Ep. 142: "Boner to the Stars"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity.
Merlin: This month, they asked Seth Boyer to help me say hi to John.
John: Jump as you do.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: How are you going?
Merlin: I'm going great.
Merlin: I'm always checking my audio levels and delivering packets.
Merlin: Merlin, man, delivering packets.
Merlin: Pow.
John: You sound like you're really awake.
John: Well, you know, Merlin, what I've been doing is I've been looking at my Facebook.
John: Oh, how's that going?
John: It's pretty...
John: It's a mixed bag, I gotta say.
John: Any photos of kids?
John: You know, that's funny because I understand the appeal, right?
John: Every time I go on Facebook, which is to say once a week, I see lots of fascinating links to very interesting articles.
John: Some of them genuinely interesting.
John: And I go down the Facebook hole and I get in there and see the things.
John: And...
John: And I answer all the Facebook messages that I get from people that probably could have just emailed me.
John: Yeah.
John: And I accept the 15 friend requests that have piled up since I was there last.
John: And then I go, and then I shut it all down.
John: I turn the lights out.
John: And I get it.
John: I get why it's there.
John: And I get...
John: I get it, but I'm not a hater, but it's, again, sort of not where I live.
Merlin: You love seeing people just be happy with their stuff.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: I'm a guy who likes other people to just be happy with their stuff.
John: Hakuna Matata.
John: Yes, the Namaste Shokaram.
Merlin: Could you ever have seen yourself 20 years ago, not only having something in your life called friend requests, but that's something that you just have to deal with on a regular basis?
Merlin: I think I did.
Merlin: I think I did.
John: I think I knew that was coming.
John: The thing that infuriates me is people who don't put pictures of themselves in their stuff.
John: You mean like as a profile picture?
John: I think what it is is that Instagram is like this and Facebook too.
John: There are people who are genuinely working as photographers who use those things to showcase some of their photography.
John: I don't mean just professionally, but this is their sandbox.
John: It's their platform.
John: They play around and they're taking pictures of other things.
John: But then there are just a lot of people who are on there, and I don't mean taking pictures of their food, but like doing artsy pictures of their plants and pictures of their dog.
John: Empty park benches.
John: Yeah, this type of thing.
John: And after a while...
John: And I approve of all that, but every 15 to 20 pictures, you ought to post one of yourself.
John: You ought to take a selfie and put it on there.
John: Maybe you should have to.
John: Maybe.
John: It should be in the terms and conditions.
John: It's like clocking out at work.
John: We've got to know that you're here.
John: And also, all of these things are ultimately meant as...
John: As personal profiles, right?
John: Now, who is going to go on?
John: Because, I mean, if all you think of, if the only people following your Instagram account are your friends, and they are, you know, looking at pictures of plants that you took...
John: I don't understand why you're there, right?
John: The whole premise is that a stranger is going to be interested in a post that you posted that got forwarded somewhere else and follow it back to there and then start following you, somebody that you don't know.
John: That's why any of us have more than 15 followers.
John: And so when that person then follows you and is interested in your views and interested in the look, interested in your aesthetic,
John: Then that person legitimately and understandably becomes interested in you.
John: And then they want to see a freaking picture of you.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: There are relatively few.
Merlin: There are pictures who take not but photos of oneself.
Merlin: And then there are people who very rarely photograph themselves.
Merlin: And I have to say there seems to be a concomitance with getting older.
Merlin: Like maybe you don't want your meat beard out there five times a day.
John: Yeah, but that's the thing of just like get, you know, get over your meat beard.
John: You got to put it there.
John: Give a meat beard shaped face.
John: Because we're looking at each other.
John: It's the whole, I mean, it's social networking.
John: We are looking at each other and all the time I'll see some interesting thread.
John: I'll go there.
John: I'll be like, oh, I like these pictures.
John: Oh, that's cool.
John: That's cool.
John: And then when I get to like picture 50 and I've seen no selfie,
John: I'm like, oh, wait a minute.
John: Do you really think that your pictures fucking matter?
John: I mean, do you really think that we're here to see pictures of flowers and whatever else?
Merlin: Well, definitely it's a kind of performance.
John: And part of that performance has got to be, even if it's just like a picture of you reflected in the window of a shop that you're taking a picture of, like a little something, a little sign that you are here with us, here with the rest of us.
Merlin: I'll tell you what I notice.
Merlin: I'm not on Instagram.
Merlin: I'm not on the Facebook.
Merlin: But I do take pictures.
Merlin: And when I look over... Well, first of all, obviously, because of having a phone with a camera, I do a lot of take pictures of funny signs just because I thought it was funny.
Merlin: I don't always post it.
John: You do that.
Merlin: You do that, yes.
Merlin: Yeah, but there's a lot I don't post.
Merlin: I'm a curator.
Merlin: A curator.
Merlin: I'm very editorial, as they say.
Merlin: You are.
Merlin: But you know what I wish we had more of?
Merlin: I think we have...
Merlin: And I've taken a fair number of pictures of my kid at first.
Merlin: Well, I'll just say it.
Merlin: We do not have that many pictures of our family together.
Merlin: We take pictures of the kid.
Merlin: We take pictures of the kid and one of us, but we don't also, my wife's not a big fan of being photographed nor my daughter, but it's, but it's funny.
Merlin: Cause like I look at family photos from my childhood and there's a lot of photos of the family posed pictures where we all took a photo together and
Merlin: And we don't... I don't feel like there's... Maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's not as much of that as there used to be, especially given the raw tonnage of photos that are being taken.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you have many of those of the family unit?
John: Well, we make a point, you know, to...
John: Every once in a while.
John: And I mean, we did it just yesterday.
John: We were all together on a ferry boat and we were taking pictures of the waves and taking pictures of the birds and taking pictures of the baby looking at the waves and the birds.
John: Taking pictures of the misspellings.
John: That's right.
John: Taking pictures of the hilarious sign on the men's room door.
John: And then it was like, oh, wait a minute.
John: Let's stop and take a picture of ourselves together.
John: And we did it selfie style.
John: But here we all are.
John: And the reason that we do it is because when you look back at the pictures from three years ago, all those men's room door and bird pictures are...
John: made a hundred times more interesting if there's a picture of you in there to locate the time and place and show the show the gray in your beard and show how much the baby's grown and etc etc right like like if you if you if you're not if you're not marking time with the one thing that we actually care about which is
John: Our ourselves.
Merlin: Well, our lives, right?
Merlin: It is very different because, again, it used to cost money to take pictures, right?
Merlin: You got to buy the film.
Merlin: You got to get it processed.
Merlin: You couldn't just take pictures of everything unless your kid got the camera and went crazy or something.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Been such a huge shift.
Merlin: I mean, think about now.
Merlin: I mean, like on the one hand, the stuff people post is more about like what I'm seeing.
Merlin: You think about, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like if I look at people on Tumblr is the closest thing I have to Instagram.
Merlin: And it's a lot of, you know, stuff like funny signs or here's my food or whatever.
Merlin: But, you know, it's a way of saying the shot that you chose, the thing that's in it, how you shot it, it's kind of made to be posted and it's made to be, this is what it's like to be me in some ways.
John: Yes, exactly.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And the idea that a selfie is like egotistical is so hilarious to me because really it's the idea that anybody gives a fuck about your pictures at all that's egotistical.
John: Like your picture of a bird or a flower or a manhole cover is something that we should celebrate because you framed it in your phone.
John: like no we the only thing that's interesting about us is that we are alive and alive for a short time right and if we were if we all lived forever none of this would be interesting no one would take a picture of a single fucking thing because it would be like yeah right right like i saw it right trees grow trees live and die and we are still here so uh i don't need to see a picture of the past
John: The only thing that's interesting about the past is that we are finite.
Merlin: But the other thing is, think about how different that is.
Merlin: Even the photos that I would take with my old crummy camera, like our show art, with the old crummy camera on my old crummy phone, you think about what's changed.
Merlin: And now it doesn't cost anything except for the space on your phone to take a photo.
Merlin: So it's economical to the point of almost being free.
Merlin: Other big difference, we get to see how it turned out and maybe take 15 photos of the same thing.
Merlin: But also, kind of along the lines of our last episode where we talked about what you post and what people say about it, I'm kind of meticulous about what I leave out of photos now, way more than I used to be.
Merlin: I'm much less likely, just because even if I'm not planning to post it, there's still some part of me that's like, oh, I don't want that mess in the photo.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Or I don't – you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's dirt on this table.
Merlin: I never would have thought of that when I was a kid.
Merlin: There's so many great – some of my favorite photos.
Merlin: There's a photo of my parents.
Merlin: My dad's smoking a cigarette, of course.
Merlin: My mom's smoking a cigarette, of course.
Merlin: And she's just walked up to him at the table and they've done something playful and now she's giving him a hug.
Merlin: And that's awesome.
Merlin: I treasure that photo.
Merlin: But also, it's just all the shit in the background that's awesome.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's like it's a kitchen in a house where people live.
Merlin: There's an old school Coke can from the 1970s that just looks awesome.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And, you know, it's got all that kind of ugly shit that every family had in their house.
Merlin: Dumb dishes, you know, unclean kitchen.
Merlin: And it's delightful.
Merlin: And I would be, I have to say, a little bit reluctant to take that photo today.
Merlin: And I'm only partly confident about why that is.
Merlin: Do you feel such things?
Merlin: Do you think a lot about... It sounds like you're more freewheeling about what you photograph.
John: No, I mean, I'm very aware of the frame.
John: But I always try to include something in the frame that...
John: That adds that context that you're saying, you know, like a car or a all the stuff that you think of as as like garbage extraneous footage ephemera.
John: But that is really the thing that 15 years from now, you're going to look back and go, oh, my God, I remember that car.
Merlin: Yeah, at my grandparents' house, there's a picture of their ugly AMC in the driveway, which is fun to see, that ugly old AMC.
Merlin: Well, my grandfather had an AMC dealership, a Nash and AMC dealership.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: No, no, I'm pretty sure.
Merlin: Your grandfather had a Nash and AMC dealership?
Merlin: He might have worked at it, but we were automobile people at one point.
John: I did not know that.
John: And after all this time to discover something that interesting.
Merlin: Well, there you go.
Merlin: This is what AMC meant something.
Merlin: But what's great about that photo is the stuff that was not meant to be in the photo, which is I go, oh, look at that.
Merlin: I see grandma's rose garden.
Merlin: I can see it must be, well, I think mostly it was holidays.
Merlin: Holidays, my grandfather would always put the flag out.
Merlin: And seeing their front porch and how it was arranged at that time, that stuff is all – that's the best part of it.
Merlin: That's what makes the photo so great, you know?
John: Well, and yeah.
John: So I feel like – I mean I have a lot of friends that post a lot of pictures that fall into the –
John: The coffee table book category, where 20 years ago, they went into a Barnes & Noble and found a Tashin published book on fire hydrants in America.
Merlin: Someday I will take photos of birds on wires.
John: Yeah, and then they're out with their camera and they're like, I want to do this.
John: I want to do something like this.
John: And they develop a theme.
John: They're like, I'm the person that takes pictures of manhole covers or whatever.
John: And I have a friend who has a blog called Street Seats.
John: And all she does is take pictures of chairs that people have left on the side of the road.
John: And it's wonderful, because the chairs are very evocative, and it's a very... You know, the limitations... I contribute to one that's nothing but mattresses.
Merlin: Mattresses, right.
Merlin: Inspired by my friend John Gruber, who every time he sees one, he says to his kid, do you want to take a nap?
Merlin: And now I do it with my kid.
John: But ultimately, like... Ultimately...
John: you know you want some of the character of the curator in there that's that's and i think more and more now the idea of like that journalists are invisible
John: And that they're writing in the omniscient and dispassionate voice.
John: And that curators are invisible and the work speaks for itself and all this.
John: I feel that is less and less convincing now.
John: And that there never was a journalistic voice that was completely objective.
John: And to continue to pretend...
John: is maybe doing us a disservice, that there is a way to strive for objectivity but have a subjective voice at the same time.
John: And that is that the voice can be personal, but that the thoughts are still striving to be as objective as possible.
John: And you can have, because there are tons of examples of people where the voice is very objective, but the thoughts are incredibly subjective.
John: Anytime you read the Wall Street Journal, you see, like, the objective voice masks what is ultimately a very pointed worldview, right?
John: And that's the failure of the objective journalist, right?
Merlin: Well, I mean, at the most basic level, the most brain dead obvious thing that's always worth mentioning is that what you choose to cover is a voice.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Like what you pick as the top story, how you write the lead or the headline or what have you.
Merlin: Like all of those things are a kind of voice, but there's – even with that, there's no way you can disappear from that.
Merlin: Right.
John: And so let's stop pretending and make the personal voice –
John: Just acknowledge it and say like, hi, I'm the reporter.
John: I am writing this article and here's why this interests me.
John: And then strive for some objectivity in your thoughts.
John: And what that involves is like openly, visibly questioning your own assumptions in the thing that you write.
John: And I feel like that's true in photojournalism too and in just the fun sort of pseudo-photojournalism that we're all practicing now.
John: It's like, who are you?
John: Not only why are you taking these pictures, but like, who are you?
Merlin: Well, this is where I put on my Roland Barth hat.
Merlin: I think it depends.
Merlin: I love that hat.
Merlin: That's a great hat.
Merlin: It loves pro wrestling.
Merlin: Your Barth hat.
Merlin: I'm going to barf that.
Merlin: Boy, this is really douchey.
Merlin: But I think it depends on who you think about as your audience because it's almost like the way you do a certain kind of line reading of exactly the same line.
Merlin: Think about a word that I love, a word like hello.
Merlin: How you say hello could be very funny or very serious or very grave or invoke something.
Merlin: So when I go, hello, my family knows I'm making a joke about Project Runway.
Merlin: That's a Project Runway joke.
Merlin: You know, when I say, hello, that's a different kind of hello.
Merlin: If I go, hello, that's a different kind of hello, right?
John: It's all the same word.
Merlin: I don't want any of these hellos from you.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: No, thank you.
Merlin: And then all the contestants respond, hey.
Merlin: So I guess what I think of like, yes, I think most people are doing it's a thing of like what I see and it's not my opinion.
Merlin: It's my sensibility.
Merlin: I think people like showing other people what their sensibility is.
Merlin: Some people like – see, this is what Tumblr is so great for.
Merlin: Tumblr is so terrible for lots of things.
Merlin: One thing it's great at is following obsessives or finding people who curate strange kinds of obsessions.
Merlin: For example, have you ever seen rich kids on Instagram?
Yeah.
Merlin: I get forwarded that all the time.
John: It's really funny.
John: It's super funny.
John: And I get forwarded it in reply to my contention that no one has it easy.
John: Because I make that contention periodically.
Merlin: I think that exactly proves that person doesn't have it easy because they have a helicopter and 17 watches and they're still unhappy and have to show it to you before they feel anything.
John: It's self-evident.
John: That's my reply too.
John: When people are like, no one has it easy, what about this?
John: And they send me some picture of a kid in a Learjet with 20 watches and I'm like, do you not see that this is a very unhappy person?
Merlin: So many people refuse to accept that even assholes are unhappy.
John: So unhappy.
John: That's why they're assholes.
John: I mean – It doesn't hurt.
John: Present company accepted.
John: Of course.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: But in that case, yeah, I'm not going anywhere with this.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: There are topics and there's a reason I'm not on Instagram.
Merlin: There's a variety.
Merlin: There are thousands of reasons I'm not on Instagram.
Merlin: I mean, least of which is I don't want to feel compelled to have to have my sensibility on Instagram.
Merlin: I think the app is weird.
Merlin: I think the whole environment is strange.
Merlin: But, you know, a big part of it is, boy, this is hopefully the ugliest thing I'll say this month.
Merlin: No, I don't need to see any more latte art.
Merlin: I'm good.
Merlin: Like a dessert with one bite out of it.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: That's really, really cool.
John: Merlin, I hope that is the ugliest thing you say this month.
John: I really do.
John: For your sake.
Merlin: You should hear what I've been thinking about the black.
John: I agree.
John: And I went on to Instagram instead of going on to something else.
John: You're trapped there now.
John: Like I said the other day, there really are only five places I go on the internet.
John: And it embarrasses me every time I pick up my phone.
John: Every time I pick up Jonathan Colton's phone and scroll through 400 apps...
John: I have 13 pages on my iPhone.
John: I'm like, what am I doing with my life?
John: I don't have any of these amazing apps.
John: Yeah.
John: And I think when I stare at the internet and I think, like, I should go on the internet more and have more places where I go and do activities.
John: Yeah.
John: But I think I do see the internet quite a bit.
John: I think I follow... I'm a link follower.
John: I hyperlink from one link to another at hyperspeed.
Merlin: And use the XHTML for that?
John: I use XHTML, which is valid.
John: Okay.
John: I go, I link around and I zip and I zap and I see like 15 celebrities who married a cousin and I see, you know... You follow those you might be interested in ones that take you to ZergNet via Taboola.
Merlin: Yeah, paid.outbraid.ru.
Merlin: ZergNet's my favorite because you click on... I don't know, I was talking to somebody about this the other day.
Merlin: We both, like, I don't know why I fucking clicked on this.
Merlin: It was... I don't usually do this, hardly ever, but I...
Merlin: It was something like 17 gay celebrities who played straight people.
Merlin: And it's like Nathan Lane.
Merlin: Wow, really?
Merlin: Nathan Lane is gay?
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: I can't believe it.
Merlin: I'm so glad I clicked on this.
Merlin: But you go to the ZergNet page, you get on the landing page, and you don't even see the article.
Merlin: You see a page of lists of articles where yours is the top left pick.
Merlin: But it's like, yeah, it's listicles all the way down.
John: Well, I got bullied.
John: Not bullied.
John: Sorry.
John: Trigger alert.
John: I was encouraged by my social network in real life.
John: I hate words.
John: I'm so fucking sick of words.
John: My meat space social network of actual meat people made of meat.
John: Meat sickles that you know.
John: Meat sickles that I know that were like, listen, they said to me at the beginning of this football season, they were like, listen, we want you to come and watch football with us every Sunday.
John: But
John: You can't just come and sit in the back and eat the food and every once in a while yell sports and spill your non-alcoholic beer.
John: We want you to sit on the couch, get engaged in the game, be part of the action.
Merlin: Was it kind of a second chance or a last chance?
Merlin: Like, okay, we really want you here, but you got to play by the rules.
John: I mean, I go to lots of sports events, and I have a very good time at them, and I enjoy my friends that like sports.
John: And so this was like, hey, we are friends, and this is what we like to do, and we're inviting you into our... But it's their world.
John: That's right.
John: They're like, this is our cult.
John: We're inviting you to church on Sunday.
John: You don't sit in the pew at the back of the church and make fart sounds.
John: You come to church with us.
John: That's not pious.
John: You don't have to take communion.
John: You don't have to go up and do confession.
John: But if you're going to come to church with us, come and sing the hymns and be a part of the scene.
John: So I was like, okay, I do want to do that.
John: And I went and I got involved watching the Seahawks and mostly watching my friends get very emotional about a sports event.
John: And I've been watching that my whole life because my dad would get very emotional about sports events.
John: And I don't have a comment about it one way or the other.
John: I'm not critiquing it at all.
John: I'm just observing it and saying, like, here we are, and we are very upset right now.
John: I am upset on behalf of everyone about the way that that last play was handled.
John: And I feel like that running back should have done a different thing.
John: And I'm upset about it.
John: I'm mad.
John: And so watching the Seahawks, I'm invested in them, and I like them, and I think Richard Sherman is smart and interesting, and I think Marshawn Lynch is very interesting.
Merlin: Marshawn's got a lot of heart, I assume.
John: I feel like he's a very interesting person.
John: I think he does have quite a bit of heart.
John: And the coach, Pete Carroll, what a kook.
John: He's really a nut.
John: And I do feel like he's had a big effect on the team and so forth and so on.
John: And then I watched that last game, the NFC playoff game that everybody's yelling about.
John: And it was so extraordinary to be behind the entire game and to be demonstrably the lesser of the two teams on the field.
John: The other team, the team from Wisconsin, which is named after a meatpacking job, butchers, basically.
John: They should have been called the butchers.
John: They were doing a fantastic job of playing the football game.
John: And the Seahawks were doing a terrible job, except for Marshawn Lynch, a person I find very fascinating.
John: And then in the 11th hour, literally the last two minutes of the game, they somehow threw a combination of moxie and hubris and sports acumen.
John: Why can't you do this for every game?
John: Rose to victory and shocking the nation and shocking anyone.
Merlin: People seem legitimately like old school people.
Merlin: Fucking blown away by what happened.
John: It was astonishing.
John: And to watch it in real time, particularly to watch it in a room full of diehard football people who, for the two hours prior, had been pacing around the room, throwing their seven-layer dip on the floor, and saying...
John: This game is over.
John: We should just turn it off.
John: This team had a good run and good for them.
John: And you know what?
John: That's just how the cookie crumbles.
John: And they were actually speaking that way about it to each other.
John: And hilariously, I was the one sitting calmly on the couch saying, you know the Seahawks always rally.
Merlin: Oh, you're like the designated optimist.
John: Yeah, I was like, they do this all the time.
John: They're behind at the half, and then they have some miracle.
John: And people were like, not listening to me because I'm not a sports guy.
John: They were ignoring me.
John: They were talking over the top of me.
John: And I was like, listen, you know, Marshawn's having a hell of a game, and I feel like there's still a lot of game left to play.
John: Still two minutes on the clock.
John: I mean, and they were ready to turn the game off, right?
Yeah.
John: And then watching the team come back and seeing the transformation, seeing new life breathed into these people, not just in the moment, but like their year looks different.
John: Wherever they are right now, these friends of mine, they are walking around feeling differently than they would have felt had they lost that football game.
Merlin: Have you sort of arrived now in their eyes?
Merlin: Do you get a little more credit, you think?
Merlin: You're only as good as your last game, but that's a pretty good one.
Merlin: They don't care.
John: At one point, we were completely behind.
John: We had no points.
John: And I said, you know what?
John: Because there's a big buffet covered with food.
John: And I said, you know what?
John: No one's eaten one of those blue cupcakes yet.
John: And even though I am ostensibly gluten-free, I'm going to go eat one of those blue cupcakes to rally this team.
John: Because this is the kind of sports thinking that happens, right?
John: It's like rally cap, you know?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: You're not wearing the shoes that you wore to the last game.
John: Why are you trying to jinx us?
John: And I was like, I'm going to go eat a blue cupcake.
John: And I went, I grabbed a blue cupcake.
John: I sat down, took a bite out of it.
John: It was a terrible blue cupcake.
John: And immediately the Seahawks scored their first touchdown on a completely nutty, like, fake out play.
John: And everybody in the room turned at me and stared at me like I had just conjured.
John: He's a wizard.
John: Like I had just conjured a fox.
John: Suddenly there was a live fox looking for an exit.
John: And I'm just sitting there with the smug blue frosting smile on like, what did I tell you?
John: And so for the next 45 minutes, every time anything good happened on the team, half the people in the room would turn and point at me and go, it's the cupcake!
John: And so I can play.
John: I can play this.
John: I can play the cupcake game.
John: But in fact, at the end, when the Seahawks won, I was given no credit for my sorcery because it was clear that they had appealed to a higher level, which is to say, Jesus...
John: who cared about the game.
John: Like they say, there's no cupcake in team.
John: But what's happened to me is that that transformation on the field was so extraordinary that I actually, two days later, was sitting...
John: you know, in my room, staring at the wall as I normally do, and a voice in my head said, I'd kind of like to read something about the Seahawks right now.
John: And I went and I read an account of the game written by a sports writer, and I found it very pleasurable because I saw that game and I was involved in it, and now I'm reading his thoughts on it, which comport with mine.
John: And then I read a lot of people in the comments and the people who are against the Seahawks said bad things.
John: And the people who are in favor of the Seahawks said, ha ha, suck it to the angry people.
John: And that comported with my feelings.
John: And so now having had that experience where I got a gratification from reading a sports article and
John: Then I was like, the next day I said, well, let's try that again.
John: And I went and I read another sports article.
John: And I also enjoyed it.
John: And then the third day I read a sports article prognosticating about the future of the upcoming game.
John: How'd that go?
John: Well, it's harder to know because it hasn't happened yet.
Merlin: That's true.
John: So this guy's talking about sports events that haven't happened, and I had a harder time feeling confident.
Merlin: And with that one now, more than ever, now you're third gateway here.
Merlin: Now you have to start forming an opinion of your own.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Apart from what you came into it with.
John: Because I can sit there and read this article and say, well, Marshawn Lynch sure does make a lot of plays.
John: And it's true, Richard Sherman is injured, so that affects things.
John: um but um the patriots uh tom brady he's a real he makes some completions and um i don't know now i don't know what to think i so now all i can do is say well i'm rooting for them are you doing anything now they're going to the uh the super bowl right they're going to the super bowl now are you invited to that
John: Am I invited to this?
John: Oh, you're talking about to the Super Bowl party where we sit and watch?
John: I would be, except that I will be on a little thing called the Joko Cruz.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: You're going to miss that.
Merlin: Man, this is like your quinceañera of football.
John: That's a shame.
John: But here's the thing about footballs is that I'm pretty sure that on the day of the Super Bowl...
John: we will be able to watch it anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Paul and Storm, Amy Mann, all the usual suspects.
Merlin: All sitting in the captain's skyhook lounge.
Merlin: I'd watch football with Amy Mann.
Merlin: I don't think she'd watch it with me, but I'd do that in a heartbeat.
John: Yeah, Amy Mann is a hard person to know whether she decides that football is her secret passion, or she's deeply passionate about it, or whether she would blow it off.
John: Because Amy has strange passions.
Oh.
John: Like some things that you would... Oh, you know what?
John: She's very into boxing.
John: No.
John: Amy Mann is... Sweet science.
John: Amy Mann follows boxing religiously and is very passionate about it.
John: I would not have guessed that.
John: And in fact wrote an album about boxing.
John: It's called Boxing.
John: No, it's not.
John: It's called something else.
John: The Heavyweight Champion.
John: It's called Sugar Ray Leonard.
John: you're just saying words um so and this is the other thing about sports you don't realize like who the secret there are all kinds of people walking around in hard hats painted in their team colors with two beers attached to the hat the straws that you know like oh that guy's a sports fan but then there are all these people like george will or uh he's crazy with the baseball right
John: Crazy about baseball or McGeorge Bundy or Bundy McGeorge.
John: Sergeant Shriver.
John: That's right.
John: Sergeant Pepper.
John: And then it turns out they're all into sports.
John: And you go, oh, sports.
John: Right.
John: Okay.
John: This is a thing that you can, this is, you know, and I'm not reading these sports articles, which are actually pretty well written.
John: They're not just guys typing in all caps, yell, yell, yell.
John: They're talking about sports as though it's, in a way, Merlin, it's like people that write history about war.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I've heard this said for many years that – well, now I'm thinking of that Kurt Vonnegut quote where he says all the best writers at Cornell are in the science program.
Merlin: But I think it's pretty well understood that some of the most lively American writing of the 20th century was writing about sports.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: People I really admire writing about sports.
Merlin: Not just Hunter S. Thompson, but lots of people actually legitimately writing about sports.
John: Legitimate writing about sports.
Merlin: Legitimate writing.
Merlin: I'm rarely surprised to find out somebody likes sports just because that's, to me, that's...
Merlin: It's like Bob Pollard says, not like in the Beatles, that's not like an air.
Merlin: I'm just so used to everybody being into some kind of a sport in some league at some level.
Merlin: I have a lot of friends who are really into soccer or Premier League soccer.
John: That's one I just don't understand.
John: I don't know.
John: I could see that.
John: A lot of people I admire are into soccer, but I've been watching soccer games my entire life and I just feel like...
John: The pace of this game is not one that I was raised to understand.
Merlin: It's different things.
Merlin: I told you the local sports ball team here was in the baseball series this year.
Merlin: We watched that, and it was pretty fun.
Merlin: It was pretty fun.
Merlin: It was some good games and stuff.
Merlin: It's fun.
Merlin: I got a kid.
John: I hate basketball.
John: And that makes me very unpopular.
Merlin: What is it about basketball?
John: Well, it's that it just goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and both teams score 100 points, and then the whole game is decided in the last three minutes by who scores the last two points.
Merlin: It's kind of like Quidditch.
Merlin: Quidditch is a very frustrating game.
John: It feels like basketball games should be three minutes long, and they should just, you know, like first team to four points wins.
Merlin: See, here's the thing I don't understand about Quidditch is you can make points by throwing the ball through the hoop things.
Merlin: So you got all these guys running around, but then there's two interesting things to know.
John: Wait, don't you have to be on a broom?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And as I understand it, now see, I'm only going to say this to you because I don't actually want to have this argument with somebody in the Harry Potter community.
Merlin: But here's the thing, as I understand Quidditch, there's two interesting rules about Quidditch that make every other rule pointless.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: First rule of Quidditch is that there is a player.
Merlin: Don't talk about Quidditch.
Merlin: You do not talk about Quidditch club.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'm writing that one down.
Merlin: Is that you got the role that Harry has, which is you're the, I think it's called the seeker.
Merlin: And the seeker goes after this magical thing called the golden snitch.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And if you get the golden snitch, you know how many points you get?
John: How many?
John: 150.
John: 150 points to get the Golden Snitch.
Merlin: Okay, that's important rule number one.
Merlin: You ready for important rule number two?
Merlin: The game is not over until somebody catches the Golden Snitch.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: What are the other ways to score?
Merlin: Just onesie-twosie, throw a fucking ball through a hoop like a mook.
John: But think about that.
Merlin: The game's not over until somebody... The game's decided when you get the snitch.
Merlin: Nothing else matters.
John: Right.
John: So it's just a game of getting the snitch.
John: Why bother scoring all the other points?
John: Here comes the owls.
John: That's the wizard version of email.
Okay.
John: I'm going to get you so into Harry Potter.
John: You're going to get mails from people who are like, the whole point is to get the blah, blah, blah.
John: But really, yeah, it's like a winner-take-all situation.
John: It's actually more of a test of character.
Merlin: No, man.
Merlin: I am the worst.
Merlin: I'm the worst.
Merlin: It's funny you should say this, though, because we talk about surprised at who likes sports.
Merlin: I was not into comics for 30-some years.
Merlin: Not against it.
Merlin: I made fun of it a little bit, but ha-ha, nerds reading comics.
Merlin: And then, as you know, I got kind of into comics a couple years ago.
Merlin: Let's super duper into it right now.
Merlin: But now, I mean, you can't swing a dead cat without running into somebody who's a giant comics fan.
Merlin: And like so many people that – so I only say this to contrast this.
Merlin: Now, to other people today, given that Marvel is going to have – between Marvel, DC – I read something – I read an amazing article on Grantland.
Merlin: How did we get to talking about Marvel versus DC?
Merlin: Over the next three to four years, I believe, there's going to be 70 –
Merlin: superhero movies coming out so it should be no it's i mean that's too many um but it should be a surprise to no one that people like comics now and yet when i hear something like oh nothing such person really likes comics i'm always like wow that's kind of cool i wouldn't guess that right but it it is kind of the literature of nerds or dnd as another one like it's it's surprising how many people were not just playing dnd but were super into some aspect of dnd
Merlin: But, you know, there's not that many shirts for adults about that.
John: And I feel like I saw this.
John: I mean, I can't speak to the comics experience.
John: That's okay.
John: I'll bring it back to Harry Potter in a minute.
John: But I remember, and I'm sure you do too, but it was profoundly true here in Seattle that in 1991-92, and I don't mean to always talk about punk rock, but
John: But in 1991-92, everybody in Seattle was scrambling to reconstruct their personal history in such a way that they had always been punk.
John: And that they were the one kid in their high school that got a ton of shit for being punk rock.
Merlin: Talk about curation.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, but seriously, I mean, the kind of manicured history and the kind of Stalinist photo editing that makes it look like that time you wore a garbage bag on Punk Rock Day shows that you were a punk since you were 13.
John: That you were punk the whole time.
John: That's right.
John: Yeah.
John: It involved not... It wasn't, I don't think, all dishonest because there are a lot of people that had a very interesting childhood in the 80s.
John: But the selective remembering of events, and like you say, the one time on Halloween that they made a mohawk out of shaving cream in their hair, that picture became the picture that was on their refrigerator and...
John: And was like, yeah, man, you know, back in Central Valley, California, I was one punk in my whole school.
John: And it was very important to everybody that they have their bona fides or their bona fides, depending on who you want to ask.
Yeah.
John: All in a row because nobody wanted to be because that was one of the things about punk rock is that there was nothing uncooler than being new to the scene.
John: Right.
John: Because that was what that was what a poser was.
John: You didn't want to say like, actually, I was just a total like a normal, like preppy nobody.
John: And then I decided that punk rock really meant something to me.
John: uh when it became popular and so it was it was ridiculous and i remember i remember saying uh at the time like i've been to a lot of places in america and i remember i remember exactly how many punk rockers there were in the united states in 1985 and that was just to say not that many
John: You'd probably seen most of them.
John: I saw a lot of them because, you know, I was a young person and I was traveling and those were small scenes.
John: And they were, you know, little readouts against the culture.
John: And it is not possible that every single person who in 1992 claimed to have been punk, it's not possible that they all were punk.
Merlin: It's like our generation's version of claiming to be at Woodstock.
John: Right, or claiming to have been there at D-Day or whatever.
John: And I feel the same way about Dungeons & Dragons, because I did play Dungeons & Dragons, but not very much or very well.
John: I was very into D&D culture and the concepts.
John: I'm right there with you.
John: I spent much more time drawing maps than anything else.
John: Oh, I drew maps and I made dungeons and I sat and dreamt of how many platinum pieces I could put in the hold of the ship I was building.
John: Did you do encumbrance?
John: What is an encumbrance?
Merlin: Encumbrance is where you can only carry so much stuff.
Merlin: It affects your fighting and movement speed if you're carrying more than so many pounds of stuff.
John: No, I did not do that.
John: I did not really follow the rules of Dungeons and Dragons at all.
John: But I poured over the monster manual.
Merlin: But the lore and the books and the dice and the figures and the hex paper, it's so fun.
John: Loved it.
John: I still have my dice.
John: I still, you know, I have them in a special place on my mantle.
John: I still think about those days.
John: And, you know, I was profoundly invested in the idea of that magic was real and that, you know, and that this interesting sort of goulash of, like, medieval culture...
John: But in an alternate universe, and also it's kind of futuristic, that is the, you know, that is the dilithium crystal that powers all of nerd culture.
John: This, like, troika of influences, fantasy, or alternate universe possibilities, medieval...
John: technology but somehow also inexplicably in the future or using futuristic technology too loved it I loved it ate it with a spoon but I cannot honestly say to you that I in any real way played D&D you know because I probably played the actual game of D&D with a dungeon master and a campaign probably played it five times
John: I just wasn't interested in another 13-year-old kid governing my journey to Middle Earth.
John: I handled all of that in my imaginarium.
John: But what I hear about... With your Nerdimantium.
John: With my Nerdimantium.
John: But now, like, I just did that Woodstock, right?
John: And how long do you think before Dungeons & Dragons came up in the meet and greet?
John: Like, within two middle parsecs.
John: Two parsecs.
John: And so I'm standing back there, and now we're all talking about Dungeons & Dragons, and I can, because of my own personal integrity, I cannot jump in and say...
John: Oh, I play D&D.
John: But I feel people do that.
John: And I look at them and I go, did you really play?
John: I mean, are you a fake geek girl?
John: Is that what I'm saying?
John: Oh, boy.
John: Did you really play D&D?
John: Or did you read Dune, brush up against D&D, and enjoy some facet of it?
Merlin: I think – no, I don't know.
Merlin: I disagree because I think it still counts.
John: Because for me, I mean I just – Do you think I played D&D by my definition?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean like – but I mean you were – when we say play D&D, I think the thing there is like how much did you connect with the culture?
Merlin: And in that case, connecting with culture for me was whoa, big time to the point where like I practically had scoliosis from carrying these five hardcover books around school with me all the time.
Yeah.
Merlin: Those books are heavy.
John: They are heavy, and there's a lot to know.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, do you know how many hit points a bugbear has?
Merlin: 40?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't either.
Merlin: I'll find out.
Merlin: Did you just send me a link?
Merlin: Yeah, I sent you a link to a photo from my high school yearbook, 1983.
Merlin: It's a photo from Punk Rock Day.
Merlin: Punk Rock Day.
Merlin: Merlin Mann.
Merlin: Some heavily connected popular girls dressed up in garbage bags.
John: Oh, I have this fantastic picture from my sophomore year Halloween of the two, like, cutest preppy girls wearing black lipstick and, yeah, like... Oh, man, I'd get that laminated.
Merlin: Garbage bag miniskirts.
John: Oh, man.
Merlin: You can rock me to sleep tonight.
John: I've been looking at it for 35 years.
John: Garbage bag miniskirt.
John: Oh, my God, it is so hot.
John: It didn't make those girls punk.
John: I don't care.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Garbage bag miniskirt.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: So now this is requiring that I sign in to Flickr.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Never mind.
Merlin: It's not important.
Merlin: It just goes with side ponytails wearing garbage bags.
John: You know what?
John: I'm on Yahoo now.
John: How did I get here?
John: You're not a fan.
John: Sorry, there was an error.
John: Please sign in again.
Merlin: I would just like to say to anybody who has access to pictures of girls wearing garbage bags in a cute way, I think that would make a great Tumblr.
Merlin: I'm just going to toss it out there.
Merlin: Pictures of like preppy girls.
Merlin: Not dead girls.
Merlin: That's super important, guys.
Merlin: They have to be cute, perky girls you would not normally expect to wear a garbage bag wearing a garbage bag in a sweet and winsome way.
Merlin: Wouldn't that be nice?
John: I would watch that.
Merlin: I'll tell you some other ones I like a lot before we get back to Harry Potter.
John: This Yahoo.
John: What is Yahoo?
John: Why is it still there?
John: I want to just see the picture.
Merlin: They bought Flickr like 15 years ago.
John: I don't want to interact with Yahoo.
Merlin: Put it away.
Merlin: Just put it away.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Craigslist Mirrors.
Merlin: It's a Tumblr of nothing but photos of mirrors that people have posted on Craigslist, and they are endlessly fascinating.
John: Have you ever been fooled by – have you ever gone and looked at an ad in Craigslist or on eBay, and it turns out that it's a guy taking a picture of his dongle in the reflection of –
Merlin: I saw the famous photo of the man in the teapot or whatever it was.
Merlin: I saw the famous one from a very, very, very long – one of the first memes I remember was a picture of a sort of a stout man taking a picture of a teapot for eBay and you could clearly see his dingus.
Merlin: That I remember.
Merlin: Are you saying this is a thing?
Merlin: Is this like a sexy thing?
John: It is a thing.
John: I've actually looked at an ad for a thing and then realized I felt weird.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: It happens?
Merlin: Like you see it?
John: Yeah, and then saw in the reflection of a hubcap or something, a guy in a... A posing jock?
John: Yeah, like in a posing banana hammock.
Yeah.
Merlin: That would put me off my beer.
Merlin: But then out there again, you just nailed another one, which is it's very difficult to take pictures of some things without having yourself in it.
Merlin: And I know that no matter how hard I try, what people are going to notice most is they're going to examine me in the picture of the thing that I – you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Merlin: Like, I didn't realize until I posted it the other night when I posted a picture of the bell getting ready to do our show that, of course, my reflection is in it.
Merlin: Oh, see?
Merlin: I was clothed, you know?
Merlin: I was be-shirted.
Merlin: I wear clothes all the time, so it's not a problem.
John: I wonder about this because I enjoy selfies, but I also – and I think that I am vain.
Merlin: Hang on a minute.
Merlin: I think you just broke my programming.
Merlin: I'm going to try and unpack the statement, I think I'm vain.
Merlin: I think I'm vain.
John: I'm self-involved to realize how self-involved I am.
John: But I also have a very clear-eyed picture of what I actually look like and where that falls.
John: I don't think that I am beautiful.
Okay.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not – just selfies.
Merlin: Back before they had a name, it was just always a picture of a girl taking a picture of herself in the bathroom mirror.
Merlin: It just became like a thing and like a cute girl taking a picture of herself in the bathroom mirror.
Merlin: The only thing that made me like those photos much more than today's modern selfies –
Merlin: are that, yes, they were less sort of contrived, but also they look at the lens.
Merlin: The thing that drives me nuts, and somebody's going to have to explain this to me someday, I don't understand why all selfies, including celebrity selfies, are primarily of somebody chimping at their own camera while they take a picture.
Merlin: What does that mean?
Merlin: Chimping.
Merlin: Oh, like when you're looking at the preview of the thing.
Merlin: So like instead of taking a picture of yourself, looking into the lens.
John: Oh, you're looking at yourself looking at yourself.
Merlin: It's a picture of yourself looking at your camera taking a picture of you.
John: I can't.
John: I don't understand that either.
Merlin: But I think that's a thing.
Merlin: I think maybe that's part of the allure is that they're looking at themselves.
Merlin: See, now we're back to Roland Barthes.
Merlin: Now, shoot, I think we're down to Sasura at this point.
Merlin: Now, you're looking at a picture of yourself in a mirror looking at a picture of yourself in a mirror.
Merlin: on your phone and then you put that up.
John: Oh, yes.
John: I think I agree with you.
John: I find that hotter for some reason.
Merlin: In the sense that for a long time... Here's me looking at me, looking at me, looking at me.
John: For a long time, the only thing I found erotic about porn movies was that moment in every porn movie where the actress can't help but look at the camera.
John: There's always a moment where she is either saying like, are you getting this?
John: Or just like, she just breaks the fourth wall.
John: And that was always the moment that made the kind of...
John: that brought the whole... Because the fantasy of like, I'm just a guy delivering pizzas and whoa!
John: Yes.
John: Hello, ladies.
John: Like I could never... I was never invested in any of those fantasies.
John: I'm talking about... To our young listeners who do not understand...
John: What I am talking about?
John: You've never seen actual porn?
John: Yeah, a time before contemporary porn when it was actual feature-length movies that purported to have a plot where people had unlikely sex.
Merlin: There would be a lot of business negotiations gone wrong.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Misunderstandings about money.
John: People come in and, you know, like someone comes in to take dictation.
John: Oh, sure, dictation.
Merlin: You got problems with Dinah Cobble.
Merlin: You might want to get the cable fixed.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: A guy's sitting at a bar, the bartender, and he are there alone, and things get a little out of hand.
Merlin: A lot of it seems to involve women needing a favor.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: It all kind of works out because they like intercourse with strangers.
Right.
John: And I feel like there was that moment in the 80s when all of a sudden it was not the lady going to the boy doctor, but it was the boy going to the lady doctor, a real little switcheroo, a little feminist-like inversion of your expectations.
John: Yes.
John: But all of those plots were not very interesting.
John: And what was interesting were those moments where the boom mic came into the shot or one of the people...
John: Just for a second glanced right into the camera and it was like, right, this is being made.
John: This movie is being made in a motel room in, you know, like probably four blocks from where the tonight show is being filmed.
John: and uh and that is interesting to me or you know that was interesting to my young libido in a way my young sense it's not your full-on pov kind of shot but it does give you the uh you the reader a little bit of insight right she just kind of looked she she didn't she wasn't aware of looking at me she was almost looking at her own reflection in the lens of the
John: of the 35mm film camera that is recording this for posterity.
John: But I do feel like that, you're right, that looking into the phone, pointing it into the mirror, that there's something erotic being communicated there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Semiotic.
Merlin: Semiotic.
Merlin: Semiotic.
John: Now, how does that relate back to Quidditch?
John: That's not important.
John: I mean, I got into an argument with somebody on the internet the other day where she said something to the effect of she was trying to make common cause with me and said something like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, something from Harry Potter universe.
John: Am I right?
Merlin: You didn't get the reference?
John: I didn't get the reference, and I didn't get why she thought I would.
John: And I was like, I don't, you know, Harry Potter doesn't.
Merlin: I'm not even doing, see, I'm such a crappy nerd.
Merlin: I mean, I have friends that are so much more successful nerds than I am.
Merlin: You're a pretty good nerd.
Merlin: No, I'm not.
Merlin: I do it wrong.
Merlin: I mean, I don't do it, I don't do the nerdy stuff in the right nerdy way.
Merlin: I'm late to a lot of it.
Merlin: And I've done, as an observer of the Harry Potter community, I'm living the unthinkable.
John: Which is what?
Merlin: The unthinkable is I have not read the words in a whole Harry Potter book ever.
John: What?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Even I have.
Merlin: I love the movies and I love the audio books, but I did not read any of the books when they were out.
Merlin: And I got into it because my daughter and I said to my daughter, hey, let's try this Harry Potter thing.
Merlin: She was really scared at first.
Merlin: Came back a few months later.
Merlin: She ate it with a spoon.
Merlin: And like this past summer, we watched a Harry Potter movie every day.
Merlin: So I've seen all whatever, seven or eight of them, multiple.
Merlin: I've seen the third one many, many, many times.
Merlin: I've seen the final one many, many times.
Merlin: I've seen all of them except a couple at least four times probably.
John: So you know, I have never seen a Harry Potter movie.
Oh, they're delightful.
John: But I did read all the books one time.
John: What?
John: Because I was locked in the brig of a transatlantic ship, and that was all that was there.
John: Was this some secret work you were doing?
John: The captain had, I would say, a pretty inflexible idea of what constituted a mutiny, and so I ended up in the brig.
John: And there were Harry Potter books in there.
John: And I was like, well, I'm here for a while.
Merlin: For the first time in months, I'm on the side of the listener right now.
Merlin: What the fuck are you talking about?
Merlin: I love the idea of you being in a brig having to read books about wizards.
John: I was effectively in a brig.
John: I was just in a place.
John: Were you having a timeout?
John: I was having a timeout, and there was nothing to do except for that, inexplicably, all the Harry Potter books were in this place.
Merlin: They're really long.
John: Well, yeah, they're long, but they're a quick read.
Merlin: Oh, they – I think they're very – I mean I've read a lot of the first one and we listen to the audio book usually from number two pretty much every day.
Merlin: We pick a section, you know, chapter six, Gilderoy Lockhart, chapter seven, my books.
Merlin: But we've – I've heard them and I've read some of the books and they are a real page turner.
Merlin: I get why they were a phenomenon.
Merlin: And they're dark.
Merlin: What I will tell you is the books are, I think, a good deal darker than the movies, by and large.
John: But they're still kids' books.
Merlin: But the kids should have dark stuff.
Merlin: It's like my friend Guy English said.
Merlin: I was talking about how I felt really bad.
Merlin: As far as I know, I've been pretty good about not horribly scarring my kid with media.
Merlin: She's seen a lot of shit she shouldn't have seen.
Merlin: She's seen tons of PG-13 movies.
Merlin: There's all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: There's only four things that have ever really scared her.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And one of them for a while was the Daleks in Doctor Who.
Merlin: And my friend Guy, who's from Canada, is like, that there is a rich tradition.
Merlin: Like, every little kid, every adult in England is still scared of Daleks because they were scared of them when they were little.
Merlin: Don't feel bad.
Merlin: Well, right.
John: Think about the Brothers Grimm.
John: Think about what we... He literally tore himself in two.
John: We've always given kids the grossest and scariest stories.
John: But, you know, I think about it, having a child...
John: The first time my daughter asked me about death was not very long after she started talking.
Merlin: She's an early and lively talker, right?
John: Yeah, early and lively talker.
John: But after she started properly talking and asking questions, it was very early on.
John: Like, you know, where do you go when you die?
John: What is death?
John: Why?
John: What are these?
John: You know, she's very interested in graveyards.
Yeah.
John: And when you think about it driving around, it's like, well, yeah, it's very interesting.
John: What the fuck is that?
John: All you have to do is look out the window and say, like, well, this area of town is very different from everywhere else.
Merlin: Sex is the famous one of, like, you wonder what it's like and speculate about all the different levels of how whatever that thing is works.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think death, the death and burial process can't be too far behind.
Merlin: There's a lot of levels to go on.
Merlin: Like, wait a minute.
Merlin: So there's a body in the ground.
Merlin: How did the body get in the ground?
Merlin: Like, is it just sitting there?
Merlin: Well, no, it's in a box, a box.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a really expensive box.
Merlin: You buy it.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Well, no, you get to see them right before they die.
Merlin: They have this little, uh, they put them in a box with Dutch doors and you get to look at them wearing lots of makeup and then they put them in the ground.
Right.
John: So many levels.
John: Or you run the box into the fireplace and that burns them up and turns them into ash and they're in this bucket here.
Merlin: There's one here.
Yeah.
John: This one on the mantelpiece.
John: The thing is, I mean, at least in my experience, my daughter doesn't have any... She is not curious about any aspect of sex.
John: That all seems to make perfect sense.
John: Daddy put a baby inside a mommy.
John: Next.
John: But the question of, like, where is your daddy?
John: Well, my daddy is dead.
John: How did your daddy get dead?
John: Well, everybody gets dead eventually.
John: Okay.
Okay.
John: And that is like, I mean, what do we have to talk about really as human beings other than that?
John: It's still fascinating.
John: Absolutely.
John: I still wonder where my daddy goes when he gets dead and how you get dead.
John: And with every passing day, I am more and more interested and also less and less interested in how you get dead.
John: And the idea that, because I think my instinct when she first asked, like I did the Terminator scroll on my heads up display, like think of an answer, think of an answer.
John: What are you going to say?
John: What do you say?
John: And then it was immediately clear to me that like, what do you mean?
John: What do you say?
John: There's no, you're not faking her out.
John: You're not trying to camouflage something.
John: from her because you know about as much about it as she does that's right like where do you go when you get dead yeah what what i mean like what real consolation can you give that isn't a blatant lie yeah right and what is and why would why would i even introduce the idea that there was some consolation for it like well i mean i mean not to be obvious but don't you don't want her to become overly morose or scared right right
John: But, I mean, I don't know.
John: I think the way that you get overly morose or scared is that you ask a simple question, which is, where do you go when you get dead?
John: And then you watch everybody around you freak out.
John: Oh, I know.
Merlin: That's something I work so hard at that, and I get it right maybe 10% of the time, is trying to, like, go, wait a minute, stop.
Merlin: Don't editorialize.
Merlin: Don't preach.
Merlin: And don't feel like you have to try and teach a lesson.
Merlin: You can just say what it is.
Merlin: That smell is pot, and our neighbors are smoking it.
Merlin: And that's what that is.
Merlin: It's like alcohol.
Merlin: It's a drug.
Merlin: And when you smell that, that's what that is.
Merlin: That's pot.
Merlin: Any other questions?
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Probably 25 years ago, if I were the same age and so forth, I would have done it really differently.
Merlin: I would have had a lot more admonishments and...
Merlin: You know, really open up by saying, oh, well, they're breaking the law or they're hurting their bodies or something like that.
John: Yeah.
John: We had one the other day.
John: She ran away in a store and it was a situation where she was standing right next to me and I was looking at a thing on a shelf.
John: And then I looked down and she was gone.
John: Oh, God.
John: And it was like, oh, this is the first time this has happened.
Yeah.
John: And I went and I found her mom, who was also in the store, and she hadn't gone to her mom.
John: She was completely AWOL.
John: Officially out of sight.
John: Right.
John: So I run to the front door of the store.
Merlin: First time that happens, man, there is nothing like it.
John: Yeah, it was no good.
John: I ran to the front door of the store and stood facing into the store from the front door, basically in...
John: Um, like RoboCop mode.
John: Full on Code Adam mode.
John: Yeah.
John: And, uh, her mom, you know, made the rounds and found her in the shoe department wearing a pair of giant furry pink fuzzy slippers.
John: Yeah.
John: With like three more pairs of shoes in her arms.
John: Not trying to buy them or bring them to show them to us, but just like, just basically having like a shoe, just the earliest stages of like shoe fetish.
John: And in talking to her about it, I was like, you can't go... You can't do that.
John: You can never leave daddy without saying where you're going.
John: You can't just run away.
John: And I remember being given the same talk in the 70s.
John: And at the time...
John: struggling to explain why because there are bad men and there are you know and then the concept of bad men got introduced into my head and I was like well what happens with bad men I was like well bad men sometimes sometimes drive Volkswagens with a missing passenger seat and ask you for help putting their canoe on the roof and then they end up having sex with your dead body in the forest for two weeks and
John: And I was like, okay, that was not what I needed to hear when I was seven years old.
John: And as I was looking at my daughter, I was like, you know who needs to know why?
John: Not you.
John: The answer is don't ever do it.
John: That's the end.
John: I understand why you're asking why.
John: And the answer is you don't need to know.
John: All you need to know is don't ever do that again.
John: And, you know, it's amazing how much they accept that because that is actually true, right?
John: That isn't just... That's not some parent jujitsu I'm playing.
John: It actually is true.
John: You do not need to know why.
John: You just need to not do that.
John: And there are so many things that fall into that category.
John: And my instinct as an over-explainer is like, why?
John: Well, let me explain.
John: When humans first came off the savanna...
John: They tamed dogs to help them hunt.
John: And it's just like, no.
Merlin: I'm with you.
Merlin: To me, it's a very revealing exercise.
Merlin: It's like any kind of sort of exercise like that where you have to do something within constraints.
Merlin: For example, I remember being a little kid and when you are taught how when you define a word, you can't use the word in the definition and that suddenly seems impossible.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, when you first try to do that.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Where you're like, well, how could I... What do you mean, what is green?
John: It's green.
Merlin: If you use the word in it, then it's not really a definition.
Merlin: And it's like, wow, you just blew my mind.
Merlin: And for me, that's like every level you're talking about and probably even more for me, where it's like, how do I keep... How do I just factually say what this is to answer the question without having to like...
Merlin: over-engineer why it's the way it is how it's the way it is or very importantly here what culture you should what kind of like feeling you should have about it i try really hard to explain things without overly putting my opinion on it which is something left to my own devices i'll have a clever remark that might stick with her forever about how now this is a dumb thing that you don't need to ever think about and it's like no i don't want to do that like i want to just describe it as a thing and then try to keep all that stuff and if she has questions she'll ask yeah and i think it's really hard
John: The hardest thing for any of us is to say that the really big questions none of us have any answers for, and all answers are pretend, you know, that we don't know anything about why.
John: Right.
John: There is no answer.
John: And the biggest question is, why do we ask why?
John: Right.
John: it's so clear that there isn't an answer, and yet we crave an answer to that question.
John: And that is a fascinating thing, and that says everything there is to say about humans.
John: But to say, like, I do not know why, none of us know why, every single institution you see on the face of the earth is in some small portion built to try and give a convincing answer as to why.
John: And they are all pissing up a rope.
Merlin: So there are so many industries, businesses, philosophies, schools that like there's an entire like giant part of our actual and intellectual economy that is wound up in trying to find some satisfactory answer to an essentially unanswerable question.
John: Right, and I think what most of us do is we put together a long string of causal whys, right?
John: This is why that, and this is why that, and this is why that.
John: It's a version of the mechanistic view of the universe, all looking for the uncaused cause, all looking for the thing that is at the end of this chain of demonstrable whys.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And it's just turtles all the way down, right?
John: But you can stack as many whys that you can answer in a row as you want, but it ultimately arrives at there is no why.
John: And, I mean, we had a lot of fascinating talks on our trip to Africa because David Reese kept bringing up the question of a manned flight to Mars.
John: And...
John: He asked everybody that we met, if you were given a chance to be on a one-way trip to Mars, like a settler's voyage to Mars, would you take it?
John: And I thought it was an interesting question, and I was astonished at the number of people, and it shouldn't have been astonishing because we were talking to people in the military, but the number of people that just instantly said, absolutely.
John: Wow.
John: Absolutely, I would go on a one-way manned mission to Mars.
Ah.
John: And David just, like day after day, was just blown away until he had to stop being blown away because it was happening so often.
John: Among enlisted men, among officers, men and women, would you go on a one-way trip to Mars?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: That would really be the big game for somebody in the military.
Merlin: You know, the big leagues.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: But ultimately, it was a personal question and...
John: And it was down to the fact that most of the people that we met shared in some way a utopian spirit of humanity.
John: And that exploration and expansion and colonization of space seemed to all of them to be as close to a why as they could come up with.
John: Right?
John: There is no, in absence of the answer, in absence of an answer to the question why, all you can do is explore.
John: And then go out.
Right?
John: And David was like, but it makes no sense.
John: Like, why would you go out and do that?
John: Like, that's all this money and resources to go do what?
John: Nothing.
John: Like, we could be using that money to make a garden planet.
John: And everybody just stared at him blankly, myself included, because I am...
John: A person that believes in spaceflight and believes in exploration and feel like we will not in our lifetimes have an answer to any of this.
John: We will not know for 10,000 years.
John: But I can't think of another, I can't think of a better purpose.
Merlin: It's like even if you don't – like increasing numbers of interesting people seem to say that we're going to have to look beyond our planet potentially for survival or for thriving.
Merlin: But even if you don't necessarily believe that yet, it's just still that basic idea that like this is what we do.
Merlin: In some ways, if there's any – back to that hard impossible question like why are we here?
Merlin: Well, we're here to find out something we don't know yet.
John: Yeah.
John: It's encoded in us.
John: And if there's any proof of anything, the fact that we keep asking why about everything is why we're here.
John: To keep asking why and to go out and ask why in further and further places and in larger and larger scales.
John: At least it seems to me.
John: And so when I'm talking to my kid and she's like, well, why?
John: Why?
John: I'm like, yes, exactly.
John: And what I'll do, what I can do is the more that you're capable of understanding, I can break down the five prevailing theories and give you that to chew on.
John: Because my whole life and the great pleasure I get out of life...
John: Is in asking why and trying to answer why.
John: And sitting up at night and, you know, like... And chewing on ideas and going like, but, but, but, ah!
John: Mmm!
John: Ah!
John: You know?
John: And what does that gain me?
John: It doesn't gain me anything.
John: But it's irreversible in me.
John: And I hope it is in her.
John: I wish that upon her.
John: Because it's been the great joy of my life to...
John: To look at everything and ask why and not ask why with any expectation of an answer, but just the thrill of the next question and the manned mission to Mars.
Merlin: That's interesting.
Merlin: That's an interesting distinction.
Merlin: I wouldn't want to make too fine a distinction, but it seems like there are people who are asking questions because they want to know the answer.
Merlin: Some people want to know an answer, and some people just want to know what the next interesting question is.
John: What the next question is, and ultimately I think it's a question of scale.
John: Like as you ask questions, you invariably go either up or down in scale.
John: And you follow a thread of questions and you're like, well, now I need to know more detail.
John: Well, now I need to get to the underlying question.
John: Or you're like, now I have the context.
John: Now I'm scaling up and I'm asking how this works.
John: how that answer that seems pretty satisfactory, how that works across a big scale.
John: And this was the thing that happened with Einstein, and it happened with physics in the 20th century.
John: It's like, okay, this is a great theory, and it works great here.
John: Now, how does it apply to gravitation?
John: And if it doesn't apply to gravitation, then it isn't a complete theory of physics.
John: And that, you know, imagine being Einstein and being like, oh, fuck.
John: You know, like, it works.
John: But it isn't the big why.
Why?
Merlin: If you had to boil down of all the many reasons why it's kind of sad that we're not doing the space program, one of them is that it clearly seems to show that we have our reasons.
Merlin: It's expensive.
Merlin: It doesn't have a clear goal in mind.
Merlin: Velcro is great, but we don't know what the next thing is going to be.
Merlin: It would be so nice to find a slush fund just for saying, well, this is just a thing we need to do.
Merlin: It's like I say to my daughter, we don't have a lot of money.
Merlin: We'll always try and find money for books and art supplies.
Merlin: Those are two things where we'll try and find something to always – you can have books and you can have art supplies.
Merlin: Because those – you can do anything with those.
Merlin: And with the space program, it's like who knows what we're missing out on.
Merlin: you know and it doesn't even need to be like you know tang or or velcro but like who we don't even we there's no way to even know we have glimpses of what we're as we learn more we can see a little bit of what we might be missing out on but like it's just it's a bummer to know that in our lifetime we're probably not going to see much progress on that well it is a bummer except that our friend elon musk
John: If there's anything that excites me to see privatized, any big state operation that excites me to see privatized, it is space exploration.
John: Because every other thing that used to be the purview of a state structure, like a large government structure that has been privatized...
John: It's invariably a resource extraction or an administration issue, right?
John: That we decide that we're going to privatize and let the free market handle.
John: And invariably it just leads to what leads to the world that we're living in now where 50% of the wealth of the world is owned by 1% of the people.
John: But something like space travel...
John: where these guys are privatizing it on their own out of, first of all, just the fact that they're geeks and have a boner for space.
John: And if Elon Musk goes up with his dumb bubble plane and discovers that there are asteroids made out of solid gold, God bless him.
John: But I don't think that's why he's doing it.
John: And I think that maybe we will see tremendous progress.
John: in uh space exploration just because uh because jeff bezos is sitting there going i'm a bankrupt person and i have no um there is no reason for me i am i am like snail slime
John: You don't like that guy.
John: But I'm worth billions of dollars and I'm a nerd.
John: What should I do?
John: Build rockets.
John: It's the ultimate penis.
John: Bigger than a skyscraper.
John: You can build a flying penis.
John: You can build a boner to the stars.
John: A boner to the stars.
John: You can literally fuck the sky.
John: If you have enough billions of dollars and that's what these guys want.
John: I mean, that's what skyscrapers are, right?
John: They're like rich guys trying to fuck the sky.
John: But you can build a penis that flies.
John: And that, I mean, talk about answering the question why.
John: The answer is flying penis.
John: It's right there.
John: All right, that's good.