Ep. 153: "The Time Buffalo"
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John: I was just listening to some hold music and the hold music was maybe the best most appropriate hold music I'd ever heard
John: In all the years.
John: What's that?
John: It was one lonely violin playing a kind of gypsy funeral music.
John: That's a very interesting choice.
John: You know?
John: And so often now you get on hold music and it's just like... Or some terrible thing.
John: I've never understood that.
John: And this was like...
John: Just one violin.
John: Just like Tevye.
John: Something mournful.
John: Super mournful.
John: Tevye is standing on the roof of his shtetl just playing this funereal single violin.
John: And I was just like, this is the greatest.
John: And it was kind of, you know, it was a scratchy old system.
John: I was like, why aren't all... Why doesn't all hold music like this?
John: I just... I seriously want...
John: It is comporting with my mood.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's so much about holes, and there must be a reason they do it the way that they do, but it seems like there's these worst practices of things where, like, you know, ultimately, as the person who's on the phone, ideally, you want to speak as quickly as possible, but if you can't speak as quickly as possible, it's nice to be able to, like, do other stuff or, you know.
Merlin: So, you know,
Merlin: The thing is, what drives me crazy, especially if you're with a Comcast-type company, is it breaks in, you hear the click, and you're like, oh, take it off speaker or whatever.
Merlin: Here we go.
Merlin: And you hear the click, and then the music stops, and they go into an ad.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So, I mean, I almost feel like I wish they would just have some kind of a tone or something.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: That's the wrong approach.
Merlin: But then also, like you say, the systems are so shitty.
Merlin: Everything's all, like, jumpy.
Merlin: If it was good music, it would sound like the worst AM radio, like, inside of a fish tank.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
John: Well, and the phone tree system that I just tried to navigate said, you know, for English, press one.
John: So I pressed one.
John: I said, for the thing you're not interested in, press one.
John: For the thing you're not interested in also, press two.
John: For the thing you are interested in, press three.
John: And so I pressed three.
John: They said, for the permutation of the thing that you are interested in that you're not interested in, press one.
John: For the permutation of the thing that you are interested in that you're not interested in, press two.
John: For the permutation you are interested in, press three.
John: I pressed three.
Merlin: But it's like stuff you should have already been – that shouldn't be there because you've already dismissed that.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And here we go.
John: And I do that three or four times.
John: And then I get – and finally the recorded message says, for the exact reason that you are calling, press one.
John: And I'm like, here we go.
John: And I pressed one.
John: And it gave me a minute-long recording of a voice telling me everything that I already knew and couldn't have been to this place in their phone tree without knowing.
John: Right.
John: And then at the end of that message, there was no further option.
John: to progress to the next level.
John: So it was... You basically made it to an announcement.
John: It was the ultimate... I made it here to an announcement that is reading from a PowerPoint demonstration.
John: Oh, God.
John: And a PowerPoint demonstration of how to be the most basic.
John: And then it was just like, to repeat this, press 1 to go back to the menu.
John: And so at that point...
John: All you can do is go operator, operator, operator, zero, zero, zero.
John: Right, right.
John: And I normally do that without even listening to the first thing.
John: But today I felt generous.
John: I was like, I'm going to follow this phone tree.
John: I'm going to go up into the highest branches of this tree where the view will be spectacular.
Merlin: I wonder if part of it, I think about when you're trying to write something long or when you're dealing with a big project.
Merlin: I mean, with me, for example, trying to write that book a few years ago, I was constantly torn between these two impulses.
Merlin: There was the one impulse to just make, make, make, make, make, make new stuff, which is, I think, a good impulse when you're drafting.
Merlin: But then there's the other impulse, which is like, yeah, but you should also keep outlining and reviewing what you've done already.
Merlin: Not revising, but it's this compulsion of feeling like I have to make sure that this is going to make sense with what I've already done.
Merlin: And I wonder if in a phone tree like that, you take that model and spread it across different business units, and you have different people contributing different parts to the tree, and there's not anybody who's project managing...
Merlin: how sensible it is to hear something at a given point and maybe it's not totally up to date.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I could see that really in a large, even in a, especially a medium sized corporation, I would say, where you wouldn't have dedicated resources.
Merlin: I could, I could see that happening.
John: Well, and it's like, I think it's analogous to the way that we misuse the police in the sense that if we have a problem in our town and you don't know how to solve it, you send the police.
John: Right.
John: Even though the police are not problem solvers, really.
John: They're not, it's not the problem solving unit of the city.
John: Yeah, I've thought about that.
John: That's an interesting note.
John: The police are really useful in certain ways, but they're not the psychology team to go out and figure out why somebody's yelling, right?
John: And in business, it seems like the engineers...
John: are the people that they send to solve a lot of problems, right?
John: Send the engineers.
John: And the engineers are – they're like the police.
John: They're very good at doing the thing that they do.
John: But they're not the ones that you send in to check to see if a normal person can figure out your –
John: project if a normal person who has who has no inside knowledge is going to show up at the front door look for the doorbell yeah and you know and the engineers like well there isn't a doorbell clearly what you need to do at that point is to you know retina scan or whatever and it's like the person's looking for the doorbell can't find it
John: And that disconnect where businesses don't – like every business should hire a squad of normals.
John: There should be like team normal where those people are constantly kept totally in the dark about the product your business makes.
John: Yeah, and how it gets made.
John: And how it gets made.
John: But they are the final –
John: the final test.
John: And it's not like testers.
John: They actually belong to, they're part of your business and you just unleash your stuff on them.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's a little bit, ombudsman's the wrong word, but it's somebody who's there specifically to find what's broken about what you're doing.
Merlin: Not just a tester, but somebody in that case, and actually that does sound more like a tester now that I hear those words, but it's somebody whose job it is to advocate for the busy and confused person.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I guess what you have to do is you have to imagine, and this is the thing that happens so infrequently in the way that we design things.
John: It's like imagine the person, not just your imagined user, but imagine a user who doesn't even know they want
John: Imagine the user who's showing up there with a crying baby.
John: That's exactly what I was thinking.
Merlin: I was just thinking of having to hold a crying baby and use the phone with one hand, which is a totally self-absorbed position to take.
Merlin: But those were the times I felt most acutely.
Merlin: This was never designed to work in this situation, and this is when I really needed to work.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's one.
Merlin: Are you ready for this?
Merlin: Never have any device.
Merlin: This happens with Bluetooth speakers.
Merlin: It happens with lots of stuff.
Merlin: Never have any device in the world that makes a noise when you turn it off.
Merlin: Like a car should not make a noise when it's locked.
Merlin: That wakes a baby.
Merlin: And it's just unnecessary.
Merlin: I have a Bluetooth speaker in my shower that makes a bloop when you shut it off.
Merlin: I was never aware of how many things make a noise when you turn them off until I had a kid I was trying to get to sleep.
John: That's a use case.
John: Do you think they're saying goodbye?
Hmm.
John: Is that what the concept is?
John: Like, well, when they turn it off, we should give them one last salutation.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I think it's probably part of a certain kind of customer service experience where like, you know, it used to be that it felt like a sign of status that your car made a bloop.
Merlin: You know, only douchebags and rich kids had those at one time.
Merlin: And so once that became, now you were kind of like when you're, you know, if it goes, or whatever, like you feel like you're a big shot.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: See you later.
John: Bye, Merlin.
Merlin: Especially with speakers, though, I think it's a confluence of two annoying things, which is on the one hand, like my Bluetooth speaker in the shower, it's just a speaker on a suction cup that's water resistant, waterproof nominally.
Merlin: But it's very, very cheap.
Merlin: It was like $9.
Merlin: And like what you couldn't do with good interface, you need to do somehow.
Merlin: So for example, there's a light that blinks the entire time that's on, which makes me a little bit crazy.
Merlin: And then it makes a bloop, one bloop when you turn it on, one bloop when you turn it off.
Merlin: That's how it lets you know, right?
John: I have a sort of side question.
John: Yes.
John: Speaker with a suction cup on it, have you ever –
Merlin: sitting in the bath suction cupped the speaker to your self no you know what that's a great question if i were a little younger i think that would probably be one of the first or second things i i did i like suction cupping things to myself you know and then like turn it up and see like how it feels well right it would be like yeah you'd really like it would be a haptic right you'd really feel the music you'd feel it not haptic but you'd feel the music in your head
John: Yeah, like you're there in the shower.
John: I could see being kind of high and trying that.
John: Yeah, like suction cup the speaker to yourself and then you're like... While you're waiting on hold?
John: It'd be pretty... I imagine that I would ultimately have to try that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, the other thing is I like what you said, though, about the police being like the engineers being like the police.
Merlin: I think there's there's a lot in common there.
Merlin: But I think there's another two different poor impulses with the police.
Merlin: Maybe for me, I kind of feel like they become my surrogate dad.
Merlin: Where, like, if I felt like I've done everything I can to ask, cajole, threaten, and it still doesn't work out, or I'm annoyed, you end up – I try not to do this anymore, but you end up calling the police to come in and – Yeah, take care of this thing.
Merlin: Like, well, you said you were going to – I'm going to call the police.
Merlin: You're making a noise.
Merlin: And with engineers, I have a feeling the impulse is more practical of, like, well –
Merlin: These nerds are going to have to be the ones who, you know, do this anyway.
Merlin: Let's just give it straight to them.
Merlin: You know, and I mean, nothing against, you know, engineering.
Merlin: It's like it's such a misunderstood and difficult job.
Merlin: But, you know, it's like they say, you know, don't put the guy who cleans up after the elephant's in charge of who's allowed to be in the parade because he's going to have a very specific point of view.
John: I feel like there are products.
John: And there are things that we interact with that are purely for pleasure, right?
John: Like a guitar, for instance.
John: You very seldom sit down, pick up a guitar, and go, oh, God, I hate this guitar.
John: I just have to deal with it right now.
John: And there are lots of things in our world that are in that category of just like, I just can't wait to get alone with this thing.
John: But most of the products that we're being sold now and most of the way design works now, the presumption of everybody, a presumption of the people making the thing are like –
John: Okay, are you ready to sit down with your Epson XP400S and really get into this experience of working with this?
John: And we're going to give you like a screen that has a sunset on it.
John: It's going to say hi to you.
John: It's going to give you lots.
Merlin: My microwave, when it goes off, it scrolls in LEDs.
Merlin: Enjoy your meal.
John: Right.
Merlin: Which I find so insulting.
Merlin: I don't want an appliance greeting me.
John: Enjoy your meal.
John: No, Merlin, come back.
John: I'm talking to you.
John: And this concept of like, I mean, 90% of the things that I interact with in the day
John: I – my attitude about it is I don't really want to be here interacting with you.
John: I just have to get through this process.
John: Please, can you just make it as simple as possible?
John: Absolutely, absolutely.
John: And so you walk up to the ATM and they're like, hi, would you like to hang out with me, the ATM machine?
John: Let's chat about – it's just like up yours, up yours bank, up yours machine, up yours programmer, up yours everybody.
Okay.
John: Just give me the basic – and the idea that the nicest thing that these people could do who are designing these things is design it so that it is invisible and that it does not assert itself.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Because you are standing there not only with a crying baby but somewhere else to be.
John: Nobody goes to the ATM machine like, I can't – you know what?
John: Later on today after I'm done with my work –
Merlin: I don't really need the money, but I just really enjoy the experience.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm going to change into something comfortable and just go down and fucking chat with my ATM.
John: Pick a fucking language and just hang out, man.
John: I'm going to call up some phone trees, pick a language.
John: Maybe I'll pick the language that isn't mine and just listen to what it says in a different language.
John: And I see that so – I mean like every copier I've bought in the last however long, which is a lot more copiers than I ever should have had to buy.
John: You mean photocopiers?
John: Photocopiers.
John: Printers, multifunction printers?
John: That's right.
John: That are also scanners and also can do a thousand other things.
John: Right.
John: And every one of them is just like a loss leader pyramid scheme to sell overpriced cartridges.
John: Right.
John: That are a thing that we're just – like somebody was like, what if we made ink out of BBs?
John: And each one of those BBs costs a dollar.
John: That sounds like Apple's cloud, right?
John: That sounds like a thing that we can just charge people.
John: It's the ultimate remora, the ultimate eel.
John: That eel, yeah.
John: And so how many printers have I bought?
John: And I think half the printers I bought are because their predecessor I threw out a window.
Yeah.
Merlin: And they're miserable.
Merlin: I mean, the one we've got can work with cloud-based printing, which is really cool.
Merlin: It needs some help.
Merlin: But just even going in to enter the Wi-Fi password, and I have a pretty good Wi-Fi password.
Merlin: I bet you do.
Merlin: Going in and entering that using an up and down arrow to choose a letter, capital, no, lowercase, number, character.
Merlin: I mean, seriously.
Merlin: And then, of course, it does the whole high security thing where it doesn't let you see what you've already typed in.
Merlin: Uh-uh.
Merlin: So it's one of those times where, again, the reality is butting up against the best practices.
Merlin: Everybody should be using a better password, but it doesn't take that many times of having to do that before you go, you know, I'm changing my Netflix password to Pencil69.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Wait a minute.
John: What if somebody's looking over your shoulder while you put your password into your printer?
John: Happens all the time.
John: Huge choice of identity theft.
John: They could be printing shit all day while you're out at work.
John: You come home, your whole house is full of like...
John: I didn't scan this.
Merlin: Who scanned this?
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Merlin: Screw you world.
Merlin: Oh, it's, it's so true.
Merlin: You know, it's funny.
Merlin: I think about like the kind of jobs I, I, in the past I've referred to certain jobs I've had as somewhat inaccurately, but I felt like an information janitor.
Merlin: where nobody notices what I do until the toilet's back up.
Merlin: You know, the kind of job I've always wanted, on the one hand, never wanted to have the kind of job where people only notice what you do when it doesn't go flawlessly.
Merlin: That would be a terrible thing.
Merlin: And the other thing is I've never wanted to have one of those kinds of jobs where the success of the interaction is mostly based on how little they had to interact with you.
Merlin: So you think about checking into a hotel late at night.
Merlin: You think about, you know, obviously rental car because, you know, the rental car is like the worst because at that point you're like, oh, OK, I'm finally done with all these flights.
Merlin: I'm not even to the hotel yet.
Merlin: Now I got to get a rental car.
Merlin: And like every like pico second that goes by that you're having to deal with that person and they're asking if you want the GPS and not.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: The problem is, though, with a device, that's kind of what you really want.
Merlin: You want to be able to cover people's needs with an ATM, but you don't want it to turn into – I mean, again, I guess what I'm saying is we are going to evaluate that interaction based on how little time it took.
Merlin: It's kind of how I feel about going out to eat.
Merlin: I just want somebody who's extremely efficient.
Merlin: I don't want to talk about my day.
John: Hi, guys.
Hi.
Merlin: How are you all doing tonight?
Merlin: How are we doing?
Merlin: I'm Skip.
Merlin: You mind if I just settle in here to the booth with you?
Merlin: Let's say about some of our appies.
John: The great thing about the rental car business at airports is that they know that you're exhausted.
John: They know that you just want to get out of there.
John: And that's why they take that opportunity to upsell you 14 times.
Merlin: It's all – that's the thing is their margins are so thin, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's going to be all about all that other crap and the collision and explaining, you know.
John: And they're just counting on you going like, fine, fine, fine, whatever, whatever, whatever.
John: Like, give it to me.
John: But what's amazing is that interacting with my iPhone as much as I do –
John: how much the business model of the internet right now is based on that same kind of coercion.
John: Like, oh, are you really excited to watch this little YouTube video?
John: Well, why don't we take 15 seconds and talk about your car insurance?
John: Or the best one is I figured out, like my latest hack,
John: Which is akin to my hack of never upgrading my operating system.
John: My latest hack is I went in and I turned off cellular data in my iPhone on all my games.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: That is a life hack.
John: I don't want my games interacting with the internet.
John: And what I discovered is I turned off cellular data for my games and that prohibits the games from downloading video advertisements and
John: which often are the thing that jam my phone up the most.
John: Absolutely.
John: But Apple has made sure that every time I turn on something that has cellular data disabled, it pops up a screen that says cellular data is disabled for this.
John: And it won't let me do anything else until I close that screen.
Merlin: And so I'd never thought of that because the revenue is going to come from advertising.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I had never thought of that.
John: So they allow it, but they make sure to punish you each time by saying like, this thing that you know you've done,
John: We want you to know that you've done it.
Merlin: Do you think that's Apple?
Merlin: I mean, I think the Apple functionality of telling you you can't do something because you've shut that off is a good idea.
Merlin: Reminding you that you're in airplane mode or something.
Merlin: I mean, for that, I would look more to the developers who are putting ads in there as the way to sustain that.
John: I'm not sure because, you know, like sometimes I will make the mistake.
John: I'll turn off location services.
John: uh in something because i don't want my photos tagged oh yeah sure location but then and i'm not even sure if that works that may just be a total like pablum but i i do what i can to not have my photos tagged particularly you know when i'm lying in bed at night uh sending uh naked texts out to uh friends in europe when you break into the white house you know i don't want like that tagged exactly but uh
John: But then I'll go click on the map program.
John: Now, why would I be doing that, right, if I didn't want to know, if I didn't want the map to, like, serve me here by knowing where I am and, you know.
John: And the idea that at that point the thing pops up and says, you need to, you can't turn that on from here.
John: You need to now go back to your settings and enable location services and then come back here, right?
John: And you're standing on a street corner and it's pouring down rain and you're trying to just map where… Right, exactly.
Merlin: That's exactly the scenario we were talking about.
John: And it's just like that somebody hasn't thought that through.
John: That if you click on map, like let's just assume that location services is enabled.
John: Right.
John: Like the 0.01% of the time that I go into maps and just want to see like, where's the 17th at Arissa Mall in Paris?
John: I would like to see that in my map program rather than Googling it.
John: It's negligible compared to the number of times when I'm in a hurry.
John: And I'm like, oh, where is that place?
John: You know, I'm within two blocks.
Merlin: Oh, you're using it really as a traditional atlas in that instance.
John: I'm using it.
Merlin: You want to look where a thing is without regard to where you are right now.
John: I do that sometimes.
John: Like the Faroe Islands.
John: I wonder how many natural water sources there are in the Faroe Islands.
John: I wonder if I can see that from my map program.
Hmm.
John: You know, there's a lot of, I mean, I don't flip through atlases anymore like I once did my whole life.
John: And so all I have is this little black box that comes to bed with me every night and I just get to flip through it.
Merlin: It may require updating.
Merlin: But there is in iOS 8, just for what it's worth, because John Syracuse will yell at me if I don't say something here.
Merlin: There is actually a way to go into privacy and then location services.
Merlin: And it's kind of cool.
Merlin: You always have the ability to turn the location to never.
Merlin: And then depending on the app, usually your other choice is use location while I'm using it or use it all the time.
Merlin: So that's kind of cool.
Merlin: But just so you know, there is granularity to shutting it off.
Merlin: If you want, just never.
Merlin: I mean, I have most of mine set to never because I'm like, you know, why does this drawing program that my kid uses want to know my location?
Merlin: And, you know, when you see how many you can do this with, it's kind of creepy.
Merlin: Always, never.
Merlin: Those are my options.
Merlin: Well, also while using.
Merlin: So if you go, in this case, I go to Chrome, the browser, and it says allow location access never or just while using the app.
John: So that's an upgrade because right now when I go to privacy, I just have always – oh, while using the app, hello.
John: Some of them have that.
John: Some of them don't.
John: Yeah.
John: So that should help a little bit.
John: Thank you, John Siracusa, for your constant yelling at Merlin on a side channel.
Merlin: Are you satisfied with your care?
John: In this instance, you have forced Merlin to do a thing and Merlin has showed dinosaur John.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, but listen, I want to also commiserate because, you know, I don't think it's transparently obvious to people what kinds of things you should flip on for where.
Merlin: And it does have an impact on your battery life and on your –
Merlin: to some extent your privacy right well i mean like look at any any service you sign up for on the web the first thing i do when i sign up for anything is go straight to the settings and straight to profile where i am increasingly not even surprised anymore when it's saying make everything public you know you just got to go in there and go like well is this you know you i don't really want my want all my information i don't want to be accessible i don't want the email you know i'm saying it really is buyer beware at this point where you've got to go in and make sure that your ducks are in a row with those things
John: Yeah, it is buyer beware.
John: Well, and the thing is, talk about battery life.
John: It's my psychic battery life that is always... Always in single digits?
John: It's always on 3%.
John: And I'm afraid that it's going to shut off.
John: I'm afraid that my battery life is going to shut me down at 15%, which it used to do before I got the upgrade.
John: And I don't want to...
John: You know, actually, lately I've had a surprising amount of energy and it's because I'm undergoing a forced program of energy.
John: Oh, I can't wait to hear about this.
John: Well, you know what I mean?
John: It's just like... Oh, because you have to show up.
John: Yeah, when you have stuff to do, you just have... You find reservoirs of energy that prior would have seemed inaccessible.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: And it's always that feeling, you know, that feeling when you're like cresting a mountain range, you're above the tree line...
John: and you know over that ridge there's a little lake, and you've just got to get there, but you're really tired.
John: You have to find that energy to push up over, and then it's downhill to the little lake.
Merlin: It helps to know there's something there, though.
John: yeah right we're trying to use every part of the time buffalo it helps a lot to know that that oh i just i don't need to get through the rest of my life i need to get through this morning you know what i mean yeah right and and so often the problem of living a life like mine was formerly that it was always a false horizon you know always a false summit like you're coming up the trail and you're like i can see light through the trees i'm at the summit and
John: and you get and you get to the you you crest that ridge and you're like oh it's just a ridge i'm not at the summit like then you see you watch the mountain go up why did apple tell me to go here on top of a windmill this isn't my oh i'm not having a meeting here the chamber of commerce is tapping their feet
Merlin: So that's impressive to hear.
Merlin: That was one of the things I was most kind of quietly concerned about was like, what a huge adjustment.
Merlin: I mean, it sounds like I'm calling you lazy, which is not what I mean to be saying.
Merlin: But just that knowing that you are a night owl, let's put it that way.
Merlin: In my experience, given the options, you tend to prefer to do a lot of your stuff at night.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a lifestyle.
John: Well, and it's interesting how it's just like when you change a job and you're doing something else and then that becomes the new thing that you're doing.
John: And it was always hard for me to get up in the morning, but now I have things to do.
John: So I'm getting up in the morning and then you settle into a thing where it's like, oh, it's no harder for me to get up in the morning than it is anybody else.
John: It's just the problem isn't getting up in the morning.
John: The problem is it's always hard to get up when the only thing
John: motivating you to do your work is you.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: That's talking about going up the ridge.
Merlin: You get there and you're like, hey, there's nothing here.
Merlin: This is not what I expected.
Merlin: I didn't do these 10,000 other things in order to be here, and the writing's not there, the painting's not there, whatever it is, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I totally agree.
Merlin: The thing I feel like I am going through, my wife...
Merlin: is working more.
Merlin: She's changed jobs and is working a lot more, which is great.
Merlin: And I'm very happy to, and really enjoy my time with the kids.
Merlin: So it is more like, especially in the afternoons, you know what it is?
Merlin: It's like, maybe like you, I got used to having a certain number of constraints, but you know, there would be a few constraints in the day.
Merlin: I think for me, where it gets challenging, especially as somebody who loves to sleep is to have the constraint of there's stuff that needs to happen up to a certain point at night.
Merlin: especially if you want to have a social life or whatever but you know even just like getting the the bath has to happen every night whether we feel like it or not like you know we can only tolerate the kitchen being dirty for so long you know what i mean you want to you don't want to be an animal so on the one hand there's the stuff that has to happen at night and then there's the stuff that really needs to happen at a certain point in the morning it's extremely rare that my kid wakes up later than six so that problem is though then like you feel what i'm saying you feel that in between and then you get like a i'm not complaining
Merlin: I'm really actually not.
Merlin: I just invented a new phrase I call the grumble brag, which is when you when you claim that you're not complaining about something while you're totally complaining about it.
Merlin: But anyway, when you get enough of those little way stations, it's why it's so hard to have multiple jobs.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It becomes so much overhead and so much like stress about all the little checkpoints you have to get to in this little rally.
John: Let me ask you a question because I was thinking about your book the other day.
John: Just as I was driving down the street, I was like, Merlin's book.
John: Merlin's book was a thing that I thought about a lot while you were making it and then thought about it a lot while you were deciding not to make it.
John: And like do you ever fall prey to thinking about that what is probably quite a pile of writing that you did?
John: Right.
John: And think like that's something I'm going to repurpose for something or that's something I'm eventually going to do something else with or have you just buried it?
Right.
Merlin: To be honest, it is in many ways incredibly painful in a number of ways.
Merlin: It's still – still, it's difficult to talk about because on the one hand, it's painful that this was something I was very – not just passionate about but felt really uniquely capable of doing.
Merlin: I had a lot of thoughts.
Merlin: I had no – there was no dearth of thoughts in my head about what to do.
Merlin: I had a lot to say.
Merlin: I produced a lot of words.
Merlin: I didn't love that many of the words.
Merlin: And I'm actually going – I know I've said a lot of this before, but I'm going somewhere with this.
Merlin: The part that makes it super painful though, it was where you get into the sunk cost fallacy stuff where I start thinking about what that did to my family for so long.
Merlin: Like for so long, my wife was just unbelievably supportive and said yes to anything I asked for until I started to really like –
Merlin: I don't want to say abuse it, but there were times where I was like, how long does it take me to learn I'm not going to write anything good and or substantial after 7 o'clock at night?
Merlin: And yet, because I'm so stressed out about that, I would happily leave her with all of the household duties while I go out and sit there and feel terrible about myself.
Merlin: That was all very difficult.
Merlin: I still feel...
Merlin: Failure is too strong of a word, but I certainly don't feel like a success in how that whole thing went.
Merlin: The other big part of this, which you didn't ask about this, but the other big part of this is just how much the landscape has changed, which we've talked about this.
Merlin: I mean, it's true for musicians, but...
Merlin: It's really true for all kinds of what we'll generally call content creators.
Merlin: Even in the last year, that's changed, let alone the last five years.
Merlin: So, I mean, on the one hand, I had a lot of stuff, you know, probably close to 100,000 words.
Merlin: I started out with 40,000 just off the website that needed to be edited.
Merlin: A lot of words.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: I never really got it to be the thing I wanted.
Merlin: And it's not even the thing.
Merlin: I was always feeling this pressure to make it kind of about email, even though it didn't have to be about email.
Merlin: More and more, that felt like such a millstone to me.
Merlin: So it's not like I have that much I want to do with that.
Merlin: The ideas in there are still very powerful and very lively to me.
Merlin: It's just now that comes out in podcasts.
Merlin: The thing, though, that ultimately makes it something I'm not trying to repurpose or re-explore is
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I would not rule out writing a book at some point, but writing anything right now is a really tough racket.
Merlin: It's a very tough racket.
Merlin: And I think that the industry has changed, business has changed, and I think the audience has changed.
Merlin: So...
Merlin: Honestly, the kinds of things that people will pay not that much money for are things I don't necessarily want to write.
Merlin: I don't want to write listicles.
Merlin: I don't want to produce dozens of Kindle books.
Merlin: This was true in 2009, but it's really true now.
Merlin: And something Hodgman said when he was saying that this is a good idea to do, and he was right, is that this is how you get invited onto fresh air.
Merlin: This is your jumping off point to a bigger thing.
Merlin: Once you're an author, it changes everything.
Merlin: But it wasn't even that that I was looking for.
Merlin: It was just being able to feel like the time and energy and stress that I had invested in that, I wanted that to turn into something really great and timeless.
Merlin: Maybe that was too much pressure to put on myself, but it just became too much.
Merlin: And now today, like, you know...
Merlin: the whole inbox zero thing is like, just the whole concept is so annoying.
Merlin: And then willful misunderstanding of what I was trying to say, struggling to say, makes it a little bit dead in the water to me.
Merlin: But honestly, the thing, as I stand here today, yes, I still feel terrible about how that went for everybody involved, but it is also a thing of like, I,
Merlin: You know, all the things being equal.
Merlin: If you're a reality TV star, having somebody ghostwrite a book for you is not a bad idea.
Merlin: As somebody who wants to sweat every single word of something that will probably take nine months to a year to do, that's tough work for what you can expect in return today.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Did I answer that fairly?
John: Yeah, you did.
John: I mean, I think about it a lot in a different way now because I've been reflecting on the last –
John: Period of my life, which is kind of, you know, it's the wisdom of retrospect.
John: You look back and say, oh, actually, the last period of my life, which seemed to go by in a blink actually was two distinct periods.
John: And it was filled with these two sort of different things.
John: As you apportion your life into eras by looking back and saying like – Which in my experience takes several years to realize what era that really was.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And some of that is happening now.
John: And a lot of the projects that I have pursued over the course of my whole adult life, but in particular the last handful of years –
John: They didn't come all the way to fruition.
John: And there was a period of sitting and being very excited about a television show I was thinking of making where I drove across America and went to little depressed cities and tried to identify –
John: And their arc from the time that they were founded through the time that they were prosperous.
Merlin: That would be so cool.
Merlin: I could totally see you doing that.
Merlin: Did I ever describe this to you?
Merlin: I don't remember you describing this, but that actually is like – that sounds like – forgive my saying.
Merlin: That sounds like the work you were made for.
John: You would be really good at that.
John: I was super excited about it.
John: And you'd come into Poughkeepsie and you'd say like, here's what this land looked like when there was an Indian settlement here.
John: And here's why the settlers chose it because it was a great place to build a mill.
John: And here's what they milled.
John: And then there was a period of great prosperity when they figured out how to –
John: how to you know what this this was the place where they invented the tie tack and the tie tack blew up and everybody in the world needed one and this was tie tack central and boom you know that's why there are all these beautiful uh beau arts mansions up on this one particular hill that they call founders hill and and then world war one came and you know and i could be telling this story in both
John: Both video but also animation and historical photographs and just kind of do this sweeping panorama of a place.
John: And then say then U.S.
John: manufacturing declined.
John: A little bit like Cosmos but hyperlocal.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: And that sounds really silly, but he's so great.
Merlin: And Sagan and Tyson, Nildegas Tyson, is that right?
Merlin: They're both so great at taking these complex ideas and making it something that you not only kind of understand, but you find incredibly interesting by being very specific, but limited.
Merlin: Like you're not going to cover everything.
Merlin: In your case, you're not like you're reading the encyclopedia for Poughkeepsie.
Merlin: It's more like saying what you taught me that I'm so grateful for is like you can just look at the complexion of this land.
Merlin: Look at where this water is.
Merlin: Look at where that hill is.
Merlin: Look at how until they had trolleys and funiculars, you couldn't live up on that part of the hill.
Merlin: That, you know, I think you're awfully good at that.
John: And it's exciting because once you open your mind to that way of seeing, you can look at your own town that way.
John: You wouldn't need a TV show to do it.
John: Like you say, there's a reason that somebody planted their flag here, and it's usually because that was where the water was and that was a defensible position.
John: And the city grew this way and that way, and you can tell where it is.
John: That whole mission I was on,
John: when i was on tour with harvey danger where every time every town on the east coast and in the southeast in particular we'd pull in the bus would stop open up the door and the tour manager would say well you guys got four hours to kill until sound check and i would walk off the bus and say i'm gonna find the civil war graveyard i'm gonna find the civil war graveyard that is in every one of these towns and invariably where it was
John: would have been the outskirts of town in 1870.
Merlin: Without having to look it up on a city-by-city basis, you had a pretty good reckoning?
John: Yeah, you just know, like, okay, I know that it's not on the outskirts of town now, right?
John: Because there's no town back east that has grown none.
John: But it's...
John: in a lot of cases it's kind of in the decaying inner ring and then you find the Civil War graveyard and you know that you kind of can see then that everything built outside of it was built after 1870 and everything inside of it
John: At least that was – those were the city limits.
Merlin: It's like a little clue you can mostly count on.
John: Right.
John: And it's different in every place and the Yankee graveyards are very different than the southern ones and –
John: It was just a kind of little game to play to pass the time that got me out and walking.
John: But I learned a lot by just kind of seeking this little depression in the ground.
John: Anyway, so that was a television show that I really wanted to make and got excited about.
John: And then I was like, well, of course we're going to have to buy a GMC RV to drive around the country.
John: And I started talking to people and people in television and they were like, well, what's the hook?
John: I was like, well, the hook is that it's really a cool idea.
Merlin: The hook is usually, I think in a case like that, the hook is usually you're already really famous in some other way.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like from TV or elsewhere.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like Anthony Bourdain, is that his name?
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: He has a show like that that's better than it should be because he's a very interesting guy.
Merlin: Would he have gotten that show if he weren't already like a celebrity chef?
Merlin: Probably not.
John: And that's the thing.
John: People kept saying to me like, well, if you had written a book about the American town –
John: And I'm like, right, I mean, this would kind of be the book I would write about the American town, this video show.
John: And then people were like, well, I mean, if you were Anthony Kiedis, and I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, if I was Anthony Kiedis, I'd be in a hot tub in Vegas, right?
John: I mean, I wouldn't be doing this.
Yeah.
Merlin: And I bet he's a nice guy, but his whole public image is so insufferable to me.
John: I love it.
John: But I got no shirt now.
John: But then they were like, well, what if, you know, what if, uh, what if you got to that town and then you found the cool artisanal, uh, like mustard factory that the, that the, the mustache kids had built in the old abandoned hotel.
John: And I was like, yeah, I,
John: I'd be into that.
John: That starts to sound like a different show though.
John: Different channel too.
John: So then I started following that stream and I'm like, what if I went to all the depressed towns in America and found the artisanal mustard factory that the mustache kids had built?
John: I was like, that's an interesting show.
John: It's not quite...
John: Right in my wheelhouse.
John: I'm happy to interact with those people and that would be a fun exploratory.
John: But a lot of those towns don't have an artisanal mustard factory.
John: A lot of those towns just have artisanal crank getting manufactured.
John: The town hasn't found its footing yet.
John: And so the idea kept evolving and eventually it just – This is somebody – you actually talked to somebody about this?
John: I talked to a lot of people about it.
John: And eventually it was like the consensus was the classic thing that my good friend Christine Connor said to me one time, which is that people come all the time and say, I don't watch TV, but I've got a great idea for a television show.
Yeah.
John: And she said the problem is that the people who do watch TV do not want people who don't watch TV to make television for them.
John: There's a reason she's in the corner office.
John: She's so smart, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And so the program that I wanted to make was exactly the type of thing that would get me to watch TV, but that isn't the type of program that the executives approve.
John: And there was no component of my show where – there was no sex tape component.
John: No one got into a hair-pulling fight with anybody else.
John: There wasn't – I never said, bam!
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: And I didn't – and I never added like bacon seasoning – bacon seasoned cream cheese to it.
Merlin: It wouldn't be expressly to make people cry, which has a certain appeal.
Merlin: It's not celebrity-based, strictly speaking.
Merlin: It's not emotionally based.
Merlin: It's not about making you feel better or more competent.
Merlin: Like there's so many nonfiction TV shows that are about making you feel like you're a chef even though you're mostly someone who watches TV.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I think what it is is that PBS used to fund that kind of thing and doesn't as much.
John: Years ago, yeah.
John: And all the things that came into the television sphere that seemed like little PBSs, like the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel and all these things, the Smithsonian Channel, where you're like, oh my God, it's a world of public television.
John: And then every one of those channels devolved away from...
John: like National Geographic is just about cute tiger babies now.
Merlin: But that should all be so telling.
Merlin: To think about Bravo, A&E, Discovery, I'm not super familiar with National Geographic.
Merlin: That was kind of after my time.
Merlin: But you take any of those things, they all started out
Merlin: with the aspiration of being, I think, I don't want to say just that, but I mean, with the aspiration of having sort of a high-minded calling, like A&E had some really nerd, they would show opera on A&E.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, Baryshnikov, right?
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It's the arts and entertainment channel.
Merlin: Ditto for Bravo.
Merlin: And, you know, there was a time before the advent of, you know, Shark Week when you could really see
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Again, I'm not grumbling.
Merlin: What I'm saying is, once again, let's just say it, the market has changed.
Merlin: They found something that was more palatable and profitable.
John: That guy, that announcer for Bravo, that's just like, on Bravo, the top 10 greatest thongs.
John: I remember watching this channel where it was like Masterpiece Theater, and now it's just like, on Bravo, we're going to go into your closet and find all the dirtiest shit that we can find.
John: like what happened hoarders who like to cook shirtless on motorcycles so so but but the the time i spent thinking about that television show and plotting it out and imagining it and imagineering it let's be honest
John: Imagineer and engination.
John: And then really trying to think who the market was, how much it would cost to produce those episodes, and whether or not I could self-fund those or internet fund them.
John: What if those episodes were only 15 minutes long?
John: What if they were 10 minutes long?
John: What if I sold them to museums?
John: What if that was a thing that when you walked into the Poughkeepsie History Museum that this video played –
John: And that was a thing that I could make a case to the National Museum Association that I would go around the country and do these cool videos about these different places.
John: I was churning all these different ideas.
John: And in the end, none of that stuff got made.
John: And in a sense, like not yet it hasn't.
John: Right.
John: But I can't think of that as like a failure or lost time because I really worked on it and it didn't come to fruition.
John: But I do think about the last five years of my life as this period where I was doing that a lot.
John: I was like, what am I going to –
Merlin: It's always when you work on your own or you do creative stuff, an element of your job is always figuring out what to do next.
Merlin: It's true in knowledge work in general.
Merlin: But I think when you are a creative person, and I'm not going to say a creative because everyone should stop saying that.
Merlin: But when you're a creative person and you make stuff and your output is how you are evaluated, a huge part of what you do is thinking about what to do next and how.
Merlin: But you don't really get points for that, understandably.
Merlin: You don't get credit for all the opera you didn't write.
Yeah.
John: And if I had – when I first came up with this idea, if I had quickly written a breezy book about the life and death of American cities and had like gotten that in the book pipeline and had gone around and done fresh air –
John: uh and and morning talk show circuit about like you've got her if if the book had support right um you got to read this book it's all about the life and death of the american city that's where we're at right now and and you know these artisanal mustard factories aren't going to make themselves
John: You know, and then went, because that's what David Reese effectively did.
John: He made that book about pencil sharpening that was very much his own personal private world, his own personal private joke on himself and world that he was exploring.
John: And then converted that into a television show.
John: And then he was in a new world of struggle and strife.
Merlin: He found a way.
Merlin: I'm so interested in this, actually.
Merlin: He found a way, though, to...
Merlin: That's how I like to say, take it and turn it.
Merlin: He figured out a way to make it non-obvious.
Merlin: So on the one hand, you go, okay, well, people buy lots of books about sharpening pencils.
Merlin: Well, not accurate.
Merlin: So he found a way to essentially, I mean, I've never read the whole book, but from watching the TV show, my sense is what you're really getting to is that he has a very interesting approach to thinking about life and experience and expertise.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: that applies to stuff that you might be taking for granted.
Merlin: So it's not a show about sharpening pencils.
Merlin: And it's kind of secretly a show about curiosity and science.
Merlin: Science on some level.
Merlin: But it isn't like educational.
Merlin: It doesn't feel like you're taking your medicine.
Merlin: And what makes it so intriguing is how involved he is and how interested he is, at least on screen,
Merlin: in exploring something that you think you really understand.
Merlin: And it doesn't come off turns out.
Merlin: It doesn't feel like, like I said, it doesn't feel like medicine.
Merlin: And that's his success there is he did find a way to, I guess with help from people like Christine, like figured a way to turn that.
John: Yeah, and the amazing thing about David, and this is the great thing about Adam Savage, and it's a thing that in a way I have in common with them is that both of those guys are still...
John: Totally into and amazed by the things that they discover in a very childlike way.
John: Yeah, good examples.
John: I mean, I go out, I spend a lot of time traveling with David, and he is as cynical as the next guy about the world, right?
John: But if you lift up a rock and there's a frog under it, David is literally jumping for joy.
Yeah.
John: And cannot believe that he found a frog.
John: And we were in Ethiopia together and we found this swimming hole out in like a nature preserve.
John: And the local kids were climbing up this improbably tall tree and jumping into the swimming hole.
John: And David could not get his clothes off fast enough.
John: And I was standing there like – and Jonathan Colton too and saying like –
John: uh david and he's already like woohoo and he climbs up this tree and he gets up in it and he realizes how high it is and he's like uh-oh but he's standing there in his underwear and there are uh you know 25 kids cheering him on and he's got to make the jump
John: And I'm on the shore like, look, look, man, here's the, you know, there's one spot in this hole that I, I mean, these kids all weigh 90 pounds and they can jump off that tree.
John: But there's one spot in this swimming hole that a 210 pound American guy is going to land and not impale himself.
John: And it's right here.
John: Do not go any, aim here.
John: And he jumps and he makes the landing and he pops up and it's just like, it's the most beautiful thing you ever saw.
Merlin: I would never in a million years do that for like 50 reasons.
John: Well, and the reason that you wouldn't do it is that two days later, the giardia that went up his nose and up his butt when he jumped in that pool caused him to be projectile vomiting and pooping everywhere.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: While we were, you know, like staying in a... And the locals were acclimated to it.
John: Oh, well, you know, or they always have a low-level case of giardia.
Yeah.
John: But David was not acclimated to it, and we were then on a Navy base and trying to find some cure because David couldn't walk 15 feet without needing to run to the body.
John: Oh, man.
John: But that is the kind of actual excitement about life, and Adam Savage is the same thing, same way.
John: It's just like you just built a scale model of the hedge maze from The Shining,
John: why like why why what why and it's just like what do you mean why have you seen it you end up applying you apply people who make an iphone app that says yo to people but then you look at him and like what's that nerd doing with the bushes like what is that like what good is this he's like what good is it it look at it it's it it sells itself and it's like wow i mean you know
John: Lee Unkrich is on board 100%, but a normal person would have no idea that that was made just, and that everything he makes, including his TV show, is made just out of the spirit of total love and total childlike excitement.
John: And I have that same quality about the things that I love, and I think a lot of people have that quality about the things that they love.
John: And it's hard to sell that excitement about like, Poughkeepsie!
John: Have you ever looked at it in an atlas?
John: Do you know where the fresh water is?
Merlin: You're never going to make it to the first commercial break.
John: Except that these other nerds have managed, you know, like Adam Savage had the advantage of like, we're going to blow shit up on an old airport.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And whatever David's advantage was, it was he just invented it out of whole cloth, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And part of that advantage was the pure improbability of a guy writing a book about pencils.
Yeah.
John: So I'm still churning that and obviously I've been trying to write my book about my walk across Europe for 15 years now.
John: And the last iteration of it, I sent it off to a guy in New York City.
John: And it's 100 plus thousand words too.
John: And he was a fan of our program.
John: He was a big editor at a reputable legendary publishing house.
John: And he was like, I'm totally into this.
John: I really think it's great.
John: But these 100,000 words are really more like notes for a book.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, the last thing you want to hear.
John: I was like, notes for a book.
John: I was hoping you were going to say they just need a little bit of, you know, you just need to round off.
John: Covering a UPC code.
John: Yeah, I was getting ready to book the author photo.
John: Oh, no.
John: And that was just like, right, notes for a book.
John: And the world has changed so much in that 15 years that so much of that writing is about how those places were in 1999.
John: And they're not like that anymore anymore.
Merlin: For it to be authentic, in some ways, you'd have to really rethink the entire approach.
Merlin: Because you've changed so much since then.
John: Right.
John: And I think the only way to do it now is that at some point, 10 years from now, I go retrace my steps.
John: And then that whole book that I wrote, they were notes for a book.
John: Like, here's a walk that I did when I was 30, and I never finished the book.
John: So when I was 60, I went and did it again.
John: This time on a bike.
John: That sounds like a documentary.
John: And on the bike, and the bike is actually motorized.
John: It's called a motorcycle.
John: And the motorcycle actually is a car.
John: And it's actually a plane.
John: And I flew over the place that I walked and I wrote my reflections on that.
John: Over a long weekend.
Merlin: You got me – I'm sorry.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: No, go ahead.
Merlin: You got me really thinking about something now.
Merlin: This sounds kind of karma sucky and I don't mean it to be.
Merlin: The way that you were describing –
Merlin: talking about trying to get your concept for a TV show on one of those places and them saying that people don't want to watch TV from people who don't watch TV.
Merlin: There's something in that that is really painful and interesting to me because it leads to this larger point, which is...
Merlin: How little we each ultimately understand about the industries we're not in, right?
Merlin: So you think – you've read lots of books, so you think of yourself as somebody who could be an author, like a published author, not just a writer, but a published – somebody who sells their words for a living and periodically and again and again and again.
Merlin: Or you think of yourself as somebody who's like, oh my god, I've watched and read so much science fiction.
Merlin: I could easily make a science fiction TV show and get it on Netflix.
Merlin: Everybody's doing it nowadays.
Merlin: But then once you actually meet people inside the industry, it ends up –
Merlin: you realize i feel like you realize how a how little you really understand about that industry like we all have these guesses and we've read things we've read books but in that case where like you go like yeah but like for john john's show hills and rivers where he goes around and tours the great cities of america and discusses their complexion like okay who do we think that is for and like who would watch that but also like who would advertise on that show right
Merlin: Because with a show like that, I could see that being a huge disconnect that, you know, you want young people to watch it, but it's probably like Ford that would want to buy an ad on there or Buick or whatever.
Merlin: I don't know if they make Buicks.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: I just think that's – I think that's part of it is like it makes the – can feel –
Merlin: depressing is too strong a word, but can feel like it keeps you down because you start to feel like such a dumbass that you fundamentally don't understand this industry.
Merlin: And then finally to that point, like, why do you imagine that there are probably tens of thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people working in all these industries?
Merlin: Why don't they have TV shows?
Merlin: They already understand how to make TV.
Merlin: Do you think you're actually that much better at making a movie than somebody who's been like an assistant director?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But they're yeomen.
Merlin: They do their job.
Merlin: It's just that we look at that and go, oh, I can make the Avengers better or whatever.
Merlin: And it's like, well, are you sure?
Merlin: There's a lot of people working in that industry.
John: Right.
John: They seem pretty staffed up.
John: A big part of – it's the classic thing.
John: And I'm seeing it now in my foray into politics, which is that I am encountering the entrenched class.
John: And they are saying, what makes – exactly that.
John: What makes you think that you can do this better?
John: than those of us who are who have only been doing this and have been doing this for a long time and they're absolutely right in the sense that in this same exact sense that you just described and the only hope the only hope is that
John: routinely there are people from outside all of these spheres who come in with a good idea and are able to master the vernacular, put together the right team of smart people to help, and actually do make something new from outside.
John: And it happens infrequently enough, but when it does happen, it's so exciting to us
John: that we misapply the lesson and think, wow, again, I could make the Avengers better by sitting here.
Merlin: Why can't I be Elon Musk?
John: Right.
John: Why can't I be Elon Musk?
Merlin: Kind of.
Merlin: Isn't that kind of what we're talking about?
John: It is.
John: And partly...
John: Partly it's the question of what role does expertise and experience play in various jobs?
John: And in pediatric brain surgery...
John: It's a factor.
John: Right?
John: Expertise is the whole game.
John: There is, I mean, the best pediatric brain surgeon and the worst pediatric brain surgeon, between those two people, there is inspiration probably is the factor, right?
John: This person has...
John: The best pediatric brain surgeon probably has incredible dexterity and has a natural physical gift and maybe also has inspiration.
John: But the worst pediatric brain surgeon who isn't… Merely incompetent.
John: Right, who isn't in jail or committing malpractice.
John: But the worst one who is still competent is still an incredible expert in their field, right?
John: And in things like filmmaking and comedy writing and television producing, I think it's much more likely that the people who have the expertise –
John: do have a knowledge base that's useful, but they also are kind of gatekeepers in a way that probably has a tendency to keep good ideas out more.
John: I mean, and a lot of the people that green light TV shows are producers who are timid and don't want to make a mistake
John: And so they keep making the same show over and over.
Merlin: But they care about the TV.
Merlin: Even if they don't love every program, they care about the process.
John: Well, or they're in the process.
John: You see it the same way in politics, that people get a long way in politics by being timid.
John: Like, don't...
John: If you don't step too far to the left or too far to the right, keep your nose clean.
John: You make the right friends.
John: Keep your head down.
John: What strange advice to give to a public official.
John: Try not to get noticed.
John: They ultimately do care about something got them engaged initially, and then they are in the process, which feels kind of like the military or a corporation.
John: You do what is done.
John: and you don't rock the boat, and you get where you're going.
John: And I think a lot of people end up producers in television, and they don't all love it or even understand it.
John: A lot of them are there because their brother was the...
John: The brother gave him a job.
John: And so there are these forms that are different from pediatric brain surgery.
John: But people who occupy those jobs would like you to think that it was equivalent to pediatric brain surgery.
John: Oh, okay.
John: That makes sense.
John: Right?
John: And it's like, oh, you don't have the expertise to do this.
John: It's like, well, it's not it.
John: Expertise isn't the entire game in a lot of these rackets.
Merlin: I like what you're saying about expertise and experience.
Merlin: And this is probably nested right in the middle of what you're saying.
Merlin: But I would say for that to form a three legged stool, you got experience, expertise.
Merlin: And the third really obvious one is motivation.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Because I think a lot of the reason that – and you notice I'm not saying inspiration.
Merlin: I'm saying motivation.
Merlin: Not only what makes you want to do this, you could even call it taste in some ways.
Merlin: What is it that makes you want to be good at this?
Merlin: And then how do you evaluate how well it's going and what you need to do differently?
Merlin: Does that happen 100% intuitively because you so –
Merlin: Like in the case of – like you said in show business, maybe you were raised in a family where that's just in your bones.
Merlin: If you're like Sofia Coppola, like she's been around that so much that just spending a little – this sounds really dismissive and I don't mean it to.
Merlin: But like I'm not saying it's easy, but it's certainly not as patently difficult if you're a kid in Oklahoma who's only ever – the biggest exposure they've had to the film industry is going to the cinema.
John: Right.
Merlin: But that motivation, the thing is that's the part a lot of people get wrong.
Merlin: Even with the experience and even – it's hard to get the experience that brings you the expertise if you don't have the right motivation.
Merlin: They all end up propping each other up.
Merlin: And if you're in politics and you have the wrong motivation, what a recipe for disaster.
John: Well, yeah.
John: But I think what also often happens is that people with the right motivation –
John: encounter a system a pre-existing system that they aren't able to navigate successfully and i think there are every year you see people run for office that seem like um you know they're painted as kind of crackpots but they're really inspired and
John: to make a difference and they just then they're painted as crackpots because they aren't able to navigate the to the to navigate the game and I mean we we see it in corporate life all the time the people I was talking to a good friend the other day and she was talking about her job she was like well the CEO doesn't he's not really a visionary and I said how many people work at your company
John: And she said, 25.
John: And I said, and you guys have a CEO.
John: Like when I was coming up in the world, a company that had 25 employees maybe had a president and that president was also the founder.
John: But the world we're living in now, your company of 25 people has a board of directors, a CEO, a CFO, a CTO.
John: and then however many vice presidents, and then however many managers, does your business have any employees?
John: And the fact that her company has a CEO who is 45 years old,
John: And is, you know, like a guy running his own company, running a company for the first time, you know, is like the expertise that he has on offer or like the talents that he is really applying.
John: Yeah.
John: A lot of those talents are just like primarily in having the chutzpah to call himself a CEO.
John: And that's an emblem of the age.
Merlin: It's one of the few kinds of jobs, though, where you can get really far, potentially really fast, and still be completely self-deluded.
Merlin: You could be virtually psychotic, and that might actually improve your chances.
Merlin: Because you're one of those people who goes, no, I refuse to fail.
Merlin: I refuse to have anything except world-changing success with this.
Merlin: And when I hear that, I'm like, man, failure is always an option.
Merlin: In Iraq, I'll always be thinking about that because you make dumb decisions if you think you can't fail.
John: Yeah, right.
John: But the thing is that the business climate now for a lot of these people is like, I have no interest in making this a viable business.
John: I want to sell this company.
John: Are you talking about growth hacking?
John: Yeah.
John: Growth hack!
John: So as I look around the world, and I definitely felt this about that television show.
John: It's like there are people who make a lot of sense telling me that...
John: or rather asking me with a knowing eye, who's going to watch your show?
John: And they know the answer.
John: And the answer is nobody.
John: Or the answer is not enough people to sell ads to make it profitable.
John: And I'm sitting on the other side saying, you have this special knowledge of who watches things and
John: And you're using that special knowledge to say it's that, you know, and invariably the people say, I would love that show.
John: But nobody's going to watch it.
John: And so what they're saying is the kind of the old classic standby, like it would be we could make a better world.
John: If only people weren't so dumb.
John: And since they are, we can't make a better world.
John: We can only give them what they want to buy.
John: And so those of us who know that things could be better are hamstrung by the fact that we can't make things better.
John: And it's the dark side of letting the market economy be the church of your thinking, where it's like, yeah, we could make amazing things.
John: We could make beautiful television.
John: We could make television that was for the ages.
John: But sadly, no one would buy it, and so there's no point in making it.
John: Anyway, thanks for coming.
John: We're going to go back to our toddlers and tiaras.
John: And you see the same thing also in city government, except people aren't quite so craven.
John: But you go into city government and you say, hey, there is a way to do this.
John: We can build affordable housing for middle-class families.
John: And people go, we could...
Merlin: Not only that we could, but oh, I would love to be able to do that.
Merlin: But that's the interesting thing about what you're saying in some ways.
John: Yeah.
John: I want that too.
John: I want exactly what you want.
John: But what my job is is to sit here and tell you that the realities don't allow it.
John: And so thanks for coming.
John: Sorry that we couldn't make a better world.
John: You know, if you have another idea that's dumber, be sure to call us up because we really like where you're coming from.
John: And that, you know, and ultimately that is, it is an argument of the market.
Yeah.
John: And all the examples where you say, well, somebody made this thing that nobody thought anybody wanted –
John: And then everybody wanted it.
John: And people go, yeah, but that doesn't happen very often.
John: And that guy was self-funded.
Merlin: That's not good for shareholders.
John: It's not good for shareholders.
John: Every once in a while, sure, there's a revolution and everybody's thinking.
John: Every once in a while, the strokes come along and they sound just like Iggy and the Stooges and nobody knew that that's what they wanted right then.
John: Nobody in the year 2000 said, you know what I would like?
John: A young, cute, less abrasive Iggy and the Stooges.
John: That sounds kind of like the Velvet Underground 2.
John: Could you make that?
John: And then these kids made it, and for a year, all anybody wanted to listen to was that first Strokes record.
John: And you go, wow, that was a thing that, I mean, I was in the process of making a record during those same months and never occurred to me to make a record that sounded exactly like Joy Division.
Merlin: You can't – I mean, yeah, God, you remember that.
Merlin: But you can never replicate the timing and circumstances.
Merlin: My friend and I, John Gruber and I, did a panel at South by Southwest a few years ago.
Merlin: And the phrase we were using is like – I mean, I – you know, it's not a question of like how you're going to be, as Ira Glass says, is how you're going to be Ted Koppel.
Merlin: Like how are you going to be who you are?
Merlin: You can't replicate the – again, so obvious, but you can't replicate the circumstances and the timing.
Merlin: It was never a sure bet that anything was ever going to happen ever, really, if you're really realistic about it.
Merlin: You don't want to replicate what somebody didn't go, I'm going to be the X of Y. Well, no.
Merlin: I mean, to become the X of Y, you have to have the same kind of – the similarities in the spirit.
Merlin: I think we've talked about this a million times.
Merlin: But you don't want to go replicate Steve Jobs by –
Merlin: being mean to people, that's not on the face of it going to be super useful.
Merlin: That's the wrong note to take from that career.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and you're absolutely right to say that nothing is ever inevitable because if it were... Everybody would have done it.
John: Everybody would have done it.
John: It's like a time travel paradox.
John: The music business is full of people trying to put the formula to work and say, okay, here it comes, the next band that you are going to love everybody.
John: and then the next band comes along it's like nobody gives a fuck yeah um but there are but it but but i cannot succumb to the idea that the that the the lay intellectual can't ever engage with the world in any way other than just writing opinion pieces for the local newspaper you know like they're the the
Merlin: Or just donating and just leaving positive comments, that your role in this is to participate in the machine that we've all agreed can't be changed.
John: Like we need to – we are so siloed and so much a culture of the cult of expertise –
John: And some of those things absolutely require expertise, like pediatric brain surgery and even, I would argue... Are you referring to Ben Carson?
Merlin: Is that an unintentional reference, or do you know what you're saying there?
Merlin: It's funny you should say that.
Merlin: No, I've been holding this because it's not relevant, but I went to the Wikipedia page for Republican presidential candidates, and at the current rate, the rate of Sunday, today's Monday as we record this, and Tuesday, you had one person announced May 3rd, we had another announced May 4th, and a third is expected to announce on May 5th.
Merlin: Ben Carson, the guy from...
Merlin: May 3rd, author and former director of pediatric neurosurgery for Johns Hopkins.
John: Isn't that hilarious?
John: He holds some very strange views, Ben Carson does, about how the world shakes out.
John: But he is an expert pediatric brain surgeon.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I didn't mean to derail you.
John: I just didn't know that was intentional.
John: It's quite all right.
John: I'm looking for role models everywhere.
Merlin: A million stories in the naked city.
John: The guy that really knows how to adjust the quadrajet carburetor, the Rochester quadrajet carburetor on my truck, has a kind of expertise that is akin to restoring a Stradivarius.
John: But there are lots of other jobs.
John: And I really do feel like CEO of a 25-person company is one of those jobs that almost anybody could do.
John: And I know that that's going to get some people mad.
John: Especially the growth hackers.
John: But those people are wrong.
John: But every single friend I have could be the CEO of a 25-person company.
John: Every single one of them.
John: Because it takes a while to figure out what the company makes.
John: And then it takes a while to figure out where the company sits in the landscape.
John: And then you need to start figuring out how the company can do better.
John: And that learning process, what does the company make?
John: Where does the company sit?
John: Yeah.
John: That stuff should not be that difficult for a normally intelligent person to figure out.
John: And then how does this company get better?
John: And if this company needs to grow to get better, then that's one direction.
John: And if this company does not need to grow but just needs to get better,
John: That's another solution.
John: But any reasonably intelligent person can address that set of circumstances and move forward in an interesting way.
John: Anybody that I know.
John: To be the CEO of a 40,000-person company, at that point, you have to be really good at...
Merlin: You just need to have so many complementary skills that are always evolving.
John: And the primary one would be know how to hire good people to manage your divisions.
John: But 25 people working on a project, if you're a good person and not a megalomaniac, you should be able to handle that project.
John: It's not rocket science.
Yeah.
Merlin: You said something earlier about that feeling of getting up in the morning thing, of climbing the mountain and hoping there's something on the ridge.
Merlin: Isn't there something to be said for the people who are able to motivate people's sight unseen on some kind of a goal that seems ridiculous or non-existent?
Merlin: That's not just delusional, right?
Merlin: How do you mean?
Merlin: Motivate people.
Merlin: Well, if you're at a startup, let's say.
Merlin: Let's say you're at a startup.
Merlin: And boy, I'm so glad we're finally talking about startups.
Merlin: But let's say you're at a growing company.
Merlin: Let's just say a small growing company.
Merlin: Okay, small growing company.
Merlin: Maybe 25 people.
John: Maybe in the Bay Area.
John: God, please.
Merlin: Maybe producing some kind of – I'm so sorry I said anything.
Merlin: I already hate this topic.
Merlin: No, but I mean there is – it seems like there's something to be said for like – in addition to all the kind of the change and the stress and the dealing with the funding and all that kind of stuff, that ability to maintain the confidence of people who could very easily get a job anywhere else, it seems like that would take a certain – I could see that taking a special kind of skill even with up to 25 people because you're kind of showing your own credibility, the company's credibility.
Merlin: Everything is changing all the time.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Maybe I watched too much Silicon Valley.
Merlin: But that seems like – that is kind of a special –
Merlin: thing to be able to do.
Merlin: You'd have to have a high level of, as we say in D&D, constitution and charisma to be able to pull that off, even if you're young.
John: My sense is that now the business climate does require those things because it's a game.
John: It's all about
John: grow fast, fill a niche, keep nimble, sell high, everybody gets rich.
John: Everyone is motivated in that business by the possibility, the very real possibility, that at 27 years old, they're going to be astoundingly rich all of a sudden one day.
John: And that's so different from actual business.
Merlin: Like when you think about the people – That's a really good point.
Merlin: From being just – like for example, if you've got a business that may be public but has been like operated by a family, like just that feeling of like how do I make sure I not screw up what my mother and my father and my grandparents – like what they – you know what I mean?
Merlin: That constant feeling of like they've made something great and now it's up to me to screw it up.
John: Well, and you think about, I mean, there are people in our world now who are practicing a different kind of business, right?
John: The guys that start a company that makes bicycles.
John: And they've improved their design and they're making a better bicycle.
John: And they're not thinking, I'm going to sell this bicycle company to Schwinn.
John: I'm going to make a million dollars.
John: They are legitimately...
John: Like reflecting on the world as it is and saying, I'm going to go back to doing something like manufacturing bicycles and that's going to be my peace of mind and I'm going to have a quality of life.
Merlin: And maybe there's a quality differentiator in the bikes and you charge more.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You're trying to make a sustainable business based on something that you care a lot about and are good at.
John: And that is the old-fashioned way of looking at business, where the product is the entire story and everything else in your business is designed toward the product.
John: And efficiencies are there.
John: You try and make it profitable so that everybody can make a living wage, but the product tells the story.
John: And increasingly, this other style of business where it's like, well, the product, sure.
John: I mean, we haven't even really decided what the product is.
John: All we know is we're growth hacking it.
John: But we have seven different layers of C-level management.
John: And already we're getting looked at by these people who are thinking about flushing us with cash.
John: And maybe we'll make an app that makes a bong when it turns off.
John: Maybe we'll make a speaker that you can suction cup to your chest.
John: There are a lot of things we could be building.
John: We haven't quite figured that out yet.
John: And that style of business is like Bitcoin farming.
John: It's something that maybe is going to make you rich and it takes up a lot of your day.
John: And like you say, it requires that you be charismatic and that you convince people.
John: But it isn't about really like making anything that helps anybody or making anything at all in some cases.
Merlin: That's an interesting edge case, though, because talking about motivation, in some ways, though, even though the motivation is to me, you know, insane or, you know, nearly magical.
Merlin: But there's one thing where most of the players in that industry do share a motivation, which is like, I want all of the money as fast as possible.
John: I want all the money as fast as possible.
Merlin: And the VCs that are getting 90% failure rates because of the 10% that pay off, they're not doing that because they like you.
Merlin: They're doing that because they think they're going to make a ton of money from you.
John: Right.
John: And that is why libertarianism is the political realm of choice for a lot of those people because when they do hit the numbers –
John: when the money does come pouring in, they really do believe that they made it out of thin air and that they don't owe anybody, that they're not part of a community, that they're part of this genius-level tier of Bitcoin farmers.
John: And so we're seeing it in Seattle.
John: Jeff Bezos really does believe that
John: I guess the streets were already there when he got here.
John: He's grandfathered in.
John: Yeah, so he doesn't really have a sense of how they got put there or how they're maintained, but he doesn't care.
John: The money he's making is because he's a genius.
Merlin: Well, can I ask you a question related to that?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: As far as how the campaign is going, the people, when you talk to people, and I have to imagine there are some people who are like, this is not plausible.
Merlin: You don't have the experience or whatever.
Merlin: Like who are the people you find most interesting in terms of believing in what you're doing?
Merlin: Apart from just the relief of having somebody go, I think that's doable and that's a good idea and I would support that.
Merlin: Who do you think are the most interesting or surprising people lining up to go, oh yeah, this is a terrific idea.
Merlin: We've got to do this.
John: What's really cool is that initial sense of like, well, the guitar player wants to be on city council.
John: He doesn't have the experience necessary.
John: The weird rock candidate?
John: Yeah, that guy who was doing a show at the Rendezvous last year wants to be on the city council.
John: He doesn't have the experience.
John: And invariably, when I sit with one of those people and talk to them for a very short amount of time, they're like, oh, you are absolutely...
John: a great candidate for this job and you you can you can absolutely do this and then they lean in and they go but here's what you need to know and then they start telling me a similar thing to the tv producer like you really need to dumb this down you you the the words that you use are too big you spend a lot of time uh really like the the word that i keep hearing is ideating you keep ideating
John: with these thought storms, and you really need to just have the three takeaways, the bullet points, the quick and dirty.
John: And I've been fighting it for weeks.
John: I don't think in bullet points.
John: I don't talk in bullet points.
John: I don't want to do it.
John: I resist it.
John: And lately I've been hearing a more new because I'm meeting a lot of people.
John: I spent all last week cold calling lawyers, like powerful lawyers in town saying, hi, I'm John Roddick.
John: I'm running for city council.
John: You're a big shot lawyer, a big shot developer, and I need to talk to you on the phone.
John: I need you to have heard my voice.
John: I need you to know my name.
John: And I need to hear from you what you think the problems facing the big shot lawyers and developers are in town so that I don't go into this gladiator contest unarmed.
John: And they talk to me for a little while and then they're like, oh, you are completely viable.
John: Their initial response is like, who?
John: What?
John: You're the artist?
What?
John: And then we talked for a while and then they're like, all right, well, and then so then their voices get softer and they lean in and they say, listen, you need the bullet points.
John: Like you can talk, ideate all you want in between, but you need to start every conversation with your three bullet points and end every conversation with it because that's all anybody's going to remember.
John: And somebody said to me the other day, they were like, it's like the chorus of a song.
John: Can you get this through your head?
John: Nobody remembers the verse.
John: Everybody sings the chorus.
John: And I'm like, the fucking chorus of the song.
John: Good lord.
Merlin: That's C. And ironically enough, it's a perfect example of exactly what they're advising.
Merlin: Take something that is really, really difficult to understand, let alone do, and turn it into something anybody could, especially somebody who's a writer, could instantly understand.
John: Instantly understand.
John: And repeat over and over.
John: And then when somebody's on the bus and they're like, I'm voting for John Roderick.
John: And the person next to him goes, what's he stand for?
John: They go...
John: ooh child things are gonna get easier you know like they sing the chorus and then the person sitting next to him on the bus that's never gonna think about it again when the ballot comes they're like oh that's right that guy that sings ooh child uh i'll vote for him and so that part of the thing is is blowing my mind but but um but but does describing in that way make it seem more palatable
John: It still is against my nature.
John: Even as someone who has written a book of tweets, I love to communicate it in 140 characters.
John: But when somebody says, what's your solution to the housing problem?
John: To give them 140 character response is anathema to me, right?
John: I want to talk about how the housing problem is too complicated to solve with a tweet, right?
John: uh but and they are receptive to hearing that but they want to hear the tweet also yeah and so that has been you know i've been talking to a lot of experts and everybody is you know there's they are the people that i'm talking to that were the most dubious about it are starting to realize like
John: Oh, this is possible.
John: And obviously I'm reading and learning by leaps and bounds.
John: And so I do every week encounter a kind of moment where it's like I am learning an entirely new profession.
John: And also the language of it.
John: So it's like I'm studying engineering and I'm also learning French.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Hey, that was very well put.
John: Right?
John: Because my engineering school is in France.
John: Yeah.
John: Yikes.
John: And yet, I'm enjoying every step of that process and there are lots of places along the way where
John: where I realized that the culture, in Seattle politics especially, is traditionally very incremental.
John: There's a lot of lip service liberalism where people are just like, of course I'm a liberal.
John: Look at this.
John: I voted for this.
John: I voted for that.
John: It's like, right, none of those were imaginative.
John: You never stuck your neck out.
John: No one ever took a risk.
John: You're just plodding along.
Merlin: That's interesting.
Merlin: It's almost like being a U2 fan.
Merlin: You go, well, I've always been a U2 fan.
Merlin: I remember liking them a lot.
Merlin: It never occurred to me to not be a U2 fan or to really question, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Not to bag on U2, but it's like you start to think of yourself.
Merlin: It was a long time before I went, hmm, I still, I think I would personally like the guys in R.E.M., but I don't know their music like I used to be.
John: Well, it's the Dave Matthews story.
John: At some point a long, long time ago, the first time people heard a Dave Matthews song, they were like, huh, that's an interesting vocal style and that's an interesting song or two.
John: And he built a massive cultural movement by not ever changing that
John: even a little bit, right?
John: He never went, he never picked up an electric guitar.
John: He never made a ska record.
John: He never, he never changed his name and put on a, and made a, and grew a soul patch and made a grunge album.
Yeah.
Merlin: That was so weird.
Merlin: I forgot about that.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Like Taylor Swift used to be a country star.
John: She's not anymore.
John: Nobody even remembers that she was really.
Merlin: She pivoted.
John: But Dave Matthews just keeps on keeping on.
John: And I don't know how many records he's made.
John: And I don't know if you took a song off the latest one and a song off the first one and put them back to back.
John: I think they would sound like they belonged in the same, not only in the same canon, but on the same album.
Merlin: To your point, though, and I don't know anything about Dave Matthews.
Merlin: I don't mean to sound like I'm disparaging him.
Merlin: I just know he's got that big violin player and he goes, yeah.
Merlin: But in your analogy, I think you're on to something interesting, which is you say like, well, I never really paused to – on the one hand, like I was saying, I haven't really paused at any point to consider how much I really am still a fan.
Merlin: whatever of the old stuff or the new stuff but i also that really that ultimately means that i have not fully processed the new information in order to realize that i'm actually way more into it or that i'm actually i maybe thinking i should be listening to someone else because it's very comfortable it's very comfortable to say like oh this is i have every confidence that i'm a sloan fan well i haven't listened to that many new sloan albums and been super into them since like 2001 yeah
Merlin: It's honest.
Merlin: And I'm not, again, there's always, they're like Cheap Trick.
Merlin: They've got a great song on every record, but I hadn't been bananas over a new album of theirs in a long time.
Merlin: And even when I kind of, I was still kind of like going like, I'm really into Sloan, so I must love this record, even if I didn't.
John: And that is exactly what happens to people in their political process.
John: They're like, this is how it works.
John: This is the tempo at which it moves.
John: These are the people to whom we entrust this job.
John: And so...
John: Change cannot possibly come any faster than this.
John: Obviously, these projects take years and years of contentious budget disagreements to even begin.
John: And we just sort of settle into this like, well, this is... I mean, I've been a Sloan fan for years and I guess I'm still a Sloan fan.
John: There's no...
John: The energy that is required of you as a fan or as a citizen just sort of ebbs and you just coast.
John: And then every once in a while something comes along that forces you to get excited or really makes everything different all of a sudden.
John: Right, right.
John: And you either make that transition or you don't.
Merlin: But also with – I'm probably stating the obvious – but also with the political part of what you're describing, just to put a slightly finer point on it, it is you're talking about the difference between how you like to think about yourself versus how you think people should govern, which are so different.
Merlin: It's one thing to go, hey, you know, I –
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I've always considered myself an REM fan.
Merlin: I used to buy the shirts.
Merlin: Like that doesn't really have like a huge impact.
Merlin: But it's just there's something that's so comforting about knowing I'm this sort of person.
Merlin: I'm a Dave Matthews sort of person.
Merlin: I'm not a Metallica sort of person or whatever.
Merlin: And I think – but you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like it isn't like you're really pausing to think about –
Merlin: On the one hand, do I really like their new stuff?
Merlin: But maybe further to the point, do I really like their old stuff that much still?
Merlin: And is that okay?
Merlin: Do you really want the Pixies to reunite?
Merlin: Because the Pixies today are going to make music that's very different, probably.
Merlin: And if it's not, then is that a leap forward for them?
Merlin: When Rush started changing, I got really pissed.
Merlin: When they put on subdivisions, I was like, this is not what Rush should sound like.
Merlin: Roll the bones!
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so you become that guy, like me and REM, like, oh, I really like everything up to Life's First Pageant, you know?
John: And I think with, you know, with government, like, there's a real tendency for people to say, of course I believe that
John: Of course I believe X. Of course I believe that we should house the homeless.
John: Or of course I believe that we should regulate the banks.
John: Or of course I believe, you know, of course.
John: But it's very hard to do those things.
Merlin: God, that of course has so much wrapped up in it if you really think about it.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: It's really powerful in a not very good way.
Merlin: Well, of course.
Merlin: Of course I'd love to change – like you said, of course I'd love to change this industry.
Merlin: But call me back if you've ever got something better for a TV show.
Merlin: Exactly, right?
Merlin: It's not of course enough that I'm actually going to invest in it.
Merlin: It's of course enough that it agrees with my general comportment about life.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Of course black lives matter.
John: But –
John: You know, what are they really asking?
John: Sean, all lives matter.
John: Right.
John: And it's just like that, of course, allows people to say, of course, I'm a liberal or of course, I'm a politically active or of course.
Merlin: It makes you sound very sane, reasoned and honest.
Merlin: and realistic.
John: That's right, realistic.
Merlin: You actually sound realistic, because you're not going, well, you know, because again, what are you almost always talking about?
Merlin: You're talking about a shifter in attention, or you're talking about a change in not priorities, but sacrifice.
Merlin: Like, what are we willing to spend on this?
Merlin: In order to get this thing made, what do we not spend money and time on?
Merlin: Which is a huge difference between like, yeah, in an ideal world, we'd all get to live in cosplay Pinocchio or whatever.
Merlin: Like you come up with these bananas things.
John: And all the saner heads, all the people who are like, well, now hold on just a second.
John: There's a whole, you know, there's a budgeting process and, you know, this is going to be too disruptive.
Yeah.
John: We can't – even if there are aliens living under the Arctic Ocean and they are controlling our one-world government, we can't tell everybody about it.
John: We have to go slow.
John: It would freak people out.
John: And even if – that's maybe a bad example, speaking as a candidate.
John: Is it?
John: Is it?
Yeah.
John: You sound very realistic to me.
John: But that idea, not the idea, but the pose of, of course I agree with you, but I am sane and we need to go slowly.
John: Like you're talking to a child.
John: And that is so much of what gets done, so much of the politics at the local level, at the national level.
John: is is done in that in that voice of like it would it's gonna like to really reform the banks is gonna be too hard it just is so of course i want to call me back when you have a dumber idea for a television show
John: Take your time.
John: Sometimes, sometimes you have to say, no, fuck you.
John: Follow me to Poughkeepsie.
John: And the excitement of me of running for office right now is that it feels like this is the time at so many levels to just say, no, no.
John: I mean, I said this the other day, like my house,
John: The market has informed me that my house, which was 10 years ago worth $200,000...
John: And then seven years ago was worth $400,000.
John: And then five years ago was worth $200,000 again.
John: And now it's worth $400,000 again.
John: And you're telling me that that is like the sensible, like the market is the adjudicator.
Merlin: Well, obviously you've been doing something right.
Yeah.
Merlin: You've added that value just by being there.
Merlin: There I was.
John: Aren't you smart?
John: And the house didn't have any value, and then it had a lot.
Merlin: You were dumb for a while there around 2008.
Merlin: You were really fucking stupid, but now you've got it wired.
Merlin: Good job, John.
John: You've got to be super smart now, and it's basically like playing roulette, but none of us, and we all go like, that's crazy.
John: But what can you do about it?
John: It's the market.
John: It is the church.
John: It's our one true God.
John: And the market just tells us.
John: And the market isn't – it's not one guy.
John: It's the whole – it's everybody.
John: And we just all decide and we follow along.
Merlin: The thing is, though, you're not naive.
Merlin: You're not naive enough to – I don't think –
Merlin: It would take a lot of naivete to go, I'm going to come in and shake everything up and it'll be really easy.
Merlin: How do you know what's your internal barometer for knowing which furniture can still be moved around, which shouldn't be tampered with?
Merlin: And how do you decide between five things that could change potentially?
Merlin: That's a big question, but pick whatever part you want.
Merlin: But it seems like to go into this, you don't want to be a dummy.
Merlin: You don't want to just go in and go, oh, I assume that I can change the entire way politics works.
Merlin: What are the parts where you go, I'm just going to have to live with that because that part is not going to change.
John: I mean, at every step of the way, there are vested interests and there are people that are going to say you can't do that.
John: And the thing is that when you're talking about a city government, right, the city is also inside of a county and the county is inside of a state and the state is inside of a country.
John: And all of those other jurisdictions also have laws that apply and affect the city.
John: And
John: You can't just say like, well, I'm going to change the state law.
John: Oh, stuff that's going to be happening above your pay grade.
John: You know, where initially when I first started talking about the police, I was like, well, the police should live in the neighborhoods they police.
John: That seems like a no-brainer.
John: That's kind of like the old times, right?
John: When the guy in Chicago swinging his billy club, walking down the street in his own neighborhood.
John: Well, then I started reading up on it and I learned a few things.
John: One, the state of Washington prohibits
John: municipalities from requiring that their officers live in their neighborhoods.
John: You're kidding.
John: No, because there was a time when the police union said that's unfair.
John: And some of those cases probably went all the way to the Supreme Court.
John: You can't force people to live a certain place.
Merlin: I had a conversation the other day with a dad at school, really cool guy with really cool kids.
Merlin: I see him at the comic store all the time.
Merlin: They're, they're very cool.
Merlin: And he just kind of offered up out of nowhere that, Oh no, I, we, uh, no, I would, I would never, he's like, I work in XYZ city.
Merlin: I live in San Francisco.
Merlin: He's like, I would use your cop cop living in the same town that he works in.
Merlin: It was kind of a Spider-Man thing where it's like, it wouldn't be safe.
Merlin: He feels like it's not safe to live where you work.
Merlin: Have you heard that?
John: That's very interesting.
John: That's crazy on the face of it.
John: But what happened was the police said, look, we're not making very much money and we can't afford to live in the city.
John: There are a lot of arguments why you can't say, if you want to work here, you have to live in this neighborhood or something.
John: But they took that to the state.
John: The state made a law.
John: So now the city can't require that.
John: Well, then I started reading up on the topic.
John: It turns out they've done studies of lots of municipalities.
John: Some of them do have rules that the police have to live in the city.
John: Some of them don't.
John: And the cities that require their police to live in the city do not have any better police outcomes, in some cases dramatically worse police outcomes.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Wow.
John: What it turned out.
John: was that the biggest factor for improving your police is high quality training of your police.
John: Ideally in a transparent glass building in the middle of town.
John: Right?
John: With an exercise facility.
John: Wasn't that your plan?
John: That's right.
John: And then they run through the streets in sweats that say police trainee.
John: And they're sweeping, sweeping, sweeping.
John: But high quality training is where you get good police.
John: And then you go, oh, duh.
Duh.
John: Right, of course.
John: High-quality training.
Merlin: It won't matter where they live if they're well-trained.
John: That's right.
John: And so the evolution of my thought, at least, on that matter...
John: was really affected by the fact that I came up against state law, which was like, yeah, well, we've already been through this.
John: And if you want to go to the state, if you want to propose a law and take it to the state and say, we need to require the police to live in our cities, you can go down that rabbit hole
John: And if you win, you win.
John: And if you lose, you lose.
John: But what do you want?
John: Do you want the symbolic victory of that?
John: Do you want to be able to say that I believe that that is going to work?
Merlin: Or – first of all, this sounds very wise.
Merlin: But it's also like you're like, oh, well, you know, guys, I came back to your thing from a couple weeks ago.
Merlin: I campaigned on this.
Merlin: Like this is a real – a tentpole of my campaign.
Merlin: I can't change even my mind about this.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Let alone my dedication to this.
Merlin: It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong.
Merlin: This is why I'm here.
John: I can read 25 studies about a thing, but since I've gone out and said this already, I can't change my mind on this because it's going to make me look like a waffler.
Merlin: And then in that case, expertise is getting in your way.
John: Well, yeah.
John: If you're a scoundrel.
John: Yeah.
John: If you're a scoundrel.
John: And the expectation that we have that politicians can't publicly change their mind and say, I read some things.
John: I talked to some people that are smarter than me about this.
John: Now I have a different opinion about it.
John: And the new thing is actually within our ability to do, which is to require that our police be trained at a high level.
John: And that is measurable.
John: Yeah.
John: And it doesn't require that we change state laws.
John: What it does require is that all the people out there who are chanting, force the police to live in our neighborhoods, you have to now convince them, who were formerly your allies.
Merlin: And who now have every reason to believe that you've been corrupted by exposure to the elements that have made that impossible in the past as well.
John: And so you go back to your original constituency and you say, look, I've learned some stuff.
John: I'd like you to read these things.
John: And they're like...
John: They feel like you're a sellout and a trader.
John: And you're like, oh, no, what I want is a better police department.
John: Right.
John: Same thing you want.
John: But now you've crossed the spiritual line of challenging the thing that you all used to agree just sounded like the solution.
Right.
John: So that process is like a process of maturation that requires that you have some integrity inside.
John: But clarity also.
Merlin: The clarity of making sure you fully understand.
Merlin: It sounds like it's good for you because you go, oh, I can learn a new thing and that was good.
Merlin: But it also helps you really clarify the problem statement.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: The way you frame that to yourself and to others will say like, well, it still matters for us to have a police force that does these following things.
Merlin: And now I've learned a thing here.
John: And what you discover is that some people, what they really just want to do is punish the police or punish the developers or punish the banks.
John: Right.
John: And when you come back and you're like, I looked into this more, and it turns out that this thing that we thought was going to really help us is not as good a case as this other thing.
Merlin: And it's a nightmare to administer.
John: Yeah, but people are like, that one, even though it doesn't work and is a nightmare to administer and is really expensive, it punishes them more.
John: And that's what I want.
John: It turns out what I want is to shame and punish the people that I think are the bad people.
Merlin: I bet you get so much traction with people in certain quarters with that approach.
John: Well, that's typically who runs for public office are the people that stand up and say, I am so mad at the cement contractors.
John: Big cement.
John: fucking cement contractors are pouring shitty cement and we are gonna punish them and the cement contractors are like well you know actually we we like to pour good cement too it's just the the contract stipulated that and they're just like shut up you contractors you're gonna suck a tube of cement on my watch
John: When I'm the big cheese around here.
John: And then you get city government where those people go into office.
John: That's why you have all those conversations with people.
John: It's that Mitt Romney and the 46% or whatever his gaffe was.
John: When he gets around people that he thinks he can talk to, all of a sudden he's like, all right, we all know the deal, right?
John: Right, right.
John: And as soon as you are sitting in office and you're talking to some people,
John: like with the clinton thumb pointing at them with the clinton thumb going we need to and then another group of people you're like you're really leaning in and kind of whispering listen you know the real deal here right right aliens pay no attention to the thumb living under the arctic ice cap and they're running our government through chemtrails but we're not going to say that to people and then it's like oh sorry the the bus boy was filming the whole thing
John: So what about Gitmo?
John: I believe my city council candidacy believes that we should close Gitmo.
Merlin: That's not the question I meant, but I like your answer better.