Ep. 165: "This Explains Everything"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: I just got to my office and there was a nice gift waiting.
John: It's a graphic novel called The Divine.
John: It was a gift from Ryan Consbrook.
John: And he said that it would be a good book for Roderick on the line.
John: Because it has the Viet Cong and owls and a bomb technician and some mysticism.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Isn't that a thoughtful gift?
Merlin: That's incredibly thoughtful.
Merlin: Man, I love getting presents.
Merlin: Yeah, graphic novels.
Merlin: That should have been written by us or about us or by us.
John: Oh, you know.
John: You know, Jade Gordon's fantastic beginning to a graphic novel.
John: I think it's still pregnant with possibility.
John: But it would have to be 7,000 pages.
Merlin: We could crowdsource it.
Merlin: It could be like when they remade Star Wars a scene at a time.
Merlin: Crowdsource, have people do a page.
Merlin: Everybody does a page.
Merlin: I mean, I don't know if we could find 7,000 people.
John: It would kind of be like American Splendor or whatever, where people would get mad at him and stop drawing his comic book, and then somebody else would start.
Merlin: Is that the reason?
John: I don't know.
John: I always assumed.
Merlin: He seemed like a pretty prickly character.
John: I really loved his work, particularly the...
John: Oh, yeah.
John: All the great collaborations.
Merlin: All the great.
Merlin: You know, I know him.
Merlin: I've looked at American Splendor.
Merlin: I haven't spent much time with it.
Merlin: I mainly know him from Letterman.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Where he was just I think amongst the early Letterman standouts, he was a special standout because he's I mean, I think we talked about this before.
Merlin: But unlike somebody like Charles Grodin, I don't think it was a bit.
Merlin: I think he genuinely hated Dave.
John: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: He hated being there.
John: There's a lot about Dave to hate.
John: But yeah, he hated.
John: There's just so much hate in the world.
Merlin: Someday.
Merlin: Oh, John.
Merlin: So much hate.
Merlin: How do you feel about Dennis Eichhorn?
Merlin: You talked about Dennis Eichhorn.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not familiar with his work.
John: Similar situation.
John: All of his work is collaboration with other artists.
John: And so his comic books have no...
John: There's not a real like unifying artistic or unifying artist, let's say.
John: Right.
John: And so, you know, it's autobiographical comics, but over the course of multiple volumes, you get all these different people's take on what he looks like and what the world looks like.
John: The art becomes like another character.
Merlin: You know, comic fans, but also comic creators get a rap for being nerds, understandably.
Merlin: But the people that I know who make comics, their work, well, it blows me away because the quality of work that people manage to produce is incredible.
Merlin: But what you're describing is how the process generally works, which is there's one person who writes a script, and there's another person in maybe even another country
Merlin: who's doing the drawings and that's not even including the people who ink it and color it you know and that ends up having a huge impact on how it looks but it takes a ridiculous amount of collaboration like down to the point where like you think the thing is done but now you have to reduce the amount of dialogue to fit in the available space for the word balloons word balloons
Merlin: but it's but like it's you know it's it's it's like you know it's one thing to collaborate on a novel or something but I mean that's just all words and you can kind of make it sound the same but I don't know I think it's an amazing process I would like to someday not today probably but I would like to someday explore your past relationship with comics which which you know it's kind of a bit that you know you make fun of the comics people but you also seem to have had a fair number of grown-up funny books you've liked over the years hmm
John: You know, I am a product of the comics.
John: I am a man made almost entirely of comics.
Merlin: Is this from your time at the newsstand?
John: No, no, no, no, my whole life.
John: I mean, I was a kid in comics.
John: I was a preteen in comics.
John: I was a teen in comics.
John: But I always was, I always felt askew.
John: I always felt outwardly.
John: Out of the gang.
John: I didn't like the comics that other kids liked.
John: And the comics that I did like, I couldn't find anybody to share in those comics.
John: You know, I couldn't find a single other 11-year-old that liked Trotz and Bonnie.
John: And I was starved for Trots and Bonnie.
John: I wanted every bit of Trots and Bonnie I could find.
Merlin: Trots and Bonnie.
John: But nobody had ever heard of Trots and Bonnie.
John: And that just wasn't a world that any other kids wanted to share in.
John: Sherry Flanagan?
John: That's right.
John: I actually wrote her one time asking if she would send me a drawing.
John: Oh, it looks really old-timey.
Merlin: It's wonderful.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Look at this.
Merlin: It was in the National Lampoon?
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: It was in the National Lampoon, which 11-year-olds should not be allowed access to.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: It wasn't too long after 11 when I discovered National Lampoon.
John: Yeah.
John: And so that was always the problem, right?
John: 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds...
John: I mean, I was into Lord of the Rings like anyone, but I also just was so crazy about National Lampoon and couldn't find a single other kid that had ever heard of it, let alone cared about it.
John: So comics were always another – comics just like music, right?
John: I mean, I make fun of music people and I'm just so – I have so many like –
John: obviously strong things to say about musics but also i am completely made of music i just was always outside the i don't mean the mainstream i mean i was outside of the alternative mainstream i mean right you and i were always going to be alternative people but the the problem is are you are you in the are you in the stream or are you out of the stream and
John: And if you're, if you're, if, if I always dreamt of being like alt, but right in the heart of alt, um, the alt aesthetic, right.
John: That my taste was like right in the center.
John: And I thought all the things that were cool were cool.
John: And I thought all the things that were uncool were uncool.
John: And I was always going to be an alternative culture person, but I also thought that alternative culture was stupid.
Merlin: But it took, I mean, the thing is, I know this is so obvious and I say it all the time, but I really can never get over how different everything is today in one important way.
Merlin: I was talking to somebody about this recently, just about how difficult it was to engage with anything that wasn't in the mainstream, but how difficult it was to even find out what your options were.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That you had to go.
Merlin: I mean, like for me, like Rolling Stone magazine seemed a little bit radical for a time.
Merlin: I mean, eventually that would become like maximum rock and roll or something.
Merlin: But even then, that's like a, that's like a, that's a zine that you can get more or less nationally.
Merlin: It's you, you had to have a rabbi to like kind of make a tape for you to explain what your options even were.
John: Yeah.
John: And the, and the, you know, the problem for us, you and me, our age is that there was, there was boot, the, the, the kind of boomer alternative culture that,
John: Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, We Magazine, all these things we've talked about, but that didn't belong to us.
John: We were too young for them, and so you would discover them.
John: You'd discover a pile of...
John: of um of you know magazines that had naked pictures in them but also a lot of cultural stuff comics more like underground comics
John: Underground comics and, you know, like even the stereo reviews in Wii magazine were interesting, right?
John: It was before Ladd magazines had digressed to just being advertising.
John: You know, you'd read the hi-fi reviews in one of those 1970s kind of men's magazines, and they were really interesting.
John: well-written, contentious, argumentative.
John: Um, so, but, but it was all because, you know, because their, their vision of the future, their 1970s vision of the future was that, you know, smoking pot was something that a, that a, that cultured, cool, intelligent people did and, and they spent their money on, on their stereo systems and their clothes.
John: I mean, it was like, um,
John: pre-war on drugs and pre-AIDS, it seemed like the future.
John: And it seemed like this is what cool people were going to be doing now.
Merlin: The situation of the 70s as being people not even realizing how much it was still the 60s in a lot of ways, but at the same time eventually not realizing how much like the 80s it was becoming.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And as a 10-year-old...
John: I was just excited initially to get pictures of naked ladies.
John: But then 80% of those magazines were articles.
John: And when you sit with them long enough, you know, it was 10 years old.
John: It was before I knew how to masturbate.
John: So I just – I don't even know why I wanted pictures of naked ladies.
John: I just wanted them.
John: They were something I was denied.
John: And so you'd get them and you'd look at the naked ladies and you'd go, wow, they're naked.
John: And then pretty soon –
John: run out of things to do and start reading the articles.
John: And, and, and yet it wasn't, you know, that stuff wasn't meant for me, right?
John: It was meant for people that had lived through the sixties or people who were 22 and, and I was 10.
John: And so that sent me on a course when, when punk rock arrived and,
John: I was already... In a way, it was completely revolutionary and scary to me and compelling, but I also was aware, too, of the things that... Punk wasn't the first time I heard about...
John: Prague or whatever else.
John: So it was just so lame to be a kid.
John: I wish I could go back and just put myself in a bubble.
Merlin: It's insufferable.
John: But that's 90% of what this program is about.
John: How terrible 1977 was.
John: Or 80.
John: 80.
John: 80 was terrible.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, the older you get and the more you have time to evaluate what made it horrible.
Merlin: It's like for a long time I used to think, well, if I had had more information, things would be better.
Merlin: If I had more exposure to things, things would be better.
Merlin: I just think, to be honest now, I really feel like I just would have had different problems.
Merlin: I just would have been screwed up in a different way.
Merlin: I think that's the dirty little secret of being –
Merlin: Between the ages of, let's say, 11 and 17.
Merlin: It has to be a mess.
John: Yeah.
John: And I definitely didn't need more information.
John: I had more than I could handle.
John: But comics saved my life just as much as they saved anybody else's life.
John: I just could not abide superheroes.
Mm-hmm.
John: And there are so many comics, so many acres and acres of comics that I was buried under them just as much as anybody else was.
John: But when I popped up out of that pile waving some mysterious thing I'd found and saying, look at this.
John: Isn't this amazing?
John: I could not find a single other kid.
John: to to share in that with me and part of that is is being from alaska i think if i was living in ohio i might have found found some other weirdo yeah um we got a lot of weirdos in ohio you know what every weirdo i know is from ohio what about texas and florida
John: No, I feel like the weirdos that I know from Texas and Florida, when you really get down to it, they're not weirdos.
John: They're adapting.
John: Yeah, well, they do some weird stuff.
John: But ultimately, they're cool, normal people.
John: I mean, I have one friend from Florida who's pretty fucking weird.
John: But what it really is is that his dad was really weird.
John: and he's been working that off his whole life.
John: But the people I know from Ohio are just generally... So this is the thing, right?
John: The people in Texas and California and Florida that I know personally that are weird, when you really dig down into them, they're regular.
John: And I mean that in the best possible way.
John: The people from Ohio seem really regular.
Merlin: That's what's so funny about it.
Merlin: Yeah, okay.
Merlin: I get what you mean.
John: But you dig down inside of them and they are thinking about having sex with an octopus.
John: You know what I mean?
John: And you look at them and you're just like, oh, what are you doing today?
John: And they're just like, nothing.
Nothing.
John: But they're really thinking about having sex with an octopus or something worse.
Merlin: Scott Simpson made a good case for this in explaining what it's like to be from like the middle of Pennsylvania where he was into a certain kind of hair metal, but he was also into his church.
Merlin: And so he's talked about how weird stuff gets in the suburbs in the middle of Pennsylvania.
Merlin: which I instantly understood what he meant, even though for me that was usually actually Florida, which is like you don't have enough exposure to know how weird you really are.
Merlin: Like if you ever tried to go make a case for what you're doing to other people, like if you're weird, if you're in California, Florida, or Texas weird, like you'll find lots – you'll find a community of other weirdos that can help you recalibrate how you should be doing your weirdness.
Merlin: But you have to be weird on your own in Ohio.
John: Well, and so yes, you have to be weird on your own.
John: And also it's like the –
John: The concentration of people in Ohio, like you have to be weird on your own, but you are surrounded by people.
John: It's an incredibly populous state and not a huge state, but really full of people.
John: So even if you're like farm Ohio.
John: you know there are farms all around you.
John: There's no sense like you have out in the West where you can go somewhere and there's not going to be anybody.
John: Right.
John: And so that, that I think is what, that's that like draw the blinds and think your weird thoughts.
Merlin: Ed Gein kind of stuff.
John: Yeah, right.
John: The first time I heard Guided by Voices, I was like, oh boy, there's a tool shed out behind this guy's house that I never want to go in.
Right.
John: Because he's got nipples drying on hooks.
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John: Yeah, you can make your own culture.
John: Yeah, make your own culture.
John: That's right.
John: DIY.
John: There are some comic book artists that I still wish that I could sit down with.
John: Dennis Eichhorn is one.
John: Julie Doucette.
John: I just wish I could sit with them for a while and just be friends.
John: You should reach out to them.
John: I think Dennis Eichhorn lives in the Northwest.
John: I think I even have his email address somewhere.
John: But I don't I'm not sure what I would say.
John: Hi.
John: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But yeah, I feel the same way.
Merlin: Sometimes I'll say hi to people on Twitter and it feels incredibly random and I'm not sure why I'm doing it.
Merlin: I'll just say, hey, you know, I just I just really like that thing you do.
Merlin: That's all.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What else are you going to say?
Merlin: You know, I mean, I'm even I even know Ed Brubaker.
John: We do?
John: Yeah, he and I were... What?
John: We were friends.
John: He makes comics, dude.
John: I know he does.
John: We were friends.
John: He lived in Seattle, and we were coffee shop pals.
Merlin: God, you always blow me away.
John: Yeah, we were coffee shop pals, and I think he liked my girlfriend.
John: And one day, it was a hot summer day.
John: Have I ever told you this story?
John: I don't think so.
John: Hot summer day.
John: We're sitting around in the cafe.
John: Ed Brubaker's there.
John: He's wearing a Levi's vest.
John: Cut the sleeves off.
John: Hot.
John: Looking pretty cool.
John: And I'm sitting there and we're both flirting with the coffee shop barista.
John: And I look over and I look under Ed's vest and I'm like, Ed, are you wearing a shoulder holster?
John: And he goes, hmm, what?
John: Oh, yes.
John: Well, what do you mean kind of closes his?
John: And I'm like, well, I mean, it's a hot summer day and we're all not wearing very many clothes, but you are wearing a vest.
John: And now I'm looking under, you're wearing a gun.
John: And he was wearing a gun in a shoulder holster.
John: And that was not customary.
John: At the time.
John: And I quizzed him on it and he didn't really want to talk about it.
John: But it was not, let's just say that the Levi's vest was not sufficient cover to also be wearing a shoulder holster.
Merlin: It seems kind of like almost like wearing a black bra.
Merlin: It's something where you kind of want people to notice that you're wearing it.
John: It was very much like wearing a black bra under a thin white T-shirt.
John: And, you know, but it was the early 90s.
John: We were all trying stuff out.
John: I'm not sure whether Ed still carries a gun.
John: But early 90s, you know?
John: It was sort of like, well, who am I going to be?
John: What kind of guy am I going to be?
John: You're just trying stuff on.
John: Yeah.
John: Am I going to be the shoulder holster under a Levi's vest guy?
Merlin: John, that is not something I see every day.
Merlin: That's a sui generis look.
John: Right.
John: And I mean, this was pre-fedora era, right?
John: So you couldn't, in 1992, you couldn't walk around Seattle wearing a fedora.
John: You just couldn't do it.
John: Wouldn't have flown...
John: But a shoulder holster?
John: Maybe.
John: Maybe.
John: So, yeah, but Ed and I knew each other pretty well in the time.
Merlin: He's very well regarded.
John: Yeah, he makes a lot of comics.
Merlin: He does, I think, arguably, he did one of the best Captain Americas ever.
Merlin: And his non-superhero stuff, he did something called Fatal that's really good.
Merlin: And he did something called Velvet that's really good that you might like.
Merlin: And they're both kind of like noir-ish things.
John: Noir.
John: Noir.
John: Noir.
John: Yeah, he was – like he did low-life comics back in the old days and was – he started as an alternative comics guy and then moved into the –
Merlin: men in tights stuff sounds like it's pretty rough to work for marvel it's a pretty rough company is that right you mean like rough trade well you know they're a company they uh they move pretty quick but yeah yeah yeah it sounds like a pretty uh pretty it's a lot of work and you know they don't yeah the names you hear about like they don't get paid as much as people would think
John: Oh, right.
John: I mean, their art is great, and it's hard to do, and it takes a long time, and then they get ripped off.
John: I wonder if there are any other artists that can relate to that.
Merlin: It's kind of like pro wrestling, but publishing.
John: Did you know Jason Lutz?
John: Are you familiar with his work?
Merlin: Nope, but I'll find out.
John: Also great stuff.
John: He drew a Harvey Danger t-shirt for us when we were in the Harvey Dangers, but he also did a graphic novel about...
John: he did he did a long running graphic novel called jar of fools and there was a uh a lot of the the early stuff took place in a cafe in my cafe so reading those early novels
John: He's a great draftsperson.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: These are wonderful.
John: And that is my cafe where I spent every minute of my early 20s.
John: And he drew... And the barista that features in his...
John: in that cafe, the, the, the sort of the barista character is a very, very good rendition of, of a, of a gal that I was really close with.
John: And, um, so that was, that was one of the, that was a situation where a comic was being drawn in real time in a, in and about my actual world and,
John: And there's a kind of, you know, there's a fantasy magic element to it that, you know, that made it a different kind of thing.
John: But, you know, that feeling when you're in your early 20s and you're like, we are living inside of the art.
Merlin: Oh, man, those moments are so exciting.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You can get that anytime today.
Merlin: But I mean, like, back then, that was a really big deal.
Merlin: Like, if somebody you knew was on the radio, like, you talk about that for a week.
Merlin: Or if, like, your neighborhood was mentioned in the paper, it was a huge deal.
Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's spelled like the plural of the musical instrument.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
John: And then, of course, Chris Ware.
John: Jimmy Corrigan.
Merlin: I loved his band.
Merlin: It's actually he goes by William now.
John: William Corrigan.
Merlin: Oh, I've been to the doctor a lot lately.
Merlin: I was going to ask you about that.
Merlin: As I was sitting here waiting for you, I was sitting and thinking, I wonder if John's sick.
Merlin: This seems like about the time that you would be sick.
Merlin: Normally.
Merlin: It seems like with conditions and whatnot, this would be about the time that you would be getting sick.
John: Normally, I would be getting sick under these conditions, and I am sort of sick, but the conditions are so extreme that I don't even know if sickness can gain purchase in me.
John: I'm listening.
John: But I have been going to the doctor.
John: I've gone to various doctors with more to come.
John: And sort of, I won't say disappointingly, but...
John: All of the doctors seem to agree that I'm in fine health, perfect, hale and hearty.
John: Really?
John: And I keep wanting to go to a doctor and have them say, I am confirming your suspicions.
John: There's something really wrong with you.
Merlin: Yeah, all these other hacks missed it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hiding in plain sight.
Merlin: You're a very sick man, John.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Don't you kind of want that?
Merlin: You kind of want somebody to just go, it's probably worse than you thought.
John: Yeah.
John: Here's why.
John: Here's why it's so hard.
Merlin: Because you.
Merlin: Oh, I get it.
Merlin: Yes.
John: You have a terrible, terrible undiagnosed condition.
John: This explains everything.
John: This explains everything.
Merlin: I'm always looking for this.
Merlin: Even if it's terrible news, there's a part of me, the ADD adult part of my brain is like, at last, we'll have some resolution.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: This explains everything.
Merlin: Yes, you have an extra pancreas.
John: It's beyond rare.
John: It's unprecedented.
John: And once we take out your second pancreas...
John: then you will stop making so much bile.
Merlin: Here's the thing that you may not understand, John, is that the human body is a lot like the state of Ohio.
Merlin: There's a lot of people in there.
Merlin: And you can't just suddenly have an extra pancreas in Ohio.
Merlin: We've got to get that out safely.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Get it out safely.
Merlin: That would explain the bile.
John: Uh, and yet every doctor I go to says, well, all your readings are normal.
John: You don't appear to have any arterial sclerosis or you don't seem to have diverticulitis and you don't have any of the other like, uh,
John: Victorian diseases that used to plague your mother's family.
John: So I'm not sure.
John: Maybe you should eat less and exercise.
John: You have a touch of the grip and a little bit of dropsy.
John: Have you ever considered meditation?
John: I've actually had a couple of doctors say that to me.
John: I'm so tired of people recommending meditation.
John: Shut up and just stop it.
John: Give me some kind of diagnosis where, A, I don't have to have a pill, and B, I don't have to go meditate.
John: What I want is for you to take something out of me.
Merlin: Well, you know, and let me just say, like, I have a lot of aloha for meditation.
Merlin: It's a great thing.
Merlin: I'm just tired of that being the answer.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because, yeah, okay, I know.
Merlin: I know how to meditate.
Merlin: I can do that.
Merlin: But I want something more conclusive, like an extra organ.
Merlin: I want something where that explains everything.
Merlin: Go meditate does not explain everything.
Merlin: That's what every doctor has told me for years.
John: Yeah.
John: I keep thinking that they're going to look at me and they're going to say, oh, my God, one of your lungs is much smaller than the other.
John: You have tiny lung syndrome.
Yeah.
Merlin: One normal-sized lung and one tiny lung.
Merlin: John, John, John, this is extremely unusual.
Merlin: Do you ever feel more tired than you'd like?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you sometimes struggle for breath?
John: Are you gasping?
John: You have a tiny, tiny lung.
John: We need to fly you immediately to a clinic in Ohio.
John: The tiny lung clinic.
John: Where a team of specialized doctors from around the world with Pince Nezes and Boris Karloff beards are going to study you and we'll pay you.
John: We'll pay you for the study.
John: And then we'll replace that tiny lung, or we'll not replace it, we'll inflate it.
Merlin: It is a modern miracle that he is able to live and breathe at all.
Merlin: Look at the shrunken state of his brachia.
Merlin: Look, see how small his nose is.
Merlin: It's like trying to smoke pipe tobacco through a children's straw.
Merlin: So it's more of a vestigial.
John: It's really so frustrating.
John: It's so frustrating.
John: I just want, I just want to, I just want some kind of, I just want some sort of easy solution.
John: What it is, what it is, is I want the, I want the Star Trek teleporter.
Mm hmm.
John: That experience where you turn to kind of crystal sparkles and there's a high-pitched ringing and then you are reassembled somewhere down the line.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But through that disassembly and reassembly.
Merlin: I'm way ahead of you.
Merlin: I totally know what you mean.
Merlin: So I was reading about how the teleporter thing works.
Merlin: And it involves atoms.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Or molecules or something.
Merlin: And so you've got a body.
Merlin: And the body is really about the relationship of all these atoms and molecules.
Merlin: And what we're able to do is shoot that off someplace and then rebuild it in this other area.
Merlin: And so if I'm getting this right, if this is what I'm thinking, it's like restarting your computer.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You want to turn off the computer, turn it back on.
Merlin: It's going to run through all kinds of checks.
Merlin: Like your body's probably got some kind of mechanism after you're teleported where it makes sure that everything's right.
Merlin: There's probably all kinds of tiny little errors in your genetics that could be fixed with a reboot.
John: Exactamundo, my friend.
Merlin: Just teleport me from here to the waiting room where I can write you a check.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't need to go anywhere special.
John: Teleport me from here to the waiting room and yet, or in that process, the stream of atoms is going through a filter.
John: Where all of the toxicities.
Merlin: That's right.
John: All of the old tobacco that's still in there.
John: All of the undigested meat.
John: All of the genetic errors.
John: All of the unactivated genes.
Merlin: I can't believe this isn't already happening.
Merlin: a thing.
Merlin: Why are we not working on this?
Merlin: Well, meaning, or at least a fake thing.
Merlin: I mean, given all this stuff about, you know, all this stuff about toxicity, you know, it's bullshit, right?
Merlin: All this stuff.
Merlin: There's no such really such thing as toxicity.
Merlin: If you are, if you are leading a normal life and it's sort of like the whole idea of like vitamins, it's like, well, you don't, if you're eating, you don't need vitamins.
Merlin: And if you do eat vitamins, you're mostly going to piss them away.
Merlin: I mean, going to Walgreens and buying these things you put in your shoes to draw the toxicity out of your feet.
Merlin: Like that's not actually a thing.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Is that actually a thing?
Merlin: You can get these things.
Merlin: And here's how it works.
Merlin: Basically, you get these things.
Merlin: They look kind of like Dr. Scholl's.
Merlin: And you use it because, you know, all the toxicity goes to your feet.
Merlin: And so you put these on and it discolors them.
Merlin: It makes it makes the thing look brown.
Merlin: It's sort of like ear candling, you know, ear candling.
John: All too well.
Merlin: Ear candling.
Merlin: That's just ash.
Merlin: That's not actually toxicity.
Merlin: Like there's nothing that is actually happening there.
John: Every single gal I dated during a certain era, mid-90s, it was like peak beet juice.
John: It came right before tattoos.
John: They were all about ear candling, and they would sit me down and stick candles in my ears.
John: And then they would, at the end, and I would just be like, oh, my God.
John: And then they would pull the candles out, and it would always be inconclusive.
John: It would always be like, well, we didn't – this is weird.
Merlin: This explains nothing.
Merlin: And I'd be like, ah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But you know, the teleporter idea, that sounds like something – it's so appealing that I kind of can't believe there isn't already a huge sham business around that.
John: If you're disassembling somebody into atoms, you should be able then –
John: to comb those atoms with an atom comb.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Subatomic comb.
John: Right, and when you stack them back up, you took all the hairs out.
Merlin: We figured there's lots of little fibers, little flecks
Merlin: of dirt, maybe a little bit of Marlboro tobacco in there, like little things.
Merlin: It's kind of like a couch.
Merlin: Like imagine you have a couch and you know how the couch is assembled.
Merlin: If you could take the couch apart, remove all the detritus, give it a good cleaning.
Merlin: Good scrub.
Merlin: Then you just put the couch back together.
John: The other day I lost my phone and I was like, I just had it.
John: Where the fuck is it?
John: And I realized it probably fell down behind the couch cushions.
John: And I reached down underneath the couch cushions.
John: And when I do that, I always feel like I'm in the Buck Rogers movie and I'm putting my hand in the stump.
Yeah.
John: And I'm reaching around, and I'm thinking I'm going to get bit by the monster.
John: If I don't, of course, I become... Is this kind of like a Benny Gesserit thing?
Merlin: Is this like you stick your hand in the thing and fear is the thing?
Merlin: Like you don't know what's going to happen.
Merlin: I'm forgetting the line.
Merlin: Yeah, fear is the thing.
Merlin: Fear is the mind killer, right?
Merlin: Is that it?
John: Well, you know, in the Buck Rogers movie, if you stick your hand in there and you get bitten, you die.
John: But if you stick it in there and don't get bitten, then maybe you become king of the bird men.
John: And King of the Birdmen is kind of always how I imagined I would turn out.
John: But I stuck my hand in the back of the couch and I pulled out a pair of glasses.
John: that I have been missing for six years.
John: Oh, God.
John: And they were my favorite pair of glasses.
John: And I remember the thing about losing a pair of glasses is you never remember exactly when it happened.
John: You're always trying to trace back.
John: Like, when did I see that pair of glasses last?
Merlin: You can get the era, but it's hard to really get even the week.
John: Yeah.
John: So I remember missing them years ago and being like, how could I have lost that of all the pairs?
John: That was my fave pair.
John: and you remember them because they were early long winters glasses, and I found them.
John: And they were vintage glasses to begin with, so that kind of chalky discoloration has started to happen to them where the plastic is degrading.
Merlin: Yeah, almost like a kind of existential mildew.
John: Yeah, it's just sort of the plastic is just starting to just die, become brittle and die.
Merlin: It was never intended to last this long.
John: It was never intended to last this long.
John: And here, like, five or six great years of these glasses were wasted with them just slowly moldering under the couch.
John: I can still wear them, and they still are great, and I'm happy to have them back.
John: But, like, all those years we could have had together, they were there tantalizingly just under the seat of my pants.
John: It's like a dream.
John: It really – I mean – It was just – it was kind of there the whole time.
John: You just didn't have access to it.
John: I didn't have access to it.
John: And so then I'm down in that couch.
John: I'm pulling out crayons and popcorn kernels and stuff just like, what else is down here?
Merlin: Spoons, straws, markers, scissors, remotes.
Merlin: I cannot even – first of all, can I ask you a question?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So there are times when you got to do the unthinkable, which is you have to take the cushions off.
Merlin: Something important has been lost and you must actually search the couch.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: When you just plunge your hand into that space, is it moist?
Merlin: Moist?
Merlin: Ours is a little moist.
Merlin: I think it might have achieved sentience.
Merlin: Well, you know, because probably, I mean, the thing is, if we spill something, you know, by that I mean, you know, the kid spills something.
Merlin: We do everything we can.
Merlin: It was an old vintage couch when I purchased it in about 1996.
Merlin: So who knows?
Merlin: This thing's probably 40 years old.
Merlin: What is the material?
Merlin: Nagahyde.
Merlin: Nagahyde on the surfaces, and then it's got – you lift it up, and it's got that crevice.
Merlin: Oh, the backing.
John: Yeah, Nagahyde backing.
Merlin: Well, yeah, it's Nagahyde lower, but when you take off the cushions, the part that the cushions rest on, the actual canonical couch, is fiber or something.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Oh, I know.
John: I know.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Like your glasses, I don't think it was ever intended to be this long, and I think it might be coughing something up a little bit.
John: You think that it now has formed a digestive system?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It could be a kind of living room sarlacc, maybe.
Merlin: I don't know what's happening, but I do not like putting my hand in there.
Merlin: I have dumped entire boxes of baking soda on there to try and dry this out, and it still is a little moist.
John: You know, it sounds to me like it has become – so one of the earliest forms of life is the Venus flytrap.
John: The Venus flytrap is a great hunter, but has no actual, as far as we know, no intelligence.
John: Not yet.
John: Right.
John: But it captures its prey just by, you know, just the prey just kind of flops into the thing, and then the thing just closes and digests it.
John: And I think that may be what's happening in your...
John: What's happening in your couch?
Merlin: I'm going to keep an eye on it.
Merlin: I want to keep an eye on it.
Merlin: What else did you find?
Merlin: Other good stuff?
John: Well, no.
John: And the thing was, this may say too much about me, but I left some parts of the couch unexplored.
Merlin: Oh, I think I totally agree.
John: Yeah, because I wanted to see, you know, I wanted there still to be some mystery there and still something left for me to find.
Merlin: That is very much how my own mind works.
Merlin: It's one thing to thoroughly clean the top of the range.
Merlin: There's not going to be any special surprises probably there.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But the couch, I mean, that's special.
Merlin: Like, there's stuff in there.
Merlin: If you really, really go through that couch, you know, in my case, I could probably find stuff from the previous owners.
Merlin: There's probably matchbooks in there.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But I kind of don't want to know yet.
John: Am I crazy also to hope that one of these days I'll be one of the guys that buys a used car and finds that the doors are full of cocaine?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I mean, that's – no, everybody thinks that.
Merlin: Everybody?
Merlin: Oh, everybody.
Merlin: Does any sense?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is like your duffel bag in the tree problem, right?
Merlin: Duffel bag in the tree.
Merlin: You're driving down the road.
Merlin: You're obviously paying attention to the road, but at the same time, you're kind of –
Merlin: Out the corner of the eye, you're just looking, could there be a 70s gym bag with $1 to $7 million in it?
John: Right.
John: That got blown into a tree.
Merlin: Well, they got to go somewhere.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, if they were on the ground, everybody would be picking them up.
John: How many times have I opened the newspaper?
John: It doesn't happen anymore, but it used to happen all the time that a bale of money would wash up on the shore in Florida or California.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: A bale.
John: A bale of money.
John: A bale of money.
John: And then I could go in to the doctor and tell them.
John: that I had an extra pancreas, and they wouldn't be able to argue with me because I had the money.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the guy where they put the fake fruit in the trees, right?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Ceausescu.
Merlin: Ceausescu.
Merlin: You could go and Ceausescu them and say, listen.
Merlin: Listen.
Merlin: You kind of tap on your satchel that's obviously full of $1 to $7 million, and you go, I think you'll find a tiny lung.
John: That's right.
John: I think when you look at me a little bit more carefully, you're going to realize there's something dramatically wrong.
John: And I need expensive medical treatment.
Merlin: Now, do you have a teleporter?
Merlin: Yes, Mr. Roderick.
Merlin: Draws back a curtain and there's like a cardboard box from a washing machine that says teleporter on it.
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John: There are so many science fiction tropes that are not science fiction tropes that should be.
John: Like the teleporter that actually has a medical purpose.
John: You come out the other side.
John: You would presume that everyone in the Star Trek universe also was...
John: More or less immortal to normal death.
John: I think that's part.
Merlin: Isn't that part of the shtick?
Merlin: Not the shtick.
Merlin: Part of the concept of the show is that we've taken care of a lot of the things that used to trouble people in the 20th century.
Merlin: And now we're able to just explore without having to worry about things like our health or war.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I guess that's right.
Merlin: I guess that is a foundational... Well, I got this from somebody else, but that's part of what makes the show able to stretch out a little bit so that they then can also talk about things that end up being, you know, like the Twilight Zone, right?
Merlin: Where you end up talking about stuff in modern life without being too on the nose about it.
John: Right, right.
John: And yet...
John: And yet they spend all that time like walking around, walking in halls.
John: You know, like if you really had mastered disease and conquered war and were sent out to explore, why are you walking up and down the hall so much carrying clipboards?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: A lot of doors opening and closing.
John: Yeah, you would think that everybody would be in a comfortable chair and they would be having sex.
Merlin: You'd be more like WALL-E.
Merlin: You'd just be in like a rocket chair enjoying giant drinks.
John: Yeah, but how do you stop?
John: They'd have to be sugar-free drinks.
Merlin: So once again, the future becomes... It doesn't take long to drag everything right back down into where we are right now.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Maybe some kind of colostomy bag where all the food goes out, but then nobody wants to interact with somebody that's got a colostomy bag.
John: And I don't mean to be like anti-colostomy bags.
John: No, they help a lot of people.
John: Yeah, I know they're necessary.
Merlin: Oh, dear.
John: Oh, you know, this week is just puttering along.
John: It's just sort of putter, putter, puttering along.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, it's been pretty, it's been a pretty wild ride.
John: And as you know, and probably as our listeners know, I did not survive the primary election.
Merlin: Are you okay to talk about this?
Merlin: You want some more time?
John: I mean obviously we will cover it at great length.
John: This is the funny thing.
John: Somebody – because the internet and also because politics, like there were some people that – not many but a small couple of people chastised me for the kind of like casual way that I –
John: that I conceded the election.
John: You know, I sent out a tweet.
John: I was like, I didn't win.
John: Talk to you later.
John: And I sent out an email to all of my supporters and will continue to send emails of the thoughts that I've had.
John: But obviously anybody that knows me knows that we will discuss the race, the campaign, the experience.
John: We'll discuss it at great, great length.
John: We don't need to get it all out right now.
John: But I'm happy to talk about my immediate sensations, the immediate moment.
John: It's just the goal that I had to remain candid, to practice my normal candor,
John: In this realm where candor is the rarest of all elements, right?
John: That was one of the foundational ideas.
John: Could you run for office and continue to speak honestly about yourself and your experience and your perceptions, right?
John: And if so, if you could, why does no one?
John: Why is it so hard?
John: Because that's the that's our first impression of candidates and politicians is that they're just not being honest.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Like there must be a reason that everybody speaks in code.
John: And what I've discovered is that there is very definitely a reason and partly because
John: partly it is that there isn't really that much difference between people and what their goals are.
John: And I even include like the radical lunatics who believe that the earth is only 2,000 years old and who don't think that women should have a right to choose, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
John: Those people and Bernie Sanders, like there are a lot of political gulfs
John: Between those people, but ultimately Bernie Sanders wants Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner and Rick Santorum wants Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner, right?
John: Everybody eats Kraft dinner.
Merlin: I'm speaking Canadian right now because – Yeah, they recently changed the name to KD actually.
John: KD, right.
John: So I'm trying to speak Canadian because Europeans also sort of speak Canadian sometimes.
Merlin: I think we might be the only ones that don't call it that.
John: They call it mac and cheese?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, we invented it.
John: It's delicious and it's easy to prepare.
John: We call it what we want.
John: But in any case, so because human beings share more commonality than we have difference –
John: Politics is the realm of difference.
John: And you want to exaggerate the small differences between one another in order to make clear delineations between candidates and choices.
John: And so what you see in the Republican race or in the Democratic race are these people that share 98% of their belief system, making a huge deal out of the 2% where they're different.
John: And when you speak candidly about yourself, all you're doing is offering up opportunities for other people to take those things that you've said and use those words to create difference and distance between you and people.
John: And so throughout the entire race, I found myself, even talking to you,
John: feeling suddenly like I needed to keep little areas of what I was actually thinking sequestered.
John: Because to talk about how I was feeling and to talk about how I was thinking completely, with complete candor, I could tell right away, immediately put me at a disadvantage.
John: Not in the race right now.
John: But because everyone in politics talks about it like it's a really long marathon.
John: And saying stuff about what I was thinking right now, I was hearing from people every day like this –
John: and understood what they were saying was that that would jeopardize me in the future if I was too candid about what I was experiencing now.
Merlin: You would just be producing fuel for people to use against you later.
John: Ten years from now.
John: And I saw it in practice and also saw it –
John: saw the potential of it.
John: And so now there's so much I want to digest and the way that I digest stuff is in large part talking to you about it.
John: But I have some big decisions to make about how much that
John: you know, what I think, what I believe
John: is that that candor about my life is more important to me than almost anything.
John: It protects me from blackmail.
John: It is the process that I use to understand the world, and that understanding is the real important thing to me rather than my ambition.
Merlin: Like what you'd have to give up, what you'd really be fundamentally changing about your whole process of being a person in order to hew to what ends up being necessary.
John: Yeah.
John: But in the experience, you know, but I got between 17 and 20 percent of the vote.
John: And.
John: Way more people, I mean, all the people that helped and participated and all of my supporters and all the people that voted for me and all the people around the world that were supporting my campaign, they've all been wonderful and vocal and supportive and great.
John: But the day after I lost the primary, I heard from a lot of other people who had never communicated with me before.
John: all saying, great run, man.
John: You really made a good campaign and you stayed true to yourself and you started a new conversation and now you forced people to talk about these other things.
John: It was a really successful campaign.
John: You should be really proud.
John: I can't wait for you to run again.
John: And that... That...
John: I'm also getting that from friends and supporters, and I'm also getting that from everybody.
John: Like, well, you lost your first one, but go get them, Tiger.
John: Get them the next time.
John: And so...
John: I'm processing that energy from other people and that – and kind of holding that up against my firsthand experience of what it was like and what I want and how best to serve.
John: And I honestly – I mean I –
John: You know, Merlin, I never want to let people down.
John: And part of what has been hardest about my life is that I've always felt like I'm always letting everybody down.
John: And I don't want to let anybody down.
John: And that propels me along the road.
John: And I don't want to let people down, but running for office was really distasteful.
John: I really did not enjoy it.
John: And it may very well be like childbirth where in the immediate aftermath you say, that was awful.
John: But then nine months later you forget and you say, oh, I think I'd like to have another kid.
John: Childbirth wasn't that hard.
John: you know, the hormonal rush kind of papers over the pain.
John: But throughout the entire experience, like I was, it was just personally very, very, very difficult.
John: And I looked around me at other candidates and at my mentors, and there is a personality type
John: that doesn't find it that difficult.
John: You know, just as, and we've discussed this a lot on this program, there are people who are made to run the four minute mile and they train and they work hard, but they also have a physiology and they don't have a tiny lung and they love to run and they become great runners.
Yeah.
John: And there are other people that they could train just as hard, but they would never be a great runner just because that's not what they were built to do.
John: They'll never dunk a basketball.
John: And there are people who are meant to – or there are people that thrive in the environment, the political environment that we have created, that we have decided is how we put people forth and how we choose our –
John: officers there are people that in that environment are they've never felt so alive their eyes are shining their coats are glistening they love that they love the process and they love that kind of attention and they love the the tussle of it and
John: And I understand why people would think I would be good at it and why people would think I would enjoy it.
John: But in fact, it is a kind of pure torture for me to be under that kind of purposeless scrutiny and...
John: and exploiting minor differences, you know, like that's ultimately the thing that I don't, that I don't see any purpose in.
John: Minor differences are things that I always try to, to, uh, to heal, to rectify or to, or even celebrate, celebrate exactly.
John: Like here, this, here's, here are the minor differences between us.
John: Isn't this wonderful?
John: And in politics, it is like,
John: I believe that Pantone Color 244 is the greatest color, and my opponent thinks that Pantone Color 245, a clearly evil color,
John: Is a good color and we should – everyone should rally around my Pantone color.
John: And it's just like, oh my god, what a terrible, terrible, terrible way to do business or to think even.
John: And you can think of people in your own experience who just love that kind of –
John: And that sort of differentiates.
Merlin: But when you've – the thing that – as you describe this, it seems so obvious now that it's crazy.
Merlin: But if you're having an argument with your pals –
Merlin: Not about whether the Beatles were a good band, but about which album you happen to like the best that week.
Merlin: Maybe not even what is the best album, but which one do you like the most?
Merlin: That is a fun conversation to have about minor differences, but you're also not constrained in how you decide to argue that.
Merlin: And there aren't consequences to what happens if somebody argues it better than you.
Merlin: But the thing is, you get to be who you want to be when you're arguing with your pals.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: One of the things that makes you who you are that makes you so interesting is that you have a very muscular way of having these kinds of discussions with people, but that's not conducive to what you're describing.
Merlin: I guess what I'm saying is there's something – I'm just repeating, I guess, what you said, but there's something structurally –
Merlin: about the way this discourse is set up.
Merlin: There's something basic to the structure of it that is hobbling to like what makes you who you are.
Merlin: And so I don't know if you agree with that, but like to me watching that and seeing you have to say something, it already feels like poison in your mouth to have to phrase something in a certain way because it doesn't get at the truth of it.
Merlin: It doesn't get at the completeness of it, but like it has to be said in a certain poisonous, you know, dumbed down way in order to not be something that's used against you later.
John: Yeah, and there are so many nuances to it and to my personal experience of running for office.
John: And the challenge for me right now in talking about it with all the candor I want to is that I want to be –
John: of service and i want to use what i know for the greater good and it seems like running for office is that opportunity or you know it seemed to me that that was an opportunity to do that and now i don't know if that i don't know if i still feel that way but but you could potentially uh harm your future opportunities to be of use if you're not circumspect about how you talk about how this went
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: And how you feel about it.
John: And also, because I've entered this new community of people where their expectations and their language is so, so different, the idea that you would run for office
John: Which was – I remember saying to you I think and saying to my mom early on and then halfway through like, well, I've had harder six months than this.
John: I've had harder three months than this.
John: I've spent three months.
Merlin: Yeah, your mom said you've had worse months than this.
John: You've had worse months.
John: And then there was a certain moment –
John: in the run up to the primary where I could no longer say that I had had a worse month than this.
Merlin: Oh man.
John: And, you know, and there were some days which were like in the running for, for like worst day.
John: And, you know, I've been to jail.
John: I've been to – I have shivered in the cold, hungry and tired and alone.
John: I have been bitten by dogs and have fought wild boar.
John: And there was a day in the campaign where I just had to wake up and go –
John: talked to like six or seven different executive boards of various unions and activist organizations, and it was worse than fighting boar.
John: And yet there are tons of people who have said to me with big Cheshire grins, you know, oh, well, you always lose your first campaign.
John: And to think like, oh, I see you just do this.
John: This was the sporting one.
John: This was the one that I just like that was just for just to figure it out.
John: The next one is going to be the real time or the time after that.
John: It requires this is what I don't know.
John: It requires either a an emotional temperament that
John: is just like being able to dunk a basketball.
John: Either you have it or you don't.
John: And to sit in a basement of a community center arguing with your opponent over ultimately insignificant differences in opinion is
John: And then when you're done, have the energy to race across town in your car to stand in front of a supermarket and hand out buttons to people who are not interested in you and do all of it with relish.
John: That is a type of...
John: And I am the type that sits and looks at maps in a book about Napoleon and thinks about what that must have meant to the people that were selling grain.
John: And it feels like you want that kind of person to run for office sometimes, but maybe that aperture just is too small or the pressure in the hose is too great.
John: But I don't want to, because this is such a fraught moment, it's the week I lost my first election, I also know that maybe I will in six months be like, you know what, it wasn't that hard.
John: It was actually great.
John: And I don't want to say, because we're living in a world where everything you and I say is recorded and broadcast,
John: this will all be something I'll have to reckon with in a year.
John: And somebody will say, well, didn't you say in the week after the primary that you decided that this was not your nature and you would never want to do it again?
John: Right.
John: So now you're running again?
John: Well, which is it, flip-flopper?
John: Yeah.
John: And I don't want to live in a world where...
John: Where I'm scrutinized in that way, not because I'm afraid to be scrutinized, but because my fundamental premise is that, yes, I can say that the week after I lost an election and a year later run for office, and that contradiction is –
John: normal and great and wonderful.
Merlin: But it ends up getting inside your own head in some ways, right?
Merlin: Because, I mean, it's easy to take a couple giant steps back and go, well, no.
Merlin: It's not easy.
Merlin: It's simple.
Merlin: It's simple to say, hey, wait a minute.
Merlin: I'm not going to tear myself up over this.
Merlin: I'm going to keep being whoever I want to be.
Merlin: But then there's going to still be the intrusive thoughts of like, yeah, but how is that going to be processed and presented and repackaged and productized by other people?
Merlin: And then now – but you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like part of it is it's like – what's the phrase I'm looking for?
Merlin: It's like it's in your head.
Merlin: Like you're getting psyched out in some ways.
Merlin: In order to do – like I've never had any doubt in my mind that you'd be great at the job that you're trying to get.
Merlin: The concern I think anybody could have, including you, is like how you get that job, which seems in some ways that it's not a natural fit for how you work or how you live.
Merlin: It isn't because like you're like somebody that somebody's going to get dirt on.
Merlin: It's that you – it's just that you end up having to fight with both hands tied behind your back in some ways.
Merlin: And you can't do what you're best at, which is being expressive about how you feel as a person in the world.
Merlin: Yeah, well, so...
John: You know, we were worried, you and I, about all the things from Roderick on the line that might come out in a campaign that my opponent would say that I had endorsed Stalin.
Merlin: Especially taken out of context.
John: Yeah, or that I had pillows made of owls.
John: All right.
John: Even in context, that's kind of weird.
John: Even in context, it's a little weird.
John: But the only one thing really came out from Roderick on the line, and it was obviously something that I don't think that anybody I was running against –
John: uh, dedicated interns to listen to the podcast.
John: I think that, um, you know, I, and I don't remember how long ago it was, but there was, there have been a few episodes where, you know, where I really rankled people.
John: And the, the, the biggest one was the one where I was talking about gender pay equity.
Um,
John: and talking about it pretty flippantly and in a voice of sort of, you know, um, I mean, I was talking, I was describing a conversation I was having with a middle-class white lady about her pay.
John: And it was, it was a, um, it was an episode that
John: immediately generated a big response from people, from our listenership, and made a lot of people mad.
John: And I got really schooled at the time by our listeners and a lot of people that...
John: listened to the program and agreed to disagree with us because they liked the tenor of our conversation.
John: And this was an example of a thing where I had crossed a line and was talking about gender pay equity, which was a thing that a lot of people were educated on and passionate about.
John: And I was just talking about it in a tone of voice that was sort of full of privilege and full of
John: uh, just lack of complete understanding.
John: And we got a lot of flack for it at the time.
John: And I was surprised that I was surprised, not, not that the response was what it was because I deserved that response, but that we lost people in that, that after a hundred plus episodes of this show, uh,
John: Where your and my minds are on display that even in a situation like that where I was wrong, I was just straight up wrong.
John: I wasn't I didn't understand the issue and was not speaking about I was speaking from a place of ignorance in a voice of confidence.
John: that people couldn't forgive it because we had touched on a nerve, touched on a topic that... But it was like it was a bridge too far for some people.
John: It was a litmus test for whether or not we were good people, whether or not I was a good person.
John: And so the education I got in that moment or in that week or so from people writing me
John: Thoughtful people, friendly friends who wrote me and said, hey, you're wrong on this and here's why and here's the evidence and here's the details.
John: I took that to heart and understood that I was wrong.
John: There wasn't a time where you and I were talking later where I had the opportunity to say like, that episode two episodes ago, I really have changed my tune and probably I should have.
John: But but it was a it was a it was an education.
John: And then and then the other component of it was that there were all those people who didn't reach out to me and say, here's where you're wrong, but who just went on the Internet and said, John Roderick is a bad person.
John: And there's one of our reviews on iTunes where some listener is like, I used to like this program, but John Roderick denies that women have a hard time in life or something like that, and now I can't listen to the program.
John: And it was just like, what are you talking about?
John: Like, fuck you.
John: I was wrong.
John: And...
John: And the willingness of people to give me or to give anyone the opportunity to learn and change their minds is the that's the ultimate gift we can give one another.
John: And to have somebody fail a test and then deny them their place at the table or to just say, like, I can't abide this person anymore because they were wrong one time.
John: is kind of the modern disease.
John: But somebody from our world, somebody who had listened to the program and who was mad or who was disappointed or who felt like I was wrong, excerpted that
John: conversation where i said where i talking to my middle-class white female friend where i said i mean do you make 75 cents on the dollar at your job does anybody you know make 75 cents on the dollar at their jobs and there wasn't for a moment
John: Like I wasn't questioning whether there were women in the world who were making significantly less than their male counterparts, but just it was a white privilege moment where in my world –
John: I was having a hard time understanding how it worked.
John: And I didn't see it.
John: And then I learned.
John: And I made gender pay equity an issue in my campaign.
John: I talked about it as often as I could and was one of the few people running for office that
John: that talked about it a lot, and in part because of that experience of talking about it on this program and getting that amount of, and getting the education I did from people that were genuinely trying to educate me.
John: But all of a sudden, on Facebook, there was an MP3, an excerpt of me on this show that was, you know, a minute or two long, talking about gender pay equity in this program
John: Smug voice.
John: And it got passed around.
John: And it didn't get passed around by Tim Burgess, by my conservative arch enemy that was out to destroy my credibility with the left.
John: It got passed around by the left.
John: And ultimately, you know, probably it was it was excerpted and made available initially by somebody that I would probably consider a friend or would have considered a friend.
John: And it was shared most widely and commented on most virulently by leftists, by the people I would imagine were my core constituency.
John: And
John: there was not in all of that conversation any attempt or offer of opportunity for me to explain.
John: And honestly, I couldn't say, well, taken out of context, what I was really talking about was
John: I mean, if I were a better politician, I probably could have said, I was talking about white privilege.
John: You're taking it out of context.
John: It was all ironic or whatever.
John: But it wasn't.
John: They were right to find that excerpt, and that was – and if I hadn't learned –
John: It would be right to call attention to it and say, well, this guy is misrepresenting himself.
John: Here's what he really thinks.
John: And in the context of this program, of me talking about Stalin and often even being wrong about the Beatles, being wrong about gender pay equity...
John: was one of 1,000 times I've been wrong on this program.
John: But it was, in the context of running for office, an instance where I was wrong about a thing that is really used in politics as a way of determining whether somebody is on the right side or not and whether or not somebody is on our side or secretly on the wrong side.
John: And that was a huge learning experience for me
John: in running for office, which was I heard over and over again from people that what you say on the campaign trail, almost everybody is too cynical to believe what gets said on the campaign trail.
John: Even political novices know that or presume that candidates are lying or
John: Right, right.
John: And so if you presume that all candidates are lying all the time, but all you're getting from them is what they say on the campaign trail, then where the real information must be hiding is in their voting record, their personal record, their paper trail.
John: And that's why we personalize campaigns so much.
John: Because everybody stands up and says, I want to
John: Make the world a better place and I want a chicken in every pot.
John: And then the reporters and the world says, well, what about this time you cheated on your taxes?
John: Or what about this time that you had an undocumented worker?
John: Or what about this time on a podcast you said you weren't in favor of gender pay equity?
John: And then you are exposed, or presumably, or the premise of that is now we have exposed this person for whom they really are.
John: And a lot of times a politician is destroyed by that revelation, by the fact that their housekeeper is an undocumented worker.
John: And sometimes they're not.
John: I mean, the revelation that George Bush...
John: was a draft dodger or got a plum job in the Air Force Reserve and then didn't even fulfill his commitment.
John: That didn't destroy his political career.
Yeah.
Merlin: But isn't it sort of like – it's at least a couple different things.
Merlin: Or on the one hand, there's – it seems like there's at least two or three things to this.
Merlin: One is like, hey, well, here's something somebody said that's really embarrassing, whether or not it has – potentially embarrassing – whether or not it actually has an impact, which in this case it does, on what they seem to be saying.
Merlin: Then there's the deeper level of like, yeah, that was a really dumb thing to say.
Merlin: And it is at odds with what –
Merlin: That person thinks, right?
Merlin: I mean, it's one thing to have you wearing a lampshade on your head in 1988 or something.
Merlin: But in this case, that seems like an important thing.
Merlin: And then there's the third part, which is, and they don't want you to know about it.
Merlin: And it seems like that...
Merlin: that combination of things is quite understandably something that people find very attractive if they're in the right state of mind.
Merlin: Certainly, we find that very attractive in other people when we see, or gosh, I'll put that poorly, but when we find out that somebody we disagree with politically or somebody who we think is a scoundrel has obviously done something that's completely at odds and hearts their credibility, like when that happens with Donald Trump, most of us cheer.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And this is an example of a thing where
John: This isn't like me wearing a lampshade or me talking about Hitler.
John: This is me talking about a very real political issue that is on the table right now and something we should all be talking about.
John: And gender pay equity is a thing.
John: It's like a very visible example of how we have – our goal of –
John: of equity in, in, in our culture is unmet and it's something we can really do stuff about.
John: And in Seattle right now we can do stuff about it.
John: Like the city of Seattle can set an example and the city of Seattle can require that companies that doing business companies doing business here, uh, pay their workers equally.
John: Um, it's a, it's a, it's a political, uh,
John: it's an actual political difference between people.
John: And here was me on tape getting it wrong.
John: And there isn't an opportunity.
John: I could have stayed up
John: Ten nights in a row and went on every Facebook page that it got sent around to and joined the conversation and said, wait, wait, wait.
John: You know, this is this is a place where I was.
John: I got this wrong and and I learned from it.
John: already before i even thought about running for office i had learned that i was wrong and i changed my my take on it um and you know and if i were a better politician maybe that's what i would have done spend stayed up all night um trying to trying to put out those little fires um but
John: But that, you know, that is an example.
John: And it's a thing of, it's a thing, when I declared I was running, you know, the first thing everybody was worried about was, well, you know, didn't you punch a guy in the nose?
John: How's that going to play, you know, in a citywide election?
John: And I was like, well, if it comes up, you know, it comes up and I'll deal with it when it comes up.
John: And then it was, and no one in the, no one running,
John: those initial questions by me um said well what about that what about that gender pay equity stuff that you uh were wrong about you know and actually the the punk rock article came back to haunt me over and over again because there are just people that are never they're just never gonna let that rest and so those are instances where my public wrongness
John: which is a thing that I'm happy to embrace personally and just in general.
John: Like, yeah, I'm wrong all the time.
John: I say a lot of stuff and I think out loud and I'm wrong and sometimes I circle back to it and sometimes I don't and sometimes I may a culpa and sometimes I don't.
John: Yeah, so I don't know how to proceed.
Merlin: Well, it sounds like you...
Merlin: Well, I mean, it's your gig.
Merlin: But I mean like it sounds to me like there's nothing you have to decide right now as long as it's – I guess what you can't do or shouldn't do probably is have too many events like this where you narrate your process out loud.
Merlin: It sounds like something that's something you probably want to limit as far as the next few weeks.
Merlin: Or is it?
John: I mean that's the thing.
John: I'm now laying the groundwork for what my life is going to look like going forward.
John: And I wouldn't have thought, you know, like personal integrity looks like one kind of thing.
John: You either have it or you don't.
John: And a lot of people in the race, including people I was running against, indicated that they would say and do kind of anything right.
John: And I don't mean like saying do anything to get elected like put somebody in a – put a drunk guy in his car and turn the engine on him.
Merlin: I eventually saw what you were talking about, House of Cards.
Merlin: But I did eventually see what you were talking about where one of your opponents was actually quite good at some very tight provocative statements that would just kind of leave a turd on somebody's lawn.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and, and very provocative and then say, uh, and then, you know, kind of take you aside behind the curtain at, at the next event and be like, Hey man, you know, sorry about that.
John: I just, uh, you know, you know, you know, I've got to go after you and, and it's all in the game or whatever.
John: And I hope I, you know, hope I can win your support or whatever.
John: And just like, it's all very, uh, skeezy or can be, uh,
John: And that's not me and I can't live that way.
John: But sitting here right now and you can just hear the hesitancy, the reluctance in my voice to come clean.
John: And that too feels like an infection, like a kind of meningitis.
John: And I have to process it.
John: I have to process what I want and what I want to do next.
John: And that's not a thing that I am super talented at either.
John: I don't usually sit here and say like, all right, here's the next five years of my life.
John: And here's what I want.
John: And so here's what I've got to say now.
John: That's just...
Merlin: It's almost like you're on parole.
John: You're not in the midst of that all-encompassing thing that was like fighting a boar, but you're also not completely free of that particular thing because, as you say, you still have to think about what might happen in the future.
John: all the cobwebs out of the corners and, and, and made the political process new and exciting and newly honest.
John: Um, and all you had to do was run an honest campaign and that honesty would be like a, a, uh, like a teleportation machine that reorganized the atoms and,
John: And took the disease out.
Merlin: Yes, because you feel like if you're saying things you know are true, sunlight does nothing but make that clearer.
John: Right.
John: And in fact, what I discovered was that the process of running for office involves so many organizations, all of whom...
John: have no interest in reform, ultimately.
John: And I'm talking about not just the, you know, not just the Chamber of Commerce, but the Socialist Party.
John: Like, I was endorsed by neither the Seattle Times nor the Stranger.
John: I was endorsed by neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the Socialists.
John: I was endorsed by, you know, neither the business community nor the unions.
John: And when we think about those groups as oppositional, right, the unions and the bosses.
Merlin: Yeah, it seems like we should be able to at least agree on taking a side.
John: Yeah, the left paper and the right paper, the Communist Party and the conservative Democrats, and nobody, none of those groups chose me.
John: And they all chose one or the other guy.
John: And ultimately, the reason that I heard over and over again was that predictability is the currency of the realm.
John: And nobody wants a candidate that isn't predictable.
John: And no one wants a candidate where they don't know exactly how he's going to vote on every issue.
John: And they would rather have a guy that they know is going to vote against them than somebody that they can't predict.
John: And so ultimately, like, being honest and being true and being yourself, all those political agents, the commonality is that none of them want justice.
John: something new they they their power rests on their ability to work within this this broken anachronistic system and so to reform and what it takes to reform the union process of picking
John: candidate and what it takes to reform the Chamber of Commerce process of picking a candidate.
John: I mean, those two groups think of themselves as polar opposites and think of themselves as, you know, as having completely different goals in mind.
John: But from my perspective, they functioned almost exactly the same, which was I went and sat down in front of them and answered their questions.
John: And ultimately they felt like, not that I was not intelligent, not that I was not capable, not that I was not interesting, not that I was not compelling, but that I was not predictable.
John: And so going into the primary election, I had the support of no one.
John: Except for the, you know, the 20,000 people that voted for me, who, as we've talked about before, you know, the Long Winters sell 20,000 records and they're 20,000 people voting.
John: listen to our podcast and 20,000 people voted for me.
John: It's the 20,000 person problem.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: But, but, uh, wow.
Merlin: But that's a, that's a mind bomb.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Wow.
John: 20,000, you know, long winners, uh, 25,000 records sold or whatever.
Um,
Merlin: We have not talked much about the statistics of this show, but you're really, really close.
Merlin: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: So that is the thing where there is no way to reform politics.
John: that process.
John: There's no single way to reform it.
John: Because if you were a renegade candidate, if you were Ross Perot, or if you had a million dollars and could just go right to the voters and you didn't have to deal with any of that political machine,
John: Even with a million dollars, even if you bought every TV advertisement on Seattle TV and just went right to the voters, that political machine, the newspapers, the Democrats, they still could defeat you.
John: I didn't have enough fame and name recognition to overcome.
Merlin: There's another thing in the midst of this, though, that I can't get my mind around, which is like for everything that you're describing about getting this job, I'm thinking about any variety of dozens of other jobs that one would try to get.
Merlin: And I'm not to put too fine a point on it, but in most cases –
Merlin: People are looking for somebody who can get along with the team, and they're looking for somebody who can accept the system that's in place.
Merlin: Most managers, let's just say, don't want to hire somebody who wants to come in and revolutionize the company, especially if they've never worked there before.
Merlin: And so in this case, I mean, I think you're facing also a little bit of an Anna Karenina problem where it's one thing to say, like, we're going to fix this system.
Merlin: But like each part of that system would need to be, as you said, would have to be changed in such a radically different way that is at odds with how they've always done it.
Merlin: So, you know, that's the thing is the system is how it is because that's how it operates.
Merlin: That's, you know, and so it's almost like you would have to accept that, well, my job is to be electable.
Merlin: Like if I'm not electable, I won't get the job.
Merlin: You really can't get beyond that.
John: And the thing about it is that the way that we choose somebody to be on the Seattle City Council or the way that a lot of people choose –
John: And certainly the way all these systems choose is they say, what's your management experience?
John: Can you show us instances where you have managed a big operation and, you know, like give us your management CV.
John: And that's true in business too.
John: And ultimately what I was saying over and over throughout the campaign is it is a mistake to choose managers for this job because being on the Seattle City Council is not a management job.
John: You're not managing anybody.
John: You're sitting on a panel of nine thoughtful people trying to make sense of the law.
John: And if you put managers there over and over,
John: What you're going to get is people that are trying to manage the other city councilmen and manage the details and manage their reputations and manage the press.
John: It's the lieutenant colonel problem all over again.
John: It isn't a management job.
John: It's a very different kind of job that's being on a panel.
John: And we see this in business too where so often the hiring process is not about who's going to get along with my team, but rather like who's got the management experience to handle this tough job.
John: And all those Google questions of like,
John: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
John: You have one minute to answer go.
John: You know, it makes the interviewer feel smart.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and they're all just Kobayashi Maru.
Merlin: It's just to see how you respond.
Merlin: It's not, you know, like I explained to my daughter, Kobayashi Maru, it seems like it's a test of leadership, but it's really a test of character.
Merlin: They just want to see how you respond.
John: Yeah, but so often, like, the ability to answer a Kobayashi Maru question is not really...
John: salient to being a good member of a team on a, that's developing.
Merlin: What does this have to do with selling ads on websites?
Merlin: That's what you guys do.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: I mean, you know, and do you really want a bunch of people who have trained to answer these, like these character questions?
John: And ultimately if like Kobayashi Maru stuff, I would love if that was how we elected somebody to city council, that'd be great.
John: But, but yeah,
John: So much of the process of interviewing for that job is showing that you have a detailed knowledge of the jobs of the people who would be executing the job.
John: And...
John: And you don't really need that to be a good city council person.
John: In fact, that makes it difficult to be a good city council person.
John: If you're coming from a place of like, I used to implement this policy and now I want to make this policy.
John: It's like, well, knowing how to implement it and knowing how to make it are radically different skills.
John: But knowing how to implement it is the only way we have to judge.
John: Because otherwise we would have to use our imaginations.
Merlin: It becomes like the SAT.
Merlin: It's like there's a test that we understand.
Merlin: And there seems to be some relationship between how well people do on the SAT and how well they do in college.
Merlin: We understand it's a crapshoot, but it's our best crapshoot.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Our best crapshoot.
John: And that best crapshoot is...
John: The last thing the SAT wants is to start measuring people's imagination.
John: The last thing that Harvard wants, they want you to be able to write a good essay question.
John: And if you're really, really a genius and are going to win the Fields Medal, yeah, they want to try and get a hold of you and they'll cultivate you.
John: But processes need to be systematized.
John: And you can't have a process that rates imagination.
Right?
John: And so, and there are a lot of jobs that require imagination and we just hope we find somebody.
John: We hope that somebody that jumps through these hoops also has imagination.
John: If they don't, that's fine.
John: At least they jump through the hoops and we can cover our butts.
John: The last thing we want is some, is to, you know, is to hire somebody with imagination and then discover that, that they shit themselves and, and have to explain why we chose them.
John: So I, you know,
John: like going forward, I need to figure out what I want to do with my life and how I can help and be, and you know, and how I can be best, how I'm most useful.
Merlin: And just like, that's been your enduring question for like a few years now.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And, and hasn't gone away.
John: Am I most useful as an elected official or,
John: I don't know how to make it through that process and retain what I think is most useful about myself.
John: And that's the Kobayashi Maru of this.
Merlin: Are you potentially open to the idea that this just might not be the thing for you?
John: I'm very, very, very open to it.
John: I just don't want to...
John: Like what this whole conversation has been about is I don't know how I'm going to feel nine months from now and I don't want to have 30 hours of you and me saying,
John: there's a certain type of person that could ever get elected to public office and there's a reason that we don't trust them once they are elected but the job of elected official is a kind of is a kind of Pagliacci and what we really should be doing is
John: is figuring out where power really lies and trying to affect the way that power works
John: trying to affect the activation of that power closer to the source.
John: And the idea of participatory democracy and representative democracy, it's also a thought technology.
John: And we elect people and send them up to these bodies to perform this task.
John: And is that the best way to get things done?
John: Or is that a...
John: has that always been and is that increasingly just a, um, just a performance that, that, that, that squanders resources and distracts people from where things are really happening and can laws be made more efficiently and better through a different practice?
John: Um, um,
John: And maybe so.
John: I mean, it's so hard to think about our democratic institutions and divorce them from our mythology and divorce them from our desire to be democratic and say, wait, the desire to be democratic is still great and we need to chase it and we need to find and perfect it.
John: What that means to be democratic rather than autocratic or oligarchic.
John: But is this method where we send... Where we...
John: put people into a process where they're running for office and then we elect them and we send them up to a legislative body and they bicker with each other and pass laws by majority.
John: Is that necessary?
John: Is that democratic?
John: Or is that a holdover from a time when we didn't have instantaneous communication and
John: Is it a holdover from a time when we didn't trust everyone to vote?
John: And are we still practicing a form of democracy that was best suited for a time when news traveled by horse carts and we all gathered in the town hall to have our voices heard?
John: And honestly, I don't know.
John: I think that we probably waste more energy and more intellectual capital and more time running our government the way we do.
John: But I definitely don't want to fall into some Silicon Valley trap of like let's find a disruptive way of doing government.
John: Let's have government by Facebook or whatever.
John: That just sounds awful.
John: Yeah.
John: Right, I've been thinking about that my whole life.
John: How do you have participatory democracy?
John: How do you have actual direct democracy without succumbing to rule by mob?
John: Right.
John: And do these systems protect us?
John: Does all of this...
John: all of his process is at all to protect us against our worst natures.
John: I don't know.
John: It's, um, speaking as someone who just lost his first election, it's very hard to, to, uh, separate the personal from the political right now.
Merlin: Oh, it's so fresh.
Merlin: I mean, I hope you can have some time to rest a little bit to not have to be places and say things.
John: Well, you know, of course, both of my opponents now have reached out to me and asked for my endorsement and expressed a desire to work with me.
John: You've used that line.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, and I wrote them both back and was like, I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to sail my boat up the Nile for a while.
John: I don't really want to.
John: I don't want to talk to either of you guys or interact with you at all.
John: And, you know, and the idea that one of you is going to champion the arts on my behalf, like, no thanks.
John: The arts will be just fine without your Johnny-come-lately advocacy.
John: But again, you know, that's the...
John: people will remember me as the arts candidate or something, which is like, yeah, that's fine, but that's the shorthand.
John: You end up being defined by one or two words when you run for office this way.
John: Oh, that's the union candidate or that's the arts candidate or that's the housing candidate or the...
Merlin: But like you said all along, that's the game is that you know that's going to happen.
Merlin: That appellation is going to come along.
Merlin: You win if you get that to be the one that you wanted.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Tough on crime or whatever.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Against the tunnel.
Merlin: Anti-tunnel.
Merlin: Is it Bertha?
John: Is that what it's called?
John: Bertha.
John: Against the tunnel.
John: And you can't be too many of those.
John: You know, you can't be against the tunnel, but for the airport.
John: That's confusing.
John: That's confusing.
John: You just get one.
John: Come on.
John: One thing.
John: Pick a thing.
John: Are you for the airport or against the tunnel?
Merlin: That's well-rounded.
Merlin: I'm still proud of you.
Merlin: We're all very proud of you.
John: Thanks.
John: Thanks.