Ep. 216: "You Could Do Less Magic"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: It's a little early.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, it is.
Merlin: You know, actually, we're starting early.
Merlin: Good for you.
John: Yeah.
John: Three minutes early.
Merlin: Ding dong.
Merlin: Woo.
Merlin: Woo.
Merlin: Yay.
Merlin: Did I tell you about the place next door, how they're like renovating for two months?
Merlin: I told you about this, right?
Merlin: Yeah, you did.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So doing some banging?
Merlin: Well, yeah, there's some banging.
Merlin: Also, I mean, I just want to clear this up because there may be some noise.
Merlin: I will do my usual poor attempt to mute.
Merlin: But yeah, I think it's a shit show.
Merlin: The Terrence stuff, I think these guys might be a little bit off the books.
Merlin: The contractors they've got.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, for example...
Merlin: My daughter and I like to walk by and just kind of stick our heads in to see what's going on.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So we noticed that they torn up a bunch of the floor and there were lots of like several inches to a foot deep pools of water in the place, which doesn't seem normal as part of a demolition process.
John: No, and it's a very sandy soil where you are.
John: Absolutely.
John: Should be excellent drainage.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, you'd think so.
Merlin: But then we walked by and there was a whole bunch of the orange heavy-duty extension cord.
Merlin: There's a bunch of that sitting in that pool of water.
Merlin: Now listen, I'm no junior high safety video, but I'm just here to say, I don't know if that's the best practice in construction.
Merlin: Was it plugged into anything or was it just resting?
Merlin: I couldn't see.
John: They might have just been storing it in the water, which I guess is safer.
John: Yeah, that is.
John: That's actually pretty standard.
John: Yeah.
John: Pretty standard.
John: I mean, if you read the manual, actually, if you buy an extension cord, it says right on it, store in water.
Merlin: Oh, that's a good idea.
Merlin: Store in standing water.
Merlin: Store in standing water.
Merlin: Oh, listen, one thing.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Standing water gets the gas face.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I forgot to get my non-clicky keyboard.
Merlin: All I have right now is my clicky keyboard.
Merlin: Should I use my clicky keyboard?
John: I think that people like to hear the clicky keyboard because they know that research is being done.
John: They know that
John: They know that work is getting done.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Let's clear the air about this.
Merlin: Because people write.
Merlin: Yeah, they do.
Merlin: They write in.
Merlin: They send us letters.
Merlin: And everybody's got a thought, and that's okay.
Merlin: But if you hear me typing while John's talking, please don't assume that I'm bored.
Merlin: Assume that it's my job to make the show go.
Merlin: And I have to do show things.
Merlin: And sometimes that requires typing.
Merlin: So today you're really going to hear it.
Merlin: I haven't used this one in a while, but this is what this one sounds like.
John: The thing that viewers should know is that you cannot, on this show, you cannot let your guard down for a second.
John: Oh, are you kidding me?
John: You know, like you couldn't get bored and start surfing the internet because, woo, you might come back into the conversation and
John: And we're all the way out, you know, we're all the way out talking about which dog is which beetle, you know, like if you had to do a velvet painting of the beetles as dogs.
John: I'm capturing that.
John: Who would be what, right?
John: And you're going to just be like, oh, sorry, I was surfing the web and I did.
Merlin: didn't get that or something john i worry i lose sleep over this because i think a lot of people you know god bless you i'm glad you're enjoying podcasts welcome i'm glad but i worry sometimes that people get so used to listening to these goddamn spoon-fed podcasts wow you know in a good way like i'm glad it's nice it's relaxing
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: This kind of shows where you can go like, hey, we're back.
Merlin: Here's the thing we're talking about, and this is what we're going to talk about more.
Merlin: You can't do that.
Merlin: You can't go get a beverage and just hope you're going to catch up.
Merlin: You're missing gold.
Merlin: You're leaving color in the ground.
John: I think a lot of the reason that people listen to this program over and over, four, sometimes five times all the way through the entire series, is that the first time they listened to it in their car, and they were like, God, I didn't get all that.
John: And so the second time they listened to it while they were doing the dishes,
John: Still.
John: So the third time they sat in their living room staring.
John: Third time they're angry.
John: Yeah, they're angry.
John: They're staring at the speaker now.
John: They're not listening to it on headphones.
John: They put it on the speaker.
John: They notice the inaccuracies.
John: They're staring at the speaker.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: And they realize that wasn't enough.
Merlin: But you know, the sixth time you listen, you realize it's really your fault as the listener.
John: Well, the sixth time, presumably you have a transcript in your hand.
John: You're listening to the program, eyes closed, in front of a speaker.
Merlin: John, are you checking your email while you're doing this?
Merlin: No, I'm afraid you cannot.
Merlin: No, you're going to sit like a gentleman and you're going to listen.
Merlin: All those notes you took in your Italian notebook, you're going to realize how much you got wrong because you missed things.
John: Is your child sitting in a car seat babbling some fucking kid nonsense?
John: No.
John: Leave it.
John: That's right.
John: Are you waiting for the light to change?
John: No.
John: There's a lot to get.
John: I was at a conference this past weekend.
John: Yeah, you went to the Zoso conference.
John: Yeah, the wonderful Zoso conference run by wonderful Andes.
John: And there were a lot of podcasters there.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It's lousy with podcasters.
John: Lousy with podcasters.
Merlin: Also, were there a lot of makers there, John?
John: Every single person there was a maker or a creative of some kind.
John: And more on that.
John: I'm going to circle back to that.
John: Okay.
John: But a lot of podcasters and also a lot of podcast consumers.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: So in a way, it was sort of a podcast trade fair.
John: Huh.
John: There were a lot of booths.
John: You would go around and pick up swag at each booth.
John: as long as they could get your email address oh yeah sure no no no that's not how it happened at all but a lot of people want to talk to me first of all they want to talk to me about you what yeah because they say oh merlin man is it true that and i'm like let me stop you right there probably
John: Wow.
Merlin: No, that's awkward.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Don't talk to people about me, John.
John: And they say, Merlin, what does Merlin mean when he, and then I say, let me stop you right there.
John: Oh, God.
John: I have no idea.
John: This is literally my nightmare.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's wonderful.
John: There's so many Merlin fans out there.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And they're starved for Merlin time.
John: And so that's what I'm there for as a sort of Merlin product.
John: And then, but the interesting thing is talking to other podcasters about their experience podcasting.
John: Oh, you know, sitting around a big table.
John: There's a big roast on the table.
John: The candelabra are burning.
John: The wine is flowing.
John: The wine is flowing.
John: Someone's playing a lute.
John: And we are.
John: Prithee, how dost thou edit thine podcast?
John: And then everyone has a different experience because everyone, this is the crazy thing about podcasting that a lot of people don't know.
John: Everyone does a different kind of podcast.
John: Everyone does a different kind of podcast.
John: Yeah.
John: It's a situation where one person's podcast seems like it should be instructive for another person doing a podcast, but really every podcast is different, Merlin.
Merlin: Oh my God, that's actually so much like life.
Merlin: It's strangely like life where people like to give advice because they went through the mouse maze in this given way and they found cheese and didn't die.
Merlin: So they're pretty sure they should write a book about it.
John: Well, and who moved my cheese, right?
John: Became a national and international bestseller.
John: My feeling about it was a lot of what people wanted to talk about this podcasting.
John: was how does one make a living podcasting?
John: And you know what I wanted to talk about is why is podcasting such an illegitimate art form?
John: Because it really is.
John: To whom?
To me.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: I saw many notes.
Merlin: I just want to say in passing, I saw many notes.
Merlin: It sounds like you did a talk that a lot of people liked.
Merlin: And you tell me the gist that I got.
Merlin: People had many quotes from you on the Twitter, which is an online service.
Merlin: And it sounds like you were talking about you pushed back against the idea of doing this because it felt too easy.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Is that fair?
John: This is ultimately the big question, right?
John: As I was preparing to go on stage, as in all cases when you go on stage, it never turns out the way you planned it.
John: One of the things I was thinking about quite a bit was that extemporaneous performance comes very naturally to me.
John: For a lot of people, it's very hard.
John: They don't want to get – it's like everybody's nightmare, right?
John: You're pushed out on stage and you're not prepared.
Merlin: They say – I don't know if this has been updated recently, but it's been said as conventional wisdom for a long time that Americans' second greatest fear is death and their first greatest fear is public speaking.
Merlin: Add to that whether or not that's exactly true or accurate.
Merlin: Add to that going out and winging it.
Merlin: I think that's the stuff of nightmares for a lot of people.
John: I think it really is, right?
John: You push out there and the lights come on and it's a big room full of people and you don't know what you're there to do.
John: And watching people at this conference get up and give speeches, it was obvious that a lot of the speakers, even though they were professionally very accomplished, everyone was very interested in what they had to say, they were full of anxiety just about the performance of their talk.
John: Like, I have to go out and talk for 20 minutes in front of people.
John: And so they have a PowerPoint, and they have their script, and their script is scrolling at their feet on a television set.
John: And I was watching from backstage, and a lot of times, you know, the speaker's very naturalistic, but it's word for word, kind of their prepared text.
John: And so part of what I wanted to talk about was, look, I'm walking out here.
John: I have no – I have really –
John: done very little preparation about what I'm going to say.
John: And honestly, if I looked over to the side of the stage after my 20 minutes was done and there was somebody holding a sign that said, can you stretch it for another hour?
John: I'd be like, great.
John: Like this kind of thing.
John: It's not like you're playing at the opening of a mall.
John: Right.
John: Nobody's repelling behind me.
John: Stretch, stretch.
John: Cirque du Soleil isn't repelling while I'm playing with no monitors at 7 a.m.
John: in front of a mall.
John: No, this is just me talking to you about stuff, and I could do it for hours, but somehow the fact that it is everyone's greatest fear and for most people very difficult to do doesn't impart
John: Any sense that doing it is like a technical skill that should be should be rewarded commensurate with its difficulty.
John: If you are a mathematician, everybody recognizes that that's very difficult.
John: They don't know how to do it and they say this is something that you should be either rewarded for with pay or with stature.
John: If you can run a four-minute mile, you get a medal or everybody applauds.
John: But there's a sense of if you can get up and wing it,
John: that you're getting away with murder somehow, you know, everyone's reaction is sort of like, Oh, Hmm.
John: Um, you didn't try very hard or, you know, there, there's a, there's this feeling or man, and maybe it's just me.
John: Maybe I'm just the one carrying this, but that somehow the person that slaved for weeks over their PowerPoint demonstration, um,
John: in order that they control their anxiety enough to give a kind of stilted performance has done more work and therefore their performance is more valid
John: than the person who can get up and give an entertaining talk without notes.
John: And this is something that's always kind of in my, I'm always wrestling with this, right?
John: Because the most fun I have is doing this podcast.
John: In some ways, it's something I'm very, very proud of, or maybe even the most proud of.
John: But you and I just get on here and wing it every week.
John: And so it also feels a little illegitimate.
John: Like cheating.
John: Yeah, that this be something we're rewarded for, that this be even considered a job.
John: Because it's just like, hey, two guys jacking off, whoa.
John: And it's a skill set.
John: It's just as difficult as being a good painter or something.
John: But it seems like...
John: I don't know, somehow invalid.
John: And I wanted to talk about that, but then when I got on stage, I just made like 40 minutes of Portland jokes and then dropped trowel, flipped the audience off.
John: Went... And then standing O. Classic Roderick.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Because that's my brand.
John: And that's what people come and that's what they expect.
Merlin: When You Look Nice Today was there, we actually...
Merlin: Well, at Adam's request, we swore that we wouldn't make poop jokes.
Merlin: And at Scott's request, we swore that we wouldn't make Portland jokes.
Merlin: And then we went out there and I did about 40 minutes of Portland and poop jokes.
John: Yeah, it was all Portland and all poop.
John: You can't help yourself.
John: Yeah, all Portland and all poop.
John: Yeah.
John: So I don't know.
John: I've got thoughts.
John: I've got thoughts.
John: Yeah, I look at people that are really, really, really, really...
John: put a lot of effort into doing these things that are sort of um that are second nature to me and obviously like i would have to put a lot of effort into doing some you know work right that's what's really hard for me to do you're very hmm this uh came up on the very special uh relay.fm members only um
Merlin: edition of reconcilable differences on which you were kind enough to guest and it came up at the end where you're saying you wish you were you wish you were more than a jack of all trades you wish you were really good at something and our friend john siracusa took you to task on this saying you're a professional musician like yeah you you get paid you get to do stuff or not get to do stuff i know to avoid that term do you get to be in a van man it's gotta be its own reward man
Merlin: Everybody's trying to steal your copper pipe.
Merlin: But I think he made an interesting point, which is that, okay, let me try to sum it up this way.
Merlin: I think I want to talk more about a bunch of details that are wrapped up in what you're saying that have to do with things like how you feel about the audience's feeling about you, what are the stakes for it going wrong, because I think that greatly changes the equation for a lot of people.
Merlin: But set that aside for a minute.
Merlin: I think anything that doesn't feel impossibly difficult to us,
Merlin: doesn't feel like work.
Merlin: And I think that's a problem.
Merlin: And I'm talking about anything here, and this is a very back-to-work-ish kind of point to make, but I think a lot of us are suspicious of things that aren't, where we have like, I don't know if it's sunk cost fallacy or something, but where if we put a bunch of effort, time, education, and resources into one part of our life, and that's not the part that is our job...
Merlin: We feel like we're being, not just that we're getting away with something, but that we're like almost, we're being disloyal to the time that we've spent in the past.
Merlin: And I think that sometimes that's great because it can make you want to stick with it and try harder and, you know, thrive.
Merlin: But at other times it really works across purposes because it's not just that it's easy, but if it's something that feels good to do, I think people are suspicious of it.
Merlin: And that's a very privileged thing to say, because we're really fortunate in a lot of ways to get to do what we're doing.
Merlin: But I think that's true for almost everybody.
Merlin: We're like, if you feel like there's some part of us, and I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Ohio, your mom is from Ohio.
Merlin: I think there is a certain kind of, I don't know if it's Puritan, but there's a certain kind of Midwestern feeling that if you're happy, you're probably doing something wrong.
John: Yeah, I think it's Quaker.
John: But yeah, I agree.
John: Yeah.
John: If you're happy, you must be doing something wrong.
Merlin: That's I mean, that's reductive.
Merlin: And I'm trying to make this about more than just this podcast.
Merlin: But yeah, the other thing just just just to circle back to that one thing was and we'll get back to Beatles dogs, I hope.
Merlin: But in that case, think about this, though.
Merlin: You're going in front of a bunch of people where, well, let's put it this way.
Merlin: Were you worried?
Merlin: were you worried that the audience would not be receptive to what you had to say?
Merlin: Were you concerned?
Merlin: Were you like losing sleep over like whether people would be going into this with a negative feeling about you preloaded for bear or conversely, like, were you worried that you had to make a certain case to that particular audience?
Merlin: And did that cause you stress before the talk?
John: I mean, there is a little bit of stress now involved in getting up and giving speeches and,
John: Just because the atmosphere around mansplaining, particularly middle-aged white men explaining, middle mansplaining, is so fraught, right?
John: That there are camps in which my presence at an event is already suspect, already problematic, right?
John: And so, you know, standing up on stage in front of people and being my natural self and saying, hello, everyone.
John: I'm a big middle-aged white guy.
John: You can suck a bag of dicks.
John: With things to say about stuff.
John: Nice to meet you.
John: I've got ideas about things.
John: There is now...
John: you know, like an inhibition that there will be people in the audience primed to be looking for a problem.
John: And at the last, at this XOXO, there was a person who, to me, very clearly came...
John: already angry and found a way to fit like and tweeted halfway through my presentation about my unexamined privilege halfway through a presentation that you know she she did not bother to to I mean she didn't tweet at the end right so maybe by the end she had she had heard things in the second half of the presentation that made her realize that the first half of the presentation was set up
John: And then the message of the second half relieves the tension of the first half.
John: It's a big part of performance.
John: So halfway through, she's already tweeting about my unexamined privilege.
John: And my feeling is that she came into the conference either having already underlined my name as a person that she was going to
John: uh you know was going to do a uh a critique of on these on this topic right i mean she was she was already mad that i was there uh and then uh oh and then someone confronted i think it's the same woman confronted me later in the middle of a in like got up and came over and yelled at me in the audience because i got up i got up at the end of someone else's presentation did a little bit of a kanye
John: Like, Taylor, I'm going to let you finish, but I just have an anecdote here that'll... And, you know, again, I'm a performer.
John: Was it someone you know?
John: No, no, no.
John: No, no, I mean the person you were Kanye-ing.
John: No, but they're a fellow performer, and I'm there as a paid performer, and my job is to perform, and I know what a good performance is, right?
John: I'm not... I know I'm not stepping on anybody.
John: It was a... I had an anecdote.
John: It was apropos...
John: everybody liked it but this person same person I think came over and gave me in an exaggerated stage whisper which seemed to be trying to draw attention to herself gave me a lecture about how rude I had been in standing up and making a comment to the room and she was entirely incorrect and
John: And again, felt like she came into the event loaded for bear, looking for a reason, you know?
John: So there is a certain amount of that when I'm preparing to give a talk at XOXO, for instance, where I'm like, you know, is there going to be something in my, you know, I know there's not going to be anything in my presentation, but is there just something in my main, you know, something in just my, in my person, right?
John: that someone in the audience is gonna find, something is gonna trigger someone else, just in the way that I carry myself, in the tone of my voice, in my casualness.
John: In the very fact that I am comfortable standing up in front of a room, that alone is evidence of my status as a white male in a patriarchal culture, and so my comfort
John: is a priori an offense.
John: And reflecting on my comfort in anything other than an apologetic tone for its very existence is an offense.
John: But I don't have any question about my ability to extemporaneously entertain an audience or to begin a story, take it through a journey down a set of rapids
John: And at the end of the story, you know, have it, have performed an arc and, and at the end there's some, some resolution and it feels like a complete.
John: complete work.
John: Yeah.
John: It's like a play with acts.
John: So I know how to do that.
John: And I don't, I don't, I'm not up in the middle of the night going, I hope that I don't get halfway through and, and blank or I hope, you know, that the, that I'm not up there dying, you know, that stuff doesn't really worry me.
John: I've died a thousand deaths in front of a crowd and it's not, it doesn't, I'm not scared of it.
John: Right.
John: If I'm laying jokes out there and the, and the laughter is tepid and,
John: and it feels like, boy, I really lost this audience a long time ago, I still can get them back.
John: You get them back just by saying, boy, I lost you guys a long time ago.
Merlin: And conversely, pandering to what you perceive to be some part of the audience is,
Merlin: How can I put this?
Merlin: Pandering to, there's no way to inoculate yourself is the way I would put it.
Merlin: Is that, you know, I think sometimes when I'm talking to people who are thinking about doing a thing, whatever that thing is, one of the things I feel like I've learned, it's never easy, but you have to just accept that there are always going to be people...
Merlin: who just don't like you and they don't like what i know this is very very simple but this is the kind of thing where i think people need to hear this i know i need to hear this is that sometimes there are going to be people who just like on your very best day the best that you're capable of they still just basically don't like you it doesn't make them a bad person it doesn't make them prejudiced i'm that way about some people there's just some people like you know guy fieri i gotta tell you like his persona bugs me but he seems like a genuinely nice guy
Merlin: But I don't like his persona.
Merlin: I would not seek out his programming.
Merlin: And that's why he sometimes gets to be a joke on here.
Merlin: But all I'm trying to say is that what you can't do is you don't want to cut muscle on the parts of your personality or your performance style that are...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think a big part of one's confidence going on stage is, at the very least, if this thing goes totally wrong, if it goes terrible, if I feel misunderstood, if I say something dumb in a way I didn't mean to say, what are the stakes?
Merlin: And I think that feeling of stakes...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: who's i don't whatever the definition of not a successful group at apple is and you have to get up in front of a bunch of people who are used to fantastic presentations about successful products and you've got to be the one who goes up and your powerpoint deck goes wrong and you have to report bad results i'd be nervous about that too it's nice to be in a place where you feel like i can be the person i want to be in front of these people with the level of preparation i think is appropriate and do what i think is best to put on a good show and you're a performer that's like that's what they bring you in for
John: But I think the challenge is, and XOXO is a place where the...
John: where the temperature has turned up a little bit on this, which is that at XOXO, me talking to this group of people that are largely my peers, the stakes are one thing.
John: But because it's going on the internet and because it's never 100% clear what the of-the-moment issue is now,
John: It's possible that you could, because we see it all the time, someone gets up and gives what they think is an innocent or innocuous presentation that they are expecting is going to be received one way.
Merlin: Or could we also stipulate it's something where...
Merlin: You maybe even took pains to have it not be something that's broadly offensive.
Merlin: And maybe you think you're saying something from maybe even a vulnerable point about yourself that you're absolutely not there to hurt anybody's feelings or to exercise privilege, right?
Merlin: I mean, isn't that part of it?
Merlin: Even if you feel like you've prepared for that, you still can't really be prepared for that.
John: You cannot because, I mean, I think you can by doing exactly what you just said, which is just sort of do less magic.
John: But if you're trying to do something original and unusual and do something within your character where you are pushing boundaries, which is a thing that we always, particularly as artists, you need to push boundaries.
John: That is the game.
John: That's how we advance the whole story, the human story, push boundaries.
Yeah.
John: But you get into a posture where boundaries are thought of as a different thing or respecting boundaries is also like a prime directive.
John: And how to push boundaries and respect boundaries at the same time, I mean, every person is trying to do it in a different way.
John: But what you can never know is whether your offhand comment, your awkward attempt to recover from a joke,
John: your panicked response to an ejaculation from the crowd that caught you off guard that you didn't expect, whether that is going to be looped and put into the world and you're going to be the next one that's pilloried.
John: And that's a thing you just can't... All you can do now is trust that all the years that you've spent on the balance beam learning how to do...
John: gymnastics is gonna save you in that moment but I see I see people take the stage and their panic is not just like what if you know what what if I walk out on stage and I look down and I'm not wearing any clothes but it's also like what if I get out there and in the middle of a thing that's going great
John: I say the wrong thing.
John: Either because it's written in my speech and I didn't realize that the word I chose is a word that two days ago became incredibly fraught or because somebody in the crowd goes, that's not funny.
John: And I reply to them,
John: just in the spirit of the moment.
John: And that, you know, and, and that becomes a thing that even if it worked in the room, you know what I mean?
John: Like even if everybody at the place gets it and goes, yeah, it changes, it changes the temperature.
John: Well, but if the one person in the room, as you described earlier, who just isn't going to like you no matter what, you're their Guy Fieri.
John: If that person is built or came with a plan and is tape recording you and puts it online and either in context or out...
John: and says, look at this.
John: I mean, a lot of times you can put somebody's comments completely in context.
John: It's not always a question of decontextualizing them.
John: You can put it completely in context.
John: But if you put a scroll underneath it that says everything that's being said here is offensive, you can take the context or you can change the context just by captioning.
John: Oh, yeah, by hanging a lantern on it, yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So it's like if I was watching this video without any background music...
John: I would feel like this was an interesting scene, but all of a sudden there's, there's background music flown in, in the form of critical context or, or, you know, just like here, the strings are getting all tense now.
John: And all of a sudden these words have a, all of a sudden these words are now either offensive or have a different meaning.
John: So, yeah, the stakes, the potential stakes have changed for every kind of one of these things.
John: And I'm not worried about it in my core, you know, because...
John: Because there's a very real risk and I've felt it just between you and me and sort of with everybody in our peer group specifically of white middle-aged guys making things.
John: That we all recognize that at some point or another we may be
John: Up on the cross.
John: It's just part of the new reality.
John: And lots of people have spent a lot of time up on the cross in the past.
Merlin: That was rarely us, though.
John: Not necessarily.
John: I mean, Jesus was a middle-aged white guy.
John: He's the first one on the cross.
John: He was middle-aged for his time, I think, yeah.
John: Yeah, right, because people only live to be 60.
John: Although I heard that that's recently dispelled.
John: Turns out.
John: But you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I mean, I...
Merlin: I, boy, have I got mixed, super mixed, not feelings, just thoughts about a lot of this stuff.
Merlin: I mean, one thing to keep in mind is that I try to keep, I'm not trying to school you, but one thing I try to keep in mind is that we, one thing that makes, that potentially makes our American experiment good is that there are people that will always be opposed to each other and that's okay.
Merlin: I mean, this gets a little bit to the whole, you know, we can all agree on cheese thing where we feel this need to find something in common when, well, you know, if we're antithetically opposed to this one to a certain given point, like we have to accept that that's part of the conversation and that maybe neither one of us should say things we don't think are true in order to look like we're being...
Merlin: collegial.
Merlin: That's a big part of it.
Merlin: And the other part of it is that there's... I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for a term I learned in this election cycle called OPPO, which is short for opposition research.
Merlin: And it's the kind of dossiers that get compiled on people.
Merlin: It's along the lines of somebody following a candidate around with a camera, recording every single thing they say, and then being able to go in and highlight certain things.
Merlin: But the thing is, that's...
Merlin: I mean, I guess the thing is, though, is that bad?
Merlin: Is that bad that there are people who just don't like us or don't like a given person for reasons that could be cultural, could be political?
Merlin: I mean, sometimes that means racism, but a lot of time it doesn't.
Merlin: It just means that's just not for me, or the way that this person presents is antithetical to the stuff that I believe in.
Merlin: Does that mean that either one of us has to change?
Merlin: Not necessarily, I don't think.
Merlin: I mean—
Merlin: And I'm not trying to say put the KKK up at XOXO.
Merlin: That's a lot of letters.
Merlin: But I am trying to say that, like, that's part of being a grown-up is just realizing that, like, you should – this is not seventh grade, you guys.
Merlin: Don't change your personality to please whoever happens to be in the room or you're never going to become an actual person.
John: I think that we're in a state – and I was thinking about this the other day.
John: We used to live in a world in which the media ostensibly tried to be nonpartisan.
John: They tried to be fair and balanced.
John: And there's a ton of media critique that...
John: you know over the years explained to us like the media was not fair and balanced the the media was operating you know the i'm talking about mainstream media in a in a closed system well we could just in in older times just call the press the press right like the the people who were for example not reporting on you know roosevelt's health state sure or kennedy's uh addison's disease yeah but
John: Well, the presumption, I think, of a world kind of close to the one we're living in now where there's a lot more access, we can see more deeply.
John: You could not hide Kennedy's Addison's disease now, right?
John: Because there are a lot of people that aren't part of the tiny little club anymore that see that as newsworthy and would be capable of reporting on it.
John: But I don't think 25 years ago, media prognosticators could have seen
John: could have foreseen a world in which media now is deeply and universally biased.
John: Like every single media outlet, nobody's pretending to be unbiased anymore.
John: It's quite the opposite.
John: Everybody's a reporter and everybody is putting a real stamp on it.
John: And I was thinking, like, is...
Merlin: universally biased media in some ways accomplishing a lack of bias or your ability to find... If you take all the reporting as a whole, rather than trying to insert false equivalency into every single person's coverage, you look at this as many, many different voices that understandably have a point of view.
John: Yeah, and that ultimately, if you're trying...
John: a more nuanced...
John: idea of what actually transpired is accomplishable, right?
John: You can look at all of the reporting across a wide spectrum and get maybe even a better picture of what happened than if five people are there trying to be unbiased.
Merlin: Isn't that historically what papers in the UK have done?
Merlin: I mean, hasn't there historically been certain papers, even to this day, that the Guardian tends to be more liberal?
Merlin: Isn't that kind of how it's worked historically?
John: It's like that was more... They were more openly contentious, but they were still major... I mean, you needed resources to be able to be heard, and resources always come with strings attached.
John: And now we just don't have that, right?
John: You don't need any resources.
John: If you're the one person sitting there with your cell phone when a comet streaks across the sky...
John: Your footage will find a place in the world, right?
John: That will be on the news tomorrow, even if you're the only one that caught it.
John: You're not a reporter.
John: You're not getting...
John: You're not out there working your beat.
Merlin: There's a distinction there that started, I'm going to guess, in the 1980s, which is if you had a portable video camera, you could be the one who was actually recording the media in res.
John: The Rodney King.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But the thing is, you've always been there.
Merlin: There's always been the opportunity for you to be interviewed as a witness of a thing.
Merlin: But as the witness of a thing, I don't mean to get all semiotic here, you're basically part of the story now, but you're not the one who's actually bringing the evidence of that to the public.
John: Right, right.
Merlin: That's still like a point of view.
Merlin: You're the person who says, I saw the accident and this is what happened.
Merlin: Well, I saw the accident and this is what happened.
Merlin: Whereas I think there is that we tend to give more weight to something like, you know, look at the Bigfoot tape, right?
Merlin: I mean, like when you're able to go out and say, you know, I recorded this, that has primacy.
Merlin: And that's something that didn't exist as widely before at least the 80s, probably the 90s.
John: Right.
John: But I think the other side and the thing that we're now in a...
John: I don't know whether this is a transitional moment or whether it's – this is the thing about transitional moments, right?
John: You don't know whether this is just a five-year blip or whether this is the beginning of a new way of thinking.
John: And in most cases, I think it's both, right?
John: It's both a five-year blip and also –
John: Five years from now, we're going to be on the other side of this and we'll be somewhere different than we would have been.
John: But everybody's a pundit now.
John: Everybody thinks that their hot take is also newsworthy.
John: And that's what makes the moment so pregnant.
John: And I thought about this relative to this woman coming up to me in the audience and trying to dress me down for a thing.
John: ultimately what happened was I did a performance and she didn't like the performance and in that sense it's just like you say you don't have to be liked by everybody there's always going to be somebody that doesn't like Guy Fieri and they're not going to like that performance but her sense of her own importance or her sense of her role in that situation was not like I didn't like that performance
John: But rather, she saw herself as the... I mean, her job in that situation was to school me and shame me and correct the wrong.
John: And she had no agency there.
John: She wasn't a stakeholder.
John: She was just an observer.
John: But all of a sudden, she adopted...
John: it was now her responsibility to on behalf of the people on stage fellow performers on behalf of them she needed now to write this injustice and that's new and
John: And it isn't simply like, I didn't like that.
John: I don't like that performer.
John: I didn't like that performance.
John: And in the past, you would go home and you'd write a blog post or you would write an article for the local newspaper that said, this was a performance I thought it was bad.
John: But to add that other element of, you know, I am a crusader personally for...
John: And both working as a media member and also as a... What is this other job?
John: The job of... The...
John: Like the sort of puritanical, the one picking up the first stone, you know, almost.
Merlin: But I mean, the thing is, though, part of it is shifting the idea of what we consider a political space.
Merlin: So, you know, the kinds of folks who started, let's say in particular, you could have people who were striking for union issues in previous generations.
Merlin: or in the 60s and 70s people who are protesting whether that is segregation or protesting nuclear proliferation but you know there are people who took an active role in saying like i need to to paraphrase that guy from berkeley you know throw yourself upon the gears it's my job here to go in and disrupt what's happening here because and you know and again we can all disagree on whether this is appropriate or not but i'm just saying there was a time when you could say look
Merlin: you know, I don't want to have a nuclear reactor in my backyard, so I'm going to chain myself to a fence.
Merlin: Or the kind of folks who would say, like, I'm going to go put a daisy into the police officer's rifle, whatever.
Merlin: But it's just that now today it feels like, and I don't have a strong, super strong opinion, but I'm just suggesting that now the politics has moved from, you know, Superfund sites to stages.
Merlin: And
Merlin: And the people who want to throw themselves upon the gears and the levers are taking a similar role to what people would have done to protest in a different time.
Merlin: Whether I agree with them or not, they feel so strongly about this that they can't allow this to go on uninterrupted.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I guess there's not really a question there.
Merlin: Do you see any analog between what people were doing in previous generations to whether that's the Luddites, you know, attacking mechanical devices or whether that's people saying, you know, I'm going to sit at this lunch counter.
Merlin: Do you see it?
Merlin: Don't you see that as part of some extension of a protest to say, I'm just doing it in a different place now?
John: Well, I mean, I see exactly the point you're making, and I wonder, and I think it's related to the fact that right now, it's very clear to members of our community that
John: the left, right, that we're living in a world in which blacks and Hispanics and women and transgender people are being oppressed by a white patriarchal, like, uber culture.
John: And when you listen to the Trump supporters,
John: they are equally convinced that white Christian America is being violently oppressed by the, like, mochaccino coalition of liberal, intellectual, media, Hollywood.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and that's the tease out.
Merlin: They see that as systematic oppression.
John: But that the left is the majority, is the megaculture, and that white Christian America is increasingly being violently suppressed.
John: And when you start to listen to everyone's story now,
John: You realize that every single person, every single political group, every entity has a narrative in which they are being victimized and oppressed by a majority.
John: And it leaves me with the feeling that not every single person is, not every group of people in America can be simultaneously oppressed by a majority.
John: But that is the current, it's not just a vocabulary and it's not an expedient political system.
John: It's a heartfelt belief that
John: And from our side, it's very clear in the minutiae, right, in each individual case of police brutality or of all the injustices, rape culture, etc.
John: Each one of those things in its specificity, it's very clear who the oppressor is.
John: and what our job as the oppressed or representatives of the oppressed or allies of the oppressed, like where our work should be.
John: Where to focus our efforts.
John: Right.
John: But you listen to the other side of the aisle, and in the specificity of their oppression, there's just exactly the same conviction that in this instance and in that instance and in that instance,
John: the oppression is so clear and so dramatic and so threatening and they are also stringing together a narrative extremely compelling to themselves that the specificity of those things spells a widespread
John: culture of intolerance that's coming from the other side of the aisle.
John: And so although I absolutely see the analogy you're making to the anti-war movement or the civil rights movement where people see an injustice and are trying to chain themselves to the gates of the weapons plant, I think that is absolutely people's perception of the work that they're doing.
John: But it's happening, it's more and more granular all the time until you meet people who are also, I mean, again, not to just keep dumping on this one individual, but she was a white woman at a conference you had to apply to attend that cost a lot of money to attend.
John: But she was perceiving herself not only as a victim, but also as a defender of other people that she was imposing victimhood on.
Merlin: Do you get the sense that this was happening?
Merlin: The way you're describing this, it kind of sounds like it's a blanket party on John.
Merlin: Do you get the feeling this person was there to do other things of this sort with different ideas and causes?
Merlin: Or do you think she just was specifically wanting to take you out?
John: I mean, who knows?
John: It's not like I went and read her Twitter feed, but her comments to me in both instances were like presupposed a truth that didn't exist.
John: Like she was judging me based on my appearance.
John: And presumed from my appearance and my position at the festival that I was all these things that she was against.
John: And she came into the festival already against those things and found a way to fit my behavior, however little it resembled what she thought it was, you know, into that matrix.
John: But I see it...
John: In trying to make sense, in trying to parse our current political situation, I hear that same kind of confident indignation from people that I disagree with totally, and I'm talking about people that think that the white race is under attack, but the tone and the victimhood
John: is like note for nose coming from the same emotional place.
John: And that's why I feel like this is a transitional moment, right?
John: We cannot continue along a path where we each individually become more and more convinced that we are being assailed by every other group of stakeholders.
John: It's not sustainable.
John: It's a moment and eventually people are going to have to start, and this is part of, I think, acknowledging your privilege, which is that each individual group is going to have to start acknowledging their own power and acknowledging it in its appropriate context and saying, you know, like, I am not a victim.
John: I am empowered by,
John: there are challenges I still feel disenfranchised but that disenfranchisement I feel in this area is not like a
John: is not a massive conspiracy to disenfranchise me.
John: It is simply that I'm encountering people that disagree or that, you know, that my power is truncated in this way and in that, or was historically.
John: But actually I do have a lot of power now.
John: I am a, you know, I'm a middle-class university student or I am a, you know, I'm a successful business person or I am a,
John: I'm just a blogger, but my voice is heard in a way that in the past, no one of my stature could have been heard.
Merlin: and and and that that's the next level of examining privilege well yeah and that or acknowledging it it's not just examining it it's like it's like well no the i mean the acknowledging part is huge but i mean that's and i think it's actually super instructive it's been really it's been a good tonic for me as much as i pushed back initially um it's been a good tonic for me as a human being but i want to just say one thing here um
Merlin: Admittedly from a remove, because I'm not super involved in this conversation, but I think it's been very interesting to, from a remove, watch the evolution and discussion about feminism, which started out for a long time, it was mostly white women and their allies.
Merlin: And over time, there was a different strain that developed of black people, black feminism, and a very, very different strain of Latina feminism, and a real different approach for that.
Merlin: And like, do you want to be, is this inclusive?
Merlin: Is this the angle?
Merlin: You know, just the whole idea that feminism is not some spray on approach to equality, but it's actually a fundamentally different way of thinking about the world, an idea that people are still getting their head around.
Merlin: I remember in the gender studies class I had in college, first being presented with that idea at the age of about 20, I'd be pretty blown away.
Merlin: Because I always thought, oh, blah, ERA, that's just, that's so silly.
Merlin: Like, you know, why do we need to do this?
Merlin: And just that idea that, I mean, and I just, I'm very intrigued by that idea that even white women in that instance are going to have to look at a lot of unexamined
Merlin: precepts about what they believe and historically have existed a certain way in order not simply to accommodate other people but to truly understand that for me to really understand the nature of this thing where mostly my kind of voice has had primacy it's really important for me to open up my idea of what this thing is and that means sitting and listening to other people who historically I've been out there saying I want to defend and I want to support
Merlin: Whose position I assume I'm taking care of.
Merlin: And then they come up and a lot of, you know, black ladies come up and go, you know what?
Merlin: Actually, we would do this a real different way.
Merlin: Latino ladies come up and say, you know what?
Merlin: We would do this a real different way.
Merlin: That's I that's something where every time I hear about that, I'm really intrigued.
Merlin: And it's not in a snarky way at all.
Merlin: It's another way of saying, like, you know, when we talk about if there's anything, any part of this.
Merlin: Well, the most important part of it is that white guys learn to suck it up and realize that we're not the king of everything.
Merlin: I really feel that way.
Merlin: But I think the second part of it is what you're describing.
Merlin: We're the guys who need to learn this more than anybody else.
Merlin: But it doesn't stop there by any stretch.
Merlin: And I think if there's anything that's a little bit damaging and destructive, it's to sit on a perch and feel like we finally understood how a situation works.
Merlin: It's the softness and openness to understanding how other people have a point of view about these things that helps these ideas grow.
Merlin: becomes something more than just this strident political position.
Merlin: It becomes a way of, as you say, a thought technology.
Merlin: It's a way of understanding the world in a way that is really illuminating and can be a wonderful thing.
Merlin: So I'm not trying to pass off the whole, like, well, you got privilege too.
Merlin: I got the most, boy, believe me.
Merlin: I'm getting that.
Merlin: But it is intriguing to watch and then to see how that will evolve.
Merlin: Where is it, you know...
Merlin: It's we think about the idea of punching up and punching down.
Merlin: And, you know, at what point is interrupting that show not punching up?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Absolutely.
John: And I think I think to your point, like there is still a tremendous energy within white feminists that fails to.
John: I mean, that's very defensive when confronted by feminists of color.
John: Right.
John: Like that like like that is that kind of.
John: The tension within feminism is fascinating to watch.
John: But like the the approach right in this cultural moment of acknowledging privilege and being and in a way being ashamed of that that first moment of like, oh, my God, I didn't know how much privilege I had.
John: And I'm ashamed that I was operating in the world.
John: thinking that I had the same challenges that everybody else did, when in fact I had quite a few advantages that it just never occurred to me I had.
John: And that idea of it, of saying, wow, I have a lot of advantages that I wasn't aware of, and taking away the element of
John: of really of shame about it but also of saying like that I mean each individual person has advantages
John: even out of a cultural context that, that we weren't taught to think that way.
John: Any of us really to wake up in the morning and count our advantages and, and acknowledge like gracefully and with humility that not everybody has those advantages and those aren't limited to advantages of gender or race.
John: And that is a very, I think it's on the path to a very much more spiritual culture.
John: And right now we're in this moment where a lot of our intellectual capital is being kind of…
John: We've expended both sort of pilloring other people for privilege that they aren't acknowledging and ourselves for privilege that in a lot of cases we've – having been made aware of it, we're now trying to redress at all times, right?
John: Or to the best of our ability.
John: But you can't cede power, right?
John: In a way, you have to take power.
John: And that's Machiavelli.
John: But it isn't untrue, right?
John: Power that's given to you by somebody else is power that they still hold.
John: And if it's being granted to you, it doesn't belong to you.
John: Power is something that you seize.
John: And...
John: and hold and that's both individually and cult and you know in cultures but the next step for us all i think is to say you know what i mean it's we look over at the white christians and say you guys are you guys have all the advantages right you're the you're ostensibly the majority and all these oil workers down in louisiana who are living on food stamps are like what the fuck are you talking about
John: we feel assailed at every at every level and part of our part of our acknowledgement of our privilege is also to sort of like acknowledge their lack of it and
John: And that isn't confined, right?
John: I mean, every day now I wake up and not only reflect on my own privilege, but reflect on the many, many ways that every person, even the richest guy in Seattle wakes up and feels under assault somehow.
John: Like nobody had a good day yesterday in a way, right?
John: And we've talked about that quite a bit.
John: The fact that
John: Bill Gates's day yesterday was probably pretty hard and part of being human.
John: part of being a successful human is to accept that and, and have sympathy for him, to have sympathy for everybody that you encounter.
John: And that's why you don't say shitty things to people on the internet.
John: It's why you don't, it's why you're not a gamer gator, but it's also important to not wake up in a, in like a, a feeling of, of like hyper righteous liberal superiority and,
John: because everybody's having a bad time.
Merlin: But, you know, there's another part of this that's really complicated.
Merlin: I wish I could talk about this at a time other than when we've just talked about a lot of political and cultural things, but there's another part of this which is that there is
Merlin: Regardless of the side that you're on, I do feel like there's a very strong culture of telling people what they're doing wrong these days.
Merlin: This has been your favorite topic for so long.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: Or as I like to say, the internet is constantly telling you that you're enjoying life wrong.
Merlin: You're doing the internet wrong.
Merlin: Yeah, but I'm trying to make a slight bridge to the personal, which is an impossible bridge to make because the personal has become very political.
Merlin: So if we could just play along with me for a minute, that we have developed into a more gotcha culture of trying to find what somebody's doing wrong.
Merlin: The one downside of that is that the stakes for changing have become a lot higher.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And there is less and less incentive to want to fix something about yourself if it makes it look like you're a flip-flopper or you're being disloyal or you're capitulating.
Merlin: And so while I understand the need for stridency in lots of things, on a personal basis, the part that I struggle with is...
Merlin: is, and I'm not trying to tell anybody to do it differently, this is just a personal feeling, is that it is difficult when you do feel like you're doing what you can in whatever way.
Merlin: And it's understandably not always gonna be, and it's never gonna be enough for some folks,
Merlin: But I guess the thing that I'd love to see it evolve toward is where a conversation about something like privilege goes from being the opportunity where you admit that you're wrong about everything to a chance for personal growth.
Merlin: And that chance for personal growth requires that you allow yourself to become kind of vulnerable, even publicly vulnerable.
Merlin: And I think the risk, to circle straight back to talking in front of a crowd, I think the risk of being publicly vulnerable is really tough for a lot of people on every side of every aisle.
Merlin: And the more...
Merlin: The more pitched these things become and the higher the stakes, it feels like you are giving a part of yourself away personally by admitting there's anything that you could do better.
Merlin: And I know that that is a second or third stage for a lot of kinds of change and growth to get to that point, that there has to be this certain kind of change.
Merlin: you know, nearly violent political confrontation to make things happen.
Merlin: But like, I'm looking forward to the point where it'll be okay to admit that you have feelings one way or another, have a conversation about that and have that not go straight to the political, have that not go straight to the like, here's the highlight reel of how this person is a garbage person because they changed their mind about something on either or any side.
Merlin: And as long as it's this difficult to talk about something and have it be an idea that you try on, like a suit, as you like to say, as long as that has such potential giant stakes to it, it's hard for anybody to talk honestly and for anybody on any side to go, you know what, I got that part wrong.
Merlin: even if you're the person who's trying to castigate somebody on the other side who's doing it wrong, you know, if you were wrong about them doing it wrong, are you going to admit that you were doing that?
Merlin: No, because you're just as invested in that as the other person has now doubled down on their investment in that thing, and that doesn't get us anywhere.
Merlin: And that's why this election year is partly why it's so disgusting and hard to watch.
Merlin: We're all just dug in further and further and further, and nobody's allowed to be a little bit broken for a while in the service of becoming fixed.
John: The reason I feel that this is a momentary space is that in a lot of things like this, I always sort of ask, what's your end game?
John: Like, in calling attention to people's privilege, what is the end game?
John: And I'm talking about, you know, looking out into the future.
John: It can operate...
John: Within a space where if you examine the end game, it is to create a world in which there is no privilege, like no advantage.
John: No group of people has an advantage over any other group of people like that is one potential look at calling out privilege.
John: Because if we call it out, we can redress the systemic institutional ways in which certain groups of people are privileged over others.
John: But, of course, you get immediately into a situation where what is –
John: In what way does talent factor into that?
John: Obviously, there are privileges that... We're right now at a place where we're addressing privileges of massive scale.
John: And of great historical portent.
John: Historical portent that have created a massive scale of privilege.
John: But it's very easy within that overarching...
John: like rubric to you know on a personal level be attacking people for like privileges that are that are much more personal you know like um for instance my ability to get up on stage and extemporize you can critique that as purely the result of the fact that i'm a white male
John: But from my world of feelings, it feels like that ability is a talent, like being able to run a four-minute mile.
John: I'm gifted with it.
John: And it isn't like anybody that's raised a child recognizes that you can do a lot of work to try to correct what you perceive to be
John: the cultural tentacles that are part of a child's upbringing, but you also see that a child at six months old already is exhibiting personality and talent and predilection that no one had anything to do with.
John: It wasn't cultural.
John: It was just innate in them, a priori.
John: And my ability to stand up and confidently take charge of a room was a thing that was in me when I was six months old, right?
John: But I'm vulnerable to being critiqued as purely a product of a social construct.
John: And for me, when I think about the conversation about privilege...
John: I think of a potential endgame being that through the different groups of people, through the different actors, both like macro actors and micro actors, we're able to say, here are our talents.
John: Here are the things that my group is good at.
John: Here are the privileges that we are capable of bringing to bear to collectively solve problems better.
John: like if there is a group of people that is
John: that because of cultural or economic or innate, like both skills, talents, and also culturally just like, yes, I was raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, and therefore I have this agency in the world, I have this ability, that ultimately the goal is to learn together to not be greedy, right?
John: and to enact that privilege on behalf of others or to, you know, like the goal can, if we start to think that the goal is to level all privilege, then that's a political movement that we also need to call out.
John: You know, that's not, that isn't benign necessarily, or.
Merlin: You gotta call in Diana Moon Glampers, the handicapper general.
Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: We haven't talked about Harrison Bergeron this entire time.
John: Well, I have an email here I want to read.
John: Oh, dear.
Merlin: I've got to put an ad in here somewhere.
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Merlin: Podcasting.
John: Let me read this email.
John: John's going to read an email.
John: I'm going to redact some of the... This is completely off the topic of what we've been talking about.
John: Thank you.
John: This is something completely else.
John: I'm going to redact some of the names.
John: This is an invitation.
John: uh that has been tendered to me okay by a firm which i think is it's one of those firms that maybe calls itself a design firm but feels like an advertising firm are they gonna put you on the board do you know do you know what no there if this was a letter about putting me on the board i would have led with this i wouldn't have buried this lead
John: I don't know what design firms do, frankly, and how it is differentiated from advertising.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: Are you being serious?
John: Here's the letter.
John: All right.
John: Okay.
John: They're inviting me to a design gathering.
John: It is, now I'm reading the letter.
John: It is, comma, a few days to get away to somewhere else and be more and different.
John: This is addressed to me personally.
Merlin: This isn't boilerplate.
John: No.
John: Here's a link to a video that gives you a little taste, but promise no trust circles.
John: But there is a talent show.
John: or maybe called a no talent show more aptly where everyone gets up on stage and does stuff where others feel embarrassed for them.
John: Otherwise we tackle a problem, social community, creative, where we use our creative brains in a different way.
John: Uh, we want to invite you up to this resort where you can see the stars and hear nothing.
Hmm.
John: We have a musical performer join us to tell us their story, their passion.
John: Look at it as storytelling accompanied by songs.
John: Please bring your family and hang out with us, observe, participate, or just explore the area.
John: One night you're invited.
John: And so I wrote back and said, hey, can you clarify?
John: Sounds like you want me to perform.
John: Is this a pain gig?
Merlin: Because it's weird because it's almost like the way you just before we I want to know this.
Merlin: But before we get to that, it sounds more like this is someone, you know, very well.
Merlin: That's essentially inviting you to like their summer house for a nice conversation.
John: Now, this is a person whose title is chief creative officer.
John: Right.
John: And I've never heard of this person.
Merlin: But you get what I mean.
Merlin: The tone of that was, hey, here's something you're going to find empirically interesting.
Merlin: You're going to get to hear a bunch of people talk.
Merlin: And then the talent show.
John: Yeah.
John: Just talking.
John: And you're welcome to bring your family.
John: It'll be a great getaway for you.
John: That's a nice offer.
John: And I said, is this a paying gig or is this an experience?
John: Thanks for thinking of me.
John: Exclamation point.
John: John.
Hmm.
John: And the reply is, it's kind of all of the above.
John: No, it's not.
John: Acoustic storytelling, small stipend with a family getaway.
John: oh i see you're so lucky right you get to go out and play your music yeah and so i wrote back and said well it does sound very much like i am being asked to perform a show because i'm not just a guitar strummer i'm also a storyteller
John: So to say like, play a few songs, tell some stories, like the one thing doesn't mitigate the other, right?
John: Like the storytelling isn't something that casualifies the guitar player.
Merlin: It's all about the framing.
Merlin: The way they're framing it is they're trying to frame this in a very specific way.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Come on out.
Merlin: They're trying to frame it as, you are very fortunate to be invited to this particular teddy bear picnic, and you know what?
Merlin: On top of it all, dude, it's an experience, and you can bring your family.
Merlin: Oh, and by the way, we're going to give you money, too.
Merlin: Can you believe it?
John: A little bit.
John: You know, some gas money to get up there.
John: Bring your family, because...
John: You know, that's how generous we are.
John: Now, I went online and I looked at this firm.
John: They have like 40 plus employees.
John: And this is a big resort somewhere up in the mountains that they're taking over for this event.
John: And, you know, when you just look at the people on the thing, everybody's kind of a chief something officer.
John: There's like 40 people and they all have, you know, chief development somebody.
Yeah.
John: But it just really gets the – you get the impression that the lowest paid person at this place makes $85,000 a year.
John: Yeah.
John: And it goes up from there, right?
John: The chief creative officer, whoever this guy is, obviously is making $250,000 a year.
John: And I haven't heard back what the small stipend is, but I'm guessing $250.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Right?
John: Isn't that in about the small stipend area?
John: I would say the small stipend is definitely under $1,000.
John: Yeah, oh, I think a lot under.
Merlin: Would you rather have a stipend or an honorarium, you think?
Merlin: I think I'd rather have an honorarium.
Merlin: Honorarium sounds a lot.
Merlin: That's a very lieutenant colonel kind of thing to get.
John: Yeah, a stipend is like, this will let you get some bottled water.
John: There are some vending machines.
John: Here's a little stipend.
John: It's like a per diem.
John: But so I ran this email by all the other podcasters at the festival who are all people that get asked to give this kind of speech or this kind of thing where it's like, hey, come on out to our event.
John: Um, you'll have an uncomfortable bed in a weird room.
John: Uh, you'll be basically on stage the entire time because everybody else at this event works together and they're all bored of each other.
John: And we're inviting you cause you're, you know, like cause everybody knows you and you were top of the list of people to invite.
John: And so from the moment you wake up in the morning, you're going to be performing and then you're going to put on a show for us.
John: and uh and it's going to be great and then we're all going to sit around i know you don't drink so you know there'll be some martinelli's apple juice there for you while we all get drunk around the campfire yeah it's going to be amazing and you perform campfire songs for us yeah and then you play the and then you just bring it out because of course you want to bring it the guitar out with you and if you say no everybody's going to go oh so you're you know
John: absolutely going to bring the guitar out there and then hopefully someone else will also play the guitar and will get drunk enough that you can hand them the guitar and like... Can I voir dire you a little bit here?
John: Of course.
Merlin: Where is it?
Merlin: If I could ask?
Merlin: Somewhere.
Merlin: In what state?
Merlin: In Washington State.
Merlin: Up in the mountains somewhere.
Merlin: Is it like an hour or less away?
John: Let's call it an hour and a half.
Merlin: Okay, so... Two hours.
Merlin: Good part there.
Merlin: There's not extensive travel involved.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, that... Hmm...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: When people ask me things like that, I've weaned myself off this, but I will be candid with you, John.
Merlin: There was a time where when somebody asked me something like that, I would say to them, would you do this for the same amount of money?
Merlin: And if they said, yes, I absolutely would.
Merlin: I said, well, that's even worse because you really don't value your time.
Merlin: You must not realize how much money you should be making at what you're doing if you would do that.
Merlin: So now you're a ding-a-ling and you're a little dishonest.
Merlin: yeah you're dishonest would you go and do your job here well and you know maybe that's the thing for a while there was the whole like i'm go to a conference guy thing like i just go and i give talks about doop doop doop doop but man that's still that still gets my dander up why don't we have a conversation like adults about this if you want to hire me like why don't we have that discussion but the fact that you keep bringing it back to the campfire spaghetti party we're gonna have forget it yeah so well and so i asked so what was the response of the others
John: I asked the podcasters.
John: Everybody rolled their eyes because everybody gets – I mean we've all – this is not a new conversation, right?
John: We talk about this all the time, all the hilarious letters we get asking us to perform for free.
John: And often at a thing like this where it's a – this is a design firm that is – they're going to pay $25,000 for food and sundries at this event, right?
Merlin: Is it an internal event?
Merlin: I think it is... I left it off.
Merlin: That's the other part to ask is how much... Are you charging anything for people to come to this?
John: No, I think it's just a getaway for staff.
Merlin: It's a chance for design people to go and walk with wolves.
John: Yeah, and that's the thing.
John: We're just going to talk.
John: We're going to share creative stuff.
John: Just fucking hang out and shit, man.
John: Real chill, real chill.
John: The presumption that I'm going to get as much out of talking to these...
John: I'm going to get as much out of spitballing with them about creative stuff as they're going to get out of spitballing that stuff with me.
John: I went to an advertising agency at one point not very long ago that was owned by some friends.
John: And they said, hey, what if we just gave you a desk here?
John: And I said, and this was a big firm.
John: And I said, I said, how do you mean?
John: And they were like, we'll just give you like a desk up here at the executive level.
John: uh on which is a separate floor and your ideas can hang out and do whatever yeah and you can come and just use the space and just be around and hang out and i was like and i mean what goes along with the desk are you offering me like a job well no i mean it's more like just here's some we have extra space you come and
John: And I was like, I come and we sit around with our wheelie chairs wheeling around throwing pencils at the ceiling.
John: And then that turns into a big ad campaign for you guys.
John: And I lucked out in having a desk.
Merlin: It's not so different than your light critique of the privilege thing.
Merlin: So if this goes really well, if you just give me a desk or whatever, we'll know that that has turned out great in a year because what happened?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and the thing is, every time I went by there, they would walk me through their latest campaigns and be like, what do you think of that?
John: And I would say, well...
John: that word right there is a little corny or did you ever consider uh this or that and they'd be like nice so yeah there's a reason they want me there to give to give me a free desk but because we're all creatives it just seems like let's just get in the creative space and just create a rama yeah man
John: And so that's the, you know, like I'm going to go up to this mountain event and we're going to just brainstorm with each other about some creative shit.
John: You know what would help me is that I sat with my guitar in a room and wrote some songs.
John: Like that's what I need.
Merlin: Yeah, man.
Merlin: Part of the whole point of this, man, is getting away from the money jive.
Merlin: That's part of the point, man.
Merlin: We got to get off campus.
Merlin: Just let it fucking, just freak out a little, man.
John: Just freak out.
John: So David Reese said, I would ask for $10,000 and settle for $7,500.
John: Did he sing it?
John: He didn't know.
Merlin: I would ask for $10,000 beep boop boop.
John: And I was like, you know, the $10,000 is definitely the, that's the line where you are saying, go fuck yourself.
John: Unless you come back and say, oh, you have now made us realize what this actually is.
Merlin: You're the asshole.
Merlin: You got invited to Thanksgiving dinner and you want to give him a fucking invoice.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: What a dick.
John: That's right.
Merlin: I was allowed to bring my family.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: They even said you could bring your family.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We could all stay in one room with two twin beds.
John: It's basically a free vacation, John.
John: It's a free vacation.
John: That's exactly what it is.
John: And I think what, I mean, I would never write this in an email to them, but what I would say if one of them were listening to the podcast is I like to choose my own vacations.
John: Yeah, it's funny how that works.
John: Yeah, I'm perfectly capable of finding a way to vacation with my family.
John: I don't need that opportunity in lieu of money.
John: But it's strange when you get it, and this came through, this didn't come directly.
John: from the chief creative officer, he knows a friend of mine who's in the show business and sent it to her and she sent it to me with her own little like, this sounds like, I don't know if this is up your alley, but this sounds like a fun opportunity or something.
John: And so I'm not replying to him, I'm replying to her.
John: And so I have now the potential to alienate not just the guy
John: But my friend, because he sent it to her like, hey, can you use your magic to get John Roderick?
Merlin: It's not a public library.
Merlin: You know, the thing is shame on them.
Merlin: If you're a public library, if you're a Macintosh user group, like if you're St.
Merlin: Jude's, you know, you could write to John Roderick and say, hey, look, would you want to come here and play some music?
Merlin: We don't have any money, but we'd love for you to come.
Yeah.
Merlin: Or you could say, you know, basically we pay for your flight.
Merlin: I don't mind that.
Merlin: I don't mind getting that from somebody that admits that this is what this is.
Merlin: This is this.
Merlin: What I don't like is being made to feel like a turd because you're trying to do a business negotiation as though you're my brother-in-law.
Merlin: That's such fucking weak sauce.
Merlin: Well, and that's the creative.
Merlin: And through somebody else, they've got an interlocutor here who's now she's putting her up on the line.
John: Well, and if I write back and go, huh, this sounds like a gig, you know, like then that's in our relationship.
John: Yep.
John: That now she's like, well, okay, I guess.
John: Sorry.
John: Sorry.
John: Sorry, I gave you this.
John: Sorry, I forwarded this to you.
John: And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: I'm not mad at you.
Merlin: I'm just like, you and I should be on the same page here.
Merlin: I hate being put in that position.
Merlin: I really, I've come to resent the whole, like, can you contact this person for me?
Merlin: No offense, but that whole idea of like, will you basically vouch for me a near stranger situation?
Merlin: The two times a year you communicate with this person who's kind of famous, will you use one of those two times to basically vouch for me even though you hardly know me at all?
Merlin: Well, of course I would.
Merlin: I'm not an animal.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So gross.
Merlin: Well, so anyway.
John: So what are you going to do?
John: Well, just sitting here talking, right now there's an email pending.
John: Okay.
John: I sent an email saying, yeah, the more I read this, the more it sounds like they want me to perform.
Mm-hmm.
John: which is what I do professionally.
John: The storytelling is actually also my job.
John: That's not a... Professional.
John: It's not friend-sessional.
John: Yeah, that's not a fun thing that I'm going to just like, hey, here's an idea that we had.
John: Have you ever considered telling stories in between your songs?
John: We think you'd be great at that, man.
Merlin: You'd be a perfect fit.
John: You should come and bring your family.
John: I have thought of that.
John: So I sent that back to her.
John: Now, she has not replied.
John: And maybe her lack of reply is...
John: you know is an email she sent back to him saying actually this doesn't seem like it's going to work or maybe she's sitting in her office like I'm too busy to deal with this shit how did I get stuck in between this but some of that is rubbing off on me right she's now got a she's she's got a feeling like I'm too busy to deal with this Roderick should have just said yes or
John: Or he should have just said, let me deal with this.
John: But he replied to me instead of to them because I sent it to him instead of giving his email to them.
John: I don't know.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I do.
John: I do.
John: It's awkwardness all the way down.
John: And if she doesn't reply, problem solved.
John: If she replies and says, I should get out of this.
John: If you don't want to do it, reply to them.
John: I'm going to be like, hmm.
John: They never emailed me, so...
John: But, you know, it is right.
John: And if they do, I'm going to say, I would love to do this.
John: Ten grand seems fair.
John: Beep, boop, boop, boop.
John: And then we'll see what they say.
John: Oh, we were thinking $250.
John: Oh, well, you don't value me very highly.
Merlin: Hey, let me rewrite this email for you.
Merlin: We want you to stop everything that you're doing in your life to go be on a place on the planet for the amount of time that we declare and we have almost no budget.
Merlin: Is that something you'd be super into?
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, this is important.
John: This is the thing that we're doing because we're going to deduct the whole thing because it's professional development for and, and our staff like this does qualify as a perk for them because they work 60 hour weeks and we're taking them up to a hotel for free.
John: That's nice.
John: So it seems I probably within, within our company washroom,
John: Like a real good deal.
John: You ever thought about being a storyteller?
John: Me?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Give it some thought.
John: I'm not sure I'd be good at it.
John: Huh.
John: What are you doing this weekend?
John: You know, it's funny.
John: My weekends are kind of full up.
John: Hmm.
John: Looking forward.
John: You can bring a guitar.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: I can bring my guitar?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And my family?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Oh, my God.