Ep. 331: "Magic Lawyer"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: How are you?
Merlin: I'm good.
Merlin: I'm good.
Merlin: You know, I got new new Skype, and it's really, really confusing.
John: So what's new new Skype?
John: New new?
John: Is this like the new new Sagaya?
John: New new Sagaya?
John: New new Sagaya?
John: Is that a Native American term?
John: Well, so the Sagaia store in Anchorage was like a sort of a fancy Japanese grocery store.
John: And then the new Sagaia was...
John: They moved locations, and then there was the Nunu.
Merlin: Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, it is like that.
Merlin: It's confusing.
Merlin: I hung on to the old one as long as I could, and then I got this Nunu one, and it's terrible, and I just keep discovering things about it that are perplexing.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I don't want to use valuable airtime for this, but I see it's included an emoji picker.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: That's important.
Merlin: So I can send you an emoji.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: What was that?
Merlin: I think it's an Indian lady at a party taking a selfie of herself.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I guess that's how you do.
John: Do that one again.
John: How's that?
John: Show me that one again, yeah.
John: Send it again?
John: Well, yeah, because it just popped up and it did like a little motion.
John: She took a little selfie of herself and then it went away, so I can't see it.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: Ready?
Merlin: Yeah, here we go.
Merlin: Three, two, one.
Merlin: Emoji.
Merlin: Send.
Merlin: Oh, there it is.
Merlin: Whoa.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, that's terrible.
Merlin: It's not super good.
Merlin: There's a lot of things that would change first, but I know that's not how businesses work.
Merlin: What else can I do?
Merlin: I can send you money.
Merlin: Send me some money.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I don't know if that's in the budget.
John: Making 50 bucks.
Merlin: So it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't stay the emoji.
John: No, no.
John: She just was there.
John: She took a little, she's a little conversation.
Merlin: Do you know how to go to the conversation?
Yeah.
John: I kind of try.
John: I try to avoid the conversation.
John: No, I understand.
John: Okay.
John: How do I go to the conversation?
John: Oh, okay.
John: So over in the Skype... Oh, it's down here on the bottom.
John: Oh, why is my heart pumping?
John: Oh, no.
John: Are you okay?
John: No, it's like my Skype heart.
John: Your Skype heart's pumping.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Okay.
John: On the conversation now, so here's what I have now.
John: I have the Indian lady.
John: She's got a
John: For those of you playing along at home – She has a – what's it called?
John: A bindi?
John: No.
John: She has a bindi.
Merlin: Is it called a bindi?
John: Yeah.
John: She's just a round smiley face.
John: Yes.
John: But she has a bindi and she has like black hair clearly parted in the middle and earrings and that is to communicate – oh, and there's some party lights behind her.
John: Yeah.
John: That is to communicate that she is from India.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
Merlin: She pulls out because party lights, you know.
Merlin: Party lights.
Merlin: And what about selfies with a purple Samsung camera?
Merlin: Is that historically something they do on the Indian subcontinent, John?
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: Well, it's a remnant of colonialism.
Merlin: I'm learning.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Like tea.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: So she pulls out the purple Samsung photo.
John: She gives a big smile.
John: But since you sent it to me twice, the first one is now static.
John: Okay.
John: But you see the second one.
John: The second one was animated, but she just got done with her animation.
John: Mouse over it, John.
John: I think it'll move again.
John: Oh, you're right.
John: Oh, I moved over them both, and now I can move.
John: Oh, why is this valuable?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm going to send you some more.
Merlin: That's called Man Award.
John: It's a man collecting an award.
John: It looks so much like you, man, doing your I'm a fake collecting an award thing.
Merlin: Oh, I think it's got something from Star Wars here.
Merlin: Okay, this is called Porg.
Merlin: There's a Porg.
John: I think you were big on the internet.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Back when I was Merlin Mann, I used to talk into my shoe.
Merlin: I remember that.
Merlin: Oh, those were good times.
Merlin: Display advertising got much less profitable.
Merlin: Flowers, bicycle, lacrosse.
John: So now instead of these, could Skype have directed their energies toward making a better voice over Internet protocol product?
Merlin: You know, that's why I say, I don't, there's a reason I'm not in the corner office, John.
Merlin: You know, I don't understand the business.
Merlin: I don't understand the deals.
Merlin: Now I'm, I will inform you.
Merlin: Let's get back to that.
Merlin: I want to put a fork in that, but I also want to point out there are several star Wars related things in here.
Merlin: I can send you a tie fighter.
Merlin: Do.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Let me find the tie fighter.
Merlin: It might be under face.
Merlin: It might be under thumb.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Is it under, is it under star?
Merlin: It's not under star.
Merlin: That seems like an oversight.
John: Oh, here we go.
John: Is there a, is there a picture of sting from Quadrifini?
John: Oh, ace face.
John: Yeah, that seems like a missed opportunity.
John: If you're going to have a category that's called face.
John: Oh, right.
John: Let me try searching for ace.
Merlin: Ace.
Merlin: No, I don't see ace face.
Merlin: They've got Stuart Copeland in here, but he's mad.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Is he throwing his drumstick?
Merlin: Fuck off, you cunts.
Merlin: Isn't that what his drums used to say?
Merlin: He had a nasty message on his drums, if memory serves.
Merlin: He's a nasty man.
Merlin: He's a dirty boy.
Merlin: All right, I sent you a TIE fighter.
Merlin: Okay, good, good, good.
Merlin: Got it all worked out.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Use your hatred, Luke.
John: Surrender to the dark side.
John: Whoa, wow, that's good.
John: Join me, and together we'll rule the universe.
Merlin: Yeah, you know that guy loves amputations.
Merlin: I don't want to spoil the movies, but he loves an amputation.
Merlin: You ever think about how many amputations are in those movies?
Merlin: A lot of amputations.
Merlin: People losing hands right and left.
Merlin: Yes, I don't have a list of all of them.
Merlin: You know what, we should find out if there's a page somewhere of amputations in Star Wars.
Merlin: See, I don't want to spoil it for people, but we know Luke loses a hand.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: We know that.
Merlin: And together we'll rule the universe, father and son.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure.
Merlin: The lightning gives me blue braces.
Merlin: And then they take out the helmet and it can place the harmonica.
John: Oh, right.
John: Right, that one.
John: Yeah, where he's like, oh, you were right.
Merlin: Samuel L. Jackson.
Merlin: Samuel L. Jackson.
Merlin: I believe he loses an arm in one of the prequels.
Merlin: I didn't watch those.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Really?
John: Not at all.
John: No, no, no.
John: Wait.
John: Of the three of them, I saw the last one.
John: That's a good one.
John: That's the best one.
John: Man.
John: Well, I mean.
John: It was fine.
John: It was fine.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: I didn't watch the ones with the reggae guy.
John: I didn't watch the one.
Yeah.
John: Like Natalie Portman.
Merlin: The reggae guy.
John: I didn't want to see them.
Merlin: They didn't seem... I'm acquainted with a guy.
Merlin: So you're probably familiar with this idea of what are called fan edits, where people will go in and do different interesting things.
Merlin: They'll combine several movies into one.
Merlin: It's a very interesting subculture.
Merlin: Garfield without Garfield, right?
Merlin: Similar, yeah.
Merlin: Remix culture.
Merlin: Everything's a remix.
Merlin: Yeah, everything's a remix.
Merlin: But it's this guy I know who I got acquainted with because I was a giant fan of this.
Merlin: And he got kind of famous for a while when he did something called The Phantom Edit.
John: You know, that's the only kind of famous there is.
John: Tell me about it.
John: Kind of famous.
Merlin: Oh, it's the best kind of famous.
John: Kind of famous for a while.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Kind of famous.
John: Would you rather have permanently famous forever or kind of famous for a while?
John: Ask me if I'm happier now than I used to be.
John: here's one i never much happier much happier i i want to put i want to put a fork in your uh in your thing about that we have so many forks john i should be writing all this down but uh but uh i you know the whole like would you rather fly or be invisible thing which is like come on duh that's hodgman crack uh but someone in the form of my daughter yesterday said would you rather fly or be able to breathe underwater
Merlin: I'd rather be able to fly or breathe underwater.
John: And I had never, it had never occurred to me.
Merlin: I never had that one posed to me.
John: No, I'd never had that wrinkle.
John: Have you ever had that wrinkle?
Merlin: Never had that wrinkle.
Merlin: Back when I had marijuana, these were the kinds of things one would talk about.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: um but i haven't given a lot i mean the thing is you know here's the problem you know there's a genie's curse in here somewhere of course right there's gonna aha but if you got you blah blah blah it's like of course i want to fly i don't dream about breathing underwater i dream about flying one of my most distinct most of my several of my distinct memories from childhood my dreams that i remember involve flying yes yeah but think about it now okay would you rather fly or breathe underwater
John: Go.
Merlin: This is the genie's going to get me.
Merlin: I'd rather fly.
John: Let me have it.
John: I thought about this a lot.
John: I don't think there's a wrong answer.
John: It's not like...
John: It's not like a flyer be invisible, and if you say fly, then you're just, I don't know, it's like a statement about your morality.
Merlin: Didn't Hodgman stipulate that in his famous This American Life episode, back when he was famous, that he— I've been famous for a while.
Merlin: No, come on.
Merlin: I didn't say that.
Merlin: I whispered that.
Merlin: Sotto voce.
Merlin: Sotto voce.
Merlin: Didn't he?
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: Even before he was famous.
Merlin: I think this is back when he was a literary agent.
Merlin: And he would be on the This American Life podcast, which is my first exposure to him.
Merlin: Big ups.
Merlin: Big fan.
Merlin: Big ups, yeah.
Merlin: He did the famous episode on, I want to say, flying versus invisibility.
John: Yeah, this was one of his signatures.
Merlin: And it was kind of what it had come down to.
Merlin: Sort of extrovert versus, I don't know, I know you don't listen to the radio.
Merlin: I think it came down to extrovert versus introvert.
John: I don't listen to the radio, but I do have some experience listening to John Hodgman.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I've lost several hours of sleep listening to John Hodgman because I wasn't allowed to leave until he was done.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I sat in his little chalet, and I'm trying to remember.
Merlin: It was something that seemed like a small issue at the time, but I was compelled to stay.
Merlin: No, you are often compelled to stay.
Merlin: He kept saying, just a moment.
Merlin: Just a moment.
Merlin: Just a moment, Merlin, man.
Merlin: That's not a moment, John.
John: No, I believe that... Can we just say for the record, we're bagging on John Hodgman, but he's a really nice, very funny, very smart guy.
John: Yeah, I don't think anyone's worried that you and I are coming out against John Hodgman.
Merlin: Are we dragging him, John?
Merlin: Is that what this is called?
John: Are we dragging him?
John: You know what?
John: Anything is possible.
John: You know what?
John: Today is anything can happen.
John: He has so much dignity.
Merlin: You two have, you both, in different ways.
Merlin: Well, you have so much fucking dignity.
John: There's a lot of dignity in the room.
John: I've been there.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And he plays the ukulele.
John: No, I think he said that if you want to be invisible, there's something about it.
John: You're a sneaky person.
John: If you want to fly, you're like a pure hearted person.
John: But in the end, the only answer is invisibility.
John: Because, come on, give me a break.
Merlin: I mean, God, this is really bad.
Merlin: You would be invisible?
Merlin: You'd want to be invisible?
Merlin: Rather than fly?
Merlin: Yes, absolutely.
Merlin: You're kidding.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: That's utterly perplexing to me.
Merlin: Maybe this is the point of the exercise.
Merlin: That's utterly perplexing to me.
Merlin: And also, I think breathe underwater is better than flying.
Ah!
Merlin: Here's how I want to be able to fly.
Merlin: I'm not even that ambitious.
Merlin: I'm not going to chase a crow.
Merlin: I want to go and I want to be able to take a little hop and fly approximately four feet off the ground.
Merlin: Let's even say at the speed of my Segway scooter.
Merlin: I don't even need to go fast.
Merlin: I don't need to go high.
Merlin: I don't need to go far.
Merlin: I just would like to be able to fly a little bit.
Merlin: That's what I did when I was a child having dreams.
Merlin: I'd fly around the family room.
Merlin: Ooh, shoo.
John: whoosh whoosh i'd fly around the living room just between four and 14 feet at a time just like i rolled a 17 uh does that um if you went out if you went out if you walked out of your house right now yeah and you could do short fly okay okay okay imagine the walgreens if i could go to the walgreens in one hop or in like a superman 1940s hop
John: Oh, like up and then just sort of always keeping your feet like parallel or level with the ground type of thing?
John: Do you remember the movie?
John: You're standing up the whole time?
Merlin: Kind of.
Merlin: Do you remember the terrifying TV movie from 1979 called Salem's Lot based on the Stephen King?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That movie scared me profoundly.
Merlin: There's a scene.
Merlin: It's not Lance Kerwin.
Merlin: It's the other guy where I think where he floats up to the window and...
Merlin: And he's all zombie looking.
Merlin: If I look at it again, it'll probably look silly, but it scared the living shit out of me when I was 13.
Merlin: It was genuinely scary.
Merlin: But I want to be able to do a ghost.
Merlin: I want to be at a ghost height.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Am I answering your question?
John: I mean, I wouldn't mind a good hop.
John: No, I think a ghost height is a perfect description of an altitude.
John: Okay.
Merlin: So that's somewhere between like four and eight feet, probably, depending on how it's zoned.
John: You don't typically see ghosts at 25 feet, do you?
Merlin: No, you don't, especially in contrast to where you're standing.
Merlin: You rarely look very – you don't look more than one story up to see a ghost unless they're a window, in which case I would reset the height to the floor of the building that they're in.
Merlin: You follow me?
John: Exactly.
John: I do exactly.
John: So, yeah, a ghost is going to hover –
John: in such a way that the hem of their sheet isn't going to get tangled in anything, but they might have to navigate around some lamps on tables.
John: That's about where a ghost is.
Merlin: Kind of like when my daughter walks around with a blanket around her and knocks things over.
Merlin: yeah right but if you're a ghost you've gotten good at that you've you've learned to account for your uh your ghost what do you call a tail or a skirt or a train a ghost train your train your ghost train okay uh so yeah interesting that so you would like to fly at ghost height
Merlin: to walgreens in an upright position no no no sort of sort of like i'm in the middle of a dive from not a high board and not a low board but like a medium like a ghost board i would say forward you're nosing forward i would say my front would be slightly up i would be floating to the two if i were in place like in neutral i think it would look like i'm just floating like a ghost
John: But would it have the same mechanics as a Segway?
John: Like if you leaned forward as a ghost, would you start to travel?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: I think it would take some getting used to and you would just adjust the balance of your weight.
John: Then you'd lean back and you would kind of come back to an upright static float.
John: And a lot of the teens would point and laugh.
John: No, I think that, I mean, although that sounds charming.
John: Yeah, I cannot wait to hear this.
John: Imagine this.
John: Imagine this.
John: You walk down to the end of the street there.
John: Yeah.
John: Walk over the big busy street over whatever the train tracks.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: Out on the pier or whatever.
John: Go over to the dunes.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then you just keep walking.
Mm-hmm.
John: into the sea and you still are and i mean you probably have to wear a warm outfit because like a surfer i might want to wear something that's insulated yeah because being able to breathe underwater doesn't mean you're suddenly like you have a layer of fat that's five inches thick well done yes um then you have you go because i i'm avoiding genie's curses right and left here
John: Also, I would stipulate to the genie that I can still breathe in the air as well.
John: Oh, nice try.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Thanks, genie.
John: I don't want to live under the sea for the rest of my life.
Merlin: If I talk to a genie, I'm bringing a magic lawyer.
John: Yeah.
John: But then in the water, and then all of a sudden you're still breathing.
John: You see, and then you're surrounded by octopuses and... You can go find turtles, or turtles can find you.
John: Turtles and dolphins, and you can just keep walking.
John: You can walk, walk.
Merlin: I could go down to Ocean Beach and literally walk into the Pacific Ocean.
Merlin: What's up now?
Merlin: I'm breathing water.
John: Here's the question I guess I would have for the genie is like, what about pressure equalization?
John: If I can breathe water, can I go like...
John: 500 feet deep and not get the bend?
Merlin: Oh, no, I totally see what you're saying.
Merlin: If you tried to go to, say, a Marianas Trench and you go in there feeling real, you could jump off the back of some kind of a large ship.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And maybe the Navy took you out there on a decommissioned battleship.
Merlin: You jump into the sea over the Marianas Trench, and you're like, hey, this is baller.
Merlin: I can breathe water.
Merlin: But you don't want your eyeballs to explode, right?
John: No, at what point are you going to get crushed by the pressure?
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know either.
John: I don't know enough.
John: That's not included in the wish, though.
John: Well, so you'd have to do some research.
John: You'd have to do some advanced research.
John: Because I wouldn't want to be like, ha-ha, and then, yeah, your eyeballs will explode.
John: But I don't know about that.
John: Because, you know, those famous divers that got...
John: that went down in the bathysphere or whatever and were all, they could be, you know, once they had acclimated, they were breathing helium or whatever.
John: Once they had acclimated, they were out in the water, deep, deep, deep underwater.
Merlin: I am so intrigued.
Merlin: Well, I started out intrigued about this psychologically in terms of why you would prefer that, but now I'm also interested psychologically in how this potentially dovetails with you not wanting to be stuck in a police car with a bag on your head or buried alive.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But you enjoy the feeling of being in the water such that you would prefer to breathe water rather than fly to Walgreens.
Right.
John: Here is the key word.
John: Yeah.
John: Breathe.
John: Breathe.
John: See, I do not like to be in the water or in a cop car with a bag over my head because I cannot breathe.
John: But if I was in the water and could breathe, what would I be claustrophobic about?
John: No.
Merlin: You just hang out there as long as you could probably.
Merlin: Bring a sandwich.
John: That does sound nice.
John: Yeah.
John: That's, I mean, if you could, okay, here's another one.
John: Yeah.
John: uh would you let's see oh wait no well i was thinking in terms of if somebody asked me what my what what my superpower would be well that's fine we can pivot to superpowers i mean i think these are all somewhat notionally magical things that one can imagine i mean you used to conjure orbs or you tried you walk home from school and try to conjure an orb but it never occurred to me to ever say that what my superpower would be would be to just never get sick
John: Yeah, you sound like you got a little cold right now.
John: I got a little cold, and I realized as I was getting my cold this time, I was like, wow, the actual superpower of all superpowers would be to just never get sick.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That's a very grown-up defensive strategy.
Merlin: Some of my favorite superheroes are ones who have what are regarded as defensive skills.
Merlin: That's the thing they end up doing on the team.
Merlin: In your case, you're saying something like, I'm never going to have another sinus infection.
Merlin: I'm never going to need to suddenly and unexpectedly poop, right?
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: You can maybe include it under the aegis of, like, I can hold my water for as long as I want.
Merlin: Is that a form of being sick?
Merlin: That's a form of being sick.
Merlin: That's an existential sickness, a sickness under death.
John: Wouldn't that be nice where you're like, I don't have to pee.
Merlin: I'll pee when I want to pee.
Merlin: It would be like having a hoagie where you'd say like, there's no, I mean, like, I don't need to have a hoagie once to twice overnight.
Merlin: I can wait for the hoagie and I'll just stay here.
Merlin: Do you follow?
Merlin: I'll stay here in bed.
Merlin: I don't need to go get up and eat an entire fucking hoagie.
Merlin: I don't need to go to Philly for a hoagie.
Merlin: I'm just going to stay here and sleep.
Merlin: And I'm going to, I'm going to think about all the things that are concerning me.
Merlin: Cause if you get up me, I go, I get up to pee and now I'm thinking, and for me, that's eating a hoagie.
Merlin: But no, you understand what I'm saying?
Merlin: You can dispatch this as needed, right?
Merlin: As quoted, as they say on the menus, you're going to be able to deploy that.
Merlin: I wonder what's included under not getting sick.
Merlin: Because you don't want to be... Here's the other part.
Merlin: Here's the monkey's paw, the O. Henry.
Merlin: But you don't want to be like a Dracula, right?
John: Do you want to live forever?
John: Well, this is...
John: I guess the million-dollar question.
John: I don't want to get sick.
John: Now, is cancer included in sick?
Merlin: Cancer is a form of being sick.
Merlin: I don't have Wikipedia open.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure that's a form.
Merlin: But if I were the genie, or if I were the adjudicating genie judge, I would look at this and say, that's a very broad reading of the law on sickness.
John: Adjudicating genie judge is something I want to be.
Merlin: Isn't that a Ben Gibbard ban?
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Mack Weldon.
Merlin: You can learn more about Mack Weldon right now by visiting MackWeldon.com.
Merlin: I'm going to do this one a little bit different, and I'll tell you why.
Merlin: There are two things that I really like.
Merlin: about when Mack Weldon sponsors the show.
Merlin: The one that's very important that I want to talk about in a second is that I genuinely actually really like their clothes.
Merlin: I really like their stuff a lot.
Merlin: But the second thing I really like a lot, and I'm going to tear back the curtain for a minute.
Merlin: Here's what Mack Weldon does.
Merlin: When they send us what to say on the ad, here's what it says at the very beginning.
Merlin: Now, usually I have to tell you, I'm going to rip the curtain from the curtain.
Merlin: Usually when you see red letters at the top of an ad read, that means there's like a million things you're not supposed to say.
Merlin: or you've got to give them a free ad, or there's some kind of legal thing.
Merlin: Here's what it says here.
Merlin: It says, use these as notes for talking points, not a copy or a script.
Merlin: Have fun and say what you want.
Merlin: You know how to talk to your audience better than anyone else.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: There are no rules.
Merlin: Really, they are.
Merlin: Just don't use certain words or talk negatively about competitors.
Merlin: That's all fine.
Merlin: But it says, do what's best for the show, and if that means making jokes, swearing, or making up characters or situations, then do it.
Merlin: You just don't get this.
Merlin: You don't get this from the sponsors very much.
Merlin: And I think they know that what they've got here is a very, very good thing.
Merlin: And I want to tell you about it.
Merlin: You know about Mack Weldon.
Merlin: You know they make the underwear.
Merlin: They got the silver underwear.
Merlin: They got all these different things.
Merlin: But I love their shirts.
Merlin: And I own several drawers full.
Merlin: full of their shirts.
Merlin: I'm not proud of this.
Merlin: This is not something I'm bragging about.
Merlin: I'm just telling you that when I first heard about Mack Weldon, I thought, oh, yeah, they're the underpants guys.
Merlin: And, you know, they do that.
Merlin: But they also make these fantastic shirts, and I really, really love them.
Merlin: I'm going to tell you three kinds of shirts that I really like, and if you need shirts, I want you to think about getting these.
Merlin: One is called the 18-hour jersey crew neck undershirt, bright white large.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: This is a white...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, one of my primary pieces, and you will see this on me almost everywhere that I go.
Merlin: This is my, I'm going to say get this.
Merlin: I'm going to say get the Pima long sleeve t-shirt and get it in your size and color.
Merlin: I often get it in Pima long sleeve t-shirt, true black, large.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I have a lot of these.
Merlin: I have them in black.
Merlin: I got them in blue.
Merlin: I got them in green.
Merlin: I got them in light blue.
Merlin: It's a fabulous piece, and that's what I wear all the time.
Merlin: This is my uniform, and I actually legit love this.
Merlin: Can you tell from my voice that I actually really like this?
Merlin: I want you to go buy this, okay?
Merlin: Now, the new one.
Merlin: Now, this one's a little more costly, but this is really, really...
Merlin: nice it's called the tech cashmere long sleeve i get it in charcoal heather large okay this one's going to cost you a little bit more but this is maybe the most comfortable shirt that i've ever worn in my life i i i bought enough of them so that i can sleep in them and walk around and those can be clean clothes it's mac weldon i want you to go check these folks out you know they let me say whatever i want i can even make up characters uh i haven't really thought about this let's see um
Merlin: Hello, I'm the Mack Weldon guy, and you should get some shirts.
Merlin: I should redo this, but I'm not going to because they said I should have fun with it.
Merlin: You heard this advertisement on the show, and I want you to try it out.
Merlin: I want you to go to Mack Weldon, and here's the thing.
Merlin: You go to MackWeldon.com and they're going to give you a discount off your clothes.
Merlin: You go to MackWeldon.com and you can get 20% off your first order using the promo code ROTL.
Merlin: That's R-O-T-L.
Merlin: Please go to MackWeldon.com.
Merlin: It supports the show and maybe almost as importantly because money is very important to me.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Maybe almost as importantly, they let me say what I want in this ad.
Merlin: And what I want to say in this ad is I really genuinely like Mack Weldon clothing.
Merlin: I'd like you to check it out.
Merlin: You go to MackWeldon.com, 20% off with the offer code ROTL.
Merlin: Our thanks to Mack Weldon for giving me so many great shirts.
Merlin: I mean, for money, but for the shirts and the underwear and the socks and all of the things, our thanks to Mack Weldon for supporting Roderick on the line and all the great shows.
John: Oh, yes.
John: Yes, that is.
John: You're right, sir.
John: So I don't want to get cancer.
Merlin: Okay, but let's just go with what's definitely covered.
Merlin: And I'm going to give you a very, what I consider a broad, bespoke reading of the law that is for you and me.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: And you can tell me if you think there needs to be some extra codicils.
Merlin: I'm going to say, first of all, you just don't get the common cold anymore.
Merlin: You don't get the cold.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You don't get the flu.
Merlin: You don't get, like, the World War I flu.
Merlin: Are you saying no flu?
John: No flu.
Merlin: I'm saying no flu.
John: No flu.
Merlin: What about pneumonia?
Merlin: Could you get pneumonia?
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: Especially if you breathe water.
John: If you breathe water, you're already covered on pneumonia because that's water in the lungs.
John: I feel like we got to separate this from being able to breathe water.
John: Okay, fair.
John: I feel like if this is... One monkey's paw finger at a time.
John: That's right.
John: So no sick, which means... No cold.
John: So how do you avoid being a Dracula?
Merlin: I don't know, because here, this is actually super interesting to me, because what about just the wear and tear on a human body?
Merlin: Does arthritis count as sick?
John: I don't know if arthritis counts as sick, and I don't know if... I feel like 90% of... 99% of the way that people die...
John: is basically one or another version of sick yes all right i mean i guess i guess they're all the people that die from like falling and getting shot and stuff yeah but like all of the natural ways of dying
Merlin: are all really when it boils down to it like what happened oh in the end they got pneumonia i gotta learn the definition of natural causes because i think that's that's a little confusing but i think under the i'm gonna say it again because it's a legal term under the ages of what we call natural causes that includes a lot of being sick
John: Yes.
Merlin: It felt like my grandmother, my grandmother, who was very small and smoked all the time.
Merlin: One time she slid off my this is a grotesque story.
Merlin: So prepare yourself.
Merlin: This is when she's in her early 80s.
Merlin: She was visiting my uncle's family and she was sitting on his bed and slid off the bed because she was an old skinny.
Merlin: She weighed 80 pounds.
Merlin: She slid off the bed.
Merlin: Her knee hit the floor and she broke her fucking femur.
Merlin: ow you know how hard it is to break a femur well yes i heard in a comedy routine that that's the single most next to like maybe giving birth that's the most painful thing you can have is a broken femur she had a broken femur what kind of comedy routine was that was from the 90s it was really funny i see yeah and so and so yeah okay all my only point being like i i'm gonna be honest god love you grandma i miss you uh but i don't think breaking your femur on my cousin's bed counts as sick
John: No, although what probably... Did she die from it?
John: No, no.
John: No, but if she had died from it, probably... She was made from tough stuff.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: That old stock, right?
Merlin: The second or third time she came out of a surgery because of smoking, she berated the doctors because she wasn't allowed to smoke in the hospital.
John: Isn't that fun?
John: Yeah, the era when Grammys were berating doctors for not being able to smoke.
John: And the doctors were probably like, sorry, lady.
John: Only I'm allowed to smoke.
John: I'm a professional.
John: But no, I think that she probably, Grandma, and I don't know how she died, but I'm going to guess that in the end, when she did die, it was from some kind of being sick.
John: No, it was from being sick, for sure.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Everybody in my family – so we haven't had any – and I realize I'm owning my privilege here.
Merlin: My family, as far as I know, has not met a violent end or – so for example, my – I call him my stepfather, my step-grandfather.
Merlin: But he was married to my femur grandma.
Merlin: They were married for 40 years.
Merlin: His wife had died.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So, for example, my grandfather, he died at 46.
John: No.
Merlin: My dad died at 45.
Merlin: Jesus.
Merlin: Now, so my grandmother was widowed in, oddly enough, 1946 because my grandfather was born in 1900.
Merlin: Don't be creepy.
Merlin: Now, she remarried a few years later, Bob Kekritz.
Merlin: Now, his wife had died in an automobile accident, which is how a ton of people died in the 50s.
Merlin: Oh, Bob.
Merlin: But let's be honest.
John: Automobile dying.
John: It's not sick.
John: Is it?
John: That's not sick.
John: Well, if you get in an automobile crash, and then you get into the hospital, and they intubate you in order to keep you breathing, and in the process of intubating, you inhale some vomit.
John: Maybe they put in a MRSA virus.
Merlin: If you get a MRSA virus, that's sick.
John: That's sick, right?
John: Or if you get an infection in the lungs or something, that's all sick.
John: Okay.
John: Really interesting.
John: Interesting.
John: If you have a superpower where you don't get sick, I wouldn't go in and stop armed robberies and stuff.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Yes.
John: You're like, I'm impervious.
John: And then they just shoot you.
John: Yes.
John: I'm sorry to say shooting is not sick.
John: Right.
John: But in terms of real-world application of superpowers, I cannot think of a power that I –
Merlin: want more as someone who is who like has has uh sickness you're so you're so sturdy in so many ways but you and forgive my saying yeah um you do seem to get things like colds fairly easily i get i get colds and that becomes that becomes your as they say that's your that's your achilles heel
Merlin: as long as you are you're fully armed you got plate armor you got your armor class is very high but you still have a vulnerability which is that like if you get near a baby you might die like a sick baby sick baby because like in my case i go to where my kid is i don't touch anything like i'm not gonna touch a doorknob i'm not gonna touch anything yeah like a school at school at school i'm not a toucher how do you feel about uh what's your likelihood of getting sick
Merlin: In any given situation?
Merlin: Would you say you're in a high likelihood?
Merlin: I mean, one doesn't want to jinx oneself.
Merlin: But like, for example, that recent thing I went through where I thought it was allergies, and you can hear I'm still a little bit nasal.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure that was actually a cold.
Merlin: It was approximately a one and a half week cold.
Merlin: And it was so not debilitating that I could mistake it for allergies.
Merlin: I don't get sick very often.
Merlin: But still, even though I don't currently suffer under this, I would still like a diarrhea codicil.
Merlin: I would like it to be included that you don't get sudden explosive diarrhea.
Merlin: Can that be included in sick?
Merlin: If that's a chronic disease, if one has, if one were to say for the sake of argument, one had an inflammatory bowel disease, does that count as sick?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: Isn't disease sick?
Merlin: I think that counts.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Right.
Right.
John: So there you go.
John: There goes your colon cancer.
John: There goes your lung disease.
John: There goes your heart disease.
Merlin: You're getting pretty broad, but that is a good one.
Merlin: You really want those UFOs to scan you, don't you?
Merlin: I kind of do, right?
Merlin: Wouldn't that be nice?
Merlin: We call it a hard reboot.
Merlin: Just do a hard reboot.
Merlin: We'll boot into a disk repair mode and just fix all the fragments and bundles.
John: You know, when I was in fifth grade, I used to get a wart on my thumb.
John: And I would sit and I would cut it and I would stick needles in it.
John: And I had this whole relationship to this wart on my thumb and I would get it burned off and I would come back.
John: No, I never got a wart anywhere else.
John: Weird.
John: I just had this wart on my thumb.
John: Was it like you think you could be a curse?
John: I didn't cross any witches.
John: I never licked a frog.
John: Why would I get cursed?
John: I was already cursed.
John: Yeah, that's true.
John: I was cursed to be living in the 1970s.
John: I didn't mean an additional curse.
John: And I actually enjoyed the wart.
John: And the only reason that I was taken to the doctor to get the wart burned off was that I futzed with it so much.
John: I was constantly like,
John: poking it and cutting it and stuff.
John: And the teachers were like, why are you bleeding?
John: And I'm like, oh, I don't know.
John: I cut my ward off with an X-Acto knife.
John: Well, it's a project.
John: Every kid needs a project.
John: Yeah, it's something to... I mean, I have a friend that sits and futzes with her thumb so much that she worries the fingernail off.
John: She worries her nail off with just touches?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, it's better than cutting yourself.
John: But if you sit and scrape your thumb until your thumb is like...
John: I mean, so anyway, I had a wart to work on.
John: One day I got it burned off.
John: It never came back.
John: I've never had a wart.
Merlin: You got the roots out.
John: You got the wart roots.
John: I guess so.
John: But don't I have warts in me?
Merlin: Well, I got two pieces of good news for you.
Merlin: Number one, I just checked.
Merlin: I just checked your ghost insurance.
Merlin: And first of all, you are covered for warts.
Merlin: You will no longer get warts.
Merlin: And I got some really big news for you.
Merlin: Pop the non-alcoholic champagne.
Merlin: No more stress bumps.
Merlin: Huh, what now?
Merlin: Oh, what who?
Merlin: No more stress bumps.
Merlin: You're not going to get stress bumps anymore.
Merlin: That's a form of sick.
Merlin: Right, because that is a sick, right?
Merlin: It's a sick.
Merlin: Uncle Licky comes in and you interact with a bad man and you get cold sores.
Merlin: Not anymore, buddy.
Merlin: You've just received absolution, Domini Domini.
John: So here's a question, though.
John: This is one for the genie.
John: If you say, my superpower is that I don't get sick...
John: Does that retroactively include all the sick that you already are?
Merlin: I'm sorry, it does not.
Merlin: You don't get pre-existing genie conditions.
Merlin: So I would continue.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: So let's say you did still have a wart.
Merlin: Would that be included in your package?
John: So the difference between asking the genie and going to the UFOs is, if you go to the UFOs, you say, put me in the tank.
John: It's the same tank that they put...
John: the guy in Starship Troopers Inn.
John: Or like Luke's the Bacta tank.
John: Luke's Bacta tank.
John: Back to the future.
John: You get into the tank, and the aliens go... But you're not unconscious, because they're asking you questions.
John: It's like an MRI.
John: The whole point is that you stay awake for it.
John: And they find all the stuff that they can find.
John: They're like, oh, right, you've got like, sure, we're going to get all this out of here.
John: We're going to get all this.
John: And then they're going to say, what else?
John: And then you say, well, actually... One shot, right?
Merlin: You don't get to come back and re-up.
Merlin: It's not like owning a Volkswagen.
Merlin: You're going to have to come in and you get one shot at the UFOs and now you're the anchorman.
John: You're in the tank, right?
Merlin: And you're breathing water, yeah.
John: In my case, I would say...
John: My fourth toe, what you would call your ring toe, I guess, is too long.
John: Oh, it's an aesthetic judgment.
John: No, it's not aesthetic because it's too long and it doesn't fit in shoes.
John: You need prescription shoes.
John: Yeah, my ring toe has to bend in order to go into shoes.
John: Oh, no, you need shoes with a large toe box.
John: Yeah, a wide, fat toe box, but that's not how shoes are made.
John: No.
John: I mean, I could go to some store downtown called...
John: big man's big, you know, big toe box or whatever, but I don't want to go to that store.
John: The shoes are so ugly.
John: They're terrible.
John: They're Boris Karloff shoes.
Oh,
John: So I would say I just want to be able to wear all kinds of shoes.
Merlin: You can make your case.
Merlin: So you're going to make a case that's not aesthetic.
Merlin: This is practical.
Merlin: This is infrastructure.
John: You're going to need me.
John: The UFOs are going to need me as the anchorman.
Merlin: There's going to be some walking involved.
John: Let's be honest.
John: Sure.
John: So what I would say is, can you shorten my fourth toe on each side by one by the dimension of one knuckle?
John: Like, don't.
John: Take a knuckle away.
John: One toe knuckle?
John: Yeah, just take it back.
John: Just like ratchet everything back.
Merlin: Is it harder than the equivalent toes?
Merlin: Like if it were like a stock chart, would it look unusual that you had a blast of activity in this one toe?
Merlin: I have a lot of toes.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And I think in general... Are you looking at them right now?
John: I'm looking at them.
John: I can tell.
John: I can tell.
John: In general, the three toes in the middle, like if you look at my big toe and my little toe.
John: Yes.
John: They look like normal toes on a normal foot.
John: But then the three middle toes are all a little bit.
John: They're long and – and like they're articulate, right?
John: Like I can grab things.
John: Like prehensile, yeah.
John: Yeah, I can do stuff with them.
John: But they're all a little long.
John: And actually now that I'm looking at them, if I was talking to the UFOs, I'd be like, you see that?
John: You just bring all three of those toes back.
John: Just bring them back like one knuckle and just make them look –
Merlin: I mean, this is a little bit out of UFO left field, but do you have concerns that – well, you take somebody like you and the way you got to how you are today, it's like you've been through a lot of stuff and you decided to be a certain way.
Merlin: Do you worry at all that the UFOs are going to take away or –
Merlin: there's a word I can't use here, or going to screw up the part of you that continues to develop because of a given sickness or, in your case, toe deformity.
Merlin: Do you worry that this will make you a different person whom you don't want to be?
Merlin: Well, so this is the Jennifer Grey question, right?
John: Oh, sure is.
John: Oh, hondo percent.
John: You go in to try and fix a nose that you think is problematic and it ends up, that was your superpower the whole time.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Nobody wants a drill.
Merlin: They want a hole in the wall.
Merlin: And in the case of Jennifer Grey, she would have been better off.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You show an after picture and you go, yeah, that's a pretty lady.
Merlin: You show a before picture and you go, that's distinctive.
John: I mean, the after picture, you're like, who's this?
Merlin: Who's mom is this?
Merlin: Literally, literally, who's this?
John: So if I take my three too long toes and I ratchet them back...
John: I am risking the possibility that the toe adversity that I faced throughout my life played some role in making me... Yes, that's exactly right.
Merlin: It's like the St.
Merlin: Equus.
Merlin: Moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: You don't know how your toes might have impacted you.
Merlin: Right.
John: Or do you?
John: Well, I wonder if you are made as I am.
John: I'm a made guy now.
John: right yeah uh i still you know i still have to chip it's usually only italian guys yeah yeah no i chip 10 up to paulie and he chips 10 up to the to the skipper but uh but he didn't move fast because he didn't need to move fast you could you can fix my toes now yeah and i'm not gonna lose that i'm not gonna lose the
John: Like I'm not going to step out one day in a perfect size 12 shoe that I just got from Zappos for 25 bucks and not encounter uncomfortable toe rubbing by the end of the day and suddenly be like, I'd have no sympathy for the poor.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
John: Okay.
John: But I think there are some –
John: optional modifications if I'm in the tank and I'm being honest and I'm talking to the, to the, to the.
Merlin: I have a feeling they'd know if you weren't being honest.
Merlin: I don't know how they know.
Merlin: Sure they would.
Merlin: But I think they would know.
Merlin: I think something in the, in the back door would tell them that you're fibbing a little bit.
John: But I have to assume that they're doing this for their benefit because I'm going to be a better anchor man.
John: And at a certain point, if I start cutting into the, to the bone and I'm like, you know what I'd really like?
John: I'd really like if I had a 32-inch waist, there might be an alarm that goes off that's like, wait a minute.
Merlin: Yeah, so preference detected.
Merlin: Preference detected.
Merlin: We know that this would be a preference.
Merlin: We don't want you playing hurt.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You're going to have a job to do.
Merlin: So, I mean, I assume that if anyone hears this, they'll know that the anchorman is the person, if I understand correctly from your model of this, and the reason the UFOs are letting your body have a hard reboot, is that it's going to enable you to be a healthy interlocutor
John: Interlocutor.
John: How do you say it?
John: Locutor, yes.
Merlin: You're going to be the helper between the UFOs and the people.
Merlin: And you're going to be able to, like Milton, you're going to defend the ways of UFO to man.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And arguably vice versa, because they're probably open to that.
John: Yes, and in order to perform that role, people of Earth have to look at me and feel sympathetic, right?
John: They have to say, like, this guy's one of us.
John: And if I show up with, like, those weird White Walker super light eyes...
John: and the 32 inch waist and perfectly formed toes yes you get too many of those people are like this guy's not no he's not one of us this is some kind of weird hybrid thing and and you know the trust goes out of the relationship at that point
John: Right.
John: So what is the... Like, for instance, this finger over here... Yes.
John: I can no longer make, like, a really solid fist anymore.
John: And that's because you got attacked that one time?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Well, okay, so no, that finger...
John: Also, so that finger was broken, but I was young and it healed and I can make a fine fist.
John: The other finger is the one that I broke.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, when you punch the guy?
John: Yeah, with those guys.
John: Okay, okay.
John: And so that fist just doesn't quite feel as fine.
John: Fresh.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't need to make fists.
Merlin: I have that in a joint.
Merlin: I don't know if it's arthritis.
Merlin: I have it in a joint of my middle finger on my right hand where it's getting a little nubby on the right side and I notice it.
Merlin: I've never punched a person that I'm aware of.
Merlin: But I'm sympathetic to what you're saying.
Merlin: Is that a pre-existing finger issue?
Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Because the thing is, when you speak, if I could say it, I don't know, this is your gig, but I think you're going to need to be addressing a lot of people through some kind of future media.
Merlin: And you might at some point to make your point, you'll probably have some kind of space PowerPoint, but you'll at some point be gesturing to underline a point and you don't want people distracted by your fucked up fingers.
Merlin: Or if you're wearing sandals, I mean, you wouldn't wear sandals because you don't travel in sandals, right?
Merlin: But you don't want your toes or your fingers to be a distraction.
John: Well, here's the thing.
John: I mean, I'm communicating to billions of people.
John: And I have to feel like part of being the anchorman will involve some kind of babble fish thing.
John: where I can just naturally speak in all the world's languages.
Merlin: There's technology to turn whatever you're saying into common tongue, for sure.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And to make it seem as though I'm not being translated, but I'm actually speaking in the local vernacular, you know, my thoughts are being communicated in those languages rather than being translated from English.
Merlin: Including analogies, phrases.
Merlin: Let's make sure it's included, right?
Merlin: That's all included.
Merlin: It gets the tone right.
Merlin: And it isn't like a Chevy Noba.
Merlin: No.
John: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like Pepsi, raise your relatives from the dead.
Merlin: You're not going to run into one of those.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: You're not going to get one of those situations where you say something you think is going to be real normal and you now sound like a nut.
Merlin: They're going to take care of that with their machines.
John: Exactly.
John: So...
John: And the people who are on very remote islands in Indonesia are going to understand me not as someone who is speaking to them in Indonesian, a language that they understand, but in their local way of speaking.
John: Oh, wow.
John: So that I would be able to communicate to them differently.
John: Not by saying, like, this is an extraterrestrial, but by saying, like, oh, this is, here is how we are going, how we would understand.
Merlin: If you were to say, for example, you know, hey, guys, don't shit the bed.
Merlin: Like, the tone of what you're saying would come across correctly, and it wouldn't be offensive.
Merlin: And maybe it would involve something about the hunter-gatherer culture that would be unique to them.
Merlin: That would be fine.
Merlin: The tone would still be fine.
John: So now this is an interesting thing about this tone thing, because...
John: Would it be valuable, more valuable or less valuable to be able to code switch even within English?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: So that if I said, all right, let's not shit the bed here, that that would get translated into grandma English.
John: Oh, so in Provo, nobody's mad.
John: Right.
John: Or like, you know, like I would be using South Carolina vernacular.
John: It would come across as something like, like, don't spoil the Jell-O.
John: Right, right.
John: Or at appropriate moments, I would in some places say, oh, bless their heart.
Merlin: Bless their heart, yes.
John: And in other places, I would be like, this is not acceptable.
Merlin: The thing is, they have ways.
Merlin: It's not that they lack the technology to do the things that you need as the anchorman.
Merlin: I think that's table stakes.
Merlin: It's that they need a human.
Merlin: who can be the anchorman and utilize that technology with your thoughts and words and gestures in some cases.
John: But at what point do I lose... Do I lose the sympathy, the feeling of fellowship with...
John: seven billion of the world's people because there are going to be a lot of people you know representation matters there are going to be a lot of people in the world who are like well so they picked an American cis musician yeah they pissed you know like it's another guy on TV right it's a guy because everybody's seen TV yeah why didn't they cast a different anchor man
John: Well, I don't think most of the billions of people on Earth are going to think that way.
John: But they're going to say, this guy is a guy on TV.
John: What does he have to say to me?
John: And if I'm speaking Tagalog or whatever, there's going to be that surprise of like, whoa, this guy knows...
John: Uh, like he's, he's, he's, he talks just like me.
John: That's cool.
John: Get over that surprise.
John: But then on closer examination, if they're like his cuticles look really good.
Merlin: Oh, he's not, he doesn't work for a living.
John: Yes, right.
Merlin: So do you get a physical filter as well?
Merlin: I mean, before we go down the road of like, you know, should this look like a dark-skinned man?
Merlin: Like, should this look like, I don't want to get into it, but you see where I'm going with this.
Merlin: How much of your physical manifestation will be also filtered by the UFO technology?
John: That's the thing.
John: It has to be me.
John: Otherwise, why would they, you know, they could just.
John: They know it's you.
Merlin: Even if they don't know why, they know it's you.
John: Yeah, otherwise they just do a hologram that looks like Joe, everybody.
Merlin: But you could just buy a Teddy Ruxpin.
Merlin: Anything that can emulate human speech and respond well to the APIs of the various alien technologies would be fine.
John: You just use Jodie Foster's dad.
Merlin: Jodie Foster's dad.
Merlin: Right, or Jodie Foster's army, for that matter.
Merlin: Or really anybody in an escape band.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: It's not a bad idea.
John: You could just have orbs, but they don't want orbs.
John: They want me.
Merlin: Now, see, an orb would be upsetting in a lot of places, a floating orb.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: I assume you're floating.
Merlin: I don't know if you're floating because you could be breathing underwater.
Merlin: But I would be nice if you're... No, I'm at about a ghost altitude.
Merlin: It'd be nice if you're... Okay, so are you going to look... You know what?
Merlin: We're getting too deep into the implementation details because I'm sure they will work that out.
Merlin: It's not like you're going to show up and tell them how to do this.
Merlin: It could be that you look like an Obi-Wan Kenobi with NTSC scan lines, in the original version anyway.
Merlin: You're kind of a blue presence.
Yeah.
Merlin: Luke.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Use the force, mate.
Merlin: Oi, Luke.
John: Oi.
Merlin: Is that called a chav?
Merlin: A shav?
John: What's he called?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe he's a SoundCloud rapper.
Merlin: Cool.
Merlin: Blimey.
Merlin: Use the force.
Merlin: Torch the lorry.
Merlin: can i can i can i go there can i can i explore and forgive me i i i i want to explore the back to tank in the room and i'm gonna ask you a difficult question i want you to answer as honestly as you can we've covered a lot of the things that the ufos are going to do for you and consequently for the world we've talked about the consideration of like what parts of me are me like how much do you want to leave on the alien cutting room floor how much of mental and emotional things are covered by sick
Merlin: Okay, do we take it as red?
Merlin: No more cold sores?
Merlin: Okay, passed.
Merlin: Let's move on to the next thing, right?
Merlin: We get that.
Merlin: What about what caused the cold sore apart from Uncle Licky?
Merlin: Do you get rid of the anxiety?
John: Interesting article in The New Yorker, I think, this month about a woman who was a very successful, high-achieving woman
John: A young woman who went to Harvard and along the way got diagnosed as bipolar and depressed and anxious and borderline.
John: And, you know, she was one of these contemporary people who collected unto themselves multiple, multiple diagnoses.
John: and was prescribed many, many things.
Merlin: Is this that thing Sean linked to, the challenge of going off psychiatric drugs?
John: Yes.
John: Okay, I haven't read it yet, but yeah, this looks fascinating.
John: Go ahead.
John: So read it, because as it goes, you get this, I mean, it was a survey for me of the experience of a lot of my friends, and it was the reason that I didn't ever take, I did not accept a diagnosis of bipolar for myself.
John: throughout the 80s and 90s and 2000s because I watched a couple of very good friends take Zoloft and Prozac and lithium and sometimes four or five different medications up and down.
John: If you find one that works, there's this whole thing you go through with finding the one that works without screwing you up.
John: You and I went through a long period with the Adderall and, you know.
Merlin: I got a lot to say about what I've been doing.
Merlin: But one thing I said to my shrink was, I said, I said, I want something that does this thing, but I don't want to be insane.
Merlin: And he said, that's why you came to me is you don't want to be insane.
Merlin: And I said, you get it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And sometimes the stuff they give you makes you a little insane.
John: Isn't that isn't that ironical?
John: That's a genie's fucking curse.
John: It is the genie's curse article like it.
John: You also feel in some ways sympathetic to the many, many, many psychiatrists and mental health professionals that are like, wow, she sounds.
John: You know, she's taking this medication and that stabilized this thing, but then we needed to give her this because she was, you know.
Merlin: Well, it's like the dead Kennedys say, one thing's fixed, another falls apart.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Trust your mechanic.
John: So by the time she got to be a person in her 30s, she had spent her entire adult life on like a pretty thick cocktail of pretty strong drugs and
John: to fix this disability that she that was first identified in her as an anxious 16 year old and she'd never lived a normal day and that was true for a whole big thick handful of people I knew and I think Sean wrestled with this too just like like a cocktail of prescriptions but most notably my friend Karen
John: who, you know, was always troubled and who was an early adopter of a lot of like this kind of diagnosis.
John: You know, she was the person that got me sober.
John: She was the one that took me to AA in my darkest hour.
John: And she and I've been friends since we were 10 years old.
John: And she'd gotten sober about six months before, and she credited my dad with getting her sober.
John: Oh my gosh.
John: I wouldn't hear a word from my dad, but my dad took her to her first meeting and walked her through that.
John: And then she bumped into me on the street in Seattle and she was like, you are a mess.
John: And I was like, ah, you're a mess.
Merlin: I'm not drunk.
Merlin: You're drunk.
Merlin: You're obviously intoxicated.
Merlin: You're out of order.
Merlin: You're obviously intoxicated.
Merlin: Nice fall.
John: And, uh, and so, so I always, Ronnie Dobbs, right?
John: Ronnie Dobbs.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: So you're, you're wandering around, not doing so great, but you're still a free spirit.
John: Yeah.
John: She dragged me to a meeting.
John: She was like, sit your ass down.
John: And you know, like I say, we've been friends since we were, since we were kids and we, you know, we'd been, uh,
John: you know, she was a tomboy and a skier and she and I were like, like she was like a sister to me and had been for our whole lives.
John: But she got into the, after we were sober and,
John: She was like, now I need to fix the underlying problem, which is that I am this or I'm that or I'm this or I'm that.
John: And she started taking Prozac and Zoloft and the bill of fire, whatever the whole, the whole nine and the, and different doses and psychiatrists getting involved.
John: And you know, the danger of course is if you do, if you are middle class, if you do have, uh,
John: Resources and coverage, right?
Merlin: You end up – and so – Even if you have coverage though, like a huge problem with this is like even if you have coverage – I've run into this half a dozen times with my mom and the phrase I always say is like isn't there anybody who's a project manager for her health?
Merlin: because everybody's got the little screw that they turn, a little bit that they do, but it doesn't feel like there's somebody who's making sure that everything is working together, that your medicines and your talk therapy and your diet and like, oh yeah, I forgot to take you off a morphine patch, my bad.
John: That's the thing that happens.
John: Especially if you are somebody who's like, yeah, this is working, but my doctor won't give me more.
John: And I think I kind of know better than they do right now.
John: What I just need is to get this other prescription from this other place.
John: So pretty soon you're making up your own cocktails.
John: Right.
John: And you're taking drugs and no doctor has a handle on everything.
Merlin: And the synergies and whatnot of those things.
John: Well, and so what happened with Karen was over the years, she was in...
John: treatment the entire time and was taking drugs to make her better the entire time and she got worse and worse and worse oh my god and and worse and worse in the sense that she just never there was never a baseline there was never a ground for her that never felt like karen could just like stop and breathe and say
John: I'm solid.
John: This is who I am.
Merlin: It's almost like she's a subject of some kind of a science experiment.
John: Exactly, right?
Merlin: Like you're an unintentional guinea pig or like an unknowing guinea pig.
John: And every one of her feelings was a symptom rather than ever just being a feeling.
John: Okay, yeah.
John: It's never okay to just be sad.
John: Humans are sad.
John: It's never okay to just feel fucked up.
Merlin: Please don't let this have a sad ending.
John: Well, it does.
John: Oh, shit.
John: So three years ago she hung herself.
Merlin: Oh, Jesus, John.
John: And it was after she had gotten to the point where she was like living in her car.
John: And there was nothing, honestly, I don't, I mean, there was a lot wrong with her in the sense that she lived a hard life and she had, and she struggled, she struggled, she struggled.
John: But she was always struggling.
John: She never gave up.
Mm-hmm.
John: She wanted to live.
John: It's just that it was always she had she just from the time she was 20 years old, every problem had a drug that was going to fix her chemistry because it was there were all these it was chemical problems with her.
Merlin: No, it's like you're running around with this.
Merlin: This is a terrible analogy.
Merlin: But it's like you're running around inside the house, like trying to fix all these different leaks with all these different things you bought from TV.
Merlin: And it's like there's nobody up there to say, like, here's how we fix the roof.
Merlin: Or like, here's how to have the home you'd like to have.
Merlin: It just ends up being all these – it can be –
Merlin: After John's done with this, I'm going to say something very inspiring, so please don't leave.
Merlin: But there's rarely a holistic approach that takes into account, like you say, the baseline, where you'd like to be, what's normal.
Merlin: Maybe you're just an asshole.
Merlin: And I keep trying to fix this thing to make you less of an asshole, and it's making you more of this way that nobody wants you to be.
John: Yeah, it's hard to... It's hard, I think.
John: In Karen's case, it's like
John: Yeah, you were 16 and you had a tough relationship with your parents and you were agitated and you were anxious and self-medicating.
John: And so you started to take – and somebody called it bipolar or somebody called it severe depression and you started to take a medicine.
John: And the medicine made one thing different but another thing different.
John: And so you took a different medicine to counteract that thing.
John: Well, who knows?
John: You know, who knows?
John: People ask me all the time, like, you haven't had a drink since you were 26.
John: Do you think maybe you just grew out of it?
John: And I'm like, you mean should I go try and drink now and see if I – see if like –
John: If I had just kept in there and not quit, that I would... You'd prove them all wrong.
John: Or that I would just end up being a normal guy who's 50 years old who drinks a normal amount.
John: Like, in my case, I feel like I could try that, but...
John: It's not worth it.
John: Like quitting drinking is not the same as taking five pills.
Merlin: It's a very – yes, I'm glad you said that.
Merlin: It is a pretty different kind of thing.
Merlin: And how long did it take for you to see –
Merlin: results from that I mean don't you see some results within like a few weeks don't you start noticing something and I know you have the thing about like you know not thinking that you're done and then you go back to where you were but like isn't that the kind of thing where within like two or three weeks you might start to notice a difference what when you quit drinking yeah
John: Oh, yeah, but then, you know, a lot of the things that you notice are terrible.
John: You're like, oh, I noticed a difference.
John: Oh, that's why I was doing that.
John: Oh, I'm awful.
John: I'm awful.
John: I say that because I don't want to suggest that what Karen needed to do at the age of 26 was go off all medicine because she did do that.
John: She tried that, too.
John: And what this article in The New Yorker talks about.
John: I'm sorry, there's so many of those things where you don't want to do that.
John: Well, and that's what this article is about.
John: It talks about how hard it is to – and how dangerous it is.
John: And talking about people that are weaning themselves off of medicine over the course of months and months and they suffer through all these like really bad psychiatric symptoms because they're taking these powerful, powerful drugs away.
John: And also then, like with alcohol or drugs, you realize, I never learned to cope with whatever this is.
John: I never learned to feel my emotions.
Merlin: It's also that your body, I mean, it's like, I remember someone, when I first heard why heroin is different, and saying that, and I don't know if this is precisely right, but the way I remember hearing it was that like, yeah, drugs do stuff to you, and like drugs can do stuff to your brain, but heroin is different, and that your cells now need it.
Merlin: Your cells need heroin and you will.
Merlin: There's a reason they call it being sick from heroin if you try to stop because you absolutely physically need that or your body is going to rebel.
Merlin: And I think here's a pretty easy example for me.
Merlin: uh was a time that i took uh for a condition i was taking a form of uh of steroids i think i was taking prednisone and and the doctor was extremely explicit about this in a way that was absolutely sensible to me which is he said that like this is going to create a huge amount of these these steroids it's going to help basically it's really good for for what you've got this is a this is a quick fix but look at me in my eyes very carefully when i say we need to taper you off this
Merlin: Because what is happening here is it is also sending signals to your body to not make the steroids because here they are.
Merlin: You're fine.
Merlin: And believe me, you do not want a cold turkey steroids.
Merlin: Medical steroids, right?
Merlin: I'm not getting buffed from this, right?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And that's actually one of the less severe ones.
Merlin: There's some of these where like...
Merlin: Whatever you came into this with, and God, this sounds like so much bad news, and I promise I have something uplifting.
Merlin: But in a lot of these cases, what you came in for is going to be 5x worse if you go cold turkey on that.
Merlin: So I am going to read this because it sounds horrifying.
Merlin: But it doesn't mean don't get help.
John: I feel like in my own case –
John: Like, she was talking about some super interesting things, and one of the things that stuck out was that from the time that she was in her very young adulthood, she was taking all this medication that really suppressed her sexual...
John: nature, her sexual drive, her sexual feelings.
John: Had she been a libidinal person before that?
John: No, not really.
John: But I mean, I think it was just that as she came into her youth, she was already overburdened with all of these emotion meds.
John: And so when she started to wean herself off of them, she felt sexual desire for the first time and was describing it as this powerful and uncontrollable and like unbelievable
John: uh extra sense right a a dimension to life and a and we talk about a sex drive but it really is a drive yeah so it's something that feels like almost like like primal yeah and it's and a motivator a prime motivator and that and she hadn't had any rehearsal in dealing with that feeling right and those feelings would make you feel insane or would make you feel reckless or that you were um
John: Out of control and would – and if you went and presented those symptoms to a mental health professional and were like, I just feel like out of control and just like this person or this, I just – you know, I'm out roaming the streets.
John: You know, they would say this is a – you need some immediate intervention.
John: You need these pills, right?
John: And there's so many things that if you go in and present them as symptoms –
John: a mental health professional will say there's a pill.
John: But in fact, they're just normal.
John: You know, they're within a natural range.
John: Oh, I see.
John: It's out of context with her larger personage.
John: So I was looking at my own, you know, recent discovery of Lamictal, which was one of the drugs that she was prescribed.
John: I used to take it.
John: And the feeling that I had that it had
John: it had had a real positive effect on my mental health.
John: And I continue to feel that it does me a good service.
Merlin: It can be great for mental stuff, for emotional stuff, and for this really difficult to describe thing.
Merlin: And believe me, be careful.
Merlin: If you're taking this, your doctor will talk to you about this.
Merlin: But it's also good for this amorphous thing that I would call personality.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: The way you conduct yourself, you feel less driven by demons.
John: In Lamictal specifically or drugs in general?
Merlin: Lamictal specifically, I felt helped stabilize some of the more extreme ups and downs of what I'll call my personality.
John: Yeah, I've felt that it had a positive effect on me, but one of the things this article talked about was this tendency we have to think that
John: um that our personalities and our struggles are a result of imbalances that the doctors have figured out chemicals to make correct that there is a correct amount of x chemical and we are missing it and limictal fills fills a hole or something you know like um and that isn't that's just not
John: a very good description.
John: That is an example of me going in and saying, don't shit the bed in Tagalog.
John: It's not, it isn't how it works.
John: They're just kind of throwing things at a wall and like, oh, do you feel better today?
John: I mean, it's like when you go into the, to the optometrist and you're like, can you just give me a lens that corrects my vision?
John: And they say, is this more blurry or is that more blurry?
John: And I'm like, really, this is still how, how you decide, can't you just shoot a laser off of my
John: off of my cornea and take the readings and give me a perfect lens?
John: Do I really have to, like, neither one of them looks good.
John: They both look blurry.
John: And they're like, okay, but which one looks less blurry?
John: At a certain point in those eye exams, I'm always like, the left one, I guess?
John: And they're like, okay, what about now?
John: And I'm like, it all looks like shit.
John: Like, fix my eyes, science.
John: And I feel like with Lamictal, there's a similar kind of like, well, we threw this
John: We threw this greased cat down a pipe.
John: And in 60% of the people, that greased cat in a pipe felt better than either a pipe without a greased cat or a greased cat without a pipe.
John: And so are you one of those?
John: And in my case, I was like, I am.
John: And they were like, great, it worked.
John: Fixed.
John: But having read this article now, I'm much less likely...
John: It's just like the introvert, extrovert, INFJ business where you get a thing and you go, this is it.
John: Like I've solved for X. I understand myself now.
John: And then you live with it for a while and you're like, but it's not quite a complete solution.
John: It's not quite a complete description.
John: You know, like I've struggled with introvert ever since I first said the word 15 years ago.
John: Trying to make my, trying to make myself fit it or make it fit me.
John: And I'm really no closer to it.
John: I don't, when somebody says, I don't think you're an introvert.
John: You know, I still, that word still is useful to me.
John: It still feels meaningful to me.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, Lamictal, I don't want to stop taking it.
John: And I feel like that's definitely a drug you don't go cold turkey on.
Merlin: I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to start slow.
Merlin: Your doctor will talk to you about this, but I don't take it.
Merlin: You haven't taken it for years, but it'll be very clear.
Merlin: You do not want the kind of rash that this thing can cause.
Merlin: Why did you stop taking it?
Merlin: Well, I mean I don't want to go too deep but – let me let you finish because I do – OK.
Merlin: I'll say my piece.
Merlin: Here's my piece.
Merlin: I want to make sure – and I hope I'm not working at cross-purposes with what you're saying here.
Merlin: But like I have recently returned to this field.
Merlin: And I've been very fortunate.
Merlin: I've been very, very fortunate with the results.
Merlin: And I've talked to you about this a little bit offline, but like, and this is not, your mileage may vary, but the mileage thing aside, like there are, if you have a thing,
Merlin: please do talk to somebody.
Merlin: I know that's a message you hear all the time, but please make sure, especially if you, if you're a sad person who has depression or if you're an anxiety, whatever it is, like it doesn't have to be pills, but like, don't keep it to yourself, please.
Merlin: In my case, the only thing I want to say is that, so the Lamictal in my cocktail of, I don't know, at this point, almost 10 years ago,
Merlin: I described this recently to my wife as I feel like when I first went in to get help for what's wrong with me, I was handed a giant mallet.
Merlin: And when the giant mallet proved to be too much to wield in fixing this subtle problem, then they gave me a glove to wear while I used the mallet.
Merlin: And in my case, Lamictal was the glove.
Merlin: Now, I'm just here to tell you, I know a ton of people where Lamictal, I'm not here to sell any drug, but I'm just saying that like, in the case of like, well, we're going to respond to this over
Merlin: over a large result of this one thing by giving you this other thing, it was great and it helped a lot and it made a ton of sense.
Merlin: What I want to also say, though, is that, I mean, in the amount of time since I last visited with a psychiatrist, there's been a lot of improvements.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: I mean, that sounds nuts to say.
Merlin: How could five or ten years make a difference?
Merlin: Setting aside what a genetic test could help reveal about mutations...
Merlin: that are peculiar to you and could give your doctor a lot of indications what direction to go, setting that aside for a minute, it ain't all just big malice anymore.
Merlin: And the approach that we have taken, my physician and I, has been extremely targeted and subtle and peculiar to me
Merlin: But it's not the kind of thing where he's going to send me 16 different things and say, do you feel better in a month?
Merlin: It's a very carefully monitored kind of approach.
Merlin: And I don't want to get too personal about this, but I'm really grateful that I, I don't know, I'm grateful.
Merlin: What's the word?
Merlin: I'm glad I went back.
Merlin: Oh, good.
Merlin: And yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So I mean, like, I do want to, I don't know, you know me, I just, I don't, I want to make sure people know, people who are listening to this who may be having a hard time, I want to make sure, I just want to leave them not feeling discouraged about the larger help issue.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: oh did you feel that that was a risk i don't know i mean i feel like when you talk about mental health it's uh it used to be uh it used to be popular to say that okay mental health is for crazy people and then it became au courant to say we don't talk enough about mental health and then it became a great virtue signaling to constantly talk about here's an 800 number to call and i feel like like for the for the handful of people who listen to this
Merlin: show i just want to make sure they get a highly targeted message from their friends at rodrick on the line that there's probably a thing you can do and it doesn't have to be medicine it doesn't have to be rock climbing but that there there is there is something that and something or someone who can help you if you're feeling very down that's mostly what i wanted to say do you know what i mean yes well uh
John: I feel like people listening to this show who are listening to the mental health adventures of Merlin and John recognize that we are trained professionals and this is a closed course.
John: And you are not necessarily, you know, do not necessarily try this at home.
John: We are doing.
John: No, we're professionals.
John: Yeah, we're professionals and we are jumping dirt bikes and golf carts.
John: Yeah, on a closed course.
John: On a closed course.
John: So, yeah, but I think in general, what I hear from people is that they like that we talk about.
John: Oh, 100%.
John: And not that they are – I don't think there's anybody listening who –
John: Who's listening closely that would say to themselves, well, none of this applies to me, who wouldn't also have heard you and me both say that exact thing many times over the years and wrestle with it openly and come back with our hat in hand saying, well, I guess it did apply to me.
John: So close listeners realize that we're also totally fucking faking it.
Merlin: Oh, that's my entire brand.
Merlin: And this actually kind of brings us back to where we started, which is in the coverage program that you have received from the UFOs, what is covered?
Merlin: that you would accept for mental, emotional, however you want to slice it, what is covered that you would say, nah, I'm good?
Merlin: Do you have a sense of what you would tell them when you're in the tank and you're not allowed to lie?
John: This is the ultimate, ultimate question.
John: Because if the UFOs Yes!
Merlin: Way more than physical, right?
John: Way more.
John: If the UFOs could remove the feeling of dissatisfaction, the feeling of
John: inferiority the feeling of failure which they surely could as easily as they could remove a wart would i be would that be is that my jennifer gray's nose would i become unrecognizable
John: and thereby useless or not useful.
John: And if that is the realization, if I cannot ask the UFOs to remove my psychological burdens because I would become then not myself, and if I'm not myself, then I wouldn't be useful as the anchorman.
John: No, that's why they hired you.
John: Does that then help me look at those illnesses
John: Or those struggles in a different light and say, oh, they are inextricable.
John: They are intrinsic to me.
John: That's what made you the anchorman.
John: Right.
John: And so is it really just that I want the UFOs to shorten my toes?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then all the other burdens, shorten my toes and make it so that I don't get a stuffy nose.
John: But the real burdens are intrinsic to who I am.
Merlin: I'll never again ruminate over a dumb thing that I said or a mean thing that someone said to me.
Right.
Merlin: See, I think act one of this, I don't know how this ends.
Merlin: It's your script.
Merlin: But I think act one of this probably ends with you in the back of the tank.
Merlin: They fixed your toe.
Merlin: They fixed the warts.
Merlin: They took away the stress bumps.
Merlin: And then I think they say to you, do you want us to fix your brain?
Merlin: And you say, what do you mean by that?
Merlin: And you say, you'll tell me, right?
Merlin: And I think it's a trick.
Merlin: I think it's a trick.
Merlin: And I think that you could probably get away with a little bit.
Merlin: You could say, you know what?
Merlin: I'd rather have just a little bit less of a fear of heights.
Merlin: I think you can get away with that.
Merlin: You could say, maybe make me less angry when I pick up my bags or fly United in general.
John: What if I say when I wake up in the morning, I would like my first thought to be, um, you know, like,
John: Something other than, oh, fuck.
John: You fucked it up.
Merlin: I don't want to say, but I got a feeling they're going to say, that's why you're the anchorman.
Merlin: Suck it up.
Merlin: Take more walks.
Merlin: Try drinking more water.
Merlin: I mean, human water.
Merlin: Corp.