Ep. 374: "Licking the Butter Lion"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Wow.
John: That's Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Well, what do you know?
John: Oh, top of the morning.
John: Hey there.
Merlin: Hey, hi.
Merlin: Hi there.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Greetings.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, well, shucks.
Merlin: Well, shucky darn.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Shucky darn and sloppy chickens.
John: That's right.
John: That's it.
John: Yep.
John: In a nutshell.
John: You're back.
John: Back on land, back in the world, the world is not the same.
Merlin: I can almost promise you, I know you think about me a lot, but I can pretty much promise you that for the last 10 days, I have thought about you a great deal more than you have probably thought about me.
John: You cannot underestimate the number of people that came up to me on the cruise ship and said...
John: A lot of different kinds of gravy here.
John: Am I right?
John: When they came up to you, how close did they get?
John: We, at some point very early on, on the cruise, you know, we first got on the cruise.
John: Well, when we were... What had happened was... What had happened was, first you're in a helicopter and then you're on a hovercraft.
John: We got to Florida and it was not clear that we were going to get on the cruise.
John: You know, Hodgman was held off the boat because he'd been to Italy.
John: And I had just come from Seattle, you know.
John: Hotbed.
John: It was a hotbed.
Mm-hmm.
John: Hot bed.
Merlin: And so jump back.
Merlin: I want to disinfect myself.
John: So as we were going down to the boat, you know, at any point, Holland America could have said, nobody from Seattle or the whole thing is canceled.
John: Which probably would have been a really good idea.
John: With the wisdom of retrospect, seems like... But I'm the cuck.
Merlin: I'm the one sitting here worrying, wringing my hands.
Merlin: You guys are fine.
Merlin: Everybody got off boat.
Merlin: I don't know why you've left behind definite articles, but when you get off boat, everybody's like, huh, wow, I'm really glad.
Merlin: I guess we were safer out there, meat mump.
Merlin: it was fuck you i've been shy i've been literally shitting myself for 10 days thinking that everybody i like is gonna die and turn into some kind of fucking pirates of the caribbean attraction well now wait the story's not over it's dying at sea for me anything could happen day um we we totally waltzed on the thing is that you know the cruise has gotten more and more professional as time goes on and so the uh in the old days sorry the running of the joeco part or the holland america contribution
John: Oh, the running of the Joko part.
Merlin: Yeah, this is not their first day.
John: Not anymore.
John: It was their first day for about seven years.
John: But now, like, all the performers were sort of ushered on before anyone else is on the boat.
John: We didn't pass through any kind of screening.
John: They were just like, welcome, Vilkomen.
John: And we were like, great.
John: So we were, you know, licking the butter lion.
John: Oh.
John: While everybody else, you know, the sea monkeys were going through, I think, a more rigorous scanning, you know, taking their temperatures and whatnot.
John: But we got on the boat, and everybody was kind of trying to do the elbow bump.
Merlin: That's still too close.
John: Well, yeah, but the thing is, it only lasted for, I don't know.
John: I honestly only bumped elbows with one or two people, and I was like, we're all on this boat.
John: If we get sick, we're going to get sick.
John: Come on in.
Merlin: Oh, come on in like this and close it up?
John: We were hugging.
John: We were smooching.
John: Sea monkeys were rolling around as they do with each other.
John: They're so horny.
John: They put an onboard messaging service together called Twittar, but now Twittar has another function.
Merlin: Oh, and that's the thing that you can use without breaking the David Reese pledge of no internet, right?
John: No, it breaks the pledge, but it doesn't involve the actual internet, so you don't have to pay money to log into Internet at Sea or whatever.
John: But there's a new element to it.
John: I don't even know how new it is, but it really came to our attention this year called Tindar.
John: Oh, no.
John: Where the spunkies are running a little dating site.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Because they haven't been having enough orgasms already.
Merlin: They need some strep-on orgasms.
John: Everybody professes to be on there primarily looking for cuddles.
John: Cuddles is number one.
John: If you ran all the profiles through a screen, you would find that cuddles was the common denominator.
Merlin: They make cuddle puddles.
John: There were some cuddles.
John: You know, I didn't personally go on Tinder, but boy, I can't tell you how many times one of the performers showed me their phone and was like, get a load of this.
John: And it was a Tinder profile.
John: There's a lot, you know, there's a lot of polyamory.
John: There's a lot of it's very supportive environment.
John: Yeah.
John: But it was clear that people were not maintaining social media.
John: uh, distance or whatever the term is.
John: They were, they were closer than an elbow away, closer than six feet.
John: They were rolling around there.
John: We were smooching.
John: Everything was going crazy.
John: It was, it was a, it was a high wire act.
John: And about three quarters of the way through the cruise, Jonathan and Paul come over and say, this boat has the lowest incidence of sickness of any cruise we've ever done or any cruise that Holland America has ever done.
John: Nobody's getting sick.
Hmm.
John: Like not even the, you know, usually cruise ships, there's a sickness.
John: It goes around, you know, people just lick doorknobs or whatever it is people do.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: So if you finish enough on a cruise, if you're just literally coming on everything, you might, they call it herd immunity.
John: It's herd immunity is what must have happened.
John: So we got back.
John: And we were like, don't dock.
John: As soon as we got within internet service and saw what had happened to the world.
John: So you guys really had not known much?
John: Some people were on the internet and they would kind of whisper in your ear like, it's really crazy out there.
John: My thing was like, don't tell me.
John: I don't want to know.
Merlin: I do take your point in that sense.
Merlin: See, we've lived in such a different...
Merlin: like splinter universe for the last 10 days.
Merlin: It's, I mean, just two shockingly different worlds.
Merlin: And I imagine we both look at each other like the two Spider-Mans, like pointing at each other, like, what's your deal?
Merlin: Crazy outfit.
Merlin: Because, you know, when you say, oh, social distancing or quote unquote, whatever it's called.
Merlin: And it's like, this is like all we have been like living and breathing this whole time.
Merlin: I mean, I had to go out on Friday for a doctor thing.
Merlin: But apart from that, like we've just been...
Merlin: Not locked in the house, we're not crazy people, but it must be so wild for you, such a shock coming back.
John: Well, we were halfway to Grand Turk.
John: When the drugs set in.
John: Yeah.
John: No, we were halfway to Grand Turk before Grand Turk said... This is bad country.
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John: We were up waiting before Grand Turk said, we're going to get ahead of this and not allow cruise ships to dock at Grand Turk anymore.
John: Gracias, pero no.
John: And so we had to turn the boat around.
John: And for a good day and a half, we were going about one knot.
John: Through the ocean because the captain didn't have anywhere to go.
John: He had a big ship full of nerds and no one wanted us anymore.
John: So we were conscious of the fact.
John: Setting sail for the island of misfit toys.
John: That's right.
John: We did not know.
John: That was the first sign that like, oh, we left and then the world kept going.
John: And I think after we left, they didn't have very many sailings.
John: Mm-mm.
John: But as we were coming into port, again, Paul came over and was like, we just heard that Holland America is closing down all operations as soon as we dock.
John: And it was like, oh!
Merlin: And also not for nothing.
Merlin: And of course, I'm writing every fucking hashtag and search term on Twitter to make sure that you all aren't dead.
Merlin: And I believe it was one day after you...
Merlin: got on boat that the state department said, okay, we're done here.
Merlin: New dealer.
Merlin: Like no, no more cruises, please.
Merlin: Wasn't like, wasn't it?
Merlin: I'm just trying to remember the timeframe wise that for us, that was one day after y'all took off and you probably didn't hear that until later.
John: Uh, yeah, maybe I'm not hearing it until now.
John: But I definitely had people when I got home sending me messages that were like, you weren't really on a cruise.
John: We thought that was a joke.
Merlin: It's pronounced joke-co-cruise.
John: J-O-C-O-Cruise.
John: That spells joke-co-cruise.
Merlin: Anyway, it's wonderful.
Merlin: It's like summer camp, though.
Merlin: You all come back with these funny memes and songs and jokes.
Merlin: Do you remember that feeling when you go to summer camp and you come back and you feel like you've arrived back in this much less bright and interesting world?
Merlin: Everything's so much less animated.
Merlin: It was a good cruise this year.
Merlin: Oh, that's great to hear.
Merlin: I mean, what are you going to do?
Merlin: What are you going to do, right?
Merlin: What are you going to do?
John: I mean, what can you do?
John: Some problems, right?
John: Hodgman got held off.
John: Wil Wheaton didn't come the first time he missed one.
John: Zoe Keating got sick.
John: Liz Fair is a germaphobe.
John: And so at the last minute decided not to come, but she did fly to, uh, Santa Domingo.
John: She flew.
John: She went to her hotel.
John: She got into a van.
John: She drove to the stage.
John: She played her show, got in the van, drove back to the hotel, and flew away.
John: Whoa.
John: Wait, so she just boated as minimally as possible and then bounced?
John: She never touched the boat.
John: Jonathan didn't talk to her.
John: Whoa.
John: Well, she's got kids and stuff, right?
John: She does, and one of them is asthmatic.
John: Oh, gosh.
John: I mean, they're both grown kids.
John: Really?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Put that into your pipe and smoke it.
John: I will.
John: Anyway, so that was a little bit sad because I was hoping, well, I was hoping that Liz Fair and I would come off the boat engaged to be married.
Merlin: I think it would be entirely reasonable.
Merlin: I mean, I was explaining to my daughter last night how I feel like when we talk about TV boyfriends and girlfriends or when we talk about movie boyfriends and girlfriends, you know, just one to another, friend to friend, family to family.
Merlin: I think that is in some ways without respect to one's binary sexual preference.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I got some TV boyfriends.
Merlin: It doesn't mean I'd want to shack up with them.
Merlin: Not for...
Merlin: Not for months.
Merlin: But I think one of the things, if you've got a TV girlfriend or a movie boyfriend, or let's be honest, an indie rock matador girlfriend, it would be entirely within the range of possibility to say, I hope that when we lock eyes, there will be magic.
Merlin: Whether or not that's pursued, I'd love to be seen and feel special.
John: One of the things about the cruise is it's a magic time.
John: I mean, not being on Tindar does not keep me from feeling magic.
John: And I knew that Liz, once she got on the boat and understood...
John: Oh, the magical rules and lack of rules that we would be swept up in the... Maybe she's a germaphobe.
Merlin: Her mind was understandably closed to this.
Merlin: She has a kid with a chronic condition, but you're thinking... I think she may be 22, but yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: She has a large adult son.
Merlin: But anyway, you're thinking she gets on there, never been on boat, and then maybe she sees a little bit of magic in the air.
John: You know, she and I know each other a little, and this might be the thing where she goes, you know, I'd like to know you a lot.
John: But it didn't happen.
John: That's not how it went down.
John: And I am just...
John: Sure, I'm still reeling.
Merlin: I'm impressed that she, based on the way you have described this, though, I'm very impressed that she fought through that to, not to make it sound so mercantile, but to fulfill her obligation.
Merlin: I think that's a very professional and very courageous thing for someone in that position to do.
Merlin: Yeah, I agree.
Merlin: She's not there for the quote unquote free vacation and cuddle puddles.
Merlin: She's there to do her job.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And she did that.
Merlin: And I think that's incredibly courageous, to be honest.
John: She did.
John: She did come.
John: She did do her job.
John: And and it was and the land concert was great.
John: It was.
John: Did she play that Supernova song?
John: She did.
John: She did.
John: Uh, it was, you know, all, all, uh, when all was said and done, it was a great cruise.
John: In fact, I could almost say that, uh, that there was some aloha that had happened.
John: Oh, um, which was nice.
John: It's nice to get a little aloha and, uh,
John: You know, the peoples, the sea monkeys, also aloha is within them.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and I mean, it's very early in the process to be happy talking about potential upsides.
Merlin: But I mean, it...
Merlin: There are potential upsides in some sense.
Merlin: Like, it is actually cool to get to spend some extra time with my family without the reboot stress of every day in that particular way.
Merlin: What I'm trying to say is it's somewhere – yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: It's like – what's the Thomas Mann, Death in Venice?
Merlin: There definitely is a feeling of like, oh, boy –
Merlin: don't share cups and stuff and don't fall in love with a little boy but there is something like the rules are off a little bit right now I do feel like I know just based on the number of worthy charities I've given to in the last few days and working on some other ones I do feel like I don't think it's just me I think everybody is trying to be a little bit nicer to each other for one thing I mean that might be projecting I know I'm trying super hard to at the very least don't be hostile toward people but
Merlin: To try and be kind and empathetic with other people and maybe even not take the easy dunks that are dunkable all the time, although one does have fits of pique.
Merlin: But I do feel that.
Merlin: And then just back to your way earlier point, and again, it's awfully early to start doing victory laps about this because we're fine.
Merlin: But it is said that we will be very likely to see a lower incidence of lots of things, including flu, just as a knock-on effect of the necessary consequences of less exposure and stuff like that.
Merlin: So that may be one reason y'all were such a clean ship.
John: I think that's right.
John: I think that's right.
Merlin: Everybody's taking double, triple.
Merlin: I was on that boat.
Merlin: I was on boat once.
John: You were.
Merlin: And, you know, it's a supposedly fun thing that I would absolutely not do again.
Merlin: Love the people, but not my tempo, as they say.
Merlin: But it was wild how much, I won't say theater, but how much performative cleanliness stuff there was.
Merlin: Or safety stuff.
Merlin: There's the obligatory safety thing, which is very important.
Yeah.
Merlin: What does she say?
Merlin: I've done the figures, and there aren't enough lifeboats for everyone.
Merlin: No, there's enough lifeboats.
Merlin: You'll be good.
Merlin: And also, norovirus is a thing, so there's always going to be somebody putting liquid in your hand.
John: We're also talking about people that are going to tend to be...
John: Meticulous, let's say.
John: You're telling me they keep their dungeon dice clean as it is.
John: A little bit more.
John: Well, not everybody, right?
John: But if you give clear instructions to a group of sea monkeys about what the expectation is in terms of maintaining social distance, sea monkeys will adopt the new protocol.
John: That's the thing, right?
John: I mean, if you were on an outlaw country and you said, all right, you outlaw country bros, from now on, we're only going to put our chair roots out inside of a half an orange.
John: Nine tenths of them would be like, hell no.
John: Hell no, we won't go.
John: I'm going to put my chair out wherever I damn well, please.
Merlin: Did you see the announcement from the guy who's running against Inslee?
John: No.
Merlin: He basically just spoke publicly in that voice.
Merlin: He said he wants – he said – so there's been a ban on groups above 250.
Merlin: He wants 251 people to come to his rally and he'll bring a six-pack of Corona.
John: You're talking about Tim Ironman.
John: I guess so.
Merlin: He's running against Inslee is all I know.
John: Well, he's a local – Is he colorful?
John: No, he has done more.
John: He's done more damage to the state of Washington than than 50 other bad men.
John: He really has.
John: He's really the worst.
John: And everybody up here with any sense.
Merlin: Is he like a Matt Gaetz, like a troll kind of guy?
John: He is.
John: He's one of the people that uses the.
John: The referendum.
John: Oh, he's like nuisance lawsuit guy.
John: He's nuisance lawsuit guy, except he succeeds because his nuisance lawsuits are all in the form of we're paying too much for car tabs.
John: I propose that we only pay $50 for car tabs because why is the government taking our money?
John: And somebody goes, yeah, why?
John: But the problem is the state of Washington doesn't have an income tax or state of Washington doesn't have income tax.
John: And so we pay for social services.
John: We pay for all services through things like car tabs.
Merlin: What do they call it?
Merlin: Usage?
Merlin: Or that term for like, it's just a practical, you can call it a tax if you want, but it's just a use fee that ends up helping civically.
John: Right.
John: There's a lot of those here.
John: We use fees attached to tickets and to hotels and to rental cars.
John: And those are the ways that we pay for the roads and for all the things that we need.
John: But Tim Einman says, $50 is the most we should pay.
John: I will not pay this usurious fee, Mr. Trump, sir.
John: He gets a majority.
John: And so all of a sudden, we only pay $50 car tabs.
John: Yay.
John: But there's no money in the public coffers to do anything.
John: And including, you know, like EMTs and schools and shit.
John: And if you need to, you should cough her into your elbow.
Merlin: Cough her, huh?
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John: Just two.
John: That's all we needed.
Merlin: Just needed two.
Merlin: It's a dry coffer.
Merlin: Oh, oh, wow.
Merlin: See, yours is good.
Merlin: That was double.
Merlin: That was a double one.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I've had on a hat, but I like them both.
Merlin: I'm going to wear them both.
Merlin: McHat's great again.
John: But anyway, he's been doing it for a long time, decades, and he has a really good way of figuring out the kind of libertarian one sentence.
Merlin: The kind of messaging that'll go straight to the brainstem of a libertarian.
John: Well, or to the majority of Washingtonians, because he keeps passing these things that are like, the state is like, well, we don't have any money, so we're going to just
John: Float this bond.
John: And he's like, float a bond?
John: More like boat on a pond.
John: And people go, yay!
John: And they vote for his thing.
John: So he's a real risk.
John: He'll never get elected governor.
John: He's just doing that.
John: He's also one of these guys that like
John: That, like, lives off of the money that he raises?
Merlin: Oh, see, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, kind of like everybody's wondering what's going on with Devin Nunez.
Merlin: Like, how is Devin Nunez affording all of these nuisance lawsuits against these very large institutions?
Merlin: And, you know, you don't have to be conspiracizing that to go, like, wait a minute.
Merlin: One of the people he's suing is a fake cow on Twitter because he's from dairy country.
Merlin: And I know he's got a family farm with cash and stuff, but the numbers absolutely do not add up.
Merlin: There's these people where you're like, how are you?
Merlin: Or really, for that matter, Jim Baker selling his survival corn and fucking corona cures.
John: Survival corn.
John: Look at those chunks.
John: Do you remember when that was the worst of our worries?
John: Which one?
John: I forget.
John: Oh, the TV ministers?
Merlin: Yeah, or just, I don't know, anything.
Merlin: Yeah, no, I miss it already.
Merlin: I miss the things that I used to be annoyed by already.
John: So tell me this, have you and your lovely family been sequestered together in your spacious and yet...
John: small downtown city apartment?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, we are, boy, we are fortunate in just about every way that a person can be fortunate.
Merlin: And we sure do know it.
Merlin: So, you know, the work that I do, it will continue.
Merlin: I mean, I suffice to say that the place where I record
Merlin: these is very near the place where I live.
Merlin: And it's not difficult for me to avoid people on that small journey.
Merlin: It's also nice that we have a second place.
Merlin: So dad can be here and he's not crowding up the house.
Merlin: And we also, we're near a park, we've got a yard.
Merlin: Like there's various ways in which we're not, I mean, we're not even getting into the fact that my wife is, you know, going to have a job no matter what and get paid no matter what.
Merlin: And we have insurance, we have all of those things, which are
Merlin: But of course, not everybody has that.
Merlin: And that's what's been top of mind for me.
Merlin: And that's why I've been spending money like a doorknob and a wet sweater.
Merlin: Like, all the kids must be fed.
Merlin: Feed the children.
Merlin: Pay the school.
Merlin: And all these sorts of things.
Merlin: But to answer your question, you know, the other weird thing for you, I imagine, is...
Merlin: I don't know, I don't know.
Merlin: Okay, so here's what I'm turning over in my mind, is the delta between me making myself very anxious and situationally depressed by gobbling every bit of this information, useful or not, and just getting so sad and frustrated and just angry at the way this is being operated at a high level.
Merlin: It's been very, very stressful.
Merlin: I did, for people who are asking, I did literally sleep, I believe, 13 hours yesterday.
John: Wow, good for you!
Merlin: Situational depression, it's a hell of a thing.
Merlin: But what I'm wondering, though, when I say the Delta, you come back, boom, pow, this all lands on you, and you're probably obviously still figuring out or learning things that we knew a week ago, but...
Merlin: I mean, okay, so I wonder who has it worse.
Merlin: Like, you know, because we were there for every little cut of this and every announcement and re-announcement and re-reannouncement.
Merlin: Every time that they said, well, now this many people down to this many people down to this many people down to like, no, seriously, just please don't go places.
Merlin: And then down to like last night, I think last night being Sunday, this is the 15th.
Merlin: was when a lot of the closings really came down, like big time, where they were like, look, you fucking idiots, we ask you nicely not to go to a drinking parade with a crowd.
Merlin: We really did ask you so nicely, but now you're babies.
Merlin: And so now we have to make that a law thing, right?
Merlin: So we knew...
Merlin: The difference, so like if you had to take a five day, you know, day over day difference, last Monday versus last Friday was like wild.
Merlin: So that would be like your third or third or so day at sea.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And as of like Monday, I'll be honest with you, we were still like, I wonder if we should cancel our trip to a large theme park.
Merlin: at the end of the month.
Merlin: Like, how should we, how will we know when that's definitely not going to happen?
Merlin: Because we've spent a ton of money and booked a lot of things.
Merlin: And like, how do we, that was Monday.
Merlin: And Monday was also like, well, the school district, which has been great about this, they've been so great, especially my kids, actual school has been amazing.
Merlin: And they said stuff like, look, you know, starting today, your kid at your discretion can stay home without penalty for the next two weeks.
Merlin: And she ended up going.
Merlin: There was – not President's Day.
Merlin: What was it?
Merlin: There was a holiday.
Merlin: Long story short, on that Thursday or that Wednesday rather, she ended up staying home out of precaution.
Merlin: She really wanted to go back.
Merlin: And then I think it was on Friday was when they said, well, that's it, you know.
Merlin: We're shutting it down for the next two planned school weeks plus through what would have been spring break.
Merlin: So three weeks.
John: Right.
John: So I'm caught up on all this because when I came back, of course, it was a big info dump.
John: It's the story.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, because the phones go back on and it's like we all were standing there in the Fort Lauderdale Airport.
John: going, oh, wow, like getting it all at once.
Merlin: Did you know that there was the, I mean, like a friend of mine was stuck in, not stuck, a friend of mine was in Poland when Trump... Shut it down.
Merlin: Well, when he had that very unfortunate speech where he made some errors and she was one of the people struggling to try and get a flight home to get in under the wire.
Merlin: Did you know, for example, that you would be potentially facing...
Merlin: Let me just throw it to you here.
John: I'm talking a lot.
Merlin: Here's things I'm wondering if you knew.
Merlin: Did you know, for example, that how bad it was while you were out?
Merlin: Let me give you just one minute to three.
Merlin: Did you know how bad it was?
Merlin: Did you know that you faced potentially an increased chance of needing to be quarantined when you arrived?
Merlin: And did you know that you might have to do some serious hustling and risk some exposure to get on a plane to get home?
John: Here's the thing about being a news junkie where you're following everything from second to second, 18 hours a day, getting anxious and ramping up.
John: Most to 98% of that information is just logically inferred.
John: Like when we were on the boat, we weren't getting any of that news.
John: But yes, we absolutely knew that just based on the information that we had when we left port, that we were going to come back to a different world.
John: When we were refused entry to Grand Turk,
John: it was clear that things were changing.
John: We knew that cruise lines, you know, we were hearing the scuttlebutt from the cruise line itself, like cruise lines are, you know, cause they were the people on the new Amsterdam were also, I mean, if you recall, there are more than a thousand people on that boat who work on the boat and live on it for eight months at a time.
John: So they aren't, when the, when the ship docks, they, they,
John: Go to work for five hours to turn the ship around and and put all the gravy back in the gravy boats and change the sheets and, you know, sanitize.
John: And then there's 2000 other non nerds waiting to get on the boat.
John: Yeah.
John: And so all of those people, everyone associated with the boat is also like, what's going to happen to me?
John: And they're trying to do that with, you know, smiling faces or whatnot.
Merlin: But everybody to a person that I saw was very complimentary of the way everybody involved in the cruise handled it.
Merlin: I think you use that phrase professional, but they made people really feel at ease and you could see the hustle of them trying to stay in front of this.
John: Everybody's everybody is wonderful.
John: And, you know, and it's and it really is a pitch in altogether thing.
John: Um, but, but so, so all of the, this is the thing about the news and it's why, it's why you actually don't need to follow the news, right?
John: Because the news doesn't help 98% of the time.
John: Like if you read the news, if you read a digest of it at the end of every day, that was three articles long.
John: And honestly, if you read a digest of it at the end of every week.
John: Are you talking in general or specifically now?
John: I'm talking in general.
John: I mean, I'm talking specifically.
John: I think in general, that's probably true.
John: Political news, normal news.
John: Um, but also.
John: It was clear a week ago.
John: It was clear two weeks ago, probably that you shouldn't go to bars, right?
John: It was clear two weeks ago that you should not probably go on a cruise.
John: Uh, but like you say, we were still in this, like, should I, I wonder if, I mean, it was much more like, are they going to keep us off a cruise rather than should we ourselves not go on a cruise?
John: And I don't think most people that went a week ago on the Joko cruise said,
John: Well, only 35 people didn't come out of 2,100 people.
John: So a week ago, the attitude was very different for sure.
John: But we didn't know whether we were going to...
John: come into fort lauderdale and be refused entry right right and we were talking you know amongst ourselves like well what are we going to do if they if they stop the boat yeah what if it's i mean because like the people that got off in oakland uh you know some of them got sent i believe to the south some of them got sent to like travis air force base but they got dispersed like in and it sounds like it's pretty rough going for the folks you know yeah at the air force base that would have been tough although you know we were we were prepared to say
John: we're not going to get off and go to an Air Force base.
John: We'll just stay on the boat, and we'll keep putting on shows every night until we run out of songs.
Merlin: As long as you've got songs and food.
Merlin: As long as you can have a fruity pleaser and a place to plug in your guitar.
John: The thing we weren't expecting was we got off the boat, went to the Fort Lauderdale Airport, and it was like...
John: fucking most icely because all the cruises had been canceled and everyone was trying to get out of Florida.
John: And so it was, it was a complete zoo there and coming off the boat, you're thinking to yourself, okay, we're entering a world where contagion has escaped its, um, escaped its cage or escaped the, the, the, uh, joke cage that we thought we could put it in.
John: All we need to do is just get home.
John: Let's just get home.
John: But then you're in an airport where there's 8,000 people also trying to get home.
John: And it's a small regional airport.
John: And then because of the way that my itinerary got put together, I flew to JFK.
John: Oh, no.
John: I land in JFK and have to take a shuttle trip.
John: from my gate to some other gate and like sprint through the airport to make it onto my flight.
John: And the whole way I'm like, this is not limiting my exposure.
Merlin: All of this is... Absolutely.
Merlin: The photos coming out of...
Merlin: you know, O'Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth the last few nights, it's just been, it's so upsetting to look at.
Merlin: I mean, stuff like, we're watching an old, we're watching Comfort TV, so we'll go back and watch Parks and Rec and something where people like, you know, put their hand in somebody else's mouth or something and everybody cringes because we're already so habituated to thinking about, you know, just politely avoiding other people.
Merlin: And the way they described it, there's this one scene in Idiocracy, which I know is an oversighted
Merlin: But there's so much great flashbulb moments in that movie.
Merlin: There's one where Luke Wilson, right?
Merlin: Luke Wilson's character has gone to the emergency room, and he's going to be examined.
Merlin: And the guy hands him three probes.
Merlin: He's like, this one goes in your mouth, this one goes in your ear, and this one goes in your butt.
Merlin: And then he gets them mixed up.
Merlin: And neither one of them can tell which one goes where.
Merlin: When I look at those pictures of those long cues of people, it's like, oh, yeah, there's a cue for people who probably have it over here.
Merlin: There's a cue for people who probably don't have it over here.
John: and they're like right next to each other you know what i'm saying and you're like man don't don't don't put the don't put the clean dishes in the dirty dishes in the same thing fortunately for for us like i was on the other side of the you know that was all people who were coming into the united states and within the airports it was you know it was just a regular busy day
John: And I was fortunate enough to sit next to, on the flight from Fort Lauderdale, I sat next to a woman who works at Wikipedia, who before she sat down, and she was a total Joko cruiser, right?
John: She had like a buzz cut that had rainbow color in it, and she'd never heard of the Joko cruise, and I was like, you're going to love it.
John: But she worked at Wikipedia, but she had a bunch of wipes, and she wiped down...
John: Not just every aspect of her own seat, but also wiped down the seat back in front of her, like the TV and the walls.
Merlin: Those things are just lousy with all kinds of crap.
Merlin: Every time you see somebody sitting there eating their goddamn popcorn off the tray table, you're like, ugh.
Merlin: Just imagine a baby's diaper, and that might be the cleanest thing that's touched on.
John: But I didn't have – and then on the flight from JFK, there was nobody in my row because I was – at that point had entered into domestic travel where people were canceling.
John: Getting out of Florida, it was like, get me out of Florida.
John: Yes, of course.
John: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
John: But getting on the flight to Seattle from JFK, that was where people were like opting out.
John: But – and then when I landed at SeaTac, it was a ghost land.
John: But getting back, I –
John: And finding out about incubation periods, which I kind of already knew and I still am not sure that we fully understand.
John: But the idea that you could have it.
John: You can be asymptomatic and have it for, I think it's at least five days.
John: Well, or also just be asymptomatic and never show.
John: Or also, whatever, incubate it for two weeks.
John: So the prospect that I had it.
Merlin: The mayor in Miami has it, but is totally asymptomatic.
John: The fact that I could have it and am just sitting here waiting or brought it home or that my daughter got it at school because they didn't close her schools until last Friday.
John: I mean, just like four days ago, three days ago, she was she was at school that we have it right that we're sitting in here.
John: And it's either waiting to finally bloom or that we're just – maybe we don't get sick but we are the contagion or we are one of those green balls that turn to a red ball.
John: That's the crazy part and the sequestering now –
John: I the susceptibility I have to to the news to like getting on that news dragon and writing the news dragon, you know, just sitting there like, what's the oh, no, 14 more people in Italy died.
John: Yeah.
John: All that really is important to know is that we can't meet anybody else like we can't have any play dates.
John: We can't go to restaurants.
John: We have to just and and doing that is all we can do.
John: Knowing more isn't
John: necessary or necessarily good.
Merlin: If we are just, if we are confirmed... I want to push back on that just a tiny bit, which is that the thing that I'm... There's a lot that I'm worried about, but one is my mom.
Merlin: And so the need to keep in touch about that, I agree with you that there's no need to deliberately ramp oneself up, and I've taken steps to move the other direction, but there are people who do need to worry about stuff.
John: You know, we have isolated my mom
John: My sister brings groceries to her, but wearing white gloves, like, you know, we're definitely not being reckless.
Merlin: And I'm assuming you're not either.
Merlin: I'm doing the best I can.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So go ahead.
Merlin: The information, so you're talking about, and this is hard because especially with a kid your age, like a kid my age is already pretty heavily into like FaceTime and group chats and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And of course, TikTok and things like that.
Merlin: But like your kid is right in the sweet spot for like, boy, a play date would be so good for everybody right now.
Merlin: Like get out of the house, do something outside like with a friend would be such a gift right now.
Merlin: And they say that, like, this is the toughest part when you got a kid, is, like, one of the biggest things that you want to avoid, they say, is the family-to-family transmission.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That that's what happened, in particular, I guess, in China.
Merlin: And so it sucks, because, like, this could be a great time to go and hang out, but, like, that's, I think that's arguably one of the biggest things in terms of protecting other people.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: That that's the kind of thing to avoid.
John: Yeah.
John: On the way downstairs to do the show, I had to step over my daughter who had arranged a card game on the floor.
John: And she was like, will you play this card game with me?
John: I was like, sweetie, I have to do, I have to go do my show.
John: And she's like, okay, well, you know, the card game will still be here blocking the door when you're done.
John: But we did, we made a mistake, I think yesterday, um, because her little friend across the street whose parents are, you know, normally pretty socially distant and, and, uh, and, and, uh, be reclusive.
John: They, they,
John: If they could play together, it would be a great relief to both families.
John: And so yesterday, there was some article by a pediatrician that said, you can't have play dates, but if the kids are playing outside, it's probably fine.
John: Now, I don't know what the logic behind that article was, and I was kind of like, just back off the boat.
John: And so the article was read aloud to me, and I was like, oh, well, I guess that makes sense.
John: I mean, if both kids...
Merlin: have it or if don't outside something something you know the thing was like don't let them go to a playground but if they're just playing outside yeah there's like so many so many asterisks on all of those where it's like is it open are you near other people how near are they to touching each other are they touching playground equipment it's like there's so many like little codicils for every one of those
John: So we, so we let her go outside and she and her little friend played all day together out in the streets.
John: And when they would show up at either house, and again, this is the, this is the codicil you're talking about.
John: Like when they would show up and say, can we come in?
John: We would say, no, you can only play outside.
John: Now I have no idea.
John: I have no idea.
John: That just feels like that feels like a form of security theater, right?
John: Like as long as you're playing outside, you are, you know, and, and only sneezing on each other in fresh air is,
John: um, that it's somehow protects us.
John: But we believe that as long as yesterday and now today it feels like we need to reevaluate that.
John: But of course, if they, if either one of them had it, they communicated it to the other yesterday.
John: So it, it does.
John: So that like that family to family transmission that you hear about from China, it's like,
John: We're just we're all playing this game of like, I hope I don't have it.
John: I hope I didn't get it before we close the windows.
John: And and, you know, to my sister's credit, she was the one that like, I think maybe February 29th said mom is going into a cooler.
John: We're not going to visit her and she's not going and we're not going to, you know, like I'm going to take her food in a box and leave it outside her door.
John: And my mom, because she's, you know, so disaster aware, agreed, consented, right?
John: Like, that's right.
John: I'm going, I'm going in, you know, I'm going into, I'm hitting the mattresses.
John: And I think I, I think at the time I probably wouldn't have,
John: taken such a draconian step, I would have been like, ah, come on.
John: Mom's fine.
John: Yeah.
John: You're overreacting.
John: Right.
John: But you know, now it seems incredibly wise of those two to have put mom in a, in a sanctuary because at least I'm, you know, I'm at least I'm confident that she is safe and also that I can trust her that she will continue to stay underground.
John: You know, she's not going to it's not like she's going to go to church or something, you know, and she and she does go down into the garage, get into her car and drive around.
John: I mean, she's not she's not living in the dark, but but I haven't seen her and and probably won't see her for a month or at least.
John: Right.
Merlin: In England, they're talking about, I don't know how they're going to accomplish this, but they're talking about a four-month, basically, cooler period.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And I mean, like, if you don't have a lot of dough or you got health issues, it's like... Forget about it.
John: The whole thing's coming unravel.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: And that's, that's the concern for me and like being far away.
Merlin: Like I just, I can't, I can send money.
Merlin: I can give advice.
Merlin: I can suggest, please, please, please.
Merlin: Those emails that you're being forwarded are not true information.
Merlin: Please.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So she, yeah, it's, it's complicated, but yeah, I'm not surprised that your mom's smart about that.
Merlin: She's a smart cookie about these things.
John: Well, and Susan too.
John: I mean, for all of the, for all of the way that they sometimes do things,
John: show up in my text messages at seven in the morning telling me that there's a comet on its way to destroy New York City.
John: And then I'm like, you know, I'm in like, comet, what?
John: And then it turns out,
John: It was a Mercury comet.
John: Is that a car joke?
John: That was a car joke.
John: Oh, that was a good one.
John: I like that.
John: Thanks.
John: Don't think for that.
John: Somebody out there was laughing.
John: Somebody in Ames, Iowa was like, ha, ha, ha, ha.
John: Like a boomer, probably.
Merlin: The thing that I, well, there's a lot I've been obsessing about, but, you know, the thing that is so frustrating to me right now and the part that's so dispiriting is, like, I think I've sort of gotten at with you before, like, just this...
Merlin: Um, just a real skepticism about how much bioavailable empathy we have for strangers at this point.
Merlin: Um, and, and in particular, it's, it's, it seems so difficult to, I'm trying not to sound judgy about this, but there's a certain kind of mindset when you say to somebody, okay, well, there's like a, uh, not even a pandemic.
Merlin: Let's say there's a big, there's a bug going around.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: A bugdemic.
Merlin: A bugdemic.
Merlin: This extends to vaccines.
Merlin: It certainly extends to all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: And you say, well, you know, there's two things to think about here, but they're heavily related, which is you don't want to get this, but you also don't want to give this.
Merlin: And it's just that this is such an extreme example insofar as a young person, like, for example, that mayor of Miami, he has it, but has no symptoms.
Merlin: He literally has COVID-19 and is bunked up at home.
Merlin: I think because he'd been maybe at Mar-a-Lago or something.
Merlin: But anyway, long story short, that guy has always been asymptomatic, even though he's got it.
Merlin: And just that one repeated piece of misinformation from the White House and their proxies that's so frustrating to me is they have allowed to circulate this idea that you don't need to be tested unless you're vulnerable and have symptoms.
Merlin: And it's like, okay, well, oh, boy, there's a lot to that.
Merlin: Well, a lot of people can't be tested.
Merlin: It's only now that they're getting the test.
Merlin: But what I'm trying to get at is it's so frustrating to me.
Merlin: Our family is going to be fine.
Merlin: We're going to be inconvenienced.
Merlin: But we're all, the three of us at least anyway, we're going to be fine.
Merlin: It's just I feel such a deep obligation to not contribute to somebody else getting it.
Merlin: And I don't think that, I think that is still not sinking in.
John: Are you experiencing, like, I mean, I feel like there's a risk, although less of a risk, like even hurricanes and tornadoes, there's that element where you're like,
John: It's sort of disaster porn.
John: It's happening to other people and the excitement of watching the hurricane come toward Florida and all the threatening blasts of like, this is going to land in Miami and it's going to kill a million people.
John: It ratchets up the suspense.
John: such that when it often doesn't happen, it's a little bit of a letdown, right?
Merlin: You see it in the weather, people.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: We're like, this is going to be the highlight of their career to be out here in this slicker getting knocked over deliberately by a buoy or whatever.
Merlin: And then you can see them getting more and more excited.
Merlin: It's true for anybody in any profession, but it's just impossible not to notice with them where you can see they're ramping up and up and up in their excitement for how bad this could get.
Merlin: And you can tell as soon as it stops getting worse.
Merlin: and is potentially getting better, you can just feel this sort of, oh, this is going to be a big one.
John: We had a big snow event on its way here this winter, and I was following all the weather nerds.
John: And, I mean, they were actually saying, like, what a disappointment.
John: That sucks.
John: Like, we were going to get buried, and it's going to be freezing, and people were going to die.
John: Why did we get robbed?
John: Yeah.
John: But there's somehow...
John: At least in me, I don't feel that way about this.
John: Like, I'm not looking for schadenfreude, right?
John: I don't hope that all those people in Nashville that were flouting the quarantine and dancing in cowboy bars, I don't want them to get sick as a result.
John: and have it be proved.
John: I don't want anybody to be proved wrong or proved right.
Merlin: Just because you went to CPAC and thought it'd be funny to shake everybody's hand even while you were... You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's difficult as a decent human being.
Merlin: It's hard not to feel a twinge of like, oh man, in another time I'd make fun of you so hard, but I just really don't want you to kill everybody in your neighborhood because you're an asshole.
John: Yeah, but at...
John: So at that level, there's no, I don't feel any sort of anticipation about the next month in the same way that you anticipate a hurricane or a tornado where you're like, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming.
John: Like two days from now, the situation is going to be worse than it is today.
John: but but i'm not looking forward to it right but but there is an aspect of it because this is global because it's so massive and potentially like a world it's already world historical because the the way economies are going to you know the way like you were saying everybody that's out of work right now is not going to suddenly be back at work like there's there's there are major gaps that
John: In billions of people's lives that are going to need to get filled somehow.
John: But nine months from now, whatever the final statistics are, you know, that's a degree of zooming out that...
John: Because I've read up about pandemics a lot because we've all known that this is actually the big threat, right?
John: For a decade or more, it's been clear.
John: It's been told to us enough times by epidemiologists around the globe.
John: that probably the next thing is not going to be a nuclear war, it's not going to be famine, it's not going to be global warming, it's going to be a pandemic that kills millions.
Merlin: And they thought it would be the flu that was most likely, but given the way climate change is moving different species around, it's becoming less surprising to anybody that it's things that started with animals because animal habitats are changing.
Merlin: It's not because people are eating bat soup.
Merlin: because it's just yet another thing that we can at least partially point to like, that's what climate change is doing.
John: Well, but except this comes from pigs being, being corralled with chickens, right?
John: It doesn't feel, this isn't like a, this isn't a monkey flu where people are eating a bush meat.
John: It's just a thing where farmers markets, you know, it's chickens and pigs, um, which is like the, that's the, I mean, when, when they talk about where the Spanish flu started in 1919, um,
John: the only reason it's called the Spanish flu is that I read this really interesting article.
John: Everyone was, because the war was happening, right?
John: The countries that were at war were all embargoing information about who was sick and what was happening.
John: But because Spain was neutral, kind of like Italy now, it was the one country that you could get
John: The press wasn't muzzled.
Merlin: I did not know that.
John: That is super interesting.
John: So all of a sudden in the world's newspapers, there's all this data coming out of Spain that people are sick, and that's how it got described as the Spanish flu.
John: Although there are kind of three different speculations about where it started.
John: And one of them was at a U.S.
John: military base in Kansas where they just had pigs and chickens corralled together.
John: Um, and chicken gets a, chicken gets a bug, passes it to a pig.
Merlin: It sounds like you're calling a square dance.
John: Yeah, it does.
John: Pig gets a bug, passes it to the hell man left.
John: Right.
John: So it's, you know, it's a thing that this, this like chicken, chicken, pig, man dance is a, you know, it's a thing that, that, um, it's just how flus get going.
John: Yeah.
John: But I don't know how to... I don't know how... I mean, in a way, it's like so many apocalypse scenarios.
John: At a certain point, we're going to open the doors to whatever mall we're living in and walk out into the bright new day into a different world.
John: And how different that world is going to be, I think a lot of us right now feel like, well, we can't go to the supermarket for a few weeks.
John: And it's possible...
John: That is the world we walk back out into, where it's like, you know, there's some siren that goes, crisis is over, and we all walk out.
John: All clear, the all clear signal, yeah.
John: Right.
John: But it's also possible we walk back out into a world that's radically different.
John: And that, I think, is the thing that my, that that weird thing inside you
John: Inside some of us, I guess, that is kind of waiting for the big earthquake.
John: We've been we've been thinking about the big earthquake for so long in Alaska and in Seattle my whole life.
John: I've been told that the big earthquake could come anytime.
John: It's like we used to be with nuclear war.
John: It could come at any time.
John: Mm hmm.
John: And it becomes a friend, right?
John: At least a companion.
John: A companion, right.
Merlin: That's your Welsh troll now.
John: It's a guy.
John: He's there.
John: He's here all the time.
John: Anytime you put a glass down on the edge of a table, your earthquake friend goes, boy, I'm going to have fun knocking that off when I finally come.
John: But what to do with your pandemic companion and how much you can...
John: I don't know, isolate your feelings too, in addition to isolate your body and your breath.
John: That's the, I think that's the thing that maybe you have had 10 more days of than I have.
John: Like just having, you know, knowing where your, where your feelings are and there's, you know, you have so much empathy for,
John: people to the, to the extent that like your, your empathy, you've got 50 different directions.
John: You're, you have to be empathetic, not have to be are naturally empathetic.
John: Like, Oh wow, that sucks for you.
John: And that sucks for you.
John: And that sucks for you.
John: Like you and I are podcasters.
John: If there's any, if there's any, um, job that's going to survive the short term, it's us.
John: Now, what, what survives the longterm?
John: We're already socially isolated and working from home.
John: But I have a lot of friends that if they don't work this week, they don't have three weeks of pay stashed away somewhere.
John: It's all connected.
John: It really is all connected.
John: But then how do you factor that
John: That short-term empathy against the fact that 250,000 people in Seattle could die.
John: Like where are you then, right?
John: I'm just hearing from Italy and the fact that they're making decisions about – they're making like triage decisions about who gets –
John: Gauze.
Merlin: Ventilators, yeah.
Merlin: It's just like, fuck.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And as of about, I think, I don't want to be all doom and gloom.
Merlin: Yeah, no, I take your point.
Merlin: You have to figure out where you can be useful and how you can avoid being a crazy person.
Merlin: Because this is just the beginning, for one thing.
Merlin: It's just, you know, it's the part I just keep coming back to and it's, you know, you're crazy when everything starts seeming related.
Merlin: But just this sort of crisis of, this American crisis of seeming unable to have overmuch empathy or sympathy for other people, even when it benefits you.
Merlin: It's almost like watching a version of Prisoner's Dilemma played out on some kind of slow motion, very large scale, where, I mean, personally, there are lots of, whatever, the opposite of a benefit, an inconvenience to us for, like, we're healthy, and we should just be wheeling around and doing stuff, and everybody's inconveniencing me.
Merlin: But the thing is, like I say, the part that still has not landed on enough people is it's not about—it is only—
Merlin: glancingly about you not catching it.
Merlin: It's about you not catching it so you don't give it to other people.
Merlin: Because we are lining up something close to a perfect storm in terms of the lack of tests, the lack of people taking it seriously.
Merlin: The fact that, I mean, as of the last couple of days, we're already approaching capacity in ICUs in metro areas.
Merlin: And boy, you really don't want to be, you do not want to be at capacity in ICUs at like day four or day three of an emergency like this.
Merlin: And it's like, you know, we're just we're spending all our seed corn on like owning the libs.
Merlin: And it's just it sucks.
John: I wonder if I wonder if you're in my show, although what's in the show is in the show.
John: Yeah.
John: I wonder whether whether we are helping.
Merlin: Oh, I think we are.
Merlin: I think I think it is an opportunity just to be now to go the other way and just be unreasonable in another way is that I think it is an opportunity.
Merlin: Everybody's different.
Merlin: Everybody's got different needs.
Merlin: Everybody's got different challenges.
Merlin: But the one thing that everybody can afford to do is to just not be awful to other people.
Merlin: And to be, you know, sort of, you know, like two Chinese restaurants in Oakland closed last week because basically people just stopped going there because they thought they were going to get coronavirus.
Merlin: And like, I don't know, there's no omnibus answer to this that I could provide.
Merlin: I mean, even listening, for example, to the very good episode of This American Life that came out today.
Merlin: I mean, the stuff that they're talking about in there is already not only old news, but like almost everything they say just needs to be replaced with please find quality information and please follow it.
Merlin: that's you can't you can't even give somebody a piece of advice by the time this comes out in two hours anything we say here will already have been old it's just more like you've got to keep your head about you and like i don't know this is not particularly useful i guess but find opportunities to to be decent to other people right now because there are a lot of people who could really use it is all i've got yeah yeah i and and and life goes on too you know there's um
John: There's still, and this was one of the great things about the Joko Cruz was that in a crisis, we adopted new protocols, but life went on, right?
John: And new protocols are surprisingly easy.
John: And I think one of the things I'm taking away from the news is that
John: The failure to recognize three weeks ago that we needed to be doing what we're doing right now is going to produce greater hardship.
John: But doing what we're doing right now is...
John: is going to prevent even greater hardship three weeks from now.
Merlin: This is not a great time for black and white thinking.
Merlin: This is a time to minimize losses and damage to the extent possible and just keep, even when that feels frustrating and the results are not clear, this is known.
Merlin: We've got to minimize that harm.
John: Yeah, it is known.
John: And in doing so, there are all kinds of alternative futures that we're
John: that we're working you know we're working to um ameliorate and that is exciting right the the degree to which
John: I think most people can recognize the situation and pull together against, you know, like if you had said four months ago that we would be able to accomplish something like all Americans not going to work, all Americans who can afford that, you know, who not can afford, but that so much of American work energy would be,
John: be both voluntarily and sort of collectively re-channeled according to, you know, like to work toward a common cause, not just against a common enemy, but toward a common cause.
John: No one would have believed it.
John: I mean, four months ago, we couldn't, you wouldn't believe that any five Democrats could agree on what kind of pizza to get.
John: And now we're in this new world and potentially come out the other side with a work-from-home economy for a lot of people, right?
John: Or come out the other side with just a collective memory of collective action.
Merlin: which in some ways is what we've been lacking as a culture for the last... Yeah, that's a phrase I think in my head, I concatenate that with the letters AFL-CIO.
Merlin: When I think of collective action, I think of strikes and stuff like that.
Merlin: But it's also a disused word that's very meaningful for any group of people, especially a country that's struggling, collective action.
John: Collective action.
John: And we've been debating politically...
John: the idea of a universal basic income, and that has not surfaced to the level of, nobody's really talking about it in bars yet, but it's been a political volleyball for quite a while, and among politically savvy people, it is a platform.
John: It was kind of Andrew Yang's biggest plank, wasn't it?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: But it's been bandied about for decades.
John: But here we have like a real world situation where a universal basic income is kind of what stands between true disaster for millions of people and what could be a sort of survivable and, you know, a situation that people could hunker down in weather.
John: And if there were a universal basic income, it would be, this situation would be
John: There would be a whole crazy aspect of the situation that would be managed or manageable that right now is not manageable and something has to happen, right?
John: You can't have 250,000 people dying of flu and 900,000 people dying of starvation, you know?
John: So something's going to happen and what's going to happen and it's going to be a clusterfuck.
John: but it's going to produce in the, in the main, a sudden awareness among a awful lot of people about like what a universal basic income is, why it works to our advantage, how it's actually more cost effective than, than a dozen other methods we have of helping people and people, I think so, so it will, so it will,
John: That's an example of like a collective understanding of collective action where it may be that this is the thing.
John: And I mean I can't – I'm not trying to say that there's a silver lining to this yet.
Merlin: No, no, but it's going to be a jolt to the system.
Merlin: And it's up to us individually and collectively, as you say, to decide or to contribute to what happens as we get through this and when it is, as they say, over.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And it may not be over until there's universal health care, right?
John: It may not be over, really over, until there's...
John: Until there's a real sea change in the way we operate.
John: And I think the doom and gloomers, and particularly the people that are looking for conspiracies, are worried that what's going to happen is we're going to come out of the other side and there's going to be a lot of...
John: Totalitarianism, right?
John: I mean, one of the interesting threads I read yesterday was there were a lot of people calling for the election to be postponed and a lot of other people saying, don't give Trump any ideas.
John: And that was a response that I wasn't anticipating.
John: But of course, the last thing you want to do is hand over the power to postpone the election to someone who has so little interest in maintaining norms.
John: as trump right yeah so now now you're in a situation where it's like well do we do we hold an election where um you know where actually going to the polls is is not only dangerous but kind of an act of social irresponsible you know like lack of responsibility um or do we
John: do we try and find a way to postpone an election where there's nothing that our despotic current ruler would like more?
Merlin: Don't put it past him.
John: Right.
John: Or do we, do we develop an, an online elections like system in the, you know, in a, like a slap a dash last minute way during an era when we're all terrified that,
John: that even the, you know, the ones that we've worked on for six years are hackable or just junk.
John: All of that is like, if it, if it weren't happening under the shadow of the possibility that hundreds of thousands of our neighbors are going to die, you know, that's all really like,
John: Some of that will be what historians look back upon and say is most interesting about this time, like how we figure stuff like this out.
John: It's an opportunity stake.
John: It's an opportunity stake.