Ep. 384: "Original Shame"
Merlin: hello hi john hi merlin how are you good i liked that we started the show with a little bit of uh okay this is so this is this is the keyboard i use all the time hang on listen oh i hear it okay and so then this is the keyboard i have to connect every time i do a podcast
John: A little better?
John: Much, much, much more silenter.
John: But you like the clickety-clack of the old IBM Selectric.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Love my Selectric.
John: You want a little clack.
Merlin: I like a little bit of clack, and I like a little bit of key travel.
Merlin: Yeah, key travel.
Merlin: Oh, that's what's missing in today's world.
Merlin: I love the key travel and the cherry switches.
Merlin: Also, this keyboard has a large volume knob on it that I use a lot.
Merlin: Does it have a daisy wheel?
Merlin: A daisy wheel.
Merlin: It's got a daisy chain.
Merlin: It's got a daisy cutter.
John: A daisy cutter.
Merlin: No, a daisy duke.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: No, I wish.
Merlin: But yeah, that's where I am.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: So I do this thing with all of my co-hosts where I try to make sure that I'm mostly up to date on what they're doing.
John: All my co-hosts.
Merlin: All my co-hosts.
Merlin: All the great co-hosts.
Merlin: I like to just go and see what they're up to.
Merlin: And so I glean the most about you.
Merlin: On the one hand, I glean the most about you from Instagram.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But on the other hand, I no longer have an Instagram account, so I can't click and see what's happening.
Merlin: So if I see a picture of, like, your mom, I go, oh, I don't want to read that.
Merlin: And then I click and it says, eh, put in your thing.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Can I ask a question, though?
Merlin: Sure, sure.
Merlin: Did you make a comedy mustache?
John: Yeah, I did.
John: It was, you know, it's a...
John: it's a comedy vanity quarantine Sweeney Todd mustache.
John: Attend the tales, John Otter Rick.
John: But, um, you know, the, the, the vanity part of it is that as my beard got bigger and more unruly because it has gone gray, um, uh,
John: We – I believe that we as a race, the humans, we see a big gray beard and it becomes a real – like it's not an age signifier so much as it is a curve flattener.
John: Everyone with a big gray beard looks 75 years old.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so I had this big gray beard and I was like, look at it.
John: I'm going to grow it really long.
John: I'm going to grow it really long.
John: And I just, every time I, every time I saw it, I was like, oh no, I just looked
John: Like an old man.
Merlin: The word I use when I grow a beard increasingly, I look, I want to say drawn is a word like my mom.
Merlin: I look drawn.
Merlin: Drawn.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I look like a narrow fucking old man.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, like somebody would carve me into stone and put me in their garden.
Yeah.
John: Well, that's an advantage you have over me looking more like an uncooked scallop that's now covered with white hair.
John: Nobody likes a hairy scallop.
John: And this is the problem, right?
John: Because I don't like my face without a beard.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so I can't just shave it off and look young.
Merlin: You said a long time ago, John, you have a beard shaped face.
Merlin: Your face wants to be bearded.
Merlin: It does.
John: These are my trials.
John: And this is, you know, if you think about male vanity as it relates to its beard, I have every instance of it.
John: Because I would just do as my father did, which is wear a mustache for the last 40 years of his life.
John: Except I don't really think I have that great of a mustache.
John: You know, you see guys that have great mustaches.
Merlin: I've always admired Rob Delaney's facial hair.
Merlin: He has a really cool mustache.
John: Great facial hair.
John: Great facial hair.
Merlin: No question about it.
Merlin: You can tell he's got thick hair.
Merlin: Dense hair.
Merlin: I have a lot of narrow hair.
Merlin: I have a lot of it, but it is very fine.
Merlin: And I think that extends to my drawn beard face.
John: Rob Delaney is hair from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.
John: Hair everywhere.
John: And I'm sure that his male vanity probably has something to do with too much hair.
John: I bet he thinks, I wish I didn't have, I wish my back wasn't so hairy or something like that.
John: You know, I hear that.
Merlin: Everybody wants the thing they don't have.
Merlin: It's like the great Maz said, you know, I want the one I can't have.
Merlin: And it's driving me mad.
Merlin: It's driving me mad.
Merlin: It's driving me mad.
Merlin: And I think it's like that.
Merlin: People with curly hair, they want the straight hair.
John: Oh, they want straight hair.
Merlin: You know what people with straight hair want?
Merlin: They want something different.
John: They want curly hair.
Merlin: They want a little wave.
Merlin: A little wave.
Merlin: Maybe get a perm.
John: And in my case, I hear from a lot of people, oh, you have such a great beard.
John: But, of course, I have a lot of issues with it.
John: And surrounding it, oh, I wish it was like this.
John: I wish it had been like this.
John: You know, if I'd had a mustache when I was young, I would have worn a mustache.
John: There's no question.
John: I didn't.
John: It was made out of peach fuzz until I was about 34.
John: Anyway, so I was looking at the big mutton chops and I saw this General Burnside kind of peeking out.
John: And I was like, huh, what if I just went that route?
Merlin: If you did a Michelangelo, you start with a face and then cut away everything that's not a comedy mustache.
John: That's right.
John: Cut away all the stuff that's not a comedy mustache.
John: I may have gone a little bit too far.
John: I could have stopped at a Lemmy.
John: You did the right thing.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: So anyway, here I am, and it's still here.
John: And the thing about a comedy mustache is you go out in the world, you forget you've got a comedy mustache.
John: Yeah.
John: And then you're interacting with people, people that already know you.
John: It's like forgetting you have a lobster on your shoulder.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Give me a little bit of stink eye.
John: And so all these people that don't know me, they just know me as the neighbor, the guy that moved into the neighborhood recently and who had a beard.
John: And then they knew me for a while as the guy who's letting his beard go.
John: But the comedy mustache really announces there's a new sheriff in town.
John: It's true.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: So that's where I'm at, and I'm enjoying it.
John: Usually when I do something like that, I'll let it go for a day, and then I'll pass myself in the mirror, and I'll go, ugh, got to get that off.
John: But I kind of like it.
Merlin: I had a very ill-advised hirsute experience for almost a year.
Merlin: For some reason, I just never had it in me to go and get a haircut.
Merlin: And I'll send you some photos.
Merlin: This is this year.
Merlin: I mean, into this year.
Merlin: And I'd also grown a beard that made me look, as my mother would say, very drawn.
Merlin: And I think something happens.
Merlin: I'm trying to piggyback on what you're saying here.
Merlin: When you get to be an older guy and your hair grays and it gets weird and wiry.
Merlin: Like right now, my sideburns are so wackadoo.
Merlin: I'm practically Hasidic.
Merlin: They're really, really weird looking and they just stick straight.
Merlin: Not even cool.
Merlin: Not like those cool curls.
Merlin: They just stick way out.
Merlin: I saw a photo of Eisenhower today where it looked like he had an eyebrow hair that was about five inches long.
Merlin: And I kind of admire that game.
Merlin: But you do need to keep it in check as you get older.
Merlin: There are ways that you can groom yourself to look very cool.
Merlin: For me, unruly hair, long beard, lots of gray going around.
Merlin: It's not a terrific look.
John: Well, and, you know, you're an example, I think, of a guy, very handsome man.
John: Thank you.
John: Very handsome man.
John: And you've gone through various, like, my hair is out of control, my beard is out of control.
John: But every picture I ever see of you, I think that, you know, he's a very handsome guy.
John: I like that look.
John: I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.
John: Yeah, it's true.
John: It's 100% true.
John: I think everything looks good on Merlin Mann.
John: Wow, really?
Merlin: This is amazing.
Merlin: We should do this more.
John: But the thing is, from inside Merlin Mann, which thankfully I've never been, I have no idea how Merlin Mann perceives his hair and beard.
Merlin: I'm so uncommonly blessed in so many ways.
Merlin: I don't think a lot about my physical appearance.
Merlin: I don't look at myself in the mirror very much.
Merlin: I just...
Merlin: I'm just not that into it.
Merlin: Oh, here's a good one.
Merlin: So there's one with a – there's me with a comedy mustache.
Merlin: And then here's another one with a beard.
Merlin: I'm texting you.
Merlin: No, but the other nice thing is I – this sounds so privileged, conceited, dumb.
Merlin: I don't know what.
Merlin: Oh, look at those eyebrows.
John: That is such a great mustache.
John: You have such a great – oh, but with the beard.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't you think I look a little bit drawn?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You seem a little bit like a castaway.
Merlin: You eat them pickles?
Merlin: I'll have them.
Merlin: But the mustache.
Merlin: The guy that would walk up to you in the food court and ask for your pickles.
John: I feel like with the mustache, you very much look like someone who's fighting Zulus.
John: Absolutely.
John: All I need is like a pith helmet.
Merlin: yeah but the other the other thing is like for example i i i'm losing some of my head hair but like i if i were bald i don't think i would overmind it as much as a lot of guys i feel bad for guys that i mean it's you know kind of sucks you know the whole hair thing oh oh hang on hang on do we have a sponsor for this this week
Merlin: Uh-oh.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
John: Maybe do a little ad read right now.
John: What is it?
John: Hang on.
John: Hang on.
John: Let me go check.
John: Let me go check.
John: Let's do an ad read right in the middle.
Merlin: I'm just going to be so embarrassed.
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Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So anyways,
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Well, that's going to be awkward.
Merlin: But I feel fortunate in that way.
John: There are things that I'm hung up about.
John: It's in the show.
Merlin: John, thank you.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: Anyway, that's all I had to say about that.
Merlin: There's some kinds of things where I wish we could trade hang-ups with other people sometimes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't you like, don't you sometimes crave like, gosh, there's this one thing that I so, like, I don't want to be famous on YouTube.
Merlin: That's not a thing that like dogs me day and night, but I would love to be able to have one day without a single intrusive thought.
Merlin: If I could trade with a YouTuber, I don't know.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like somebody who's really, maybe you want my disability and I want yours when we trade.
Merlin: It would be kind of like a freaky Friday.
Yeah.
John: Let me see.
John: What would an anxiety that seems to plague other people be that I wouldn't mind trading an anxiety that I have for?
John: Let me think about this.
Merlin: Okay, so it's sort of like, I don't know, I don't play those fantasy card games, but maybe something more like jacks or marbles from an earlier time.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I'm going to say, let's see here.
John: Oh, I think I got one for you.
Merlin: Okay, go ahead.
Merlin: Maybe if you could have a day without feeling menaced by your own expectations.
John: That would be wonderful.
John: I mean, am I cutting too deep?
John: Because I know I would like that.
John: No, that's nice.
John: But what would I take for that?
John: What is somebody else's anxiety that I don't think...
John: I don't think I would mind having because the thing is, it's not a question of not caring about what other people care about, because in order to take it on, you would have to you would be plagued by it.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: That's that's the game.
Merlin: I feel like, here's one way I think, one model for getting your head around it is consider something that you realize you have a higher, for which you have a higher tolerance than a lot of people you know.
Merlin: You think about – like there's that term I first learned – what?
Merlin: The first time I heard this used in terms of psychology, I think, was compartmentalization.
Merlin: And the idea that Bill Clinton, it was believed, was a tremendous – tremendously skilled at compartmentalization, which is a way of sort of like being able to focus very heavily on –
Merlin: on this one thing and then intentionally or unintentionally like not noticing this whole other thing or not being bothered by this.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Not being bothered is right.
Merlin: Do you think you have anything like that where you could like, you could trade that to somebody for some peace of mind?
John: Oh, well the thing is like, I don't feel a lot.
John: I do not, I'm not bothered by pain and physical discomfort.
John: Like for instance, I don't, the thing is I feel pain.
John: I feel discomfort.
John: And obviously I would,
John: prefer not to i prefer it when i'm not but i'm not it doesn't um doesn't consume you it doesn't right so pain when i feel pain it uh part of my response to it is like aha i'm alive yeah you know it's like it confirms
John: Something for me.
John: And and so I have what I have is a high tolerance to endure it.
John: Now, my mom.
Merlin: That's a really good distinction.
Merlin: It's sort of like like one reason I think Wolverine is such an interesting Wilberforce is such an interesting character is that he yes, he does heal from his injuries, but he feels exactly the same pain that you or I would have.
Merlin: So like when the claws come out, Rogue says, does it hurt?
Merlin: And he says, every time.
Merlin: So there's a difference between, and this is a very, I think a very sort of Buddhist point, is like it's one thing to have pain, and it's another thing to feel bad about the pain.
Merlin: It's another thing to be bothered by the pain and your reaction to it.
John: My mom does not feel it the same way other people do.
John: Like she can burn herself and not know it.
John: Whoa.
John: And then...
John: Or hurt herself and then realizes later that it's a serious enough injury that she should be doctoring it.
John: But she didn't notice it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I've done that when I'm washing the dishes.
Merlin: You ever do that when you're washing the dishes?
Merlin: I hate to even say this.
Merlin: It gives me shivers.
Merlin: And you accidentally cut yourself with a very sharp knife while you're washing dishes.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And you don't realize it for maybe even like 30 seconds.
Merlin: You feel more like the pressure of the knife.
Merlin: But I don't often experience it as a painful cut until I notice I'm cut.
Merlin: And then I'm like Wile E. Coyote running in the air.
John: My mom describes it as when she knows that she's hurt.
John: when she feels nausea.
John: Um, and for her to feel nausea requires that she be pretty hurt.
John: I don't have that.
John: I, I am hurt, you know, I'm, and I, and I heard all the time, ache and hurt and whatever, but I, but I don't, it would never stop me.
John: Right.
John: Like,
John: Um, and, and that has caused injury before.
John: Like I walked on shin splints on my long walk across Europe.
John: I walked on shin splints until I couldn't walk anymore.
Merlin: And you get that.
Merlin: I know like runners get that.
Merlin: And that's usually from moving a lot on a hard surface, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And just, I've been not stretching out, not being warmed up.
John: I don't, I don't know, but I, I ended up having to
John: just sit still for like two and a half, three days to, to be able to walk.
John: And then I still had, I still had an injury.
John: I just had to get up and keep going.
John: And, and, um, and I, I've done that a lot, you know, like I did that thing when I broke my hand and walked around with the, with my fingers taped together with a
Merlin: With a fucking pencil.
Merlin: That must have been so – those little tiny bones.
Merlin: That must have been so painful.
John: Yeah, it was really painful.
John: And it was only after 10 days that I was like, OK, well, it's not getting better.
John: So I should go to the doctor.
John: And the doctor was like, thanks.
John: Well, it's a little late now.
Merlin: Was it all purple and bangy?
Merlin: Oh, well, what he meant was that the bone had started... No, but I mean, like, as you were walking around and had it taped up and everything, was it, like, visibly, like, was it swollen or purple?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, it was awful.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: See, I have to tell you... The reason I ask, I'm thinking of a very funny scene in Parks and Recreation where one of the characters...
Merlin: is telling this doctor all these bizarre maladies that he has.
Merlin: And then he says, oh, no, also I broke my hand on the way here.
Merlin: And he holds it up, and it's purple.
Merlin: And I think, like, for me, the most upset, like seeing the blood, I think the most difficult part, well, the pain would suck, but it looking that weird would freak me out.
Merlin: Body horror kind of thing, right?
Merlin: Like my body integrity is gone.
Merlin: My symmetry, as ever, is diminishing.
Merlin: And on top of it, now my hand's all purple and bangy.
John: Yeah, I think I wear that kind of stuff, blood and scars and stuff.
John: I'm, you know, unless there's like blood streaming down my face, I wear that stuff with pride.
John: The other thing is I'm not really embarrassed the same way that other people are.
John: I feel shame.
Merlin: You're way ahead of me.
Merlin: I love these distinctions.
Merlin: There's a big difference between constant shame and occasional embarrassment.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: you know uh shame you bring on yourself embarrassment you feel you see radiating from uh the reaction or the imagined reaction of others yeah i feel tremendous shame yeah right we talk about it all the time you're practically first i said you're buddhist now i think you might be like uh well like an evangelical like you you've got it man original shame
Merlin: You're fighting off the blood of the original shame.
John: Original shame.
John: I have no idea, honestly, what people who are embarrassed, I know exactly what it feels like.
John: I just don't know why it's so inhibiting.
John: Because, like, I walk into situations all the time, I guess like Wolverine, embarrassed, but it doesn't impede me
John: And that does feel like a superpower given how often I hear people report that it's embarrassment that keeps them
John: from doing the things they want to do or, or, or the fear of embarrassment.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The fear, the fear of anything can be as bad or worse than the thing.
Merlin: And that's the whole, well, that's the whole heart of anxiety is that, I mean, for me, anxiety is something where like I just come up with all unintentionally something inside of me comes up with all of these scenarios that I mean, I might as well be happening right now.
Merlin: I don't, I don't, when I, when I have anxiety, which is a lot, I don't, I mean, I, I,
Merlin: I don't have much distance, and that's the problem.
Merlin: So you might see – again, now you're Wilberforce because you get embarrassed.
Merlin: It hurts every time, but then you heal.
Merlin: But it doesn't stop you from doing your crime solving.
John: Yeah, and I guess what it is is if you feel – if you power through the embarrassment – like there's all kinds of stuff I won't do, right?
John: Like I won't just –
John: Walk into a wedding party and push the minister to the side and say have I got a wedding for you?
John: I've always liked that about you.
John: Yeah, you never you very rarely push a minister I very very rarely push a minister But I don't I don't feel inhibited By embarrassment Even though I do it does hurt.
John: I had my first tinge of anxiety this morning in months Wow
John: I woke up and I was thinking about just sort of health in general.
John: You know, my health is on all our minds right now.
John: Sure.
John: And then I did that anxiety leap, which was I started thinking about my future health.
John: Yeah.
John: And as soon as I started thinking about my future health, then, you know, like the Terminator menu screen came up and started scrolling through.
John: every possible and probable disability that I was going to suffer in the course of my life before I finally mercifully, uh, crossed over to the other side.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was just like, Oh no, I don't want all those things.
John: I don't want to, I didn't want, Oh no, you know, I'm going to be bedridden.
John: And then I felt that thing come up in my, in my, uh, crawl that like, like the tightness.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was just like, Oh shit.
John: Yeah.
John: And you know, and, and I've, I've,
John: I've gotten now so I can stand at that crossroads, which where it hasn't yet filled the room and say like, aha, I can think about this for one more second and be fucked.
John: Or I can get the fuck out of here.
John: Yeah.
John: Get out of this like a rapidly, you know, like shrinking room.
John: And I managed to shake it off, but it was spooky because I hadn't felt it.
John: In a while, you know, I used to be having that feeling constantly during my anxiety years a couple of years ago or a year ago.
Merlin: Why do you suppose, if you are comfortable saying, why do you suppose that happened today in particular?
Merlin: Anything different?
John: Well, yes.
John: There is a new piece of news.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I don't love that.
John: I know.
John: Oh, God.
John: The lead foreman of the contractors working on my house has coronavirus.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And I saw him.
John: Oh, my God.
John: He and I stood in a bathroom together.
John: I was wearing a mask.
John: And was, you know, intentionally like crowded into one corner of the bathroom and, you know, kind of like using the force to keep him on the other side of the bathroom.
John: But that was 10 days ago.
John: And so I am within the...
John: What we imagine is the 14-day window.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Can I ask when he told you that he had it?
Merlin: Two days ago.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: That's... It's certainly cause for concern.
Merlin: But... Well, you tell me.
Merlin: How do you feel about that?
Merlin: It seems like you're probably okay.
John: Yeah.
John: I think I am.
John: You know, the danger is that my mom... My mom has not...
John: She's come out of her, like, super tight quarantine and has started to go to my house to work in the garden.
John: And what that's, you know, she still wears a mask everywhere she goes.
John: We have not, you know, no one in my family has actually given my mom a hug in three and a half months.
John: We stay, you know, we stay apart from one another.
John: But she has gone into the house to use the bathroom.
John: You know, so...
John: So what it's done is it's just brought reality home up until that.
John: Literally.
John: Yeah.
John: Up until that point, we didn't really know anybody that had it.
John: And it seemed sort of distant from our day to day reality.
John: Right.
John: We're not we're not at the lake of the Ozarks, but we're also none of us have to work in a hospital.
John: None of us have to you know, we're not going into a crowded environment.
John: We don't we're not working in retail.
John: where a bunch of strangers come.
John: And so every time we go, we have to go into a store or a thing, you know, we batten down the hatches, we mask up and we go in and we stay away from people.
John: My sister loves to yell at people.
John: And like in everything, in everything in her life, she manages to be able to yell at people, mock them to their face and they come away loving her.
John: like she will say excuse me she's got moxie she does she's like excuse me please practice social distancing and the person goes huh what and she's like you're not practicing social distancing right now and the person goes oh oh uh and they take like four giant steps back and she goes thank you thank you and they go uh sure and she goes are you seriously not wearing a mask in this store
John: And the person goes, uh, I just, and she's like, I mean, seriously?
John: And then they laugh.
John: And they're like, well, I just, I left it in the car.
John: And she's like, left it in the car?
John: And they're like, I'm going back to the car now.
John: And she's like, okay.
Okay.
John: Bye.
John: And they're like, bye.
John: Here's my number.
Merlin: I don't know how she does it.
Merlin: I don't, I see.
Merlin: I don't want to do that, but I want to be able to do that.
Merlin: It's like, it's like when you, I want to know Jeet Kune Do.
Merlin: I don't think I'll ever have to use it, but boy, be nice if I could.
John: It's incredible.
Merlin: It's a superpower, John.
Merlin: And this is your same sister, yourself, same sister for new listeners.
Merlin: She's like my friend Pete.
Merlin: My friend Pete, we used to call him Action Line.
Merlin: Because anytime you need to get anything done, especially with customer service, you call Pete.
Merlin: Because he's the nicest, sweetest Christian man, wonderful drummer, but boy, did he know how to get things accomplished efficiently.
Merlin: And I feel like your sister's had that role.
Merlin: Doesn't she relish the opportunity to set someone straight?
John: Just loves it.
John: Loves to set them straight and finds a way to do it where, you know, because she does that thing.
John: And I think one of the distinctions and it happens a lot like way into the interaction.
John: So it's not the key.
John: It's not the key.
John: What the key is, I don't know.
John: But way into the interaction, that moment where we all are inclined to turn to our friends and go, oh, my God, this guy.
John: Can you believe this guy?
John: Can you believe this guy?
John: That moment, when she does it, which she does, she directs it directly at them.
John: She looks them in the eye and goes, I can't believe you.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And the fact that she directs it at them, like if you look at your friend and go, this guy, the person gets furious.
John: Right.
John: That's that's the moment where they always pass over to.
John: Like, fuck you.
Merlin: If they see if somebody catches you throwing shade, presumably behind their back.
John: Right.
John: But she looks right at you and goes, are you serious right now?
John: And when she does it, it's disarming somehow.
John: I don't know.
John: If I did that to somebody, I'd be in a fist fight.
John: Absolutely.
John: But she's just like, I can't believe you.
John: And the thing is, she's not... She doesn't get away with it because she's frail or small or cute or anything like that.
John: She's...
John: Her body English is, do you want to go right now?
John: Do you want to go?
John: Because I'll go.
John: She kind of gets a little bit crazy eyes.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Anyway, so she does that, which if we're out together, definitely clears a path, right?
John: Like nobody's around.
John: And when my mom is involved, she's like a, I don't even know the wild animal to compare her to.
Merlin: But she will – The wild animal I would compare her to is a veteran dean of girls at a high school.
Merlin: She has that like – OK.
Merlin: This is what I've done all day for 19 years is worked with punks like you.
Merlin: First 1,000 punks, right?
Merlin: She's the McCluskey of girls.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Isn't that part of it, though?
Merlin: It's like your mom is so like I want I want to not displease your mom.
Merlin: Yeah, she's very no nonsense.
Merlin: But she's also she's it's she does that thing where like when she talks the way she talks just in her day to day, she's so focused.
Merlin: She's really looking at you.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Dina girls.
John: My sister said the other day that the way that you tell my mom is furious is that she clears her throat.
John: If my mom goes, like, hit the dirt.
John: She doesn't tell.
John: And I never put it together.
John: And Susan was like, oh, watch.
John: Watch.
John: If she clears her throat, it's over.
John: And I'm like.
John: So I've been watching her.
John: And as soon as I put it together, I was like, oh, right.
John: That's the... That's when you stop whatever you were doing and put everything away.
Merlin: It's not just... People have all different kinds of tells.
Merlin: I know I have some of these.
Merlin: I can tell when I'm really, really...
Merlin: being emotional or angry when I do certain things.
Merlin: But people like Daniel Dale have talked about Trump, or a lot of people have talked about this, and his tells.
Merlin: So one of his huge tells is, at a press conference, a woman asks him a perfectly, a female, a reporter who happens to be female, maybe she happens to be Asian, American, asks an entirely plausible question that anybody in his position should be used to.
Merlin: He's tired of talking about it.
Merlin: He's bored.
Merlin: You know what he does?
Merlin: He makes his accordion hands.
Merlin: He puts out his hands.
Merlin: He says, okay, you ready for this?
Merlin: And that's what he says right before he greatly exaggerates or misleads with a statement.
Merlin: So basically it's that classic.
Merlin: Also, I mean Daniel Dale has talked about the sir stories.
Merlin: Any sir that involves a soldier crying and calling him sir definitely never happened.
Merlin: So with your mom now, you have a skeleton key to her interior world now.
John: It was always easy to tell that my sister was about to come unglued because the whites of her eyes turn electric green.
John: And she is just waiting for you to finish your sentence.
John: And it's almost a thing where if you keep talking, you can put it off, but the eyes are getting greener.
John: You're not going to
John: you can't talk your way out of it.
John: But, but so, so right now, yeah, that's right.
John: So right now in our clan, there is this exposure that's happened and we're concerned about the, our contractor.
John: He has been working with a team of three or four guys.
John: Um, they, they, uh, they kind of,
John: We're scoff laws about the quarantine because they're like look we all work together.
John: There's you know, we're it's a team of four of us We
John: they just kept working.
John: They've been working for the last three months.
John: They just powered through.
Merlin: They were like, we're essential, but also... We only recently, officially, officially reopened construction officially, a week or two ago.
Merlin: How long has that been?
Merlin: I mean, what I'm trying to ask is, is that in contravention of local guidance?
John: It was in contravention of local guidance from the get-go.
John: But, you know, in the case of
John: uh, for instance, um, the recording of Omnibus, Ken and I were on the Joko cruise together.
John: We walked off the Joko cruise.
John: We flew home together in an airplane.
John: And then two days later we were supposed to record Omnibus, which we do in person.
John: So Ken called and he said, have you been out?
John: And I was like, no, he said, I haven't been out.
John: I was like, right.
John: I trust you.
John: And he said, am I really not going to come over there and record today?
John: And I said, I don't see why you wouldn't.
John: And he got in the car and he was like, it only took me 10 minutes to get to your house where it usually takes a half an hour.
John: I was like, yeah.
John: So Ken and I have been in quarantine together and our families have been in quarantine together from the very beginning.
John: And that was what was, that was what the contractors kind of,
John: said to me as a justification for the fact that they were just going to.
Merlin: Don't worry about this.
Merlin: We were only exposed to each other.
Merlin: We are practically family for quarantine or for Corona purposes.
Right.
John: And so when I asked, when I said, now, how do you think that you caught this Corona virus?
John: If you guys are all, you know, uh, maintaining good practice.
John: And his answer was he got it.
John: He probably got it at the store.
John: Uh huh.
John: Because he's a contractor.
John: He's going to the Lowe's and clearly was not doing it right.
Merlin: And you're not going to know.
Merlin: That's the other problem with this.
Merlin: To state the obvious, you can be asymptomatic.
Merlin: So you can be around somebody where you both appear to not have it.
Merlin: One of you might have it, and you're not going to know for several days.
Merlin: So you could be – I mean, I know this sounds – everybody should know this, but I don't think everybody is fully accepting that.
Merlin: The whole like I feel fine thing is that's it's like I said, it's like it's like using a backup camera on your car to see if something's going to hit you next week.
Merlin: It's like this is we don't have a way to know.
John: And that is what is causing me, I think, today to wake up in the middle of the night and say, hmm.
John: Yeah.
John: Because I have this.
John: Because if we take the 14 days to be meaningful, I have four more days.
John: But also, I don't know if I'm one of the ones that has it and doesn't know.
John: And so we're back to a place of like, well, we can't see mom and we can't go see Ken and we can't, you know, because I've had some outside exposure.
John: And...
John: we were not going to loosen up, right?
John: We were not in, within the family, we had no intention of going swimming or we're not the ones that are sitting here going, I can't believe that the overreaching federal government is trying to tell me how to make my macaroni and cheese.
John: We were like, yeah, right.
John: Still thinking in terms of listening to scientists, not, it wasn't ever really about the government.
Yeah.
John: Um, so we were still fine, right?
John: We were just like, look, it's, it's working.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, but like for instance, the next door neighbor.
John: I was talking to him yesterday and he and his wife were both ministers, evangelical ministers, but ones that where their ministry was focused on the homeless.
John: So they spent they have spent I think part of their career definitely was going to Bulgaria to convince some Orthodox kids that what they really wanted to be was born again.
John: But in the last cooler outfits there.
John: Oh, yes.
John: Right.
John: I love an Orthodox church.
John: Incense.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: We used to go to a Greek culture food, you know, Greek festival in Cincinnati.
Merlin: Yeah, we have one of those.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And we go and sometimes you have occasion to go in the church.
Merlin: And I was like, man, their church is so pimped out compared to ours.
John: It's so much cooler.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And everybody's got a cool outfit.
Merlin: And it's all like, I want to say Byzantine.
Merlin: Like just, yeah, I love that stuff.
John: But the evangelical argument is you don't need all that stuff.
John: You get direct with God.
Merlin: Well, it's like meeting somebody who's drinking warm RC, and you're like, did you know I can get you a chilled Coke?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Would you like some ice in that?
Merlin: Believe me, you want this.
Merlin: I'm like, no, I'm good.
Merlin: I'm good with the RC.
Merlin: That's actually how I enjoy it.
Merlin: I keep my car so it warms up.
Merlin: And you'd be like, no, no, no.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I should have been clear.
Merlin: You will be becoming a Christian.
John: Try an icy Coke.
John: Try an icy Coke.
John: Also, we're building a mission here.
John: You're welcome.
John: But in this case, I was talking to him and I was like, how's it going out there?
John: You know, I'm imagining that your many services for the homeless have become somewhat choked off.
John: And he was like, oh, you wouldn't believe it.
John: You know, we used to provide dental and medical and two squares a day and all this.
John: And we're down to three bag lunches a week and all the other stuff is closed.
John: I was like, bummer.
John: And he said, yeah, but the real bummer is the way that we actually made a living, my wife and I, is that she worked for Norwegian cruises.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Double exposure.
Merlin: Well, exposure economically.
John: Yeah.
John: And I said, oh, that's no good.
John: And he was like, it is no good.
John: She's been out of work since the beginning and they're not opening back up.
Merlin: It's like my friend.
Merlin: I shouldn't say friend, but I mean, I don't know that well, but I have acquaintance.
Merlin: He and his wife own two bars in Brooklyn.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That sucks.
Merlin: I just think about them all the time.
John: But yeah.
John: They went from doing great to, or at least like struggling, but like
John: on behalf of some cool thing that they owned to like, no future, no future.
John: And it's, it's terrible.
John: Right.
John: And I could imagine that you would, in that case, even if you were living a science-based life, you would at least be praying to science that one day you'll be able to open your bar.
Right.
John: Or go back to work at your cruise company or whatever.
John: Do your work.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, we are incredibly fortunate to have – we've gone from a thing where we were more or less embarrassed by our jobs.
John: Like, yeah, what I do is pretty weird.
John: It's weird.
John: Hard to explain.
Merlin: Like I used to say, I used to just say I do stuff on the internet.
Merlin: Or, like, do stuff with computers.
Merlin: Because that's so boring.
Merlin: It's so boring to say that.
Merlin: And, like, you know, we're not going to have to discuss this.
Merlin: Especially as we've talked about many times.
Merlin: Especially, well, I don't know if it's especially here, but definitely in the Bay Area.
Merlin: It's always this, like, sizing up.
Merlin: Like, can I estimate, like, how valuable you are to me by learning what you do?
John: Yeah, I wonder within the Bay Area how that must go.
John: Because here in Seattle, everybody works in computers, but there is considerably less entrepreneurship.
John: Every third 24-year-old you meet is not hoping that their app makes them $1 billion.
John: Everybody here is working for the man.
John: They're getting paid kind of outrageously.
John: But they're not trying to tell you that within the next year they're going to be living in a helicopter.
John: And in the Bay Area, I really get the feeling that every third person you meet thinks that they are better than you.
Merlin: Yeah, especially the young ones.
Merlin: One thing that's so interesting to me also is the – again, to state something kind of obvious, every region, like every city or area that I've lived in has slightly to very different culture around what you can and cannot say, what you should and should not say.
Merlin: And they're almost all a cliché, but they're a cliché that has a basis in reality.
Merlin: It is true.
Merlin: In Ohio, in the Midwest –
Merlin: Um, there's a, a lot, I feel like there's a lot, you could gossip all you want and say terrible things about people, but you don't ask them awkward questions.
Merlin: You don't, you may not know that somebody's divorced ever.
Merlin: Like you just, you don't talk about that kind of stuff.
Merlin: You think about some areas where you do or don't go to somebody's house, uh, after you started working with them.
Merlin: Um, like in England, that doesn't happen as much.
Merlin: You don't just like hang out with people that are your boss.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: Whereas in Florida, in the south, especially in Tallahassee, it's much more – Tallahassee even more, obviously, than the Bay Area, Tampa Bay Area, more southern.
Merlin: And so you can say the most cutting things about people.
Merlin: You look at the phrase, bless your heart.
Merlin: You would never say, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, but you can say, bless your heart.
Merlin: Out here, for example, I was struck, two things that struck me when I moved here.
Merlin: One is how much people join one another's conversations in public, which I always thought was so, I'd never seen that anywhere else but here.
Merlin: But the other one is, for example, talking constantly about what you pay in rent.
Merlin: Like everybody, one of the first questions, it's okay to ask people is what they're paying in rent.
Merlin: I've never lived anywhere where you talk about that kind of aspect.
Merlin: Let's put it this way.
Merlin: You sure would not do that in Ohio.
Merlin: That would seem really like your big timing a little bit.
John: In New York City, all you talk about is... Well, there are two things you talk about in New York City.
John: Where you went to college and...
John: And your apartment, you know, like every aspect of your apartment, how expensive it is.
Merlin: And your history of apartments, the smallest like thing you lived in, the cheapest you ever lived in, that kind of thing, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And basically in New York, the game is you're bragging about how cheaply, you're bragging about how cheap your rent is.
John: Yep.
John: But it's seen as a way of describing your relative wealth.
John: Because your wealth is how well you're playing the system.
John: You know, how well you're playing rent control for yourself.
John: In Seattle, you would... It's very rare that you would ever mention how much your house is worth.
John: How much you paid for anything.
John: Nobody would do that.
John: The rent conversation is...
John: Has entered into it, but it's changed.
John: It's gone from you're not going to believe how cheap my rent is, which used to be the way to brag.
John: And now it's you won't believe how expensive my rent is as a way of trying to.
John: communicate to others that you have a social justice complaint too.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Or the cost nationally, really, the conversation about the cost of being uninsured, the general cost and the problems of health care.
Merlin: That's become something for obvious reasons, I guess, has become something that more people are not only comfortable talking about, but they consider an important form of like personal activism.
Merlin: It's like, no, I mean, like not me too, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like I also –
John: I also, yeah.
Merlin: There's just so many stories of somebody who's just living their life with their $8,000 deductible, and then they fall down and hit their head, and now they owe $20,000 for the ambulance ride or whatever.
Merlin: Doesn't that seem like that's really entered into the conversation?
John: There's a lot of that, but there's also, I think, a lot of... I don't know.
John: You have to... You've always had to work and pay money to live, and that... Back when my rent was
John: um, $350.
John: I also only made $900 a month.
John: Right.
John: So it wasn't like, yeah, my rent was cheap.
John: It's like, I think I've described that when I was in, when I was in Romania and I was like, yeah, you know, these 25 cent a pack cigarettes in the United States, you won't believe what I pay for cigarettes.
John: Like at the time I was paying $6 and 50 cents for a pack of cigarettes and $6 and 50 cents was like, well,
John: your typical Romanian made in a, uh, a day or, you know, that was what, or, or no, or made in, you know, in like three days of work.
John: Yeah.
John: And they were like, that's impossible.
John: You can't possibly be telling me the truth right now.
John: How could a pack of cigarettes be worth that?
John: And it's like, well, because people in America make cigarettes,
John: thirty five thousand dollars a year and they were like thirty five thousand i haven't made thirty five thousand dollars in my lifetime it's like well i don't know what to tell you so so there's a certain amount yes the national conversation has turned to um how health care and housing are have gone crazy but there's also a lack of perspective in that conversation it's
John: where people are talking about the fact that they have to work to pay rent as being intrinsically unfair.
John: It's a way to kind of shame the older generation to say, well, you didn't have to deal with what we have to deal with.
John: It's like, well, I mean, even boomers had to work and pay rent.
John: And the rent wasn't easy for them to pay.
John: But there is truth to the fact that there was a time in America when you could work a blue-collar job and buy a house.
Merlin: Also, there's never been a time...
Merlin: So everybody for all of history has always felt like they have big problems.
Merlin: I don't think there's very many people in the world.
Merlin: And whether one agrees with that or not, it is very true that there's nobody who doesn't have problems in their mind.
John: Even during the times when it was like, these are the salad days, it wasn't, you know, your daughter ended up marrying Meathead, who came and lived in your house and talked about the war.
John: But, you know, like there's never people, there's never not been cancer, you know.
Merlin: How did I get us onto this, John?
Merlin: I need your uncanny – I brag on you all the time for your uncanny ability to remember how your story started.
Merlin: How did I derail us onto local customs?
John: Because we were talking about the – we were in this – it was before the conversation.
John: Oh, it was San Francisco.
John: It was after Susan.
John: Yeah, we were talking about – Mom, your mom.
John: We're talking about we're talking about mom, but we got into the oh you were saying in Ohio No, whatever talk about what's happening.
John: Well, that was interesting I thought it was interesting before we got down into a place that was where you started to get uncomfortable me But let's bounce back all the way to you're uncomfortable.
John: I'm gonna come you're uncomfortable.
John: You're uncomfortable.
John: You're uncomfortable.
Merlin: You're covered with shame I am still maybe maybe maybe maybe you and me we could do some trades
Merlin: You know, let's start.
Merlin: Let it begin with me.
Merlin: Let's just start with some simple things.
John: OK, I'll trade my shame for your anxiety.
John: Oh, there's chocolate in my peanut butter.