Ep. 400: "Abberdabber"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Super, super, super.
John: How about you?
John: I was up late.
John: I was up late.
John: Oh, what were you doing?
John: Were you feeding your Komodo dragon?
Merlin: What was it?
Merlin: Oh, I was watching something.
Merlin: I went down a... Well, not quite John Roderick-esque, but John Roderick-adjacent rabbit hole, which is watching...
Merlin: like some kind of like, it's a series on BBC and it's like, you know, the year, the history of top of the pops for this year, the history of top of the pops for that year.
John: Sure.
John: Sure.
John: Sure.
Merlin: So it's not just the highlight reel.
Merlin: It's, it's narrated by the wonderful Sue Perkins.
Merlin: Um, and, uh, and they, it's funny cause like there, it's a lot like, Oh gosh, our show sure was dorky, wasn't it?
Merlin: But there was also these things and I don't know, really padded out, but that's my jam.
John: What were some of the years that you, that you went down?
Um,
Merlin: Well, because it's a good question, it popped up, you know, like things do in Eurekos.
Merlin: And so I think the first one I watched was probably started to watch 1981.
Merlin: And then I was like, oh, but there's more of these.
Merlin: So what did I watch?
Merlin: Oh, God, I watched a lot.
Merlin: Like most of the 70s and a little bit of the 80s.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: You went for it.
Merlin: Well, that's why I'm tired.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I saw Captain Sensible on several different occasions.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: With The Damned.
Merlin: And, yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, it's just, it's so weird.
Merlin: I guess America is as much as ever at war with itself.
Merlin: But, man, England is really always warring with itself.
Merlin: Culturally, like, it's just, they seem very embarrassed about everything they've ever done.
John: Considering what a small country it is they sure do produce an outsized amount of Western like
Merlin: Well, you know, it's almost like how you feel, like, how can I put this?
Merlin: There's a great line in Ted Lasso where he says, I think he says to the other coach, like, how many countries are in this country?
Merlin: Did you start that?
Merlin: It's five, right?
Merlin: Five?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You're counting whales.
Merlin: Nate the Great.
Merlin: But, you know, I think about how I felt.
Merlin: I don't know.
Yeah.
Merlin: how i felt when i was maybe like 17 where like i i hated i hated who i was as a child i hated who i was as a teenager like you know what i mean i hated who i was as a little kid not hate but like i was like that guy and then there was like pubescent me gross i disliked current me and i had no idea how i could possibly ever like future me which felt very english my uh daughter yesterday the the uh
John: The Skype or not the Skype, the whatever, the music box, the machine that plays the music when you say its name.
John: Or the other one.
John: Not the one that plays the music when you say its name.
John: It's the one where you put up your phone and it bleeps over.
John: That thing started, the ones that are shaped like soup cans.
Merlin: Hang on one second.
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Merlin: Okay, we've got a lot of dings today.
Merlin: I'm already losing my breath.
Merlin: Okay, so it's not the one.
Merlin: You put it on the Skype, but it's not the Skype.
Merlin: It's not the one with the name in the can.
John: Yeah, it's the other one.
John: Okay.
John: It started to play Tiny Dancer.
John: And my kid was walking across the room, and halfway across the room, as the song came on, she kind of paused, gave this big shoulder shrug, deep sigh, and then continued on her way.
John: And I said, what was that about?
John: And she said, oh, this song, the memories.
John: That's so good.
John: And I was like, the memories.
John: And she was like, oh, yeah, I just saw this song just brings up so many memories.
John: And then she like hustled on down the hall and on to her on the rest of her life.
John: And I was like, the memories.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, it's the first time I'd ever heard her say anything like that, that kind of.
John: Just like, oh, wow, the nostalgia.
John: Wow, she's nine years old.
Merlin: What nostalgia?
Merlin: I had extreme premature nostalgia as a kid.
Merlin: But I'm curious.
Merlin: Now, that sounds to me, if I were in the room, I would read that as she's unintentionally saying something, either that somebody else in the family would say, or like a specific line or mood from a certain person.
Merlin: Did you hear any family members in that remark?
John: Well, you know, I thought about that.
John: The thing about the premature nostalgia that you and I felt growing up was, and I'm assuming this is true of you because it wasn't me, I felt nostalgia for times that had come long before I was born.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It's a real pictures of Lily type situation.
John: Yeah.
John: I just felt – I just longed for these times, you know, like deep, deep –
John: uh, deeply in my heart longed for times I had no personal experience of, um, you know, uh, and, but I think in her case, cause I thought about it for a second, like, is that, is she just echoing her mom?
John: But her mom doesn't talk like that.
John: And I don't really talk like that.
John: I think that she was having, um, she was having an authentic experience of like tiny dancer is the type of song her mom would have played in
John: every morning on their way to school when she was in kindergarten and first grade or whatnot.
John: And so I think she was having her first wave of, wow, this song really reminds me of times.
John: Yes.
John: I agree.
Merlin: I know we're having a laugh, but I totally agree with you.
Merlin: You don't have to be a certain age to be eligible for emotions.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, and just hearing it come out of her mouth and realizing...
John: You know how it is with having a kid, and I know you and I don't want to take listeners away from our other parenting podcast, but watching a kid come online and realizing like, oh, wow, they're having independent life now, and oh, shit, they're having independent, complicated life, and the role that nostalgia has played in my own life is so strong.
John: and seeing it in her.
John: And I think, you know, very different from like, I miss my friends or I wish that, you know, I remember when we used to come here, but like, like that, that involuntary sigh almost of like, Oh, Oh, this song.
John: It was, I didn't know.
John: I mean, then I was like, Oh,
John: Not about Tiny Dancer, but about... Oh, I see.
Merlin: You're experiencing it on a couple different levels.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's funny when you said that, though.
Merlin: This is, again, this is how music in particular and memory work.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I can't speak today.
Merlin: I stayed up way too late last night.
Merlin: I know you were watching this TV show about all the decades in England.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: We'll get back to that.
Merlin: I'll put it in that.
Merlin: But for example, like when you – I have – gosh, I have several specific recollections of Tiny Dancer just from the last like year and a half.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean like what?
Merlin: Like I remember I got a – we were at a retreat that my wife had put on for her work and we were up in –
Merlin: Like Point Reyes.
Merlin: And I'd gotten up really early to go get us coffee in the lobby of this place we were staying.
Merlin: And they hadn't started making coffee yet.
Merlin: So I hung out and like was just, you know, listening to my headphones.
Merlin: And an episode of Strong Songs about Tiny Dancer came on.
Merlin: And I remember sitting...
Merlin: Strong songs.
Merlin: It's a really good show.
Merlin: It's Song Exploder-ish.
Merlin: But it's real good.
Merlin: More about the writing of the song, the arrangement of the song, that kind of thing.
Merlin: But anyway, and it was really good.
Merlin: It was an episode about, what was it?
Merlin: It was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Tiny Dancer and how they take two very different approaches to songwriting.
Merlin: And anyway, why do I remember that?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I also remember that's the weekend we started playing Pokemon Go a lot.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: But you can pin things.
Merlin: Then another one is I remember being in a Lyft on the way to an event for our podcast network.
Merlin: I'm on last, I want to say, August.
Merlin: And I was listening to the Florence and the Machine version of Tiny Dancer, which is also very good.
Merlin: My point is, like...
Merlin: What is the phrase I used?
Merlin: Eligible for emotions?
Merlin: Well, what could be more boomer than calling things boomer?
Merlin: But apart from that, a thing that is very boomer is this ha-ha-ha idea we have of, oh, you think life's hard now, just you wait, or blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: And we come up with all of these ways that we write people off because they have not achieved the level of existence that we have.
Merlin: that we think is necessary to be able to express a certain kind of feeling.
Merlin: And I just want to say I do that.
Merlin: I want to stop doing that because it's gross because being a person is complicated.
Merlin: And just because you're an older person rather than a younger person, well, guess what?
Merlin: There's going to be a corner.
Merlin: You turn oldie when things get much more simple and not in a good way.
Merlin: Like, enjoy the complexity of those feelings, because that means you're still growing.
Merlin: When you stop having those feelings, like, now you're moving the wrong way.
Merlin: I'm rambling.
Merlin: I stayed up until I watched that show.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean, though?
Merlin: Like, just because a little kid says something, I mean, you don't have to be, like, some annoying, like, poindexter kid.
Merlin: Like, kids have feelings.
Merlin: And then, like you're saying here, then you can appreciate things or experience things on different levels.
Merlin: And it's extremely complicated.
Merlin: It's a real toy story kind of feeling.
John: Yeah, it's weird.
John: I was thinking about this the other day, and again, in talking to her and trying to explain to her, she wanted to know what naive meant.
John: And I was like, well, you know, we're talking about a kind of a spectrum between naive and, you might say, you could describe it one of two ways.
John: that it was that the polls were naive and cynical and wise was in the middle, or you could say that it was a progression from naive to cynical to wise, that wise was that, you know, that inevitably you go from being naive to, you know, over-correcting and becoming cynical and then
John: Ultimately, you are wise.
Merlin: Does naive imply either, it seems like depending on how one uses it, you could be implying a certain amount of ignorance or a certain amount of almost like self-deception in the way you say to somebody, oh, don't be naive.
John: You know, what I was saying, trying to describe it to her, I just said, in life, when you start out, depending on how you're taught and who your parents are and just sort of
John: I think less, maybe I'm somebody that believes that nature plays a large role in a lot of things, but this, I feel like maybe less so, but it's, it's easy to believe that when you're, when you're starting out, that people are who they represent themselves to be.
John: If someone seems friendly, they're friendly.
John: If someone seems honest, they're honest.
John: And I think there are different levels of intuition so that you can tell a creep sometimes, even if they seem friendly.
John: But I was saying to her in general, you know, you and I have talked about this a lot.
John: Very few people think they're the villain of their own story.
John: Most people believe they're doing right.
John: They just they just.
John: If they see an advantage, they believe that taking that advantage is right.
John: Not that they're screwing you, not that they're trying to hurt you, but just that they're trying to do what they think is right.
John: And in that case, it's being selfish or greedy or whatever.
John: And she was like, oh, like the Trade Federation.
John: And I was like, yeah, exactly, like the Trade Federation.
John: Thank you for finding a Star Wars connection.
Merlin: The Trade Federation is how?
John: Those are the... No, no, believe me, I know.
John: It's the racist characters.
Merlin: No, I know.
Merlin: Believe me.
John: She's saying that the Trade Federation, one of the confusing things about them is that they appear to be in service of evil, but in fact, they're just trying to get...
John: Good trade deals and they get played at first in the early part of the movie.
John: They feel like Padme is naive But then later on after they get Oh They're getting played.
John: They're getting played.
John: Yeah, I get you.
John: I get you.
Merlin: Also, why do they exist?
John: Why do we need a trade Federation?
John: Yeah, we don't and are they a race?
John: anyway
John: But then... Newt Gunray, I think his name is.
John: Newt Gunray.
John: I was saying, you know, if you think that people... Naive is to believe that everybody is as they say they are, and most people are going to present themselves to you as honest, and people will tell you that they are...
John: excited to work with you, that they have your interests at heart, and then you'll find that not all of them follow through.
John: And after you've experienced that a lot of times, then you develop what is cynicism, which is assuming that no one is telling the truth, assuming that no one is honest, that everyone has a false face.
John: And the thing about cynicism is that to the people who are cynical, it feels wise because
John: Because they're not dummies.
John: They have learned.
John: They've seen.
Merlin: When we call a child naive, I think we mean it more in the sense of the Game of Thrones sense of, you know, my sweet summer child.
Merlin: Like, you've only ever experienced summer.
Merlin: You've never experienced winter.
Merlin: That's why we say summer child to Bran.
Merlin: And so, like, you know, you're unspoiled.
Merlin: You've never had to know winter.
Merlin: And I think that's what we mean with naive.
Merlin: I think increasingly as people get older, when they say naive, it definitely implies, it can imply some sort of like, oh, you know, don't act like you don't know better.
Merlin: But I think it really does imply almost like, almost a conspiracy or like, you know, oh, come on, you know how life really works.
Merlin: Don't be naive.
John: Oh, but I do feel like it's a, I never hear naive used
John: To imply that a person is being intentionally a rube?
John: Is that what you mean?
Merlin: That they're being like... Okay, but how about this instead?
Merlin: Just shade that with a little bit of light gray, like optimism.
Merlin: Here's how I hope this will turn out, right?
Merlin: And so you could say like, oh gosh, if things really keep going well in Pennsylvania, blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: And people go like, don't be naive.
Merlin: Look at what happened in 2016.
John: Oh, and I feel like that's just...
John: it is that use of naive is precisely the description of a cynic.
John: You know, like that is how a cynic talks is by saying, don't be naive.
John: Haven't you seen through the gauze like I have?
Merlin: Oscar Wilde says a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
John: Right.
John: And that's a perfect example of it.
John: I guess I do too.
Merlin: I guess I say that too.
John: I didn't say it first.
John: But I don't think wisdom is a balance point between those two.
John: I don't think cynical is one way and naive is the other and wisdom is in the middle.
John: I think you have to go through both.
John: And then I'm just, you know, I'm saying this to her, but like wisdom is understanding that you have to bring all your faculties to bear.
John: And if you go into situations where you assume the worst, then you are going to, that's the life you're going to lead.
John: You know, you're going to create that reality.
Merlin: And knowing contextually what tool to use or in a given application.
Merlin: This is really boring.
Merlin: But like, you know, in the Continuing Tiny Life Improvement Project, something I did recently is I've been sort of decanting the various oils that we use into bespoke containers so we don't have to use the big clunky Costco container.
John: That's lovely.
John: Where did you find these other little smaller containers, Merlin?
John: I don't know.
John: Oh, where did you find them?
John: Come on, tell me.
John: Oh, come on.
John: Oh, be a dear.
John: No, no, no.
John: I just, I have to know.
John: Is it something that I could order?
John: I got it at Ross.
John: Ross.
John: Oh, are they matching?
John: Are they matching?
John: Everything's matching if you have no taste.
John: Are they different colors?
Merlin: Yes, they're different colors.
Merlin: They were meant to be for condiments, and I'm repurposing them.
Merlin: Oh, you're repurposing them.
Merlin: That's precious.
Merlin: You know, I don't know why I go so far to make a dumb point.
John: I'm sorry.
John: What condiments were in there in the first?
John: What were they meant to be here for us?
John: No, they arrived empty.
John: Like all of us.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Anyway, I go into the bedroom and I'm holding.
Merlin: This is so nice to be married to me.
Merlin: I go in and I'm holding two containers.
Merlin: And one of them has a tiny little Sharpie C on it.
Merlin: And the other one has a little Sharpie O on it.
Merlin: And they clearly have some kind of a, you know.
John: And you put those there.
Merlin: I put those there and I held them up to my lady friend.
Merlin: And I go, huh?
Merlin: Huh?
Merlin: I go, what do these mean?
John: This is a test for her.
Merlin: Well, I want to see if I did the intuitive thing.
Merlin: And like that Spike Lee movie.
Merlin: And and she said, C is for canola and O is for olive.
Merlin: I said, you got it in one.
Merlin: Canola and olive.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: So she said, you know, she said to me, she said, I like olive oil.
Merlin: And I said, well, I like olive oil too, but I use them for different things.
Merlin: Like canola oil can tolerate a much higher temperature.
Merlin: It's not as tasty.
Merlin: Was she saying we don't need canola?
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, I'm not trying to drag her here.
Merlin: But I mean, this is an example of like, you know, so what I'm trying to get at to your point is that to be a wise person,
Merlin: you have to have a big toolbox and you mustn't always pick the flathead screwdriver because that's the nicest one you've got, let alone the hammer.
Merlin: You need a big-ass toolbox and you need to know when something you need is not in that toolbox or you need to know when to throw the toolbox away.
Merlin: It takes situational awareness and experience and metaphors on the tires, all those kinds of things.
Merlin: Are there times to throw the toolbox away?
Merlin: Times to throw the toolbox away.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: If you don't know, you will.
John: That's one of my favorite Harry Chapin songs.
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John: Now, wait a minute.
John: So you've decanted into these special containers.
John: Sounds dirty when you say it like that.
John: But that means there is another layer of storage now where you have the big, the mothership containers that are now behind darkened glass.
Merlin: Do you throw away your wallet when you get a suitcase?
Merlin: You can't roller skate in a buffalo bird.
Merlin: You can't go swimming in a watermelon patch.
John: So...
John: So is there now here's I guess this is the this is the question that everybody listening wants to know.
John: Sure.
John: Is there a caddy?
Merlin: There's not a caddy.
John: So you have all these decanters and you don't have a decanter caddy?
Merlin: Um, sometimes I have an intuitive sense of what I can get away with.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Um, and I think having, uh, what we're probably meant to be ketchup and mustard containers is, is, is one bridge and then having a caddy for those.
Merlin: Maybe, I don't know, maybe that has pigs on it or something that would make me happy, but that might be, as they say, a bridge too far.
Yeah.
Merlin: So are they clustered in a corner of the counter?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: We have a kitchen island.
Merlin: And the big problem was we've got a Costco canola oil.
Merlin: The Costco canola oil was clustered in a corner of the kitchen counter?
Merlin: It's catty-cornered from the canola container.
Merlin: No, it's not a condiment container.
Merlin: It's a canola container.
Merlin: And it's catty-cornered from the Costco canola.
Merlin: On the counter?
John: On the kitchen counter.
John: Yes.
John: In a corner of the kitchen counter.
John: For one of a nail.
John: How do you keep them from getting under your elbow and slipping off and breaking?
John: Well, one problem is this.
John: How do you corral them?
John: What a kitchen counter, what the kitty corner of a kitchen counter needs is a corral.
Merlin: It's on the bottom part.
Merlin: No, okay.
Merlin: Would you like me to explain the whole kitchen island?
Merlin: The whole kitchen island is a caddy, you're saying.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You are making me feel very philosophical today.
Merlin: You know, anyway, you got to have a toolbox.
Merlin: You got to throw it away.
Merlin: Roger Miller was a great singer.
Merlin: You know, trailers for Sailor Rent.
Merlin: I grew up on that guy.
John: Sure.
Merlin: There's also the rooster in the Robin Hood cartoon.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: I believe so.
Merlin: He was the balladeer, it said on the LP that I had.
John: You know, I knew that.
John: When I said, is that right?
John: It's not that I didn't.
Merlin: Oh, you were playing with me in the space.
Merlin: I love that.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: You know, I was yes-handing.
Merlin: Oh, thank you.
Merlin: I took you off.
Merlin: It's one of the things that makes our show magic.
Merlin: Hmm?
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: I could explain the trick to you.
Merlin: It doesn't make any less magic.
John: That's right.
John: That's why I called my granddad Abberdabber, because he was my granduncle, first of all.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, I couldn't pronounce Abberdabber.
Merlin: Abberdabber.
Merlin: Aw, oh no, you had an uncle magician?
Merlin: Is that like a sister wife?
John: No, no, well, I mean, listen, are you doing a good job as an uncle if you're not also a magician?
Merlin: Oh, see, now we're getting even more philosophical.
Merlin: Forget about wisdom.
Merlin: What about the magic of uncles?
John: Uncle magic.
John: But he was my great uncle, that's the thing.
John: Well, I'm sure he was fine.
John: And he would do magic tricks.
John: And so when I would see him, when we would walk in the door, when he would walk in the door, anytime...
John: I would see him, I would shout, abracadabra!
John: And I wanted him to do abracadabra for me.
John: Would he pull a coin out of your... Oh, all that stuff.
John: I mean, he wasn't a great magician.
Merlin: No, but he was probably, I mean, the same way, you don't become a black belt when you join the army, but you're going to learn enough to do a karate chop.
Merlin: There's probably basic uncle and great-uncle training.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: You're an uncle before you're a great-uncle.
John: Right.
John: Lieutenant Carl before your car.
John: He was a World War I magician, one of those.
John: You know, he learned it in the trenches.
John: A lot of magic tricks with matchsticks and
John: You know, like trained fleas, that kind of thing.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: People have said this before, but it's true.
Merlin: I mean, for one thing, you don't realize how much we just sort of glide past a lot of words and their meaning and the big questions in life.
Merlin: And it's like when you talk to a kid, and I hate that phrase, explain to a kid.
Merlin: When you have a talk with a kid about something and they...
Merlin: In that rare case, they have a question or whatever.
Merlin: But somebody asks you a question like, you know, what does naive mean?
Merlin: And, like, I feel like, well, first of all, you're going to learn how much you really know about stuff.
Merlin: Because now you're going to have to adjust whatever your screwed up idea of the world is.
Merlin: You're going to have to adjust that to be meaningful to this person.
Merlin: Now, a great way, just so for future dads out there, a great way to avoid this temporarily to stall for time to think is to say, well, what do you think it means?
John: Right.
Merlin: Now you also sound wise.
John: Yes, that does sound wise.
Merlin: What is good?
Merlin: To hear the lamentations of their women.
Merlin: Drive your enemy before you.
John: Yeah, I told her all about that.
John: I was like, listen, the thing about victory is... Keep your Thulsa Dune speech.
John: The thing about victory is it's never as sweet as when your enemy is at your feet begging for mercy.
John: And she was like, check.
Merlin: Are you writing this down?
Merlin: You should be writing this down.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, boy, yeah, you figure out what you know.
Merlin: But also, like, there are certain kinds of things where it's difficult to talk about something without unintentionally revealing your point of view or bias.
John: And, you know, I try so hard to, I don't try to eliminate bias, but I try so hard to contextualize.
John: And, you know, I do that
John: With adults, I do that in our conversations.
John: Like, it's why I never give a simple answer to a simple question.
John: Every time somebody says, what's the, you know, what do you mean?
John: I go, well, and start, like, set the Wayback Machine to Wayback.
John: And it's because I'm trying to give all the context.
John: And I'm not afraid to put my own opinion and my own bias into
John: in there, but I want that bias revealed.
John: Like, here's how I came to this.
John: Here's why I feel this way.
Merlin: People act like there can be something without bias.
Merlin: Talk about naive.
Merlin: Talk about cynical.
John: Talk about cynical about being naive.
John: That's right.
John: But I feel like that's the key.
John: Expose your bias.
John: Say like, I am biased.
John: Here's why I think that you should do this.
John: And here's why I have this bias.
John: Because I've tested this.
John: a few different ways in the course of my life.
John: And I've seen other people, you know, test their theories these ways.
John: And this is what I've come to.
John: I'm trying to do the best I can.
John: And this is the best explanation for it I've come up with.
John: And I feel like that's the antidote to so much of this just shouting at each other.
John: Because it's like show your work.
John: You get to be a certain age.
John: If you're in a position to be – if you feel like you're old enough to start lecturing other people –
John: about anything.
John: Show your work.
Merlin: Think about how would you even, like, I'm trying to think how I would describe, it's one thing to say to somebody, okay, how would you describe the word, the meaning of the word naive to a preteen?
Merlin: And you say, go, you got two minutes, right?
Merlin: Then what if you said after that, okay, now can you describe the word naive to that same person without revealing any kind of bias or point of view?
Merlin: So inevitably, to me, with a word like naive, how could you not use an analogy or an example?
Merlin: Not an analogy, an example.
Merlin: And how could you give an example of that?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It seems like it would be difficult if you, without fundamentally altering what you think the word means, how you would describe it or use it in a sentence without having to show...
Merlin: You know what it means in a way that reflects your bias.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
John: Well, yeah, because when you're dealing with when you're kind of dealing with anybody and you see this a lot.
John: This is one of the complaints against modern journalism, but it's also one of the complaints against people that that try and adopt that lofty tone is that they try to do things like this without specificity.
John: So they're trying to describe naive with zero specificity, all the most general language, the most sort of... And so the description becomes very opaque.
John: And what the practitioner, I guess, believes they're doing is giving a non-biased answer.
John: But what they're doing is giving a... And they think they're being scientific, that they're reducing these concepts to...
John: like manageable knowledge chunks or something.
John: But really naive is nothing if not described with specificity.
John: And for a nine year old, you can tell a story that will root the word naive in something she really understands.
John: Like, do you remember when your friend Katie said that you could come to her birthday party and you were excited and then it turned out that you didn't go and
John: because
John: Katie was just using you to get to Brenda.
John: And it's like, it's like, oh, I mean, you know, and she's just like, wow, right in the moment again.
John: And then you're like, right now, Katie thought that, you know, in that situation, you were naive for ever thinking you were coming to the party.
John: But in fact, you know, in fact, she was being, she was being cynically manipulative.
John: You, you can get, you can, you can root words.
John: in somebody and ideas in them by just relating them to something very specific.
John: But is that, but, and you're absolutely revealing your bias.
John: Like I'm sure Katie's mom would not have described that situation that way.
John: I'm sure Katie's mom in using that, that term, even if, even if she was trying to just use the word naive and describe it by referencing that same incident between those two girls, she would not have
John: characterized it that way uh and so that's where you know my daughter's education and katie's education um are different and they're and that's part of growing up right you're you're exposed to these situations your takeaway is is your takeaway is rooted in your learning of vocabulary you're learning of civics it's it's all very it's all very specific and personal
John: At first.
John: And again, that's part of the people that think that they can denuter, I'm sorry, denature or neuter language.
John: A little portmanteau there.
John: A little Roderick portmanteau.
Merlin: Freudian slip.
Merlin: They think they can emasculate a man for the words that he uses.
Beep.
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John: Dig the specificity out of things, but it doesn't, you know, you, it's not that you're skating across the top of the world.
John: Uh,
John: untouched.
John: It's that you're, that you've lost, that words have started, started to lose their meaning when you don't at least lose their specificity.
Merlin: Like it's, it's, it's, it's cool that we have words that, uh, that means specific things and this and not that I'm, um, this is making me think about, uh, an idea that's just been kind of floating around in my head lately that, uh, relates to me and podcasts and other things.
Merlin: And that's that I, um, how do I describe this?
Um,
Merlin: um i i'm a sucker for context i'm i'm in so many ways you were going to say you were a sucker for content and i was just going to virtual high five like emoji thumbs up you know what that's actually that's you know what that's a pretty perfect example of the of the corollary which is you know like when i when i argue with the front of the show not argue but john seracuse and i both have our beefs with like how ratings and reviews work
Merlin: And like what they're useful for.
Merlin: And I will sometimes say something to him like, you know, I think star ratings, a single five star, you know, rating for a thing is not very useful.
John: Rate and review.
John: Rate and review.
John: This podcast.
John: Right now, everybody.
Merlin: When's the last time you talked in and you sat down and you were ready for some TV and you said, boy, I really would love to watch a three-star movie tonight?
Merlin: Nobody's ever done that.
Merlin: Like, well, three stars out of what?
Merlin: Three stars for what?
Merlin: But like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, three stars for whom?
Merlin: For like, what situation?
Merlin: Context, context, context.
Merlin: The point I'm trying to make, if any, is that I love, I like line readings.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I love context.
Merlin: The context is so much more important to me than the content.
Merlin: Like, here's the thing.
Merlin: Somebody gives you the thing.
Merlin: I'm like, well, no, what I really want to understand is the context for this.
Merlin: Context over content.
Merlin: Context over content.
Merlin: Stop the presses.
Merlin: I'm realizing this, and I'm not saying this is necessarily good or wise.
Merlin: It might be naive or cynical.
Merlin: But like a day like today, where depending on how you do, you may be celebrating one of various October holidays.
Merlin: And one of them is to celebrate this fellow who came over here and sort of tamed the untamed continent.
Merlin: And it's like, you know, what we know about the purported facts about Christopher Columbus, well, first of all, a lot of them I'm given to believe are not facts, but they're not useful without a context for understanding lots of different things that go deeper than this one thing.
Merlin: And so I, you know, I'm interested in the content that's out there, but I'm more interested in the context.
Merlin: Like what else was happening at this time?
Merlin: You know, you judge the bitter by the sweet.
Merlin: Like to know that this thing was such and such thing was happening around the time of both the flu epidemic and World War I. And, you know, maybe somebody's in a fight for this election, et cetera.
Merlin: There's all kinds of stuff that when you put it in context,
Merlin: It makes it richer.
Merlin: And I say that because probably, I don't know if it's exactly my favorite, but one of my favorite podcasts, especially through the summer and up till now, is this show, Mike Check Podcast, which is, they talk about movies.
Merlin: And it's very, you know, sort of discursive.
Merlin: Like they might, the show might go for an hour.
Merlin: It's very funny.
Merlin: Their chemistry is great, these two guys.
Merlin: But the point is that like, this is an episode, like last week's episode, it was about Back to the Future.
Merlin: But they talk about,
Merlin: about Back to the Future for like an hour before they talked about Back to the Future, if you follow what I'm saying here.
Merlin: So, I mean, as somebody who, I would say that's probably one of my top 10 favorite movies, but do I really need to sit down and have somebody give me the plot
Merlin: of Back to the Future?
Merlin: No, not really.
Merlin: Well, then what are you tuning in for?
Merlin: Here's some critical analysis.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: In this case, I want to listen to the film critic from The Atlantic and the guy who plays Arthur on the Tick.
Merlin: I want to hear them just nerd out about things related to this.
Merlin: The context.
John: That's why you love my award-winning podcast, Friendly Fire.
Merlin: Well, same idea.
Merlin: What is the content that people feel like?
Merlin: So why am I being defensive about this?
Merlin: Because I feel like some people are like, well, just come on, get to the Mac headlines or whatever.
Merlin: And it's like, well, are you that starved for computer information at this point?
Merlin: In my case, I've always said with podcasts, you come for the content and stay for the voices.
Merlin: And no matter how much I like the content, if I don't like the voices, I'm going to bounce.
Merlin: It's the voices and the context, you know, for, I don't know what I'm saying.
Merlin: I guess I'm just saying, like, I do feel like there are people who are really super gay bones for content or the specificity of the lesson that you instill in your child, you know, versus a more liberal arts approach of like, well, you know, how
Merlin: how do we know what we know?
Merlin: How do we learn more of what we need to learn?
Merlin: And how do we know when to throw away our toolbox?
John: I think that, I think that we are, we have to be now on the cusp of, um, for years we've been saying that, uh, what's in the show is in the show in our case, but in the,
John: I think in our pond, in our, in our, uh, in our Bay of Fundy over here, we, um, you know, we're making content.
John: And by that, I mean, everything that I've ever done music and, and every show I've ever done, but also just like in general, the conversation that we're having, that's not even, that's not even, um,
John: Coming from you and me, but that is that we're part of right our conversation about the discourse I'm talking about you know, I'm talking about our our corner of it and the people that listen to our show and the conversations that they're having with each other and it it There are tendrils that go out into the whole world, right?
John: I've seen it many times you and I will mention something on the show and I'll get an email and
John: within a day from Israel or from Turkey or from, you know, Korea and someone will, I mean there, we have listeners to the show in Saudi Arabia who are not expatriates, but who are Saudis who have discovered Roderick on the line and they've emailed me and I'm like, I don't, you know, I go, I go check their, check out their stuff.
John: And it's because it can't, I feel like it can't be real.
John: Um and but it is you know there I mean on or it's a it's a completely amazing social media account of a of a of a love like some young Saudi guys who are just living their lives That that somebody drummed up just to just to mess with me but like there are tendrils
John: in our conversation, our corner of the world that go out to worlds we can't possibly imagine, but really the pool, the pond that we're in is a, it's also a pond to be good for you.
John: It's a pond.
John: It's also somewhat a discrete space.
John: And that's like, that's what's confused.
John: It's confusing to us because we do, we do feel connected to the larger world.
John: And you and I grew up in a world where there was a,
John: where there was a, um, a megalithic culture or a monoculture.
John: And so we were kind of trained to think that that was the goal to get your voice into the, into the big stadium, you know, to get up there and be, um, to, to make it right.
John: To make it over the line and, and be heard or to be synced up with, with, um,
John: With a school of thought.
Merlin: For a lot of our coming up, at least I'll speak for myself, for a lot of my coming up, I look back in retrospect, and I think it's a series of hoping for some kind of approval from someone to get Entree to the next step of the only option I had.
Yeah.
Merlin: So basically life is a railroad and you're going to ride it whether you like it or not.
John: Life is a highway and you're going to ride it all night long.
Merlin: My way or the highway, you're going to ride it.
Merlin: But no, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's train tracks here.
Merlin: Yeah, you're either on or off.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And like, if you do not want to get stalled at this station very early in your journey, I don't mean to torture this to death, but what am I implying here?
Merlin: Well, for one thing, I did not feel like there were multiple options available to me ever for anything, whether that was for a job.
Yeah.
Merlin: For an education.
Merlin: I mean, I felt very limited in the number of options that I had.
Merlin: And maybe that was a failure of my imagination.
Merlin: But I think it's a lot of cases it was what was encouraged by a hopefully helpful and generous version of family, a very risk averse family who'd had a lot of loss.
Merlin: in a school system that was trying to prepare me to be a good worker.
Merlin: Um, but then, so like, not only were there not multiple avenues, but I, I do feel like there's, now we say gatekeepers, but like, I didn't even have, I didn't even have the temerity to, to dream very big.
Merlin: But if I did dream big, I would have probably been thinking about how am I going to get this to an editor or an agent or,
Merlin: Or, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Or somebody who is in a position to give me, again, approval that becomes an entree to the next thing.
Merlin: And I wish I'd been more aware of that.
Merlin: I wish I'd been more aware of, like, that I, without ever examining it, I had no way, I didn't say, you don't know what you don't know.
Merlin: And the context lost there was, well, there are many different kinds of experiences.
Merlin: There are not just color pictures in big, thick books.
Merlin: There is actually a world out there that those pictures are representing.
Merlin: I just didn't feel like that was ever any more than the closest I would get would be clipping that out of the encyclopedia.
John: Because the adults that taught us didn't.
John: didn't have any sense i mean not you know no nobody really knew that was why my dad was like you got to go to law school right because that was his idea of what it took to get outside if you could if you went to law school maybe you could step outside the hermetically sealed culture bubble and i don't know what come at it you know
John: You could breathe water for long enough to get to some other pod.
Merlin: I had a guidance counselor.
Merlin: I feel like it's such a lame thing to say about people, oh, they got this job because they couldn't get a different job, blah, blah, those who do do, those who don't teach, and that kind of stuff.
Merlin: The only thing is I would leaven that with the idea that I have a lot of friends that had a fallback strategy.
Merlin: Like, well, at least I can always be a carpenter.
Merlin: At least I can always teach, or I could always this, or I could always that.
Merlin: Without making any implicit segue here, I will just say that I've had a lot of guidance counselors that really were not putting their back in it.
Merlin: And I was, believe me, I was not a person you needed to spend a lot of resources on.
Merlin: But just for what it's worth,
Merlin: When I was, I think this is even when I was a junior, my assigned guidance counselor, the main thing that he pitched to me over and over was that the Air Force was actually a pretty good deal.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: There's work at the post office.
Merlin: You get, you know, three hots and a cot, free clothes, haircuts.
John: You know, you get to look at planes.
John: For me, I think now, it feels right now like...
John: You and I are part of a culture.
John: We're in a culture.
John: We are culture makers even.
John: And we're at a turning point in time, in history, where the ship has kind of sailed that we're, at least in our lifetimes, I think, ever going to get all the Americans back into one box where they...
John: You know, Peter Sagal said in a Twitter feed earlier today that the thing that made America kind of exceptional was not that we had a constitution, because a lot of countries have constitutions.
John: It was that... That they followed it?
John: No, that... Well, what we did was that in America, the tradition was that the losers in any election, the losers in any political dispute...
John: um agreed to abide by the by the law so if if you if your side lost if your president lost or if your if your candidate lost if your law failed or a law you opposed passed we all still agreed to abide by the law winning and winners or losers and in losing that like all the countries of the world that have constitutions but aren't
John: But aren't democracies or aren't, you know, whatever America is or was.
John: Their problem is that people just don't abide by the Constitution because what ends up happening is power.
John: And power becomes the factor.
John: And that means that the people in power, when they lose, they don't consent to lose.
John: So we're now living in a time when it doesn't seem like we're all ever going to make it back to whole, at least for a while.
John: And it's troubling to me because a big part of that is we've splintered into a universe of a thousand little pools, a thousand little ponds of people that all get to have whatever beliefs they in their pond agree are
John: are real and they can consume only media that supports those ideas.
John: And they just, you know, they can sit and morph and in, as John Syracuse would say, evolve, evolve within their, within their little ponds and live in a, live in a state of, of, you know, altered reality.
John: And here we are in ours.
John: And on, on one hand, just for our own sanity and for, for peace, um,
John: we've increasingly sort of resigned ourselves to disengage from the idea that, that we can help everybody or that everybody's going to get it.
John: Um, and, and I think you and I over the last 10 years have, we, we already started out and you were one of the first people to teach me this, like, don't try to please everybody on the internet.
John: Don't, you know, don't try to be everybody's friend.
John: You don't want it.
John: You don't want to make a thing that,
John: everybody likes, you know, I think, I think you were one of the first people to say like having a lot of followers on Twitter is a blessing and a curse.
John: And the curse is that you have a bunch of people on there that don't, that aren't your people that are following you because you were on a list and now they're, they're shitting on everything you say, or you're just dealing with static all the time.
John: So we've, we've just, we've, we've in the last 10 years, we've like shrunk the
John: our worlds around ourselves a little bit like muting people that suck, not reading other media.
John: And I'm not, I'm not saying that, um, that I don't think that we have shrunk into a bubble where we're also just feeding off of like a tailored media teat that, uh, that only tells us half truths.
Um,
John: But the challenge, the place I find myself in is how do I protect myself and live a life in the world that is where I'm not constantly at war, where I'm not constantly like nauseous with trying to interact with or convince people that believe that Hillary Clinton is at the head of a pedophile ring.
John: But at the same time,
John: still believe in truth and still believe in like, like, you know, like that I'm, that I'm part of a culture that's trying to preserve truth and justice, but not, but at the same time have a culture that is like personally gratifying and you know, that, that it isn't just constantly, uh, bashing our shields with our swords.
Yeah.
Merlin: I said something I think was last week in the context of you talking about, you know, texting with with that friend of yours.
Merlin: And I was saying I feel like there's there often is a distinction between or should be a distinction between like I don't like the thing that you did versus I don't like the way that you do that.
Merlin: And I was saying that I think it can sometimes be it's one thing to talk about me not liking what you did.
Merlin: You know, one of the Christians, the evangelicals say, you know, hate the sin, not the sinner.
Merlin: But another version of that being that like, even if everything you do is great and above board, I could still really not like the way that you do it.
Merlin: So, I mean, one way to think about these times where people can't seem to agree on what the truth is, is to like...
Merlin: Try and identify what your tolerance is for a variety of different things.
Merlin: Because I hear what you're saying, and I feel like we're all expected to be a little bit defensive about stuff like not participating enough in the discourse or keeping all the doors open to all the people all the time.
Merlin: And I remember a time when I used to get yelled at a lot because I had more followers than people that I followed.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I remember even saying, thinking especially.
Merlin: But do you remember that was considered to be like, it's very important that every time somebody follows you, you follow them back.
Merlin: I'm like, do you just not care about your life at all?
Merlin: Either you take this seriously enough to have that dumb rule, but you take your life not seriously enough to invite all of that into your life.
Merlin: The point I'm trying to make here is maybe we can't all agree on truth, but I don't think it's selfish or naive to...
Merlin: Have your own idea about the rules by which you will play and what you will tolerate and allow in your own life.
Merlin: Which might sound really fancy.
Merlin: It might sound really obvious.
Merlin: But I think we can still go out and try to find diverse opinions.
Merlin: I'm not talking about civility even.
Merlin: I'm talking about like...
Merlin: On a highway where the speed limit is 75, you can get away with going 90 and you can get away with going 55, but please don't go 200 and please don't go five.
Merlin: That's not how this is going to work.
Merlin: And if you're not willing to be somewhere in the normal route,
Merlin: the range of normal parameters for using this particular, uh, road, maybe this is not the place for you.
Merlin: And I should not be ashamed for saying to somebody, Hey, I think 200 is a little fast for this.
Merlin: And I think five is a lot too slow.
Merlin: So I, I don't know if I'm making any sense at all here, but I don't think it's, I don't think it's fancy.
Um,
Merlin: To to decide that you have standards in life, whether that's the standards for the content, quote unquote content you create.
Merlin: Like, who do you want to please?
Merlin: You know, who do you I mean?
Merlin: And then just to say, like, well, you know, I'm not going to try to be everything to everybody.
Merlin: I'm not going to try to try to be all the way available to everybody.
Merlin: Last week when I was watching the debate, the vice presidential debate, I'm sorry, I'm really drifting here.
Merlin: John Dickerson, in front of the show, John Dickerson said something really great a couple weeks ago.
Merlin: I think he just made up this quote that's so good, but he wishes he had a wise elder relative to attribute this to.
Merlin: With so much good food on the table, why would you take the bait?
Merlin: So last week, I just was saying over and over to my family, it's so important that Harris not take the bait.
Merlin: Because Biden took the bait a little bit, and he ended up wrestling a pig.
Merlin: And it's like if I – there's a reason I'm not in the corner office.
Merlin: I'm going to try to tie this together.
Merlin: There's a reason I'm not in the corner office.
Merlin: But if I deserve that corner office, it's because I would say to Senator Harris –
Merlin: I want you to, I'm going to hold up these three photographs.
Merlin: You can pick any three photos you want.
Merlin: I want you to imagine these three people as who you are talking to, right?
Merlin: And you can pick whatever group that is.
Merlin: I mean, I think a real good one would be like, yeah, a suburban professional woman, maybe who has two kids and the whole family's at home right now.
Merlin: Whoever it is, it doesn't matter to me.
Merlin: It should matter to you.
Merlin: Imagine three people and through that camera, you're going to look into that person's eyes and you're going to speak to them directly.
Merlin: And you're not going to be defending lies from the vice president.
Merlin: You don't get wound up in all of this talk.
Merlin: You assert a very affirmative vision of how the future can be different and with your vote will be different.
Merlin: And you speak to those three people because you know what you don't want to do is end up talking differently.
Merlin: to no one else except the vice president as you get really wound up.
Merlin: So that goes to the audience issue.
Merlin: That goes to the personal issue.
Merlin: It's like, how do you develop an integrity and personal focus that allows you to do the things that you think are important with a certain kind of fearlessness that enables you to make connections that matter rather than pretending that connections that don't matter do?
Merlin: Because that's not helping anybody, especially you.
John: I remember when we first started doing this program and my sense of talking to you on the phone and arguing about the Beatles and Hitler and that you were putting those conversations on the Internet and that our early listeners were a lot of tech people in San Francisco.
John: Yeah.
John: And I remember telling stories in those early days with with this picture of
John: in mind of people in San Francisco whose shirt collars were too small, who were listening on very expensive headphones.
Merlin: Oh, with the small pants, tight pants.
John: Small, tight pants.
John: Small pants riding a bike.
John: The shirts were too small.
John: Marco had told them what headphones to buy.
John: And they were listening to the show, and they were kind of living vicariously.
John: And as the years have gone by and I've met, you know, I've met our listeners and communicated with them and gradually realized like that I couldn't, um, that they, that although there were still a lot of people in San Francisco, that that wasn't who we were talking to anymore.
John: And then I think, I think I've certainly had multiple kind of identity crisis crises over the years.
John: Like who are, uh,
John: our listeners and basically like, who am I making things for?
John: Who am I talking to?
John: Who's talking, who am I listening to?
John: Um, that's been a, that's been a real bumpy and often unsettling kind of trip.
John: Every time somebody does one of those, I'm not listening to your show anymore because of X, you know, it always breaks my heart.
John: even if I go kind of study that person and go, Oh, why were you ever listening to the show?
John: Like, um, but I always wanted the largest possible tent.
John: And I,
John: And I wanted that, I wanted that large tent because I always, because I want everyone to get along.
John: You know, I want the largest tent because I want people to come together into whatever tent and see they have more in common than they have different, than they have differentness.
John: Yeah.
John: It's one of the, you know, there's a, there's a Facebook page, Gary's van, which is devoted to kind of discussing because there's not a Roderick on the line.
John: fan universe on uh you know uh what uh reddit or whatnot i don't think there's much of one but i don't want to know but it's all it's just it's happened guys just yeah it's happened within the gary's van kind of room gary's vaniverse gary's vaniverse but you know like people trying to enjoy the show and there's a there's a suggestion that listening to this show that you would be
Merlin: uh that you would want to take the these conversations to a third location with somebody not a hippie yeah but you know to go sit oh i mean okay so we when you put it that way absolutely i'm sitting here like crowing about about blank check with anybody who talked to me about i'm like that about a lot of things like again like ted lasso uh jason and i are just like over the moon but going back and forth about ted lasso if i'm a fan of something you and jason sudeikis are
John: Going back and forth about Ted Lasso?
Merlin: A very good friend, Jason Sudeikis, the drummer for the presidents of the USA, Jason Sudeikis.
John: Oh, Jason Sudeikis, yeah.
John: Not Jason.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, Jason Jason.
John: So based on your recommendation— I didn't mean to interrupt you.
John: Don't go away.
John: I don't want to take you off.
John: I didn't want to interrupt you, but based on your recommendation of Ted Lasso—
John: I went on, and this is just, I'm bringing it back around to Gary's Van.
John: Because someone on Gary's Van, in the Gary's Vaniverse, was saying, oh, I agree with Merlin about Ted Lasso.
John: And I was like, well, you know, Merlin recommends a lot of content.
John: And and now they're now on Gary's van they're talking about this show and the way they talked about it was this does not sound like something that That you showed sounds like it should not exist let alone be successful Let alone be for John Roderick, but I'm so then I wrote here I wrote you again and was like what the hell was that show you were talking about and then you wrote me and said Ted Lasso and then I put it on with my sister and
John: And we watched the first episode and Susan was climbing the walls in joy.
John: She was like, how did this get made?
John: This is the best thing I've ever seen.
John: And then she insisted that we watch three episodes back to back.
John: And then she came over last night and insisted that we watch three more episodes back to back.
John: So I am deep in the Ted Lasso verse.
John: And it's very, very fun.
John: I'm enjoying it very much.
Merlin: Really unusual.
Merlin: So you're up into where it's getting a little... Each episode gets a little bit deeper.
John: There's more drama.
Merlin: In a way you don't anticipate.
John: Ted is experiencing a lot of personal turmoil.
Merlin: Okay, so you're there.
Merlin: Okay, good.
John: And, you know, it's very... I don't tend to jump on episodic television, but my sister...
John: And daughter's mother both do.
John: And so now I'm...
John: I'm open to it.
John: You know, it's, oh boy, it's the coronavirus.
John: Am I right?
Merlin: It's really got us watching a lot of TV.
Merlin: Well, yeah, I mean, having this show come along when it did and be based on a TV commercial, like it's all pretty weird.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: It's based on a TV commercial.
Merlin: It's based on a TV commercial.
Merlin: Apple acquired the rights to the IP in the TV commercial and made a TV show out of it.
John: I'd like to see that TV commercial.
Merlin: You know, at the beginning when they show him doing the dance and everything.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, shoot.
Merlin: What were you talking about?
John: Oh, I was talking about.
John: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Gary's Vannaverse.
John: Gary's Vannaverse.
John: A place where people get together after the show to have a cup of coffee and talk about the ideas.
John: Are you still there?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm trying to get better on muting because people who claim to like the show think it's too noisy.
Merlin: If I reduce the noise anymore, there won't be any sound.
Merlin: Did you mute it because you were spitting in your chew cup?
John: No, because it's morning and I'm still clearing my throat.
John: You know, I make so much noise on this program.
John: And I I'm I'm astonished that people aren't like, my God, what is he made?
John: This is the Trump problem.
Merlin: Like you've lowered the bar and now you clear it as you snort and snort.
Merlin: Whereas I'm I'm this simp over here still playing by the rules.
John: There are still people who are upset about the sound quality of this show.
John: Am I right?
John: There are still thousands of people.
Merlin: People have a lot of opinions about a lot of things.
Merlin: I understand that, but the show is what the show is.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: The biggest thing, I've been making little improvements.
Merlin: I'm considering rebuilding all of our little sound bits.
Merlin: because I think I could do better.
Merlin: I just can't find the old Skype bloop sound.
Merlin: But I went back and listened to the original Sugar From Sand, and the sound quality is so much better than what we use here.
Merlin: So anyway, that's some inside baseball, as they say.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: That's the thing with a bias, you know?
Merlin: You know the guy who sings that song in Ted Lasso?
Merlin: I'm Not Your Stepping Stone?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: No?
Merlin: No?
John: No.
Merlin: Which guy?
Merlin: Mumford sings that.
Merlin: Oh, there's a lot of Mumford-y music in it.
Merlin: Well, that's an actual, one of the two people is, I believe he's called Marcus Mumford.
Merlin: Oh, Marcus Mumford.
Merlin: Marcus Mumford.
John: You know, I drove those guys around Seattle one time.
John: I know.
John: I want to be a part of the larger world.
John: I don't want to live in a village.
John: I never did.
John: And increasingly, I don't want to live in a city either, which is a weird thing I never thought I would say.
John: But cities now...
John: feel too small.
John: Seattle feels small again.
John: Seattle felt really small in 1992.
John: And then it felt like it was, Seattle always felt like it was, it thought it was bigger than it was.
John: But Seattle got to be kind of a big city for a while in an exciting way.
John: And now it just feels, it feels provincial and, um, and, and puny relative to,
John: I think what it could have been.
John: But I don't want to live in a village, and I don't want to live in a city-sized village.
Merlin: Yeah, just out of curiosity, I'm not sure I follow.
Merlin: You say even Seattle feels small.
Merlin: What is something that in your mind would feel, apart from a city or a city like Seattle, what would feel large to you right now, do you think?
John: Well, I think when I first heard of the concept of the Internet,
John: in 1990 i had the feeling like that we all did when we first heard about it which was oh this is it this is the league of nations this is a one world government this is the universe in a in the pen cap and um and this is this can only be good if there what could the possible downside be of of connecting everyone and having access to all information
John: And I still believe in it, and I believe that we've done a terrible, terrible, terrible job of—
John: of navigating these early years, partly because late stage capitalism and partly because we handed the keys over to the guys.
John: It's, it's just like I used to say about web pages, like the, the content size of a tuna can surround with ads.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, or, or just that the problem, the initial problem was that the, the best websites were not,
John: for the best products or the best writers, the best websites were for the product of the guy that knew how to do his own website.
John: You know, it was, it was my problem with those early websites for bands.
John: It was like great bands had shitty websites.
John: The band, the bands that had great websites were the bands that had someone in the band that could design a website and
John: That was what was so great about you designing the Long Winters website.
John: Because if you hadn't, there wouldn't have been one.
Merlin: It's almost like the way in Deadwood, the way Saul and the two protagonists are going to go to Deadwood to set up a shop to sell provisions and building supplies.
Merlin: And it's probably not ironic that they also had the ability to build the store.
Merlin: So they built the store.
Merlin: and then sold things that you would use to build stores out of it.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah, and that's exactly the problem with the internet, is that we seeded the content over to the people that knew how to build the architecture.
John: And we seeded the... Oh, I think you're right on the money with Facebook.
John: Yeah, well, and with a lot.
John: I mean, you know, all of our internet ethics...
John: And habits were determined not by ethicists or by writers or philosophers or even thinkers.
John: They were designed by computer math guys.
John: Computer math enthusiasts.
John: Yeah, to be efficient for them.
John: And often just because of a failure of imagination.
John: I mean, that's what that documentary is like.
John: We didn't know how to make money, so we went this way.
John: And that has created like a Hitlerverse.
John: Are you talking about that Netflix show?
John: Yeah.
John: But I still believe in that larger world.
John: And I believe that this social media era is going to go into the garbage can.
John: And it's going to take a lot of stuff with it and good riddance to bad rubbish.
John: But Seattle now feels like in attempting to make a place, what...
John: What the culture of the city has done is set its sights too low and made a place that is too small, culturally.
John: Because, as you were saying, everybody feels defensive now.
John: And, you know, it's the constant crisis of liberalism.
John: And we'll see it when Biden gets elected.
John: There's going to be a ton of people on the left that want us that want the left to be as vindictive and small minded as the right has been.
John: And to go in and do all the same shitty things in reverse and partly to reverse some of the shitty things that have been done.
John: But then to really stick it to them, you know, like really drive in the knife and twist it.
John: Because now we're in power and we're going to do the same things that you did.
John: And that is the classic mistake of thinking that the left and right are equivalents and just two sides of a coin when they're not.
John: Like the right is a way and the left is a better way.
John: And the better way requires that you not allow the other side to set the tone and the rules.
John: It's not just that you paint everything that was black-white.
John: You have to go...
John: you have to bring care and compassion back, which are not just the opposites of hate.
John: There's something, they're completely other thing and they require a different way.
John: And Seattle in attempting to be a place of light has increasingly chosen to, in its desire to be anti-dark and
John: It's just the methodology of the things that we hate in service of the things that we want.
John: But it's the methodology that's the problem.
John: You don't use the methodology of hate to get the things that are good.
John: You have a different methodology.
Merlin: Yeah, you're – without saying – I don't know, 100% agree.
Merlin: Well, I think I agree with what you're saying.
Merlin: But I do very much agree on the qualitative differences in – well, first of all, like you're not going to get – if you're more than 14 years old, you're not going to get very far in life by defining yourself by what you're not and who you don't want to be.
Merlin: You have to have something, as I say, affirmative, not positive necessarily, but you have to assert something about who you are.
Merlin: And the answer to tearing down values is to not tear down different values.
Merlin: It's to build up values.
Merlin: And that's what makes it so difficult to try and see as this, as you say, black and white kind of thing.
Merlin: Because once you allow it to become a black and white kind of thing, you've lost.
Merlin: Now you've allowed the other side to sort of turn chess into checkers and checkers into just piece of plastic, like to keep dumbing the game down.
Merlin: And instead of saying like, well, you know, it's not a game.
Merlin: It is life.
Merlin: It's the future that we want for the people that we love.
Merlin: But I do think it's – I very much agree that –
Merlin: Well, first of all, it's just it's not a great look to just go out and have, you know, have your own sort of frontier justice because you didn't like how you were treated.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, politics is a little bit inscrutable to me, but no, but it isn't it isn't to say like, you know, people want to do this.
Merlin: They say the opposite of love is not hate, but in difference.
Merlin: It's that kind of a rethink that's required to say like, you know, let's stop just reacting to everything and let's have an approach that reflects the values that we have.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: There's more to it than just like, oh, you know, now I get to be hall monitor for four years.
John: Well, and I think the problem of San Francisco that you have described to me in the 20 years we've been friends and that I've seen unfold in the 40 years that I've been going to San Francisco is that, you know, in a way San Francisco is a paradise of – for many, many years it was a place where progressive law could be put into action.
John: But the thing is that liberals are more critical of each other than conservatives are of each other.
John: And so it's very hard.
John: It's very hard for the left, I think, in addressing problems of the city to know what to do when you put policy policies in action and they create unanticipated negative results.
John: Like you say, we're going to we're going to we're going to
John: this is our new housing program or this is our new social services program.
John: And then it doesn't work completely.
John: It creates unintended side effects that no one expected.
John: You know, no one expected 50 years ago that the mission would have become what it became.
John: And no one expected that the mission would, in the last 15 years,
John: go from what it was to what it is now.
Merlin: I think it would have been pretty unlikely if you talked to folks in what was then called Eureka Valley in the 1960s to say that, would you imagine in five to eight years this is going to go from being the place, the local neighborhood where nurses and firefighters live, to being the place where more affluent progressives and a lot of gay men move
Merlin: within the next five to eight years.
Merlin: Would you imagine that?
Merlin: And I was like, no, I couldn't possibly imagine that.
Merlin: But they probably also used to go to that McDonald's near Golden Gate Park and not feel very endangered.
John: But I don't think anybody in San Francisco in 1968
John: said, well, one side effect of these programs is going to be that in the 1990s, if you walk down on Market Street, there are going to be people throwing human poo at you.
John: Oh, yeah, for sure.
John: That was never part of a plan.
Merlin: Mid-market?
Merlin: Man, that's the thriving theater district, theater and sporting goods and electronic stores.
Merlin: You could see it's like Back to the Future 2 going down mid-market right now, where you're like, oh, I could really see what this would have been like at a different time.
Merlin: But boy, it sure ain't that now.
Merlin: It ain't that now.
John: But the problem, I think, on the left is that we don't know how to address the problems that we create without looking like our conservative critics.
John: And we're so afraid to look – we're so afraid to do anything that might –
John: taint us with the brush of, of appearing to agree with our conservative critics for even a moment that we often can't address, uh, the problems that we have created with our own, you know, that are intrinsic to, uh, applying new policies, you know, that are, that are, that are earth shattering in some ways.
John: So we put something into place and it's like, Oh wow.
John: Okay.
John: We need to recalibrate this because, because people are, uh,
John: people aren't getting the help they need, but it looks like the solution is going to be too close to what our conservative critics are saying is the problem and we can't go there.
John: That's bad optics.
John: And so we have to, we have to constantly be at war with that.
John: And what ends up happening is that we, we, we don't find the solutions to the, to our own problems.
John: Um, and that is,
John: You know, that's what's happened in Seattle.
John: Seattle has played whack-a-mole with the problems that our own legislation creates, but we can't solve those problems.
John: We can't truly whack them because that looks like, and there are no conservatives in Seattle, it looks like what the liberals would propose.
John: And, you know, we've done a hash job here.
John: Um, but I want to live in the, I want to live on the space station still, you know, Merlin, I want us to live in a world of ideas and in a world that is not on the, on the brink of civil war.
John: Um, but a world where, uh, where, where the continuity of ideas that began when, when human beings first wrote things down,
John: is where that continuity continues.
John: That's right there in the word.
Merlin: One nice thing also about living on a space station is that you do kind of have to find a way to get along.
Merlin: I mean, if there's one person who can't get along, shoot them out the airlock like frickin' John Hurt.
Merlin: You have to drink your own pee.
John: We know that.
Merlin: Can you drink other people's pee?
Merlin: I mean, consensually.
John: No, no, no, you do.
John: You have to drink.
John: Everybody's pee goes into a vat.
John: You take the pee out of it.
John: Oh, it's like stone soup.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: And then John Hurt goes out the airlock.
John: Those are the two fundamental principles.
Merlin: Definitely need to talk about the bonus situation.