Ep. 420: "The New Urbanist Superhero League"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Did you slip and fall?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: I've fallen and I can't get up.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Merlin: Where's the beef?
Merlin: The listener wouldn't know that if you hadn't said anything.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: What happened?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Just record over this part.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, hang on.
Merlin: No, it's okay.
Merlin: I've got to get you louder.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I thought I was ready, and now I'm not so sure.
John: Well, can we walk through it?
John: Can, you know, what...
John: You're as ready as you're up.
John: I'm not ready either.
John: You're as ready as you will ever be.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Um, no, what had happened?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So let's get started.
Merlin: No, see, I realized there were still some residual things I needed to prefer to quit.
Merlin: App-wise, and then accidentally, I quit Skype.
Merlin: Quit the main app.
Merlin: Two seconds after you started talking, which must have seemed weird.
John: It seemed a little weird, but you know, I've grown accustomed to computers being somewhat unreliable.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And so I just chalked it up to just a regular old internet.
Merlin: But that's the nut behind the keyboard.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Pilot error, as they say.
Merlin: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: I could always be better.
Merlin: I could always be better.
John: I'm looking out the window at squirrels in the trees, and I thought you meant a nut, like a literal nut.
John: And I was like, what are these...
John: San Francisco software pundits going to come up with next, the nut behind the keyboard.
John: What does that even mean?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's, you know, it's a technical term, but I don't know, man.
Merlin: I watched, I've been watching a lot of stuff that involves tech community douchebags.
Merlin: And I think I really need to take a break.
Merlin: I watched too many tech douchebags things yesterday.
John: Are you talking about like sitcoms or are you talking about YouTubes of real tech douchebags doing talks?
Merlin: Well, I don't want to – As you know, I'm not a fan of call-out culture.
Merlin: So I don't – if I'm calling you out on this and revealing something, I hope you'll tell me so.
Merlin: I was watching a documentary about WeWork.
John: Oh, WeWork, the site.
John: It's like a place.
John: It's like a cafe.
Merlin: It's a lifestyle.
Merlin: I don't want to open up litigation possibilities here, but WeWork was a heck of a thing that at one point had reached a $40 billion valuation when what they mainly did was leased office buildings and then subdivided it and sold desks.
Merlin: It was a heck of a thing, but it was also a hack of a thing.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: That's so good.
Merlin: That's so good.
Merlin: So anyways, what had happened was I was watching, I actually ended up watching a documentary about WeWork all the way through twice yesterday.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Well, this happens a lot in my house because I'm sort of the, what does one say?
Merlin: I'm like the Admiral Perry of TV.
Merlin: Like I discover a lot of the stuff and then I make my family watch it.
Merlin: So I watched it kind of with my kid in the morning.
Merlin: And then last evening, I said to my wife, I said, you should check this out.
Merlin: It's real good.
Merlin: I still have a very, you know how funny it is, like you have specific recollections of things.
Merlin: For me, that's, I think one of my few somewhat often uncanny abilities is associating a bit of audio with where I was at a certain time.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, you are good at that.
Merlin: We should talk about that because I think that's interesting.
Merlin: I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: Audio and place and time.
Merlin: Audio, place and time.
Merlin: And I have a specific recollection of a while back, probably, I don't know, a year and a half ago, my lady friend, as part of her job, one of her remaining event planner jobs is that she...
Merlin: She does a really good job managing this off-site meeting, a retreat, if you like, with a bunch of the doctors she works with, et cetera.
Merlin: And I have a specific recollection of being at this place kind of up near where The Birds was filmed.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Bodega Bay.
Merlin: And I have a couple of specific recollections.
Merlin: I remember there was a man with astonishing dyed black hair and a Speedo at the pool.
Merlin: Of course, I remember going and visiting the church from the birds.
Merlin: I remember that my daughter had just gotten really into Pokemon Go, so I got into Pokemon Go.
Merlin: And I remember very specifically that WeWork had just released something called their S1, which is the form that you release before going public.
Merlin: And it was completely banana balls.
Merlin: I'm starting to think that I'm not calling you out, which is good.
Merlin: Because you would know all of this.
John: Me or someone else?
Merlin: You.
Merlin: I'm getting there.
Merlin: I'm getting there.
Merlin: But I remember being so agog.
Merlin: This included things like the douchebag who ran the company was getting paid $6 million to license the trademark on Wii to his company.
Merlin: His wife was going to be the only person who could declare his successor.
Merlin: all kinds of crazy stuff and so the WeWork thing was pretty wild and not to spoil this for everybody it is history but it went from it basically in six weeks over this six week period of time it completely imploded I recommend it it's a documentary I think it's on I want to say Hulu but
Merlin: But there's a point that's so – it's so good.
Merlin: They talk to these journalists.
Merlin: And one of the journalists says – you know what he says?
Merlin: He says something along the lines of – there's a phrase here, the Nantucket sleigh ride.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And he says that's when – so the idea is you go out and you're a whaler.
Merlin: You whale.
Merlin: And you go out and you shoot a harpoon at a whale.
Merlin: And the way that's supposed to –
Merlin: right you're supposed to like then draw that whale to you but but what is it what happens sometimes john oh that whale takes you on a ride merlin he takes you on a ride and all of a sudden you're you're gonna get your big ship is gonna get pulled by a whale until it ends you never know what a whale's gonna do you never know what a whale's gonna do that's right let me just uh and what's that called john what's it called when a whale does that to a ship
John: Well, it's called a Nantucket sleigh ride, but I do have a point of order, Merle.
John: Sorry, you there.
John: Which is that when you are whaling, when you're actively engaged in whaling, you're not firing a harpoon or throwing it from the ship.
John: You're down in an ore-powered boat.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: See, I should have finished Moby Dick.
Merlin: I skipped so many chapters in Moby Dick.
John: This is the thing.
John: So you get excited about a Nantucket sleigh ride because you imagine that there's a three-masted, you know, whaling ship.
John: And this is more of a dinghy.
John: Well, you know, they'll put eight, ten guys in it, but I'll tell you, when the whale takes off... Oh, that's even more impressive.
John: Oh, yeah, it's scary.
Merlin: And then you've got to go find those guys, right?
Merlin: They're going to be moving probably a good deal faster than a three-mast ship can move.
John: Yeah, then the ship's got to find them.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And in fact, I have this beautiful illustration of...
John: of a sailor standing up in one of these boats, holding a lantern.
John: on a pole because the whale took them for a ride and then the sun went down.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: They're just out there in the sea with their lantern hoping that, you know, they went over the horizon, right?
Merlin: The ship's got to like... But it isn't like looking for like a missing kid, like where you go to the cul-de-sac or the video game place or whatever.
Merlin: The oceans are big, John.
Merlin: They're big.
Merlin: They go in every direction.
Merlin: They go in every direction.
Merlin: It could be behind you.
John: Yes, that's right.
John: And especially if...
John: Say for instance, now I'm not speaking from personal experience, but say for instance you encounter a group of whales, a family of whales, a pod of whales.
John: I don't know if whales are, I know orcas are in pods, but I think whales, other whales might have different names for their family groups.
John: But let's say you encounter a group and you're an ambitious whaler, you're trying to get ahead, you lower all three of your boats, whatever your
John: I don't know what they're called.
John: Or boats.
John: Or boats.
John: And each one goes after a different whale.
John: Each one harpoons the whale and goes on a separate Nantucket sleigh ride in three different directions.
Merlin: Are you following me?
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: It's like when it's one thing to try to keep track of one toddler.
Merlin: But if you have to keep track of three toddlers or more,
Merlin: You're mega screwed.
Merlin: You know what they say, if you chase two rabbits, you lose them both.
Merlin: You can't run and chase three toddlers at the same time if you're running solo in your oar boat.
Merlin: And in this case, you're saying it could go, you don't know where it's going to go.
Merlin: It's infinite chaos.
John: And how are you going to get all three guys?
John: I mean, the thing is, what we know about toddlers is one toddler does the work of one toddler.
John: Two toddlers do the work of half a toddler and three toddlers do no work at all.
John: That's a really good point.
John: Right.
Merlin: It's like the opposite of horses.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So that's exactly right.
Merlin: Three horses do the work of six horses.
Merlin: I learned from a podcast that if you get horses that are friends with each other, they can pull more than the sum of their actual weight.
Merlin: You learn this from a podcast?
Merlin: You don't want to know.
Merlin: But the point is that's the opposite of toddlers in that sense with whales.
Merlin: And can I say, John, I'm not an expert here, but it seems to me those whales are going to be pretty steamed.
Merlin: If you could harness three whales, I bet you they'd do the work of six whales.
Merlin: Or it could be exponential.
Merlin: It could be like nine.
Merlin: I don't really understand maths.
Merlin: But you're saying it could go, you could say different directions, but you don't know.
Merlin: If you're a whale and your kid just got speared by an oar boat, woof.
Merlin: You're going to get pretty mad.
John: What I've never understood about whales is, see, whales, this is something I didn't, I read all of Moby Dick trying to figure this out and no one ever really explained it.
Merlin: You didn't skip any chapters in that?
John: No, no, no.
John: I read every single word.
Whew.
John: Because that's the kind of reader I am, and it's a problem.
Merlin: It's actually a problem.
Merlin: Yeah, we talked about this.
Merlin: You read slowly, and then you reread parts, not because you didn't understand it, but you're savoring the dick.
John: You're savoring it.
John: That's right.
John: And all that stuff where it's like, oh, this entire chapter is just, he's listing all the different kinds of ten-penny nails on the ship, and it's only two pages.
John: It's like Best in Show, where he's just naming nuts.
Merlin: Yeah, let me get out of here.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: But you like that.
Merlin: It was a very modern novel for the time.
John: Very modern.
John: That's right.
John: That's why it's the great American novel now.
John: Not because it was popular in its day, but because later modernists identified it as an early example.
Merlin: It's like a Tristram Shandy, except in this case you've got a Queequeg.
John: It's a Queequeg.
John: What I don't understand is one of the number one things a whale can do, I'm going to put this in the top four things a whale can do, is go down.
John: A whale can go down.
John: But so often in where... I mean, the whole industry of whaling presumes that when you stick the whale with the giant spear, it's not going to go down.
John: It's going to run that way on the surface.
John: And were I a whale... That is a human conceit, my friend.
John: Well, see?
John: Yeah.
John: So I'm thinking...
John: Take a deep breath and go straight down.
John: You're doing it anyway.
John: You go down there and eat giant squid or fight them or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: So if somebody stuck me with a giant spear and I could go down, I would go fuck down.
John: I hate to think of that.
John: Well, that's okay.
John: It's not going to happen probably.
John: I'm on good terms with my neighbors right now.
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John: But in all these scenarios, the whale gets speared and they just run on the surface
John: Until they get tired and they die.
John: And I don't understand what's going on in whale society.
John: I don't understand, you know, it's a cultural, like, confusion that I have.
John: I can't figure out why.
Merlin: It's like thinking about Canadians.
Merlin: It's just different enough.
John: It's just different enough.
John: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I mean, whales, don't you imagine whales love their family, probably?
Merlin: It's like Sting said.
Merlin: Russians love their children, too.
Merlin: Right?
Right.
John: So anyway, so WeWork was a Nantucket sleigh ride.
John: I went into a WeWork once.
John: Shut your mouth.
John: No, two times.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Two times.
John: First time I went into a WeWork, there was a guy coming through town.
John: He was making tin types.
John: Old-fashioned photos.
John: Like a daguerreotype kind of thing.
John: A daguerreotype, but, you know, like on a piece of metal.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Probably started in Portland, I'm guessing.
John: Almost certainly.
Merlin: And it was, you know, it's absolutely like... Let's do something in a way that's difficult and makes worse results.
John: He takes the cap off of the thing.
John: You stand there, you know, and you got the Sundance kid on one side, you got Butch on the other, and you're there holding your hat.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: And so I knew somebody who knew somebody who was like, hey, this guy's coming to town.
John: Why don't you go down and get your picture taken?
John: And I was like, this is exactly the kind of Portland thing that I love.
John: And he said, it's happening at the WeWork.
Oh.
Merlin: Oh, he's going to make a tin type of John.
John: He's going to make a tin type of me.
Merlin: You weren't there for the Wii community per se.
Merlin: That's a side thing.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: So I go down there.
John: This is the thing.
John: When I'm at the state fair and somebody says, hey, let's go in and get an old-timey photo of us in Western clothes.
John: Love that.
John: I love it too.
John: And I go in and I get into character.
John: You know, I'm not somebody that goes to a costume party and then stands there and talks about WeWork.
John: I go to the costume party and I'm in the character of the person in the costume.
Merlin: You're like a historical reenactor.
Merlin: I had a friend that used to work at Colonial Williamsburg.
Merlin: And he was what they call an interpreter.
Merlin: And his job was to walk around and he asked him questions.
Merlin: My friend Dennis, he asked him questions.
Merlin: He goes, oh, what is this Facebook of which you speak?
Merlin: Churn butter.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You're fully committed.
Merlin: You're like a lifestyle costumer.
Merlin: I love to be that guy.
John: And this was my problem with the, you know, like I have a lot of friends in the cosplay community.
John: I've done a cosplay adjacent in a couple of different directions.
John: And every time I go to a comic con and there's cosplayers all around and, and they're all just standing there talking about Facebook and looking at their phones.
John: I'm like, you are a steampunk Batman.
John: Why are you looking at a Facebook right now?
Merlin: You know, you could pick, you could pick brass goggles or phone, but not both.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Unless it's a steampunk phone and you're doing like a Wild Wild West type situation.
Merlin: But that's probably just like an iPhone 11.
John: All you have to do is put some steampunk stuff on your phone and I will buy in.
John: But I was talking to a cosplay friend like two days ago and I said –
John: Why don't you, if you're going to be silk, if you're going to dress up as Lady Spider-Man.
John: You know about that?
John: Chinese Lady Spider-Man.
John: Oh, my God, John.
John: I'm learning so much.
John: If you're going to be silk, why aren't you also, like,
John: But silk, if you're going to be there, if you're going to go to all the trouble, then go all the way.
John: And she's like, eh, I just like dressing like silk.
John: And I'm like, well, but don't you want to be silk?
John: And she's like, no, I just want to dress like silk.
John: And so I'm just like, I don't understand it.
John: Because if I were dressed like silk, I would be silk all the way.
John: I would go the distance.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: So at the state fair, I go all the distance.
John: And what that means, Merlin, what does that mean?
John: I take off my freaking tortoise shell glasses because they are not historically accurate.
Merlin: It's what they say in the Civil War reenactor community.
Merlin: They call it OOP, out of period.
Merlin: You don't have vintage fleas.
Merlin: The buttons on your waistcoat are a mess.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You shouldn't have that Baja Blast Mountain Dew.
John: Even if no one sees my underwear, I'm going to wear period correct underwear.
John: You know, you know.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: I will know.
John: You're going to wear some coarse panties.
John: Well, and I've got a wonderful photo that I took at the state fair where I'm dressed like a sort of a major in the cavalry that's fallen into disfavor and gone a little bit wild.
John: But he still wears his old uniform.
John: Like I got a whole backstory for the guy.
John: And, uh, and you know, and that, and that picture is prominently displayed.
John: But the, when this daguerreotype guy came through town, I was like, all right, I, you know, I know that this is, I know that we're not in an old West situation here.
John: This is happening at a, we work.
John: I want it to be classic.
John: because it's going to be a daguerreotype.
Merlin: You're not going to get a lot of extra shots at this.
Merlin: I imagine this is not like you got your Canon 7D and you go... You're going to get probably one shot at this.
Merlin: Make sure your eyes are open and stand real still.
John: I only had one shot I did not want to miss my chance to blow.
John: Okay.
John: So I go down there, but I'm wearing glasses that day.
John: But they're clear, and they're what I would consider a classic...
John: frame they're an aviator it's kind of a world war ii look i've got going got my khaki jacket on and i'm like all right this is gonna i'm i'm cool with this we're gonna get a daguerreotype but it's gonna be in a we work it's gonna be modern plus plus classic no no one in the place is wearing uh braces or handlebar mustaches it's just what it is he takes the picture and
John: I'm very happy with the experience.
John: It was very fun.
John: I enjoyed him.
John: I enjoyed the man.
John: And then later, months later, in the mail comes the thing.
John: And I pull it out.
John: And what happened, what had happened was.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: That the glasses that I wore, although clear, were polarized.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, no, and that becomes a tell.
John: Well, no, what happened was the daguerreotype camera, which is made out of gears and, you know, and ribbons.
Merlin: Steam-driven, it's got a lot of brass fittings on it, right?
John: The daguerreotype lens perceived the polarization as just impenetrable.
John: And so the glasses...
John: are the blackest lenses you ever saw.
Merlin: You look like an unsighted person.
John: Well, I just, I mean, if those glasses actually had lenses like that, so dark that no light could penetrate, they would be the coolest sunglasses you ever saw.
John: But in the context of a daguerreotype, it's weird.
John: You know, like I'm not standing out on a beach somewhere.
John: I'm not in a fighter jet.
John: I'm sitting in a WeWork room
Merlin: you know holding my philson briefcase with the darkest sunglasses like if you could see a built-to-spill t-shirt through your blouse like it's out of period whatever you just every time i see someone mention the band bts the the korean boy band i always think i get i get confused too you were just you were you just conjured uh like a vision for me of someone in a kind of
John: opaque, you know, like silky, slightly see-through blouse.
Merlin: Like an 80s lady blouse.
Merlin: Yeah, like a lady blouse.
John: And then you can see a built-to-spill t-shirt under it.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: If she had combat boots, can you imagine?
John: Who are you?
John: Marry me.
John: Oh, my God.
John: So that was the first time I went.
John: Oh, anyway, so I have this daguerreotype, but I don't know what to do with it because when you look at it, it's just like,
John: It's a little bit, I don't know, it's a little time traveler or something and not in a good way.
John: So I don't know what to do.
John: If I had taken my glasses off, it would have been amazing.
Merlin: Oh, you're on the horns of a dilemma because you're not sure that's something you want to make part of your permanent installation.
Merlin: Maybe Jason Finn would buy it from you.
John: Well, the thing is, it's a beautiful thing.
John: It's a beautiful item.
John: I'm sure somebody would like it.
John: I'm sure, you know, it's like Tony Soprano dressed as Napoleon with his horse sitting on Pauly's wall, right?
Yeah.
Merlin: Sadness accrues.
Merlin: Yeah, that would be terrific.
Merlin: You could probably just hear him breathing through the photo.
John: The second time I went to WeWork, it was the same WeWork.
John: Okay.
John: I was running for city council, and get this.
John: I'd been to every single union in the city.
John: None of them really felt like, you know –
John: my experience with the unions was that they were all, the unions are extremely political and they were like, look, the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don't.
John: And so we're all, we're going to go with the guy that publicly we all vilify as being not labor friendly.
John: But he's like a known quantity.
John: Yeah.
John: And in actuality, because this is Seattle, he's super labor friendly.
John: So we should talk him, but
John: we're not going to choose you because who the hell are you yeah and i was like who am i i'm like i'm you know i'm the guy and they're like mr guy like i'm here to fix things up they're like not yet not yet but but so and it was very difficult to do that week after week day after day to walk into a big room full of people sitting behind the table and go hi i'm me i'm just me i'm here to do what you know i'm here to like contribute to the town and they were like nope
John: There's already somebody doing that, and we don't like them.
Merlin: I think you've talked about this in the past.
Merlin: Like you can expect, obviously, a lot of questioning and pushbacks, but it becomes a little dispiriting when your whole day is just going to meet people who are just challenging you all day long, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Challenging you and then not really listening to your answers because they already have the answers in mind that they want you to say.
John: Sure.
John: But so I went to this event at the WeWork.
John: And I had been given a rating already on somebody's website by the new urbanists.
John: And the new urbanists, I think you know who I'm talking about.
John: The new urbanists are young people.
John: who are very into bike lanes.
John: They want density.
John: You are my density.
John: They want everybody.
Merlin: Sort of, I want to say the opposite of the suburbs, but something quite different from the suburbs where the whole idea began as you go and live somewhere that's not the city, but you still get the benefits of the city when it suits you.
Merlin: But then you go back to your neighborhood full of white people.
Merlin: But you would never bike to where you need to go.
John: Within Seattle, the idea is of hubs.
John: Anytime you have a transit stop, you have an opportunity to build density at that corner.
John: So Seattle has a real problem.
John: NIMBYs, right?
John: Nobody wants anything to happen.
John: Everybody wants it all to happen.
John: It's just nobody wants it to happen right here.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You want – what's your phrase?
Merlin: You want y'all and Paul to go take care of that over here.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Paul and y'all over there.
Merlin: Yes.
John: It's like, hey, what we need is a new this.
John: And they're like, great.
Merlin: Put it somewhere else because we like – We get that with halfway houses, drug rehab stuff, anything where people who –
Merlin: I mean, honestly, a lot of places around here where people paid $1.3 million for their house do not want a regular amble of homeless-looking people wandering around.
John: That is the classic NIMBY, but it gets worse because there are the NIMBYs who are like, we don't want...
John: There to be a five-story building here where every apartment in it is a million five because – Oh, back to density.
John: I get it.
John: I get it.
John: noise or it's going to bring young people or it's going to bring – who knows?
John: What it's going to do is it's going to change.
John: And so people in Seattle who are like, we need – what they do is they vote for all this stuff because they believe in their hearts that the homeless should all be housed and that there should be no childhood children.
John: Yeah, you got a lot of theoretical progressives.
John: Exactly.
John: But then when you're like, well, we're going to build a new building here that has – that's a multipurpose building that has a grocery store on the bottom.
John: There are going to be seven market rate apartments and then there are going to be seven subsidized apartments.
John: for middle class families that can't afford to live in the city and the people are like out there protesting like no those nurses and firemen can be pretty rough trade oh my god you know especially if they have two kids that are in school oh they're so loud so the so i am in a lot of ways an urbanist i don't buy i don't hook line and sinker with it but i do feel like
John: If you put in transit and then there's a transit stop right around that transit stop, you should just build a town.
John: You should build a little town there.
John: Right.
John: Because then those people can get on the transit and go to work and they don't have to have a car and you can build.
John: It's a whole thing.
John: I totally agree.
John: Anyway, so I had been given a rating list.
John: by this group of young people that was one of those, like, we don't know anything about this guy.
John: So we're going to, this is early on in the campaign.
John: So we're going to give him a rating of let's say middle.
Merlin: And it was like, like a gentleman's B. Yeah.
John: And it was like, well, fuck you.
John: You didn't, you never, you don't know anything about me.
John: And what it was, was it's based on some like press release that I'd made where I said, I said three things and I wrote it in four minutes and
John: Anyway, they had an event at the WeWork where they were going to in-depth interview the candidates.
John: Okay.
John: And I, and I go to the WeWork and I'm there, you know, and this was a period when I was like wearing, I was wearing business clothes every day.
John: And I sit down and I think what the, I think these urbanists had actually maybe, maybe given some lukewarm endorsement of one of my opponents and
John: But I sat in the room with them and I was like, you want to talk about urbanism?
John: And I laid out all my ideas and I was just like, and then the gondola comes over and it lands in a, you know, in the tower that's also got an elementary school and an observatory and it's got water slides and there's, and it's got a university and it's got a polar, uh, simulator and
John: that has a ski jump and these guys were just like wow you're incredible and i was like i yeah i haven't even got started you kidding me every okay
John: Okay, follow with me.
Merlin: A bear on a minibike.
Merlin: All right, you got a bear on a minibike.
Merlin: I love that.
Merlin: Minibikes are just so cute and so funny.
Merlin: Put a bear on that with those big legs and that big trunk.
Merlin: That would be adorable.
John: Every town has a bear on a minibike just riding around.
John: And the thing is, it's not a bear that's like a captive bear.
John: The bear can do what it wants.
Merlin: Well, it's got a little motorcycle and go wherever it wants.
John: Give it a little motorcycle.
John: What's it going to want to do except just ride around and delight people?
Merlin: So I leave them.
Merlin: Maybe have like a hydro flask full of honey.
Merlin: Oh, a hydro flask.
John: Wouldn't that be cute?
John: That's so cute.
John: The whole thing is killing me, and this is why.
Merlin: Is he wearing a bandana?
Merlin: I would love it if he's wearing a bandana.
John: They each get to choose the hat of their choice.
John: Whatever you want.
John: Oh, my God.
John: There are as many hats as there are bears, Merlin.
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John: Do I leave the WeWorks?
John: And I'm standing out front and everybody coming in and out, they're all wearing J crew suits and everybody's just, you know, and it's just like tickety, tickety, tickety.
John: There's every seat is taken all full of young urbanists all doing their, their offsite work.
John: They're all working.
John: They've got conference rooms that people are having conferences in.
John: And I come out, I'm standing out front.
John: I'm talking to some other candidates.
John: One of the candidates that's running in a different seat is,
John: Um, he also lost, but he was very, he was very popular with the, with the, the polity.
John: Uh, he said to me, you know, at the beginning of this campaign, I couldn't figure you out.
John: I thought you, I thought you just didn't know what you're doing, but, but lately you've just been killing it.
John: Like, I really feel like if you had started your campaign four months earlier, like you would be the front runner now.
John: And I was like, that's not what I want to hear, but thank you.
John: But this was, you know, toward the end of the campaign.
Merlin: That's what I've come to call a stomplement.
Merlin: It's supposed to be a compliment, but it just ends up being not really all that nice.
John: Yeah, well, what he said was your gondola plan isn't realistic, but it turns out you're a great candidate.
John: What about my funiculars?
John: You're a great candidate.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: My candidacy is founded on funiculars and gondolas, so you don't know what you're talking about.
John: But I felt briefly for a moment like a member of the new Urbanist Superhero League...
John: Where we were all wearing pegged pants.
John: Yep.
John: But – Probably scowling a lot.
John: Well, and just like looking serious and we all had very expensive shoes and we were working.
John: We were going to a place where we were – it was basically like going to a gym except it was an office.
John: And then one day it was gone.
John: The WeWork was gone and I don't – I'm not sure I want to watch the whole documentary but like what happened to that dream?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I guess we all have – Well, it'll – I personally would say it's real good to watch.
Merlin: It is very frustrating because it's one of those kind of – people overuse this phrase, but sort of one of those emperor has no clothes situations where everybody looking at it –
Merlin: It's just like, what, what are you, what you're as, let me find, let me find this.
Merlin: I did a screenshot of this because I love this so much yesterday.
Merlin: One guy they talked to is a reporter, not a reporter, excuse me.
Merlin: He's a professor of some kind of marketing.
Merlin: And basically he started doing some deep dives on, on what they were saying and like coming up with this conversation.
Merlin: Banana stuff, if I remember correctly, one is that the floor of a building in which we work was located was worth more than all the other buildings they were leasing put together.
Merlin: There were all of these just like, there's nothing to this.
Merlin: And what was the phrase that he used?
Merlin: He had just gone through this whole thing of like, oh, yeah, you know, so you lease buildings and then you subdivided.
Merlin: He said, I mean, for God's sakes, they're renting fucking desks.
Merlin: And that's what it was.
Merlin: But then it turned into this weird cult where there was We Work, where there was We Live.
Merlin: Then they wanted to start doing schools called We Grow.
Merlin: And they had some kind of a Coke-fueled idea for something called We Grown Up.
Merlin: And that's going to be like for continuing education.
Merlin: And more and more, it's sounding like, and I mean this in the best possible way, either like basically like Cambodian re-education or possibly L. Ron Hubbard's religion.
Yeah.
John: So they did – there was an ideology in the people, in the man?
John: Well, there was.
Merlin: I mean it expressed itself by this guy who's the moving force behind this would just say stuff like anytime somebody would ask him a question about the actual business, he would just keep bringing it back to like raising human consciousness.
Merlin: And the thing, I said this on the internet earlier, like last night, but the phrase that keeps coming up over and over, and once you hear this phrase, you'll never unhear it.
Merlin: How often do you hear one of these think-fluencers say that they want to change the world, right?
Merlin: But like, I mean, everybody asks, where is Waldo?
Merlin: Nobody ever asks, how is Waldo?
Merlin: They're always talking about wanting to change the world.
Merlin: Very few of them are truly committed to helping the world.
Merlin: And once you kind of get over that little seemingly small semantic difference, you get to how much change the world means.
Merlin: Screw up something that already works in order for me to make an ungodly amount of money.
Merlin: I know that sounds cynical.
Merlin: But when we see Elon Musk consistently tout that he's basically reinvented subway tunnels or whatever,
Merlin: You're like, ah, you're not really trying to change.
Merlin: I mean, like Tesla, good.
Merlin: Batteries, good.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But like there is this thing to this of like you keep falling back on your plan for all of this is like how you're going to elevate human consciousness through office space.
Merlin: Anyway, I thought of you because of the Nantucket sleigh ride.
Merlin: And then what else did I watch?
Merlin: After that, I watched another business douche thing.
Merlin: But did you walk away with me?
Merlin: Did you walk away with me?
Merlin: I have lots of things I've been writing down while you were talking.
Merlin: We still have to find out the other three things that whales do.
Merlin: I also want to talk about apparently I've discovered a vein of what I'm going to call Moby Dick fan fiction.
Merlin: There's a lot of fan art of Ishmael and Queequeg in that bed together.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: Looking very open to like whatever.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So that's a lot of, that's kind of the deviant art angle.
Merlin: Could you give me at least one more thing that whales do?
Merlin: The first thing I've got here is that whales can go down.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: So, but like we, we work, we, we get lost in this.
Merlin: We don't think about all the dimensions.
Merlin: In this case, literally a dimension, this sort of, I guess that'd be the y-axis of down.
Merlin: We keep thinking whales are going to think like we do, run like we would.
Merlin: And let's be honest, just as a side note here, this is in 2021 is my year of saying, let's please stop guessing what somebody else's motivation is or deliberately understanding other people's motivation.
Merlin: But I think it is fair to say we make an error when we think that everybody's going to respond to something the way we would.
Merlin: And a whale who just got harpooned by some guys in an oar boat may behave in a way that is different from what you would have guessed.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Is all the whale-related stuff regarding this kind of subterfuge?
Merlin: Give me at least one more thing that a whale can do that might surprise us.
Merlin: You seem to have a lot of command of whale facts.
John: Well, I think the number one thing that a whale does, I mean, I think...
John: go down is like maybe number two on the number of things that are on the top five things that a whale does.
John: But the number one thing a whale does is go around.
John: Because the ocean's big.
John: A whale just goes around.
John: Go around.
John: A whale is going around.
John: Every time you see a whale, it's going around.
Merlin: It's like trying to chase somebody who's good at parkour.
Merlin: In some ways, the human version of that is – and you see this a lot in movies now.
Merlin: But you see people who – like if you're like a typical ectomorphic cop trying to chase somebody and then they whoopsie doopsie do a silk.
Merlin: They do a Spider-Man.
Merlin: They do a Spider-Gwen.
Merlin: And they're suddenly going up a wall or climbing over some brutalist architecture.
Merlin: And you're like, hey, that's not what I would have done.
Merlin: It's like exactly.
Merlin: You can't do that.
John: Can't do that.
Merlin: If you get chased in the way, this is why, and they say, for example, in my second home state of Florida, if you got an alligator running after you, you need to zig and you need to zag.
Merlin: Because the alligator can't zig and zag.
Merlin: Alligator in a straightaway is going to take you down to its meatlock.
Merlin: La, la, la, la, la.
Merlin: I hate you.
Merlin: Yeah, like Robert Shaw says, you know, the Indianapolis.
Merlin: He's going to drag you down, you know.
Merlin: But like the thing is, what if you think that guy who is, let's be honest, a suspect in this crime or this alleged crime is suddenly climbing up a wall like Miles Morales.
Merlin: You're going to have to think twice because you're like, oh, blimey.
Merlin: Like, how am I going to get up the building?
Merlin: And in this case, it's just with a whale that can go around.
Merlin: It's a big ocean.
John: Every parkour person is.
Merlin: seems to me to be living in an outskirt of paris or in brazilia because as you say they're always parkouring on brutalist architecture so much i think brutus architecture has more things to grab oh maybe so if you try well no i don't know if you try to maybe a frank lloyd wright even because he has lots of sconces and things but like you could parkour the shit out of a victorian neighborhood though there's so many things to grab curtains and like scones they have more filials than i've had hot meals you go up you go up a queen anne
Merlin: Pardon my saying.
Merlin: But you never.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Hello.
John: But you never.
John: It's better than going down with a whip.
John: But you never you never see parkours happening in Queen Anne neighborhoods.
John: They're always on libraries or they're always going through like half half constructed buildings in the Ukraine.
John: Oh, not the Ukraine.
John: Oh, no, that's okay.
John: We'll fix it.
Merlin: Ukraine, Ukraine.
Merlin: I think you said that Ukraine.
Merlin: Ukraine, yeah.
Merlin: Which Ukraine?
Merlin: In that Ukraine.
Merlin: Which Ukraine we honor and stand.
John: If you look at the history of whaling, 80% of what they're doing is just going around looking for the whales.
Merlin: Oh, they're doing whale-like behavior.
Merlin: You've got to think like a whale.
Merlin: Think like a whale.
John: Go around.
John: One of the number one reasons that there was any kind of interest in visiting Hawaii after Captain Cook, there was a long period where the colonial enterprise was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Hawaii, until the whalers needed a place to stock up on fresh water and coconuts.
Merlin: And so Hawaii was... This is back to your original idea that you taught me so many years ago, at this point, probably 10, 11 years ago, which is that this is the way to understand the makeup of a city, of a community.
Merlin: It's like, what are the waterways?
Merlin: Where are the roads?
Merlin: Like you see certain kinds of, if you like, industry and probably eventually culture spring up out of this.
Merlin: Like we got this good food because ships used to come to, well, maybe not Boston, but like I'm not a huge fan, but I like illegal seafoods, you know, lobster roll.
Merlin: But what you're saying is you come in with the stuff...
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You come in with the cumin or the bay leaves or some kind of other delicacy.
Merlin: And now because you had a waterway, now you're enjoying bay leaves in Cincinnati.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Same here, except as with Captain Cook and whales.
John: I mean, why do the Hawaiians use ukuleles?
John: because there were small apartments no because there were so many portuguese that immigrated to hawaii to work in the sugar sugar you say the portuguese are i don't know if this is ableist my understanding is the portuguese are at the heart of it they see seafaring people it is exactly 100 true and uh and the portuguese originally arrived as sailors on whaling ships
John: Hmm.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: And they brought their ukuleles.
Merlin: They brought their ukulele.
Merlin: You're telling me the ukulele is a South American instrument?
Merlin: Well, no, Portugal's aren't.
Merlin: Oh, Portugal.
Merlin: I thought you were talking about, oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm conflating my Brazilians.
Merlin: I am so sorry.
Merlin: But we also know that the Spaniards, and again, I don't know if this is racist, but I believe they were well known before the English.
Merlin: It was their armada that everybody feared.
Merlin: And I'll bet you there was more than one Portuguese working on the Espana ships.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Because it's right there, right?
Merlin: Portugal and Spain are like peas and carrots.
John: Yeah, but you don't want to mistake them because the Portuguese are going to get very mad at you.
Merlin: Oh, I did that.
Merlin: I confused Australians in New Zealand once, and boy, I never got over it.
Merlin: Boy, don't do that.
Merlin: You don't want to do that.
Merlin: But here's the thing about a whale.
John: If the number one thing a whale did was go down and not around, they would run out of squid in that area very fast.
John: They were running a squid.
John: Because the whale, I know, I'm talking about Moby Dick whales now.
John: I'm talking about sperm whales.
Merlin: Oh, this is not the kind that eats, what are they called, Kree?
Merlin: I think the Krees are in Marvel Comics.
Merlin: What is it, Krill?
Merlin: There's the Krill eaters, and that's going to be more like, is that a sperm whale, John?
Merlin: Who eats Krees?
John: Those are like humpback whales.
John: So there are baleen whales, and there are toothed whales.
Merlin: Interesting.
John: And they're different toothed whales.
Merlin: What's the one in Pinocchio?
John: That's some kind of.
Merlin: That's a tooth whale, I think.
John: So there's a lot of question about the whale that Noah went into.
John: Jonah?
John: No.
John: Oh, well, yeah.
John: So Noah, I guess, put the whale on the boat.
Merlin: Noah had to get two whales on his boat.
Merlin: But Jonah was the one, I think, who was consumed.
Merlin: Jonah went into the whale.
Merlin: He was consumed by whale.
Merlin: And there's some question about what kind of whale that was.
John: But all the whales have to go around.
John: Because the thing is, you could imagine a whale that went all the way around the world and never went down.
John: Because it can go around.
John: Because if it was going around, it could just be eating krill.
John: It doesn't need a map.
John: It doesn't need a map of Pangea because it can always go around.
John: It feels it.
John: It knows where it is.
John: It feels it.
John: It goes here.
John: It goes there.
John: It goes hither.
John: It goes yon.
John: So go around is number one on what a whale does.
John: Go down is number two on what a whale does.
Merlin: Got it.
Merlin: Okay, that's two.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I don't want to press you on this.
Merlin: I don't want you to feel like you have to keep doing this.
Merlin: Okay, okay.
Merlin: I bet being big and strong is one, being bigger and stronger than we imagine.
Merlin: And isn't it said also, this might be old information, isn't it said the whales are very smart?
Merlin: Well, but that might also be one of those things where it's like... Oh, it's like saying Asian people are good at math.
John: Yeah, human beings think that whales are smart because they have big brains.
John: But I'll tell you what, if I was smart and somebody hit me with a spear, I would go down.
Merlin: You'd go down.
Merlin: Oh, you wouldn't just panic and start tearing ass straight ahead.
Merlin: That's an anti-alligator type thing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Another thing you have to know about whales is their eyes are on either side of their head.
Merlin: And that means that they are likely a food rather than predator.
Merlin: Predators get the eyes in front, right?
Merlin: Like a killer whale.
Merlin: Wasn't there an eye thing?
Merlin: Like we were talking about this with our lizard.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And where a lizard, like if he's going to go somewhere, he's very cautious.
Merlin: He likes to pause for a minute.
Merlin: And then he does the cutest little thing, John.
Merlin: He sticks out his tongue to taste whatever's in front of him.
Merlin: It's adorable.
Merlin: But then he also does this thing where he turns his head.
Merlin: He inclines his head very slightly.
Merlin: And I've said to my wife, I think that's because he's food more than, I'm probably getting these backwards, but he likes to kind of get a little extra angle on binocular vision.
Merlin: So he goes, hmm.
Merlin: And that way he can get more depth perception.
John: Well, and so I think you're right.
John: Like horses and cows, their eyes are on the side.
John: Yep, right.
John: They're food.
John: But the thing about a whale is that the eyes are completely on the other side of their giant head such that –
John: Such that, you know, like a horse or a lizard, if it is looking at a bale of hay or in a lizard's case a fly, it can look at it out of one eye and then turn its head and look at it out of the other eye.
John: But a whale, each eye has to be seeing a completely different world at the same time, simultaneously.
Merlin: And it's not like an owl or similar or a gecko where it can like move its eye sockets or eye stalks independently.
Merlin: In this case, if he wants confirmation of what's going on over here, he sees an Aquaman or something.
Merlin: I mean, what's he going to do?
Merlin: Is he going to turn 90 degrees?
Merlin: That doesn't seem like whale behavior to me.
John: No, it would take 15 minutes for a whale.
Merlin: 15 minutes just to turn.
John: Just to turn to see whatever it was looking at.
Merlin: He can go down fast, but he can't go right or left so fast.
Merlin: He can't turn his head as fast.
John: Exactly.
John: So what that means is it has two eyes, and its entire life both eyes are independently seeing and processing the world.
John: That makes you think.
John: It really does.
John: And then somewhere in a whale brain...
John: It's combining those two pictures without being able to see in front of it at all.
John: Right.
John: Combining those two pictures into a single image of the world it occupies.
Merlin: It's what Nick Fury might call a sit rep.
Merlin: You got a situation report.
Merlin: So maybe you don't think the way we do see the way we do.
Merlin: Obviously, flies and Samuel L. Jackson, everybody's going to see differently.
Merlin: What you're saying to me here is there's a command system somewhere in the whale that's able to not find it confusing that there are two
Merlin: completely different images coming over the camera, a mono camera, not a stereo camera, but that comes into the control center and that gets made, you get a sit rep and you can say, okay, you know, that's a wagon wheel falling off a boat over there, but there's some, some yummy squid over here.
Merlin: I'm gonna go after that.
John: Is that right?
John: It's gotta be.
John: I mean, it's got to be, it's got in the same way that we have a blind spot where our ocular nerve connects to the shin bone.
John: Oh, okay.
John: They have a blind spot that is probably like, what, 15 degrees from left to right directly in front of them.
Merlin: It's almost like being from Tralfamador, but like it's a different system, right?
Merlin: And so for us, it's confusing because we are so accustomed to our way of seeing the world that we really can't put ourselves in, and they're also the windows to the soul, but like we can't put ourselves in the mind of a whale.
Merlin: And if you try, that's like faking a Brooklyn accent.
Merlin: Although I bet I could fit inside the brain of a whale.
Merlin: You're saying if you were Jonah, you wouldn't have just stayed in the tummy.
Merlin: You would have swam upstream through the nervous system, getting in the brain.
John: If I shrank down and had a little ship and was with Jeff Goldblum.
Merlin: Inner space?
Merlin: Is that what that is?
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I don't know if it's a fly or Portlandia.
Merlin: I'm kind of confused.
Merlin: Oh, Jurassic Park.
Merlin: You never ask your scientists, why are we making this movie?
Merlin: What I want...
Merlin: This show is so fucking stupid.
Merlin: I hate how stupid this is.
Merlin: Money machine.
John: It is.
John: If I could communicate with a sea aminal, I'm not sure a whale is who I would pick.
John: Say all that again.
Merlin: I'm looking for pictures of bears on motorcycles, so I'm a little distracted.
John: Say it again.
John: If I could communicate with any sea animal.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: We're not even saying it's not like you're going to be like, we're not, let's stipulate.
Merlin: We're not talking about like super high level, let's talk about our relationship stuff.
Merlin: It's almost like the way like the little girl can do sign language with King Kong in the new HBO Max movie.
Merlin: It's a way of you being able to do basic communication, no guarantee that you're going to be able to talk about Sartre or similar.
John: If there was any, if it was just like, okay, like if it was any aminal.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't know exactly.
John: I don't know what I would pick.
John: Here's the thing about talking to aminals.
John: We all want to do it.
John: Theoretically.
John: Right?
Merlin: But what if they have harsh criticism?
John: Exactly.
John: They've seen some shit.
John: They've seen you jerk into some really upsetting stuff.
John: There are so many boring people.
John: Oh, God.
John: Let alone if you're talking to a dog.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, what is a dog?
John: This is the problem with time travel.
John: How's that?
John: Well, I'm not going to talk about time travel, but I am a fan.
John: Well, here's the problem with time travel, right?
John: If you... All the people that are like... Because it seems... This is like one of those, like, would you be invisible or would you... Yeah, flight or invisibility, yeah.
Merlin: And then there's the problem of, like, there's something about picking invisibility that's immoral or, like, the virtue... John Hodgman says... John Hodgman says in his famous This American Life segment, if memory serves, John Hodgman says that people who want to fly are sort of, like, extroverted, look-at-me people, and people who want to have invisibility...
Merlin: I don't know, they're full of shame or something like that.
Merlin: But he's got a unified field theory of it, I think.
John: And I've heard it, and I'm not going to recapitulate it here.
John: But my feeling is that about time travel, that all the virtue people, all the extroverts, all the ones that are like, la la la, they all pick going to the future.
John: Because they think that that's where the, you know, like, I'm going to.
John: That's where the good parties are.
John: Right.
John: But the problem is what they don't factor in is that in the future, when they arrive, they will be boring and useless to everyone else.
John: Because they bring no new technology.
Right.
John: They bring no real context.
John: Okay.
John: They have no skills.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, you bring a Rene Descartes to what he thinks of as the future and we think of as the now, and he's not going to want to talk about humors and all the interesting stuff for the existence of God.
Merlin: He's going to have questions about why there's so many different kinds of forks, and you're going to like, Rene, man, pump the brakes.
John: Well, and the problem is that after the original novelty of like, hey, Descartes is here, ha, ha, ha,
John: Don't put Descartes before the horse.
John: Oh, God.
John: You know, you're going to have like, you're going to have two weeks where he does all the talk shows and he's going to be like, but then very quickly the game is going to turn to.
Merlin: It is incredibly broken English.
Merlin: Then I mentioned he speaks French and Latin.
John: But then the game is, even the first time he goes to meet John Oliver or whatever, the game is going to turn into, hey, Descartes, hey, Descartes.
John: Have you ever seen one of these?
John: And then holds up a Game Boy, and Descartes is like, what is this?
John: What is this?
John: I do not know.
John: What are you doing?
John: Why are these potatoes?
Merlin: They have the electronic quarterback.
John: It makes no sense.
John: And so that game is going to get old really fast.
John: And then Descartes is just a guy that still believes in phrenology.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And maybe he fills in a couple of blanks like, wait a minute.
John: Now, what did, you know, like,
John: What did Samuel Peeps have for dinner?
John: Whatever happened to St.
John: Thomas Aquinas?
John: I like that guy.
John: There you go.
John: There you go.
John: Whereas if you go back in time, of course, you become a god and you can misuse that power, but you can also help people.
John: You can bring penicillin.
John: Even somebody like me that doesn't know how to make penicillin.
John: Right.
John: You can learn.
John: I could at least refine the trebuchet for them a little bit with what I know.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: There are a few innovations that would probably come to me like, hey, wait a minute.
John: You know what would be cool here is I could probably figure out how to make a lawnmower engine.
Yeah.
John: Or at least I could sketch it for somebody.
John: Steamboat lawnmower.
John: You know, like something.
John: Steamboat lawnmower.
Merlin: And that's a problem for somebody.
Merlin: You go back and stick a Louis the something, a Louis the something-teeth, you go to like a Versailles, and he's going to be like, you could trim my hedges so much faster with this.
John: If I went back, that's the thing.
John: If I went back and met Descartes and said...
John: Here's a rudimentary design for a lawnmower engine.
Merlin: Steer away from the phrenology, yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: What we should do is use this lawnmower engine, build a tiny minibike, and see if we can get better.
Merlin: Tell me it's for the glory of God.
John: It's for mon Dieu, for tout Dieu.
John: And then we get a bear on a minibike, and that becomes like, that's on the fucking royal crest from now on.
Merlin: You've changed everything at that point.
Merlin: You've got a whole new timeline going.
John: So the problem with talking to whales is, a whale is fucking boring.
John: It's like, hey, whale, what's up?
John: And it's like, well, I go around, and then sometimes I go down.
John: And I've been to Hawaii a bunch of times.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And it's like, you know what?
John: You know how many guys I know that go around and go down and have been to Hawaii a bunch of times?
John: I don't even know.
Merlin: I mean, I think any of us can instantly think of people we've met in our life, even like sort of briefly at like a DMV or a waiting room.
Merlin: We were like, you know, just kind of the one issue voter.
Merlin: We're like somebody wants to tell you a lot about, say, model trains.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And how much will Descartes have to bring to the conversation?
Merlin: But if you go back, you're going to get to be like, especially if you get to do a Connecticut Yankee thing, where like, a la your other podcast, you think ahead, you bring along a pocket Wikipedia, Bob's your uncle, and you come in and say, you do a Connecticut Yankee on him, and you go, oh yeah, you might want to check over there, because if you're trying to make lead into gold, you're going to make some strides with that, but I maybe would spend less time on that than the other things.
Merlin: Work on your meditations.
Merlin: The meditations are going to have staying power.
Merlin: All of the alchemy is not as profitable as it feels.
John: Now, I never break the fourth wall in this show.
John: Oh, Jesus.
John: John, we talked about this.
John: But I am recording from my new house.
John: This is the first podcast I've ever done from my new house.
John: The devil you say.
John: You sound really good.
John: I'm in the classic podcasting posture of Travel John, which is I'm lying in bed with my blanket on, and I've got my laptop on my lap, and I've got my microphone in my hand in my new bedroom.
John: And the door just...
John: creaked open and there stood my mother.
John: And she did not expect me to be here podcasting.
John: And she gave me, and normally when she comes in the room, she waves her hand like, oh, oh, oh, don't let me interrupt.
John: And she disappears.
John: But in this case, she just stood there holding a jar of caulk or fast and furious.
John: Her paint.
John: Oh, she's paint.
John: And then she just stared at me.
John: So it's very rare for her to interrupt.
Merlin: Is she there right now?
John: She's still looking at you?
John: So she's here.
John: And she's never appeared on the show.
John: But hey, mom.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Hi, everybody.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: Would you do me a favor and ask her if she could go back in time and kill Bonaparte, would she do it?
John: If you could go back in time and kill Napoleon Bonaparte, would you do it?
John: No, she doesn't.
John: She feels like Napoleon.
John: Having him is better than not.
Merlin: Doesn't she have some pretty strong feelings about Bonaparte?
Merlin: Well, she does.
Merlin: But she's not a killer.
John: But why would you lose those feelings?
John: Those feelings are important.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That's a good point.
Merlin: And this is why we shouldn't talk about time travel.
Merlin: Because a lot of people are like, oh, I'm going to go back and make sure I had more snacks yesterday or whatever.
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, but you don't know.
Merlin: Like the tradeoff of the way you could screw that up, is there anybody – well, don't ask her because she's busy.
John: What you're angry at is as shaping of who you are is what you're happy with, right?
John: Say again, the shaping of who you are is what you're happy with.
John: Well, hang on.
John: Let me ask my mom what she needs.
John: What do you need, mom?
John: Oh, you just came to stand in the doorway and just show your appreciation.
John: She's welcome here anytime.
John: I hope she knows that.
John: Merlin and I will be done in a little bit and then you and I can go ice skating or whatever.
John: Tell her I said bye.
John: Bye.
John: Merlin says bye.
John: Yeah, so I think that having Napoleon in her family's backstory— You can screw up a lot of stuff by killing Napoleon.
John: Well, that's the thing.
Merlin: Without him, how would they— How would we say you've reached that point where you're being defeated?
Merlin: Or like Abba.
Merlin: When Abba appeared at what's called the European Soundfest, when they first appeared and sang that song, what would they sing?
Merlin: Would they sing Mamma Mia instead of Waterloo?
John: Right.
John: I mean, the whole Louisiana Purchase, right?
John: I mean, what would Lewis and Clark be doing?
John: I mean, my mom's people were already in Ohio at that point.
John: They already had strong feelings.
John: I don't want to deprive them of that.
John: God, you know what?
Merlin: That's a big-hearted way to think about it.
John: Well, as a potential time traveler and animal talker, I mean, if you think about the most noble creature on Earth.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: It's Charlize Theron.
Merlin: But if you think about the most... She puts all horses to shame.
Merlin: Just look at her withers.
Merlin: She's so majestic.
Merlin: What about Margot Robbie?
Merlin: You think Margot Robbie, she's kind of like the Charlize Theron at Avignon?
Merlin: If I could talk to her.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: If I could talk to Margot Robbie.
Merlin: I would.
John: If I could talk to her, I would.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: You know, even talking to the.
Merlin: I bet she knows how to go down or around.
Merlin: Oh, stop it now.
Merlin: No, you know what I mean.
Merlin: Like, you know, an Australian way.
Merlin: Oh, well, down under.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: That's.
Merlin: This is.
Merlin: We're done.
Merlin: Did find a pretty good bear on a motorcycle.
Merlin: Yeah.