Ep. 447: "Flip Too Far"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Who is it?
Merlin: Christmas time, Christmas time, Santa's going to spank you.
Merlin: It's Christmas time, Christmas time.
Merlin: Is that a traditional song of your people?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: It's a Florida thing.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, it's a North Florida thing.
Merlin: North Florida.
Merlin: Yeah, Spanky Santa.
Merlin: Every year, he comes into your trailer and steals all your natural light.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I was a Spanky Santa for...
Merlin: For a decade.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: And people would come sit on your lap and talk about what they wanted.
John: Oh, and get spanks and, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: Kisses, hugs, long hugs.
Merlin: There's a lot of lore around The Man in Red.
John: Oh, the man in red, they call him.
John: That's in central Florida, they call him that.
John: It's nice to talk to you.
John: You know, it's trying to snow here.
John: Is it really?
John: Yeah, I know you've been having an atmospheric river there.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: It says here in the local fish wrapper, it says we're going to have... Did I mention I recently turned 55?
Merlin: We're going to be having eight days of rain.
Merlin: But no snow that I'm aware of.
Merlin: But you're all ready for that, right?
Merlin: It's all context, John.
John: It's context.
John: We're on tap for eight days of rain, too.
John: But they keep saying every day it's going to snow.
John: And what it is, it's very frustrating for the children.
John: Because it does, at some point, snow...
John: And then also rains.
John: So the children look out the window and they go, it's snowing!
John: And they put their little suits on and they get their sleds and they run out and they stand in the rain waiting for the snow to...
John: Oh, it's so close.
John: It's one of these things where every fifth drop of rain is a big, huge snowflake right now.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: So first it comes down fluffy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then you get the stuff.
Merlin: The rain that comes after, that's going to make – this doesn't affect children directly, but hazardous driving conditions, right?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: But, you know, Seattle –
John: If you've ever listened to my podcast with my sister, Road Rage, you will know that Seattle drivers, every condition is a hazardous condition for them.
John: They don't appear to have any object permanence or memory of the past so that.
John: Everything that happens, it's like the first time it's ever happened, and no one knows how to handle it, even when it rains.
Merlin: Yes, there should be a name for this.
Merlin: I mean, it's a well-documented thing, I think, everywhere.
Merlin: We've talked about this.
Merlin: It rains.
Merlin: That somehow liberates oil from the road.
Merlin: That's dangerous.
Merlin: But it's not just that.
Merlin: There should be a name for this condition where you should know that, okay, here's the thing.
Merlin: I've lived here for...
Merlin: 22 years and i'm still sometimes i still sometimes space on the basics about living in san francisco and i mean i know i really should be used to it i think for example i sometimes forget if i'm going to a part of town that's not where i live you know always the where the layers like they say but it's going to be warmer almost everywhere else
John: You forget that you go over the top of the hill and it's a sunny day in San Francisco.
John: In the real San Francisco.
Merlin: The one that really gets me, though, and I should be so used to this, I've had 365 times 22, more than that, really.
Merlin: And it's still so weird to me that it gets cooler in the morning.
Merlin: You wake up, it's usually foggy-ish, and then it cools off.
Merlin: Which is weird.
Merlin: That's the opposite of Florida, big time.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: In Florida, you start opening, if you don't have air conditioning, which I've lived in places that didn't have air conditioning, it sucked.
Merlin: You've got to open the windows.
Merlin: Like, you've got to get up early and open the windows if you closed them.
Merlin: Get the fans running.
Merlin: You're going to have to start bringing that temperature down because by noon, it's brutal.
Merlin: But the crazy thing is, so it's cold in the morning.
Merlin: This is so goddamn boring.
John: You know, the coldest summer I ever spent was a winter in San Francisco.
John: That's what Winston Churchill said.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But then, like around 4 o'clock, it gets sunny.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then it's sunny for like an hour or two.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then the fog comes back in.
Merlin: And I know this is all – science explains all of this.
Merlin: Yeah, science.
Merlin: But it still seems weird to me when I'm sitting at home.
Merlin: Maybe I've come home a little early and I see the sun fixing to set and it's beautiful outside.
Merlin: It's the weirdest thing.
John: Yeah, isn't that nice?
John: You know, here in Seattle, it's a thing where you forget, you know, sometimes in the morning, it'll be raining.
Yeah.
John: And then in the afternoon, it's raining.
John: And then it rains all night.
John: And then the next morning, it's also raining.
John: And then the following afternoon, it's raining.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And what about the next evening?
John: Does it dry up?
John: So then it continues to rain.
John: And that's very confusing to people when they wake up on the third day and they discover it's raining.
John: They're like, wow, it's raining.
Yeah.
John: Weird.
John: And then that afternoon it's raining.
John: And even people who have lived here for years and years, 20, 30 years, still can't quite get their heads around the fact that it's going to continue to rain.
John: Sometimes until June.
John: Okay.
Merlin: That's changed a lot recently because of the global warming.
Merlin: See, I don't like to bring it up because it's easy enough for people on my side to constantly say everything's about climate change.
Merlin: But I'm here to tell you, buddy, it is not as foggy as it used to be in the summer here.
John: Is that right?
John: Is that right?
John: You know, every one of these silver linings is, did you read the latest thing?
John: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: Coffee's bad for you.
Merlin: Wine is good for you.
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: Don't even go there.
John: Don't ever say that.
John: Don't ever say that.
Merlin: I'm not afraid to stand up to big science.
Merlin: Don't worry, Anderson Apple.
John: So I, for a long time, wasn't reading the news at all.
John: And it was really great.
John: It was really great.
John: There's absolutely zero in the news.
John: that pertains to any of our lives.
Merlin: One way I look at it, and this is not a popular POV, but based on what I learned today, I will need to change what about how I think or what I do, which I realize is a somewhat privileged position.
Merlin: No, no, no, it's my own opinion.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: But I think you've got to ask yourself, is this to make me smart or is this to make me scared?
Merlin: Yes.
Yes.
Merlin: And a lot of people would say being scared is smart.
Merlin: I'm not sure that's right.
Merlin: That might mean you watch too much TV news.
John: That's not true.
John: You know, I remember the first time I felt that Twitter made me a more informed person and feeling like, oh man, you know, I'm reading the news on Twitter now.
John: And we'd already been on Twitter for years at that point.
John: And it was like, oh, wait a minute.
John: That was the era of smart dick jokes.
John: Well, it was.
John: But then there was a moment where I knew about something from Twitter way before anybody else did because of the news.
John: And I said to somebody like, oh, yeah, well, you know how that turned out.
John: And they're like, how would you possibly know that?
John: And I felt so in, so wise, so like...
John: You're like mainlining.
John: I was so now because I was like, I found out about it on Twitter.
John: And that was when you still had to explain what Twitter was, you know?
John: Yeah, I know.
John: I was reading the news on Twitter.
John: But then, of course, it became this terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible thing to read the news on Twitter.
John: Just everything became terrible.
John: Everything is terrible.
John: So I wasn't reading the news.
John: For like nine months.
John: And then the damn Apple news.
John: Have we talked about this?
John: No, I deleted it from on my device.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: It's on your device automatically.
John: So, you know, when I'm flipping around my phone and I always flip too far, you know how it is.
John: You flip too far.
John: You flip too far.
John: And I flipped too far and there's the news.
John: Oh, it's telling me the news.
John: And I was like, for a long time, I was like, don't look at the news.
Yeah.
John: But then it sucks you in.
John: Oh, it's a news item that seems tailored to my needs, my wants.
John: then i was reading the news but of course apple news is a is a it's a racket they're trying to get you to subscribe give you all these little things but it also is like if you i don't want to look at it in an app i want to look at it on on the site where it lives yeah well and then they charge you and then there's all this rigmarole come the eels there was that there was that they apple news doesn't have it figured out because they're like want to read this article on the atlantic well subscribe now and i'm like
Merlin: close it out go over to it's another one of those unfortunately i'm not just gonna say apple products it's another one of those products where like they push something out and then they really seem to have lost enthusiasm for making it good yeah and now there's just some staff sitting there at one infinite loop whose job is to
John: like rope people in to their Ponzi scheme.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I mean, I think there's just as a side note, I think there's a lot of stuff like that where you're like, wow, I see why you did this.
Merlin: This could be a good idea, but, and it's not just hardware.
Merlin: It's not software.
Merlin: It's all kinds of things where you're like, well, you never really put a lot of oomph into this.
Merlin: So that's my lady friend.
Merlin: So go.
Merlin: No, no, there's no oomph.
Merlin: I was just agreeing with you.
Merlin: No oomph.
Merlin: And then somebody said to my lady friend last week, and this is one of those, there should be a name for this too, the kind of thing where you know and you know better and you know good and you know smart.
Merlin: It's not about the knowing, it's about the doing differently.
Merlin: So, like, I know too much of any kind of social media or online grazing or flipping too far.
Merlin: I know none of that is good for me emotionally, just psychologically, but I...
Merlin: So I said to my lady friend last week because nobody cares.
Merlin: But the way my week works is the first three days of the week, there's a lot of recording stuff and then doing stuff related.
Merlin: That could be putting out this show.
Merlin: Nobody cares.
Merlin: But, again, the amount of time that it takes behind the scenes to make all the pieces go together can take a lot.
Merlin: Thursday and Friday tend to be days where I can work on different kinds of things –
Merlin: But they're not podcast recording days.
Merlin: And what I've noticed, I think, is that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I am much more likely to finish recording with you, say to my dingus, hey, play cable news, and I'll have it on in the background with the sound off.
Merlin: I don't know why I do this, but I do this.
Merlin: It keeps me occupied while I'm doing other things.
Merlin: I might be listening to music.
Merlin: Thursday and Friday, I've realized I very rare – I spend less time looking – I spend less time flipping too much.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Good.
Merlin: I spend less time looking at the news and stuff.
Merlin: And it's still another – it's not – it's even more shocking than the Bay Area weather is that if I'm away from all of that flipping –
Merlin: Let's just make that the term for all of these shitty things we do.
Merlin: All the great flips.
Merlin: If I spend a few hours away from that, blissfully involved in writing or, you know... Are you building a popsicle stick Eiffel Tower?
John: Maybe.
John: You keep dancing around it.
Merlin: You keep dancing around it like...
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Merlin: All right, I'll start another one.
Merlin: No, what I said was, and this is very, very uninsightful, except this should be continued data that I apply, which is, they say, it is said that Americans are, it was said a long time ago anyway, Americans are the only people who experience culture shock upon returning to the U.S.
Merlin: I don't know if that's true.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: But you're much more – to take away the Jerusalem effect and stuff like that.
Merlin: But you come back to America and you're like, whoa.
Merlin: And it's not just about healthcare.
Merlin: It's not just about traffic circles, all the things that other countries have taken care of.
Merlin: But you come back here and you're like, God, there's a lot going on here.
Merlin: America is a lot.
John: So many brands of canned corn.
Merlin: Yeah, like John Doe said in 1986, even back in 1986, was five kinds of Coke, 100 kinds of cigarettes.
Merlin: This freedom of choice in the USA is driving everybody crazy.
Merlin: See how we are.
Merlin: But when I'm away from that and then I dip back in, I flip.
Merlin: I go back and I flip.
Merlin: I'm like, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: No wonder everybody's so fucking mad all the time.
Merlin: Everybody's angry, John.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, they claim – I mean, everybody says that the algorithms don't say their name out loud.
John: It's like saying – Candyman.
John: It's like you're saying candy?
John: Candyman.
John: Candyman.
John: It's like saying candy.
John: Don't say Babadook.
John: Don't say candy three times.
John: Don't say Babadook.
John: No!
John: Roger Stone shows up.
John: um uh they're supposedly targeting these news feeds at me directly based on what i google but what they show me is a mother in arkansas drowns two babies and all right whole family dies in the castle in australia did you see that
Merlin: The which castle?
Merlin: The bouncy castle in Australia.
John: Oh, no, I don't want to hear about it.
John: I don't want to hear about two children dying.
Merlin: You super don't want to hear about it.
Merlin: No, you super don't want to hear about it.
Merlin: 30 feet in the air.
John: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: But what I did, so I got addicted to the news again because of this Apple thing.
John: And then I realized, as you foreshadowed, you can actually delete it off your device.
John: And I felt so...
John: So like, boo-yah, look at you, Apple.
John: I deleted your own thing off of this.
John: I wish I could do it more.
John: Makes you feel like you got away with something.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: There are so many things that you put on this phone that I wish I could delete and can't, but I can delete news.
Merlin: If you've got the problem, here's the problem, just to be clear about this.
Merlin: You can also, I believe, you can also delete their terrible, terrible podcast app.
Merlin: If you're somebody like me who likes podcasts, you could use different ones, like my friend Marco's app Overcast, which I recommend.
Merlin: Overcast, yes.
Merlin: say let's just stick to news if you have apple news on your device and you open a link from an apple news link that somebody sends or whatever it opens it in apple news if you don't have it on your device it has nothing to open oh wow it's a truly it's a defensive approach to this kind of stuff yeah yeah you gotta go on the defense yeah but anyway but go ahead so you've gone back and forth with this uh well so then so it's late at night you know it's always late at night with me
John: And it's middle of the night and you get to, and I've deleted.
John: That's when your demon dogs come.
John: Is that right?
John: Well, they do.
John: Well, a lot of things come in the night and I'm, and I'm looking at the phone and, uh, and I don't want to be, but I've, and I've, and I've done the thing where I, where I've tried to, I've tried to take all the cigarettes out of the house.
John: There's no booze anywhere.
John: Yeah.
John: And then it's like, Oh, but there is that bottle of vermouth or what, you know, there's the, Oh, I forgot that I had that.
John: I had that vodka for cooking.
John: Um,
John: I mean, you know, like a friend of mine and I one time were so desperate for booze that we were like, can you get drunk on vinegar?
John: Like it is wine.
John: I mean, that made us very sick.
John: Yeah.
John: But so I went on my phone a couple of weeks ago and just, it was like my hands were moving on their own and they just typed news into the search bar on the web application on the Safari and it pulled up Google news.
John: Yeah.
John: Which is again, very tuned to you.
John: Tuned.
Mm-hmm.
John: And Google News, of course, based on all of the searching I do around the Ottoman Empire and, you know, like top 20 best Bismarck quotes, Google News took that to me.
Merlin: You get a lot of Turkey and Germany related.
John: No, what it gave me was mother in Arkansas drowns two children, bouncy castle.
John: You know, that's all they have.
John: I get it.
Merlin: This is going to be a theme for me.
Merlin: It is a theme for me.
Merlin: I get so fucking mad even at the news that I pay for, especially the New York Times, where it does drive me crazy that I really feel like whether they realize it or not, they want to keep us scared and off balance and
Merlin: Not so terrified that you don't look at the news, but so annoyed, aggravated, frustrated that they start to feel like the only source of the information that either makes you feel alive or makes you feel dead.
Merlin: But their job...
Merlin: even if it's unintentional, is to keep us always on edge.
Merlin: I mean, they say, what is all the news that's fit to print?
Merlin: I think the model of the New York Times should be not so fast.
Merlin: Because as soon as you think you understand something, there's a turns out about what you didn't understand.
Merlin: So you can't ever, you live in perpetual future.
Merlin: You can't have joy in the moment.
Merlin: And you're just constantly thinking about, in order to be smart, I have to figure out what to be more scared about today.
John: Dread, dread, dread, dread, dread.
John: Even tornadoes.
John: But also the kid stuff.
John: i know i know no i don't want to hear about dead kids and the thing the reason i subscribe to the new yorker and the atlantic is that it is news but it's long form somebody's thought about it you know she's a delight you know helen rosner delight absolutely absolutely you you you get you get a bigger picture it takes you longer to read but it's so hard at night when the demon dogs come you've been sorting rock posters all day you get them all sorted and at the end of the day
John: You've got a bunch of sorted rock posters, and you're like, now I sorted them.
John: Now what?
John: And they all have to go back into a flat file somewhere because there wasn't a reason.
John: You did it.
John: It feels good that you sorted them all.
John: But then it's not like there was an audience waiting.
John: It's not like the Blues Brothers are standing outside the Cook County Register waiting for you to get done eating lunch, and then you're going to...
John: You're going to open the window that says open and you're going to hand out all these sorted rock posters.
John: You got your own Steven Spielberg to worry about.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: No, I was just, you know what?
John: I was just having a sandwich.
John: But so I'm looking at the news in the middle of the night and the news is tailored to me.
John: And so I'm going through all these house fires where all these children died and all these Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.
John: And I come up on a news item and I don't know how this news item snuck in there.
John: Because there were no dead babies.
John: There was no disaster.
Merlin: Here's the news.
Merlin: It could be the ALGO rhythm.
Merlin: You're a slave to the ALGO rhythm.
Merlin: Oh, come on, man.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: But if it's AI-ish, machine learning-ish, it's also probably trying stuff out to see what happens.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And it got me.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: What was it?
John: A farmer somewhere...
John: Who also happened to be a marine biologist or something.
John: This article is very confusing and very garbled.
John: And it felt like I had to check a couple of times.
John: Is this one infomercial?
John: Is this one of those things that looks like an article, but it's really a it's.
John: We used to call it an advertorial.
John: An advertorial.
John: Is it one of these?
John: Like, I've stopped clicking on any link.
John: Oh, from Big Farm?
John: Big Farm.
John: Or something.
John: Yeah.
John: Any link to a BuzzFeed article, because I cannot stand BuzzFeed, because the thing that loops me in, oh, they just know exactly what I want to see.
John: You know, like, top ten celebrity moments where Jimmy Page...
John: made them get their period early.
John: And I'm like, I'll read that article.
John: And then refuse to pay a bill.
John: And then I go read it.
John: And it's just like, this sucks.
John: I feel dirty being... Exactly, exactly.
Merlin: They got you.
Merlin: It's like when you go to a big city.
Merlin: When I was younger, I first went to Manhattan or whatever.
Merlin: And I'd realize, oh, I see everything here is a jam up.
Merlin: It's a jam up.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: The reason you're talking to me is not because I'm an interesting college student from Florida.
Merlin: You're talking to me because you want some money or similar.
Merlin: You're going to a job interview and your kid's in the car and you just need some gas money.
John: There's a weird thing now, and the algorithm does know this about me, because...
John: There's this weird kind of article.
John: It's a new kind of article.
John: It's not one of those ones where you have to click through to see each page of Demi Moore.
John: Oh, you want to see another picture of Demi Moore in high school?
John: Got to click through to the next one.
Merlin: Oh, here's a gallery or a carousel.
John: Yeah, something like that.
John: No, the new one is the headline says, Tom Petty says George Harrison was his best friend.
John: And I'm like, oh, I want to read about Tom Petty and George Harrison's friendship.
John: And so you click on it and you read the first little bit of the article and it's like, oh, that's so sweet.
John: And then you scroll down and the article keeps going.
John: And then pretty soon it's not talking about Tom Petty anymore.
John: It's talking about George Harrison.
Merlin: Oh, you clicked on a thing to go to a thing, but there's a big long page that never ends now.
John: It never ends.
John: And the articles feel like they're written by either an AI or someone that doesn't have English as their first language, but they're very fluent.
John: But it just doesn't quite read like human.
Merlin: An extreme example is when you go to – I'm always looking up what else somebody was in, as you know.
Merlin: Oh, I know you love that.
Merlin: I know your daughter's mother does that as well.
John: Oh, she was the one that was in the one with the one with the girl that was in the one.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But that will all, yes, which I do.
Merlin: That's basically my evening when you're sorting rock posters and I'm finding out what else this actress was in.
Merlin: And then, of course, I'm always Googling for people's heights.
Merlin: And I'm wondering who's taller than somebody else.
Merlin: So, like, who's taller?
Merlin: Like, Cousin Greg from Succession or Jared from Silicon Valley?
Merlin: And it's Cousin Greg.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you ever land on one of those sites and it's like height, feet, net worth, divorce?
Merlin: And you're like, the actress – let's think of somebody here.
Merlin: I can't think of an actress.
Merlin: Elizabeth Taylor.
Merlin: Kate McKinnon.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Kate McKinnon.
Merlin: Well, that's not it.
Merlin: But Elizabeth Taylor was married with her shoe sizes, that kind of thing, where it does really feel like a form letter.
John: Yeah.
John: But these are –
John: These read-like articles, and it feels like they're being— Like somebody wrote it.
Merlin: Like somebody got paid to write it.
John: Yes.
John: And what it feels like is something is combing the internet for any reference of George Harrison, taking all that text, and then putting it all in the same kind of written—like it almost feels like a computer is plagiarizing—
John: A hundred articles because this article keeps going.
John: And pretty soon it's talking about George Harrison and Patty Boyd.
John: And pretty soon it's talking about Patty Boyd's relationship to Eric Clapton.
John: And then it's talking about Eric Clapton's recording of Layla.
John: And you're like, this is all one article.
John: It never, there was never even a, and, and, and I find myself feeling like manipulated in a way where I, like I, this would just lead me right to my,
John: joining a cult or something.
John: I have to snap out of it.
John: What am I doing?
John: I've spent 20 minutes reading about stuff.
Merlin: It also helps you better understand stuff.
Merlin: I've had pretty good luck, knock on wood, on YouTube, where my recommendations rarely get to
Merlin: But you hear the thing about how like different ALGO rhythms will take you to a slightly more extreme version.
Merlin: I think I told you the only time that I ever really noticed this was I finally Google or did a YouTube search for Russian dashboard cams.
Merlin: And I was about three videos away from like top seven motorcycle deaths.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: What you're describing, I got to find this because I think about it constantly.
Merlin: I want to say peanuts.
Merlin: I think it was a peanuts, but for the sake of argument, let's say I think it was Peppermint Patty, like had studied for the wrong test.
Merlin: And like, just for the sake of argument, Peppermint Patty studied...
Merlin: for the Moby Dick test on the day of the Absalom Absalom test or whatever.
Merlin: And so the essay begins, you know, Absalom Absalom, which is not to be confused with Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
Merlin: And Herman Pat has to write this whole essay.
Merlin: And you're like, well, that's what those articles feel like to me.
Merlin: Like you say, like we find some instance, oh, you know what's resurfacing?
Merlin: That video of Prince throwing his guitar in the air and kind of ruining the show for everybody.
John: Yep, there it is.
John: There it is.
John: I saw that the other day.
John: It popped back.
Merlin: We should talk about that.
Merlin: My feelings about that have changed very much over the years.
John: Oh, very interesting.
John: Okay, good.
John: I'll write it down.
John: Prince video.
John: Let's pivot to that.
John: But the problem with my YouTube, I think I have YouTube set up wrong or something because no matter what I watch,
John: Within three videos, it will be directing me to Milton Berle on The Carol Burnett Show.
John: Interesting.
John: It thinks what I want to watch is Dean Martin's celebrity roasts.
John: Okay.
John: And listen, I have watched a lot of Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett shows from the early 70s.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Every six months, I watch every appearance by Don Rickles.
John: Every time Don Rickles ashes his cigarette into a Burr Reynolds coffee cup or whatever, I am going to die.
John: And Dom DeLuise thinks it's really funny.
John: And Dom DeLuise falls on the floor, you know, and I can't get no respect.
John: I watch it all, but YouTube thinks that that's all that I am.
John: And I go on and I'm like, no, no, no, that's not true.
John: I would like to also watch somebody unwrap some Disney presents or whatever.
John: You should get into knife videos.
John: Don't put me into a box.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, no.
John: The other thing that we watch, my daughter and I will watch.
John: I showed her how a lathe works at one point.
John: Oh, I love it.
John: And she really got into lathe videos and smelting videos.
John: Have you tried Lockpicking Lawyer?
John: No, but I will go there immediately.
Merlin: Because that seems right up my alley.
Merlin: He's a lock picking lawyer.
Merlin: All his videos start like this.
Merlin: And he's a guy who picks locks.
Merlin: And he's really, really good at picking locks.
Merlin: And he tells you what's good or mostly terrible about a lock.
Merlin: And it's the perfect YouTube.
Merlin: I mean, okay.
Merlin: There's the Japanese guy.
Merlin: With a dollhouse who makes tiny food and then doesn't eat it.
Merlin: That's perfect for YouTube.
Merlin: The people who groom elderly and tiny dogs, perfect for YouTube.
Merlin: The guy who washes carpets and then break dances, he's amazing.
Merlin: But I feel like Lockpicking Lawyer, and they're really short mostly.
Merlin: And sometimes he goes out and shoots guns with a Bosnia bill.
Merlin: But anyway, you should check out Lockpicking Lawyer.
Merlin: I will.
Merlin: I will.
Merlin: I'm just frustrated.
Merlin: Lathe.
John: You bring in a lathe and then they take you back to Milton Berle.
John: They think I am such a narrowly focused person.
John: Maybe they haven't developed enough of a profile about you?
John: I don't know.
John: I think that every time I watch Richard Burton describe his process to Dick Cavett...
John: It resets me all the way to the back.
Merlin: I don't know if you know this, but Dick Cavett was friends with Groucho Marx.
Merlin: I don't know if you ever mentioned that, if you ever heard that.
Merlin: He mentioned it like twice, maybe once.
Merlin: Groucho wrote him a letter and said, did you ever notice that Peter O'Toole has two phallic names?
Merlin: Who said that?
Merlin: Oh, that was Groucho Marx in a letter to Dick Cavett.
John: I was thinking about this the other day because I was fortunate enough.
John: one day, to be sitting in a room with Dick Cavett and Mel Brooks.
Merlin: Is this in your seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams?
John: No, this is real.
John: This really happened.
John: Oh.
John: You were in a room with Mel Brooks?
John: Mel Brooks.
John: That guy's great.
John: And the guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm, the dark-haired comedian that's really anxious and fretful.
John: Richard Lewis.
John: Richard Lewis.
John: So it's Cabot and Richard Lewis and Mel Brooks and me.
John: Like a panel?
John: No, no, no.
John: We're sitting in a room at the Chateau Marmont.
John: And Hodgman.
John: Hodgman's there.
John: And I think Jack Black is there.
John: Whoa.
John: I bet he's fun.
John: And Richard Lewis says, I brought something for you to Cabot.
John: And he pulls out...
John: He pulls out Groucho Marx's day planner.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Is that real?
John: Yeah.
John: He's obsessed with Groucho Marx.
John: And he's like, look at this.
John: It's Groucho's day planner from 1956 or something.
John: And the three of them.
John: Not his prime years.
John: Brooks and, and, and, uh, and Cabot and, uh,
John: They sit, and I'm looking over, you know, I'm standing, I'm looking over their shoulder at the day planner.
John: And the three of them go over this day planner, and Cavett's just narrating it.
John: Like, oh, well, this was the day that he, you know, he knew Groucho, he knew him by the hour, right?
John: Like, oh, this, you know, later on this day, he went to see Lucille Ball or whatever.
John: Wow.
John: And just the fascination that these legends had with Groucho.
John: And, of course, Cabot can't go an hour without mentioning Groucho.
John: But that Belzer knew this.
John: Not Belzer.
John: Richard Belzer.
Merlin: What am I saying?
Merlin: I know what you mean.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He knew it enough.
Merlin: He's still on.
Merlin: I think he's got something going on health-wise.
Merlin: But he was on Curb like a week or two ago.
Merlin: I love that guy.
Merlin: I thought he was so good.
Merlin: I used to love when he was on Letterman.
John: Oh, my God.
John: All of them were lovely, lovely people.
John: Although, at one point, Mel Brooks did turn and look at me and say...
John: Literally, he didn't say, who are you again?
John: But he said, what is it you do here?
John: You're so goddamn lucky.
John: I was like, you know, it's a good question, sir.
John: It's a good question, sir.
John: There's nothing you can say to Mel Brooks.
John: Well, I'm not a waiter, but I'm also, you know, but I'm not the star.
John: I might as well be a waiter.
John: But you wouldn't have heard of my work.
John: No, it's not.
John: Believe me.
John: No offense.
John: None taken.
John: No, this article, Merlin...
John: Oh, shit.
John: So I've been scrolling.
John: I've been doom scrolling.
John: I've gone through all of the times that all of the articles about the Supreme Court is going to this, and the January 6th committee is going to that, and the Omicron is going to do this.
Merlin: We got him this time.
Merlin: We got him this time.
John: And it's all going scrolling, scrolling, just like, oh, and this mother drowned her babies, and oh, boy, you know, Bitcoin, I'm scrolling, scrolling, just get me out of here.
John: And I come to this article, and it says...
John: And I don't know whether this article is written by Algeorhythms.
John: Uh-huh.
John: What?
John: But it says a farmer who apparently is also a marine biologist or something.
John: It's unclear.
John: Discovered that if you feed a certain kind of seaweed to cows.
John: Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
John: A, the cows love it.
John: And B, the seaweed, something in the seaweed, neutralizes the methane.
John: in a cow's gut thereby helping cut one of the single largest sources of greenhouse gas in the u.s so this article says is that the idea that's that is the idea and oh the marine biology is important because seaweed seaweed they say a particular kind of seaweed which is very common in the ocean if they could and the thing is they the cows don't have to only eat the seaweed
Merlin: It's like taking a – well, I'm not a big vitamin fan, but it's like – or like it's a prophylactic.
Merlin: We're going to mix some of this seaweed into whatever cows eat, and then they're going to fart less.
Merlin: Or their farts will be less impactful.
Merlin: They put the seaweed in the cow chow.
John: They put the seaweed in the cow chow.
John: They shake it all around.
John: That's right.
John: And apparently the seaweed in the cow chow.
John: makes the cows eat less.
John: It makes them eat less and exercise.
Merlin: Wait, so now you're saving dough on food, too.
Merlin: So here's why the farmers are going to do it.
Merlin: It's a cattle appetite suppressant.
John: Yeah.
John: So why do you get an electric car?
John: Well, you don't want to, but it turns out it's cheaper.
John: Why do you give your cow red seaweed?
John: Because it makes them eat less.
John: Brings down the cost of ownership, yes.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And then, according to this article...
John: If we successfully put seaweed in all the cow chow around the world, it would take more methane out of the atmosphere every year than if every automobile in America turned off its engine.
John: That's not big farm.
John: That's big seaweed.
John: Big weed.
John: Big seaweed.
John: And then the article goes on to say, now, this is not going to be easy for us to do because how are you going to collect that much seaweed out of the world?
John: But then the article goes on to say that this kind of seaweed is very easy to grow in an aquaculture kind of system.
John: And it grows super fast so you can harvest a new crop of seaweed.
John: It's like wheatgrass juice.
John: You harvest a new crop of seaweed every two weeks or something.
John: Okay.
John: And I'm reading this article and I'm like, where did this article come from?
John: This feels to me like that thing.
John: science plant that somebody built that was going to take all the the the offal from slaughterhouses and convert it into platinum and cooking oil and i got so excited about i read about it in science in in discover magazine listen don't call it alchemy
John: It's extremely – it's sort of slathered with science sauce.
John: I read this article a decade ago.
John: I probably – no, in fact, I did.
John: I did an episode of Omnibus on it.
John: This processing plant that someone developed where you can put any garbage in it, it's super trained in a nutshell.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I mean, I didn't want to be too on the nose, but they've clearly stolen your IP.
John: And now I got this seaweed.
John: I got this cow chow idea.
John: And yesterday –
John: It wasn't in my head.
John: And now today, and the thing is, I don't even know, if I went online and I said, feed seaweed to cows, I don't know what I would get.
John: I'd probably get scheisse porn.
John: Oh, dear.
John: Oh, no.
John: Don't say that out loud.
Merlin: But it's living rent-free in your head now, John.
Merlin: It was a meme more in the Dawkins sense.
Merlin: It's a sticky idea now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like me having a lucky one by Michael Penn in my head, which I don't mind.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
Merlin: But that's such a good song.
Merlin: He's the luckiest in luckydom.
Merlin: He is great luck.
Merlin: Oh, he's so good.
Merlin: But, um, oh, John, now, now, are you, are you chewing on that?
John: Well, so what I, so I really like it and I like it for, for a lot of reasons.
John: And I mean, the number one reason would be if it's true, but it also comports with, you know, my like general kind of attitude about the news and
John: Including themes in the news that sometimes are five years long or decades long or a decade long.
Merlin: Would you count stuff like coffee is good or bad for you, wine is good?
Merlin: Like the ongoing story of carbs and that kind of thing?
Merlin: Or just like energy solutions?
Merlin: Where do you put it?
Merlin: Give me another example if you can think of an older one.
Merlin: What's the provenance of an idea like this?
John: There's a kind of idea that is kind of like the – it undergirds the news in a way where there is a problem that is a doomsday problem.
John: And it cannot be solved.
John: And the doomsday problem, and then you remember this.
John: We've talked about it before.
John: The doomsday problems that we've seen.
John: Population bomb like in the early 70s.
John: That's right.
John: Too many people and not enough food.
John: And we're very quickly going to arrive at the place where there are just too many people to feed.
John: And then there was famine.
Merlin: Or like peak oil, like we've gotten.
Merlin: My understanding of peak oil is the idea that more than 50%.
Merlin: We've gotten to the point where 50% of the mostly easily gettable oil has been gotten, which now is going to make it less costly.
Merlin: Greenhouse gases, these kinds of things, right?
John: Oh, well, and think about the ozone hole.
John: I mean, that ozone hole.
John: The hairspray.
John: I remember that in the 80s.
John: Yeah, down in the South Pole, and it was just going to come up, and then the sun was going to cook us all.
John: Or, and the smaller versions of it, the killer bees, the killer wasps, the killer turtles.
John: Oh, sure.
John: That, you know, once these killer bees arrive here, none of us are going to be able to leave our homes and they're just going to, it's all some kind of murder.
John: Child predators?
John: Does that count?
John: Yeah, there's a very—right, okay, so in the 80s, right, there was the repressed memory phase, right?
Merlin: Yes, there's satanic cults.
Merlin: But in the 70s, you know, there was all needles and razor blades and Halloween candy, yeah.
John: But, you know, the bigger, the top-level ones are the ones where the world is coming to an end.
John: Right, species-ending shit.
John: And the big one, of course, in our childhood was nuclear war.
John: How are we going to avoid it?
John: It's impossible to avoid.
John: It's a matter of time.
John: But every one of these, it always feels like a matter of time.
John: And for the last five years, I mean, for the last 50 years, it's been global warming in various forms, right?
John: Climate change.
John: Yes.
John: Nature.
John: You know, we've done it.
John: We've screwed it up.
John: It's over forever.
John: You know, we've we've it's.
John: We've passed whatever the threshold is.
Merlin: Yeah, every time there's a new report that says, like, this is our last chance, it's like, yeah.
Merlin: And then we speed up.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's not our last chance.
Merlin: I'm saying our real last chance was probably the early 80s.
John: But right now we're living in a time where, you know, climate change is the one...
John: thing that everybody on on on one side of the political spectrum we all just we say it reflexively you know it's just like climate change and every every day you look out the window and there it is climate change it was it was snowing a minute ago and now it's not the climate has changed and i'm not not and believe me no i understand as you compose your emails to me i am not mocking the notion of climate change on the on the contrary
John: But I also have felt like I've seen so many of these things come and go where no one ever foresaw...
John: The solution, even the five-year or 10-year solution.
Merlin: Because it's based on your previous experience and ideas alongside not really understanding.
Merlin: People say this is what happened with the whole population bomb idea was that it wasn't that they were stupid or saying the sky is falling.
Merlin: Based on, you know, following that path of that line and knowing what we know in the past, but it can't account for what will happen next.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: All the things – like, you know, there's all kinds of things where that might – it could be the way that China dealt with, you know, the number of kids that are allowed to be around or the way that we would develop new efficiencies in making – yeah, exactly, in making food.
Merlin: And, like, it wasn't for a couple years, you'll remember.
Merlin: It wasn't for a few years that – at least I learned that the starvation in Africa thing –
Merlin: thing and you know the basically the feed the world you know uh live aid thing well problem number one we learned was that it's mainly a problem of getting the food there because b the other problem is all the warlords that are stealing the food yeah it wasn't it wasn't that these people were dumb because they lived in a desert and didn't know how didn't know what beans were it was it was a logistical or will problem which is very different kind of thing to solve
John: Yeah, right.
John: This Eritrean warlord and that Eritrean warlord.
John: But for me, cow chow, seaweed-based cow chow, is a thing that two days ago didn't exist in my mind.
John: Maybe two days ago didn't exist in anybody's mind except the five guys that were feeding seaweed to cows.
John: Yes.
John: Oh, that's Phil Wandersher's calling, which is very strange.
John: Um, and now at least, at least in my mind, and now that we're talking about it in the minds of our tens and tens of thousands of followers, the idea that maybe rather than switching all to Tesla's, maybe that this whole business of like, how are we ever going to stop burning gas?
John: Maybe all of a sudden we just are feeding seaweed to cows and
John: And, like, talk about a game changer.
Merlin: It becomes a sort of – it's so attractive.
Merlin: And I'm not trying to diminish, but in the same way that when Cold Fusion first became the buzz in the late 80s, it becomes a skeleton key because a solution that is disruptive in allowing –
Merlin: It sounds mean.
Merlin: I don't mean it this way, but you go like, oh, how do we keep living mostly the way we're living except something comes along that makes that sustainable?
Merlin: And I feel like the problem in so many of these things becomes, well, we have more options if we're willing to change more things.
Merlin: But wanting – it's sort of like in a relationship, and I've been guilty of this this week.
Merlin: Is like when you say to somebody, how are you doing?
Merlin: Are you – is everything okay?
Merlin: What you really are saying or I'm really saying sometimes is, could you please act happier?
Merlin: Which is not really helpful for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: Like, could you please let me know that I'm not in trouble and you agree to be more happy?
Merlin: Well, okay, but like for me to be more happy, conditions would have to change, right?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And, like, you know, if your answer to, you know, climate change is, well, I still buy a car, but it's less polluting.
Merlin: It's like, well, I don't have an answer to all of this.
Merlin: And it's something I wrote down 10 minutes ago.
Merlin: I mean, we often say, like, oh, gosh, why are some of these problems so difficult?
Merlin: Why can't we solve these difficult problems?
Merlin: And, well, it's because a difficult problem exists because all the easy problems were solved.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I mean, it turns out a little bit obvious, but what are you willing to move around?
Merlin: I was watching Aliens, one of the great movies.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Alien 2.
Merlin: Aliens with the S. You know what that's about?
Merlin: It's about Gaia bombing.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Gaia bombing.
Merlin: They end up on that planet because there's a crew down there that Gaia bombs.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: They're basically terraforming.
Merlin: Yeah, they're colonialists.
Merlin: That's correct.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I cut you off.
Merlin: So you're thinking, you got cow chow on your mind.
Merlin: I found an article here from CBS News.
Merlin: One farmer's seaweed discovery could help slow methane emissions and change the world.
Merlin: Oh, see, change the world.
John: It's right there in the title.
Merlin: It's from two days ago.
Merlin: So it's probably from this.
Merlin: It's probably that not this article necessarily, but this is the story, right?
John: No, that might be the article.
John: Okay.
John: So I sent the article.
John: So my cousin Libby, Libby Roderick.
John: The globally famous Alaskan folk singer, Libby Roderick.
John: Yes.
John: She is an eco-warrior.
Merlin: She was on, what was she on?
Merlin: Was she on Merge or was it Drag City?
John: Oh, no.
John: No, she had her own label that was, I think, called Thinking Like a Mountain Records or something.
John: I like that.
John: And she was a very, very...
John: popular niche folk artist uh they they sang one of her songs at the uh the first united women's conference in china in beijing and when the mars rover stopped this is maybe apocryphal but this is the story when the mars rover stopped
John: Working at one point many years ago.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And they couldn't get it to respond.
John: And they were, you know, NASA was trying everything they could.
John: Somebody at NASA sent...
John: one of my cousin Libby's songs to the Mars Rover.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And the song was like... Did it cheer it up?
John: The song was like, get up and do it, or, you know, you can do it, or something.
John: They uploaded that to the Mars Rover.
John: They uploaded it to the Mars Rover, and the Mars Rover started moving again.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: Does everybody there live in the shadow of Jewel?
Merlin: No, my God.
Merlin: Wasn't Jewel an Alaskan folk singer?
John: She is.
John: But she was...
John: She was anomalous.
John: You know, like Alaska has its own culture, and Jewel went down to the big city, and everybody's very proud of her.
John: She was in a car for a while, if memory serves.
John: Speaking of which, the new Miss America is from Alaska.
Wow.
John: And it's first Miss America from Alaska.
John: Oh, that's wonderful.
John: And I went, I saw it.
John: I was scrolling through the news.
John: I was like, cows eating seaweed and bouncy castles.
John: And then it was like, new Miss America from Alaska.
John: And I was like, you're just targeting this at me.
John: Do you know what her talent is?
John: Well, she's, these days, I think you have to be kind of smart.
John: Yeah.
John: She works with Special Olympics.
John: Oh, that's awesome.
John: But I read her name.
John: Her last name is Broyles.
John: B-R-O-Y-L-E-S.
John: And I was like, Broyles?
John: Hmm.
John: Broyles?
John: Hmm.
John: And it's the thing... Sounds like somebody describing the super pan.
John: Broyles and brambles.
John: When people say, you know... No ordinary pan.
John: When people say...
John: Oh, you're from Alaska.
John: Do you know my friend Jim?
John: It's always good for a laugh because it's like... Sure.
John: It's a pretty big state.
John: Half the time I do.
John: But in this case... There's only like three cities, right?
John: I actually said, how many broilses can there be in Alaska?
John: And I... One, two, three.
John: Three.
John: I went searching through her, you know, her like this article.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: And I was looking for pictures, you know.
John: And...
John: There it is.
John: She is the daughter of a really good friend of mine from high school.
John: Oh, that's wonderful.
John: My high school buddy, Ron Broyles, his daughter is Miss America for this year.
John: Good for them.
John: She seems wonderful.
John: And I know.
John: And Ron was like a, he was a fit guy.
John: He was like a, like, you know, he lifted weights and was in good shape.
John: And so he's just like, um...
John: I think he got into bodybuilding and was in some contests maybe in middle age.
John: He sired a Miss America.
John: That's nothing to sneeze at.
Merlin: Isn't that something?
Merlin: So you sent this article about the red seaweed to Libby.
John: I sent it to Libby, and she has been a climate change apocalypto for 25 years.
John: I mean, 25 years ago, she was standing on stage at her folk concerts, which were widely attended.
John: She played very big folk shows for the folk music community.
John: And she would stand up there, and she has a great sense of humor.
John: But she would get serious every show and start talking about climate change.
John: Before that was even a phrase, right?
John: When people were still talking about— We'd just say global warming.
John: Global warming, right.
John: And she would say, no, it's about climate change.
John: And let me tell you— And everybody in the room would all kind of rattle their fleece.
John: And it would be like— Or like refill their pilsner.
John: Yeah, it would just be like—
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Let's talk more rock.
John: I sent this to her just to see what would happen.
John: And I got what I kind of expected back, which was a happy holidays reply in which she also specified happy solstice.
John: That's nice.
John: It's inclusive.
John: Yeah.
John: But no...
John: No reference to the cow seaweed article.
John: And my sense was that as a long time climate change warrior, she was not interested in stories about how we were going to change climate change by feeding seaweed to cows.
John: Yeah.
John: She was very, very invested in what she is, I think, like most climate change warriors, like most warriors, very invested in how we're going to solve the problem.
John: What we need to do to solve climate change are the following things.
John: And like you say, end our dependency on oil.
John: Switch to vegetarianism.
Merlin: You know... But the big, like, load-bearing walls of, like, actually making a difference in an amount of time that would make a difference.
John: Right.
John: Super-duper change-the-world stuff.
John: And also a certain sort of apocalypse porn about it.
John: The feeling like, it's too late.
John: So...
John: There are no solutions.
John: You know, the combination of like, we know what the solutions are, but it's also too late.
Merlin: Yeah, the elephant in the room, not to interrupt you, but like the elephant in the room for me is COVID.
Merlin: And like, it's, it's this whole like, yeah, well, yeah, well, like every single time we've had a chance to do something about this, we didn't and we fucked up.
Merlin: And like, yeah, you know what, we're not allowed to feel optimistic.
Merlin: We have not earned optimism.
Merlin: And so like, oh, don't worry, Omicron's 3% of the infections and it's less severe, even though everybody says that means it makes a lot of people, sickens a lot more people, which spreads it faster.
Merlin: And I'm like, you know, just keep your optimism to yourself until we've earned it.
Merlin: Is it somewhat like that of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, here's another one of those like, yeah, now all we need is to like build a laser beam, you know, that can cut the sun in half or something.
Merlin: And like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard all the solutions for 30 years.
Merlin: And the only real solutions are human solutions and nobody wants to talk about that.
Merlin: It's that kind of thing.
John: I don't see.
John: I don't know.
John: First of all, I don't even know if the cows eating seaweed article is real or whether it was written by the same bot that's writing about Eric Clapton's racist rants.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't know.
John: If the solution to climate change is something weird, like, Oh, it turns out that, you know, that we, uh, that there's an owl that loves eating carbon dioxide.
John: And all we have to do is breed 1 million of these owls and our carbon dioxide prop, because they breathe carbon.
John: So cute.
John: And what they do, what they do, they eat carbon dioxide and they fart lithium.
Um,
John: Oh, so our mental health will improve.
John: Well, and you go to their nests, you collect the lithium, and that's how you build more Tesla batteries.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: It's the lithium owls.
John: Maybe those are the solutions.
John: The answer to the question, who?
John: Me.
John: One, two.
Merlin: One, two.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: Wow, we're killing it.
Merlin: Three.
Merlin: Mr. Owl.
Merlin: Also, the tendency.
Merlin: I've seen that commercial so many fucking times.
John: Me too.
John: The tendency of people that are really invested in what the problem is, is to also feel like they know what the solutions are and they're not open to, I mean, you see this all the time with people that are convinced that society is collapsing.
John: Yeah.
John: And you say, well, yeah, but, you know, it really could be as simple as George Clooney runs for the presidency.
John: I mean, nothing is off the table now.
John: And maybe George Clooney runs for the U.S.
John: president, and he brings the whole country together.
John: He brings the fucking owls.
John: We all love George Clooney.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: He's very lovely.
John: He's a beautiful man.
John: I love that guy.
John: And with the smile, and he's got the very accomplished spouse.
John: He's got a sense of humor.
John: Yeah.
John: So maybe it's that, you know, maybe Alec Baldwin is too divisive of a figure, but George Clooney could run for president.
John: Yes.
John: And, you know, did you see Matthew McConaughey was considering running for governor of Texas?
Merlin: I think he was way more than considering.
Merlin: And then I think the abruptness was not his entering, but was his leaving.
Merlin: He just sort of bounced.
John: Oh, I love that you know more about this than me.
Merlin: Tell me more about Matthew McConaughey.
Merlin: You know, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Laura.
John: The thing about Matthew McConaughey being the president of Texas is maybe that changes the whole world.
John: Maybe that's the lithium farting owl of America.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: He's not beholden to party.
Merlin: He's the kind of guy that could sit down with Ted Cruz and make Ted Cruz.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I mean, Ted Cruz does a pretty good job of making himself, given that he is Harvard educated or some Ivy League.
Merlin: But he's very well educated and he knows better.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And as we say in the South, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
Merlin: He's full of shit and he knows it.
Merlin: But like Matthew McConaughey, you know, tête-à-tête, mano-a-mano, as they say, you go head-to-head with Matthew McConaughey, he's going to make you look real stupid, I bet.
John: Well, Matthew McConaughey doesn't play by the rules.
John: Oh, he's going to feed you some avocado toast.
John: He's going to say, all right, all right, all right.
John: All right, all right, all right.
John: And then all of a sudden, you know, everything's not all right.
John: No, but then he heals the divisions in America.
John: It could be just as simple as that.
John: You know, you don't know.
John: But nobody wants to hear that.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: Nobody wants.
John: How many people out there right now?
John: How many scientists?
John: are listening to this program and thinking, hey, wait a minute.
John: Have I ever tried to feed carbon dioxide to owls?
John: Do we even know?
John: Do we even know?
John: It's dark.
Merlin: It's a little bit like your mom.
Merlin: We're really into bird matter here.
Merlin: Is it a little bit like you guys and the crows and nobody knowing where crows sleep?
John: Maybe there's things we don't know about owls.
John: Even now, maybe crows, if we find where the crows sleep, maybe it's like a lithium mine.
John: And we won't have to go to the Atacama Desert.
John: Maybe that's why they keep stealing all our aluminum foil.
John: So I believe, first of all, that the children are our future.
John: But I also believe that...
John: As you go, as you live, as you read the news, and as it feels like you're just playing a frogger game where every log is a new apocalypse.
John: Where you're just hopping from apocalypse to apocalypse.
John: And there are gators out there, which are other kinds of apocalypse.
John: Yeah.
John: That there's always, at least in my lifetime, there's always been something...
John: that comes along that staves it off and what we do what our tendency is is to just we all have um a borderline personality disorder because the apocalypse was going to be that the that the atmosphere burned off and then we stopped using hairspray and the atmosphere didn't burn off but we didn't oh i see we didn't high five each other about it we just pivoted
John: to whatever the next it's just like having a borderline personality disorder girlfriend where you're like look honey i solved the problem that you were really upset about and she's like the new problem is this maybe you should have a fear of being abandoned yikes
Merlin: It me.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I do want to talk about the Prince concert.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Tell me your feelings about the Prince concert.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So real quick, though, in passing, yeah, we can make this fun.
Merlin: It's Christmas.
Merlin: But I get this with the COVID coverage where, I mean, I think even somebody who's pretty well informed is probably a little bit confused about what's going on right now.
Merlin: And I think that extends to a lot of people.
Merlin: Like, how can I put this?
Merlin: You know, when you ask people to do things or you ask people a question, it's useful to understand what their role is.
Merlin: So, like, you know, it's one thing to ask the concierge for a good place to eat.
Merlin: It's another thing, you know, somebody outside who's picking through the trash asking them a good place to eat.
Merlin: Like, when you ask people different kinds of questions, it helps to know, like, what they're situated to do.
Merlin: And I think that's – this is a little bit technical.
Merlin: My wife works in a med school.
Merlin: So, like, for example, if you ask an epidemiologist –
Merlin: a virologist, just a general sort of public health policy person, you ask different people the same question, you're likely to get different answers because of their expertise, because of their interests.
Merlin: And I don't want to say because of their bias, but I think the problem is all those people might be a kind of medical professional or medically adjacent professional, but they're going to tell you different things differently.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, it's like if you ask for advice, you can ask the same piece of advice to a mechanic, a plumber, the guy who works at the hardware store, John Roderick, Merlin Mann, and you're going to get different answers because of our background and our – do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I mean, here's what it comes down to, at least on like the – what site's not a clickbait website at this point?
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: It is really about keeping you off balance, keeping you scared.
Merlin: And then like notice, for example, like I feel like I first started noticing this in things like BuzzFeed, which is different from BuzzFeed News.
Merlin: It must be noted.
Merlin: BuzzFeed News is very good.
Merlin: BuzzFeed is not.
John: I did read a great article on BuzzFeed News.
John: They have a great staff.
John: They have really, really good people.
John: I was very confused about that because I hate BuzzFeed.
Merlin: Yes.
Yes.
Merlin: Totally.
Merlin: But like the kind of thing.
Merlin: Have you noticed how often a headline now says things like, I mean, there's the classic BuzzFeed or host site that's even worse than BuzzFeed.
Merlin: The sort of like, here's the one here's the one weird trick you should be doing in the shower.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There's those kinds of things.
Merlin: But that kind of nonsense happens.
Merlin: has passed well into certain departments in journalism.
Merlin: And again, I just want to clarify, this is covered in my wisdom document, the people who write the articles rarely get to pick the headline for the article.
Merlin: So if the headline sucks, don't blame the writer at most big, you know, journalistic institutions.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: They A-B test those, John.
Merlin: Like, for example, like you said, oh, it seems like they really know.
Merlin: Well, most – a lot of websites – I think Huffington Post might have pioneered this – is the, like, we keep – we put up this article and we run – well, this headline for 50% of the viewers, readers –
Merlin: This other headline for the other 50%.
Merlin: And within like an hour, because of like some law of large number stuff, they know within a very short period of time what to make the actual real permanent headline because they saw which one is successful.
Merlin: I'm talking down to you, but a basic A-B testing is what we call it in the web world.
John: Which is why every single article in my feed has a headline that says, Janet Jackson nipple slip.
Merlin: Yes, that's exactly why.
Merlin: And I'm like, what?
Merlin: Again?
Merlin: But that technique or things like the surprising tips.
Merlin: I learned this a long time ago before it was popular and abused.
Merlin: If you have a list and it starts with a prime number, people are more likely to click it.
Merlin: Don't say ten.
Merlin: Don't say five.
Merlin: You say the nine things you need to know if you're going to WWDC this year or whatever.
Merlin: Is that really a thing?
Merlin: Oh, it's totally a thing.
Merlin: People are much more likely to click it if it's a prime number in my experience.
John: Is nine a prime number now?
Merlin: Yes, prime.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Awesome.
Merlin: Oh, here's an article.
Merlin: It's the only surprising trick those mathematicians don't want you to know.
Oh.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I should have said an odd number.
John: No, it's true.
John: But Prime is even better.
John: It is 11.
John: You see 11 things on BuzzFeed all the time.
Merlin: It's like telling somebody the speed limit is 17 miles per hour.
Merlin: They're more likely to notice it, it turns out.
Merlin: But I guess that kind of technique, though, which we have fun with and we laugh and go, oh, that's very silly, has really passed into... I'm betting you... This is going to be so disappointing.
Merlin: I bet I could go to the SF Chronicle right now and find stories that say things like...
Merlin: Something like, oh, a surprising revelation at the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.
Merlin: But they don't tell you what it is because you got a click, right?
Merlin: Or something like, I'm trying to think of another similar example, where you could say, oh, the one thing you need to know this week, but also the something something headline colon what you need to know.
Merlin: Updates on the Omicron spread, what you need to know.
John: Well, didn't that cow article have a thing that said a farmer makes surprising discovery?
John: Oh, God, is it?
Merlin: But that kind of thing— Tommy Chong says don't take CBD oil?
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: All I know is Dan says don't buy it at a gas station, but that's just—he's in Austin.
Merlin: But, like, when you run into those kinds of things, you get that feeling of, oh—
Merlin: This headline, and I don't know, this is just my – maybe it's my wish casting or my fantasies.
Merlin: But when you read a headline like that, you think like, okay, who is this for?
Merlin: Like for whom will this be a hook?
Merlin: Big idea for me in the world of ADHD is the hook being in.
Merlin: Be careful what you allow to – the hook that gets into you.
Merlin: Because if you have ADHD, you don't realize that something hooked you until it's too late and like two hours are gone.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In this case, they do seem very pitched toward anxious, obviously, people who visit websites about news and want to be updated about things.
Merlin: But those kinds of – that is what partially leads me – the evidence that leads me to say they want you off balance, they want you scared, and they want you then clicking on the related articles and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's nothing against, I know it's a tough racket, but the problem in all of that is like, again, I come back to what I said at the top, which is like, do you want to be smarter?
Merlin: Do you want to be scared?
Merlin: And thinking and dealing with your fear by becoming what you think is smarter is not, more information is not always what we need.
Merlin: Unless you're prepared to change how you think, how you see, and how you do as a result.
Merlin: And the part that's so frustrating about that is it becomes a kind of apocalypse porn in some ways.
Merlin: So like right now, yes, Omicron is 3% of the current caseload.
Merlin: But they'll play up the part that Fauci says this will be a winter of discontent or whatever.
Merlin: Playing up that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And it's like, no wonder everybody feels overwhelmed, including me, by all of this stuff.
Merlin: There's this surfeit of like half information and unfinished things and like, oh, you know, you're in the know because you click this and now you know.
Merlin: But you get addicted to that.
Merlin: You get...
Merlin: You've got to just keep doing that flip even though you know it's not good for you.
Merlin: Like, what are you willing to change today?
Merlin: Let me ask this to the listener.
Merlin: What will you change today based on what you learned today?
Merlin: Because if you've been learning things for the last two weeks and haven't changed anything –
Merlin: If you've been learning things for the last 10 years and haven't changed anything, what's finally going to get through to you about what needs to change?
Merlin: Is it possible you don't actually want to change?
Merlin: And that mostly, yeah, you're going to get the Tesla because you still get to drive around or whatever, even though, or if you want to buy the new energy efficient house, anybody will tell you it's much cheaper to live in a shitty old house than to use the resources needed to create a new house.
Merlin: It's better to keep an old car rather than like buy a new car, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: But that's not really the problem you want to solve.
Merlin: And so that's not the information that's going to lead to a change.
Merlin: I'll stop talking now.
Merlin: It drives me fucking crazy, man, because people get so serious about all of this.
Merlin: And how dare you make a joke today on this momentous thing happening where these two people on YouTube are getting divorced or whatever.
Merlin: Or like there's just all this stuff where people are in this constantly serious keening state because they have no idea that Twitter in particular is not real.
Merlin: they have made it real because they continue to be around people who agree that it's real and that kind of makes it real but it's it's it's the stay puff marshmallow man if you quit looking at it it doesn't thrive i i think in short i think about this all the time it's baked in to the idea that we have as and i think
John: primarily as liberals, that we've had for the last 150 years, which is that education...
John: is what's going to change the world.
John: If people are educated... Oh, what about raising awareness, John?
John: Is that important too?
John: That's a later thing.
John: But just the whole idea of we're going to start giving kids sixth grade educations, and that's going to create a nation of informed workers, right?
John: We're going to start... High school is now mandatory, and that's going to make citizens.
John: We're going to have...
John: It's going to be a nation of philosopher kings.
John: And particularly, you know, in intellectual circles and liberal circles, the idea of...
John: Changing the world by educating people, it became such a truism for us.
Merlin: Throughout the 20th century, if there's a problem— And all the immigrants who come here knowing, like, you can have a future in America.
Merlin: You're not stuck in your class or caste forever because in America, anybody could become president or president of Exxon.
Merlin: Education is really baked in as, like, it's an undisputed good.
John: That's right.
John: And the thing is, education is always the path.
John: We don't say come to America and cut trail and get six jobs and, you know, and work your way into owning a gas station.
John: We say come to America and get educated and that's your path.
John: And we say it to ourselves.
John: And we've said it to ourselves all the way up to the dawn of the Internet.
John: And you remember what we said when the when the World Wide Web was, you know, was dawning.
John: We were like democratizing information and information.
John: Everyone's a philosopher king.
John: So it's it's baked into our view of the world that there's no downside to education.
John: But in fact, we hit a wall somewhere where the benefit or the benefits of greater access to education and more education did not, turns out, did not continue.
John: Whatever the curve was, whatever the graph of benefit of education, it started to flatten out.
John: And one might argue that we're on the downside now, that the curve, that the more quote-unquote education is not producing thoughtful, considerate, helpful, useful people.
John: More and more education is turning people into monsters.
Merlin: And, but like, I think what you're, I feel like one thing you're getting at, if I'm interpolating is that like, it's also that like, this is not a thing we're going to, this is not a thing to be debated or interrogated or,
Merlin: or unpacked in terms of practicality, or in terms of feasibility, or in terms of justice.
Merlin: Like, we just, okay, hey, listen, you know, God said it, I believe it, that settles it.
Merlin: Education is good.
Merlin: What is your problem?
Merlin: Well, yeah, but like, but there's, I mean, like, let me give you like five boxes of asterisks about that.
John: Right.
John: And I feel like 100 years from now,
John: I don't personally think that we will still be saying education fixes everything.
John: And there are certain situations, there are places in America where we wish education was better.
John: But there is ample evidence that better education hits a wall.
John: And that it...
John: That more and more better education does not produce great results or it doesn't produce the results that you expect.
John: And what we do is we're doubling down on a thing.
John: But in the future, it may be that we think of all of these issues that right now we –
John: we think of as education issues, and we start thinking of them differently.
John: That there isn't this blanket 20th century approach to making the world a better place.
John: Yeah, like who's being educated about what, how?
John: Right, right.
John: And right now, every person in America has access to a little device that has all of collected human knowledge on it, and they scroll through 11 Demi Moore nip slips,
Merlin: Before they jump over to me, more Janet Jackson fan fiction.
John: Yeah, and no amount of education is useful in that situation, because you and I are both very educated, and we're just sitting and looking at 11 different fucking owls that fart lithium.
John: And what, you know, we have enough education to read the article is what we have.
John: But how much education do you need to make sense of it?
John: And if you could make sense of it, what good is that?
John: You know, like, I'm just, I'm downstairs sorting rock posters, and it's like, wow.
John: And you'll notice by our trail of dead, like, I have weirdly more posters of them than I would have expected.
John: But you don't know until you put it all in one place.
John: You gotta sort them, Merlin.
Merlin: Here's a few headlines right now from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Merlin: And these don't all exactly follow the point I wanted to make, but I think they're telling.
Merlin: Is Omicron as contagious as the measles?
Merlin: Here's what we know.
Merlin: Here's what we know.
Merlin: You see that a lot?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Here's what you need to know.
Merlin: SF Politico says he was accosted by a woman with a knife.
Merlin: Okay, which Politico, what woman, what?
Merlin: Scientists didn't see Omicron coming.
Merlin: No one knows what's next.
Okay.
Merlin: Could the Sierra get 100 inches of snow by Christmas?
Merlin: Here's the mountain forecast.
Merlin: Are you familiar with Betteridge's Law of Headlines, I think it's called?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: If you see a question mark in the headline, the answer is no.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is my personal favorite.
Merlin: Just this one's personal privilege.
Merlin: I thought I was a genius.
Merlin: I thought I was a genius selling my home during the pandemic.
Merlin: Now I live in a crap shack.
Ah!
Merlin: I don't know what a crap shack is.
Merlin: I would click that.
Merlin: I would read that.
Merlin: I know you would.
Merlin: I know you would.
Merlin: And then you go, and it's just about a bunch of kids in a bouncy castle.
Merlin: He lives in a crap shack.
Merlin: I thought he was a genius.
John: Now he lives in a crap shack.
John: Am I going to end up in a crap shack?
Merlin: Here's what we know.
Merlin: Man.
Merlin: I probably shouldn't end the year by saying things that aren't that nice about Prince, but...
John: Go on.
John: You know, we've talked about this episode.
John: Have we?
John: Yeah, we had a whole episode, I think, on it.
John: I bet my feelings were mostly quite positive.
John: Yep.
John: And I got a lot of feedback when we talked about it from fans.
John: Oh, like where'd the guitar go?
John: No, no, no.
John: Fans who did not like my hot take.
John: What was your hot take?
John: Remind me.
John: Well, in watching it, I felt like Tom Petty...
John: was very visibly not into what Prince was doing.
John: I totally agree.
John: And George Harrison's son.
Merlin: And people were very mad at me when I talked.
Merlin: Well, people know what we're talking about, Sean.
Merlin: Famous video, a George Harrison tribute.
John: People who listen to this show, they have heard it because we talked about it.
John: We talked about it at length.
Merlin: It was a famous performance of, like, Tom Petty and a really great lineup of musicians.
Merlin: Was Jeff Lynne there?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne.
Merlin: Why can't I never remember George's son, that incredibly handsome son of his?
Merlin: Huh?
Merlin: Donnie.
John: D-H-A-N-I.
John: Oh, is that right?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, let's make an Osmond joke.
Merlin: And then, of course, the great Minneapolis prince.
Merlin: And the thing is, that video gets passed around.
Merlin: I was going deep with a friend last week or a week before on Tom Petty and just how much I love Tom Petty and that I feel like the dictionary, if the dictionary people had any dignity, they would have a picture of the heartbreakers next to the word, like, restrained.
Merlin: The heartbreakers were so tasteful.
Merlin: And restrained.
Merlin: But anyway, and so, of course, anytime you do anything with any of those people, you always end up back on that video.
Merlin: And each time I watch it, my feeling hardens a little bit about Prince's antics.
Merlin: It's a great guitar solo.
John: It's a great guitar solo.
John: But for me...
John: It's all in Tom Petty's face that he is all there.
John: Super bummed.
John: And he's being a pro.
John: He's being a pro.
John: And there's a moment strumming along while Prince plays as long as he feels like it.
John: There's a moment where Prince looks at him.
John: He and they catch each other's eye and it's on it's on camera.
John: You see it's a reverse shot.
John: Prince looks at Tom.
John: Tom looks at him and gives him the most forced smile.
John: Yeah.
John: Like Prince is like pretty great, right?
John: And Prince gets this.
John: He sees the expression and it just powers him more.
John: That Tom Petty is like, you're shitting all over our show.
John: Now Prince made it.
John: He made it.
John: You know, that's the reason we're all still watching that.
John: Yeah.
John: But...
John: And so when I first said that, I got so much pushback from people.
John: People tweeting me all afternoon.
Merlin: And just to be clear, I love Prince.
Merlin: And for any of you out there who think you love Prince, I can almost promise you that I loved Prince a long time before you did.
Merlin: When I came home with a copy of 1999, and the one was a penis, I was in 10th grade, and it made my mother very upset.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, I mean, think about...
Merlin: Think about... Let's pretend we're married, darling Nikki, a couple years later.
John: Darling Nikki, I mean, that was some scandalous shit at the time.
John: Tipper Gore didn't like it.
John: I think it's very well established that no matter how much you like Prince, Merlin liked them before you did.
Merlin: Yeah, me and Neil Dash, I'm always wearing purple.
Merlin: But seriously, what that guy did when he was 19 is crazy.
John: Dirty Mind is insane.
John: I love Prince, just saying.
John: I know.
John: And what we're talking about here does not, it is not about not loving Prince.
John: No.
John: But what I'm curious about.
John: It's about bad behavior.
John: Is when I introduced that idea, almost no one agreed with me.
John: You were ahead of your time, John.
John: And now the scale seems to be tipping.
John: And I think it's an example of the influence that Roderick on the line has invisibly on our culture.
Right.
Merlin: Oh, are you saying like we're Adam Smith's, what's it called, The Hidden Hand?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: Is that an NPR show, it turns out?
Merlin: No, it's called The Hidden Hand?
Merlin: Am I The Hidden Hand?
John: We're The Hidden Hand.
John: We're The Cow Chow.
John: We started talking about how all the great shows, and now it might as well be, it's going to be George Clooney's slogan for his presidential run, All The Great Shows.
John: Right.
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: Where he got it.
John: It's not he's not going to know where it came from.
John: I see.
John: I get I get what you're saying.
John: You know what, though?
John: Go.
John: Well, I'm just saying now it seems I'm reading articles all about how.
John: Yes.
John: How Tom Petty was not into it, where when we talked about this for the first time five years ago.
John: Everybody was like, no, no, no.
Merlin: I heard he and George Harrison were really good friends.
John: Oh, they were really good friends.
John: And he was so into what Prince was doing.
John: Oh my God, look, it's a guitar solo.
John: This is the freaking hidden hand of Roderick on the line.
John: It's the hidden hand.
Merlin: It's the freaking hand.
Merlin: I'm going to sign off my year by doing something I rarely do.
Merlin: Usually you'll find a link in show notes to John's Patreon, which I would love if y'all would Patreonize.
John: I'm reading my travel journals from the 1980s now.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
John: Really?
John: I'm doing a little 15-minute mini podcast where I just open a travel journal from the 80s.
John: Oh, is that the one that just showed up?
John: I just saw something pop up in the feed.
John: I didn't recognize.
John: And I just read for 20 minutes in my voice as a 20-year-old.
John: Oh, I love that.
John: But I'm kind of commenting on myself as I go.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: I'm going to sign off my year.
Merlin: There's going to be a second link.
Merlin: There's always two links with me.
Merlin: And it's going to be a link to what it looks like when gentlemen with taste play together.
Merlin: It's one of my favorite YouTube performance videos.
Merlin: No, it's not a quick one, although I could put that up too.
Merlin: The greatest rock and roll performance of all time.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a wonderful... I'm going to put a link to Earl Scruggs, Steve Martin, and Friends on David Letterman doing Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
Merlin: And just so you know, the Friends include... Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.
Merlin: Vince Gill, Marty Stewart...
Merlin: Albert fucking Lee.
Merlin: Jerry Douglas, the Dobro master.
Merlin: I had a Jerry Douglas Dobro album in college.
Merlin: I liked it so damn much.
Merlin: Of course, Paul Schaefer kind of fruits it up with too much piano.
Merlin: But Albert Lee, did you ever see Born Fighters, the rock pile documentary?
Merlin: no oh shit dog i got a copy i'll pass that rock pile oh jesus christ well you know what it is dude it's it's basically so you know what happened we're basically you know so so i'm sorry i'll address our listeners because this is valuable uh rock pile you know rock pile but you don't know rock pile you may know nick lowe the guy who did you might know dave edmunds um you might know billy bremer who was later well anyway long story short
Merlin: They were a fantastic band.
Merlin: They had one proper album, per se, which is Seconds of Pleasure, which is a pretty good live album.
Merlin: Here's what you maybe didn't know, is Rockpile, those four people.
Merlin: What you didn't know.
Merlin: What you didn't know, did you know, that they were also, the four of them played with a backing band for at least a couple Dave Edmonds records.
Merlin: Oh, I thought you were going to say Huey Lewis in the news.
Merlin: I was going to be like, what a twist.
Merlin: No, Huey Lewis is in the video.
Merlin: He's in it, though.
Merlin: Because Clover was Elvis Costello's man.
Merlin: No, a very young Huey Lewis is in this fucking movie.
Merlin: It's hanging out.
Merlin: But, you know, cruel is the rule, but sometimes bad is bad, you know?
Merlin: But anyhow, which is, I think, a Dave Edmonds song.
Merlin: But anyhow, so, like, if you've ever heard Cruel To Be Kind, guess who the band on that is?
Merlin: Rockpile.
Merlin: If you've ever heard... I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll.
Merlin: If you've ever heard, like, anything from D7, like, or, you know, just these fuck... Nick Lowe and Dave Edmonds have these fucking amazing albums that not enough people know about.
Merlin: And the backing band on both...
Merlin: John recorded at the same time because they couldn't put on a rock pile record.
Merlin: And these guys were on the hook for solo records.
Merlin: Rock pile was recording a labor of lust.
Merlin: And I want to say, if not D seven, the other one, Dave, they were recording them at the same time.
Merlin: Oh, I love that.
Merlin: And fucking Albert Lee, just, just watching Albert Lee dick around on guitar backstage.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Get this, Dave Edmonds' eyes are like glassed out.
Merlin: Albert Lee does things with pull-offs on a guitar that should be illegal.
Merlin: And then his son, I think, is the guy from The Strokes.
John: Oh, is that right?
John: I think so.
John: I could be wrong.
John: Dave Edmonds was the first guy I ever saw play a Dan Electro Longhorn guitar.
John: Lipstick pickups?
John: And I'd never seen a thing like it at the time.
John: Those are sexy guitars.
John: That's a crazy music video.
John: I was so into him then.
John: And now it's like he never existed.
Merlin: But like, you know, Steve Martin... Okay, here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's who Steve Martin is.
Merlin: Steve Martin is fucking Steve Martin.
Merlin: True.
Merlin: But he's out there with Earl Scruggs and Vince Gill and Marty Stewart and Albert Lee and Jerry Douglas.
Merlin: And they do Foggy Mountain Breakdown, which is like, you know, one of the sort of well-known canonical bluegrass songs.
Merlin: And just watching...
Merlin: These gentlemen play together is such a delight.
Merlin: And, you know, if Prince were alive, he'd learn something from it.
John: Can Steve Martin hang?
John: He can, can't he?
Merlin: Oh, he can absolutely hang.
Merlin: He hangs, right?
Merlin: I think he's well regarded by other banjo players.
Merlin: Did you ever read his book?
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: And the audio book that he reads is extremely good.
Merlin: I just want to end the year on a happy note.
Merlin: Uh, you know, there's something about you, you know, uh, got a dirty mind, big fan.
Merlin: I'm going to send you.
Merlin: And if I can find a link to, it used to be on YouTube and that's where I got it from.
Merlin: I downloaded it with my stealing software off of YouTube.
Merlin: But if I can find born fighters, uh, I will post that on my, uh, I'm sorry, social media, but I'll send it to you personally.
John: Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Merlin: And I do have a copy that I can send you if you want an actual copy.
Merlin: But, man, they smoke a lot and they're so good.
John: They're so fucking good.
John: Happy end of year solstice and merry times to you, Merlin.
Merlin: Merry times to your – it sounds like a lame thing to say in public, but our family loves your family and I love you very much.
Merlin: And it's a joy and an honor to get to do this with you.
Merlin: Because, you know, we're not going to be around forever.
Merlin: And every time I do this, it makes me happy.
John: I love you too, Merlin.
John: And I'm going to start eating cow seaweed immediately.
John: And maybe it will cut my greenhouse gases.
John: And maybe we will live forever.
Okay.