Ep. 565: "The Magical Table"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, me too.
Merlin: Same.
Merlin: It's a new year.
Merlin: It's a new year.
Merlin: Yep, yep.
Merlin: Still got that showroom shine.
Merlin: 2025.
John: Which sounds so made up.
John: Did you ever think 2025?
John: No.
John: That was so far in the future when we were kids that they didn't even make science fiction movies set in 2025.
Merlin: The audacity that it would take to do that.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Think about that.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Unbelievable.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And this might be a continuation of the post-COVID time problem, but my concept of time is so screwed up.
Merlin: I said, because you know the week in between, as you call it.
Merlin: Is that what you call it?
Merlin: What was your name for it?
Merlin: The week between.
Merlin: The week between.
Merlin: That's one of the worst times for knowing what day it is, even for us normal people.
Merlin: I can't imagine what that's like for you.
Merlin: But for people who normally keep track of what day it is, what was it?
Merlin: So yesterday at noon, I said to Madeline, it feels like Friday night and it feels like 3.30 p.m.
Merlin: And it just always feels like a different time to me.
Merlin: And sometimes it feels like a different year.
Merlin: What year does it feel like to you?
John: You're absolutely right that I could not, if I weren't like really surrounded by people that know what day it is, I could not tell you whether it was November or March right now.
John: I don't believe that.
John: It just feels right in between the middle of nothing and nothing.
John: We went away for Christmas to a little cabin.
John: And so that adds an element of where are we?
John: What day is it?
Merlin: Well, because you're unmoored from all the stuff like school, you know, work, like all those different kinds of things.
Merlin: The Week Between does feel very particularly drifty.
Merlin: I think we all suffer from that.
Merlin: But yeah, no, it's crazy.
Merlin: It can't be 2025.
Merlin: It's nuts.
John: Today the little one went back to school and tonight there's our usual routine of like swimming and we go to the gym when she's at swimming.
John: We call it swim gym.
John: Are we going swim gym?
John: Because we're very cute.
Merlin: Everything suddenly just picks all the way back up with no...
Merlin: Now, listen, we could have done our own personal transitions during the week between, but most of us, let's be honest, didn't.
Merlin: So my kid, like I wake up, my kid's gone.
Merlin: Kid has gone.
Merlin: It's project week, which is like you pick some kind of like a thing you do with a group and a teacher and you go and do for a week, you do a project.
Merlin: So that's kind of a transition.
Merlin: But he also has skating tonight.
Merlin: So he had to remember to bring his skates.
Merlin: He went out on his own yesterday to the mission to get a haircut.
Merlin: This kid is completely... You should see this new haircut.
Merlin: It's a really boss haircut.
Merlin: Are we talking about ice skates?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Hockey?
Merlin: No, no, no, but he's been professionally tutored on ice skating by a professional.
Merlin: Ice skating, you say?
Merlin: Ice skating, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Like jumping and spinning.
Merlin: I think it's mainly trying to not fall down.
John: Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.
John: Because that's the level of ice skating that I'm at.
Merlin: Oh, oh, I can roller skate, great.
Merlin: But I cannot, ice skating, I cannot do.
Merlin: But I'm just saying, it's difficult for everybody.
Merlin: On top of it, mom is pretty sick right now.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Oh, man, she's really bumming.
Merlin: But, you know, we need, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I kind of wish we were like France and we just took August off, except I wish it was all the time.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you think this is a good first episode for the year to bring in new listeners?
Merlin: Should we do something more?
Merlin: Hi, everybody.
Merlin: Hi, everybody.
Merlin: I don't like those guys.
Merlin: Welcome to the pod.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: Hi.
John: Be sure to like and subscribe.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Tell me three things that you did this week for your mental health.
Merlin: And let's talk about preserving jam.
John: I feel like my ability to, you know, for a long, long time I've been fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, Merlin.
John: Yeah.
John: And I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know if I can fight anymore.
Merlin: If you can say, what are you fighting?
Merlin: Just whatever comes along.
John: Yeah, whatever comes along.
John: The internet, my phone.
John: I've been fighting my phone since the day I got it.
John: But I feel like a colony collapse level of lack of resistance anymore.
John: It just feels like we're, in myself, but everybody around me, nobody's trying not to look at their phone anymore.
John: It was all a...
John: a joke the last few years like i'm trying to not look at my phone so much but no nobody's trying that anymore it's all we're all pod people the the the the monster is in us now and it's taking our brains i think i i think i i know what you mean and i think based on my extremely limited exposure um
Merlin: Uh, that I agree with you.
Merlin: I think we used, well, there's two, because you're kind of saying two, two things that are related.
Merlin: And one is we all, Oh, don't look at your phone too much.
Merlin: Uh, kids look at their phone too much.
Merlin: Everybody's brain is getting rotten.
Merlin: And then we would all just kind of like parrot that.
Merlin: And then, and then even if we say that, I think most people have just, they've just given up and it's just what they do now.
Merlin: And again, I just want to be clear here.
Merlin: This is I don't mean this in a judgy way because I do it, too.
Merlin: Not as much as some people.
Merlin: But I, for example, I'm still able to enjoy visual humor because I can see what's happening on the television instead of looking at my phone.
Merlin: And sometimes I'll turn to something.
Merlin: I'll go, what are you looking at?
Merlin: Skirts.
Merlin: Instagram ads for things that claim to curl your hair.
John: Skirts.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Everybody likes skirts.
John: Sure, if you like a skirt.
Merlin: That can be kind of upsetting, though, when you catch yourself.
Merlin: Obviously, it's easy enough to catch your loved ones.
John: When you're like, I'm watching a thing, but I'm looking at a thing while I'm watching a thing.
John: What am I doing?
John: What has my life come to?
Merlin: What are you looking at?
Merlin: Why are you not watching?
Merlin: I'm trying not to talk about my life too much, but I really, I think you, I shouldn't even say this.
Merlin: You in particular, I think, and Sean together, I think would particularly appreciate this.
Merlin: I finally got somebody in the house to watch a couple episodes of The Office UK.
John: Oh, well, you're kidding.
John: I thought that that was probably something you watched just on constant repeat.
Merlin: Let me ask a question.
Merlin: Are there things in your life where it feels like there are things that should be on constant repeat, but you can't get somebody to sit down like a person and you say, look, I know you.
Merlin: I can pretty much promise you're going to like this.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And yet it never happened.
Merlin: Like, Drive.
Merlin: Like, Drive.
Merlin: It's the cruelest joke in the world that I cannot get my young person to watch Drive.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Every time I say it, without, importantly, without looking up from my young person's phone, he says, I Drive.
Merlin: Because he knows that's a line from the movie.
John: Oh, mocking you.
John: Mocking you without even knowing the mock.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But I mean, you know, and they'll just go, yeah, someday.
Merlin: And I was like, listen, so we had watched one of my all time favorite episodes.
Merlin: Not that it matters, but I, you know, I'm a fan.
Merlin: One of my all time favorite episodes of the American office, which is episode two, or sorry, season two, episode three, the one where they have the, you probably were not a fan, but they have the Olympics in the office.
Merlin: Michael is out signing the mortgage and all the stuff on his new house.
Merlin: And back at the office, they have a funny office.
Merlin: Olympics and it's it's got a really wonderful hilarious sweet ending and I was like look would you ever just I think it's like I've seen you I've seen it I was like look you've seen parts of the first one but what if we jump into like one that's a couple episodes later
Merlin: And I think it went pretty well.
Merlin: But the humor is very subtle.
Merlin: The humor is very visual.
Merlin: And you don't see that if you're looking at skirts.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: Isn't that terrible of me to be like that?
Merlin: When you're right, you're right.
Merlin: You're right, you're right.
Merlin: But I'm like, I feel like I'm, you know, I don't want to be the, I don't want to be the cop.
Merlin: Nobody likes the cop.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: We never liked the cop.
Merlin: And this is different from the cops, who I also really gravely dislike.
Merlin: But you don't want to be the cop.
Merlin: You don't want to be the grammar cop.
Merlin: You don't want to be the continuity cop.
Merlin: Or you don't want to be the pronunciation cop.
Merlin: What are other kinds of cops we don't like?
John: Oh, well, the morality police.
John: We don't like the morality police.
John: What about the tone police?
John: Oh, the tone police.
John: We really don't like the tone police.
John: We don't like food cops.
John: Right?
John: Food cops.
Merlin: Food cops.
Merlin: But, you know, with all of these also, I mean, it's one thing to go all the way back, a conversation you and I have almost every week is like what it was, at least how I felt, I'll speak for myself, growing up, right?
Merlin: And the constant, like, criticisms and stuff like that.
Merlin: But then there's also just the sort of, the thing about tone policing that I think works so well as an analogy to other kinds of policing is that it's often abstract or speculative policing.
Right.
Merlin: Speculative policing.
Merlin: Well, you know, there's the kind of, there's the white knight in.
John: I love abstract policing.
Merlin: But abstract policing, like, you know, oh, you know, well, don't play with that.
Merlin: You'll put your eye out.
Merlin: And you're like, well, it'd be really hard for me to put my eye out with that.
Merlin: But I see what you're saying.
Merlin: I think, again, per many previous weeks of this show, I think it's that mainly parents in particular feel like they have to have, they have to find a way to hector a child about almost everything that happens.
Merlin: And I think the world is like that in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The tone policing part, though, is, you know, like so much of the white knighting.
Merlin: That's sort of like, well, I can imagine in the worst case scenario in the entire world, something that might be a certain way.
Merlin: And therefore, you should feel bad about something you almost did.
Merlin: And that's not, buddy, that ain't just about me and you.
John: No.
Merlin: That's like just a way of rolling in the discourse, which is not a very good Adele song.
John: Rolling in the discourse.
Merlin: She has such nice nails.
John: I definitely, last night... Oh, I took you off your phone.
Merlin: Sorry about that.
John: No, we had a dinner party, and as we were getting up, I said to my child across the table...
John: Because I was, you know, in the kitchen, like, clearing the table.
John: You hosted people for dinner.
John: No, not me.
John: Okay.
John: I was an adjunct at a dinner party.
John: I was the sergeant at arms at a dinner party.
John: Yeah.
John: I was in the kitchen and I said, kind of over my shoulder to my daughter who was sitting and twiddling her thumbs, looking at her phone, looking at a book at the table, whatever it is children do.
John: And I said, sweetheart, I asked you to clear the serving dishes.
John: And the dinner party is still there.
John: Everybody's kind of standing up.
John: We're transitioning to another environment.
John: But dishes are getting moved to the kitchen.
Merlin: You're going to move on to the gentleman will have port and cigars in the room.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And she says, you didn't ask me to.
John: clear the table or whatever.
John: And I did the first line, which is, well, sweetie, if you'll recall, I did ask you to, and she came back again.
John: No, you didn't, because when I was there, and I said,
John: Just imperceptibly raised voice, just imperceptible tonal change.
John: Imperceptible to you.
John: I said, Marlo, whether I asked you or not, it needs doing.
John: And the people around the table, the six or seven people, all went... Oh, because of the tiny amount of change in town?
John: Just because someone had asked a child to do a thing...
John: The child had done some, you know, did the child sorcery of like, no, but over here, but smoke and, you know, like, no, but this, the child sorcery that dominates our world today.
John: Not from children, but everybody just practices child sorcery.
John: Like, look over here.
Merlin: And then there was a kind of personal lawyering that everybody does.
John: Exactly.
John: Yes, Your Honor.
John: He did not ask me, Your Honor.
Merlin: And I just said, well, I mean, it could just be it's the equivalent of I can just do some from watching television shows.
Merlin: Objection assumes facts, not in evidence.
Merlin: Objection hearsay.
Merlin: Hearsay, right.
John: Ad hominem is a popular one.
John: That's right, especially if you're having a public debate.
John: But I said, you know, what I was saying was, I'm not, we're not going to, what's in front of us, Your Honor, is not whether or not I said or didn't say.
John: What's in front of us is I'm in the kitchen and you also need to be in the kitchen with a dish in each hand and not standing at the table.
John: You are not—it is not cigar time for you, is what I would say.
Merlin: No port, no cigars.
Merlin: And if I could just say from—I mean, I'm seeing this from a remove, but I have some degree of confidence that this is the sort of situation that all of us have been in, in all three parts, in terms of being the aide to camp, being the reluctant child, and being the person stuck at a table while a family argues.
Merlin: But the thing you kind of—one of the things you want to get at is like—
Merlin: Because it becomes a little bit like tone policing.
Merlin: I'm not saying tone policing is always bad, but I'm saying it can become a habit that's actually not that useful.
Merlin: But in that instance, it's like, you know, everybody's there kind of, you know, witnessing this.
Merlin: And what I would want to say is, hey, look, time out.
Merlin: This is not a criticism of how, I don't mean this to be a thing about how we communicate with each other.
Merlin: Let me phrase it differently.
Merlin: Can you give me a hand clearing the table?
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Because rather than having a public argument about whether we have communicated effectively, how about we both give each other a break and just get the table clear?
Merlin: That doesn't make the audience feel any better about it, though.
John: They're sitting there.
Merlin: They've got all those juices going around in their tummy.
John: The wonderful thing, I think, about the way that I approach everything is that the people...
John: The people there at the table, whether or not they're uncomfortable or not, it doesn't even bother me in the slightest.
Merlin: I would just like to say to the listener, in my experience, that is true.
Merlin: In my experience, it may actually be a kind of kindling for whatever fire we didn't realize has already started somewhere in John's midsection.
John: Well, because I think the fact that they all go, uh, also impart, that is also imparting something.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's not, it's not directed at me.
John: It imparts something to her.
John: Right.
John: Because now she, now she's the center of attention and was, and is the center of attention, not because she's helping, but is the center of attention because she's not helping.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: So now we're getting into like, I don't know, like the lottery or the ones who left Omelas type situation.
Merlin: This is like, we're going to really, this kid may have to go.
John: I mean, that's, yeah.
Merlin: Or you could say like, it takes a village.
Merlin: It does, it takes, oh, so it's their fault.
Merlin: Look at you just sitting there with your napkin and you're laughing like an asshole, you know.
Merlin: But did it make people uncomfortable?
Merlin: Who, without saying a name?
Merlin: Who cares?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Were you able to notice if someone was uncomfortable or did it simply not register because you were up on the lectern?
John: I can't imagine why it would.
John: You know, it's... Yeah.
John: But...
Merlin: Yeah, it's hard to be a person.
Merlin: I think it's hard for almost everybody to be a person.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: The rules change over time.
Merlin: It can be very, very confusing.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: Yeah, it's true.
John: You want to button this up?
John: I opened up the boxes that were in the garage the other day.
John: Is this the Susan Project?
John: Well, it's connected to it.
John: Okay.
John: The boxes, there were a lot of boxes in the garage that said, you know, like, bathrooms.
John: Yeah.
John: When I moved from the old house.
Merlin: It was just full of bathrooms.
John: I had three bathrooms.
Merlin: There was like four full-size bathrooms.
Merlin: Four full bathrooms.
John: I wish I'd known about that.
John: The bathroom from a boat, the bathroom from a... They call it a head.
John: Yeah.
John: And when I left the farm, I put everything in whatever, boxes that just had Sharpie hieroglyphics on the outside.
Yeah.
John: But, of course, at the farm where I'd lived for a decade, but also that was where we raised the little one up from infancy.
John: Oh, gosh, of course.
John: There was all this stuff in the bathrooms that had been, you know, all these half-used tubes of Neosporin and Aquaphor, but also... Oh, my God.
John: Get out of my house.
John: I know.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Like thermometers and little... We have four digital thermometers and none of them are the one that I want.
John: there it is and so all of this went into these giant moving boxes and then during the pandemic of course I was living at Ari's for half the time and then I moved in here and I never really unpacked that stuff and
John: Because of Susan's project to arrange my books by color, now all of a sudden, I don't know if I told you this, but my mom was powerfully affected by how successful Susan had been.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Does Susan know she felt that way?
Merlin: Because that's a really nice compliment to Susan.
John: Well, sort of, but I mean, my mom has been trying to organize my life since I was three years old.
Merlin: Remember that time you stuffed all your toys in the closet?
John: Yeah, I do.
John: What'd she do?
John: I do.
John: She jumped on them.
John: She stomped them all.
John: She stomped them all until they were little teeny bits.
John: Yeah.
John: And with that, trying to organize my life since I was three, the ideas for many years were that she had a way of doing things and I was doing it wrong.
John: And then as time has evolved, she has a way of doing things that she thinks will be helpful to me.
John: And then as time has gone on, she has a way of doing things that's like demonstrably a better way, but she's willing to try and figure out what my way is.
John: But there's always been an element of...
John: of moral help that she's trying to do.
Merlin: Yeah, I really like the way you put that, because I think, well, there's nothing against your mom, but it does imply a certain kind of thing with helpful people, which is like, and I'm a helpful person in the worst way, which is like, hey, there's a right way to do this, and you're not doing that.
Merlin: You know, you should learn the right way.
Merlin: Or then that becomes, well, you should let me do the right way for you.
Merlin: Then that kind of becomes, well, can I find in a teachable moment where I can make you realize what you think would be the right thing to do?
Merlin: But that's a long mission for two people to have with one another.
John: It is.
John: It is.
John: Over 50 years of it.
John: Yeah.
John: And so for my sister to come in, and Susan has always been like an outlier in that conversation.
John: Susan has not been... Mom hasn't been trying to change the way Susan organizes the drawer for that 50-year period.
John: And Susan has never jumped in and really defended me.
John: She just... When that conversation starts...
John: The you're doing it wrong or whatever Susan just just sort of wanders away, but now Susan's put herself right in the center of it and
John: And she's made a huge difference in a very short amount of time just doing what she wanted to do.
John: And it's destabilized my mom a little bit, not just because the room is arranged, but because there's some identity stuff here.
John: Like my mom is like, well, I'm the one that organizes you.
John: I'm like, well, she's not organizing me.
Merlin: And also it's been subtle, subtle distinction.
Merlin: But yes, that's her job.
Merlin: But also like it's her project.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: You know.
John: And what I said to mom was, Susan didn't organize me.
John: She just organized the room.
John: Whoa.
John: Whoa.
Whoa.
John: How does she handle that?
John: Well, this is what we're navigating as a family because I keep saying to my mom as she brings in a box of things and goes, I'm going to give these away to the goodwill unless you say no.
John: I say, when Susan organized this room, she did not give anything away, nor did she present me with any choices or come to me with any questions.
John: And so what you're doing is organizing a space and presenting me with some sort of Greek level, like puzzle,
John: Here, these things are going to Hades unless you intervene.
Merlin: Well, yeah, I was going to say almost like it's like Aristotle, where he's got a way of understanding and organizing almost anything in the world of human knowledge.
Merlin: And it belongs in ethics.
Merlin: It belongs in metaphysics.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: He's arguably one of the first people who did a good job of making those slots for us.
Merlin: Your mom's kind of the Aristotle of that in some ways, right?
John: She knows where she go.
John: Yes, she is.
John: Well, so anyway, what this did is that Susan has taken care of all of these top-level problems
John: in a way that I'm still negotiating or navigating every day.
John: There's a little bit of my post-Christmas sort of blue feelings, a little bit of the depression of the week between is a result of sitting in a house where there isn't a project that needs to, it's not a project that I'm gonna necessarily do, but there isn't, a lot of the projects are just, they've evaporated.
John: It's not like they were even solved, they just went away.
John: And so I went and I got all of the boxes out of the garage that said bathroom.
John: And I brought them all up into my beautiful, clean, like completely, basically empty living room.
John: And I opened all of the boxes and took all of the tubes of Aquaphor and all of the half-used travel size dental floss containers and...
John: all of the bars of soap that people have given me, plus the bars of soap I've taken from hotels, and I spread them all out on the dining room table.
Merlin: Toothbrushes of unknown provenance.
John: Toothbrushes?
John: Did someone leave this here at my house?
Merlin: Did I use it to clean something once?
Merlin: That's why I usually mark it with a Sharpie if I use it to clean something.
John: It's good to know.
John: Well, every time I go to the dentist, of course, they give you a new toothbrush.
John: So I've got unopened toothbrushes that I could use for the next four years.
John: And so then, yes, Merlin, I did go to the cupboard and get a peanut butter jar that I should have not saved in the first place.
John: Oh, see, it just accumulates, don't it?
John: But I did save the peanut butter jar, and now it's a toothbrush jar because I put all the used toothbrushes that now I'm going to use to scour little corners in the garage one day.
John: I'm going to use the toothbrush.
John: Now it's in a peanut butter jar.
John: And it's been a New Year's miracle because I've done a couple of things, a couple of marvelous things.
John: One of them is I've completely cluttered my dining room again to the point that there's no place you could even set a coffee cup down, which is a great, it's a very familiar feeling.
John: It's the comforting, warm embrace.
Merlin: John, I'm sorry to correct you.
Merlin: The only problem with what you're dealing with, if I may say, is that you're still calling it the dining room.
Merlin: Like what if you called it the staging area?
Merlin: The staging area.
Merlin: Like what if it was like D-Day, right?
Merlin: And like we got to get all our stuff over there.
Merlin: We got to get the, what were those called?
Merlin: The Mulberry Pier built.
Merlin: Like we got to get all this stuff in place.
Merlin: You're marshaling all of your resources in preparation for hitting Sword in Omaha, if I may say.
John: That's right.
John: I'm walking around like Eisenhower with my hands clasped behind my back.
Merlin: Is the weather finally going to give us a break?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Are you ready, boys?
John: Well, at my dad's house, we called it the magic table, because if you put something on my dad's dining room table, it would immediately disappear.
John: And then you would find it at the bottom of a pile of of bills from 1940.
John: And you would say this.
John: How in the hell did these end up in the same place?
Merlin: This pile hasn't been disturbed since it breaks the rules of archaeology by which most of us run our cleaning operations.
John: Yet and yet, you know there was at my dad's magic table.
John: It's on the magic table He would say where you know, where's where where's my grade card on the magic table?
John: And then you'd go and that was it was always an excavation And I have that too
John: But now, I'm looking over here, oh, I've given myself such a project.
John: And the thing is, of course, I immediately realized I need more bins.
John: I need more bins.
John: I got these little bins at Target.
John: and when I bought them, I didn't even know why I was buying them.
John: Isn't that the beautiful thing?
John: I was at Target, and I was like, look at these bins.
John: I bet I'll need these.
Merlin: So what Adam Smith refers to is the unseen hand.
John: It's the unseen hand.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Or Benjamin Franklin, for that matter.
Merlin: Hit your kids every day.
Merlin: If you don't know what it's for, they will.
Merlin: That also does for Target bins.
Merlin: Target bins.
John: Yeah, in this case, I found these bins that I bought with no sense of what they were for, and then I realized what they were for.
John: It is they are for Band-Aids, and they are for itch cream, and they are for, like, pseudoephedrine tablets that are... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: All those hafniosporins, right?
John: You remember how important pseudoephedrine was to us both.
Merlin: I've had a lot of ephedrine in my life.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: A lot.
John: Yeah.
John: I use it as a kind of cure-all.
John: And, of course, you can't get it in Europe.
John: They won't sell it to you in Germany.
John: And so when I realized that it was a thing that was hard to get, and especially after they started putting it behind the counter because of the meth problem, I started to stockpile it because I'm a stockpiler.
Merlin: It's so funny to say that.
Merlin: I didn't want to take my, I won't get into it, but I've got this bullshit for ADHD that doesn't help me at all.
Merlin: And I knew I didn't, it was too late.
John: That works on your ADHD.
Merlin: No, it doesn't.
Merlin: It doesn't have any stimulants.
Merlin: It's bullshit.
Merlin: It's pilot pills.
Merlin: It sucks.
Merlin: Is it guamfacine?
Merlin: No, that stuff is bullshit.
Merlin: That's the cough suppressant they used to put into ephedrine to make it seem like medicine instead of speed.
Merlin: And it made the pills big, and it was super annoying.
Merlin: But wait, what was my point?
Merlin: What were we talking about?
Merlin: Pseudo-ephedrine?
Merlin: Oh, so all I had was I had Claritin D's.
Merlin: Now, Claritin D is nuts.
Merlin: Claritin D is also a behind-the-counter still, because it's got whatever that is.
Merlin: You buy regular Claritin at the Walgreens?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That doesn't do shit.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Claritin D will give you a little kick.
Merlin: It's probably more kick than you would prefer.
Merlin: But, you know, it's like Imodium.
Merlin: You've got to have them around because they need to be deployed.
Merlin: But just for what it's worth, I had some over-the-counter Claritin this morning.
Merlin: Oh, you did?
Merlin: You took a little bit this morning.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, it's complicated.
Merlin: You know, it's really complicated the way the body works.
Merlin: Anyhow, you've got your bins.
Merlin: Can I ask what size bin we're talking about here?
Merlin: What size target bin are we talking about?
Merlin: Does it fit in a linen closet?
John: No, these bins will fit in a drawer.
John: They're little bins.
John: I need little bins is what I've learned about myself.
John: Little bins.
John: I need little pouches in little bins.
John: If you put something in a little pouch, then it can go in a little bin.
Merlin: Well, this goes very much toward one of the most important technologies of my entire life, which is bag-in-a-bag.
John: A bag-in-a-bag.
Merlin: I run my whole life off of bag-in-a-bag, but continue.
John: Well, Susan does, too.
John: You always know where stuff is, then.
John: When she packs her suitcase, what she's really packing is 15 bags that go in the suitcase, and a lot of the bags have bags in them.
John: Merlin's bag-in-a-bag technology.
John: I have a lot of bags, but when I pack, I don't use bags.
John: The bags are, I don't know why I have so many bags.
John: Because you enjoy them.
John: I do, I do.
John: I feel like a bag has to be a metaphor, right?
John: Isn't there something magic?
John: You put something in a bag.
Merlin: A bag is a wonderful combination of possibility and constraint.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's very constraining.
Merlin: It's a little wound.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you pick a bag for a purpose, it's still got all the possibilities of taking you anywhere you want to go in the world, but it's still governed.
Merlin: And if you're really good with the bags, you learn bag-in-a-bag tricks further down.
Merlin: Like, well, on your outbound mission, don't fill everything all the way up.
John: Oh, because you're going to get some stuff.
Merlin: Yeah, and this is why, for example, I carry a 19-gallon folded-up IKEA blue Fracta bag whenever I travel.
Merlin: Because, you know, instant bag.
Merlin: Anyways, but it's a nice combination, though.
Merlin: Like, think about the world, but also then think about what you're not packing for.
John: I feel like your bags are a constraint, but also a world of infinite possibility.
John: It made me suddenly realize that the human body is just a bag full of bags.
John: Whoa.
Merlin: I think that might be, are you talking about like organ systems?
Merlin: Organs are just bags inside of a larger bag.
Merlin: And then the vagus nerve is kind of like a Cat6 Ethernet cable that runs through all the bags.
Merlin: That runs through all the bags.
Merlin: Keep them all.
Merlin: Connect goes through your butt.
John: And a lot of the bags have littler systems inside of them.
John: And, you know, you can't.
Merlin: John, let me ask you a question.
Merlin: What's a long?
Go ahead.
Merlin: what's a lung what's a bag of little there's little bags inside of a big bag you're way ahead of me alveoli you've got tiny little bags inside of a bag and that's your goddamn lung and you got two of them but don't fill them both don't fill them both right you're gonna want to leave a little bit there's stuff in france you're gonna want in case you're yeah in case you have to climb some stairs yes i think it's called alveoli i might have remembered that wrong
Merlin: But if there's anything that's a bag, I think that's one of them.
Merlin: What about you got, where's your urine go?
Merlin: You got a bladder?
Merlin: I think that's just Latin for bag.
John: Bladder is Latin for bag.
John: It's the infinitive verb to bag, bladder.
John: If you think about your stomach, it's a bag.
John: If you think about your intestines.
Merlin: That's obviously a bag.
Merlin: What about you got two different intestines?
Merlin: You got the outer and the inner intestines.
John: Those are big bags.
Merlin: Big bags, small bags.
John: Slender bags.
John: Slender bags.
John: He was a great guitar player.
Merlin: Two, three, four.
Merlin: What about veins and artilleries?
Merlin: What about all the ways that your blood gets around?
Merlin: That's a kind of narrow bag.
Merlin: Heart's a bag.
Merlin: Heart's a muscle bag.
John: Like it's the kind of bag that you use to frost a cake.
Merlin: Do you think it's a way of externalizing?
Merlin: Like we're born like this.
Merlin: We woke up like this.
Merlin: We've got body bags, so to speak.
Merlin: And then do you think the acquisition of bags that go externally could just be an adaptation?
No.
John: Well, I've always felt like when I sit down to a big plate of pasta with tomato sauce, that what it really is is you're tricking your primitive brain into thinking that it's sitting down to a meal of raw entrails.
Merlin: And you're giving your eye... I've watched enough Walking Dead to know.
Merlin: That is, at least according to what I've learned from the AMC TV show, The Walking Dead, that is very much what guts look like, especially from a zombie.
Okay.
Merlin: Right.
John: And I've seen enough dead birds.
Merlin: You're like a lion, right?
John: You're like a lion.
John: Yeah, I get it.
John: I get it.
John: Or like the way a tiger.
Merlin: Tiger puts his forepaws on your shoulder and then runs on your tummy with its back legs, and now it's spaghetti night.
Merlin: Campfire of spaghetti party.
John: That's right.
John: That's how they get you.
John: Well, in my case, I do wonder whether when I pack a suitcase, what I'm really doing is filling up a human body with all of the organs.
Merlin: That it needs for travel.
John: Yeah, and then I have my little doppelganger, my little human torso.
John: That's how you get the word dopkit.
John: Short for doppelganger.
John: It comes from doppelganger.
John: Right.
John: And I have four or five complete dopp kits over here on my dining room table.
John: The problem is, now that I've spread out all... Wait, hang on.
Merlin: So really, in some ways, what you've done right now is like a... You've done some medical exam or some Quincy shit.
Merlin: on the magic table, right?
Merlin: You've got a lot of, you've been taking it out, weighing the liver and shit like that.
Merlin: What kind of a doctor is this, Sam?
Merlin: That type situation?
John: Yeah, it's like the transparent pages in an old set of encyclopedias.
John: I love those.
John: The visible man.
John: The visible man.
John: Oh, fuck, yes.
John: But the thing about it is, of course, that all this bath stuff, that not only do I have all the tubes from having a young child,
John: But I also have all the dop kits and all of the pseudoephedrine-like packages of someone who traveled for a living for 20 years.
John: And so every single packet of pseudoephedrines has five pills taken out of it.
John: because that's the one that I used on some trip, and then when I got back, that dopp kit went to the bottom of some closet, and then the pseudoephedrine tablets that I had on the counter, I was using it separately.
John: And that's true of all the toothpaste and all of the dental floss.
John: It's not that I would go to the store and buy a new one every day, it's that I would be in London and I would have to get a new toothbrush or a new package of this or that.
John: Now, what am I supposed to do with it all?
John: You can't.
John: I had a conversation last night at dinner about whether or not you can take two toothpaste tubes and stick them nose to nose and squirt one toothpaste into the other.
Merlin: In the restaurant industry, we call that marrying.
John: Marrying.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Can you marry a toothpaste?
Merlin: You marry your ketchups.
Merlin: And you're saying head to head, mano a mano, paste to paste.
Merlin: Can we just squeeze one of these boys into the other?
John: And this was a topic at dinner where some of the people confessed to, even now, combining toothpaste tubes in a marrying type scenario.
John: I thought there was already a pretty well-known analogy about this.
Merlin: Was there?
Merlin: Didn't people in a different time say you can't put toothpaste back in a tube?
Merlin: They're saying after it's been decanted, right?
Merlin: Obviously, if you've made a nice big plate of spaghetti with toothpaste on it, you can't get it back in the tube.
Merlin: But if we got them end-to-end, I'll bet you there's a 3D thing I could print for you that would marry your paste.
John: If it's still in a tube, it's not out of the tube, and you're just transferring.
John: It's like a space station thing.
Merlin: Aristotle would have loved this.
John: Yeah.
John: All of this is just like the International Space Station.
John: You're just combining a Russian pod with an American pod and trying to get it to fit.
John: You need special bolts.
John: You need an adapter.
Merlin: Everybody, please remember we're doing only metric.
John: No Imperial, please.
Merlin: It's caused us some problems in the past.
John: There's only two countries that have ever been to space, and yet the two of them could not collaborate on what a port looks like.
Merlin: Ain't that a pickle?
John: Yeah, it's a real pickle.
Merlin: It's even hard to agree on holes.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: I've got a bunch of COVID tests here.
Merlin: There's an elephant in my room that I'm just going to ask you.
Merlin: And this actually leads to potentially a whole other question.
Merlin: The whole other question is, do you ever notice any strong differences in your households about what an expiration date means?
Merlin: But before we even get to that, did you look at the little butt of the Neosporin and check the date on them?
Merlin: Did you look at the date on everything that has a date?
Merlin: Because sometimes that'll tell you right away what to do with it.
John: I do look at dates because it's interesting from an archaeological standpoint.
Merlin: Well, it's interesting in terms of your life.
Merlin: You could go, oh, if this expired in 2006, then I was probably using it in 2004.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Kind of, right?
John: Well, so after I had all this stuff spread out on the table, on the magic table, when I arrived at a place where I realized I needed more bins, and I arrived at a place where I also didn't know exactly what to do with like five tubes of Neosporin, half tubes of Neosporin,
John: What I did was go back down into the garage and see the multiple, multiple bins that said cables and adapters.
John: And I said, you know what I really need to do right now is dig into that.
John: You need to duct tape those and put them on the curb.
Merlin: There's nothing, I can promise you.
Merlin: There'll be two things in there you think you need.
Merlin: There'll be two things that get you excited about what's in there, but I can almost promise you you can duct tape it and put it on the curb.
Merlin: What about all those lightning cables you bought a few years ago, John?
Merlin: How are those going?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: So I open up the box, and this is one of the boxes, and I start pulling stuff out.
John: I have an entire box of cables that plug into the cigarette lighter of a car,
John: that charge something.
John: And it's a huge box, an astonishing box, because, again, traveling, you're like, oh, I forgot my cable.
John: And so all you're doing, you're in a truck all day.
John: All you do is you go get something that plugs into a cigarette.
John: Unfortunately, they don't sell those anywhere, so you're stuck with just that one.
John: Just the one.
Merlin: But I have this enormous box of them, and that is something I looked at, and I was like, this can just go.
Merlin: Well, okay, but step back.
Merlin: How did we get there?
Merlin: Because the worst kind of, well, not the worst kind, one of the less valuable kinds of, quote, organizing you can do is just putting a bunch of undifferentiated
Merlin: stuff of unknown value into the same box and then closing it.
Merlin: So it feels like you've done something.
Merlin: But what if you had a box that was just all expired Neosporin?
Merlin: Technically, I mean, super expired.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about, though.
Merlin: Just because you've got all the rotten vegetables out of your CRISPR doesn't make you organized.
Merlin: You should throw that away.
Merlin: Don't put that back in and it's like organizing your recycling.
Merlin: It's no sense.
John: Well, so what's crazy about the lightning connector
John: is that, what is it now?
John: It made it at least 10 years, right?
John: 12, 13 years?
Merlin: I only have, I think, I think I have, I know I have one thing that requires lightning, and almost everything else is USB-C.
Merlin: But when I go into one of my, and just to be clear, John, one of my numerous,
Merlin: oh God, I wish we could do five episodes on this.
Merlin: I discovered something that Costco sells, which is a kind of collapsible box.
Merlin: And it's the worst thing I could have possibly gotten because it's perfect for your, it's perfect for, so like imagine, imagine that kind of box where like if you push in the, you know, the sides where the handles are, you push those in and it lifts up and then the other sides fold down and it becomes a flat box when it's not a box.
Merlin: So you could keep it in your car.
Merlin: But like, because I said to myself, I'm going to get some of these because that way I won't have all these big rigid boxes.
Whew.
Merlin: I don't know if that was a good thing, but I've got so many things full of cables plus whatever.
Merlin: It might have a Mac mini in it, but what I'm looking for is one specific kind of cable.
Merlin: I'm looking for like a this to that cable, but like, yeah, most of it's USB-C.
Merlin: Almost everything I pick out of that thing is lightning.
Merlin: I don't know how I've accumulated so many lightning, like USB-C or A to lightning cables.
John: I've got so many.
John: This is, I think, one of the things about not throwing stuff away is that going into this box, because you're an early adapter.
John: I'm an early adapter, for sure.
Merlin: No, I agree.
John: And when USB-C, or no, what did you say?
John: Yeah, USB-C came out.
John: That's kind of the main one now, yeah.
John: Yeah, but of course I was offended by it at first.
John: You're still mad about it.
Merlin: We're not even talking about 30 pin jacks.
John: I know.
Merlin: Remember how mad you were when we went from 30-pin to lightning?
John: You were mad about that for two years.
John: I was, and it's so funny that I still thought of lightning as the new kind of adapter.
John: But I'm going through these boxes, and I'm finding all these lightning cables.
John: You remember about the early lightning cables, that they're all frayed.
Merlin: They break real easy, and if you look at almost all of them will have a mark on one of those four little contacts that looks a little bit like somebody drew on it with a crayon.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Did you know that?
Merlin: Well, that's, that's corrosion over time.
John: Oh, corrosion over time.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You can just throw those right away.
John: What I found was, because what happens is you don't change everything all at once, right?
John: You get a new one.
John: One of the things phrase, you get a new one, but you still, I still kept the one that was a little damaged because I only had two.
John: Yeah.
John: And that was the one that I kept by the bed or something that I wasn't going to use all the time.
John: And then I got a new one and the better one went next to the bed and then the shabby one went to the third place and then it went into a drawer.
John: So it went through a process before it went into the drawer.
John: Now what it should have done is gone into the garbage, but it went into the drawer and then it went into the box marked cables.
John: But pulling them all out and realizing, oh, this actually is a record.
John: Of every lightning cable I've had since 2012.
John: And I'm astonished by A, how many I had.
John: B, how many of them went all the way to being unusably damaged, almost dangerous before they were replaced.
John: But you're still operating on that old principle of I need to keep these.
John: Until last night, with the Neosporin tubes throbbing on the magic table upstairs, I'm down in the garage actually throwing lightning cables into the garbage.
John: It's so freeing.
John: And it was lovely, but also I was marking... Because there are still things in this house that need it.
John: Like, I have a...
John: Maybe you can explain this John Sir Cusa certainly has some opinions about it I'm sure but the but the the mouse That came with one of my computer.
John: Is it the one we have to flip it over?
John: You have to flip it over to charge it and it only charges by lightning and I my daughter and I sit and say this to each other all the time It's become like a little shibboleth between us.
John: Yeah one will say to the other Why do you need a wireless mouse?
John: And then we'll both kind of stare out the window.
Merlin: Because you can't plug it in and use it.
John: It's the most insane design decision.
John: And so every time she's like, oh, I need to do my homework, she goes downstairs.
John: It's kind of like having a car.
John: It's like having a car you would have to flip over and plug in.
John: And plug in.
John: And then she comes back up five minutes later and she's like, with her shoulders slumped, and she's like, the mouse is dead.
John: Because neither of us remember when you're done on the computer to plug the mouse back in, to flip it over on its back like a dead turtle and plug it in.
John: And then she'll go, why do we need a wireless mouse?
John: And I'll go, why do we need a wireless mouse?
John: And then we'll both stare out the window.
John: But so I need a lightning cable because I have this legacy wireless mouse that's not even that old, but old enough.
John: Yeah.
John: So anyway, I have a few of these cables left, but Merlin, I have all of these cables with connectors.
John: that I don't even remember.
John: Like connectors that are going into Firewire 400.
John: I know, 400, 800.
Merlin: But the irony of that in some ways is that, I mean, one of my practices, I'm not recommending this, but this is just a rule of thumb for me.
Merlin: If I don't remember what an app does on my phone, I'll often delete it.
John: If you don't remember what an app does.
Merlin: Because you can always get it back.
Merlin: But here's the thing with cables.
Merlin: There's the cables where you know what it does.
Merlin: Like, oh my gosh, this is a Thunderbolt 5 or 4 cable.
Merlin: It's really expensive.
Merlin: It's a really nice cable.
Merlin: Obviously, that's way over here in the modern necessary cables area.
Merlin: And then at the farther end, you've got 30 pin things with that little, you know, those weird, you'll never need that.
Merlin: But in between, the irony is sometimes you run anywhere.
Merlin: I'm not sure what that's for.
Merlin: It's got a weird label on it.
Merlin: And I'm not sure what it means.
Merlin: In some ways, I'm much more likely to keep it if it's a weird cable.
Merlin: Because then I think, well, if I don't know what that is, it's got to be special.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: And I can't stand the idea of not having it if I might need it.
John: You didn't keep all the computers.
John: You're saying there's a Mac Mini in the bottom of a drawer somewhere and you don't even remember what it was or what's on it?
John: Or do you wipe everything as soon as you transition?
Merlin: Well, I don't.
Merlin: I don't and I should.
Merlin: I've got so many laptops with bulging batteries like in the garage that are just freaking me out.
Merlin: No, in that case, that was a good known Mac Mini that I still like a lot, but I didn't find the use for it that I was expecting.
Merlin: And so it's just in one of those liminal spaces that just never ends.
Merlin: Now it's in that box with other things.
Merlin: There's a phrase I heard a while back.
Merlin: I think I'm using this correctly.
Merlin: Have you ever heard of the IKEA effect?
John: I don't think so.
Merlin: It's a neat phrase, and it's the idea that we... It's a cognitive bias that says we tend to put an exaggerated amount of value into things that we feel like we helped build.
Merlin: Oh, so if you put together a shelf... You're more attached to a Billy bookcase that you made yourself than an equally not that fancy bookcase you just bought.
Merlin: And the things... I'm not using that.
Merlin: I'm not trying to, like...
Merlin: Say that is exactly what I'm saying here.
Merlin: But what I am saying is I think that's one problem with organization is that we impugn, not impugn, we confer.
Merlin: Impart.
Merlin: Yeah, impart.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: We confer value on anything we organize.
Merlin: Because whether our brain realizes it or not, we're saying it's worth keeping.
Merlin: We skipped the step of whether it's worth keeping and gone straight.
Merlin: So I'm not saying this is you, but for me, I need to be careful.
Merlin: It's a known issue that the IKEA effect here is like, okay, I have held this in my hand in the last two years, and it goes, and now it's organized in the organized thing.
Merlin: And now I have all this organized shit I will never touch again.
Merlin: But then that also leads to anti-patterns like, okay, I got all of my Gerber utility knives in one place, but now I can't find that, so I've lost 11 knives.
Merlin: LAUGHTER
Merlin: Which is arguably, I mean, that's a contender for the worst kind of organization.
Merlin: Now I've lost all the knives.
Merlin: They're such good knives.
Merlin: And I think, oh, I... So, you know, like, you know, Oxo scissors, Gerber knives.
Merlin: These are things I deploy around the house.
John: Well, so I do now have every tube of Neosporin in one bin.
John: Oh, my God.
John: That must feel so good.
John: It does, except if I go traveling...
John: I'm going to forget to put a Neosporin in whatever magic.
John: You're in London.
Merlin: You buy another one.
Merlin: It's Neosporin with a U in it.
John: You buy that, bring it home.
Merlin: You got half a Neosporin here.
John: Right.
John: So I don't want to do that.
John: But this is the survival kit.
John: This is the small bag packed problem.
John: which is in order to have a small bag packed be effective, you need one in the car.
John: You need one inside the front door.
John: You need one on your person at all times.
John: You know, like the last thing you know.
Merlin: I mean, like I'm not trying to be cute about this, but first of all, that concept, however silly or not, we tend to think about, oh, like you're going to be pursued.
Merlin: But the small bag is not a bad idea in any way.
Merlin: Anybody who's ever had a pregnant person in the house learns you have a small bag packed because you don't get to pick when the baby decides to come.
Merlin: But also, can I just say, it's very conducive to bag in a bag.
Merlin: Because the real success to keep a small bag packed, right, is what you're describing.
Merlin: Which is like, well, we know, I know there's almost everything that I could need if I'm in a car and trying to get out of town before the UFOs.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And inside that bag might be other bags or metaphorical bags.
John: This is the everyday carry thing where there are, I guess, a thousand websites of people.
John: Yeah, they love that stuff.
John: Yeah, they're laying it out and they're like, I carry fishing line with me everywhere I go in case.
John: In case the shit comes down, the drones off the coast of New Jersey decide that this is the day and I'm going to need to fish to survive.
John: And I'm going to be so mad if I left my fishing line in a bag in the car that got vaporized.
Merlin: So the only thing more frustrating than not having something you know you have and need, the only thing worse than that is the anxiety about never wanting to feel that feeling.
Merlin: And this is where I'm reminded of that wonderful scene in Seinfeld when they're going to go to L.A.
Merlin: and George shows up with all the bags.
Merlin: Remember when Jerry says to him, who are you, Diana Ross?
John: Yeah, because George doesn't think they sell toilet paper in L.A.
Merlin: Because he needs to be able to dress for the many moods of George.
Merlin: This is Morning Mist.
Merlin: But that's me anyway.
Merlin: My compulsion is I've got all this stuff and see also Ikea effect.
Merlin: I have organized all this shit that I 50% don't need.
Merlin: I'll be so bummed if I'm at this hotel somewhere and I didn't bring sunscreen or I didn't bring the most appropriate cable or stuff like that.
John: Oh my god, the sunscreens around here.
John: You could build a new house just out of the sunscreen bottles.
Merlin: It does help to see them all in one place just so you can throw them away.
John: I did used to say to the guys when we first started touring and they would show up at the airport for a trip to Europe with bags that I was like, listen, guys.
John: Like Kate Winslet show up with steamer trucks.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, listen, they do sell toilet paper in Europe.
John: They use it there.
John: I can confirm they use it all the time.
John: But also all this stuff, you know, toothpaste, all this.
John: You don't need to.
John: We can just get it at the airport.
John: But that's why you end up with five tubes of Neosporin and 15 half-used toothpaste.
John: None of the systems are perfect.
John: Let's just admit it.
John: What I can't do, and you can help me with this right now.
John: This is your opportunity, Merlin.
Okay.
John: I cannot fill up a small garbage can with half used toothpastes and just get on with my life because I, a don't believe in expiration dates.
John: I think it's a scam.
John: Totally a scam.
John: I believe that you should use things.
John: Somebody said to me the other day, do you, did you ever take a course of malaria pills?
John: And I was like, sure.
John: And then as I'm going through my bins, I find my old malarial pill.
John: And I'm like, look at that.
John: I found the malarial pills.
John: I sent a picture of them to the person that was asking, look at that.
John: I found that you were just asking about these and I found these pills.
John: And they wrote back and said, well, you know, they're good for 15 years.
John: And I said, well, look, these malarial pills are only 10 years old.
Merlin: But the thinking is, isn't the thinking in some ways, I would never be madder at myself than if I got malaria tomorrow and didn't have my malarial pills that were right there yesterday.
Merlin: I'd feel like such an idiot.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: The 19 cents it cost me to get some quinine.
Merlin: I can't do that.
Merlin: I need to make sure I have my legacy pills.
John: And what I should do right now is take this kitchen garbage can.
John: So part of me is, well, what is this worth?
John: What is the value?
John: What is the monetary value of all this half-used 15-year-old toothpaste?
John: The monetary value, as you and I both know, is zero.
John: There's no resale value to it.
Merlin: But you're also basically paying rent for cubic inches of shit you know is shit.
John: Right.
John: Which does have a cost, a non-monetary cost.
John: But that's a cost, right?
John: Not a value.
John: Right.
John: And also, if I needed toothpaste right now,
John: would i would i go to one of these where the toothpaste has separated into a kind of viscous fluid and like a granular what i need to i've never heard of this brand name and it says it has lead in it it's it only expired in 1998. i found oh my god the best thing i found was a little vial a little tiny tiny little medicine bottle
John: of nitroglycerin pills that were prescribed to my father when he had a heart attack in 1973.
John: And I opened it, and the cotton swab that was in the top of it had become kind of fused with the rust of the cap, because this nitroglycerin bottle went with my dad from 1973
John: He clearly had it with him his entire life until he died in 2007.
John: He got them from around the time of the Watergate hearing.
John: That's right.
John: And in 2007, when he died, they were sitting in some damp bathroom and went into a bag.
John: And that bag went to me.
John: And then I took it.
John: So, of course, you stored it under the checks from 1962.
John: From 1962, which I also have.
John: And all of his Band-Aids that have become, you know, where the Band-Aids.
John: Ooh, old Band-Aids can be really gross.
John: They get very dark.
John: They get weird, right?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, they do get weird.
John: And somehow, this little bottle of nitroglycerin pills managed to survive.
John: It's kind of like one of those little bots in Star Wars or some little science fiction thing that just kind of attaches itself to the bottom of a spaceship, and it's so small nobody notices it.
John: And then it... And it found its way here, and I'm opening it for the first time...
John: in at least 30 years, because my dad, there are still 200 nitroglycerin tablets, because they're microscopic little things.
John: They're really small, right?
John: They're really small, and they're in this little bottle.
John: Isn't that what dynamite's made of?
John: That's what dynamites, or it's, yeah, you could, I don't know if you could light them on fire.
John: I don't, I don't, I don't know.
John: That's a good question.
John: It's gotta be the same stuff.
John: But so here I have this little thing.
John: It's got, and on this tiny little label, it's got the date.
John: It's got his doctor's name.
John: It says, it says, you know, says take one.
John: If you're, I don't know, out of breath or whatever it is.
John: If you have trouble with your heart bag.
John: At this point, this little guy has passed well beyond being an artifact into being a fetish item.
John: Like, it's become a little god.
Merlin: Well, yeah, I guess.
Merlin: Is it like what Garing got?
Merlin: Is it like one of those little vial things with stuff in it?
Merlin: Yeah, it's got little pills.
Merlin: I would throw that shit out and then keep it.
Merlin: Is it brass?
Merlin: Well, no, I kept it with the pills.
Merlin: I put the little cotton ball back in it.
Merlin: You can let the pills go, probably, right?
John: Why?
John: Why would I?
John: The whole magic is in the pills.
Merlin: You're breaking up the set, yeah.
John: And so I put it, I actually moved it out of the medicine bags, off the magic table, and I put it on the little shelf...
John: of little worship items associated with my dad in the bookcase the one you know it's got a it's got a picture of him it's got his pilot's license it's got all these little things oh wow and and so now the little bottle of that's nice i like that does it have like does it have like a loop for a keychain
John: No, but, I mean, that would be interesting.
John: Do people wear it around their neck?
John: How do people do it?
John: I guess he just kept it, you know, you remember how men used to keep things inside the inner jacket pocket of their jacket that men wore every day?
John: Absolutely.
John: I found some great shit in those pockets.
John: A lot of good matchbooks.
John: Yeah, I found a pack of cigarettes in a jacket I bought the other day.
John: Wow.
John: A pack of cigarettes from the Philippines in an extra large leather jacket, which I haven't been to the Philippines.
John: But there's a story there.
John: Oh, I'll say.
John: But so, you know, just tracing the life of this nitroglycerin bottle.
John: That of all the things that survived, of all of the little remora that attached themselves to my dad, the eels that he carried before they were even eels, before he even thought of eels.
John: But here's this little bottle that went from pocket to pocket to medicine cabinet to medicine cabinet.
John: And thinking back, some of my earliest memories, that little bottle was in the medicine cabinet.
John: where I'm like, daddy, daddy, and he's like, I'm watching MASH.
John: The little bottle is just feet away, sitting next to the sink, and in a way, this little medicine cabinet bottle has followed me my whole life.
John: Yeah.
John: And now, I mean, I know for one thing for sure is when I die, my daughter will put all of this in a bin and shoot it into space the day, the day that I die.
Merlin: Oh, I know you're sad right now.
Merlin: So Auntie Susan's going to help one large arm sweep across the magical table into a giant husky trash can.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: It'll be super train.
Yeah.
John: Super train will just come in.
Merlin: We knew it was going to happen all along.