9. Orphans on the Roof

AlexThis is Do By Friday, the weekly challenge podcast from Merlin Mann, Alex Cox, and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, take a nap.

MerlinHello.

Speaker AHello. Good afternoon. Hi Merlin. Wow, really rude of you to call us back so late. I'm so sorry. I got really busy with my card game. Wow.

MaxWell, technically it's not the card game that I work on. It's the Seafall, which is the Euro-style oceanic exploration campaign that I'm in the middle of.

Speaker AOh, bad on me. Is it like a German board game, Max? Well, yeah. It is like a German board game, actually. Yes. Yep. What of it? They call it BoardGammscheissa.

Maxso we we had the uh so we had the cards uh retreat last week and i am i well we'll get further into this when we start talking about napping and stuff but i'm all fucked up from this retreat because it's like uh so all the guys come in town and we just like uh agonize over uh cards and cards against humanity we talk about every single card in the game and decide whether it stays or goes and we're pouring over data and writing and just like basically like running ourselves ragged we work like you know i don't know like 16 17 hours a day sitting in the same room together for like 10 days until we all go insane and uh we had we came up with this sort of

interesting thought experiment I would like to pose to both of you which is let's say that there was a party that lasted for 10 days would you would you and you were attending this party

Alexhow long would you last 24 hours a day partying oh there are so many factors that like this isn't Okay, so are we talking, can you give us some examples? Like, is it a party with, like, five of your closest friends? Or is it, like, our New Year's Eve party? That's, like, over 100 people.

MerlinYeah, like, are there projects? Do you have to, like, decorate a bear or something?

MaxThat's a great question. I haven't stipulated so much in the thought experiment. Let's see. I'm going to say that, so, like, our New Year's Eve party, it's funny that you hold that up as an example of, like, a crazy party because there's people sitting around playing board games and there's craft projects. Oh, no, no, no.

AlexWell, that's the thing about our New Year's Eve party.

MaxIt's not like a rager, right?

AlexThe reason I bring it up is am I a host of the party?

MaxIt is a rager if you're you, Alex.

AlexOh, God. I was wondering if that was going to come up.

MaxCan I eat this coaster? Alex was arm wrestling people.

AlexAnd winning.

MaxAnd winning. Very strong. Yeah, it was great.

AlexI don't remember that actually

MaxThere was a Hamilton rap You and Mel were doing a Hamilton rap Oh you love that

AlexI do but if I was hosting a party

Speaker AAre you guys familiar with Hamilton? It's a musical Is that the historical musical mix with the rapping? It is It's quite popular

AlexAlso he wrote Bring It On Which nobody remembers or enjoys Which is based on The movie Bring It On But if I was hosting a party for 10 days I think I could last because that's kind of my job in some like like when we go to conferences, we sometimes have just like 10 day parties. And well, OK. Man, now I'm really thinking. So would you last in your ideal conditions?

MaxWould you let's just let's just stipulate that it's like it's not a party that's like custom tailored for you to have fun at. It's like a party that you would go to. Like, you know, like in Chicago, there's like New Year's Eve parties that you can like wait in line and you get into you pay. and you get into? Yeah, I mean like a party, party.

AlexNo, so I would last zero minutes.

MaxYou'd turn around and leave immediately?

MerlinWell, I mean, I have a heuristic for this. And that is, like, let's say, I mean, to me an easy way to kind of shortcut this is to go think about the most fun you've ever had at parties. And, like, who was at those parties? Like, what were you doing? So I can just say, like, if I think about, like, the parties, some parties in college, especially parties after college. Like we used to do a thing where like a bunch of friends would get together at my house actually for New Year's Eve. And it was like it was like a two day thing. I'm going to say one question.

Do I sleep or is it a certifiable Rage-A-Rama 24-7 for 10 days?

MaxGreat question. I think if you're going to sleep. OK. Have you guys seen Breaking Bad? No. What's that? You know how in the season where Jesse's real sad, he has the party in his apartment that goes for like the entire season. Oh, yeah. People live in his apartment. and there's it's like the music's always playing and they're always doing meth and dancing and partying but also people are sleeping so i think it's that i'm gonna say if it is a standard

Merlingovernment issue party that i'm enjoying like a lot and i'm younger and i have uh stimulants i'm gonna say 18 hours easy i think by day three i'm gonna be wilting regardless of how much fun I'm having because now I'm thinking about like with all due respect the family things where there's always somebody walking around and doing stuff and like getting a water and using the bathroom and like after four days of proximity to lots of people I get really introverted so

that's I mean you know I mean if it's like an ongoing fun rolling jesse party and I'm hopped up on goofballs you know i could have fun for three days but if it's a rage of rama straight through i'm gonna say 18 hours i could not do 10 days that would be tough and who take care of my

Alexkid that's well i keep thinking like at any party i've ever been at i've never followed like any of the rules because like 10 minutes in i'm in my phone uh in a corner or with a cat or doing something so it's really if we are talking about that jesse party i would just take like a tiny bit of meth go into the corner um and start reading Moby Dick and then you know nine days later I'd probably be fine but if it but if it's like um you know like you're saying Max you're in

just the same room with people like you can sleep and you can eat and pee and whatever but you just have to be in the same room with the same people I I will not go to that party a retreat to me is

Merlinbasically a professional abduction they try and make it sound fun oh it's gonna be great it's gonna be a working vacation and you go and like and you're just in proximity to these people that like you're uh what's uh ron swanson's phrase your uh workplace proximity companions you know workplace proximity associates that's it that's it um so i mean work things and it sounds like you guys get on but what you're describing max i don't want to change the subject here but what you're describing sounds exhausting like having to think about funny things in that environment

it seems like you would really need breaks to just be able to just do the de minimis you know loveless work of trying to make things funnier uh you think that do you guys just you just guys

Speaker Ajust i mean you seem like a harsh taskmaster let's be honest but like you you just got to

Maxgrind through it uh yeah i mean this is always how we've worked on the game is like it used to that we would come home from winter break in college and we'd be in one of our parents' basements and that was the time we had was between when we came home and when we went back to school and that was all we had to work on the game. Can I ask a follow-up question? Yes, yes.

MerlinWhen you're thinking, you and your, and I don't know that much about how you guys operate as a company, but when you're figuring out if somebody's going to be a good hire, are there things that you look for How do you decide if somebody is right for the team in terms of just how they roll, but also in terms of how they're going to respond to being abducted into a room to be funny for several days? How do you vet them?

MaxSo interesting fact. So there are no employees at these retreats. This is the eight original creators of Cards Against Humanity who I've known since kindergarten. Wow. Yeah. So there's no employees there. It's all the people who own the company. And we get together about two or three times a year and seal ourself into a room and eat, take out, and fart. write jokes until we go insane.

Speaker ADid any of you ever date the same people in the past? No, actually. Okay. That makes it easier.

AlexHow is that possible?

MaxWell, you have to keep in mind that none of us dated anyone until we all went to different colleges. Yeah. We are unlovable dorks. Yeah. So that, you know, it makes the math a lot easier. But, yeah, but I mean, it's not a party. Like, I don't want it's like I also just want to be clear, like it's not a working vacation because there's no vacation aspect of it. It's just a working work. And the most fun we have is like we we we usually try and like schedule a couple of like fancy dinners. But we're pretty cranky when we go out. But it's like at least it's something to like get out of the building.

But other than that, it's like, yeah, it's like we work until we're exhausted and then we pass out. We go to our people go to the hotel or in this case, I go to my house and everyone passes out. and then you wake up slightly too early and shower for five minutes and run to the office and you're back in it and you start again.

MerlinDo you bring bagels?

MaxYeah, yeah. Okay, that's nice. Yeah, yeah. All the food is delivered, so we don't have to worry about it. Are you listening to music? Sometimes. We listen to a little bit of instrumental music. Sometimes we have to like, we have like quiet, we take like a 20 minute to like quietly go through the spreadsheet and everyone like highlights cards that they want to discuss and we'll listen to some music then. But otherwise, it's just repetitive, just sitting there having these sort of circular looping conversations. I don't know. It's kind of weird. But somehow I'm able to make it through this, but I wouldn't do very well on the week-long party.

I think I'd call my parents to pick me up within a half hour. Oh, yeah. I'd faint an injury.

AlexWhat's the longest party you... Oh, well, quick note. I will say that this year seemed like a very special retreat because there was a baby and there were two air fresheners in that room. It was very exciting for the employees.

MaxOh, the fart suckers?

AlexYeah.

MaxYeah, we had two industrial. Those were very impressive. Two industrial fart suckers in the room. It did not hold up to the Jewish smorgasbord, the deli that we had every day and then all of our stuff.

MerlinYou're going to get a lot of gout, too. And so this sounds like this is like a known issue without saying too much because obviously y'all are friends and you got to work together. Are you able to track it down to a couple really bad offenders or are you just going to assume that everybody farts a little? Is there anybody making a particularly fruity dog fart that you can really identify and kind of track him down, take him aside? You say, let's cut back a little bit on the Brussels sprouts. Let's just drink more water.

MaxYeah. No, it's all of us. I mean, I contribute to the problem. It's like a lot like global warming. It's like, well, I'm not the worst out there. I mean, I don't own like a coal company, but I'm complicit. I mean, you know.

MerlinYeah, you buy a new Tesla and, you know, all the resources that go into making a Tesla, you know, you better just keep your old gas guzzler. Or in this case, you know, not fart salamis. That's complicated. Now, what's your answer? What's your answer, Max? You sound like a party animal. You like to get out there with some EDM and dance to some sick beats.

What's your estimate?

MaxI don't know how to dance.

MerlinOh, everybody knows how to dance, Max?

MaxNot I. I don't know. I've never been to a dancing party. Or maybe I think I went to prom. But I didn't really dance. What was the theme? I don't think there was a theme. Really? Yeah, no.

MerlinWhat about you, Alex? Did you have a theme at your prom?

AlexNo. That sounds super tacky and awful.

MerlinYeah, it was.

AlexWhat was your theme?

MerlinI went to two proms. Oh, well, well. What's funny? You're the coolest one here. I'm just jealous.

Speaker AI have to system a little bit for one prom.

MerlinWait a minute.

Speaker AYou went to two proms?

MaxMm-hmm. How did that come about?

MerlinWell, we did a life hack where when my girlfriend and I were juniors, we had two friends who were not – one of whom was a gay man and the other of whom was a girl. And we basically technically went as the dates of the seniors.

So there was that prom. The theme of that prom was Faithfully by Journey, which is a song about cheating on people. And then for my official prom when I was a senior, I took a girl that I had a crush on since 10th grade. It was really good. The theme for that prom was Careless Whisper by Wham!, which is a song about cheating.

Speaker BNo stairway to heaven.

MerlinNo, you know, Saturday night is all right for fighting. like i had voted for i will follow by you too and apparently that got exactly one vote

Alexi just like how you not not i expected the story to go like oh well then i ended up having to go and no you plotted and willingly went to two prom oh you millenniums you're all the same you're all

Speaker Bi can't go to things i can't go to things i wouldn't understand i'd have to look at my phone you go to the prom you got to go to the prom you go to the prom you play sports you get in the stamp

Maxclub you got to do these things i went to prom just purely based on how humiliating it would be to have not gone to prom but it was like exactly it was basically like it was it just felt it was one of those things of like it felt so important it was like oh like i have to go do all this like

Merlinbullshit but like this is why everybody should watch the netflix program the crown because you think oh how great must it be to be the queen of england and the commonwealth like oh that's so amazing you get to do whatever you want you wave your magic wand somebody brings you some cookies and it's no, it's just a life of endless obligation over which you have very little control. You don't get to manage pretty much anything about your life unless you're particularly politic about how you do it. So basically you just get led around like a Barbie doll and that's being in high school, I think. A lot of it is just like one dumb rote thing

you don't wanna do after another. And I think you millenniums, what I'll give you credit for is you've learned you could say no. We didn't know that you could say no to these things. It's the 15 minute walk run. You gotta do a 15 minute walk run, that's required. Now you guys would just say, I gotta look at my phone because I'm an introvert.

AlexThat was the year the iPhone came out, and I got an iPhone. So I have all these amazing prom pictures. It was at an aquarium, the Shed Aquarium in Chicago. It was actually pretty cool.

Speaker AYour prom was at the Shed? Yeah. That's so cool.

AlexIt was very cool. Anyway.

MerlinMy prom was in 1985, so I think I had like a manual for an Atari or something. Phone. Have your own phone in high school. Jesus Christ

AlexIt's a tool

MerlinYeah So was I

Speaker AHey, Happy New Year everybody How's it going? Oh, it's a whole new year Everything is different

AlexIt's so much better Thank God

MaxI've made a lot of resolutions and life changes Because the calendar changed And so far, everything's going really well.

MerlinJust the 2016. 2016 was out to get us, Max, up until the end. It wasn't done with us yet, the arbitrary period of time that had a malevolent influence over our lives. And now Charles Manson's sick. It's just, I—

Speaker AI know, cruelly, 2016 is still taking people from us.

MerlinTaking Charles Manson from us. He's been there my whole life. I'm not saying I love Charles Manson, but he's always been there. And he turned his ex into a swastika, which is pretty brilliant. And now, you know, now he's not he's not doing he's in Bakersfield, home of so much great country music. It's really sad.

MaxIf Morgan Freeman dies like this week, I'm still going to blame it on 2016. Like, ooh, 2016 got another one. Oh, hug your babies. So what have you guys what what are your big resolutions that you guys have made? Because, you know, when the calendar year changes, it's a good time to make a lot of dramatic changes. you got to over correct for pretty much everything in your life that's happening. What have you guys decided to go with in terms of your big New Year's resolutions?

MerlinAlex, I know this is a huge one for you. What have you been thinking about? What do you say to yourself, it's New Year's Eve, I'm wearing a hat. How do I change my life?

AlexWell, I went into the end of 2016 thinking, wow, I've literally had nothing to drink. So at 1201, January 1st, 2017, I had a whole lot to drink.

And that's how my year started. And I've had fast food three times so far in 2017. So it's going pretty well. Yeah.

Speaker BNice.

AlexI have a friend actually who joined a gym three weeks ago. And she's like, I'm gaming the system. I'm starting my New Year's resolution three weeks in advance. so I can complain about the people who go to the gym on January 1st and 2nd. I'm like, okay, good job. All those posers.

MaxWell, my resolutions are, you know, the key is to pick something. You've got to think big, and you've got to pick something really ambitious so that you're motivated to do it. So I've decided I'm going to lose 150 pounds.

Speaker AOh, that's good. That's a nice round number. It's a sesquicentennial drop.

MaxWell, it's easy to remember.

Speaker AIt's easy to remember.

Maxso i'm gonna drop i'm gonna drop a 15 stone i'm gonna visit every continent uh i'm gonna be nice nicer to all people that i meet oh that's so nice max um and i'm gonna uh make uh uh an extra one million dollars in 2017 those are my goals really that's so reasonable are you gonna try eating praying or loving do you think um well the eating is not compatible with my first resolution so that's out the window there'll be no eating this year um purely it's just are you

doing a cleanse um well it's a it's a power i i not so much of a cleanse as i only have uh powders now it's a detox it's a d oh that's it it's a detox you get all the toxins out merlin we here's merlin we live in a toxic environment there's toxins all around us they get in now you would

Merlinthink that your liver your kidneys and your skin would do enough but no no no you need some teas You need some kind of like a lemon powder would be nice. Don't do actual lemons, even organic lemons. That's you don't want that. You're going to you want a lemon powder. That's a homeopathic lemon that's been that's been distilled down to its primary citrus components. You get that. You mix it into a rudimentary paste. You put that in your ass with your douche and then you just sit there. You sit there and think about what you've done. You could do some yoga.

MaxWell, I'm really glad you brought this up because I'd like to tell you about our first sponsor this week, which is Crystal Nootropics. These are these are mind crystals. They make you so smart that you don't need to sleep anymore. It's like doing 1,000 Sudokus. You grind these crystals up and you eat them. And that's how you know it's working. Well, that's their guarantee. They have 100-day. Your first 100 nights are free, and you can return the crystals if you're not happy.

Speaker AYou pick it up in a box, you carry it up by yourself,

Merlinand if for some reason you're not happy after 100 days, they take it away for you.

MaxThat's exactly right. And, of course, you can buy these at MerlinMansSupplements.com.

Speaker BI've got to tell you, you're going to really get ripped. You're going to need to get in there, really.

Speaker AYeah. Thanks to our sponsor, Merlin's Man Supplements.

MerlinThis is from 2003 from my website, Fives. Five resolutions for the new year. Stop apologizing for drinking at work. Undertake some kind of faith-based initiative. Start carrying a yoga mat everywhere. Spearhead trucker cap buyback initiative. and you guys will appreciate number five begin more publicly referring to myself in the third person as daddy

Speaker Awow that is really problematic now I mean daddy has

Maxresolutions that's really showing it's age that fives Alex do you have any resolutions do you have any resolutions no I'll tell you okay well Alex you tell us your resolutions first and then I'll give I have some further updates for you

Alexmaybe I won't tweet about my iPhone as much aww I don't know. Yeah. Let's go with that.

MaxWell, I, so in all seriousness, I actually did install an app on my phone, a resolution related app on my phone, which is I installed the app called Streaks. Are you guys familiar with this? Yes. So I installed Streaks. Streaks is like you can like set little goals for yourself and basically you build a streak. So it's a thing you want to do every day.

MerlinAnd six Sundays in a row, I didn't masturbate in church.

MaxExactly. And then you hold it. Yeah. Once you get through a whole church service, you don't jack it, and you hold down the circle, and it goes ping, and then you've got a streak. And what's cool is it works on the Apple Watch, which I like, and it'll actually tap your wrist at a certain – you can tell it like, hey, if I didn't do my thing, start tapping my wrist at this time and remind me to do it. And the idea is that it's like – I think it's like a Steve Jobs thing of like – what is that thing where you like put the Xs – oh, it's a Jerry Seinfeld thing. You like put the Xs on the calendar.

AlexCommonly mixed up.

MaxI don't know. It's some overrated, mediocre white dude who's like, What is the deal with chamfered edges?

Speaker BWho's coming up with this stuff?

MaxIt's some, like, lovable asshole who has, like, this impossible productivity tip that everyone loves that doesn't really help you with anything. But the idea is, like, you work on your new material every day, and you put the X on your calendar, and then at some point your only goal becomes don't let today be the day where you don't put an X on your calendar.

MerlinOh, I get it. Yeah, I was trying to use streaks to quit doing things, and that's much less satisfying. You know what I mean? It's one thing to go like, I'm going to, like what? So you get those ding-a-ling resolutions like I'm going to eat celery every day or drink water this many times. That's much more satisfying. Doing something and checking it is super satisfying. But sitting there nervously throughout the day and praying that midnight comes before you haven't done the thing you're not supposed to do is harrowing.

Speaker AWhat? Were you trying to get off meth or what were you trying to do? I'm not going to tell you.

AlexWe talk about meth too much.

MerlinWow. I would love some meth, you guys. I would love it so much. I mean, I'm on the Claritin train already, toot toot. But, like, man, Daddy could use a little kicker. I really – I got to get back on the Adderall. I miss it. I was like a great glistening beam. I could do anything. I was invincible.

MaxWell, so over the cards retreat, you know, here's my thing is, like, here's my actual goal for installing streaks is I want to try to remember to meditate every day. I just want to try and make 10 minutes minimum to just sit and quietly and meditate. it seems like it should be like pretty trivial to squeeze that into your day but actually like life kind of gets in the way and you wind up like running from thing to thing and it's a lot of days it's hard to do you have to actually like make and have some intentionality and like plan it out and like great example is when we do these writers retreats like I literally just don't have 10

minutes in the morning like I want to sleep as much as I can and then I have to go right in so it's like if I want to meditate I have to wake up 10 minutes early to do it anyway so I was like I'm gonna make a streak and that will motivate me to keep meditating and I built up a streak of two days and then I was like fuck this app this is too hard to I don't know how dare this app like start tapping my wrist and bothering me to meditate I know I get I still at 8 42 every

Merlinmorning I get a reminder from headspace it's like you know hey time to get some headspace you know it's like click and it's just it's so again it's the same principle as like why we rail against resolutions where it's like well time for me to suck again ping and it's the worst but You know, one life hack, I do think this is true. I found this to be true with work things. And again, that's another one of my obvious observations. But if there's something you want to do and you can do it in the morning, I think you have such a better chance of success.

I guess that differs from person to person except in as much as if you can get up just a little bit earlier and do the thing. If that thing's writing 500 words or that thing is like taking a walk, I think the morning is the best time to do that. I think in some ways that is a I feel like that's a habit that has not like positive knock on effects in a way that an afternoon or a night habit might not. Do you know what I mean? It's like because like, you know, I know for me with writing in the past, if I haven't written anything by 10 a.m., it's very unlikely I'm going to write something the rest of the day, even though I act like I will.

Right. Like any decent writing I've done is usually before like 11 and often before eight. So I think you have to figure out if there's something you are trying to do, you have to slot it in a place. Make yourself do it for three days and then don't give yourself any breaks on it. But you know what I mean? If it's something where you're like, well, remember to do this thing before bed, I think that's harder. That makes me anxious.

MaxThere's some sort of – I'm imagining it as like an armadillo up on the roof rolling around. It's like turned itself into a ball form and it's angrily rolling around like a boss in Mario. and it's like it sounds it sounds with the headphones on it sounds like a bong doesn't

Alexit sound kind of like a bong can you hear uh the armadillo merlin oh no i hear it yeah okay so just now you started hearing the armadillo all right uh it's so loud it's just there's some sort of something clattering around in the roof what does it sound like it sounds like it sounds like uh there's just someone keeps dumping a bowl of marbles yes it sounds like someone it sounds

Maxlike children are marble racing on the roof. I think that's what's happening. I think we have some chimney sweeps up there.

AlexOh, it could be Lin-Manuel Miranda.

MaxSome sort of lovable orphans have snuck up onto our roof and they're racing their goddamn marbles. And Armadillo

Speaker Bis balled up, called up, running marble races, looking down on all the cars against faces. Rap, rap, rap. Rap-a-rap-a-rap.

MaxTo your credit, that was actually better than Hamilton.

Merlinaww thanks you're so sweet I'm gonna teach you how to say goodbye motherfucker you're gonna love it you're gonna feel so bad you're gonna get so into it you're gonna be all like why was I like that why was I such a sad tomato about this

Maxactually Merlin that's where you're wrong because I'm not allowed to like it anymore because I'm entrenched so firmly in my position so I'm not allowed to change my mind so

MerlinI love your other program for so many reasons but like one of the reasons I love your other program is that Pat is still just slipping that little knife in from time to time

Speaker BIt's so great.

MerlinYou get it from so many. You're surrounded by people who are in the 5% of Hamilton superfans, and you just can't get away from it, and it's so fucking funny to me.

MaxWell, I've made some big updates on my iPad since the last episode. I have a little bit of follow-up to talk about on the iPad.

MerlinSome of the people play two different characters. That's an important part of it. You get Lafayette in Act 1, and then the same fella, he plays Thomas Jefferson in the second act. and then there's little twists on like and like for example you take my shot my shot you gotta really think about this because my shot means at least three different things do you want me to explain it

Alexwait wait are there gonna be guns

Merlinoh there's guns and ships we rendezvous with Rochambeau consolidate our gifts

Maxone thing I've done is I've installed Spark across all of my devices so I have oh we should talk about this

Merlinbecause you got me to get on airmail so yes I love this thread I want to talk about that.

MaxOkay. I mean, I'm aware of how boring this is for everyone but us, but what are we going to not talk about? Mac applications? So I'm feeling a little bit down on the Apple ecosystem lately. Like I still...

MerlinWell, I think you're pretty much alone on that.

MaxYeah. This does not seem to be a trend. I have a brave, bold opinion that I think things are not feeling... I feel like I'm not on as firm ground as I was maybe like six years ago. but it's still very it's still very firmly like the best thing out there like a bunch of the cards guys now got to google pixel phones and i played a lot with their google pixels because that's like supposed to be the leading phone that's not an iphone i played with it for 45 seconds and i was like this is shit it like feels bad in your hand the screen is not responsive it like looks ugly like the apps don't work like the it just sucks like it's so much it's like everything

i do everything that's like lightly driving me insane about a mac and ios right now are like a billion times worse on every other platform. So, you know, what am I going to do? I'm going to stick with it. But anyway, I've got Spark going. And Spark, I can report. So I used this when it was in beta, and I had some sort of, I don't know, I had some sort of frustration with it or whatever. But, man, have they really...

MerlinIt had a lot. I mean, I just, I like the Reto guys. I like Dennis. But, like, it had tons of weird bugs that were there forever. And one that was, I mean, just not to interrupt you, but one that was super frustrating as somebody who was using Spark exclusively on iOS was it wouldn't do quoting right. Like, I'm a quoter. Like, I'm old school. I mean, I'm a top guy, not a bottom guy. I'm no John Gruber. But, like, I like to select something, hit reply, and then be able to have that be, like, you know, you can – it's so important to me to be able to, like, interleave or whatever the word is, my response. And, like, it would just shit the bed every time you try to do that.

Plus, they got the whole weird server thing that I'm still not totally comfortable with. But what was it doing for you?

MaxOh, I don't even – I honestly don't remember. I just remember I downloaded it. Everyone was really excited about it. I downloaded it and I was like, ah, this is like not, whatever it solves with the mail.app, like the default application, it's like, it introduces new problems. So it wasn't really, you know, I was, it was all the same to me to just stay on mail.app. But anyway, I'm back on Spark and they've ironed out all of the issues, I think. So I'm really enjoying it. The only thing that really my only complaint, and I don't, this isn't really an issue with Spark. I think it's

just sort of an ecosystem problem is it takes a long time to download the mail so like what happens is i open up my mail application i can see that i have you know whatever 20 new messages i click on a message and it goes like downloading the rest of this message and like really how big is an email

Merlinit's like 50k or something why why this is a this is a non-iCloud account because that's part of the part of the problem is like i mean what does that mean i think i have all of my levers set correctly and I still don't get push email with Gmail. And so I open up any of these apps and I do that thing, what Linda Stone calls email apnea, where I go, fuck, because I always have an empty inbox because I'm that guy, literally. And then I go, I inhale and I wait for the spinner to start spinning and then it starts bloop, bloop, bloop,

dropping them into the inbox. It's not doing it in the background for me.

MaxOh, just a little panic attack

Merlinthat you can watch unfold in real time. Nice thing to have six times a day.

MaxYeah, so no, I definitely, I'm only on Gmail. So I definitely get that. And the Gmail app is no – I mean, I think the Gmail app is actually pretty quick, but it's, like, bad to use because it's a web view. So I don't know, man. I mean, there's not a perfect solution.

Speaker AI mean, email – Did you try airmail? Am I thinking of the wrong show? Did we talk about airmail? I'll try.

AlexYou talked about it on your other program, Back to Work. So I don't know.

MaxYou tell me – I mean, if you're on airmail, I mean, you've got to leave with the Fs and Bs here, Merlin.

MerlinOkay. All right. I'll give you the Fs and Bs. Well, I want to hear why Alex is making a noise. But the funny part is there is one just horrible, upsetting reason why I still use Spark, and I'm so ashamed. But Airmail has integrations out the wazoo, and it has a desktop app that's pretty good. But, you know, it makes it really easy. Like, I was just getting it set up on the desktop this morning since it's kind of become my go-to in the last few days. And you can do stuff like, say, like, send this to OmniFocus, and you don't need the Clipatron to do that.

You can say send this to Reminders, which I love. It's got all these integrations. send this file to Dropbox. It's just made out of integrations and settings. And if you're the kind of person that likes a lot of settings, which I am, AirMail is really, really great for that. But it doesn't do one thing that Spark does, which is you touch the little thing at the bottom of the screen, you slide, and every email gets snoozed. And I still have to go in once a day and say, I'm a bad person, and I don't want to see this mail till 1042 tomorrow when I do the same thing again.

MaxOoh, I have so many questions about this. Question number one. Let me ask you this question about the desktop. So I'm a Gmail in the browser email user, and I've just stubbornly stuck with that basically since Gmail was announced.

Speaker BIt's great, and it's got the key commands.

MaxFuck, man, those key commands are gold. J, X, J, X, J, X, E, clear them all. Boom. Left bracket. Left bracket. Yeah. Just pow, pow, pow. I mean, I don't even have to look at the keyboard. I don't have to touch. Here's a great one. I don't have to touch the mouse.

Speaker ALike I E I E I E like make them all go away.

Speaker BGet out of here.

MaxIt's Gmail. Gmail is awesome. I know all my labels. Like I have such like muscle memory. Like, I mean, it's probably my I mean, if I'm being honest with myself, it's probably my my most used like technology. Like I spend most of my day just in Gmail, like reading and writing emails. And I'm really good at it. And there, and no, I mean, like, I feel like we may be, you know, Gmail, they, they, they introduced this, like this, like, what do they call it in inbox or.

AlexYeah. They're, they're iOS app inbox.

MaxRight. And you can do inbox on the desktop and like inbox has a lot going for it. Like I like a lot of what they're doing with it and it's, there's, has lots of cool features and stuff, but it's just, it's not for me. It doesn't basically anything that's not Gmail as exactly how it is right now in the browser is not for me. Like that's my thing and I like it. And I do get a little scared. and I'm like, man, Google could just, like, this could just go away, and, like, I'd be so fucked. There's nothing like it.

MerlinYeah, they could Google Reader this.

MaxYes.

MerlinAnd I'm still sad about Google Reader to this day.

MaxOkay, let me ask you my other questions. So, so.

MerlinAnd I have a follow-up answer to you about. Please. About why. No, no, but it can come later, but. Please proceed, Governor. Well, okay, so my thing is, like, I do use the snooze stuff because I'm a terrible person and don't follow my own advice. But, you know, I'm usually pretty good about getting all the way, you know, clear, at a certain point. But my problem is that I'm with you. I think Gmail, if you're on a desktop, Gmail in a web browser, if you don't think that's the best email app, you're probably not a power user.

What you can do so quickly with so many emails, the idea of having to sit in mail.app and hit multiple things to make that thing go away is bananas to me.

MaxAnd I'm clicking, I'm dragging, I'm going to click the send button.

MerlinYou know, you just, it's all, it's all meta keyless letters. It's not even a key command. You hit a letter, you hit LW and that labels this as work or whatever. So I still find that my favorite desktop experience. My problem is when I have like unto a dingaling snooze stuff and it pops up in Gmail for the web, I'm not using any plugins right now that would accommodate that. So I have to go on my phone and re-snooze it because I'm a bad person.

But, like, you know, I got your mail up. It's working. I've got it. It's really good. I mean, it's not as killer on the desktop as it is on iOS. But, no, I see myself going straight back to Gmail and the web pretty soon.

MaxMerlin, you mentioned me in your reply, so that gives me 90 seconds to respond. Yes, you there. So here's the thing. I've been through – back when there was the email app that we all love that I can't remember the name of, the Dropbox thing. Mailbox. Mailbox. I really tried to get into the snooze lifestyle because mailbox really pioneered. That was the first time I ever saw snoozing as a feature of emails, right? Like, hey, bug me about this later in the day or over the weekend. You could be like, tell me about this on Monday morning or whatever.

And ultimately, I was not able to embrace the snooze lifestyle because I feel like, you know, here's my thing about email, Merlin. I feel like you want to open every message once and act on it.

MerlinOkay, so when you get the email, you only touch it once.

MaxThat's correct. Because then you're sort of going, you know, every time you open an email, there's the cognitive switching task of like you have to like understand the whole context of the email and all the people, the dependencies and the people working on it and the project. And it's like I don't want to open an email and do all of this like sort of mental work to be like, where is this project, this person, and all right, now I remember this, and I'm going to open OmniFocus and check in.

MerlinWould you say it's a little bit like alphabetizing your recycling?

MaxI would say that. It is a lot like alphabetizing your recycling. So my goal. That's a really good point. Thank you. So my goal is I want to get every email. I want to read it once and I want to take an action that's decisive. And being like, I don't want to look at this anymore. I'm going to push the action back later. Well, now I just have to go through the cognitive switching task again and it's going to be painful again. So I would rather just archive it. Honestly, I do this a lot. Merlin, here's a life hack. Do you know you don't have to reply to every email? You just hit E, you archive it.

Merlinbut what like somebody spent spent the time to contact you and like they're like expecting

Maxlike a response sometimes the kindest thing is to is to just say nothing like if you're if someone asked me for something and i know that i'm not going to do it a lot of times i just uh i just hit e and i'm like i'm not i don't want to like get into a back and forth about why i'm going to

Merlindecline this i just hit e and don't do it like what if i have like a like a shit ton of email that like i haven't responded to in like three years i mean i got to respond to that right uh

MaxWell, Merlin, I'd like to tell you about a little something I invented called Inbox Zero.

MerlinOkay. Is that that thing where I spend all day on my email?

MaxYes. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. You get the merit badge.

MerlinDid you know there's an inbox? Every single app I use, once I have cleaned out my inbox, I see the icon from my user account and the word Inbox Zero.

MaxOh, Christ. It would be like if every time in my life I looked at my romantic partner. there was like she had like a cards against humanity tattoo on her forehead or something but how do you i'm i'm but i'm no i'm kind of making fun of you here but like honestly

Speaker Ahow do you like how do you reconcile this because like it's don't you do you still feel like that i don't i can't that's i contain multitudes i'm like i'm like a rapping poet leaving aside the the the

Maxinbox zero thing just just the general principle of like don't do each email twice which seems like

Merlina very sound principle to me well okay well here's here's here's no there's two two because it's always two things with me here's the thing is that uh first of all that is a that is a best practice um i do a lot of the things that i have counseled other people about which is that Like every time I open my email app, I don't want to see emails in there that I haven't, like I want it to only be things that I haven't read or things I might want to do something about. So if there's something, I mean, I'm real good at archiving. Believe me, I got a good archive finger.

Like I'm really good at that. And of course, as you know, Gmail on the web makes that very easy. So I mean, the thing is I do mostly practice what I have previously preached. Part two that's difficult is on the internet, you're never supposed to be contradictory. You're never like the thing is, there's no bigger crime on the internet than perceived hypocrisy. And I used to struggle with that. And I guess I still struggle with it just a tiny bit. But mostly, like once you've decided not to be bothered by hypocrisy, your life gets so much better.

And it makes everybody's life, everybody else's life so much worse because they're so confused. You've just been proven guilty of the worst crime on the internet, which is seeming to do something contradictory. and not to be all Walt Whitman at this point, although he's a fantastic rapper. But the truth is, like, that doesn't bother me like it used to. And I go, you know what? I'm an irrational person that does dumb things. And I've got an email right now from one of my roommates just after college that I do intend to respond to, but that's not going to be today. And, like, it's not killing me to see it every day, but I'm just not ready to respond to it yet.

And is that wrong? Yeah, that's kind of stupid. But, like, the truth is, like, it's not a best practice. I don't have, you know, when I was in military school, there was three responses to any question, which is yes, sir, no, sir, and no excuse, sir. And I'm going to give myself a no excuse, sir, here. There's no excuse for me doing it that way, but that's how I've done it. I'm mostly good about it, but sometimes I'm not. And I still have to go on and have a life, even on the days when I don't always follow my own rules. And like, that's a pretty good way to be 50. Now, Alex, Alex, you're not talking. We're going to get chided. Tell me why you don't like airmail. You know what I love is that nobody gets mad at the

Alextwo of you for uh not letting me talk i get private messages about how i should talk more uh i don't know i got that out but really though they're like there's just like one angry lady

Maxwho's like can i tell you about something i like uh this week our sponsor is a fracture

Speaker Athey uh what do they send you photos on postcards or some bullshit i don't know i can't remember

Alexoh man women are so irrational am i right i'm very upset that you guys get all the silver underwear and not not i understand why my silver underwear just arrived yesterday my daughter was wearing it on her head she said she's an underpants nun yeah i want i want uh bacteria-free silver

Merlinunderwear no just gotta yeah well when you're sacking up like a man you're gonna be guaranteed that you're gonna need some silver whisk away up to 18 hours worth of stink from your crotch area move it out get that taint and scoot it aside because here comes silver old ag we call it

Alexthis all needs to go okay for the five people who don't listen to merlin they don't know who merlin man was max sounds it's just so confusing and then people help me about the edit and oh man who yells at you about the edit uh just don't edit stop editing the show no that's ridiculous who yells at you about the edit well first of all all of the voices in my head. But second of all... Hello.

Speaker BAre you sure you want to leave that part in? Are you sure you want to take it out? Shouldn't you feel bad about the thing you're doing and not doing? I hope you're up at night because you're not a good person.

MaxAlex, the little chimney sweeps on the roof. They don't really get a lot of say in how we edit the podcast. They're up there smoking their bong.

Speaker BAlex, tell me

Speaker Aabout email apps. What's your feeling on email apps?

Speaker BI don't know.

Speaker ACan I just say if there's someone online who's yelling?

AlexI've been looking at pictures of iPhone 7 Pluses for the past 15 minutes. Are you still having bought one? What the fuck is wrong with you? Because here's the – Well, oh, okay. So you're wondering why when Max is like, I'll try airmail. It's because Max likes to keep things in, like, Max likes to keep his, uh, most of his Apple stuff, like, in stock condition as much as possible, uh, until it slowly degrades and becomes, uh, as max as possible.

um but and i don't think that you're gonna like airmail because you're gonna play with it for a while but when it then it's gonna stop making you happy and uh you're just gonna go open your email on the desktop again because spark sparks is fun because you get to like swipe and make stuff go away and airmail is like almost the exact uh like it it's the exact same thing that you would want from Spark except you can customize it out your ass.

Which, like, what do you want to change in Spark? Like, I don't know.

MerlinRight. So, like, in Spark, one thing that is cool in both these apps is Spark is definitely, and I mean this as a compliment, is a simpler app. But just the accommodation of saying, hey, look, you know, here are the things. There's a nice, real, simple screen in the settings where you say, like, you know, in your head, when you slide your finger this way, what should happen? And it lets you control that. Like, a little swipe means this. A long swipe means this. And then that gets really blown out with, I mean, it's almost like you remember when you got your first digital watch where you've got this one button for controlling all these different things and there's all these modalities.

There's a lot of modality stuff in there. What's it called? Airmail? I mean, I don't even know if I'm going to use all this stuff, but I think you'll be fine with Spark. But Mail.app, man, or Mail.whatever, yuck. I hate it when it even opens. It's like my new Microsoft Word. It's like don't even launch. I wish I could just delete it from everything.

AlexI agree. I don't understand who uses Mail.app other than Apple employees.

MaxI had a point of procedure. I had some more iOS stuff before we move on to the sleep things.

MerlinWell, I also want to tell you my dream about Steve Jobs I had last night.

MaxOkay. I'll go through this pretty quickly. See, we covered Spark and Streaks. We won an Upgradey. That's a big accomplishment for us.

Speaker BWe won the prestigious Upgradey Award.

MerlinEvery year, every year. you explain this Alex we never let Alex talk can I tell you about Fracture? you guys know Fracture it's the photos with the silver threads in the taint

Speaker Bwhat are we talking about?

I haven't eaten

MaxYeah you don't eat though You just let that claret and go to work

MerlinYeah Well I have two different kinds of medications You're supposed to do on an empty stomach My herbal mood stabilizer You're also supposed to have on an empty stomach Is that

AlexWait like medication you're supposed to have On an empty stomach

MerlinYeah my son Theanine Works better if you have it with a cup of coffee And no food Hey you guys I don't know if you heard We won a prestigious upgrade Did anyone listen to the episode?

AlexYes.

Speaker BI listen to every episode.

AlexGod damn rocks. I really, no, I do. I really like Upgrade. And I voted, I didn't really, I think we were added like really late in the game because I remember voting and I did not vote for our show or maybe.

MerlinWow, thanks, Alex. We got the, and it's fun. It's like, you know, Jason also does these drafts a lot on Incomparable, which I love. I love the drafts where you go around in a circle and you pick your favorite or something and if somebody else picked it, you don't get to pick it. I love the discussions about how and why people choose the things that they choose. That's my favorite part of these kinds of things. And in this case, for each one of these, they go back and forth and decide who should win based on the case that the other person makes. And both of them like this. I think they almost gave it to this other show that's probably better than ours. But, yeah, in the end they said, yeah, best new podcast is Max Temkin's program Dubai Friday.

Speaker AThank you. That's an honor for me to win that award. Why? What did they say? Specifically, what did they like about it? Mainly they like Alex. Good. When we let her talk.

AlexUh, yeah, they couldn't give it to Mike's.

Speaker ABro, let me tell you about our sponsor, AdamandEve.com. AdamandEve.com.

AlexWait, what? Is that a thing? Was that a gay joke? I don't know what's happening. Oh, what is this? Oh, oh, it's porn. Okay, never mind.

MerlinAdam and Eve. Oh, I see. They make vibrators.

MaxYou guys don't listen to any podcasts sponsored by AdamandEve.com? No. No. What? No. They sponsor, like, half the podcasts I listen to.

MerlinIs it like a hair wolf thing?

MaxWhat's that one with all the fake comedy shows? They do the comedy podcasts. Don't listen to comedy podcasts. Alex, say something else so I can interrupt you with a Stamps.com joke. Are all these trips to the post office killing you? You know how everyone goes to the post office all the time? If you sign up today with Stamps.com and spend more than $100, they'll give you a free drug scale. Oh. Please remember to use the Please remember to use the offer code Hamilton

Trunk club Can I tell you about my trunk Ow fuck I just pinched my hand in the microphone Can I tell you about my experience with trunk club

Speaker BYou already did I did? Did I tell you the story? but you explained this is why you and Alex dress the same

Alexoh my god Merlin he got a Tom Bin bag and Clark desert boots I got a brain bag what did you get well no I have like a lady I use the Tom Bin white tech boy whatever that backpack is that everybody has

Maxdon't they have one called the founder

Alexthe founder's bag

Speaker Blike the white tech boy Yes, there is a laptop in here. Yes, I am carrying a yoga mat.

AlexOh, I have the Synapse 20. No, no, no. Yes, I have the Synapse 25. And then Max got the Synapse 19, which is like the little girl backpack. Oh, these are so little.

Speaker BThey're so teeny.

AlexThey are. They're so small. And I don't know how you fit stuff in there.

MerlinLook at my brain bag. My brain bag is huge compared to that. I got a big boy bag.

AlexNow I'm looking at backpacks. You know, I really think in 2017...

MerlinBut the thing is, they're expensive, but they're so worth it.

AlexThey are.

MerlinYou cannot kill these things.

AlexI've got the very garish checkered one that when all of the other White Nerdy Boys Tom Bin bags are piled on top of each other, I can see it because it's all stripy.

MerlinAll right. I like these external pockets. Wow, this looks, oh, it's got lots of, oh, I'm envious. This is nice.

AlexYeah. It's a nice bag. There's that front pocket that would probably fit an iPhone 7 Plus in there, really.

Speaker BOh, why are you waiting? I don't understand this. What are you gaining by not getting this? You need this. It's for your work.

AlexAttention on Twitter. I don't know.

MerlinDugga, dugga, dugga, dugga, dugga. Challenge. Okay, it's been a while. It's been a couple weeks we were away for the holidays, and my challenge to you all was to, the challenge was to take two on-purpose naps over our interregnum bi-weeks. So over the next two weeks, the idea was you have to take two naps on purpose, and then we'll talk about how that went. And I realized fairly quickly this is actually probably a horrible,

it seems like a good time of year for this challenge, but it's in actuality for all kinds of realistic reasons. Probably a terrible time for this challenge, but I still want to hear how it went.

AlexOh. All right, Max, you want to go first?

Speaker AWell, I just straight up didn't do this challenge. So, okay. So I'm happy. Did you try it?

MerlinThe thing is, I was explaining this to my daughter last night because she loves when I explain things to her. I said, this is, and I know Alex disagrees, I think the point of this show is to have the challenge, have it hanging over your head for much of your life, adding unnecessary stress. And then if you didn't do the challenge, you talk about why you didn't do the challenge. What was difficult about it? Was it scheduling? Was it a lack of flat surfaces? And I think that's part of the challenge. If you didn't do it, tell us why.

MaxWell, Merlin, as you know, it's not so much that I'm busy as I'm highly time constrained.

MerlinWhat's the distinction?

MaxI don't know. I heard it on a podcast. Same thing. No, it sounds cooler when you say time constrained. So, no, I just, I don't know. I didn't have a lot of time. I just didn't, I don't have time during the day to nap. So here's what I, I just really had one attempt at this challenge, which was there was a day where the week before the cards retreat, so the first week where we were off, it was around like 4.30 and I sort of finished everything that was like urgent. and I was waiting for Veronica was coming home from work at like six and I wound up with like an hour free.

And I just sort of put on my headphones and lied down in the couch in a dark room in the office and just sort of chilled out. And I was like, maybe a nap will happen. And it didn't. But I enjoyed sort of lying there for like an hour.

Speaker AAnd so I think we kind of covered this before, but it makes sense to, excuse me, it makes sense to recover this here.

MerlinI get the sense that y'all are not nap people. You're not super into sleep as a thing. And you have not historically been people who make the time to take a nap. And if you have, you probably didn't even mean to. Is that accurate?

AlexYes.

MaxYeah, I'm extremely not a nap guy. I mean, I couldn't tell you. Does it make you anxious? When I wake up, I feel a little bit anxious. I feel like something is wrong when I wake up from a nap, so I just don't really take them. But sleep is very important to me. I get eight hours every night. Wow. I really am very – What? Oh, yeah. Wow. But also, I'll say I'm incredible at going to sleep. I pretty much can just lie down and close my eyes and fall asleep no matter what's going on. And a lot of it is I have some smart things of I keep myself busy

until I'm sleepy. And then once I get sleepy, I stop doing things and I lie down and go to sleep.

MerlinThat is so sensible.

Speaker AI'd say it sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't do that. Totally agree. Now, what about you, Alex?

MerlinHow did how did you I'm guessing it went really well. You're around some racist relatives, plenty of opportunities.

AlexYeah, I don't ever think I don't think I've ever taken an like an intentional nap unless I've been sick, which admittedly happens a lot.

MerlinEven when you're like working really hard and stressed out like at events like you don't go and steal like an hour to go catch up.

AlexThat's the worst. So we we always try to do that. And like there's always like a nap room that nobody naps in because we're all too stressed out. Because if we fall asleep and like we don't hear our phone and someone calls us, then something like that, something terrible has happened. And in fact, especially at conferences and events, I always wake up at 5 a.m. without an alarm because my body has just trained me to assume that a catastrophe will happen at 6 a.m.

So I just wake up.

MerlinOh, God, that's awful.

AlexOh, insufficient. um I but even even like I I did genuinely try to nap four times and each time I would lay down and think like okay it's the middle of a weekday like and while I am on vacation like something bad bad could happen and also it's like it just adds a weird I don't I don't know like if if um I did one time over the holidays unintentionally fall asleep in the middle of the day just like from exhaustion.

Like I fell asleep watching House MD. What a show.

MaxIn the middle of the day?

AlexYeah. Which episode? Which episode? I love House.

MerlinThe lupus episode?

AlexIt's never a lupus. It's never a lupus. Was it twins?

MerlinIt's never twins.

AlexIt was in the final season after Cuddy leaves and it kind of gets boring. Yeah. Well, but that, however, that season is the neti pot brain amoeba episode, though. So there's a standout. Have you seen that, Merlin?

MerlinNo, I haven't seen that one.

AlexThey think that the guy has gotten some bacteria from his sex doll, but it turns out his neti pot gave him a weird water brain amoeba. Everybody lies. Yeah.

MerlinOh, you know, if they just talked to Max about this, Max will be the first one to tell you, watch out for the amoebas because they're going to fuck you.

Speaker ADid you guys know that you can get a brain amoeba if you use an unfiltered water in your in your neti pot? In your in your neti pot. And that gets right in your brain, the amoeba.

AlexIt's never the sex doll.

MerlinI'm proud of you. I'm very I'm proud of you for trying. I knew going into this that this is not something that was going to come easily, naturally or funly to you, you guys. So I'm glad you I'm glad you tried. But there's not even like an appeal for you guys, right? I mean like whereas to me, I'm always like, God, I would love – like my grandparents – I would go visit my grandparents. They would take a nap every single day. And now today I'm like if I could sleep for like 30 to 120 minutes every afternoon, my quality of life would be so much better.

AlexReally?

MerlinOh, absolutely.

AlexI'm just wondering maybe – see, and here's the thing. I do think that like I am doing it wrong because if I fall like I can't fall asleep because I'm anxious because I'm like, what if I don't wake up in time? And then when if I like in the past when I have taken naps in the middle of the day, like I'll try to take a nap before I know that I'm going to one of, you know, the aforementioned parties. Yeah, they call it a disco now. Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to have to be up until four in the morning. But then I wake up and I'm just like, God damn, I don't want to go out.

And I just I never feel energized. And it's I don't know what. So do you do all the like the nap stereotypes and like the stereotypical benefits? Do they apply to you? Do you feel refreshed and happy afterwards?

MerlinWell, yeah, I want to address that. But I also want to address what you're saying, which I think is really important. There's two because it's always two things with me. There's two really important things here. one is you've got to talk about the uh you talk about stereotypes you talk about the stigma against sleeping in the middle of the day right and you're like when you're describing you're describing the nap room that nobody uses for me a similar thing is always that beer cooler at a dot-com that nobody ever dares open because like it's just there to make you look cool it's like the piano in the lobby it's like it's not really there for anybody to use and i think that's true

i think and i i actually used to talk about this back when i was merlin mann where you talk about how important it is. If you have a value as a company or as a manager, and it's not expressed in how you conduct yourself, you can't expect your employees to do that. I actually had this very angry conversation with this EVP who was like, I have told all of my people that they can take naps whenever they want. I was like, well, when's the last time you took a nap? She's like, I can't take a nap. I fucking work here. I'm important. I was like, well, there you go. You went to Stanford. You're a fancy lady with a Marc Jacobs bag. Why would you take a nap?

Well, the thing is, now all your employees see that. And I think there is a very real stigma. Even if you're like a dork who works at home, you feel lazy. You feel shiftless. You feel like maybe, I don't know, maybe you feel like a drunk. Like maybe you feel like this is not something that normal adults do. And I get that. So I think that's one of the biggest problems. But then the second part is some people just, like you guys are saying, don't like naps. In particular, they don't like how hard it is to fall asleep because they're scared their phone's going to beep or their kid's going to be on fire. and they don't like the feeling of waking up.

I mean, I very clearly remember, like even as a teenager, if I did fall asleep at like three o'clock, I'd wake up and it's dark and I would panic. I'd be like, what? It's seven o'clock, what? Like, I don't know. I don't understand what has happened. I think people hate that feeling and all of that stuff together, that is more than enough to admonish most people to not even attempt to do it. But getting into the habit and doing it is a practice. You've got to be okay with it. And then it is like meditation in the sense that you will start recognizing patterns that you get more comfortable with when you're trying to take a nap.

And then finally, yes, it does help me a lot. I feel like a million bucks after I sleep for an hour.

AlexAnother question then. Do you nap in your office or just in your home?

MerlinI have. At times when I was doing lots of stuff at home or like when my family was at home, that's the other huge part of why I was only half successful with this challenge was that my daughter and my wife were home for all of those two weeks, And there just weren't that many times when I could do that, you know, because my kid's going to come in and, you know, want to read me something out of Ripley's Believe It or Not. And like, I want to hear that. And of course, I'm terrified about notifications. We should come back to that. But yeah, I have slept in my office. I used to have a sleeping bag and a pillow here. Wow, you went full George Costanza?

Connie Selica, nothing wrong with that. That's a great episode. Yeah, no, I've totally done that. And, you know, but like, it's weird. I know this sounds weird because nobody knows what I'm talking about, but if you've meditated or if you've done any kind of relaxation thing, you start to recognize certain things about yourself where you notice your thoughts drifting in certain directions. And you go, oh, this is that thing that happens as one of the last things I remember, in my case, before I fall asleep. You know what I mean? You might notice these patterns. And people who have things like anxiety and panic attacks start to notice these kinds of things, too, and then be able to regulate it.

So in my case, I notice myself nodding off. I noticed some weirdly random sexual thought, which I almost never have like day to day. I'm like, oh, it must be time for me to fall asleep. My brain is dumping its garbage bin and have given me these weird thoughts, these weird Maria Bamford thoughts. And then that means I'm falling asleep. And you start to recognize that and embrace it. And it's like a it's like a good thing.

AlexLike, are you distinguishing then between falling like sleep, sleep, like nighttime sleep or like you get the same thoughts before falling asleep at night and falling asleep before a nap?

MerlinUsually a nap. But I mean, like I have a specific position I like lay in that is the position I tend to remember falling asleep most often to. And I'll do that. And sometimes I'll say to my daughter, look, I'm just going to go. And I man up about it. I person up about it. And I say, look, I'm going to go try to sleep for an hour. So, you know, don't bug me unless it's something important, which is horrible to say. But that's what you've got to say. Most people like I'm just going to lay down for a minute or I'm going to rest my eyes. And it's like, well, yeah, you're just being embarrassed. Like if you want to actually sleep, you have to go sleep like a person.

I don't know this is probably really boring to you guys I'm glad you tried though I know this is difficult but I'm very glad that you tried

Alexit's kind of fascinating I don't I mean I don't know I consider you I don't know why Merlin but I would consider you kind of a highly energetic high strung not necessarily high strung but a person with a lot of energy and like for you to be able to fall asleep and also wake up and resume your day and not feel like garbage it makes me happy

Merlinwow well i'm glad i mean here's here's one thing to learn i i don't know like so many things this could be it turns out i don't know the exact science on this but one thing i i've been hearing for years that i suspect might be true well what i first heard was from this is from my one of my psych teachers cognitive psych teachers was that that everybody has any healthy person anyway has a certain pattern of how they sleep where you go through the different cycles and at the time the conventional wisdom was that's about 90 minutes. Now, I think since then, we've learned that that

can differ from person to person, but you can discover like what your little cycle is. And, you know, and if your little cycle is that like, I go through a full cycle of sleep in 90 minutes, 90 minutes is a good target time. If your cycle is 90 minutes and you're waking up 50 minutes in, oh my God, that's why you feel the way you feel is because you're right in the middle of a spot where your body has finally relaxed enough to be able to go to sleep, get into, I don't know if It's exactly REM at that stage. But you're going into a stage that's very natural for your body, and you're being ripped out of it.

And that's why today you see all these apps and dinguses and devices that watch for when you stir. So when you start moving around, that means you're coming out of a stage of sleep, and that's a good time for you to wake up, as opposed to when you're dead like Trotsky and really, really out. That's disruptive. Then when you wake up in that, you get a notification. Somebody wants to talk to you. That's really jarring. But, yeah, even a high-energy person can do it if you practice.

MaxYou want to turn out about that?

MerlinWhat?

MaxI got a great turns out for you.

Speaker AOh, give it to me.

MaxTurns out everything you know is wrong. Every last thing. So we have these guys in the office who are sleep researchers, and they have a really interesting project. So they come out of Northwestern, and they are interested in doing sleep research, but only with one sort of goal, which is as it pertains to athletic performance. So they do sleep analytics and like feedback for college and professional sports teams.

And this is becoming a big trend in if you're like an NFL team, because, you know, basically like like the way an NFL team works is like essentially when you're like building your team, you're paying people, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for like every point they get or something like that.

Speaker BAnd if you're such an interesting way to look.

MaxYeah. So like or a basketball team, right? Every every basket you get, you're getting paid a certain number of of hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get that point. And like so if you're a professional NBA player at the top of your game or, you know, college player at the top of your game, things like exercising regularly and having great nutrition, they give you like a one percent gain. That's why people are so crazy about it as they're looking for a one percent gain. And it turns out that like because athletes have such bad a bad culture of sleep like there's a there's kind of a bravado of like showing up to practice without having slept that by changing people's sleep habits into something that's like responsible they're getting like 5 10 20 percent gains in sleep like huge gains for these professional sports teams.

And so one of the things they've looked at is like all these sleep devices on the market they do this thing where they gently wake you up at the lightest part of your sleep cycle. So basically, like I have one of these I got on Kickstarter, and one of the things it does is it monitors your sleeping rhythm, and you can basically like authorize it to wake you up up to a half hour early when you're at the end of your REM cycle. So when you like, you know, like you're saying, like you wake up and it's sort of this gentle, like you wake up and you feel refreshed. Here's what the sleep guys have found. They've found that actually if you just sleep the extra 20 minutes, your performance will be enhanced in a measurable way better than if you wake up and it feels good.

MerlinTurns out.

Speaker AThat's a really good turn.

MaxIsn't that interesting?

Speaker AI'd never heard that. Isn't that interesting? So they're like. It is.

MerlinCan you, if you are able to and comfortable with it, could you find a link to their stuff?

MaxWell, I don't know that they're sort of a startup. So they're not like publishing their research yet or anything. They're a sleep research startup. Yeah. So I'll ask them if they have any sort of like data or anything. But all they're doing is like they're basically like measuring lots of athletes sleep and then correlating it with their performance in games. And they find a higher correlation with athletic performance if the people sleep the extra 20 minutes than if they wake up at the most comfortable part of their sleep cycle. So their advice is basically put on a sleep mask and sleep every possible minute you can.

MerlinYou know what else is really good? Thank you for that. That is a good turns out. I also bought something. Sometimes you get a product and it's not exactly good, but it is useful. This thing is not super well implemented. But I got this thing from the Amazon. And it's basically a little headband you wear that's got speakers in it. I think it's called Sleep Acoustic, something like that. Sleep. And it's called Acoustic Sheep is the company. And they make something called Sleep Phones.

And it's kind of like a Bjorn Borg type. You get like, yeah, that's an athlete. You get this little fuzzy fleece headband you put on. And it's got these two shitty little speakers in it that act as headphones. and it's got a dingus in the back that lets you control on off and volume and it's a Bluetooth headphones that you can wear while you sleep and it's fucking great. They're not very well made. They're kind of like horribly implemented but I'm loving these things.

MaxI've been wearing my Siri balls when I go to sleep. I got my Siri balls by the way.

MerlinI'm envious. I think I might

Maxwant some someday. They're so good. I just ordered them and they were supposed to show up and like I think Apple was giving me the ship date of February 2nd and then they just showed up in the mail so good for me. Alright I'll go. right um they were uh they're excellent they work exactly how you imagine and everyone reporting that they're like comfortable they're like it's like i don't know you just i just here's the really this i mean this sounds like underwhelming praise but it's it's actually one of the highest compliments i could like possibly give to a product is it works exactly how you imagine and you don't really notice them they just sort of become this incredibly convenient thing that works

Merlinexactly how you want that's uh exactly what i like to hear in something like that they're like

Maxextremely reliable they switch over to the device quickly they don't run out of battery you can walk really far away from your phone and they still work like it's just it's so natural you just pop them right in and go about your business veronica says i look like a chappy the robot she goes uh when i wear them to bed she goes are you wearing your chappies oh that's sweet yeah so i i go to sleep and i listen to uh philosophy lectures and i wear my chappies and uh i usually will like um Set a little timer.

And when the timer goes off, I usually wake up and take out my chappies.

MerlinAlex, I sent you that anxiety and sleep thing. That thing's been working great for me. Wait, I want this. What is this? It's this guy. This is so embarrassing to admit. But he does these hypnosis things on YouTube. Not like a creepy hypnotized girl thing, but like these hypnosis things. especially for people with anxiety. One of them is basically to help you fall asleep, but it's also a hypnosis thing about anxiety. I have found it really good and useful, and I listen to it on my ShePad phones.

Cool.

AlexDo you want me to put it in notes?

Speaker ANo, you can skip it.

AlexWhat about hypnotizing ladies? I want that. Oh, seductioncience.com. This looks promising. you're you're you're a big part of the seduction community um oh this is horrible wow uh no it's

Maxreally bad it's really bad and then there's there's like it's the same guy the same guy who hypnotizes anxious people to sleep tells you how to like confidently like con women into having

Merlinthat's a good point because i had thought to myself i have not listened to this all the way through while i'm awake and i had a kind of homer simpson feeling like i'm actually gonna increase my vocabulary or learn how to like grab a girl on the subway you know now merlin when

MaxWhen you talk about Hamilton, are you negging me?

Speaker AIs that a neg? That's exactly what I'm doing with you. I made you notice me. Throw a drink in your face.

Speaker BYour friend's cuter.

MaxNow, one of the other things I've heard you have to do is you have to peacock. And when you peacock, this may not be real. This may just be something I saw in Parks and Rec. But when you peacock, you wear like a crazy hat so that people notice you. Oh, no, that's totally real. That's real?

MerlinWhat? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker ADoesn't Tom do that on Parks and Rec?

Speaker BHmm.

Speaker AThat's right. I've got to find out what it puts in.

MerlinIt's her. Yeah, and it's like that guy with the rings. With the rings and the big fuzzy hat from TV. Same thing. That guy, what's his name? Mystery? David Blaine?

Speaker BIs that his name? No, no.

MerlinLook inside your panties. Oh, my God!

Speaker BThat's my car!

MerlinIt's got my number on it.

Speaker BWhat else?

MaxAlex, you went to an all-girls school. Did you have a prom?

AlexI did not go to an all-girls school. There was not an all-girls school. No, it was just a Catholic school. Oh, just a Catholic school. And I was the one that was like, oh, guys, wouldn't it be super fun if we all just went as friends together and we didn't find dates? And it worked out really well for me.

I got to... All right, anyway.

MaxThat's a great strategy. Shit, I wish I thought of that.

AlexNo, that's totally a thing. People didn't do that at your school?

MaxNo. No, you still had to find a date or you were a loser. Which I did, by the way. I just want to establish for all of our listeners, I did have a date to prom. Oh, nice.

AlexGood. Up here. Good.

Speaker AYou guys.

AlexHow did you ask them to prom?

Maxi think over like uh well instant messenger yeah i think so oh we were friends she was more of a friend date i think she actually wound up going home with someone else who went to the prom

Alexlike a sports guy maybe or something merlin was it a thing at your school to do extra like uh ask people to dances in extravagant ways well it's funny you should say that because literally

Merlinthis week like maybe yesterday my wife introduced to me the concept of the promposal which i'd never

Alexheard of before have you heard of this i mean i've never heard it said that way but oh yeah it

Merlinoh my god it's and she's like god it's just like it's so much pressure it's nuts yeah yeah so did

Alexyou was that big in your school oh god yeah balloons and oh god like not it and then it became like so big that people would have to find uh like other stunts and other ways to like ask people because you can't just you know write it on someone's car now you need to like make a puzzle or do secret notes and if you're too dumb like me and you don't notice that somebody has uh asked you to a dance it's very embarrassing and you make the boy feel very bad um yeah can i can i say one

Maxmore thing that i did on i have a new one more mac um follow-up that i'm i'm yeah that's a big one for me so over the cards retreat i downloaded the app bear yeah which also is the recipient of a very prestigious upgradey and bear rules it's actually the app that i've been every so often i like post on twitter and i'm like is there like just a goddamn text editor that has tags in it and everyone's like oh you should use ever the evernote family of products it's more it's really it's more of a lifestyle. But I hate Evernote. I use Evernote extremely begrudgingly because it

has tags. And I organize, for complicated reasons, I have all these projects that are basically like 200 text files with tags in them in Evernote. And oh my God, Bear is so fucking good. It rules. It's so good. It does markdown. It's formatted really beautifully. You have interconnected tags you can have tag hierarchies if there's anyone listening to this podcast and you have like a text file based lifestyle like i do just get bare stop using whatever nonsense

Speaker Ayou're using and get bare it it's so so good i'm making a little bit of an alex noise we're

Alexmaking an alex noise all right i thought that was the chimney sweets smoking their bong i can't tell anymore okay uh so so we're gonna then let's let's break a little bit from our format and some i don't even know how vax is making this noise that's pretty good uh hold on i need to get another energy drink i uh what is that this is okay so i've got i didn't have breakfast this

Maxmorning they're like increasing in severity of color they're like turning more and more into

Alexcolors that are things that human beings shouldn't eat so so right now i'm having the monster energy ultra red which tastes like uh literally it like kool-aid with with i don't understand why you have

Merlintrouble sleeping this is so strange i can't i can't quite diagnose or unpack why you would have resistance to sleeping this is so odd anyway go ahead so it's red this is the monster yeah Is it a normal-sized can, Alex, or is it one of those jokey millennial-sized cans?

AlexIt is between the two. It's like a reasonable millennial-sized can.

MerlinAs long as you're, you know, please drink responsibly.

AlexYeah. I remember the day people started, remember Four Loko? It is not that size can. But now I have a Monster Energy Iced Tea, so there's a little bit less caffeine, I think. nope just as mine never mind okay can i try this uh yeah go do you mind i've actually never had this so i'm interested the reason why i like energy drinks is because it smells it smells like

Maxit's i don't know how to describe this except have you ever found yourself in like a kind of a trashy like like cruise ship or resort situation where all the cocktails cost like 17 dollars and there's lots of fruit floating in them. That's what it smells like to me.

MerlinI think they smell like maybe like a bull with a urinary tract infection. Oh, sweet. It goes in and really just wastes the bathroom with a really long whiz and they groan a little bit. That and Mountain Dew is what the smell is.

MaxSo many good things are happening right now. That is the sweetest thing I have ever tasted. I feel like a hummingbird. I'm like sucking this up through my proboscis. La la la. This doesn't just have caffeine, too. This also has all the taurine and all the other stuff. You got taurine in that? Ginseng extract.

AlexYeah. L-quarantine. The one that I was just drinking has, it's like the calorie-free, it's, oh, no, wait. What else is in there?

MaxHoly shit, Alex. This has so much taurine in it. This is like the entire adrenal system of an adult bull. i'm sad who took my adrenals i didn't want to make merlin i hope she's doing good work

Speaker Bbecause i could really use my adrenal system

Merlinhi i'm merlin man did you know that every year thousands of bulls lose their adrenal system to people who work for companies in chicago when i see people with those fucking drinks i'm just like boy what are you doing with that energy what are you making now in your case i understand you're you're planning parties you're uh you're uh you're you're eating paper you're not buying an iphone i mean you're you're finding a way to really channel that to kind of like level your resources and get it into the fun

Alextunnel uh i actually could not sleep last night because i felt so guilty about not being able to

Speaker Anap so i'm a little sleepy this morning are you kidding oh no that wasn't the idea everything is working exactly as intended this is all going so well all right drink one of these is that the

Alexchallenge uh oh no first merlin i would like to know why that you don't like bear oh it's cute

Maxit's very cute what are you what do you you you have like are you like mike hurley you have like a thousand note apps. Oh, no. Hurley's a bear guy.

MerlinA reminder to do the reminder. I know. I know.

Speaker BNo, you don't care.

MerlinI'm not here to amuse you. I know I do care. Tell me why. I'm an adult. I'm a grown man. I don't need to make water, Miss Daisy. One of the best things

Maxabout being on the internet is that I don't want to find out that I like the wrong things.

MerlinI like you angry and incurious. It's a great combination. Because first you get mad

Speaker Band then when somebody tries to tell you, you get even madder.

MerlinNo, I'm genuinely curious why you don't like it. uh i just downloaded it for um the desktop it's you know it's uh it's okay it's it's an interesting kind of frankenstein idea i'm intrigued by the idea proposed by i want to say fraser spears that you could actually kind of make your own little personal wiki with this since it does internal linking the the tags idea is interesting to me but i get everything i need out of editorial mostly i'm real happy with editorial and i i don't need this pseudo whizzy wig approach to doing markdown i mean to me that would be like putting a putting a gui on emacs it kind of would

Maxdefeat the purpose so you so when but you so you have like markdown vision you can you're like neo you can like see the matrix you look at you don't even well also i use i use very very very basic

Merlinstuff i mean back in the times when i was doing more writing with links it was a bigger deal i could really see that being useful uh with this but no most of what i do i mean this is a very clever app and i'll spend some time with it because a lot of people like it but no no for most of what i do it's h's basically h's and asterisks is most of what i do you know just nested nested lists and headings and a little bit of you know bold italic that's most of really most of what i use there's some multi-markdown stuff i do i use some really obscure multi-markdown stuff that nobody

but me uses like i do tables which some people do but i also do uh glossaries which almost nobody

Maxdoes. Good lord, you do markdown tables? Huh?

Speaker AYou're history's greatest monster. My markdown tables fucking rule. You should see my sous vide table.

MerlinYou want me to send it to you? Absolutely. Every time I do a new sous vide recipe that I'm not positive of, I track the results in a different new line. Wow.

MaxThat's actually a very good use of a note.

MerlinI could do it in, I guess, in Google Docs, but it's just real fast and easy.

MaxActually, I think ever I think Evernote actually makes a companion app for sous vide results that you can download and integrate with the rest of the Evernote family of products.

MerlinYeah, you flip back the cover. It's $17 a month. You flip back the cover, and it's got a picture of a sous vide dingus. And then you log into that. So you can get the novice account. You can get the pro account. You can get the super user account. You can get the admin super user. You get the executive admin super. Now, those are all different by $0.75 a month except for a couple, and I'm not going to tell you which. When you get to that right level, you will get sous vide syncing, which means now when you pull the cover of your iPad back a second time, that does what's called a push. It's going to push that into the cloud. Now, you can have that cloud push working on one to three devices,

provided that you have the executive admin pro account. If you have the pro admin exec account, it's not going to happen. It's going to seem to push unless you fold your iPad back a third time. Now, that's going to do what's called a pull, okay? And that's going to use basically R-sync combined with a GitHub. You get a GitHub, and that pushes it in. But it doesn't really do anything because you've got the wrong account, and you're not sure why.

MaxThe only downside is now the Evernote employees get to taste your food after you sous vide it. I think when we're done recording, you and I are going to have to go, I think we're going to have to go fly my drone and look down on the roof and see what little children are rolling their golf

Merlinballs across the roof up there. Is this one of those things like that home near Canada? Is this something where you're there for a while you don't hear it then you can't not hear it and it's like

Alexit just drives you crazy that's the thing i'm in here so often that i have just is this been going on for a long time this always yeah what oh yeah i've never heard this before really yes yeah um it just happens sometimes it also smells like sewer in here sometimes well that i know what

Maxthat is that's the sewer well so you know it's working yeah no that's a that's a that's a that's Listen, I think we take the drone and we buzz the kids just real close. And that ought to scare them off the roof. We're going to fire a warning shot across the bow.

AlexMerlin, did you see Max's video of his new drone toy?

Speaker ANo.

AlexIt's actually really cool. I'll watch it. I'll watch it.

Speaker ASo show him my markdown file I just sent you. How are you sending this stuff back and forth to each other? Why aren't I included? Oh, my God. We only wake you for the important meetings.

MerlinYeah, I would love to see that. I enjoy videos. Didn't like Interstellar Boy it made me mad

AlexI talked about it with Syracuse

MerlinLast night So many parts of it were so good And so much of it made me so fucking angry One of my favorite movies

Speaker BIt's so good Because parts of it are perfect

MerlinTwo thirds of that movie is perfect What were the parts you didn't like? I'm just never going to forget That the 3D 5D world exists I'm going to forget that it was incredibly obvious from the first scene that Martha McConaughey was the ghost in the books. I'm going to completely forget that, hey, it turned out fine, and they live in a world where there's crops in circles. Fuck it, eh? He should have died so goddamn hard. That was such a good movie. And then they, bah! It's a good movie. Good movie in parts, but terrible. Terrible. So that's my file. You can see that, Max. You can see it on your phone.

MaxDid you get the part where books are a time machine?

Speaker AOh. Is that related to the concept of love being the most powerful force in the universe? A little bit. books, it's a movie.

MaxMax, why don't people just read books anymore? Honestly, I couldn't tell you, but I fucking love that movie. I think it's very smart and people actually don't think hard enough about it and they take it too literally. You should check out Hamilton.

MerlinHang on, hang on. I'm sorry. I really have to pee. I do want to hear this. I'm going to pee. So do I. Thank you, Merlin. Is that okay? Wow. All right.

Speaker AI mean, I got a bucket here, but I could act like I'm doing something. I'll just hang out alone and entertain our readers. I'm going to go. I'm going to urinate, and I'll be back. All right. We'll play a selection, a medley from the hit musical Hamilton.

MerlinDun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

Speaker BDun, dun, dun.

MaxI'm the only one not peeing.

AlexIs Merlin not back?

MaxNo, he stayed and made jokes while you were peeing.

AlexOh, no.

MaxYou want to hear my Hamilton rap?

AlexYes, please.

MaxMy name is Hamilton, I'm here to say. I wrote the Constitution of the USA. I should get a MacArthur Genius Grant.

AlexReally? It feels like there are more geniuses every year.

MaxYeah, anyone can get onto that shit now.

AlexI mean anybody I hear that they have that 30 under 30 list Now that people

Speaker AMoving on what's your challenge

MerlinWere you on that Max Because I can't look at Forbes Forbes won't let me look at their site They say boo ad track

MaxIf you have your ad tracker on you're going to miss the Forbes thought of the day And that's a big That's a big part of the day I mean every morning you spring out of bed And you're like ooh it's a new Forbes thought of the day

Speaker BIt takes a keep on living to make a house a home Yay Forbes

MaxAlex what's your challenge

Alexapparently Max is on the 30 under 30 list but I haven't actually seen it

Maxthat's not a fair challenge for you guys because Merlin can't make the list moving on

Speaker Bmaybe I could be in the 200 under 200

MaxI think they may have a geriatric version

Speaker Ayeah

Merlinthe contest closes at 4 because everybody went to dinner Forbes early bird being old is funny being dead is better

AlexI can't wait until I turn 30. This week, I would really, really, really like you to try to have only one screen on your iPhone. And I will accept two.

Speaker BWhat?

MerlinThat is so weird.

Speaker BWhy? Why?

MerlinIt's sort of like saying I want you to have one. Whatever size your house is, I want you to have one room in your house.

AlexCan you say this again?

MerlinI'm not sure I'm following.

AlexSo your iPhone, you can have many screens. I want there to just be one or two of those and not however many Merlin has.

Speaker BWhere do you put the rest of your stuff? In the folders.

MerlinYou just put them in folders. Okay, here we go. Stuff, stuff, stuff.

MaxWhen did the iPhone come out?

Alex2007.

Max2007. Okay, so I'm coming. it's been now 10 years i've had all my icons the same way for 10 years i know i could close my eyes and open any app on my phone and you're telling me i need to have it a different way i know what

Alexit sounds like yeah so how many how many pages do you have on your phone so i have my i have my first

Maxpage uh these are the the core functions of the phone so things like text messaging the phone my contacts the clock the camera the things where it's like this is what the phone does then i've got my work applications like things where like in a pinch I can like go to this page and do some work function on my phone like open a spreadsheet or whatever then I've got games and then I've got

Alexall the bullshit that Apple won't let me delete all right there are so many things wrong with this first of all you couldn't even have uh pages until the second iPhone because there were no apps

Maxand now you can delete but I still have my home screen on the first page it I have all the apps in the same order that they shipped on the original iPhone.

AlexThen that's fine. Then you have an easy week. But Merlin has some...

MaxNo, how though? Because all my apps don't fit on one screen.

AlexBut you have three. I have four. Get it down to two. You can fail.

Speaker BAll right.

AlexAll right. No, I'm going to do it.

MerlinI'll do it. I will rise to the challenge.

AlexAnd you will also, in the show notes, we will be sharing our home screens for both our phones and our iPads.

MerlinCan I also get like 250,000 fewer followers? Jesus Christ. Questions.

Speaker BThink about how excited everyone's going to be. Merlin? I'm too busy to take a nap. I'm drinking five loco. It's hard. I'm young and I don't like to take naps. Go change everything about your computer world. And then to show everybody. No big.

MerlinLol. Fucking millenniums. All right, I'll do it. I'll do it. I'm going to be making a lot of stuff folders.

AlexThat's fine. You know, you do you, Merlin. It's going to be okay.

MerlinNo, I'm not going to do me. People should stop doing themselves. They should be almost anything other than themselves. It's just what a horrible piece of advice that is.

MaxAlex, turn my gain up a whole bunch. I'm going to point the microphone up and see if we can hear the children playing with the golf ball.

Speaker BWhat?

MaxCan you hear that?

MerlinAre you guys making that noise?

MaxNo, I'm telling you, that is the orphans and they're rolling their marbles. they're racing marbles on the goddamn roof are you on the top floor of the building well we own

Speaker Athe building yeah it's our building what do you mean it's like i don't i don't know fuck all about

Merlinwhere you are like but like so that is actually the roof above yeah at first it sounded like a creaking but then it very it sounded like golf balls falling off a footstool here's what i

Maxhere's what i think it is it's it's i think there might be like a raccoon who got like an acorn or a walnut and he's and he's cute and he's working and he's working it with his little hands but he's got no grip you know oh that's so cute he just wants that he's just trying to get into the walnut and do you know i mean and he's and he's and he's kind of walking around on his back feet and he's got his front feet on the walnut he's pushing this thing all over the roof precious we can't

Speaker Ahave that i gotta get the drone up there and scare him away you know the only thing that

Merlinwould make this tableau x better if you were sitting in a what's called a video game chair while you were looking at it. I'm fascinated by the idea of the video game chair. I see it sometimes on TV and I'm like, you have a chair for video games.

No matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, it's the fault of somebody buying you a video game chair.

MaxSo the only thing that makes me, I think about this image of the video game chair every time is when conservatives talk about Benghazi and they're like how Hillary, how she did Benghazi. I think in their imagination, how I always picture her is she's in like a pro, gamer rig and she's got like a headset in and she's sitting in the gamer chair. She's like, now take off the ambassador. Go, go, go.

MerlinTell security they can go.

Speaker AExecute order 66. I think in their fantasy, that's how it went down.

MaxAll right, Alex, get your raccoon gloves. We got to get up on the roof.

AlexOh, he just wants that acorn. Enjoy your week, Merlin.

Merlinyeah you know what fuck you I think that's the first time I've ever said that I'm going to just say fuck you this is brutal

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Transcript

9. Orphans on the Roof

Show notes

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