13. The Dust is Your Daddy

AlexThis is Dubai Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, automate something.

MaxHey, hey, how's it going, you guys? Hi, everyone. Podcasts begin.

Merlinwell it's very zen i was looking at my um i'll probably do the nature of our challenge this week i was looking at uh uh the alexa skills and there's a section in alexa skills called zen and relaxation and like i'm not a great student of either buddhism in general or zen buddhism in particular but i'm pretty sure anybody who actually has any knowledge of zen would say Well, first of all, you would not put it on an electronic device, and you would not necessarily associate it with relaxation.

MaxWell, the key to mindfulness is you have to have all of the right configurations on your tech devices. And they have to be automated just so, so that you can reach a state of mindfulness.

MerlinMmm, Satori, Satori. Yeah, we should do that. We should get Zen. Zen, like chocolate. Zen, like household sprays.

MaxHey, you guys want to hear my story about watching a movie, watching an Oscar nominated movie from an Academy screener with members of the Academy for no reason. Not that we were talking about this before.

AlexYes, please. Oh, I know the story. Wait, did I tell it on this podcast? You did not.

MaxOkay. So I saw some. So years ago when Zero Dark Thirty came out, I watched that movie with on an official Academy Awards screener disc with members of the Academy because they were friends with my friend's parents. and we all got together at my friend's house and watched it in the living room, which I think is against the terms of use of those screeners. But I'm not going to say who they were. But anyway, in my head I was thinking, boy, watching movies with other people almost always sucks because they talk and they don't pay attention and they get up and go to the bathroom

and they interrupt the movie. And it's like really the only acceptable movie experience is to watch it by yourself with headphones and when everyone else is asleep so that you can't be interrupted. I don't know how people... Check. Like, I don't know how people get through this. Totally agree. How does anyone get through this society where, because like, I swear to God, like every time I sit down and watch a movie, someone interrupts me or they have to take a break to go make popcorn. It's like, can't you fucking focus for two hours? Like, don't watch a movie if you can't get through the thing.

MerlinAnyway. And there's still that, there's still that phenomenon. And even, even setting aside the phones, like, oh my God, why are you looking at your phone like in the theater? There still is that thing of like, hey, you know, and I'm not saying this is necessarily a lady thing, but I think that's the only break some people get is like me and my friends are going to go to the movie. And you know what? We're going to talk like this through the whole movie because it's our only chance to socialize. It's like, well, can't you go get some wine or something? Why are you talking?

AlexWait, are you saying it's ladies talk more often in a theater? What?

MerlinI think men talk more loudly in theaters. I think it's more performative. Oh, I see. I think going to the movies as a group. Okay. No, I don't think this is sexist. I think going to the movies as a group for an event is something more women do than men. Guys have a seat in between them. It's not sexist.

MaxIt's that women, there's a lot of science that underlies this. The shape of women's skulls makes them talk during movies. I'll get my calipers and demonstrate. That's not sexism. That's just a fact.

Anyway, so I, oh, wait a minute. Is this a thing that happens in San Francisco? So when I see movies in Chicago, I get this all the time. The trailers come on, not during the movie, just during the trailers. And then the lead actress is revealed in the trailer and someone yells out, she's hot.

AlexYeah. Oh, gross. Well, I think it's, I see a lot of movies in the suburbs with my family, and that is a, definitely a young teenage male phenomenon. I don't want to be, you know, sexist, but.

MaxWell, you know what we do in San Francisco?

AlexThrow some needles on the.

MaxAlex, that's really sexist of you to generalize all men based on your anecdotes that you've

Alexseen. The anecdotes of my asshole little brother.

MerlinIn San Francisco, San Francisco people hiss. So, at the end of the trailer, when it goes to the credits, you'll hear.

MaxWait, what?

MerlinWhat does that indicate? It means boo.

MaxBoo corporations. They're mad at the trailer?

Speaker AYes.

MerlinThey're always mad at some aspect of what was portrayed on screen needs to be protested, like in situ. And so it goes, you know, coming, coming, you know, summer 2017. Silence and then.

Speaker Blike a bunch of basilisk coming to the pitbull Jesus Christ

Maxmaybe they're all doing a little bit of nitrous they wait until the break in between the trailers and then they get their balloon out

Speaker Bthe sliding scale

Merlinof what is acceptable in a theater. Because you see it, like, when we come in, so it's mostly my daughter and I that go to movies. We go to movies almost every week, like, pretty often. It's like a regular thing we do.

Speaker AAnd from the time we, like, walk into the theater, we talk like this. Like, if we're going to talk at all, we talk like this.

MerlinAnd, like, I mean, really, it's like church. My daughter is already, like, a quiet talker when we're in public, which I really like about her. And then other people are coming in, and they're like, well, here's some seats

Speaker Awhere we can sit and, oh, my God, has this always been read? Oh, oh, refills.

MerlinOh, my God. Why does everything have to be a... This is not Facebook, asshole. Sit down and shut up. This is church. This is movie church, and we show our respect for the movie gods by not saying anything audible while we're in the theater.

MaxSomeone always tries to open up a bag of Sun Chips, too, right when the movie starts.

AlexRemember when Sun Chips tried to have like paper bags for a week and then uh everyone was like wow this is so great sun um sun chips are making compostable bags but then the sound was so intolerable that they stopped

Merlinand everyone was like i heard about this on a podcast i didn't know about this but apparently people were like irrationally like fucking out of their minds angry about this it was yeah i mean

Alexthe thing is i it what surprised me because it was just the really big bags you know so i was surprised at how many people were eating giant bags of sun chips so frequently that this noise

Maxwas outraging them right anyway i sat down to watch zero dark 30 with um two members of the academy and i thought to myself this is going to be great because these people have an obligation to watch this movie not doing any of these things you know they're for you know being part of the academy you swear this is the industry the part of the industry is to show this a huge amount of respect for what you're watching. Exactly. And you swear an oath to take in these films and judge them on their merits and you really have to pay attention. And I was also thinking like, ooh, we're going to like get to have a conversation

about it afterwards. So basically, the way it worked was they talked throughout the entire, Zero Dark Thirty is kind of a boring beginning where there's a bunch of like showing how we use like torture to get the information about Bin Laden's whereabouts, which did not actually happen in real life. It was completely invented because the CIA financed the movie and they wanted to show the, they wanted to depict torture working. so there's a big boring torture sequence at the beginning of the movie that was completely invented out of full cloth for the film and it's very boring and everyone talked throughout and they missed critical exposition

so then they spent the rest of the movie asking what was happening and while they'd be talking while a character would walk on screen and be like who's that? I missed them, who is it? the characters would be explaining the next bit of exposition so they were always behind

Merlinwhy are they there now? yeah right well if you're watching, here's what I say I turn and I say you know what? you're watching the same movie i am if you were watching the movie you would know why they're

Maxthere well that's eventually what i said i was like you know i bet if we stopped talking and we paid attention to what was happening on the screen these questions would answer themselves you should get bounced out of the academy that's fucked up they should yeah but anyway they probably took in less of this movie than almost anyone i've ever seen taking in a movie and like thankfully i think it won best picture right i think so yeah i think it won best picture but uh it was a i thought it was overall it was like a fine film but it like just drove me nuts it's like that's why the academy awards are so fucked up it's because it's a bunch of like it's all a bunch of stupid people

Merlinand they can't sit through and film that's that is really depressing and a very interesting point of view where like you have these contests and it's like there's no test no one's gonna like you know give you a quiz on like whether you actually read the book or whatever you know how

Maxevery so since they expanded the number of nominees for best picture there's always one good movie that's like the token good movie that makes it in. So like I always remember a few years ago, it was like a garbage slate of movies and some absolute trash won Best Picture, but Beasts of the Southern Wild was nominated as the token good picture so that they could be like, oh look, like one good movie got in. Do you remember this year, Alex? Yeah. I can't remember what the fuck won. It was like The Artist or some like treacle Hollywood masturbatory nonsense. And Beasts of the Southern Wild,

obviously the Best Picture of the Year and should have won, but it always strikes me when I see that and I'm like, maybe this will be the year that the token good picture wins.

Speaker BAnd it's like, those people, they didn't watch that movie.

MaxThey didn't watch it at all. So of course it's not going to win because it was boring. It wasn't about them. The Academy loves movies that's about them. So every movie that's won for the last five years is about how great making movies is. Like, Birdman is all about the transformative power of theater and this narcissist relationship to theater. And everybody in Hollywood goes, oh, I can relate to this. This is about me. I can pay attention to this film. Same with the artist. La La Land I guarantee you

AlexOh La La Land is going to sweep everything I really thought that Birdman was going to be like where they draw the line and it wasn't gonna win and I was like oh okay

MaxLa La Land is obviously gonna win Best Picture this year because it's again

MerlinI hate that that is one of my favorite movies I've seen in a very long time I've seen it twice but I would hate it if it won Best Picture

Maxand it probably I mean is Moonlight did Moonlight get a nod for Best Picture

Alexyeah it's the token

Maxthat's the token good picture and if there's any justice that movie would win but there's not because these people are idiots that movie's not about them and they're not gonna watch it

MerlinWell, yeah, I mean, La La Land, God, it's right in the pocket. It's, you know, it doesn't have anybody with a disability in it. But apart from, you know, usually it used to be for a long time, it was like, is there somebody who's doing a very bold, very brave decision? You know, what's Tom Hanks doing this year that will impress us? But yeah, I'm bummed. They talked about this on Slate Culture Gab Fest where, like, all of them, like me, adored La La Land. But then you're also like, oh, man, there's so much opportunity to like reward really ambitious good stories that aren't about like white people in the entertainment industry.

Right. I mean, because that's the other part of it. It's about L.A. and it's like, hey, movies, entertainment, it saves us all.

AlexReal time update. The best picture of what was it? I don't know. The 85th Academy Awards are Argo beat out.

MaxArgo. Another fucking movie about how great movies are. Yeah, it was like, again, like Argo, a fine movie. Like, I was, Argo, like, I watched it, I was entertained, it went down easy. It's a good plane movie. Yeah, it was fine. And there was like, I remember the guy was like, hey, Argo, fuck yourself. That's funny. It was a good film. It was fine. Not Best Picture of the Year. I can't believe Argo beat Beast of the Southern Wild. Yeah. What's wrong with us as a society?

AlexIt's not, well, I mean, I'm surprised that you don't know, like, all of the things. it's i know that like oscar so white and like all these things have slowly started to like bubble up but the academy has always been like this not just with like um having like a token good movie but also they hold grudges against uh lots of films that are financially successful like the academy hates christopher nolan so anything like christopher nolan like christopher nolan will never win because he he can make any movie he wants and with whatever budget he wants and they

hate that because he made batman and dc can't well now it might be different but they were like uh warner brothers can't get rid of like he got a free he got a free pass yeah like warner brothers can't get rid of christopher nolan so he can make whatever he wants and so uh there was the one year where Inception was, the only thing Inception was nominated for was like best score or something because they did not want Christopher Nolan to win anything. And grudges. So weird. Yeah.

And what's his name? Guy I hate. Birdman and Revenant guy.

MerlinThe Revenant, I don't know if you know, The Revenant was very difficult to make. You probably haven't heard this. Wait, you don't like him as a director? Why? Oh my God. Oh my God. He's insufferable.

AlexYeah.

MaxOh my God.

MerlinWhat's wrong with you people? Have you ever heard an interview? Have you ever heard any interview

Alexwith that guy no i just like his films oh my god no i saw you like birdman there's i do birdman

Maxis a great film it's just not about you like the revenant no i i watch listen guys are the only two films he has made no that's not true he didn't he also do gravity all right no that was uh i'm

Merlinthinking i might be thinking of the same cinematographer you're confusing your mexicans here's the thing the shape of their skull enables them to make much more difficult movies no you're

Alexright that was curan that was alfonso curan you're right yeah alfonso curan should has also I believe not won an Oscar yet because he he he made Prisoner of Azkaban yeah he well that's the thing he he like the more in league you are with this a studio that the Academy doesn't like because oh uh Harry Potter made a ton of money so then Alfonso Cuaron got got to make Gravity and I think it did win a few uh a few like nods but listen can I just can I just say this about The Revenant

Maxwhich is everybody saw that trailer and it looked bad and then they watched the movie and it was bad and then they complained about it i just this is the only thing i think it was okay i don't think

Merlinit was terrible it's just he never misses an opportunity to congratulate himself on the

Maxdecisions that he's well i just and it's exhausting i didn't watch it so i wouldn't know but all i want to point out is like if you see a trailer for a movie and it looks bad and it looks like a man who's getting tortured by a bear for two hours and like with his guts hanging out crawling crawling through the woods and like you know eating shit to survive like don't go see the

Alexmovie you don't have to see it oh all right well it looks bad so don't go see it so no that is totally i have never disagreed with max moore the the okay the people who make trailers typically especially when his movie like the revenant and is made by big studio they have like nothing they have no say in how the trailer is made so it nobody should ever watch trailers ever no but

MaxBut listen, the trailer sends a message about the movie that is usually correctly conveyed.

AlexYeah, the message is come see this movie and give us your money.

MaxLet me give you another example. I saw the trailer for Suicide Squad, you know, because it dropped and everyone was talking about it on Twitter. And that trailer was whispering to me in every shot in that trailer was whispering to me. It looked very ambitious. That trailer was just whispering to me, don't go see this.

Speaker AThis is not for you.

MaxOh, really?

Merlinyou're not gonna really i thought it looked i thought it looked like it could be kind of exciting

Maxi saw i watched that trailer and like and and the trailer's just saying like hey skip this one you're not gonna like this so i didn't go see it and then everyone went to and everyone went to go see it and they bitched and moaned about what a bad film it was and i was like did you not look at one art

Alexone art direction choice all right so so so okay so it seems that you're a trailer whisperer uh how

Maxdo you think beauty and the beast is gonna be beauty and the beast looked like it was pushing the nostalgia buttons in my brain. And I want to go see Emma Watson as the beauty.

MerlinDid you get all the feels, Max? I got some feels.

MaxYou know, yeah.

MerlinGod.

MaxI saw that movie and I was like, you know, I'm adulting like a boss all the time now. But this is hitting me right. Oh, your reaction is everything. This is hitting me right in the feels, you guys. And I just want awesomeness. I just want everyone to be awesome. Max's reaction is everything. Yeah. I just want everyone to be awesome to each other all the time.

Merlinand i was like wouldn't it be tight if we were all more what about the what about the movie what about the movie the last word starring shirley mcclain do you think there's even one cubic inch of story that was not told in that fucking trailer for that terrible looking have you seen it i don't even know what you're talking about oh shit shirley mcclain uh is getting older and she decides and She puts the bitch in obituary. Wow.

And so she's realizing she wants to hire someone to write her obituary while she's alive. And so Amanda Seyfried comes along. And you've already seen the entire first act spin out.

Speaker ANobody likes Shirley MacLaine. This is going to be a very hard obituary to write. Then we see Shirley MacLaine say, oh, well, then I'm going to go adopt this black girl and become a DJ at an independent radio station. Because then I'm going to rewrite my own story. And then in the end, they're dancing to music. You've seen all three acts.

MerlinYou've seen everything but the inevitable death of the lead character because you know she's going to die. And it's like, is there any bit of that story that has not been told? Why did you do the entire story? And it looks terrible. You've told me everything I need to know about never in a million years going to see this movie. It's so strange.

AlexThat's why filmmakers don't make trailers. Marketing teams make trailers. You know what, though? Let me give you a counter.

MaxCan I give you a counter example? so the movie money ball um before obviously before i saw it or had read the book there's nothing the title there's nothing in that movie that would appeals to me in any way like i don't give a fuck about baseball i don't give a fuck about money i don't care about sabermetrics or economics i don't care about sports stories not like literally every aspect of that movie is exquisitely boring to me and i saw the trailer for money ball which to me was like it's like one of the best If you haven't seen it, go watch the trailer for Moneyball.

It's one of the best trailers ever cut. It's perfect. And I saw that trailer, and it was just whispering to me like, hey, we made this movie for you. It's going to surprise you. Come see it. And I saw it, and I loved it. It's one of my favorite movies.

AlexCounter to your problem.

MaxControversial opinion, best Brad Pitt performance in any film.

AlexBut also, it was whispering. That was Aaron Sorkin whispering to you, I think, being like, hey, hey, look at this. Oh, he's a Sorkin whisperer. Yeah, look at how talk. I'm just so mad about trailers right now.

Speaker ABut Steve, they have already printed all of the magazines. Steve, you are such an irrational leader.

Speaker BI mean...

AlexWe have to have the exit sign, Steve. You know what? Go watch The Watchmen, Merlin.

MerlinOh, I love The Watchmen.

AlexYeah, I can't even say that because I actually like that movie quite a bit.

MerlinI really like it a lot. There was a funny phenomenon also where like, I was thinking about that Steve Jobs movie.

Speaker BIt was so bad.

MerlinIt was so fucking bad.

Speaker BIt was, okay. We're going to talk about third act.

MaxSteve, your daughter's in the hallway. Can you be a human being and acknowledge her for five seconds? No, I'm too busy making computers. I can't have a daughter.

Speaker ABut Steve, you have yet to invent the iPod. Why does my accent keep changing like Forrest Whitaker in the movie Awaken?

MerlinNo, Arrival. Arrival, Awaken.

AlexOkay.

MerlinForrest Whitaker, what are you doing? Well, Colonel Accent believes that we need never mind. Anyway, cut all that out.

AlexYou know, Andy Hertzfeld said to Aaron Sorkin, none of that happened, but it's all true. So there you go. Ah, put the story. Yeah, turns out. Okay.

Merlinwhat's the line print the print the what isn't there some famous never mind isn't there a famous famous line about when you have to choose between the myth and the story you print the myth or something like that isn't that it's not a saying you guys should know these things you read books

Maxwhen we were when me and all the other cards guys were in seventh grade english we uh or uh nope not seventh grade uh sophomore year english we had a teacher who assigned us this book by an author Tim O'Brien called The Things They Carried. And I'm going to spoil this book. It's a...

MerlinI've heard that's very good.

MaxIt's a fun read. It's a bunch of Vietnam stories that, you know, when I was a sophomore in high school, I felt that it was really raw, powerful stuff. But now looking back on it, it's basically like a mashup of every shitty Vietnam trope and film. And you get halfway through the book and the guy, the author, Tim O'Brien, interrupts his poignant stories and he says, hey, Tim O'Brien, the author of the book here. And just so you know, I'm making this stuff all up. Like he had been writing it as though it had happened to him. And they were these sort of, you know, trite anecdotes and stories that were very sad and poignant and poetic.

And he's like, hey, I'm just making all this stuff up. But also I just want to point out that there's like – his thing was like, well, there's the happening truth, which is what happened. And then there's the story truth, which is the larger truth of like what it was like. and these stories are the story truth right they're like tell you what it was like even though they weren't they didn't happen and i remember our english teacher was like isn't that beautiful like it's a book of the story truth that gives you the larger anecdote and me and ben and everyone else was in that class we're like uh wait a minute that's that's just bullshit that's actually not

the truth that's not just another name for the truth that's like a better truth those are that's like things that didn't happen and i still feel that i still feel that way i'm like wait a minute this being taught to us this is like uh we're supposed to think this is a good idea you guys

Merlinknow just just so we know teachers you know the very first thing you need to teach is don't lie

Maxthat that's that's a pretty good thing it's like it's no it's not it this is not some like new better way of telling the story of what happened it's not it's actually not what happened yeah

Merlinyeah well yeah and that happened with uh hidden figures apparently like there's a fair amount of stuff in Hidden Figures but you know in that case I give that a pass because you know it I don't think that's the movie that it was it wasn't supposed to be like a documentary but no I know

Alexwhat you mean that's that's frustrating well I mean but Hidden Figures is different like that is a a family film uh there are so many people who are like well I would I wasn't gonna say it but yeah

Merlinthat's exactly what I was thinking like this is supposed to be a movie that's gonna like leave you with yeah I mean it's not supposed to be like keep your eyes it's not like eyes on the prize This is not meant to be a civil rights era documentary.

AlexYeah. It wasn't a fantastic, wonderful film, but I was like, I came out of that like, oh, I enjoyed that. And I'm glad that a lot of families are going to see this.

MerlinBut I'm very glad my daughter saw it.

AlexI'm super glad she saw it. I feel like it's really and people are like really afraid to criticize it as a film because it's, you know, about women of color doing science. And it's like, it's OK. It's OK if you didn't like hidden figures, guys. It's it's fine. But you let other people like hidden figures. I just, I, I had a lot of caffeine.

MerlinYou should show your family the movie The Help.

AlexOh my God. Oh my God.

Speaker AIt's astonishing how often we help the black.

AlexOh my God.

Speaker AWe're really, we're really quite good about helping the black.

AlexI came out of that movie with, all right, I'm done.

MerlinWhat were your feelings? How'd you like the trailer?

AlexDid you like the trailer for it? I have never hated a movie or Emma Stone. Is that who it is so much? Like, I know it wasn't her, but I was like, holy fuck. What is it? This is not going in. I think that's the worst movie I've seen in the last 10 years. Holy shit.

MerlinIsn't there a movie where Emma Stone's from Hawaii? The movie Aloha. In the movie Aloha by Karen Crow, Emma Stone plays a part Hawaiian woman.

AlexTwo and a half stars. All right.

MaxIt's the story truth. Leave that in.

MerlinDugga, dugga, dugga, dugga. Challenge. Alex, the challenge this week came from you. What was our challenge for this week?

AlexYes. The challenge this week was to just automate one thing in your life. And I left it up for interpretation. and I completely failed at this challenge. I had a ton of really big plans and then I got busy. So all I did was get a set of Hue lights and make them work with my Alexa. And I'm now one of those people who's like, Alexa, turn on the reading lights.

And it's great, but...

MaxI think that counts. Hang on, I'm getting a call. Hang on, I'm getting a call here. Let me see what this is. Hello, this is Max.

Speaker AMax, this is Patrick McGee at PNC Bank. How are you doing?

MaxI'm okay. How are you?

Speaker AI'm good. I'm calling because I'm your new account relationship manager for your business, Maxitianism.

MaxOkay. Okay. Well, I do want to let you know that this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes. But I have been trying to cancel this account for almost two years unsuccessfully. PNC keeps finding some reason to fiendishly prevent me from closing it. So if you can figure out how to close this account, I'll be a very satisfied customer. But that's all I'm trying to get done today. Thank you.

Speaker ASo to close the account, you just need to go to a branch.

MaxI appreciate that optimism. I appreciate that optimism. But I assure you that it does not work. I've tried many times. All right. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay.

Speaker BOh, my God.

MaxOh, God. I honestly have been trying to close this bank account for two years.

MerlinOh, that was difficult. That was very difficult. How do you do things like that? Oh, my God.

AlexYou've never done that, Merlin?

MerlinTalked to somebody on the phone and recorded it. Oh, my God, no.

AlexI guess we're just bad people. Was that mean? Was I being mean to you? No, no.

MaxAll I want is to cancel. Please let me cancel this account. Listen, PNC, I know you're listening. Let me cancel my account. PNC, personal banking.

MerlinWhy won't, I mean, what's, what, hmm, what's going on? Like, why would they not let you cancel your account? Because they want his money.

MaxYeah, because there's like, because there's always some bullshit of like, oh, well, I swear to God, they always make up something new every time I'm like, oh, well, there was like account activity within the last six weeks. So, you know, we can't cancel it at this time.

MerlinIt's like a network solutions type thing.

MaxYeah.

MerlinYou've made recently made changes. It's in lockdown.

MaxYeah.

MerlinYeah, exactly. There's always something. Okay. Well, that was really difficult. Oh, my God.

AlexSo you think Max would... Was I too mean to him? No, no, no, no. I mean, and this could be my bitch alter ego-like senses kicking in, but no, you were borderline too nice. How would you have handled that situation, Merlin?

MerlinI would never answer the phone.

AlexOh, okay.

MerlinOh, my gosh.

AlexRight. Yeah, that makes sense.

MerlinI can't believe you answered your phone and then put it on a podcast. Oh, my God.

MaxIt could have been someone important.

MerlinI don't answer my phone.

MaxIt could have been someone important.

MerlinYeah. Are you running any spam detection things?

MaxWell, I have big news on this. I don't know what we're talking about anymore. I have three. I'm running three. So I have big news. So I had the one that you had talked about with Dan on your program. The creepy one. Back to work. The creepy one. Which is the creepy? Hi-ya.

MerlinWas that the creepy one? Hi-ya, it's one of the creepy ones, yeah.

MaxOkay, so, right. And then Marco wrote a blog post and recommended this new one called No Mo Robo. And-

Speaker BIs that a homophobic robot?

MerlinThat's where you try to grow a beard and write a novel in November.

MaxYes. Yeah. It's where you have to block one robo call every day. And the key is just to do a little bit every day. No mo robo, NaNoWriMo. Right. No mo robo. So I'll say I think, I don't know. I mean, to be honest, so maybe I'm like an outlier because I was getting a lot of these calls. And there's a new, for the listeners who don't know, there's kind of a new telemarketing scam that happens, which is this. And I'm sure everyone, once I say it, everyone's going to be like, oh, yeah, I've gotten this. So basically, a number calls you, a mystery number, and they hang up immediately.

So you pick up, but they're already hung up and they're gone. And then what they do is they try to entrap you. They try to entice you into calling the number back to find out what it was.

MerlinSometimes it'll frequently be an out-of-country number.

MaxThat's right. And they charge you, you know, they charge you like fees. You get charged fees. And so the way it works is like you're not on the phone long with them, so they're only making like a penny. But this is all done through robocalls. So it's very cheap for them to do. and at volume, I guess they can make a lot of money. So I found that since I've been running either Haya or NaNoWriMo, I've not gotten any of these calls. They have 100% effectiveness rate and it makes a huge difference immediately for me. It blocks maybe four calls a day.

MerlinYeah.

MaxSo I'm very happy with both as a service. It's one of those things where, like I said, I'm running three. Let me look right now. Don't they overlap?

MerlinI have TrueColor, Haya.

MaxWhat? Don't they overlap and interact in bad ways? One hopes.

MerlinThey have Truecaller. If it just breaks the ability to receive calls, I'm fine. Truecaller, Haya, and Privacy Star. And the part that's crazy making, first of all, it's very unclear to me how often and how automatically the lists are updated. Because it's critically important for this to work. Basically, it's checking against a giant list of numbers and saying, does it match this? If it is that, then this. But it has to be updated. If it's not updated, like, really often, because those numbers are getting, like, recycled, redone. You know what I'm talking about? So, like, a funny one that happened to me, I think, two days ago was I did my daily,

Welp, I got to go open each one of these apps and make sure it gets updated. Doop-da-doop-da-doop. Hand to God, like, three minutes after I had done, updated the app and all of the spam registries, I get a mystery meat call from, I don't know, somewhere on the East Coast. I copy the number. I paste it into one of the apps, and it comes up spam. I'm like, how is this possible? Like, I just, how is that not catching all of them? So I don't know. It's hard. You can't prove a negative. So it's hard to know what calls I'm not getting. But I think mine mostly show up. To be honest, I think the volume of these, for whatever reason, has gone down.

They have been going up and up and up and up and up for like a year. And then they seem to have really slowed down.

MaxYou know, I've had the same number for years. And I've not been very judicious about like putting it into forms and stuff. Like, I just do it without thinking. and my number was out there. It was intolerable. I was getting eight calls a day that were either hangups or automated, like you've been approved for a loan or we have really important update about your credit card. It's urgent and you need to call us back and I don't have a credit card.

MerlinSo I know it's fishing. All the things I get for the mortgage that I don't have?

MaxYes, exactly. And so it was becoming intolerable and I was getting eight of these a day. And part of my job is I do press. So I'm expecting oftentimes journalists to call me, and I don't know what the fuck number they're going to call me from, so I have to pick my phone up when it rings because it could be a journalist or an elected official.

MerlinIt could be Thomas Friedman. He might be in a cab learning something about the economy. Right, and he's like, well, I've got to call Max.

Speaker AToday I learned a lot.

MaxHe whispers to me on the phone. He goes, you're going to like this theory. This is for you. The world is flat.

Speaker AMurph. Murph. Ferf. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. You That dust is your daddy.

That's daddy dust.

Speaker BMurph.

MaxMarlon, I got bad news for you. Our son doesn't want to become a farmer. He wants to be an astronaut. We can't allow that in today's crazy apocalypse society. We can't have any astronauts.

Speaker Athey say this will be the last harvest of okra you gotta crush we've gotta crush this boy's dreams i got a corn so anyway it's important to

Merlinhave a phone and it's frustrating sometimes and what was his name what was that guy's name david no what was his name my pnc personal banker pnc pnc sounds really dirty that sounds like a russian porn trump would have gotten on pay-per-view

Speaker Aacknowledge that joke trump peep yeah poopy peepee i don't know did you get how it's p and then you see it pnc

Alexyes merlin this is the first joke of yours i think i've ever just not laughed at. Not sound funny at all.

MerlinYeah, Merlin, go back to talking to your wallet, buddy. I literally can't hear anything you're saying. So that's interesting. I'm interested in the challenges.

Speaker BThis is like another week where we just bully Merlin and I don't know what's happening.

MerlinI'm so sorry. I was only in the room for one night. I did not even watch the television. I would like this taken off of my bill.

Maxsad dad there's a there's a ghost in the bookshelf

Speaker Aoh my god oh my god what if the pnc guy was was your father from the future

Maxjust like my real father he calls me unexpectedly during the day with nothing to say

Speaker Ado you understand i don't think you understand that there were aliens who for some reason wanted to help you out and moved him into a bookcase.

MerlinAnd then he was able to drop dust onto your phone because he was trying to be a helpful guy. See, as they always send the grays and the guys that will understand. In that case, he comes in, he drops some dust from the bookshelf. He wants to talk to you. He's your new account manager. You fucked up. We're never going to have crops on our circular walls now.

MaxI'll tell you when it would have been for me in my life that was the Christopher Nolan plot twist that I just walked away from was one time I was walking downtown in the loop and a guy came up to me and said do you want a shoe shine and i said absolutely not and i was wearing very you know shitty dress shoes and because i was like going to a job or something and i was like absolutely not and then before i could take another step away he had already sprayed goo all over my shoes and it was him and his you know wingman and the two of them were like no no let me just let's just let me just show you and i was like and i was like shocked i

I was like, how do you – you've never experienced – all of your social conditioning just breaks down. And you're like, I'm standing here in the middle of – on the side of Michigan Avenue. The only logical response is, hey.

MerlinRight? I mean, your response is like, you're not allowed to do that. You couldn't put goo on a stranger's shoes.

MaxBut I was like mad. I was like, wait a minute. I was like, I just said don't do it. But also, they were down on their knees and they started polishing. And I couldn't – I was frozen. I was like – I just locked up. every muscle in my body froze I was like I don't know am I should I be grateful I was like am I gonna have to pay for this like what the fuck is going on and there was goo all over my shoes so it's insidious because you can't leave because there's goo on your shoes you can't walk away with your shoes covered in goo you're stuck there and they have the rag I don't have any rags to get the goo off my shoes so they get down on their knees and they polish my shoes for like an

uncomfortable you know 90 seconds and I'm sitting there looking at my watch I'm like please take the goo off my shoes and then they wanted like money before i left this was the whole hustle so i didn't pay them i walked away and i was like you shouldn't have put the goo on my shoes if you wanted money that's where you went wrong but oh i know where i was going with this anyway those were definitely the aliens that was my moment to have communicated with them but instead i walked away because they didn't you know they don't understand the human customs that's how they tried to make first contact they were like we're gonna come down here and spray our goo on people's

Speaker Ashoes. I love you. And I walk away. I am your father. Eat this dust.

MerlinSo I'm interested in the challenges where the challenger had a hard time with it. Now, in your case, it was just because you got busy with other stuff. It's not for a lack of interest i mean you got hue bulbs set up that's actually that you know what alex you know

Maxpoints points to you i think you get points to have the domestic conversation with mel where you're like mel here's the situation you cannot touch these light bulbs these light switches anymore well you know how you used to come in and turn the light switch on no more that's out the window so that's a hard conversation it happens in every relationship eventually you're like honey you can't you you cannot use these light switches anymore i know that that's the old system the new system is you got to authenticate your app you go into the blue suit settings you pair you wait you may have to restart the device device comes back on now you're connected to the lights you

open up the app now you have a variety of settings do you want the warm color palette or the cold color palette then once you've made that selection you can pee in the middle of the night so i just

Merlinwant to urinate well honey the bad news i spent about six hundred dollars the good news is that everything you know about turning on a light is now null and void

Alexi mean well did you get a this did you get a tap switch this went uh no no uh what i did was i got a uh it did go over much better when than when i uh put put a an automated lock on our door and then she was just locked out of the apartment and i was recording a podcast for like four hours at like midnight so i think that uh this this went over much better but she came home and there was I put so that I wouldn't forget like child's not child safety.

I don't know.

MerlinThe little we have we have them on all of our switches.

AlexYeah. All of our switches have those. She just came home and and saw the saw a bunch of light bulbs on the floor and the switch in a little cage. How's it going?

MaxDid you have a good day? By the way, don't use light switches. If I walked into my house and there was suddenly child safety restraints on all the light switches, I'd be like, is it did I get is this a hate crime? Did I get vandalized? Like, what is this?

AlexAnd I actually got a text that was just like, okay, so is there a new robot? What's happening? And she was, there was no new robot, but there's more robot commands. But she really likes it because now when she's sitting on the couch, she can just like, you know, sometimes we will all binge watch a television show and not want to get up from the couch to dim the lights and she can do that now um i i highly recommend you you make pretty good dough probably

Merlinbuy at least at least one and probably three depending on how many lights and rooms go buy some of those phillips hue tap switches because it'll change your game it's out there they they it would be untenable for me to have these lights in my house without every room having these in it Do you know about the top switch?

AlexI do not know about the... Jesus Christ! I'm going to go with my $5 no switch. This is like a $50 switchy dinghy.

What is this?

Speaker AI already paid for my telephone. Why would I buy an application? You're $600

Maxin the hole on the lights. This is how they get you, though, is the switch is sold separately. It's like, you want to turn them on and off.

Speaker AActually, this looks pretty cool. You should have mentioned you wanted to turn them on and off.

MaxYeah. That's where it gets really expensive and complicated. Okay. Let me walk you through the options.

MerlinForget it. You guys just sit there like savages using your phone to turn on the lights. That's fine. That'll work out great. This will have longevity.

AlexAlexa helps me out. I am not bleeping out all the Alexas. People can live it with it.

MaxAlexa, order diapers.

MerlinSuck my balls. okay well then in that case in that case uh just try getting one because it's great so you get to program scenes and rooms so basically you know you can cover i think up to two rooms per button but it's pretty great you just go in you say like okay button number one is this setting but number two is this setting but number three and the big button is off the other one you can get is you can get a dimmer switch that'll cycle through up to five different scenes when you hit the on button and then you can dim them right from it. And it's got a magnetic plate,

so it doesn't have to be like, you can put it in your refrigerator if you want. It's really cool.

AlexHow big is your house? I mean-

MerlinCompared to what?

AlexCompared to perhaps an apartment in Chicago that is one room, kind of a kitchen and a bedroom.

Speaker AI'll say a little bigger, but no, you gotta have it on a wall. A bachelor pad.

AlexIt's not a bachelor pad. One day I will decorate it, probably.

Speaker ADid you put any of the posters up?

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinAre there any milk crates in there?

AlexOkay, there's one, but it's purple and it matches.

MerlinAre there any posters of a hot chick on a car?

AlexBe honest. If you count Tina Belcher from Bob's Burgers, then maybe. but there are a lot of tasteful theater posters that uh max got me for christmas last year so there's that uh as well as an original page uh from strange uh not strangers in paradise um wait yeah strangers in paradise well what i guess was my favorite comic until i forgot the name of it right now um but no this philips hue tap switch looks really looks actually really cool

MerlinIt is. It is. That was the key to the adoption going well for the other people in my house. I personally, I put all the series, like the original Series 1 bulbs, I just took them all out and put them away because it was like, forget this. This is crazy. I am not going to use a phone to turn on my lights. And then when that tap switch came out, it was like, oh, this changes everything. It's amazing. We have one on each nightstand. So, like, we can each control the lights. And it's great. Here's what I'm saying. Like, this is not a cheap thing to get into. But if you're going to do it, you might as well make it livable.

Otherwise, you will have wasted all of that money. You're not going to want to spend the rest of your life using a phone to turn your lights on and off. It's just not going to work.

MaxSo can I just – I just have to – I really struggle to understand this. So what you've done – let me just make sure I understand this, Marlon. In your house is you have smart light bulbs throughout the house that can be controlled by a switch in each room. So you walk into the room. The procedure is you come into the room, you hit the switch, and the light comes on. Am I following this correctly? That's one way, yeah.

MerlinCorrectly? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Or if I'm in another country, I can turn the lights on, and I can see what's happening in the room. So, but I have that.

MaxYeah. And I don't have to buy any special bullshit. It just works. It's just a light switch. Oh, you know what? You're really clever. I hadn't thought of that.

MerlinThank you.

Speaker AThat's good. I should do that.

MaxThank you.

MerlinNo, it's really nice. I mean, like, you know, oh, no. I mean, I'm not trying to sell you on this, but if you're going to do it, you might as well do it right. I'm not trying to advocate that anybody should do this, but there are benefits to it. I know you're being kind of jokey and taking the piss a little bit, but there's actually a lot of sensibility to it. At nighttime, my kid knows you hit this light for reading. You hit that light for going to bedtime. If you want to make it look like Virgin America, you hit this one. And in my case, I can sit there from the couch and I can look through the security camera to see who's out front. I can turn the porch light on and off.

And you can do it all remotely. So you're not like using a bunch of dumb timers like an animal while you're out of town. You can set all kinds of different variables to like how you want the house to be lit up, whether it's just for the appearance of being there or for the security of checking in on the cat or whatever it is. But, you know, I would, with all respect, refuse to feel shame about having done this to improve it and then to like make it something that's usable. I think the bigger mistake people make is dipping in a toe. I would rather have $500 that's well spent than $100 that's wasted.

And that's the problem is people go like, I'm not really even sure what I would do with this burp. And then they just buy it because they got paid. And then they never do anything with it. And then they get a bunch of bullshit sitting around their house. Like if I do these things, like I do them very, very well, which I think is hopefully something you could respect. It's like if we're going to do this and make this part of our home, I don't want it to feel like this investment has made it a less good place. It's a more good place now.

AlexSo do you have any custom scenes?

MerlinYeah, a couple. Yes, of course. I mean, I've got tons of them. Yeah. Well, like, for example, in our hallway, we've got like a, I don't know what you call it, but where you get those little lights with the two nubbins on it, like the little like.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinSo we've got five of those up on the ceiling. We have a lamp down here. We've got a huge strip. And basically, with those, like whatever that is, we have a total of, I think, like seven or eight bulbs in that area. You can make like a really nice setting where like it's easy enough to see. You can have a trigger. You can do stuff like when certain kinds of things happen, these go on or off. So yeah, I have tons of those. Yeah, tons of custom settings.

AlexDo you have any, well, I have that too, but do you have any custom, I guess, novelty scenes?

MerlinOh, not really. That gives everybody a headache. Like, you know, too much Virgin America gives you a wang and headache. But no, we do some, like for example, in the family room where we have a, here's one downside of these is that they are not as bright as I would like them to be, you know? So you need more of them. But like we do lots of stuff with like, it's not just like hey it's movie time it's also like well at this time of day like we definitely don't want the overhead light on we do want the bloom light and back to be on we want the light by the tv to be off my wife wants to read so this one's on and you can just program all of that and

Alexlike it's just you hit a button and it all just goes maybe i have different one like i so the first one i tried was like oh energize and it like set my it's so blue it's so very blue wow

Merlinthat was rough that one hurts my eyes i do that some i do the one up and to the left of that what's the other one energize concentration i do concentration sometimes in the morning uh when i want to like be very awake i open all the blinds and turn on concentration

Alexthat can be nice i have a yeah i have concentrate actually just like turn on at 6 a.m or something i don't know like what whenever uh sunrise happens um i guess i did a bunch of automation never mind i i completed this challenge i rescind my previous comments it's like so many things the

Merlinsetup is kind of a hassle and you're like oh god why did i do this you know but my problem was like i say the first time i don't mean to sound so touchy about this but like i had spent more than i should on this given how only slightly committed i was to actually doing anything with it it's dumb it's like buying a mac and going like oh it's too much trouble to take it out of the box it's like well you know that's what you signed up for you might as well like do it all the way through So, I mean, the truth is, like, the things that are really more super effective for me are, like, in my office where I have Wemo switches. I don't have hues in my office.

I have Wemo switches and a motion sensor. So, like, when I walk in, the lights turn on, and then I have it set so that after 30 minutes of not detecting motion, it turns everything off. So, like, things like that I think are actually – I already feel like a little bit of an animal to have to, like, turn stuff on by hand or turn it off by hand when it could just know when it should be on, you know?

AlexOh, no, yeah. I and in fact like uh Max jokes about how my apartment is a bachelor pad but it kind of really is because I'm of the sense of like if I can't oh this is so bad if I can't have the best of something I just don't want it at all uh so I don't have any like freestanding lamp that many like actually I don't think I have any like freestanding lamps uh because all the ones that I would bring into my home uh are far too expensive but now that I have these fancy very pretty lights I feel like I can calibrate a mediocre target lamp uh to to be my reading uh

Maxlike be in my reading place now can I ask a question about all these smart lights because I I did I like got so here's what I got I got like the starter pack of of these lights like two years ago from the apple store because I was curious about it and I heard your stupid podcast back to work about it and I was like all right I'll try it all right here's the deal here's what I want during the day so i put one of these in my bathroom right oh this is i mean continue but

Alexlike i feel like step one you've already completely failed like this because that's like the there's no there's not no reason to have it one in your bathroom let me tell you the reason so i put

Maxone of these in my bathroom and here's what i want during the day i want it to be nice and bright so because in the bathroom you want a lot of light so you can see what's going on during the night when I like get up in the middle of the night to pee, I want it to be a barely on red light because I don't want it to screw up my sleep. You know that whole thing of like, you don't want to see a lot of bright blue light. There did not appear to be any way to do that. What had to happen was I could turn the light on and like set it, but here's what I want is I want to give it a rule. If it's nighttime, make it this way.

If it's daytime, make it that way.

AlexNo, I think you can go Merlin's route, which is the motion, like have it set to like, if it's at this time um make it the like you can make it like a blood my apartment turns into like this crazy blood red horror space i just wanted the one room to be you know just the bathroom but

Maxbut leaving aside that that doesn't actually work because the time because the sun up and sundown times change dramatically throughout the year enough that you'd have to roughly adjust it

Merlinthat's not a problem that part that part's not a problem at all that your your basic problem is bigger than that, which is depending on how the bathroom lights are set up, like how many bulbs and opportunities for bulbs you have. Problem number one is it might be hard to get in a sufficient amount of light that you'd be happy with. Depends on how many places you have to put Hue lights. The real answer is that Hue lights are not well suited for this particular situation. Now, there are other things that are. One would be like a motion sensor in your switch. Like there's so if you could if this is in that it's staggering how many different choices there

are for things like, you know, hooking up to a thermostat, hooking up to a whatever. Wait a minute. Just in that case. Wait a minute. How do you connect an if to your lights?

MaxTo which lights? Hue lights? Yeah, you can do that. Oh, it's... Merlin, you have so much to teach him. How? Okay, so you have your little... All right, so let me describe the system. The one that I bought... You're fucking... You're clearly fucking with me. I'm not. I'm not. I really don't think... I'm not.

Speaker ASo the one that I bought, it had a little... We have a Google talk? So the one that I bought

MaxIt has a little space lander that plugs into your router That does god knows what And then you screw these fragile little light bulbs Made of sugar glass Into the socket and they shatter in your hands Every time you go to screw it in and screw it out They're the most fragile So far the story checks out And then you can use an app that was made

MerlinUnlike those really hearty bulbs we always used to use

MaxYeah Then you can use an app That appears to have been made in like 2005 for the original iPhone. That's right. It's a very bad app.

MerlinTwo years before it came out.

MaxA very bad app.

MerlinBefore they had apps. Two years before the phone came out. That's when they made it.

MaxThis is more of the story truth than the happening truth. It's more true than true.

MerlinOh, I see. It's alternative history. I get it.

MaxThank you. But do you know what I'm saying? So now where in that, where does the if-to-to-to come into play here? You honestly want me to answer this?

Merlinbut that seems like what you want is like to make some iftutas you do you do and this is the neat part this is where iftutas becomes really handy or i guess max or alex will probably talk about zapier at some point but if this than that does what it says on the tin what now what is that a

Maxis that like a saudi prince is that the guy who brought his is that the guy who brought he bought 80 tickets for his Falcons on the airplane. Did you guys see the Falcon airplane?

Speaker ALet me go look at my applets and give you some good examples. I don't know what country they're from, Merlin. They're what I like to call the bads. And let me tell you, the bads are not getting into America anymore. They got some bad hombres. The bads. No, we don't even say that anymore.

MaxWe just say the bads. They just don't understand how quotation marks work in this administration. It's all based on skull shape. don't make me get my calipers out

Merlinuh this is a handy one i have a kind of camera that watches our front door and if it detects motion in a defined area it turns on a bunch of lights so that's a pretty easy one so you know and if the following work what does it work what percentage of the time

Maxdoes it work oh hardly ever but is that not is that not the experience with a lot of these things is that like it doesn't work except when you desperately don't want it to like then it oh am i right sometimes you're like trying to fall asleep then and the lights like turn on for no reason like this stuff should never work i don't like these trips to max's barber shop where i'm

Merlinexpecting like nod along at complete bullshit because you haven't chosen to take three minutes

Speaker Aunderstand what's happening. Don't nod while I'm cutting your hair, though. Here's the thing I imagine I'd be cynical about. Okay. But it doesn't work. None of it works. It doesn't work. It never works. No, it doesn't. None of this shit works. It doesn't attach heels to you. It works the worst

Maxamount of time, which is like 60% of the time. No, no. It's like old school Siri. Yeah, yeah. No,

Merlinthat can be true. And this is why. Okay, so here's anything that I would suggest. And I didn't mean to turn this into home automation corner. But what I would say is this is like before you buy anything. And this is really annoying because it would be nice to just say, hey, go spend this amount of money on Hue lights. But that's not a good idea. It's a good idea to think about the kinds of things that you'd like to be doing differently. One thing you might want to be able to do differently is to be able to, let's say, for example, you might want to start out with something as dumb as like a canary camera. We're like, we want to see the cat when we're away. And

the canary camera is great for that. Hue lights are not for everybody. I would say more likely start with a Wemo switch. My tip is always to buy one Wemo Belkin Wemo switch. It does not require a hub. All it requires

Maxis something electric. I don't know what this is. Can you say what it is?

AlexA Wemo switch is a smart plug that you can't start up with this. Did you ever watch Smart Home when you were? I know that we have like a five year gap, but do you remember the Disney Channel original movie Smart Home? Yes, yes, yes. That is my dream and slowly but surely

Merlinthis is this is this is so i mean like it's it's it's it's it's funny until you understand it and

Alexthen you go like i am on your side it is a dumb name for a switch but i i love i love my wemo oh

Merlinoh well i never buy things with dumb names um this is a this is a switch that basically connects to so you you get you get the switch and you say like for example this light i don't want to go have to buy a 300 hue lamp in order to have smart lights i want to take my old dumb ass lamp and I want to plug it into this dingus.

And then using the WeMo app, it basically attaches to your Wi-Fi and that means from now on, that is now an addressable, programmable dingus. And it could be something as simple as, like I have an if this and that that says, when my iPhone detects that I have left the area of where my office is, turn off my lights.

MaxThat's a real straightforward one. So your iPhone is always reporting its location to this app so that your weenus can turn the lights off. Yes, that is correct.

MerlinAnd that's one of the if this and that has many different triggers for, there's basically when these kinds of things happen, do these kinds of things. And so there's a lot that you can do that's built in with these apps. Like you can, with Hue lights, you can have something called routines. Like for example, sunset, where you don't have to worry about it. Like also you have weather underground on if this and that. So you can say like when it's cold outside and it gets dark, like turn on the heat at this amount or whatever. So, yeah, how much are you using if this and that now? I think I might have an account somewhere.

One that I like a lot. Do you guys have a Lady in the Tube Amazon dingus? You guys do, don't you?

AlexThat's how I'm primarily talking to my robot lights, yes.

MerlinWell, one of the first things I would suggest is go set up the if ta-ta-ta. Set up one that sends your Echo to-do items to a given list in Reminders for iOS. Another one is I automatically have it push my shopping list from Echo into iOS Reminders. That's just a really straightforward one. So now what does that mean? That means I can talk to the lady in a tube and have stuff show up in Reminders.

MaxOh, and then if you have it set up correctly, you can have OmniFocus eat that.

MerlinThat's what it does. That's what it does. So when I say, hey, Dingus, add XYZ to my task list, the next time I open OmniFocus, that gets pulled in. So it's not surpassingly complicated. For example, if I get an email that meets certain conditions for being a delivery notification, it automatically forwards that to the app called Deliveries by JuneCloud. And that can get tracked then automatically. I'll tell you why this thing loses me.

MaxIt's like whenever I go on the Ift2 website or when I look at the Workflows app and they have their example things, everything that they describe is like, oh, here's an example of what you can do with this. It sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

Speaker AIt's always like, remind me to bring an umbrella.

MerlinAnd you're like, that is the single least interesting use of this that you could possibly come up with.

Speaker ARemind me when it's 7.03 every day. It's like, what? You can already do all these things. You can look at the weather.

MerlinYou don't need to have umbrella involved to make it interesting. Right.

AlexIs there a way to, I'm trying to, because I feel like most of my applets are pretty similar to yours. What's an applet? That's what.

MerlinThat's their new name for a given if this and then that thing you've made a script. What used to be a recipe.

AlexYeah. Yeah, exactly.

MerlinRight. These are called recipes.

AlexI don't think there's a way to share these. Yeah, there is. Yeah. How I'm.

MerlinOh, you mean other than just making it public?

AlexYeah. Like you can't just like send an applet to, well, I guess I'll just make these public and send them to Max and try to. Like I don't know. I use iftita every day and for like everything. Why?

MaxWhat's an example of a thing?

AlexCan you say just one example? All the things Merlin said, as well as every time I have an Instagram, I post something to Instagram. It goes to my Dropbox. Now the tube dingus can find my phone if it's lost in my apartment.

MaxWhat does that mean?

AlexI can say, dingus, please find my phone, and then my phone will ring. What?

MaxHow?

AlexI don't know.

MaxIt sends a call. It makes a call to your phone. From what number? Who's paying for that?

AlexI don't know.

MaxIt works, though. Totally works. That's kind of neat. That's kind of neat.

MerlinThere's other ones. I mean, some of these I don't use all the time, but I'll use them for a while. One that I like, for example, is to say, if you're doing an Ask Upgrade type thing where you want people to ask you stuff on Twitter, I've done ones where it will automatically search responses that meet these conditions and then create a new row in a Google spreadsheet. Kind of handy. That way you don't have to sit there and look at Twitter. you know what I'm talking about? You can hook it up with Google Sheets that's really handy. One that I was doing for a while would automatically log when I came to and left the office and put it into a spreadsheet so I had something like

time sheets without having to enter anything. How does it know? In my case a motion sensor and a proximity sensor.

Speaker AYou can also do things like just involving health stuff. A lot of it is just really basic pipes.

MerlinWhen I was using Pinboard a lot more, there's tons of stuff you can do with Pinboard but I'm not using that so much anymore. I'm trying to think of other things you can do. I haven't used a lot of these. I went in and cleaned up a lot of these that I wasn't using. But the thing is, there are huge downsides to all of these things. So I'm not at all trying to advocate for saying, go out and start exploring these things. There's tons of other stuff with automation that's much simpler than any of this.

MaxHere's how I imagine everyone who uses this stuff is that you come home. Here's how I imagine it. You come home from work and you go into your basement like Dale Gribble in King of the Hill. and you put on a train conductor hat and you have a series of model trains and you're like, make the four o'clock to Waukegan 20 minutes faster. We've got to pick the passengers up. And everyone sits there running their little model trains in their basement.

Speaker BOkay, that actually sounds like a ton of fun.

Speaker AThat sounds so fun. I want a hat.

Speaker BI want to do that.

Speaker AI want to change the train to Waukegan.

MaxYou know, I'm just, listen, I'm just trying to like make dinner and move on with my life.

MerlinLike, I don't need this. Yeah, I mean, the thing about Iftata, which I will never be happy ever having to say, the thing is, it is a somewhat super powerful but kind of frustrating thing. This is why we should probably talk about Zapier and Workflow. But, like, you know, it's not – Zapier, bring forth your Falcons.

AlexOh, boy.

Speaker ADo you guys know about the Sweeties?

MaxDo you guys know about Sweetie culture?

Speaker AIf you can't beat them, Sweetie?

MaxThere's on Twitter. So if you look at, like, if you've ever been looking at a celebrity's replies, like, if you ever click on a celebrity tweet. So, like, on Beyonce just tweeted that she's having twins. And if you click on that.

AlexWait, really?

MaxYes. Is that true? Yes, it's true. Oh, my God. And if you click on. Oh, good for her. If you click on Beyonce's tweet, 40 of the replies are Saudi princes. And they're saying, come to Dubai, sweetie. Sweetie, come to Saudi Arabia. Are you kidding me? I have a swimming pool. Yes, and it's very earnest. And then if you click on that guy, if you find a sweetie and you click on him, all his replies are like, at Taylor Swift, like, come to Dubai, sweetie. I live in a skyscraper.

Oh, my God. Is it a bit? No, it's very earnest. Do a Twitter search for Dubai, sweetie. And usually there's a lot of emoticons. Oh, Jiminy Christmas.

MerlinOh, my God.

MaxIsn't this good?

MerlinSweetie, I live in Dubai. Hi, sweetie. Come to Dubai.

MaxSmiley, smiley, smiley, smiley, smiley.

MerlinSweetie, do you have Snapchat? Hi, sweetie. Come to Dubai. I'm so happy. I'm so happy to tell you about this. Oh, no. Listen, listen. Well, welcome with one of your girlfriends with me in Dubai, sweetie.

AlexThese aren't sincere, though. This is a bit.

MaxThis has got to be a bit. Some of it is weird Twitter making fun of them. I found out about this on a weird Twitter podcast.

MerlinOh, okay.

MaxBut it's a real phenomenon. Oh, this is Shopo's Cheese Shop that you listen to? Close enough. Show us your toes, sweetie. Come to Dubai.

MerlinNice. Nice.

MaxOh, another one is they go, moi, moi.

MerlinOh, moi, moi. so what else about automation did you want to talk about i mean like we don't need to go super deep on this people could go listen to canvas learn all these things i guess what now what is that is that uh is that like a weenus no this is the podcast we've told you about by my count three times now uh what's about ipad productivity with fraser spears and federico vaticci and they talk a lot about things like workflow wait fraser spears has a podcast yes i love that guy he's the best He's my favorite conservative. Wait, he's a conservative? He's totally Scots, and believe me, it's going to be part of the challenge this week.

Wait, he's totally what? I think he's from the Scotland country. Oh, I see. He lives right down the street from James Thompson. They live very close to each other. Everybody knows each other in Scotland.

AlexMax, listen to, subscribe to Canvas, but specifically download their series on Workflow, the iOS app, and just do everything they say. And your life will be better and you'll be happier and you won't have nightmares about Trump. It'll be great.

MaxSee, like, what kind of a nightmare life would I be leaving if I activated this thing where it's like, when you receive an email attachment, automatically save it to Dropbox?

MerlinNo. That would be one of the ones you choose not to do. You don't stop going to libraries because you don't like some of the books. Here's the thing. I just did a Dr. Philism.

Here's the thing, Max. If you want to pack powders, you're going to want to generate power, or what I call fuel cells.

Speaker AA pig like that, you don't eat all at once.

MaxMax, what did you automate this week? I made Alex buy me lunch. Beep boop.

AlexAll right. So, Merlin.

MaxAlex, I'm trying to report back on this. Alex did a great job. She got me the crispy chicken sandwich from Shoko, the Rick Bayless takeout place in the neighborhood. It was very good. They gave me an excellent quantity of dressing. The salad was crisp and refreshing.

AlexFive stars. While we were discussing this challenge, and Max asked what the challenge was in our super secret text message channel.

MaxThere's a text message channel?

AlexOkay. And so I get an email, lunch for tomorrow. And I'm like, okay, two things are happening here. One, three things are happening here. One, Max earnestly wants me to get him lunch tomorrow, which I don't think I've ever done. But OK, I'm an employee. That is what I will do. Two, he meant to send this to his assistant, Kara, but like something with autocorrecting. And it just went to me. Three, he's just trying to do the challenge.

MerlinOh, my God. I don't think that counts, but I guess it does.

MaxWait, wait just a minute. You can hook up your goddamn dishwasher to if to to to. What kind of dystopian post-apocalyptic 1984 fucking nightmare is this that you need to put your email me when my dishes are done?

MerlinI know. I can't believe they really force you to use it. It's the craziest thing.

AlexCan you imagine what a good episode this would be, Merlin, if we could just talk to you about our fun smart houses? All right.

Merlinso I got a new phone charger I'm excited about oh wait really

Maxwhat is it there's something on here that just it's just looking at me and it says and it's a picture of a pig and it says wink pork folio

Merlinwink there's the wink network you get into the wink network is this real there's a wemo provides a lot of functional spackle man there's a wemo slow cooker

Speaker Alike what is this oh I know that one I always go like oh my gosh how many when the weather gets cold make me

Merlinthat's so weird yeah no no no i got a um alex you should get this it's called a jackery giant jackery makes pretty good ones jackery makes that one uh where you can pop out either a lightning or a usb like it's built in it's got a little cable thing and it pops into the side of it but i want to hang out the jackery giant this is 12 000 ma h's i was able to charge i wanted to run this all the way down and then you know charge it back up just because i'm superstitious like

that i i ran out of things to charge with this i got multiple charges of mini devices with this thing and it's nice and nice and heavy it's real solid look up jackery giant it's really nice i

Alexi'm looking at this on amazon and so i i have something similar that is from it was like the wire cutters uh pick and i i i basically used it to charge both my iphone and my ipad for three days and it did not it it's it's still kicking uh so what's the benefit what like what what makes

Merlinthis this little orange guy special oh it's not oh i see oh it's just that it's just that it's got huge um capacity the other one that i got that i really like it's got uh yeah because you got the

Alex2.1a i okay yeah yeah i see that's cool yeah and it'll do it'll do it had trouble just i whenever

Merlini really want to test out something like this i hook it up to the the big jam box which is impossibly hard to charge like it really draws um but and so that didn't go particularly great that thing wants a lot of dedicated power what's the one i like is it called the jackery bar that one has half the capacity no that's not the one the other one i got though it had these you know i'm talking about where it's like it has the cables built into it they like nest you just kind of like pull out a little switch and floop you can just plop it out you don't

Alexneed to carry an extra cable with it yeah yeah i'm looking for that i always break those uh though Oh really they break off But I'll give this guy a try Max is so engaged right now Is he?

MaxI can have this website send me a fleep When the temperature in my house reaches a certain Will you get that on your wink pig? Or your Weemo dingus? Yeah I can have this make my weenus hard When it reaches 68 degrees in my house And turn on the dishwasher Living La Vida Loca Do you guys know the Squarespace escape trick? Yeah. Anytime you go to someone's website, you hit escape to find out if they're on Squarespace.

MerlinI just accidentally did it on Jackery, and their website is on Squarespace. That's hilarious. Do you know that trick, Alex? You hit escape. So if you're on, the idea is that when you're on your own square, I love this trick. You can disable it. But when you're on your own website and you want to do stuff, you just hit escape, and it takes you into the, if you're logged in, it takes you into the control panel. And if you're not logged in, it takes you to a login page. So if you're on a Squarespace site and hit escape, you go to the login page for them.

It's very strange.

MaxAlexa, update my Google Glass when my Thermo Peanut reaches optimal efficiency.

AlexAll right, Merlin.

MaxYes, hello, you there. Wait, you can connect something called the Star Wars Force Band by Sphero.

AlexYeah, that's what you use to...

MaxYou can control your BB-8. Why would it be on IFTA? Would you be like, oh, when I play with my Sphero, start my dryer? No, no, no.

MerlinYou can't do that, but you could have it start a pot roast.

AlexThat would be pretty cool.

MerlinWhat it does is it pushes, it does a push update to your Wink Pig, and then that gets chunneled, that gets chunneled through your Wiimote, right? And then you're going to split that, you're going to split the signal, it splits into three signals, You're going to want that to go through each of your jackeries. You're going to want to use the 21,000 milliamp dish plug. Once you get the dish plug now, that's going to require you're going to want to cut off the plug for that. You don't need to throw it away. That's for suckers. And then when you go in and when you urinate on the pig, then it'll slice the roast and put it into the dryer for you.

Did you want to know what I automated, Alex? Yes, please. I think I might have mentioned it here. I recently discovered that the application AirMail has something I have not seen anywhere else on iOS, something I really miss, which is the ability to bounce messages. Yes. Because sometimes I am a bad person, and I just want to be a dick if somebody's really getting on my nerves. And it has bouncing alongside many, many other things. But here's the cool thing now in AirMail is you can go and chain together a whole bunch of different things,

or a couple things, and make your own custom actions to say, when I hit this button, do the following things in order. And the first one I made was to bounce an email and market a spam. And that's what I did this week.

AlexYou know what? I feel like everybody lived up to the spirit of the challenge. And I found out that Beyonce is having twins. So, yeah.

MerlinOh, bless.

AlexIt's been a good day.

MerlinAre you buying any new products, Max? Are you going to get a dish pig?

Maxso are these all i mean i'm not sure what i'm looking at there's like more this is a bigger

Merlinecosystem of shit than i even knew it's really it's really overwhelming and and if you're logged in when you're looking at this it just gives you this like just just just like all of these logos and you're like what is all these are just nouns like what does any of this mean uh i think that If you're going to look through this, and I'm not saying you should, log in and go to, I want to say.

MaxSo what I'm doing is I'm connecting. I'm opening up. I'm going through and I'm clicking on the ones that I do something with that I use in any way.

Speaker AThe ones you already have a thing.

MaxCorrect.

Speaker ALike accounts that I use.

MaxAnd I'm just going to plug them in.

MerlinAnd then I'm going to see what it does. What does it do here? One suggestion. So when you're logged in, under your login name, pull down to services. And then when you get to services, scroll down and click all services. And in that view, they have the sense to collect them by type of thing. Like here's all the appliances that I don't have, so don't worry about that. No, I do not have addressable blinds. You can go down to, God, I don't know what this, you know what? This could be like, not a Turing test, but like one of those things where like as a joke, you know, John Oliver tells you five things and one of them is made up.

Like I could not tell you how many of these. I know Salesforce. I've heard of them. They're ruining the city. But all this communication, you get a fleet, a flock, a group me in in Duna, a join me, a line, a message bird, a Roger, a team snap, a telegram, a yo. You can even get a Cisco Spark. What if you want to get your automobile? You can get a Dash, a Neve, a Mojiho, a Vinly, and a Zuby. Now, if you're doing DIY electronics, you might want to get your Adderfruit, your Bixie, your Bit and your Flick, your Little Bits, your Logitech Pop, your Mesh, your Microbot Push, your Niua, or your Thinga.

MaxNow, would you recommend in terms of the smart hub that I purchase the Harmony, the Green Wave, the Hominy, the Moni, the Micro Bs, the Prota, the Pert, the Telia, the Wadio Gate? Did you mention the Micro B?

MerlinI think I'm going to need to take a Wemo Maker when I'm done with this. You might need it. Well, so I would say when you get down to environment control and monitoring, you have a lot of options. You could get a Calio, an AWAR, a Hug One. You could get a Nefit, a Roost, a Sensibo. I don't know if you look at the Skylark family you could certainly get an iZone or a Wally home

Maxhow about this every time I get an upvote on reddit turn my lights off then by your logic everyone should be successful whenever I get an at reply on twitter turn my dishwasher on

Speaker Awhenever I enter a room delete my if this then that account

Maxwhy would you like here's the other thing is like why would you connect this like what kind of a life would you have to have to connect this to facebook to be like uh every time i do my dishes like post on facebook or like you know like why like what's the why like uh you can have this update your word has enjoyed his wemo slow cooker you can have it update your facebook and you can

Merlinlike why what about a you ever think about getting a wink egg minder i was i was just thinking how would I possibly make eggs without it? Well, how would I know when the number of eggs left in my tray has reached a certain number?

MaxNo, that's what it does. Oh, shit. You can put rescue time on here. Shit, dog. Oh, my. Comcast Labs.

Speaker AGood God. Trello. I put everything in Trello. Trello. Trello lets you have cards. Can I ask you a question? Yes.

MaxShould I have some sort of security, smart security camera? You have one, don't you? Yes. I have the Ring doorbell, which sort of is like that. Yeah. But not, it's not really. Like, I can't

Merlingo look at what my door sees. The thing that sucks, I've got what was called a drop cam. It is now owned by Nest. I like it, but I have zero confidence in the future of Nest, which makes it hard for me to recommend. The Canary is really cool because you basically, you stick it on a shelf. I've sent you pictures of mine, right? You have sent you pictures of my, like the cat. Oh, but, but, but it's not listed in Ifta, Ta, Ta. There's no Canary here. No, Canary sucks for doing Canary. You can do, if you use, if you use Wink, you are able to use Canary for automation, but no, it does not. Canary does not work with HomeKit.

It does not work with much automation stuff. Well, then I don't want that. I don't want that. That's shit. Then that's shit. Okay. Well, here's a challenge to listeners. Tweet at us with what – tell me the home security camera system that has the brightest future. Because I like the Nest. I like the DropCam. But, you know, you do pay for it. One thing that's cool about it, though, with the Nest is you basically – you go to the website. In my case, it's looking at our front door. And you draw on the screen, you know, like little handles, like with a, you know what I'm talking about?

Where you like, what do you call that? Like in a drawing app where you get the handles to like move the shape of things. So you could say this area here is outside on the front porch. This area here is inside, et cetera. And you can only get certain kinds of alert with certain kinds of movement in certain areas, which I think is super cool. Like you may not want to like, if you're in a busy area, but you might want to say, wow, that means if there's movement here, and that's not an area the cat can get to, that means there's definitely somebody inside the house or what have you. But yeah, listeners, tell us some cool

if-ta-ta-ta-able cameras that have good security and a bright future.

AlexAnd tell me what backpack I should buy and what phone case I should use. And the Tom Bin Synapse 19 is not an option because Max has that backpack and we already matched too many things.

MerlinWhy do you bring this on yourself? Now people are going to say things.

AlexI don't care. You should send them a fleep or a flock. Listeners, listeners, please do not contact me. Would you like to get a fleep? And always tag them at Max Temkin.

MaxListeners. You can send your Trello cards to fleep. Please do not contact me in any way. I will block you. I will block you immediately.

Can I ask you a question? I have a podcast question for you guys that I'm honestly confused about. Does it do anything if people, you know, sometimes on podcasts, please remember, leave us a suggestion. It helps us to be number one or whatever on iTunes.

I want to get to daily show on numbers. Do people need to start leaving reviews and ratings and all that business?

MerlinIt's my understanding that, at least in the past, I don't have recent 100% intelligence on this, but I think if you want to get into top N, if you want your show to show up in the rankings, all rankings are based heavily on velocity. It's number of new subscriptions. I remember this used to frustrate someone I used to do podcasts with because he had the most popular podcast in the world, and he'd be bummed that it wasn't always number one. It's like, well, no, it's velocity.

like if there's a new show like don't get too proud of yourself because your show showed up there because it's velocity it's like you know i need i need every single person listening to

Maxthis show to unsubscribe and resubscribe every week that doesn't seem like a lot to ask you know

Merlinwhat you should write a script you should write an if to to to to for how to do that and then do it

Maxoh you know what i mean yeah no listen go in and just could you could everyone just promote us on social media like if you're listening to the show and you like it just make a bunch of tweets and

Merlinfacebook what is it max do you want the show to be bigger you want to be more popular i will not

Maxrest until we have more listeners than the daily show and then i want to challenge them to a debate to see who's the most anti-semitic because i think we have them beat now we could totally got them beat i think they're i think they're cucks i think we're way more anti-semitic than them oh i totally

Merlinagree i've been packing double powders too we should talk about that i've been i've doubled my powders i got my i got my tf i've been doubling i've i've doubled my claritin intake and everything's

Maxchanged for me we're never gonna out these cuck servatives in our midst if we don't get the tea up can i ask you a question about this so i take a clarit i just want to make one remark it's well

Merlinknown that milton burrell had the largest penis in hollywood somebody would walk up to milton burrell at a urinal and say hey let's whip out our cocks you know what milton burrell would say he'd say i'll take out just enough to beat you that's what i say to those cuck servatives over at the daily show i'll take out just enough to beat you i'll just i'll slap you a little bit around your little around your temples. I'm going to raise your tea with what I got right down here. Double my powders. I got double powders. I'm a fucking mummy. I pack the powders into every part of my body. I'm made of gum.

I bet Clarins is really going to work on you, Merlin. Now, I've been taking... Did you see your buddy? Your buddy, he drew a spicer, a cinnamon spicer. I'm going to have it sent to you as a gift. Oh, sorry. Is it Kevin? Who's the guy that does the drawings?

AlexKevin Budman?

MerlinI'm saying he'll do drawings for ACLU contributions. And I said in passing that I'd love to get a cinnamon spicer drawing like a gum man of spicer and so I need to I need to go and make another donation to the ACLU and if he has actually done a hard copy I would

Maxlike it to be sent to you I would prefer listen I would prefer that instead of donating to the ACLU that all of our listeners please promote us on social media because I want the numbers yeah give me the numbers talk about how good and funny our show is because listen we're not doing this for health I want everyone to listen to us we have a message to get out to the people which is a variety of home automation software the counters and powders that we're gonna start selling any day now that can help you ACL use

Alexgoing to Y Combinator to learn how to growth hack I know what is up with that that frightens me what's so weird it's a little weird like like really back is strange like a strange bit of messaging and optics they're lawyers they're

Maxlawyers they are old burdened by old-fashioned thinking and they don't understand the changing landscape of social media they do not understand the new activism aclu clearly is looking out at the world right now and they're like boy like we missed the trump revolution of like this fucking guys on twitter and like you know became became like hitler from tweeting and simultaneously we're like missing the counter revolution where the left is like organizing protests at airports it's like quickly based on on their tweets and they're left in the dust and like wait a minute

we just sue people like we're missing out on the whole fun here so i think they're going to y combinator and they're like we need to like you know be a little more techie like the guys i know at the aclu have been there for 20 years like they're they're like civil rights lawyers right like they give you a law degree and you get you work for your whole life at this place because you believe in the cause but they don't know what the fuck is going on online so i i understand the the thinking behind it concerns me a little bit that these like these fucking silicon valley you know vampires these literal what the hell siri just started writing down what i was saying

why these fucking silicon valley these literal vampires like peter teal are going to have access

Merlinto the aclu now i don't know yeah just not gonna leave the house anymore um yeah but let's be honest the opportunity for us to talk to the folks on the daily show and i'm sure they're nice people but to get that debate to happen you guys are gonna have to bring really bring up our numbers you're gonna have to boost our tea that's we can boost our own tea with powders and and uh mummy tea but like really you guys you guys really need please like and subscribe hey guys

Maxpost on social media listen i go on and i search for the phrase do by friday on twitter all the time and i only see a few tweets and there are people making our they're trying to be funny and they're making our stupid jokes back at us. So stop that. Don't ever talk to us, but do promote our show and tell everyone how funny it is. We're good at this. You are really good. Thank you. I don't want to be engaged with in any way. So if you have something funny to say, don't just, just don't, don't do that. Uh, let me ask you this. When I've been thinking about this a lot, when society crumbles, because it will, we're in the, we're in the very end stages of,

I mean, we're really in like societal hospice care right now. I mean, it's almost over. So when society collapses, have you guys thought about like, what you're going to do with your life. You're going to wander through the countryside for five years, and then you'll come to the compound where people have built their walled city and their farming and their –

MerlinTerminus.

MaxWe make it to Terminus. Exactly. And you're going to be standing at the gates, and the guy is going to come to the tower, and he's going to say, Halt. Stop. You come before our city. You wish to enter. What do you have to offer us? what skills can you contribute to this new civilization have you guys thought about what

Merlinwhat what uh what uh what uh what class am i yeah no no no no i'm asking you i'm like i'm a ranger am i cleric you're uh how many gold how many gold pieces do i have my high hard boots

Maxno you're just merlin man uh internet personality i mean what are you gonna say what are you gonna say formerly famous podcaster what are you gonna say you're gonna be like i'm funny on podcasts you should let me in they're gonna be like no we're gonna they're gonna be like release the Release the hounds.

MerlinI can do this. I can do this. Okay. Use key.

MaxDid I get it right? Alex, what would you do? What would you – well, like what preparations are you making to – you know, what's your plan? I guess what I'm asking is like what are you going to be good at? Like how are you planning for –

MerlinOh, I see. How do you – it is like Terminus, right? You need to go – what do they say in the seduction community? You have to go and like what? Display your value. Alex, how are you going to show your value to Terminus?

Alexuh well every every woman in my family has uh has given birth at least three times successfully so i assume that if we are trying to rebuild the population uh that got dark uh yeah i just become one of the brides yeah like yeah i'm gonna be in in mad max

Maxbut you're like uniquely you know ill-suited to that uh i would okay if it

Alexmeant uh okay you're you're assuming though that i have like tried and made it determinist so i must have a reason to want to stay alive and that might be like i have i already have kids or like my wife needs to be safe or my cats so like i would i would do like that's not a so you're in

Maxthis scenario you're imagining that you have your cats with you because i thought about this

Merlinand it's very practical they're inside the shopping cart you got you got your you got your You got your son and your two cats and your shopping cart, and you don't want them to get eaten by the cannibals.

MaxPlease, please, my cats are hungry.

MerlinPlease, let us in.

Speaker AMy wife is very sick. I love that picture so much. I don't care if it's fake. I love it so, so much.

MerlinI got to see it now. My wife is very sick.

Speaker APlease, my wife. She's very sick. And the raccoon's holding the cat. And it's like it's his wife. And the cat's like, what? What? I'm a cat.

MerlinI think, you know, Alex has me thinking now because as she pointed out, this is the kind of thing, you know, this is very interesting when you're thinking about The Walking Dead. Like, if you've made it this far, you must be pretty good at something. But I'm taking a step back because Alex is right. Like, I don't know if I'd make it that far. I don't think I would have made it off the farm, honestly. You know what I'm saying? Like, I think I would have gone down like, you know, I would have been in the barn pretty early.

MaxBecause you're going to show up to the city and you're going to be like, I have a lot of home automation tips for light bulbs.

MerlinBitch, we haven't had electricity in five years. well yeah or they're gonna or they're gonna say uh morton joe has been very skeptical about deciding whether this is a good investment could you give some ideas for additional things that he can purchase to make this more convenient i'd be like yes i can do that i can help you with this please my wife she's very sick

Speaker Awhat about you max how are you going to get in there uh well i think if society collapses i'll

Maxkill myself immediately because there's the thing is let's do it together can we do it together yeah yeah well we'll do it over skype really but here's the thing is i barely can get out of bed now and we like have the internet so i i'm you know i'm just not built for that world when i when i kill myself push a wink to my table thanks automation

Speaker Ahe's saying please my wife she's very sick he's carrying her like it's his wife it's the greatest thing in the world

You can tell he's a little timid. He's not sure he should come in. Because he's a raccoon. But he wants to get her some help.

And the cat's like, what? I'm a cat.

Speaker BOh, God. You can't just spread that.

Speaker ALook at his little toes. Well, now you know why there's so much poignancy to the idea of you having a raccoon on your roof.

13. The Dust is Your Daddy

Show notes

Transcript

13. The Dust is Your Daddy

Show notes

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