20. Metal Nature Shit

AlexThis is Do By Friday, the weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, use your voice.

MaxHello. Hi, Merlin. Hey, Merlin. Hello. I think I figured out why the show is so bad. It's so quiet.

AlexIt's always bad. It's always quiet.

MaxNo, I think I figured out why the show was so bad last week Because you guys edit too much, too much editing Oh my god, last week was saved in the edit Worst thing we've ever recorded I think it was because I was on my laptop I think I was cranky and I was on my laptop And I wasn't really paying attention I could tell I wasn't paying attention Because I'd periodically jump into the conversation And be talking about something completely different Than what you guys were talking about Red

AlexI really like how one person referred to The first portion as a cold open No, Max was there

MaxCan you turn me up? I can't. My headphones? I don't know what's going on here. You sound like Jay-Z. Turn it up in the headphones. Now it's too loud. I don't want any hearing damage. It's not funny when it's too hot.

AlexSee, that's why we don't mix it high, everybody, is because you're all going to get hearing damage. Bring earplugs to concert, kids.

MerlinI don't know if you know Alex, but the show's a little quiet compared to other shows. Have you heard this?

AlexI played it. You know what? If the volume is good enough for the talk show, I feel like it's good enough for us. But maybe my standards are too low. That was me. We're lovely on the talk show this week.

MerlinDid you hear about Splatter? Did you know? I mean, obviously, as a Kombucha and Man Wipes fan, you know about the problem of Splatter. Alex, you have certainly shot on your balls at one time or another.

Speaker AOh, of course.

MerlinDid you know that it was such a problem? Max, there's a brand of toilet that comes out. Now, the focus of their advertising push is that it gets rid of the splatter in a toilet. It's got a Turbo Max, I think it's called.

MaxUh-huh.

MerlinSo if you splatter, let's say you shit on your ball.

MaxLet me tell you, I splattered some toilets this weekend.

MerlinI had to stop the kombucha. Only this morning am I returning to kombucha.

MaxI'm still not back. So basically what happened was, man, I really got fucked here. I went on this cruise, and I did not get norovirus on the cruise. I've now gone on two cruises and not gotten norovirus because I wash my hands compulsively when I go to conventions and when I'm in public places. Constantly washing my hands, very diligent. I'm like a fly. I'm always washing my little antenna before I eat. And I'm very, very clean. And I rarely get sick. I don't ever get what people call, sort of adorably, they call it con crud, but really what it is is some sort of either the flu or norovirus.

And I didn't get anything on the cruise. I came back, but all I think what happened was a bunch of people went to PAX and got a bunch of norovirus and flu. They brought it back to the office. I got it from them. Spent the whole weekend throwing up. Just splattering all over some toilets. I'm proud to say that I Threw up more times This weekend than I think I have Cumulatively In my entire life leading up to this weekend Maybe I don't remember Some throwing up in my childhood Wow I think I probably could count

On one hand the number of times I remember Throwing up And I threw up seven times this weekend

MerlinDid you get down the dry heaves? Oh boy I'm not even counting the dry heaves Oh, sure. That doesn't count.

MaxI mean, I was dry heaving and holding my phone in the other hand and Googling how to stop dry heaving. I learned a lot about throwing up.

MerlinCan you think of a couple little capsule things you might want to share with our listeners?

MaxWell, so I think everybody must have. I think it's a little bit. I think the way you throw up is a little bit like your fingerprint. Like, I think it's a little bit special to you. Oh, yeah. Because I've seen a lot of throwing up in movies and TV, and I do not throw up like those people. It's very violent. I throw up like how a dad sneezes. There's a lot of yelling. It's very propulsive.

I didn't even know where. I throw up like some sort of like a kung fu movie. I'm trying to punch through a guy's heart. Like X-23 knifing somebody.

It's crazy. It's crazy. I didn't even know where those sounds came from because I'm not I don't have a lot of energy I'm and I'm like lying on the floor

MerlinI'm so good at vomiting I you know me. I don't like to brag but I fucking kill it. I kill it. I just walk up I walk up. I open my mouth wide like this and I go And everything just comes out flawlessly I walk away I go back to the business. I could do it all day. I should throw up. You know what? I could go pro. I could give me a green jacket. I am so fucking good at vomiting. And I don't do it nearly enough. I only vomit every few years and it sucks.

MaxDo you have any advice for me? Because here's the thing. It was very messy.

MerlinWell, okay. I've got some vomiting tips.

MaxDo you put a little English on it? You know what I mean? Do you shape your mouth in a way? You got a little spin. It's like a football. You got a little spin on it.

MerlinYeah, like a little vomit, like a trebuchet. Yeah, I think you could do that. I mean, one thing is to learn to listen. Listen to your body. And, like, if you get the feeling, if you have the feeling more than once where you go, ooh, I ain't got a feeling I'm going to throw up, you need to go to the bathroom now because you're not going to get too many more warnings. So that's number one. Get ready. Now, here's the thing. If you know you're going to vomit, let go and let God. Like, stop worrying about it because the worst part is the nausea. You know, the nauseousness.

That's the part that's troubling is like, holy shit, I think I'm going to blow. If you're going to blow, hakuna matata. Open it up. Let it go. Throw yourself into it. And, you know, yeah, you're right. You're right. And just go like, you know what? Each one of these could be the last one, but it doesn't need to be. Accept that. It's a very mindful process. Because if you're struggling, you're going to be like, oh, my God.

That was me. And don't do that. You don't want to do that. That scares your family. Don't be a reluctant barfer. Put your back into it.

MaxThat was me. I was very – I did not want to let it happen. I went kicking and screaming. Boy, I don't like being nauseous. I mean I feel like that's kind of an obvious thing, but it just doesn't get said enough of like, man, it's really the worst. It probably is actually the worst thing you can feel.

MerlinWhat about passing out? Have you ever passed out?

MaxI don't think I've ever passed out.

MerlinHave you ever passed out?

MaxOh, yeah.

MerlinThat's a terror. That's like nausea cubed. It's really, really bad because there's this thing that happens and you hear that phrase tunnel vision. And you don't really know what tunnel vision is until it's happening.

Speaker AYou go, oh, I'm having tunnel vision.

MerlinAnd suddenly you get this like Dr. Strange hallway in front of your face. And like, what's going on? Why is my house an accordion? And you go like, I'm totally going to fucking pass out. And before you can finish that thought, you're on the ground. it's the worst it's a terrible feeling now i don't have i don't have that many tips on passing out but i'm gonna work on it i'm gonna say avoid edible marijuana would be my top tip

Speaker Ayou have had some bad bad experiences i passed out twice from edible marijuana and i will never

Alexhave it in my body ever again i do i don't like the edibles either i don't well like i don't buy that marijuana is ever laced with anything but it seems like what's happening to your body is just

Maxthings that should not happen. No, it's, uh, it's, I'm a tab. I, I haven't, I, I have a theory about this. Roland, do you like a, do you like a painkiller? Does that make, how does that make

Merlinyou feel when you, I'm not a huge fan. I'm actually kind of, I don't want to say I'm immune, but like they don't make me happy and they don't help that much. So when I, when I take any sort

Maxof like sedative or painkiller or anything like that, I get very sweaty and clammy.

MerlinTalk about this, Max. You had, you, you, you, when you go to the dentist, you, you don't,

Maxwant to be out. If they had to operate on you, you say you want to be awake. That's right. So I think it's basically people have, I think basically you're either kind of a stimulant person or a sedative person. And I have a lot of friends who are sedative people. They love pills and they love getting drunk. The effect of taking a sedative is not always that it makes you slow and sleepy. If you're a sedative person, you could take a sedative and it gives you tons of energy and you get really excited and you have like a kind of a doctor house thing going on, right?

Merlinfirst time first time um oh god the glory days the salad days my friend said you know you have add right now it's like whatever let's ride bikes and she's like no no you've totally got addd and i said and she said here take two of these and she gives me two adderalls i'm like whatever and i took an adderall and it was like boom like i had energy i had focus but i had never felt quite so calm in my entire life. Do you know what I mean? I, it was, I was, that's how, you know, you have the ADD is if you take something like that and instead of like wanting to go out and

disco dance, you're like, I could write everything today. Oh, I have, I have the same experience. I

Maxfeel, I just feel normal and productive when I'm on stimulants. Uh, but to me, it's like a Claritin D and a bunch of coffee. And I, and I, and I kind of, I'm like, all right, let's do this. Like, I feel like a functional person, but I, here's my theory is I think that, um, Um, I think that edible marijuana has more of a sedative effect over a longer period of time, like a more pronounced, um, uh, sedative effect and stimulant people don't like it. It makes them feel bad.

MerlinAlso, Alex, aren't you pretty, I mean, you tell me, but it sounds like you're pretty careful about sourcing of these sorts of things. So like when you get your, when you get your, uh, your, your sleepy time lozenge, like you, you have a pretty good idea of what the effect is going to be, what the dosage is going to be.

AlexYeah. it's literally on the package uh that has it and i do enjoy uh seattle's laws that make it like impossible just impossible to open the uh little little sleep time lozenges if you have already intoxicated because they need to be childproof um but yeah it's 10 milligrams and you just go to sleep and then you wake up you feel fine we're sleeping pills like see that that's the thing like full-on sedatives and like opiates i'm like ah no no no no no um and it's it just makes me feel

Maxtired for like four days straight it's that's that's me with a documentary before i go to sleep i get about 10 milligrams of uh doc i watched a merlin's hip-hop documentary that you talked about oh yeah did you watch the first episode the first one is is i mean it's really the i mean it was pretty i watched it all it was the other ones are fine but the first one was amazing like god damn People, humans will never be as cool as they were in 70s disco.

MerlinAm I right? Grandmaster Flash in the kitchenette with Fab Five Freddy watching him spin. Is that not like the single like empirically coolest thing you've ever seen in your life?

MaxIt's the, it was the, it's the birth moment of, it's like the, that is like the, the like er moment of our entire popular culture. It's crazy. And it was, it's crazy that they're all living people and that you can go do a documentary with these living guys. And I mean, the interview with Grandmaster Flash is the crowning moment of that whole documentary. He's so funny.

Speaker AHe's amazing.

MaxHe's such a weird, weirdo, just a weird guy. But it's crazy because it's this one guy and he's like, I grew up and I loved spinning things. And then I learned how to loop the turntables with a crayon where I'd mark it off and then count the number of turns. And there you go. You have one guy who's like kind of autistic and figured out how to manipulate the turntables really well. And boom, billion dollar industry and the entire course of Western civilization and popular culture.

MerlinAnd I'm like, also just like, of course, as you do when you're having your 10 milligrams of Grandmaster Flash, I'm on Wikipedia at the same time. And like, you know, a lot of the documentaries go like, oh, something, something black people, something, something Puerto Ricans. And in this case, you're meeting the actual people. I don't know if everything in that is true, but I get the sense that, yeah, these are, these are, these are like, who was the guy like her cool herk or like the original like dj guy like back in the day anyhow but you're watching this so i'm gonna go to wikipedia and fat and um grandmaster flash is

credited like okay he like made scratching or he made beat mixing and all that stuff into this this thing that we now think of today but he actually invented like four different methods he is like the thomas edison of the turntable he came up with stuff that people are still using to this day he came up with that within like a couple years it's mind-blowing you know what's interesting is they go

Maxto the people who invented the actual rap and they and and I like the interviewer in this I thought he was smart because he would go to the guy who's like you know the first rapper right who would be like giving shout out the guy that would just do he would start out just like doing shout outs to his friends in the audience shout outs to his crew right and he would say to that guy well what inspired you to do this which is a great question to ask someone who was the first guy to do something where it rarely gets asked you know but of course that's what you want to know is like well what were you thinking about when you were the pioneer of this thing and he He was like, well, I was listening to these old, I don't know what it is even, like blues albums.

Like there was that one guy, like, what was he, like the hog man?

MerlinOh, yeah, like, no, it's – The House Trotters. Pigmeat, Pigmeat, Markham. Pigmeat, Markham. And then they play a little – Here come the judge. Here come the judge. But that's totally rap. It's totally – you go and listen to it and I'm like, I remember my dad. That was a Sammy Davis bit on Laugh-In when I was a kid. I'd never heard Pigmeat, Markham. That was something my late father used to say all the time. He'd say, here come the judge. And then I went back and I listened to Pigmeat, Markham, 1968. You know what? We're going to put this in show notes. I want you to stop and go listen to Here Come to Judge from I think it's 1968. It is more so even than Rapper's Delight.

It is a hip-hop song in 1968.

MaxI'm sorry, everyone. I apologize. We're already having – now it's a bad episode again. No. Why do you say things like that? You guys, you millenniums, you millenniums and your standards. It's exhausting. I'm sorry. I just realized I got so excited about the hip-hop. Anyway, that documentary rules. Go watch it. Speaking of hip-hop.

AlexYeah. Yeah. So, Max, what did you do last Friday? Wednesday. Whatever.

MaxWednesday. How are you talking about?

AlexThursday. You went to see Hamilton.

MaxOh, right. That's right. Yeah, I mostly was thinking about the vomiting. Yeah.

AlexThat's good.

MaxYeah.

MerlinOkay, cool.

AlexClose the bug. So, I got you something. So, these. Do you enjoy these at the theater?

MaxNo.

AlexThey're balls that you can suck on in the theater. So really, I would invite you to please suck my theater balls. They're very good. They're really good. You'll enjoy them, and I think you should return to them again and again.

MaxI just want to say that I do like this candy, and I am going to eat these, but I'm just going to be enjoying the candy. I will not be sucking on anyone's balls. I just got owned so hard just for going to like this thing. All right. Do you want my actual critique of Hamilton?

MerlinI don't want your critique. Yes. Okay, fine.

MaxI thought it was so first of all I really enjoyed it and I was very entertained for all eight hours of it and and I barely noticed like listen I have a sort of a rule of thumb I see I mean I go see a lot of theater and a lot of comedy and I have a sort of a rule of thumb of like if after the show if I can describe to you anything about the like the lighting grid or the theater space that we were in it was probably a bad show. It was a show where I was looking around for something to think about other than what was happening on stage enough that I was able to I could like diagram the lighting plan on the back of a napkin afterwards.

I could not tell you one fucking thing about the theater where Hamilton happened. I mean, I was really I was really sucked into it. Wow.

MerlinHow about that turntable? Isn't that crazy?

MaxIt's cool. The staging. It was good. So it was less. Here's what I'll say. It was it was less like Wikipedia rap than I was led to believe. And there was less like, you know, like like, oh. like uh i'm rhyming with monticello and the audience you all love that because you heard about this in your social studies class and then everyone cheers yeah so it was like it was a little it was less of that and it was more of a human story and it was more of a and i and i liked the story with with liza and and hamilton and that stuff was all good it was good it was it was really

well done where i where so now having seen it my probably my biggest sort of uh nitpick with the show because and it is a really smart good piece of media but my whole nitpick with the show is that it so it does cast burr as the villain and you know rightfully so like i don't think he occupies like a great space in american history and for me what i don't like about burr is that he introduced the sort of naked partisanship and scheming political machinations uh into into

american politics in a way where that he's the most identifiable guy when you when you think about that. And the show sort of dings Burr for that throughout by saying, like, well, he never tells you what he's for or what he's against. And he's always sort of hiding his intentions. And Hamilton wears it on his sleeve and he fights for principle. Well, go ahead and say what those

Merlinprinciples are, why don't you? Yeah. The thing is, in a blind Pepsi challenge, if you showed people what Burr believed and what Hamilton believed, I would almost definitely pick Burr.

Maxwell I mean that's a fair that's a fair point but also like for such a brilliant musical that has so much commentary to offer where the major attack on the bad guy is that he doesn't tell you his positions well why don't we spend two two two two minutes telling me what uh what Hamilton and Burr believe and what what is their political philosophy what motivates them like why is there is a whole rap battle about where the capital should be located and that's fine that's a interesting debate and it talked it showed how how a little bit of how Hamilton thinks I mean that was a cool moment but like you're telling me that there wasn't also i mean we spent five minutes on that

there wasn't also five minutes on what they believed about mankind and about about the where where sovereignty comes from and what their political beliefs were that was my only complaint about it uh but other i mean and i understand it's a very max complaint to have about it to say that this like academic like hip-hop musical wasn't academic enough but i i ultimately felt like these characters are the whole point is that they're like dying for their beliefs

Merlinand they're but also i mean like such a big part of the narrative that i'm not saying this excuses that but another huge part of the narrative is just the raw ambition of that character where he was you know that two a couple of the big themes are the um you know what it was to say you know wrote his way out right that he's constantly you know this prolific writer and speaker and you know that's the record does reflect that but the other part is his naked ambition and how that ends up being his undoing in a lot of ways so I'm not saying that like covers it up you're right I mean you could make it

like nine hours long and probably have a lot more in it and some schoolhouse rock but like I I like that theme of it let me ask you this here's the crazy one so my history with this was very briefly that and I have suggested this I've counseled my kids on this to get started with Hamilton I think it helps to start by listening in sort of concentric circles where you start out, like, if you don't like the first song, you're probably not going to like the rest of this. If you don't like my shot, you're really not going to like this. But that's how I would listen to it. I would listen to like the first couple songs for a while. Then I was listening to the first five songs. Then I was listening

through the Skylar Sisters part. I didn't listen to the second act of this for over six months. I listened only to the first act. So yeah, so I'm getting somewhere with this, which is the first act is, I mean, now that you're sure it's a long, if you're not familiar with it, uh, it does, it's a very long musical, but like, well, if you were to be a person who became more familiar with it, you'd be surprised how fast the entire thing goes by, especially the second act. So my question to you is how did you feel about the second act, which is the much, much more about the feels? Did it, did it touch you?

What happens in the second act?

MaxYeah, I didn't, uh, I went with our, with our friend Tommy and Tommy like wept continuously throughout almost the entire play.

MerlinOh, the last third of it is just basically from the third duel to the end. I'm just sobbing the entire time.

AlexFrom Take a Break onward, I'm crying. It's just interesting.

MerlinYeah, that's true. But also really with Burn, the Morrissey song, Burn, like from there to the end, I'm just, I'm broken. And to this day, almost a year and a half into listening to this, still when she says she wants to tell you about the orphanage, I still get misty. Every time she says she wants to talk about the orphanage. I know it's corny, but like it still kills me.

MaxYeah, that got me.

Alexuh well i'm so it's really interesting because my max complaints i'm sorry theater balls in my mouth get some man wipes max's complaints were actually really similar to mine the very first time i listened uh to to the first few songs because i was like okay wait wait a second the uh he didn't punch the bursar that's a lot like this this i immediately was like okay this isn't true this isn't true and kind of got all snooty. You felt you fell down the well, actually.

Yeah. And well, because in high school for all of our AP classes, we needed to choose a like basically write a thesis paper, a very broad. It was it was stupid. And so I for for American History, I chose Hamilton because of course I did. His name was similar to mine. And, you know, why not um and i went into the play being very like okay this takes a lot of liberties but then you listen to satisfied and like holy shit this is a musical um and yeah just kind of

like spirals out from there and especially the eliza story and i'm reading the uh ron churnow documentary the book now and it's just a big book oh i'm about 10 hours in it's been about about a month but it's just so so good um it's very it's very well written in paste given as

Merlinlong as it is this he's a very gifted storyteller turn out and I wonder how like I I guess I could

Alexcome out that's I'm just trying to think like because I have this whole history with Hamilton like I feel like I could come out of the play and being like yeah he cared very much like he uh says uh what what does he call Washington um does he actually call him your grace in the play I forget uh but it's like he cared very much about a strong central government blah blah blah and like um but the play isn't about that and I wonder though because I was talking to my mom the other day on the phone and I was like oh you know when because

I'm trying to convince her to come see it with me and she's like even if you didn't know that uh Hamilton dies at the end and she's like, wait, what? And I forget that people don't know.

Speaker ALike even-

MerlinI know, that's true.

AlexI was like, what the fuck? Which was very upsetting to me. And I'm very glad my mom-

MerlinThat's literally the only fact that I had. Well, the fact that I had was, I remember there was a famous duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton and I'm pretty sure one of them died.

AlexYeah. I was like, wait, I thought, wait, I thought he was president. I'm like, Jesus. And my mom is a, you know, smart lady, but-

MerlinBonnie's a smart lady.

AlexShe is.

MerlinBonnie is my mother.

Speaker AYep, yep. Oh, goddammit, Bonnie.

MerlinAnyway. Can we just do just a couple seconds more? You can cut these out. Can we do just one more quick Hamilton dive? In terms of seeing it live, I have not seen it live. Right in my mouth.

I can't get into it. Let's, for the sake of argument, say there were ways to have seen this without being in the theater.

MaxHave you really seen it, though?

MerlinHave you really seen it?

MaxI mean, I don't think you have because unless you're there. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. The king.

MerlinHoly shit. So good.

MaxHe's all right.

MerlinDo you know about the history of that role?

MaxOf course I do not.

MerlinOh, it's kind of fun. It's a smart, like modern media idea. And tell me if I'm wrong, Alex. But basically they designed that role. It's essentially the same song three times and some hijinks. And it's designed to be a role where you could bring if there's some kind of like singing celebrity, You could bring that person in for a week or a month. They could get up to speed on the role Do that same which is you know, essentially you've got to learn and master this one song and the moves. Isn't that right Alex? So Jonathan Groff or like, you know, you can have Martin short come out and do it

MaxOh, that'd be good. He would be so good. Anyway, the king was stole the show

MerlinOh man, Jonathan Groff is so good. Okay, but anyhow Well, I was gonna say what's your favorite song but that's probably really boring But in terms of the staging and seeing it live, like what what did you think were some of the more effective scenes? Like, OK, here's a specific one. Like when you do I don't know if you remember Hopeless and Satisfied. Right. So Hopeless is where, you know, the Morrissey girl comes out and you see her story and then there's rewind, rewind. And then Angelica has her story.

How did you feel about that stage? Was that memorable to you? I guess not. because they do and rewind and they reenact the scene that you just saw like from a different point of view i only think about it you know every day i think hopeless hopeless is um not hopeless but uh satisfied has settled in after all these months is has settled into being my

Maxlong-term email uh email alex at cards against humanity.com if you hear if anything was wrong in this podcast about hamilton and also like if anyone said any of the names of the songs or if

AlexPerhaps Merlin called Breath of the Wild, called the Wild for 15 minutes. Anyway. I'm so sorry, you guys.

MerlinYou know, it's so crazy because I am such a huge fan of Wind of the Wild. I can't believe that. No one. I love Bomber Boy.

AlexNot a single person corrected him.

MerlinGod, I love our listeners. Just so you know, Zelda is the green boy. That's actually Zelda's monster. Actually, it's Dr. Zelda. Mr. Zelda is my father. Call me Link.

MaxI got a little comment from a listener. Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. They said, the brain of the adult manatee is about the size of a softball. This is a website that I'm reading. The brain shown here is viewed on the left side.

Oh, this is really boring. Hang on. I guess I'll just go right to the joke, which is manatees have perfectly smooth brains. Oh, turns out. They look crazy. It goes, we think the relatively smooth cerebral cortex of the sea cow, when compared with that of the land cow, indicates that the manatee has a fewer number and variety of cortical regions. which is reflected in the relatively simple perceptual and behavioral repertoires as well as in their relatively simple casual gentle mental social and emotional expressions

oh that's sweet we believe this is because manatees spend much of their life casually eating and slowly moving around to find food quiet places to rest and seeking out streams

Merlinsmooth brain smooth brain can i just talk something out here i don't want to sound cold or callous, but maybe you wouldn't get chewed up by so many boat engines if your brain wasn't so fucking smooth.

MaxPick it up. Chop, chop. Mach Chanel. They're floating around looking for a cabbage to eat. Look at me. I'm a cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage me.

Speaker AI'm a manatee. My brain's smooth. Mental.

AlexAs Merlin would like to say, SeaWorld is very problematic, but it's pretty funny when they have a manatee section where they haven't taken they only have manatees that have been hit by boats oh it's so sad growing

Merlinup in florida you go there and their backs are just lacerated that was my file card on manatees for most of my life was just that they were so sad did you ever see the seal and otter show

Alexthis is very sad yeah there's some that can only swim in a circle because one fin oh no this isn't funny i'm sorry i'm sorry uh any well if you've ever seen a manatee in the wild they're actually great they're very they are they're much too friendly they probably would uh survive like they probably would not be endangered if they well you know i mean they're i don't know

Maxyou know what they're big they're big and dumb but hey follow up well maybe this is maybe this

Merlinthis evolutionary biology's way of like saying hey you know tick tock okay well this is what i

Alexwas trying to talk about with the pandas merlin like oh they're so sweet no at least manatees they help uh you know they help keep algae in check and stuff like that pandas do nothing there's not like a crazy bamboo epidemic where they're just everywhere and we need to get rid of the bamboo like literally pandas have no function and you're saying oh that's super cruel like you shouldn't let them go extinct but we have a ton of them in zoos and we could slowly domesticate them so that we could basically have giant pandas that are like the the oxes oh alex can i uh

Maxsuggestion from the audience uh what if we instead of just domesticating what if we also domesticate and miniaturize exactly yeah well that would happen cat size yeah yeah well i i think

Alexit has to be kind of like at a point though where they're still boxy enough that they can pull things because you just put like bamboo in front of them and they they pull you know well i guess i guess we don't have carts or horses anymore never mind yeah i'm on with max's idea of making

Merlincat pandas but did you see how it kept falling on its bottom it'll fall on its bottom and then All I wanted was to get into the basket with the leaves. Oh, they're so dumb. It was so sweet.

MaxAll right, follow-up. Last night, so I'm done with my hip-hop documentary, and now I'm watching, I've purchased, and I'm watching Planet Earth 2. Holy fucking shit. Planet Earth 2 is the great, I mean, have you guys seen this?

AlexNo, I'm waiting for the office to be empty so I can use the 4K TV.

MaxEvery, every, the advances in film technology and camera technology that have happened in the decades since they shot planet earth one are astounding the quality of image that they're getting and the way that they're able so i think they're not shooting on tripods anymore i think everything is on a gimbal and so they're moving and the fact that all these shots are moving i mean you're watching an hour and every single shot is the is the craziest most metal nature shit you've ever seen in your life

crazy so i last night so i watched it i i was trying to watch my 10 i was trying to have my 10 milligrams of documentary and fall asleep last night and instead i started planet earth 2 and i was fucking wired i was wired i was like i had a like i like i had a whole redolin i was just like i was like furiously like googling all the animals i saw and looking up how did they shoot this every shot and um i uh opened up on itunes because you know the old planet earth used to have

uh a making of thing attached to each episode so i was like where on itunes is the making of and it's just not there because the itunes ecosystem is so cool and awesome and easy to navigate but i did go into the reviews for planet earth and what i saw on the review of planet earth was um five stars top review five stars this just goes to show that there's an intelligent creator and then it was like and then it was like revelations like 411 or something like that the episode that i watched that preceded this was let me tell you what was in it that proves

that there was an intelligent creator there is a special on it was islands was the islands episode and the islands episode they profile a species of bird that only lives on this island and it lays its eggs on this tree, and the tree has developed these sticky spiny seeds that go on the bird's back, and then the birds fly to another adjacent island and drop the seeds off, and that's how the trees move between the islands. They spread their genes throughout the islands. However, sometimes when the bird hatches, when the little baby bird hatches, it falls into the forest canopy, and it

becomes covered in these sticky spiny seeds, and they get into its feathers, and it just dies of hunger and they show that happening the poor bird how great though art the sticky seeds out and the tree we call it the bird killer tree happy revelation and the birds have to lay their eggs in this tree i guess it's the only tree that works for them what a smart does what a great design who could you follow did you follow out

Merlinon any more of the um any more of these this person's comments was was there any thread to

Maxother uh reviews they left that's fascinating i don't have my laptop out because i'm being a good boy this week but i i i could try and look it up for next week but i just thought that's the dumbest thing i mean the whole thing when you watch planet earth you're like none of this makes any sense like it's all fucking crazy these penguins are walking 300 miles to get a goddamn fish and half of them die on the way there who would design it that way it's crazy it's crazy I would fire someone who designed something that way

it's not even a it's like it's not even a good effort it doesn't make any sense all it shows you is the crazy random contingency of everything and the scrabble for survival with not enough resources and the brutal nature of the earth red in tooth and claw the war of all against all How could you watch that and be like, this proves that there's a divine creator?

MerlinAmazing grace. What about this? You know, there's a section here I like on the Wikipedia called Mind-Altering Parasites, which I highly recommend. It includes toxoplasmosis, includes zombie ants. How do you feel like that fits into God's plan?

MaxOh, that's very interesting.

MerlinIt's not just mind-altering parasites and insects. There's all kinds of opportunistic species that we're not even getting into the invasive exotics that come in and beat up on all the wussy local plants.

MaxI heard a great turns out about this last week, which was they recently discovered that some types of flu, or viruses, I guess, when you get them, your contact with other people is doubled during the incubation period of the virus.

MerlinOh, I heard about this. Right.

MaxSo basically what the virus does is it hijacks some part of your brain or your physiology that makes you crave being with other people. What? You don't perceive this, right? Jesus Christ. You're just like go about your life. But we study this by numbers, right? So we just count how many people does this person come into contact with. And it's twice as many when they're incubating this virus. So to me there's sort of two things that are interesting about this, which is one, nature's really fucking figured out how to hack the ecosystem for its survival. I mean, the tree lures the birds in to lay its eggs, but then it gets the sticky seeds on them.

I mean, this is what evolution does, is it finds—there's no plan. It just finds a niche, and it fills the niche until, sometimes to its own detriment, both species go extinct. And that could happen with a virus. The virus could get so good at exploiting us that we both die. Although, obviously, that would be bad for the virus, so it's not trying to completely kill the host. That's number one. Number two is like we're so much less in control of our lives and the experiences we have than we want to think. Like if the number of people you can come into contact with is to some degree determined by a virus that you accidentally got,

like really consider how much agency you have over like all of your life and your decisions.

MerlinOh, my God. Can I read you something here? Can I read something from the Internet?

MaxWell, I mean reading long, boring things is kind of my bit.

MerlinOkay. So you want me to send you the link?

MaxI mean, I guess do it, but just patent pending Max Temkin.

MerlinWell, I know you're not—I think of you as a secular humanist, Max, whereas I am virtually a man of the cloth. I believe in God's plan. And that's why I want to tell you about Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is a fungus that works on ants. The spores of the fungus attach to the ant, eventually breaking through the exoskeleton using mechanical pressure and enzymes. Yeast stages of the fungus spread in the ant's body and presumably produce compounds that affect the ant's hemocell, utilizing the evolutionary trait of an extended phenotype to manipulate the behavioral patterns exhibited by the ant.

An infected ant exhibits irregularly timed full-body convulsions that dislodge it to the forest floor. The ant climbs up the stem of a plant and uses its mandibles with abnormal force to secure itself to a leaf vein, leaving dumbbell-shaped marks on it. A search of plant fossil databases reveals similar marks. Once the mandibles of the ant are secured to the leaf vein, atrophy quickly sets in, destroying the sarcomere connections in the muscle fibers, reducing the mitochondria and sarcoplasmic reticula.

The ant is no longer able to control the muscles of the mandible and will remain fixed in place. This lockjaw trait is popularly known as the death grip and is essential in the fungus's life cycle. Fungus then kills the ant, continues to grow As its hyphae invade more soft tissues And structurally fortify the ant's exoskeleton So that's a nice thing So this is really, it's all part of God's plan Can I give you a pamphlet?

MaxHave you seen the YouTube time lapse Of the Cordyceps fungus going to town on the ant? No, is that a thing? Oh boy, is it Listen to me, listen to me, all of you out there All of you, all of you wonderful anti-Semites listening to our podcast. Listen to me. Stop. Turn this off immediately. I don't care if you're at work or what the extent. If you're driving, pull over to the side of the road. Stop this podcast. Oh, it's a planet Earth. It's David Attenborough. We're going to put it in the show notes. We're going to put it in the show notes,

but ultimately just Google probably what would you Google? Max, this is really unpleasant.

MerlinLook at the mandibles.

MaxAlex, turn your computer. I want to see it. Oh, my God. Is this the right thing? Here, I'll put it in the thing. This is the one.

AlexOh, my God. This is it. What is happening?

MaxThe fungus is... Wait, so now it's locking its mandibles on. See how it's sort of drunkenly staggering around? Oh, my God. It goes through its head? That's because the fungus is in its brain.

AlexOh, my God.

MaxOh, my God. So it sort of staggers around, and now it's going to lock on. So now we're locked, and now we're in time-lapse mode, and watch that fungus go.

Speaker AOh, no.

MaxOh, my God.

MerlinListen, God has a plan. Because life is precious, and God and the Bible. What? Oh, my goodness. Put it in show notes

AlexOh wow

MerlinLook at that fungus go Look at that fungus go Hakuna Matata Follow up

AlexMerlin I understand we're trying to do a podcast But this fungus It just won't stop

MerlinIt's only the sniffles I might as well go to the convention Oh my god

Speaker AOh Jesus Christ What the fuck I've seen planet earth

MaxI actually don't know if that's a planet Earth or what.

AlexOh, my God.

MaxAre you seeing the mushrooms growing out of the insects? Yep, yep. It's over now.

AlexIt's over now.

MaxDigga, digga, digga, digga. Follow up. Have you guys seen Mike Huckabee's jokes on Twitter? Oh, God, he's funny.

MerlinI understand your human jokes. I mean jokes. He's doing a lot of good. Jokes are humor for humans. I mean us. He's doing a lot of great material. He's doing some great material. His sausage material is magnifique. That joke does not make. there's nothing about that joke that makes any sense he he's a weird guy man but it sounds like something ted cruz would say after he had a couple earth drinks yeah well ted cruz for him it's a

Maxmania because he kills a drifter and he gets and he gets so excited and he can't help but make a

Merlinjoke but it's a long long day of driving around with a dog on top of his car for huckabee well

Maxfunny you should bring up dogs for huckabee you should bring up yeah for for uh for former governor mike huckabee um he had this one tweet that just blew my mind so i guess he was mad at uh he was mad at snoop dog or something like that snoop dog made like an anti-trump like track and so he tweeted there's a lot going on in this joke so i'm gonna do it slowly so here's at go mike huckabee poop dog has nephew named bow wow semi-colon both bad dogs who advocate murder

and sex slavery for POTUS and First Lady. Who let the dogs out? There's a lot going on there. He called him Poop Dog, and then he said he did a Who Let the Dogs Out in 2017.

A lot of layers.

MerlinA lot of layers. Breaking news. Jimmy Dean Sausage Co. will be renamed Gorsuch Sausage, all caps, because he's grinding up some Democrat senators into pure pork sausage. All caps, exclamation point. Well, if it's pork sausage, how is it made of Democrat?

Maxrat um well i don't know i can't speak to the sausage thing but i did want to bring up that a former governor mike huckabee has a fun cool relationship family history with dogs and uh this is according to the fact check website max i have it is it's on that dog looks very scared and let me tell you why this is from the website snopes.com on july 11th 1998 two young men working as counselors at camp pioneer in hatfield arkansas killed a dog at that Boy Scout camp.

One of these young men was 19-year-old Clayton Frady of Texarkana, and the other was David Huckabee, the youngest son of Arkansas Governor Michael Mike Huckabee. David Huckabee was 17 at the time of the slaying, although he would turn 18 less than two weeks older. Both young men were fired over the incident.

So basically what happened was a stray dog wandered onto this camp property, and Mike Huckabee's son tortured and killed the dog. and we know this because of public records that dog does look scared look at that family photo

Merlinthere's this uh story arc in adventure time it's a kind of a weird b story where the character lemongrab who is a lab produced creature lemongrab goes and lemongrab has like an exact twin and the two of them use candy from princess bubblegum to do nothing but create these horrific clones of themselves they're like it's like totally like island of dr moreau this is like if lemongrab

Speaker Amade huckabees oh my god this is acceptable i can't they all they all they all the dog looks

Merlinthe most surprised to be there oh god well she's got like a kind of a cute rachel bilson thing but like the the four other adults just all look like they're made from the same broken dna

MaxAnyway, listen, I don't work for Mike Huckabee. I don't work for Mike Huckabee. But if I did, my advice to him would be don't make a lot of dog jokes

Merlinbecause your son killed a dog. There's dogs in lots of these photos, Max. I don't know if you've noticed. If you go search on Huckabee Family, not to be creepy, you get dogs and guitars and handshakes and Lemon Grab.

AlexDo you think any Republicans watch Adventure Time and think, Oh, hey, it's like me. Like just this

Speaker AUnacceptable How does your daughter watch that episode

AlexAnd not have nightmares Merlin That picture huh

Speaker AIt's so You see the

MerlinLemon grab thing because you're like They kind of they all look like they're kind of Made out of mashed potatoes and bibles

MaxDo you guys have any fun stories About torturing and killing dogs have you guys ever done that

MerlinDo I More like democrat sausage am I right Up high. This is joke I make.

Dooga, dooga, dooga, dooga. Follow up. We got lots of toots from people who either suggested bespoke meditation apps or people who have offered to make apps or people who are making apps? Who wants to cover, who wants to let the dogs out on follow-up for meditation apps?

MaxListen.

MerlinOkay, I'm going to say,

Maxhow about Alex does the follow-up on this? All right, I'll just, I did find, someone sent me an app that does what I want and it's on the market already and it's called Still. And what it is, is a timer and a chime and it syncs with HealthKit.

MerlinWell, thank you to all our listeners for their...

AlexAll right. Well, hold on. There's a couple. We'll put them in show notes. Although our friend Ben made one called Catnap that started to just go exclusively to my taste. I think I'm going to ask him to have the chime be a cat noise. Because really, that's how all of my meditations ends, is with a cat in my ass. My stammer is funny. A cat in my face with its ass rubbing against me and just like,

but it's called cat nap. And I will say of all of the meditation apps, it is my favorite icon. So yeah, check that out. Cat cat nap by Ben rice, but please stop sending us.

MaxAll right. Stop. Stop. Now it's freaking us out. Honestly, we got 300 workflows. Listen, I know that you can do this stuff in workflow. I'm not that, but I just don't, It's like I don't want to. I don't want to spend my life configuring a workflow.

MerlinSometimes when people contact you, it's not about the thing. It's about saying I love you, Max. That's what it means. Try to be gracious. People are being nice because they want to say hello.

AlexI should say the majority of people were very, very nice. Thank you so much. But the people who try to DM you about it, like, why aren't you using this workflow?

MaxListen to me, everyone. Listen to me, everyone. Don't make an app for a podcast you listen to. call your congressman. Honestly, it's disturbing. It's disturbing. We don't care about you. You're meaningless to us. Oh my goodness. No, I think if you hear any idea, We don't even have any ads on this thing. You're nothing to us. You have no value. Don't do anything to us. The relationship is not reciprocal. We don't like you. Oh my God. Don't, I don't even care if you listen or not, but don't make things for the podcast. It's a tremendous waste

of your time. Call your congressman.

MerlinGene is changing its name. It's a podcast sausage because Gorsuch is making so much fan mail. The fan art is little Fanny sausage.

AlexIf you would like to see now, I feel like we have this power though.

MaxOh, another. I just went on Twitter and there's another, another iOS app. But this one has a really good icon though.

Alexcatnap has a great icon what's on twitter now

Maxhere's another one called Omo wait are there ads on this

Alexthank you Jenny for Omo

Merlinoh there's Jenny Jenny Javert Jenny Javert

Maxfollow up This is from The Verge. Today, some Google Home owners reported hearing something extra, and they asked for a summary of the day ahead from the smart speaker, an advertisement for the opening of Beauty and the Beast.

Some Android users also reported hearing the ad through Google Assistant on mobile. The ad was delivered using the regular Google Assistant voice, so it blended in seamlessly with the other My Day information, weather, calendar appointments, et cetera. But some people still weren't happy about it.

MerlinIs it really an ad? Is it really an ad, Max?

MaxWell, no, I don't think it's an ad. I think that it's helpfully telling people when they ask for the weather, it's helpfully telling them that a new movie that they may love is out. It's an integrated vertical product pointer. That's an experience. I mean, that's a value add. Really, that's an added value.

Alexexperience max did you hear google's uh actual response to this what was their actual response this isn't an ad the beauty in the assistant is that invites our partners to be our guest and

Maxshare their tales that makes me want to die so i have a question i have a question can i can our podcast throw up again can our podcast um buy an ad on google home so that when people ask so when people go uh what do you even say to make the google home go uh okay google so people would say so they go they go okay google what time is it and then google would be like did you know that mike huckabee's son killed a dog in 1998 do i eat an umbrella today suck my balls suck my balls

this message was brought to you by uh your friends at america's the number one anti-semitism podcast I'll be honest We may drop a few rankings After my old tirade about the apps

AlexAnd I will say Literal trigger warning I'm not going to bleep out any of the Hey dingus as we accidentally say

MaxAlso here's the situation I know that we may Listen I know that some people may stop listening Because I yelled at them about the apps But also one of the people from the daily show Was a Jew So you know

Speaker AI like it when you don't use your computer So the standards

MerlinThe standards are very low Have you always been capable of this But you've just been looking at Twitter the whole time

AlexI told you Merlin It's such a high compliment When Max doesn't have his laptop He's not even holding his phone right now God God something's going on Okay Hey, well.

MaxListen, I had a lot of toxins in my body. I threw them all up, and now it's just the powders are left. I've rebuilt myself. I'm more powerful than ever. I have a powder-based skeleton. Can't be destroyed. Alex accused me of having bad gaydar.

I've heard your gaydar is not good at all.

AlexIt's not great. It's not great.

MaxIt's impeccable gaydar.

MerlinHmm. Hmm.

MaxSomeone told me Ellen Page was gay

MerlinOh she's totally gay She's totally gay

AlexShe's been gay for like Oh here's Max did you know Tim Cook was gay Before he publicly came out

MaxTim Cook?

AlexYes

MaxTim Cook? The operations guy at Apple?

AlexChrist

MaxAlright

Speaker AOkay I found another

MaxLet me tell you something though Donald Trump is gay 100% I guarantee it No way He's gay

Speaker ANo

MaxLook at how he speaks He's very He's very He's very Faye and flamboyant

MerlinHave you been watching Peter Serafinowicz's? Do you watch his videos?

MaxI have. I have. That's what keyed me off to it, but now I can't unsee it. Do you know about these? The sassy Trump? Sassy Trump.

AlexOh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

MaxTrump is so gay. He's gay.

AlexI would love it. Like, I would – I can't get my hopes up. I just can't think these good thoughts. It's just – no. We'll get him this time.

Speaker AOh. They got him this time

MerlinThis is the worst Worst day That he's ever had

Speaker ANot coming back from this one

MerlinTuesday Do you listen to John Dickerson's Diary on Friday nights?

MaxI do not, no I like subscribe to it after you told me about it And I still haven't listened to it Because I have other I have too many podcasts Did you guys listen to the Richard Simmons podcast?

MerlinYes

MaxI got sucked into it based on the sort of spectacle and the hype, and I felt very dirty. I didn't like it.

MerlinI felt dirty. By the second episode, I was like, where is this? Is there a chance that you could just realize? Okay, here's the thing you got to know about this guy. He was going to make a documentary about Richard Simmons. You know this, right? Go on. The whole bit is he was going to do a documentary with Richard Simmons' help, I believe. Richard Simmons says, no thanks. so anyway that's an interesting fact to know about going and do this incredibly invasive speculative gross podcast that i end up listening to every pot every episode of

you know i i had had misgivings i'm sorry i'm monopolizing this i'd had misgivings since the beginning but like even after the second episode i was like god is there a chance that this is just maybe he's not transitioning maybe he's not depressed maybe he's not fat maybe he's just maybe he really is actually just fucking sick of everybody bugging him and maybe you could just go fucking leave him alone instead of speculating on whether he's becoming a woman it's like but i'm not doing that i'm not doing that but you know it is a thing that he could be doing the public

Maxappreciation of richard simmons has always been cruel it's always been slightly bullying and even in the podcast in the way that they talk about him it's always what what a character he is and what a weirdo he is and and what he also likes between like over familiarity and distance like

Merlinwhen it suits him he reminds you about how how tight he is with richard simmons and other times he gets all journo about it and is like, oh, no, no, this is really just in the public interest because maybe he's sick or something or maybe he's in danger. And it's like, no, I don't think the evidence supports that. And I think you know it. Right. Well, that was fun. All right.

MaxChallenge. So Veronica asked me last night what the challenge was this week. And I was like, oh, we have to like use the voice stuff on our phone. And then she was like, oh, I should try that and she goes on siri and she says siri what time does the grocery store open which is the perfect question that a regular person would ask the assistant on their phone what time does the grocery store open of course for a lot of reasons that question completely flummoxes siri and siri

goes to like bing or whatever and it's like i found like the bing results for grocery store Here's what I could find about ours. Yeah. Time is a construct created by the Gregorians.

And so it was like, then she was like, oh, I must not have asked a specific enough question. And then she goes, Siri, what time does Mariano's open? And that's a much better phrased question, but still Siri completely flummoxed. Again, Siri has no way to relate two pieces of information, like the information of a store and the one closest to you. It's like you can never figure that out. It's too much of a stretch for it to find the closest Mariano's and tell you the hours over the voice thing.

It would never work. And again, it was like I've pulled up the like, you know, here's like a dog pile search for Mariano or something like that. It was like completely useless. And then she just turned it off and went to sleep. so that's more or less actually a really telling anecdote yes that's more or less just a little parable of like my basically my experience is doing anything with the voice search of like just stepping back i know everyone who listens to this podcast is a smart uh a smart genius about exactly what the constraints and capabilities of siri are and they've all read the goddamn like

spec for it and and know the api or whatever but just could if you could just step back and imagine that you're just a regular human being and someone's like oh you can talk to your phone and ask it questions why would you be able to ask your phone to remind you of something in the future but not what time your grocery store opens like it doesn't make any sense and i do know this thing fairly well and it still doesn't fucking work even when i ask it something i know that it can do so i'm ready to pronounce this generation of voice technology very bad and furthermore if you want to get into it i'm also ready to argue that um voice technology will never be the way that we'll

interact with computers it's a uniquely bad it's a uniquely bad model for hci and i'm happy to talk about why i think it is that but anyway those are my thoughts the challenge this week uh was to use

Merlinyour voice more how'd it go max i don't think we mentioned what the challenge was but uh yeah so okay you're right you're up you're absolutely kind of right on a couple things for sure

MaxI did find out I do think But I like my horse I do think Her name is Posey And she's sweet I think Alexa works pretty well

Speaker AAnd

MaxAnd I did start using the voice Thing on the Siri remote

Speaker AOh

MaxOh right For like your TV For my TV And when it works It works better than typing out Than sort of Hunt and pecking the letters

MerlinIt's a bit of a savior If you're doing anything with TV shows In particular Like if you bought TV shows it's a godsend. If you were the kind of person who had over 60 episodes of Doctor Who, this is the only way to deal. It's like buggered, buggered, buggered, buggered, scroll, scroll, scroll. I think your lady friend summed it up really well. I mean, I could well actually at you and say, well, actually, there are apps that are good at this. There are apps like Hound that do this. But you know what? Hound is not what's on your phone when you hit the button. You're absolutely right. There's incredibly intuitive things. So step back. One step back. If you're

describing the kind of computer nerd who knows the ins and outs of this, you know the incantations, you know the little virtual command line things you have to do to make this work. But you're right. Wingardium Leviosa.

10 points to Slytherin. But if you don't know that, what are the kinds of things that you would want to know and you're you're absolutely right that that you that's pretty much a perfect example you know if you were just going to say like abstractly to people maybe stuff like there are some things that do work like you could say like where's my wife or you could say no you

Alexcan't you can't do that yeah no okay hold on where's my wife oh shit did she flee the country

MaxWhat's happening?

AlexSo I've got a map of the United States.

MaxNo. Hang on. Let me try. Let me try. Let me try.

AlexThere she is.

MaxWhere is my wife?

AlexWell, but you don't have.

MaxI don't have a wife.

Speaker AOkay. You don't then.

MaxDon't insult me.

Speaker AThat may be beyond my abilities at the moment.

MaxHow dare you? Do you have any idea who I am? I host America's number three anti-Semitism and powder podcast.

Merlintell me when my wife leaves work okay and that pops up a thing and now i will get a push when she leaves the office like again but not not i mean that's the kind of question like maybe it's it's sort of like beginner's mind sort of thing there's sort of things like a little kid might ask a little kid is not gonna go well i need an umbrella today like that's not that's not how you would use it for me like you know is the is the what time does the library opens at different times closes different times different weekdays so like what time does my library open is exactly the kind of thing that that you would expect it

to be able to do and it doesn't did you ever play with hound at all uh alex it is super cool but it's super nerdy but it does it is pretty bonkers as a proof of concept for what you can do

Alexwith this stuff so yeah and i kind of wanted to back up because i know uh back when you were Merlin Mann and back when I was a young innocent person not on an anti-semitic podcast I was really into the original app Siri uh and was just like blown away and got so so happy when Apple bought it and then it was on the 4S and then nothing like it it still feels like that weird toy that oh man I I was so excited going into this challenge and I was like I'm I'm gonna bring

all these points as to why max is going to be wrong and why it's really great but wow it has not how i i don't know it's it's amazon really feels like it has it's an operating system that has a language and you can figure it out but siri it still feels like even if i'm saying exactly what it wants to hear it just like the server will be down or sometimes hey dingus just does not work

Merlinat all um and especially on the watch yeah it's i i don't i mean if i draw my hand up into the air and hold it to my lips like dick tracy it will sometimes get me but if i try and casually address it the way i would the lady in a tube pretty much just doesn't do it which is the way i don't want to have to stop what I'm doing and look at my watch to talk to it that's not what I want to do with

Alexthis my my main uh so I I actually use Siri um and and my tube friend very regularly so the main challenge for me was to try to use Siri on my watch uh which was like a complete failure

Maxum Alex Alex you strike me as a woman who's never been satisfied

Alexi don't remember that i don't remember that all right uh so i i totally i totally agree with you

Merlinit's that that this is the place where it should in your head like it should be the dynamite killer app close the deal we're done we've entered a new world donezo but you're absolutely right like my

Alexwatch just does not hear me and then it's like a snarky bitch about it's like hold on hold on That's the thing.

MerlinWe were texting a bit about this earlier, and I was trying to figure out what it is that makes it so extra galling. And when you sent that screenshot of, like, you know, trying to use your Siri to contact your mom, I think that really kind of nails what makes this extra frustrating. Because there's the one thing which is, okay, there's a little bit of a learning curve to this, plus there's the remembering to use it. Okay, so I've done a little bit of learning curve. I've learned how to use it. Sometimes it doesn't hear me. or sometimes it doesn't hear me right. It's getting better at that.

Working on its own, the Hey Dingus functionality, which just to clarify here, there's a way that you can manually cause Siri to hear you. So you can either push the crown on your watch. I think this is worth clarifying because it's not clear to people that there is a distinction. You can have this functionality. The thing that you can do on any iOS device that has Siri turned on is you can press and hold the home button to cause it to listen for what you're going to say. Ditto with your watch by holding down the crown. I know everybody knows this.

By flipping on the Hey Dingus functionality, you could do that without touch, right? So you don't have to hit the button. You don't have to hit the crown. When you address into the air and say, Hey Dingus, it should go beep beep and start listening to what you're saying. So far, so good, right? So like the problem is that that part doesn't work that well. When it does hear you, it sometimes doesn't get it right. The things that it does and doesn't get right are very, this is symptomatic of what's fucked up about Apple is that they, in some ways, this is they've abstracted this stuff and made it so simple. It's virtually impossible to know. Sometimes you don't know that something went

wrong and then you don't know why that thing went wrong. Like if it didn't capture you right, well, guess what? If you don't go check your watch to make sure it heard you, guess what? You're not going to have your alarm tomorrow morning. So now you've lost confidence in that. This stops being a thing that's useful for that purpose. But here's the part that I think I feel like you guys are both saying. It's a smart ass about it. Like I said to you in text today, it's like having a 14 year old boy a slightly precocious 14 year old boy as your personal assistant like i already know

Maxthat why are you telling me that i heard you i'm just not gonna do it oh my god why don't you get a light that's to your point merlin one of the worst things about using siri for you know this week for things like reminders and alarms and stuff is sometimes like 20 of the time or 10 of the time you go through and i say the thing and i can see on the screen it transcribes what I said correctly. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like I'm like setting alarm for eight o'clock. Right. And then I can see on the screen, it's, it reads out correctly, like Siri set an alarm for eight o'clock, but then it just doesn't do it. I like, I don't know why. Maybe I was supposed to say,

okay, or reply or, you know, maybe I missed a step. With Hey Dingus up until recently,

Merlinit's not unusual for three different devices to hear it three different ways. Yes, I know. It's a, it's really tough to be a white guy with multiple devices, but if you do Hey Dingus, you could get heard by multiple things and you don't find out until eight minutes later when three different devices demand that you take out the pasta, but it's spelled different ways. And because it heard different things,

Maxit's a, it's, it's, that's what's great. That, that, the thing where you're like, it might fail. There's like a 10% chance that it just didn't take. And you don't really know unless you go check on it, which defeats the whole purpose of using voice commands. Right. Is a little infuriating.

MerlinYeah. And, and the thing is with lady in a tube, Now that I have spent more time, and if you're a new listener, hello, welcome to the Premiere Powder and Antisemitism podcast. A thing that I do is from Friday nights through most of Saturday, I try to use voice for everything that I can. That means I am using Lady in the Tube a lot more. I am using my watch a lot more. I'm using yelling into the air at my Apple devices a lot more. And what this has caused for me is what I just want to call almost a regression. There are so many things I felt like Siri had gotten so much better at.

And I'm curious if you guys get this. I more and more get the hands in the air like you just don't care, throw me to Bing, because you don't understand what it is that I asked about. And I feel like you used to understand what I was asking about.

MaxI think there's a curve. I actually don't. I mean, I can relate to that experience, but I interpret it a little bit differently, which is I just think there's a slight curve of like first Siri really sucked and we didn't use it. And then it got a little bit better or a lot better. And then we started using it for a lot more. and now we're all accustomed to using Siri more and more, counting on it more and more.

MerlinIt's like a cognitive bias.

MaxYeah, but it's like, it was never that good. It never got like that good. So now we're just more aware. The more we depend on it, the more we become aware of it's like, you know, inherent, inherent.

MerlinWell, and to your point, exactly. Part B of this, how more acutely I go, holy fucking shit, lady in a tube. It's astonishing how often, uh, hominemous words yes it'll get right it gets the context of it seems to use context to go like it gets names like you know eliza style names correct i'm like how did it do that i talked to alexa

Maxlike a fucking drunk because like i start saying things to alexa without knowing where i'm going sometimes so like i realize like we need trash bags and but i've but and so i start to tell alexa like uh ordered these trash bags but then i realized i've thrown the box with the trash bags in the garbage so then i have to paw through the garbage to pull the trash bag out and i start reading i'm like alexa order trash bags oh shit uh the hundred this one the brand with this thing and this property and they're the force flex and but not that one and then it's like and then it

goes like thinking thinking thinking it's like did you want this and i'm like yeah that's exactly what i wanted it somehow it somehow pieces it together yeah yeah it's really it is it is really You know what it is? It's like Richard Simmons' maid. That's what I want is a loyal maid who lives with me and orders my trash bags no matter how drunk and weird I get.

MerlinDo you want to also have a Morrow? Do you want to also have a personal massage therapist who might think that your maid is a killer? Is that the kind of thing you think you'd want?

MaxYou want your servants to— Oh, my God. There were so many air quotes.

MerlinBe stabbing each other in the back. Just say it's his handjob guy. It's his handjob. Just say it.

AlexIs this from the Richard Simmons podcast I haven't listened to? I'm very confused.

MerlinNo, it's my guy. I got a guy. Okay. All right. Like I said, he's a massage guy. He's a massage guy. He helps me out.

MaxYou know what's your life? He's real bulky. Listen, here's the thing with Siri that drives me crazy. So Siri does a thing where, so Siri works very quickly now. When you hold the button down, it's just like, boom, you're on. Siri's live. Let's go. And the way that it does this is I think there's a little bit of black magic where it's actually, the phone is like always listening. So it is always getting the last three seconds of sound.

MerlinI have personally tested this. It will, if you start talking before the part where you're actually talking, it will capture what you said before you hit the button.

MaxOkay, so that's accurate. I'm not crazy.

MerlinNope, nope, nope. I think Daniel Jocko had the same result.

MaxIt's always recording and buffering, like a little few seconds of sound in there. And then when you hit the button, it's able to use what just happened and incorporate it into the thing. Now, has this ever happened to you? I am sometimes listening to a podcast through my iPhone speakers right I'm playing overcast I don't have headphones I'm just blasting it right out of the phone and then I remember that I need something and I'm like uh Siri uh uh remind me to uh uh murder a dog when I get back from work and then what it does is it gets that but it also appends the last three seconds of the podcast I was

listening to twice twice a day so it's like so it's like uh and then Richard Simmons uh his his personal masseuse came over. It's an Anjo-BA. Yeah. His Anjo-BA came over and reminded me to kill a dog when I get home from work. It's like, that's not helpful. Those coffee tables. Yeah. And then it's like, do you want me to do a Bing search for Anjo-BA?

Speaker ANo, I don't want that.

MaxI don't want that in my search history. You don't want to get fucked.

AlexI feel like two different things are happening. Something with the, just like the iCloud servers. I don't know if the iCloud servers and like the Siri servers are similar. Like they're in the same building. I know they keep buying up more server space. Wow. More server space for both. But there was this article that came out last year in August, and it was called,

The iBrain is Here, and It's Already Inside Your Phone. And it feels like I want it to be that Apple is going to blow us out of the water with some standalone Siri device, and it's just going to reveal that they've had thousands and thousands.

MaxWhy would they do that? Because the thing is, because you already have the Siri on your wrist. You have Siri and the Siri balls in your ears, and it's in your phone, which is always with you, or your iPad. I mean, when do you ever not have your phone or your iPad?

AlexI think it's going to be a matter of, hey, dingus just does not work as well as Lady in the Tube ever. And I don't know, they can position it as like a speaker thing. But like the reason I want to use Apple for all of my shouting at device needs is because I am like it's very clear how they're getting my money. It's very clear like why they have my data. And I mean the whole Google advertisement thing like what the fuck.

Come on. That's really creepy and just icky. And I don't know if I'll ever.

MerlinI almost wonder. I have to wonder if that's a bug. Not a bug, but something that was on staging somewhere and accidentally got deployed. Because that seems awfully early to do that.

MaxYou're talking about the Beauty and the Beast?

MerlinYeah. It seems like a really – that seems like an oversight. Like, sure, they've certainly thought about ads, but it's so ham-fisted. Let me tell you something.

MaxI am almost certain that this is happening. This is my most paranoid conspiracy theory that I believe. I think – we talked about this. God, we've talked about this.

MerlinYeah, the purple underwear stuff.

MaxYeah, yeah, yeah. We've talked about this. This is back on the other program. That's right. I think that these always listening devices in your house are doing some sort of natural, they're constantly recording and doing some sort of natural language processing on your conversations. And when they hear you and your spouse talking about buying a dishwasher, you're going to start seeing dishwasher ads online. I'm almost 100% sure this is happening.

MerlinYou think it's something that's buried somewhere as quality assurance? That's the reason we're doing this? Or do you think they're just sliding it in?

MaxWell, I think that their terms of service allow them to do this. Like you, you, there's nothing in there that would prohibit them from doing this. And if I was them, I'd be doing it. Right. If you're Amazon, Amazon's not a company that's like renowned for its like amazing, like privacy and corporate ethics. So like if I was Amazon and I had a little microphone in everyone's house and I, and I had the sort of, um, EC2, you know, power to just do natural language processing on everything that everyone says, which, which we've also had listeners from the show. I had assumed erroneously that the only reason not to do that would be because of the tremendous processing power required.

And a number of listeners sent in articles showing that it's actually like trivially easy and does not require much processing power at all to do, especially because you're not really trying to transcribe the conversation. All you're trying to do is identify target keywords like new television. Right. You're not trying to listen to the whole conversation. But I do think it's listening to what you're saying. It's pulling keywords out of the air and then using to change your Amazon environment and your online ad environment. That's why Google, that's why there's a race for this space.

Like what the fuck does Google care about having a thing in your house that tells you the weather? Like they don't give a shit about that. They want the ads. They're an ad company. Everything Google does, everything Google does, it helps them sell ads. If they're doing it, it's because they think it'll help them sell ads. If they don't, if they get rid of it like Google Reader, it's because it turns out it didn't help them sell ads. So that's how to understand the corporate motivations of all of these companies.

AlexAnd that's why I'm more comfortable with Amazon knowing all of my shit because their goal is to get me to buy more shit. And they're good at selling me shit. And it's kind of I'm kind of OK with that. Like I've made my peace with it. But I just man like Apple is also really good at selling me hardware and I will buy all of their expensive shit. But they're so secretive and they can't get AI researchers to stay because they can't publish their findings and they can't say, oh, my God, we've made this major breakthrough.

Whereas papers are coming out of Google and ads all the time.

MerlinI think that is a really good point that gets missed. It's like if you are the top of your game in whatever it is that you do, the way I always say it is you want sharp tools and interesting problems. And they may have the sharp tools but maybe not the interesting problems. And you're going to go somewhere else. Like maybe you go to Tesla. Maybe you go to Facebook. Maybe you go to Google. Because they're going to give you the runway to do something that's a crazy unsolved problem that you get to have your name on at some point.

AlexYeah. And it's like, God, it's just heartbreaking to me. Because I think I might have – I don't know if I mentioned this last week. But there was an episode of Control-Walt-Delete, the podcast, the Verge cast with Walt Mossberg. and they were talking about the big five companies and how all of these amazing startups are just getting eaten up and how there was this one company, V, Viv, I don't know, and it was co-founded by the guys

who originally made Siri and it was just mind-blowing what it could do. And one of the very first examples was on the way to my brother's house, I need to pick up some cheap wine that goes well with lasagna and it shows exactly like how I'll put it in notes, like how this is parsed and how it'll figure out, uh, how to help you. And, and then, and then Samsung bought it and Samsung isn't even part of the top five and no one's ever going to have this because no one, I'm well, no one like us buys no rich assholes like us buy Samsung phones. Um,

so it's like, well, what does this happen?

MaxWe'll never know what kind of wine to have with our website.

AlexWe're not going to get the cheap wine.

Merlini kind of want to i haven't tried this demo in a while i kind of want to try that crazy hound demo again do you remember that one the crazy one uh what was the crazy one no let me try it again what is the population and capital of japan and china and their areas in square miles and square kilometers also tell me how many people live in india and the area code for Germany, France, and Italy.

Speaker BThe population is 127,288,000 for Japan and 1,330,044,000 for China. And the capital is Tokyo for Japan and Beijing for China. The area is 145,882 square miles and 377,834 square kilometers for Japan and 3,705,405 square miles and 9,597,008 square kilometers for China. The population of India is 1,173,108,018. The area code is 49 for Germany, 33 for France, and 39 for Italy.

AlexOh, God. I've just got a full Latin-er for that. That was amazing. Holy shit.

MerlinNo, I know. I know, Max. I know. Just cool it for a second. I know. Who would do that? But what I want to point out is a couple things. Third, I want to point out how fast it talks back to you because you can understand language a lot more quickly. that like people who are unsighted or weirdly sighted, I don't want to say blind, can listen to stuff so crazy fast that you and I can't understand. Well, first of all, Hound understands, you can understand stuff a lot faster than you think. So we're not gonna treat you like a dummy. You can turn that down if you want. Okay, so yeah, who would want this? I get that. But here's the thing I just want to point out. The amount of time between me finishing that however many was,

50 words, and it having the result and spitting it out. That's hair curling. that that that something is tuned there and who knows maybe this is just one that they have in the can because this is one of the examples that they use i kind of doubt it i've tried it with other things not perfect but this is multi not multivariate this understands context and understands what i mean by that and this it knows that if i ask a follow-up question bring back into context so you could say stuff like what's the capital of new york

Speaker Bthe capital of new york is not in my database oh wow really what's the weather like in manhattan anyway you were saying the weather is 32 degrees and sunny in manhattan how many people live there the population of manhattan is 1 million 487 536 what state is that in the first administrative division of manhattan is new york

MerlinOkay, Max, full points Holy shit So it knows all of that stuff What did I get wrong that it would not know

MaxAlbany? Merlin, you're in like an abusive relationship You're like, how is this my fault?

MerlinYou can listen, Max, he's so nice to me You don't know how nice he is to me

MaxThe thing is, he's really busy with his work

MerlinAnd he's so The thing is, he has to drink because it's very stressful Alright, now that sounds like my relationship

AlexI was gonna say, you're just describing me, Merlin But let's move on. Who's the abuser?

MerlinI'm confused.

AlexI work a lot. Anyway, what was the question that you asked, Hound, that it got wrong?

MaxI think it was, what is the capital of New York? Guys, I'm playing video games on my iPhone. Let me know when you're done.

AlexAll right, hold on. I feel like this is fun.

MaxThe capital of New York is not in my database.

AlexWhat is the capital of New York? holy shit this feels like a bug though yeah what is the capital of illinois

Merlinyeah yeah that's a bug i'm i'm willing what is the capital of the state of new york the capital of new york is albany see he's so nice to me when you guys aren't around he hits me because i'm bad

Alexi i think this is super interesting though too because hound gets both both of the things right that uh siri seems to have a problem with um is the language parsing and the microphones that's why i always i'm like oh well i i try to give her a pass because you know you know her microphone it's really tiny but but i'm talking to it the same way i would use siri and it's it's faster and

Maxi don't know like do we i don't know if you guys want if you guys want a random computer voice to mumble facts at you artistically why don't you go on the comment section of a website oh where's the mcdonald's on wacker drive the rock and roll mcdonald's

Speaker BMcDonald's near Wacker Way, Sacramento.

MerlinSacramento. I guess there's a Wacker there.

AlexAre you talking about Chicago Wacker? Or San Francisco Wacker? Which Wacker?

MerlinWhere's there a McDonald's in walking distance that's open late tonight?

Speaker BShowing one result matching McDonald's within 1.5 miles that is open at 11 o'clock p.m. All right, that's cool.

AlexWho is Max Temkin?

MaxOh, boy. Nope.

Speaker BShowing search results for who is Max Temkin?

MerlinBoo. How many calories are in kombucha?

Speaker BNo results found.

MerlinHow many calories in a Big Mac?

Speaker BThere are 468 calories in one McDonald's Big Mac.

MerlinIt is on the one hand, like almost unusefully brilliant at things that may or may not be useful, but then almost incommunicative about the stuff that's really important.

AlexI am interested in, because I think we've made a good case here and on all your great shows about why voice is really important and voice is going to, not just voice, like voice is the parlor trick. Voice is what gets people into this. You know, touchscreen is what gets people into smartphones. But I'm curious as to why Max thinks that this is like a MacGuffin and you don't think that anyone's going to use voice for any computer.

MaxEventually we'll... So I actually think that one of the best, the smartest things that anyone said about this, so I'm really engrossed in this video game that I started. Now I need to know which... Playing Clash Royale.

Speaker AOh.

MaxI'm clashing. I got a big clash going on. Fuck me. Oh, that's a heartbreak.

MerlinDid you lose your king hat?

MaxI shouldn't have been trying to talk while I was doing it. All right. I'm sorry, guys. That was on me. should have not been paying attention to the podcast while i was playing that um i apologize

Alexto the whole clan listen oh i'm in the clan fuck that oh no oh there goes our chests all right

Maxanyway anyway here's here's the deal i think the smartest thing that anyone said about this uh is uh which is uh i'm pretty sure it's john syracuse's sort of thing where he's like there's sort of a gulf of like if you tell people there's a little smart man on the phone who in the phone who can answer your questions most people will like assume it has capabilities that it doesn't and treat it like an intelligent kind of an AI. And the truth is we don't have AI, right? We don't even have a soft AI. It's a really dumb, programmatic, logical computer thinking kind of a thing.

You know, it doesn't even have the sort of like lateral thinking abilities.

MerlinHe compares it to like computer go or computer chess where it's like at this one thing, it knows the tricks.

MaxThat's right. Yeah, but it's like, but it's like, it's like very, it's like too orderly. Like it doesn't even have the lateral thinking skills of like a neural net where you can like, it can like interrelate two pieces of information or anything like that. So anyway, um, that's the problem is like, when you say it's like the thing that's going to get people, it's the big feature that's going to get people into the phone or whatever. Like I sort of don't see it because they're going to use it. And it's the, the reality of using it is not going to meet with their expectations of what it can do. And then they'll be disappointed.

MerlinBut that's not what I said or not what I meant. I'm, what I mean is there's what I, I'm sorry. This is the third fucking podcast where I said this, but I think this is important that there's a stack to this, that the voice part, they call this in the same way that Steve Jobs called this thing a phone. How often do you use your iPhone as a phone, right? So what we're calling this stuff is voice, but it's not the voice. The voice is the least important part of the stack. The voice is the top layer that makes you go, oh, gee whiz, I could use that, maybe, but it's what's happening underneath the layers. It's the ubiquity combined with the functionality. And I think the ubiquity and the functionality is going to end up being tons more important

than the voice part. The voice part, like, well, eventually on John Syracuse's infinite time scale, Well, yes, voice stuff will get great. Voice stuff will get better at it than we are, right? In the same way that computers play chess better than we do at this point. It's just that, you know, I think the reason just for this one audience that doesn't care about any other shit I do, the reason I'm saying this is that I think to say, oh, this voice stuff is silly, it didn't understand what I said, is to utterly miss what's happening under the surface of the voice stuff that is going to be so much more important

than whether you can ask it if you need an umbrella. That's the part of the technology story that I think a lot of people are missing is it's easy to laugh at the voice stuff because it is not there yet. But look at the parts of it that are there yet. See where that is going and watch a little kid use a computer because we're used to going like, oh, I prefer this kind of gaming mouse. It's like, OK, guess what? My kid talks into the iPad, corrects things by talking into the iPad. And that's the future. So I don't know. So that's why I don't say it's frustrating because I don't have a dog in the fight, but I sometimes feel slightly misunderstood or that I communicate about this poorly because I'm saying like, oh, it's really going to be about walking around your house and talking.

No, it's the walking around the house and talking that enables us to open our mind to what this shit can do when we're not sitting at a computer typing. And that's the story that I think we lose when we go into 45-year-old man mode and go, rah, that's silly. Bring back my pony. That's all I mean to say about this. But this was a very successful challenge in the sense that we realized how shitty and really unreliable a lot of this is. And I think that's valuable to know. I think that's valuable for the people who make this to know. It's valuable for us to know. And if you're making decisions about what you're going to trade off in terms of privacy and disclosure, that's all very good stuff to know.

AlexWho let the dogs out?

MerlinSausage. Democrat sausage. Good dog.

AlexJimmer Dean. The other interesting thing that wasn't part of the challenge, but what I figured out is there are a ton of things that if the voice functionality was taken away, I would be very, very cranky. Like I haven't opened up iOS Reminders in like two years.

Mostly for all of my personal stuff, most of it is just ordered on Amazon through the Alexa. And we set like 12 timers at a time on it. What else? Oh, dictation. I wish that, you know what?

MerlinHere's one thing. I wish to Christ that the lady in a tube, I don't know what to call it, would get named timers and named reminders. That sounds so dumb, but so much of what I use, like I said to Gruber on that show today, is like, it's me saying, remind me to do this thing in X minutes. But you know what drives me crazy, though? We're sitting there watching TV, and I know we hear, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, Because Amazon's reminding you about something. And you're like, why is it beeping?

It's weird how quickly that became weird. Where it used to be alarm meant time to wake up in the morning. And now it's not an alarm. That's an alert. And it's an alert about what. So tell me what that means.

I'll tap you when I'm ready. Give me a fucking break. Oh, yeah. So something related to the lady in a tube, the multiple device problem is getting fixed. So I did make a bitch list. I had to manually create the bitch list.

AlexOh, please. I want to hear the bitch list.

MerlinWell, you've already heard most of these. The big frustration, I mean, I want this stupid watch will feel like a transformative device when I can just casually. Like if we were talking right now and I casually held it, it heard me and it did a thing. This would be a transformative device. You ready for this? How about this becomes such a transformative device that I don't even think about whether it has a screen anymore. That's when you'll know it's working. But as it is right now to do that, and I'm repeating myself, I have to pick it up, right? It has to turn on.

I have to start talking. I have to make sure it heard me because it probably didn't. It'll tap me when it's ready, bro. And so I end up pulling it up to my mouth, drawing it to my mouthful area and hitting the digital crown just to make it hear me. Like that's, that's, we're not there yet. And then when it does hear me, yeah, so on and so forth. what else did I have? Multiple Echo lifestyle feels like the future. Totally think that's true.

Just still the language for adding. This is really boring. I'm sorry. I should stop. Cut all this out. Cut all this out. We're going back to dog killing.

AlexDo you, do you have a series, series zero series one watch? Like I'm curious cause I have the original Apple watch sport and I wonder if the reason it's so sassy is because it's old and it's microphone isn't as good. I don't know.

MerlinYeah, you've said or intimated several times that you think you might need a new watch. You have suspicions that yours is not doing its thing right.

AlexYeah, well, and I also should, you know, let people know that I get very frustrated with my phone's microphone, but I do take it in the shower to listen to podcasts every morning. So, that might be.

MerlinI have not tested that yet. Wait a minute, you don't get a little Bluetooth speaker?

Alexuh well it was like 12 and it broke and then like oh this is waterproof i'm not putting it under the shower it's just like off in the corner but you know it gets pretty humid in there pretty humid

Merlinyeah so i listened to a loud ipad in the bathroom but we used to have a shitty little uh bluetooth speaker no i mean i had i had the first one i had the sport the cheapy first one then when the new sport came out i got that and gave my lady the the older one which she the thing is she's an actual athlete so she like wants one of those big ass watches that does real stuff with your body and gps and stuff like that but no i mean i think that i feel like in my gut the bigger it's it's cool that it does the thing like spits out the water when you swim and stuff like that that's really cool i think the bigger change is probably in the software which you're already better from

Speaker Aturn the dial

Merlinmakes like a spongebob sound god uh but but you know are you gonna hold out because you like your dingus but are you gonna hold out until a newer one comes out i guess yeah i mean they're

Alexpretty expensive and they i don't know well i thought oh a new ipad might be coming just

Merlinkidding oh boy it's like it's like medium-sized everything nowadays nowadays you know it's like you know what i mean it's like there isn't really like a like a pro anything it's like oh just everything's a medium-sized drink at apple now hey we have a new medium-sized drink costs a little less i was like okay that's gonna appeal to somebody theoretically oh merlin did did i

Alextell you my crazy macbook pro story no so i'm using this macbook pro you were you were playing

Merlinwith his adorable and yeah you think i think you did mention this tell the story so i uh there's

Alexsince like maybe the after the first month i got the like totally tricked out um macbook uh pro with the touch bar it started being like kind of flaky like weird things would happen um there would be a lot of restarts the touch bar would freeze um like and we all know like chrome is a memory hog but like there'd be a lot of weird crashes and then uh especially final cut and logic we're doing some strange things so i brought it to the genius bar i'm like your ram i think

there might be something with wrong with your ram have you been putting any uh been doing any strenuous activity like uh editing video or audio and i'm like um my macbook pro yes yes i have literally two hours ago and like oh well I think we need to take it take it back I'm like no no no no I'll come back later because I need my laptop um so so later this week I'm gonna give it to them and they're gonna I I don't know what they're going to do so I borrowed Max's uh MacBook

Adorable and this is like the first generation one that everybody pissed all over but just setting it up and I don't know it just seemed much easier and it seems like not faster than my MacBook Pro but like faster than it should be yeah and I don't and I'm and I'm not like you I can't run uh I can't run a Mac stock I have to install Alfred and all my weird things and disable the dashboard like it just I would go crazy if I couldn't do that um but it still feels normal

I don't know and I'm wondering if it is you don't feel you don't feel sort of hobbled no and and like I've been talking to like a lot of people in the office got uh touch touch bar MacBook Pros and a lot of them are having the same issues and a couple people have had the same RAM issues seriously yeah but nobody has probably has had problems with the MacBook Escape and this could be just crazy uh you know tinfoil hat stuff but i i don't know it bummed it bums me out

Merlinit should bum you out i mean uh you know whatever continued on next 50 podcasts it's nuts that you

Alexjust can't throw your money at literally the next podcast you listen to i know well like

Merlinyou know take my money like take the money like whatever if you want to charge six thousand dollars for this laptop you want to hear crazy thing there are people who buy that if it is completely tricked out and like the top of the line everything and it does all the things and the chips are upgraded there are some dinglings who would pay that and even if you weren't charged four thousand dollars for it there are people who would do it but like to just not make it available to like not up the mac pro i'm sorry oh you heard us apple boy poor marco did you hear atp this week

Alexi i wanted to like send him some flowers he's wounded i mean he's he sounds he sounds kind of

Merlinlike a freshman libertarian like a new libertarian like he's ready for heads to roll he sounds like he just finished nine ran book like he's mad and hurt he sounds like feels i think max

Alexis literally asleep uh but you know he he's the kind of guy who can use his phone and it just works for him so i'm very happy about that yeah it hasn't hit rem sleep yet but getting there

Maxremember when the worst thing that happened in the white house was the president got a blowjob yeah he came on a dress he had a cunnilingus cigar what i wouldn't give for that i'd even take a rep i'd even take a republican president who merely got a blowjob in the office versus committing versus committing treason did you

guys see that roger stone has a tattoo of richard nixon on his back is that true what 100 percent true how i the babadook yeah the steampunk babadook that was a very funny thread

Merlinhe's so gross and did you of course of course of course you watched the front lines and the mini son and daughter front lines from The Choice. They recycled The Choice. This year, they recycled The Choice into like four different shows. I don't know if you caught that. But the interviews with him and that, you're like, oh, this guy. Oh, man. You get it. He's got it. He throws the shape, is all I'm going to say about Roger Stone. You get a feeling from that guy.

MaxDonald Trump has a real penchant for collecting these like broken, corrupt, evil people who are completely desperate and will do anything for power and credibility. You know, Chris Christie or, you know, these people are, oh, my God, that Giuliani, you know, all these all these fucking guys. Right.

MerlinThey're so but they're so craven. They can't even be troubled to cover up. They're not even like a like a senator type. They can't even be bothered to cover up how craven their desire for for their mojo is.

MaxThat's why Trump likes them. It's because ultimately they're all extremely compromised and he has total leverage over them. Like Roger Stone is a joke. Is he really? Oh, Roger Stone is a joke outside of Trump. Trump is the only—well, since Nixon, right? He's a Nixon guy. Oh, absolutely. And since Nixon, he's just been a joke, a laughingstock of American politics. I mean, even a laughingstock is putting it too charitably because it implies that people think about him and laugh. They don't. He has no—he's nobody.

He's washed up. His only contribution to American politics is that he's been trying to get—he took Trump very seriously and tried to get Trump to run for governor and president over many years. so it's like so it's like you know trump loves this guy and and he's very loyal to him because he knows that he has nothing outside of trump same with the same with um uh breitbart what's

Alexthat fucking guy bannon you mean walking aids oh god it looks like it did you guys see the thing

Merlinabout the acid in the hot tub it looks like a case of aids developed a person did you guys did

MaxDid you guys see the thing with the acid in the hot tub? No. Yes. Let me read. Let me find this and read it. Oh, yeah.

Speaker AHere he goes.

MaxHe's back. He's back from the clash of crowns. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. This is from Esquire. The Washington Post reported a story on Saturday investigating counselor to the president Steve Bannon's legal residence, since no one really knows where he lives. But in the course of that investigation, they uncovered something that is even more disturbing. a hot tub at a house where Bannon claimed to live looked like it was filled with acid. The Post started looking into Bannon because while he claimed residency in Florida, he was spending most of his time in D.C.,

but his address was listed at his business manager's office in California. In fact, prosecutors in Miami have opened an investigation into Bannon's claims to be a Florida resident from 2014 to 16.

Yeah, and like, you know, if you find us in the bathtub, just ask my ex-wife. Have her take care of it.

Speaker AGod damn it.

MaxThe theory is that Bannon claimed to live in Florida because the state does not have an income tax, therefore allowing him to avoid paying taxes on his earnings by claiming to reside there. And then shit gets weird. The Post obtained a February 2015 email from Bannon's former landlord that read, quote, entire jacuzzi bathtub seems to have been covered in acid. What? The landlord also noticed that padlocks had been installed on interior doors. Creepy. While other doors were totally removed. Also creepy. I'm out of town. Oh, my God.

I'm out of town, Bannon responded, a likely story. Is there any way you, spelled with the letter U, can talk with Diane and sort things out? It leads to a disturbing-

AlexWait, wait, wait, who's Diane? His ex-wife. Oh, okay, sorry, sorry.

MaxIt leads to a disturbing question I never thought I'd ask. What happened in Steve Bannon's bathtub? Was it a hot tub party gone awry? Did someone put too much chlorine in the water? Was someone trying to get rid of a body breaking bad style? The people deserve to know. Also, this is 100% an H.H. Holmes murder house.

Speaker AYeah, wow.

MaxAnd only in Florida would the building code, would the lax enforcement of the building code, allow you to build a modern... I mean, really, if I had to pick a state to build my murder mansion...

MerlinI think it's going to be like an alligator keeping meat in its locker. You have to earn the right to go into the sex dungeon. You're not going to go in there the first week. First, you have to prove yourself worthy of the sex dungeon.

Yeah, exactly. Before you're in the clown mask.

MaxWhy all of these people? What the fuck is wrong with all these fucking... monsters why are they all monsters it's like there wasn't listen i hated the bush administration i could tell you the on any of the cabinet officials in the bush administration they were all cronies they were all incompetent they were all tied to industry but they were monsters within normal parameters yes but they were within the normal parameters of like of like evil um of like evil ideologues without really any credentials but these are like these are like literal like Like, villains.

Like, who has a fucking hot tub full of acid in their house at a famous address where they don't live?

Speaker AWhat the fuck? I need it from my work.

AlexI always remember the time, like, Max and I, we talk about this a lot, how we watched Enron, the smartest guys in the room. And it was a really formative, like, documentary for us. And it's like, you see that and you're like, wow, these are truly evil businessmen. But like our kids are going to be watching documentaries about like Bannon's serial killer house.

MaxAlex, I want to tell you, I want to tell you the, oh shit. So in Enron's smartest guys in the room, one of the creepiest things that that stories is that the like, there was like sexual promiscuity. And one of the guys, one of the executives, the trading floor executives, every night there was a rumor that he would party with strippers. And then he, on the way home, he would stop at the gas station and splash a little gasoline on his clothes so that he didn't to get, so that he didn't smell like strippers. So his wife would just think that he smelled like gasoline. Sounds so normal. And I remember watching that documentary going like,

wow, that's so fucking evil. That guy's such a liar. Here's a headline from yesterday. Here's a headline in the Washington Post from yesterday. Are you ready? Headline from yesterday in the Washington Post. Labor nominee Acosta cut deal with a billionaire guilty in sex abuse case involving 40 underage girls.

Speaker AOh, God. Oh, God. What is it going to?

MaxLet me read it again because I feel like maybe you didn't catch all the points. You really want it to sink in. Here's a headline. This is in the Washington Post from yesterday. Labor nominee. This is a cabinet position.

AlexOh, God.

MaxLabor nominee Acosta cut deal with billionaire guilty in sex abuse case involving 40 underage girls.

AlexNot just alleged. Guilty. Guilty.

MaxGuilty. That's true. Not alleged. It's yeah, it's yeah, it's Jeffrey Epstein like we know he did

MerlinYou guys know a lot of it's just a tearsay you cannot prove that Steve Bannon is a guy who likes to fuck a severed foot while crying

Speaker AAnd it would be irresponsible

MerlinTo say that he has a multi-tiered sex dungeon That you have to quote unquote earn access

MaxThere's locks on the inside because he's security conscious if there's there's a lot of things that I hope people learn from listening to this podcast But one of the things that I hope that they don't do is google foot pussy

Show notes

Transcript

20. Metal Nature Shit

Show notes

Transcript

0:00

0:20

0:26

0:28

0:50

0:58

1:14

1:23

1:27

1:42

1:54

1:54

2:09

2:10

2:12

2:15

2:21

2:57

3:30

3:37

3:44

3:57

4:00

4:22

4:35

4:49

5:16

5:22

5:24

5:34

6:05

6:27

6:36

6:55

6:58

7:00

7:01

7:02

7:14

7:19

7:40

7:47

8:00

8:09

8:19

8:24

8:27

8:56

9:30

9:35

10:00

10:16

10:52

11:16

11:25

11:47

11:48

12:18

12:48

13:07

13:38

13:41

14:12

14:15

14:32

14:38

14:39

14:41

14:46

14:47

14:48

14:48

14:58

14:58

15:10

15:27

15:29