45. Fortunate Son

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

MerlinHello. I'm sorry I'm late, Merlin. Oh, it's okay. I'm sorry I'm late.

AlexI was actually late. I made my dad coke.

Speaker AIt's actually Alex's fault this week.

AlexIt actually is.

Speaker AIt's always my fault.

AlexI'm really sorry, you guys. Oh, man. It's such a big week, you guys. We have a lot to talk about. I'm also really excited for people to complain about my voice again.

MaxWhat's wrong with your voice? What are you talking about? The clicking.

AlexNo, no. I'm just nasally.

MaxDid you fix the crackle?

AlexWe have a crackle. Max has a crackle theory.

MaxI have a theory about the crackle, which is I noticed that as soon as Alex, so I was early to the studio this week and Alex was late as we've covered. We've previously established that. But I watched Alex plug everything in, and the minute that she plugged in the USB-C adapter, the official Apple USB-C to the wide boy, the fat boy. Yeah. The fat man. Yeah. You're a little boy and the fat man.

MerlinI love my curvy adapter.

MaxI love my big, bold, beautiful curvy adapter. As soon as she plugged the fat man into her computer, the clicking started. Uh-huh. Interesting. And you know, as we know, remember that blog post from Cable when he was looking at Apple's dongles and adapters and he discovered there's a whole little computer in there?

MerlinRight, right, right. Well, there's probably like a $30 adapter or a $60 adapter if you want the 29-watt decrackler. You've got to get that into the Grove and get the full experience.

AlexThe first week that the office switched over to these wonderful MacBook Pros that nobody has a problem with, let's say one of my bosses got a bunch of Anker, just basic USB-A to USB-C adapters.

MaxHey, those things are great.

AlexAnd then I was like, why are all of my USB-A cables suddenly completely broken? So Anker fixed the problem eventually, but the first week they were out, not great.

MerlinWhat was the problem?

AlexNot good. They just dented them and twisted them. They're just a manufacturing issue. So I was let down. Anker's my, I like Anker. I got a new anchor coming today. Hmm.

Do we want to go down the apple rabbit hole?

MaxFollow-up, NBC. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to multiple senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the time. The tensions came to a head around the time that President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the official said. Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a, quote, moron after a July 20th meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump's national security team and cabinet officials.

According to three officials familiar with the incident. You know, this is what's great about Rex Tillerson. This is why you know that he's in the right job as secretary of state is the man is such a master statesman, so skilled in the arts of diplomacy that he, A, calls the president a moron and then B, three sources leak it. Oh, yeah. and where's the confirmation? We're going to have the best people. Let me tell you, Merlin, we're going to drain the swamp. We're going to get the best people in there.

MerlinSupposedly, I cannot verify this independently on my own. I haven't had the opportunity. I'm on the show floor here, as you know. Supposedly, the actual quote was that he's a fucking moron.

But he's not going to address that petty stuff.

MaxToo soon. This is a bad week. It was bad right from the start. I don't feel very funny Which part was bad? Oh, the shooting Tom Petty? Yeah, Tom Petty

MerlinSee, I wasn't going to bring that up because I couldn't stand the idea that you were going to do that thing you do where you just hate on something because it's popular

MaxNo, no, who hates Tom Petty? Nobody hates Tom Petty Nobody hates Tom Petty I watched a lot of Tom Petty YouTube videos this week Me too One of the weird things I realized about Tom Petty is he's so iconic. He's so, how do I put it? He is the sound of rock and roll. He was so ubiquitous in my childhood. It's hard for me to separate his particular voice and his particular sound from just music.

MerlinI'm cribbing this a little bit from a site culture gap fest I just listened to. But when you talk about Tom Petty, it's like, how many artists are there where like, I mean, is there anybody who doesn't love at least one Tom Petty song? Like where, like you, you, it's one of your favorite songs probably. It's just, and you know, and he walked, he stood astride these different genres, but like, and he was kind of a weirdo. He looked like a wraith and the watcher. And like, he was like a watch to the wraith, like out there, like, like just looking down on the, I don't know, just normal people and telling little stories.

And what do you say? I mean, it's, it's weird. Cause my Tom Petty is an old Tom Petty. I think most people's Tom Petty is full moon fever, Tom Petty, which is, which is a really good record. But to me, he's like the refugee era is my up through like Hard Promises is my time.

MaxOh, man. That video, I went and watched.

Speaker ADid you watch the music video for Refugee this week? I didn't watch that one.

MerlinI was watching the live Old Grey Whistle Test from 1981 and then stuff from, not Dan the Torpedoes, from Hard Promises, I think.

MaxThat refugee music video is very cool. and his voice is cool and his guitar tone is cool just it just sounds like rock and roll it's like

Merlinhard to imagine music without tom petty the thing is the band was so fucking good i mean everybody you know throws understandably puts a lot of accolades on ben montench and um mike uh campbell but like the bass parts on those songs are bananas you go back and listen to uh the waiting the bass part on the waiting the bass part on the bass part drives American Girl it's most of the melody on American Girl in a way that later like hardcore bands like Husker Du type bands would do where the guitar is doing something fairly repetitive

this is really boring I'm sorry nobody likes music at all but go and watch that live performance look for I'm going to say Tom Petty American Girl OGWT and it's really good

Alexthis sounds super fucked up but i kind as soon as i knew that this happened i kind of went on full media blackout that he's death because i wanted merlin's suggestions on uh like where to go and where to start oh yeah i would love that the beatles yeah no i mean i i mean okay so the

Merlinlink i just sent you is a pretty good snapshot of the ascendant tom petty he's doing a song from his first record which is from the mid 70s this is in the later 70s but you get a feel for that um let's see the waiting he had a whole dust up with his record label there's a really good

Speaker Afour-hour documentary you can watch about it is this the netflix one i've heard that i've heard

Maxa number of people recommend the netflix documentary there's there's a couple there's

Merlinone peter bogdanovich did that's that's uh that's real long so so he had this big dust up with his company the story supposedly goes that he was adamant about i don't know if this is accurate but supposedly he had this very specific idea of like he didn't want to charge more than this amount for an album and he ended up having this huge dust up with his label he had kind of a springsteen where he couldn't record for a while and then he had hard promises in 1981 where he's seen walking through a record store and that's really good that's got the waiting which is my favorite tom petty song but you know and then honestly come on whose favorite tom petty song

isn't uh won't back down oh you know that's good it's a little i like that song but it's it's achieved the mona lisa status in some ways where it's so like well you just like hear it You're like, yeah, okay, so that's long again. But you're bang-a-dung-a-dung-a-dung-a-dung-a-dung-a-dung-a-dung. And then boom-doom-doom-doom-doom. Watch that video. Let's all watch a Tom Petty video together. Those are all good. I mean, Traveling Wilburries, you know, it's kind of fun, silly stuff. But, like, you know, he continued to find new and interesting ways to reinvent himself. He developed this through, I think, through Traveling Wilburries.

Developed that relationship with Jeff Lynne from ELO, which gave him that very distinctive ELO kind of sound on his 90s stuff. But like, yeah, I mean, he's great. He's a baller. And he smoked like a chimney. You know, you got to respect that.

Speaker AYou're watching that Vietnam War documentary, the Ken Burns film, right? Jesus Christ. I don't know why I keep watching this.

MerlinI don't know why I keep thinking, oh, this one things will get better. I just got to the May Lai Massacre last night.

MaxOh, boy.

MerlinOh, God.

MaxMan, I binged it. It's the first like bingeable Ken Burns film. I watched all 16 hours in like a weekend. I just, I, it captivated me. You know, I've always been fascinated by, by Vietnam as a country and the history of Vietnam. And I've always been fascinated by the Vietnam War as like a unique window into the like absolute, like moral failing of America and a sort of American mythology. And this movie just got me going again. Like I kind of forgot about how much, how, like, it's crazy.

Like I forgot about how much I love the Iraq or the Vietnam War and how much I feel like it drives like even all of the politics of today and how evil and over the top it was.

MerlinWe were talking in the first – or we were talking in the little text channel about this. But, you know, you had some interesting criticisms of – well, basically, long story short, the first episode for me, I did not know the history. I mean I knew that there – I knew that Vietnam had had a lot of troubles and been kind of a colony of France and it wasn't super nice. But I had no idea what those folks had been through. And it's a really interesting way to start framing that storytelling. That first episode, I think, is very, very good for just about anybody to watch.

MaxYeah. I mean, you know, if you only ever want to dip your toes into this or you're not even interested, just go watch the first episode of the Vietnam War documentary because it doesn't actually deal with the American War. deals with Ho Chi Minh and the French occupation, the Japanese occupation, and the Vietnam Revolutionary War against the wars, successful wars against the French and the Japanese. But pretty remarkable history. Like, I've traveled extensively through Vietnam and studied abroad there, and I've been to

a lot of these locations. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, yeah. You've had many lives, Max. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, among other things, it's, in my opinion, the best food in the world because you have Asian ingredients but French culinary technique because they were occupied by the French. So they have written recipes and baguette and bread and things like that. But yeah, love it. Fascinated by it. And then Merlin, you recommended. Now I've done the thing where I've consumed the Vietnam documentary.

I've almost completed watching it twice. And now I'm eating all the crumbs. Like, do you ever do that with a band or something? Oh, yeah. I listen to the albums, and now I've got to find, like, the B-sides and the, like, you know, live recordings.

MerlinWell, and it happens that there's another very good media product that's recently come out that's a perfect companion to this.

MaxSo I'm going through. So you recommended this. It's a podcast from, I think it's from PRI, and it's called LBJ's War. And it's so good. It's a better, in my opinion, a better political treatment of the war than the Ken Burns documentary provides.

Speaker AWell, you know, I guess what, I don't know.

MerlinI don't know who knows what. But, you know, Richard Nixon was not the first president to tape the Oval Office. LBJ taped a lot of his phone calls. And so you've got this first-person document of McGeorge Bundy.

MaxHey, Google, do yourself a favor, everyone. Google LBJ orders pants.

Speaker APants. He pulls up into his ball sack.

MerlinIt was a wonderful call with LBJ calling the, I believe, president of Hagar Pants and talking about how he very specifically wants his crotch area dealt with and some custom pants. He wants long pockets for his keys and his pocket knife.

MaxI know this because of the wonderful Louis Carrow documentaries, sorry, biographies of LBJ, like the best biographies ever written, a three-part series about LBJ that, if you have any passing interest in American politics, like these books are a must-read. They're very fun and very good. But LBJ had a huge hog, and he would take it out in front of people all the time. When he was just trying to intimidate them or, you know, sort of like get their gander, he'd just take his hog out. And he would also like call reporters into the bathroom while he was like taking a shit.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, he's a famous, very tall guy. There's a very famous photo of him, basically, like, you know, how he would intimidate people when he was a Texas, what, congressman, I believe? Was he a congressman or a senator? I forget. But he's a very famous whip. Like, he was really good at getting the votes. And let's be honest. Nothing's going to be more intimidating than knowing that the man shitting in the stall next to you has a giant giant hog. That's the kind of thing where you're going to flip your vote. It's a very good series. And like I say, you can feel, like I was saying to you when we were texting,

you can feel him struggling with himself and with this decision that he feels he can't back out of. And then he's being egged on by Bundy and McNamara and all these other bellicose figures who are saying, oh, no, no, this is going to be just the thing. We've had these terrible losses, but boy, this is really – Ted is going fine. Ted is fine. Don't worry. It's no big deal. We'll be all right.

MaxIt's a decisive victory for us. It's the particular madness – man, there's so much I want to talk about here. It's the particular madness of Vietnam that by episode one of the Ken Burns documentary sets up so clearly that it's an anti-colonial conflict. them. The Vietnamese people just want their goddamn peace and independence. And, you know, to some degree, Ho Chi Minh has been radicalized by the Chinese and by Marxism. And he's very taken with sort of Leninist anti-colonial writing. And he's like, enough is enough. And people fly,

he starts on an army and people flock to his army. And you have to understand, like, these people are willing to lay down their lives as martyrs for their country. And they can lose 100 people and they'll keep fighting. In America, every single soldier is a tragedy. It's so obvious that we were going to lose that war, that there was nothing to gain. And the documentary, it sets that conflict up so well and kind of touches on it. But then by episode three or four, you're like, the US had to fight the communists. We had to support the independent democracy in

South Vietnam, which was this like shambling facade of a zombie government that we could repeatedly.

MerlinThere was no government there. Yeah. But also the fact that when you think of these Stalinist, you know, dictatorial characters, you think of these, you know, these regimes, you tend to think of them as being very brutal to their people. You think of them as being very insular. And I don't get that vibe at all. The note that really killed me was the thing about how Ho Chi Minh was like reaching out to Americans. He's quoting Thomas Jefferson. He's trying to get letters to Harry Truman that are not being delivered to Harry Truman.

And it's such a heartbreaker. Hmm, bad timing. But it's such a heartbreaker to like know that this guy was out there like trying to do the right thing and trying to appeal to America to exercise American values. He was not just some rogue state with missiles. Quite the opposite. It was a very poor country that was trying to, you know, break off the chains of this imperialism that they'd suffered under.

Maxit's can we can i do can i do my little serious political rant that we're going to edit out for the week and then and then we'll come back and then we can come back and talk more i actually have a thing to talk about music which is why i brought this up but first my serious political point so i think this week the thing that's most depressing to me is this is like a like uh it's like a theme of like watching all the vietnam stuff watching the mass shooting and then you know i also got embroiled a little bit in this argument with you know i don't know if you've seen like jack and biz and some of the twitter people are sort of digging in on on what they're going to do with Trump and Twitter and all of this. And it's like one of my perennial frustrations

in politics is like sometimes political problems require a lot of nuance on both sides. And it's a morally very difficult thing to figure out what to do. And there's unintended consequences and it's complicated and confusing, but sometimes it's not, not every issue in politics is like that. Sometimes an issue in politics is extremely simple and there's like an obvious common sense solution right in front of us, but for like a variety of social or political reasons, we like can't do the obvious solution. So we rule it out, right? So let's take like guns are a great example, right?

If you take away the extremely simple and obvious solution of get rid of guns, you know, do a massive buyback, I don't know, do what Australia did, right? Do a massive buyback program, make them illegal. Like that's, it's hanging right in front of us. Like we know that we could do that and then gun violence would plummet, but it's only if you take that off the table if you're like well i'm not going to consider the very obvious solution in front of me that then gun violence becomes this intractable morass of like well we it's like it we it's like well there's no cause is it mental illness and it's like a lot of it

is suicide and we don't know what to do and it's like well yeah because you took away the obvious answer it's like it's like i'm so tired of of in this whole gun first of all i hate the gun argument on twitter it's so bad i mean even on the people who agree with me i i fucking hate that everyone has to chime in and be like i hate guns like on every fucking text thread and slack and tweet thread that there is like i i know i know you don't tell me go do something call your congressman or i don't know do you go do anything other than say that you hate guns like i it's just

i i'm tired of the of the what about me ism uh of that but so that's what bothers me on the left but then it's like well it's like on the right you have this like why why people like over complicated so much. They're like, they're like, well, what are we, what? They're like, they, I'm so tired of hearing these like complicated reasons why we can't get rid of guns. Like, well, there's no, if we get rid of guns, people will still get them and the murder rate will actually go up. And it's like, what are you fucking idiot? Like, of course, if there's fewer guns, there'll be fewer gun deaths. How it's just simple math. It's like, don't, it's like

that people's ability to do like mental gymnastics to justify almost anything with like, by introducing needless complexity to it is astounding to me. And it's the same argument with Trump on Twitter, right, where I was like, listen, I was like, I finally, I get so fed up with it when he was tweeting in North Korea and starting a war. I was like, just fucking, I was like, just kick him off the platform. And I was like, I know that he can still start a war, but it doesn't have to be on, if you own Twitter, the war doesn't have to be on your website, right? Like, at least just say like, well, it doesn't have to be here.

MerlinIt's that kind of all or nothing approach to something that is such a dead end in so many parts of life, but very much especially in politics, where if you had a chainsaw on a rope in your living room swinging around and almost killing your kids every day, you'd say, well, no, no, we have to respect the chainsaw. It's about heritage. Well, the chainsaw's always been here.

Or you would say, like you're saying, I think, you hear those arguments of like, oh, well, the classic bumper sticker, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

Speaker AWell, okay, that's a start. That's so good.

MerlinBut how do you make a case for having 23 rifles, some of which have been retrofitted, to turn into automatic weapons?

Speaker AWell, people say it's the price of freedom.

MaxWhat freedom? The freedom to have the guns. That's its own circular—

Speaker ATautology. It's a tautology.

MaxYeah. What do you mean it's the price of freedom? It's not the price—other countries are free, more free than us, and they don't have guns? It's a non-sequitur. It really is a non-sequitur. Anyway, so, and then, and, you know, and I'm haunted by this logic of, like, this idea of, like, well, it's like I'm willing to introduce almost impossible levels of justification and complexity to justify the sort of patently evil thing that I want to do or the very obvious remedy would be to just not do it when I'm watching the Vietnam documentary.

because that's exactly what they did is they were just like well we're going to send hundreds of thousands of of marines and and soldiers into vietnam to go crawling through these swamps and lay down their lives to take these hills that we don't even want and we're not even going to keep just to say that we took them because and then we have back home all these geniuses at the rand corporation making spreadsheets proving that we're going to win the war with some sort of equation and it's like well you've now engineered the most complicated like in defiance of all

common sense and what your every basic instinct in your own eyes can tell you you you've created this mythology of the numbers that tell you know or or the the complex logic or the equation or the algorithm that tells you that you're getting the result that you want in in like plain defiance of the facts. And if you wonder, like, how did America go insane and do this war? Or how did we do the Iraq war? Or how do we get to this? You look back at history and you're like, how did it get to this point?

Well, this is it. You see it. Go on Twitter. You see it right in front of you. And it's like people you know, right? It's like regular smart people. They're able to go to unbelievable lengths to, like, overcomplicate these simple moral truths.

MerlinYeah.

MaxAnyway, I really like the soundtrack for the Vietnam documentary Have you guys listened to the soundtrack?

AlexI have, actually I'm surprised there's music that's so good in the Ken Burns documentary

MaxIt's very good There's two soundtracks So you've got your 60s music soundtrack, which is excellent Hold on, wait

AlexAsterisk, people will tweet at me Other than the jazz documentary

MaxAnd then you've another one Which is the Trent Reznor sort of original score Which is also really good

MerlinYeah, I don't ever need to hear another CCR song in the Vietnam thing ever, ever, ever. I love CCR. I'm just tired. It ain't me. I ain't no fortunate son. You know what? It's like gun violence. Let's just resist the urge to put fortunate son in everything. Just stop. Let's have a break from CCR. We love CCR. Let's take a break. Let's not put that in our Forrest Gump's anymore.

Speaker ALet's not put, let's just leave it. Just take a little break.

MaxDude, it's like the helicopter rotors. It's just like, that's the sound of Vietnam. They should let us run things I love in the documentary that it gets more It starts off with Pete Seeger And Bob Dylan And a lot of folk music And as the film goes on It gets a little harder More like Led Zeppelin It really The music direction is brilliant

It's really smart, really brilliant

Merlinyeah you know a nice way to wind down right before bed is to be reminded of how kent state went oh my god that's a nice feeling that's a nice feeling to go to bed

Maxa lot of the kent state footage um it was never shown before this documentary so it was a student filmed it and was so disturbed that he like changed his major and stopped making films and put the tapes in his basement and they and they found it for the first time the other thing was the um uh the the the when the execution of the the north vietnamese a soldier that had only ever been shown in video one time ever live on the news and never again in video rather seeing it

Merlinin video rather than a still is a trip because you see what it isn't it looks like a formal sort of uh extra extrajudicial um execution because the guy's got his arm extended it looks like this very official thing no the guy just walks by i think he's maybe smoking a butt he walks by he takes out his pistol shoots the guy in the head and keeps walking it's so pop it's so fucked up to see the actual video of it. Oh, God.

AlexCameron's great filmmaker again. Yeah.

MaxWell, everybody, hey, it's October now, which means only one thing. It's Semen Week here on Do By Friday.

AlexHappy Jizzle.

MaxWe've prepared a selection of jizzween stories, of hilarious jizz stories, to share with our audience. It's an October semen explosion. Enough semen to fill an ocean. Semen in the trees. Semen in the air. Everywhere you look, there's semen there.

Speaker AThat's because it's jizz-a-jizz-a-jizzween. The new holiday you didn't know you needed. So much jizz In the news of the jizz In your pockets filling up your shoes Is it jizz in your coffee?

Have you checked? Cause the jizz is showing up Where you least expect

Speaker AOh, jizz Oh, jizz Oh, we

MerlinDigga, digga, digga, digga Dateline, Washington Sorry, sorry, should I go?

AlexWait, Merlin, you know that helicopter noise You made a few minutes ago? Could you just make that again?

Speaker ABow now. Bow now. Baby! Digga, digga, digga. Dateline, Washington Post. We go to Southern California.

MerlinSemen-contaminated flutes might have been given to children, California school officials warn. Several school districts in Southern California warned parents this weekend that flutes and recorders given to children through a non-profit music program may have been contaminated with bodily fluids.

Speaker AAt least one district specified that those fluids could have been semen. I have a lot of questions about this right off the bat.

Maxso many questions. Number one, how did they figure it out? He's like the Pied Piper of Jizz. Did one of the kids, was one of the kids playing the recorder and was like, hang on a minute, this tastes

Alexlike semen. Yeah, how old were these kids that they know the taste

Maxof semen? Me thinks I taste some jizz in this recorder.

MerlinWell, it's this traveling Pied Piper music character who comes in, this is a quoting here from these, the performer distributes a flute-like musical instrument made of PVC pipe or bamboo, to students during a music lesson, and the allegation is that he contaminated some of these instruments with semen. He came in the flutes. Saugus Union Superintendent Joan Lucid said in an email to parents on Saturday, these allegations are deeply concerning, and I realize they raise many questions. Well put, Ms. Lucid.

Speaker AThey do indeed raise many questions.

MaxHere's the thing. If you're coming in the flutes, the children's flutes, it must be the greatest, it must make you feel like God. It must be the greatest feeling in the world. It's very high risk. It's a very high risk attack.

Speaker AShould I come in one recorder? Should I come in one recorder or should I come across many flutes?

MaxWell, I would imagine that if that's your thing, it's like 30 times better if you have 30 students all lined up playing the old gray goose on their recorder and you know that your jizz is in the flutes.

Speaker AEvery time I hear hot crust buns, I can. But here's... Ah, ah, ah. Ah, ah, ah. Ah!

MaxFortunate son. Fortunate son. As you know, I'm a utilitarian, right? I'm an economic utilitarian. What's best for everybody. And I think that the night, here's the good thing about capitalism and our criminal justice system and our whole society really is that it's set up to distribute utility in the most equitable way. And here's my question. Let's say that this, how much do the, here's what it comes down to. How much do the kids really mind that there's a little bit of jizz in their flutes, right? Because did they really even notice? You still get a flute. How much does the guy, how much does he need it to get off? Because if he's getting 100 points of utility,

Speaker AWell, let's just say he's getting 100 points of utility per child. He gets a plus five flute.

MerlinEach flute is decorated by hand, has a photo tied onto it, and inside is placed a personal handwritten note by the flute giver to their unknown flute friend in another part of the world, the website stated. They decorate a pair of flutes with symbols of peace, unity, and healing. They learn to play music from diverse cultures through listening and watching the oldest way we learn music and language in the world still today.

MaxNow, do you think the note, if you wrote that note and that was your fetish, and you think that he, so to speak, that he rubbed it in?

Alex100%.

MaxWhere he's like, I really hope you enjoy this special treat that I've prepared for your young mouths. Oh, God. Nope, nope. Nothing I love more than the sweet sound of music coming from the lips of children.

MerlinGive you a little toodle. They had music missions in Haiti, Philippines, Honduras, as well as they sent flute ambassadors. They sent flute ambassadors to Nepal, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

MaxFlutes across the world. I hope that the gift of music sticks. No.

MerlinSo to speak. No. No. You're coming into your own as a young musician.

AlexNo. All right. Dig dug. This reminded me of a story from my childhood.

Yay.

AlexThere was like this urban legend in middle school about a young man who came into a He just jizzed into a bottle of French dressing. Hot. Yeah. Hot.

All on Z. Castro, and this was at Wheaton North, which was the public high school in my neighborhood. And the kid, Castro, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in connection with the December 6th incident. And this is in 2014. He admitted taking a bottle of ranch dressing from the school cafeteria to the bathroom and ejaculating into it and then returning to the cafeteria where juniors and seniors eat lunch. First, I don't know if he was like a freshman, like good on him if that's the case.

Students reported Castro and the senior was expelled from Wheaton North. There were no reported case of illness following the incident. Castro told the police he thought of the prank after watching a movie filled with crude stunts. I have no explanation for what I did, Castro said in court. I felt bad after I did it. Harry Smith, Castro's attorney, noted that the teen had already been punished, including missing the end of his senior year and humiliating himself and his family. It has not been without consequences, Smith said.

MerlinThat's a shame. He's going to be tarred with that forever now.

AlexOh, poor kid. Poor kid.

MerlinWell, you know, the thing is, Alex, I think what a lot of people don't understand, when you hear that somebody came in your salad dressing, you're thinking, well, that's not wholesome. Like, who would cook with semen? Dugga, dugga, dugga. Amazon, we go to Natural Harvest, a collection of semen-based recipes.

Semen is not only nutritious, it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you'll be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you're a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients, you'll love this cookbook.

Frequently bought together. Natural Harvest, a collection of semen-based recipes. Semenology, a book about drinking semen. And a book featuring a man with an ice axe naked. It says images you should not masturbate to.

AlexOh, good. Great. All right.

MerlinIt includes an image of what you look like holding the book against your chest, which is handy.

AlexOh.

MerlinNatural Harvest. And the cover is a flan. It's a cum flan.

AlexThat, that, God.

MerlinIn the Spanish style.

AlexOh, God. It's on Kindle Unlimited. Did you happen to get this book? Like, my question is, like, what, how much? How much do you need? Like, this has to be a lot.

MerlinI bet it's like cilantro. There's some people who won't like it, but then a lot of people were just a little bit could really change. Max have you ever Cook with jizz

Speaker AOh who doesn't Cook with jizz

AlexI can think of one person It's not only nutritious Well you know

Speaker AIt also has a wonderful Texture

MaxYou've got your Blue cheese jizz You've got your Ranch jizz Sour cream and onion jizz

MerlinAnd if you've had A lovely candle lit Dinner for friends You've got six people there And then at the end You're serving coffee And you say Just to let you know I used a rather Unusual ingredient In all the dishes Tonight My fortunate son

AlexI would rather Eat human flesh I would rather be like a fancy human shot. Really? Well, yeah. Yeah. You've cooked out all of the AIDS.

MaxI'm not like excited to guzzle jizz, but it doesn't gross me out that much. I don't know.

AlexI'm pretty grossed out by it. You ever seen it, Max?

Speaker AIt's kind of viscous. Oh, I've seen some jizz in my day. I've seen it in pictures. Well, on the internet, I mean, it's hard to avoid.

AlexYeah. I'm a music teacher. CBS News. Hold on. I want both of you to Google the, just Google Halloween font and tell me what you see.

MerlinF-A How do you spell font?

AlexLike the font, like a typeface. Halloween font. I thought you said font.

MaxI see a bunch of fun, spooky fonts that are just sort of dripping with some sort of viscous liquid.

AlexIt looks like somebody started

Merlinwith a pretty standard, not very interesting typeface.

AlexI understand it's supposed to be blood. I may have seen jizz on the internet.

MaxThis one is just a normal sans serif. This is not blood. The children play their flutes

Merlinand then all of a sudden it's dripping. It looks like somebody add a little bit of fortunate sun to Harry Potter is what some of these look like. the a a a a a a a a a a a

AlexOkay.

MaxI'm sure they have a spell to remove the jizz. Jizz on removal.

AlexThe common rooms will get so gross. They've got those four poster beds. Actually, for sure

Maxthere's like a Ravenclaw fuck room.

Speaker Adid you ever look up expecto patronum on urban dictionary what what what now

Merlinokay just go look up expecto patronum on uh the internet oh god there's so much semen on snopes i mean is snopes fake news now i don't know i think they're struggling alex you spent a little time on snopes looking at semen uh did did you find some i found most of them were false did Did you find many that were true?

AlexI believe Rockstar Pump's stomach rumor. Oh, no, it's false. Never mind.

MerlinThat's from my childhood. That was supposedly Rod Stewart.

AlexOne of my favorite stories from Snopes. Most of the semen ones are false. But there was this thing going around that people thought that Arizona iced tea had pee and semen in it for some reason.

MerlinReally? That's not true.

AlexThere's just a Facebook post.

MerlinI'm going to stop buying it then.

AlexI know. Go with Arnold Palmer. And someone just says on Facebook, are there rumors about human urine in your drinks to the Arizona Iced Tea Facebook group, which exists? And Arizona Iced Tea responds, hey, Molly, we can assure you that those rumors are 100% false. But they don't provide any evidence.

MerlinOh, that's typical. They always used to say, when I was a kid, they used to say when you get a can of pop, you should wipe the lid off. like clean off the top of the can because truck drivers would pee all over the cans in the back of the truck. And that was a very conventional piece. That was conventional. To this day, you see people who clean off the top of a can. That's because we were all told that they were

Alexpeeing all over the cans. I mean, it's sterile, though. That's better than having anthrax in your

MerlinHalloween candy. I'm going to get a little bit Max Temkin on this one, which is like, let's apply a little bit of Occam's razor. If you were a truck driver and needed to urinate, it would take extra effort to get in the back of the truck and pee on it. Why wouldn't you just pee into a jar or just pee right on the road? Maybe because you wanted to put your fortunate son under the beverages.

Sell it to the flute guy. Is it true that Lady Gaga's new perfume is created from human blood, semen, and poison? I read it on the internet this morning.

MaxAnytime that you see on the internet that something is actually created out of semen, it's 100% true. That's a common thing that a lot of luxury brands and common items, they're loaded with semen.

MerlinYeah, if you've ever enjoyed a fondie bag or a Tom Ford vest, that's just pure jizz. That's jizz all the way down. Semen in Starbucks coffee, true or false? Oh, Red Bull, buddy. Oh, Red Bull.

AlexI retract my earlier statement. I don't think that anyone has tried Red Bull with bull semen. and we don't know if it works better. I'd try that.

MerlinYou ever heard the thing about drinking your pee in the morning?

AlexNo. Please enlighten us.

MaxDrinking urine morning. Please talk about this. I have heard that people do this, and I can't tell if it's a joke or not.

MerlinI can't either. It sounds like, well, I don't know spoilers, but it's kind of a snipe hunting, cow tipping type situation where it's one of those things where I think enough people talked about it. Oh, it's an unorthodox Chinese medical cure. Oh, we're going to go to a site called Chinese Insider. It's a little bit ping pong. Headline, drinking your own urine. The unorthodox Chinese, quote, miracle cure.

The Chinese Urine Therapy Association claims that drinking urine can improve the body's ability to fight diseases.

Speaker AWhat I've heard is that you can't just drink any old urine.

MaxIt's got to be the first piss of the morning. So you need that thick, meaty, you know, orange, dark orange pee. And then you just drink the first 10 seconds. You just drink the top. Because that's where all the nutrients are.

Speaker AOkay, it's like the cream.

MerlinYes, I think this has to be true. The crema. The crema. The crema. I heard the same thing, so this must be true. I heard that it's got to be your hot morning urine that you've just produced, and you drink it right there. Now, do you brush your teeth before or after? Because with orange juice, you don't want to drink orange juice after you've brushed your teeth.

MaxYeah, you've got to drink the piss first. Well, it could be a gargle situation. No, because then you're wasting the piss. It could be a gargle. No, no, no, no. You swallow. You piss. Here's the order of operations. You wake up. You piss. You drink the piss. And then you brush your teeth.

Speaker AOkay. The other way you could do it is you get up.

MerlinYou put your watch on the charge stand. You greet your family. Okay? You go into the bathroom.

AlexYou've got to set a timer for an hour.

MerlinRight. You watch a video of somebody destroying your stamp collection by stomping on them. You go on Twitter and see what the cabinet officials have resigned. Fucking moron.

MaxWell, thanks. Thanks, everyone, for joining us for our first annual Jizzoween. And, you know, stay safe out there.

So this was a story that I fell in love with from the New Zealand Herald. An eight-year-old boy was left honking with every breath after swallowing a party hooter. First of all, come on, party hooter?

Speaker BParty hooter.

MaxDoctors had to operate to remove the whistle from the boy's throat with doctors sharing footage of him online to show parents the danger of the popular party toy. and you may be wondering did they provide the video can you hear the boy breathing and then the party hooter going and I have good news for everyone which is they absolutely did that

Speaker Aand here it is just for medical reasons

Merlinfor public health reasons they put it

Speaker AHe looks so guilty.

MaxHe looks like a dog that ate the whole bag of kibble. He's looking up at the camera, just taking these deep breaths.

AlexGod, this video is worse. The punishment of this video is worse than surgery. Like you could see it in his eyes of like, this is gonna, I'm Star Wars kid now. It's so bad.

MerlinOh God, the squeaker is so small. Look at that. I'd eat that. If I was just sitting, digging my hands into some various corns, I could very easily eat a squeaker and just not know it. Sorry, Party Hooter. That was my name in college, Party Hooter. Party Hooter.

Speaker AHey look out you guys

MaxHere comes Party Hooter

MerlinI don't know why I feel The need to have

MaxParty Hooter is what I would be After I had After I would smoke I would have one hit of pot And then for the rest of the night I'd be like

Speaker AMy mom put me up here With my squeaker break

MaxWell, I feel like we should get into the challenge because there's a lot going on this week.

AlexThat's so much.

MaxThere's a lot of levels to the challenge. So, you know, a couple of things.

Speaker AMax, how do people find out what the challenge is going to be before it happens? Great question, Roland.

MaxI'm so glad you asked. So, as you know, Dubai Friday has launched a Patreon. You can become an official member of the Dubai Friday Powder Nation if you go to patreon.com slash Dubai Friday you may be asking why would I do that? Why would I give Dubai Friday $5? Well the answer is you get a RSF subscription to our secret after show where we basically stick around for about a half hour after the podcast and we do another podcast that's even better I mean honestly this podcast is like a flute full of jizz. It's really very salty going down.

Speaker AThis is like watching somebody

Merlincome into a flute. You actually get

Maxto go jizz into the recorder. You know what we're doing is We have a reverse morning piss where the first, it's like all the nutrients, all the nutrients, those first, that first half cup, that's in the half hour in the after show you have to pay $5 for. And then the rest of it where it's sort of, you know, diluted, that's what you're listening to right now. You're saying this is like a prequel, really? It's the prequel. It's the prequel. The real show is the one you have to pay $5 for. But that's anyway, in the $5 show that you can go to patreon.com slash Dubai Friday and sign up for, that's where we discuss the upcoming week's challenge. And we invite the members of the Powder Nation.

Well, let's say the official members of the Powder Nation to do the challenge alongside us and give us their feedback. So this week was my challenge. And this is a real doozy of a challenge. We heard about this from a friend of the show, Christy. Christy shared a Reddit post from slash r slash sous vide. And the post is from Antares07923. And they write, so I noticed there was a stank coming off my shoes after I wore my regular socks and the gym shoes because I forgot my gym shocks.

So my regular shoes started to stink up. I tried everything from balls, which Merlin helpfully explained where they were the like sort of cedar balls that allegedly get the smell out of your shoes to wiping them down with antibacterial substances and tea tree oil. I even froze them overnight, but eventually the smell came back. The bacterial colonies were pretty entrenched. So I realized I would probably have to go with prolonged heat, but the oven was too hot. Gee, if only there was some instrument that precisely controlled the temperature for more long periods of time. So I put newspaper in my shoes, lightly vacuum sealed them. Do it lightly, otherwise your shoes will deform

and mold that way under the heat. I have much more to say about that in a minute. And I sous-vided them at like 180 for a day. Viola, no more smelly. So that was the challenge this week was sous-vide your shoes. Merlin, did you sous-vide your shoes?

MerlinShit, dog. I did, I did. Well, I've got, just in terms of methodology, I did, I did. Here's my methodology. I don't have anything that stinks because of the laundry. You don't have a pair of shoes that smell bad? No, you have those toms. When I wear Crocs, they're antimicrobial by nature, the Croc. It's not rubber. It's an antimicrobial material. So what I did was I found, and I do, I keep shoe trees in my shoes. It's got silver fibers in it.

Rejoice. So what I did was I took my favorite pair of disgusting jeans that my family keeps trying to throw away. I have what's called a food saver. and the food saver is an $80 dingus that you buy for sealing these plastic bags, these bespoke plastic bags or rolls of bags. So what you want to do is, in my case, and if you're doing sous vide, you can do it with Ziploc, but it's so much more fun to do it with the food saver. So what I did was I took a pair of jeans, I took my sports ball shirt, and I took some keen old man walking shoes.

I sealed the shoes up in separate bags. I sealed up, and we'll get to the methodology here, but the pants did the shirt. For the shoes, I put my fancy cedar shoe trees into them because in an initial attempt to try and do this, I couldn't get enough weight to push them down into the sous vide device. So that's my basic methodology. And so I did 160. I think we talked about trying different temperatures. I did 160 for about 16 hours. Alex, did you sous vide your shoes?

AlexI sous vide something. Go on. I don't have – when shoes get bad, I throw them away. I don't have any super fancy shoes except for those Clark Desert boots, and those I just get cleaned every year because those are my only fancy shoes.

MaxWait, how do you get a pair of Clark Desert boots cleaned?

AlexYou go to a haberdashery or a-

MaxA hat store?

AlexYeah. No, that's just the fancy- Or you go to a Shoeba Doober. Yeah. You just go to a fancy shoe place. A cobbler? Yeah. You have a cobbler?

MerlinIs it a glazier?

AlexIs that what you use? I walk in and bunch of little elves with cookies.

MaxThis is an extremely Dwight Schrute thing. No, it's not. Jim's like, Dwight, so you're apiarist? He's pretty good. And he's like, yes, Jim. I would work with a bad apiarist.

AlexThey just fix up the suede, so it's still nice. OK.

MaxCan you refer me to your cobbler? Do you need a referral? A cobbler referral? Did I take Blue Cross Blue Shield?

AlexAll right.

Speaker AWould they receive my fortunate son?

MaxCould you, I mean, what's the relationship? Could you go to the cobbler and say, listen, I got a little spilled, a little fortunate son. I have so much cum on my swing. I know this sounds unexpected coming from me, but I spilled a little fortunate son on

Speaker Athe Clark Desert Boots. Yeah. And now I've ruined the nap.

MerlinI've ruined the nap with my blessing.

Speaker AI fluted on my shoe.

MerlinOh, who among us has not fluted on a shoe?

Speaker AOkay. Sometimes you get a little too excited.

MaxThe kids get, you think you're going to make it to the end of hot cross buns. And then you're not halfway through all over your Clark Desert.

Speaker ADoing your morning benediction and playing your flute.

MerlinAnd then some lady in high heels stamps on your stamp collection.

Speaker AMary Giseline, everybody.

MerlinOh, that was the end of the river, all right.

Speaker ASo what did you, um, so what did you, what did you see, what did you see, Alex? You didn't do your Clarks.

AlexNo, I don't have any shoes that are particularly gross. I have a lot of gross bras like most women do they get nasty they get old and rugged I knew that this wasn't going to go great Max offered to give me borrow a fancy sous vide thing but he was switching assistants and things were stressful and I'm like wait I just don't want to have this I don't want to just replicate everyone else's situation

Speaker Ais this photo an accurate depiction of what you did.

AlexWhich photo are you referring to?

Speaker AOh, God. This is the saddest thing I've ever seen. You got a little pot and a plastic grocery bag. This looks like how a hobo would do laundry or something. It's like making soup out of your laundry.

MaxIt's like a stone soup situation. It's like the villagers had nothing to eat.

Speaker ABut there's not even a stone. it's just a it's just a discarded grocery bag in two spoons

Maxso Alex has got like an Aldi bag with a bra in it and it's it's sitting in it's sitting in a metal pot on a burner and then I assume to hold it down there's just like a bunch of measuring spoons and ladles and stuff just like clattering in on top of it

Alexwhy are you hating on the spoons it looks like you're punishing

Maxit looks like you're punishing something you found on the street Alex it looks like you're dissolving a body in your kitchen this is very Breaking Bad

AlexMy partner came home and came in the kitchen and was like, do you buy Friday? And I'm like, yep, yep. And she walked out. Anyway, I've sent in our super secret text channel the method I use, which is Martha Stewart's how to sous vide without the fancy machine. And the answer to that is Ziploc bags, a basic thermometer.

Speaker AThese are not Ziploc bags. You use grocery bags.

AlexHere was the problem with the Ziploc bags I used initially. You could tell that I was getting some bubbles. And my first bra, it did not go well. The water seeped in. It morphed into a strange shape.

MaxA bra can get wet.

AlexIt can. It can't be heated to 150 degrees for three hours. That's not great for it.

Merlinum see there's the problem is the degrees yeah that was too many degrees so that i was like all

Alexright i've ruined one fancy nice bra so then i did a second attempt just for science um and used a shittier bra basically and uh the the thing i did with the the plastic bags i had um i borrowed one of those what is it like a little vacuum reverse vacuum thing from my neighbor um reverse vacuum I think it's a party hooter. It sucked. I ran out of Ziploc bags.

Oh, God, Alex. This is a travesty. No, no, no. So those are actually two.

MaxIf we keep doing this podcast, eventually you're going to be standing outside your house talking to a fireman about why your house burned down. And you'd be like, well, anyway, then I ran out of electrical cords. So I fashioned my own out of a wire hanger.

MerlinI had to try autoerotic asphyxiation, but all I had was a grocery bag. Challenge, be an astronaut. Come in a bag. How do you come in space?

AlexI don't know. Anyway. You know what? I'm going to send this picture to you, Merlin. I don't know how HR would feel. sent a picture of a deformed broad, Max. All right. Oh, nice. Hold on. So this is my second attempt.

MerlinAre you modeling it or is it in situ?

AlexNo, good Lord. No, no, no.

MerlinI don't know if I can handle that, Alex.

AlexNo, Jesus Christ. No, no, no, no.

MerlinShould I send you something equally intimate of mine?

AlexSure. This is.

MerlinNo, no, no.

AlexWell, this isn't for you, Max. But this is my broad. And so you see how like.

Speaker AThere's that moment where you're waiting for a text to come in.

AlexOh, sorry. There's a lot of white notes.

Speaker AThere's a lot of coffee discovery someday. I just want to clarify a couple quick things from your text message. You tried to cook a brassiere inside of a grocery bag.

MaxAnd Mr. Temkin, could you tell the court, how did it feel when your employee sent you a picture of her cooking her bra?

AlexI sent them to my friend Merlin. Oh, no.

Speaker AThis is, oh, no, your bra. Oh, no, my bra.

AlexNo, it's okay. This was an ugly, bad one. But if anybody should, in the after show, I'm going to share my bra size. If anyone wants to send me some new bra.

MerlinHow much would people have to Patreon for you to send this to?

AlexYou know what? Along with a picture of you pissing on their stamp collection. $50, because that's how much one bra costs. $50, that's a good deal. But you notice. Oh, man, really? Like, you see how at the bottom of one of the cups, it looks as if, like, I've worn it a bunch. And it's, like, been worn down. That is not the case with this bra, because I didn't like it. It's blue. It's bad.

MerlinSo it lost its structural integrity? This is an underwire, right?

AlexThe underwire is completely melted, but it also kind of melted the foam within it, like the little, you know, like the padding so your nipples don't show.

MerlinI think they call them biscuits.

AlexAnd it just, and normally, like when you're washing a bra that has underwire and there's like traditional cups to it, like what you do is you twist them so that like the cups sort of fold in on one another so it retains its shape, which is what I did with my sous vide cooking method. I shouldn't have used a human thermometer in the water. That was probably one of the downfalls. But it just completely morphed it into this monstrosity.

So I'm going to go home tonight and see if the other bra has retained its monstrosity. Oh, God, my boogers are coming out of my throat.

MerlinI'm so sorry. Alex, take a bra out of petty cash. You deserve it. This is terrible. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were going to be damaged in this way. You didn't try it on, right? It's too disfiguring.

AlexReal-time follow-up. You know how you guys had talked about putting things in the freezer? I put another bra in the freezer and thought, I don't know. I just wanted to know what would happen.

MerlinYou're a curious young person. There's no reason you wouldn't freeze your underwear.

AlexWell, that's a story for another time in the after show. But it came out, and it was fresh. the smell had gotten. Like, it wasn't like a smelly bra, but you know how, like, you know, you're just done with clothes and they don't smell, like, fresh. But this came out, like, smelling, like, the, kind of like the chemicals as if it had never been washed before. Like, I had just...

MerlinOkay, save that, because I got a fuck ton to say. Max, tell us about what you sous vide did.

MaxI, I, I mean, listen, I followed the instructions. I took my pair of Toms that smell horrible, and they smell like Parmesan cheese, and I put them in a Ziploc and I sucked all the air out, and, oh, I packed them with newspaper i put them in the ziploc sucked all the air out put them in the sous vide at 180 and i sort of had to wait that what i did like a just a like a cereal bowl filled with water and sort of put it on top and that was enough to sort of force them down into the water but uh man first of all water got into both bags because i think i think i think it's so i think this never

happens when i do food but i think the issue is that there was so much air in the bags because of the newspaper and the shoes and all of that, that it was like battling. I don't know. Something weird happened, and water got into both shoes. I took them out. They both smelled worse than when I started, and they were wet and ruined, and they had like soggy, smelly newspaper inside that was really disgusting.

MerlinThis mirrors my results.

MaxAnd the shoes got sort of... My clothes came out... My final thing I'll say is the shoes got kind of hard, and it cooked the wrinkles into the shoes. That's what happened with the bra. And then one of them is like way smaller than the other now.

MerlinOh, no.

MaxSo I'll just go buy a new pair of Toms. But I guess I would need to do that anyway because they smell like Parmesan shoes.

MerlinI only did it at a low temperature for 16 hours. I took them out this morning. I dropped my kit off. I came home. I took my pants out of the water. And I had professionally sealed mine. Now, you understand when I did my shoes, I took your counsel on this and used the shoe trees to make sure it maintained their structural integrity. Okay, so what I started out with was a shirt that I'd worn a couple times that didn't smell too bad, a pair of shoes that smelled mostly like cedar, and a pair of pants that smelled like pants. This morning, what I got out of those bags was hot, moist items that smelled 10 times more what they originally smelled like, but now a little bit moist.

They smelled more like what they were. It did the opposite. This is an accelerator. This makes it smell more like whatever that thing is.

AlexI mean, I think we just basically put moldy things into a vat of something that grows more mold.

MaxWell, here's my question about that. I know that we, I feel like there could possibly be some science involved in this whole discussion. It sounds very, very scientific. Merlin, do we know anyone who might have some expertise on this subject who would be able to tell us a little bit more about it?

MerlinWell, as it happens, Max, I have a very good friend, my good friend, Dr. Donald Schaffner, who is a professor at Rutgers University, where he's a microbiologist specializing in food safety. He's a good friend of all the great shows. And we're going to give Dr. Don a call and see if he can tell us what went wrong with trying to sous vide our shoes.

Speaker ASous vide your shoes. Sous vide your shoes.

Speaker BHey, this is Don. Sorry I got my times confused. I was thinking 2 o'clock Eastern. I have a shitty microphone. Can you hear me? Yeah, you sound really good.

MaxOh, well, that's so good. Thank you so much for joining us on Dubai Friday. This is really exciting. We usually just sort of wildly speculate about these things and sort of make proclamations. And it's a big change to our format to have someone who knows what they're talking about.

Speaker BOh, well, I'm a huge fan, guys. It's my pleasure to be here.

MaxThank you. The podcast that you do, I almost can't believe that it exists, and I became aware of it when Merlin was on as a special guest. And it's really fun. I mean, it's almost exactly what I hope to find in a podcast, which is like a sort of obscure specialist topic, but you guys use it as a way to talk about all kinds of interesting things and make it very accessible to people.

Speaker BOh, well, thank you, Max.

Speaker AThat's fantastic. Say the name of the podcast. Let's promote it. Yeah, where can people subscribe? What's the name?

Maxfoodsafetytalk.com. All right, so the challenge this week on Dubai Friday, I don't know how much Merlin has told you, but a friend of the show, Christy, sent in a Reddit post from a guy who sous-vided his shoes as a sort of a harebrained scheme to try and get his shoes to stop smelling. We all attempted this challenge, and it was mostly, I would describe it as a wet disaster. And for me, my shoes smelled worse than when I began. They smelled more like Parmesan cheese than when I began.

Actually, I'll say they smelled like a more expensive Parmesan cheese than when I began.

AlexAnd I melted two underwear bras.

MaxNice.

AlexYep.

MaxCan you tell us, so I guess the theory that this guy was, to the extent that there was any sort of scientific theory underlying this idea, it was that there was some sort of, you know, bacterial colony in the shoes, and that the same way that you can sous vide a steak to sort of kill the harmful bacteria, you could sous vide your shoes at a low temperature over a long period of time, and it would kill the bacteria in the shoes. Can you kind of help us

Speaker Bmyth busters this? Well, you know, in principle, this is right, right? Because heat kills bacteria, right? We know that from sous vide. But the key and this and you know, this is what what I discussed with Merlin via email. The key difference is that when you're sous-viding a piece of meat, essentially you are providing what is called wet heat, right? So in other words, that piece of meat is moist. And we know from decades and decades of research that wet heat is way more effective than dry heat. And so essentially when you're taking an underwire bra or a shoe and you're

putting it inside a plastic bag, unless you have water in that bag with those things, that's what we call dry heat or, or it's certainly not fully moist heat. And so because it's dry, we know that when bacteria are, uh, or, or molds or whatever, when they're, when they're under dry conditions, it's a lot harder to kill them with heat, which is why we had a problem so many years ago with, uh, with salmonella in peanuts, right? Because the, the, the peanuts are a full moisture food. And so it's really hard to kill the bacteria on the peanuts.

MaxWow. And that's, and that's because there's not, because the moisture is like conducts the heat basically to where the bacteria are? Am I, is that right? Well, it's, it, it has to do with the

Speaker Blatent heat of vaporization, um, which is a chemical term, which I'm sure I think Virginia could probably explain that to you, but, but basically it has to do with, with that, that, that moisture in the air potentiating, making that, that, that heat much more effective. You can think about it like, you know, that thing that people always say, it's not the heat,

Maxit's the humidity, right? Okay. This is, this is fascinating. So basically the, the, the actual results that we got, which is that it did not make our shoes stop smelling, you probably could have predicted this had we asked you. That would have been my guess, yes. Well, let me do a follow

Merlinup on this, Dr. Don. Is there anything that we should sous vide that's not food that might produce an interesting result? As a microbiologist, what do you recommend as something we could put in hot water for 16 to 24 hours and make some kind of a chemical, physical change? What should

Speaker Bwe be sous-viding that we're not? I think that we should sous-vide food, Merlin. I'm sorry.

Speaker AI can't think of anything else. You wouldn't do pennies or sporks or children's squeaky toys, nothing like that? What if you got a flute with some sort of contaminant in it? Would you be able

Merlinto sous-vide the flute to sanitize it? If somebody, just for the sake of argument, someone in Southern California came on a flute, is that the kind of thing that you would want to sous-vide? Would that improve the performance characteristics of a flute or a recorder or

Speaker Bother wind instrument? Well, one of the things that we say in food safety, Merlin, is you can sanitize a dirty surface. So if there was, let's say, some contamination on a flute, I would start by cleaning it with warm, soapy water. And then maybe after that, put the flute in a bag with some water and then sous vide that bag.

MerlinIt's semen flutes all the way down. Oh, God, this is so useful. I think we should make you a correspondent

Maxthat on the show, Dr. Don. This is so useful to me. I have a little rare Dubai Friday real-time follow-up that I bet Dr. Don will enjoy. So do you remember, this is a deep cut, but do you remember when we first started talking about kombucha? We were looking at the ingredients of the kombucha and they listed one of the ingredients as love. And I said, I wonder if the Food and Drug Administration takes issue with the kombucha company listing love as an ingredient on the beverage as a joke. Well, this is a real-time follow-up from the Washington Post.

This just posted. This is from Travis Andrews in the Washington Post. FDA rebukes bakery for claiming love as an ingredient in granola. The ingredient list for Massachusetts-based Nashaba Brook Bakery's granola was normal enough, save for one ingredient amid the oats and sweetener was, quote, love. The subject of nearly every rock and roll song, the thing Romeo and Juliet died for. All right, we get it. I get it. I get it. This is a lot of news writing where they're trying to make their story longer. It was supposedly in the granola, which was sold at around 120 stores around New England.

The, quote, ingredient was a nod to the passion bakers put into their product and a wink to the fans of the snack. And then, let's see. But the Food and Drug Administration didn't see it that way. A human emotion, it said, cannot be an ingredient in baked goods. The FDA published a warning letter to the bakery on Tuesday Which told the bakery to stop claiming that its granola contains love Quote, your Nashaba granola label lists ingredient love Ingredients required to be declared on the label or labeling of food Must be listed only by their common or usual name

Love is not a common or usual name of an ingredient And is considered to be an intervening material Because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient

MerlinI hope the FTC comes down fucking hard on Subaru. Because I am here to tell you that love is not what makes a Subaru a Subaru. Calling it a Subaru is what makes it a Subaru. Let's end this. Bring these jackals down. This is disgusting. They're contaminating our food. Much like a music teacher might contaminate a flute.

MaxLet's see. I'm trying to think if I have any other topics. Okay, here's another one. Can I just ask you a random food safety life hack question, Dr. Don? Sure, absolutely. So I saw this story going around over the weekend and it's kind of, I don't know, I can't tell if it's kind of like Snopesy or if it's a true story or whatever, but it was like one of these things that was like, did you know that your kitchen sponge is like dirtier than your entire bathroom?

Speaker BYeah, Jesus, don't get me started.

MerlinOh, I'd love to get you started because I got a hard on for sponges, buddy. They do not have a long shelf life. And then maybe you got a life mate whom you love very much that just leaves it in the sink like an animal instead of squeezing it out. Are you talking about me? Well, you know, you've had my back for a long time, Dr. Don, and I'm super grateful. You stood up for me that day that the slides didn't work and I don't even want to get into it. But shouldn't we be changing our sponges much more often than we do? Am I a nut about this? Well, yes, certainly.

Speaker BIf your sponge stinks, change your sponge. What we do in my household is we demote them from sponges that are allowed to contact dishes to sponges that are used on counters and then. But this most recent news hubbub about sponges really has me steamed because this is some research from some people that did some really fancy molecular biology and gene sequencing and bullshit. But if you dig into the paper, if you dig into the paper, you know how many sponges they studied? They studied 14 fucking sponges.

What?

MerlinHoly shit. That's hardly any sponges at all. I would go through that many in a day if I could. That's ridiculous.

AlexYeah, that's how much are in my cabinet right now.

MaxMerlin uses sponges like paper towels. You open up a new one from the plastic every time you clean a dish.

MerlinI'll give you a life hack. If you do what Dr. Don does in his household, make sure you take a big sharpie and make an X on it. And that is your way of saying never let this touch the food surface again because it's been used to clean the bottoms of things.

Speaker ASo what about – let me ask you a couple of questions. What about microwaving a sponge? Oh, yeah. Does that do it? Yeah.

Speaker BSo two comments, okay? First of all, if you have an automatic dishwashing machine, my advice is put the sponge in that machine because that water gets hot and works really well. You can also microwave sponges, but here's the thing. Don't microwave dry sponges because they can catch on fire. So put a little bit of water in your sponge and microwave it. That works, but that's a little bit less precise.

MaxThat's a – Dr. Don, that's what you call wet heat. Yes, exactly, Max. You got it.

AlexI'm wondering also about like a pop culture thing. How do I clean my phone, Dr. Don?

Speaker BOh, gosh, Alex. I don't know. You could lick it clean.

AlexThat sounds like something I would do. Yeah.

Speaker BI cleaned my phone just earlier today. I wiped it on my dirty blue jeans.

AlexAlso a daily thing. Yep. Yep.

Speaker BI'm not super concerned about phones and how you clean them. even if you use them while you're, let's say, theoretically on the toilet. I'm just, it's not high on my list of things to worry about.

MerlinReally? Dr. Don, I heard that it's dirtier than the toilet I read on the internet. Well, it depends on the toilet. It depends on the... That's such a good point. Whether you've been rubbing sponges on it or collecting your morning urine to drink or making a flute. That's a really good point. We shouldn't keep Dr. Don for too long. We could certainly have him back, I think.

MaxWell, this was fascinating. Thank you so much for talking to us about sous-viding our shoes. and maybe next time we'll save ourselves the incredible mess in our kitchen and ruining a good number of shoes. And bras. And we'll just ask you first. It's my pleasure, guys. Happy to talk with you anytime. Thanks, Dr. Don. Thank you. Merry Jizzween. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

MaxThat was delightful. Holy shit, that was great. You were holding out on us, Merlin. We could have asked him and he had information.

MerlinThere's so much stuff I just guess about.

MaxI have a question. Did you ruin your shoes?

Speaker AWas there any damage to your shoes? I mean, granted, it didn't really work. Well, I mean, I'm not sure if I'm portraying this well.

MerlinI mean, this food saver... Okay, one thing in terms of the sample size, and I'm not talking about sponges here, but when you think about, like, oh, I've never gotten water in the bag before. like i could see getting water in the bag with the ziploc but i'm pretty good at doing the food saver and i don't generally get incursion uh with that said i mean i wonder hmm anyway my shoes are kind of fucked up i think they'll dry out they're sitting out with the shoe trees i took my pants outside because they are a holocaust of pants right now they are real super duper nasty it just

it just made to smell worse but no my shoes are not ruined and by virtue of the fact i put my costly cedar shoe trees in i think it maintains some structural integrity when i get home i will probably take them out and do the opposite of this which is when i take a metric shit ton of silica packets i stuff you stuff newspaper into your shoes uh silica packets and then you get a hygrometer so you can tell what what the humidity is the relative humidity you put that in a two gallon ziploc bag you leave it overnight that's what i'm going to do with the shoes because then i need to draw out uh some of the fluid are yours are yours wrecked you're just done right

Maxyeah I'm gonna toss them I've sort of like left them out to dry but they it's like they have the consistency of like an old tire like they're kind of brittle like it's just

Merlinthey lost all their

Maxall their flex

Merlinwe left nothing on the tarp this week you guys I think we really did it I mean we we got out there and took the flute for you you know you don't need to do this and so sorry if you did the challenge

Speaker Aoh by the way I mean that's just the kind of risk

Maxlisten the people listen Merlin the people who do the people who go to do by Friday.com or patreon.com slash do by Friday. Listen, they're risk takers. They're thrill seekers. They're adventurous, but they're out there on the, they're on the frontier. I mean,

Merlinthey're trying to live in new powders and learning new woodwinds. They're out there every day on, on the edge of society saying, give it to me, give me your worst. Just straightening.

MaxIf you're the kind of person who hears something on a podcast, you know, like a mattress ad or like some sort of subscription food thing. And you don't even, you have no critical faculties and you're just like, I heard about it on a podcast. I should absolutely do it with no further hesitation. Absolutely subscribe at patreon.com slash do by Friday and do anything we tell you. And eventually we will need you to kill for us.

Show notes

Transcript

45. Fortunate Son

Show notes

Transcript

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