Episode 69 · March 15, 2018 · 01:34:33

69. Disco Sauce

This week's challengeFind the best Beatles bridge.

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Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, find a great Beatles bridge.

MaxOh, what's this? Hi, everybody. It's Do By Friday. Oh, look at this.

AlexI got a package. I did. I got myself a treat. I got myself a podcaster's blouse. Ha! The co-host? You got the co-host? Is that the...

MerlinI'd be worried about my flabby arms.

AlexOh, my God. What is it?

MerlinPlease explain what this is.

AlexPurely translucent. What is it? Modcloth released a shirt called the Podcaster, I believe.

MerlinIsn't the Podcaster co-host?

AlexHey, yes, because it's definitely a woman's shirt. So pod. Yep. It is a podcast co-host because women don't host shows. Long Sleeve Top and Midnight. You're interrupting.

Speaker AYou're interrupting me, Marlon.

MaxOh, I'm sorry. I'm interrupting you.

AlexSorry.

MaxHow could it be that Alex laughs too much and we interrupt her too much? Oh, my God.

AlexThat's immediately what I thought.

MerlinThis has been a big week for me. I've been criticized both for talking too much about my children and not being clear enough what I'm talking about with my children.

But, you know, it means people are listening. At least they're talking about it. You know what I'm saying? Over. First they laugh at you. First they – don't they ignore you first? Well – What do they do first?

MaxYeah, you're right. I think they ignore you first. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. First they ignore you. Then they complain about Alex laughing. Then they complain about Max and Merlin interrupting Alex.

MerlinHow dare you have an unusual chemistry, you dicks. You know what it's like? Okay, just real quick. My family watches this terrible show called Kitchen Nightmares. And basically my daughter and I are addicted to this show. And it's not a good show. It's so formulaic. But the same thing happens pretty much every week. Gordon Ramsay's producers find some horribly mismanaged restaurant that's on the verge of going under. And then he goes in and criticizes them.

He criticizes the food. He points out how disgusting everything in the kitchen is. But the show, you know, you've seen the show probably, right? It's exactly the same every episode. He finds the alcoholic owner and says that they've lost their passion and it's a whole thing. But then the big reveal at the end is, quote unquote, overnight, he transforms their restaurant into the most fucking generic gastropub you've ever seen in your life. The walls are always blue gray and have recovered shit on the walls. and this new POS sales system from Omnicon. He pulls out a computer because now you can do good orders.

But, like, you can just see the blood drain from everybody's face as he takes whatever was slightly interesting about that place and turns it into a place with salmon.

AlexIs this the same show or, like, the sister show of, is it Hotel Nightmares? Hotel, hotel, hell. Yeah, yeah, and every hotel's turned into a generic Marriott. I know, I know, I know, right?

MerlinYeah, and he's just so obsessed. He's become very obsessed with dust and spider webs. But the beauty part is, you know, some poor producer, some woman in a podcast co-host's shirt had been in there for weeks finding where all the bodies are buried, and then Gordon goes in and, like, tears the place apart. That's the problem. Like, you know, if you prefer a more gentle podcast where they don't have chemistry, there's so many of those. You're good. Over.

MaxGuys, I have a lot of follow-up and front manner this week. Do you have big balls?

AlexMax has his laptop. All right.

MaxSo I'm prepared. I have not been listening to a word that you guys have been saying because I got my laptop here. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Alex. I'm really sorry to interrupt you. I've got my laptop here and I'm full of content. There's a lot of latency. Are they bulging? I'm brimming with content. I'm too messing with content.

Let's see. Where to even start here? I had a nice note from a listener. Can I read that? Please. Okay. This is from listener Mary. Listener Mary emailed us to say, hey, DBF gang, one of your three female listeners here. I wanted to quickly write and say thanks for your part in my heartwarming tale of love renewed. My husband and I have been married for four years, together much longer, but experienced a rough patch after the birth of our son and separated for a year. During that time, I came across your podcast, an overcast suggested feature of all places, and enjoyed it so much.

the topics the jokes the banter the challenges it all reminded me so much of the things i loved and missed about my husband i suggested it to him one afternoon and discovered that he's been listening from the very beginning we talked about the show for hours and even decided to become good ten dollar boys your podcast gave us the first push towards renewed companionship and for that i am so grateful i am happy to report that we are doing really well now many thanks mary god we can never stop the show oh my god well all right counterpoint though what if we're done

Speaker AOh, that's true.

MerlinYou're starting to pack it up. Maybe your chemistry needs to die, too. I've been thinking that we should have some salmon on the menu. You know what people love? Gone are the interesting walls and memorabilia of your youth. Everything is blue-gray. There's recovered shutters on the walls, and you can't change it, you dicks.

MaxWhat if we all wore matching suits and Oxford shirts?

MerlinAnd bowed?

MaxYeah, and bowed at the same time.

MerlinIt's very cute. Nine chord. Wrong. That would be good. We should do that. Brian would love that.

MaxSo anyway, congratulations to Lister Mary. Thank you, Mary. That is such a nice story. Call in and we'll send you out a commemorative tote bag. All right.

MerlinI think we should probably, if this were Max Fon, we would have charged her $100 for that. We should charge her for that. Oh, well, you're saying that's a...

AlexOh, like we did marriage therapy.

MerlinWell, you know, like they do on all the Max Fon shows where you call in and you get Justin to read something funny on the air. That's all a billboard. Billboard, that's it. Yeah. You know what? Let's make that a freebie. Just don't do it again, Mary. Congratulations.

MaxFirst one's free.

MerlinI hope you like the taste.

AlexDon't worry, Mary. I'm not going to be going to bed every night thinking that I'm responsible for your marriage. I'm terrified of how we're going to fuck it up.

MerlinThat's going to be in your backup brain. That's going to be sitting in a fridge someday.

MaxAll right. Let me get through a couple of other quick things I've got to plug and talk about. First of all, I just want to say shout out to all the kids who are doing the March for Our Lives walkout today. I saw a bunch on my way to work, and it's very cool to see this happening in Chicago. This is not the kind of thing that I've ever seen in my life. I just wanted to put it on Twitter like, yeah, we probably should have done this after Columbine, you know?

MerlinWe would just complain about wanting a longer lunch. I mean, the organization, and like I said before, the focus is just astonishing. They're not going to let this go.

MaxJust in case there's any of those kids listening, uh thanks for doing that and uh solidarity from us here at dubai friday uh sorry for interrupting

Alexyou max but do you think you would and merlin do you think you would be one of the kids i think max

Merlinmax definitely would be yeah yeah i wouldn't really i was so oh i really wanted teachers to

Alexlike me i i mean i i walked out for far less so i would i would it's a different time but i don't

MaxI know. Here's an interesting thought experiment. So Jen and I reached out to the Florida, you know, March for Our Lives organizers. And I had also thought about kind of getting involved in the Chicago one. And I guess I sort of like – then I also saw these other groups doing that. So not – okay. Do you know that there's like – so you guys know the Women's March, right?

MerlinYes.

MaxYou know that there's like basically a company that kind of calls themselves the Women's March. And they've kind of declared themselves the like de facto leaders of the march. And they like sell merchandise and stuff. Although I don't think they had anything to do with planning it. They're just sort of a marketing brand that leached onto it like a little pilot fish.

MerlinIs it really that cynical or is it to be like an aegis for organizing?

MaxI think it's probably – I think they're well-intentioned, but it has the effect of commercializing this otherwise kind of cool. Really? That's my feeling.

AlexSomeone's making money off of the pussy hats.

MaxWell, but lots of – but it was lots of people making money because they were like an Etsy phenomenon.

Merlinwell it's like why it's why stallman wasn't who was a stallman who was somebody copyrighted oh god i'm gonna get this wrong but there's this thing in open source where people who do an open source project will copyright it for the express purpose of not letting anybody else

Maxi can't think about i can't hear you i know without without dan but dan trying to yell at you on the on you trying to talk about him on back to work okay i don't know we're so far off off our stuff we're talking about the women's march the kids all right and then i felt like you know i didn't want to be like the the company doing that to the women's march like i didn't want i don't know i i'm i'm self-conscious of capitalizing on this thing or taking away some of the authenticity or saying that it's you know in part that somehow it's our thing and not

the kids thing so i i don't know they did a great job without us oh absolutely and i'm i'm really i

Merlinmean any way that you can help people who need help help like that's a good thing but i think of it a little bit like being uh the parent at a sleepover like as a parent at a sleepover my job is to buy stuff and stay out of the way and i'm not it's not i'm not there to do magic tricks i'm not there to play dj like it's their party and i am there to be the money butler and i feel like

Alexexactly the one thing we have that they don't is money and that's what we can get used to be we

Merlinknow how to use computers and they didn't but now they're better at that than us but like Like every, I mean, this is, I don't know, this is, I'm such a wandering liberal at this point. But like, anytime I see something where I'm like, hey, give us a few bucks for a thing. I frequently go and give a few bucks for the thing. And, you know, but you don't want to over, you're like, hey, look, you guys, I Facebooked my donation. But like, I think that does add up. You know, I, it's something, it's something. But then, you know, you don't want to turn into that guy. It's kind of why I still don't want to talk about Black Panther too much, because I kind of want to let other people have that for a while before I come in and, you know, white-splain it to everybody.

But I agree with you. I think these kids are amazing. And the fact that they can tolerate, up to a point, the fusillade of attacks on like that awesome girl with the short hair and how she's a lesbian and a puppet and this and that.

MaxHere's what they're doing right that makes the attacks bounce off other than the fact that they're grieving children, which I guess that probably helps. But that aside, this is a very earnest protest. And, you know, I'm – no one is more guilty than me of doing like sort of clever, funny things in the name of like protest and activism. Like that's kind of our thing at Cards.

MerlinI mean it can be a form, a clever form of branding while you're doing good, but they're not doing that.

MaxYeah.

MerlinThey're like really? You're making fun of a kid whose friend got shot?

MaxThat's your approach here. This is what was needed I think to have sort of messaged correctly against Trump in the campaign that never arrived because people were so busy making fun of his haircut and the way he talked. and that he spells Marine Corps, C-O-R-E. You think that was a Scavino? You think it was a Scavino or a Trump? Like a fucking idiot. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Who gives a shit? But it's like, I mean, it's just so, it's just. He has such a hard on for the military. Just have some shame. It's just so shameless.

But anyway, I just think that this sort of earnestness of like, they're not holding funny signs for the most part. They're holding signs saying like, please stop killing us. Like, take the guns away. They're killing us. I appreciate that. That's nice. All right. I have a couple other quick things. I'll just get out of the way. Two ways that Dubai Friday needs your help right now. Number one, you guys have money. We want your money. You can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com, and you can sign up to get access to our exclusive after show. That's right. It's a whole second episode of Dubai Friday.

This week, we're going to have a special guest on the after show. We're going to be joined. Should I say who it is?

MerlinI think so. I think, well, I don't want to get too far ahead of our skis. But as I said in our super secret private text channel, I think we have an exciting new thought technology for leveraging stuff. I think we've got a new approach that we should share with people that we're going to try.

MaxWell, we're very excited this week on the after show to have Cards Against Humanity Community Manager Jen Bain come on. She's going to sort of pitch us the challenge that we all have to do for next week. And then she'll be back on the podcast next week to do the challenge with us and talk about it. And we'll see how it goes. Maybe this is the format that we bring a couple of guests on in the future. She's really funny and she has great hair. All right. And then in addition to your money.

AlexOkay, letting it go. Sorry.

MaxWhat? I don't want Trent out to get me.

AlexI've seen the video. It's very scary. Fair. You're right. You're right.

MaxIn addition to money, we also want your time. We need your time. And that's why you can go to giveusyourfuckingtime.com to help us find and catalog the best bits of Dubai Friday. I'll go ahead and say this will be the last week I plugged this. We'll probably sell this thing up pretty soon.

MerlinI think we've got a good amount in here.

MaxIt is pretty good.

MerlinThis is a very good spreadsheet to go and tell us your favorite bits and give us a time stamp. But honestly, even if you're a leech, go in and you can listen to some of the very good bits. If you want to catch up before there's an episode about this, people have spent some wonderful amounts of their fucking time to go in and document a Richard Speck video. I saw a dump truck. BDSM Lives Matter. I'm the jazz girl.

DJ Bane, the podcast destroyer. My father. So you go to giveusyourfuckingtime.com and you can be in on the ground floor of helping us make it easy for people to get into the show.

MaxYeah, we have the idea to do this, some sort of like a promo episode to fit this new iTunes feature where you can have like a, it's like an intro episode or a trailer for the podcast. And we had this idea that we would sort of edit together like a montage of the best of Dubai Friday. So we just set up a little Google sheet and you can go on there. It's giveusyourfuckingtime.com. And if you have a favorite bit from Dubai Friday, you know, paste it in there. go find the time code though because we're not we don't want to look that up it's your time i mean it's your i mean that's the deal right it's your time and uh like marlon said it's an open google sheet so you can go on there and poke around and see what other people liked as well

Alexattack grab the jewels uh all right sorry to interrupt you max are you making up this itunes

Maxfeature they have a thing now where you can upload you put a trailer it's not you know say anything i don't think i've seen that it's no no no no it's real there's a feature on it i think it only works in the Apple podcast app. That's the problem. It's like not available in Overcast, for example. I know,

Alexbut going just to podcasts in see if it's in iTunes, is it still Apple podcast? I don't know.

MaxListen, it's a thing that I've heard and I know that I have friends with podcasts who have done one of these and I think there might be a time limit on it. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But even if not that we'll still do a little promo episode, I think. But okay, so all right. And then I have a couple of quick final things just to plow through here. Cards Against Humanity and myself have this friend Queenster she was a finalist for the Cards Against Humanity Science Ambassador Scholarship which is our full ride scholarship for women getting degrees in STEM fields and she needs so Queenster is a DACA recipient

so she's a dreamer and because of that it is extremely exceedingly difficult for her to get financial aid this is a really accomplished young woman she was an intern at the Adler Planetarium she's done a lot of environmentalist education activism, and she needs some urgent tuition support to be able to continue to study to be an obstetrician at UIUC. So she's trying to raise $30,000. We're about $10,000, so we're about one-third of the way there. And I would love the Dubai Friday audience to just

kick in a couple bucks and help out Queen Sir. But more importantly, I just think it would be really nice for her to have this feeling of people have her back, because she's having a really shitty time and America's not really being very good to her. And it would make me happy. And I can only imagine that it would make her feel pretty good to see people say, hey, we want you in this country. We want your contributions and you're doing all the right things. And there's a link to that. Go fund me in the show notes and anything that you can give. Deeply appreciated for myself and our friends at the Adler Planetarium and all of us at

Cards.

AlexDig Dug. Wait, you don't have any upsetting stories? Maybe about-

MaxOh, I have lots of upsetting stories. Wall Street Journal Washington in a proper room in China's Great Hall of the People in November, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sat with President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials as their host delivered plates of wilted Caesar salad. Mr. Trump, in the midst of a five-country tour of Asia, grew concerned that the untouched Greens would offend the Chinese, according to people familiar with the matter. So he ordered Mr. Tillerson to start. Rex, he said, eat the salad.

Mr. Tillerson laughed off the remark, But the moment illustrated the at times awkward relationship. Oh, you don't say. Between the Secretary of State and his boss that came to an abrupt end Tuesday when Mr. Trump announced in a tweet that he had replaced him. Try the meatloaf, Chris. This is a big power move, I think, when we do any sort of company dinner or something,

Merlinif we get something that I don't like. Oh, like when you do one of your compulsory and non-compulsory dinners, you can bring out really strange and perhaps get some Gordon Ramsay style, like slightly rotten food to bring out. And you just say, hey, eat the salad. Eat that. Alex. You eat that now. You have the cordon bleu.

MaxAlex, eat the salad.

MerlinDid you guys, I mean, you know, we can't go on and on about this, but the, you know, The sideshow to the clown car these days is all the vast amounts of bizarre government spending that's being done by our president's cabinet.

MaxWhat was the door? I only sort of – I don't even know if that was a real story or not. Did you hear about the door?

MerlinIt wasn't a door. It was going to be to replace the doors in the office. Was it HHS? I forget which one it was.

MaxI don't know. I didn't really follow – I didn't get into that story.

MerlinOnly $139,000 to replace some doors. Ben Carson supposedly was going to have a $31,000 renovation to a table that Obama people said didn't really need renovation. He was going to get a nice new table. He said the other one was unusable. You get a nice hutch that comes with it. Supposedly now emails have emerged that show that Carson perhaps personally was involved in ordering a $31,000 table. Remember, this is HUD. This is for inexpensive housing for people who can't afford housing. That's what he's head of. Now, the other one is you remember hearing about the guy who wanted the skiff in his office?

Was it Pruitt, the EPA guy? Now, they're finding that in addition to the – what was it? It was something like the $25,000 to have an actual skiff in his office. There was $18,000 spent in preparing the area for where the skiff would go in his office.

MaxThat's unbelievable. Now, the door one doesn't surprise me because I just – we just did our house and like doors are insane. They're so expensive. Are they really? Oh, my God. Doors and toilets cost so much money, and you don't even really enjoy them that much.

MerlinIt's strange. I don't know. I guess I think more about in the private sector where you've got an operations or physical plant kind of group that takes care of all this mundane activity of making sure that all the chairs match and stuff like that. It seems strange that a decision about that would reach up to a cabinet-level person.

MaxIt seems like you have a lot of other stuff to do. It's because you're so unqualified and so unknowledgeable about the functions of HUD and so unmotivated to fix anything and you don't care and you don't know what's going on. So it's like – it's very like Simpsons kind of a moment to me. It's like you look around and you're like, what could I do here? And you're like, I need a more comfortable chair. Like that will help.

MerlinThat's the emerging narrative people say is that if you look at – if you kind of pull back to like a 20,000-foot view, what you actually see happening in different ways, in different areas for different reasons, What it sums up to is a slow but steady dissolution of civil rights, particularly anything that Obama helped happen in terms of civil rights. And that's if you look at if you look at what's happening, like with decision by decision, it's just civil rights erosion all the way down.

That's that's the impact. I mean, the two of the two. Oh, God, here we go. The two things that I get scared about, because there's always two things with me, is on the one hand, the internally, domestically, all the stuff and how long it's going to take to like from the environment to civil rights to all of this different stuff, how long it's going to take to get back to something like normal after this shit show ends. And then obviously, like internationally, the way that the way that we get looked at internationally in the future.

MaxAround the time of the transition, the presidential transition, I heard a great little pep talk from an Obama administration person about the different buckets that they were looking at. Did I tell you guys about this? I don't think so. It's pretty interesting for thinking about the lifespan of an administration. So I was very – a lot of the Obama people were pretty like – they were kind of pretty upset around the time of the transition. And I had even talked to some people who had said that they felt that the odds that Trump would sort of round up and jail his political enemies were as high as 50 or 60 percent.

So people were really worried. I mean it seemed like a moment of – We talked about this a little bit back then. Fascism.

MerlinThe signs that we could see was that it was not just idle talk about Hillary Clinton, that there was going to be a fairly focused effort to find dissent and squash it.

MaxHe if he was smarter and like like less like senile and more understood how to do things. He probably could have done it. But but anyway, I mean, anyway, that aside, I mean, I only bring that up to people were very, very worried. And I had kind of a sobering talk with a with a former Obama person who told me, you know, because I was saying, like, why is Obama like doing anything? Like he could at least he could speak out or he could release some documents or I don't know, he should be doing something. And here's what I heard. He said, well, the administration is thinking about it in this. He's like, we're thinking about it in these ways. There's four different buckets of things that we're concerned about.

Bucket number one is like legislative priorities and things like that. And, you know, in some regards, like on like infrastructure, that actually may improve under Trump because the Republicans wouldn't let anything go because they were worried Obama would get the credit for it. And there are bipartisan things like building bridges and roads that we need that might get unstuck. And they've actually as of yet not gotten unstuck. But the thing with legislation is it moves very slowly and it was broken under Obama.

So it's still broken under Trump. So that's bucket number one. Bucket number two is foreign policy and that can get pretty fucked up. But the nice thing with foreign policy is it can get fixed as quickly as it can be destroyed. So the next guy can put it back to – that's just – that's completely in the power of like –

MerlinEspecially when you're governing by executive order, which Trump claimed to – used to say that Obama abused and now seems to be his primary way of getting anything accomplished. Exactly. Because he can't get anything through Congress.

MaxYeah. The third bucket I already kind of touched on, which is like infrastructure stuff. And people were actually pretty optimistic that that would get better under Trump. And then the fourth bucket is what they were calling democracy. And democracy is things like civil rights, voting rights, election integrity, free speech, things like that. And they were like, the one that everyone is the most worried about is that that fourth bucket of democracy. And if we see that meaningfully threatened, like the president will speak out.

President Obama will say something. So, you know, when I see something and I start to panic of like, you know, I was I was getting just getting really worried. This whole notion of that in one week, Trump is going to go. Our idiot president is going to go meet with Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un. and that he also fired the secretary of state and the deputy deputy secretary of state and they

Merlinalso lost the 30-year veteran of north korean policy yeah that was on rachel's big wall last

Maxnight yeah yeah and and now he's going to go talk to the guy i mean it just seems like he's sort of going he'll just he'll just go in because he's the deal maker deals are his art he'll just go in there and get it all straightened out doesn't it just seem like the sort of theater that you do before you start a war. Like, well, we tried. You sabotaged every tool that you have. We have a completely dysfunctional state department.

MerlinYou skip past the entire process of, like, I don't know how to negotiate. I don't know how to make deals, but I do know this. I know that you leverage everything you can in terms of intelligence, background history,

even just the intel, like what you learn from intel about what the person you're negotiating with knows and wants. you learn their motivations and then you you slow walk that entire fucking process all the way up the chain you don't start you don't start by saying sure i'll take a meeting you you make them earn the meeting with your lowest person you make them you make them do accommodations along the way but then they just say oh i'll meet with you oh but first you have to get rid of literally all of your nuclear devices and it's like was it was it like love it fail it was like love it i think love

Maxit was said on on positive america that it's like that scene it's like the episode of um seinfeld Kramer spills the coffee on himself.

MerlinI told you to put a balm on.

MaxYeah. McDonald's is like, you see them outside and they're like, okay, we're going to offer him a lifetime of free coffee and $1 million. And they go in the room and they're like, Kramer, we've decided to offer you a lifetime of coffee. And he's like, accept, I accept.

MerlinDone.

MaxDeal.

Speaker AGiddy up. It's exactly like that.

MaxBut, you know, also like, you know, Trump's style of negotiating and deal making, I've come to sort of wrap my head around this is it's partially, you know, it's not ineffective.

It's just that you have to, the only thing is that you have to not worry. You have to have no shame and no dignity and not care if people think you're an asshole. But what he does is he breaks something that's really critical and then says, you have to negotiate with me to fix it. So he cancels DACA, right that DACA was fine there was no problem with DACA it was everything was fine like we needed a dream act but DACA was the was the band-aid that was that was keeping shit together Trump did an executive order canceling DACA right it was fine until he fucked it up and and

canceled it and now he says okay now everyone needs to negotiate with me to fix this thing well it's really up to Congress right and he says the Democrats are stalling on DACA it's like the fuck do you mean the Democrats don't care about DACA like the Democrats did DACA and it was fine

Merlinuntil you got there yeah anyhow so how's your outlook right now as you sit here today well

Maxi i was start i was really working myself into a panic about this earlier this whole idea because i really felt like boy this is it this is like the war in iraq like they're just like putting all the they're like kind of doing their little their little dance here to make it look like due diligence has been done but they're just marching to war and uh i don't know obama hasn't said anything and and so maybe that that you know anytime i see something really crazy happening and my mind starts to go off into like, you know, Rachel Maddow territory and I'm rustling my papers. I do start to, in the back of my mind, there's like, you know, there's that fourth bucket.

Obama hasn't said anything. So maybe it's not actually that bad.

AlexCould he start a war in a legal way though? All wars are legal.

MerlinWhat do you mean by that? Well, it's been a while since anybody's, I think, it's been a while since anybody's gone through the full congressional dance.

MaxExactly. It doesn't matter.

MerlinI mean, you guys know that that's a...

MaxI know. I mean, that's a total facade. I mean, depending on your outlook, either all. So it depends on your political philosophy here. Right. Like, I would say that no wars are legal in terms of any sort of any sort of just law that values human dignity would never permit a war, a legal war. Like, there is no just war. There is there is war is never legal in any sort of legal and just not. But I'm saying no, I would say if you had to push me on it, I would say like no, almost no wars are ever legal. But then it's like the actual way the world works is not decided by like moral philosophers.

So in that sense, all wars are legal because all war, it's like if you're strong and you have weapons, you get to do what you want and say that it's legal. That's how the law works.

MerlinI realize this is a very high level version of whistling past the graveyard, but I'm trying to take some armchair psychology and apply it to the leader of North Korea. He is a vain, soft man who is heavily abusing his people. He gets stuff that nobody else in the country gets. He gets fancy foods and wines and stuff, and he gets to watch the movies that he wants. And he's a large adult dictator. And I bet he wants to flex his muscles, but he also wants to keep watching his stories.

I bet he does not want a big war. He has to be bellicose, and he has to saber-rattle, because that's what you do when you're a banana republic. But I don't think he wants that.

MaxI bet he's bored, and he wants a sand table with troops on it in the Oval Office.

MerlinYeah, I mean, you could go through the theatricality of that, but I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just trying to console myself, but I think—

MaxDon't you think Trump fancies himself like a General MacArthur and he's going to be like – and he'll like have one of those – one of them little like pushy sticks and he'll be like – Oh, the pushy sticks. And he'll be like, move the cavalry to the eastern flank.

MerlinTotally. 100 percent. And he's so – it's so funny how he fancies himself. Like I said before, you go look at – pound for pound, most of the time you go look at the header image on his Twitter account. And maybe this is a Scavino, but I'll bet Trump loves this. He loves pictures of him in his fat boy suit with his hand over his heart, standing amidst a bunch of either soldiers or, as he likes to say, first responders. He loves that association with the military. He's always talking. He's always, the whole time since the campaign started, he's talked about his general. He's got all the best generals. The generals love him. And he's always going on and on about the troops and all that stuff.

He loves that stuff. You can tell. He loved being in military school. It was one time in life where he felt like he was really excelling was when he was in military school.

MaxYou know, the wag the dog thing where it was like, oh, like Bill Clinton or, you know, got caught like fucking the intern and George W. Bush, you know, had all these scandals in his administration. So it's like they started a war to distract everyone. And I always felt like that was like a couple of degrees too dumb to really to really be reality. Like it was always sort of conspiracy theory ish. But the thing with the Trump administration is like they're actually dumb enough to do that.

MerlinBut also George W. Bush was surrounded by people who had scores to settle. I mean, he had a score to settle because they tried to kill his daddy. They had – he was surrounded by some very bellicose figures.

MaxI don't know. I don't like that either. I think it was more of – I think it was more of a combination of like cronyism and like I said before of like just like no respect for the law of just like we want this thing. We're going to go take it. It wasn't – it was like business opportunities and – Take the oil, right? You know that idea of like you'll – what is it? It's like the hard – you can never convince someone of something that his job is dependent on him not understanding. Yeah. It's like people have an enormous capacity for their brain to create – to logic its way around whatever you really want.

So it's like if you have all your cronies around you who want like oil deals in the Middle East. Oh, yeah.

MerlinLike if you're a cop, you're way more into like the escalation of more and more SWAT-like cool outfits and sunglasses rather than something that makes a kid want to come up to you and say, can you help me find my puppy? Right. It's much more fun to like get into that militarization.

MaxBut the cop thing, boy, what a good example of what I was talking about before of this idea of like all wars are legal of like, you guys know how the cops do this training now where they're like, they're like, I can't remember what it should. I can't remember what the standard is called, but there's this legal standard that's like, you know, oh, like the jury instruction for when you evaluate a police brutality claim or like a wrongful action by the police is that the judge says to the jury, you're not allowed to consider alternate things that could have happened or the whole circumstances or extenuating circumstances or any other information.

You just have to consider what did the officer know in that moment? You're just in that moment and you decide whether the officer was threatened or not. So as a result, officers are now trained to say into their stupid dash cams or whatever, their body cams, they go, I feel threatened. He's coming at me. And then they just murder someone. Right. And then they know that it will hold up in court because the jury is not supposed to consider, for example, whether the guy had his hands up or not. They're only supposed to consider what the officer felt like in that moment. And so it's like they have these gaping loopholes and they're like, well, if we used it.

It's like if we use the force, it was de facto legal because we said the magic words and did the rain dance. And the same thing is true of war. It's like, oh, well, we said the right things of like, oh, they've got weapons of mass destruction and we feel threatened and we're going to say our statements. But at the end, it's like, well, I want to kill this guy and I'm going to kill him.

AlexNow Trump's header on Twitter is him. You're right. Standing around a up above a bunch of troops. But behind him is a gigantic fighter jet and and a giant American flag. And I'm just looking at it. So, oh, God, it's so bad. What's Max, you know, what is what is MCAS Miramar? Is that a military academy or like a golf course?

MerlinNo, this was from – it does. This is from his thing the other day where he just – basically, I think this is from when he just sat there in front of a bunch of Marines and piled on the media and everybody cheered.

I think this is from the other – it's a terrible photo. Come on, Dan. You could do better than this. Just Google it.

AlexI have an almost decent transition. Dig Dug. Can we talk about the brain thing? I promise.

MaxI was so excited about this. This was on my list. I cannot wait to hear about this. I was sort of hoping that no one would find this so I could read the article. Max, do you know me? I shouldn't be surprised that you...

AlexWe recorded an emergency episode of Roboism last night. Max, can you tell us about the brains?

MaxOh, you want me to do it? I thought this was your whole thing. Why do I have to do all the work for? Come on, this is your baby. I talk so much in this episode.

AlexWell, all right, so I'll do this just because I'm sad looking at the fire jet now. This is from the MIT Technology Review. Great site. People should follow it. A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is, quote, 100% fatal, unquote. Nectomy will preserve your brain, but you have to...

MerlinI can't wait to hear which part about this you love most. I feel like part of your love of this is the fatal part.

AlexHold on. Hold on. Nectomy, which is, I think, based on the word connectomy, which is the thing that connects all your memories together. Nectomy will preserve your brain, but you have to be euthanized first.

The startup accelerator Y Combinator is known for supporting audacious companies in its popular three-month boot camp. There's never been anything quite like Nectomy, though. Next week at YC's Demo Days, Nectomy's co-founder, Robert McInter, is going to describe his technology for exquisitely preserving the brains in microscopic detail using a high-tech embalming process. Then the MIT graduate will make his business pitch.

As it says on his website, what if we told you we could back up your mind? And again, remember, this is the MIT Technology Review. The next paragraph starts with, so yeah, next to me is a preserve your brain and upload it company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, as a statue of frozen glass. The idea is that someday in the future, scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation.

That way, someone a lot like you, though not exactly you, will smell the flowers again in a data server somewhere. And if you go to Nectomy's site, at first I thought, okay, so this is just essentially a fancy embalming of brains, which it is. And I thought, oh, their mission is to take these brains and just see if they can reactivate them in 100 years. But no, no, no. On their site.

MaxWhich, by the way, the rich morons who pay for this. I mean, you have to be truly dumb to pay for this thing, to be embalmed alive in the hope that in 100 years they'll figure out some way to do this. No, customer service would be pretty easy. But here's the thing is that why would you be the one that they bring back in 100 years? Well, okay. Who gives a shit about you?

AlexHold on. Our mission is to preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact. From that great chapter, your favorite book, to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family, we believe that within the current century, it will be feasible to digitize this information and use it to recreate your consciousness. so before you you all go shitting on how crazy this is let's just say in theory as a thought experiment this works i agree with max like who fucking cares about apple pie who cares about the

cold winter air but if you can truly take someone's memories and and also fuck bringing back your consciousness like you're dead but let's say you can get those memories that is the like truest form of empathy and that we can actually we could actually learn from past mistakes let's say what what what is the truest form of empathy is someone's consciousness because you are

Maxnot just experience what is the idea that you think that that then in the future some sort of like some sort of like the cards gonna get beamed into your memories learn how to play the flute no

Alexno no you're you're going to possibly possibly but but you're also going to instead of baking an apple pie what if you're like oh i remember what if what if you could scan someone's brain from uh poland in 1939 and realize oh this is what the rise of fascism felt like and no one knew it before then no one had experienced a hitler before i don't understand that just turn on the news but but you what about why would we need now why would we need that because we can't

Nobody, not nobody.

MaxIf a Nazi now watched a memory or played a memory, whatever, went into a memory of Anne Frank, they'd probably just kill all the other Jews and then add it. They'd be like, this is awesome. The Nazis are cool.

MerlinEducational and academic thing. It is beyond educational. You're not doing this because you want to be preserved. It's because of what you'd be able to contribute.

AlexYes, it's building a library of human experiences.

MaxThe Nazis now watch like Inglorious Bastards and they're like, the Nazis are cool in this movie.

AlexYeah, but that is watching something. It is not experiencing a base level fear.

MaxThis is what video game people said about movies and movies people said about books and book people said about stories around the campfire. They're like, once we really nail the written word, the empathy factor will be able to cast our spell and make everyone feel the way we want them to feel. Like it doesn't people don't change because of this stuff. Like they just they just make it fit into their their stupid little worldview. But you're not writing anything.

AlexYou're not you're not shaping a narrative.

MaxYou're not shaping.

AlexThis is nothing.

MaxIt didn't work for books. It didn't work for movies. It didn't work for video games like that. People, you know, shitty people play video games and they act shitty and good people play video games and they act good. And that's just how it is. but they're and you and i play video games where we like grow corn and fish

Alexi garden a whole lot of video but i'm just but but but i'm you know do you see what i'm saying

Maxthough it's like it's like this is what everyone said about video games you know whatever 50 years ago or 20 years ago whenever where or they still say that right like eventually these games will get so advanced that like you know people will realize the horrors of killing and it's like No, they don't.

AlexBut that is a narrative. This isn't a narrative. This is a pure experience. If they're not trying to make like a, oh, what's a good example? They're not trying to do like a Tom Cruise.

MaxWhy don't you just go see a movie in one of those seats that vibrates?

AlexThat's very immersive. Oh, my God. In Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at Disney World, they would stab you when the little bugs came out. And, oh, it's real. Oh, and now they do it in a bug's life. And what do you mean? That's scary. They would do little stabbies in your back. Like the seat would protrude out and then it was very frightening as a child. But OK, but here but here is the thing. Books have changed people's minds and lives. Movies have changed people's minds and lives.

Video games have changed people's minds and lives. I don't know if I could have survived a summer like working 18 hours a day if I did not come and play Animal Crossing and shut off my brain. And that's a little hyperbolic, but this is not a narrative. This is not something that people are creating. This is an actual human mind. And again, it is just as a thought experiment. You're not watching anything. You are feeling it in your brain. You are at the camp watching. See, I can't, you can't do any sort of metaphor.

There's no comparison.

MaxYeah, you can't even describe it because it doesn't exist and it doesn't work.

MerlinWell, it does. I mean, the thing that I'm trying to seek first to understand. So I think I get what you're saying. The idea is that if we take it as read that, well, what is it we decide that this thing is doing successfully? So it's capturing your, well, let's say at least your brain in situ. And if they somehow figure out a way to keep that alive and going. So you're saying also then as a result, that is also capturing that most ineffable thing, which is consciousness.

That your consciousness is preserved.

AlexThat is what their mission statement is.

MerlinOkay. But an interesting part, I feel like to me, because I'm not discounting what you're saying. If we just take this as a thought experiment, it's interesting. The other thing that I think is interesting also is like the fallibility and reliability issues with the human mind where stuff like – there was a time where right into the 60s and 70s even eyewitness testimony was always given so much credence. And then we learn more and more about how memories are formed and then how those memories are recollected.

And the kind of fallibilities, would that be part of what's captured in situ as well? So like, you know, the emotional valence of a memory, do you think that would come across? Yeah. It's not just a readout. It's not just like a Mr. Burns ticker tape of like how the stocks did today. Whatever weird corners are in there could continue to be explored and learn from the good stuff, the bad stuff, the wrong stuff. It would all still be in there.

AlexI would love, correct. I would love to jump into the brain of some Nazi at Charlottesville just to just to know. Max, I'm not saying that this is possible or real.

MaxDon't you just want to understand? Can you imagine if you could do that? The call out that would happen on Twitter of like, oh, Alex Cox went into the brain of a Nazi. Problematic. Wow. She's just asking the question and possibly making it worse.

AlexAll right.

MaxAnd you're not even allowed to think that a Woody Allen movie is funny anymore. How could you go into the memory of a Nazi of Charlottesville?

AlexBecause empathy.

MaxAh, the empathy, the famous value that's practiced and valued in all corners of our civil society today.

MerlinI think it was a problem to introduce Nazis as our jumping off point for brain freezing. But I think there's other ways to look at this. My only thing with this is like, who would you go, whose brain, whose memories would you go into?

Maxwho's not problematic that you wouldn't get yelled at i just feel like one famous person i feel like every i know alex is trying to say steve jobs i could see her i could see her fighting so immediately

Alexyou would really want to be in steve jobs's brain i would want to be in max temkin's brain no you don't i would want to be in a small nobody wants trust me no one wants that because well this is why people say that we're similar all the time and i don't understand why people say that. Yeah, I can't imagine why. It's because you dress the same. I mean, you guys have the same

Merlincase, but different phones, you know? The other thing I keep thinking about, though, is, and this is probably exactly the kind of stupid human exceptionalism and individualism and primacy of my own experiences, but I feel like every human being is almost like a different gaming platform with different cartridges i'm not sure how it would work to try and be to like jump into the 38th year of somebody's life and be able to think and feel like them because at that point

Alexyou're not you anymore you're them that's amazing that i can't believe that max is a philosopher just thinking like you you don't even just think about this you don't even think about like what but then what is what is the you like if you're in steve jobs's brain i don't want to

MaxI already got corrected on talking about my philosophy thing the other day. But this is a whole field of philosophy called phenomenology that I'm very interested in. And I don't even think this is like – I mean I don't know. I mean everyone should read the What It's Like to Be a Bat essay and then come back and say whether you think this startup is a good idea. It also says in the article –

MerlinYou're saying you wouldn't invest at all in this? Well, I think it's a great business because rich people – There's a no-returns policy that's pretty – This is kind of thing. Kevin – you know what Kevin loves? Kevin loves – he loves weddings and funerals and death cults because people think very irrationally.

MaxI was just about to say it's an irrational market. Like if you're a rich idiot who's worried about – who's panicked about their – He's already pretty deep in this space. He's got cupcake in a cup. If you're a solipsist, the worst thing that can – obviously the worst thing that can happen is when you die because you take the whole world with you. and that is a rich solipsis that's not true for you but that is true for me exactly a rich solipsis i mean that's your that's your ultimate whale right it does say in the article quote also still lacking is evidence that memories can be found

in dead tissue oh that's a that's a pretty big caveat you don't say this is really a fantastic

AlexYou've got to crack some eggs, Max. Yeah.

MaxAlex, let me ask you this. Have either of you heard one of my all-time favorite This American Life episodes called Mistakes Were Made? And it's about this TV repairman in California who has a good idea for a business, which is to cryogenically freeze people, like Walt Disney. Have you guys heard that?

AlexYes.

MaxI think so. It's an unbelievable episode of This American Life. And I think if you listen to that, you'll recognize some of the challenges that the cryogenic head-freezing people will face.

MerlinWell, I've sent you the link for Alcor, which has a YouTube channel and a Facebook. Alcor, I think, is the OG. I think that if you really, I mean, they've been at this for a while. They must get real frustrated at all the good press about the brain freezing people because Alcor is all about the freezing you for the future. That's a hell of a site. I really recommend looking at it. Have questions? Oh, look, they have a CSR you can call. A free, no obligation cryonics consultation. You just call 1-877-GO-ALCOR. I think it's an interesting idea, Alex. I want to applaud you. I want to applaud your roboism.

AlexI think it's a very interesting idea. Thank you for applauding my bravery.

MaxIf you get sedated and pumped full of embalming fluid so that they can slice up your brain, can I have your Canon Prime lenses? Yes. Thank you. Dugga, dugga, dugga. Next door. Upset with my neighbor's Wi-Fi name by Leroy Bruce. Oh, no. On Next Door. Hi, all. Now, we all use devices to connect to the internet and whatnot, and my grandkids come over and use their phones and iPads, too. Well, the other day, my grandson went to connect to the Wi-Fi and our neighbor's router name is, quote, all cops are buttholes.

Now my wife and I are very upset because he started crying and they had to explain to him that indeed all cops are not buttholes, etc. And then that's all I can see.

MerlinIt's always news from Wi-Fi names. You know what? Let's go look. Let's go look at the local Wi-Fi names that we have access to. avocado avocado i got avocado toast david avocado toast my main man uh xfinity xfinity and most of these are pretty boring twin thing twin thing i actually shouldn't say this this this upsets my

Maxuh opsec oh dear yeah you could be you could be someone could war drive you the one that we constantly have that all of our devices connect to all the time is lg smart refrigerator which i think we got some sort of goddamn refrigerator that makes a wi-fi network i I guess that you can like turn the ice maker on while you're like traveling or so. I don't know. It's like, oh, we'll be home tomorrow. Better turn the ice maker on. But it's some dumb IoT bullshit. And it's an unsecured Wi-Fi network and I don't know how to turn it off. So if something is ever wrong with the internet, all our devices switch over to LG smart refrigerator.

MerlinYou can't just delete it.

MaxI don't know.

MerlinYou got to delete because I mean like that's the problem. If you, you know, Starbucks, AT&T, any of those like Marriott, were their names similarly? Oh, you got to delete those after they're gone. I put my daughter's rock tumbler on the internet of things and it's working out great

Maxthat's how you you take a rock you polish it into a bitcoin that's actually where bitcoins come from

Merlinis that right I didn't know that

Maxit just tumbles and tumbles and tumbles it's literally mine you take a piece of broken glass you put it in the rock tumbler and then if you get very lucky it uploads a bitcoin but that's only if it's on the internet of things

Merlinoh see that's smart i should uh yeah the the did you see where uh bitcoin i'm sorry i interrupted you dig it dig it dig it max next door are you were you were you prompting me to do something

Maxi'm sorry i cut you off i apologize over i i read my whole thing uh all right end of bit

Alexam i am i bad i i yes square cat i mean i know i know i am already but square cash was suddenly like oh hey you can uh invest in bitcoin right here and i was like what what happens if i put five dollars in and then i'm like oh i'm contributing to a terrible terrible unethical thing and i'm ruining ruining the environment unless i live in iceland and now i feel really bad but do i cash i i've lost uh 86 cents so far in my five dollar investment losses jesus

MaxI know.

AlexIt's so... Are people just panicking like 24-7? Like it just keeps going down and down and down.

MaxDid anyone read the F-Train Bitcoin article? No. It was phenomenal. Phenomenal. It's all you need to know about Bitcoin. Okay. By Paul Ford. It's by Paul Ford. I don't remember where it was, but it was... Yeah, F-Train. There's so many Paul Ford articles that I... You know, I really... He's like one of those writers like David Foster Wallace of like... Every once in a while I just get to a sentence and I'm just like... fuck that's so good i'm just like i'm like mad it's so good he's incisive he really cuts to the

Merlincore of the matter so often yep yeah it's on medium it's not on his site oh uh it's a combination of

Maxlike um i think it might have been in wired or something like that it's a combination of like insight and also just being an a a tremendously funny and gifted writer but anyway this uh bitcoin piece bloomberg hell of a hell of a hell of an article it's probably all you need to know about Bitcoin. We'll probably put that in the show notes of Alex.

MerlinIt's already in. You go to DubaiFriday.com or OfficeHagrid.com.

MaxIt's all in there. Merlin, in as much as you can say, where would people find the show notes for this

Merlinepisode? Okay, you go for episode 69 of your DubaiFriday program. You go to DubaiFriday.com slash 69. Nice. Yeah!

AlexOh, I've been waiting so long and I forgot about...

MaxI have another piece of follow-up from last week. I remember I promised I said Veronica has this text file of potential cat names for different cats that we might get. Oh, yeah, right. I have gotten a copy of the list, and it's quite extensive, but this is collaborative. I feel like we've come up with a lot of these together, but can I present this to you? Please. Okay, so this is not names that we call our cat, just to clarify. It's a little different. This is like the text file of names that when we get these cats, we'll name them. All right. I love it.

Okay, so starting at the top here. Lentil, noodle, footnote, pilcrow, obelisk, jejun, figment, voxel, panache, sprocket, epsilon, puddle, mushroom, nettle, stilton, squiggle, serif, muffin, squimby, stencil, madam curious, and then it says in parentheses real cat, gizmo, potato, corduroy, pumpernickel, salty, mallow, as in marshmallow, carmello, marmalade, neo, real cat, mandu, real cat, pickle, fishums, goober, splish, blinkums, couchums, donuts,

Smooshy, Moppy, Satchmo, Cheddar, Lumpy, Pierogi, Jalopy, Burt, Wheezy, Nutmeg, Muppet, Hazelnut, Pouchy, Yodel, Biggums, Schenectady, Soft Serve, Cottonball, Waddle Seed, Fig, Sourdough, and then in parentheses, Only if Mean and Fat, Poppy Seed, Beep Boop, and Shmear. Wait, wait. Oh my god, those are terrific.

AlexWas it Sourdough? Sourdough. Only if Mean and Fat? Sourdough is a sweet name. Oh my god, he is, he's mean and fat.

MerlinWell, that's the funny part. We've got at least, I think, three in common. This is our canonical pet list name for future pets. Sprinkle Noodles, Come Here, Pancake, Mittens, Crackers, Scraps, Chappy, Mitzi, Inn, Puppy, Pim, Scoops, Rosabelle, Walter, Sushi, Bonnet, Pepsi, Pepsi, Jr., Jarvis, Scout, Pizza, Pickles, Puppycat, Kibble, Princess Fluff, Edgar, Daniel, Mr. Biscuits, Scooter, Beach, Stuffy, Cotton Ball, Ziggy, Daisy, Gooky, Gyoza, Truffles, Kirby, Precious, Cardinal, Theodore, Lily, Colette, Cedric Diggory, Hello Kitty,

Butterscotch Nubbin, Buttercup, Lord Nibbler, Taco Tobacco, Nachos, Cozy Bear, Chips, Beezy, it's a BB if it's a Bichon Frise, Buckets, Peewee, Cupcake, Sherbet, Cat Cat, Pep Pep, Wasabi, Mithany, and Kipple.

AlexBravo!

MerlinBecause eventually, somebody says a name, we go, oh, that'd be a sweet name for a pet. You put it on the list. Do you have one of these, Alex? Do you have prospective, speculative

Alexcat and dog names? How do you know what to name your cats? You squeeze them? How would you even know? Actually, when we got Francis, initially, Maddie wanted to call him like Miso or like something stupid, like the soup. And also the initial finder of the cat was like, oh, it's a little lady cat because his little balls were so tiny. And he was so young, he was still up inside him. And I'm like, no, that's a dumb name. Francis, like Francine's a cute name for a girl.

And the next day went to the vet and she basically like pulled his balls out. Wow. This story turned.

MerlinThat's problematic, Alex. Do you know how hurtful that is? Talk about your cast genitals. Pulled them out. Pulled them out.

AlexHe had worms. Withdraw the testicles.

MerlinNarrow your breath. Narrow your breath. That's a hell of a job. Better call him Sid the ball tugger.

AlexLike had them removed? No, no, no. That was later. Bring him the ball tugger. Yeah, help them descend. And later they were removed. And now he just has a little empty sex.

MaxWasn't that worse than, why didn't they just take them off then?

AlexBecause you can't when they're real tiny.

MerlinYou got to wait until they grow to a certain size. You get enough content in them and you just snip them off.

AlexYou got to wait just before they start to get horny.

MaxBoy, I don't like this.

MerlinDo you have balls yet? No? I can wait. Snip, snip. You're a big growing boy, aren't you? I'll go ahead and make the appointment.

AlexAll right, Merlin, would you like to present the challenge?

MerlinDugga, dugga, dugga, dugga. Challenge. This week, the challenge is mine. And the idea is to listen to the Beatles or to have listened to the Beatles. And the none of the challenge, I'm open to, well, I have things I will be presenting. But the idea of the challenge was to listen to Beatles songs, pick out some of your favorite Beatles songs, and be prepared to present and discuss your favorite bridges or middle eights from Beatles songs. How did we do?

AlexHold on. Middle eights? What was that? That's a bridge that happens more than once, right?

MerlinWell, I mean, there's going to be people, there's going to be pedants who say, oh, that's not really a bridge, that's a middle eight. But, you know, there's actually Lincoln Notes for this.

MaxCan we talk about the Beatles documentary for a few minutes? Because that was the way more interesting part of the challenge to me. I mean, I know that you have big balls full of middle-eighths content, and you wrote up whole little essays for these.

MerlinSure. Why would we want to listen to stuff we spent hours preparing? But I had never seen this documentary before. I thought you said you loved it. No. I must have been thinking of a different one.

MaxNo.

MerlinHow far in? So we're talking about the 1995 multi-part documentary called The Beatles Anthology. and it came out around the same time as there it was like sort of to promote this um anthology which is a bunch of there's a three volume set of remasters and outtakes and stuff and so there's this really good documentary called the beatles anthology that is i think out of print but i've

Maxgot avi rips of it so i watch until i'm about halfway through so are you into like 65 66 65 66 and I just started 65, 66. So you're into the like,

Merlinwe don't want to play live anymore part.

MaxJust approach. That's like the era that I'm just approaching. Yeah. Boy, did you watch this, Alex?

AlexI watched like an episode and a half and I'm just smitten and amazed.

MaxI mean, the Beatles are great and I've never seen a lot of this footage before so that's really cool. um i just had and then i just had a couple of questions to run to run by everyone first of all what do you alex what do you think of this documentary just as a piece of filmmaking

Alexi was shocked at how like weird and avant-garde it was right from the get-go uh like i i didn't

Merlinknow if it was supposed to be uh for the time i think it was they do a lot of stuff though i'm interrupting you there's a lot of conventions we have today in documentaries that they're doing here like 10 years before a lot of other people are doing those conventions i was not expecting

Alexthis was made in the like early 90s right um it came out in 95 yeah and and just the way they're they're blending the uh well first of all the way they blend uh lennon's interview with the rest of the living beetles is very interesting and i i don't know i think it's very hard to do montages well and hard to you know piece together footage is piece together footage

in an interesting way when they're talking sometimes talking about something completely different but I thought it was

Maxon the other hand how many times can you watch an airplane land while Hard Day's Night plays all the times they do play Hard Day's Night about 30 times in this documentary it's a really good movie no not the movie the song

MerlinI'm familiar It's got no narrator. It's got a paucity of lower thirds identifying. That's Neil Aspinall that you keep seeing over and over, but they don't identify him nearly often enough. But they also do that thing that they do. God, they do this in the Joy Division documentary where they at the end of the segment, it kind of freezes and fades.

MaxAspinall sounds like one of those liqueurs that fancy bartenders with like a hip bartender with a beard puts in every cocktail that nobody likes. Oh, that's the secret ingredient is the Aspinall. Yeah, it's like some sort of bitter made from like asparagus or something. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's very trendy and people like –

MerlinA tonic or like the way you would use like bitters. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's – I mean the thing that I think really is – I mean there's – how can I put this? I said this in the episode last week, but I really like this because first of all, I'm obsessed with the Beatles and have been for most of my childhood and adulthood. But also I like it because it's got lots of headroom and got lots of room to breathe. And because it's so many parts and because everybody, including the Beatles, the extant Beatles, the Beatles, I guess, probably John's estate, definitely George Martin.

All the primary characters are involved. And it really does not it does not rush. And the way you see that best, I feel, and you'll really see this, I think, in the next couple, three episodes, is they do something I wish more documentaries would do. which is, first of all, get the rights to the Beatles songs. It's amazing how many Beatles documentaries have fake stock music of the Beatles because they don't want to license it, like a lot of your Netflix kind of things. Of course, they have the original songs, but they play the whole song. You get to see this whole—and understand, 1995, nobody had seen these performances before.

Some of the stuff on Dutch TV, they'll just do the entire song, and you get to hear it all. The stuff that was a Shea or Candlestick, they'll just play several songs from that performance, and not make it a big like, okay, now we're moving to this other part of the documentary. It's all, everything that's in the show is in the show. And then they talk about it. I feel like I learned a lot about Ringo. I didn't know before watching this. First couple episodes are good, but a little slow. I feel like when they, the one right before they come to the U.S., the second episode, I think, is, I think, good. But I feel like it really picks up steam in the episode where they come to the U.S.,

not least because they've got more actual footage to show. Yeah. They didn't have that much footage from 1963.

AlexBut I had never, as you know, I'm very, so I'm really unfamiliar with the Beatles. When we did the Sgt. Pepper remaster challenge, that was like the first time I had listened to an album.

MerlinI totally forgot about that.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh my God, I forgot we did that.

AlexYeah. So this, it was slow and it was a little weird, but I was learning a lot that I had no idea that was happening. The reason I didn't get into the documentary as much is because I kept going down crazy Wikipedia rat holes. Like, oh, wow, this is what a band. Good God.

MerlinIt's amazing what they it's amazing what what they accomplished. The amount of time that the Beatles and I will always look at this seven year period in Marvel. the amount of time that they were like a a big act in england to the time that they disbanded was approximately seven years which as i mentioned to dan yesterday is the amount of time that we've been doing back to work yeah they they went from like love me do to like long and winding road in seven years what they just did i mean you're going to see from my choices 65 to 66 is my period like the six the like the era from maybe something i don't know i don't know the exact date but the

single 65 singles through rubber soul and revolver what they accomplished and let's call it even two and a half years is an absolute marvel to me like when you think of like what made the beatles the in terms of their influence like what spawned all those other bands so much of that happened

Maxin basically like two and a half years i i had a couple of other quick topics about the documentary um first of all the beatlemania i there's just a lot of good footage of the beatlemania in this documentary that i hadn't seen before and it's fucking crazy just like i i guess i don't know it's just always was like a trope and i don't know i never really stopped i never i guess i just i never really thought about it that hard but i don't know something about seeing all the new footage of it and just like hearing all the stories of like oh they could only ever have like a moment of peace when they were in their hotel rooms and they would still hear young women

Merlinoutside like screaming for their and it happened i mean in england it happened pretty fast and then in america it happened pretty fast but you know it's the the thing now now that the beatles are regarded as probably the greatest rock band of all time by most people's assessment it's easy to forget that they were dogged from the beginning by all kinds of naysayers that they were there was like they were seen as i mean at worst maybe the downfall of society but at best like completely harmless stupid like so many of the articles about them were about their hair or about like

Maxhow stupid they were that's the next thing i want to get into is they were they were stupid in the beginning like the beatles did something that that this is the ultimate like art that i i i personally really connect to and like about the beatles and this documentary does a good job of showing the whole arc of this which is which is they started off and they were really dopey like i mean they like there is a universe where the beatles just did songs with like love in the name and they all wore their matching suits and did their little choreographed thing and had their

higher cuts and you know what they did that was in the beginning that was clever was i don't even know that there was any especially in the very early days right when they were like covering other people's songs and stuff. Like, I don't, musically, they were just white guys doing black guy music, you know.

MerlinAre you grading on a curve, though? Are you allowing for the time and what was happening in music at the time?

MaxI can't not, I mean, I don't know. No, I can't do that.

MerlinI mean, they were pretty unusual. They got unusual and unique pretty quickly.

MaxI agree, I agree that they had that. They did not sound like other bands. But I'm saying there's a universe where that didn't happen, where what they were was three-part harmonies, songs about loving girls and and they all had matching haircuts and were kind of a novelty and they'd still go down as like uh as like a like a good band of the time that wrote hit songs but what's cool about the beatles is that to me like i said this is like the part that i really connect to is they did it the best and they built like a really consistent brand and like a look

like they always had the logo on the drums and they always were in the same arrangement and they just looked like the Beatles when you saw them.

MerlinAnd then if you think of a band, that iconic image of Paul on the left, like playing left handed and George next to him, John on the other side, Ringo in the middle. Like that to me is like the iconic image that that's the silhouette of what a rock band looks like.

MaxNo question. And that was, you know, it's like one of those things like I think I said this before on the show, but like the iPod, it's like now that you think back of MP3 players, like the iPod with the wheel on it, like it seems inevitable. Like, oh, like, yeah, of course, that's how a music player would work. But it didn't have to be like that, right? Someone figured that out. And the Beatles figured this out. And that's amazing is that they became an icon. They transcended, you know, being normal musicians and they became this icon. And then they did something, in my opinion, even more remarkable, which is they did what they could with the icon and the brand.

They used that as their tool to get to, you know, godlike, you know, status of popular culture. and then they got weird and they reinvented and they started pushing boundaries and they changed the instruments they play and the content of their songs and whatever and they were still good like the talent was still there like that's and they managed this they managed and like once you know

Merlinthe whole story it's really remarkable that they stayed together as long as they did it's they were they were so very different from the beginning john was so depressed for so long paul was i'm sure maxwell paul was in some ways probably kind of unbearable in the band you know george was always for the rest of his life, George would always be the young guy in the band. And Ringo, I think, would always be the new guy, like for the entirety of the time that they were together and after. But it's kind of amazing that they hung together as well as they did, that they were still doing songs together into 1966. Like, you know, of course, by the time they did the White Album,

I'm sorry, I'm being that guy. By the time they did the White Album, they were very rarely in the same room together, with the exception of stuff like Happiness is a Warm Gun. They were very rarely, like literally in the room they just they did not like being together and then you get of course you get to let it be which is just very difficult to watch i i was just uh yeah i was just thinking

Maxwhen i was watching this like how many people that i meet with or i talk to or whatever and they have some sort of plan of like they have some sort of business or brand and they do something you know they make games or they make podcasts or whatever it is and then they like they they're like we're we're gonna start doing like weird stuff and reinventing and stuff and in the back in my mind I'm always like well you're not even good at the thing that you do it's like you're not even it's like why don't you you know it's like I feel like a lot of the time for people like why don't you try why don't you try why don't you set your sights on the peak of what you're doing

is and get as close to that as you can and then reinvent and get weird you know what I mean that I just there's just something so that's the thing that that I that's a story I take away from from the Beatles and part of the magic of like when you're talking about by the time you get to what was it 66 67 when they were doing those um a revolver and rubber soul and in in such a short span it's like well that's why they were at that level it's like they put their time in

Merlinthey became the best at what there was at the same time it was never it was never a sure thing like you go back and look at the the contemporaneous articles not to beat it to death but the contemporaneous articles and the interviews they were constantly being asked you can even see it in the documentary like like it's even in 63 64 they're asking them like so what are you going to do when this falls apart? And Paul's like, well, I think, you know, John and I will probably, you know, start writing songs for other people. But it was, it was inconceivable that these guys would be any more than the flash in the pan that every other English band had ever been,

that they would be like, basically like, they would be like Cliff Richards, or they would be like, you know, Acker Bilk, or whatever, they would be just another band that had a big hit, and then some lesser hits, and then they went away forever and like, fixed those.

MaxThey put a lot of work and care into, like I said, into like being the best version of what there was at the time. And then when they reached the top, they were like, how do we keep going? Where is there to go now? And they figured it out. And that's the thing that – those are the magical moments. But I don't know. I just think there's – I do think there's some sort of lesson for people who are like, I want to do my project or I want to be the person who's like reinventing or whatever.

MerlinHow do you – like a lot of people think they're on their Sergeant Pepper when they really haven't left Hamburg.

MaxYeah. Why don't you write some pops? Why don't you take what's being done at the moment that people listen this is if you want to be like commercially successful and like popular and like be good at stuff. Why don't you take what people like and do the best version of it? That's a little bit different. That's your style of it that you can do and then when you like conquer that and you have an audience and people are like you then the genius of the Beatles is like I said like they're like well where to next right? We are now we're now we are now we're at the top. Now where do we go? but they didn't just start they didn't just start doing the fucking white album in 1966 no one would

have noticed them alex chime in what do you how's your deep why why wait a minute i'm sorry why was paul being interviewed on a boat that was my only other question that i wrote down what the fuck was

Merlinthat interview i think you know how george likes to eat an apple when he's on the phone i think i think paul needs something to do he needs a middle distance to stare into while someone's asking him

Maxquestions why was he steering a tugboat and the interview was shot through the windshield of a tugboat i don't know it's really weird and he he did seem like he was on something so relaxed ringo is so relaxed and paul's driving a boat why why why was paul like that and he and he was i think he was on something in that interview too and he was very he was very manic well we'll

Merlinsnort in a toot you know hit the pills um well let's let alec we let out alex alex yeah but

MaxBefore that, I just have one more comment. All right. No, go ahead.

AlexNo, I enjoy listening to this because, again, I have no experience with the Beatles. I don't really know what made them popular until, you know, I didn't know about their manager until you mentioned. I'm like, you talked about how the band started unraveling after Brian died. I'm like, who the fuck is that? I did not know that there was a drummer that was fired.

MerlinThere's another drummer and a handsome man.

AlexI didn't know that John Lennon definitely fucked his manager. But I kind of wonder, would they have been noticed? Would they have had any success if, fuck, what's his last name? The manager, Brian.

MerlinBrian Epstein.

AlexBrian Epstein. Would they have stuck together? Would anyone have ever noticed them if it wasn't for him? Like the, I forget where I was reading this, but they were, they were performing in jeans and they had long hair. And he was the one who was like, put on the suits, let's bow at the same time.

MerlinAnd then bow at the end of the song. Yeah. Well, I think, I don't, I mean, it's hard to Monday morning quarterback any of this, but I think between, I think it's difficult to say that they would have achieved anything near even their earliest success without a combination of Brian Epstein and George Martin in different ways. because they both were, to use an overused term, they were the adult in the room in very different ways. Because Brian was a businessman. Like his father owned a record store. Brian did lots of shenanigans to make them popular. But he also understood what Max is calling branding.

Like he understood how to give them a distinctive look that would make them stand out. He understood how to market them. He understood lots of behind the scenes stuff. Can you imagine John Lennon trying to run that band? Like it's crazy. At the same time, you've got George Martin, who had done, I think his inroad was that he had done comedy records that they loved, like Peter Sellers and the Goon Squad, is that what they're called? They loved him because he'd done the comedy records that they loved. They didn't care about the classical stuff. But George Martin had exquisite taste and a great work ethic and kept them focused such that they could record their first album, Please Me, in 14 hours.

They recorded in one day in 14 hours. They put out that record and John had a cold. That takes a lot of focus and an adult in the room. So, no, I don't think, I mean, and really, I mean, not to be too dark here, but it really feels like there's a lot of simmering, totally understandable simmering differences. These are four very different personalities. But after Brian died, that, I mean, it's amazing they hung on even for a year after Brian died. And they went through the whole, as you'll see in the documentary, they go through the whole thing of, oh, let's start the Apple store. And we've got these ideas about what we want to do.

And that was gone in like a year, year and a half. they had the apple label which had more success but unmoored from the direction that brian gave them um i think it's a miracle they stayed together at all and they never i don't think they ever i don't think they i mean they were obviously very talented but they would have been a band you go see at lunch in liverpool i don't think it's i don't think they would have been on

Maxthe bbc and i uh uh i had one more thing that i wrote down here which is like i think i i realized watching this documentary one of the reasons why i continue to like john lennon so much like just connect with him so much more and like him so much more than almost all the rest of the beatles which is in my lifetime i've only known the living beatles as these sort of like rich fat old men with like melty faces who make like who like make like who make like who make like who make like like arrogant you know statements and are kind of say embarrassing

things and wear a lot of like scarves and bangles and and you know they're just like they're just like a very hollywood scarves they're just sort of hollywood rich people i guess and like lennon

Merlinnever lived long enough to get to that point yeah also he dropped out pretty hard you know for a handful of years so like but he certainly had his embarrassing periods like he he got real silly for a while um he yeah he had he had a pretty tough time in the early 70s no but you're right you're right it's again this is this could just be a don't you feel a little bit of embarrassment

Alexwhen you see paul mccartney speak now well i also think he's a dick and i've never he's just so it's

Maxso like oh my god it's just like he's just so i don't i don't think that i don't think that has

Merlinvirtually anything to do with the music and that doesn't that that kind of genetic criticism you know 30 40 50 years after they recorded that kind of genetic like reverse engineering of like do i like the band because the drippy face guy has a scarf on a boat i mean that's ridiculous i mean

MaxWell, but it's not in the sense that a lot of the appeal of the Beatles' music is and has always been the look and the people playing it at the time and what they're about.

MerlinI buy that a ton more with, say, the Rolling Stones, where I think they've been fucking the same dead corpse for over 40 years, and it's really gross.

MaxBut the idea that the Beatles walked away when they did at arguably, you know, their – maybe they didn't even reach their creative peak.

MerlinThey certainly could have peaked out another five years of shit if they wanted to. Yeah.

MaxBut I don't know. I mean or if they – again, like imagine an alternate universe where they had slightly – you know, were doing slightly fewer drugs and had slightly better interpersonal skills. And they continued to have a friendly rivalry instead of like a bitter rivalry. And they could have held it together for another five or ten years. maybe they didn't hit their creative I'm glad they didn't I'm glad they stopped when they did huh why because in this timeline it would have been embarrassed it would have been terrible there were some real stinkers on that uh I mean you guys were not there so much maybe some obviously

Merlinone of you not at all but I can think of two periods that were really embarrassing um that I was awake for one was in the late 70s when everybody got into disco because by 1978 and And this is nothing against disco, except to say that it became necessary to have some disco sauce on whatever you did. And some people did it well. Like, the Rolling Stones actually did that fairly well. Blondie did that fairly well. But it got real silly. And there were, like, a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s. You got Fred Astaire showing up in, like, disco movies. And it's like, oh, that sucks.

I'd rather remember you from Top Hat. The other one, I mean, that was gross. Like, all these people suddenly were just slathered in disco sauce. And then in the early 80s, when New Wave was the thing, then everybody's putting squeaky squawky keyboards on their stuff and trying to be all angular and like playing through a fucking chorus and a flanger. And these people who a lot of people who had like had years of really good song craft got really silly and tepid. And I'm glad they didn't have to put on disco sauce. Do you know? I mean, I think they gave us a lot in those years.

And it's like it's I don't I'm not in a position to be able to look at this critically because at probably five to nine points in my life, the Beatles have had a huge impact. Like from the time that it was one of the very first 45s I ever bought was the Beatles, like a reissue in the mid 70s. So I don't have much distance from that. But no, I mean, I I think for their own sanity, it's probably good they stop when they did. I mean, the way John's life ended is horrible. But but in the time up to that, he was a happy guy. He'd been home with his kid. He'd taken care of his kid. He just had a really good album with his wife come out. And, like, I think he found his peace in life.

And to your point, though, Max, some of the most definitely the most interesting interviews you will read and hear are John. Because he has no fucks to give. And he has no branding that he's worried about. He is, when his Playboy interview in, I want to say 1980, but pretty much any of those interviews you hear from him, he's just no bullshit. And it's really refreshing. Yeah, I don't know. That was a bad challenge.

MaxI'm sorry.

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MaxWell, let's get to the challenge. We haven't even talked about the challenge yet. We're just talking about this documentary. But all right, Marlon, why don't you start off with the bridges? How do you want to do it? Draft or one by one?

MerlinWhat do you have in your head here? What I want to get at is, and I sent you guys a screen grab. I could not find an excellent summary of this, but there's something that most Beatles fans are aware of, which is that from the time that they started, John and Paul in particular, the way it worked was that for a long time they did covers. they had the pace of their albums, of their output for the first couple of years is just horrible. It's not even good. They had to do stuff like cover a song from the Music Man. They had to cover Chuck Berry because there's no way they could write enough good songs that fast. But for the first, let's say, four years,

there was, for the first couple of years, there was a lot of collaboration between John and Paul where you could fairly say that like plus or minus like 60-40, like they both contributed heavily to this song. As in most bands, the person who is the primary vocalist on a given part is usually the person that wrote it. That's one clue. Not always true. But one thing I love about the Beatles is that as they move into what I consider their most interesting period, there's something to me very cool happening, which is that John might mostly write this one song.

It's a very, very good song. But there would be notes on it from Paul, and Paul would often be the primary author of The Bridge or The Middle Eight. Same in reverse. One of my all-time favorite Paul songs that I'll talk about today is heavily influenced by a super John-based bridge. So you get the cynicism, bluesiness of John. You've got the pop craft and romantic optimism of Paul. And when you bring that together, the bridge is frequently my favorite part of a Beatles song. It's where they're trying out new things with the vocals. It's when they're trying out crazy stuff with the instrumentation.

and that's often the part that I have in my head in the morning is the bridge. So that's why I just wanted to talk about, like, you, Max, I believe, are not a fan of bridges. Is that correct?

MaxI think it usually takes, I usually like the chorus. I think the songs that I connect the most with, this is Beatles songs, the songs that I connect the most with and that I get stuck in my head have, like, a great chorus. And then pretty much anything but that chorus, like, I always want the Beatles to be a little bit more like Nirvana. Just give me the, just write either, like, just do a great chorus or a great verse and then just basically make that the song. What do you think, Alex?

AlexYeah. Again, this is interesting.

MerlinThis is semi-new to you. Like, are there songs that really jumped out to you that you didn't realize were the Beatles?

AlexOh, yeah. Do you want me to just go through, I did not do this challenge correctly. I tried and then I just kept getting sidetracked by all of these amazing stories. but I chose five songs that I have just been listening to basically on repeat for since I think I think Friday one I did not know twist and shout was a Beatles song god I didn't know the story I

Maxdidn't know the story of John Lennon doing that in one take because his voice was going yeah he had

Merlina cold it was the end of the day and they waited to be the last song because they knew that he was

Alexgoing to shred his voice on it that's and what did they do like they recorded that whole album in like like 10 hours 14 hours 14 hours and and and it just sounds like a like a weird like proto-punk song and i i it's so i love it so big and like like a lot of their best early song stuff like

Merlinshe loves you like it just comes straight out of the gate like it's just like it's like you know

Maxit just it's an explosion even for a mid-tempo song they also didn't write a song that was more

Merlinthan three minutes long until like revolver almost no no no it was a little before that but like which one of these on mine there's one of mine yeah when they first wrote a song that was like three minutes long it was a really huge deal because you go back and listen to some of these even some on my list here and they're like just they barely crack two minutes it's like a ramone

Alexsong i love i just love the backing vocals i love how his voice is broken uh i'd like to believe that he intentionally did that with the uh you know the situation really have a bridge though No, it does not.

MaxI was trying to think through it in my head, and I was like, hey, by the way, just a shout out to our good friends at EMI. You can go ahead and reach us at 1917 North Elston, Chicago, Illinois.

AlexFair use, fair use.

MaxGreat pick of a favorite bridge, Alex.

AlexWhat a great bridge.

MaxShould I do one next, and then we can get to Merlin's good list? It is Hey Bulldog.

MerlinThat bass.

Speaker AI can't see that. You can talk to me. You can talk to me.

You can talk to me. If you're lonely, you can talk to me.

MerlinThat's pretty good. Very good. Good song. That's better than I remember.

I bet you that's Paul playing guitar. That sounds like a Paul part. Paul was the best guitar player in the band, and a lot of times the most wackadoo solos are totally Paul.

AlexInteresting.

MerlinYeah, he had to move to base when Stu left.

AlexWait, there was another one, too?

MerlinNot George? George Harrison's not the best guitar player in the Beatles? Not by Longshot. No, no, no. Like, if you listen to The End on Abbey Road, all those wackadoo guitar solos, most of that's Paul.

MaxPaul is really talented. He's just such an asshole. You're not wrong, Walter.

AlexThe next song that I... This is the very beginning.

MaxDoesn't Merlin get to go? No, no, it's okay. Merlin, I think, has the best. It's got a tight grouping. Yes, yes. Go ahead, Merlin. Coming in hot.

MerlinComing in hot.

MaxGo ahead. No, I want to. If we're going to do it, let's do it. Let's go.

MerlinYou want us to do all our shitty ones? Go ahead, Alex. You've got my Spotify list. So go cue 38 seconds into I Feel Fine.

Speaker Aand I feel fine. I'm so glad that she's my little girl. She's so glad she's telling the world that her baby finds the things you know.

AlexShe finds the time. Interesting. Why do you like, what about that stands out to you?

MerlinThe best Beatles bridges, like most good bridges are middle-aged. A bridge is often in terms of the lyrics or in terms of the arrangement or in terms of just the writing. It's meant to be what some people call a refrain.

So it's going to be some kind of a counterpart to that. I feel like I Feel Fine is pretty definitely one of the most important Beatles songs ever for all kinds of reasons. I mean, one is it's got the feedback at the beginning. They somehow snuck past EMI because it was out of standards with the recording process. I love the contrast of John's straight up pretty much like blues shuffle for, you know, the verses. And even again, this is a super short chorus.

It's got the soup. But then you get the naked romanticism. Right. You've got like so he's so John's like, yeah, I feel fine. She likes me, whatever. But then Paul is like, I am so glad that she's my little girl. She's so glad she's telling all the world. He sounds like he's bragging, right? Almost like bragging. He's so excited that somebody has a crush on and likes him back, which really contrasts with the more measured bluesy part of John's. And I feel like what they do with those three-part harmonies in that particular bridge, it just explodes.

MaxResolves. I think it's kind of a resolution, right? It's kind of like the completion of the chorus. And reflecting really these two – I'm sorry, the verse. The two personalities really kind of come out. And you see this – What do you call that when you're doing – It's like the last note in a scale. It like ends it. What do you call that?

MerlinI don't know.

MaxYes, you do. It's like the thing that completes it.

MerlinThe way it resolves. Like you go – If you're playing an E and then you do a B7 that has that tension and then it resolves back to the E.

MaxYou need a resolution at the end. And that's what the bridge does in that song. And you're just like – It's like taking a breath. It's just like, ugh.

MerlinI used to have this. I mean, there's a real lazy way to think about, especially in the 80s, there's a real lazy way to think about song craft that tends to be true a lot, which is you can choose, like in a lot of 80s songs, new wave songs, punk songs, indie songs, you'll notice that there's usually a lot of tension and release. And so the interesting part is, like, is your tension going to be in the verses and your release in the chorus or vice versa? Bands like the Cars would often have like a, like you think about something like Touch and Go,

you think about any of those songs, but like Sonic Youth did this, where there would be a lot of like angular, tense irresolution in a verse. And then the chorus typically is when that explodes. And you can also reverse that. The role of the bridge and the part that always makes my heart like beautifully ache is how you can take some element of that song and then take it in this other direction. And then when you come back for the last verse in the chorus, something Weezer does well, something Beatles do well, then when you come back to that chorus the last time you do something different about it, something with the arrangement. Or in some cases with John, he'll do the

middle eight one way the first time and a different way the second time. I don't even know the words for it.

MaxThat's part of what makes the Beatles songs enduring too. You can listen to them. I feel fine. I've probably heard that song 300 times in my life and it's still pretty pleasant every time I hear it. There's still something fresh in there and lively.

MerlinBut there's also just that there's that sound, that Beatles sound, that the doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop, that plunky sound. And then that's right before they get into their what I call the blamp, blamp period, where there's a lot of just like on like on the two and the four, there's like a blast that becomes so much what you associate with the Beatles. It's Paul's doing some noodley bass part and John and George, somebody's playing a little riff, but the other guy's doing like this. think about something like tax man or something like that where it's just such a distinctive sound so plinky so big and ringo's drumming just gets better and better and better over the years

Alexwhose turn is it max that's right alex um i'm gonna keep this shorter i think um i i also had i i had never heard the song come together i don't know how that this has been used in movies right right it must be um but and same with uh i want to hold your hand which i've heard from the the movie uh cross the universe which i do not recommend um but but then uh so

this started playing at the start of the documentary and i'm like what's this what's this But of all these friends and lovers

There is no one who bears with you These memories lose their meaning And I think of love as something new Oh, I know I'll never lose affection The people I think

Speaker AWanted when they fall

AlexDoes that have a bridge? Nope. It might be. Is it the little guitar part?

MerlinI think it has a bridge. That song was really unusual for Nike.

AlexIt doesn't.

MaxThere's kind of a minor chord leading into the chorus that is kind of bridgey.

AlexIt doesn't. No, the pre-chorus.

MerlinNo, but it's a really good song. Nice song.

AlexNo. People are listening to this screaming. Let's cut Alex a break. she's she's discovering the beatles let's cut her a break this is i'm i'm very much uh i i will peanut butter on this challenge if necessary because i love this challenge despite well no but like there are there are great there are great bridges on uh still my favorite album is sergeant pepper uh but this is just like rediscovering these songs in a different context was so much fun and also the drums on that are just so simple and pleasant and like like christmasy i don't

i don't know they're just i understand that it's not like fantastic drum playing it's just pleasant

Merlinand it's fantastic what are you saying it's fantastic he's so nuanced it's it's just people

Alexare hard on ringo it's sickening i guess so it just reminded me of christmas and happiness all

Maxright max you're next what's that paul mccartney christmas song that's like a specter that's A wonderful Christmas time.

AlexAll right, let's be nice. Let's be nice.

MerlinIf I ever... A wonderful Christmas time. Let's be nice. We're simply having a wonderful Christmas time. All right, Max, you're...

MaxIf you ever find that I've killed myself in a mall, it's probably... Ooh, that's enough. We're simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Probably because that song was the straw that broke the camel's back.

MerlinThe carol of angels sings their song.

MaxDing dong.

MerlinIs that simply having a wonderful Christmas time?

MaxWait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that. What kind of Christmas time is it? We're simply having a wonderful Christmas time. So it's wonderful, but is it more than wonderful? Is it complicated? We're simply having a wonderful Christmas time.

MerlinDo good.

69. Disco Sauce

Show notes

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