88. Liberalism.jpeg

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox, Max Temkin, and Anita Sarkeesian. This week's challenge, make some hummus.

Hello, Anita?

MerlinI see the icon.

AlexOh, yeah. Now that one worked. We just got to get that Temkin guy. right amita alex is a little bit under the weather oh good good that's yeah unfortunate well it's it's walking pneumonia so i'm walking all right oh yeah all right that's kind of

Merlinterrifying so you're like a zombie you poor kid you got you have fluid in your lungs well that

Alexwas the thing merlin you know oh yeah everyone's here you know my life hack of uh going to the doctor's office just as it closes so that you can be seen right away and typically they're like yeah sinus infection okay here's your antibiotics you'll be fine in 24 hours i think that's when

Maxyou get the best standard of medical care too is when the whole staff is just like they've got it

Merlinworks for everything it's when you get the best you get the best food you get the best medical

Maxcare if people are really hustling they're really attentive when you roll into a restaurant at like uh 9 59 p.m they're like oh we're just delighted to seat this person and you know make a whole suckling roast for them that's why it's a life hack you wouldn't expect that

Alexjust whip out some risotto uh but and but normally you know breathe in breathe out and when they went huh that's never a good noise that that a doctor makes huh so yeah i got my fancy nebulizer got uh what what is it it's like a bane mask uh yeah if you take the mask off will you die uh no no i don't have the mask on now i just have a mini nebulizer difference you were born in the doctor's office yes it's also called an inhaler these days uh but yeah uh how are you inhaling

i don't know steroids something i'm eating prednisone and i'm uh inhaling something that has is getting rid of the fluid from my lungs yeah you're recording a podcast like that's important right now i canceled the other two i've never missed an episode she's the iron man

MaxWait, can I just back up a second? You have a mask on your face and you're inhaling a gas.

Speaker AI do not have a mask on my face right now. You totally made up the mask part there, buddy. That was all your imagination.

MaxThere was a video.

AlexNo, one, it was a photo. And two, it was what looked like a very fancy robot vape. And it's called a nebulizer. And I love it.

MaxOkay, I'm sorry. This publication regrets the error. I'm sorry. You had a robot on your face. And the robot is dispensing a gas. And you're not 100% sure what the gas is. but you're breathing it.

AlexYeah.

MaxIt's Dr. Juice.

AlexYeah.

MaxMake this go in your body. Is it like the slurp juice? You drink it and it helps you regain your shields and health?

AlexYeah. Well, I was able to do some sweet tricks afterwards. And yeah. Kick flips? Oh, shit.

MaxWell, I guess I'll introduce our guest for the week before we get too far into the episode. This week we are joined by a friend of the show, media critic, internet personality, writer, Anita Sarkeesian, oh, and founder of Feminist Frequency, Anita Sarkeesian. Thanks for joining us, Anita. Yay!

MerlinHello!

MaxWell, I'm in California right now. Wait, what? Really? Yeah, I am. I'm like an hour away from Merlin. Hello! We're doing like a Cards writer's retreat all week.

Speaker AOh, that's fancy.

MerlinIt's a bunch of dudes in a room farting, right?

MaxYes. Are you having cured meats? Yeah, we're having cured meats. We're having a lot. We did a lot of like, well, it's California, so we're having a lot of like healthy sprouted grains and granolas and things like that, but no better on the farts, really. I'm tired. Is anybody else tired?

Speaker AYes.

MaxI'm very spry. It's very nice here. The weather in California, I don't know if anyone's ever remarked on this, but the weather is really pleasant in California.

Speaker AAlthough it depends on where you are, because San Francisco summers are the worst.

MaxWait, you live here?

MerlinYeah. Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker AIt's so foggy today.

MerlinI'm in the outer sunset. It's so foggy today.

Speaker AWhen is it not foggy?

MerlinWell, you know, how long have you been? Well, I'll have a sec. I've lived here for 18, 19 years, and I can tell you, like, I feel very confident in saying it's not nearly as severe as it used to be. You do get... I mean, it used to be. I remember.

Speaker AWe're getting the good side of global warming.

Merlin100%.

Speaker AWe're getting the nice warm weather here.

MerlinWhen I was working at home in 2001 that summer, I just, I got depressed. I mean, it was, it used to be really bleak every day and like 49 degrees every day. And we just don't get that as much. You know, what's great is opening your podcast with Weather Talk.

Speaker AYeah, it's really good. I'm also going to continue this conversation though, because I remember when I first moved here like almost a decade ago i uh had friends come over in june july and they left my house that evening wearing mitts and a scarf because it was so fucking cold in the middle of summer

Maxoh my gosh well i remember when i first got to san francisco about 72 hours ago

Merlinlots of people live in san francisco i'm pretty sure darth lives here oh we don't know my wife and my daughter live here there's there's a lot there's at least seven people in San Francisco. I'm in a place called Santa Rosa. Do you guys know what that is?

AlexThat's where the wine is.

MerlinSanta Rosa. Oh, that's where Coppola lives. There's some good bands from there. Anyway, it's... I'm tired. I'm tired and it's cold and I'm tired. I'm tired. You should see my sleep numbers though, Alex. I've been putting some serious numbers on the board. My sleep consistency has been really good. I'm at like 453 right

Alexnow. Oh, bravo. Oh, bravo.

MerlinWhat's your number? What's your number?

AlexI don't know. In fact, my Apple Watch died and my charger was at the office and I wasn't allowed to come to the office. And so I don't know, but I have been sleeping a lot. So I'm pretty sure the numbers are up there by many people. But now it's OK because I'm on the zone. Anita, do you track your sleep in any way in like a perhaps neurotic way that Merlin and I do?

Speaker AI don't. I've thought about it, but I don't want to have a thing on me while I'm sleeping.

MerlinYeah, that's totally understandable.

Speaker ASo I look into it every now and again.

MerlinThat's your position, Max, right?

MaxNo, you know what? I will wear the Apple Watch. So I can't really do it consistently just because of irresponsibility-related reasons. But if I'm interested in tracking my sleep, I will wear the Apple Watch to bed.

Speaker AWait, so to track your sleep, you wear it to bed? Oh, absolutely. You don't have a long enough battery life, though.

MaxOh, yes, it does. So I have a new, so I got the new Apple Watch 3. And I'll say the battery life is really good on it. And I can usually, what I do is I wear it to bed. And then when I get up in the morning, I throw it on the charger. I shower. I get ready. And before I leave for work, I put it back on. And it never, I don't think it ever goes below like a 50% charge.

AlexYeah.

MerlinI first heard about this from underscore David Smith, who does a sleep tracking app. And I think I'm really I would not attempt this earnestly with a very old watch, but pretty much what Max is describing works. If you get it on the stand for a half hour twice a day at times when you're not going to be doing stuff like when you take a shower, maybe you could do it when you're watching TV. You can depending on how old your watch is, you can you can make it.

AlexYeah. No, my my spouse, Maddie, does that. They've got my old series zero and it still does the sleep tracking just fine.

Speaker ASo here's the thing is like I'm all about this kind of bullshit of like tracking all your vitals and crap. Like, I love it. I'm such a sucker for it. Me too. I'm so in on it. Yeah. But I know when I'm not sleeping because I'm awake. Right?

MerlinWell, you may be surprised. I know I was surprised when I started doing this in earnest where I was sleeping a lot less than I realized. And no, I'm not getting a CPAP. Stop asking.

My apnea is me. It's my identity. No, I don't know if I have apnea. I think I do snore. But what's interesting is when you start doing it, when you wake up in the morning, like, huh, I slept for quote unquote seven hours, but I'm still kind of tired. Like you'll realize there could be many times when you're awake just a little bit and you don't realize it.

Speaker AThat's fair. Which is depressing. I'm sure that's my entire life. I suggest being wracked with anxiety. It makes you worry about everything.

MerlinIt's a good look.

Speaker AI don't know anything about having anxiety. I don't even know what that word means.

MerlinI just want you to hear my truth I um I don't know how you do anything I'm so impressed by you I really really am I don't want to fawn but it's like holy shit I'm sad when my postmates is late and like you put up with where's my soup it says very clearly here who is going to arrive

That's one that really has stuck with me, though, the sleep tracking stuff. Do you do your calories, Alex? Do you do all the food stuff? You're not doing that, are you?

AlexYes, I was doing the Fitbit, and then the Fitbit thingy gave me RSI. Wow, we are such normal, fine, healthy people.

MerlinWe need something to do.

AlexYeah, exactly.

MerlinSometimes you've got to hit the demon dog with a Fitbit.

AlexBut yeah, no, I switched to, if anybody's interested, the Under Armour My Fitness Pal, and I do that.

MerlinMy wife started doing it, and she's been eating real good, and she's dropping weight like a bad habit, like in a healthy way. Well, she ran 11 miles on Sunday. She's a monster. But yeah, it's working great for her. Because we did a food tracking challenge, didn't we?

AlexI don't remember. I think we quit.

MaxNo, we've talked about doing a food tracking challenge, but we haven't actually done it. It's way harder than it seems. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.

Speaker AYou have to record everything you eat? Come on.

MerlinMy fitness pal makes it pretty easy. They've got lots of brand names in there, like down to, in my case, a local place. I like Molly Stone. There will be local grocery stores and stuff sometimes are in there. It makes it fairly easy to do. Eventually, you learn how much coffee you make when you make coffee, and you can adjust how

Speaker Astrong that is if you're a coffee person nope i track my fitness stuff for sure i like religiously track my workouts even though i never crossfit right no i didn't

Maxyou gotta throw a big tire around you gotta you gotta curl the ropes up and down for some reason

Speaker Ayou know what i can't you know what drives me nuts about crossfit though is that like they're always on like they're always in retail stores on the street that you're walking by and people are working out like in your face and i'm like can you just chill like we get that you're

Maxworking out there used to be so like on the block like like like directly across from our office when we first moved into that building there was a place in sort of like a closed down like real estate office there was a place called hero fitness oh god and the whole and the thing was I think it was like an off-brand CrossFit, but these guys would be these huge, muscly, big hot dog neck guys. Yep. And they'd have these big, like they'd have like a big like tire and it'd be wrapped in metal chains and then they'd just sling the metal chains over their shoulder and they'd run with this tire in the street up and down.

And I'd be trying to get my car out and be honking at them. I'd be like, get your tire out of here. Stop pulling the tire in the street.

MerlinDeadlift your car. Okay, I gotta ask. I gotta ask. Did you hear Ashley Feinberg on Chopo?

MaxI'm behind on my podcast.

MerlinWas it good? Oh, God. I love her so much. I learned about her from your political Twitter list, and now I adore her. She's gotten perhaps, I think, most famous for basically discovering stuff about public figures based on social media. So, for example, I'm pretty sure she's the one who found Sebastian Gorka's Amazon wish list. Yes. Yeah, she wrote the wish list piece. She's heavily tracking Don Jr. And I think the phrase she used is he's the most going through a divorce man of all time.

He's obsessed with Zippo lighters and CrossFit. Like he's. Yeah, he posts a lot of gym selfies like I'm doing great. He's very moist.

MaxYeah, he wears a lot of like beaded divorce guy bracelets now.

MerlinOh, it's so hard to watch going through a divorce guy. He's got so much to prove to no one in particular.

MaxOh, goodness. I thought the, the, uh, my, my recent favorite Chapo was the one where they read Dan Pfeiffer's book and Dan Pfeiffer, I thought it was very, I thought it was very, very funny. Um, but also I thought that it was, it was some, a really good, um, um, I don't know. I thought it was a very

Merlininsightful political discussion at their best and worst, which is they are, they are very, very mean and very funny. Yep. But yeah. Oh, did you listen to the one where they watched the, uh, The movie about the troops, the epic troops. Yeah, I did listen to that.

AlexOh, no.

MaxI can't.

MerlinI mean, I'm going to have to watch that movie now. It sounds like about the worst. So, Anita, there's this movie that got put out. How did they describe it?

MaxIt's basically, it's by troops for troops. It was funded on Indiegogo by some former troops. And these are like, I would describe them as like Shark Tank troops. They're the kind of troops that make like troop branded like Zippos and, you know, chotchkes.

MerlinMostly offensive t-shirts. Like, you know, fuck your feelings t-shirts. and stuff like that. And so they made this epic zombie apocalypse movie where they kill or have intercourse with almost everything and talk about how they're definitely not gay.

MaxYeah. Wow. Yeah, as they describe, so I think zombie movies in general are sort of a proxy for violence fantasies. It sort of allows you to explore how empowering and awesome it would be to slaughter with impunity, but then because they're zombies, It sort of like takes all the moral culpability out of it. And I think that's why, you know, if you've ever seen it, there's some interesting maps and like data, as you can see, of what TV shows are popular and what different states and what different kinds of social climates.

And I've always thought it was interesting that like Game of Thrones is like a blue state show and Walking Dead is a red state show. And not to say that everyone who watches Walking Dead is a Republican, but that's like the number one show in red states and Game of Thrones and other things tend to be the number one show in blue states. But I always thought that like I've never been able to get into Walking Dead. And I always thought that it was because it's sort of the whole premise is like, what if you could like what if there were people that weren't people? So they were just as it was the same as killing people.

MerlinAnd what if it was important and critically useful that you killed strangers? Like, what if it wasn't just your dark fantasy about about emptying a magazine and Spencer's gifts? Like what if it was what if it was like it was actually part of like this was your hero story was you got to kill with impunity.

MaxRight. And then the troop version of it is that they're so much better than the regular people at mowing down remorselessly mowing down the zombies because, you know, you put 10,000 hours. Right.

Speaker AWell, and let's be real too, like that's what video games are. Like that's why the majority of AAA video games are about zombies or aliens or Nazis because you can kill them. You can kill them for 20 hours and not have any sort of moral quandary about it or like, why am I doing this?

MaxJeez, Anita, you don't like fun, huh? What about my stories? I'm helping.

Speaker AI enjoy shooting an alien every now and again, just saying.

MerlinI'll tell you, man, I'll tell you, man, when I saw that little girl come out of that barn and I saw she'd been zombified, oh, I got epic.

Speaker AOh, my God.

MerlinThat's a very sad scene. No spoilers.

AlexMerlin played a video game.

MerlinYeah, do you have a reading series for us? You found one thing this week that I'm really hoping you'll explore. Oh, well, you'll learn about the Trump Network.

MaxOh, well, there's not much to say about it, but I did have one thing first. Obviously, the big news item this week is the Trump-Russia stuff, and the epic Cheeto man, he beshitted himself in the orange clown. He be-clowned himself when he did gay penis things with Vladimir Putin. Shame on you, Drumpf. How dare he? At long last, at long last, when he did the gay penis things with Vladimir Putin, has he no dignity?

Are you talking about Trump Putin?

Speaker AAlthough, can we, hold on, can we actually talk about the fact that, like, the New York Times released a fucking deeply homophobic cartoon? That was dark. It's insane. Like, that's not okay. Like, that's not okay. And that's something that we've been saying for a long time is, like, there is so much to criticize Trump about. like we don't need to reduce our crit our insults and criticisms to like homophobic like homophobia

Maxbut that's like it's like liberalism.jpg though because it's like it's like the gay the gay cause is like set dressing for the liberal cause like up until the moment when it's not when it's funnier

Merlinor more convenient to do something else i think people don't people don't realize what they're really says Joe Joe my friend Joe Rosenstiel was tweeting about this the other day and retweeting some some really interesting voices about this particular issue and it's like hey you know the joke was that it was like a like a dialogue hey hey liberals do you want to come over here and hear a really sick gay joke and like no thank you very much it's like oh well do you want to hear like you know the same joke about Trump and Putin like yes please I don't think they I don't think people realize like how deeply gross and offensive it is that they're actually impugning the all of

Speaker Athese people that they're all gay sex is gross that's funny right we actually at feministfrequency.com we made a whole video about this topic like because this was this was around like this this has been happening since since he was like a major contender for the presidency and like why is it okay to throw marginalized communities under the bus for your fucking jokes right like that and that's the thing that is constantly happening in this space from people who really legitimately think that they're like down they're like we supported gay marriage but we're still gonna

laugh at this joke because we don't see the connection between these two things

Alexanita i'm totally gonna suck up here uh and and you could you could you not use those kinds of

Merlinterms please i know it's real funny it's real funny for your chicago joke to talk about sucking

Alexplease my lungs they're very sick um but in the oh no my lungs in like no and in the most frequent feminist frequency radio you talked about this but i wonder like i we we talked we've talked before about like if you could say one thing to trump what would it be and i feel like just throwing a homophobic slur at him would be the only thing that would even like like hit the tip of his his dead cold self like i i all of the like it's one thing for the new york times

Maxtimes to Alex Alex mark my words I mark my words the Democratic Party is going to nominate we're so dumb in 2020 I guarantee you we are going to nominate some sort of like our version of Trump and it'll be some sort of like Mark Cuban or some sort of rich alpha male guy and he's going to go on stage and he's going to enact the liberal fantasy of standing on the debate stage and saying Mr. Trump sir you're being a bit gay no I think it's going to go the opposite way like

AlexTrump's going to start throwing homophobic slurs at him and he's not going to, you know, you can't. What can you do with that? You know, I don't know. I don't really know what my question was. I guess it's like what it I guess if I had one thing to say, I would not go. I would not go high. I'd go super low. I like it's going super.

Speaker Aright but in your in what you're saying though super low is like is deeply oppressive to a huge population like there's so many other things that could happen why is that the thing that like you i i just i don't think that's the way i like this i'm not trying to get into a like whether we go high or low bullshit because fuck the democrats they don't know what they're doing but the um but i think that we cannot go into this territory of like throwing marginalized folks under the bus because it's it's funny or because it might get under someone's skin or whatever

right like that's just that's a line for me like i can't that's not okay well thank you i just

Alexwanted to make this a little bit feminist frequency radio yay i did it but it's just one interesting

Merlintake though on the stuff that happened in russia at least from the msnbc side of things um is that I think we can take it as read, at least I feel very confident in that so much of what drives Trump is, even in the absence of any evidence one way or another, to always feel like he's president deals. He's always the smartest guy in the room. He is the most powerful person and will do anything he can, not to prove that to the world, maybe secondarily, but in his head.

He must always feel like he's getting the best side of everything. You know what I mean? Doesn't that seem like a fairly true thing to say is that at his heart, the most basic thing is that he always appeared to be coming out on top. And then so what a lot of people are saying, I think it's kind of an interesting idea is that like you wonder, though, about the fan base that thought that he was going to be the new American tough guy who wasn't going to apologize for America anymore. All that, you know, all that nonsense and blather. And he really did look like a terrified. He was the Don Jr. to Putin's Don Sr. on that dais. He looked very weak and equivocating.

MaxSo I actually have some follow-up I wanted to play for everyone about this Russia thing. But the one thing I think you may not be taking into account, Merlin, because I think your analysis is correct. Like in terms of Trump being the alpha male, the thing I always remember is in the debates, in the Clinton debates, do you guys remember when he did that weird thing where he sort of leaned his torso into a chair in a pained sort of – do you know what I'm talking about? He sort of almost keeled over on this chair while Hillary was speaking, and it was weird, and everyone made GIFs about it. and they were like, look at this weirdo.

Does that moment ring a bell to you guys? Was he doing like a Putin slouch? He was slouching, but kind of over on a chair. And then, so anyway, it was a thing everyone made fun of. And then eventually- Oh, he was on a stool.

MerlinHe was on like a stool, right?

MaxIt was the one where they were walking around. And the one where he kept getting in frame,

Merlinlike some kind of menacing stalker?

MaxYes, he was doing it follows behind Hillary, but he was sort of like, he had sort of bent over at a 45 degree angle, like in this weird pose. And everyone did memes and made fun of it. And I saw on Twitter, eventually I saw a primatologist who was posting about it. And he was like, well, if Trump was a gorilla, this would be called a broadside display. And it's a way for the alpha male to show his girth to the other tribe members to show that he's like a big fat body and he can't be toppled over in an alpha male battle.

He does watch a lot of nature documentaries. But I think it's instinctual. I think Trump was like, I think, you know, Trump felt low in that moment. And then he was just like, and it's just like his gorilla brain just activated. And he's like, I better do a broadside display on the camera to show that I have a big fat body and I can't be knocked over.

MerlinHis family is bad at standing. Did you see the picture of the family trying to look normal standing? Oh, they all look, they look like they're like poorly rigged models in a video game. Yeah, exactly.

MaxI just sent the photo to the text channel.

MerlinLook at Don. Is he okay? He looks like he's trying to digest a bowling pin.

AlexThe Disney president's statue looks more human than this.

Speaker AOh, yeah. It's the arm placement.

MaxThis is a normal way to stand. My father is excellent at standing. Listen, if you're a primatologist and you listen to Dubai Friday, please email us about this. We'll put the picture in the show notes. And please contact us and tell us what sort of display the Trump family is doing.

MerlinWhat would you call Because what Don's doing First of all They all have Preternaturally long arms Given their Given their Their odd body shapes I don't want to shame them But Don Jr. Is doing this thing Where he This could be lens Distortion But This is not Photoshop This is a real photo

MaxIs there one of those Monkey things Where you display your gums To your rival Because I think Eric Trump does that one

MerlinThat's a display of aggression Don Jr. Looks like he's throwing The D a little bit Like he's flicking his Lighter a little bit If you know what I mean Alright let me

MaxLet me get to Mike let me get to my clip here so yes okay so obviously the trump russia stuff big story of the week and everyone on twitter has been completely insufferable about it like everyone's like a fucking foreign policy analyst like talking about the russian indictments and yelling at trump and trying to i don't know just just throwing their their scottish insults at trump and calling him an absolute spoon or whatever and i thought it would be interesting to sort of um on dubai friday you know i like to check in on the other side and see how you know it's like is any of this breaking through right because like it's in my media bubble and i you know and everyone's like the

big debate i saw yesterday too was people some people were saying trump's a traitor and other people were saying no sir he is not a traitor he is merely complicit in treason like and don't call him a traitor like so anyway uh i just caught this little clip and um it is a c-span caller calling into the the c-span like call-in show and i was wondering could one of you guys play this so we can hear it on the headphones like maybe Alex you can just put it on your on your laptop and like hold it up to the microphone I just want

to see like how is this breaking through to the other side look what is the other side are they are they ready to turn on Trump you know I got my screen time on

Alexall right here we go

Speaker Bfor independence. Mary Lou, good morning. Good morning. I'll try not to sound too awful, but I want to thank thank the Russians for interfering with our election to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president. That woman has got illusions of grandeur, and so hasn't her husband. That man,

the whole time he was in the White House, was just fooling around sexually with Monica Lewinsky. He is an accused rapist. He has never denied it. And his wife never did anything to stop him from doing that. Mary Lou, let me ask you, do you think Russian interference was the reason that President Trump won in 2016?

Yes, because the Russians interfered. I mean, what would we do with Hillary in that White House? That woman, she doesn't know what she was doing. what a mess she made of Benghazi what she did with those emails to put a server in her living room or wherever she put it that just made me sad

Alexthat's not

Maxgood work everyone this is going to be the midterms we're going to talk about Trump-Russia and we're going to have debates about whether Trump's a treaterous Cheeto trader or not and the other side is going to be like yeah it's awesome Russian helped him win and Hillary did Benghazi. And meanwhile, once again, totally failed to offer a program to people

Speaker Athat is worth voting for. And that's the thing that I think, Merlin, what you're getting at before is like, there's nothing that he can do that is going to get his supporters to not support him anymore. People are very, very good. And people in general are very good at intellectual backflips to justify their positions and to not ever change them. And that goes across the board, right? But specifically here, when it's like, you're presented with all of this evidence and all of this data and all of these facts, like none of that matters, because the narrative and

the story that we embody and internalize is what we feel so strongly about. So like, yeah, cool.

MerlinThank the Russians, apparently, right? That's well put. This is true for everybody. I know it's true for me. I struggle with this every day. I do a podcast with John Siracusa where I learn how poorly I'm doing it, all of these things. But we're so good at compartmentalizing anything that will either support or threaten the identity that we have. And the case I've tried to make on here poorly is that a lot of these folks see Trump as their basically their surrogate father that they would never betray. And so an attack on him is an attack on them. And I mean, there's just all

kinds of, what's the phrase in rhetoric, the backfire effect, where, you know, the more you criticism isn't that what it's called yeah where where the more that you i mean i'm not saying to stop attacking but that the more that he is attacked the more it proves their very point that he's right and i think i think humans are there's so much in looking at stuff like mindfulness and dealing with anxiety you learn so much about how we are wired our our minds are wired for a very different kind of existence in some cases that means that you know the time you

were supposed to be scared of a snake and run away well now you're just terrified of being outside for the rest of your life because that pathway has been cut, you know, recut so many times with your own steps. But we're also we're not well disposed to discover and internalize new information that disrupts our idea of who we are, that hurts our integrity from an identity standpoint. And anyways, I'm just like a liberal now. But that's, I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. But like, it does seem apparent that they're going to stick with this guy. When we, there's this thing

Speaker Acalled a spectrum of allies are you familiar with this concept no so it's imagine like a half circle and on one end are your closest allies and on the other end at the bottom of the half circle are your like most vehement like opposition and then in the very middle are the people sitting on the fence so i i think about this a lot when it comes to activism when it comes to politics and we this i internalized this for feminist frequency when we were doing the video game series because there were so many voices out there yelling at me and like from all over the place, right? There was

like really hostile voices. There are really supportive voices. And it's really hard to figure out like who your audience is and who you're trying to talk to when everyone is just like in your face. And so the way that I thought about who my audience would be and what I wanted to do with that project was I would only talk to the fence sitters down towards my supporters, because if we can build a critical mass of people who are um who are willing to listen and willing to give me the benefit of the doubt or and this goes with any any topic right or anything that you're doing then like fuck the people who are just like extreme on the other side that can't be

listened to right like it's not sing it sister yeah i think that there is a place right in your

Merlinwheelhouse max isn't this your whole thing about the the elections yeah i i think that this is a

MaxI mean, Nina and I have talked about this a lot. I think I embrace his philosophy in all aspects of my sort of like activism and organizing. And, you know, I think to me it represents the best version of the saying, don't feed the trolls. and you know um i um a good like i think i think about all the time i think it's from brandon mordell did this tweet where he's like never block your enemies you should always mute your enemies never block them because a block they can screenshot and post it and that gives them content and the first rule of posting is never give your enemy content

Speaker Aso but if someone comes at me and they're like what are you going to block me i block them

Merlinimmediately as if like i wouldn't do that i just i just do it on wine i just go on political twitter

Maxand just look for people to block just as a way to kill time i just i do i do i do i all do i do 100 mutes which which solves the problem for me but but yeah but the point is yeah but one of the

Speaker Aproblems with that is then so i get what you're saying and i think that they're in some situations that is great advice and other such it's not a it's not a blanket advice because here's the thing is that if you're if you mute someone they can still see your tweets they can still follow you They're still going to harass people. Yeah, they're still showing up in your timeline that other people can see. They're bringing people to you. If you block them, it's a little bit harder for them to actively go out of their way to find you and look at your tweets and see what you're doing.

Maxso there's like that is true i'm not i'm not because i'm not thinking that but my my broader point is all i wanted to say about that is like i i agree with this idea of that you don't spend your cal you only have so many calories that you can spend in a day to to do the work that needs to be done and if you spend them arguing with the half of the circle that doesn't agree with you instead of the the allies and the fence sitters you're basically giving them energy and giving them content and like trolls the the economy of like trolls and and and you know hate groups and things like this is energy like they need to be energized they need like new stuff to be mad about

and you just love that shit man just don't just don't give them anything and and it it it speeds up the rate at which they have the potential to get bored and do something here's the thing is

Speaker Ahow do you apply this on a larger scale right like how do you apply this to um the like the the the attack on uh reproductive rights for example yeah right like when you're when when we're just desperately trying to hang on to the bullshit that we've like fought for how do you not acknowledge or engage with that and i think that this is one of the big questions with activism is like how do we actually make real change without sinking to i don't want to say something to their level that's kind of dumb but do you get what i'm trying to what i'm getting at well

Maxreproductive rights is a great example and it's a fight that we're we're about to have you know we may be it may be it's kind of already it's happening right now yeah and uh you know in like

Alexan existential way but wait what do you mean by existential way you know in the way that in in

Maxsix months we may not have reproductive rights okay so just in the all right yes but also recognize

Speaker Athat this has been ongoing for decades like ever since yeah yeah so like this is not new this has been happening this was happening under obama like this is not it's not i think people forget

Maxthat even though you have a federal you federally have a right to get an abortion in most states in this country you like functionally can't or it's extremely difficult to get an abortion so people tend to forget the the sort of implementation details of this but anyway all of that aside from just from a messaging and sort of and you know communication standpoint like i think that that this is a great example of what i'm talking about most we have a commanding majority of people in this country who support reproductive rights women's acts women's access to health care women's right to choose it's it's a settled issue in public opinion it's like overwhelming like almost

it's like huge numbers of you know vast majority of women support it and most men support uh support this as well and that's nationwide so we there's all these i often hear these conversations about liberals of like what argument do we make to conservatives to convince them to respect a women's right to choose and respect women's bodies or whatever and like i it's it's probably not going to happen like in the time that you could get one conservative to change their mind you could probably register 20 people who agree with us to vote and how do you convince

Speaker Apeople how do you convince people who don't see you as human that you're human right and that that's

Merlinthe thing right like oh you're kind of already back on your heels if you're trying to make the

Speaker Aargument that you're worthy of humanity and that's what this is about and and that's the thing that came up that actually when people when people were getting super like concern trolley and tone policing about how folks were reacting to the election um that like you don't get to you don't get to tell people that they need to have a dialogue with people who think that they shouldn't

Merlinexist right when it comes to like send the new york times out to do some real in-depth stories

Maxon how trump voters feel or that they don't believe they exist well there was there is some interesting social research um that has an interesting um history in in the research itself is pretty controversial but there's some pretty interesting research these these um um Researchers did this thing where they took women who had an abortion in their life, and they basically did a canvas. They went door to door in a place where there was an election happening that involved reproductive health issues. And they knocked on the door and said, hello, I'm here to canvas about this issue.

And in their conversation, they revealed to the person at the door that they had had an abortion. They talked in very honest and emotional terms about their experience. and what this research indicated is that that moved that that conversation so the voter meeting someone who had had an abortion and realizing that they're not inhuman or whatever like actually really did move the needle on their opinion and in some case changed their wasn't there a turns out about that yes well there was a turns out which is it ran on this american life and it turns out that the uh researcher who talked about the study in this american life there was some questions

about the integrity of the data and maybe parts of that study were falsified but i've heard even And more recently, a double triple turns out that the research does hold up pretty well. Maybe not as well as it was originally thought, but that it does. The effect actually does exist.

AlexTurney McTurnerson. Wow.

MaxWhoosh. So I think there's probably something to that. But it's also worth noting that this was a face-to-face, a one-on-one face-to-face conversation that happened at someone's house. And it wasn't like posting.

Speaker AWell, I was going to say, our strategy can't be convincing individual people, though. Right? Like that's the thing is like if you want to to get people to stop using plastic bottles, you don't go and knock on everyone's door and say stop using plastic bottles.

MaxNo, we obviously we have to ban straws. Obviously, that's how we're going to save the ocean.

Speaker ABut like you have to change the system. You have to go to the plastic manufacturers. You have to go like you have to do it on a much larger scale. And that's one of the things that I think like not that you shouldn't have these conversations when the opportunity arises or like I think that's the job of allies. to go talk to like white folks need to talk to other white folks about white supremacy and cis people need to talk to other cis people about like trans rights and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, like the way that we have large scale change in our in in culture and is because we change the system and force people to behave differently within the system because

that's the new norm. Right. It's always about changing the status quo. There's a great philosophy

Maxpaper that Mark Fisher talks about in Capitalist Realism called The Subject Supposed to Recycle. And he says, it's a paper by Campbell Jones, like a philosophy paper. And he says, in posing the question, who is the subject supposed to recycle? Jones denaturalizes an imperative that is now so taken for granted that resisting it seems senseless, nevermind unethical. Everyone is supposed to recycle. No one, whatever their political persuasion, ought to resist this injunction. The demand that we recycle is precisely posited

as a pre- or post-ideological imperative. In other words, it's positioned in precisely the space where ideology always does its work. But the subject supposed to recycle presupposed the structure that is not supposed to recycle. In making recycling the responsibility of quote-unquote everyone, structure contracts out its responsibility to consumers by itself receding into invisibility. Oof.

Speaker AYeah. Yeah. Good shit. Yeah. Like also the history of recycling was was a way to not have was it was an intended not to sound like a fucking conspiracy theorist, but it was intended by bottle companies to make sure that you was kind of Coca-Cola's idea. Right. Yeah. And so like instead of the reduce reuse recycle. Right. The reduce and reuse was the most important parts of this. Recycling wasn't. And recycling is kind of a pollutive process. Like it's just. Yeah. That's a really good quote. uh and we and it's and i actually people get super pissed at me if i don't recycle like

a fucking plastic bag or something and i'm like you know you can't it's already down cycled like you can't recycle a plastic bag or whatever like people get really into it and that it's it's a

Maxfascinating the funniest one are the reusable the reusable grocery bags that people the beloved like npr reusable grocery bag things you have to so those are so those use so much more plastic than and paper than disposable grocery bags that you have to use that thing i saw a study that you have to use that thing like 2 000 times for it to pay off god this is depressing and like who's ever used it more you use it three times and you lose it a lot of the bullshit we've been taught about

Speaker Alike what makes you like a good like person in the world when it comes to environmentalism is not true like we are like if we actually want to do anything about it we have to drastically change the way we operate and live. And that has to start with we can't fly anymore.

MerlinCan I still get paper towels from Amazon?

Speaker ANo. Not to say that I don't do that. I'm just saying.

MerlinAre you aware, Anita, are you aware of something called subscribe and save?

Speaker ADo you have one of those buttons? Do you push the button and it just appears on your doorstep? Happy Prime Day! Happy Prime Day! Oh, God. Oh, this is really, really depressing. Did anyone watch Sorry to Bother You?

MerlinNo, I really want to see it.

Speaker AGet on it. But also, there's a corporation in the movie that's basically Amazon, and it's kind of sad and hilarious all at the same time.

MerlinI'm kind of surprised. After what happened on Prime Day, something happened. I don't think it's at the AWS level of the tech stack. I think it must have had something to do with their ordering. But Amazon Prime now was down. They lost supposedly billions of dollars. Alex were you a little surprised that Elon Musk didn't like send them a submarine or something doesn't seem like that's the kind of thing he would have intervened on send a waterproof child coffin to Jeff Bezos

Alexthe only thing I can think of right now is that Grimes must be

Merlinrepudiated this man yet

Alexmany times I was a dumb naive stupid person and I just really like batteries and you know my young 21 year old self really wanted a tesla and why is he why is he melting down what is happening he's in he's an insane narcissistic billionaire who is i mean my wife and i were like we're both tracking different

Merlinelon musk like cell phones like dumb shit that he was doing and we're both like isn't he busy like doesn't he have stuff that he has to go build or doesn't he have projects to abandon somewhere isn't he busy how does he find time to fuck to self-own and fuck up as hard as he does

AlexAt this point, I think that this, like, giving this man attention, it's almost like a Trumpian thing. Like, this is all he wants is for his cults to follow him and, like, be, like, he, uh.

MerlinHe's got some flying monkeys, man.

AlexMan, space is the one good thing we have left. That's why we're having Space Force.

MerlinSpace Force, Space Force, Space Force.

MaxI think he's got the Kanye West, Donald Trump dragon energy, which is to say he's doing an enormous amount of cocaine.

Merlinit's actually called huge dick energy he's like what his energy comes from being a huge dick

AlexGrimes what are you doing

Maxall right I want to do I wanted to do a little transition a minute ago so we were talking about the way that that turning recycling and environmentalism into like an individual consumer choice, it kind of makes the system of oppression invisible by putting all of the responsibility onto the individual consumer. All right, we're going to cheer things up. Here we go. So I feel, I was curious, since we have Anita here,

and she's an actual qualified media critic, I was curious to talk about one of our favorite subjects on Dubai Friday, which is representation in superhero movies. And my feeling on this is that these films have in the same way that recycling has privatized like a societal problem into a consumer choice that is largely ineffectual. Oh, my God. Liberalism championing. Can't she have a day off?

Speaker BCan't she have a day off?

MaxNo, I cannot. No, I cannot. You're there. Dance for me. Dance for me in the way you do in public. Dance. I think that liberalism has, by confusing politics with movies, has taken these actual political issues and turned them into a consumer decision where being a good ally, being a good feminist is going to see Wonder Woman rather than engaging in any sort of political solution. Your thoughts, panel.

You guys need me for this one?

AlexI hate Wonder Woman. I think it's a terrible movie. I hate it.

Speaker AI just don't like it. It's a bad movie. I think this is bigger than just media, though. Like, so what's happening now is feminism. So there's an analogy by someone who I can't remember because I can't just like pull shit out of my memory like you all can, apparently.

Feminism is like a corkscrew. And it sort of comes and goes and comes and goes. And we're in one of those phases right now where feminism is really popular. And with its popularity means that it's become completely depoliticized. So like 10 years ago, when I first started being a media critic and even earlier than that, when I was like getting into feminism and stuff like that, you know, it was a very, very popular sentiment to say, I'm I believe in equality, but I'm not a feminist. I don't hear that anymore at all.

Like it's just like H&M and Zara and fucking Forever 21 are selling T-shirts that say feminist on them. celebrities are now saying that they're feminists even though like their behaviors may or may not be changing to co to coincide with their new identification of feminism and the martin like so andy zeisler has this really great book called we were feminist once and it's about what she terms marketplace feminism which is this idea that like the market has taken over feminism and it's become depoliticized but there's this constant tension within actual feminist movements because

having that kind of attention and that kind of profile is good except when it's not and I think that that's what's happening so you have people who think that they can like not that whatever this is complicated but that like you can just go watch a movie and like that's a feminist act or you can just tweet a thing and that's a feminist act now I'll say one caveat because this was actually called out recently um in my orbit of like there are people who can only do activism online like they're like whether it's a disability or mental health issues or whatever and that there

is still value to being activist by writing or tweeting or whatever but um yeah I think that this is this is a thing about like people don't actually know what feminism stands for they haven't read feminist theory they're not like in uh like feminism is a movement right and we forget that and feminism is only necessary so as as long as we have gender inequality right so like yeah and i didn't like wonder woman either for the record

Maxgod it's like a good vomit oh i want to say we've recorded more than one podcast where i accidentally started complaining about wonder woman and then i was scared to release it because i didn't want people to get mad at me on the internet yeah they can get mad at me we have a plug-in for that now

Merlinwe have a plug-in that just sweeps the podcast for problematic things max is going to make us cancel it on a thursday yeah it's a good compressor plugin it's fun because first there's the part where we beg him literally beg him not to talk about something because he's going to want to cut it out and then he goes way way way deep into it and they say you know you're gonna make alex cut

Maxthat out and then i'm not gonna i'm not gonna cut anything we're not gonna cut anything out of this episode and if people want to get mad at me they can yeah if people listen here's my stance if people want to get mad at me they can but just know that you're attacking beloved female video game critic and important figure nita sarkeesian and you know you should just think twice about

Merlinwhether that's what you want to do you guys you guys think it's so easy to be a woke twitter ally but then you attack max and by extension nita oh lord yeah that's how that works yeah it's fun to

Speaker Abe a human shield i'm more than used to being the feminist killjoy i was literally because i didn't like mad max fury road i was literally the only feminist that didn't like it and so i was invited to be the feminist killjoy on panels where everyone else on the panel was like, I loved it. It's the best thing ever. Oh my God. And I was like, it's not good.

MaxNo, she's got a robot arm and kills with impunity.

Speaker AOkay.

MaxI know, right? Oh my God.

AlexWell, you guys don't like movies. No, I know that this was my one thing where people are like, oh, Alex finally disagrees with Anita Sarkeesian over Mad Max. But I don't think it was a feminist film, but I do think it was a good movie. And like you're saying-

Speaker AI thought it was like a fucking video game. You go through checkpoints and then you got to turn around and go back to the beginning.

MaxIt wasn't even a video game. It was a cut scene with quick actions. It was just a long cut scene.

AlexI liked Heavy Rain.

Speaker AWhat can I tell you?

MaxOh, my God, Alex. I'm sorry.

Speaker AOkay, you just crossed the line. I know. I'm sorry. That's it. I'm done.

MaxI'm leaving. It just occurred to me that we should probably play Detroit on this podcast.

Speaker AOh, God.

AlexOh, boy. I'm glad I'm not a regular I was I was so young you guys it's not an excuse no I was well but that's no that's fair but there's so much danger in calling something like I I'm so happy like for for me seeing Star Wars was uh The Force Awakens like I there are many cinematic things I can't defend about that film and I I still love it and I still just my heart just bursts every time I see it and I don't think that it's a feminist act for me to see it but yeah I am excited to like if I

have kids to take them to see that and I I don't know the whole Wonder Woman thing is I just it was

Speaker Aso bad there's a difference between like okay we gotta remember that feminism is a political movement yeah when did the political social economic movement it's not like it's not like a color it's not a genre a movie can have feminist values but a movie can also just have good

Merlinrepresentations or you know what i mean like it just there also seems like it seems like um and uh it seems mind if i explain feminism to you please it seems to me that like one aspect of what has historically made feminism as against just straight up equality interesting is it is philosophically more sophisticated than just saying, oh, we should all be equal in a system that's broken. I've always taken feminism to mean that, no, we're seeking a bigger vision of the world that isn't just about being equal in a man's system. And I think one thing that

makes feminism so interesting and lively is that it is necessarily confrontational. It doesn't feel like there's an end point where we say, okay, we're done with this, let's move on to the next thing. And any kind of feminism that makes 50% of the people in the room just smile wanly may not be feminism here's your thing you might be a feminist no but like you know i'm saying like there's something necessarily confrontational about it it's always pushing

Speaker Aalways pushing the needle on what needs to change but that's only because like shit sucks and it hasn't stopped sucking right so like i and it's so to say if you you believe in equal rights between men and women you're a feminist is is reductive and i don't and i i've caught myself doing that in certain situations because I'm like trying to reach people where they're at. But that's not how I would define it. And that's not how I think about it either, because feminism has always been about seeing

Merlinthe humanity in all people. That's what I was trying to say. That's what I was trying to say. The idea of like a 19, like a women's lib idea of, OK, well, in this same corporate system where women are systematically not allowed to advance, where they are undermined at every point and sexually harassed in the workplace, we want to be paid the same as the men. That ain't feminism in my book. That is, you could call that equality. You call it equal rights. You could really, what you're calling it is separate but equal in some ways, which is far from actual equality.

Speaker AWait, you're saying like being harassed but being paid the same is, sorry, I missed the first half of that.

MerlinI'm saying that when I was coming up, no, no, it wasn't until college and some gender classes and learning a little bit from people who were way smarter than me that I thought feminism, women's lib, and equality all meant the same thing. And I came to, at least from my vantage point, see those as very different. I'm saying that the idea of quote unquote equality in a system that is necessarily unequal, that doesn't feel like feminism to me. That feels like a very kind of watered down, like first wave idea of like how you get a foot in the door. What I've always admired about feminism, as I understand it, is that it's actually it's what the Democrats don't have.

It's a vision for something bigger than just tweaking the system that we have right now, that there's something we could put in place that would be better for everybody involved.

Speaker AIt is about equality, like at the end of the day. But I think the reason I think that's reductive is because it doesn't take into account power. Yes.

MerlinAnd that we have to move any of these load bearing walls around.

Speaker Aand that's why like the this is this is an older this is a much older analysis of feminism but like you know like and i'm i'm gonna say radical feminism to mean um challenging systems not turfs because fuck not the moth taking over the term radical um and turfs are trans exclusionary quote-unquote radical feminists we call them mothmen yeah they're the mothmen they can fucking um but but so like liberal feminine like so these old school terms liberal feminist is ones who

believe who work through the system so they're the ones who think that just having like women in the fortune 500 ceos is like success that having a female president is success like we are we are hitting it we're doing it and this is feminism right radical feminists say nah this entire system is the power the power imbalances reside with um patriarchy and white supremacy and etc etc right um and that we need to reimagine entirely what these power structures look like so just throwing women into existing repressive and oppressive power structures doesn't change

Merlinanything um and so so i think that's giving women half the board seats on uber is not going to on the face of it make it a better company for example a film that depicts a woman participating

Maxin violence i understand what if she's a robot well and well hold on hold on i i don't want i

Speaker Aalso don't want to get trapped into this place where it's like an either or it's just to say that like yes having half your board be women has been is like whatever if you want to believe these statistics is statistically proven to show that having more like more diverse voices actually makes your company better but what it doesn't do is it doesn't challenge capitalism and capitalism is an oppressive force that hurts women as well as many other people right so that's the difference is like yes we need to be doing both of these things but we can't we can't we can't forget

like the ultimate vision here is an equitable society where everyone has basic human rights and more than basic human rights if I you know whatever so that that's part of the difference here and so it is about equality but you can't remove power from that equation um right yeah this is the best day of my life except you're you're you're a walking zombie

MerlinI'm sorry Max is making you do your day job while you're here. I, as a work Twitter ally, had said to Max, how about we have our friend Anita on and let her do something fun instead of making her do her day job?

Speaker AWell, we're going to do both. We're going to do both. Because now we're going to talk about food, which makes me endlessly happy.

MerlinWe took a challenge.

MaxYeah, so this week was Anita's challenge. Anita, please tell us about the challenge we had this week.

Speaker AOkay, I'm sending you all a bunch of gifts so you can see my process. Oh, yes.

MerlinAnd we talked to Anita during last week's after show. We have a Patreon where we do an after show, a whole separate episode every week. And last week, so people are not going to be familiar with this challenge unless they're members. If they're jackals who are just suckling off of our teats for free, they're not going to know about what the challenge was.

AlexI broke that Patreon link. They can't see that.

MerlinHoly crap, you really did this.

Speaker Aof course i did it oh my god should i say what the challenge was please yes please this is

Maxincredible okay easily the most work anyone has ever done for any podcast any challenge on this

Alexpodcast anita has just sent us a tome oh my god of animations oh my gosh i just did it on my

MaxInstagram story and live in the photo.

Speaker AOkay. Enhance, enhance. My challenge was, okay, to make hummus without chickpeas. So I can't eat chickpeas. I probably shouldn't tell people that because now they're going to try to murder me with chickpeas. It's not. I'm not going to die. I'm not going to die from it. So it's fine.

And, but I, for years have been like, I should make an alternative hummus. I don't. And I never do. So when it came time to be on this wonderful challenge podcast, I was like, fuck it. Let's do this. So I made it with fava beans because that's what I've been wanting to try.

MerlinThis is so pretty.

Speaker AI can post these somewhere so you can share them if you want. They're not actually as pretty as everyone is saying they are. They're just gifts. Oh, I disagree.

MerlinWell, they're damn sight prettier than mine turned out. Oh, yeah. I made a rudimentary paste.

Speaker Awell well okay but here's the thing is i may like i can make a really good hummus so i'm middle eastern i grew up with this i took my mom's recipe and like changed it up to to my own tastes um but so we so the fava beans i made in the instapot and i've made beans in the instapot before and you don't have to soak them ahead of time because the instapot is a miraculous

Maxamazing device that you're making them from dry i'm making them from dry because i couldn't find

Speaker Aany fresh ones um it took us a miracle we didn't know how long you can make rice you can make rice in like 20 minutes with that thing it's nuts everyone should have an instapot i i'm i'm all about soft boiling eggs in the instapot now it's fucking great all right uh but so it took us a long time to figure out how long to cook the beans like it took forever because we kept putting it on for like 25 30 minutes and like it just they kept not being cooked enough so whatever the thing about fava beans is you also have to peel them this is a lot more work than like making did you do a

natural release or a manual release we did a natural release the first time and then i did a manual release the second time because i was like these still aren't fucking done yet and we

Merlinmight need to cook them for longer wait that's not my wife and i had a pot for six months and we still no i would still say that every time we use it and we still laugh we giggle like children every time we say it she's like oh you got the rice in yeah i got the rice in for 12 minutes She goes, are you going to do a natural release or are you going to do a manual release? So, you know what? I'm going to do 12 minutes. I'm going to do the white rice for 12 minutes. And then I'm just going to have it do really a natural release. But I'll do a manual release right at the end.

Speaker ACool. So, I was with a friend of mine who's a really good cook. And he just started. He roasted the cumin and then, like, mashed it in a mortar pestle. So, I was like, all right. Like, yeah. We're really doing this all the way.

MaxIt's the only way to fly.

Speaker AI know. But I would have been lazy and just used the ground cumin that I have in my house. and then whatever you cut a quarter like that i don't even know what cumin looks like before

Merlinit's powder i love cumin but i don't know what is it is it a nut like what's it come from

Speaker Aokay i wouldn't even know i was somewhere and i saw garlic growing and i didn't i like i know it's called garlic root but it never occurred to me that it was actually like a group did we talk about this already i feel like i just talked about this uh yeah we i don't who knows who knows how food happens how does food happen i don't fucking know so weird um anyway so then i just made it exactly like i would make hummus with chickpeas and it's just a it's a matter of like putting all the ingredients in and then tasting it and seeing if it was like if you want more more of anything

and i usually put i usually end up doubling everything um and then that was it i made it and i served it with some two different kinds of bread pita bread and now consistency consistency

MaxPolicywise, this looks about right. It looks like a normal hummus.

Speaker AIt does, except I will say it needed more water. It was a little thicker than I'd like, but I'd already scooped it out. I had the opposite problem.

MerlinSo, okay, let's peanut butter up. Who did and did not do this? I'm guessing neither of you did this. Yes. So I somewhat did the challenge. I did part. You both have. You have reasons to peanut butter out because you are in wine country making dick jokes and Alex is ill.

Maxso you both get would get a pass so so here's what i accomplished was i did so i start i want i've never made hummus before so i wanted to start by just making a chickpea hummus to like understand the process a little bit so then when i started playing with wacky ingredients i could tell what to do to make it good and that is as far as i got because i could not successfully make a good hummus like no like i've heard that i've heard that making really good homemade hummus is like way better than store-bought and nothing i made so easy to make though where did you go wrong I honestly don't know so I did from dry with chickpeas and it turned into a gum like it just

it just it just seized up on me and it was very unappetizing and not like you couldn't cook the chickpeas properly or you couldn't I don't know I don't know what I did so I did chickpeas from dry in the instapot and they tasted fine they tasted like cooked chickpeas to me but you did that yeah but I just could not nail but it was before I left but I could not nail the finished hummus product and i don't know maybe that maybe next time i visit i'm gonna have to teach you how to do this okay yeah i i think the issue was that i wasn't you're supposed to save the p the pee

Merlinwater i don't pee pee water it's a starchy obviously you don't cook very much you need a

Maxnatural release is what you need i don't i just i don't use it's a starchy deposit left over from cooking the chickpeas and you're supposed to feed that back into the hummus right did i do that wrong i i don't do that did you read that somewhere your people eat every part of the chickpea

Speaker Ai don't know if that would affect it or not are there different styles of hummus to like different you know cultures and nationalities i mean i kind of feel like it's pretty consistent in my experience i feel like i think of it as an israeli dish it is hummus is a generally a broad middle eastern thing like every culture has it and like there's only what five or six ingredients in it and then you just adjust it accordingly so my mom makes her hummus really light she uses a lot more water than than oil i don't like mine that light and i like mine with a lot more garlic

so like it yeah you just do variations on the ingredients but it's ultimately the same thing

Maxunless you unless people put some weird ass shit in it uh for what it's worth uh i saw a friend of the show matt text uh send a tweet to kenji lopez alt from the food lab and said kenji if i wanted to make hummus without chickpeas what would you recommend and i think he said lima beans so that was my first that was where i was going to start investigating you could do like white beans too

Merlinprobably that's what i did that's what i did my consistency came out terrible but it tastes amazing what was i doubled uh so i basically followed an internet recipe uh so i did um i I started out with the 15-ounce can of beans. Sorry. Cannellini? White beans?

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinI doubled the amount of lemon. I doubled the amount of garlic. I did not put cumin in. Let's see. I did basically two garlic cloves, two cups of olive oil, two cups – not cups. I'm sorry. Two tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of tahini, the two garlic cloves. I think I put too much extra water in that it didn't need. and then we just did it up in one of those costly blenders my wife uses.

Like I say, it came out a little bit soupy. Wait, hold on.

Speaker AWhat did you mix it in?

MerlinLike a Vitamix kind of blender?

Speaker AOh, yeah. No, you have to use a food processor.

MerlinYou have to use the spinny blade boy.

Speaker AYou have to use a food processor to make it.

MerlinYou think it makes it too thin?

Speaker AI don't actually know the difference, but I know that you have to do it in a food processor or else the consistency will be entirely wrong. So that's probably where you messed up.

MerlinI will try this again because the flavor, we made it this morning. I mostly made it, but then my wife helped me out because I'm not familiar with the blender. I don't blend. You made it this morning. Do you have a Spinny Blade Boy? We recorded at 9 a.m. She's got a Cuisinart handheld for natural release.

MaxNo, that's not. You need a real Cuisinart. Merlin, what do you do when you have to process a ton of onions? Postmates?

Speaker AYeah.

MaxOr DoorDash.

MerlinHow do you shred 12 potatoes? yeah yeah um that is that's like i don't know that's like asking a fern why it doesn't have

Speaker Aa driver's license that just doesn't come up in my house oh boy i i hear that we're not processing

Maxfood at scale i would say i would say that the the cuisnard food processor my god is like one of the top kitchen things like i use it i use it all the time oh we have so many ding guy right now though we have so many there's gotta be something there must be something you can get rid of to get to work the Cuisinart food processor into the rotation.

Speaker AYou can also get one of the tiny little food processors that have the like three different attachments. Is that what you, that looks like you have one of those.

MerlinNot to be a concerned clown here, but that looks like what you've got, like a countertop spinny boy.

Speaker ANo, well, this one's not mine, but this was my friend's, which was weird. Mine, I have a big Cuisinart one, but you also can get one of those little ones where it has like the electric whisk and the immersion blender and the base that's a, that's a food processor so you don't have to have it takes up a bunch of counter space and

Merlinyou can still make it in that i'm just here to say it turned out i mean flavor wise i it makes me want to try it again because my the whole family really likes it's one of the rare foods that everybody in the family likes my daughter really likes it um so i think we'll try it again i wonder like but i did the canonically simplest lamest non-chickpea version what are in exploring this did you guys find other stuff uh that that appealed to you that you heard lima beans what are some other ones i saw beets and that scared me beets beets could be good my wife's a big beater

what about a pea puree because that you that is a thing that people make these millennials they're they're they're ruining guacamole alex did you make anything

Alexi'm sending it uh i'm sending it right now I don't know why you're laughing

MerlinBecause you sound like a very sick ant

Speaker AI don't even know what this is I did Oh gosh

AlexOh is that ramen I did a deconstructed

MerlinWhat the actual living fuck Is this a cup of

AlexI did a deconstructed hummus Instead of chickpeas I used peanuts and oh my god what is happening holy shit is that pretzels so that i didn't eat and then this is

Maxdog food this is we're straight up looking at dog food right now this looks like something that

Alexwould be rejected from denny's what is this and then instead of uh tahini i did i use i use sesame sticks because tahini is sesame right

Maxhave you guys ever seen those blogs that do a picture of a fast food advertisement so they show you the like flame grilled whopper and then they go to the restaurant they get one and they do a side-by-side that's what this looks like where Anita's is the one in the ad and then when you go to the restaurant to get the non chickpea hummus this is what you get it's a chunky i mean this

MerlinThis looks like prank food that a frat boy made out of things he got from a machine at a motel. What's the gravy, Alex? There's some sort of gravy in here.

AlexNo, no, no. Is that peanut butter? There's peanut butter. There's sesame sticks. And this week I've been eating a lot of ramen. Yes. So I sprinkled some ramen on top for texture.

MerlinOh.

MaxThat's a very soignee, you know, restaurant quality move, I think, putting the crumble. Yeah. You really elevated the flavor profile. I did, and now I'm going to use a pretzel. A lot of depth.

Speaker AI'm going to use a pretzel and dip it in and see how this goes. Wait, like right now? Yeah. Oh, don't eat that.

MaxHow old is it? Wait a minute. How old is this?

Speaker AHas it been sitting?

AlexFrom yesterday.

MerlinJust now. Yeah. She just made it. You know she just made it.

AlexI'm not. Nobody's here to tell me. All right. Hold on. Okay.

Maxremember the rule if you vomit we need to hear it oh god it's a special perk for our ten dollar subscribers and then she steps on your stamp collection

Alexit's really good it's a little too crunchy i may have over you know i i may do you out of curiosity

Merlindo you eat uh uncooked ramen noodles because my daughter loves them should we get her green noodles and she loves eating just crunchy green noodles oh my god she makes a garnish on top

Alexyeah so that's like what i've been i at one point did not have the energy to

Merlinto actually make the ramen oh no and maddie was we get the brand name green green noodle you can buy a big crate of them and she loves them and we make two packs for her and one of them she'll just put it's so bad she's sitting there playing zelda and she gets half a pack of ramen and a screens and junk food oh gosh so good alex you killed it with this one you deconstructed the

Alexshit i know i i think this if this was a quick fire challenge i would be in the top three

Maxi don't want to go home uh anita would you make this would you make this again was it was it a good enough recipe

Speaker Athat you would do it again okay oh yeah i was really good i really liked it a lot all right and i have i haven't had hummus in like five years so that was fucking rad oh hooray yeah um i will so a little advice for folks who would like to try this at home which i highly recommend and um and for merlin because you fucked this up apparently um a little bit just so start like do a baseline like start with just a couple like a little bit of everything taste it and then just add as you go and i'm not a cook like i'm not a very good cook overall like

i'm not someone who can just like whip things together in the kitchen but this is something that is very much like you're literally just throwing things in a food processor and mixing it up so just adding a little bit here and there if it's too thick add a little bit of water or oil if it's not flavorful enough like add some more cumin or salt and just see how it you know just

Merlintaste it as you go do you ever use sumac in cooking yes yes i'm a i'm a big fan of sumac sumac to me is a little like cumin in the sense that like just a tiny bit of this stuff will totally change a dish yeah it's super like sumac on rice oh my god yeah or like just on a on salad

Speaker Alike if you do like cucumbers and tomatoes and onions and just some sumac it's sort of like a

Merlinresponsible left-wing msg oh um oh lord

Show notes

Transcript

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Show notes

Transcript

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