92. Catholic Brain

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, read, I can tolerate anything but the outgroom.

MerlinI installed a new mailbox. I'm very excited about that. I got new Levi's coming today. Wait, wait, you switched your mail app? No, no. No, no. The physical mail slot on my garage. Like on your Mac?

Speaker AHuh? What?

MerlinLike on your Mac? Yes, like on my Mac, except for hard mail. I call it hard mail.

MaxWait, is that a thing I should be doing? Hard mail? How do I...

MerlinAre you going to pay for that? Hard mail? No, no, no. No, no. It's included. It's an included service. It's part of your package. I see. You get hard mail. And I also put a bag. I put a bag so that it catches my mail. It's got Velcro. And then I bought a staple gun so I could staple gun it to the garage. Now that catches my mail. I see. Hard mail. snail mail they call it hard mail I like hard mail

Speaker Bno

Merlindid you ever see my soft mail I'm sorry I never got your soft mail Alex

MaxMerlin speaking of soft mail there's a very upsetting thing that's been happening which is since you said that you were leaving Twitter I didn't say I was leaving since you said you were quitting Twitter in a rage to protest the racist white nationalist actions of CEO Jack Dorsey if I may quote you exactly quit your job sir now since you said that I'm getting DMs. People are DMing me about once a day.

MerlinI have begged you. I have begged you not to speak to anyone ever on my behalf.

MaxHave I begged you? I'm not speaking to them. They're speaking to me. They're just asking the question. They're just asking the question. And they DM me and they say, here's something that I think Merle would enjoy. And he's not on Twitter. Can you show us him?

Speaker AIt's like the, what is that? It's like the, it's like the lazy man's like, like, like at reply. And then Anita Sarkeesian still won't follow you just because of how you were born.

MerlinHow you were born, sir. Yeah, no, I appreciate people doing that. Yeah, it's real interesting. It's a little bit like, who was talking about this? Ah, ah, Alex, did you ever listen to that sad David Sedaris interview?

AlexYeah, it was weirder than I thought.

MerlinYeah, but wasn't it different than any David Sedaris interview you've ever heard? Yeah. He's changed. It's different. He's real wise now and, like, different. And I don't know. I really enjoyed it. It was so sad, but I really loved hearing him and hearing him gulping water while Terry Gross asked him very, very difficult questions. But he talks about he talks about when he quit drinking.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd he just basically stopped. He just stopped drinking. And he did that kind of successful stop drinking where you just decide to you. It isn't anything where you're like, it's not a big deal. You just say, OK, I'm not going to drink anymore. And the key to the not drinking anymore is that you don't drink anymore. That's the key. There's no program. You just stop drinking ever again. He talks about being at a wedding in England. Did you hear this part?

AlexYeah.

Merlinwas like oh come on governor you got to do the toast and he's like no thank you i have i have some sparkling water here i'm happy to do the toast like oh no that's not how it works you gotta have your alcohol in your cups and then the woman literally stuck her fingers in champagne and shoved her fingers into david sedaris's mouth which knowing what i know about david sedaris must have been pretty fucking wild and she cut she cut his she cut his mouth with her fingernail So it's funny to me that the whole point of my exercise is I just need to not see I don't even want to talk about it

I just need it out of my life for a little while. It's not that I'm mad, but you send me links You keep sending me links You say here's something somebody on the internet says you should look at on Twitter because you're not looking at

Speaker AWhat am I supposed to do not send it? I don't know. I mean that would be a failure of your commission now Merlin

MaxYes now as you know you've bravely decided to quit twitter to take this hand against the system remind me why did i quit well it's because you're protesting the awful the orange cheeto man who is a cruelly and coward cowardly allowed on the platform by you know his real name is drumph that i did know that a lot of people don't know his real name is drumph i heard that on the john

Speaker Aoliver program uh now look it's a banner and a band yay welcome to the resistance and you know

MaxMerlin, you know that I worry about you, and I worry, you know, I think I stay up at night. Thank you, man. And my mind is churning, and I think, I'm thinking about Merlin, and I'm like, is he missing out on what's going on on Twitter? You know, is he, do you see what I'm saying?

MerlinYeah, but willfully deciding to not look at Twitter.

MaxDoes he know he's not seeing Twitter? Is he missing all his friends? So this week, I did a little project, a little extracurricular project, and I approached all of your Twitter friends, and I said, would you, and I said, you know, Merlin.

MerlinI'm sorry, Max, real quick, did you do this on Twitter?

MaxNo, I didn't. And I did it in real life. And I said, you know, our friend Merlin has bravely quit Twitter to protest the racist policies of CEO Jack Dorsey. And I feel like he's missing all of his friends. And so I said, would you please record a tweet from Merlin into your phone and send it in? You did not. I did do that. You're not funning.

Speaker ADid you actually fucking do this?

MaxI did. And I now would like to present to you. Wait a minute.

Speaker AYou're saying I get bespoke audio Twitter? I now present to you Merlin's Twitter. Twitter.

Speaker BHi, Merlin. It's your old pal, Matt Howey here. As you may know, I quit Twitter too, and I'm here to support you in solidarity. Here's to not posting our free content on a white nationalist site. To be honest, I don't really feel like I'm missing your voice from the internet, since I get like three or four hours a week to a new podcast from you. So thanks, Merlin, for being a guiding star. and an all-around good egg. Is your card the two of hearts?

MerlinOh my God, I'm going to cry.

Speaker BBye. I swore I'd never say this to anyone publicly, but here we are. On Analog, a show I do with Mike Hurley, I talked for a long time about seeking out my white whale, about that one person on Twitter that I really wanted to follow me and just acknowledge that I exist. Oh no! And I think it's appropriate to say that that person was Merlin Mann. Oh my God, I died. And when he followed me, it genuinely made me extremely happy. may have made him pretty miserable, but it made me real happy. So thanks for that follow, Merlin, and thanks for all the funny things you've done all over the place,

including Twitter. Your pal, Casey.

AlexToday I had a farm-fresh egg omelet with mixed field greens, heirloom tomatoes, sprinkled with pink fleur de sel, with a trio of sausage de petite déjeuner sliced diagonally. Hashtag, what's tip eating.

Speaker BI know about so many amazing people because of you. Most notably, John Roderick and John Syracuse, and most recently, Max Temkin and Alex Cox. You've also inspired me to make a podcast, which is the most fun work-related thing that I do on a regular basis. Thanks. The solstice grind is killing me. I'd ignore it, but the post-war mind progression has slowed me down to the point where I'm still 18 points below the light level cap. The solstice stupidity is actually my best option. Forsaken can't come soon enough. Pound sign, Destiny.

Hi, Merlin. It's me, your friend, Jen. I just wanted to tell you that I think you are so amazing. You are the amazing combination of hilarious and kind. And you make the internet a much happier place. I miss you on Twitter, but I think it is extremely cool that you are taking care of yourself. And more people should follow your example. Not just in this, but in basically everything. You make Max and Alex so happy every week. And that makes me happy too. And to all you Dubai Friday Cucks out there, or whoever you call yourselves,

Check out FriendshipingPodcast.com if you know it's good for you. This is a threat. You have one day. I've had the pleasure of spending time with Merlin Mann a handful of times in the last seven years. And what's interesting about Merlin is every single time I feel like I'm in the presence of a superstar. And yet I feel like I'm there with my old pal Merlin Mann. And that's what makes Merlin so special. So thanks, Merlin, for all the stuff you do, especially due by Friday, because I love that podcast more than almost any other. So thanks.

Hey Alex, hey Max It's your old friend Todd Vaziri here I'm running around San Francisco Looking for Merlin Because since he's been off Twitter I've missed him so much Well, I'm not really running around Because of the broken leg I can't actually even walk right now But podcasting is the theater of the mind So let's just leave it at that So since he's been off Twitter I don't know who to have Parks and Recreation Gift Wars with I don't know who to talk about Full Media Blackout with I don't even know who to talk about if Amy Adams is a monster or not.

Deveat me, you coward! If you guys talk to Merlin, let him know that I'm still on Twitter. I still haven't given up on Twitter yet, just like I haven't given up on America. If Shop Objects was a Stephen King property, the season would end with the entire town on fire.

MerlinGod, I hate this keyboard.

Speaker BI can die right now. Holy shit, Max.

MerlinHoly shit. How do you get anything done doing such kindnesses for your friends? You guys, I can't believe, you know, I feel like what I did was, I don't overcomplicate it, but it was extremely brave of me. It was very brave of me to look down. I said, sir, your white nationalism will not stand. You're cowardice, sir. Your use of drumpf will not stand. And now, I don't know.

Speaker AAm I second guessing it? Should I be back on Twitter? I think. I'll tell you. I'll just tell you. Is this something you could do weekly is, I guess, the thing I'm asking. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't have anything else going on.

MaxBut, no, I'll tell you. I can just tell you from my perspective. I mean, since you and Matt left, I've been spending a lot less time on Twitter. I mean this in all seriousness. I've been spending a lot less time on Twitter.

Speaker BI didn't leave Twitter.

MaxSince you bravely quit.

Speaker BI'm hitting the desk.

MerlinI'm so misunderstood.

MaxI'm sorry, not that you left. Since you stopped using Twitter, since I know that you're not reading my tweets on Twitter, it's less fun for me to use. I have an update.

MerlinI have an update on that after you're done. But have you got the fear a little bit?

MaxWhat's the fear?

MerlinI don't know. I mean, have you got a nudge to think like maybe this isn't wholesome?

MaxOh, I know it's not holes. I know that it makes me, I know that every time I go on Twitter, it makes me miserable. And no, all I was going to say is I have come to real, since you took your break or didn't leave or whatever you did, where you stopped posting and reading Twitter or whatever you want to call that, I, it's less fun for me because you're not reading my tweets.

MerlinOh, I know that feeling.

MaxAnd it's just like, you know, it's like, I'm not saying like the only reason I'm on Twitter is to post funny things for Merlin, but it takes, it's like, you know, it's like 30% less fun.

Merlinthat's a big part of what you do though when you make anything this is uh an old thing of mine but like i feel like um oh what did what did stephen king call it my ideal reader right he's in that case it's his wife uh i think tabitha and she uh she's his first reader and his ideal reader and he writes for her and hopes everybody else likes it too so i i i definitely know that feeling but in the age of muting it's hard to even know who sees your stuff you know what i mean it's are you saying you muted me me no no and i love your card game i play it every night that was so funny you

made my whole family laugh so fucking hard i didn't notice you sent us a picture of something

Maxand i saw that cards against humanity there was some some stuff stacked under it so i was just wondering every night when you play the game do you get it out from under all that stuff and then

Merlinyou put it back it seems like i don't know honey go brush your teeth we'll play an hour of cards which is a game you play and then alex zoomed in on the fourth doctor's head and it was real creepy I'm never sending you guys a photo again

AlexWhy would you just leave the head though

MerlinHe's got two heads and two hearts He's a time lord You can't see two hearts because he's an action figure

Speaker AYou have to show the other toys what happens That's the price of Oh it's like a Pinochet type situation Like who wants to get on a helicopter Yeah so that's the price of disloyalty Don't make the noise What did that used to mean

AlexI don't know No comment

Merlinwe started watching the top scallop season of top chef again oh that the top wait is that top chef

Speaker Amasters no no no it's all-stars with um what's the guy's name the italian guy but oh okay i'm thinking of a top chef all-stars oh you know that's a really good show they take it very very

Merlinseriously. It's taken very seriously. But I took you off your topic. Max, thank you so much for bringing all those wonderful people to my doorstep. I do have a quick update. Yes, please. So what I've allowed myself to do is on one device, in one app, I'm logged in. So Chrome on my iPad. And I started looking at it a few times a day. And it's not as terrible as I remember, but it's not nice enough to make me want to come back.

But what was it that precipitated it? Oh, I saw I was hearing news on Google News about Sarah Huckabee Sanders. A lot of people forget the Huckabee part. She was doing a press call. It's Barack Hussein Obama. And so I went and dove into political Twitter for just a minute. I'd rather be a Hussein than a Huckabee. She's really something, isn't she? Her defense of the president. Are we allowed to say that?

MaxWhat's that? Are we allowed to criticize her?

MerlinShe's something. I'm just asking the question.

MaxYeah. Okay. I'm just saying I wouldn't attack a woman, but that's just me. Oh, my God. You're right. You know what?

MerlinYou just schooled me.

MaxYeah.

MerlinOh, my God. You're right.

MaxListen, you know, it takes all kinds.

MerlinSmokey eye. And so I dove into that because she was apparently, supposedly, she was defending the president's, you know, he loves to call people dogs. Like he doesn't understand what dogs are, how dogs do. Oh, yes. So he was calling the lady from TV. You know that's not how dogs do. And so he was calling a lady from TV a dog, and she, Miss Huckabee Sanders, was defending that by saying, oh, come on, he's nasty to lots of people.

Oh, it's racist. You know what? You know what it is? That is casual racism toward dog ladies. To single her out for that treatment. No, he treats everybody that terribly. How even could you say that? And also, she's a woman. so the hell of a time you know I popped in a little bit saw some things um I saw that photo of you and your dad which is maybe one of the great things of all time isn't that a good photo

Speaker Athat is that his idea um no so we were we went out

Merlinto dinner for my dad's birthday tell people about this photo because tell people if somebody god forbid has muted you on twitter tell people what this photo is because it's maybe the best I don't think anyone's muted me no you know you get a pop up notification

Speaker AUm, uh, it's, it's a picture of me and my dad from when I was a kid and we're dressed the same. So it's very cute. You're sitting on his lap and you have a mustache. Yeah. So it's, so 1990.

MerlinSo you're like, you're pretty little.

MaxBasically I was out to dinner with my dad and he had mentioned, and it was for his birthday dinner and he was like, Hey, I, I did a, I adopted a classroom on a donors choose, which is kind of like a Kickstarter for teachers and you know, just a local classroom. And I want to fund this project. And he's like, would you tweet about it? So people will, will help fund the project. and I was like yeah I should put a picture of us like a childhood picture or something in there so it's like cute so people hit the retweet button and you know you gotta go window dressing in there you know and I was like do you have that picture of when I

was a kid because we used to have this like in the house where we're wearing the sweaters and he had it on his phone ready to go

Merlinyou there's such a resemblance oh my gosh it's remarkable you look so much like your dad

MaxI'm seeing my dad today. I'm going with Dr. Professor Temkin to go to a magic store. We're going to go look at magic tricks.

MerlinVoila. Hey, please tell Dr. Mr. Temkin I said hi.

MaxOkay, I will.

MerlinWell, that's enough of that warmth.

MaxAll right. Okay, so let me just make sure I have my notepad here. I just want to make sure I have all the right. I don't like to leave without my action items, Merlin. Okay. The meeting. Yeah, sure. Okay, so do not tell you when people DM me and say, Send this to Merlin.

MerlinCould you do them all in one? Checkbox number one. Do it like in a Google Doc or something that I can just look at once a week.

MaxOh, okay. Yeah, yeah. No, sure. Okay. I was actually looking for a way to add overhead to this. So, okay. So, if you do have a tweet from Merlin. You can also do it in Markdown. That'd be fine. Because, as you know, Merlin is boycotting Twitter. He's quit Twitter because of the racist policies of this terrible company. Thank you. And thank you for your service. So, please, if you have a tweet that you want to share with Merlin, just DM it or tweet it to me and I'll create some sort of spreadsheet system where I'll ingest all of the notes and organize them. And I'll share that with Merlin.

MerlinOkay.

MaxOkay. So do not share directly every tweet that people send, but do pass messages on to my dad.

MerlinOh, you know, that's a good question. I'm glad you asked. Yeah, that's all fine. You know, whatever works for you. I guess I could also follow you on Twitter and then I'd be able to see when people tweet at you about me. Would that be faster for you? That's good. You could build a little Twitter search. Alex, can I get a workflow that follows Max? Is that what I would do?

MaxMerlin, how about this? Okay, wait. All right, here we go. Because you've got to think about this, Merlin. How does it scale? How does it scale up? How do it scale up?

MerlinI want my 10x, yeah.

MaxNow, how about this? Now, what if we get Twitter out of the equation completely, right, as part of our heroic boycott? What if I just say, if you have a message from Merlin, you email me, right? Now, am I going to get a lot of emails? Absolutely. But here's the brilliant part. I'm going to forward all my email to you. You're going to deal with it. Okay, okay.

MerlinAnd then I could get a workflow that would automatically post that to Twitter, and I could follow that. Would that include the images, Alex? How would that work?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinWell, you're the one who likes workflow. I thought you were the work flowy.

AlexNo, no, no. I'm the work flowy in training.

MerlinOh.

AlexI don't know. I was out of the game for a while. Still use Dogmator. Now they pulled you back in. I know. I'll be damned.

MerlinYou know, whatever works for you, Max. I know. I assume you're busy. I don't know. You could. Whatever works for you.

MaxI have it set so that every time I get an email the lights in the house flash on and off three times just to keep me

Merlinupdated. I Love those. I love those Hugh labs things are literally like when it reaches exactly 63 degrees flash everything blue That's handy

MaxYou're gonna know when it's exactly 63 degrees. What are you gonna do? Yeah numbers. Yeah, I'm not gonna go through my life and not know when it's 63 degrees

MerlinI just you know what I appreciate all this this is super nice of you as my friends I just want to encourage everybody to be as brave as me and not doing something. Find the courage. You know, look into you and think about what Drumpf has done to you, that orange Cheeto pumpkin man. And I want you to find the bravery to do something that makes you feel better. For national, you know, speaking out, for the in-group.

MaxYou guys want to do the money zone?

MerlinYes, go there.

AlexWell, before that, Merlin, Merlin, can you hear any fans coming in through our end? There's no noise. There's never any fan noise.

MaxNo, it's sweltering. It is muggy and hot. It's a swamp in this room.

MerlinAlex, are you getting an enhanced interrogation, do you think? Is this one of those wet Guantanamo things? You get somebody wet and they sit in a little chair with a fan on them?

AlexSlowly, something's going to start dripping on my head in intervals that are totally random.

MaxIt's so muggy in this room.

AlexYeah, that's why the fans go on before and after. Yeah, but that's not how a fan works.

MaxIt's not like you just move hot air around. You have to condition the air.

AlexYes.

MaxWell there is conditioning The air conditioning is too loud so we turn that off And then we got the silent Dyson Fans that use science in some way To move the air around That's nice This is the compromise but you can't hear that on the microphone

AlexSure maybe we'll see Email Alex

MaxIf you can't hear it Wait a minute did you hear the Justin is getting the vasectomy Oh my fucking god That is one of the funniest things I've heard Recently on a podcast That killed me.

Speaker AIt was on the calendar. Some guys black out when I knew that.

MerlinAnd I love the video that's playing while he's waiting. Oh, boy. The only thing that would be worse than sitting in the waiting room to get your vasectomy consultation is to be forced to watch a looped video of how the procedure works. I don't need to hear the word Vas deference too often

MaxThat episode I mean this can't be our podcast They're just saying bits on other podcasts that are funnier than ours

MerlinBut that was one of the funniest things I've heard The Stacy's mom thing was very funny too When they tried to play Stacy's mom with minor chords And Justin couldn't do it He kept going to the major chords It was so funny

AlexShe passed this week What? No

MerlinYeah, Stacey's mom passed.

AlexNo, you're fucking with me. No, that's a fictional character, right?

MerlinStacey's mom dead.

Speaker AGoogle Stacey's mom dead.

MaxIs this like Macaulay Culkin dead? Like, you know, it happens every few years, but not really.

MerlinOh, oh wait. Oh, this is your fake news. Okay.

AlexOkay. Okay.

MaxFucking called it.

MerlinStacey's mom dead.

MaxMerlin, remember that time that you read the story about the diarrhea in the strip club and it turned out to be fake news and you didn't look at it carefully enough? The diarrhea in the strip.

MerlinOh, that was my fault. I'm sorry. That was my fault. I should have read that more carefully

Speaker AIt's that all over again Oh my god This is the problem

MaxI'm actually looking at the report here It starts off World renowned MILF Stacy's mom Made famous by rock band Wait a minute Wait a minute Hang on now Hang on now

Speaker AI want that on a coffee cup I'm getting a little brain wave here What are you getting?

MerlinAre you getting a radiation vibe? Did I say that right?

Speaker ARed Dragon Tattoo?

MaxAnd I have a new Twitter bio.

Speaker AOkay. I'm sorry to hear you quit your job at Hellman's. I was sorry to hear that. It was causing real...

MaxSo did I talk about this on the podcast? That I made my Twitter bio CEO of the Jansport Backpack Corporation.

MerlinAnd then you found the absolute unit.

MaxYeah. Oh, yeah. That was funny. But for a week, whenever I would tweet something about politics, people would retweet it with a little arrow going... Oh, the arrow. CEO of the Jansport backpack company everyone like he's like hates Trump or whatever so I changed it because I didn't want to get in trouble with Jansport and I changed it to CEO of the Hellman's Mayonnaise Corporation and the same thing still happened people would be like if I would tweet something so I did one yesterday

MerlinI bet it's Laura Rosen, Laura Rosen is big on the arrow

Maxshe just retweeted anything it was like random like hashtag resistance like wine moms would retweet me and be like here everyone it's an authority here the ceo of the hellman's mayonnaise corporation hates trump but so yesterday i did a tweet that was admittedly admittedly ill-advised when there was like so there was this omerosa thing going around where she's like yeah there's a tape of trump saying the n-word and i think that stuff is so fucking funny how everyone cnn breaks in with the breaking

Speaker Anews a tape may exist from 2016 it's from it's from like two years ago yeah but okay but let's Let's say he says it live on TV just for the sake of argument.

AlexWhat do you think his supporters are going to be?

MaxThey're going to go, my lord. Oh, my goodness. This is a bridge too far.

MerlinThis changes everything. He doesn't like the black.

MaxSo I did a tweet yesterday that said, if the tape is true and Trump used the N-word, I'm probably not voting for him again.

MerlinYou got wine moms. You were lousy with wine moms.

MaxI was crawling with wine mounds. Boy, did that. There was a fucking professor who came after me.

AlexNo.

MaxWhat is that? That person's username has the word professor in it.

AlexWait, hold on, hold on. Because in her bio, she says instructor. But her Twitter username. Well, yeah, but I could be Professor Cox and like no one. Oh, you're saying.

MerlinYeah, OK.

AlexProfessor.

MerlinOh, she does have a professor name.

Speaker ALike a surname.

AlexYeah.

MaxSo this person says to me, okay, but we already know he's talking about grabbing women by their private parts. It was on tape. Why did you vote for him then? And I was like, what am I supposed to – I was like, what are my options here? I was like going through my head of like, okay, let's make a plan.

MerlinThere's two ways this evening can go. Which one will I choose?

MaxYeah. So I was like, I could be like, I'm joking. Or I was like, what do I do here? And so I just replied, fake news. just to see what happened because i do think that's what a trump person would say and then she goes lol yeah but you'll believe omarosa okay whatever pulls you back from the dark side and then i was just like yeah very reputable i've seen her on tv i think that ended it that was my whole day yesterday oh and then that was my whole day yesterday and then we somehow we i we invited or so i guess like a

couple months ago the whole the company of instagram emailed us and they're like can we come to your office for a comedy show for like our our off-site like team building thing in chicago and they asked me in like i don't know i don't know when it was it was a few months ago and i was like and they were like can we come in august and i was like yeah i'll probably like to do that in august and uh kevin reminded me on monday that we had instagram coming to do a 3 p.m to do a comedy show in the awesome totally sober comedy show as part of their corporate team building exercise and i was like what was i thinking who was the co-host of that cleveland anderson from the

from the lincoln lodge yeah i love him yeah yeah we did it it didn't um it didn't uh it didn't bomb we didn't bomb like we got laughs but it didn't wasn't good it wasn't a good show what do you expect what do you think it's like everyone's there with their co-workers they're not gonna laugh at it you're not gonna like really let your guard down you know comedy you have to like that's why comedy works in the dark I don't think I seriously I don't think people understand this you people don't laugh if you're not in the dark because you need the anonymity of the dark to really be able to let your

guard down and like really let a laugh rip in like it also helps to have chosen

Merlinwillfully to be at a comedy show because you like to laugh at comedy in the dark that's a long way from this is compulsory and it's gonna build the team for you to laugh. That's a tough draw.

MaxYeah, and then we tried to put a hat on it. We tried to, you know, it was like, hey, welcome to your compulsory team building event or whatever. And boy, did they not like those jokes. So we just didn't.

MerlinSome comedy's not funny.

MaxIt was a hard show. It was a challenging show. But anyway, we always do these shows at fucking convention halls, like when we try and do our panel. And big fluorescent lights, those lights that really make your butthole clench up when you go in the room. That is not comedy lighting. You know, you got nowhere to hide in those lights.

It's not funny lighting. No, no. About 50% or more of comedy is, are there drinks and are the lights off?

MerlinDrinks and lighting. Yeah, yeah. No, that's heavy. And it's also, I mean, I don't go to comedy shows like I used to. I used to, you know, when people come through town, I'd go see comedy, Mitch Hedberg or Mark Maron or whatever. And, you know, it helps.

MaxNot Hannah Gadsby, huh? Interesting.

AlexNot who? Keep going. Keep going, Merlin. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

MerlinYou ever notice that every TED Talk begins and ends with thunderous applause? Have you ever really thought about that? Every single TED Talk begins with warm ideas for thinking.

Speaker BAnd then like, ah!

MerlinIt's just as rad as then somebody goes, okay, turns out, neckties. And you're like, okay, great. And then at the end it's like, ah! Like, it's a fucking mosaic event. Like he's come out with Moses has come out with the tablets and shit is fucking real. Turns out there's a 14th commandment.

MaxWell, they have they have Phil Spector producing those things. How's that? They have Phil Spector producing those things.

Speaker AIs that right? I didn't know that. Yeah, that's smart.

MerlinWell, the sound they called it. Yep.

AlexComedy lighting. Do you think that sometimes those are faked with the TED? I mean, literally, for YouTube, they amplify the clapping. I can tell you that there's...

MaxI'm almost positive. We know from doing our events, Alex, that you can really shape the perception of what's happening in a show or in a speech or something based on where the mics are placed and how they're mixed into the feed. And you can make it look like a politician is giving the greatest speech of his life or like he's completely bombing based on if the audience has mics or not. and uh that's like a kind of a political trick you'll see sometimes like no i know but some of

Alexand that's how like that's like across the board normally that you can tell that's what's happening in a ted talk but there was there's one i'll do it uh you know queen of shitty robots simone geert uh i liked her ted talk but it clearly wasn't it was like i'm gonna do a shtick and the room was silent the whole time no laughter nothing whatsoever and then i don't i mean i don't think that's a funny audience it's yeah no it was i don't know why they had her do one um but then at the end it just sounded so wrong like can i also add one thing here to notes i hope this is

Merlinthe right podcast you've probably certainly heard this this is another one of those podcasts that everybody should hear i think it's this 538 podcast called why the dean scream sounded so different on tv yes yeah and alex you need to hear this because it's all about mics yes and the peculiar qualities of different mics and hearing the dean scream from different sources there was peculiarity of i guess the diaphragm or the way that that mic works that made him sound

Speaker Ainsane it's the same it was like overdriven and compressed and it's the same thing where you know

Merlinalex jones the room noise was deafening he couldn't hear himself right he didn't know how loud

Maxhe sounded so i was not mike did him no service so i was i was too young to work on that campaign but i was i followed it very closely it was like my first campaign that i really like like fell in with and I have a lot of friends who worked on that campaign and one of the stories that they tell for the people who were there that night is they all thought that he crushed they thought they thought that is a historic that's gonna go down as one of the great political speeches that everyone in that room was fired up to was dialed up to an 11 to the point of the scream he was on

Merlina roll yeah with the way that he I mean that that was that was a great speech in the end with we're gonna go to them we're gonna go to it was all so good in In the room, it really sold, huh?

MaxYes.

AlexWell, if you listen to the rest of the audio, it does. Like, it was just a perfect storm of audio disasters that made it. Oh, God.

MaxThere are so many things on my stack here that I have to fucking look up. I actually have a great thing about this that relates to our assignment for today for the homework. Oh, good.

MerlinWe also have a new corner to introduce at some point.

MaxOh, right. The new bit. Yes. Okay. Hang on. It's not a bit. It's a corner. Okay.

MerlinIt's like a paper cut or a plane crash.

MaxOkay. Alex, edit all this awkward silence out while I log into my, where I authenticate with Amazon.

MerlinAlex and I will talk while you look for it. How's it going, buddy?

AlexWhoa. What was that noise? Who made that noise? That exhale just became booger. Who made that noise? And also with you.

They changed it, right? Oh, yes. And with your spirit. What? That's what you say. Instead of, and also with you, it's in with your spirit. Oh, that show really went off the rails, man. You think so? Oh, I mean, you know, I just.

MerlinEveryone ends with an indie rock song and her saying, fuck you, to the camera.

AlexYeah, I just, there's only so many. Fuck you, Ann Lydia. Like, there's only so many female castrations I can take in a month where I'm like, okay, enough.

MerlinThey gave Rory a big band-aid diaper.

AlexOh my God. That was so, oh, every, I, she's one of the few people I just cannot disconnect from a character that's previous.

MerlinAnd the unflattering super closeups where you can tell that she's in her thirties now.

AlexIt's like, so stop, stop.

MerlinDon't do that to Rory.

AlexExactly. It's like, oh God. She's so cute.

MerlinAnd she likes coffee, coffee, coffee. Like don't zoom in on her.

AlexDon't do that. Oh no. Don't, don't take her click.

MerlinYou know, Lane put a book out. Lane has a book out now.

AlexOh really? Huh.

MerlinYeah. Gilmore Girls Lane book.

AlexLaura Graham also has a book, which I have but have not read yet. Gilmore Girls Lane book. A lot of good books. 2018 has been a good year for books so far. I'm a book guy now.

MaxI have my bit. So this is from Clay Johnson's book, The Information Diet, which I think is very relevant to Merlin's Twitter fast and also Well, my brave statement. Your brave stance of boycotting Twitter and also our assigned reading. today. But this was a story that totally rung true to me, which is, so he was working on the, he was doing, I think, digital on the Dean campaign. He said, he writes, the week before the Iowa caucuses, I remember asking the campaign's pollster, Paul Ford, not that Paul Ford,

by how much we were going to win Iowa. His response was, we're not. John Kerry is going to win by 18 points. My jaw dropped. I wasn't sad or disappointed. I was mad at Paul and a little disappointed in him. How could he be such a traitor? Hadn't he seen the news? He was clearly incompetent. Any fool could see that we'd correctly leveraged the internet in Iowa and that this puppy was in the bag. Howard Dean would win Iowa and go on to beat George W. Bush.

Speaker ABe in the bag. But Paul was right and we were wrong.

MaxWell, that's more of the Mike Huckabee's son's bit, but I don't want to steal his bit.

Speaker BMy father stabbed a dog to a car.

MaxBut Paul was right and we were crazy. You know the rest of the story. Howard Dean lost the Iowa caucus by nearly 20 points and we go on to give a concession speech with a yell that became his defining moment. Only the political intelligentsia would remember his use of the web. The rest of the electorate remembers him for that terrible scream.

MerlinI remember I had friends who worked on that, too, and I think it was a big Drupal thing. There's a big Drupal.

MaxOh, yeah.

MerlinIt was like it was. But they rolled out. They rolled out a special version. I feel like Jeff Simmons might have worked on this, but basically they rolled out some kind of super scale version of Drupal that would allow them to have like this CMS site that everything would be on brand, everything would be the same, and be totally controllable and easy to use by tons of different people in different places, which seems really normal now, but I think it was a fairly huge deal in whatever that was, 2003.

MaxYeah, I remember the blogger for the campaign, Zephyr Teachout, now running for attorney general in New York. Cool name. Big New York political player. Anyway, the thing that I remember from this is he said, the morning after the caucuses where Dean gave that speech, our Burlington, Vermont offices were filled with more delusion. And one of my colleagues ran up to me as I walked into the office and said, Clay, did you see the governor's speech last night? It was awesome. He's totally back. We're going to win this thing.

But isn't that crazy? Like, like, I think about that little passage from from this book all the time, because, like, it's so funny, because, like, this doesn't the same thing repeat itself when you talk to people about Trump. And they're like, I hear people say this all the time of like, yeah, so and so is going to happen in two years or three years. Oh, Trump will be out of there before then. Like, what the fuck are you talking about?

MerlinYeah. I mean, I thought, I didn't think he'd last six months.

Speaker AI thought he'd quit. Well, you thought that recount was going to get him.

Speaker B500 bucks.

MaxAll right, Merlin, let's do the money corner, and then you have your new bitch. Down, down, down. You have your new bitch.

Speaker AWhat is it? The timeout corner? What is it? I want to tell you about pineapple box. All right. Well, listen, everybody. It's that time of the podcast. Oh, it's that time. It's time for the money zone. Oh, we're doing it.

MaxDig a dig a dig a money zone. It's that time of the podcast, everybody. Here's the deal. You've got money and we want your fucking money. You can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com to give us your money. For $5 a month, you join our Patreon. You become an official supporter of Dubai Friday. You're probably wondering, well, what's in it for me? I assume because at this point, I think if you haven't backed our podcast, you're essentially a selfish person. And so I assume that's what you're thinking. And here's what's in it for you is you get a whole second episode of the podcast every week. We do a whole after show and you get a little private RSS feed from Patreon that may or may not work. And then you'll email us for customer support and we'll say, sorry, we can't help you with your feed.

You have to email Patreon for that. Sorry. And then what else? And then at the end of the month, we are sending out a little. We have at the end of this month, at the end of this month, which is this calendar.

Speaker AAugust to 2018.

MaxAugust not to date the podcast, but Trump is still president. It is August 2018. At the end of this month, August, we are sending out a little care package in the mail with some delightful illustrations and art prints and treats for our $10 subscribers. So if you go all the way up to the Cox's Cox level, you will get a verified certified treat from Dubai Friday from me and Alex and Merlin. And you can go on.

MerlinWe're going to personally lick every one of them.

MaxYou can go on the, and you can use that to clone Merlin. That's your job.

Speaker AYou can make a little Merlin clone and get his organs. Go where you work and knock the prints out of your mouth.

MerlinAnd I think we... 2,200 more.

Speaker AI love my job.

Speaker BI better get another Diet Coke.

AlexOh, that reminds me.

Speaker BI chewed this one up real good.

AlexWell, okay. Now that we're talking about money, RX bars doesn't give us any money. And so I was eating one and I eat one of these every morning. And here's the thing with paper. It won't suddenly gush into your mouth in a strange way that has never happened before.

MaxWould you get a little liquid RX bar?

AlexYeah. And it wasn't like melted. It came from our, like the kitchen pantry. And I was like, oh. Your RX bar gushed in your mouth unexpectedly? It gushed multiple times. Like the dates like popped or something. I don't know. I thought they were dried. Anyway.

MaxIt specifically says on the front, no BS. No BS. It says that right on there. That's not supposed to happen. You've got a prank bar. Speaking of eight, that actually reminds me, speaking of the RX bars.

Speaker AAre you done with the money zone? Well, I've got one more request for people. Because people have got to know. You've got to tell them.

MerlinYou've got to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com, and we appreciate your support.

AlexAnd I think we can say that it is August 31st, midnight central time is the cutoff.

MaxYeah, 1159. Okay. I just want to specify for the record that when Merlin says that we appreciate your support, he's only speaking for himself. That's true. I'm very brave. Yeah. So, oh, so the Dubai, that reminded me of the RxBar. The Dubai Friday Discord got into our iTunes reviews this week. And they're, first of all, they're very funny. But most of them are, there was someone who very cruelly said that they don't like when Alex eats an RxBar on the podcast because it demonstrates disrespect for our listeners.

AlexExactly that.

MaxAnd that may be the top review for the podcast. and just as a favor to our listeners, if you do, I know that, I mean, if you're listening to this podcast.

Speaker APlease don't encourage them to do anything, please.

MaxBut listen, if you're listening to this podcast. You're just reminding them of things they can do. I know, but if you're listening to this podcast, I have to assume that you don't have a lot going on in your life. And if you could please just stop jerking off for 10 minutes and go on iTunes and write a nice review of our podcast, then people see it. Why don't you try cranking our hog? Yeah.

MerlinYou know what I'm saying? Get her to help us out a little bit.

MaxWe need to finish too. What else do people have going on? Go on iTunes and leave a nice review and tell just knock that one down the ranks a little bit that Alex eats in our X bar on the podcast.

AlexI think it's a feature, not a bug. I'm shocked at how few people are angry about my laugh or my voice. Oh my god, please stop talking about this. I mean, there's a few, but...

MaxOr are they upset about the vocal fry?

AlexOh, yeah, but normally on any other show I do that's the whole thing. good good job you droned out because you keep promoting things you do people are going to listen to it they're going to have remarks because i don't i don't do any

Merlinso anyway thanks for your support max is very grateful that you would take the time to help us out and give us your fucking money thank you very much here well one okay one one more

Alexbusinessy business thing people um it wasn't until last week we're like hey we're gonna send out more treats then maybe maybe like 10 people emailed like oh i never got my my poster and i feel really bad because nobody it's like oh you waited until now like we'll fix that we fix that for you uh and like nobody complained and i'm not used to people not complaining so thank you i'm gonna what about didn't you address somebody needing to update their address yeah it's different for everybody but like oh boy oh boy no but it's like five people it's it's i'm pretty sure it's

done. Email me. Thanks for listening to that.

MaxIt's some sort of crispy, upsetting. It's called a bark. What is that?

AlexIt is a bark thing. It's part of the confession corner. Well, we'll get to it later. All right.

MaxConfession corner. All right. End of the money zone. Merlin, tell us about your new bit, your hilarious new bit that you've engineered.

Speaker AThanks for framing that, buddy. Yep.

MerlinAlex, you want to go first? What is it? Can you explain it? Well, no. I just had an anecdote that I wanted to share from this morning that seemed kind of on brand. And then Alex said that she had a confession too. Do you want to go first? I'll confess.

AlexOkay, what's your confession?

Speaker ANo, Alex starts us off.

AlexOkay. You still eating your nuts? Well, there's something I've realized. Best deference? I have fairly regular bowel movements, but I realize that any podcast I record that isn't like if I'm just a guest somewhere, I always have to shit before that podcast. Like this one, no, it's fine.

MerlinIn my band, we used to call it a pre-show. Everybody would have to take a dump before we played.

AlexIs it like a nerves thing?

MerlinIt's a thing.

AlexNo, it's totally a thing. Oh, that's so strange.

MerlinEspecially if you had a lot of coffee and cigarettes like we used to do.

MaxIt's like how a bird, before a bird takes off in flight, they vacate their bowels.

Speaker ASo they're lighter and more agile in the air.

MerlinOr like a fawn. A fawn trying to run away might drop a duke.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOr leave a superintendent. Yeah.

AlexWell, I also, well, then things that aren't outside of my body. We said regular, Alex.

MerlinWhat do you call regular? Is that in composition or on a timetable?

AlexBoth. I would.

MerlinOkay.

AlexYeah.

MerlinDo you make a little sausage?

AlexDo you? Uh, I'm, I'm correct on the scale. What is it? It's called the director scale. What is it? The poop scale.

MerlinThe rectum scale. It's called.

AlexOh yeah. Yeah. What's it called?

MerlinThe, the Higgs boson. What's it called? The, uh, what's that scale called? Uh, poop scale.

AlexWomen don't shit. Ugh.

MerlinI got started with the bristle stool chart.

AlexBristle stool scale. That's it. Yep. Yep. i'm a tight four i'm a tight four do you i mean do you want to give it to give the timetable usually it's it's uh morning and then and then so when you say regular though you do it you do it once a day usually uh no two two two okay yeah yeah yeah um apparently three if there's

Merlinsomething unexpected if you get nervous you feel like you get nervous and then that communicates

Alexthat's that's how the body works you know it sends signals i when i'm nervous i throw up like I mean, honestly, I or if you eat a nut or eat something besides bread or paper Or paper.

That's the thing. Okay.

Speaker AI'm okay.

AlexI'm okay. I'm okay. Oh, boy.

MaxIs the confession corner we just is this where we just talk about

Alexabout poop no no no i'm so confused about what the bit is no uh that was just some that was some

Merlinso so there's a really first of all good story alex what's the story the story is you had an

Alexrx bar and then had to drop a duke no no no no that was it's out of the show it's all of the show this morning i went to get an rx bar i normally eat a eat a bar around 11 p.m a.m wow uh because you know you're supposed i don't know you're supposed to do the two hour thing with the, I don't know. But then I opened the thing and there was this bag called Bark Thins. Have you ever seen these, Max? The Bark Thins?

MaxI've seen them in the pantry.

AlexYes, so I was... Slide it over. What is this? I assumed that it was a healthy... I'm like, oh, Bark. It must be healthy. And I've seen it with almonds. Well, the packaging looks like medicine.

MerlinNo, it doesn't.

AlexIt looks like, you know, that kind of prescription.

MaxIt says almond. No, it doesn't. It says Bark Thins are a snackable sliver of dark chocolate paired with real simple ingredients for a completely original take on snacking. Wow, they've reinvented the snack. They should call it day food.

AlexComcast Business is built for business.

MerlinBark Thin Snacking Chocolate.

Speaker AIt's got soy lecithin in it and emulsifier.

MerlinSoy lecithin.

Speaker ALecithin.

MerlinI love that. Snacking chocolate. We've gotten drinking chocolate. I've never seen snacking chocolate. Gosh, who even would snack on chocolate? That's so weird. Fair trade, non-GMO.

AlexIt was like, oh, this is a healthy thing. Look it. Oh, there's almonds. There's one with almonds. There's one with peanuts. Oh, this is great. Then I started eating it, and this is just chocolate with pretzels inside of it. I've just been eating a candy, like a bag of candy bars.

MerlinIt's not prescription candy at all.

AlexNo.

MerlinOkay.

AlexSo I've been eating a bag of candy bars since 10 a.m. this morning. Yeah, it's just candy bars.

Speaker AIt's a healthy boy Wednesday. I can't believe you like dark chocolate. Doesn't it have too much flavor for you?

AlexWell, yes, but it's healthy. It's better for you. It's got the cacao. It's way better for you. Yeah.

MerlinWith that and a glass of wine, you'll live forever. Why do you think all those wine moms are drinking wine? It's their version of you. It's the Marin County version of Elon Musk.

AlexThis is just candy. Okay. Thank you. I feel better. Merlin, your confession.

MerlinMine's not that interesting now. It's not very funny. Okay, so I sent you guys. Go look at the image that I sent you. Where is that? Please. Where is this? It's in the super secret text channel. So as soon as I arrived at the office, so basically my daughter has been going through the stage where she's very into like, you know, a grilled cheese-ish sandwich. She's very into like paninis, panini. And so yesterday we were home together and I made her one and she thought it was okay.

But so I did not use the panini press. I used just the stovetop. So I arrived at the office this morning and as you can see in this text from my wife, she pulled out the panini press. She's going to really go for it. and um and we don't use it very much so she pulled it out and she sent me a text that says how it's done and uh she sent a picture of it i was like oh shit yeah you probably have it set wrong and i said oh yeah okay so you set the selector to griddle and you put it on high and i said i said the grill is for when it's open and i was like wait a minute no i just got this completely backwards i said stop i'm wrong you said it's a grill panini uh my bad i said god

that's bad interface the griddle is for when it's on hinge so grill panini is probably high so you know i just basically wanted to explain to her you know because i you know because obviously she was confused about how to use it and then that's her response i'm very confused about what went

Alexwrong and what you feel bad about read her response okay okay please read it aloud all right oh hold on uh madeline oh i wasn't asking you how to do it i was telling you how it's done as in i make I make a better peenie than you.

MaxOh my god.

AlexOh shit, I got poed. Dunk. I will most death be sharing this amazing example of mansplaining.

Speaker AOh no, sweetheart. Seven or eight texts. You misunderstood. I'm just saying I'm better than you. Merlin, did that vasectomy hurt your vas deferens? My vas deferens are flaring. They're super raw around the edges.

MerlinI can't finish.

AlexNo, you didn't even, you thought you were being hyperbolic by saying seven or eight texts. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven texts.

MerlinWhen food is involved for the child, you get involved. I have to go do my professional program.

AlexEleven texts explaining to your wife.

MerlinThat's after I arrived at the office at 8.38 a.m.

AlexOkay. 22 minutes before the start time. Okay, okay.

Speaker ASo anyways, good job, Madeline. Wait, this is so fucking funny.

MaxThis thread of you explaining it, grill is for when it's open and is governed by baby temperature settings. Oh, wait. Stop. I'm wrong. Set to grill dash panini. My bad. God, that's bad interface.

Griddle. Griddle, which I think you meant griddle. Griddle is for when it's unhinged. So grill panini is probably high. I like that you're working the logic of this out in the text thread.

Speaker AI'm looking at the photo from a distance trying to remember how to use this. God forsake.

Alexthing. Even I know how to use this. You put it on hot and you close

Merlinthe thing on it. No, I know what, from now on, I'm gonna stop using anything by the Cuisinart family. Oh. Because of my braveness.

Did you have a confession this week, Max? Did you do anything stupid

Maxand fucked up? Uh... I don't know how to work this into confession but i have a funny story from last night from a i did a community meeting for this um oh boy how do i tell the story without getting myself in trouble so i'm part of a a i feel a thursday edit coming i am a board member of a parks and rec type my board uh board in chicago that that is in charge of a pacific infrastructure and um uh i could probably just tell the story

Well, here we go. All right, Alex, drop a marker so Alex can edit this out easily.

AlexWait, are there numbers involved in the thing you're about to talk about? Numbers? Yes.

MaxWhat?

AlexOkay, then never mind. Go ahead.

MaxWhat are you talking about?

Alex606?

MaxYes.

AlexOkay.

MaxBut we don't call it that. We call it the Bloomingdale Trail.

AlexOh, my God. It's actually Cloud Gate.

MaxNo. No. No, excuse me. Bloomingdale. 606 is the Cloud Gate name. No, it's not. It is. We have the cool original name of what it is actually called by people which is the Bloomingdale Trail For a hundred years it was the Bloomingdale Trail. That's what it is Okay, well I'm on the board of this organization friends of the Bloomingdale Trail and it's kind of like the Highline and you know Highline in New York Merlin. It's like an elevated walking path. Yeah. Yeah

MerlinSo it's like, you know, whatever like tracks the trails kind of thing you turn something into something else and yes For stuff. Yes, and it's a park kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah

MaxSo it's three miles of elevated park that go through the north side of Chicago. And I'm on the Friends of the Park Committee. So we're the sort of governing body on this thing. And I help them with like political organizing and I don't know, projects and stuff. And we had a meeting last night. And one of the big controversial topics is on the eastern side of the trail, which is the sort of more developed. It's the sort of more gentrified.

I don't know. What would you call it? Like it's the rich side of the trail. there's this huge new development going up a six-story condo with all these little efficiency units in it that are going to cost a billion dollars each this is in like like uh liquor wicker park or like way in between like wicker and logan and uh this building they're building it right on the trail like right on it like like bright abutting up against it and what they want to do is build a little ramp that connects the trail to into their building because i assume because it'll help with the marketing of their building to be like it's connected to

the Bloomingdale Trail. And also, just for reference, there's no other buildings connected to this thing. Like, you have to get off at entrances and exits to the trail. And in exchange, well, what is the building giving us? They're offering us the one Achilles heel of this whole project, which is we have no public restrooms. Like, there's three miles of trail and no bathrooms. Oh, my gosh. So it's because there's no money. Who's going to clean them? Like, where does the bathroom supplies come from? Like, it's really.

MerlinIt's a huge issue here, too. But, I mean, like, that's, you know, for all kinds of reasons, including probably accessibility, there's all kinds of reasons that that's what fucks up a lot of stuff is the bathrooms.

MaxIt truly is. And so what people do is they get off the trail and they go to neighborhood businesses and they ask to use the bathrooms. And that also creates problems for those businesses because those are, you know, not every – I don't feel so bad if it's a Starbucks, but if it's like a little neighborhood gallery, like, they're not equipped to have hundreds of people come in every day and defile their – flush the Chicago Tribune down the toilet. so it's a it's actually a big problem and in the course of planning this thing over the years it was a very controversial issue and we were really fought hard as the as the friends of the trail organization to say like the park district needs to put some bathrooms and ultimately like we got

the trail but not the bathrooms that that was the deal so this building says well we're going to have two public restrooms they're going to be staffed and we're going to keep them clean and they're going to be right there on the trail and we'll have like some storage space for the organization and all these benefits and stuff. And in exchange, we just want basically a gate that connects our building to the trail so people from the trail can come and use the bathrooms. I missed a little bit. Is it a residential building? Yeah, yeah. It's like a condo building with high efficiency units.

MerlinOh, I get it. So now that gives them, I'm sorry, now I understand. So that gives them the opportunity to say, hey, we're near the 660 or whatever.

MaxWell, we call it the Bloomingdale Trail. It's not that they're near it. It's that their building has a little bridge that goes over the street that connects to the trail. So if you live there, you can take your bike. And it's a unique feature of that building. Correct. It's the only building in Chicago that connects to this thing. And as you can imagine, in our sort of Parks and Rec style meeting with the community last night, this was a very heated topic.

Speaker AMan, mayonnaise.

MaxMan, mayonnaise. Yeah. Yeah. What was the guy's like? What was he like?

Speaker AI lost my bird. He's going to fly away. There's no time. I made sun tea with the water. Yeah.

MaxSorry. sorry sorry okay so basically in our parks and rec style meeting last night like i was just i actually didn't do anything to embarrass myself i didn't say anything at all because i have to i have to choose what hill i'm going to die on in these situations but i don't know to me it's like i mean my my i'm curious i'm just i'm actually curious where you guys come down on this so let's let's take it for granted that this that this condo is going to be bad for the neighborhood oh here's the other funny thing is there's going to be like 100 units and like eight parking spots like you know that's a big thing in chicago now is they do these huge buildings with no parking

and it creates like infrastructure problems in the neighborhood because everyone i certainly couldn't foresee any problems from that yeah but anyway so let's just take it for granted that the building i think we can all agree this building is like bad for the neighborhood like the neighborhood would be way better off without this huge condo building right like we all i mean that's just like that this is but we can't take that for red no we could say that sure i can say that this is a terrible building yeah like lots of lots of it yeah everyone I think everyone on the in the in the meeting last night agreed that this building sucked and we wish that it wasn't being built and also it's six stories tall and they would be like by far the tallest building in the neighborhood so so the trade-off is you

Merlinagree for these these folks will pay for much-needed restroom facilities in return for a ramp that goes into their building and sort of a tacit a tacit thumbs up from the public sector that they're they're good citizens yeah well

Maxthey really want their little gate that connects to the trail. And I think we could probably, I think, so basically, basically, so where we came down as a board, we actually were unable to make a decision. I don't think we were able to make a decision because we debated for so long. Half the room was saying, we've spent years trying to get a public bathroom and this is the bathroom and we should, you know, I'm trying to, I want to explain the debate to you without revealing too much of my bias, but like some people are, you know, like, and then the other side. So half the people are saying, this building is going to destroy the neighborhood And I live here and it's going to decrease my quality of life and it's going to ruin the view of all these people in the neighborhood.

And we are opposed to this building in every way. And it absolutely has to be stopped. And the other half of the room, we're like, yeah, but the building is going to get built anyway. And we can either have the bathrooms or not.

MerlinYeah. OK.

MaxRight.

AlexYeah.

MaxWhere do you got?

Speaker AI see.

AlexYeah. That's the thing is I from what I understand about this building, it's already going to be built like this is not.

MaxHave you ever known a building in Chicago that didn't get like that?

AlexYou know what I mean? Like, I mean, no, that's because they were bankrupt. Yeah. You know what I mean? This one is like far in development. There's no like they have all their permits and bullshit. So this building is happening. And I can't imagine.

I would say like take take.

MaxBut also if the trail organization says we oppose in the strongest terms everything having to do this building and we're not going to budge an inch and we oppose everything. They're still going to build the building and it just won't have the gate that connects to the trail and it won't have bathrooms.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYeah, fairly classic sort of, I mean, public sector tradeoff where you're like, if it's going to happen anyway, I might as well get something out of it.

MaxRight. Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that it's like a there's like a I don't know, a deal with the devil or like a sellout factor. There's something unsavory about it. But also, like, are we not going to get the bath? Like, we're going to say no to bathrooms. Well, and that's the thing.

AlexI feel like you could have the leverage of being like, we hate you so much, but we're going to do this. And you need to make it like so brown and black people are not afraid to come and use your bathrooms.

MaxWe actually, it's interesting. We did talk about that. And we said they need to have, there's like a contract with the city basically to connect to the trail. And we were like, you're going to have to like put an inclusivity clause in there saying that you won't, there won't be any discrimination to me though. Like I was just thinking like, as we were going through this meeting, you know, there's, I don't know, 20 some people were in the theater in the office and you know, it's just, it was, it was talked for an hour about it back and forth, back and forth. Someone was like, what about the bathrooms? And someone else was like, what about the view?

AlexAnd then someone was like, but it's happening, right?

MaxAnd someone else was like, what about the bathrooms? and someone else was like but it's six stories tall and someone else was like but what about the bathrooms and so and then someone else would be like but we hate the development or whatever you know it was those back and forth back and forth and no one not me or the leader of the organization the chairperson of the organization no one was able to say because of the dynamics of our organization the kind of people we want to be no one was able to swing a gavel and be like okay everyone stop talking we're we're doing this now right and not even even if we decided okay we're going to war against this building and we're going to fucking we're going to fucking strap c4

to ourselves and sacrifice ourselves for the cause. That's actually a knife to your boot. Even if we said, this is it. Even if we said, this is the hill we're dying on, and we're going to war, and we're going to do everything in our power, and we're dedicating our lives from this moment forward to stopping this building, even then, we don't sort of lack the cohesion and the structure and the decision-making power to effectively really organize and put pressure on these people. I was sitting in this meeting, and I was thinking, man, isn't that the asymmetry of like society like it's so unfair that they're on their side they have millions of dollars and

there's a ceo who's probably kind of a half wit but he of this development company or contractor i don't know whoever's in charge right but that guy has the benefit of being able to give orders to an army and they have to do what he says because he controls like the purse strings and there's like a clear chain of command and then meanwhile we're right like there's no question that we're the we're right and we're the better organization but we're so hamstrung by our process we can't even decide if we want the bathrooms or not we can't like we don't even of the process to have the vote to make the decision to decide what to do next and so we'll never even whatever we decide we'll never like fully like like tool up and like go to war against

these people in in like an organized way because that's the asymmetry of like we're the side that cares about process and oh i i want to just make sure that you feel heard and i respect your viewpoint and let's hear some more about that just imagine how ungrateful you'd look right

Alexuh and someone who has the privilege of getting off of this i'm sorry the bloomingdale trail and and going to uh stopping at our office to use the restroom and then getting back on uh i don't like in okay in theoretically let's say the building just doesn't get built and it's like oh you know what you know what bloomingdale trail friends of bloomingdale trail we've grown five times its original size and we're not going to build this building.

Five years later, it's going to be... Like Andrew Breitbart, you die on the toilet.

MerlinWe lost a lot of good ones that way.

AlexAndrew Breitbart, Elvis, my grandfather. All the good ones go that way. This area of Chicago is being gentrified and those people who don't want the bathrooms weren't there fighting to not gentrify the neighborhood. It not only feels disingenuous, but it's like up on a high horse of like i can't afford to be in these buildings well i guess i don't i don't know it feels dumb i don't know should i have a strong opinion about this i feel very strongly i

Maxwant i have a strong i have a strong opinion about it which is i think that this is i think this is the dirty work of politics which is on the one level will we could we take over the city government and pass ordinances that prevent these kind of developments absolutely i i hope to that happens of my life like i i work on that kind of cause level in the stack yeah that's not the level of

Merlinthe stack that you're at you're at the level of there's a little bit of you know noblesse oblige from an apartment that's gonna let you have a bathroom that sounds otherwise impossible for reasons i don't totally understand but like there's just no other option for bathrooms

Maxwell because who's gonna do the bad who's gonna clean it right i'm seriously like that it's like it sounds easy it sounds easy until you go like well is that a full-time job or a part-time job and does that person get benefits and who administers their benefits is there an hr department Like what happens when they quit?

MerlinI mean, that doesn't make it about me, but shit dog, this is the San Francisco problem in a lot of ways. They've tried to do this in the past, tried to deal with this by like the sweeping under the rug version of this was, well, people just go to Starbucks. And Starbucks and whoever was for understandable reasons, not really into people like basically approximating a shower in their bathroom, understandably. And it's got real bad. And so, I don't know, 20 years ago, they introduced these, this French company introduced these Fred Flintstone-looking bathrooms that you could put ads on. And it was a complete fucking mess.

They have them deployed around the city. I mean, like maybe on four occasions, tourists have gone into them and been like, I'm so unhappy that I came into here. They drop in this bathroom. Like I said, it's very Fred Flintstone inside because basically every time you use it, I think it costs a quarter or something, whatever. But every time you use it, it cleans the entire bathroom, sprays water everywhere. But basically people were using it to shoot up, get a beach, and take a shower and just ruining it, just ruining these things completely every time. And they became exactly what you described.

Nobody seems to account for the maintenance. And another way we went through this was my kid's school where somebody wanted to buy a 3D printer. And I was like, okay, what's the budget for supplies and repair? And they're like, well, we just want to get a 3D printer. I'm like, it's the Polaroid model, man. You buy this thing for cheap, and then you're going to be paying for it in maintenance for the rest of your life. I'm sorry, I got off track. But it seems like a relatively small problem. Like, where is a tourist going to pee? Suddenly it turns into, guess what? This has affected the quality of life of 800,000 people because there aren't bathrooms.

MaxYeah. No, I just, I mean, I guess, yeah, when I was saying, like, I do feel strongly about it, it's like, I wish people had this much, it's just like, this is the tiniest issue, right? It's like a municipal issue of like, how do people take a shit on this on this cool trail that got built? And like now magnify that 10 times, you know, whatever, 10 million times or whatever of like this, you know, this microcosm playing out and a million different issues and a million different municipalities and states and federal issues. And it's like it's hard. It's really, really hard.

And it's like very thankless work to be the guy on the committee who's like, well, I need everyone to feel heard. And we have to reach a consensus. And I don't want to bully anyone. But we have to make a decision. You know, it's hard. It's fucking hard.

MerlinPeople either should have been invited or attended a much earlier, very different meeting in a different part of town. This is not the meeting where we get to adjudicate whether an apartment building is a good idea. There's nothing. We don't have any power over that.

AlexAnd can't you take it? You even said like there's going to be an inclusivity clause. And isn't there like some sort of contract like, OK, you need to have these bathrooms open for like 10 years or whatever, because I'm sure that they are not going to like they don't. do they know how they're just going to be completely destroyed? Not by like bad actors or whatever, but like Starbucks can't keep their bathrooms clean. And I, I don't know. Get the bathrooms.

Speaker AThat's how I feel. That's how I feel. It's like, should we, should we try to crowdfund this?

AlexOh Jesus. Go fund me. I'm asking. I'm just asking. I'm literally asking the question.

MerlinI'll put up a gram. Like let's, do you want to try and get bathrooms built publicly? Or is it just too much of a pain?

MaxWell, I'm just even going through.

MerlinOut of scope. It's out of scope.

MaxI'm just even going through like, well, here, let me get, let me open solver.

MerlinI just Googled cost of maintaining a public restroom. So that's in my history.

MaxAll right.

Speaker ASo how much do you think construction for the bathrooms would be? Should we say we, let's say. How many?

MerlinLike a two, like we're talking about maybe two to four unisex one door bathrooms.

MaxYeah.

MerlinLet's say that we use some space. $300,000.

MaxI don't think it will be that much. I'm going to say, I want to be generous here. So let's say we could do it. Let's say we get lots of stuff.

MerlinHow do you get the land?

MaxWell, we own the land. We have the land. So the city has the land. So let's say we could build the bathrooms for $50,000. And I'm assuming we get like all the plumbing fixtures donated because it's like a cool cause and stuff, right? So that's just like labor and installation and whatever. So $50,000. Now you've got to hire, let's just say we're going to hire one guy who maintains the bathroom. Like basically a janitor.

MerlinSomebody comes at 7 p.m. every night to make sure everything's reloaded.

MaxOh, boy. You think he could only come once a day?

MerlinNo, no, no, no. Well, no, you do like the parks. You could do like the parks and you put six rolls up at a time.

MaxI don't know about that, man.

MerlinYou think you need somebody more like coming in four times a day?

MaxI think you have a guy in a golf cart who's driving to the different spots with bathrooms, almost on a loop throughout the day, checking on them. But let's just say this guy. I'm already sad.

MerlinNever mind.

MaxWhat do you think this guy is making?

Merlin$15 an hour.

MaxOh, well, so he's hourly, not salaried? Oh, I don't know. I'm just guesstimating. Sure. So $15 an hour.

MerlinI'm just trying to get in the ballpark.

MaxYep, $15 an hour.

MerlinYeah, we can't afford it.

MaxYou're right. We can't afford it. Times 40 hours a week, times 52 weeks in the year. Let's say he's only, if he's hourly, he's only working 50 weeks a year. Could you get a honey bucket? Okay. Now, so now this guy, if he's working 40 hours a week, is he getting benefits?

Speaker AYeah, we should give him benefits.

MaxOkay. So what's healthcare is going to be?

Alex$3,000 a month.

MaxYeah. So let's just, let's say $3,000. Let's see what a honey bucket would cost. So $3,000 times 12 months. And now how many years do we want to commit to funding this in our Kickstarter?

AlexFive.

MaxOkay. So that whole total is... Honeybucket.

AlexWell, and Cards has actually bought, not bought Honeybuckets, but rented a similar thing for the Science March in Chicago.

MaxSo I think we've created a very low cost package here of we're building all these bathrooms for $50,000. We're only hiring one guy to take care of them. And he's only getting paid $15 an hour. So our Kickstarter to keep these bathrooms running for five years would be $600,000. That's a lot of money.

AlexThat's actually way less than I would have thought.

MaxWho is going to give six?

AlexNo, no, no. I know that it would not be a successful Kickstarter. It just seems less than I would have thought. But also, I still think that's very low for... That doesn't include repairs or anything.

MaxYeah. I mean, that is...

AlexIt's got to be at least a million a year, I feel like.

MaxLike, oh, I mean, I think we're forgetting. I already think we're forgetting things like we don't have cost of supply. We don't have toilet paper in here. We don't have like cleaning supplies. Yeah. Yeah.

MerlinYeah, right. Maybe we can cheer you guys up by going to the Honey Bucket official shop.

AlexNo. Okay. So I. Did you see the image, Alex?

MerlinSomeone owns the brand Honey Bucket. Yeah. Oh, no. Honey Bucket. That's our go-to local porta-potties. So you just saw that Alex's vision of hell is 30 portalets lined up in a row. And on front of it says official shop. Now you go in, you get a honey bucket hand sanitizer.

MaxOh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god, I want these t-shirts. I know. Oh my god, we're all getting honey bucket t-shirts. I'm getting them for all of us. Toilet tunes, road warrior.

AlexOnly if they're triple ply.

Speaker AWe need a honey bucket. Oh my god. I am abs... Holy shit. The thing is, when you go into the honey bucket, it's a great, great, great... Merlin, what are you a men's medium?

AlexMen's large? Oh, he's a small. Oh, really? Oh, you're tall. And Alex, what are you? Men's large. I'm old 5'9". I'm a large man. I'm getting us all official Honey Bucket logo.

MaxA large adult podcast. Look at this. I'm getting us all official Honey Bucket logo t-shirts. Honey Bucket. Honey Bucket. They got accessories.

MerlinThey got hats. Oh, they got a bear. Look at the little bear. They have a teddy bear. They have a little toilet. A toilet mug. I am wearing this t-shirt all the time. You need this, Alex. You love coffee.

AlexOh, boy. Oh, yeah, indeed.

MerlinWait, look. Look at the Honey Bucket mug. You drank out of the little toilet. The beauty part is that's not what the toilets look like the toilets are a hole into which one shits It's not an actual bowl

MaxThey saw honey bucket shoelaces, you know how whenever you leave a porta potty you You look down at your shoelaces and you're like boy. I'm happy that those went in there

Honey bucket oh I'm this is I cannot tell you how much an official honey bucket logo t-shirt is in my wheelhouse of t-shirts

Speaker BI just love saying Honey Bucket. Who do you work for?

MerlinI work over at Honey Bucket. Honey Bucket, is that like a diner? Well. Okay, challenge, challenge, challenge. We're running real long here. We are. Add to cart. Oh, man, I want this. What are you getting? What's in your cart? Leave it. Leave it. I'm going to close it. Leave it.

MaxWhat's in your cart? I just put a toilet in my plastic. Oh, the toilet mug?

Speaker Bhello you have a dill ball in your plastic

Alexoh good

Speaker Aokay I got us all an official Honey Bucket logo t-shirt no no no down here wow

MaxHoney Bucket Troll you've had a real fall for grace from your days in the public library

Merlinand then that other bit from last week oh I just like to help people remember they've got a toilet in their plastic Honey Bucket Honey Bucket See it's soft and it's almost like praying

Speaker AChallenge. All right. Merlin, it was your challenge this week. Digga, digga, digga. I'm tired.

MerlinDigga, digga, digga, digga. A long time ago, we put ourselves to the task of just kind of making a whole bunch of ideas for different challenges. We have an Excel spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet that Max does not currently look at. But a long time ago, there was an article that Max wanted everybody. We didn't even talk about Gorilla Dream. Damn it. I'll save it for the after show. Long time ago, Max suggested we all read an article by something called Slate Star Codex, The Joyful Reduction of Uncertainty. It is an essay from, ho, campers,

September 30th, 2014, written by Scott Alexander. And the title of the article is I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup That Was Assigned Reading for this week. And that's our main topic this week.

MaxWell, I have been aware of this article for a couple of years. and it might be my favorite piece of internet writing. I just think about it all the time. I think it's really smart. I don't know.

I guess I thought I'd have more to say about it in a moment.

MerlinThat's okay. We can keep it short. I think something has ruined my attention span and I had a lot of trouble following this as I read it in Instapaper. But I like the way it ends a lot. I am curious about what your takeaway is. Maybe one way to approach this, Alex, unless you have a different idea. One way to approach this is let's give an overview of what the article says and the nut of his kind of model that he's providing here. Would that be useful?

MaxYeah. So I think the main thought technology in this article that was really helpful for me is that he talks about America in terms of having a red tribe and a blue tribe. And then he also talks about a gray tribe, which I think has absolutely come to fruition. So he writes, this is Scott Alexander who writes this blog, writes, The red tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical and religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting USA is number one, and listening to country music.

The blue tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula. Got me. Drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it. Getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots. Marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America and listening to, quote, everything except country. there's also a partially formed attempt to spin off a gray tribe typified by libertarian political

beliefs docking style atheism vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up eating paleo drinking soylent calling in rides on uber reading lots of blogs calling american football sports ball getting conspicuously upset about the war on drugs in the nsa listening to filk what is filk i don't know but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the blue tribe most of the time. That's one of the most interesting parts of the whole essay to me. And that's one of the parts that's just, I don't know,

just sort of an interesting way to align your thinking around American political spectrums. And what's interesting to me is when he wrote this in 2014, gray tribe was like just a subset of blue tribe. Like they were just the weirdo techie kind of folks in blue tribe.

MerlinThe Tea Party happened at that point.

MaxYes, this was post Tea Party. But since this essay has been written, I think it's fairly clear that Gray Tribe has spun over to Red Tribe, at least in the Trump election, right? Like the whole internet kind of crowd and the sort of internet trolls and that whole sort of tech bro culture, they all became—

MerlinNo, Silicon Valley kind of like woke bros.

MaxYeah. They all became like Trump people. Now I think maybe it's more fractured, but I would say by and large they're probably Trump voters. So gray tribe is sort of interesting. There may be like a bellwether kind of a thing for like the mood of the country or whatever, like whichever side they're kind of leaning towards.

MerlinAlso, I've heard that phrase in-group and out-group used before. I'd never really given it much thought. Alex cut out the silence while I look for where he describes this. So at one point here, it's in lots of sections. Section two, if I had to define tolerance, it would be something like respecting kindness toward members of an out-group. And so describing here, we have a lot of people. Let's see. Well, he's basically saying an out group represents the people. How would you describe it, Max? It's the people who are not in your group. That's the other side.

MaxIt's the other. Yeah, it's others. Like, like it's, it's always, I think it's always, it's more or less always part of a group identity to have someone that you're not. Like, it's very hard to be part of a group and then not have like some external reference of, oh, well, we're defined by partially not being them. Yeah.

Speaker AYeah. But the others.

MaxThey took my boy.

MerlinThey pivocated something real good here. was that was that interstellar yeah yeah okay good good um um i see i don't know that was lost lost yeah oh you got a man on your boat you got a man on your boat that's what we used to say when my daughter made a duke in her diaper said oh no we got a man on the boat.

I want to avoid a very easy trap, which is saying that outgroups are about how different you are or how hostile you are. I don't think that's quite right. And then he goes into a probably slightly unnecessary explanation of compare the Nazis to the German Jews and the Japanese. And he's basically saying like, even though the Nazis and the Jews actually had more in common in a lot of ways.

Let's see. Meanwhile, the conflict between the Nazis and the German Jews, some of whom didn't even realize they were anything other than German until they check their grandparents' birth certificate is the stuff of history and nightmares. Any theory of outgroupishness that naively assumes the Nazis' natural outgroup is Japanese or Chinese people will be totally inadequate. And now you know this one's got me popping a nut. This isn't a weird exception. Freud spoke of the narcissism of small differences. I say narcissism, minor differences. And this is one of the greatest thought technologies of all time. Saying that, quote, it is precisely communities with adjoining territories and related to

each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other. So, you know, in this instance, I think you could think of it, if we're being unkind, we talk about how, see, I don't even know the names of current groups, but like, it's like you don't hate people outside of your musical interest.

You know, it's like more like the closer somebody gets to being exactly like you, the more distinctions that you find and the more reasons you find to really hate them. So he's taking a little twist and a turn and saying, in this case, if I consider myself like a real woke liberal or progressive, is the out group in this case really the Republican Party? Or is it people in my tribe that I have disagreements with? Isn't that part of the net?

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, nobody's going to read this whole thing, so we're going to have to describe it to them.

AlexIt's not like a hard read. I thought it was a fun read.

Speaker AYeah, I think he's a great writer. I love the ending.

AlexOne thing that's still, it's not a huge part of the whole thing, but he says that the most controversial thing he's ever written is, was just about when Osama bin Laden died, which I, like, so I was 10 when 9-11 happened and I was a freshman in college when he died, I guess. and I remember like hearing about it in a cab like over the radio and having this overwhelming feeling of like relief and then having an overwhelming feeling of guilt and I'm like

why do I why why like they this is not part of I don't know I just thought that was interesting and but some of the comments of like oh you're a monster how could you care about someone like how could you not like that's not very Kurt Vonnegut yeah it just felt so weird it's I I don't know there were some things that I didn't quite agree like those people are like they're part of what we call like call out wow call out culture now it's kind of

not representative of the blue tribe as a whole I think but I think he makes sort of like you're

Merlinsaying here i think he's he's sort of making a case if i read this right i read this quickly um but that he's making sort of a case to say that you are signaling with saying something like you know actually i'm kind of relieved that that chapter's over with you are signaling something that you you feel you're sending a signal of support to the other tribe by saying that yeah

Alexand it's like i'm a monster for like having this gut reaction of relief that like the boogeyman from my childhood is like out of the picture yeah yeah it's like okay we're done with this now

Merlinbecause you could yeah another way to do this i hate to split hairs but like another way to say this is like you know are you somebody who's watching the sudam hussein um was it no no no it was a qaddafi you ever seen the video of qaddafi no i couldn't no i couldn't it's rough it's real rough you saw parts of it in hyper normalization yeah but you know to be on the one hand the kind of person who's glad to see him like raped and killed on the streets versus as somebody who's like wow i'm kind of glad the specter of that is no longer hanging over our head and and you could choose to look at that from two different angles are you glorifying the death of

somebody who's who's just like just another muslim guy or are you like in a more long history way going like well i guess uh that that piece is over for now am i being too am i being too clever

Maxthere is that is that no isn't it also a little weird about bin laden like i always thought it was a little bit weird that like he that like isn't the whole thing about bin Laden that he like had no respect for like like natural law and like human lives and and like rule of law and civilization and all these values that we care about like why did we like murder him why didn't he have a trial why didn't he go to the Hague or you know what I mean mm-hmm I mean I know why he didn't go to the Hague because he would have he would have died in a jail

cell and they would have never gotten their shit together I mean I know why It's like convenient for the US to just be like we lost good Nazis that way

AlexI know it never I know you're joking but yeah, I'm not joking that's that's what happened. Yeah

MerlinI'd one of the guards to give him cyanide before we could hang him. Yeah

Speaker Aum

MaxI don't know. I mean you sort of saying though like I always said it was a It's just really those little dance nagging doubts in the back of my mind of like like is that was that the best thing that we just murdered him and like dumped his body in the ocean like no isn't that not agree isn't that not

Merlinhow it's supposed to like am i wrong i don't know i think things have really changed you guys because civility has gone away and we gotta really we gotta really fight for our fight for our side you guys we can't we may have to use some of the the maneuvers of the other side to

Alexwin this all right we're doing this again punch some nazis dig dug dig dug one of the things that I thought it rather it was like oh it was like reverse bearing delete like he he kind of busted his nut out early with in part one um he said there's a lot of people who say I forgive you when they mean no harm done and a lot of people who say that was unforgivable when they mean that was genuinely really bad whether or not forgiveness is right is a complicated topic that I don't want to get into blah blah blah um since forgiveness is generally considered a

virtue and one that many credit for having, I think it's fair to say you only earn the right to call yourself forgiving if you forgive things that genuinely hurt you. And that sort of, I, that's pretty, you disagree? No, no, no. I totally agree. And I wonder,

Merlinit sure makes you, it sure makes you see a lot of your own things you pat yourself on the back about

Alexin a different light. I mean, I definitely, again, so many of the stuff I, in terms of philosophy and politics i come at it from like i i just can't help but come at it from like a catholic brain and wondering if like what he refers to as the red tribe has become or rather i don't know so is the great tribe great child wow great tribe like would you still consider that like libertarians and like the base or uh i think no i just think it's it's a cultural

Maxit's like a cultural group it's a it's like reddit so reddit is great okay so then what's

Alexwhat's the tribe of like the the lazy white women who voted for no no no no no well yes the but the women who voted for trump like brown tribe i guess so well then is the red tribe more forgiving of things than the blue tribe like they're they think so i i know i well i'm just wondering and thinking like what the blue tribe's not forgiving at all right that's what i mean we

Maxcrucify people all the time whereas for sport and the red tribe points it out all the time and they

Alexkind of have a point a lot of the time and that's what i i just think about so many folks that i know who would be like he says he doesn't interact with people part of who are part of the red tribe uh at all and i and i think if i had grown up in a different place i'd be the exact same way

Maxbut wasn't that story about the reddit thread of someone was like can someone explain the case against gay marriage and nobody could explain it but everyone else said well i believe in gay

Alexmarriage but here's what i think the arguments would be yep yep yep and and i think of so many people whose whose minds have changed and they've like mushed over into this sort of purple area and this isn't like about turning trump voters in into democrats or whatever it's just about people whose minds have evolved. And I don't know, it got me like the forgiveness paragraph really hit me in a weird way. I'm gonna have some more candy. And it's weirdly,

Merlinit'll accept me off thinking about something. I hate to make this about Trump thing. But like, it's sent me off in another direction of thinking about something. You know, two threads that are happening as we record this is, on the one hand, there's continued speculation about who the president may choose to pardon for various crimes. How many times will they get pardoned? For what things? Is that going to happen? And at the same time, there's a lot going on right now with the idea of confidentiality agreements and NDAs. And in both cases, there's something that this story

reminds me of. In both cases, when I try to play it out in my mind, how that would actually work, my brain breaks a little bit. In the case of pardons, in the past, there's a pardon board, You go before. Generally, historically, somebody who has been convicted of a crime and probably has served time for that crime in most cases will dozens of years later be before a board to say, you know, I want to be, you know, I want to be pardoned. I want or I want the sentence reversed or whatever. Right. Back when things were normal.

That's what you would do. And there would be a whole thing. And then toward the end, like the day before they left, one of the presidents would pardon a bunch of people. Yes, sometimes it was overtly political. The thread through all of those two threads through all that was that it was somebody who usually had been convicted of a crime for which they had been shown to be guilty. And that that you were you were basically saying there's some quality of mercy here to this person who is guilty of a crime being let go. Right. So what happens when our president instead starts partying people when there's been not been a conviction yet, for example?

Like, that's going to be super fucking weird. But then it also makes me think of shit like Kamarosa. Like, what happens? What happens? I mean, you know, again, there's always further we can go. The other thing is, like, I feel like we already got a taste of this with the Stormy Daniel stuff. But it's going to be so interesting if and when Trump and his people decide to start trying to enforce all of these NDAs. Because for every step of this, you find yourself going, OK, then what happens? Do you follow me? Yeah. Do you see the similarities? where you go, okay, oh, hey, you know what?

I'm going to take you into arbitration. Arbitration for what? You know what? No, tell me what are you bringing me to arbitration for? You know what? Oh, it's this secret NDA that you can't admit exists. Oh, okay, so you're saying I signed an NDA? No, I'm not saying that, but you're going to arbitration. Then what happens? We go further. You go into arbitration. Well, what happens if that gets kicked up in the court? Well, guess what? There's going to be discovery. Then what happens?

MaxWell, I think the arbitration, I don't think that's how it works. I don't think arbitration gets kicked up in the court. I think arbitration is something that people agree to to keep it out of court.

MerlinThat's a good legal question. But there's, I mean, when you go into arbitration with somebody like, who is it? Somebody's dad used to do this. John's dad, Roderick's dad. When you go into arbitration, is there a presumption of guilt where you don't have to adjudicate whether this thing was actually broken? Is it like it's just a fucking star chamber where you decide how many millions you owe? I mean, don't you have to kind of show what the case for this thing is, how it was breached?

Alexum i mean now because i've watched almost every episode of netflix is the staircase i'm an expert in criminal law and litigation but i i'm thinking of that in terms of i like uh arbitration doesn't go to the courts but alfred plea i like how many people are going to get an alfred plea out of this administration of like oh yeah i did it but not really and then they just skate away into the dark

MerlinI'm not sure why I brought this up. It's just that in both cases, I guess maybe especially the pardon stuff, I think it's very interesting because the whole nature of a pardon historically has been that in some sense the person admitted they did something wrong or the system decided that they did something wrong.

And that the quality of grace and forgiveness in that case is like you come down to like a Sandy Hook parent. We're like, can you imagine how fucking hard it would be to like forgive at this point? But that's what real forgiveness is. And true tolerance in some ways is like this guy is saying, is not just putting up with stuff you find easy to tolerate. True tolerance is being able to put up with something that's basically or to not even, I don't want to say love, but to learn to accept something that is antithetical to your basic nature. And in all these instances, I think we run up against this historical precedent of like, we're going to have to start asking ourselves more and more.

Well, like, what does it mean to forgive? Like, what does it mean to pardon? What does it mean to like at because at some level somebody had in order to get the forgiveness? You have to fucking admit you did something wrong and there's not a lot of that going on right now Well, you know, I think that's gonna make a comeback. Sorry. That was a weird tangent But do you see the point at all? No, I mean I that's why I think about this essay

MaxI mean, I'll just say like my pitch for people reading this essay because it is really long but my pitch for people reading this are is that I think that the discourse and people talking about politics is so dumb right now, right? Everything is someone tweeting, like, if Trump said the M word, I'm not voting for him again. And then 20 people yelling at that person saying, like, you're a bad person for voting him in the first place. And then that person saying, again, like, fake news.

Just to wrap people up.

Speaker ATo your point, Marlon, where do we go from there, right? I mean, I think it's fun. It sounds like two sides belching at each other in slightly different pitches.

MaxYeah. Yeah. Is it funny? I'm having fun. I mean, I like a good belching contest as much as the next guy. Sure. You're not made of stone. It's nice to remember that we actually can say smart things about politics and about society. And there actually is like insights. And it's kind of exhilarating to read. You know, it's like something from like a bygone era when there was like thoughtfulness and you could.

get a new thought technology in your head and be like, wow, I see this a little bit differently now.

MerlinWell, that was a funny one. I think that's in the can. Did you see this mug you can get? It looks like a toilet.

AlexShoelaces. Honey bucket.

MaxWow, weak sauce, guys.

AlexWeak sauce. I don't know what you're talking about.

MaxOh, boy.

Show notes

Transcript

92. Catholic Brain

Show notes

Transcript

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