103. The 10x Hour with Johnny Bumpers

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

Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Oh my god, I think we need to turn Merlin down.

MerlinAll right.

AlexOh, my God. Oh, my. Your ears are also broken. Max has very sensitive ears.

MaxI like Merlin to be much louder than us. I agree. I agree. Because otherwise we both talk over him because he's on just enough of a delay. I was about to say that. Yes, room where it happens. What's she eating, Max? I got a little McDonald's, bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, which I do think is the best item. I've thought about this a lot. And I think that if I had to pick one thing from McDonald's to save, if the whole company was going under and I could only get one item, it would be that bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. I do think that's the best thing McDonald's makes.

Every component is very good. The biscuit's very good. I like the sort of egg. What is it? It's sort of a yellow square. It's really two yellow squares. I like the whole thing. I like the American cheese even. I think the American cheese works really well on the sandwich.

AlexI really want renowned, incomparable podcast host Tiffany Arment to let us know if that's Kato or not. Kato? Kato? Am I being... It sounds racist.

MerlinA little bit ping pong. A little bit ping pong.

AlexIt sounds racist every time I say it.

MaxIs that the name of like a cartoon frog?

MerlinKind of. It's the Green Hornet's assistant played by Bruce Lee. It was. Bruce Lee's first American appearance.

MaxI have a lot of updates. Oh, good. Guess what I'm going to do after the podcast? I'm game for anything. Trying to find. Trying to find.

MerlinTalk about voting.

MaxI like to vote on election day.

MerlinYeah.

MaxReally?

AlexWhy? It's exciting. It's it induces a panic attack in me every time. Like, what if this goes wrong? What? Especially because I'm in the sixth. Like, it might matter.

MaxIt might matter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm going with Mary Robinette Kowal. And we're going to go carve pumpkins for our houses.

AlexOh, yay.

MaxSo Mary lives on in. she lives in what Merlin might call a two-flat. But in America, we might call just an apartment where she's on the second floor. And she's amazing. She has one of the coolest houses in Chicago of anyone that I've ever seen. But she has this little balcony that comes out, and it goes, like, over the door. And so what she does is when the kids come to the door, she carves a pumpkin that says, yell trick-or-treat. So the kids yell trick-or-treat. Oh, no!

AlexNo!

MaxAnd then she's built, she cackles like a witch. And she's built, like, a winch system. and she lowers a basket of candy down to the children and does a whole Wicked Witch of the West thing. And it sounds amazing. And she has a whole costume and a whole setup. Now, what I've done this year, I have this crazy smoke machine contraption and these lasers, and it makes this really cool effect. Tommy and I kind of set it up over the weekend, and it's sort of working.

AlexAre these the crazy disco mushroom lasers?

MaxI'm not sure how to answer that

AlexThe green fog machine

MaxWell it's a normal fog machine And then you shoot a green laser Like a laser level across it And it makes like The effect is like it almost looks like water Like it creates like a plane In the fog where there's this light It looks very cool

MerlinThe guy next door did that on Bob's Burgers for Halloween That's a good look

MaxYeah well I'm building the You know my street is no fun Everyone hands out organic carob chips in a Ziploc bag or a homemade granola or something like that.

MerlinOh, God. Give me a break.

MaxThere was that one guy, Mark Sanford, was handing out to Pocket Constitutions. He showed a picture of his Halloween tray filled with Pocket Constitutions for the children who come to trick-or-treat at his house.

MerlinWell, it's Halloween at my kid's school today, and everybody dresses up, and I guess it's Halloween everywhere. But we got a special visit from city assessor Carmen Chu. And she came out and took the mic and did so many dad jokes. And she was being like, go out and be careful tonight. Did she say what the city assessor does? Yeah, we bring in lots and lots of money. Look at me. I'm wearing an orange dress. I'm a pumpkin. Is that what she said?

MaxThat's what she said? Yes.

MerlinShe opened her jacket and said, can anybody tell what I'm dressed as? Ew.

MaxNo, but did she say, hey, kids, I'm the city assessor?

MerlinAnd you might be wondering what does anybody know what that means? Blank stares and blinking. She goes, it means I bring in lots and lots of money.

MaxWell, she's not technically wrong, but also I wouldn't describe the job that way.

MerlinI don't know.

MaxI wonder if she says it like that in a debate, if she has a primary challenge.

MerlinI used to be like this. It's probably like how you guys are now, like where you can't tell when a kid's 2 or 11, and one doesn't really know how to talk age appropriately to a child. You usually sound kind of brain damaged when you're talking to a kid. Do you like dolls?

I'm in eighth grade. What do you mean, do I like dolls? What's wrong with you? Did you just arrive here in a flying saucer? You like Bullwinkle? What? What is a Bullwinkle?

MaxI have had much better success talking to children like they're my peers. Like I don't change my voice and I just try to talk to them about stuff I'm into. So I'm like, hey, what's your favorite Star Trek captain? You like hentai? Yeah. Yeah. More than Bullwinkle. What do you think about George Soros?

MerlinWhat podcast are you into? I always ask. You listen to the new season of Slow Burn? Slow Burn, yeah. You gotta listen to that serial. You just get madder and madder.

MaxNow, what are you dressed as for Halloween? Oh, Bumblebee? Well, here's the thing is I think Adnan did it, but also the state had no case.

MerlinOh, it's Reese's. Reese's has created a candy converter machine that allows people to trade in the candy they don't want for Reese's peanut butter cups.

MaxNo, I don't want to say. How awesome is that? I don't want to say that I've already opened up the candy supplies. Oh, everybody's already opened the candy.

MerlinWhat are you talking about?

MaxI haven't. Man, God damn. We got like these mixed candy bags and like God damn Reese's is the best candy. See, I don't do that.

MerlinAren't you like a full bar man? Don't you do full bars? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Matter how he does that. He puts out a whole bunch of full bars. Yeah, that's what we're doing.

Maxthat so we so we ran out of candy last year because word got out that we're a full bar household and all the neighbors are all the neighbors are giving away like they're giving away like uh fruit leathers and like uh vegetable chips a pamphlet about jill stein and uh so we uh yeah so we're the full bar house and word got out and you know it was it was we had a lot of kids who were like very overjoyed and that made it worth it but then we also had surly teens who were like, can I have more than one?

And you know who dealt with them was Bobby. So I have people over to give the candy out because we get a lot of trick-or-treaters and it's pretty fun. And man, Bobby fucking handled those teens. They really frightened me because I was worried they might make fun of me.

That's what they do. Oh, no. They're so good at it.

AlexThose theoretical teens.

MaxI was worried they'd come up and they'd be wearing a mask, like a scream mask or something. Nice torso. Yeah. I'm self-conscious about my body. But no other costume other than just like a drugstore, you know, mask. And they come up and they'd be like, how many am I allowed to take? I didn't want to say one per person because then they'd be like, why are you going to eat them all? Why don't you go complain about it on your podcast?

They just savage me so effectively. I didn't make that haircut for men. I don't want to be made fun of by teenagers.

AlexNow, do you have any alternative candies for the mean parents who are like, oh, they can't have that?

MaxWait, did I send you that thing from the Facebook group?

MerlinNo.

AlexNo?

MerlinOh. That's a good idea. You could have like black licorice or African-American licorice. You could give them something kind of nasty.

AlexHand the parents a pamphlet and the children some licorice.

MaxI'm not going to be able to find it in time, but there was a very funny post.

AlexRegistered a vote. remember to vote I just do all Reese's because that's all I want a great move Alex but the problem is no one ever comes to our door so that we just have a giant bowl of Reese's consolidate forces bring the come give candy out of my I might just bring all of them here Halloween lives matter

Maxno no uh but you leave it you leave a bowl here's what you do Alex you leave a bowl out right and And that's either going to service a neighborhood of good children or one fat, awful child.

AlexNo, no, no. It's going to service the one not ex-Marine who really cares about blue lives. Oh, he's going to take them all?

MaxHe's going to be like the fat cat from Neko Atsume and he's going to come and eat your whole bowl. Oh, no. Oh, no, my bowl.

AlexHe actively said this week, man, I wish there was trick-or-treating for adults.

MerlinThat's nice.

AlexThat's very upsetting.

MerlinHe hasn't lost that spirit.

AlexDo you just want me to buy you some candy, dude? So you're not sure if he's a Marine? He's got the flags and stuff, but he doesn't have the tattoo.

MaxYou know what that cat's name is?

AlexChubbs or something?

MaxTubbs.

AlexTubbs.

MaxThat's it. So I got an email the other day. I got invited to an event to a roundtable discussion about UBI, Universal Basic Income. And I may or may not go. Nice. Hot, hot. So the invite was an invitation to a roundtable discussion about UBI with Mayor Tubbs. And I was like, they got the big cat from Necroatsume? But it turns out he's the mayor of Stockton, California, and he supports universal basic income.

AlexI mean, you don't know it's not him. Or it could be that Tubbs fucked Isabel from Animal Crossing, and he's their son.

MaxI don't know if he supports universal basic income. He's at the event, so I assume he does. That'd be a fun face, which. He could be a griefer. Is that what it's called? No, he has a pilot program for universal basic income in Stockton. Cool.

MerlinStockton. I think that's where Paveman's from. I'm sending you pictures of my elf. You look up your Facebook thing. Were you admonished by the group? Was I admonished? About what you're allowed to do for Halloween?

MaxOh, no. You know what it was? So it was like one of those text posts that was a picture. So it was like a JPEG of text all laid out all crazy. Oh, no. And it was like, don't ask a child a trick or treat because they might have an auditory processing disorder. And don't scald the child for not taking the candy quickly enough because they might have a movement disability. Oh, my God. Who scalds the child? And don't give candy to every child because they might have a different dietary need. And it went on like that for like 30 different items.

And it was like all things not to do at your door. And it was like, I don't know. If I read this and took it to heart, I don't know what to do. Like you're not supposed to say trick or treat. You're like not supposed to give out candy. Like, like, can I just say trick or treat?

MerlinAnd when I'm elected, when I'm elected, we're going to be saying trick or treat again. People are going to stand with pride and say trick or treat.

MaxAnd let me tell you one other thing. If there's a child with a tremor and he struggles to take a candy out, you bet I'm going to tell him to hurry the fuck up. I'm going to say, let's go. There's more kids. Let's go. Come on.

AlexGet those able body ambassadors up here.

MaxHappy Halloween. Happy Halloween, Lil Shaky. Come on. Let's go. Let's move it. One candy. What my other errand today I also thought would be fun to discuss on Dubai Friday.

AlexThat's what we do now. Discuss Max's errands. Go.

MaxWhat are we going to read the newspaper? Are we going to talk about a podcast? Did you see what this Trump guy said?

MerlinSee us going on these ding-a-lings in Congress? Yeah, Pittsburgh was very, very nice to Melania.

MaxWell, the one thing that's driving me crazy this week is he's been doing all this. He says one crazy anti-immigrant thing after another. And it's like, yeah, it's just it's obviously like, well, it's not even obvious. He literally said at a rally, he said, boy, I wish the press would cover the political issues I want to talk about instead of all these, like, you know, hate crimes and shootings. He literally just, you know, it's killing.

Merlinit's killing the Republican momentum to have all this discussion of pipe bombs.

MaxYeah, he said the quiet part loud accidentally. But yeah, but yesterday, what was the one was the as of recording? This would have been Tuesday. Yesterday, he said he wants to issue an executive order to countermand the 14th Amendment protections given to children born in the U.S. so that they're not necessarily citizens. And I'll say the only funny I mean, I'm not going to you know, what are you what are you going to do? What are you going to get mad at Trump about it?

MerlinThat's you know, it's like there's like three things about that are implausible.

MaxIt's a real, yeah

MerlinIt's like his November 1st tax cut I know, but it's the kind of thing where you literally can't do that You can't just have an executive order to override the Constitution And you wouldn't get it done by November 6th

MaxBut here's what I'm going to say is It's a little bit, like, first of all, people were very scandalized by this And I can't, I mean, what is it? It's kind of like a scorpion and a frog situation at this point, right? Like, you know he's going to keep saying increasingly crazy shit And there's not going to be any consequences Except maybe electorally down the road And here's the other thing is a lot of people, Merlin, had your take, which is that you just said, which is like he's not going to be able to do it. The court has – this is settled jurisprudence, and the court will stop him from doing it. And I was like, boy, these people are really slow to catch up to our new reality, right?

Like if Trump really – which you know he's going to get bored and forget to do this, so I'm not actually that worried that he's going to do it. But if he actually decided to do it, like you know that he could strip the citizenship from the children. What do you think? You think Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are going to be like, sir. No, no, no. Oh, no, sir. There's a settled case law. By next Tuesday? No. They're going to come up with some sort. That's what's funny about originalism is they're going to find some nonsense that they're going to be like, well, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter, you know.

Yeah. They'll find something. And then there'll be editorials. and it'll be the same battles as everything else. But if Trump set his mind to it, which again, he's not going to do, but if he did, of course he could do it.

AlexYeah, I have no hope anymore. Do we remember November 2016? I don't think that Congress is going to stay red. Sean Kasten isn't going to just lose. He's going to die in a pit somehow and everything's going to be bad. I'm no longer even trying. which other people should try though been out in Wheaton like every day this week are you? good for you I've talked about how much I I just fucking hate him

MerlinI introduced my daughter to Emily's list via Christina Reynolds dog have you seen her sweet dog Rosie?

Maxno you're going to have to take things off the stack one by one there

Alexthis is a yes yes no situation

Merlinit's your political list I started watching Well, I was telling her Well, it was all in the service of showing her a sweet doggo And I said, there's this really cool woman That I follow on Twitter named Christina Reynolds

MaxRare pupper, 10 out of 10

MerlinYeah, anyway, it's not funny now Now you killed my joke, but basically Christina Reynolds works for Emily's List And they work really hard to try and get women into office Which I think is a very laudable and good thing to do But she has a dog that looks like Dobby And she dressed him up like Dobby yesterday It was really cute, it had a little sock fin to him It was so cute Anyway, vote

AlexSo, so far on this podcast, we've established that I think my Democratic candidate is somehow going to be murdered tomorrow. And you are not tomorrow, next week. And Merlin thinks that dogs that look like Dobby are a drunk.

MaxShe's also trying to. Oh, wow. Merlin found a hecking good pupper on Twitter. Yeah. We all, you know, we all are helping our midterm candidates.

MerlinI'm having a very difficult time right now. And I would like a little bit of space to have my difficult time. My crazy lady made her account private on Twitter, and I can't see my crazy lady anymore. Oh, is this your gang-stalking lady? My gang-stalking lady, my favorite. She's been down for like two months, and it's killing me. Maybe they got her. So it's been a lot more. They might have gotten her. I think probably her husband went in and shut it off because he's got the brain beams that make him not aware that she's targeted.

But yeah, I look a lot. I have a group called Cuties. And so I go and I have a Twitter list where I go and look at cute doggos and kit kits and pup puffs. It's a sweet thing to do. And I follow weird animals. You should go find my cuties list. It's called Cuties and it's on Twitter. And you can see lots of interesting animals and funny animals. And there's a whole one. You know, George Conaway and I both like corgis a lot. So we have a lot of common interest in corgis. They have such little legs.

AlexYou know, now that Twitter is taking away the like button and I know.

MerlinYou think that's real? You think that's a trouble?

AlexI don't know. I don't know, nor do I care. Twitter's less fun every day. Twitter should be the place we all go. You seem like you're in a good place right now, Alex. Yeah, fine.

MaxI've been using much less Twitter.

AlexI'm really liking Instagram.

MaxI deleted the app off of my phone, the Twitter app.

AlexOh, so did I.

MaxSo I go in the browser. No, I mean, I go in Safari, but it's so bad. It so barely works that I don't read as much Twitter. I read like one eighth of the Twitter that I used to.

AlexBut you probably get more upset because there's like, oh, this is so frustrating and hard. Oh, look at all these bad things. So really the outcome is the same.

MaxNo, usually what I do is I go on a few times a day to see if people are mad at me. That's the first thing. Okay, sure. Why do you go on Twitter? Number one, you want to know if people are mad at you at that moment about something or another. And find out what you did wrong. Exactly. And I like to take inventory. and then I'll sort of scroll through the timeline and see what would people on my timeline be talking about. They might be, maybe they're making fun of an obscure conservative media personality who no one's ever heard of except that they get retweeted and dunked on Twitter all the time.

MerlinI think it's going to be Jacob Wohl creating a company two weeks ago and the phone number is his mom's voicemail.

MaxThat was all very funny, but also-

MerlinThat was extremely, extremely good.

MaxVery funny.

AlexCan someone explain that to me in 30 seconds? I was-

MerlinJust very, barely. So rumors started circulating recently that women who have worked or seem to have worked with Robert Mueller over the last 40 plus years were contacted to say, we want you, we will pay you. In this case, this one woman who gave it to somebody, I think at Bloomberg, said, we'll give you $20,000. We'll pay off your credit card debt. We know exactly how much credit card debt you have. We'll pay that off. Hand you $20,000. If you do it today, you get an extra $10,000. These things started getting circulated. Then the reporters passed that along to the FBI.

as the reporters then started digging in. And they found that it was funded, apparently by this guy named, this real dirtbag GOP operative named Berkman. And that basically he had charged the very, very serious Jacob Wohl from Gateway Pundit with going out and doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this. We found out that Jacob Wohl has been, quote unquote, has leaked to Gateway Pundit where he writes this document showing all of these outrageous allegations against Mueller. Only he redacted everything, but forgot to redact the part with the fake company that he had formed two weeks ago.

You can go and see his email is on the domain. And if you call the phone number, it goes to his mother's voicemail. So that's been a lot of fun.

AlexIs he like 17 years old?

MerlinYeah, he's like three kids in a trench coat.

MaxHe looks exactly, do you guys know Review of the Week? No. He looks exactly like Review of the Week guy. Please fire up a Review of the Week, Alex. So what is the Review of the Week? It's a guy who looks like Jacob Wall. The Report of the Week? Report of the Week. Oh, there we go. He's a guy who looks like Jacob Wall. He always wears a double-breasted suit, and he has his hair slicked back, and he reviews fast food products, sometimes in a car.

AlexOh, my God. I got it. Burger King's Halloween Nightmare Burger. Let's watch a second of this.

Speaker AHello, everyone. This is Running On Empty Food Review. Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen and everyone watching. This is Running On Empty Food Review, and I'm your host.

AlexOkay, is this guy serious?

MaxYeah, it's not a bit.

AlexOh, no.

MaxI've watched a lot of his videos.

MerlinDon't wear a short-sleeved shirt with a tie.

MaxDon't do that. I've watched a lot of these.

MerlinDid you hear it on my Bim Bam? Did you hear the Nightmare Burger?

MaxNo.

MerlinOh, my God. It's so bad. Last year, they made it with a black bun. It's a green bun with a burger and a chicken patty and bacon. It's like 2,000 calories. It's so gross. This fellow looks real. He's got kind of a Tilda Swinton thing going on.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinDoes he refer to himself as Report of the Week? Does he always do that? I think the Royal Report.

MaxHey, I got, I changed my pants. I got new pants. Oh, nice. This is my report of the week. I'm actually excited. I'm going to go pick them up today. Tell me about your new pants. What made you want to change? I've worn the same pants since college. I do the Levi's commuter jeans. Are you guys familiar with this product? Yes. They're called commuter jeans. They're basically like 511s, which are the best Levi's.

They're made specifically for cyclists. When I first got these in college, they had what they were oh my god they were so fucking nice they were like slightly stretchy but like reinforced in all of the areas where you would be on a bike seat so you would get like they were reinforced on the crotch so you could avoid like a blowout which is like a gusset like a chuck norris gusset i think so yeah i'm not sure what that is but i think it has oh you

Merlinknow it's like when you get an extra little uh fabric diamond it's like a dart for your dingus

Maxbut it's inside it they look like normal blue jeans but they're but they're really tough and And they had some sort of water repellent quality that made them like, Merlin, you and I, we don't like to wash our jeans too much. No. Because it kind of ruins the quality of the denim.

MerlinIt needs all those juices and dampness in order to conform to your body. You shouldn't wash your jeans for six months.

MaxYeah. So what else? And then the best feature was, so what you would do is before you got on your bike, you flip up the cuff like about an inch. and inside there's a little reflective strip like a safety strip and so it's like having a little reflector on your ankle wherever you go and that's a cool slim fit so here's the problem they keep me i will buy what i normally do is i get four pairs of the same exact pair of jeans i like get them hems they fit perfectly and then i keep them for about two years and then i replace

them and that's my pants like and then i i just wear basically the same pants on a rotation like every day and uh the problem with these commuter jeans is they keep making them worse every year oh that sucks like every year they keep like they're like oh we all will just take this feature away we'll make them slightly shittier and now and i have my pair and i'm not even at i'm i don't think i'm even at the one year mark and i'm very dissatisfied with them so and here's the other thing is i've observed you know i'm a as you know i'm a pretty careful cultural observer you know i

I like to stay on top of the trends, the fashions, what the kids are doing. And I've noticed that I think people are wearing a lot less blue jeans. I think you're right. I think you're right. I think blue jeans are not.

MerlinYou think they're played? We're done with them.

MaxYeah, I think people are doing different colored pants. Not like khakis, but I think like a lot of brown and gray pants I'm seeing.

AlexOh, before you say anything else, can Merlin and I make a prediction about what color and kind of pants?

MaxAbsolutely. Okay. You're probably going to get it on your first guess.

AlexI don't know. Merlin, how about you?

MerlinI don't know. I like the look on Max, a man of Max's stature. I like a pumpkin orange super tight Chino. I wanted this to be a real game. You can see every religious aspect. As he's walking into the office, you can see exactly what he's got going on. That's a powerful look.

AlexMerlin got it on his first guess.

MerlinI'm a pumpkin you guys notice anything else yes Max no really look you can see I know Max you can be very uncomfortable trigger trains what's your guess Alex okay so what's the actual answer Alex

AlexI think well I don't know Max has been dressing more like a respectable adult lately and not wearing the exact same thing everyday like I do. You are wearing, you are not wearing a t-shirt and jeans every day. You have a nice sweater.

MaxYeah, it's winter. I wear my same sweater. I have one, I have six of this sweater that I wear one every day like Mr. Rogers. Right, right.

MerlinThis is so funny. I do the same thing. I do, I have, well, we should come back to this. I do the exact same. I wear the same thing every single day.

AlexSo do I. You've all, well, today actually I am a, don't you do plaid or don't you do like lesbian dots or something? Exactly. I need, I'm forced to buy different patterns and colors but it's all the same shirt. Right.

MaxThat's the trick is I put a lot of work into finding the thing that I like and now I'm open to variations on it but that's my thing. It feels comfortable. My goal is to be a cartoon character.

MerlinDon't you do a real tight cuff on the sleeve, Alex? Aren't you a cuffer?

AlexOh, well that's more out of utility than fashion. That's where Alex puts her cigarettes.

MerlinThat would be such a good look for you. You should go grease her. Snap when you come in the room. Keep that rocket in your pocket. Alex is, you know, Alex kind of is a greaser

Maxbecause she's always, she's always fixing her like a Corvette, except it's, it's plugging, it's like plugging cables into the podcast studio. So I always come in here and I'm like, yo Alex. And she slides out. One of those little wheelie dolly things. Yeah. Yeah. Cover with grease. Why are you covering with grease? She's got cables coming out everywhere. She's got a pencil behind her ear.

Pauses to go. All right, Alex, what's your guess here?

AlexThis is only because this is the pant that I have been looking for and have considered getting custom made is just a gray slack that is sort of casual enough that you could wear it with a T-shirt, but also nice enough that you could do like a button up and a sport coat, whatever those things are. Like a blazer. But I'm also thinking you might go with a dark brown, not quite khaki, but a little.

MaxSo I'm going to say a dark brown for you. Well, here's the new pants that I'm going to be trying out as possible candidates for the new pants. It's the black Levi's 511s. Holy shit. I might go to a black blue jean. or a black jean a black jean what do you guys think about that?

MerlinI think it's definitely worth trying for sure

MaxI know a lot of cool people who wear black jeans

Alexthat's exactly why I will never wear I just all of the cool people I know wear black jeans a friend of the show Kevin Budnick Kevin wears black jeans he's the coolest person they're all cool

MaxI've been looking around and seeing a lot of cool people wearing black jeans and I think I want to get in. I want to get in early. So are you going to do a 501? No, 511 black. No, because I, listen, I have my pants. Okay. Right? So it's just a different style. That's something very appealing to me about this whole situation is I can stay in my beloved 511 line.

MerlinI try these 511s. I'm still 501 all the way down.

MaxNow, a 511 is a more, I think it's a more tapered. They're a girlier jean. It's more tapered and it has a slight, they're like women's pants. They're the girl jeans. But women's pants are more technologically advanced.

AlexThey're stretchy. Oh, my God. No, no, no, no.

MerlinThey're not encumbered with those large pockets.

AlexExactly. There's a bit of... They're stretched jeans?

MerlinThey stretch?

AlexThey're slightly stretchy.

MaxThey are slightly...

MerlinWhy don't you just get yoga pants? Get those yoga pants with the translucent knees.

MaxThey're not like elastic.

MerlinThey're just a little bit stretchy.

MaxThey're like a four-way stretch. Like after you eat the president's lunch, your jeans have a little gift.

MerlinPodcasting pants. yeah yeah yeah oh you got a good he gay on these ones with the 511 slim fit performance performance jeans yeah i need to perform in my jeans slim chino pant these all look like they have like a really long rise i have a very short rise and i don't i don't like having that mom jean thing where it comes up to your belly button i like i'd like a short rise i should get custom

Alexpants oh i i love a good mom jean which is which is why the i also have the 511s but they're they just they don't i i have merlin don't listen back merlin i have hips and it's really hard like they're the best girl jeans unless you have hips it's very don't lie yeah but right and the pockets are huge the these pants like levi's have nailed pocket technology yeah yeah for sure for sure oh

Merlinmy goodness look at all these choices you can get them what color is that called it's called pomegranate you can get pomegranate yeah you can get i went to the levi's store i get so stressed

Maxout when i get there there's a lot going on there's a lot going on in that store and a lot of people want to help me and i don't want to be helped i want to sort of look at everything and they're like what can i tell you about this i'm like what could you possibly tell me they're fucking pants they're pants right what what are you going to tell me like what you should ask

Merlinsometimes they might really unlock some shit that would like blow your mind maybe it'll be like you Wear them on your arms.

MaxMaybe it'll be like, since the days of the cowboy, denim has been an American staple. Like, they'll have a whole thing.

AlexI think they'll have more of like a pant waiter type of thing. Like, ah, have you worn these before? Notice our belt loops. Oh, you see these cuffs?

MerlinWe call them cuffs. Yeah, that's the trouser sommelier. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of racism in these pants. I don't understand what the deal is, which is these even-sized waists.

MaxMaybe if you ask for help in the Levi's store, they open their mouth, but it's Avery Truffleman's voice comes out, and she just does an article of interest.

MerlinYeah, they had like a Levi's historian on for that one episode.

MaxThat is true.

MerlinThey had a Blue Jeans episode, and they had like the Levi's historian on.

MaxWell, anyway, that's the big pants update. God, good for you, man.

MerlinI'm glad you're trying stuff out. Try some different pants.

MaxChallenge. Challenge. I feel like if you get too scared to change the color of your pants, that's really the day when you stop living and you start dying, Merlin. Oh, my God. It just blew my mind.

AlexYou were doing magic so, so wrong. I want to hear this. Max has been doing a lot of magic tricks, but also talking about magic and showing people how much he does magic. What are you talking about showing people how much I do magic? Yeah, and that's the thing. You feel like it's always kind of looming over your head?

MerlinYou don't know when it's going to happen? It could trigger you? No, that's the problem.

AlexI bet he's going to take out cards right now. But that's the thing. You need to come at people with just completely surprise people. You can't let people know that you're doing magic if you want to do magic tricks for them. you're expressing your hobby and enjoying it too much actually Merlin he's doing it wrong I don't

Maxdisagree it sounds like it I actually don't disagree with that that's not wrong and just it

Alexit I any any time for for example if theoretically I had this amazing amazing trick planned for our magic trick challenge and it epically failed none of you would know but perhaps this still has been brewing in my mind for months and it will happen at someday when i pull it off because as max said when you pull off a magic trick it's it's like coming it's amazing but it's really did i say that no i said that okay i'm sorry i'm she pulls into the details a little oh boy um by

Merlinthe way by the way it's called it's called it's called an illusion it's not a trick it's an illusion a trick is something a whore does for money or cocaine you know this this is reminding

Maxof something that Alex once said, which is that Max is probably the greatest manager who's ever lived. A really incredible boss. Are you getting pull quotes? You're getting pull quotes. I'm pretty sure I'm attributing that correctly. Yes, yes.

MerlinYou're saying this damages the performative aspect of it. It would be like somebody in a musical saying, and now I'm going to sing! Like, you gotta just start singing, right? Is that what you're saying? Like, just get out and do the effect. I don't know. It's like

AlexBank... I guess that's a decent analogy. It would be like Banksy being like, yep, yep, see? I did that. See, look, I'm prepping to do a thing. Look at that. It's less magical. You just got to bring it out.

Pop it off. Come in hot. Fucking glass. Oh, the glass card trick. Still troubles you to think about that. It hasn't stopped. There are a few people who know how it's done, and they're like, no, Alex, I know you can figure this out, and they won't tell me because it's simple enough that I can figure it out.

MerlinI'm not sure it helps, Alex. I've had the two of hearts trick explained to me many times by people, including a magic professor. And I still don't really understand what happened. Like, oh, yeah, I understand. He did a thing with the deck, and then he had me do this one thing. And it still fucked me up.

AlexWell, that's why it's great. I don't know. It's a lot of fun. But theoretically, that big trick could be coming. Statue of Liberty just disappeared. All right.

That's the stupid trick. Oh, boy. That's such a stupid trick. Wait. Oh, sorry. I remember this morning. I was trying to change. The next point was me saying anyone try to use Docs on an iPhone because, oh, wow. I've never been more self-conscious than knowing that Merlin is watching me try to paste something into a Google Doc on my phone.

Merlinit's not it's not much better on an ipad at all but like i mean i do a lot of stuff involving time or uh duration things and like the colon you have to flip to the right on that little tab

Maxbar to get a fucking colon uh it's crazy but we get we really should get to the challenge because i i think i think we've got a lot to talk about uh but uh oh right uh i had a new uh feature i wanted to go to the apple pay pig power hour here on dubai friday who bought tell me about that What is that? Let's get the Apple Pay Pigs together for a roundtable discussion.

I'm not going to ask if you bought an iPad, but let's just all go around and say which size of iPad we bought.

MerlinOh, no. That's so much worse. Can we just go with if? Because then you can just assume that I bought the most economical model.

AlexI'm going to assume that you did not spend $1,000 for sure.

MaxNow, I bought one of each. I wish. I did my same move as the iPhones. I bought one of each. And when they come, I'm going to see if the 12-inch is too big.

MerlinBut I think it's going to be.

MaxAnd now.

MerlinI don't know, man. I'm ready for the upgrade. I'm ready for the upgrade. The way they described it. I mean, the combination of getting something like the screen size of the big one in the smaller one. And it's just a little bit bigger than the 10-inch. It's very appealing to me. And I super-duper love the iPhone 4. Oh, right? Slout Edge. Oh, my God. It looks so beautiful. I miss that design.

MaxThere's no question it's a better design, and it's more grippy and easy to hold in your hands and stuff. I think it's coming back. But it does slightly bug me that it looks like it's a different product line than the iPhone.

AlexIt's coming, though. I hope so. I think so. You think so?

MerlinYou think the square-y sides will come back? I wish they would. It still looks. I see somebody using a 4, 4S, a 5, a 5S. It's like a 16-year-old phone. It looks amazing. It still looks so good. it's usually got a cracked screen and stuff, but it looks so good. And mine's like, man, it's a phone. It's an iPhone. It doesn't have that same. I mean, and you know what's weird also is like the, how do I describe this? The flare, like the little dots, the little speaker grill and all that stuff looks better on that phone. I can't explain why, but it looks better.

AlexThere's a fucking antenna line also, right? There's three grills and then five, wait, six? Oh, God.

MaxThings are pleasing and beautiful if they show you how they work in a generous way. And they become weird and disorienting when they try to obscure how they work in a way that's ungenerous. And there's something about that. There's a real confidence of having that metal band. I don't know what it was. Aluminum band. Aluminum band. It goes around. And it has the speaker dots and the charging cable and the brakes for the antenna and the buttons. and you can kind of look at it and it's generous in a way of it of of you know where everything is

Merlinand what it does that's declaring that it's a it's a mobile device and like this is how it works

Maxyeah it's just i don't know it's just it's there's a confidence to it and there is something about the new phone the way that it's just sort of it's you know it's like eve from wally like there's no everything just recedes into the body and you can't see where anything is and i don't know it It feels creepy in a Stanley Kubrick way to me.

AlexI guess I'm going to sort of disagree. Like, I am full on for the squared corners, but this just feels like a trend that they wanted to go on, and I do think there must be some reason. Like, they want some sort of illusion to make it, like, okay, okay. Thought. Thought happening. Here we go. Like the tapered edge in a MacBook Air. Originally, it was because the battery,

like they wanted to make it smaller but still have the big battery in the back. Where I think with the iPhone, there must be something like if you had those straight edges across, it would feel like 10 times bigger with this OLED screen. But with the liquid retina stuff, I think they were able to get it small enough that it's like, okay, We can like shave off these corners, do the 90 degree thing, and it will still feel small. Whereas I think that if they thought...

Alex, are you malfunctioning? No, it's fine. It's fine. I'm at 90 degrees on this iPhone.

MaxDid someone tell you a logical contradiction?

MerlinYou may ask one question.

AlexAnyway, I didn't get an iPad. So Max, do you want to tell us about Patreon? You didn't get one? They're so expensive. No, I did not get one. Me neither I didn't get one either Neither of you got a new iPad Merlin definitely didn't get an iPad That's completely specked out

MerlinAll I'm comfortable saying is I got something Is it for your tattoo art?

MaxCould you say which one I mean I know we all know that you didn't get one But which one didn't you get?

MerlinOh the one I didn't get Was the large one 512 And two cases and a pencil

MaxNow I did 512 I did 512 too and I feel...

MerlinBecause I figure this, no, this is the one that's going to last me for five years.

MaxOh, yeah.

MerlinSo I have my... Well, I made a case to Dan on Back to Work that I think is a case that a parent and lots of normal people need to think about, which is like, this is also a movie machine. When you go somewhere, you want movies on it. And if you put big movies on a 64 gig device, that's going to fill up so fast. And it's a huge fuck you from Apple to make the leap from, what is it? 64, 256, 512, 1 terabyte. That's a ridiculous setup. I mean, 128 would probably be fine for people. But no, they're not going to do that. They're going to make you go way up.

MaxNow, I remember, so I have the previous iPad Pro, which I love. It's like one of my favorite computing devices ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I think I got the biggest one. And is that 512?

MerlinProbably, yeah. I think I got 256, but I don't know.

MaxI've never, I don't think I've ever filled up 50% of that storage.

MerlinI'm not even close. Not even close. Oh, really? But if you think about it, like a movie is going to be, I don't know. at least a couple gigs, right? To get a, I mean, I don't know what the exact compression stuff is.

MaxSo when you say you put a movie in there, you mean you're syncing it on Plex?

MerlinNo. But it could be Plex. It could be Plex. But no, it's iTunes. So again.

MaxSo I've had this. Here's why I do syncing on Plex now is I have, so I used to be a good iTunes boy. And what would happen is I would sync all my movies. I would check them to make sure they were there. And then I would get on the plane and I would hit play and it would go, So iTunes cannot authenticate.

MerlinYou've got to do it two days. I told Dan this. You've got to do it two days before. Don't do it the day of.

MaxDon't do it the day before. You've got to do it two days before. iTunes cannot authenticate this movie.

MerlinThat's no good.

MaxAnd then I'd be on a flight with no Wi-Fi where the Wi-Fi was broken, which is every flight. That's brutal. And then I couldn't watch it in my movies. What am I going to not watch my movies on the flight? You're a Plex man.

MerlinYou're a Plex man. I get that. I get that. The Plex sync just works. My Plex problem is a weird kind of edge case. And again, if anybody's ever heard Back to Work, I'm sorry I'm repeating myself. But part of my problem is that my Plex server is not where I'm watching the movies. My Plex server is at my office. I've got redonkulously fast 298 megabit down at home and office with a very strange 11 megabit up. And 11 megabit up. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. That's the program that I'm on. I can't get fiber.

But it's plenty fast for downloads. But for uploads, it's garbage. And also, I have an ongoing, with my home-ripped media of things that I got on DVD open source, I have a terrible audio sync problem that comes up within five or eight minutes on almost everything I stream. And I have not figured out how to solve that. So, I'm using Plex a little less. We own 330 movies on iTunes. And so, we are a good iTunes family. But, yeah. So, anyway, you know, you don't need that. 64, though.

MaxYou're going to wake up one day and those movies are going to be gone.

MerlinThey're going to be like. I'm going to wake up one day and everything's going to be gone.

AlexYou're going to wake up one day until you don't, and then you're dead, and it doesn't matter.

MerlinYou're the one who's living the lie. You're the one who thinks you can preserve anything.

MaxI think that if you get your media server.

MerlinYou look through your third eye.

MaxI think that if your media server is configured correctly, you might never die. That's what I'm working on. The dragon will never eat you. I really think that one day you're going to wake up, and iTunes is going to be, Oh, I'm sorry. You bought all those were movies. We only have cyber movies now. And we don't support movies anymore. and also there's no way to watch them. So if you want to watch them with this laser. And they'll probably have some sort of program where they're like, well, because you were a good customer and you bought the movies, we're going to give you 50% off on your cyber movies.

But cyber movies do cost $99. And then every Gruber and everyone are going to be like, wow, this is really great that Apple is giving the discount for their, on their new cyber movie program. Because it just shows that they're a really classy company. It's a courageous move.

MerlinDo you, are you, I'm sure I've tried to sell you on this, but are you registered on Movies Everywhere? Movies Everywhere. It's important that you do this because once you...

AlexNo, no, no. What does it do? Merlin, you know this better than I do, but it's great. Is it anywhere or everywhere?

MerlinI always forget.

AlexI don't know because it just... It was one of the easiest things that has ever happened.

MerlinThis is the most... Arguably one of the most magical, implausible services that you can possibly imagine. For example, do you remember when... So remember the early days of buying music, or for that matter, of even listening on a streaming service. They're in these real wackadoo formats, just loaded up with weird DRM. And then Steve Jobs announced the most implausible thing. Somehow, a deal had been struck with the labels where they were going to sell DRM-free versions

of music for $1 apiece, or $1.20, or whatever. It was the most bananas thing you can imagine. Well, along comes Disney. This used to be called, this used to be a Disney-specific service, but it's called Movies Anywhere. We'll put it in notes. You go in and you get an account there, and then you authenticate with iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, Google Play, Microsoft Movies and TV, and even Fandango, even though I don't use Fandango. Fandango. Hobo Camp.

Chipotle. Big ups to Jerry Blank. you go and you authenticate with those services and to the extent possible I would say well over 80% of the time any movie you've bought from any of those services will be available anywhere else vis-a-vis and this is not perfect it's not every studio is exactly the same setup on each one of these but when you agree Alex it works implausibly well once you've bought something on iTunes hop into Google Play, guess what, you can watch the movie there Prime Video, you watch it there which doesn't sound that cool but it's actually super cool you're a Plex man Max

Like I would prefer to watch certain things on certain devices in certain ways. And over well over 80 percent of the time, everything I bought from all those services are in all of those places. It's crazy.

AlexI expected an ultraviolet situation. It's the opposite of that.

MaxWhat does the service do exactly? So you have a part I'm missing.

AlexAll right. So you have purchased movies from Amazon Prime, from iTunes, from I think they have Google Play. They have Voodoo. I have. The hypothetical Max Temkin, the Royal Temkin.

MerlinIt works both ways. Yes.

AlexOkay, okay, got it. So then you sign up for Movies Everywhere, and then you can either, if you're a monster, watch all of those movies in the Movies Everywhere app, or now suddenly all of your movies that you bought on Amazon Prime Video show up in your iTunes library, and you can watch them on your Apple TV. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Exactly. Wait, it's crazy. They made a deal with all the tech companies?

MerlinThey made a deal with all of those companies. Are you ready for this? You pay for this? Sometimes if you bought it in HD, you can watch it in 4K on one of those other services if it's not in HD on that service. It's completely bananas. It doesn't cost anything and it works great. Why? How?

AlexBecause Disney has so much money and they are ramping up for this streaming service and they are trying things. They're taking a loss for the team.

MaxOh, Disney is making this. I think it was called Disney Anywhere before.

AlexSomething like that. And then they're like, well, what if we bought everything? and then they just, you know, pay everybody else. I'm sure it's going to go away.

MerlinBut for now, I'm going to enjoy it. What I can't say is, like, so I know I've got something like 300. But the thing is, it's so weird what they count as a movie, what doesn't. But I've got 221 movies according to Movies Anywhere. So it's not everything, but, like, I bought Incredibles 2. I'm looking at it right here. I bought that on iTunes, and now it's available in Movies Anywhere. And it doesn't cost anything.

AlexRight. And for some reason, I don't remember why, but my entire collection of the Golden Girls is on Amazon Prime Video. I guess it wasn't on iTunes. And so some of them are in movies everywhere.

MerlinYeah, it doesn't do TV. I don't think it does TV usually.

AlexIt's not supposed to, but there are just some episodes that pop up and I'm like, oh, I mean, not going to complain. It's so random. But okay, sure. But that's going to have to go away. But again, you're going to die one day anyway. So just enjoy it. Oh, you're so going to die. Yeah.

MerlinYou're so going to die.

MaxAll right, we really should get cooking on the challenge. I just had one final piece of business here, which is I was going to plug. Merlin does another podcast with John Roderick, who's the musician. He's the front man for The Long Winters, and he's played in a lot of other bands. And they recently hit episode 300. Congratulations. And that is one of the best episodes of the show you guys have ever done. Oh, let me look. It's called the, it's the, it's the airplane.

The episode title is The Airplane Doesn't Care. And John does the sort of one man play about him. Him and his dad are taking a flight and they see that the deforestation in the Pacific Northwest. And then they have the conversation with his uncle. It's the, the warehouser guy. It's an amazing, amazing episode. So if you're not listening to Roderick on the line, I think this is a pretty good place to start.

MerlinOh, thank you. We've been on a pretty good run lately. John's been he's been full of beans lately. Sometimes when. Well, you know, he just. Yeah. Thank you. Enough said. Yes. Thank you. I really I really I gave that episode a little star in Overcast.

AlexOh, man.

MerlinWell, well, finally get up over over get up over Joe Rogan. I can tell Overcast has gotten popular because I don't know.

AlexI'm like, oh, yeah, Marco. Oh, ow. Ow.

MerlinIt's like ATP and lots of Tim Ferriss type podcasts. That's how I made this.

Speaker AThe Founders Circle.

MerlinThe Corner Office. The Seat One A-hole. Things you've learned from SkyMall. Executive Lounge. The 10X Hour. With Johnny Bumpers.

Speaker AHi.

MaxHi. We have candid conversations with America's top CEOs and ask them about their secrets of scaling and success.

MerlinYou're going to learn from the pros who failed and succeeded and failed again and failed three more times and wrote a book and finally kind of succeeded. It's a podcast about succeeding eventually.

AlexDug Dug Challenge this week. It was your challenge, Merlin.

MerlinYeah, I kind of shot my wad in the after show last week because I'm just so jazzed about this. But the challenge this week was to go on to Spotify or similar, but ideally Spotify. And to identify a band that you know you like. It could be a recent band, an old band or whatever. The original, it's basically do whatever the fuck you want to make a playlist and share it with our listeners and each other. But the goal of it was to explore the discoverability component, as you say. of Spotify and to go in and start with a band and then click on the area called fans also like and then explore bands you haven't heard,

songs you haven't heard, and make a playlist and share it. I might have done this slightly wrong. No, there's no rules just right. You did just fine.

AlexWe all did it in a very different, interesting way.

MerlinAs it turns out, I did it in all of the ways.

MaxI'm not as familiar with the Spotify product. I use Spotify. I just don't know all the little features and everything. So what I did was I made a new playlist, and I just stuck a song in there. And then if you scroll down on the playlist screen, it says, like, other songs that might belong in this playlist. Totally legit. Totally legit. And then I added one, and then you can hit refresh. And then every time you add one and refresh, it, like, changes it, right?

MerlinAnd it's rarely – I'm not going to say it's always great, but it's rarely terrible. It's rarely very wrong. It will be something you might kind of know, but it's really good at going like, there's a chance you're going to like this David Byrne song. I'm like, yeah, I do like the David Byrne song.

MaxI have another problem to toss out there, which is I have Spotify Premium, which I expense to cards because for a long time we used my Spotify account in the booth of our theater, like on the computer in there. Oh, no. So you've got a lot of – So I have – Oh, yeah. It is fucking chaos in there, like all the stuff in my library, all these playlists. and then when it makes my like playlist for me or whatever like it's total nonsense try having a

Merlin10 year old oh fucking a she first she ruined my apple music and now she's ruined my spotify i got her own she's i got a family spotify so she could have her own stuff but like i still get tons of recommendations for disney's the descendants and stuff like that because or that pt barnum movie where or uh finding neverland where she just put one song on repeat for literally four hours no that's a known issue they should have an Amazon like thing where you can say like

Maxthey should have like a

Merlinnuke my account button

MaxI know they would never do that because it's like their business model is like accumulating all this data to sell to advertisers that it turns out doesn't pertain to me at all

Merlinbut it's bad data they're gathering

Maxwell they don't care if it's good or bad they care that they can sell it and they sell it by having a lot of it not by having it be good which is why the world economy is going to collapse

Merlinyeah all I'm saying is that like if you are in the business of leveraging collaborative filtering to improve your product and sell ads, it benefits you to know that there's not a ton of false positives in there. Right?

MaxNo one, my theory is that no one actually benefits from the data being good. No one in the business, no one in the transaction benefits from the data being good. They benefit from there being a lot of data. The only person who benefits from the data being good are like advertisers who are trying to sell things and they don't really know if it's good or not until after they've already spent their money.

MerlinSo they can sell Marco more ladies shoes. Right. Do you get weird Instagram ads? Marco was saying, and lots of people have been saying, they get very strange Instagram ads. Are you getting things for like the other gender and stuff like that?

MaxOh, I get crazy shit. Part of it is that they know that you're – so like – how do I – like – okay, so the other day someone was over at our place and we were having a conversation about like our dishwasher and they liked our dishwasher. And then the next day I started getting ads for like dishwashers around the Internet. You know, I'm one of those like things. And I was like, man, that's so fucking weird because I never Googled the dishwasher. I never searched for it. And then I went through that thing of like, were they listening somehow?

MerlinReply All did it.

MaxI know, right.

MerlinReply All explained this.

MaxBut basically, my theory is the advertiser knew that my friend was in my house with me because we were on the same IP or even in the same geographic area, even if they weren't on my Wi-Fi. And they probably knew that we were friends because we posted on Instagram. You're on the same social graph. Yeah. And my friend Googled the dishwasher, probably. I haven't asked, but I assume they did. and then it's got me. But the other, so that's off, that's bad because I already own a dishwasher so I shouldn't be getting ads for a dishwasher. But the other funny thing is like

when we were buying our house and we got appliances, like one day we like went and picked out a washer and dryer and we bought a washer and dryer. And well, you know, and then for months afterwards I got ads for washers and dryers. And the algorithm was like, this guy loves washers and dryers.

MerlinIt's consistently one of the stupidest things that you see. And it is so funny when you can see the seams that hard. Two examples. Hilarious funny one was Matt Howey bought, I think it was porch lights. He bought a new light for his porch. And everywhere he went for the next six months, they're offering him porch lights. And the same thing happens on Amazon where you're like, okay, I bought a filter for my dehumidifier. And then for the next month, it's like people who bought filters for their dehumidifier also bought these other filters for their dehumidifier.

That does not make any sense. There's no way. You have this paucity of data that you're trying to make meaningful. and it's stupid.

MaxI think there's a real emperor has no clothes situation with a lot of this online advertising where it doesn't really work that well and people have to do it now because it displaced like all other kinds of marketing and advertising.

MerlinBut... It's a good analogy because everyone benefits ends up kind of benefiting from agreeing that they're seeing the same thing even if it's nonsense. Even if it's noise. It's like line noise.

MaxYeah, yeah. Well, anyway...

MerlinI mean, your emperor has no clothes thing. It's good because everybody benefits by going, oh yeah, that's a great outfit.

MaxRight, right. I mean, but also at the end of the day, like I don't think those ads work very well. And I'm very, I do feel like at some point, so, you know, I don't think there's like a tech bubble per se. I think there's like an ad tech bubble. And people have also talked about maybe there's a media bubble, which also seems like plainly not true to me. Media is really struggling. But I think this ad tech bubble is like going to be pretty ruinous for the internet when it bursts. And people have forgotten how much internet infrastructure now runs off of Facebook OAuth and things like that.

If that crumbles, lots of services go down. Think of Amazon Cloud Compute and things like that. It's happened with Facebook recently, yeah. It's not good. It's not good when those dependencies. Remember when a lot of the internet went down because that one JavaScript library got updated and it was just a dependency that everything had that was hosted somewhere? I don't remember all the details. But that kind of shit could go – if tech companies really start suffering, people forget how much of the internet and how much of our lives and this infrastructure is just absolutely held together with duct tape.

MerlinThe thing about AWS and Facebook, just those two things. And, of course, Facebook probably uses AWS. But those two things, you'll see this happen. And you can almost immediately know. You go to a website and suddenly none of the images are loading or a surpassing number of the images are not loading. And you go to other sites and they're not loading. It's like, well, AWS is down. And like, that's a really, really big deal.

AlexI mean, I agree with everything both of you said, except the majority of people do know that everything runs off Facebook and Amazon. They know it as everything's running off of Facebook and Amazon. And it's when AWS breaks for the little guys that use it. Like, we're all fucked. The normies who use the internet will be fine because that's where the money is in it. It'll get fixed. But I don't agree.

MaxI think it's going to be a huge issue. I do think there's an ad tech bubble. It's going to burst. There's going to be lots of upheaval in the tech startup world or whatever. Because I think a lot of these companies have sort of inflated market value prices based on imaginary value of ads being sold that don't work. So I think there is going to be a reckoning for these companies. What the fuck are we even talking about? This is music.

Merlingo back and listen to last week's after show uh give us your fucking money.com because i talked about that a lot already i don't want to rehash all this i i offered this challenge because lots of reasons i explained last week but what it came down to for me is i'm realizing how much I enjoy Spotify as this very informal way to learn about, gather, and listen to information.

As we talked about last week with Dr. Don, it's very different from the way Max does his iTunes library. It's a very promiscuous world on Spotify where you can just go find stuff. It's all very kind of ephemeral. But what I loved about it and what made me so, I ended up making six playlists. But it reminded me of college. It reminded me of making mixtapes and other people making mixtapes for me. And then, like, there's so many songs in some of these various other ones that are, like, old lists of mine, like, from college that are from the mixtape era where all these songs I learned about on, like, Mexel cassettes.

And I thought there was something really exciting about that. And I just wanted to share with you guys and our readers the idea that once you spend a little time on this, it does get smarter about knowing what you like. But it's also just a great way to, like, with very little friction, learn about new music and share it with people, which has become so fun for me. Will you walk us through one of your playlists, Merlin? Yeah, these aren't even my favorites. But the first one I started with, just real quick, was where I was trying to most honor the challenge. And I ended up honoring the challenge in many different weird ways that I think are kind of interesting.

The first one I did, I don't love this playlist, but I said, okay, the most straight version of this challenge is, and go take a band that I really like that I've just learned about, which in this case is a New Zealand band called The Beths. And so I went into the Beths, I clicked on the Beths, and I went to their section called Fans Also Like, and I just started clicking. And, of course, I saw some bands I knew, tons of bands I didn't know. And the easiest way to do this is just click in the middle of the artist's image, and it just starts playing their top song right now.

It's not necessarily the top song of all time, but it's their highest ranked song right now. And if it's even vaguely interesting, go and listen to some other ones. I found a lot of stuff I really liked that way. And that pattern continued through all of these lists. And a pattern comes up with, okay, look at Discover Weekly is another one of my lists. Like one called Recent Finds that started out with Discover Weekly and what's the other one called? The Radar, Release Radar. And, you know, that's usually like at least 30% stuff I end up really liking. And you just click and click and click and follow your nose.

And you know what? Along the way, you're also going to find stuff you forgot you used to like from this band. so I started a list called Oldie Recurrent which is a radio term for like once it's fallen out of like high rotation it's like a song that's really good that you put back in the rotation lightly so I'm like oh yeah like Max like you reminded me of Aqueduct I forgot I like Aqueduct add that to that list and so it just becomes this I don't know it's a very fluid way to be able to just explore stuff to bubble up stuff you used to like stuff you might like and I don't know

I just think it's a ton of fun to do so yeah that's what I did so with the best I did that So just real quick, I don't have time to play songs. The Beths one was good. Another one where I started. Why do you say we don't have time to play songs?

Speaker AYeah, let's do little bits. Well, I don't know.

MerlinOkay, well, the Beths one was the basic one. I didn't love, love, love everything I was finding, but it was good. The next one was I started with this guy Jeff Rosenstock, who's really interesting, and followed through and found, as we talked about last week, found some good kind of what I called emo skate and slightly math songs, but really like screaming emo songs that I liked. Recent Finds is just like every time I found something from Release for Radar and Discover, I would add that to Recent Finds. My giant project over the weekend was I've decided I made two playlists that represent songs that were large or special to me in college.

One is my first two years of college. The other is my second two years of college. And those are real big. They have like over 40 songs. And my sixth list I made is called Oldie Recurrent. And like I said, that's stuff where, oh, yeah, I forgot. I used to really like that song. I haven't thought about that in a while and put it on there. So that's what I did.

AlexMay I play a little bit of Jeff Rosenstock?

MerlinYeah, do it.

Speaker AI love this guy so much.

MerlinDid you listen to his concept album? Did you listen to The Worry? No, no, no. He has a kind of rhetoric when he sings a little bit. He does, he does. He has this weird punk rock concept album loosely based on Abbey Road. Not really, but the whole second side is just... Go look up Jeff Rosenstock's Worry. Because, Alex, I think you might really like this. Let me look. Because the last half of it is just punky, emo, one long medley of songs.

AlexHe's just so sad, and I love it. Give me a track.

MerlinTry track 10, Bang on the Door. This is just in the middle of the, I bet you get the idea.

AlexThis is like early, almost getting into emo type of, oh man.

MerlinSelf-deprecating. But then just for a little bit of contrast, hit 16 while you're alive.

AlexOh, man.

Is this like a chronological thing of post like emo and post punk? Like this.

MerlinI know. I found so many that like I don't even know if it's been enough time to call it like nostalgia. but like there were so many songs on that one dbf uh emo skate and math um on that one like go click on uh i mean it's it's so straightforward that it's almost like yeah like i know what this is but like go to applebee's bar i love it

Speaker AI am every person that you've ever ignored. I am a flaming bag of dog shit on your board. Do you think I was a savior? Is this a parody or a real song? No, it's a real song. No, it's like recent music. Yeah.

AlexSo I... That sounds like a parody. No, no. It does. But that's the thing.

MerlinIt's still going on. It's like surf or rockabilly where it's always been going on. You just don't want to hear it in the charts.

AlexThere is this, oh, man. Well, let's finish Merlin's thing. God, I've fallen in love with Spotify.

MerlinIsn't it fun?

AlexThis has become my favorite social network.

MaxYou can even get a new account.

AlexYeah, just. Oh, that's a good idea.

MerlinYou should do that.

AlexThat's the one thing you could use your Cards Against Humanity email for.

MerlinThat is true. Just that. Do you want one more song? Yes, yes. How about go to recent finds where I just, even this morning I'm adding stuff to this. But like, you know, for many years my favorite band was Guided by Voices. I have not followed them. Absolutely. One of my all-time favorite bands. And I followed them very closely. It was very influenced.

MaxYou ever got into Guided by Voices? No, it's okay.

MerlinIt's all right. Where do I start? Start with B-1000 or possibly Propeller. But probably B-1000. Those are albums? Well, the one after Alien Lanes is more accessible. Maybe Alien Lanes. Give me the, what's the starter one?

MaxWhat's the one where it's like, listen to this if you want to see what they're all about?

MerlinWell, their later stuff is much more palatable and polished, but their whole bit was that they were deliberately incredibly super lo-fi, and they've kind of mostly left that behind. Pollard's mostly doing other stuff now, but I didn't know they had a new album, so click on Grace Bat Matters. Wait, so which one should I listen to? What's my first album? B-1000. Try B-1000. If you hate B-1000, you won't like GBV.

AlexAnd this is Grace Bat Matters.

Speaker Aso good at my voice is this is this recent yeah it just just came out

Merlinif you want still have you checked out have you checked out car seat headrest Alex no I don't know if you're a GB like and I almost didn't put on here because it's so similar. Click on fill in the blank. I just discovered these guys not too long ago, and if you like GBV, check out Car Seat Headrest. Listen, it's very tuneful. You are now listening to Car Seat Headrest.

That's very GBV.

Speaker AMaking that guitar.

MerlinWay to get to the chorus. It sounds like a case.

Speaker AI'm so sick of Filling the blank Accomplish more, accomplish nothing If I was living too I would just take my fist So I can beat up the rest of me You have no right to be depressed

You haven't tried holding them to like it I've seen enough of this world yet

MerlinGive that horse some line Okay, that's good Anyway, that's mine All I ask is if you're interested in this stuff I'll put them in, well, they'll be in show notes And I will add these to my playlist MerlinM.com slash playlist

AlexWho was that last one?

MerlinCar, seat, headrest I was into that

AlexWhat a good name for a band

MerlinYeah, their stuff is fun There's still so much good rock music out there. Nothing against all the EDM the kids like and the Moody songs. But there's still so much good rock and roll out there. And I have no way to discover that. I don't follow the trades. And this has been real good for me to just discover new stuff that's in my wheelhouse.

MaxDid you listen to any of the lady rock and roll, like front woman singer-songwriter rock and roll bands that I recommended to you?

MerlinWas it Waxahatchee?

MaxWaxahatchee, Heartless Bastards.

MerlinI didn't love Love Heartless Bastards. I listened to some Waxahachie and liked it a lot. I have to be in the right mood for that kind of stuff. If I'm like a Sunday afternoon mood, that's like right in my wheelhouse. You know, if you like the girls' stuff, I have a list I'm really pleased with. It's not still technically done, but I'll put it in the show notes. I've been really into The Baths. The Baths was a good discovery. Oh, and the sequencing on that record is so good. That's a good... I just love her voice. it's beautiful and clear but it's not like over trained

like there's some I have another

MaxI have another one shoot I better look it up so I get her name right but I think it's Margaret Glaspy and she has an album that's a cool she has an album Alex play play one play the opening of this song on Spotify Margaret Glaspy it's the first song on the album Emotions and Math

Speaker AOh, and I got you by my side. Everything's all right. It's just when you're gone, I start to snooze the alarm. Cause I stay up until four in the morning.

MerlinOh, I like this.

Speaker ACounting all the days to your back. Shivering in an ice cold bath. Of emotional man

AlexI enjoyed that.

MaxI almost saved that. Yeah, that's one of my Spotify discoveries that I've been really into. I think she has a really good voice, like an interesting voice. I don't know what to... There's not anyone else who she sounds like. No, it's real quirky. I like it a lot.

AlexIt's like a Nora Jones slash Regina Spector kind of thing.

MaxKind of like Joanna Newsom, but in a less novelty way.

AlexYeah. I don't know if that's mean or not. I like Joanna Newsom.

MaxI like Joanna Newsom.

AlexWe all like a harp player. Good old Newsom. Harp. Merlin, is that? God, it is.

MerlinThat's plenty. That's plenty for mine. I'm also going to put in show notes this list. I have many good playlists. Someone's called Some Girls. and this is just really good women singing songs. Lots of rock and stuff.

AlexSexist, but okay. We'll put it in there, I guess. I hate girls. Boom. No girls allowed. But it's got Maps. Neasly. The best song ever. It is, objectively, the best song ever made. What song?

MerlinMaps?

AlexMaps? Oh, my God.

MerlinThey don't love you like I love you. Wait. Oh, play it. Oh, my God. Play that beginning.

AlexOh, it's so good.

MerlinMy Angus, please stay. Yeah, yeah, yes.

AlexOh, my God. Jesus, Max. Oh, my God. I remember watching this music video in my grandma's house.

MerlinShe's crying because Angus wasn't there. Fucking Angus. Angus was supposed to be there.

AlexOh, the drums.

Speaker APack up. That's so good. It's enough. Oh say, say, say Oh say, say, say Oh say, say, say Oh say, say, say Oh say, say, say Wait They don't want to be like I love you Wait They don't want to be like I love you I love my That's why I spent

AlexThat is a good song. I spent like two years trying to get my guitar to sound like that.

MaxI like the Beyonce version better.

MerlinThey were supposed, they were going to shoot their video and her boyfriend, a rock guy named Angus, was supposed to be there because she'd written this song about him and his imminent leaving and he didn't show up at the video shoot and she literally fucking cries in the video because Angus isn't there singing this song about him. My Angus please stay, Maps.

AlexGod.

MaxAlex, what was your playlist?

AlexOh, well now that, well, I mean, how do you follow the best? No, yours is good. Alex, I like yours. Talk about yours. You know what? I like mine too. It's moody. So what I tried to do,

I think last week I mentioned how I also shared my Spotify with Maddie and it was just a big old disaster. And so then I tried to kind of train it by liking or what's it called? Following playlists that Spotify has created, like Pop Punk Hourhouse, Emo Forever. acoustic emo so a lot of like that nonsense um and then it started popping up bands like the get up kids and like stuff that I actually liked um and then I was like okay I want to find stuff

that I guess I listen to more often because I'm sad and want quiet music so I I just played a bunch of Sufjan Stevens uh and then found the refresh thing and just kept refreshing and found like my my i only have five um oh let me pull this up i will say spotify really oh you oh in chrome can you play spotify in chrome yes okay i have safari as my browser right now that's why

Merlinum i'm using the app i'm using the the desktop app well if you go to a link it doesn't automatically

Alexopen the app for some right it goes yeah yeah yeah um this this is so the first song serotonin russians which is russes which is by max how do you say it fuya and miyagi right yeah you guys both had these folks on your list and i think this showed up because now i just we we play the cards against humanity playlist all the time the place playlist you made so that also is tailored to my

spotify account um and i had no idea they're not in there though the the maybe you are really i don't well then somehow they just got they they all got all up in here um wow i love their album art and how would how would you describe them i don't know well that's what i mean i'll talk about

Maxthat in my playlist because that's i also use i made all i try yeah anyway i'll get into it in a

AlexYeah, so I found a live session by Audio Tree, which is this awesome music thing in Chicago. But it's a mix of like bleep bloops and rock. So this is Fuji and Miyagi? Yes, this is Serotonin Rush's.

MerlinI really like it. The drums are super live on this.

AlexOh, that's very good. And the, oh, I know why. It's kind of, it's a little bit like Battles. Maybe that's why it popped up. And then there's this other band, Helios. No idea who they are, what they're about. Just really, really started liking them.

So this is Bless This Morning.

MerlinI added this one to my recent finds. This is good. I like this one.

AlexThis is mostly ambient, so I'm just going to skip around. Oh, it's just dark and pleasant. I'm scared and mad at the world. Just a slow boil.

MerlinIt's singing along.

AlexSo that's what I listen to when I get angry at the Shortcuts app not working. And this guy, Perfume Genius, he is indeed. And he basically talks about all there are a bunch of sad songs about being gay. Really don't know how I could relate. But there was this one song, Mr. Peterson. It's like a Dear Mrs. Robinson type story. And I just enjoy him. It's also, oh boy.

Boy

Speaker AI work in math class with notes attached Of a place in town

AlexThat's definitely not for everybody, but it reminds me of The Antlers, but with... Oh, man. Piano's fun. I miss piano.

MerlinMm-hmm. Love piano.

AlexI don't know if you're making fun of me or not.

MerlinI'm being dead serious. I just sit around and listen to Glenn Gould just because I'm like that. Yes. I love the sound of a piano. I couldn't sleep last night. I first listened to the Goldberg Variations and then I listened to the first Boston album. And I slept just fine.

Speaker Aall i want is to have a peace of mind take a look ahead but i love piano oh gosh and uh all right

Merlinall right you ever you ever watch you ever watch glenn glenn glenn gould i have not no no no i'm gonna send you a video of him jamming oh boy oh like i can fuck shit up uh this is a good list

Alexalex it's very moody it's just like moody and weird what was the really weird one where i said

Merlinyou might like low uh the one that was kind of thumpy and had like weird electronic uh sounds

Alexin it oh i'm not sure this is just pleasant piano music all of our arnold's um but but this song by an artist in honie called violent men oh my god what a weird crazy i i don't even know what this is

Speaker AIt feels so good. Yeah, you were born of me.

Well, you went to see me. Yeah, you were born of me.

AlexI'm going to get you back to my end. Oh, I love it. So maybe people might need some jazz cigarettes to enjoy that type of stuff. But I was just entranced by all of her crazy weird stuff and the looping she just does with her voice. And yeah, this is like my new social network is seeing all of my friends' activity and then checking that out and just hitting that refresh button is so cool.

Merlinuh and yeah that's a great that you're discovering something great especially if you have a very tightly a tight genre that's happening like if you're listening to a lot of in my case like 80s or 90s like indie rock it's pretty good at going yeah you probably want to add this to your list and you see stuff that's familiar and you're like you get me and i like that you it it sort of knows

Alexwhat you are listening to i i thought my whole all of my suggestions were going to become weird ambient stuff but no you start listening uh again to modern baseball and then it just pops up new weird indie punk bands and i oh i love spotify all right max uh so i've been uh very into this band

Maxfujiya and miyagi lately so their new uh their new album uh i think is like my favorite uh new album i've heard in a long time where is it oh yeah it's called the dbf cyborg playlist and it's called the different blades from the same pair of scissors.

So why don't you, could you play this, but maybe started it like two minutes and 15 seconds in or so. And then we'll listen to a few minutes of it.

Yeah, so also this album is one. That's very crowd rock. Yeah, it is. This album is super, super crowd rocky, but it's rangy. It has a lot of different sort of styles. and then it's also like a 50 minute song. Like it's one song that's just like 50 minutes long.

AlexWell, actually it's 43 minutes and 27 seconds. All right. Oh, it's so good.

MerlinIsn't this fun? That's super fun. I love his voice.

AlexThis is one of those, like, I haven't listened to something in a while where I'm like, fuck, I would love to see this live.

MaxYeah, they probably would be pretty. It might be a live software demo kind of up in.

AlexBut, I mean, there's not many things where I'm like, yeah, I would totally, totally leave the house for this. But, oh, it's amazing. So why did you call it Cyborg Playlist?

MaxIs this all craziness? So a friend of the show, Zach Gage, made that solitaire game where you can have the computer suggest a move. and he said a lot of people would just have the computer suggest a move, do the move, have the computer suggest a move, do the move, and that would be the game. And then eventually they'd lose and that would be how they played. And he called it cyborging. And he's like, it's a very popular way to play. Like you'll lose every time, but it's an option. So I kind of felt like this was cyborging, right? Like I had a computer suggest a song and then the next one, the next one.

So, okay, so I put the Fuji and Miyagi thing in and I was like, I don't really know how to classify this music exactly, but I want more of it. and I want to find the related artists. Another band that I know is similar is L1011, who, by the way, I always assumed L1011 was like one guy with a computer, but no, no, no, check them out on YouTube. Not now, but later, check them out on YouTube. I recommend a song. One of my favorite songs by them is called Transitions, and it's a crazy song, but it's a very technically complicated song to play, and you've got to see these guys play live.

I mean, maybe not everyone's kind of music, but it's like the technical skill of playing that live is insane to me.

AlexThis is the double guitar guy, right?

MaxHe plays a double guitar and he like – That's a double guitar, right? Yeah, yeah, a double neck guitar. And he has this thing where he like – I think it's called a bow and he electrifies the strings to get these crazy tones out of them. Like an e-bow? An e-bow, yeah, that's it. Yeah.

So, yeah, so that's that. So I put it in and I saw what it would suggest. So suggested Fortress by Pindback, one of my all-time favorite songs. You could put a minute of that on.

To the fall, I see the summer of the world. You realize it more. Sometimes it falls, you're the second floor. You're not a boy, you're not a boy.

AlexWhen is this from?

MaxOh, probably early 2000s. I love his voice. Yeah, I know. Pinback's one of the great, the great bands to me. You should check out that Heavy Vegetable record. I will, yeah.

AlexThat's a delight. I didn't, I've never heard of Pinback.

MaxOh, they're so good. Wow. So that album, Summer and Abaddon I think is it's probably their best album but they're a very consistent band and they don't have a bad album like you can pretty much just listen to whatever I like their new stuff a lot they're great right in my wheelhouse so I thought okay now we're getting somewhere like the Pinback I already knew them but I was like that's a great fit with Fuji and Miyagi very similar kind of a tone and then it started throwing in some Yola Tango oh yeah a little bit of Eels one of my other favorites

Merlinthat Eel I forgot now I added that to my oldie recurrent I forgot about that song, and it's so good.

MaxThere's like three songs on every Eels album where every time I look at the album, I'm like, fuck, that song. That was so – you know another one that this showed me was Hospital Food from Blinking Lights and something else?

Speaker AI know.

MaxOne of the great Eels songs. Oh, okay. And yeah, and then it kind of lost the track. It got a little LCD sound system, which is kind of like what I was going for. I can see what happened, though. You know what I mean? Yeah, it kind of went off a deep end And then it started giving me stuff it knows I like Like I think at the end where it's giving me Spoon Spoon and the Unicorns It's like, yeah, we're out of ideas But here's some stuff that Max likes

AlexNo, no, I really like this

MaxIt was giving me a lot of Beck too Which is an artist that I don't particularly like Beck, I like some songs I like the idea of Beck I like some Beck songs I think are catchy But I don't sit down and go Ooh, I should really listen to a Beck album

AlexI think I don't like Beck at all So no comment on that But it's almost like I can see The progression of how they're like Well LCD sound system That's why they were recommending Beck But just like the It did kind of be like well I don't know what else you want So here's some spoon Which I don't think that's bad I think that's interesting

MaxPeriodically I forget how good LCD sound system is And then I listen to it And then I get halfway through the song and I'm like kind of rocking to the song, I'm like, man, LCD Sound System is so fucking good. You forget how good they are.

AlexI don't, but I love...

MaxI forget until I'm halfway through an LCD Sound System song, I forget how much I like them.

AlexThat's another band that when I saw them live, it was like, oh, I get it now. It doesn't take away from their work or anything, but that guy can fuck. Have you seen the LCD sound system documentary?

MerlinDid he do Losing My Edge? Yeah.

MaxHave you guys seen the YouTube video of New York I Love You with Miles Davis? No. No. Alex, go on YouTube. Flip your computers. I want to make sure you pick the right video. So it's New York I Love You and then I think it's Miles Davis. This is one of my favorite things on YouTube. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just hit play on that. We'll listen to a few minutes of that.

Speaker Aall right i'm sold merlin you just gotta pull this up yeah you should be looking at it it's funny like a rat in a cage

Merlinokay

Speaker Apulling minimum wage New York I love you but you bring me down

Alexlisteners just just think of a lip syncing Kermit

Maxwell that's the video music video for New York I Love You but now he's pulled up another YouTube video with Miles Davis.

AlexBut like the...

MaxIsn't this amazingly good

Speaker Ahow it fits together? It's so good. When you open the door To the cops who were born Once they'd run out of crime

MaxHow could it work that well?

AlexYes. Oh, my God. This is both a good like they're taking the music videos from both and just I don't know. This is a fun film mashup as well as music. This is delightful. It's really, really clever.

MerlinAlex, the one I just sent. Alexa, stop. Alexandra, click on that low while we're waiting. Listen to that Lowe song I sent in the text. Tell me if you hate this or not. Did you ever listen to Lowe back in the day?

AlexI know of it. Is this the...

MerlinThey're real quiet and their live shows are insufferable because everybody sits on the floor and goes, shh. But check out this wackadoo fucking new album they released. I think it might be in your wheelhouse. Try that song Disarray.

MaxOh, yeah.

AlexThis doesn't feel like a sit-down and shh type of concert.

MerlinWell, it doesn't sound like low.

AlexMmm, I see. Before it falls into total disarray, you'll have to learn to live a different way.

Speaker AToo late to look back on apocryphal verbs, and to be something beyond kinder than words. This theme of spirit man is bringing me down. It tells me not to do the things that I should. It graduated to the back of the bus They say you let it in when you took the drums

MerlinYeah, so, good headphones music.

AlexI think I literally just, this is so fucking good.

MerlinOh, you don't hate it.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no.

MerlinBut for Lowe, like Lowe used to, oh man. Oh, they're so good.

AlexSo if this doesn't sound like Lowe, I don't know how I'd feel about Lowe, but I am going to get into it.

MerlinOh, they're good. It's like Sloan says, it's not the band I hate, it's their fans. There's this song there that's called Whore that I used to really, really love. Where is it? Actually, it's in my oldie recurrent list.

AlexDo either of you do the thing where you're listening, you hear something new, and then it pops into your head like, oh man, this sounds like the soundtrack too or like you start picturing. Oh, yes. That is, I couldn't, I don't know if it's, and specifically I think about like things I've shot or things I've seen and I don't know. It's just this, I guess that's why my wheelhouse has expanded because anything that's good, I have enjoyed.

This is a sit down and shh. What is this?

Speaker AThis is whore.

AlexSo low. Low.

Speaker AWell, they haven't gotten to the hook yet.

AlexAll right.

MaxI'm going to take a quick nap.

AlexAll right.

Speaker AYep, yep. That's low. Shh.

AlexCalm down. Calm down.

MaxI was playing. That's low. That's low.

Speaker AThat's low. Don't interrupt low.

MaxHe's low.

Speaker AOkay, here comes the hook

MaxOh, I've never been so excited for a drum What's gonna happen?

AlexShh, shh, shh Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry

MerlinHere comes the hook Yeah, it's pretty much the same What era?

AlexJoseph Gordon-Levitt starred in whatever movie.

MerlinJoseph Gordon-Biden. What era? You're listening to Max Richter. What era is that from? Late 90s probably. 2001. Early 2000, yeah. Do you ever listen to that song from Arrival, that Max Richter song everybody uses for FPO music? Do you know that song, Alex?

AlexI mean, I know all of the...

MerlinOn the Nature of Daylight.

AlexGoing, going, going. I'm sure I do.

MerlinBut you're instantly going to know it. It's the song that makes you cry in Arrival, but apparently it's one of those songs that everybody uses when they're editing and don't have the final music yet.

MaxAs well as the soundtrack from Moon, Lunar Industries, big movie trailer. Is that right? Yeah, big movie trailer soundtrack.

MerlinI sometimes just listen to it on The Nature of Daylight because it makes me sad and it's beautiful. Oh, I think we... Luis Banks was an excellent mother.

MaxYou know another? How about this for a movie? Here's a good poll for sad movie trailer music. The Mighty Rio Grande. Give that a little play. Here, do Merlin's first and then we'll do it.

AlexWait, so on arrival, what's it called?

MerlinOh, look for, go to Max Richter, R-I-C-H-T-E-R. I'll send it, didn't I send it? Oh, no, I'll send it to you.

AlexMax Richter, a catalog of afternoons.

MerlinHere we go, here we go, here we go. On the nature of daylight, I'm clicking. There. You'll know it.

AlexOh, yeah. Oh.

MerlinShe watches it get older. She turns 11, 12, 13.

Speaker AGet your men out of there Johnny Merlin would you

AlexWould you still have had the kid

MerlinOf course I would have had the kid

AlexSo would I

MerlinJohn Syracuse is a bad person And so is Todd Vaziri They're bad people

AlexHe is a bad person

MerlinLouise was a great mom

AlexI agree Thank you Hashtag Louise was great

MerlinYou know the courage it would have taken Hashtag Louise was right You know what she would have to go through Knowing what she knew and she still did it?

AlexYes. Yes. God damn it. And that kid had a fucking good life. Had a good, good life.

MaxAll right. Put on the Mighty Rio Grande. This is one of my favorite other movie, funny, overused movie soundtrack songs.

Speaker AMighty, mighty.

MaxMovie trailer. It's from movie trailers. You've got the Inception music, obviously used a lot.

MerlinMm-hmm. Right?

MaxRom.

MerlinRom. What's it called? The brown sound? what's it called?

AlexBrom. Yeah.

MerlinBrom.

AlexMike Granetta did an amazing live reasonably sound about the Brom.

MaxIt's very good. Do you guys know this song?

AlexI don't think so. Go in a little bit. Okay, yeah, this is... Oh, inspirational indie type stuff? Okay, yeah. Yep, here we go.

MaxLike every sports movie. We bought a zoo. Yeah, put it back on. Put it back on. What is hope? Hope is a concept.

Speaker AHope is what we fight for.

MerlinIf we can just change one life today, it'll be worth one.

Speaker AI'll walk you get out on that field. Leave it all on the field. Clear eyes, full bowels, can't move. Oh, God.

MerlinVery funny. What was that? Explosions in the Sky, the fake Godspeech you Black Emperor?

AlexI love that song, and I will stand by it.

MerlinIt's a fake Explosions in the Sky. Which is also a fake Godspeed.

AlexIt's good. And what's this? You don't know what this is.

MerlinIs this Friday Night Lights?

AlexYes, this is Explosions in the Sky, Your Hand and Mine.

MerlinYeah, which wants to be Godspeed you, Black Emperor. God bless you.

AlexLet's do the crying part where they don't make the touchdown. Touchdown.

Speaker AViolin, violin, violin.

MaxWe're leaving Texas. Wow, he got tackled so hard. He's broke his spine. Oh, no.

Speaker AWe got a good question. Landry! I miss you, Grandpa! That's my favorite secret.

AlexSo this podcast is on Spotify. Did you recognize that reference, Alex? Wait, which one? I got lost in my own reference. Zeke from Bob's Burgers. I miss you, Grandpa!

Speaker AOh, God. What a good show.

MerlinOh, classy like a lady butler. Call me.

AlexMaybe, I don't know.

MerlinWhat else we got? What's the one? Oh, you know what? Henry V. Fucking Henry V. Roddy Doyle. The Henry V music. I think it's actually been reused in other Kenneth Branagh movies.

AlexOh, oh my goodness. I just typed in Henry. Oh, I am following my friend Henry Birdseye. Awesome. On Twitter. Oh, this is just trash. Oh, no. So what am I looking up?

MerlinOh no, I was just thinking So you know the greatest speech of all time, St. Crispin's Day?

AlexYeah, you did a project and abandoned it

MerlinI did, I did, I did Wow, you were following me back then? I didn't do it, I didn't do it

AlexShit What was this project?

MerlinLet's see who thinks so

Speaker AIs this a whole thing? This is a whole thing?

MerlinThe idea was by October 25th of probably 2003 Memorize the St. Crispin's Day speech and be prepared to present it And I totally bailed on it

MaxWait, for what? For what was this for?

Merlinbecause it's the greatest speech of all time

Maxno but for what was why were you doing this

Merlintumblr

Maxall right I think we are trying to dial in Amanda Littman from Run for Something to close out our episode with an inspirational speech about voting Hey, how's it going?

Speaker BGood, sorry about that. Today has been a bad one.

MaxOh, no problem. This is my dear friend, Amanda Littman. She is the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, which is an organization that helps young people and exciting candidates run for office. Amanda and I met working on the Clinton campaign, and she has really built this amazing organization that I really, really admire. and I know I've been supporting and working for some Run for Something candidates here in Illinois.

But I just thought, I know, you know, we obviously talk about politics a lot. We get a lot of questions from our listeners, like what kind of stuff should they be doing leading up to the midterms, and I can really think of no better person than Amanda to give us a little pep talk and also give people some practical advice on how to spend this last week before the elections start.

Speaker BI am so, so excited. So where do you want to start?

MaxOh, yeah. Okay, first of all, tell us about Run for Something. And can you give us some, like, I think we all need a little pick-me-up this week. So can you give us some of the good news from that, you guys have done some amazing work over the last two years. Can you give us some of the highlights?

Speaker BAbsolutely. So since we've launched on Inauguration Day, almost more than 19,000 young people have raised their hands and told us they want to run. And about 10% of those have actually gotten on the ballot. So we know that there are thousands of young people running for office across the country for the first time All running for something local, for school boards, for state legislature, for city council The things that really make a difference What I'm really excited about is that in just a few days, on election day We're going to have 420 endorsed runners and candidates all across the country

46 states 50% of them are women, 35% of them are people of color 15% are LGBTQ And they are amazing, they are moms They are teachers. They are veterans. They are artists and musicians. They are real people like you and like me, but so much better because they have changed their careers and their lives to what I think will ultimately change the world. So I am so excited for so many of them to win and for the ones that don't, for their door knocking and arguing about the issues to really have made a difference in their community.

MaxCan you tell us about some of the cool Run for Something candidates? I mean, I know out here in Illinois running for DuPage County board is my friend Hadia Afzal. Very excited for her. I know you guys worked with Danica Rome in Virginia. Tell us about some of these exciting people that you guys are working with.

Speaker BTotally. So Hadia in DuPage County, along with Ashley Stellman and Zara Sawatwala out there running really, really great campaigns, talking voters, knocking doors. We've got people like Erin Wiener in Texas who's running for State Ledge and kept getting mistaken for her college kids during her first trimester of pregnancy because she couldn't stop throwing up while knocking doors. We've got Andrea Marr who's running for Coastal City Council out in California. Jennifer O'Meara running for State Ledge in Pennsylvania who's done an incredible campaign.

uh, Gayatri Agnew, this badass mom in Arkansas who, uh, helped get Arkansas women the right to use campaign funds for child care. Uh, Josie Raymond out in Kentucky did the same thing. Caitlin Clarkson-Pereira up in Connecticut is fighting against the Connecticut State Ethics Commission to make sure that moms and dads can run for office and make sure their kids are taken Terrell. Who else? Sam Edwards down in South Carolina, who was the founder of Indivisible there. Frank, whose last name is escaping me, but if he wins, he'll be the first elected

African-American mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. Lavelle Compton in Oklahoma. You know, I could go on and on and on. These incredible candidates. Well, I saw, you know, we were texting each

Maxother about that article that ran this week about, it was an interview with these millennials about why they don't vote. And it was interesting. They talked to like 14 millennials who are not going to vote. And they got into why. And I would say like the number one reason was people felt like they didn't understand enough about the issues to vote. So they were like, they would say something like, yeah, I don't really like Trump, but I also don't feel like I know enough about the issues to vote. And to that, I would just say, like, the way our country is designed, you're not, you don't need to be an expert to go vote. Just vote your gut. Go with the people that you trust that aren't transparently trying to kill you and dick you over and go with that. And if you're not sure,

you know, also, you know, you don't have to fill everything out on the ballot. So just go vote for the people that, that, you know, you've heard of. And the other thing is, I think there, I think, you know, some of our listeners may live in states where maybe they're not that excited about tickets, like on the top of the ticket. So for example, like, let's say there was a state where you had two people running for governor and they were both, they were both billionaires and, you know, More or less indistinguishable in their backgrounds and sort of personal presentation. And they just pull up alongside each other like these big ironclad battleships in the Civil War

and just start firing attack ads at each other, spending millions and millions of dollars until your eyeballs are bleeding. And you're like, boy, I'm not really motivated to vote for either of these people. But consider this. There are going to be some really cool young people running down ballot, people who can actually relate to your life and your problems, who you can go vote for. You don't have to care about the top of the ticket or some guy you've never heard of or you haven't met. Go vote for the people in your community who are going to, like Amanda said, they're going to fix your streets and prevent the planet from melting.

Speaker BYeah, and if you don't like the folks at the top of the ticket, make sure you're voting for people who can check their power. So maybe you don't love either a gubernatorial candidate, but your state-reg candidate is going to be the one who can hold them accountable for the next one of the decisions they make. So focus your efforts there.

For me, what I think is really telling about that article, and I mentioned a few, is the ones who did mention, oh, I'm probably going to vote, is because they heard from someone, because they talked to a mom or a friend or a candidate or an organizer. They really connected with someone in real life about why this matters. And that reminded me why it's so, so, so important to be knocking doors and making phone calls, especially knocking doors. And why I'm really glad that at least I run for something candidates are knocking on average between 5,000 and 10,000 doors in the businesses themselves.

That conversation will do more than any ad campaign we could ever imagine. So I think that is part of the way that we get young people really excited about voting again.

MaxWell, Amanda, you're probably in touch with more of these sort of local campaigns than anyone I know. People are listening to this. they're probably feeling nervous, as I am, about the election. You want to do everything you can. I would say now is the time where in a week, if things don't go our way, you don't want to be looking back going, oh, boy, I wish I had done something more. So this is kind of the time to leave it all on the field. What specifically should people do? So you mentioned go find a local campaign, make phone calls, go Canvas.

How do people do that?

Speaker BOne of the best ways to do it is to go to runforsomething.net slash volunteers. dash four dash something. We're very creative with our naming here. Basically, every candidate we're working with, along with most of the state parties we're working with, will have events listed up there. There's also remote opportunities. So if you're interested in doing text messaging or phone banking from home, we have those up there too. The other thing you can do is find your local Democratic Party's website or the part of the infrastructure that appeals to you,

whether it's Democratic Socialist or Indivisible or OFA, and head to their website and see what events they've got going on this weekend. In this final stretch, folks are going to want to go on their own and talk to the voters. And this is the best, honestly, this is my favorite time to do voter contact because you're not talking to people who are scary. The list you're going to get are folks who just need a little reminder to vote. So you're not saying vote for this person or that person. You're going over and making sure that people have all the information they need to make their voice heard. So do they know where to vote? Do they have a plan? Do they know what time the whole is open?

Do they revive? Can you help them? It's really, really positive and fun.

MaxIn other words, we're not talking to Republicans anymore trying to convince them to vote for us. We're only talking to Democrats and giving them, like, logistical information on how to vote. And in general, people, at this stage, if you go out and canvas, people are so happy to see you. Like, they'll, like, thank you and give you a high five, and they're very fired up. So it's a very safe and fun and exciting time to go door-to-door if you're considering it and you haven't done it yet. One other thing I can think of is if you do have a car, especially a large car like a van, there really is a need to both this weekend to be driving canvassers out and helping shuttle people around,

but also on Election Day to drive people to the polls. You can also volunteer with a campaign about that. Are there any other things like that that we should tell our listeners to do, Amanda?

Speaker BThere's going to be GOTV. I mean, go get out the vote activities happening all through Election Day. So if you can't campaign this weekend, but you can maybe take Tuesday off work and do that, that's helpful. You can also do text messages and phone calls maybe from work or on your break. So don't think you don't have the time. You absolutely have the time to at least do something. And if you can't do something, or even if you can and you want to do more, go give online, especially to these local racers where they may not spend money on ads or on canvassers. It's really important that they don't end in debt, especially for some of these local racers.

because there'll be personal debt on the line. So anything you can do makes a difference.

MaxAll right. And Amanda, give people that URL one more time if they want to connect with a Run for Something candidate.

Speaker BRunforsomething.net slash volunteer dash four dash something is your home base.

MaxAll right. Thank you so much for joining us. And I definitely urge all of our Dubai Friday listeners, if you, you know, whatever. It's all fun and games and making fun of Donald Trump, except for this week. Please go do something, because you'll be really sad if you don't. And if you need further advice, you can reach me on the Discord or the Twitter or something, and I will help find something cool in your area for you to go help out with. All right. Thanks, Amanda. Good luck. Thanks, Zach.

AlexWhat campaign office is she working out of?

MaxI don't know. I think Amanda's very involved in—I'm just speculating here, but she's very involved in Virginia politics, so she might have been doing some sort of GOTV thing in Virginia. That would be my guess.

Alexand Run for Something is

Maxnationwide right? Nationwide and they have so many cool young people who are running for office for the first time I definitely recommend if you're going to put your effort somewhere find a Run for Something candidate and go work for them it'll go noticed and be appreciated so much more than like making calls for Beto or something like that not like Beto's not great but he has enough help. Alright well is that it?

AlexI mean yes but say something funny

MaxI don't have anything funny to say but I forbid you from listening to the podcast if you don't go do something this week to help out let's all go around and say what we're going to do to help out Merlin what are you going to do oh all the great things

Alexyep yep yep yep

MerlinI've had a pretty busy week getting out there I met a very old Chinese woman with kidney disease at a dim sum stand and I helped her understand how Prop 8 is hurting her HMO's dialysis holding company. You can stream that live at xiaomai.disco slash superwokebrother for now, one word. I taught a grateful Estonian man with a toupee that payday loans are usurious to the white working class. You can check that out at hirsute.ee slash getreal1percenters slash affiliate slash hotdogsladies dash actual, one word.

Oh, last night I helped a homeless genderfluid man with a detuned banjo learn that love is actually a verb. that's up right now in the members only feed at premium.membersonlyfeed.epalette slash claw dash hammer dash preview slash scrugs slash blue wave slash 2018 well one word

103. The 10x Hour with Johnny Bumpers

Show notes

Spotify Playlists

Merlin’s

Alex’s

Max’s

Transcript

103. The 10x Hour with Johnny Bumpers

Show notes

Spotify Playlists

Merlin’s

Alex’s

Max’s

Transcript

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