184. Big Zone Energy

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Stemkin. This week's challenge, find media that exists out of time.

MerlinHello, I'm on Skype.

AlexI'm on Skype too, but I don't want to be the one who talks first.

Speaker Asave ya

Alexsave ya 3, 2, 1 is Max on Skype? I mean can one really be on Skype? what if we do a Midwest thing where it's like I am in Skype

Merlinoh like a line soda, soda pop

Alexfor a year I called water fountains bubblers and I still hate it

Merlinfountains bubblers

Speaker Awhat? Did you just bite me? You call fountains bub-bub-bub? That's adorable.

MaxHello.

Speaker AHey, Max is on Skype.

MaxMax is in Skype. In Skype.

Speaker AI am on Skype. I love Skype.

AlexOkay, Marco.

Speaker AHow are you doing, Alex?

AlexI am, you know, this is... I am all right. How are you doing, Merlin? Good.

Merlinlike all men, like all men, I'll just sit here and nod until you say I'm fine.

AlexThat's the thing. I'm like, I'm going to answer your question.

MerlinAm I in trouble?

AlexUh-huh. Uh-huh.

MerlinNo, seriously, last week you sound like you were having a bit of a time.

AlexWell, that's the thing is I had a bit of a time, and that's what would help is admitting when you're not doing all right. I mean, I was all right this morning until our friends Stephen and Michael of RelayFM just sent a message saying, hi, Alex. And then Stephen is typing, Stephen is typing, Stephen is typing. And so for a solid five minutes, what text that could have just been, hey, can we hop on a call later for this thing was just, hi, Alex, who starts a text chain with?

Merlinbut damn benjamin oh that's that's that's really that's criminal uh he i can't believe he regards himself as a christian man oh my god that's a very it's a very hostile thing to do to a person

Alexyes i thought he was a nice man i did too but you know live and learn typing typing typing you got

Merlinto begin every i'm going to say it again people it doesn't change with covid every time you contact someone, it must begin with you saying, hi, you're not in trouble.

It's so criminal to do anything but that.

MaxJen does that. She texts me and she goes, hello, nothing is wrong. Basically, if Jen ever calls or texts me, I assume the building burned down or somebody died.

Merlinor is part is part of that that she is is it not fair to say that part of that is that she is perhaps uncommonly good at handling stuff and that she wouldn't be contacting you unless there

Maxwas something where she yeah jen well i don't know jen jen yeah yes yes jen has jen jen is like the in a lot of areas of cards is like the sort of the first realm of defense and then if it if it needs to get escalated, Jen is often the person who makes that call of like, okay, Max has to figure this out or someone else. Yeah.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. I don't know. I want to always believe the best in people or assume good intentions, but no, that's criminal. You should go to prison for that. You should always begin by saying everything is fine.

AlexOr just immediately say what is wrong. That's the thing. I would love to know if one day I'm just going to get a text saying that my family dog has died, which is going to break my heart into a million pieces. And I don't want to hear the problematic dog views right now because I just because this one time it's OK and I will just be devastated. But it's not going to be that. Instead, it's going to be my mom going, hey, how's it going? Hey, are you are you busy right now? That's the other thing. Are you are you busy right now?

MerlinIs this a good time?

AlexOh, my God.

Merlinyeah no i agree i but i see i want to assume best intentions but sometimes i'm not saying this is jen i'm not saying this is i steven i'm i'm saying that there there are people who i think enjoy that moment of typing typing typing that you have to sit through i think it's a power move sometimes

Alexi really believe that oh i i believe it too because i've done i mean am i being awful to

Merlinthink that am i being awful to think that because is it just that i here's the problem so i get that text is let's say let's go you know what let's super escalate this let's say you get the text that says we need to talk okay that's in my experience that's the one that sends my adrenaline

Maxlike flying up my neck i have a good coronavirus topic oh go on so i thought it would be interesting to talk about uh the um the ways that uh being at home all the time and just the all the weirdness of the world right now is messing with our idea of time and the passage of time.

MerlinPlease, yes, please.

MaxYes, please. It is really, it's really messing me up in a...

MerlinWe're going way beyond, we're going way beyond at least it's Friday. We're going way beyond, I don't even know what day it is. I'm talking about glacial level time and I'm talking about like moment to moment time. I'm talking about, it feels like I've been doing this for nine years, on top of which, how is it already 3 p.m.? What the fuck happened?

MaxI'm not usually like this. That's what I have. That's what I have is I feel I have been. It's always three o'clock. Like, how does that keep happening? I mean, it's three o'clock right now, right? As we're recording. Well, at least it's Friday.

MerlinAm I right?

MaxI've been, I feel like I'm in a time loop of waking up and making breakfast and then getting ready for bed and then waking up and making breakfast again and then getting ready for bed.

Speaker AWasn't I just watching YouTube and drinking?

MaxAnd I'm, I, every morning I wake up and I'm like, I just made breakfast. It was eight minutes ago. Oh my God, you're in Slaughterhouse-Faugh. And then all of a sudden I'm getting ready for bed and I'm like, I just did this. How could it be?

Merlin1985. I'm making a mega muffin.

Yeah, no, let's interrogate this. It's very weird. It is. Yeah, part of it must be more of the obvious elements. Well, certainly like a certain kind of sadness and uneasiness. It's also, like you say, the repetition. It's the, you know how like this happens a little bit when you're a kid in summertime, I feel like, unless you've got like some kind of strict, you know, violin playing schedule or something, where you kind of lose track a little bit, partly owing to that repetition in some ways. or like your vacation.

Like I never have fun on a vacation until the second to the last day. And then I'm like, fuck, now I got to go get on a plane and go home. Right? You know that feeling? And I think it's like that. And there's so many things that are so amplified about that. But it's that in the same way as a child, the reason I say that is you're lacking these context clues or context shifting clues where you go like, you know, Monday school, Tuesday school, Wednesday school, Thursday school, Friday's Friday, then weekend. And you got this like cycle. hakuna matata right you do this thing and now it's like it's always three o'clock it's always

Maxthree o'clock on whatever the fuck day it is well i i sort of even for that reason i i even sort of miss the rhythm of the school year because i always thought that you know when i was like in high school and college for all the parts that i didn't like about it i did like that you had these like very like solid like like demarcations of time like these fence posts of like now it's finals time and now it's break yeah a semester a semester is a fairly meaningful

Merlinsub-year amount of time. Right.

AlexIt's like the perfect amount for a life project or like a, I don't know. It's a good, it's just a good way to sort of gauge how the year is going in a real meaningful way.

MerlinYeah. Three to four months. There's a reason it's close to a season. It hews to, owing to our agrarian background, it hews to a certain cycle of the seasons. So yesterday when my favorite governor, Gavin Newsom, said, hey, look, this thing's going to come back. We need to get in front of it in so many ways. And one of the ways we need to get in front of it is we were looking at restarting the school year in July, which broke three brains at least in my house. Because starting school in July seems – that's like if you failed Algebra 2, you'd take school in July.

But that ain't a normal time to start school, right? because it screws up your idea of the seasons.

AlexPlus, I think that's kind of part of the having a monotonous day and having, but it's still not a predictable day. It's a routine, but you don't know when it's going to be disrupted and go back to school in July. You never know when it's, like, it could be like, oh, vaccine!

MerlinIt works on a weekly level, too, though, because even in spite of or even perhaps because of things like the Sunday scaries, you can pin an emotion to certain days. As I have said ad nauseum, I think days have a valence. John Roderick thinks that years have a shape. Like everybody has, I think everybody, I don't know if everybody has a voice in their head, but I think almost everybody has a mental model for the cycles of what we perceive as time. I'm sorry, this sounds like really up my ass, but I think it's super true. So you may still get the Sunday scaries a little bit,

but now you might be getting them on Thursday. And it's like, ah, geez, I don't know. I mean, there's no TV schedule. There's no sports schedule.

MaxThere's not any of those things. For me, there's a moment of, especially like in the meat of the day. So in the morning, I have my routine and I wake up and make breakfast or whatever. And now you're done with your routine and it's time to get on with your day. And for me, that means like emails and work and Zoom meetings and doing this podcast and whatever. and there's this feeling in in in the meaty part of the day and sort of and then the evening which is sort of like you know okay now i'm done with work and i'm gonna go back upstairs or whatever

and just be fun i guess there's this feeling i have of at any moment maybe something horrible will happen or maybe i'll get bored or and lose my mind huh one of one of one of your big fears

MerlinYou don't want it. You hate being bored, right? Well, I'm almost never bored.

AlexIt's impossible to be bored unless you're in prison.

MerlinNo, no, no. I'm saying the fear of boredom is real. I think one reason we look at Twitter is fear of boredom.

MaxNot being bored. It's fear of being bored. You should see the amount of stuff I take on an airplane because I fear... I guess it's not even the boredom. It's that I'll be bored and then I'll have a panic attack or I'll lose my mind or I'll become jokerfied or something. You get a little twisted?

Alexno it's it's a real thing yeah there's this feeling during the day for me of

Maxsomething awful could happen at any moment or i could i could become bored and become jokerified at any moment and so there's this real like how do i describe it it's this real minute to minute like grasping for like what's the next thing i'm gonna do and now what's the next thing i'm gonna do and now what's the next thing i do and now it's 3 p.m and none of those things were useful or substantial in any way.

AlexI mean, well, let's go up Merlin's ass further. And I've been talking to people about the folders website and I'm realizing more and more like, oh, all of this- 78 folders. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A73 folders?

AlexYeah.

Speaker ABut a bitch ain't one?

MerlinI was born in the project,

Speaker Ariches and rats.

Merlinhas the merlin cinematic universe started to loom large in your house because it's starting

Alexto seem like that a little bit it is are you exploring the back catalog well yes i'm exploring the back catalog with my spouse uh because he's never had any sort of i mean none none of us have had lives like this before, but he's had like, you know, knowledge work and stuff like that. But it was always like routine or freelance or walking dogs, like a physical checkbox thing.

MerlinAnd recently it's been go to a place and do a job or go, you know, whether it's cat sitting or baristaing or volunteering at a shelter or whatever it is. Those are all things where you take your body someplace to go be useful.

AlexAnd not even that. It's also like I know exactly when this is done. And the sort of the idea of time and attention is a bajillion times more important now. Even in my own work, I'm realizing how much more agency I have. And don't listen to this, Max. But Jesus Christ, I can get a fuckload done. And I feel like that's kind of why things always by 3 p.m.

I'm almost like, oh, oh, look at all look at all that stuff. And it sounds like I'm patting myself on the back right now, but it's kind of like, okay, I need to use this stupid.

MerlinNo, you've got one problem. I think what you might be getting at, at least from my point of view, is that there are usually ironies and paradoxes to this kind of thing. Isn't it funny? This is sort of a guiding principle of 73 folders. Is this notion that like what the difficult something Peter Drucker said in the 60s is that knowledge work is not just about doing the task. It's like deciding what task needs to be done. That's a capstone of knowledge work. So it is a blue ocean job in a lot of ways. You have to decide what your job is.

Sorry, I'm being me. But I do think that's true. And the thing is, if you are super, quote unquote, busy, then you don't have the time, nor the attention, nor the agency to make decisions about what to do. And now in this case, it's a real, it's a fucking existential moment to go like, oh, it's kind of on me now. And it's great that I can get this done. But I mean, is that kind of part of it? is like it is a little bit existential to like realize that that agency is there and has been

Alexall along uh well i don't know if it has been there all along for well for for better and worse um like in the last episode max actually put this really well in a way that i hadn't thought about it but we are very much in the hospitality business any anything i do if it's bringing someone cables yeah or or putting on an event or whatever it's it's all another way to put it is

Merlinyou enjoy i mean max don't listen to this um another way to put it is that i um i even people used to ask me what i do i say i try to make people happy on the internet and uh and and with with with max don't listen to this max it's also it's that uh it's to a certain extent you enjoy taking care of people yeah and it's it's hard to take care of people remotely well and that's the

Alexmax don't don't listen to this but but like i have i have the the best job in the world you guys me for this one uh but but like making people happy for me is is the best job in the world i could have um and but i think i'm getting a whole lot better at doing it um because i have so much not not even so much control on time just control on um attention and there's new expectations on how to get other people's attention like i love now zoom meetings are people kind of are kind of

burning out on them just like they did normal meetings. So when I'm the person who comes with the bullet points and like the actual like five things that we need to take care of, and then there's a definitive end, I'm the fucking hero. And I love it. I love weekly meetings with my manager now because I just, I know it's like, here are the things that I've done. Here are the things that need to get done. And I'm like, oh, God, this is, woo. And those sorts of

MerlinInsufficiencies are probably more and better rewarded now than they would be in another time. I'm trying not to overpromote other programs that I do because that's really gross. But we've been talking about this a lot on Roderick online. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. It's just this notion of, well, I mean, I hate to keep using this word, but many of us are more introverted than we realized. And it might take something like this for us to realize how much we have agreed to buy into a certain the theater of work that we're compelled to do.

And I feel like in a similar way, like, I think it's fair to say that from.

MaxIt's funny that you and Roderick are the ones who are talking about this because neither of you work.

AlexYeah.

MaxYou're the least you're the most removed from a normal work situation to people that I personally know. And yet, and yet. I don't know any two people who have less conventional jobs.

MerlinThat is a completely fair criticism. And yet, you would think that people would leave us the fuck alone.

Speaker AAnd they don't.

MerlinDon't you realize I don't work? And yet, you keep asking me to go to places. No, but like, from like, that's fair.

MaxThat is entirely fair. Wait a minute. But if we go to Disneyland together, that's not work. That's fun. We're going to do that. That'll be fun. We'll do that. That's fun.

MerlinI want to go to Disney World. We'll go with the whole family. I'll go. We'll go. You know what? I'm into it now. Fuck it. There's a car that I want now. What car? Oh, shit, dog. Save it for the show. Save it for the show.

AlexOh, my God. Can we talk about... Oh, oh.

MerlinIn the same way that early elementary school teaches you the importance of... Not the importance. The necessity of following rules and learning how to conduct yourself. Keep your hands to yourself. Only pee when we say it's okay for you to pee. That's what the early parts of elementary school are. And that is important because a little kid needs to learn some of that stuff from somebody. I think a lot of office work. I'm sorry, man. It's a similar kind of thing. Roderick put this very well on the show we did Monday, I believe, which is that every day, don't listen to this, Max, every day that goes by that your boss does not have the permission or, let's say, agency to tell you what to do, every day that goes by, that bossness is eroding day by day.

because guess what? Shit is still getting done even though you're not getting bossed. What the fuck? I figured out how to pee on my own. This is very, another existential moment.

AlexI will say, Max, listen to this part. My, I can say his name. My manager, Kevin Reeder, who is very much of an extrovert in life and it's been-

MerlinHe draws energy from other people, you would say?

AlexYes. He's an improviser, performer. He does a bajillion million things. Google Kevin Reader. He's awesome. He makes games. He does a bunch of stuff. But one thing that we often do in like our check ins is like, you know, like a standing meeting pre pre quarantine. It was very much Kevin being like, Alex, I want to support you and be here for you as a boss also emotionally. And I'm like, let's just get our work done and leave. And now it's like, all right, here's the checklist of all the things we are going to do.

And also here are the five minutes we have put aside to talk about Survivor. And then we know our meeting is over and we've accomplished everything if we've gotten to Survivor.

MaxWait, Kevin's watching Survivor? Yeah!

AlexOh, damn. It's where we talk about game theory and whatnot. But I guess the... Man, I don't know. I've just been really noticing how... You're right. Extroverts are having tougher and tougher time.

MerlinThey're suffering. They have no platform for their performance, and it's killing them. I'm completely sympathetic.

AlexYeah.

MerlinFor some people, that performance is being loud in a bar three times a week. Yeah. Everybody's different. Everybody's different. For my performance, shit dog, I got this right here. I'm good.

MaxDon't worry about me. I have a, well, I had one thought about this, which is that there's like, do you guys know the Deep Work book and that whole idea?

AlexOh, yeah. Haven't read it three times. Yeah.

MaxI'm supposed to be in a New Yorker article he's writing a year ago. I wonder whatever happened to that. I probably heard about the book from Merlin. But anyway, it seems like...

MerlinHe's a pretty cool guy. As turns out, guys go. I think he's a pretty good one. He's a good thinker.

MaxBut I think that's a pretty... I think whatever, the back flap of that book, the idea of it is pretty good. I think there's something for me... I have this constant fear of boredom and I always need a thing coming up and whatever. And for that reason, I think meditation has been very helpful in my life because it's kind of getting a certain comfort level. It's like exposure therapy to just sitting there and not doing anything and you don't die and you don't go insane.

I think there's probably what?

AlexNothing. Go on.

Maxand there's probably something to uh along what you're the lines of what you're saying of all these people being stuck at home and just having sustained alone time to work on things that's gonna be i don't know what it's gonna show them something that of how good that is that they

Merlindidn't know um audience audience don't don't listen to this it's so important you not hear me say this um i said something to my lady friend this morning uh before i left i'm usually i'm fairly bibulous in the morning i uh i'm full of beans and and i'm sharing a lot of my observations uh whether they want to hear it or not and one of the um what's bibulous is that is it like bilious

Alexsort of like uh garrulous outgoing talkative oh i guess so i did i i was i did that mental calculus in my head of i think i know what did i use the word wrong i might have used the word

Merlinwrong no i think you did i learned it from a robert lowell i learned it from a robert lowell poem yeah oh bibula is successfully fond of drinking alcohol so that's true too okay um so the point being what i said was i said i i have to make an admission of you know there's the sort of the the ideas that swim around in your mind and if you like bounce around inside your skull and then the idea finally like becomes this uh uh the demamantica Katamatra. And it turns into a big snowball of that actual thought that you think. And the actual

thought that I thought, and I said this to my wife, is I'm worried that I'm going to be very depressed if things suddenly go back to normal. I'm worried. I'm super worried about the health component of that. But I'm also really dreading the day that people could be, you know, like the landlord comes to fix stuff and bang around in the yard. Or like I suddenly, now I'm getting calls. And as the president says, the pent up demand for things starts being expressed.

Do you feel that at all? Do you think at all about like, what's June gonna look like?

MaxYeah, as everyone's had this, obviously the talk right now is like, everyone's like, we gotta get a plan to get back to normal. And some states are like opening back up. Iowa, Iowa's so fucked. iowa is so mega fucked we can we can get into like what that means exactly but but because like i don't think that's really a political decision that someone can be like open up and then everything opens i mean that's not how it's not really how it works but but but but all of that aside like yeah like i found i'm not like there's some i i'll say like at best i have like mixed emotions about

it it is not a hundred percent positive for me like when i like there's some stuff of like i just want to fucking go out to a bar with a friend i just want a burrito i just want to get a burrito Like, wouldn't it be nice to sit at a diner with a friend and just have coffee and, like, talk for a couple hours? Like, I really miss that.

Speaker AI feel like I'm in a Turkish prison sometimes where I'm like, all I want to do is just go to a bookstore.

MerlinYes. I want to go to the hardware store that I like to go to and get my soda streams. It's like there's all these little rituals, these twice-a-month rituals that I really miss.

MaxYou guys don't have a car in your family, right, Merlin?

MerlinWe do. Yeah, my wife has a car.

MaxOh, you do? Okay. So I've developed for myself a little Richard Skiri busy town routine of like doing one thing per day in the car so that I can feel like I've – Like crying or masturbating?

Speaker AYeah.

MaxWell, yeah, sometimes both at once. Yeah, no, like I'll go to the cafe to do something or I will go pick something up or we'll drive to go out in the suburbs and go to a forest and go for a walk. It's like – to me it's like –

MerlinYeah, we did that the other day. We took a hike up in Marin, and it was so nice to just get in the car and be. But the car is your third place now. Yes. That's what it is. I used to see this when I picked my kid up at school, and you'd see so many. Dads love being in cars. You just see dads in cars all over San Francisco. They're usually looking at their phone and listen to sports radio very loud, and they just love being in their car. I think for a lot of maybe men in particular, it's their den.

AlexHuh.

Merlininteresting i'm sorry i interrupted you max you so but no that's no no no that's okay it's just

Alexit's something to break up the day no you're right i actually uh well i've i've been going on fewer and fewer walks because people are out more and more in my neighborhood yes it's horrible

Merlinin the last week shit has started blowing up here there's so many more people out they're not wearing masks you guys have a car right we yeah we have oh man we were gonna sell

Alexwe've touched so many

MaxVeronica and I know all the places to go walk you just have to drive you should be prepared to drive like 30-40 minutes and just get away from the city this feels like a challenge oh I would love this but there's places, if you just go 40 minutes out of the city and I can tell you some of the places that are still open we did a three mile walk through the woods on a really nice trail and saw maybe four other people

Alexwe were there for an hour and a half

Maxit was really nice

Alexthat's i'm actually doing that this uh don't don't be no one can be creepy who would follow me to indianapolis um but indiana does have a lot of really nice parks that are open now and i can't stop talking or thinking about my newly born niece are you gonna see the baby yeah and from a distance and and my mom's going to but i'm i'm going to be the meanie police i'm like seriously we are all taking this seriously and they're all like okay yeah we are taking this Seriously, we're all going to, we're going to prepare a thing of food in the middle.

And then we're going to go back to our cars and have our own little like cookout from our cars. And I was like, this is, I do not crave any sort of public space. I just want that. I don't know. I want to see. You want to smell the baby. You're a normal person. I'm not going to smell the baby. I'm not going to smell the baby. Oh God, please smell the baby. I can't. That would be too cool.

MerlinI want to know what it smells like. I bet it smells like a baby.

AlexNo, it's... Oh my God.

MerlinNope. She's so cute.

AlexToo close.

MerlinShe's a precious angel.

AlexShe's perfect in every way. But the car... Would you kill for her? Oh, who says I haven't already?

MaxUh-oh. Parody. In the game, in the game.

AlexIrony, irony, irony.

MaxLegendally, legendally.

AlexThe other day I found myself driving literally five, maybe six, I don't know. Well, less than a 20 minute walk to McDonald's to drive through to get a Diet Coke. And I was like, holy shit. What a time. It was delightful. That's what brings me to light now.

MerlinThe highlight of my day a couple times a week is going to the ATM.

AlexWait, wait.

MerlinWhat are you doing with cash, though? First of all, we're not going to go over this again. But you people and your goddamn credit cards, you know you're killing. You're killing America. Use your watch. That's fine. Use your phone. That's fine. You people with your goddamn cards to buy a stick of gum are killing America, and it have been for years. Also, you need cash. also the chase atm that i go to lets you select your currency size wouldn't you love going to an atm you could say you could say hundreds twenties and fives oh shit delightful when shit was going

Maxdown with coronavirus when it was first in the news right and it was like okay first case in america and then it was like first community transmission and you know it was it sort of it was still the message was like yeah we've got this under control and it's only seven people and so on and so forth but i think all three of us i could tell at least i was like yeah this is

Alexgonna be a problem we were ahead of that curve quite a bit all of us i went i will tell you i

Maxwill tell you i went to costco and did some panic shopping i mean i didn't you got your rice i didn't yeah i didn't buy anything like outrageous but i because like we're eating the stuff that i got but like i went and did my panic shopping and i got like you know wipes and and a big thing of rice and whatever canned food i was there was no one else in the costco panic shopping like i was ahead of everyone so i was panicked before anyone else first i panicked first you're like han solo i was into panic before it was cool exactly exactly the panic hipsters anyway um did you guys

when it was sort of clear that shit was going to go down did you go get a big wad of cash to put in your house just in case.

AlexOh, no. I do that all the time anyway. Don't be creepy.

MaxYou didn't?

AlexWell, one, it's not like...

MerlinYou were way ahead on this. I mean, when we first started talking about this just in the context of, ha ha, Dr. Don, come tell us how to wash our hands. And I was having a laugh. But yeah, you seem to, your concern about this, Max, I feel like was way ahead of anybody I know.

AlexMm-hmm. I mean, they were talking about this on Cortex. Oh, look at me dropping Relay FM names. But Gray was talking about how he...

MaxCortex is a podcast?

AlexI don't know. Just so you know, I know the name of a podcast. I know the name of a podcast. Did you know they had 100 episodes? I purchased a 100-episode special edition t-shirt.

Speaker AI have the Cortex theme book from the podcast of the same name.

MerlinI'm a member of Slate Plus. I get all the podcasts. I delete the gist every day because it keeps coming into my feed.

Speaker AI get the bonus segment in my RSS feed.

MerlinI could choose to listen to any of the back Catalog for years and years Of maximum fun shows I was There when ground was broken On many of the most Significant podcasts

Speaker AStill extant

MerlinToday and even in these Uncertain times as we Downsize the number of episodes It doesn't prevent me From discovering new podcasts

MaxI used the This American Life application to access the back catalog.

MerlinHeck one. Heck one. Heck one panic buying.

AlexDig, dig, tug, dig, dig, tug. since since all of us were kind of ahead of the curve especially max and we were all but especially

Maxwith podcasts wait you guys didn't get a big wad of cash though okay well i don't know what i would

Alexdo with that cat only because i didn't know i i don't i mean this one didn't turn out to come true

Maxbut i was like especially when that's good project management alex that's really good what would i prepare when they were saying when there was like the it was going around that it's like yeah the governor pritzker might do like a lockdown of the state and you can't leave your house i was like oh fuck i'm gonna go get some cash because like i i was like i don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow like i because the machines the machines might not work yeah yeah i didn't go i didn't go crazy but i got like a couple thousand bucks in cash and i and i scrolled it away okay

Alexwell no i did i didn't and i guess the the more you know but that's i i that's why i'm asking is what's the next thing that we need to do to prepare that other people are like that's crazy i mean i guess i'm gonna go get oh i see your question okay not thousands of dollars

Maxi guess i could get a job yeah i think in some ways it's sort of um the resiliency of a lot of these sort of systems is sort of been been proven to be okay right like grocery store like i mean God, I mean, I hate to say it. It's like exactly what... There was that episode I did with Dr. Don and Professor Chapman, and we were like... And I was sort of asking them, and I think what we all sort of... What we all came to the conclusion of was like,

there's probably not going to be like food shortages in the sense that like you can't get enough food and you're hungry. Like in the sense of you can't acquire enough calories to keep your family alive. That's not going to happen. But there may be shortages in the sense of like you can't find the brand you like of this or that.

MerlinYou have to get an off-brand pate. from Safeway or whatever.

MaxAnd that's where we are right now. And I don't know, there's a lot of projections of maybe there's going to be some meat shortages and things like that. I mean, yeah, that could happen. I don't think that there's going to be no meat. I think there will just... We may have some months where it's like, yeah, it's really hard to get pork right now, right? And you have to get something else. This is so...

MerlinOkay, let's cut to the chase here, for me anyway. It's a lot like the... You know what? Listeners, don't listen to this. It's a lot like Amazon. You know what? I get a lot of my stuff from Amazon. I'm just going to put that on the table here. And one of the reasons their system worked and has worked and continues to work is that it is kind of a default part of my workflow at this point, including stuff like, yes, saying that, like, you know, getting paper towels delivered once a month with subscribe and save.

Right? But it's also that, is it not also true that, like, let's say we decide we're on the show here and we decide we want a treat, and then you buy a bag and it arrives that day? Or you want to try a smart home device and it arrives tomorrow? And now there's so much stuff, understandably, where, like, if I want this battery charger that Max recommended, it might not arrive for one week, two weeks, or a month. Or it might say it's a month, and then it's actually a week. I do an Instacart delivery for four days from now, and then it actually happens this afternoon.

again more of this time displacement stuff but that's one thing that's got me a little bit screwed up is the bad on me for having that expectation but like don't you think that's kind of part of it is that we're so used to being able to get any fucking kind of meat we want all the time in america like john doe says in that x song uh you know uh see how we are what does he say you know 10 kinds of coke 100 kinds of cigarettes this freedom of choice in the usa drives everybody crazy. It's like, it's just what, your particular variety meat, the hoof, that you enjoy will be

unavailable for a while? There's so much fucking food in America! It's not like we're going to, like, that's why I say food versus calories. It's not that we're going to have to fall back on some kind of government-issued rudimentary paste. We're going to find calories to stay alive.

MaxPlease, please, Mr. Kushner, may I have

Merlinsome more gruel.

AlexWe have enough gruel

Merlinfor everybody. Everybody, everybody want to go, the governor's come to me and they say It's very difficult, the ventilators. Everyone was talking about ventilators. And now it's hoofs. Hoofs and variety meat. I spoke today with Gavin Newsom wrote me a very nice apology letter about hoofs.

Your Trump is honing in, Merlin. It is. Oh, we see my accordion hands. Is Kim Jong-un dead?

AlexHmm. Question.

MerlinIs he dead? Is he dead or very ill? Okay, how about this? Is North Korea covering up something new?

MaxThe only take I have on that is that I did enjoy, there was sort of this confused media stories about his sister where it was like some of them were like, yeah, it's like she's like a hashtag girl boss. And she's like, finally, we can have a female. She can lean in on me. A female dictator who can run North Korea. Well, be a vagina tater.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But do you think, it does seem pretty fucking weird. And did you, I mean, okay, so in the criminology of this, because, you know, I watch the Trump things. I bring that on myself. I watch him do that weird standing thing he does. I watch the press conferences. And the weirdest thing happened, you probably heard about this perhaps on Yahoo News, who wrote him a very nice apology note. But they said, oh, yeah. So what happened was, what had happened was that, so he's been missing or not in public, which is not super weird, except that apparently he missed a very substantial holiday or event or appearance.

It would be like Santa not arriving for Christmas. Like, where's Kim Jong-un? Is he enjoying cigarettes? What's he doing? Is he just rolling down a hill? What is he doing? And so everybody's like, hmm, that's kind of weird. That's kind of weird. And for, what, a week or more, everybody's saying, well, yeah, he's got to be totally dead. Then over the weekend, this past weekend, as we record this, it's April 29th, the North Korean government issued a statement and say, hey, everybody, don't worry. Here's a block quote on a piece of paper from Kim Jong-un.

He must be fine. Here's the paper. You can look at it and hold it. Right? So that's kind of weird. Like, why didn't he not come out and talk? But the point is they issued that statement. Somebody asked Trump at the press conference on Monday, what can you give us on updates about Kim Jong-un's health? He says, I'm not going to talk about this. He says, I know, I know, I know, I know about his health, but I'm not going to talk about it. And it was really fucking weird. Then there was some crosstalk. What was weird about it? Why is that weird?

So, like, usually when he says, I'm not going to talk about that, it's because he doesn't know. Okay. or he's doing his reality show thing of in a very short period of time, I know too much about this man. In a very short period of time, we'll have more to say about that. It'll probably be in the next two weeks. We'll see what happens, et cetera, et cetera, right? There's all this like punting vaguely into the future without answering the question. And then, yes, please go ahead. Thank you, yes. And then you move on, but there's some crosstalk. And then somebody said something about the statement

that was issued on Saturday. And Trump's response, which I don't have in front of me, was something along the lines of, oh, no, no, no, that couldn't have been him.

AlexHmm.

MerlinI don't know about that. I don't know about that statement, but that couldn't have been him. And it's like, hmm, okay.

Speaker AMeaning he knows the dude is dead

Merlinand he likes being the guy who knows the secret. Do you think that indicates that he might be dead?

AlexI have no idea because you right now could be QAnoning or could be totally rational, but I have removed myself from most of this. after the disinfectant situation i i'm always going to remember when that happened and where i was like i was on the couch and uh dicking around on twitter and there was a point where i said to maddie i need to go to my computer right now and so you know i had two ipads the

imac pro everything like oh my god what's happening what's happening but apparently i have no idea about kim jong-un i i i don't know max are you even further he's the he's the uh 36

Merlin36 year old i know who he is roly-poly leader of north korea yes i he likes smoking in tiny shoes and stovepipe pants like the president wears big stovepipe pants thank you papa i'm not super

Maxinvested i mean we'll find out when we find out and and yeah it's uh it's it's one of these there's enough upsetting, scary news that affects my life where it feels like it could strike at any moment. You just can't let me have this. No, I mean, it's interesting. It's interesting, but I have a more... You're kidding. I'm only kidding. I'm interested in it. I have a more zen, like, I can't do anything about it. It's like, we'll find out when we find out, or we'll never find out, and it'll never be satisfying.

MerlinWho knows? Do you realize how much you sound like a person in the hyper normalization movie

Alexyeah

Merlinjust take a minute just take a minute I don't know what the fuck maybe spoons are an illusion

Maxdo you not understand how much we're in the fucking zone this is big zone energy you're mostly off twitter bze right now we're all in the zone which zone Max? the zone we're in the zone the zone Jerry no zone Jerry

Speaker Ano zone

Merlinyes i do have a very good idea but i can't talk about it now said trump when he was asked i just

Maxwish him well it probably means that trump doesn't know what the fuck is going on and his intelligence briefings are ambiguous and the president also said he didn't think kim made any statements over

Merlinthe weekend however the north korean government did release a statement that purportedly came from Kim. But Trump was seemingly unaware of that communique. Surprise, surprise. He loves to read. And said Kim couldn't possibly have made any statement. Quoting, he didn't say anything last Saturday. Nobody knows where he is. Wait a minute. I hate this man. He didn't say anything last Saturday. Nobody knows where he is. So he obviously couldn't have said it. This is breaking news that Kim Jong-un's made a statement on Saturday. I don't think so. Oh, boy.

MaxGet in the zone, baby! That's a big zone story. B-Z-E. Well. Huh. I want to learn more about the zone. We're in it, man. Huh. He's dead. He's alive. We don't know. There is ventilators. There's no. I see what you're saying. It's the liminal space.

It's the zone. Is there. Can you get tested? Let me ask you this. Can you get tested for coronavirus? Absolutely.

MerlinAnybody who wants a test can get a test. It's a beautiful test. Welcome to the zone, baby. I had the one with the lung swab. Welcome to the zone. And this I can tell you. this I can tell you. It is both true and not true. Oh, I get it. It's a Schrodinger's fact. Don't look at the facts or you'll kill the cat. No, but pick your facts. What do you want? Oh, they're all in the box. In existing states of quantum... Speaking of quantum mechanics, listen. Amidst these uncertain times, it's so important to take care of yourself. So I think it's very important that we talk about Albert Einstein and the use

of quantum physics in personal health. Has anyone else been exploring this?

MaxIs this a real topic or are we making fun of someone? oh wait is this the thing i didn't understand i need a full explainer on this

Alexhey you guys in these trouble yeah i'm i'm at no no no at these references i got a lot of tabs

Speaker Ai got a lot of tabs i'm in the zone okay i'm in the zone jerry baby

Merlinwell where do i begin uh well let's just get a fun one off the top uh this is cuomo's sister right georgia men georgia men drink disinfectants in attempts to stop coronavirus oh they had a history of psychiatric problems well they are from the south that's not funny you guys the HEAL process involves advanced energy medicine specialization there's a quote here from Albert Einstein

medicine of the future will be medicine of frequency so the HEAL process this is at the HEAL process H-E-A-L process.com is a cutting edge energy healing system grounded in the field of quantum physics.

AlexOh, here we go. I read the, yep, yep. Here, sorry for interrupting.

MerlinSorry. We treat each dimension of our client's existence, body, mind, and soul, no Oxford comma, body, mind, and soul. During our sessions, we teach our clients how to manage their energy levels by releasing the built-up, oh God, I think this is about handjobs. During our sessions, we teach our clients how to manage their, I manage my energy levels a couple, three times a week. Teach our clients how to manage their energy levels by releasing the built-up tension of emotional and mental energy within the pain body. Within the pain body. Are they thetans?

As they learn how to properly breathe and release trapped negative emotions, their frequency raises. Max, the frequency raises from a science standpoint.

Speaker ALove that.

MerlinAnd restores the flow of love and light within their body, expediting the innate natural healing process. This is the heal process, it's called.

AlexThe heal process.

MerlinYou sent this, Alex, And I think we discovered this via Christina Cuomo's bleach baths. Can you help us address the bleach baths?

AlexNo, I can't help. Okay.

MerlinWell, that's a good bit, guys. Let's knock off for the day.

AlexOkay. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Just that she takes baths with 10% bleach. Like, what else is there? It's another crazy wellness.

Speaker ANo, did you read? Did you read? It's a really good article.

AlexI had to tap. No, I tapped out. I'm like, I can't.

MerlinI love these two paragraphs so much. They talked to this woman who's been anonymized. Her name is Dr. Nancy. She might know Dr. Dawn. That's a pseudonym. What are these actually? So basically, the wife of the governor of New York was talking about, in the media, I think about things like taking a bleach bath and doing various kinds of somewhat unconventional health treatments. And people have been interrogating that a little bit. So they talked to Dr. Nancy. Nancy, where's Nancy? But what do those who actually work within the overstrained medical

system actually think of Christina Cuomo's COVID-19 treatment? I contacted Dr. Nancy, a pseudonym to keep her identity private, an internal medicine doctor practicing in a Philadelphia hospital, and asked what she thought of Christina Cuomo's extensive routine, and it's a hell of a routine, as documented on her blog post. Her first reaction, what the fuck, to a large majority of it, unquote. Quoting, this is my favorite sentence of the month, A lot of the therapies seem to be excessive and with the only benefit of having expensive urine.

Oh! That's vitamin C in a nut, baby.

AlexI should not have tapped out. This is wonderful.

MerlinI make costly pee. Title.

AlexSo then did you not get to the Heal Process website? Because you were just reading from the article, which references the Heal Process. No, I'm on the WordPress site for the Heal Process. Got it, got it. Did you get to the product, the body charger, which is what derailed me the other day?

MerlinNo. Tell me. Oh, I see it up here in the menu. The body charger. Okay.

AlexCan I tell you about the body charger?

MerlinIs that the light or the love, Alex? What are the megahertz? How many megahertz should I get?

AlexIt's between 60 and 70. 60 and 70. And if it falls before- What is that? Falls below 59 to 58, quote, you may experience a common cold. And if your body continues to lower...

Speaker AMax, you get colds, you should do this.

AlexYeah, yeah. So at the asterisk of the end of this product page, the body charger and electrotherapy are the healing wave of the future. Every cell in the body has a tiny battery coated in it. And when the battery becomes low from stress, injury, or disease, it will have electrical difficulty. The cell has an approximative electrical potential of 70 mil volts.

Speaker AThere's so much science sauce in this.

AlexOkay.

Speaker ALet's just slather this in science sauce.

AlexYeah. But then the body charger is designed to complement the principles of the heel process. It is currently only available by contacting them directly. So I know what I'm doing today. Challenge.

MerlinHow much is it? It's going to be $1,200, I guess.

AlexOh, more than that.

MerlinOh, no, it's opening an email. No, don't do that. Oh, no, no, no, no. I think I got hacked.

AlexYeah, yeah. It's going to open mail.app. And ooh, ooh, ooh. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

Speaker AMailplane. I'm not a monster.

AlexMailplane is still around? Oh.

MerlinWow.

AlexOh, oh, oh. Okay, sure. Hello.

MerlinIs that how we're going to do it? You actually use mail.app on your computer?

AlexNo, no, no. I don't. Well, I have it.

MerlinIf you hit an email link on your computer, what app opens?

AlexOh, well, it used to open Gmail and Safari, but now it opens Gmail and Chrome because, yeah.

MerlinWhat?

AlexI know.

MerlinI thought we talked about this.

AlexI know. I'm sorry. I've been a bad, bad boy. Yeah. But Mailplane, look at this.

MerlinDo you have concerns, setting aside the jokes and my very, very funny ongoing Twitter thread about Mr. Trump, sir. It's a very funny thread. Um, do you have concerns, real talk, about people harming themselves, uh, in the service of trying to not get sick? And let's not be, let's not be fancy. Well, you're on the middle coast, so that's not really a coast. Um, but like not be a coastal elite. Like there are people who are scared. There are people who have to go to Walmart. I'm not saying this is right or good. I'm saying it's fucked. But if you have to go work at Walmart because you're essential, like are people going to

be attracted at any scale to do this crazy shit? People do stupid shit all the time.

MaxThat's really true.

MerlinJim and Jim Baker are still selling colloidal silver.

MaxMy guess is that in total, the amount of dumb shit that's being done in this country is far lower than an average month.

MerlinOh, it's sort of like the rallies, where it depends on how you shoot the scene. It's not as many as it looks like.

MaxYeah, well, listen, we live in a stupid country. And definitely everyone having cameras with them all the time amps up the dumbness and the scale of everything. It changes the denominator because you're getting more stuff. And a lot of times people do dumb stuff that hurts other people. It's not just that they jump out of a hotel balcony into the pool and hurt themselves. It's that they also hurt other people. So right now, because everyone's stuck at home, probably the total amount of just dumb shit that people are doing

is greatly reduced.

MerlinThe net dumb shit on a per capita sort of GDP basis.

MaxBut yeah, some people are going to take a bleach bath or drink Clorox or whatever. Probably they were going to do that stuff with or without the president. I don't, I actually, I guess like, listen, like on the balance, like I can't get myself worked up about this. I don't know why. Like on the balance, like, yeah, I guess I wish Trump.

MerlinYou know why? Because of the zone?

MaxBecause of the zone. On the balance, would it be nice if Trump didn't say to inject bleach or we should look into it? Sure. Fine. But like, what do you expect out of the guy? Like he's reading this. He's literally have you I've talked about Trump's Twitter feed right on this show. I mean go look at the man's Twitter feed like he's reading the same dumb shit news that the dumbest people in the country are. He's reading like grandpa news and he's watching grandpa TV and he's parroting whatever. They get some fucking quack, you know, doctor, Dr. Oz on Fox News who says, well, we should we haven't even tried drinking bleach yet.

and Trump just says it and he's not he's just asking the question he's not trying to do anything he's just it's the same thing as when you have your confused grandpa at the dinner table and he's repeating things that he read in an article or saw in Fox News he's he's repeating he's reading the chyron and saying it out loud to a national audience like I also don't think it's fair to if people do it I don't think it's fair to blame it on Trump because I don't like it's just the man just does not hold that much sway over people's lives like it's just not as

bad or as consequential as everyone wants to make it seem i was i actually think that everyone's stupid and do you do you feel like over amplifying it could be harmful it's just annoying it's just annoying that's because of the zone it's annoying that trump does it and it pushes my buttons although i don't think it is actually very harmful in the world i think that those fucking idiots who drink bleach would have been drinking bleach because they're reading they're watching the same shitty

Speaker AThey're reading the same magazines as Trump.

MaxSame magazines. Right?

MerlinLike, they're not doing it because the president said. Trump, who does not, who apparently does not read, he does not read the PDB and cannot even tolerate an oral one paragraph summary of the PDB twice a week.

MaxHe's one of the dumbest people alive. Like, he's, no one is doing things because the president said to do it. They're doing it because they saw the same Fox News headline. Yep. Or what's that other one? The OAN news that's even wackier.

AlexThey're seeing the same shit that Trump is.

MaxAnd Rush Limbaugh's still doing it. Yeah.

MerlinAnd Alex Jones, all those things. But also, I think one of the roles of all these powders and poultices, in some ways, is a term that's becoming increasingly important in my vernacular, is agency. What the fuck are you going to do? Well, there is something I can do. And what I can do is take care of myself with this revolutionary treatment that these other people don't want me to know about. My mom's the same way with her essential oils. Listen to everybody.

MaxStop listening to this show because we don't know what we're talking about. Go listen to season two of The Dream. If you want to understand why people take powders and creams because they think it's going to do something for their life, you have to go listen to season two of The Dream. And people take powders. Young living. There's purity mythology on the left and purity mythology on the right. and it's in our language and it's in our metaphors and it's in our politics and people on the left have certain types of pills and powders that they believe will make their life better and people on the right have certain pills and powders

that they think will make their life better and it drives me I hate the discourse it's so I'm like fully like some of it's very orange cheating I hate it I hate it

Merlinyou know what I mean some of it is very like you know what I mean like the dumb liberal response reply guys. If I, I, the liberal reply guys are in some ways a million times worse than the quote unquote bots on the right. It's the people who are just in every thread going, wow, waste your taxes and blah, blah. You look, you look like a Cheeto. It's like,

MaxOh God. If I have to hear one more fucking drink bleach joke, I'm going to, I'm going to drink the bleach. It's, it's at least it's Friday. It's awful. I, I honestly like, I'm, I know this is a run. It's a, I know it's a running bit on the show.

MerlinAt least he'll be good for comedy.

MaxThat's the thing we all know. I know it's at this point it's a running bit on the show, but I'm genuine. I have done so good not going on Twitter. Did you finish watching Millennium Actress? When I do go on Twitter now, I feel like Neo in the last scene of The Matrix, where I just see the code, and I can put my hand up and the bullet stop, and I'm like, your bleach jokes, they suck, I don't care. You literally say, whoa, I know kung fu. And then on the right, they're making jokes, they're doing their thing and i put my hand up and those i'm like i don't care i don't it's all

it's the dumbest discourse it all sucks i just put a bottle of bleach in my ass are you triggered

Merlinum trump does this thing he started doing this uh more and more people are saying something he does is retreading himself from a day earlier um and my favorite my favorite i just sent you the link to this this might be my favorite trump tweet of at least the month so on april 25th he said Remember. So first of all, he's fucking mangled this phrase, and it makes me insane as a part-time English major. Remember, the cure can't be worse than the problem itself. The cure can't be worse than the disease, is the phrase. But he says the cure, capitalized because he's talking

about Robert S. Dan, remember the cure can't be worse than the problem itself. Be careful. Be safe. Use common sense. So he quote tweeted that

Speaker Aone day later, and you know what he said about it?

MerlinSo true.

Speaker Athat's the thing he says when he's reading something for the first time because he can't be bothered to rehearse it so he's so fucking dumb he's the dumbest man alive it's just it's

Merlinnot even worse like the dangerous dumb guy he's got dumb guy confidence huge dumb guy confidence

Maxbut it's one of the hallmark things of someone who's really dumb did you post this or someone said this yes i retweeted i retweeted um not ezra klein but somebody who said like well it's just a classic dumb guy thing that that that you think that maybe you thought of the obvious answer

Merlinthat all the experts didn't think yeah so he's he's looking like in one of these one of the famous ones is sort of um uh what's the word i'm looking for wondering let's just say there's a shot of him at one of his rally conferences about coronavirus. And he's looking at a big graphic, a big, you know, chart. And it's basically the same shit. You know, the president's 15-day, sorry, 30-day. The president's plan, the president's plan, so much great leadership. And it says here's stuff you can still keep doing to, like, take care of yourself.

And it includes stuff like, I think, washing hands, keeping social distance, and using disinfectant on surfaces. And there's this great photo of him. And, you know, there really is no good angle to shoot him from. But this is one of the less flattering, the sort of like Sims walking away northwest sort of view of him, which is very compelling from kind of an orthogonal standpoint to see all of his shape. Anyway, you see him like looking at the thing that says disinfected. And a few minutes later, he's asking Dr. Birx if we can shine love and light into the veins through disinfected.

MaxThis is like every, I know a lot of people who, when they were in around, let's say sixth grade, they designed a perpetual motion machine in their notebook that involved magnets. You either did that or draw tanks, right? That was your, either draw tanks or design perpetual. Oh, did we talk about, we must have talked about this already. That was Syracuse. Yeah, go though. Keep going. Okay. Well, anyway, I just feel like a lot of people came up with a perpetual motion machine and you're like, why? It's so obvious. Why hasn't anyone thought of it? You just have two repelling magnets and you have free energy forever.

MerlinWhy hasn't anyone else tried this?

MaxYeah, right.

MerlinYeah, or it was sort of like when Cold Fusion came along and everybody's like, why did nobody ever do this before? This is amazing. They're getting close to turning that sucker on. The perpetual motion or the fusion?

MaxWhat's called the Russian thing? The fusion.

MerlinThe difference engine.

MaxThe fusion thing.

MerlinThe debt ceiling.

MaxNo, there's a Russian fusion thing. They're getting pretty close. It's going to turn on soon. Hmm. Might work. Hmm. Oh. Anyway, I don't know, man. He's just so dumb. It's just dumb. It's annoying, but I ultimately think one of the best things that you can do individually is to mostly ignore it and not take the bait.

MerlinI know you're right. I know you're right. I find it so difficult, and yet I know you're right.

MaxIt's just like there's got to be nobody. Let me maybe come at it from another angle. Ultimately, what do we want? We would like to not have Trump be president, but also we need some sort of political program where we can get some power and do something good that helps people in this country.

We will not get there by talking about how dumb Trump is. Because the people who think that he's dumb are already going to either vote against him or not vote. And the people who don't think that he's dumb are either going to vote for him or not vote. That's done. Those battle lines are drawn. And talking about how dumb he is does not inspire anyone to action or change anyone's mind. but if we could talk about why doesn't your family have health care during this health crisis well maybe there is someone out there who that would start their gears turning i feel like this is

Merlinsomewhat at odds with your electoral feelings right now me maybe we could talk about that in

Maxthe after show well we don't have it we don't we i wish we had a candidate that offered people a health care solution that made their lives better now we don't we don't have that but it's

Alexstill worth talking about navigating for no no he he he made women online sad uh but max i'm i'm serious do you think that you're mostly off twitter moments coincide with the levels of idiocy with not just the president but the necktie twitter being like I just don't I don't understand when you get fed up and take breaks from Twitter.

I'm very, very glad that you do and that it happens. But I don't know, like what what pulls you back in? And what's is it the idiocy that just?

MaxWell, I go on Twitter ostensibly. I tell myself, why do I use this website? And number one, it's because I like to promote. frankly I like to promote things like maybe if I make a new game or a podcast I feel the same way. Promotion and

Merlingratitude. I want to be out there. I want to be thanking people and I want to be amplifying good

Maxthings. And there's another one for me which is I'd like to see comedy and there is still really fucking funny shit on Twitter. Sometimes. Oh god. The women are killing

Merlinit. The women. We love our women. Our binder is full of women. Seriously Alex let me fucking have this you son of a bitch okay you don't think alexander petri's book summaries are good you don't think the lady

Alexdoing the beast is good no no no alexander petri is a gift i i don't see gender merlin anyway

Maxi have my little i have my little lists of funny people i mostly try to read twitter and lists now but it's just even sometimes when you go to the comedy twitter where people are supposed to just be sort of ironic and be doing jokes and bits and stuff like everyone fucking takes the bait and they're all talking about the fucking injecting disinfectant and it's like, it sucks, man. It sucks.

MerlinYeah, but you know what it is? It's neoliberal. Don't listen to this. It's neoliberal humor. Like there's a lot of people I like a lot, including some celebrities and friends, and they're really just slightly left of center, just slightly left of center, and it's a smart version of Cheeto jokes a lot of the time, and it's like, but then they pull me in. I can't find this tweet.

Maxit sucks it's just it just offends me comedically it's not maybe maybe there was never a tweet maybe i'm in the zone shit there definitely there definitely is a correlation i don't know what that is of the political divide there of like a lot of the comedy that i find like so fucking cringy and lazy and just makes me want to die is normie mainstream liberal comedy a hundred 100%.

MerlinIt's why I don't like comedy. Except for the four comedy podcasts I like, I hate every other comedy podcast, and I cannot tolerate it. Then I think... It's a wonder to me that I can find any quote-unquote comedy podcast, because podcasts by professional comedians are not funny.

MaxYes, I agree. And then I think the next funniest thing to me is conservative comedy, but from a level of...

MerlinYou mean like Don Jr. humor?

MaxYeah, yeah, but from a level of like... Or reading Bill Mitchell tweets or something like that. like on the level of like it's very it's just genuinely very funny and absurd and dark to me

Merlinhe's so obsessed with diarrhea have you seen have you seen Bill Mitchell's diarrhea tweets

Alexyes so many people die just so many

MaxI mean he's got a hard on for the runs man

AlexI mean once again

MaxI feel like we're treading on chopo territory but Bill Mitchell was for a long time he was going his big line was you know when the party line was sort of for the Trump people was like this thing isn't so bad it's no big deal he was like this many people die of diarrhea every year every year it's no big deal why don't we don't have shut down the government for diarrhea we don't do this for diarrhea what if you had diarrhea it was so funny he was on such a tear and then all of a sudden like overnight when trump unveiled that chart of like hey if we can keep it down if we can have only 250 000 deaths we'll be doing an

amazing job and then bill mitchell's bill mitchell turned very dark and he was like what is death really i mean isn't life just a veil that we passed through and who knows what maybe he got

Speaker Ahe literally tweeted no one no one's ever seen no one's ever seen anything like this before he goes

Merlinbill mitchell literally tweets he goes maybe the dead he was totally goth he was totally goth yeah

Maxmaybe the dead envy the living or no what was it no maybe the living here's your hot topic gift card

Speaker Abuddy boys don't cry oh god

Merlinuh it was it was uh he's not a friend of the show i'd like to meet him craig mazen one of the hallmarks of the dangerously stupid is the consistent belief that they've found great solutions that experts somehow missed. Craig Mazin, I think, is gettable for us. Well, don't we

Speaker Ahave connections, kind of? Yeah. Through John August, kind of? Mm-hmm.

MerlinHmm. I bought his software.

Speaker AMm-hmm. Son of a bitch. Wow, wow. Challenge! Merlin's scatting. That is a bum bum! The challenge this week was to go out and find yourself a piece of media or something. similar that you feel has aged

Merlinvery well. I haven't done Tom Waits in a while. It feels good. This was a very poorly defined challenge, but the challenge that we ended up having, I thought, a pretty interesting...

MaxWell, let's be honest. We all were hoping that Todd would join us. This would have been a good episode.

Speaker AWell, I mean, now you brought the whole room down. There's no Todd here. We're Todd free. No, Todd!

MaxNo, Todd! Now, this could have been a good episode.

MerlinWe could have been hearing about... We tried to have a get, because apparently that's now a word we're using as a noun. We tried to have a get. It was a big ask.

Words, mean, things. So we wanted to have Todd on it. So we had what I consider a pretty interesting conversation, mostly in the after show last week, and we found ourselves, we were talking about The Sopranos.

MaxWell, this was an Alex observation that I thought was really sharp. Yeah, give it to us, Alex. Yeah, one of my

Alextwo good ideas a year. I found The Sopranos to almost feel like a period piece, even though it was made in the late 90s, early 2000s, when the show takes place. And I wanted all of us to think about other pieces of media that have aged well because somehow the way they were made, whether about a certain time or for a certain time, just kind of feels timeless.

Speaker Ait's not just that it's it's not just that it's still good

Maxit's not yeah exactly it's that it transcends it's that it transcends the time that it was made it doesn't feel like it was made in the 70s it feels like it was made today and set dressed to look like the 70s like there's something to me that what it means is Todd wrote us a little mini essay in the channel about

Merlinit and his theory on it but fuck him because he's

Maxnot our guest to me it's that there's so something so at its core there's something in that media that is so modern it feels like it has the sort of modern perspective but it's just yeah like alex said like a period piece the sopranos feels more relevant now to me than when it was made because it's about these sort of like petty idiot criminals and their uh dumb petty schemes and constantly being undone by their own stupidity and sort of american grift and the end of american empire and so on and so forth and that just feels like it was made about the

trump administration but set in the 90s about uh new jersey mob yeah and i think that's

Alexit was it was also made in a time where binge watching wasn't a thing but it works for like it works for every type of consumption too was that preceded by sex in the city i do feel like

Merlinthat was near the well no the only reason i mentioned is that in the same way that you youths no, you're not even old enough to remember this. Fuck. But Thursday nights on NBC, they call them must-see TV. Thursday nights where they put all their good shows, and that was where they would introduce new shows they thought were going to be popular. Sunday night on HBO is still a thing. It's like, there was a time when that wasn't a thing. There was not HBO Prestige TV, and there was not a Sunday night HBO appointment viewing.

MaxJust a couple years ago, Sunday night HBO was, the block was Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and some... Veep! Veep Veep and John Oliver Yeah I mean Yeah That's a pretty good night of TV Yeah Ooh that used to be a fun That used to be a nice Monday morning You'd wake up

MerlinThe Plex would be Yeah I did not look this up But unless I'm remembering it wrong though That was This goes back to the 90s It's like this is But this wasn't always this way

MaxWhat was the original must see TV? Seinfeld was in there I believe Friends Friends Seinfeld

AlexYeah Oh yeah I was gonna say I remember like my mom Okay yeah

MerlinI mean in terms of blockbusters I think it was Oh no before that Cosby what am I saying um Cosby and what was it with paired with it was Cosby and I forget what but Cosby was when I was in uh maybe high school probably more likely college was when it was a phenomenon the Cosby show and Cheers were just juggernauts they were always on top you know they of the critical stuff and really of like but it was Cosby was like always the number one show and it anchored that evening because you know you get you get so much of the

juice when you got a good show. So you get a lead in from the show before you, then you get a lead in into the show after that. And if you can keep that up, that also helps your local affiliate because people stick around for the 11 o'clock news, right? It's like it's Law and Order. Was that the other one? Or Law and Order or LA Law? Which one wasn't on Thursday nights? But anyway,

and so as usual, and I hope in an interesting way, I thought about this challenge more than I did the challenge. I did the challenge, but I'm trying to think about like, what are the characteristics? You know, what is the essential nature of what we're talking about? And I came up with like three different ideas. On the one hand, there is like one of my easy ones, like the Beatles album Revolver or the Beatles album The White Album or Buddy Holly music. Where it's like it's really on some level, these are such classics that maybe you can or can't tell when it came from.

Other kinds of things, they are of an era, but they're still extremely good and relevant. but I'm also super interested in ones where you would watch something and go, I can't tell when this was made.

Speaker AI think a lot,

Merlinif somebody wanted to put themselves through one of my favorite albums, which is the Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band album, Trout Mask Replica, which is for many reasons, totally unlistenable to any normal person.

MaxI love it. That album is very challenging for me. I've tried so many times.

MerlinIt's very challenging, but I'll tell you what's good. You know that Vox series that lady does? there's a really good video on Trout Mask Replica. Like I say, it'll make you like it, but it will make you, I think, more sympathetic to what's interesting about it.

MaxI find that series to be so white. She's like, now this is what we call a syncopated beat from the 808 drum machine. But that's their deal. They're the explainer people. They're the explainers.

MerlinI don't want to be the person who watches that. All right. So, how did you folks approach this? What was your angle? Was there a pattern?

MaxThis is what some people might call a fly riff. A fly riff. These cool cats were really jamming on this track. Oh, you're saying, I see. And then this is the way that Taylor Swift uses paradiddles. Okay, I get it. I don't like how they explain it. I don't want to be the consumer of that.

AlexI'm just glad that I don't have opinion about it. but I'm very happy that I've never heard about this.

MerlinWhy do you hate women, Alex? Why do you hate women?

AlexWhat? God.

MerlinHave you always hated women this much?

AlexOh, I mean, for as long as I've hated myself, I mean, kind of, all right.

MerlinSo you self-identify as a hated person.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinI don't see genders.

AlexI'm going to start.

MerlinMy question was, are there any, tell us what you did and did you find any interesting, I'm trying to lead this in a direction where it doesn't just always land back on sad. Did you find any interesting patterns? Did you find any interesting?

Speaker AI'll stop. You guys can keep digging about Twitter. That's fine.

AlexI don't understand any interesting patterns. So when I went into this, I immediately had a film in mind, which is Moon, directed by David Bowie Jr. Great. that's a cool movie it is is it gertie gertie is the thing right yeah yeah yes uh that was

Merlinactually the one thing so good i love the i love the expressions oh no come on come on see this is

Alexwhat okay okay sorry you need a 53 year old white man to keep you from going into pedophilia and twitter no well that that was the one thing well all right all right moon all right we're slight spoilers for Moon.

Speaker AThere's no such thing as a slight spoiler for Moon.

AlexOkay, fine. I'm just going to spoil Moon, I guess. But that's the thing. Another thing about the, I guess, a trend that I was seeing is this stuff can't really...

MerlinIts excellence exists outside of the plot. The plot is part of it, but a truly great piece of media cannot be spoiled because it is the experience of the media that makes it special.

MaxRight. Moon has a real cool atmosphere too. That's my favorite thing about that movie. Yeah, it's spooky.

AlexAnd upon re-watching it, I was kind of like, oh, other than I can't stop thinking about Kevin Spacey assaulting Anthony Rapp. Jesus fucking Christ. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay, okay.

Speaker AWas that the guy from Rent? Yes, yes. I thought he wasn't going to pay rent.

AlexHow many moments? and and who are you measuring your life alex on topic ah okay dig dug moon moon uh is set on the

Speaker Amoon um spoilers in short the moon is a land of contrast oh god well the the whole idea behind

Merlinmoon moon or as the american indians called it maze he's a guy on the moon he's a lonely man on the moon he has a ship he has a job he has a robot and he loses his fucking mind uh yes we

Alexdon't realize that for a while but but when i was what i was looking for actually was uh literal set pieces of could you have an idea of when this was taking place i'm pretty sure that at the beginning there is a little bit like in the year 2048 um but the it's much less science fiction and and i won't i wouldn't even say speculative fiction it is just a show about isolation and the human mind. You know, some light films, some

light movies for today's time. Well, you know, you could

Merlinget sort of drawn into, if you're like me and probably like Max and probably like you, you can get so drawn into just the use of typefaces

Speaker Ain the movie. Yes. The use of typefaces

Merlinin that movie, that sounds dumb to say, but no, you're right. The place

Speaker Awhere it takes place, it feels like it's

Merlingoing to be a science fiction, speculative fiction, but it's really more of like a ghost story in some ways. Mm-hmm. Kind of?

AlexKind of? I... interesting. Maybe.

MerlinI mean more like a more like or gothic or something more like a Mary Shelley kind of thing. It's not a thing about, it's not a beep boop hard science fiction movie. It's about the human mind.

AlexYeah, it's more, it's like really macabre. And yeah, I was taken aback how like, yeah, I truly wouldn't know when this takes place. It feels futuristic because it's vague enough to be like, okay, all of this is different than what we have, but not so outlandish that you couldn't believe it. it's not a um i mean even even 2000 even you know 2001 you're kind of there's a couple things where

you know you're in an 80s boardroom so you you know that like this is definitely pre-future and

Merlinthen there's okay quinn dig dug well and and on the no on the one you know you're making a great point though but like for example let me mansplain your point to you is that yes 2001 they do they do an extraordinary thing, many extraordinary things, I think. I think that movie is not overrated. I think it's extremely good and at any age you could watch that movie and it's so thought-provoking. But one of the things I think is so fascinating is, on the one hand, it's 1968 that they're shooting this, or whatever, 67. It came out in 68, I think. And

one of the things they did that was so cool is to say, you know, at some point, space travel is going to be so normal. Well, how normal is it? It's so normal that you basically go to an airport. Oh, is it a regular airport? Kind of. but the airport is like a big round ring. And does it have phone booths? Yeah, it has a phone booth, but it's a video phone and you can talk to your English daughter on it. So on the one hand, that grounds it so firmly in like, oh, it's just normal to have a waitress with Velcro shoes picking up your pen while you sleep. On the other hand, that heavily dates it as being from the era of TWA, right?

So it grounds it, but that grounding is also part of what makes you watch it and go, oh, you know, my ex used to always say, no matter what historical movie you're watching it's almost always the makeup and hair that give it away like if you think about anything even with caveman in it you can watch a caveman movie that has raccoe welch and go like oh yeah obviously this was shot in the 60s because the way they did hair and makeup and the same is here with uh fashion but like but but the concepts in that

Alexmovie are like timeless by design yeah i think there's a difference being well and that's why I think there's a difference between if a movie holds up versus if it's timeless, because I don't think the actual filmmaking in 2001 and in a lot of Kubrick's films hold up as as timeless. But the themes and messages do. Does that make sense? Like we've we've evolved sort of past all of the.

MerlinAre you calling him a hack? Is that what you're saying?

AlexNo, no, no. See, okay, okay. We have evolved based on so many things that Kubrick has done. If you were a less educated, non-film school person, you'd be like, what the? There are some people who are like, what's the big deal about this? And I'm like, are you kidding me? The shot? Oh.

MerlinWell, it's not until for a lot of people, unless you've got a friend like Todd who can tell you what the name of the concept you're talking about is, there are going to be people who don't realize, and I don't mean to say anything like a, I'm not looking down my nose, but I know I don't fully appreciate how many conventions are done well enough until you watch something like The Room or Fateful Findings or a movie like that. And you're like, oh my gosh, there are so many things that happen in movies. Oh no, shit. Have you seen Birdemic? I know it's a bit, but have you seen Birdemic?

AlexNo.

MerlinIt's really, really quite something. And it really is kind of next level, like beyond Fateful Findings, beyond The Room. Things like Alex, you're doing the 180 shot or you're doing, what did Todd call it? Shot, reverse shot. You're doing those kinds of things. But they did one take. The take they got was terrible. They flubbed the line. And my favorite part, I love when it's different room noise in two different shots in a shot, reverse shot. You know what I'm saying? You show this person and you hear an air conditioner.

Then you show this person that's like a foot away from them and there's no air conditioner. Because they're shooting or like there's traffic noise here, but not there. And you're like, oh my God, I'm so aware of this editing. because this thing is totally sticking out with its shittiness. But when you watch even a passably okay, something that's on USA on the weekend when I was a kid, you watch some piece of shit movie and they still get all of those things well enough.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinBut if you don't know this, this is water moment where you're not even aware of what D.W. Griffith did apart from the racism to help us understand or that Murnau or any of those folks or, you know, like Battleship Potemkin, all these kinds of things where you're like, oh, they built the vocabulary for like how we think about visually editing and portraying time and emotion.

AlexThat's why we enjoy things like Survivor differently because I think Max and I, Max is like trying to figure out how a puzzle is made. I am trying to figure out how they got that different piece of footage or like how did they shoot this in a way that like, oh they really didn't need a body double wow okay and we do actually have sort of a lexicon just no not rather the opposite of a lexicon what what is it uh just in a built like a palette a

palette or a vocabulary yeah um yeah and i think that's why something like moon is successful because it uses that vocabulary, but doesn't do it in a way that is too flashy. And it doesn't dig into the science fiction stuff that you're like, ah, yes, these things are different because it's 2048. Like, and I guess you could say,

well, yeah, it's a story about humans. Of course it's timeless. But just, I want people to rewatch it, not only because it's good, but because it is, I think, timely, actually.

MaxWell, also just to state the obvious too, it's a movie about isolation and being alone and being stuck in a place. Yeah.

MerlinI mean, maybe you could have a make a night of it and watch Moon and Sunshine.

MaxGod, I do. Two movies that I love.

AlexI can't do it.

MaxI haven't gone back and watched Sunshine in quite a while. I wonder if that holds up. The movie's fucked up. I love that movie. I love it.

AlexYeah. it it holds up but it you can tell that like this was in a certain area of you can see the trends of indie filmmaking in that time and moon was a part of that but you don't really see those trends you're not like there's something about this it's not like a wes anderson movie that is you're like rolling your eyes and it's like okay i get the tweenness he's doing his wes anderson thing yeah anyway uh how oh oh shit wait real quick um i don't want to get into it too much but i realized

this without like this this morning i was just watching videos about the like writers of the office and i was like wow the office holds up for a lot of different reasons but we watched three episodes last night you can tell that it is 2008 you i mean i i didn't know what the workplace felt

Merlinlike when i was i i was in high school i i and i can tell i can tell why alex knows i bet because there's a similar reason i know which is you can tell exactly what was filmed before and after 2008 a lot of the time for one reason.

AlexOoh, are we just talking about the... Flip phones. Oh, I was going to say the slight aspect ratio.

MerlinWell, no, no. If you see somebody who's in a position of power using a flip phone, if you do that, you do that in... I don't want to say I'm becoming a god, but if you have a scene from the 90s and for joke effect, you want Will Ferrell to use a car phone like the size of a toddler for comic effect, That's one thing. But it can be extremely dated. Apart from the references, the technology, those giant CRT monitors. But the comedy is so solid. We watched.

I love when they come back. And I know you guys are pretty deep in the mythos of this, too. So you know what happened in season one where it was incredibly uncertain. It was almost certain that it would not.

AlexIt was almost canceled.

MerlinYeah. It was pretty much. It was for practical purposes canceled. One person, I believe at NBC, but somebody in the system along the line practically put their career on the line to say, let's do a few more of these. So he went and did 40-year-old virgin, and he came back. He was in better shape. They gave him better hair, and they made a very important decision. I'm sorry I know you all know this, all you office-cologists. They decided there needs to be more scenes where Michael is slightly more competent and way more sympathetic.

And so you got an episode called The Dundies, the one where they go to Chili's and it's the one where Pam gets drunk and falls off the stool and all of that. And Stanley, Stanley, Stanley, I thought you were going to bring your wife because I did just because she's white. And it's so good. And then that's followed by Office Olympics, where I think they deliberately did two episodes in a row that made when they put Michael up on the stand and give him the yogurt lid medal and he thinks it's because he closed on his house. it's it's so there's something just so sweet and universal about that season of the office

Alexi well i mean for for me actually it was seeing him actually be good at his job is what not not made him a sympathetic character a sympathetic character but a more believable character and it goes with like the 2008ness of it like oh paper yeah that's right the uh paper industry

Merlinis kind of dying. Oh, no shit. Okay. But also, from time to time, he's portrayed as at least a competent and perhaps pretty good salesman. Because like Max, he's in the hospitality business. He wants to be loved and make people happy and make them laugh and be seen as the guy who throws the parties, the 555 party. But you know what I mean, though? When they portray him as not an incompetent. He's incompetent in the Ricky Gervais way of like his schemes don't work and he thinks

they're working. And then when they don't work, the cringe happens and we all have a good laugh. But to have him be totally incompetent, that show never would have lasted if he was just a dick.

MaxTo me, the obvious thing about The Office in terms of the question of like, is it dated or not? Is it's a little time capsule of a way of work in America that really doesn't exist anymore or barely exists anymore. I mean, work almost everywhere across the board is...

MerlinAnd they really confront that with the big box stores and all that kind of stuff. You could feel it's a transitional period for that kind of work.

MaxWell, and the tech, when they become a tech startup, the website. But also, you know, similarly, like Office Space is another movie that captures a kind of work that I'm not sure is out there anymore. I don't, in America, I don't know that people work in offices, like office space anymore. I mean, maybe if you like work in government or something like that, but like, it just feels so...

MerlinBut you would not see that. You probably don't see as many programmers in cubes as you saw there.

MaxNo, I think it's... I mean, that used to be how a huge amount of this country worked every day. It was the default way for professionals to work. Yeah, and then the other thing in the office that to me is sort of not aged well is very ideological, but ideological in a way that doesn't you know it's real ideology in the sense that it doesn't seem like ideology it just seems sweet and reassuring is the idea that yes these people have to have this job and they go in every day and they you know whatever Stanley's always doing the crossword puzzle but really deep down they love

each other as a family and they don't leave because it means so much to them to come to this thing and work together and like that seemed a little sad to me when I watched I always thought it was sort of tragic that Jim especially was like trapped in this place.

MerlinAnd they do. That's a really big point of the Office Olympics episode.

MaxYeah.

MerlinIs Pam talks about how excited he gets when he has something to do. And at the end, after they've had the ceremony, remember he's like, sorry, I just watched this last night. He's talking about like how, yeah, I close two deals before lunch. You know, I could do this every day, I guess. And like Tim in the English version, this is one cognate that really worked. Like remember Hat FM in the British one?

Speaker AOh, yeah.

MerlinWhy are you in so early? What, did you shit the bed? And she comes in with this hat, FM hat, the hat with the radio in it. And it's like, Tim is so stuck in that job. And Jim is so stuck in this job. And in some ways, though, Max, you're right. It's like Phyllis, I wonder if Phyllis is there because Bob Vance from Vance Refrigeration is nearby. And Jim stays there because of Pam until he can't stay there anymore because of Pam, but he still has the same job. And guess what? He meets another lady like that. so he's like he's really in a the wire kind of way he's very stuck in that system in a way that

Maxwas always it seemed tragic to me but now i think it's tragic for all of them i don't know it just and it also just seems like a document of like very mainstream like this is a message that we want to tell the american people about about work and things like that i don't know maybe i'm being

Merlintoo like well no i'll give you another i'm gonna slide i'm gonna slag another one that's my of all the Mike Schur shows. My absolute favorite is Parks and Rec. It is the ultimate comfort viewing for me. I absolutely, from the time that Chris... Guess what parts of that haven't aged well? Well, let me tell you what hasn't aged well that seemed hilarious at the time. What seemed hilarious at the time was how much Leslie Knope adored a bunch of neoliberal ding-a-lings, in retrospect. And like her meeting Joe Biden, which was such a sweet

moment on the show, makes me so goddamn angry.

MaxIt's brutal. The fucking cast of characters.

Speaker AI'm mad at myself for liking it. The fucking cast of, like, war criminals. Just, like, pedophiles and war criminals that they trot out. Dr. Kissinger, Dr. Kissinger, I made it to all of you.

Show notes

Transcript

184. Big Zone Energy

Show notes

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