197. A Useless Dog

AlexOh, I think call recording is working. All right. Hooray.

MerlinYeah, that's how they get you. You know, it's like public transit. Like, it works just often enough.

AlexGo on, go on, excuse me.

MerlinWell, I mean, I used to feel this way when I rode Muni a lot to get downtown for work. And it was like, ah, it's such a dream. I'm very, as you certainly know, I live very close to a streetcar line. So I walk out my door, take a few steps, walk onto a streetcar, and theoretically, it drops me off downtown in 20, 25 minutes, except when it doesn't. And you're like, that's the day of the job interview, or that's the day of jury duty, or whatever it is. and I feel that way with Call Recorder. At the urging of John Syracuse,

I have finally created a podcast checklist, which I have in front of me right now. Ooh. One of the things is make sure Call Recorder is still installed.

AlexYep, that's now been added to mine.

MerlinBut it'll work fine for two years mostly, except for the couple times it doesn't, and then it uninstalled. And I thought, huh, that's kind of weird, and I reinstalled it, And then it uninstalled again a few days later. And then it was fine for, what, two, three weeks. And then I want to say last week or week before, two days in a row it uninstalled. Is it uninstalled twice over a 12-hour period?

AlexYeah, it's kind of like an every two-week type of thing for me. Or maybe it's becoming cyclical. Oh, maybe this is also syncing up with my period.

MerlinI was just going to say, it's got a double period.

AlexI wonder if it's like a podcaster's period, too. Like maybe the, I don't know how anything works anymore.

MerlinSo who? I don't either. But, you know, but this is the problem. This is, and here, here, since the reason I finally capitulated after years of doing this and have the checklist is because as the words were coming out of my mouth, I already braced for what Syracuse was going to say. I said, the problem is, I said, I, what I did, what had happened was I, I have set call recorder to always record everything automatically. I use Skype for, as they say, literally one thing, which is recording podcasts.

It's not a social network. It's not a telephone. It's all I use it for. So, of course, I always want a call recorder to record. But that does rely on the assumption that it's still installed, you know?

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinSo I never look down. Why would I look down? It always is set to record. It's so crazy. It's like, you know, you remember in driver's ed, they're always like, before you get in your automobile, walk around and inspect the tires and look at the windshield, see if any pebbles have cracked the mirror and all that kind of stuff. And eventually you're like, no, I think the car will be fine. But this is like realizing we're out of gas, but you also forgot your car.

AlexOh, man, I didn't go through my checklist this morning. And now I'm like, wait, I am recording with my microphone, right? Right. Man, this is such quality audio content after being gone for a week.

MerlinYou start with do not disturb on everything. If you look nice today, I have to set up my lights and I have to set up my iPhone camera. I run my bunch.app start podcast bunch. I redirect the audio to the pre. Pull down the mic arm that has my mic and headphones on it. Turn off all fans and air filters.

AlexPull down the mic arm?

MerlinI've got a clampy mic arm.

AlexA clampy mic arm.

MerlinI don't know what the boom, a boom? Is that what it's called? But it's got the hinge.

AlexYeah, but what do you mean pull it down?

Merlinas in like bring it to your face well let me let me start at the beginning or rather let me end at the so when i'm done recording i do three things immediately it's always three things with me i hit this i hit this that mutes that mutes because i always muted when i'm not actually recording a podcast otherwise people would see my balls and i take off my headphones and i put them on this rack dingus the uh the swingy part the the the hanging microphone is in and then i push that up

till it's what would that be you know straight up like like 12 noon and that way it's all the way out of my way with my headphones stored on it yeah i gotta pull that down this is the point of the checklist okay so first of all here's some meta stuff about checklists a lot of people out there are gonna say right now well first of all why do you need a checklist and i say shut up The second thing that people are going to say is all that stuff is so obvious. And I say, yes, that's why you have the checklist. It's because it's the obvious things that you always forget. Turn off all my fans and filters, including my co-way, which I know you also have.

Just replace the filters. Bring up the quiet keyboard next to the clacky keyboard. P, unmute the mic, get a new seltzer, make sure call recorder is still installed, and then always make sure to hit the button in Audio Hijack. That's in all caps.

AlexI have a really important question.

MerlinYeah.

AlexHave you changed your seltzer habits?

MerlinOver COVID times?

AlexSure. Actually, yes. Let's start from the beginning.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So dear. I have. Actually, it's changed back and forth during COVID times. Because I don't know. I mean, you're not a big seltzer drinker, are you?

Alexuh well follow up but let's get to you first okay all right all right okay all right um so uh for

Merlinfor years i did soda stream and then at some point i don't know i just got kind of tired of my family gets very annoyed because i forget exactly why i got into the safeway refresher canned uh seltzer for a while uh i've la croix i don't know if i just get bad batches but the LaCroix standard seltzer water is virtually flat to my taste. I don't think it's very fizzy, and I don't like the flavor of it very much. Then, I don't know how this happened.

I discovered my beloved Canada Dry original sparkling seltzer water, which I don't know how you say water has a taste. I guess it's minerals or something, but it's not mineral water, mind you. It's seltzer. It's just carbonated water, but it has a slightly, I want to say, sweet aspect to it And really good fizz. It's not like Marco's New York seltzer that we can't get here. Well, that's what they say. I want to try it, but I went to the website. I couldn't find it.

AlexI'll work on that. So you're a fizz person over a flavor person.

MerlinNo, absolutely. But then here's what happened. What happened was then COVID times came. And as you may have heard, the reason I asked you, I wasn't trying to interrogate you, but there's been a shortage of CO2 and it's affected a lot. It's another one of these wackadoo things that ends up affecting a bunch of industries. If there's a CO2 shortage, well, that affects me directly in the sense that it's more difficult to find any kind of seltzer or seltzer preparing product. But it goes further than that. Guess what else? That affects the soft drink industry.

It's harder to make your beloved Diet Coke. It affects the beer making industry, I guess. I don't know. I think that's part of it. But anything that requires CO2, it affects all of those different industries and markets, which in turn then affect other markets. So if it affects, if CO2 is short, that means beer is short. If beer is short, that affects bars, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I capitulated. And then, of course, okay, so yeah.

God, fucking cut all of this out.

AlexWe're an economy podcast now.

MerlinCO2, everything is low. suddenly all of the prepared in a can products are drying up. You can't get them anymore. And guess what? A la the clippers for your hair. You go to Amazon, everything SodaStream is sold out. The makers, the chargers, it's all sold out. It's very difficult to find. But I finally, I did look, I was kind of hovering over this one product. I don't know the brand name, but it's like an extremely fancy SodaStream, like way too costly. And I got one of those.

And then I started getting chargers as they started coming back in again.

Speaker AAnd then, I don't know, I kind of got sick of it again.

MerlinIt's just the filling the bottles. I drink so much. I probably drink a 12-pack of seltzer a day. So that's where I am now. I'm back on the cans. They go, they ebb and flow in terms of being available. But that's where I am. Tell me your journey.

AlexI drank a lot of Diet Coke for my whole life. That's super bad. But it was never really about the fizziness. I don't really like fizzy things. And then I...

MerlinI'm not surprised. It can be very intense.

AlexIt is. And with the whole super tasting thing, along with it comes a sensitivity to texture to the point where sometimes I'll open...

MerlinNo, you're basically Roderick Usher. Yeah, I get it. I get it. You just have to sit in a dark room with gloves on. It is. That bed's too loud.

Speaker AI heard an ant two houses away

AlexNo it's normal for someone to put an energy drink in the fridge open and then to have it the next morning when it's much less carbonated Maybe I'm the cause of the shortage Maybe right now it's like me

MerlinOh my god all those bubbles lost like tears in rain

Alexit's like I'm buying boxes of masks and just throwing them in the street

Speaker Ait's like you're buying tubs of yogurt and just leaving them outside open it's too warm and not rotten

Merlinwell here this is funny because so this might be another interesting contrast is that my my arch enemy in this world is uh flavored water so like oh it's like no well you You know, one of those like, oh, it's just lightly infused with the essence of pamphlet mousse.

Yeah. Whatever kind of fizzy, non-fizzy, whatever it is. That shit is garbage. I despise a lightly effervescent fruit drink. I'm wondering, given your sensibilities, if that's exactly in your wheelhouse.

AlexHmm.

MerlinBarely carbonated, barely having a taste.

AlexYes. But, but, but, but, I'm going to send you something that has changed my life in the past 72 hours.

MerlinWhoa. Okay. Wow, I'm into this.

AlexOh, I sent you a picture of my dead dog. Wait.

Speaker AOh, Murphy. Oh, look at the face. Oh, Murph, why did you do this to me?

AlexI'm sorry, I'm sorry. Did he used to do that with his tongue a lot? Excuse me. You just misgendered my dog, but, you know, moving on.

MerlinOh, no, I'm going to put $7 in the gender jar.

AlexNo, no.

MerlinAll dogs are boys and all cats are girls.

AlexConsent. Oh, boy.

Merlinactually my ferret is femme if you know what I mean

AlexI think ferrets are a thing in the gay men community no otters

Merlinis it called ferreting? the kids are calling it ferreting you do it in a ferreting cage

AlexI'm breaking this fourth wall hey everybody thank you so much for all the nice messages about my dog that passed away some people thought it was silly which one, fuck you But two, everyone was super sweet. My longtime family dog passed away, which is why we weren't here last week. But everything's fine. She was very, very old. But I just sent Merlin a picture of her, and that was the first picture I took of her on my iPhone.

MerlinYou know that's going to be the show art. That's got to be the show art.

AlexOh, yeah, yeah.

MerlinWhat a precious girl. Look at that little moist tongue and those beautiful dewy eyes. Right? Oh. But do you know what? I'm sorry. The word breed really troubles me. What sort of, apart from very good, what sort of dog was Murphy?

AlexA peekapoo. So a Pekingese poodle. So a fancy, basically.

Speaker AA useless dog.

AlexYeah, a literal useless dog to the point where she is technically a rescue because we got her from somebody who had gotten their dog from a breeder. And they're like, yeah, there's this one puppy left, but she's so much bigger than all the others. And this is a 20 pound dog And all of her siblings Like died with No I don't want to talk about dead dogs But anyway get a dog with a mixed breed

MerlinIt's like Francis McDormand In Raising Arizona What is it that Sam What's his name says Dog wants to have another baby She says these are getting too big to cuddle He's a precious angel

AlexOh man

MerlinOkay so you're sending me a-ha

AlexAha.

MerlinAha, sparkling water.

AlexYes. And it's with caffeine and electrolytes.

MerlinOh, that's what a body craves?

AlexOh, God. There was that time there where I'm like, oh, I'm getting migraines again. Wow, this is a lot of puke. I clearly have a brain tumor and I will die soon during COVID from this. Hooray. No, no, you just really shouldn't stop having caffeine all of a sudden. So I've been trying.

MerlinOh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've tapered a lot over the last few months. But no, my lady friend, I mean, she's okay with a lot of stuff in life, including her career, family, and pets. But coffee is what she really loves. She wakes up in the middle of the night at 3 in the morning. She makes a cup of coffee and goes back to bed.

AlexReally?

MerlinShe's amazing. She's amazing.

AlexThat's, oh, wow.

MerlinNot even decaf.

AlexHoly shit.

MerlinNo, but she drinks a fair amount. I don't want to throw her under the coffee bus, but she drinks a lot more coffee than I do. And I think she's much more, speaking here as somebody who once drank a truly unhealthy amount of coffee, I know that people debate this and whether this is true and what is the sort of ceiling for caffeine. But I know that at the time when I was drinking a pot and a half of coffee a day,

if I had less than that, I'd really feel it by like early afternoon, like wanging front of the front of the top of the forehead headache or like, you know, kind of just above the eyes like that vascular probably headache. Because I think caffeine is a I think it dial dialates. I don't say vein vessels. It dilates something in your head. Like there's like is that is that right? Isn't like blood vessels in your head that it dilates? And so if you don't have it, it's gotten kind of the blood vessels are hooked.

And so they do a Dick Cheney and that causes a headache.

AlexI I'm going to say sure, because, again, I don't have any idea of what is real or not anymore.

MerlinIs that right? That sounds like this is a good time for me to really gaslight you.

AlexThat's the thing. Anybody could tell me anything and I would be like, I mean, that sounds about right. it's like the whole thing of uh like i could go on a literal turf war with a turf like i can take that bitch down 100 but if a flat earther comes to me and is like the earth is flat i can't debate them they're gonna they're going to wipe the floor with me 100 that's why i was opposed to having a

Merlinflat earther on the show as a as a larf yeah because they it's like fighting a frat boy yeah like they're gonna win of course they're gonna win like it doesn't matter who knows more about actual science the frat boy is going to beat your ass and the flat earther person cares so much more

Alexthan you that well and that's why i think oh i mean maybe it's a little bit early for the challenge but i who the heck knows but pretty much all this is sort of fueled by my deep dive into the the backlog of you are not so smart oh great i'm so happy to hear that yeah well i i got his book a while ago and for some reason i'm like i don't like how you write also i'm bored and so i stopped reading which doesn't happen often uh but then i returned to it and i'm like no this isn't i like

how you write so who who knows the the israeli guy or david david i uh i don't like how the israeli Guy Wright's problematic, but good book.

MerlinWhat's his writing style like? I mean, I enjoy him on a podcast, but I mean, is he more of what we've come to call a science educator? He's more of a CGP Grey than a Tversky, right?

AlexYes, 1,000%. And I think maybe, when was this book published? Like 2013?

MerlinBy the way, he's not Gerald McRaney. Gerald McRaney is Major Dad. uh who major he's also in simon and simon i've missed joe mccraney he was also in uh deadwood i still haven't watched it yeah save it for prison the

Alexi i mean i've really come around and uh decided that the sopranos is one of the best shows ever

Merlinmade i know oh okay sorry i took you off your thing so david david's first book and it's called I believe is the titular you are not so smart. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

AlexI think I was just being an ask because I'm like, Oh, this is, I like this. He writes very much like he speaks on the show, um, in a good way. And I, I mean, I don't know, but yeah, he is very much someone that I like to learn from as like a science explainer. Like there's a reason I am not a scientist, but a reason why I'm a huge fan of scientists and science in general,

Merlinlike big fan. They do a lot of good work. Let's be honest.

AlexYeah, yeah. Again, somewhat controversial opinion.

MerlinA lot of them report the news very unfairly. Some of them can be very nasty, especially the women.

AlexOh, oh, speaking of lady doctors, I stopped listening to the other program about work that you do because I felt a little hurt and cheated because you discussed the Daily Beast piece about, what is her name?

MerlinHer name is... No, she's from Houston. No, I know this. I remember that she's from Cameroon, but I don't remember her name.

AlexI remember that according to her, I'm gay because of the demons I've had sex with in my dreams.

MerlinIn your dreams.

AlexExactly.

Speaker ATake me, king. Ruin me, demon man.

MerlinOkay, hang on, hang on. Let's just take a breath here. So are we going to talk? Do you want to go into the challenge stuff? Or did you want to talk more about aha? Or did you want to talk about demon sex? I could do any of those. You drive. Let me know what you want to do here.

AlexYou know what? I would love for you to tell me about Trump's favorite COVID doctor, who believes in alien DNA, demon sperm, and hydro... Okay.

MerlinIt's not too... This will come out on... If we're alive, this will come out on Thursday, July 30th. July has 30, right? We'll have a 30. This is why I have 94 meetings.

AlexYeah. There is also a 31st, although I thought it would never come. Yeah.

MerlinOh, wow. Okay. All right. Okay. So this won't be too played? No. Okay, good. It's an extremely, extremely good story. And it gives me a chance to amplify the very good work of Will Sommer.

AlexExactly.

MerlinWhich is always something I'm always happy to do. Give me a sec to pull this up. Oh, my God.

AlexOh, sorry. I got it. That's all I've been doing this morning is just watching videos of this lady who... Okay, so are you doing that on YouTube? Yeah.

MerlinAnd so aren't you worried? I mean, are you in incognito mode?

AlexI'm scared.

MerlinI want to see it, but I'm scared.

AlexOh, absolutely. Incognito. Okay.

MerlinOkay. Cool. Cool.

AlexI am terrified of YouTube. I'm terrified of TikTok. It's just.

Speaker AReally?

AlexWell, doesn't it freak you out how, like, I don't know. My TikTok algorithm. Is that a spoon? No, that's not a spoonerism what I just did. That was just me.

Speaker AA spoonerism. through accident with semen in a word.

MerlinI'm talking about sailors.

AlexGod. Sailors that are in your mouth.

MerlinUh-huh. It's not a Navy boat. It's a gravy boat.

Speaker AI've been working on Tina's talking points. I think I can quote almost that whole episode. Are we doing this? Things haven't been so great with Tony for a long time. Ooh. Same rat, different hat.

MerlinOkay. Okay. Do you want me to do this?

AlexI can't believe people come to this podcast for political news. What are you doing?

MerlinSee, you did it again. You put semen in the sentence. People don't come to the podcast. Okay. Dig it, dig it, dig it. Okay. Okay. So one thing. I got one little slam here on the Daily Beast where they did the thing where the Twitter card says something different than the headline does and that might be because they changed it at one point oh huh what it used to be so right now the twitter card is trump's new covid doctor says sex with demons makes you sick okay so you get to the daily beast article this is by uh i want to

say front of the show but i only know him through twitter and his wonderful work he's in my pantheon of top five current writers uh he's up there um so will summer writing for the daily beast will Well, Summer, as you all may know, has he's one of those people like Daniel Dale where you just have to really feel for the guy.

Like like I want to say, not Ben Jacobs, but he's on he's on that. He's on that the far right beat. His whole deal and I think the whole reason he got hired by the Daily Beast was, you know, that he kind of monitors what's going on the far right. Is it fair to assume here that people probably haven't heard back to work and I can read some of this?

AlexYes, that is. Yes, yes, yes.

MerlinReading series. Trump's new favorite COVID doctor believes in alien DNA, demon sperm, and hydroxychloroquine. The Houston doctor who praised hydroxychloroquine, Quinn, Quinn, Quinn. Quinn? Oh my God. Cool new rap name for our producer.

AlexYes. Oh, hydroquin.

MerlinHydroxychloroquine.

AlexHydroxychloroquine.

MerlinShe's going to love that.

AlexI'm sure.

MerlinHi, Quinn.

AlexHi, Quinn.

MerlinSays that, uh, praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren't necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious, became a star. Anyway, Stella Emanuel declared, made this video. She's part of this video that was declared a must watch by Donald Trump Jr.

Before Trump and his supporters embrace Emanuel's medical expertise, though, they should consider other medical claims that she has made, including those about alien DNA and the physical effects of having sex with witches and demons in your dreams. New paragraph. Emmanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. DNA is current. She says alien DNA.

I'm just going to gloss through some of this. We'll put it in show notes. She alleges that alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments. Scientists are working, and that scientists are working up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. I'd love for Dr. Don. I know he's not an MD, but I would love... He's not an MD. Is he an MD?

AlexI don't know. I'm sorry, Dr. Don.

MerlinHang on. I suddenly spaced. Is he an MD? He's got to be an MD.

AlexWell, yeah, because he studies things that go in and out of your body.

Speaker AHe could be getting me Adderall. Oh.

MerlinWe're going to talk about this. We'll take it offline.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinI would love somebody in the medical arena to chime in on what kind of pathways and sort of means of... What's the word I'm looking for? How would it be that you make somebody stop being religious, just from a medical standpoint? Oh, I guess you could take them to college.

So, and that, to cook it up. And despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that government is run in part not by humans, but by reptilians and other aliens.

AlexOh, I wish.

MerlinSo this is part of, Emanuel gave her viral speech on the steps of the Supreme Court, obviously, at the, quote, White Coats Summit, a gathering of a handful of doctors who call themselves America's frontline doctors. That's a group. It says it right on their little white jackets like the MSNBC commercial doctors wear.

And dispute the medical consensus on the novel coronavirus. The event was organized by the right wing. Let's get to some of the good stuff. So how about this so far? How are you feeling about this so far? You feel good about this?

AlexYeah, yeah. What are you are you not feeling good about this?

MerlinNo, no, no. I'm wondering how like how is this resonating with you? I found this a fascinating and very engrossing story. It got this. So this this video got 13 million views in a very, very, very short period of time.

AlexAnd like you mentioned, retweeted by Trump, but it also put Trump Jr. in Twitter jail, which is the first time he went to Twitter jail for 12 hours. Yeah. I love this paragraph.

MerlinEmanuel is a registered physician in Texas, according to a Texas medical board database, and operates a medical clinic out of a strip mall next to her church, Firepower and Ministries. She's from Cameroon. She has a legal defense fund.

Last one. Let's just wrap with this.

Speaker ASermons posted. Sermons. Medical sermons.

MerlinTitle. Medical sermons. And sermons posted on YouTube. Claims medical. Oh, yeah. Spirit husbands and spirit wives. A phenomenon Emanuel describes essentially as witches and demons having sex with people in a dream world. Quoting here. They are responsible for serious gynecological problems, so this should interest you. Emmanuel said, we call them all kinds of names. Endometriosis. We call them molar pregnancies. We call them fibroids. We call them cysts. But most of them are evil deposits from their spirit husband. Emmanuel said, of the medical issues, they're responsible for miscarriages, impotence, men that can't get it up.

AlexDid you think while reading this, just have a brief inkling of if I were to go to the doctor soon, I'd like to. Well, oh, I guess you don't don't have gynecological problems, but I.

MerlinI mean, you know, I heard I heard everybody might have HPV. I just learned that yesterday. Oh, you learned. I learned it from the same place you did.

AlexYes. That.

MerlinOh, from the ear podcast from from You're Not So Smart. Wasn't that an amazing anecdote that basically there's all this hysteria. on both sides of the aisle about HPV, potentially mandatory HPV treatments for girls. There was not a similar backlash for, was it HPV? Like an almost nearly identical kind of treatment.

AlexYep. And I was one of those people because I was, you know, at my Catholic school. And it's like, why do I need a shot to prevent a, well, at the time was taught to me at school. why do I need a shot that is a basically protecting me from STDs? I don't need this. Yeah.

MerlinLike why would I need insurance if my house has never been on fire?

AlexExactly. And luckily my mom, my still Catholic mom at the, this was, oh wow. This was like, oh God, I'm so old. This was like 18 years ago was like, no, listen, you are getting this. It's not going to hurt. It's going to be, everything's fine. It has nothing to do with sex.

MerlinYou're not in trouble.

AlexYeah, it's like, we trust our doctor. She would not recommend it if it wasn't perfectly safe. And it's weird because among people my age who work raised religiously, it seems like the majority of them have not had the vaccine still in 2020.

MerlinAnd that's very much, is the phrase abstinence only education, they call it?

AlexYeah. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinNo, I mean, not just about birth control, but about really all kinds of things. I'm trying to find this article, but I read this wonderful article yesterday in the New York Times by this writer I really like. Here it is. This woman is so cool. I've heard her on podcasts. She's so cool. Her name is Emily Oster, and she wrote a book called Crib Sheet, A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting from Birth to Preschool. And it's the most wonderful and useful kind of turns out book about all the things that parents and potential parents fret about, all the bad advice they get, all the things that they don't need to worry about and all the things they should be worrying about.

And she does it with a, you know, sort of like kind of like not a behavioral economist, but like she uses data to figure out what the best thing is. I read this thing of hers yesterday, Alex. And you know how I have one of these moments once a month where I'm like, duh, you just gave me a new thought technology for understanding something really important. And I'll tell you what, her piece is called, What Will Schools Do When a Teacher Gets COVID-19?

AlexAnd when, not if.

MerlinWe need to start planning for this now, because here's the thing. Right now, there's this almost like an implicit idea that we're going to put all of our effort and planning time and our limited budget is going to go entirely into trying to get people so that they don't get COVID. Well, I got news for you. People are going to get COVID. Teachers are going to get COVID. What happens, not if, but when a teacher gets COVID? Do you shut down the whole school? Who becomes the kid's teacher now? Do we change, you know, there's all kinds. As soon as she wrote that, my mind started swimming with the obviousness of,

even as a retired project manager, I kind of did a bonk on the head and went, oh, yes, when you're doing this kind of stuff, you have to think about when, not if. And the problem with saying Jesus does not want you to get a shot is you're banking very heavily on a big if instead of a possible when. And I don't want to make this dark, but there are people who end up having intercourse at times and in ways

that maybe aren't a great idea at the time, and it might even have been forced on them. And I don't want to, like I say, I don't want to make it dark. And that's certainly kind of a worst-case scenario, but in any case.

Alexwell here's the thing though but that that's also what we were all kind of told eventually in in school because luckily i i don't want to say i went to a progressive school but it was like like straight up the teachers were like well what if you get raped you sure do want that vaccine and it's like okay thanks like that is the narrative that was peddled well yeah like was it well it

Merlinsucks it sucks that you have to put it in in terms like that yeah it was super fucked up because normally I'm somebody who's very adverse or someone who's very, my guards go up when I detect that somebody wants me to be scared. Whenever somebody wants me to be scared, I figure they have an angle. And often enough, especially in America, especially today, especially online, I've been talking about this since the 73 folders day, but like, you know, I got the bit about how procrastination is what happens when we, you know, forget who we are.

I think a lot of advertisers, businesses, marketers, politicians, not politicians, people in government, whoever, it's very important that they have an understanding of how to get you scared about the thing that they want you to be scared about. And that happens often enough that I think it's useful to be aware of that. And that may sound very adversarial, but I think you need to be adversarial. I think you need to be on the alert for what the angle is from somebody who ordinarily would not give a shit about your life who now wants you to be scared.

There's all of these people on the right who just don't give a shit about all of these different people until there's a reason to act like you care. All the black unemployment, Latino unemployment, they don't give a shit about those people. And all these marketers who really are Tom Selleck out there wanting you to get your mortgage redone.

It's just fear of something ruinous or even just fear of embarrassment or being stuck in the out group, which is, again, relevant to that podcast. All of the ways that we exercise fear on others should make us very skeptical of why somebody wants us to be scared right now. Now, if it's your parents saying, I need you to be scared of running into the street, I think there's worse things. But, you know, because you're too little to be told rationally why you can't run after your ball.

I'm sorry, I'm ranting.

AlexNo, but you're right.

MerlinBut when I read this, this really landed on me because, you know, it's such an obvious thing. But boy, it's sort of like my recent obsession with denominators, where I'm like, it's such a reframe for everything when you say, okay, well, don't give me a Bezos number. Give me context. Like, what does this mean? What's the seven-day trend line? Tell me all these things. And the idea of when, not if, it so vastly changes the way you think about the future. It actually is more optimistic in some ways. It's a way of saying that like rather than act like nothing will ever go wrong again, like what happens when it goes wrong?

That's really the bigger thing to plan for.

AlexAnd I think it's been weaponized so many times that it's why people are so reluctant because, you know, more and more people are like you sniffing out like, oh, this person wants me to be afraid for the lulls or for the clicks. and because, you know, the narrative our parents put out there of the, like, when you get hit by a car, when you are kidnapped, like, they're...

MerlinYou use your little hand, you pull back the carpet, you punch out, you let them wave your hand, wave your little hand, let them know something hanky's going on. When you get kidnapped.

Alexwell that's how um dare uh dare to what was it dare to keep kids off drugs drug awareness

Merlinand retaliatory ejaculate i don't remember what is it i don't remember what it stands for

AlexUh, D.A.R.E.

MerlinDrug awareness. And drug awareness.

AlexI can't believe I have forgotten this. What does D.A.R.E. stand for? Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

MerlinI got every bit of that wrong.

AlexThat, drug abuse resistance. So you're not resisting the drugs, just the abuse part. I could get down with that. Is that a triple negative?

MerlinAlso, it's hard to say. It's like Elaine Bennis says about breasts. It's very hard to say. Breasts.

AlexWell, Dare was after your time, right?

MerlinYeah.

AlexIt was very much when someone.

MerlinIt was very much when I was in late high school and college.

AlexDid you ever get the when you are offered or when someone tries to sell you drugs part?

MerlinAs in Nancy Reagan's just say no?

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinI mean, I think just say no. Oh, see, okay, I have a very clear recollection of when they park the, this is not you look nice today bit, when they park the wrecked car in front of every high school and say like, you know, somebody 16 was in that car when they died driving drunk.

AlexOh, that's one thing I was spared.

MerlinWell, so yeah, drunk driving, when I was really little, it was much more about, I would say, narcotics, which they obviously included marijuana with. But it was like, I just have so many enduring images from health class of needle drugs and people passed out from or dead from sniffing glue or any kind of huffing. And then, honestly, high school, the big focus was on drunk driving. But no, yeah, I mean, I was aware of it. And then I do remember driving down, I want to say DeSoto. I forget the exact road. But I was driving around near college and I saw a car and it had three bumper stickers on it.

and it had three of the exact same dare bumper sticker on it. And I was behind. Now, this is the way your mind works when you're 20. But I'm driving behind this car. I'm like, huh, that's pretty wild. And then we're at a light, and I'm looking more carefully. And it's very clear from the age where kind of the fading of the stickers that those three stickers were applied at different times. so that means they put one dare sticker on there

and one about their business and then one day they went

Speaker Ashit I should probably get another dare sticker on there

Merlinso they put a second one on time passes maybe months go by and you're like you know this shit is not getting any better I'm going to pop for a third dare sticker

Alexit's like just putting up the same billboard every month

Merlinit's like keep adding more and more you know um blue lives matter flags well and so and so that came to you so you you you arrived in your somewhat progressive catholic school if i could ask what age ranges did you or grade

Alexranges did you go there uh well i mean the kindergarten like all of elementary through high school or well it was kindergarten to eighth grade the first school and then um you had to take an application test to various uh private high schools if you in that were catholic in order to get in which is was the elementary school part of your parish yes yes yes yes uh and then high school is an extended part of that so yep eight uh 15 years of that 14 years i don't know

uh but it was like the reason i bring this up is because the constant narrative of when and not if was absolutely used against us. And I've never had anybody try to sell me drugs. I've had to seek that out.

MerlinI would have loved it. It's harder than it should be, for sure.

AlexIt is. You should move here.

MerlinActually, don't move here. The rents are going way down.

AlexYeah, I mean, you guys are sure doing stuff over there.

MerlinWe're having a time out here. Yeah. I don't know. But to me, that is such a good thought. The when, not if thing is such a good thought technology because it's – when, not if, this is off the dome, but it's a fundamentally progressive idea.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinSo if, never, when – now I sound like Kierkegaard. If, never, when becomes an extremely conservative in the true sense of the word or – what's the word I'm looking for? really not even conservative. It's kind of if never when is so optimistic as to be impossible. And maybe that's how you end up in a death cult, is that you're so sure of a certain kind of outcome happening or not happening that you go all in on something rather than saying, well,

what kind of risk mitigation, you know, what kind of amelioration can we prepare for in the event that this goes a certain way? You know, that's just good project management. and so was it presented to you as packaged branded dare in your i mean was because like i know in public schools shit we even had christian groups again this is a you look nice today bit and i'm a bim bam bit and a many other people bit but we definitely had the christians who would come in and talk about you know throwing the frisbee or ripping the phone book or uh you know just to show

that like you don't need drugs and this is what jesus does for you when i won the air guitar contest that would that was a bunch of christians called freedom jam was the group that was there that's that's amazing uh freedom jam they were there just to show you yeah freedom freedom jam yeah yeah they come out and they're kind of like the temptations they're like several of them that would tour so freedom jam would come and they had a diverse brady bunch-esque uh diverse group who would come and play a new wave rock and then talk about the lord and that was a mandatory assembly

AlexOh, God. Literal. Oh, God.

MerlinSo was your was your anti-drug stuff in high school, roll your own homegrown parish or school stuff? Or was it like branded dare?

AlexWell, it was it was absolutely branded dare. But, you know, of course, the officer who came in, sir, the sir and madam officers that came in were Catholic. So it's kind of like. How could you tell? they look guilty again not if when you go to confession to talk about your interactions with drugs and I the reason I bring this up is again kind of challenge related

is the weaponization of that is kind of like even for someone like me who I would again hope hope that I am progressive had that thing for a while where it's like oh this isn't the truth and now i have less trust which is something that's talked about on you're wrong about which is the as you would say thought technology that has kind of blown my mind uh in in the past two days or whatever and he specifically

says uh we truth and facts are prevalent but there's so little trust that that is what is

Merlincreating yeah he talks about how his mind was blown by yeah reading that distinction yeah well that's that's huge for me wait don't we say it again it was what versus trust uh hold let me uh

AlexI'm going to play it right now, actually. I clipped it out. That is how much I enjoyed this bit.

MerlinIt's one of those things, though, it feels like if your brain's broken like mine, a lot of people would see it as an oversubtle distinction, but I think it's such a reframe.

AlexOh, yeah, totally. All right, here's this bad boy. Thanks, iOS 14. Here we go.

Speaker BOne of my Twitter followers said something that I have repeated over and over again. And I have no shame in taking this and using it everywhere. They said, we don't live in a post-truth world. We live in a post-trust world. Blew my mind. I was like, oh, God, I think that's more right than anything ever.

AlexAnd it's like, yep, that seems about right.

MerlinWell, yeah, because if you, I mean, I'm just going to mangle what David, not Gerald, what David just said, which is, you know, it's you believe your truth, but you may distrust the sources that disseminate what they consider truth. So you distrust that. Right. And like the whole idea. I mean, you know, again, I hate to be all who's that dingaling hillbilly elegy guy. But like, you know, the truth is or actually a guy went to college, David Leonard. He's been on this beat for a while of like, you really grossly misunderstand a lot about these people in, you know, useless flyover states to you.

But that, you know, they have seen a diminution of their social standing in a way not dissimilar to the way African-Americans used to be able to get really good factory jobs. These are people who used to be able to have like, you know, family legacies of having a certain kind of career that's utterly gone away. They've been abandoned by so many people, and it's kind of understandable how you would be a little starved for relevant truths, truths that feel relevant to you, and for anything that gives you power, even if it's power by proxy.

And I think that's one way you get Donald Trump, is that people love—it's not even just owning the libs, but it's a way of saying, finally, somebody's in there. If he's crooked, he's my kind of crooked. You know, if he's dumb, he's my kind of dumb, but he's my guy. And like, you know, I'm going to be, you know, pro-Mets, you know, ride or die. But that started in probably, started when? It started a million years ago. But like, especially the 50s, 60s, 70s, like into the early 70s, you guys have heard Allentown.

You know that in the 70s, you can be guaranteed a middle or upper middle class job in the Rust Belt that would provide for your family. Or like my grandfather, who turned off people's electricity for 35 years. He had a pension and retired to Florida. Like, none of that exists, obviously, now, but it hasn't really existed for 20 years.

AlexThat's not something I ever considered.

Speaker AI didn't know that was an option.

AlexYeah, no. I mean, I talked about this, I think, recently somewhere. I apologize. It feels like I haven't podcasted in, you know, it's been 84 years.

MerlinTwo weeks or something.

AlexBut I never thought that I would be getting married in my lifetime just because, you know, no. At the time, the people that I trusted were like, that's not possible. That's not even an option.

MerlinAfter you were aware of your orientation.

AlexYep. And I think they kind of drilled that into me.

MerlinNo, because you were a pretty good faker for a while, right? I mean, didn't you say you're the last person to realize you're gay?

AlexOh, for sure. And yeah. I mean, I'm the last person to realize a lot of things. I'm the Fredo in every group.

Speaker ATo quote my friend's dad, if they're not, they're missing their best bet. Did I ever tell you that story?

MerlinThey were getting their house redecorated. I want to say the man's name was something like Billy. And he was just a delight. This is when I'm 17. My friend Sam and I are 17 or so. And his dad is 34 because he got pregnant. His wife got pregnant at New College. But anyhow, we're cleaning up after a party, and his dad's a, he's buzzed, let's say. And at one point, like, we were kind of, we were talking about Billy, and we're talking about the redecorating. And he'd done redecorating at their house and redecorating, like, serious redecorating, not, like, putting up a new vase with flowers, but, like, really redoing the whole, like, ID of the house.

And they'd done work at a place in Boca Grande. day and we're like um sam goes dad is um billy is he uh do you think he might be might be gay and sam's dad goes immediately without missing a beat he goes well if he's not he's missing his

Speaker Abest bet it's still one of the greatest lines i've ever heard in my life

Merlin1984. Thank you, Ken.

AlexOh, thank you for your service.

MerlinAnd so you thought, so of course, your future, your opportunities, your horizons are going to be limited by lots of things. You're coming up in the, well, so at this point you've been, has the recession happened at this point?

Alex2008. So sore.

MerlinSo we're just running, just starting into that period. Gay marriage is still many years away. Gay acceptance, which started about six months ago. So it must have felt like a pretty bleak future.

AlexWell, and along with that, being told in high school also constantly, like you need to not only go to college, but you need to be at the top of your class because it's going to be nearly impossible for you to get a job as soon as you graduate. because I graduated high school in 2009.

MerlinThat's why they always refer to them as the tiger mother superiors.

AlexThat's stupid.

Speaker AStudying hard, education's important.

AlexDig, dug, dug a dig. Let's get into the challenge.

Speaker ADo, do, do, do, do challenge.

MerlinThis challenge spun out of a podcast that we just talked about that I think is really good. It's called You Are Not So Smart. And in a nut, it's about cognitive biases and some other things, but a lot about cognitive biases.

So what is a cognitive bias? It's something that harms or kind of mars our thinking by—the human mind will have these certain patterns of things that we notice that come out of self-preservation or some sort of evolution, but they're ultimately very damaging to us because they're usually, like most bias to the person who is biased, are pretty much invisible. invisible. So what's a cognitive bias? Classic one, confirmation bias. I will tend to seek out and then believe information that confirms my own priors. Things that I already, I will go out and

find new sources and people who agree with me. That's confirmation bias. I'm not going to tend to seek out stuff that is a very smart person explaining how I want to, might want to re-examine my beliefs. And so that's what, so just to jump in here, is that kind of right? How would you

Alexdescribe you're not so smart um uh oh i don't know they exactly that same way i i was gonna talk about the book i i guess like the summary oh no we're getting we're getting to that i'm just

Merlingiving context so there's a recent episode where uh or david mcgraney had a guy on to talk about his new book uh the book is called the blind spots between us yeah and i thought it was a great interview and so i posed that for a challenge alex jump in here you you i'm you have a lot of uh A lot of steam coming through the chimney here. Tell me how you feel about this book.

AlexWell, first of all, peanut buttered because I only got like three-fourths of the way through because then I started reading.

MerlinThe book or the first chapter?

AlexOh, was that just the challenge? Oh, I crushed it. Never mind.

MerlinIt's always just. I think the challenge should maybe be, you know, asterisk. And this sometimes has to be vetted. You only have to read the part that comes in the Kindle sample. and if you like the person's writing style so uh yeah talk about it uh hold on i was pulling up i'll talk for a second while you boy you look this up it's my understanding that this guy is in the tradition of the um of the great israeli uh behavioral economists people we talked about

like you know toversky and uh daniel kahneman and uh this is another guy gleb something i forget his last name um he but he's he's very interested i think the nut graph on this book and his process it that's funny how where's space do you go backwards when you're not he uh i guess you know he he's sort of trying to say well okay like people like um daniel kahneman are obviously i mean daniel kahneman's the og thinking fast and slow read it today

But boy, he's the guy who he and Tversky virtually, I think, they maybe kind of invented the idea of cognitive biases. Like Daniel Kahneman is touched. There would be no turns out anything without Daniel Kahneman. He's like the OG behavioral economist. And so I think what this author is saying is like, OK, we've had this amazing first generation of researchers and thinkers who developed the idea of what a cognitive bias is. And now this fellow, see, this author feels him, that he's part of the second generation

of people who, now that we know what that is, what do we do about it? How do we get better about recognizing this? And in this particular book, he wants to talk about how cognitive bias of all different kinds can harm your relationships, whether that's with your family, your business partners, whatever it is. And how do we get better at, as he says, turning your head around, looking behind you to see what your cognitive blind spots are?

AlexI mean, the book comes out like full force right away saying, for example, arguments, they're never good. They're virtually always going to end up having everybody involved feel bad, feel bad, never fight online. But also don't fight in person and or rather sorry, don't don't argue in person. And immediately that turned me off because I'm like, that seems not right.

How do we change as humans? But there's a difference between argument and discussion. And, you know, our little tiny peanut brains are turned discussions into arguments because we think that we're facing a tiger instead of a human being. And that is always the sort of way people oversimplify, I think. Fight, flight, and freeze is like, do you see in your past life as a caveman, you see a tiger.

Do you freeze and hope the tiger doesn't notice you? Which, that's me. Do you flee and run away from the tiger?

MerlinI'm a freezer. I'm a freezer, Jerry, a freezer.

AlexYeah, for... Let it go, you know? And also fight, which is the argument part.

MerlinJust do I run straight at that tiger, like with no chance of winning?

AlexYeah, and so, which is, it's Twitter. But then the new way that he, or rather, I've never heard sort of our autopilot brains explain this way, is he says the autopilot system has been compared by scholars to an elephant it's by far the most powerful and predominant of the two systems oh sorry the two systems being the autopilot system and the uh intentional systems that that's keying off of daniel kahneman's thinking fast and slow

yeah and he called it like system one in system two uh but this guy i not dumbs it down but for me, it makes it much more clear calling it the autopilot system versus the intentional system, which is, you know, our evolved reasoning brains versus.

MerlinI mean, I wonder if I could dumb it down further and just say absolutely no. I've virtually peanut buttered this challenge. I don't like this guy's writing style. But I think another way to put it is like a transmission. Is it automatic or manual? Or, you know, for that matter, like we say autopilot also like, you know, cruise control versus like, you know, how you're going to drive when you're on a racetrack or something like that. You have to be so completely engaged. And so what Kahneman is saying is that one problem is we will spend almost all of our time in that autopilot mode and that we could be experiencing.

I hate that. We could be making the same poor decisions over and over and over just because that's the way that we always do it. And Kahneman demonstrates with a lot of fascinating things like, can you solve this kind of math problem? Do you notice the shift in the way you have to think to do this division problem? If I ask you what one-on-one is, that's going to be very different from what's 137 divided by 17. You're going to notice, if you're mindful of it, you're going to notice a very profound shift in the way that you have to think about that. Because you don't have the rote response to that unless you're really good at arithmetic.

But the other thing he does is, and again, I didn't read a ton of this, but I was very interested in his seeming, it seems like he's going to go places in this book where he's going to take on the Malcolm Gladwells of the world and obviously the Tony Robbinses of the world. but it's funny because I was reading it and he was talking about how one of his biggest pieces of advice is to stop quote unquote going with your gut because that's the advice everybody gets

especially from these gurus and I was like oh I think he's going to mention Blink and then I think he does right?

AlexHe does but he comes right out of the gate with Tony Robinson

Merlinbut he's talking about like Malcolm Gladwell is out there saying like you can recognize a statue because like you have your 10,000 hours of Beatles or whatever and he's like going with your gut is a really bad idea for almost anything in your life. Your gut is absolutely, your gut is like this, your gut is the steering wheel for the autopilot, which is to say it's not really attached to anything.

AlexYeah, it's what causes car accidents, really, because we are, well, you know.

MerlinLike relationship car accidents. Yeah. Because both of you, both of you are in autopilot heading toward each other.

AlexMm-hmm. and I mean like but it's not your gut doesn't necessarily mean it's bad I went into his previous book I keep not only forgetting but I cannot pronounce this guy's name and I really don't like his writing style either it felt a little good yeah no however I would actually recommend that if people are into this reading the Kindle sample of this and then reading thinking fast and slow because I think, I mean, that's a big, dense boy of a book.

MerlinThose guys are so smart. I would also, I always say I'm going to find things for notes. There's a wonderful interview with, I think, I believe Tversi's past, but there's a wonderful interview where Michael Lewis talks with Daniel Kahneman, and it's really, really, really good. and um i would say i mean to state the obvious yeah that's a good idea to read the sample but also i would just check out this episode if it resonates with you well we're not even saying

Alexwhat this episode was was about did did uh about unconscious but i don't know what what is this

Merlinabout what was the title of this one this was the challenge no no no no because i think i'm concatenating it with the masks episode of uh the most recent one the masks episode but this one is I think it's basically the name of the book.

AlexThe Blind Spots Between Us. Yeah.

MerlinYeah, exactly. So we'll put all of this in notes if we remember. But I would start with that. And if you enjoy that, maybe explore it further. Also, you know, man, just going to that Wikipedia page for cognitive bias is like, and you could go to like, what's the, what's the, like the Urmso actually site? Is it, is it Rational Wiki? Is that the one where it's all about?

AlexI've never been to that. I usually go on the Wikipedia page for cognitive biases about once a month and just do a big old deep dive.

MerlinI am not here to stand for this site, but Rational Wiki, our purpose here, analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and anti-science movement, crank ideas, authoritarian and fundamentalism. But it is a lot of that kind of by your logic, please debate me stuff. But yeah, it's a fascinating idea. And to pull in our worst friend of the show, John Siracusa, this stuff is so much harder than it seems. To call up some other ideas from other cognitive biases, the Dunning-Kruger effect, you're not as good at cognitive bias awareness as you think.

I can pretty much guarantee it.

AlexYou're not as good at anything as you think. You're really not so smart, is the way I would phrase it. Yeah, yeah.

MerlinSo give me something. You've read a butt ton of this book, and I didn't. give me some of your big takeaways. What grabbed you? You got your Kindle notes there. What are you

Alexon fire about right now? Oh, well, no. Oh, I didn't finish the elephant bit. He says, the autopilot system has been compared by scholars to an elephant. It's by far the most powerful and predominant of the two systems. Our emotions can often overwhelm our rationality. Moreover, our intuitions and habits dominate the majority of our life. We're usually in autopilot mode, yet that's not a bad thing at all. it wouldn't we okay we said all of this um but more importantly well because like if you didn't

Merlinif you didn't do stuff like availability heuristics and chunking you would you would never get out of bed like you have to have some shortcuts you can't reprocess every bit of data information and stimulus in your world every single time you encounter it you lose your mind and yes because

Alexlike the next part which was another like wow like mind mind blows for me uh the intentional system is like the elephant's rider it can guide the elephant deliberately to go in a direction that matches our actual goals and so then i was thinking about why that that's one totally right but two at uh now more than ever it it really does feel like i am constantly driving driving

or directing the elephant because your day driving the elephant that's good because my days now are mostly uh like i i don't really have an autopilot anymore like it's there's not a routine because so much is changing yeah i for for a while it was uh i think why i was i i would i guess i would say

thriving somewhat under quarantine is because i am by no means an extrovert like that energy is drained so quickly after like a half hour conversation with you know any anybody uh but now every little decision is something I overthink. What mask to buy? What book to read?

MerlinOkay. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost like that feeling like when your power goes off. And the classic for me is even though I went to college and I know the power is off, every time I go to the bathroom, I still flip the light on because I've always flipped the light on when I go in the bathroom. But it also causes you to re-experience, this sounds pretentious, But it causes you to re-experience so much familiar stuff in a completely new and very manual way. Whether that's making, when you're making food now, you don't have all your usual options.

You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of stuff you're going to have to think about. And you're going to have to season that with the idea that, oh my gosh, what if my freezer, how long will my freezer be out? Should I eat that food? Can I defrost it? No, you can't defrost it. There's no microwave. You know what I'm saying? You re-experience your entire existence in this much more kind of grinding dream-like manual way. It's kind of fun when it's like camping for half a day, but I wouldn't want to do it for a week.

AlexOr six months, probably.

MerlinSo what has changed to take you from automatic to manual mode?

AlexWell, because of, you know, like my job is constantly changing now. my uh family situation is everything's fine like my family situation is not in trouble my family's not in trouble not uh but uh you know like i've also lost a commute which was my main times every day i think that were even if i was if i was driving if i was doing um public transit

or walking even though even though those are like three very different things i did them so often that it was only one decision of I'm going home. Is it raining? I'll walk. Do I have a car?

I'm driving because I'm a monster. Nope. Okay. Time to get on the bus. And that was the single decision about commuting that I did. And why do I say that? Because then that's two hours of my day typically where I'm doing absolutely nothing other than maybe like, you know, the elephant being like, ah, please don't get hit by the bus. And I don't have that anymore. I wake up and I go to work and I'm trying to re-implement

a routine again. But I think the reason I fell out of having a routine is because driving, driving the elephant, driving an elephant is fucking hard.

MerlinThe elephant, it's important to remember that in some form or fashion, the elephant is letting you drive it for a while.

Alexyes that's yeah exactly uh and i think this is becoming so important important with our cognitive biases and just our rationale because if you can't even figure out what to watch uh on netflix at the end of the day then how are you going to have a conversation with somebody about why a mask is important like even in all good faith did you did you hear that episode by any chance oh oh yes yes yes not the second part uh but but you heard you heard those

Merlinlead up into the tribal psychology stuff that was a really made me think yeah the guy's big the guy's basically saying or the people these four people in this interview about why people don't wear masks i mean you can check my math on this but i i think sort of the as you like to say the nut graph the log line, the deck, big deck, is that when you're in a tribe, things can get to a point

where it's much more important that you show loyalty for the tribe than you look out even for your own safety. But we may not even have gotten to that level of sophistication. It's just more like, I mean, I don't want to sound glib, but, you know, Mr. Trump hates masks, so I'm not going to wear a mask. Whereas I know Dr. Fauci likes masks, so I wear a mask. And that shows you what tribal association that I have. I mean, I have my own, obviously, I have cognitive biases. I have my

Speaker Aown feelings about who's going to be on the right side of history here. But it's like, when you

Merlinthink of it that way, it's like, ah. And look at it this way, okay? So you were a weird little kid. Like, imagine growing up. Okay, imagine growing up in the Trump family. This is Donald Trump to the 10th power. It's like, imagine growing up, seeing your beloved, like, very lovable, garrulous older brother be destroyed in slow motion by your father. And you go, hmm, make a mental note of that. He hates weakness in people.

You see where I'm going with this. Even in the microcosm of the Fred Trump household, you would learn what you have to do in order to be accepted and stay accepted. And it's not going to take much for you to become the black sheep of the tribe. And not in a fun, I throw rocks at kids in a kiddie pool way like Donald. But you know what I'm saying? Now imagine being a queer kid growing up in Eufaula, Alabama. and like it's so important no one find out that I dance alone quietly at night you know what I mean

imagine growing up like that and like my entire life is so close it comes to the lottery all over again I'm sorry I referenced that way too much I don't know if you ever read the lottery have

Alexever mentioned that to you Alex oh yeah you should really watch the liar you love it when I explain

Merlinthe lottery to you over and over I feel like it's a similar kind of thing where it's like you can either be the one getting rocks thrown at you, or you could be one of the lucky ones throwing a rock today. So if you wear a mask, you say, well, I saw in the newspaper, the last local newspaper, or CNN, they said, oh, you're watching CNN? But they say to wear a mask, and that'll keep us from getting sick. I don't know why I'm talking like Angus McDonald. Sirs, should we wear masks? But you know what I mean? Of course you're not going to fucking wear a mask.

This Louie Gohmert piece of shit who's refused to socially distance. This is just an amazing story today. So once again, a la Rand Paul, this fucking ding-a-ling, thumbhead, Louis Gohmert, has refused to socially distance or wear a mask. Of course he got COVID. Of course, like Rand Paul, he did go to the gym after he knew he had COVID. And of course, he did call everybody who was apparently on the way to their car back into the physical office so that he could tell them he has COVID, quote unquote, in person.

AlexOh, my fuck.

MerlinHe was with Bill Barr. He was with Droopy yesterday at the Senate or the House Judiciary hearing. Senate? Oh, my God. Senate. House? House. Senate?

AlexHouse. I mean, I didn't know who he was until this morning, so I don't know.

MerlinHe and his quotes on this are, in addition to his extreme, very lowbrow, like Mike Huckabee-level humor, racist jokes. He's a real piece of shit. But he's also he's also been saying, hey, look, I get tested all the time. OK, weird flex. I get tested all the time. If I get sick, I'll wear one. But what does that tell you? The president is getting tested twice a day, but doesn't think people should wear masks. It's too dangerous to hold this political convention in this inside area.

Too dangerous. But we do need to reopen literally every school in two weeks, three weeks.

Alexit's it's strange because i think i almost came out of this on the uh with sort of the opposite mindset is you or less less angry and hopefully more empathetic in terms of not that sorry not

Merlinoh no no no i no no no it's not going to stop me from dunking on these pieces of shit oh yeah I know I'm bad when I do it now. No, I walked away from that. And again, it's like reading. It's like reading the stuff David Leonard writes for the New York Times where you can't help but go like, oh, shit, we are really punching down when we do this. You know what I mean? It's like it's so – in some ways it's extremely insensitive to that situation. It's just so difficult to watch all of the violent words, the violent thought, the violent behavior of all of these people.

When you watch the Karens have a meltdown at the grocery store, a muni driver got beat up with a baseball bat because he made people wear a mask. Oh, Jesus Christ. There's a story, I believe, about somebody who got killed yesterday telling people to wear a mask. This reopening means people who are making $11 an hour now have to walk up to Charlie Thumbhead and say, please wear a mask. Sorry. No, it made me more sympathetic. It didn't make me nicer.

AlexOh, no, no, no. that's but i mean that's that's the point i i wish i wish i could feel like me singing kumbaya

Merlinwith these fucking hogs would make everything better but we've tried that we've we've tried every we've tried everything to do this like a gentleman and none of it has worked i need everybody to extremely harden their approach to this and whatever anybody is best at i need you doing that right now to make the country come back in some way but i i there's a big big difference

Alexthough because you said punching down i really am mixed on the phrase punch punching up and punching down but i mean the these are the asshole ding-a-lings who are are in power i mean like you said he called people back into his office like and those aren't even the 11 hour these aren't um you know, quote, it's central workers who now have to, sorry.

MerlinNo, it's extremely, it's extremely careless. And like they said, they're, you know, this is, if we're going to, we got to get to the after show. Again, I'm never going to stop talking about how they fucked up this messaging from the beginning. Yep. And, you know, it's, we, every other country said or said and accepted, wear this mask to protect others and probably to protect you.

And because here in America, we put that as wear this to protect others. It's like, oh, really? You want me to just fucking wear a dress that says punch me on it? Like, why would I want to protect others? I'm strong like bull. I clean pools for up to four hours a day. I'm a big, beautiful boater.

AlexBut then there's the, you know, 95% of folks who I don't want to say can't, but, you know, they're going to if they put on a mask then then their dad thinks that they're gay because it's like oh you're gonna gonna capitulate to the Democrats that's you know that's why we need to drain the swamp and I started thinking about all of you know those folks in rural areas who literally they're probably kids who don't want to go back to school or want to participate in

the quote optional like distanced learning and like yeah parents of course don't want to teach their kids i i can imagine i would not want to do that either i'm gonna i'm gonna get canceled i know

Merlini'll get canceled for saying this but like a thought that goes through my mind sometimes i'll tell you there's a lot of things that i've really gotten my head more right about over the years i don't have time to go into all of them but there's a lot of dumb shit that i've said believed, thought, operationalized over the years. And now I'm regretful that things I've thought have been so hurtful of people.

But, okay, so one of those things that if you've never been anything but a fairly comfortable middle-class white person, there are certain things you get to see on TV your whole life where you're just like, I don't understand why those people live like that. All those people in Africa, why are they always like, they always look so sick and they're always drinking out of a white five-gallon bucket. How could you live like that? They don't have any options. Let's bring that to America.

Oh, my God. Look at these crime-ridden, and let's talk about some of our words here, crime-ridden ghetto. Look at this slum. Look at the way that these blacks treat each other. They're so violent. and I don't understand why those people don't just move. I don't understand how you could be a single mom with three jobs who has four kids and takes care of a sick mother. Why don't you just move somewhere safe? Why don't you just move to the suburbs? I hope that sounds silly to you right now. This is something that has been part

of the American vernacular for as long as I can remember. Why don't these people pick them up by their bootstrap? They must really like it there. They must like the violence. They must like the need to sell drugs or join a gang if you want to stay alive. They must love that. And you're like, fuck you. They don't have the resources to do, they don't have the resources to live like they're living now, which is barely at all, let alone to have the resources to pick up stakes and move to Westchester County. They don't have that. And I realize this is going to sound problematic, but I do sometimes like to remember

that dancing boy in Ufala, Alabama. That's why I say punching down is like, just because we're hearing the loudest voices of these horrible, horrible people doesn't mean there aren't people there who are suffering deeply by having to live with that man. You know what I mean? I don't want to be too awful because there's some unintentional human shields living in that house. And I think that's the thing I want to be careful of. I'm not that worried about hurting some idiot's feelings, but I don't want to accidentally

pick somebody innocent and kind and vulnerable. I don't want to pick them up in my dragnet just to make a dunk.

AlexYeah, it's kind of the thing of, this is weird, but it's kind of now how I think about recycling. Okay, not strap in, but hear me. Strap on. Here, strike. Okay. The strapper. Strap on.

MerlinStrap off. The strapper.

AlexBut you know how, like, yes, we should all recycle in compost. That would be great. But, you know, dunking on people who don't recycle or maybe, let's say, have espresso Keurig pods, like they're not the problem.

MerlinDo you know people who do that? Wow.

AlexI know. I should really cancel them and get them out of my life. But the, you know, the the idea that like, oh, let's shame these individual folks who aren't wearing masks when the fucking, you know, president's telling people not to wear masks. And if you are a kid who has been who had sure, like you're trying to find the truth, but you don't have any trust for anybody else because your your parents have kept kept you safe. and why would they decide to put you in danger?

So of course you don't need a mask.

MerlinYou've never had a catastrophic illness before or had to even see it. That's for other people to get. That's for careless people to get. That's for dumb people to get. That's for poorer people to get. That only happens to people who did something wrong. That's how medieval our thinking on this stuff is.

AlexThis is another thing. I will probably get canceled for this. I think the word like psychopath and sociopath are way overused and not because they don't exist, but because I think it minimizes how damaging sociopaths can be.

MerlinThat's how I feel about evil.

AlexYes. Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, it's very funny to me when Felix on Chapo goes off about how someone's a sociopath and it's like, well, is that person a sociopath or is that person deeply horrible and like not just lacks empathy, but is so has can get to empathy if you wanted, but isn't going to because of all the personal gains.

and capital and resources being from being a cool kid all the way to running the country right and whereas like the sociopath literally cannot experience any sort of empathy towards other human beings and that feels like uh a mix of the two are in charge and whereas you know i god like again like posting photos of you screaming at a woman in target doesn't feel like not not

it's not that you shouldn't do it but or doing it doing a screen grab this happened just yesterday

Merlinand it happens all the time posting a screen grab of a bunch of uh in this case i think republican reps doing a like a press conference and going look at that guy not wearing a mask it's like And the person, somebody responds and says, well, you know, like everybody in that room, he took his mask off right before he went up to speak. Yes. He had a mask most of the time. Yes. You're just, I mean, like if you, we learned this from Edward Morbridge, you know, many, many decades ago. If you freeze any moment, you can make it look any way you want. That horse is not actually in midair for all that long.

AlexMm-hmm. Nancy Pelosi was not doing a sarcastic clap.

MerlinUh-huh. Exactly.

AlexOh.

MerlinI'm going to look this up for my, we got to go. I've got to look this up for my quotes to get right file, but something famous that became famous that somebody said, I believe, about George W. Bush is that he was born on third and he thinks he hit a triple.

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197. A Useless Dog

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