260. Small Story

AlexOh, connecting to audio. This is, it's just the worst. It's the worst of every world there is. The worst. Just the worst. Hello? Hello? Of course I am. Of course I'm muted. Of course. Good morning. Now it's the show. Oh, it's the worst of every world. Stop, please. No, please. Can we not? Can we not? Can we not? I wasn't. I want to start an episode. I thought it was on mute. Alex?

Alex?

MerlinYes. It's really important to me that we stop starting every episode with having some kind of a neurological event about technology. We need to just do the content. Well, I ain't my nuts.

I discovered a new snack.

AlexOh, oh.

MerlinThey're not for you. They're not for you. You can't even try them.

AlexNo, no.

MerlinIn front of the show, Leanne, introduced me to Blue Diamond Almonds Bold Wasabi and Soy Sauce Flavors.

AlexOh.

MerlinThey're really good.

AlexIs Blue Diamond an important part of the snack component? Like, does this brand taste different?

MerlinI have no idea. No, I mean, that's what she said, so I got it.

AlexOh. Well, I care about almond brands.

Speaker AOkay, we should start over. This is going to be a tough one.

MerlinMmm.

Speaker AMmm. Mmm. Mmm. I got a lot in my gums. I need to get those out.

MerlinIt has wasabi and soy sauce. So it's like the dipping sauce that you would make, you know, for sushi. Especially you. You love that.

AlexOh, it's a delight. I thought one of your pieces of wisdom was never to explain food.

MerlinI'm going to stop the recording, then we're going to restart it. It's going to be the show. Are you ready?

AlexYes.

Speaker AGood morning.

AlexGood morning. it's it's 140 p.m where i am but it's a little ribbon it's already had my parade

Merlinhow did you sleep carefully uh no yesterday i had two podcasts and one of them was a night podcast that uh usually stay up later than i should but i tried really hard i mean you know you know what just once alex just once i would like to start this show without me talking about

Speaker Amy health. I'm going to restart the recording. Are you ready?

AlexAll right. All right. Three, two, one.

Speaker AGood morning. Good morning. What the fuck is wrong with you?

MerlinNow, I know what the problem was. That was a bit, or was it a bit? Because I did actually restart the recording, so we're probably going to have to use your recording for continuity. Oh man, this is difficult. Should we start over? These are really good. Why is the Blue Diamond part important? I don't know. That's just the brand that Leanne mentioned. And they're really – they strip like a whole layer off your mouth. They're really – they're quite zesty as nuts go.

AlexOh, yeah, no. I only ask because I enjoy Blue Diamond low-sodium almonds. And I am like –

Speaker AThese are the exact opposite of that.

AlexWell, there's a shame in that.

Speaker ATo quote Star Wars, they're more sodium than nut at this point. Oh, it's nice to talk to you again, Alex.

AlexOh, I missed your chance.

Speaker ALet's restart the show. Mm-hmm. This is... Let me see how long I slept. Yeah, I think I slept a really long time.

MerlinListen to Michael Penn. You know, we are going to have to literally restart the show because people cannot listen to chewing.

Alexor there's this I got that what's it called

Merlinmiso miso hornophobia where they're scared of nuts

Alexthis is Dubai Friday a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox this week's challenge watch squid games

Speaker Athose balls bofadoes balls what this has become the dumbest running joke in my house is my daughter says bofadoes nuts and i

Alexsay bofadoes balls thank you for sharing the running inside joke oh what are you clicking

Speaker AOh, God, we have so many. 11 hours, 9 minutes. I went to bed at 23.45 and woke up at 10.56.

AlexWait, 23.45. Oh, that's 11.45. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. You're the math guy.

MerlinMilitary. Yay. I did finally look at the Rudy Giuliani thing you sent me. You sent me so much weird shit without context. There is at this point about a 45% chance that anything you sent me was intended for somebody else or it was the wrong link intended for me. So you sent me zero context. And then I have to fucking figure out why I should stop editing a podcast to go watch a video that would appear to be Rudy Giuliani with some kind of what snap filter of Abraham Lincoln.

AlexI mean, would you say it was worth it? I mean, I. I would say it's worth it. In fact.

MerlinHow would I know that? But see, do the cognitive load.

AlexYes. And I thought in this.

MerlinStop work. Stop your work and go look at what's that?

AlexI thought, OK, this is a 30 second recording. Someone sent me.

MerlinShow me which part where it says 30 seconds.

AlexI don't know. Was it more than 30 seconds? Really? I don't know, Alex.

Speaker AYou just sent me a link to a tweet of a WhatsApp. What's that? Giuliani Lincoln, man.

AlexOK, now you're you're challenging my honor, basically. Of course I am. What could be easier to challenge?

Speaker AYou have no scruples.

AlexOh, God.

Speaker AGotta break a few Greggs.

AlexThere are now 30, there are 35 seconds in this clip. And I just see our listeners. No, no, I got this down. What are we doing here? What is this? What's happening? Just, just. What are we doing? Take a break for 35 seconds Oh no, oh no, my phone's on What the fuck am I doing? Am I eating nuts?

MerlinAm I looking at those balls?

Speaker AWhat? Wait, what am I doing? Am I watching the man? Oh god, okay, hang on Say 3, 2, 1, go Virginia

Speaker CVote against The man who dishonored our past By selling my bedroom Hundreds and hundreds of times To scoundrels in a pay-for-play scheme.

In my time, we had a name for men who sold bedrooms for one night. In your time, the name is Terry McAuliffe. That is nothing. That is nothing. And the Clinton flees once and for all.

Speaker ANow, is there a Lincoln bedroom in the Virginia governor's mansion? Because I think of it being in the White House.

AlexOh, interesting. Because I watched that and immediately thought the Lincoln bedroom, like his childhood one.

MerlinOh, the famous Lincoln bedroom at Monticello, probably.

AlexNo, no. Well, I've seen that bedroom multiple times. On field trips, you get to walk in it.

MerlinA bedroom for a man who was born around the time Thomas Jefferson died? Is that what we're doing here?

AlexYep, yep, yep. And we, but it was great because you'd walk around the bedroom like the Simpsons kids have to walk around that guy's office. Like it's lined off. So I was like, okay.

MerlinWait, what guy? You mean the Thomas Edison?

AlexAbraham Lincoln.

MerlinThe one who reinvented the chair that leans backwards?

AlexThomas Jefferson? Hair pimples for hairy fish nuts? I haven't even talked about my horny goat medicine yet. There's too much of a stack. There's too much.

MerlinThe problem is I am, as John Syracuse is always happy to remind people, I make jokes about things that I don't understand well enough to make a joke about. Like, that's going to stop me. But if you were to ask anybody who had finished 10th grade, well, you know what? Let's not make this too difficult. Ask somebody who's finished their graduate degree. What do you think of when you think of the Lincoln bedroom? I feel like a lot of people would say, well, the one I've heard about is the Lincoln bedroom in the White House.

And the controversies I know about that are, supposedly, I want to say it was Bill Clinton who was supposedly selling access. Now, I could be wrong about every cubic inch of that.

AlexSee, I've never heard of that, but I thought JFK used that as his fuck room.

MerlinBut do we agree that when—

AlexLike him and Marilyn Monroe.

MerlinOkay, but when you invoke—we are of different generations, but when one invokes the mouth sound, Lincoln Bedroom, we tend to think— Is he saying that Terry McAuliffe is selling fuck nights in Lincoln Town, which is a terrific guy to buy voices?

Speaker Btwo three four oh gosh black nights in Lincoln room so I

Alexactually did put this in the doc did you do some due diligence on this I did because I've never been so tempted to press the send anyway even though you had do not disturb I thought it was so funny okay Rudy Giuliani appears to discover video filters

MerlinAnd just so you all know, this will be the original link to Rudy W. Giuliani's Twitter account where you can find this. This will be in show notes. Sorry. Go ahead.

AlexYes. As Lincoln, Giuliani recorded a message in an indeterminate accent urging supporters to vote against Terry McAuliffe. And I didn't really know who he was. Yes. Terry McAuliffe. Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor who is running again for the position in next month's election.

MerlinWho's a big deal, unless you're going to get this in this, just shut up, Merlin. But who has been historically a huge fundraiser for the Democratic Party and who, whether he feels like it being this way or not, currently now represents a bellwether about how 2020 everything title is going to go. because his, in the same way as the Gavin Newsom election was seen as that, the second big test all the pundits say is, will McAuliffe be able to beat the Stingling in Virginia?

So it's both that they would, it could be like a triple wound if he loses, and it's crazy close right now. Does that sound about right?

AlexIt does, especially as an outsider who is sort of online, but not very online anymore.

Speaker AYou're in a different line. You think you're in the line for the Haunted Mansion, but you're actually in the line for the DMV.

AlexAnd the ghost will follow you home. No, no, no. It's like the Haunted Mansion versus like...

Speaker BHaunted Vagina.

Speaker AYou know what?

Speaker BI'm sorry.

Speaker AYou're a ghost host. You're a ghost host thing. I just put three Lincoln hats on three Lincoln hats. Go ahead.

AlexThis long tirade is a way of saying you're correct. He's implying, I think, that the wonderful governor is again selling access to the bedroom. Like he talks about it as if... At the White House. Yeah, yes. The White House bedroom, not the bedroom children visit.

MerlinOh, but given that he's the governor of Virginia. Okay, wait, I don't understand fucking any of this.

AlexThat's why I brought it to you. Yeah.

MerlinOh, is this a yes, yes, no?

AlexI'm confused. No, no, no. We're at like, no, no, maybe.

MerlinWe're at no, no, what? Yeah.

AlexI know that he's involved with Bill Clinton.

MerlinWell, and that's why now I'm listening to what I just said, which I think is true, is that he's been a really big fundraiser for the Democratic Party. And I think he's pretty tight with the Clintons. And it's my understanding, I'm not a geographic titian, but it's my understanding that Virginia, like Maryland, is adjacent to Washington, D.C. So maybe the cash register is in Virginia, but the fuck room is in the district, if you know what I mean.

Speaker AI'm going to start over.

AlexThis is Dubai Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, watch squid games.

MerlinI did Reconcilable Differences last night. Now I'm tired. Okay, so the thing is now, somebody's going to well actually me, and I'll have it coming, because I'm sure there's a million things about this I got wrong. But what I feel like I can guess, well, let me ask you this. I should click through. This is recent, I'm guessing, right? It must be.

AlexI believe as this morning. But that's the thing about this link and every other story. Oh, okay, fine. That's fine.

MerlinThat's fine. But it's about this election. And he's trying to, yes. And he's trying to tar this fella. And the joke is, we could tell that he's, is he having fun with this? what part about it does he think is funny about this? Because I feel like a certain thing happens at a certain age, and I'm certainly probably past this age, but something can be funny, but very much not for the reasons you think. Like if you come out and do your Bob Hope impersonation, like let's say Grandpa comes out and he says, hey, everybody, it's Grandpa. You ready for my famous Bob Hope impersonation?

And he goes, I got to tell you. But what he doesn't realize is that his diaper fell down and his tiny, tiny dick is sticking out

Speaker Afrom under his yachting blazer.

Speaker Beveryone's laughing but not at this bob hope oh gosh like does what does rudy think is good about

Merlinthis uh the mayor of 9 11 did this what is what in alexandra what does rudy w giuliani think was good about this he thought i need to go put this on the internet this is cool no i was afraid you

Alexwere gonna ask me this and why i think don't be afraid of me i've been thinking about this

Speaker BI come in the sleeping hours.

Speaker AI've come to your haunted vagina.

Speaker BI, because... Ooh! A little bit twisted. Ooh! By the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. Ooh!

AlexOkay.

Speaker BWe cannot consecrate. Here's the thing that I... I'm a ghost Lincoln. Well, that's my...

Speaker AI live in Monticello for some reason.

Speaker BI also have weird creepy rings and goblin fingers.

AlexOh, that's the final hat. I don't get that one.

Speaker AOh, man, I'm going to be whatever that character was for Halloween. It's going to be the Rudy Duke. You thought the Baba Duke was Roger Stone. No, you were looking at the Rudy Duke. He's got a cool hat.

Speaker BIs there another bathroom I could use?

Speaker AOh, it's done now. What'd you do? Absolute paint job.

AlexWet, wet mud. Have you had a full edible? What's happening here?

MerlinOh, no, no, no. So I slept for 11 hours. I woke up. I texted you as soon as I woke up, which was at... It was just a little bit before the hour, But it was just about the top of the hour, like when we were supposed to start recording.

AlexIt was 12.59 my time, which was very – and I was like, ooh, under the wire. Technically, he's not breaking his wisdom, unlike maybe or maybe not talking about sauce.

MerlinWhich wisdom? That being on time is a sign of character?

AlexYeah.

MerlinBecause that should definitely be in the document.

AlexWhich I completely – which actually – well, actually, it's not in your wisdom document. It's going in now. But it really should. Yeah. No, it's going on right now.

MerlinI talked about it yesterday on a podcast, and now I'm writing it down. I'm really sorry. I don't think it's funny to dwell on this, but I am legit sorry, but I overslept. But as you may know, I'm going through a transition, like the eyeglasses. I'm going through a transition where I'm trying to do something interesting with my sleep that involves being forced to be up early a couple days a week. And given some recent schedule changes, trying to sleep a bit later other days of the week,

Speaker Aand then still trying to have what I'm just going to call days off where I get to do whatever the fuck I want.

MerlinAnd this is one of those days where this has become the day where all the mistakes go because, you know, title.

Speaker BThat's what my birthday's called.

Speaker AI'm sorry. Continue. That might be the funniest thing you ever said.

AlexAll right. That might be the meanest thing you've ever said to me.

Speaker AWell, you might be a piece of shit.

Speaker BAll right, there we go. Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't me. That was the spirit who inhabits me in the sleeping hours. Hello. I'm Rudy Duke.

Speaker AWhy is that so funny to me? Because it's a terrible joke. Okay, so Robert Roger Stone does look kind of like Babadook.

MerlinBabadook, super fucking scary. But I love the idea that Rudy is the world's most confused apparition. And the most basic thing, he's very stylish, and he has some big rings. But at the heart of it is this, if you like, a misapprehension about a misapparition, which is he may not actually be a ghost, but he can't tell. So basically he just walks around your house going, ooh.

AlexSee, that's what I'm wondering. He could be that now. He uses all toilet paper up. He uses all toilet paper, doesn't replace it. Oh, hashtag never forget. He was the guy that Lauren Michaels asked, can we be funny again? And, oh, boy. All right.

MerlinWell, you know, over the years, there's been a whole bunch of academic and business speak around stuff. Well, let me just say it. Computer principle. This idea, I think the Peter Principle is something along the lines of, there's a concept from, I want to say the 60s. And the concept is something along the lines of every person in an organization, people will tend to rise to their level. In an organization, people will tend to rise to their level of incompetency.

Which was a kind of a massive idea at the time. But if you think about any organization you've been in, especially like a big, like siloed organization, well, think about Tom Womganz, you know, or you see those people who keep getting sort of promoted, doing things they're not very good at until they get to something they're terrible at. And then they stay there until they get fired or die.

And but, you know, sometimes there is America loves heroes and America loves, you know, a third act. And America loves the first act. Like, he was seen as a hero. He was the guy who was prosecuting the mob. He was not afraid to go up against the mob. And I don't know. There's just been so many personalities in America that were like that. Look at Charles Lindbergh, long before we realized what a Nazi he was. Like, he was seen as, like, America's hero and this brave guy. And, like, I don't know. I don't want to go all blitzed here. But there's this part of me that wonders if there's been, like, this backdoor derangement.

Just a cell, like a, what's the word we used to use? A sleeper cell? a sleeper cell madness in America. And then at some point after 2000, let's really even say, but after George W. Bush, but maybe it started sparking a little bit, Pacific Rim style around the Gulf War. Well, and you got a little bit like of this extremist virus that made people like Colin Powell say, there's definitely weapons, I'd stick my career on it, right? Or you get the Florida election,

but finally in 2015, somewhere around that summer, of the extremist virus truly rained down in a sudden departure sort of way. Like there was this one day when the man came down an escalator and everything changed and everybody lost their fucking mind. And the people who didn't lose their fucking mind in this way lost their fucking mind in that way. Alex, I may have accidentally just created a really good children's book series just for what it's worth. Or young adult as they say. Yes, Twilight! But do you feel what I'm saying? It's like, I swear to God, I still look around and you used to talk about this

and certainly Max introduced so much vernacular to this show about the fucking hogs and the chuds and all the Chapo names for people we don't like. But back then it was like, what is happening with everyone? I still remember pulling into a Target somewhere, and I want to say probably Gold Country, and every guy looked like a thumb. Everybody had gotten the same thumb haircut and had the Oakleys on the back of their head, and it really, it was like there had been some kind of fucking angry body snatching going on. and everybody was wearing sleeveless shirts,

not in a cool Mac way. But it just was also weird. It was like there had been this latent... Do you remember Extremis Virus in the Iron Man 3 movie?

AlexNope, never seen it.

MerlinI mean, Extremis is an interesting concept in the Marvel world that they play different ways. But Extremis Virus, amongst other things, it makes you incredible. It makes you... Basically, it's something you give to a human, if memory serves, that gives them amazing powers. But that power is sort of at the...

They end up getting crazy and they end up getting uncontrollably angry when you give them the extremist virus. So, do you remember this character? Oh! Yeah.

Speaker ARemember that character of mine from the show?

MerlinOh! Just like kind of the screaming John Goodman, Judd. I always think it feels like the extremist virus. It feels like you took an ordinary assistant manager at a lawn grooming company, cut off most of his bald head hair, and then gave him the extremist virus. And now he's so fucking angry. And he has a truck, and the truck has a flag, and the flag has Donald Trump's name on it. Now, let's go back to, say, 2014 and say how many – let's guess. Let's just guess 2021.

Between – you're on Jeopardy or similar, and you say – no, I need to not pose this as a question. You, how would you estimate, how would you estimate how many people, how many flags will be manufactured between 2019 and 2021? How many flags will be manufactured and purchased that have the name of Donald Trump on them?

AlexOkay, you need to, there's no way for me to agree or disagree with you because I, you need to remember I was born in 1990. And this is always the world that I have. Donald Trump was president for four years. But like you say, I remember when, you know, like as a kid, we would all watch The Celebrity Apprentice and The Apprentice, but largely The Celebrity Apprentice. And I'm not going to pretend as if there felt like this seismic shift.

But for me, it was 2016. And I don't like to be one of those people who pretend like they were never excited about Hillary Clinton. Shut up. Of course, I was 24 and wanted a woman president.

MerlinYeah. Well, we had we had we had we had good reasons and better reasons and then worse reasons to support her. First president. Yes, please. Beat Donald Trump. Yeah, I'll take it. Everything else. And we still have a Madam President magnet.

AlexI finally took off the fridge. It was up. Well, like I don't I barely, barely remember a world before 9-11 and I don't remember a world in.

MerlinYou were 10 or 11?

AlexYeah. And like when people ask where I was, I'm like, I think like I can barely remember which. Probably crying somewhere. No, they didn't tell us. Crying about my wife somewhere.

Speaker AOh, like I wasn't.

AlexOh, gosh. And I mean, this might be, oh, I hate to be this person again. But despite being- You hate to be so many people today. I hate to be myself. So really, it's not surprising. But the like maybe it is the fact that one. I don't know. I would expect because you grew up in Florida and Ohio, you would just always be accustomed to these things. And yes. You mean to people who are like very well.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. To very colorful, conservative people.

AlexYeah. And it wasn't it was like Twitter that finally made the backwards Oakleys like a meme. But that was so, so common. Just going even to fucking Whole Foods in if you're in a red, not even a red state, but a red county like I was.

MerlinWell, I'm going to sound like a real boomer to say this, but say this fucking again. But we didn't have the Internet. I mean, it's and this is something so.

AlexNo, no, no, no. I know. I'm saying that that didn't. But I mean like I – okay.

MerlinSorry. Sorry. I feel like everywhere I turn in the last two weeks, this is how you know you're crazy is everything just starts seeming connected. But like there's a lot of big ideas that are banging around in my brain pan right now that like I don't know, man. I haven't organized these thoughts. But who was highlighting this? It was probably on – we've talked about it. It might have been on what next. But just this idea that – fuck, I wish I could remember where I heard this. It might be Ezra Klein. But somewhere – somebody was talking about this.

Lots of people have been talking about this. It's like, hey, look. Oh, you know what it was? It was with regard to the does Facebook – has Facebook made nice people terrible? Right? And the evidence so far – and boy, was I bummed to hear this. The evidence so far is no, not really. If there is evidence there, we haven't found it yet. The evidence so far is like something even more blindingly obvious than, well, it's not that conservative people are terrible. It's the people that like to be terrible are going to tend to go to the places that are having an open mic.

It's that there's always been terrible people. But like the thing that we please everybody, I love you all. Let's never stop forgetting this one part, which is like there's always been terrible people and not terrible people. And you never needed to care before because you never needed to know. I mean, ask yourself how many times, even in the post-COVID or the COVID and on times, have you run into somebody and you could tell the way a conversation, like a Lyft driver, where you could tell the way the conversation was going so you kind of steer against it. Like a place that I – like a bodega around the corner run by a really nice Armenian family, Armenian-American family that I like a lot and they're very, very cool.

but like sometimes I'll go in there and an unhoused person will be sort of being gently directed away and as soon as that person's out of the doorway this family fucking goes off on having to deal with people I'm gonna save you from this having to deal with people like that and then it becomes therapy like I become I do the emotional labor and they're like should I have to put up with that? Do you know how bad that guy stinks? And he always comes in here and he blah blah blah and we're like, why doesn't he just get a job

and a house and so forth? I'm like, oh man, crazy days. It'll be 60 tomorrow. Bye. Do you know what I'm saying though? Do you think that is a product of Donald Trump or Facebook? No, it's not. My whole fucking family was like that, Alex. My whole family, while being more, when I say this, my Ohio, most of my Ohio family was somewhere, my uncle was maybe center right, but almost everybody in my family is not even right. They're just more like fucking hillbillies.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, don't give a hillbilly the internet. That's what my wisdom doctorate. You know what I'm saying, though? And it's only because the terriblest people find the broadest, dishonest, weird ways to become even more terrible people and have it amplified and develop wuffy amongst other terrible people. but like and the thing i can never get people like you know my friend john in syracusa to to seed to me is that i can't even tell you how many of the nicest people i know in my day-to-day are are christians and they're kind of quietly christians but you can tell they're super

christians like not that's but i mean like superhero christians they're the kind of christians that like they're the people who just come over and mow your lawn and that you don't even know you did it yeah like they're the kind of people who took who just came in and like helped with your kids when you had to go to the hospital. And I can't get somebody like, I love John Syracuse so much, and I know sometimes he's having fun with me, but it's so difficult for me. Like, we did this episode where we talked about what cults we've been in, and I think he really wanted me to say that my Christian church in Ohio was a cult, and I was like, it really wasn't, man.

My military school was much more of a cult. Just because it's religion and you don't like it doesn't make it. There's so many decent people, but you know what? They're not the ones that are getting all the headlines. I hate to have to say this. My friend Pete Butler, my friend John Dickerson, people I know who are really ardent Christians, but that's expressed mainly through – they may not believe good works will get them into the kingdom of God. But they do believe that good works help define your character as a human being. Or they're just fucking nice.

So on the one hand, you've got the silent majority, but the extremely silent minority or whatever. Like there's just so many terrible – I'm sorry. I'm going on about this, but it just gets so frustrating that our way of solving this problem about why everybody else is so terrible is based in so many misunderstandings about how and why we communicate. Don't you remember the very first thing in Merlin's wisdom document? It says sometimes an email is just a way to say I love you, right? So that email, I have to re-explain this to my wife sometimes.

Emails are not always about communicating something. It's about making a connection. Or it's about bonding. Or it's about making an inside joke with your family. Or it's about there's nothing, there's not really any information to be passed here except the message that is implicit, which is I love you. So one way that we don't just pick fleas off each other. Another way to thrive in the tribe is to have communication that mainly shores up the strength of your relationship. So when some people say, when two family members say, well, I can't believe that N-word is so stinky.

Yeah, right up here. Am I right? whether you like it or not that is a kind of bonding when people in the church say we should go take communion out to Becky's house because I don't think she'll be better by Sunday that's a kind of bonding too you know what I'm saying though Alex? Speak, I'm sorry I wish we could give so much more credit to the people that we don't hear anything from and I wish we could spend so much time fretting about the people who are mainly doing the shittiest performance ever at an open mic, which is what Rudy Giuliani is doing, if that wasn't obvious.

AlexYeah. And the problem is it's not just it's not an open mic anymore. There are now posters for these people. And you are you come to sing the songs together, just like you're saying. And I don't think Facebook or any social media makes creates terrible people. But I think it makes people sad and lonely. And that's why I keep sending you.

MerlinWhich which which people? You mean like people who are addicted to Facebook because of right-wing ding-a-ling?

AlexYeah, for the people who have –

MerlinMan, I feel like it's the opposite of that. I feel like it's – I would not be surprised to learn that some percentage of people who fit that description would say everything else in their life is the lonely sad part.

AlexNo, no, that's –

MerlinLike this is where they find – Oh, you're saying that like at home – That's their church. Like my children – my children don't answer my phone calls, but, you know, but, you know, Maga Cock 666, you know, just favorited my picture of Deborah Birx being drawn in court.

AlexAt least I have this. At least I'm not the one person who –

MerlinI'm sorry. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, but it's not – I mean this is – I feel like liberals are so easily – I'm sorry. I'm going to be unkind. People get so wound up in this shit and then they get duped about what's actually fucking going on. And, like, have you ever seen a – you've certainly seen a little kid dressed up in, like, a Hitler – pro-Hitler outfit holding, like, a Hitler – doing a Hitler – like a kid, you know, in the 30s.

AlexOh, I thought you meant now. I'm like, where do you live again? Okay.

MerlinBut you've also seen – you've seen kids. You've seen John John Kennedy doing the salute like a soldier. You've seen the way they dress up the royal family for different kinds of things. You've seen a little kid, and I've certainly seen thousands of little kids, babies even, wearing a shirt that says, you know, I'm the world's smallest San Francisco sports fan or whatever. You know, you buy your kids a Ramones onesie. They buy their kids a Nazi onesie. The baby's not actually saying that, dude.

The baby doesn't know what the Ramones are. But that's fine. because, again, you're introducing, before that child even knows it, you're introducing them to a world where you need to get on board with the family and what we're doing here. And trust me, don't worry, it's so fucking fun. It's really, really fun. Now, there will be times if we, God willing, if we've saved enough pin money that we can go to a game, there will be times where we chant things like, kill L.A. Why would we do that? Because we're not against L.A.

Our family's against L.A. Oh, so you really want to kill L.A.? No, no, it's just easy to chant. Oh. Okay, can I have a different family? No, no, we already got you the shirt. You're stuck here. I don't want you to run away wearing a Ramones shirt. And so I think it's difficult, especially once you started sniffing your own MSNBC farts about this stuff. It's difficult. It's certainly extremely difficult to separate who is the extremely deranged fucking unsupervised person who wants to set off a bomb in the Capitol versus who is a person standing outside the Capitol on January 6th

saying we're here to shoot Nancy Pelosi. Right? Well, did you bring a gun? Did you bring a gun, ma'am? Yeah. No. Other people are going to do that. But I'm just here to yell. I'm here to yell shoot Nancy Pelosi. And then what if somebody did shoot Nancy Pelosi or they did hang Mike Pence? The problem is it's like you can't watch this from a distance and guess what someone's actual intentions are. In some ways, they're there. It's a Giants game for assholes. Everybody's just there. And there might be a handful like Proud Boys and shit. But you know what I'm trying to say?

Liberals get so fucking cucked about this stuff without ever really exploring what parts of this are truly either effective or dangerous. The evidence to me seems to be this. The echo chamber for this is getting smaller and smaller. It's actually less effective. But the disincentive to speaking about it as an ex-person of that circle has never been higher. Because then you're going to hear about it. Then you're going to have the same way that people are fucking yelling at children about wearing masks. You're going to be confronted. I don't know if you've ever read the short story by Shirley Jackson called The Lottery.

But it's going to be a lot like that. If you're the one who starts bringing up how expensive it is to get all these stones, guess what? Tomorrow it might be your night in the barrel.

AlexAnd I mean, I feel like we've both been through the small ringer in sort of regards to this. But OK, let's take a really low stakes one. I don't really think there's any I don't think there's really a problem with gender reveal parties. I don't think the majority of people who have them are transphobic or care whatsoever. They just want another excuse to get the family together.

Speaker AThey want to read. They want a reason to eat Subway with friends outdoors.

AlexYep. And unfortunately, it's like if you if you don't have a church, if you don't really if you have if your tribe isn't explicitly defined, it's just neighbors and family. Right. That doesn't mean you're not like a strong unit. It's just you have like Christmas, Easter babies and birthdays, you know. And now you've got all of these people saying.

MerlinOh, you said talking about the rituals of the tribe.

AlexYeah. Like and baby showers. And like we have created many of these.

Merlinand like but then you got like it's interesting you should say that because we've got rituals in the rituals because then you've got the like the girl bonding ritual of uh bridal and baby showers you've got the guy bonding rituals of like bachelor things and then you could even take that back to like you know um not men and knights but uh you know barn raising and stuff and stuff like that that idea of like this is a thing that we all do together and it's just the thing we've always

AlexRight. And I do think it's important to examine that. Like, I'm like, yeah, maybe we don't need to like trample each other on Black Friday every year because a big TV means our love on. No, no, no. No, no, no. That's that's the thing. OK, but but like, let's hang out and cut into a cake and see if it's pink or blue. yay yay yay and now we're gonna get caught up on like that's anything fucking new right the only

Merlinquestion anybody cares about apart from are you pregnant is is it a boy or a girl it's been this thus has it been for fucking ever but then it got the name gender reveal party and became associated with pink bombs exploding in yosemite this isn't often fire related are there fire don't get me

Alexwrong i love watching the gender reveal fails but like i enjoy any hog fail because i'm human and it's funny when people like sit on a rocket and i don't know like my rocket is skint yeah

Merlinno i get it i get it uh why do we hate gender reveal parties it's anti-trans oh it's is

Alexsupposedly you are labeling this kid how would you know if they're trans yes you well and then everybody's yelling at you and so you're like wait are my parents let's say you're a sibling like wait am i a terrible person because i went to this party or maybe you're adults and you are liberal and you're like oh am i a monster because i went to one of these parties and i don't and i've seen people like end french lifelong friendships over their opinion of gender reveal

parties not their opinion of like gender or transphobia or anything like that just the concept the the or the the existence and attendance of these yeah and i don't think that's an uncommon that must be yeah well i mean it's it's a small hey i'm trying to think of an example that isn't like chanting around the chanting around a confederate flag like some people have always had confederate flags and it's fucked up well that's pretty no that's pretty different that's

Merlinpretty like extreme to rail blindly about something where you two can't even agree what

Alexyou're arguing about yeah may not be a great vocation for us and i don't know if that facebook makes bad people i i know i don't know it's like how far whether it takes normal people and twist

Merlinthem into something crazy or whether it's just an amplifier for people who are already kind of yeah

Alexit is an amplifier but then it's like well those where do those ripples end up and is anybody

Merlinresponsible for that and i don't know yeah absolutely we um we talked about fucking finally not in a good way but we ended up talking about grit last night again on wreck diffs and i was feeling very not because of john because of me i was feeling very defensive about it because i i realized that like um so grit is this idea that was very pretty viral a few years ago alongside stuff like growth mindset. And it's this idea that to be successful, we need to teach kids to be resilient, to stick to the plan. Some people spin it as that they should have a passion for something

that they're really sticking to. But then, of course, the thing that became the third rail is this woman then said, brought forth some research to show that success in life is associated with grit, but really to kind of imply that academic success is greatly improved with grit. And then there was just a barrage of responses to that. Now, whatever. I'm not a science sauce kind of guy. I was just more there to say, holy shit, what a crazy privileged piece of shit way to see the world. And then eventually there was a Washington Post article that was like, yeah,

guess what? Poor kids already have grit. Turns out. They have grit so much more than your kids. You have no idea. But of course, then my spin on that is thinking about trauma and thinking about abuse and thinking about hunger. And like, you know, oh, yeah, if you're if this little black girl had more grit, she'd be in The New York Times, too. But, you know, she has to like take the take the beating sometimes to protect her sister. And, you know, her grades have really been dropping and stuff. And maybe she could use a little more grit. and you know my corollary to that is always there's a it's one thing to have this like mid-level

life hack one secret the the one uh what's the phrase the one um the one crazy trick nobody wants you to know but like what's the one crazy grit uh trick well get grit it's the crazy grit trick get get grit okay well i think your advice should be way more ambitiously specific or way more unambitiously like general. So like, like my general advice would be something like, uh, care more and feel great about it. Well, how do I do that? I don't know, dude, but like, show me, show me another option. Or it could be something as specific as the guy that wrote a

book called make your bed where he's implying that that's a metonymy for success in life is

Alexwait, is that a real thing? Hold on. You found it. Yeah. It's a general. Okay. Come on. Fuck.

MerlinBut, but you take my, I hope, I hope you take my point. The problem is like, I look at this and go like well I don't know why I'm ranting like this. Because you care. It's just I do care. I'm trying to remember what it had to do with I'm sorry I got really

Alexmake your bed. Grit Facebook

MerlinMaybe I got a long distance edible Grit. Why were we talking about that before that Facebook but and then of course the thing with that is there's the not metaverse, but metacognition level of, oh, I feel so smart when I know about stuff like grit. And it turns out 10,000 hours sort of way where I'm now somewhat beholden or cleft to this idea because of how smart it makes me feel and how it's something, you know. Remember, and I quoted you last night actually,

talking about who's the person who's most likely to be on the internet using screens, talking about how they make their kids not have screens, the performance of that, And the way that you could do this performance of, well, we got Tyler and all the best water polo academies and grit schools, and you get to look really smart about that. And then the implication that just sits there festering on the table for generations is that all these little black girls aren't gritty enough.

It's nice that you took the beating for your sister. Your dad probably had his reasons for doing that, but whatever. But if you'd have more grit, you'd be in the New York Times all the time, too. Did you see that article? This was covered on Slate Plus. There was an article in the New York Times a few years ago about this girl named Dasani who's in just Section 8 housing. And her entire family was broken up. I'll put it in notes. It's so hard to listen to, Alex. Their family's in Section 8 housing. They have eight kids. And this author who wrote this article years ago is saying it's so important to understand the difference between abuse and neglect.

Abuse is like a fairly overt way of harming a child. Neglect could also be just because you can't afford stuff. Like, you just can't afford it. But what's worse, it's Section 8 housing, and their landlord had not been taking care of the house.

AlexWas this?

MerlinBut the parents were blamed. They broke up the family. All eight kids went to different foster homes. Hang on, there's something for everybody here. All eight kids went to different foster homes at a cost of over $30,000 per child.

There's approximately, I think it's something like six to ten times more money is spent on breaking up families than it is on keeping families together in New York State. And this was an update, like catching up with this girl who's like, and just the incredibly fucking complicated, like people look at this from the outside. You know, everybody loves that Cinderella ending. And then it's like, well, what happens after the honeymoon? How does Cinderella feel after that? Like in this case, it's like, well, she's basically being counseled. God, this feels very sorry, very The Wire, where she's being counseled by Nicole and Powell types who are like,

look, you know, wash your face, make your bed, you know, pull up your pants and learn how to talk right, because that's how you're going to, whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, you're going to learn to code switch to thrive in this world. But she desperately craves the comfort of her family being together and like being able to help with the family instead of having them broken up into like foster care is a thing that frequently does not go great.

AlexFoster care isn't a thing that's usually even thought of, even by people who are thinking about adopting kids. It's so medieval.

MerlinIt's like that reporter who's getting put into Rikers. You're like, oh, my God. This is completely medieval, this approach. So anyway, I don't know what the point of all this is. Why am I talking like Tim Robinson?

AlexThe point is Rudy Giuliani's ghost. Oh, gosh. Send, for real, send.

Speaker AOh, those fingers. Those fingers are really bad. Really, really, really bugged me with the fingers. I don't like them. When he's playing with his phone, he's got those fingers out.

AlexI mean, that's why the Babadook is gay. At least his fingers are long and useful. Oh, is he?

MerlinOh, that's nice. Well, I mean, I imagine his smell like cigars and...

AlexNo, no. Cigars and butts, maybe cigars and pussy. What do you think they smell like? Pussy and fresh... Bowling balls. Bowling balls. Pussy and fresh joints. For sure.

Speaker ATwo, three, four. Okay. We got... Wait, we had another thing we had to talk about.

MerlinWe should talk about this goddamn show.

AlexOh, Squid Game, that you don't like. Not that you don't like. It's not that I don't like. No, see, I did the thing. No, this is the problem. I know.

Speaker BAnd this is the problem. I know.

AlexYes, I know.

Speaker AI mean, you're telling me I didn't wear the ribbon.

AlexNo, exactly. No, I am actually interested to hear about why you didn't like it.

MerlinOh, also, I'm now emo.

AlexOh, my God. That is, I was like, is this what happens when we go a week without talking?

MerlinWell, I'm going to make this a lot less interesting. We can have fun with this, but I was listening to Minor Threat, and I mean, I'm almost 55. Why do I need to impress people about fucking music? No, but I mean, I've liked music for a long time. I just had never known. I knew MCS, and one time when I was in Ontario, AFI I was playing, but I just totally missed stuff like Fall Out Boy. And I fucking despise Green Day with every fiber of my beard.

That's the problem. So natural bash lice there. Yep. Yeah. They were really good when they were being called the Buzzcocks.

AlexI am going to...

MerlinTrue had some seriously good, like, real-life tension. You ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with? Because he couldn't have the world know he was gay then. 1976. Peach Shelley. Peach Shelley. Bad haircut. Very bad haircut and flares.

Speaker BOh, big flares.

MerlinHe looks like a maitre d' at a coked up cafeteria steakhouse. Hello.

Speaker AWill you be having our I found so long today, Governor?

AlexOh, good characters are happening today.

Speaker AWhat do I against? You know what?

MerlinWhy don't we talk about that in our After Show member episode. Alex, I've been doing this and I've been doing a really good job lately. Do you want to take a run at it?

AlexLike a real run? Okay. Hey, everybody. Thank you.

MerlinOkay. Three, two, one. No, see, that's the opposite of God of My Voices. God of My Voices is two, three, four. Okay. That's Bob counting in before he does the kick. What I'm doing here is I'm doing poorly edited podcasts because people love editing their podcasts so hard.

AlexIt's fun sometimes.

MerlinThree, two, one.

Speaker AAnd so we'll talk about that in the after show. Alex, how can people get an opportunity to check in and listen to our after show? Oh, wait. Oh, I think it's what they call the proximity. Perfect. Extremely close. What are you doing in here? Get out of here, you son of a bitch. Your fingers smell like pussy.

AlexIt's a chimera of characters today. Hey, pals. Thank you so much for listening to this show. We genuinely really appreciate it. And if you want to give us money for some reason.

Merlin's making noise. I don't know what it is. Hey, everybody.

Speaker AI'm doing the day. I'm doing the day. Okay, ready? three two one well if you want to hear the shit that we say

Speaker Bif you want to hear the things that are gay you're gonna have to pay some money yes sir go to patreon dot com slash do by friday

Alexnow wait how are you

Speaker Adoing that with your oh

Alexoh oh I want to be a reporter

Speaker Ano I'm doing okay there's two ways the way the way I taught the world to do this

Merlinthe way I taught the world to do this on you look nice today is to make a church make a make a vagina hand church. And then hold your nostrils like this.

Speaker ANow you cut your hands around like this,

Speaker Band you'll find a certain spot where it sounds a little bit like it's being played through a hard money machine. Counterfeit money machine. Spooch bra, spooch bra lifts and separates.

Speaker AAnd this one here, I was just doing with my friend Lance's coffee cup. And if you do this one, I think it makes it a little more like Rudy Valley. Please, could the black people use the back end? and the other water fountain you can find on the edge of town yes sir oh god oh hey everybody

Alexuh it's dubai friday free if you enjoy this program did you know that you can hear more of it yes you can every week we have an after show that's just for premium members or patrons or whatever we're calling it this week you can find the after show at DubaiFriday.com no you can't fuck you can't you can find the after show at patreon.com

slash DubaiFriday or giveusyourfuckingmoney.com or joe rogan no no joe rogan

Merlindot hair

Alexdot club? joe rogan joe rogan podcast dot club there we go what if you did an emo theme oh my god oh my god that an emo after show theme oh well we'll save it for the after show oh i would do that no i'm no just trying to remember how pocketbook scan goes

Merlinright

Speaker Ayes right yes you got my back on that yes

Alexwe've all seen the video yes yes oh have you not seen the video making fun of Pockenwell's in an album

Merlinlet me just I'll do some if you want to do some Michael Penn for you. Would you enjoy that?

AlexIt's a good way to learn guitar. It's just... What? What are you talking about? It's a good way to learn guitar. Just playing Pops and Punks.

MerlinOh, all the Green Day covers?

Speaker AI'm so dissatisfied

AlexAll right, Squid Games.

Speaker AYou had some- No? No? Oh, were we doing emo in the after show? Did we close our threads on-

AlexYes, go to joeroganpodcast.club to listen- Oh, I was playing guitar. I know, it was wonderful, and I was interrupting-

MerlinMichael Penn is very good.

AlexI agree.

MerlinDid you listen to that Slate hit parade episode?

AlexNo. No, I have it in my queue, though. I listen to the – We're going to listen to it.

MerlinYou know what we should do? You know what? Actually, no, fuck it. I don't like the things where people watch a whole thing together or listen to a whole thing together. Like when I get one of those for blank check, I'm always like, hmm. Because I'm not going to sit down and like – You know, if it was one of their classics, if it was Emily or JD or one of the, like, you know, Blanky, past and future, multi-time guests, I would. Because, you know, we could listen to it together, but that actually would not be that interesting. Maybe we should watch Squid Game together for my sins.

AlexOh, God. People always ask.

MerlinBecause you can share a watch now, right?

AlexCan't you share a watch? I think you can. But what sins? Hold on. What sins do you have in regards to Squid Game? You're not squidding all over it like the rest of the internet? I don't understand.

MerlinI mean, I don't know. It didn't – I did – we all do this. I do this. We all do this. If there's something – let's say there's something that, like, we love intensely in media. Let's just stick to media for a second. Like, something happening in the world of media that we love intensely, but as it happens, a lot of people love intensely. I'm trying to think of a good recent example of that. Something –

AlexTiger King, which went by super fast.

MerlinYeah, that one's almost too easy to pick on. But if it's something like, oh, shit. Okay, I have not watched a lot of this season of Ted Lasso. Just because my kid loved it and said it's fantastic and is so mad that I'm not watching it. But there was so much backlash about it. And I was like, I won't wait until the discourse dies down. I'm so tired of reading about this. But there was a time, let's say maybe last year or last season, put it that way, right? Where like Ted Lasso made me so happy. I think you should leave. made me so happy as you said tiger king but ted lasso was special i talked about this on the

incomparable episode about my favorite episode uh make rebecca great again uh put it in show notes but uh i that show was very special to me and i would think anybody who spoke against ted lasso at that time well it would make let's just start with this let's start with the the most important part not the guessing why but the emotion and the emotion is what or like oh like I'm a little bit angry and my feelings are a little bit hurt because I love this. And it is known like everybody loves this.

This is great. So what do we do next? What do you say? The thing you say to another fucking human being, why didn't you like him? Why didn't you like him? Like, what would you say that about something on network TV? Like, oh, did you watch the did you watch the something fucking horrible? Did you watch Trash Kings of Minnesota County last night on HGTV? Which is probably a real show or will be by the time the show comes out.

Speaker ATrash Kings of Minnesota County? Is that right?

MerlinOh, my God. Isn't it amazing? Really the right thing at the right time. What are you talking about? Oh, Trash Kings. You know, it's the one everybody's talking about, how much they love it. Trash Kings of Minnesota County. Oh, I don't know. I think I tried to watch it on a plane once and I hated it.

Speaker AWhy didn't you like it?

MerlinAll right.

Speaker AAnd then next, you know what happens next? You watched it wrong. You watched it wrong.

Speaker BYou got to watch, oh, you didn't like Buffy? Poop, poop, poop, poop. That's your one example.

AlexAfter season 16, it gets so much less bad. Is there another example you have other than Buffy?

MerlinYeah, Trash Kings of Minnesota County.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinNo, but what I'm saying is I have already given and received this criticism of myself. Why don't you like it? I don't know, man. It just didn't land for me. well did you watch it wrong i don't know and i definitely watched it wrong because first i tried it with um just dubs and then because and because my hearing is really bad then i watched it dubbed and with subs which was insane because they don't match and i guess maybe they don't need to but then i found out from the internet and you and my daughter and everybody that the um i'll stop trying to be cute about this the subtitled version is better or excuse me the subtitled version is

much better than the dubbed audio version. The dubbed audio version is not very well done and the subbed version. I'm avoiding the whole fucking thistle of anime people and their hangups.

Go fuck your pillow, guys. But congratulations. You win. So why didn't I like it? I don't know. Did you watch it wrong? Yeah, probably. And then of course there's always the other part of me which is like maybe this thing gets better or different. you know but the test i did not the test the advice that i give to everybody and that i've been giving to a lot of people about the leftovers recently because it's become very important to me as a show your favorite show it's become my favorite tv show over the wire and but like the thing i say and like you know people will pop in like my pal jesse said all you know as a

as a uh retired i didn't use this phrase but it's a good phrase as a my phrase as a retired christian I wasn't sure I was ready for something that looked apocalyptic and I said look you know I'm going to say what I tell all my kids it's really true with this one watch the first one and if it doesn't grab you don't worry you'll be fine it's not for you but if you get into this and realize what it might be instead of what it seems to be which is such a tenet of Lindelof things like am I watching what I think

I'm watching or is it different than what I think I'm watching and like I went on such a member show rant last night about all the levels to the leftovers and making the case that you could do an entire like above average network tv show just about a character named kevin who can no longer trust his perceptions is surrounded by trauma but still just wants to do the right thing that would be such a good tv show about that one guy it could be a tv show about a woman whose entire family disappeared they didn't die they disappeared they disappeared she doesn't know what happened she

doesn't know where they are and she doesn't know why there was a one in 120,000 chance that it would be her family that that happened to. But now what do you do? How do you go on living? There's so many shows in that show, but I would just say, hey, watch the first one and they lay a lot of very good groundwork. I would put it in one of my top 10 best first episodes,

Alexup there with stuff like Lost. Okay. Here's where I'm going to disagree with you. is if you I've heard this from people I've recommended it to is they've watched the first episode they're like the leftovers or leftovers and they're like I got lost vibes and we uh as a collective sort of got burned by lost and it's not not because of David Lindelof you know the background on that uh he left the you know it's not his fault right exactly exactly and then I

Merlinoh Max told actually it was Max who told us this that ABC demanded suddenly out of nowhere wanted him to apparate a whole bunch of new episodes and consequently new storylines, new details. Oh my God, what a curse.

AlexAnd that's why unfortunately a lot of Lost style shows can't even get off the ground because it's just polluted the collective taste.

MerlinOh, like they salted the earth for stuff like that?

AlexYes. Oh, it sucks. So if you don't like the first episode, I'm going to say just at least stick with, or no, just it's not Lost. It is not, it's not Lost.

MerlinNo, you misunderstand. I feel like you misunderstand or I misspoke. What I'm saying is that in my personal, you're asking me what I like, in my personal pantheon, I would have loved if Lost had gone a little different at certain points, but it's his show, as they say.

AlexBut it was in his show. That's the problem.

MerlinIt was, oh God, Alex, please just take my life. What I'm trying to say is the first episode of Lost was one of the great first episodes of a TV show is what I'm trying to say to you.

AlexOkay. Oh, yeah.

MerlinThat's what I'm trying to say. I can't speak for Lost. I'm not going to carry his water, piece of shit. But anyhow, in that case, because, you know, there are things where, and it's so difficult. You know, Syracuse, God, I must really love him. I talk about him so much. There's so many things where, like, now there's like almost this folklore amongst us about these kinds of things. But like it's really as we, I think, have stipulated on that show. I know we have stipulated.

Anything can be a spoiler. Like even saying that there's a spoiler is the ultimate spoiler. If you say to somebody, oh, listen, I don't want to spoil. Well, how about this? If somebody comes up to you and says, oh, man, are you really digging XYZ TV show? And let's say you are digging it and you're up to episode four. You say, oh, I don't want to spoil episode six for you. Well, fuck. You just told me. I have no idea what you're telling me about except that now, whether I want to or not, because I went, you know, I had an above average education and I had breakfast today.

I now know I will be scanning mentally. Even when I'm watching the recap at the beginning, I'm going to think about what are they showing here that they're going to surprise me with. And now I'm fucking mad. Right. It's so hard not to give. It's difficult. I mean, and that's why I sometimes find myself saying the dumbest things, which are things like, hey, listen, if you trust that our tastes are similar, not even that you trust my taste. If you trust that our tastes are similar in this kind of thing, I'm just going to tell you the leftovers is very special. I cannot think of a higher recommendation than something like that.

Whereas with other things, I might say Squid Game seems really cool, very ambitious. I think it's probably not for me, but I can see why people like it, right? Right. I'm not going to throw it under the Korean bus.

AlexNo. Oh, my God. And that's why I am interested in why you didn't like it, because you have good taste. Because I watched it wrong. Okay, okay. Because I think it—

MerlinIf I ever met anyone who acted like anyone in this television show, I would never speak to them again.

Speaker BThat's such a— That's really good.

MerlinAnd so then, okay, but are you ready? Are you ready? Let me represent counsel for the prosecution. Oh, that's because you're watching it wrong. Well, what do you mean by that? Oh, don't you know it's a big thing in Korean TV shows to yell all the time? Oh, no, I didn't know that. Now it's good. What the fuck?

Did you listen to – actually, you know what? Let's take a break. Can I ask you to – did you listen to the thing that I posted on the internet last night?

AlexNo.

MerlinOh, good. This will be perfect. Could you please go to – assuming it's still up. Don't be creepy. Oh, did you see my banner picture my daughter took of me in the park? She's using my Canon now and taking photos.

AlexOh, shit. Full-on art kid.

MerlinGo to the... I'll send you a couple of her good ones. She's so cute. Oh, I love her so much. Piece of shit. Go to what appears to be my latest tweet as of right now. You see a picture of an eye of like a doll. Next week's Reconcilable Differences also serves as a good preview of tomorrow's Dubai Friday.

AlexOh, oh.

MerlinHere's the thing. If you do this thing, you're going to die. And like, or, you know, even a thing that just like surgically cuts your head off immediately, like a saw thing. Like, I know that's gross, but it's so much more interesting than like somebody shooting guns and hitting the wrong people.

Speaker AAnd like, what the fuck kind of operation is that? Like, what's your plan? You're just, why don't you just kill everybody? Just kill everybody and you'll be done.

MerlinOkay.

AlexAll right. All right. Well, see, that's a good explanation as to why it's not for you. See, I thought it was, I really liked it.

MerlinAnd then John reminded me that my friend Alex was the one who said, would the South Koreans love their squibs? Was that you that said that?

AlexYeah, they do.

MerlinIt's true.

Speaker BThat's so fucking funny.

MerlinWe should, can we, do you think we can, if I get that, can we drop that in for better audio?

AlexOh, for sure.

MerlinSorry, that was really unprofessional.

AlexOh, more unprofessional than me holding a ghost Lincoln up to my phone.

MerlinAnd of course, I am in my underpants wearing socks.

AlexOh, Lord.

Speaker AI'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm comfortable.

AlexWell, if we're going to continue being very, very racist and not liking Squid Game, it makes me incredibly sad that it... I like North Koreans. It's the South Koreans I don't like. Oh, God. But no, it suffers from what a lot of Netflix series, quote, original Netflix series have, which is the three too many episode problem.

MerlinOh, yeah. I mean, they do seem to really, when you see that there's a Netflix series

Alexand it says limited series and there's four.

MerlinOh my God, wait a minute. The Billion Dollar Code, how many was that? Five?

AlexI haven't seen, oh, I haven't seen all of that, but I.

MerlinNo, but there's like five, right? I think so. But I get what you're saying. Like, if you see limited series, you're like, oh, fuck, great. Like that means there's fewer than eight or 10. I'm so much more likely to be in this, not because I don't have the time or the interest, but just because I know they didn't like, they didn't put in two scoops of cornstarch to make it 10.

AlexYeah. And, well, a lot of it, that's what also-

MerlinAnd was this truly original? I have a feeling they play fast and loose with that.

AlexYes.

MerlinThey actually, they paid for someone in South, South Korean, like creative team to make, they funded this the same way that, okay. Same way they would do like Sense8 or something.

AlexRight. And Midnight Mass, which was the sequel to The Haunting of Bellevue or something.

MerlinHaunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly House.

AlexHaunting of Bly House, which was after Haunting of Hill House, which I very much enjoyed, but also felt like there were two. I've heard it's good. I loved it.

MerlinIs that Billy Zane? Not Billy Zane. Is that the guy, you know, the one guy, the guy who plays Dr. Manhattan and the guy who's in Almost Famous? You know what I mean?

AlexNo. Is that that one guy? Billy Crudup? No. Yeah.

MerlinIs that Billy? It sure looks like him.

AlexNo. He's busy with The Morning Show being a strange American.

MerlinShow about death and recovery. It's very. The Morning Show.

AlexI don't like that show.

MerlinSorry, Joe Steele. Sometimes I try a pun and it just doesn't go.

AlexSorry.

Merlincan we start at the beginning it's a very good place to start

Speaker Bmy kid said

Merlinmy kid and her friend have been breaking a rule at school so there's this show they heard about and this must be two three weeks ago this show kind of came out of nowhere from my point of view but it kind of came out of nowhere my kid's like yeah Astrid and I were in a stall watching it together and I was like that's cool I like that you're breaking a rule like that that's a dumb rule and I'm glad you're breaking it please don't tell anyone I said that

AlexPlease don't. I'm a sec. Okay, go.

MerlinDon't tell – you know what? Can I ask you a favor? Don't tell my kid how to use a phone. I don't even tell my kid how to use a phone. You're still not allowed to tell my kid how to use a phone. I have created an environment in which responsible phone usage is being handled just fine.

AlexWell, she doesn't even have a phone. She's not on the internet. But if this fake daughter existed, what was in the stall?

MerlinSo she and Esther would watch it together during lunch. and she was so basically she was just talking about I was like oh yeah I saw this thing and I kept calling it the wrong thing. I kept calling it something really stupid like the deer board or the fence games or something. And she's like oh no no it's this show from South Korea. I was like yeah I keep seeing it. It looks really weird. It looks very much like a comic book kind of movie. And she said no. She said it's really really good. But like listen when you watch it you've got to watch it. subtitle. Don't watch a dub. The dub is really bad.

And she's like, but you should watch it. It's really, really good. And so by the time she was three or four episodes in, I finally dipped my toe in. And like I said, it was, jokes have left the room. I mean, I have, my hearing is bad. And sometimes when it's hot, we're running a fan, and I can't hear. So I have dubs and subs running. Hey, you know what? Marker? I need to poop.

AlexGo right ahead. Let's actually stop and because you did

MerlinDo a mini pause for 10 or 15?

AlexYeah. All right.

MerlinHow about how about five after?

AlexSounds good.

MerlinI just I don't know what I'm getting involved with here.

hello hello can i can i speak about the show inside the show yes first of all this is gonna be a hell of a ride um i feel bad for for quinn slash you i'm so sorry um we just took a bio break i'm sorry to interrupt the flow of how i watched the show wrong um the i we had a bio break and you were kind enough to give me 15 minutes to bio it was very successful well i would just like to

Alexthank you for earlier giving me those 20 minute notice because then I was like, oh yes, I have a window. So I was able to take a bio break without anybody. Oh dude. I've availed myself of it.

MerlinSo, I mean, as, as we'll be covering the wisdom document, being on time is a sign of character, but if you can't have good character about being on time, you must have good character about giving a halfway decent estimate about when you will be there. Character, character counts. That's, that's if you make your bed is what I'm saying. Um, great so what else did i do i oh hang on i uh i i uh i refilled my i refilled my can you hear me i can i can yes uh i uh i i refill well you know what i do i i you know like we say you know you

say to somebody in like a drinking situation which is like a fresh drink you could just pitch out the detritus and spit of the drink and use the same ice i like to be a little fancy sometimes and i'll give myself like a whole new glass with all new ice so that's me if you're gonna get a fresh drink it needs to be a fresh drink so oh yeah i have in addition in addition to my um my beaker meet me uh my beaker with one one liter of ice and seltzer i also have my ice my tejava oh tejava iced tea

with lime and i'm now introducing a third beverage which is a a drip coffee so i did those things oh so two sources of caffeine uh yeah i don't think of it yes true i don't think of it that way i i just i this is a thing that you know it's not important i like having multiple beverages so i did that and what else did i do i made the coffee bio break i did turn on the tv with the the the show oh no what's going on oh no it's just that i have alex on the brain right now

And so I tuned in and just said, you know, hey, dingus, play the news, which turns on MSNBC on my show. And it was a piece that there's I can't even tell you how many things about this four minutes of TV that I watched made me think of you. It was a piece on, you know, everybody knows about the supply chain problems, right? I'm going to get my coffee.

AlexShut up. I know you already foiled. In theory, I know that one exists. Oh, OK.

Speaker AWell, well, we'll find it.

MerlinWe'll find it for notes. One of my favorite YouTube videos of the last year was the Wendover Productions video on what's up with the supply chain. Like, yes, it is about COVID, but it's about more than COVID. But, of course, it's about COVID. It's utterly fascinating about how connected the world is and what happens when, you know, we're getting for the last two years, we've been getting is before we get to the Panama Canal, whichever the canal was that got fucked up. But just the fact that for the last couple of years, there's been so many disruptions in everything, right?

One of those things, and they've talked about this a lot on Slate Money, I think very intelligently. But, you know, one of those things is at a point, you know, China had this dict earlier than we did. But our economy changed in the sense that we were spending a lot less on services and a lot more on goods. You put that up alongside the thing about, you know, the companies that make the chips having to like so many orders for chips pulled. They started making GPUs for Bitcoin mining and stuff like that. And then that affected. That's why you can't get a car now.

And if you go to Alaska, it's such a good video. But it was about supply chain stuff. I'll find it for notes. Anyway, this piece that was on. Oh, my gosh, you guys.

The supply chain is a mess. But boy, okay, Alex, point number one, get ready for what I wrote down, I wrote down the phrase, a chaotic holiday shopping season. And believe me, when it comes to seasons and it's about the holidays, you don't want chaos. But guess what? That's where we're getting, because why? Because as we've all read over the last few months, like a lot of people like left a job that they were in and haven't gone back to that job or they decided to retire early. There's just a whole bunch going on where COVID for any number of reasons

made people rethink the way that they work, how they work, for whom they work, how much they're willing to accept and pay. And this means that a lot of people who've been truck drivers for a long time are quitting or retiring or cutting hours or whatever, right? So Alex, point number two, wouldn't you have guessed the headline about trucking in 2021 would be that everybody's been replaced by robots? I mean, like five years ago, wouldn't you have kind of some part of your brain gone? And if there's anything where automated, what's the official name for that?

AlexOh, see, I should fucking know.

MerlinAutomated vehicles. But if there's anywhere where we could see a big push in automated vehicles, it stands to reason that it would be trucking. Because it's already a very dangerous job. It's already, you know, people do fall asleep. What you hear about what it means practically to be a truck driver is pretty crazy. And I could imagine a world, if I were to guess, and I might be cribbing this from CGP Grey, but I could imagine a world where something that's the equivalent of a tugboat, a highway tugboat, gets an 18-wheeler with a container on it from an on-ramp onto the highway.

Because a highway—

AlexEven Teamsters thought so. Like, even Teamsters were worried a few years ago.

MerlinBut once you've got it on the highway, that, of all the systems, is sort of a monorail. Monorail. Sort of that, like this. Monorail. Is there a chance the truck could have been? Landly. Lyle Landly. But once you've got an 18-wheeler on the road, I mean, it's the decision-making for how to deal with driving on a highway has got to be one of the first places where automation would make more rather than less sense. And there's got to be times to refuel and stuff like that. Wouldn't you have imagined a few years ago, you get the truck on the road, and then it just needs to get to the off-ramp, and another tugboat takes it to the Amazon Fulfillment Center.

I mean, that was my guess by 2021. Yeah. But no, it turns out, point number two, truckers are leaving. So now, according to this piece on MSNBC, they're struggling to fill positions for truckers. And so they cut to a woman who's visiting a truck driver training facility in Georgia. and of course she's sitting in the cab of a truck and she introduces some tape pieces and so she talked they show some, as they say she had some tape of a guy who runs the school saying hey you know Alex .3

oh man this is this kind of job like it used to be like older white guys but now like there's no anybody can drive a truck and like the thing is it's one of the most they didn't use this word but I will egalitarian democratic jobs because all we care about is like you get behind the wheel and drive the truck and everybody's paid the same based on the numbers of hours that they drive. So Alex point number three, yeah, but the number of hours you get, any chance that varies based on the color of your skin? Whatever. Then it gets good. Alex point number four. This guy says, the guy who runs this school, who I'm sure

has no reason to say anything that wouldn't be positive about the trade, says this is a fantastic opportunity for people. I can't think of another job where people come in, get four weeks of training, and then walk straight into a job making $50,000 a year. Possibly all true. And it's like, okay, on the face of it, that's really cool.

AlexSign me up, motherfucker. Yeah.

MerlinIt is cool in the sense that there are people who end up doing a lot more to earn a lot less a lot less quickly. All right, cool, cool, cool. So that was Alex Point. What am I on four? But then we get to the really good Alex Point, I think number five, which is they cut back to the reporter in the truck, and she says, and I talked to name of person, TBD, who is just about to complete the course, and he's very excited. He's 40 years old, and he has nine kids.

So a 40-year-old guy with nine kids is about to become a truck driver for $50,000 a year. And I imagine he's not a single dad. That's a lot of kids to take care of when dad's on the road all the time for $50,000 a year with nine kids. Holy fucking shit.

You see how I was thinking of you? Do you see?

AlexOh, just a guess.

MerlinBecause you're real horny about billionaires and wealth nowadays.

AlexOh, yeah, yeah. It's not a... Is that costly?

MerlinIt's not an affliction. It's a gift. It's a Buddhist gift. Nine kids, $50,000 a year. Okay. I'm going to say two honest things about myself because it's – I make a little more than that and I have one kid.

And I have the most simple, conceivable setup that a person could have, which is my job is not difficult. I make pretty good dough. I work around the corner from where my family lives. and like I I guess like a lot of people would be like wow I don't feel like I mean I can't buy a house right and this guy

Speaker Awith nine kids

Merlinhe's 40 he has nine kids and he's going to be in a truck making $50,000 I mean better than nothing but holy shit dude bring on the robots

Alexoh god yeah it's a very divided slash unpopular idea but If people are interested, I would suggest reading Automated Luxury Communism. And yes, it's supposed to be like an evocative, annoying title because it is and it isn't. We put that in notes, of course. Yeah. And I mean, it's since maybe, oh, June 2020, the majority, well, not the majority.

Oh, no. Actually, I'd say the majority of delivery trucks, well, and including USPS trucks, are Amazon. Like, not even Amazon trucks, but those vans, you know?

MerlinYou mean like the Amazon Prime, those gray vans?

AlexYeah, yeah. And I guess they've been around for a while, but they were never in Chicago.

MerlinI mean, for the last few years, like, a lot of my, especially Prime now, which is now officially dead as of this week. Prime now, but also Amazon Prime deliveries, we're often like, I think somebody coming home from work who's just wearing a yellow vest. There was a lot of civilian deliveries in the last couple of years. And now there are a ton more Prime trucks. Is that what you're talking about?

AlexIt is. But, oh God, that's the other thing, is now I'm looking at a car and it's like, okay, it is a Prime person, But they're also just wearing a yellow vest with civilian clothes, I guess. And then sometimes they're running into someone else who is delivering Postmates. And they have the old Amazon Prime, like Prime Now sticker on the car.

And I was like, it was just this like, and we say this all the time. I order like everything from Amazon. Like, of course I do. I am not a fancy duchess. Like, but I'm like, wait, so I don't even know. And I'm not going to fucking ask, are these people contractors? Are these people who work in the warehouse? Because by design, we don't know a lot about the people who deliver for Amazon other than, you know, they pee in bottles or whatever.

But it's like, wait, do we know? Like, I know nothing about how Amazon delivery works.

MerlinIs P.M. Bottles the delivery people or the fulfillment center people or both?

AlexExactly. It's just like a jumbled like, well, sure.

MerlinThe fulfillment center sounds like a circle of hell.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThe requirements and people just sometimes so hot. And Amazon has been pretty Facebook-y about saying, oh, yeah, we already fixed that. Or maybe Joe Mancini. Like, oh, yeah, we already fixed that. We already fixed the environment. We already fixed the working conditions. It's not hot here anymore. It's not very hot here. It's just hot here. but you still have to meet your quota.

And every time I see that goddamn TV commercial where the people are playing in the warehouse and popping bubble wrap, I'm always like, oh God, this is so brutal. I think playing with bubble wrap in an Amazon fulfillment center would not last for very long.

AlexIt's a little bleak. Just it's a little.

MerlinI do too. I'm a big Amazon boy. I am. I really am.

AlexEverybody that doesn't live in a, I probably wouldn't have to be, but the majority of upper class people who live like sometimes Amazon won't even deliver to you if you're in either a too sparse of an area or a too dense of an area because there's an Amazon store you can go to.

MerlinI would not want to be a UPS driver in Manhattan. I've always wondered how they do that. Like, it must be insane.

AlexThey unionize. and that's what I'm wondering is like okay when does Amazon start having their own just their full on own trucking division not robots yeah and I mean it's happening with the fucking vans like I don't know this is so crazy though like it's not a coup but

Merlinit'll do for now a week from today my daughter turns 14 years of age and so as previously stipulated my wife and I share an Apple Notes note where we collect ideas and then we each kind of execute on the ideas that i i'm not i've never said this out loud but we each execute on the ideas that kind of represent our relationship with the kid i feel like you know i'm saying like there's certain kinds of things where matt's going to be more into getting or this kind of thing and i'm more into getting or that kind of thing and like it's just so wild i never would have guessed when i when i first bought what was the first

thing i ever bought uh 1999 i bought a copy of confederacy of dunces from amazon was my first purchase and like yesterday i ordered two it's always sunny and don't hey listen keep a secret don't tell my kid this um so um i just wanted to get started right so i go to the uh the washington delivery uh concern and i got two always sunny shirts i got one i got a riot like a mac riot shirt unfortunately still has the sleeves on it so we need to cut those off i got a mac riot shirt

I got a Patty's Pub shirt. I got a Way of the House Husband anime notebook because she's loving that comic right now.

AlexYay. I didn't know that.

MerlinAre you familiar with it?

AlexOnly vaguely.

MerlinIt's a manga about a guy who's, I don't know the details, but it's a guy who used to be in the Yakuza, and now he's taking care of the kids at the house.

AlexYeah, it's the fish out of water manga mix.

MerlinYeah, and she says the TV show's okay, but it's mostly, it's basically like a puffed-up motion comic. Her advice would be just read the comic. She's on number four right now. I got her Way of the House Husband notebook. I got her a really cool Iron Giant figure with a little Hogarth on the shoulder.

Speaker AOh.

MerlinI did all that yesterday. I bought my wife a set of headphones. I got a bunch of lime juice. a couple weeks ago I have an automatic order every two months to bring me six pairs of Golto socks.

I bought a hard drive. I bought some oyster sauce. I bought a OXO pepper grinder. These are all things that come from the same company. And when I go in and like, for example, like it's so weird though now, like we have a really nice Yeti cooler that when I keep it stored with a giant ass tub of damperate in it, just so it doesn't get nasty. and like I go to reorder the damper that I get. And I was like, hmm, I was flustered because it wouldn't deliver until November. I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

You don't, if you, you know, you could just walk to the hardware store and get what they've got. It's just, I'm so used to reordering this order from Amazon. I'm used to reordering this order from Grubhub. There's just all of these things where like the amount of convenience that has been offered to me is stunning. and like even with all of that convenience i'm still like man what am i damn for it

Alexi the i mean yesterday was it no two two days ago when um the big fancy computers came out

Merlinpeople were like oh god they're oh yeah we gotta talk about that yeah oh after show after show

Alexwhat yeah yeah but just and i'm not saying like oh boo on you folks but it's like oh god they're already out um they're already unavailable till november i know well that's that's what that's

MerlinThat's the only thing that kept me from buying a phone. That's the only thing that kept me from buying the phone I didn't need was once I saw, as I told you, once I saw what it would cost, the fact, if I could have gotten that the same day, Alex, I can't promise you that I still wouldn't have gotten it. If I could have gotten it same day.

AlexIt's an amazing hit of-

MerlinOh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, let's, you know, here's the thing, America. Let's hope there's not going to be a chaotic holiday shopping season. Get those dads behind the wheel.

so my kid liked this show a lot and um i gave it a swing and i admittedly did watch it quote unquote wrong but it was it's so funny because this is again one of those shows where my wife and i were watching it together because she'd already seen the first episode and was off doing whatever the fuck and i was really pulling for it to be something i could super get into

and i'll stop talking in a second because i we should we should walk through this but like there's so many times i was really pulling for like for example when we first get the reveal i think the storytelling is a little muddled uh i i'm unclear about how the girl got out and was picking pockets and is this all the first day for all of these people and is number one really that old and he's but he's only been there for one day like how long have people been in this weird dorm but when they first did the reveal of the dorm or whatever the gym with the beds in it and the which is a wonderful piece of production design where basically as i'm sure it was not

lost on you all the people in that facility are essentially sleeping on shelves like their

Alexmerchandise and they're stacked by number but then the people come in with the masks

Merlinwell up to before the dr doom guy came in i thought that was just stupid but like the people with the weird uh playstation masks and i was like oh i said i said to madeline i said oh i think this is what this show the show spent like 30 minutes getting up to this point but this is what this show wants to be it doesn't just want to be the guy screaming about gambling and fried chicken but i don't know it's in in that'll be that's enough for now tell me your feelings and then

AlexIt seems like it just wasn't your...

MerlinNot for me.

AlexYeah, like almost your aesthetic, but not quite because it wasn't your vibe, which these are all like Zoomer hipster words.

MerlinAnd it's not because I don't like weird stuff. It's not because I don't like weird stuff, and it's not because I don't like South Korean stuff. And in fact, last night when I tried for the third time to finish the first episode, I found myself just putting on Snowpiercer, which... Oh, interesting. Whatever anybody else thinks, I think is a fantastic film. and I'm also going to do the Snowpiercer TV show on Syracuse's recommendation.

But I don't, I mean, I like Oldboy. I like Parasite. I'm a real normie dad. Oldboy's a fucking crazy movie. I'm not against like, that's like an aesthetic like this. But, and so tell me your feelings about it. Tell me, oh, and of course, of course, Alex, the fucking, the reveal, sorry, spoilers. the reveal that everybody there is there for debt and that his brother-in-law, whomever is there, the guy who's crazy successful but is actually not successful.

And boy, did that ever land on me because something I've been saying, at least in my own head, for a long time when we talk about shame, I don't think people are anywhere near as successful as they look most of the time. Oh, no, not at all. Nobody's as successful as they look. Everybody's got debt. Everybody owes everything to everybody. And I had this thought go through my mind. is there anybody in America right now that does not owe any money to anybody for anything, including all the things? Which sounds like a really simple question, because of course, people have homes where they've got a mortgage and stuff like that, but everybody has debt.

And debt is, you've got the shame aspect of debt, but you've also got the obligation aspect of debt, which is like, nobody's truly free as long as everybody owes money to everybody else. people can exercise control of your life in so many aspects because of your combination of shame and debt in life.

AlexI remember when you're like, I'm not trying to say anything radical, but, well, that's why I chose this as a challenge. What pill did I get? Did I get black pill, red pill? I don't know. I think you got Alex pilled a little bit. Because it was like, ooh, yum, yum, yum. Oh, man, if there was a green, oh, see, now I don't want to think about it.

MerlinI got green pilled. Okay, I'm going to put notes. We're going to workshop that. Greenfield.

AlexBut like Alex B.

MerlinIt's like the seduction community except for stealing. Yeah. Hey, wait, did you just nag me? No, I stole your wallet. Oh, cool.

AlexGood Lord. Star Wars, Star Wars.

MerlinCool, cool, cool.

AlexLike I guess I assumed that the reason I made this a challenge was because I assumed that you would watch it at some point or you would get because it could be your kind of thing.

MerlinI thought I was off the hook when you skipped last week and I thought we weren't going to do it. And remember I said to you, I texted you, I first texted after I hadn't texted you for a few days because I don't want to bug you. I was like, oh, man, I'm kind of relieved because everybody's talking about Squid Game right now. Like last week was like, I hope, peak Squid Game. It was everywhere in this way that like, for example, Succession was on Sunday night. Like everybody's talking about Squid Game right now. I'm finally watching Succession.

AlexPeople stopped DMing me. I saw.

MerlinSo you really didn't know that the guy from Scott Pilgrim was on it? You didn't know?

AlexNo. no I didn't know anything about it like it was just one of those shows

Merlingo easy on the Pepsi Fuller

Speaker Aone of the great gifts of all time do you remember that in Home Alone where they're talking about don't drink too much Pepsi

Merlinyou're gonna wet the bed and he has to sleep with Kevin and he goes Fuller go easy on the Pepsi

Speaker Aand he goes with his eyebrows and then he's in Scott Pilgrim and he's so good

AlexDonald Trump being in well not that movie but the second Oh, full circle. Oh, yeah. Oh, boy.

MerlinIn the back of a limousine with a cheese pizza. It's a grid system.

Speaker AIt's a grid system, you simple bitch.

AlexSomeone said recently, like, if you can get around New York, you can get around London. And I'm like, that's a lie. You're all lying.

MerlinOh, I don't know about that. I was doing a John Mulaney bit. I was doing the John Mulaney bit where he thought Home Alone 2 was like the height of luxury because he was a kid.

AlexYeah, yeah. Oh, but we don't like him now Because baby, I truly don't know See, this is kind of what I'm talking about

MerlinYou just dropped and effectively dropped a link I mean, why are we talking? Okay, alright, alright

AlexI don't know, that's the point But you make it real

MerlinYou make the Rudy Duke real

Speaker BWhy are you still here? No, I'm not here, I'm gone Oh, 9-11. 9-11.

Speaker ASalmon droit. Qu'est-ce que c'est?

AlexThe one thing that all of the Squid Game coverage, like, yes, they're talking about debt and shame, but it's almost like no one wants to say, oh, yeah, if I was in this position, I would totally rather die. Like, it doesn't kind of make the most of, I don't know, because, you know, that's like a big, that's like a dark thing to say.

MerlinYou mean like where you're, where you're don't, you don't want it to be. So part of the, and this goes back to our trauma discussion, which by the way, I just cannot stop thinking about trauma now. It's the craziest fucking thing, Alex. It's become, I've got a new file. My big ideas file. Trauma's right in there. But, but, but it's like the thing of like, well, you know, as a QED, we talked about here, like the, the way that one, one aspect of trauma is like, we feel like we need to, our brain tries to keep us protected in the tribe and stuff like that. But then the introduction of shame makes all that so much more complicated.

So is it, if I'm understanding you, it's that you would prefer people not know about either your shame or debt. And the reason for both is shame and debt. And so you're saying you'd rather not be alive than alive in shameful debt? Talking about the characters who go into the dorm.

AlexOh, yeah. Like the one guy, he's not going to have his daughter and his mom's going to die because she, like, South Korea also does not have comprehensive health care. And like most of those people.

MerlinI mean, you should steal her debit card for gambling, though.

AlexWell, exactly. Not super cool. It was so fucked up.

MerlinYour daughter just wants fried chicken and you, title. She just wants fried chicken and you. That's all she cares about. Also, there's no way that kid would have won that claw game. Every claw game is rigged. I'll find the video about it.

AlexThe, oh, that kid? I think, see that.

MerlinEvery person who has a claw game in their venue gets to make a decision about the payout and how difficult it is to get the payout. There are levers inside of those games. I'm sure we've all seen this probably Vox video about like basically you decide how shitty your claw game is so people lose this much more or less, but everybody loses.

AlexI actually, hand to God, thought that there was going to be a pan after a camera pan after he won the claw game to the kid running off to some guy because they had

Merlinthat was a lot of contact with a child that was a lot of physical contact no no no i mean like

Alexthe kid is basically a like um ticket mule at dave and buster's like he's he's like encouraging people and he's like hey get me to play some other games and then the kid's making this guy I pay for a ton of other games.

MerlinAnd in so doing, sort of like with Wade in Deadpool, where he and the lady from the TV show play skee-ball. And unsurprisingly, Deadpool is really good at skee-ball. So he's disrupted the economy. He's basically created superinflation, World War I style. And like tickets now are virtually meaningless.

AlexWell, no, I thought he was like the owner's kid or something who was tricking people into – I don't know. I thought it would I thought it would have been a nice you have so many scenes and so many unnecessary pauses that it would have been a nice little gotcha. But anyway, yeah, no, no way that anybody can quote win at a claw game. But I mean, most of those people, yeah, they were there's a I thought one of the most interesting aspects of this versus something like Battle Royale and Hunger Games, which is definitely not inspired by Battle Royale, is the aspect of choice.

MerlinSo Syracuse thinks I'm imagining or remembering Battle Royale being better than it was, which might be true, but I don't think anybody's come close, including Hunger Games.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinEven if you can set aside the galling claim by the very talented author of Hunger Games, the author of that book claims that they had never even heard of Battle Royale. We had just talked about this, didn't we?

AlexThat makes me a little bit angry. It's crazy making.

MerlinYou've got to be kidding me. This would be the weirdest, I don't know, whatever. You know, again, bad art.

AlexIt's another thing with shame. Like I can.

MerlinOh, yeah. Shame, man. Shame explains everything. It's like I always say, if you don't know why somebody is doing something, ask yourself if it could be about money, fear, or both. And almost everything that you don't understand comes out of money or fear.

AlexMm-hmm. And these people are not in the Shirley Jackson small story, the lottery.

MerlinIs it that's the short story? The small story?

AlexI like to call it a small story. I don't know. It's a small story. Okay, I love small fiction. Oh, that's a joke in our house. You don't know.

MerlinOh, sorry.

AlexWell, now it's in mine.

MerlinWe're always, we're forever talking about small stories at our house. What do we talk about when we talk about small stories?

AlexSmall stories are overrated. I'm sorry, underrated. Underrated. Okay. Oh, goodness. See?

MerlinWell, in addition to being lazy, I genuinely loved small stories. The only class that I kind of took twice, I took two different. Well, that's not fair. I mean, I had many poetry classes, but I had two different short fiction stories where we read a lot of the same stories. They're really good. Yeah. We read The Fun House. We read the Raymond Carver Talk About Love one.

AlexI can't tell if I really loved Edgar Allan Poe or I just liked saying that I had read a bunch of stories.

MerlinI think that both are totally valid, but the way my daughter got her middle name is from a short story. The author of the short story, A Good Man, is Hard to Find.

Speaker BI still haven't read that. Gosh.

MerlinOh, it's okay. No, no, don't worry. It's no pressure. Yes, pressure. It ends with one of the greatest lines of all time. She'd have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

AlexOh, my God. That's so—

MerlinFlannery O'Connor rules. You know what? You should probably read it. It's one of those things like reading, say, Confederacy of Dunces or like reading. There's certain things that seem like when you read them, you're like, wow, this is really impossibly modern for when it came out. Maybe in tone, maybe in execution, but really even in just, you know. There was a lot of the most interesting things about what would become metafiction and postmodern stuff. I feel like a lot. Who fucking cares? Starting in short stories is all. What's that one? What am I thinking of?

It's not Roland Barthes. Who wrote In the Fun House? in the fun house. I know this. It's one of those guys. Lost in the fun house. John Barth. That's why I was confusing it with Roland Barth.

AlexOh! Rookie mistake. I thought... I didn't catch that.

Speaker AOh. Tell me about Squid Game.

AlexOh, no. I mean, you've covered all the things, basically. It's how we, I think, underestimate... Turn it around.

Speaker AWhy'd you like it? Why'd you like it? You watched it, right?

AlexI watched it, right? Oh, that's the thing. It was hard to watch, right? Because it immediately starts playing. And the dub, which I don't think the way the dub is written is that bad. But it is performed like a terrible anime. It's just, it's bad all around.

MerlinIt's like Godzilla, Godzilla level. Yeah.

AlexOh, look, it's Gamera.

MerlinYou know, that kind of thing.

AlexAnd it was unlike, actually, fuck, the Billion Dollar Code, which I was confused for a second. because I'm like, wait, is this a dub?

MerlinBillion Dollar Code is something I almost, in the same way that Syracuse clued me on Leftovers, I clued Alex on Billion Dollar Code. And I did feel the need to just, you know, judge me. I was like, this might be really up your alley. I mean, in so many ways, the log line for Billion Dollar Code is right up your alley, but the execution, it's a little corny. But I, it had, did you see what I mean though about how like it has a little bit of the spirit of Halt and Catch Fire to it?

AlexOh, absolutely. Yeah.

MerlinYeah. And the like, even if you didn't like it, I thought you should at least see it.

AlexI'm only halfway through and I try like I knew about these guys, but for another day, I it's I love it. I loved Squid Game. Oh, sorry. Squid Game immediately starts with the dub. And I have the subtitles on for just everything in general on Netflix. So it started with both. And I'm like, wait, what? And so the first.

MerlinAnd then when the cognitive, get my back on this, whether or not it's a good translation one way or another, the fact that the words on the screen differ from the words that they're speaking causes a almost uncontrollable, like cognitive dissonance.

You cannot. I could not get into it. I could not get into it because my brain was breaking.

AlexTruly, if people cared about accessibility as much as they pretended to, like more. Why isn't I talking about this? Like more people would have noticed. bring in that fire well uh but yeah and i turn i actually watched it all with the terrible dub and with the just with the subtitles because damn yeah the aesthetic and the just the sort of aside from the like episodes that felt too long but the pacing of like a korean drama and horror

film even is something I've missed and I just really liked and I don't think there's been anything sort of as on the nose in terms of shame as the as this in a while like it's unabashedly just about shame and capitalism and it doesn't try I at least I don't think it tries to be too smart like oh you get it it's it's for rich people it's like yeah this is for the rich people Like, I don't know. I just found it fun.

And I did think the acting was good, but I don't speak Korean. So who the fuck knows?

MerlinI'm going to perhaps surprise you. I do not have a formal plan to keep watching this right now. But I think I will just start over with just subs at some point. I've got a lot of stuff I'm really enjoying right now. And boy, what could be better than having a bunch of TV you look forward to watching?

Alexand well and that's what the the main thing is the is the set design and like that that's really easy to say especially in a buzzfeed article and you just have pictures of everything and it's like oh it was inspired by mc escher and they're walking on different levels because

Merlinthey're different levels of society yeah i mean i like the color for set design but and i i john gets so mad when i talk about stuff that is on an episode we haven't released yet so i'll avoid

Alexsome of that but how does that conversation go he's he's mad roderick talked to me about max for

Merlintwo minutes on monday i can't win i can't win um the uh yeah but like the prisoner certainly i mean definitely the prisoner um battle royale there's just so many things where i was like i don't know but but i'll come back to it yeah as you heard in that audio one of my biggest beefs is just if the the scene the red light yellow light um i don't know what they call it we call it red light yellow light stop but whatever what that scene with the big doll which was very cool

um i just the the the guns i was like what what the fuck is this like what what is i mean i guess i'm gonna learn if i stick with it i'm gonna learn why this is happening at all and who's behind it and why but it just seemed like i was like okay is this going to be one of those like oh all of these people deserve to die in a weird way based on their sins or is this like i just hate poor people and want to kill them with some amount of cover and like but like you could have done so

much more with that stadium like i say i would have preferred laser beams to kill them that's just me or similar and then at the end there should have been something that involved like a giant wall coming down that separates these people from those people something like that but i feel like every entity every part of this should be should have been much more like a black eyed shark who just is a killing machine wait what wall well okay so you've got the scene in the first episode where it shoots the people who are still moving after you say red light yeah oh like they're

Speaker Aoh i see like what the fuck like i said what kind of operation is this like some people are moving

Alexand it just, some people are moving

Speaker Aand it didn't notice. Like, oh, and then, oh, you can hide behind that person, but let's just shoot this other person.

MerlinAnd it's like, ah, God, like, why don't you?

AlexIt's almost like that's how capitalism is. Oh, like you hide behind somebody and then, sorry.

MerlinIn capitalism, who's doing the shooting? Well, no, you're, you're, you know, having to make a fun point. But what I'm saying is like these kinds of thrillers and horror things are much more satisfying to me. um and i shouldn't say because i haven't watched it all but like just the first of all you're right the spectacle of it very cool very much very similar to the prisoner and um the island you know in the prisoner but like you know i felt like if you're just shooting off machine guns at a bunch of people

um like what what am i supposed to draw from that like it's but the other reason like as far as the set piece part i was like yeah okay great congratulations it's 2021 you just invented the astrodome it's been around since 1976 congratulations there should have been more interesting things than that just looking like somebody trying to do good sight lines at disneyland it was just i feel like they hadn't really executed on like where i was going to go with this whereas in something like take something that's why i made that crack in the audio about saw like say what you will about saw but you get what they're trying

to do in it, which is that you don't appreciate it. Pick up the bone saw you find at your feet. You're going to be punished because you don't appreciate your life. And you're going to be punished for that in an ironic, like really creepy way.

AlexSo you didn't get that like, oh, the reason it looks like this is because they're supposed to be children on a playground. OK, so you've only seen the first.

MerlinAnd that's why they're playing children's games.

AlexYeah. And you ask, like, capitalism, who's doing the shooting in capitalism? Well, when you're a kid, do you really know who's shooting? When you're an adult, do we really know who's shooting and why?

MerlinI don't want a spoiler here. I will keep watching this. I'm sorry I watched it wrong. If this is a spoiler, don't tell me. But my daughter or somebody I was talking to about this, the guns. So there's the targeting system on the doll. It's got a Terminator heads up display. and then it sees or doesn't see movement and then guns are fired. Are the guns being fired by people or are they being shot exclusively based on the heads-up display of the doll? Is that a spoiler to tell me that?

AlexYeah, this...

MerlinOkay, never mind. Okay, cool. All right, I'll stick with it. That guy sure is emotional. A lot of yelling. That guy needs the novelty-sized bipolar pill.

Speaker BI can do that!

Show notes

Transcript

260. Small Story

Show notes

Transcript

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