267. 12th-Level Asshole

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, douse your face.

Good morning, Merlin Mann. Good mid morning.

MerlinGood afternoon, Alexandra. Good morning.

AlexThank you.

MerlinBulavanaka.

AlexHow are you? Mraftonoon. Mraftonoon. I am doing, you know what? I'm doing great. I have accepted.

MerlinOh, you should send me that with your new sticker app.

AlexMy new sticker app? What's, no.

MerlinYou made me spend $2 on the silliest thing I've ever, ever, ever bought.

AlexOkay, we should discuss this. because is this the pre-flight i can never tell let's i still don't know what a pre-flight is isn't it supposed to be a checklist we don't have a checklist we don't have a style guide

Merlinit's just pure chaos i don't even have a manifesto i can't get you to say the same thing the same way twice with the same construction it's really upsetting um this doc is a mess and we need to work on it i'm buying a back brace and i'm looking here oh yeah yeah it's a challenge it's for a challenge you don't know about yet um we're gonna improve our posture oh this document is a goddamn mess. Here's what I've got. News and topics. I'm going to read this to our audience. May I do this? I'm sorry. Yeah, this is Overland Rules.

Alex would like to say thank you. New devices. VR curious household. Merlin's partial podcast bankruptcy. Siri light colors. Bonus friend points for a matchy. Epstein household manual.

Three times a day, according to Ghislaine. Last night in Soho, what we do in the shadows, ringtones, and Alex Mask Off.

AlexI don't remember what Alex Mask Off was.

MerlinYou kept saying something about YouTube and Mask Off, and then like a goddamn idiot, I said, what the fuck is Mask Off? And you're like, oh, Mask Off. It must be a TikTok thing.

AlexNo, it's not a TikTok thing.

MerlinIs it the couch guy? Is the couch guy in trouble?

AlexNo, no.

MerlinHassan Nabi is in trouble.

AlexHe was banned from Twitch for saying Cracker.

MerlinWait, the guy from TV?

AlexNo, the guy from Twitch.

MerlinOh, nice.

AlexNo, he's the attractive...

MerlinHoss of Mondi.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinWell, okay. Wow, what a disordered mind you have in your whole generation.

AlexInternet native, as you say.

MerlinKind of like sweeping up after a movie and trying to find a lot of meaning in the bucket.

AlexOh, okay. Here's the thing. News and topics. I added 1.5 things to this.

MerlinThese are mostly, you know, these are all of these are mine except for mask off. Or maybe I put that in. Alex would like to say thank you, which might be a parallel with my bonus friend points for Matchy. I think I already covered that. Did I cover that last week?

AlexI don't know. People just keep saying nice.

MerlinEverybody should have a friend like Matchy that's only ever nice to them.

AlexYeah, I.

MerlinThat might that might be a codicil for me going forward, as I like to say on a go forward basis. I think. Was that funny to you? It was funny to me. okay I'll play it in a minute um but I think I might have said but I'll say it again I need everybody needs a friend like matchy you're never gonna get friend like matchy you got a friend in

Alexme um that was a very upsetting Randy Newman my favorite part is when he goes um I used to sing

Merlinthis off we just listen this every day when I drove her home probably listen to the white album or Toy Story and I and I was looking in the rearview mirror and she's back there eating some finger berries out of a little container. I go, some of the folks might be a little bit smarter than I am. Bigger and stronger, too. I would do that. Sing the Randy Newman part from that.

AlexThat didn't frighten her. That was the most frightening Randy Newman.

MerlinI'm her daddy.

AlexDaddy-like.

MerlinI cleaned her poops.

AlexOh, no.

MerlinI'm not a good dad, but I'm a nice dad.

AlexYou know what? I don't know. I've not seen a lot of your first-hand parenting, but I strongly disagree.

MerlinI beat the shit out of that kid. Beat the fucking shit. I beat the gay out of that queer.

AlexWould you like to go, oh, you're going to be the old lady?

MerlinI'll give you something to cry about.

AlexOh, yeah, I'm going to push you down.

MerlinI'm just going to never get some. Well, no, you got to keep them wondering. Otherwise, how do they get that trauma? It should be unexpected and kind of random. A slot machine of slapping. Alex that trauma book is really good did you read that book about trauma

Alexoh oh I yes I have read that book about trauma twice now I believe book is still fucking me up

MerlinI two new things a week at least that's always two things with uh Yordick von Hocken van der math i i uh i'm gonna get his name right is it henrik vanden clef van vander vander slice hoven what's his name henrik what's his name hi uh let's look it up let's look it up and you know what challenge no i think uh the body keeps the score okay uh uh his name is is then he's gotta

be dutch that's an assumption you know what happens when you stick your finger in a dike brain hey easy brain mind and body in the healing of trauma and the author's name is vessel van der kolk now can we get a mnemonic for that vessel vessel sounds like bissel which sounds like a vacuum cleaner okay uh vessel van der kolk i refuse to say this man's name because okay anyway there's no way for me to say it without being i can't say i've tried alex this

Alexbook is still can i just say alex's book is still fucking me up i think that's a good thing i may be

Merlinin danger i may be in danger of this becoming something my worst friend john syracuse hates which is a skeleton key i feel like this fucking book explains so much shit about the world yes yes and me i'm in the world i do that i want to be known for one thing and that is one thing

Alexsending you this book oh oh look uh oh i i i'm trying to find the day oh here we go uh august 29th 2021 um the one exception is my new york times podcast come for the guests leave for the kindle sample when oh this is mean when cara and ezra started you were okay okay everybody's always

Merlinwanted to be remembered for one thing i get a lot of jazz on the internet for forgetting

Alexoh my god i'm so sorry this is my thing this is my one thing uh i get a lot of jazz on the

Merlininternet for forgetting who told me about something yes like i'm erasing them like

Alexyou know total twitter erasure don't take my trauma val i'm in a weird mood today where did you serve you know what i would i think your your velocity and viscosity is great today so you can go

Merlinwherever what the fuck is up with you why do you guess what i'm like i'm not i did that to you i don't go where you go and slap the trauma out of your mouth i always fuck up that joke let me do another take go ahead and fix this make me sound smarter hey i don't go where you work and slap the trauma out of your mouth what do you have is that 365 what do you have oh

Alexit's i'm trying to open oh there we go uh some kind of a trick it's not like you just opened four drinks no um monster energy zero ultra energy drink oh happy 12th birthday yeah jesus christ oh my 10 calories what's next lisa franks

Merlini found in cleaning my office i found a box that over the years has accumulated oh here's an emma thing like so i got an area a pile of uh of precious things which are like things that she drew or blah blah blah then i have a box of like shit she used to play with when she was here when she was little and it's a fun time capsule because whenever i find stuff i throw it in that box and i brought her home uh i think of course we bought it at walgreens america's store a book of lisa frank stickers from when she was probably seven or eight and uh she covered

an entire phone case with them it's really really fucked up like one lisa frank sticker kind of cute it's like a rainbow unicorn wearing converse when you cover a whole phone case with them it's really fucked up it's what i imagine charlie charlie kelly's brain looks like on the

Alexinside yeah yeah and especially uh her generation lisa frank if you want to stick on the hamburger

Merlinstore my twitter bio until this morning um was uh yeah i don't think he gets this man which is one of the great especially when you watch the bloopers you appreciate what a fucking great line rating that is and they keep cracking up you know the scene i'm talking about

Alexthe uh from

Merlingang solves the let's see i think why am i

Alexsnapping um gang solves the gap yeah where they put the they take gas and they put it in the spoilers they put

Merlingasoline in the 55 gallon drunk yeah and then but then like they go they're outside i remember they're at like what looks like an odd oh they're trying to buy a van there's anyway there's somewhere outside of a van and they're standing around and charlie keeps talking about their roles right because you know i think wild card wild card bitches and jumps out um anyway long story short and they're talking to him and charlie's obviously he's responding in a way where he's obviously not listening or not hearing does charlie realize that we're talking does he know that we're talking he goes and charlie just goes yeah i don't think he gets

this man and each time he does it in the bloopers they just die because it's so fucking funny what's my current one now my current one now is this from the song you let my tires down i I think, unless I changed it. Oh, I also put up a new Twitter header today. I don't know if you're looking at the internet.

AlexOh, I am back on Twitter in a bad way. Sorry, Quinn, if you're hearing my...

MerlinYou know what you do? I've seen you doing your threading. I've seen you threading.

AlexI'm threading.

MerlinCould you say something? And then I can feel, because I feel like I know you, and I'm going to judge you a little bit here. You post something, and then you go like this. You go, and then you write something after it. And then I think you write that, and you go, and so you'll do like uh you'll do like a three two three two uh thread three three two two thread hey that was five comedy points that was good i'll look at i look at my photo i took that photo with my new camera you see the see the header up there that's that's that that's that window with abraham lincoln in it and then there's me uh in the woods i'm not even that's okay don't

Alexworry about it you're good i can hear my keyboard and oh what's going on you having some kind of in their anesthesia or no i'm having a oh you tweeted it again you should just tweet this um

Merlinovercast link once a day that's i i well what i'm gonna do i didn't realize i needed to do this until this morning but i'm having a little bit of well here's another example for years i've loved quoting things and the record shows i've apparently loved quoting things wrong and that's how i got the quote document and the quote document exists for me to find the closest i don't know quote doctor whatever it's called but i quote quote investigator um it's already taken but you go and um so i started making a list and i would do my very best to be the quote doctor and track down

the actual thing that someone said and perhaps unsurprisingly because this has become a bit you know uh mark twain you know pipe uh winston churchill pipe gandhi like what you know i'm doing regular expressions here um but you um you get it wrong and you say the wrong thing and like but it's very important well like gandhi said you know almost nothing you do in life will be important but it's very important that you do it now i've got to find that quote because that might be from an apple poster i'm albert einstein we can't both now is a great time to buy a computer oh we got our

Alexside sidebar i notice now that your twitter header is a picture of a picture of yourself i took it this morning yeah with my new camera why do you have a picture of yourself that's my business card the but it's it's but i don't know it's very cute i find i find this very nice i don't know why do i have a picture of myself yeah i don't know it's my business card it's well yes

Merlinbut it is also a photograph i couldn't put the back on there none of that information's right anymore i'm not a thought leader that's a window i found on the street now it's got abraham lincoln

Alexin it oh let me show it i it's a very very like there are a lot of things i in your office because I was very, very privileged to be

Merlinable to visit. It's like a cis straight silence of the lambs cellar. No, it's

Alexnot. No, no. It puts the

Merlinnano leaf in the basket.

AlexWould you fuck me?

MerlinI would do the creepy dance looking in the mirror with my necklaces. Except I'm listening to Tropical Fuckstorm. And I'm a surplus loner. Call me ass goods of parole. Have I gotten into that band yet? I really haven't. Have I?

AlexNo. Wait, is that Big Star? What's this?

MerlinYou let my tires down. So where they eat the buscetti, they eat the buscetti backwards.

AlexNo, no. Oh, ew.

MerlinIn that music video, they give them the buscetti.

AlexI love Deacon.

MerlinHey, you know what? I think my velocity might be a little fucked up today. I love it.

AlexI love it. Oh, good.

MerlinNo, I'm so insufferable. She's the dog with the diaper. You scroll down a little bit.

Alexwith the diaper. Oh, oh, look at the face.

MerlinDo you subscribe to this? Pets all, pets salon.

AlexNo, I don't. Now I am.

MerlinIt's a Japanese pet groomer and they take photos. Extraordinary. If you ever try to take a photo of an animal, it's pretty hard to get like a legit good one, especially if it's a dog in an outfit, who's just has like a bulging rotten left eye. And like is on a stage, in this case, wearing what appears to be underpants. Try and get a good photo of somebody else's dog this consistently. And they fucking kill it. And here's the beauty part. You know how we have time zones?

Right about the time I'm getting home and my brain is fried, QED. I sit down. I open my laptop computer. And they're starting to post. Because it's morning. It's like, well, you say morning in America is what Ronald Reagan said. But it's morning in Japan. and they're not mourning as in weeping, but they post dogs and so all night long I'm getting dogs, dogs, dogs. Look at chocolate. Look at that sweet face.

AlexAll of these dogs are very, very,

Merlinvery, very, very. I love the ones with the bulgy eyes though. You know when they get the rotten eye?

AlexThe rotten eye?

MerlinLet me find a rotten eye photo for you. The thing in Japan. Like an allergy eye? Excuse me? Energy eyes?

AlexAllergy eyes. When they get the group.

MerlinOh, you get eye scratchy, cough due to cold? yeah yeah my dog had allergies wait no do you like cute dogs or do you only like a certain remind me like like for example this let me let me run translate and get the dog's name do you like ken coon i'm saying this right now like ken coon you like you know is that a too

Alexcute dog for you too much waiting waiting oh oh my good this because to me that's a precious angel yes this is a puppy stuffy this does not look like a real dog like if go to the account because

MerlinWe'll put this in show notes. It is extraordinary. And it seems to really specialize in old fucked up toy dogs.

AlexYes.

MerlinThere's a lot of, I don't know what you call it. A lot of these are water dogs of some kind, like poodles.

AlexThis one's wearing a vest.

MerlinOh, look at this handsome, handsome boy. Oh, my God. It's like, what? What? I love dogs. I can't find a good. Oh, here's a bulgy eye.

Alexand this this this poor dog is also being held up by a leash i know i know you can tell some

Merlinsome of them are some of them are so fragile oh look at this i think this is a papillon look at

Alexthis one uh papillon that's french for a butterfly oh my god this is this is such great audio content but it's worth it oh those ears are i know i know but i bet that's a lot of work to groom

Merlinboy i'm not finding a good bulgy eye here oh here's here's one this one's fucked up smile who is this this is chiti chan i think chan means chan is the suffix for like a cute little thing

Alexright wait do you translate the the names yeah that's how i know that's chocolate yeah

Merlini thought you just named it chocolate no no it's chocolate with no e but i figured that's going to you know couldn't afford the vowel oh this is i knew a guy in college and uh his name is mark singer but he went by scum and scum was uh at new college you're considered an alumnus alumni alumni uh you're considered an alumnus if you've completed one semester at new college which i always thought is cool doesn't mean you're a graduate it means you know it's cool

Alexlike it means you matriculated oh yeah no it sounds yes yeah so like you could be in the

Merlinalumni association if you've only gone there for like you know one semester but anyway scum was

Alexreally cool it's like bennington college that's cool interesting bennington college i mean new

Merlincollege is is sort of uh i don't know it's sort of the airport salad of educational brokenness like yeah like grab it and go college yeah yes mark's uh scum's real name was mark singer and he ran the film series he was amazing what do you mean by the film series like a movie club type thing what is film series student affairs allocates monies and at the beginning of the academic year you can go in and say i want some monies um and so that was that was always one

that got like and nobody didn't like the film series so basically scum comes in and goes i want this much money and scum gets up there and puts scum looks like a filthy like little like ronnie james do like like if you had to do a composite sketch of every non-human character in um lord

Alexof the rings as soon as you said the name that was what i was picturing and yeah exactly i'll

Merlinhe was super cool really nice really smart but like that's how i got so gay bones for the janice films jitter logo it was like i mean this is where i saw where do i begin stuntman a gary wrath of god uh i mean like every movie that not every movie but so many of the movies that were so formative kenneth anger movies like really fucked up movies um and but he would come in and it's student affairs everybody would always go you know it's a very small school and you come and ask for monies and it was the uh first year my friend dan got a four track for for the for the college

Alexand which is my first experience with a four track wait so it was like you can just go and ask for monies how a different time good lord but it has to be it has to be for stuff but scum would

Merlincome in it's gonna put a fucking show like scum would come in and really he was like like a filthy court jester he would come in and scum would just with gesticulating and creating writing on the board and making diagrams and laying out the case for how he'd chosen the movies for this year and here's how much money he needs to rent the movies oh i genuinely love that that's oh it was the best and you know you could go into it's called the what's called the teaching auditorium it's this very uncomfortable room the but it was available to students it had a screen it had those like rb style chairs that don't move you know like oh yeah but you can also sit on the floor and you

could be a little bit drunk you'd be a little bit high and you could bring in stuff with you and you could hang out and you'd watch you know sort of like an mst3k you'd have like a short subject sometimes and then a feature but like shit dude like okay okay i i i'm not from sweden i'm not scandinavian but i was once young and i sat there on the floor a little bit high and watched the seventh seal and i thought it was the greatest thing i had ever seen in my life because that's how i was now you watch the seventh seal now and you go wow max on side i thought i looked old in in the 50s um but it was great and it was so formative and my god when we talk about what we

talk about when we talk about college fucking college it's all so stupid except for the parts where it's not getting the opportunity to go live with 419 other really smart people in central florida and have a man named scum come out and introduce a gary the wrath of god to you holy shit um point being scum mark singer me mark singer scum spelled his name scvm because he couldn't afford a vowel which was a very funny wheel of fortune joke

Alexyou know in the 1980s my mother would appreciate that that joke that's uh is we all fortune still

Merlina thing if you ever said anything to scum about anything he'd say okay yeah yeah cool all right like he still had even though he didn't go to school anymore he still had his p.o box they just let him keep it and he would always say okay cool you know i live in i live in um you know po box 127 just leave me a note in there when you're blah blah blah he's a really nice guy and you go there and you open the door and there was a tiny a tiny table and two chairs it was because he lived in box 127

Alexthere was i i mean i went to a very different school than well the more you talk about new college the more i realized that uh columbia college chicago was aka not the good columbia

Merlinis and by the way new college not the oxford

Alexbut it was very um sort of choose your own adventure in terms of how you like your own curricula and stuff yeah yeah so i basically well i didn't dick around i mean i dicked around in good good ways i i guess yeah i mean you you've talked before about giving yourself an

Merlinulcer when you're in third grade or getting sorry being caused to have an ulcer in third grade because you you were hey i don't do these this word when you're a kid you're a little bit of a grind weren't you a little bit of a grind well like the kind of like uh i mean it's on that spectrum of like studious hard working smart grade grubbing but like it's it's in that venn diagram of the kid who works harder than they maybe even need to and are really driven you were like that all through your um public school education oh sorry you're my get my my you know what i mean

right what were you i guess i'm trying to say is as you entered college columbia not the good one were you still like that were you still very industrious and hard-working and needy uh there

Alexyes but there was a very big difference because the neediness went from the like authority figures

Merlinto my peers and well you've gone to catholic um high school but this was a uh a sectarian

Alexuh uh college right yeah i went to a catholic that's no that's what i'm trying to say what's

Merlinthe word um secular so i just i thought it was a bit so i agreed yeah i went to a baptist yeah

Alexbut i i went to a i went to catholic school my whole life went to a catholic college real uh went insane dropped out and then went to uh art school and was like you yeah i i was the same way except i was giving myself ulcers for i didn't actually get an ulcer i think you got different ulcers oh worse and more diverse

You have so many things in your news and topics. Well, new devices is how I read that.

MerlinYeah, yeah. The first person I ever saw do that was, I think it was Jen. And I didn't realize it was a black lady thing. I just thought it was so funny.

AlexThe cops.

MerlinIt's a black lady thing, right?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinIsn't it yet another thing we've stolen from them?

AlexI don't know. Probably.

MerlinI assume. Yeah, everybody's black on the internet. um but the new devices that's kind of boring um the vr curious you enjoy your phone is is what you're saying oh by the way a pre-flight um i that term for me although it obviously has a more specific meaning in aeronautics and aviation right before we fly we do these things including your checklist and stuff like that there was an amazing so really one of my first killer apps was page maker which is a layout app that was popular you know because you know let's

go back apple kind of started the personal desktop publishing revolution with the laser writer and then companies like aldis which was later acquired by adobe um put out page maker so you could make really pretty professional looking desktop publishing things very easily um and wait what was the point of this oh but but as as we moved it was one thing to print it to your laser writer or your image writer like i have which is like you know you got you do want to make sure you're using a font that like if you use like new york or palatino it'll look good because those

are system fonts but if you want some wackadoo fonts they could be blocky because back in the day you had to have a bitmap font for on screen and a postscript font for printing oh lord and oh before you type and all that kind of stuff for ots that was a real pain in the ass and what about your images like did you include an embedded image on the floppy disk with your document because if you didn't all you're going to get is the preview that was rendered back in page maker and it would really suck for your very you know your costly brochure to go out and you

missed something on say for example especially a font or an image and somebody i think a third party came up with this app called what was it aldous preflight but it's called preflight and preflight you could run it against your your page maker file and it would make sure that you had that all the fonts and images or any other assets were included with it it was a lifesaver so i still think to me pre-flight means i'm getting ready to send this to the bureau then a couple years would go cork only and break my heart but um because it's a terrible company

Alexand they hate their users uh well did did you ever have to use microsoft front page yes i chose

Merlinto use that because that well page mail was probably the first one of those page mail and then front page both did similar garbage jobs of turning things into html yeah i totally would use that page maker or sorry what was it called not page mail um front front page put so much garbage did you ever use it i let's just go back let's go back in our minds microsoft word did not always have a save as or export html i mean i guess that should be obvious but it's worth

mentioning that if you want to get stuff on the web one of my jobs was making trade show my big job in the mid 90s when i first went freelance was doing a trade show website so i would get a cd full of all the assets all the microsoft word files and i automated as much as i could but i mostly had to save stuff out i had to zap the gremlins like knock get out all the weird page breaks there some of them from different different parts of the company might be encoded in different ways you know um and so what that was one of my big jobs was take all these microsoft word files

for these you know biography and bullshit sites as we called them the bmd site and um and have to get all that out and then front page came along and you could like memory serves you could open

Alexup your word file and then just save as html yes and well yes you would have been real really young

Merlinthen you would have been this is before go live cyber studio we're talking about 95 to 97 maybe

Alexyou'd be so young then well my i'm gonna give myself a pod ulcer we use that to tell it on yourself self-report i really wanted our in high school our student newspaper to be online as well because I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with all of you? And so I was the editor of the features.

MerlinI was the feature editor in high school.

AlexYeah, it was. I used to want to be a writer.

MerlinMe too.

AlexOh, shut up. But so there was, and we only had Windows computers for some reason at this school for all the fucking money it had.

MerlinBut like not DOS, not Macs. We're talking about Windows 3. No, for you, it would have been probably Windows 95, right?

AlexNo, we were on XP. But it was also the final release of FrontPage.

MerlinWait, what is?

AlexOh, yeah. 2007. I graduated high school in 2009. So we were using this disaster. And I was on your velocity. I was in such a good mood. and now I'm having a layout ulcer.

MerlinYou're doing terrific. Just lean into it.

AlexOh, great. Lean.

MerlinDon't edit. Don't edit. I mean, if people don't like this, plenty of other much more understandable shit out there. We're giving people what they need.

AlexOh, I hope so.

MerlinI mean, we're the friend who does butt stuff and doesn't make a big deal about it.

AlexNo. No.

MerlinThat stuff.

AlexWe're the friend who is like, you do your butt stuff. I affirm and accept your butt stuff, but do not come near my butt, please don't come near my butt i am are you touching about your butt i don't want anybody near my butt i just i the i i returned all as i say but i don't you you have had much stranger

Merlindemands in life i think that it's complete i mean i don't know you i your lived experience but like i think wanting people not not to not to fuck about don't mess about with your with your butt uh butt stuff friend uh oh yeah front page front page 2009 you're happy with your

Alexnew device that... Did you just change the topic? No, I... You're the one who brought up butts. I did... No! No! You brought up butts! Scratch, scratch, scratch!

MerlinYou're wondering how I got here.

AlexYeah, that's a meme, right? Oh, you... Yes! You got your iPhone that you like and you took a picture. I don't know. You can lead the way...

MerlinNow everything exports everything. It's bananas. Everything like these kids don't understand. There was a time when you had to bring the mountain to Muhammad. I think it could be argued and has been argued two decades ago that what there's a lot of things that made the Mac interesting and appealing. And I mean, it was so costly compared to other kinds of computers. But one of the things they did is say, hey, look, you know, we're going to have to learn to play ball. It's so funny to me that one of the things that made the Mac less unsuccessful was the dedication of people honestly like guy kawasaki people who went out there and

evangelized and said look you should work with us but we also need to work with you so you know we're going to make our shit work with your shit we're going to use these floppy disks that have usually been used for pcs we're going to come up with you know um networking systems that are proprietary but but play well with the wires the rj14s or whatever they're in your wall you know that's that's how you know until they could make their own but they made their own printers but now they won't make their own their own router which is heartbreaking or their own

Alexmonitor that doesn't cost more than a house the just the foot the pretty shitty house the feet

Merlinlittle feats yeah i don't i should shoot me another dog um yeah i got our devices oh do you want to do gratitude later podcast bankruptcy what are we talking about here do we don't have to we don't

Alexhave to talk about it i don't have to do anything but die i don't know what merlin's partial podcast bankruptcy means whatsoever so let's i'm worried that it's a little bit nasty but you just you know you go go go off king be a bitch um that's a meme too no i know i thank you

MerlinI feel like we've, I feel like we've discussed this directly, privately, is that, I'm just going to say it, like, I am a big fan of probably about half, maybe half a dozen podcasts on Slate. And like, one of the reasons, well, like, as with this is, I wanted the vaccination so I don't make other people sick. I pay for media because I like the people who do it. I don't, I'm not going to run a store and I don't want you to run a store. if i give you money like i give money to like three or four people on patreon that literally

don't make anything hi at me oh shit i do that no but like i there's people out there and i'm not saying do nothing but like i just give andy mcmillan money because i really like him and i i want to support what he does i pay for pinboard because i like uh mache and i i's so interesting and i love what he does and i'm dropping some of my physical subscriptions because it's i don't know i mean i've given enough money that i hope gia tolentino and you know helen rosner know i love them she's gonna be fine yeah i think she'll be fine but

like with you know that kind of stuff what was my point you're declaring bankruptcy oh yeah okay but i i don't want to tell on myself but so what do i love let's just get some of these out of the way i'm sure i'll forget somebody but obviously political gap fest uh don't love culture gap Fest like they used to. I think they've kind of lost their passion. And now they're just smart

Alexand mean. Oh, that's a good way to describe it. Yeah. Steve, I don't think Steve likes what they

Merlindo. I don't. Yeah. So anyway, I've kind of fallen off that one, which will become important in a second. Gab Fest. I love sorry. Political Gab Fest. Slate Money. I really enjoy, especially Stacey. And I like them all. But Stacey's been a great addition. I love Hit Parade. I love Decoder ring i love uh how to especially when charles duke was uh hosting it i love anything with uh with um june thomas especially the old x uh you know x y or whatever it was called the x x before

Alexthey did a chicken yeah yeah they did a chicken and i think slate in general did a chicken yes and

Merlinit's okay first of all is it horrible what i'm saying is it horrible and unkind what i'm about to say no a lot of their shows they have it feels like there's been some meetings maybe like six months of meetings and decisions were made which is fine and it feels like there was a decision i'm not gonna say it was to be more woke but i am gonna say it was to take a a moonshot at a new and different kind of relevancy but the shows that that has produced aren't for me

Alexmm-hmm well and that begs the question who are they for raises raises the question not okay i've

Merlinuh raises cut that out but i'm saying i'm saving your ass on that one you become a better person

Alexwhen you stop saying baby question that was i'm so sorry i did that cut that out no no no no no i was trying to do it in the joe rogan voice and i failed i i accept i i yeah yeah merlin man doesn't think alex cox is funny uh mask off i don't mask off couch guy but that's a lot of what

Merlinit started with um what was it originally called before they called it xy but back when it was those three fucking amazing women so it was oh shit the woman who is there's june thomas there's the younger girl and then there was that you know the woman who does the woman does decoder a ring no it was but you know the other the third woman but those three that was such a great show because they weren't 20 in june thomas's case i mean i don't want to speculate but she's like a

smart scottish lesbian and she's fucking amazing and but she's not like a weirdo she's really really smart and see she's like all these women have seen some shit some more than others but they can talk really intelligently about like a lot of stuff and i feel like that's when things for whatever reason when they stopped making that show and they changed it to xy and then it turned into like an forgive my saying basically like an msnbc nmsnbc coverage of something about voting rights in congress which it turned into a lot of like you know very photogenic young black women

which is great i love the representation i'm not saying i hate it i am saying to quote adam Lissagor, it's not for me. And why is that a problem? It's just because you can do a thing where you go into Slate and you can like go onesie twosies easy. If you like Slate and you realize you like most of their podcasts, whatever, you just get the Firehose feed, right? The Firehose feed is, I don't think it's ever been fewer than five episodes a day, probably. And I, it really started to feel like i was getting maybe 10 episodes a day which is not a problem if you

like over half the shows ask yourself what happens when there are shows that you either don't like or just aren't interested in so now i'm paying whatever i'm paying to mostly delete podcasts every day oh oh oh i know he's gone now but mike mike pesca the guy seems cool i enjoyed him on npr but like i don't i never liked mike pesca podcasts of which there at one point were like 40 and like it's just and so like i delete i'm still paying for slate i love them they don't make me log in quite as often as the daily beast but boy do they make me log in a lot um and i deleted the feed

just to see what happens and a funny thing happened on the way to the overcast which is that i went like this alex i said huh because i found myself on the one hand thinking oh there should probably be a new episode of hip parade the bridge or obviously it's saturday we should be a new slate money but of course i had to leave that feed but apart from that uh this noise huh i didn't crazy miss it so obviously i will go back and make sure that i have access to

the dickersons and whatnot but um i had too many i was too much shit coming in that i didn't want i was putting compost in a crisper blah blah you seem how do you feel about that uh i'm

Alexconfused as to why you feel or i i'm i apologize it seems like you feel conflicted or guilty

Merlini feel mean i feel mean like i i have i'm lightly acquainted with a handful very lightly acquainted with a handful of people there both the talent and the tech behind the scenes people i've i've at least had like you know very i don't know i i know who jim thomas is and it would not surprise me that without knowing it, she knows who I am because she's super into a bunch of the stuff that I'm into, including stationery and pens. Right. So like, I don't think she knows quote

who I am, but I think if you said, Oh, that's the guy that did that. She might go, Oh yeah, right. That guy. Right. That's not that it matters. I would never in a million years want to be hurtful toward people who make something that I love. And even, and I I'm enough of, I'm sort of person who should feel bad about picking a shirt and like hurting his feelings. and so like they would have no way of knowing that i'm not listening to what they did but like i feel like kind of a dick about it and i feel like a double dick huh huh i think it's called dp yep director of photography they call it you um but i feel like even now like if that got back

to them i'd be bummed if benjamin fresh hears about this i'd be kind of bummed i don't think dickerson would care one way or another he'd probably just read as thomas merton and everything

Alexwould be fun the well that's that's oh this is a big old can of where i can't that's not original but are you sad when people i guess you are sad when people stop listening or reading something

Merlini do yeah yeah well i mean secondarily yes but a thousand percent bigger primarily is i don't care well okay here's the thing and i've told you this before i'm gonna name a name because i've been cagey about this before but there was a time i used to be on a podcast that was pretty oh one doesn't say successful it was unpopular and i was not happy with what the show was doing i was not happy with what i was doing on this very popular show

and then one day i found out that matt howey who used to be a giant fan of at least other things orthogonal to that show including that show i guess he just told me straight up one day like i just can't listen to it anymore and i was like huh like obviously obviously i'm not made of stone i'm bummed that that a person with whom i'm acquainted doesn't like a thing that i'm involved with not because of my feelings but because well let's flash forward he became my canary in the

whole mind when matt howie stops you everybody title everybody needs a matt howie everybody out there needs somebody who's tasty trust and who's a better person than you to like let you know a whiff that you can't even detect as a scent yet and you can go oh huh that's that's a pretty good guy and he has really good taste and and he's a nice honest friend and that was telling for me So I'm more, it's more like, honestly, just I'm, it's more mercantile.

It's more practical, which is like, I don't care about the fucking raw numbers. I wish I could pick literally who listens to all of my shows. I wish I could tell you, you are literally IP band. Like you're not allowed to enjoy this show. You, you aren't good enough. You aren't, you don't get it. And like, I don't think it's not for you. And yeah, now it's not for you either. um anyway but like no i mean honestly like i find it i i wouldn't want to say this too much

publicly but it's it seems so on the one hand you have the matt howeys in your life or whomever and like i say you know get your man who can do both be your friend and be honest but um i do sometimes feel the awe of somebody who can like detect that you're not up to date and like that i really don't want to be like that. And I, I, let's put it this way. If I were like that, how, however in life would I benefit if I became more like that? If I started taking it personal and making it personal.

AlexYeah. So that's why I'm confused and, and well said that you would think that, uh, people, I don't know. It's, it's slate. They, they know many, many people. They have a large audience. you have a large audience at your other programs but but like i mean okay like for example

Merlinoh boy let's cut right to the chase um like so far the season of sunny is is pretty good it's not amazing it's pretty good it's pretty good and um of course i'm still listening to podcasts i'm still it is still a top three show in our house it's just watching the show but like this it's so with sunny it's like this season's pretty good it's not incredible and that kind of helped me out a little bit because like i just i want it to be good i know how it feels to make something that you're really excited about and really happy about like in same way that when people like around episode three of succession a lot of people were like i don't know about this

season and like i was like oh like i like this season you know there is like a three percent part of this which is like oh do i just not have good taste but then the other part of it is like oh i don't want people to say mean things about succession because i got in a fight with cory doctor once because you know he would go on these giant jeremiah ads about you know the eff style stuff and he had written this really good piece for boing boing about npr changing their terms of service and they had the most bullshit thing in their tos which was like you're not allowed to link to this site without permission and cory tore them a new asshole over several days as he was

want to do um and i i you know got with him probably through email and said hey just you know I know some people at NPR because I was doing some work with them at the time. And so there's a lot of really good people there. And this is happening like above their pay grade. And it was gross that I did that because then he went off understandably on me, you know, and it was like, well, no, this is this is a legal thing. It's really it's ridiculous. And but that's how I get I get a personal affection, a personal fealty or loyalty to certain things, not just because I want to be loved in the cult.

like oh god please don't make me beloved in the apple cult no thank you like you know do you know i'm talking does that make sense i don't want to make you sad about my big dad but i do feel like you know i i am a not i'm a fan but i'm also a cheerleader and so like i don't like i don't enjoy sports the way a lot of people do but i pull for people like i want john mulaney to be happy my daughter and i say this to each other all the time i just want that person to be happy yeah i want i want um um the girl from um from dub sick uh uh caitlin deevers i don't know

sometimes we just look at each other and i just want caitlin deevers to be happy in life

Alexonly one episode in is that the lesbian that is also in book smart the oh oh fuck yeah oh she's

Merlinreally a lesbian um and she's also in short short term 12 which is extremely good the uh

Alexoh god yeah many many times she's the she's the kid she's the kid yeah i'm just like oh she's a

Merlinbaby in that my god she's so little she i mean like she's one of those kids that like one of those people and it's often women but like her or like the girl's name kenzie thomason or whatever the girl from you know soho well i just i i'm i'm i was about to say the phrase i'm really attracted those little girls. Oh my god. I have a special affection for children who look like children's book characters. You know, like with the big brown eyes. And you're like, how do you not want to just take care of them? Oh god, we're gonna get

C-sams. It really looks like she's in a children's

Alexbook. Oh god, Tim Cook's gonna perish. No, I'm not creepy. Oh god. Watership down? No, Tim Cook's okay. I have questions.

MerlinYou ever find yourself doing this, Alex? I don't know a ton. I mean, obviously I feel like I realized we are a little bit in a grand falloon, if not a carass, but we do from time to time, somewhat independent. How does one say independently? Because we, we have a lot of the same friends and interests and stuff. So maybe it's not unusual that we both land on a thing around the same time. And then it might even formally bubble up to the level of, you need to read the trauma book Merlin, or you need to see what we do in the shadows, Alex, right? But like, are you like that?

You seem like you're very much like that. You have a loyalty, a passion. And like, it's just, yours is even more complex because there are things that you love hate. There's not that many things that I love hate, but it feels like a lot of things. I mean, an example might be something like Elon Musk, but there are things where you do love it and you do hate it. Like you have very complicated feelings about your passions.

AlexThis was a quite, this was eight no nine years ago when i was like the the uh wow the paypal guy or the uh what was he oh yeah now he's the meanest lesbian at the bar yeah now the uh i was like oh and he he bought the he's in charge of the car company oh interesting oh he's bad oh he's really oh he's oh boy but uh i i mean no i have i have that relationship with with apple of company like

Merlinit's it's to be a fan of the biggest apple the products apple the leadership apple the what

Alexum apple the just just the the company like being yeah like to be a fan of a corporation like that's

Merlinweird i or rather i wonder it's a lot like family where it's like you know there's so much shit where you get in these tighter concentric circles around yourself and like things that are very far on the outside, like very, very like large concentric, you know, the final circles on the outside are stuff that you don't dislike, but you don't even like have an opinion about because like, who cares? Right. Like, I don't, I could not tell you who leads Burkina Faso. It doesn't mean I hate Burkina Faso.

It just means I don't know fuck all about it. As you get closer to yourself, you pass through these different things where you'd be like, oh, you know, I'm a retired Catholic. I have pretty strong, but yes, complicated feelings about the Catholic church. you get tighter and tighter until you get to yourself and you get to that level of hey i'm allowed to make fun of my family but you're not right and so like like the kind of joke like in the african-american community or in various many queer communities you would say things you might say things to another queer person with a familiarity maybe right but if anybody else ever

Alexsaid that about that person you'd be pretty steamed right oh yeah and um been guilty of that you know dropping that t word this is why you're a bad queer according to the internet well and then but then like a relative will think it's okay and like oh no no no no that was that was

Merlina big big moment for me when um it's this is so stupid but we realized oh like you shouldn't you shouldn't make a surpassing amount of racist jokes because then you go like uh okay well what's a racist joke and like a racist like there's the kind of like frank reynolds like this is the way that you do blackface stuff if an actual person were making jokes about how stupid shiftless and probably murderable black people are like that's that is legit on the nose racist but like

a person who thinks that they're smart feels like you can make a racist joke in jest this is the thing that i'm struggling with right now not just racism but just anything like i think i'm doing that as satire but if i heard anybody else say this let's say at a frat house i would find it extremely stupid and hurtful so like do i just intuit that everybody's as not even woke but as sophisticated as i am like i'm allowed to play in these dangerous waters because i'm doing satire it's like well no a racist joke is a racist joke and you probably just shouldn't do it

and it took me 50 years to kind of go oh i get i think i get it because it's even if you think you're you know you know but then on the other hand i think dm blackface is very telling i think i think robert danny jr and tropic thunder is very educational as well as amusing so i don't think it's an easy distinction but like you have to come around to like what it feels like to be

Alexin that as max used to say out group but sorry i cut you off yet again no i i love this velocity

Merlinbut isn't that part of your like your world is this like you maybe like the millennial world or in some ways some like i say some queer communities there's a lot of like jostling and you know kind of ribbing and the way that you think about the way the guys treat each i know this is an old reference the way the guys treat each other in the original boys in the band yeah they're horrible horrible to each other but everybody but leonard would probably find it really a fit leonard would find it really offensive if anybody else talked about called called uh you know the guy with the with the eye called him a fairy like that that might be

Alexfighting words i mean it's hard because i mean yeah no i know that there are many people in my life that make those jokes but they don't make them in front of me and uh i'm sitting here making jokes with you right now and i can't decide if it's horrible no it's well that's the that's why it's called oh god i hate the i don't hate but the word edgy is always is means something different now i think but i i like being on i think she's been co-opted by edge lord

Merlinthat's that's that is a bridge too far but just because you haven't reached that bridge yet

Alexdoesn't mean you're you know paddling in the right direction yeah and i mean i don't i stay away from there i mean there are so many gay and queer jokes to make that i can uh happily play in these waters uh and but some people do still get upset about that for example there is a comedian slash TED talk giver, um, Hannah Gatsby, who had a whole bit about how, oh, we need to stop making gay jokes and punching down on ourselves because

everybody else.

MerlinRemember that twist where then she changed it. And she, remember the twist, you remember the twist, she did the whole show and then there was a twist. Remember that?

AlexNo,

MerlinI remember the twist. Oh yeah. All the things I just said, uh, you know, Bob, you know,

AlexI just love you love Hannah Gadsden. And I remember being like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's that's my story. No, no, no, no, no, no. And I mean, like, like, okay, founder of Cox's Cox Cara Fagan, who has known me now for like 15 fucking years, makes jokes in my expense that you would never say in front of or about other people. and i mean i i don't know i'm it's not something i struggle but it's also but there must be

Merlinsomething to the level of degrees to this also where um so i i think i feel like i feel like i understand the very good heart of motivation of the white knights that are out there of the people who pipe in to take offense on someone else's behalf I feel like in the end I'm not sure that helps as much as they pretend to think it's helping when you come storming in

and speak, sorry?

AlexIt usually hurts, please stop

Merlinwhen you come in and you're the white suburban mom or dad who's speaking on behalf of the trans people and making announcements on their behalf and imagining what it's like to know a trans person and you come in, you come storming in at the meeting and you do that, that's what I consider a certain kind of white knighting that even if it's not primarily performative, which I think it usually is, it may not be helping. And if it is helping, it may not be helping in the way that you think or the person who you think it's helping. But whereas I feel like at least for myself,

there's a growth opportunity in my heart hurting when people make a queer joke because I go, oh, that's my kid. It's my friend, Alex. And it's like, that's really hurtful. And like, I would hate for them to take a chunk out of themselves. I never want to give my kid an eating disorder. and I also will always fail on the side of trying to make my kid feel better rather than worse about herself because there's always this whole life you're going to have of people tearing you down and like you only have a limited number of years where you get to pretend you're not terrible in

life and like I would never want anybody to take a chunk out of who she is just because they're trying to score you know score a dunk for one side or another I'm sorry not to be you know mawkish about this but i that i hope and i'm not trying to do the father of a daughter thing but like i hope that helps me grow because that's a kind of empathy a kind of empathy which is whether i like you or not i would like to understand how it feels to be you and like if we don't have that like what the fuck are we gonna do but that doesn't mean i need to go out and

become like nothing against the parkland parents but like i don't want the rest of my life to be screaming at everybody about one issue because of a thing. You know what I mean?

AlexYeah.

MerlinI think there's a difference in degree there.

AlexThere is. And that's why we talk about context all the time.

MerlinEven like code switching to a certain extent.

AlexOh, yeah. And like you said, it is a thing that if you're a part of any marginalized community, unfortunately it rarely leaves your mind because people around you are going to just remind you because they want to and maybe maybe it is a joke maybe it's like uh i mean there i don't know i i almost feel like you are overthinking this because uh like for for example like the white knight

storming in on on twitter like stop don't it's weird grab me your lance announcing your steed yeah but but on the other hand someone be like oh hey it's time it's time for a white man to

Merlinintervene i'm an ally everyone says so i'm an ally you may have my help madam or he hey alex guess what i forgot to hit record

AlexHello, and we're back. Yeah, I got it. It's all good. It's all good.

MerlinOh.

AlexWell, you... What? What?

MerlinYou're supposed to tell me really quickly.

AlexOh, I guess you've never done the Zoom recording thing. It's like Zoom is converting.

MerlinAll right, all right, all right. All right, all right, all right. Should we keep going or do you want to start over?

AlexNo. Yes. Let's just throw out that hour.

MerlinYou can't throw out time. It's like Michael Stipe says.

AlexOh, boy. I think I know. I know that you are overthinking. Just don't make. I can pretty confidently say that white people shouldn't make racist jokes.

MerlinWow.

AlexYep, I know. I'm very brave. Very, very bold.

MerlinMichael Scott would disagree. I mean, we're family here.

AlexBut there's a...

MerlinDo you want to be feared or do you want to be loved? I want people to fear how much they love me. What a great line. I'm sorry about that, Alex. Now wait, now here's a question for you. Do we leave that in? We probably leave that in.

AlexYes, yes.

Merlinall right whatever is yeah whatever uh overthinking it overthinking it okay so let's say you do an oopsie so what another thing i learned from the trauma book is like you cannot you cannot

Alexdo not count on your rationality to make it so yeah you my you're you're going to hurt people's feelings in life. You were sad that, yes, it sucks. It's a bummer.

MerlinWell, if I mean to do it, I'm really pleased because, you know, hey, headshot, no scope. Because I've been cruel through a lot of my life. I have been horrible through a lot of my life. You don't even want to know. Imagine all this instead of being directed at talking as fast as I can and amusing the person who can keep up. Imagine instead I tried to knock you down in front of your peers because I was a 12th I was a 12th level asshole.

AlexI mean, I think I think about not that specifically often, but I think about all the incredibly smart and articulate people in my life who use their powers for good instead of evil.

MerlinAnd, you know, Dickerson, really, he could take you down a peg if you wanted to.

AlexOh, gosh, he especially because he's Catholic. He I'm sure he's been through the ringer, so he could get in some dunks. But everyone's going to be unintentionally cruel. And I think the best thing to do is recognize that cruelty when someone's like, hey, that that bums me out. And by bums me out, I mean, like, you know, if if I were to be like, that makes me personally sad because, you know, the that's just like not a thing that makes me feel good.

MerlinI wonder if one way to think about it that is simple enough to explain to a child or possibly even me is to say – I mean, there's a classic sort of like, I don't know, sitcoms. Just sort of like, how's your wife? Oh, we've been divorced or she died. Like, oh, cool. So good then, huh? There's the kind of stuff where you like unintentionally really step on your dick. And actually in that example, one reason I am very – I'm not good at keeping up with people and one of the reasons is I'm terrified to keep up with people because I'm constantly fearing the first conversation where I learn that they've had a disabling accident or that their partner that I liked even better, they've been divorced from for years and like now they have kids.

And like and bad on me that I don't have more courage to deal with that as an affirmative adult. But maybe I may be a rule of thumb.

AlexOh, hold on. What do you mean by dealing with that? Like, do you mean keeping up with people or?

MerlinWell, yeah, we're like maybe like or like I had a friend. I was very close to in college who had a terrible bout with schizophrenia in the 90s. Like like all the things like bad. And like I have not checked in on that friend in a long time because I'm scared to find out.

I'm scared to find out that like, you know, he's in an institution or worse. Well, that's an extreme example.

AlexNo, it's not. That applies to one person on this podcast.

MerlinHell, I don't keep up with my ex-wife how I should. Maybe I hope I could be forgiven for finding that a little thorny. but like I love that person why do I not do that okay so here's the rule of thumb I'm suggesting well so stupid but like chicken bock bock and you um you know if try and avoid saying things to people that that you can really imagine would be hurtful you know what never mind this is this is not as profound as it sounded in my head but like you can't guess everything about another person

but you can learn to conduct yourself in a way that if not, even if you aren't up to being 20% kinder in general, you could at least to be, like I say, one of my first bullets in the document. Sometimes it's often it's easier not to be terrible. Am I unintentionally being terrible to this person? You know, and that could be even like the whole like, hey, I got accepted to, you know, Brown or whatever. You know, that kind of like, well, that could really hurt somebody's feelings if they're having a bad day.

I'm from Ohio. I kid about that, but that's the truth. I really grew up in an environment where, I don't know if this is formally taught, but one of the things in my upbringing that I was taught is don't put people on the spot.

You can guess that there's certain kinds of topics that don't need to come up here. to quote my brother-in-law, no good can come of it. And he said this one time, I don't totally agree on this, but no good can come of it. Because there are certain kinds of things in life where you're like, I can see how that would turn out all right. There's other things that are like, no, very little good can come of this. If all of the conditions are telling you that, for example, maybe as we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner is not the time to ask

why your sister-in-law is not there. because run the scenario in your head. There's eight people, ten people, oh, sorry, nine people around the table, whatever, right?

Joe Biden's always talking about that extra chair at the table. It's just, you know, that's Susan, and she makes jewelry now.

AlexTiny Timmy's just a chair.

MerlinShe makes jewelry now. Yeah, I hope she's happy. You know what I'm saying? If you ran that scenario and thought through, you know, they always say a lawyer should never ask a question. they don't know the answer to. Well, if you answer the question in your head, like come up with two or three scenarios for what the answer might be, which ones are great? Oh yeah, she's dying. Oh shit, okay, stuffing? Or, oh yeah, she's divorcing me and it's taken a really long time because I can't afford a lawyer. Oh, awesome. Okay, gravy? You know, like run through the scenarios or just like, you know,

we just had a huge fight about my affair. Turkey?

AlexAnd as you're like, turkey? You realize that you are wrong. You feel embarrassed.

MerlinAnd then you do this and you go, ugh.

AlexSo those bears are right.

MerlinI don't love the way this feels.

AlexI think we all need to be more okay with being wrong and just owning. Like, I don't.

MerlinWait, wait, wait. I mean, sorry, word guy.

AlexMessing up.

MerlinOkay. Being incorrect or being indecorous, like saying something that's not really appropriate for the setting?

AlexNo. We need – well, I need – there needs to be a broader word. We need to be okay with – I mean just with fucking up.

MerlinYeah. I know. You're right. This is part of the chicken problem. Part of the chicken problem.

AlexIt truly is. Like we make fun of that book, White Fragility, because it's stupid as fuck. Um, but there, there is just, there is white fragility and human fragility of just being like, well, I, I don't want to be seen as the dick and the chicken problem of, well, I don't want to be seen as the insensitive one who doesn't care about pronouns. Like I tell like we make fun of white knighting, but I find it nice if someone pops in is like, oh, hey, by the way, they use they pronounced now or something like that.

Not that I never expect that of somebody, but it's chill.

MerlinMy approach to that would be like, look at the person if you're intimate or like, you know, familiar with the person who is obviously about to start a really bummer paragraph. I wish you could see me visually. Imagine me sitting at the table, bringing my head up just a little bit, but not directly looking at the person, closing my eyes and shaking my head like this.

Like you'd say to that person, it's basically the physical, the body language for, hey, you know what? Don't go there. Like, let's, can we not? Like that's, you know what I mean? And like, obviously there's all kinds of ways in another pillar of comedy. This is why it's comedy and not tragedy is that the incongruity between our intentions, our desires, all of those things going horribly wrong are why comedy is great and why comedy is instructive. And that's, again, I mean, I'm not really worried at a certain point I'm going to become the greatest American stan for blackface.

Oh, my God! But no, but I mean, there really is a difference in certain kinds of things. And if you don't know there's a difference, you're going to really put your dick in the mashed potatoes.

AlexYeah, but sometimes that's okay. Or it's okay to not, I hate that, it's okay to not be okay. But I mean, so your dick's in the mashed potatoes. Take it out and clean it.

MerlinBut like, remember, again, from the document, remember whose party it is. You know what I mean? Let's remember what we're doing here and begin with the end in mind. Like, how do we make this project successful? well, I don't make somebody have to talk about their partner's illness.

Can I say something about the trauma book?

AlexNo, I hate that book.

MerlinBecause the thing I'm really thinking about now, and again, spoiler alert, skeleton key. Boy, this has ever explained a lot of stuff in my life anyway. my life um is uh um how do i do this in a way that's not too personal um i'll just be the tiniest bit a little bit personal um you know when you're dealing with a kid you have your sort of uh codex you've got your velton shong you've got like a way that you deal with the kid and you know i'm from a time in a generation i said this to syracuse last night after we finished recording

And like, here's the thing I try to avoid personally. Oh, honey, can you come here for a minute? Yeah. Sit down. Let's turn off the TV. Can you put your phone down? And you sit on the ottoman three feet away from your kid. Based on every cue and clue, isn't it fair to say that kid assumes they're in trouble?

AlexMy heart rate just went up.

MerlinYeah. It's the kid version of we need to talk.

AlexYeah.

MerlinBut like, okay, but thing is now, Alex, where I come from, all of those things are absolutely legit ways for a parent to perhaps intentionally change the barometric pressure in the room and send you the signal of like, you're in the equivalent of the principal's office now. Here's the problem now. No matter what you say to that kid, really, no matter what, let's say you're about to pay them the biggest compliment in the world. You're about to tell them like, oh, you know, I got you a pony. Hey, let's turn off the TV. Hey, I got you a pony.

Like, you'd be like, what the fuck? Like, what? You just did all of those things that hit pause on the easy conviviality of how we generally live, the familial jostling of how we get around. And you just pulled fucking rank on me and, like, demanded that I sit here. But here's the key part in that, in some ways, Alex, is the sitting in a chair or whatever. like in like we're the rule of thumb is that Americans at least back in the day would talk just far enough

from each other that they could put their thumbs in each other's ears if you're sitting close enough to your kid that you could put your thumbs in their ears they're going to feel a little bit menaced and probably more than a little bit defensive and tensed up because you're like looking them in the fucking you're a teenager you're looking them in the eyes after creating this you know Spanish Inquisition sort of like courtroom scene. You might as well come out in some kind of a pretty papal gown.

So yeah, I try to avoid that. And I love the part, I'm just getting into the parts that are a little bit more about the treatments. I've skipped around a little bit. I listened to the EMDR chapter. But the whole thing of just like going somewhere and like you're dancing or you're doing a thing. Like I forget who said this to me. And I'm probably the one thing somebody wants to be remembered for. I heard this somewhere in the last month or so. If you want to talk to somebody like about a thing, you got to be a little bit tricky. And if you could take a walk with somebody

to like for an errand, a mission, a journey, right? Hey, let's go pick up a card for Christmas for mom or whatever, right? And you're walking next to each other. Well, maybe you're not looking at your phone as much. They're not looking at their phone as much. But you know what you're also not doing? You're not staring them in the fucking eyes. You're not in, you know, as Paul Robbins says the way to get close enough to pick somebody's pocket is not to get in their space and stare in their eyes. That's what you do when you want to make them defensive so you can do a misdirection. If you really want them to trust, you need to go in sideways and not be in that

plane to plane. Right? Remember that about Apollo Robbins? Yeah. So, you know, I guess the physical stuff is so interesting to me, but also this idea of like, let's go easy on each other. And if we take a walk where you know if there's a time when we can like let's let's establish some intimacy and safety rather than beginning with creating a sense of danger and impending due and that includes getting out of their face you know what i mean yeah i mean some of the

Alexwhen someone says hey look at me or or that just sends a chill down my spot

MerlinOr in an uncurvonigant way, you say, listen. When you demand that somebody focus on you. I'm not sure exactly how that's related, but I think it's related. I think that just in terms of effectiveness, but also in terms of kindness, don't make somebody feel like they're in the hot seat. And when you ask somebody why their spouse is not at the family meal, you really are putting them on the spot a little bit. And you probably should have known that.

So are you surprised? Are you surprised that your kid's being defensive about homework? Or are you surprised that all the blood is drained from your soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law's face?

Because they found the courage. They found the courage. This made-up person here. But they found the courage to be there knowing that that was going to be a little bit of a lift for them to get through this event. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

AlexYou, I, you're not supposed to know.

MerlinYou're also not supposed to look back. It's written by a pillar of salt. Remember when I cried last week? I cried this week? I might just cry every episode now.

AlexWell, that's what...

MerlinIt's turning into I think you should leave. Because it's always funny when he cries. I would watch a compilation that's just him crying.

AlexWhat did that...

MerlinBecause the air conditioning's so cold and I was worried about you.

AlexYou've worked yourself into quite a tizzy for deleting podcasts Fully loaded

MerlinShe's taking all the nachos that are fully loaded All I get is like one chunk of meat and a little bit of cheese I kind of wrecked the show

AlexYou are having so many feelings And it makes me, I don't want to say happy

MerlinYeah, but I'm having the feelings not because I want to be loved on the internet. I'm having the feelings because I want to become less terrible.

AlexI – do you think you're a terrible person?

MerlinNo, but I wish everybody would do that. If we started first with fussing about how we could be – and I'm not even saying I'm being better, right? How do we each become less terrible? If we all fucking bent over backwards to do that 10% more, everybody, we'd all be so much better. Just try a little bit harder. like I say, bring in people's trash cans, carry somebody's groceries. Just do a dumb thing not for you, but just because it's the right thing to do. How do you become that person that you would like to be? Well, the person I would like to be is less terrible.

If I'm terrible, you're going to know about it. You're going to be shitting yourself in the clarinet room. It's not a thing. You ever make a clarinet of shit?

Sounds better than they're playing. Call it liquor shit.

AlexSomeone's deflecting.

MerlinYou do that. You're being defensive.

AlexOh.

MerlinBut are you saying this to me because you don't want me to be unhappy? Are you saying this to me because you think I'm not being effective? Are you saying this because, as I like to fantasize incorrectly about Sean Sirkusa, I told him this, I think he's terrible to me because he believes that I can take it and be better. Why are you telling me to feel differently here?

AlexBecause I'm curious as to where these feelings are coming from. And it feels as if you are almost spiraling.

MerlinWhat? What the fuck are you talking about? Spiraling? I'm telling you a real thing.

AlexWell, spiraling can be real.

MerlinOh, my God, Alex. I'm not spiraling.

AlexI'm not spiraling. Okay.

MerlinBad choice of what? What? No. Okay.

AlexWhat do you think? What's your definition of spiraling?

MerlinI'm going to tell you something. And I don't love that I frequently come back to the topic of food, except that I think when we're trying to explain things about our intentionalities, volitions, and will, Whether we like it or not, one of the most effective ways that I can talk about that is in terms of food. So this thousand flowers bloom. Like if you're trying to, you know, eat less junk food for a resolution, we'll start by not buying junk food, right? But like when I'm on, I hate to say a diet, but like let's say I'm trying to get more

exercise, I'm trying to eat better, and I'm trying to be more mindful about how I conduct the physical management of my body. that means that various times through the day, I will have an opportunity to make a decision, whether I realize it or not. And realizing it is a big part of it, right? So when you go on a quote unquote diet and you've got a rule, which is like the basic rule of, for example, Atkins could just not be simple. It's so simple, it is actually literally stupid, which is for two weeks, you cannot have more than 20 grams of carbohydrates

in a day, full stop. You can have that wherever, you can have a sip of Coke, you can have a spoonful of sugar, helps the medicine go down, right? But your rule, the rule in Atkins is I cannot go over to good, bad, or indifferent. Just go with me here. That is the easiest fucking rule in the world, which is eat whatever you want, but like you can't have more than 20 grams of carbohydrates. And so that means every time I'm thinking about what I will eat, what I will do, I have to set that alongside that rule. Okay.

Now, not everything is that simple, but if you've ever been on a diet, you know that One of your primary drivers is to, let's say, lose weight. And so every time you're thinking about food, and you are thinking about food, way more. I mean, my personal belief is if a diet works, it is primarily because of awareness. Regardless of any diet, you could go on the craziest fucking wackadoo diet in the world. Could be cabbage soup. Could be paleo. Could be whatever. The fact that you're thinking about food and you normally don't think about food, it's a misdirection.

It's made you more aware. But every time I think about physical activity, I think about food, I think about like, I'm looking here at my iced tea. Like I couldn't have this iced tea because you're not supposed to even have a minimum of caffeine and not even fruit juice. So easy decision there. But at each opportunity, I could say what's more important to me, sticking to this thing and doing what I've agreed I'm going to do or getting the food that I want right now. Like that sounds like such a silly example, but I think that's a real world. That's a real world example. And it also shows you how Van Der Ick von Hokenbloken's idea of like your dumb infant forebrain cannot beat the part of you that wants raw calories and comfort right now.

That's why you lose. And so what if instead I say, am I spiraling? No, I think what I'm doing is saying like if I became more aware of the opportunities to be, yes, less terrible, but to also be kinder, if I start becoming aware of those, I'm not fretting. I'm not spiraling.

AlexSpinning is a better word.

Merlinyeah yeah but i i also believe that the most reason most people are terrible is because they

Alexdon't realize they're terrible oh of course i mean that i well i say of course because i think i have to believe that otherwise i i i will just break i mean i i have to believe that the people who hate me the most feel like they that it's the right they feel like they're protecting something it's just not like yes not you they're protecting and i i mean i i i don't

know i i just spiraling that's okay spinning because you know we we started with the

MerlinDo you know anything about what's happening in the dervish community right now? They literally can't get anything accomplished because they keep spinning. You're deflecting. I just want you to like me, piece of shit.

Sorry, I didn't record.

What else we got on the list? I just wanted to say everybody should get a matchy. Certainly you want to be surrounded by certain kinds of people like Alex who are constantly telling you what's wrong with you, but also get you a matchy.

AlexMaking definitive statements about your feelings.

MerlinNo, you're wrong. You spun. You spun that hard. You're spin city. You're spinster.

AlexWell, everyone needs a matchy and everyone needs a Matt Howey. And I this this is why. OK, we're we're we're not taking off. You have landed the plane. But but you you mentioned that Matt Howey and I agree impeccable taste. And I often think about the.

MerlinMaybe just find somebody you call Matt. Yeah, you just get him or get, you know, get somebody that you like and then call them that.

AlexYes.

Merlinit's called reverse engineering right now you're my huckleberry but i wish you were my mat

Alexoh god i love you there's the famous ira glass bit where he's like you're gonna make shit for a long time but you know that you have good taste so you just need to figure out how to turn that into your own thing, but you have good taste.

MerlinMy favorite line is, stop trying to copy Ted Koppel. We already have a Ted Koppel. I always like that line.

AlexOh, that's good.

MerlinWho are you going to be?

AlexOh, that's really good.

MerlinIt's really fucking good. It's painful, but it's good.

AlexYeah. Oh, God. Well, and there's the fear of, oh, God, maybe my taste is terrible. And then that goes, this is my spiral, is like, okay.

MerlinThen you wake up and discover you're Neil Breen.

AlexOh, boy. Like, oh, my taste is terrible. Maybe my taste in human beings is terrible. Maybe I am just a terrible person. Like, that is how.

MerlinThat's a familiar spiral to me.

AlexThat's, yeah, that's my, it's less of a spiral.

MerlinMy apologies to the dervish community. I don't even know what a dervish is.

AlexLazy Susan. That was ableist.

MerlinOh, my God. Are you saying it's because she's black? She spins it. Oh, my God. Are you saying – are you calling her a spinner? Is that an otter? No. Who are we talking about? Oh, no. Susan's not here because she's divorcing me. And please stop spinning her potatoes.

This is a stupid show.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinWell, we got to – It's very important that you do it, like Gandhi said. Your devices. We are curious. If you're a curious household, let's move in the after show. I want your advice about VR things. And if the VR advice is don't buy anything right now, that's okay, too. Maybe we put that in the after show.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOkay, I figured because it's all going to be Facebook, right?

AlexWell, I mean, it depends. It's on Instagram. It's the after show. Merlin, where would people find it? What's the after show and where would people find it?

MerlinYou can go to patreon.com slash do by Friday or give us your fucking money.com. And we would be pleased and grateful if you would give us a little bit of money because then we can spend it on things. And you can do that there. And you get a bonus episode each time that we record. And it's not a store.

AlexOh, no, no, no.

MerlinIf you want some free cards, have a couple.

AlexAlthough I did get some stickers made. So we'll see.

MerlinFor what?

AlexI don't know. they're just stickers uh you got stickers without my permission you've got um well that's that's

Merlinthe thing is i i'm like do i ask for permission or for forgiveness i would love if you ask for both mishmish for fish i want you to i want you to fear how much you love me

Alexthat's a real thing for somebody oh god don't you don't you fear how i i am terrified of how much I love most people. It is horrible because those people could be caught in a second. You're so gay.

MerlinSeriously, man.

AlexI know.

MerlinYou sound like somebody who dies in the second act of a cable movie from the 90s. She was so perky and supportive and her music was good. She had a fun haircut and I miss her.

Did you ever watch Angels in America?

AlexIt's a pretty wild show.

MerlinI watched the first episode again last week, and it was such a long – I forget how long ago that show was. Everybody's so young. Oh, fucking Patrick Wilson is so young in that.

AlexI take it back. I have not seen that. I have seen the play and not the show, actually. I don't know why I haven't.

MerlinOh, look at me. Tick, tick, boom. I get it.

AlexAll right. Wait.

MerlinOh, are you talking about the movie? Oh, the movie. Oh, yeah.

AlexNo.

MerlinOh, the movie?

AlexNo, I've seen the play Angels in America, but I've never watched the show.

MerlinDid they do Harry Potter on that? Did they do that for like two nights? No, no, no. Is it really long? Or is it a trilogy?

AlexNo, no, no, no. It's just a... It won many awards.

MerlinBut isn't that like a Miss Saigon level of staging shit? Like isn't like crazy stuff to stage it?

AlexNo, I must... I guess I must watch this show because I don't know what you're... you're talking about. Oh, this is interesting. Angels in America

Merlinis, I mean, you would have to tell me how well it's aged, but I really like it. What's her name from Weeds is in it? Anyway, so characters. The woman who takes drugs and is married to, she's Mormon and married to the guy. That's Patrick Wilson and fuck, the woman from Weeds. The young guy with the partner who's sick is, I think his name, is it Justin Kirk? No. that one guy that really the handsome guy that's in lots of things he's so fucking good in that roy cone is al pacino who's very good in this oh the the guardian angel ish guy who comes to her

is jeffrey wright and he's really good in it oh damn this is a bit oh this is quite a cast yeah it was very i mean it was a big prestige thing that's tony cushioner right yeah and i i'm

AlexOh, I, how have I not seen this?

MerlinChallenge. It's on HBO Max.

AlexIt's, well, yeah, I think it's because in.

MerlinWatch Angels in America.

AlexWell, the play is an amazing, it's a two part play, but like plays that aren't musicals. It's, it's like, I don't know. It's weird. They're not weird. It's just, it's kind of like all over the place, what you would call it. But the play itself is called Angels in America. Fuck, what's that? Oh, Angels in America, Gay Fantasia, National Themes.

MerlinRight, right, right. What a great title. What did Tony Kushner do recently that he's super famous for? He wrote something I love recently.

AlexMunich, Lincoln.

MerlinOh, God, he worked on Lincoln? I love Lincoln.

AlexHe wrote West Side Story.

MerlinThat's it. did he write the book for West Side Story?

AlexNo. No. Well, the book

Merlinfor the movie. Yeah. Isn't book what they call the dialogue and stuff?

AlexYes. Wait. But I am talking about the 2021 film.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, okay, I could be vastly wrong and I don't mean, I'm not trying to be jargony and cute here. It's, the music is primarily by Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics primarily by Stephen Sondheim. Okay. So he wrote like the screenplay

Alexmaybe. Right. That, yeah.

MerlinHe adapted it. Yes. Oh, wow. He's a little younger than I thought. I don't know why. I thought he was a lot older.

AlexNo, he, unlike me, he accomplished something before he was 30. Oh, good Lord. Marching towards death. Oh, he received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Big deal. He is old.

MerlinBig deal.

AlexI forgot how long he's been around. Oh, my gosh. Munich is good.

MerlinAlien Assassins, La Femme de Berlin, Heavenly Theater, Umbrella Oracle. Oh, he's written a lot of plays. Holy shit. Holy shit. Like he wrote a lot of plays before Angels in America.

AlexYeah. Well, yeah.

MerlinOh, my. So Angels in America was first produced in 91. Huh. Wow. So it got to HBO pretty fast.

AlexIt won a Pulitzer, I think.

MerlinI think you're right.

AlexI know it won a Tony. Yes. Pulitzer Prize for Drama 1993. Man, I'm going to read all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels this year, next year, and all of his plays. I've never read a Vonnegut play. And I don't know. I was just reading Cat's Cradle.

MerlinDid you ever play a piano?

AlexNo, no. I've never read, what is it? Titan?

MerlinSirens of Titan.

AlexSirens of Titan. I have read Cat's Cradle, Blessed Mr. Rosewater.

MerlinI guess I didn't realize until I watched that documentary or I didn't realize or had forgotten that Player Piano was a fairly bizarre early success followed by not as much bizarrely surprising success until, you know.

AlexAnd Player Piano is like totally, I think, like my jam in terms of like the machines took over. Yeah.

MerlinIt is. Thematically, yes. Yeah. I mean, he's a sci-fi writer and, you know.

AlexOh, what a beautiful weirdo. Dresden didn't affect him at all.

MerlinNo drama here. Did you know, did you know, did you knew that, that's movies with Mikey when I do that, just so you all know. But did you knew that, I had dinner with him once. Yes, he's very nice. Did you know, he is nice. He's a pistol. Charming guy. I liked him even better in real life. He's really cool.

Did you know, did you ever see, look at this length. Did you ever see all the colors that you can demand Siri turn your lights to? I mean, click that link for Siri Light Colors Smart Home Explained.

AlexOh, here we go.

MerlinI guess there's a lot more than I'd realized.

AlexOh, what the heck?

MerlinSo you can say, hey, dingus. In my case, I would say something like, hey, dingus, make all lights Boston University red.

AlexThis is so stupid. I love it.

MerlinIt's so stupid. And all of these so far that I've tried, all of these work with the Nanoleafs so far.

AlexOh, it's not just like the Philips Hue.

MerlinIt's all the, oh my God. No, Phil, there's a separate page on this website for just Philips Hue. So a couple of reasons, always a couple. I want to show this to you. First of all, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. Because, you know, there's some lightweight namespace pollution going on. The thing I wish I could yell into the air a lot is, hey, dingus, make all lights warmer. But problem is I think that steps on thermostat stuff sometimes or it gets confused. But my quest, my grail, and you'll see this maybe in notes I'll send to you, on this website is keeping up with Siri commands.

And this purports to be an exhaustive-ish list of everything. Alex, why is there not a list? Why is there not a list that I can go to? It tells me every single thing.

AlexBecause Apple documentation is, I mean, I'll be, the KC, there's just no documentation. It's such a low priority. It breaks my heart.

MerlinThat is even more bizarre, obviously, for developers. Like, if you haven't really well and fully documented your API, that's not smart. But, like, it's just also weird to me. Like, it is another one of those little unintentional bits of evidence that makes you wonder how seriously do they take this. because there are ways. I mean, there's a page that, oh shit, I forgot to link to this on Tuesday. There's a page I link to at least once a year, which is Apple's official page of key commands. And the thing that I say, I post that every year. The second thing I do every year is say, I defy you. Even if you saw this last year,

I defy you to go look at this list and not find something you didn't know about that you could use. There's something in there that you didn't know or you forgot, right? But like with the Siri stuff, like it would be simple enough. It's just nuts to me that the semi-official-ish way to do it for a long time was click on the question mark on your ios device it's like no i want to i want to like a diction not a dictionary but you know i want a glossary of like it doesn't have to be every possibility but like what are okay what are the different ways why not though why i mean

have it wouldn't cost anything no but all i mean is like and this guy does that so if you go look

Alexclick the thing i just sent you and then click on for example i can't believe this exists in that i I'm so glad it does.

MerlinAnd I can't believe Apple, it doesn't exist on Apple. But scroll down, and this guy's saying stuff like, and this is obviously one of those generic WordPress-y shovel blog sites, but I found this very useful. You can say, hey, Dingus, set the Tahoe house to 72 degrees. Hey, Dingus, turn off the living room lights. But there's already stuff I didn't know in here. Hey, Dingus, turn off everything except the bedside lamp. I did not know you could say that. Why did I not know that you can say that? Did you know you can say that?

AlexWell, I did, but I think that's because I've a short but well only because my main smart home thing is lights like that but and the fact that i

Merlindidn't know about all this color oh god they're so show me my camera my uh here i i am not trying to say hey this is not to say that every one of these would be useful to me it's very much a way to say i had no idea you could do that hey dingus show my security camera recordings from yesterday I did not know that was possible

Alexthat's and that is so

Merlinuseful I think I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe people would use this shit more if you told them what they could do with it oh let's go to reminders there's reminder stuff I wouldn't know that is my biggest far and away my biggest usage did the updates to HomePod fix your shortcuts

Alexoh I haven't updated them and I haven't tried switched i have right now uh our lights are running off of shortcuts from the philips hue app

Merlinbecause uh it's just that weird little area that's such a strange new tab it's like hey check this out it's important enough to be one of four tabs hey go somewhere else to do this well no i

Alexwe just do uh hey dingus set the lights to christmas vibes and then or hey digus some reading and then unlike oh god home home kit used to be really good home kit still is good but if

Merlinyou forget the reminder name but remember its position siri has you covered hey dingus mark

Alexthe third one complete oh that's interesting that's dangerous well actually and again let's

Merlinstay focused okay here's the thing to understand in punditry especially shitty punditry there's two general kinds of pundits there's a kind of pundit who talks about markets and ecosystems and things like that. And there's a person who has lots of opinions about whether they like it. All right. I'm wanting to be not the second kind. I'm not saying whether this is useful. I just want to know what it can do. The more I learn about everything this can do, the more I can do with the things I'd like to do. Right.

Web search settings notes. I'll put this in notes because I think it's really useful. It feels like there might be a challenge in here somewhere.

AlexThis is absolutely fucking wild. Like, I... Sorry, I'm just like... And this is like shit that, like, I mean, I would have OmniFocus do. Like, flag this thing for, oh my god. Oh my god, you can tag me? Oh my god. Sorry, I'm...

MerlinYeah, and they just, one of the updates in 15.2 is now you can change tags, you know.

AlexOh, thank god.

Merlinyou and I still haven't done our share play our new Apple technologies challenge with FaceTime stuff share play maybe we should come back to that

Alexkeep pushing it off

Merlinoh my god my heart is broken Alex my heart is fucking would they say spring of 2022 for universal control I mean I'm glad they're going to fix it and make it good yes I have to obviously say that but oh I wanted it so much I know it would be really really cool

AlexAnd it's one of those things, too, that, you know, it is a feature that I think would surprise and delight people and which would make them buy more Apple stuff, which would make the hopefully the development of the headset or whatever the fuck it is go faster.

MerlinI'm going to suggest that I'm doing things in the document. I'm not asked. I did not ask permission. I think we should talk about new devices in the after show, maybe. And that was the other thing we're going to talk about in the after show. VR curious household or whatever. Yes. Do you want to talk about the challenge?

AlexNo, we should. I feel like we have been talking about the challenge the whole time in a good way.

MerlinEverything, yeah, everything's related. Yeah.

AlexYeah. This week. I still thought that sound was from a reality show.

MerlinHey, check us out with a new Ku Klux Klan.

AlexThis week's challenge was yours, and it was to douse your face.

MerlinI found an article via the New York Times about some quickie, it's a shovel blog article, but some ways to quickly reduce stress because of COVID. And one of the things this person recommends, and we can talk about this as much or as little as you want, because I do think it's kind of interesting and kind of wackadoo. Spoiler alert. But whether or not this is real, I want 50 more of these. I want to learn every one of these goddamn tricks. Like I said to Dan the other day, like the thing of the acupressure thing where you can supposedly squeeze the web on your hand between your thumb and forefinger to get rid of a headache.

I want to know all of these. I don't even care if it's real. Like I want to be a human lab. I want to be the Tim Ferriss of my vessel.

AlexNot title.

Merlinyou know it's a speak of the devil you know um but uh nobody ever finishes that speak of the devil and we're having pie for dinner what no speak of the devil and what is it officially

Alexspeak of the devil and he will appear the i don't know i've well no one ever finishes so how am i

Merlinsupposed to know i finish constantly i'm always coming across good ideas don't use that catalog don't use it um and so here's one of the things was to and i think we should talk a little bit about what purports to be the the reason behind this um you can induce something called the dive response by dousing your face in water cooler water we can talk about that as well um and the idea is that there's something that happens in vertebrates in vertebrate

creatures, including humans, which is that when you're holding your breath and most of your face is in water, your nostrils cool off, and owing to a slightly panicky Vegas-style thing, autonomic thing, it tells your body freaks a little bit. And one of the ways that it, the primary way I was interested in, the big number one of these like three things that it does is instantly lowering your heartbeat is what it purports to do. So it's a, and Alex and my, I think, if I could speak for you. In our vernacular, this is a very bottom-up

approach. So rather than saying, like, I want to talk about my relationship with my father, I say, okay, well, if I lower my heart rate, that will necessarily, a priori, make me less stressed. And, like, if you need a break, if you're freaking out, if you're having, let's just say, like, maybe something close to a panic attack and you're losing your shit, the question then becomes for this challenge, if Alex and Merlin choose to stick their face in water, what happened? What did you think about that dive response thing, though? Isn't that kind of

Alexinteresting uh this is yes this is something that i've been doing this by the way this will all be

Merlinin show notes if you want to science your way through this it's uh this well this image is very upsetting it's the eye the eye is very upsetting i hate the eye i'm taking it out forget it i'm gonna put it in a picture of caitlin devers instead would that be better

Alexuh this is so dbt dialectic behavioral therapy oh yeah talk about that yeah i mean it's basically like uh okay do do the reverse of or feel feel the reverse of what your body is telling you to do which um and it's like a evolution or part of a cbt cognitive behavioral therapy

Merlinand um what is the distinguishing if you know because you've been doing this right yeah what's the distinguishing characteristic of so i think like i say i think of cbt as being that thoughts end up controlling your, how do you put it? CBT seeks to fix, it's cognitive and behavioral, which is different than previous therapies. And the idea is that if you catch yourself having a thought that's causing an undue emotional response, leading to what Dan and I have called the seven dwarves of bad emotions,

if you find yourself becoming fearful, if you become fearful when you think this thought, if you become panicky, if you become angry when you think this thought, well, what happened? And the ABC is A, you thought a thought. C, you had a perhaps overwhelming feeling. But the B is your opportunity to catch that you have a role in directing how that thought turns into feeling. Correct? Is that kind of CBT, right?

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd it's very, very heavily related, at least in my headcanon, to mindfulness.

AlexCorrect.

MerlinI'm feeling this. This feeling is being felt by me right now.

AlexAnd DBT is even more focused on bottoming in that it's like, all right, I'm having this feeling. And by feeling, I mean like a physical sense. So I'm having a physical sensation.

MerlinGod, it is all related. Alex, it is all related to the book.

AlexYep.

MerlinIt's bananas. We're back in the Las Vegas system. No matter how you say that word, you're kind of fucked. You're going to say Vegas, V-H-E-U-S. You say Vegas, on the one hand, everybody's going to go, ha, ha, roll the dice, spin that wheel. Or what are you going to say, Vagis?

Vagis sounds like a problematic Roman philosopher. In the words of Vagis. Clitoriandi de mande, esperitus ante, enoiceptus, novus butstov, seclorum.

AlexOh, Lord.

Merlinthus thus back vagus vagus the holy that's funny because i took another get another show alex just run away while you can Probably drag you down into this.

AlexOh, see, I didn't want to, you know, bottom up too hard, but I made an ass, not assuming, but I was like, hmm, is Merlin's thing about all of the Matt Howey-ness going to be like, oh, are we going to keychain challenge this?

MerlinAnd like, oh, show over. I wouldn't have anything to do on Wednesday.

AlexYeah, you got to do something after the optimistic day.

MerlinYou literally can't do nothing.

AlexBut but OK, so all right. I'm I'm having the feeling that Merlin is mad at me. And oh, that feeling is causing my heart to race.

MerlinYeah, the classics are like that person, that person walked by me without saying hi. And I assume that like my that goes like that you pass straight over the B and go right to the C, which is I they hate me. And so I probably hate them and my feelings are hurt. And now I think about it all day.

AlexAnd the and the thinking part is, you know, that the C, but then the D is like, all right, how when you get to D, it's like, OK, so I am feeling this way. Is my heart racing? Is my throat closing up? Like, am I?

MerlinAnd that must have been caused by this. And it also, I mean, I don't have much to add to this, but you know, me and the whole thing of like, there's that cascade I always mention, which sounds so like I'm trying to be cute about it. But like, if I change the way I perceive, I can change the way that I think. If I change the way I think, I can change the way that I decide. If I change the way I decide, I can change the way that I behave. And then the music goes around. But like, you can't, if you leave out those steps, you may be super fucked. To just imagine that if I like, just don't see this thing anymore, I don't have a problem. There's all kinds of ways.

And what this is saying is, and you keep a journal, like you keep to have a little table that you fill in. You say, what is the thing that happened? Merlin, Merlin didn't laugh at my joke. Okay. How did you feel about that? I felt let down and disappointed and a little embarrassed. Right. And like, is that kind of how it would go in CBT, wouldn't you say?

AlexYes. And then with CBT is, it's like, okay, let's do the reverse of that. Let's be like, all right, so let's do – like the whole dowsing your face, the idea is to lower your heart rate. It is to shock your system into feeling –

MerlinShock is such a good word for it.

AlexYeah. It's to shock your feeling – your body into feeling the – basically the opposite way.

MerlinShock your heart into beating slower. Yeah. And you get, the phrase I always use here, probably too much, is you get a sense of space and expansiveness that didn't exist before.

AlexMm-hmm. Oh, that's good. Yes. For sure.

MerlinThat's a lot of my favorite meditation lady on Apple Fitness, Joanna. That's a big thing for her.

AlexOh, I love Joanna.

MerlinDo you like Joanna? I love her so much. You know what? Can I say something here, Alex? Merlin 2021 is trying not to talk about people's physical appearance. Joanna is in the handful of people whose tattoos I really like.

AlexOh, yeah. She looks really cool.

MerlinHeather Champ. Heather Champ. Great tattoos. Joanna, the meditator. Simon the Devious. Maybe you haven't heard. My club exploded.

AlexI think my hat's probably cursed.

MerlinDon't you love Joanna? And she's so gentle. And I don't mean to make this all about, you know, Joanna's my mom. Oh, my God. Joanna's my mom. No. But I love the way she walks you through it and says, get their intention, set that. But when she introduced the idea of in this calmness thing, 20-minute calmness, we're going to not carry a heavy bag anymore. And every time we realize we're carrying a heavy bag, just put it down. That's all there is to it. Just keep putting down the bag, which just, I mean, that's just so fucking great. But she does it. She keeps talking about as you're coming out of this 20 minutes, open your eyes and start becoming aware of the space around you.

but if you're stressed if you don't land on with Alex and me on that word expansiveness expansiveness is what you lack when you're having something involving anxiety which is that my world has become a pinprick there is no I mean really it's like a pinprick in a piece of paper or cardboard it's like I don't have I don't have any role in this I don't have any agency in this there's fucking nothing I can do about this and in the extreme cases I don't usually get near this extreme but the kind of panic attacks where you're like i'm pretty sure i need

Alexto call 911 you've had those right oh yes very very uh they are they're not a daily occurrence anymore but uh definitely a weekly occurrence and it's oh god you poor thing that sucks no seriously i'm not i mean like honestly i hate that you get those i so so do so do i but the things like um doing the uh dousing your face what i do is typically um i will like squeeze

in in ice cube like i have those big um like cocktail um squeeze an ice cube i've never heard that yeah well it's just uh it's it's a smaller if you can't you know dunk your face like when

MerlinGuillermo squeezes the stress guy.

AlexThe baron really likes that thing. I found it total.

MerlinNot the ogie animal.

AlexCan you smell?

MerlinPatsy room.

AlexI wanted.

MerlinAre you deliberately sort of focusing how it feels to squeeze the thing? Or is it, I mean, obviously this must be like a physical part of this. And the coolness of the ice cube. What does it feel like? When I say how does it help, what I mean is in what ways does that help you, if I could ask.

AlexIt's right by the whatever the vein in your wrist is called. So, you know, you kind of squeeze it so that it's touching that. And it is a less drastic version of, you know, sticking your face in water. Or I just stick my hand in like a big.

MerlinReally?

AlexYeah. Yeah.

MerlinBecause I am, and I saw this mentioned several times. And just to be clear, I hope there's a mindfulness or a thoughtfulness in the way that we're walking through this, which is I'm not here to like – I have not done primary research on this. I've read the abstract for exactly one paper that purports to be about this. I'm not here to say do this. I'm not here to say that it works or why it works. But I am walking through why I thought this was interesting. One of those is I know that if I just, as they say, splash some water on my face, I feel better. If I let water fill my cupped hands, I think one thing with this, and I'm interested to hear your – I don't think this needs to be freezing cold water.

I think there's a case to be made that non-freezing cold water might be better. But if I do like room temperature or outside temperature water and I put my face into that bowl I just made with my hands and then rub that water on the back of my neck, I instantly feel better, like less bad. I instantly feel like this. I don't know if that's related. People on blogs claim that it's a similar phenomenon. I don't know if it's a trigeminal thing. But I think that's interesting because I can say, yeah, taking a walk makes me feel better.

Splashing water on my face makes me feel better. Like wearing clothes that fit better makes me feel better. Like there's all kinds of stuff where you're like walking around. Joanna makes you aware of this. Like if this is uncomfortable right now, it's OK. Like that. But like is there like how many stones are in how many shoes for me? And could I just be sticking my face in a bowl?

AlexWell, no, I am here to say yes, that is all of this is correct. Yes. Well, because it is like a fact that cooler temperatures just lower your heart rate. But more importantly, when you're you are doing something different. So there you are.

MerlinThat's exactly correct. You fucking nailed it. And that's why I say taking a walk or like, again, think about the diet. Like this is that moment in the movie when you realize, oh, my God, M. Night Shyamalan really pulled it off every time I saw this color. This was happening. This is what we're talking about here, which is any break. because how do you, and this is life hacks, this is everything, it's all related. How do you know anything worked? Well, you took a break from the way you were doing it before. If you fucking stand up, but what does that go back to? Knowing what life hack to choose, knowing that it's a good idea to go do that,

the awareness to know I need that little break, call it a break, call it whatever you want. But splashing water on your face, taking a walk, like bending over a little bit, stretching, any of those things are, I believe, the result of maybe even an unconscious feeling that you need to switch it up with your modality a little bit. And that's, I mean, there's so much about being, our well-being in life that comes on macro, micro, all kinds of levels. Like, if you just keep doing the same, let's look at the other way.

Keep doing the same shit over and over, you know? Fuck around and find out, you know? Like, just keep doing your same bullshit, except harder, and then, like, see how great that goes.

AlexI heard a ding.

MerlinLet's see what it is.

AlexLet's go look. I bet it's my daughter. Is that because I texted you?

MerlinIt is. There was an order delivered by UPS. No. You saw in notes. I want to talk about what the fuck is going on with Focus and how I strangled to death in the crib. I will turn that back on. I apologize. Oh, also, I got the new watch faces. They showed what the guts of the inside of the watch look like. Like an x-ray. You got those?

AlexWhat? No? Huh? Oh, what's this?

MerlinI fixed it, put out these. It's Apple. It's Watch Series 7, but it's okay. I can cheat. I have a six or a five or something. But it's, yeah, I'll put it in notes. It's what the guts of your watch look like, but that's on your watch.

AlexOh, like as a photo? Oh, that's cool.

MerlinYeah, I'll find it for you.

AlexOh, fuck, yes.

MerlinBut isn't that important, Alex? It's like, oh, God, Alex, of course. Now, I hope you will feel, it's important to my self-esteem that you feel this way. I hope I'm not too much on like legit straight down the road, like aggrandizing myself or there's not, there's almost nothing I want to be remembered for, but I am reminded of the fairly significant, if you had to pick five people that helped popularize the term life hacks, I don't love this, but I might be on that list.

AlexYou are on that list.

MerlinI mean, Danny came up with it, but I popularized it. Yes. Oh, yep, yep. So when I see here, what is mammalian diving response? Question mark. This hack for calming anxiety actually works. It's on Bustle.com.

AlexOh, God. Oh, no.

MerlinBustle.

AlexOh, Bustle. They're the one who did the Anzi Sansari thing.

MerlinBut something happens in your regular brain, your lizard brain, or some part of your brain, probably not your lizard brain, but you go, ooh, I need to take a little break. And this is why people should smoke. Smoking fucking rules because you have to get out of your chair and go somewhere.

AlexI wish I was.

MerlinOh, my God. Smoking was so great, Alex. Through the 80s, it was fucking great. Well, think about it. That's how Mac met Paul Thomas Anderson.

AlexYep, yep, yep. Cut that, cut that, cut that. Well, cut, cut, cut.

MerlinGlenn Howard didn't sing, cut that, cut that, cut that, is my new favorite funny thing. It's so fucking funny. They all say it, but it's the way that Glenn Howard goes. Cut that, cut that, cut that, cut that. She's a woman.

AlexI am. She's a woman. man i love i love their producer so i'm like oh she's me i love her and you know you're loving

Merlinher laugh in the back when 35 minutes goes by and you're like oh god there's so many shitty shows that are so long like you know they just did a over two hour blank check in their increasingly ridiculous annual series talk in the walk walk in the talk talk in the talk walk in the walk They talked about – they had J.D. Amato, the guy from Mimimam and other stuff, on to talk about their rankings for the best walks in movies.

AlexAnd it was like three hours long.

MerlinAnd I loved – I listened to the whole thing on Sunday and it made me so goddamn happy. 35 minutes of those three boys is not enough for me.

AlexThis is my theory of like why It's Always Sunny is – like, sure. it's not great this season. I actually really enjoyed the Lethal Weapon one a whole lot.

MerlinI love the Lethal Weapon one. I thought the monkey was pretty funny.

AlexThank you, monkey. Another beer. He's up there. Thank you, monkey.

MerlinHowever they pulled off that effect, he really does look like a monkey pouring a beer. It's so funny. Like a monkey would look around. Oh, my God. The gang replaces Dee with a monkey. But you got to be aware. You know, like if you smoke, you know when it's time to go smoke. Maybe it's because you're stressed out. Well, guess what, fucko? Is there any other thing in your life where you go, I guess I need to go do this because I'm stressed out? Well, maybe have a drink. Maybe have a cigarette. Are there any good things where we could become addicted to that kind of break?

AlexYes. That's really smart.

MerlinI almost saved the episode with that one, but not quite. Their chemistry. Their chemistry. You see that their chemistry is good one to another from the beginning. But when you watch a scene where the three, especially the three dudes are just are talking to each other and like those characters, we know those characters so well. They know those characters so well. And even when they are, as Glenn Howerton keeps saying, it's that show where everybody just yells at each other. Like even when there are like five of them, whatever, they're yelling at each other and they all sound exactly like who they fucking are.

So it's not just it's not like listening to a crowd at a baseball game. you catch little snippets of what each and Charlie's always saying some just fucking whenever they're yelling at each other says the most insane shit and because their voices almost form a chord the ranges the way that they talk no D D's a soprano Charlie's an alto like he's got he's very high up and then but oh my god I love it so much

Alexand I think you love it and I the same reason they still make the show is that they love doing it. It's what they do.

MerlinIt's what they do.

AlexAnd even when they're not, even when it is not the best show, it's still something like

Merlinthey have good,

Alexthey have good taste.

MerlinAnd I, you understand, I didn't mean to drag our program.

AlexNo, no, no, no. That's not, okay, critiquing media is not dragging a thing.

MerlinI feel disloyal. I'm supposed to be your lab partner. I like your freckles. It's for pep.

AlexGreat,

Merlinnow I gotta watch that tonight.

AlexYou did, You did the thing. You liked the thing of jumping in your frozen water.

MerlinYeah. And I, and yeah, let's talk about that. But anyway, I'm beating this to death because you need someone in your life who beats this to death, which is that, you know, you, you can call it mindfulness, call it whatever you want. But like the earlier you realize you're feeling a little fucked up, the more opportunities you have now to do something about that. And, you know, it's like I say to my mom with COVID, you know, because of course she's now 87 and still absolutely unvaccinated will never be vaccinated. I finally lost it a little with her, I guess, almost two years,

whenever it was at least a year ago where I was like, look, I, I hate that you don't care about you. I said that it breaks my heart that you're 86 years old and will not receive medical care because of the media that you watch. That breaks my heart. I said, but you know, I'm gonna tell you this. I love, I love Eleanor more than anything in the world, probably. and if I ever found out that I made my daughter sick, God forbid my daughter dies because I didn't get a vaccination, I said, I don't know about you, but I could never forgive myself.

And you live in a building full of people who are mostly your age. If you unintentionally, and I don't want to guilt you here, but you need to think about this. You're an adult. Like if you refuse to get vaccinated and you don't care and it makes you sick, that's unfortunate and dumb. If you end up making someone you love very ill, will you ever forgive yourself? Because that was totally preventable.

And so like, you know what? I hope you care about yourself and you find ways to become aware when you're feeling fucked up. But if you don't care about you, can you fucking care about the people around you? Can you care about like what that does to the people if you're fortunate enough to have a family that you live with or anybody that you love? Maybe it's the people you work with. Don't you care that you're fucked up around those people? even if you can't find the will to care about yourself couldn't you find a side door or a loose window to care about them and like the earlier you get on this shit the better

you're gonna be for the people who love needing you i don't want to cry again i don't like it okay we gotta go did it work did it work i i tried to science this shit um and so i did it on a few occasions, different water temperatures.

I mean, what was your take? This is what we're talking about here specifically about dousing your face.

AlexWell, I don't literally douse my face in water. That was a challenge, you piece of shit. No, no, no.

MerlinI did.

AlexI put ice cubes in a bowl and stuck my face in there and it dropped my heart rate.

MerlinDid you measure? Did you measure how cold it was? It was basically ice water. It was like sub probably 45 degrees.

AlexOh, it definitely was. Fuck.

MerlinI did that. I did that first and it was way too cold.

AlexYeah. Yeah. I should say, I think that it doesn't need to be that. It doesn't need to literally be freezing.

MerlinI did it at 55 and I did it at 70 and I did not.

AlexHow did you measure?

MerlinIt's thermodynamics. Oh, well, we cook food at our house. We cook food. Some of the food is white, but a lot of it is non-white and we cook it. So when you're cooking food, you need to, oh, fuck, what do you call it? apply heat and but you want to apply the right amount of heat and i'm sorry i'm going this is a lot to cover quickly you need to apply the right amount of heat and this is complicated for the right amount of time so you can get tools for that now for the time part i would suggest at least a clock um and a clock is a way of knowing what time the earth thinks it is uh and then you can even

there's something you can get it's a different kind of clock called it's a timer to uh to uh jess you get a timer and the timer tells you how long it is now here's the part about temperatures is you can get what's called a thermometer. It's Latin. And you get a thermometer. Thermometer. Thermometer.

AlexNo beaker.

MerlinWe got one of those recommended quick, what's called a quick. It's one of those things you can stick in, and it gives you a quick response on how internal temperature of food. And so I did that. I started out the very first one I did. I said, seriously, I used my ice from here at the office, my crazy cold, fast-melting ice. Oh, Brady's bits, you may not know this. Melting ice is colder than non-melting ice. That's good to know. And that's why you want water in your cooler, not just ice. Also, it covers more of the thing.

Thermodynamics tells me, okay, I make this as cold as I fucking can. I stick my face in as far as I can. And I didn't hate it, but I almost hated it. The next night I tried. So what I did, it's cold outside right now by our standards. So it was in the 40s. And so I started out basically doing tap water, which would make it just under 50 degrees. And I did that and I had a result. And then I tried it by adding some ice to it. Now, again, normally thermodynamics, you want to go from – you can't really warm a cool thing.

That's like pushing a rope. That's why I always run all the hot water first when you're making a bath. Also, the marble is 11 degrees cooler. You need to accommodate that. So then I added some ice and I had about equal results. I'm here to tell you, and I'll share my result when you're ready. I had a result, and I had it at most of the temperatures, and the result was kind of interesting. How about you?

AlexIt always drops my heart rate like 10 beats? I don't know. Like, usually you get to –

MerlinAlex, every single time I went down 10 or 15 degrees, like within fucking seconds. Now, the bummer part is it went straight back up pretty quickly. But yeah, it did what it's supposed to do, which is calm me the fuck down. Like, don't expect a bowl of water to change your life.

AlexI would, well.

MerlinWell, if you're dirty.

AlexI do this every time I take a shower. We've talked about, like, you know, I deal with dysphoria stuff. So before I get out of the shower, I.

MerlinThat's how you discovered your situation was the shower, right?

AlexYeah. And the but the reason Psycho was so successful.

MerlinBut everybody goes a little crazy sometimes. Don't mind if I do.

AlexIf you don't want to stick your head in a in a bowl of water or had trouble finding one that was big enough for your head like I did. Your head's not that big. it's really well listen

MerlinI want to tell you as your friend your head is big for the scale of your body especially now I don't talk about people's appearance anymore you look very fit in photos I've seen almost hot

Alexyes I have let's say my pandemic body went the opposite of most people's

Merlinyou sent me a photo and I was like what the fuck just happened and I didn't want to say anything because you know Merlin 2021 is trying not to remark on people's appearance but like Alex you look really cute Your head looks fucking huge.

AlexI know. Thank you.

MerlinYou're going to have to get a special Christmas bowl.

AlexIt doesn't.

MerlinGrandma, can I have a Christmas bowl?

AlexI have to get enough popcorn bowl.

MerlinIt's the time of year where your giant head needs to sew.

AlexListener, if you want to try a really, really easy thing, just make your shower, make it as cold as possible when you're done.

MerlinDid you ever do that? You ever do the cold showers? All the way cold shower? That was a thing for a while.

AlexYeah, but I found it didn't help. But the last bit, if I just make it as cold as possible and then I put my head under there until I start shaking a little bit, which sounds...

MerlinDo you ever get ass-pounded on your pineal gland? Do you ever have... So we've got... We're hanging on to... Because we live in a fucking nanny... As you know, Alex, I don't want to talk about this a lot, but there are things in my life that I've ordered and had delivered to you for you to send to me because California is a fucking nanny state and I fucking hate it. I'm finally getting my mind right about the light bulbs, but I'm still fucking mad about the shower heads. And so the way Gruber gets keyboards, I have several of the water pick one that I like.

Unfortunately, even nationally produced water picks are not what they were. Worse and more diverse, classic, right? And so now I'm really fucked. I might be on the last one of these I ever have. But if you go all the way to the right, you get the nice, sharp, pointy water. You know what I mean? You go one just to the left of that on mine. Don't be creepy. And you get pounded in the ass. You get the like, where it makes three super streams. You get, you back into your shower, like, like a gentleman, you back into that head. Huh.

And you get pounded on your fucking pineal gland. Like at the base of your skull, get pounded with the hottest water that you can handle.

AlexWell, that is not,

MerlinI do that in,

Alexin, uh, hotel rooms, but we do not have that sort of water pressure or that sort of like,

MerlinFor Christmas, you should ask Dougie for water pressure.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh, wait. He's like, oh, wait. You're using the water?

AlexMy vaginal gland, please.

MerlinOh, no. Oh, no. My vagus. But I'm going to count this in all of the ways that matter. I will count this a success for me because we did it. It was a thing. It did a thing. It's not going to change my life persistently. consistently now emdr i'm super interested in it and i'm so scared to ask my vat i've talked to my string hi tom um i've mentioned this to him before but like it sounds and i think this is what ezra

klein means maybe when he says at the top i always skip that part with the time stamp but hey you know some of this stuff is considered like fairly experimental don't just go doing this stuff unless

Alexyou know but like emdr has been around for a long time but i did it a decade ago

MerlinSince the early 90s, maybe it sounds like. So wait, did it work kind of for you? EMDR, so tell people what EMDR is.

AlexEye movement, wait, eye movement.

MerlinYou summon up with a clinician. You don't talk about how you feel. You are asked to summon up a very difficult traumatic event. I'll let you jump in here. But the practitioner of this, it moves their index finger left to right and you follow it as you're thinking about it? Is that right?

AlexSo there's that and there is tapping. I know some people, I think it's-

MerlinIs that the Maura Wilson thing? Maura Wilson thing. Anxiety tapping, I'll find it for notes. Oh, no.

AlexIt's different than that. Like I had a therapist who had tap.

MerlinWhat's your tapping?

Alextap no my therapist would um no it's still emdr like um she would tap my like um where the uh where like your reflex is on on your knee like very soft but not super soft i'd uh i'd tap that but but uh this is a thing that i have to do not have to i am lucky enough to be able to start doing soon uh because yeah it's it's great for uh trauma therapy and and a lot of reports in the

Merlinbook the trauma book with vinderig von liwanhoek he he he purports in the book that emdr is a thing that he was trained in he didn't believe it would work but that when you're doing that when you're doing emdr and you're summoning that you get something you can get something close to

Alexspontaneous for a mission from trauma is that right yep and it's freaky well because

MerlinBecause it feels like an absence of something that's usually there, the Dan's backpack of bricks sort of feeling?

AlexI mean, it's more like you put it as a moment in time and it's not a looming.

MerlinI love the way that he says with EMDR, if it works, something that was traumatic and life-destroying potentially turns into just a memory of a bad thing that happened, which is very different.

Alexyes it's it's like a uh yeah you're putting it in um not ember what uh no i know what you mean

Merlinthough it's because that he's his whole bit in a lot of ways is that the problem is like yeah you you know trauma when you see it which is that it's you don't have any memory of it you re-experience

Alexit did you watch um did you watch uh the sinner the sinner no i might want to recommend it maybe

Merlinat least watch the first episode of the center but that involves a person who gets triggered by hearing a song oh god that must suck but like i i rolled my car one night uh and as i rolled my car it rolled over landed on the wheels and i drove it home which is weird but the night the night that car rolled the song on the radio was heartache tonight tonight by the eagles and if you've ever flipped over in a car it's very memorable

AlexI can imagine somebody's gonna hurt someone

MerlinI've always hated that song I don't like the long run album generally and it instantly when I hear it on a good day it instantly takes me back to standing in line in the dark at military school on pancake day instantly I am fucking 12 immediately did you know I had to wear a uniform for a year when you go to military school?

AlexYeah.

MerlinWait in line for pancakes?

AlexYeah.

MerlinThere's so many songs that are indelibly seventh grade to me, so I didn't love it to begin with. And now it has become kind of funny, but when I hear Hardick tonight, it immediately makes me think of Rolling My Car.

AlexOh, that's...

MerlinThat's the thing, though, right? Yes. When we talk about triggers and...

AlexYes. That's...

MerlinOr like... Or Vandermeer Van... Van... Van... Van... Van... slice says you know you see somebody who kind of looks like the shape of somebody me with my landlord's car in sarasota yeah like every time i would see like his make of car i thought it was my landlord trauma baby or pseudo trauma as i call it oh my god

AlexNo!

Show notes

Transcript

267. 12th-Level Asshole

Show notes

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