295. Person of Insanity
2022Show notes
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Transcript
Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesAlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, try bearable.
MerlinAre you waiting me out?
AlexI am. Fuck you. Oh, I did it. I did it. I'm very proud of myself right now.
MerlinIt's never happening again. Never happening again.
AlexWell.
MerlinJust for the listener, I don't like to address the listener. There was a very, very, very long silence. And I thought the only possible explanation is that Alexandra's off.
Alexhow are you off off as in all the ways all the ways every way yeah no i mean like your signal
Merlinchain nothing your brain you know i'm just saying how's it going i like that my brain
Alexis Roger Rabbit looking at Jessica Rabbit? I don't like it when he puts the shoe
Merlinin the goo. I hate that.
AlexNo, it's so upsetting.
MerlinYou had to turn it off. Fest over, Daddy. Fest over.
AlexOh!
MerlinIt's so cute, little shoe.
AlexNo. I thought that movie was an actual... I don't know what you'd call it. Based on a property.
MerlinOh, a documentary.
Alexlike how Space Jam was based on the Looney Tunes I just assume Who Framed Roger Rabbit was based on another cartoon that I was not familiar with
Merlinoh like a Bugs Bunny or similar
Alexyes yes yeah it makes sense and then I realized no no
MerlinI don't know if you listen to the podcast I can never remember the name of Downstream big fan I'm a big fan of Downstream of course I love Jason but Julia on Downstream is so smart. And I just want to be really clear here. I want to say this as many times as people will listen. Julia is actually smart. Julia is not pretend smart. Julia is not a thought leader who puts a Seth Godin in their Twitter header. Like this is an actually smart person who knows things about media and business.
And she says the most thought-provoking things. They were talking about how, you know, the way that, what's our program, The Bear dropped all at once. So it's a John Landgraf, you know, FX joint that they launched on Hulu. But then the question is, well, it seemed like it was made to be like a week by week, you know, like regular TV show. Like, do they know when they're making the show how it's going to be released? Because like that must go into how you think about it.
And they were saying, they were just talking about, you know, how, you know, the day of the week, Wednesday is when, you know, Stranger Things drop. But the reason I thought of this, first of all, Julia, amazing. Julia has a last name, but it escapes me right now.
AlexI'm going to guess Alexander.
MerlinAlexander. So you had a mnemonic for that. The mnemonic is me.
AlexNo. The mnemonic is boy.
MerlinWho's that horny magician with Morgan Le Fay? God damn it. What's that guy's name? Oh, Merlin. That's right. But what they said was interesting is you look at something like Stranger Things, people give it some stick for being like... When I watched it, I liked the fact... I watched the first season. I didn't watch more of it. I watched some of the second season because I saw the sailor suits at the ice cream place. Love Steve. But anyway, as much as that might be sort of beholden
to Stephen King in particular and 80s movies in general, it's very successful for something that's not based on an existing franchise or a book or whatever. Oh, for sure. You don't see a ton of that these days. That's been a thing for a while, but are you still watching it?
AlexAll right. I guess we're going to do feelings or I'm going to do a feeling. I have not watched more.
MerlinSo I woke up at 2 a.m. I woke up at 2 a.m. My brain, I don't know what you're going to get today, but I don't want to talk to our listeners. But the audience should be forewarned that my brain is like less than a pudding right now. So you go anywhere. You drive. I'll just sit here and fiddle with the radio.
AlexOh, scoot, scoot. No, I mentioned how the bear, both the cold open of the literal bear and the television show, it just reminds me so much of my family. And my grandpa's getting surgery later this week. And I have just, I guess, been not in the brain space to watch a bunch of people in the kitchen because it makes me so stressed because it's just so familiar.
MerlinWhat are you attracted to in a situation like that? If you're going to decide to watch some TV, maybe to divert your mind a little bit, have a little break from your brain. What's something good? Do you have comfort viewing that you turn to?
AlexAdventure time is the answer. It's the answer that I give people. That's true. But with a big asterisk, that Futurama is probably. to be on in times of distress. You have many comfort shows, yes?
MerlinI do. I do. I usually have a primary one. For the longest time, as I've said, Parks and Recreation was just the default show. I think right now if it's all three of us there, my wife doesn't care. She's looking at her phone. Well, my kid's looking at the phone too, but whatever. Community.
But, you know, I I had some time to myself and I was flipping around. And, you know, you can't sleep on Peacock. People give Peacock a hard time. I like Peacock. I like what's on there. I like the fact that every time you come back to watching a show you were watching before, it immediately pops up a little, not interstitial, but a little lower third that says, do you want to start over or do you want to resume? Every thing ever should do that. But anyhow, my kid and I were watching. And it started off because my kid, I was like, have you seen the super fan versions of The Office?
No. So it's neat. They like, this seems like a fair amount, sort of like that podcasting thing for journalists. It seems like a lot of work for what you get out of it. But boo that they took The Office off all the places that it used to be. But yay, they do what's called super fan edit. And they just take a bunch of stuff that got cut out and put it back in.
AlexWhat? I had no idea this existed.
MerlinLike, yeah, yeah, it's pretty wild. I mean, obviously none of it is essential, but it's so interesting to watch a TV show. So I guess what I'm saying here is The Office is kind of like that for our family, too. Another one of the shows we discovered in a hotel room while we were out of town and then ended up watching.
But yeah, so have you enjoyed watching The Office?
AlexOh, yes. Seen it many times, but not the fan edit? Or what is this?
MerlinI'll give you two examples. So it's so fun to watch, though, because we've seen these a jillion times. And it's a fun game for my kid and me where it's like, okay, I don't remember that. I don't remember that. You know? So here's one. You remember how Michael Scott likes to wake up to the smell of crackling bacon? You know? So he's a George Foreman girl with bacon next to his bed, and he cooks his foot. So that one normally in the normal episodes opens with the phone ringing Pam picks up and it's Michael saying somebody has to come and get me.
You know.
AlexAnybody but Dwight.
MerlinYou know that's how it usually opens.
AlexYes.
MerlinWell in the super fan version this is again this is inessential but if you're not a fan of the show I'm whatever but like if you are like somebody who's watched it a million times it's so fun. Because in that instance, I instantly clocked it because it opens with Pam making a really funny face. And then the tall guy, Jim, makes a very funny face. And they're trying to crack each other up with faces. And it's totally inessential, but just a sweet 30-second bit.
Speaker AAnd then the phone rings.
MerlinAnd it's Michael saying, you know, hey, somebody, anybody but Dwight, come pick me up. The other one, I can't prove this, but you know the Halloween episode's pretty great. There's that one Halloween episode where, do you remember, let me ask you a question. Do you remember as I do that in that one Halloween special where Michael has to fire somebody? Remember his costume is, he has a second head. Dwight is dressed as a Sith Lord.
Jim is three-hole punch paper. Do you remember that episode?
AlexI remember the episode and I remember Jim's costume. But get the gist.
MerlinYeah. But another thing I remember and always thought was very funny was that every woman in the office is dressed as a cat.
AlexOh, yeah.
MerlinPhyllis is a cat. You know, Angela is a cat. You know, Pam's a cat. Everybody that's shown is a cat. in this fan version I don't remember ever seeing Meredith in that episode I might have but I don't remember in this one Meredith is some kind of ghoulish zombie where like her head's been split open and her brain's sticking out and they do a talking head with her I don't remember that at all. Anyway that's good comfort viewing and it's nice because you can play a little game
with yourself to see how well you remember The Office
AlexI'm curious. That show's so good It is and it's An interesting juxtaposition of something, I mean, this is an obvious observation, but something like Stranger Things or even Ted Lasso, which I still don't know if they knew. And actually, I think Jason Sudeikis has said they didn't know if it was going to drop all at once or if it was going to be a week-by-week thing. and you can almost tell that sometimes the pacing isn't necessarily bad,
but it's different.
MerlinRight. Or it'll get aired out of order, like where they aired that Christmas episode. Oh. Kind of like out of order. I mean, it wasn't part of the sequence, but you learn from the Sunny podcast where there's continuity problems because of things like that. One day they decided on set that Charlie was illiterate. Let's do a take where Charlie can't read. And then that becomes canon. And it's like, you know, the way I describe it to my kid, I think Charlie's situationally illiterate. Like, I think sometimes.
What does he think? It says pirate office, you know? Or the tattoo. We're like, now he's got to get made up with an incomplete arm tattoo for every episode where he has his arms showing. You know, stuff like that. But I think that's a very interesting idea. But this is in the context also. And we'll find it for show notes. It's a really good show on Relay called Downstream with Jason Snell and Julia, probably Alexander. But they were talking about also the thing of how the public doesn't get real numbers on what's succeeding and what's not.
Julia has access via her job at Parrot Analytics. she has access to things where they can like put together the impact of these things you know let alone whether it's succeeding on tiktok something she talks about a lot is like you know the there's just a term for this in the industry like the people who make a tumblr about it or something that that's that's something they track um but anyhow talking about how like the public doesn't know and you know what the showrunners don't know the people who make the show don't know and she and jason were talking about how that gives in this instance netflix a huge competitive
advantage in negotiations.
AlexIt's so upsetting. I mentioned this too. What do you, I don't know if you're being sarcastic.
MerlinNo, I mean like, I wouldn't, upsetting isn't the word I would use, but like.
AlexWell, wait, what word would you use? From, I'm thinking of it from a, okay, yeah. Well, but both are true. I'm just thinking of it from a.
MerlinI'm not quibbling about your words, Alex. I got up at 2 a.m. And then I thought about Markdown. Oh! But like for example, you could say, for example, like, okay, you know, hey, look, you know, like any metrics including podcast metrics, which I continue to believe are black art or bullshit. But, you know, it's not that this is certainly not the number of downloads for this episode or the number of views for this show.
That's not important. And actually, Dan Harmon does a really funny bit about this in the Community Season 1 Cast Evaluations episode. I'll find that for notes on YouTube. Very, very funny. But showing the first week, it was huge. And it immediately dropped. And part of the cast evaluations is we're going to talk about what each of you could have done to make these ratings not be so bad. But if you can go in and say, hey, look, in this, I don't even know, 1849, whatever. Remember, in this target demo, you know, we get this kind of like penetration with this.
And we got, you know, so we're really valuable. And in the case of, based on the stuff that Julia looks at, I'm sorry, I'm talking about another podcast for a long time on this podcast. But it's fascinating.
AlexI'm going to do by Friday. We like podcasts.
MerlinJust saying something like with the metrics to which she has access, you can say, hey, Stranger Things represents 3% of the viewing time on Netflix, right? But they can't show you like an industry standard number and compare it against similar shows, et cetera, et cetera. All the kinds of – you know Netflix is doing that inside and out. But you can't go in there. All you can do is say, hey, we know we're doing really well. People make TikToks about us. you know, this J Random
analytics service says we're number one in the blah, blah, blah, and we're beating out you know, by half an order of magnitude, beating out the other two shows. And Netflix goes, could go like, uh, are you? Like, you didn't get that from us. And they're going to be like, oh, come on, really? Are we going to play this game? You know? But, I don't know. I think that stuff's interesting.
AlexInteresting, upsetting, gross. Yes, gross. it's like the uh app that i like but probably shouldn't autumn that a u d m yes that has all the feature stories read by typically the author yeah talk about this you texted me about this yeah oh there's a service called autumn that i like that's a really good name yeah it it has most features that you'd want to read from a bunch of outlets usually condi nast like and you know
the atlantic new yorker all the great problematic articles but they are available both in their original text form and it is read by usually the story is read by the author which feels well did
Speaker Aget any like gia tolentino she's she's one of my favorite writers and she has an amazing voice
AlexYes, she did read her post-row article, and that's very good.
MerlinOh, my God. She and another woman were on What Next talking about that.
AlexOh, yeah.
MerlinHey, spoiler alert. Gia Tolentino is fucking mad.
AlexShocker.
MerlinReally good. She's so good. And we will also find for notes, because I'm saying it here and I will find it later in script uh we should also find uh land of the large adult son which is one of the greatest
Alexthings i've ever written oh there's pieces of our time it's a big adult son week this week or at
Merlinleast uh oh yeah i watched that unprecedented thing it's fine i it's yeah but there's a lot eric actually comes off looking really good dawn seems like he should be at a disco with robert
AlexEvans in 1978. Woof. Wow. I have no idea what you're talking about. I thought it was just
MerlinHunter. I think he does cocaine, Alex. I think he's done a lot of cocaine. I think it's damaged him to a point where not or whatever it is that is making him how he is. Maybe it's like the what is it in Iron Man? The extremist virus, like whatever is causing Donald Jr. to be how he is.
AlexI'm not sure if it's reversible at this point. I think he's just jealous of Hunter Biden. Whatever he is putting into his body.
MerlinHe's so mad about her. Can I say one thing about somebody's appearance?
AlexHe's hot. Go on. Sorry. What?
MerlinI mean, you know, I used to think that of his fiancee, so I don't have a leg to stand on.
AlexOh, no. Not Don.
MerlinShe was legit. She was legit hot. And she had good early 2000s eyeglasses.
AlexYeah.
MerlinBut the ex-president, a lot of real meaty tight shots. Wow. His pores are really, really, really upsettingly large.
AlexNow, now. Remember what he looks like? No, I asked you.
MerlinI asked you why. You know, it's better to ask forgiveness than talk about someone's pores, I guess. But we were talking about that. You were talking about the president, and I took you out of your topic.
AlexWhat? Oh, because the big, big sons.
MerlinOh, the sons. Oh, yeah. At the time, it was Mike Huckabee. Everybody was talking about Mike Huckabee's large adult sons. And there's that amazing—I'm not going to talk about people's appearance, but Gia Tolentino's article, I think it's called something like The Land of the Large Adult Son, includes a wonderful photo that you remember that family photo of the huckabee family oh yeah and they look like lemon grabs yeah like they used all their candy for princess bubblegum to make more huckabees talk about upsetting that episode oh upset right i was talking about upsetting
Alexthings like how i doubt that gia tolantino is paid more to read her article for this third party service autumn that i mean the story also appears in audio form on the new yorker website typically or the atlantic or whatever it's very like an apple news deal do you feel like you feel like
Merlinthat's probably bolted on to whatever they're like i'm thinking of the times back when you think of somebody like tim goodman who's had who had a column called the bastard machine in the san francisco chronicle since christ was a corporal where he did movie reviews or sorry um tv reviews um and uh he he's talked about this on his show with jason that i still miss but like you know he used to be a guy who wrote for a newspaper and then he became a guy who wrote for a newspaper who also had to do a thing to go on the web right the same way that as i used to
saying my stupid talks like everybody has the job that they have plus email. Like email is not part of anybody's job description. Maybe not now, but you have something, everybody has something probably similar that's like an unmetered part of their job. I'm not even going to put air quotes around that. Email is part of your job, but like should that be half of the time you spend at your job? Well, guess what? That means you're at home now doing your job at home. And in the case of I wonder if Gia Tolentino sees any extra money for doing that.
What do you think? It sounds like you're pessimistic.
AlexI think Gia Tolentino is hopefully fine based on the fact that she is probably the most beloved writer at The New Yorker right now.
MerlinRona Farrow does real well. Isaac Chotner.
AlexBut you say he's beloved. I mean, I'm not like.
MerlinHe's very handsome. He looks so much like Woody Allen. It's uncanny.
AlexPure coincidence. I don't think – I mean, I would –
MerlinI mean, you see what I'm saying? Does it seem like it could be something similar to what happened around – well, for me, I have my own color of my crystal here. Around the time blogs got big and then everybody had to be writing their column for the paper paper but then also writing for the online paper, like, you know, doing something different there. I bet that's happening in a lot of places.
AlexOh, it absolutely is, especially on TikTok with musicians and the like speculation around trying to make accidental viral hits and watching these. Not everyone can be Lizzo. So you're watching these poor mid-level bands just dead-eyed in your phone, just looking so sad.
And you can see all the regrets on their faces. And it just is upsetting, gross, somewhat triggering to a degree. Like, oh, is this the only future? This is now the God next it's going. I mean, it's already a little bit newslettery, but I just feel sad when I don't know how to really describe it, except like it just makes me so sad.
MerlinI mean, it is, as Alec Baldwin says in Glengarry Glen Ross, it is a tough racket. And I think that's, just to state the blindingly obvious, I think that's why, you know, something like Substack is or, in my opinion, feels like a way to build your brand. I'm saying that unironically. Like, you know, not everybody will become Gia Tolentino. Not everybody will become David Roth. Like it's – again, I only apparently read two people.
But if you're out there and you're hustling, especially Chris Geidner I saw, the courts guy on Max's 2019 political Twitter list. He recently started one that he's very heavily promoting. And I mean I don't know what kind of dough people make from that. I tend to wonder, I tend to think or I tend to guess or I tend to fear that that is a very false economy based on the right-wing ding-a-lings who couldn't stand having an editor and got paid some – apparently, fail sons like Iglesias apparently got a pretty princely sum.
AlexOh, I mean Glenn Greenwald, it must be rolling in cash for just bearing his principles.
MerlinI think he got some extreme. He's another one of those guys. I think he got the extremist virus. I don't know what's going on with that guy. He's not hooked up right. But yeah, it is a very tough rag. I was just re-listening because I'm going through a big Renz thing right now, one of my favorite bands. And I revisit them every year or so. And I was listening back to-
AlexThis boy is exhausted.
MerlinI did an interview years ago with a friend of the show, Rachel, and we were talking about a thing called Crush on Radio. And I was on to talk about the Rens. And I think maybe in particular the Meadowlands. Yeah, I think it was about the Meadowlands. But there's a couple of things that are funny in that interview from years ago where stuff that I think of as a fairly recent obsession of mine. For example, I mentioned the Italian restaurant scene in The Godfather.
I did not say what I want, but that's a big part of the MCU at this point. The other thing was, in an unusually sort of like unvarnished way, I did a little bit of preemptive That's Fine for Merlin. Because I was saying one reason I love the Meadowlands and I love the Rens in general, in brief, is that, I mean, I love their music more than anything else. I really like the guys. Like Charles is one of the nicest and best people I've ever met. I have huge admiration. Also, I made a leukemia joke about the band before Charles ever had leukemia.
And I feel kind of bad about that. I think he's better now.
AlexYou hated the blood cells before. It was cool. God.
MerlinI was talking about exhausted.
But the other thing I said was like the thing is there were so many things I admire about them. And the way I phrased it back then was in a back to work-ish way. I see, I feel, and I admire the problems that I share with a band like that or whomever. I'm not trying to like, I don't mean to cover myself with glory, but like, and this is true right now of Syracusa final. This is true of you, which is that, yes, it is amazing in so many ways to get to do your own thing.
But the way I described it talking to Rachel was, hey, you know, there really is no net. you can try to make a net you can try to fashion a net you can try to have plans b through k but i mean of course the truth in the end is that no job is secure but like when you're totally on your own it can be so scary and because those guys are my age poor bastards 10 kinds of a bastard they uh they came up at a time where like me success was seen as getting signed to a big
label it's true for john roderick like getting signed and then like you do an album a year and like you tour on that album for like in the case of some bands for years but like for at least for a few months usually you might do two legs over a year but like it was not unusual at all in that era to spend months or over a year on a record whereas the wrens in that interview from I think I want to say maybe 2012 I said and their follow up to Meadowlands
should be coming out anytime now and now it's 10 years later but there's been a lot going on in the band like they've got a lot going on but you know what I mean it's like now but the system's changed man like you know we as I used to say we trace shadows on the sidewalk of other people's success we go oh I want a shadow like that but like after they walk away all you have is a chalk outline of somebody else's shadow and and that's if you know you have to really realign how you think about stuff and that still really
resonates with me in their music on a song like this boy is exhausted that's a song about how great it is to play in a band you've got you've got a day job right you you're a lawyer or a financial consultant like two of them were or are and like charles teaches guitar takes his kids to school but uh and i think he's over leukemia hey charles but um but you know no i have i i that guy's in my caress i have so much endless admiration and just i charles is like the most i cannot understand what he's doing on guitar i do not understand it and as the person who's like
the captain of that ship in terms of the most of the songwriting and like how it sounds you can just sit and listen to something like north to nothing which is my current obsession song I can listen to North and Northern over and over and I'm just like, these guitars are doing completely different things in the different, you know, but it's not 1978 and you're not Led Zeppelin.
Alexit's not that i resent or romanticize the like yes you're going to go into a cabin and uh right until you drink yourself or shoot yourself uh drink yourself to death i've been reading hemingway i don't know why death by shots i think is what you're looking
Merlinfor title yes shot such a dumb self-harm by shot let me start over oh man but it's i'm i'm like who
Alexis this for i can understand the audio thing no no i was i was gonna say i understand like oh this is really cool i like being able to listen to the this a nice author talk about Ron DeSantis and how terrible he is and how terrifying he is. But I don't know who the manufactured weird viral stuff is for because it didn't work a decade ago and it still isn't really working now unless you're genuinely good at it.
MerlinAnd the cycle has sped up so much. You fucking people talked about the goddamn blue or gold dress for like two weeks. and like I swear to God if that article where they talk about the guy who ate all the meatballs if we just sail right past that in less than 12 hours I'm gonna be so goddamn mad because the guy and the White House eating all the meatballs like made my entire week I have no idea what
Alexyou're talking about meatballs White House okay save it for the show write it down I'll read it
MerlinI'll read it to you it's it last night I was just sitting alone in my living room just cackling to myself at this article, but, you know, those cycles move so fast. I went, I and a lot of other people went through this with online publishing, which is that, you know, that the, when you, I mean, if we're going to be mercantile about it, I mean, yeah, I guess you post stuff to get in my day, like ad views. But another huge thing you would do is, I mean, if we're being honest, like influence, like getting, you know, reblogged by, you know, a classically like,
Jason Kotke or John Gruber, you know, you might get 10 times more traffic from, what was it back then? Probably Dig or in an earlier time Slashdot. Like you would get this, it would like bury your server, but there would be no long-term value from that. You didn't really attract anybody with your work. Like you were just another, you're like a packet of like salsa that somebody left on the table. Like, you know, you were just, you were, you know, all the interest they had was to come in and look and go. But whereas I have the stats or had the stats
when I looked at these things, had the stats to show that like a link from Gruber or Kotke and certainly others, but that's two that were huge for me was like, you know, boing boing, less so, but still. Like you might attract, I'm not going to say new fans, but you might have piqued somebody's interest about what you do.
And that is a word I hate. invaluable super valuable is what I should say it's priceless another word I don't love but like you can't beat that like if you if a smart person has found what you do and they don't hate it you just made a friend like that means like people you admire when I find out that people I admire listen to my stupid fucking podcast it makes me incredibly happy when James Gunn likes my tweet that makes me happy I'm small
Like that stuff means so much to me. Well, not because James Gunn is famous, because I really admire that guy's work a lot. And I think he's fucking hilarious. So like, you know, there's this one sort of callow like, oh, did I get retweeted, you know, by some J random online star that I don't know? I sent you that link to what every trending topic looks like. You saw that, right?
AlexOh, God, yes.
MerlinYeah. Yeah. We should mention that too. But like the thing is the enduring value though of making a connection. Like I was listening to Buffalo Tom from 1986 on and the fact that I'm now lightly acquainted with Bill Janowitz is like that's huge for me. Or like I'm pals with Derek, the drummer from Meat Puppets. Am I doing that to be star fuckery? Not really. But I'm living the fucking dream. It's like the guy in I Think You Should Leave who is fake married to a supermodel whose poster he used to have on as well.
Also, he doesn't live in a hotel. I feel like I'm the equivalent of marrying your dream girl when somebody you admire maybe at least tolerates what you do and perhaps really likes it. That sounds like old, warmed-over Merlin Mann 43-folders bullshit, except that I can't make you feel about that the way that I feel about that, but I continue to believe that in all of our visions of success that we cobble together over time, you mustn't lose sight of why you're doing it, who it's for, and how you'll know if you're succeeding.
and sometimes success is not what you expected, right? If you thought you were going to get signed to A&M Records and be the next squeeze, well, that's, you know, that's probably not going to happen. You need to realign. You might need to do what everybody on Spotify does, which is put out so many things as a single. Like, it's so hilarious. Like, I want to say, like, The Cure. Somebody I was listening to recently has, like, or, you know, I guess a huge one is New Order does this a lot, But they've just released so much stuff.
They've papered the waterfront with all of these like records with one song on it because I think that helps with the, if you're lucky, nickels that you make on Spotify. Well, that's the business. If you don't want to be in that business, I mean, good luck changing that business. But when you're little like us, you're allowed to have the temerity to say success for me means more than strangers pretending to like me. Success also means that I get to fashion a way of living and working.
Something you and I like to talk about is that overflow living. There's a whole thing I heard on NPR the other day about people who like post-pandemic. Like, hey, look, I don't want to have to keep explaining to people that I'm non-binary and having them look at me because I'm wearing the wrong shirt. Like, I'm going to get a different job. Well, that's bold, and it takes a pandemic for a lot of people to consider that. If you can stand not having a net, that also puts you in this enviable position, you know, lack of net notwithstanding, to say, like, well, I get to pick.
I had this phrase go through my head the other day and you can't post about this because it sounds really self-involved but in some ways success in life is having a role in your own mythology. My mythology in the sense of you're this puffed up character that doesn't really do anything but more in the sense of there used to be a time when you'd have PR people would build up these stories about you and now today the internet gets to decide who you are permanently. But like, there's this liminal space in between where you get to
have a role in how quote unquote successfully you want to be, which could make you the happiest person on your block. Instead of saying like, I want to go like eat a bunch of fucking chicken feathers for nickels. Like this is the thing I'm going to do. Here's my rules for who's allowed to fuck with it. And these are the kinds of risks that I can tolerate for now. And, you know, I think that's really great. I hope Gia Tolentino is, I don't just even want to say compensated. I really hope she's happy with her job because her job makes me so happy. If I can make somebody like,
I mean, obviously not, but if I could make somebody like David Roth or Gia Tolentino like what I do, that would really mean the world to me. I'm kind of fake internet pals with Lizzie O'Leary now, and that makes me happy because she's genuinely fucking hilarious. And I can riff a little bit with her at a respectful distance. I'm not going to make it weird, but do I go out and follow the host of every podcast in America? Holy shit, no. I'd rather be set upon by bees.
What I'm saying, Alex, at length, I got up very early. What I'm saying is, first of all, whatever you consider success, or for that matter, whatever you consider not utterly failing, is a moving target. And you need to read the room in so many different ways to figure out if it's going away you can live with
Alexbut that's that's a buddhist gift yeah don't don't know if that helped anybody but i sure hope so what that mean oh because i don't think most people know what they want or want want as a success or even have a sense of what success is.
MerlinBut the pandemic and all of the tumult of the last, let's say, six years, I think has a lot of people not only aware of the Matrix, but finding it difficult not to constantly see the Matrix. And for me, that can be stuff that includes stuff like, holy shit, cops, really? Really? This is what you're here for? To quote Eric Geller, is this protecting and serving? There's stuff like that, but think about all the things that were load-bearing walls or immovable rocks in the road of life for people two to seven years ago.
I'm here to tell you, there's a lot of people that see The Matrix now and go like, oh, shit, my job was never, like, you know, like that book says, your job can't love you. Your job has never loved you. You don't love your job and it doesn't love you, but you hung on to it because it felt secure, which, like I say, that's a little bit like throwing somebody an anchor in some ways. Like, you're so grateful that somebody noticed you and threw something, but like, is that really what you want to – And I think a lot of people are looking at that and going, I didn't realize how fed up I was with shit.
I didn't realize how much my health, my emotional, mental, and even physical health has suffered out of something I thought was an immovable rock in a road that I had to walk down every day. And I think that's shaken some shit up with people. Do you have friends that have done that? They keep talking about, oh, is that a dumb word? It's like a staycation-style word. whatever you know that dumb word people use now. Do you have friends that have either of their own accord or
for external factors have seen those kinds of shakeups especially with regard to their career?
AlexOh yeah. Most everyone I know either quit or was fired sometime between 2020 and like spring of 2021 or no 2022. When was I fired? I forget. Oh, God, only like three months ago. What?
MerlinHow long is it off the dome? How long does it feel?
AlexOh.
MerlinSix months, a year?
AlexOh, at least two years. Oh, wow. Yep, yep. Well, I had the very obvious but still brain-dead tweet of me saying I just keep performing at my desk as if someone is watching me work.
MerlinOh, I love that. That popped up on my – I accidentally reverted to – from chronological to bullshit. And it popped right up and I put a heart on it because – say what you said in that tweet.
AlexI'm still trying to get my brain to remember that right now I'm my own boss. I don't need to do pointless busy work. I don't need to perform for a manager. I don't need to spend at least eight hours at an actual desk if I finish work for the day.
MerlinBut doesn't it eat at you still? Absolutely. Maybe I'm projecting. No, but I feel like, I mean, obviously it's nothing I could ever talk about, but even in my repose, even when I'm by myself, I think like, God, well, I regret not having done some stupid bullshit right now because I think that's my idea of being employed.
AlexAnd what is weirder is like when I was at an office, that was that wasn't even as prevalent. Like because, you know, some of that we bring on ourselves. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like when I had my job and working from home, that was way more like, OK, I got to be like Syracuse. Like most people I know.
MerlinYou got to check in and make sure nothing's blown up. Make sure or, you know, the way I what Max used to say. Oh, God. He used to wake up every morning wondering he's mad at him. And my version of that is I wake up every morning wondering who I didn't know I was disappointing.
AlexYeah. Every morning, I think who has forgotten about me and I need to stop doing that. But like I said, it feels like a year and I've done nothing for a year except things that don't, not that don't matter, but there's only so many hours in a day I can fill out like IRS forms. And like if something isn't working, I don't need to be on the phone for two hours with a customer service person.
It's very weird.
MerlinRight, right. And this gets back to this thing, though, that I feel like is a grace note. I know in my life and I feel like in a lot of people's life and this is you will be totally forgiven for thinking that's fine for Merlin. But I think there and I this might be based in, you know, old religious values. You know, I'm not Calvinist, but, you know, some kind of like old school, like you're meant to suffer idea. But like I do think the grace note is that I think the unstated but entirely real and present default assumption is that if you're not unhappy, you're not doing enough.
And in particular, if you're not unhappy, you're not, quote unquote, working hard enough. And you see this in this whole like hustle culture. Why am I so reluctant to say this? Well, it's a flavor of the chicken problem. It tastes like chicken title. Which is like, holy shit, you know, like I have started – it's like Orwellian in the true sense of the word. Like even if the telescreens aren't turned on, I'm going to still act like they are. I feel like I'm in some kind of international panopticon where I constantly need to be performing in a way that somebody won't find objectionable even if I'm by myself.
And how fucked up is that? You know, like that's if you don't have that sense of who you are when people aren't around, what must you be like when you're in front of other people taking pictures of your feet for Instagram, I guess. I don't know. But, you know, good job. Curtain call. Bravo. you know and but like you know it's and the part about this that i i hope seeps through to somebody who um has the ears to hear it is that you i don't call it agency exactly but you you have
you have more ability to have an impact on your life than you probably think and one reason you probably don't think that is it's fucking scary it's like the first time you read like, you know, an existential novel or something. And you think about the emptiness of like, well, up till now I've had the constellation of believing that, you know, God's watching me and he's mad because I diddle on my twinkus last night.
AlexOh, diddlers.
MerlinTrending headline. I diddle on my twinkus last night and now God's mad. Well, what if you found out that not only was God not watching you, but that office is not occupied. That's harrowing. What if you are ultimately responsible for the shit in your life, you know, on some level? I don't know. I just want people to be happy, Alex. I honestly really do.
AlexI think about, I don't think about this all the time, but I often remember one day you saying, I think you could be happy eventually. Or something like that. And I was like, I am happy.
MerlinYeah, because you probably, I felt like you needed to hear that. Well, and think about people who think they're unlovable and going like, you know, regardless of what I think about you, I think you not only could be lovable, but I think you are lovable. But what I if I were giving you advice you didn't ask for, I'd say start acting like you're lovable.
AlexI have decided or have tried to decide as of today, like I could just decide that I was successful today because it's probably bull. It would be bullshit either way. And it would be nice to spend an evening not being really angry at all of the things that I didn't do. And it, God, it sounds so obvious.
MerlinThat's another case, though, of like, it's, you know, to say the obvious, easier said than done. But, like, I do think it's, I mean, I don't know. This is going to seem like an overly subtle distinction. This is a very deep episode. I didn't sleep a lot last night. But, like, I think this might seem like a subtle distinction. But, like, that phrase that you sometimes, acting like you're trying to knock down a door. Like if you steal yourself too much and you get too much like too much like I've got any number of characters on TV.
Speaker ALike I'm salesman of the month.
MerlinI'm going to do great.
Speaker AI'm going to win the Cadillac.
MerlinBut if it's like unmoored to anything, same way that a resolution doesn't work without infrastructure. Like I mean one good start is like hey, it's up to you to decide how hard to be on yourself. If you think you're being hard on yourself because of your parents or your priest or whatever, well, that's probably true. But there's nobody standing next to you telling you to be hard on yourself right now. And if there is, you need to leave immediately. You know, go into that new special cut off your connections mode on your iPhone and just run the other way.
because there is not somebody standing there with a gun to your head demanding that you be permanently unhappy, unmoored, and unhopeful that anything in the world could ever change in a way that you find gracious and life-affirming. That's a pretty terrible way to live. But like, if you can even make it just over that little hillock, you're going to be so surprised at all the stuff that, again, something from the Wisdom Project. How much of those ill feelings are ultimately optional. Feeling bad about feeling bad is ultimately optional. You know, choosing to
write off trauma and pain and continue living your life with a big happy grin on your face, that's optional. That's, I'm not telling you how to fix that with like a magic wand in an afternoon, but like, that's on you. Like you, you always have the option to do that differently. I don't mean to sound like self-help, but if, if I can chuck somebody on the shoulder and say, what if you were lovable? What if you were confident? How would you act? Is it possible that you're acting more like somebody who's really scared and defensive and now that's become who you
are? Well, that might be a thing you want to work on. And you don't have to declare yourself sales in a month. You just have to declare yourself somebody who's worthy of thought, effort, and the occasional sacrifice. It's like I say, it's simple, but it's not easy.
AlexI have a problematic take that I'm very excited to share. I would love that. Oh, yes. I think it is often easy. Not easy. I think it is convenient to conflate this with mental illness and just assuming that we don't have any, not any, but we have less agency on our emotions than we think we do.
As a person of insanity, I...
MerlinYou're one of those POIs I've been thinking about.
AlexOh, God. Like, I mean, just because you have a, in my case, a big old box of medications, that doesn't mean you've been prescribed misery along with Prozac.
MerlinLet's refer also to that phrase I keep using. Don't stop pathologizing people. You know what I mean? Stop trying to figure out which label you're going to affix to someone. And that's not going to govern how you treat them. And that includes yourself.
AlexLike I'll be Teddy Trans again. I'm like, if you don't want to be the person who is making it look like all queer people are miserable. Well, the same is also true of people who aren't neurotypical or have a broken, just a straight up broken brain like me. I don't know what. Literally. Literally. It's, oh, it wasn't, it was a mild concussion.
MerlinNo, no, I'm being serious. Your brain is literally defective. Oh, yes. So like when Dave Grohl says, I can't save you from my poor brain, or gosh, I go like, my brain's so stupid today, but my brain is stupid today. But like in your case, like you got a lot going on.
AlexOh, yeah.
MerlinWhich is something I do think about a lot, how you navigate this world having to occasionally probably second guess your perceptions and your decision making and your emotions. It must be maddening.
challenge not quite first i gotta read you this oh please wait there's several things i said i was gonna talk about but it doesn't matter we'll go to challenge this okay no you know what fuck it we do challenge i just wanted to read this because this has such a nice mouthfeel this is a tweet that went around the other day that like um it made me feel as you youth say this made me feel seen
uh this is twitter user merit k m-e-r-r-i-t-t-k um and and the the person says uh this is what every twitter trending topic looks like to me now and they mocked up this fake but very real looking thing you'd see on, boy, this really, I'm still fucking laughing about this. Fake headline from HuffPost. Grimbo Schnarp reveals Donkis Brim's been thirsting after his Stringer Tongues co-star
and the Crimbler isn't happy. That's how I feel. I mean, it sounds like I'm making this up, but literally, there's been at least a couple occasions where I ill-advisedly click on Twitter, not the magnifying glass, but whatever's there, the garbage the garbage pail and i end up looking at this and it's like oh my god this is the this is like having like completely undesirable access to the raw id of the internet when you see people
let's get this trending you know but i i on at least a couple occasions i feel like there has been something where i'm like i know these are all words i feel like i i have like an aphasia because I know these are all words. They're words that I know, and I'm reading them in order, and I can tell that this is a sentence. And I think it's about two people on YouTube who have been in a relationship, but now one of them has been having an affair with a different YouTuber. And I don't know any of these. People with names, I think, are a prank.
Like, apparently, there is a person called Jacksepticeye, and I know this because the person called Jacksepticeye is in the very good movie Free Guy in a very, oh, really entertaining cameo. Boy, that guy's funny. But Jacksepticeye, whatever the fuck that is, is not only in that film, but is somebody who my kid knows of. I said, that's not a real person.
Jacksepticeye.
AlexIt brings me comfort.
MerlinSee, I'm probably being mean. That's probably about his grandma or something.
AlexWell, no. Okay.
MerlinGrandma Septicott. It's an Irish name.
Grimbo Schnarp, it's time for the challenge. Alex, what's the challenge? What's the challenge this week?
AlexThis week's challenge was to try Bearable, which is an app that you discovered, I think, because John Dickerson tweeted it.
MerlinBecause it's John Dickerson, who's a good person.
AlexYes. Oh, his voice is a good—I hope he gets paid a lot for reading his books.
MerlinHe also has really nice shoes. I always admire the shininess of his shoes.
AlexOh. I hope he's also being paid to use his feet.
MerlinI'm wearing slip-on Vans. I'm wearing slip-on Vans right now. And it looks like a joke gift for an elderly relative. Hey, Grandpa, look at you. You're Tony Hawk. What?
What? Who keeps moving my gum? What? Hang 10, dude. Gross. Get radical.
Okay, Grandpa, let's get you back. Yeah, yeah, but John had posted, a friend of the show, John Dickerson, had posted a thing where it was on the... You know what it was? I think it was on the Reddit for...
AlexSelf-quantification.
MerlinFor like Beautiful Data. I think it was actually from like a Beautiful Data one. Have you seen David McCandless's new book? He has a new Information is Beautiful book. No. You know the talk where I cried? He was one of the other speakers there, so I got to meet him very briefly. Oh, really? But he does Information is beautiful. He does those incredible infographics. I love.
But John posted something about this and saying like, it was like to all you people out there who, you know, think a lot about sleep, maybe check this out. And it was a graphic somebody posted and it was, I guess, a couple who lived together and they each posted their stats from something called Bearable. And it showed, this is catnip for Alex and me, I have to say. you ever seen the cat eating the hamburger you ever seen that i've seen many cats eat many hamburgers so i'm not sure and they posted uh again i'm just coming into this cold but i see
this like oh here are the things that have had an impact on sleep and i'm like tell me more and they're like fasting three hours before bed gives this percentage improvement um going to bed before 11 gives me this percentage improvement. I'm like, tell me more about this wizard. Who is this? What is this magic app? And that's what led me to Bearable. And then I started playing with it. It reminded me of other things I have tried and we have talked about. And I said to myself, I said, this is Alex's shit, is what I felt like.
AlexOh, indeed. I'm rolling around in it. I am a full-on
Merlinpig. Should we describe what this app, I think I kind of did it here maybe in the after show, but do you want to take a cut at telling people what this app is and what it's for? That's the thing is I'm struggling to describe
Alexthis app since there are plenty of self-help journal type iOS apps and mood trackers. I'll take a stab at it if you want. Yeah, it's such a, well, describe it and I will, I have more takes.
MerlinOh, no. Well, okay. So there's something that's been around for a while that some people call self-quantization, which is kind of a mouthful and seems a little pretentious. But if I had to describe this, like think about the way your phone used to have a bunch of static stuff on it. Well, eventually your phone could start noticing things about you, like how often you use the phone and stuff like that. And eventually along comes Apple Health. And Apple Health will tell you things like how many steps you took today, et cetera.
And that ecosystem around all those things continue to grow. And, you know, there was a bunch of stuff you could have it watch for you. Like, you're not writing down how many steps you took. Probably your Fitbit is telling you that or, you know, your watch or whatever, right? There's some stuff that's just capturing, like where you are, the ambient part of your life. Like what I did, what I was doing, like, you know, all that kind of stuff. There's stuff where you can tell it things where you could say, like, for example, there's a lot of stuff in Apple Health I didn't know about that.
I only discovered when I'd done a deeper dive recently. You can put I'm not trying to be funny, but like sexual activity is a section like alcoholic drinks is a section.
you can, I think there's a bowel movement area, but there's all kinds of stuff where you tell it something and then it remembers that, okay? So there's that, right? So there's like the stuff that can be tracked about you. There's the stuff that interests you to keep track of for health or whatever personal or curiosity reasons that you kind of tell it about. And then the world gets big because there are apps and services that are doing their darndest to take the information that's been gleaned about you
and the information that you've told about you and to varying levels of interaction from you finds interesting patterns. And Bearable is an app, and I think it would be valuable in a sec after I shut up to talk about the other apps that have done things like this because that's, I think, important.
So on the one hand, you've got stuff that's like, I don't know, do you remember Datum, D-A-Y-T-U-M?
AlexNo, I don't think I ever did.
MerlinGod, I wish it was still around and working. Datum is the guy who did one of those things. But Datum was this app where you could track anything. And it just made it so easy. I used it for how much I was spending on SodaStream refills. Every time I changed my SodaStream bottle, I would just say, oh, just changed the SodaStream bottle. That's all. All I'd do is go there and hit a plus sign. Or these are days that I wasn't smoking.
AlexAll right. I am going to plug When Did I, which is an app that basically does the same thing, I think. And I just really like it.
MerlinBut it's beneficial to me, and this will become a little more important. It's beneficial to me. Oh, look, voice, the whole thing we've been talking about here, the voice log idea. It's just, I just want something that feels brain dead simple to me. Simple in terms of like what I want out of it. Making it is a damn sight harder. But like I just want to be able to yell in the air and have something written to a line in a CSV. I want to be able to just click a plus sign and have it know I just changed a SodaStream container of this amount. Now, OK, so that's interesting.
Then you can go back and on your own you can say like, oh, well, I can calculate pretty easily like how much I spent on this. Or like these are days I didn't smoke or whatever it is. You can see the benefit in that. So, you know, I do. But I do think this is important. Over here is the stuff where, based on usually some kind of technology, but it doesn't have to be technology, but generally, based on some kind of technology, there are things that it can track about you. Over here are things that you tell it about you.
And then over here, often in a different place, are apps and services that find, well, sometimes obvious, often surprising correlations between things that you had not been aware of. And what's neat is as those apps try to do that to varying levels of success, you start to discover patterns that maybe can help you figure out a hunch about something if your hunch was right. But often what the dream for me is to have an app that not only intuitive lets me do all of these things in one place in a really hands off way, but then also it tells me the things that are important to me.
It's important to me to understand how sleep or lack of sleep has an impact on my life. It's important to me to know how exercise or not exercising, et cetera, et cetera, for all these things. You could go in and just maybe you're really interested in like how much choline I had this week. Like one of those words from a nutrition label. Maybe you have gout, so you need to keep your uric acid down. And so there's all kinds of reasons for doing this that aren't just dieting to lose weight. But have that all in one place. So, yes, show me the things that I know I care about.
So give me the opportunity, the affordance, if you like, to have input about that. More on that in a minute. But then also the dream, find a correlation, the most wackadoo correlation that I never would have made. That's not just a completely – again, like, oh, you – the weather – like, you weigh more when you're in Washington, D.C. Well, okay.
Speaker AFavorite example.
MerlinYeah, that was a real one. I made the joke about, like, it's cold in San Francisco when you're in D.C. The real one was that you – it was something about my weight based on the four days I was in D.C. during my child's life. And that keeps popping up. Hey, you want to know about – dude, it's cool. But isn't this the dream though, Alex, is like find me a correlation that over the last five years, your step count seems to go down in relationship to the time that the sun sets or the weather.
Or if you get real deep in the stack and you're tracking a lot of stuff, because some of these apps will also let you do things like rescue time and say, I tend to spend a lot more time on sites I know represent procrastination. I tend to do that a lot more in December.
But show me over time. You get this, right? You take all these pieces, put it together. And then the big part, the big, big, big, big, big. This is why I say track stuff whether you need it or not because someday it might be really valuable. You know, it's, you know, save money because you'll find something to spend it on someday. And in this case, like, track all that stuff because who knows what I'll eventually be able to correlate. And wouldn't it be great to just plug some amazing new service into three, five, 10, 20 years of data to do your own like personal longitudinal study?
The same way you like study like, you know, the students at Yale, you know, and we're like, you know, the movie Seven Up, like check back in on this. So that's the dream. And I thought bearable, I'm going to shut up and let you talk here. But there's a couple of things Bearable does that I have not seen in other places. And that's why I thought it might appeal to you.
AlexI really like everything Bear does because unlike Gyroscope, Bearable, it has an adorable icon.
MerlinBears that overrated app.
AlexOh, no, it's cute. It's funny. If you're not familiar with Markdown, it is a lovely way to – I recommend it to people who don't use Markdown, but I want them to send me something in Markdown. Anyway, Bearable is one of the most full-featured tracking apps I've ever used.
MerlinCustomizable.
AlexYes.
MerlinBut not in a way that makes it necessarily overwhelming, which I feel like always must be said. If there's stuff you don't care about, please do not make it a thing you have to check in with on the reg.
Speaker ALike you will get very fatigued.
MerlinI mean, I've got medication, the medication support in Apple Health because I'm on iOS 16. I love it. It tells me when to take pills and it keeps track of all of that. But I'm already fatigued with having it with, you know, I brought this into my life. I invited this particular Dracula in. But like, yeah, hey, you know what? Actually, I just missed one because I have DND on. But like 1140, take this pill. And then it pops up and says, hey, did you take your 1140 pill? And I do the long press and I say, mark as completed.
And I'm getting that three times a day is already a little fatiguing. Like I don't need another thing bugging me about something I don't care about. I've got so much of that. I'm shedding that rather than wanting to bring that in. But I just wanted to say. So, you know, like don't turn on all the tags. Don't turn on all the nags, tags and nags. Don't turn all that on unless it benefits you. But like, I don't I don't think that's a way to I think you would do better treating this and really any app. You'll get more longevity out of an app that you customize for how you are rather than how you think you should be.
AlexThe first thing I did was turn off almost everything. I think. Oh, yeah. I'm going to do that. I'm going to start over.
MerlinAlmost start over.
AlexWell, I actually wanted this app to bug me more. And you have to set, it could be wrong, but I had to set custom reminders.
MerlinIt's got a lot of stuff where you still need to turn the crank a little bit.
AlexYeah, and it's, I mean, that's the reason I love that one app that basically does nothing except track a number. or in my case, the energy level.
MerlinYour mood expressed as a numeral between one and five.
AlexYes, but all I need to do is a long press and then select.
MerlinYeah. When this reminds you to say how you feel, you have to click through, go to the app, and at least in my experience, it doesn't land you on the place where you do that.
AlexAnd it has, it loads. It just takes you to like. It loads every, it's like never in, oh God. Like, okay, if you force quit and then the little ball, not the ball, whatever, the little radial thing is, okay, it's not that long. But still, it's really slow compared to a lot of apps I'm used to. But I don't know. I think right now the benefits are worth it just because already I can see, oh, my mood and energy, I have more of that when I've slept less.
And it's like, whoa, why is that? Oh, because Alex is bipolar. Yeah.
MerlinSometimes I think I do better podcasts when I'm tired.
AlexIt's really weird. Yeah. And I already was like, I mean, that's something I know, but it is nice to see it represented without, at least I hope, I don't think I was skewing it.
MerlinI would like to make a remark and then I would like to ask to me the most important question about this and all apps of this kind. I wrote a bunch about this, but we don't need to do it all.
Yeah, I like to prepare. But like the funny thing I was going to say that's so embarrassing to me is I find myself bitching about this app. And I wouldn't bitch about it if I didn't like it. It's definitely got room for improvement. But when I find myself bitching about the app, yeah, most of the time it's because it's bugging me about something. I'm like, is this worth my time to do? But the irony is I find myself thinking, gosh, I kind of wish this did more of the stuff that exists in Gyroscope, too.
Like, for example, like the really obvious one, I'm sure there's a reason. Why does it only have like six Apple Health? What's the word for it? You know, there's only like six or eight Apple Health things. Yeah.
AlexNot the APR. the sucking in of Apple health kit stuff. Like,
Merlinso like it'll do stuff like, um, I think it'll, I mean, I don't understand why it doesn't have more of those because what I find myself thinking is like, wow, ultimately I'm going to cut right to the chase. What I, what I really want this to do is to do way more of the automatic stuff. I love the configuration. And let me just say again, the whole thing that made me immediately attracted to this app personally, Those results are great. Well, those results of those folks on Reddit talking about their sleep, that's a lot of work.
Like to do that, because think about like how did it know whether you fasted three hours before dinner? How did it know that you had no to moderate drinking? How did it know all this? Well, you had to punch it in. And in this case, you punch it in. You've got like a.m., p.m., blah, blah, blah. And was it moderate drinking? was this. It's like, ooh, this is really like I cannot handle doing this as an Excel spreadsheet. Like it's not there yet. But the one that really grabbed me, a couple of things it lets me do.
My longstanding bitch about so much stuff involving data, including like I recently sent a bunch of my Apple Health data to Syracuse kind of as a laugh. But also like how do I show, because the whole point was I said, Syracuse, I'm going to show you my Apple Health data for the last few years and you'll see patterns of stuff like when my kids stopped going to the school to which I walked my kid that got me that baseline, that base tan of a mile and a half a day of steps, right? Or here's where I got a Segway or here's where I got my nicer Segway or here's where I
got a bike. Where do you put that? Right. Well, at Google Sheets, I guess you go and make a new column all the way to the right and you write the event in there they the the i think fella i think it might be a one-man operation making bearable gets this and makes they have things one thing i
Alexlove significant events that really have you done this yeah i mean i mean it's hard because like you mentioned there's not a lot of old apple health data other than sleep it can pull in so i've only been doing July.
MerlinAnd the other problem with Apple Health data, if we're being honest, is that the Apple Health data that gets sucked down and then shared, there's not actually that many things that are being tracked. I think for almost all apps that are using the HealthKit API, I could be extremely wrong. I think what it tracks is something, something, something. We know you're in bed. Something, something, something. We know you're asleep.
That's kind of what it does. I think when you're opening something like auto sleep or sleep watch or sleep plus plus, you get other things. But I don't think it's Apple health that's making that's showing me how loud the room was while I slept. That's I don't know. Well, but like, where is it? Like if you do a big dump of your data, go and see. Like if I do that, use that really cool site auto export.
It's just exactly one sleep metric per se sleep metric in there, which is how much did you sleep? Like anything I've gotten from my blood oximeter or from other kinds of devices, it's all in there, but it's not cleft in exactly the same way. I don't think there's a way, for example, is your REM sleep cycle something you could export? I don't think so. It shows it in graphs. But I think that's part of the limitation there. But one of the things, significant events.
So that's where you can say something big happened. like it or in my case like something medium-sized happened which is i got a bike that's really cool i can put that there but it's also great for saying stuff like this is when i stopped doing crack or this is when i was hospitalized or whatever it was and alongside the other things you punch in or things that get detected that shows you some interesting patterns and if nothing else you can certainly like at least scrub to the left and see what the data looks like after this point but you know so much of this is going to be only as good as what gets captured and what gets put in
The other thing, I think this app, I don't know what I would do differently in terms of design. There's something about the structure of this app, the design of this app on a conceptual level that is brilliant. The implementation of it in the UI is not as brilliant. There's a lot of concepts to learn in this app. But let me just put it this way. If you spend some time and you look at it, here's one of the coolest things. It very clearly differentiates between inputs and outputs. Right? So like your desirable goals are not to be confused with your weight or things that happened in the world.
You're tracking, like think of it almost like an X axis and a Y axis.
AlexOkay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MerlinBecause you can go in and say there's things like there's significant events. And then there's stuff like factors that you can go in and put in, symptoms you can go and put in. And like this is why I say the bottom line is, well, try this app. It's cool. The huge part, though, I have to say is don't feel like you have to flip everything on or learn everything. I would even say I'm going to be real conservative and say if you look at this app and so you want to check it out, pick one thing. Maybe just one correlation. Grab as much data as you want. But I would not expect 20 correlations to come out.
And I would not cause it to be something where you're expected to go and do your fucking TPS report cover sheets seven times a day. but also then there's not really it needs more integrations because like what if I wanted to track how much water I'm drinking is there an integration for that because if it doesn't get it from Apple Health where does it get it from
Alexthey do have a road map and that's potentially there's of course a suggestions area
MerlinI'll keep with it because I support this effort and it is a very promising start but it's still pretty young
AlexI'm glad that there is a way to give this app money. That was my main concern because there's like Dave Leo or, oh God, I've forgotten all Pacifica. I don't know. There's a million like mood. What are these words? These are cute names of apps that are supposed to track your mood or whatever.
MerlinOh, that went away. Like the Polish guy who made the OmniFocus thing that had like five new features a day and then he disappeared forever. Oh, yeah. remember that this one does sinking
Alexwell and I the community around it is actually pretty if not big smart and engaged and like they have you know like there's people who are like yeah I really want to
Merlinwell the person who's making it I think understands what people want I think it's not like oh god I just saw a wonderful new edition from the roadmap for Descript one of my requested features is happening. I'm so happy. Like it's that it makes a big difference when it doesn't just feel like another shovel app that's there to be like all these millions of other shovel apps. And I don't mean to say anything like disparaging about this, but like I, I don't, I don't do gyroscope and exist so much anymore. I could really use this. Can I cut to the big question though? Because
this is where I think you really bring it all home. And I, you're the only person I know who can really answer this question. Well, if you think about what you want in life in terms of your, you know, again, I think it's important, you know, ways and means. It's like we said, what's the difference between an intentionality and a goal? Like a goal is a thing that I want to be different. And intentionality is how I roll on the way to getting the goal. I think it seems subtle, but boy, is that ever a big difference. And if it's like I said in the document, if you
understand the difference between an enemy and an adversary, you're going to collect a lot of the former. And so here's my question. Like, what do I want? Well, I want to be happy or I want to be, I want to feel well. I want to feel like myself. Two words you've used. We both mood and energy. Now these are both, there's ways that energy is expressed in, wow, I did 20,000 steps today when I was at Disneyland, or I did seven steps today because I'm in the hospital. There's right. But So, yeah, I have less energy because I'm sick or I have more energy because I'm hopped up on pineapple whips or whatever.
But my question to you, this is the part where it falls apart for me and it's nobody's fault but my own. So you, somebody who previously has stipulated, is comfortable with the idea that a mood app pops up periodically and says, hey, Alex, how do you feel from one to five? And do you have a similar thing for energy? Like how much energy do you have right now, right? Is it something similar that you use?
AlexNo, because it's such a simple, basic-ass app. But, I mean, now I have this thing. I have this. Now I've been using Bearable for that. But you can't choose to.
MerlinWell, let's just stick with mood for now. But, like, here's, like, the most. So this thing, and so what I'm getting at is this thing, If you track your sleep with something that goes through Apple Health, yeah, it tracks your sleep. That's cool. And it can track your mood. That's really cool. One of the most intuitive things that it will present with you, presents you, I think it's like the main, not mine anyway, it's like the main graph, is like how is your mood based on how much, not necessarily how well you slept, but how much sleep you got mainly.
And it does a Google Sheets style. It's kind of neat. It's kind of clever. You turn your phone sideways and it gives you more views to a thing. And I admit to not being somebody who's an expert at this app, but this is where the rubber meets the road. And it's where my rubber goes off the road because it's cool that you say, oh, I would not be surprised at all to find out. I don't think it's going to be a day-to-day correlation. But if you know you've been in crunch mode and you've been stressed out and you've not been eating well and blah, blah, blah, and all those things, you may find that your mood is pretty low when you sleep.
But here's my question. what the fuck does it mean? What is mood? How do you determine your mood? And what is the baseline? Because do you want to guess what I always put? Almost always seven or eight. Now, that's important. That's important because, okay, like when I'm first doing it, I'm actually feeling pretty good. Why am I feeling pretty good? Well, guess what? I got this app because I'm working on my health and I'm trying. Oh, so you have a seven or eight.
How about this? I think people don't return the questionnaires that they feel make them look bad. I don't think people return. People don't like to do the personality quiz that makes them a fried chicken part or Sex in the City star that they don't like. Have you ever been in not a great mood? And you're just like, fuck it. You skip it.
AlexOh, absolutely. Which is why-
MerlinRight? I think that there's probably a name for that in social psychology. But like, where's my threes title? Where's my threes? Because I feel like an asshole writing down that this is my mood. But the thing that underlines all of this that I really need your help on is how do I establish a baseline? And then how do I know whether this is a 2, a 5, or an 8?
AlexI mean, the unfortunate answer, I guess for me, is always like how alive do I want to be right now?
MerlinBut what are you comparing it against?
AlexOr wanting to die. Like literally, that is a baseline I had to find out.
MerlinTry my new site, selfharmy.io.
We got it. No, we can't go because we need to answer this question. Oh, boy. Like, give me, no, no, I'm not, I mean, I'm not asking you to hold my dick, but like, how should I be thinking about this? Because I already feel, and just to be clear here, I'm saying this because I want to know how I feel. I want to be able to know that on this day, and just to be clear here, another thing that this app does, it's fan-fucking-tastic. When you go and you enter in your mood from 1 to 10, it also has what we could just call tags, which is handy.
Alexoh are we thinking of the same thing the feature or uh what's it called the featured fuck where oh see crash thank you my friend uh oh i right right right sorry yeah i don't i do not have the tags on because because there's just one more bit of resistance okay no exactly well but
Merlinhere's the thing let's just let's go to an obvious one for me it has those tags most of which like are not meaningful to me. Let's just open it up. And I'm not ragging on it, but I'm giving you an instance where like, this would be so useful for me.
AlexWell, we wouldn't be talking about it if it was shitty.
MerlinWell, so I just clicked seven and then it does the greatest thing, which it gives you all of these tags. Do I feel happy, confident, optimistic, excited, loved, awful, stressed, anxious, frustrated, exhausted? Well, okay, now I'm really not trying to be a liberal arts major about this, But like, well, am I anxious or am I stressed or am I both? And like compared to what? So it is cool that when you pump in your little number, it also says, well, then like describe in a noun what that feeling is.
And you can pick what's in there. So for me, anxious, relieved, stressed, grateful, that's real good to know. And you can even add a note, which sometimes confuses the screen. But you can add a note. So like I've said stuff, I told you last time, like, why are you grateful right now? I'm grateful because I got to hang out with my kid this morning. You know, I'm grateful because I'm not on fire right now. I'm grateful because something I was terrified of what happened didn't happen. I'm anxious because I think something terrible is going to happen.
Whatever, right? And being able to write down what that event was will teach you a lot about yourself. I already know, even though I'm resisting using this feature for the reasons I've stated, I could get a lot out of this if I kind of, as you say, made myself do it. But I just don't understand how you decide what the number is. If you were going to give advice to a friend, like theoretically me, how should I be thinking about my mood expressed as a number between 1 and 10?
Is there a trick?
AlexYes, I'm a mood guru. I like to think of 10 as the happiest you've ever been or the happiest you would like to be.
MerlinOh, you're on the Syracuse scale where you get predestination two and a half stars.
AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no, no. Predestination is a-
MerlinIs yours like a bell curve? Like, do you feel like I should be seeing a lot of 5, 6, 7? And if I'm not, I'm either manic, unhappy, or not using the system, right? Like, how do you know if it's working?
AlexWell, that's part of why I like the little notes area. Because if I'm like, yep, I'm at a nine and I haven't added a note as to why, it's probably mania.
MerlinYou just write down like feeling fine. Like you could just go like, oh, I know that feeling. I have that what I would call the Saturday morning feeling title. When you're a kid, the Saturday morning feeling where you wake up and you're like, oh, shit, do I have to go to school? No, I don't. And Batman's on at 1030. Like, ah, Saturday feeling.
Alexright and in the same way the sunday scaries if my mood is at a 3 at 9 p.m on a sunday i mean mine shouldn't be because my monday is only controlled by me i heard your boss is an asshole
Speaker Amy boss is the worst like the magician
MerlinSo Sunday Scaries, you get a three. And then when you go back, I mean, here's the thing, though. I was really trying to use this. This part is not a criticism. I think they're doing as well as I can imagine doing this. Certainly better than having, how do you feel? I'm feeling very three. You're not 3.5. There is no 3.5. I feel three. Round down. Round down. But like when you look at, for example, I'm guessing you look at the, you know, the MVP, how do I feel versus how much sleep have I gotten?
Has that been meaningful to you yet?
AlexUh, yes, but I already knew that based on other apps I had used, what I am interested in, and again, it's only been like two and a half weeks, is my mood versus my energy level. That's my, that's the custom one I made. Where are you doing? Oh, I see. And when you do a custom one, help me cheat. Let me cheat off your your test. We do it. It's a custom. What? It's a custom. No, it's a custom. So it's a little area of custom ratings. And it is a it's it's a my I I I'm at a three right now. Like it doesn't make sense to anybody but me.
Well, and it's a little bit helpful because everything is on a five scale.
MerlinYou know, synesthesia where people can like see or like hear colors or, you know, like, you know what I mean? Like where two of your senses, you get all Marcel Proust and your senses get a little bit mixed up. But it's not mixed up to the person who's having it, having that synesthesia. I think Adam Neely has talked about this. Like people with synesthesia have a very strong feeling of like what the number three means. and it makes you sound crazy or like why you find something disquieting about a lowercase h h for example no seriously these are real things are scary kuber kuber probably has that he probably
gets a serif wrong and has to go take a shit like who knows he gets very upset about things but like there's this but like do you have something that's a dumb question but do you have something approaching that sort of synesthesia are you able to go like oh yeah this
Alexdefinitely feels like a four day yes and only because i have have the the baseline of uh zero not alive yeah yeah yeah previously stated qed yes yes yes okay like the day that okay 10 all right gothika oh god i went back on the outside because i'm two but the the okay the The more important thing – okay, okay, okay. Okay, okay.
The more important thing is if you get –
MerlinYou're like Andy Cohen at one of those Real Housewives reunions. Go.
AlexIf you get too hung up on it, you're not going to answer it or you're not going to answer it honestly.
MerlinBut how will you know later on? I mean I just don't know how – when I look at those and I go like, yeah, well, it looks like I picked seven and eight a lot and I slept some. I just haven't figured out – okay, this is my personal journey. I'm the only person who probably has a problem with this. I need to figure out what the numbers mean.
AlexThat's part of the – I think that's part of like the whole process. Because if you don't know – like some people have too much REM sleep.
MerlinI just don't think in number. I don't think in – no. I mean like there's that phrase. I know I guess the guy's problematic. I don't know. But the guy, one of the Penny Arcade guys, has pretty severe anxiety and wrote about it on the website. and several people pointed me to it. God, I hope I don't butcher this. I'll try to find it for notes. But he talked about his anxiety and the way that his brain starts somewhere and then hops somewhere else. And before he knows it, he's like, wait a minute, how did I get to that?
How did I get to that like world ending thing that's not happening? And I think he called it, was it like web worrying? But describing it as being like a spider web, which instantly made sense to me. Where it's like, I just time traveled door or anxiety hopped three to five places and i don't remember ever agreeing to teleport like i i went from my heart is being a little bit fast and i feel kind of unsettled right now that which sends me off scanning the notional list of things i that might be a threat to me
i zero in on not zero in on i happily invite in like dracula's a couple of those and then i take it to the worst possible thing. And the joke about this for people who do this is like, like somehow the coffee person wrote my name wrong and I know I'm going to be homeless this week.
What happens in between? My brain is what happens. And that's not my particular one. I just see like everything that anything that's happening or not happening represents my total irreversible undoing. What does that mean? I don't know. That's part of the anxiety, But I know that would be my undoing because I can imagine it. So that's a three.