297. Specialized Flowchart Software

Speaker AWelcome to Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox, Brienne of Tarth, Latin and Greek word roots, James Gunn's dog, a lesbian dressed as the 10th doctor, many sundry personal regrets, a fear of mathematics, childhood ulcers, nearly meaningless word distinctions, those parting neighbor kids, 200 Africanized fruit flies, and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge. Do the after show first. Now, here's Alex.

AlexI was laughing so hard that I needed to mute myself. Want another take? Want another take?

Speaker AReady? Welcome to Dubai Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox, Brienne of Tarth, Latin and Greek word roots, James Gunn's dog, A lesbian dressed as the 10th doctor. Many sundry personal regrets of fear of mathematics. Childhood ulcers. Nearly meaningless word distinctions. Those parting neighbor kids. 200 Africanized fruit flies. And Merlin men. This week's challenge. Do the after show first.

Now, here's Alex.

AlexOh, my God. Oh, that was a good one. Good afternoon, Merlin man.

MerlinSee you all next week.

AlexI'm well. How are you doing?

MerlinOh, I'm great. I bleached a garbage can. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Dubai Friday. Can I say something, Alex?

AlexPlease.

MerlinWe started recording the show, and believe it or not, we were able to record. But here's the thing. It was really fucking weird, and I think I was being really weird. And it's the kind of thing that's perfect for an after show, only we hadn't recorded the regular show yet. Not the animated program my kid likes. But now we're going to do the regular show. And if you're a listener and you give us your fucking money.com, you can listen to the before show. And now we're going to do the real show like professionals.

AlexYes. Three, two, one.

MerlinWhat do you think of my brand of Tarth? Three, two. Now you should clap on both ends.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinI ordered three different Briennes of Tarth because I decided it's for my work and I needed a treat.

AlexSee, that's something to expense.

MerlinOh, God, that would be great.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinAs long as you say it's a challenge.

AlexYes. Give us your fucking money dot com so we can buy Game of Thrones toys.

MerlinThis week's challenge, find yourself having bought three Briennes of Tarth.

Alexwhat started this new game not new but i guess newest game of thrones kick i like game of thrones

Merlini was a late comer by comparison i mean i i didn't even i mean i knew of it but i was a late comer to it but by i don't know third fourth season i was really into it long story short now years later and the last two seasons i was like hanging on every episode you know every it's so funny how you get habituated every Sunday night I still get this tickle to watch Game of Thrones sometimes I feel like watching Curb Your Enthusiasm or sometimes I feel like watching The Righteous Gemstones but like there's a very Sunday night tv feeling for Game of Thrones

and my family was out of town went to visit relatives pushed some women on planes and I was by myself and I was like huh I'm gonna do all my projects now no you don't know this from what I post on the internet but while i'm doing stuff like watching an entire season of game of thrones in one day i'm also doing things well but then i do it again the next day with the next season because if you finish season two you gotta go straight into season three and now i'm into season six and things are a little silly but i still love it the the relationship between varus

and that Tyrion is delightful.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinAnd as weird as the ending was, you know, the...

AlexI thought it was fine.

MerlinIt was okay. You know, but when you go back and you watch and you remember the beefs that everybody had in part of six, but especially in seven. Like at the point when they went super north and they were kind of like stuck and surrounded by the bad guys. Do you remember the... The... Well, I'm sorry. I'm trying not to spoil it, but because one point.

AlexThat kind of podcast.

MerlinWell, there's one point. No, but there's one point where like Jon Snow and his retinue have been dispatched very far north and they're surrounded by.

AlexBy people who.

MerlinI always get the terms wrong. See, I don't want to. Yeah. But then suddenly they're able to somehow send a raven. They send the guy running, you know, back to the wall, back to Castle Black, and a raven gets to Daenerys. And let's just say there's a title Daenerys Ex Machina.

Come on. That's good. That's Latin.

AlexAll right. All right. That's – oh, save it for the pre-show.

MerlinI don't know why, but like – but, you know, but like – and like it seems like sort of like, oh, you're being one of those nerdy bad sports when you – point stuff like that out. But then on the other hand, well, I mean, I like so many things as a liberal arts, a retired liberal arts major, I see both sides. I mean, on the one hand, I'm enough of a nerd to go, you know, when Mr. Grandmaster Pycelle farts and it says farts under his face, like that's funny. I posted that on the internet last night. Or when, or when, or like when,

You know, when Tyrion says, if I have another great idea like that, punch me in the face. It's like, okay, well, that's not a very George R. kind of thing. But anyway, so I listened to it at bedtime. To go to sleep, I listened to a chapter a night of the first book. And I, so to answer your original question, I just got like surprisingly into it and stayed into it. And like I weirdly own a lot of Game of Thrones. I'm that guy now. I'm a multiple media guy. Like I've got it. But I bought – you know that weird thing where like you can buy things and then put in a code and it ends up through something like Movies Everywhere or Movies Anywhere or whatever you end up getting?

AlexAnd it's the one time it actually works and it ends up like everywhere?

MerlinWell, yeah. Well, there's this – the service I think – and this is another one of those how did Steve Jobs end up selling MP3s for a dollar. I don't know how that ever happened. If you remember the industry of the early 2000s, that was not on my, as they say, bingo card. But there's a thing where you can get – when you get a digital code, like you buy physical media, it will come with a code sometimes and you can pop that in. You might be able to redeem it on iTunes. But if you go to – I think it's called Movies Everywhere. Like it ends up depositing it into your iTunes.

It puts it into like your – you know what I mean? Like where all the places.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIt shows up. I bought a box set of the original, like the whole run on, I think, Blu-ray. And I ended up getting this weird thing where in iTunes, it's in this weird – it's like buying Doctor Who episodes. We get all these different weird collections. You know what I'm talking about? Like I don't know where the episode called The Snowman is. Is it under Christmas? Is it under Matt Smith? Is it under, you know, the guy from Withnil and I? I don't know. Anyway, there's all of those. and uh and i've got every episode in there but it's kind of hard to watch i also own it on super

blu-ray and i super blu-ray yeah like uh what's the one the new one the one that's like better

Alexthan blu-ray hd uhd 4k out of touch i suppose get dvds and get dvd and that's gonna be uh 480 right oh i know are you explaining the resolution of dvds right now well apparently i need to

Merlinwait so you get a dvd and i think that's a maximum of 480 progressive you get high what's generally called high definition starts at 720 but generally when you would buy a i'm trying to get this exactly right but then the typical like table stakes hd has been 1080 but the thing the thing about any blu-ray is it is progressive truly progressive unlike streaming progressive in the sense of this is thousands of single perfect sharp images i'm just here to tell you buddy

watching a blu-ray versus watching even the best streamed movie totally different thing but then you get 4k uhd what i'm calling super blu-ray because i don't remember what it's called what's

Alexcalled oh i know i thought it was 4k u8 i thought it was 4k uhd yeah but there's a name for the thing oh i don't know i just know that that's what my everything everywhere all at once copy is

Merlinyeah i got that too i thought it was gonna be i looked like from the packaging bad on me i thought it was gonna be my first steel box but it was just the shape of the cardboard but it does look pretty damn good it does however um ultra hd blu-ray ultra hd blu-ray is the name of what i'm

Alexsaying yes okay well i don't i realized i don't own a blu-ray player anymore because i don't have a ps4 anymore so now it's just sitting sadly on my desk but uh on amazon you can now do the thing where it's not a pre-order, but you can sign up to be invited to buy a PS5 when they're available. God. KidRot.com.

MerlinYeah, but like the economies of scarcity

Alexare so bizarre at this point.

MerlinIt was like me. It was like me sending away for my, was it Kenner, original for, like I was one of those kids who was 10 years old in 19, you know, when Star Wars came out. And like everybody, I ordered the original four Kenner, you know, dolls, action figures. And very famously, basically you sent in – you got a coupon to basically preorder these because they want – the demand was so high. And then they would send them to you when they came out later, like a year later, that kind of thing.

And now – well, like there's even a joke about this, of course, in Toy Story 2. There's the joke where Barbie's giving them the tour of Al's Toy Barn and says, you know, dude who's short-sighted, blah, blah, blah. They didn't, you know, order enough of these toys, which is a true story. Like, they didn't think Toy Story was going to be a big deal, so they hadn't planned to make toys of them. But then everybody wanted toys of the toys, surprisingly enough. And then it's – by that time, it's too late.

AlexThis is almost on topic, but do you think – hold on.

MerlinI defy you to find anything on topic.

AlexAll right. Do you think George Lucas really knew what merchandise merchandising opportunities he had? Or do you think he just kind of stumbled into that? Because he doesn't seem like a business savvy kind of guy. I don't know. I don't know.

MerlinWell, I mean like just to like tease this out and you'll get this if you're going to go back and listen to Blank Check. But the story I heard, I think this is a twice-told tale. At least they've said this in the early days of Blank Check.

So he had a deal and he had like – there's always all these great stories about people with friends in the industry. And like he was kind of mobbed up with all those West Coast film nerds, the Coppolas and everybody. And so he had a deal with Fox where he was going to make the deal that they – I'm so sorry if I got this wrong. And I'm so glad everybody's in San Diego right now catching COVID and won't be here to correct me.

AlexThat's right.

MerlinYeah. But I think what happened was they said, okay, I have this movie about growing up in the 50s in Modesto and being really into cars. and it's going to be this kind of unusual slice of life, especially for the guy who made THX 1138 twice. He's like, okay, so you're going to make American Graffiti and then you're going to make this other movie called whatever the Starkiller Chronicles or whatever it was originally called. But part of the deal was, if memory serves,

that he would get, I think exclusively, got the rights to toys. Isn't that right?

AlexYeah, I thought that was sort of like the famous deal he made.

MerlinWe get to make this movie we think we can sell, which, you know, I think I bet at the time off the dome, I'm guessing American Graffiti probably felt a little bit like Last Picture Show or something. Some kind of slice of Americana thing. Certainly not the thing that in retrospect we'd associate with Grease and Happy Days and the revival of 50s culture. I bet at the time it was just more like stories about our youth, a la Last Picture Show, right? Bogdanovich movie.

But yeah, I think – because the reason I'm – first of all, the reason I'm flubbing this is I don't want to get anything wrong and get yelled at. But I'm also concatenating it slightly with the way the prequel trilogy worked. Because didn't he also have a sweetheart deal on merchandise for that where it was going to like – he basically paid for – Didn't he have movies that basically got paid for from like toy revenue? I feel like.

AlexI think so.

MerlinGood excuse to go back and re-listen to Blank Check from the beginning.

AlexThat's true.

MerlinOoh, challenge. Go back and re-listen to S when he won a Blank Check. From that first episode, all the bits are there. David grew up in England. There from the first, you know, pro-smits, no bits. Like it's all there from the beginning. And then they announced the conceit of the show. We're going to do a podcast about The Phantom Menace. And from this point forward, we will never again mention that there is any other Star Wars movie apart from The Phantom Menace. And you will be docked points if you mention anything about Star Wars that wasn't in The Phantom Menace.

It's the funniest bit.

AlexWelcome to Dubai Friday, a podcast where we really love other podcasts. That's true, though. Man, podcasts are great.

MerlinIt hurts my heart when you say that. Do you understand that above all I am? Well, I just – I don't like to have to repeat this. I'm happy to repeat it, but I am above all first and foremost a fan. I mean, I know it's not cool to be a fan, certainly. But, like, for example, like, you know, and I'll propose our previous conversations. Like, all my Ted Leo love lately, you know, and all my make a playlist of Ted Leo and stuff. Did you notice one thing that never happened in the midst of all that Ted Leo love?

Not one mention of that Ted Leo.

AlexYes.

MerlinWho follows me on Twitter? Because I don't need him to love me. He's already done just putting out the album, the 2001 album, The Tyranny of Distance, and arguably putting out the Chisel album 8 a.m. all day. Putting out those records is all that Ted Leo ever needed to do for me. I certainly don't want to be a Ted Leo thirst trap title.

Did I use that correctly, by the way?

AlexI think so.

MerlinDo I have to post my cum gutters for it to be a thirst trap?

AlexOh, patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. I'm shilling the show now just because I don't want people to think that you're talking about cum gutters in general.

MerlinNo, you're specific. Well, who's Alex Cox? Shut your whore mouth. Who's specific cum gutters? If I'm talking about cum gutters, it's because you mentioned a particular set of cum gutters. Who's cum gutters were discussed in the pre-show?

AlexJesus Christ.

MerlinOur Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified onto pieces of wood that look like my Bluetooth speaker. Give us your fucking money.com.

I am first and foremost a fan. But I do feel that fish back. I don't think that's a thing. I think what I want to say is pushback I get that fishback sometimes from people like John Roderick who's very famously like not a fan and like I'm very happy to be a fan I like being a fan I like being a fan of my check I like being a fan of the Flophouse I like being a fan of you I like it

AlexI never said that being a fan is

Merlinyou said it in the before show you were very hurtful about it I was like

AlexFuck everybody who's a fan of things. Fuck sincerity.

MerlinOh, shit. That means we can't use Richard Potato as a title. Fuck.

AlexSee? Now we're talking about the show. I want the show.

MerlinMr. Potato is my father. Call me Dictator. Mm-hmm. Give us your fucking money.com. Ultra HD. But here's the problem. And here's the real problem. It's like I buy this stuff. I buy my brands of Tarth. Or I buy my Ultra HD Blu-rays. But like, and as discussed here, and I think very much on other shows, you've heard, for example, John Siracusa's journey with trying to find the right, you know, gear for his once in future TV. But like the plain fact is that like, like you mentioned, you get a Blu-ray in a PlayStation. I've got a Blu-ray in my PS4, our PS4, but I've also got

a Sony Ultra HD Blu-ray player, which means if you have that, obviously you can play Ultra HD. You can play regular Blu-rays. You can play DVDs. You can probably play CDs. But it's so joyless to use, Alex. It's hard. You know what I mean?

AlexWell, that's why I don't have one.

Speaker AWell, I eventually bought a remote for our PS4.

MerlinLike when we were trying to use it as our Blu-ray player, I bought a bespoke Sony remote for it. But even with that, there's like a new interface to figure out every time. And what is top menu versus this menu and all that menu. And it's all slow. And it's got to go read the disc. And I imagine if you bought some crazy, crazy super top of the line player, that stuff might be less pokey.

AlexOh, I doubt. No, if you still get ads, we would know about it. Like, there's no way. Do you think John Syracuse would not own the best top of the line, most amazing Blu-ray player? Well, as soon as I'm saying this, I'm like, of course he wouldn't.

MerlinHe would buy it, but then he would also get the nicest fan that you could get, but it wouldn't work, and then he'd be a little bummed. The nicest fan. I'm a fan.

AlexI'm a fan.

MerlinI'm a fan, and I make noise. Deal with it, John. Deal with it, John. I'm a fan. I'm a fan, and I make noise.

AlexOh. you own a lot of action i think well we both own a lot of action figures and you called speaking of mr uh speaking of john syracuse you sent both of us a youtube video oh shit dog i

Merlinsure did well we had we had a conversation a while ago but like and i feel bad because john's you know in Sharktown with his family now. But there's a video I came across courtesy of a friend on Twitter. A friend, Brad, sent me a video. And I try to – anytime somebody sends me something, especially if people give me context on why they think I should look at it, I make time to look at anything someone sends me, music, videos, whatever. But you know how it is, Alex.

AlexBecause you're a fan of your fans.

MerlinOh, shit. I don't have fans. But if I did, I'd want them to be quiet.

AlexYes.

MerlinSo much fan noise. SpongeBob. But Alex, I said this when I tweeted this yesterday. There are very few YouTube videos that have ever existed that have spoken to me more completely, more directly than the one that friend Brad sent. And it's not only right in my wheelhouse, it happens to be right in the Venn Diagram's wheelhouse of Syracuse and you and me.

And I think what I said last night after I'd ordered three brands of Tarth was I said something like it's very important that you watch this at your earliest convenience.

AlexYes, which meant while we were on our break between the pre-show and this show because I –

MerlinShould we say before show? Because there's pre-flight. I like before show. Pre-show was the term in Bacon Ray, the euphemism for taking a shit before you played a show. You've got to go do a pre-show. In the before show, in the aftertimes, the before show, so you started watching it and you watched it more. And is it me or should we mention this to our listeners? I feel like we should. The video and the concepts and the alignment with our stuff.

The five principles of organization.

AlexYes. Yes. I agree. Yes.

MerlinOkay. You take it.

AlexWait. What am I taking? Am I taking the hold? What's happening?

MerlinI was trying to seem gracious about not –

AlexWhat were you setting up?

MerlinI was trying to seem gracious where people go, oh, it's really nice that Merlin's trying not to talk as much. But also I want to get some more iced tea. I'm throwing to you.

AlexOh, all right.

MerlinI'll be right over here. I sent you a video called The Five Principles of Organization By some guy who does something In a workshop

AlexI still don't know He's a professional labeler

MerlinWell it's just because he has a similar name Alex

AlexOh does he really? Oh shit Van Neistat

MerlinHe doesn't look anything like a frog Do you think he looks like a frog?

AlexNo I don't want to comment on people's bodies Merlin 2022 doesn't and Alex 2022 is trying to not talk about the thing the things your brain

Merlinchooses to remember are um perplexing and troubling to me um uh ditto the no you the uh

Alexall right you I initially got excited about this video somebody sent this to me my friend

MerlinFriend Brad sent this. Brad, who's not a fan, but he is a friend. He does have a Twitter account, and he does not equal-equal his Twitter account, Syracuse. He sent me this and said something like, I really enjoy this. This sounds like stuff that you've talked about, but in different language, you might want to check it out. And so I checked it out. And from the instant I pulled it up, I really – I felt like it was almost a little Manchurian candidate, where at first I was like, wait a minute. because I could see in the, he's one of those YouTubers. I love when people do this, where they put stuff down in the notes about like chapters

or I love chapter markers, especially in YouTube. But like, you know, and like the very first of his five principles of organization, I was like, are you, are you testing me, Satan? Like, are you fucking with me? Or is this exactly the thing that I obsess, I've obsessed about for years. And I sound like a lunatic when I talk about.

Alexhonestly the first thought i had upon finishing this video was oh my god merlin could have done

Merlina way better oh you're really underselling it i feel like this is great just on the basis of

Alexnumber one alone okay all right merlin what is the first of the first essential practice

MerlinLet me answer your question with a – let me answer your question with – Alex, what is the first principle of organization? I didn't get my iced tea yet. No stacks. Slash.

AlexSlash one-handed.

MerlinSo what this guy is saying is – I guess it might be helpful to know more about what this guy does. I think I described him to Dan as, and I don't mean to drag the guy, but he seems a little, like I said, he seems a little bit like if Chris Glass, but I didn't know what Chris Glass did. He seems like a guy who exists to talk about his workshop.

AlexYes, which is also why I compared him to Casey Neistat because it's like a...

MerlinRibbit.

AlexWell, it's, I don't want to say like workshop porn, but now it seems like a little bit like a workshop.

MerlinWell, it's the same way that, like, I have visited the workshop of Adam Savage, Humble Bragg, on a couple occasions. And it's exactly as magical as you would imagine. Because he's really nice. He's such a nice guy. But it is pretty fucking weird to walk. And now, as much as I am a fan, like, I didn't start out as a fan of his. I never watched his program. But when I met him, I was first introduced to him. I immediately thought he was really nice and cool. And seriously, like I guess if you know Adam Savage, you may know his workshop, but you walk around and he's got a fucking R2-D2 that he made.

He's got like every lightsaber that he made. Like the place, he makes some fucking crazy shit in this beautiful place. And then you get to go to a party there and hang out. And it's really nice. But then I could very well. Well, Alex, let's look at it this way. As recently as last night, I had a new notebook in my life. I was, you know, I still order notebooks. I collect notebooks. The fact that I now call it collecting notebooks buys me a little bit of slack because I'm not saying I need this for my writing

or I need this for my work. I, it's only slightly, very slightly more evolved to say, I got this because I like notebooks. You're very much a collector. Yes. But what, what, at least in my world, I won't make this a question. I'll make this a statement, buying new notebooks will not cause you to write more unless you're the one doing the writing. You could write on fucking anything. You'd write on a candy wrapper, you know, and the idea that buying a notebook makes you more of a writer, right? Can we see that that's at least a piece of MPU lore, correct?

AlexOh, absolutely.

MerlinI think the same is true here. Just because you have a workshop with labels on things doesn't necessarily make you a maker. And that is a kind of, that is a kind of porn. You have to like what's I never remember the fucking name of this. Knolling. That's what it's called. Like the thing where you watch videos of people lining up wrenches and like that's its own thing. And it's relaxing. But like and again, it's OK to buy notebooks if you can afford it and you're not hurting anybody. It's also OK to watch videos of people lining up wrenches.

Just don't watch so many of those that you start to think you've made something with the wrenches you don't own. That's my only cautionary tale. We're still not talking about the video.

AlexI mean, I would encourage people, I suppose, to watch – I would encourage people to watch pornography of any sort, but just know that it is pornography. You know, when you – sometimes you don't know it when you see it because then you're not going to enjoy it more.

MerlinWell, you also don't know it if you've been locked inside of like a space shuttle while six people have sex on a bed a few feet away from you.

AlexOh, gosh. Have you seen that one? Have you seen that one?

MerlinHave you seen the one where Nathan says the plan? We're going to turn this hotel into a place where families can go and the parents can have sex. And he develops this thing you can lock your child into so that you can have loud sex. And then to extra prove it, he brings in a group sex scene and the parents have to stand there while the child is locked in a space shuttle.

AlexWatching a man. No, not just a man. Watching Nathan Fielder stand in a hotel room while a, what is it, a five person orgy.

MerlinYeah, and the girls are kissing themselves with real open mouths. It's a real Peter Baelish type situation. There is a feet scene, but also just the wonderful expressions on the parents.

AlexJust, oh, God.

MerlinAnd this is also apropos of our challenge. This video is called Five Principles of Organization. And I think two of the segments of this are extremely good and up my alley. Congratulations to Froggy Neistat for doing a great job with this. The first one of them, though, is – and he's like, these are the five things about organizing your brr. But the first one is no stacks, one hand. And the reason I'm carrying on here, I'll explain the joke, is that I have said for a long time here and elsewhere that – and this originally wasn't off the dome remark, I think, but it's true – is that I want to be able to do anything I can do in the dark and with one hand.

With the example of that being, for example, let's say you're in a strange place, like you're in a hotel room and you know roughly where your backpack is and you don't want to turn. This is just I'm giving you just an example, right? Like if you're someplace where you aren't usually and you need to get something out of your backpack, like and you don't want to turn the light on. If you can find your backpack, would you be able to get the thing you want out of your backpack with the lights off?

AlexYes, I just did it with my chapstick. and this.

MerlinYou take the point, right? If the lights went out of your house, would you know where to find a flashlight?

AlexOh, yes. I could navigate to it without, in fact, I could navigate to it without running into anything.

MerlinOkay, you're affirming this, which I love, but also because you're affirming it, I feel like we might be skating past a couple of the things that are worth talking about. What if you didn't know, even though you've constantly asked your family, For example, just to propose nothing, let's say you've repeatedly asked your family, please do not put things in the hallway.

Please do not, let's say, store paper towels in the kill zone. Or please don't put a laundry basket in a place where a middle-aged man might have to go to urinate in the dark. To even get to where you would find something in the dark, you have confidence about that path. You know what I mean? Like the concept I'm ultimately trying to get at here is you think about the things in your life. What is a practice? What is a rehearsal? Think about that cheer show, like this basket catch. Like we need to do this so many times that we could do this in our sleep and make it look easy.

And like the concept, this is actually the least important of the two to me. But in the dark thing is like I don't have – I can trust that something is where I put it and it's – I guess the word might be organized. that is placed, situated, situated in a way that I could do it without having to turn the lights on. And the thing is, of course, the bit is you could turn the lights on. You're a grown person. You've got Siri. You know how to turn lights on.

But, like, to optimize for that situation, like, you know, like, whenever I, like, when I used to go different places to write, I eventually derived this thing that's orthogonal to this, which is always act like you're about to be chased by Draculas. So wherever you go, whether it's a library or not me, but other people, if you're the person who would sit outside because you like to smoke while you not type your book, act like Draculas could arrive at any moment.

AlexYou smoke? Sorry. Go on. Sorry. Sorry. So Dracula is coming to chase you outside. Yes.

MerlinHave you ever? Have you ever? not you have you ever seen people like when your partner for example worked at starbucks have you ever seen people who go and sit down at a starbucks and they spread out like they're hoteling at like a branch office if a dracula ran into that starbucks while they had all their shit all over the place the dracula would get them so easy because they had in my words spread out no you can have one thing out of a time out of time and you need to always be ready to grab it

because there could be Dracula's. Same kind of idea. Like, don't, again, don't put anything down any place you wouldn't want it to be overnight if it's valuable to you. Like, these are all, like, conceptual things derived over time. And one of mine is one-handed and in the dark. Now, the one-handed part is more important to me because the one-handed part, and how masturbation, it's funny, we do it. But, like, the one-handed part is, like, I should be able to canonically grab a dish out of this cabinet with one hand. which seems pretty straightforward unless you're,

you know, you're, you're coast co living people are more aesthetic in nature and like to stack things like the pyramid of Marine. And then like, what if the plate you need is five plates down? Well, guess what? Now you're using two hands. Try doing that in the dark.

All I really want to talk about, I wanted you to see this just because mainly I wanted a gut check on like, is it just me or like, and I'm not saying the guy's copying me, like who fucking cares? And I don't think he is. But like, oh my God, it was so gratifying to hear that guy talk about it. And what I love in particular, the two that I really thought were really good and really pretty much 99.9% my own feeling were no stacks slash one hand and kit your shit. I thought that was really good too.

But like what's – I mean from my point of view, what's another way of saying kit your shit?

AlexBag in a bag. Plastic bag in a bag. Okay. Bag in a bag. I was close. I was close.

MerlinDude, this whole thing is bag in a bag.

AlexIt is. But this video –

MerlinSee, you didn't like this video and now I want to interrogate why.

AlexOkay, okay.

MerlinEverybody go watch it and come back.

AlexNo, no.

MerlinCan I get my one more positive thing and then you just fucking go off, King?

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinAnd I said this in the before show. Fuck. But what I loved that he added to the conversation for me, one of those things where like, yeah, I could intuit this, but he put it really well. Why don't we stack? Well, in my case, the stacking problem is that I don't want to have to move the thing that's somewhat randomly on top of another thing to get to the second or fifth thing before we even get into the other kind, the ad hoc stacks, the stacks that turn into trash, the trash that turns into storage, right? Before we even get into those stacks, I just – it's frustrating to me when I have to use two hands to get a plate or similar, right?

There's a lot to this. But what I love that he said was it's okay to stack, I think implicitly what he's saying, as long as you know that you're stacking and you only ever stack things that are identical. Or to put this just slightly differently in a way that comports with my brain, they are identical, but they're also interchangeable.

AlexYeah. Oh, that's a way better way of putting it.

MerlinThat's important. Right? So if you've got – let's say, for example, those – off the dome again, those red solo cups that people use to drink at frat parties. If you open up a sleeve of those and pull out five of those, I mean to a certainty or to the best approximation, they are literally identical. but they also are literally interchangeable. Unless there was a manufacturing error, all five of those are exactly the same.

So, and why am I putting, why am I making that distinction? Well, let's talk about forks because I'm always talking about the cutlery drawer. Well, are your forks identical? Are they so identical that they're interchangeable? Or is there a chance that there's a salad fork amidst the dinner forks? And like even though you bought the same set of dishes, are those both – but the point being, I totally get it. He's right. If you stack – and I guess we could take this even a thousand times further.

How many things do you stack before it becomes like not very manageable where you go from like storage –

AlexStacks versus piles.

MerlinWell, yes. And you get working area. You get an active working area. It degrades to a working area. Working area degrades to a holding area. a holding area degrades to a storage area. In a storage area, you might need to put that stuff in deep storage. So you don't need 45 plates in there unless you do. You might want six plates in there or four plates in there, but they're identical and interchangeable. This was the thought technology, though. It's okay to stack if they're identical. And then the corollary, it never stack anything that's not identical.

And it was that, I know that seems like a distinction without a difference, Or like, why would you need to also say the corollary? But as I said, mentioned earlier, the thing I said to my wife was like, you know what? Can I give you an example of don't stack non-identical things? Our fucking linen closet. Like our pantry. Like think about all the areas in your house where there's something. Let's just say, what is a stack? A stack is anytime you've got a thing on top of another thing. And implicit in that then is it might obscure the other thing. You can't see the thing underneath it.

Let me ask you this. Is there any chance in a thousand million billion years that at any point, not like last night, but in the last 10 years, is there any point when for a minute you couldn't find your phone because you put something on top of your phone like a hat or mail or something?

AlexOr a pile of post-it notes.

MerlinAll the time. Well, or just all the time. You need to. How do you find things? Well, you find things by looking in the places you haven't looked yet. child. You don't find it by telling dad, I already looked there. You look at all the places that something is not. And then you know what you do? You start lifting things to see if it's there, but you can't see it. Because why? Because you just unintentionally made a stack. So a stack of non-identical things means things get obscured. See, that's why you don't need to watch this

Alexvideo. You're doing it. That was my only gripe with the video. There's not a distinction.

MerlinBut isn't that a great thought technology when you stack non-identical things? Like I'm putting this so poorly, but like – and honestly, like jokes, we'll leave the room for 30 seconds. While my family was away, my big omnibus project with mini subprojects was I liberated some dead areas in our house that really needed liberating. So areas that we'd really gone dead to, storage we'd basically just given up on using. And not in a bad way, a mean way, but areas where like this is just where we didn't know where to put stuff, so we stuck it here.

And then there's like 14 different things for cleaning floors in this area that nobody has touched in eight years. But that's where floor stuff goes, so we keep putting it there. That is the equivalent of stacking non-identical things. Because at that point, it's just become, as he gets to in a little bit, I think in a pretty smart way. Now you've just – now everything's turning into just junk drawer after junk drawer where it's things that are like maybe sort of roughly existentially related but not functionally placed.

AlexIt makes me think of what I – oh, God, I guess I have a thought technology of if I want a stack, I never want it to become a display. So things that are not identical. A stack is functional. A display is to look pretty. And if I have a pile of post-its.

MerlinThat's so interesting. That dovetails with my thing of it's only a collection if it's curated.

AlexRight. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's.

MerlinCurated and displayed.

AlexI like your distinction, though, of not identical but interchangeable. that's what distinguishes it for me from porn to actual something that's actually functional

Merlini guess because the like like paperclips paperclips and he talks about talismans which i thought was kind of funny i feel like the the the well if i were going to say just one general kind of glib thing i feel like it gets a little little sillier and a little less strictly strictly useful as the numbers go up i think one or two are the best but like i agree that like you should have what he It's called talismans. You could also just say tools. But, you know, but like every number 64 rubber band is, unless we know otherwise, identical to every other number 64 rubber band.

Like when you tear off another way to look at this that might be useful, think about a roll of Scotch brand tape or a roll of duct tape. unless something's gone very wrong. There's two inches of duct tape up here should not be different from two inches of duct tape six feet later in the roll. You can grab an inch of scotch tape and it'll always be functionally the same inch of scotch tape. Right? I think that's an important...

That sounds silly, but like, for example, are Legos identical? Well, they're all by the Lego brand company, but anybody who's made Lego could tell you, But, geez, no, they're not identical. Like you may have like similar one-nubbin brown guys, but a one-nubbin brown guy is neither the same as a two-nubbin brown guy or a one-nubbin black guy. Well, excuse me. We don't say that anymore. Those are different things. You couldn't just stick your hand into the Lego box and to a degree of certainty pull out unless you're at the Lego store buying in bulk the way you would buy like, you know, dried fruit.

But, you know, right? I mean like I don't know. This is a very subtle thought technology, but the identical part seems really huge. And the reason I'm so obsessed with the don't stack non-identical is that that's a huge – not a red flag. What's the word I want? It really – that really feels like a – well, perhaps a red flag. Are there areas in one's house where you have unintentionally made a stack or similar of things and they're neither identical nor functionally –

They're not physically identical nor functionally similar enough to really have earned that. And like, you know, sometimes you put stuff in a box as long as it fits in the box. Well, those all have something in common, which is they fit in the box. But apart from that, what do they have in common? If you're putting stuff because they fit in the box, that's a pile at best. I mean, that's really, that's hardly even a stack. That's just really more like a rectilinear garbage bag.

Alexmeet your future garbage what you're saying is what distinguishes i think this video versus something that's more helpful because these are like in the like we talked about in the before show it's kind of like the answers to the math problem without actually showing your work It just doesn't really think about why kit your shit is important.

MerlinCorrelation and causation kind of stuff where just because the lines match up graphically doesn't mean that one caused the other. And like, you know, just because you put something in order by size does not make that the best way to organize. Like, you know what I mean? Knulling aside. You know what I mean? Like, and that's where I think the kit part is a nice complement to it. Because the kit idea, or what I would call bag in a bag, is this idea of having like things be in a container that – just be very on the nose about this.

The beauty of bag in a bag is that you keep like with like at the most molecular level such that these three bags of stuff might go in this other bag of stuff, and then that might go in a bigger bag, right? So you think about something like a first aid kit. A first aid kit is a kit. It's right there in the name. Like you would not keep the parts of a first aid kit in different bags just because they're the same color or size. Your Neosporin may be roughly the same size as a Band-Aid, but that doesn't mean that they should be in a separate kit.

AlexAnd this is why you should become a vlogger, because you could make this video with all of your thought technologies in a succinct, lovely little YouTube video. And then NordVPN will sponsor you and it'll be fantastic.

MerlinI love to use it to watch television shows from other countries.

AlexSure.

MerlinAnd to have NordVPN give all my data away to any of the five highest countries. This is Dubai Friday, where we don't deserve sponsors.

AlexI like, I'm just giving you shit, but I like this video. And I – watching this though, I realized my methods of organization are really just – and it's really just a way to reduce anxiety.

MerlinLike all of my things that are successfully organized are – to make this something that'll be more useful in the future?

AlexYeah, that's why the one-handed thing isn't as important to me as the find-in-the-dark thing. Because if you're trying to get away from demon dogs, you don't want to have to think about where that extra charger is. You just want to go get it. Most things that you need to retrieve quickly, I mean, obviously flashlight, but charger or cash wallet you want to do it quickly because of something right right well

Merlinwhile it's a great example of a kit in some ways it's the most obvious thing in the world but it's it's that obviousness that makes me say it well if you want a really good example of a kit it's your wallet which you might have a george costanza wallet haha you're in a minimalist Well, like whatever. But like I bet if you're a healthy ish person, you probably don't need to go through your entire wallet or even most of your wallet before you pick it up to leave the house. You might, for example, want to say like, OK, did I, you know, my wife's case, my wife has this weird habit of like leaving credit cards and driver's licenses and stuff outside of the wallet.

And it's certainly – I've done – I know. I know. It's like the Syracuse rule of AirPods. But you might want to – but I bet you don't unless you have a flavor of OCD. I bet you don't need to mentally do a little secret chant in your head. The reason the wallet is such a perfect kit is because you can probably trust that it's where you – we put it. Wherever you put it, like it's still there. And whatever the contents were, it's in there. I know I've got three debit cards. I've got my state ID.

I got my insurance card, like stuff like that. I don't have to go back through my wallet before I leave the house to make sure my insurance card is in there. There's no reason I would have taken that out. That's what makes it a perfect kit.

No? No, you tell me. Tell me about your kits and why the dark is more important than the hand.

Alexnow i feel like you're almost getting into the the horniness of it a bit i i don't know i came into this i came into this very excited to talk about this man's method uh organization and no no no i'm i'm nothing you're not in trouble no one is in no one's in trouble no one's in trouble

Merlinum that's exactly the kind of thing you say when somebody's in trouble no no no no no now i'm just

Alexsort of thinking about this in the sort of i i guess frame of a rehearsal like how much of the organizing becomes just rehearsing and isn't actually useful that i i'm not saying that's

Merlinwhat this guy is doing so but like if i understand i i don't i may not understand but i feel like when you say like when we talk about the demon dogs part it's like it's the um rehearsal is a thing that lets us practice alongside other people for example right like so we're going to rehearse a play and like one beauty part of that is like you're testing you're sort of like proving to yourself that you know the lines right you know the lines well enough to be able to even adapt when somebody else doesn't know the line there's that kind of stuff there's the levels of rehearsal

there there's also just the rehearsal part of like having enough confidence to know that i can get out there and i'm i'm sort of like not gonna die i mean ultimately rehearsal is about getting better but like there's a lot there's a lot more than that to it but if you're making

Alexstacks all the time it's like well when do you get to the one-handed part that's my thing is i think a lot of people make the one-handed stacks but then they're there's not an actual function

MerlinAnd you can actually, in a way, you can end up worse than where you started with that. I wonder if you've ever found that. Like, let's say, look, here's a great example for me. And this is true of lots of things, but this is especially true. Like, I mean, a really obvious one. Like, I've got a battery caddy. And what's it called? A caddy daddy? What's it called? But I've got a thing for putting batteries in. and I even have a way that I put the batteries in that,

and this is very much a one hand in the dark, is there's an order in which I sort of like, rotate is the wrong word, but I know that the very freshest, like those Eneloop batteries that Max got me on, they don't have great retention and they don't have great staying power. So I do need to periodically re-up them and even then they don't fill up. But I know that these go in the AA side, these go in the AAA side, that's table stakes. I also know that like the ones that are rechargeables are down here. The ones that are, you know, alkalines are up here.

And I tend to know, I don't need to get into it. I know that these are ones I've charged most recently, but like, and so that's, that's easy. That's great. But let's say you've got something that's a little bit more obscure, like those, not one, three, twos, but the, um, you know, there's like, they're like half the size of a double A and you use them in stuff like Eve devices and things like that. They're a little bit obscure. They're in some flashlights. And you know the ones I'm talking about? They're basically like little stubby guys, like if you cut a AA in half.

And those and what's the generic name for watch batteries, disk batteries, like C01032s?

AlexI just call them coin batteries, which is not helpful.

MerlinOkay, so like the kinds of batteries that I use a lot, AA's, AAA's especially. I've got all of those, but then I've got like – I signed up – when I bought Tiles Pro years ago, I guess what I didn't realize at the time that's kind of great but mostly hilarious is for every Tile I've ever bought – and I bought a lot. They send me a new battery for each Tile I feel like every six months, possibly once a year. Oh, really? So just suddenly in the mail, I'll get three envelopes full of little cardboard packages with a single, I want to say CR1032.

But, you know, the tip of the classic like hearing aid or not hearing aid, but like watch battery. But like, OK, my only point being like if you've got something that's a slightly nonstandard, like sub nine volt type of battery. And I'm like, fuck, I just bought I just bought these. Where are they? Oh, see, I'm badly organized. Oh, I bought more of these. I bought more of these. Well, somewhere in the two places where I spend time, there's got to be 80 different like fresh batteries somewhere.

OK. Now that's bad, right? We can all admit that that's not the smartest thing in the world. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world that like can't find another deodorant so they buy another deodorant and then one day they discover seven deodorants or scissors or whatever that is. OK. So anti-pattern, big anti-pattern number one, having your shit in different places. slight improvement in pattern that can be an anti-pattern. Like what if you're in the midst of one of those feverish, your family is out of town cleaning and organizing sprees.

And you'd say, that's it from now on. Every time I find a fucking battery, it's going to go into this. This becomes important unlabeled cardboard box. And then I'll know that all of the batteries that aren't double A's and triple A's are in one place. I've just succeeded at collecting all the batteries in my world. And they're here somewhere now. Have you ever had that? I organized so good that I've now successfully, I've actually reduced my chances of a practical solution being that if I look long enough, I'll stumble across a watch battery.

No, because I have so efficiently hidden every battery in the world from myself because I did a shitty job with remembering where I even fucking put it. I got so organized. I worked at cross purposes.

AlexThat's not to call out my co-living partner spouse.

MerlinAnd he never finishes his seltzers either.

AlexHe doesn't. But then you can so easily become tidy and unorganized.

MerlinWas it you that came up with that? I think it was you. Because, boy, I thought technology last year for me is that I am very organized. We talked about this. I'm incredibly organized. This sounds so silly. I'm really organized and incredibly not tidy. And that is way more compatible than I would like to believe exists. But it's totally true.

AlexThat's how Matt and I are because his areas are very pretty and nice looking, but he can never find his wallet or the batteries. Oh, that would make me lose my mind. Oh, gosh. When he takes my keys, I don't get very happy.

MerlinWhen do you get a kid in school? When do you get a kid in school and you're like, you had your backpack 12 hours ago. Where could it be? I don't know. I already looked there. Well, I guess we'll just give up and get you a new backpack every day. No, it'll be like paper towels in a men's room. We'll just pull them off one at a time. New backpack. It's Thursday.

AlexOh, my God. How many lunch bags do you think you went through?

MerlinHow do you mean?

AlexSorry. Like, oh, did your kid not have a lunchbox type of thing?

MerlinWell, beginning every school year, at least in the later elementary school years, the kid would get a whole new kit. of like, you know, something themed something like I've shown you those. Like here's this year. It's all Harry Potter is a Harry Potter binder and a Harry Potter. Actually, our kid, as far as that stuff goes, pretty good. Pretty good. Didn't lose a lot of things. At this point, I'm just I have to be careful of my impulse to put an air tag in things.

And I want to deploy them smarter and more mindfully than I have in the past. But there is very much a part of me that thinks either, A, I want to start putting AirTags in way more things, or B, I want to redeploy all these shitty tiles that I already own. Like, if I'm going to have it, if I'm going to have, like, Alex, if I'm going to have the unlabeled brown box of batteries bat on me, why don't I throw, like, an AirTag in there? The same way I would label a box. Exactly. Like when I label a box, it can have different kinds of shit in it, but I'm going to label it as such.

I'm going to say good trade paperbacks, Roomba supplies, and something. Never write junk on there. Ant traps. Like as long as I can like scan the boxes and see what's in there, I mean, it's maybe not ideal.

AlexWell, that's the thing that I – this was actually my favorite part of the video. What does he say? Oh.

MerlinWhich part?

AlexThe –

MerlinWhich step?

AlexOh, I'm trying to find where – I forget even which one it was.

MerlinI don't have to find me. There's one hand. There's kit. The last one is customized. You've got talismans.

AlexIt's not like –

MerlinOh, learn to build shelves? Learn to build shelves?

AlexAt some point he says not all junk drawers are stored.

MerlinOh, right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I thought that was so smart.

AlexAnd I have a little banker's box that has an air tag in it, and it just has a question mark on it, like a, I guess it looks like the Riddler's box because it's the thing where I'm like, I know that this has to be, like, this is going to be important at some point.

MerlinI think most houses have an area like that. Like, in our case, like, you know, it could be stuff like coupons. It could be stuff like letters to sign, like whatever it is. Some people, it's mail. But, like, I think you need for your house, but very much for yourself, you need an area probably no bigger than a banker's box, which you could just call your special. This is my special. If there's a thing and I absolutely don't want to lose it and I can't afford to get so wound up in my demon dogs that I end up, put it in that box with the air tag.

That goes in the special box.

AlexAnd that's why I really am a proponent of the junk box versus the junk drawer because when have you needed to, like, usually it's the kitchen. When have you been like, yes, all the junk in the junk drawer I need to use in the kitchen in this one spot? Where if you have a little box, it travels along with you unless you lose the box. But that's why the AirTag is there. I love, love, love the AirTags.

MerlinI get it. I totally get it. Well, I'm going to send you this. And this is really just a junk area in a lot of ways. But this is your doing. You got me onto these bins. and I know I can always be a better person than I am, but this has helped me an awful lot. So I just sent you a photo. We can maybe put this in notes. I don't know. I just sent you a photo and you can see where I've got bins and racks.

So...

AlexYes, you built your shelves.

MerlinWell, I bought the shelves. But like what's neat is Acro Mills, right? I always say the wrong thing. You know, I get confused because Aiken Mills, I think – wait. Akin Gump is a law firm we used to work with.

Acromills makes the bins, right? And these are T-H-E bins. These are the bins. Like you see these in the Theranos TV show. You see them in lots of places. And they're just – they're bins of different sizes used for different things. But like if you were, for example – let me put it this way. If I were a grandpa and I was going to do a ground up like recreation of like a tool area or a workshop, I would absolutely start with racks. Start with racks and then get the bins.

Because guess what? These bins are of different sizes and they can hang in these racks. You see, I've got one that's wall mounted on the far side. And then on the nearer side, you'll see one that just is a freestanding one on a shelf. But like these are so – there's an anti-pattern here you've got to be careful for. But – because the anti-pattern is like everything turns into organized junk title. But like the truth is like you would know to look at this, but there is a sanity to this. You can see, for example, like some of those like are just donguses. Some of those are like further – the really better, more functional ones are on the far end.

But one is just like different kinds of screws for different sorts of things. Some of them are like pocket knives of a similar kind. but like that this is but even like the way the dude says in the video like i mean i'm i don't remember exactly what he said but something along the lines of it's okay to like keep screws but like you don't need every screw you've ever seen in your life you don't need all of them and like there but the point of the junk drawer the and this is really it's a risky thing to recommend to somebody who might be a hoarder for example but there it's okay to have a junk drawer as long

as you know it's a junk drawer and it that's not where it's going to live forever like like some like there are people who have i think this was actually a joke on black jeopardy but like some people have a junk drawer some people have a menu drawer some people have a sauce packet drawer like what's a better place like if you've got the space and you want to know where the soy sauce is well you're going to have to sort through some other packets you don't need a soy sauce area a sauce packet area is probably enough right and in my case like you know alex though but you were

so proud of me those clear ones further down down by the banker's boxes stack some of those like one of those is all i don't know the term for this but like like if you do the um elgato uh mounting system they're like ball ends a lot of it is it's the nexus of stuff for attaching cameras lights, you know, all the various kinds of things that are of certain gauges.

AlexI used to know the name of that when I was a documentary.

MerlinYou got the ball joint ones where you put it over and you put the little screw on. But any of those related things, I can go in there and Frankenstein myself, almost any connection. But I do have them grouped into separate bins. And in this case, when I say bins, I'm talking about those little bins, like the canonical bins. Until you get good at bins, I would say avoid these big, pretty blue and yellow ones. Focus on the little ones because you want to get good at that before you start warehousing at scale. But – oh, that was another one I'm adding to the wisdom document.

That's another one I'm adding to the document this week. Unless you're pretty sure you know what you're doing, never buy someone underwears again.

AlexLike I did.

MerlinLike everybody's done. Oh, thank you. Thank you for this garter belt, Merlin. and I look like, I guess I look like gold. I feel so pretty.

Challenge!

AlexOh, boy. This week's challenge was to watch the rehearsal.

MerlinThe challenge is Alexandra's challenge.

AlexIt is, it is. I was very insistent on this challenge.

MerlinI never know exactly which side of sex you're on, but I got a feeling whatever side you're on, it allows for Nathan Fielder is my feeling.

AlexOh, absolutely. Absolutely.

MerlinHave you actually thought about doing the act like with him? Or is it just from a distance? Okay. Because I'm thinking like – We'd be the fifth. There's a great slow bit. We'll talk about this in a second in the context of his previous show on Comedy Central called Nathan For You. But there's a great payoff. you know whenever he's he's when they're doing his thing and he meets somebody there's that moment where he shakes hands with the person and leans forward and like bows awkwardly and then at one point in one of the later episodes they show this compilation of all the times nathan has looked

just visuals of nathan looking awkward with other people and was such a great payoff i'm just saying a man that doesn't know how to shake hands and does a bow he might be amazing in the sack it's very very i bet he knows which bus to take to go downtown merlin can you please explain

Alexbecause i know that you'll do a better job of it explain the the character of nathan fielder well also his previous show yeah nathan for you yeah so nathan fielder i think it's his real name

Merlinis an actor uh comedian from canada and best known in the states for a comedy central series called Nathan for You that maybe you, maybe Max, I forget how I got started on it. But boy, I love that show. All you need to know just in brief is that he's had a kind of character that he's done on the CBC for a while. He's Canadian. And then on the American show, Nathan for You. And the character is like just this, he's not exactly a dweeb. He's not exactly like an Abed,

but he is, he's very awkward around people. So the conceit of Nathan for You, the show that had two, three seasons on Comedy Central and is available lots of places. Highly recommend it.

AlexFive seasons.

MerlinOh, really? Yeah. My God. Was it the claw of shame? Oh, my God. So Nathan Fielder, the conceit of Nathan for You, which is important to know, I feel like, to appreciate this show and taking it to the next level. Nathan for You is a show where, for whatever reason, it's kind of presented as there's a business in trouble. And it needs Nathan's help. But I don't however you want to look at that conceit is fine. But Nathan comes in with some the plan, you know, make frozen yogurt that tastes like poop.

You know, the plan, dumb Starbucks, you know, just all the haunted house that the haunted house where the conceit of the haunted house is at some point in it. you're given to believe that you've been exposed to like a deadly disease. And then you're taken through like an ambulance and taken to a hospital. And he just creates these incredibly complicated and awkward situations that cause mayhem. And the one to know about here, because I'm going to put a pin in this for why I love this show,

or I'm very interested in this show anyway, is that there's one episode of Nathan for You where there's a bar in LA and the owner of the bar smokes and everybody who comes to the bar wants to smoke, but it's California and you're not allowed to smoke. But Nathan claims to have found a loophole that you can smoke if it's part of a scene in a play, right? Is that the basic conceit? And so he basically redoes this bar. And the idea is that if he puts two theater seats and a curtain

in there. Now, technically, the bar is a theater performance, and everybody in the bar can smoke. And I won't spoil it any more than that, but, like, if you think that's kind of a silly, funny premise, the depths, the distances that this goes to, I'll just say it involves him hiring actors and actresses who are exact duplicates of the people in the bar one particular night, and then he falls in love with one of the actresses, and it's extremely awkward.

So now there's this show called The Rehearsal that has a lot of that DNA. There's two episodes. Well, wait.

AlexI think there is another episode that we can not spoil. The anecdote from season four, I believe, which – like the more important through line.

MerlinOh, when he wants to have a – he needs to have a good story to tell on late night TV?

AlexYes. And the funny bit that is throughout all of the seasons of Nathan for You is that his character, which is him dialing to 11 months. He doesn't know how to act.

MerlinYes, exactly. Exactly.

AlexHe wants a connection with people, and he does not know. It's not just that he's awkward. He wants to be less awkward.

MerlinHe's a lot like Abed in season one. up until the point in that wonderful sweet scene where Jeff agrees to like, when Abed, remember the chicken fingers, where Abed starts working in the cafeteria because everybody likes chicken fingers. And then we learn that he does all this weird stuff because A, on the one hand, he sees everything through the filter. We mentioned this earlier in the episode, but he sees everything through the filter of like media. But ultimately he really wants to be close to people and he just doesn't know how. And so he creates these bizarre situations that in his head make sense.

and in that one it's the so like it goes like a one two three number one everybody knows Nathan is awkward number two Nathan would like to have an anecdote he needs to have some funny story that he can tell on late night tv and then part three is what he tries to create all the conditions

Alexthat enable that to be a true story was that how it works well he decides to watch hours and hours of celebrity interviews with you know Kimmel and Fallon and Myers everybody and notices that the three ingredients for good late night anecdote is a funny picture a mix-up and a run-in with the cops so he decides that and and this is the it's he's he gives this at the beginning of the episode

so don't worry but then he puts which all seems very logical except it's insane oh yes yes and he wants to have a good a good story so he but he puts in place all of these pieces without technically lying technically so that he will have a wedding to go to right so related to the trivia questions yes i get it yeah right he has a wedding to go to um where he will accidentally pick someone's

yes he picks up someone else's luggage and he ends up wearing this gigantic suit and he takes a picture of it to show uh oh he's on jimmy kimmel that's what this shows uh that's what the anecdote is for and engineers a way to have a cop pull him over with a substance that ends up being um human ashes and the way that he gets and that's like the twist ending is he gets to say to jimmy kimmel a cop pulled me over and i had a powdery substance and it turns out that it was

someone's mother's ashes. And just the way he gets there is absolutely bonkers. And it cost $350,000 to get this anecdote to exist. And it's one of, I think, the best things ever made for television. And one of the most interesting just conceits.

MerlinAnd also, the show, I mean, I don't need you to agree with this, but I feel like the way that show wrapped the episodes dealing with Bill Gates were it was really fun and really it was a kind of a I feel like in retrospect a, again, a harbinger of what was to come with the rehearsal, which is like, you're like, oh my god, I can't I can't even tell. I'm putting a pin in this Alex. I think the most interesting thing about the rehearsal we'll talk about it no spoilers but like i honestly cannot tell how

much of it is quote unquote real and not and then does it matter that it's real or not i i'm fascinated by that but you so we did this challenge is alex's challenge and because alex seems um and i i god i really want to know exactly what aspect of this obsesses you but you seem like this is really your shit and you're kind of obsessed with the show is that fair to say Yeah. Do you want to describe that? Do you want to describe the premise of the rehearsal?

AlexOh, we'll try. I'll try. The rehearsal is different from Nathan for you in that he decides he wants to help individuals rehearse an event that they are anxious to go into. And the first two episodes that have aired are he wants to help a guy rehearse telling his friend that he has lied to her for over a decade.

MerlinHe's been dogged for years by the fact he's – the most important thing in his life in some ways is his, like, pub trivia team. And he – the conceit is that he is obsessed and really, like, vexed. He feels really guilty about the fact that he told everybody. Everybody in his trivia team has at least a master's degree. And he pretty much directly said he fumbled an answer at one point. And basically when he was still getting his bachelor's, he told them he had a master's degree.

So the conceit is this has really been weighing on him. Trivia is everything to him. And in particular, there's this one woman that he feels really bad. He considers a friend. He feels really bad about that. But he kind of can't imagine telling her. and Nathan's going to be the one who comes up with a very simple and easy to implement idea for helping this guy do what he needs to do.

And should we call it spoiler horn here?

AlexLet's do spoilers. We are now going to spoil the first but not second episode of the rehearsal. so the episode starts with Nathan introducing himself to Cork the guy he is going to help out and we see you know the typical reality TV situation

Merlinthere's already a camera and lighting inside the guy's house

Alexright and it's like hi I'm Nathan and they do this little back and forth banter of haha I see the Nathan's like, I see these books on your shelves. One says, like, how to... It's like Door City over here. Door City over here. And he tells a couple of awkward jokes. The core and Nathan sit down. And Nathan explains the premise of, I want to help you do this. And, hey, surprise, this interaction that we've been having, I have rehearsed it in the same way.

MerlinDozens, dozens of times in an exact duplicate of your house.

AlexMm-hmm. He's like, I have, I sent over my team and they pretended to be the gas company.

MerlinRemember when we said there was a gas leak and we had to come in?

AlexMm-hmm. There wasn't a gas leak.

MerlinThere was no gas leak. We made an exact digital scan of your house.

AlexMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so the rehearsal production team actually made a replica of this guy's apartment down to the books that are on his shelf. And Nathan hires an actor that looks like Cor. I make sure that it's.

MerlinYeah, I think it's his name. And he hires the actor. And so he had found Cor on Craigslist with a very general question. And is there anybody – what was something? A very short, like one-sentence Craigslist ad that's like, do you have something that you want to fix in your life or something like that? And so the actor he hires, another African-American man, he hires him to study his video that he sent as a submission.

And this is the beginning of – and then, of course, like Alex says, it's – and I'm not going to talk about it yet. But it is an exact duplicate of the guy's apartment in which Nathan will be able to work with the actor and rehearse and then be able to say to the actual real guy, like, you could tell, wasn't this a fun interaction? Wasn't this a fun interaction? Wasn't it comfortable? Aren't you having fun?

I should bring my own plunger.

AlexOh, God. Yeah, and then, in fact, he – so then we see the intercut of him interacting with the real core and then the fake core asking him, like, do you think – not just, like, do you think it's funny, but, like, okay, when should I say this? Where should I sit? And one of the –

MerlinAnd trying different scenarios, increasingly trying different scenarios to see what would happen. So Nathan – and I feel like this must be part of what really – I don't know. Part of what scratches your brain is the like, aha. But if this person does this thing I didn't anticipate, I can rehearse their bad reaction to that in a way that I can still save this, make it good.

AlexIn theory. In theory.

MerlinIn theory. But that's the whole Abed part of this. Sorry to be obsessed with Abed. But it's a similar kind of thing where it's like where I can see the logic of this or like, you know, sort of that classic like with a little kid where you're like, well, I can see what you were trying to do there. But like, you know, this is not the way that you make Coca-Cola or this is not the way that you like save a bird. Like I figured that if I electrocute the bird, I can bring it back to life. I can understand how you would think that, but he is, he, the character of Nathan in this show has a very exotic idea about how to become less awkward.

And it's usually extremely complicated. And in this case, the titular rehearsal is the pitch of the show is I can help you with something in your life about the past or the future by creating an opportunity for you to rehearse that, which would be funny enough. But then, of course, it just things fold in on themselves in the most unbelievable ways.

AlexIt snowballs in a way that the later seasons of Nathan for you tend to do where he decide Nathan decides, all right, we need to pick the bar.

MerlinYou got people playing people. But he's dealing with them as the character, as the actor and as the actual person. He's got all these different angles on it again. Again, I love you. Again. I love you. Again.

AlexHe creates a flow chart

Merlinin OmniGraffle. Yeah, what did you call it? I put it into some specialized flow chart software.

AlexTitle!

MerlinAnd it is OmniGraffle.

AlexIt's very... I was very excited. I did like the

MerlinLeonardo DiCaprio meme.

AlexI know what that is.

MerlinYou know what it reminds me of in some ways, though? Well, because it is so funny because it's basically – it is Omnigrapful to spoil the joke. But he's done a flow chart like with like decision points. And in some ways it's a little bit reminiscent of the way that's played mostly straight in everything everywhere all at once. Well, if this happens, then that happens. And he has all these exotic like incredibly strange things and he adapts it and acts like this software is the thing, the science sauce that's going to govern the success of this project is this like – this app that he runs.

Alexand well and and we we laugh but i would argue that this was a very successful rehearsal because yeah after um you know he he keeps hanging out with core and one of the like important points is he wants trivia night for him to go really well because he's going to tell his friend that he's going to tell her that he's been lying over a night of trivia.

MerlinBut Nathan, in the show anyway, the way that Nathan twists it is something that makes sense in Nathan's mind. And so there's a little hook that goes by pretty quickly. You could miss it. But the hook is, well, he loves his trivia team and he thinks the best way to do this would be in public. And that sounds like a really simple thing to say.

AlexBecause she'll do something violent.

MerlinBut how – and again, I don't want to spoil the whole thing, but this is a theme, at least through the two episodes indefinitely. And the first one is that Nathan has this a la make soft serve or make frozen yogurt that tastes like poop. He comes up with something where you're like, hmm, okay. So in order for this guy – to Nathan's satisfaction anyway – in order for this guy to properly rehearse telling this to the woman, it starts off simple enough which is we just need to start by making

an exact replica of the bar where you will be on Trivia Night

Alexwhich cost more than the construction of the actual bar which I don't know

Merlinhow they found this out that's not in the show is it

Alexoh is it not in the episode it might have been in the New York profile

Merlinwe'll come back to this is it really a duplicate or is it really just the same set

AlexI don't know. I don't know.

MerlinI don't know. And we're not going to spoil number two, but I'll tell you, you can already know what I'm hoping. Nathan gets so attached to the bar, and I'm like, oh my God, I hope this keeps happening. This is the Robert Downey Jr. angle. I hope this keeps accumulating. That would be so amazing.

AlexThis, right away. Oh, God. Well, I want you to talk about its connection to, I still can't pronounce it, Sedectady, New York?

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's very much connected. Yeah, that was your note. But like, and again, now we probably said almost enough, but I just want to tickle you a little more with this and I want to laugh along with fellow fans. is that now as in all of these things, like in the past and now, so he's all about sets and actors and then rehearsal, literal rehearsal. And so what's the missing piece, obviously? Well, in order for Kor to rehearse the best way that he can generate the best results,

he needs to be able to rehearse by talking to this woman on his trivia team that he considers a friend. But guess what? Well, who's Kor going to talk to? Well, we need to get an actor who can play that woman. And a la Kor's actor,

oh my God, there's the most fucking amazing scene. And this is where we, if you've seen people saying, if you see these five words on Twitter, this is where it comes from. We learn that Kor's friend, whose name escapes me.

He described-

AlexNo, not Victoria.

MerlinYeah, Victoria? He describes her as being like she's really good at trivia, but, again, she has a blog about things you can do that aren't very expensive, and her blog is called Cheap Chick in the City.

And it's mostly posts about how she's sorry she hasn't updated more. But, like, well, I think one of the first bona fide moments of genius in this episode is they do hire an actor. And, of course, that woman now is going to need to study her. But how do we do that? Nathan starts a fake blog called Thrifty Boy that's about cheap things to do in New York and creates a persona, the titular blogger Thrifty Boy who has a funny hat, and basically offers that woman a chance to write for his guest blog for him.

And so he's going to hire the real woman to interview a birdwatching expert. The birdwatching expert is the actress who's going to play the woman. And this is her opportunity to get a read on what this woman is like. That all right there is so fucking funny to me. But then the way the woman who's supposed to be doing the interview, the real woman, she just – you think I'm bad? She just chatters incessantly about her life in this hilarious montage.

It's so funny. It's so cringy. And then you take it from there. And then a lot of it is the—

AlexWell, but importantly, the actor who is going to be playing—I remember her name is Trisha because he's like—

MerlinTrisha because that's my mother's name. You don't meet a lot of Patricias or Trishas.

AlexRight, right. The actor tells the real Trisha—

MerlinThey get through the supposed interview, and then the actress woman feels like, go ahead, she has to say something.

AlexShe decides, I'm sorry, I lied to you. My mother's name is not Trisha. And then the real Trisha just goes, oh, okay. Do you have any funny stories about birds?

MerlinBut she basically says, I'm not, that's not who I am. But at that point, she does. She's awkward. She doesn't know what to do. And so she keeps conducting the same terrible interview for Thrifty Boy, like, like, despite all of that. And then that woman playing Trisha, the actress is so, the actor is so fucking funny in the scenes with Core. And, like, you know, then they get into the meat of it, which is Core's got to do all these things. Can he get the table that he wants? Is he going to, he orders her the titular line, orange juice with no pulp.

And, like, it has to rehearse. And then it gets increasingly outlandish to prepare core for what could happen. He's terrified. This can actually turn to violence. And my only last thing about this, because this is then the left turn that makes this genius is we learn partway through all of these rehearsals as core is probably drinking a little too much. We learn that core not only really likes trivia night, not only is trivia like important to him, but he's basically fucking up the act. Even just he's fucking up the rehearsal because he's so obsessed with winning trivia night.

It gets in the way of the rehearsals. And it becomes clear that he cares more, really, ultimately cares more about trivia night than this whole scheme.

AlexHe says to Nathan, he's like, if we are losing trivia, I'm going to bail on this confession because then I have lied to her and I've ruined a trivia night.

MerlinBut then how do you operationalize that? You try to time it with the amount of time it takes to order a pizza and have it come out at a certain point. It's like at this point, even – again, we'll get to this, I guess, how much of this is quote-unquote real. It's like it is very stressful. And I almost texted you when I finally sat down and tucked into this whole episode, whole first episode where I'm like there's – I don't know if this is accurate, but my thought off the dome was there's so much cringe in this. But then there's so many levels to the cringe that at a certain point, it kind of crosses over into something.

It's not merely like, you know, I say merely the classic David Brent. It's not clearly like, you know, like watching David Brent sing a song about racism or dance at an office party or whatever. There's so many levels of cringe to this. And there's so many people put in an awkward position. And it just keeps building up to like what eventually happens. But he's built two entire, at least two entire sets. He's hired actors. He's found a way hilariously to fake, even in the rehearsals, to fake the pizza that's supposedly being made in the back.

AlexThey built the exact oven.

MerlinThey just throw the pizza away and grab this other one from a box.

AlexGod, it's so good. You keep calling it cringe. and my

Merlinisn't that what people say now isn't that when they reappropriate an adjective, a noun into an adjective into a noun and we use cringe now as an adjective

Alexand a noun and the whole cringe comedy but the reason I started to become obsessed with Nathan Fielder as a person and a character is cringe as you say is something that I do slash experience all the time and it is just a normal part of my existence. I'm a fucking weirdo. Is that somewhat what we

Merlinused to call being embarrassed?

AlexI guess, yeah. Awkward.

MerlinI think for it to be cringe, the noun or cringe, the adjective, as in that person's so cringe. I can just feel my bachelor's degree leaving my body. But the, why would I need that? But the, wait, no, I was going to say the cringe that, oh, oh, is, you know, but you know, the thing with Nathan, what the thing that makes something go from like, this is awkward to this is, as we say, cringe is commitment. And like the thing

that makes, well, I mean, think about, for example, other great examples of this. Think of just the whole movie Bridesmaids in some ways. And like the, the, like the way that once you're committed to something. Oh, you know what's the classic? Maybe the classic is 22 short films about Springfield where Principal Chalmers or Superintendent Chalmers comes to the principal's house and Seymour has burnt dinner and then he has to go to the Krusty Burger and you get into the whole steamed clams or steamed hams.

Wait, you call hamburgers steamed hams even though these are obviously, they have grill marks on them. And like that commit, that's what makes that bit. Right. Isn't that what makes that bit so amazing is that he's so committed to the entirely implausible lies that he's piling on to other lies. And I think that's what makes something cringe is commitment.

AlexIt's beautiful, though. It's just like a fucking.

MerlinThat's how you felt when you were 13. Really? Like all the time. And then you do an awkward dance or something.

AlexOr you stammer like someone I know. And it's God. And that's what I found so appealing about the rehearsal is watching the the cringe actually success successfully make the situation better. Like at the end of this episode, the core is like, yeah.

MerlinYeah, we're doing spoilers, right? It's OK to do spoilers. Yeah.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinIt's a really, it's actually a really, again, I don't know if it's real. That's the next thing I'm talking about. But there's a really, a really sweet ending that we can all really learn from, which is not only was there in the end, there was no violence, but he was, it was so much easier than he expected to tell her. She was so much more kind and like accepting. And like for somebody who's obviously so self-involved, like Tricia was like, oh, don't worry about it. Like everybody has got weird stuff.

A lot of people don't even have a bachelor's degree. Like, don't worry about it. And then twist on twist on twist. Then for an hour and a half, Cor talks about his life to her. He got out. He had a way out. He was done. He fixed it. He could theoretically go straight back. But instead, in a cringy way, he's deepening their relationship by then him prattling on about like how his father said he'd pay for college but wouldn't and going into this whole thing about his life. And it's actually it's kind of sweet.

AlexIt's so hard.

MerlinHow do you how do you end up loving Tricia? It's really weird. It's that long thing, though, when he's you know, he's supposed to say it. You know, he's running out of time and there's no pressure from Tricia. So Trisha's basically there between the rounds. They're like at the, I guess, the end of the night or whatever. But she's looking at her phone and the camera relentlessly follows core, obviously not knowing to quote pretty in pink, not knowing whether to shit or go sailing. He's so uncomfortable. He doesn't want to say it. You could tell at one point he gets up.

He walks around a little bit. And like, don't you get the feeling he's thinking about just fucking bolting at that point? I thought he was going to bail. I thought he was too. That's what it feels like, but it builds, and the tension is just completely unbearable. But, you know, this is what we've been training for.

AlexAnd then I, of course, immediately was like, okay, obviously editing is a huge part of this show, any reality and comedy show. But I'm like, was he pacing back and forth? Was there that big pause?

MerlinMaybe this is our opportunity because this is a long – you know, listeners, we love you, and there's a lot of things. Mommy and Daddy don't tell you about everything, but just suffice it to say that this entire week's enterprise, I love doing this show. It's an utter joy to do. I like that some of you guys like it, and I super love Alexandra. But this week, it was only partly because of Internet connections. Let's tell them, Alex. We started recording. We recorded for probably in the end like almost four hours yesterday.

your power went off in the middle of recording this part of the show. We had to redo it. Hi, it's Thursday. I said I wasn't going to say anything, but you've handled it really well.

AlexThe show is due by Friday. It'll be out by Friday.

MerlinI don't think that does. Does that imply the show is due by Friday? I thought the original conceit was, wasn't it original conceit? It's D-U-E by Friday. And that's that you had until Friday to do the challenge originally.

AlexAnd the name was I just thought it was really funny to make it confusing and hard to pronounce.

MerlinAnd people say Dubai Friday, like Dubai, or they say Dobby Friday. Did you know that actually the tallest building in the world is in Dubai? Burj Khalifa.

AlexBurj Khalifa.

MerlinI don't know if I will convince you guys to watch this show, but one of the really stupid, incredibly stupid standout bits of this, the biggest belly laughs I produced while watching this were during a part where Nathan realized, long story short, Nathan realizes he knows that Core has a very high ethical standard about winning, but also never cheating, blah, blah, blah. and Nathan realizes for what reason he realizes that that in order to get go because core is

Alexgoing to bolt if they don't win yeah so because he said there's like i'm just gonna you know i

Merlincan't ruin trivia night and the least plausible part probably almost of the entire thing he's talked to like the mc of trivia night and in his uh thrifty boy disguise like why would yes as my kid said like why why is why would thrifty boy be on camera talking to trivia night guy because it's Free? Anyway.

AlexBecause he says he's making a documentary about cheap things to do, thrifty things to do in this city.

MerlinAnd he figures out through this, totally implausible, he figures out how to incept the answers to the next quiz. And I think you just need to take this read that it worked. So he realizes that now he can't give the answers to the pub quiz, the trivia quiz. He can't give them to Cor. instead he's going to incept him with finding a way to make sure Kaur knows all this in a real low-key, in-context way. So what's the first one? The first one's pretty straightforward. The first one's like...

AlexI think it's 1784, like something... Oh, yeah.

MerlinYou punch in the code for something and he says, yeah, yeah, you know, that's this four-digit code, 1780, whatever. Because that's the year of the French Revolution. and that's, haha, that's funny, but they walk by a crime scene where there's a cop who's being played by an actor, and they're like, what happened? And they're like, the cop, the cop, the actor cop, Cor does not know it's an actor. Nathan does, and he's like, what happened here? He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah,

somebody got shot. And then my, probably my favorite line, almost my favorite line from the whole thing. It's days like this that I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder.

Alexoh god and we'll we'll get to this not in the after show because we have a before show but something very interesting happened last night involving sort of a cancellation maybe kind of we'll see but i exactly um but should we get get into them like the end of this show well

Merlincan we wait okay so before we leave i want to talk about i want you to tell me what's real and what's not even though i kind of don't want to know who got canceled what possibly nathan well

Alexoh shit no there's always been well nathan fielder has always been a controversial no no no it's okay it's okay nathan fielder has always been a somewhat controversial character because in the first series he had nathan for you when he's helping small business owners they're typically

Merlinoh shit you're talking okay you're talking about the guy from the baby episode uh oh that too that's

Alexfucking funny uh the second well okay yeah the second episode of uh of the rehearsal is amazing

MerlinBut the person in that episode, and this actually is kind of on the way to how much of this is real, there's a guy who really does not like how he was portrayed in the episode. You're talking about something else, though. Did he sex somebody?

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MerlinDo I have to be his penis lawyer, too?

AlexNo, no. Just last night, people started sending me tweets of comedians.

MerlinAlex was receiving tweets? I was. I'm told that I was receiving tweets.

AlexFounder of Cox's Cook, Kara Fagan, was like, what's happening? Because there was a tweet that says, Sorry, not sorry. Going to care about Nathan Fielder because I grew up with an alcoholic, psychologically abusive father in constant state of anxiety about the future. Hearing the key in the door every evening was my own. the rehearsal for almost 20 years and the the there was another one uh god it's uh don't think

it's a coincidence that bernie bros this is a separate person don't think it's a coincidence that bernie bros adore the rehearsal fielder just like bernie loves to manipulate people and his use of these tactics to manipulate a talkative woman in episode one feels particularly close to how Bernie bros degraded Warren's supporters. Ha ha. It's so funny that he can get these people to buy into his promise that he can help manage their lives. Oh, yeah. As funny as Bernie promising free health care.

MerlinIt might be valuable for you to just not be on the Internet sometimes.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no. But Merlin, here is the thing. I was like, wait, I know these people. These are comedians. don't these comedians have some connection to the show and then i realized oh this is all a fucking bid this is just oh my god you got me and then all and i was like oh i just keep i just

Merlinkeep worrying i just keep waiting to find out that tom hanks is actually killing children for their for their invigoron or whatever i don't want i don't want people i like to be canceled i don't

Alexwant to be a penis lawyer the well no it's it was i was like wait a second wait a second um and and then i realized a bunch of comedians are just really leaning into the bit that oh my god toxic terrible person and i was like and then i'm like wait is this part of the show because it's all like comedians who are semi-famous but like really funny and i was like wait seriously how did they

Merlinlike not get the conceit of the show and they got us alex they got me alex they totally got me

Alexbecause i was like wait a second wait a second um and just a moment just a moment it was really i was like okay okay okay okay okay and uh finally found a gif of that i'm so glad and i just was like oh my oh my god oh my god and now I'm wondering, is this going to be part of a future episode? I have no idea. I have no idea.

MerlinBecause dumb Starbucks was a pretty unusual episode of Nathan for you, I feel like, because you know my little world theory of podcasts I've told you about where like I think the podcast, the podcast, my favorite podcast I've done and a lot of my favorite podcasts I listen to are like a little world and you don't let the entire world. And this is why I say things like don't let the audience or like not everything gets to be in a little world. Like the little world, like, and I'm like, you look nice today being the greatest example of that.

I don't think I ever use the word podcast. You know how rarely I use the word podcast, let alone pod. I don't think I ever use the word podcast on purpose when we're recording you look nice today. I would always refer to it as our program or our visits or something like that. Yes. People like to make fun of that because if you have a podcast, you're supposed to talk about it. It's a running bid on blank check. Every time they do a series, Griffin finds some tortured way to work the syllables pod and cast into the title of the director series they're doing. But I love Little World Theory, but Dumb Starbucks is full of the big world.

News reporting on how he's in trouble because he's created this thing called Dumb Starbucks. Is that what it's called, Dumb Starbucks?

AlexYep. And he was like, because of parody law, we won't get in trouble, even if it looks exactly like a Starbucks.

MerlinBut he learned it from Wikipedia, right?

AlexYes. Yes.

MerlinHey, can we get to the big question? And do I want to know the answer? Well, actually, so my question is, Alex, and it's a compound question, counselor. How much of this is, and I keep saying quote unquote real because I'm not even sure how to scare quote this. But like, how much of this do you think is real and doesn't matter?

AlexThe answer is I have no idea. And also, I don't care.

MerlinI'm not the only one asking this, just for what it's worth.

AlexOh, no. This is, you know, blowing up everywhere in the same way that it honestly, it feels like when I barely again, I was like barely sentient. But the first season of Survivor, there were some people who were convinced that these people were just on a set.

MerlinOh, I see. I'm sorry. I apologize. You're saying in terms of, like, people thought it was fake.

AlexYeah. Yeah. They thought, like, okay, this must be fake. And for years, people were like, oh, reality shows are fake. And now there's more of an understanding of, like, how reality shows work and how producers get involved to, like, create storylines. and uh there is much debate around the rehearsal over are all of these people actors and uh is was any of this improvised or is this just you know nathan fielder doing nathan fielder

and i it's not okay it's not that i don't care so the answer kind of is it doesn't matter the show the the answer to me is it would not make me enjoy the show less if it was all completely

Merlinfake and i think the people are real and the editing is fake i think the people are real and not fake but like i i get the feeling core for however he got bamboozled into this is like probably what he seems in the same way that the bar owner in la i mean i really think is probably what she seemed.

AlexAnd, well, and people, I mean, of course, internet, people found Trisha, and Trisha actually said, like, I can't say anything. No, no, no. Like, she said, hey, I can't say anything really about the show, except I had a really good experience on the show, and yes, we're real. And the people actually found that Cor had been in an episode of Cash Cab along with some of the Instagram members.

MerlinOh, maybe he's one of those people that's on, like, a list of people who will. Yes. Isn't that a thing?

AlexYep, to be on a, like, a list of people who could potentially be cast as reality show stars because they're, like, just quirky and fun. And that's, and now it's like, oh, is any, like, how real is the trivia group? We don't know. And it's not that I don't care. Again, it's not that I don't care. It's just that it doesn't matter.

MerlinBut if you think about it, one thinks about it the same way. You know so much more about this than I do. But I feel like through some combination of 80% you and others talking about this, those articles Max has found about how Survivor's made, the hundreds of people on the crew, down to that pretty good short live show about being a producer on a reality show. What was that called? The one? The woman who's like – she was an alcoholic and she had to quit her job. She's at the top of her game as a producer on a Bachelor-style show. and then she comes back.

You remember that show?

AlexOh, what?

MerlinI'll try to find it for notes. I don't think I've ever seen this. Notes, notes, notes.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinBut the thing is, if you know roughly, whether you're talking about the season-long arc or even, like, a given episode, you have an idea of, like, what stories need to happen, what needs to move forward. And I bet it is a combination of, well, partly it's the footage you got, but then how you use the footage you got to tell the story you want to tell. So it's about prompting, right, Or like, oh, let's do another take where you say, take it this way. You could make it feel like still sort of natural, right?

But I mean, again, starting from the first principles, Clarice, when we first walk into Cor's house, there's a camera inside. The thing I always say to my kid when we're watching like, you know, Kitchen Nightmares or Hotel Hell, like, isn't it funny that whenever Gordon arrives and walks in with his little suitcase, there's already cameras inside the place that he's surprising?

Alexand we and i think now we are very much past that because even youtube stars come into a room and say hello and it's as if they have not set up the camera and it's like it's a single person of course

Merlinthey set up the camera oh hello i didn't see you there like a jenna maroney kind of thing

Alexand i and this is with your question of whether or not this is real and whether or not they are actors was almost sort of answered because the second episode there i don't want to spoil it because it is it's pre-bananas it's remark it's oh my god i okay okay the episode the episode

Merlinis terrific but in particular however they got that particular woman and like her whole fucking deal was perfect. Like if that had been anybody else it would have been a different show. That woman is so unintentionally perfect for what they were doing.

AlexAnd listen, there are people, there are a lot of reviewers who have seen every episode of the rehearsal except the last one and much like in the last season of Nathan for You where all the reviewers got to see everything except the final episode which was actually a documentary

Merlinthat was an hour and a half long. The Bill Gates reenactment drone footage one.

AlexYes and if there's anybody who can pass that along to me I think about this show constantly. There's nothing

Merlinin my mind except this show. Don't you like waiting?

AlexDon't you want to wait? I don't know anymore because I used to I used to like wait. I kind of like

Merlinthe way Irma Vap makes me wait.

AlexI I've queued that up. I'm very excited to watch it.

MerlinI'm asking you for a two-episode commitment. First episode is very good, but I think you could be forgiven for not being hooked until – I'm not saying anything giant happens, but the show is very cumulative, very accretive. They talk about this all the time on Downstream. like you know there are some kinds of things where like the you know if Netflix drops you know their fucking 10 episodes two episodes too long season like it goes by so fast you don't get any of that water cooler buzz you would get

from a must see TV show and I also kind of like not being able to binge

Speaker Aalso I think this season of what we do in the shadows is not very good

Alexso far I know I saw the first two and I'm like

Merlinfirst one is not good the second one is better and the third one I was like okay the bitch is back but I was like oh it's fine it's kind of a different show it's kind of a different show the way people talk about people get so fucking bent out of shape about everything about community this feels like that not if it's a gas leak season but so far these episodes kind of feel like it's a different show made by different people

Alexyeah I wonder if there's anything that happened behind the scenes supply chain The person who thinks about it. Oh, that's what? That was funny that he gets caught in the... Oh, okay. Well, okay. Okay. Okay. Cut that out. But there is a person in the second...

MerlinThat was not a stop. I thought I had you to stop there.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinYou never get the last laugh.

AlexI... Okay. Then actually, no. We're done. Because I think in a follow-up, we're going to... Yes. That's it.

MerlinThat's it.

AlexWe're done. We're done. No.

MerlinIt's not clean. We got it.

AlexYou got the ding. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. There's two sides. There's clean.

MerlinNo? Alex, Alex, Alex. Yes? Again.

AlexYes.

MerlinAgain.

AlexAgain?

MerlinSay it again.

AlexI forgot what I said. I literally...

MerlinOh, see, that was going to be a funny bit. We can't do that one now. I thought I'd say it again, and then you would say, I love you. And then I would pause, and I would say it again, and you would say, I love you.

AlexOh, oh, I... Oh, oh, I love you.

MerlinI love you. Oh, see? Oh, oh, oh. Oh, that felt weird. I love you. God, get a plunger.

AlexAll right.

MerlinSo I love you. Are you crying a little bit?

AlexI love you.

MerlinAre you crying a little?

Thank you.

297. Specialized Flowchart Software

Show notes

Transcript

297. Specialized Flowchart Software

Show notes

Transcript

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