353. Baby Eisenstein

This is Due by Friday, a weekly challenge. Podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, try out FS Notes. Merlin, is it still Wait, time zones? Minus two. Yep, yep. It's i it's not afternoon for you yet. Hello. Hi, how are you? I I I'm good. Yeah, awesome. Heard you've been doing some home improvement. You got a new towel bar. That's exciting. Everything's coming up, Alex. I know. I really like when my landlord uh says he's going to do something. Yes. That's awesome. Yes. We make small commitments in life. We do. That's awesome. Everything's great. Ugh, I slept a little weird, but I'm alright. What's what's what's going on in your neck of the woods apart from that? Anything exciting?

I also slept weird, but it wasn't Good weird. You know how sometimes you sleep weird and it's good? Does that make any sense? Like probably, yeah, that that could make sense. I mean it's not how I would I would not describe sleep I didn't not consider positive as Weird in a good way, usually. Uh sometimes I don't have any dreams. Like some uh a a weird way of sleeping. Uh-huh. Nothing you remember anyway. Right, right. Like it's it's one of those nights where you close your eyes. And then a bunch of things happen that you don't know about and then you open them. My toddler had a name for that. Ooh, what is it? Blink sleep. Blink sleep? I just had a blink sleep. I just had a blink sleep. Oh my god, that's really good.

Well the baby the baby lays down and goes to sleep and then wakes up and didn't realize that they were asleep. I just had a blank sleep. That's a really good name. That's a pretty good term for it, yeah. Yeah. But did you have bad dreams last night? Yeah. W were you were you troubled? Tru tr uh no, no, it was uh the a a paprika s style evening, except with um characters yeah from childhood versus ki cur current characters in m my life, like podcasters I won't name as well as cartoon characters like, you know. The a roster of people you talk to Talking about people who visited you in a dream? Like you s who you saw in a dream? Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm telling telling the audience. You'll you'll visit uh regularly um our my neighbors will any anyone I occasionally see see in my daily life on a regular night sleep, they will uh you know drift in and out of dreams sometimes just like a h hello And uh still very paprika style, doesn't make any sense, completely boring to describe, but I still ain't gonna be able to do it.

Yes. A a very good if they haven't heard about paprika yet, where where is it? Pound for pound, most people think of pac paprika as a reddish uh pepper that you put on things. I I I didn't know that until I had seen the Blues Clues episode where m um mm mm I believe it is Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepe. had a baby and it was paprika. Magenta's coming over. Magenta's coming over. W was your kid in like the blues clues end phase? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I enjoyed it very much. Did you have Joe or or was it still Steve? We have both. We had Steve and it transitioned to Joe. Steve goes to college. Oh, that That was a very sweet episode. It was. It's very, very good. And now Steve is a full-blown adult with the punk band.

I I love it. Did you did you did you know about uh Blues Clues Steve being um both of He has an album uh produced by Dave Fridman, which is a pretty big album. Oh so yes you do. I don't know who that is, but I I was reading it phonetically just now. No, the guy who produced the film Flaming Lips did his um like two thousand one maybe record. Something like that. There's also that um Sound of Young America interview with him where he talks about losing his hair and it's really funny. Yeah. He seems like a cool guy. I think the whole way that show was produced was interesting because unlike most children's shows, they were really um insistent about having the people play characters of themselves.

Mu much like let's say a uh podcast, or how th they described it like we want a light a late night show uh like the b the beginning monologue should be like a late night show monologue where when the kids shout the answers. Yeah like when the kids. I see like with the audience participation kind of thing. Yeah. And and like when the kids shout the la laughter, it should be like a a laugh uh shout the laughter. When the kids shout the answer to like, there's the clue, it should be very much like an audience laughing situation with the idea being that kids will watch their parents w watch their parents watch late night and th that will convert over to a children's TV show. I don't know if that Yeah, I uh well I I don't know if it that's the reason Blues Clues was successful.

Do do a lot of lot of toddlers watch their parents watch late night? I don't know. That's that's that's why I was like, huh, that's an interesting idea. Big J. Leno fans, yeah. Oh, oh That's cool. Yeah, it sometimes it's difficult to for adults Hmm. I don't know. I mean see you see this with stuff like obviously with stuff like Caillou but other stuff too where there's this uh it sometimes feels like adults are like guessing what they think kids will be engaged with. And like it's it's for a long time it seems like that was really not interesting at all to to the people who made these shows by and large. It was just like Here's a bunch of stuff that will appeal to parents because it's the kind of of dumb, harmless garbage that they grew up with.

So let's just do that rather than the kind of thing that really does like actively engage. H I I don't doubt for a second that some kids got very engaged. with with Dora and Diego. I mean my kid liked Dora and Diego but didn't yell at the screen. I mean that would seem a little simple, I think, for to yell at the screen. You know what I mean? Like I mean have you been around kids some kids love to yell at the scream, but some kids just like yelling. You don't even need a show to be on. I've never seen a uh kid yell at a screen without an adult prompting them to engage with the show, which makes me think that But I mean like it's like anybody the uh the little kid is having a uh suspension of disbelief.

Like I think in in my day it was romper room when I was a kid and at the end of every episode the woman would hold up a m what was meant to be a mirror, but was really just a mirror with no glass in it, and look through it and say, all the kids they see that she sees in the audience. And she would say a bunch of generic names of kids and you would always hope you'd hear your name. But I mean, I don't think even in those simpler times, I don't think kids really thought that she was seeing through the television. Yeah, I've oh I I maybe very, very little kids. I mean I've only ever fooled my kid like three times ever A couple of them were epic, but like it's pr harder than you think to trick a kit.

Yeah, oh yeah. J uh I guess I'm just going to talk about late night. t today, but uh uh Mul Mulaney had uh not a bit, but he was talking to Conan O'Brien on his show that's now a podcast, I I suppose, about how he uh is Or like funniest he thinks to his child and any whenever he feels smart or funny, it's only through the eyes of his son. So he'll try to trick his son it with the he's too old for like peekaboo. now, but you know, he'll he'll play with him or tr and and try to trick him. Right. But there is an age then where kids like kind of want to be messed with a little bit. I think kids ench kids do enjoy that. But th and those are the kids who grew up to be much. I I wonder too, how much of that came from the Disney era by and and by that I I guess Like after Disneyland, you probably would know this m more than me, but like how after Disneyland was so successful, a lot of cartoons tried to m mimic what was in a theme park and uh also made the assumption of the way that people reacted in uh i in real life It would happen on television if they saw the same thing, like with the Mickey Mouse Club.

And I I don't know. It's a it it it's It feels like one of those bits where it's uh where in a a cartoon or even like a 30 rock thing, there's a big evil executive like mm mm mm mwahaha, this is what the kids will like. But I I I don't know. I wonder how many of them were parents. You seem like you'd be a good uh uh a a good TV uh children's TV producer. Hmm, thank you. I I I don't I don't think so. I don't think that would bring out the best in me. Um, there are some people that think it could bring out the best in, but I don't know. I mean, cause like of course I don't want to seem clever about it or something, but you know, it's like these um you know, the charities and um NGOs that are trying to do what they can to get relief in the Gaza right now and it's like I don't know.

Look, we just Or like, you know, or the no no child hungry thing, for example. Like there's things where it's just like, well, you can interview me all you want, but all I'm ever gonna say is that the one true thing, which is we wanna We want to facilitate money from people turning into food for kids. We want kids to have food. And that's so like, you know, you could you could choose to like get hung up on all of this the political intrigue of this, but regardless of how it happened, whose fault it is, whatever, that's not our concern. Other people will be around to fret about that. It's maybe sort of like St. Jude in some ways, you know, just that sense of like we just want to provide the most direct means possible to like A, find out what people need and then B give it to them.

I have so much respect for people who do stuff like that rather than like try to couch it in some kind of weird, you know, there's so many weird charities now that are not as sort of neutral as they seem, you know. Autism speaks comes to mind. Um, but anyhow, I don't know. I don't know. I I I would like to think I think I could be a good writer for it. I don't think I'd be a good showrunner. What would bur you said you don't think it would bring out the best in you. What would bring out the best in you? That's a completely different question. I know. That's why I asked it. Being left alone. The No, I don't know No, I mean like you're talking about a career that would do that? No what uh whatever you prefer.

Oh no, no, this is the same thing. rather than saying what is the opposite of the one thing that won't bring out the best in you. I'll answer I'll try to answer anything you want. Um I uh I'm an adult and I haven't been a kid in a long time. And uh like every adult, uh you know, peop whether whether or not that person likes kids um or like cares about kids. Like we've all got our own ideas about things. And when you have an audience that is as out of control, out of your control as children, you can get away with all kinds of crap. You can get away with like all kinds of just like again to as long as we're talking about John Mullaney, think about you know the assemblies. And like, you know, nobody took a vote with the kids about what would be useful for them.

Like how can I how can I report abuse without getting hit more? Oh, how about instead we have the woman with the wrist cast bring her puppets in? You know, it's like oh this kind of stuff. You know what I mean? It's like uh I don't mean to make it sad, but like uh I I don't know what it is that kids need or want. And even if you are somebody who's like a PhD I don't know. I think that's it's such a difficult needle to thread. And it's funny how the market seems like it's kind of taken over now where I've never seen something called Cocoa Melon, but I've heard a lot about it. I guess it started on YouTube. And now it's on something like I want to say Netflix. And that's supposedly like the new that and Bluey, I guess.

Is that the ones kids you have you have young people in your family. Do they watch? TV things? What are they what are they if you can say or willing to say what what what what looms large in their life? Yesterday I watched a lot of Cocoa Melon and Bluey, in fact. And I it's weird because cocoa melon it feels very much like an adult version of or a children's version of uh an adult's like like e easy show, like a a brain off like sitcom, just you know, just put it in my gullet because that's all I want to engage with right now. Like here's here's some stimulation. Whereas Blueie But you say it's like adult swim for babies? The uh hey mmm a little bit. It is a little bit. Whereas Blueie Whereas blue B Bluey almost feels like uh training wheels for adventure time.

Like you you can't just have it on in the background and pop pop in and then it's like yay colors. Really uh uh uh s I mean, I don't know. Wa watching it as an adult and probably trying to look for more meaningful things rather than oh look they're talking about mortality. But you know, when there's an episode about a grandparent's death that gets pretty real but doesn't upset kids who are between two and four years old. That's im impressive to me because it's hard to get an adult. to do that. I I don't know. And but I those are the two most popular kids' shows and most are uh ripoffs of the the those and and SpongeBob still. I don't know why. Um But it it very mu much mirrors adult television in uh that's interesting.

In in that way. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know. That that's not why I always found kai Caillou like just I I I never it's there I don't know if you saw this, but what's her head? Um oh Maggie Mayfish on Nebula had a funny video about like um anti-vaping campaigns and she had this just this this funny video. I mean it was I think she's being a little silly with it, but she's pointing something out that has been around for a while, which is like Like you're you you you're trying to make these ads and go like, you know, hello fellow teens, you know, please please don't vape. It's it's gross and bad. And sh and she's having fun with it. Uh, you know, about how these on the one hand, like they're so they're so drug prevention ads tend to be so dorky.

or so serious or try so hard to seem like cool and like they understand you that there's all kinds of ways that that either the message doesn't get through Let's put it this way. I was the kind of kid that did not need an anti-smoking or anti-drug message because I was not smoking or doing drugs. I had no intention of ever doing it. So to say that uh an anti-smoking, anti-drugs message was effective on me would not mean as much as being effective towards somebody who was much more inclined to do those things, let alone somebody who was already doing those things. Dare had a 100% success rate in my fifth grade class in Wheaton, Illinois. Yeah, no white suburban kids were doing crack. Shocking.

Right. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of that's that's that's a good way to put it. So anyhow, but she was just uh just you know talking about that kind of stuff. Like I my gosh, it would take so I the way I would put it, I'm not saying this about other people, I'm saying this about me. If I were put in charge of that of a program or if I was asked to get get the ball rolling on something that would Uh try and prevent young people from doing something that somebody's decided is dangerous for them. That's the I would be very, very bad at that, I think. I don't I wouldn't know how to do that. Partly, probably honestly, my heart wouldn't necessarily be in it. But also, just because I don't know. It's just uh it's also strange, but like sometimes it really feels like uh that there there's there's this sort of a and and the one she was talking about in particular, I I don't have any way to prove this, but when she starts talking about Some of these very, very overfunded anti-smoking, anti-vaping, anti-drug campaigns, she makes it sound like it's just basically something where elected officials want something that makes them look good.

And the more money they pump into looking good, the better it is for them, even though it's having no tangible effect. Right. Because you're, you know, it's almost like a four year consideration ad. Where like if you're gonna put up you put up billboards all over Hollywood, Beverly Hills, whatever, Southern California. Um, I mean that's really different than trying to launch a campaign to get people come to come see your movie. It's a very specific kind of targeted thing. And I mean, uh certainly there are I'm not really going anywhere with any of this. But then there are also things where people are like you know, hey, you know, make sure you put a lot of money into this book promotion campaign or this movie promotion campaign and you could really see how there understandably there are people.

Netflix won't tell you how many how much uh traffic or how your how many subscriptions your show generated, right? You have to do stuff that just increases your brand. And so if you're out there on an FYC um Billboard, that's good for you, even if it's not necessarily that great for Netflix. They're all these are all for like different reasons, but just because we see a billboard doesn't mean it's helping children. It is interesting though because all of those people you've talked about aren't necessarily true not aren't necess aren't necessarily probably aren't true believers in the way that at least Anita Bryant presented herself to be a true believer. Who knows how accurate that was. Um but she felt very, very strongly.

She took it very, very Personally, as a woman and as a Christian. She was very serious about it. I don't think she was fronting at all. I I mean, and at a certain point, like you could tell it was tearing her apart in a lot of ways. to to the the the like how she was perceived by people, but she believed in in what she would call her values so strongly that she had felt she had no alternative but to do that, to be like anti-gay. That ah see that that freaks me out because it is hard for me to tell from old videos. of her versus videos from now or even in the uh like 2005 era era watching uh either Christian activists or straight up anti-gay activists who have completely reversed their positions.

Um Like the it was seeing their old speeches and they st they seem like true believers, but they clearly weren't. They just wanted to keep their church's jet, you know? Or they wanted to win, you know, they they wanted to win. Well and somebody like like Jerry Falwell Jr. was able to continue to conduct his public life in a way, I mean, we don't need to get into this, but you know, the the way that that guy, that guy was, he had a private life. Let's sure put it that way. that was seemingly at odds with this the public appearance and it's one thing to be like an alderman and be be be doing sex stuff and it's another thing to be uh uh an evangelist or televangelist who is not who is who's constantly browbeating other people about their values I'm I'm I'm trying to avoid strictly saying like anti-gay, but really the thing is at Liberty University that you're not there's not supposed to be any canoodling at all.

It's very again, a very bright line of like when you're here, like that's not something you're gonna be doing here. You're not going to be out there pursuing your horn-dogged tendencies. And even for the least cynical of us, it's difficult when the person who's running that organization is horn-dogging harder than anybody's ever horn-dogged. It you know, and I'm not just kinda like pointing and going, oh hypocrite, but like it yeah, that's that's that's difficult. And it's not even I don't think it was ever presented as like I have my own personal struggles too. It was much more like um you know, Eli Gemstone or something up there being like, you know, I my marriage is really good and I'm not horn dogging around.

Yeah, there was an amazing profile of him where it it felt like it came directly from the righteous gem sounds because he was like, eh. At least I got to keep my car. Didn't they have a didn't they hire like a pool boy or something Yeah, I mean the I'll put the uh the piece in sh in show notes. But he did a whole bunch of stuff that um I believe none of it was I'm talking about I'm talking about like with his his pants being off on the boat. Like the stuff everybody talked about. That's not to me it's not a question of legal. It's a question of like it's grossly at odds with the public face he puts out, which would be his own problem, except that he's also encouraging a a disruption of the lives of people he doesn't know because of that belief.

Which makes it a little difficult when he's not healing his own life. I don't know, there's one one show I can think of. I mean, you know, there's things gosh certainly like Pixar movies or whatever where you talk about it's you know, it's Done in such a way that it can be for different audiences and the the parents like it as much as the kids. There's a handful of things that are like that. I mean, I would argue that Adventure Time is not a show for kids. Oh. Uh Fiona and Cake is very much definitely not a show for kids. It's a it's in the style of children's entertainment, but very much from to me like from an adult point of view, right? Um SpongeBob more so Uh SpongeBob I I could see being more for kids, but I I happened to really like I like I love Spongebob, especially you know, I love the voices.

I love uh I love Mr. Crash. I feel like that's another one that's kind of a training show for weirdos because it's a normal it's normal enough to be a kid's show, but it really sets you up for I don't know like l liking White Hot. Well, it's definitely it's got an unusual sense of humor that that uh appeals to me. The one I was gonna say though, and I I'm not here to like, you know shoot this across the sky or anything, but uh Yoga Bagabba was a show that everybody in our family liked. I could it it could wear a little thin on me 'cause there was a lot of business. But it was a genuinely very entertaining and as an adult I could watch Yoga Gabba and like, oh, this is the way this is done is It's very cool.

But I mean honestly though, there were also times then when I thought, well, this is really a show for hipster parents to say they show their kids. Baby Einstein, I remember that. Oh. Baby Einstein. Do-do-do-do. Baby Einstein. If that was really what it was, that would have been a fucking bottom. And that was that thing, the like play your kid Mozart and it'll be a genius thing. Yep. Yeah. Are you learning all this from podcasts? I feel like these are all things you've learned on podcasts. No, these are all things that I experienced when I was like ten because my sister and I are ten years apart. You were a baby Einstein, huh? Had the big mustache and everything. No, I had uh while while I was babysitting kids, it was usually those hipster parents.

My my parents showed me baby Roderick Usher. Very quiet. That's bright in here. Okay, this is gonna be my new line. My new line is gonna be um you know stuff that's out of uh copyright and I'm gonna make uh maybe maybe the brand name might just be baby all kinds of shit It's gonna be anything in the like it could be I mean I don't know it could be um uh I don't know. I mean it could be like baby directors. You could do like an Eisenstein or something, baby Eisenstein. Well it's funny because you said baby Einstein. Baby Griffith. DW Griffith. That's a baby DW Griffith. You play it for them. You play it for them in the crib. And and then they they don't realize how racist they are. Or they don't care.

Nathan Bedford Forest. Baby Nathan. Oh, all right. He started the clan, you know. I don't He didn't start the clan now. No, no, ooh. Ooh, baby I wonder, is there like a baby Baby Bon Jovi or no baby Baby Joel. Oh baby Joel. I like Baby Bon Jovi too though. That's pretty good. There is Baby Green Day. Uh baby Billy. Uncle Baby Billy Joel. Go on now. You know the catchphrase in our house is I gotta warm up. It takes me four or five times before I get it to my satisfaction. Go on now, boy I can do it during the show, but I I can't I can't just do it at will. So what's the one? This is still so funny to me. When Tiffany comes in and the baby's eating cigarette butts. Have you watched this season?

No. It's a it's a pretty fun season. Baby Billy he wants them to really give him his due. And so he he wants to do this show. Mm-hmm. It's it's it's not it's not just family feud. It's very different. It was called Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers. And it's really, really funny. Go on now, boy. I love Walton Goggins. You can cut all that out if you want. I don't care. No, I I I love that program. I think the reason people love uh love it, both people l like me and well oh well you did grow up a a little bit um in a Mm-hmm. I would say more than a little bit. Yeah, we I I think it was that one of the defining characteristics of especially my Ohio childhood was our uh our Christian stuff that we did, yeah.

I I guess l less um yours was less evangelical because both of us have the same I I think sense of how much church was community to our families outside of just you know, eating a lot of it. It's almost like trying to do like D and D alignment. I mean it's not exactly that. But it's it's got more axes to it. But like some churches have the I think one thing ours both had in common, yours more so probably is Like we had a lot of community service, but we wouldn't have called it that. We I would have called it just being nice. There was a lot of being nice to other people at the church, which is one thing I think it's a bummer. More people don't pick up on how important that is in a lot of in in every community.

But like yours, it seems like you did that, I guess, but then also was the outreach, the outside of the community of your church or faith, right? That's a big part of the ca the Catholic effort, right? No in that it's uh no no no that's how you became like a like a John Dickerson. Remember how I told you one of the service trips uh I went on that was very j gemstone-ish. They don't like Catholics or Lutherans. Or Mormons, but Mormons didn't go up to the very old nun. Yeah, they first she made no noise at all. Then she made a lot of noise. So the the reason Chris Chris Glass is. Is that Chris Flammy? Yeah, it's Chris Flammy, not Chris Glass. The reason that is so funny to me is like I have so such a clear picture of exactly what that that is.

I believe I totally believe it. Well these mystery meat memories we have of things that we can't quite put together and in that case, like you say, you can't like find anybody to g to say that it happened, let alone give you the same version of what happened. Like we all have mystery meat memories, man. But it's but it's like I I a lot of kids have that feeling, if not that memory, of like why are all of these psycho adults in costumes making it? I felt like that every time I had to listen to someone play bagpipes. I was always like, how did it come to this? There's a guy in our church, his name is Lo Nimmo, and he was a very nice guy. And n if you lived in southwestern Cincinnati, excuse me, northwestern Cincinnati and I forget where we live, but you know, Grossbeck White Oak.

you know, all the old haunts. You were gonna see Lo Nemo play bagpipes a couple times a year. And it was always a whole thing where he would like walk down the aisle like he was the bride. in the whole with the offset. Lil Nimmo, he would come to the schools and he always had this big entrance. It was a little gay. But 'cause he had the whole thing. He had the little we had the fur pouch in front and everything. He's wearing the dress and the whole night and you couldn't leave. He had to stay there while he was playing. This this isn't a bit. This is a real person from your life? Do you think I can make up a name like Lone Mmo? I don't well I I don't know You take the high low and I'll take the low low It's so good though.

Yeah but Like, okay, so for example, like I'm not sure who decided that was something that every child in my school and church needed to see, like, a lot. But he seemed to really enjoy it. You know, he was he was the uh the the woman with the with the wrist cast, the cast on her wrist, putting puppets into her car. Oh Children's programming w must be hard and and we don't have time or scope to get into it today, but I have a lot of thoughts about these things, you know, personally Because it dovetails with something that's been an emergent idea for me, which is this I don't know what I would just generally call get the fuck out of your kid's way approach. Which, you know, I'm I'm making a little octothorp with my fingers.

Pound sign privilege, I have a good kid. I'm fortunate to not have a Helian, but like, ooh who was I talking to about this? Somebody this week. I was talking to somebody about this this week. Just that whole thing of the way that we like convince ourselves that we need to be in every cubic inch of Well, usually our kids' life. Like we need to be there constantly telling them what they're doing wrong. And that extends to to television too. So you can sit around and go, oh, like My kid gets blah-blah, not very much. And duh-da. And like the whole reason you're worried that it's Caillou, as we've talked about here, is because you're gonna park your kid there. And you need to know that they're not gonna see a pussy or something.

Didn't work for me. Cats at all? I thought you like cats. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Was I uh three, two, one beaver. Cat. That was all right. So they you don't want the kids uh show 'em caillus so they don't see a beaver. There's a lot of beavers in Canada. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. What's the guy next door? Not Mr. Hoople. Uh wha what's his name? Mr. Uh I know I say his name all the time on the show and I know I've forgotten it. Mr Mr It's not Mr. Frumble, that's from Richard Scary. Mr. Hinkle. Oh, Mr. Hinkle. Oh, and the other Gold Tooth! Gold Tooth! Oh God! Was he in the Wu Tang clan? I mean I mean maybe the Canadian version. Are there oh they have Drake. I bought them atomically. Socrates philosophies and biographies.

Can't deny how I'd be dropping these. Uh Mr. Ankle. Sorry, Capadona. I think yeah, b baby baby Hinkle would be a great a reference. Oh, baby Hinkle. Yeah. Yeah. Then and play Kirf friends like Lil Hanks. Come yeah. Let's play Canadian Doctor. Ah Why I don't even know what that would refer to. It's a good thing. It would be like playing Doctor, but with maple syrup. I I uh Syrup's coming over, syrup's coming over. I think we're finally reaching the end of the herald and we can do the challenge. What do you think? The challenge this week was to to again do something bloggy, but uh I I have a feeling that you didn't Do that Merlin based on a little bit of a little bit of a little bit more. Do you merely have a feeling or did you read the thing I literally said to you in public on the internet?

The uh was it in public on the internet? My brain is broken. Okay. Do Uh I I I say learned, but I think relearned. This is one of those apps that I've looked at a couple times. But uh boy, uh it's introduced me or reintroduced me to an app that's come a long way, which is called FS Notes. And uh I knew I tarn't gonna blog none. So I suggested to Alex, because Alex seemed excited about it, that maybe we should look at this, uh, this app called FS Notes. My first question is how is this different than uh d drafts and and and v alt? Because how much should we play with it? So not at all. Oh okay. So this is on the other side. Git and then couldn't and then do much of it. So wait, you found time to set it up with Git, which takes 20 minutes, but you didn't have time to play with the app?

You went and generated a key for a new repo, put all of that in, did a thought it would be because I thought it would be more interesting to uh hear about how this is different because you uh you because you like it'll be like giving you a car and then you just like start taking the engine apart. I mean mine has a battery. Um be because you go to settings and I see there's the right thing. Fair enough, fair, fair enough. Uh I mean fair enough. Baby Fairstein. That on the show. Yep. I bet said pull for every thirty every thirty seconds. Yeah, I'm definitely doing that. Um I bet I can import everything right now. Because because like At at first glance, when you download this app, it just not just, I don't want to like diminish any apps here, obviously, but it's got um You know, like an in b a thing that says inbox notes to do, uh then unboxed.

Uh no, I'm on my phone. I'll get the Mac app right now. How much time have you spent with it on a Mac? Ex Exactly none at all. That's not really an answer. Okay, the second part was None at all. Okay, well that that's that's therein lies the tale. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Um go on. Well, if you haven't done a lot with this, I mean uh well let's keep it short then. I I don't really want to go on and on about this This is an app that was created by somebody and look I don't have a dog in this fight, but um so NVALT before NVAlt there was notational velocity, etc. And and Brett and uh what's his head made um NVALT and You know, for I think for a variety of reasons, some complex, some not. It's it envy alt got a little sort of stagnant.

And then there's NV Ultra, and like I'm not really even sure like where that stands right now, but The thing that made notational velocity, the original version of this by Zach, whatever his name is, so amazing, this is impossible to describe, so I I I will only just briefly describe it so you'll know what I'm talking about if you know what I'm talking about. There's one area in this app, this is a very Unixy kind of app, in that you can just start typing something. And let's say you got 2,000 little text files. It'll find every match for that in your corpus of text files and automatically select the most likely candidate for what you were typing. But that's also the way that you can create new documents.

is by typing up there. And I won't try to explain it. You gotta you gotta experience it yourself. But once you very importantly, like you that's not gonna work great on iOS. It does work fantastically well on a Mac. And once you start doing it, at least in my case, I could never go back. You know, I I it's it's still it feels um I don't know how I would do this differently, but it still feels awkward to me when I have to go do a finder search. and say now it's time to do a search. And it's got this scope to it. And certainly you're covering a t a ton more different sorts of things. And fortunately now you can limit scope for search to like just this folder or just your home directory or whatever.

But you know It's one of those things where like it's the the what NVAlt Notational Velocity NV Ultra what those things have all done for people who live in text files is uh I don't know, it's maybe not be the sexiest app in the world, but boy, is it ever fast. And everything else feels like a lot of extra effort if you're used to doing this one way of doing things. And I like the quote from Brokeback Mountain, I just I can't quit it. It's understandable, it's a priori understandable that this does not exist such as it is for iOS, because it can't. This was my this was my breakthrough this morning when I was laying in bed was realizing that part of my frustration with all of this like there's text files on the Mac, there's text files on iOS, and technically they're identical.

You know what's not identical is the user model, the way that you Interact with those things is so different. Everything that I love about NVAL on a Mac is virtually impossible to do on iOS. So, you know, w the spoiler alert here is that now my my project is to start thinking about, well, okay, if we take it as red that the stuff that I really want to do is on a Mac, which is true. Um, that's where I spend my day and that's then I really need to think about what am I willing to give up on iOS or how am I willing to satisfy with that. But um what's neat about this app FS Notes I think it's five bucks you buy it and it works on iOS, it works on Mac, it works on iPad. I think one purchase From what I can gather so far, you get it on all all your places.

It does iCloud, um, you know, sort of file syncing. I don't know how deep we want to go into this because it's gonna be pretty boring if people won't know what we're talking about. I mean we've we've talked about uh drafts, we've talked about it. We've done a lot of things, Alex, but you can't assume that everybody's heard all those episodes. Uh no, I know, but Uh let's assume at least that people know what markdown is and that a lot of people use things like Apple notes or drafts and You can't do markdown on notes. Uh the no. No, you can, but it won't be Markdown. I no, I'm I'm aware I'm saying that people use s not everybody uses Markdown, but is for the mm familiar with it because Merlin Man is the guy with text files.

Um and uh the I but I uh immediately uh download. But you haven't used this on a Mac, is that correct? I well I I have na now I see it. And I Oh now you see it okay Yeah. No, I yeah, exactly. I have not used it except to open it and see like, oh, okay, so I get it. This is uh Well they're they're completely different apps. Then then no tell me 'cause these look really similar in the website. Oh they are in the web okay. Have you tried to set up a Dropbox folder on your iPhone? I have not. Okay, because you can't. Mm-hmm. But you can do that on your Mac. Uh oh. So okay, so you can use it with you can use it with what are called external folders on your Mac. It will not work for that on iOS. So, and you know, I there's a lot that I this I no matter what else I use, drafts still continues to be what I use for a lot of stuff.

Drafts does not work for some of the stuff that I want to do. For reasons I've gone into before. It doesn't it doesn't live in a place where I can use task paper on my Mac, so it's kind of a non-starter for that part of it. I want those key commands. Again, I I am starting to realize that what it is I really want is like the interaction models, key commands, integration with other parts of the uh OS. That's the stuff that I it's not simply that I want to be able to open up and do stuff in task paper, although that's huge. I want to have my cursor anywhere on the line, hit Command D, and then that's sets it as done, as a completed date. Command Shift A archives it. Save saves it. Like and like but what I was realizing is that like it's nobody's sort of fault.

It's just it's where Where these interaction models just can't overlap. You can't do the stuff that makes NVALT great on iOS. And I I'm sure somebody out there really smart is going to go, yes, but you could connect it to one of those four hundred dollar keyboards and it'll work great. And that doesn't that's accurate. But then what do I do on my phone when I just want to add something to task paper? And that that's where I continue to hang myself up. But as a um sort of heir apparent to NVALT, boy, is this ever a neat app. Um and you know I think you you'll like it fine on iOS. I don't think it's nearly I think what's amazing is this fucking great Mac app also works pretty well on iOS and iPad.

If you're Mac first, and as they say in the marketing materials for this. If you're Markdown first and Mac first, this is a terrific app. It does. I mean did you look into the stuff like the little packages that it makes or like how it'll it can like embed images and stuff. It's really neat. It's very clever. You can do that on iOS. Every folder can become a project and then you can Yes. You know, it makes it and we're like if you're into tags, like in NVALT, I think in NVALT you can do tags via Finder, but you mainly do it via this how do you describe it? There's a tag area, right, for each document. Which is a text file. And but it's just that with this, you do them in line, and then you can have hierarchies, you can do all this stuff.

I think it works with sh there's some shortcut stuff. I'm not really sure. I I think it's a very exciting app. I'm looking forward to playing with it more. It's made me more than ever though, it's made me aware of like how what I what I think I really want out of this stuff is at this point kind of not doable. And I'll tell you when I really noticed it is no shade and eliminate, but I was so enthralled with this app on Mac. And then really excited to see it play with it on iOS, my thought then immediately became, okay, show me the widget for putting something into one of those folders with this tag. And if you dare say to me you can make a shortcut that does that, I will gut you. No, like as with drafts.

With drafts, you can just drag over like an eight-button array and do anything you want with it. I would I would really like it if If I have to satisfy on the idea that to have a full-fledged Mac experience, I have to give up a lot on iOS, then it becomes a lot about like, okay, so we're back to the bike log in a lot of ways. Right? The bike log project, which is I just need a way to get something from up in the air into the right place with as little typing as possible. Cause typing on iOS is no fun. Oh, it's uh it was good for a while and I swear to god it's gotten worse. But but but but but even when it was good, it's still no good. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I and again again you you can find uh uh People who are idiots could say stuff like, well you can actually command tab on any of these things.

It's like, okay, great. So every time I want to do something on my phone, I'm gonna hook it up to a keyboard so I can command tab. I don't I'm not gonna do that. I'm not even gonna do that on an iPad. But command tab is in has been in my bones for years on a Mac. Mm-hmm. And back when I used to even use ones like uh what was it? Uh the the there's a really the really good tab one where you could like which where you could tab inside of apps windows and stuff like that. Anyways, like I John Syracuse paid for each one of those pixels. I paid for every interaction model on this Mac. I want access to all of them. And that's sometimes when I use iOS, it absolutely feels it feels like a rich man's toy.

And I there's just it's du it's not nearly fast enough to get something from one place to another place. But that's maybe not what it's for. So maybe when Siri gets good, we'll be in good shape. But like right now, I'm still I'm really looking forward to this. This does not at all solve my task paper problem, but I really I'm very impressed by the Mac app in particular What does I I guess you'd answered the question I was going to ask of of you know, like what would you use this for? But But I can I have a way of I do at least. Okay. I have a way of doing things that involves what things are called. And it's easy to call things what they're called because NVL automatically fills it in for you.

So to me, the most general information is at the left side of the title. And then the most specific information is at the right side of the title. Which is yet another reason why ISO is also the best aid format. So I can have like a sort of a like the way I name something might include its sort of domain or area of um influencer whatever over on the left there's specificity about project you get further into project you've got more specific things until it ends with a date at the end So Roderick on the line show notes for episode XYZ from this date, I start typing anything, I see everything that's our Roderick on the line show notes. Because why? Because the first whatever 12 characters are always exactly the same.

And it's very counterintuitive to the way most of us were brought up, which was to think about making folders in the Finder. Which is great. I mean that's that's that's a great way to do it. And I use Hazel. Hazel happens hundreds of times on my computer every day. Like for example when I drop an image into blot, it automatically detects that there's an image that's been dropped in there and changes that's that dumb thing, where it changes the title of the image or the name of the file rather to have an underscore at the beginning. So it doesn't show up as a it's own that's just a like You know, that's happening with Hazel all the time. I've got so many Hazel things that are like moving all my 3D models or like tagging them or moving them into the right folder.

There's all that kind of stuff. But But for the text file part of this, all I need is this app. I can find, you know, escape and command L. Like Command L puts my cursor in the the searchy dewy line. Title searchy. Dewey line. I don't know how that's spelled, but Oh we'll figure it out. I feel like Dewey line and then escape gets me out of that. This one that was so weird. Nell gets me in, escape gets me out, return creates a new node. I I just did that on because uh obviously on a Mac right now, I I promise. Tough to deal on iOS. It's well no, but like just Dewey that doesn't happen on drawing. Searchy Dewey is is much is usually pulled to the to the right on That's a real term. Uh but like, oh wow.

Um, I I got excited because you can also just create a um a a link to a temporary web page. Like you just set it up completely marked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you could it basically post to you could do your own server. Or you can do their server and it just does like it's whatever you post it in there will be up. But it doesn't have like your username or anything on it. But it's a it's a in that great tradition of like, hey, I just want to share this real quick with somebody. And it's it's it's it's pretty great and it works real fast. That's what got me all hard because just I I well that's something that's very difficult to do on uh for n nor for normal people to do. Like I am con I've already set uh Maddie up with this on his phone and just imported olive what?

You still haven't used on a Mac. No, I okay. Oh my god, this is so funny. I'm using it right now, but but it's not a good thing. I bought this SUV so I could make Trump videos in the front seat. I'll drive it someday. I I mean he uh used be bear for the longest time. Uh bear. Well it's pr it's so pretty. The little bear is so cute. It's it was it was a good uh PDFs. Sweet. Listen. How rich is the text? Is the text very, very rich? I I don't like the new the the like new thing that these kids are doing where they're like it's a special flavor of Markdown. I'm like I well I get it, but then it's not markdown and even I don't like I like if I'm using grass like that's fine. Okay, all right. Um have you I have I have 12 years of talking about Markdown on podcasts.

I know. And I can tell you it is the boner killer of of discussion topics. Even the people who like it don't like it. I uh I think m okay, I'm let letting it. Well you want to say about markdown that hasn't been said. You don't like discount because it's different too different. Multi markdown too different. You want straight you want straight B boring Gruber markdown. The new tables. Mostly 'cause I'm not smart enough. That's probably why it's probably because you're not smart enough, Alex. I'm um I am set in not so smart and until I have things like bear and or table flip, which is so good. And give those tables. I'm I'm saying just like there were people who wanted want to hear about yachts all day, there's many people who'd want to hear about markdown uh Okay That could be a show you could do.

I actually have a gen a genuinely a question that I was genuinely a question. Okay. I'll be over here. Go ahead. On on when you are in both on the Mac app And on the iOS app, in settings in general, you can you can hit command comma. Don't worry, it's it's real. Um can the container, it there's a Dar uh dot markdown like the full word and then dot md? What what's the difference between that? When you create a new file, um do you want it to be named dot md or dot markdown? Uh but does that in in the is it the s same way that we're going to do that? But it depends I I probably don't understand your question. It's y they're all text files. It's just that that's You're saying uh ev whenever I do this, for in my case, I want it to always be .

md. It's not a different format. They're all they're all literally the same text file. I no, I I I know, but is it uh is the consist is the reason for the consistency l like just for consistency's sake or for a bygone computer thing that I am not thinking of. I don't I don't know. Uh okay, okay. Well, because you don't need it to say dot markdown if if your preference in my case is it to say dot md. I mean they they they stop at that point. Now on a lot of other ones, there's some weird things about this. Like when you type what you want the edit in app to be, you just literally type it into an open field, which is strange. You don't select it from like your applications folder. That was weird.

Yeah. There's no way to have this thing go to marked, which I think is a little weird. I don't know if that's a competition thing or something. That's weird. But um, but then yeah, also you you can't, I don't think you can name them. txt. I don't think you can name them. That's why I was confused. It's dot markdown. I don't like change. Yeah. Um, w would you use images? Or have you like played with images in this? And does it satisfy sort of uh Yeah, I mean it's it's you know um Uh for me, um I I'm gonna guess not so much for you, because I I don't even ever really need to ask whether you're using your phone or not. You're always using your phone. And like in my case, um I I'm using my Mac a lot.

So the part that makes this app real good, if this were were only an app for iOS and iPad OS, I would think it's very good. The fact that it's does what it does, and sometimes uniquely on a Mac makes me real happy. I'm not sure what big problems it's solving for me, but it is modern and updated and all that good stuff. And there's just a lot of stuff in it that's like, if you're a dork, is amazing. There's like a command slash, whatever the slash is that's under the question mark. That'll do you a preview right in line. Mm-hmm. But like which may not seem like a big deal, but it's also got silver. So you can type stuff in curly braces that are silver. You could say what's, you know, what's 20 US dollars in pounds sterling?

And when you hit preview, it'll show you the silver result. That blew my mind the first time. It doesn't work for everything. Like the very thing I would need it for though. Like I don't know. Yeah, but I mean like the silver, I mean, that's neat. That's that's the kind of parlor trick that you can do in a spotlight search. Almost all those things you can do in spotlight. But but what would be handy is just very basic variables Because that to me is where silver gets powerful is when you say, you know, um whatever income 2022 equals, not just colon. But equals, because now that's where it becomes like its own little Excel where you can have things in parentheses with pluses and minuses and times and orders of operations and But they have a thing called Silver Core that it was done done by the Silver Person, which is a pretty easy drop-in-place uh implementation of basic silver stuff in the document.

I think I'm very happy with that. That's great. I mean like I'll I'll I'll use that I mean getting past the immediate shine of why I think this is good, I'm not I don't know what giant problems it's gonna solve for me, but I think it's for five bucks, it's so worth looking at. And Hakuna Matada the to the folks who made it. It's cool. The git the Git integration is very cool. That's I it's almost what is going to help me understand Git. Setting is setting things up makes you understand Git a little bit more. You know what? I don't care. I'm not gonna talk about this. This is dumb. Stupid. No one cares. Why am I talking about this? Nobody cares about this. Um if you're using Git as your primary way to, if you like sync stuff between places I know that's not exactly what, but like in my case, if I'm using Dropbox, why would I also need it to be on Git?

I'm not John Syracuse. I don't need it backed up to seven places every minute. Um, I would say you might want to just do a push periodically when it occurs to you as a backup, but and it's fast. Well, I was blown away. It's it is a little it's a little bit fussy to set up the Git integration. But once it's done, uh for me it worked the first time I tried it. And it was I was I got a thumbs up and I thought I was really impressed. I I just keep making web pages and it's very i exciting. But you once it's up, you can't change it. I'm not sure if you can delete it. Which freaks me out. Oh. Well, okay, so like let's say you accidentally put your balls up there, how would you delete it? My balls are everywhere.

But you take my point, right? Like if you if you have the opportunity, you need the opportunity to like fully delete stuff. Otherwise, that's just gonna live forever somewhere. Yeah. Right now the server loads fine. Maybe it'll delete into the month, yeah. I would prefer if it did. I think that that would act no I'm serious. I think that would actually be. Um, but I I don't ever every time I go to check I kinda don't expect anything to still be up there. I don't even know uh uh what that's I think it's PG G G D D uh, but it's just some kind of clever domain name. But yeah, it's just a thing where you could sense it's like this basically. But you get your own addresses and it's yeah. I just Yeah, I mean I I could probably figure out how to do all of this with my Synology, but I don't want people on my Synology.

I don't want have to obfuscate people finding my Synology. Like it's you know what I mean? Like I it's weird. Like I I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. Well it's it's still weird to think Uh I I don't know. Yeah, it it is weird when I send someone a link that's just to you like down download a photo that is on my Synology and I'm like, oh You're you're in my own. There should be a way Yeah. So like when I send you links, it's it's it gets sent as blah di blah shortcuts or short Ural service, but it resolves to the actual, at least when I do it locally, it resolves to a completely findable directory somewhere, mostly. Mostly. I wish there was a DMZ, especially for stuff like drop dropping a link to somebody.

I wish there was a DMZ on another server that would like I don't know, handle that better. I don't know, I don't know the tech of that kind of stuff. But anyway, thumbs up from me. I like this app. I'm gonna play with it more. It gets my official okie dokie. I'm I'm just excited that things like this exist and are fairly popular. Like I know I I know things like this exist, uh obviously. But this it feels so much more like uh Envy Alt and as you continue to s say has a very good mA app, but it's like twenty-seven on the app store, like the uh the ranking in popcorn. That's when Kirk Cobain died. No Janisdroplin. He died in the coolest way. I want to go out that way. What? Wait, what? What? Why is that?

Hold on. Wait, who did you say? Did I say Kirk didn't I say Kirk Cobain? Oh, I thought you said Kurt Vonnegut. Oh yeah, ew. Oh no. I think I think it's wholesome when you're very very old and and you pass away because you fell. Oh oh I miss her. Oh, that's so sad. I hate that. No. Fuck. Yeah, you know, really it was Courtney Love that really was so hard on Kermonica Jr. Ah, Miss World. That's so upsetting, huh? raw transcript