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The Talk Show

172: ‘Holiday Party’ With Merlin Mann

 

00:00:00   Been a heck of a day. I've had a very interesting 30 hours.

00:00:06   Yesterday morning, we woke up early. I knew I had jury duty at the Superior Court.

00:00:15   Wow.

00:00:15   Yeah, yeah.

00:00:17   On voting day.

00:00:18   I only found out finally yesterday that I'm registered under two addresses, and basically

00:00:24   that's why I get called constantly. And I'm jury crack. I always get called. I

00:00:29   always get picked. And no matter what I say, they're like, "That's great. We could

00:00:33   really use you." So, and in this case Superior Court, oh my god, what's it gonna

00:00:36   be? Long story short, we get up early. The three of us go to the polling station. My

00:00:41   daughter drops in the ballot for Hillary Clinton. I go to jury duty. I narrowly,

00:00:47   narrowly avoid a multi-month attempted murder jury duty. John Gruber, I'm

00:00:55   literally rocking in my seat and making this noise. I won't drag this out,

00:01:04   but basically I pleaded hardship even though they said they're probably not

00:01:09   gonna let us off for that. I astoundingly got deferred. I walk up 6th Street.

00:01:14   Are you familiar with Sixth Street?

00:01:15   I am.

00:01:16   Yeah.

00:01:16   I am.

00:01:18   You know what?

00:01:19   I am oddly familiar with Sixth Street in San Francisco.

00:01:22   You don't unsee Sixth Street.

00:01:24   You don't forget Sixth Street.

00:01:25   Right.

00:01:26   I walk up Sixth Street, and it's like a Godspeed,

00:01:31   you Black Emperor song.

00:01:32   It's just a lot of people with sores and amputations.

00:01:35   I saw a sobbing man pooping on the street.

00:01:37   There's a lot of screaming and dogs.

00:01:38   And it's basically-- it's like the end of the world.

00:01:42   And that was my morning up till about 11.30.

00:01:46   So then I just went home and started rocking at home.

00:01:48   I couldn't even play threes.

00:01:49   I'm just rocking, going, hmm.

00:01:51   Because I'm already--

00:01:52   I'm sorry, I'm monopolizing your show.

00:01:55   I don't want to make a big deal about it,

00:01:56   because I think it's unseemly--

00:01:57   It was a bad start.

00:01:58   It was a bad start to a bad day.

00:02:00   And I hope that those would all be good portents.

00:02:04   But that was my morning.

00:02:06   And then, yeah, how are you feeling?

00:02:10   You having a good day?

00:02:12   No! Here's the thing. I think you and I owe it to the world. We owe it to America.

00:02:21   We're gonna do this show and we're gonna do a show for everybody.

00:02:27   Okay. You don't have to be an Apple fan. Are you with me so far?

00:02:31   Oh, I'm so with you. You're gonna get notes. We're gonna get notes because we're

00:02:36   gonna miss some people well we're trying to scoop up everybody we're trying to

00:02:42   work where we've I don't know we've got the scoop we're coming in for everybody

00:02:53   are you having a holiday party there Merlin we're coming in we're coming in

00:03:04   the scoop. We're coming in for everybody. We're gonna try to pick everybody up.

00:03:08   - Yeah, okay. - And we're gonna miss some people. There's no doubt about it. There's no way.

00:03:14   - You can't get every person. That's the first person you learn.

00:03:16   - Right. And we're gonna miss some people. - Yeah.

00:03:23   - This is an epi... In my opinion, this is the most special episode of this podcast I've ever

00:03:32   recorded. I've recorded many Star Wars... That one's your... isn't that still your

00:03:38   record holder? Yeah, of course. Star Wars episodes are about an eight episode...

00:03:43   eight hours long. Okay. And you know, I mean, we've had... I mean, we've had Harrison

00:03:49   Ford on, we've had Mark Hamill on. He was a lot nicer than I expected.

00:03:53   Carrie Fisher. I mean, some very special guests for those episodes. Nothing is

00:04:00   going to compare to this episode of the show and I'll I will tell you what sure

00:04:05   no no pressure well there was only one person we're trying to scoop up

00:04:09   everybody but we're gonna miss some people well I will tell you this I mean

00:04:14   I'm gonna be honest open kimono I'm opening the kimono here I'm not happy

00:04:23   with the election results.

00:04:25   I honestly fear for the state of Western democracy.

00:04:34   I absolutely, positively had too much to drink last night.

00:04:40   And when I woke up this morning, I

00:04:42   thought, there's only one person I

00:04:45   can ask to be on my show today, and it's Merlin Mann.

00:04:49   Hello.

00:04:51   And I will say this.

00:04:53   Yeah. I reached out to you for this very special emergency episode. Right. Because I'll tell you

00:05:00   what, I am in general, I try to go once a week. And once a week would have put me like a couple

00:05:10   of days before the election. And a couple of days ago, I was too pre-election obsessed. And I

00:05:19   I thought, nobody wants to hear pre-election obsessed John Gruber talk about the keyboard

00:05:29   on the new MacBook Pro.

00:05:31   Right?

00:05:32   I mean, who the fuck cares about the goddamn key travel on the MacBook Pro two or three

00:05:39   days before the end of Western civilization?

00:05:44   So I thought, I can't do it.

00:05:46   I probably should have.

00:05:47   I should have just done like a regular show, just called "Molt Up" again.

00:05:51   You know what I mean?

00:05:54   Couldn't you also, you as a person, you enjoy

00:05:58   a winning franchise

00:06:02   with a story. Oh, I do. And one thing I've learned from you and I share with a lot of

00:06:06   people is that distinction you made one time, I think on this program, talking

00:06:09   about

00:06:10   how there's numbers people in baseball and there's story people

00:06:15   yes you know with regard to fans I still actually I still think about that a lot

00:06:18   and it did have an effect on how I think about

00:06:21   sports as a thing but I'm not trying to take the piss I mean you you you like

00:06:25   you know you you like the you like the Yankees you like

00:06:28   with cowboys right yep you like you like these teams with a storied past

00:06:33   who are gonna win so it it makes sense for you

00:06:36   to wait until the inevitable win

00:06:40   to be able to talk about it in a way that's, I don't know, more celebratory.

00:06:46   I mean, why be jittery on air?

00:06:48   Because it all seemed like it was going in the right direction, mostly.

00:06:55   Mostly.

00:06:56   I mean, I don't even know where to begin.

00:06:59   You know what?

00:06:59   I'll just tell you this.

00:07:01   I was thinking last night, and early on, early on, I started tweeting less.

00:07:08   Because you know what I started thinking like, you know what I like to do.

00:07:12   And I think people who who, you know, certainly people who listen to the show,

00:07:18   but people who follow me on Twitter certainly know

00:07:21   I like to tweet during sporting events I care about.

00:07:23   And it is a similar feeling in my stomach

00:07:30   when there's like a sporting event I care about

00:07:34   and an election I care about.

00:07:38   But then there's a difference, and the difference is that sports don't mean anything.

00:07:47   And that's kind of the fun part about sports, and I know that there's...

00:07:51   Yeah, everything that's wonderful about sports is what the fan brings to it.

00:07:56   You can choose to bring all different kinds of history and expectations and import, but

00:08:01   you get to pick what you're going to be very emotional about.

00:08:06   You get to kind of on some rational level you get to decide why those stakes are important, right?

00:08:10   like if six months ago you you something happened and and you had a terrible head injury and

00:08:17   You went into a coma

00:08:19   but you're a terrific baseball fan and you don't wake up until like the middle of next year and

00:08:27   Ah, you wake up and you're like who won the World Series and somebody tells you well, it was the Cubs

00:08:34   Cubs. The state of the world outside the word "C-U-B-S" Cubs is actually not any different

00:08:46   than if they said, "Oh my God, it was the Cleveland Indians."

00:08:51   I feel like I only hear this, but a lot of people say that was probably one of the better

00:08:57   World Series games. Some people will put that in their top 50 games.

00:09:00   No, there's people who would put it in their top five games.

00:09:03   I mean, it was an amazing game.

00:09:05   But the truth of the matter is that outside of the baseball park,

00:09:13   it doesn't really matter.

00:09:15   And that is-- so I do.

00:09:18   I woke up yesterday, and I thought, you know what?

00:09:20   This feels like when the Yankees are in the World Series.

00:09:23   I've got that feeling.

00:09:24   I care.

00:09:25   I can't sleep.

00:09:27   I'm jittery.

00:09:29   Except I know that this time it cares.

00:09:32   And in one regard, it makes me say,

00:09:35   this is why sports are great.

00:09:37   And in the other regard, it makes

00:09:39   me say, this is why a lot of smart people

00:09:42   don't give two craps about sports,

00:09:45   because sports are actually nonsense.

00:09:47   And I kind of feel like this election brings that

00:09:54   into focus.

00:09:56   Yeah.

00:09:57   There's, um, I mean, I, I don't like getting involved in a lot of political, I don't like

00:10:08   talking about politics in public. I have, I have my feelings about all kinds of stuff in life,

00:10:12   and who knows, maybe it's time for me to talk more about it. But I, I feel like, generally speaking,

00:10:19   the cost-benefit analysis on having a strong public opinion that's unambiguous, and you argue

00:10:26   about it a lot and you encourage people to pick or continue fights with you. That's

00:10:33   not my personality. It's not how I want to live. It's not who I want to be, but that

00:10:39   doesn't mean I don't have those strong opinions. So my card's on the table. And I'm that guy.

00:10:45   I'm that guy that used to say, "Get rid of all your news tabs. Stop following stuff.

00:10:49   Be out of time and attention." But I have started listening to probably half a dozen

00:10:55   about politics this election year, some of which come out every day or twice or three times a week.

00:11:01   I've been utterly steeped in that, but at almost every step of the way, even when things were not

00:11:09   looking great for the Democratic candidate, there was still this part of me that said, "I think I

00:11:16   understand enough about the bones of this country to know how this will end up." And on top of that,

00:11:23   that I see enough stuff from different sources of data that tells me it'll turn out okay.

00:11:30   Is this going to be the best election ever? No. But like, I swear to Christ, like, even

00:11:35   up until yesterday, that confidence in the American bones is, I think I might have gotten

00:11:43   it wrong. And so, that's kind of, when we were texting this morning, that's kind of

00:11:48   where I am. I'm not too angry yet, I'm not too finger pointing, I'm not even to abject

00:11:52   terror yet. I'm still stuck at sitting there in my living room with my family

00:11:57   last night. My daughter was literally under a blanket. She put earplugs in and

00:12:01   went under a blanket to read Wimpy Kid because she couldn't take it anymore.

00:12:04   Yeah. I love the Wimpy Kid books. Oh, they're better than you think.

00:12:10   But watching that little drip, drip, drip, and then seeing a

00:12:16   state flip to red. And at first when we walked up, I picked her up at school like

00:12:20   I said, "Hey, look, he's got three on the board already. Don't worry." People knew

00:12:24   he was going to get those. Those are not giant electoral states. We talked, she knows about

00:12:28   this from school. But anyway, I don't mean to prattle on, but I'm here today because

00:12:33   I'm not even to where I know I'm going to end up. I'm just stunned by how wrong I

00:12:42   I was and how poorly I saw. And I think I'm going to be processing that for at least a

00:12:50   few days. It's just the—I mean, the words like "shock" and "surprise," it sounds

00:12:56   silly. You know, I just listened to "Keeping It 1600," which is a show I like a lot.

00:13:01   And they're just like, "We got every single bit of this wrong, and we feel bad that we

00:13:06   told you not to wet the bed." And we, you know, it's—now I'm just sitting—I'm

00:13:10   I'm babbling, but I'm sitting here and I'm just stunned with how much I got wrong.

00:13:19   I'll eventually try to figure out what I got wrong, but at this point it's just an unconscionably

00:13:26   large amount of assumptions that I had a fairly decent level of confidence in that I'm going

00:13:32   to have to just rethink a whole bunch of things that make me very uncomfortable.

00:13:36   I you know and and I

00:13:39   Not for like

00:13:44   Well, let's make sure everybody feels included sake

00:13:49   but for hey, everybody is sick of the

00:13:53   Divisive stuff is why I would love

00:13:59   And I think you agree that this episode of the show should not be like hey Hillary should have won

00:14:06   Donald Trump is an asshole. I I don't want to divide people

00:14:10   because I mean it's

00:14:13   Everybody's had enough of that and the time for that not least because Democrats are the second the second most surprised party today

00:14:21   Right. I agree. I really I really believe I think so too, right? I don't think they this is I

00:14:29   I don't think most people in their hearts really believe this would go this way.

00:14:34   I do. I agree, and I honestly think if we want to just for a moment get a little political,

00:14:42   that Donald—but seriously, Donald Trump's win is not a Republican win, it's a Trump win.

00:14:49   What he is and what he represents and what drove his victory

00:14:55   has almost nothing to do with the Republican Party I

00:15:01   but I

00:15:04   Would like for this episode of the show to be for everybody and I will just tell you that I

00:15:11   My son who is not I wouldn't think is political because he's he's 12 years old, you know

00:15:19   I mean, it's it's he's way too young to be political

00:15:24   Before we sent him to bed last night. We're watching the results they were not

00:15:29   you know, they were obviously heading towards where we are and

00:15:33   he said that his stomach felt bad and

00:15:36   I I mean it it killed me because what am I gonna say to him? You know, I mean, it's like yeah

00:15:44   Well, they I mean I think I think

00:15:48   Maybe less so as to get older but kids kids pick up a lot

00:15:53   from the people around them, particularly their parents, doesn't mean they're going

00:15:56   to listen or put on their shoes, but they can read a lot of the emotional

00:16:00   temperature and barometric pressure in the room. And I think, and we've talked a

00:16:05   lot about this election at home, a lot, a lot, a lot, and but I think the difference

00:16:10   here is it's not that my team didn't win, it's that maybe I just don't understand

00:16:15   baseball anymore. And that's a very different kind of thing to

00:16:19   process and I think apart from the fact we're both crying a little bit which is

00:16:24   never fun to do in front of your kid it's I think there was definitely the

00:16:28   sense that this was something very much different I mean it's not like she sat

00:16:35   and watched a bunch of presidential elections but it felt like the stakes

00:16:39   were higher than we had any idea yeah he's that does that and then God what

00:16:44   did what did Amy say today about I mean could you share what happened at his

00:16:48   school? Well, I mean, the one thing was that we got a letter from the principal of the school,

00:16:55   the head of the school, whatever they call the guy. But I mean, and they, you know, we got like

00:16:59   an actual email that said like, the rhetoric of the guy who won the presidential election

00:17:06   is still no longer accepted at our school, which is like...

00:17:10   That's like when did you get the creepy clown letter in October?

00:17:15   Yes, we got the creepy clown letter.

00:17:18   And I remember thinking, oh my god, I know how busy our principal is.

00:17:21   And I can't believe that she had to take any amount of time from her day

00:17:25   to acknowledge that there was such a thing as creepy clowns, and then to feel the need or the,

00:17:31   maybe the mandate. Maybe it came down from the Unified School District. But she had to say,

00:17:37   there's a couple other things I'm not going to do today because I need to email everybody about

00:17:40   creepy clowns and you're like wow that's you know just FYI for my purposes you

00:17:46   don't need to keep on the creepy clown beat I I trust you to down the strength

00:17:51   to just take care of that but that's something that the that your kids

00:17:55   principal felt they needed to do on that note on that note you guys know fracture

00:18:09   let me take a break and tell you about our first friend we're gonna laugh

00:18:16   we're laughing you're gonna have a holiday party I feel like I should have

00:18:19   one too that's just that's just what we need just need me to show up on my kids

00:18:26   school in two hours just a little bit drunk that everything's gonna be fine

00:18:34   Daddy's just sleepy. Today's host of the talk show is Harry Caray. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

00:18:51   Seriously, I mean, we're laughing because we're crying, but I want to tell you

00:18:58   about our... You want me to take this one? Our good friends at Automattic. Oh, love

00:19:08   Automattic! It's a small adapter. It turns your car into a smart connected car.

00:19:15   They've just launched, I mean seriously, within like the last month or so, the

00:19:20   Automatic Pro, it's a new version of the device they already sold that in addition to all

00:19:29   the cool stuff it already does, it includes unlimited 3G online Internet connection.

00:19:39   Exactly.

00:19:40   You think, well, that sounds too good to be true.

00:19:43   Well, look at your Kindle, your Kindle.

00:19:45   You know, Kindles have been doing this for years.

00:19:47   I don't know how they worked out the deal

00:19:49   with the 3G providers, but the automatic people did it.

00:19:53   It's a dingus.

00:19:55   You plug it into your car.

00:19:57   There's a port on every car made since like 1997, 1998,

00:20:01   somewhere around there.

00:20:02   There's a port, and that's where when it says like,

00:20:09   you know, you get like a thing on your dashboard

00:20:12   that says like A1 service due or whatever.

00:20:16   You don't know what A1 service is.

00:20:18   You take it into the car dealer,

00:20:21   they plug a thing into this port,

00:20:25   and then it knows exactly what you need.

00:20:27   Well, it turns out that's just an oil change or whatever.

00:20:30   Automatic lets you plug their dingus, they have a dingus.

00:20:37   That's what you buy.

00:20:39   You plug it in, and you get all that information,

00:20:43   all the service information that your car can provide

00:20:48   to like a mechanic or a service provider.

00:20:54   But instead, you get it.

00:20:56   You can, you know, if it's nonsense,

00:20:59   if it's just like, oh, you know,

00:21:01   the light is, you know, one of the lights is out

00:21:04   or something like that, you can just turn it off,

00:21:06   whatever you want to do.

00:21:08   Otherwise, though, it gives you so much information.

00:21:11   It gives you information on your efficiency,

00:21:14   on like how you're driving your car.

00:21:17   It gives you information on like fuel efficiency,

00:21:22   all that stuff.

00:21:24   - John, John, John, it does it all.

00:21:26   It's an app plus it's a dingus.

00:21:28   You did mention it's a dingus.

00:21:29   It's a fantastic dingus.

00:21:30   Here's the thing.

00:21:31   Those fat cats, those fat cats in Detroit,

00:21:34   they never, or Tokyo or wherever, no offense,

00:21:37   no one will be ping pong,

00:21:38   they never intended you to use that port for this.

00:21:40   - That's true. - That's for them.

00:21:41   That's for them, that's their port, don't use that.

00:21:42   They're democratizing that port

00:21:44   in a way that's very important in our country right now.

00:21:46   You get that dingus, you get that app, you plug it in,

00:21:48   and you know what, you don't have to think about it.

00:21:49   You're gonna hear this beep, that means it's working.

00:21:51   You can have it yell at you when you break.

00:21:53   You could have it tell you,

00:21:54   "Hey, quit driving so fast, you dork."

00:21:55   And now, like John, for example,

00:21:57   John lost his license now about five years ago.

00:21:59   You were driving, I think you were driving 190

00:22:01   in a 30 mile per hour zone.

00:22:03   - Well, that was what they said I was doing.

00:22:04   - Was it that fast?

00:22:05   It was pretty fast.

00:22:06   - I don't think that that's true,

00:22:07   but that's what they flagged them for.

00:22:09   - Well, the only goes-- - 105 in a 30 zone.

00:22:11   - 105 in a 30, the spinometer only goes up so high.

00:22:15   But you get this thing, it can do stuff,

00:22:17   it'll automatically tag business trips

00:22:19   for your expense purposes, it'll do all of that,

00:22:22   and it will make you a better and more mindful driver.

00:22:25   You don't have to think about it, it just works.

00:22:28   It also works with things like IFTTT.

00:22:30   You can hook it up to all kinds of different things.

00:22:32   You can have it turn your frickin' lights on

00:22:33   when you pull it on.

00:22:34   This thing is dynamite.

00:22:36   I'm laughing because you're the only person and you know I don't know if anybody who listens to this podcast regularly has noticed

00:22:46   There's a couple of regulars who come back you're the only one who ever breaks in and helps with the sponsor read yeah

00:22:55   Thanks, John. Well, but you're exactly right

00:22:57   Well moles will never do it moles will sit there and text me while I'm doing it and he'll give me notes on how the sponsor

00:23:04   read could be better but he won't break in and say anything

00:23:07   moles sickening sick and won't say a goddamn word he's I use this I love it I

00:23:13   bought this dingus with my own goddamn money and we use it and I look at it and

00:23:17   it's a it's a it is a terrific device all right where do you go to find out

00:23:22   more, go to automatic.com/the talk show, automatic.com/the talk show.

00:23:36   There you go.

00:23:37   There's the, the phenomes you need.

00:23:40   My thanks to them.

00:23:45   Great sponsor.

00:23:46   I love them.

00:23:47   I've got it plugged into my car.

00:23:48   I've got the app.

00:23:49   And it honestly, it has gotten me to sort of take the lead foot off the gas pedal.

00:23:56   A little bit.

00:23:57   Awesome.

00:23:58   That's so important.

00:23:59   So did you ever get your...

00:24:00   I mean, you probably shouldn't say it.

00:24:01   No, I don't have a license.

00:24:02   I haven't had a license in six or seven years.

00:24:04   But the automatic becomes a kind of ad hoc license.

00:24:07   Yeah.

00:24:08   It's licensed to be safe.

00:24:09   They can just run with that.

00:24:11   Did you get my text?

00:24:13   Right.

00:24:14   My hope would be...

00:24:15   Did you get my text?

00:24:16   Can I tweet it?

00:24:17   Absolutely.

00:24:18   Absolutely.

00:24:19   Okay.

00:24:20   My hope would be that the people...

00:24:24   I mean, there's not that many people who listen to the show.

00:24:26   My hope would be that people are not going to report this to the Pennsylvania Department

00:24:32   of Transportation.

00:24:33   No.

00:24:34   No.

00:24:35   We'll keep it on the QT that I continue to drive without a valid PA driver's license.

00:24:43   Yeah.

00:24:44   Um, you know, I don't think that has to be a big deal.

00:24:49   You know, if you're just like moving the car, or let's say, you know, what if you have to

00:24:52   go somewhere that's like important?

00:24:54   Should you need a license for that?

00:24:55   No.

00:24:56   Like what if it's a fairly short trip, or better still, what if it's a very long trip

00:24:59   where you're going to be on a highway, and everybody knows highways are safer.

00:25:02   Oh, very safe.

00:25:03   I mean, you could fall asleep on the highway, right?

00:25:05   I mean, that's where, I mean, people who have the Tesla's, they hit a button and you could

00:25:10   just go to sleep.

00:25:12   Yeah.

00:25:13   Yeah.

00:25:14   Yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy.

00:25:18   I got a catalog the other day. Just yesterday, I think it was. I got a catalog. I don't even know

00:25:23   what I bought that put me on the list, but it came addressed to me. I got a catalog for a radio

00:25:30   flyer. Now, you know radio flyer, right? Oh, I got the same thing with the Tesla?

00:25:34   With the Tesla, yeah. What are we on? How did we get this?

00:25:37   You know what? Maybe it's this show. I don't know.

00:25:41   They send it to all the artists.

00:25:43   Clicky keyboards, fussy coffee, fizzy water, has podcast.

00:25:48   They call that an array.

00:25:50   I got a Radio Flyer catalog.

00:25:53   We've gotten two of them.

00:25:55   With a little delightful young boy riding in a Tesla,

00:25:59   like a fake Tesla Radio Flyer wagon.

00:26:08   Kids love Teslas.

00:26:11   Well, I thought about taking a picture of it and making a joke.

00:26:15   And I couldn't make a joke.

00:26:16   I couldn't figure out the joke because it's like,

00:26:18   what are you going to joke about, like zero emissions?

00:26:21   It's like--

00:26:22   Yeah, self-driving.

00:26:23   Yeah, it's like zero emissions.

00:26:26   It's not actually a joke.

00:26:27   It's like, that's actually kind of cool.

00:26:29   Yeah.

00:26:30   I couldn't figure out the joke.

00:26:32   We get a lot of catalogs, John.

00:26:34   We get a lot of political things.

00:26:35   We had-- I think it was-- let me check here--

00:26:38   175 ballot initiatives yesterday.

00:26:40   Oh my god.

00:26:42   And John, the Board of Elections had

00:26:45   to provide guidance on how to fold your ballot to put

00:26:48   in the envelope so that you didn't end up spending

00:26:50   like $11 on postage.

00:26:52   They had guidance on that.

00:26:53   I think they had a QuickTime movie you could watch.

00:26:55   Crazy days.

00:27:00   We had two-- we don't call them ballot initiatives here

00:27:04   in Pennsylvania.

00:27:05   We call them--

00:27:05   I forget what we call them, but it's not like California.

00:27:09   But we had two things to vote on that were sort of,

00:27:12   the sort of thing that I don't think

00:27:15   you should be deciding by direct democracy.

00:27:20   I think that this is exactly why we have a legislature.

00:27:25   So one of them was, should we raise in Pennsylvania,

00:27:30   like many states, a surprising number of states,

00:27:33   if you just Google it,

00:27:35   So, if you're a state judge, if you're a, you know, when you reach the age of 70, it's

00:27:44   a mandatory retirement. You're out.

00:27:47   And that's probably a pretty old law from the time when being 70 was kind of a big deal.

00:27:53   It seems like it. And on the ballot was an initiative, I don't know what you call it,

00:27:59   whatever they call it here in PA, to raise the AIDS to 75. And we got...

00:28:06   That's so weirdly just slightly less arbitrary.

00:28:10   Right. Like, it's not to get rid of it. Exactly.

00:28:12   Come on, let's make it 76.

00:28:13   Oh, okay. That'll fix it. Done.

00:28:17   That's exactly what I thought when I saw it. It was like,

00:28:21   "You know, do you want to get rid of this AIDS thing? Yes or no?" I can kind of see that,

00:28:28   but like 70 to 75, it's like, where do these numbers come from? But we got a thing because

00:28:37   we're registered, we happen to be registered Democrats. I don't think people are surprised

00:28:41   to hear me say that. But we got something from our local Democratic ward with a suggested ballot.

00:28:50   Like, here's how we think you should vote. Here's everything that's up. Here's who you should vote

00:28:57   four and you know, I mean, it says like, President, you know, you should vote for Hillary Clinton.

00:29:04   You know, Senator Katie McGinny, that's, you know, our senator who's running against this dipshit

00:29:11   Pat Toomey. And so on as it goes down the ballot, but then it gets down to these ballot initiatives.

00:29:19   We only had two. And on the one that said, you know, should we raise the mandatory retirement

00:29:27   age for judges from 70 to 75, it said, "Vote no." In other words, don't raise the retirement

00:29:35   age. It said, "Vote no."

00:29:37   Oh, that confusing language.

00:29:39   Uh, it's already hard enough to get rid of bad judges. That's what it said.

00:29:46   What?

00:29:47   I swear to God, Merlin. I'm not making it up.

00:29:51   Doesn't somebody have to approve these things? Do you just get to, like, paste it up and

00:29:54   it just goes in, whatever you have to say?

00:29:56   Well, the next best thing was that the next question was,

00:30:02   should the city of Philadelphia raise $185 million

00:30:06   in debt to finance infrastructure improvements?

00:30:10   And the answer on how should you vote, it was blank.

00:30:17   [LAUGHTER]

00:30:18   It didn't give you an answer.

00:30:19   It was blank.

00:30:20   Like you forgot to fill it in?

00:30:21   I forgot to fill it in.

00:30:24   Forget about it.

00:30:25   Highways are for dicks.

00:30:28   Oh, gosh, we had a lot.

00:30:30   Should people be allowed to sleep in tents on the sidewalk?

00:30:32   [LAUGHTER]

00:30:35   No.

00:30:36   I would vote no.

00:30:37   I would vote no.

00:30:38   It's very controversial.

00:30:40   They don't have anywhere else to sleep.

00:30:41   You go down to Division Street, and it's

00:30:44   like one long KOA under a highway.

00:30:47   You got the, oh, the grocery tax, bum, bum, bum.

00:30:50   What I think they should do.

00:30:51   Here's what I think they should do.

00:30:53   OK.

00:30:53   You know?

00:30:54   We're trying to-- just to be clear,

00:30:55   we're trying to scoop everybody in here.

00:30:57   We're going to miss a few people.

00:30:58   But I think it's really important that we

00:30:59   try to really find some answers.

00:31:01   I'm giving you an honest answer.

00:31:03   Here's what I honestly think.

00:31:05   I think they should drive buses, special buses around the city.

00:31:09   And you find anybody sleeping on the sidewalk in a tent,

00:31:13   you just scoop them up in the bus.

00:31:15   And--

00:31:16   Where do they go after that?

00:31:17   [LAUGHTER]

00:31:18   They just stay on the bus?

00:31:19   Are they allowed to get off?

00:31:21   They can get off wherever they want.

00:31:23   be closer to what we see in the next four years than you think.

00:31:26   Whenever they wake up, they can get off if they want.

00:31:29   Oh, it's going to be tremendous.

00:31:31   They can get off wherever they want.

00:31:34   OK.

00:31:35   But--

00:31:35   [LAUGHTER]

00:31:38   OK, I'm OK.

00:31:39   So the bus comes along.

00:31:40   You scoop up the 10 people.

00:31:42   I do.

00:31:44   And I'll tell you what.

00:31:45   This is an opinion that I would not

00:31:47   have had if I haven't spent a lot of time

00:31:50   in downtown San Francisco over the last 10 years.

00:31:55   But I'll just tell you that there are people sleeping

00:31:59   on the sidewalks in San Francisco

00:32:00   who make the city an unpleasant place to be.

00:32:04   - There are people living on the, it's important.

00:32:06   These are not people who take a nap.

00:32:08   This is people who do not have anywhere else to go.

00:32:10   - Yeah, and I, you know, we're trying to have fun.

00:32:15   I'm not trying to make light of a desperate situation.

00:32:20   But people already ride on the public transit.

00:32:23   You can ride on the public transit.

00:32:24   You got a fairly comfortable place to be.

00:32:27   Yeah, but most of the--

00:32:29   what I'm suggesting, though, would be a bus that has a toilet.

00:32:34   Oh, nice.

00:32:35   OK.

00:32:36   Obviously.

00:32:37   So you've got-- you've got a stadium restroom on wheels.

00:32:40   I think John would have shower facilities at all,

00:32:42   maybe like a small library.

00:32:43   Could you get a LaCroix?

00:32:45   I would like all of those things.

00:32:46   I would vote for all of them.

00:32:47   You get a Google bus.

00:32:48   You get a nice Google bus.

00:32:49   I would vote for all of those things.

00:32:51   I would vote for the shower facility.

00:32:53   I would vote for the small library.

00:32:55   And I would, honestly, I would vote for the tax increase

00:33:01   that would pay for it, honestly.

00:33:04   I do feel like that would make for a better city.

00:33:07   - Well, if you never find a house, you should come out here.

00:33:12   (laughing)

00:33:13   Too soon?

00:33:14   - Too soon.

00:33:15   (laughing)

00:33:18   There's an awful lot of people, and again,

00:33:24   I'm not trying to rub it in anybody's face,

00:33:26   I'm not trying to say who, you know.

00:33:29   I voted for Hillary Clinton, I think a lot of people

00:33:31   who listen to this probably voted for Hillary Clinton.

00:33:34   I'm not trying to say she should've won,

00:33:37   I'm not trying to rub it in anybody's face

00:33:39   if you voted for the other guy.

00:33:41   But there's an awful lot of people

00:33:42   who voted for Donald Trump,

00:33:43   who I would really like for them to spend a day at like third

00:33:51   and market in San Francisco.

00:33:55   Just stand on the corner for 12 hours.

00:33:59   No, no.

00:34:01   Yeah, yeah.

00:34:02   I mean, that kind of--

00:34:03   I don't know.

00:34:05   That gets at a lot of the problem.

00:34:08   Did you look at that--

00:34:09   I mean, we don't have to go into this.

00:34:10   But did you look at that Washington Post demographic

00:34:13   break down?

00:34:13   - Yes, I did.

00:34:15   - Boy.

00:34:16   Oh, this is gonna be interesting a few years,

00:34:17   'cause basically, this is a pretty cool,

00:34:20   I don't know if I can find the link now.

00:34:21   I sent it to you here.

00:34:22   - I got it, I got it.

00:34:23   I'll put it in the show notes.

00:34:24   - Yeah, they essentially, and I think these are exit polls,

00:34:27   so take it with a grain of salt,

00:34:29   but basically they go in and do a full

00:34:31   demographic breakdown, starting with the basic numbers,

00:34:37   but then going through gender, race, education, party, age,

00:34:41   And I think it's a pretty good infographic that really tells a hell of a story that I

00:34:46   think many of us need to really digest.

00:34:51   I love the fact that, so basically they've got a line of like, so like you say like for

00:34:59   example, they say sex, I say gender, because I'm woke.

00:35:04   So how many, what percentage voted blue?

00:35:09   And then I think that's reflected.

00:35:12   So basically the area of the circle

00:35:14   is based on the size of the demographic group

00:35:16   and percentage of vote obtained.

00:35:17   So you actually get kind of three different,

00:35:19   very interesting data points.

00:35:20   You get the who did what, you get the how that went,

00:35:24   and then you get the like,

00:35:25   what percentage of the total amount do they represent?

00:35:28   And therein is quite a story.

00:35:32   - It's a fascinating thing to scroll through

00:35:37   because it works on a couple of dimensions

00:35:42   where the circles are the size of the group.

00:35:50   - So like the total number, like the per capita,

00:35:56   like how many people are involved, right?

00:35:57   - Right, it's like you see how far apart the two groups are,

00:36:01   but the size of these circles lets you know,

00:36:04   Well, you know what I mean, like,

00:36:06   sex, men versus women.

00:36:11   Well, the groups are obviously humongous

00:36:14   because it's almost everybody is either a man or a woman.

00:36:19   And the race won, where it's,

00:36:25   how did white people vote, how did black people vote?

00:36:29   It shows you how many of the people who actually voted

00:36:34   are white or black or Hispanic, etc. etc. And so you hear these numbers like you

00:36:42   hear that, you know, here's the numbers for the... this is from the page you're

00:36:48   saying and we'll put it in the show notes, but the black vote went 88% to the

00:36:54   Democrats, 8% to Donald Trump, 2% to Gary Dingus or whatever his name is.

00:37:02   Yeah, but the size of that circle—

00:37:05   Right, lets you know—

00:37:06   —ain't that big.

00:37:07   Right. You say, like, 88 to 8. Well, holy hell, that's a blowout. And then you see

00:37:12   the size of the circle—

00:37:13   But a pie is always round. I mean—

00:37:16   Exactly. It's a really interesting infographic, in my opinion. It explains the election in

00:37:26   way that feels true to me. And obviously not in a way that is like true, like, "Oh, this is the

00:37:34   truth I want to hear," because the election did not turn out the way that I wanted. But—

00:37:39   Jared: Sometimes when I get real worked up, I take pictures of my TV, and so I just sent you an image

00:37:44   from last night at the great state of Pennsylvania in which you live, and at the point this was

00:37:48   taken, I don't know if you got that in your messages.

00:37:51   Pete: I got it.

00:37:51   Jared; At the time, this was, look at that breakdown. So, they're breaking down,

00:37:55   voting for the two parties, presidential candidates by city, suburbs, and rural.

00:38:00   City, 73-24 Clinton. Suburbs, 48% dead even. Rural, 72% Trump.

00:38:09   I remember all the way back to 1992, and it was... I mean, how old was I then? Jesus Christ, I was only...

00:38:24   Jesus Christ, was that the first—I think that was the first election I could vote in.

00:38:27   Yeah. Oh, wow.

00:38:29   I was like, you know, freshman in college. But I remember hearing James Carville on TV. And at the

00:38:38   time, James Carville was like the horse whisperer in Bill Clinton's ear, you know, like, you know,

00:38:44   he's the guy telling him what to do. And James Carville described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia

00:38:51   on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the middle. And as a lifelong Pennsylvanian,

00:38:59   I was like, "Oh yeah, that's exactly right." And as a college kid who had just moved from that sort

00:39:06   of Alabama middle to one of the cities on one of the sides of the state, I was like, "Yeah,

00:39:13   that's exactly right. That is totally right." Scott Simpson always used to say the same thing.

00:39:17   He comes from a very rural community. He felt absolutely no allegiance to either of those two

00:39:21   cities. Yeah, I believe Scott is from Lancaster or near Lancaster. I should

00:39:29   remember. He was in a Christian rock band. Company of praise. They

00:39:35   abbreviated COP. If not Lancaster, it's close enough. And it is everybody I know from

00:39:40   Pennsylvania. And it's actually one of those things where it's like, it doesn't

00:39:44   matter if you're a Democrat or Republican. You hear that and you're like,

00:39:48   "Oh yeah, yeah, that sounds right."

00:39:50   Right?

00:39:51   Even if you're pro-Trump, if you're somebody

00:39:55   from Pennsylvania who voted for Trump,

00:39:56   you're like, "Yeah, that sounds right."

00:39:58   It's dirty liberals on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia

00:40:03   and good people in the middle.

00:40:04   - Right.

00:40:07   - And it's absolutely striking.

00:40:11   The picture you just sent me is amazing.

00:40:16   there was that time last night

00:40:19   where it was

00:40:20   trying to do the translation on time

00:40:22   but it was uh...

00:40:24   past my daughter's bedtime but it was at the point of like oh

00:40:27   oh you know what I should not have been looking at

00:40:29   is that stupid New York Times

00:40:32   little speedometer thing

00:40:34   that was the death of me

00:40:36   it really was for me too

00:40:39   it was Clinton 82

00:40:43   for a really long time. Then it's like beep boop boop boop, it's on a little bit, and you get to

00:40:46   50/50. What? And by the time it was getting up at one point, then it said greater than 95

00:40:51   for the Republican candidate. And that was around the time when... So I was going back and forth

00:40:57   between CNN and CBS, because CBS has John Dickerson, who is flatly the best. He was

00:41:05   so good on that show. I wish... You know what, in hindsight, honestly, it wouldn't change the result,

00:41:11   which obviously is the only thing that really matters.

00:41:13   But in hindsight, I wish that I had CBS on.

00:41:16   I watched MSNBC.

00:41:19   OK.

00:41:20   You know what?

00:41:20   And that was the worst decision I could have made.

00:41:24   Honestly.

00:41:25   Because they were-- was there happy talk

00:41:27   about how it would be OK?

00:41:28   No.

00:41:29   It was more like--

00:41:30   I don't know.

00:41:34   It was something about the attitude

00:41:37   were taking to the results that really got me. What I really want was just a total pro

00:41:44   who didn't have, you know, I'll bet. I didn't watch CBS, but you know, I'll bet John Dickerson

00:41:51   was exactly what he did. It was great. It was a pretty good crew, but when I would flip back

00:41:54   and forth and sometimes CBS would go to local coverage and I was like, "Please don't tell me

00:41:58   about legal marijuana. I need to see what's happening with this national race." So I'd hop

00:42:02   over to CNN. And it seems like, by the way, you guys can have your marijuana now.

00:42:07   Congratulations. You can have your 420s.

00:42:10   Right. The people in New Jersey. It was like, we're having the most important, in my

00:42:19   opinion, the most important presidential election in our lifetimes. And then

00:42:24   half of the time was spent on, do the people in New Jersey get medical

00:42:29   marijuana. Well, okay, so one nice thing is I think they're finally getting their

00:42:33   hands around how to deal with those giant touch screens. It's still kind of

00:42:36   funny to watch them struggle with. Oh my god, on MSNBC it was horrible. Did they keep hitting the

00:42:41   wrong thing? No, and the guy kept complaining about it on air. He was like, "God damn this

00:42:47   machine." I don't think they get time to practice, like, nearly as much as, like, if

00:42:51   you go see your local perthappley with doing the weather report, like, that

00:42:55   that is a person who has been dealing with a green screen and understands how

00:42:59   to gesture their arms. In this case, they're flying all over the place. But it

00:43:02   was the point in the evening when they got to where it was like, "Okay, well, this is

00:43:07   how it's looking." And this is right before it went to Florida, like, pretty

00:43:10   conclusively. But he's going in and it was, it was, I don't, I almost felt like it was

00:43:16   all he could do to not say, "Oh, there's still a chance." But he kept like zooming

00:43:19   way in on Broward and saying, "Well, we know this could still be Broward," and zooming

00:43:23   further and then saying, and then you compare that to 2012.

00:43:26   And then you go back to, he kept going to these two counties

00:43:29   in Michigan.

00:43:30   And kept saying, now Detroit, the story could still be

00:43:33   Detroit, there could be like 150,000 people in Detroit

00:43:36   that show up in a minute and we're all going,

00:43:37   yeah, yeah, that could be it.

00:43:40   Hey Detroit, Detroit seems cool.

00:43:41   - You know what, that was a little bit of the MSNBC

00:43:44   experience too.

00:43:45   It was almost, yeah, that's sort of a mirror.

00:43:49   - Because I mean, like across the board, and I'm sure

00:43:52   we're eventually gonna get to our friend from

00:43:53   by Southwest.

00:43:58   There was a little bit of this sort of, you know, we're watching it and we came into it

00:44:04   optimistic.

00:44:06   We really did, you know, I mean, and I don't think we were unrealistic.

00:44:11   Everybody sort of expected a Hillary Clinton win.

00:44:16   We went into it.

00:44:17   Well, they at least expected something within a normal range, but it was like you went into

00:44:20   your kitchen to make cupcakes and it kept producing monitor lizards. You kept going,

00:44:25   "I don't even understand what's happening in here." And I think they're struggling

00:44:29   with it because they can't just say, "What the fuck is going on here? What the fuck?"

00:44:34   You can't say that on the TV. So they've got to go like, "Well, Detroit could really

00:44:38   – there could be a heck of a lot of underperforming with get-out-the-vote news alert."

00:44:47   That is so true where I honestly think that that again

00:44:52   I am laughing because I am a

00:44:56   white male with a

00:44:58   job, so you know I

00:45:02   I can afford to laugh but

00:45:05   You know, I'm crying on the inside because I really do think that

00:45:10   I'm not making light of this election. I know I don't think that's right. I don't think it's coming across

00:45:16   - All right, I hope so.

00:45:17   I just wanna double emphasize it as many times as I can.

00:45:21   But I really do think watching it live last night,

00:45:24   there was this sort of like,

00:45:27   we can't say what the fuck.

00:45:32   So therefore, because we can't say what the fuck,

00:45:36   we're gonna say stuff that doesn't make any sense,

00:45:38   where they're gonna say--

00:45:39   - We have to utilize these other words

00:45:41   that are in the parlance for our business

00:45:43   but don't get even near how what the fucky this is.

00:45:46   - And so they were saying things like,

00:45:48   "Hey, Hillary Clinton is down by 300,000 votes in Florida,

00:45:53   but she might make up 80,000 votes in Broward County."

00:45:58   And you're like, "Wait, you just said she's down by 300,000

00:46:04   and she maybe, if everything goes right in Broward County,

00:46:08   might make up 80,000."

00:46:11   you realize that's not even close to making up the difference.

00:46:14   No, it's his magical thinking. Everybody goes, well, you know,

00:46:17   Wisconsin still isn't all the way in and I don't even bother to go to Wisconsin

00:46:20   because that's so in the bag. It's not even going to be a problem.

00:46:22   Right. And I would turn to Amy and I would say, am I mishearing this?

00:46:26   This doesn't make any sense. And by the time I turned to her, I,

00:46:30   I would look and then all of a sudden they're talking about Wisconsin.

00:46:33   Wait, wait,

00:46:35   put that manic guy with the glasses back on and have him

00:46:41   explain to me how making up 80,000 votes in this, you know,

00:46:46   doesn't that, and they were, on MSNBC,

00:46:51   they were going through these contortions about,

00:46:53   you know, what they can call and when they can call it

00:46:56   and it was whatever, and I was like saying to Amy,

00:46:59   I was like, wait a minute, if you're saying

00:47:02   she is down by 300,000 and the most she can make up is 80,

00:47:09   What in the world is the difference where you can say we can call this and I'm like just call it

00:47:16   Just fucking call the goddamn thing

00:47:18   You know what? I mean? And and here we are 24 hours later. We've got these results

00:47:24   We see the results, you know, and she didn't win for it. Why couldn't they call it when she was

00:47:30   Definitively like best-case scenario down by two hundred and twenty thousand votes. I I don't understand that

00:47:38   There's this other phenomenon in like when you're a little kid, I have to tell you

00:47:42   I just remember we might have talked about this before talking about TV

00:47:44   But I always hated election nights as a kid

00:47:47   It was so boring all the shows got preempted and then our parents would sit there and watch this

00:47:52   Incredibly boring thing and you'd hear about like who your new alderman is. Yay. Like where's happy days fucking bring it

00:47:57   And so, you know, I knew this excruciating for my daughter

00:48:01   But I was like, you know

00:48:01   I think we've kind of we told you this is a pretty big deal and we're I won't get too personal

00:48:06   personal, but like we had a lot of personal stake. All three of us had a lot of personal

00:48:09   stake in this. Yes, even my nine-year-old daughter, maybe especially my nine-year-old

00:48:14   daughter, had a lot of stake in this. And so that made it really difficult. But there's

00:48:21   -- you learn as you get a little bit older, like when you first see the map when you're

00:48:24   a little kid, you go, "What? Like, oh, Texas. Well, Texas is a big state and it's a big

00:48:29   deal because there are a lot of electoral votes." But you know, all those little states

00:48:31   you see running down the side because they're too small to identify, some of those end up

00:48:35   being really important. In other words, the amount of red or blue on the map, you learn

00:48:41   to look at the numbers rather than the pretty colors, because that's the story, right?

00:48:45   You know what I'm saying? A smart person understands that you can, for example, as recently as

00:48:51   2016, you can win the most votes and still not win the election because that's not how

00:48:57   the electoral college works. And Mike Kent understood that. My wife and I understand

00:49:00   that. So you start seeing more and more of the red pop up, and then they go to somewhere

00:49:04   like Michigan.

00:49:06   And all of a sudden, I felt like I was seven years old again.

00:49:09   I was like, there is so much red on there.

00:49:12   And they keep zooming in on these two or three little blue areas.

00:49:15   But it was very profound to me to then have to undo that idea,

00:49:20   because the colors were not lining up, the shapes were not lining up,

00:49:24   and the numbers were not lining up.

00:49:26   I mean, that's why I want to locate this a little bit in last night,

00:49:32   because over the period of about 90 minutes, the world started to feel a little bit different,

00:49:38   and at least a little bit different, and then it started to feel different,

00:49:42   faster and faster, and my breath was taken away at several points.

00:49:48   I mean, we're three hours time shifted from you, but we were watching the same thing at the same

00:49:58   time and that is exactly how I felt. Exactly. Exactly. I couldn't put it any better.

00:50:07   Especially and again, like you were saying with these county by county results in Michigan,

00:50:13   I was just like, what the, you know, how can this be? How can Hillary Clinton possibly

00:50:23   win looking at this?

00:50:25   - Right. - Right.

00:50:26   - But also some 2015 part of your brain is spinning.

00:50:31   'Cause the 2015 part of your brain goes,

00:50:33   "Well, even if there's three people in that county,

00:50:36   "how did three people in that county

00:50:37   "choose to vote for the Republican candidate?"

00:50:39   - Right. - In my 2015 line,

00:50:41   which I still have, that's still a big part of my brain,

00:50:43   is, and that's, and again, now I have a different mind today

00:50:47   but that was part of the cognitive dissonance for me

00:50:50   was even like looking at straight numbers

00:50:52   having my iPad Pro sideways with multiple tabs open plus the side screen and like an

00:50:57   idiot, like a monster, I'm looking at all this data and then drilling down. And New

00:51:01   York Times actually had pretty good coverage on this, where you could go in and like drill

00:51:03   down into specific areas and see for yourself what was going on. And you could just look

00:51:08   at the numbers. And the other thing we told our kid, and I think this is a good thing,

00:51:11   is like understand this is a multivariate thing. Like there's a certain number of electoral

00:51:15   votes in that state. The state is comprised of counties. Each of those counties are reporting

00:51:19   in different ways and at different times. And shame on CNN for the amount of like 1%

00:51:23   reporting special news alerts that they had. It was so gross. But you can go in and this

00:51:28   is a thing that happened though, and I guess this happens to everybody when their side

00:51:32   is not winning, is that you start seeing that number go up and you see 60% reporting. You

00:51:37   see 70% reporting. You start wondering how many more votes really could be there in a

00:51:42   box somewhere in Portland that would pull this out. And then like you're describing,

00:51:46   describing, I think you're very very aptly describing that feeling of "oh my

00:51:51   god, just say it," because I see it. I see it. I don't believe it. I see it.

00:51:57   Why aren't you just saying it because, oh my god, another one just turned red. Why

00:52:00   is someone not saying what's really happening here? And I really, in my heart,

00:52:04   believe that at least some—I know they're trying to be journalistically

00:52:08   canny and trying to be fair and trying to to not freak out, but I honestly, I

00:52:14   I bet you we're going to hear a lot about a lot of things.

00:52:17   And I bet one of the things we're going to hear is how many people just can't believe

00:52:23   what happened on numerous levels.

00:52:26   The failures or shortcomings of everything from our own perception to how we learn about

00:52:33   what people think to how we choose to believe anybody else could see the world.

00:52:37   I feel like I've just come out of a cult or something.

00:52:42   I don't know what I even think anymore.

00:52:44   I mean, I know what I think, I know how I feel. I'm here to talk to you about how I feel.

00:52:47   But like, I don't know what to trust about my brain anymore.

00:52:51   It was very frustrating, I thought, last night. Because I really wanted—what I want is somebody

00:52:57   who is like—somebody who knows as much shit about the goddamn new MacBook Pros as I do.

00:53:04   I want them—somebody who knows that much about the elections to tell me what the hell is going on.

00:53:10   and I felt like I wasn't getting it.

00:53:13   You know what I mean?

00:53:13   I felt like I was getting people

00:53:15   who were as loosely informed as I was,

00:53:19   going like, "I don't know, this seems kinda crazy.

00:53:22   "This is unexpected."

00:53:24   It's like, I'm looking at the numbers on screen,

00:53:28   and I'm thinking like, "Why won't somebody just tell me

00:53:31   "Florida is already lost?"

00:53:32   Like, it was, at the point,

00:53:35   it was at least two hours after the point

00:53:38   where me as a non-expert was looking at Florida's numbers

00:53:41   and thinking, this is gone, before they said, OK, Florida

00:53:46   is in the Trump column.

00:53:48   And I'm like, why did that take two hours?

00:53:52   That's crazy.

00:53:55   So the two-- you can actually see this in my safari--

00:53:58   the two things that it says, do you want to visit this site

00:54:01   on your iPad?

00:54:02   The two of those have been 538 and the Upshot.

00:54:04   The Upshot has done a really, really good job

00:54:07   graphically displaying whatever information they had. And you know, don't, don't yell at them.

00:54:12   They're just reporting the polls. But one of my, one of my favorite things to look at,

00:54:15   because it's very interesting, is the how other forecasts compare area, which I can,

00:54:21   I'm sure you've seen. So this has not been updated since yesterday. But as of yesterday,

00:54:26   New York Times, 85% Democrat. Five thirty-eight, the very conservative five thirty-eight,

00:54:32   you know, really in context, they were very conservative compared to the others. They got

00:54:35   lot of heat 71% yeah huff put huffington post 98% democratic um pw i'm not sure what that is 89%

00:54:43   pec greater than 99% yeah oh that's the princeton uh okay election something okay pw is predict wise

00:54:53   so 538 was the uh most uh pessimistic with uh 71% the princeton election committee or whatever the

00:55:04   hell they're called. I love the guy and I'm not doubting the statistical math behind the projection,

00:55:12   but that was how I slept the last few nights. Oh my god. Also, they use WordPress.

00:55:17   You have anything else you want to tell me about today? Anything you like?

00:55:24   Should we talk about these buttons on the keyboards? Sure, sure. I just didn't know

00:55:31   - Let me win that.

00:55:32   At this happy point, I thought you might want to wedge in

00:55:34   another sponsor visit.

00:55:35   - No, let me tell you.

00:55:36   - I'll help with the sponsor.

00:55:37   I'll help your fault here.

00:55:38   - I'm gonna tell you, this is a new sponsor.

00:55:40   First time sponsor on the show.

00:55:42   This is a great, and I love it, because I love,

00:55:45   I don't know if you know this or not.

00:55:47   I spend about 180 days a year at Disney World.

00:55:51   I love Disney, and for the first time ever,

00:55:55   Disney is sponsoring the show.

00:55:58   - Oh, that's so nice, that's so nice.

00:56:00   That must have taken a long time to work out.

00:56:02   - Have you heard this though?

00:56:03   This might be new to you.

00:56:04   You might not have even heard about this, Merlin.

00:56:07   It's called Circle.

00:56:08   Circle with Disney.

00:56:10   - You're not kidding me.

00:56:11   - I'm not kidding you.

00:56:12   I am not kidding you.

00:56:13   This is an actual sponsor.

00:56:15   It really is Disney. - Oh my gosh.

00:56:17   - It's a device called Circle.

00:56:19   And it's a little dingus.

00:56:21   (laughing)

00:56:23   I swear to God. - Look at that.

00:56:24   It is a little dingus.

00:56:25   It looks like a,

00:56:25   it looks like the power adapter

00:56:28   that comes with your iPhone.

00:56:29   - Exactly.

00:56:30   you plug this into your house.

00:56:33   It pairs with any wifi router that you might want.

00:56:38   And what you can do is set up a thing

00:56:43   so that if you have kids, your kids,

00:56:46   you can manage their internet access.

00:56:48   - Oh my God, this is so boss.

00:56:51   - It's $99, one time cost.

00:56:55   But if you use the code, the talk show,

00:56:59   Don't forget the the, the talk show.

00:57:02   You'll save 10 bucks, it's only $89.

00:57:05   And you can get this one time cost.

00:57:09   You can get Circle Go, which is like a service,

00:57:12   you can get it for $10 a month, $9.95,

00:57:15   for up to 10 devices, but it's only for iOS.

00:57:19   It's super easy to set up.

00:57:23   There's nothing worse than setting up

00:57:25   a complicated networking device.

00:57:28   I mean, I've done it with--

00:57:30   John, that's table stakes nowadays.

00:57:31   If you want to penetrate the market, as you like to say,

00:57:34   you're going to have to come out with a device that

00:57:37   has as little fiddly--

00:57:39   save the fiddly stuff for your coffee.

00:57:40   Let's Circle manage your content for you.

00:57:42   You know what I'm saying?

00:57:43   Exactly.

00:57:44   If you're going to spend a lot of time on something,

00:57:46   it might as well be making your coffee.

00:57:49   Circle with Disney lets parents filter content, customize

00:57:53   what's available, customize the time

00:57:55   that kids can be on the Internet.

00:57:57   It's amazing.

00:58:00   Kids staying up late on their tablet circle with Disney

00:58:02   lets you set a bedtime for each kid on each device.

00:58:06   What about 4G?

00:58:09   Because you think like, hey, you know, I'll shut off the Wi-Fi.

00:58:13   My kid will just hop on the

00:58:16   LG, everybody, you know, they know that

00:58:19   your kids already have

00:58:23   probably, especially if they're teenage years, they already have a smartphone and they already have

00:58:29   that. So that's why they make Circle Go. Circle Go, Disney Circle Go, takes all the settings on

00:58:38   your kids' devices and lets you configure them with your circle with Disney. What? Yeah, I

00:58:44   swear to God, I don't even know how that works. Is it an MDM? Like how does that work? It's

00:58:49   Disney Magic. You know what it is, John? It's Disney Magic. Disney Magic. Disney Magic.

00:58:53   So here you go. Go to... If you've got kids and you want to manage their access to the internet

00:59:00   on your Wi-Fi, remember the code, "TheTalkShow." Go to

00:59:11   meetcircle.com, M-E-E-T, not meet like, you know,

00:59:16   like we're going to eat steak or whatever.

00:59:18   It's, you know, like you're meeting somebody,

00:59:20   like you're greeting somebody.

00:59:22   Meetcircle.com.

00:59:24   And you get free shipping and $10 off with that code,

00:59:29   the talk show.

00:59:32   It's a great device, super easy.

00:59:34   They sent me one, I did, I sent it up.

00:59:36   It is super easy to set up.

00:59:38   I mean, my kid actually is, just between me and you,

00:59:43   is maybe sort of not the sharpest tech in the room

00:59:48   because he, I don't think he actually tries to go

00:59:52   to anything that we wouldn't approve of.

00:59:54   - But doesn't it disappoint you a little bit?

00:59:57   - A little bit because I know--

00:59:58   - Don't you want to be a little bit more ambitious?

01:00:00   - Yeah, a little bit.

01:00:01   I would think that he would, but so,

01:00:06   We're not really, you know, it's like, we set it up,

01:00:09   and it was like super easy to set up.

01:00:11   They sent me the thing, I set it up,

01:00:13   and it was like, do we really need this?

01:00:15   I don't know, because it seems to me like our kid

01:00:17   just like comes to us and is like, hey, can I, you know,

01:00:21   is it okay if I search Google for blah, blah, blah?

01:00:23   And it's like-- - Wow, but you know what?

01:00:25   Belts and suspenders.

01:00:26   Have a good kid, and get yourself a circle.

01:00:29   - Exactly, that's what I thought, exactly.

01:00:32   - Good deal.

01:00:32   - This couldn't be easier to set up.

01:00:34   It's a beautiful little device.

01:00:36   So go to Meet Circle, meetcircle.com,

01:00:40   and remember the code, the talk show.

01:00:43   You will save 10 bucks and get free shipping.

01:00:46   So there you go.

01:00:47   - Just for what it's worth, for now,

01:00:50   it appears that meetcircle.com with an A is available.

01:00:53   (laughing)

01:00:56   You know what?

01:01:01   I'm just gonna go there.

01:01:03   As a man from San Francisco, I'm here to tell you,

01:01:04   if there was a website called Meat Circle with an A

01:01:07   about circles of meat, I got a pretty, pretty good feeling

01:01:12   that meat circle with two Es would not let you see it.

01:01:14   - I could have sworn that was the name of the restaurant

01:01:16   where we went the last time I was out there.

01:01:18   - Meat Circle.

01:01:21   - You know what, that would, I mean, that's actually,

01:01:26   we're making a joke, but it actually is not a bad name for,

01:01:29   not a bad name.

01:01:30   Think about those touristy sushi places you go where it arrives on a boat and they just

01:01:35   count your plates.

01:01:36   What if there was a rotating, let's call it a carousel, a carne carousel.

01:01:42   You've got a spinning meat Lazy Susan.

01:01:48   And you could just try all different things.

01:01:49   It would be kind of like going to a Brazilian steakhouse for that kind of technology.

01:01:54   I think people would love that meat circle.

01:01:56   You could gobble that up.

01:01:59   At the Brazilian Steakhouse, the ones I've been to, we've got two here in Philly.

01:02:04   We've got a Fogo de Shao and we've got, I forget what the other one's called.

01:02:10   The other one's better.

01:02:12   [laughter]

01:02:13   A bringing endorsement from John Cooper.

01:02:16   A bringing endorsement.

01:02:18   [laughter]

01:02:19   Yeah, we've got one here.

01:02:21   It's costly.

01:02:22   But it's a lot of fun.

01:02:24   If you go at lunch, you don't get as many varieties of meat.

01:02:26   No, no.

01:02:27   At lunch, you get screwed.

01:02:28   Lunch, they got chicken hearts. They got chicken hearts at lunch.

01:02:32   They desperately want you to come in at lunch and...

01:02:35   Would you like more chicken heart?

01:02:36   Yeah!

01:02:37   Corazon de pollo? Yes, I know that's Spanish.

01:02:40   But still...

01:02:40   We're like, we're good, we're good.

01:02:44   How about some more of that tri-tip? Yeah, yeah, maybe you try the chicken heart.

01:02:48   It's on a sword.

01:02:48   I think you'll find it quite toothsome.

01:02:51   And the tiny little sausages?

01:02:54   I love the little sausages.

01:02:56   I like the salty. My favorite, I think, is the straight up salty sirloin.

01:03:00   All right. The other one here in Philadelphia is called chima.

01:03:05   Chima.

01:03:06   That's the good one. Fogo de chao is a little... I don't know. A little...

01:03:12   You save five bucks on the... There's always an all-you-can-eat type deal.

01:03:19   Oh, you don't want to be buying meat on price.

01:03:21   Right.

01:03:21   Yeah, chima is the good one. But for anybody who hasn't been to one of

01:03:26   these places. The both of them at least here and I've been to Fogo de Chao and you know it's gonna

01:03:33   be funny because it might come up again later in the show in Austin, Texas I've been to Fogo de Chao.

01:03:38   You meet a lot of interesting people in Austin. You meet a lot of interesting people. You okay, man?

01:03:45   But it's the same feel though where you get you go into this place and and there's these you know

01:03:53   the cowboys walking around who grill the steak.

01:03:57   And you have like a little--

01:03:59   they give everybody a little thing, like red light,

01:04:02   green light.

01:04:03   Obrigado.

01:04:04   Right.

01:04:05   Yeah, more steak, less steak, red and green.

01:04:07   Right.

01:04:08   So green--

01:04:08   Red steak, green steak.

01:04:09   If you put it up green side up, if the guy's

01:04:13   coming around with whatever cut of steak he's made,

01:04:16   he'll say, hey, do you want some?

01:04:17   And you say--

01:04:19   See, they usually ask you, but if you have it on green,

01:04:22   They are not legally obligated to ask.

01:04:24   Right, they might just give it to you.

01:04:25   Right.

01:04:26   That's the law.

01:04:27   That's the law of Rio, it's called, from the Magna Carta.

01:04:29   They can come right up and put whatever meat suits them

01:04:31   on your plate, and you have to eat it.

01:04:33   And they don't have to ask that.

01:04:35   You don't have to say thank you.

01:04:36   They're just going to literally keep bringing meat

01:04:38   until you can get your swollen, greasy fingers to change it

01:04:41   to avocado.

01:04:42   That is true.

01:04:43   That is the law of the Brazilian steakhouse.

01:04:48   But if you put red on--

01:04:49   Even the other law is don't fill up on salad.

01:04:51   That's the second law. Second law of the Brazilian steakhouse.

01:04:53   Because 2A, that's how they get you. That's how they get you.

01:04:57   They want you to fill up on potato salad and shit.

01:04:59   Don't do that, because they're going to bring you a bunch of chicken hearts.

01:05:02   And they always have... it's always a... everyone.

01:05:07   It doesn't matter what the name of the steakhouse is.

01:05:10   If it's a Brazilian steakhouse, it's always a salad bar where you can go up

01:05:15   and go hog wild on the salad.

01:05:18   They might have... ours has a hot bar too. Ours is called "Espedis" and boy is it ever good.

01:05:22   Is that what's just called "Buca de Bebe"? "Bepedibuca"? What's yours called?

01:05:26   Well, we got two. We got "Fugo de Chao" and we got "Chima".

01:05:31   "Chima". At "Espedis" they got a really nice salad bar of some unconventional salad,

01:05:37   some non-traditional salads, and they got a hot bar. So if you want black beans and

01:05:41   white rice, not a problem. You can go up there and get yourself kind of some "Faky Paella".

01:05:45   It's really good by the bathroom. Just wash your hands, come out, get a plate.

01:05:49   But that's that's rule number two. Rule number two of Steakhouse Club is you don't don't fill up and help bread

01:05:54   They're gonna give you the cheesy bread. Fuck that. Rule number three of Brazilian steakhouse. Do not fill up on the fucking

01:06:00   I'm talking to you daughter. Big glass of milk. That's for meat.

01:06:04   Don't fill up on that. And the cheesy bread is good. That's it is good. But that's how they get you. That's 3A.

01:06:13   It's so true.

01:06:14   It's really disappointing.

01:06:16   There's a reason why at a regular steakhouse, where I mean regular,

01:06:22   meaning you don't get unlimited red light, green light meat,

01:06:28   that they don't also have a just eat as much as you want at the salad bar,

01:06:34   salad bar.

01:06:36   Exactly.

01:06:37   Right.

01:06:38   It is true.

01:06:42   you said that's how they get you and that is for I think for me and you that's how they get you is

01:06:49   sort of a catchphrase of like our parents generation would tell us like that's they would explain the

01:06:56   way the system works that's the single greatest piece of conventional wisdom for everybody uh

01:07:01   older than me right you're going to you're going to 7-eleven that's how they get it

01:07:04   oh you're gonna go to 7-eleven you're gonna get one of those big gulps oh how much is that it's

01:07:08   You know what that costs? A nickel. That's how they get you.

01:07:11   No, and they would--

01:07:12   Is that right? Is that right?

01:07:13   Japanese car? Japanese car? That's how they get you.

01:07:15   I remember somebody telling me that when you went to 7-Eleven,

01:07:18   that you had to be careful how much ice you put in the cup,

01:07:21   because that's how they get you.

01:07:23   Right. That no matter what size cup you got, they'd fill it up with ice,

01:07:28   and you'd get the same amount of soda even if you got the 64-ounce--

01:07:32   which is bullshit.

01:07:34   Like a 64-ounce soda is an enormous amount of soda.

01:07:38   But there were people who told me in my youth that that's how they get you.

01:07:44   It's like the secret menu for cheapskates. It's like the things that you can get away with.

01:07:47   "Hey, you know, listen, so you know when you go to this place,

01:07:49   you can ask for extra rolls to take home and they have to give it to you."

01:07:52   So at...

01:07:54   We used to run a restaurant when I was a kid, and it would be the same people who were very unhappy

01:08:00   every weekend would come in. And they came there to be unhappy together. And they would come in,

01:08:04   and the same people would complain about the same things every time. There was one couple that always

01:08:08   came in, always got the same really crappy deuce right by the bar, and then they would complain

01:08:12   about the noise in the bar, and then they would steal literally everything off the table. Every

01:08:16   week, they would take all the silverware, they would take all the salt and pepper shakers,

01:08:20   they would take the sweet and low, they would take the sugar, they would take the flour arrangement,

01:08:23   and then we'd have them back the next week. And that was just the thing we did. Florida.

01:08:28   We had like, uh, it was like a—

01:08:31   I'm having a hard day, Jon.

01:08:32   I got to be honest with you.

01:08:33   I'm having a hard day.

01:08:35   You know what?

01:08:36   I don't know who else would do this with me, Merlin.

01:08:39   Honestly.

01:08:40   Well, we are not going to scoop up every single person.

01:08:42   But--

01:08:43   No.

01:08:43   You know, I think it's good that we're here.

01:08:45   It's good we're here to talk about this.

01:08:46   All right.

01:08:47   So Amy and I, you know this.

01:08:50   You know this.

01:08:51   Maybe people who listen to the show don't know this.

01:08:55   My wife, Amy and I-- people maybe know her on Twitter.

01:08:58   She's @AmyJane.

01:09:00   we literally were in the same kindergarten class together. We were in school together from

01:09:06   kindergarten all the way through 12th grade, then we were separated for the college years,

01:09:13   somehow made it work. And here we are, now we're married and we're on Twitter. We're married on

01:09:21   (laughing)

01:09:24   But we've often said though, it is an amazing thing

01:09:29   that we spent our teenage years together.

01:09:33   'Cause we can tell stories about our teenage years

01:09:36   and instead of like, oh my God, just blacking out,

01:09:39   rolling your eyes because your significant other,

01:09:43   your partner is talking about being 14 years old,

01:09:48   you're like, oh my God, I remember that.

01:09:50   And you're like, I was there.

01:09:53   And yes, that is true.

01:09:55   So we were,

01:09:57   where we grew up, everybody was a member.

01:10:01   It was a public pool.

01:10:03   It was public, but you had to pay,

01:10:06   your family had to pay like 100 bucks a year

01:10:08   to get in or something like that.

01:10:09   So it wasn't like you could just show up.

01:10:11   But everybody was a member.

01:10:13   You'd get a special badge.

01:10:16   Every year they'd put out a new color badge

01:10:18   and you'd sew it on your swimsuit.

01:10:20   So when you showed up at the pool,

01:10:22   they could see that you were a paid member.

01:10:25   And as a teenager, every day, every single day in the summer

01:10:31   what I would do is I would wake up,

01:10:33   I would go play basketball,

01:10:35   'cause I was an avid basketball player.

01:10:38   I would play basketball from like, I don't know,

01:10:40   11 a.m. till one in the afternoon.

01:10:43   And then it would just, when it got just too goddamn hot

01:10:47   to keep playing basketball,

01:10:48   we would head over to the pool.

01:10:51   And that's where we would go.

01:10:53   And at the pool, there was a snack bar.

01:10:58   And the snack bar sold Reese's Peanut

01:11:02   Bear Cups, Swedish Fish.

01:11:05   I think your entire selection of food offerings

01:11:09   were Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Swedish Fish, which

01:11:14   were a penny apiece.

01:11:16   And they'd count them out.

01:11:17   It would take forever.

01:11:19   One, two, three.

01:11:22   Three Swedish fish.

01:11:24   And--

01:11:25   Get back to the pool with you.

01:11:26   And we're going to have fun before you go back in.

01:11:28   And they had a soda fountain.

01:11:29   And here's-- long story short, at some point in my teenage years,

01:11:34   somebody convinced me that they were screwing me over

01:11:38   by filling my cup up with ice.

01:11:40   Because that's how they get you.

01:11:42   Yeah, that's how they get you.

01:11:43   So I would go over and get my--

01:11:46   I would say, like, give me a Dr. Pepper, no ice.

01:11:49   I'll never see that coming.

01:11:54   Two points.

01:11:55   I have two points to make on this.

01:11:56   Number one, warm Dr. Pepper tastes like shit.

01:12:04   It is horrible.

01:12:06   It really is.

01:12:08   You really-- the pruniness really comes out.

01:12:11   You don't realize how pruney Dr. Pepper is until you

01:12:13   have it at room temperature.

01:12:15   And number two.

01:12:16   It tastes like some kind of a 19th century elixir.

01:12:19   This is the point.

01:12:20   But you're going to love this, Merlin.

01:12:22   You're going to love it.

01:12:23   About two or three weeks after I started ordering my sodas, no ice,

01:12:27   and my friends were doing the same.

01:12:29   It wasn't just me.

01:12:30   It was a bunch of us.

01:12:32   They changed their policy.

01:12:34   And if you ordered your soda no ice, they only

01:12:37   filled it to one inch below the cup.

01:12:44   - Wow.

01:12:46   - So if you said--

01:12:47   - It's 'cause of portion control.

01:12:48   - Right.

01:12:49   So they, and we would say,

01:12:52   like, give me a large stock to pepper, no ice.

01:12:55   And they'd only fill it an inch below the rim.

01:12:58   And then you'd be like, well, wait, that's not fill.

01:13:00   And they'd be like, well, that's where the ice would go.

01:13:02   (laughs)

01:13:04   - It's like one of those bars,

01:13:06   bars with the robot dispensers, you know,

01:13:09   that only like, you know what I mean?

01:13:10   But like, there's some bars now where when you get a drink,

01:13:13   It's like the robot does it.

01:13:15   It tells you this is exactly whatever,

01:13:16   an ounce or half an ounce or whatever.

01:13:19   Oh, it's sickening.

01:13:20   My god.

01:13:21   See, and they got you again.

01:13:22   That's how they got you a second time.

01:13:24   Well, you know what?

01:13:24   The thing is, in hindsight, one reaffirms the other,

01:13:29   where on the one hand, it tasted terrible

01:13:32   because it wasn't cold.

01:13:34   But on the other hand, the fact that they started screwing you

01:13:37   on how much soda, it reaffirmed the initial reason

01:13:42   why you did it, which was, this is how they get you.

01:13:45   Because if it wasn't how they got you,

01:13:47   why would they be screwing you on how much soda

01:13:49   they put in the cup, right?

01:13:52   Absolutely.

01:13:53   Absolutely.

01:13:55   The system always wins.

01:13:56   The system always wins.

01:13:57   And you know what?

01:13:58   This is honestly how we wound up with President Trump.

01:14:01   I mean, honestly, I think you draw--

01:14:04   if you connect the dots--

01:14:05   You blame the system.

01:14:07   If you connect the dots, I would say that like 1987 at the Antietam pool, a no ice Dr. Pepper,

01:14:20   only being filled one inch below the rim, dot, dot, dot, here you go, 2016, President Trump.

01:14:29   Do you agree?

01:14:30   So when they finally, oh, well, it makes perfect sense.

01:14:32   I think it's a clear line. I mean, I don't even think it's...

01:14:34   when you put it that way, I see it. I mean, and this is like, I'm thinking of like any kind of,

01:14:37   you know, document—not a documentary, but a docudrama, like you do something like,

01:14:41   "And the Band Played On." And the Band Played On is about the AIDS epidemic, but it begins with

01:14:45   Matthew Modine dealing with the Ebola. And that sets us up for all the flashbacks. He says, you

01:14:51   know, Paul McCartney walks by, he says, "Bass in the window, oh, one day I'll be playing that at

01:14:54   the Cavern Club." You know, as you know, Bob, this is what I end up doing. Right? And so, in this

01:14:59   case, a young John Gruber, hot from basketball, 11 to 1 every day, he wants to take a dip,

01:15:05   buy 3 cents worth of Swedish Fish, and have himself a refreshing cup of Dr. Pepper.

01:15:09   And now today everybody's at school crying.

01:15:14   Right. And I—

01:15:16   Really, yeah, you put it that way, and I do, I see it now.

01:15:19   It's, it's, I think it's a direct line.

01:15:21   Yeah.

01:15:26   How did everybody get so...this is gonna be...

01:15:31   God, so you know I was telling you I was listening to all these podcasts.

01:15:34   Usually, I'm getting six podcasts a day in the run up to this.

01:15:39   And boy, it was like radio silence this morning.

01:15:40   There was one NPR politics episode I think they recorded last night.

01:15:45   There was a pretty short...what was the other one?

01:15:49   1600 finally came out.

01:15:51   But so far today, no Culture Gab Fest.

01:15:54   Maybe John's busy.

01:15:55   No Trump cast, still haven't heard election profit makers.

01:16:00   It's been like a real quiet--

01:16:02   - Kriga's serpent.

01:16:04   - I mean, I don't know how many of those things

01:16:05   you listen to, but I mean, I'm sitting there,

01:16:07   flip it, flip it, flip it, like, come on, overcast.

01:16:10   Let me experience my emotions,

01:16:12   as my hippie girlfriend used to say.

01:16:14   I wanna experience my emotions, I wanna walk through this.

01:16:16   - Okay, again, I'm being more jovial than usual,

01:16:21   and quite frankly--

01:16:24   - What's the holiday season?

01:16:25   - Well, yeah, right.

01:16:26   Quite frankly, I might be,

01:16:29   without taking another sip of any beverage,

01:16:32   I might be drunk for the next 72 hours

01:16:34   based on how much I drank last night.

01:16:36   So, you know.

01:16:37   - You gave yourself a contact high.

01:16:39   - Well, it's, you know.

01:16:41   - Yeah, no, I mean.

01:16:44   - It's table stakes.

01:16:45   Let's just face it.

01:16:46   - It's a complicated time, for sure.

01:16:47   - I think it might be enjoyable,

01:16:49   but here is what I thought.

01:16:52   I really did, and I'm gonna be deadly serious here.

01:16:55   And again, apolitical, it doesn't matter

01:16:58   which side you're on.

01:16:59   But there was a moment yesterday,

01:17:02   let's say 24 hours ago, and as we record,

01:17:06   no results were in, so it wasn't even like,

01:17:09   oh, it looks bad for her, it looks good for him,

01:17:13   or whatever.

01:17:14   24 hours ago, I thought, you know what?

01:17:18   I should've done a show by now.

01:17:20   I should have had a new episode.

01:17:23   I don't have a regular schedule.

01:17:24   I don't record on a regular schedule.

01:17:26   And the reason I didn't record a show is I thought,

01:17:30   I can't, I'm so distracted by this election,

01:17:33   I don't wanna do a show because it's all I can think about.

01:17:36   And I realized, in hindsight, I should have done a show,

01:17:40   not for myself, but because, hey,

01:17:43   I'll bet tens of thousands of people who listen to my show

01:17:46   would love to just distract themselves

01:17:48   with me talking about the goddamn key travel

01:17:52   on a new MacBook Pro.

01:17:53   - Absolutely.

01:17:54   - Right, like two hours of me talking about

01:17:57   what it's like to type on the new MacBook Pro.

01:18:00   In my mind was like, well, what a waste of fucking time.

01:18:05   But in hindsight, I thought like,

01:18:07   oh, that actually would have been great

01:18:10   for the people who love the stuff that I do.

01:18:13   And I should have done it.

01:18:15   And then I woke up today and I thought,

01:18:17   well, now I've got to get Merlin.

01:18:18   - Yeah, it's, no, I mean, basically,

01:18:22   it's been a really weird morning,

01:18:24   and my only thought was, like I said in the text to you,

01:18:27   my only plan for this entire day was to try to stay sane

01:18:31   and clean the shit out of the car.

01:18:33   My whole plan for today was to,

01:18:35   like, my wife biked to work today,

01:18:37   and I was like, so, how about I clean the car today?

01:18:39   She's like, yeah, that's fine.

01:18:40   So I go out there, I got the vinegar,

01:18:42   I got the baking soda, I got the mini vac,

01:18:44   I got the big vac, I'm taking it all out,

01:18:46   taking the whole thing apart,

01:18:47   and I'm scrubbing it like a crazy person

01:18:49   'cause I need to control a small area today.

01:18:51   - I did that yesterday.

01:18:53   Merlin, I swear to God, you can,

01:18:55   I mean, seriously, go DM her right now.

01:18:57   You can DM Amy yesterday.

01:19:00   - Is she at the holiday party too?

01:19:01   - Oh, no, she's actually, she probably will be soon,

01:19:05   but she's not at the holiday party yet.

01:19:08   - You know, the reason you didn't get an invitation

01:19:10   is 'cause you asked for an invite.

01:19:12   If you ask for an invite, you don't get an invitation.

01:19:14   that I, I, you know my feelings on invites. That's rule number five of Brazilian steakhouse.

01:19:20   You never get an invite. There is no invite. It's not a word. Stop saying that.

01:19:26   Yesterday, I swear to God, you could, you could, I swear to God, DM her and find out.

01:19:33   Okay. You clean the car.

01:19:35   No, I, what I did is I vacuumed in their dining room.

01:19:43   And our kid, our kid, he loves to eat, he loves corn chips, he eats a lot of tacos,

01:19:50   he, you know, but he has, he just likes corn chips. And there's, there was just a ton of

01:19:58   ground up corn chips underneath our dining room table. And I thought, "Oh, what better,

01:20:04   why not now?" Let's get them. Somebody's got to get these corn chips. Somebody's got to get them.

01:20:11   And my wife came down.

01:20:13   And it is-- I mean, shocker.

01:20:17   99 times out of 100, when somebody vacuums up

01:20:21   the corn chips, it's my wife, not me.

01:20:25   And my wife is like, what the fuck are you doing?

01:20:28   Oh, I cleaned the shit out of our dishes last night.

01:20:30   I cleaned dishes I didn't need to clean.

01:20:32   I cleaned the cast iron pan twice,

01:20:35   and then this is a life hack.

01:20:36   You can use kosher salt, and you can rub it around in there

01:20:39   without harming it.

01:20:40   You don't want to put soap in there.

01:20:42   So I did that a couple times with the kosher salt.

01:20:45   And they still kept turning red.

01:20:49   Stopped at one point to watch a Parks and Recreation,

01:20:52   because my daughter was on the verge.

01:20:54   And so we watched a very good, relevant episode of Parks

01:20:56   and Rec where she narrowly wins the election,

01:21:01   because it's an educational program for a nine-year-old.

01:21:06   We've got to talk a little bit about--

01:21:10   Don't you think a little bit about what we got wrong?

01:21:12   Don't you think?

01:21:14   I mean, is that too much?

01:21:15   Is that too deep?

01:21:15   We could talk about the keyboard.

01:21:17   You know, I'm not using my DOS because I'm on the podcast,

01:21:19   but I could type on my DOS if that would help.

01:21:21   No, I think we should.

01:21:22   I think we should talk about what we got wrong.

01:21:22   That's some amazing key travel.

01:21:24   Listen to this.

01:21:24   Listen to this.

01:21:25   Let's see.

01:21:27   Oh, that sounds good.

01:21:28   You want to talk about key travel?

01:21:30   That sounds good.

01:21:32   Sixth rule of Brazilian steakhouse.

01:21:37   Wow, that... I mean, honestly, that is...

01:21:41   I don't know what kind of cherry that is. That could be cherry blue, cherry brown.

01:21:43   I don't know. I'd have to have Jason listen to it. You know Jason types very fast.

01:21:46   For two or three seconds there, I completely forgot about this election.

01:21:51   Oh, isn't that nice? We can talk about it.

01:21:53   I have seen... You know, I...

01:21:55   It seems so relevant.

01:21:57   I have photographed...

01:21:58   That's all very interesting, but will I be dissatisfied with the butterfly switches on my computer?

01:22:02   I have photographed myself.

01:22:07   It's like taking us, you know, as the kids call them a selfie with Jason.

01:22:13   I watched a video of you using an escape key. Yeah. Does it here? No. Okay. You know what?

01:22:21   I had to delete that tweet. Oh yeah. Oh because it's a loner? Yeah well and

01:22:28   it turns out the embargo is not up. Oh man the embargo still counts even today.

01:22:35   I'm so ludicrous that anybody is doing anything today doesn't it seem crazy anybody is that's exactly what I thought yesterday

01:22:42   What I it turns so long story short I I tweeted a video of me using an escape key on

01:22:51   a MacBook Pro and

01:22:53   The embargo is not up on those MacBook pros

01:22:57   but on the ones that have like the physical keys it is up and I I just

01:23:04   It was yesterday and I was so I was just like wouldn't it be you know

01:23:09   I mean like this is what I was thinking. I was like, yeah, why not obsess over the escape key?

01:23:14   Absolutely, I would love to spend the next four years

01:23:20   thinking about escape keys

01:23:23   It just seems like wake me up four years from now when when the next election is over and I'll spend the entire

01:23:32   between now and then just dealing with escapees.

01:23:36   Even our friend Marco even said, "Hey, you know, I would get into sports if I could get that back."

01:23:41   I've gotten two emails today. One email was a 2FA to get into my

01:23:47   Apple on the web when you sent me the notes for this, and the other one was somebody

01:23:50   who just sent me an email today. I was like, "What the fuck? You sent me an email today?"

01:23:55   Who sends a fucking email the day after the election?

01:23:58   I mean, it's the way we used to feel about Christmas. It would be like

01:24:02   some is like a be like having like a vacuum salesman at your house on

01:24:05   Christmas morning you'd be like why what are you doing don't you live in civil

01:24:09   society you don't send somebody an email on a day like today it's just what are

01:24:14   you thinking how did that even cross your mind to do that I'm just

01:24:18   I'm sending texts to my friends and saying are you okay that's what I've

01:24:22   been doing all morning is texting my friends to say are you okay the Sun never even came

01:24:26   out here. We actually have had we've had about 36 hours of complete

01:24:33   darkness. That I mean that might even making that up it's actually been a very

01:24:37   dreary day. Yeah you did go red. Yeah and yeah the amazing thing and I thought

01:24:43   well this is a good sign is yesterday election day it was beautiful it was 62

01:24:49   and sunny. What a good sign. What a great sign. Not a cloud in the skies.

01:24:54   Everything's coming up, Milhouse.

01:24:56   [Laughter]

01:24:58   This is going to be... I'm going to walk away with it. This is...

01:25:02   To return to that, because I just need to vent a little more, is like, even at last night,

01:25:08   even when it got bad, and even when the needle moved past the 50%,

01:25:12   that 2015 part of my brain said, "Calm the fuck down."

01:25:16   There's no way. I mean, how late was it before you started to flip

01:25:23   to flip and then how long did it take for you to really say, "Oh, shit."

01:25:26   That's a good point. That's a very good question.

01:25:29   There are plenty of chances and you expected to go back and forth. This is how it works.

01:25:33   Electoral, "Nah."

01:25:35   You know what? I started to feel really bad in my stomach when it took so long to call

01:25:43   Virginia.

01:25:44   Oh, okay.

01:25:45   Because I…

01:25:46   So, Florida, you're okay with Florida because you're in this big state, lots of places.

01:25:49   Yeah, and Florida's kind of…

01:25:50   - Two time zones, like there's a lot going on in Florida.

01:25:54   - And I'm enough of a political nerd where I kind of,

01:25:59   I do feel like this election flipped a lot

01:26:06   of the conventional wisdom,

01:26:08   but the conventional wisdom is still basically true.

01:26:11   And,

01:26:16   Virginia being so long was like a really bad sign.

01:26:21   So she, Hillary Clinton ended up winning Virginia,

01:26:24   but the fact that it took so long to call it

01:26:26   was really where it is.

01:26:29   So I would say at least on the East Coast time,

01:26:32   it was around, I don't know, around 10 o'clock,

01:26:36   so probably seven o'clock your time,

01:26:38   where I just thought the fact that they're not willing

01:26:41   to call Virginia is a really bad sign.

01:26:46   Yeah, I think I started to really get to fear a little before that.

01:26:50   Last night-- you know how you do the benefits, like where if you go and buy

01:26:53   this restaurant, the school gets money?

01:26:54   We try to do that.

01:26:55   So girls went out to go get some poke at the poke place, Poke Bowl.

01:27:02   And they were gone for a while.

01:27:05   And they came back in, and I was like, this is not good.

01:27:11   It was a situation where--

01:27:13   I follow this enough to know, OK, here's the battleground states.

01:27:16   I don't need an infographic to understand the importance of that.

01:27:19   Being somebody who's followed this more closely than I would ever admit in public until today,

01:27:23   I knew that there's a handful of places that are going to make a difference.

01:27:25   Right?

01:27:26   Anyway, I explained this with my kid.

01:27:27   I mean, yeah, California's got a lot of electoral votes, but what is it they say about companies

01:27:32   that's, you know, they picked into the price or built into the price?

01:27:36   We go into this knowing that there's a really good chance, I mean, there's a way beyond

01:27:39   good chance that California is going to go this way.

01:27:42   There's a very good chance that, say, Utah is going to go this way, et cetera, et cetera,

01:27:47   et cetera.

01:27:48   So you really focus on, it's like, we're not going to worry about the ponds.

01:27:50   We're going to worry about the row that's right in front of us here.

01:27:53   These are the big things.

01:27:54   And it really, I kept going, okay, you know, ha ha, here we go.

01:27:58   I'm not going to have a drink.

01:27:59   This is going to be fine.

01:28:01   And I just kept thinking, okay, it's time for a few of these to go from white to blue.

01:28:07   And I kept thinking, it really, really feels like it's really time for some of these to

01:28:11   go from white to blue to like, "Well, this seems quite irregular. Why are more of these

01:28:17   not flipping to blue?" And that's where I got to the headspace you're in, where you're

01:28:20   like, "What is taking so long? We thought that was going to be one of the firewall states.

01:28:28   Like what happened with that?" And I bet that along with a lot of other people watching

01:28:33   this, that's probably around the time we had the WTF, maybe a loud moment of going like,

01:28:39   You know, what if this is something, I don't want to say fundamentally different, because

01:28:43   it isn't like it started as an election and turned into a tennis game.

01:28:45   It was an election that ended as an election.

01:28:47   But at the same time, there are so many things that we thought to some level of certainty

01:28:52   we understood about this.

01:28:54   And I have to just, I mean, I'm sorry to keep coming back to this, but this is just where

01:28:56   my emotions and my mind are today, is I'm still stunned.

01:29:02   I'm just, I'm still stunned with how much I did not understand about what was happening.

01:29:07   And then you go and you look at the polls, and you go and you look at the reporting on

01:29:10   all of this.

01:29:11   And I think it's probably about five times worse for a journalist today.

01:29:16   You know what I mean?

01:29:17   Like, listen to these folks just sitting, listening to the NPR podcast this morning,

01:29:20   and they were just like, "Yeah, this is real different than anything we had imagined could

01:29:25   happen."

01:29:26   And so what, do we rule out?

01:29:30   I mean, just to get this out of the way, because there's certainly some part of your brain

01:29:33   that goes, "Huh, it's weird.

01:29:36   Like if I were going to make a program that affected the elections, if I were going to

01:29:39   do some kind of an exploit, I would make it look close for a while and then win by a little

01:29:42   bit.

01:29:43   Like you're a gambler, right?

01:29:44   But are we ruling that out?

01:29:46   Do we feel like that's probably not...

01:29:48   I just want to get it out of the way so we can move on.

01:29:50   But yeah, I don't think so.

01:29:51   Do you think there was meddling?

01:29:53   I kind of do.

01:29:54   No, I don't.

01:29:55   I don't think so.

01:29:56   I think it's a totally legit election.

01:29:58   And that's the problem.

01:30:00   There was a period between, I would say between like 8 and 10 Eastern time last night.

01:30:09   We had MSNBC on before 8, but 8 is really when we, you know, we, that's just when real

01:30:16   results are...

01:30:17   That's when polls start closing and you start being able to say something.

01:30:20   Right.

01:30:21   So from 8 to 10, I was kind of rolling my eyes and I kind of felt like MSNBC was sandbagging

01:30:29   it like to make it look close there was like they're sandbagging is a great word for it

01:30:34   like they're milking this this is their last chance they need to make this seem like a

01:30:37   horse race up to the end and then there was i kept saying every everyone kept saying how

01:30:41   close it was that was the watchword of the night this is so much closer than anybody

01:30:45   thought and and there was there was an interchange between uh rachel maddow and uh uh what's

01:30:54   guy's name. He's the guy who got fired from the big seat at NBC.

01:31:00   Oh, Tom Brokaw? No, but he got demoted. Not fired, but demoted.

01:31:06   Oh, Brian Williams. Brian Williams, that's it. There was an exchange between Brian Williams and

01:31:12   Rachel Maddow where they kind of went meta and they were like, "We're not fucking with you."

01:31:23   honest to God, this is as up in the air as we're making it seem. And it was right around that

01:31:31   10 o'clock at night moment where I thought, like, the fact that they're not willing to call Virginia

01:31:38   yet is like, this is something that's going on. And that's where I thought, hey, this isn't just

01:31:45   the TV. They're not just playing this for ratings. Right, right. Yeah, I felt something similar. And

01:31:53   And CBS did a really good job.

01:31:55   I mean, I didn't love every single one of the folks on.

01:31:57   I think they could have done with fewer than six people

01:31:59   and just let Dickerson talk more.

01:32:01   But it was a very good group.

01:32:03   But I felt a similar thing

01:32:04   in a lot of what I was looking at.

01:32:06   And that's when we were talking earlier

01:32:08   about the screaming WTF.

01:32:11   I don't know why I'm suddenly so precious about language.

01:32:13   But there did get to be this feeling

01:32:17   that you're describing of almost like,

01:32:19   like we need to break the fourth wall for a minute here.

01:32:22   Like, we all understand that there's a performance aspect to this.

01:32:26   I mean, a polling site is going to get less traffic if it's a solid 85-14 for a year.

01:32:39   If it's a pretty solid 85-14 for a year, that's not going to get as much traffic as something

01:32:44   where those numbers are changing around.

01:32:45   So we get cynical about that.

01:32:46   We understand clickbait and all that kind of stuff.

01:32:48   But no, I agree with you.

01:32:49   I think there was a certain point.

01:32:50   Maybe I was just inferring this with my own increasingly frazzled mentality, but it really

01:32:56   felt like they were struggling with it too. And so, we're avoiding getting to this, but like,

01:33:03   you know, the polls. Who everybody, you know, and like you go listen to anybody. I told you in text

01:33:11   today, like I've been listening to the FiveThirtyEight podcast and, you know, between Nate and

01:33:15   Harry, they're always trying to say like tamp down this like irrational exuberance about what this

01:33:19   means and like constantly, you know, Nate got burned pretty bad on Trump because at

01:33:24   one point he said, he's now famous for saying that he thought Trump, I can't believe I'm

01:33:28   saying his name, had a less than 20% chance of becoming the GOP candidate. And that really

01:33:33   came back to bite him. And I think he clamped down super hard with the model. And listen

01:33:37   to that show all along, how they developed the model, updates the model, what's happening

01:33:40   with the model. But I think they have all along been trying to tamp that down. But I

01:33:48   this really sick feeling where I want to hear this but I don't want to hear this. I want to hear what

01:33:52   they have to say because they were the most conservative and it was still so... I haven't seen

01:34:00   a side-by-side yet. I have not seen a side-by-side on how it turned out versus what each polling site

01:34:06   modeled, but that's going to be a hell of a story. Like, what parts of that broke down and how did I

01:34:14   I mean, I like to think of myself as an empathetic person. I'm fond of quoting that old Renoir

01:34:19   movie and saying everybody has their reasons. Like, I think I'm a fairly empathetic person

01:34:23   about this, but I did not realize how deep something was in this election. How deep some

01:34:32   set of feelings, and I think there's a variety of feelings, I think just calling it racist

01:34:36   or misogynistic is a little short-sighted. There's something maybe even deeper than

01:34:40   that going on here, and I called that way wrong.

01:34:43   Yeah, and it's, you know, it is clearly, I mean, you know, subtract white men and the

01:34:52   election is a blowout for Hillary Clinton.

01:34:56   In the model, but a lot of white women came out.

01:34:59   That's the crazy part.

01:35:00   It's true.

01:35:01   Right.

01:35:02   Yeah, and it's weird, like, what is the difference?

01:35:05   like why was the white, whether you're men or women,

01:35:10   angle so definitive here and not when the black guy

01:35:16   was running the last two elections?

01:35:19   You know what I mean?

01:35:20   Like he-- - Oh yeah.

01:35:21   - You know what I mean? - Look at the margins.

01:35:22   Look at the margins.

01:35:23   Look at the margins in the, oh God, listen to me.

01:35:25   I fucking hate myself.

01:35:26   Listen, look at the margins in the battleground states.

01:35:28   But look at the margins, the '08, the '12,

01:35:30   and the Hillary margins and Wilkes-Barre.

01:35:34   I mean, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it,

01:35:35   but that's one that Obama ran away with.

01:35:37   - Yeah, well, Pennsylvania-- - He won by 20 points.

01:35:40   - Pennsylvania's gone blue since '92, I think.

01:35:45   It's crazy, it's really, really weird.

01:35:47   Turnout was phenomenal in Philadelphia.

01:35:53   I don't know what you were watching.

01:35:57   You said you were watching "CNN."

01:35:59   - CBS and CNN, yeah. - Right, but on MSNBC,

01:36:02   they kept cutting to Philadelphia,

01:36:03   they were showing like crazy long lines like North Carolina North Carolina you

01:36:08   see a line where somebody takes their iPhone right in portrait mode and walks

01:36:11   along and you just see several hundred black people waiting to vote and you're

01:36:16   like clearly part of this when they do and they say like the whole percentage

01:36:20   reporting well what if we don't know how many people have actually voted right

01:36:23   but then you kept going like oh maybe maybe this is really gonna pull it out

01:36:26   maybe North Carolina is gonna be the one I think what they're gonna you know for

01:36:29   whatever reason they're gonna show I think the results will show that the

01:36:33   turnout in the middle of all these states where you know the rural areas that the the turnout was just

01:36:41   phenomenal

01:36:43   And hasn't been even you know with

01:36:46   You know

01:36:50   You know in the Obama election years it you know for whatever reason Trump turned these people out

01:36:56   And it's you know I don't get it, but it's there

01:37:00   I need to dash in a bit. Did you want to tell me about one more thing that you're excited about this week?

01:37:04   I do want to tell you about one more thing.

01:37:05   I'm very happy to help if I can.

01:37:06   [laughs]

01:37:07   That's the eighth rule. The eighth rule is there are no sixth and seventh rules of Brazilian steakhouse.

01:37:12   The ninth rule is you help a buddy with a read.

01:37:14   [laughs]

01:37:15   Have you ever heard of this?

01:37:16   Obrigado. Obrigado.

01:37:17   It's a new sponsor, a brand new company. Well, maybe you've heard of them. I don't know. You're juiced in.

01:37:23   So maybe you've heard of them.

01:37:24   Yeah, I'm juiced in.

01:37:25   Have you ever heard of a company called Squarespace?

01:37:27   Squarespace is that with an S?

01:37:31   With an S. Squarespace is...

01:37:35   Are you talking about the single best place to go to have

01:37:39   a website, a portfolio, or an online store?

01:37:42   That's exactly what it is.

01:37:45   Yes, I do. I've heard of Squarespace. Yeah.

01:37:47   Well, you're more juiced in than I am. I've never heard of this company.

01:37:50   I'm a little more juiced in. Yeah.

01:37:51   I've never heard of this company, but you can start building

01:37:54   your own website today.

01:37:57   Does it require a credit card?

01:38:00   It does not. But if you use this code

01:38:04   "talk show" -- now they don't have the "the" -- it's just "talk show"

01:38:08   but you'll get 10% off whatever level you end up signing up at.

01:38:12   But you can sign up for free

01:38:16   with no credit card.

01:38:19   Are you telling me you could start literally building your website today

01:38:23   today with Squarespace by going to squarespace.com.

01:38:25   Is that what you're telling me?

01:38:26   - Yes, if you have any notion in your head for,

01:38:28   hey, that should be a website.

01:38:31   I can make a website that is blank.

01:38:34   And it could be, like you said, a portfolio of your work.

01:38:39   It could be a store where you sell the crap that you make.

01:38:44   - Yeah.

01:38:46   - Could be a blog, could be a podcast, could be anything.

01:38:52   - Yes.

01:38:53   If you just start by going to squarespace.com,

01:38:57   you almost certainly will have an easier time doing it

01:39:01   than if you do it in any other way.

01:39:04   The sites-- - Is there any benefit,

01:39:06   is there any benefit at all to signing up for a year?

01:39:09   - I think you get a free domain.

01:39:12   If you sign up for a year. - You get a free domain name.

01:39:14   Sign up for a year.

01:39:15   - Free domain.

01:39:16   Are you looking at the, are you looking at my screen?

01:39:19   - Yes.

01:39:21   If I don't know, why did you home screen like that?

01:39:24   If you sign up for your docs in the wrong place, you can get a free domain name.

01:39:29   Uh, so literally they cover everything from registering the domain name to the

01:39:35   layout of your site, the fonts, the style, the, you know, is that a portfolio site

01:39:42   where you're showing the illustrations you make, is it a store where you're

01:39:45   selling t-shirts, is it a blog?

01:39:48   Is it a, all of that stuff you can set up.

01:39:51   visually they have.

01:39:53   I don't know man, what if I'm a developer and I want to get my hands on the actual code?

01:39:56   Is there any way they have any provision for that? Probably not because it's Squarespace, right?

01:40:00   They wouldn't have anything like a platform for that.

01:40:01   You would think that they wouldn't. You would think it's all just, you know, you got to click, click, click.

01:40:05   But the truth is, Merlin, this is amazing. If you want to get in there and like you want to like

01:40:11   write your own JavaScript code and put it in there, you can do it.

01:40:15   You actually can.

01:40:16   Right on the website you can do that.

01:40:18   Right in the website. You can just get in there and insert your own code.

01:40:23   But the thing is, with all these sites, if I run into any kind of trouble, I'm on my own. Is that correct?

01:40:27   If I... Let's say I run into some kind of trouble. Maybe I get confused.

01:40:32   Maybe I follow the wrong tutorial from John Sirquhousa's CPAN, and I do my backslashes the wrong way.

01:40:38   Is there anybody that can help me? Probably not.

01:40:40   You would... You know what?

01:40:42   What if you got a... What if you got a... What if they call it a greedy enumerator?

01:40:44   I would like to tell you...

01:40:44   What if you have something that's accidentally eating your JavaScript?

01:40:47   Is there anybody that you can call?

01:40:48   I would like to tell you that, you know, I would like to say that you are correct because you're on the show and I don't want to embarrass you.

01:40:53   I would like to say yes, you've got to fix it yourself.

01:40:55   Okay, good.

01:40:56   The truth is though, they actually have 24 hour a day real-time support.

01:41:02   You just call them up and...

01:41:05   Anyway, you can text them.

01:41:06   Yeah, but they've got people. They've positioned them around the world.

01:41:11   Literally, I'm...

01:41:12   What if I want to talk to somebody in Portland? Is there anything that they can help me with?

01:41:16   Yeah, they're in Portland. They're in Ireland.

01:41:18   They've positioned these people strategically around the world so that when you need tech

01:41:23   support, if you need tech support, you can get somebody on the horn.

01:41:29   It's like the Dr. Strange portals.

01:41:30   They're protecting the globe with these three equidistant points, and they put an entire

01:41:35   web of support over the earth, and that keeps us away from Dormomamamoo.

01:41:39   Exactly.

01:41:40   That's amazing.

01:41:41   What's it called?

01:41:42   What's the name of the service again?

01:41:44   It's called Squarespace.

01:41:45   Squarespace.

01:41:46   Now, I think they're going places.

01:41:47   I think you're going to hear about them.

01:41:48   I think-- keep it in mind, if you have a notion for a website,

01:41:54   go to squarespace.com.

01:41:56   Remember the code "talk show," know the, and you'll get 10% off.

01:42:00   But you don't need--

01:42:01   honestly, you don't even need 10% off.

01:42:03   Even if you forget the code, just go there and sign up.

01:42:06   It's a great service.

01:42:08   And there could be somebody in your life today who needs this site,

01:42:11   and they don't know it, but you do.

01:42:12   That's the thing.

01:42:13   You do not want to be in the webmaster business.

01:42:15   You don't want to be making for your preschool for your church group. You don't want to be doing that

01:42:19   You don't want to get out of that business where you've got to know the SSH login to be able to know

01:42:23   You don't need to do that anymore. Tell your friends and your family about this site because it's perfect for somebody in your life

01:42:29   Yeah, that's actually I mean, you know, I'm tongue-in-cheek on this whole thing where you you know are jumping in on this

01:42:36   That's actually probably the single best advice about Squarespace

01:42:41   is that keep it in mind for people who don't listen

01:42:43   to shows like the talk show, because exactly,

01:42:47   like if your kid's preschool or the church group

01:42:52   or whatever needs a website, guaranteed,

01:42:55   that is a better idea than you jumping in and saying,

01:42:59   oh yeah, I'll jump in and SSH in and start an index.html

01:43:04   web site, forget it, just go to Squarespace

01:43:10   and cut yourself out of it.

01:43:14   Totally true.

01:43:14   Cut yourself out of it.

01:43:15   They just got to run with that, right?

01:43:18   It's totally true, though.

01:43:19   What are we going to do?

01:43:26   I think we're going to be OK.

01:43:27   Yeah, I think we will, too.

01:43:30   I share your interest and obsession

01:43:31   with the whole idea of story.

01:43:33   So I was talking about this.

01:43:34   I'm doing a new show with a couple of friends of mine.

01:43:36   We were talking last week about that Steve Jobs lost interview.

01:43:40   that you can see on Netflix. And I was realizing, and forgive me if you've heard this, if you're

01:43:44   one of the five people who listen to that show, but I'm very interested in the idea

01:43:46   of how Apple and Steve Jobs and Pixar are so interested in the idea of story. Story

01:43:51   about the company, story as a thing that we create. And I was trying to make the case

01:43:54   that Apple also, if you accept the notion that story is an abstraction layer, their

01:44:01   computers and their devices are stories too. They're taking out all of the inessential

01:44:04   things and telling a great story with the minimal number of components needed to tell

01:44:08   this story correctly. So I've been thinking a lot about story, and now today I'm thinking

01:44:12   more about story, because I just, I feel like with the, with our President-elect right now,

01:44:20   you described something earlier, well, is that, is this a victory for him? Is it a victory

01:44:24   for the party? Is it a defeat of the opposing party? It's hard to know right now, but the

01:44:28   one thing I do feel that I need to learn more about before I try to do anything intelligent

01:44:32   rational, is to understand what stories he told, whether they're true, whether

01:44:38   they're good, whether they're accurate, whether they're kind, whether they're

01:44:40   decent, whether they're respectful. Whatever stories he's telling meant a

01:44:43   lot to people, and I think different parts of that story meant things to

01:44:46   different people, and a lot of the folks in those red states found a way to

01:44:50   overlook one to five terrible things about him because there was something

01:44:55   about that story that worked for them. And the failure of imagination for me, as

01:44:59   as I sit here today, is that I don't think I got that story well enough. And I think

01:45:03   like everybody else, I missed it. I don't know what's going to change as a result of

01:45:06   that, but I don't know how I proceed to do anything intelligently until I understand

01:45:09   what I got wrong. I don't want to point a finger. I don't want to yell at Jill Stein.

01:45:13   I want to first understand how I got it wrong. And I think I didn't get the story right.

01:45:21   So I am of the opinion that in the 2000 election that you can yell at Ralph Nader, that Ralph

01:45:32   Nader really fucked that one up. And you don't even want to get my way. You've probably heard

01:45:39   her do it because that one is...

01:45:42   She has a few hot button issues.

01:45:43   She has a hot button issues. And Ralph Nader in 2000 is one of them, is that Ralph Nader

01:45:50   really fucked that one up. And I don't feel like this is that at all. I'm with you. I

01:45:58   don't have any animosity towards the third-party candidates, towards Jill Stein or Joe Schenectady,

01:46:07   whatever the guy's name is.

01:46:08   Yeah, the pot guy, Joe Schenectady.

01:46:09   Yeah, the guy who doesn't know where Aleppo is, you know what I mean?

01:46:13   Yeah. Aleppo's that Brazilian restaurant in Philadelphia.

01:46:15   You know what? I think that's the third...

01:46:17   - That's the 12th rule of--

01:46:20   - Aleppo, if you yell Aleppo, you always get,

01:46:24   you get a fresh cut on the house sirloin.

01:46:27   - You like maybe a nice chicken heart?

01:46:29   - Yeah.

01:46:30   - Don't fill up on Aleppo.

01:46:33   - This isn't that at all.

01:46:35   It's very different.

01:46:37   I tweeted it.

01:46:41   My id comes out on Twitter.

01:46:45   I tweet a lot looser than I blog.

01:46:49   And even on this show, I'm looser on Twitter

01:46:54   than I am anywhere else.

01:46:56   And I tweeted before, I think it was even before,

01:47:01   yeah, I think it was like two days ago,

01:47:04   but where the Trump team had suggested

01:47:08   that they're gonna appoint Rudy Giuliani

01:47:12   as Attorney General and--

01:47:15   You could not put those announcements in Gingrich.

01:47:17   You could not put that in Mad Magazine and have it be possible.

01:47:20   And Newt Gingrich is Secretary of State.

01:47:23   And you know, maybe that's actually, you know, at this point, maybe that's going

01:47:26   to come to pass.

01:47:27   And like you said, it sounds like something out of Mad Magazine.

01:47:31   But honest to God, at least there's a certain honesty to it.

01:47:37   You know what I mean?

01:47:38   Like, I think it's preposterous.

01:47:40   I don't agree with it.

01:47:41   I think it's terrible.

01:47:42   But at least they're saying this is how bad it's gonna be.

01:47:47   You know, or this is how, you know, I say bad,

01:47:52   but this is how, you know.

01:47:54   - Different.

01:47:56   - How different it's going to be.

01:47:58   - I think we can fairly say in a nonpartisan way,

01:48:00   things are gonna be a little different for a while.

01:48:02   (laughing)

01:48:03   - Yes, I do.

01:48:05   I think that's exactly right.

01:48:07   But there is--

01:48:08   - Did you see that video of Obama high-fiving

01:48:10   a little kid dressed like Superman?

01:48:11   - Yeah.

01:48:12   - And then he fell down, he Superman high-fived him

01:48:15   and he fell back.

01:48:16   Like he was really, like the force

01:48:18   of that little five-year-old kid knocked him over.

01:48:20   - Right.

01:48:21   - I don't think you're gonna get so much of that anymore.

01:48:23   - Yeah, not so much.

01:48:24   - I'm gonna really, really miss that guy.

01:48:26   (sighs)

01:48:30   Sorry I cut you off there.

01:48:32   - No, it's, you know, I don't know where I was going.

01:48:34   - You gotta edit this thing and put it out, John.

01:48:36   This is gonna help a lot of people.

01:48:38   - That's exactly what I want, is--

01:48:40   I think you are probably one of the premier Brazilian steak podcasts that's available today.

01:48:44   I don't know all of them. The thing is, we can't scoop up everybody. That's the thing.

01:48:48   We're going to leave some people out of the Brazilians' meats.

01:48:50   Have you ever had the fried banana at a Brazilian steakhouse?

01:48:53   Shit, dog. Hell yeah.

01:48:55   And here's what I thought the first time I went. I was like, "Well, I'm not eating a fried banana.

01:49:03   That sounds disgusting."

01:49:04   That's how they get you. That's how they get you.

01:49:06   And that's how they get you.

01:49:07   It's pretty damn good.

01:49:08   It's really good.

01:49:10   And next thing you know, you're asking your guy.

01:49:12   The guy thinks you're asking for more of the top sirloin

01:49:16   or the bottom sirloin.

01:49:17   They've got 13 different cuts of steak.

01:49:19   And the guy thinks you're going to ask for that.

01:49:21   And you're like, no, bring us another fried banana.

01:49:24   They should serve it on a sword, though.

01:49:26   That would make it more fun.

01:49:27   They should.

01:49:28   Banana sword.

01:49:29   I think because, though--

01:49:32   I think the problem is that it's going

01:49:34   to fall right off the sword, it's

01:49:35   going to cut right through it.

01:49:37   I agree.

01:49:38   Did you get the little tongs on the table when you go?

01:49:40   I love little tongs.

01:49:40   Oh, always.

01:49:41   You got to get the tongs, because the tongs--

01:49:42   Well, you get to participate a little bit.

01:49:44   I don't think they have to do that,

01:49:45   but I like the fact that they cut most of it off,

01:49:46   and they kind of give you this look.

01:49:47   They go, huh?

01:49:48   And you grab your little tongs, and you

01:49:49   help with the rest of the way.

01:49:51   Right.

01:49:51   They cut it about 80% of the way.

01:49:54   And then you take your tongs, and then they

01:49:56   cut the rest of the way, and you take your little slab of meat.

01:50:01   Now, one Brazilian steak.

01:50:04   So--

01:50:05   I think America needs--

01:50:07   I think that's what America needs.

01:50:09   America needs a Brazilian steak.

01:50:11   - That's a really good way, stronger together.

01:50:14   I think that's something we could all use.

01:50:16   Are you, do you feel like you're gonna be okay?

01:50:19   I mean, after the holiday party's over,

01:50:20   but I mean, do you feel like,

01:50:22   I know it's probably too early to feel anything

01:50:24   too coherently, but anything you're thinking about

01:50:28   going forward?

01:50:30   - All I keep thinking is, I am upset.

01:50:36   I've taken this very hard.

01:50:37   I am politically very fascinated.

01:50:42   I've said this before, but where like,

01:50:45   when I first started thinking,

01:50:47   I should start writing a blog.

01:50:49   I had this name, Daring Fireball, in my pocket,

01:50:52   and I thought, should I write about Apple and tech stuff,

01:50:56   or should I write about politics?

01:50:58   And it was like a 50/50 call for me in 2002.

01:51:01   - Wow. - It really was.

01:51:02   - Wow. - Which one?

01:51:03   I really am that invested in this stuff.

01:51:06   Or maybe sports.

01:51:07   Did you ever consider sports?

01:51:09   Sports is always up there.

01:51:11   No, I'm not being facetious.

01:51:13   I mean, did it cross your mind?

01:51:14   It did, but not as much because I didn't

01:51:17   feel like it was as underserved.

01:51:19   I feel like--

01:51:20   OK, yeah.

01:51:21   I felt like politics and tech were underserved

01:51:25   by smart commentary.

01:51:26   Well, we both got lucky and different.

01:51:28   Obviously, you were way more successful than I was at this.

01:51:30   But we were both--

01:51:31   we had good timing at figuring out

01:51:34   a pie slice of a pie slice.

01:51:36   Like, who would ever think somebody would want

01:51:38   something about Mac productivity?

01:51:40   Like, you know, most people don't want a Mac site.

01:51:42   Most people don't want a productivity site.

01:51:44   Who would want a Mac productivity site?

01:51:46   That's bananas.

01:51:47   And in your case, there were not that many people

01:51:49   out there doing what you were doing.

01:51:51   But, you know, the sport's a little more.

01:51:53   - Totally true.

01:51:56   But I will tell you, and,

01:52:00   Like previous elections, you know, again,

01:52:03   I'm glad that Barack Obama won the last two.

01:52:07   I was despondent in 2000 and 2004

01:52:10   when George W. Bush won.

01:52:12   But this one, to me, there's like a,

01:52:17   I don't just feel like my side lost.

01:52:21   I feel a guilt.

01:52:23   I feel like, and I,

01:52:29   You know what I mean?

01:52:29   You and I are almost identically aged white men,

01:52:34   straight white men with wives and a kid,

01:52:39   and our kids are both what, roughly 10 years old.

01:52:42   My kid's a little older, yours is a little younger.

01:52:45   We're almost the same guy.

01:52:47   We really are.

01:52:47   And we make our living on the internet.

01:52:51   We've got it good, right?

01:52:55   I mean, there's no denying it.

01:52:58   You and I have it really good.

01:53:01   And I really do feel that at a basic level,

01:53:06   like I almost, it's not even my right

01:53:11   to feel bad about this one,

01:53:12   because it's my people who blew it.

01:53:17   And I didn't-- - That's true,

01:53:20   but there's another part of this,

01:53:21   that's part of what eats at me,

01:53:23   is that I have seen, and I agree with you,

01:53:25   like who needs two white guys talking about anything?

01:53:27   except like I'm a white guy who's really pulling

01:53:29   for a lot of stuff to change.

01:53:31   Like regardless of like, you know,

01:53:33   whatever applesauce my dick is in,

01:53:34   like there's some stuff that means a lot to me.

01:53:37   And as I have had small and sometimes private

01:53:40   little bits of evolution in how I think about the world,

01:53:42   I got a little myopic in thinking

01:53:44   that other people saw the same thing

01:53:46   and that they could be thrilled and buoyed

01:53:50   to see people who never had a chance

01:53:53   to be normal American citizens before,

01:53:55   get to do things in the last five years

01:53:57   could have expected. I mean, who saw the gay marriage thing coming along the way it did?

01:54:02   Well, some people did, and then it happened. And you're like, how can you look at that

01:54:05   and see anything but joy? The two people just got to be the person they want to be. America

01:54:10   is where you get to be the person that you want to be. And that's the hard part. But

01:54:14   it's even--I want to say even more especially as a white guy, because no, I don't have the

01:54:18   same--certainly I'm extremely privileged in so many ways. I get to go where I want to

01:54:23   to go and all that kind of stuff. But my little miniature journey into understanding these

01:54:28   little parts of America better and getting to see those people have these exalted moments

01:54:32   of victory after years of being told that they aren't an actual human being, to see

01:54:37   so much of that progress in the last five years and now see that in jeopardy hurts my

01:54:41   heart in a way that's difficult for me to communicate.

01:54:45   I feel exactly the same way.

01:54:46   I can't say it better.

01:54:53   This is why I'm glad you're on the show with me today.

01:54:55   And I really hope that whatever side of the election

01:54:59   people who are listening to this are on,

01:55:01   that they can hear us and sympathize.

01:55:06   I mean that.

01:55:08   And in a way, you know, like for example,

01:55:13   I think my wife, if she were, I don't think she listens to the whole show.

01:55:19   So I think she'd be furious if she heard me saying that I'm, you know, whichever side

01:55:25   of the election I'm on because she thinks the people who voted the other way are shitbags.

01:55:29   And she's not wrong.

01:55:30   She's not wrong.

01:55:31   She's right.

01:55:32   No, she's not.

01:55:33   She's not wrong.

01:55:34   She's not wrong.

01:55:35   Here's something I got schooled hard on by my friend in the show, John Siracusa.

01:55:39   And we were talking about things having to do with the way that women get treated by

01:55:43   everybody.

01:55:44   And I found myself saying this thing that I don't say anymore.

01:55:46   This is like less than a year ago.

01:55:48   But I found myself saying, "Don't these people who are these gamer-gate guys, don't they

01:55:51   realize that they're talking to somebody's sister or they're talking to somebody's daughter?"

01:55:57   And John, I think, very intelligently said, "Hey, you know, is that really, is that the

01:56:01   hill you want to die on?

01:56:02   You sure you want to put their, the importance of their humanity and rights in terms of how

01:56:07   how they relate to you.

01:56:09   And I thought about it for months and months and months.

01:56:10   And then I saw it happening a lot after the pussy grabbing,

01:56:13   and I thought about it a lot.

01:56:14   And now I think you have to want these things for people

01:56:17   because they're people, not because they're people

01:56:19   that you've decided are particularly empathetic

01:56:21   based on your own feelings and needs.

01:56:23   And that's where I think I do feel comfortable

01:56:25   as a white guy saying that this is a shit show,

01:56:27   because I've gotten to see those victories.

01:56:31   I see it in my kid's class.

01:56:32   I see it in the girl in my kid's class in a,

01:56:35   where's the hijab?

01:56:36   I mean, you see it.

01:56:38   It is real.

01:56:39   This is not an abstract thing about a wall.

01:56:42   This is about actual human beings

01:56:44   who have worked extremely hard to make what they can here.

01:56:48   And to see that potentially taken away

01:56:50   in such a massive way, if that doesn't move you,

01:56:53   you're not wired right.

01:56:54   - I saw a thing where just yesterday,

01:56:59   somebody posted on Twitter, just, I mean,

01:57:02   it was a thousand of them, you know,

01:57:04   maybe there's a thousand different pictures

01:57:06   the same thing but somebody posted yesterday a picture of a white guy

01:57:11   looked you know maybe around somewhere around 27 years old white guy at a Trump

01:57:16   rally the day before the election and he was wearing a shirt that said Hillary is

01:57:22   a bitch pound sign Trump so black letters Hillary is a bitch and then the

01:57:31   #ItWasInRedTrump.

01:57:35   And somebody, you know, just, the observation was,

01:57:40   can you even imagine, you know,

01:57:43   how much worse is the misogyny that allows somebody

01:57:48   to go out in public with a shirt like that?

01:57:50   Because what would be the equivalent shirt against Obama?

01:57:54   Right?

01:57:55   Nobody would go out wearing a shirt

01:57:57   with the N-word on it, right?

01:57:59   I mean, or I say nobody, but, and it's, you know,

01:58:04   maybe in a country of 300 million,

01:58:05   there's one guy who would do it.

01:58:07   But this wasn't like that abnormal.

01:58:09   - But you wouldn't have 46% of the population

01:58:12   thinking it's okay.

01:58:13   - Right, exactly.

01:58:14   There is something very different.

01:58:16   And--

01:58:17   - There's no cultural prohibition against that

01:58:20   that's pushing back to make him go,

01:58:21   maybe this isn't such a good idea.

01:58:22   - And it makes me feel personally.

01:58:26   And even before the, and again, this was like 48 hours ago,

01:58:29   This is before the results.

01:58:31   But that one tweet and the guy wearing that shirt

01:58:34   that said that, it just emphasizes how I feel

01:58:38   like this whole time, I feel like I need to step backwards

01:58:43   and let other people tell me what is going on

01:58:49   rather than observe myself.

01:58:56   You know what I mean?

01:58:57   I do.

01:58:59   You have to shut the fuck up at the times when somebody is telling you

01:59:05   something you need to hear.

01:59:06   And then increasingly, I'm coming around to the idea

01:59:08   of how important it is to speak up when somebody is doing the opposite.

01:59:12   Exactly.

01:59:13   The only time I feel the need to speak up is to observe.

01:59:17   Like for example, to say, it is to me, literally--

01:59:23   I'm not exaggerating-- unacceptable to wear a shirt

01:59:27   that says Hillary is a bitch.

01:59:29   It's completely unacceptable.

01:59:31   It really, to me, is as unacceptable

01:59:36   as saying Obama is the N-word.

01:59:40   It's that equivalent.

01:59:44   Yet, we're not there as a society.

01:59:47   So I'm willing to stand up and say that,

01:59:50   but in terms of how we got this election result,

01:59:57   I just feel like, you know, I don't know.

02:00:01   - I don't know either.

02:00:04   - I tell you what, the other thing too,

02:00:10   and I think we're in the same boat here,

02:00:12   with, like I said, like with two kids who at this point,

02:00:15   like when we first had our kids,

02:00:17   it felt like they were so far apart in age, right?

02:00:20   - Oh, I know, I know, I know.

02:00:22   We were just playing with that.

02:00:23   Last night, Ellie was pulling out some of her stuffies

02:00:25   'cause she was feeling pretty wrecked,

02:00:27   And she found that little bird Jonas gave her in New Zealand.

02:00:30   It was like...

02:00:33   They were like babies. There was a little baby and a big baby.

02:00:36   Yeah, it was like...

02:00:37   Well, it was like, you know...

02:00:40   But at this point, it feels like they are both "about 10 years old."

02:00:46   And that's a loose approximation.

02:00:49   I have to say, honest to God, and we don't like...

02:00:55   We haven't indoctrinated Jonas with politics.

02:00:58   We haven't, you know, like, you know,

02:01:02   we don't make him talk about it.

02:01:03   We don't make him think about it.

02:01:04   He just absorbs what he picks up.

02:01:08   I have to say, he is devastated.

02:01:10   He's absolutely devastated.

02:01:12   And the kids, you know, again,

02:01:17   maybe it's because we're in the city

02:01:19   and it's an urban environment,

02:01:20   but the kids today are so open-minded.

02:01:23   kids today like he you know I mean he's got like oh it's it's it's I mean

02:01:28   unbelievably different yet my daughter does not need to be schooled that it's

02:01:31   it's okay for gay people to be together I mean it's everywhere it's the teachers

02:01:37   at her school it's it's I mean that's where we live this is life these are our

02:01:42   friends I these I think and you it would be like saying to her you know Pete you

02:01:46   shouldn't punch people in the face just cuz I wear a blue shirt like well yeah

02:01:49   yeah of course not like why did you need to tell me that well just so you know

02:01:52   It's okay if gay people are together.

02:01:53   - I've said this before,

02:01:54   and I think you listen to my show,

02:01:57   so maybe you've heard it,

02:01:58   but I think it's the most amazing thing.

02:01:59   Jonas' School has a club, and it's called GLOW, G-L-O-W,

02:02:04   and it stands for gay, lesbian, or whatever.

02:02:10   And to me, it is the greatest,

02:02:12   it's so much better than LGBT,

02:02:15   and then they keep, there's Q and--

02:02:19   - QIA.

02:02:19   - Yeah, QIA.

02:02:20   Gay, lesbian, or whatever is to me...

02:02:26   Oh, that's the actual name?

02:02:27   No, it's literally the name. It's officially the name. I'm not making it up. It is so great.

02:02:32   It's actually weirdly efficient.

02:02:33   But nobody... but like, he doesn't think it's funny or clever at all. That's literally...

02:02:40   but it actually is what everybody of his generation seems to think is like, "Wow, yeah, you know,

02:02:48   Whatever you're into, you're into.

02:02:50   Cool.

02:02:51   It's all right.

02:02:52   Why would that matter to me?

02:02:54   It's like me worrying about you having a green car.

02:02:56   But this election result is such a repudiation of that or whatever part, right?

02:03:02   That's the stage two I'm going to be hitting.

02:03:06   And the kids get it.

02:03:07   The kids do.

02:03:08   There's no denying it.

02:03:13   It's not just like the video of the Latino girl saying to Hillary Clinton, "I'm worried

02:03:19   that my parents are going to be deported."

02:03:22   And Hillary says, "Come here.

02:03:24   I'm going to do whatever I can."

02:03:28   It's all kids.

02:03:29   It doesn't matter what their background is.

02:03:31   All kids see it, and really, I don't know what to do.

02:03:36   It's the most loss I've ever felt as a parent.

02:03:40   Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, it's so early. I think it's at a time when you're not sure

02:03:47   what's going on, you're feeling at sea. You know, I think the advice to not panic is a

02:03:52   good one. I mean, it's hard not to, but I think on some level, you've kind of got to

02:03:58   just, you got to just feel your way through and know we've gotten through a lot of stuff

02:04:02   and we'll go through a lot of stuff in the future. I don't have anything inspirational

02:04:04   to say here, except that like you just, you've got to keep your cool, keep doing the right

02:04:08   thing and try not to be unkind. Like right now, there's a lot of people going after

02:04:13   each other and there's a real vibe of telling—feels like there's the beginnings of a vibe of

02:04:19   finger-pointing and there's a big vibe. And you know, if that's your thing, you know,

02:04:24   Hakuna Matata. But like, I would feel like if I had one thing to ask, let's go easy

02:04:28   on that for a while and let's go easy on tearing each other apart or tearing other

02:04:32   people apart. And let's maybe just have at least a couple, three days where we don't

02:04:36   people that they're feeling wrong incorrectly or they're feeling bad wrongly. Let's let

02:04:42   people have a time to grieve for whatever it is they're grieving for, even if you don't

02:04:45   think they deserve it.

02:04:49   That's exactly how I feel. And I don't want... Again, I don't want to point any fingers.

02:04:54   I really don't. I just want to say, "Keep pushing in the right direction and forget

02:05:05   It's so hard because we're, as mechanical devices,

02:05:10   human beings are meant to see everything day by day,

02:05:16   hour by hour, moment by moment.

02:05:18   But the truth is, in the long term, what matters is

02:05:23   on the years and decades perspective.

02:05:30   And just keep pushing in the right direction

02:05:32   and it'll work out even though this is clearly a setback.

02:05:37   And I really do think that it's not right,

02:05:45   counterproductive to start pointing fingers.

02:05:47   - Well, let's check back in after a while.

02:05:51   I gotta go pick up my kid and start my holiday party.

02:05:54   I have a holiday party, did you get the invitation?

02:05:58   (laughing)

02:05:59   - I'm gonna be joining you.

02:06:02   Merlin Mann, where else can people listen to you?

02:06:05   You are, in my opinion, probably the single greatest

02:06:09   podcaster on the internet.

02:06:11   Where else?

02:06:12   - You're always saying that.

02:06:13   - No, but I actually mean that.

02:06:15   - Oh, thank you.

02:06:16   - You have a bizarre gift for being really good

02:06:20   on a podcast.

02:06:21   - Bizarre gift, declares John Gruber.

02:06:23   I don't know, I just don't fucking know at this point.

02:06:26   Tell me very good branding.

02:06:28   Just go to Hot Dogs Ladies if you wanna see me on Twitter.

02:06:30   Kind of quiet right now go to hot dogs ladies on Twitter, you know, I should do you know what they should do

02:06:35   They should listen to the show. I do with John Sir. Cusa. I do show John Sir Cusa called reconcilable differences never

02:06:41   Never heard of it. Is that relay dot FM slash RD never is this guy John Sir Cusa? I don't know

02:06:49   I think he might be an Italian. I don't know if he's here legally

02:06:52   We're gonna build a big

02:06:54   Beautiful wall with Napoli and we're gonna make the Italians pay for it. It's a spicy meatball

02:07:00   That I don't run down