Let me just check my speed real quick. I feel a little bit pokey. This will just be a second. Yeah, yeah. You know, my upload speed has hugely increased recently. Really? Let's see. Let me test your memory. Do you remember my classic download upload heretofore? It was like 300 down and eight up. That feels hurtful. I think you sent me a screenshot of that at some point. Well, that might've been when I was somewhere else, but when I'm at one of, when I'm at one of my Xfinity there, I said it.
related properties. It's a little under a grand down, like a solid 800 down. And up until recently, it was 17 up. That's not much better than what I said. What did you say? Three? Or three. That's not right. No, I think I said eight. The one I just did, 41. 41 up. That's... Welcome to 2002. You're saying like maybe I got like a pretty good DSL, like some real solid DSL. Just don't pick up the phone. Now, wait, you can talk on the phone then, right? It was a separate phone line? Yeah.
We had that at our original location here. And it seemed like a huge improvement over dial-up at the time. You know? It was. Different days. Yeah. All right. Fine. Be that way. Hey, everybody. I'm going to tell you what I love about America and what I love about being in it. Jim, please, please leave his laughing in a triplet. Make it extra loud. Would you say that you believe in America? Um, I'm sorry. Um, three, two, I believe in America. Close enough.
He raised his daughter in the American style. Yeah, when you had a cat, you raised it in the American fashion. And it was a masculine cat. I took a photo. Wow. I saw your recent photos. Oh, of what? Of Savvy. Oh, oh, oh. Do you follow that woman in Australia? She's wonderful. You're going to have to narrow it down. Oh, there's more than one. Yeah, I actually do watch the YouTube video that I posted a picture of with a woman in Australia. I do follow that channel.
But that woman is not Australian. She just happens to be in Australia right now. Whoa, that's confusing. This is like talking to my teen, except you're somehow nicer. When did we just stop saying hello and goodbye? Did that happen in your house? Did people just stop saying hello and goodbye at one point? We never did that, so it didn't have to stop. Whoa, how do you have easy, friction-free greetings with each other?
People just yell at you that it's tomorrow's ice day? We're not a big greetings family. Hello! You know, like Uncle Leo. Yeah, no, I'm familiar with greetings. You learned about them in college? I know how they work. I could name some. I'm just imagining you kind of hunched over with your number two pencil. It used to be, I could name all kinds of greetings. That's right. That's right. Mom would always say to me, Heya. Hello. Hi. Did you watch Sirens?
Sirens? There was a series called Sirens that was about killer mermaids, I believe. There was a movie about killer mermaids and there was a series about mermaids, but I don't think that's what you're talking about. It isn't. Never mind. You're talking about the one with the two ladies and it's kind of like a comedy. It's got the Little House of Dragons lady with a really good... I don't think she's Khaleesi. You're talking about Misa?
I don't know. I saw a banner ad for Sirens, and I looked at it long enough to know that it wasn't another mermaid-based property, and I lost interest. um yeah madeline and i i don't see the whole thing i've watched more than i would like and i continue to watch it and it's not good but i can't stop it's not good but like that one woman i don't know her name but she's the one that's not
the woman from Boogie Nights, and she's not the woman from, she's the other woman. Her name's Megan, I want to say. She's terrific. This is a star-making performance for her. But it's not a good show. Anyways, I Believe in America.
Oh, the other photo I took, though, I took a photo today at a stoplight of a cat that looked like Savvy in a window. Even from a distance, though, you could tell it was cleaner. Yeah. I think that woman's name, at least her screen name, I don't want to blow up her spot. It doesn't matter. But she's a person who works at an animal rescue place in Australia. And she's really funny. And either one of those would be enough to put her on my list. But those two together is really good. And...
See, it's an Australian rescue, so you should see the kind of animals they get there. You know what I'm saying? They're really good. And she's got a beardie. It was a sweet, precious angel. I'll tell you why I love America. This is not about other people from Australia. There's two women who sing in the band Tropical Storm.
Tropical F storm. Yeah. I hate when people do that. Either curse or don't curse. Why do you hate it? Okay. Here's the thing. Yeah. What we're choosing to do is don't curse. All right, fine. I'll do it again. Tropical F storm. Does that hurt you? It sounded painful. Well, no. The one that bugs me is when people put asterisks in their own curses. Right. If you put asterisks in your own curses, you lose your license to curse. Maybe they're just trying to do like a Qbert homage or something.
How does he talk? How does he talk? Curse with the punctuation symbol. I know. How does he talk? How does he sound? I believe. Now, how would you say I believe in America? I don't know. Okay. Anyway, it's just fun. It's fun. It's fun. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But like, when's the last time you had me over for coffee or, you know, petted my cat. I'll tell you why I love America, the follow up this week.
I don't even care if it's from America. All I know is we're in America. We got a bunch of good follow-up this week. And this is a Dr. Heavy companion light episode. John will be driving this week and taking us many interesting places. Um, my only job this week is to say hello. Cause I still say hello. That's something my people basically invented. Hello. Uh, let's see. So, so this is a running topic on this is, we're having a lot of, uh,
Well, D-Rail's here, and I like that. There's two words we talk about on... Thank you. No. There's two words we talk about on Dubai Friday. I believe that there are two words that can be said in a lot of funny ways. One of them is hello, and the other one is yes. Mm-hmm.
And I think Uncle Leo is one of the original funny hellos. Jerry! Jerry! Hello! Right? That guy's an old character actor. He used to be on the Monkees and stuff back in the day. I don't know his name. They had so many good character actors on that show.
What's that one guy, Matthew Barney, Barney Frank? That one guy who played one of Jerry's dads? They changed his dad at one time. There's a lot of confusing things like that. They changed the Three-Eyed Raven. That's how we got Max von Sydow. They changed the Mountain. That was confusing.
And it kind of did a little bit of switcheroo. Although the High Sparrow and the High Septon do appear in the same episode, the High Sparrow kind of ends up taking over. And the High Sparrow is the guy who was in Brazil. He also plays Cardinal Woolsey in Wolf Hall. It's the Infinity spokesperson. Right. That's what people know him from. Toyota? Was that there? Who was it? Infinity. Okay, I'm sorry. There was a time when car people, especially Japanese car people, which I think are car people.
started trying to sell upscale cars where they hadn't before. Now, what was the Toyota one then? What am I thinking of? Lexus? Toyota is Lexus. That's right. Can you do one more? Plexus? Lexus. Henry Miller. All right. So we did a Nissan Infiniti, Toyota, Lexus. Can you do one more? Johnny, come lately. You're not talking about a Cadillac. You're talking later than that.
when they started introducing these cars. I'll give you a hint. It's Japanese. You're following my model here. There's one more. I want to say it's one of those brands you don't hear about anymore. I want to say, okay, so it's not like Nissan. or uh i already said nissan is infinity and it's not nissan it's nissan you don't know that i do how would you know that because in every ad that for this car company in my life they would say nissan
And I think the company advertising itself to me knows how we're supposed to pronounce it in America. I think you should pronounce it as somebody who was originally purportedly from Long Island. I think you should say Nissan. No, I don't think I should. I think Billy Joel says it.
I bet he says it right. You don't really play with me in the space sometimes, but you do let me play by myself. Well, are you not going to try for the third one? Yes, I will. Okay, Infinity with Jonathan Pryce. Lexus. Toyota. And is it a Japanese brand? It is. I told you, yeah. Is it Nissan? No, that's Infiniti. Don't you pronounce it Nissan? Yeah, but it's the same company. I'm blowing this. It's...
What is another? It's not Subaru. What do you do for my Subaru? Tell me the car maker and I'll see if I can get the name. Honda. Oh. Nicer than an Accord? Is anything nicer than a core, John? And they made up a new brand name for it? They sure did. Okay. Oh, it's not Odyssey. Nope. That's not a car brand. You know what? Okay, now I'm the hound. Just kill me. What is it? Acura. Oh. Honda Acura.
Yeah. Remember the Acura NSX? It was known as the Honda NSX in the rest of the world. I remember the 900 SUX. Yeah. And then Mazda had Mazda had one too. That would have been a bonus question, but you don't get to do that because you failed on the third. Oh, cause I didn't, I didn't get through the first round. I had a, I had a protege, which was, which is a new name. They gave the three, two, three.
My boss had a 626. Yep, that was a nice car. And our boss, his brother, had a 929. I know. I kind of like that model naming scheme. I do too. you know i for some reason it really it really does work for me and i'll tell you man i loved that car that was not a costly car i mean i made payments on it forever but it was
It was really good. You should have seen when I was... This is back in the day, right? This is 1990, 91. And I'm out there reading consumer reports and looking at all the little circles and how full they are and all that stuff. And what was I thinking about? I think I was thinking about... I didn't want to go all the way to an Accord, and I wanted to be a little bit above a Civic. And I was looking at the Protégé, aka 323, versus the Ford Fiesta.
And the wheel size. You made the right choice out of those two. You think so? The wheel size, I don't know what you call it, the size of the wheels, it troubled me. It was smaller than all the other wheels on cars. It was about the size of a bicycle. It was like a big roller skate. It really was.
So you think I did right? Now, what about a Rabbit? I mean, you would have been better with a Civic. Out of those three cars, I would have said Civic. I'm telling you, I was talking to my friend Michael today. He lives in Berlin, one of my best pals.
He had, he got a Civic around the time I got that thing. And then all through, even like the dot-com era, I've told you the story. He couldn't kill it. He had... so many miles on that thing a car that he bought in 1990 and even as sgs was making some pretty good uh stock anyway he uh he he stuck with it because he couldn't bear to part with it because it still worked and like sub
1,000 sub $500 repairs kept it running for 10 years. Isn't that wild for the time? 10 years is nothing. My car is older than 10 years old. But yeah, the early 90s Civics are actually highly sought after because they were so tunable.
I mean, it's hard to find an unmodified one at this point because people like to tune the engines to make them like hot rods type things. Oh, I see. They like soup them up. They soup them up. But yeah, but just the bones of the car. Bones of the car are good. The neighborhood kids. did that with like Toyotas a while back and put ground effects on them and stuff. Yeah. Huh. This episode of Reconcilable Differences.
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grist.com slash diffs. Our thanks to Grist for supporting Reconcilable Differences and all of RelayFM. All right, we got to get to our follow-up because we got a lot of stuff for the show here. We're talking about Pee-wee, you know, talking about... Did you watch that Pee-wee thing on HBO? No. It's great. I did see you post it, though.
Well, okay. Kudos. Hey, everybody. It's an even-numbered episode, which means we'll have a bonus episode after this. We'll record and put out, and if you support the program... You get that in your feed and you can support the program at relay.fm slash RD slash join. And John, do me a kindness. Tickle everyone's fancy, including mine.
but by saying what it is, you're going to talk about. In the members only after show, which by the way, is not a separate episode. It's just one longer episode. If you get the members only feed for the show. Anyway, in that different, it's a different episode this week, I'm going to talk about, this is like.
Past tense. John Is, I don't have it in front of me right now. You said John Is was playing Marathon, which I know to be the name of a filling station in Ohio. And I think, is it Myst? Is it like Myst? No, you remember Marathon from back in the day, right? Maybe. Is Miss the one on the island? Yes. Is Marathon where you shoot the Nazis in a tunnel? No. Marathon is shooting aliens. Okay. Oh, is it one where you go to lots of different planets?
No, I'm thinking of that old game. Anyway, if you're listening to this and you're an old school Mac user, you may remember the classic Mac game marathon. I asked you if I needed to prep and you said I didn't. You don't. That's not what I was playing. I wasn't playing the Classic Mac Game Marathon. I was, in fact, playing the closed alpha of the modern game.
From the same company, based on the same IP, also called Marathon. Oh my goodness. It is nevertheless a different game. Was it a game you loved as a kid? Well, as a kid, yes, I did love the original Marathon. I'm sorry. You know, I don't care, John. I'm trying to keep you talking. Marathon, was that a game that you played, I guess, in the 90s? When you weren't a kid, but you liked games?
I guess it was the nineties. Yes. Anyway, that will be in the members only after show. If you want to hear about me playing the closed alpha of marathon and me trying to explain what the hell the current version of marathon is to Merlin. Oh my God. I cannot wait. Um, why they close the alpha.
It didn't work out? Closed Alpha just means that not everybody could play it. Oh, of course. You can't just come in and ask. You had to be selected to play it. And it was for a short period of time. Now it's over. I watched some videos about the video game I'm thinking of. You know how everybody in England had that weird computer that everybody loved? Sinclair Spectrum? Sure. But then there was all those different games also. They had different games over there that they liked.
And there was that one where you could go to all these different planets, and it kind of looked like a Magnavox. A mule? I don't know. It was one where you could go to different planets, and yeah, I heard it inspired a lot of tech bros. But it sounds amazing. That's what we're going to talk about in this exactly the same episode. But we're going to talk about John Iswas playing the closed alpha of Marathon, but we have some follow-up to get to. Yeah, last week...
We were talking about Allentown, the Billy Joel song, and there was some back and forth about what the original title was before it was Allentown. And we did find a link to an article I found in real time during the show, but didn't have time to obviously to read the entire article while we were recording the podcast. So A, I'm going to put that same link probably in the show notes again for this one. And B, I want to actually clarify now that I have read more than.
glancing at the text to figure out what the situation is this is basically just an expansion of what we said last time but i can't let it stand as a long islander i need to make sure this is clarified so i will now i'm going to quote in this house Yeah, I'm going to quote somewhat extensively from this hidden history WordPress page by Lenny Flank. What a great name. It's lflank.wordpress.com. I'm Lenny. This is a post from 2015. This is Carl.
all about Billy Joel in his history blog. All right. So the writing is Lenny's. So forgive me if it sounds strange. Do you remember that he says it twice, though? That's what makes it funny. He goes, I'm Lenny. This is Carl. I'm Lenny. I think that's Frank Grimes. Is it? No, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's when he's introducing, I think they're introducing themselves and they say, I'd say, I'd say he's more like a duck. Yeah. All right. So here we go for money.
Singer-songwriter Billy Joel had already reached the top of the charts with his hit album, The Stranger. For his next album, The Nylon Curtain, he wanted to do a song about the decline of American manufacturing and the economic ruin it was leaving behind. At first, he centered the song around Levittown. the company-owned industrial city in New York that Joel had grown up near. Now, let me just pause here.
levittown described as a company-owned industrial city in new york i disagree with that characterization as someone who spent a lot of time in levittown and who's both both of my parents grew up there and my grandparents lived there their entire lives we visited them frequently and i would not call levittown a company-owned industrial city in New York. But anyway, let's let that slide. Sorry, sorry, but is the implication there that, like, you know, Company Town, I think of as meaning...
The light definition of that is it's the town where everybody lives who works for a big company. But the bigger implication of company town, the company store version, is more like Lumen. Or like, you know, a mining town. Yeah, but this says company owned. What company? So that's weird. So like, yes, obviously Levittown was a development made by a single company, but they didn't own the town and everyone there didn't work for Levitt.
an industrial city. Levittown is a suburb. It is the prototypical suburb. It is not an industrial city. It's Leave it to Beaver. Anyway, setting that aside. So, you know, they said Joel had grown up near there. So this is quoting, we're living here in Levittown and I don't see much going down. The lyrics began.
But although he worked out a musical chord progression that he liked, Joel couldn't make the lyrics fall into place. At heart, Billy Joel was a storyteller and he couldn't see a good, interesting story here and thought his lyrics would be boring, so he set the song aside. Then a few years later, in 1981, while preparing to record the Nylon Curtain, he took a trip down to Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.
which contained the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, and became interested in the history of the steel industry and the problems it was currently facing. That gave him the story he wanted to tell. Although the steel industry was centered in Bethlehem, Joel thought that Allentown sounded better in the lyrics and was easier to rhyme. He also concluded that people would think a song about Bethlehem was a Christmas song. You did great, John. These are all things you said.
And so the lyrics for Levittown became reworked into Allentown. As he explained later, it sounded like Jimmy Town, Bobby Berg, any town. It just sounded real American. So there you go. It was a song about Levittown that was going nowhere. And when he. visited the steel area in Pennsylvania. He said, this should be about this, but he couldn't pick Bethlehem, even though that was the center of it. He ended up picking Allentown.
so yeah that's why i knew like in the in the lore of the my long island upbringing it was like uh you know that allentown song was originally bethlehem but he couldn't find rhymes to it but we didn't have the levittown part of it so that was part of it but that was kind of like the first version of this song that just didn't work out and honestly like
manufacturing and economic ruin that doesn't describe like uh levittown levittown was not a big manufacturing city like so i think lenny maybe needs to visit levittown and see what the deal there is but There you go. Slightly expansive, but as a Long Island native, it is my duty to make sure this is recorded for posterity. Thank you, Mr. Flank. You have served your people well. Follow up.
We use all parts of the Joel. So this next part is all about the apparatus, which we discussed last episode, which is a... It's something on the side of a residential building.
in my neighborhood a couple blocks from where i live and i've been tracking it over time because i am i'm not an anything and i want to get it out of the way straight ahead i never really really super actually wanted to definitively find out what this is I'm glad in some ways that we're learning, and I hope that it will get to the more basic question I have of why does it look so bananas, and is this the way it was supposed to look when they designed it?
With that said, I became a little, not obsessed with it, but every time I passed it, I would look at it because it was unusual. And the key part is I started noticing additions to it.
on this house that had been taking a long time to renovate. Additions, additions, additions. And now we've gone, well, not full circle, but people say that and don't understand what it means. But we have got turned a corner to where they still occasionally add slight new things, but also the old things are looking very bad.
and rusty and weird. And we got some, I noticed some of this go by. I've been saving it because I wanted to hear it from you. But what did our listeners have to say about the apparatus, John? So the first bit of feedback we got was from Neil Torda.
who said, Crocodile Dundee style, that's not an apparatus. This is an apparatus. And sent us a picture in a Mastodon post, which will link in the show notes, that shows an even more impressive collection of... pipes and tubes and valves and gauges i'm not sure if this does the same thing as our apparatus which we'll get to in a second yeah but it is very impressive it does have a lot of parts but there's one thing i'll say about the thing that neil sent even though it is like
physically more complicated than the the the one that we're talking about that's near you i when i've been thinking about it i think one of the things that bothers me personally the most about the apparatus near you is that it is outdoors
And as someone from the East Coast, from New England. And for a long time with exposed wires. It's very, it's very, just the, there's electrical, but yeah, there's all this other stuff too that you have to imagine. Sorry, I'm interrupting you. You live in a place where there's salt. That thing's going to be dead in two years.
right it's not the salt thing like here's the thing that the reason it read to me as like an art installation or a joke or a funny thing or whatever is because if you are in new england and you see a large complicated structure of pipes
outside a building, ostensibly carrying water, you're like, well, that's not a functional thing, obviously, because you can't have pipes that carry water outside of a building in New England. That doesn't... work the winter will come it will freeze those pipes the water will burst expand and burst the pipes and destroy everything that's there and yet in california so many and other parts of the country so many things are outdoors because it never actually gets that cold
So that's one I realized in hindsight, that's one of the reasons that thing looks so absurd to me. Whereas when I see this picture from Neil, it came to me. It's like, why doesn't this picture by Neil bother me? It's like, oh, but that's in a building. But it's got more. I agree with Neil. It is. I mean, I don't know what I'm looking at. had apart from something similar to the apparatus but a couple things uh it looks much better
When I say better designed, it's at least a lot more pleasing to look at in terms of people figuring out what the shape of this thing is to take up a certain amount of space in an area. It locks the bell. It also doesn't have an SPKR on it, does it?
yeah like i think this is actually a different thing and i do look at this and i do have the question of like do we need this many pressure valves really like how many like how many valves and and again i just i keep coming back to this whole like This seems, oh, and by the way, the second I looked at this, it occurred to me, a word went through my mind, waterworks.
I think what I was thinking, might be last week, what I was thinking of when I said it's like Mousetrap, the game Mousetrap. There used to be a card game called Waterworks. This was probably before your time. Like one of those Mealborns type weird people games. But where you would try to connect pipes and you'd have cards. Both of these look...
I mean, just to my mind, maybe because I'm, maybe I just don't know what enough actual equipment in life looks like. I watched a video about the original Jeeps in 1940 this weekend, and they're just a model of simplicity. by design right so that you could they have manual windshield wipers so there's no fuse to to break they you know everything on it is service like is there for a reason and serviceable and and deliberately like dull and boring and capped out
limited, but also really great. It had four-wheel drive in 1940. Unheard of. And anyway, I look at this ad hoc is the phrase that goes through my mind. It just doesn't seem like this was... If you'd asked somebody at the beginning, what are we building here?
Is this what it's supposed to look like? And we'll have a link to this in notes. Yeah, this actually kind of looks like maybe like there's a circulator pump and it's part of a heating system. I don't actually understand what this is, but no bell, no sprinkler. Uh, no SPKR, like a fire hose attachment for the, uh, fireman or whatever, but it is impressive. So there's that. But then we get into after Neil, uh, was flexed on us and said, uh, that's not a knife. This is a knife.
We got to the apparatus explanation. Well, game recognized game, first of all, to Neil. Thank you for submitting this. I agree. This is extremely good. We have the apparatus explanations. Various people taking a look at your apparatus. You know what I mean? Yes, my neighborhood's apparatus. Yes, and telling us what it actually is. It's good when you get lots of people giving this feedback.
Because when they agree with each other, you're like, okay, these are people, you know, what are the odds that multiple people independently would come up with the exact same explanation? It's the kind of thing that the internet is actually has always, in my opinion, or my experience anyway, been one of the best things.
one of the best things about the internet is when this can't happen and I know this is kind of what made some people probably fall in love with Reddit but like that ability for one person it's almost like stone soup where people bring different parts where they go like one person will go like oh this is a thing
And another person goes, well, that's a thing. But then how do you explain that thing? And they go like, yeah, that is kind of unusual to see that thing. And other people contribute in a generative, like useful way.
And, but you know, what I've loved up till now, it sounds to me like you're about to settle this. So I'm preparing myself for that. But up till now, what's neat about it has been exactly that where people will go, like, I do this stuff for a living. This is, there's several things about this that are.
least unusual and and then a lot of times there are people i don't know maybe not veterans but people who who have been around the block who are like i don't understand why they decided to do this one thing this way yeah so there's two parts here first uh there's an image from seb seb posted this on mastodon and seb labeled the image so it is one of your photos of the apparatus okay with labels added to it in seb's mastodon post so if you just want to see the image
discussing follow the link in the show notes to Seb's image of the apparatus oh look at that that's really cool well that was nice of Seb to do that but now we're going to read Bob's explanation Bob Dively's explanation of the thing and again they i think they basically both agree and there's other people who agree with this as well um but bob had the most succinct explanation of what in the world is this thing so here we go from bob uh we'll link to bob's mass on post as well
The apparatus is the water supply for a sprinkler system. Water enters from a supply pipe in the middle bottom and goes through a water meter that communicates remotely via the gray aclara box. I guess that's the brand name. I think that's that little plastic box that got added late. The red cap pipe to the left allows a fire engine to pump water into the system if the municipal supply isn't working.
for example, in an earthquake. So that's the SPKR connection thing. What if the water isn't working from the city, you need water, the fire engine can connect up there. Continuing from Bob, the red... Fire hose connector for feed-in, it says on the diagram.
Yeah. The red box on the upper left is the alarm pressure switch that monitors the system water pressure. When a sprinkler head is activated due to a fire, there's a pressure change. The alarm pressure switch detects that and activates further alarms and systems, including the big red bell in the upper right.
The rightmost pipe is for testing and flushing the water in the system. Finally, there's a presser gauge. The entire system inside the building is continuously pressurized and the gauge lets maintenance tech know it's up to spec.
There's also armored flexible metal electrical conduit painted blue in the most recent photo and mounting arms very rusty recently. And so here's a little bit of extra from Seb. Oh, is this also where they got into there's actually two bolts on the Tatooine arms? Was this that discussion?
Yeah, yeah. The double-check detector assembly near the bottom sticks out from the wall, so the pipe above it kicks out from the wall, resulting in a lot of elbows and short pipe pieces. They're basically explaining why there are so many joints there. Why it looks so ad hoc. The flow switch and the butterfly valves are connected to the alarm system via flex conduit because they will trigger the alarm if water flows or are closed respectively. And then finally...
Ian of Earth clarifies about my concerns about those supposed braces. First, he says, each one of the braces are connected to the wall with two bolts, not one. So I looked at them again, and I can see what he's talking about. Like, you can only see one bolt, but I can imagine there's another bolt behind it. So it's not just one pivot point. There's at least two. That's good. Okay.
The ones on the fire department connection, the SPKR, are to resist the forces of disconnecting the heavy fire hose. All right, that makes sense. And again, that's, he's saying like the ones, those rusty arms on the SPKR thing, those aren't to hold the thing up, they're to hold it so that when you're...
shoving the fire hose into it or pulling the fire hose out of it, like into and out of the wall. That's what they're resisting. Oh, okay. Sorry. You know, what's funny is I think you just collapsed that area.
And I thought I was having a stroke. Okay, I've got it back. So what you're talking about is the fire hose comes in and boy, in addition to all the pressure from that, they're running around, you know, something happens, a dog runs over it. You've attached the fire hose to the fire connector for feed in.
The Tatooine arms keep it from, like, tearing off the back flow. Going into it. As you know, like, if you suddenly start a powerful flow of water, the hose, like, kicks back at you. Yeah, yeah. It's very funny. Yeah. Right. And then continuing, the ones at the base are of the riser section at the top are likely there for seismic reasons. So during a seismic event, the whole apparatus...
is less likely to whack into the wall, fall out into the street, or shear a connection inside the wall. So the theory on those is, again, basically earthquake stuff. If the world starts shaking... uh it's the upshot is that none of these rusty arms are helping with gravity at all they're entirely for directions other than gravity
caused by either the powerful fire hose detaching or water flowing in and out of it or earthquakes. Okay. So there you have it. That is an explanation of the apparatus. Several people sent a similar thing. That's what all the parts are there for. That's what they're doing.
You can, we'll send you the, you know, again, the link to the label damage will be in there. It looks ridiculous, but apparently every part of it does serve some kind of purpose. And the fact that the entire system is pressurized, which is how most sprinkler systems work, makes sense. So you can come and inspect this again or reiterate.
Part of the reason that to me this looks ridiculous is like, yeah, but all this stuff is outside of buildings, so it can't possibly be real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it can be real because if you live somewhere where things on the outside of buildings don't freeze, then it's fine, apparently.
Well, then that gives me the opportunity to close this. Well, again, for now. At one point, I tried to roughly calculate how long it would be before this took over the whole neighborhood. You know, like a Last of Us mushroom. Exactly, yeah. Well, if you tickle it over here, another building over there, we'll find out about it. That sounds like a Mitch Hedberg joke. Or Stephen Wright. Oh, that's funny, John. Did you watch the ending episode?
I did. I already did a podcast about it. Oh, cool. Two questions then. Just dumb questions. Okay. Why don't I see more of these? Well, one theory is... They're inside the building. You know what, John? That's kind of what I was hoping that you would say, which then leads us back to an original thing, which is, what the hell is this thing doing on the side of a building?
in a suburban San Francisco neighborhood. Well, I think like, so they could be inside of the building, but obviously the fire hose connection for the firefighters. I just don't see anything. John, almost two years ago, this caught my attention in a way that nothing else similar attached to a building has attracted my attention in 25 years. I don't have a master's thesis on this, but like...
if this is something this building needs, why don't more buildings need it? And why haven't I seen it more? And if it is needed more, why is this one outside? Yeah. So, I mean, if these are, obviously, this is for a sprinkler system. So it was kind of like a commercial slash commercial landlord thing. Like, do you have sprinklers in your house right now? I don't think you do. In the home where we live? No, I have it in my office, but out of my house.
Right. So I think it's the difference between your office is like a rental property where they're renting it, right? So whatever the zoning restrictions are is that you can have people living in a place that doesn't have...
a sprinkler system but like college dorms for example have to have them offices have yeah sure different so the category building and in those cases i would imagine that perhaps the fire hose connection thing the spkr part is maybe the only part that you would see poking out of the building because If you're building a purpose-built commercial building or retrofitting a commercial building where you know it's going to be offices or college dorms. They might not have had a place to put it inside.
Right. And so this this building strikes me as perhaps this actually was actually a place where people just lived and there's not really room inside it. There's not like a machine room or the wall. The wall is like stucco. Maybe it was inconvenient to get out of the building.
through the stucco. That's why all the pipes come from the ground instead of, I don't know. I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied. Yeah. But I would think that it's like, maybe if you interrogate this building and say, is this like, was this actually a residence? Well, I got more. I got photos of inside their garage when they're running. I got photos.
of everything. I made this a project. And that leaves me with the final question is, what do I do when I hear the bell? It's not your problem. So nothing is the answer. That's right. I don't need to call anybody. I'm not saying if. I went to college, okay? I'm not saying if. I'm saying when. When that bell rings, because all bells eventually ring, that's what makes them a bell. Because a bell is a cup until it is struck. Do you understand? So it's close enough, John.
You know? You're saying it's not my problem. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I mean, if it's an earthquake, it'll be your problem, but not because the bell is ringing. Okay. Because your house is falling in on itself. Oh, so it is like the quadriceps or whatever those, what are they called? What are those mushrooms called? What do they call them? Cordyceps. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh, I'll be hornswoggled. So it is kind of like that. Yeah, well, it's not so much like the cordyceps. It's like, it's when you shake the entire earth. Yes. All the things on the earth also get shaken. It's not a salt shaker.
Yeah, it's not as if because the apparatus is shaking that's making your house shake, it's because the earth is shaking that both the apparatus and your house are shaking. It's because the earth is not caused by the apparatus to which the house is attached. If the earth is rocking, don't come and knock it. This episode of Reconcilable Differences is brought to you in part by P. It's just the letter P.
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Hey, thank you to everybody who's talked about this. Thank you for this journey. I'm not done. I didn't do a check-in today because I had stuff to do. But I'll do a check-in. Um, just to kind of keep up with it. And if I see anything, you know, maybe something we should ask our friends who listen to the program, what should, I mean, also if you want to listen, no offense to John, he went to college too, supposedly, but, uh,
Do you the listeners agree that I shouldn't even listen for the bell or do anything if I hear the bell? Just chime in in comments. It really helps people discover the show. And the other part of it is, maybe help me. You can post on Nextdoor. I called PG&E. They said there's no speakers. Did you hear who the commencement speaker was at New College?
It wasn't Kermit the Frog. That was Marilyn. No, no. And just if you want to make a different joke, Russell Brand, like that was for a different thing. No, it was Alan Dershowitz. Nice. The Dersh. You know what's funny, though, is do you remember that movie, that Jeremy Irons movie about Sonny Vaughn and Klaus von Bülow? Do you remember that movie from probably the early 90s?
Because it's based on a true story. And there's a guy in that who plays young Alan Dershowitz who helps crack the case with his law students at Harvard that gets sunny or... Klaus von Bulow off the hook, if memory serves. Now, that Dersh was cool. I'm just saying. You know, the Dersh of 2025. Perhaps highly fictionalized. The new one. I think he's got a lot of fiction in his life from what I can gather. Yeah. Nobody likes his flight manifests.
Butterfly valves. Yes, they do. Hey, everybody. It's Reconcilable Differences, and we're answering questions. We're solving problems. Was there any other follow-up? No, that's it. We did it. All right, we did it. Topic this week is yours. Yes. Well, it's kind of yours. Oh, the topic this week was ours. One of the many topics inspired by you on other podcasts. This is in reference to Roderick on the Line, episode 576.
where John Roderick talks a little bit about his journey to potentially record and release a new music album, his ADHD, and his desire for a project manager to help him. accomplished the goal of producing a new music album that is then available for people to listen to. And that has been an ongoing thing of his.
You went back and forth in that discussion. It was interesting to hear how it was going for him. Things are happening now. I think I tried to buck him up a little bit, which I don't do over much unless I feel like there's an opportunity. But I think that was one of the ones, I don't know if you've gotten to this, but at one point.
where I was just trying to say like are there ways that you could think about this from a different angle I mean I would never be a callow enough friend to say something like well Maybe instead of just being mad at yourself for 10 years, you should do some work and put it out. I wouldn't say something like that. But I might say something like, you know, instead of it struck me that he was very product oriented about this, like really thinking of it as this.
CD or album and everything they're onto. And I was saying, like, I think, I don't know if you heard this, but I was trying to say, like, can you think of this more as a process where you're kind of relearning how to do this, you're trying new things, and you're deciding what the product will be further down the line.
And the MacGuffin there is I think sometimes not just John Roderick, but a lot of us get so fixated on the product we think we're making. Don't get me involved in the whole like BAPL thing. But when I say product here, I mean result, right? Sometimes we get so fixated on the product that we're trying to do that we end up undercutting ourselves. And I thought it was an opportunity.
to encourage him a little bit not to say like oh great this will make you you know respected by minor celebrities again but more like you know it would feel good what i said was why don't you put out a shoot if you're going to make a product shoot for a four song ep which is a very cool thing. You've been pushing so hard for the EP. But it's something that like a lot of my favorite bands, like Tropical F Storm has a new EP that came out this week. They put out lots of stuff, but you know.
I don't know, Stalin or Marx or whoever said, you know, you don't look perfect. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. I mean, don't let something be the enemy of you just sit there eating donuts and feeling bad.
you know get something out and if you want to make an album later you can make an album later but like and it's not to say like oh I don't think you're capable of making an album but it's more like I think you are much more it's much more accessible for you and will improve your life as a human being, I would say this to anybody, to embrace whatever the process is rather than trying to cleave yourself to some very old idea of what the product should be.
To give some context for the few people listening who don't have it, John Roderick is a musician who last put out an album how many years ago? 15? A new album of new material. It's been a while. Yeah, he put out a bunch of albums in his heyday and then took a really long break. And now he seems to have been stuck for a while. And one of the things that struck me about this conversation...
It was kind of the first time that I heard John express straightforwardly. Did you mention the band, The Long Winters? Did you mention that? Yeah, The Long Winters, the name of his band. Okay, sorry, I didn't know if I mentioned that.
uh so don't look for music by john roderick although you will find it you look for the long winters uh it's a couple albums um and then a long break and uh but this is one of the few podcasts that i've heard where he's basically said i want to put a new album and i'm slightly frustrated that i have not been able to do that and he has various ideas about what what could possibly help him you have ideas which some of which you just articulated about
Different ways to think about this to potentially get somewhere, maybe not so fixated on exactly where he wants to go. And you went back and forth about that. But like, so that was interesting for me to hear him actually say, you know what? I do want to put out a new album. I wish I could, but it's not happening. And it made me think about, this whole discussion made me think about the larger topic that I want to talk about on this show.
which is about the idea of goals and accomplishments. Yeah. I'm so interested in this. I know we've had like this. No, no. This is like a secret topic. I mean, not only is it a topic, I didn't realize what this was going to be about till like three seconds ago. Now I know what you mean by that. You're almost throwing me.
a softball right because you know my bit about some of this well i was i was gonna say like this oh my god john i would love i want to hear you talk about this yes it touches on one of the things that you've said on many podcasts many times
uh like it tangentially touches like the new year's resolution thing yeah like oh it's a new year and i have a bunch of goals and i want it to be x y and z and how that is setting you up for failure and you can't do this articulated a different version of without mentioning new year's resolutions it's like well
Is it so important that you get like the album that you want or is just important to put out music, in which case maybe you could change, you know, concentrate on the process, maybe do an EP, like just all sorts of things that set you up for another way of saying, well, yeah. And a way of saying. to state something blatantly obvious, I guess. Okay, well, if I have a goal, like, what is that goal? And how much, how clearly have I defined that goal?
I want to be honest here, like for better or for worse, have I overdefined something that's not realistic and I have no business trying? Have I underdefined it as something that will not give me any vigor to want to pursue it? Because it takes a balance of those things. Otherwise, you lose interest. Yeah. And the other angle on this that I was thinking of is like, it's kind of like the shape of the year type thing. How do...
Goals and accomplishments form the past and future of your life. Like how much do you shape? Especially as a retrospective, as a postmortem. You know, you always hear about all the stuff you're supposed to have goals and you're supposed to like want to get into college and you're supposed to want to do all of this stuff. Yeah, it's easy to have the one you got.
Well, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed by it when you're young, honestly. I mean, you probably didn't get this anywhere near as much as I did, but I got really frankly tired of people telling me I wasn't living up to my potential. They thought it was a compliment, and I know... In a way, it very much was. It did not help.
And that doesn't mean that I'm a good person and they suck. It just means that for whatever reason, that sure was not the skeleton key to get me to live up to my potential. I think I still have all my report cards that say not working up to potential on them over and over again, year after year.
Teacher after teacher. When that became something that you almost, I don't want to say anticipated because you never know, but like when that became something that you'd seen enough that the next time you saw it, you went, oh, that again. Like, how did you feel about that when you were, say, 14? That was like second grade.
Not that I had seen it enough. Handwritten by my teacher on my report cards, because that's how they used to do report cards, kid. It was a piece of paper that your teacher would write with their handwriting on it. yeah like and so the thing is and even at a young age i knew it was true but but yeah like what did you call it you called it goals and accomplishments was part yeah so like like it's when you're young
There's kind of obvious milestones that you're working towards. You want to get through elementary school, then get through middle school, then get through high school, then get into college, then get a job, then maybe get married, then get a house, then have kids. And like you can line it all up like the stereotypical game of life type goals.
and accomplishments and their goals when they're out in front of you. And if you achieve one of them, their accomplishments, not all the same, you might say, I'm not going to go to college. And when you make those goals, there's so much implicit in all of these. When you make those goals, sometimes they'll tell you this straight up.
they'll definitely yell this at you later. It's like, you need goals, get goals, get goals, get goals. And the thing that's implicit with goals that makes it so frustrating when other people are trying to make you choose the goal they think you want is it has a built-in notion of...
I don't want to be histrionic, but sacrifice. Like when you have a goal, well, you know, it's like the Taoist would say, you know, I mean, like you're choosing not to do 10,000 other things. So you're saying that this thing is now my goal.
Or as I say in a way that Marco really abuses, this is my priority. This is the thing that goes at the top of the list. And that means the reason that I differ about that definition of priority is that my idea of priority has built into it an idea of... sacrifice and exclusion, that you're basically putting somebody to death when you create a priority.
If you think that sounds dramatic, you don't understand what a priority is. Because that means there's so many things you not only don't get to do anymore, there's so many things now, and it's not bad necessarily, but when your parents are yelling at you to get good at clarinet.
Or whatever. You've certainly been around this, right? Or somebody who's like, I always dreamed that you'd like get into the dry cleaning business with me. But like, especially something like, hey, you know, all your brothers and sisters love soccer. So how's that going? Well, you need to get a goal. You got to work harder. And when you get it, but do you follow me though, right? Goal is a kind of a, not a synonym, but it's an ally of priority, which is, yeah.
I'm sentencing a bunch of my life to death. There's a bunch of stuff I'm not only not going to do that I can't do, and it's not advisable for me to spend a lot of time thinking about. And so how did I slide in this thing that now becomes deeply traumatic, which is your parents yell at you to get good at soccer and then say you don't take it seriously enough. And then there's 10,000 things you didn't even get to consider. And I mean, if you can walk away from that.
being bad at soccer and not feeling bitter, you're a better person than I am. But like, so what does that bring us back to? That brings us back to, well, we're not even going to get anywhere for now and nothing near, nowhere near is a goal, a good idea.
Because I have strong feelings about that. But now we're also into this way more interesting area of like, okay, in the absence of straight success or straight failure, how do you feel about that? And what are you going to do now? And that's a lot to... deal with at any point in life but especially if you just are you're exhausted and you didn't like your orange slice and now you're expected to be a good soccer boy yeah especially for goals that are not
like near-term goals. You have a lot of them in childhood as well. Like a doctor. Becoming a doctor. Like seriously trying to become a doctor. Or even just like graduating college when you're just a kid. It's got a lot of... It's one of those classics that has a lot of... I mean, lawyers, you could say, yeah, but like with medicine, that is, I mean, that's like becoming Pope in some ways. There's steps that are taken in a certain order by a certain time, right?
And so like if you decide at 16 that you want to be a doctor or somebody else has decided you should be a doctor, that's a lot of commitment. Or even like think of a 13-year-old John Roderick didn't have this goal. I'm sure I would imagine someone in his place who did. I want to be a rock musician and put out an album. When you're 13, there's not really much you can do to make that happen this year, let's say.
But it can still be a goal and it's off in your future. And unlike a doctor or graduating college, there's not really a well-defined series of steps to get you there. So it's one of those things that it's like. I don't think people, people would not agree. Well.
secondarily, people would not agree on what the best way is to pursue that. And the less controversial topic is whether that's something you should even pursue. So you're on your own in a lot of ways. I'm not saying like a 13-year-old, like, oh, I'm going to go like become...
like get an agent and get on Epic Records or whatever. But, you know, this is one of the problems with level zero of expertise is, to paraphrase the Dreyfuss brothers, you don't know what you don't know about what you don't know. Yeah. And even things like college, especially things like getting married, it's like, well, that kind of takes another person. So you're really missing a big piece of this puzzle right now.
What a strange thing to want in some ways. It's so odd to think like, especially in the American Western romantic idea, lower R romantic idea of love is like, oh, there's this thing where I've got to find the person who's right for me and dah, dah, dah, dah.
It's all worked out, and I've got a dress in a cedar box, and there's all this stuff ready. All I need now is the only person in the world that that could be. Yeah. I mean, depending on how lowercase or romantic you are, I mean, the only person. Just the... A suitable person. We're right up to Royce Bolton. So Ramsey now has been set up with Sansa.
You know, she's got the dyed black hair now, S5E4. But then we also, of course, get treated to a dyad that I love, which is Royce Bolton with one of Walder Frey's daughters. I think he forgets which one. It might be Walda or Waldo or Wonga. But in those arrangements or like in a lot of this English.
you know, sort of Elizabethan or Edwardian, like old, not Edwardian, but the old, like, you know, Edward the Eighth stuff I've been watching, you know, there's constantly, they're constantly setting people up for marriages. Cersei's about to get married again.
You know, for the realm. That's a real different idea of love, but it's actually not that different in some ways from this whole like, well, all I know is there's this long dark tunnel that I need to get through. There are no off ramps from the tunnel. There is just a long, think about a tunnel that you go through with your automobile, right? All you know is that you see there's light at the end.
And you know there's light where you came from. And in between, there's one direction. If you want to get out, you keep walking in that direction. You don't get to turn left or right. You don't get to ask questions. And any time that you spend deliberating...
about the extent to which you would like to proceed down that tunnel, get out into that other side and do something, is an impediment to you getting out of the tunnel. And everyone observing your process and progress of getting through the tunnel is thinking the same thing. to go to something you said six minutes ago.
Yeah. Well, you got to get out of high school because high school, you get into college. Well, you got to get into college because you got to get, then you find a woman, you get married. Oh, you're married now. Okay. I'm effing married. Okay. When are you going to have a kid? When are you going to have another kid? You're never people.
are never satisfied. They're constantly adding, like the apparatus, they're constantly adding additions to the tunnel. And, you know, the light is this thing. You follow what I mean, though? It's like, there's a lot of things that are... like that maybe there used to be maybe there's fewer of them today than there used to be but even down to the kinds of tests you would give in England
Isn't there a test they used to give people when they were 11 or 12? And based on that, you go to a different euphemism school. Like, you go to this euphemism school to learn how to topple a chimney. You go to this euphemism school to learn how to go to Oxford. And those are tunnels. Like if you want anything good in life, I mean, do you remember like your pals who like dropped out and had to do, I always want to say the GRE. That's not it. The, um, GPA. What's the one, what's the next one? GRE?
Jerry? The GED. GED. Right. Well, you've got to get your GED. I mean, I remember when the Marines were recruiting me, you know, they're like, well, you're, you know, you're a high school graduate. You know, you know, we're the only branch of the military where you have to be a high school graduate. Like, everybody's got a tunnel. Now you say something.
Yes, the getting back to the marriage goal for a second, like one way to one way to possibly think about that in a different way is I want companionship in my life. I want romantic companionship in my life. And so the goal is really... I want to achieve romantic companionship in my life. Not, you know, if you just think it was like getting married or finding the right person, it's more difficult. It was also just to be decorous. It was also will be decorous. It was also.
I really want to find out more about personal physical intimacy. We don't need to get married for that. I don't know, man. Time was, I mean, with my... Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm not saying people didn't have intercourse until 1964, but what I am saying is, I mean, a la...
all this royalty who has to be like set up with somebody from another country where they don't share any languages. Like, well, the parents are happy now. Like we're going to keep the bloodline going, keep the Targaryens alive or whatever. But, you know. over on your side of the ledger, I mean, that's quite a change to adapt to. Yeah, at the far end of this, though, after the litany of...
Goals that are either set for you by other people or set for yourself or goals that shift and change long term and short term.
uh one after the other saying say you are living in an enlightened time and you choose you eventually choose the goals that you want you're out from underneath the clarinet in soccer you decided you don't want to get married you decided you don't want kids you decided you do want to do this for you profession or whatever at a certain point and this is relevant to a podcast routine you and roderick both of uh whom are 50 something uh men who have done a lot of the things we just listed
in their past. So those, whether or not those were goals, they are now quote unquote accomplishments or at the very least things you have both done. I was starting to think about kind of where John is now, which is like. what it was he's talked about his life of just not putting it out out an album what what the shape of that life is like what happens when you've done
most of the things that you had thought of as potentially goals for yourself when you were younger. Or conversely, and this is why I love your distinction.
I guess deliberate distinction between goal and accomplishment like so like yeah the way that I was raised and I assume a lot of people were raised or imagine a lot of people were raised is to phrase that to phrase this retrospect post-mortem on our life thing you say like oh well yeah what if you ended up achieving goals in life and oh my gosh or like what if you end up getting things that in retrospect are as good as a goal well now we're getting into accomplishments which is like well
What if instead you could look back at your life and maybe, I don't know, personally, I'm not sure there's a ton of value in any of this. backward looking stuff except to learn from it but because a lot of people just want to like buck up and go like oh yeah I got my participation trophy and you know I received this major award or whatever but truly though that feeling of nothing
Suits me better in life than being able to, not to celebrate an accomplishment, but to relish the improvement that I got in life out of that. That's something that I kind of feel like a lot of people. have become immune to for a lot of reasons, a lot of reasons, but I'll just say like a goal that I succeeded at. Well, Jesus. Yeah. Let's say I tried harder than anything I've ever tried to do in the world and I barely made it. Yay.
I did my goal. I decided, you know what I mean? It's like trying to land on a planet. You've got to think way ahead in time about where you're going to land. And it's like, oh, great. I graduated from high school. in Pasco County, Florida. And the principal, the last thing our principal, this is, I've graduated, wouldn't you consider that a goal? I failed two classes as a senior, John.
I failed earth science and I failed music theory, right? So I failed. I barely got out of high school. When they handed me that thing, I didn't know if the inside was going to be blank. Social promotion. I just wanted you out of that school. Well, I, whatever. Yay.
I had a diploma. Oh, great. I got a diploma from a public high school in Florida. Was that a goal? That was so much a goal. There's so much I didn't do because A, I didn't want to make my mom sad. And B, I wanted to get out. I wanted to be able to graduate high school. And the way that people can manipulate, manipulate you by pointing to doing something that could damage your ability. So did I want that for a goal? Oh boy, howdy. That was never a goal that I had. I don't.
care. I did not care about any of the people that I needed to impress who I needed to like me in order to graduate from high school. It was incredibly stupid. At that occasion, June... You know what, dude? I dropped a decade recently. I was about to say to you recently, can you believe it's been 30 years this month since I saw U2 in Tampa? Can you believe it's been 30 years? At least you got close.
I was, I dropped a decade. It was 40 years ago, John. It was 40 years ago. I graduated from high school 40 years ago. So let me get to this ending that I think is pretty good. It's June 1985, and we're graduating. And I remember real clearly being in the gym of our school. And our principal, I think it was Mr. Pryor, our principal saying that if anybody threw...
their cap in the air, nobody would leave the building, and nobody would get a diploma. Now go out in the world. Now you're big, grown people. There's just something about that moment that really captured my success of winning that particular goal. Yeah, you know what the celebration was? Was this guy with a Himmler mustache told us not to throw our...
our inflammable hats in the air. And it's like, I don't know how you walk away from that feeling like that's quote an accomplishment. It was so begrudging. And yet I can look back and go like, I was able to mount my new bird feed mount because I've gotten good with a drill and a level, and I've got...
I've gotten good all the way down to like knowing what size bit to use, like with this kind of screw and this kind of, like the dumbest thing in the world. On the one hand, normal people would go like, Okay, good for you. As John would say, get back on your iceberg. And professional people would go, well, that's silly. I have a son who got hit by a beam and he knows things like that. But I don't care. That's an accomplishment for me.
Because I've synthesized focus from different things that excite me to learn a new thing and then apply it. And it's imperfect and it's silly sometimes, but I wish I could get... roderick to let himself off the hook in a similar way i think i probably am grateful for my accomplishments and i think a lot of people feel really bad that they haven't reached their goals Well, the bird feeder is a great example of what I was getting at after the goals that everyone can kind of think of have passed.
Not so much going to say like in retirement or whatever, but like at a certain point. No, no, no. I feel retired. Yeah, you get to that age where you kind of have to make your own. You don't have the frenzy. Did you notice what that episode was called? I think it was called The Velocities of Youth. I meant a lot of things by that, but partly the way that you speed forward when you're young.
It's just an observation, but like you're constantly like propulsively moving forward and things and all the way through, let's just say it. this particular tunnel, you've had a baby and like, oh my God, the first 14 weeks are so difficult. And suddenly your kid's three and then your kid's nine and now your kid's 17 and having trouble logging in to take the AP test. And you're like, whoa.
There's cats in the cradle and whatnot. But I can already feel that propulsiveness slowing and my relevance to that process heavily. Isn't that kind of what you're getting at also? I don't want to say irrelevant completely. I'm not saying everybody my age is irrelevant. I'm saying I'm open to the idea of accepting.
how that changes as I become less relevant to a lot of people. And how do I do that in a wholesome way that lets me still have a self, you know? But that can be really dangerous territory because... But the velocities of youth aren't there anymore. And by velocity, in that case, I don't mean the natural enthusiasm and healing factor of being young. I mean the, like, I always know what the next thing is and what the consequences of me not hitting it.
You've got less of that, if you're being honest. There's no longer really other people setting goals and expectations for you. The goals and expectations you set for yourself- Or generating future accomplishments at like a set of steak knives. Like who's going to get the parking space?
or even just like the simple obvious ones of like well now you had a kid you should probably try to raise that kid and that's an obvious goal and as you noted that starts to go by the wayside too because the kids become adults and you're raising of them is Not entirely done. And isn't it ironic, which would mean that that goal was successful. If my goal was having a, well, my first goal was having a kid who to the extent possible lives.
All I really ever cared about, I hope the kid likes music and I hope the kid likes to read. But, you know, is that a goal? Is that a success at this point? Well, it sure feels like it, but... okay so how do i look back at that and go oh do i want to put on a record now yeah so like setting so now eventually you get to the point where
A lot of things are in your past, whether you want to call them accomplishments or not. At one point, someone had set them before you as goals or you set them before yourself as goals. And then you get to pick. Existence occurred. Yeah, you get to pick. what if anything you want to put in front of you as a goal and the choices there are there's there's so many more of them because like it's there's not there's no obvious thing there's no like essential thing there's no like uh you know
Again, Raise My Child is pretty, like, whether or not you set that goal for yourself, it's there. Like, it's in front of you for you to take or not, but it is... You're talking about the whole child project. Yeah, exactly. Like that is, that is clearly a project. And we're like, and we're like, if you, I mean like think about a movie like Kramer versus Kramer or there's another one that's escaping me right now.
But, you know, there's fewer movies, there's a lot of movies that reflect life, where it's the dad who leaves, but there are occasionally those movies where it's the mom who leaves, and it's such a different kind of movie. Do you know what I mean? Because it's really disruptive to our whole idea of how these sort of things go. Yeah, and getting back to John for a second, he's in the middle of the child's project.
he's farther back than we are because his kid's younger right um and so that is that is definitely a thing that's going on but i often get the impression that setting aside the child project There aren't, he doesn't have that many other obvious projects that people would put in front of him or that he would expect for himself. To that point a second ago, there's not a thing with consequences if he doesn't do it.
And like me, he doesn't like things that are thrown at him with consequences if he doesn't do it. And left to his own devices to come up with potential his own things to look forward to. He seems like one of the modes, which I think we're all familiar with this mode is...
actually i'm not setting any goals for myself right now i'm not i'm not particularly working towards anything i'm just trying to exist right now and that is a mode we've all been in from time to time and it's a mode that i enjoy some for as long as 10 years yeah it can't it can't
forever but then one of the other things is like there is this other long-term goal like maybe i'm gonna put out another album because that's the thing that i used to do it's the thing i got famous for maybe i should consider that but
Even setting that aside, let's say he does it. Let's say he puts out the album. Like, okay, there was a thing that he'd been thinking about for a while and was annoying that he couldn't get it done and he finally gets it done or whatever. And let's say by that point... His kid is all grown up and not even off to college or off living on their own or whatever. You're eventually left with this thing of like, okay.
do you want to put out another album? Are you going to be the Rolling Stones? Are you going to put out albums until you're 70? Or do you feel like you're done with that? And if you are done with that, and if you are done with all this, I guess you're still a father, and you're still a friend, and potentially a romantic partner, and there are things that you're doing in your life, but like...
Is it important? At a certain point, is it still important to have goals like hang the new bird feeder? Like whatever. Because you can pick whatever you want. Your goal could be like learn woodworking. I get it. You can be serious. It's okay. Um, like you're asking a really big question that I absolutely don't, if I understand what you're asking is like, okay, you reached J random age, like you're, you're a certain age and anybody who knows will know.
You're at that age. Like, I'm at that age. Roderick's at that age. You're getting to be that age. So the question you're asking is, if I understand, is like... I don't know quite what the verb for this is, but there's an idea out there of I've had these things in the past where, whether it's through youthful velocity or existential angst or whatever it is, I somehow kept doing things. I became a dentist. I got good at golf.
I coached like a hockey team, right? Those kinds of things. Okay, so you've reached, let's call it that age. Is it advisable to generate a new goal for yourself right now? Is it right? Doesn't it kind of start all the way back to, well, I guess one. Okay. So maybe the Johnny Syracuse way to put it is, um, shouldn't you have another goal?
I'm guessing. Whereas mine might be, I'm guessing. But mine would be more like, is it advisable to make a goal? Which is an easy enough question. If the answer is, yeah, it's advisable. Okay. The way I would put it is, do you feel compelled? to set a new goal for yourself? Is that an urge that you have? Or is it not an urge that you have? Do you assume the goal has a price tag or a clock on it? Or can it be just like, I want to put out another album someday?
I don't know. How would you phrase it? It doesn't have to be big. It could literally be as small as my goal today is to hang the new bird theater. Well, it could be something like, I want to learn, let's say, something like, okay, I want to learn Spanish. Would that be a big enough one? That's probably too big. I'm saying the goal for today is to clean the corner of this room. Oh, you call that a goal?
Well, there's big and small versions of it, but like... My goal for today is to... But the nice part about a goal like that that makes it a better goal than other kinds of goals is because it has a... Boy, I never really thought of this. Or have I? Be careful about goals that have a very definitive verbal feeling in your head versus a very inchoate.
way to complete. Like, there's certain kinds of things where you could go like, you know, it's a good idea, world peace. And you're like, haha. But like, in that case, well, the devil's in the details, big time. with world peace. But let's make it even easier. And this is, I have to admit, a very David Allen thing, but in getting things done, one of the things that changed the way I think about not just work, but my life, was that...
We have a taxonomy for this that is sensible, which is this. You have things that you want to accomplish in life. Right. You and there are things that are there. They're important enough that they are going to have several tasks to it and they might have a date or a deadline or whatever. But the point is, there's a desirable outcome. Right. The world will be very, very slightly different. in this way once this is completed. Ergo, if my project is to take the trash out to the trash can...
Like the way I define that can be strangely important and to get specific with it. Well, having trash out of the house, is that a task? No, having trash out of the house is just a good idea. Taking care of the trash is part of a project that I would call infrastructure. So that's a desirable outcome, which is like keep the building standing. But then you have other kinds of projects. And the idea is your task is a verb.
And you say, take out the trash or do whatever the thing is. And if the project's important enough, it'll have these multiple steps and it'll have consequences. But you don't. The point I'm trying to make, John, is like, put out an album. I'm not talking about, I'm only, sorry, I shouldn't even say that because I'm not really referring to Roderick, okay? Like if mine were, okay, okay, how about this? Write a book. Is that a good goal on any level for me to have right now?
I could make a very strong case with specifics about why that's a fantastic idea that's actually something I'm working on versus that's a terrible idea. I'm the last person in the world that should be 58 and thinking about writing a book. Even in that case, wouldn't it be a better goal for me to say, turn the Wisdom Project into a book? Isn't that a better project than put out a book? Or write a book about Robert Moses?
is probably a better... You know, do you follow me? The specificity of the verbs in your tasks are important. The specificity of the change in the world from your projects is vital. But the thing... the reason you have email you don't do anything with is because you're never going to do anything with it and you haven't admitted it. You're living a lie and it's made you sad and you blame your email for it. And, and so.
When you get more specific, if we take a priori, that it is potentially advisable to have goals at that age. What is the level at which you define a project or you think, how would you define a project at that level right now? It sounds to me like the answer to my question that I posed before, do you feel compelled to set goals? Your answer is a resounding yes, because you're of no shortage.
No, I mean, I don't call those goals. I've got projects, but goals? I hope to shout. It's kind of the same type of thing of like... I think of myself as very ongoing. There's a lot of them that it's not like there's like, oh, I have to do this thing or else, which is the kind of thing. Take that part out. Yeah.
But like, but like, just like you have a lot of, put it this way, you have a lot of options. You're not hurting for options of things that you could potentially choose to do. No, no, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's on me. Yeah. And that is a contrast with like. The other potential state of being, which is probably extremely unfamiliar to you, which is you wake up one morning and you think, is there anything that I can, should, or want to do today? Like at all?
Like long-term, short-term, the book that I'm working on, a thing I was thinking of doing, a bird feeder I'm going to hang. But like that existential, if you were to give yourself that little moment, that can be, don't you feel, like that can be. Really, weirdly overwhelming. Have you ever found yourself in that situation? Well, I mean, that is almost the definitive existential crisis.
I'm not sure it's a crisis, but to you it seems like a crisis. An existential crisis is not an existential failure. It's a moment of reckoning with what existentialism is about. which is like, this is this, and you are you, and what are you going to do today? I'm not a scholar of this, but that's what makes it so fascinating in that moment, because here's the question.
Like, you know how we do our things on here and we talk and we do, you know, the way that Jason does drafts or whatever. We're like, I'm so interested in the rules. I always want to talk about, you know, when we try to like figure things out here, I'm way more interested in the infrastructure and like.
and the like, you know, how we plan it stuff, which I think probably makes me a little different and weird from other people. Yeah, if one was to find themselves in that situation where there isn't a clear... things that you might think about wanting to do long-term, short-term, or otherwise. And you let yourself think about it. If you didn't just dash off because of some fake urgency you made up. If you actually did sit there for 10 minutes and think about on what level am I comfortable...
making an assertion about something that I will cause in the future. Because if you do that with this morning, it's pretty easy to say, I'm going to do pour over coffee and take a dump. You could make that a little bit further down and go like, you know, whatever. I really want to see the substance this weekend. Or I'd love to go to Cannes someday. Or like, you know, whatever your version of that is. See, you just can't help coming up with them. Like, you have no problem.
I'm coming up with them. We respond to so many things out of emotion. Maybe, I don't know if you do, but I think you have a lot of emotions. Like, so do I. And emotions...
are jumping off point for a lot of things that kept us alive in like Paleolithic times. But those emotions are not always great for us now. So if you're... really sad because let's take a look at classic if you're really sad because you're hung over from drinking and your head hurts and you go oh i'm so god this sucks i don't want to be hung over and then that leads to you going like should i
do something different about what I'm doing with drinking. That one's a pretty straight up like classic example. It doesn't always work on the first time.
It sometimes takes people, and that is admittedly like a pretty big deal for a lot of people to admit to and to do something about. But let's make it about a different kind of thing, which is like, you know, maybe I wake up one day and... I have to imagine in some ways, John, this is how people end up with toupees and sports cars, where there's something that feels like the level of existential horror that I am prepared to deal with is the level of...
hey, I make enough money to buy a red car, and I'll bet that'll make me feel better, right? I'm not ready to take that all the way up to... My gosh, my relationship with my family is so colored by our differing views of religion.
And also, I do overseas money laundering fraud or whatever. That's why you end up with a red car, don't you think? Oh, goal succeeded. I am now a paragon of success. I'm a dickless wonder wearing a bunch of... asian hair riding around in a red car i can barely afford listening to well fog hat would be too cool like listening to bon jovi and like i you can tell i've really arrived and performing that for people and then expecting
It's the ultimate life toupee because then you expect the rest of the world to look at you in what is regarded as you imagine complete success and thinking everyone will look at you and go, look at that success man because he's not ready to ponder on a different existential level. about what could I do today? There's not that many answers to that that classically resolve to red car. Yeah, I feel like if...
If anyone was to get to the point where there's nothing in their head for the thing they want to do next, one thing that could occur to fill that space in a little bit of time would be something like the idea of, I want to have fun today. I want to do something fun today. I would say I want to do something fun today. Yeah. Or like you could even like say you're saying something a little more playful, a little more like or something that's like, yeah, I want to have fun today or like.
I honestly do have days like this. I wonder if there's a low-key nice thing I could do for somebody today. I... I've never said that out loud, but that has those kinds of things do occur. I wake up and I, and I go like, honestly, like it feels so good to have a moment where you're not like beating the crap out of yourself about how you are. And you can just find yourself going.
Um, what would be a, what would be a memorable thing I could do today? Yeah. And do you want to know, like this, this touches on another one of our topics. You want to know, I think a scenario in which many people, including myself, find themselves in that headspace and have similar thoughts to that. Video games? When they're on vacation. Not true of you, perhaps. No, no, no, I get it. Many people. Because you're not, you are, and John Syracuse, you are very famous.
and lauded for your ability to separate from work. Whether that's work you do for database things for a company, where they keep moving your chair, or whether that's doing what you do with your apps and your podcasts, you are... This is not something that's new. This is not new to John at that age. John has always been good at, when I go to Long Island for a few weeks and come back, I don't remember the key code for the office, right?
Yeah, and I think it's not just me. I think a lot of people... But that lets you unhook from the thing that brings you back to all the dreariness. Because that's what you'll hear from... The only time you'd hear someone voice or say something like that is if they're just on a vacation, they say, I just want to do something fun today. Because what they...
don't have are all the all the other goals that they've set aside whether it's just like keep your job uh continue to be married raise your children uh Maybe even get a raise next year, get that thing fixed in the house, you know, sell the house or like whatever those things. When you're on vacation, it's like a break from that. And it does give people an opportunity to potentially be in a situation where it's like.
you know, wake up with an empty head and with no concrete thing that they, nothing they need to do, nothing they want to do, nothing they want to accomplish. That's not fair because now you're describing a real vacation. We wake up, John, where you wake up and there's nothing you have to do.
I could just go take the baby to like go ride on a toy at the grocery store and that would be fun. That's an amazing vacation. Mine is, I just don't like waking up and it's like we're not sure what's happening today.
day what you wear or how much sunscreen perhaps not applicable to you but i do hear a lot of people also compare retirement to the idea like the conception of retirement as being like it's just like being on a vacation that never ends which is not really how retirement is like but they're
people conceive of it that way and i think there is some overlap in this type of thing of where if you have accomplished all your major life goals and you don't have anything that you're necessarily putting in front of yourself and you wake up in the mind space of like
Uh, it's, it's, it's kind of, in some ways it's freeing and it's like nothing immediately occurs to me that I have to accomplish today or that I want to accomplish short-term or long-term. So I can say, I just want to have fun today. If somebody said to you one day when you were at work, when you were 34, can you imagine being at a point where there's no goal state that's been visited upon you that has a date and a cash register on it? Like that you could, John, you're 34.
Think about it. Like, hang on, hang on. Let me just grab you. You could be in a place someday where you get to define how you spend the next... nine to 15 months of your life and what success would look like after that time. And you'd be like, wouldn't you be like, sign me up? Well, I feel like for young people, speaking of the velocity of youth, I feel like that for young people, that is...
very difficult. Like you hear about people who like became fabulously wealthy at a young age and they essentially quote unquote retire at age 35 or whatever. And they are. The way they do retirement at 35 is so different and not just for health reasons, but so different than people who retire at 65 because.
There's something about that age and how much they still feel like they need to accomplish or want to accomplish or whatever, that even though they're quote unquote retired and that they have enough money and they're set for life. They end up doing things that are very much like what they would have done if they had not quote unquote retired.
Actual retired people at like 65 or whatever. Yeah, many of them like, oh, they do something and they volunteer and do a thing. It's like a job for free, but it is very different. You always get a project. Like you could just like the yard could be your project.
yeah like it is i feel it is very different like it's maybe it is part of the aging of like slowing down a little bit and not feeling like you have like there are things out there that you haven't seen you have to do or whatever like it takes a certain amount of life experience to uh really decide that yes the garden is going to be each it's like that your that your goals are going to be
running on the cycle of your garden. You know what I mean? Like what season is it? What day is it? What's the weather? And it's easier to appreciate the vacations if you've been working really hard. Like to know the bitter from the sweet in some ways as you get a little bit older. No, but also like, honestly, like in that time from, I'm making up ages for you, but between like say 35 and 40, even in doing these fairly similar.
jobs from one point of view like don't you feel like an evolution based on the stuff happening in your life about how you think about what those goals should be like you know i don't know when you guys had a baby age-wise for you but that changes some of your horizons even if you think you've prepared like you know they ruin it in the nicest way right that's true for almost anything I was just I was thinking about Bob Fosse for some reason
And like, you know, the way that his career worked as featured in, you know, movies like All That Jazz and Fosse Verdon. But, you know, he in some ways reminds me of that more like a Steve Jobs type, maybe just in the sense of like, I'll never be done. Like I've always, I've always got to be like doing a new thing. That's a really new big idea. Yeah. Billionaires have that problem, which is part of how they become billionaires. I mean, I honestly don't mean it. I don't mean it derisively.
Because in the case of Bob Fosse, it was more like, you know... Think what you want of the guy. He had a lot of problems. Creative billionaires. They might not have a billion dollars, but they have a billion creatives. Yeah, but even Bono has a boss part comes into it. Sondheim is another one. Fosse and Sondheim both.
There was never a time when they were guaranteed gold at what they were doing. For the love of God, remind me to put this in notes, please. Be Kind Rewind video on Megalopolis, which is...
Gosh, her videos are so good. And it's just, she did a really good one on The Godfather 3. But her one on Megalopolis is so thoughtful because, first of all, she's so gently... introduces a lot of the like real like wow you think you've seen francis for coppola making a movie about himself this is a francis for coppola making a movie about himself at like three different times in his life
Like if you really get into Coppola lore, Megalopolis came because, came, started the whole idea. Do you know this? The whole idea started because of One from the Heart and how that went in selling Zoetrope. That's what caused him to want to make Metropolis. And it's like, you know.
You watch people do that, and you're like, oh, no, no. Oh, gosh, I see interviews with him, and he looks so old, and he's so frail. And, like, he's sitting there with Miss Andy and Adam Driver, and he looks a million years old, and he had to sell everything.
And it's just, I know, I guess, you know, he made a lot of money from selling the winery or whatever. But it's kind of a bummer because you're like, ah, you took so many swings and everybody... admired you for it and then you took too many swings for too long and you really weren't that good of a batter anymore and it's a bummer right so there is that sense of like i don't you know i don't want to be
one of those people who ends up like penniless in a, you know, in a SRO. Dream big, John. Speaking of Bono and Coppola, like, I feel like this, this is the sanction we get for public people. It's like. Oh, let's compare the goals we think Bono is setting for himself today. He's got a new Vision Pro video of him doing like a one-man show. You should link to that. You guys talked about that. It's also a book and also an audio book. That's Bono, right?
But we know that because those are public things. And even though they're not necessarily singing, which is what he made his career doing, there's still things that we see in public. So we're like, look at Bono out there. He's the same age maybe as his bandmates. But what is he doing? He's putting out books. He's doing a one-man show. He's on the Vision Pro. He's doing all these things. I'm sorry, but from that framework I introduced a long time ago to Roderick, he does seem...
Like he, like he's not intimidated by process. Like, yeah, he's for sure got product, but he's not intimidated by this idea of like, well, maybe I'll just figure out a way to professionally become an interesting aging man. But you've got to, like in a Bowie-like way, you've got to engage with that process in order to determine what the product even should be.
more than once. Like, you know, what do you talk to a girl? Do you want to have any longevity? Well, then you're going to have to find a way to like have your previous accomplishments. make sense with whatever, or having the next thing you do makes sense with your previous accomplishments and like align with the kind of curiosity you have.
I don't care for his work, but I kind of admire the guy. One of the things is that his musical career was in a band and he hasn't gone off and had much of a solo career or anything or whatever. So his ability to... do more U2 stuff is dependent on his bandmates willingness to do the same thing. Coppola kept making movies because that's what he wanted to do. And it's a thing he could more or less do on his own. And so no one could stop him. So he kept doing that. But then I think about.
What's Larry, Adam, and Edge? What are their goals these days? What are they accomplishing? I'll bet at least one of them is super into art. Yeah, just because we don't see them putting on one-man shows doesn't mean they're not. I bet Adam likes art. Yeah, like they're doing things that are just not public, but surely they're doing things. Right. They probably still have projects and they probably still need to mow the lawn.
yeah or like whatever whatever things that they're setting before themselves it's just they're just not as public so it's tempting to think that they that bono still has goals and they don't but that's absolutely not true it's just a different variety of them and i do feel like both performers and billionaires uh
We tend to think if a performer keeps performing, they're, they're somehow, uh, suffering from like, they just can't, they have to keep doing this stuff. They have to, they have to keep setting, but like the, the other performers who you don't see them perform anymore. Or maybe doing exactly the same thing. It's just that they're hanging a lot of bird feeders and you don't get to see that.
like and and then there are i feel like there are the people who a lot of birth yeah there are there are also the people who wake up one day and have nothing set before them and feel a sense of satisfaction and say i just want to have fun today or don't feel any kind of like
shame about not having a big thing that has to be done. I just want to do something fun today. I just want to do something fun today. Today I want to have a relaxing day. Like this, like this is the extent of their, of their, of their goals that they're setting for themselves. Something I've been thinking about, and I've been trying to articulate in writing with myself, which is like a bird feeder. You'll never see it. But, you know, those adjectives, intrinsic and extrinsic.
Does this thing have intrinsic value to you or does it have extrinsic value to you? I don't know. There might be a better word for that, but I take that to mean like I have. I see value in this thing because it's relationship in the rest of the world, with the rest of the world. Like, does it bring me status? Is it, you know, entrance, things of intrinsic value are something.
We treasure it in some ways, not in spite of the fact that only we love it and care, but maybe specifically because of that. I have intrinsic value. There's things that I do because of me. There's things I do because of other people. Let's pause there a minute. Do you understand? Does that distinction sound right? Yeah, normally it's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Am I motivated to do this? Oh, motivation. Okay, all right, all right. Well...
This is just a dumb thing. And, uh, it's, it's, it's so, uh, you know what? This is stupid. The basic thing I want to say without being trying to be overly clever is if you're struggling in life. This is a good place to look for lots of things, including projects for men of a certain age, is to understand. Here's the way I would put it.
When I make this thing or cause this thing or work on this thing, the value that I get out of that, is it intrinsic or extrinsic? Well, if making it makes me feel great. if you think of this almost as like a macbook two by two panel you know how do you feel about making it and then how do you feel about i don't know how you feel performing it or or whatever so like the thing is if you
I keep posting stuff on social media, even though I think it's weird that people don't like it as much as they used to. I think I'm funnier than I used to be. And I don't understand why people don't seem to like it as much, but, and I'm not. actually that mad about it because the extrinsic value of star star star heart heart heart is not as value is not ultimately as important to me as the intrinsic value of making it
And I realize that is almost impossibly subtle and in some ways probably very privileged. But what if you could apply that to more stuff in your life? I think about my friend from college, the class president. a year or two above me at New College, Dave Dagen, who, like I say, was the NCSA president. He was brilliant. And I've told this story a million times, but I can never get away from this. One of the smartest people I've ever met.
He found a way to trick the registrar into having his diploma formally say David Dave Dagen with air quotes. It was just every little thing he did was clever and sharp-edged and great. He went to law school at FSU. He did law school. He finished law school. He took the bar while studying for the bar.
It was during study groups with other lawyers that it isn't that he first realized. This is not a dumb person. It's not that he first realized it, but it's when he really landed on him that Dave did not like spending his day with other attorneys. One of the smartest people I've ever met became an attorney. I can't even imagine what an accomplished attorney he would be. He was a very accomplished friend. Title. But get this. That smart guy.
There's no way he could have known how much he didn't like being around other lawyers until he was almost a lawyer. And that's the point I'm trying to make. It's very difficult to make assertions about your future based on where you hope that arrow will land. You have no idea. Think of all the work that fellow went through. He, he wrote, he had a, he had a paper one time that he showed me. It was so funny. It was something about Spinoza for Doug Langston. And it was like something Spinoza colon.
or sorry, he got the actual punctuation from Dr. Strangelove. It might have been Pascal's wager, but then he goes, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Lord. One of the funniest smart ups didn't know he hated attorneys until he was almost an attorney. So how's your intrinsic doing at that point?
You told that story before, and I do think, by the way, that perhaps Dave was either overgeneralizing based on the small number of lawyers he was spending time with. That's also just a good story. Or there was actually something else going on. Yeah. No, no, could be. He went on to teach at FSU.
which is what a lot of my friends who started out wanting to be practicing lawyers end up doing is teaching. The point or the truth about that is not important. The part that's important is I'm trying to make a distinction.
If you're having trouble finding what you said, you said earlier, right? Intrinsic, extrinsic motivation. Okay. Let's go to your meaning of this. If you're having trouble discovering what it is that makes you want to do things, let alone doing that thing. If you're having trouble connecting to that. either rationally, emotionally, or otherwise, are you sure there's any value there at all? Why are you scraping around? You're like Circe.
Like, you know, shame, shame. She's on the floor, like, trying to suck water off the stone. Like, is an album what's going to make you happy? Because, you know, do you want to be happy or do you want to be right? I don't know if this is making sense to you, but like, here's, here's, here's, if you look at that two by two Steve Jobs, like laptop table, you know what? If you hate doing it and you hate the results, was that a good goal?
And like, could you ever at some point lavish upon yourself the idea of finding an intrinsic value in either the making of or the performing and doing of something? Not John, but... but me, you and everybody in the world. Cause I think that's what super hangs people up. And then the attending shame, the shame is so important because now you haven't put out your record, John, you know, you haven't successfully.
I don't know what you failed at, but think of something where you failed. But like Merlin, you haven't put out a book or you haven't gotten a professional haircut or whatever it is. Now you should feel shame about that because of the disparity. And how that thing went down. And like, and then, so what do you have to look back on in terms of your goals and accomplishments? All the times that you did something you knew was a bad idea for the wrong reasons, failed at it.
was shamed about how it didn't go great. And then you had to pick up the pieces and like every existentialist, wake up in the morning. So maybe I should do something fun today. You might need more dimensions on your two-by-two thing there. Maybe you need a hypercube or something. Do you remember how simple it used to be, John? Your friends would say, hey, hey, hey, you know what, Max, right? And you'd say, yeah, man, totally. They'd say, ugh.
You know, it's like people wanting to read Green Lantern again. Like you need a, you need a rabbi. You need somebody who's going to like explain to you why it's probably a bad idea. We're at a good time now. Everyone just gets the M4 MacBook Air and we're all happy. Yes.
But it was kind of fun for a while, as long as this made sense. Like, do you want the white toilet one or do you want the silver nice one? And then like, do you want it? It's like this one and this one or this one and this one. Do you remember how great it was in the age? Do you remember the two by two tables, John?
They were really prevalent for a while. I do remember. I'm just saying I feel like the example you just gave maybe needs to be a cube. To the third power? No, like an actual physical cube. Did I say it wrong? I thought the third power was God. No, no. Third power is love. Or that's the fifth element. No spoilers.