Ep. 149: "The Humility Opportunities"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Boy, it's late.
Oh, is it?
It's late.
Shh.
It's very late.
It's late.
The sun is in the sky.
Not like when we normally record when the sun is just peeping up over the horizon.
Just blazing at us.
Just mocking our existence.
Oh, that sun.
That darn sun.
Yeah.
Happy Easter.
Thank you.
I do feel happy about it.
Did you do anything special?
Easter isn't one of the main holidays in my culture and tradition.
It is a holiday, of course.
I remember my sister, when she was a little girl, she and I, we had our own bedrooms, but we also had a bunk bed.
And sometimes the bunk bed was in my room and sometimes it was in her room.
And when the bunk bed was in my room, she never came in and slept in my room.
But when the bunk bed was in her room, sometimes I would go in and sleep in her room to just comfort her.
Yeah.
And I remember one Easter morning, we were sitting on the top bunk together, looking out the window, and my sister swears.
Now, she was just a child.
I mean, I was probably seven.
She was four or five.
She swears that we saw the Easter Bunny in the backyard.
She swears to it to this day.
My memories are unclear about whether or not I saw the Easter Bunny or whether I just...
in a big brotherly fashion, reinforced that she had seen the Easter Bunny.
You know, it was a long time ago.
Of all the holidays, it feels like it has the biggest net disconnect between why we theoretically observe it and then what we actually do.
With Christmas, even if you're a secular person, you probably still have a certain amount of Christian Christmas carols playing and stuff like that.
But for non-observant people, Easter is really about candy.
The thing is, my daughter's in an age where now everything is about candy.
She's a candy lawyer.
She's constantly negotiating the candy.
Today has been nothing but a long series of negotiations about candy.
Yeah, fortunately, my child is still sort of pre-candy.
Mm-hmm.
That won't last forever.
Does she get a bunny?
I have, you know, frankly, full disclosure, I have not seen her today.
Yeah.
Because she went to Bellingham, where her grandparents live.
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah, and they are having a full day where the Easter dress at church and all the wonderful American holiday traditions...
And I have been kind of running around like a crazy person.
Yeah, getting ready to really nail down the Easter evening holiday celebration.
No, in fact, I've been running around like a crazy person because I have kind of a surprise.
Is it something you'd like to share with our listeners?
I have a little bit of a surprise that I want to reveal to our listeners, that I want to share with you, Merlin Mann, my close personal friend.
I can't wait to hear.
Are you ready?
I think I'm ready.
I'm as ready as I'm going to be.
Are you in your ready chair?
I got the bell ready.
You better earn it.
Tomorrow, I am declaring my candidacy for Seattle City Council.
That was kind of a muted bell.
Well, you know, there's a lot to talk about.
We don't have time to let it ring.
That's right.
We should get right on it.
You're a politico now, John.
You've got to go right to the brass tacks.
It's so true.
I need to learn how to give a concise interview.
What?
Oh, I got to write this one down.
Right.
Concise interview.
I need to be able to say what my policies and plans are in a very short, truncated sort of sound bitey way, which is intrinsically a method of speaking that I distrust.
And and yet it is the way that this business is conducted.
Sometimes ideas can be, it's a little bit like having nausea, where you feel like you're not done until they're all out.
You know what I mean?
I'm not really done here.
I'm taking a break, but I still got a lot to get out.
I just started a new list here.
It's called John's Opportunities for Growth.
And the first one I have is Concise Interviews.
Concise interviews.
This is a growth opportunity stake for me.
Wow.
And in some ways, August seems a million miles away.
But of course, I will be doing lots and lots of going to barbecues and kissing babies and saying what my ideas are over and over.
So there's plenty of opportunity between now and August for me to get my ideas out there.
Right.
But the challenge for me is going to be to not want to tell everyone all my ideas the first time that I meet them or talk to them.
Right.
And also, I am running on a premise that I am listening to your ideas, you citizens of Seattle, and you people who are listening who are not citizens of Seattle, who feel like they are in some way a global citizen of Seattle.
Right.
I want to hear other people's ideas, right?
I mean, being on city council isn't about your ideas.
It's about the city's ideas.
It seems like a real down and, not in a bad way, but a down and dirty kind of job.
There's a lot of things with, you get millage, you got zoning, you got parking.
I don't know anything about this, but I'm just guessing it's a lot of like how the city actually functions.
Is that fair to say?
Right.
And as you know about me, that is exactly right.
And as you know about me, I am fascinated by all those things.
You love infrastructure.
I do.
I love the ins and outs, the ups and downs.
I love what's under manhole covers and I love what's on top of telephone poles.
And so the job is ideal for me.
I will relish it.
I will relish sitting at a dais and listening to people talk about zoning and
But the challenge in getting there is that in our country, we have a concept of who it is that occupies these roles, right?
People that go into government are a certain kind of person.
And we typically think of them as either lawyers or people who have sort of been professional activists their whole career.
and they kind of earn the job.
Uh, and then they think of it as a professional job that they are professional legislator.
And the thing about me is that I'm an actual Democrat in the sense that I think that citizens should be involved in government.
Farmers used to just be in office for a while and then they go back to farming.
Thank you.
Or figuring out how to push books off a shelf.
Right.
Going into a tesseract that is through a black hole.
I know we don't have time today, but I tried to watch it.
I tried to watch it.
We got to circle back.
I want to talk about it.
I really do.
I want to hear your thoughts on McConaughey.
But listen, so I'm trying to convince the city of Seattle, not just that I will be a great person on the city council, but also that it is not that dangerous to elect somebody who is talking about art as a civic virtue.
And not every city – I mean every city council person in Seattle has generally the same ideas.
I mean because Seattle is a liberal utopia.
We all think that there should be more transit.
We all think there should be affordable housing, right?
It's not like there's somebody running for Seattle City Council who thinks that the earth was created in seven days and who wants –
uh, a blood wave to sweep away the, uh, same sex marriages or whatever.
It'd be a hell of a platform.
You know, it'd be very unusual here.
No, everybody here is a liberal and that's a wonderful opportunity.
And my challenge is that I'm going to go in front of the city and say, listen, there's never been an artist on city government.
And that is precisely what we need.
And that is precisely where we go next.
Um,
it's time to take a big leap forward and some of that big leap forward is a stretch of the imagination that we not keep putting like people who are down in the weeds in positions of power on city government because there's no reason to think that they aren't going to stay in the weeds.
But that's a challenge, right?
A lot of the people that are the gatekeepers between me and the citizens of Seattle
The only way they have to compare candidates against one another is this model of like, well, your opponent says that there should be more buses and trains.
What do you say?
I also think there should be more buses and trains.
Well, how is that different than your opponent?
Frankly, it's practically not different.
Because the truth is we need more buses and trains, right?
I mean, there's no – why would anybody have a different attitude?
Nobody would.
So how do you differentiate between us?
And the differentiation becomes a question of who can tell this story to the citizens of Seattle and make people invested –
in doing what is ultimately the hard work of building a better place.
That's good.
That was good.
Oh, thank you.
Well, I'm practicing.
I have to just do this now every day for the next six months.
Right.
And then there's a popularity contest where they decide which candidate appeals to them more.
I think a lot of voters pick the one whose hair looks better.
I do have good hair.
Yeah, but you've got farm-to-table hair.
You've got locally sourced, like you literally cut your own hair.
And how many other candidates are going to be able to say that?
Marlon, I cannot tell you.
Last night, I'm writing my platform speech.
And what did I do?
I decided that I needed to give myself a haircut.
Two o'clock in the morning, I'm standing in the mirror and I'm cutting my hair.
And one of the clearest voices in my head is telling me, idiot, do not cut your hair right now.
This could go a lot of ways.
That's part of your big vision, though, is sometimes you have to know how to make that vision be implemented in ways that may seem non-obvious.
Right, right.
And luckily, in this case, I did a pretty good job of cutting my hair.
It looks pretty good.
But what it means is that I walk out the door the next morning not full of hair confidence.
I walk out the door with a little bit of hair anxiety because I cut it in the middle of the night with a pair of construction paper scissors.
And now I'm walking out to stand in front of the city and say, I am an American and also someone who is not a lunatic.
And I propose to represent you well and effectively in city government.
And I cut my hair last night.
Any questions?
Hello.
You there.
For those of you who don't know me.
I am John Roderick, your next city councilman.
Boy, I like the sound of that.
So, and of course, one of the challenges for me is that this podcast, for instance, is a thing that I cannot imagine sacrificing.
And this podcast is not something that any of the other candidates for city council have like a similar podcast to compare to.
Right.
It's not there isn't a precedent, I don't think.
And it's, I think, fairly rare in government that someone is proposing to be in government and also once a week talk to his friend with the utmost candor about what's happening in their lives.
And so it shows, though, you're not afraid to discuss the difficult issues.
well let's let's hope i mean this is the thing we we talk about politicians in a certain way we want them to be a certain way but the only people who run for office are people with unrealistic hair some of them have unbelievable hair and who tell us you know who do that thing where they convince us that they actually do have a foolproof plan
And the only people who really believe they have a foolproof plan are either fools who don't have enough information to know how wrong they are or sociopaths.
The reality is if you go into public office, what you should say first and foremost is I am going into this job to listen to people and hear every side.
And I mean somebody has to choose and that's who you're appointing.
You elect people to office to choose on your behalf.
But what makes that person a good chooser is not that they go into office already with like an unshakable faith in their own ideas.
Right.
It's what makes them a good chooser is that they are good listeners, that they are thoughtful, that they have a breadth of knowledge.
And then you empower that person to choose for you.
Right.
And you have faith in them.
You trust that they're going to choose based on what they have learned, not based on what they already know or based on what they think they know or based on what they've known since they were five because everything they ever needed to know they learned in kindergarten.
Yeah, especially for a job – when I say at this level, what I mean is that it is – again, I don't know anything about politics.
But it strikes me that it is a very – it's a job where there's lots of – where the decisions that you make have a potentially fairly short path from hopefully seeming like a good idea to being something that's doable to being something that can be implemented.
Whereas you could run as – one could run as an outsider in a presidential race mostly to just stir things up and change the kinds of conversations that people have.
But obviously there's no evidence that that person is necessarily going to be great at being president.
But it would become clearer if they didn't have the gusto to jump into – there's a word I'm trying to avoid –
I told my wife about this.
She's like, what?
John's doing this?
Doesn't he hate bureaucracy?
And I was like, actually, John does not hate bureaucracy because he does not consider bureaucracy to be a bad word.
Not in the sense of being like busy work or deliberate pushback to make government opaque.
And we had that episode where you talked about Romania, where they don't have as so much of a bureaucracy.
Right.
I don't want to get you in trouble.
I don't know if you've got a Romanian lobby there.
But just specifically that you'll be driving down the street and suddenly there's just no sewer lid there.
And it's been that way for months.
And it's that bureaucracy that enables you to have that sort of stuff happen.
And having the right people make those decisions, make sure that the sewer lids are in place.
Right.
Right.
An effective bureaucracy is an incredibly civilizing thing.
technology.
And again, a bureaucracy is another thought technology that it's our invention.
And if it works well, my goodness, you have some place to go to file a complaint.
I mean, think about that.
And expect that something might actually be done about it.
Right.
File a complaint and somebody actually takes your complaint and then something changes.
Right.
So no, I mean, I love that function of local government.
And the thing about
The thing about it here is that we really are, what's so fantastic about this moment is that I think nationwide there's this tremendous frustration.
We feel like nothing is working.
It's never been worse than it is now.
You hear people say that all the time.
Young people kind of giving up hope.
Ask your grandparents about that.
Well, right.
And at a certain level, because things like Ferguson are happening, because there's a greater wealth inequality than there's ever been, at least in people's immediate lifetimes, they feel like, oh, these problems are insurmountable.
And I'm giving up hope.
I'm a cynic.
There's no chance for us.
But in fact, things have never been better than they are now.
There's never been more justice than there is now.
There's never been more equality than there is now.
Like we have succeeded so much.
And now we're on the cusp of making a giant stride.
People, we have the technology to do it.
We have the consensus, at least in our cities, that, I mean, Seattle is a liberal, it's like a giant city where over the course of decades, a pretty radical liberal consensus has settled into place.
Like even the Chamber of Commerce in Seattle is liberal, deeply liberal.
And this is an incredible opportunity.
But the thing about us is liberals have always felt persecuted.
We felt persecuted by the FBI and the police.
The FBI was wiretapping Martin Luther King.
Like we're used to being in the opposition.
And so in a city like Seattle, it's very hard for the liberals here to recognize we are in charge here.
This is a liberal utopia that is on the cusp of happening.
And we just have to recognize that we are the establishment now.
And we can make a radical liberal agenda happen.
We just have to, first of all, recognize that we are not proposing a violent revolution against ourselves.
We're the establishment.
We can put our policies into place.
And I really do believe more than ever before that we're on the verge of a technology revolution.
We've talked about this, you and me, so much.
But like we are in the next five years going to see technology transform cities and
like the promise of the internet.
I mean, Matt Howie is sitting in his driveway trying to get his garage door to open from his phone.
And we laugh.
But the reality is that is the way that it's going.
And that is going to transform our urban life.
And that's incredibly exciting.
And nobody in city government here or in San Francisco or really anywhere is...
Trying to say, listen, in the next 10 years, a lot of these 20th century problems are going to change radically.
And Seattle is still trying to build a highway tunnel under the city to solve a 20th century traffic problem.
Okay.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the 21st century solution is like, it's almost here.
The thing is, we can't quite see it, right?
Elon Musk is developing it in his garage, right?
But it's actually real, you know?
And we're going to have a real switcheroo in terms of what our urban toolbox is.
So anyway, we have, in Seattle at least, we have a general liberal consensus.
We're on the cusp of this technology wave.
And we're also, like San Francisco, have this prosperity wave.
There's so much money.
And...
It's just time to turn that money into cool things.
You know, it's cool city things.
The thing that always strikes me, I always – like when our current president was running for president, I was one of those people that – one of those relatively few people amongst my friends.
They were like, that guy seems amazing.
He's certainly a great speaker.
He's obviously got a great heart.
But I was always –
more than a little bit resistant.
I was resistant to him being marketed in terms of the word hope, but I was downright cynical about how much I felt like people who should know better didn't understand what's really involved in being the president.
And I don't even talk about it today because I think the guy still does a pretty great job, but at the same time, those posters probably seem a little bit weird.
I mean, if you marched in Selma, oh my God,
Talk about hope.
I mean, what could be a greater thing?
I would not in a million years.
But I think it's important in that instance to separate the amazing historical shift specifically in having the black guy be president.
It's huge.
But the thing that would always go through my head for his job and even more so maybe for your job is like how much of your day – that's not strictly true.
But how much of your day you end up having to decide who's going to be disappointed by what you decide or not even what you decide, because I don't know how much you get to decide, but by how much has to be implemented in a certain way for the greater good or whatever.
That's the part that I find.
So for me, ultimately unappealing about a job like that is I want to be loved.
And I would find it so difficult to – once you – I mean anybody who's – you've had to run a ban out of a van and you know what it means when you say, no, we can't take a pee break now and no, you can't have French fries.
It's not in the budget.
It's not fun.
But I wonder how you feel about that because it just seems like no matter what job you take in politics, setting aside all the optics of how you end up looking a certain way to somebody, it seems like a lot of your job has to be saying no or maybe at times it would be nice to be able to just always say yes.
Well, and this is the reason that we have such a struggle with people that hold public office is that every single situation involves somebody making a compromise.
And we keep electing people who are dishonest about that and who say, we can have our cake and eat it too.
Everybody wins.
Right.
And making sacrifices isn't bad.
Like it's part of living in a city.
It's part of, it's part of being part of a family, right?
You make sacrifices and there's something incredibly noble about that.
And the problem with our culture is that we, we are afraid to say that.
And so we lie about it.
And then when the sacrifices come, people feel betrayed and,
So what we need are people who go up to public office and say, listen, everybody's going to have to pitch in here.
And that's a wonderful thing.
That's a wonderful business.
And the people that have the opportunity to pitch in or the –
who have the prosperity that can pitch in a little bit more.
Like, here's how, and we welcome your contribution.
And, you know, so often from the left, there's this sense of saying like, well, income inequality is this intolerable thing, which it is.
But what that means is that the rich are our enemy.
And the only way that we will redistribute the wealth is that we go to war with the rich, right?
And that's very galvanizing.
It makes people feel like, boy, you've really got a plan and we're going to take some action here.
Also, you're not afraid to tell me the thing I kind of was expecting to hear and wanted to hear.
Yeah, right.
Which is very, very simple.
Tell me the exciting thing that I already thought.
But it's very different to say like, you know, the people, certainly the people in Seattle who are the most rich and the most famous, you know, there are people that had an idea and they turned it into a business.
And then American capitalism took that business and turned it into an enormous pile of money.
But they are not our enemy.
They are people who need to be encouraged by our culture and by, I mean, selective judicious application of laws and regulation, but also a community commitment to say, hi, you are super rich.
You live in this town.
We know you want to help.
Here's how you can help.
We're going to do a public-private partnership that funds our transit, that funds the construction of rail.
And that rail is going to go right through the neighborhoods where you built your business.
So it's going to serve you and it's going to serve your companies.
And we need a little help in the form of your contribution.
Because when you built this business here, you stressed the infrastructure of the city.
And that's great.
That's growth and that's how it works.
But now it's time to give back.
And I don't mean give back by just paying your income tax.
I mean recognize that you need to step up and be actually a corporate citizen and take some responsibility.
Yeah.
And that includes like, oh, did you move to Seattle because you got a really high-paying tech job and now you're living in a cool loft downtown and you have a BMW 740i and the biggest TV that you can buy and now you still have more money than you know what to do with?
Well, great.
Here's an opportunity for you to also be part of Civic Life.
And put a little bit of that money into making the city a better place for people that aren't making that kind of cash.
And that conversation, which is not about passing laws as much as it is about saying, in cities like Seattle, we do business a different way.
And we're not just going to default to Wall Street values or Cupertino tech bro values.
Right.
We're going to not default.
We're going to assert our values, which are actually progressive urbanists and doing business in Seattle has a lot of incentives.
It also comes with an additional opportunity to put your money where your mouth is.
I mean, Jeff Bezos is a liberal and he wants to do a good job.
I mean, I think about Bill Gates.
Bill Gates was the richest man in the world for 15 years and he never gave away a penny.
Until Warren Buffett called him and said, hey, hey, it's an embarrassment.
Is that really true?
Yeah.
Wow.
Called him and said, listen, you're the richest man in the world.
You need to have a foundation and you need to start giving your money away.
To not do it is an embarrassment.
And Bill Gates heard it.
and started the Gates Foundation, which is an incredible asset to the world, right?
But nobody passed a law that forced Bill Gates to redistribute his income.
Somebody called him and said, hey, guy, you want to do a better job than this, and you need to do it.
And Bill Gates was a human being, and he heard that message, and he...
And that's not naive to talk about from the standpoint of somebody running for office.
You can't go through life saying everybody that has more money than me is morally suspect.
The real job is to say, listen, we are all in this together.
It's hard on everybody.
And like, don't you want to help?
And that applies to people that are making $50,000 too.
We want to make this city a better place?
Okay, everybody pick up a shovel, right?
Right.
And that is the difference between running for office and saying, here's my three-point plan.
To pass laws to penalize developers and to create a, you know, and it's like, great.
Every one of those laws that you pass creates a cascading wave of problems you didn't anticipate.
You need to pass laws pretty judiciously.
And you need to think about all the potential problems before you just start saying, all right, our new law is, because we've seen that countless times.
It happens every year.
Here's a new law.
Oh, there's a thousand new problems.
But there is nothing naive or, and I think it is the purview of somebody on something, for instance, like a city council, to say, hey, hello, Seattle.
We have to evolve a different way of doing business here.
And that can be exciting for us.
That is absolutely the way this conversation should happen.
And I don't know if Jeff Bezos is listening.
Pretty sure that sometimes he tunes in.
I think it's safe to assume that he is.
So Jeff, just speaking to you directly, this is a fantastic opportunity.
And I have some ideas about affordable housing to build down in the neighborhood around Amazon.
And I have some clear ideas about transit to get those many workers in and out of your campus.
And it's really, in the long run, not going to cost that much.
you're already getting good at this right see all right here's the thing can i pivot i want to hear it okay i want to pivot are you going to talk about your new way of cooking chicken or are we talking no apparently for the next few months i won't have time to be able to do that god do you know how many people i could help do you have any idea it's it could not be any simpler and people are not going to be able to hear about it until like november
What?
Oh, your chicken thing?
Oh, chicken thing.
No.
You know what?
There's going to be... One equal time, John.
Equal time.
The thing about this podcast is that it cannot be just about making Seattle a better place to live.
It has to be about... Making the world a better place to live.
Making the world a better place and revolutionizing everybody's chicken cooking techniques.
All right.
See, that feels like really piddling stuff.
It's an amazing thought technology.
Maybe next time.
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Here's the pivot that I think, first of all, I don't know why at the 30-minute mark I feel the need to say this.
I would like to point out it is not April 1st.
This is real.
John is actually doing this.
Because you know people are going to ask.
Yeah, well, and one of the things about my candidacy is that it is an unusual thing for somebody like me to run for public office.
And so, yeah, there are going to be people who are like, can this be real?
Sure, you got Peter Garrett, you got Jello Biafra, you got Tom Amiano, you got all kinds of people from the arts moving into politics.
You got the Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan, that's right.
He moved from the arts into politics and brought his classic artistic sensibility to the conduct of his office, both as governor of California and president of the United States.
Yeah, you wouldn't believe what he wanted to do to San Francisco with highways.
Woo, doctor.
Well, Reagan is the one who took art, who defunded art.
He's the one that defunded the arts in America because Robert Mapplethorpe had some naked pictures.
And that's a legacy that we are still suffering from.
Okay, so here's the big thing.
The big pivot is, I'm curious, the questions I have, I think we'll have plenty of time to hear about your platform.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
I've had a good three years of hearing about your platform already.
Oh, you want to hear about my platform?
I'm going to call you after we get done with this podcasting.
I've been napping on your platform for years.
The super train platform.
Here it comes.
Here it comes.
So the – I don't know.
I guess I'm curious about – there's two directions I can go.
And you can pick which one of these you want.
But the one kind of question I'm super curious about is how does this change stuff in your life?
And you can talk about it any way you want.
The other thing I'd like to talk about is what do you think is going to be most difficult about this?
You can take the second question first if you want.
What's difficult about this, not just in terms of making it happen, what's hard for you, what do you have to sacrifice?
What are the things you're most on the bubble about, either in terms of concern or worry or sacrifice that you kind of go, well, I'm going to miss that being that way?
Are there things like that where you go like, well, I'm going to set these kinds of things aside?
Yeah, in the run-up to this, I talked to a lot of people in the professional political class and they all gave me very good advice.
It was all super good advice.
And over the course of several weeks of thinking about it, all that advice caused a lot of anxiety in me because the way that people in the professional political class imagine it is that you run somebody for office is that they have a plan, a certain way of doing things.
Your plan should have a certain number of points, I understand.
Well, but the thing is it's very analogous.
It's like a listicle for politics.
It really is, right.
But it is very analogous to what happens when you're a brand new band and you're about to put your record out.
Everybody that you talk to in the music industry has a very clear idea about what you need to do next.
And they are more than happy to tell you about what you need to do.
And the problem is that that's all true until a band comes along that doesn't do any of those things and becomes the biggest band in the world.
Right.
And so this was when I joined the music business.
Everybody said, I mean, seriously, and I know you remember this.
People said, oh, don't go on the Internet and talk to your fans.
Right.
They don't.
You know, you need to maintain an air of mystique.
That's just rock and roll.
And they say, oh, you need to, you know, don't waste your money releasing vinyl.
Nobody buys vinyl anymore.
Save that money to spend on opening weekend to try and get your record in the top 10.
Save that for Pitch 4 Cats.
Right.
Or just like, or, you know, get it on MySpace or whatever.
I mean, everybody knew exactly what you were supposed to do until the game changed and that wasn't how you did it anymore.
Right.
Um, so in the run up to this, people were giving me a lot of advice and what they were trying to do was either put me into a box where I was claiming to be a social activist or I was claiming to be a, um, you know, like a, like that music had been this hobby, but really I'd been a secret politician the whole time.
And at a certain point a few weeks ago, I said to this group of advisors, I was like, listen, okay, you know what?
This is causing me a lot of stress because I'm not either one of those things.
I am an artist and I made a life for myself as an artist and I believe in the transformative power of art.
And if I can get elected to the Seattle City Council with that, then I will run.
Because I believe it.
And I believe that art is one of the pillars of civilization.
If you are telling me that the only way I can get elected to the Seattle City Council is that I pretend that I've been a housing activist this entire time or that I portray myself as a legal expert on local government, then there's no point.
There's no point in me lying to people because every other candidate is portraying themselves in a certain light.
And I have to just be myself.
And I do believe that I can get elected personally.
by doing that, but it requires that we, uh, that we change people's expectations, I guess.
But so that is the, that's the thing that's caused me the most stress.
And it is the thing that is maybe going to be the most difficult.
Um, you know, for me personally, um,
I relish my free time and I relish the fact that I don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn.
I wasn't going to bring it up.
And this is going to require that I change that about myself.
But that is very, very doable.
Those are luxuries that I afforded myself.
But I've said on this podcast, and you and I have talked for years about the fact that
You have to set your aspirations for yourself somewhere.
And you get to be 45 years old and there's a tremendous pull to set your aspirations for yourself right about where you're at.
Oh, you know what?
My aspirations are to just keep burbling along like I'm doing.
It feels a lot less disappointing.
Right.
Because it's so scary to be 45 and to do something that puts you right back in a place where you don't know what's going to happen next.
It's much better to be like, I know the bands I like and I know the neighborhood I like to go to and I go to the pub and they know me by name and I'm doing pretty good.
But that isn't enough for me and never has been.
So do I have to get up in the morning in order to do this?
I absolutely do.
And do I have to learn to love it?
I'm not sure if that's possible.
But I am galvanized by a desire to do something
You know, to take the privilege that Seattle has afforded me and turn that back into sacrifice.
Yeah, but like specifically, Candidate, like what do you –
I realize this is going to be a crazy process and there's a lot that you're going to be learning about and reacting to as it comes along.
But do you have in mind – are there things that you know of already where you go, well, that's a thing I'm just not going to be able to do or the way that I like or at all or in a different way?
I mean, obviously there's the thing of like, you know, being able to talk in the way that you might like on this show.
I mean, you're not a man who's necessarily, I don't think of you as somebody who parses what you say too much to begin with.
But I mean, like as far as time and stuff too, you talked last year, I'm going to refer the gentleman to your earlier remarks, that you want to do a lot more songwriting this year.
And I guess this probably came up in the interregulum, but what's the kind of stuff where you go like, that's going to just have to be okay for me to not do this particular thing for a while.
Are there things like that?
Well, you know, this is absolutely going to change my parenting.
I've had the opportunity to spend the first four years of my daughter's life kind of at my leisure with her.
And now I have to do what every parent has to do, which is learn to budget my time better and learn to budget my time in such a way that the last thing that suffers is my daughter.
And that is going to require a lot of additional effort and thinking on my part to make sure that she doesn't see less of me.
And yet I am also doing all this new and additional work.
The work that I do now is real work.
It often looks like sitting and staring at the wall.
It also often looks like dreaming.
But that is real creative work.
The thing about this undertaking is that the work that I need to do often just looks like being there.
It means getting up and getting in the car and being there on time.
Listening to people takes a lot of time.
It does.
I'm not being silly.
I mean making yourself available just to – I mean I'm just in my own completely nonpolitical experience.
I mean just the number of people that have my email address and can email me or text me.
Like I don't always want to have to talk to people all the time.
And it seems like you're going to have to have –
an amount of, on the one hand, access different than probably ever before that you welcome and embrace, but also that there's going to be a lot more stuff.
I mean, look in the last couple, what, in the last week, set aside being sick and Easter.
Just how many times we have to change the scheduling just because of stuff that's happened.
It seems like that's going to become like a thing.
You're going to have to be okay with how often circumstances require you to do something differently.
Yeah, I do have to, and I have to be there.
Uh, in a way, but you know, it's funny.
I was doing a photo shoot tonight, uh, downtown getting some pictures, you know, up, uh, for the launch.
And I'm standing there on the street corner and a group of women comes by and they're like, hey, you're John Roderick.
And I go, yeah, hi.
And they go, what are you doing?
Why are you standing here getting your picture taken?
They're a little bit older than me.
They're all sort of women in their early 50s.
And I said, guess what?
I'm running for city council.
And they were like, oh my God, that's fantastic.
And we stood and we talked about the city for a minute.
We talked about what they perceived to be the problems in the city.
And then they were very content to say, fantastic.
We are so glad that you're running.
You have our vote.
And then we all took a picture together.
And then they were like, goodbye.
Because there's a different way that people want to talk to a candidate.
If I had been like, I'm just standing out here thinking about some songs and talking about some songs, they would have said, great, let's stay here together for an hour and a half.
But I'm a candidate for political office.
And there's something in that where people recognize, I mean, most people, normal people recognize that you go, great, let's get a picture.
You have our vote.
Goodbye.
And I'm standing there having had this wonderful experience with these people.
I'm thinking, well, this is interesting.
They knew me as a musician.
But when I said that I was running for office, all of a sudden we had a very different conversation.
Yeah, I'll bet.
I'll bet it's going to be real different.
It was very enjoyable, too.
They were excited I was running.
They offered their support.
Maybe you found a new way to make people afraid of talking to you.
I would love to get a course on that.
So I walked down the street about half a block.
And there's another group of like five people standing there.
There are a couple of families.
They have a couple of little kids.
And they're like, hey, you're John Roderick.
And I go, yeah, hello.
And I'm thinking to myself, oh, this is interesting.
Like all of a sudden I'm walking down the street doing a photo shoot and everybody in the world knows who I am.
But it's very unusual, right, to see somebody standing there getting their picture taken on the sidewalk.
And so this group of people says, hi, you know, what are you doing?
And I say, oh, I'm running for public office.
And they said, we just overheard you talking to those people and we wondered if that was what it was.
And I said, yes, I'm running for city council.
We talked for a few minutes.
they told me what they thought needed to happen in the city.
And they said, we're so excited for you.
You have our vote.
Let's get a picture.
Goodbye.
Wow.
And I was like, what is this?
This is a very different, as soon as you're a candidate, people are talking to you differently.
So it is about being there.
It's about talking to people, but also it's a completely different conversation than the way people want to talk to their favorite musician.
Wow.
And so it's, so, you know, quite candidly, I was energized by both exchanges.
And that was exciting to me.
Now, I know that running for public office, there's going to be somebody that wants to talk to me about chemtrails for an hour and a half.
Right.
uh little do they know that i am an expert on chemtrails but also you might you might want to have a blue ribbon panel but here's the thing i have i'm gonna i'm gonna have a campaign manager who's standing next to me with some kind of uh large phone and that campaign i already have this person my campaign manager already is a person who actually has a large phone
Wow.
See, that's smart staffing.
And this campaign manager is... Let me ask you a question.
Do you have a large phone?
Yes, I have a large phone.
Can I see it?
Can I see you operate?
But then the person's going to come up and they're going to say, what are you going to do about chemtrails?
And my...
And of course, I'm going to go, let me tell you about my policy, about chemtrails.
And my campaign manager with the large phone is going to lean in and they're going to say, Mr. Roderick, we have to go.
And I'm going to go, you know what?
I want to engage you on chemtrails.
I really do.
But we're going to have to table this until I see you next.
And I will not be lying.
But also I will be able to get away because I have somebody whose job it is to recognize the tinfoil hats.
You're going to hear about this.
Even when they're under a different kind of hat.
So anyway, my life is going to change.
It really is.
And a lot of it is going to be availability to people, accessibility.
But there's another thing, which is I realized going into this,
I don't want to run against the other people who are campaigning for this seat.
It sounds like what you described, I mean, it's private, I guess, but you sound like you have a lot of respect for the other people who are running.
I have absolutely nothing against my opponents.
I think anybody that wants to – having just even entered into the process as much as I have, I have tremendous respect for anybody that runs for office.
It is excruciatingly difficult.
And it really is sacrifice.
You know, when we talk about we thank people for their service who have served in the military.
I heard they don't like that.
It's hard to know.
You know, they thank each other for their service.
Mm-hmm.
Thanking somebody for their service where it feels gratuitous or it feels like it's some kind of way to pat yourself on the back.
It's like me talking to Ramon on the last day of the cruise.
It's a little condescending.
Right.
You don't want to condescend to somebody who actually has done some hard work.
Who literally risked their life for several years.
And then you get to congratulate yourself because you thanked them for their service.
Right.
They can smell that, I think.
But the reality is that public service takes a lot of forms, and one of those forms is participating in your government.
So I have no desire to run for this office by denigrating my opponents or by saying, you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy or whatever.
If you want, I mean, you haven't asked, but if you ever want some help coming up with zingers like that, I'd be happy to help.
Right?
Well, you know what?
I have Lloyd Benson on my speed dial.
And the fact is I do not know at some point in this election, and I'm absolutely sure it will happen, that somebody will say something really nasty about me.
No.
I think so.
I don't think it's going to happen.
I think, well, you know, it's hard to know.
It depends.
It's early days.
It's early and it probably won't happen tomorrow.
But somewhere along the line, somebody's going to take a shot at me.
And of course, as you know, those of us who spend all our time on the Internet, we do not want people to yell at us.
And part of this job is putting yourself out there and inviting or at least affording people the opportunity if they want to yell at you, here you are.
I would go further than that.
It's part of your job to take it.
Yeah, that's right.
It's not optional.
Right.
And so that will require a kind of – well, you know what?
Ultimately, I think a kind of humility.
And as you know, I've been trying to learn and embrace humility for a long time.
And even gearing up this much to run for office, like the humility opportunities come every day on a big platter.
And if you run for office like full of arrogance, it's a gross disservice or a gross misapprehension of what the job is.
And I really do feel like the humility of standing there and letting people take shots at you and you keep standing and you keep talking about what you think matters is something that I've been practicing for it for a long time.
And I don't think anybody looks forward to it.
But it's really going to change it for me, and particularly, you know, I mean, I have a kid.
She can't read the newspapers yet, but one day she will.
She'll be sitting in the library stacks looking at a microfiche, and she'll be reading the newspaper accounts on her microfiche, because even though the internet is going to transform urban life, still students will read microfiche.
Absolutely.
It's part of the core curriculum.
Father, what did you do during the chemtrails wars?
Yeah, and she'll be there looking at the microfiche, and there will be some newspaper article where somebody says, have you ever really listened to the Super Train episode of their podcast?
Oh.
That's nothing.
That's a romp.
That one's – I think that one's actually – that would bring a lot of people into your big tent, John, if I could say.
You think so?
Oh, yeah.
That's not – I'm not going to help the competition by picking on episodes.
Do you think it will bring all the boys to the yard?
It sure could.
Yeah.
But you – this is going to be your job now.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean let's be clear here.
You need to campaign for the primary and then if and when you succeed at that, you go on to the election.
This is going to be your job at least through the summer.
Yeah, right.
And here's the worst part.
We haven't even talked about this.
Oh, fundraising.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The whole game is is asking people for money, a thing that we all hate to do.
Right.
And so asking people for money is and the thing is asking them for money and then they go, OK, we sure will support you.
And then you ask them again.
Hey, remember when you said you supported me?
Will you give me that money?
And they're like, okay, we sure will.
Thanks for calling again.
And then you look and you see that they didn't give you the money and then you call them again and you go, hey, just me calling to check in.
Like, it's the worst.
And you do that until they either give you money or they say, listen, don't ever call here again.
And even then, I think you have to call them again and say, I know that you told me not to do this.
So the advantage is that the way that Seattle City elections work
The maximum amount that anybody can donate to you is $700.
So there is at least a ceiling where if somebody has given you $700, you just can't take any more money from them.
Can Paul Allen make the whole soccer team give you money or something like that?
Well, there are a lot of ethics rules about that.
If, if, if everybody that works for Paul Allen gives you $700, the ethics committee is going to, is going to take some of those people aside and say, did Paul Allen make you do this?
And if they say, yeah, he kind of did, then that's a, that's a super violation.
Hmm.
Um, this is going to be so crazy, right?
It's gnarly.
And the thing is, if somebody gives you $700 and then they, then they, uh, also give you, uh, like a silver candlestick and they say, here's a candlestick.
Use it for the, your election.
The value of that candlestick.
has to be computed into the amount they've given you.
And if they've already given you $700, they can't give you the candlestick you have to give it back.
Oh, you love candlesticks.
I do.
And the thing is, if you're running a campaign, of course you want a big table and you want some candlesticks on it.
That's a huge differentiator.
There was an episode of Fresh Air the other day, which is where I learned everything.
And I think it was – let me see if I can remember right.
It was David Bianculli in for Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's apparently away.
And no, but it was a great interview with this woman.
Let me get her name.
Judge Sue Bell Cobb.
And she was the former – I think she was the chief justice of Alabama.
And it was an amazing – you should hear it though.
It was an amazing interview because now that she's out of office, she's advocating strongly for the idea that judges should not be elected positions, that it's very unusual like internationally.
There are not that many first world countries where you elect judges and that the whole idea of like having to do elections is –
especially as a judge and having to see people who come before you.
That angle is interesting, but the way she handles it, she's really honest about it.
I feel like I have no way of knowing, but I felt like she was very honest about talking.
You could feel her discomfort about the basic process where she'd have to get somebody on the phone
And like get up to the point of asking for money and basically say, can I have my finance person contact you?
The thing is – but she's exactly – as clear as she is about that and the pain of that, she's exactly as clear as saying I could not have been elected if I hadn't done that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And everything that she did was ethical.
She didn't do anything wrong.
Nobody – she's not saying anybody did anything wrong except that the institution of what makes those kinds of things legal is difficult for everybody.
Yeah.
It is.
And the problem with it is that somebody gives you some money and then there is just inherent in that a lot of expectation.
Well, I gave you that money.
And somebody like me, I have a tremendous advantage, which is that I'm not beholden to anybody.
I didn't come up out of the unions.
I didn't come up out of the prosecutor's office.
I am a completely free agent who also knows every nook and cranny of Seattle.
And so I go into this able to say, I'm clean.
Yeah.
And I am also like I have a moral compass.
I'm not liable to have somebody sidle up to me and hand me a briefcase.
What if somebody just gives you a candle?
Do you have to write it down?
Feel free to get back to me on that if you need to.
I went and had a long meeting with the Seattle Elections Ethics Office where all of that was talked about.
And there are really clear rules for everything.
But they are clear.
They're not ambiguous.
No, they're not.
That's good.
And if you take money from somebody, you need to have their name and address and phone number too.
If somebody walks up and says, here's $700 in a paper bag, good luck.
You have to hand it back to them.
You have to say, you need to fill out a form that allows us to know that you gave me this money.
But this becomes, that's going to have to be a big part of what you do for the next few months, right?
I mean, especially at first, because getting, I don't know anything about anything, but it seems like part of it is like getting that money from other people shows that you're serious.
And then, like I said, the early money is like yeast, right?
Like you start getting that and then people want to give you more.
It's the way you communicate to the professional political class and the journalists and the people who are watching the race.
It's the way you communicate that you are a contender is strictly that you have money.
And that's why you end up with people running for office who are already millionaires and they just use their own money.
And that's why we're taking those people seriously because they have money.
And it doesn't mean that they are actually serious people or good people.
It just means that they start out with the advantage of having the money to run a campaign.
But the advantage that I have that the other candidates don't is that I'm not struggling for name recognition.
And also there's nobody else running for city office who lives on the internet the way I do.
And so I've never, you know, I've never gone to the internet and asked them for anything.
All I do is give.
You know this about me.
I do know that about you.
You thought long and hard about whether you even wanted to participate, but once you did, you just opened those gates and all your gifts just came flowing out one way, one way, John.
That's right.
I said, Internet, here, take it all.
I am basically the giving tree of the Internet.
Wait, don't they get chopped down?
Yeah, he does.
Spoilers.
And you know what?
I've been chopped down, but I got up again.
I think those guys are anarchists.
Oh, they are.
Yeah, they are.
Chumbawamba?
Chumbawamba are anarchists.
They are a collective, an anarchist collective.
I'm going to go read up on this.
I remember Peter Garrett.
Peter Garrett was the guy from Midnight Oil, right?
Did he actually win in his election?
Give it back!
bow bow bow he did win and he was a very effective politician he's a hell of a dancer too uh he's a he's an extraordinary man and i think that i think in australia he's held in fairly high regard they have an unusual i've seen remember reading i remember hearing wow the midnight bell guys running for office they have don't they have kind of a wackadoodle with all respect to our aussie friends the kind of a wackadoodle uh way of doing national elections where it's i guess it's somewhat electoral in nature or something where like an outsider can can actually have a chance or something like that i don't know i don't know it's
My understanding of Australian elections is that they put a marble in a conch shell.
And then they put the conch shell at the bottom of a reef.
And it's on a pillar at the bottom of a reef.
And they don't tell you which reef.
You get half a map.
They give each candidate a knife.
And they have to carry the knife in their mouth.
Yeah.
And then they ask you, is that a knife?
And then you have to answer, is that a knife?
You're making friends already.
Now that's a knife.
So, yeah, they do things very differently there.
Yeah.
And I think in New Zealand, right, don't you just, you go to the top of a volcano and throw somebody in?
I think it's something like that.
The name that they scream on their way down is the name of the- Their main concern is that you not confuse it with the Australian way of doing elections.
They're very sensitive about that.
Yes, let's, you know what, enough said.
Yeah.
About the Kiwis versus the Aussies.
So what are you going to miss?
What are you going to miss?
I mean, like, you're going to miss, let's be honest, you're going to, I'm guessing you're going to miss, like, having your time be your own, such as it has been.
That's got to be one.
Well, yes, I will.
But I also, you know, you stand at the threshold of something and you cannot take a step forward if you are consumed with thinking about what you're going to miss.
Like what I don't know about what the future holds, about what my life is going to look like is everything.
I don't know anything about what is going to happen next.
And that's thrilling and I just have to step into that.
You know, before my daughter was born, a lot of people said, aren't you going to miss your freedom?
And I said, well, you know, I've had a lot of freedom.
I've been to a lot of plays and dance recitals and bars and rock shows.
And in fact, for many years, I would go to three or four rock shows a night.
I have lived.
I have sucked the marrow out of life.
Once my daughter was born, I realized that whatever I no longer could do because of my daughter...
And that did not feel like a sacrifice at all.
Right.
I couldn't go out and see rock shows anymore because I was at home with my beautiful daughter who, you know, looking into her eyes is like a kind of drug that I never knew existed.
And so I don't – I mean only somebody that doesn't have a kid would ask you, aren't you worried about losing your freedom?
Because when you lose your freedom, you do it voluntarily and you say farewell to you, my freedom.
I mean hopefully you do.
At least I did.
I said, I do not need to go to see Spoon tonight, although I want to because I'm here with my daughter, which is something I want to do more.
And so in looking at my future life, running for office first, which is a very different job from holding office second.
uh i can only hope and expect that that the sacrifice of giving up um my ability to go down to portland this afternoon because i want to talk to somebody about a hamburger um and then once i'm down there maybe i'll you know do like jump up at their show and play a guitar solo um
losing the ability to do that because I have to be here the following morning to hear about how we're going to redo our sewer system to accommodate wet wipes.
I can only hope that and I do expect that I will be so invigorated and thrilled by the opportunity that I won't look at it as a sacrifice.
That's a good answer.
Yeah, and I can't imagine looking at the next 40 to 50 years of my life on this planet and thinking about it in any terms other than that, you know, I have to just keep stepping through that door every time.
Yeah.
And, you know, because the alternative is to just come to a doorway one day where I go, well, it's one doorway too many.
I'm not stepping through this one.
I'm just, I'm fine here.
And that doesn't feel like it would, you know, that's not what I've been working toward.
and hopefully you know I don't come to some doorway and have somebody say like well if you step through this doorway there's either a lion
or a beautiful princess get a lady or a tiger which is it gonna be uh-huh uh you know because what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna i'm gonna open both doors at the same time because i'm i have long arms this is gonna be a ride you know what and the thing is like uh we're gonna talk about some stuff some weird stuff on here i am not gonna continue to monopolize
our mutual podcast that we love so dearly.
Is that a commitment?
Is that a campaign promise?
You know what?
This is my commitment to you.
And I would like, I would like, if you will, if you will allow it, I would like to close out this announcement podcast.
with your new thought technology about cooking chicken.
Thank you, John.
First of all, I'd like to say thank you for the opportunity to appear here tonight and to have an opportunity to share a thought technology that I think many of you will enjoy.
Let's be honest.
Nods emphatically.
A lot of people like to eat chicken.
Crowd goes wild.
I read about this in a book and, um,
A recent book?
I read it on the internet and printed it out.
I was looking for a new way to cook chicken.
John, I can't talk about this.
In the middle of your portent, I can't come out and drop a chicken recipe.
See, this is the problem.
This is the problem.
What?
You're worried that we're going to lose all the great chicken recipes?
All the great chicken recipes.
Because suddenly we're operating at a higher level?
Well, this is special.
This is a special edition.
I don't know if I want to sully it with my chicken.
Okay.
Well, you know, the thing is I want to give that chicken...
Time to, first of all, marinate.
That's a good question.
If anything, I feel like it's too easy of a recipe.
Are there any other questions?
Do you have any closing remarks today?
We'll talk about the chicken next time.
But you've got – this is going to – I just want to – I guess this is a good place to set a few things straight in as much as we can, which is we're going to keep doing the show.
That's right.
That we hopefully – hopefully our schedule will not become too erratic, but that's a little out of our control and it would be bad to overcommit.
That's right.
But we are going to continue to do this show because that is our commitment, not only to you, the listener.
Sorry, breaking the fourth wall.
I know we don't do that.
Our commitment to you, but also, Merlin, our commitment to one another.
If it were not for you, my friend, Merlin, ma'am, I would be less of a man than I am today.
Okay.
And you have made me more of an adult.
You have been the little pill flavored like a turkey dinner that has enabled this space program to make this mission to Mars a success.
This podcast has been the wall in front of your... Five inches away from your face as you go in a death can hurtling into space.
That's right.
This podcast...
has been the Whopper, which both starts a global thermonuclear war and also recognizes that the only winning move is not to play.
Interesting.
Congratulations.
Welcome to candidacy.
Thank you.
It's going to be fun.
I hope that everybody follows along.
Listen, voteroderick.com is the website, voteroderick.com.
Is that on the internet?
It's going to be on the internet.
VoteRoderic.com.
Wow.
And, I mean, basically my expectation is that everybody that listens to this podcast will go there and immediately donate the maximum amount of money they can.
Sure.
I mean, I think it goes without saying.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, we cannot accept money from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Finland, or actually any country other than America.
Really?
You got to vet that, huh?
You cannot give money to the campaign if you do not live in America.
And I'm sorry to all of our... You know, one problem at a time, John.
One problem at a time.
But if you do live in America, if you live, say, for instance, in Kansas City, Kansas, or Kansas City, Missouri...
Kansas City, New Hampshire.
If you live in Kansas City, New Hampshire, I would love to get a map of your town because it's one I don't have in my collection.
But you can give money to the campaign from anywhere in America because, of course, Seattle is one of America's top cities.
And if Seattle goes, so too does America go.
Right?
As Seattle moves, America moves.
And so it is not unreasonable to think that people who live elsewhere want to see Seattle move.
Right.
And so, yes, that is the opportunity.
VoteRoderick.org.
You know, I'm going to say that.
I'm sorry.
Not .org.
Although we do also have .org.
VoteRoderick.com.
VoteRoderick.com.
Anybody in the U.S.
that can just jump in.
That's right.
Does that change anything that you talked about that on here?
Hmm.
How do you mean?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, like, it's okay to ask for money, right?
Well, I mean, that's the thing.
We have to.
And, you know, I think there is a desire.
Well, first of all, as we said already, everybody on this podcast will automatically give the maximum.
But then they have to go to their friends and family.
In the United States.
In the United States.
And those of you who live overseas who have friends and family in the United States, you can absolutely call them and send them emails.
We'll leave no donor behind.
And ultimately to spread the word.
And now what I'm talking about is one of these things, these internet things.
I don't want to say it.
I don't want to curse it.
But to spread the word where this candidacy is recognized as representing...
All of us.
I see.
Why am I?
In case you missed it.
Ding.
Listen.
I'm going to put in some March music here.
Right.
Okay.
We're marching to a better future.
Moving Seattle within the constraints of the election laws.
Find a friend in Germany.
No.
Ask them to tell someone in the United States.
Okay.
Yes.
You know, I'm just workshopping it at this point.
If you find a friend in Germany and tell them to call the United States, that is one method.
Call it election scheisse.
Congratulations, John.
Thank you.
Thanks, Merlin.