112: Here Comes the But

After some opening remarks, your hosts reveal the _very_ special guest for their forthcoming [member](https://www.relay.fm/membership) episode. They also invite you to please help Relay with a really cool project to benefit [an excellent cause](http://stjude.org/recdiffs). Merlin has some follow-up on his Apple TV, and John wants to understand why Merlin overpays his bills. Talk turns to the evolution of ecommerce. John assures Merlin he's still a valuable part of the team. John critiques how well or poorly Merlin helped Roderick fix his computer. Talk turns to the care and feeding of a Synology NAS running Plex. Merlin gets John to talk a little about Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her TV show, _Fleabag_. This leads to a brief, spoiler-free discussion of this terrific series. Two enthusiastic thumbs-up. This week's main topic is the backdoor pilot for a multi-episode arc: **secret weird things people do**. _Are we even able to even realize when there's something extremely weird that only we do?_ The inaugural sub-topic is Merlin's strange obsession with making spreadsheets. What is he tracking and why? Does he really need to know the historical price of asthma medicine he doesn't even use any more? Are Halloween costumes and flashlights the sort of thing a normal person would ever need or want to track? And, importantly, what sorts of things will John be trying to notice about himself? Does he have anything like separate sock drawers, and how even would he know? Tune in next time to find out! (_Recorded on Tuesday, August 27, 2019._)