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John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 481 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we’re answering listener questions, but not about screenwriting. Instead, we’re answering your questions about love, home ownership, ego, marriage, parenting, coding, and more. To help us out with this we are very lucky to have back Nichelle Tramble-Spellman. She’s the creator and showrunner of the award-winning AppleTV+ drama series Truth Be Told. Her other writing credits include The Good Wife, Justified, Mercy, and two novels.

She last joined us in Episode 424 at the Austin Film Festival. Welcome back Nichelle.

Nichelle Tramble: Hello. Thank you for having me back.

Craig: Nichelle. We got Chelle back.

John: This is our last episode of 2020. And for that we needed just a ray of sunshine and light and hope. And so Craig suggested Chelle and I could not have been more excited when you said yes.

Nichelle: Oh, thank you. I’m excited to be here. This is a nice way to end this crazy year.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Crazy year.

Craig: Yeah, let’s end it.

John: And while there were highlights, there were lowlights. But this is not going to be really about anything 2020. It’s just about advice for going forward. So it’s not looking back. It’s looking forward.

Nichelle: I’m all for that.

Craig: What I like is that some people out there legitimately think that John and I know what we’re talking about. That we have some inherent wisdom that stretches beyond our narrow field. Whereas it’s far more likely that Chelle will actually have useful advice, but John and I will continue to fake it until we make it.

John: Mm-hmm. And also to wrap this up, in our bonus segment for Premium members we’re going to talk about that Martin Shkreli article because everyone says like, hey, how could this be a movie. And we aren’t going to get it in in 2020 if we don’t talk about it, so that will be our bonus segment talking about the crazy story of the reporter who has fallen in love with her subject. It’s all not good.

Craig: It’s crazy town.

John: Yeah. But, I’m so excited to answer listener questions. So, I sent out an email to Premium subscribers on Saturday afternoon. By Monday morning at 8am we had 52 emails about all these topics. Here’s where we welcome on our asker of questions. She’s the proxy for our listeners. It’s our producer, Megana Rao. Megana, welcome.

Megana Rao: Hi everyone.

John: So 52 is what I see in the Workflowy, but there’s probably been more than 52 emails that came in so far.

Megana: Yeah. So I think we’re about at 80 the last time I checked. And these emails are just beautiful, about everything. And I’ve had such a joy reading through them.

Craig: Oh my.

John: Hooray. I look at what you’ve assembled in the outline and it’s a really good sampling. But there’s so many, we should probably get right into it. So do you want to start with our first question?

Megana: Great. So Lisa asks, “Dear masters of advice.”

Craig: That’s already funny.

Megana: At work we had a Secret Santa gift exchange. It was recommended that we try to put some real thought into these gifts and as we’re paid quite well spend some real dough, which I did for my person and felt great about. I’m definitely someone who prefers to give than receive. I had no expectation of my Secret Santa gift, but I was still shocked, as were my close workmates, at what was handed to me. A small, crumply gift bag, a little torn on one side. Inside were what I imagined to be the items from someone’s junk drawer. Metal straws. Some white Ticky Tack. A strange sponge with a marijuana leaf on it. A small box of hard toffee.”

Nichelle: Oh my god.

Megana: “And pink tinted lip balm. After the effort I put in and seeing all the other lovely gifts given to people reflecting their personal taste is it wrong for me to feel sad about my gift? To feel that this wasn’t just thoughtless but intentionally meant to be insulting. Do I need to find out who my Secret Santa was so I can ask why they’re angry with me?”

Craig: Oh, Lisa.

John: Nichelle, I’m going to bring out the big guns right from the very start. What do you think of this situation? What’s going on?

Nichelle: You know what? It’s so funny because I think there’s an answer for every decade. If I was in my 20s I would have been the person that couldn’t afford to give a gift or forgot the morning of and then felt terrible and then did something like that. And in my 30s I would have gotten my workmate to be like the little in-house detective and find out who Secret Santa was and I would plot their death. And then in my 40s I just would have said, “All right. That’s cool.” And just not thought about it.

But in every decade I would have thought that is a terrible gift and that’s a terrible person.

Craig: [laughs] Which is the one thing in there that is the indication that it is the worst – what is the worst of that bunch of stuff? Because I have my theory.

John: I think it’s the sponge is the worst thing in there.

Craig: I feel like it’s the small box of hard toffee because you could actually eat it, but it’s just like oh my god.

John: You’d have toffee resentment every time.

Nichelle: Wasn’t there a lip balm or a lip gloss in there?

John: Yeah.

Craig: Pink-tinted.

John: Hey, I think Secret Santa is a terrible idea.

Craig: Of course you do. You’re a cyborg. [laughs]

John: It’s a bad tradition. It only leads to sort of heartbreak and sadness. No one kind of gets what they want. It just stirs resentment. I think I was also watching an episode with my daughter a couple years ago of some Disney Channel show where there was a Secret Santa thing and people got up in arms. I think we should just stop with Secret Santa. That’s my belief.

Nichelle: I agree. I think so, too. I think that there’s one person in charge that gets the same thing for everybody at the Christmas party, when you get your cookies and eggnog. You just pick up one of the little boxes and everybody has the same thing.

John: The gift bag mentality.

Craig: Well, you guys stink. I love Secret Santa.

Nichelle: I don’t love it. I don’t love it.

Craig: Well, here’s the deal. You got to understand, every Jew will always have a slightly more fond appreciation for things like Secret Santa, because we’re so Christmas-starved as children. [laughs] But Santa is involved and we didn’t have him. We instead had candles. We had candles.

John: Yeah. But they lasted.

Craig: God knows how many times I’ve railed against Hanukkah but anyway I like a Secret Santa. There’s a surprise. You know what, Lisa, here’s the deal. Don’t take it personally. Lisa, do you understand how short life is? In the blink of an eye it’s gone. So this feels like you should totally just let it go.

John: The only other advice I’d have for Lisa to actually do some introspection and figure out what emotion you’re actually feeling. Because you say sad, but I don’t think you’re really sad. I think you’re probably angry or frustrated or confused. Those are all valid emotions to have. But actually ask yourself what emotion you have because you are a writer who is going to be writing other characters and so don’t say sad when you really mean something else because as a writer you need to be able to understand exactly what the motivations are of those characters you’re writing. And so think about what your motivations are.

What is the question you’re actually trying to answer? Is the question really how could they do this or was it intentional or was it a forgetful thing? If that’s the question you’re trying to answer maybe be Nichelle in her 30s and try to solve it. But you may also just want to be yourself in your 40s and just let it go.

Nichelle: It took me 20 years to get to let it go.

Craig: Yeah. It’s hard.

Nichelle: 20 years of adulthood to get to let it go. It’s hard.

Craig: It’s hard.

John: It’s hard.

Craig: And it’s still hard. It’s not like just when you finally start to get the whole let it go thing, it’s still – I have to remind myself at times to just take a big breath and exhale it out and move along.

Nichelle: Yeah. And then there’s the moments where you scream, “I’m not letting it go.” And then there’s just rage that follows. [laughs]

Craig: I do like that.

John: Megana, what’s our next question.

Megana: Great. So Mark asks, “What are the best ways to move beyond professional jealousy? I mean, really? Why is it always that person doing better work than me? And why can’t I just ignore them?”

John: I think it’s because you’re human, but Craig, tell us your feelings on jealousy. And Nichelle also talk about jealousy versus envy because they are slightly different things.

Craig: I have so many problems and so many weaknesses and flaws. Somehow this is the one that missed me. I don’t have jealousy because I never look at the world around me as like a zero sum thing. The industry is this very flexible, expandable thing. And of course our careers take these strange loopty loops. They go up, they go down. So at no point in time do I ever think that somebody doing well is a reflection on me doing poorly. Or vice versa for that matter. This one is just weirdly not in my head.

But I recognize that a lot of people do struggle with it. So, I’m going to let the two of you come up with answers because I don’t really have one, a good one at least.

John: So I definitely relate to what Mark’s feeling, because I would say early in my career I did feel this a lot. And I’ll distinguish envy from jealousy. Classically envy is when you want a thing that you don’t have and jealousy is to be fearful of losing a thing. And I was definitely envious of some writers who had more than I did. But it was very peer-focused. So as I was starting out it was like Kevin Williamson or David Benioff. When I would see them doing well I wasn’t angry at them, but I was asking myself why can’t I do that thing. Why can’t I get that?

And sometimes that negative feeling can be motivating. Can sort of jumpstart you. You’re sort of modeling yourself after what you perceive that they’re doing. But, of course, it can fall under this trap where you’re comparing your perception of them to what you actually know about yourself. And those things are a bad match in most cases.

Nichelle, did you feel jealousy/envy at any stage in your career?

Nichelle: You know what? I just always had this weird thing that I felt like there was enough for everybody. So Malcolm sometimes will say, “You’re really happy for that person?” And I’m like, yeah, why wouldn’t I be?

Craig: [laughs] With surprise in his voice?

Nichelle: Yes.

John: I can completely hear it.

Craig: Good lord.

Nichelle: Total surprise. He’s like, “Are you happy?” And I’m like, yes. I mean, because I honestly feel like it doesn’t have anything to do with me what someone else’s, you know, accomplishments and successes are, because then I would have to internalize their failures, too. And everybody else’s failures. And so I just really have blinders on straight ahead. And if I am getting weird about something that’s going on I usually just turn it into work. I’m like, OK, you know, I’m going to go work on something. And then I get so lost in whatever that project is that it goes away anyway. But usually it’s like good for them. And then we just keep going.

Craig: Yeah. And you know what? Mark, I would say when you ask the question why is it always that person doing better work than me, or better work than I, by the way, you should be jealous of my grammar skills. The answer may be that they’re better than you. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you encounter somebody that continually does better work than you get closer to them and learn. That’s the best you can do. There’s always somebody better than you. Always.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Always. So, you know, just keep looking up. And finding those people – as best as I can I’ve always tried to get closer to people who are doing excellent work to see what kind of lessons I could pick up or how their standards would impact mine. So, maybe it’s a good thing.

Nichelle: I think that the success I’ve never been jealous of. What I get jealous of or envious of, sometimes the way that people work. You know, the people that can just sit down, butt in the seat. I have this to accomplish today. And they get it done. I’m so curious about that because I sit down and I get started and I have everything going and then I’m like, oh yeah, there’s a sale at Saks today. Or, you know what I mean? And I’m like off chasing a rabbit here and there.

But that I feel a little bit more jealousy or envy of, the people that can sit down, do those eight hours, and every single day it’s the same thing. And I don’t really get started until like 11 o’clock at night. So I spend the entire day going “I should get started” when my routine is just to start at 11 o’clock at night.

Craig: That’s yours. That’s your routine. And by the way, it’s working.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Of course, look, we all want to be this imaginary person that has all of our plusses and none of our minuses. But that person does not exist. And the person who is working eight hours a day just may not be doing work at the level that you’re doing for two hours a day or one hour a day. We are what we are. We can’t do any better than we can do, except as we can. So you know what Mark? Accept it. Accept it buddy. There is no perfectible you.

John: For sure. Megana, what’s next?

Megana: Jeffrey asks, “Should everyone learn to code? And if so, where to start? I’m in my early 40s and did some C++ in junior high school. I’d love to teach myself to code, not for web design (snores) but along the path that could theoretically prepare me to be a (white hat) hacker. Advice?”

John: All right, I’m probably the coder among the three of us I’m guessing.

Craig: I did code. I mean, when I was in high school I was a coder.

John: And what were you coding back in high school?

Craig: Pascal.

John: Yeah. That was an educational language people used back then. So Pascal is not being used anymore.

Craig: No.

John: My answer would be sure. You can absolutely learn to code now. It’s absolutely great and fine. And if you want to make apps, you should learn something like Swift for making apps for iOS or for Macintosh. It’s a really straightforward language and it’s applicable to a lot of stuff.

But if you want to try to do anything on the web don’t learn Swift. Instead, focus on JavaScript which is the [unintelligible] of a lot of web stuff. You can go into Node with that and build some really cool things.

If you want to do hackery kind of stuff, something like Ruby or Python would be good because that’s the scripts that take down stuff and sort of do big database hacks. That’s Ruby or Python or a language that’s like one of those would be a more like what you’d be doing.

But, yeah, there’s great resources online. It’s not hard to learn. And if you like it, great. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, too. You’ll learn quickly how much you enjoy it.

Craig: I accept that answer.

Nichelle: Me too.

John: Megana, what’s next?

Megana: OK, so Adam asks, “What’s the hardest either of you have ever laughed?” And a follow up, “What shared moment is the hardest you’ve laughed together?”

Craig: This is crazy.

John: Craig, what’s the hardest you’ve ever laughed?

Craig: I think the hardest I’ve ever laughed was watching Team America World Police when the little puppet vomits for about two minutes. I was actually nervous while I was laughing that I was dying because I couldn’t breathe. I remember legitimately being concerned that I was going to die because I could not stop. That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

John: Chelle, how about you? Hardest you’ve laughed?

Nichelle: Oh my god, it just made me start laughing again. It was during quarantine and I was in bed. And Malcolm came in and he said, “I want you to see this.” And he was holding his computer and keyboard, he even showed me, “I just lost [unintelligible].” [laughs]

Craig: For no reason?

Nichelle: For now reason. I seriously had tears coming down my face. Then it set him off. And it still [unintelligible]. So he finally turns it around and it’s footage, it’s random footage with this German man narrating, oh my god, this seagull that’s killing pigeons for no reason. And it’s the most insane thing. And there are a ton of people on this beach but no one but this one man is noticing that this seagull is just murdering pigeons all up and down the beach. And he drowns one and Malcolm and I were – it’s horrible – we were laughing so bad that he said, “We’re going to die.” So he ran out in the backyard in his underwear to get fresh air so he could stop, because we were both afraid we were going to die laughing. And that was it. It was completely goofy. And we just could not control ourselves.”

Craig: That’s beautiful.

John: I have the same experience of being afraid for my life while laughing. So this is the taping of the Sarah Silverman special Jesus is Magic, which if you haven’t seen Jesus is Magic do yourself a favor. It’s streaming. You can find it.

It is so funny. But there’s a joke sequence where she talks about her grandmother dying and how her grandmother was in her 90 or whatever. And so of course Sarah insisted on a full rape kit. [laughs] And I was laughing really hard before that point, but then I just couldn’t stop laughing. And this whole thing is being filmed, and so I’m worried that I’m going to die on camera. The camera is going to pan past me, so I’m sure some editor out there has all the footage and you can find me somewhere in the middle of that audience just about to die.

So I had to do that thing where I just tuck my head down and just sort of don’t look and don’t react, because I couldn’t take anymore comedy in. But it was hard to breathe. It’s so weird that humans have the ability to laugh. It’s not productive in any meaningful way. I can’t believe it’s actually an advantage.

Craig: See, this is what he does. This is when you know he’s a robot when he literally talks about us like we’re different. Why do humans laugh? I do not understand.

John: I mean, there’s no evolutionary advantage to laughing, but man it’s so great to laugh.

Craig: Well laughing is crying. Laughing and crying are literally the same thing, it’s just that one feels good and one feels terrible. But they’re the same. As far as I can tell.

John: Yeah. I don’t think Craig and I have ever laughed together though. This is the only time we’ve ever laughed together.

Craig: Very grim. Very grim. Always.

John: Megana, what’s next?

Megana: OK, so I hope you guys are ready for this one. Michael asks, “How do you know if you should marry someone or not?”

Craig: Well, You know what?

John: Fundamental question.

Craig: All three of us are married. And we’ve been married for a long time. So, we’re good to answer this.

John: Yeah. We’re all on keeper marriages, so yeah.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Nichelle, start us off. What’s your take?

Nichelle: I don’t know if I can really give advice. Malcolm and I, it took us 17 years to get married.

John: Wow.

Craig: But then you knew.

Nichelle: We lived together, yeah, we did know. We knew the whole time, but for some reason we just didn’t do it. But we’ve been together almost 30 years and we’ve only been married like 11 years now.

Craig: That’s a lot. 11 is still a lot. I mean, especially if you were together for 30, then my feeling is you can back qualify certain years if you eventually get married.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So like Melissa and I got married I think in – I want to say 1996 maybe. Something like that. We’ve been together since 1991. So, I can back date us to ’91. I feel good about that.

Nichelle: Yeah. We actually celebrate our meeting. We met on Halloween. So we actually celebrate that every year more than we actually celebrate our wedding day, because we did it for so long.

John: The same with me and Mike. So we count as 20 years, which is really from our first date, because we couldn’t get married for many years along the way. But, yeah, I would say 20 years that we’ve been together. The time you’ve been together is what really counts. So the question here though is–

Craig: How do you know?

John: How do you know if you should actually marry? How do you know if this is the person that you should actually marry? And some tests for me would be like is this the first person you want to tell a piece of good news, or a piece of bad news? Is this the person you want to go to first with that information? Do the pros significantly outweigh the cons of this person? And can you accept the fact that you will not change them? You will not change this person. And is that OK and you’re willing to live with the flaws that are going to be there. Don’t go into a marriage thinking you can change a person because you cannot.

Nichelle: Yes, I agree with that wholeheartedly.

Craig: That is true. I recall thinking that, you know, look, people fall in love and sometimes they fall out of love. There is no surefire way to know that you should or shouldn’t marry somebody. But I think the most important things for me were this. I was very comfortable with Melissa. It wasn’t work. It was easy, which I think is actually important. Because when people say marriage is work, it is work. But then make it easy work. You know, just find somebody that it’s easy with. Otherwise, you know, it’s just going to get harder and harder as you go.

And the other thing is it’s really important to see how the two of you weather a problem. Somebody gets sick. There’s some sort of trauma, accident, sickness, loss of a job, something – a crisis occurs. How do you act together in that crisis? And if it makes the crisis better and easier, that’s a huge sign. If you crumble under it, uh-uh, it ain’t gonna last.

Nichelle: Yeah.

Craig: Because more crises are coming.

Nichelle: I agree. Those 17 years we were together, the year that my mom – my mom was in hospice for four months and then she died. And without any discussion we decided to get married after all of that. We weather all of that together, even though we’d been together 17 years. It was just regular stuff and that was the really big one. And I think it was about five months later we got married after all that dragging our feet and all the discussion and this and that. And it was just like, no, this is what it’s all about. And you see everything up close. We saw how heartbroken we all were. My stepfather. And it was just like what are we waiting for? And we weathered that together very well.

Craig: In those moments there is no romantic love. And that’s important.

Nichelle: Nope.

Craig: Because romantic love is going to go away. That is a function of chemistry. And it can’t last. If you’re legitimately in romantic love for 30 years, like where your heart is pounding and you’re sweaty and you can’t – then there’s something seriously wrong with you. And that’s not healthy. So finding a moment where the non-romantic love is defined and passes the test, that’s a big deal.

Nichelle: That’s a big one.

John: Megana, what’s next?

Megana: All right. So next up Desi asks, “Why do people get so stuck in the preparation phase of things? Why do people go to film school instead of making films? Why do they research and outline and built backstory for things and never get around to just writing a shitty first draft?”

Craig: Hmm. Well, they’re scared.

John: There’s definitely people who get stuck in that. It’s fear. It’s fear of failure. It’s perfectionism. It’s just easier to think about doing the thing than actually doing the thing. That’s a natural thing.

What’s weird though is I always get frustrated when people talk about writer’s block. You don’t hear about like potter’s block. Or woodcutter’s block. There’s an aspect of it that you just actually have to do the thing and writing is just one of those things where it’s easy to distract yourself from actually doing the real thing.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Nichelle, are you a preparer? Are you an outliner? Are you a take a bunch of notes person? Or are you a get down to doing the draft?

Nichelle: I’m not an outliner. I do a lot, a lot, a lot of research. And the research starts to take form because I’m putting sections of the research in different categories. And then it starts to form sort of a loose shape. And so I don’t have an extensive outline. I just do – like when I was writing the novel I’ll just do what that chapter is about. What the next chapter is about. And there may be three to four sentences in a paragraph. But I do get lost in research. And I know I’m spinning my wheels when I just am not ready to write yet, or I am afraid to start for whatever the reason. So the procrastinating is the research part for me.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I think these things are – the reason that there is no potter’s block is because you’re not particularly vulnerable when you finish a pot. Or a woodcutting. It’s just a very vulnerable thing to show people this work. And until you show it to them it could be the great American novel, or the best screenplay ever written. The rubber hits the road when you’re done and you show it.

And so I think a lot of people just want to live in the warm comfort of possibility, because you’re invulnerable in possibility. Unfortunately, if you want to actually do this and write things you need to expose yourself to pain. There’s just no way around it. You just have to do it.

John: Yeah. And a thing we talked about on the show frequently is that a lot of times people will give up early in a draft and it’s the mismatch between what they thought the script was going to be versus what they actually are seeing underneath their fingers and it’s not as good as they sort of hoped it would be and they recognize that and so they don’t finish stuff.

You’ve got to finish things. You’re not going to actually improve until you have written that first script, and then the second script, and then the third script. And so I’m not telling you to rush blindly into things, but probably you’re better off getting started a little bit before you’re ready than getting over ready and never actually starting a thing.

Craig: Yup.

John: What’s next?

Megana: Great. So Kevin writes, “I’m a screenwriter eyeing a move to LA in the fall. And my wife and I are looking to finally own our own place. But I only know a little bit about the process of making such a big purchase. When is a good time to buy? And at what point did John and Craig stop renting? What are the neighborhoods I should be looking at for a starter home? It would be great to hear from two people with experience, especially from the perspective of two screenwriters.”

John: And you’ve got three writers here. I don’t know if 2021 is the right time to buy a house or not. LA rents have fallen a lot, just like they’ve fallen in a lot of other big cities, so this might be a great year to try out a neighborhood and rent someplace and see what you think and whether you like it. Because you might decide – here’s the thing about moving to LA is that you might be a person who likes living on the west side by the beach, or you’re a person who lives on the east side. But you got to kind of make one choice because there’s no both kind of. So that’s a thing you may want to – that’s why you might try something out to see what side of the city makes sense for you because your life is going to be very different based on where you pick.

Nichelle: I think that if you’re moving to Los Angeles for the first time I’d say you rent first. The city is so big and the neighborhoods are so different. The east side is different from the west side. But then within that area there are a ton of tiny neighborhoods with their own character. And you just have to get here, feet on the ground. Figure it out. What feels like home to you? Because to buy and then get stuck. And I also would just be a little nervous about buying in 2021 until we know how the world is going to really shake out.

Craig: Yeah. I think, you know, the sport of surfing Los Angeles real estate prices is a dangerous one. You never quite know what the ocean is going to do. So, you look at it as a long term purchase where you are buffeted from any particular trend. And when all the trending is said and done you’ll be ahead. That generally is the way it goes.

But I would recommend is this. Take a look at the kind of house, or imagine the kind of house that you think you can afford. What can you afford? Well, ideally you can put 20% down of the home value in cash. The rest will be a mortgage. And you want that monthly mortgage payment to be something that you feel comfortable you can cover each month with plenty left over for the rest of your living.

Once you get a sense of what that number is, take a look at what kind of houses you would get for that money. Then, totally agree with John and Chelle, rent. But rent a home and rent the kind of home that is roughly the kind you’d be able to buy. Because what you don’t want to do is rent a home that’s really a lot nicer than the one you can buy, because then you’re just never going to want to buy. You’re going to feel bad when you do buy.

So, find your slot, be in that slot. Check out a neighborhood. East side is kind of like funkier, cooler. West side is a little swankier and kind of New Agey. Those are super broad things. West Hollywood, there’s a lot of great shopping and nightlife. Hollywood Hills are a bit sleepier and bedroomy. Check it out. You rent. You see how it goes.

John: Yeah. The other thing I would say is you don’t say whether you and your wife are planning to have kids, but if you’re planning to have kids moving into a neighborhood that has a good public school will save you a tremendous amount of money and also let you use the public school system, so that is going to be a factor. A house in a good public school system is going to be more expensive but could totally be worthwhile. So, again, that’s a thing you can figure out when you’re actually here and seeing what the neighborhoods are. Then you can figure out what would be the elementary school that I could go to that would make sense. So that’s another factor.

Nichelle: Another option that you would have right now, which was not there when we first moved to Los Angeles, is you can kind of bop around a little bit if you do like maybe six months of Airbnb and just check out different neighborhoods that way. And so you’re not tied down and you’re not committing. And then possibly from that see what you really like and then rent there.

Craig: Yup. All true.

John: Yeah. Good thinking. Megana, what’s next?

Megana: Richard writes, “Is it wrong to lie to the Red Cross about the gay sex question when you know you have a scarce blood type and they’re always in short supply of it?”

Craig: That is an excellent question.

John: Yeah. And so it’s a question I’ve had to ask myself often. So, as a gay guy I have not been allowed to donate blood since college. And I have a good useful blood type. I’m an O, so I’m a universal donor?

Craig: You’re O-positive?

John: O-positive.

Craig: Yeah. So you are not a universal donor. O-negative is universal donor.

John: Oh, OK. Oh, no, I think I am O-negative.

Craig: Ooh my god, if you’re O-negative for god’s sakes lie. Yeah.

John: So, anyway, I know I’m type O and I don’t remember if I’m positive or negative. The point I want to make though is I haven’t donated blood since that time because it comes to the real fundamental question of like when is it OK to lie and when is it not OK to lie. And I don’t think we ever talked about Sissela Bok’s book on lying. But it was a really great book I read in college and it sort of stuck with me since that time. Craig, have you read Lying?

Craig: No. I’m tempted to say that I have. [laughs] Just to violate the title of it, but I did not.

John: Nichelle, I don’t know if you’ve read this either.

Nichelle: I have not.

John: So it’s a really great book. And so she’s a philosopher who is sort of looking through systematically at when is it acceptable to lie and when is it not acceptable to lie. And lying to protect others and lying to liars. It really sort of goes through all the scenarios. And for me the decision is that if I lie in that case and sort of say that I’ve not done this thing, systematically nothing changes. To me it’s a better – not giving blood until the system has changed is a better solution than to, in this case, to accept the fallacy of why they are keeping the blood out of supply, when they could test it and they should test it regardless.

So I think it’s a dumb system. It’s a bad system. And I’m not willing to sort of lie to perpetuate that system. In an emergency, if it were literally like this person is dying, of course I’m going to give blood. I don’t have a problem with blood donation overall. It’s just that I’m not willing to lie to hold up this system.

Craig: If you are O-negative I really would love you to lie. Because the way I – I mean, this is just my ethics. I evaluate things based on impact. Right? I mean, everybody lies. There’s no way to go through life without lying. You have to make little white lies all the time. And we usually do it because the act of lying will actually be of benefit to other people. We’re trying to protect someone’s feelings. Or to ease a difficult situation. And so you try as best you can to stick to that kind of lying. Lying that actually works to other people’s benefit. And of course it’s a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? I get it.

In my mind, if you have my blood type, which is A-positive, it’s not a particularly rare blood type. It certainly isn’t super useful in a hospital if you have a patient and you don’t know what their blood type is. You know, I donate blood but no one is clamoring at my door for it.

If you have O-negative, you got to lie. Because it is such a powerful benefit for everyone. And the people it’s going to benefit are almost certainly not going to be the people that are holding up or sponsoring or insisting upon the continuation of a system by which gay men are not allowed to donate blood. They could be children. And so, yeah, I mean, if you’re O-positive I’m not going to twist your arm. But if you’re O-negative I’m going to bring it up every month. [laughs] Until you finally just go.

John: Nichelle, do you have any opinions on it?

Nichelle: Nope.

John: Nope.

Craig: So smart.

John: Megana, what’s next?

Megana: So Sarah asks, “Dear Segue Man and Sexy Craig.”

Craig: Yes.

Megana: “I recently dated a guy for about three months who broke up with me when I asked to define the relationship. He claimed he wasn’t looking for anything serious, but acquired a girlfriend shortly afterwards. This is not the first, but just the most recent in a series of dating experiences that have left me feeling like the practice girl before someone else’s real relationship. The heartache has been great for my writing, but not for much else. I wonder if you can shed light on what motivates a person to categorize a romantic partner as either serious or not serious. Or what kind of character flaw a person might have to trigger the same non-committal reaction from their partners?”

Craig: Aw.

John: Oh, Sarah.

Craig: Let’s fix this. Let’s fix this for Sarah.

John: OK, first off, ouch, I’m sorry that this happened. You don’t say in your letter how old you are. I’m guessing you’re in your 20s, because it’s a different thing if it’s early relationships in your 20s versus later on. Also, if this person had left and then gotten engaged to or married to another person I think it would be a bigger hit than what this is, but it still sucks. Sucks to be in that situation.

Craig: I think Sarah that you could probably imagine a situation in which a guy asked you out and you went out with him and he was nice. Weren’t super turned on or anything, but you were OK with it. And so you had a few dates and maybe things went a little bit further and it was cool. But you were sort of like this is not my forever home here. And then so you just sort of get to a place where you think it’s better to just end it here rather than continue on. And you do. And partly you tell him it’s because you’re not looking for anything serious. And maybe you’re not.

And then three weeks later you meet some guy that just absolutely blows your heart out of the back of your chest and you’re like oh my god I’m fully in love. Well, you can’t not go down that road just because three weeks ago you thought you weren’t looking for something serious.

So, the reason I’m saying all this is maybe it’s not about you at all in the sense that this is going to happen sometimes. It doesn’t connect. There’s inherently not committable about you. There’s nothing that you that makes you more or less worthy of being serious. It’s just the two of you together didn’t make – the equation didn’t work out. And it’s awful. It’s just awful. I hate it. And I’m so sorry that you went through it. But literally everyone does. Everyone. Including that guy. Everyone.

Nichelle: Yeah. It’s hard to improve on that. But it really comes down to something that Craig said earlier and it’s that easiness. And people – even if they don’t know that’s what they’re looking for, when it sparks and you meet that person where it just clarifies so many things. And I know that you didn’t say what age you’re in, but there’s something about the 20s dating where everybody is just kind of running around and trying to find that. And give it time.

Nurse your broken heart and give it time. And like Craig said it is really not about you. It is just when those things happen sometimes it’s so easy and it’s perfect for both people. And then other times it’s just not. But I’m sorry for you.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Yeah. You say it’s been good for your writing, Sarah, and that’s awesome that it’s been great for your writing. And obviously you understand, you have your own emotions, and it’s great for you to be able to look at those. But you can also as a writer imagine what it might be, what’s the story look like from his point of view? And what Craig said in terms of like maybe he just got his eyes opened when this next person came along. Look at it from other character’s point of view, other people’s points of view, because there’s something great about having had the experience you had as a writer and be able to sort of remember what that was like.

So, you know, if you’re Taylor Swift or Dua Lipa, you could write a song out of it, but you are a screenwriter, so you can use this write a scene or a movie. So cherish that you actually have this experience even though it kind of sucks to be experiencing right now.

Craig: And also remember, Sarah, you’re changing because you’re aging. We are all in the midst of it. Everybody ages at a different speed. You may be – your peers may not be where you are. You may be ahead or behind them emotionally, in terms of being ready for commitment. How they define commitment. You know, if somebody is serious about commitment and they ask for a commitment that can be very intimidating. If somebody isn’t serious about commitment and they’re like, oh my god, we should totally get married one day, you’re like, “Yeah, we totally should because I know you don’t actually mean that. Because you’re nuts, and I’m nuts, and wee.” That’s a different story, right?

You just may be in a different place. Just stay open. You’re not the practice girl. You are somebody’s conclusion. You just have to find that person.

John: Yeah. All right, let’s go to a listener question that actually came in in audio form. So we’re going to take a listen to Ben’s here. So I’m going to share this with you guys so you can hear it.

Ben: Hey John and Craig. I am 30 years old and have a great job. But I’ve always dreamed of getting my Master’s degree. I found a great program where I can earn my degree on the weekends and still keep my wonderful job during the week. The only issue is telling my parents. I know I’m an adult and should just do the things that bring me joy, but they worked really hard so that I wouldn’t have any debt after I got my Bachelor’s degree. And this would mean going into debt for a little while. It feels like a betrayal of some sort.

I’m from the Midwest, but live in LA, and there’s tons more competition than back home in my tiny hometown in Nebraska. I think this Master’s program would help me advance my career. So, how do I tell my parents who are very money conscious that I want to do a Master’s degree? I love them very much and don’t want to break their hearts. You guys are great. Thank you all so much.

Craig: That’s the sweetest thing. Somebody likes his parents. You know, that’s nice. [laughs]

John: It is so nice. Aw. Hey, what advice should we offer to Ben there? Nichelle, do you have any first thoughts?

Nichelle: Well, is he asking them to pay for it?

Craig: Doesn’t sound like it.

John: I don’t think so. I think he’s embarrassed that he’s going to have to pick up student debt to pay for this Master’s program.

Nichelle: Oh, I see. Well, if it’s his debt and not theirs, it’s his life and he should do it.

Craig: Of course. Of course. I mean, Ben, you had to know we were going to tell you that, right? The deal is not whether or not your parents are correct. They’ve obviously done their job. Their job was to instill in you a very strong doubt about incurring debt. And they were right. You shouldn’t go running around incurring debt like that. So they’ve done it. In fact, the fact that you’re feeling this is a great sign. If you want to tell them, and you don’t need to by the way. If you want to tell them you can say, “I want you to know you did your job. The fact that I’m taking on debt is a sign of how serious I am about this but I’ve already come up with a plan for paying it back. So that is not going to be an issue. I’m never going to be a guy that ends up on the sidewalk, or coming to you with his hand out, because I’ve figured it out.”

And I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear it. And, Ben, if they’re not, then it’s time to turn your back on them. [laughs] Which I tell you is a great feeling. And just, you know what? You’re 30. And if there were ever time to stand on your own two feet and make choices about yourself it would be this. And if this helps, consider this. When I was 30 I had my first kid. So now I was a parent. So at your age I needed to be the guy that would now instill these things in my child, even though he was one month old. And as it turns out I’m not sure how well I did there.

But, I tried my best. You’re ready. You’re ready to at least father yourself. So, go forth young man. Get that Master’s degree.

John: Yeah. Ben, I wonder if you’re using your parents to kind of outsource your worry. I wonder if you’re worried and you’re using them as the proxy for your own worry. You got to move past this because if you’re worried about this thing and parents and theoretical student debt, there’s a lot more life events that are doing to happen that they’re going to have opinions about. And you can’t let them dominate that. And it feels honestly very Midwestern. It was interesting that you describe yourself as being from the Midwest, because I know what that’s like and it’s that fear of overstepping and doing too much. But you’ve got to move past that.

Do the thing that you want to do. Take this as the win. Take this as, hey, I found a great program that I can get into that’s going to be a really great help. I’m going to do this thing. I’m letting you know that I’m just going to do this thing. You’re not asking for permission. You’re just telling them what’s happening. And at some level they’re going to be impressed that you’re telling them what’s happening.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Yeah. All right, let’s try another question that way. This is Victoria.

Victoria: Hi John. Hi Craig. My name is Victoria and I live in Southwestern Canada. My question is for both of you. A lot of writers really struggle with depression and mental health conditions, something that’s really exacerbated this time of year for all kinds of reasons. Excluding the additional stress of Covid, if that’s even possible, I was wondering how both of you manage your mental health and keep from being overwhelmed. Also, I know you both lost parents this year and I just wanted to say I’m really sorry. I know how difficult that is. Thank you so much for everything that you do.”

Craig: Aw, that’s very nice.

John: That’s a very nice thing for her to send in.

Craig: Thanks Victoria. That was very nice of you.

John: And you have three experts here. So you also have Chelle. People didn’t even know that they were going to have this bonus perspective. Craig, you’ve talked about depression a fair amount and I have depression in my family as well. And the season tends to make things like this worse for certain people. And everyone has their own strategies for dealing with it, especially as you get older. You sort of learn kind of what works for you. Exercise can be really helpful. Lights can be really helpful. A therapist can be helpful. Medications can be helpful. What am I leaving off this list?

Craig: Well, I find that for me and my issue has always been anxiety as opposed to depression, the thing that has probably helped the most is a full acceptance of the fact that I actually have a mental health – I don’t even call it a problem. I just have a mental health condition. And I take medication for it. And I acknowledge it. And when it gets me, and it creeps up on me and jumps on me which is frequently, instead of kind of thinking I am anxious, I am scared, I am depressed, I am afraid, I think, ah, my mental health is inflamed right now. The way my knee is acting up. It’s my thing is acting up. So, what should I do when it’s acting up?

I separate it from myself. I don’t add this extra burden of personal failure on it. I just try and do some of the things that I know help. Like deep breathing exercises. Very helpful for me. But mostly just remembering and reminding myself, ah, yes, of course. This interesting churning sensation of fear inside me is actually disconnected from real danger. This is just my mental health condition. So, let’s keep it in that perspective.

I find that that gets me off the hook of feeling like I am “falling apart.”

John: Chelle, any insights on this?

Nichelle: Whenever I get sort of anxious or I’m dealing with depression in any way and it’s brought on a lot by stress, so the first year of the show when we were in production and just the craziness of launching a first year show, it was hugely difficult. And I would spend entire days just listening to music. That somehow just kind of contained things and brought me down from the edge. And then the other activity that I got into which was creative but was separated from writing because I needed a break was baking. And then when it got really big and I couldn’t handle it I was like what can I do outside of myself that will help control all of this and turn this energy into something good. And so I started this organization called Dorm Key. And it was born in the middle of the biggest stress month while we were putting the show up.

And the idea was simple that there are a lot of young women going off to school for the first time and they didn’t have anything that they could take. Whether it was sheets for their bed, stuffed animals for comfort, basic food items. Whatever it was. So I came up with this idea that we would find young women from disadvantaged backgrounds who were going off to college for the first time and just basically make their dorm room turnkey. And that’s how I came up with the name Dorm Key.

And that occupied me for about three weeks, shopping, getting everything together, finding the girls, this and that. And it was just something about stepping outside of what was worrying me and focusing and doing something for someone else that was so stabilizing and so great. And so, you know, I learned that lesson late in life. A lot of people grow up knowing that. But I learned that later and it was so helpful. And so that’s a thing that I’ve been trying to do when I get those moments. OK, I feel really awful today. What can I do outside myself that might help other people? And in the process it’s helped a lot.

So that’s been my kind of cheat code for this the past couple of years.

Craig: Nice.

John: That’s amazing. And you’ll give us a link that we can put in the show notes for that?

Nichelle: Yes.

Craig: She’s already hitting me up for dough on that one. Don’t you think that Chelle didn’t come at me hard. And I was like what? No. [laughs]

Nichelle: And actually what’s so great is that we did this thing this year because we couldn’t – we shop and we do their rooms for them. And this year we couldn’t do it because of Covid. And a lot of girls weren’t going to school. So we did gift certificates from the places that I shopped for them.

Craig: Oh, that’s smart.

Nichelle: Yeah, and so they had that. And then when they turn the receipts in to prove that they actually focused on things that they needed for the dorms they got a bonus gift certificate of $250 just as their mad money. And then we expanded it because of this unusual year, again, where they got one once they completed their finals and then when they completed the semester they all got another one for Christmas.

Craig: That’s awesome.

Nichelle: So it’s been great. Yeah. It’s been great.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: Megana, let’s get to Riley’s question.

Megana: Great. So Riley wrote in and said, “Open relationships? Do they work? For whom? What is film and TV getting wrong when it comes to polyamory? Or right?”

John: All right. Let’s tackle some open relationships.

Craig: Yeah, open.

John: I would say that…open it up.

Craig: Open.

John: I would say that I am less skeptical of them now than I would have been five, ten years ago. Just in that I know some folks who do have open relationships, which is a very broad category, but they make it work. And they make it work because of honesty and open communication. And I think the thing I get frustrated about sometimes when I see like cheating or infidelity or the assumption of cheating or fidelity it’s like maybe they have an open relationship? Maybe it’s actually fine. Maybe they’re actually not cheating on each other. Maybe that’s kind of how their marriage works, or their relationship works.

So I think I’m less judgmental about how people choose to conduct their relationships because what works for them may work for them. And that’s great. So, and that said, I acknowledge I’m coming at this from a perspective of a same sex couple. And the thing about a same sex couple is they may be on more equal footing about some of that stuff. And so just acknowledge my biases there. But I think it is possible to do if people are treating it openly and honestly and with respect.

Nichelle: Well, I wonder if we see terrible versions of it because maybe it’s something that people go into a room and they pitch because they read about it. But they’re not coming at it from a place of real understanding. I would be a terrible person to put that on screen and that’s why I haven’t done it. And I wonder if it’s something that happens where if you’re sitting around in the writer’s room and everybody is trying to come up with something that would be cool and they just pitch something that came from something that they read and that’s why it just feels stiff and unnatural and salacious. And not organic.

Craig: Yeah.

John: I can totally see how that would happen.

Craig: Absolutely. Like writing what you know about and then when you have no clue, or you have no internal connection to it, then it’s really hard to do, or to do well. I have no problem writing a same sex couple because for some reason I think really the thing that I ultimately dial into is the amount of people. Is that it’s two human beings looking at each other and feeling something for each other. And if you are heterosexual or homosexual you should be able to kind of just project yourself into that very similar situation. You’re changing the bits downstairs, but otherwise it’s the same thing. It’s that connection and love and all the things that can happen between two people.

But I will say that when it comes to things like this, I mean, the overall question, open relationships do they work? Riley, you know that thing that you can make with an emoji of the little smiley guy with his hands up going I don’t know. I hope so. I hope so for the people in them. I root for everybody to be happy and be in love. I don’t judge any of it as long as everybody is in there willingly. Who am I to say? I don’t know.

Nichelle: Yeah. And I think that if I got assigned a script that had that I would write from the point of view of the person in that that didn’t quite understand how they got there, or how it works. That would be the way that I would tackle that sort of relationship. That lack of understanding, deep lack of understanding on my part, is what I would approach as the way to write it.

John: A zillion years ago we had Dan Savage on this podcast and we talked about some stuff. And I do want to sort of distinguish, I said it’s a broad umbrella. Open relationships from polyamory which mean very different things. And so when we talk about like, you know, this is throuple, a long-term committed group of three people, I don’t have any experience with that either. And I don’t have insight to sort of how that works. In my experience, people who I know who have attempted such things, it hasn’t worked well for the reasons we can all imagine. There’s so many relationships you have to manage within three. That just becomes a lot.

But more towards the open relationship, we’ve had open relationships throughout all of history. We’ve always had mistresses and stuff like that. And it’s actually a fairly recent I think invention, this idea that you are 100% monogamous to this one person. We’ve always sort of had people on the side. And you watch The Crown and they knew they were having affairs and that was–

Craig: Men had it. I don’t know if women always had that opportunity. I think men always had that opportunity.

John: Yes. I think there’s a paternalistic aspect to it that is – misogyny has sort of always been there. And, again, coming at this from the same sex couple side, that’s not the same. Those factors are different.

Craig: Yes. Yes.

John: Let’s move onto our next question. What do you got Megana?

Megana: All right. Chris asks, “What are the most important personality traits to have as a player of Dungeons & Dragons, or any other roleplaying game?”

Nichelle: You have as a what? I didn’t hear it.

Megana: To have as a Dungeons & Dragons player.

Craig: You should take this. [laughs]

John: Absolutely. You’re the expert here.

Nichelle: All I know is that my husband was kicked out of your group.

Craig: Yeah. And let me tell you why. I mean, this is important to discuss.

Nichelle: I know.

John: This will be in canon now.

Craig: We need people to know. We need people to know. So, we played together for many years and Malcolm was part of our crew. And, you know, there are only a few things, and this is actually important. We’re going to answer Chris’s question by saying don’t be Malcolm.

So here’s how it works. You play this game and there are just a few fundamental things you have to tick off on your list. Show up roughly on time. Stay for the session. Know the rules. That’s it. OK?

John: No, no, stay conscious.

Nichelle: And don’t fall asleep.

Craig: Don’t fall asleep. Malcolm would routinely show up late, would not know the rules aggressively. I mean, I’m talking like years have gone by. In Dungeons & Dragons every time you try and hit someone you roll a 20-sided die. Every single time. He goes, “I attacked that guy.” Great. Roll. “Which one?” Goddamn it. Malcolm.

And then at some point he would just move from the chair on the table to a couch and then suddenly he was horizontal and then we would hear the snoring. And I would be like you don’t have to come. Are you looking for an excuse? “No, man, I love it.” And then we’re like, no. No more. That’s it, you’re out. Can’t have this anymore.

Nichelle: [laughs] I just sat at home wondering when is the call going to come that he’s kicked out.

Craig: You knew. You knew. Yeah. Sometimes he would show up – this is even worse – he would show up late and then not come in but stand outside on the phone talking loudly. So he was there, but not there. So none of that. So, Chris, none of that. If you can cover that stuff, then I would just say in all seriousness like positive personality traits for Dungeons & Dragons, be creative. Enjoy playing the character, even if the character – make sure your character is flawed. No one likes the perfect character that does everything exactly right. The min-max and all that stuff.

Allow your flaws to come through. Allow your play to be imperfect. And have fun. Try and find the funny in it. And as a dungeon master please don’t harass your dungeon master over nonsense.

John: No. No.

Craig: As they frequently harass me.

John: I would say conviction to the bit. So whatever your character is, play your actual character. And don’t be the player trying to win the game. Play your character. Even through combat, don’t stop playing your character when swords come out.

Be curious. And be thinking about the storytelling of it all, because it’s really this group project. You’re putting on a play in a way. So just participate, too. It’s like an improv troop really that you’re all sort of doing this together. So, just commit to the cooperation that it takes to do that and you’ll have a much, much, much better time.

Craig: Yes.

John: What’s next?

Megana: All right. So Benjamin asks, “Bringing a child into this world has arguably never been more complicated. If you were faced with starting your families in the year 2021, would you change anything? How would issues like climate change and political upheaval shape your decision-making?”

Craig: I am arguing this Benjamin. I’m arguing it hard. I’m not saying that bringing a child into this world is simple or without concerns or fears. But let’s look slightly on the bright side for a moment. We don’t live in a time where children are being enslaved, at least here in America. We don’t live in a time when the infant mortality rate is sky high. We don’t live in a time where smallpox and bubonic plague are ravaging entire populations.

We have medicine. We have antibiotics. We have MRIs. You don’t die because you, I don’t know, you cut your hand.

There’s a billion reasons why bringing a child into this world is a lot easier now. You can bring a child into this world without experiencing labor pain. So, I just want to – let’s just acknowledge how things are better than they were in 1400. That said.

John: Or you and I both grew up in 1980s. So nuclear war was always hanging over us, and yet our parents chose to have kids.

Craig: We didn’t have car seats. Benjamin, they didn’t have a car seat. I drove around in the back of a Volkswagen Bug, banging around without a seatbelt, in the dead of winter, in a car with no crumple zone or anti-lock brakes or airbags while both of my parents smoked with the windows up.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So I’m just saying like—

Nichelle: I feel like there is a real coffee table book in ‘70s parenting because it was just like hey man, whatever goes, goes. My mom is like read your book, sit here in the car in the parking lot while I go in and grocery shop.

Craig: That’s right.

John: Oh yeah.

Nichelle: And me and my sister would wait in the car and there were other kids waiting in the car. And we would wave to each other.

Craig: Yes.

Nichelle: I mean, you’d go to jail for leaving your kids in the car while you shop now.

Craig: Yes.

Nichelle: But there’s always something. I think that you – I don’t think that the craziness of this year should stop you from becoming a parent if that is your heart’s desire.

John: Agreed. And, Craig, you and I both had kids relatively early. You were 30. I was 34 when we started. I would totally have kids again. I mean, and we tried to have a second kid. It just didn’t work out for reasons I’ve blogged about. Kids are great. Kids are a lot, but if you want to have kids don’t wait, don’t delay, and don’t use climate change, which is real, but it shouldn’t be a reason to stop you from having kids. My opinion.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, Benjamin, people were having children in the ’40s in France when it was occupied by Nazis. I mean, people were having children in Ukraine during Stalin’s forced famine. The world is tough. There’s always going to be trouble. Some places more than others. But don’t think that we live in a time that is so brutal and awful that we should just end things.

Stay hopeful. I’ll tell you who will be hopeful. Your kid. Because your kid is going to be younger, and alive, and not dying the way you are. Because we’re all dying. We’re just dying man. We’re old. We’re dying. And once you have a kid it’s like, oh good, I’ve replaced myself. Go on. Let me die in peace over here and then your kid makes you die faster because they make you crazy.

But your kid has got great knees, and doesn’t have arthritis, and doesn’t have back pain, and wakes up and pops right out of bed, yay. So the kid is going to be fine. You’re going to be the one who is going to be miserable. You’ll see.

John: All right. I want to make sure we get to as many questions as possible. So let’s try to speed round some things. So we’ll ask the questions but we’ll try to get through these quickly and see how many we can bang out.

Craig: Great.

Megana: OK. How do John and Craig invest their money for retirement? Stocks? Real estate? Businesses? How does being set up as S-corps change things? SEP IRAs?

John: Great. So I have an S-corp which is my loan out company. But really the money that comes in it goes to my investment guy at Merrill Lynch. He puts it in these little funds that are very much like index funds. I don’t think about it much. I don’t talk about it. I talk with him like twice a year. I don’t worry about it that much. They’re pretty normal, standard investments. There’s tech in everything because tech is in everything. They’re global because the whole world is global at this point. Every company is global.

But in general if you act like you have much less money than you have then you will never need to worry about it.

Craig: Yeah.

John: That’s my goal.

Craig: Yeah. My only advice is invest in as money retirement instruments as available to you. So I have IRAs, I have 401(k)s. I also have a defined benefit plan. These things are available to you when you are a corporation. They are not always available to you when you’re not. But just try and invest as much as you can in retirement because it grows faster. Because you don’t get taxed on that income. And then it’s available to you later in life. It forces you to protect your old age. When, like Benjamin, you find yourself dying in a fragmented, burning world.

John: Chelle, any insights on money?

Chelle: You know, I’m an old school saver.

Craig: Mattress.

Chelle: I really like the comfort of having a savings account. Every woman that was a friend of my mother’s, and a relative when I left home, was like always have your own money.

Craig: Yup.

Chelle: Have the cookie jar money. Have the mattress money. Always have your own money. So there’s just something about that message being told to me by 50 different women makes me really hardcore love savings accounts. And then we do small investments and things like that. But I’m a saver.

John: Cool. Next up.

Megana: Great. Aaron asks, “How can I be as cranky as Craig and still stay married?”

Craig: That’s a question for Melissa.

John: Craig, are you cranky to Melissa?

Craig: No.

John: Because in the times I’ve been in your home I don’t see that happening at all.

Craig: No. I’m not cranky. Melissa actually loves – so you’ve got to understand, Aaron, what happens is sometimes I’ll go off on a rant about the world and how nah-nah-nah-nah-nah and she just sits there and is deeply amused and possibly slightly turned on occasionally by my passion about things. But I’m not cranky at her. I’m not that guy that sits there going, wait a second, this fork doesn’t go with this plate. I’m a super nice dude. I’m awesome. I just don’t like things like the way everybody thinks that college is the answer. And then I’ll just go – and then that’ll be 45 minutes of me angrily going on about college. And she’s just sort of sitting there with a little smirk on her face. Watching the show.

John: Next up.

Megana: Leah asks, “What do you do if your two-year-old doesn’t eat or sleep well? It takes him two hours to fall asleep. Two hours of crying. I thought about reading him the Final Draft 11 instruction manual, but you know—“

Craig: That’ll make him cry more.

Megana: “He’s just an innocent kid and not a war criminal. Sleep appreciated, I mean, help appreciated.”

John: Yeah, so Leah, yes, it happens. Talk to your pediatrician just to make sure there’s nothing unusual, because it could be like an ear infection. There could be some actual cause to it. The thing the pediatrician will be probably tell you is that this is both normal but also addressable. And there will be strategies for getting through this. And you will get through this and you’ll get on the other side and it’ll get better. But it’s terrible when it’s [unintelligible] so you have my sympathy.

Craig: I will say at two years old this is not super common for two hours of crying in advance of sleeping. I would probably – absolutely make sure that there’s no underlying condition. But also, Leah, let’s take a look at the general way that you’re dealing with your child when he – it’s a him – when he is crying. Is there any kind of – are you going in there to comfort him? Because if you are that is probably going to extend the crying.

There are some wonderful books out there about sleep scheduling. There’s Feberization, I think the person’s name is Ferber, which is sort of the most strict version. But there are a couple of versions. I would insist that if there is no underlying medical condition and no underlying behavioral condition that you try and follow one of those programs. And the person who is going to be suffering is you. Because they’re just screaming. But you are feeling like a monster. So, part of it is going to be training yourself. But that is not ideal and it is going to put an enormous strain on you and if you’re parenting with a spouse, on your spouse. It is really disruptive when you have a kid who doesn’t sleep well.

The eating, they’re not going to starve to death. I see parents constantly forcing food into their kid’s mouths. They’re like why won’t you eat, why won’t you eat. They’ll eat. They’re not going to die.

John: Yeah. Your pediatrician will tell you if they’re grossly underweight or something, but if they’re not it’ll be OK.

Craig: Exactly. They’re not willingly starving themselves to death. Let’s put it that way.

John: Megana, I think we have time for one more question.

Megana: Great. So Derek says, “I often listen to your podcast while doing dishes or cleaning up around the house. A question my wife and I often debate is how long should one spend looking for an item before they ask their spouse for help in locating it?”

John: That’s a great, great question.

Craig: I know what I do.

John: Nichelle, what’s the answer?

Nichelle: Oh my god. [laughs]

Craig: This is going to be big.

Nichelle: I cannot abide it. I cannot abide it. Just keep looking until you find it.

Craig: But does he even look at all? Or is he just like, “Chelle!”

Nichelle: Now it’s turned into a comedy routine because he’s like, “Chelle, where is this?” This is the best one ever. I swear to you. I went on a writer’s retreat for a week in Hawaii. I was with seven other women. We’re in this gorgeous house in Maui. The phone rings at 7am on the house phone and then I hear the hostess say, “Chelle, there’s a call.” I go downstairs and it’s Malcolm in LA. And I was like hey what’s going on. And I was asleep. And he says, “Where’s the remote?” [laughs]

Craig: That is so him. God, this is why we had to kick him out of D&D. I mean, literally he would do the that of D&D.

Nichelle: And it’s one of my favorite stories ever. I just had to laugh because it was like he took it to such a, just a level.

John: I have a real time example of this. And so earlier Craig asked, we were debating whether I was type O-positive or type O-negative. So I’m looking through on my iPhone in the Health App and I cannot find, because I know we just – I did a blood test really recently, like during Covid times I did this. And I know the answer is there someplace. But I was like, screw it, I’m just going to text Mike. So I texted Mike and he texted back that I’m O-positive. So Craig can stop harassing me.

Craig: Yes, I will.

John: But that’s an example of like I could have kept looking for it, but I knew that Mike would have the answer.

Craig: Yes.

John: In my experience it’s been about 30 seconds is how long I’m willing to look for something before I go to Mike who just will know the answer.

Craig: Yeah. I will – if I can’t find something that I know, OK, I thought it was here. It’s not there. I can’t find it. The second it becomes arduous I’m coming to Melissa. And she’ll come to me and I’m sure my reaction is the same as what hers is which is like, “For god’s sake. Really? You’re an adult. Now I have to move around a house, opening drawers with you?”

And of course the person who was looking, even if you were looking for five seconds, when you go and they’re like, “Well did you look here?” Yeah. “Did you look here?” No, it’s not going to be there. It’s not going to be there. You begin denying that it’s anywhere. What you’re really saying to the person is this doesn’t exist anymore in this dimension. And then they’re like, “But it does.” And you make them find it for you in this dimension.

John: Yeah. A thing I will also do is like do you see my phone anywhere, or do you see my keys anywhere? Because I feel like I am just blind sometimes. And I suspect they probably are within sight, I just don’t see them. So I’ll say like do you see this thing. Do your eyes work?

Craig: Do you see what I see?

Nichelle: Oh, this is amazing. This is amazing.

John: All right. Let’s go to our One Cool Things. So, my One Cool Thing comes from Fernando Polanco. So back in Episode 403 Craig did the solo episode on How to Write a Movie. Fernando Polanco has translated it into Spanish.

Craig: So nice.

John: So we will put a link in this so it’s just a Google doc that has the translation. Kind of a summary, but really it’s pretty much all of it. And some of what Craig says in that, I think it’s a good episode in general, but some of what he says actually feels more poetic in Spanish. So, here’s an example. Escribir es construir algo desde la nada, y para esto se necesitan otras instrucciones.

So, to write is to create something out of nothing, and for that you need different instructions. What poetry.

Craig: It’s like I know Kung-Fu. I said that in Spanish because someone did it for me. Thank you, Fernando.

John: Yeah. So anyway, thank Fernando for that. It’s a good reminder of a good thing that happened, well it wasn’t this year, but in the past.

Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing?

Craig: I do. I do. Little late for Christmas gifts, but you know why not. Is there anything better than Christmas being over and you’re like, “Oh, bummer,” and then suddenly, surprise, it’s January 3rd and there’s one more.

So, I play in addition to the game that I DM with John’s group I also play in a game with Joe Manganiello who is a big D&D guy. Everybody knows that. And he has this merchandising thing called Death Saves. It’s really cool. And you can find it. It’s death-saves.com where they make really cool t-shirts. Cool hoodies for men and women. And jackets and stuff. And they also – he sent me, it’s so cool, this new thing. It’s a Death Save Dime. So, Chelle, if you haven’t passed out from boredom already, a death save is when you’ve been reduced to zero hit points. Your health is down to zero. You have to start rolling a die to see if you’re going to survive or die permanently. And this is this big heavy die that they made with these really cool – so it’s basically instead of numbers, because the numbers don’t matter, it’s just save images and death images on each face of the 20-sided die. It’s really cool.

So, check out death-saves.com

John: Nice. Nichelle, do you have a One Cool Thing to share?

Nichelle: You know, I read a book recently that was the best book of the year for me. And Craig, Melissa is reading it right now.

Craig: Oh, she is so grateful to you for this book. She will not stop talking about it.

Nichelle: Oh my god, it’s incredible. And I am going to Google right now so I get the author’s name correct. But it’s called Notes on a Silencing. It’s by Lacy Crawford. And it’s the story of sexual abuse and the community at St. Paul’s Boarding School not addressing it and what happened to this young woman. And her writing about it from a distance of about 30 years. It is so beautifully written. It is harrowing and frightening and I feel like every high school freshman should have to read this book. And then I think they need to read it again when they get to college.

It’s just incredible. What she went through. The way that she’s able to relate it. The way that adults just failed her and the way that the school and the alumni organization worked so hard to keep all of this under the rug, sweep it under the rug. It’s a beautiful book about a really tough subject.

Craig: Melissa completely agrees. She’s been going on and on about it.

Nichelle: Yeah. Malcolm has heard about it every single day when I was reading. And she and I texted back and forth about it. It’s just really, really a great book.

John: Excellent. Well that is our show. Our final show of 2020. So, as always, produced by Megana Rao. Edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Nichelle, I don’t think you’re on Twitter. You’re not on Twitter.

Craig: Wisely.

Nichelle: I’m on Instagram as @tramblegirl.

John: Fantastic. We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s where you’ll find the transcripts. You can sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has lots of other links to things about writing.

And you can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re just about to record on Martin Shkreli.

Most of all, I want to thank Nichelle for coming on the show.

Craig: Thank you, Chelle.

Nichelle: Thanks for asking me.

John: It was absolutely a delight.

Craig: You’re the best.

John: And just to hear your laughter. It was a nice way to round out 2020.

Nichelle: Well thank you. Happy Holidays.

[Bonus segment]

John: All right. In our bonus topic I want to talk about this article that’s in Elle Magazine about the reporter who fell in love with her subject, which sounds like it could be a good romantic plotline, except the guy she falls in love with is Martin Shkreli who is the pharma bro. Terrible, terrible person. What was fascinating to me about this article is it was Ashely Nicole Black had tweeted about it and was like, oh well, I have to read this article. So I immediately read the article because she recommended it. And then to see the cycle that happened. Within 12 hours there was the interview with the person who had written the article about the reporter. It was all this weird swirl of stuff. And just confusion over the role of journalists and subjects and the criminal justice system.

Nichelle, what did you make of this article, this whole situation?

Nichelle: I thought it was so nuts. And so disturbing. And she seems to be completely unaware even now that she got completely played.

Craig: Yeah.

Nichelle: That’s what it came across to me. It just did not seem like it was a relationship that was reciprocal. It felt like he had something to gain. He got it. And then he ghosted her. And she blew up her life. And is trying to put the pieces back together. And he’s not even talking to her. What did that article say? That he hasn’t spoken to her since March? And she’s still holding a torch?

It was just disturbing on every level.

John: Yeah. It reminded me – you see those articles where somebody falls in love with a bridge. And they truly have a romantic attraction to a bridge. It’s like this is a person who cannot love you back because, first off, they’re in jail. But also they’re not good in any meaningful way.

Craig, you’re a student of psychology. What’s going on there?

Craig: Well, there are people who are high performing, they seem well put together. I think a lot of competent people have done a very good job covering up their weakness. They have a weak spot. And every now and again someone even more clever and more perceptive comes along and not out of malice, but rather out of their own need for connection, sees that opening and they fit themselves perfectly into your weakness so that you feel more than you’ve ever felt before.

Someone is solving a fundamental problem of you. And that is so powerful. That it is I would imagine very easy to, as this woman did, blow her life up. The problem is that the person who did that, their intensity of feeling can leave as quickly as it arrived. And they move on. But you – you are now addicted to them. They got you.

And she seems like someone who has been fundamentally altered by this encounter. That she needs him now. And I don’t know what it is that he did, or said, but I would treat him like a dangerous person. Anybody should treat somebody who can do this like a dangerous person.

Look, I feel terrible for Ms. Smythe’s husband, who was an innocent collateral damage in all this. He was her husband. She cheated on him. And then she left him. And I feel bad for her. Because here she is with nothing, including no job, no husband, no boyfriend, no love life, no fixed problems.

John: And a career that’s really in question because you have a hard time taking her seriously as a reporter given sort of what you know about all this stuff. And it’s challenging.

Inevitably people send this to us as a How Would This Be a Movie and it got me thinking about where have I seen this story in fiction before. And so some of what you were describing there, Craig, reminded me of Silence of the Lambs. You have the incredibly proficient person there who is being manipulated by someone who is just remarkably good at manipulating her. Also I was raving about Harley Quinn, the TV series, and the Joker dynamic with Harley Quinn has aspects of that as well.

But it’s one thing to be purely in the realm of fiction. If you were to try to do this story right now as an author, as the writer assigned this project, I don’t know how I would get into the mindset of what it’s like to be her in this situation. Because I cannot put myself in her shoes. That’s the challenge.

Nichelle, you write mysteries and psychological stories. How would you as a writer’s room approach something like this?

Nichelle: You know, I think that one of the things that we’re addressing on the show with Octavia is journalism and what it means now. And my personal thought is that it’s turned less into journalism and more into opinion everywhere. So this would be a really, really great story in that we would just go on the journey to see what was going on in her life that made her open to this guy. Like what was her story before she had her first encounter with him? Where were her vulnerabilities? What was lacking? What was missing from her past? How was she unfulfilled? And then look at all of that to see how as Craig said he just filled in all those spaces for her. It would just be a deep dive into her character and less almost about him, in my opinion.

Because I’m just so curious how she burned everything down so quickly.

John: Yeah. In some ways this feels more like a podcast than it does a book or TV series or anything else. Because you’re describing that deep dive kind of thing. That’s what I am used to podcasts now doing in the 2020s. Filling in all that stuff and taking on the psychological journey of how these people get to this place.

So you look at Dr. Death or any of these stories of manipulation, podcast feels like the natural way to sort of get into these character’s heads for these things. Because it really is a journey. And what I find so fascinating though is to have a character at the center of this, Smythe who, I don’t know if it’s Smythe or Smythe, but who is so articulate and even in the follow up stories after this feels completely rational and yet she’s making choices that anyone standing outside could say like, “Well that doesn’t seem rational at all.”

Craig: Yeah.

Nichelle: Yeah.

Craig: The problem with these stories is it’s hard to empathize. Unless you’ve been through something like this, and I think people who have been – for instance, subject to cult behavior and cult control can empathize with this. You are being asked to empathize both with someone that is almost another species, the sociopath, and someone who is wounded in a way that you don’t yet know you also might be wounded.

Because I think until this happens to you it seems like I never thought this would happen to me. I can’t imagine how this would happen to me until the right asteroid crashes into the right planet and then it happens to you.

I don’t get the sense, unless I’m wildly wrong, that this particular had had a lot of experiences like this before. She seemed almost shocked herself as it was happening. That she could look at herself from the outside and go, “Well this is so strange, but here we are kissing in prison in a room that smells of chicken wings while I blow up everything.”

Nichelle: Right.

Craig: It’s hard to connect to them. Yeah, I don’t know how I would approach this as a show. I think, yeah, maybe I would want to stay in the documentary zone.

Nichelle: Mm-hmm. I think that you’re right. It feels like it’s a podcast. You know, just talking to the different people in her life, hearing their story, hearing what she’s saying. I’m not sure where we would go with the movie because I would just, you know, I’d sit down in a theater and go, “What? What is she doing?”

John: Yeah. And actually part of the reason why a podcast may make more sense for it is we’re used to podcasts not really resolving. We don’t have an expectation that they’re going to finally come to an end, a conclusion, a dramatic, thing. Versus a series or a movie, where is the exit point for that character? And I just don’t think there is one now or yet. It’s too early at this stage. We want to see what the third act of this is, and we really don’t have a good sense of what that could be.

Nichelle: Yeah.

John: Nichelle, thank you very much for talking us through this.

Nichelle: Thank you. This was fun.

John: Thanks Chelle.

Nichelle: Bye. Talk to you later.

Craig: Bye.

John: Bye.

Links:

• Donate to Dorm Key, make sure to ear mark your contribution!
• Sarah Silverman, Jesus is Magic
• Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life by Sissela Bok
• Episode 403, How to Write a Movie in Spanish translated by Fernando Polanco
• Death Saves merch
• Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir by Lacy Crawford
• The Journalist and the Pharma Bro by Stephanie Clifford
• https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2838492/“>Nichelle Tramble Spellman and on Instagram
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Heidi Lauren Duke (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.