A Menlo Phase

**Casey Liss** (0:00)
I would like to tell you that I'm upset at the two of you. And the reason I'm upset at the two of you is because I am finally getting around to reading Project Hail Mary, and I can't put it down, it's so freaking good. No spoilers, please, anyone, but...

**Marco Arment** (0:13)
Did you see the movie?

**Casey Liss** (0:14)
No, so this was the impetus, was that Erin decided that she would like to read the book before we watched the movie, and then I was like, no, she's probably got the right answer there. So I started to read the book a little bit behind her, and she's a much faster reader than I am.
So I am reading it. I'm a little bit less than halfway through, I'd say, and it is, this book is a sniper attack complimentary on my wife, because it is all like biology and science. I'm not gonna get any more specific than that, but she is freaking riveted. I am also riveted, and so I'm a little upset at you too that I'm having to spend my time with some of my best friends instead of reading my book.

**Marco Arment** (0:52)
I'm sorry. I will say, I did see the movie, and without spoiling anything, I thought it was excellent. I really enjoyed it.

**Casey Liss** (0:59)
That is generally what I've heard.

**Marco Arment** (1:00)
Yeah.

**Jon Siracusa** (1:01)
I saw the movie too. It was rare. Marco and I both wanted to see a movie in a theater. That's wild, but it happened.

**Casey Liss** (1:07)
Oh, that is true. Wow. And I did not. Wow, what a slack guy I am.

**Jon Siracusa** (1:10)
I think the last movie I saw in the theater was F1, to give you an idea of how little I go to theater these days.

**Casey Liss** (1:14)
Oh, wow.
I'm really slack. Man, I have problems over at my household. Goodness. Well, that's right. The other pre-show I wanted to do is I asked John to do a little bit of homework. And in Marco's defense, I did not explicitly say to Marco one way or the other whether or not he was expected to do the same homework. And so he didn't, which is fine.

**Marco Arment** (1:33)
But, but I can barely do the homework that is assigned to me, let alone homework that is not. By the way, before before we partly continue, sorry, John and Merlin on the last episode of Reconcilable Differences did in the in the member exclusive bonus content did an incredible segment on homework.
And that's true. And I can like, I found it incredibly therapeutic and incredibly good because homework when I was going through school was just the largest source of profound emotional damage that I like most of what I talk about in therapy today is related to that. And so to hear this discussion of homework and how kind of, you know, the downsides of our homework culture and how ineffective it can be and how damaging it can be, I found quite therapeutic and quite interesting. So thank you, John and Merlin remotely for talking about that so well. And may I join whatever efforts possible to abolish homework?

**Jon Siracusa** (2:38)
Yeah, well, I mean, you're going through it with your kid. So like you can see how it has changed and how it has not changed since your experience.

**Marco Arment** (2:45)
Yeah, it's not actually, it's not as bad as it was like when we were in school.
There's less of it now. And my biggest problem was always that like as soon as I was not in school, I would just never think about it. And or things would be assigned to me in class by the teacher just like saying something once or writing something in the corner of the board. And as soon as I'm out of that classroom, it's gone. And so if I didn't see it or write it down, I would never know about it. You know, now they can just log into their Chromebooks and log into their whatever classroom and see all the assignments that they need to do. So there is no such thing as like, I don't know what I have to do for homework tonight.

**Jon Siracusa** (3:23)
Do you find that to be the case? Because I heard that from my kids a lot, even though, yes, you're right, they could have just logged on and checked. But I mean, it's just didn't go away. It just got less plausible.

**Marco Arment** (3:31)
Yeah, it isn't a perfect system. And there is certainly some feign surprise. But it is way better now than it was when we were in school. It's way more forgiving. And now most of my kids' teachers, not all, but most of them will accept late made up homework before the end of the quarter. Which that was not, when I was in school, if you didn't have it when it was due, zero. That's it, just a zero.