Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - A Seven Figure Opportunity | Ep. 288

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

The guys weigh the pros and cons of being supplement grifters, wonder what the Quick Question equivalent of SmartLess Mobile might be, and find peace despite how much less integrity they have than Ryan Holiday, Then, early lessons in academic dishonesty and a truly cursed pitch from Daniel’s past.Follow Soren & Daniel on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social/ https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialThanks to ASPCA Pet Insurance for sponsoring this episode. To explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.

Line 1, you're on the air! Yes! Why doesn't water taste of anything? I can't drink it! Taste of nothing! A disgrace! Something needs done! That's a super weird problem to be honest, John, but... Have you tried Deep River Rock flavoured water? No, I haven't! Deep River Rock flavoured water.

Won't make you less angry, will make your water more flavoured. Great, we've John back on the line! Just try the apple and pear one. Delicious! Deep River Rock, that's better. The dangers of being in a room, pitching that and being like, I think it's funny.

What about you, Soren? Michael? Cody? All right, since there are no objections in the room. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight

So what's your favorite? How did you get? How did I be? Do you remember? Words without words, word and all that How do we know? Oh forget it Saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here

I think you'll have a great time here. The advertisement insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company of United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. So hello again, Sorin. It's the podcast. It's the podcast quick question. Yeah. We give each other questions and get answers from each other. I started this time with a light intro because I was actually pretty nice I was reminded me of the old days the times of yesteryear when you would do a so Well, I've learned something about our show from our reddit

Because I do I I go to the quick question subreddit every once in a while I lurk around there and someone made a post once in a while I lurk around there. And someone made a post that was just like pretty judgment free asking like, why did they stop doing the intro? Were people really sick of the intro? Like Daniel says, where is he getting that data? I missed the cadence of having that intro.

And I had to be like, no data, just didn't feel like doing it. When Daniel no longer wants to do a thing, he will say nobody wanted this. Say when we finish this podcast, we're done here. When we cancel this podcast, we'll be like, everyone was demanding it. Everyone wanted us to cancel it, so we did. Yeah.

It was a decision that was made with like no consultation even from you or the rest of our team. I was like, I don't think this is useful podcasting. I don't think it's helpful for new listeners, which is sort of where my, um, my, my thought process stopped. I hadn't anticipated that our actual listeners might have grown familiar and fond of the intro that we've been doing for five fucking years or however long it's been. Um, so I decided that I'm going to like sneak it in every once in a while, but Soren,

that's not what I want to talk about today. Okay, I'm excited. My buddy Ryan Holiday, I've mentioned him before. He writes books about stoicism. He's got a newsletter. He owns a bookstore in Texas. He does talks all over the place. Um posted this to his newsletter and it's also on his blog at ryanholiday.net. He got a sales pitch but according to an email that he got a few weeks ago he had a seven figure opportunity sitting in front of him and he was apparently too stupid or closed-minded to see his words. He said, all I would have to do is partner with a supplement maker and produce a line of supplements connected to the daily stoic brand That's his brand marketing their ability to help with calm clarity and resilience I could very easily make several million dollars. I would handle everything procurement production design fulfillment

I just have to lend my brand and my platform to do it. The only problem I don't want to. He's not opposed to supplements. Soren, it's just his brand and he's very careful about it. He recommends things that he wants. The title of this entry in his blog is you are what you won't do for money. And I'm using our platform to say that we will take that deal. Yeah, 100% sell your supplements to any of our listeners with disposable income. I will do it in a heartbeat. I will do it and I'll lie about taking the supplements. If there is anyone out there who is listening and I don't think we're going to get seven figures because I don't think we got a bite. I don't think we got the kind of reach that Ryan has I'll

take five figures I shouldn't we should give ourselves room to negotiate I will take I won't settle for less than seven figures I take back what I said we want the seven figures and we will sell your so we walk for those seven figures, or we walk. You know what? I mean, I don't wanna kill our chances here. I'd do it for $100. I would. I would, I'd like to, pardon me, I want to say, if the supplements worked,

I would do it for some free supplements. But history has shown we have sold different vitamins on this show before that empirically don't work. And in fact, I did ads for them despite that. So it doesn't even seem like that's a sticking point. If the supplements don't work, but just the idea of me getting something free, I think that'll be enough. But let's start the bidding at seven figures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we just like as a good negotiating tactic, we're going to let you know right now just how low we will go. And it's all the way to the bottom. So let's get started. $700,000. So that's how I want to describe things.

That's crazy. So he won't, I guess I get it. It's the same where like, if there was a, that's also within his field. Like that's way more in his wheelhouse than ours. Where supplements mean nothing. If my brand is, my brand, if our show is attached to supplements.

I know. There's no harm in that. But if my show was attached to, if they were like, hey, we've got this new thing that will help you write scripts and all you gotta do is put in some characters and it will give you some scenes. It'll pump out some scenes for you. I'd be like, oh no, I can't.

No, fuck you. Yeah, absolutely not. We're not doing that. This happens to come at a time. I mean, our podcast will be a little bit dated by the time this comes out, but it's been a lot of fun for different podcasts because the Smartless podcast empire announced their new venture, which is a mobile phone provider. It's super fucking grim. It's really, really weird for a podcast

of millionaires to like, we're really pleased to announce our next intuitive follow-up to the podcast that you all know and love. It's Smartless Mobile or Smartless Wireless. It's some insane business pivot that no one understands. And all the other podcasts in our space have like, I think How Stuff Works made a joke about being a bank now and Doughboyz is talking about launching some kind of Bitcoin or something like that. There's so much more plugged in than me. I don't know the podcast space fucking at all,

it turns out. I listened to my two and that's it. And like the fact that everybody already knew this and there's like a running bit throughout it sounds very fun It's it was a lot of fun and we've missed our window. Yeah All right. Well, I would be nice for us to pivot into supplements I we do talk about the gym quite a bit on this podcast. It's nice for us to get into that space I think if if there was like a smart supplement company, because we're, I think, surely we must be touching

on the Manosphere a bit just by accident. I mean, just from the algorithm being like, here are two white men and in the word cloud, the AI generated word cloud of what they talk about, gym and fights come up a lot. So, we must be in some shared spaces with the Manosphere that I feel like we can get some of that supplement money. Or if there was a smart supplement company

that carried all of the lack of ethics that most supplement companies have, but just were a little bit smarter about marketing, they could sell a product through us that was like, this is a male supplement that is not just for like tough guys. This is about focus and this is about clarity and serenity and creativity.

You could say all those words and put it in a little horse pill that tastes like mustard gas and put quick question Right on the bottle and we would be fine with that put our faces on it. Mm-hmm I did just listen to a pocket I listened to science verses which is one of my two and they did a great podcast about creatine Like the creatine was helpful first of all and whether there were any side effects and how detrimental it was And you come out of it thinking. Oh actually creatine was helpful first of all, and whether there were any side effects and how detrimental it was. And you come out of it thinking, oh, actually creatine sounds pretty good.

So if you're a creatine company and you want to like get to Dan and I, and you're like, hey, I don't just want to go to Meatheads. I want to go to whatever the next level is down. The guys who are not that, but interested in working out. Well, we'll sell your creatine too. It sounds like absolutely sounds like we're fine with it We'll sell your your weird. I want to what could we get into? Okay, that like great question Pete Holmes Is now an ambassador for some weird fucking hippie. Yes shampoo. Yeah

What is that called? Is there something that we could tap into some kind of? Thing that we can slap our name on and just just try to rub some nickels together Yeah, and like that would make sense that there's like it's not it's not completely out of the field We really we were really close with lululemon, I felt like. Yeah, I think so. But it does seem like there's some brand that would need our help, actually. Man, this is depressing.

I know. It's okay. You know what it is? What is it? I got it. I solved it. Oh, fuck, this is perfect. Final draft.

The company Final draft. The company final draft. Okay. Really, really struggling to make a product that everybody likes. Yeah. Constantly innovating, but innovating in wrong directions all the time and breaking things that people previously liked.

Final draft, if anybody doesn't know, is the standard in terms of what you're gonna format your script in. It's just like any other product that you would buy, you put it on your computer, and then you're gonna, all of your, anything you write, a script, anything you write will be in Final Draft

because it's so easy to translate that to everybody else. Everybody in the industry knows Final Draft, with the exception of the Simpsons, who I think up until recently were using Word famously. But yeah, Final Draft is what everybody uses. Final Draft is a product that I use every single day and that I complain about every single day. If we could get like Final Draft from Shore among writers, everybody's pissed at Final Draft all the time. Because happiness also writes white on a white page where they don't, when people are happy with Final Draft all the time. Yeah. Because happiness also writes white on a white page where they don't, when people are happy with Final Draft,

they don't hear anything. So the only people they hear are complaints and we could be the ambassadors of Final Draft and be like, look, they turned a corner. We're really happy with Final Draft now. Final Draft brought to you by Daniel and Sorin. I'm putting you in front finally. And some people might say, Daniel,

your company famously works in a completely different script writing software that is more conducive to late night called Scripto. Do you really? Yeah. And they might further say that, Daniel, in your spare time, you do not use final draft for years you haven't used it because you didn't want to spend the money on it and you

were using free software. And then they'll say Daniel when you became a member of the writers guild they started giving you final draft for free and you still didn't take it because it's a bad product. To that I say, make me an ambassador final draft and all that goes away. Yeah, final draft, make me an offer to start using final draft. And it can't just be subscription to final draft

because I have that. Right. And I have that offer and I don't want it. So it's gotta be something else. There's gotta be, wet my beak a little bit here, Final Draft, and we will. Final Draft gave me a free subscription to Celtics, the writing program that I actually prefer.

Then I will sell Final Draft for them. That's my stipulation. You used to write in Celtics. That's right, when we were in,. Oh, you still do it. Yeah, in crack. And so to the point where when I wrote my first, my first episode for the show, this is communication within these television shows you'd think would be top notch. Generally, it's pretty bad to the point where I was out on script for two weeks writing my script, didn't have final draft or anything. And it was just like, I guess people just use whatever. And so like truly trying to model mine

based on the episodes of other people had written, that other writers drafts that I'd seen come in and just doing it all like manipulating Celtics to get exactly that. I go to turn it in, they're like, what the fuck is this? And I was like, oh, it's my table draft. They're like, well, no, you've got to write it in Final Draft.

And I was like, okay, that's fine. It's like I transported over, I get Final Draft finally. They're like, oh, no, you've got to write it in final draft. And I was like, okay, that's fine. It's like I transported over, I get final draft finally. They're like, oh yeah, it's really easy. You just get, you go to this person, then you go to this person, and then they will give it to you. And I'm like, okay, cool. That would have been awesome to know. Yeah, put that in day one of training, please.

Put final draft on my computer, put it in final draft. Our scripts have, they have to be tight. And when we turn in a writer's draft, it's gotta be 40 pages. And turn that in, and all of a sudden it jumps up to 47. And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, fuck. Okay, okay. And then just cutting and cutting and line fucking

for a long time until I got it down to like. You guys know me at this point, you know that I've got my dog Jackson and I love him very much. He's super important to me. I give him 10,000 kisses every single day, even though his breath smells like dead fish. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my stinky,

wonderful, high energy, very dumb dog, Jackson. Jackson, if you're listening, shout out, love you very much. When you have a pet, you love taking care of them because like Jackson, they take care of me. They take care of you. But even if you're the best pet parent in the world, unpredictable things can happen. Fortunately, you can always give your care a boost

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The ASPCA is not an insurer and not engaged in the business of insurance. Do it. When I was 22, I was commissioned to write a screenplay on spec, and I'd never written a screenplay before. And I said commissioned. There's a contract that says if the movie ever gets made,

then I will get paid. This movie's never gonna get made, so I didn't get paid squat and I never will. But I'd never written a screenplay before, and I liked the idea of sort of a low stakes opportunity to do it at a deadline that came from someone else. So I did it. I was again 22 so I could not afford final draft. So I wrote the entire screenplay in Word and then when I was done I went through and line by line,

formatted it according to like looking at screenplay books where they were like, the character name should be 12 indents from the side and the dialogue should be here. And so I just like line by line, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, like centered what I could center and went through the entire thing and sent it off, it was an unforgivable sin. The people that I sent it to was like,

yeah, this is great. Just, you gotta put it in like the thing that everyone in the entire fucking industry. I mean, even if you pull up a preview, it's gonna fuck it up. If you pull up, you usually get the email and you're like, well, show me a preview before I download it.

You would see that and it would be a mess. It would be impossible to even read probably. I am like horrified now because the producer was telling me at the time who he was sending it to. And at 22, I'm just so excited that these people are reading it. But now I'm flashing back where it's like, hey, good news, we sent this to Vivica A. Fox

because we thought she would be good for the lead. And I'm just thinking like, oh no, what if she associates this poorly formatted fourth graders version of a screenplay with my name. This is, that's hope for a number of reasons that she forgot that she saw a script about a little kid's baseball movie. That's, that's tough. But nobody tells you. Nobody tells you these things. There is no onboarding at any writing job. Let me just like get that. Okay, Daniel and I are now sponsoring onboarding as a writing career. Oh that sucks. That's master class adjacent.

I don't want to do that. Daniel and Soren sponsor master class. Okay, let's see. What else could we do? You don't, were you okay with finals draft or that's off the table too? That's off the table too. Yeah, you don't use it. I think, you know what could be like genuinely great

but impossible to get off the ground? Just an email service provider that was as good as Gmail was five years ago. Because Gmail is trash now and everyone's emails are compromised. If we could just have like a simple, the way that people are like opting for dumb phones instead of smartphones, they get the phones

that are like the old school flip phones with no room for apps on them. If we like created a very user friendly and safe, easily organized and customizable email provider that didn't make people feel like, you know, goons for using at Hotmail or at Yahoo as their address address I think that would be really good we just stripped down we get a very simple email

provider that would be our smartless style pivot into a field we have no business entering you know what else we've said it on the podcast previously we shouldn't we should pivot into a business that is a TSA pre-check for hospitals. Oh yeah. That gets you the right, you're gonna be in the hospital with the right type of person. Yeah, that is a thing we've said, huh?

Ha ha ha ha ha. Sponsored by Daniel and Soren. This is when my name is out front. Daniel the shield. All of the show is Soren and Daniel, but when it comes to our products, then it's like Daniel and Soren present Bitcoin for ICE. That's what our product is gonna be.

I had a memory the other day about being at cracked. This predates a lot of like Black Lives Matter and a lot of this other stuff where cops have really proven themselves to be the worst in every capacity. I remembered it cracked. You're constantly thinking of article ideas. And I was like, wouldn't it be fun to take like an alternative take and like do like a piece

about how good cops are? Cause already like we are kind of turning against cops. We've done an after hours and like do like a piece about how good cops are. Because already like we are kind of turning against cops. We've done after hours in which we like talk about cops with the serials, the serial mascots. And we talk about how the police are kind of bad in that. But I was like, maybe I could do like an article about like the importance of police. And I look back on that and I'm so thankful

that that doesn't exist out in the world for time immemorial, that I never did that stupid fucking article. I mean, obviously I would have run it as I was doing it, I would have found out also, oh, I shouldn't be doing this article. I would have probably still tried to power through because you need content,

you need something every single week. And I'm so thankful that that isn't in the world. There's one other piece that I made that we did even film. Yeah. That I'm so thankful that that isn't in the world. There's one other piece that I made that we did even film that I'm so glad. We don't need to talk about it. We'll talk about it on the Patreon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. I think even, we're so lucky,

because I think even then, we kind of had an idea that this was maybe not the right piece to do, but we were all like further enough in our time there that we were trusting our own instincts and trusting each other's instincts. You know, it wasn't like early days where someone could say like, I am rejecting that. Like, we got to a point where we weren't self rejecting much, but there was still like, everyone had kind of like, whispers and back of our mind conversations. And then a real life real world event happened. And I was thinking like, oh, boy, this isn't directly related to what Soren's video is about. But it's like, it touches it. And I don't I don't know how I'm gonna how I'm

gonna say hey this thing that you wrote that we shot that you liked I think we got to cancel it forever and I didn't even need to bring it up you were so quick like first thing in the morning. We're not doing it. Hey we're not gonna run that thing right? I mean, there are actually two instances. It's so hard because when you're younger, you are really trusting your own instincts and you're like, well, what's funny? Like, what's funny to me?

But you're not at all investigating the toxic sides of yourself. You're just being like, what's funny? Like, what's funny? What's funny? And a lot of times that was actually played to your favor. Like you would do something that was a little bit, that did cross a line a little bit and you saw enormous success for it.

This was like the early 2000s. Like, Bo Burnham talks about this all the time and like the things that he would do because he thought they were irreverent and neat. And in retrospect, you're like, oh no, all I was doing was making space for the type of people that I actually hate. And that was a shame.

There was another one we did where I thought it was the funniest idea in the world where I had written a sketch, designed to be a series even, that was called Dead Presidents Ghost Fighters Club. I was something like, no, Dead Ghost Fighters Club is what it was called Dead Presidents Ghost Fighters Club. I was something like, no, Dead Ghost Fighters Club is what it was called. Good idea. But it was one that we eventually, we even, we animated it.

Oh, let me just like back up here. Dead Ghost Fighters Club was a cartoon that was about Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Morton Stanley as ghosts who would fight ghosts like Ghostbusters. Like you would call them when you needed to get rid of ghosts. But the thing was is that they were only interested in getting rid of ghosts who were

from like Native American burial grounds. Like they would only, it would only go after ghosts that were already minorities like right or it native native and that and we started doing it it is in retrospect a fantastic cop satire to have this like protective force that clearly has an agenda and will ignore certain things to go after to like confirm their own biases. That wasn't your intention at the time. I mean it could have been in a subconscious way. They would go after poltergeists like they were interested only in one very

fighting one particular type of ghost and they would like turn away offers or like if they found out it was a different type of ghost they would leave but there was it was an opportunity where you had these guys who were all terrible all working together and land they would but also couldn't be killed like you would you would destroy them over and over again you would demolish these guys every single episode but they were ghosts so it didn't really matter and it was always ragtag like they'd throw things together in a way that like they fought as they were fighting ghosts and stuff. They were not likable, that was by design. And they would, they would also,

as we were like building it, people were like, I just don't think that there's enough satire here. Like we're not having them say enough bad things about these ghosts from burial grounds. So I'm like putting in more and more and more jokes. Like the characters were unfortunately funny in ways that you couldn't really, they were charming in a way.

You couldn't not make them, yeah. And so I was like adding more and more jokes against like Trail of Tears jokes and stuff like that. And then I looked at it, I remember watching it with new eyes basically, like we even got to the point where we animated it. It looked really good. And I read a theme song and everything,

and then I was watching it and I was like, oh, this is bad. This is not, I mean, it's funny, but this is not, this is not okay. What we're doing is not okay. Like it is, we are, we're charmed by these characters, we like them, and they're doing something genuinely awful and they're saying very awful things.

And I don't wanna be the guy who's then like looking, watching that video and seeing people in the Reddit thread or whatever quote tweeting it, literally quoting it. I'm like, I don't want that. So I remember coming to that meeting and being like, I think we have to kill this. This thing that we worked really hard on, I think it has to die.

Thank goodness. I never got that far into the production process of my thankfully failed subversive and edgy pitch, which was the series, Time Traveling Pedophiles, which I wrote about the experience. No, Time Traveling Sex sex offenders, wasn't it? That's what it was watered down to. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha these three guys who were pedophiles and they built a time machine and their whole dream,

their stated purpose was they want to go back and have sex with like, I guess it would have to be famous people when they were children, I think. I don't know if there was if there was, they were like, the history angle was important. They weren't just like, let's go to the past where no one's gonna see us doing this.

They were like, oh, I wanna, I wanna go back in time and have sex with young Joan of Arc was, was what all they wanted to do. And they would, every episode would be the same. They would go to France in the past and find young Joan of Arc and they're like, all right, here we go boys, time to do the thing that we really wanted to do. And then they would notice something was askew in history. They'd be like, oh wait, this, this King is supposed to be dead now, but he's alive. That's wrong. And they would need to sort of like, sort of like, oh wait, this king is supposed to be dead now, but he's alive, that's wrong.

And they would need to, sort of like, but not at all like Sherman and Peabody, they would need to save history. They would have to do something like- They'd save the space-time continuum. Right, because if they didn't, then the whole world would implode or something. And they would go and they would save the space-time continuum

and that's when uh once they save things in the nick of time that's when they realize oh rats we have to get back to the time machine we did all this stuff saving history we never even got around to having sex with the child that we wanted to have sex with they were they were will be better and and like every time i pitched the show i would i would have to have sex with. They were, they were, they will be better. And like every time I picked the show, I would have to start off with like, the important thing to be, to make clear is that they're never gonna do it.

We're never gonna show it. We're never even going to like off screen suggest that they've been successful in the horrible, unforgivable act that they wanna commit. So don't worry, if that was your worry, don't worry. They're never gonna be successful. It's really a show about these guys

saving the space-time continuum, and it's like a different chunk of history every week, and there's history jokes and stuff, and like everybody, even me, was still like like I don't know and then it went from pedophiles to sex offender which is a slightly easier pill to swallow because then it's like I want adult Helen of Troy and but it's still against against her wishes and I think that the big stopping point was always like We Are we rooting for these guys?

Right and is that complicated and like every time that they save the world that's good. But then they're like Oh, why are you so down buddy? We save the world Well, I didn't get to do my favorite thing and like I don't don't want, there was no way to thread that needle with the audience. And I'm so grateful that that pitch got watered down enough and enough and enough that it just became like, what if it was just like, assholes traveling through time? And I was like, well, then I'm not really interested in doing assholes traveling through time.

It's also, you can't have a single emotional arc in a series like that. For, like your characters are mine. Because if you give them any sort of, any sort of self-realization where they like, even if it's not that it's related at all, like they just suddenly discover I'm being very selfish with my friends

or something like that. You're like, well no, I don't wanna see them, I don't wanna see, I don't wanna feel for them. I don't wanna see them, I don't wanna feel for them. I don't wanna see them be like, oh I'm having this moment of self realization and I'm becoming a better person. Because it's not in the right fucking direction. It always has to be about one specific thing

or it doesn't work. For one of the sex offenders to be like, you know what, I've been really selfish and I'm gonna try to be a better friend. It's like, that's not the growth that you need to work on. Yeah, how dare you try to convince me that that's something that I should be sympathetic with him for. Yeah. Yeah. So neither one of them really work. They work as an elevator pitch and that's kind of it. Yeah. And the kind of it's, it's so close to the heart of

like any 24 year olds, not any 24 year old, but like many 24 year olds pitching comedy. What's like, what's like a fun kind of subversive victimless thing, according to me, a wildly privileged person. What's the thing I will never have to worry about? Yeah, what's the thing where they like are clearly, yeah, that I'll never have to worry about ever in my life this. Oh great, this would be funny. This is a funny thing I've laid

it on. The dangers of being in a room. Pitching that and being like, I think it's funny. What about you, Soren, Michael, Cody? All right, since there are no objections in the room, Cody? Alright, since there are no objections in the room... I guess this must be good. We got a pretty good swath of America here. Looks like we're doing it. God almighty. Line 1, you're on the air.

Des, why doesn't water taste of anything? I can't drink it! Taste of nothing! A disgrace! Something needs done! That's a super weird problem to be honest, John, but have you tried Deep River Rock flavored water? No, I haven't! Deep River Rock flavored water.

Won't make you less angry, will make your water more flavored. Great, we've John back on the line! Just try the apple and pear one! Delicious! Deep River Rock. That's better. Saved from our worst impulses. one delicious deep river rock that's better saved from our worst impulses uh not always sorry i got a quick question for you yeah go ahead did you ever cheat in school uh yeah i was listening to a great podcast from, I think, Wired about cheating because reasonably

there are a lot of discussions happening right now around AI in schools and whether kids can use chat GBT to help them with homework and whether or not that's cheating. And there's a lot to be said on all sides of it. And like there are some professors who are using ChatGBT in their lesson plans in a way that is like causing outrage where it's like this plan was created by ChatGBT. And there are professors who are using ChatGBT. Huh?

Yeah, that's good. I love this discourse. Yeah. Yeah. And some some professors are like, well, chat GPT AI is here. So I'm going to teach a class about it. And we're gonna just like talk about the ethics of AI and all that kind of stuff. But the the starting question in this Wired podcast was assembling the panel and then just like right off the bat, did you ever cheat in high school and middle school and college?

And I don't know that I've ever asked you that. Before we get into like the ethical ramifications of cheating with AI, just very curious about your experience. Yeah, I cheated a lot. I cheated constantly. I cheated on stuff where I cheated constantly. I cheated on stuff Where I felt that it wasn't that it wasn't hurting me in any way guys

I clearly had my own set of moral code that I wasn't willing to examine much But it was like oh, no, this is not beneficial to me. I should just get through this and then occasionally stuff that I just I punted on for too long ran out ran out of time, and I was like, and now I will cheat. I never was, I was not a copy and paste kid by any means, but I would go through like Joan of Arc. I remember reading Joan of Arc and being like, I have to write a paper on this. Let me go buy the little yellow cliff notes version of it

and see what they say are like the all the the really undertone the undercurrents and like the real the Literary tools here that are being used and so reading that and be like, okay This sounds like something I could also say and then using that same theme as my thesis Yeah, I don't think anyone ever thought Cliff Notes Constituted cheating when we were going to school.

Oh really? I think because it was also a book. It was a weird like gray area where the internet was new and scary so teachers were very wary of that. But something like Cliff Notes is like, it's in the fucking bookstore. What do you want? I read Grapes of Wrath like I was supposed to, didn't get it.

And then this other book was like, here are the themes of Graves of Wrath. And that helped me. It was like having one of those puzzles where you turn it over and the answers are all like written there upside down. That's what Cliff Notes were. And I think all art by the way should have that.

I think every piece of art I should be able to turn over and see what it really means. But I would cheat in that way. all art by the way, I think every piece of art I should be able to turn over and see what it really means. But I would cheat in that way. And then also on, in math, I would cheat all the time because you're supposed to remember formulas like physics and stuff. You're supposed to remember formulas.

Some of them are very complicated. And so I would just find a space in my TI-83 where I would put all those in and I could just go find them and just look at it and then know it and plug it in and then do the, whatever the question was. But also I agree. I mean, at the time I was like, this is not cheating. This is fine.

Why should I have to memorize this formula? I don't think I cheated a bit in middle school. I did in high school and a lot of it was also math, but I didn't even think, again, it's like self-justification, my own, hey, geography, but it was, I'm the victim here because what happened was I didn't understand math and I didn't know how to get it. Like once we reached a certain level in mathematics, it was just not finding purchase for me. And I would have teachers that would like make a joke of me not understanding math,

which if I had thinner skin would have really destroyed me. But I was like kind of in on the joke. It's like, yeah, I'm fucking stupid. I'm like a theater and band kid and I don't get math. It's not for me. I don't know how to understand it. And there is and was like so much, there wasn't a lot of room

if you didn't understand something. It seemed like you weren't trying hard enough in the classes that we were taking It seemed like if you didn't understand something it meant you probably weren't paying attention in class or you weren't doing the homework or you weren't You know taking it seriously whatever the things were and I didn't have the vocabulary at the time To explain to anyone like I know I I swear I'm not trying to be a jerk. I just don't understand this. And because I didn't have the vocabulary for any of that,

my solution was to just like, I would get my homework and I wouldn't do it because I didn't know how. And then I would come to homeroom and starting off very simply with the girl in my home room who was also in my math class and be like what did you what did you get for for the pre-calc homework because I'm just I'm a little curious and I was like oh and then I was right down what she did and that evolved over time to be like Laurie can you give me the okay thank you and then I will work out your homework. This didn't benefit me at all on tests.

I was still like firing in the dark on tests. And it wasn't, I didn't get like mad or entitled about it if I would come into homeroom and I would say, Lori, the math homework. She would just be like, yeah, I didn't do it. My plan is to do it during lunch. And I'm like, hey, that is totally right. I'm fucked. But that's like, if you can do the homework, you should do it, my plan is to do it during lunch. And I'm like, hey, that is totally right. I'm fucked.

But that's like, if you can do the homework, you should do it. I totally would do it if I could. I can't, that's fine. That is not your problem. It's mine. Yeah. I didn't cheat like Steve Siever would cheat

in growing pains where he'd like write the answers on the bottoms of his shoe or anything like that. I wasn't bringing something into class that could potentially get me caught. I wasn't bringing something into class that could potentially get me caught. I wasn't dumb in the way that I cheated. No, of course not. But I would cheat. And then I would also, I can vividly remember

in high school in a Spanish class, having like a vocabulary test and being like, see calcetines come up and be like, what the fuck are calcetines? Just sitting there for a while. Yeah, and then looking at somebody else's paper and be like, oh shit, yeah, that's right, socks. But noticing, well, not noticing at the time, that that person was sitting next to me had

spelled it S-O-X. And I just immediately wrote in S-O-X. And then I was like, as the papers get collected, I'm realizing it. And I'm like, oh, fuck. Because usually when I would cheat, it was like, it was either little tiny ways or it was ways where I could easily cover my tracks And I got and here was this one and it never came up again But I was like I was sure that I was gonna get busted for cheating there

We had our big famous high school scandal with the English honors class freshman year we had an assignment over spring break that was read a book and write a summary of each chapter of this book over spring break. A cherry assignment, the kind of thing that I would love to be assigned a book to read now. But at the time over spring break, none of us wanted to do it. The internet was growing and growing. And a bunch of people had the exact same idea at the exact same time, which was, hey, we noticed there are there are Fahrenheit 451 chapter summaries, all online, we can just copy and paste those. And everyone was doing that in the honors class, the smart kids class. And I was doing it too, but I didn't copy and paste it

and print it out like many did. I wrote it out freehand looking at the copy and paste and forms to like cover my tracks a little bit because even as a freshman, I think because I was in these classes, but probably like knew even then that I'm a bit of a step behind everyone everywhere. Like I don't quite belong in the, in the smart kids classes. So I knew enough to know that like,

I need to cover my tracks in some way. I need, I, I, I need to dumb this down a little bit. So it sounds more like me and I would get a few details wrong in my chapter summaries. Yeah man, I don't know how I was this fucking smart. It was insane and I say it became the big scandal because everybody got caught and the English teacher who was a young guy, I think this was probably who was a young guy, I think this was probably his trap by design. I think he kind of knew that like,

I'm gonna assign this over Spring Break. I know this chapter summaries are out there. I know what to look out for. I'm gonna catch these fucking kids. And he was gonna feel great. Like he, there were two English honors classes that he taught. He's not a teacher.

And he gave the same speech in both of those classes when the papers came in where he was like, he addressed all of us and he was like, I caught you. I know what you're doing. I have the same internet as all of you. You are not going to get away with this. We are going to be calling you to the office in the middle of the day to reprimand you and we're gonna talk to your parents and we don't know what the punishment is gonna be yet but it's gonna be huge because you can't get away

with this and he gave that speech to the other English class and now everyone was just like it was very effective terror we were all just sweating for days even me even though I felt like I did a pretty good job covering my tracks, I don't think I could, if called upon to describe what had happened in Fahrenheit 451, I don't think I could successfully do it. So I was like, if he asked me a question about this book, I'm fucking toast. So I didn't know I was out of the water, out of the woods.

And they did over a couple of days, just like one by one take kids out of the woods. And they did over a couple of days just like one by one take kids out of class and you'd be sitting in a different class and they would just say like, Don Smith, the principal's office and everyone would be like, we fucking know, sorry Don, they caught you, we know what this is about. And kids were crying and because this was an honors class, everyone was acutely aware that we wanted to leave high school four years from then with a bunch of like clubs and groups and organizations that we were part of. So they would look good on a high school resume.

So you can go to college and National Honor Society was like a big thing that we all thought was so important. We needed to have that on our application when we're trying to go to college and if you didn't have that and a good GPA you were fucked all this stuff that we thought was important and we knew that if you got like suspended for cheating or you got like some kind of admonishment of that level, then you were just not going to make the National Honor Society. So everyone was like, this is, we're going to have like an entire year of a graduating class that is fucked that that that makes the school look bad. And they were calling all these kids in and kids were freaking out. Some of the parents were freaking out. There was maybe six of us, your boy included,

who did not get caught, even though we all did it. And the teacher, Craig, his first name, I don't wanna dox him too much, but we knew that he wanted to really throw the book at all these kids because this was more important to him than teaching English for sure. And the principal or the superintendent with, after many phone calls from parents,

had to like boil down whatever the punishment was going to be to just like one hour long after school session where the kids would sit and get lectured by him and he would just like tell them why what they did was wrong and bad and how you can't just get away with it. Yeah. But it's like it's very funny to be like actions have consequences not this this one, really. You're still all gonna be fine. But it was like a huge, like a very scandalous moment for us. And for me going from like,

I'm fucked, I'm fucked, I'm fucked. And then when I see them reach the alphabet where they go past the O's and they move on to the next kid, I'm like. That feel, yeah. Well, that's where you get cheaters, I didn't cheat. You can't prove shit. There was nothing quite like that feeling

of getting away with something when you were young. Cause it felt like the end of the world. When you fucked up and it was like, you did it because of greed or selfishness or whatever, nothing felt worse. Like it was like a piece of your soul was gone. And to get caught doing that was the most humiliating possible thing in the world. And when you didn't get caught, it was like,

God, oh my God, I learned the lesson and I didn't have to, I didn't have to like face anyone about it. That's, and then you don't realize that's what adulthood is. You aren't accountable to anybody. And then you learn these lessons and you're like, you suffer them on your own,

which is like, you don't know that as a kid, you think it has to be a public display. And obviously Craig has wanted it to be that too. Craig I hope has moved on to his real calling, which is corrections officer. Yeah, 100%. But man, what a great feeling that must have been for you. It was awesome.

For me and Joe, who also 100% cheated to get away with it and having learned nothing except how to cheat well and the importance of covering your tracks. By the way, a college skill that you are, I think that they foster and that they try to encourage, especially if you're an English major, my dad would tell me when I was young, he was like, they're gonna give you more

books than you can read but you what you need to be get good at is understanding what's in each book and what's being said in each book so that you can write papers on it and I was like oh oh yeah and so like I was in college and you're if you're a an English major you're not reading every single book now cut front to the tip to tail like you're just English major, you're not reading every single book. No. Like tip to tail. Like you're just not doing it.

In fact, there are some that you might not ever even crack and you're gonna write three papers on that book. Man, there were books that I didn't buy because books are expensive and I didn't have the money. I'm just like, well, what am I gonna, what do I think I'm actually gonna read? Let's start there and spend the money on that. And then if there's some leftover,

I'll get some of these other books, but I don't really know. I don't feel good about their chances. Yeah, and it wasn't, and this wasn't an era where I would be like, all right, well, I don't really know a Jane Eyre, but like, let's go look it up. I can't do that.

There wasn't like, the internet didn't exist for that purpose when I was in college. And so you'd figure it out by, you'd either get Cliff Notes, There wasn't like the internet didn't exist for that purpose when I was in college. And so you'd figure it out by you'd either get cliff notes or you would go to class every single day and you'd figure out like what the discourse was. And then you'd be like, okay, everybody seems pretty set on this woman in the attic who set his bed on fire. I think I could write something about that.

I could write something about a woman who's not allowed out in public and like what they do to women, how crazy it is and it's your husband who's doing it, like all of that, I was like, okay, all right, I have a thing, I have a foothold and that's gonna be enough to carry me through three pages. Yeah, it's wild that just thinking about having to go online to read themes or get Cliff's notes or whatever, it's, you're really forced to cheat

with some of these books, some of these classes in high school certainly, and probably not college, but certainly high school, where you kind of have to ask someone else or go to the Cliff Notes or go to the internet because you can't, you're not allowed to go to class and say I read Crime and Punishment and I don't get it.

You're not allowed to do that. You have to get it. And you can't write an essay that is like, I can demonstrate that I read this thing, I know a bunch of their names and roughly what happened. I don't know why we're being taught this book. I don't understand why it's important. I'm not gonna carry it with me.

That's an F paper. And I end, you know, when I reinvent school, it won't be an F paper. Well, it's because of all the crags in the world and that you don't want to allow kids that kind of grace because you're also allowing in the door all the kids who just didn't wanna do the assignment. So like they really penalize laziness.

But the problem is, is that if you don't understand a thing, you look just like one of the lazy kids. And see, there's no, you can't just walk up to a teacher and be like, I didn't really get it my first time through. Can I have a little help? Because then all they're hearing is, oh, this is a trick, this is a trick. He just didn't even read it.

He wants me to explain it to him. And no matter what, you're always lumped in with that group. And so yeah, there is no room for doing the work but not retaining it. Like that doesn't exist in high school. All of my high school math, except freshman year, all of my, as soon as it gets a little bit more difficult, and I would like meet with teachers,

be like, hey, I didn't really understand this, so can I meet, I'll meet with you during lunch to try to go over it, and still not getting it. And like part of me wanted to be like, can this, can this count as me doing homework instead? Like, what do I need to, like, we can both agree that I'm not gonna need pre-calc.

Sir, please. You've seen me in the plays and I might not grow up to be an actor, but I'm definitely not growing up to be a mathematician. So can we just both be adults here and agree that me trying is enough? And it's not, because I didn't do the homework. No, no, no.

There is, history too, was like, there's just certain things, and I hate to say this now because it gives a lot of kids license not to do it, but there are certain things that your brain stick to and certain things that your brain does not stick to. For whatever reason biology, geology, like that kind of stuff my brain was perfect for it. Like all that stuff I retained immediately and I retain to this day. Like I just keep it. But geography or history and math, like history I know is your that's like your wheelhouse.

History, I cannot keep a fucking thing in my brain related to history. So when I'd have to do these cause and effect flow charts of what led to the American Revolution, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do my best here, but a lot of this is gonna be wrong. I don't know how parents, your kids are young for this,

but I don't know how parents of like high school age kids, if the kids come home with homework questions. It's hard for me to imagine taking a modern high school student's homework seriously. If a kid, if I came home to my parents and was like, taking a modern high school students homework seriously if a Kid if I came home to my parents and was like, oh that this whole spring break instead of Doing our family vacation or whatever it is that we were going to do

I need to read Fahrenheit 451 and write a summary of every chapter I feel like parents it's hard to hear that with a straight face, you know, and not be like, why, what are you gonna do with that? What's that teaching you? The only thing that proves is that you did the assignment. And if you were an adult and someone gave you that assignment for your job, you would figure out a way to fake it like the rest of us do for the shit

that we don't want to do like anything's really coming home me like yeah, I need I'm trying to get the I'm trying to get these dates to stick in my head of when they actually signed the Declaration of Independence because it wasn't 1776 and I need to try to get like the I we need to know And I need to try to get like the, I, we need to know 10 of the 12 names who signed the thing. And for an adult to hear that and to be like, nah, go outside. It's way better for you to do something else that's not bad. You're not going to need to know this. You only need to know it

for the quiz. There's a great current work example of that, which is the people that were in government jobs that suddenly got that mandate from Doge that they were supposed to write down every single week, give bullet points to the things that they accomplished in their job. And then quietly they just realized no one was ever reading those. Like no one had ever even looked at them. And it was like you were doing this just to make a point. Like that's what most of school is. Later on, I mean, early on, you understand, like you need kids writing stuff down

because that's how they learn to form a sentence. Like they just need practice, practice, practice, practice. By the time you get to high school, you know how to do that. Now it's just proving you did the assignment. It's proving you read the book. I don't care what you got from the book, but you need to know the names of the characters and vaguely what they did. And it's like,

well, what then what are we doing here? You're not learning anything from that. Yeah. Well, that's the problem with schools. And that's why you need to come to the University of Daniel and Soren, the University of our product. We're pivoting to schools. Ha ha ha ha ha. You're not gonna like the books I'm gonna suggest. Ha ha ha ha. Hattifight presidents every semester. Every semester.

Yeah, all right. Well, let's be done. Okay. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. The answer's not important,

I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? How did you get? How do I be remembered? What's it all good? What did all the good you get? Who would I be? I can't remember What's the answer? Word and order Guide and wings on Oh forget it

I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here