Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Comedy Washing | Ep. 304

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Daniel and Soren wade into the Riyadh Comedy Festival mess: who showed up, who stayed home, and how much moral flexibility three million dollars buys. Then a hard pivot to domestic policy (when to wash a dish and when to call it art) before wrapping up with wasp warfare and the case for seeing what everyone on the internet actually looks like.Thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/qqFollow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts on to 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? Who did you dad? When do I be?

Remember? What's it out? I've heard it all. Oh, forget it. I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien. If there's random comedy writers, if there's an answer, they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. So, hello again. Welcome. It's the Quick Question podcast. I'm your host, Daniel O'Brien,

and we've got a remote record Soren Bui. My co-host is joining us. us on location from the Riyadh Comedy Festival, Soren, what's it like on the ground out there? I'd rather not talk about it. Things are going pretty bad here. Oh. There's not great. There's a lot of things you're not allowed to say.

It turns out. And so we're pretty, a few of us have disappeared and things aren't going so hot. Okay. But the money, I am told the money is very good. Excellent. It's excellent. It makes it all worth it in the end.

Thanks to Shopify for supporting quick question. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash QQ. Have you been following any of this Riod Kameney Festival stuff? Camity? Yeah, I have. Well, I've been following the blowback before it even started. I don't even know if it's happened yet. Is it a, is it done? I don't, I, it's like, that's a really good point. I also don't know.

It seems like, uh, I know that some people have performed, but I don't know how long the festival it is. Oh, okay, so it's going on right now. We're in this. The, the, the story about it has been going on for, yeah, it feels like a full solid month. I don't, I don't know if there's new details to the story other than what, why the fuck are all doing this? Where are they all going? And everyone's saying, for the money. And you're like, oh, okay.

We're getting some people like Bill Burr has done it and he's making the rounds now for his response to the backlash, which has not been great. For everyone who's completely unfamiliar with this very specific comedy thing is Saudi Arabia, which is it's hard to paint with a broad brush when you're talking about a whole other country. But they're the bad guys. They're the 9-11 guys. they're the let's disappear journalists and not even like cutting up journalists yeah just like like like like doing bad guy shit from the movies about bad guys they're doing it out in the open uh it's a very corrupt royal family uh bad for women bad for gay people bad for journalists uh bad for free speech they have lots of money and they wanted to do the uh comedy festival that's hours in terrible for towers

They wanted to do this festival in Riyadh and make the biggest comedy festival in the world. It seems like a way to launder their image because they just got some of the funniest people in the world to come to this comedy festival and bring comedy to the people of Saudi Arabia. Dave Chappelle is there. Bill Burr is there. Pete Davidson is there. There's a lot of big names. There's a lot of conspicuous big names that are not there.

Shane Gillis, who's huge right now, is not there. And Mark Marin, who is huge. These are people who very clearly would have gotten this. Yeah, would have gotten this invite and turned it down. And it just became this whole story about it. Like there's the Mark Marins of the world who are coming out and saying, like, yeah, I got this offer and it's a lot of money, but like, it's Saudi Arabia. it's the 9-11 people so I just personally couldn't do it and there are other comedians like

David cross who were like I couldn't do it and also I feel very let down by the comedians who did do it because these the 9-11 guys and also you must know that you're there to launder the reputation of this royal family you know you're going to they you're going to go there and you're going to tell a bunch of jokes and then you're going to come back to America and you're going to say it was great. You're going to say the people are just like us and they all just wanted to laugh and it was really fun and I didn't feel like I was restricted in my speech or anything because that's the narrative that the royal family in Saudi Arabia wants you to spread out to the world so the rest of us forget about the 9-11 of it all. Yeah, I mean, yes, I think that that's true.

I think the Kosogi thing is like, that's like, that's the first thing that jumps to my brain is that this is a current, because 9-11 happened, oh, who remembers how long ago? Nobody possibly could. But the Kosogi thing was so recent, and it's like this regime. Like, we're currently living with, those are the same guys. The guys that are talking to on the phone inviting you are the ones who used a bone-saw to turn him into little tiny pieces. Yes.

Because he was a journalist they didn't like. And that's horrifying. And that's not like a thing. I don't know how you could look past. But I also didn't get invited. So like, it's very easy for me on this side to be morally righteous about it because no one wants me there. Yeah.

But it is pretty diabolous. It's pretty brutal, man. Bill, Bill Burr. Nope. Yeah, Bill Burr. Not Bill Barr. Two good buddies that I get confused a lot. Bill Burr, whose takes I generally like.

I think he's like a really progressive and thoughtful guy who, is also like edgy and human about a lot of things. He went on Conan's podcast and his reaction to the backlash is I think he's

doing a little straw man stuff where he's talking about how like, you know, these people who wear t-shirts that are made in sweatshops are coming after me for going to the sweatshop and doing a joke and I'm just trying to make people laugh

And it's like, ah, that's, that's, that's a little straw manny. It's like, it's, you're, you're riding the line of like, there are, there's no ethical consumption in capitalism. There's blood everywhere. So, like, what are you going to do? And treating the, the thing that seems unfair about how he represents himself is treating what he's doing as just bringing comedy, uh, I think is half the story. I think as, as we've said, the other half of the story is like the reputational comedy

washing that's being done by having this festival here. You're not just making a bunch of people laugh. You're also changing the global image of this monstrous family because that's what they want you to do, because that's what they're paying you to do. But I don't, for some reason, it would be more refreshing. think if he had said truly like you said in the beginning soren oh they paid me a lot of money and so that's why i did it and i'm going to give some of my money to this charity and like i don't feel great about it but uh our friend jason uh amidst all this backlash jason pointed out something on blue sky that that um skeeding a screenshot of the headline you as comedians defend

decision to play saudi arabia they're paying me enough to look the other way jason says in general, your favorite entertainers care way more about money than you think. Yes, including the leftist, environmentalists, punk rockers, and raging anti-capitalists. There's a reason movie stars do TV ads and launch gin brands. They are, above all else, hyper-efficient money-making machines. Everyone claims they already know this, but I'm watching fans be shocked at how ravenously comedians will lunge at the chance to go from 100 million to 103 million, as if their lives depend on it.

You don't get the 100 without that mindset. Talent alone doesn't do it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, well, I think that that's strong many, too. None of these comedians don't have 100 million. Well, actually, some of them might have $100 million, but that's, I don't know that all of them are that wealthy. Also, it is still like, yeah, you're getting like $3 million to anybody that's enough money that you are like, oh shit, that's, that changes things for me in some way. And so I kind of understand that. I understand

And also, I'm going to, by the end of this, I'm going to not agree with the Saudis and what's going on, but let me just say these things up front. This is not the first time this type of thing has happened. I think that celebrities get invited over there all the time and celebrities get invited over there at the behest of royalty and it's either to hang out, it's to perform in some way, but they're getting invited for a large amount of money to just come there and spend time there. And I think a lot of celebrities do that quietly. Like, they have been doing it for a long time. And I've even, there's like rumors even that sometimes it's prostitution because they are so much money. Like they can offer you whatever amount you think is like absorbing it and too much, they can offer you 10 times that. Like they, so they are going to give you any amount of money you want, any amount of money you want to do whatever it is that they want.

Yeah. And I think that there's, so obviously, I don't know if this is true, but there's like rumors of prostitution, like celebrities, maybe not like ALA celebrities, but celebrities will go over there and there's a good chance that for $20 million, like, you might have to sleep with a Saudi prince. Yeah. And these things have been going on for a while. This is like the most, this is more duplicitous for two reasons. One, I think that it's, it's way more out there in the open. It's like they're posters for it. There's ads for it and stuff like that. that. So they're like, they're celebrating the fact that these celebrities are coming, which was before I think it was much quieter. And then also it's designed to be for, designed to be for the people, like the people of Saudi Arabia. And that's not who's seeing. It's not, you're getting the, the friends of the regime who are there. And so, yeah, it's, the attempt is at whitewashing. The attempt is like, hey, Saudi Arabia's not so bad. Look, they love my blue collar jokes just like, what else? Look at Dave Chappelle. He's killing with jokes about how awful free speech is in the

United States. Yeah. The other thing, I think to your point, even sidestepping the high-end prostitution stuff, which I haven't actually heard about, I do feel like the idea of comedy comedians doing incredibly lucrative small corporate gigs very quietly. That's been going on forever. Like, your favorite leftist comedian has, in all likelihood, performed at Elon Musk's birthday party or Mark Zuckerberg's birthday party, like all of the names that are, all of the people who are like condemning the comedians at the Rea Festival, most of them have probably done these corporate gigs for a CEO that certainly has destroyed lives or the environment. You know, I'm not saying David Cross has, like,

performed 10 minutes for the Sackler family or something like that, but all these comedians have been doing corporate gigs for bad actors for a lot of money quietly for a very long time. I'm sure they feel some kind of way about it, but I'm sure if you're Bill Burr and

there's suddenly backlash for the Riyadh Festival, he's just like, what the fuck? You you sang you put on a Maryland Monroe dress and sang for Mark Cuban. Why Is this suddenly bad? We've all been doing shit like this forever.

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The most popular headlines are Kim Kardashian offered a million to spend a night with a Saudi prince. This is a little disturbing. Kanye West offered $10 billion or $10 million by a Saudi prince to sleep with Kim Kardashian. So they might have been back-channeling and offering more money to Kanye- Oh, that's rough. That's real bad stuff. But it is, it does, I'm not going to say it does happen, but it is a thing that there's a lot of rumors about this happening

that all sort of correlate with one another. It's not great. It's not a great situation. It's kind of a bummer that they're there. But I've never been in the situation where I have been offered the same thing. If somebody was like, even if somebody offered me a million dollars and they're like, you just got to go there for a day and you've got to tell some jokes. I would be like, and I didn't know that there were going to be posters like that.

I would be like, okay. Yeah. All right. Right. Because it's not, it's not coming from MBS or anything like that. It's coming from your agents and a bunch of people through the channel who are like, there's this place, Riyadh. Do you know where Riyadh is?

Absolutely not. Okay, well, they've never had a comedy festival before and they're so excited to see. see some American comedy. And this will be the first one and like the biggest. They're going to do it at a soccer stadium. Isn't that exciting? It's like, hell yeah. Do I get to ride on a plane to Rio? Yeah. You have to, in fact. Yeah. In fact, yeah, it's you're going to sit in a private plane. And you're like, amazing. And also, you're going to, the many, I'm sure that there are a lot of comedians who got on board because they're like, and guess who, yeah, like Bill Burr's doing it or like these other comedians that you know are they going to be there. And you'd be like,

fuck and they want me that's so exciting you would at no point are you like well what is their ethical stance on journalism stuff right and like there there is going to be like a a do not discuss list for their sets but when you're getting a bunch of these like headlining american comedians and they're like you just have to promise you're not going to do any jokes about the Saudi royal family and they're like don't fucking worry I'm going to do jokes about bathrooms leave me alone yeah you will not find that anywhere in my yeah it is and then I I don't know like what sort of power you have at that point to back out either like once you are agreed to do this that you're on the the poster

and everyone's like complaining around you and you're starting to realize oh shit I'm involved in something that's pretty diabolical I wonder if you can be like actually I don't want to do it or if now you're you're a target There have been comedians who donated all of their money to charity after the festival. Jessica, Jessica Carson, oh, I said there were comedians. There was one. Jessica Carson apologized and donated her entire fee to charity. Jesus, man.

I thought there'd be more, I call the shot, but there'd be a lot more. Yeah, some of the comedians, most of them, probably. Yeah, man, that's enough. Certainly after one person did it and everyone was like, good, we like her for that. Surely Aziz Ansari would have been like, I could, I have a movie coming out. I could really use some good publicity. I will also donate my money. Now that I know we like that.

Yeah, now that I know that this has blenish my reputation, I wonder if I could buy it back. You know what I've learned in this discussion, Soren, that we had no business ever have. is um yeah you put a lot of uh emphasis on uh comedians being on on posters are do you are you seeing a lot of posters it's the only way i know about comedy shows man are you are you moving into a college right now what i do is i get up in the morning i travel down to the bus bench and i see what's going on the little shelter there i see what's coming up what movies there's going to be with comedy shows Yeah. I go past a building that's got a lot of construction going on.

Whatever bills are posted on the outside, that's how I'm getting my information, the comings and goings of shows. And the people of the Riyadh Comedy Festival, they're trying to lure you from the bus bench. They're thinking you're going to see that poster and be like, Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr? The only reason I know of the poster, and the reason I keep using that is my example, is because in the, the only thing I've been aware of is the backlash. backlash. I didn't ever see like an initial like, hey, we're doing this show. I've only seen people be like, hey, this show fucking sucks. It's crazy that people are doing this. And the only way

that they can like, the only good way to give that information out online is be like, here's the poster for it. Now you get the idea of what it is. Now we can talk about why it's bad. And so the poster is the only thing I've seen. Yeah. We did used to make posters for crack shows. Do you remember that? Yeah, we did. We used to make them and for a while, I would make them. I was our designer until we hired a designer. There was, I don't know if you remember. Five years into the company, but I don't know if you remember, but you would make them. And if we were going somewhere, I would take whatever you made.

And because I also had Photoshop, I would change it. I would change it before I put it up. And I would put, I would make my picture bigger so that it overlapped everybody else's and sometimes obscured their faces entirely. I made my name much bigger. And underneath all of your names, I scrolled those off and put and friends. I put Saur and Vui in friends. That's really good stuff.

All of us making posters to put on Tumblr to get people. And you know what? The 15 people who saw it? I think at least five of them liked it. Yeah. I mean, crack.com in its time was a successful venture, but could you imagine if they'd hired one person who had any skill other than comedy writing?

Just like a marketer or a promoter or a designer. just a single person who had a second skill that they could help boost and elevate the company. Just imagine the heights. Well, okay, to be, to be fair to crack, we did have some of those people and we fought with them constantly. That's true. There was like a revolving door of them because we didn't get along with any of them and they didn't understand the sensibilities.

So they would be like, they would come to us with braided content ideas and be like, this would make you a bunch of money if you were willing to do. do this and just say that this product, say that this P and G product is good. And do I make a whole article about how shampoo's rad? And we're like, are you fucking kidding me? We built this brand from the beat. We got every single one of our followers one by one and we're not going to do this. And so we would fight off everything.

Everything they tried to do, we would fight. I also remember after the site had been established and successful, then we would bring in like a branding or marketing team that was supposed to help us get to the next level and they had like a blue sky um just riffing meeting with us where they were like now crack.com what would you say your brand is it's a question that like now i recognize as a very standard question you would ask in a branding meeting to get all the people who build something together but at the time when they're when some weird suit was asking what our brand is i was like throwing my pencil up in the air, like, this fuck didn't do his research, sounds like it.

Do your homework. Yeah. I understand. Yeah. As an adult now, I understand why they would ask those questions and why that was important that they got an understanding from us what we think our brand is and like what we're aiming toward. Because the other thing is like, what they're also looking for is like a consolidated way of

saying it. Yeah. So that when they have to pitch that out to people. you're talking to a bunch of people who aren't comedians on the other side too who are like selling these products and I want to use your site in which to sell their products and so you have to be like here's what the site is and they have to be like oh okay oh and that's and people like that and and so it's it's just like a bunch it's all the way down it's these people yeah it's people who are it's two fillers who are just like I'm so mean I'm so cruel

this is the real human beings that have jobs and some of them are really funny but But, like, people who are just not writers, they're not comedians, and like, they're, and there's nothing wrong with that. And their whole, and I know that now. Well, hold on. Their whole job is trying to understand the space, which is like, and I don't know which is worse. I don't know if that's worse or the people who are huge fans of comedy and working in that, in that vein. Because then they want to, they want to, they want to, like, play. They want to, like, have their hand in the pie.

They want to offer some jokes and stuff. and they don't understand how precious and our egos are about that kind of thing. And it's like, I would not take a suggestion from you if my life depended on it. Soren, let's do it right now. Let's do a brand meeting right now for a quick question of the podcast. Soren, I'll start with you. Yeah. What is the podcast?

Oh, the podcast. Oh, well, first of all, from the, it's a visionary brainchild of these two. two comedians. They are, both of them started on the internet. They worked their

way up in the American dream. They both now working on opposite coast on American broadcast

television. And actually, you're not on broadcast, are you? They're both on television. They're both

television writers. All right. One of them, huge Emmy winner, huge Emmy winner. Nobody's huger. The other one, plugging away.

And, they're best friends they came up together and now they just get together every once in a while and they just talk and they talk about the things that we're all dealing with all the time and they ask questions of one another like

let me think of a single one man what what's a what's a movie that you like holy cow Like friends do. Yeah. You know what?

It's really, it is really hard to pitch our podcast. It's hard to, it's hard to, here's the thing. Yeah. Just like you were saying, it was hard to pitch. It's hard to do, before this podcast, we were talking about writing pilots and Daniel was talking about the pilot for cheers and how on its surface, ostensibly, the pilot is a woman walks into a bar, she doesn't decide she doesn't want to get married and decide she's going to work at that bar.

But there's, like, there's a charm there that you're not going to find from just reading a breakdown of it. You don't dissect the bird to find the song, you know? Like, the beauty of it is not in that. You have to have, you have to understand it, read it. I would say, not that I'm comparing us to Cheers, listening to a single episode, you're like, oh, it's the chemistry. It's the two guys talking to each other that I really enjoy. Yes. So that's your answer?

Yeah, you don't, you don't break apart the piano to look for the notes inside. Yeah. Is that a soren original? You don't dissect the bird to look for the song? No. Don't dissect the bird to find a song. I think it's from a song, actually. Oh, really?

Yeah. That's a good one. I was ready to credit that to you because you drop pearls like that often. Thanks, man. There was a, I went to go. Speaking of lyrics from a song, I went to go see Mountain Goats recently, the band The Mountain Mountains. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, they, I like them a whole lot. They played a bunch of songs. I feel like I know more Mountain Goat songs than the average person. And they played almost

exclusively songs I didn't know. I couldn't believe it. And you also learned that a lot of mountain goats songs sound kind of the same. I'm still, I was there with friends. who didn't know any mountain goat songs. And it became a game of them looking to me like, is this one that you know? And I would listen to a couple bars and be like, no, it's very close. It's very close to dance music, but it's not dance music.

So we gotta, we gotta just hope for the next song is gonna be one that I know that I can. And then what I know, I'm gonna sing along. But they played out of a set of maybe 14 songs, they played two that I knew. And they closed with, can you guess what they closed with Soren? Yeah. um uh this year yeah of course they did that is if you're a fan of mountain goats you know that

song if you're not a fan of mountain goats you might know that song because everyone it was like an anthem i think maybe in the first trump administration whether it came out then or just like made the rounds over and over again but it's just like a peppy jumpy tune and the chorus is i'm going to make it through this year if it kills me. And it's a very fun thing to hop and sing along to when you know it's going to be a kind of bad year. So the band had to play that song. There was no question about it. And they do their whole set. And they don't even intro that song by name. The singer just goes, okay, the vampire's on your neck. You know what comes next. And then they jumped into that song. And I sat there smiling. And like, I know he's a

songwriter and he's written a lot of great lines but i just i just thought he didn't fucking write that and he didn't it was uh katie lang oh wow whatever happened to her um well okay so the vampire's on your neck yeah that's a good one i would like to have that put that in the arsenal um so he you know the song no children right maybe oh oh okay well you should go listen to that one it is so his song the mountain goats if you're not familiar with them some pretty dark lyrics they've got a whole song called heretic pride a whole album called heretic pride that is wonderful and like really well really a cohesive as an entire album but fall is what it feels like essentially an apocalypse and it's it's

some there's some brutal stuff that happens in it and like there's uh it's pretty dark but they have a song called no children that is like the darkest song i've ever heard it's so rough It's about people going through a divorce and absolutely hating each other and wishing each other would die and wishing themselves would die and it's tough but it's really good

really good song just checking to see if you heard it no and in fact I didn't even hear it now because I was looking up who said that thing about vampires it wasn't Katie Lang was it was 10,000 mania Natalie Merchant it was Katie Tunstall

I think that's a reasonable mistake Yeah. Kay, I like that you just said KT to establish that this is why I was close. Because KD, which while they are initials, sound a lot like KD. Yeah. All right, well, congratulations on being close, Dan. Thank you.

I'll take it. Daniel, I have a quick question for you. Shoot. What? Okay. When you go to, I'm trying to. I'm trying to think of like the best way to ask this question. I want to know about your, your dish ed, your dirty dish etiquette.

Because I think everybody has different dirty dish etiquette. Because when you go stay with somebody else, like you stay in an Airbnb with your family, or you go to somebody else's house, I find myself completely bewildered by their crazy rules or like lack of rules. There's never anybody, it's very hard to thread the needle and have somebody be in the exact same boat I'm in. So I'll be like more specific about these. but, like, how long do you think dirty dishes can stay in a sink, let's say? Oh, that's how it starts? I want to start there, because the other stuff is much more minute and I think maybe not true to everyone.

But, yeah, I want to know, like, how long can dishes sit in the sink for you? This is, our audience loves to diagnose the two of us after our... Are you trying to be careful? After our incredibly private conversations leak somehow, they love to be like, oh, I had no idea. Soren had OCD. But now that I know how he orientes his phone. So I'm sure more diagnoses will follow, but Soren, those dishes don't stay in the sink a fucking minute. Yeah.

They're in right now. There are two dishes in the sink right now. only reason I know that is because I microwaved a burrito right before this podcast, and I requires two plates to microwave. One on top, one on the bottom? Uh-huh. And I was already late to the record, and I put them in the sink, and I shouted to wife that I will take care of this.

Yeah, that's letting her know. That's not coming from her. This is 100% coming from me that, like, I don't walk out of the kitchen if there's a dish in the sink. because, and sometimes it bugs her because, like, it's one of her dishes and she doesn't want to feel like I'm cleaning up after her all the time. Okay. But I want her to know that, like, this is, I don't think I'm cleaning up after her or anyone. I think I'm just removing the dishes that show up in the sink, and I feel good about doing that.

They, they do not linger. I do not have dishes in the sink. And, uh, I, it's driving me a little bonkers that there are two. in the sink right now that I can't get to until the podcast is done. So if you, doctors in the comments, think you can do anything with that, good luck. Yeah. If you want to take a peek into this twisted mind. Okay.

So I guess my other question is, does your dish etiquette correlate with your significant others? And did one of you have to have to bend more than the other? No, they don't correlate, and no, no one had to bend. He is more comfortable leaving things in the sink a little bit. And because she can mentally let them sit there and do her other business, she can like, for me, the act of having lunch includes handling the dishes. For her, it's more of like, I've finished lunch and now it's back to work. And I will get to the dishes later when such time arrives.

is as I clean the kitchen. But for me, it's all cooking and eating and cleaning. It's all part of the same process. And like, I can't move on until it's done. And it's, and it has certainly led to zero fights. There's, like, truly incredible. The closest it gets is me taking a dirty plate from our coffee table and her just being like, I was going to get it.

And I was like, but, but now, darling, you don't have to, because I'm getting it, and I love getting it. And then just to get more intricate here, how are you about, like, let's say I made some toast and I'm going to put some butter and jam on that toast, and now there's a knife that has butter and jam on it, and I just rest it at the edge of the sink, so that over the lip is the dirty part of the knife, but the rest of it sits back over on top of the counter. Does that a thing that happens at your house, or no? That will happen at my house.

because the handle part isn't dirty. Right? And why is it there? Do you have like a reason why you'd keep it instead of just throwing it in the sink? I don't want to dirty the sink. Okay, that's weird. Not the end I was expecting.

I was kidding. That's not weird. It's not weird. You got to wash the sink after you're done with dishes. That's just what you do. I'm going to go through my dish etiquette here because that's why I'm like I'm leading here, is that I used to be different. I used to be somebody who could leave dishes in a sink for an entire day, sometimes into the next morning and then be like, all right, well, I really got to tackle

these. I'll just, this is a new job that is separate from the eating and the cooking, that I will tackle at some other point. That's not who I am anymore. My wife has shown me a better way. My wife was somebody who was like, just like you or she was like, it's got to be done now. just get it out of the way and uh it's just part of the whole meal process and i was like realizing the error of my ways i was like oh yeah you're absolutely right this is much better to the point now where it drives me crazy if somebody leaves dishes in the sink the only time that we have dishes in our sink is if the dishwasher's running and we've used other dishes and i won't and sometimes like i'll see them in there and i'm like i just fucking wash those by hand like let's just go like let's crank

it out i can't this can't sit there now as far as like a nice or something on the edge of the sink. Sometimes even a spoon will sit there. We have like an agreement that that's allowed because throughout the rest of the day we might be using that again. I understand. There's so many times where you're going to have to like, I'm not going to dirty four knives throughout the day because I made toast in the morning and a sandwich in the afternoon and then for like for a snack I needed something else that was spreadable. Like that knife is going to be used a lot. I use even to use it. Like if I see a knife on the edges when I have my tea, and I'm mixed in my honey and my milk and everything. And I'm like, I need to mix this. And there's a knife there. I'm like, perfect. Yeah. That's the one.

I don't care what was on it before. That's so handy. Diggle, diggle, diggle, diggle. And so we will leave a dirty dish occasionally out there. And sometimes a cutting board. We'll also stay out that has crumbs on it, which tough to look at. I'll admit, tough to walk into a kitchen and be like, oh, there's a lot of crumbs here. I see crumbs.

But I'll leave that out because we're going to be doing maybe some cutting. throughout the rest of the day. Have you ever... This is a real... I think this is a mental question and not a hygiene question. Would you... You make your toast.

You make your toast. You get your jam on your toast. You take that knife idly. You put it in the dishwasher in the little basket that's just for silkware. Yeah. An hour passes. You decide to make some more toast.

do you, have you ever open the dishwasher and taken that knife out and used it again? Yeah. If it's in its own chamber, if it's in its own chamber and it hasn't touched any of the other silverware, I will do that. If it is touching the other silverware, I refuse. I did it

last night. It's so wild that we're talking about this. I did it last night and I regretted it. And that's why I say it's a mental thing because the principal should be the same. It's not touching anything, like, truly disgusting. But it's from the dishwasher where the dirty things are. It's not from the saints.

Sat in there with the dirty things. With all the air that I've cleaned. But, like, last night, we went to go see a Broadway show last night, and we got home on the train pretty late and got back to the house and we were both just starving because we didn't eat dinner. and we're just like having snacks and I was having some chips and I recently got

oh they were salt and apple cider vinegar chips very specifically it's quite a brag that New York is a different world the chips we got at a shop right and they were home we're home when we're eating our snacks so aren't your apple cider chips okay fucking weird seasonal chips go on salt and apple cider vinegar chips

and now I wanted something sweet and we got this vegan chocolate chip cookie dough that you can eat raw or baked. I don't know what kind of science is in that box of goop. But I thought, like, this is going to be a perfect sweet treat. Let me have one scoop, spoonful of this. And I ate it, and I put the lid on the thing, and then I put the spoon in the dishwasher. And then I thought, nope, that's not going to do it.

It's going to be more. And so I took the spoon out of the dishwasher, and it had been in there for seconds and I took it out so I could have seconds and it was so much worse in a way that I have to know could only be mental because it's not a bunch of germ bugs that got on the spoon while I was sitting in the in the dishwasher and I didn't like put it in a puddle in the dishwasher it's in its cage where it likes to be but it's still my brain was like we don't take things out of dishwasher and use them. This is against the rules. And my brain sent that message to my taste buds and it fucking worked. I didn't enjoy the second bite as much of the first bite. And you're like the

spoon is a little bit colder since it left your hand. It's a little more foreign. The stuff that's caked on there on the bottom of it that your tongue didn't quite get all of. Like that stuff is like yeah. No, there's something wrong here. It's not always just in my mouth. This is something. It's been somewhere else since my spoon is my son that I sent off to college. And then when I take it out of dishwasher, it's got a sole patch, and I'm like, who's this guy? Yeah, it's just different, different in a worse direction. And I can't explain why, but just know it's not mine anymore, the one that I made. Yeah. Yeah, I get that feeling. I have a really hard, I don't, I would never, I don't think, like an ice cream or something like that, if I'm eating ice cream and I put the

spoon in that, I would not take the spoon out and put that whole thing back in my mouth. The only way that I would take something out of the dishwasher is like a knife, or like, I'm going to, that I need to cut with or I need to spread with where I'm like, this thing isn't directly going into my body. Yeah. It's just the vehicle to get other stuff in me. But I have a real aversion to that as well. I as a kid, I would freak the fuck out when I would go somewhere and for a restaurant, I go to a restaurant and my parents would be like, should we get dessert?

And I'd be like, yes. And they'd be like, I don't think we really want anything. Let's not get dessert. And I would get a dessert. And then everyone at the tail would be like, kind of. I have some of that fucking dessert. And like passing it around, the sharing of it was not my concern. My concern was always that because the expectation was that I was the only one eating

this dessert, there's one fucking spoon there. And this spoon is going into other people's mouths. And I hated that. And then the dessert was ruined for me after that because everyone's saliva has now been on this spoon. And kids in general should not be worried about that kind of thing. No. should be, in fact, famously or not, famously are little humans, but I really, really

hated it. And so to this day, my mom is still like, sore and hate sharing desserts. And I can't be like, point of order, here's why. It's not like that I'm gluttonous or that I want the whole thing. It's that I don't, I think all of you are filthy and I don't want to be anywhere near your little exterior bones. I think that's reasonable. Okay, thank you. Yeah. I did, like you, I used to be different.

It wasn't Shea who changed me. I think it was just living on my own, honestly, that changed me. But when I was in college, my roommate and I had an apartment together and plates would stay in the sin. for so long, for just days, and we wouldn't say anything about them. And then sometimes one of us would clean some of the plates and silverware and not the others. And it's because we're waging a war where it's like, I have cleaned the plate that I used and the dirty plates that are in there are yours and I'm not going to clean up after you.

And that silent war would become a vocal war every once in a while where days had passed and no one knew the origins of anything. We were like, those are your fucking plates. You were cleaning them. I need a plate right now. Clean your plate and give it to me. Yeah. It's just like a shitty way to live, too.

It says to have crusty old food sitting around. I mean, people talk about how in bathrooms, your toothbrush is in the bathroom, right? And like the amount of stuff I'm getting your toothbrush is awful. No, they're not about it by bacteria in a lot. bathroom pales in comparison to the amount of bacteria in a kitchen. There's so much more around food and germs around food that that's where that's where the magic happens in far as sickness is concerned. So I'm with you. I don't like it. I don't like it anymore. I think that for a long time

it didn't bother me and now it's like I cannot hang to have dirty dishes just hanging out. I have one more question for you regarding this. Okay. How do you determine 3 a.m.s here. How do you determine whether you use something, whether you need to wash it with soap, whether you just need to give it a rinse, or whether you just put it right back in the drawer? Did you ever do that? Put it right back in the drawer? Uh-huh. Ah, if I've cut bread, that knife gets a wipe with my hand and then goes right back in the drawer. Yeah, yeah, my hand is the sponge at that point. Yeah, I agree. Things that are like a dry material. and I use something, and I'm, like, cutting into it, and it's only ever touched dry things, that thing is still clean. That thing just has some crumbs out that need to be shaken off.

Yeah. And that's it. To your other questions, I mean, there are some things that get soap. There are some things that get bartender's friend, which is another cleaning product, because they can't go in the dishwasher. some things get rinsed if there's like some sediment on there that's going to come up come off with a rinse and some like melted cheese or melted anything will get like a little scrub off before getting into the dishwasher and I got to say that's this is newish behavior the idea of cleaning something

before it goes into the dishwasher is new to you is maybe a two-year-old development in my life I'm going to be 40 in three months. This is, I had long-held ideas that once a dish goes into the dishwasher, some magic process happens and that it should be clean. And if I put a dish that had a chicken bone on it and I put it the dishwasher and the chicken bone was still on it when it came out, why, that's a broken dishwasher friend. I got to call someone about that. This is a user issue.

the betrayal of seeing a dish come out of the dishwasher with something on it is like yeah well then why are you here yeah because once i'm cleaning the dish it's like well what the if i'm gonna just like scrub the ketchup off it then what then why don't i just rip the dishwasher out and just have more space for my feet because this is you are doing nothing to contribute to this family yeah i feel the same way. There are several times though, and maybe you'll encounter this when you have children someday, but there's like, there's a lot of times where I just do a rinse. They use plates for snacks and stuff like that. And if they're, let's say that they eat in a granola bar or gummies or something, and I give them a plate so they're not getting crumbs all over the

place, I know that we're going to eat another snack in about half an hour. So I'll just rinse their plate off and throw it in the dryer and drying rack. But I'm not going to give it a clean. And then that is translated into my things as well where like there are certain things where I know I'm I know it I know what it's touched I've been there I was there I was there for the moment and so I will just give it a rinse and then I'll be

like that's good enough it's fine a bowl that has only held a couple of Altea chips for a little bit that's popcorn yeah I found the second cleanest a bowl can be I do protein shakes

sometimes and As long as I'm cleaning fast, too, that also matters. How long has something sad inside of that bowl or that dish? So, like, I've got these little tiny, it's not like a normal size blender, but it's just like the size of a cup. And I blend up protein shaking that, and I drink it real fast. And the blades from that that I unscrew from the bottom, I just rinse those off. Yeah.

I don't, because they just got used. They're fresh out of the blender. And you're going to use it tomorrow. Yeah. And then also the cup itself. Sometimes I'll put some soap in it. If I take that out, my instinct is always. to sniff everything before I use it. That's my own thing. And I'm like, oh, don't like that smell.

What? Something is, something has stayed here. Something has somehow defeated my hands cleaning system. Yeah. And stuck around. And so then I will clean it. Then you call out the big guns. Then you bring in the professionals. Bring in the soap. Yeah. I, I don't know why I do that too. I think it's probably because for a while we had an avocado tree and avocado, you may know if you have, you leave avocado on anything for more than 45 minutes. Congratulations. Avocados on there forever now. Yeah, I got a cutting board that I cut an avocado on once. Avocado, it becomes Kevlar. It becomes completely bulletproof and something you will never remove. And if you're the type of person who cuts your avocados and then scoops it out

with a spoon, man, if you don't clean that spoon soon enough, that spoon should just be thrown away. Yeah. It's not making it through a dishwasher. You're getting out the other side and then you're going to be eating your cereal and you're going to something's going to be on the bottom that spoon you're just going to like your tongue will be like hey something's different here can i ask you and and this will be a preview for the long threatened uh house maintenance checklist episode that we're going to do one day how often and how do you clean your dishwasher oh my god the only cleaning of a dishwasher that i'm going to do is that will take take out the bottom rack, and if there's debris at the bottom of the dishwasher, I'm scooping it out.

And other than that, it's on the dishwasher to clean itself. You have, maybe you have a futuristic smart dishwasher that, that does more than, than my shit one does. But you don't, you've never taken out and cleaned the filter in your dishwasher? No. you've never even put one of those like you can buy uh like a sanitizer like a bottle of something that you just like put the dishwasher and run this run it on on high or you you do like the the homegrown version of that where you just take like a glass and put vinegar in it and put it in the top rack and use that to sanitize and disinfect the dishwasher you've never

done either of those things no here's the thing what's going to happen now is that i'm going to go check my filter after this podcast is over, and I'm either going to feel very differently about myself or very differently about you. I clean my dishwasher so much. Okay, wait. In multiple different ways, it sounds like. You've got a couple different strategies. I do like the monthly sanitizer of the bottle that you can put in there, unless I'm out of those bottles and don't feel like going to the store.

Then I'll do vinegar. And I will also clean out the... filter, but that's more based on vibes than like any kind of time morning. Are you getting anything out of that filter? When you clean it as often as I do, not really. It's not enough to be satisfying.

Okay. All right. Here we go. I'm excited to determine how I feel about one of us. I can't wait. Because I generally think I'm, like my upkeep is good. But occasionally I will discover something where I'm like, oh, fuck, this got away from me. I didn't know that this was even

the thing I was supposed to be doing. I think my upkeep is probably over, overkill. And on next week's home maintenance episode, we'll get more into this. But the upkeep, I do so much stuff and sometimes I will feel bad if I skip something every, skip something one month or like do something every six weeks instead of every month. And then I try to remind myself in the 20 years that I lived in my childhood home, my parents didn't do any of the things that I'm doing, any of my monthly maintenance checklist. I don't think my parents had done once in my entire life. And I'm beating myself up because I only change the filter every two and a half weeks. Yeah, it is. I lived a very different life as a child. I was allowed to get away with a lot more.

And I think that our whole family just did. I remember there being dog hair everywhere all the time. And then also, I had acne when I was in high school and realizing as an adult that that was probably the fault that I would have pillowcases that would be there for an entire season without being washed. Right. Like I had a pillow. My sheets would go months without washing and didn't realize until I was an adult.

They're like, oh, no, it's pretty good idea to clean your sheets maybe every other week. Right. It's so tough because we have access to so much more information. now and we also have access to so many more lunatics now that it's really unclear which generation has it better because I can talk to my parents and be like, how often did you clean the filters on your washing machine? And I'm like, we didn't do that. And our washing machine was fine. And I was like, yeah, but like I also feel like it kind of broke all the time and you're always like working on it. We have more information now. But the more information I have is like a

fucking freak on Reddit made a checklist. And I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And I have no idea if this guy even has a home. Or this is just a 14-year-old with a spreadsheet who is just like, this is what I think houses should do. Yeah, yeah, the source is tough. It was really nice to have a beacon in the storm with parents who you're like trusted on some stuff. And other things where you were like, you know, I didn't really like how we grew up. So I think I'm going to go in opposite direction with this.

but I agree with you that there's at the minute I'm I need help with anything I go to the internet and I go to like try and see different ways to do it and I'm going to get a scatter plot because I know that the first one I'm finding it's going to be a weird one they're choosing to do something weird they're weirdos so I need somebody I need corroboration that this is the right way yeah I'm really itching to try the the internet you should just try the internet You should be. I can't wait. I'm not allowed. The internet feeds me this life hack every once in a while where someone's got a bad wasp or hornets nest on the outside of their house and they take their bowl, their clear bowl with

gasoline that this person just has and they put it underneath the nest and then they watch all of the wasps asphyxiate and die and fall into the bowl of gasoline and then they once all the the bugs in the hive are dead they scrape the nest out and they that's the way that they remove it and like god it looks insane it's also it's it's always some like formless voice that is like hello i'm bud you got wasps people have been asking me how i take care of wasps and so here we here we have a wasp wasp nests in my porch and it's like, so what's the timeline

in here? Was the wasp nest already there and people asked you about it or like, what, how could this have happened? Right. That people needed wasps removed and you happen to have a huge fucking wasp nest and then you just have this

like a piece of Tupperware that's like sawed off full of gasoline that you got from somewhere on your property and it seems to work but it's just, it's There's always more questions than answers. But I don't know. If I get a hornet's nest or a waspest, I'm going to want to try it.

Yeah. I'm going to want to try. I even, I did the exact same thing. Right over the eaves over our front door, I had a wasst nest. I think I talked about it on the podcast and how I got rid of it. I went online and I was like, how do I do it? And they're like, you got to wait till the dead of night. That's right.

And then you're going to need to trash bag. And then you need to clip. Yeah. So there was a whole thing about how to do it. I did it and got into a pretty panic situation where I ended up losing the scissors inside the trash bag along with the nest and then put the whole thing in my freezer because I wanted my scissors back. But yeah, it's the same thing. Everything that breaks in my house, I'm like, okay, I'm not just going to go listen to information on how to fix this. Now I've got to be like a judge of moral character and stuff to determine who's actually telling me the truth. I know this, okay, I know this, A, ruins the internet. B, could be weaponized to hurt vulnerable people. C makes me look bad and judgmental. And yet, despite all those things, I think I need to see what everyone looks like.

Everyone who posts something on the internet, I need to see what you look like, how you dress, where you live, what you're doing, because if some link comes up and is like, are you looking to take care of wasp? Well, you need to put this thing of gasoline under the wasp nest. It sounds very authoritative to me. But if I click through, I mean, like,

oh, it's fucking Corey's dad? Okay, we don't listen to Corey's dad about anything. Corey's dad's not allowed to see Corey's mom. So we're not going to trust him on wasps. Yeah, I want to see a portrait of you in your living room. Yeah, having that would really, help me determine whether your advice is sound. I'm already thinking of people of my life

that I've like, and I'd just known that. I don't know we would have been friends. I'd have seen the way they lived. I don't know that we would have really hung out. But yeah, I think that that would be weaponized and terrible for everyone except me, which, and I would like it. Yeah, I would make that my power. And I won't, I swear to God, I won't abuse it.

It's just for very specific, like, like lawn and home care stuff. Yeah. Yeah. All right, everybody. Well, that's going to do it for us. Somebody make that happen on the internet. But make a good version.

Not a mean version. Yeah. Okay. Docs everyone on the internet. Give it a me and soren. But only us. That's how it's useful. Yeah.

Let us be the arbiters of that power. Yeah. This is a quick question. If you liked our theme song, that's by me, Rex. If you want to see more of this podcast, you can see us visually on YouTube, or you can listen to more of this on our Patreon, where we do shorter episodes and exclusive ones, things you wouldn't ordinarily hear from us. And if you like this podcast in general, that's because of Gabe Harder. He has our sound engineer editor, chief producer, the glue to the podcast. And I think I covered everything.

Goodbye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to 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? Who did you get? When do I be? Remember? Was it out? Worded all there. Goate a movie. Oh, forget it.

I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends of comedy. 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.