Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Daniel Promises to Start Trying!

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

The guys are back with New Year Energy! This episode Daniel talks about working his pipes (arms) at the gym, and Soren talks about breaking some pipes (house). And as always big thanks to our sponsors!  Shop with confidence — get Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/qq . Thanks BetterHelp.  Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq . Skillshare.com/qq and one-month free trial

So hello again and welcome to the first episode of Quick Question of 2022, the official year and podcast of Soren and Daniel. I am one half of that podcast, author of How to Fight Presidents, staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and wandering nomad Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. So hello, everybody. I'm Soren Bui.

I don't have any Emmys or I haven't published any books and I don't have a fancy job at last week tonight, but I do have a lot of Kirby Puckett baseball cards. I have a bullet from the civil war and I have a ninja blender, which if you're not familiar is the best kind. So you could say that I'm rich in material possessions and I'll just leave it up to all of you to decide which is more, which is better. That's definitely one of the top two things to be rich in yes material possessions is a good one yeah because that can be traded for money right generally the number one thing right uh rich

in experience i think is a bullshit one yeah it doesn't count yeah that's like a deathbed one where you're like well at least i had something right yeah and then the other one i think is cultural treasures, which is harder to pinpoint, but also just as valuable as money, I think. Yeah. So Civil War bullet, does that fall into two camps? Is that worth anything? Oh, man, that is such a good question.

I don't know. I have dreams always of taking things to the Antique Roadshow, and that would be a great one to bring. Yeah. I can't imagine it's worth very much because people are still digging those up out of the ground in Gettysburg all the time. What must it even look like?

Just an imperfect sphere? No, they're not like round, like a musket ball. They are actual bullet shapes. They kind of look, they have the look of a missile a little bit. They're about an inch long and it's all smooth it's hard to tell because it's got like it's all calcified or calcified at this point

but the back of it has like kind of like these little ridges and i'm not sure what those did if they helped it spiral out of the gun or whatever but i'm pretty confident the inside of it is lead like if this hits you it would really fuck you up yeah and it's yours is is uh particularly valuable because it's it's which which general is uh signed it is it lee yeah lee well lee and stonewall signed it although the stonewall one it's questionable because the date that he put on there is the same date he was killed by friendly fire so it's just not clear. I see. Somebody else was like trying to cover that up.

What happened? Sure. Oh, gross. I hate being somebody who knows stuff about the Civil War. Like I don't want people out there thinking I am a Civil War buff. This is all just like I crack a history book and this is what in my mind and this is what was on the first page. Yeah. I'm not that guy.

Okay. Thanks to BetterHelp for supporting Quick Question. For 10% off your first month, go to betterhelp.com slash QQ. Start living a better life today. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question. Skillshare empowers you. It's an online learning community that offers membership with so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one month free trial. Let's thank Honey for sponsoring this episode. These days, it feels like online shopping is the only shopping we really do. Am I right?

That's where Honey comes in. It's the free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes and automatically applies the best one available at checkout. Go to joinhoney.com slash QQ. automatically applies the best one available at checkout. Go to joinhoney.com slash QQ. Soren, I've got so much news for you. I got big news for you and our listeners.

This is huge. I've decided I'm going to start trying on this podcast. I'm really going to start giving a shit. What was the turnaround what happened we saw so at the end of uh 2021 or i guess right at the beginning of december which is the end of when we recorded spotify starts doing those um you're in review playlists where they do like these are your most listened to songs of the year and these are also your most listened to podcasts of the year and uh people sent us screenshots on twitter of of where we ranked in their most listened to podcasts and it was very cool to see

and i'm sure we're not like like globally or nationally the most listened to podcast but i'm not seeing screenshots of any of the other ones i'm only seeing the ones coming towards us so even if it was only like, you know, 12 people not counting my family, it still felt very overwhelming. And I was not prepared for a visual representation of people listening to this podcast. Yeah. It filled me with tremendous responsibility. So I made the bold decision to really start working on this thing. That's great news, I think. I'll commit to at least half of that.

Yeah. That sounds reasonable. I am bringing back a game that you invented last season that I think is really fun. Oh, that sounds reasonable. I am bringing back a game that you invented last season that I think is really fun. Oh, that's fun. I do think recurring segments is a way to go. And that's sort of, so let me just tell you where my roadmap is at.

Phase one was saying, I'm going to start giving a shit again. Phase two is I'm going to try to stop audibly stretching during the show. I can hear it coming into my voice. So I'm going to try to, uh, I'll try to be more aware of that. Three, I was going to smile more. Oh, and then I'm sort of tapped out. Yeah. I haven't really figured out what a better version of this podcast is going to sound like um but i think deciding that i want to do it is uh uh pleasing to the lord yeah i think that's probably true i think

that smiling more isn't really going to help the podcast too much okay good i wasn't going to do it good yeah that's one that you can you can throw away um i mean sometimes you can hear like like so you know remember the uh original broadway cast recording of wicked and the wizard and i when she says of course that's not important to me you can hear her smiling at that part and it's a really like smiles do carry over audio format i can hear you doing it right now at that sick reference that might be the said though like this the slurping sound of my eyes rolling in my head uh yeah i i guess you can't and also it's like it projects a certain amount of the same way where like you put your chest up and you put your chin

out how it sort of like changes your general demeanor and the way that you communicate and everything i wonder if smiling does the same thing where it just puts you you force yourself into the mood you fake it till you make it basically all right well i think those are good those are good ones i'm very upset right now at okay because so many people have done their new year's resolutions which are always to lose weight or to work out and so my gym is just flooded with people and they're not respecting my rules, my specific COVID rules. Sure. Oh, it's, it's wait.

Well, the rules of the gym. Okay. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out if you're a villain or not. I'm also, you know, I also cheat those rules sometimes. Like I'll be on the treadmill and if I'm on the treadmill and I'm in mile four and I'm really feeling it sometimes just to like cheat a little, I'll take my mask off for a second and I'll use my towel on my face, but I'll like really take my time about

it so that I'm, I can breathe for a little bit. Maybe I'll drink some water while I'm clumsily drink while I'm running. Right. Just anything to keep that mask off for a little bit. And then I'll put it back on. And sometimes I even, I have a way of like lowering my chin, opening my mouth really wide. So the top of my mask pokes down and my nose can come out. Accidentally. Yeah. Yeah. And then I go, oh, what a mistake.

And I put it back. But these people are not, they're not even trying to make it look like a mistake. And that frustrates me. Yeah. There was a man who was doing pushups and uh and then in between each push-up set would just take his mask completely off and i was like that's not you're not allowed to do that yeah when you're breathing your hardest and then there was another guy whose breath i felt and that made me very upset oh no a guy was doing uh squats with dumbbells um i don't really know why he was

doing these over by the benches goblet squats or i don't know what that is goblet squats are uh i guess you could do them with two if you have lighter ones but uh imagine you've got a 50 pound dumbbell and you're holding it with both hands in front of you sort of at chin level as if you're holding a very large heavy goblet and then you squat from there he's not doing that he's got him down at his sides and he's just doing like a uh he's using it like dumb like he would with a barbell but his hands are out of the sides and he's there his knuckles are facing straight forward so the dumbbells aren't like pinned to his legs or anything and then he's just going down and back up but as he's doing it his mask is all the way down not just over he's just over his chin and he's breathing you know he's exhaling with each one which you're supposed

to do but he's exhaling right on me and those little wispy white hairs on the front of my head i could feel his breath in there and i immediately stopped my workout and walked away yeah and i was like i was so scandalized and mad yeah that this took place that i i couldn't hang i was so scandalized and mad that this took place that I couldn't hang. I was so lucky. I'm really going to miss my old apartment gym because I've moved it. I'm sure we'll talk about that. But the way that gym worked as of COVID, it used to be a free-for-all, come in whenever you want. But then you could only reserve hour blocks at a time, and they

limited the amount of people who were ever in there, which is easy to do for an apartment building, because there's not a ton of people using it anyway, but it was still like, I was never in that gym with more than four people. And, like, there were few enough of us that, like, very often, I could go into one of the

studio rooms, which has a bench and kettlebells and dumbbells, anything that I could I could need for certain workouts. And I just like have this room to myself. And it was great. And I'm really going to miss that now, like because a gym to go to wherever I am in the country. And just like even Google image searching retro fitness. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not going to like this. I'm not going to like being in a, in a room at peak hours. I want to schedule my time of like, I'm going to be in there from nine 45 to 10 45. There's going to be three other people in the whole gym. And not only is that great for spacing and COVID reasons, it's also, if I block an hour of time, I'm in the gym for an hour, which I don't normally do because I hate being in gyms.

Well, yeah, you're one of us now. Yeah. I am thinking of joining a new gym. I'm thinking of leaving Equinox. I'm going to step down down walk out of the ivory tower and see what it's like to be among the the dregs of society yeah don't if you're used to equinox definitely don't google image search the the color palette decisions of retro fitness i can't i'm really coming down hard on this gym that i'm probably going to join.

Well, it's to be fair. I think there's a lot of gyms that are sort of like spiraling the drain in that respect. There's, um, there, there, the colors of planet fitness are completely baffling to me. Uh, you know what that is? That's, that's like a Lakers colors. It's like purple and yellow, but not even like a gold and purple. It's like bright purple, bright yellow, and then red. Just a bunch of colors that don't go together, except at a fast food chain. And then the other one that's really strange is, I think it's crunch. Crunch has got some very strange colors as well.

I'm going to look at it. Oh, yeah. They're all, I understand branding, I guess, but at what cost? Oh well. I got another update, Soren, because it's been a while since we talked to each other. I don't know if you're going to like this one. I think you might hate it, you son of a bitch. Are you ready?

Yeah. It's one of those, I'm becoming a different kind of guy oh no okay you're a new yeah you're a new thing uh yeah do i want do i can i guess what it is how many guesses you want i only want one okay but i really want to like i want to nail it so i just need a second um it's gonna be seasonal i wonder if i could give you if it would be fair to give you hints right now because i feel like the the biggest hint fair to give you hints. Because I feel like the biggest hint I could give you would give it away. All right.

You're making taffy. No. You're becoming a confectioner. That feels right up your alley. That's a very fun guess. I am getting into making pasta from scratch which is okay is totally similar but that's not the kind of guy i am anymore i'll tell you how i got there my path was that you're i know you're down on the shore or you're at least in new jersey

for some of this and it's exactly like you to be wandering around caught up in the romance of the boardwalk and like stumbling onto a shop that sells saltwater taffy and being like you know what i wonder how that's made and then just doing it yeah your instincts are right on for the way that my brain works and that i just sort of like walk around with my mouth open in the world and wander into the first open thing uh your timing is off. It didn't happen while I was down here. It happened while I was on vacation on Catalina Island. Okay.

All right. You're a camper. No, I've been a camper. Yeah. Oh, that's right. You go in. That's right. You and your brother.

Yeah. You're a guy who eats bison now all the time for every meal. I'm just going to tell you, I'm going to become a scuba guy. Oh, fuck. That's such a good... Oh, I should have known it was scuba. I'm going to become. It's so fun.

You have big plans to build your entire personality around something you haven't done yet no i did it i did it once i took a class on catalina island okay and uh you know the the the same as you picture that i'm just i'm wandering around this very small island and catalina is very on brand for me for anyone who doesn't know it's an it's a small island 20 miles outside of long beach california it's population of like 3 500 there's uh it it's a small island 20 miles outside of long beach california it's population of like 3 500 there's uh it it's it's squarely in my wheelhouse as i travel around the planet collecting small weird beach towns uh with with like very tight communities uh and i'm wandering around there looking for things to do and after i bought every piece of tourist bullshit imaginable there's uh golfing hiking

and scuba there so like i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna do scuba diving i tried it once before years ago and i had a really bad experience but i i'm i'm better now in every possible way i tell myself and so i went scuba diving and i had just like one-on-one instruction with this woman who but I'm better now in every possible way, I tell myself. And so I went scuba diving, and I had just like one-on-one instruction with this woman who was there. And A, it was incredibly fun. I really enjoyed it. I was right going into it that like, I think my first bad experience was really a one-off bad experience,

and I really do think this might be the thing for me. And I was right. My instincts were correct on that. I loved it I found it very peaceful I found it very meditative I'm just racking up meditative things at this point and probably the the biggest reason I decided I'm going to become a scuba guy is uh the instructor who remember I'm'm paying, said that I was a natural and I should become a scuba guy. That's really all it takes to get me to do anything. That's true. It's very, just a little bit of confidence.

It's like genuinely freshman year of college, a person with professor in their name was like, why are you studying theater? You should be a writer. Like, okay. And it's been my entire life. Until now. Now I'm quitting writing, and I'm going to do scuba full-time.

It's the new year, and with the new year comes new COVID terrors. What interferes with your happiness or prevents you from achieving your goals? It could be any number of things. Every stressor counts. BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. You can act in a safe and private online environment so it's convenient.

You can start communicating in under 48 hours, all without ever having to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room. BetterHelp is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed. And BetterHelp is more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available. With BetterHelp, you'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions and send a message to your counselor anytime. BetterHelp is not a crisis self-help line. It's professional counseling for you. Licensed professional counselors who are specialized in depression, stress, anxiety,

trauma, anger, grief, self-esteem, relationships, family conflicts, and more. And in depression, stress, anxiety, trauma, anger, grief, self-esteem, relationships, family conflicts, and more. And in fact, so many people have been using BetterHelp that they are recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. Start living a happier life today. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com slash QQ. Join over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health. That's Betterhelp.com slash QQ for 10% off your first month. Thank you, BetterHelp. Hey, you're creative. I don't know if you're letting

that muscle atrophy in your life while you focus on other things or if it's something that you're passionate about and you work on every single day. Well, regardless of what step you're at in your level of creativity, Skillshare can help.

Skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership with meaning with so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives, Skillshare can empower you to accomplish real growth, regardless of what rung of the ladder you're on right now. Skillshare can help you make 2022 a year of new learning, growth, and connection through creativity. You naturally have this ability in you. You've got some creativity that wants to be used so badly and Skillshare wants to get it out of you. Get it out, get it out like a, like a bot fly baby. There are tons of classes to choose from no matter what your interest is,

like the ultimate self-care playbook where you discover and nurture your centered self with Jonathan Van Ness. Yes, that Jonathan Van Ness. I've taken a few of these classes and I really enjoy it. I felt like I was sort of, I had sort of given up on myself, frankly, being a father and a husband. I was like, well, what's the point of like trying to better myself at this point? This is like, put this thing in a glass case in a museum. It's done. Not the case. You can always make yourself better. You can always be a better person and it makes you feel better makes you more self-confident and it makes you happier there's also youtube success script shoot and edit with mkbhd with marquez brownlee there's find your style five exercises to unlock your creative identity there's all kinds of

classes that you regardless of who you are, will enjoy. Whether you're a dabbler or a pro, a hobbyist or a master, discover what you can make with classes for every skill level. So explore your creativity at skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one month free trial. That's one month free at skillshare.com slash QQ. I have a lot of questions about school because I'm also a little scared of it and yeah water sports in general are my my weakness i'm not i don't feel confident in the water um are you is it breathing in and out of that thing is it freaking you out yeah okay because it's not you you never feel like you're getting a full breath ever uh because

it's because you're just not you're just not getting as much of an inhale as you want uh you also your body is telling you that this is wrong it's it's you prepared so much of your life for not breathing underwater that when you're when you're doing it your your your body is going into mode, at least at the start. It's like, hey, this is, we've, I've worked so hard to keep the brain out of situations like this, and now you've led us straight into the depths. We've got to get out of here. The brain is out of control. It's time for the body to take over.

And that's when your breathing gets quicker and gets more panicky. And what was very helpful going into it was the instructor was like, that's normal. You feel like this is weird because it is weird. And you're allowed to feel uncomfortable and you're allowed to feel like the suit is too heavy or I'm not in control.

Just remember that it is and you're not. And that was a helpful thing to keep in my head that anytime it felt weird or uncomfortable I was like no this is this this is the correct response to everything that's happening right now And once you process that you can enjoy being under the water and looking at all the cool fish and whatnot Was there a lot of cool stuff to see there? I don't think of that as being a coral reef Hotspot no, there's not a coral reef. There's a ton of kelp, which is not fun to look at, but you know, it's fun to swim through. And there are a ton of fish down there, calico bass and garibaldi, which is the state fish of California, I think. And it's a protected fish. You can't have it. And they're just like this

bright orange, beautiful fish to look at. And a a bunch of other fish the names of which I don't know I was really excited going into it because they're showing you on this map like all the stuff that can be seen in these waters and it's like octopus and and like giant fucking bass and a little bit farther out some tuna and lobster. I was like, are we going to see any of those things? No. Okay. Yeah.

And did you see any big things? Did you see some, what are they called? Mega fauna, like seals and walruses. No, no, no. Okay. So my only experience with animals on first there's some crazy animals out there in catalina there's wild boar out there there's bison for whatever reason and then i tell you the reason oh you can't okay uh and then also my wife and i were kayaking out there once um in a tandem kayak so yelling at each other

and and uh a little seal popped it's like a harbor seal popped its head up to just be like hey is everything okay and we were both so touched by the experience we were like it just calmed us way down uh but it was it was really it's it's a humbling experience to have an animal of another species a wild one come and check in on you be like what are you guys even fighting about? Especially a big one that is not a threat, but not afraid of you. Yeah. Like an animal that's not running away from you in fear is like, oh, okay, you understand

that you are safe from me. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so why are the bison out there? I think bison are out there because of the same reason that most of the animals are out there. It's because this guy, Wrigley, like the famous, the gum and the Chicago socks guy, he fell in love with the island years and years and years ago and eyed it as a great tourist spot.

And he did things that a lot of rich people do, which is like, I'm going to import a bunch of shit that I like here. So he brought in like bison and deer and a couple of other, like plant life, like vegetation. He just imported over that he liked. And he also built, it's not there anymore, but built a Wrigley Field replica stadium and had the Cubs

do spring training there for years oh but that's not there anymore but there's still like a giant I think he's buried there and there's like a huge monument to all the stuff and money that he brought into this little island that wasn't

really on the map before then but as far as like the bison and the weird animals go, it's one of those, it's like a very rich guy thing to do, just to flex where it's like, I like looking at bison, so I'm going to put them on here. I'm going to put these deer on here, and we're going to have some foxes, and it's going to be great. And so one of the unfortunate side effects of that

is it's like, it's almost always deer hunting season because there are no natural predators on the island because it's like a completely manufactured ecosystem and nothing kills these deer except humans who feel like hunting them. Yeah. Or we could put some wolves out there. Uh-huh. Just see what happens. I mean i i can guess what

will happen some people will die yeah yeah maybe all right uh what if we did dinosaurs well that sounds like fun i think that scuba i could see you doing that you like big watches i do i think that's not a personality trait that's come up on this podcast frequently but i've always noticed that you've always got kind of like a uh you've got a watch that does a lot i mean i always have i have my thing is i have lots of watches okay so sometimes i'll have a watch with a lot of business going on but i also have like like more elegant watches yeah well then it was this or skydiving those were really your options which is also something that's like always on the table in in my brain the one time i went skydiving

my brother and i were talking about this over christmas is like the the first however many times you go skydiving you have to go tandem yes attached to another person but then once you do that enough then you're certified and you can go solo and that's the kind of thing that i wish i did when i was younger and had more time and i just like let's see if i can spend a summer or spring banging out these tandem skydiving things. And then I could be a person who just like, whenever it looks like a nice clear day, I could drive to a skydiving place and do some skydiving.

Yeah. It would be really cool to do it on your own. Yeah. I thought that immediately too, because then you also don't have to ride up in somebody else's lap. Yes. And the guy, when we went skydiving years ago for my brother's bachelor party, the guy who owned the place, a very old guy, but he just recognized that it was like

a remarkably clear day and like absolutely perfect conditions for skydiving. So he must have gone up six or seven times while we were there, just hopping on every single plane that was going up and jumping on his own. Like not even just not in tandem, but specifically like I'm getting out now. The rest of you stay on the plane because you need to start from up higher. And just like what a life option that must be to just, it's nice out. I'm going to jump out of a plane eight times today i'm gonna go cheat death yeah and over again yeah i i'm trying to even like think try to think what to equate that to i guess maybe like building a really big jump out in the wind like in the a road gap in the winter

and being like all right well it looks like a really nice day. What if we learned backflips today? Well, it sounds like you had a good time while you were in Los Angeles. I got to see you briefly while you were here. Yeah, we had a nice dinner. Oh, I have. I'm trying to. All right. We had a great dinner. We had shared plates.

Yeah. I don't know how far spread this trend is. It's certainly in New York, and it seemed like it was everywhere in L.A. Because when I was visiting Los Angeles, I was there in L.A. proper for a week, and then Catalina Island for about six or seven days. And it seemed like every single restaurant I went to was another shared plate place where you sit down and the end, uh, it's, I think when at the place that we went to, it was me, you and bacon.

I think at that place, the, the judge let him out for, for a night, which was nice. And at that place, they, the thing that we did right was they showed the list of menu items and bacon just said should we get everything i was like yeah that's the right option that's good i like that a whole lot and we had a great meal with a lot of things to try and then i had a few more uh similar restaurant experiences with great friends, and they were good, and I think by the last meal that I had there, which was a, uh, a two-person dinner with me and

this woman, Christina, as soon as the waiter came over and was like, so have you guys never been here before? Okay, great, let me, uh, I just want to let you know that it's a shared plate here, so we recommend getting four or five plates, depending on, and at that point, at, like, meal seven of this I was like no give me what your chefs have decided as a meal I don't know this one well enough and we're both gonna be so

polite that no one's gonna make any decision and I'm sick of this I just want a human amount of food for me that has already been measured out. It opens up a whole new door onto all these rules of etiquette that you didn't otherwise have to think about if you just had something that was exclusively your own. Yeah. Like the only etiquette that occurs when you have two different plates and two different people is that you could say, do you want a bite of mine? And then that's it. That's like, and that's all you have to share. can say do you want a bite of mine and then that's it that's like and that's all you have to share you also don't have to eat 80 of it and then leave the last 20 because maybe somebody else

might want it like right the the only way that shared plates works is exactly the way we did it where it was at the end there's maybe like one item left on a couple of plates and it's not there because people are being polite it's there because everybody is fucking full. Yeah. It's perfect. It's, it's such an, an added stressor too,

uh, of deciding how many plates is right for two people who are hungry eating dinner. And it's like, that's usually not up to me. Right. Normally you guys handle the portions. And now I have to sit here with with

one or two or three people and she's like okay i i think maybe if i have a bite of steak and some octopus and i nibble on this papaya salad and and and some of a chicken wing that i might not like i think after that i I should be full. But I don't know. Get the Brussels sprouts too. How could I fucking possibly know how much I need to eat? And also, you go to these places and the meals are so creative to begin with.

You're just imagining what it could look like. And you have no idea conceivably what the size is. And you're basing your entire idea of how hungry you'll be at the end of the meal on your own image in your head of how big of a plate bacon wrapped figs you're about to get yeah well you know at the end of the day i had several great meals this isn't soren i've been this is why i hesitated before getting into this i've been pretending to be angry about things on this podcast for like two fucking years now. None of my problems are real problems.

And especially this one, it's fine. Everyone, I'm sorry if it ruins the podcast if I'm not complaining about stuff. I think you're allowed to be annoyed by things in your life regardless of your economic security. of your economic security. I don't think that you should have to like shut the fuck up just because you have problems that other people don't have. I think that you're allowed to express those because there are going to be other people out there who are feeling the same thing and they've been shutting the fuck up and they're like, oh fuck, yeah, that does get me.

That does get me a lot. I think that's fine. The entire 80s comedy was based on that. I think that's fine. The entire 80s comedy was based on that. The idea of airline food was so removed from so many people. But the people who were on top were just like, yeah, it does kind of suck. I don't even know if it's a financial thing as much as if it's just like sick of finding things to complain about for the sake of conversation or or content i think i saw there's something going around because of uh new year like a gif from curb your enthusiasm

of someone wishing larry david a happy new year and he was like you're a little late like what it just happened a week ago it's like the window is three days to wish someone happy new year i was like jesus you're just, learn Spanish or something, guy. This isn't real. I mean, I don't know what kind of content it makes, but you could make a New Year's resolution of trying to bring something every single time that you're excited about. Bring something. To the podcast. Oh.

Something that made you happy. Something that like really charmed you. We all shop online. Am I right? But we've all seen that promo code field taunt us at checkout. Hey, am I right? But thanks to Honey, manually searching for coupon codes is a thing of the past. Honey is the free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes

and applies the best one it finds to your cart. Honey supports over 30,000 stores online. They range from sites that have tech and gaming products to popular fashion brands and even food delivery. Am I right? Imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites. When you check out, the Honey button drops down and all you have to do is click Apply Coupons. Then you wait a few seconds, just a few, and Honey searches for coupons it can find for that site. If Honey finds a working coupon, you'll watch the prices drop. Honey has saved me money all the time. It saved me money on specific things, a Henley shirt, a large roll of plastic wrap, and some tools.

And it saved me $19. If you don't already have Honey, you're going to be straight up missing out on free savings. It's literally free and installs in a few seconds. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this podcast. Am I right? Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash QQ. That's joinhoney.com

slash QQ. Ooh, are you watching Yellow Jackets yet? No. Oh, you'll love it. It's about soccer. Oh, is it really? Okay. Yeah, it's an 90s girls high school team from new jersey uh it doesn't spoil anything to say that they're they just won state and they're on their way to nationals oh all right well i'm busy right now getting confused by the witcher so

when i'm when i'm done with that it's i this is true of both of us and it's it's it's i this is true of both of us and it's it's we we both are busy people who don't have time to watch everything and there are a lot of things that come recommended to us from each other and just from like broader internet support like i still haven't watched squid game and i know there are things you haven't watched like yellow jackets and i can see us both. There's no rhyme or reason to why we land on something. And sometimes it's just a miss. And I see that happening for you for Witcher. I can't, I'm so surprised that Witcher is the one that you were like, okay,

let's say I have three free hours a week. I'm going to watch the Witcher. It makes no sense for me. To the point where my wife came in the other day, and she was like, what are you watching? And I was embarrassed to describe it. It's not up your alley. It's not really my alley.

I don't know why I'm watching it. It's deeply fantasy. There are elves and dwarves, but we haven't seen any of the dwarves yet oh and lots of monsters and this guy's just kind of like a a really a nerd's idea of a cool guy walking around killing monsters yes i think there there was one scene in the uh first season that made its way around the internet as an isolated scene which is just him, him doing like a very well choreographed fight through a whole bunch of people.

And I was like, this is, this is a cool show. I'm, I'm, I'm the audience for this show. And, uh,

just the timing of it. I didn't start watching it until, uh, my first night in Thailand when I was vacationing in Thailand and I put it on and I was like, what the fuck am I doing watching anything right now? And then I never came back to it because I'm just sitting there and like, they're telling me all the names and all the rules of their town.

And I'm like, this is, this is not a good use of a fucking 14 hour flight. Yeah. Well, uh, you'll be happy to know that in the second season, they really doubled down on all of that information that you have to collect and collate in your brain. There's a lot of like places and people that you're supposed to have remembered or just know, I guess, generally from the books or the games or whatever came first. And, uh, I've got none of it. So I'm just like, I'm like exposition, please, please, please. Let's just, I will accept that all we're going to do in this episode is fight a bat thing.

So can we just get onto that? Please, please. The Netflix thumbnail. It had him with two swords. I know what's going to happen. Yeah. There's also like this subplot that has to go through. I probably assume the entire series where it's an escort mission. He's basically taking around this young girl who's a princess and and maybe powerful but not yet and it's really just such

a slog like you can't let this cool guy do all this cool stuff because he's got to also protect this girl the whole time and it's just like no it's like in the second season of friday night lights where landry can't be funny yeah you're like no like fucking take off his leash let him do what he's good at um but I have some news from my trip to Tucson Arizona oh yeah I drove my electric vehicle to Tucson and oh charged along the way to see if I could do that the last time uh this is a huge jump because the last time we talked about this car you uh didn't know how to drive it right i didn't know how to get on my driveway yes um it has a backup camera but the backup camera is equipped with a emergency stop if it senses something is behind you presumably to save small children things dogs things like that

but because my driveway pitches down and then there's a the road behind it is crowned it recognizes the road as an as an immovable object and immediately stops but i can't get out of the driveway i figured out how to turn that off oh good yeah so then i was free and drove an electric vehicle now with an electric vehicle when you drive it across the country i will say that that not across the country i drove it across two states yeah and these states were pretty well equipped to handle what i was doing they were at pretty much all the stops they had some sort of charging station and charging generally took like half an hour 40 minutes and so you have to kind of plan your trip around these specific charging stations and

then also what you're going to be doing for that time with children oh fuck yeah so i had to i didn't know like okay well we're going to be doing we'll hit this spot at lunch and then this one has a park nearby that we can walk to while the car is charging like that kind of shit yeah and that's hard that part was complicated and difficult uh just in like the the pre-planning but actually hitting the stations there i wasn't like waiting for chargers or anything like that that was all easy and then i found it was very charming and this wasn't a thing i thought i would initially like you get out and you start charging and you're just standing there and you'll strike up a conversation with

somebody else who's charging and generally just talking to strangers is a general fear of mine because i i'm worried they're going to be weirdos but every everybody who you're talking to um you immediately have something to talk about because you're all like you're giving each other tips and tricks about like oh no don't go to charge point those Those suck. Go to Electrify America. Those are way better. Or like, how many kilowatts is yours pulling? And like that kind of stuff.

Yeah. You immediately got something in common. Also, your general outlooks generally align if you're both driving electric vehicles. You've chosen to make this choice. And so, this conversation comes very easy. And I genuinely enjoy just like talking to these people in a way that made me feel like this is what smokers must've felt like forever. Like where they were just like going outside and smoking and you immediately see somebody else who's smoking and boom, you can talk to that person because you have something

in common immediately. I don't have to do my rig and roll where I'm like, okay, what's your name? Where are you from? Yeah. Where did you grow up? okay omaha nebraska yes i know a tour thing or two about it yeah uh and so it's and you can do like where are you coming from are you headed that way that way oh would you think about the quartzite station like that kind of stuff and then other things like people have well or have had a car like yours and they'll be like oh you've got the automatic driving system on there i'm like yes, yes, I do. It's been very fun. And like, you know that if you take a can of Coke and you just put it on the wheel while

you're doing that, you don't actually have to keep your hands on the wheel because the weight of the Coke makes it think that your hands are on the wheel and then you don't have to drive at all. What? Okay. So my car has a self-driving feature, but it's called driver assist because they can't call it self-driver because people will start killing themselves if they actually treat it that way. Sure. But you have to keep your hands on the wheel, but you turn it on, you can set your speed

and then the car will more or less try and keep that speed, but also we'll keep the distance of the car in front of it. So it's not going to be passing cars, but it will keep the lane. It'll keep, it'll keep you in your lane no matter how many sharp turns or anything are in the road. It will keep a certain distance from the car in front of it and if it gets out, that car in front of it fucks off for whatever reason, then it will go the speed that you wanna be going.

And it was awesome. I loved using it almost the entire trip. Okay. And you do start to catch yourself though, where you're like, I was turning it on and off throughout the trip. And sometimes I would like be driving and I would be like, it has a huge skylight, this car. I believe they call it a sunroof in a car. And so it was raining at one point and I was just sort of like, oh, that looks really nice. Like

to seize the rain kind of hitting the roof of it and drizzling backwards. And I'm kind of watching it for a little while and I was like, well, I should go back to the road. And I look back at the road and I realized that I don't have the Dre resist on while I'm doing this. And I was like, okay, yeah, I gotta have a real check in with myself about

this. I've been treating this very cavalierly and I don't think I'm allowed to do that. I think that if I had this on, I need to know when it's on and I need to be paying attention. Yeah. I think, well, I'm glad nothing bad happened from that. And you got a little beautiful moment with the rain. I did. I think maybe it's because I'm so not used to it because I drive a 2007, but I never, the notion of driver's assist doesn't doesn't appeal to me because i think i always want to be passing i'm surprised you i i thought that was in your nature too well so

this car it doesn't preclude it doesn't preclude you from doing that so as soon as you start rolling up on somebody you can still just duck around them and the car won't stop you from doing it if you're in total control but but as soon as you let up, the car will continue to drive underneath you. It'll brake, it'll put the gas down, it'll steer the wheel. But basically, you never turn off cruise control. It can stay on the entire time. Yeah.

So yes. Which I never have turned on. I never use cruise control. I want to be passing at all times um the other thing that was really fun was that on the way back we hit wind you know where the wind turbines are uh out in the desert out in like almost coachella valley no but but i know what wind turbines look like there's tons of them and it's because like the this particular area all the whatever's coming from the west all gets funneled into this one area and it's very very windy and i didn't realize that

that would have an effect on my battery as i'm coming back like hitting this headwind it drained my battery a lot faster than i thought it would to the point where i was getting into a dangerous territory where i was gonna like i could see what my battery life would be when I got to my next destination. And for a while it was like hovering around 5%, which is way, way too low, very dangerous territory. That's like 15 miles left at the most. And, uh, I was, I had a lot of fun with that because I liked trying to figure out how to gain more battery life on the way and like how to, how to use the car in such a way that I was going to make out how to gain more battery life on the way and like how to, how to use the car in such a way that I was going to make it was very, very fun for me. Right.

Just powering down shields and putting them towards thrusters is what I imagine you're doing. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Seeing what makes a difference was really great. Did you make it? Oh yeah.

We made it. We got back. Actually, we got home with 7% battery, which is crazy low. But I was so proud of that because it was like I used it all up. I did it. Yeah. There's someone on my street. And I'm in one of my very small, tight-knit, culty beach towns.

And I just saw today someone was running a cable from their house to their car is that allowed inside their house yeah i mean you could i guess it's they're using a 110 probably or that's like if they have a dryer that's right there they could run a 220 there but i basically what you usually do is you just have an exterior uh um socket on the outside of your house and it could be a 110 and that's like what you usually do is you just have an exterior socket on the outside of your house and it could be a 110 and that's like what you'd ordinarily plug a lamp into or whatever. You can use that to plug your car into. It just takes forever to charge. Okay. I mean, I, that, that makes sense. No one here ever goes anywhere.

I'd never seen a cable going straight from a house to a car. Okay. Yeah, no, we installed just an outlet, a regular old outlet on the outside of our house when I just had the Volt, and I would charge it overnight, and it would charge right up. Yeah. Get an electric, Dan.

They're great. Obviously, learn to drive first, get your license, do all those things. I think I'm going to drive my current car into the ground because i have no reason not to and uh we did an episode of the show last season that was like certainly every more people should get electric cars hurrah hurrah for sure for sure but the episode was very focused on our our current power grid which is not if we if we did what a lot of uh hybrid and electric car advocates are clamoring for and everyone everyone switched to electric cars in the next five years our grid could not handle it no that's true but it would be

good good uh it would it would have to start accounting for that like the right now there's so many industries uh and places around the country that are like well why would we put in electric like why are we why would we do any of this well we can't this infrastructure is not necessary yet but if it became necessary and they'd had to do it we'd figure out a way i think yeah anyway i mean it's it's it's a project on the same scale as like, do you think we could build interstate national highway system again? Right. No, I know. We don't need to take a lot of time on this because we don't we don't really get political on this show or talk about anything important. just digging into this topic for the show as soon as I am

seeing like the very helpful animated charts that experts put together where it's like if we need to if we're gonna have any hope of Fixing our grid we need to put a bunch of large garish Wind turbines and a whole bunch of these massive transformers that are going to send power. We need to build all of this ugly stuff right here in the

center of the country so we can transfer that power and then we see a bunch of arrows going from the center of the country to the coasts where we're using so much electricity and I'm like, oh well, we're fucking boned. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

It's not going to work. Yeah. Yeah. What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?

Well, that's, I mean, that could be the end of our show right there. I don't, us saying we're boned? I don't know about that. What, how was Christmas? Christmas is good. There's a thing that happens i don't know how much i want to get into this there's a thing that happens at my in-laws house oh yeah do you take any big shits lately we can cut that so i i i i i go to there and for some reason, something goes wrong with the bathroom. Every time we're there,

the guest bathroom, here's what I think it is. Let me just speculate. They don't have a lot of guests. They have guests that come to their house, but they aren't staying the night, especially for multiple nights. This area of the house is not getting used a lot.

So like they're, they are totally, they aren't necessarily aware of what's happening with that guest bathroom anyway the last time i let me give you some context the the first time they moved in we went into that bathroom i was taking a shower i tried to turn the shower off and the nozzle just kept screwing on the cold tap and finally it just shot off and a jet of water came shooting out with it fired it into me like a bullet and then continued to like fire into the back of the tub like all the way lengthwise across the tub and it would have kept going you know through the tile had it not been

there and well i'm like shut off the water naked shut off the water shut off the water and so they have to find out figure out this new house they got new to them where the uh the how to shut off the water and so they had to find out figure out this new house they got new to them where the uh the how to shut off the water for the entire house and then they have to have a plumber come out so that goes wrong the next time uh they had a problem where uh sewage started backing up through the shower and i know why that happens because generally with the sewer lines there's like something caught in there and in this case it was these vines from an oleander plant uh they start getting in there they get through the joints and then it's the sewer line itself starts to back up and it backs up to the lowest point which happened to be this tub then this time something weird was happening where the shower wasn't draining

and then all of a sudden it all drained at once and all the toilets all drained at once and so there was like no water and anything and then all of a sudden it all backed up two days later uh to the point where like you couldn't get it rid of anything and uh i was like well here we go again and then so like as her dad's sitting there, he and I are in the bathroom and we're looking at this tub that's not draining. And he goes, you know, this is you, right? And I was like, what?

And he's like, it's you. I mean, there's no other commonality among all these things. And I was like you are you suggesting that it's like witchcraft for me he's like well no and i was like and then i started to put it again i was like oh you think i'm pooping so big that i'm blocking your sewer every time he's like well and he did like this like gesture like if the shoe fits kind of thing yeah and i was like no what first of all this is the first time this particular problem has happened.

Do you think that I shit so big last time that I made the shower explode? That I made like the nozzles pop off? And he kind of took it good naturedly. But like the rest of the night, I was so steamed. I was so like mad that I was accused of this. I was so like mad that I was accused of this. And you're coming in here with your electric car and your fancy West Coast giant shits full of avocado toast or whatever. And also because, look, I've seen it on flush toilets before.

I've seen my own shit. I'm doing fine. All right. And I was so like bewildered and also just like how dare you how dare you accuse your guest of of shitting so big that they broke your house and uh and i was so mad for a little while and then like this guy came out and he looked at it and he's like well we don't really know what it was he did like some cleaning out of it and he found something that was um they call it soft blockage but he thought it might be some material like maybe a tampon or something or a pad or something along those lines and uh i still felt like the blame was on my shoulders yeah i think he wasn't letting up and he's like talking about

how much it cost and stuff and i was like I went to my wife and I was like, I'm just going to leave that amount here. And she's like, please don't do that. No, he thinks it's me. I'm going to leave the amount here. And she's like, I'm begging you not to do that. So finally like I relented and I very much cooled off and realized I was being silly and that even getting offended by that was very silly. But in the moment I was being silly and that even getting offended by that was very silly. But in the moment, I was so mad. But the rest of Christmas was good.

It was all very fun. It's so much fun with children. It's like, I can't even stress how great it is to have children who believe in Santa Claus. Oh, at least one. The other one doesn't get it yet. But just like getting him ready, getting him primed for the holiday is so much fun

yeah i think the i i i've never had bad christmases but i think the gap between all of the children and nephews and nieces and cousins being like uh old but young but that but the gap between that and there being a bunch of like this next generation like all all of my nephews and nieces running around that that gap is is uh kind of a slow gap it's you introduce family drinking into christmas so you got a couple of years where it's like oh this is this is kind of new i'm not a kid anymore and the cousins aren't kids anymore and we're all drinking together. Isn't that neat? but otherwise, it's a Very different party from when you were a children and now this brand new exciting thing where there are other children around

That that is like oh, yeah, this is this this is a more familiar Christmas to me because we have just a christmas to me because we have uh just a uh shitload of nephews and nieces in the family now and it's so fun to gather around and watch little kids opening presents oh it's the best it's the best watching them like giving them that indulgence yeah where they're just allowed to do it and they know how to do it because ordinarily we kind of like it makes me realize what a tight leash we keep my son on unfortunately where i'm, he's ordinarily we would, even his birthday, we let him open the presents,

but then we're like trying to instill in him. Like, you've got to be thankful for this. Yeah. The people who gave you these gifts. Now you got to write these thank you cards. I'll help you write them. But like,

you've got to do it. And, and trying to just curb behavior that you're not even seeing yet, but you're afraid might come at some point of like the spoiled kid who opens a present and thinks it sucks. And so like on Christmas, we don't give a shit because it's all family. So even if they open a present,

they don't, if they didn't like it or they want to express some sort of emotion other than pure joy, they're allowed to do that. And I'm like, I should be probably be allowing this more often. Yeah. I mean,

but I don't know. It's that's one of the things that makes Christmas fun. should probably be allowing this more often. Yeah. I mean, maybe. I don't know. That's one of the things that makes Christmas fun. Even I decided this year a thing that I'm going to do going forward is everyone gets like a present present and also a book. That's something that my grandma used to do for all of her grandkids. And so I like a personalized book going to each kid as a thing that will be weird Uncle Daniel's thing. And every kid in my family is very polite and well-behaved,

but I can see them opening a book and be like, oh, thank you. I'm excited to read this. I'm like, hey, man, I know there's a remote-controlled time truck behind you. Just go for it. It looks awesome. It's okay. It's Christmas. Yeah.

But you want your kid to be that. You want them to have that sweet, oh, this is really great. We had some people over for New Year's and afterwards somebody left a jacket. Like another little child left a jean jacket that was very acid washed and then had kind of like pink fur around the collar and around the cuffs. And Ronan was like, what is that? And I was like, we got you one more thing. Do you want to try it on he was like it's for me and i was like yeah it's a really i think you'll really like it and this is not up his alley at all like this is not his thing i was like would you will you try it just fucking with him and he was like yeah okay and like put it on and i'm like do you like it

he's like yeah it's really nice and i was like buddy you don't have to do that it's okay it's okay i'm you're very well trained i really appreciate this was a test um you don't you don't have to do that i that's very very sweet of you you're a good kid this is not for you yeah you know like the relief on his face it's palpable thanks i'm so glad it's not for me only a fucking loser would wear this well no let's well hang on we gotta keep that inside uh all right well that feels like a show yeah i think maybe i will do our little bumpers here at the end talk about how everyone can find us. Is that right with you?

Yeah. Well, you can find Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD. You can follow Bacon, our CFO, who we had a delicious dinner with, at MakeMeBaconPlease. That's spelled P-L-S at the end. And you can follow Quick Question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. Or you can email us at QQ underscore Soren and Dan, or you can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel

at gmail.com. Also, you can just find us on Patreon. If you want to... You got into a large sum of money in the holidays, and you're like, what am I going to do with all this? You know, throw it our way.

Let us wet our beak on that sweet, sweet cash. It's Patreon slash Quick Question. Oh, you can also find and follow and hire our sound engineer and producer and editor if you can find him somewhere his name is gabe harder gabe harder.com as far as i know does not belong to him anymore so you won't be there but just uh snatch that name out of the ether see if you can get any leads bye