Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Desert Daniel’s Shark Attack Show

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

The guys do some catching up on wedding fonts, doing bits at your ceremony, and their experiences learning about the Trump shooting before questioning one another about deserts and hypothetical shark attack watching. H/t Catherine Newman & Sandwich: A Novel for the inspiration. 0:00: Wedding catch-up + Trump news reflections 22:49: Desert Daniel + Deserts generally 37:20: Hypothetical shark attack 👀 Quick Question bonus episodes are now available on Apple Podcasts as well as Patreon. Same bonus episodes, now with 100% more Face ID and a one-week free trial. Also still available at www.patreon.com/quickquestion Thanks to Rocket Money. RocketMoney.com/qq. Iit could save you hundreds a year.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it up with? Where at all? Did God win? Oh, forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and slightly overwhelmed boy on this Monday morning. Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm a writer for American Dad, and I'm a dad of myself. Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting our podcast. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones you don't want stop throwing your money away cancel unwanted subscriptions

and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash qq um daniel are you overwhelmed because of your wedding stuff or because a presidential nominee just got shot in the ear? Are you guys dealing with that? You know what's crazy? Neither of those things, even though they're very present. It's just been like a lot of running around in the morning. And I just got back from a series of errands that started. I left my house at 6.40 a.m. It is now 12.23 p.m. And I just got back from a series of errands that started. I left my house at 6 40 AM. It is now 12 23 PM.

And I just got back here. Uh, and I have more errands after this. So I'm just like, I'm mowing through my tick tick to do list, which, which always feels great. But it's also just like, I feel, uh, it's like being in school again. It's like being in elementary school where i just feel like a bell rings and then the the strange vehicle that is my body just sort of like shuffles my brain to a new location and i'm just like i'm really relying on alarms on my phone and my my phone's uh tick tick to-do list to just like i haven't had a thought today it's just like look at my phone my augmented brain and be like oh i'm supposed to be in the shower now okay i have to go do that and i gotta say that sounds like my ideal day but now i have to be like like present and talk to you and you're right we did have a big um so it's been a big

weekend for the two things that you mentioned we had um uh we had like a good old-fashioned wedding planning day where we worked out in the morning and then on saturday it was rainy so we just sort of locked ourselves in and just did a lot of like the nitty gritty like uh we need to get what is a box that the rings are going to come in what is like the signage that's going to be around the wedding just the stuff that we're like really again ticking off boxes just like going through all this stuff and it's you know it's it's a marathon for sure it's definitely like a whole day of like looking at things and developing strong opinions on things that you hadn't previously had strong opinions on. But it's still fun.

And like ordering all these cute little things that are going to be the, you know, the raw ingredients that will be our guest book. And will be like all this other stuff that we're planning for the wedding. That's going to show up and it's going to feel like Christmas. We're going to get all these packages that show up that are going to have like our branding on it. You know, it's going to have stuff that it's going to say our names and the date of the wedding. And that's very exciting and will make it feel more real. So, yes, I had wedding stuff to answer your question this weekend and it was fun and we're really mowing through it and yes also

so this was the saturday and we're like you know what would be great let's as a reward for all of this work that we did the weather is cleared up let's go to this new like beach tavern for a celebratory dinner yeah on a nice marina in town and we went to that and then like we have our our phones away because we're like let's let's be present and enjoy this food and talk to each other perfectren it's very it's a it's a real um there's everyone remembers where they are when when history is made and this was a weekend where history was made because we were sitting at a restaurant with our phones down being present and you just start to hear like a like a wind sweeping through every other table in the restaurant you start to hear people mumbling things that kind of sound like they're saying president trump was shot

and we're all we're like we're trying as hard as we can to be present while we're also listening in on these tables and like people are talking to to the waiters these very personal professional waiters who are like yes and our specials are, what did you say? Oh, no shit? Is he dead? And like just watching the news as it happens and like no one has any of the full story. We still don't have the full story

48 hours later. We don't have all the information. Certainly 10 minutes later, we didn't have jack shit. It was a whole lot of people who are spouting off theories and they're reading things and they're just trying to like no one knows what's what's real there's a picture with blood on his ear and like it's it's everyone around us doing this strange game of telephone we eventually look at our phones and we become phone zombies like

everyone else refreshing new york times or i think sky news was the first thing that was willing to say he was shot in this and this thing happened and it's a it's a really it was a delicate place to be because we're eavesdropping on people who are getting this news and also i've mentioned that we're on a marina which means there are lots of boats around which means we're surrounded by people with money and even though New Jersey where we live is like a blue stronghold moneyed

people and like very moneyed people boat people a lot of them not to paint with a broad brush lean pretty conservative so we're it's impossible to uh really know what the political temperature is of this restaurant and like the people that we were nearest to that we were most clearly eavesdropping on they had gone like 10 to 15

minutes just talking about the news and just the facts of the news and it was not clear where they fell politically and we were like we like we not that we would ever celebrate anyone getting shot but like there are certainly you you feel different ways depending on your political leanings not about like we're all against political violence but it's still like how do we are is this the kind of thing where if our liberalness is too noticeable and on display are we in trouble here is this is this like are we right does liberal become uh immediately antifa and immediately the the the people who are who are responsible for this this heinous act so we were just like just as as as quiet as we could be and just like sweating at this restaurant trying to eat our food like we just get the check can we please it like we need

to we spent our whole day in front of our computers can we please get home and stare at our computers so we can get this news in like a quiet and safe environment please that's that's a wild place to find out and also to be late on it i was also late on it um yeah i was on a plane when it happened so we landed and all of a sudden everyone's on their phones and that old part of me is like look at kids. Can't wait to get back on their phones. This guy for two hours and they can't handle being away. And then they all start talking to each other, which is like really fucking up my narrative, which is they can't look at what phones are doing to us. They're ruining us.

The phones were bringing everyone together. And I was like, no, no, no. Stop looking at each other's phones. No, no, no, no. Like strangers talking to each other suddenly the plane is like very lively and i was sitting next to my son and i was sitting next to another kid who i think was probably 11 and found out from a kid who's 11 that the president was well not the president former president had been shot in the ear i was like what and then um as i'm like

also getting i do a little heat check of my own because this flight is coming from Arizona. I'm getting the sense that some of the people around me are big Trump fans. And I was like, sure. Listen, I don't want the guy to I don't want him to be shot. I don't think that would be good for for anybody i don't think that's i i unequivocally and like across the board want to say i don't think the president should be sorry you say the president the uh the former president should be shot but these people were like it was it was like it was going to be go time on the plane like they were like it's okay it finally happened like now we can all do the thing we wanted and i was like oh yeah this is bad this is really bad and i think that the fact that he wasn't killed helped out a lot in that regard um but uh yeah it was it was scary it's i don't think either of us want to get too wildly political

on this show and i don't even know like, my show is a political comedy show and we were off this weekend and are still off. I don't get back to work until tomorrow. I don't even know what kind of like social media guidance they are going to offer, if any, for us of what we should be saying or doing about this. I think it's enough to just say that it was a pretty wild weekend. be saying or doing about this. I think it's enough to just say that it was a pretty wild weekend. And I think it's easy, again, to reiterate what you said for both of us to say,

like, we don't... We shouldn't shoot anybody. No. Period. We just, like, that's not a thing that we should do, and it's not how, like, there's pockets of discussion where it comes up, like there's pockets of discussion where where it it comes up like

is it worse if he would have died or blah blah blah it's like i think like just generally like opening the can of worms of of in modern times in this country uh violence as a way to settle uh political disputes or like to accomplish political goals it's just like not an aspect of democracy that I would like to see added to ours yeah currently it's just not not like because it only escalates and that's yeah I don't think anyone wants that it's also that you never really we never talk politically on the show, but I'm sorry. I'm invested at this point. And I think that you,

regardless of the reason that somebody did it, like that almost never matters. Like, because you look at like why someone tried to assassinate Reagan or, or JFK was assassinated. JFK was not assassinated because of the work he was doing with civil rights or whatever. Like,

there's like a very honed in, very specific reason. He supported a bill that killed somebody's grandfather or something like that. Or with Reagan, it's like he didn't like his policy on one particular thing. And it wasn't his biggest. It wasn't the war on drugs or something like that. Well, it was also largely to attract the attention and win the affections of Jodie Foster. Right. Which, as far as, like,

there are no right reasons to assassinate someone. Hinckley's goal of winning over Jodie Foster by killing Reagan was, like, more wrong than most. It's wrong for a couple of bonus reasons in addition to just being wrongheaded, period. Right. Yeah.

None of them are right, but there are some that are more wrong than others. Right. And so that's never, but no one gives a shit about that part. It's like, as you remember the assassination attempt, you're remembering only this person

who was clearly a creator. What do you call him? A diametric person? Somebody who is like, has a lot of people who don't like them for any particular reason. You're immediately going to assume that the reason-

Oh, divisive. Divisive. Not diametric. Divisive. That that person is, assume that the reason divisive divisive not diametric divisive uh that that person is that was the reason and like that and everyone's just fine with that everyone's like yeah probably was and no one's gonna look at any deeper than that so assassination attempts in general are never going to achieve the goal that anybody actually wants like if you're if you're somebody who thinks oh this will solve a lot of problems no man

it's gonna do exactly the opposite it's gonna do and when i say on no man i really mean no man because yeah because guys the only ones who were like maybe if i kill him yeah this will all go away we've had a couple of female, uh, a woman tried to kill Ford and squeaky from was an assassin. I believe there might be, I might be having, I might be getting that wrong, but you're right that it's, it's,

it's, it's largely a man's game. Uh, especially in modern times, a young man's game. Um, did you have, uh,

I certainly, we, we, A young man's game. Young man's game. Did you have... Certainly, any human being is probably getting texts and emails and notifications from friends and family that are like, holy shit, are you seeing this? And so that's what we were mostly fielding all day. And then I get one text from a co-worker who I'm good buddies with, and just seeing his name in my phone was like, oh, this is going to be about the thing because we work at a political comedy show.

And we were like prepping what we thought next week's episode was going to be about that we're probably going to have to throw out the window. So as soon as I see his name, I'm like, this is going to be about the show. And I open it and it's an Instagram link to a uh to bass player Victor Wooten yeah saying like this is fucking awesome I was like yeah hey have you seen the news are you watching the news today buddy Saturday did he just discover Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

on his own and then how are you possibly like on your phone enough that you you see instagram and you saw a cool video but like none of the other stuff that happens on phones has reached you yet how stuck how could that have happened incredible my phone forced me to know about this from multiple different sources before i could even look at Instagram. Yeah. But yeah, I broke the news to him. Oh, good. Oh, that must have felt good. It's always fun to give people news.

It's always fun for me to like know things. And still being like, yes, this video is awesome. This is why Vic Wooten is the best to ever do it. But also like go to a second website right now. Go to another website and see what they're talking about. I want to, this is a quick question question but it wasn't a planned quick question i want to back up to your wedding planning really quick um and all the little details i care i think in general i care less about people's colors at their wedding than i do about their font have you guys already decided on the font for your wedding? Nope.

There's like a consistent font? No, not necessarily, but you'll notice it if there's not. Oh. I think we're going in a different direction. So you've got all the cards where people's names... Well, I guess there's a board that you have to put all the tables on or assign people to tables or on the tables themselves sometimes there's a card there's the welcome there's like there's a lot of different

things written at a wedding if there's like cool stations and things like that right i think it it's you you certainly would notice if all those were a different font they would look like a church flyer a lot of that is going to be provided by the venue, I believe. And there are a few things that are not provided by the venue that are like our special little touches that we're doing. And no, there is not a consistent font strategy behind it.

Okay. That's a, if that's the thing that you get hung up on at our wedding yeah i think it's actually kind of funny i think i'm i'm over i'm over the wall of mad and i'm on the other side of the wall just like yeah that's kind of funny i guess oh you're gonna see me at your wedding looking very bummed and drinking a lot yeah because of the font just angry just angry by myself and everyone else i told didn't care here the mom said what font which font what's a font

uh i i think i'm yeah we had like a uniform font throughout our, our whole wedding. But like even the, no, you know what? They save the dates and stuff. We're not. But the wedding itself all had everywhere that you would look inside the tent. It was clear that it was like the same font. Yeah. We've done a lot of cobbling together for a lot of different sources because it's pretty, we're, we're an eclectic little duo.

a lot of different sources because it's pretty uh we're we're an eclectic little duo and uh yeah that's the end of that sentence can i make a uh request for your font yeah i don't think i can stop you wingdings okay that uh would be fun because only only the the the realest of real nerds will be able to find their tables and and i i like that i like making everyone work for it a little bit you've got two nerds that you're you're placating there you've got the nerds who know wingdings and know what those are going to be and then you got the code breakers you got the people who don't give a shit about font but are really good at like puzzles and they're going to be like okay which one's used the most that's got to be e and they're going to figure it out that's certainly like it's i do have to tamp down my natural uh bit and joke instincts that a part of me that that did at some point want to make it like

kind of difficult to find your table uh because that's my favorite kind of joke where like the the the engine is the joke the the thought put into it is the joke and and really people aren't going to respect that in the moment or later this isn't a thing that'll ever have a payoff it's people just want to find their table, please. That's a very good bit to be like, assign everyone a color and then be like, and the color will inform which board you go to.

And the boards will each have a number, but the number is going to take you to another location. I wanted everyone to get an invitation that was like, all right the the they want us there at the the ceremony is at 4 30 and then this thing happens at 5 why are they baking in a half an hour between cocktail hour and reception what are we supposed to do it's like oh you'll see when you get there you've got a you've got an escape room no one's beat it yet but i believe in all of you

yeah all right well yeah then fuck funds who cares yeah here's a quick question for you how much money do you think you're spending on subscription services a month if you're're anything like me, you don't actually know. And if you're exactly like me, you don't actually know. And the number that you thought was way lower than the real number. I have plenty of subscriptions that I didn't know I was still paying for. And I found out with Rocket Money, there were things that I signed up for during COVID that made sense that I no longer need. Rocket Money found those subscriptions that I don't need, and they even helped me cancel it to save time for me. Most Americans think they spend about

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash qq. That's rocketmoney.com slash qq. rocketmoney.com slash qq. I want to ask you now my real quick question. Do you want to start the show? Yeah, let's start the show. Okay. Daniel, quick question.

Go. You have been, since I've known you, a lot of different Daniels. I think you'll agree. You have been Island Daniel. You've been Golf Daniel,'ve been golf Daniel climbing Daniel sure one thing that I don't think I've ever seen you as is desert Daniel have you ever been a desert Daniel have I ever been a desert Daniel no I can confidently say no I think um the only desert experience I had was filming uh a bunch of sketches with you.

I don't think that really counts as an honest shot at enjoying desert life. Michael Swain was always big on desert camping, and I never took him up on that because it seemed boring as hell. I think I... Is Palm Desert like a vacation spot in some part of California? Palm Springs. I think Palm Desert is like a cousin of Palm Springs. Yeah.

I spent some time there for someone's bachelor party. Soren, I'm providing you with all the facts. Now you have all the information. Every time I've been to a desert in my life. And did I enjoy it? No. it no yeah good why do you ask because i'm just a desert person because i am also not uh what you call a desert dog um i sure i've been to like moab and places like that where uh utah deserts are like all this like red sandstone and i can kind of i can kind of get behind that a little bit i've like gone down the grand canyon or i've been

on rivers in desert and like at least you're near some water so you're not too panicked but i just went to tucson in the middle of july and i have to say, not only am I not a desert person, I don't believe anybody is. I don't believe any of the people that live there are. I think you've got a lot of people who are aggressively reminding themselves that they're in the desert. There's like, you know,

everything about the desert is a celebration of it when you're in a town that's there. Same way like a mountain town is. It's all about the mountains. Or your beach town, for instance, where everything is fucking nautical around you. when you're in a town that's there. Same way like a mountain town is. It's all about the mountains. Or your beach town, for instance, where everything is fucking nautical around you. But I don't think the people that actually live there enjoy the true desert.

I think they're enjoying a very specific window of the desert, which is 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening, and then rainstorms. Like when the desert is not the desert, they're really loving it. Because when people talk about like the beautiful colors and stuff of the desert, you can't even look at the desert in the middle of the day in the summer. It's like looking at the sun. It's just too much.

It's like there's no shadows anywhere. It's barren. It's really tough. And it's just these heat waves. Nothing looks clear. And it's just these heat waves. Nothing looks clear. And it's scary. Like we were there and it was, I think one day it was like 112. And that's too hot.

Jesus H. You can't even really be outside for more than a couple minutes before it becomes a problem. And I know that in Death Valley recently it got down to 135. Down. It got up to 135. Which is like, that's like being on Everest in terms of your body's not meant to be here and it's going to die if you don't do something about it. Yeah. What was the hottest, when you were like aware of the temperature, what do you think is the hottest temperature when you've been outside in your life?

This was probably it. I mean, 113, 112, 113. Yeah. I was in Baker, California. Baker, California is famous for a couple of things. One of them is a giant thermometer that is like one of the biggest thermometers in the world. And also like the thermometer doesn't work.

It's famous for the giant broken thermometer. It's famous for my car breaking down there. The most famous broken... It's the only giant broken thermometer in the world. You can't find another one. You have to go to this one. And it's also famous for like, they used to have either a prison or an asylum and a bunch of people broke out

of it and they just didn't recover them and they didn't reopen the prison or asylum. That's another thing that bakers got going for it. And I was stranded there for about 10 hours and the broken thermometer read 113 degrees. And the direction in which it was broken, it was either 113 or more than that. And it was like, you spend that much time in the heat

and then it makes sense why they make such a plot point in Romeo and Juliet of how hot it was that summer because it's like yeah if i had to be in the heat any longer i would kill a bunch of people too i would also get so crazy that i murder my girlfriend's best friend or her brother me and my cousins would kill a lot of people yeah yeah i love that bakers they the thermometer rose so high like a cartoon cat with a fever that it like burst out the top that all the mercury's popped out the top and it broke yeah 113 and i'm sure it probably was hotter for you there like i think that once you get past a certain threshold it might be become impossible to even tell what's hotter than yeah than anything

else but like certainly 113 was noticeably hotter than I'd ever been. And you're in the sun too. And like the sun in the desert is just worse somehow. And it was absolutely brutal outside. And everyone, I mean, everyone in the desert is prepared for that kind of thing because you don't even move out. You can limit how much time you're actually spending outside. There's like buildings are connected and things like that.

And all the car parks have shade over them. Usually they end up being solar panels, which, you know, great idea. But anyway, you don't actually hang out in the desert itself when it's the summer you don't hang out in the desert from like i want to say like june to november which is a pretty big chunk of desert time um and i feel like i don't know what a desert person is supposed to do and like when i just looking at google image search of uh moab uh i see like beautiful canyon stuff and rock stuff i guess that's desert i think to me it is a different type yeah so that's canyon and like and like hiking adjacent that's so there's a lot of great outdoor stuff to do in that desert that

desert's got like world-class climbing uh there's uh kayaking there's a lot of white water around there and then there is uh a lot of whitewater around there. And then there is a lot of hiking, canyon hiking, and especially mountain biking. There's a place called Slickhorn right around there. That's like this world famous mountain biking place because the sandstone just grips everything. It's great for climbing because you can smear on it. That means like your whole body's like touching it and you can basically stay up on it like a gecko. And it's great for mountain biking too for the same reason um this desert is the snorin desert that i'm talking about it is snorin it's sonoran sonoran oh i wasn't trying to do a bit i thought that was i thought i was pronouncing

a thing wrong again but i thought this was another twilight how'd i do there depends on which one you were trying to say i was was another twilight. How'd I do there? Depends on which one you were trying to say. I was aiming for twilight. Is that right? Yeah, I think you got it. Okay. So this desert has no sandstone. All the rock is like much paler.

And there is actually quite a lot of vegetation. But all the vegetation sucks. It's like vegetation that wants to hurt you. It's all cactus. It's cholla, which is like, they call it a jumping cactus, because basically you walk a little breeze and it kind of like falls off and jumps onto you and it's terrible. But everything is prickly and bad and looks dead and it's rough. But there are these moments, I say it like sunset or i would assume

sunrise but i don't do that and also it rained once while we were there they had these monsoons where it was absolutely gorgeous i mean it was really really beautiful to see the dramatic lighting and everything in the evening um or it rained and there were these beautiful rainbows because the sun was out at the same time and the rain was warm and these huge droplets of water. This was all great for nine minutes each day. It reminds me of like a wild animal. Like I would not even look at a wild animal if it was just wandering around me and I was with it. And I was like in the same space as it and I need it.

I would not i can't you can't think about anything but this is probably not healthy for me i need to get some water i need to get out of here and then there are these moments where it's sleeping like very few moments where it's just sleeping you can actually really examine it you're like oh this is like a really impressive animal this thing is yeah incredible oh how sublime but man that i think that's all you get out of the desert it's either dark too hot to stand or these beautiful moments that last like 10 minutes and i think everyone lives for those 10 minute moments there i really believe that that's all they're there for

and that's just not enough time for me i'm not a desert person i don't think I've met many people who are excited about the desert. I've met a few people who live out in like desert Arizona parts. And it was very much like, this is near work for me. And the land is cheap for my family. I can have I can I can get a big space here. And I met someone. uh god my memory is incredible when I used to work at sports 30 before it closed uh back in the early 2000s I met someone I was selling him equipment from sports 30 because he was retiring and his dream was I want to go and get an rv and live in the desert in Arizona specifically because I don't want to talk to anyone or be seen i just want to like be out there on my own and that as like a motivation to live there yeah made sense to me but as far as like a a non-cook like a person roughly our age or someone like in their 20s who was like i can be anywhere in the world. No one I know has chosen desert.

Yeah. It's, I mean, the people that are generally, you're right. I think that there are a lot of people who go there because it is more off the grid. They're like undiscovered parts of the desert still to these huge weaving

mazes of slot canyons all over like northern Arizona that are incredible. They're like people have not been to some of these places in like a century. But in general, I think you're right. I think that if you want to feel plugged into a society at all, this is not the place. And I'm going to throw another another wrench into this. I live in a desert. I live in Los Angeles, which is, I guess, technically subtropical, but it is mostly just desert. And I hate it. I don't like it here either. I think that you don't get... What a scoop. You don't even get like the joy of that kind of rain in Arizona, in the Serenoran Desert.

At least you're getting monsoons, which are beautiful in the afternoons in the early summer. And they kind of cool everything off. Everything smells really good. The creosote or whatever the plants are like smell delicious. But here we don't even get that. The only time you're going to get rain in Los Angeles is when it's already really cold. You get it in rains in like February, January or February. And so it's not an enjoyable rain ever. And then the rest of the season, I mean, the rest of the year, you've got from probably when the June gloom wears off in July all the way until October where you will not see a drop of rain.

It just doesn't happen happen and no one's expecting it and it every single day the sun comes up and it heats everything up and then it goes down and everything is just stays a little hotter than it did the day before before the sun comes up again and it just compounds and it just gets hotter and hotter here and the environment the habitat is called chaparral around here and chaparral makes for some of the worst fucking hiking in the goddamn world. Part of the reason I don't like hiking is because the only place I can do it is in this chaparral. Which, if you don't know what chaparral is, it's like a spiny, it's not cactus, but it's like the worst waxy, spiny, dusty plants you can think of. All the terrible ones.

All the ones that if you brush against, you're like ow like it feels personal um and you can't go off trail it's all thick these thick thick tangles of this briny shit and uh our bramble shit and i i can't hang i don't know i don't like it i'm here because i because this is where my job is but i I go places like New York or I go places like Colorado. And in New York, you guys get these beautiful, warm rainstorms, at least. Like when it's hot in the summer, it's not going to be hot every single day. It's not for months on end. It's like you get a hot streak and then it'll rain on everybody. And everyone's like, we don't need umbrellas here.

Like, well, just dry off. Yeah. And it's great. Love a summer rain. Seems like you're having a pretty rough time, Story. I don't know why I got so heated about it. I was going to say, like, oh, he was in Tucson and didn't enjoy it. Oh, he doesn't enjoy his home either.

Oh, no. He's just. It's Tucson in the summer. I've learned over time. My wife is from Tucson. I've learned to really like aspects of it. There are some things about Tucson that I really do enjoy now. I finally went in July and I was like,

no! Everybody out! Get out of here! Don't do this to yourselves! And then it rained one day and i was like you guys have no idea we we beat this already we defeated this kind of thing you don't have to live like this yeah keep the wagons moving like you didn't have to stop here um i yeah it then it rained and then one day and i was like ah it's gorgeous here this is beautiful yeah and then. Yeah. And then the next day I was like, no, it was a trick. It was all a trick.

That was it. That was all we got was these little bits of honey. Man. Sorry, I got a quick question for you. Oh, great. Yeah, sure. Because you mentioned animals before and I was thinking about this for a while. So I read this, I just finished this book, probably the best novel I've read in like 10 years. It's called Sandwiches by Catherine Newman. And it's a, it's a great novel. And it just happens that a character, one of the quirks of this character throughout the book is she will just like throw out a very like rich hypothetical that none of the other characters discuss. It's just like,

just this, because Catherine Newman as an author, I think she just like, she really throws everything out there, like really leaves it all on the field in every book that she writes. So like, she will just like casually write like a beautiful line of poetry in the middle of of a book and also will casually drop this like you could make an entire book out of just these hypotheticals that you were just

like burning as uh like a character trait yeah to ask hypotheticals and one that i was thinking of that the characters didn't uh dig into too much was the character asked uh if if no one was ever going to find out and you couldn't stop this thing from happening would you watch someone get eaten by a shark and everyone in the book is like bella and then they move on and we're like no answer that like that's very that's very fascinating to me and i thought about posing it to you too like you're at yeah again you can't stop it no one's gonna know um you're at an aquarium and it's an aquarium you've been to a bunch of times and there's something that like your the your kids want to do a very kid specific thing at the aquarium and they only want to do it with your wife and it's like

no we want mommy and they're like alright they're going to go to this petting zoo part of the aquarium and just some guys like psst hey I see you got nothing to do for the next 10 minutes if you open that door shark's going to eat a guy right now would I watch it do you want to

I'm not going in with you do you want to see it and then like and after I open this door for you Would I watch it? I'm not going in with you. Do you want to see it? And after I open this door for you, I disappear. Nobody knows that you did this. Nobody knows that you watched this happen. I mean, this is so boring, but I think I'm not going to do it. I've had this opportunity because there are videos of people being eaten by sharks. And I don't choose to watch them. I find out that this exists. I've had this opportunity because there are videos of people being eaten by sharks. Sure. And I don't choose to watch them.

I find out that this exists and I will be like, oh, this is a guy getting eaten. No, I don't think I want this. Yeah. I don't think I could do it. I think that that would sit with me for too long. I've seen movies like Traces of Death and know about myself that I won't let that go, that that will just stay in me for a while and I'll carry it. And so I don't put that stuff in me anymore. I'm almost positive I wouldn't watch it for the same reasons that you

say. And like even fake violence in movies, I find more and more turning away at things because it's it looks too realistic and it's like not a visual that i i want to see there's something about i think if i was going to make an exception it would be sharks because i'm more scared of sharks than i am of any other animal by miles and miles and miles i might be more scared of sharks than i am of any other animal by miles and miles and miles. I might be more scared of sharks than I am of any non existential thing. I think as far as like actual natural world threats go, sharks are very high up there for me. And there's a there's a part of me for years and years of my life that was like, you're going to get eaten by a shark one day, buddy.

Just like, if you know it's coming, it'll be easier, I think. Just like, accept that this is in your future. And so there is a part of me that thinks like, maybe if someone offered me Shark vs. Man, there might be a part of me that is like, you know what this is like because this is this is your future you should see a preview of what's in store for you but i don't know that might that might be overridden by my my broader aversion to violence what do you think you'd be preparing for would you be preparing for i see the attack from there i would like a defense or would you be preparing would you be watching it in preparation for like this is how it will feel when i'm dying

i think that the the the latter i think this is how it will feel when i'm done i don't think that's constructive no i don't think so either uh there was uh sophia benoit uh writes a great newsletter about like dating and and romance and love advice. And she was answering someone's question about someone who thought, who was pretty convinced that their partner was cheating on them and what to do with that information. And her advice for it was like, let that go. Don't hurt your own feelings for no reason and also it's not going to if you're so convinced this thing is going to happen that doesn't that won't soften it if it turns out you're right it won't make it better or anything like that i was like that's a really good uh

thought to apply not to to romance but like my fear of sharks i need to remind myself that no matter how like steeled i am no matter how many shark videos i watch when the shark does kill me on my wedding day or sometime around then yeah it's not gonna i'm not gonna be like ah i prepared for this and so it feels fine it's not gonna soften the teeth i do like the idea of you making your horrible teeth your rounds are at the tables at your wedding. Finally getting a chance to talk to everybody. Your dinner's getting cold up at the table for two,

but you don't mind because you get to see everybody. You're seeing aunts and uncles you haven't seen in a long time. You're meeting some of Shay's family that you've never met before and it's going really well. And then you sit down at a table

and there's just one other person at the table. And you look again, that's not even a person. That is a shark. Yeah, we'll person at the table and you look again, that's not even a person. That is a shark. Yeah, we'll be making their ass and I'm going to be here with a champagne ding of

like someone wants to make a toast or someone wants to see us kiss and we're looking for the source of it and it's just a shark at the bar just like banging on. Ding, ding, ding, ding. With his little fins that's very close to him. One of my brothers will be like, I'll handle this and the shark will be like blah, blah, ding. With his little fins. It's very close to him. One of my brothers will be like, I'll handle this. And the shark will be like,

blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, hey, like gesture like, this is between me and Daniel. And my brothers will be like, I respect that. And I'm like,

it's been a long time coming as I like unbutton my jacket. Yeah. I mean, you're going to have to fight the shark at your wedding, I think. I know.

It sucks. It sucks that we all have to do it. It sucks that everyone at their wedding, they have to overcome shark at your wedding i think i know it sucks it sucks that we all have to do it it sucks that everyone at their wedding they have to overcome their greatest fear and but we all do it it's it's what everyone's done their whole lives and i don't think i'm gonna make i think the shark's gonna beat me that's i i did not realize that about you i didn't know sharks you're such a beach boy i did not realize that sharks were such a threat to you. I'm a beach boy and I'm an ocean boy. And I'm an also like largely pro animal across the board.

And like anytime that people don't like an animal, it's very much like, oh, I don't like snakes. It's like, no, that's like a projection. Like that's movies put that on us. Snakes aren't evil. Things, these animals are less complex than we are. They are not capable of like this real malice that we impart on them. And then I see sharks, the aquarium, like,

no, that guy's fucking evil. That guy is mean and bad. And he wants to hurt us. And he knows we're scared of him. And sharks are all boys. That's why I'm saying he. And that's why they're so violent and mean. It's always sharks that try to kill presidents.

Have you noticed that? Yeah. They are. I agree with you. They look very unfeeling. Go ahead. Yes. And they look made for violence.

Yeah. And I know this is all projection because I know dolphins can be violent too, but they don't look like that's what they're for. But sharks look like a jagged saw. That it was like, this isn't the one for butter, this is the one for ruining trees. And I don't know. This is going to sound nuts.

I'm probably overthinking it. And you can just tell me I'm just overthinking it, Soren. But we used to vacation every year in Wildwood, New Jersey, a beach town in South Jersey. We would go swimming on the beach every single day. And every year, before we went on vacation, my parents would put on Jaws. Yeah.

Famous Jersey movie. Probably has nothing to do with this longstanding fear. Just like get you ready for beach life i i guess so because the because uh not the very beginning of jaws not the first scene but there's all right you don't get to watch that 10 minutes there's 10 minutes towards the beginning where it's just about a beach town in the summer the reason if you if you haven't watched Jaws in a minute, Daniel's talking about the first 10 minutes of this PG movie where there's a naked woman in the water

and we're underwater with her and then she gets eaten by a shark. Very, very, it's all there. Everything, you see everything. And when I say everything, I don't mean genitals and stuff. I mean, you see someone who's naked get teared apart by an animal. And that's a pg movie uh young people decide to go skinny dipping and enjoy their sexuality and they are swiftly punished for it that is the the the lesson of the movie and then for there's like 10 minutes of like i got fun beach romp buried in

there before it's all sharks and alcoholism and some pretty graphic shark deaths. You know, so when I was young I was very afraid of sharks too. I was like very scared of sharks and I would also go to Ocean City, New Jersey and I would be very, I would I hated going in the water specifically

for that reason. Until my dad was like it's too warm here for sharks and I was like, oh and I trusted that for a very long time until we went somewhere else and he was like it's too warm here for sharks and i was like oh and i trusted that for a very long time until we went somewhere else and he was like it's too cold here for sharks and i was like wait a fucking second oh no no you're just trying to trick me you're trying to get are you a shark are you trying to get me in the water so i could be eaten by a shark um and i i was scared of them and i was scared of them because it was right around the time that I was learning about a lot of how a lot of different animals would kill their prey. And I was like, you can't help but as a child or maybe as an adult, think about what it would be like to be any other animal than a human where you die because something else is eating you generally. And that's just like across the board.

something else is eating you generally. That's just like across the board. And with a lot of other animals like macro fauna or mega fauna, I mean, they're going to like a lion, for instance, or a tiger, it's going to choke you out before it starts eating you. Like it wants you dead before it starts eating you. And a shark could not care less. A shark is going to just start eating you until you are dead it's like there there's no reason like a any other animal is gonna leave you alive long enough that you can

fight back they're gonna choke you out or snap your neck whereas a shark will just be like an arm that was delicious i'll go back for a leg yeah maybe i'll come back in 45 minutes and get the rest it's like they just and also And they love blood so much. So specifically once they bite you, suddenly they've just produced more of their favorite thing. And I don't like that. No, it's awful. It's absolutely awful.

That's not going to discourage them. They've got these cactus mouths that are like, the teeth aren't even going in the same direction. You're never going to get a clean cut. It's just meant to shred you. It's really awful. So I'm with you on sharks. I want to tell you quickly a story that I forgot that happened when I was in Tucson.

After the rains, we went for a walk along a wash, which anyone who's from the desert knows don't do that because um the flash floods issue but this was like long after the rain so we're walking along this uh what is a what is a uh an additional descriptor beyond wash that i can add dry riverbed google image search wash riverbed yeah dry riverbed um or a desert wash and these are it just looks like where all the water has rushed through and so you're getting a lot of debris and stuff but it's like the it's the evening it's beautiful out so we go for this walk in this wash and as we're walking i'm thinking i wonder isn't this around the time like snakes would come out because diamondbacks are and i think mojave rattlesnakes they're like they're all there and they're super dangerous and my at that exact same

time my father-in-law is like i don't think we should be out here i think we should go back and we're like oh we're gonna stick it out and my son got some stickers in him he got some cactus and so he went home with my father-in-law but but my wife. Did your father-in-law, did you both just get the snake sense at the same time? Yes. Yeah. Like I, well, I just happened to kind of like be thinking about it, but I didn't say anything, but he did. And so he was doing the right thing, which was acknowledging that this was probably not

a good thing to be doing. We're like, we'll look out. It's not that dark yet. Like, we'll just kind of, we we'll walk it and so we did we kept walking i was with my mother-in-law my daughter my wife and me and i thankfully had my daughter on my shoulders but like we just come around this turn and we're in this this one little rivlet which is like maybe two feet wide and there's like a bank up on one side but not very high maybe six inches high and at the top of them at the top of it is this giant

rattlesnake that i'm now like three feet away from and i i my instinct was to say to everybody freeze back up and everybody did which is not what my reaction would have been if somebody else said freeze if somebody else was we're gonna walk and somebody said freeze i'd be like why and it just kept pounding through you don't own me you're not the boss of me um but everybody stopped and everybody backed up and then we all just kind of looked at the snake for a second we're like oh yeah we shouldn't we shouldn't be doing this let's let's get home um but it was wild they they see them a lot more often obviously um they've had one in their yard before they've since taken steps to make sure that doesn't happen again but he also owned a copper mine for a while not like a working copper mine but one where he would go and

get minerals from um wolfenite and stuff like that it's very cool i've been inside of it it's awesome it's like an abandoned mine it's really cool anyway he when he would go up there frequently in the very first hundred yards of the or hundred feet of the mine before it starts to descend rattlesnakes would get in there to cool off and so he would go there and there'd just be a fucking rattlesnake there and he'd kill it and then move on did the the snake that you saw did he did he play the hit did he do did he rattle did he do the thing that oh yeah i mean we're all here for no so he's got some new album stuff that no one really understood no he he was not even coiled up um he was maybe he was hunting i don't know i don't know if he would have been bothered by us just talking to my father-in-law about it he's like you know

rattlesnakes so rarely give a shit about you um they will try and get away first they're not even gonna waste the venom because it's not worth it to them only if they feel completely trapped he said that he at one point had stepped on one when he was younger and it just was like fuck and then like rattled off or like and disappeared but if they're coiled and rattling like then they're prepared to strike you but if they're kind of like moving, they're on the move. So their body's long and they're not really in a position to be striking very well. And they don't want to do it. And so they're going to try and get away first.

This one was just posted up, maybe hunting, I assume, or gotten washed out of his hole or whatever. But he was not ready to fight us. And he did not rattle when we got close he was just it was just i just happened to in the dark see a stick that was not a stick and was a rattlesnake and was immediately like don't feel good about this the same way i felt when i saw that kid's hand break that kid break his wrist at the end i was like oh god okay i'm all right i'm all right come on soren i do i i do think all animals could stand to be more polite and indulge us with the things that we want them to do the way that like you can like you can raise

your fist up and down when you see a big truck and you want the truck to pull its chain and honk its big horn. He knows the rules. I want to be able to signal a dolphin or a whale to do the blowhole thing. Shoot the water out. Come on. I'm on a whale-watching trip to see you. Do your magic trick. What are we doing here?

I don't want to see your tail. I don't know why that's important. Hey, dolphins! magic trick what are we doing here i don't want to see your tail i don't know why that's important hey dolphins i saw one of you do a flip once a sea world do that not in the water i can't see down there get up here yeah something that's like all right let's give the rattlesnake its space but before we do just like everyone take out your cameras and we're gonna do like the honk honk sign and the snake if it's cool we'll be like and then we'll we'll wait there you go one for the fans um i did i went to the zoo once and to see a cassowary almost exclusively to see a cassowary do you know what that is it's like a big uh i think i only know it from from crack.com it's like a big bird with talons on its feet and it kicks shit and it's like a big, I think I only know it from crack.com. It's like a big bird with talons on its feet and it kicks shit and it's like chaotic and powerful and fast.

Yeah, it's basically a dinosaur. Yeah, it looks like a, it's bipedal. It looks just like a velociraptor. It's got that giant claw on its foot that can just eviscerate you with like one swipe. Sure. And they're super territorial. that giant claw on its foot that can just eviscerate you with like one swipe sure and they're super territorial so each year people get killed by these these birds because they don't see them common and they're like a big dinosaur plate on their heads and they're blue their skin is blue

and uh they these things are super dangerous and they're very aggressive and territorial i go to the zoo because occasionally one of these will be in a pissed off mood. And it's amazing. Like, it's amazing to watch them. A peacock got into one of their cages before. And this fucking thing went crazy. It wanted to kill this peacock so bad. And that was very fun for me to watch.

So I went to the zoo. And the cassowary didn't give a shit about anything. It was having a very nice day. And I didn't like that. And I was like, I shouldn't do this, but I wonder if I should, if I just like did some fast movements, like some darts. Yeah. Like I was like, like pump faking at this cassowary. So I was like, I kind of stepped back a couple of paces and then like just darted towards the, towards the glass.

And this cassowary. Behavior that I'm sure the zoo employees are used to admonishing children for. People have been killed by tigers for doing this kind of shit where tigers just like, that's enough. And it jumps over the moat and then kills them. I can always do this. I did that. the terrible thing and this cassowary like very slowly looks up at me with these dead shark eyes and just stares at

me for a second and i'm like here we go and then it just unloads the biggest shit i've ever seen biggest like excellent and like a shit i don't know what their diet is but it's eating a lot of seeds because it shits and the shit's making noise like soda because as these seeds are hitting the ground they're kind of like tinkling they're tinkling around like like it's like so it's it's shit on the ground and immediately all these seeds start popping out all over the place and rattling around like Like somebody dropped some marbles. And I was like, okay, I think that was a really good strategy. I like it. It didn't want to fight me.

It was just like, oh, you think you're bad? Watch this. Just torture you around. But, you know, come on, don't do that. Don't do what I did. I was young. I was dumb. No, yeah, it's's bad i was like 39

uh all right everybody yeah that about show wraps it up that's the show was quick question but you knew that already you can email us at quick question with quick qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com it is we are instagram qq underscore with underscore soren uh no i think we straightened all these out at some point they're different now yeah i stopped even reading my outros i just now just make it up yeah our theme song is by the incredible mere rex me rex dot band camp dot com uh you can find us on patreon you can find us on youtube or you can watch our videos uh the whole episode

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I'm not prepared to go on any longer. Feels good. I felt like that was enough. Bye. You know what I'm going to start doing at the end of these? I'm just going to start saying, if you'd like to find out

anything more about this podcast, please listen to a single other episode of it and go all the way to the end. Yeah. I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get?

What do I be? What's it up with? Where did all the boys go? Oh, forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here