Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Did Hollywood Call? | Ep. 302

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Daniel talks through the post-Emmy afterglow that never arrived: a clean cut to Kimmel, a week of headlines, and then absolutely no industry knock at the door—no agents, no meetings, not even a polite threat. Soren matches him with his own long relationship to being un-represented on a very represented show. Plus the private logic of phones and closets: color-gradient app grids, folders labeled “Who Cares,” bottom-row dock politics, and the eternal “useful” pile. Finally, a full throated endorsement for Writing Things Down.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts, I want to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be?

I remember. What's it out? Word it all. Go ahead. Oh, forget it. I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're going to find it

I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here We're back It's a quick question It's Soren and Daniel is a podcast with comedy writers And two best friends talking, giving each other answers and asking each other questions. So we've got to get right into it.

I'm Daniel O'Brien, but here's the thing. Uh-huh. Everybody knows who we are. Everybody who's listening to this podcast. Everybody in the world knows who we are. And there's just something that we've got to talk about. Uh-huh. I know that we talked a little bit about it in the last episode.

That the show that I worked for, we got an Emmy. And I got on stage and I gave a speech. And you've got a lot of FaceTime since then. Got a lot of FaceTime since then. There was a lot of heat. There was a lot of, and I was so, I'd been so nervous because I'd never given a speech before. And I'd kept my head down at this job for seven years, just being a head down writer. They asked me in my interview seven years ago when I was coming from crack.com, when I was coming from creative director, a boss.

and they're like, are you, will you be okay with being just a writer? I was like, that's all I've ever wanted to be was just a writer. Just let me put my head down and be a writer for you guys. And I've been doing that faithfully, a faithful servant. And then I give this stupid speech to make my wife happy. You did it for her. You gave your Emmy Award winning speech for your wife. I thought, I thought Shay would like this.

Did you thank your wife in it? No. Interesting. there's no time uh there's actually a uh backstage there's like it's like e or one or some network is like hey here's a place for you to thank anyone that you forgot to thank when you were on stage and i also didn't do it then oh perfectly no one knows where that footage is but i give this speech and in this speech soren i mentioned that i am thrilled to be sharing this category with late night political comedy writers while that is still a type of show that's

allowed to exist. Good joke. Seventy-two hours later, Jim Kimmel is ripped from the air. Not a thing happened in the actual, you wouldn't have been able to tell this because he were live, but you know since, is that you said that. You got a little reaction shot from the audience. And who did they go to, lo and behold, in the audience, to give that reaction, Jimmy Kimmel. The cut to Jimmy Kimmel right to him. Right to him. I didn't know it, of course, because I was live and that little juxtaposition was picked up soren was picked up yeah there's my dumb face on msnbc with morning joe all these write-ups when kimball gets pulled off the air yeah there's all these write-ups in vanity fair and variety all these things last week tonight senior writer daniel o'brien

that is the first line in these articles and i'm just thinking this is this is so much fucking heat it's did they call you dan or did they know they call me dan okay good oh It's a, what a boon for you. You're looking at the wrong part of this. Great to hear from fans. Everyone is recognizing you as Daniel now. I heard John Oliver say it on the next show. He called you Daniel.

That was another part of the heat, is that this clip of me giving the speech cutting to Jimmy Kimmel, that is on our show. On our show last week tonight, I'm a named person. We see a video of me on the show. I did not want this. I've been so worried for a week straight about how much attention. I was pulling into me and away from the show and I didn't push to have me featured on the show I was upset like all my name's going to be in these articles

and everyone was talking about what a prophecy this was that I had made and I was so freaked out about how this was going to change my life and all of the attention that was going to come rolling in positive and negative and we're we're about a week and a half away from it and and soren there's just been fucking not a single knock on my door just no one I can't get arrested in this town there's no one is I was so paranoid that like my star would shine so bright and right so high and the last thing in the world that I wanted was to distract

attention away from the show and I didn't need to worry about that no you didn't There was a period where we talked about this before we taped our last podcast. And you were like, I don't want to talk about it. I just want to keep my head down. And it was, I mean, your concerns were justified. I don't know that it was always as altruistic as I don't want to be the Oracle of Delphi because Benwell out due to the show. But it was like, it was, I don't want to be a target. I don't want to be, I don't want people seeing this and it's being like, oh, there's another guy in late night who we can all focus on.

let's fucking get him i didn't want that and i i even when i'm doing that calculus i'm like you know i don't want to i don't want to put a target even if it means maybe i take that that that being a target would get me a couple of meetings and couple like some industry buzz even if it means that i have to stay away from the industry buzz there was no buzz to stay away from soren i did this i i gave a little speech the Emmy stage and then I was on on HBO and HBO Max and YouTube you're ever last week tonight I was a named featured background last week tonight I got a larger bump in blue sky followers for being a guest on behind the bastards podcast and I got

or any other stuff that I thought for sure was going to like move the needle make my star so distractingly bright that I need to move It's funny. It's funny because, yes, I can understand why nobody came knocking, not even like in a threatening way, which at this point might have been nice, might have been nice to at least have somebody pay attention. Yeah, I mean, just a water cooler moment is all I'm going for, even if it's among the worst people and the worst water cooler. I got messages from people. Does that help? What a feather in your cap. Yeah. Yeah. So my brother contacted me to talk about it because he saw you on the show. And I heard from our mutual friend Chase Mitchell. He contacted me to say hello. He's got my fucking number. I can't even get a phone call from Chase. What's it happening? I'm on TV. You call Soren, Chase? Another guy contacted me through Blue Sky to talk about something about.

you, completely unrelated, because I don't think he can get in touch with you. He guys did an, you guys did an episode about organ donation and he, after watching it, was so inspired that he then gave up his kidney and like started this chain where a bunch of people were getting kidneys and he was so, he was so thrilled by the show that he wanted to let you know that he did this. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that person can lose my number. That's fine. but yeah I got contacted by a few people who were like Dan's on I saw Dan all over TV and I was like I know so what did you know the things that I'm doing lately do you know that I'm still on my show yeah I was thinking there would be like like a surge in Google searches of people who are

like who is this last week tonight Daniel character and there would be all these explainer things that came up about my 15 year public eye comedy career but just nobody nobody was and it's good it's I'm glad that no one's curious are you I'm thrilled I've never been more thrilled in my life yeah okay but still standing there peeking out of the blinds like, no one. No one. No one's coming by. No one's sniffing around. Hollywood reporter doesn't want a word with the soothsayer. Doesn't want to know if I have any other predictions in the old fortune cookie. Nobody wants to know how they die because I can do that. I got. Nobody wants to know the plane crashes they die in. It's so funny to be sitting in my my little swamp house in New Jersey

thinking sitting there talking to myself being like, I'm not a friend. fortune teller. I don't want all this attention. And the rest of Hollywood is like, this guy's not a fucking fortune teller. We don't need to bother him. They bother everybody. They didn't. It was never, it's so interesting. It is actually really interesting because it's the first circumstance in which it was never about the person themselves. Yeah. Like, it's always about the person. It's like so deeply about the person that it's really uncomfortable. But for you, for whatever reason, like you are just an arm of the show as far as they're concerned. And you're like, You were an extension of John Oliver, and they're like, yeah, why would we interview John Oliver's finger?

Like, that makes no sense. I feel like five years ago there would be articles, an entire like 24-hour internet news cycle of like, here's everything we know about the unnamed model holding Fiji bottles at the BET Awards. Yeah, somebody has caught everyone's attention this year at the award show. Let's get a word in with them. Find out who they really are. What makes them tick? But not, they look to you and they're like, well, I'm pretty sure I got it. Right. And that wasn't better. The thing in the past wasn't better. It's just crazy that now everyone has learned. All of the, uh, SEO driven article writers were like,

I don't really think, I just don't think there's a story there. I just don't think there's anything, there's any reason to talk about this person, which is good. I'm glad I'm a writer. I want to quickly complain about something that is tangentially related. So I've been a working television writer for eight years. This is my eighth year of it, right? And in that time, I early on didn't have representation, didn't have a manager, didn't have an agent. Because I'd gotten through this job through an insanely lucky backdoor, essentially. And as I was first working it, I was like,

Yeah. Well, that makes sense. And like, why would I continue? Because I don't know if anyone knows this, but you probably do. If you have, you're paying 10% to every one of those people of whatever jobs you have. Whether they got you the job or not, you're paying 10% to them on whatever you're working. And I, I was like, oh, well, this is nice. I'm not paying anybody. And then, you know, like each year, as the show would have to get picked up again, I start to get nervous and start kicking myself because I was like, why didn't I, like, seek out representation? It would have been a really good idea in case the show gets canceled. And I should be, you know, I should be working on other stuff too.

I should be like trying to build other things. So I'm like, well, that, that'll come. That'll come. That'll all happen for me. And then everyone fired their representation because there was a big issue with the agencies and the agencies sending out packages and like they were working for themselves instead of their clients. Everyone fired their representation.

I was like, yep, we're all at scratch now. Like, what? There's, now I'm even with everybody. This is great. But now after that happened, and the fight was over between agents and their clients, agents came sniffing around again to find all everybody. And they're like, well, who's not represented? And like, they started picking people up.

Daniel, not a single sniff in my direction. Not a sniff. And now it's, that's long over. Like, we've had a strike since then about something completely different. I've been working on this show. I'm a working writer on a, on, I will say a dinosaur of a show in that it's very successful and can continues to go. Yeah, just like a dinosaur.

Just like a dinosaur. Always, you can't stop them. They're going to live forever. That's the main thing people know about dinosaurs. And, like, for whatever reason, I don't know what it is, but like ages were just like, no. I know. Not even like, hey, give us a sample or anything like that.

Just like, I, you know, I, you know. I'll make my money somewhere else. I thought after this whole speech and feature on the show that they would be like, even some junior sharks, some assistant vultures to circle around to sniff blood in the water, just someone that I can say no to. I thought for sure someone would be like, this is the time strike while the iron's hot, your name is on the industry's tongue, get out there and kiss that tongue. And I'd have to say, no, thank you.

I'm very happy where I am and then smash cut to reality and I'm like, should I have hired a publicist? What doesn't anyone want to talk to me? What happened? Why does my well-connected in the industry buddy Chase see this as an opportunity to reach out to Soren? What on earth? He didn't want to bother. Maybe that's what it is. Nobody wants to bother you. I know. Everybody's like let's be polite to this guy let he surely he wants his space that's what he's he that's the energy he's giving off yeah right it's it must just be like the the the journalists who worked for industry trades are famously uh ethical and dogged investigative journalists that they saw that speech and they're like we looked into it he only did the speech to make his wife happy

let's give him his privacy in this matter he doesn't want to be doesn't want to be featured doesn't They're sensitive. Journalists are well known for their emotional sensitivity. Yeah. Well, that's my thing. Yeah, it's really, it's pretty wonderful. That's great. But I guess we should start the show for real.

Now, because I do have a question for you. It's good. And I want to answer it. I'm just a writer. All I want to do. This is a question that actually our producer and sound engineer and editor Gabe came to us with. And I loved it so much because I was like, Yeah, I have so many thoughts about this.

There's something in your life that is very private, which is your phone? Yes. And he wanted to know, like, is there anything? Like, how do you set your phone up in terms of, like, where your icons and stuff like that? Like, is there something about your phone that you're like, I've solved it? I have like this very streamlined organized setup on your home screen that, like, works for you. Or like, how have you done it that, like, because everybody must have. Everybody at some point, nobody's just sitting there with like a mess of shit on their front page

on the front home screen and being like, I don't know, I'll figure it out at some point. Everybody has solved this already, but everybody, nobody talks about it or solved it in their own individual way. So I'm curious, like, what is your home screen set up? It's very interesting that you say everyone solved this. Oh, you have not solved it. No. At one point, and I think we talked about some of the podcast, or maybe real life, at one point,

I saw someone else's phone and they had organized all of their apps. by color gradient uh that was me that was that was your phone i was yeah you're talking about me yeah uh it was very it was very aesthetically pleasing and i thought i want to do that just because i like the look of it so much and i started to do it and a few things became very clear very quickly one it's it's kind of hard for me to move stuff around in the phone on the phone face okay it's It's what I would like is to take the three pages of my phone's home screen and put them on my laptop and then organize them there on the laptop where I could see everything at once and I could drag a drop from there and then port that back out of the phone. Because the phone, when you're trying to move stuff around and you're like dragging it across pages, it's just, it's too sensitive for what I want to do. So the idea of like spending the project of color coding your phone is not like a thing you bang out in an hour because I need to take breaks because I get frustrated.

I do it during meetings. That's smart. So I abandoned that because it was too much of a bear and the latest thing I started doing was looking at the apps that I don't use and putting them in folders. yeah, which I just found out about oh I had a folder on my phone that I created accidentally years ago and I just I just saw it one day and I was like weird that's where the United app is that's I don't know who put that there but that's fine because I don't need the United app all that often and then I was like let me put all the stuff that I don't need in little folders I'm not going to throw it out because it's on the phone so I must want it for some

so I'm going to keep them there but I'm just going to keep them out of the way my dream was to have only the things that I use every day on my phone's home screen. And so I did that for a little bit. And then I moved some things back to where they were. Oh. Because the muscle memory of like my hand knows where duolingo is supposed to be. And it's three pages in. And when I don't find it there, I can't.

Real mad, real quick. Well, you just have to retrain in yourself. Or... Yeah, go ahead. You just keep it where it's supposed to be. Just keep it where it's supposed to be. That's interesting. How many pages do you have?

Free. And like, I don't have three pages worth of apps. I have a full page on my front page. And then I have like six apps on page two and four apps on page three. Yeah. Just because that's where they are. I could condense if I wanted. just that's just not where my head's at right now. Okay. Yeah. I'm, so you know those annoying

people who organize their books by color on their shelves. Those terrible, awful people. Yeah. I'm one of those people. Great. And I love it. I love the aesthetic. It's so nice. It is not functional, but it is so beautiful. And I'll say, if I've read a fucking book, I know what it looks like. I know what color spine I'm looking for. Like, I know where to be. If I'm like, going to go find a Philip Marlowe story, I'm like, yeah, I know where those live, even though they're not all next to each other. I know like, okay, I know that the copy of the very high window that I have is like, or the very high window that I have is black. And I know that the copy of the little sister is going to be a deep blue. I know where to go.

But the same thing is true of my phone as well. It's like, this isn't for anyone else. I only cleaned it up because I'm the only one looking at it. I did it for me. and it's by gradient and it's by not only color so it's like it does a Rory G. Biv but it's also by gradient

and in fact things will get placement on my homepage based on that like if something's not really working out like there's a color that is sort of like a mustard I'm like fuck this doesn't really go with everything else it's gone like I'm going to well I'm going to have to dig for this

every time I want it because it doesn't look right and instead pages will be prominent even though I'm never using pages on my phone it is um it's not an easy solution it's not a solution where like it makes it easier to use my phone but i don't care i like opening my phone and seeing that and being like oh it's the best argument for it for redesigning anything on a phone i've heard to date uh not that i hear a lot of arguments but like your your phone is really pleasing to look at and that's not nothing i want it to be yeah and i also agree with you that there are folders that i have that are same

way where like I was just like moving stuff around and then all of a sudden I lost a thing and I was like well hold on where did that icon go yeah I can't find it anywhere and then I discovered that I'd put it in another icon and I was like you're creating a folder so I created a I have a few different folders one is called who cares one is called Apple junk one is it's all they're pretty disparaging because it's shit that I don't want there yeah but I have to constantly get new apps for school for everything. Like they're you you constantly MLB tickets like anything you need to

you're not allowed to do anything and so I have a ton of apps that they don't ever use that are all like organized in disparaging ways but I know exactly what I mean when I'm like this is bullshit oh I know where the yeah oh I've got to do all my

EV charging that's all in the bullshit file I'll just go there and I'll say I love it other than when these companies consistently update their app And it ruins everything for me. You would hate Duolingo because sometimes they'll give you a free trial of Duolingo max,

and it changes the color of your app temporarily. And like it'll be black for a while. And then that color will over days slowly fade back to green. So you don't even get like a consistent anything with it until it goes back to its normal non-paid version. It's either red or green. green or black I think you're black doesn't nowhere near each other in my color spectrum I would hate that

I really hate that there's at the bottom my bottom four don't really adhere to that on like an Apple phone I don't know if this is true of other phones but on an Apple phone you get the bottom four which are like the ones that you're going to end up using the most most likely

and they stick they they glue to your screen no matter where you are or whichever page you're on but what do you keep in your bottom four there? I don't know. You don't even know? Oh.

No. All right. Do I have any control over that? Absolutely. Wow. I can't wait. I can't wait to look at my phone later. We'll see what other stuff it does.

You can move everything. Everything is customizable. And so that's why I'm like, well, I'll customize the shit out of this thing. No. But I do it for completely non-functional reasons. I just got used to where everything was and that's what makes it convenient to me. I just know where my things are. I know.

I should do, I should take that step, though, because when I think about the aesthetic look of your phone and how nice it is, it reminds me of, I tried to do that with my closet with all my clothes. Yeah. At one point, when I, when, and I will do this every couple of years where I'm like, I'm going to put all of, uh, the short sleeve shirts together and then all the polo shirts and then the short sleeve button down and then the long sleeve button down and then the sweaters and then with within this I am going to do a color gradient and put all of the colors where they're supposed to be within their little umbrellas of things and then that goes to shit because I only wear like four or five different things overall and over and over and over again. So I'm like, why do I have to dig all the way to the far side of the closet to get the green Henley when I just, why can't that be one of the first four things I see when I open the closet? Because that's the thing that I want. Why do I have to sift through my summertime short sleeve button downs to get to the stuff that I need? This is, this is says the

closet looks good. So I have like half a closet that looks really good. And then like a four really hard-used shirts. Yeah. Yeah, that's my wife and I share a closet and she is also, she's a planner by nature. I mean, she went to school for planning. She's an urban planner. And she, uh, her closet compared to mine is incredible. I think, here's what I think.

I don't think anybody is completely, um, put together in every quadrant of their life. They like, focus on certain ones and they're like, my house is going to be clean or like my friend group or like, whatever it is like, I will like curate this thing. and then there are other things where they're like I cannot fucking be bothered and so for me that is my closet like if I'm going camping I'm the most anal person you've ever met

I'm a different human being when I'm camping because I'm so insistent on like knowing where everything is at the end of the night packing it all back in your bag and bomb proofing it knowing like that your bag is loaded in such a way that you're not top heavy like all this stuff where I'm like insist on juffle bags for everything

there's got to be I need like a bag for every single group of items. I'm not that way in the rest of my life. My closet is a mess. My closet looks ridiculous. It's still, I have probably four bags of to still have shirts in them because I brought them home from the dry cleaner and never took them out of the plastic. And they're still sitting there in the plastic. And some, some plastics that are still in there where I have since used all of the shirts, but still left the plastic on a hanger in there. That's such a hassle to get rid of it. Yeah. I had to go all the way downstairs. I had to fold up that.

wire hanger and throw it away. Yeah. My wife, on the other hand, she not only has a color-coded side of her closet, all the clothes are color-coded, but the hangers themselves. So the hangers match the color of the clothing. It's like the dress or the shirt.

It matches the color of the hanger. She has these plastic hangers that are a rainbow of hangers, and then they are in an order. That's got to be pleasant to look at. It's gorgeous. Her side of the closet is, I Absolutely gorgeous.

But I don't know. I maybe like, I think that would be such a pain. Every single time that I'd be putting something away, and I do this with her clothes, where I'm like, well, it would be nice if after I've folded her laundry. If I'm like, well, I should put some of these, I know some of these are hang up. I should put them away. And I'm like going through and I'm like, you know what? There's like three different hangers it could be and I'm not sure which one. Yeah.

And I'm not sure where in this color spectrum it goes because I think I lack some of those cones in my eye. You do. I'm going to just leave it on the bed. Yeah. I think it adds a level of, it would add a level of frustration for me if I was doing that. The idea that it's the end of the day and I want to hang something up and I have to make sure I use the right hanger, I think that would drive me a little bonkers. That would be like an unforced stress for myself that I could easily remove, which is. which informs a lot of my design decisions in the house.

Like when we bought this house and moved in, I had some real opportunities to do things for the very first time. Like we built a tool bench in the basement. And I also had the garage for a whole lot of like our seasonal stuff and also all of my camping gear. You built a tool bench? Well, I bought it and put it together. Okay, okay.

Okay. I was excited for a minute. I thought maybe we were going to talk about building together. No, never. But like the tool bench and also like the gardening stuff in my garage where as I'm setting up, the basement and the garage are two areas of the house where basically only I am ever spending time. So they're my domains for the time being. And I could make the garage.

however I want it to be and at first it was like let's make sure all of the the the Christmas stuff is together in one spot and let's make sure all of the luggage stuff is together in one spot beach stuff camping stuff all this all these things and then I spent more time actually interacting with that space and I was like let's put the Christmas stuff in the fucking loft who cares about it why is this why is a fake Christmas tree and a box taking up any space in this area that I need what I only want quick access to all of my various gardening tools. I've done the same thing in my garage.

And right now my garage is being remade or remodeled. So at a certain point, we're going to have the opportunity to go in there and like restart this process where you're like, all right, I'm going from scratch again. Let's try and get it right. Let's try and let's sign like, let's nail it. I do like a place that's perfectly put together. And then I come into it, there's something that feels very good about putting something down where it doesn't go. It's like a borderline fetish where like I like bring back

stuff from the beach and I'm like I know the beach stuff is supposed to go in there. But this floor is so clean. No. And I could just put the bleat beach stuff right here on the floor. It almost makes the rest of the space look cleaner that this one little spot is messy. Yeah. You need it. You need the rain to know how good the sun feels. Oh man. No true words have ever been spoken. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to redoing, like, reorganizing our garage because starting from scratch on something, you're always like, it's like writing. You're like, you've got a new project and you're like, okay, this time I'm going to get it right. This time I'm going to fucking nail.

Like this time I will fully prepare. I won't just like wing it as I go. I'm going to like really get it right this time. And every single time by the end, you're like, I did. I fucked it up again. I don't know. This is me. I think it's just in my heart that I'm this.

writing is such an extension the kind of writing that I do now for last week tonight but it's not about me I'm just a writer it's such an extension of this whole conversation because we will as we're doing in the writing process of an A story on our show one of our main stories like the 16 to 28 minute long segment that is a single topic segment that starts with when the writer gets going through uh four to 800 pages of footage transcripts and uh interview transcripts and articles and stuff a lot of stuff that uh we are digesting and like eventually we're going to turn these many pages of documents into an outline for the bosses to look at and an outline is like a joceless version of this script including the clips that we think should go into the show

and where we think they should go. And so we're like, we're formatting a lot of the, the clips come in and the forms of like a full transcript. And we need to format that, like, here's where we want it to cut. Here's where we want it to flash from this time code to this time code. And we have to put it in a special format in our scripts. As I'm going through footage, I will copy and paste parts of the transcript into a separate document that I have that is sort of like where I'm collecting all of the clips.

that I think are going to be useful. And I always start that process with like searchable, tabbable line headers. So it's like there's a section for funny. There's a section for general. There's a section for sad. There's a section that is marked for something specific to that piece where it's like, this is one where like here's all the Marco Rubio stuff or here's all the stuff in West Virginia.

Whatever the topic is, there are like easy ways to classify what kind of clips you're doing and where they should go in my very neatly organized doc that I call my shot with the subject headings before I start going through the footage. Inevitably, I create more subject lines as I go and I double things up. And then I create a subject header that is basically just like useful. And that's where all, that's where all eclips end up living. Great. It's simple.

Then now you just have to go to it instead. Yeah. And that's what my, my phone interface is. It's all just one giant pile of useful because I'm going to need them all. Yeah. I mean, that's how my, I, you know that and anyone who kind of sorens of the show will know that I used to do this podcast out of the back of the garage where I was with a bunch of paint My unkindest of co-workers called it the pantry from The Shining.

Great. And it was my space, though. And so, like, it was messy. And, like, when I would work, I would work back there, too. And so, like, occasionally, like, I'd just spill stain on the floor and be like, well, that's, that stain's going to be there forever because I'm not cleaning it up. Like, I don't have to. Nobody else goes back here.

It's just me and the spiders. And then I would, I would organize everything. in my own, as though no one had ever learned how to organize in their entire life. I was the first person on earth being like, well, let's figure out what organization is. And so it wasn't right. It was a messy system. But it was a system that I had memorized. So I knew where the stuff was and I knew where to dig for it.

But it was not, if you were to walk in there, you'd be like, this is a shh. This is, people can't live like this. You have to stop. Sounds like your phone is what I'm saying. It is my phone. and it makes sense and it's the shape of your brain and yeah i don't i i it's kind of sound crazy i know where everything is all of the stuff that i'm in charge of i know exactly where it all is even i have like a closet and a dresser and a nightstand with two drawers and if someone was

like casing the joint and they were trying to figure out where i put things trying to figure out like a system for storks and then they opened the nightstand they're like then we do the dresser ah the dresser is just closed closet is closed the nightstand must be where that hang on this is also like this is also two shirts and two pants and I don't understand why that wouldn't be with the other shirts what's and now at this point the guys are taking out their scheme as like can we just talk for a second that like there's a there's a drawer that's clearly for shorts but there's another drawer that's for workout shorts and then a third drawer that's for like a different kind of short

what do we think is going on here let's put all the shorts in the bed and try and figure out what the differences between these because he's clearly identified them as different and I'm not seeing it I think if I had to guess I would say like these are our house shorts I don't understand why he would need to put them in a separate drawer and now he has two shorts drawers that are both half full

but you and I know scratch the same it when we go to hotels where it's like I get to start from the beginning again maybe I am an organized person let's just try yeah and then in a hotel I get to organize all my clothes out I get to put everything where it goes and I'm like yeah I could be this I could be this kind of human and then by the end of the trip it's like there's a shoe in a drawer and like a belt hanging where the jacket should be yeah once I put everything away in a hotel I'm like you know they should really make this for like houses too they should make

They should make it for homes. That would be so nice. The one phone thing that I have, and I'm sure we've talked about it before, is the app Tick-Tick, that does not pay me. And they don't need to because I'm going to use the app forever. And that's the only thing on my phone that is good. Everything else on my phone is bad. But Tick-Tick is an app that organizes my... It's just a to-do-list app.

And it probably has a lot of great features that. I'm not taking advantage of I don't need anything else. It pulls from my Google Calendar. So anything I put in the calendar pops up in there. And Google Calendar has events that my wife will put on my calendar. It has all of the birthdays of people in my life. It has holidays. It has anything that I've ever put in a calendar before populates in there.

And the rest of Tick-Tick is just whatever I put in there on a day-to-day basis. Or I could set things in the future or I could set things to be. recurring and if it's no it's no exaggeration if if it's not in my tic-dick app i am not doing it it doesn't exist i trust the process so thoroughly and the process is me and the google counter it's still it's still always me like at some point putting the work in and saying here's what you like tomorrow you need to have you have a meeting and you have to write uh 2,000 words for your for this thing and you need to take out the garbage and you need to do XYZ all those things it's still me doing it it's not a ghost it's not a person in charge

but it never feels that way because I wake up and look a tick tick and it tells me all the stuff and I love it I click the things when I'm done with them and uh if something in the house doesn't get done it is tick tick's fault never my fault. If I was supposed to do it, my phone would have told me. And because my phone didn't, that must mean it was someone else's responsibility. Yeah. I think it's just, it's like whatever you commit to habit.

And like committing to habit is a big endeavor. Yeah. Like the same reason you won't move stuff around on your phone is like, I already have the habit built and I'm going to have to restructure. I'm going to have to rebuild the habit in my own brain. And that sounds awful. And that's like, I think that that's. that's pretty much everything it's like why they teach in therapy is it really yeah yeah the habit

whether or not it's working for you it's what you're used to and you're like well then this is the system like this is how things will go from now on and so it's the same way we're like google calendar i have fucking punted on calendars sure where i password saves i'm on it like anytime i get a new password the first place even before i set the password in the new app or whatever i'm going to my passport safe. I'm putting it in. I'm getting it all in there because I hate the feeling of showing up at a site I haven't been to in six months and being like, I got it. I really need to, this is time sensitive and I have no idea what the password is. And like trying a bunch of different combinations and getting locked up. So I have like passwords, I'm, I'm the fucking man at.

But the like obviously other things, it's only because I created a habit out of it. If I, the act of trying to add a single thing to my calendar, it's so daunting that I'm like, I'll just remember it, or I won't go. Yeah. Do you remember what my old system was back in the crack.com days? You would, anytime that there was a new meeting or anything like that, you would go, Siri, set a meeting for, and you would use your iPad. No, I would not. Yeah, you use your iPad for everything.

Siri was not even invented. This was pre-I-pad and even, like post-I-I-Pad. iPad for a while. Were you ready it down on a Post-it note? I'm going to tell you and you're going to remember immediately that I every year would have physical calendars that would sit on my desk that I would fill out. That's the dream. Honestly, I think that would help me so much. I'm shocked you don't remember it because it was like they weren't hanging up because I didn't have space to hang up. They were just like lay flat on my desk and I would look at it and it would have it would have meetings and it would have birthdays and it would also have like at some point

I was writing what my mileage was supposed to be if I was training for a race I was like flip a page and be like oh I was supposed to be running nine miles tomorrow and then I guess I would just run nine miles and it was every year I would go to Barnes & Noble or wherever and get a physical calendar and fill it out with everything I needed yeah yeah well that's I honestly I think I would do way better in that circumstance. What's the, what was the Supreme Court Justice who had Bruce keys

fucking written all over his calendar? Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah, Brett Kavanaugh, you're, you're doing a Brett Kavanaugh. Like somebody people are going to stay lower, well, well, David, that's what we're calling it,

doing a Brett Kavanaugh. Everyone's calling it that and everyone knows that Daniel does Brett Kavanaugh's. I don't think. But like the fact that he would have you, when he was saying, no, you know what, I didn't. This is my memory of it.

So maybe it might be wrong. there's no way I could have assaulted that woman because it wasn't on my calendar yeah and then you're like what I do that make he says and you see his calendar you're like oh shit he wrote everything down yeah I remember during that hearing and people like this guy is really fucking crazy about calendars and I was just like yeah this guy's a bad guy with some interesting ideas silently throwing your own calendars in the trash and try not to make a noise with the bag in there Man, yeah, yeah, that's right. I do remember now. You would write everything down physically. And honestly, that's still, that's still my preferred method. It's still like, if I can write something now physically, I'll actually do it. I would love to never use my phone for anything. Yeah. typing on my phone feels like such a daunting, awful task. Whereas, like, just I have stuff written on, I don't even have like a journal anymore. I have just pieces of paper around me. There's like bills that have stuff written on them. There's like, just, I have stuff written on them.

is sticky notes occasionally. Sticky notes is like a best case scenario. There are, when I actually do find a book where I'm like, oh, I did write some stuff in here. I go and look at what it is and it's like the names of players I wanted to draft in fantasy football three years ago. Sure. It's like, okay. Well, this clearly hasn't been used. My wife has a system that amazes me that works because it's not my system.

and I watched her interact with it today where she went to this strange phantom basket of garbage that we keep on our kitchen counter and she took a stack of mail in it and then paid some like physical bills that we needed to address and made phone calls based on what was in one of the letters that she kept and that is so foreign to me. And I know, like, in her head, she's just like, she gets the mail. She looks at the mail and knows, like, this is a future problem. I will put it in the Shea pile of the basket. And then I will address it when it's time to go through the basket and do things. And like, sorry, you know what's crazy? There's a me pile, too. There's a stuff that's that you've never seen.

Absolutely not. There's stuff that demands my attention. And I feel like if that was really important, I mean, this feels like a credit card. But I feel like if it really was important, it would be in the tick, and it's not so toss it please I do physical bills as well every time they're like and I get into the system and it's like do you want to just go paperless and I'm like absolutely not I love my system where I get the mail I do look at it and I'm like okay the bills have started rolling in for the month I'll wait till all of them are there and then I'll get them

all together I'll go to my bank account and I'll just bang them all out at once but that's you know i understand that's not everybody's system and also it's a colossal waste of paper when i'm done with my bills it's disgusting and it's like me separating out the true pieces of paper from the envelopes that have a little plastic screen in them because you're not allowed to recycle those is it's its own terrible task and i because the system and i do want to want to make sure our audience heard that and and thought about it that you get the the physical bills but you are still paying them online. You are not, you're not doing the thing that people get physical bills for. You're not doing that like, oh, I don't trust computers. I like to sign a check, a paper check and

put it in the mail my computer with the envelope that they give me for this purpose. I'm still paying it all. I still have to go, I use my, and I have to use my bit, my password safe every single time. I want to go into my bank. And then I go, set down, I open up all the mail and I and I type in every single thing that I owe. But the reason I do it is that I don't want to do that direct pay because I need to see it. I need to see the changes in the gas bill throughout the year and know what the trends are. I need to know every and anytime something is errant, I'm like, ah, I know what that should look like. Whereas if I just, it took it away completely and it became an autonomous process, I would be, I'd be so scared all the time that I was being taken advantage

of i mean i'm it's it's rare for me to to be the more tech savvy in any conversation yeah but i'm telling you something you know that i i received a text message about my water bill yesterday and the text message is like your water bill is this much um and i oh you're wasn't sure and and i said that it to my wife and she said that's higher than normal and i went to the website and logged in and it it has exactly all the information that you're talking about it has it even it says what i paid last month it even has a little like summary of what the 12 month average was so i know where i am relative to that so you could like this has all the information that you want and and like a like a better version of it too yeah but is it on paper right in front of me

So it can be I have one more You can write it down about writing in relationship to this You talk about how The process of like how How tough it is like To write something alone

We were talking about this before the It's tough but it's all I've ever wanted I'm just a writer I don't need all this smoke It became really clear to me At the current show where I work Which is American Dad That writing like a full episode of it

Thank you Thank you. Thank you. I'm just, you know what? I don't need the attention. That's not why I do it. I just want to make the world better. I want to make everybody happier, you know? When you're breaking a show, how crucial it is to have a group breaking it with you. Because your brain, as you're like building an episode and you're, it's by act, right? And you know, like, what scenes are going to go in every act and what the emotional turn of the scene of every scene is going to be, what the arc of the episode is saying, like that kind of stuff, you are. you're basically doing this. You're creating the pattern in your own brain. And you're like memorizing everything and then shuffling it around. So you want to know where everything's placed. So it's very easy to like shuffle it if you need to or change or throw stuff out and put new stuff in. But a lot of it is just creating the habit basically of the episode.

And then there's no room for you to fucking think about how to be funny. You need it at the rest of the room to be like to be adaptable and to be like, well, let's just switch that out. And you're like, oh, no, that's really heavy. Like that's a lot of heavy lifting because then if that's a lot of heavy lifting because then if that changes like that's going to move everything else behind that's going to tumble and they're like yeah but who cares and you're like oh yeah but like in my brain the structure is there already and if we break it in my brain then I have to relearn it again and so so much of it is you just memorizing the shape of the episode so that you can move things around and that takes up an

enormous amount of brain space to do our boss Tim always has a giant cork board with index cards for like every column of the show basically and it's in a there's like a color coordination to it and a few notes on it that like very clearly makes sense to his brain and when we used to do in-person meetings and someone would suggest something in a meeting about like how a certain part of the script didn't work didn't flow correctly he could turn and look at this board and see the first. full visual shape of the episode and what happens if you move something around in a way that like intellectually i understood but didn't that wasn't how i wrote the show so it it seems very

disconnected to me now i'm i'm taking this pilot class with this guy matthew star i highly recommend it and i'm i'm very quickly on my way to becoming a cork board guy as i'm working on like yeah writing an hour-long pilot for for a dromedy thing where i'm like it would be really great if I could just see a thing in my shorthand visually somewhere that I could like move pieces around and see what

it still looks like and make sure the tower is still standing after that because it's that's all the ready process is like yeah fucking pulling things out and seeing if it still stands pulling other stuff out seeing it still stands adding things to see it now if it's lopsided and like making sure that you still have a structure

and a shape to it and that's it's like such an underrated part of writing but it's not fun it's like being the person who's in charge of memorizing that stuff so it's your episode you're the one who's writing it all up on the board and it's like you're boarding the stuff and you're boarding all the beats for it and as you're going you're like people will suggest things and the room laughs but you don't because you're like you're not thinking about it in that terms in those terms yet you know if something like you'll hear something you'll be like oh yeah that's good but you're never like you don't have an impulsive like someone in the room

was like someone in the room was like and a fourth wheel here and you're like yeah yeah it's a tricycle though so i just don't think i don't think it would still be a tricycle if you right another wheel on there it's yeah there's so much time spent with the person whoever's breaking the story just like someone will suggest something the person will not say whether they like that idea or not they just look at the board again and they're like okay if that goes in what does it do to everything else here and like and like that's not a that you're not you need somebody else who's like helping like to create the story because otherwise you would just make something that is structurally good and that might

be a bullshit episode that might be terrible it might not be compelling at all because all you've done is like you've organized a closet basically you've been like well this was just for me yeah but doesn't it look very nice isn't it super pleasing to stare at it's pleasant right even though it's not to engage with you hit all the expectations you could have predicted the entire thing. Well, isn't that fun? Isn't that what we want from the story? Anyway, I just broke a story

and now I'm out writing it. And when I say I broke a story, everybody else in the room broke a story while I sat there and looked at a board and then helped me drag it across the finish line as I hemmed in hot and got worried the entire time about how it's not working. Oh, man, this was a great episode, Soren.

I feel pretty good about it. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Well, you know what we did? We started with phones and we took it all the way to our jobs. I don't think we started with phones. I think we started with jobs and then we, well, we bookended. You know what? This is a very, like, it's a very symmetrical episode.

It's pretty, I love the shape of it. It's, uh, it's long. That's fine. That's, yeah. This is not by no means our longest episode. Thank you everybody for listening. This is, of course, quick question with Sorin and Daniel. So if you like us, you can find us on Patreon as well.

You can go find shorter episodes where we also talk about writing sometimes. We talk about all kinds of stuff and stuff that you wouldn't hear on the ordinary podcast. You can also see videos of us if you find us on YouTube doing the same podcast. And if you liked our theme song, that's by me, Rex. If you like this podcast in general, that's all Gabe Harder. He did it all for us. And that's it. That's it.

Goodbye. Bye. random 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