Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Fun Facts with Jason Pargin

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

The guys are joined by friend of the show Jason Pargin for Fun Facts Show & Tell. Everyone brought the heat, so soon you'll be armed with facts about everything from the Wilhem Scream, to counting to a million, to how to keep birds alive in a world with wind turbines. Learn more about Jason, his new book I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, and the rest of work at atwww.johndiesattheend.com. How's this for a fun fact? Support the show and get a bonus episode every other Friday for $5 at www.patreon.com/quickquestion Go to mybookie.website/QQ and use promo code QQ to cash in on a double deposit bonus for a limited time. Find Soren & Daniel on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialFind the show on IG:https://www.instagram.com/qqsorenanddaniel/

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 can talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? Who will I be? Do you remember? Words without a word, words without a word What are you going on? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here

I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, senior writer for last week tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents and for the the time being, stationary man Daniel O'Brien. Joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello. This episode is sponsored by MyBookie, an online sports book with live betting. Get started today by going to mybookie.website slash qq and use promo code qq to cash in on a double deposit bonus for a limited time. Hello everybody, I'm So and Bowie. I am a writer for American Dad. And I mean, as much as I

do want to hear all about what's going on with you, Daniel, I'd also like the opportunity for our guest to speak as well on this podcast. We have a guest today, author of all of your favorite books. I think every book, he wrote every book, right? But he- I first- I'm an old head. I first got on to him when he did the Iliad. That I thought was super tight. And I was like, this guy's got something to say. I'm gonna stick around. I was on him already from the Epic of Gilgamesh, but like that's your thing. It's cool to come in. Oh, you're older. Yeah. Our guest is Jason Pargin, everybody.

Jason Pargin, say hello. I always try to come in early, let everybody know. I'm not here to ruin the vibe. I know that the appeal of this show is that it's two best friends and you're listening to them talk about their lives. I'm not here to disrupt that, but I do off the top on our talk about something that

bothered me the last time we spoke. And I want to confront you about it here rather than in private because all of my conversations are conducted via podcast and if it can become content as something that I think a lot of listeners pointed out. Uh, so I want to clear the air. You two both work in the upper echelons of showbiz. I mean, literally, literally has more Emmy wins than the entire

cast and crew of the wire. Considered the greatest show of all time. Dear single handedly has more trophies than everyone involved in that show. Okay. Single-handedly has more trophies than everyone involved in that show. Okay. When I come on, I therefore try to coax celebrity stories out of both of you. Right. And I feel like, and you're fine to correct me if I'm wrong about this.

I feel like the celebrity stories you tell are the exact same stories somebody would tell if they just lived in LA or New York for a year. Where it's like, oh yeah, I've got one. Three months ago, I was like in line at a taco truck and who was right behind me? Andy Dick. I didn't say anything to him. Where the stories the viewers want and the listeners want

is, yes, Jason, last weekend, we were out drinking with Jared Leto and Kendrick Lamar and James Cromwell. And who did we run into? The new Brad Pack, of course. The pussy posse. But Billy Eilish with Clint Eastwood, it turns out they have beef with one of those people I said, Jared Leto.

Billie Eilish, she whips out a blackjack and just starts wailing on us, like, that you are in the scene with these people. Yeah. Do you not have celebrity friends? That's what I'm asking. Then we can go on with the show, but I want to clear this up,

because I think a lot of people are concerned. Yeah. That you don't post a lot of photos with, you know, Sabrina Carpenter or whatever. Yeah. It's true that I hardly ever post photos with Sabrina Carpenter. I'll own that. I'll come to that. I think, um, the, if we start trading in some of the wildest, weirdest celebrity shit that we both know, we're gonna lose our in, I think. We're gonna lose our access, and then people are gonna stop letting their hair down around us.

Yeah, I'm not gonna get... it's... If I start speaking out of turn, I'm never gonna be invited back to Cromwell's private fuck island, and I I wanna be there, where all of my friends are. Where we do our favorite thing. I don't wanna spoil what that is. And I'd like to maintain those relationships. And also, because, like, Jason, imagine you, one of your... Jesus, what do people who are sworn...

It's been so long. If you have a friend but they're not famous, what do you call are sworn, it's been so long. If you have a friend, but they're not famous, what do you call them? Oh, a pedestrian. Pedestrian, if you're with one of your pedestrians and they do something wild, and then you get on a mildly successful podcast and tell the world about it,

your friend's gonna be upset. Imagine you did that thing, except your friend was someone like a Billy Crudup, someone who actually mattered in the in like the the world you would be devastated And you know You know that all the trades are gonna pull that moment out of the podcast and turn it into a headline Absolutely like you mentioned offhand like you know well Jared Leto You know he's getting in shape to play Skeletor in the new He-Man reboot.

It's like, well, boom, now that's a headline because that wasn't out there yet. So I guess I understand. Nobody tell the headlines about what he just said. I mean, that is happening. But please don't, don't pull that. That was a good example, Jason, but please everybody just be respectful. I think that, yeah, I'm not interested in burning my bridges to James Cromwell's Fuck Island, but we also don't, we don't encounter celebrities generally. We are, we're living lives of, well, I would say like elite podcasters. Yeah. Which means that we spend a lot of time at home podcasting. And so all of my encounters with celebrities are not at parties.

They are situations where I'm, I was on a plane to Daniel's bachelor party and Pat Noswalt was in first class. And I was like, oh, I have all kinds of connections. He's done my show. Like he's, I've directed him sort of, and like he's also a good friend with somebody else who left my show and they started Modoc together. And then I was like, he doesn't want to hear from me.

So I just walked right past him. Didn't even do it. Yeah. Jason, this'll, cause you're such a, you're such a weird little freak. You're such a creep. This'll wet your appetite for celebrity gossip. The kind that Sorin and I trade in is I was recently in LA for a work trip and in the

airport lounge on the way back I saw JK Simmons, someone of whom I'm a huge fan. And this is like how I want to say 95% of my celebrity interactions go is that I see him and then I go, and then I text my dad JK Simmons is at the United Lounge at LAX and my dad says wow Send Short guy send and I go yes, and that's it That is every almost every celebrity encounter I've ever had is text my dad And then we talked about how short they are and then we all go on with our lives

Is that what you wanted? What's your beak? I think it's fascinating because people assume, I think in Hollywood that everybody kind of just, you see each other walking, like you're all living on one compound. You know what I mean? Yeah. Where sometimes Daniel makes it sound like he's only met John Oliver the same number of times I have, which is obviously not, obviously not true. Like they work on the same show. He's an important

person on the show, but it's just sometimes he will phrase it as, yes, he came in and said hello to the writers one time. And we all felt, we all felt good about that. This is crazy that you mentioned James Cromwell because I do know James Cromwell. Oh really? From outside of Hollywood? From just like you're both in the climbing community? The high school that I went to, Colorado Rocky Mountain School, his son, John Cromwell, went there.

Ah. And James Cromwell, another very, very short guy, right? Famously short. Pete Slauson Right? Right? Soren? Soren He is a giant. He is as big as you can imagine a human being being. Pete Slauson Listeners, I was testing Soren to see if he was lying about James Cromwell, who is six foot seven. You can check that on Wikipedia.

But I was trying to catch him in a lie there. He would say, oh yes, tiny, tiny man. I used to put him on my shoulders and give him little piggyback rides. Anyway, so now you can start your show. I apologize. I just wanted to clear the air with that. I do think, no, but I think any of like, uh, the real celebrity interactions would bore you? Like, I met such and such a celebrity at a party that was stacked with other celebrities,

and we talked about Star Wars, period. And that's it. And it's like a teen heartthrob that you definitely know. And I, talking about J.J. Abrams' Star Wars, as like, as fans would. Or I talked to a very famous rock star about scores for children's cartoon shows and like which ones we liked growing up and it's like the most boring, most mundane, the stuff that you talk about with with your civilians, your pedestrians, on a much greater scale because it's us doing it but it's still like just the everyday average boring shit. Like there's no...

like James Corden tells a story about Tom Cruise taking him skydiving as a way to like become friends with him and then like sending Corden on a scavenger hunt to find Tom Cruise's number so they can text like that was this big grand thing and I think everyone assumes that's what everyone in Hollywood is like. I think the most important thing to remember no one is like Tom Cruise. No one in the world is like Tom Cruise. He's the only Tom Cruise and he and stories from and about him are the the best but you can't use that as an explanation of what other actors are

like any more than you could use it as an explanation of what other actors are like any more than you could use it as an explanation for what other Toms are like. It's just the one Tom Cruise. Okay. Because I guess like there was an episode of there's an episode of Hot Ones where Shia LaBeouf was eating the wings and he was talking about how one time he and Tom Hardy got into a nude fight

at a house he was renting and they fell down the stairs and like threw out his back because he had just come out of the shower and they had this thing where they were ambushing each other and doing like MMA moves on each other. And so they had like a naked fight. Like to me, that's the kind of thing, like to them, that's normal. But to the rest of us peasants, it's like, well, that's an interesting insight into the way all of these people live. Everyone in Hollywood lives like this.

So it's possible that what you see as a normal everyday story, because you're in that bubble among the glitterati, as you are constantly saying, to the rest of us, it would still seem fascinating. But I get why it may seem tasteless to, because to you it's just routine. Yeah. I mean, I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, Jason. I did just hear an interview with Rob Lowe where he was on a show, on a podcast,

and he's talking about the set of Tommy Boy, and he's saying that he watched a fistfight erupt between David Spade and Farley because Farley stepped on David Spade's turkey sandwich. And I was like, oh, and in the middle of it, he's like, I don't know, is this interesting? And they were like, yeah, yeah, this is, please tell us everything.

And he had like 20 Chris Farley stories that were incredible, that were amazing. And Rob Lowe had no idea that these were interesting stories. And they're making a feature film about the early days of Saturday Night Live, because in that writer's room, it was not like, oh, we got into it, we played our funny prank. It was no, like Bill Murray pulled out a switch blade and held it to Chevy Chase's throat. And they went smashing through a window because they were fighting over whose cocaine that was. He had snorted his cocaine and then John Belushi came in and clotheslined Lorne Michaels and

sent him to the hospital. But then we all got incredibly high and had an orgy that night and we all made up and we had to get up in one hour and shoot the show and it was perfect. Everybody loved it. And I don't know, maybe, maybe it's not like that anymore. Maybe that was old Hollywood. I mean, we, I generally also don't want to kiss and tell either. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that happens with celebrities that like we get into fights, it would be easy

to burn that bridge, but then you generally the orgies do solve all of it. So yeah, we don't want to bring it to the podcast then. And the cocaine is for the table. You know, we would, no one would, it's different now because there's just so much of it. No one would argue over whose cocaine is that. Cause it's just like, it's for, it's for the people. It's for everybody. What are you doing? It's in your gift bag when you leave the party. At the end of the day, I think you eventually all find like solace in fact, it's like, look, we can have our disagreements, but we're all sexy here.

Yeah. We're all hot. We're all famous. Like there's nothing, you know, our fights should be with the filth out there, not among each other. Absolutely. We need solidarity with each other. There are people trying to get into this party, and it's our job to keep them out.

To keep them out, right. Because then the party will be worse if they're here. Hey, it's football season again, and we're all obviously very excited about that. But there are gonna be moments this season, I guarantee, that are, I would say, lull sounds like a generous word for it. I'm preparing you all for, like, let's look at the schedule. November 10th. That's going to be Giants and Panthers.

Who is going to be watching that game? Well, it depends on if you got a dog in that fight or not. There are Giants fans out there still, I promise you. There are some very, I think maybe, some red-faced Carolina fans. But if you don't like either of those teams and you think, why would I watch a game that's going to end up 15 to 12? I want you to know that if you have some money on that game, suddenly it becomes a lot more fun to watch.

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Go to mybookie.website slash QQ and use promo code QQ to make your football season a winning season with MyBookie. Let's get into the show. We should probably talk about Jason's upcoming book. Jason, your new book. I'm starting to worry about this big black... Is it Black Box of Doom or Big Black Box of Doom?

I'm starting to worry about this Black Box of Doom. It is a standalone novel that is not a part of anything else I've written or this podcast. You don't need familiarity with anything that's happening here. It is its own thing. Daniel, everyone at the publisher calls it Big Box of Doom. this podcast, you don't need familiarity with anything that's happening here. It is its own thing. Daniel, everyone at the publisher calls it Big Box of Doom. I find that fascinating.

I can show you email subject lines from months after we decided on the title, they're inserting the word big. The box is not that big. It's like a steamer trunk size. But for some reason, there's something with the human brain that wants to, and now I'm wondering if it should have been called Big Box of Doom the whole time, because everyone does it. It's not one thing. I've seen my agent do it. Multiple podcasts. I'm not kidding at all. There's for some reason, Black Box of Doom doesn't scan and they want to insert the word big. So, well, too late now. We can't be changed now.

There was a lot of how to fight with presidents from my publisher and my agent when I was publishing that book 10 million years ago. And I had that same thought where I was like, should it be with? I kind of, I like the simplicity, but it seems like everyone wants to say how to fight with presidents. But, oh well, it's too late. But I don't want to talk about my book for once. I want to talk about Jason's book, which off the top of my head, I would say is a road trip through America that is equal parts hilarious and terrifying.

Jason understands humanity better than most, and it's inspiring that his diagnosis is ultimately optimistic, which is the blurb that I wrote for your book that I saw on the Amazon page. humanity better than most and it's inspiring that his diagnosis is ultimately optimistic Which is the blurb that I wrote for your book that I saw on the Amazon page It's it's on the back of the back of the dust jacket. Is it really that's fun. Thank Yeah, now they just it they did spell your name this is David O'Brien, but it's that's fine They'll know they'll know what that means. Yeah, they can actually reach the end through there. That's fine. But listeners, if you don't understand, it's common to reach out to people to do a blurb on your book. And it is universally understood in the industry that they do not read the book first. They just give some generic like, oh, a thrill ride. It really exciting. Loved it. Daniel's thing was actually specific enough that I think he read it, which is weird.

I was very happy. I read it just this past weekend, and I gave you that blur back in March. I was so happy that there was a road trip element in the book. That was a shot that I took. That's a real gamble. Yeah. My plan was if there wasn't a road trip and the audience was confused and they confronted me about it I would say you didn't get that it was a road trip like I would make it like a subtext thing But luckily we don't have to embarrass anyone because there is a road trip in it And the book just to like strip us of all of our bits and stupidity

it's fantastic and I love it and I truly it's still like strange for me to talk to you Jason and about your writing because I, as former co-workers we've spent hours together on the phone, we've gone to boring meetings together, we've wrestled nude like normal co-workers do, but I still like have a separate part of my brain that is just a pure fan of your writing, and I'm constantly amazed at how you have the same, like, Schwarzwaldian approach to writing, which is just like, start funny and big, and then build and build and build and build and build. It's just, it's like every sentence is funnier than the previous sentence, every chapter funnier and more engaging than the previous chapter, and it's just like, just

an impossible magic trick to watch unfold that I can't figure out. And I like it. It's a great book, and thank you for letting me read it in advance and write about it. And more importantly, thank you for not charging me. I hate supporting authors, but I love reading and this has been a great loophole for me. That's incredibly kind and if anybody wants to know the secret to writing that way, it is just rewriting every sentence like 12 times because you're so paranoid that somebody paid like $30 and that's the sentence I'm giving them. It's not a healthy way. It's not, no one else does it this way. I, but it's, it's a draft that has

been written and rewritten and rewritten and trying very hard. It's like, if there are two bad sentences in a row, they're going to throw this in the trash because I am like that with things I read. There's so many books I've paid full price for the book and on the first page it's like there's two paragraphs like last person can't write. Yeah. I feel that way about some TV shows that fall in a very familiar rhythm that was like bucked by... did you watch Jason Fallout, the Fallout series? I watched most of it. I still have the rest of it saved. I liked it very much. I was reading... I'm saving it for later, is what I'm saying. I'm saving it as a treat for myself. Tuck tucked under your pillow. So that someday you'll pull it out

and dust it off and take a look again. There was an interview with the writers and showrunners at that show where they were talking about what to me felt like a revolutionary idea, even though it's very obvious writing advice, but they were saying, when we found ourselves writing the boring parts

that we felt were necessary, we just cut them. We cut the boring parts that we felt were necessary, we just cut them. We cut the boring parts because they were boring. And I think you can see that in the writing of that show that it's just like every episode is kind of fun and kind of interesting and fairly lean. And you can really see it, you can see that advice not being taken

on a lot of other modern prestige shows where they seem like they were all operating from the same playbook where action ramps up to a certain point and then it's just to episode like seven or eight of a ton episode series and then they just like digress with a weird hour-long flashback where we're like this is just kind of like a poignant mood piece and it does like work if you think an episode of television can be a poem then sure this strange little side quest on The Walking Dead is a little standalone poem, but there's a part of me that is also thinking like you can make You can make the whole show The Fireworks Factory

You can make it all the exciting part without having to do this weird diversion that that so many modern writers have gotten in their heads well yeah every show needs to for a little bit suck and be boring and so this is this is around the part of our season where we have to have like the shitty episode that everyone gets frustrated by while they wait for the resolution of the show they've been watching okay guys anybody out there who are friends of Daniel's that work on gets frustrated by while they wait for the resolution of the show they've been watching. Okay, guys, anybody out there who are friends of Daniel's that work on House of the Dragon? He was not talking about House of the Dragon. He was talking about The Walking Dead.

This is all going to shake out Jason in the orgy. Don't worry about it. The House of the Dragon is, I know a lot of people love the show. They had, whenever you watched an episode that had a lot of dragon stuff in it and you knew that was a $30 million episode, it's like, next week it's going to be a meeting heavy episode. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of meetings next week around their fancy table where they discuss the meeting of what just happened with the dragon stuff.

Yeah. Or they will talk about a battle that happened off screen. It is a rhythm that we've trained ourselves as TV creators and also audience members that, like, like no one really revolts when they get the boring episode seven episodes into a ten episodes series. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand how television works. It's a, it's a juicy thing and then a homework thing and then a homework thing and then a juicy thing. It's like, what if it didn't need to be though? What if it could all be Fallout or one of Jason's books where there's just like it would be

insane for an author 300 pages into a book to be like and now just here's a chapter that like I know sucks I know it was like kind of a boring but the book ran out of budget midway through. And so now we just have to have one chapter that is like a character that you don't really care about talking about their childhood. And then we'll finish the book later, but like just get through this objectively slow, bad, boring chapter and then we can go back to having fun. You would never read any Hardy Boys, Dan or Nancy Drew, because that shit used to happen every single time in those books. Those books were written by the word, like sensed by the word.

So you could just see those fucking authors dragging shit out. There's a whole, I read a Nancy Drew book that's called like the Phantom of Brown Bridge or whatever. And I would say that 40% of that book is dedicated to a golf match, like a golf tournament. And I'm reading it to my son and I was like, what's going on here? And so I looked it up and I was like, why, what are we doing? And they're like, oh yeah, most of those old Nancy Drew books, she was getting paid by the word. And so she was just like putting as much padding as she could into it. How old were you

before you found out that Carolyn Keene wasn't an author? That that wasn't a that they just have a team of writers that write these? I was 38 years old when I found out. 42, yeah, 42. I did not know that. Yeah. Well, I think that's going to take us into this the meat of this episode of Quick Question, which is the all fun facts episode. and Jason knocked it right out of the park with a fun fact that I had not known that that Carolyn Keene who I assume is the author of the earth like the name behind Nancy Drew is not a person it's a collection of people. Yeah same with the author of the Hardy Boys books it was always a factor is always an assembly line that that name just means this is the slave labor we employed to write for one penny a

page or whatever it was back in those terrible days. Was there ever, because I know like at this point, or at a certain point, James Patterson was outsourcing so much of his books to people who had been trained to write in the James Patterson style, but he was at one point a real guy. Do we know if there was, if this, this Carolyn King person was like, did she write one Nancy Drew book first or was it always a collection of ghosts? Uh, no, there is no Carolyn King. I don't believe it's, it's, it's, uh, I'm going to Google that right now because in case her estate sues me. The original writer of Hardy Boys, Edward Strat...

I know Edder Stratemeyer, I think that's his name. He was a real guy and like loathe the fact that he wrote the Hardy Boys. The early, and I think he did like the first batch of them. That view bought like that box set when you were a kid or you had that, then those were him. and he hated it he hated that that was his because that became his legacy and he wanted to be a real writer and he was just doing this kid books on the side and just being like I don't know fucking mysteries are easy and just started

like pecking away and uh then everyone was like these are the books these are this is what you will be remembered for and he was he had this like real moment of like oh oh no and he refused to do interviews refused to do anything about the hardy boys because he hated it so much yeah that's very funny to be mad about something so successful and like this is what you'll be remembered for over my dead body yeah sure if you want it doesn't matter this is this is great for us no carolyn keen is that's a completely made up fake person. Same as like the Mavis Beacon typing software. There was no Mavis Beacon. It's just two words they put together.

There's, it's just in a stock photo model. Yeah, totally fake person. Jesus. Great fun fact to kick us off. Soren, you got a fun fact for us. Yeah, thank you. Does this episode need more setup? No, I think this is great.

What we're gonna do is just talk about, and I'm about to do exactly what you just said, but I want like, we're just like looking for facts that aren't like necessarily trivia, but just like really interesting things that probably nobody knows and should not be lost to time. I have another celebrity one that I'll put out there. OK, the guy who sang Purple People Eater, do you remember that song? Yeah, sure. OK, his name's Shub Wooly.

Shub Wooly also did the Wilhelm scream. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So the guy who sang Purple People Eater is the same guy who did that famous scream that you hear in every single movie. Yeah. What was his job?

What kind of freak job did he have? He did both of those things. I think that he was not only, because he was a, like a, he was good performer, a good performer. So I think that that song was maybe not written by him, but he was the one who would go on shows constantly and perform it. Cause he's doing like the voice and everything. He's making a lot of faces and he was also an actor and he was in an old cowboy movie. And in the cowboy movie, gets shot in a river and does that scream. And then like later on, somebody who was,

I can't even remember who it was, somebody who like reintroduced it to us all. It was a director, I think, who used to be a fan of these old Westerns. It was like, that's a very funny scream. And just started putting it in stuff. Oh, it was the sound man for Star Wars. And he added the Wilhelm scream to Star Wars.

And then it became like, blew up from there. What's his name? Dora Birch. The sound guy from Star Wars is a legend. And it's shameful that I don't know his name. It's like something Bert, because Star Wars, if you didn't know, is entirely a sound design film. Like this is a guy that's like,

hey, Darth Vader needs a thing. How about if his breathing is really heavy? Like world-changing sound design things. And it's like the lightsabers, hey, they should make a noise when you wave them around. Maybe be like a heavy electronic wire sound. Like, whooom. Like, that was this guy. It's Star Wars' garbage without that stuff.

There was actually a sequel to that song, Purple People Eater. There was Purple People Eater meets the Witch Doctor because the Witch Doctor song, like, ooh, ah, ooh, ah, ah, bing, bang, they were all very similar. And I think, in fact, Peepleator might've been based on Wish Doctor. So there's the song that would the two meet. It's by the Big Bopper, okay?

Not super successful, but the B side of that record, Chantilly Lane. Like the song that made the Big Bopper. Can I, I don't know, the problem with the fun fact is that it prompts follow-up questions that the originator of the fun fact might not know. So forgive me, but the the Sheb Woolley, did he die incredibly wealthy?

I feel like I probably know the answer is gonna be no because when you first tell me about this person who is Directly responsible for two iconic things I get excited What a jack-of-all-trades what a maestro and then I realized there's no way back in the past Whatever year any of this might have happened. There's no way He has a copyright on his scream that has now been in he has a copyright on his scream that has now been in 10,000 movies. There's no way he's seeing any profits from that. So I think he lived to see that whole resurgence of the Wilhelm scream. He didn't die until 1999, which means that...

Wow. Yeah, he died at 82 in 1999. And so I think he saw that Wilhelm scream show up in multiple places. Now, I don't know that he got paid for any of that, because obviously Hollywood was different then. But I can't tell. I wonder what the first time it showed up in another movie, if they were like, check that out, it's pretty cool. I call it the Wilhelm scream. And he's like, huh, you should call it a shep, buddy.

You should call it a woolly scream, maybe. Woolly scream objectively is better. Went to Wikipedia, to his Wikipedia page to see if he was wealthy when he died, as if Wikipedia includes that information. He died penniless and insane in 1999. He did die in Nashville. Maybe you would know this.

Is that a good hospital he died in, Jason? Skyline something? Yeah, maybe that's the fancy one. Yeah. Okay, great. Well, that's mine. That's one for you. For a limited time, switch to Shopify Point of Sale and you could save up to 20% and improve your bottom line. See Shopify.com slash POS 20 for details.

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one murder based fun fact and one and two Names of places based fun facts. I'm kind of all over the map. I wonder if we have some of the same ones Give me your murder one Murder one. I guess this is also kind of all over the map. I wonder if we have some of the same ones. Give me your murder one. Murder one? I guess this is also kind of celebrity adjacent, but this is from a book called Furious Hour. I killed a drifter! I drowned Natalie Wood! In the 70s in Alabama, there was a black man named Maxwell who killed his wife and collected

the insurance money and it was like never proven but definitely him and then he killed five other people and like kept collecting the insurance money. Everyone in this small Alabama town was like it's 100% this guy. Why isn't he? Why does he keep getting away with this? And like the insurance companies were hiring and bringing in detectives. They were like we keep he keeps taking life insurance policies out on people that aren't him.

And then the person dies and then he makes money and he's just getting thousands of dollars and we can't stop him because this is the past. Can we just get into detective to prove that it's him or a lawyer to prove that it's him and no one could prove that it was him. And it was like wife dead, second wife dead, neighbor, his brother, and then like the the daughter of of his wife He just gone through six people total allegedly, but definitely and the it's

Fascinating that he can get away with this and it's fascinating that it was always one lawyer who was getting him off this guy Tom Radney got him off and it was like only one actual case went to trial and he was found not guilty and all the other things that this lawyer was done, like anytime someone showed up dead the lawyer would show up and successfully get him the life insurance policy. So they were this very good lawyer who was like making his fortune off this murderer and the life insurance policies and the cut that the lawyer got from this. Now the last victim of this guy, Maxwell, was a young woman named Shirley, the daughter

of his dead wife. And at the funeral for Shirley, Maxwell was there. And then this guy who was connected to the deceased, a guy named Robert Burns, he comes to the funeral and shoots Maxwell dead in front of everybody at this funeral in this church, shoots him dead relative to the deceased, clear motive, pretty clear cut case, and then he needs a defender in trial for his definite murder. And who steps up but this guy Tom Radney who was like I recently lost

My cash cow client so I'm available and I'm a pretty good lawyer when it comes to getting murderers off for murders They definitely committed and the lawyer fucking did it successfully got this guy Robert Burns Not guilty verdict in this trial for this murder that he were everyone saw it All of this is fascinating enough to me like the entire string of murders and the lawyer just going from my client's dead and now I'm gonna defend his murderer and then the last tiny bit that makes this an even more fascinating story to me is that there was someone in the audience for the entire

trial of Robert Burns, someone who was fascinated like interviewing people and taking notes and it was known recluse Harper Lee just interested in the trial who showed up and was like maybe I'm gonna write a book about this or maybe I'm just gonna like hang out author of To Kill a Mockingbird which is like there in this fascinating fairly recent story because Harper Lee was alive in our lifetime. This is like 1979 or something like that. It's all in the book Furious Hours and I found every bit of it absolutely fascinating. Now I you included I just want to make sure I got all the details that you chose to include. He this this man was black? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for including that detail. That was helpful. I do think it was unfortunately relevant

information because we're dealing with the past and America where it's like one of the first serial killers in America that we know maybe the first serial killer of all time predates-Dates Jack the Ripper, was also someone who was exclusively murdering black people a while, because that was an unfortunate reality about race in America, is that you wouldn't get a lot of attention if you were a black person murdering other black people. And that's why I felt it was relevant detail to this story, Soren. The issue, Daniel, is that you mentioned that the perpetrator was black, but you failed

to mention that the victims were too, so it came off. That's fair. That's why Soren is trying to help you out there I see okay well That was my fun fact That is really interesting Harper Lee also not her she had a different name too, right? There's no really is not a real person. Yeah, cuz she was trying to write in a pseudonym. That was more Gender neutral. I thought she couldn't get published as a woman.

Okay, so is it my turn? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if everybody has heard this fact. It's one that you hear some places, but you've heard the one about if you, and if you've not, if you take a piece of paper, fold it in half, you know, the thing is you can't fold a piece of paper more than like seven times, it just becomes too stiff. But if you had a giant magical piece of paper

that you could keep folding, if you could fold it in half 50 times, how like if you picture in your head how thick that wad of paper would be, I think most people are picturing like well 50 times is a lot lot I bet would it be like 100 feet tall or something like that. Yeah, that sounds big Yeah, if you fold a piece of paper in half 50 times It would be a stack 60 million miles high It would last it would stretch two-thirds of the way from here to the Sun What now here's something.

You can do the math, it's real easy to check. A standard piece of like good sturdy paper is a tenth of a millimeter thick. So in your calculator put in.01 millimeters, times two, times two, times two, do that 50 times, and you will wind up with 100 million kilometers. You'll wind up with a number that just stretches off your calculator because that is the power

of doubling things. And that's something our human brains do not deal well with the idea that if you keep doubling something the numbers become absurd very quickly. Yeah. A thing that I want to say that you're not allowed to say in the Fun Facts episode is no it wouldn't. I know I'm not allowed to say that because because that would break the rules you brought a true thing You can't you couldn't bring a lie to this thing, but it's still I am I am Subject number one to prove your point that the brain doesn't like it and can't handle it. It's like no Surely not dog barking

Yeah, I'm trying to Do you leave the dog barking in Yeah, I'm trying to think. Do you leave the dog barking in the show or do you have to... No, we leave it in generally. I actually don't know. I've not listened. Jackson. Jackson. We can keep going. I'm sure it's fine.

Okay. All right. I think we double back to me. Jason, that's fascinating. You're right, that was a fascinating one. Good bring! Okay, this is- Now, wait, just for clarity, the person folding the paper, Jason, what is their race? Okay, you guys are familiar with wind turbines, right? And one of the major problems with wind turbines is that they occasionally kill birds because birds fly through them. And you've seen them. I don't know if either of you have driven to Los Angeles from wherever you live

and you see massive ones out in the Indio desert. There's hundreds of them out there. They're all over the country. Anyway, they figured out that by painting just one of the turbines on those black, they can decrease bird deaths by 70%. And they're just not doing it. And...

Why? Why does that work? Because the birds can recognize that it's something actually moving instead. I think sometimes the birds aren't registering that this is something that's like spinning in front of them as they're flying into it. And when they can see more, when there's, I don't know why. It's just more contrast. No, that makes sense. Yeah. And so they can register that this is something big and it's moving and they just steer clear of it by like 70%.

And so this would be so easy to do. You just go around and you paint one, not even like all the turbines. You're just painting one turbine black or a different color. And suddenly like all these bird species are surviving and everyone's just like, I don't know, we'll get around to it eventually. If this wind thing takes off, maybe. You're talking about 70 or $80 worth of paint though. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I understand. I had a cat for a long time. I know what it's like. I know that cats kill a bunch of birds and I still kept one. So we all want to kill birds I get it yeah and even though I'm sure your neighbors came up to you with a solution that was like if we just

kill your cat there will be no more dead birds and you're just like you're not interested in that no this is this is the same the the the wind turbines are as precious to us as cats are to you we need them. I'm curious about the specificity of the study that says if we... we will reduce bird deaths by 70%. Because they did it on a few of them. So they can track how many birds they're killing.

And yeah, but like, and I'm talking about race, Dan, that's how important it was that these stay white. Yeah, but like and I'm talking about race Dan. That's how important it was that these stay white. Yeah great It's what a grim field of study Just period just like studying bird deaths and what we could do to have Fewer bird deaths and then come up with an answer and then it's just being case closed. Like you just bring your, like you have dedicated your life to so many increasingly narrow field of study and getting your expertise in increasingly niche subjects so you can be the foremost expert on saving bird lives from wind turbines

There is no one who knows it better than you you suck at parties because this is the only thing you talked about and you Completed your life's work that was like here's how we can save 70% of birds and the wind turbine people are like hey man Thanks, this is really cool. I'm gonna read this when I get home. I'm really glad you did this. Oh cover is beautiful Thank you. This is terrific. It's going to the pile of important things that I read. It's gonna go right here. Yeah. Thank you. Because as far as-

Listeners. Go ahead. No, any viewers who are watching this on YouTube, if you want a more interesting visual to mute while you're listening to us, go look up YouTube videos of where they're testing what happens to birds when they fly into jet engines because the people who develop the blades, the titanium blades, they have to be designed that they can withstand a bird flying into them.

So there are people who have just a cannon that shoots like raw chickens into jet engines and they get hyper slow motion of the thing slicing it up just such a way because they need to perfect that design. And again, there's somebody out there who that's their entire job. They could corner you at a party and talk about bird anatomy and velocity and like, well, you know, the bones in some birds,

they can be chomped by the turbine and the jet engine, but not fine enough so that when it goes back into the engine and is, you know, blown out the back. So what we've had to do is actually make the blade duller so that it pulverizes the bird first. Then it becomes like a slurry. And that's their whole deal. Cause that's millions of dollars of jet engines.

You know, in lives. Somebody's job is making sure that jet engines are better at killing birds. Right. And someone who was like, you know what a problem we ran into was throwing raw chickens into the turbine. We didn't account for beaks. So that was a lot of wasted time and a lot of wasted money to go back and put the beaks through the turbines. I wonder how long it took the guy whose job it is to do that.

I wonder how long how many parties it took for him to just tell people his job was finance at a certain point. Just like this is let me I'm just going to say I.T. That's easier and prompts no follow-up questions. Do you guys know how the city of Atlanta got his, got its name? No. I don't think so. There's a, I mean like, like most places they get their name when they become like, in the past, when become like like a travel hub yeah, incorporation is is is is one of the ways and also like when it comes to to Towns or cities specifically you are nothing until you get like a post office or a train station stop then like we need a name

for where this train is gonna stop and the governor at the time was a man named Lumpkin and They were like hey, you're our governor and we got a train station now We're gonna this town needs a name and the governor was like, please please Lumpkin as a name is Terrible, please. I'm begging you. I have a daughter. Her name is Martha Atalanta Lumpkin, please, please name this town Marthaville, and then they did for a couple of years And they eventually changed it to Atlanta because they realized that was so much better

And it was like part of the Atlantic Pacific line and like oh we should call it Atlanta but just that that two-year period where the guy was like the choices are Martha or William Lumpkin or Martha Adalanta Lumpkin. It was like Marthaville. And there was just a little town called Marthaville for a while. It's a little fun Atlanta fact guys. I love that he was self-aware enough to know that his name sucked, but then to be like,

so instead I'd like you to name it Pubert USA or like something infinitely works. It's also funny to me that Maddie Atalanta-Lumpkin, when she married, she married someone and took his last name, obviously, because it's the past, and that new last name was Compton, which also could have been the name of a place.

There's a lot of good options for what Atlanta was. Wow. There's, I did a TikTok video that I don't remember the specifics, but there's a city where they named a street after one of the first like merchants that set up there. But unfortunately his name was like William Maine. So it's just main street and no one realizes it's named after this guy. It's in Seattle, it's somewhere, but he was like a respected, you know, he helped found the town, but it's like, oh, congratulations.

Yeah. Okay. That was my fun fact. My fun fact is if you take a deck of playing cards, 52 cards, and you give it a good, thorough shuffle, congratulations, you're the first person in the history of the world to ever have that exact shuffle of 52 cards in that order. In fact, I'm going to say it again. Not true.

In fact, if it turns out there are many alien civilizations that somehow all have poker and that exact card, and they've all been playing poker for a million years, you're still the first person to ever have that exact shuffle of cards. That is because, and you can do the math easily on a spreadsheet, the total number of shuffles of a deck of 52 cards is an 8 with 67 zeros behind it. Whoa. There's no word for that number.

There are more possible shuffles than there are atoms on Earth. So every single shuffle is brand new. If you shuffled once per second for the entire time our universe has been around, you would have to do that across a billion universes before you ran into the same shuffle again. Here's I'm going to I'll start with the thing I hate about having Jason as a podcast guest and then Soren will do this and we'll go back and forth until we run out of things.

This is in both of your fun facts 100% of your fun facts you have Told us to do math yeah No one talks to me like that anymore. No one tells me to do the math on a spreadsheet you lunatic All right now so when you go, what do you what do you hate about Jason? I don't like the way he looks What do you hate about Jason? I don't like the way he looks. I don't like... I... I...

I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I...

I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I...

I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I. No, I have no idea. I do have a question about that that maybe we can sidebar

with later because you do have a picture of you when you do advertisements for your new book, and it is you on the body of maybe the yoked person I've ever seen, like a Jack Reacher type. And I'm wondering how many people look at that and they're like, oh, I guess that's Jason. I guess that's what he looks like. It's not that you need to be specific. It's the, it's a body of an incredibly muscular man, but with the stock photo, uh, watermark all over his body. I didn't even pay the three dollars for the stock photo. So it's this incredibly muscular dude with my head on it. But if you will just look at the picture for 10 seconds, you'll notice that it's,

and I do not doubt there are many people out there that I'm like the most jacked author in the world. Because that to me is extremely funny. That's all it takes to make me laugh. Well, yeah, Chuck Palinuk was somebody who really threw me for a loop the first time I saw him. I was like, no, no, no, no, you're not that. I think it would have sent me down a really dark path if I looked at my favorite author when I was younger, and trying to be a writer, and found out Stephen King was just like fucking yoked,

posing in the back of his book in a tank top. I'd be like, well no, you're not allowed to be two things. Somebody hit him with a car. This has got to end. I got one more for you. It's a very quick one here. It's one that I looked up because I was curious. People who are deaf, I wanted to know if they talk in their sleep.

I was like very curious of what that would even be like. And so I started digging into it, and I found out deaf people sign in their sleep. Really? In their... Not in their dreams. You're not saying like in their mind's eye, they are signing to...

You'd lie in bed next to somebody who is deaf, and occasionally you would look over, and they would be signing in their sleep. That is... that's... that to me is like the platonic ideal for a fun fact because I had never thought about it, had never considered it, but it makes complete sense when I hear it. It's like, yes, of course they would. Why would... What else would happen to create the same experience that I understand as talking in your sleep? That is such a fun fact.

I'm just gonna marinate it in it for a while. Because it almost sounds like a really offensive joke that like somebody in the 80s would have done from the stage yeah I married a deaf chick and she used to talk she's to sign in her sleep ha ha that's a really I mean because it's muscle memory like yeah now you say it it makes sense it's just yeah huh let's all just marinate it for a while. I have other fun facts, but I'm so self-conscious about the quality of the facts that I've brought

already, that I don't think they're good. One's another, like, town name origin that I don't think anyone's gonna care about. And one of them is a... It was the Main Street one, wasn't it? Jason swooped in and stole yours. No, it was the... it's just because it's very New very New York specific and I learned it recently that and it really surprised me What you've heard of the town in New York City in Manhattan, Tribeca. Yeah and I and

Perhaps yeah, there's the Tribeca Film Festival. There's whatever song you're talking about. There's I Assumed for the longest time like many things in New York, it was, the name origins were either a Native American word because there were a lot of Native American settlers out there obviously, or a Dutch word because New York was initially like a Dutch settled colony, but Tribeca, this little town in New York it stands for something It stands for triangle beneath Canal Street What? Is it like a triangle?

Oh on a map on a map. Yeah. Yeah, I'm an idiot Or triangle below Canal Street, forgive me And so it's one of those things where like Tribeca to me sounded like such a cool word. And I was like, I wonder what it means. I wonder what its origin is. And when I find out that it's just like a lazy combination of three sounds, it's very depressing to me. It's a very modern sounding. When did they come up with it? Because these days that would be like the name of a,

if you created like a new apartment complex in some fancy neighborhood, you would call it Tribeca and it would all be abbreviated from something really cool. That could very easily be a car, yeah. Yeah. It's got that feel. I always like to feel self-conscious about my fun facts. Not at all.

Dan, hey, you're doing great. Thanks. You're doing awesome It's my turn. Yeah, we have time for one more fun fact and then And then I have to lay down Okay, if you start counting if you start counting out if you start counting out loud your lips won't touch until you reach 1,000,000 Damn it out if you start counting out loud your lips won't touch until you reach 1 million Alright, let's all start no go to a million guys. I Mean Jason doesn't know that I count in kisses, so I think like already

Yeah, that's wrong. Yeah, that's wrong right off the bat To 1 million. It's the it's the em. There's no there's no bees and no M's and those would be the only ones, right? Yeah What why don't we have any M's or B's in our I've been saying this More numbers with M's and B's. I mean we got an M and B in number and they're doing great work in that word Yeah, it just seems like they deserve representation elsewhere and number and they're doing great work in that word. Yeah, it just seems like they deserve representation elsewhere What? Goddamnit, now I'm trying to- Also, did you know, soaring off the top of your head, you immediately knew M's and B's

Did you just know that those are the only letters that make make kisses? Both my children have been through language therapy like speech therapy and so you you learn like there's sounds called velar sounds, which are like in the back of your mouth, sounds like in the forward of your mouth, and that you know which which number or numbers, you know which letters make those pretty quick. Got it. Well, that's a great for our fun facts episode, gang. That time just flew by.

And now we're gonna We'll say our goodbyes, but I want to plug again. Let's start to worry about this Black box of doom see no one comes after Jason when he says it It's coming out Probably the day this episode drops it is out everywhere books are sold it is I? This is one of those like like fake podcaster talk show things where I say a thing is good that I haven't read. I read it cover to cover, it's great.

It's got my endorsement in real life and everyone should read that and support Jason with all of his other books. He does the entire John Dies at the End series of books. He does the Zoe Ash series beginning with futuristic violence and fancy suits. And you could find him where he is the brightest star of all on TikTok for all of the TikTok heads out there. Jason, you want to start doing some of your own plugs because I'm going to just say Google Jason.

Jason K. Pargin Yeah, no, the username Jason K. Pargin is it's that on TikTok and everywhere else, including I'm still on the Nazi version of Twitter. I shouldn't be on there anymore. But I'm on I'm on all the platforms. TikTok is where I have 550,000 followers. That's been a strange trip. That will be the subject of a different episode. But yes, the book is available in all formats, ebook, audiobook. I do not read the audiobook. People keep asking, you do not want an audiobook that I've read.

I don't, I'm not a performer. It takes me 30 or 40 takes to get a TikTok video out that was one minute long, asking me to read 140,000 words without mispronouncing things. I literally wrote myself and you realize that I don't know how to pronounce some of the words I use because I've only ever read them.

I can't have people finding that out. No. You should let Dan and I do it. We should do it. I read the introduction to how to fight with presidents for the audio book version of that. And it was a terrible experience for me. It was so, and like I have a vague performance background but it was still like I don't have

a voiceover background and I don't, I should never be hired for my voice and I was like in a booth in a studio somewhere reading words that I had written and rewritten and edited a million times and stumbling over them and and like being self-conscious about my delivery and the idea of doing that for 40,000 more words fucking Kill me no thanks And just be a podcast too you know you're gonna hype I Do not have my own podcast.

I only turn up on other people's podcasts. Are you sure you're not one of the three hosts of Big Feets? A podcast about monster hunters, Jason? I don't think of that as mine. I think that is Brockway and Sean Baby's podcast. But yes, we are doing a, we have a show called Big Feet's that I get more fan mail about that than my books, which is fine. I get it.

But where the three of us, me and Sean Baby and Robert Brockway are watching every episode of the cryptid hunting reality show Mountain Monsters, which no one has seen, but we are doing an incredibly in-depth analysis of what turns out to be one of the most fascinating pieces of art ever created. Because this was a cryptid hunting reality show where there were six guys with no, as far as we can tell, no experience in performance, TV, whatever, who somehow convinced the Travel Channel to do an hour long reality show about their hunting of Bigfoot. And you would think that it would be about like, oh, we've talked to a witness and we

found a footprint and, you know, what? We think we heard a growl. No. Within five minutes of every episode, they fight Bigfoot and lose. Every episode begins with them immediately finding the Mothman or whatever cryptid they're out after that week. And then it's now a battle with, because they can't, they have no effects budget. They cannot show the cryptid. So them being attacked by it, it's always, he threw a rock at us. It's like a crew member off camera. And then the rest of the episode of

them devising a strategy to find and kill Bigfoot Yeah, they are not trying to document the existence of these creatures. They want to assassinate them It's been going on for nine seasons. Yeah That's a lot of it if you're hearing about this for the first time Listeners you might have the same question that I had which is do I need to watch? listeners, you might have the same question that I had, which is do I need to watch Monster Hunters to get into this podcast? You absolutely do not. I assure you, you don't need to watch an episode of this show.

In fact, it's probably better if you don't. It might be better if you don't because experiencing it through the podcast like I do is a fantastic way to live your life. Some people think we made up the show that it's like this meta bit like, oh, we invented a fake show and we're gonna pretend, because the stuff we're improvising, it's like, oh, well, that didn't actually happen in a TV show that was broadcast around the world. Yes, it did.

Anyway, and the show's still going. So ideally, Big Feets is the name of the podcast. Just search for that on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Great. And you could also, if you're only listening, watch our show, Quick Question on YouTube. You could email the show at qqwithsorenanddanielatgmail.com.

You can find us on Instagram and you can find the show on Twitter. You can find Soren and I both on Blue Sky. The theme song to our show is by the incredible Mere you could find their work at me rest out bandcamp calm We are recorded edited produced our podcast our president of thought podcast operations Gabe Harder who is unfindable We have a patreon and on the patreon we were we released two extra episodes every single month that are shorter and looser and

Worse, but you pay for them. So that's what makes them special Bye I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? How did you get? How would I be remembered? Words without words, word and all that I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry Oh forget it!