Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Oh No... It's Santa (SantaCon Nightmare, Frasier For Dogs, Sleepy Time Podcasts)

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

The guys discuss the mundane terror of an unexpected run in with Santa, when Fitbits make you sad, and pitch ideas for the best possible “podcast to sleep to”.Follow the show on socials: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcast Soren Bowie: https://twitter.com/Soren_Ltd Daniel O'Brien: https://twitter.com/DOB_INC

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? What do I mean? What's it up with? Oh, forget it, I'm sorry, baby, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all the good things go? 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 on behalf of that podcast, senior writer, for last week's Night with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and making his triumphant return, the constant winter sickness edition of Daniel O'Brien,

joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, take it away. Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad, and I'm... Well, I mean, frankly, I'm in kind of a bad mood. Oh, yeah? Today. Yeah, but let's do your shit first. You're sick again? Yeah, I'm sick again. It's that... We've gone back and forth the last couple of years where I will just be perpetually sick for winter, and then you will go up and down with very bizarre illnesses that only you yourself can diagnose and treat. treat and we're in the the the the portion of the year where i'm sick boy and that's and that's just all there is to it i felt the cold coming on a few days ago and there's just nothing doing there's sometimes you do yeah you do like a marathon sickness type of thing where like you are

you're sick for the long haul a long easy sickness right there's I'm not, plenty of people have worse illnesses than me and worse reactions to sicknesses than I do. But like, I'm going to be sick until mid-February, beginning now. This is just it. I'm some version of this sick for the next nine weeks. Yeah. I mean, I found that I've, and maybe this has something to do with age. Maybe it just has to do with like the world has changed. But I noticed that when I get sick now, I hold it longer. Like my, the cough just stays a little bit longer. I can't get rid of the expectorate quite as fast as I used to. I can't like bounce back as quickly.

Yeah. I, it's, it's kind of a superpower now to know as soon as I get the slightest tickle in my throat, there's no question. Like, Monday evening at 8.15pm, I was like, this is, this is, I'm going to cancel dinner for next Wednesday, because I just know I'm not going to be good for then. Like, like, I've, we've, we've seen this movie before. I know how it goes. Are you, do you find you're still still surprised by symptoms though not surprised by uh symptoms i will still do dumb things like i'll work out and go for a run and then not understand why i'm the most exhausted i've ever been i always think like yeah sure i'm sick when i'm in bed in the morning and at night and when i'm drinking my fluids all day but but the gym is the gym that's my i'm we're putting everything on pause i don't dress like i normally do so i leave my life behind i keep my wallet at home for that yeah i will get i will i will be sick and then like. And like the next day be like, I feel awful.

Yeah. What's happening to me. But yeah, I still find myself like I, I will get sick and then be like, surely it has never been this bad before. Surely I've never had such a sore throat. Yeah.

But it's, it's, I just forget about it each time I do it, I get over it. And then it's like, I've never been sick in my entire life the next time it happens. The other thing I frequently forget is I know that I'll never like be 100% better in the middle of the day.

It's always going, if I get better, which I won't, but if I do, it'll be after a good night's sleep. And there are some nights, these last couple of nights where I just haven't been getting any sleep at all because I'm breathing through my mouth and I'm uncomfortable and I'll realize it's like three in the morning and I didn't get any sleep and I'm just like and I can feel it in my throat and my nose but I'm still like maybe maybe maybe in two hours if I just keep my eyes closed my body will think it's asleep and then it'll heal itself in the background like it always does.

And the message is so clear. It's like, no, you're still sick. We've got a couple more days of this at least. Well, yeah. I mean, the worst lesson I was ever taught by my body was at one point I thought I was getting sick, like had a sore throat and I was like, here it comes, here it comes. And then didn't get sick. And I was like, yeah, whatever I did there, I'm going to try and replicate that.

And assuming that like somehow I'm just, I can just live in this state of denial and sometimes it works. That's a horrible lesson. Yeah. You know what I feel like I haven't seen? And then we're going to get to your thing in an hour. What I feel like I haven't seen is like an accurate depiction of someone being run-of-the-mill cold sick in movies or TV shows. There was a New Girl episode that felt kind of close only because Nick and Cece, they were sick.

So they just stayed on a couch under a blanket watching garbage television like some european puppet show that they couldn't understand and didn't know what anything meant but they were just like and it makes for somewhat boring television which is probably why they don't depict it accurately a lot but it was just two people on a couch covered in blankets with a lot of tissues around not saying much and just consuming hour after hour of nonsense that they're not retaining. And I'm like, yeah,

that's the closest. That's the most what it's like. It's always gotta be the extreme in a show. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm looking forward to for you is that moment when you're about four days into this and you go to blow your nose and it feels like you blow out a quarter of your brain

through your nose. Oh, God. And like, it's just thick and viscous in the Kleenex, but it's like air is touching your actual brain. It feels so good. Yeah, finally for the first time. All the things that i've been trying to smell finally have an in again and they can tickle my brain man um can i guess why you're in

a bad mood yeah please i have some insider information because we were texting before the podcast is it uh because of traffic you la fuck i got stuck behind s Claus. Oh, no. How fucked up is that? So there's a thing that happens in our neighborhood, I guess maybe all of Culver City and maybe other areas of Los Angeles, but Santa goes and visits certain parks at night this time of year. You bring all the kids out. Santa comes. It's like a mobile Santa.

There's a sleigh. It's all in the back of a truck but there's like a sleigh and he comes and says hello and like kids meet him and they can uh sit on him i guess is this your real quick is this your first day on planet earth santa says hello and kids can sit on him He waves and children are allowed to touch him with their butts, as far as I understand it. And so, I turn onto my street. It's like the street that my son's school is on. And my son's school also has a park that's like, during school hours, it's shut to the public. But all other hours, it is essentially a public park. Like during school hours is shut to the public, but all other hours is essentially a public park.

I turn onto my street and it's just gridlock. And I'm like, this never happens. What's going on? And I can see up in the distance and I'm like, oh no. And I can see like the flashing lights of the sleigh. And I'm like, oh, we're fucked. We're so fucked because now we're stuck here. And already traffic had been really bad for me.

And it was one of those circumstances where like I needed to make a lot of right turns, but there were just cars that were going straight in front of me. And I was about 10 feet away from the turn I needed to make onto a completely empty street and couldn't get there. So like that frustration mounted. Yeah. And then finally got onto my street behind of all people saint nick and so we just sat there we sat there and there's nowhere for me to turn around there's no way for me to go to a different side street i just have to eat it yeah and you can't

even kill him because he's a god i can't kill him he keeps coming back i i i now understand the plot of the santa claus i have not watched it yet he just kills santa right kill santa santa and then santa he becomes santa yeah that's right okay you do um and so it was i was so angry and i was so angry at christmas i was angry at everybody i was angry that we had to do the podcast. So I raced into my house. I didn't even bring in any of my stuff. Got to my computer and was just sat down in this dark cloud mood.

I'll say it has been lifted somewhat, Dan. It's nice to talk to you. That's good. It's nice to talk to you too and it reminds me of something that I don't think we ever talked about in this podcast. I went to San Francisco last year to catch the warriors celtics game the first game the warriors celtics played since uh the warriors beat the celtics the previous year in the finals so we

had to go see that game at warrior stadium very exciting time and it was a nice uh an early trip for shay and i to take together. And we were so excited to be in San Francisco in the winter. And we didn't do our due diligence. And it just so happened that we went on the weekend that was SantaCon. And if anyone doesn't know that, because you don't live in and around a big city, SantaCon is an annual now weekend long festival that is essentially just dress up as Santa and drink for 48 hours straight. So everyone is dressed in Santa Claus costumes doing bar crawls there. It's a big one in New York. They just shut down New York when it's Santa con. And I know there's one in LA and there's, we, we one in san francisco at the time that we

were there and it's it's a special kind of terror that you don't normally associate with santa i think the same way that you turn down the street it's like oh no it's santa which is a thing that you didn't expect yourself to ever say but it made sense in the moment. And this was us just trying to find one bar that wasn't full of fucking Santa clauses. And it was impossible. It's a very specific nightmare. It feels a little bit like being in a zombie movie because everyone is doing the same thing except you.

And they're a little bit mad that you're not Santa also. And like, why won't you be Santa? It's Santa con. And we're like, we didn't know we're from far away. Our Santa con is at a different time. We didn't think to check. Yeah. I'm so sorry I didn't check the schedule of the city to know that everyone would be dressed

up exactly the same one day for the year. Listen, I know this is the biggest weekend of the year for you because you're sad and weird, but I just want an old fashioned somewhere and not to be surrounded by the drunkest Santa clauses anyone has ever seen. I do sort of love it though, when people schedule their wedding, they find out they're like, oh, we do have a date and they schedule their wedding like six months in advance. Like we do have a date available right around this time you're looking for. It's the last one. And like, yeah, we'll take it. Thinking someone just missed this like we this is the last one of all the good ones and then realizing later no everyone knew what they were doing right this is

during like this huge event in this town and we just fucked up we went to a wedding in oregon in uh not ben where were we we were like a hood Hood River, Oregon, which it turned out was the ideal place to watch the eclipse. And the eclipse was happening the exact same weekend as the wedding. You could just sense it, the entire wedding, that this couple was like, fuck! Fuck this goddamn eclipse! lips so that's my horror story i keep i i wonder if there's some way to make it a movie but the the stakes are not high enough it's just one couple being inconvenienced by 100 santa claus and there are a couple of set pieces that could be fun but like ultimately you either kill the Santa Claus or you become the Santa Claus I think you witness a Santa get murdered and then you're like you're trying to get to

police or you know it's like a judgment night type of situation where you're like trying to get out of a certain a certain part of the city but it really is just like the surreal experience where everyone there is a Santa and Santa might have done it right and like I don't i don't uh i didn't do a good enough job setting up what santa con is it's a couple of things you dress up as santa

you drink all weekend and it's also um the same rules as the purge so you can do whatever you want including murder yes including correct a purge a santa purge yeah uh well dan do you want to get into the show yeah sure okay i have a quick question for you and it is related to your sickness okay uh because i wanted to ask you about sleep are you are you tracking your sleep in any particular way uh like in an app no okay i i in my mind i had i pictured you in the same way that you impractically run with your phone you might also sleep with it on holding it no because we've we've talked to my phone is in my mouth uh we've talked about um because i don't want to be i don't want to be disturbed so i have the ringer off so if i do get a call like it's an emergency my teeth will vibrate and that way i don't want to be disturbed, so I have the ringer off. So if I do get a call, like it's an emergency, my teeth will vibrate.

And that way I don't disturb anyone around me. But no, we've talked about sleep before. I don't really track it because I'm generally, for most of my adult life, I've been a pretty reliable sleeper in terms of like, this is when I start getting ready for bed. And then I go to bed. And this is when I wake up and I get up. It's been upset with this sickness lately, but generally I'm a good and sound sleeper.

Yeah. If I, if something goes, if I don't sleep through the night and I have a bunch of nightmares or whatever, then it's like, then I'm, I'm in detective mode and it's so easy to find out what it was, whether it was like eating something that was with, had sugar in it too late at night, or if that's the way that I find out, Oh, I think there was some dairy in that meal that I ate. Cause I didn't get sick, but also dairy gives you a lot of dreams. Interesting. Okay. So I, uh, I started wearing a Fitbit again. I like go on and off with, with wearing one. The only reason I ever put one on in the first place is because I'm curious

about my run. Like I'm doing a new run and I'm like, I don't know how long that is. I can't get a sense of it. I'll just put the Fitbit on. This is a tangent, but that's also like a terrible idea because it, my Fitbit is incapable of believing that I can do a sub nine mile.

So like, even when I'm doing below eight, it still is like, it just, all it does is it shaves the distance off. Yeah. And it drives me crazy. I famously run with my phone and I use an app to track my speed and my mileage. But every once in a while, I'll go for a walk or a hike. So I change my app from run to walk. So it measures it that

way. And if I forget to switch it back before i start a run and i look down the app has no idea what's going on it's like it's mad you're running a 7.83 mile no uh four walking the four minute mile no 13 minutes just slow down let me think about this let me crunch the numbers i yeah it's it drives me bananas because it's like i know how long the run is from my house to the gym and it's just getting shorter and shorter the better i yeah it's it drives me bananas because it's like i know how long the run is from my house to the gym and it's just getting shorter and shorter the better i get at it and it's that makes me very angry but i start wearing it again if i want to track a new distance but then i also because i'm like i know it's going to be like two or three tenths of a mile off

but i also realized like it's it's really good for tracking my sleep and so i started wearing it at night and i'm just i wake up every morning it's the first thing i check because i'm so excited to see uh how i did it to see like what grade i get when i'm from my sleep and i was fascinated by the results one because i didn't realize there are so many layers of sleep there are three do you know the layers of sleep uh yeah there's the mantle of course yeah and then when it's colder there's the crust and then when it's very cold and you're in the weighted blanket then it's the core yes good great job um i didn't realize so i thought rem surely that was like your deepest sleep like when you get into rem that's when

you're really cooking yeah but that's the opposite it, I didn't realize that you go into like deep sleep makes up almost none of your night. You get, you get about an hour of deep sleep a night. And then the majority of your night is made up by light sleep, which is the next layer up from deep sleep. And then above that is REM. REM is the closest you're ever to being really awake. So when you're doing like your rapid eye movement, and I assume a lot of your dreaming is happening there, that's like when you're on the verge of waking up. This is all news to me, but I really like seeing my sleep patterns

and seeing like, it's very good at tracking when I wake up throughout the night and like knowing when I was up, even if I didn't get out of bed or I didn't move around at all, I guess my, your breathing and your heart rate just changes. Yeah.

And I didn't realize, here's the thing. How much sleep do you think you're getting a night? How much sleep do I think I am getting a night? On average, yeah. Seven hours to eight hours, seven to eight hours, seven and a half hours.

Okay. Shave an hour off of that. It's crazy. Hold on. Give me a second. Okay. All right. Get a piece of paper. me a hold on give me okay all right get a piece of paper yeah uh come back to me yeah so i thought i was like oh yeah if i get to bed by this time i fall asleep by this time i'm getting eight hours and i was counting it even the times when i would get up

to pee or whatever as part of that eight seeing it all laid out for me it's like i'm i'm awake each night for like an hour and 14 minutes not consecutively but man throughout the night there's just like time that you don't realize you're awake that you are awake throughout the night and i was really bummed by that i was realizing i was getting like seven hours and 10 minutes a night and And I was like, that's not enough. Even my app is telling me that's fair. It's not good. It's fair. And so that was startling to me. And then also my daughter has been sick recently. And so there's a lot of me getting up to deal with her. And I really like going into the app and just feeling very heroic in the times where I'm clearly in a deep sleep and how quick I jump from a deep sleep to awake to go deal with her.

I'm like, oh yeah, I, nothing can stop me. Like there's nothing that's going to keep me under. That's great to like self validation to know that your paternal instincts are that strong. Right. That there there's something beyond your control that is going to, it's going to pull me right out. Force you out of that bed.

Yeah. And it's only that noise. Like there's the, the noise of her or my son that's like going to throw me out. And bed. And it's only that noise. There's the noise of her or my son that's going to throw me out. And otherwise, I will not wake up for anything. But yeah, it was very interesting to see how much of that sleep I'm getting. And then it gives you a little rundown

of kind of like, here's why REM is important. Automatic for the people, great album. Right. Yeah. I mean, one of us had to do it, right? That's a storm. You're not going to get out of the way of the people. Great album. Right. Yeah. I mean, one of us had to do it, right? That's a storm. You're not gonna, don't, you're not gonna get out of the way of the rain. Just let it come. Yeah.

That would have been silly to just leave that sitting there. Um, yeah. So I, I, but seeing like why REM, like how that's good for your, your mood the next day and everything. But I was really surprised by also the nights when I drink, which isn't often, but like even just a couple of drinks, I will, it just fucks up your whole sleep. Everything, especially like how much sleep you're getting in the late or like the later part of your night. So, like right before you wake up, your body is clearly up long before you are.

And it's just like, this is uncomfy. I'm uncomfortable. Something needs to change. I'm hot. Now I'm cold. And how much it just messes you up. Man. Two reasons that I wouldn't want to do this Fitbit sleep tracking thing.

One, very basically, it's none of my business. I don't need to know what's going on when nighttime Daniel, when the creature of the evening takes over. Whatever you need to do to have me ready to do my job in the morning, you just do it. You do it, Mr. Hy serious is as we're talking about my uh running app i have been thinking about not using it anymore just because there was this uh new york times did like a whole summer of articles about running specifically it was a really great feature i don't know what brought it on but i read it every. And there was a great article that will link in the footnotes of this episode about how there was like a spike in the popularity of these apps, like Strava, which is the tracking app that I use. And then a lot of very serious runners just

stopped using them because it was taking a whole lot of the joy out of running for them. And I'm noticing that in myself too, because something about runners is like, you can have, uh, it's, it's very natural to have like a competitive side to you if you're drawn to any kind of exercise. And, and I'm not the most competitive person in the world, but running, as soon as I got these apps, I was very much looking at it while I'm running. I set goals that I wanted to hit. And I still think it's, if you could be a human without a personality that is addicted to competition and tracking numbers, then I'm sure it's fine for you. You can like engage with your running apps in a healthy way. I don't think I've been doing that because I think of the

time before the app and I would just run and run. I would have my watch that would tell me how long I'd been out. And I would sometimes look at a map afterwards and try to like guess how much I ran. But mostly it was just like, I'm running. All right, I'm tired of running. I'm done running. Or it's I need to turn home now to make dinner and that was my run and i thought my thoughts on my run and that was it with the app that i'm now obsessed with and a lot of the runners in this article are obsessed with too now i can run 40 minutes and then i look at the app and if the app is the app will tell me how good i did compared to me in the past and And that'll affect how I feel about the run. And I never used to, like, there never used to be any factors at all

that determined if a run was a good run or not. It was just, you ran, and you were done, and that was it. And now the app is like, I know at one and a half miles, I know, ah, this isn't going to be good i shouldn't i shouldn't i'm not going to get a great five miles out of this i should just turn around and make it a 5k and try again some other day oh yeah it's it's influencing how you choose to do the rest of the run oh that's interesting it can influence how you choose to do the rest of the run and it could also like i was saying before just like just cloud if it was a good run or not.

I now have this other factor that tells me if it was a good run when I and you lose sort of like the pure joy of just I ran for 40 minutes or 45 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever it is. You just you ran from point A to point B. And that was how you could gauge whether or not something was a good run. And now I have four and a half years of data that can tell me if i'm slower or faster and as good as it feels when i'm faster it feels that bad when i'm slower too right oh i yeah i maybe i'm lucky that i can't trust my mileage because i would absolutely do that every single time i would check my splits and i would check the time that it took me to do the run and i would get to i would probably run more much more recklessly too because i would get to stoplights and i'd be like well i just got the

red but there are no cars i'm just gonna try it um just to try and like hug those turns a little bit more like i'm playing mario kart um yeah i don't i see i can see that happening so i might do that with sleeping too that like i do that i definitely competitive sleep i wake up i wake up in the morning feeling good like oh man that was great and then i check my stats and it wasn't a good sleep and be like ah fuck yes it wasn't good i thought i was rested but but that's a failure that's exactly like that's why i was asking mostly is that i was shocked by how many nights I would wake up and not feel particularly good. Look at my, look at my stats and be like, oh no, it was a good night.

It gave me a good score. I got an 80 last night or like I wake up and I'll be like, I think that went well. Yeah. And then I'll look at the stats and I'm like, no, no, no. I got a fair. That was only 73. Um, and I don't totally understand. I guess it's just the hours of wakefulness that like help inform or like the ratio, maybe the ratio of deep sleep to light sleep to REM. Like you need like a certain amount of everything to make the pie. But the one other detail that they give me that I find fascinating is they tell you your blood oxygen saturation throughout the night and what it does. You get like a little graph of how the variance in your blood oxygen saturation.

It's like how well your blood is oxygenating throughout the night. And I think that this can inform whether you need like a CPAP machine or you've got a deviated septum or that type of thing. For the most part, it looks good. I mean, I'm well within range. But occasionally I peak and I'm like trying to recount where that was in the night. I'm like, okay, so let's see, 3 a.m. What position was I in? What was going wrong at that point?

Is this a nightmare thing or is this a, like what's causing it? So I like thinking about that. I also like thinking about it tells me my resting heart rate, like how low my heart rate actually gets when I sleep. And that was great for me because I was getting an A plus in my own brain. It was like I looked at mine, then I went and looked it up, and I was like, yeah plus in my own brain. It was like, I looked at mine, then I went and looked it up and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is like, I'm basically Lance Armstrong without the steroids. This is, I'm hibernating. That's tight, man. That's really cool. I don't think it's for me. I'm really glad that you, I think, have a healthier relationship with it than than i

probably would yeah i i asked me in about a week when i the first time i get sick or the first time that i really drink hard i think i'm just taking the watch off sure like i don't want it to know i don't want the shame of it having like when i do like my monthly, my 30 day average, that's going to throw way off because I went to a party with Seth MacFarlane. Sure. I felt like you were going to come up with a fake name. I know, but I just got so excited. Going to a party with Seth MacFarlane. As somebody who's written on his show for six years and he has no idea who he is, fact that I got the nod to a Seth MacFarlane party now it's like I feel like I've been chosen

is that so uh could you do you want to talk about that at all can I ask questions about it yeah absolutely so Seth MacFarlane your boss at American Dad and he is the titular dad in the show. Is it like a known thing in the staff that you don't get invited to his party until you've been there for a certain amount of time? No. Or is it like truly he handpicks who he wants to go to this party based on some other metric?

It was unknown. It was all too dark to understand. go to this party based on some other metric? I, it was unknown. It was all too dark to understand. And then when I got my invitation, when everybody on our staff got their invitation this time around, nobody told each other because everybody thought they might've been the only one who got it. That's so funny. Yeah. So here's the, here's so here's how the parties work.

There is a greater American dad family guy party that's thrown by the network. Then there is Seth's party. And Seth frequently schedules his party for the exact same night as the American dad or family guy party. And so you can tell by the absence of certain people who was invited to that other party.

Yeah, listeners at home, it's a terrible industry we've pitched ourselves to. It's really petty and awful. Historically, I think most of the Family Guy writers get invited. This is the first time that I think American dad writers have been invited. There might be some people who have a better relationship with him who get invited on the side. I know that our showrunners get invited, but I don't think most of the writers do. And this time it was the first time that like a writer got invited and it's like a very

cordial invitation that you get. That's like, he would like fuzzy door would like you're at you to join them for this party. And I was like, and so each one of us was concocting in our own mind why we particularly got invited this year for, for one guy on our staff. He was like, it's because of the episode I just wrote. It's gotta be the episode. I wrote a really great Christmas episode for somebody else.

It's like there, they had been with their, their husband had been invited the year before they went with their husband. They thought I must've made a really good impression for me. It was like, Oh, obviously it's that very deeply awkward interaction i had with him right during picketing he remembers me

um right he gets his car and he goes to his driver jarvis who was that man earlier write that name down i want to remember him for my holiday party um but the truth is we all got invited this year. It was much more diplomatic than that. It took a long time for us all to figure out that each other got invited. And now it's coming up. And I'm so excited, Dan. It's like it's the Oscars after party for me all over again, because who knows who's going to be there? That does sound very exciting. I can't wait. This will be fun for our listeners because we will either talk about it or it'll be so star studded and like

no phones, NDA sworn to secrecy that it'll never come up on the show again. Right. Oh yes. It'll be, yeah, definitely. It'll be one or the other that I can just not ever mention on the podcast again. Right. We'll come back in like January or something. It'll be like, hey, how was Seth's party? And you're like, it was fun. There was a chocolate fountain. Quick question. Do you like birds?

We'll just quickly burn through it. Yeah. So anyway, I'll let you know. I'll also tell you if I'm still wearing my Fitbit after that. I can't wear it to the party. That's very tacky. Right. Of course.

That's the other thing about this Fitbit is that like i feel very embarrassed wearing it in public like when you're on a run it's one thing at the gym even that's even that's like you're you're playing with fire and then just in my like at work wearing a fitbit who the fuck do you think you are yeah i i never judge anyone who's wearing a Fitbit. One of the other reasons that I will never wear it is I am so committed to being a watch guy.

I have somewhere between 12 and 14 watches that I've accumulated over time and I always have a watch on my wrist and, you know, for every day around the house stuff, it's my running watch, my just like waterproof Timex bullshit digital watch but i take time to like pick what watch i'm going to wear for what outfit and what specific event and what i want to say with each watch and it just doesn't mix well with the the fitbit lifestyle i do like that you have a good you've got a good

wrist for watches i'll say that thank you what do you mean i good, you've got a good wrist for watches. I'll say that. Thank you. What do you mean? I mean. Oh, because you got those thin stick wrists. I've got bird bones. Yeah. You have a good, so it doesn't matter the size. You're not a guy who has to look at a watch and be like, it's nice, but is it just too much for my wrist? Your wrist is going to handle it.

That's right. It's not going to be an issue. Your wrist, you can put a man's watch on you and it looks like, yeah, I have a man's arm. If I put- That is what I'm going for. So I'm glad that comes across. I have to be so careful with the type of watch that I get. Because if I get one that's too clunky or too bulky, I look like a child.

It's like, it looks like somebody wearing a Casio watch. One of my favorite Soarin' things is you famously don't care for or are very uninterested in and get angry when other people talk about Star Wars. And for years, you had a BB-8 watch. I still have it. And it was your favorite watch. You wore it all the time. It fit your wrist perfectly.

And I think this must just speak to your watch problems where you find something that works and you stick with it. I still wear it. You know, it doesn't even work now. The battery, for whatever reason, drains really fast in this watch.

But I wear it all the time because it looks really nice. It's got a white face with these little orange kind of circles in it it's it is a gorgeous watch and uh it's a fucking bb8 watch and so if you look really closely at it the little the the thing where you like twist it to set the time has a um a rebels logo on it and if you look at the back of the watch, it's got some bullshit Star Wars quote on it. And so I just have to, and they've made like a 3CPO one

that's just like this beautiful gold one too that I also vacillated on. But I really landed on this BB-8 one and I am humiliated. Every time somebody like notices what it is, I'm like, yeah, it's Star Wars. And they're like, yeah, it's dumb. And then they're like, no, no, no, no, it's not dumb. I love Star Wars. I'm like, yeah, it's Star Wars. And they're like, yeah, it's dumb. And then they're like, no, no, no, no, it's not dumb.

I love Star Wars. I'm like, well, you're dumb. Yeah, well, then you don't know what you're talking about. I can't trust your opinion on anything. So I got a quick question for you. This actually comes from our engineer, producer, editor, and director and boss, Gabe Harder. He sent this question ahead to us uh i'm gonna read it

verbatim there's a thriving market of podcasts and youtube channels specifically designed for you to fall asleep to if you can materialize a sleepy time video series or podcast engineered in a lab specifically for you what would it be are you familiar with these no oh oh exciting what do you think it is i assumed it was um an asmr thing and so i've i well i assumed it was like either an asmr thing where someone uh whispering with their wet mouths close to a microphone dancing all around your ears making your head tingle in an uncomfortable and definitely sexual for some people way and uh i wouldn't like that or i would assume it was just like i don't know i'm even i'm i'm in the weeds if this is a separate thing than like

a white noise machine or me asking one of my smart speakers to play ocean sounds which is something that i used to do all the time then i don't know what it is is it not ocean sounds or like no water uh uh it it is so i on the spectrum there are certainly the asmr ones there's ones that are just like designed to be noises that you could be so comforted by that you would fall asleep to but uh there's other ones that are stories like it's an actual telling of a story that's designed to make you go to sleep. There's a lot of these for kids too. Yeah, let's not pretend we're reinventing lullabies.

But they're designed to be long, meandering, and without any plot so that you don't have to follow anything. So it's like a really bad story. I listened to one. Somebody had turned me on to these. I can't remember who. And I was like, well, I'll give it a shot.

And I listened to one and it really did the trick for me. Like it hit home so well. It was about a train. It starts with you getting on a train. It's snowing outside and you're about to do a train trip across the like siberia or somewhere like that like somewhere deep north in europe like a place that you also don't have any context for so like nothing you're not looking it's designed specifically that way like you don't want any pinpoints you don't want to be like oh i wonder if we'll hit the yukon like or like like that kind of shit

would it be here it's like yeah like i've been here before yeah it's designed to be so distant and then just about how comfortable your train car is like you settling in you seeing turning the light out in your particular car and seeing stuff outside your window. And I, it just knocked me right out. It was so comforting to listen to. It was like putting on a warm blanket. All right. I have 10 million thoughts because this is, um, very appealing to me without going, without

getting as, as personal as, as, as possible. I do, I have historically liked historically liked uh being talked to sleep just just like hey just tell me a story we're adults but tell me as uh make up a story right now and i will go to sleep while you're telling it it's a a thing that really appeals to me for whatever part of my brain likes it um a thing that does often happen is i will challenge the story yeah because i'm like my natural instinct to do bits with the story will come out it's your you know you have to it's like how your brain works i get it um so they're not it's not always successful because i i get too invested in it so So I think to answer Gabe's question,

it's such a cliche at this point, but I didn't realize it at the time, but when I was younger, a way to really put me to sleep, not in a boring way, was listening to Frasier. It just so happened to be the thing that was in reruns at like 11 or 1130 at night

when I was in high school and had a little tv in my room I was like I'm gonna just put this on because I like Frasier so much and then something about the tones would help me go to sleep nowadays it's it's not as easy for me to fall asleep to just tv for the same reason as the stories like it'll take me out of it especially if i put on old fraser right now i i would stay up all night like i would recognize episodes and i would i would i would want to see certain bits especially if i was just like hearing laughter but no dialogue because then i knew david hyde pierce is fucking tearing it up or perry gilpin was about to light up Bulldog in some way.

And again, it would force me away. It could take me out of it. What I would love. Okay. So have you ever seen one of those YouTube videos, Soren, where it's like, this is a rough approximation of what human conversations sound like to a dog, where it's just like noises that sound like words and occasionally you'll hear ball or food in there or they've done videos where it's like this is how

an american conversation sounds to someone who doesn't speak english and it's the same thing where it's like certain noises that i as an english speaker was like yeah that has like the melody of a conversation that two people would have. And there's laughter in there. But the words are very convincing gibberish. I would love an episode of Frasier that was just like the music of the way they talk, the dulcet tones of Kelsey Grammer, just going up and down and taking his little runs and all the other voices coming in there, but not ever having a story that could take me out of going to sleep. Just like an episode of Fraser for someone who doesn't speak the language, that would knock me right out. And

if it doesn't exist, it's mine and I'll take a million dollars for it, please. I don't know if something like that exists hey say that's a great idea be nice to me i'm saying daniel that is a great idea i do like that a lot i i so i we i don't know i can't remember if i talked about this on the podcast but my obsession with asmr which i feel like has passed at this point but when i was like in the throes of it i discovered that i was leaning towards these makeup ones because i didn't give a shit like she's talking about the different things she's doing on my face like now i'm adding blush or like now i'm adding eyeliner and like i don't care i don't care what any of those are i'm just listening to the sing-song nature of your voice.

And I'm listening to like the sound of the brush on presumably my cheeks. I don't know. Then I discovered from there a woman who was doing it in Spanish. And I was like, this is way better because I don't understand a fucking word. All I'm getting is the nice tones, like the really nice sounds that I wanted from somebody's voice. She's not like whispering. She's like telling me something. But it's something I don't have to have any investment in whatsoever.

It's somebody talking to me without any expectation that I will listen to them. And it was so nice. It was really, really pleasant. And that's really where ended my asmr career was like just listening to foreign ones yeah let's see i'm trying to think of how you even do yours i think you just get like the uh you get the russian version of everybody loves raymond or the if there is whoever does the spanish version of fraser and yeah you just listen to that.

Yeah, I'm sure they exist and I could do that. Ah, what a gift to me that would be. But I do like, I mean, there are certain things that they say in these particular ones where they're trying to get you to go to sleep that are ideas you didn't come up with. And it is sort of fun. Like it's fun to imagine it and it's helping me go to sleep. Somebody talking about like you fall into a pile of warm laundry but you continue to sink deeper and deeper into this pile of warm laundry like they're just creating this scenario and i'm like i do like this were you ever afraid of getting hypnotized or inceptioned all right wait wait why do you ask because did the laundry thing remind

you of it well well sinking deeper certainly reminded me of get out um and when you're talking about listening to someone who doesn't speak english and you don't know what they're saying yes i i immediately thought about um not not hypnosis or anything but

trying depending on what they're saying if they're saying something very sexual or very radical and insane, having to explain why your search history is full of Turkish women telling you to rise up against the bosses. I am afraid. And the reason that I'm afraid of getting hypnotized is that in college, I went to a show where the college was putting on where the hypnotist like got kids up on stage and made them do crazy shit. And the way that he began it was he's like, I'd like everyone in the audience to just close their eyes for a second. And just listen to the sound of my voice. And he would just started talking to us. He started saying deeper and deeper. At one point, he might have mentioned falling into laundry, which feels maybe like a common tactic now. And I was like feeling at one point, I don't know what I was feeling. At one point, I woke up from it, like pulled myself back from it. And I was like, whoa, something was happening there. I don't know if I was falling asleep or if I was actually getting hypnotized, but it was not under my control. And it was because of the things this guy was saying. It's like, I pulled back. And at a certain point he has to be like, he wakes everybody up, but he says, now, is there anyone look, open your eyes, look around. Is there anyone sitting next to you who still has their eyes shut? And then if there were, those were the people he pulled on stage. I don't think you were actually being hypnotized because they had a hypnotist at my high school. And I was one of the people that got hypnotized and I was lying for attention. Because the hypnotist, what their real skill is, is being able to weed out which kids are going to play along and which kids aren't. And lo and behold, there were a lot of theater kids who were hypnotized

that day, who were willing to sit on stage and be silly and do things with the gentleman's agreement that we would all pretend afterwards that we were hypnotized. It was an entertaining night for everyone and a great skill for that hypnotist to be to to be able to spot because he was throwing kids off the stage when he could tell no this was gonna be a prick he was getting rid of them so the only people on stage were ones who are like willing to look stupid at his command and also willing to like when i left the school at the end of the presentation with my friends, they were like, do you not remember anything? I'm like, no,

I felt like I was there for, you know, I closed my eyes for one second and then the thing was over. What happened? And, uh, just, you know,

you know, you lie to your friends cause it's entertaining for a while. Um, maybe that's one of the reasons. Yeah. There's a good chance you're falling asleep. It was like early days, like freshman year, and there's still orientation happening. And I was like sleeping about four hours a night.

I was probably just falling asleep in the auditorium. And then woke myself up startled that this man had control of my brain. Yeah, I don't know what i would create in terms of one i i think i like the story i think i want a story in english and i want a story that meanders but when in which i have no responsibility like it is about me they're like telling me like here are the things that are happening to you but that has no peril. There's no jeopardy. There's really like nothing going on.

But the voice is interesting enough and compelling enough that I want to continue to listen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a great question. And that about does it for our show, which is quick question. But you all knew that already. Recorded, edited, produced, and now scripted by the irreplaceable

Gabe Harder. Our theme song is done by the incredible Merex. Their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com. You can find me on Twitter at dlb__inc or the show at qq__sorinanddan. Email us at qq__sorinanddaniel at gmail.com. We are coming up on our

end of the year slash holiday episodes where we take questions from you, the listeners and viewers out there at YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok world. And if any of you are watching us on Vine, you can reach out too. We have a Patreon. You can find us there.

Yeah, I don't know. Oh, I thought that was a real thing. I thought Vine was back. No, Vine is dead. Vine? Yeah, I don't know. Oh, I thought that was a real thing. I thought Vine was back. No, Vine is dead. Okay. Our friend Cody just put out a video. Our friends Cody and David Bell and Katie Stoll and Will Gord

and John Conway and some other folks that I'm forgetting. They all work on the Some More News YouTube channel and podcast Empire. And they just put out a video about the fragile content creator economy. It's great. It's a 30 minute video episode that you can get on audio also. And they mention something like Vine in the episode. So it was top of mind. That's why I said it. Got it. All right. Bye.

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

Who did you get? What do I be? Remember? What's it up to? Where did all the bad weeks end? Oh forget it I'm sorry baby 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