Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 103 - Lend Me a Hand

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

In this episode the guys talk about their burning desire to escape modern trappings and live in the wilderness, and then consequently how quickly they would die!  As always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to Hello Tushy.  10% off + free shipping HelloTushy.com/qq .  Thanks to Skillshare.com/qq and one-month free trial of  Premium Membership. Thanks to Mack Weldon. For 20% off your first order, visit mackweldon.com/QQ with promo code QQ

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and commentators ask each other questions and give each other answers. I'm one half of that podcast, author of How to Fight Presidents and staff writer for last week's Tonight with John Oliver, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody.

I'm Soren Bowie. I'm a writer for American Dad. Previously worked at Cracked, helped write the Cracked book, so I've got a book on the shelves if you wanted to go find it. I could even tell you which little sections i wrote no big deal but uh if you find yourself reading it and you laugh out loud that's probably mine uh and that's about it for me all right that's the show thanks everybody see you next week thanks to mac weldon for supporting quick question mac weldon is a premium men's essentials brand that believes in smart design and high quality fabrics for 20 off your first order visit mac

weldon.com slash qq and enter promo code qq thanks to hello tushy for supporting quick question keep your sweaty crack clean all summer long with the latest in butt cleaning technology water clean your butthole with a bidet get 10 off plus free shipping and get your butt clean sweaty crack clean all summer long with the latest in butt cleaning technology, water. Clean your butthole with a bidet. Get 10% off plus free shipping and get your butt clean at hellotushy.com slash QQ. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question. Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. Do something today you couldn't do yesterday with classes designed for real life. Skillshare is an online learning community with so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives.

Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one-month free trial of premium membership. I generally don't think I could tell you what parts I worked on for the Crack Detects book. You don't recognize your writing? I, I, own? Not really. I know I did a bunch of it, but I also like there's so much,

especially back then, the overlap between the way I wrote and the way that we tried to make cracked sound is very... Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of overlap, I guess. And it would be, yeah, really difficult for me to tell which is which.

I guess I could say the funny parts. Yeah, but that sounds... The overlay of the voices of Cracked, like there is one voice of Cracked and the overlay is basically a mixture of you, Jason, and, uh, and the other guy. And Jack. That's almost criminally irresponsible. The guy who invented it. Gave us all of our careers.

Always a supportive supportive generous man and so yeah when everybody else was writing they were aping essentially your three style so i guess i can understand that why it would look so camouflaged in there um but like i can remember writing the foreword for that book and being very proud of it and i can remember there are sections of it my son occasionally picks it up and looks at it because he likes the pictures a lot and asked me to read sections to him and i'll read something i'm like reading to him about the mimic octopus and i'll be like oh wait i wrote this yeah that was i remember that being very funny so much so that that my brain was like you probably did that

i i feel like i I feel like I... Like, I don't... I have no real recall over what episodes of Agents of Cracked I wrote. A show I did with Michael. And you wrote an episode, and Cody wrote an episode, and Jack wrote a couple episodes, and Jason wrote a few. And I know which ones, like, Jason, Jack, you, or Cody wrote, but for the most part, that show became such a weird blend of both of us

because we also took passes on each other's scripts uh that and we didn't the first two seasons i think we didn't even say written by credit for any of them because it was all just like from these two egoless 20 somethings uh and like like truly re-watching an old episode mean like that's pretty funny is that is that rude of me to say who knows yeah that stuff sort of gets hazy after a while and when i look back on the old videos that we did like when you talked about the sky monster action plan movie or show that we did i was like i didn't write an episode of that oh yeah i did after hours are a little bit easier to tell because i usually remember the argument that like i could tell an argument that's that's

born out of my brain and also i could tell tell by what lines I've chosen to give myself. If I have easy lines or an opportunity for something fun or a reason for me to have note cards in my hands. Very often I'm like, oh yeah, I see. Or I guess the only ways I could tell Agents of Cracked is if for some reason in season one, agents of crack is uh if for some reason in season one the daniel character instead of his trademark vest tie and button-down shirt has for some reason found himself in a t-shirt i bet i wrote that yeah that's the very easy way to go through after hours determine if i wrote the episode is just check the cross the page in the script and see if it says so everybody the gang is all eating soren is eating a chocolate silk pie from claim jumpers that you'll have to get this freezer section of ralph's if it's not silk pie from Clam Jumpers that you'll have to get at the

freezer section of Ralph's. If it's not there, Pavilions also carries it, but you'll have to drive all the way to Culver City to get it. Good. Good welcoming way to get people into the show. Do you want to do the show?

I think that's a good idea. We should. I think that's what they came for. I have a quick question for you. Go. Obviously, my quick questions always come with a very long meandering premise. I mean, preface. So let me do that first. I'm reading Hatchet to my son. Are you familiar with the book Hatchet?

No. The premise of Hatchet is that there's a young boy, I think he's 13 or 14, and he is on a plane and gets lost in the Canadian wilderness. The plane goes down and he gets lost and the pilot who's with him dies tragically, but the boy survives the plane crash. And he's stuck out in the Canadian wilderness without anyone around and he's there for, I think, 58 days. And all he's there for I think 58 days and

all he's got with him is a hatchet and It's about him learning how to survive out there. First of all, you know dealing with the the issue of like This is completely impossible. I'm hearing all kinds of wolves and things like that and then slowly Realizing that he can do it and what it takes to do it. And then coming out the other side. Now, there are a bunch of follow-up books, which are also pretty good. There's one called The River, where he goes back out there to show some guy who's working with the government. Who's like, we want to be able to tell people how to survive out in the wilderness.

Especially if there are soldiers, if they get stuck out there. How to use the elements to their advantage. And then, obviously, things go wrong again. And the boy's out there alone again. But I'm reading Hatchet currently. Is this book supposed to be for your son's age? No. So I'm realizing that as I'm reading it to him.

The minute the pilot died. And he basically crashes in a lake. And he looks over and the dead pilot is sitting next to him. And this continues to haunt him throughout the rest of the story. I was like, oh, you know what? i think i read hatchet about fourth grade but he is enjoying it uh he really likes it for the same reasons that i liked it when i was young which was the complete wrong reason of the story which was i fantasized exclusively about being lost in the wilderness and how i would thrive out there and like picturing in my head in the fantasy, every single detail that I would do.

And I want to know if this is, if that's universal, if like every kid who ever hears about the prospect of being lost in the wilderness and how terrifying it would be to face wild animals and make your own fires, every kid goes, fuck yes, give me that right now. I want to say, yes, it's universal. But I don't know if that's strictly kids.

And the reason I bring that up is because I saw Into the Wild when I was definitely in college. And it's a movie about Emil Hirsch's character. It's based on a book. He graduates college and then's a movie about emil hirsch's character it's based on a book he graduates college and then like destroys all of his credit cards destroys his car uh says goodbye to his family forever and just lives out in the in the world and the movie is is him like meeting different weird characters and he works at this job for a while and now he's at this like uh like desert sort of co-op colony for a while

and his dream seems to be end up in alaska and then just live off the land in alaska he has a bunch of fun doing it and then he uh uh fucking dies from the elements yeah i i like i he might even poison himself he's accidentally so that's based on christopher mccandless who was like a real guy who did all this john krakauer wrote a book about him but like he went out there was like kind of irresponsible but somehow just like got very lucky and lived for a long time and then ate the wrong shit and it just slowly he wasted away out there and died yeah uh and i watched that movie on my older brother's suggestion and when it was done he was like what did you think like i think i want to rip up my credit cards burn my car go to alaska

it seems so freeing i want to do exactly what i want to do mostly exactly what that guy did yeah um crazy that um zach gilfanakis is in that movie as like a blue collar hard-nosed uh trucker kind of guy he's one of his bosses at one point oh no he just works with him he works isn't go ahead vince vaughn too yes like some weird weird casting choices they got like very comedic actors to play very straight roles. And Zach Gilfanakis tells him basically what to do when you kill big game. How do you preserve that game, that meat, so that you can live off of it out there. And as he's telling them, like, it's pretty detailed.

I was doing the same thing when I was a kid. I was like taking notes. I was like, okay, so I got to bury it immediately. I got to get it in the moss. That's important all the guts out okay okay okay i could do all that good advice thank you zach yeah um it's yeah and it's definitely like the the movie is not trying to they don't want you to walk away from that movie thinking the guy who abandoned his sister and family and then died is the hero or someone that you should like take lessons from but that's i i certainly did i did it for that and also uh

127 hours another oh yeah based on a real story about a guy who went hiking aaron ralston i guess like like like biking is that what he was doing? Biking in canyons? He was canyoneering. So he biked out there and then he was just repelling and working through the canyons. He fell and a rock landed on his arm and he was there for 127 hours until

he had to cut his own arm off and then find help and miraculously survive. And it's like a difficult to watch movie it's very torturous they do a really good job uh walking you up to the decision to cut his arm off and then like really making you feel like uh that was a uh that that probably really did hurt and i hope to never have to do it but at the start of that movie he leaves and it's still

like dark out he He leaves his house. He doesn't leave a note for anyone. He doesn't tell anyone he's going. He just goes for a hike. And I did that shit the day after I saw that movie. I watched that movie in theaters. I'm like, I'm going to Topanga Canyon tomorrow. I'm not going to tell anyone.

This is a really important question. Because I like the freedom of that. This is an important question. When you did your hike without telling anyone, very pointedly not telling anyone, did you bring a pocket knife with you? Oh, yeah. Okay. But I think I just, I like always had a pocket knife.

Like even before I was doing any real hiking, when my brothers and I all went to college, our dad got us a gift of a pocket knife. I was like here this is yeah some kind of transition into manhood thing uh slash uh protection in college i don't know a lot of unsavory characters in college quads yeah you might be walking through one at night you're gonna need this bad boy yeah on the first day you go up to you find the biggest guy well first you go to your ra you ask where's the biggest guy. Well, first you go to your RA, you ask, where's the biggest guy?

And then you get into a fight with the biggest guy. And you stab him. And that's how you graduate. Yeah. Here's this knife in case you need to stab anyone to death in college. This is tangential, but I'm vaguely recalling a story of you getting pulled over as a pedestrian on a freeway when you got to LA and a cop finding a knife in your bag. Yeah. Mack Weldon is a premium men's essentials brand that believes in smart design and high quality

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Mack Weldon, reinventing men's basics. You man, you really didn't know how this city worked yet. No. And this is, I feel bad telling this story now because I've gotten older and fun stories to tell about run-ins with police officers used to be a reliable delightful icebreaker but as i've gotten older and stories of uh there's a disproportionate amount of fun that you can have

with run-ins with police officers based on your race and gender and so like it's it's it's less of a treat to be like look at all these times where i should have gotten in trouble and didn't um so i've retired talking about most of those stories, but this one, cause it came up organically. And because I'm just trying to pad time in this episode, I moved to LA. It was my first time going back to Jersey for Christmas and I didn't have any friends. I also didn't have a lot of money for like taxis and I didn't understand how public transportation worked. And I needed to take my car in somewhere to get repairs. And it lined up with this trip to New Jersey. It was like, great, I'm going to drop the car off at this repair place. And then I won't need a car for

a week because I'll be in New Jersey and I'll get it when I get back from New Jersey. The place was pretty close to my apartment at the time. So I dropped my car off. And then I was, I was just going to run the four miles or whatever from the repair place to home, which is a fine plan. But the four miles was on the 405. Because that's what, that's what Google Maps told me was the fastest route. So I was just running in the shoulder of this very unsafe, very famously dangerous, very fast freeway. The worst freeway in Los Angeles. Correct.

The very narrow shoulder, very small lanes, and very windy. Yes. And I'm running. I'm making good time. And I also cleared everything out of my car to put in in my backpack and i was running home with my backpack and a a cop pulled me over very quickly and gets out of his car and like no decorum of cop stuff going on he was like what are you doing i was like i don't have any friends i'm running home this is the route that i took to get here so i'm just following it back i knew and he i gave him my driver's license because he asked for it and it was still

a jersey license and he was like do they let you run down the freeway in jersey and i said yes but you never did that in jersey no and also do they even call them freeways there you just have like highways don't you have like garden State Parkway and highways and stuff. But, you know, I don't think he was too familiar with the intricacies of our road system. Yeah, you bluffed him. Yeah, and that's when we were like, yeah, we do it all the time. Our governor does it. You love it.

It's great. Yeah. And so I was like, all right, you can't run on the 405. I'm going to drive you home. I'm going to search you before I put you in my car because i have to do that so i'm on the side of the road with my hands in the back of my head and he searches me uh and he's like i gotta search your bag too do you have any any guns knives weapons bombs in your bag like no it's just stuff i was clearing out of my car and he pulls out a pocket knife

and like like in like perfectly comedically timed, it's the first thing he grabs. His hand just like goes for it, pulls out a knife and he shows the knife to me. And I'm like, oh, I have, I do have a knife. And he's like, you can't, you can't have this. Like, he pulls- Wait, how big is the knife?

It's bigger than, when it's unfolded, it's bigger than my hand. This is not a Swiss army knife. This is like a, I have to skin this animal now knife. Yes, yeah. And like he measured it, it's too big it's bigger than my hand this is not a sysarby knife this is like a i've to skin this animal now knife yes yeah uh and like he measured it it's too big for me to have he still gives it back to me this is like tremendous amounts of idiot white privilege on display that i i am alive and and and not dead or in prison or horrible statistics somewhere and he gets me in the car and he drives me to my apartment and uh he's also like he also points out like you you need to get your driver's license changed to a california license he's like

he's just like listing very dumb basic things like you can't run on the 405 you can't have this knife you got to change your driver's license and And he's dropping me off. Just like, you just, you just got to be better. Yeah, you got to grow up, man. You can't be like this. Talk, talk to someone. I love how after he catches you on the 405 running, it's like everything's eggshells after that. He's just like walking very delicately with everything.

Like, okay, listen, you can't have a knife this giant in your bag you can't you got to get your license changed you can't run on the 405 actually you know what let me come in your apartment i'm gonna tell you if there's some stuff wrong in there that's gonna kill you in the next couple days yeah i don't know you've done so many stupid things immediately that i don't know where the line is so i'm just gonna throw some stuff out there you can't leave your burners on when you leave you can't leave your door unlocked you can't if you have like a kid at home in a tub you can't do that how's that just just check all these things check all your outlets check your fireplace i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna come back in a couple days i just want to make sure you're okay

just gotta make sure you're eating that's so funny um but the it's it's it's very easy to look back and laugh at those moments now that we're adults but you know early 20s nobody was good at being grown up yet um college is maybe like the very worst thing to prepare you for what it's like to be in the real world because it's so insular and and they really it's padded walls at college yeah and when you get out of the real world you don't know how to do anything like very basic stuff is so confusing and hard uh down to like check writing where you're like i don't i don't understand yeah okay so so tell me again with the gas pump uh i picked the one that says 85 and like you just don't know this shit yeah and when you and

you're kind of learning it along the way and you're doing it very quietly because it's so embarrassing that you're the you think like you're the only person who doesn't know until later when you find out everybody else was running on freeways and carrying big knives yeah i remember you say like writing checks i remember my first apartment uh giving in a rent check on like the 17th or 18th of a month because i'd gotten paid that day and i was just like at the manager's office, just like here, I have it now. I don't know if I'm going to have this much later. So like take this now.

Okay. And then we're good. I had, uh, somebody had to come to my first apartment that Dan Campana and I lived in and, uh, they did some, some work did some work on the ceiling was leaking. And afterwards, I had to pay the guy. And I was going to get reimbursed by the landlord called me. He's like, whatever they charge, just like pay them and then I will reimburse you. And so I had to write this check and really had a moment of panic where I went to the memo line.

And we started to write maintenance and then realized I didn't know how to spell maintenance. And I was like, okay, okay. Be cool. Just, you got this. What else could you write?

And eventually just spelled something that I was like, I hope this is maintenance. And then kept fretting about it. Like when he sees that check, is that going to be, is that check doesn't, does it not work now? Like not knowing how,

I didn't know what part of the checks were important. Man, I think I, I don't know if any parts of the checks are important because I remember my first year of like writing checks for things. I like calling Verizon or one of the people that I was sending bills to. And I said, hey, something just occurred to me.

I can't remember if I signed that check. So just let me, let me know if it comes to you and it's not signed. I'll send out another one. And you could like write void on that one. And the Verizon person was like, it's going to be fine. And it ended up being fine. It's weird that you're just allowed to do that. I would go to cash checks occasionally that would be to my wife and me at a bank where uh she didn't she wasn't a joint member on the account and sometimes they'd be like

you can't cash this here you're there's somebody else's name on it and other times they'd be like looks fine to me and they just cash it i was like okay well it's just lawless i guess checks are checks or whatever you want them to be um makes you want to rip them up and walk into the wilderness huh dan, Dan? Absolutely. Didn't have to worry about signing anything when he was dying violently. I think he actually passed very slowly in his bus. He found a bus out there in the middle of nowhere. That's right, he lived in a bus out there.

And we read that book when I was in high school. And I went to famously a very i was in high school and we i went to a famously a very outdoor orient outdoor forward high school and as we were reading it we were everyone was having the same reaction which was the indulgence of it of like it i could do it i could live out there and like everyone's getting excited and then one day we walk into class to do it and my teacher uh class to do it. And my teacher, what's his name? Peter Mueller. That was his name. He's like, everybody on the bus. And we're like, okay. And we had these little tiny buses back then because it's a small school. So like these little things that we called fat boys. And everybody got on this bus and this was probably February. He drove us up into

the mountains, essentially. There's an area that's called Spring Gulch up above Carbondale, where I grew up. And there's all these little valleys and ravines up there. He drove us up there and just parked the bus on the side of the road. And he's like, get out. And we all got out with our backpacks. And nobody is dressed for snow because we're dressed to go to class. But he has us hike up this ditch, which is just, it's all powder. This is not well trod. And we're all getting drenched and we've got snow in our shoes and everything. And he's like, now sit down.

And I was like, no, he was like, no, we're doing class here. Please sit down. And everybody has to sit out there in the snow. And then we started reading some more of In the Wild. And as we're reading it, he's like, this, this is what it's like. Like, you're not prepared. You don't have any of the things you need. This is the miserable part.

This is what it's going to be like every single day, except you don't have the luxury of other people around you either. You're just alone. And everyone was like, oh, yeah, okay, I'd die. That's fair. Well, I think counterpoint, Mr. Mueller. That's not what it was like. It was not a surprise when he got to Alaska that there was snow. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. But a story like Hatchet, he was woefully underprepared, Christopher McCandless. But a story like Hatchet, you think about going out there and you're like, okay. And then I'm bringing my dehydrated meals. I've got my pocket rocket stove. I've got all the things I got at least like a ground tarp at the very, the very least something I could build a lean to with, but no, you have nothing. You're going out there with nothing. And then you got to figure it out. And that's, you know, part of me is like, Oh, that sounds scary scary and part of me has always been like oh fuck man that's a they just let it all go nothing else that sounds great i'd listen

to the birds i'd know when they were giving their warning calls i mean i don't know it now but i'd learn it yeah you'd have to pick it up right yeah so there's a show called alone are you familiar with this i think i talked about it you've talked about it on the show yeah yeah it's it satisfies the same itch for me it's like they really are out there and completely alone and i guess they're allowed to bring certain supplies with them like they bring hunting bows and things like that but boy i watch that show and i'm like okay okay How do I get on this? And then I'll be thinking to myself, no, come on, Soren, you've got kids.

And then one of the people that they're introducing will do their backstory and they're like, you know, it's really hard being out there because I've got my one-year-old back at home. And I'm like, I have a one-year-old. I could do this. Colleen, there's a precedent. Hey, quick question.

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HelloTushy.com slash qq for 10 off hellotushy.com slash qq this is tangential but did you read um the k growing up of course so i'm just thinking of like what why there was such a market for hatchet the k and lord of the flies just these books where tragedy happens and some kid has to live in the wilderness somewhere there's another one called the cave for anyone who doesn't know uh go ahead like a uh young white british kid his plane or boat crashes and he's he's is stuck with uh an older black man and it's like it's high status kid and, and low status person back in,

uh, wherever they were coming from. But then the, the, the man certainly knows survival better than the kid and teaches him how to live on this small Island that they wash up on. And also the kid, uh,

in like an early beat of this stuck up punk kid story the guy's like hey we're we're floating on a raft to this island just want you to know um don't stare at the sun or you'll go blind and the kid's like fuck off and stares at the sun and goes blind yeah so it's just this blind kid and this relative stranger surviving together on this island it i think the very there's another book of the that's called the goats which is also a really good um tween but what's that what's that genre called young adult yeah yeah it's a young adult book and it's just like that's like two kids who get stuck out on an island together uh when they're at camp but i'm realizing that like the the granddaddy of all these is huck finn

and that's such a great, satisfying, indulgent book to read when you're a kid of like, and then I just go down the river. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. You're getting away from your parents. You think about all those horrible,

grim fairy tales where the kids go get lost in the woods. And as an adult, you're like, why did they make those so dark? But I don't think you remember that as a kid, when a story starts with, and now you're alone in the woods, you're like, great. Let's do it. Good.

Tell me what happens next because I am in. Yeah. Kids in Lord of the Flies, their boat crashes and they're stuck on an island. It's like, uh-oh, so long, brushing my teeth. I only have one pair of clothes is what you're saying and i never have to change again sounds great let's do it yeah let's make spears let's kill the monster yeah i wonder if we should uh try hunting kids we don't like or if we should like stick to the plan and like make sunday school oh nope we're all already wild and hunting the kid we hate good uh i do there was that weird satisfaction from that story too i

remember that it's i wonder if this is i'm maybe outing myself as sexist here so bear with me please daniel if this is a boy fantasy or if everybody has this I didn't want to make that broad sweeping generalization, but I think it is. Because like my mother and sister-in-law also watched Call of the Wild around the time that my brother and I did. And they were like, that M.O. Hirsch character, selfish. I'm like, no, totally, totally selfish. Hey, Davidid a word david i need your lighter please i have to burn this credit card right now uh yeah i i don't know i mean i the stories are horrific and i think there's a point that

it's just boys on the island in lord of the flies like that's part of it um but i wonder if that i god if only we had a female perspective on this show that we could check in every once in a while with um but yeah that i wonder if it's a horror story for some people and then like an indulgence for others and the people who it's indulgence for just have to like very quietly be like oh yeah it's bad it's bad it would be bad to be out there alone and uh just watching the sunset every day and seeing the bats fly through the air yeah knowing the earth yeah that's bad that's bad yeah boy there's a some natural disaster happening in new york right now i think that's just real real round of of a squad yeah i'm sorry it's just it's just the city it's just the city it's just my city it's just my home yeah

boy trade one canyon walls for another set of canyon walls huh dan no no yeah okay no i was just dreaming about you know falling off the trail on i guess alongside the hudson and maybe getting there are some boulders i can get my arm stuck in uh-huh maybe maybe i could live out my fantasy there i read that story so i haven't watched 127 hours because I don't think I can. Oh. But I read his story. I think Aaron Rolston wrote it for Outside Magazine and basically just did a very detailed accounting.

And the same sort of thing is in the sequels to Hatchet where they make him go back and relive it. This Outside Magazine took a photographer with them. They went back to where it happened, back to the rocks. He showed them everything that happened, and he tells the whole story. And I had to read this over the course of a day of like four or five different sittings where I would sit there and read some and then have to go lie down because it was so awful to read. And, uh, really like I don't do well with blood and he's describing what it feels like to finally cut through the bone like finish that cut and like the first cut and when he starts getting through

arteries and stuff and i was like genuinely getting sick and i'd have to go lie down for a little and think about something else and then i'd be like okay steal myself a little bit emotionally and go read the rest of it let me ask ask you something. What is your artistic endeavor right now? Do you have one? Are you doing something artistic? I'll bet even if you answered no to that question, the true answer is yes. You just don't think of it as art because it's something that's so ingrained in you and so innate that you feel like you have to do it. There's like a calling to it. We are all born to create in some capacity. We want to feel necessary in relationship to the world. And that's what art does, folks. Whether you last picked up a paintbrush yesterday or in to create in some capacity. We want to feel necessary in relationship to the world,

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YouTube Success Script, Shoot and Edit with MKBHD. This is a class by Marques Brownlee. And the thing that I really enjoy about this class is that I don't get TikTok. I don't understand it. I'll be honest with you. It's something that confuses me, but it's massively popular and so popular in a way that I'm concerned at some point somebody's going to come to me and say, hey, you need to have some sort of presence on TikTok.

I want to be ready for that moment. And this class is very helpful because it's teaching me how to edit videos, how to make videos, and the best way to shoot things I didn't know before because I always had a director or somebody who'd be like, hey, what you're doing there, that doesn't work. You got to turn around and face the camera.

Ah, ah, I understand now. I find my light. Oh, it's so easy. You can explore your creativity at skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one month free trial of premium membership. That's one month of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. It's a tough watch for that reason.

And like, even if you know what happens going into it as is inescapable from the previews and the premise of the movie, I remember in theaters watching it and he gets stuck in that boulder within like no joke 12 minutes or something like that and i'm like oh so the movie is mostly okay there's not like there's not like a half hour of him just enjoying hikes oh shit yeah it's a very close relative to like torture porn or like yeah uh movies like uh where people are stuck at sea and the sharks are just toying with them or whatever it's yeah it's just stress the whole way through and it's somebody inflicting the torture on themselves which is my worst nightmare yeah anyway that's not my fantasy getting stuck or like things ever going wrong in even the

slightest degree not my fantasy yeah in my fantasy like things ever going wrong in even the slightest degree. Not my fantasy. Yeah. In my fantasy, everything goes right, right off the bat. And I am good. I am mother nature and I are pals. Yeah. My adventure mirrors the beginning of their adventures.

And then I don't do anything stupid like die or get caught by a rock or anything like that. You do feel very invincible when you go out into the wilderness and maybe you don't tell anyone. I'm not advocating that. But no, I don't do that anymore. You don't tell anyone. You go off and you come back and you're like, ha, beat it. I survived.

And no one's the wiser. And you feel very immortal. I remember going on a lot of camping trips when I was young on backpacking trips. That's like backcountry stuff. So you're finding your way on a topographic map. You're deciding on your route. And you go, you go out, you do it. You sleep out there.

Everything you need is on your back. And then you come out the other side and you're like, lived it. I'm done. Take that mother nature. And it feels very good. Yeah. lived it i'm done take that mother nature and it feels very good yeah there was the first time i went backpacking with my old college roommate in yosemite and just like walking around with paper maps and just like all right we camp here tonight and then we're gonna start going again tomorrow morning and just doing that for uh three or four days and then getting back out to the parking lot

and being like oh oh so i guess the the map was right and i guess i know how to follow maps okay good and i was really yeah go ahead sorry instead of treating it like a miracle that we survived it was like huh maybe i just have a natural instinct for surviving in the wild well yeah of course that's the first place your brain goes is oh oh shit i'm good at this i rule at this i didn't die huh some people died that was irresponsible of them they shouldn't have done it but me i know what i what I'm doing. No, you know what I did? I treated Mother Nature with respect as I was out there. I didn't take my eye off her. I knew that she could shake me at any minute.

And that's the secret. When you meet Mother Nature as a peer and the respect is mutual, that's how you live. That's how you survive. That's the only way. Literally the only way. Now, in the books i can't remember it's like it's like taming a wild horse a thing i could probably do i don't know if it's true hatchet but in the river which is the sequel there's a there is a

topographic map at the beginning of the book that shows you basically a couple different rivers in this river the stream are a couple different lakes and the stream that goes through them and then down through a very narrow section that's very steep and out to an outpost. And I was showing it to my son because I was like, I wonder if I could teach him how to read a topographic map at this age. And so I started asking him, like, what are these squiggly lines mean? And he's like, that's where mountains are. And I was like, fuck, OK, what can you point to the top of a mountain? And he did it. And I was like, how do you know how to read a topographic map already uh maybe i taught him at some point but then i was like what does it mean here because the area where the river goes through a gorge basically and it's steep on both sides

i was like what does it mean here where the lines are all really close together and he goes that's very steep i was like well right, you go out there. You're clearly the one. Yeah, he's a genius. And he's a natural mountain survivor. I even tried to trick him. I was like, take me. I was like, all right.

So if we had to get from here to there, what's the best way for us to go? And he's like, like this. And said it like that, like, duh, dad. And picked out like the softest gentlest route and even the traced a line for some of it's like basically traversing across the side of a hill and i was like i don't know if that was intentional but that is absolutely right for him does he like hiking i forget no hey damn loves camping so i think that's the incentive and i i think maybe deep in my heart

i'm the same way where you getting out there is not the fun part it's being out there yeah and then the moving from place to place is just sort of a pain in the ass but the sitting at night as the darkness just descends on you and complete quiet and everything's cold like that's what i love yeah death death is what i'm describing sweet death comes to claim me uh hey so soren we when uh when we started this episode i didn't have any questions and i said you go first and then by the time you're done uh i'll have a question. So quick question for you. Yeah. Do you think I came up with one?

What's a good question? You had to like come up with one right now. What's a good question? Yeah. I'm looking at the amount of time that we've been talking and it's, it's a, it's a not rude amount of time. I think once we get the ads in there. It feels let's nobody's going to question it. They'll be like, in fact, they might get to work and be like, oh, good.

It ended right. I was I was arriving at my job. And I feel like the next time we record, it'll be a few weeks from now and we'll have more to say to each other. True. That's true. I'm going on a big trip. Yeah. And I'll come back with lots and lots of stories.

OK, well, you can follow daniel on twitter at dob underscore inc you can follow me soren at soren underscore ltd you can follow uh or well let's say let's do quick question you can follow quick question at qq underscore soren and dan or you can email us at qq with soren and daniel gmail.com. Kind of goes back and forth. Much to Dan's dismay, all of these fluctuate pretty wildly between Dan and Daniel. We have an Instagram too. You want to know what that is? QQ underscore with underscore Soren underscore and underscore Daniel.

And then, of course, you can follow and find higher and find, and I don't know. Well, I don't know. You actually can do any of those things, but we do have a producer and sound engineer and editor that we always like to say thank you to. And his name is Gabe harder and he's just the best.

He's so good at his job and he's so funny. And every single time that we actually let him on the mic, he makes me mad because he so clear he should be on the show and that's it i'm not gonna let him on right now no he's probably not walking his dog anyway all right bye