Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 106 -The Youths AREN‘T All Right

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

In this episode the guys talk about the weird things they did as kids, and Soren discusses his rock collection and his son's cone collection. CONE ZONE!  And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks Hawthorne. Take your quiz and get 10% off your first purchase at hawthorne.co with code QQ . Thanks  Hello Tushy.  10% off + free shipping HelloTushy.com/qq . And thank to headspace. go to HEADSPACE.COM/QUICKQUESTION for a FREE one-month trial with access to Headspace’s full mediation library.

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, author of How to Fight Presidents, and staff writer for Last Week's Night with John Oliver, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey everybody, I'm Soren Bui.

I'm a writer for American Dad. Jesus Christ. Hey everybody, I'm Soren soren buoy writer for american dad i'm sorry i'm just doing some research here on um some mp3 players i could be using at the gym uh or what i'm running okay uh is now not a good time to do the podcast i mean if possible thanks to hello tushy for supporting quick question now the brand new hello mean, if possible. Thanks to HelloTushy for supporting Quick Question. Now the brand new HelloTushy 3.0 modern bidet attachment is here to level the playing field. It's stylish, eco-friendly, easy to install, and affordable. HelloTushy.com slash QQ to get 10% off plus free shipping. Thanks to Hawthorne for supporting

Quick Question. Hawthorne for supporting Quick Question. Hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile with skincare and hair care made just for you. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine at hawthorne.co and use promo code QQ

to get 10% off your first purchase. Thanks to Headspace for supporting Quick Question. Just 30 days of Headspace lowers stress by 32% and just four sessions can reduce burnout by 14%. Headspace is here to help. You deserve to feel happier and Headspace is meditation made simple. Go to headspace.com slash quick question. This sounds pretty, pretty urgent.

Well, I'm finding out there's a bunch of new technology I didn't even anticipate. So now I got to like research, which I didn't. I thought Apple would certainly have like some little nickel-sized thing I could just put in my pocket. But there's all kinds of stuff now. What do you run with? I run, I use my phone, my iPhone. And I listen to music when I run. I have,

I keep cycling through different playlists of running music and the latest one is all about trying to make me faster. You listen through your phone. So your phone is on you when you're running or are you on a treadmill? It's in my hand. My phone is in my hand. You're running with a phone in your hand?

How far are you going? These days, about in my hand you're running with a phone in your hand how far are you going uh these days about five miles five miles with a with a suitcase no wait you have a phone in your hand while you're running because i don't because because if i put it in my pocket it's bouncy and i don't like that feeling i don't like to have anything in my pockets uh and I know that they have those what do you call it? Like a thing where you put it on your arm? Yes. You could put your phone in like an armband thing. I don't like that because

I like to replay the same song over and over again often. And I also use I track my runs on an app that tells me how far You're using your phone while you're running yeah you're like you're it's in your hand and then at a certain point like you get to the end you're a song and you just pick it up i i interact with it yeah sometimes uh because you

know how how siri will can like read your text messages to you sometimes that happens too and i'm just gonna be running and i'll and they'll be like mom says have a good day or whatever well let me just say dan i ordinarily wear a wedding ring i can't even run with a wedding ring on because i don't like the imbalance of it really you run with a phone a whole phone in your hand that you're also occasionally like texting people on and and being like i don't like this playlist let's go see what else spotify has has cracked has up for me wrote oh my god okay and that's got to get awful right the phone's got to get sweaty first of all the phone gets really sweaty and sometimes uh if a phone is wet you can't interact with it

also i don't i don't expect and this is not like a slate against you can't interact with it for a while. I don't expect, and this is not like a slight against you, I don't expect it's recognizing your face after about three miles. No, but I don't need it to do that. Are you using a manual password to get into your phone while you're running? Soren, of course I am. I look at my phone. I try to figure out how far I've gone i enter my password i open the app

that tracks my steps all right and it's like oh great three miles i could turn i'm canceling your birthday present the birthday present that's been in the works for six years i think i'm canceling it and i'm and i'm getting you the same thing i'm getting. And it just hooks up right into your wireless earpods, buds, whatever you got. Your Raycons, I assume. We'll see who the advertisers are for this episode. Oh, my God. That's like a lunatic thing. Do you ever see anybody else out on the road wait no the uh the thing you're talking

about that that uh syncs up to my my beloved fucking ray j's headphones yeah what you don't have to hold it where does that where does the okay the thing what i'm looking at is it's about the size of like a uh silver dollar uh it square, but like imagine that size. It's very thin and it has a little clip on it and you wear it on your shorts, wherever you like. I mean, it can also just go in a pocket very easily because it's very small.

All it has on it, I guess you want it outside because you're going to be able to push pause. You're going to skip songs really easily on it. And it just hooks up directly to your spotify and there's no wires or anything like that it just goes straight to your earbuds and there's like 60 different products like this and i guess you just like now i have to what now i have to load my songs onto this stupid box through some kind of third party you have to put an app on your phone, I think, to do it.

No, no thank you. Wait, all right. When you're out running, just picture it, and you're running past a lot of people. I know that you're smoking people left and right. Do you notice phones in any of their hands? I'm not really looking, man. Because that's a special humiliation, I think,

if I started getting burned by a guy who's carrying a phone as he's running. And occasionally just like looking at it and smiling because his mom said, had a good day. Have a good day. Yeah. I think that would really piss me off. Okay. Well, be pissed off then.

You're really getting in my head on this. I can't believe that you run with a phone in your hand. Yeah, I have for years. And I think if I ever stop doing that, the replacement will be running with nothing and just running in silence. I'm much more likely to do that than I am to be away from the phone on a run.

But that means also occasionally like work comes in and you got to stop and look at it yes yeah it's just ruining your workout oh i don't want to tell you what to do dan but but seriously get this thing and get a credit card all right well i guess we should start the show. Yeah, do we have any COVID updates, I guess? Yeah, I have, like, bummer COVID updates that I know. I know, like, four people who got breakthrough cases, vaccinated people who got Delta variant.

Are they okay? They're okay, yeah. Just, like, it sure seems like New York thinks COVID's over and it sure definitely isn't. Yeah. Everybody's really good here. Yeah. Everybody has slid right back into, look, we wear masks. We wear them everywhere. When I take my son to school, we're outside, but there's so many kids and adults around each other that everybody's wearing a mask. When I go to the grocery store, everybody's wearing one. Some people, if you're just walking around in the street,

like when I go on a run, I'd say probably 50% of people are wearing them outdoors even. And people are good here. That's good. I feel like at some point the narrative shifted to COVID's over. We beat it. We got vaccines and uh the cases have not agreed with that narrative no yeah i the way that i have i've been more reckless i mean i

went on trips i went to weddings yeah um and i'm not back i mean i'm not actually i'm vaccinated but i live with these two assholes ronan and Gilly, who are not vaccinated. Who just refuse. They won't do it. And I rarely even think about that. I'm just sort of like, no, we're back in the world now. It's fine. Yeah.

And it's really not fun. I'm starting to wonder how back in the world I'm supposed to be. Like, I had a planned trip to Costaa rica and i canceled that yeah because travel advisories were saying uh don't go unless you have to go to costa rica and i was like man i definitely don't but like that's at at a certain point i feel like i need to to treat everything as like sensible risks i guess because, because I don't know, I'm vaccinated and I'm healthy and I wear a mask all the time.

And if I'm waiting for a travel website to say it's 100% safe to fly to Costa Rica, I don't think that day is ever going to come or at least it's not going to come anytime soon. I think I need to start like, we have to start acting like the world is back you're also otherwise it it won't be back you're in the kind of position where you live alone you don't have anybody else around you who's not vaccinated um you're not like

a teacher you're not in danger of spreading it to a lot of people because you're working from home i think man i really thought this was going to be like eight synonyms for lonely in a row you live alone you're not around anybody workouts are in a apartment you break into that where no one lives um there's you're not a you're not a spreader by any means and so i think that you're fine to go live your life and you're vaccinated if you do get a breakthrough case i don't imagine that's going to put you in a hospital um i think you're you're fine to go do things that you want to do yeah good i think you do need to go to costa rica yeah like did you even think about it when you looked at the travel website did you go do i need to go to costa rica maybe i do yeah because they don't make you fill out a quiz like proving why i need to go there but i feel like i could if not a quiz write a pretty convincing essay yeah

i did do a little traveling. I went backpacking two weeks ago. Where'd you go? We went to New Hampshire, the White Mountains. I've never been to New Hampshire. Is it cool up there? It is really cool. Extreme Colorado vibes. Certainly because we were in

the White Mountains, but even the town outside of us, we stayed in in lincoln uh the night before the trip and it just you could tell it's you're here for hiking and you're here for uh in the winter ski yeah and that was like just this big hiking active ski town and i love is it uh this is gonna be a hard to answer. Is it arid or does it seem very lush and wet? It seems pretty lush and wet. And like, that's one of the things that made our hike a little scary, at least going into

it, is that it's in a particular area. I don't know the exact science behind it. It's a particular area where the weather can change very quickly, very dramatically. where the weather can change very quickly, very dramatically. And we were up on top of these mounts on Franconia Ridge, this incredibly, you can see it if you Google Franconia Ridge. It's just very exposed. You're walking on the ridge on a bunch of mountains, and you don't want a sudden thunderstorm to hit when you're up there.

But we really lugged out with the weather. That's great. Yeah, I think that's just sort of like mountainous areas in general are uh it's the clouds just move faster there like storms come in so quick oh this is beautiful it's very green up there it was great yeah okay not a lot of scree different type of rock than i'm used to this looks great it's very easy to hike on it was it was tough like i it was we did 32 miles in two days whoa that's nine summits that we're doing uh not these colorado peaks but like you're still going up and down 4 000 feet a couple of times 32 miles in how many days two that is so much dan i think people maybe don't have a good sense of what a mile is when you're hiking compared to when you're running, like just out or like going from.

Basically, when you're running or walking on a street, you have the luxury of going straight. And that's never the case when you're hiking. I would say that generally like outdoor hike, canyon hiking, you go about a mile an hour if you're lucky. And then outside of a canyon, like if you're lucky and then outside of a canyon like if you're just out on trails and stuff it's probably barely faster than that so maybe like 45 minutes or 50 minutes for a mile so yeah we had a couple of 45 50 minute miles and a couple of hour miles because you're you're going up and it's slow going often and even when you're going down a lot of that is is steep and you're scrambling down and it's also not like

i don't know how how normal people walk when you're walking down the street but uh you can be a little more careless with it because you you trust what the ground is going to be but in these hikes it's all ankle breakers you're walking on on big painful rocks so you're like you have to pay attention uh so you don't fall and hurt yourself. It's, uh, I, it's weird to,

to, to, to follow up with, uh, it's pleasant. I enjoy doing this, but the thing that, uh,

you wanted to give me kudos for doing it in two days. We originally were going to do it in three. Uh, but we, after the first day we were like, I think we can do it in two. So let's do it in two. Even three days sounds, that's like over 10 miles a day.

Soren, there are people who do it in one day. Yeah, but that, those people are. We saw these people on the trail who were like, yeah, I'm on a, you know, hour 12. I started at three o'clock in the morning. So I'm a little tired now, but you know, they, they, they have an easier time like traveling than my brother and I did because they don't, they're not carrying 35 pounds of cat. They're jogging with their phone in their hand. Yeah.

Like normal people do. Uh, but it's still, it's, it's gotta be one of those things that is just bragging rights or just like, yeah, I, yes, this was my workout for the week was doing 32 miles in a day because the first half of that almost guaranteed you're spending it in darkness. You got a headlamp on and you're, you're hiking at four or five in the morning. And then, uh, maybe darkness at the end of it too, depending on how slow you are and what time of year it is. Did you guys get sore? Uh, not as much as we thought. It's, it's crazy that like like the because we didn't go home

after the hike we got the best food the best meal i've ever had in my entire life and then uh we stayed in a hotel again and like middle of the night my knees were killing me uh but i was surprisingly fine the next day the only thing is i still have uh i just need need better hiking shoes i still have uh tons of blisters and i think i'm gonna lose a toenail okay yeah that's comes with the territory i guess i'm glad to hear that you guys though that went to red robin that's wonderful it's so exciting for me is your butt clean enough to sit on the couch naked you You know, the dream? No? Get a Tushy, the modern bidet that attaches directly to your toilet in under 10 minutes. Imagine the weird stuff you could do with a Tushy behind you. Tushy, the modern bidet company, washes away even the messiest of poops,

leaving you with a better clean than toilet paper. If you got poop on any other part of your body, would you just wipe it off? No, right? No, you'd wash it. Stop wiping and start washing with Tushy, the modern bidet that attaches directly to your toilet. We love partnering with Tushy and we have a deal. Go to hellotushy.com slash QQ to get 10% off plus free shipping. Tushy is the modern bidet for people who poop. Just poop, wash, and pat dry. The Tushy bidet washes your bum with water for a better clean than toilet paper. Washing with water is less irritating and more soothing for your b-hole. It's easy to install. Attach to the toilet in under 10 minutes.

No electricity or plumbing needed. Using a Tushy Bidet reduces your toilet paper use by 80%, saving you money. Eco-friendly. Stylish. Tushy has a full product line to make the restroom the best room, including Tushy Ottoman, the sleekest toilet stool designed to help you poop at 100%, 100% of the time. Rated number one by Wirecutter.

They've also got the new Tushy Brush, the only toilet brush with disposable scrubbing pads so you can use a clean brush every time. And more. I love my Hello Tushy. It's not just for me. I've also got like three or four family members turned on to getting these things. They're super easy to install and they're affordable and they're eco-friendly and they

do the job that they're supposed to do. Start washing with a Tushy bidet for a better clean. This is a special offer for our listeners at HelloTushy.com slash QQ for 10% off plus free shipping oh i have a quick question that's related okay um assuming we are fine starting the show that's fine um have you you've you've done a bunch of hiking have you ever had a trail name wait like a name i go like i'm a burning man like there's a name that i go by out there yeah yeah i never heard of it before but we met that sounds silly we met hikers uh and i was like hey i'm daniel it's normal what's your name and she's like

footloose my trail name is footloose what oh all right yeah and did you both laugh no i think i i i don't know if it's a specific so she's a section hiker doing uh the appalachian trail and sort of our our trail becomes at for a little while uh and i think it's a very appalachian trail specific okay where you don't give yourself a name uh but someone grants you one that is either an inside joke or something specific to the time you're having on the trail okay i guess that makes more sense like people that do the pct or like something that goes from mexico to canada you're doing that for so long you're like yeah well i exist outside of my normal life here i am wood fire yeah whatever uh well that's silly but cool good for her does she scoff when you said daniel or

was she like yeah that's fine you just don't get it no she was she was fine with with my my normal human government name i could see it being because because i like uh community and club so much i could see it being a cool thing to connect you to a larger community if if it's all contained specifically within like the appalachian trail you know you can because then you're meeting a stranger and you're saying hello i'm footloose and they're like hello footloose i'm destiny yeah and it's like great yeah we're we're both in on on on this this this inside joke this shared private club thing i like that kind of shit i think that's cool yeah um i think that's what you do at burning

man i think that people choose different names while they're there man that sounds stupid well can i make a guess at what your name would be and i think i guarantee you've already thought about this right yeah my first guess is big dragon big dragon i think well that's that guarantees that i picked my own name which i don't think you're allowed to do okay um oh boy but unless you're just giving giving that to me now that's your your gift to me well i just if you were going to pick a name for yourself i i knew immediately it would be big dragon hundred percent big dragon no questions let's see what if you put something trail oriented you're see this is a problem because

you're gonna come up with something really great um and i'm having to do this on the fly rock hopper yeah rock hopper that's pretty tight it's not that no i mean i don't know if we're gonna solve this today here here all right you and i all right forget it um yeah so i've done i've done a lot of hiking um but i've never heard of a trail name in my life i that's to be to be fair though i've never done like a the most the longest i've been out there is 15 days i've never done a trip that's jesus that's like you been out there is 15 days. I've never done a trip that's like, you're out there for a month and a half going through different states or anything like that. 15 days is so long. Yeah. So the way that that trip works is that you, for part of it, you're working on a forest

service project and then you're going off and doing a lot of other hiking and camping. That's like not on trails.'re up in you're up above you're kind of like in scree mostly so occasionally there's a cairn somewhere you know cairn is yeah occasionally there's a cairn somewhere and you can kind of get like oh this is the way to the saddle between these two this is the way to the pass between these two peaks or like that kind of thing but generally you're just using a map oh by the way i got i had somebody who who on twitter after i had talked to you about topographic maps who was like soren it's topographic not topographic because i was pronouncing it topographic and uh i was so mad i was immediately mad because i was like who fucking cares they're right

obviously um but i i don't know why i pronounce it topo i guess because we you talked about maps on this show we did we talked i asked you if you could read a topographic map and i was telling you how my son knows how to read them um you said you could oh cool yeah great job dan it's it's legitimately insane to me how little memory i have of this show i'm not trying to like knock the show or anything it's in a pretty troubling way it's like entering a fugue state because i can't see you i'm famously alone and just like staring at a microphone wearing headphones being like oh i haven't heard so Soren's going to stop talking soon. I'd better fill that time with whatever's going to come out of here.

And then I just start going. And then eventually we say goodbye to each other. Yep. And then it's dark out. Yeah. People will occasionally ask us questions on Twitter or they'll message you and say something about, they'll reference the podcast in a way...

First of all, they do it with episodes that are like six past. They do those ones that we did months ago. But even when it's like the same week that we recorded it, I'm still like, I need more context. I have no idea what you're talking about. Why are you telling me about chocolate chip cookies? Do we talk about that on the show? Why is everyone sending me this fucking cake monster

yeah hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile hawthorne uses data from hundreds of thousands of customers to recommend perfect products for your body chemistry skin type hair type, hair type, and lifestyle. Listen, you could go to a drugstore and you could guess at some different products that might be good for you, or you can upgrade to the products that help you, like your body wash, shampoo, deodorant, face cleanser, moisturizer, and cologne that are specific to you. Because Hawthorne knows. Hawthorne can figure it out for you. All you got to do is just take a short study back quiz and get matched with your perfect grooming kit. You get free shipping on your Hawthorne can figure it out for you. All you got to do is just take a short study back quiz and get matched with your perfect grooming kit. You get free shipping on your Hawthorne order too. And if you decide you're not satisfied with your product, you smell it,

you're like, nah, not really my scent. They'll give you free shipping on the return as well. I took their quiz. It's not super extensive. It's not very long. I thought how could they possibly know anything about me from this? It's only like 10 or 15 questions. But they nailed it. They really got me. Everything that they sent me, I love. They've got different colognes and I'm not even a cologne guy, but they've got options of work or play. And I love the smell of both. In fact, I've been to a couple of weddings recently and I sat there for a long time with both in my suitcase thinking okay all right game time what's it gonna be do you remember uh we were going to the same wedding and i wanted to coordinate with you which hawthorne cologne you're gonna wear yeah and i think my reason was so i don't wear the same one because that would be confusing and you didn't question that and i really appreciate that yeah yeah yeah

no i i'm on the same. You don't want other people there to be smelling the same. It's like wearing the same outfit. Yeah. Having the same scent. I don't want people thinking, oh, okay. Do you live in the same house?

Why do you guys smell the same? But yeah, I love wearing the colognes. I love that Daniel asked me so that I could wear work and he could wear play. And I think that it really informed who we were at the wedding. And what they do after you take the quiz is that they will give you the option of sending you this essentials bundle. And that's got all kinds of, it's got shampoo, it's got conditioner, it's got body soap, it's got the colognes, it's got everything that you could possibly need to

get your daily skincare routine and hair care routine off the ground. And you can choose from that what you actually want. If you're not the type of person who uses lotion on your hands every day, you can just drop the lotion out of your essentials bundle. Hawthorne's grooming products are my answer to looking good, feeling good, and smelling good. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine by going to hawthorne.co and using promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. That's H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E.C-O, promo code QQ for 10% off your first purchase. You know what I loved about hiking that I think might have been slightly tainted this time around? I'll tell you.

One of the great things about hiking, and this is another community club click type thing, is almost everyone you meet is a great person. And I'm painting with a broad brush there, but you already know that they are your kind of people. If you're the kind of person who's going to get up early and hike and camp and do this strenuous, difficult thing that connects you to nature uh you're gonna meet like-minded people you're not seeing someone you're not going showing up to the beach and there's someone with with jeans and sneakers on the beach or anything like that these are all

people who are committed to the same like silly natural values as you uh and i like the opportunity to spend a few days knowing i will not be uh hassled or made to feel self-conscious by youths by mean youths it's like one of the only places i feel like in the world in my entire life where i won't have my day just wrecked by a 16 year old saying something very mean but very true about tonight I don't go ahead well there's one I've I've been thinking about one interaction this whole time because you meet plenty of great people on the trail and and you cross paths with a lot of the same folks over and over again you see people at the campsite and it's

great and you you have you form many tiny friendships. And then there was this one group of youths on our second day. They were all together. It seemed like they couldn't have done this on a lark because they were in any direction 10 miles from a trailhead. But they still had larkish attitudes about them and one of them said to me donda released kanye released donda it's out now it came out today and i was like finally he's been working on it and then the kid goes finally he's been

working on it and then they go their separate ways and you know 10 minutes goes by and then my brother's like you think he was making fun of you i think so i don't know how sometimes just like when you're when you're young and invulnerable sometimes just like getting someone to talk is is like is a way that you're outsmarting them yeah i made that motherfucker interact with me what an idiot yeah there was there was no there was no right answer for me. I couldn't have been like, I don't know what Donda is. Leave me alone. Or I could have done what I did, which was, oh yeah, it's his album.

He's been working on it for a while and he keeps delaying it. I'm culturally relevant. I'm aware of the things you're aware of. But neither answer was good. I still felt embarrassed. I mean, you could fuck up a kid like that just being like, okay, cool. And then keep walking. And that kid then will be like, oh, fuck.

I don't think I could. You think the kid was going to fight you? I think that kid would be fine no matter what I said. I don't mean to blow up your spot here, Dan. But the types of people that you're meeting out on the trail, they're like-minded. They make you feel good about yourself. You feel safe and comfortable with them. Just like predominantly, what color would you say these so up where we traveled which incidentally was called the white mountains i don't think uh anyone is taking uh diversity initiatives seriously up there soren uh it's not your fault that's

is what you're saying it's a that it's new hampshire's fault okay and uh like body type what would you say these people are any anybody who might be say it's more heavyset um it's a more heavy set. It's a fit group. Okay. This is, here's what, here's, listeners, here's what happened today. Sorin woke up fine. And then he learned that I run with my phone. And he's never stopped being mad at me. And now he's trying to trap me into being a body shaming racist. When I'm talking about finding community with footloose and destiny on the mountain

I'm sorry it's not fair because you're absolutely right that there are people who are like the people who use trails are more environmentally conscious there is a clear community out there of people who find each other who are like

yes you are interested in the mountains you appreciate nature in the same way that i do it's just an unfortunate circumstance that you also yeah that every single one of them is white yeah i don't love that my one main gripe that i've spoken out loud about this hike is uh someone telling me about a new I'm sorry wouldn't it be great if there were a pocket-sized guide that helped you sleep focus or act or be better there is and if you have 10 minutes headspace can change your life I've tried meditation before and it didn't work I I couldn't quite get the hang of it. I'm sure you have too. Or maybe you didn't feel like you were doing it right. If mental health is part of your self-care plan this year,

and it should be, you owe it to yourself to try Headspace. If people keep telling you to try meditation and you're like, when? When would I have time? You should check out Headspace. you should check out Headspace. I don't know who needs to hear this, but you, here you go. You deserve to feel better than you do today. And you can with Headspace. They make meditation simple. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy to use app. It's the only meditation app advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research. So whatever the situation, Headspace really can help you feel better. Overwhelmed? Headspace has a three-minute SOS meditation for you. Need some help falling asleep? I do. Headspace has wind down sessions their members swear by. And for parents, Headspace even has morning

meditations you can do with your kids. Headspace's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of well- kids. Headspace's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of well-being. Headspace is back to my 25 published studies on its benefits, 600,000 five-star reviews, and over 16 million downloads. Headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you

on your schedule, anytime, anywhere. I love Headspace. I can't be the only one who's stressed right now the you know fill in the blank whenever this episode comes out with whatever horrible thing is happening currently outside your own window so I get stressed and this app helps that you deserve to feel happier and headspace is meditation made simple go to headspace.com slash quick question that's headspace.com quick question for free one month trial with access to headspace's full library of meditations for every situation

this is the best deal offered right now head to headspace.com quick question today why don't why don't why don't we move on I'm gonna ask you a question Daniel Why don't we move on? I'm going to ask you a question, Daniel. Great question. Yeah. Give me some more rope. Did you have an obsession when you were a child that looking back on it now, you can't believe that your parents sanctioned or even that they sometimes subsidized? Like that they helped you buy things to keep this obsession going?

Soren, yes. White people. Figure out how to spin that one into a trap uh i will say that my my son i'm asking this because my son um i i don't can't remember if we talked about it he really likes traffic cones to a degree that we had to make rules about the traffic cones we have around the house oh do you want to take a guess how many traffic cones i have or my son has um real these are real traffic cones that you would use that like the city uses yeah three okay we have one two three four five we have 10 and i have another one in my attic that i haven't given him yet that i've slowly been giving him what does he

do with that great question i said three because three is a three is the amount you need for most games yeah no this is he sets up sites um what do i mean by that he what am i talking about he does uh he sets up construction sites a lot the construction is like ancillary the construction almost never happens honestly it's really about setting it up and uh he likes to put them in places where you are allowed to go in places you're not allowed to go and if you violate that it's a big deal uh we're like this is a this is a construction zone you're not allowed here well he calls them the cone zone because we saw that on a sign once on a road trip. They're like, you're entering the cone zone.

And I was like, Ronan, Ronan, wake up. We're entering the cone zone. He was like, the cone zone. So you're not allowed at the cone zone. And then also if I'm doing work out in the yard or when we had the tree put in, my son gets out there and sets up cones, sets up a perimeter.

And he's like, puts on his vest, puts on his hard hat and sets up a perimeter. And honestly, it's a big pain in the ass because that's a small perimeter always because he's got no sense of how much space you actually need. And so I'm just like walking into cones all the time, trying to do my work, but loves the idea of them.

And now we have indoor and outdoor cones because we won't let him take some of the cones inside because they're so dirty okay but he in my stupid limited imagination i thought never did it occur to me that he would be using them to do cone stuff yeah i was like sure one goes on your head and one for each arm and then you're like cone's your trumpet um yeah yeah he he loves cones so the degree that like when we go to the airport we see sometimes for some reason airport they have blue cones or green cones and he's that's all he talks about on the way to the airport when we go on hikes we like stop in the parking lot and if there's a cone there it's going to take us a while to go on the hike because he's going to have to go see the cone look at it for a little bit ask us over and over again do you think this belongs to anyone and i mean i know what he's

vying for um out when we're just like on the way to school if there's a construction site god help us because he's gonna be like do you think they need all of those cones it's where do you where do you acquire cones i remember in college stealing them we get them from amazon a unique college experience that uh apparently everyone does i can't give him cones that we would steal out on the street because guaranteed those have like tar and stuff on them because they've been used properly yeah so we buy brand new cones i don't think they're particularly good for you in general because that that type of heavy duty plastic is can't be a healthy thing i think they might even have little warnings on them but he's you know he's got his specific types and he knows the difference so if i if he if i'm like

if he asked for new cones i'm like you already have a lot of cones he's like yes but i don't have any with the black base with two reflectors uh he's also knows the difference in like the diameter of it so he likes the skinnier ones because they're easier for him to pick up but he wants them to be tall and then we saw barriers once those big white folding barriers and he was like dad do you think for when christ comes, I could get one of these? And that doesn't mean just one. I mean, that means he wants to start with one. And I'm like, no, I have to draw the line somewhere.

We have cones everywhere. And so he's very obsessed with it. We had to make rules about how he couldn't have them in his room because he was trying to sleep with them for a while. And a cone could go outside his door, but he wasn't allowed to have it in his room. And when we were working on school, he wasn't allowed to have it in his room and when we were working on school he wasn't allowed to have one in his hands so that is so fascinating

it's an obsession um and then i so as i was like trying to decide if that was healthy or not i was remembering my own childhood and thinking oh no i had some weird stuff and then looking back on i was like why did my parents allow me to have that weird stuff because i had two basically i had one was uh collecting blown glass miniatures wow yeah and i'm not even like there's only two shops you could get it in the entire Aspen Valley. There was one in Glenwood Springs and one in Aspen. And I would go in there. I would peruse their glass cases and just look at the little figurines. And I started off with pewter.

I thought, yeah, pewter's where it's at. And then I got very into blown glass because I found a blown glass pig that lit up really well when you displayed it. blown glass pig that lit up really well when you displayed it and uh just as a quick sidebar i cannot believe that i am this week's podcast white supremacist this is unbelievable to me because i buy a lot of blown glass figurines in aspen that's every culture does that dan that's everybody um that was a weird one that might i mean there's no way i was buying those with my own money either uh because those are expensive so i think i was like finding stuff i was finding like maybe go and tell my mom there's a wizard in that shop uh that i really need and she'd be like okay all right do you really need it and i would have been like yeah

i think it's it's it would really round out my collection and then we would go get it and i had a little display case with a light in it that's that's what i was wondering like you don't you don't play with these the pig doesn't fight the wizard it doesn't no these are just no one wears the cones on their on their heads you just place them yeah it's you just look at them i would take them out every once in a while and kind of like really examine them look them over especially if there were different colors within it that was very exciting and then i would clean them off so they didn't have fingerprints and delicately put them back in their case for tomorrow what happened to them you know what i don't know they might be in a bin at home somewhere

and that you never uh that itch never showed up for you again i don't know i i remember sharing an office with you and you didn't have like a bunch of shit all over your desk or anything no but i you know what it might been? I will occasionally find my rocks and look at them and then put them back. Right. Of course. So the rocks that I keep wherever I work. Yeah. That I hide places.

I will occasionally take those out and look at them because they're good ones. Okay. Right. Of course. The rocks are good. That's why you picked them. It would be weird if you found like normal rocks and we're we're hiding them in elevators that would be nuts would you imagine seeing the

elevator repairman who finds a bunch of bullshit rocks you'd think it was an animal or something what are these pedestrian rocks doing in my elevator some sort of creature has put these here um instead of the nice surprise which it must be for him when he finds the really great rocks so i there's one other one that i want to tell you about before i let you answer this question well it was a little bit darker and i it was my brother and i i think he might have been the one who instigated this but did you know what muscle men were muscle man yeah you do uh i think i do but they're a toy they're like a little plastic toy um that are flesh colored for the most part and speak on that oh oh damn it. They're peach in color. And they're like, they're all

different fighters. They're designed, I think the original ones were designed to look like luchadores, but then since they quickly evolved into all kinds of crazy ass Mortal Kombat type characters. And they're wrestlers. They're designed to just look like wrestlers.

I think all of them are wearing little spandex wrestling underwear. Now, my brother told me when we were kids that what you were supposed to do with them was get blood on them so that they looked more realistic. Already a weird thing. Yeah. But we would do that. Every time that we would get a cut or scrape we would immediately go get our muscle men and wipe it all over our muscle men so that

they were covered in blood and i can even remember having a new muscle man and thinking i gotta get these guys broken in like i gotta christen these guys and being like, do I have any scabs that I could open and put it on my muscle man? And I think we were allowed to do that. My parents must have been aware of these toys because we'd leave our shit everywhere all around the house because we were, you know, kids who constantly have your parents telling you to clean up. And they must have seen that there was blood on these toys and just were like, whatever. That's fine. I can't imagine that was like our friends would play with them too. So that's not safe.

No. Hey, man, that's pretty weird. I think it's weird that you did that. I think it's. Have you talked to your brother about it? No, I should. Like, I'm curious where the, we need to get blood on them so they look more realistic. It's going to really fuck me up if he goes, I have no idea what you're talking about. But yeah, I'm pretty sure it's him.

It might've been one of our neighbors, but we had some bad neighbors. But I think that it was, I'm pretty sure it's him. It might have been one of our neighbors, but we had some bad neighbors. But I think that it was, I'm pretty sure it was him. And yeah, it was, you get a little bit of blood on your musclemen. It wouldn't always last super long either because they're plastic and your blood flakes over time. Yeah. But yeah, that was like, it was important that our musclemen had blood on them. Fascinating. Real human blood.

Yeah. I don't like that. Real human blood. Yeah, I don't like that. I had, this is, I guess, wrestling figure adjacent, or muscleman adjacent. So I used to have wrestling action figures that I liked a whole lot because I was into wrestling. And then I found very early internet days forums

where people were making custom wrestling figures uh based on wrestlers that didn't have the action figures yet and they were just like explaining step by step how they did it which brought me to going to the hobby shop and getting molding clay and different paints so i could you know they didn't have a je Hardy action figure so I took an old triple h action figure and made Jeff Hardy with painting and this special type of clay that uh you put in the oven and then it hardens and becomes basically like plastic and so I would use that for like different pants depending on the character or like facial hair uh you would sand off the original face and build up a new face with the molding clay uh and i did it for probably a year or so just just making different wrestling figures with my buddy chris making wrestling figures uh just like two seventh graders silently sitting in a kitchen delicately painting

the right kind of camouflage for Bubba Ray Dudley's pants no music no just the sound of a clock ticking yeah just a a mom who's nervous but doesn't know why yet. It doesn't seem like we're doing anything wrong. But she doesn't want us to do it. Yeah, of course. So I did that, and then I transferred from making wrestling figures to making just like people. I repainted a bunch of action figures to match

the members of my older brother's band. I was like, look at this thing that I did. It's you and they're like that's interesting you're too old for whatever this phase is goodbye and then i graduated from that i took figures out of the equation entirely and just made little people out of clay and would would film little movies with them and And the people, I need to be clear about this, were real life people. People in my school. I made my teachers and all of my friends out of clay.

And a bunch of people that weren't my friends, but I thought would make sense for the larger, like, milieu that I was assembling. Yeah. Oh, God. that's super uncomfortable did anyone ever find out from your school what you were doing uh no yeah so you knew at the time that you shouldn't let anyone know that's a uh yeah i guess some deep part of me was like let's just keep this between us guess some deep part of me was like let's just keep this between us okay i so i also anticipate that these are pretty good you're generally good at arts and crafts yeah thank you um so they if somebody saw theirs they would be like i think that that's me i think yes maybe yeah yeah if

anyone walked in my room and saw I had an entire shelf that was just get beer street middle school posing on a shelf just like existing together wearing stuff that they have worn in real life if anyone walked in and saw that they'd be like hey is that is that uh is that fucking me don't do that. Destroy that. I guess you don't have to answer this question if you don't want to, but did they just sit on the shelf or did you do things with these? I did things with them. Not weird things.

Yeah, but I mean, you played school. Did you play school? I played school, but what was dumber than that is I would make movies with them. I had a habit of making clay and like action figure movies alone in my room. Stop action? Yeah. Oh, okay. And then I would, none of these are saved, not out of like shame or embarrassment, but I had one tape and I just taped over it like every night, made a new show by myself. Oh, wait. Okay. So you're making these all the time. I'm making them all the time. but I had one tape and I just taped over it like every night made a new show by myself oh um wait

okay so you're making you're making these all the time I'm making them all the time I'm watching them and then I'm making another one the next day usually uh and one of the things that I did frequently was make basically just like rip off Saturdayurday night live sketches including weekend update and just like do them but with my friends as the cast and so if you want to like just follow the extra steps of how stupid this is i could have made will ferrell i didn't i made my buddy matt out of clay and then i gave matt a will ferrell wig because in this universe matt is the star saturday night live i mean there's even a step removed that you're not even thinking about which is just get matt to do a sketch with you where like you're both just doing saturday night live

you just copy a weekend update together no it's matt out of clay and i'm doing his voice doing an impression of will ferrell as harry carey does that make sense yeah it does but it's so weird and it's so uncomfortable for poor matt yeah if that tape ever showed up and so your parents are aware you're doing this the entire time yes you should talk to them about that find out what was going on in their minds like if they were ever worried or if they're just like nah kids do weird things yeah i wonder if they had like an age where they would have to drop the hammer because a lot of my weirdest uh impulses and quirks either i aged out of them i was shamed out of them or i just got more comfortable with them.

And like, I'm like, I'm still just a weird little guy. But I wonder if they were, if they sat up at night being like 15, if he's still doing this when he's 15, we gotta, we gotta, we have to make a rule about clay in the house. He's not going to like that, but 15 is going to be the age. Did they sit up on a shelf or did you keep it up like hidden away they were on a shelf man so people i mean you got to have friends that come over to your house you just hide them when they come over no it's it's uh i probably should have been more discreet and more embarrassed but i don't know yeah you don't

know at that age yeah you think it it seems it doesn't seem that far away now as you're an adult like uh 14 13 14 doesn't seem that far away but it really is the stuff that you're doing as a 13 or 14 year old you do not know how the world works yet and you don't know what's acceptable and what's not uh so that's that's fine yeah i'm willing to allow some some grace to a 13 14 year old and i think even less than being uh appropriately embarrassed about it i would guess that i was probably pretty proud that if i thought like a girl would come over and be like is that me thank you oh yeah just uh you made me so pretty i'm like yeah i stare at you all the time a girl would come over and be like, is that me? Thank you. Oh, yeah. You made me so pretty.

I'm like, yeah, I stare at you all the time. That's part of this too, I guess. Yeah, you really captured me. Well, I look at you a lot. I'm very smart, so in classes, I don't really need to pay attention. And I find that my mind wanders to you. Yeah, that sounds like 14 year old daniel's dialogue but like on the clarinet yeah you just start playing

well at first i imagine you doing saying all this while wetting a reed yeah uh okay yeah that's a good one um fuck dan Fuck, Dan. So you have rules about the cones. Do you have an age where he can't have cones anymore? No, I hadn't even thought about that. I assume that this is just something that he will grow out of. But he... I hadn't even considered the fact that at some point cones wouldn't be okay, but his friends come over and they are not interested in the least.

Oh, that's surprising. Where he'll be like, do you want to see my cones? Or do you want to play cones? And they're like, no. Or they'll try for a little while because they're like, oh, a kid is suggesting a game I've never heard. And then they start doing it and the kid is just like, what's this over here? You got trucks. Yeah trucks yeah just very patient polite kids that are like so ronan these cones are are are spectacular

but uh we heard you had a bouncy castle is that in play at all they are really patient kids i say that my son is excellent at making friends uh so far at his schools and i'm really excited about that he's just started started kindergarten and he's already got some friends. He's got like a crew. It's him and it's three of them. It's this girl who lives down the street from us and this other boy and just meeting them. I'm like, yes, like these are good kids. These are kids that are, they're a little bit more reserved. They're a little bit quiet. They're respectful. Like they understand their bodies and their space. And their intent is not to just destroy everything they see,

which is a very natural kid reaction. That's what I was like when I was a child. It was like, oh, does this break? It does. And they don't have that in them. And those are the people that he picks out as friends. And I'm like, this is good. This is a good thing that will serve you the rest of your life.

Yeah. And meanwhile, you're out there like like let's get some blood on these cones let's christen these babies rona where do you want to bleed from today um yeah i i think he's he's choosing good kids they just don't they don't get the cone thing you know what else it is it's signs too um but you know mostly construction-ish signs like signs where you're like you can be here you can't be here there's like a don't enter kind of stuff he's not as interested in handicap parking or like that kind of stuff but he does like signs a lot as long as they're instructing you on where you're not allowed to go it's a control thing i'm thinking that seems like a a healthy impulse yeah but he wants to be in the he wants to be the in the driver seat right he wants to be in control of of where you're allowed to go and where you're not and he's allowed to move freely between all these spaces but not everybody is i wonder if this is just like

a cousin of having a fort and it's a fort where there's rules i can create the rules no one else is allowed hard to say but i'm not worried about it it's just something that has it's ended in tears before where we're like you can't you can't have a cone in your room while you're going to sleep because it's distracting and you won't go to bed and it's just like really distraught about that kind of thing and then we started to worry a little but uh dedicated rules to it it's been a lot better is his sister into cones at all no she couldn't care less i'm trying to think when he actually got into them i think i bought him some sports cones uh we saw some at target one day when he was probably three and he was like that's it that's the thing i

love and from there it graduated into real construction cones but no she's not interested at all um she doesn't have any weird things yet but she's also real young you know what's what's crazy to me a part of me that's still attached to like the a child's brain is that in this conversation i looked on amazon to see if people were selling cones because i'm i'm i'm sure they they are a and i wanted to see like has this is this a market do people know kids like cones and i'm going to target their their parents or whatever um but the the child impulse in me is i think the same as ronin's where i'm looking at these cones and like, no, these aren't right. It needs to be the construction style cones. Like I see these fucking hallmark bullshit target cones.

I'm like, no, that doesn't count. The orange is wrong. And they need to be that like that hard, probably bad for the environment kind of rubber. Yes. And they've got to be that hard, probably bad for the environment kind of rubber. Yes. And they've got to be big. I mean, there's a lot of little ones that are just like, why even bother to sell these? Like the ones that you would expect to see if somebody had a flat tire that they might have in their trunk. Yeah.

Those are no good. Those are crap. Absolutely not. No, I understand that. But the tip of it, the very top, is very important to him. What it does at the top, what the base looks like, and then whether it has two reflectors or one on it is very important hell yeah yeah man next time i'm out in l.a i'm gonna get him a bunch of cones you can't stop honestly he would go nuts for that he would love that or a barrier oh boy he'd really you'd be his best friend if you got him a barrier

and i would hate it because i wouldn't know where to put it. Well, what do we think? I think that's the end of our show. I'm trying to think if I have anything else to say about hiking. That was a nice long show. Yeah. All right.

I'm just going to track down all of our social accounts. No, we don't do that anymore. Jesus Christ. You can find Soren at Soren underscore LTD. You can find me, DOB underscore INC. You can email the show at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com

or find the show on Twitter at twitter.com slash QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can find and hire our engineer, producer, editor, Gabe at GabeHarder.com. It's been a while since I checked. Here we go. My connection is not secure. What the fuck is happening with your website, Gabe?

All right, bye. Bye.