Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 23 - Birthdays and Babies

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. We've been told that we need to say something up top, informing listeners that this is a new episode, so here I go doing that. It is. Quick Question is the advice podcast featuring two best friends who both happen to be comedy writers, separated by 3,000 miles. Every week-ish, we give advice in quotes, and we will not stop until every question gets answered or one of us gets too busy to make time for it.

So with the holidays coming up, I'd just like to say it's been a good run. My money's on the ladder. For the last time, Daniel O'Brien, and with me as always is Soren Bui. Soren, how's it going? Things are good. Things are good. Hey, Bacon, are we ranked in advice podcasts at all? No, we're not.

Awesome. All right. Good to know. I really thought you'd planted that question because you had a very good answer for it. Well, you right off the top said it was an advice podcast. And I was like, no, I think in Iceland, we're most famous for being an improv podcast somehow. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

We're not an advice podcast famous for being an improv podcast somehow. Oh, that's right. Yeah, we're not an advice podcast. We're an improv podcast. The person that you read from Iceland, her review, she tweeted at us and she said, sorry for my misspelling. And then something very nice about you guys. I can't remember quite what it was, but she was very- What a cool thing to bring up. She's very flattered.

Well, she was in Iceland and we're the tops in Iceland. That's good. We're the tops in improv podcasts in Iceland. Okay. Let that sink in. Yeah. As I said, we are Quick Question and that's true all the time. But even more all the time, you, our listeners, prefer to be called Quickless Cage from the movies The Quicker Man and Quick Ass and Gone and Quicksty Questions.

Wait, I think we already did Quickless Cage. I think we did Quickless Cage, but I don't think I did all that other stuff. You didn't even do Vampire's Quiz? No. Hey, Gabe, edit it. So I did. I'll give you one clean everyone shut up vampire's quiz okay a gabe just like put that in one of them is is strangely sexy none of the others are but anyway speaking of our fans we like to call out one review every

week to read on the show and oh this is noteworthy when i checked today uh we had 555 five-star reviews feels like as good a time as any to hang the whole thing up i don't think we're gonna get another fun milestone like that in a while we go for five-star reviews 555 sounds good. 5,000 sounds greedy. 5,555 sounds delusional. But anyway, this review comes from, oh, gross, Trav Job. I loved this podcast so much that I stopped listening to it because Daniel kept telling everyone to stop listening to it. I hope it's still good. And I'm glad to do my part in contributing to the type of listening that the guys seem to really want which is as minimal as possible but still excited and supportive what is some other bad advice you guys have given to friends or strangers well he'll never know i mean obviously i have noticed on patreon some people you could they

tell you also when people change their donations. And I'll see people who are giving $5 are like, I'm going to give $3 from now on. And I'm like, oh. You're paying attention to our Patreon? Well, I get an email every single time anything happens on Patreon. Really? Yeah, no matter how many times I've tried to stop it, I get those emails. But should we answer TravJap's question?

Do you have bad advice that you've given? I mean, I give you an awful lot of bad advice on this podcast. Yeah, but I don't take it. So it's a victimless crime. It's a wash. I don't know if I've ever given really truly bad advice. Have you? No, I don't.

I feel like I have standout bad advice that I was given from when I was in fourth grade and I still recognize it as bad advice. So, I was, this is going way back. When I was in fourth grade, I had to get surgery on my eyelid because my left eyelid was drooping and the doctor said it would impact my vision if it kept going. So, I got a surgery where they cut the muscles at each corner of your eyelid and then they stitch it up on the inside with stitches that would eventually dissolve. Uh, so I had the surgery and then, and, and like, as it wasn't difficult enough being a droopy eyed clarinet playing fourth grader, which listeners, it was difficult. Uh, I then had to show up to school post-surgery with an eye patch but not like a cool pirate eye patch it was a blue plastic eye patch that was taped to my head they don't do the

elastic wrap around thing they tape it to your fucking head and i had that and uh it's it was not a cool look and uh one time uh like a parent volunteer, it wasn't a teacher or anything like that. It was like the parents that volunteer at school lunch and also like to help you get off the bus, that kind of thing. Just like the volunteer parent folks. One of them caught me crying in school because a kid named Brian called me eye boy and then covered one eye and said, I read this news and pointed. Oh, he dunked on you so hard. Yeah. It was devastating.

And I explained this to the parent volunteer. I didn't use Brian's name, obviously, because even at an early age, I understood. You already had stitches. Right. What was the point of finishing at that point? Of course. So I kept my mouth shut.

But the volunteer said, next time this boy tries to make fun of you you should find something about his face that's funny and make a joke about that whoa and even at like 10 years old or whatever i was like oh that sort of flies in the face that everything i've learned that's wow yeah very irresponsible very bad advice amazing and i didn't do it i took the high road that that adult didn't take i do i mean i love picturing you as like a low-rent dennis hopper from water world yeah instead of being a bolted to your face it's taped on yeah it was it was very much that, that surgery is just my nightmare.

The idea of anyone touching my eyelids. Yeah, I wanted to bring it up because I thought you would hate it. Oh, God. I'm just like, my stomach is down in my rectum right now. Have you ever had surgery? Yeah, but it doesn't really count. My surgery was wisdom teeth, and it's a surgery that pretty much everybody has, but I also had the better version of it, which was I only had was wisdom teeth and it's a surgery that pretty much everybody has but i also had the better version of it which was i only had two wisdom teeth why i don't know genetic superiority okay uh my brother had two as well and my mom had none i guess i don't know anything

about wisdom i thought we were all supposed to have four. And then sometimes they hurt too much and you have to get rid of them. Yeah, well, sometimes evolution takes a leap. Okay, and in your case... It receded. Receded a little. Yeah, some people just don't have them. Was there anything particularly traumatizing about your your wisdom teeth removal yeah i well i i don't do well with you don't you don't do well with blood

blood it's really yeah so they gave me a percocet before they said take this home because they could tell how nervous i was i was a teenager and they said take this uh before you come in it'll help calm you down and i took it and it made me very queasy which blood makes me queasy anyway they gave you a percocet before your surgery yes to calm me down and uh i got there i threw up when i got there and then they found my vein i threw up again and and they they put me under uh with gas and when they put me under i remember thinking uh i was falling asleep like that moment where you kind of like wake back up and you realize oh i was i was falling asleep there and i didn't fall asleep i can remember looking up and looking

into the goggles of the guy who was doing the surgery and seeing the reflection inside my mouth of just blood and being being like quietly horrified about it throughout the entire thing that's pretty traumatizing yeah i didn't like it but i it's also i can't tell people how horrific my my wisdom teeth surgery is because everybody's had the same experience yeah i mean i didn't i might my i had one tooth that hurt and i went to the dentist and i was like my teeth my tooth hurts i was like yeah we might as well just take fucking all four of them they might work and then they gave me percocet or or vicodin which i guess it's percocet probably right i can't remember i mean they gave me one of those and i'm i'm i'm like naturally i'm

so nervous about getting addicted to things that i just didn't take them. I just sat with the pain of post-op wisdom teeth removal for several days and just dealt with it. thing. I think I'm one of the few kids that dare had the promised effect on where drugs really scared me. And when I had got my Vicodin, I was like, I know what, I know where this load road leads. And so I just kept them. And then my brother found them and he was like, can I have these? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. I just gave them to my mom and like, she wasn't going to abuse them. She wasn't going to sell them or anything. I was just like, yeah, this is not for me. You can take these, have them please. Yeah, I had to have the bone cracked in my jaw. And then they get inside there and they just sort of like chisel them out. It's a very savage process.

Oof. Should we get into the show where we ask each other questions about things? Let's do it. So, Soren, before I ask, I sent you an article by, can I say a friend of yours? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lindy West, a phenomenal writer, author of Shrill. And you've seen her articles if you've been paying attention to the internet for the last 15 years. Yeah. I suppose. Yeah. She's just like a tremendous writer who's been featured everywhere. She was interviewed by The Cut by interviewer

writer Maggie Bullock about money because she's making Hollywood money now. And it really got me thinking about money and how we spend our money because people don't talk about how they spend their money a lot. Yeah, it feels kind of gauche for people to do it. Yeah. And she's in a place that feels very similar to me where you grew up not having a lot of money. And now she's getting Hollywood paychecks and doesn't really know how to deal with them, which is a fascinating topic to me to dig into. But the first part of it that I wanted to get into is what was the first splurge that you made the first thing that you got when you had like adult money where it was uh the closest thing you would say is like a toy for you an indulgence yeah i think that's probably what's your first adult toy is that is that the question that i'm

asking um i so i think uh it was probably when i was working at cracked where i started to feel like oh i'm making more than my rent i could go out to lunch each day if i wanted to and that's when i bought a ping pong table with colleen with my wife and we don't play ping pong we were just like we had garage and all of a sudden we were like, let's get a ping pong table. Right. This was after you'd had your house. So you'd been buying purely sensible things. Yeah. Well, this is like, that house is an incredible investment. It was a very good idea. That I wouldn't include like a car, a computer, like things that are necessities or that are actual investments

i wouldn't include in that but as far as like a splurge we bought a ping pong table and i didn't even buy it like a really nice one and it i didn't even buy it with the intention of playing a lot of ping pong i bought it with the intention of playing beer pong on it and civil war which is like an extension of beer pong and i got it uh let's, like five or six years ago. And then we had our wedding shower and at the wedding shower, I made people play beer pong. And then at our baby shower, I made people play beer pong on it. You and I have played beer pong on it at a New Year's party that I had. We played, I don't think it would be fair to say we played beer pong. We played flex alert for Soren champagne pong. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Only a flex alert because we ran out of everything else. That's right. Yeah, that was a party. I'd thrown a party at my house to try and get everyone to stay in one location on New Year's, which people are loathe to do. They want to bounce around a lot. And in LA, that means you're driving drunk everywhere you go. And so I was trying to get people to stick around. So I created a whole night with teams of people who were coming that was in the spirit of

Legends of the Hidden Temple that had a quiz section, a flip cup charade section, and then an obstacle course in the backyard in which people severely hurt themselves that i think to this day still have lingering injuries from it was still it was i think it might be the the best new year's eve party i've ever been to because top to tails there was action and excitement and like you you always felt valuable and useful like my team i when I was on the, when we were in the trivia section of the New Year's Eve party, I was like, oh good, I'm useful. And then we're in the obstacle course.

I'm like, ah, this is not my part, but like I already proved my value elsewhere. That's right. You were in Silver Snakes. Yes, we were. Such a fucking historically dominant team. I mean, every single episode of that show. It's so silly. The kids are 14 feet taller than the other ones.

Yeah, they just stack it for the snakes. What about you? My first big splurge was I bought an iPad 3. I was still at Cracked at the time, and it was right around the time that I'd gotten like a significant raise. Because when I first started there, they weren't paying jack shit. And it was like 2012 when I'd gotten a raise. And it coincided with the time that I had sold my first book. So I had an advance from that coming. And it was the first time in my life where I thought like,

oh, I can spend money on something that I don't actually need. And it was the first time in my life where I thought like, oh, I can spend money on something that I don't actually need. And what could that be? And I got an iPad three because, uh, I, I didn't know what a good investment was. And that wasn't an iPad three. It was just, it was at a time where like, I, I still had a shitty flip phone that couldn't take pictures and couldn't get on the internet. And I didn't have a laptop. So I thought the most fun thing that I could do was buy a portable internet machine. I remember when you got that and you fell into the role of an iPad 3 owner head first.

I was very excited about telling people that I had an iPad 3. And if someone said nice iPad, I would correct them and say iPad 3 as a bit. I didn't really need to correct them. It was fun to me because this was the first flex-worthy thing that I'd owned in my entire life. And I wanted to get the full breadth of that experience. And I remember our boss at the time, full breadth of that experience. And I remember our boss at the time, Jack, giving me shit at your wedding because I brought my iPad 3 to take pictures at your wedding. And it's like a very dumb thing to take pictures with. But at the time, I was like, well, my phone doesn't take pictures. And I'm like, the quality is better than a digital camera. Leave me alone. I want to capture this moment.

You had a giant television screen raised up at my wedding, taking pictures, obscuring the view for the people behind you. Now, just for the sake of the DOB devotees, what was it that you had the iPad call you when it would summon you? Big Daniel. That's right. Siri would call you Big Daniel. Yeah. God, that was annoying. I've later learned that the splurging

that I should do for myself is travel-based. That's the only place that I spend money that is not like food, clothes, family-related is taking trips. But at the time, I was like, what's the, I got a raise. What's the best way that I can spend a thousand dollars? It's an iPad. It's the ability to go on the internet when I'm not at work or home.

I also remember how crestfallen you were when another iPad came out. Yeah, that really destroyed my status. Um, I, so since I've had my writing job for television, after I wrote my first episode, my office mate said, you should find something fun to spend your episode payment on or just to splurge on. And so that is actually when I got your birthday present, Daniel. Oh, my God. That has yet to be delivered. We all forgot about Chekhov's birthday present. I have.

I'll tell you right now, not ready. But it's, I said, listen, his birthday is, I don't want to tell your actual birthday over there. But I said, this is when his next birthday is. I just want to get a sense of if this is going to be done before then. And he said, yes, it'll be done that day. I said, okay. Oh my God. I'm so much farther away from knowing what it might be.

Yeah. It's a long ways away. Although not, you know, it used to be a lot further. Yeah. Every day you're a little closer. We're getting closer. Oh, fuck. Can I?

Go ahead. Do I need to? So there's a chance that I will be out of the country during my birthday week. Okay. Is that going to be a problem for you? Is this thing a living my birthday week. Okay. Is that going to be a problem for you? Is this thing a living thing? No. Okay.

No, but I'll have to figure out how to get it to you. This is a new wrinkle I hadn't anticipated because mailing such an expensive thing is a terrifying prospect. I think I can do it. I think I know how to do it. I'm just going to drive it. This is, I mean, fuck you.

First of all, you shouldn't have spent any money on me. Second of all, thank you. This is a thing that I'm going to, God, it's hard to explain. This is a thing that I'm going to benefit from as well. Okay. Bacon, do you have any guesses or do you already know? No, I don't already know. I think off the air, I asked Soren if it was like a, I think I asked something about like, is it like a cross stitch or something like that was the only question I had. But that was based on the clues that I don't remember last time. And now that you know that it's a very expensive thing, you would probably revise that question.

Yeah, that's new information though, right? That it's expensive? Yeah. It's very expensive. See, I'm surprised by that. That completely throws me off. It shouldn't be. I've never gotten you a birthday present. No, you did. You got me a birthday card on the day that... No, no, nevermind. You got me a happy five-year anniversary card on your birthday.

Yeah, I got a lottery scratch off ticket for you. That's part of why this is even more fun for me is that this is such an ostentatious thing. I thought we were done with birthday pranks. Yep. I moved so far away with birthday pranks. Yep. I moved so far away. That's what makes a prank a prank. Fuck. Do you have any questions?

Yeah. I got a quick question for you. Okay. Have you ever considered what you would name a child? Like if you had a boy or a girl someday, like have you already thought about names? I have, yeah. Have you thought about girls names yes do you want to tell me what they are well one of them I will never use because my brother used it for his daughter Charlotte I think every all the guys in

my family wanted to have a girl and name her Charlotte because they wanted Charlie. I really like Charlie O'Brien as a girl's name. That's great. My one brother, David, so far just has the one boy and Tommy has two, Colin and Charlotte. And the dream was, yeah, you got a Charlie up here, but she insists on being called Charlotte. So that dream is dead. So Charlotte slash Charlie is one dream that I'm not going to do anymore. And the other one that I've been thinking is Madison, but I feel like that's one of those names that has gotten way too popular in the last couple of years that maybe I'll need to rethink it. Would you call her Mads?

No, I like Madison. The whole thing? Yeah. You're just going to stump everyone. Yeah. But I think if I should have learned anything from Charlotte Charlie is that I will have no control over what a child prefers to be called and I want to honor that. Yeah. You can hedge your bets a little bit by giving them a middle name that they could also use if they needed to. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You can hedge your bets a little bit by giving them a middle name that they could also

use if they needed to. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I know a lot of people who now go by their middle name and it's because their parents had the foresight to be like, listen, we have this family name. We can agree to name our child this. And then they'll also give them a middle name that's like, but this is the cool one. And then the kid inevitably goes by the cool one yeah i ask you daniel because i have to pick out a girl's name oh this is so exciting oh my god congratulate i mean like it's it's weird to say congratulations because i already no i didn't oh my god holy shit yeah yeah does the i haven't told either of you that i'm having another child and that i'm having a girl it's a girl yeah you're gonna have a little girl

a little girl boy i thought for sure this was like a slow roll into like my i'm having a baby niece i'm having a baby puppy delivered to my house congratulations congratulations man thank you do you know are you allowed to say are i'm so happy for you are you allowed to say what you're leaning towards as far as names yeah yeah i like the name olivia a lot what bacon just blew up that was gonna be that's the only one that uh it was olive and oliver were the ones if you guys asked me it would have been olive and oliver yeah and i was actually gonna say that uh olive i've seen a bunch of olives come up yeah like are people doing this now is that oh is all oh i don't know but olivia

is different olivia is different but it's also I don't know that we can do it. We have some friends who just named their child Liviana, which and then and good friends. So Olivia and Liviana, I think those are those neighbors are too close. And also, we I really like the idea of calling a girl. Oh, and I can't call my kids row and oh right it just won't fit so i'm back to the drawing board on that oh my god this is this this sucks i have tears in my eyes i'm so happy for you thank you man thank you very much it's very exciting for me too when i i this is i did the same thing i did with ronan where i didn't think that i cared i was like i don't care what the gender is it doesn't matter to me i'd be happy with either

and when i found out that ronan was a boy i got very very excited and when i found out this was a girl i got very very sad no i got very very excited uh i was like i was so thrilled and i was like i guess i wanted that i think i wanted that. And Colleen definitely did. So it's very exciting for us. Oh my goodness. Oh. Yeah. Gee. Fuck.

I'm. This was like one of the leading decisions in why we moved houses to. Yeah. For school systems and everything. And so, yeah, we're. We are. How far along? The nuclear family.

It's got to be. Yeah. How far along now? Oh, so she's doing may oh my god what a strong month and i maybe you have this thing too uh where when things are going really well in my life i feel like i'm i'm pretty happy my first instinct is to be like, if I died now, it'd be okay. Do you ever feel that way? I do sometimes where something good happens and I'm like, oh, this was good. Yeah.

Like you win your Emmy and you're like, yeah, this would be a good time to die. Right. If the newspaper was like, shortly after winning his Emmy, he got hit by a car and we're like, well, all right. What else was on the list? There's a, I think maybe the marathon is named after this guy,

but there's like a Greek myth about a guy who has to run 50 miles. Maybe I'm going to butcher this. It has to run like 50 miles to go warn this other town about a war. And in doing so runs the full distance. And as soon as gets there drops down dead and uh everyone's like ah the perfect way to go everyone in the town is celebrating the fact that this guy died doing something great and how they all wanted that like they wanted you to to have that moment of immortality and then you don't live anymore to ruin it i want to talk more about death because i have follow-up questions about that but i'm i i don't want to do it right now

because i'm i'm you you you really you caught me off guard buddy yeah i figured i would i've been listen i've been saving this up because you're so long where you're not supposed to tell anyone and like you have to decide whether to tell people. It's a really weird thing that people do where they don't tell people that they're having a baby. Because what that means is that if anything goes wrong and complications always happen in pregnancy. That then if something goes seriously wrong, then you just like grieve in silence and you can't tell anyone. You can't like throw that on them. I was pregnant.

I'm not anymore. Like that kind of thing. And so you kind of have to wait for these safe times to tell people. And it's good. I'm sure you were talking to your wife, Colleen, and you were like, I want to tell my buddy, Dan. And she was like, wait for the pod. Let's save it for the pod. I did ask her.

I said, is this going to be weird that I do this on the podcast? And she said, no, why would it be weird? And I was like, yes. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's very exciting. And I saw her, I saw the ultrasounds. They did the 3D thing where you get to see them. And obviously- What colors her hair? Is that happening yet? Yeah, it's all in. Everything's cooked up.

At this stage, they don't have any fat on their faces. So that 3D imagery is just a skeletor in her belly. It's one of the more terrifying advances in ultrasound technology. Why do we do that? It's like, look, here it is in color and horrifying. It's so weird that they do that before the stage where it actually looks like a baby. Because you can see it from the side and you get it. You're like, okay, that's very clearly that they're about the size of a string cheese,

but they still have like, there's the head, there's the spinal cord, there's the arms and legs. And then they're like, do you want to see it in 3D? And you're like, hell yeah. And then they show it to you and it's just a skull with some skin draped over it. And you're like, why did you do that to me? Soren, where did you get this point of reference? It's about the size of a string cheese. Okay.

So a lot of times in all the baby books, they equate it to fruit, and I'm trying to buck that trend. So I'm thinking of other things that it could be string cheese is also something i've been eating a lot of lately that's we're gonna move on to other things but i'm just i'm i'm so happy for you and i and just to uh i gotta get you a bunch of presents I got to get you a bunch of presents and get her a bunch of presents, goodness gracious. But just to turn this back to me for a second. Like I had in my notes that I wasn't sure

if I was going to bring up this podcast or not. It was just like, I have a scratch pad for like things that I could mention on here or not. And I didn't think I was going to bring this one up because I didn't think there would be a natural way to ease it into the podcast. But now that we're talking about the birth of your daughter, I think that it's fair. I was meeting with a mutual friend, Cody Cheshire and his girlfriend, Lex, and her sister-in-law who just had a baby and I was

meeting this baby for the first time it's a five week old baby and I'm baby crazy right now so I was just like happy to hold a baby and I was holding this baby and we were talking about nothing baby related I'm just like a person holding a baby bouncing it being happy to be there and talking about like oh oh, this is my job. This is what I do. Here's an observation about the weather. Here's some jokes about this thing. Here's a show that I saw on Broadway recently.

And our friend's girlfriend's sister, who was meeting me for the first time, apropos of nothing, said, it'll happen for you. You'll find someone, and you won't even be looking and you'll find them and it's gonna happen she could just read it all over you tell and she was also like i mean not me obviously no of course i have some i gotta make this guy's day somehow yeah i'll give him some false hope prop him up that's great

congratulations man how do we what thank you so i just wanted to talk about death because we were talking uh i was talking to our mutual friend robert evans former co coworker, who is the host of Worst Year Ever and Behind the Bastards podcast. I was a guest on his podcast, Behind the Bastards, about Jeffrey Epstein's death. And in that conversation, it came up that a guy had rumored that Nelson Rockefeller died while having sex. And Evan said that was the cool way to die. And I challenged that because I didn't think that was the cool way to die. And we briefly talked about other cool ways to die. And I've been thinking about it ever since.

And I wanted to hear your thoughts about cool ways to die. Not like there's the happy ways to die, which is like surrounded by family after having lived a good life. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about cool ways to die, which is like surrounded my family after having lived a good life. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about cool ways to die. I like the idea of, uh, my cause of death being poisoning because I don't, I, I, I'm not everyone's favorite person in the world, but I don't think that I've inspired poison energy, you know? So I would like to, when I am found dead, I want my cause of death to distract people from how sad they are about me not being here anymore. And poisoning is one of the ways to do that, where it's like, man, it sucks that Daniel's not here anymore, but like he had poison enemies. That's because it's so premeditated.

Yeah. He had people that like hated him so much that they knew where to find a poison and then they bought it and then they poisoned him. That's pretty fascinating. It is. Let's put a pin in Daniel's death for a second and just like talk about like, what's this other side of his life that we didn't know. There's so much backstory to it.

The procurement of poison. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Yeah. And then, yeah, getting it with the plan of poisoning you. And especially if you died of a slow poisoning. Like if somebody was able to give it to you over a certain amount of time. Right. Oh, boy.

That is a pretty good way to go. Right. I want a death that causes more questions. Yeah, absolutely. Mine is not so elegant. I want to be struck by lightning. That's a really cool one because the places where you get struck by lightning, you're already doing something that's probably pretty cool. You're up on high peaks.

People get struck by lightning a lot um playing golf very cool uh and if you're if you are climbing i and i've i know some people who this has happened to where you get struck by lightning and you fall they don't actually know the cause of death right away they kind of have to look you over because you're smattering on the on the rocks and And the way that they can tell is that one of your shoes will be melted. And that's the only way they know that you were cooked alive by lightning. Why is it one of your shoes? Because you only, you become a, I think it's, you only have, the electricity will just choose a path. It'll like pick which way to go and it'll just stick to that.

It's very decisive lightning yeah uh but uh the great equalizer it's so dramatic and big that it feels like such a cool thing and i think it's also instantaneous so uh i don't have to sit no i don't have to be bedridden with poison in my running through my veins for a very long time do you have a because i i feel like i've read because you're a you're a hiker you're a climber and i feel like i've read so many stories of like so many great hikers and then eventually the biggest risk takers die is that an interest at all to you? I was like, man, this guy's done free climbing for so long. And then up, he's dead at 40. He climbed and fell off the thing. It used to be when I was younger, the idea of getting old, old was so haunting to me that I was like, and 40 already felt very far away. So it was this, this time that never existed

for me. And I was like, yeah, oh man, going out, like you're on a peak somewhere. And like, you freeze to death. Oh, those guys who like George Mallory, that was the way to go. Uh, and now that I'm almost 40, I'm like, I don't think so. I think I'd like to die in a bed somewhere when I'm 90 or a hundred. Um, I, yeah, I, I like, I, that is pretty common. It's these people who are risk takers. Eventually those risks don't, don't, there's some sort of reckoning for all of that. Right. He set a world record. We made a documentary and then'd have to go so he's instilled in me at an early age that these

people are just dumb that you don't do this kind of thing you don't do it to the people around you yeah because most of the time mountain rescue is not up there pulling people off of mountainsides who are alive they're going up there and like scraping people off of the scree because they've done something stupid and reckless and so at an early age he there was a lot of talk about this is stupid that what a pointless silly thing to do to the people around you it's so selfish right i made this a downer podcast after they should be sometimes listen it can't all be comedy and no but in the middle of it it was it was inarguably our most uplifting and exciting podcast. I would say that this podcast-

You're having another baby. You're having a little girl. You're going to name her Danielle, and you're going to call her Big Danielle, and it's going to be so great. This podcast is our lightning crashes, I feel like. The song Lightning Crashes? Yeah. We cover birth and death.

The placenta falls to the floor? Yes. My child will have the eyes of an old woman as far as I remember correctly. Yeah. That feels right for the tone here. Daniel. Yeah. I have a question.

Quick question. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I have a question. Quick question. When you find yourself in a perilous situation or like say you're walking down the street and it's night and you kind of notice maybe somebody's walking a little close to you and you don't know how this is going to develop yet, but it does feel like it has the potential to be perilous or like when you're hit by a cab, uh, when those dangerous situations, do you have a, uh, negotiation you make with the universe on why you can't die? Uh, expand on that question, please. I think a lot of people, when they find themselves in situations where either something bad is about to happen or they're about to die, they think that there's a chance that they could be killed that night. You hear something in your house while you're sleeping or whatever, and you go, oh God, if I just make it through this situation, I will fly straight from here on out. Like I will be a good person. Or they'll say, I can't go yet.

I haven't achieved this thing yet. Why would the universe take me away when I still haven't achieved this one very big thing I want to do? And I think everybody has at least one thing in mind that comes up every single time. I do. It's a philosophical negotiation that I'm sure people smarter than me can put a name to it, but I'm mostly just conversing with God and saying, listen, get me through this and you can take another year off the end of my life. I'm negotiating against the end. I'm just like, okay, just make it shorter, but keep me around right now. It's a thing I think I got from my dad who did it jokingly, where it was like, I made a deal. I'm going to die one year younger than I was supposed to die. And it got

me through this. That was the thing that my dad joked about growing up and that I sort of internalized as a thing that I do now where things are going really bad. And it was like, listen, just like get me through this. I got hit by a cab or I fell off my bike and broke my wrist and I was like, just let me get through this. Okay. And then you could take, you could shave off a couple more years from the end. Like a little withdrawal. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting. I guess unless it's a perilous situation where you could die because that is the end of your life. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. I guess unless it's a perilous situation where you could die because that is the end of your life. Yeah. That's a good one. I like that kind of negotiation. Yeah, just negotiating. It's like, look, just like eat me and then you get more of me later. And like the more that we make this deal, the more you get me when I'm like at my prime, you know?

Yeah. What's your deal? I used to find myself in the situation a lot more when I was more willing to take risks with my body. And I would, I would tell myself, I'd be like, I still have, like I would try and have a job interview with the universe where I'd be like, look at all this. I still have to offer. Like there's still some things that I could like, I could give to the world. And if I can just do that, then man, I'm worth way more to you alive than I am dead. I like that confidence. Here's why you need me around.

And I'll, in those situations, like I have had situations where I thought somebody, I've been in a foreign country. I thought somebody was following me and I was like, this is going to turn into a bad situation. And so I just knelt down and picked up some trash off the ground and threw it in a trash can. I thought, see, I'm fucking great for this place. and threw it in a trash can. I thought, see, I'm fucking great for this place. I also just sometimes broadly channel, this is, I mean, if anyone's looking to cancel me, channel Idi Amin's energy,

where I'm in danger and I just think, no, this isn't how I die. I decided I've seen how I die and it's not this. So I'm not scared here. Idiom mean for our listeners who don't know is a monster, but routinely said, this isn't how I die. He was a guy who famously was like, I know how I die. It's not in this battle. It's not here. So I'm not scared. Yes. The witch showed me it was in a cave, not here. So I'm not scared. Yes. The witch showed me it was in a cave. Yeah.

Here. Um, that's a, I kind of like that one. I also really, I, I early on in my life, I found that petty worked really well because I didn't die, but I would be lying in bed and I would hear what I thought were footsteps

coming up the stairs. Like a child does. And I was like, I can't die yet. My birthday's a month away or like something very, very simple. Like that would be a reward for me. And I was like, I can't die yet. My birthday's a month away or like something very, very simple. Like that would be a reward for me. And, uh, and then when that worked as a child, I would do that over and over. And I would just find the most banal thing that I was somewhat excited about and be like, I haven't, hold on. I can't die yet. My family's going to

New Jersey this summer. And I haven't seen my cousins in a year. Right. Just broadly being like, no, I still have stuff to do. Right. I'm not done yet. So this can't be how I die. Yeah. But I don't find myself in those situations as much anymore.

It makes me realize how many more risks I used to take. And I look back on it and kind of cringe at how reckless I used to be. What are these risks that you're talking about? I would like, a friend would be like, we'd be on a roof somewhere. And they'd be like, that other building, these buildings are so close here. And I'd be like, yes, I think I could jump to that other one. Or jumping off of, I remember jumping off of a roof into a bunch of cardboard boxes on moving day into college.

Just taking risks for the sake of the people around you to be cardboard boxes on moving day into college just taking risk for the sake of the people around you to be like whoa he's taking a big risk yeah because that's equal popularity in my mind and coming down off of out of a flip crashing through the boxes and then getting up and looking over and seeing that at the bottom of the boxes next to me is a concrete bench that like i just missed yeah or when i said know, back in the days when I would snowboard, you would just throw your body, when everyone was like, we're going to learn how to go inverted today.

So we'd be like, okay, well, let's try a backflip on this tabletop. And you have no idea how to do it yet. And it's such a dangerous thing to put your head face down as you're flying through the air. And people come out broken collarbones and stuff like that. and we just do it

yeah oh well all those people by the way went on to be sponsored and participate in the x games i was only doing it because they were doing it and i was like i i desperately don't want to be left behind and i think this is just how the world works. Everybody's good at these things. Yeah. I mean, that's the only way out of your mountain town, you know? You got to get out. Yeah.

All right. Should we wrap up? Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to track down all the social accounts. And while I'm doing that, Bacon, you said you wanted just 20 seconds to say whatever you wanted, just 20 uninterrupted seconds and you could say just whatever and I remember I

said to you when you asked me for this, I said intellectually 20 seconds doesn't seem like a long time but trust me, when you really just have 20 seconds to talk and everyone is just silently looking at a timer while you talk, it's going to talk and everyone is just silently looking at a timer while you talk it's going to feel like a lifetime and soren said yeah you should really take his word on this maybe start with 10 seconds and then you said fuck you make it 30 so here you go bacon

you've got 30 seconds to say what's been on your mind and i'm starting the timer and won't get into the social accounts until 30 seconds expires. So timer starts now. Yeah. So a couple episodes, Soren talked a lot of trash about my room and I took it very close to heart and I, uh, made some real significant changes to the room. And I quietly in my, uh, my mind was thinking, boy, Soren's going to be really impressed when he comes in this room,

looks around. And he, uh, walked in today, uh, sat down quietly. That's 30 seconds. You can find me at DLB underscore INC on Twitter.

You could find Soren at Soren underscore LTD you can find Bacon at Make Me Bacon Please PLS you can find the show on email at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com you can find us on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan and Instagram at QQ underscore

with underscore Soren underscore and underscore Daniel our engineer editor producer Gabe at QQ underscore with underscore Soren underscore and underscore Daniel. Our engineer, editor, producer, Gabe, refuses to be found from this show, and I do not blame him. You can support us on Patreon, but you shouldn't. But where could they if they wanted to, Bacon? www.patreon.com backslash quick question okay and i'm gonna keep saying backslash yeah fuck that guy fuck that one guy

bye then bye