Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 26 - How old is too old to believe in Santa?

Episode Date: December 12, 2019

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. And if you simply check the sell-by date, you will realize that this episode is newer than the previous one. This is the show where two best friends and television writers ask each other a series of questions while avoiding the real question, how long can a podcast built on the shaky of a foundation sustain itself? I am one half of this podcast, Daniel O'Brien, and with me, as always, is current and future father, Soren Bui. Soren, what's up? Do you really think this podcast has an expiration date? No, that's not the question that we asked, buddy.

I mean, it never really occurred to me. Also, is it weird for me to call you current and future father? No, I think that's cool. Okay, because there's... Future father! that's cool okay because there's I don't future it's not implied there's like a there's like a period in between where you won't be a father briefly no I think it's fine I like the once in future king that's not like he took a little break from it right uh that's I like the idea of being future father yeah that's neat okay and uh Okay. And speaking of things, we're joined. Hey man, you're going to be a future father too, Dan.

Thank you so much. That is absolutely a thing that I need to hear. It's going to happen. I appreciate it. It's going to happen. Thank you. Your lips, man. We're joined by our CFO, business daddy, Bacon.

Hey Dan, how are you? I'm doing well. How are youFO, business daddy, Bacon. Hey, Dan. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good, man. How's the house? How's the house? It's wonderful.

I spent the last week staining a fence, and I have become soft. I'm not made for manual labor. I did not situate well to spending four hours four hours a day which is not a full work day uh just like lifting stuff and moving stuff and okay uh it seems staining has gotten more complicated in the in the last few years also i'm looking out his windows right now there's not a fence to be seen no no the fence is it's built yet. I've done such a good job of moving the wood that you can't, it's hidden wood now. It's just, we're moving like a million things because they're all there. The fence isn't built yet. So we have to move each individual piece of wood around.

I created like a, was it a Rube Goldberg machine? Sure. Is that the thing that's very complicated? I created like a process that I don't believe anyone else on the planet would use, given the set of circumstances and problems. But I've been deeply committed to using that process. And I think Mona might murder me at some point because of that process. Because I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You can't. We can't stay in the edges first.

You've got to stay in the outside first, or we're going to lose at least 5% of our time efficiency here. Let me see if I can guess what your system is. Are you laying these out on the ground when you're doing them? Or out on pieces of wood? We're laying them across trash cans. Yeah, yeah. So that they're mid-body height when you're doing them.

And then we're transferring them to a resting area and then flipping them and then laying them on the trash cans again. And then trying to do all of the edges at once by stacking them all next to each other. But it means the wood is in like five different stages of staining. And if at any point you put one in the wrong place- It doesn't get stained. No, listen, I've been there before. I've built picnic benches that are like vertical slatted. So there's just a bunch of one by fours all like lined up and you prop them up a little bit. You always want to stain,

fours all like lined up and you prop them up a little bit you always want to stain your your weight and stain the the the top facing portion last because otherwise you're going to get drip stains on it so yeah you start with like the back you do like your fuck up job there and then you got to do the edges and then you lastly you do that and you're always going to end up with something that you forgot or along the way you're going to turn one over and there's just going to be huge pools of drips on one side and like, oh, okay. Anyways, if you want to come over for a pizza party unrelated to nothing else and maybe do 15 to 20 hours of hanging out with me. Don't do it.

You are invited. I would love to. It sounds like 15 to 20 hours. That's four hours of work. And then a lot of just like free time. I don't think he's going to work you that full time. He takes little breaks for mint juleps and sits on his plantation porch and you have to do the work plantation porch as always we are a quick question and as even more always you our listeners prefer to be called it's quickie quickie quickie it's quickie it's quick, quickie. It's quickie. It's quickie, quickie, quickie.

Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Is that good? Is that anything? I think so. I mean, I got it clearly. All right.

Anyway, we like to call out one review from quickie, quickie, quickie every week to read on the show. And this week we turn to Mama Afalter, who gives us five stars. Thank you, Mama. The title of this review is Wholesome Bros Being Besties. And the review itself goes, Daniel isn't a bro, whatever. He's great and funny. Honestly, hearing men talk about being baby crazy and how much they love their families is so wholesome.

And it's in this show about two friends talking about just random stuff and ideas in their lives. It's nice to hear new material from Soren and Daniel. That's generous. They're both really creative and fun to listen to. It's nice to hear new material from Soren and Daniel. That's generous. They're both really creative and fun to listen to. Thanks for making a fun pod, guys. And then they did an emoji that is the live long and prosper thing from Star Trek that I cannot do with my hands. That's very sweet for me again.

It is. Yeah. Wait, so you're not a bro? According to Mama Affalter, I am not. Okay, well, Mama Affalter, you don't always get to see daniel in his natural habitat but dan i think maybe 90 of shirts that dan's did dan ellens don't have sleeves on them dan regularly walks around glistening with uh either torn or i guess sewn probably sewn to be that way athletic shirts that don't have sleeves

and some sort of athletic hat. Yeah. Usually stained in some weird colors. And he wears shorts. He wears shorts everywhere. Every time that you're, this is a peek behind the curtain. Every time that you're watching After Hours

or one of the shows that we used to do and Dan is in a suit or whatever he happens to be wearing, on the bottom, Dan is wearing basketball shorts. A bathing suit. He's wearing a bathing suit. Correct.

Is there anything more bro than a guy who wears board shorts while wearing a suit on the top? It's one of the things that, uh, coming back to the East coast has been really difficult for me is that is, uh, the amount of sweat that my body produces i make a whole lot of sense in california that's where i'm allowed to wear sleeveless shirts and bathing suits to work all the time uh i have less of an excuse when i show up to work in the middle of november drenched in sweat in like a button

down shirt everyone else is very comfortable and happy and I'm just like the sweatiest piece of shit on the planet that's I didn't even think about that it's also so much more humid there this is a good temperate environment for you because it's so arid out here that it all wicks away from you pretty quick but there it just hangs on you right and and no one bats an eye if there's a sweaty guy in a backwards cap and a and a in Los Angeles in the summer. They're like, oh yeah, he probably just came from surfing. And I was like, no, I didn't. I was typing, in fact, but you don't know that. I was reading a book. one of my biggest problems in the winter was I would dress up in warm clothes. I had to take the subway. I would immediately sweat through everything I owned. And then when we'd get inside the building, it would be freezing cold. And I would be shivering by the time I got inside the

building. And so I ended up ultimately, for summer and winter, just wearing a throwaway shirt to get there. And then I would have a shirt at the office I was at to put on because it was such a problem with the temperature control. You Don Draper'd that shit. That makes sense. I don't know how to dress for anything because I don't have a car and I walk a lot. I walk all over the city. Yesterday, I did a terrible thing and walked two miles to the target in Times Square on a holiday weekend, which is pure chaos.

It's just someone who's looking to kill several hours of the day. And I walk a few blocks in 30 degrees and I immediately need to take my coat off because i'm i'm sweating because that's that's just how i am and then i go into the target and i need to put the coat back on until i need to take it off again and there's just no i i feel like everywhere that i go in new york as a sweaty person i need to plan for like four different climates and i i and i don't different climates and i i and i don't yeah i just decide to be sweaty and i can remember going to new york in the winter and i remember being on the subway or sitting in the subway waiting for a train to come and just smelling the wet wool around me on everybody and like their their own bodies sort of like their smells starting to creep through wool. And I was like, there has to be a better system than this. Everybody has to go outside at some point. So they're bundled way

up. But then in the subway, it's 90 degrees down there and everybody collectively is starting to stink. Right. And it's terrible. There are some days where like, I'll get dressed for work in the morning and I'll look at myself in the mirror and whatever I'm wearing. And I just think if I get transported to work right now, I will look decent at work, but that doesn't account for how warm the elevator is going to be and how much sweat I'm going to do on my walk over there. And then by the time I get to the office, like I got to take off this, this, this nice sweater that I got specifically for work. I have to take it off because it'll be strange if I'm sitting here at my desk with a fan blowing in my face in the middle of December, sweating like a monster. I don't know, Bacon, if you know how sweaty Dan is, but there's a product called

Spirit Gum that is designed to- Yeah, it's a strong, strong adhesive. It's like a pain in the ass to get off. You basically have to get a razor blade underneath it to start like cutting it off and then there's a special um a special solution they make to like get it to release a little bit and use it to put on beards and fake prosthetics and things like that and when we would shoot sketches and dan would have to wear a beard or something he would tell the costume director i mean the makeup artist beforehand i this will not stay on my face and she's like trust me it's fine spirit gum and he'd be like you don't understand i'm built different and then throughout the day it would become like almost insulting to her like

he was doing it on purpose and she was mad at him because without fail in the middle of the scene this mustache would just all of a sudden get crooked on his face and start falling down because he sweats through spirit gum. It's amazing. Oh my God. Yeah. And that would probably make, that would make me more sweaty. That would make me anxious to know that. Nothing makes you more sweaty than being criminally aware of how sweaty you are.

Should we get into the show? Let's do it. Stop talking about my sweat. Okay. Soren, hey, quick question. Yeah, go ahead. What was the hardest part about planning your wedding? And I ask you this because I'm planning my own wedding.

What? No, I'm not. It was fun when you surprised me with your baby girl. Oh, Jesus. A couple of episodes back. So I thought I would surprise you with something, but I don't have anything. Oh, I was so worried I was ready to be very excited for you but boy that was scary oh man um okay let me just

I'm not planning my own wedding I'm just cool my cool my heart down a little bit um planning my wedding like logistically i can give you some answers but i would say on the whole the biggest or the hardest part about planning a wedding were all the fights we had because you have something that you get very invested in you start to treat i i understand like where the idea of a uh you watch these shows where like at the end of the at the end there's a woman who's like, it's my goddamn day. It's my fucking day. Everybody does what I say because it's my day.

And it seems so crazy because it's so out of context, but you understand how a human gets to that point because you're making so many decisions and so much of it hinges on what you say. And you get to the point where one aspect of it falls apart and you've got this sunk cost fallacy in it all. And you're like, nothing else matters in the world. Nothing matters like this matters right now. And you start to get really irate and crazy about it. And we both did that. And we would get on each other's nerves all the time. You start to think that your decisions are good decisions because you're

making so many of them. And when somebody disagrees with you, you're like, what the fuck? Just let me have this thing. Or you don't think the other person's pulling their weight. And that's super common where it seems like neither one of you, one of you thinks that you're, you know, you can't help but like silently keep score no matter what you do, even in a relationship that sounds very unhealthy, but it's something that i think everybody inherently does especially when they start to notice the other person is sort of like shirking their duties and i think i was on the the shirking duties end of that where i was not doing a ton and calling a lot of the work fell to her and there was some deep resentment because of that and every once in a while we'd have these

blow-up fights deservedly on my part that we would have them but uh that was really the hardest part is that you have these big blow-up fights about this day that's supposed to be about how much you love each other but like logistically tables i don't know yeah i mean i i that's fascinating i i i like the personal stuff i think i was I was, I went into the question thinking there was going to be like a, no one ever tells you how much chairs cost or something like that. Like some surprising thing. There are things like that. So, they just take it. I mean, your answer was more interesting than chairs, if you could believe that much. They really do. The entire wedding industry is designed to just take money away from you.

I'll give you a really good example. When you're sending your notifications even, not even like your wedding announcements, just to save the date, you're sending that out. If you do it through some wedding vendor or some site that caters specifically to weddings, it's going to cost you like 100% more. They'll mark it up 100% than if you just went through a Vista print or like some company that does business cards or all kinds of different stock stuff. And you don't tell them what you're doing with it. You get to customize it. So you're the one putting on there that there's actually going to be a

wedding or something like that. And then it costs way less. So like we looked around at all these different wedding places and we're like, Jesus, it costs a lot just to tell people you're going to get married. And then we went to, I can't remember somewhere. That's a ballsy business when last I checked, email is free. Yeah. The problem is like there's so much writing on it. There's so much judgment surrounding a wedding where the people around you, they get an especially traditionalists like your generation before us if they get an email saying hey we're having a wedding they're like oh this is tacky and so there's there's this element of tradition that you're supposed to adhere to that you don't even necessarily believe in and maybe we won't in future generations when all these people just die.

But by that point, there'll be people sending invitations on whatever Snapchat's equivalent is in 30 years. And we'll be like, oh, fuck off. You can't do that. Right. You'll be old and you'll be mad

that someone's trying to slack you a wedding invitation. Right. So it's, we ended up- I mean, your specific was better. Snapchat was better. I'm sorry.

We did. We should have just, we should have stuck with that. Well, we can always edit. No, leave it all. We did refrigerator magnets for our save the dates because we thought this would be a great way for it to stick in people's minds. They can put it on the refrigerator. It's not going anywhere. It's not going to get lost in all their other mail.

And it was so much cheaper to do it through whatever this Canadian website we used, who usually just makes business cards, as opposed to doing it through an actual wedding venue site. Not a wedding venue, a wedding site. It was 100% cheaper. It was crazy. Speaking of cheaper versions of wedding invitations, you should all check out Gingerly Noted on Instagram. That's run by Caitlin Large, friend of the show, gingerly noted on instagram that's run by caitlin large friend of the show friend of both of ours she makes custom uh invitations and saves the dates and cards and designs and whatever else you want i didn't mean this to turn into an ad i just saw an opportunity to help out yeah i'm surely noted i'm sure it's moderately priced yeah it's it's it's very fair yeah

there are there are like a few industries that just sort of, they know they can take advantage of you and they do. It's the funeral industry, the wedding industry, and the baby industry. They know that they can sell you on stuff that you would never ever buy on your own. And it's because you feel like you need to do it. And they just take advantage of that. Are you, do you know that about the funeral industry? Just because I've been watching, for the last several months, I've been watching The Irishman on Netflix. And there's a beat where Robert De Niro, his character Frankie Sheeran, is picking out his own coffin.

And it's salesmen who are selling it to him. Like, this one's $7,500 and you really want it because you're using this to go home, so you got to spend the money. Is that a real thing or is that exaggerated for movie purposes? No, it's definitely a real thing. I think there was an article from somebody who works in a funeral home. It was an AMA on Reddit,

but I think it made its way to Cracked actually. And it was an article about how much they take advantage of people in that state of grief because they're in no position to be making big decisions in that state. And your reverence is for the human that you've lost governs all of your monetary decisions at that point. And they know that there's an opportunity to just hose these folks.

So they overcharge on just about everything. And you don't always, what was it? There was something about like, you don't always even get the box that you wanted. And people don't even know the difference because on the day, there's an open casket or a closed casket sitting at the front. They're not looking at it and being like, wait a second, that gold inlay is supposed to be pewter. What is going on? They're not

thinking about that. So you can really just give people whatever you want to give them. Huh. Sucks. Anyway, I wouldn't say it's just the cards. In general, it's dealing with everybody it's dealing with so many different contractors at once and so many different vendors at once

and i mean i'll give you a hint like our dj pronounced both colleen's name and my name wrong i mean that's a pretty that's a pretty strong hint i didn't mean i mean like there's a good example here's a good example. Here's a good example of how inept a lot of these people are who charge you so much money. Is there something either that you would do again differently or like a close buddy is getting married in six months? Advice that you would have for them? Yeah. I would say, first of all, don't forget to thank the people who paid for the wedding at the wedding.

It seems like you have so many speeches planned because you're probably going to read each other's vows. You might have like, at some point you might say thank you to everyone who also speaks at your wedding, your best man and everything and groomsmen and maid of honors. groomsmen and maid of honors. And you should always plan to, at the end of all those speeches, stand up and say, thank you to everyone for being there and thank the, for coming from so far. And then also say thank you to the parents,

which is, we forgot to say thank you to the parents during that speech. And I, it still eats me alive that we didn't do it. The other thing is when you get up at the, at the altar, you're giving, putting rings on each other's fingers.

The secret is you put the ring on just to that knuckle, like the big knuckle, and then let them do the rest of the work. Don't try and squeeze that thing over their knuckles because both of you have had your hands down at your sides for so long that all the blood is rushing to your hands. So even if that ring fit perfectly before, it's not going to fit on their finger easily when you try and push it on yourself. So you always see people struggling with those stupid rings. Every single wedding I've ever been to, you see people struggling with those rings. All you do, it's so

easy to get it on just to that first knuckle and then let them just slip it on the rest of the way. That's fantastic advice. I love that. I'm thinking about this because for one reason, but before I get to that, you brought up thanking people who've traveled a long distance. That's something that I've observed at every wedding that I've ever been to

is that someone in some speech calls out how far certain people have traveled. And that's a very silly thing to me. And as someone who's been a bi-coastal person most of my wedding-going career, you don't need to do that. It's fine. Whenever they get to the wedding where it's like, and some people came all the way from California to here in New Jersey. It's like, no, it's not my day.

It's a part of every wedding I've been to. And it's a part that I feel like can be completely cut out of the process. And no one will be mad. But I think you're different than most people, Dan. I think that- No, I'm the same as most people. I'm very normal. Okay.

Dan, you're the same as most people. You're very normal. In this one circumstance, I think maybe some people feel differently than you, and it's a worse feeling than yours. Yours is more altruistic and good. I think that when you go to a wedding, it's very common for somebody who's gone to a wedding who thinks that they're special in the mind of either the bride or the groom or both of them, and they don't get the attention that they feel like they necessarily deserve.

Not in speeches or anything like that, but they don't. they really deserve, not in speeches or anything like that, but they don't, you know, the bride and groom have 140 or like a hundred people there that they all love. They're all their favorite people and they can't spend time with everybody. And so there's so many people feel shortchanged, like they got a little taste of, of them when they came by their table for a second, uh, making the rounds and then left to another table and they feel a little shortchanged because they came so far for a wedding. So the more that you can make anyone at that wedding feel special for being at the wedding. Like,

I feel like that's really valuable. I feel like wedding guests should just get out of the way and, and give your presence and dance and, and cheer and clap and cry. This is a good, uh, this is a good ad for anyone out there who's getting married to invite Dan to their wedding. He's a perfect wedding guest.

Thank you. It's Daniel, but yes. Say his name Daniel at the wedding, for God's sake. When you call him out for his special moment because you have to do that, he's going to pretend he doesn't want it, but he does want it. Say call him Daniel. On the East Coast, I probably walked a few blocks

of the subway and then took the subway to penn and then took the pen somewhere else and like maybe i gotta maybe i rented a car with all that luggage both a suitcase and your suit folded over your your shoulder absolutely plus i'm bringing jackson oh thank you by the way for letting me bring jackson of course um i don't know the wedding talk i bring up because i'm i, I can't remember if I told you this, told you this or not. I'm officiating a wedding in February. Are you really?

I am. Are you ordained? I'm going to be ordained. That's so exciting. You got to, but I'm, I'm not there yet. Yeah. Will you be a reverend?

I guess so. I truly have not looked into this. Please, Daniel, from this point on, anytime you have the option to put reverend on something, please do it. Okay. I love, I mean, mean like what what things are you talking anytime you stay at a hotel or you fly uh and they oh where i get to pick my title yeah you pick that suffix or

whatever it is you pick reverend yeah that's gonna be very fun it's a really fun bit that's very exciting uh i can't think of anybody better to do fun bit that's very exciting I can't think of anybody better to do it Dan that's awesome oh that's kind of you do you have any questions for me quick or otherwise I have a quick question for you this is the time of year I think when

there are a lot of I'm reminded of it only because everyone's back from school for holidays and I hear my cousins lying to each other. I'm sorry, my son's cousins lying to each other and lying to him about things where family members used to just lie to me about stuff and I believed them for the longest time. And I'm wondering if there are any lies in your life that you believed for way, way too long. I would say I believed in Santa Claus longer than a person is supposed to. And I did so in a fairly dramatic way.

I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, which is way too old. Oh, Dan, like, yeah, like people are kissing and stuff. And I'm like,

Santa Claus is real. So that's just to let you know what the playing field looks like. I do like picturing you, some kids in a closet fingering each other and you bang on the door, telling them the Santa is real. Yeah. That's what was happening. And I truly believed it because I like genuinely didn't think my parents would lie to me and like had that purity to me for a very long time, which I kind of like about myself. I'm like, I'm happy that I'm dumb and

easily tricked because it lends itself to my persistent belief that magic is real in this world. And I like to hold onto that for as long as I can. So I'm glad that I was tricked for as long as I was. But I found out I was home from school sick when I was 12 or 13 years old. And the computer that we'd asked for for Christmas that year, my brothers and i collectively asked for a present from santa uh it arrived to the house while i was homesick and when i saw it showed up and it was addressed to my parents i called my mom at work and i was like bawling i was like santa's not real this happened and i was like i felt very that's the problem with finding out very late is that you're old enough to feel betrayed, which I did at the time. And my parents were both like graciously apologetic, even though they had nothing to apologize for.

Because in hindsight, it's like, yeah, you got the scoop. There's no mythical North Pole demon who's bringing you gifts. It's just your parents spending their money, giving you presents every year, waking up early to hide them from you. So you can have, have presents. And the fact that they would go through all that and then still apologize to

me is, is an insane thing. And like a testament to their strength as, as parents and the kindness that they did to me. But I was really betrayed at the time. And it was made worse by like being openly pro Santa in school in a way that like even like middle school bullies would come up to me and pull me aside and be like

hey um man santa's not real you gotta give this shit up man it's gonna be really hard for you if you keep beating this drum it's gonna be tough uh like i talked to my mom about it and he's not real like it's just our parents it's always been our parents and i was like well jesse uh i believe that santa's not real for you because you're a bad kid. But he's real for me because I'm good. Yeah. And what do you mean? And I love my parents, Jesus.

What do you mean? Like your foster parents, Jesse? And even the bullies were like, well, I tried. Whatever happens, if he dies, he dies. Whatever happens to this kid, happens to this kid. That's really rough, man. That's a late age. Do you think maybe even subconsciously, because you're the youngest in your family, that you were holding onto it because you knew that the magic of Christmas only lasted as long as the youngest kid still believed in Santa?

No, I truly just believed like, well, like, sure, all these kids at school said Santa's not real. And I'd seen plenty of movies and TV shows that had said Santa's not real. But my parents said he was and they wouldn't lie to me. Like I just had this thing in my head that my parents wouldn't lie to me about that. And years later, talking to my mom about it, she was just like, yeah, I just figured you'd figure it out. Your brothers did. Yeah, you had older brothers who didn't tell you. No, they didn't they they they thankfully wanted me to to have magic for as long as possible i can remember

as a young because i was also the youngest being young and figuring it out and just not letting letting on that i knew um because i remember exactly when i figured it out we used to get stockings and it was always santa would bring the stocking into your room in the middle of the night with all your stuff in it so that when the kids woke up early in the morning, they didn't go bother mom and dad. The kids just play with everything from their stockings first and bought another hour for the parents to sleep.

And we went and then we'd show each other what was in the stockings. And my dad had gotten a haircut at the town barber. Like a free gift certificate to get a haircut. And it had been signed by my mom in the stocking. And so it clicked for me then that, ah, Santa didn't leave this. My mother did.

But when I figured it out, I didn't really let on because my brother was also at an age where he was too cool for school. Like we do videos. My dad would have that giant camcorder that fit a full VHS in it on his shoulder in the mornings of Christmas. And my brother wanted nothing to do with anything, was too cool for all this, wouldn't even show you what was in his stocking. And so the Christmas was basically, I felt like Christmas would be over as a holiday as soon as I stopped believing in Santa Claus and that we all stopped this pageantry.

And so I just continued to pretend like I believed in Santa Claus so that we could continue to have Christmas. Fascinating. Yeah. And did you, like, before you found out, were you, like, suspicious and trying to find out? Yeah. I can also yeah i have very vivid memories of sitting in a family friend's basement maybe even like thanksgiving and just thinking to myself okay either santa is real and it's the only thing that's actually magic in the world or maybe there's just no magic. And I was like, well, which one of those makes more sense?

And kind of like hoping that it was still true, but because there's so many inanswerable questions around it and religion wasn't a deep part of my life, so there wasn't that magic. It was just like, well, I think maybe there's just not magic and this has all been a big game. Terrible. Yeah, I actually felt okay about it i mean yeah you turned out fine i guess yeah i'm for the most part um but it is really it's very endearing that you believed in santa for so long and that you insisted on it to people who did who no longer believed yeah that's like some real faith right there i think that there are some religious zealots who

would be like jealous of that kind of faith i didn't even had like a a crisis of faith moment after i'd found out when i was talking to my mom you at the time, at like 12 or 13 years old, about feeling betrayed and feeling let down by this. And my mom was like, you know, in a way, I don't think I lied to you because Santa Claus is real in the feeling that we all have around Christmas. That's what I mean when I say Santa Claus. I mean this thing that is bringing us together and making us feel good. And I remember even being at 12 being like, cut the shit, Ma. I wanted him to be like a guy

who showed up in the chimney that we don't have. There's a really great This American Life, and I'm trying to find the name of it right now, but I'm struggling. I might be able to by the end of this, but there was a dad who had three kids and each Christmas he would take them on a walk, a surreptitious walk on Christmas Eve. And they would find some grizzled guy out in the woods and with moss in his beard and like a really beat up suit. And it was, he had just this very gritty

version of Santa that was hiding out there and Santa had lost his reindeer. And so the kids had to bring Santa in, they would feed him something. And he was kind of, it was kind of like a little gruff. He was, he was a guy who really looked like he was trying to deliver millions of presents in a year. I think it might be called lights, camera Christmas, but I'm not, so I'm not certain about that. But anyway, anyway they they're

trying to get him like santa action better off the top of my head i didn't even spend any time thinking about that um and so and then the kids would they'd find they'd be like all right his his reindeer escaped and they would have to do something like find this bone out in the wilderness that was an instrument and blow it and it would make the reindeer return. And then Santa could leave and deliver the rest of the presents. And so these kids had an actual interaction with Santa just about every Christmas. And it would be different people that he would have dress up, people that weren't familiar with the kids, I mean, that the kids weren't familiar with, so they wouldn't recognize them. And it was this whole world that he built around

what it means to be Santa, that Santa changes every year, that Santa runs into these problems. And it was amazing. It was amazing for these kids. The youngest and the oldest ended up eventually kind of figuring out what was going on and still treasure that memory of when they were young and he would do this amazing thing for them. And the middle one does not talk to his parents. little one does not talk to his parents. Like it was such a huge betrayal to him. It seemed like this diabolical trick that they'd pulled on him because he also spent a lot of time at school trying to convince other people that he'd had these experiences with Santa and had cost him his social life in middle school. And to this day, his dad still insists that it,

maybe it was real. Like he's still very coy about it and doesn't come clean about the fact that he orchestrated it at all. And, and he, coy about it and doesn't come clean about the fact that he orchestrated it all. And, and he, one day when he was very, very sick, uh, with a fever, when he was in, he was probably like 13 or 14, he asked his mom, did it all happen? Is it real? And she said, no, it's not real. And that was like the only indication he had ever been given by his parents that this didn't

actually happen. And he felt like it was the most diabolical, deceitful thing a parent could do and cannot forgive his parents for it. Yeah. I guess that naturally lends itself to a question. What's your plan for your kids? We're doing, okay. I think about this a lot because of that story. I think about this. I think it's really easy to, to, uh, turn too hard into the skid and just try and make it as big and magical as possible. And I don't think that's always the best idea. So we're doing Santa. Santa brings the very best gift. Santa is a guy who lives in the North pole and he creates these, he knows what the gifts are that you want. I don't know if we'll do letters or not but he knows how to reconstruct them perfectly. So they'd be just like you would they would be if you bought them at the store. His elves are that much of an expert.

And every Christmas he flies around, we leave cookies out for him. You can leave a note out with questions and he'll answer those questions and that's going to be pretty much it all right but we are doing santa yeah that's that that feels good i feel like if uh if i ever have kids which i uh you know tomorrow would be great today would be better but whenever it happens it happens uh i i i want to have santa and i want to have magic but i i think i want to

downplay some of the more religious elements of it just because i i uh my roommate in college was uh jewish still is in fact and uh christmas time coming around was was obviously it was huge for me. It was like very exciting. And I was just like really into the spirit playing my Christmas music and, and decorating our, our shared apartment. And he was like, not against it or everything or anything, but he was just like, you know, it's, you should know that growing up as a Jewish person during Christmas time is

not the most welcoming time in the world it's not like scary or threatening time but it's very clearly like this is treated as a christian catholic holiday yeah thing and it feels very alienating and you can you know schools will try to dress it up as like oh this is this is christmas and hanukkah celebration and like hanukkah is not in the top three of the most important holidays in judaism uh so it's just sort of like an like an afterthought consolation prize so just knowing how alienating christmas was to him i feel like if and when i have kids and we have christmas it's going to be i don't know more of an american holiday i guess yeah like just like move away from religion a

little bit just to to make it more inclusive if possible yeah i mean i i'm trying to think if i even had any religious aspect to it when i was a child and there really wasn't much i was vaguely aware of what we were actually supposed to be and there really wasn't much. I was vaguely aware of what we were actually supposed to be celebrating, but it was not the focus at all when I was young. And I think some people would say, well, then you've stripped it of all this tradition. You've taken out the love of Christmas. But no, actually, I think it's kind of more inclusive. Yeah. I think a lot more people can celebrate it when it's just this celebration in the middle of winter

of, hey, we made it. We made it through a year. It's just this celebration in the middle of winter of hey we made it we made it through a year uh it's a family celebration as opposed to new year's which i think is very much an adult i mean that's how i felt growing up too like even though we were going to church it didn't feel like a religious thing i just bring it up to be like if you're completely separate from the religion if you're if you, if you're Jewish, for example, it's just not part of your, your upbringing period. Even though like, I never thought, oh, I'm getting presents because I believe in Jesus Christ, which I didn't think growing up when I was getting presents, it still forces people to become outsiders. Yeah, that's true.

Anyway, that's what this podcast is about. Did you, you brought this question up. Is there something that you, while we're wrapping up that you, you believe for too long? Yeah. This is something that a neighbor told me when I was young and it didn't even occur to me until my son, right around the time my son was born. So I was reading a lot of books. This is going to sound a little dark, but bear with me. I was reading a lot of books about childbearing and in every single one of those books, inevitably there's a section that brings up the word stillborn and stillborn, stay with me, Bacon. Why did you think this was going to seem dark?

Stay with me, Bacon. Stillborn was a word that I always knew. I knew the meaning of it, Stillborn was a word that I always knew. I knew the meaning of it, but the etymology of it, etymology? Entomology, I think is a study of birds or insects. Insects, okay. Ornithology is birds. So, I thought that it was, it meant that when you have a baby that dies in the womb, it has to be born still. Like, it's born still.

And like a stillborn would be like, it was dead. We don't know what to do, but it's still, it's got to still be born. And so I thought that was the- Still be born? Yeah, like stillborn.

It's stillborn. Like that process is still going to have to happen. And you still have to do that. And so, I thought that was where it came from. When did you find out that that's not what it was? What was the circumstance? When I was reading it and looking at the word, it occurred to me that all this time I had been, that Ross Truelove had told me was incorrect incorrect that it meant that the baby was born completely still obviously which had never even never even crossed my mind he said that you still have to have the baby is that is that a weird one dan it's a little it's a little weird i mean i i

it's dark so it's hard to joke about but uh i i do and will always love uh unexamined wrongs unexamined fallacies unexamined blind spots that you it's it's a thread that if you tugged on just a little bit you'd realize that it didn't make any sense but you didn't until very recently which is very funny to me because if you tug on that thread you have to know that there was a doctor at one point who was like, well, this baby is dead, but it's still going to be born, right? So let's call it that. And then all the other doctors were like, yeah, that's good. That's some solid rebranding, doc.

Yeah. We'll do it. It's not fun to think about it. Let's just call it that. Yeah. And it made perfect sense in my mind it made enough sense and it was also one of those things that i never had to think about until i was going to be a father and so it just stuck there until i was reading the book then i was like

wait a second that can't be right well should we wrap up here? Bacon, what do we got? Yeah, we're good. We can wrap up. Okay. Well, I think it's my turn to find the intros, Dan. But that's going to actually take me. I mean, I don't want to jump in here, but probably you mean outros. I don't even think I mean outros.

I think I mean find the social accounts. I don't know why I keep calling it outros when we do these. It's such a misnomer. But it's going to take me a while to find them. So, I just want to- I can just send them to you right now if you need them. No, no. I have them saved in a spot. It just takes me a while to remember the code to get in. But I wanted to give you a little bit of time to talk about something that you talked to me recently about, which was you said something like the thanks to modern capitalism, like hostile takeovers and corporate slapsuits and just general business espionage are all parts of what we consider modern

warfare. And where it used to be that the strongest man was king in the modern world, it should be in order to save capitalist society that we make the richest person king. Do you want to explain why you think the richest person should be king? Do you know how much Jeff Bezos gave to charity last year? I don't. $43 million, probably, or something like that. It might as well be that. Do you know how

many jobs jeff bezos created in the last year i would say upwards of 14 yeah so much more than 14 and it doesn't matter if they're you know peeing themselves in factories or dying on factory floors and being left there for hours before someone is like, excuse me, I think this is a corpse. The thing is, he's a job creator. That's one. That's one corpse out of the many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs that he has created single-handedly with no help from anyone else.

How many jobs did, what's her nuts, Mother Teresa create? I don't know. None? Off the top of my head? I don't think she was creating any jobs when she showed up in fucking Calcutta in 1920. I don't think she was sharing that wealth, spreading that money around. Jeff Bezos is. Or Bezos.

Or whatever. You don't even know our king's name. No, I don't. And he could flog me for that. And he would be right too. Because he is listening right now on this speaker that he gave me for free so he could listen to me. And I'm going to just like shout things that I want in my apartment, sometimes in my sleep. And then I'm going to wake up and there's going to be an ad on my computer. And I was like, hey, I heard you screaming about weighted blankets. Do you want one? And I'll be like, ah, yes. Thank you. And then some fucking 16 year old is going to shit their pants to make sure I get that weighted blanket in 48

hours. And who am I to stand in the way of that? For a second there. You ever yell at a storm, Soren? You ever stand on the beach and try to scream at a tidal wave? How'd that go for you? This is the way the future is going. This is the shape that progress is taking. You don't want to be the fool who tries to reason with a tornado, do you? I guess not. No.

I hope you feel about two feet tall right now. For a second there, I thought you were going to say that Jeff Bezos listens to our podcast, but you're absolutely right that the American public is his podcast. He can listen to everybody anytime. Absolutely. And I hope he likes what he hears. You're bald and your eye is weird and your rocket ship looks like a penis. Jeff, Dan's opinions are not my opinions.

And I'm happy to serve you, sir. You can follow us on Twitter. You can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. Or me, Soren, at Soren underscore ltd. You can also follow file. Motherfucker. You can also follow I think

I nailed that one. Michael at makemebakeandplease. My favorite part about the word follow is that it's four syllables. It's a lot of vowels in the middle. It gets very tricky. You can follow him at makemebBaconPlease with a PLS. It's literally consonants in the middle. Like the direct middle is double consonants.

Yeah. Fialolo. I woke up earlier than you, Soren. Fialolo. Or you can follow Quick Question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com.

You can also find, follow, or hire our sound engineer, producer, and editor by fucking write off. He doesn't want you. You don't want your money. He doesn't want to be contacted by you.

His name is Gabe. Oh shit. Okay. Gabe's got a website. What is it? Hold on a second. Gabe, what?

Gabe harder. Yeah. Okay. You can follow, hire, or, uh, you know, just check out Gabe. Hold on a second. Gabe what? Gabe Harder? Yeah. Okay. You can follow, hire, or just check out Gabe at GabeHarder.com. That's G-A-B-E-H-A-R-D-E-R.com. It's really cool that like last year, like he was born Gabe Hard. And then last year there was a horrible, like someone in his family was murdered, and then he just woke up one day in a storm and was like,

it's Gabe Harder now. Yeah. That long distance stare, smoking a cigarette in the rain. Harder now. I mean, I'm not rooting for whatever horrible tragedy will result in Gabe Hardest, but I'm not not rooting for it. Yeah. tragedy will result in Gabe hardest, but I'm not not rooting for it. Yeah, Gabe hard with a vengeance is the one I'm looking forward to. All right, I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. Bye.