Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 46 - The Seniors Most Likely to Start a Podcast Are?

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Check out ep 46 where the guys talk about senior superlatives, and song they connect with that they really shouldn't.  And big thanks to RAYCON!  Get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com/QQ

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, a podcast where two friends ask each other questions about comedy, writing, and life and rarely land on any answers. I am one half of this podcast, author, staff writer for Last Week's Night with John Oliver, and a guy whose high school girlfriend broke up with him by moving on Valentine's Day to another town. And I am joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello and introduce yourself. Hello, folks. This would be a lot easier if we did this section after I knew what we were supposed to call them for this week.

But anyway, I'm Soren Bui. I'm an executive story editor over at American Dad. I'm a husband and a father. I'm a pretty good Ultimate Frisbee player. And I've got extraordinary balance, which you would know if you ever watched me walk a slack line. See, so the, the rhythm of things that I did was like, here are some professional accomplishments and then an embarrassing truth about myself. And do you, do you see the difference between what I said and what you said? Yeah. I mean, they're just like the things that define us.

Okay. Right. So you right so you have you have nothing in high school that was embarrassing okay one time i when i was captain of the soccer team um this already immediately sucks ass So, so the goalie came out on my team and I rushed back into goal to cover and someone took a shot. And my first instinct, the ball came right at me. My first instinct was to just catch it. I caught a ball in my own goal, which is an immediate red card. And I got tossed from the game. in my own goal, which is an immediate red card. And I got tossed from the game. I could have just played it off my chest and kicked it out. And I went to the bathroom and I cried. Wait, you're not allowed to catch the ball when you're the goalie?

No, I wasn't the goalie. The goalie came out. Oh, you were just occupying the goalie's space. Yeah, the goalie came out until I punched the ball away or whatever it was. They brought the ball. It was just like an immediate strike again. And I had stepped in to do the right thing and just fucked it up beyond all possibilities. They'll not only get a penalty kick,

but if you are not the goalie and you touch the ball in the box, that's an automatic red card. That means you're gone for that game and the next game. Got it. And my school was watching and I went in the bathroom and cried. If you want,

Rick, a really embarrassing story, I used to be on a basketball team when I was in middle school that when I was in eighth grade, they made me play in the seventh grade team because the seventh graders didn't have enough players and I wasn't good enough for the eighth grade team and my whole school was there to watch me play with the seventh

graders. Okay, I'll take that. Thanks to Raycon Wireless Earbuds for supporting Quick Question. Raycon earbuds start at about half the price of any other premium wireless earbuds on the market. Get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com slash QQ. We're going to get into the show where we ask each other questions and give each other answers before that we're doing as we've been doing for the last hundred days or so checking in on uh life under quarantine i have a small thing that uh will sound dated by the the time this episode comes out but um uh recently megan mccain co-host on the view and

daughter of john mccain uh went on twitter to talk about how her her city of manhattan her town was it looked like a war zone because of the protests and that she didn't even recognize it anymore, that it was so war torn that she couldn't handle it. And it's so scary. And very funny, very silly thing about this is that Megan McCain and I live in the same building. And this happened to be a day where my brother found himself in New York City for a business that is not relevant. And he had nowhere to go for a while. So we just took a walk around the neighborhood and he bought flowers for his wife. And it was like altogether one of the most wholesome mornings I've had in 100 days.

Buying flowers and sitting in a park and chatting with my brother. And then I go back to my apartment and I look online and see Megan McCain tweeting about what a war zone this is. It was so incredibly silly. There's another late writer who late night writer who works for a full frontal with Samantha B. Kristen Bartlett, who also lives in this building. Yes. She,lett tweeted megan we live in the same building i just went outside it's fine and it was very cathartic for me to see that because like i don't want to out megan mccain where she lives or out myself where i live but at the same time it's like i'm fucking walking around here at 7 30 with a bouquet of flowers with my brother it's it's lovely it's wonderful what are you talking about oh that's gratifying

um dan you might be upset with me all right i went and got a haircut oh no how does it look really good and it feels really good Oh, no. How does it look? Really good. And it feels really good. Did you get so like it's... Walk me through it. Okay.

You're waiting outside? I got to... No, I got there and my barber was waiting outside. There's this guy, Tim Carr. Great, great barber in LA. And he works out of somebody else's barbershop. But the barbershop, for whatever reason, doesn't, I guess like they just loan it out to different barbers.

So every time I've went and gotten a haircut there, there's four other seats. I'm the only person in there. And there's not even another worker there. So he waits outside. He opens the door for us. We went inside and I said, do I need to take off my mask? And he said, no, I can work around it.

And then as he cut my hair, he would take like one ear piece off and he'd be like, we hold on to your mask. And I would hold on to it. And then. Oh, that feels worse. I hate that. And then I would put it back on, do the other one and I'd hold on to the mask. And all in all, pretty good experience. He wore his mask too.

And I felt like it was great um this is like a unique circumstance because i just me and my barber in a shop together but i thought it went really well i was really really pleased with it yeah anyway well that's fine i'm not mad about that i would like to get a haircut i'm i'm i panic shaved my head yeah uh and the because of the realities of of going bald the sides and back are growing out so much more than the top and like i know that this eventually will be fine it's just gonna take a while and there's nothing I can do right now as the hair is growing out and like the back is outpacing the top so dramatically. There's a funny thing that happens with newborns where if they're born with hair, they rub it off with their, cause they're, yeah, they're constantly on their backs. And so like the sides of their head, they rub it all off. And so they get this opposite male pattern baldness thing going on where they

keep the stringy hair on the very top of their head and then all the sides become very bald until the new real hair comes in and it's such a funny look once you're no longer the parent of that child when you're in the moment you don't even notice it because this is your kid you have nothing but rose tinted glasses for this child and you're like everybody must know how gorgeous my child is and then you can look back through the old photos and you're like oh that was fucked that we left her like that we should have just cut the other hair like we were giving her a comb over for a very long time that's fantastic and also what i'm going through right now which is uh to say that when people look back on photos of me in the present, they will say, man, that's fucked up. We should have done something. But let's get into the show where we ask each other questions. I want to ask you a quick question about senior superlatives. And for anyone who doesn't know what a superlative is, it's something that happens in middle school or high school, traditionally, where people are voted most blank. There is like best vocalist, most likely to

succeed, best smile, best nicest eyes. I know you didn't have superlatives in high school because you, Soren, quite famously went to a high school in a 40-person windowless yurt in the unincorporated woods outside of Carbondale, Colorado. But it was something that most of us had. And it's something that I believe is going away. I used a lot of superlatives there to describe where I went to went to school but i'm not correcting you because you're absolutely right yeah i was talking to uh k about this and realizing like out loud in real time discussing the subject of like getting rid of superlatives how wrong i was for defending them because i was like superlatives are harmless me and all of my friends got them and we turned out fine.

Oh, the ones that didn't get them? Those fucking weirdos? Who gives a shit? Who cares? I don't know. And I'm wondering, you with your outside perspective, how you feel about the eradication of senior superlatives if it's a good thing that they're gone forever?

Because that seems like the trend that we're moving in. I had no idea that that was even happening. But yeah, that seems absolutely right that they should get rid of those. I think it could only be hurtful to the people who are just looked over completely, right? Right. So it was just one last popularity contest at the end of high school? One last stick of the knife? Yeah, it was the kind of thing that you couldn't really actively campaign for.

It wasn't something where you could put up posters like you were running for student council or anything like that. Like, make me treasurer or whatever. posters like you were running for student council or anything like that like make me treasurer or whatever um but i was certainly like i i my senior superlative was broadway bound and i had certainly built my entire high school career around being a theater kid uh and if i didn't win, it would have been devastated. But I won it. So I guess I think the system works. And when I, I don't even know what they call it, not commencement, but continuation from like elementary school to middle or middle school to high school.

They did a thing where the teachers went through and they were like, where is this kid going to be 20 years from now and for each kid they read like a little short blurb of where they thought that kid would be oh my god the teachers did that yeah good lord and um they they were generous you know they weren't okay they weren't honest but that felt that felt pretty good i feel like you that's something that could work if you if everybody gets one no you know what i'm taking that as it comes out of my mouth i'm realizing i don't want that i don't want everybody to get one um and i think just taking them away

completely is probably a good idea i think so too what did you get i got broadway and now i got um in uh going from middle school to high school i got best male vocalist and going from high school to uh the abyss i got broadway bound well good for you yeah i mean you're not any closer to broadway now no absolutely not i'm not a singer either you were probably closer then i've let i've i've uh retreated so much from either of those things i never sing i'm not going to broadway i've i've burrowed myself into a career where i can hide writing for the rest of my life, ideally. Maybe they just meant that.

So like the voting committee was wrong. You blew it again, high school. They didn't mean you'd be on Broadway. It was just that you knew Broadway show tunes so well and all the plays so well. They're like, yeah, I mean, he's going to go see more. He's going to be around that area for sure. He will guarantee if you went to one you might see him in the front row yeah he's going to be waiting outside of beetlejuice for alex brightman and he

will be like did you go to the show it's like no i just know when he takes his breaks just want to ask him how he does his voice that way i have a lot of what about bob questions so i'm gonna just wait um okay no i yeah questions, so I'm going to wait. Okay. No, yeah, we didn't. I'm trying to think. Maybe in middle school we did them, but they're so long ago that I can't remember all the ones I collected. I'm sure that.

Of course. Biggest testicle. That kind of stuff. You got biggest testicle in middle school? Yeah. So I want to be clear with what you said. So like, hey, Soren, stop talking for a second. Because you said biggest testicle. Yeah.

You didn't say testicles. So you got biggest testicle in middle school. I'd have to go back and look. I don't, it was either me or Logan Draves who got biggest testicle, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. But one of you, but like you were in the top two running in whatever fucking A-frame cabin you went to middle school in. You were in the top two consideration for biggest testicle.

Right, and you should know that's not as big an honor as it sounds like it is because there are so few kids in the school that it's, you know, there's not a lot of for biggest testicle uh-huh and uh yeah i think i i'm pretty sure i got it i don't know what about my tone implied that i thought it was a big honor because i want to clear up the record now is i don't think it's a big honor i think it's um at best a misguided brag on your part at worst probably a sex crime um but you still seem weirdly proud of even the possibility that you could have the biggest text testicle either you or logan graves draves dan draves come on god help me yeah i can't remember which one of us i could call him and like we could just take quick pictures and see where who who now has it and now give us it would inform probably who had it then well no that's not how it works you don't you don't retroactively

assign superlatives that's true well he might remember um but i i guess if i did bring it up with him that's a whole another can of worms that i'd be opening because what if he didn't get it and then it's felt bad this entire time and he's like we should be doing away with those i mean then that would be fine i also think that they should not be assigning biggest testicle in the middle school tent that you grew up in outside of carbondale i'm emailing him right now i'm gonna say okay dan wants to know how big your testicle was in middle first of all first of all yeah daniel okay let me go back daniel wants to know how big your testicle was in middle first of all first of all yeah daniel okay let me go back daniel wants to know how big your testicle was in middle school okay i'm giving you his i'm giving him your number is that all

right okay yeah that's fine okay great send so that was the entire message daniel wants to know how big your testicle was in middle school here's his phone number send yeah okay yeah oh should i put broadway daniel on there what's gonna make it more specific for him no no no no i think that's that's plenty of information okay yeah i'm not even sitting next to a computer right now this is all just it's, Dan, trying to save whatever face I can at making a dump. No, no. A dump rag. I think this podcast is at its best when you talk and I just ask you logical follow-up questions. You're probably right.

Me as a rope peddler, very happy to keep doing that. Folks, thanks for listening to this podcast. To keep this podcast going, we'd like you to tell your friends about it, to tweet about it, do whatever you can to let other people know that we're actually doing this, especially people who you think would be fans of Soren and Dan. We also want you to support our sponsors. And in this case, our sponsor is Raycon. Whether you're working from home or working on your fitness, you want what you're listening to to be what you're listening to, not what your roommates or your neighbors or your significant others listening to. So we teamed up with Raycon and they are offering 15% off your order at buyraycon.com slash QQ. Whoa. Yeah. 15% right off the top. I like Raycon

a lot because I can't go to the gym right now. I can't listen to their music. I've got a child. So a lot of times what I'm hearing in the background is just kids cartoons. So if I want to do some burpees or I need to try and get some sort of workout in at my house, I can put these guys in. They stay in my ears. They're discreet.

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and more compact design that gives you a nice noise-canceling fit. Whoa! Get the latest and greatest from Raycon. pairing more bass and more compact design that gives you a nice noise canceling fit. Whoa. Get the latest and greatest from Raycon. Get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com slash QQ. That's buyraycon, R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash QQ. Daniel, I have a quick question for you. Can we get to that yet? Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. Okay. I have a question about songs for you can we get to that yet yeah go ahead yeah okay um i have a question about songs for you so there are songs that i maybe this better not be a fucking broadway one for you but it might be there are songs that i listen to and the lyrics will tell some sort of story and a lot of times it's so far afield from my life that I have absolutely no context for whatever they're passionate about in the song. But it doesn't matter. Like somehow it still feels so immediate and real to me that I belt the song out like it's happening to me. I'll give you my examples first to make it crystal clear what I'm asking for from you.

Please. There's a song by OK Go called The Reddings on the Wall. Have you heard of it? No. Okay. It's about a bad breakup. It's about two people who,

even before they're broken up, just like how this relationship is not going well at all right now. And he sings like, it seems like forever since we've had a good day. And then the chorus of it is, I just want to get you high again.

I just want to see some pleasure in your eyes. Like he just wants to have with this person who tell, like they've sort of grown to hate each other. He just wants to make this person happy one more time. And it feels like it, it feels so honest and good. And like, I love it. I love listening to the song. And like, I love it.

I love listening to the song. I love singing along to it. I'll tell you a little secret about me. I have never had, I've never really had a bad breakup. I've never been in that situation. And part of me feels like I missed out on, like when, if all your friends dealt with COVID

and you were in a place that just didn't have it. And then afterwards you came out and everybody else has been through some shit and they all came out and they're a little stronger for it. And they're, I don't have that. I am this fragile, emotional thing that never had to deal with callousing to the world because my first real big relationship, uh, that lasted more than a year was in college and I married her. Right. And, but you, that, but that song still resonates with you for some reason. It really does. Yeah. It's, and I, oh, that I should also mention here that we very much love each other, that love my wife that i i still think that that you know you hear stories about people who have children or that uh they get old and they

start to despise each other that's not what's happening here i just there's something about this song that about two people breaking up and it doesn't feel it doesn't have that same cloying feel to it or like the self uh aggrandizing feel that a lot of other songs have uh where like i can't believe they did this to me it's just like this relationship is not working it's not necessarily you it's not necessarily me but we are not happy together and i just want i just want to see you be happy again and And I'm like, yeah, no, that resonates on such a great level. But I, again, that's, I can't like point to a point in my life and be like, yes, this is why this song means this to me. So I have a few songs for this.

And one very specifically to the thing that you're talking about right now is the song The Last Polka by Ben Folds Five, which is about a breakup. And it's about a relationship that has been going for a while and then ends very dramatically. And it's mostly told from the perspective of a woman who's dealing with a guy who is just a piece of shit like he's she's putting the work in and he's lazy yeah and the whole song is about like this fight's gonna happen any minute and it's also from the sense of like she's really gonna lay into him and by the end of the song that's the first time that we get his perspective because she's she's it's all her from this whole time. And then we finally learned that he is like, I'm also unhappy. And like, I'm sorry that we're breaking up.

The lyrics are I hate that it's coming to this, but baby, I was doing fine. How do you think I survived the other 25 before you? And it's devastating. And it's like the whole song is a great handling of this relationship that becomes quietly toxic until it becomes loudly toxic. And I have been listening to it for years and screaming along to it,

despite the fact that i've never had any like a big loud angry breakup with anyone i've i've never had to like access those emotions when fighting with someone that uh i loved so much that it turned to hate yeah no i know exactly what you mean i there are there's just like something about just knowing what it would be like to be in that situation. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, this is what it feels like. I think it was Chuck Klosterman. I think it was him.

He said that music doesn't move you. Music holds your hand as you move yourself, which is like, it basically you, music is just there to like, let you access these things within you as opposed to it taking you there and guiding you there. And I'm like, oh yeah, okay. That's very true generally. But in these one instances, in these few instances, no, the music is absolutely doing all the heavy lifting. It's not like taking me back to a moment in my life. It's just like, here's this brand new thing. And now you care about it. And I'm like, right. I do. It's also like music in a way that like tells you what, uh, what truth is in the way that like, I watched the wire and was like, Oh, that's what it's really like. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like if I had met an actual baltimore police officer or a

baltimore drug addict or drug dealer who was trying to tell me what things were like i'd be like no i'm sorry uh i don't think you're right about that i saw the wire the wires told me what this life is and you're wrong and that's what i mean i feel like a show a movie that's their job because they're allowed to be so long but a song you don't have a lot of time to get somebody into this world teach them what the world is and then be like and now care about it and when songs do it so expertly i'm like fuck yeah you got me another song that it's also ben folds five because i'm very on brand it's called boxing it's an imagined conversation between muhammad ali and howardosell towards the end of Ali's boxing career when he feels that he's lost a step. And it's clear that boxing isn't a forever career. And it's him wondering what he's for now. And if all of what he's done has been worth it. He frequently asks Howard, boxing's been good to me, Howard,

but now I'm told I'm growing old. The whole time we knew, a couple of years I'd be through. Has boxing been good to you? This was a song that I inexplicably felt at 16 years old. I heard it and I was like, yes, that's it. What if you do a thing well and then it still doesn't matter? I've gotten older and that's no longer a concern of mine. Like I have different definitions of regret and different interpretations, interpretations of hell and a different and

healthier and much more realized version of peace that are no longer tied to career or legacy. that are no longer tied to career or legacy. But at the time, as a 16-year-old white kid listening to a 29-year-old white kid's song about an imagined conversation between Muhammad Ali and Howard Gosell, I was like, yes, this is life. Stepping back for a second. To what? How do you think that Ben Folds put aside self-criticism long enough to write that song? Knowing as much of his discography as I do, this was like a very early song that he'd written.

Okay. Because I would be writing that. And in the middle, every five minutes, I would be writing that and in the middle every single like every five minutes i would be like what the fuck do i know about boxing or like what do i know about muhammad ali like no i could never like like the the hubris of writing a song from the perspective of muhammad ali is absurd but you felt because there's the the implication that it was like this song is really about me because I consider myself the Muhammad Ali of soft boy piano rock. I am the greatest.

Float like a butterfly, sting also like a butterfly. I'm surprised you didn't bring up brick dan i didn't well so like true ben heads don't really like brick okay it's not a good one no it's it's so uh if you're a huge ben folds five fan uh brick was probably your entrance to the band because that was their undeniable radio hit yeah but it's also uh a couple of things that are very different about it that from like the rest of his discography uh there's no harmonies in it and that's a huge hallmark of ben folds five songs is the harmonies it's also uh one of i think two songs in the entire oeuvre of ben Folds 5 where Robert Sledge plays an upright bass instead of an

electric bass so it's not a very representative song of that band yeah you would not give that one to the aliens when they ask who no absolutely not and like seeing Ben Folds and Ben Folds 5 as many times as I have it was very exciting the first year I saw him when he didn't play brick and I was like good he doesn't feel like he needs to do that anymore that's fantastic that means that the audience has been uh winnowed down to just the people who really like him all right which is very gatekeeper i understand um i have another one that i want to tell you about. Another song? Yeah. Okay. Have you heard of the Decembrist song, The Bus Mall? No, because I hate the Decembrists, but go on.

Interesting. Wait, what do you hate about the Decembrists? The guy's voice and the words that he chooses to sing. Yeah, that's fair. He does a lot of basically narrative songs. They're just like, they tell a whole story. And there's one called the bus mall oh have you ever seen the movie my own private idaho with keanu reeves and river phoenix

yeah it's basically that it's a story about young child prostitutes who are runaways and are selling their bodies in like alleys and stuff like that and it's so touching and beautiful, the treatment of this song, that when I first got into Decembrist, which was probably like 2004 or 2005, I would just cry to this song in my car thinking about these children. But there's all these very poignant facts in it. Like they stayed in a rat trap hotel on the freeway and they'd squirrel away their money there and then they'd sleep in on Sundays and like what the all

the things that that means like obviously these are not religion doesn't play a part and they have to live inside of a hotel which means that they're transient their entire life and there's all these great details hidden in the lyrics that make me like immediately i'm in this world with these kids and like how they're

just like thrown away they're having these terrible sexual experiences horrible sexual experiences and then they're laughing it off with their friends and like that's how they shed it they get rid of it by like talking about how oh that limp dimp dick old man and like that kind of stuff and i'm like oh it's so sad it's so sad and i feel for these kids um you should listen to it well it's tough his his voice is a lot to get over i know and and like the words that he chooses are a lot as well. I wonder if you could listen to a cover of it, if that would help. I bet it would because sometimes I'll hear his,

his stupid voice. And, uh, I wish like there's a song. I am a something and a something like whatever, um, those lyrics are pretty much all place. Something with, uh, like whatever um those lyrics are that's pretty much all place something with uh a word that is

included in the lyric just to tell the audience that he fucking read a book sometime or studied history in college like that's a lot of his lyrics to me is is is like and he brandished a blunderbuss. It's like, okay, now I have to Google blunderbuss. Okay, all right, got it. Yeah. You read a book. Congrats. I understand that. I feel that in the same way that I can't,

I like Tim Minchin as long as I don't have to look at him. I mean, here's where we disagree. He's great, and looking at him is part of it. I can't hang. It's just got such a weird look that it feels like a big cry for attention. I'm like, you don't need this part. I think if you saw very early Tim Minchin, where he had short, curly hair and no eyeshadow and played the accordion, you would hate it so much more. Oh, really?

Yeah. Because that's what he used to do. That was like a natural look for him. Well, yeah. This isn't working. I have a natural aversion to the accordion. But I don't know. He's just got such a,

so this is an affectation that makes me hate it even more. This is not just who he is. He was like, this isn't working. I got to try something new. What if I grew my hair out, made it look like I just got out of bed. Uh,

so it's all puffed up in the back, did a little bit of mascara and wore some flashy shirts. I wonder if America would like that. we're not america the world if you really want to talk about it i can because i like his whole um idea has been confusion of status like he can come out looking like a rock, like very early, not so early where he was like curly hair and, and accordion, but early in this current version of Tim Minchin, he would come out looking like a rock star, long, crazy hair, tight leather pants, no shoes, flowy white shirt, eyeliner. And he's going to come out and he's going to like raise his arms up like he's a fucking rock god and then he's going to fall off the stage so you go from high status to low status immediately and then it gets on the piano and starts playing and it's surprisingly good piano player for a comedian that's again like a strange mix of of statuses and then later in the show he'll reveal that he's a very great piano

player and that's again another subversion of expectations so i think it all works and it's all part of it and you're wrong period all right i'll go look at pictures that tim mentioned you go listen to the the bus mall and we'll be even it even it's called the bus mall the bus mall i fucking hate that god it was it tapped into something that was at at the december's in general when i was at an age where like pretension was the highest it could be i just graduated college and thought the world needs to know my thoughts on things and that's when the december's hit me and it couldn't come at a better time because that's how they live like that's that's what all their songs are yeah i think so then i think that's a good uh jumping point to another answer that i had on this which is something

corporate's constantine which uh it's constantine spelled with a k and it, it hit me at the right time in high school. It's a nine and a half minute piano ballad about a relationship falling apart. And it's a song that was like not a mainstream release that somehow reached everyone. And like particularly hit the, the pop punk emo kid sect yeah in early 2000s and there aren't a lot of lyrics to it I don't entirely know what it's about but I definitely remember being in my teens and listening to this song where a guy is like scream crying

if i hurt you then i'm sorry and no one will hurt you like i did and feeling like yeah that's what adult relationships are i haven't felt it yet but but one day I will. And I agree that this is what it is. And it's like fully not. It's like a very suburban, angsty, emo idea of relationships that fall apart. But again, to the point of this question was like, yeah, I, I empathize with a thing that I had no experience with whatsoever. Right. I wonder why those breakup ones are, we're really drawn to,

I wonder if because so many movies and everything romanticized the idea of you have to get through this catharsis first, like you do the breakup and then something better comes along in your life. And I wonder if it's just like in our minds, we're like, this is the tearing the bandaid off. We never tore the bandaid off. Oh my god i never tore the band-aid off right um i don't know it's hard to think about i i might also just be for selfish reasons that i indulge

the fantasy of it uh of in the songs because you're kind of like preparing yourself emotionally for something devastating, which is natural. That's a naturalistic. My children, I have just these like flashes. I walk into a room. I have these flashes of like the way my children could die in that room. It's gotten better over time. But when my son was born, it was like it was bad. I would indulge these thoughts that were really damaging to me.

We're like, here's all the things that could go wrong. We're going to go to the, the, a bird sanctuary. And I was like, I know that they give out little things of honey or sweet nectar that the birds will come and land on you. And just like in my head had this flash, like all these birds landing on him and then like descending on him and just like pecking him and me trying to get him out of there.

And I was like, what if that happens? And it's obviously not going to happen. It's not a healthy thing to think about. And at the time I had justified it as like, well, I'm just sort of, I'm mentally preparing for all the possible circumstances in which could hurt him so that I can avoid those. But that wasn't really what I was doing. I wouldn't be able to cope if something did happen to him. Like all of them led to the same place, which was if he was hurt catastrophically, or if he died, how would I, what would I do then?

And I don't know. I would be, I would be adrift. I would like, that's the only time I would probably consider like being like, well, maybe life isn't worth living. And so my mind was just like racing through all these scenarios of like

trying to get me to the same point of here's if you have to face the worst thing that could ever possibly happen. You want to be prepared for that, not getting him out of those situations. And I think it might be the same thing with a breakup, like breakup. The idea of a breakup, a bad breakup is terrifying. It's like a nightmare scenario, especially if it's unwilling. If you're with somebody that you love and they don't love you the same way, like what a terrible thing to face. Um, and you're, it's just your brain trying to get you to the point where you're like, Oh no, you have an arsenal of tools at your disposal for that circumstance. If that ever happened, ah, look at these songs that have taught you the way you're going to be fine i wonder what would happen if uh like because i'm trying to blame and i put

blame in quotes i'm trying to find out if i want to blame the kids or the artists because i wonder what would happen if uh whatever music was popular to kids in high school right now, if the artists had gotten together and wrote a bunch of songs about healthy relationships, if the kids would, would gravitate towards those, or if they would go out and find alt pop punk emo shit about bad relationships. Right.

If you, yeah, because like, like I, I devoured what i was fed yeah um and if i was fed a bunch of songs that were like high school's about starter relationships and you you learn a lot about yourself and it's fine if you break up you're not really ready for a full relationship. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba, go to college. Like if that was all I'd been fed, if I would have had a different relationship to breakups. I don't think so.

Because it would say that whatever you're living right now is not important and no kid wants to hear that. It's like your life won't be valuable until you're older. Or like your experiences won't actually matter until you're older. This is all just like practice. You don't want to hear that when you're young because that's when you're older or like your experiences won't actually matter until you're older. This is all just like practice. You don't want to hear that when you're young because that's when you're the most emotional. No, you want Romeo and Juliet. You're like, fuck you. You want Constantine.

Yeah. And it feels like you've been alive for a very long time because you have no context yet. It feels like you've been alive, like you've lived a whole life already. And you're like, no, I get it. I get everything now. I think the kids would seek it out. lived a whole life already and you're like no i get it yeah i get everything now i think you i think the kids would seek it out i think they'd go look for those those bad songs about terrible breakups so i shouldn't fund a bunch of bands that are talking about healthy relationships

i couldn't hurt they did it in motown and that seemed to be fine okay but that seemed to be fine. Okay. That seemed to be fine. Everything worked out with Motown? No. No, it didn't. And certainly that entire era didn't really work out in terms of relationships. I don't think I have a thing for you, Soren. That's all right. So this is a little different because I asked my wife,

what should I ask Daniel on the podcast? And she was like, what about this? She is way more unplugged even than I am from pop culture because she's got a child now, which pulled her even further away. Only she does. Only she has a child now. Here's the deal when you have a an infant and you are doing exclusively breastfeeding that child is just plugged into that mom like you i see her

occasionally when i can help her fall asleep or uh change her diapers but for the most part it's just like the baby is on mom for the whole first month and got it so she's just stepped away from things for a while and she said what's the best way for me to catch up on pop culture all at once and i was like boy i don't know um she said well maybe daniel will know he knows pop culture really well and i was like all right maybe he could create like a list of things of like this is what you need to know about the world right now and not necessarily like in any detail just like here are the big headlines that you need to know and that's a lot to spring on you but i'm thinking for like next

time if you just like you're like it's these's these boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then I could just give those to her. Yes, I could. I absolutely could do that. I could do these things. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I could be the week.com, but for pop culture there, there, you just did it. What's the week.com? The week.com is, uh, they always have like a headline article that is longer and

then they have five things that are like these are the five things that you need to know today and they have a weekly magazine that gives you the five things that you need to know this week and it's an aggregate of things that have happened across all news media that week. And it's very helpful. They combine editorial and opinion and dial it down to like, here is the elevator pitch of what everyone is saying about every big issue this week. I can do that for pop culture for your wife.

No, you don't have to. I think you just did it. Because really her question was, where do I do? Is there an easy way for me to get all of this? No, but the week is only news. It's not pop culture. Okay.

All right. Yeah. Is that what she meant? That you mean news? No, no, no. She knows what's going on in the news. Like a trend. That would be nice.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, my God. I'd love to do that. Excellent. Okay.

Gabe, can you unmute for a second? Hey, I'm here. Sorry. There might be dogs in the background running around. No, can you unmute for a second? Hey, I'm here. Sorry. There might be dogs in the background running around. No, no. That's totally fine. I just need to end the podcast and track down all the social accounts. They're not handy right now.

But in the meantime, I just wanted to know, Gabe, what is the one fact about you that would be the most damaging to your career that you would reveal right now, please? Just reveal one fact about your life that would be the most... Like, the thing that could, if released, would be... Soren, help me out here. Professionally damning.

Destructive. Yeah, yeah. I'm a recovering heroin addict. Okay. Is that for real? Yeah yeah that's for real oh man dan fuck you dan oh no you got destroyed like gabe just fucked you good god you can You can... You can... Oh, man. Soren, please do the socials. Yeah, so you can follow Dan at dob underscore inc. You can follow me at soren underscore ltd.

You can follow Bacon at makemebaconplease. Or you can follow Quick Question at qq underscore sorenanddan. You can email qq with sorenren and Daniel at gmail.com. And you can find and hire our producer, sound engineer, and editor, Gabe, at GabeHarder.com. Holy shit. And he's a saint, and I think he's amazing, and I love him. Gabe, I'm so sorry.

Bye. Gabe I'm so sorry bye