Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 47 - Directions on How to Properly Construct a Sweat Lodge

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

In this episode the guys talk outdoor exploring, movies and television and how to make a sweat lodge. Pretty normal episode for us.  And as always big thanks to Skillshare, get 2 free months of unlimited access to thousands of classes at Skillshare.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 attempt but often fail to land on any useful answers. I am one half of this podcast, author, staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, comedian, and guy who was so nervous to ask a girl out in high school, he did it over AOL, Instant Messenger, and in code, Daniel O'Brien. And I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello.

Hello. I'm Soren Bui, singer, songwriter, poet. And I once learned to ride a bike the very first time I tried it. You know what I love about your entrance is that you matched me in energy. That's the only thing? Yeah. Yeah. Before we get into this show, I do want to say that by the time this episode will come out

on Wednesday or Thursday or whenever the hell this show comes out, you will have had a birthday. Are you planning anything for it? No, nothing. No, okay. It just doesn't feel like a celebratory time and i don't really totally know what we do other than you know the general stuff that my wife and i both do for each other on their respective days where when it's my day i get to just have my

way i get to have the sandwich that i want for lunch and i get to have a dr pepper and i get to watch a movie yeah good lord i mean that sounds fun man i love it your life sounds great um did you as a i think our listeners already know this because you posted about it on twitter but in our episode a couple weeks ago, you mentioned thinking that your wife was going to forget Father's Day. Yeah. And it sounds like she didn't forget. Not at all. She did great. I know.

Damn. Sorry. Huge loss. There's even so the she really went above and beyond, too, because there's you are probably familiar with. Do you remember Bay Cities? This deli that's in Santa Monica? Oh my God, the fucking sandwiches. Some of the best sandwiches I've ever had.

She's trying to get me Bay Cities because she knows I love those sandwiches. And it was almost impossible to do because they're not even allowing people to do it through meal services anymore. You can't get somebody else to go pick it up anymore because I think they're getting so crowded that they just stopped doing it all together. So you got to go there to get it. So she was coming to come up with a reason why she needed to leave the house for 45 minutes with our infant so that she could run there. And I was like that. And then when she revealed what it was, I was like, oh, no, that's not that's not worth it. I'll just I'll eat a grilled cheese.

It's fine. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question break up the routine of a day spent indoors explore workshops classes and more in topics such as design

illustration productivity freelance and entrepreneurship get two free months of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ

we're getting into the show we're going to ask each other a bunch of questions I mean you know what the show. We're going to ask each other a bunch of questions. I mean, you know what the show is. Should we do a quick coronavirus update? Do you have any quarantine COVID-19 protests? The world is crumbling. Yep. I got news. All right. I'm a man of the earth now, Dan. I grew a cucumber. Hey hey is that um forgive me difficult i don't i don't know uh it wasn't for me i've been gardening i've got garden boxes now and i've been i've got an eggplant plant i've got a tomatillo plant and i've got a cucumber but the cucumber is the only one that's produced anything

and it's a real big cucumber I did it that's fantastic now I've got so um my brother and sister-in-law they have they're trying to do gardens in their backyard and finding it almost impossible to keep their three-year-old out of those gardens from digging and playing yeah is that true with with ronan as well yeah so we have three garden boxes two of them i've planted in and then one is just for him to fuck around in and so he's got his basically his own garden box where he pretends to plant seeds but then most of the time it's just there's a bulldozer in it and there's a couple other earth movers and stuff like that that he just he just moves soil around yeah i think that's that's that's probably the right approach like we

had uh every once in a while we would have a garden growing up in jersey where my mom would plant tomatoes and and corn and shit and whatever else you wanted to grow that year. And if I was young enough, I was like, you know, like any kid, you see what just looks like your parents plunging their fists into dirt. And I was like, that looks like fun. I want to do that. And to keep me from ruining the garden, there was just

like a corner of dirt and mud that I could just hang out in. And it's like, we're going to take the hose and make some mud. And then you just like sit and play in the mud for a couple hours yeah and tuck yourself out and uh that's your version of gardening yeah it was tunnels for me i was my mom would would she would dabble in the garden and then i would allow to i was allowed to have a section of soil and i could just scoop down deep enough holes on each side then i could finally at the bottom of them just start digging it out and connect them and if i made a tunnel that was the best day of my life oh yeah that's fun get water to run through that tunnel

oh forget about it i was obsessed with like filling a bunch of like this small uh crevice crevice? Just like a dip of land that was just dirt filling it with water so it became mud taking my action figures and planting them there and then waiting for the mud to harden into dirt and the action figures looked like they were

mistakenly fused with the dirt via some kind of teleportation incident. That was very fascinating to me just like watch these like look at these like half buried half frozen action figures in in peril was i think that's pretty common mike so my brother yeah my brother and i used to do that in the sandbox all the time and it was but he would say that they were frozen in carbonite i didn't know what that meant at the time but that was like a big deal for him was we get them yeah you get them in the sand you get them planted in there and then yeah you wait for it all to evaporate and then you or sink into the bottom and then you've got a guy who's

did you ever watch the first season of legion no well it's just like people half suspended in walls and things like that yeah it doesn't look like they belong there yeah it was very fun and uh i'm glad that it's common and not something that our listeners will hear and be like, oh, yeah, you know who else did that? Dahmer. Well, they might. There's still time for each of us to become a serial killer. That's true.

People are living longer now. Yeah. Don't close any doors on your potential vocations. You know, Samuel L. Jackson didn't start his career until he was like 45 or something like that. It's inspiring. Yep. I want to get into the show. I have a quick question for you, Soren.

Is there anything from your childhood that you didn't realize until very recently was probably weird? Like something that you did and then didn't have to really confront or think about it until recently. And then it dawned on you was like, oh, that that's a that's I probably should have told someone about that. And right off the bat, because this is this podcast, nothing traumatic. This is not a podcast that will hopefully ever require a trigger warning for anyone about something traumatic. This is not a podcast that is, that will hopefully ever require a trigger warning for anyone about something traumatic. Why don't you go first while I think about this? Okay.

Mine's long and you might have some thoughts about it. Are you at all familiar with an organization called Ryla? No. Okay. So back before quarantine, a bunch of coworkers were hanging out and talking about childhood, as you do. And they were sharing stories about,

like a bunch of them had gone on church retreats growing up. And I was like, no, I haven't done anything like that, but I did this thing called Ryla. It stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Award. It's a thing I'd never heard of until I was a sophomore in high school and was told uh guess what you made it into rila you were selected this year you and four other students in this school

were selected for rila we were chosen i guess by the teachers it wasn't like a student council thing where students nominate and elect people so i assume i was either chosen by teachers or by representatives of the, the Rotary Club in my particular part of New Jersey. And I was told very little about it, which is by design. I was given a pamphlet that had vague nonsense about how we'd be learning about leadership and community. And there would be different activities and little clubs that you can join. And a bunch of different students from all over the state would be there. And what appealed to me was that it was like four days away in the summer staying at a college. It felt very adult, just being away from home and staying on my own.

And I was like, yeah, I'm going to go and live in a dorm for four days. Are you fucking kidding me? This is incredible. I don't care. I will pretend to learn about leadership. And you get there and there are these people who are mostly college students and they're so fucking pumped and they greet you and like they take your bag and they're very much like, goodbye parents, we've got it from here. And the guy's walking me to my dorm room where I'll be staying and and like i hope you're ready for the weekend that's going to change your life and uh like a lot of it is normal stuff you're having

meals together there are a bunch of icebreakers where you're meeting the other people there's a few hundred kids who are all doing this and you're broken up into smaller groups of like five or six words like we're all in this together but you six are unit 12 or whatever it's going to be and you're you're hanging out it's very social it's very still unclear what it is and eventually this guy dave the only adult the entire weekend shows up and gives essentially motivational speeches he just like speaks an hour a day doing a ted talk about responsibility and communication and relationships and and and leadership and he's a very effective speaker and um they would give you like false itineraries where they're like oh tomorrow you're gonna do a hike at 10 a.m and then you're gonna do this and

you're gonna do that and then tomorrow rolls around and there's a pounding at your door at 7 a.m and they're like wake up we're doing yoga now and you're just like brought to a field to do like group yoga or group like dance aerobics stuff every morning and um one of these lectures uh dave brought up uh some high school girl some tiny teenage girl on stage and had her do this thing after one of his speeches where she wrote a goal on a piece of wood, something that she thought was out of reach, but that she wanted. And then he was like, now you're going to break this board with your bare hands.

And she tried and she couldn't do it. And he's pumping her up and we're all pumping her up because now we've like, we've all thoroughly drank the Kool-Aid of this because this guy is such a good speaker. And we really want this stranger to succeed. Because now we've all thoroughly drank the Kool-Aid of this because this guy is such a good speaker. And we really want this stranger to succeed. And she's fucking crying.

She tried again and she couldn't do it. And then finally she could. She punched right through her board. And we fucking lost it. And then he was like, Marissa did this thing. And you all believed in her. Do you think you could too? And we're like, yeah, yeah, sure, of course.

And then the helpers brought out hundreds of boards of wood for all of us to do the same thing and then we went off in our groups and we and we broke our boards with our hands and it was incredible and uh also kind of weird and another night we all got together and i forget what the context or prompt was but um people were encouraged to just get up and share kind of traumatic stories. And a lot of people did. They told stories about like parents divorce or losing a friend or struggles with an eating disorder and people were crying. Like a kid I went to high school with, whom I didn't know too well,

told a story about his brother passing away. And I had like, no one had any idea about that. And a lot of these stories began with, I've never told anyone this before. And it's whenever people who weren't talking were moved by someone else's story, they would just sort of instinctively get up and put a hand on their shoulder.

And then huge groups would form of people with hands on shoulders, most of them strangers, just openly sobbing at night. And at the time it was like very bonding and very helpful and instructive um there was another night where we we were brought to the woods around a large fire and uh we made some pledge that i don't remember and we all lit candles in this large circle around the fire and as i was telling this story to my co-workers, I was like, huh, I think this was a low-key cult.

I do have a lot of questions about this, Daniel. Before you said cult even, I was wondering, at any point was religion even mentioned during this? No. Things that I remember David speaking about were the dangers of radicalization and um which which seemed like a uh a strange thing to bring up in a cult because i was like fully ready to do whatever he told me to do um but this was after september 11. This was the summer after September 11th. So he was talking about how radicalization had led to people being so convinced that they were right. This is a phrase that always stuck into my head. That what did they do with that knowledge?

Those bastards drove planes into the Twin Towers. And that was the closest thing to anything political. Wow. But also, to even bring up the... In a group setting like this where you're very enthusiastic and all together, somebody saying radicalization is bad is a weird red flag too. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so...

It all felt like... And I want to be clear. It felt really good. It was a very powerful trip for me and like the other people who were the four other kids from my high school that i you know knew to different levels of familiarity after that we were like there was like a special bond forever okay like to to this moment um and it it sought to teach a lot of things about being open and sharing your feelings like that that was i think a lot of what they wanted was

open up share your feelings and you will be rewarded with relationships which like you know good fucking luck i'm descended from a long line of repressed irish catholic maniacs. It's gonna take more than four days To undo all that shit Well, then this may be a silly question But were you clued in at all to the people who were hooking up or doing drugs during this whole time? So here's another funny thing about this. So you make so many because it's so vulnerable and it's Take taking place in such a short amount of time you forge really strong emotional relationships with people very quickly and i exchanged a lot of aol instant

messenger screen names so we can keep in touch with people and one of the helpers like one of the authority figures who was must have been like a sophomore in college while i was a sophomore and freshman we were chatting afterwards about ryla and he was like so like let me know who'd you uh you hook up you hook up a lot i was like no and he said why yeah that's the whole point what were you doing and i was like i was learning about leadership i was doing what i thought i was supposed to be doing he's like yeah i mean like you're you're away from parents for four days in dorm rooms with with one adult who doesn't give a shit why wouldn't you this is this is this is why i like it and this is how i learned that i i uh am pretty uh susceptible to cults is that I remember thinking like I would have if

you guys told me to didn't know so you weren't even clued in at all of the fact that the people around you were all just blowing each other no yeah I'm like full bore on like the the emotional aspects and like trying to learn more about empathy and and uh learning how to um investigate my own biases all the all these things that are that are like genuinely good things to learn i was very committed to learning them and while i guess other people were like yeah i'm gonna pretend to cry about this kid talking about his mom jumping off a fucking bridge or whatever and then i'm gonna uh nail that that chick who who broke her board earlier well it's okay we i used to do a thing um i took acting classes when i was a kid it's something that i sort of fell into because my brother

did it and uh and you do just what your older brother does because you like him and you admire him and so yeah i also did these act classes with a very intense woman who did have sort of like a cultish group of kids around her and a lot of them were kind of wayward teens the type of people who would fall into something like acting very early on theater is so culty it sucks we don't talk about it enough it's so fucking crazy what theater teachers do with with kids it's it's real it's massively irresponsible but anyway there was a lot of uh drug use went out in the open during all of this and but then there was also just kind of behind the scenes sex that generally happened and um we would do these things called

vision quests which were like a week long or like a four day long trip together where it's a wrestling movie and but this one's a little different dan let me tell you how nobody wrestles we there's like a sweat lodge there's a bonfire um there is a lot of that uh all of you sitting in a room breathing together and then everyone gets up and tells some sort of devastating story about their life and they're in tears and everyone just sits there and watches them tell the story and it's about like opening yourself up and becoming vulnerable and learning how to access all these different parts of yourself so that when you presumably then when you're acting like you can access all this stuff at like a the drop of a

hat um it's i was also very very on board with it i didn't do any of the drugs aspects of it when i was young and i was very curious about the sex that was happening and it was not happening to me like just uh people all of a sudden you just sense this weird dynamic change in the group and like yeah suddenly you're just aware of the fact these two people know each other a lot better and you're like what when did they hang out like together like you know like when you're with a group of of people who have hung out more than you've hung out with anybody else there and you're like okay there's these people have made their each other's fingerprints are on one another not like a literal way and just like oh they they know each other no there's like a shared secret suddenly

yeah and it was it was very very strange it wasn't there was just an energy it was not them touching each other it wasn't them winking or anything that obtuse it was just like all of a sudden i was like fuck they know each other really well all of a sudden right and you kind of want to be like what what is it did you guys do you uh you guys see a fun movie last night what is it i went in tell me what it was yeah i want to be part of this too is this the drug thing did you guys like did you guys get high together um but no it's just they were all they were they were all fingering each other off in the woods together. And I was never asked to participate in any of that.

I didn't participate in any of that. And so I did feel a little left out. That's part of the reason maybe why I wasn't full tilt into the cult aspect of it. It was like, well, clearly they've got something else going on that I'm not invited to. So let's see, maybe i'm good at basketball it's very funny that um without prompting you knew that there was a bunch of sex happening at at ryla over in the wings that's just that's just the way it goes so i'll i'll tell you mine is that uh it's somewhat similar in that, um, before I went to my high school, there's an orientation trip called wilderness and it's a 10 day long trip where

the first three days you work, you go off into the woods, you work on a forest service project and like you're building a raised trail or you're cutting down trees or whatever it is. And then the rest of the trip you're off uh you're only following a topographic map so you're not using trails i'm sorry i i need to jump in there's no reason for me to be on this podcast you should just write the stories that i imagine would have been in your journal growing up and just say them into a microphone like tell people what you think normal is and and honestly it's gonna be a much more successful podcast than this one i haven't even gotten to the part yet that i was like oh that's pretty fucked up

um we the rest of the trip is you're following a topographic map you're off like you're not on trails you're off above timberline so there's no trees around because they don't they can't grow at that elevation and you're just really cruising across these passes and you have a destination in mind but it's a group of you there's maybe like seven to ten of you and the towards the end of the trip you do a thing called solo and solo is 24 hours spent alone. The guides, whoever there's a, there's a teacher. And then there's a student guide working together, usually a senior, and they will take the kids off like a mile away from each other all. And they're in the middle of this big radius. And, uh, you spend 24 hours alone without food and by yourself. And you don't bring on these trips, you don't have tents,

you've got a tarp that you share with everybody. So you don't have a tent or anything, you've got your sleeping bag, some necessities other than food, you've got water. But the idea is that you, you just spend this time with yourself without any sort of interruptions. And it was terrifying to me the idea that I was a late bloomer. So I was like, when I was 14, I was still about a year and a half away from puberty. And I was scared about every aspect of this trip because it was a huge pack. I was worried that I, I, I have to carry the same amount of stuff as everybody else. Cause you know, I'm still using the same amount of gear. It's just, I weigh a lot less. I was very very scared i was scared of the idea of solo i just being out there by myself was was not it was very unnerving to me did you

looking back as an adult do you have like a winking suspicion that there was someone 20 yards away watching over you making sure that you know we're actually because i became a wilderness assistant and we did not but i did find out once i scary once i became a wilderness assistant i did find out how many kids were just fucking on these trips okay um and how fast because they don't know each other yet they meet on the first day of wilderness and by day 10 there's already relationships and people who've already hooked up on these trips but the scary part was the solo to me. I thought that was just like this rite of passage that everybody had to do. I knew it was coming for like three years before I went to high school.

And I was scared of it. And then got to the trip, did the trip. On the trip, there was a new teacher who was also there with us, a French teacher, who the day before the solo broke his ankle, compound fracture. It was just sticking out. His bone was sticking out of his ankle. And my thought at the time was, oh, thank God. And so three of us, they picked three guys to run out basically.

And we didn't end up being in the same area where we thought we were on the map. So it ended up being instead of just like running out five miles to a trailhead we ran 11 miles to a trailhead got there dark and eventually like walked down the street and found this long road and found a police officer and Then we spent the night in a town hall the next morning. They went up with a helicopter They got him and everything when I would tell the story to people of what happened It was always with like this how lucky i was that i didn't have to go on solo until like enough people corrected me they're like that's not the lead the lead of the story is this guy broke his ankle in front of you you

saw this man's bone what an intimate experience no no i agree it's good that you didn't have to do the scary thing um and so that was that that I really came to terms with where I was like, oh, not everybody was worried about this thing. Yeah. What are you, what is one supposed to learn in wilderness? What are they preparing you for? Because it sounds like that's good preparation if they assume that for the rest of your life some part of it will be left will be lived in the woods yeah i think that's the what they're trying to instill in you is a uh first of all creating this moment that you treasure and then you always you want to come back to the wilderness at every opportunity and

then like an appreciation for the wilderness as well, because there's a ton of other wilderness trips throughout the year. It's a very outdoor-oriented school. And it's not, and it's, so sorry for jumping in again, but it's like, it's mandatory for everyone. There can't be someone who's like, look, I think it's pretty clear I'm going into law, and we'll leave Colorado as soon as possible.

Do I still need to camp in this place alone where sometimes an errant bone will pierce through someone's ankle well first of all dan you can jump in any moment because i don't genuinely know what's interesting about any of this so i'm just telling you details and hoping some of them stick to the wall the no everybody has to go. No matter whether you come to school as a freshman or a senior, like you have to go on this trip. There are people who get pulled off of it for various reasons. Some people get giardia from the water.

Do you know what that is? That's a disease that I'm only familiar with because dogs get it. Yeah, giardia is when you drink unclean or unsanitized water. If you're just going to drink directly out of a river or a lake, just from animal feces and stuff, you can get Giardi, which is a, it's just a parasite. And you kind of keep it for the rest of your life. You have to.

Yeah. I mean, like it's definitely a threat for Jackson, but it's not one that I see looming around any corners. Well, yeah, we live in a first world country. We're doing okay. So you're constantly, you're not purifying the water but you're putting in iodine tablets and everything you drink because you can't carry water that whole trip everywhere that you go you're like these murky murky streams you're just like pull

or ponds you're pulling up water and then you're dropping in some iodine tablets and it tastes terrible it stains your water bottle and everything but right kids get dropped off for that there are kids who are so unhappy out there that they poison themselves. They will take a bunch of Tylenol or do something super dangerous, not with the intention of killing themselves, but they just want off. So they try and make themselves sick. That's rare, but it does happen. My mom was the nurse, so she had a lot of stories about these things. And then the other one is that it will snow occasionally on

you it rains while you're out there but if it gets just nasty like if it's below zero at night and like there's worry that people would get frostbite then they'll pull people out early and you have the the guide has a radio and so she can call in if she needs to assume it presumably um except on our trip where she left the radio at resupply after the the um the after we did the forest service project she left the radio fantastic yeah um and what drew you back to wanting to be a guide or that like does that get you uh like good resume or college credit points yeah i don't know i think that's what it was also my brother you know everything i realize everything i do is because my brother did it my brother did it it's a big

it's a point of it's like a badge of honor at the school if you become a wilderness guide as well if you get chosen um and it was important to me to go out and do it again um i just like trips too. I like camping. So I was like, I want to do it. Man, I, I tried to eventually become one of the helpers at Ryla and failed at it. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

I, did you have, did you apply or how does it work? It's, it's, it's just as, as vague as everything else about this stupid fucking weird cult. Where they're like anyone

who had done ryla the next year is allowed to go to this one day um application summit i don't know it was in like a uh a large gym and you again break off into groups and there's a bunch of extemporaneous public speaking that is required. No one is ever explicit about what the criteria is for what they're looking for. You do, like, you'll consume some information and then apply critical thinking and speak on it. And sometimes you have to get emotional. Not as emotional as, like, it's in the you're you're crying on shoulders or anything like that which is like this is me speaking from the heart about my experience with Ryla and why I want to to have a leadership role within it and I did that you know not going to beat myself up over it because I did as best I could just talking

and then with no real explanation as to why you get a follow-up letter a week or so later that are just like yeah we didn't we didn't pick you it's like all right what was your energy like it was certainly like devastating to me at the time but in retrospect it's like okay like you're looking for a certain thing that you want and i don't have it it's still like it's like a popularity, you're looking for a certain thing that you want, and I don't have it. It's still like a popularity contest or a casting call where there's a specific energy that they know they want for who can inspire the next gen of kids the way that I was inspired, and I did not have that energy. Wait, I am curious. So there's an audition, right?

You're standing in front of a bunch of people yeah pleading your case i want to know like did you bring it um i don't think so okay i i really thought um my intention was to just be as authentic as possible no big mistake and i'm certain i did that and i also watched other people who were like who had like magnetism and charm and i was like oh yeah that's pretty good that's i should have done that so you get to watch everybody else go yes no, it sucks. Oh, no. And, okay. Do they have, like, pieces of paper? Are they writing while you're doing it?

I don't remember. Oh, God. Okay. I just, I'm so curious about how they made their decisions on people. I wonder if it was, like, he's got this quality. And what they all really mean is he's fuckable. if it was like he's got this quality and what they all really mean is he's fuckable i do remember one of my one of the helpers that was like assigned to my group of six reaching out to me afterwards to be like i was really pulling for you but so it's clear that like all the helpers get together and vote on who made an impact and i was not one of them and you only got to go to this one year i did yeah oh man and

were there kids younger than you there um i think it was all freshmen and sophomore and then like again the older helpers yeah perfect age to get people into a cult it's the perfect age to get kids for a cult it's the perfect age for kids who want to run off and uh safely engage in early sexual experiences or if you're me really really double down on on leadership and empathy really double down on being leonardo from the ninja turtles everybody's favorite the guy who's a stickler for the rules who puts duty before self yeah yeah when i hear that theme song and they're like rafael is cool but rude and i'm like yeah who's that for no thank you um wow dan and i did you guys do uh there's a thing that i've done the board thing the board

thing is bullshit um because everybody can punch their one i was that first girl a plant no okay she's i talked to her like we we became really close after that um and i i talked to her for years afterwards and she was not a plant did you guys do anything else like walking on coals or we didn't do that we did um i think we watched we watched a bunch of uh movies and then discussed uh conflict resolution after the movies like the the thing was all over the the maps of what we were what we were learning there was one time where um we were divided into groups based on all the countries on the planet and we were given a certain amount of uh like beans some kind of token that represented the resources that we had and we were trying to solve a problem of like how we can distribute these beans to our countries

the i'm butchering the discussion but the thing that we were supposed to description rather the thing that we were supposed to realize by the end of this exercise was that uh the united states had too much and the rest of the world had too little like the the the design of the game was to get us to like articulate oh if america would just help libya then everyone could have pizza instead of well because that's that's what was at stake whoever like won the game gets to have pizza and the rest of us would have like fire festival sandwiches or whatever you eat the beans yeah we eat the beans and like they they wanted us to come to a point where where a bunch of 14 and 15 year olds were saying out loud as if it was their idea oh if america just shared her wealth then we could all be prosperous uh which you know is an important

lesson a strange thing to like not tell the parents of kids that this is what they're getting into where it's like here it's a pamphlet you're gonna meet new friends and you're gonna watch movies and and and do yoga that's it nothing else that's so and then they get a bunch of kids who come home who are like guess what mom i gotta say dan i america's being selfish i uh i'm way into this i am too i think it sounds like it's just a bunch of people telling you what to do a lot and everything is really structured and polished for like the lesson you're supposed to get from it and that's what i want out of my entire life it's just like people who tell me when to move from one place to another when to get up like when i'm supposed to go to bed and then they're like and now we're going to do this

thing who knows what you'll get from it and then by the end they're like you got the right thing you're like yeah oh there was a secret thing there's no clear time limit for anything there was one thing where we had like a giant full barrel of water in the woods and a bunch of ropes and they were just like we need you to use the ropes to take that barrel from where it is and put it over there you can't put your hands on the barrel, though. All right. See you. When you're finished with this, you'll have lunch.

And the lesson that you're supposed to, that we ended up landing on was someone climbed up on someone else's shoulders and was like, look at me. Listen to me. Who has a plan? And then the person who had a plan like spoke up and articulated their plan and explained the physics of this is how if we put these ropes here and we all do this just like a person who was delegating to other students what they should do yeah and then we moved the barrel successfully because which is the the real lesson is like who's going to step up and be

a leader and what are they going to do with that power because for the first 30 minutes everyone's just sort of milling about and yelling at each other and arguing and until someone steps up and says the thing that needs to be said amazing yeah there's there was a lot of that with vision quest there was like a lot of after we did the sweat lodge we did this arrow thing do you know what sweat lodges yeah okay after we did the sweat lodge we do this arrow thing we all got in a wait is it any more complicated than what i think when i hear those two words next to each other they it's you go into a lodge and sweat yeah it's an outdoor sauna basically you build it up with out of pine

needles and branches and things like that you there's a a lot of hot rocks in the middle of it you have a fire outside it's got rocks in it and you bring these rocks in you put them in the middle and then you're just pouring water over them and i can't remember what kind of shit we were supposed to be seeing in there or anything like that but it's how long are you in there a while like 45 minutes good god um it's yeah and then you go bathe in the river afterward there was a lot of nudity on this too i should mention oh that sounds bad no wonder that people were all hooking up um there was a very free atmosphere that people didn't have to wear shirts if they didn't want to and stuff like that um that might have been after the drug use i can't

remember it's all kind of become a blur now to me, but there was another thing we did. We're all gotten a tree house and we had arrows and you put that back of the arrow against a wall. And then you put the point of the arrow in your throat, like the soft spot at the bottom of your throat and you hold it there without your hands. And then you press on it until the arrow flexes and breaks and that's like an that's another one of those bored ones where it's like it seems like no i can't do that and then as soon as you do it you're like ah okay there's a trick to it there's something like this is something that looks very hard but is very easy for people and it makes them feel very good about themselves like a tough mutter yeah which we both did

folks we love doing this show and we'd like to keep doing it and there's a couple ways you can support us one of them is telling your friends to listen to it but another one is to show some love to our amazing sponsors and this week we are talking about skillshare skillshare is amazing uh it's an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people you can learn new skills uh you can deepen existing passions as i've been doing with some some bass guitar classes i'm taking and get lost in creativity um there's there are so many important conversations happening in the world right now. Your voice is more essential than ever. So explore classes to unlock your creativity for social good.

Skillshare offers creative classes designed for real life and all the circumstances that come with it. These lessons can help you stay inspired, express yourself and introduce you to a community of millions. I have, Dan, I've just been taking a class recently that I've really, really loving called design great stuff, how to make merch. And you might be thinking Soren, I've never seen any of your merch. I am thinking that I'm certainly thinking that, but if you'll remember, we had a coworker, Randall Maynard, who used to make us action

figures of ourselves occasionally on our birthdays. He was a guy who could design something at the drop of a hat. He could make a Funko doll. He was a guy who could design something at the drop of a hat. He could make a Funko doll. He could make an action figure of you. Uh, he could make a lot of really cool stuff. And I was always so jealous of that. And now that I have a child, uh, he's very curious about these things that Randall once made for me because they're sitting around my house. And so I thought, what a cool thing it would be for me to make these kinds of things for my son. And so I started watching this this video trying to figure out if i was to make an action figure for my son like how would i even go about doing that haven't gone to that section yet but the rest of it has also

been very insightful and interesting that's fantastic and that's the kind of thing that people can learn how to do you can all learn how to make action figures of soren for his child you can explore your creativity and get two free months of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. That's two whole months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free. Get started and join today by heading to Skillshare.com slash QQ.

That's two free months of unlimited access to thousands of classes at Skillshare.com slash QQ. All right, Dan, I have a question for you okay um this one has nothing to do with your life oh good this is about movies and tv great is there a movie or tv show that you think would have been better served or would be better served by being animated like they're just sort of held back by the limitations of live action and you can tell yes i do i i want to say game of thrones and like i know that doing so would deprive us of the great acting that we got from that show but there are so many things that we've learned since it's come

out where it's like hey why did the dire wolves just stop fucking showing up why do we just not see them anymore i was like oh it's really expensive to make yeah dire wolves that's it and i was like okay well then if it's too expensive to make this show live action then just don't do it like like especially having read the books and just knowing like what the the size of the wall is supposed to be and the size of the dragons are supposed to eventually be i assume um and the size of dire wolves like all those things uh that you just can't really do even on massive hbo budgets it's like well then just do it animated like then like it's uh it's cheaper yes Yes, I agree with you. There's that whole fight at night that was very hard to see with the White Walkers.

And then you have a whole scene where these Dothraki you've been following for a huge chunk of the story, and you've heard nothing about how great they are out on the plains. And then they go out at night, and the entire battle is just you watching lights go out. Right.

They just get snuffed out. Like, yeah, I mean, like this is the cheapest way to do this battle. No. All right. You just don't do it. Yeah. I'm with you. Mine is also an HBO show.

I think Westworld would be a vastly better show if it was animated. I think immediately I don't think I agree with you but go on there's a lot more that you can do with uh the robots themselves like if they you want these people to be superhuman not just uh intellectually but they also just like they they're physically superior and there's a lot more you can do in an animated series there's a lot more you can do with them getting fucked up and in a show that's uh animated because you're series there's a lot more you can do with them getting fucked up in a show that's animated because you're allowed to show a lot more like them the the absolute violence that happened atrocities that happen to these robots is a lot easier to digest and watch if it's animated

and i think that i'm more likely to lend some suspension of disbelief to an animated show that I don't understand that I am a live-action one anime or something has taught me over time that like oh if I'm not getting it it's just because I'm I cerebrally I'm not there like I haven't I haven't figured it out yet and West World is not that West World feels like they don't know what the fuck they're doing they don't know what they're making and I would lend them that kind of leniency if the show is animated it would certainly help me with the violence like i'm just i'm old enough and there's enough real violence in the world that when they're showing me like oh this this is a robot woman so she's not really a person so uh that's why we're gonna have

some cowboy beat the shit out of her. It's like, no, but it still looks like someone's beating the shit out of a woman. And that's difficult to watch personally. So if it was a cartoon, I would have an easier time. And maybe they want it to be difficult to watch, but I think that's stupid. It's also where they're allowed to go. There's just a lot more opportunity. I'm thinking more towards the first season,

but like when you want to create a whole Western world, they're really strapped to only create a world based on whatever that set is. That's in Northern, like Northern Los Angeles County. Well, it's been burned down now. Yeah. It's gone.

But like you, you have like a strip and that's all you're allowed to use. And you're like, all right, well, where are we going to set these scenes? Well, I guess we set this one in the bar again, and that's all you're allowed to use. And you're like, all right, well, where are we going to set these scenes? Well, I guess we set this one in the bar again, because that's what we've got. Right.

But like, you can explore that world entirely. It's not just that. And then a fucking landscape of chaparral where you're allowed to go have some scenes. It's you can really have like a full red dead redemption type of world there. Um, and you get, you, uh, you it's there's just so many more things you could do i feel like i don't know yeah i'm trying to think i want to because like we've we've both picked like big budget shows and i'm trying to i wish i could come up with a sitcom that would better animated than it would not yeah the they just feels like they're they're strapped for for money every single time you watch an episode not even like i i i wonder what like

a completely um completely free meaning creatively free 30 rock would look like where they can do absolutely whatever they want because that's a show that that loves to cram in many characters like the simpsons does and loves a lot of quick cutaway jokes and throwing as many jokes in as possible yes that i would be interested in seeing a fully animated 30 rock well say the reason i thought that question is because i love working for an animated show i it's oh yeah it's so much fun and it's so freeing that when you're writing in the room like you can do anything there there's nothing you're beholden by you don't have to set a house a show that's entirely in the house because that's where the cameras are.

Or like, well, it's going to cost a lot for us to do scenes everywhere else. No, you just go wherever you want. We're going to go to Cuba for this one. The only thing you can't really do are big crowds. And that's just like a rule of animation. I'm really curious if we want to get into the weeds on a writing question because you came from Cracked like I did. I mean, you did Sketch before that and whatnot, but we were always pretty budget constrained there.

That's why so many of our shows were different variations of two to four people talking in a room with very few exceptions. very few exceptions uh was that when you started working for american dad was that like immediately freeing or did you need to to like punch the old impulse out of your head i really worked hard at it i don't i think it was very freeing but i also found myself occasionally just like coming up with ideas when i was going to pitch a story ideas for when i was going to write mine i'd sit there and think is this just a bunch of talking heads it's just a bunch of people sitting around a room and uh didn't even realize that i'd done it my last episode which i just which i wrote it coming out july 20th was one that after i wrote it the director came up and said i'm glad you wrote such a small episode and i was like what does that mean and it was like small in terms of places that they had to build and

like that they had to draw and create and it i didn't even think about it but i had written one that's basically takes place exclusively in the house or in the house in the cemetery and uh i didn't even think about it but that's like that's just cracked ingrained in me it's like no you gotta find a way to keep it all in one place i had a uh an informative chat with our uh one of our directors chris um because we have every once in a while we'll we'll jump to sketches at last week's night usually like to end the episode if we have the time we'll have like a dumb sketch that sort of sums up everything that but dramatizes everything that that you just learned as an audience member and uh i realized that the script that i turned in was essentially

man talks directly to camera for four minutes and worked with him on it. It was like where he can be like, here are the things that I can do. If you want to maneuver the writing in that direction, it's like, Oh yeah, that's way better. I'm sorry.

I'm used to, uh, having Cody hit record at the YouTube space. We, one of us took off a shoe so we could put the boom in it. Um, yeah, I, it was something i had to get over but it was also like it was immediately very free just like hearing people when they're breaking a story being like okay and this one like they're getting into an instagram life and they're becoming van culture van life culture and and then maybe like she becomes a cult and then hayley gets sucked into

it and then they send her down to um i can't remember they said columbia and i'm like but but what looks like columbia around here i don't think that's a good idea oh we can't we can't do this scene we're losing light airplane hold for airplane yeah none of that none of that ever happens it's really it's wonderful i love it so i think we should wrap up soon but also a couple of key takeaways is that i think you should write the we should write the wilderness movie because you don't know what's interesting about it. Right. And we should also write the Ryla. Oh, man.

A teen sex romp where the main character doesn't know that there's a teen sex romp happening. I think we should also write that. It's just happening in the background. Yeah. Just everyone's fucking and one guy is learning about leadership only to lose at the last second. Like, bear with me here, Dan. That's a really funny porn. I will not bear with you.

Bear as in B-A-R-E. Yeah, of course. All right, well, I'm going to go find all of our social accounts then. Okay. I don't know. We should probably fill time during this. You know what you could do? them okay um i don't know i should we should probably fill time during this you know what you could do uh you you told me the other night that you thought uh the point of being famous is

that that that's how you get women to like you so why would anyone not use their fame to get women uh do you want to elaborate on that yeah uh so it's gonna sound like skeevy and shitty but uh i was never great at talking to women one-on-one that was always like something that i struggled with because of anxiety and and a lack of confidence but i know that if you're famous you get access to a whole lot more people and I knew in my heart that what I wanted to do was elevate other voices and if I got famous enough I could learn from a larger and more diverse pool of people because

Fame like my fame was something that I could offer them. I didn't have anything to offer before that. I brought nothing to the table for most of my life, Soren, until I became, as you know, incredibly famous. So once I realized I was coming to the table with nothing, I thought, I need to add something to this. So I became famous, and then suddenly I had more access to more women so I could learn their stories and elevate their voices and educate myself on these different stories.

That's a great question. I have to clarify. I'm sorry? I have to clarify. Are you, so you're using your success to help other women. Yes. Exclusively. I wouldn't say exclusively. I'm using my success to elevate other voices and be a mentor. Okay. You did it. No, you did it. You're done. You're done. You did it. No, you did it.

You're done. You're done. You did a nice job. On Twitter, you can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, your best friend, at Soren underscore LTD. I'm not even going to talk about Michael. Michael's not even on the show anymore. Not until COVID's over.

Or until we buy him a microphone. You can also follow Quick Question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. And you can follow, find, hire our producer, sound engineer, and editor Gabe at GabeHarder.com in the future. I'm done. Yeah. Bye. Bye.