Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 68 - Do As I Say and Not As I Do

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

In this episode the guys talk about advice they always give but never follow themselves, and some close calls were they ALMOST got in big trouble but didn't.  And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Go to hellotushy.com/qq get  10% off  BIDETS and FREE SHIPPING. And big thanks to Skillshare, Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/qq2 and get a free trial of Premium Membership.

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and TV writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. A show that our families would likely describe as, I like it and it seems to be doing well. I don't know, it's probably not for everyone, but podcasts seem to be in right now. I am one half of this podcast, an author, comedian, one time talking head on the A&E biography of Steven Seagal, and guy who once mistakenly thought because a girl gave him a Christmas card,

it meant they were boyfriend and girlfriend, Daniel O'Brien, and I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, I am going to treat this like Jay-Z's public service announcement and allow you to reintroduce yourself, so go! Hello, and thank you, Daniel. I'm Soren Bui, a big time hollywood writer i'd say a night runner and the 27th result in a google search for bowie which i think is honestly pretty good in high school i once reached inside a cow and pulled out a smaller cow so that's where i'm coming from like a like a baby cow yeah i birded the cow not not just yeah you birthed a cow not just like there was a an errant tiny cow in there

no the cow had not swallowed another cow or a smaller cow was not wearing a bigger cow it was okay well i guess figuratively i don't really know i what qualifies in that category but it was a calf okay yeah well that's um do you want to talk about that a little bit sure how old were you 17 uh there was a was this part of your your um weird schooling yes yours it was okay yeah it was school and not family this was school yeah so we my family was not nearly that agrarian. This was like, these were all supposed to be learning experiences. The school that I went to, you eat two days a week, you did a sport mandatory. And then two days a week you did a work crew and everybody, you get to know pretty early

on what like the really cush work crews are. Like there was a preschool adjoining my school. And one of them was, you would go and hang out with them for an hour or at lunch, you would work the Hobart, which is like the washing machine that all the kids bring dishes to this one little counter and you just put them in this machine. But there was other crews that were way more hard and only the kids that really felt like they had some sort of moral prerogative to push themselves would do those. And by the time I was 17, I was thinking I might be that kind of person. And so I did the ranch crew and ranch crew meant like, you're out, you're either burning ditches or you're like, you're out in the fields, digging up pig shit or

doing terrible things. And one of the things, if you're burning ditches. Oh, so, uh, in their irrigation, I think you mean witches and we haven't been doing that for quite a while. I know. I said I was like 17 when I did it. Um, they, we would burn ditches, irrigation ditches in the, over the fall. And then the winter, first of all, a lot of leaves and debris fall into the ditches. Cause they don't run in the fall and winter. Cause you're not irrigating anything. And then snow falls on all on all that and so it starts to decompose under there instead of just raking all that out for miles of ditch you take diesel gasoline and you pour it along the ditch and then you run some water along the sides to keep the sides wet and then you just burn the entire ditch so if you set the entire

ditch on fire and burn up all the debris it It's great. It's awesome. Okay. But depending on what time of season you're there, you also might have to help the ranchers who are adjacent to our school with their cattle. And one of the things you do is sometimes you'd be birthing cattle, and they have these big cattle floodlights, which are like, I guess they're birthing lights. I don't even know why they're there. They're only there during the season when the cows are giving birth and you're out there in the night and

what makes them specifically seasonal and what makes them specifically birthing well i think because the only time i've ever seen those lights yeah they're like huge like stadium lights okay and uh and you are the cow is giving birth a lot of times cows will just give birth but occasionally if they're if it's just taking a long time you're you're inclined to reach inside of the cow and like feel for the head and make sure that the head is coming out first so the baby is the calf isn't breached and then you can kind of give it a little tug to get it started. It's very visceral and smelly. Is your hand, would you say, wrapped around like the neck of the calf? No, just the snout.

Okay. Okay. That's better. Yeah, I'm not going very far up. Not even like to wrist, I wouldn't say. But it was gross, and I don't think i'd do it again okay thanks so much to skillshare for supporting quick question this holiday season get creative and learn how to make the perfect handmade gift with skillshare's online classes skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Explore your creative side at Skillshare.com slash QQ2 and

get a free trial of premium membership. Thanks to Hello Tushy for supporting Quick Question. Hello Tushy is a sleek bidet attachment that clips onto your toilet and sprays your butt clean with fresh water. And it's the best thing you can do for your butt. And it starts at just $79. Go to hellotushy.com slash QQ to get 10% off bidets and free shipping. I think my mom was in Texas once and like witnessed the birth of, I can't remember if it was a cow or a horse,

but it was a really moving experience to see because it's like a different birthing experience than um most humans are used to in that they stand up the entire time yeah yeah you were not moved by that that was a nerving well because they're also such big animals that's like right and like that's the thing about horses like a horse is born and it's not like this is a baby that needs to be cradled. A horse is born and it's just like, I'm going to try to start walking right now. It's parents are like, run. You have to run now.

Yeah. The cows, it's, it's, I don't like being that close to an animal that big. Cause I, it's, I don't know. It's a lot of weight and it's like it's a little scary and uh to be doing something that i wouldn't want somebody to do to me i think it's like i don't i don't know how this cow's gonna react at any point so it's unnerving to be that close to a cow giving birth i guess moving i guess it's arresting let's call it that now Now, are you, so you mentioned that this is part of your school curriculum. What did you get on this process?

Did you get an A? And what does a D look like? No, the, I think with the way it worked with work crews was it was just about attendance. Okay. And so there were also kids that clearly just coasted through a lot of their work crews too, like kids who did the hard ones or got set on the hard ones and they didn't do shit but they showed up and there's not a huge expectation on most of them but they will if you are showing an enthusiasm for it they will take you all the way down that road um there was we also had these yellow buses these like little short yellow buses okay well that Well, that's not standard to Colorado.

That's dumb. But these are like, these are little ones that we called fat boys. And one of my workers was doing work on those. So we drive those over to the shop and then like change the oil on them and stuff. And I can remember that there was a kid there who showed a real propensity for that kind of thing. And they were like letting him take apart engines and shit like that so the sky was the limit if you showed an interest but there was a baseline that you had to meet

and that was it huh well i don't know how we're going to continue the show from here but we're just going to power through let's do it this is a show that we where we ask each other questions and get answers and we're going to get into that but first um we have one of my favorite segments it's uh daniel's date update uh can we get data sorry sorry no oh sorry okay i had a whole fucking bit planned i'm so sorry let's just do the whole thing again i'm so sorry for trying to to make the show better from my end that's okay no you already like bulldozed the show with your amazing life story and then i was going to try to rest control for you with this thing that i have like written out i'm sorry that i can't do anymore no

i'm not gonna do it i'm not gonna do it now We had the no one's listening live We just delete all that shit and do it again. Okay Give me a second. It's not even gonna be good now Now is the part of our show where we're going to get into daniel's date update uh it's one of my favorite segments hey can uh gabe can we get the sound wrap for that that segment gabe please daniel's date update thank you for putting that together greg gabe that was uh i really liked how that turned out keep all of this so you may recall that a few months ago at either a low point of shame

or a high point of blind optimism, I slid into the DMs of a fishing YouTuber on whom I developed a minor crush. It should come as no surprise that so far she has not responded to my unsolicited invitation for a catch and cook

to yank some truly inedible bluefish out of the Hudson estuary. But in the meantime, she made an Instagram post on election day that was hashtag MAGA. So that's that. In fishing terms, this is less of a one that got away and more of a one I decided to stop pursuing due to irreconcilable political and moral differences. Oh, Dan, I'm so sorry for your loss. That's okay. It's one of those things that's bound to happen because, again,

fishing YouTube has a great intersection with hunting YouTube, which has a great intersection with MAGA YouTube. Oh, right. i forgot about that you forgot about it so well i forgot that fishing was so adjacent to hunting oh yes um it's really weird if you if you like me like get down a rabbit hole of fishing youtubers it's like i caught this responsibly and i cleaned it and then i cooked it and uh and i ate it and it was great and i fed it to my family and it was wonderful and then another video will be like i shot this deer from a tree in the throat and now i'm gonna skin it i'm like oh i draw a line there i guess so um daniel you she never responded to you and that's obviously for the best but uh how long did

it take you to figure out that she was not somebody you actually wanted to know uh i i did my due diligence of like going through her instagram to see if there were like MAGA things, Donald Trump things, red state things that were popping up in her Instagram and it really hadn't. And then like literally on election day, she was like, Hey, it's election day, everyone. It doesn't matter who you vote for. Just like participate in this hashtag MAGA hashtag red 2020 hashtag Trump oh no yeah that's a lot alright well that's the grapes were sour anyway man

yeah bullet dodged thanks again everyone for tuning in to another edition of Daniel's Date Update Gabe once more Daniel's Date Update thank you I really, whoever recorded that,

I it's top notch. Thank you for doing that. We don't even have to call it that. It's just Daniel. Never met a girl was the name of that segment. It's at a time in this time. Again, we're talking about Skillshare.

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With so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives, Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. Give a gift that's one of a kind, completely personalized, or perfectly imperfect. When you put time, effort, and creativity into a gift, it personalized or perfectly imperfect. When you put time, effort and creativity into a gift, it shows how much you care. Skillshare is also incredibly affordable, especially when compared to pricey in-person classes and workshops. An annual subscription is less than $10 a month. That's amazing. If you want to give a person in your life a Christmas gift this year, $10 a month is insane. At this point, you know me. I've learned a lot from Skillshare. I've learned about close-up hand magic. I've learned about sign language. I've learned a little bit about

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the show where we ask each other questions? I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I have one for you. Okay. Quick question. Go ahead. Is there any advice you give a lot but never take yourself i have two infuriating ones if you need time to think yeah i want to hear them one is a romantic one which uh runs counter to me sliding into the dms of this stranger um but if someone has a crush or wants to make a move on someone, I'm first in line to say, shoot your shot, go for it, ask them out. Worst case scenario, they're like, no. Best case scenario, absolute best case scenario, you fall in love. Do the cost-benefit analysis. Don't be aggressive or overly persistent, but don't let just the fear of failure determine whether or not you have a shot of happiness. I'm eager to tell people

tell your crush how you feel life is so short and meaningless just go for it and it's a thing apart from this Trump supporting probable 9-11 truther uh I never do I I never shoot my shot with a crush almost ever even though I know it's it's like good advice as long as you're not creepy about it you are I get it I'm for it well I mean I can't speak to it because i've been married for a very long time and i i'm out of that world but like i remember when i used to be interested in a girl it felt like a really bad idea to lay all your cards on the table right up front and be like here are my intentions with you because how should how could you possibly know what your own intentions are when you're just meeting this person right like i would i always would uh err towards the friendship angle and then see where it goes from

there for both of you i i'm blown away by the braveness of people who just go up to strangers and are like hey i like the way your face sits like what if we went on a date and see if this works? That is how people talk. I like the way it hangs off your skull. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you say? The drip of your face is pleasing to me. Get in my car for my pleasure.

I like that you've got shoulders uh but yeah i'm always blown away by people who do it uh just go up to somebody and they have not only like the the courage to do that and and suffer the consequences but like the courage of their own convictions to look at somebody and be like yep that's somebody i want to have sex with hey you do you want to have sex with. Hey, you, do you want to have sex with me too? I think, well, we're different here. We're like the thing that I admire is that if you're going to shoot your shot with someone, if you're going to like go up and tell not even a stranger, but like a friend that you think could be more of a friend, the thing that I can't get past is they are okay with the failure of that. Yeah. Which I am not.

I sometimes think about, especially in years past, going up to someone and being like, hey, we've been friends for years and we've been kind of flirty and we agree on a lot of the same things and our families like each other and do you want to go on a lot of the same things and our families like each other and do you want to go on a date with me and if they say no I'd be like that's very cool and then I'd fake a seizure and then get transported to a hospital and then I'd move and then I'd create a new identity somewhere else because I can't stomach the idea of someone politely saying no thank you I'm not interested and then the two of you politely saying, no, thank you, I'm not interested.

And then the two of you just pretending from that moment on that you're still friends in the same way. Yes. Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense to me, Dan. I think moving is a pretty good option in that circumstance. I think that would be very, very hard. But it's not. It's not, right? Well, I think that there's... uh but it's not it's not right well i think because again the worst case scenario is is they say no i just want to stay friends and then you have the friend that you've always had it'll

be a little bit awkward more awkward than it used to be and you will know that the door is closed, maybe forever, maybe not. But that's not a death sentence. So why? The reason that I give the advice, shoot your shot, is why should you be afraid of that as your worst case scenario? And yet I don't take it my own self. I have some wine glasses, Daniel, that I got at my wedding. Stay with me here because this is a bit of a walk. But I have these wine glasses that when I went to get them, or like when Colleen and I were filling out our registry,

we went to a place, they showed us the wine glasses, and the guy was like, they're like these really, really thin, delicate ones. And he's like, watch this. And he hits it on the side of the table, and it doesn't shatter. And he's like, and that's's isn't that amazing like that these wine glasses are designed to just so structurally sound yet they're so thin and uh i guess but i was so blown away by it that i wanted to then do it at parties and things like that i've never done it once i've never had the courage to actually do it because like if i do it then now I have a shattered fucking glass.

Like, that's what it feels like these relationships become. Like, if you have, like, the courage to try this thing that's, like, very, very cool and it could be great. The minute you do it and it doesn't work, well, then you just have a stem. Like, that friendship is not the same friendship after that. Right. But it's... Even that is still not the end of the world, because then the friendship that you have after that will be a more honest one. Right. Yeah. I'm advocating for the advice that I'm giving that I don't take. a little more fucked up. I've certainly been in friendships before where I knew that the other person was attracted to me and I preferred the fact that they didn't say anything, but I also

liked that this person was attracted to me. And like, even they didn't hurt the friendship. We never talked about it, but it's flattering to have somebody who's interested in you. My ears are burning. Um, do you have advice that you give, but never take, or do you want me to do my second no i have some um mine is child related so back in the day when we did the crack podcast with jack uh uh dave berry came on once dave berry famous columnist dave berry came on the podcast and he was very good and very fun and at the end he asked us if we had any just questions for him and i was like yeah and it was right before my son was about to be born i knew that he had kids and i was like dave barry do you have any advice for a new parent and he was like yeah

let your kids just be themselves don't try and force them into anything just let them be who they are and i was like god that's so sage that's so good and then i started saying that all the All the time. And I do not do that. What do you push Ronan into? Well, I push him. I was about to say I push him to his limits, and that sounds terrible. I push him to do things that he's either a little bit scared of or that he's uncertain of just because he hasn't done it. Because the thing with kids is that they don't know that everybody sucks at everything at the beginning like they're afraid to try stuff because they did it maybe once and it didn't go right and they're like well that's not my thing and they'll just like search for other things that they are good at and everybody has to practice at everything

to get any good at it it's like biking is a good example i try i have a bicycle for him and i know that he can ride it because I've made him go up and down the block a few times over quarantine until the point where he's not on training wheels anymore. He can ride it, but he's scared of it and he doesn't want to do it. And I'm like, you don't understand, like this opens up the world to you. Like you, you're gonna want this. And when you want it, I want you to know how to do it.

And so I will try to make him ride this bicycle to the point where like he's crying before we go outside and I'll have to check in with myself and be like, what am I doing? You don't know. You don't have to go ride your bike. It's fine, man. Let's just, let's do something else. And it's the same way with organized sport too. I want to play with him.

I like playing with him, but the games that he invents suck uh they're just they're not good they're bad and he cheats them and makes up new rules in the middle so i want some common ground where we're like we both know the rules to this now we can play it together sometimes maybe i'll let you win sometimes i'm gonna win now you'll learn what losing is like too like i have all these grandiose dreams of like this is what's gonna make you a good person this is, I watch Friday night lights with me and then we will go play a game. And, uh, as we're, as we're trying to like play a sport, it's just because he's so new to it. It all seems very daunting and he gives up right away. And I just like gently like pushing him to be like, no, we're not giving up just yet.

We're going to keep doing it a little bit. pushing him to be like no we're not giving up just yet we're gonna keep doing it a little bit and uh and then i think back i'm like everybody all comics who are like fucked up complain about their dads who made them try and play sports and i'm like well i don't know if i'm doing the right thing but it's what i'm doing it's it's tough because i don't want to uh endorse what you think might be a bad behavior but but I kind of agree with you. When I was learning how to ride a bike without training wheels, I remember being frustrated

and sad and crying about it, and my dad pushing me to learn how to do it, and Smash Cut, I loved biking. I biked fucking everywhere. It was a huge part of my childhood. It like one of the the first um grasps at freedom i had i was like i'm just gonna go biking with my friends and then i just felt like i i owned the whole town and it's even more important now because we're all in quarantine like we're all learning our shit off in the

wilderness and then we're going to come back to society and like you better know how to do all the stuff that everybody else does if you want to fit in so like there he doesn't have friends around him right now who are riding their bikes where he can be like oh shit i gotta learn it's just him so i gotta be like no you you're gonna need this as soon as we get back out we get the vaccines we're all back into the world you're're going to have friends who are going to be like, let's go to the park and you got to know how to ride your bike there. Man, I think that's, I think you're on the right side of history here. Okay. Thank you.

Do you have others? No, no. Yeah. I mean, I have some like writing ones, but I think we've talked about them on the show before. When I tell people to write every day, that's bullshit. I have another one that is simpler and worse. And it's advice I give is go to a doctor. Like whenever someone complains about a health thing or like a mental thing or a family thing, I'll say, oh, go to a doctor, talk to a doctor, whatever kind of doctor is relevant

to your situation. Because it's generally good advice that I do not apply to myself. I go to doctors for like an immediately pressing thing, like my wrist is broken and I don't have the tools for that in my apartment. But there are some things, whether it's like anxiety or chronic stomach pains, where I'll just throw my hands up like, well, I guess this is what life is. Some of us are just supposed to live with a not inconsiderate amount of pain when they get nervous and i must have joined uh drawn the short straw oh well it's it's a thing that i'm i'm trying to work on it's not a new year's resolution but it's certainly like a plan for the future i've had too many conversations with family, a family that is filled with smart people and medical professionals. And I'm like, my stomach hurts. And they're like,

have you talked to anyone? And I'm like, no. And that still didn't work. Yeah. I'm, as you're telling me this, I'm realizing how much of this is like dropped into us like seeds when we're children and then just grows. I'm the same way where I will not go to the doctor for anything. And when I do go to the doctor, if it's not really, really bad, I'm humiliated. Do you know why you don't go to the doctor? I know that you're broadly scared about needles and having blood drawn. And that's like a phobia of yours.

But is that the reason that you avoid doctors or i think it's a couple things one i've been misdiagnosed a few times but for things and uh they thought i yeah so and and because of that there were like consequences from like at one point i went in with a sprained ankle and it was starting my whole foot was turning blue and i thought there might be a circulation issue and went in. The doctor looked at like a scab from like two weeks before that on my ankle. And he was like, what's this? And I was like, that's just a scab.

He's like, you've got an infection. And then I had to get an injection and sat there on an intravenous, this like this IV for a while for like three hours in the hospital. It cost a bunch of money. And then I had to take a bunch of pills. The pills had side effects. I didn't need any of it. I did not have an infection.

I just had a sprained fucking ankle. But a couple of things like that have happened to me in the past. But then also it's, I think it's residual from childhood from, I grew up with my father who would be like, anytime that you complained about anything, he'd be like, oh, well, you better go get in bed. Oh, if you're really hurt, then you better go lie down. You better sleep the rest of the day. Like in a very condescending way like that.

And to the, I just. So it's a way that it's not like take care of yourself. It's more like, oh, well, I guess that means you can't watch TV or play video games. Right. In a way that's like, get over it. Everybody has something. It's fine. Right. In a way that's like, get over it. Everybody has something. It's fine. And so just recently, my dad, his leg wasn't working right. Or like, it was really in a lot of pain. And my mom was like, we got to go to the doctor. And he was like, no, I'm fine. And was crawling around the house to get places. And she was like, please, can we go to the doctor? And he's like, well, let's just see if it gets better. And so he slept on it that night,

and then the next day he finally agreed to go. Broken hip. Jesus. And he was like walking and then crawling around the house on a broken hip and wouldn't go to the hospital. And I'm like, yes, yes, that's where it comes from. It's you. That's fascinating to know the source. I don't know where it comes from. It's you. That's fascinating to know the source. I don't know where mine comes from.

I think it's just like I've read too many stories where someone was like, I had a headache, so I went to the doctor, and then the doctor said, oh, it turns out it's cancer, and you have two weeks to live. So that instilled in me this sense that I thought, no matter what pain I have, I won't know that it's going to kill me unless I go to a doctor. So I'll just, like, keep it inside me. It can't hurt you until it's been diagnosed. Right, it's the diagnosis that'll kill you.

Yeah, that makes sense. I get that. I mean, obviously it doesn't make any sense. No, I know that it's wrong. I know it's bullshit. And I'm trying to work on it, dear listeners. I've made some very early steps of like looking at gastroenterologists that are in my health insurance program and bookmarked the page of the names.

So it's like baby steps. I didn't make an appointment, but I'm, I'm, I dipped my toe in the water. I just don't want anyone to yell at me about this. Hey everybody, it's the holiday season. Might be time for you to be thinking about gifts for people. And why don't you consider the gift of cleanliness? Hello Tushy is available for just $79. Go to hellotushy.com slash QQ to get 10% off bidets and free shipping.

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You need a whole separate space in your bathroom for that. Everybody's got that. That's for like the 1%. Hello Tushy is basically an egalitarian bidet. Hello Tushy attaches to your existing toilet. It doesn't require any additional electricity. It doesn't require new plumbing. You can do it yourself. And it cleans your butt with a precise stream of fresh water. Just gets right in there. Trust me, I have one. And with Hello Tushy, you don't have to wipe at all. You're helping the environment and you're getting cleaner than you would have with toilet paper. So stop wiping your butt and start washing and join the millions of happy Hello Tushy customers right now. Plus, Hello Tushy is the perfect gift for anybody this

holiday season. I got to tell you, I was skeptical because I thought, what, am I just going to walk around with a wet butt all day? A soggy bottom? No, no, you don't have to. I tried my Hello Tushy. You sit there for a little bit. You let it dry. It doesn't take long at all. You could use a little bit of toilet paper just to blot it dry. But honestly, the cleanest I've ever been. Whoa. Yeah, I know. Also, did you know the average person uses 57 sheets of toilet paper a day? Jesus, what are you all doing out there? You knew that? Yeah, I did. That's way too much. Way, way too much. Well, I'm in quarantine, so I live at home and there's not much to do except count sheets of toilet paper. Well, I've got a new strategy for you, Daniel. And if you're worried about wasting water, don't because 37 gallons of water is what it takes to make a roll of toilet paper.

So, within a day, you're actually saving water and you're getting cleaner. The bathroom should be your modern-day self-care oasis. Why not take care of every part of your body? Go to hellotushy.com slash QQ and get 10% off your Tushy right now. That's HelloTushy.com slash QQ for 10% off and free shipping. HelloTushy.com slash QQ. I have a question for you, Daniel. Okay. What was some bad trouble, maybe from childhood or just earlier in your life, that you barely missed out on being involved in? Like something that people got into a lot of trouble for, like a group of your friends,

and you absolutely would have been there had it not been for some extenuating circumstances. Can extenuating circumstances include my own cleverness? Yeah, I think so okay so uh freshman year of high school uh the english honors class had a an assignment over spring break which was read a book and then write summaries chapter by chapter and this is like like first of all that's a shitty assignment like take your spring break to read a book and summarize every chapter shut up don't give us homework over spring break what are you doing um so everyone in my entire class was going to cheat on this everyone uh and it was like early days of the internet where you could

find summaries of books online and students didn't yet know that teachers could also use the internet. So a lot of people, including all of my friends, copy and pasted chapter summaries into a Word doc and printed them out and were prepared to hand them in, not thinking that the teacher would read all of them, which is a reasonable assumption. I, for whatever reason, also looked at these chapter summaries for this book and then decided to write them freehand in a notebook instead of uh printing them out and i also again i don't know where this instinct to cheat comes from but i got things wrong on purpose because i didn't want i i was covering my tracks as someone who definitely did not read this book which i think was a good book i think it

was fahrenheit 451 but i like looked at all these printouts of the chapter summaries and wrote them in my own way and got things wrong so you couldn't prove that i cheated because i looked dumber and It became a large scandal for the entire freshman class of my high school. Because everyone was getting called down to the principal's office. The teacher was fucking stoked to get this scoop and bust everyone. And everyone was getting called down for cheating. And this was... I don't know if you had this at your school, which was in a teepee somewhere in the woods, but National Honor Society was a thing that ascribed some

level of academic prestige to students that if you're in the honors class, the AP class sect, you wanted to have National Honor Society on your high school resume because that would improve your chances of getting into a good college so the threat of plagiarism was huge and this was a potential scandal where like everyone in our class would not get national honor society except the few who didn't cheat and there was like four of us who didn't cheat and by the way we cheated because i was one of them i was just better at it but it was like a full it's i remember it starting with our english teacher saying to the class i know that so many of you cheated i know you didn't outsmart me and this is really gonna bite you this is really gonna be tough you're all every one of you who did

this you're all gonna suffer consequences and then over the next two or three days in different classes someone would come on the principal would come on the loudspeaker and be like can we have the following four students come to the office and so you're just like waiting for your name to be called and I'm sitting there like the cat that ate the fucking canary and it's like couldn't be me I got chapter four wrong it's not me and it wasn't me but like 98% of the class got called in to the office and had this mark on their record and had to go to like a special seminar about how wrong cheating is.

And me and the other three cheaters who were smarter at it were just like, oh, it sucks to be those guys. God, you must, I would have been sweating bullets no matter what. I would have thought, oh, fuck. They're're gonna figure it out that i was me as well and like just like going through the entire thing in my head like which words did i change nah man you knew you knew the entire time you were in the clear yeah it's a it's a bad lesson for a kid to learn that like oh you can cheat but just be like good at it that's pretty good lesson if you know how to cover your tracks right yeah that'll serve you well in your life um i had one that was more violent um

no one got hurt i'm sorry more violent than copy and pasting? Chapter summaries for Fahrenheit 451? Good God. I had some friends, and we were into fires and explosions when we were young. Like, eighth grade, freshman year, that era. So, like, we're getting into some sophisticated type of explosives. Speak on that. What are they? Pipe bombs. Okay.

And other incendiaries that we were like, also figuring out that you could dissect fireworks and then make your own firework out of all the black powder that you find inside. Just like we were getting really into that kind of stuff. And I had two friends who one day we found out one of them had built a pipe bomb it was like the first one that we any of us had built that's not like metal pipe bombs these like pvc pipe bombs but uh we were

so excited and i couldn't be there when they were going to set it off. And it turned out that what happened was that they were looking, looking for a place to set it off. They knew of this abandoned RV on the highway up to the town where I got married, Redstone, like up along that windy road up there, there was this old abandoned RV and they're like, let's put it in the engine.

And they created a huge huge huge fire out there um not a forest fire but like just the entire rv burned to a crisp fire department had to come out and everything it did way more damage than they anticipated they thought they would just like blow up an engine and not in a sparks kind of way and just like a look at the damage we've done look at what we have wrought but they burned up the entire thing and one of them was like i went i saw him at school and he's like relaying this information to me and just like dead eyes just looking off into the distance trying to he's just trying to like contextualize how much trouble he's actually in because they had this cop to it and i think what they ended up saying was that they were playing with fireworks and that like one of them had

they accidentally had shot a bottle rocket into the engine or something much much tamer than what actually happened um and he got they both got in so much trouble that they were doing they're cleaning fire engines for like another year uh as part of their community service for that. I think that they had a court date and everything. And I had just avoided this thing because of some other, I think, can't remember what I had to do that day. It was something with my family, but because I was so like, you never know what worst luck, your bad luck is saving you from. I was so happy. Like it was like this new lease on life. Like the sun was brighter, the wind felt better. It was just, I felt so good knowing that I was not involved in that. Yeah. That's the thing. So

I'm curious because like the, the, the thing that I got out of my high school freshman experience was great that I didn't get in trouble and I never had to worry about getting stripped of National Honor Society. But I was not able to claim any sense of superiority because I was just like, oh'm i didn't do the right thing i just did the smarter thing did you did you walk away from your experience thinking you did the right thing and did you like could you feel like you could lord that over your friends who did get caught because i did not i was just like i knew that if bragged, then they would rat me out because there's no honor among thieves. No, I didn't. It was never a point where I was like, yeah, I can't believe you guys got caught. That was so dumb.

Or it was something I could hold over them. It was just like this insane elation of like having not been a part of something dumb that I absolutely would have been a part of. not being a part of something dumb that i absolutely would have been a part of and uh yeah i in fact we didn't really talk about it much after that mostly because i think they would have gotten a lot more trouble had any of the authorities known as a pipe bomb and can you just so everyone knows uh say their names old person last their address. Pipe bomb? Yeah. Yeah, pipe bomb. What is? Oh, it's an explosive that you pack into a piece.

It's like about a foot long piece of PVC pipe. You have butts on each end that like screw on. And then the inside is incendiary so that it makes a really big explosion. It's like making home dynamite. Okay. How big is the explosion supposed to be, ideally? Okay. So this is the first successful pipe bomb any of us had made.

And the other ones, the other explosives that we had made were like an M80. Okay. If you put it in some sand or something like that, you could get a little tiny crater, like a little foot crater, but, uh, you throw it in a lake and it would like,

you get a big, nice bubble, but if you put through it in a dumpster, it wouldn't obliterate the dumpster. Like it's not going to destroy metal. And do you know how your, how your, your friends were found out?

The fire. I mean, the giant fire. Oh, were they just standing around the fire because we didn't yeah i don't imagine they had cameras in red rock in the past no they didn't um so this was an honorable thing they stuck around because they knew what they had done they're the ones who went called the fire department and came back and then got their story straight to make it not as bad as it had been. And they knew that this was a big issue because it's like fire in the middle of the woods could get really bad really quick. So when they saw that it was a fire that they couldn't put out, they called the fire department.

Oh, that's pretty noble. Yeah, they didn't just split so there's a movie that's out right now called american animals that's about these young kids who dress as old men to go try and steal these like a darwin book and uh some other original art pieces from a college and for some reason this college has this extensive library of really expensive old books it's based on a true story or yeah okay yeah so these young kids i think it's in ohio or somewhere in fuck ohio somewhere in the midwest uh they try to get into this books into this old library and they're like they have this like elaborate plan to do it

and the first day that they're like trying to do it, they have it all timed out. Their watches are synchronized. And so one little thing goes wrong and they have to abort it. And as they're walking out, like you could just see how good they all feel that they didn't do it. And I was like watching the movie. I was like,

Oh my God. And that feeling came back to me and I knew exactly where it was from and i was like i remember how that feels it is a good feeling it is it is it's uh i mean it's a good feeling and it's a bad feeling because like i i remember feeling bad about my classmates who were like who clearly knew they were fucked and were like worried about their future chances which by the way as an epilogue of this story the new jersey public school system is not going to wipe out an entire class of national honor society students so like everyone after their like two-day seminar got their records wiped clean.

So it was fine. But, uh, it was still at the time bad to see all of my friends sweating, but still good to be like, Oh yeah, I, I skirted by this somehow through what I'm going to say is cunning,

but was my own genius. Probably dumb luck. My spectacular mind gets me through another scrape. Huh. This old baby, I think I'll keep her. My brother, so we have senior parties at my high school, which was just basically, I assume whatever the people have is prom,

where afterwards everybody just parties. And one year, I think when my brother was at that school, he wasn't a senior, but the seniors broke into the headmaster's house when he wasn't there and had senior party his house thinking, what an epic thing to live in the history books of Colorado Rocky Mountain School that all these kids broke into the headmaster's house and had the party there, not realizing at the time that that's breaking and entering, and devastated the house. And then all of them got kicked out of school about a week before graduation. All of everyone who, well, the ones that had been at that party, I think that the headmaster wasn't

there, but maybe another faculty member had come and broken it up and got a glimpse of who was there, took down names, and then those kids did not graduate. And they thought at the time, how are they going to – they can't – even if we did get caught, what, are they just not going to let us graduate? That's exactly what happened. They were all kicked out of the school a week before graduation. Every bit of your life sounds like a movie thing to me that i didn't think was real like i i never grew up with captain of teams and you're the captain of your soccer team and we didn't grow up with like a headmaster and you had one and people who went to the headmaster's house to party that all sounds like a thin plot to like a straight to VHS American Pie spinoff movie. But it's all real.

You're telling me it all happened. This is, I think that there's like a subset of people, Dan, who just went to private school. And these are the experiences they had and those are the people that then grew up to be in go to harvard and they were on the lampoon and then they started making the movies that everybody knows anytime i saw one of those movies where it was like i'm dating the headmaster's daughter i was like who's the do you mean principal what What's going on? What are his powers? The fuck's a headmaster?

Master of whom? Yeah. It was a different life, man. I think we're pretty close to wrapping up now. Yeah. Oh, I had some brief housecleaning. We have mentioned our CFO, business daddy, occasional voice on the show, Michael, who goes by Bacon. We've plugged his Twitter multiple times.

We've asked why he is not on the show anymore like he used to be uh and we're kind of ready to put that bit to bed now because uh for reasons that are not negative at all uh he will not be appearing on this show ever in the future and uh again it's it's it's all good we just can't say why it's good. He is still very much a part of this endeavor of the show. He is, after Gabe, the first person to listen to the show when edits come in, and the one who makes sure we can keep the lights on and keep the show going. But we just won't hear him on here anymore, ever. And so as a result of that, we probably won't keep doing bacon bits and i want to make clear he is all he is alive he's alive he's fine he's healthy yeah i don't

know we had to uh we can edit this out i don't know if we can say healthy we can say alive okay okay well he's a he's alive and he had to move for other reasons um yeah where he lives is a mystery now but uh i think that that's probably for the best for his family yes yes and for again we can't get into this but it's also for the best for the families of all of our listeners um so we we wish him well uh and we are still in contact i can't say that no someone is still in contact with him honestly the less that you know as an audience the safer you are but uh uh definitely don't follow him on twitter at make me bacon, please make me bacon PLS. And meanwhile,

as we close out the show, I just want to say we joke a lot here, but the entire time I've known you, Soren, I've known you to be a feminist, your partnership with your wife, the way that you talk about her speaks for itself. When you had a more leadership role

in the columnist section at comedywebsidecrack.com, you immediately sought out more women writers to bring them to the attention of editorial leadership, and these writers included, crucially, Jamie Loftus, Katie Golden, and Samantha Irby, three of some of the inarguably funniest and sharpest writers I've ever encountered. But while I'm tracking down the social accounts, I wanted to give you some space to talk about one time you overdrank

told me that there are still some jobs that men are simply better at, biologically speaking. Would you mind telling me what those jobs are while I track down these accounts? Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I would love to. A lot of times you hear people say that the hardest job in the world is being a mom and see that's simply, simply not true. That's just the hardest job in the world for a woman. There are still some jobs that are clearly hard and also women just aren't as good at them uh as men because um their their brains are different

one one you've committed to making a list now one taxi driver men's brains are proven to be better with spatial awareness than women. Two,

game show contestant men have been proven to, in the moment, come up with language faster than women and the word that they're looking for because the nature of language is based on what men have created as opposed to women language is inherently sexist three gardener that's just going on a personal experience I'm fucking great at it there's

no woman who could like hold a candle to my garden you can find more from soren on twitter at soren underscore ltd uh you can email the show at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com i imagine that we're going to do some kind of end of year questions that just come from the audience so you can send them there or you can tweet at twitter.com slash QQ underscore Soren and Dan find us on Instagram QQ underscore with underscore Soren underscore and underscore Daniel. You can hire our producer editor friend at Gabe harder.com. Maybe we also have a Patreon that you can check out by Googling all of the relevant

words that we have said and that you assume. And that's pretty much all I have to say. I don't mean any of those things. I just want to clear the air. Bye. Occasionally I do get honest

on here and this is not one of those times. Everyone. I should really just like stay in a lane. I should choose whether I'm going to be honest or I'm going to like really steer to the skin and not both. Bye. Bye.