Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Snorin’ Bowie

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Snorin' Bowie and Daniel O'Bedtime are here to discuss the best possible way to get a good night's sleep. Plus more Soren gym altercations and Daniel's Star Wars Boardwalk!  Help us grow the show by following us on socials and doling out some sweet, sweet engagement: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcast

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When do I be remembered? What's it all about? Where did all the good things go? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien.

Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here podcast senior writer for last week tonight with john oliver author of how to fight presidents and of the four people in this room the least interesting one daniel o'brien joined as always by my co-host the second least interesting one mr soren buoy soren say hello hey everybody i'm soren buoy we really should have turned this around we found out that uh some of the other people working on this podcast are going to very interesting places in europe and in africa and we don't we don't do that.

No, we don't. I couldn't have been helpful. This, we're doing a video version of this podcast. If you're listening to the audio and I was mimicking, and I was trying to like do it as like a, Hey, we're on the same team type of thing where you were doing just gestures.

Yeah. I was doing gestures for, for all the words that I was, what if we had it timed? Like what if we did it together? Yeah. And I thought this is probably distracting for him. No, it was fun it's um a really easy like uh comedy hack for my my brain is uh for someone to do not actual sign language but like like mimed interpretations

of songs or things that they're saying there was a comedian i can't believe i'm blanking on his name uh he was tucker in there's something about mary and he was the non-nathan lane brother in the movie mouse hunt so we all know who i'm talking about oh he's also like a uh oh brother where no successful british comedian uh and he did a whole bit where i i think it's to bohemian rhapsody and he's just doing that kind of like fake sign language where where uh little silhouetto of a man and grabs his dick and like does the entire thing where he's just like doing like crude but very obvious uh visual hand and body representations of the words and that kind of thing just kills me every time it's I've seen it done a few times they do it in

the play that goes wrong off broadway right now and it's it's it's just great fun and i was and i was trying to do a version of it it's just now occurring to me that when somebody says something and you're like yes that's right you touch your nose you know that that old sign yeah you're like like that yeah oh like it for a long time I thought maybe that's just on the nose but it does very clearly also mean like ah he knows

yeah he knows I wonder if that's where it comes from I don't know surely there would be a way to find out I don't want to think

about it no well Daniel I want to start the episode by doing a do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do injury update. Okay. How is your foot? It's better. It's still not, like, the coloration is still not 100% normal.

Is it yellow? Is it like a deep, like, paltry yellow? It's yellow, yeah. It's yellow around the toes where the blood was pooling the most. Like, paltry yellow? It's yellow, yeah. It's yellow around the toes where the blood was pooling the most. And I will still... I feel pretty comfortable walking around my Airbnb and, like, the apartment area without this boot on.

And I, today at the gym, did my first time doing the entire workout without the boot. Whoa. Yeah. I wasn't, like, putting a ton of weight on my foot but i was just like freely walking around in in workout shoes uh i think i could probably get away with mostly not wearing it the problem is uh other people because yeah wearing the boot lets people know that that that i am i am inferior right now broken egg yeah to like clear a little bit more room for me and and to understand i'm going to be slower and i really need that it was very jarring the first time i went to get coffee without the boot and i was like

why isn't everyone being gentle with me why why why are they treating me like everyone else don't they know how scary it is to walk so i will in public places continue to wear this mostly because it's not 100 and i don't want to like yeah i'm not as as as spry as i normally am with avoiding pedestrian traffic okay um and you weren't worried about like somebody else dropping weights or anything. I guess that doesn't really happen. No, this gym is not, it's like Tatooine in the Star Wars prequels. It's not sparsely populated. That was your frame of reference? It is sparsely populated, yes.

Yeah, because there's a, so quick story. There's a, when that movie came out, Phantom Menace came out uh my brothers and I uh loved it we loved the first prequel unironically we were the right age for it right you were and then we went to Wildwood New Jersey that summer for our family vacation and there are rides there are boardwalks there are snacks there are beaches and there there are stands where you like games of chance where you throw a ball at

a and you try to knock down a cat familiar with boardwalks yeah okay i don't know what our audience what what our mostly indoor audience is is into but like you do games and you try to win prizes and uh one year one of the stands had uh star wars character banks They were like this big, and it was Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padme, and Darth Maul. And you put a coin, every time you put a coin in the thing,

the character moves around and says a line or two from the movie. Where's the money going? This isn't like a square. This is like somebody standing on top of it? There's like a, yeah, there's like a base

that they're standing on top of. Okay. And you put the money in the base and they move, vroom, vroom, vroom, and they say one of their iconic lines from the movie. Darth Maul in Phantom Menace

famously has, like, two or three lines and they're not interesting. Right. And instead of making some up, the people who built this bank were still like, no, we're just going to use the audio from the movie.

So you put a coin in Qui-Gon's thing and he says something cool that a Jedi would say. Same for Obi-Wan. You get to Darth Maul and he goes, Tatooine is sparsely populated. Because that was like one of the two lines they had to choose from. And so that is just always in my head.

So the gym, like Tatooine, was sparsely populated. And so he fights and then says some California's gold shit about Tatooine. Yeah, just some exposition. That's wonderful. And the cool thing about this gym is they have

all the machines that you would expect and everything else that you expect in a gym. And in the section where they have mirror all the machines that you would expect and and everything else that you expect in the gym and in the section where they have just like mirror and free weights uh and no benches there are taped off like zones this is where you are this is this is this mat fits comfortably for people in their individual like lanes i don't know if that happened after covid or if that was always the way but i just thought this is so good this is so much smarter they're just like this is the area that i occupy right and i'm i'm safe here no one's in it i love that yeah i mean there there is like a tacit understanding that like please don't go on somebody else's bench space

like anything and you can you understand like if somebody's lying on a bench the more the most room they could possibly take up is like doing flies right so like that's your arms fully extended to each side you give people that amount of space regardless of what they're doing like that's the amount of space because who knows what they're going to switch it up to yeah um i love the idea of being actually law though yeah it's very very helpful um i got in another altercation at the gym so at the end of last time i was doing this i told you a story about me getting in an altercation at the gym which was uh uh it was it ended with this guy pouting off by himself going stupid ass under his breath now i got into another one great since then where there was a guy and

he's like down with his gear and stuff like he's got his duffel bag and he's like got his phone out of his duffel bag and he's just kind of like got it pointed to the side like he's not looking at it it's turned perpendicularly to him and he's like pushing the button on it and i go and i'm like walking past him to go get water and i see that he's taking pictures of this woman who's standing there and uh I was like whoa and came back around and just like confirmed like that he like he took the pictures and then flipped the phone around to see if he got the photos and I could see that it was of this woman and I was like oh boy this might be bad so I went over to her and I said, do you know him? She was like, yeah.

And I was like, okay. He was just taking pictures. I'm sorry. And I walked away. I'm doing lifts and stuff. And as I'm working out in another section of the gym, I happen to catch eyes at this guy who is just glaring at me. Just like glaring. Like wants to kill me. They must know how reasonable of a reaction that is.

I thought so! They must obviously, like, if I'm that couple, I'm thinking, oh my god, he must have thought something terrible was happening. What a gentleman hero for stepping in. He's wrong. What a delightful misunderstanding. I don't think everybody's online as much as we are. And so, I think what he was was like trying to get a candidate of her yeah i was like this would be great to have for it out she looks great here and he was like trying

to take a picture of her and he's doing it surreptitiously because he didn't want her to be like posing for it yeah anyway he's staring daggers at me like i think that he wants to kill me and i kind of like give him a wave and he just shakes his head and i was like oh man so i carry my cast with me at the gym and i was like i gotta i have to approach him and i'm going to put my cast on so that he knows that i'm uh i'm a broken egg and so i put my cast on and i walk over to him and I was like, Hey man, I'm sorry. And it was clear that they had already talked about it. Cause he was like, it's okay. It's okay.

And I was like, I just wanted to make sure something weird wasn't going on. And he was like, what? And then he stopped himself. I was like, it's okay. And I don't know what he was going to say,

but then I looked over her and she was smiling. Like, wasn't this like, she was giving me the energy that I wanted. Like, uh, like that was very kind of you. Um the energy that i wanted like uh like that was very kind of you um i didn't realize in the moment i was just confused what you were doing

but now i'm like now we're all on the same page but he was never on the same page with us he was always like this motherfucker and i i like in my brain i was like he's either he's either thinking that i was trying to move in on her like this this is going to be my opening line was like, Hey, I'm going to save you from that creep over there. Or he thought that I thought he looked like the type of guy who would do that shit. And he was upset about that. Don't mope about that guy.

Well, I don't know. Like a hypothetical guy. Um, so I, I don't know what it was. The relationship is somewhat repaired. And part of the reason I also went up to him as the broken egg was like, this is a dude I've seen at the gym before.

So we've got a similar schedule. And I've never seen him with her before. But he's like a dude that he has cycled through there. And I was like, I'm going to have to run into this guy so frequently. Like I have to repair this somehow. So I went and just apologized to him. He did give me a fist bump. But at no point was he like, I understand it i understand it yeah no you were doing the right thing and uh and and then i was driving

home i was like why do i do that shit like what i always think that like i see some wrong in the world and i'm like ah i'll fix this and everyone will be happy and i try to fix it and everyone's like what the fuck i'm like oh okay i i gotta stop doing that i'm not a superhero i shouldn't be doing these things i almost uh i'm kind of charmed by what i assume is this guy's uh how naive he is because i can't say the the version of that word that i want naivete naivete naivete yeah uh i'm almost charmed by that because in my head, he assumes you're moving in on his girl because he can't, for the life of him,

imagine a world in which a creepy stranger would take pictures of a woman. Like to him, if anyone sees him like sneakily taking a photo, he'd think, yeah, obviously I'm taking a candid of my beautiful wife. What other reason could there be? Yeah, what a beautiful existence. He just lives in this amazing world.

I guess from his perspective, he just watched a guy. He was not near his wife. He was taking pictures of her from afar. And then a guy walked up to her, pointed at him. Ruined the photo. Yeah, and pointed at him. And what looked like him saying, yo, is that your man? Are you free? And she was like, that is. And I looked like him saying, yo, is that your man? Like, are you free?

And she was like, that is. And I was like, okay, cool. See ya. And he hated me from that point on. Like it was never going to come back around. And then they're driving home and she's like, he was just trying to do the right thing. He's a good guy. I was like, would a good guy just like take his cast on and off?

This is all liar. It's a known liar. So this jam all the time. I did go pick it yesterday without my cast among people who I had seen maybe twice in the past two weeks. And so they had seen the cast, but as far as they were concerned, the injury happened when they saw me because that was the first they were seeing of it. And then I wasn't wearing it. And one woman very accusatoratorily, was like, Oh, you don't wear it anymore?

Where's your cast? I was like, I fucking healed. What do you want? That's the thing that I've been bizarrely paranoid about, because I've been, again, toggling on and off between wearing this cast. And I have a friend staying with me now in the Airbnb, and I've mostly got it on, but I was so worried yesterday before my friend got here that someone in the apartment complex would see me without it

and then would see me with it, and then that person would be like, he's faking it. I don't know what he told you. He's fine. He doesn't need it. Yeah. But no one would do that

because the only kind of person who would step in to be a hero is you. You're not staying there. So I'm safe. I do such humiliating things, Dan. I will be on a run and I'll see someone with their dog pooping and no plan with a bag. They don't have a bag. They're not reaching into something as the dog is going to the bathroom or anything. And I will stop my run to make sure, far enough away that they're not watching me,

but far enough away that I make sure that they are picking up their shit. If they don't, I don't have a plan. Okay, good. My plan could be then, like, go up to them and be like, hey, you need to go clean that up. Or I just, like, keep running and I'm like, ah, that person's on the list of somebody who has done something wrong in my brain. Yeah, I mean, you can go to hell on that. We don't always have bags. Yeah.

You run out and you, and, and, and, or sometimes your dog goes more times than you expect and there's nothing you can do. And, and, you know, this wasn't the plan, but you look at it and it's like, this is. It's going to stay. It's going to stay. And I feel really bad about that. I'm not going to come back here and clean it up. I think that's what I want.

I want to see the, I will always, like... If I don't have a bag, I will do the entire mime thing of like, good boy, time to... Do I have any? And now I'm due at the hospital. Jackson, we got to run home so we can come back and bring with a bag. I'm going to put a pin in this location so I know

where it is. I want to see that. I want to somebody like doing the pageantry yeah so that i can be like uh we all run into those problems what i don't like is part of the reason is that there was a batch of grass at my son's previous preschool now my daughter's preschool uh the patch of grass in front of it and this guy would take his dog over there from the apartment across the street every day let his dog shit there and then leave and so there's like shit all over it and i would see him doing every once in a while and i would get mad at him and he was the type of person who wasn't like gonna get mad back he was like uh okay um i'll see if i can find a bag yeah but he would you know he wasn't actually doing that but i could still be like hey hey clean that up and he would be like oh oh and he looks startled enough that i was like well that's all i wanted

like that my that that scratched the soul itch for me just superman yelling at a robber you better not yeah i told him not to i realize i do the same thing with my children we're like if i see that they're gonna they're doing something dangerous i won't stop them from doing it but I'll be like don't uh like you could get hurt like watch your head watch your head for this and that feels like enough so like when they actually do it then and they get hurt then I

am mad at them like I just told you gave you every opportunity I didn't stop you but I was like I know it could happen and I'm'm going to just warn you against that. It's like you can't lose, because if they get it right, then great. If they don't get it right, I was still right. It's not fair. It's not fair to them.

Should we start this show? Yeah, are you doing all right? Yeah, am I manic? A little bit, yeah. We can tell them you were late today. We were totally fine. We were having a great conversation about stuff. I was late.

I don't know if that's the only reason. I don't know why I'm this late. Okay, yeah. No, it's good. It's a good energy now that we're filming. It's a good energy to... Yeah. Do you want to start the show?

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to try and just tone it down a little. No, no. I shouldn't have even gotten your head. I want to get out of your way and see what happens. This is actually a good topic. Musical instruments around.

Let's see where he goes. This is a good topic for this. Oh, I wonder if that's tuned down. I could play some really cool, some really cool old Victor Wooten song. That's tuned down to a drop D. Okay. When you're going to, first of all, let me me just start by saying how dare you and how do you sleep at night those are my questions great uh how how do you sleep at night how do you sleep

at night daniel um what i mean let me explain by that i i mean like how do you go to sleep because so many people i think have trouble going to sleep at night yes they just they go and get into bed and they lie awake and you feels like after decades of having done it, you should know. And there was a book when I was reading when I was younger called The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. And in it, there's a scientist who gets hauled off

to this place before they even show him what has happened and what the issue of the book is. And they're like, just get some sleep because it's going to be a busy day tomorrow. And he, in the book, Michael Crichtine just says that he uses an old trick he learned to fall asleep and i was like michael what's what's the fucking trick what is the trick to falling asleep um and so i think about that all the time like is there a trick that you can use to just fall asleep and i think that i might have one okay but i do want to hear what you're like

what you do to fall asleep and how do you like keep out like intrusive thoughts while you're trying to go to sleep um it's a great question uh because i used to struggle with sleep a whole lot and and really wanted to reverse that and the first thing first very obvious thing is just completely not completely severely reduce my caffeine intake. So there's no caffeine coming in after 10, 30, 11. Oh, wow. I'll do my... Wait, at night? In the morning.

Okay, good. I also work very hard to keep very busy and active, which has been tough with the foot, but keep very busy and active and which has been tough with the foot, but like keep very busy and active and do lots of stuff throughout the day. And to make sure that by the time it's bedtime, I'm tired. Uh, keeping a schedule has been very, very helpful where it's like nine 30 is when I start getting ready for bed. I don't have any kids to take care of. So it was very easy for me to just be like all right it's 9 30 it is time for me to if i'm not asleep be in bed because now it's it's it's time for bed uh if i

and usually like i'm i'm ready for sleep at that point because of ritual because i get up early don't have too much caffeine i do a lot of stuff during the day and i keep to my schedule if i'm really having trouble, like the most severe amount of trouble where I was like, I've been laying in my bed with my eyes closed for an hour and a half, two hours, and I can't get to sleep,

I will take two melatonin gummies. Okay. And they will put me to sleep. They're not great at keeping me asleep, but they can get the process started. Interesting. And the other thing I've learned that is helpful for me, which i don't have with me in la which has been frustrating sleep mask really uh-huh wait but isn't that you just feel it throughout the night wouldn't you

do you don't you don't want to like take it off and like rub your forehead and your cheeks not once not one second hmm okay so drugs is some of the answer yeah sometimes uh as always and uh the other thing i do before drugs is uh i will count i count not necessarily sheep but i count uh breathe in on an odd number breathe out on an even number and just do that until about 300 or i'll set a goal for myself it's usually 300 because 300 seconds is five minutes or, uh, no, what is seven minutes, 500 seconds. Oh, you, you're asking Sarn Bui. Let's say for example, that seven minutes is 500 seconds. I read something somewhere, uh, and it could be bullshit and I could be misconstruing it, but it says it takes the average person seven minutes

to fall asleep. And so I started doing, I'm going to count to 500 uh i'm gonna just like set a goal of 500 and i'm gonna count to it and i'm gonna focus on each breath as i'm counting them like the in on odds out on evens is a good way to just like to focus on one thing to hyper focus on it and that uh is very i think that's probably the same logic behind counting sheep where you're just like doing one thing. And our friend and former coworker, Sean Riley, Sean baby does the same thing when he's trying to get to sleep, not necessarily counting, but like focus on one thing, have one thought over and over again that you're trying like one story or one thing, just like one thing that you're focusing on. And then you can start to feel when you're going to sleep. Like when I start to lose count, then I'm like, all right, I got to get back on track.

But this is how I know that I'm, that it's working and I am falling asleep and the numbers start to fall away. And eventually you're just, you're out, buddy. It may, we'll speak to my freneticism today that when you were telling me that you out on the, out on evens, uh, in on odds or whatever, I was half listening. the out on evens uh in on odds or whatever i was half listening um that i was like god that's a lot of fast breathing because i can count one two three four five six it's like oh he's he's breathing different he's counting slower yeah that's how i get that that medical grade perfect resting heart rate, baby!

It is interesting to me that you say that you count. Because how often do you make it all the way to 300 or 600 or whatever? Almost never. Right. It's the same when I had surgery on my eyelid in like 4th or 5th grade. They're putting you to sleep with a thing.

And you get really nervous that they're gonna, cause they're ready to go. They sleep with a thing yeah and you get really nervous that they're gonna because they're they're they're ready to go they've got their things and you're really nervous that you're not gonna be asleep in time that's everyone's fear uh especially in fourth grade and the doctor's like just start because i was like i'm nervous about this and they're like count back from 10 to 1 and if you're still awake by 1 give us a signal and we'll we'll we'll take you out of this and i was like i. And I was like, I was very much like, I'm going to make it to one just to prove your ass wrong. I'm going to do it.

I'm going to make it to one. And I was out by like seven or whatever it was. And can you, in your, I know this is a hard ask, but when you're counting, there are other thoughts happening in your head. Can you remember that you are thinking about other things or does it just seem like the numbers are all that there is? Mostly the numbers are all that there is. Okay. And I feel like I'm coming away from this

sounding very healthy and on top of things. Yeah, absolutely. I was so bad at falling asleep for the longest time. It took me a while, and two years of meditation has been incredibly helpful because meditation uh twice daily transcendental meditation that i do is 20 minutes twice a day of just closing your eyes and repeating the same mantra over and over again for that entire 20 minutes and if you lose it you come back to the mantra yeah so at this point i'm i'm pretty well trained at focusing on a thing and

blocking out intrusive thoughts. Interesting. It takes work. So if you start thinking about something that you don't want to be thinking about, or that's like occupying too much of your attention and keeping you awake, you just go back to a mantra and it wipes it away. So I'm doing something very similar that I didn't realize was like a meditation thing. It's a fight club.

I'm fighting until someone knocks me out. 9.30 PM every night. And then I am asleep. I don't even put my fists up. I just wait to get hit. And then I am asleep. I, and I,

I've tried to get my son to do this too. Cause he has very, as kids, like you can't control your thoughts at all. And so he's like thinking about something bad. He has visions. He has visions of a crystal in a cave. It's a big crystal.

He doesn't know what it can do, but he knows it's very powerful and he's afraid of it. And I'm like, is this a nightmare? And he's like, no. He can just see it. Well, don't. I mean, follow the boy.

Oh, I do. Go into the cave. It's fun where I'm like, how big is it? He's like, it's as big as me. I'm like, what color is it? He's like, it glows kind of like a white green. And I was like, this is great. This is all really good stuff.

Hold on, hold on. Yeah. And I'm like, how long is the cave? How far into the cave is it? Is there water around it? Because he has answers for all of these things. So he's like seeing it. It's probably real then.

And it's the the most remarkable thing i don't want to derail us too much but like the most remarkable thing is that he's got he he's afraid of hit because he knows that it can do something but he doesn't know what it is this is so cool and uh yeah so we talk a lot about the crystal, but he, at night he'll be like, I'm thinking about it again. And I'll be like, okay, this is what I do. I think about if I'm having thoughts that I don't want to be having when I'm trying to go to bed and that like, I'm just getting hung up on the day or whatever it is. I visualize myself putting it, it being on a sheet, putting it in a manila envelope and then mailing it off. And like, if I then am like, those thoughts come back, I just do the same thing again. I put them in the manila envelope and then mailing it off and like if i then i'm like those thoughts come back i just do the same thing again i put them in the manila envelope is that a real thing you do or is that lies we tell our children no that's the thing i do oh cool i imagine it's not really like mailing it off but i do have like i remember from high school we had these boxes that you could like teachers could give you papers back in them and stuff i would just put it away in my

box because i know i'm going to keep checking that later so it's never going to get lost but like i was like i don't have i will deal with this i'll think about it but i'm just going to keep it in my box for now so like i will put it in a manila envelope close it up seal it like get those little metal tabs down yeah of course and i will put it in that box and if those thoughts show up again for me i do the exact same thing that's good that you're just putting it in a box and not mailing it away because my thing is i never, I never have stamps. So that would be very stressful. I would do the whole process in the dream. It's like, Oh fuck. Oh, uh, maybe I'll go to Ralph's more places should sell stamps. I ran into the hang up with him because he doesn't have, he doesn't know what the box is. And so I was like, just put it in an envelope and mail it off. He's like, how am I

going to write an address? I was like, Oh, right. Um, okay. These are pre there's a, there's an address already on there. It's all set. And he's like, don't you need money to send stuff? And I was like, okay, we're getting off track. Like, don't worry about any of that. I've taken care of the manila envelopes. Just mail it. All your only job is to like put this away and mail it away. So it's not in your hands anymore. And so I'm like, I was like giving him that. And so he does use that use that now good which i think is very similar to having maybe a mantra where it's just like whatever you're thinking about you just have to have something so polished in your brain whether it's like a mantra or it's like this one thought process of like now i slide it in now i shut it now i fold down the tabs now i put it here that like erases the other stuff. Yeah. So that's like how I get rid of those thoughts.

But I'm very curious to hear about the counting because when you're falling asleep, you're actually I think that you're having two different thought processes at once. Yeah. Like do you like a chameleon can see 360 degrees and it can move its eyes in independent direction so it can see two different things at once. Yeah. 360 degrees and it can move its eyes in independent directions. So it can see two different things at once. And I feel like we can do that with our minds that like with our brain where we're actually thinking about two different things at once, as long as like the baseline thing is something that's so easy to think about that it never is a problem. And then as those two things like start to diverge, that's where you fall asleep. Um, and so if you have something like counting sheep or you're just counting a number, or some people say that they close their eyes and they imagine each part of their body slowly falling asleep. So their toes relax, their balls of their feet relax, their heels.

And like they move all the way up. Sorry, I thought you went straight from toes to balls for a second. Yeah, you're hitting all the big ones. That's right. The balls of the feet because all feet are male. And so they have testicles. And just like and so you have like a very baseline thing that is practiced or that you're good at. And then on top of that, you're just having the other current of thoughts, which would be happening anyway.

But because you have the baseline one, you're not hyper-focused on like, oh, I really shouldn't have told that guy's girlfriend that he was taking pictures of her. And that's keeping you awake it's like you have like the same way like with athletes they say that when you get to the free throw line you hum a song because it helps calm you down and you just your your muscles then just know the practice motion already and all it's doing is like keeping you out of your head it's like if you have a song it that bare minimum is like keeping you uh away from being too hyper focused that you can't actually do the task at hand and i feel like the same is true of sleep where you you have something that you for me i just close my eyes and i just let a run of like images appear yeah it doesn't matter what i'm not trying to hold on to any of them it's just like a run of images sometimes it's animation sometimes it's like

it's stuff that I saw that day it really feels like snapshots I'm not really it's not like I'm watching a show or anything and there's no narrative to it at all it's just this and then on top of that I'm having still those thoughts but I can like you start to like you'll catch yourself every once in a while like when you say you have to get back on track

where you're like oh I was really just thinking about two things at once right there. Yeah. And like, and then you start to like feel them kind of like diverge from each other a little bit more. And that's where I feel like I fall asleep. Yeah.

Um, and so I try and just do that. I just let those, that stuff run. The other thoughts continue. And then I just go to sleep. Do you ever do it with a memory that you know really well? Oh,

that's interesting. Yeah, I do. I've done that. There, there are some, uh, the entire process for me of getting hired last week tonight uh not the not like the interview process or the application process but um this was a job that i wanted for so long and i was unemployed at the

time so i really wanted any job but specifically this this as a dream job, the parade of like telling people that I got it, like the phone call that I got to make to my mom and dad when, I didn't tell them when I applied for the job because I was so superstitious about it that I don't think I told them until it was like two rounds in and I was going to fly to New York for an interview. But like the act of telling them about this process and then getting the email from my EP that I was hired and then the round of phone calls, like calling my parents and telling them I got the job and coming back to new york calling my brother uh david who was i knew he was at work but like he knew like to expect some kind of call and like so i could hear him like whispering in the hallway calling my brother tommy uh i texted you and then

you called me and i talked to you about it because you were one of my references to get this job even though i don't think they called you no no uh talking to ben joseph who was the person who like put me up for this job and then like the rest of that day grabbing lunch with my friend Nick grabbing dinner with Caitlin and Brian and just like reliving the memory of this day it's I picked this one because it's one I know super well and it's it's always like a fun thing to revisit and if I don't feel like counting one night and I just want to like let me just like play this scene again. Let me like go through this,

this great, this wonderful Tuesday that I had again and like replay it a few times. The way you're like rewatching an old family video. It does help wipe out anything else. It's like, it is a street cleaner basically for your brain where you're like, you have a good memory. You can get rid of everything else that's going on.

And then you're like, you have blank slate. can get rid of everything else that's going on and then you're like you have blank slate i feel like that's true um i i also think that there's something to your thoughts where you're capable of accepting information like um of receiving uh thoughts and and and not really thoughts like things in front of you that are presented with that and thinking about something else at the same time, but you're not as good at like, as giving out those thoughts. Like if I have to speak to you right now, I had to think exclusively about that. I'm kind of like two steps ahead. Cause I can, I know what the next word is that I'm going to say. But for the most part, you're just focused on like what you're about to say. But when you're getting information

from somebody, you can be having having you can be upset absorbing what they're saying and dealing with like me sometimes even like two other things so it's like if you counted in your head right now to do what you thought was a minute like you did seconds you could listen to me continue to talk to you you're upset you're absorbing everything that i'm saying to you but you would also be able to keep that count going yeah which is like a really cool thing you i don't think you can do it while you're talking to somebody and trying to count at the same time. That's true. The entire time you were talking, I was listening to you and counting for a little while and also thinking about lunch.

That was, I'm going to say, the main part of what's been happening in my brain for the last two and a half minutes, however long you've been talking. But now I'm just talking. You can't do it. Yeah. I just need to say other words, however long you've been talking. But now I'm just talking. And I'm, and I, and I, yeah, there's, there's, I just need to say other words and I'm barely doing that. Yeah, like you're receptive and you're expressive are the completely different. Expressive takes all of your energy

and receptive, you only need like half. So like when you are closing your eyes and you're thinking about that moment from your past, or you're thinking about just something very simple like sheep jumping over a fence, the quintessential thing. That is so easy because you're receiving just this thing

that you already know what it's going to be. There's no surprises. And then you get to think on top of that. But the minute you are focused on something like something you have to take care of, you're planning and you're like, that feels more expressive. Like you're like, okay, well, I have to, I should write that check. Now I got to find the checkbook.

I don't even know if that's expired. Do checks expire? Like all that stuff. Like you're. I gave all my stamps to Ronan in his dream. Fuck. And so I feel like that's where really where you end up staying awake is that you are focused on something and you just have to unfocus basically like unfocus your eyes and then you will fall asleep. Yeah.

But I also I've never tried melatonin. I've heard great things. I know a lot of people who give their children melatonin and I think that maybe this sounds judgmental. I feel like maybe don't start that way. Like don't start with the drugs. Like try to give them other strategies first. I don't use them every night by any means. They're really like a break-in-case-of-emergency kind of thing.

I think that's why they're effective for me because I don't build up tolerance or anything. But I tried other stuff before, like NyQuil or Z-Quil. Those haven't worked on me. And I had a doctor prescribe Valerian, which... A Valerian root? Is that...

Yes. Yeah. God, why did I think it was like a Game of Thrones thing? It is. It's both. Oh, okay. They're spelled different. Okay.

But when the doctor was like, hey, you're so stressed. And I was like, yeah, what should I do about stress? I'm like, try Valerian. I'm like, yeah. A should I do about stress? I'm like, try Valerian. I'm like, yeah, a purpose. Valerian steel. I'll slay my enemies and then I'll sleep like a king.

And did that work? It didn't work, no. The only thing that's worked was melatonin that my mom, who is a medical professional, recommended. Yeah. was melatonin that uh my mom who was a medical professional recommended yeah and it's an uh it was great to have like camping where none of your like when you're in a tent camping like backpacking kind of thing not in the backyard that's a really helpful thing where you know you're not going to get a great night's sleep uh you're mostly just resting your body and your eyes as much as possible uh but then pop in some melatonin and it's a little bit nicer.

I bet that. Because certainly with camping, it's really tough. Yeah. When you're in a new environment, it would be nice to have a shortcut. I did. So I had a lung infection at one point and I got codeine for that. And codeine was very much a shortcut to falling asleep. I was like, oh, it could be so much easier.

Codeine is like a fullon serious painkiller? What is codian? Yeah. And it's also one that makes you deeply drowsy. And so I would take that right before I go to bed. And then it was even fun to try and fight it because it didn't matter at that point. It was just this wave that would take you.

And so you could do whatever you wanted. So just trying to stay awake on codian was its own little fun game. What side of the bed do you sleep on? Great question, Daniel. Always the same side. Even when I'm on vacation or I'm somewhere. We went to a wedding recently.

My wife was not there. I'm still on the correct side. I sleep on, if you're looking at the bed, I'm on the right. If you're at the foot of the bed and you're looking at it, i'm on the right like if you're at the foot of the bed and you're looking at it i'm on the right what about you i'm trying to figure it out now because i've slept in several different beds this year because i've done so much traveling and i had come to the conclusion that i sleep on the side closest to the door to get in okay that had been yeah what i thought i was doing uh and then this airbnb that i'm staying in i'm not on the door side i'm on the left side and i'm trying to think like when you're looking at the bed on the left side

yeah so i'm thinking okay so am i like am i a left side sleeper and is it just that coincidentally that's the side that's been near the door no the last house i had before my current place i was right side closest to the door so so there's no pattern to it oh but i do definitely have a side that feels correct to me i do love that you sleep even when you sleep alone that you sleep closest to the door yeah because it it to me just means like if i'm gonna be killed by a serial killer let's just get it over with yeah like let's not let's not give him extra work to do no and it seems like it's gonna be embarrassing to run in and what's he gonna climb over the bed yeah what's he gonna do that knee thing where you have to like walk on your knees over the all of it um i sleep specifically on my side because because i am a snorer and i don't snore

in one very specific position which is if i'm lying on my left side on a pillow i will not snore yeah and so uh that's also if i'm facing left i can face towards like nice stand and like away from my wife because when i'm facing towards her, then we're breathing in each other's faces and I hate that. And so the question that I'm wondering, and I think a lot of our listeners and viewers are probably wondering, is that,

is there a chance that it's perhaps even more like Snorrin' Bowie? The show is Quick Question, but you knew that already You can find me on Twitter at D-O-B-U-N-S-C You can find Soren

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The end. Yeah. Yeah. Enter. Yeah. I would push enter. Enter. All right.

Bye. Bye. Bye. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? Was it awkward? Worded over? Got a reason? Oh forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here

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