Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The Bad (Luck) Boyz of Podcasting

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

In a very special episode of QQ the guys talk about their no good gad dum bad injury luck the last few weeks.  And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks Raycon!.  For a limited time, go To buyraycon.com/qq for 15% off your entire Raycon order.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, 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 favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up to? Where did all that go?? 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. I think you'll have a great time here. So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where our two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I'm one half of that podcast, senior writer for Last Week's Night with John Oliver, author of the book How to Fight Presidents, Daniel O'Brien. But today I've got something in common with my co-host, because today, buddy, we're both sore.

I'm sore. My back hurts. You're sore and buoy. Sore and say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm sore. I'm Daniel's co-host, and that is the only thing that we share in common, it turns out. Hey, Dan. What's that? I'm Daniel's co-host and that is the only thing that we share in common, it turns out. Hey, Dan. What's that? My mom calls me sore and it didn't even occur to me until just now how much I hate that nickname. I feel like I've heard your wife use that nickname before, but no one else in our shared lives ever call you sore no i wouldn't allow it my mom i guess it's possible that my wife has done it uh a couple times i she can call me whatever she wants but yeah i i remember as a child my mom air was my

brother because he's eric and sore which which also have like a weird symmetry to them. Yeah. But I always thought of it in terms of S-O-A-R. And it wasn't until this exact moment that I even considered that it was an S-O-R-E. I think we've talked about nicknames before and how you are just blessed with a name that does not want to be nicknamed like no one ever i think maybe katie willard tried to get sorbu to stick but uh it didn't take and no one really had any interest because we were a big uh a bunch of nickname heads over at crack yeah absolutely uh it was just never discussed what do we need to call Soren?

Because Soren is such a great name. And without even asking you, I never thought Soren is going to be jealous if we don't give him a nickname too. Everyone's got nicknames. No, no, no, no, no. He's fine. Yeah, I don't need a nickname. It's fine. Thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question.

For premium audio at the perfect price point, you've got to go with Raycon. Go to buyraycon.com slash QQ today to get 15% off your Raycon order. So I was watching The Menu recently and you may not know it because you don't watch movies with subtitles, maybe, or when you

go see movies in theaters and they don't have them there. There's a character in that named Soren. No one ever says his name. He's one of the shitheads he's one of the um the finance three yeah he's one of the finance bros he's the finance bro that tries to escape in the boat his name throughout it is soren huh and that like i defy you to find within the last 10 or 15 years a character in a show or a movie or anything named Soren who's not kind of bro-y and kind of a big – who's an after-hours character. Yeah. Which makes me think, did I do that? I mean, it's a wonderful life where I get to go through and see what happens in pop culture as a medium and whether people are using that name or not and how they're using it.

Yeah, that would be a really great investigation for a future episode of this show. There's no way to know. Oh, man, unless I could just go to every single, the people who rate these things, go to them and be like hey no you know you're allowed to use it it's a it's a name anybody could use did did you ever see after hours where did you we're like right why is this name synonymous in the same way that like chad is synonymous with that yeah kind of thing like why is soren now in that that camp because it doesn't feel like that type of name unless you've been inundated with a character who's exactly like that. It's, I mean, it's entirely possible.

I don't want to speak for the writer of that film, Will Tracy. He was at Succession now. Before that, he was at Last Week Tonight. I took his job at Last Week Tonight when he left for Succession. Before Last Week Tonight, he was at The Onion. So it's entirely possible when we were all oh my making internet stuff at the same time and he was looking at the competition saw after hours thought this isn't for me i don't care for it but soren i'm gonna jot that down in my brain notes

as like that's that's a a name i don't hear a lot that i i can pull if i am one day writing a satire about fancy people. I hope that that's true. And we really do have an access point now. I didn't realize that you were that close to him. Yeah, I mean, we didn't get to work together at the exact same time, but you met him with me at the WGAs, or at the fucking Emmys at the HBO party. It's too many awards to keep track of.

I know. Which, which award show did I take you to? So I'm having a hard time remembering all the ones that we've stacked up. All right. Well, I don't remember him. I'm sorry.

Maybe if I saw his face. But yeah, I'd also like to find out early on in this podcast. It's very early days. There was a show that I discovered like the Dragon King or something like that, that was on Netflix where there was a character like that. There's a, whatever Seth Rogen's young, young child version of super bad was that came out. Do you remember those like little kids that were like middle school kids? Yeah. Was it's good boys or something like that yeah and there was they're all trying to get to Soren's party oh it's it's it's

coming up man that name is showing up a lot now and I'd like to think I'm at least somewhat responsible for that yeah for sure we know at least one married couple of strangers named their child after you. Yeah, it was a really haunting experience when we met them. It was really bizarre. I know some people also named their pets, which I don't particularly care for. A fan will be like, I named my cat Soren. I'm like, well, don't.

Save it for a baby. Save it for somebody. Save it for somebody who's going to be around for a while. Yeah. I very briefly wanted to do this bit when I first got my dog Jackson. When anytime I introduced someone to him, I was like, listen, his name. I don't want you to think anything into this. I just like the name so much.

It's Sorin. But again, it's just like I went through my list and read nothing into that. And I was going to do that with everybody that I like. Oh, yeah, it's please. It's Swaim. And it's just like it's an easy dog name. I won't get him confused with other dogs at the dog park.

It's just if it really bothers you, I'll change it. But I mean, he's got the tags but i didn't i got too too excited to just start screaming jackson over and over again there is a friend from college actually two they got married uh years after college but then they had a baby and we knew they were pregnant we saw them when they were pregnant a few times then i got an announcement that said please welcome to the world soren edward and then the baby's last name and obviously i don't have ownership over that name but it is a rare enough name that you should i'm just check in just be like hey we're gonna name our kids soren so i can be like all

right cool i'm prepared for that yeah especially when it's it's like a couple that you know like people were like all right so i know where you got this name from i know why it was on your radar yeah you could just come to me it's not going to be an awkward conversation that's fine i don't it's not i know that it's not that you think highly of me i had to pick baby names too you just pick the ones that you like the most and that's fine thorn's a cool name i agree um anyway i try to do that with my children. Thorn's a cool name. I agree. Anyway, I try to do that with my children as well. I had a unique name growing up, a name that defied nickname and that also felt like a really cool

but not like a crazy name. It was cool and different, but it wasn't so unique that everyone would be like, did your parents just make that up? It feels like, oh no, this has been around. It's just, we lost track of it somewhere. Yeah. It has more history to it.

It doesn't, it doesn't smack of like a modern asshole name. Right. Certainly. It's like, oh, his parents weren't trying to be cute or anything like that. Like there's a, there's some kind of weight to that name from. Yeah. It's not like a J-fin or something like that. So I, I was like i want

to i liked that i liked that growing up and i liked when people would hear my name and then they would automatically remember it because they're like oh that's interesting and so i was like i want to try and get that for my kids and i remember coming up with my son's name which is ronan and being like my wife and i were really landing on that and being like this is a cool this is a fun name uh we, we liked what it meant. We liked that. It meant little seal. We thought that was very adorable.

And we came to my mom with it. We're like, we're thinking of naming our child Ronan. She, and she, there was a long silence. And then she goes, well,

you'll think, you'll think of a lot of names. Wow. Yeah. I know. What a bold thing to, to go on record. Oh, if I can say, if I can give a PSA real quick,

if you're having a child and you've come up with a name for that baby while the baby is still in the womb, you could tell your friends, you could tell coworkers because they're going to give you the answer you want. They understand the game. They know that no matter what you say, they're going to go, that is, oh, that is such a good name.

I wish I had thought of that. That's the right answer. Your parents will never give you that. And in fact, whatever your parents say is going to be deeply insulting. Don't ever tell them. Don't ever tell your parents the name until the baby is born. I guarantee it will be bad. And the PSA on the other side of this conversation is your friends and coworkers who are so supportive and give you exactly what you need. Don't worry. they're not weird. Behind your back, they're talking about it if they don't like your name with the other friends. They'll talk about it with people who don't even know you.

There's a text thread that just says that name and then there's laughter after it. It's almost spring and this time of year, people are talking about making changes which is all well and good. I am changing around my diet a lot because I realized I've been cooking too much pasta. I know there's no such thing as medically as too much pasta but if you saw the amount of pasta I was making you would agree it's too much i've actually found

that small changes to my routine like that can make the biggest impact because when i'm not making pasta three or four nights a week that means i'm not making leftover pasta for lunch that means i'm branching out and trying new things with my food just a small small change to make my life better. In the same way, you don't have to break the bank to make a big deal purchase. Even the smallest things can be a part of a big change. It was something you use every day, like me and my Raycons. And yeah, Raycons start at half the price of other premium audio brands. Go to buyraycon.com slash QQ today to get 50% off your Raycon order. I use my Raycons every day of the week. I run with them because I had an old competitor brand of audio listening equipment

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buyraycon.com slash qq today to get 15% off your Raycon order. That's buyraycon.com qq today to get 15 off your raycon order that's buyraycon.com qq to score 15 off so anyway i'm sorry i derailed everything talking about myself daniel why are you sore buddy i hurt my back i'm i'm i i don't want to spend too much time on it because i know the last episode was the i broke my toe episode and i think a couple episodes in a row of us being sick and i'm so being sick let's be honest so aware of this turning into like the old man complaint podcast hour that we round up to an hour because we get cursed somehow we sound like some fucking eeyores yeah i i hadn't really put all that together but yeah when you step back and look at the big picture the the devastation that has befalled both of us yeah we fall in both of us is really

pretty pathetic yeah this was i my my best guest is last Friday. I, this is going to, this, this, this story may or may not make me seem cool because on the one hand I'm doing a nice thing, but on the other hand, it destroyed me for days. But I, they were looking for extra hands and arms for the food pantry that I volunteer with on Friday. For people to eat? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah eat? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Handy snacks, you know? And I was on Outline,

so I didn't need to be in front of a computer for meetings. I was like, yeah, I can give up a morning to do this thing. I'm usually there every Monday, but they needed people on Friday, and so I got to just go and see a different crew. I like to see who else works at the pantry. And the first thing oh the only thing i do with these is like moving boxes around and stocking things that's exactly

the the job that i want to do there is just march back and forth and like stock the shelves when we're running low on stuff and grab stuff from the basement bring it to the kitchen etc moving boxes was a fine enough explanation you're the resident hauler yeah and my first task was bringing up like a milk crate that was full of bags of white rice up the stairs and it was i i just gotta i don't know if you've ever had to to carry a milk crate that was absolutely like like overflowing with white rice it adds up i don't know how much it weighed but the the weight adds up and I wasn't like I didn't need to stop on my path up the stairs but I certainly midway up the stairs was like this was probably too much weight to be doing this and I

just I just jumped right in because it was the the first task assigned to me and I... I didn't want... I'm the... I'm called in for my strength, Soren. So I didn't want my first task to be like, well, let me take some of the rice out of this box and do it in two trips. I want to just be like, yeah, get point at the thing that you need moved and I'll move it. So I did that and I just recognized it being heavy, but then like continued about my, my day and my life.

And it didn't really like feel any pain until two days later, Sunday morning, woke up and it was just no good. Yeah. Yeah. You're, I mean,

you're the Louisa, Louisa Madrigal of that, that Encanto. Yeah. Right. You're like, you're the one who's like, Hey man,

great work. When did that movie come out? Was it week ago because i've seen it my friends i've seen in kanto um i know that feeling i know that feeling where you like you're first of all everyone's like well you do it because the subtext is you're the strongest and you're like yes and then you go pick something up and the minute that it's up you're so surprised that you got it up that you're like and now i can hold it forever and this is good like i got it up that's the hard part but then to walk with it and going upstairs i think like that's a a type of weight carrying that i am never doing. I'm never going upstairs, like holding with my arms fully extended down, holding weight that way. It's going to be fine. I've been doing ice and heat and laying on my back. When you're carrying something like that and you don't immediately feel like a tweak,

where you go, oh, what was that? Which would be a pulled muscle, which means that like, you know, exactly your window of healing time. You've got like two to three weeks on that. But if you do some damage and you don't feel it right away, and then all of a sudden it like it takes a while and then you start to feel it. That's like, that's spine shit, man. Now, now I'm going to be fine tomorrow. That's like numbered discs.

You know what I mean? Yeah. You're like your C3 or whatever, where now that stuff, I have no idea on timeframe on how long that kind of stuff takes to heal. I think it'll be another day. We had a friend who we played football at. Was it your joint birthday? Yeah.

I think it was, yeah. And he, on one of the first plays, felt like a little tweak in his knee, but not like a serious thing. He just was like what you would feel any old day where you're like, oh, I haven't used my knees in a couple minutes. And then days later, it turned out that he had torn

his anterior cruciate or whatever in his knee. And if he ever wanted to play a real sport again he'd need surgery yeah we did this this very strange very fun uh tradition because there were three of us pals uh guys that you knew from college that i glommed on to as my friends when i moved out there and our birthdays were all within one day of each other and rather than like throw birthdays for ourselves and get that kind of attention it was always like all right the three of us with our shared and separate group of friends we're gonna do a joint birthday thing every year and we were doing this into like late 20s and early 30s with other 30 year old dudes and there was always like a nighttime drinking

component to things like a normal party but in the day we were like no we're gonna we're gonna play we're gonna go to an indoor trampoline place and play dodgeball on trampolines or we're gonna we rented out a college football field and we're gonna play like real football with each other terrible thing to do. Fantastic idea. We had a ref. It was like sanctioned. Yeah, it was cool. It was super, it's a super cool idea

until you're 20 guys in your mid-30s realizing, oh, you know, I haven't actually used any of my football muscles in quite a while. Like there was, I think Cody had the worst injury, the one that you're telling about that tear, but none of us came out unscathed from that thing. No. It was really...

No, I didn't. Remember, I got injured almost immediately. I pulled my calf and then had to play quarterback the rest of the time because I couldn't run. It was really demoralizing to have that happen. It made me realize that I always thought, oh, if I couldn't, I couldn't run. Um, it was really demoralizing to have that happen. It made me realize that I always thought, Oh, if I don't want such a step down to be the leader of the team, but there's no glory. I don't get to score the touchdown. I have all these touchdown

dances planned and I don't get to do any of them. No, we lost miserably. I think, I think you guys trounced us, but, um, in fact, I know you did, even though it was years ago. I have a memory of it. I felt terrible after that game. And it made me think, well, I used to think if I didn't have this job, I would be leading wilderness trips or I would do something that was more active. I would be outdoors and I would be, even if it's, you know, clearing rocks, landscaping, like there'd be something, an outdoor component to my work. And then after that, I was like, who am I kidding? I've been so soft and squishy at a desk for so long that if I had a

job like that, the minute you get hurt, you don't just, you're not just like, all right, well, I'll take a break for a while. I won't work for two weeks. You got to keep working. And then the injury just gets worse and worse and worse because you're not nursing it. And so like the minute I get hurt in a job where I'm working for the national parks or whatever, I would be like, okay, well, let me just go home for like a month and just rehab this. They're like, no, that's not how jobs work. Let's get the, let's get the helicopter cuz I hurt my knee here in the woods so chopper me on out of here they get that get that for me yeah okay well Dan I I don't know if this is like helpful to you but I'd like

to commiserate for a second do it because I woke up the other day and my arm, my right arm was in so much pain and I couldn't figure out why. And like I started to like try and move it around, you know, you're trying to isolate and pinpoint where exactly it's happening. And found it was, it really originated like in my back, right behind the shoulder shoulder blade in the back of the shoulder blade and then every movement that i was making was like shooting pain out of my arm and i was like what the fuck is this like well how did i wake up like this and then i realized what it was which is i overdid it cutting a tree up i we had as you know torrential storms in los angeles recently unprecedented storms oh yeah we got some crazy wind too and two of my trees fell down in my yard one of them fell

on my house so i was like out there in the rain like chopping up this tree with just a handsaw trying to get it off of the house. How's your fucking house? It's okay. It's fine. I wanted it off so that I could see what the damage was and also so that the wind wouldn't do any more damage. I think the gutter is a little fucked where it fell, but the house itself seems fine.

It fell kind of onto an awning or like a section of roof that's down below onto a porch. Even if there was some damage there, that's not imperative that I fix it right away because all it does is it would leak onto the porch. But I can see some damage to the gutter. But yeah, so I was like,

I was trying to cut that up in the storm. And it's very hard with a handsaw to cut wet wood, first of all, especially wood that's above you because you're like cutting at an angle and it gets all weird. But I finally got that all done. And then the next day I was like, I need that off. I need that out of here. We have a window of time where it's not raining. I don't want this in the yard. I don't want it pulling at the tree. It's like half of a tree, basically. There's these ficuses that grow up 30 or 40 feet and it's split down the middle of this trunk. So half the ficus is

still there. And then another half fell. So I was like, I'm going to get this cleaned up as fast as possible because I don't want pulling down the other one. And I just spent the, maybe like three hours cutting it up in cutting it up. I took it into my alley and realized that I have a giant bird of paradise tree that also fell backwards out into the alley. So I was like, well, I might as well chop that up too, man. It wasn't until the alley. So I was like, well, I might as well chop that up too. Man, it wasn't until the very end where I was like, it would have been way easier if I just dragged my table saw here or my chop saw and just put these big sticks on it and cut it up that way. But I did it all by hand, like I was a fucking pioneer or something and was feeling pretty good

about myself. I was like, well, I made quick quick work of that tree here's this big bundle of wood maybe i'll even message everybody in my neighborhood on the whatsapp and see if anybody's got a wood burning stove i'll be a real hero and feeling pretty good and until the next day when i completely forgotten any of the work i had done and all of a sudden i was in staggering pain where like i couldn't hold stuff in that hand and stuff man yeah that's always uh funny and stupid injuries where it feels like something completely brand new and you're trying to remember and then it's like oh yeah this very specific thing i only did one time in the last like 10 years of my life yeah it's probably that it's probably this my arm not being used to repetitive sawing motion for quite some time and with all that force that i was applying to repetitive sawing motion for quite some time.

And with all that force that I was applying to the saw. Like this, and it's like that, that kind of injury shouldn't be happening in the first place. A saw is designed to be so that you just, you lay it basically in the groove and you're just moving it back and forth. But I'm an idiot and I want to get through it fast. So I'm like pushing as hard as I can. Like I'm going to somehow chop the tree open with this saw. Now is it, I'm going somewhere with this question is it is that soothing work to you to watch the tree fall apart oh god yeah i love it i gotta tell you man the reason i stuck with it i uh didn't tell you this story when it happened my car broke down um sometime between christmas and new year's and

that needed to be repaired and it broke down at this uh not very convenient spot off route 35 in new jersey and it happened to be this big open field with a bunch of trees in it but they're tearing down all the trees and they're gonna build whatever the fuck they're gonna build there so as i sat waiting for uh my toe and i sat there for like an hour and a half because it was a bad tow truck company uh thanks for nothing triple a uh a giant backhoe was destroying these trees and i was just silently watching it and having the time of my life it's a very, it's an inelegant process. They don't, if you know what a backhoe is,

you might think that over time, they've like really dialed this in, that they know the best and smartest and most efficient ways to do this. He's really just using the backhoe like you would a giant metal robot arm and he's like hacking away at this tree. And I'm just, and I'm sitting there and at one point a a cop came over to like be with me until the tow truck got there

and he's just sitting in his car and we're both just clearly silently watching this and like oh man i don't know when i'm gonna have this kind of time to sit and watch this again and like you start to get into your head like, I get this now. One more big hit's gonna fucking do it. One more big hit and that whole tree is going down. And it was just so pleasant. I can't imagine a better way to wait two hours for a tow truck.

There are these elements that are just appeal to my nature. I know that they're problematic. They're like, these are, this is me having an impact on the world that feels permanent. The same way as a child where you're burning stuff. Burning stuff felt so good as a little kid because you're like, I made some sort of clear impact on the world. That same feeling you get from throwing giant boulders down a hill, throwing rocks into water, cutting up a tree, rendering

basically a tree. It scratches this itch in my brain that's so soothing and nice. The cutting up of this tree felt so great. It was like knowing the plan because it feels overwhelming when you first see it. If you know a ficus, they've got, it's way too many branches, way too many. And knowing like, okay, I have to separate these branches, separate the leaves, the ones with the leaves, then I have to get to the smaller branches, then I have to get to the heart, which is like this trunk. And just the process of doing it and watching it fall apart by my hand was so satisfying. Yeah. Boy, when i immediately googled ficus tree they are not impressive but i i see it now because they have a lot of like indoor ficus trees oh right that's

what first comes up when you google ficus but yeah i see it large outdoor there we go these are huge i mean these are these are about 40 feet tall and they're but they're really skinny yeah um they're not this this these like well manicured ones either it's not really a good indication of what my ficus looks like here but yeah it's boy that they fall and it's like you're there's so much cleaning up that has to be done along with it and i can't express how excited i was for the entire process of doing that. And Colleen was like, we have a gardener. Why don't we just wait and just leave it there?

Leave it there till Friday when he comes, we'll contact him, we'll pay him extra to clean it up. And I was like, and rob me of that opportunity? Are you, do you know me at all? How else was this crazy storm? How were the kids in the storm? They're bummed. They're bummed because it's so hard to go outside.

And they're just sort of like miserable about it. We try and go places, but you're running even from the car. We went to like an indoor gym because, you know, as you know, we have the golden pass of COVID now where we had it and everybody's good. So we can go to all these places we haven't been in a long time. We go to indoor play gyms. And just like running from the car there, the kids are like, what the fuck? This is not fun.

This is not comfortable. And then them in the house getting really wound up and just staring out the windows. My son seeing a patch of blue in the sky and losing his mind being like yeah he's like that's what did he say not irregular but he said like that's something you never see that's something you've never seen you're gonna see a lot of that come august my friend you're gonna be wishing that that wasn't the case but um it's good for the ground it's good for from what i understand the reservoirs the mountains it's good for all that stuff in my pessimistic mind all i can think is okay so we're gonna get a lot of greenery this spring and then that will all burn in the late summer yeah but maybe i'm wrong i don't know yeah i've obviously still have a lot

of friends in la so just like seeing on twitter how crazy the storm was and like we had crazy storms here at the same time in a way that like shatters my understanding of how the weather is supposed to work like oh yeah the everyone this weekend across the whole country, it's the same bad weather for all of us. Like, you know, that didn't used to happen guys. There was a notification for Mount Baldy here that said they're expecting over a hundred feet of snow, that Mount Baldy would be the most snowed in mountain on earth that past weekend. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And then I saw a lot of notifications that were like please don't try to go to mount baldy please no one try to go there

because that's the first thing everyone la does i know we made it sound really exciting made it sound super cool unprecedented please don't go there well dan i do want to talk to you about plants in another way oh boy what did i tell you gabe another corker i'm watching a show called last of us and i'm up to date on it like i i'm caught up it is rare for me and i want to talk to somebody about it i love this show oh good oh thank god i never i never played the video game i'm not it's it's not the kind of game that i that is soothing to me which is to say it's not a mario game and it's not a puzzle game so i don't it's it's it's likely that i'll never play it um so i didn't know anything

about it going into it i knew like broad strokes it is you are following joel and ellie uh but that is it and zombies yeah i've never played the game either i don't ever want to play the game this this game this movie is not a movie this show has not made me want to play the game but it has made me very excited about the world of last of us um i was done i thought i was over with zombies are we gonna ask me? Are you familiar with the zombie discourse surrounding the show? No, but I do want to get into that. I just want to quickly say that I was fucking done with zombies.

I was like, we did it all. Stop making these. Stop making the zombie shit. Same way I felt it cracked when we kept doing Star Wars shows. I was like, not another one. Let's do a different thing. Let's do cowboys. i i was through with it and then they the way that they've dealt with the genre is so exciting and fun i mean i'd say in the last two episodes maybe three episodes you see maybe three zombies

at most yeah and the way that the zombies are presented is very, very fun. Where they are, it's a fungus, which is a cool idea, but then that they can interact with each other through the ground. That's very cool. Yeah, that you could like, you kill a zombie that's on the, there's a zombie on the ground, you kill it, immediately you're surrounded by 50 other zombies. Yeah.

Because it just tells that through the ground, hey, this is where they all are. And that there are different kinds and it feels earned it's not like resident evil where they're like and we also made some skinless gorillas you're like well yeah yeah it's no you get yeah the opposite of walking dead where the walking dead over time you just saw the zombies naturally deteriorate and decompose even more but because this is specifically fungus and they're not undead they continue to evolve and get stronger over time as as a decision the show made i i assume like that's built into video game navigation where the the enemies need to get harder but it still does feel earned. And

like I buy the science behind it. Yeah. It's such a surprise to feel like mini bosses that feel earned in a show. And yeah, you get these ones called clickers, which are, they've bloomed, their heads have bloomed into these giant, will look like sheep head mushrooms and they don't have eyes anymore, but they hear very well and they use sonar or something and they're harder to kill. Like they're just tougher. And I'm like, yeah, I believe it. I'm on board for all of it. I love that these things exist. And then there's a new one that gets introduced just briefly. We don't actually sit on it at all, but there's a new one that comes out from under the ground where you're like, I'm afraid of that one. I don't like that one. It's scary looking.

Oh, we're not going to play what it is? That's fine. He's like a big, huge boss. And you could just tell from Joel's reaction that just in his eyes, it's like, oh, that one's new. Ah, fuck. Don't have time to look into this. Yeah. I think the casting is perfect in it. It's like

pitch perfect. Pedro Pascal is really good, even though he has to play a Texan in it. And I love every bit of it. I love the bottle episodes that you get a little bit of story, but then you're also just telling somebody else's. We had one this last Sunday. this last Sunday. And it made me realize like kind of what the game of the show is finally. Like I'm getting the pattern, which is you do end up by the end of each show being like, what is there to live for? Everything keeps going wrong. But really they're introducing these bottle episodes to be like, no, there are these moments where there's like real beauty still. And like, that's what everybody's sticking around for. These relationships are happening despite what's happening around them. And nobody's expecting to live for very long. In the grand scheme of things, nobody is.

Nobody's living very long. So instead you're just like, what are you getting while you're here? Without spoiling too much, there's a moment where two people are sitting there deciding what to do after they've both been bitten. And they're like, let's just wait it out. Like we have, I know that we have anywhere from two to 24 hours.

Why would we waste that? Why would we give that up? Yeah. It's like, yeah, man, that's life. Yeah. I'm just really enjoying it. It's really good. And I don't, it is definitely grim and bleak.

And they do break your heart at least once an episode. But it doesn't feel as hopeless and chore-like as Walking Dead got to feel. Which was just bleak after bleak after bleak. And you only learned one lesson over and over again in Walking Dead. And it was be hard to survive. This show is, I don't know if I want to call it optimistic yet, but like it has something that Walking Dead never had and a lot of zombie movies and shows don't have.

That always makes me crazy is that like in a realistic zombie apocalypse, people would still be having fun and and and cracking jokes and like getting distracted with with dumb i've been beating this drum forever and walking dead everyone was to a person incredibly serious for i don't know seven or nine seasons and then they we finally introduced negan and he's like no no no i'm thriving in this world and i'm having a lot of fun doing it and like of course I'm doing jokes and bits I was doing jokes and bits before and like as a uh a human being Daniel who does jokes and bits and has sometimes had bad things

happen to me I still continue to do jokes and bits i have like every belief that if zombies happened in our world now we would still like find humor and find like some pleasant distractions in it so that's i like that last of us does that and like the kid character still gets to be a kid every once in a while and you're like oh yeah she'd be really interested in that in a mortal combat video game or like a new magazine she's so curious about the world and she's not like just because you're born in the zombie apocalypse if you're 13 or 15 or however old she is you're still like we didn't just start making kids differently you would still be a 13 or 15 year old kid with little kid concerns and natural appetite for play. I love that they have... I mean, the idea of an escort mission lends itself to a

show so well because she's seeing the world with new eyes. It's so much fun to watch her discover an escalator. And you're like, yeah, of course. Of course, you'd have no idea what that's like. Or a map. You're like, okay, this is very, very fun to see somebody who's charmed by the stuff in the world that I get to experience every single day. And in this grim situation, still being very charmed by it all. There's a little bit of that in The Road. you remember that movie oh yeah yeah where he finds a soda and gives it to his son yeah just or like the kid thinks he sees another kid in one of the towns and just and won't leave because he's he's like just the possibility of another child being out there's enough for him to be like we're

staying here forever yeah uh i read that book first and knew that it was grim and tough. And then my brother and sister-in-law were staying with me in LA when it came out and it came out on like Thanksgiving. So we had Thanksgiving dinner and then we were like, let's go to the Galleria and watch the road. We're all excited about that. And like 15 minutes in we're whispering like, why did we do this? We're all excited about that. And like 15 minutes in, we're whispering like, why did we do

this? We're all so full of turkey. We knew this was going to be such a downer. It's a movie that's very hard to watch. It's a movie that I watched and was like, that was really good. I won't watch that again for another decade. I haven't watched it since Thanksgiving. I

remember it being good and looking really cool and all the actors are great, but I don't know if I'm ever going to be in the mood for that. Did I ever tell you the Viggo Mortensen story about that movie? No. When he chased after the director naked? No, why did he do that? So the director is John Hillcoat. Do you know who that is? He's made a couple of movies.

He made The Proposition, which is a really cool Australian movie with Guy Pearce. What did he make from? Oh, Lawless. He made Lawless. Okay, I know Lawless. He's great. They were shooting, as you remember, in the road. They finally get to the sea

and there's a scene where Viggo Morgensen strips down naked and he swims out into this dark gray sea and goes and tries to find, tries to pillage a half sunken boat it's brutal and it's bleak and it's also a lot of

that is just shot on a really really nasty winter day and so it's snowing and stuff. And they're like, we got to get this quick because there's clear issues with health, with the possibility that Viggo will get hypothermia. Like he can only be in that water for a short amount of time and he's naked. So you got a skeleton crew anyway. And he goes out, does the scene, comes back in.

And Viggo's like, I don't feel like it was right. I feel like my swimming was weird or something like that. And the director's like, packing up the camera and stuff. He's like, no, we're going. We're going. We got the shot. Get under this wool blanket. Please just stay warm. We got the shot. And Viggo's like, it's not good. I want to do it again.

And they're like, we're not doing it again. I'm sending people home. Nobody should be out here. And Viggo will not let it go. To the point where the director is running to his car as Viggo is naked chasing him. And the director gets into his car and Viggo is slamming on the windows as the director is driving away being like, we're doing it again. We're doing it again. Like, oh, that's what the movie... That would have made me feel much more lighthearted about it if i had the context of the actual filming and knew that he was a crazy person that this was a

lot of fun so it's just him holding a gun to his kid's head every scene so the last of Us broader zombie discourse. Yeah. The creators of the show are very resistant to saying it's zombies. And I can't tell if that is more because they're like really committed to their own biology where it's like, well, it's not zombies. They're not people who died and came back to life. They turned into mushroom things and are evolving as mushroom things. They're not technically zombies. Or if there's just still so much hesitance,

if you want to be a prestige drama show, to call yourself a zombie show. Interesting. I mean, these are zombies that truly exist in the world, right? There's like within other, our population obviously but yeah uh there's all these parasitoid animals like wasps and actual fungus that does affect the brains of certain animals and make them do a crazy thing it's i guess they're not zombies no but like as someone who is uh tangentially aware of the discourse but not like passionate

about strong opinions for any pop culture, that's me going, it's zombies, buddy. I'm really sorry. I know you made charts on how the mushrooms change over time. It's zombies. It's big scary zombies and some are fast and some are huge. It's true. I mean, you do have to kill them in the head. You have to get them in the head. They're crazy fast.

They lost all of humanity. You turn into one of them if they bite you. Yeah, you're right. Zombies. Anyway, I'm very much enjoying it. I'm really sad that the woman from Mindhunter isn't in it anymore. Yeah. That's one of the cool things about the casting of that show when you get the formula that like every episode you're either getting a mostly self-contained story or you're getting like a two-parter and it's an opportunity for some fantastic character actor to come in and do a great job and then they leave you don't see them

again it's like oh it's it's melanie linsky she's just going to be this like brutal leader of this new faction that's cool i'll watch that for for two hours yeah it is really nice it's and that they got people on board with this so early because i don't know how they knew it was going to be a hit i don't know how anybody ever knows that a show is going to be a hit but when actors sign on to things it's usually because they can smell it in the water and at this point obviously anyone who wants to be on last of us can get anybody that they want because it is doing very well but early on i mean when they're filming these early episodes how do they how do they know this is gonna be good can't just be the writing right you always that can be fucked up no matter what

they must know like it was written by the same guy who wrote uhobyl. And that was such a big success for HBO. And I didn't watch that one cause it seemed grim. And I think that's one of those things where if you're an actor and you know you wanna work with HBO and they're like, hey, the guy who did Chernobyl, who just won those awards, they're giving him carte blanche to do his next thing. Oh, it's a video game adaptation?

That's gonna be a real risk. I don't know how they decide to sign on to that because video game adaptations have historically not done well right i'm glad it's it's great i i know it's one of those shows that i it's me this is me struggling with being in the present where I like it so much and I'm gonna be so sad when the season ends in three or four episodes from now because then it's gonna be so long before they get another season and like I'm still as much as I can binge anything I'm I I think just my age I will always be a real sucker for episodic television appointment viewing that i get excited about and think about all week and then i read reviews of it as soon as it's done and then and then it goes off tv for two and a half years and i'm already thinking

what am i gonna do when this show is over i I hope HBO is smart enough to time it so succession happens. There's no gap. I need succession to pick up right after this. I didn't even think about that. I mean, I guess I should have. I should have considered the possibility that it ends. But you watch a show like Game of Thrones and you watch these children grow up into weird-looking adults throughout it.

I don't... Like, Bella Ramsey's gonna look completely different the next season she's just a little kid i know i mean she's 19. is she really yeah oh man she plays young so well is she supposed to be like 14 in the show i think she is yeah and like that's uh that's strange information for me to have off the top of my head but i but it's because she was so good and she seemed like she was 13 or 14 or something that i had to look it up to be like how i know yeah movies and tv are confusing with like no one ever looks their right age in there

but like i had to look up to see is she just the best little 13 year old actress on the planet or no she's she's a very good 19 year old actress she's so great i mean her play like she's so nice feels so naive and like young in it and her falling in love with moral combat too and stuff it's it's I don't know. I'm in hook, line, sinker. It's so great. Can't say enough good things

about this show. Anyway, I guess fucking watch it, I guess. Yeah. Well, that's all I have to tell you today. That's great.

We can wrap things up. I need to track down our social accounts. No, I don't, I have them, I haven't done that bit in fucking two years.

I'll tell you, I was very worried you were about to do it. You can find the show on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan or Soren

at Soren underscore LTD or me at DOB underscore INC. You can email the show QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We also have a Patreon

which you can find at Quick Question. I have a sub stack where I send three to five book recommendations every month and it's free. And you can find that by, link is in my Twitter profile. Those usually go smoother. They go smoother, don't they, generally? What? It's like the only thing, those outros.

Yeah. You're saying they usually go smoother than what I just did? don't they generally what it's like the only thing those those outros yeah that's you're saying they usually go smoother than what i just did yeah than what just happened there yeah oh the show is quick question but you knew that already we are recorded edited and produced by the irreplaceable gabe harter our theme song is by the incredible me rex their digital album is available at me rex.bandcamp.com I skipped ahead in my notes and I'm all turned around, man. I'm sorry. It's okay. 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 favourite?

Who did you get? When do I be remembered? What's the doubt word? Word it over 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