Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The Wrong Narrator | Ep. 342

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

A million dollars to read an audiobook sounds easy until Soren leaves out one crucial detail. Daniel tries to draw the line between commitment to the text and commitment to staying out of trouble, while both of them wonder if there’s such a thing as the wrong narrator. The boys end the discussion by arguing over whether listening to a book counts as reading it.Thanks to ASPCA for sponsoring this episode. To explore coverage, visit http://SPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION.  The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

We've got a quick, quick question for you all right. We're back. We're going to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get?

We're back. We wanted to jump right into it this week. Soren, huge news. I think you can already tell. Got a new hat. Dan's got a new hat. Really happy with this hat. It fits my head better than a lot of other hats.

It's comfortable. I can do it frontwards or backwards. I think I could do sports in it. I could run in it. But I want to keep it nice. So I'm probably just going to just going to. Let's take it for a spin. Can you put it on backwards for a second without doing too much damage to your headphones?

Yeah. Let me just see. Yeah. Okay. That's a solid hat. Does it have good ventilation? How's your air flow? It really does.

It's great. Is it a golf hat? I don't know. It's a, it's under. Armour, and I feel like having done no research into this, I think Under Armour is like a pretty cop-coded

brand. I don't know if that's... No, I don't think that's true. It's not? Okay, great. No, you're okay. I think maybe it's possible that cops are wearing the neoprene, but it's, I think it's like, it is, it's all athlete-coded, I think.

I think Under Armour is finally athlete-coded. Every once in a while I've come across something that I've learned was owned by a subculture of some kind. And I don't know how pervasive it is, it is, or if it's truly just the internet and like the internet people that I hang out with where like you find it like, oh, new balance is the preferred shoe of white supremacists. And I was like, ah, but I like some of their shoes.

And I showed up to a work thing with a pair of salmon shorts because it was summer. And my co-worker started joking about like, oh, those are the shorts that, like, you see some of those shorts of the person who says, um, trust the market, the market will correct itself. I just liked them. What the fuck? Furn. Pretty solid burn. Um, this has happened.

My friend Ed, um, a friend of the show, Ed Wilson, he ordered a hat, a skate hat from a company that was similar, lids adjacent, I guess. And they sent him the wrong hat. They sent him a hat that just said on it, Happy Dad. And he was like, I'm a dad. That's perfect. And then he started wearing it because he was like, I'll wear this instead. Like, I don't want to deal with the hassle. And out in the streets, people would be like, fuck yeah, happy dad.

And he was like, I am. And he was getting a lot of attention. And he was really excited about that. He did not know at the time that that's Happy Dad Hard Seltzer, which, if you're not familiar, some serious maggatize. They are maga-aligned. Yeah, mega-aligned hard-celzer company that is, I think the co-founder, one of the founders was like a prank, started as a prank channel. He was like this controversial prank channel guy.

And then, boy, is that a pipeline. And then they, because I think he got a lot of pushback from that, obviously people who, anyone who gets public pushback falls into the right. Because the right is like, we'll take anyone. Hey, is everyone, is the woke mob getting you? Come to us. Let's get rid of all that. Now you think, oh, yeah, we should get, it's not my fault. It's their fault.

And so then, and then Hartzeltzer was the, I guess, the end goal of all that. Yeah. That's so funny. I wonder how almost without exception, the jackass crew, sort of the platonic ideal of whimsical pranksters haven't fallen into that that hard right ecosystem. Yeah. As far as I know, I'm almost positive. Really?

No, I don't think so. But I like them, Soren. But I like them. I invented a premise and I'd like it to be true. The other thing that happened to me with that is to me, myself, was I owned a Fred Perry sweater. And are you familiar with the brand Fred Perry at all? I am not.

Okay. Are you familiar with a black polo shirt that has gold piping along the collar of it and has a little gold pipe, a little gold brand in the corner? Have you seen that on maybe some boys singing Proud of you? A Proud of my boy? No, I have not. It's Proud boys. I believe it's a same thing.

They have a uniform. a Fred Perry shirt. I bought a Fred Perry sweatshirt. I mean, a sweater, not knowing any of this at the time. It was a, it's brown. And the emblems blue, but boy, that did not matter. As soon as anyone saw that emblem, they were like, what the fuck?

And I was like, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I just basically stopped wearing it. And then started to kind of feel bad for Fred Perry. Sure. Because I don't think they asked for that. I often very, at a great distance, we'll feel bad for some MAGA aligned folks. Because for us, like, I would feel self-conscious wearing new balance shoes. Or you feel even a tiny bit self-conscious wearing, like, flag iconography now.

because that like they're the the patriotism to mega pipeline is is is is too fraught at this moment that I don't want to wear like an American flag on my hat because new balance new balance is that true new balance has new balance is like the shoe of choice for the far right yeah didn't I is is that not what I said earlier it is oh oh fuck me yeah I okay I think you're absolutely right But so like I'm looking at this in the microware. It's like, oh, rats, I can't wear new balance shoes as much as I used to. And I can't wear like a thing with an American flag on it. Oh, rats.

But then I think about the amount of stuff that people on the right and far right need to pretend they don't like. And that list is fucking huge. We're of course like, I'm dripping. examples of it because of the job that I have. I've just been forced to consume so much conservative media and I just they won't consume it.

Boycying everything. My heart breaks every once in a while when they have to just like Sean Hannity needs to get on TV and pretend Beyonce has no talent. Like a couple years ago Bruce Springsteen started being very vocal

and critical about the administration and people have just suddenly be like, you know, you know what? I, yep, never liked him. I never liked his working class, straight down the barrel, rock and roll, joyful stuff. I've always, this whole time, liked present day kid rock. That's, that's my favorite guy. My bread and butter.

Kid rock. Just, just, uh, dream blunt rotation of kid rock. And my favorite actor, John Voight, Jake Bucie, maybe. I think I like Kanye West, but I can't remember. Yeah, it is, he had like a clear, he's got it. Trump's got a clear act to grind for Bruce Springsteen because he talked about it during even the correspondence in her. But it is really, really funny that, first of all, that everybody's impulse is that.

When there's not a group, somebody who they're not allowed to like anymore, because their tribe says they're not allowed to. like him anymore. They go, their first instinct is not to be like, fuck, that sucks. I really liked that person. It's to go, I never liked the art that they made.

It's, and it happens to our tribe too. I mean, years ago when Louis C.K., when those allegations were made incredibly public about his sexual assault and misconduct, everyone was just like, yeah, fuck this guy. He'd,

he, you know, we don't need to keep giving him money and keep supporting him financially. It sucks that he did this, this horrible stuff. And people online were like, are we now ready to finally have the conversation about how he's an overrated comedian? It's like, well, that's not what we're talking about. Well, hold on. Fuck the guy, but like, hold on, though. I'm not going to, you're, you're putting me in a position where I'm, where I feel like I need to pull out some specific bits that he's done as iconic. And I'm not going to do that.

This isn't going to turn into like a world tour celebration. But like we can't. You can't pretend. The worst are the people who are reconning it. Like they noticed something, some moral failing in the human before that point where they're like, yes, I never liked him. And I couldn't understand why until now. It's like, no, I mean, you don't have ESP. You're not, you're not picking up a different wavelength than the rest of us.

Right. You didn't see a. a special or an episode of his groundbreaking television show and be like, I think this guy was, was masturbating in front of women without their consent. There's something about this short film starring Jeremy Renner he made that makes me think, writer-director. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that the, I don't know, those people are just trying to keep their own record unblemished, I think. They're just like, I, I've gone completely. undefeated this whole time. I've never fallen for anyone who was potentially problematic,

which is like a weird record to try to hold. Isn't it more impressive to have liked something terrible? And then even if it was like you liked what was terrible about it at the time, and then over time to be like, oh, you know what? I fucked up.

Yeah. I see now that that was bad. I know people who work very hard to cultivate like all of their tastes around someone that they've around artists that they've they've thoroughly vetted as unproblematic yeah as of right now like checking every box and going through every like potential thing that could one day uh be remembered negatively by history as

social mores change and i look at these people and i think it's it just seems so stressful it seems so and and there are there are there are traps, you know, Mumford and Sons probably seem safe and then they're drummers and anti-vaxxer or some shit. What are you going to do if Lynn Manuel Miranda beats a kid? What are you going to do? Man, bluegrass is just a hair's breath away from country. Like, we should have seen that coming. Everybody's like, bluegrass is safe. Bluegrass is a safe territory. Not true. Not true. This is rural folk, my friend. They're just weird, they're weird rural guys. They're standing up on stage and and they're harmonizing and they're making you laugh.

And then one day the government tells them they're not allowed to go outside anymore. And you're going to see, you're going to see some country coming out. And when people are surprised by football players, white football players being being somewhat offensive, they're like, what? But I loved that kicker. He's a kicker. No, you didn't. So, Daniel, this is actually helpful for my segue.

Because you've got a lot of people who. who will try to keep their record unblemished. And part of that is also curating what books, classic books that they think are still worth it, and which books are problematic. Hawk Finn is a great example because Huck Finn uses the N-word quite a bit. And everyone, there's debates, it seems like this cycle gets pulled up every couple of years where people are like, Huck Finn isn't actually that good.

Huckabler Finn is not like a good story. and you have to be like, well, fucking just hold on. Everybody just cool off for a second. Yeah. I wanted to ask you a quick question. Well, first of all, I think I'm on record that I don't think, I did not enjoy Huckleberry Finn. We might have read it in high school. I feel like that didn't count for me.

It didn't find any purchase. So I read it, what I'm deciding is the first time I read it last year. And I thought it was such a fucking slog. and I'm not trying to be cool. I'm never trying to be cool. I'm not a cool person, but I'm just reading this book. Like so much of it just feels very meandering to me.

That's novels, baby. I know. There are definitely parts that I like, but at one point he's just like, he's describing paintings that he saw. And, like, yeah, dude. Just like, here's a painting, and he's like describing every bit of it

and what it makes it feel. And then he moves out to another, and I was like, I'm already reading a book. We don't need to go. to the museum in the book. And he's like telling me poems that he saw in the newspaper. Get bent.

This is the woke mom coming for him again because pacing is different now than it used to be. You're ready for a television show where it's got to be on. I'm reading Return of the King with my son. And do you know how long I have to sit there and listen the fucking the structure of Ministerreth? How many layers of

minishterth there are and hear what's in each one? What's in the gardens of each one? It sucks. But that's novels. It's like you're giving, you're allowing the author some free reign to breathe and to like really like find their wheels. But then you just trust that when you get through all this, the story itself will be worth it. And I think that's fine. I'm fine with that. We can, we can shake hands on Huck Finn is fine.

Okay. Now forget I said Huck Finn for a second because I have to ask you a question. Somebody's offering you, you get a notification tomorrow that somebody's like, you know what? I love the podcast. I love your voice. I would love for you to do the audiobook version of a penguins calling you or something. And they're like, we really want you to do an audio book. We're going to pay you a million dollars.

Well, a million dollars. A million dollars. But they have not said and they will not say until you're on the day what book it's going to be. Will you do it? I cannot. I cannot do it. Of course the answer's no. I cannot end up doing the audiobook for Elon Musk's memoir or Hillbilly Elegy or some other that Brian Thompson's cookbook of his son's blood.

I can't, I can't do it. So, because I can't, I can't make it clear. By the way, that's Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson, forgive me. I, oh yeah, you're, you're. You follow a lot of his immortality tricks. You know what it is.

The most recent news about Brian Johnson is that he's got, oh, fuck, it's possible I'm wrong. Is that the lead singer of ACDC? Brian Johnston, maybe. We know who we're talking about. Pause, please. Yeah, it's Brian Johnson. Okay, good. Brian Johnson is also the name of the lead singer of ACDC.

So I was momentarily panicked that I somehow conflated. But now you're right. right twice. I'm right on all fronts. The most recent news on him, and I don't love how much I relish this, he's got some incurable disease.

Yeah. That like, time got him as well. And I'm like, yeah, score one more for time. Is that the latest news? I thought the latest news was that, like, he cloned himself and was going to live forever in his clone. Oh, shit. Like a post-diagnosis thing.

He's done a very, it's really, it's really bad to find glee in someone else's terminal diagnosis. He's making it really hard to have empathy because a bunch of people did celebrate when he was like, hey, me, this guy who's pinned tweet to this day is, I'm going to live forever. It turns out I have a terminal illness and there's no cure for it. A bunch of people made jokes and had fun with that. And I was like, well, I'm not going to join the fray of people making jokes and having fun with that because death is bad. I'm on record.

And then he started posting about how, it's like, isn't it interesting that people are finding glee in this? Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. You know who I remind myself of in this moment? It's Jesus Christ. He and I both went through the same thing. We both were all we wanted to do was live and teach. Live our lives. And people took joy in our downfall.

We just wanted to monitor the erections of our 18-year-old son throughout the night. We wanted to compare our own erections to an 18-year-old and just see. We just wanted to see. We're asking questions here. Which one's harder? Drinking blood and asking questions about donors. Hey, everybody. You may feel like this if you're a pet owner.

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because there are moments where my cat will just be walking around the house limping. And I'm like, what happened to you? And the cat just can just stare at me because there's no communication. Or she goes and she hides because she's feeling sick. But I can't put a hand on her forehead

and tell that she's sick. I'm out of ideas because I've only ever dealt with children and humans before. So when they're not feeling well, I feel so helpless. So if you've ever found yourself awake at 2 a.m., phone in hand, Googling things like, is it normal for dogs, or do I need to call the vet right now, you're not alone. Those unexpected moments are part of having a pet, which is exactly why the ASPCA, pet health insurance exists.

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company and produced by PTZ insurance agency limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. I can't add a disclaimer in the in the audio book. No. They don't they don't let you they don't let the speakers be like just so you guys now. Not me. I don't like this. I did this for a million dollars.

What if they were like we will we'll we'll we'll make sure that it is not nonfiction and we will make sure that it is a classic within a It's genre. Now, do you do it for a million dollars. I mean, there's, you're still, there's the huck fin of it all where it could end up getting me to say words that I don't use and don't like to use. No, I'd do it. A million dollars. Okay, good.

Congratulations. Well, your book is going to be the Joy Luck Club. There's a lot of dialogue in it. It's super important that you do it. You try to emulate the voices as much as possible. What are the voices? Amy Tan, the Joy Luck Club, is a story about... You heard the name and you knew immediately.

You know what? You don't have to do the Joy of the Club. We're going to have you do the color purple. It's epistolary and it's written in local color writing. That is not like color like you think it is. That's like an actual term, right? No, I got it. So this is a thing. I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks.

Now I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you my whole... The whole show. I've been reading a lot of audio books. I'm glad show escaped your mouth because for a while that was I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you my hole. And there was a lot of air before we got to show. So I listened to audiobooks on my way to work

because now my work is over an hour away. And what I found is that everyone's just being pretty cool with the fact that you only have one person reading the audiobook. So when they get to characters that are written with an accent, and sometimes even when they're not, that whoever's reading the audiobook is taking some big swings, some big cadence swings.

Now, let me drill down to what that means. I listen to a book called The Star is My Destination. It's grace. Or Tiger Tiger, you might know the book as, because for whatever reason this book has two titles. They don't get a bunch of different people to do the voices. at least not in the audio book circles in which I frequent. But it's one guy, and they're usually pretty good.

I mean, they sound like voice actors. They've got a lot of gravitas when they're just reading the narration. And then when they do the voices, they pick something for everybody. This guy has picked for the main character. He's got like this South African voice. That's very cool. Say it, African. Yeah, do you weapons work.

Are you crazy? That's exactly what the character sounds like. he he has to do a Chinese detective every once in a while and he's taking a really big swing on this Chinese detective that's

it really throws you out of the book but the most startling example that I've come up with so far and everybody again nobody's talking about this is I listen to Stephen King and there's the whole Dark Tower series

which people have raved about people who I respect have raved about about it. So I was like, well, I better read this. And you get into this book called The Drawing of the Three. And in that there's a character named Dead a Walker. And I want you to just hear

some of what Dead of Walker sounds like. The chambers swung open. Loaded. Fucker be loaded. You're going to do this young cock at the walk first. And that really bad man be waking up and you're going to give him one big grin, smile, honey child so I

can see where you is. And then you're going clean his clock, something righteous. she swung the chamber back so here's what I think Soren Yeah go ahead I think

Go for it I think the reader went for it I think that's what you have to do I think I think that's Less enjoyable as a piece of media

To listen to If the reader is timidly If I I'm just saying all those words in this unaffected voice. And I'm not changing dis to this. I'm just using my normal nasal Daniel O'Brien voice to say, dis motherfucker loaded. That's way worse than someone doing a voice, I think.

Soren, my white friend, what do you think? I think it's a fucking trap. I think that there is no good answer. I think that if this guy did it this way, the way that he chose, which is the very biggest swing, I'm like, whoa, I have to stop whatever, I'm about to pull over because I'm like, are we, are, is he doing this? What is going on here? And there's a lot of, uh, him saying honky in it.

There's a lot of like him really, really like diving into this accent and whatever's written on the page, which you're trying to be faithful to the original author. I get it. Yeah. But no one ever anticipated this moment. when it would have to be read out loud. And, which is the one you're proposing, it would be just as, I think is just as bad,

which is you don't go for it. You try to cover your tracks as best you can. You mitigate the damage and you just read it in your, your ordinary voice. The way when I or you, when you speak Spanish, when we're like, I'm going to put the accents in.

That's, I know that that's where they go. Like, I'm going to do that. I'm going to roll my R's and stuff. But I don't think that's, I don't think I'm totally allowed to do that. And so, but I'm not going to speak it like a gringo, you know? Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be like,

Por favor. Yeah, me la piece as grande, e Amarillo. Like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to, I'm going to say Amarillo. So I don't know what the, I don't think there is a good answer for it. I don't know how you do this other than if they hire more than one person to do the voices in a book, which I don't think is a terrible idea. I think that would be pretty fucking rad. It's an expensive idea.

Yes. Yeah, I guess you're right. And then you're getting into like directors too because you've got to like do a whole thing about it. And I don't think that we can guarantee that kind of treatment across all books. There are so many books. Well, let's see. You are going to be your publishing house. you're creating these. You've got, you're clearly doubling up on guys anyway. You've got

guys that are reading multiple books. Every Stephen King book I've read so far has been this one guy. Every Raymond Chandler book is the same guy. So you have somebody you can bring in who is your goon. And like he's just doing every goon part there is. Yeah. Not the modern meaning of goon. No. Stephen King hasn't gotten to that scary story yet. The Goon Cave. Coming next from Stephen King. What will happen in the Goon Cave? Yeah, you've got your tough guy.

You've got your nerd. You've got the stable of people. And you're like, these are who plays each one of these roles. And I know that they do it well. I'm not going to deviate from it. And in addition to that, you're also going to make sure you have one of those for every ethnicity. What does your Dark Tower reader do? because there is a prominent child in that series.

Yeah. And there are also, I think, women, what does he, does he have a little kid voice? Does he have a white lady voice? You bet. Great. Yeah, he's got it all. He's got a little kid voice. And it's also pretty grating, but it's not offensive.

It's a real, I cannot stand adults acting like children. It's a real, it made the alien earth show. very difficult for me to watch. Because I don't know if you've seen that show, but it's... I don't see it. It's a lot of it. It's a lot of it is adults acting like children, and it's like fucking theater. People love doing that kind of...

Theater kids love pretending like their children. They love it so fucking much. It sucks. I hate it. They love to stretch. Yeah. It's like that's like the challenge of it. They're like, oh, yeah. Oh, this role is a stretch.

Let's try it. Let's try it. And they get excited about that kind of thing. They love playing old. Man. Yeah. Did you ever see the show Penn 15? I thought they did that really well, where they like make kids play

griseled 50-year-old people from New York. That's good stuff. This characterization and an audiobook thing, and I still think I'm team go for it instead of team. Well, then you're winning because everyone's going for it. Team give people jobs. There was, this is such a time capsule, but I believe it was one of the bonus features

in the DVD. of one of John Malaney's comedy specials where there is, you could probably find it on YouTube, but it's like a conversation between Malaney and Dan Mince and Anthony Jezelneck, who especially at this time, like,

this has got to be new in town or the one after that, John Malaney's special called New in Town. This was at a time where like Malaney was famously, this is is this is pre-batchelide milani pre-divorce milani pre-marriage milani where it was like this is what a what a nice man in a suit you know he's not clean but it seems like clean comedy this is such a a good old boy we like john milani

he wears a suit he's a showman his hair is combed and anthony jensile neck is like the dark comedian he's the rose guy and he's evil and he's the devil and you know dead baby jokes and this and that and uh politically incorrect as far as you can get and the two of them talking about John's special in this DVD bonus feature hit on something so interesting because Malaney will tell he will talk about law and order and he will do an impression of iced tea that's as accurate as he can get and he will also talk about encounters with people that he has on the streets of New York and it has him doing a black voice like there's no way around it that this is like and jesselnik confronts him about it and it's just like for all the

dark stuff that that for my reputation of darkness I would never do that I would never in a million years get on stage and do black voice because it seems so inappropriate and malayne's just like that's what he sounded like so on some level when the guys are reading the audiobooks yeah I think that self-justification is like, this is, I'm reading the page, and it is my job to interpret what the author is trying to say on the page. This is what this character sounds like. So I'm going to, I'm going to do it. You hired me and you bought the audiobook. You trusted me to interpret this book for you. Here's how I'm doing it. Okay. You're right on some level. But I have to think that 20 years from now, when everybody else starts listening to own the audiobooks,

and we've all forgotten how to read, this will be as big a problem as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. He went for it. He got hired at a job at the time. It didn't seem crazy in the moment. Then they're like, what's the best you can do? He's like, well, I really should steer into the skid here. I should just really go for it and did.

And boy, does it not age well. Yeah. So I think that here's the other part of this, that I offered you a million dollars because even for less than that, I don't think you could do it as a already public figure. I think a lot of these guys who are doing these voices, maybe again, I don't travel in the same circles of voiceover actors, but these guys aren't well known enough that somebody's reading, going to listen to the audiobook simply because they like the guy reading it. They're not going to be like, oh, I love his work. I'll check out that book. I think that if you did it, that would happen. And that's more dangerous.

That's more dangerous. Because then I'm courting the controversy a little bit. Yeah. But I wanted the money. I want the money. People, stop. I want the money. I mean, and also just listening to these,

I'm sure that there is a ton of work that goes in before this has ever read. It's not like the guy shows up on the day and he's like, well, the words are right there. I obviously don't have to memorize them because no he's looking at me. What if I just read it on the day? That can't possibly be it because he's got to make big decisions. I always saying he. I guess there's women who also do these. Shout out,

Dorothea Lewis. She's a friend of mine who reads audio books. Shout out, Dorothea Lewis, aka a dog. And it's also a real ding against me that it's clear that even though I'm burning through audiobooks, I haven't done a single one that's clearly written from the perspective of a woman.

Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to read the Joy Luck Club next, I promise. I got completely different. I think there's a lot of work that goes into it. Oh, there's a lot of work. They have to figure out what the voices are going to be, right? I think they also probably have some kind of discretion over what they choose.

That's got to be a conversation where the publisher is like, we have this available, we think you'd be good for it. Heads up. Here's some of the stuff that goes into this. And an author has the right to, a reader has the right to say like, no, it's not, I'm not. It's not for me. I don't feel good doing that. I think that's probably true. I think that you, but you're also, you know, there's going to be words in there that you don't know.

Words that the author made up. And so then you've got to be in contact with the author to make sure that you're doing it justice, right? So you've got, there's so much front end work that probably is happening. The guy who read my audiobook didn't say shit to me. Well, you're right in the King's English. It's very easy to understand. Thank you. there's like did a chock there's within the dark tower which clearly is something you have her read seen

seen okay so there are these like lobstrosities that live in the ocean and they make a very specific sound that is like a did a chock did a shock kind of sound and even written that seeing that written out phonetically you'd be like well fucking get king on the horn because i don't know what this is supposed to sound like and i think that they must do a ton there's even stuff that i'm not thinking of that they have to do in preparation to make sure that they're doing as much justice to the book as possible. The guy who does the Raymond Chandler ones is amazing. For anyone who doesn't know, Raymond Chandler writes all the Philip Marlowe hard-boiled detective stories. They are the birth of hard-boiled detective stories. Like, he is the master of them and he was the originator. Arguably.

But the guy, the Philip Marlowe character is very, the Philip Marlowe character is very specific. and he's when you read him he's so fun on the page it's much tougher to do that as an actor like to really capture what he is and the guy who's doing it is fucking nailing it so it's clear that he worked on this character as much as a guy would have if he was going to play him in a movie um and so so much work goes in i have to assume this conversation has happened multiple times for these books where they're like okay i'm going to be doing this character who is first generation from Thailand as well. He's only on these five pages, but I'm deeply worried. Would it be okay? Can I give you one, one take where I'm just doing my voice?

Just so I can say that I did that and gave you that option. And then when the book comes out, then it's on you for picking whatever one that you picked. Can we just? I think we run into it. on our show too there's a really excellent renowned Morgan Freeman impersonator in Los Angeles and

he does Morgan Freeman for a lot of shows a lot of animated shows white guy you you got him for us for cracked when you were when we still work for cracked obviously we had something that was like I don't know that it was going to go out to the internet or if it was some internal thing that you're doing like our parent company. It was for South by Southwest. Oh, South by Southwest.

And we needed, uh, we wanted like a Morgan Freeman as narrator. And you're like, I got a guy. And he comes into the office and he's a very white man. And he's like, oh, oh, oh, okay. It's just the South by audience, I guess. Nobody's, nobody, yeah, we're not going to credit you. Is that okay? But yeah, we have, and, and obviously the show is, is, is,

has been on long enough now that we've been through moments of awakening, I would say, moments where we become more aware of the world and we're like, oh, maybe that wasn't such a good choice. We had a character on our show named Short Round. No, that's Short Round. It's also a pretty bad character. Yeah. But 8Bit, I think, is the name of our character who is like a Cambodian general. And that's a, that accent's a pretty big swing. And if you go back and you listen to it, you're like,

Oh, that's tough, man. This is not just somebody trying to be faithful to Cambodians. This is somebody who is making fun. Yeah. Very good chance that this person didn't, like, consult a bunch of resources and, like, talk to some people from Cambodia to get an accent. There's, I'm going to say, a 90% chance, no disrespect to this voice actor, a 90% chance that this person was like, I think I have a rough idea what they sound like.

I think I got it. Let's just try one in the room. Come on. I have to think, I haven't watched Team America in a long time. And it certainly helps that you're doing the voice of a dictator. But they are really playing with a Korean accent in that. They're playing with like, what's the fun of doing Korean? Which I don't know if that's the same territory because now you're making fun.

Now you're being hard on them. Yeah. Now you're getting jokes without any jokes being told. And so then you're not getting laughs without any jokes being told. And then so where's the laugh? what is the what is the joke then what is the subtextual joke what do we all think is funny you're back in the way someone talks oh um so yeah i i i didn't i can't really talk to anybody about this because nobody else i know it only consumes their books this way i'm a maniac because it's it's like i'm at the gym or i'm driving and i'm like let's listen to a story let's like listen to something fun and have gotten obsessed with audiobooks and man this is across the board this is a problem for me

yeah I mean that's I can't contribute much I think I've listened to one audio book in my life on a road trip with my wife we would listen to Kamala Harris's book

107 days oh does she do her own voice she does her own she oh she doesn't do any she doesn't have the fun with it that I'd hope she'd have You know, I think she's probably going to run again.

So she's not going to do like, she doesn't bust out a Trump or a Biden voice. And I'm just like, come on, you got one. You're aching for it. You got one. I know. I fucking know you do Lindsey Graham. I bet you've got a great Lindsey Graham in you. You got that high pitch voice already.

Yeah. Lindsey Graham said he would not support me. He said, no way. I'm like, yeah, but did he say it like that? Come on. How did he say it? Yeah. And I think it went a little something like this and then do it.

I I don't think I can I haven't to do a lot of nonfiction In nonfiction I think it's probably a different animal I think that they aren't expected to because you're listening to the story as though it's being told to you from the actual person Yeah so like when they're talking in other people's voices

You still expect it to be in the voice of Kamala Harris Sure even if it's quotation dialogue But not at man these fiction stories. It's a dangerous territory. You should listen to more, by the way. They're great. And in fact, you have to make sure that you get the right ones because there are some. I'll give you an example. L.A. Confidential. Unlistenable. Okay. I, um, this, this is, this is one of those takes that gets people pointing a bunch of knives at me. And I was hoping to never have to get into it. Uh, and just let it be one of those takes that I, I, I have in my heart and bring to my grave, but I'm, say it aloud. I'm pretty anti-audio book.

And that's, at first, people are going to hear that and get very pissed off. And they're going to think I'm elitist and ablest, and ablest, that I'm trying to keep books out of the hands of people who can't read. And then by the time I've finished my explanation, I think people will be pissed off for different reasons, because I'm a, I'm a semantic asshole where I just think that we should, if you consume a book by listening to it, we should call it something else that's not reading. We should make that distinction because for a while, I think everyone made that distinction. It was like, I read this or I listen to it.

You know, people would self-correct and say they listened. and then at some point in the last 10 years loud people on the internet or writing for the Atlantic or wherever the fuck idiots with too much time and not enough problems go they were saying that hey if you listen to a book that you read the book and you can say that

you never have to let anyone know that you listen to it instead of reading it and it became like so many things a cause and a pride thing I did this and I like it So that means it's good and it's right. I disagree. I think, and this is where it gets into semantics.

You listen to the Great Gatsby. I read the Great Gatsby on the score of like, have we both consumed the same information? Yes, we have. Do we know the story? We both can convincingly pass a high school English test about the Great Gatsby, even though you listen to it. and I read it. We can both, I think, swear to a lie detector test. I know what happens in the Great Gatsby and how it happens and the style of writing that was employed in it. Yes, we both got the Great Gatsby. We ate it, we consumed it. We didn't both read it because reading, in my opinion, that is worthless, reading is a thing that you

make time for that takes up all of your attention. Because everyone when I had my son and was bummed that I would have less time to read, people were saying, oh, you can do you can listen to audio books in the car.

You can listen to them on your runs. You can listen to them on the walks. You just like have it going in your house while you're doing X, you know? Yard work, chores, prepping the dinner, putting the kid to sleep, whatever you want to do. And it's like, that is not, I don't want to read and do another thing. The act of reading is enjoyable to me.

And I like that I'm giving it my full attention because I reject the efficiency economy where we're trying to make things happen faster and multiple things happen at once. I don't want to do that. I don't want to multitask reading for the same reason that I don't want to like multitask. love making or eating you know all these things that are just like no this is the thing that I like to do so I like the the point is making time for the act of it and like sitting and looking at this and unlocking my brain

and not like reading while also vacuuming or raking leaves or doing any of these other things it's again it's a it's a it's a semantic distinction and uh makes me ableist at worst and like just annoying at best but it's how I feel and I looked at our runtime and we still had more minutes to go and I could tell Sorin was running out of steam

and so I thought my big old rant about reading was gonna go somewhere and here it is well all right I've let you speak yeah thank you and I'm gonna say now that I think you're completely wrong that this is a knives to your throat moment oh I think you're I don't think you're going to find a writer who disagrees with you. Okay. I think everyone who writes understands that there's a fundamental difference, which is why I generally qualify when I, if I say, when somebody's like, oh, what's a science fiction book that you really like? I'm like, well, I read this one called the Stars My Destination. I listen to it.

I listen to this book on Stars My Destination because it's, it is an important distinction. When you read, you find passages that you particularly like that you think are interesting and beautiful. whatever, and then you go back and you reread it over and over again. You sit there with the book for a while. You stay on that same page. The pages are not turning at the same uniform pace as they would with a audiobook, where you're just blowing through everything and you're getting the information and you're understanding this. You're comprehending the story. You're not comprehending the, I don't think from reading it, I'm from hearing it, you're not going to get a lot of the literary devices that are being used. You're not getting the interesting.

turns of phrase as much. You might capture some of them out of the air when you hear them, but you're not, you can't, don't have the luxury of then like rereading it over and over again and have it set in your memory. There's stuff you just can't do. I also think that there's something really valuable to reading a book, giving it your attention, and it not holding your attention. And you like drifting off as you're reading it being like, oh shit, I didn't pay attention to what just happened in the last paragraph. And then rereading it again and dedicating yourself once more to a thing. Like that.

kind of commitment. Or letting yourself stay kind of drifted off. I mean, there's no, there's no better imagination activation machine than a book. It is still like bar none unparalleled, undefeated as far as like getting my brain to work when I'm sitting and staring and looking at it. Versus when I'm listening to a book with my wife, we will, a thing that you can't do when you're reading a book is we will turn down the volume and talk about what we're going to have for lunch and then turn up the volume and miss little bits and pieces of the book because we're not really paying full attention to it. I mean, even screenwriters, you know that watching a movie is a very different thing than reading the screenplay of it, despite the fact that there's a lot of

differences in dialogue and stuff because changes get made. But even if it was exactly the same, you want to see the formatting. You want to see how it's written. You want to read the action lines because those are super crucial to the flow of the story. And seeing it is one thing. Reading it is very, very different. You pick up on foreshadowing in different ways. You pick up on through lines that you didn't see before because it's on a page now. It's like, it's the same way

when you're writing yourself. You have a lot of thoughts in your head and you're kind of keeping track of all of those and you're juggling them. You're juggling them and it's very hard to focus on any one of the objects that you're juggling until you can put it down in front of you and look at it. And so like it's writing

just allows you to lay everything, all those thoughts and like you're like, I have the whole story in my head. No, it allows you to lay it out in a row so that you can see it before you and really notice all of the details of it. Yeah. I just want to close by saying, I don't want anyone to feel bad. Anyone who... They should. People who say that they fucking listen to, that they read Moby Dick and they listen to Moby Dick. Ah, fuck that. They can come at me, not you. I'll stay in front of you. You can still go to parties and say you read all the books that you want to say you have read.

It's, I'm not, I, I never want to make anyone feel bad for anything. But imagine listening to Ulysses. What are you going to get out of that experience? You might get something. That's what I'm saying. It's just a different, it's just a different thing. It's a different thing. But you, yeah, I guess you're right.

I guess you're right. I mean, I go to, I think about going to museums. Like an art form that I don't know anything about. I'm trying to like make it as distance itself, distance it from me. I go to art museums and I get bored because I'm like, Christ painting, another Christ painting, another Christ painting. What are we doing? And like, I don't understand the work that goes into that. I don't understand the details.

I don't understand why making water look real is tough. I don't get these things. And so somebody who does and has like this whole tool, this whole like tool belt of ways to dissect a painting and understand it, they're going to understand a lot more than I will. And so I think maybe from a distance, if you are not a writer, audiobooks are for you, man. They're totally fine. And there's a very specific reason that I'm reading like pulp stuff when I read in my car when I'm listening to audiobooks. I'm listening to Stephen King and I'm listening to Raymond Chandler and stuff because those are the story itself is very enjoyable.

And it doesn't, I don't, I know that I'm missing some cool Cormick McCarthy type shit when I'm doing it. But it doesn't matter because I'm there for just the. story itself. Yeah. There's a lot of Cormit McCarthy stuff in Stephen King and Raymond Chandler books. You know what I'm telling about. Those are the ones that you're listening to to find some Cormac McCarthy stuff. I'm going to reread.

I'm going to, in Blood Meridian, I'm going to reread the stars wheeled across the sky toward uncharted reckonings over and over again because I'm like, that's a fucking awesome thing to say. If I hear that in a story, it's just going to blow right past me. All right. I'm rant over, but yeah, come for me. Yeah. Not Daniel. He's good. He's a good heart. Leave him alone.

All right. Well, thank you for listening to this podcast. Thanks. This has been quick question. But really, Daniel. Honestly, you should read the podcast. You should read it. This is how we, this is how we intended it. We, before every episode, Patreon listeners know that we write these podcasts. We script them first. 100% scripted. and that's how we want them consumed.

And then we record it for as like some icing on it. But this is not the right format. This has been quick question with Sorin and Daniel. You knew that. If you liked our theme song, that's by Meorex. You can find their music anywhere you download music, or you can go to merex.com slash bandcamp, I'm pretty sure, and find all their albums.

If you like this podcast and you want to watch a video version, you could do that on YouTube. And if you were like, I just want more of this podcast. More. You can become a Patreon subscriber and we do bonus episodes. over on our Patreon behind a wall. You got to pay to get through. And if you like this podcast

and you think that it sounds good and that the clips are good and you think that it's wonderfully put together, that is all McKenzie Mazzel. If you like her, you can follow her podcast, which is don't make it worse. Thank you for listening. And we'll see you on the flip side.

Bye. on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be?

Two best friends and comedy, if there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time, yeah. I think you'll have a great time.