Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Tickling the Muse

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Daniel (basically) wins a race!! The guys talk writing on their critically acclaimed shows, and how to balance confidence and imposter syndrome. And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks  Avast.com! Thanks Truebill.com/qq.  it could save you thousands a year.

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

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here answers i am one half of that podcast my name is daniel o'brien and i work for a show called last week tonight and i am joined as always by my co-host mr soren buoy who works for american dad soren say hello hello everybody i'm soren buoy uh i was so i was in a panic trying to think of like well he did a he did a song for his will be a fun song for mine and immediately i was like american man american man and then and then you did it good american band american band yeah i really uh this might shock you but

i came up with yours first and then sort of backed into mine like well i'm not gonna i'm not gonna scrap american dad american band that's gold what is something that is equally golden last week tonight subbed in for I'm loving it. Okay. Yeah, sure. We're on a clock here. No, I thought it worked. I thought I was startling at first when ba-da-ba-ba-ba came up.

Yeah. But it's also the exact right number of syllables. And I'm big about that. I'm huge about that. When people try to parody a song on twitter and i'm like it's just you don't need to be musically gifted to count the syllables just do that and it makes such a difference especially when you go long like if you're the way you're trying to like shoehorn in is too long it's so obvious and glaring yeah i'm also guilty of it a lot anyway so

are you that's disappointing i've done it before. It's just like you have one where you're like, I don't know, but this one's also really good. I'll just give it a shot and you throw it out there. I don't know. Even as I said, it didn't sound good. Forget it, everybody. Thanks to Avast for supporting Quick Question. Avast's new all-in-one solution, Avast One, helps you take control of your safety and privacy online through a range of features. Thanks to Truebill for supporting our podcast. From forgotten free trials to automatic renewals, when big companies keep charging you, Truebill is your secret weapon to save you money on subscriptions you don't need.

Go right now, Truebill.com slash QQ. It could save you thousands a year. I'd like to, I think I want to start doing that at the end of a lot of my tweets, to just come back to them and say, forget about it, everybody. Forget this one. Don't worry about this one, guys.

You know this, you're familiar with the song We Built This City? Yeah. He just, you know, a lot of times throughout the day you have a song stuck in your head and you just sing like a portion of it. He regularly sings, she's got big titties. Jesus. And it makes me laugh so hard.

Because first of all, it's completely inappropriate for a work setting. And he's not doing it like on purpose. Like, it's just like in his head as that. and he's not doing it like on purpose like it's just like in his head as that so it just gets me every single time i like to think that that's how they started writing that song and they're like well it can't be about that i mean that's just gonna get us started but we gotta do something grander than that i think they probably started with like that was the song and then like somebody came back to them like you can't you're not allowed to you're not allowed to do that song

and they're like are you kidding me why not it's the past i know i know it's the past but still um dan i had to tell you a story about something that happened to me recently oh great that you're gonna i don't know how actually i have no idea how you feel about it because you have no context for it but my wife and I did our first overnight stay away from our children. Wow. Since my daughter was born. How far did you go? Nine miles.

I knew it was going to be super close. There was even a point where I almost went home to go let the cat in because uh our babysitter stayed with them and uh and i she had trouble getting the cat to come to her understandably cats don't there's like three people that they'll listen to and uh and so i hold on please So sorry about that. Did you just get LaCroix all over yourself? No, I was trying to take my hoodie off as subtly and non-invasively, non-obtrusively as possible. And I think until the end, I was nailing it.

It's the head part when you're wearing headphones and talking to someone, that's the part that's really going to throw you. Um, but I, I, so I, we went and stayed in a downtown. We stayed in a hotel downtown and it was really fun. And like when we were going out to dinner and we're talking and stuff and I

can drink as much as I want, cause I'm not going to be driving anywhere or like returning to my children at all when I don't have to get up early with them the next morning. I just in talking to my wife, generally the conversation goes like this. We talk about the children, even though we're not with them. We talk about them and then we start talking about each other's jobs. And it made me realize I don't know much about my wife's job. Like it's really, and I don't think she knew a wife's job. Like it's really, and I don't think she knew a ton about mine either. Cause it's not ever a point of conversation for us when we are in the

house with, with the kids, it's always like, here are the pertinent things you need to know about my upcoming week. And like stuff like that, or like, are we going to get, we have to figure out camps every single day for Ronan during summer

break so that we're not working with him in the house, that kind of stuff. And, uh, it to sit sit there and have her talk about the things, the goings on of her job, which would be like normal things that we would talk about back before we had children. I was shocked that I didn't know so much about her job. I'm off the hook because I'm allowed

to not know anything about her job. But I do see her posting things on Twitter. and she does seem to be a pretty big deal in whatever her field is. Yeah, it's just, I'm like, I'm circling it. And her field seems important. I'm going to find out what that field is any day now. That's not true. I know that she's, so she works in the, she works in environmental policy. That's not true. I know that she's so she works in the she works in environmental policy.

She helps like do these research projects that inform environmental policy in cities like Los Angeles, primarily Los Angeles County, but also kind of all over the country. And that but if you ask me to like drill down and be like, well, what are some of those research projects? I'd be like, well, it's complicated. Okay, no, I mean, it's not your responsibility to understand all of her research projects. So I'll give you a softball. What does she do every day at her job?

There's a lot of, there's like some website building for some reason that I don't totally understand. Like, that's the thing that we we're when she's kind of exacerbated i'm not exacerbate where she's exasperated and she'll be like well it's just i've got what's his name working on the website and it's i i just can't i can't edit all of his copy i need him to be able to just write some of it i'm like i don't know what this website is. Sounds important though. But I do know like she's like working with other people to ensure that they get grants that can fund these research projects and then finding the people that are going to be doing the actual studies.

So I know that there's a big portion of her job, which is ensuring that a bunch of people are all organized and headed towards one direction, like working on one project together, even though they have very disparate roles, and making sure that everything's covered, and if stuff slips through the gaps, that she can then take over and do that work. And that sounds like a nightmare to me. It sounds like a job I would be terrible at. And it's fair to say that, like, you mentioned environmental causes and grants and research. It's fair to say that, like, you mentioned environmental causes and grants and research.

It's fair to say that, like, broadly, she is on the let's save the world, let's save the environment path of things. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, her sustainability or whatever. Sustainability, yeah. And, like, making sure that we're not going to all die in a generation. I don't know that she actually has a lot of say over that, but she's certainly working towards that goal. And in a way where it's, boy,

working at a job where I just do jokes all day, it's, boy, do you feel, it makes you feel like pretty insignificant. Like she's actually doing work to try to save the world. And then I do, I jump in and I'm like, yeah, but like laughter is super important too. There are so many threats to your privacy and your cybersecurity everywhere. So you need something like Avast to help protect you. Avast is a global leader in cybersecurity for more than 30 years and trusted by over 435 million users. Avast empowers

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real threats to the world, the environment uh at work and i get so steeped in this research that i think how are future generations going to look back on this period and they're just going to think how would how did anyone work at any job that wasn't hyper focused on saving the world why would anyone choose anything else? Because I look at it like it's like, boy, this is a real hands on deck situation. Not for me, of course. Not these hands.

These hands have to have to tickle the muse to write jokes. At least yours is like somewhat related. Like people do watch last week tonight to get informed

and to learn about policy and stuff like that and be like, figure out where to put their ire, you and uh i don't i don't have that uh i just wrote an episode i finished an episode today writing my you finished it today i know you're working on it how uh how you feeling man well that actually leads me to my first quick question for you you're right jumping into the show is that okay with you oh okay great uh dan quick question right with me how do you know if something you've written is good but i i don't mean that in like a silly

facetious way i mean like after you write something have you ever looked at it without showing it to anybody yet and been like, yeah, this is really good? Have you ever thought that? No. Not once. No. No. Things have been finished.

That's usually what I go by is a thing is due now. cracked when i had a weekly column which i could not do again for the rest of my life i don't think was i was responsible for a piece of site real estate every friday at five o'clock in the morning so something was going to occupy that real estate every friday at five o'clock in the morning and it wasn't always ready but but it was always done. That was just kind of the thing that made sure the work got done. And I think made me an asset to Jack and Jason as a reliable occupier of space. Right. But they never came to you and they're like, hey, that column is really good.

No. No. I mean, Jack would say nice things. He was good about positive reinforcement. But like even to this day, I'm still very, well, I'm going to hand in, I don't know how to hand in, I don't know how to write this last week's night script. I have no idea how to do it. I know I'm going to because I can't imagine the scenario in which I don't because I've

always handed in the thing I'm supposed to hand in. But even a thing I handed in literally a week ago today, I, I hit send and I thought like I should, I should reach out to my boss and apologize in advance. I should tell him it's okay if he doesn't want to do this, that it won't hurt my feelings and then I'll try harder next time. It's, it's, I,

so I only had the epiphany when you and I talked about this offline recently where I was like, this is basically how it works when I write. I will write something.

I will look at it and be like, this is, this is probably bad. There's like blind spots that I'm not seeing. There's issues with this. I know that it's not, it's not what I wanted it to be.

This is a disaster. Maybe I'm not good at this. And then I will turn it in and I will give it to people. And what I get then is if somebody outside of myself will give me some sort of validation about it where they're like, oh, this is good. No, it's really funny. Then I start believing that. And I start being like, ah, that's the narrative. This is good. Like, ah, I always knew this was good. This has always been great. I am a great writer. And then I will start like thinking that this thing that I've written is good. that i write and i'm writing and i'm writing and i'm like this is bad this is bad why am i no good at this i'll reread something that i've previously done and think ah this is what i knew how to write this is so good yeah i don't know if this is because this particular piece that i'm talking

about did receive a lot of positive feedback from bosses and different staff members and it was all very humbling and and and nice um i don't know if this is imposter syndrome or some other uh thing wrong with my brain but i i i still don't totally trust that i'm good at this yeah sometimes i have like sometimes I get I'll receive positive feedback from something and like well I know I'm not a good writer because if I was a good writer I'd be better at this and I'm not so maybe maybe writing has gotten worse so the only answer when you write something and people think it's good the only answer is that the entire bar for writing in the world has dropped. Yeah.

Those people just haven't read all the great things that I've read, so they don't know how good writing can be. Yeah. Yeah, it's so hard. I mean, first of all, I hate it. I hate the process of writing. I hate how daunting it is. I hate it. I hate the process of writing. I hate how daunting it is. I hate when I'm in the middle of it. I hate sitting there, erasing the word the in a sentence, then putting it back, then erasing it again, changing it to a instead of the, like that kind of shit.

Like the ticky tack shit that goes into all writing. Every single stage of it, I'm like, this is torture, this is torture, this is torture. When I'm done, I'm like, well, at least it's done, but I don't feel good about it. And it's not until I get any sort of like criticism or response from the outside world that I feel anything about it. Like that it might be okay. And so Jack used to tell us not to read comments on our column. So I was also, I had a column that was on Mondays. We like bookended the week.

And I would, you know, finish it by 4.30 in the morning and get it up on the site by 5. And then afterwards, I would hear nothing from anybody from the site. So I'd be like, well, there is no, I have to at least take a scatterplot of a heat check from the comments. So like, I got to read the comments to make sure that like, this isn't completely off base and not everybody is saying the exact same thing. Because even though you can't trust individual comments necessarily, you can get a good scatterplot of like how generally people feel about a thing.

And not always granted, not always does that mean that it was good or bad, but at least like I knew what, what people thought. always does that mean that it was good or bad but at least like i knew what what people thought and then that was that after that i was like ah i see this is good or ah i see no this is no good this is this was bad this is a bad idea and i'll say that the few times in my life that i've ever written something and at the end been like you know i think that's really good i was wrong i was with way off like there's some huge thing that i was missing about it that i just couldn't see the forest through the trees and i up yeah i feel like i think i've mentioned this before i'm trying to think back on other things that i've written

and it's rare that i'll come across something and think that's very good or that's better than i remember it or like wow this is a really great writing but I will I've gone over things that I've done in the past and was surprised at how much fun I was having with it that's something that that I don't it comes up in the how to fight presidents book that I wrote, available in wherever books are sold. And that's something that I hardly ever revisit. But when I do, and it's just like sort of every chapter is a balls out, no rules, no one over my shoulder, no immediate feedback from the audience. It's just me.

Every chapter is the process of me being alone with my thoughts for eight months. And I look at that and I'm like, you were having a little fun. I could see when I get a little bit silly and I I certainly the the the joy comes out more than anything else and that that is a helpful reminder to me because I don't I I don't always think of writing as a joyful thing but but I can see that it's in there I guess you can see it in your own like you, we were just doing Alex Schmidt's podcast on Monday, and off the podcast, you were explaining to him the plot of your Scottie Pippen episode. And it's clear that you're enjoying it,

not in a narcissistic way. You're tickled by, like, the idea of this other soren that you don't know who came up with all these silly things for scotty pippen to do yeah yes i did i i guess you're right there are things that i will reread and be like oh this was a like you're really taking a risk here you didn't know if this joke would like this is a different type of joke where you're just like trying new stuff in it yeah and what you've written and you're like oh it's really experimenting interesting and it's like there's no there's no like sense of good or bad then either i guess you're just like trying new stuff in it in what you've written and you're like, oh, it's really experimenting. Interesting. And it's like,

there's no sense of good or bad then either, I guess. You're just sort of like proud of yourself for being like, well, look at you taking your shot. Look at you trying something new. Yeah. So I finished this episode. I have no idea how it is.

I turn it in because it's due. And I don't know. Like the way that it works at my job is I will probably never know because I guess this is my other question. After an episode airs and you did a segment, because you don't write entire episodes, right? You do segments? with every script is written with two or three writers they each write their drafts they get combined into one master draft and then if there are gaps or jokes that need punching up more writers will get brought in so everything is a tremendous group effort okay so after you've written something and if you feel any sort of ownership over it because like you wrote a good portion of it or you're excited about it at the end what is your like when the reviews are in where are those reviews who are you actually who's who are you turning to to be like this they liked it or they didn't like it what do you mean like i'll give you an example so the audience or yeah exactly at work i think both

so okay at work it's very tough for me to. I assume it's tough for most people to tell because the job of a boss is to not be super candid when people are at their most vulnerable and be like, this is no good. This is crap. Cause you can really fuck somebody up that way. But you, you say, Hey, this is great. This is great. I think we're just a few things we're going to need to change. And then you, and then you get a sense of how it actually is by how much actually gets stripped and gutted. But when it goes out to the world, I don't have a sense of like how an audience, when they watch it on TBS or they watch it on cartoon network, how they feel about the show. There's very few places where you can go and see like, Oh, this, this, I know that this website does reviews of our show. You can read it, but that's one individual person who's like also on a deadline and is also trying to write something where they're like, what's an interesting point I can make? What's an interesting point?

Like it's the same situation. They're not completely candid with how they actually felt about it because sometimes the answer is, eh, it was fine. And you can't just write that. Like you can't be a critic critic that can't be like the critique of it so you have that and then you also have i think probably reddit and i know that a number of other writers on my show will go to like reddit and just kind of see what get a heat check for their episode and i'm like i can't think of anything worse than going to reddit and like trying to like sift through some weirdos who go to an American...

Oh, man. I'm going to alienate my entire audience here. Sift through people who are going to go to an American dad thread and say how much they hate the show. Because what a weird impulse that is to do that over and over and over again. You would just stop watching, I'd assume. Yeah. Instead of do that over and over and over again you would just stop watching i'd assume yeah instead of doing that over i think would be really gratifying for you to see and i don't know if this is i'm certain it's not possible but really gratifying for you to see who in our industry that i know you know and respect

likes your show and watches your show it just just came up. They're like the, one of the only other podcasts that I listened to, the flagrant ones, has three of the funniest people I know of in the world. Hayes Davenport, Sean Clements, and Carl Tartt. And American Dad comes up a bunch and they clearly all know the show and are fans of the show.

And I think, I bet it would be really nice if you told the writers of american dad that you like their show i understand that as someone who like i would never do that i i love plenty of shows and i don't just like i'm not going to reach out to stephanie robinson and just say hey i really like what we do in the shadows keep it up but i i guess that would be a good practice to start doing because otherwise they'll just never know like you don't know how many funny people wandering around our industry know and like your show very much god that would be that'd be great to know um

i would love it i did see so american dad was on uh at atlanta recently um there's just like on the background in atlanta as a crossover oh okay and and when like so when we talked about it in our thread um our whatsapp thread people were like oh yeah we've heard that we've heard that uh that that Donald Glover is a huge American dad fan. I was like gushing about that. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Donald Glover walks my show. I'm like in love with the idea of that.

And it is, you're really kind of like, more so than when you write for the internet, you're just like writing into the dark. I think it's maybe different for last week to today because you do get a lot of celebrities who are politically minded, who are then retweeting it with some sort of editorializing over the top of it. Yeah.

Or like writing, putting it on whatever social channels they've got, like Josh Molina and like Patton Oswalt. People like that are like, oh, John Oliver's nailing it. Like whatever it is, like they pull out a segment. They like to, it's designed to be cut up and like given back out to the world i mean there's nothing i could do for my career when when bradley whitford is like so important and i'm like cool uh you want to can i do you want to do billy madison too with me i write it uh it just feels like you're kind of like writing into a void and you do get some feedback at work,

but in terms of like the general populace, you have no idea how it's being gauged out there or like what the consensus is about what you're doing. And maybe there is no such thing. Maybe it is all just individuals and they don't, there is no, like there's no pulse. Yeah. There's no collective pulse where they're

like this is good this is bad and that's why it's especially rough like the what we were talking about at the beginning just the act of like turning something in and stressing over it that is a part of this this whole um job slash existence that i've committed myself to fully, if you know you might not get a response from your boss or your peers, you might not get a response from an audience, there is also no way to internally know that something is good or as good as it can be. And I just hand in a thing that I stress about every single assignment I hand in and have handed in for my entire 15 year professional writing career. And every time I handed it, I'm like, this is so bad.

I'm so embarrassed. Why did I pick this job? Why didn't I pick a job I'd be better at? No one made me pick this job. I'm not like living in a small town and like hey we need one writer in it and we picked your name out of a hat i signed up for this i should have picked something that i knew i could do better not just signed up like you doggedly pursued it it wasn't like oh at career day you picked it and like fuck i shouldn't have that that day

no it's like something you can take at every single turn you were like yeah this is the one this is still the one i moved 3 000 miles twice uh yeah i i think about back when i was in school and i would have to write essays and stuff and i would always be like that was the worst part of school the worst part of school was i knew i had a paper coming up. I knew I had a day that it was due. And I was just going to have to buckle down and like really think about this, the color purple or whatever it was and go write an essay about it. And I hated that so, so, so much that I dreaded it. I do all my other homework first and like get it out of the way because I knew that was going to be the easy stuff. It was like the essay that was going to be hard.

And then you and I had a decade-long career just writing essays it's it's so wild to think about like both of my brothers are uh as as far as i'm concerned experts in their various fields one of them is an occupational therapist one of them is a musician slash music teacher slash minister of music. And they're both great. And they know how to talk to patients. They know like my music teacher brother is the most patient guy on the planet. And he gets students who are all over the spectrum of skill level. And he knows how to talk to all of them and like exercises to give them, to make them better at music that day than when they came in.

Or at the very least to make them feel better about their own playing that day than when they came in or at the very least to make them feel better about their own playing than they did when they came in that morning and my other brother the occupational therapist just like knows stuff about the body and how it works i i complained to him with shoulder pain and he starts like listing off the names of of bones and like does a couple of quick tests to see like if he can assess what it what this shoulder pain could be and he just knows stuff and there's no there's no version of their occupations where he comes home from work and he's like I don't know I don't know about this one today this one kind of got away from me I worked on some some people with some some pretty serious spinal injuries and i i really

don't think that's my thing i really i i should have had someone else do it i feel bad i hope my boss isn't mad i really fucked up that person's body i was just feeling weird today i was in a weird mood so it came out strange or like the music that happened to be on was making me feel really odd so i just did kind of a different thing yeah that just that shit doesn't happen yeah it was raining and sometimes when it rains i don't feel like helping someone walk again i don't know i do a worse job of it or i do a job of it that's like derivative of something that we did a couple of seasons ago yeah i i did it and i thought it was pretty good i thought i did a pretty good job and then i remembered that like i had done the identical thing two two weeks ago and like i had just forgotten that it was me and so i basically like plagiarized myself trying to get this guy to walk

again um yeah i i don't know i i never feel good about a thing and when i when i do feel good about it it's like it's so hollow it's like based on it's based on like the three different people who might have said it was nice and whether they're being honest or not you never know it's just there's no there's no metric that's the problem in our job there's no like quantifiable metric for what makes something good. We used to work at a company called, ah, fuck it. I don't care. Demand Media.

We used to work at this company called Demand Media. And they were in a real hunt to create as much content as they could. And at one point, we had a big party because our CEO noticed that we had our articles. Every day, we were generating enough articles that we had our articles every day. We are generating enough articles that we are writing more words than there are in war and peace. And I was so demoralized by that because it meant no one gives a shit. No one cares what what if something's good or not or what that even means, because it's different for everybody. And like so many people's idea of what's good is dependent on other people saying that it's good or not, or what that even means, because it's different for everybody. And like so many people's idea of what's good is dependent

on other people saying that it's good. And I'm like, oh shit, that's me. And that's my stuff. And I don't know if it's good. But I mean, the vaguer thing is also weird and scary. And there are some times when this will make me sound shitty and like the opposite of humble imposter that i've been this whole time but sometimes i'll write a weird joke and the audience won't totally be on board with it and i'll immediately just think like well the audience is wrong today and i and i and

i'm not even just saying that as a joke on this podcast i feel that in my body was like yeah i mean they don't laugh at everything and uh, you know, sometimes they're wrong. I thought it was good. My boss thought it was good. My coworkers liked it. What? I mean, the natural conclusion to that is what does the audience know? And I'm not going to say that.

I'm not even going to think it. I'll think it for you. Thanks, buddy. Do you know why free trials renew without your consent? It's because it's part of their business plan. That is a feature, not a bug for them. So don't let the greedy corporations pocket your money. Download Truebill to take control of your subscriptions.

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Well, it's good to know that we're all in the same boat. I think that a lot of people probably feel this way. That a lot of people like have never written anything and at the end been like, ah, a masterpiece. And I think that's's fine let me try to walk back that audience thing

because i think if there was a metric for success um i think you would reject it it doesn't need to be because that's that's oh yeah who you are as a writer and that's what what it takes to be a writer. Of the many random magical things that go into being a writer, one of the things, in my opinion, that it takes to be a writer is rejection of metrics like that. It doesn't have to be me saying the audience is wrong here. But if someone at Demand Media says,

this is the most words, then you know that that's bullshit. But if someone at Demand Media says, this is the most words, then you know that that's bullshit. Or someone, some fuck from some other startup could invent some algorithm that will determine what is the best article or the best episode. And you would still, as a writer and you, reject that. Don't you think? I think so. I'm trying to think of like there's a single person that I guess I would respect only their opinion above all else. And I guess there are like a three people like that in my life where if I showed it to them and they were like, I don't know, I feel like I could use a few

more drafts or, uh, they're like, this is really great. I would be like, it is great. It is really great. And believe them. Um, but that's only because I know that those are people who would be candid with me. And that's the other aspect of that those are people who would be candid with me. And that's the other aspect of our job is that you're so vulnerable when you just create something and that everybody's aware of that. They're keenly aware, in your circles anyway,

they know that if it's not good, you don't just come out and say to that person, it's not good. Because that's devastating. Because it means, it's like a reflection on them. It means you're not good. Right. And that's hard to swallow.

And so instead, there's different ways to couch it like a reflection on them it means you're not good right and that's hard to swallow and so instead you there's like there's different ways to couch it and and add a little sugar to the medicine and and i'm always worried that i'm not catching on to that that it's like it's happening to me and i'm just like oblivious to it yeah um and that's that's just as scary i don't know it's maybe this is maybe this is not valuable to anybody but us but but it is i think it's probably nice to know that everybody deals with this yeah uh i wonder if this is related or not i was going to talk about it anyway but in the the time since we've recorded podcasts, I had a race.

I ran a race because you know I run Soarin'. Okay. Mm-hmm. Can I make a couple of guesses about what's going on here? Sure. Okay. First of all, I want to guess that this is probably a 5K. No, it was not.

Okay. Did you create a playlist to go along with it? No. It was a very low-stakes race. So create a playlist to go along with it? No. It was a very low stakes race. So did you train at all for this race? No. Okay. That's all right.

I'm all caught up. This was January of this year. Once I settled into a new town, I was just Googling around like, what are all of the local races coming up? Because I like to sign up for a couple races a year once every couple of months I think and this was one of the first ones that was happening it was a 2.2 miler which is a nothing distance and it's it's 2.2 because people wear tutus it's a charity for Boys and Girls Club of America and

it's very low stakes very not competitive a lot of America. And it's very low stakes, very not competitive. A lot of people walk it. It's really quick. And I was like, yeah, let me just, I can bang this out before work. I'm not going to train for it because I'm never only running 2.2 miles when I run ever. I'm always like minimum doing a 3K. And I didn't want to do like really focused training on, all right, well, let me just get, let me start sprinting miles every day. Cause

that wouldn't, wouldn't have been fun training for me really. So I was like, I'm going to just do this race and I'm going to show up. Uh, and Soren was not competitive race. Not a lot of people showed up for it, but I still never get to say stuff like this. Sixth place, baby. How many people were there? Hundreds. At least a hundred. And you got sixth.

Yeah. Fifth, fifth male, sixth place. And it's, it's. That's awesome, Dan. That's so cool. That must have been so exciting. I've, it's the first time I've gotten, uh, I mean, like I don't get a medal or anything like that, but they give awards in quotes to top finishers.

And this is the first race I've ever had an award in. And I feel awesome. I know it was not competitive. I know that a lot of the other organizations that I've run with, I will continue to not place or get any awards. But it felt really fucking cool. First time doing this thing, felt happy with my time. But I think it ties into how I feel about myself as a writer

where it's like, yeah, I'm not fast. It was just a slower race and everyone around me was worse. Immediately start qualifying it. Why you did so well. This can't be right well this can't be right this can't be right oh look everyone got injured if this was a real race I'd have lost no were you wearing a tutu when you did this sure was buddy you didn't train for it though which means that had you trained for it fuck think of you could have placed even higher than that I bet how close behind number five were you I was right behind her and i thought if i was feeling shittier i thought i can i can maybe catch her i didn't

know that she was uh first place woman so i'm really i'm glad that i didn't because it's also bad form to like sprint ahead of someone at the very end of the race because she had me beat the whole 2.2 yeah and i felt a little bit in my tank at the end where i was like if i want to sprint past this lady i could probably do that but i didn't and i'm glad i didn't but i was right on her heels and the person after me was was a ways back okay and could you see uh could you see first place finish i didn't see him finish no he was a full two minutes faster than I was. Whoa.

Yeah. That's a lot. Well, but you also didn't know, you still have fuel in the tank. It means that you didn't know throughout the rest of the race how to spread that out. No.

You were just sort of like guessing. Which I never do. I'm never really good at that particular thing. It's when we got closer to the end and I saw like the little, the big clock that tells you your time when you finish, I was surprised that we were done already.

Yeah. Oh man, that's, so you could have been fifth and, but you would have, it would have been bad form. Dan, that's awesome. That's so cool. Out of hundreds of people

and you smoked them. I smoked people who were like dressed up in costumes and having a good time. But you were also, it was a level playing field. You were also in a costume and having a good time supposedly. Yeah. That's really great, man. Congratulations. That's, I've never felt that before. I've never been in a situation where it's been a big competition and I came in top 10. And I'm like, oh, look at that. There's nothing you can...

It's hard to not have a little bit of an ego about it because every step of the way, I was like, this is not a competitive race. People are having fun. It's like by design, they're having fun look at all the walkers and then smash got to a day later i'm refreshing the website like when are they gonna post the fucking results i gotta see my name up there come on take a screenshot for my dad you would have and had it been uh all all women you would have won right that's what i'm understanding sure i wonder if you're allowed to do that for first place i wonder even anything like this if you

were that close behind somebody who was in first if you were like i think i'd rather be first and you just went ahead of them i don't know i'm always curious because you'll see some race finishes like that. Like I've watched a bunch of videos on YouTube where someone who's clearly in first slows down and like puts their arms up to celebrate a bit. And then someone just zips past them. And I guess part of that is hubris of the guy putting his hands up to celebrate prematurely. But another part of it is like, you know, it's the end of the race, right? And like that was the guy who end of the race right and like that

was the guy who was winning the whole time yeah yeah so i did a stair climb a few years ago which have you ever done one of those before um sort of we did this thing uh relay that i did in college with my brother and my dad called the uh urban athlon where you run and you do a bunch of uh street obstacles we were hopping over hurdles of uh like traffic dividers and my portion of the the relay was up and down um i think 52 flights of stairs in one of the world trade center buildings, not one of the RIP ones, like a different world trade center building. It's just like a narrow,

lots of stairs inside. Awful, awful time. Hot, no air. It's yeah, they're terrible. I did one of those and I was,

it was similar. It's like 50 stairs or 50 levels or something like that. And I did not train for it, but I came into it hot thinking like, I can see the top of the building from here. How bad could this be? This is going to be a, this is going to be a breeze.

It's like, I came out of the gates hot. Like I came out, it's like sprinting up four stairs at a time and stuff. And then got to like level eight and was like, Ooh, I got a lot to go. And,

but like stuck with it in a way where you can only do when it's your first time. You don't know how much gas to burn where you're like you overexert yourself and you do too much and you try and do it too fast. And you do end up doing it. It's just at the end, I was like throwing up at the top. And at the end of it, I was like, I went past so many people in those stairs. I feel like I probably did pretty well. Then I saw the results and I got absolutely annihilated by like 400 people because there are people who just travel around doing these. They don't go do races.

They do stair climbs and they have a strategy. They have like the outfit that's perfect for it. Like whatever it is they have, they use the railing. It's one hand, two hands, pull one hand, two hands, two hands pull and like they know the system to get them up the fastest and i knew none of that i just like stumbled up the stairs as fast as i could and threw up at the top and then thought i won did you so you said throw up at the top did you there wasn't a down component to your stairs no i mean everybody walked back down afterwards but that was not part of the i

think that's maybe it's with most stair climbs i think that's maybe too dangerous to ask ours going down was part of it and that was my whole thinking as a 20 year old with bones made of rubber i was like this is where i'm gonna make up the time i lost being slow going up it's just like straight legs slamming my heels into every step, just like fucking zooming down at like a moron. And you could see experienced people who are like, oh, oh, he doesn't, he doesn't know. He doesn't know about his shins tomorrow. Yeah, it's just the muscle starts to separate from the shin. Yeah, that's a bummer.

Yeah, I got to the top and didn't really enjoy it. Like people are like, what was the view like? I'm like, I have no idea. I was, it was hot and it was, it was bright because I'd been a dark stairway for so long. And I think there might've been a helicopter pad, but it's hard to tell because I was throwing up on it. Yeah. Someone spilled puke all over the roof. And then like other people who had finished were looking at me like, what, why did you do that? What did you get out of that?ie you don't understand i'm probably first place in my mind i'm thinking nah just wait till the results come in you'll understand

i do i don't i i didn't give a shit about it at the time and i certainly don't now but i i definitely remember finishing the la marathon the only marathon I will ever do, and finished in like, in some not impressive amount of time, five hours, maybe. I don't remember what it was, but it was, it was not good. And I wasn't going for time. I was really just like, let me, let me try to finish a marathon and see if I can do it. But I still, in like the, certainly the back half, probably back quarter of the finishers, put my arms up in celebration when I crossed the finish line and you could hear the announcer

laugh about it. That's humbling. This guy is feeling really good about his six hour time. Is that good? Couple of walkers right behind him. Not feeling as pleased with themselves. Someone seems to have stopped for some ice cream along the way. He's also finishing now.

Yeah. I do remember as a kid, there's a race called the Boulder Boulder in Colorado, which is like a six mile race. And my dad and I trained for it. I can't remember how old i was i must have been like 11 and we would run from my house which is out in the woods into town and that was like six and a half miles or whatever and he had like run along a highway and stuff and so training for it i felt good it was like the first race i'd ever done and i thought i think i'll win this and then went and did it and in the middle of it got kind of tired and just walked for like 30 seconds and then got mad at myself and started running and i still think about that all the time i'm like that

i didn't run the whole thing that i that i for whatever reason i stopped and slowed down and walked some and then was like no you shouldn't do this and then ran but it was too late like the damage was done and so when their results came in my dad was like look for your age group you were in 13th place that's amazing and i was like yeah but i but i didn't really do the race and like mad at myself i so i do uh orange theory with my friend susan every monday i think i mentioned. And it's normally just like circuit training, high intensity interval training stuff. And every once in a while, they will throw in some new element, like once a quarter. They'll just announce like, hey, on this day, we're doing the catch me if you can challenge, which is specific when you're on the treadmill treadmill you have to maintain a certain amount of uh

distance and they'll you have like a chart that says at two minutes in you need to be at quarter of a mile or whatever it is and then at four minutes in you need to be at this or whatever it is uh and you go that way up until 18 minutes uh and the the times in between get shorter and shorter which is how i make like you know you have two minutes to do a quarter of a mile great and then as it gets to the end you've already been running for 15 minutes then they start checking in with you every 30 seconds you need to be here you need to be there uh and there's less room obviously for you to make up ground if you're getting slower. And the game of it is, if you're not where you're supposed to be,

then you're caught. You know, you're being chased, quote unquote. And if you're not where you're supposed to be, you're caught and you're out. And then you just sort of run for personal best to put your score down and try to beat it the next time you do catch me if you can. And as soon as I heard about this challenge,

I was like, there's no fucking way in hell i'm getting caught in this thing because i run every day it's the main thing that i do and i could see like the the the simple way to to to cheat and to not cheat but like to ensure that you get the distance that you need to get for every uh checkpoint is to just run at 8.6 speed the entire time which is a thing i can do and i even started faster than that because i wanted to give myself some very very comfortable breathing room and i had it for so long that i'm just looking down when when when coach be like all right uh at this point you guys need to be at 0.75 mile and i'm looking down and i'm at 1.1 miles i'm like this is in the bag yeah and at some point in this challenge i just decided

to go slower just like well let me took the foot. I think, yeah, my plan was going to be like, and then for the last minute and a half, I'm really gonna just burn it. So let me, like, let me rest up to that. Let me earn that. I've got enough of a lead on this fictional chaser that I can slow down to

7.5 or 7, whatever I was doing. I could slow down to that for a minute. And I got caught by the fucking guy. And I was so shocked. I was sitting there thinking I'm the hero in the tortoise and the hare, a book I started, but I'm not done with yet. And I can't, I can't even,

I'm still to this minute just thinking like because no matter what i can run uncomfortably for 18 minutes i don't even know why i would ever slow down ever in my life i could like it's it's only 18 minutes you stupid fuck wait is this this is on a treadmill this is on a treadmill yeah and so you're going that's part of my 8.6 yeah oh that's fast dan and then i slowed down thinking i've i've created enough of a buffer here you gotta be fine but it really catches up to you that's crazy and you got caught i. Oh, that's humiliating. It really is.

That's like worse than just being slow. Right. To get caught for a stupid reason. Yeah, I was too dumb. It's clearly stupidity and hubris. It's really just me being like, all right, 8.6 has been the necessary speed this whole time but maybe seven will be the necessary speed now i'll if it makes you feel any better if i when i go run on a treadmill i well i'll run for like sometimes if usually it's gonna be for half an hour but

sometimes i'll be like oh i gotta get to work or whatever so i'll only do it for 20 minutes and seven is gonna be pretty fast for me even Even setting it to seven, I'm like, oof, that's, Soren, you're really gunning it. I think everyone in the gym is taking notice because this is fast. I'm really comfortable at like a 6.7, honestly. Yeah. So that's good.

That's really good. I, thank you. I, one of my, I just hate running on treadmills so much so that's another one of my problems where i'm i'm really feeling how fast that is and how long it is and i think one of the i think i'm i'm definitely overall faster when i'm running out in the world i think i can obviously run a faster mile if I'm on a treadmill and I could see the time and just decide like, okay, this is how I could see. I just press the buttons and now I'm faster so I can get a better time. But I hate being on a treadmill and

I can't do any of the fun disassociation that is so crucial to my running strategy when i'm just on this thing especially if coach is there and he's like all right just maintain we're going to do all out pace now for three minutes and you could just stare at a clock that is a digital clock clicking down to three minutes i was like that's not that's not helpful for me to see no it's when i'm running i'm not supposed i'm not supposed to know how far or how much time i need to do this yeah i found that when you and i did sorry that's why that guy caught me soren i thought he knew it was a mental game when you and i did our our playlist to try and like rush through a 5k and i built that and then i ran to the playlist i did it and i was like hey you did it i never

want to do that again i hate the feeling of like getting to that last song and being like okay you got to time this out perfectly or like this is where you really got to rush the entire time thinking about like basically having these songs count me down to the finish was so bad i hated it uh because then you're also like looking for drags in the song you're like oh this part i forgot about this noodle i forgot that they do this like a little solo here that's good that's gonna save me some time like it's not what i wanted to be focused on while i was running oh that's also another way that running and writing are very similar is that sometimes i'm worse at running than i was before i'll be running not to a playlist or anything i'll just be running one of my normal routes and i'll look down at my

watch to see what my time is and i'll be like what that no but i've done it better before i found that i'm and this is weird i found that i'm way faster at night uh why do you think so can run at night where you are can you yeah oh cool that's real cool yeah um yeah i i don't know why maybe it's because it's cooler and it's like the sun is has a profound effect on me i don't know um but i can like because it's cooler and the sun has a profound effect on me. I don't know. But I can like, I just shred times when I run at night. Don't know why. I never know if that's like, because I haven't been shaking things up and running super early and sometimes in the middle of the day. I used to run at night all the time.

And I'm really curious what kind of pace differential that'll be. Because I never know if that's like... I like running at the end of the day because I like it as my workday is done now. And now we transition into the fun stuff. Yeah. But I always wonder like... I'm less conscious of, uh, like,

like fuel or eating when I run at night, I think. Oh yeah. Cause just like whatever I had for lunch, whatever I snacked on during the day. Whereas now if I know like I'm going to run early, I have a window where I can run early. Then I'm probably going to do it before lunch. And then when I come back for lunch,

I'm going to have one of my stupid fucking salads. Yeah. I think that maybe running at night is like, it is like writing in that I, I'm like, I've just, I fall into focus a lot easier after a certain point of the, of the day where it's like, I get so distracted so easily throughout the day. And I want to be distracted. I want just like, I want indulgences all day long. It's like, I get so distracted so easily throughout the day and I want to be distracted. I want just like, I want indulgences all day long. It's like, give me candy, give me television. Let me watch videos. Like I want it bad. And then in the night, for whatever reason, I don't know if I trained myself this way in college or whatever it was when I write papers then, but it was like, that's when I really, I like settle into it. And I'm willing to just focus on one thing at a time at night. Don't tell my boss that though.

I don't want to have a career where I just write at night. I don't think they could mandate that, could they? I don't know. I think sometimes it happens. I've heard stories about writer's room where a showrunner will be like, the best writing happens after midnight. Oh, yeah. And everyone being like, oh, no. Oh, i don't know if i want to work here i think we can wrap things up now yeah we

turn it we ended up turning in another sports podcast hell yeah we did we turn the show is quick question but you know that already we were recorded edited and produced by the irreplaceable gabe harter our theme song is by the incredible Merex. Their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com. You can find me, Soren, and the show, all of us on Twitter, me at dob underscore inc, Soren at soren underscore ltd, the show

at qq underscore soren and dan. Email the show at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com. We also have a Patreon you can support if you want. You get bonus exclusive questions just for the listeners who support us on Patreon. There's something I want to try at the end of episodes

that I've been thinking about for a while and then I keep forgetting to do it. Okay. Dan, I really enjoyed talking to you. Hey, Dan. Thanks. I really enjoyed talking to you too.

All right. I'll talk to you later. Bye-bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you. All right. I want to hear your thoughts so I know what's on your mind. Bye-bye. What's it up with? 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