Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Unidentified Flying Questions

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Surfs up! Soren rides an unending wave of sickness and lands on his own personal strange encounters of a third kind, and Daniel teaches us an equally riveting lesson about inbox management. 

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up to? Where did all that go? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it after we got a week's off? 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. I think you'll have a great time here for last week tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. And Soren, I don't even want to give you a chance to say hi today. This is going to be an all me episode. I'm telling you, I'm fired up.

I got huge news. You're not going to be able to beat it. It's going to occupy this whole episode. I'm ready to jump right into what is the biggest news of the century, unless you have anything quick you want to get out of the way first. No way. Let's get into it. Whoa. This is going to be great. This is going is gonna be a great episode what's going on there buddy just give me a second

um if i if i get to the wrong register it's it sounds like i'm going through puberty again because i got COVID again. Record scratch. I'm sorry to hear that, buddy. I was, okay. Let me just back up a little bit before I tell you how I got it and say that I am very judgmental of people who are constantly sick.

People who get sick all the time. I'm like, well, fucking just take a vitamin for crying out loud. Do something. Get some sleep. This has been a humbling 2023 for me. sick all the time like well fucking just take a vitamin for crying out loud do something um get some sleep this has been a humbling 2023 for me so far because pretty much all of 2023 so far i've been sick with something from one week to the next it's just like i'm just floating on this wave of sickness and i just move from one to the next yeah doctors don't even don't even test you for

anything anymore they just you come in and they look at their list and it's like uh yeah you're due for the flu now that's the next one on the list you haven't had the flu yet oh fuck you that's what it is go home it's the flu um yeah it's it's been so bad and it's not in a way where like i'm learning a lesson from it either where by the end of this i'm gonna come out of it and be more nice to people who are sick. I'm just extremely embarrassed and humiliated and will live like that until it's over. And then I'll be like, I'll just forget that little window. Now, there are a few points of order here. One of them is one of confusion for me in that you already had COVID and it wasn't that long ago no that this i this is genuinely worrisome in that um i i know that there are consequences to having covid over and over again each time you get covid it does different things to you and it can have like terrifying long-term effects on your brain

and things like that and i was flying high for a long time thinking I'm not getting COVID. Everybody else I know has had COVID and I have not. Then I got it twice in three and a half months. Yeah. You were, you were so, you were one of the most, um, one of the safest and most protected people that I knew personally throughout the, the pandemic. You were, you were, you, you were integrating yourself out into the real world later than most people because you were protecting your family. And you,

you lasted so long without getting it. And previously, before all this, just knowing you in life, you are not a person who gets sick often. No.

And then you got it the first time. And I think we both like quietly rejoiced after that with the, a bonded experience that I know I felt that like once you get COVID, now you're like really free and clear for a while. Now you've got this

immunity that everyone's talking about, this brief window where you're untouchable. And it doesn't sound like you got to enjoy any of that fun stuff. I mean, I had a window. I didn't really actually do, God, I hate my voice right now. I didn't actually do a lot of the things that I wanted to do even while I had it. Because also with children and everything, I'm pretty confined. My son is the one who originally got it this time. He got sick. I just tested him because that's the new normal where as soon as someone in your family gets sick, you're like, well, let's make sure. And he found out he had COVID. And then my wife and I start like figuring out how the next 10 days of our life is going to go because now we can't send Gilly to

school because she's a close contact. We can't send him to school. So they're going to be home. We're going to keep working now. Also, how are we going to handle being in the house? Is he in a separate room? Is he wearing a mask? He was feverish. His symptoms were not good at first. They were like really, really bad cold for the first few days. And mask he was feverish his symptoms were not good at first they were like really really bad cold for the first few days and then he was fine um but we're trying to like we're making him wear a mask in the house he's sleeping in a different room than his sister and even with all that colleen got sick and he was even he's poor kid was eating his meals at a different table than us like we were eating at the kitchen counter and he was eating over at the dining room table all by himself. Listening to his music.

it's um this time it's been much easier on me because i didn't have the chills i didn't have the exhaustion it's just been a a mucusy thing it's like in my lungs and it's it's clearly affecting my voice and for colleen it's been a little worse she got some fever stuff but we got covid our whole family and maybe not gilly i don't know also go ahead that's uh that sucks real bad uh i was gonna it's it's it's always tough when um i'm sure you're getting the same advice from a million people and it's like very obvious stuff but uh have you tried that extra strength mucinex yet no really really really cleared me right out yeah okay um we haven't done that i also having covet as a whole family has revealed the true weaknesses of the covet testing system because we bought a bunch of at-home tests with very surprising results like sometimes ronan has

it through these sometimes he doesn't gilly has never had it i Ronan has it through these. Sometimes he doesn't. Gilly has never had it. I have never had it through these. Colleen has. And then we were like, well, we got to get PCRs because we want to be in the system in terms of like having COVID. We want the world to know. It's like important for medical history to say what happened here. And so we all went and got our PCR tests in what i would say was like the peak for all of us the only person who came back positive was colleen man so so far i haven't tested positive technically for covet but you're still absolutely certain there's no fucking way it's not covet because my son definitely has it my wife has it a bad lesson for me as someone who uh i think famously we've talked about on this show that i own two thermometers because i don't always trust

one of them and when i've taken covid tests and they've been negative i'll usually take multiple and then last time went to urgent care to get their like official doctor's test and even when those were negative i was like now i got it i i right refusal to believe that anything works unless it says there's something wrong with me if the if the broken thermometer says 102 fever then it's like oh finally he's he's stepping up yeah i it's a special humiliation for me too that this is not like a bad covet the one that i got this time around or whatever the strain is because this surely i mean the last one really got me but it was a big strong one it that got me and this one is like it's not it's a nothing it's a it's a gentle breeze of a cold and i can't believe that it fucking got me that it's beating me you do you you don't sound great and i don't mean to make you self-conscious i'm sure you sound I can't believe that it fucking got me, that it's beating me.

You do, you don't sound great. And I don't mean to make you self-conscious. I'm sure you sound better than you sound in your own head. But like, as soon as we got on the microphones before we started recording today, I was like, oh, he's not, he's not fooling. This is a real, he's got something. Our boy's got something. Yeah, it's, today was also the day where we started

working on my story so i'm like pitching to the room with this fucking voice and no nobody can focus because nobody can listen to this and be like hold on let's fucking talk about the fact that your voice keeps cracking i i have i have two that makes me think of two things that i'm gonna spend some time talking so you can rest your voice a little bit but um years ago on this podcast i mentioned uh doing this youth leadership camp that may or may not have been some kind of wellness cult that i did in high school but it was really fun like three-day weekend thing that i did where you learn skills and you meet new people from all different schools and you learn about leadership, I guess.

And I met up months later, just agreed to meet up with two of the girls that I met there and became friends with. And this was all very exciting stuff because I wasn't, I was like a junior in high school. It was like a rare and exciting thing to socialize with, with girls who didn't go to my school. And my voice was just gone from whatever sickness I was getting over.

And I was like in the, I think one of them was driving cause I didn't have my license yet. And I was just like in the backseat of the car, like a child. And it was like, I'm really, there's, I swear to God,

I'm not sick. And look, we could go bowling today. You guys want to go bowling? We could do mini golf too. And just like anytime I just try to talk and just seeing if I had, insofar as I had any shot with either of these girls, just watching it go down and down and down

because this was like, there was a period of months where they hadn't seen me and their memory could have made me anything I could have been interesting I could have been taller and they're like hey thanks for picking me up don't I'm gonna just sip my juice back here if that's okay can I sit in between the seats back in between so I can see and talk to you both it's just easier if i'm so close to you talking it's better it's better if i sit in the middle i get car sick otherwise

we're not gonna go eat cheese are we uh and the only other thing it makes me it calls to mind is uh being in a local theater production also in high school of you're a good man charlie brown and uh my voice is completely giving out and turning full rasp on the very last performance um and it's a thing that i can't forget because my dad who is a wonderful man and i love him so much shout out dad thanks for being a a long time listener to this day uh he will say he can't say you're a good man charlie brown without adding with your raspy voice or something about my voice like it's just like a core memory for him now like yeah i remember you did that show with uh with your with your with your voice with your

sick voice with your with your i'm like yeah no i know i did we had five for five other performances for five other performances where i sounded like an angel we i i it does stick in your memory in the same way where we did an after hours episode out in the desert and you were just getting over being very sick and i started to get sick that day like i started to get a fever that day and you and i like you know you, it's always a two shot. So it's Katie and Michael and they look, I remember. I just needed a second. There's that COVID brain. It's your fears. And the, you know, they're in the desert.

So obviously that part's different, but they look normal. And then you get to our side and you're like, what the fuck happened? What happened to these wartime presidents? They're suddenly 70 years older. It's, I feel like I remember watching the da vinci code when that was in theaters and there are a couple of scenes where like tom hanks is clearly sick the day they filmed it like he's got a cold of some kind his voice is just different and i remember thinking why didn't you just stop filming but then now that we're on after hours which is a production that's on the same level as Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code uh I'm realizing like oh you

just can't you can't yeah you're on a budget and you have like certain days that are blocked off for filming these things so like that's why we're gonna do this entire sketch this entire episode uh in a way that will be like very unpleasant for the audience to listen to. A blown day is like canceling a wedding last minute. That's how much money you're spending. Oof. So sorry you're going through this again. That's all right.

So when my son was sick at the beginning and I was really like, you're just trying anything to make them feel better. And I'm talking to him. I'm like, this is a good thing. It's a good thing that you're sick right now because this won't last long and then at the end of it we get to go do all the fun stuff that you haven't been able to do probably that you since you remember like we can go to a movie theater and his eyes lit up and i was like and we can go bowling and we can go to science museums and he's like can we go to the natural history museum and i was like of course we can like all this indoor stuff that we haven't been able to do in years because we've been so safe

it's crazy you sound exactly like i did in that car ride science museum we can see a movie i think minority Report's playing let me check if that's the right time period girls like Minority Report right precogs you guys want to know about precogs the police officers have a stick that make you throw up when they touch you with it

that's interesting right I've heard Colin Farrell is very attractive in this one. So I was trying to get him excited, but at the same time, I'm thinking in the back of my head, if I don't get this, we're not doing any of that fucking shit. Because I can't teach him to drive and go by himself. He needs one of us, and we're not sick.

But now that Colin and I both have it, it's on. Game on. The end of next week, that's 10 days for me, and I was the last one to get it. So we're going to do it all. And her symptoms are pretty rough? Yeah. She got a fever and chills, and she just gets wiped out. I mean, we've had to switch off with the kids because we both are still working each day too.

Yeah. out. I mean, we've had to switch off with the kids because we both are still working each day too. And there are times where like, I'll come out of my office, which is just the garage, and the kids will just be screaming and fighting with each other. I'm like, where's mom? She's just given up somewhere to like rest because she's like, I got to recharge. It's not any good for them. It's not good for me. Man. And this lines up. So you've been sick for the Super Bowl and Valentine's Day. Yeah.

I don't know if you had big plans for either of those things. I did have Super Bowl plans. I mean, you always liked the Super Bowl. I love it. I didn't watch a single second of it. Man. I know. Do you care to know who wins yeah I mean I'm familiar I checked in after the game to see who won so you don't have to

scoop me with that story um but yeah I didn't get to go to Super Bowl stuff to Super Bowl stuff and then Valentine's Day is a thing that we don't totally do, but we do a little something. And it was just out of the question this year. We were going to do a trip this weekend that was going to be visiting friends down south. It was very exciting. And all that's obviously out the window. And instead, Colleen was like, what if we just go to the mountains and go sledding? And I was like, we can't do, oh my God, we could do that. We could just get in the car. We'll get an Airbnb up in the mountains where we

don't know anybody. We'll find a place that's hilly. We will just go for the weekend, stay in a cabin. The kids will see snow and we will go sledding. So that's what we're doing. will go sledding that's fantastic we're doing it's uh this will not be interesting podcast fodder for anyone uh but listeners if you're just joining us soren has covet for the second time so we're we're we're just filling time however we can here and people are jumping in in the middle of the podcast yeah that's correct yeah coming back one of the podcasts had a commercial break so they just skipped around yeah they jumped to this one and here we are uh so it's it's it's funny to me that you're you're very excited that the kids are going to be able to see snow when we are on the east coast now experiencing what i'm i'm certain is a false spring it's been like 50s and 60 degrees the last two days here.

And I'm really close to putting away the big coats, but I've done this dance before and I know I'm going to get hit with a later winter, but man, it's so appealing, the thought of it possibly being spring here. It doesn't make any sense. The groundhog saw the thing. It really tricks you.

Well, the groundhog thing, I don't understand anyway. Because if the sun's out, that suggests early spring to me. And that's the time when they're like, no, if the sun's out, you get a bunch more winter. Yeah. And I don't think anyone has ever actually gone back and crunched the numbers to hold that groundhog accountable for the times that his prognostication has been off.

Did I tell you last year, there was like in New Brunswick, New Jersey, which is the town where I went to college at Rutgers, they also have a groundhog ceremony with their own fill to see the shadow in the morning. I'm assuming, obviously, Punk's PA is the main one, but other towns have their own things all over. Did you make that up?

Punk's PA? I'm sure I, I, uh, heard it in the Groundhog Day musical by Tim Minchin. Oh, so it's Punk's Rock. That's good.

Yeah. Um, but they had one in, in New Brunswick and last year it was canceled because their groundhog died. And they just didn't think to get enough. Like, they thought anyone would care. They were like, no, no, no. No, like, our groundhog's dead.

Like, well, go to the fucking woods or whatever and grab another. We don't know his name. They didn't try to do that. I brought my niece and nephew here bring bring me a rat with a little hat on give me a fucking possum yeah that's really funny they didn't try to do the pet store switch yeah in the like the easiest place you could possibly pull off that heist it died like days before? I think it must have, yeah.

That's got to mean something too about winter, right? Yeah. Yeah. What does that say in the book? Pull out the arm and all the neck. That's just, they dust off the book and just like, oh yeah, this is two and a half more years

of COVID. I don't even know when this book was written. That's a real bad sign. How do they know that? I'm really pleased, Dan, that you're having such great weather and temperate weather there. I do remember what that was like in Colorado as a kid. As soon as I started to kind of, you could like, when you're really young, you have no idea like what the next season is. It could be anything. Yeah.

But at a certain point you get used to predicting like, okay, so then it's winter and then we have winter for a little while and then it becomes summer. I mean, spring. Yeah. And as a kid, I remember we had one of those in like March. And March is still pretty much fucking winter in colorado it's it's we've had snow in march in the in the past like in the recent past too and i i know i know not to get too ahead of myself because there's i've there have been people in my life who've been like man we got really lucky it's been a really mild winter and i'm like it's not no it's not god can hear

you it's we're still in it don Don't let them think that we're happy. Don't say shut out in the middle of a shutout. Yeah. Yeah. It's also, I like thinking about, as you said, being young and not understanding exactly when the seasons happen. Because in my memory, it feels very much like Pioneer Oregon Trail Days, where it was like, it starts to get dark and cold.

And then mother and papa are like, well, don't worry, soon it will be Christmas. I'm like, ah, that's right. That's why it's dark and cold. And then when Christmas is over, I will wait for the sun again. That is how I orient myself around the year. It's amazing that you never get used to how long winter is.

No. Ever. I i'm i still like to this day you're like you get to february and you're like are you fucking kidding me it's still going yeah and it's you still have march you have some of april too it's it's bad it's like long and there's nothing to celebrate during that time i i think think the shift of it is the difference between shifting into spring and summer is that spring and summer feels like that happens like very gradually. You lean into it and you like start shedding layers. For Jersey, we have fall and then one day it is winter and that's it. They'll get like some like surprisingly warm winter days, but mostly just like, ooh, it's fall and I'm walking around and I'm enjoying just hoodie and shorts weather. And then you wake up the next morning and it's dark and it's very cold.

And you bust out the big coats. The other thing I did notice about Los Angeles, though, that was starting to wear on me towards the end of my time there, the summers last longer than you want them to. When it's still hot in October, it's fucked. Like hot, hot. That's very upsetting. You're right.

It has flipped for me. From Colorado to here, it's like the summer is the one where I can't believe how long it's been going on. It's like it's hot as madness outside. And I'm like, how is this still happening? Is this a global warming thing? It's like, no, you forget it every year i think there's i mean i always thought when i was younger when i would hear like girls say oh i just i was all of a sudden in a really bad mood i didn't

understand why and it was like oh i was getting my period i would always in privately in my head be like how can you not know when your period is but no i would be exactly the same i can't even keep track of shit like in terms of like all the things that i should be predicting happening every single like on like clockwork yeah i still am bewildered by uh sorry quick question okay did you want to hear my news that i i thought was gonna occupy the whole episode i'm so sorry i steamrolled you yes please give me your news i got a soda stream give me a second oh my god oh yeah so okay all right i'm ready to talk about this dan that is right i'm so sorry that i trumped that that i came in and just sandbagged you.

This is, I can't tell by your tone yet if this is devastating or awesome, but either way, congratulations or I'm sorry. I think our listeners are going to be very confused because we already did a Soarin' Has COVID episode. So if they like tune into this one, it'll be, they'll just be lost because that's like, we've done that already.

To that end, listeners, if you're just joining us uh i d neil beans america's sweetest baby uh finally got a soda stream it's been a very exciting development in my life uh we've talked many times on the podcast in the past about uh limited daily drink options for me as a person who doesn't drink soda, just drinks three cups of coffee in the morning and then switches to water for the rest of the day until it's nighttime. Sometimes I'll have a sleepy time tea.

I did drink LaCroix all day for a while until it was brought to my attention that I was drinking too much and then I stopped drinking LaCroix all day for a while until it was brought to my attention that I was drinking too much. And then I stopped drinking LaCroix. So I've just been a water boy for the last couple of months. And then I finally, I got a SodaStream because I was at my friend's apartment and I saw her playing with it. And I was like, that sounds fun. I don't have any toys anymore as an adult.

And I was so excited to get like a new thing to play with. I've had it for like a day and a half now. so excited to get like a new thing to play with i've had it for like uh a day and a half now very excited to experiment i've been i made some lemon lime fizzy water from scratch with some i had some pomegranate seeds in the freezer so i threw those bad boys in there oh it's a real thrill for me i've never used a soda stream i'm familiar it's really easy you you get like a uh like a co2 like a carbonation container and you jam that in the back and then you put your water in the thing and you press a button and you get to you get to like carbonate it as much as you want the instructions are like if you want like a normal amount of carbonation hit it three times if you want more than that hit it five times and i'm like i'm gonna hit it eight times you fucking idiots i know how numbers work this is gonna be

so goddamn fizzy there's no brakes on this thing the police have no idea what i'm doing right now i'm gonna hit a 15 fuck you um can you make soda with it i don don't know. How do you make soda? Like cola, I mean. Like a cola. Like sugar and syrup? Yeah, are they giving you like flavored syrups with it or anything like that?

They gave me one little flavored bottle of lemon-lime juice. And I've been, sorry. I need to look into it more to like to really see what I can do with it. And that's,

I think the the reason i wanted to bring it up is and i and i know how uh our filthiest listeners will take this but there's just not enough toys for adults so it's very exciting to get one and it made me realize like what i consider toys now and it's like my theragun was very exciting for me my vacuum cleaner obviously i'm a huge fan of my vacuum cleaner and now this soda stream thing and like it's not i'm not doing a bit for the pod it's genuine excitement i'm really like oh i get to oh as soon as my work is done and i get a treat i'm gonna i'm gonna play with my new toy it feels like you're pretty kind of like i mean i get that i get that feeling i know that feeling completely but i feel like with a soda stream i mean your options are fairly limited you

i i can think of like six flavors yeah and that's that's as far as i can go yeah i keep like in my head i'm thinking like i'm gonna get really into this and and come up with some pretty great experiments but i'm pretty limited you're right about that there's i'm not gonna just like this one's gravy i'm not gonna get into that kind of world or anything or right like they're also very clear they know exactly where my brain went because they're like don't put anything else but water in the bottle i was like but i will put like but what about orange juice what about coffee you don't know what happens so to stream and they're like no we do we know what happens

it's not good you don't want it yeah i guess that's my follow-up question if you do put any sort of syrup in it what what is your cleaning situation of this thing? Is it easy to clean or really difficult? Yeah, you just put like, it's a big plastic bottle that you put in the base of the machine and that just like carbonates the water. And then you drink out of that bottle or you could pour the bottle into like a glass and keep the bottle in your fridge. I drink straight from the bottle and then you could

put the bottle in the dishwasher wait so nothing has to run through the opaque part of the machine no oh my god okay i thought surely there would be some sort of filter like the same way that a sink aerates your water as it comes out it's got like that little screen i figured there'd be something like that in there now because i'm an idiot i think that's how you make bubbles is to separate the water i was a figure i don't know how much of an idiot this makes me but i look for a long time i looked for uh the plug because i refuse to believe this thing just operated on the co2 tank and if i would have stopped and thought about it for a second i'd have been like no no no no you like this this makes sense what would electricity do but i didn't ask myself that

question because my brain was already thinking the electricity makes things go it makes everything go there's a button that means i plug this into something yeah it's a soda stream machine yeah machines need electricity oh man well dan i'm so excited for you congratulations on getting a new toy and that's my latest fun adult toy my other adult toy uh because we still got some time to kill um i ordered new sheets fancy new sheets for my bed And this is a great moment of vindication for me because I got an email that said your package had been delivered. And I shot back lightning quick. No, it hasn't. And they said, well, according to our tracking records, it was delivered.

And I said, well, it's not here. I'm here all the time. Your move. And they said, you're right. It has not been delivered. It's somewhere else. We'll get on this and we'll get it to you. That's thrilling for me to be right about something.

Yeah. But Soren, the reason I bring up this fairly mundane thing is because my other announcement, the reason that I could stay right on top of this email about these sheets being delivered is because my personal Gmail inbox is down to 50 messages. Are you kidding?

50? Yeah. And they're all red. Like that's not 50 unread. Yeah, they're 50. They're all red. They're ones that I'm keeping now. And some of them I'm going to delete soon.

And some of them are just going to stay there forever because I like rereading them Okay Reading this book Before I tell you the title of the book Man, this podcast is all over the place listeners. If you're just joining us. I'm gonna quiz soaring With the name of a book that I've been reading but first of all soaring without doing any back of the envelope math How how many weeks do you think

the average human lives? Weeks. Okay. I'm not going to, I can't do any of it? No. Okay. I'm going to say 10,000. 4,000.

4,000? Yeah. So I would say that because that's the title of the book that I'm reading is 4,000. get done all the things that we want to get done or that work wants us to get done or that etc wants us to get done uh all this way not to to bend people towards nihilism but bend people towards like focusing on enjoying the things that you are doing instead of like trying to get everything done so you eventually reach a point of some like well if once i just get everything on my to-do list done then i will do the things that i want to do no they want the book wants to train you to not think that way anymore and you know the same way like there there's a lot of stuff you want to do sure there's also a lot of tv out there

there's a lot of content out there and the solution isn't joylessly do all of it as quickly as you can and watch everything at five times speed so you can check it off the list the the solution isn't joylessly do all of it as quickly as you can and watch everything at five times speed so you can check it off the list. The solution is find the shows that you like watching and make time and watch them and enjoy them and let the other shows go away. Couldn't we apply that to life, I think, is what the book will eventually try to tell me. I'm not there yet, and I'm sure the book will be very helpful for me down the line if i get around to finishing it there's just no time but in the meantime one of one of the sections on that book was talking about uh the like the email inbox trap where people really try to get their inboxes inbox down to to zero and like the trap of that especially with work is

if you become known as someone who replies quickly and efficiently that's just going to be get more emails and it's a sisyphusian task that you're never going to complete but reading that section of the book as i often get the absolute wrong list from things i was like this is a good opportunity for me to put this book down open my computer and see how low I can get my email inbox down. And I went from, I just sat and went from 9,000 to 50. I just went through deleting things that I didn't need. And it's just thrilling. And the book is wrong. I feel great. I can't have it all. Even the fact that you're at 9,000 is incredible, Dan. I mean, you are already doing really great.

Oh, thanks. Can you be vulnerable? What's your inbox? Yeah. So I'm just going to pull it up on my phone here. I can see how many, this is not even how many emails are in it. This is how many emails are unread in mine. Do you want to take a guess?

It's more than the weeks we live uh is it like oh six six six thousand six thousand six hundred and eighty six wow unread are and are like be be real are like some of those like promotions and and social notifications that you you don't need to read or um yes i mean i'm not gonna let stuff slip through the cracks that's important so a lot of it's trash that i either but i don't i mean i'm pretty good about deleting trash for the most part so i don't know how it got that high and also the the inbox itself is i mean i don't even know how to tell how many emails are in my inbox oh wait i do know how to tell i can see it oh jesus christ okay so i thought this was the number of emails i have i think this is the number of pages of emails i have oh my god God. Let's see. No. One of one through 50.

That's not, that's not as bad then. I can see it. No, no, no. I got it now. Um,

one, one through 50. I know exactly how many emails I have. I have 17,248 emails. I don't ever collate. I don't ever put stuff in different folders and not. Yeah. Almost 18,000. ever collate i don't ever put stuff in different folders and yeah almost 18 000 emails uh you know what's a funny thing that i learned going through my emails because like i i'll the first thing i'll do is is like filter by subject line that i know um

is deletable without a second thought. Like, you know, like there are some like a receipt or a confirmation number from an airline that I know has just been sitting in my inbox. I could filter those out. I get weekly emails for the food pantry that I volunteer at. And so I can just like search that subject and delete all of those knowing that I don't,

I'm not missing anything. So once I get through all those, then I'm just sort of like scrolling through 50 at a time and seeing if there are attachments because that could be like a script that I'm trying to save or some other important like photo thing or a video thing that I want to keep.

And then I just have to go through like, who's the sender? What's the subject line? Is this something important? And I found the podcast, the subject line is this something important and i found the podcast the first email about this podcast when i was going through all of my emails from january 25th 2018 and i'm not going to read the whole of it the subject line oh boy is imagine it a podcast but with straight white people yeah and that and that's that is what we did

we did deliver on that promise but this is me and executed perfectly yeah pitching you on this show and uh i don't want to to bring up just how much money we thought we would make on it because that'll make us both very upset uh but the one uh bit that made me laugh was me saying as i'm trying to sell you on this podcast is the main thing is that this isn't meant to be a big time investment i think it should involve more thought than simply daniel and soren talk about whatever but it doesn't need to be particularly resource heavy boy that's sure in this episode where we talked about soda streams and the weather and sickness. Well, to be fair, you guys, Jesus Christ, when you guys were pitching me on this, and it wasn't like a hard pitch, by the way.

It was like I was immediately on board. But it was your guys' idea first. And when you came to me, you had no job at the time. Yes. This was going to be my job. Yeah. So I was like, I understand why you were so ambitious and excited and like optimistic about what it could be. I'm glad that it's not that by the way. Yeah. I'm glad that it is what it is. Hey, Dan, I have a quick question for you. Go for it, buddy. Have you ever seen a UFO? No.

Oh, fuck. Have you? So when I say UFO, you know what I mean, right? It's not like, I'm not asking if you've seen aliens and you have proof of the existence of aliens. Have you seen something in the sky and been like, what the fuck is that? And then watched it for a while and then be like well i'll never know oh yes when i um but we've we've since solved it when i was very very young uh my brother tommy and i just saw a bunch

of like perfectly oh oh hmm ovalular ovalesque i think just oval oval perfectly oval shapes uh above the the woods near our house and we just like watched them they were like they were moving on purpose they weren't random and they were like very clear oval shapes of light in the night sky it's obviously like there was a concert somewhere that had uh like spotlights going that were like waving in the sky and we didn't know that we're just we're imagining these are lights circling above the the woods near where we grew up uh i don't remember how we found out the truth later but at the time just sitting there looking at them just being like well that's aliens i guess was it were they're hitting the clouds is that what was happening yeah yeah okay yeah okay i i

can't remember if i told you this or not but um we went out to dinner not too long ago a couple months ago and afterwards my son and I were going on a walk. My kids get very restless at meals. And so like the way that we strategize is that we'll eat, one of us will eat very quickly. And then the other, and then that person will go off with the children. And the other person gets to have a nice meal by themselves, which is, I can't tell you how valuable it is. Wait, that's weird.

So when do you and Colleen sit and have food together? Just like talk about your days when when do the kids respectfully go away while you like share a warm meal with your wife when does that happen it's so sad we don't even go on dates every time we try to plan a date something terrible happens date something terrible happens but uh we went out to dinner i took my son on a walk and god i guess gilly must have been there too but she's not in the memory she's probably too young to talk or something and uh we see these red lights in the sky like clear red lights coming in from the ocean and we're in culver city so it's like we're miles away from the water but it's very clear that these have come from like the beach or from the water and are coming inland and they're in a line at

first and then the line sort of starts to dissipate a little bit and then these things get very close to us like in a way that feels personal where like it knows that they're being watched and so these red lights start coming close to us and then they start descending right where we are and as they get close to the ground like we're trying to see what they are they're they're the shape of them isn't clear um it's kind of like moving around a little bit and it's not the light is in the middle but it has like a black uh there's like a black silhouette to the body of it and it's and then as it gets closer and closer the light extinguishes but you can still see the black portion drifting down and it drifts down to this yard right across

the wall from where we're walking and we we're like, what the fuck was that? And then we start watching the other ones. And this other one comes down. And there's a busy street on the other side of this block where we are. We watch it go over the yard of this tire emporium or whatever the fuck it is. There's a bunch of tires piled up in LA. LA's got these weird tire places. And then the third one drips into another yard

where we can't see it, but we watch it go down. And it makes basically a triangle around us. And we were so fucking pumped because my son is obviously getting very, very excited by this. And I'm feeding off of his enthusiasm. And we were just like what is this we couldn't figure it out and so we still talk about it because we're like they chose us like we watched and this thing these things just came to us my best guess is that these are lanterns

these are like sky lanterns the ones that you light and then you send off into the sky somebody on the beach was doing it. The wind brought it inland and we just got very lucky that they fell around us. But they extinguished and then that's why they fell because they no longer had the fire keeping them up in the air. But it was so wild and so weird because you couldn't get a bead on what the shape of these things were as they were coming down. You were just like like what is this and they fell just perfectly in places we couldn't see them but right around us

uh it was fascinating that is really cool do you know if there's any kind of uh mechanism or like something specific in the way they're designed that uh prevents them from bursting into and spreading fires? Yeah, that's a great question. I have no idea. It does seem really reckless, doesn't it? Yeah, I remember a wedding that I went to years and years ago in Jersey,

and I don't think this was like sanctioned by the venue. It was like a cute idea the bride and groom had. They were like, okay, like, and this is towards the end of the wedding. We're all a little bit drunk at this point. the venue it was like a cute idea the bride and groom had they were like okay like and we're this is towards the end of the wedding we're all a little bit drunk at this point and i was like okay everyone come to the parking lot now and we're like sure thing and we all shovel off to the parking lot and they have lanterns for all of us to light and release into the sky and it looks so cool and like we're playing like music like music from we all went to high school together

so it's like music on on the sound system from our past and we're watching these lights float up in the sky and uh we're holding our loved ones and enjoying this moment and then we get bored we all sort of fuck off and go back inside the venue and then the next morning all bleary-eyed google like forest fires new jersey like did anything come of this did we kill like condors what do we do yeah i i i'm trying to like look it up here i it's got to be super reckless right because it's just you're sending a fire out into the sky and be like good luck yeah and it's not the most sophisticated piece of of equipment it's like paper and sticks right yeah no it's all paper around a flame yeah um yeah anyway i think that's maybe what we were

clocking that's my best guess anyway yeah uh but i just all the ufo talk in the news lately has made me every time i hear about it i'm like or like it was in the paper and ronan loves seeing pictures in the paper and being like what's that story about and generally that's a very tragic conversation but there was one recently where there was there was an article that was about the weird sightings of different stuff by norad and he was like what is that and i was like yes let's talk about this this is ufo shit and he's like we saw ufos and i was like, yes, let's talk about this. This is UFO shit. And he's like, we saw UFOs. And through the news and we'll we'll all somehow as an entire planet hear about this one very specific weird thing that seems like a freak occurrence in this case it was a weather balloon being shot down overseas that some people thought was ufo for a

while and i was like man that was nuts suddenly, every other day, you're getting stories of different UFOs that we don't know what they are getting shot down. And the reason this happens is just because, well, two reasons, basically. One of them is if you are a digital or even print news organization and you see this story of UFOs got a ton of clicks, then yeah, you're going to find other UFO stories to get clicks your own and to like, suddenly this thing is a phenomenon because look at all these stories we have. Now we've got more coverage, we've got more attention, we've got more ad dollars, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Another reason is something all of our brains do. I it's it's its initials are ras but i forget what what it actually is but it's uh like what it stands for rather but it's

the phenomenon where you you've never heard something before or you've never seen something before and then you hear it for the first time a co-worker mentions going to turks and cacos you've never heard of turks and cacos and then suddenly it's Turks and Caicos is everywhere. That's a thing that your brain does on purpose where Turks and Caicos isn't suddenly everywhere and UFOs suddenly aren't everywhere, but your brain clocks that as important. So it rejiggers your brain's filtration system, your filter. So you see it more now because your brain is like, oh, something in you has decided this is important. So I'm going to make sure you see it more than you see

other things that we used to think were important. I've done that with like, I was thinking of getting a certain type of car and now I see that car fucking everywhere. The car was, that car was always there. My brain is just like, I get that this is important to you so i'm gonna i'm gonna show it to you so that's the other reason we get these ufo stories is that our brains and journalist brains are are suddenly unconsciously finding them for us and i like that it was ufos because like this happened famously a couple years ago with

spontaneous bird death it was a whole it was not a bird flu thing it was when we were uh working at cracked i only know because i i wrote about it for the site at the time i remember they were just like you know like a hundred birds dropped dead in ireland and couple of, and you're like, Oh, that's unfortunate. And then you find a story that's like 6,500 birds washed up dead in this other part of the world. And there seems no linkage. And we just like kept doing bird story after bird story. Uh, and,

and of course it's just, again, what our brains are filtering and what the websites want to drive clicks. So I'm glad that was ufos because like that's so much more fun and whimsical than bird death like once i realize oh this is the new bath sauce zombie thing great i'll take it i'll i'll i'll consume a ufo story every day of the week this is this is fun it is really nice it's it's such a harmless one for everyone to... It's like you don't realize how clearly the appetite for stories drives what's in the media. Yeah.

I think generally. And the appetite has been really toxic and bad, I think, for a long time. Yeah. And so when you get these little pure things, it's really, really fun. Yeah. There was also a very tragic train derailment recently that we're still dealing with the after effects of East uh east palestine ohio and i've seen my twitter feed people are finding other train derailments that happen other places in the world i'm like no no no no no go back

to the ufo thing both of these things are happening in equal measure let's just focus on the ufo thing for now local news is going to take care of the train stuff. We've got agencies dedicated to that. Let's just keep this light for a little bit as much as we can. It does seem like all of a sudden I'm hearing

about airborne toxic events all over the place. Yeah. Oh no, hazardous chemicals just leaked out of the semi in Tucson. Hazardous chemicals just leaked out of another train

in Pennsylvania. I'm like, hold on. Yeah. How come the only thing we're transporting in trains anymore is toxic chemicals? Let's just stop doing that. Who wants it? Tell them to make it.

Leave trains out of it. But yeah, that is interesting. It's fascinating the way that that happens and that it's not just that it's like you're seeing it more often. You're also seeing it more often you're also seeing it more often because you have proven the appetite for it so the media is seeing it more often and pulling it in for you and yeah what it's just like a self-fulfilling prophecy i remember i i briefly mentioned that bath salts zombie thing and that was one of the ways that

this was also clued off to me was uh also years ago at cracked there was that a famous story of a person i think in florida who did the drug known as bath salts that might actually also be bath salts or no no it's just a drug street named bath salts yeah and this inspired this not inspired but like destroyed this person's brain enough that they tried to eat another person and all the headlines were like zombie zombie zombie and then other clear to clear to to form other websites and other newspapers found other stories where a person was trying to eat or attack another person in a way that was similar to zombies because they want to they want to like build this zombie narrative we the only reason we were really clued into this as

a phenomenon is because our co-worker jason pargen's article about the zombie apocalypse had like its best traffic day ever five or six years after it had been published yeah and it's just because somebody, a disturbed person took drugs in Florida and tried to eat someone else. And then everyone on the internet was searching zombie, zombie, zombie. I need more zombie content.

And that's why this five or six year old article got 2 million more views overnight. Yeah, this is, I'm now thinking about everything in my life but it was like suddenly like all of a sudden become very popular all at once you know in our writer's room today we were talking about how kiwi was a very 90s fruit god i miss being in a writer's room and what i mean by that is all of a sudden kiwi just had its fucking day in the limelight no pun intended in the 90s where everyone all at once was like we're gonna put kiwi in everything

kiwi and strawberry snapple like kiwi you're gonna mix kiwi with some other fruit and it's gonna be a drink or it's gonna be a gum or's going to be a something and everyone just got very gung-ho about kiwi all of a sudden and we're all like i guess we all like kiwi is this new is keep it's fruit right it's been around for a while okay okay the same kiwi though right we're not this is a new one okay then let's yeah let's do it um and it it made me think like i think maybe i'm just not as plugged into it anymore because i've been in the fruit the fruit the fruit section of the grocery store recently and wandered to the sections that aren't organic and been like let's see what we'll see what we're

cooking up in the labs lately and i find something called ugly fruit or unique fruit have you heard of this i've heard of ugly fruit yeah i didn't know what the fuck that was i was like did we just make this is this did this just come out it's this giant orange essentially it's like it has the peel of a satsuma but it's bigger than a grapefruit and it genuinely lives up to its name it's like wrinkled and weird and ugly and i was like when did when did we do this one and i maybe they just were always around and i didn't realize it i mean it's got to be old enough that we were still calling things ugly i don't think we would do that it's at least 2018, right? Yeah.

Yeah. We wouldn't be judging it based on its appearance anymore. But I have also noticed, God, this is going to sound like such a fucking old person, 60 minutes weird editorial complaint, but apples are huge. Listeners, if you're just joining us we're gonna wrap things up

they're so big they're like i i was bewildered by how big these are they bigger than softballs are they like like roman apples or like i know they're just a honey crisp but they were so fucking big everything else is trending in the opposite direction cadbury eggs everything but no apples they're like no let's let's go the other direction let's steer into the skin like like we're gonna make the big we're gonna get bigger uh all right i'm done being andy rooney yeah we are gonna wrap up the show i can't i i can't make you talk anymore with that voice uh the show is quick question but you know that already we are recorded edited and produced by the irreplaceable gabe harter except today we are recorded by

jacob hello jacob he does not want to be found our theme song is by the incredible merex their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com you can find the show on twitter at qq underscore soren and dan or soren at soren underscore ltd wish him a speedy recovery or me doobie underscore inc suggest flavors for the soda stream you can also email the show at qqwithsornanddaniel at gmail or you can find us on Patreon at patreon.com That is all we have to say

today. I'm googling where Apple's bigger. Alright, fine. Bye. Okay fine bye I'd be here now but what's it up to? Word it all up, why do we not? 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