Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - When We Were Younnnng

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

In this ep the guys go through a list of currently famous 23 year olds, and see how many they recognize. Spoiler, the results are not encouraging! 

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 favorite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up with? What do we talk about? I'm sorry, baby, 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. senior writer for Last Week Tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, and moving boy, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say something authentic. Can you just one time do that, please? Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and just try to love the questions themselves, like they're locked rooms or like books written in a foreign tongue.

You can't now seek the answers that can't be given to you because the point is to live everything. So you live the question now, and then perhaps gradually you live along some distant day into the answer. Inauthentic. Yeah, that's real. How are you, buddy? I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing? You're moving still. It's good. Yeah, I'm very excited. That's the dominating story in my life right now is that I'm moving down to a different part of the Jersey Shore.

I got my contract. I'm super stoked about it. I'm a little grouchy right now because I e-signed the contract and I was so stoked. And then my realtor emailed and was like, now all you need to do is print out and sign this form and mail it and a check to the landlord. And like envelopes, stamps, paper, print out a thing. I'm not prepared to do any of those things right maybe i'll just stay here i'm at a point in my life where it's gotten beyond just anger it's a genuine panic when anyone asked me to print i think rodent school asked me to print stuff all the time and i'm like

uh yeah i'll be right on that and then like i jump out a window because i don't know what else to do there There's no way I can print a thing. No, I have to go to Staples now. I'm really excited about this place. Three different places you have to go. I know. I really want to move in as soon as possible and like establish myself as someone who is reliable and good on deadlines.

But like I didn't really pencil in a staples trip and a post office trip yeah let me just like run down quickly like i would do in my own day how much time i think each of these are going to need so you need a check so you're gonna have to find a checkbook yeah which if you're me that's gonna i'm gonna like put in half an hour for that because i there's like 12 different places it could be an old checkbook then you've got to get stamps and you can't do that the same place that you get uh the printing made because for whatever fucking reason that's not how it works you got to go to a mail like an actual ups store or a um usps store yeah so you can you can get away that is you can get stamps at grocery stores

which is nice uh so i can do that in one trip but the i'm gonna say that that's 15 minutes then yeah uh then you've got to you don't own envelopes i know that no you're gonna have to go buy envelopes maybe you could get them at the grocery store if that's like one fell swoop then that's 20 minutes yeah and then you've got a fucking print still the printing and like and yet i don't know if if if you've had to go to staples to print i've been printing stuff at staples since 2020 because before that i've had office jobs and i used my office printer but i don't own a physical printer myself. So in the last three years,

when I've needed something printed, I've gone to Staples. The internet at Staples is so fucking slow. It's so bad. And I also, this is a dumb thing. If I log on to the computers at Staples to print something, I have to what? Remember my password for Gmail?

I don't have that information that's gone yeah also i think you have to pay to use the internet at those you do you have to pay to use the internet and you have to pay to print and it takes so fucking long because no one relies on staples for printing anymore so it's just it's such an afterthought you can uh save whatever document that is to your computer and then in like a breezy two hours find a flash drive put it on that and bring it in that's right i've gotten 10 000 free flash drives in my life in my capacity as someone who worked on the internet and got branded swag for a decade i have no idea where any of them are of course not of course not they'll you'll they're not things that are

live in your life they're things that you find occasionally you're like huh look at that and then you it's like and then it's gone out of your head again i found one when i was in tucson in my backpack and i have no idea what's on it i have no idea where it came from it doesn't look familiar to me but it was like in the bottom of my backpack and i was like i own a flash drive oh the things i could do with this and then put it away i have a pepsi blue flash drive from south by southwest what the fuck i know what you're talking about um yeah so good luck man um at least you don't have to get a notary that That's like a whole nother, a whole nother part of the trip. Yeah.

We don't have that. You know, for a while I thought maybe I would become a notary. Why? Uh, yeah, let's make, let's make this the episode now. Why? Because I was needing a notary so regularly that I was like, it would just be easier if I was my own notary. I've needed a notary once in my life. How, why did you need them so often? I needed them for wedding stuff. I needed them for, uh, at the same time I had an aunt who died

and, uh, the, I had a cousin who was like in charge of the estate but the cousin was constantly giving me these distributions like these small little chunks of money from my aunt being like she wanted you to have this and I had to be like okay great and then I had to every time that I got something I had to sign something for a lawyer which meant that I had to go print it out and then go set it, give it to a notary, sign it for the notary, then ship it away. Huh. Could you, could you, uh, be your own notary? Is that ethically? Okay. Yeah. I don't know either. It was only a fantasy of mine. Yeah. Oh, you know what? This is actually a really good segue, Daniel. Uh uh i have a quick

question for you oh sure let's go it's been a while since i've done one of these i appreciate your patience um if you could if if you had to for a day do any other job uh other than what you do and i'm talking like a high profile job. Let's not like say assume notary. Nothing against all you notaries out there. Hey man, May 1st, I might have to. That's just a fun little inside baseball joke for folks listening. We might go on strike, everybody. The writers might go on strike and Daniel and I will be out on our asses. Yeah. Well, we won't actually be out on our asses. We'll be out on lawn chairs picketing, I assume. Yeah. Because that's part of the agreement um if you had to like pretend to be a professional in

another high profile job and you couldn't let anyone know that you didn't actually know what you were doing and it's like something that you don't have any skill sets that belong to this job what's a job that you think you could get away with uh do you have one that that you want to do first okay i have a i have one that i think about a lot okay uh weatherman oh wow i think i could be a fucking awesome weatherman at your age i think it's a great age um uh johnny mountain you familiar with him no he used to live in los angeles okay there are a couple of couple of very famous weathermen out here. All of them have names like Johnny Mountain or like Jimmy Rainier or something. Yeah, I mean, LA doesn't own that.

And all of them are these like silver foxes. Like they're these guys who are a little bit older, but like still kind of got it. And I fashion myself as one of those. but like still kind of got it. Um, and I, I, I fashioned myself as one of those. Uh, and a lot of it is, uh,

you know, obviously I think these guys are writing into a lot of their own stuff. Cause these guys probably have meteorological degrees and there is something to like, they got to know how to read a Doppler or whatever that is. They've got to, they've got to know how to track a storm and stuff like that pressure and cold fronts all that i'm confident that i could make up and no one would know the fucking difference i mean i guess another weatherman might but i'm confident that i could

just make it up on the spot i look at whatever there is on the green screen i can see it like i'm like i see some arrows and i'm like fucking yeah this is hot down here this is where it's headed and then we're gonna heat me another weather system right here. We're going to get a high pressure front coming up from the south. Obviously, that's going to cause a couple of storms right around the Temecula area. Like I could just like, yeah, they drone like it's so it seems so easy. And there's absolutely no weather. There's no accountability.

Right. No one has ever gotten fired. Like they don't bring in Al Roker at the end of the year. I'm a hundred years old. They don't bring in Al Roker at the end of the year and be like, Hey man, you really fucking blew it this year. None of your predictions came true.

We have to let you go. It doesn't matter. No one cares. There's no like a December list of apologies that this network is giving out for that year of like things that they needed to retract. And it's a bunch of fucking clouds. Like you, you, you're just, there's no accountability whatsoever. That's why I'm so curious. Uh, I'm immediately curious about a thing that I never thought about before, because you said that you assume that whether

people have degrees in meteorological studies, that true do they need to couldn't they just get fucking anyone up there i i don't know i think that there's a lot of occasionally like the anchors the anchors feel free to talk throughout the weather segment yeah and they will ask questions uh on local in local syndicate news and they'll be like hey so what does that mean for our weekend todd and todd's gotta know todd's gotta know like well and like the way that he talks he knows the glossary of terms i assume that means that he understands what's going on yeah it's so insane and so funny to be like todd when's this rain going to end? And Todd has to have an answer. Great question, Julie.

Wednesday? And it's such like a clumsy science to begin with. It's like, because there's no accountability because we all accept the fact that we don't totally get the weather. We don't totally understand what's happening. When I look at my phone and it's giving me like weather two weeks out, I'm no you don't yeah you don't know that you fuck up all the time um anyway i think i could be really good at that and i would even you know the ones that

add just like a barely a seasoning or a spice to what they do those guys go internet famous right away yeah there's it's such a vanilla job that if a guy actually his dog wanders on the screen everyone loses their shit um right it's also it's a it's a job like uh i'll i'll liken it to like um writing recipes or writing about fitness it's so rare that you get someone who writes about those things, but is also interesting and funny separate from their thing, that when you find someone who does,

like Casey Johnston, who writes about fitness, or... No, there are no funny cookbook writers. But if you find someone who does that interestingly, you latch onto them. So if you were a weatherman who was doing, you know, you're, you're, all you have are the raw materials of the weather that you can't control.

If you add one little spice on top of that, you're a fan favorite. Everyone's going to love you. It's so easy. There's a, there's a weatherman in LA who dances and everyone's like, and there's long periods of time where you're just looking at, can he can afford to because all you're seeing behind him is like sun from here till the end of eternity generally i mean obviously not recently but um he's like the whole week forecast he doesn't need to say anything because it's all right there and uh and so he would just like music would come on and he'd dance and that was a big

deal like everyone was like, the dancing weatherman. Yeah, we all know the dancing weatherman. The bar is so unbelievably low that I could make weathermanning. I could put like my own stamp on weathermanning easily. Like the top of my head, like the first thing that comes to my mind, I would just be like, oh, then let's just try that. And it would be a success. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm fully on board for uh storm and buoy i'm a little curious like do you do you i haven't seen a weather report in i don't know how long i use my phone or i go to weather.com uh one of the first websites ever invented and and look at the weather from there and there's no interface with a person right do you even better why is that even better because nobody's watching me there's there's even less accountability i mean these guys still exist the career is out there i mean because it's broadcast television hasn't gone away and strips news media or whatever that owns every single syndicate across the country right there each one of them every city's got a weatherman still oh it's so easy to just duck back into the

fold like just like get up there and be like i'm doing all mine with a green suit on and then i'm gonna pretend that i'm just ahead and that's gonna be my thing and it when it will be a success yeah and then if it's not i just duck back in among all the other weathermen yeah and then everyone gets really excited anytime there's any holiday and it's like what's soren gonna do for like the saint patrick's day weather is he gonna say top of the storming to you i can't wait it's a oh i think i could do such a great job. Do you have one in mind? Man, your answer was so great. I have a lower stakes answer that I've always felt like I could do whatever it is that Don Draper does in Mad Men. I think like the idea of just all you need to do is convince a small room of people that

whatever you're saying is important. I feel like i could i could fucking crush that that was anytime i've ever been in school and the assignment was give an essay right now give a persuasive essay i was like great i don't need any time to to prep i can just like go up and bullshit better than anyone i know in the world and uh that is i guess what i think sales is is that what he did in in mad men yeah i yeah i i like salesman advertising yeah for a day i think you're right i think for a day it would be very easy to get away with that job yeah i i think that there are a little well i'm now i'm backtracking on

my own because there are a lot of parallels with my own career like i've had i'm a performer by nature yeah so i already have that under my belt i think that you have been accidentally selling things for a very long time i have and i also feel like our experience at correct we have had different people on our marketing team and sales team and every one of them i've thought oh you're just a charlatan you're you're you're you're just trying to trick people and and charm people i could do that i think i could probably do that yeah i think i could too all right so you're saying from the perspective of like somebody's coming into gillette's coming into you and they're like, how are we going to sell our razors? And you're like, all right, here you go. Here's some ideas. I think you would be really good at that. That's copywriting though, huh? Like high profile lying, I think is what it is.

It's not a razor. It's a carousel. You say that for everything. Every one of them. Everything's a carousel. You say that for everything. Every one of them. Everything's a carousel. Whatever the product is. And you're just showing off pictures of your family over and over. It's not an at-home rectum testing for cancer. Yeah. It's a carousel. Yeah.

Here's my daughter listen i know i know this app claims that it wants you to spit into a vial and then mail it to somewhere in sweden no no no no it's not that it's carousel look at me on the beach it's pretty cool right my dog isn't that nice uh i think man for a day i think that would be so easy and you're not going to cost any of those clients because they're going to come in they must come in all the time and be like i don't like any of these ideas go back to the drawing board and you're like all right see you in three weeks uh so and the problem with yours is that you're surrounded by people who are doing the same job. Yeah.

And some of them might be like, what the fuck? Or maybe, I don't know how I feel about this yet. Maybe they'd be like, yeah, that'll sound like a good idea to me. Don't know why it didn't work out. That's the thing that I think about that industry. I think there is some level of awareness that marketers know that no one really knows anything and they're all bullshitting each other. It doesn't strike me as a total meritocracy where the best of the best are at the top. It does seem like everyone is engaged in the same

shared delusion that it's okay that they're pretending they know what they're talking about. Yeah. It's so hard to tell. It's so hard to tell because it feels like that. There are a lot of careers like that where I'm like, none of you know what the fuck you're talking about.

And that is certainly one of them. And Mad Men didn't dissuade me of that yeah him going in drunk and stealing other people's pictures was like oh fuck i could do that so like i feel like if i did a madman thing and i was like you think this is about energizer batteries it's not it's about carousels i think someone else in the room would be like well i know he's bullshitting but like i'm bullshitting too so i don't want to give the whole game away so i have to clap and pretend to cry and then at the end i have to say what a great job with it is until i believe it yeah uh this is getting a little too close to home

with actually yeah this is writing i don't like this game anymore uh i have a quick question for you yeah go ahead this this came up in work recently where um someone was writing a joke that relied on the punchline being uh the name of a 23 year old celebrity okay and so i very quickly googled 23 year old celebrities and came up with a list of let me scroll through 48 people soren i knew four of them how many do you think you are my expert you're the you're the guy you're my encyclopedia for this shit man how many do you think you will know and i want to i want to preface this by saying i i have pictures and names and jobs and a lot of the jobs are instagram star or tiktok influencer i'm confident that i i don't know if i wonder if you can get the if you can get the four that i knew

i wonder i think i can get one i'm pretty sure i can get one um if i just like think of people that are around that age i'm pretty confident that i'll know at least one of them people who were born in 1999 this is the same thing that happened to me the other day when the coachella lists came out and somebody was like, hey, how many of these bands do you actually know from Coachella? Are you over 35? How many of these bands do you know? And I looked at the list and I was like, uh-oh, none. Yeah. It was a real humbling moment when like, it was a popular internet thing to do like fake photoshop versions of coachella lineups those posters uh and it was very humbling when i could not tell the difference between real and fake because for a

while i could i could tell what was fake and now when i look at a listing of the coachella lineup i'm like blink 182 all right pass on the rest of these don't know if someone's playing a prank on me we'll never know it does feel like an alternate universe all of a sudden really oh i don't i don't belong here anymore yeah so i want to give me these names i'm gonna run off four names real quick james charles instagram star ice spice rapper bryce hall tiktok star tony lopez tiktok star uh no i don't know any of those not one uh youtube star dream oh oh uh dream was uh they didn't know his his face for a long time that's right you got one

oh that's exciting i didn't get that one so you're off to a great start nba young boy yes oh really a young boy um only because i just saw a video recently where uh like these rappers got checked they were in like the wrong neighborhood making their videos and they got checked like and it was just a compilation of this wow nba young boy was in a mall and he got checked by some people who were like because he had been claiming himself as part of the role in 60s which is uh an la uh subset of the crips and uh then when like he got checked in the mall he was like no i don't really fuck with that and then later he threw up some gang signs with other people from the 60s and and then everyone was like you're fucked oh my god yeah

you you either throw it up all the time or you're you're out when i saw nba young boy on this list that was the the the first clue that made me think this is an ai generated response to the question famous 23 year olds because it seems so improbable that there was someone named nba young boy who was a famous rapper well i wouldn't be able to tell you a single a single verse no he has ever done i've never heard him actually rap i've barely seen blurry footage of him how do you feel about jordan jones jace norman jack avery brooklyn mcknight and tanner fox oh those names suck so hard i know jace jace norman tell me is tanner a girl tanner fox i'll look her up is a youtube star i think boy the boy oh he sucks yeah it's a poor guy i don't know in the off chance that

somehow he ever hears this i'm sorry tanner you don't suck no i'm looking at just at tanner fox's headshot and it's not dissimilar from your headshot well the first thing that came up for me were just a bunch of pictures of him in front of like very, very fancy cars. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's your thing. You're a little car boy. We are approaching the first person on

this list that I knew. Okay. Elmo O'Dwyer, Chris Sean Malone, Kabi Lame, John Morant. elmo o'dwyer chris sean malone cabi lame john morant no i don't know any of those really oh john brandt's a basketball player on morant yeah oh jaw john morant yeah oh i thought you're saying john oh no oh yeah yeah i don't know i know john morant oh that was 20's 23? He's 23, yeah. So it was like a very Pyrrhic victory where I get to the 16th person on this list and I'm like, Ja Morant, I know him.

I'm relevant. He's 23? Fuck me. That's exactly right. Oh, no. The train of thought I just had. He is, yeah, he was in a lot of trouble lately, too. Yeah.

I guess I only know the ones the only ones that really break through my shield of age is when kids get in trouble and then i'm like uh course of course the next generation's we've got sky jade kristen hancher y YNW Melly, Ethan Kotoski. None. None of those register with me. I think, I mean, this, I don't know if this is good podcasting. I could just keep listing names. Yeah, no, I think people want to, I think they had the same appeal as like those Coachella lists.

Like I wanted to go through the whole thing. Yeah. And I think if somebody's sitting in their car, they're like, I bet I know some of these. And then they're listening right now in horror as these 26 year olds even are like oh fuck yeah it's also important to to keep in mind that i'm i'm almost positive everyone on this list is a millionaire so are what are all the careers on there? Are they almost exclusively TikTok, Instagram? TikTok star, Ben of the Week. What is that? Dancer, Michael Lee.

Okay. Rapper, Toosie. T-O-O-S-I-I. Rapper, Triple Red. Instagram star, Woe Vicky. She has pink hair. triple red Instagram star. Whoa, Vicky. She has pink hair. TikTok star,

Emilio Martinez, Snapchat star. Juana Roman, Instagram star, Mario Selman. Fuck dude. I don't know. Dan, you had some more, right?

I had one that I... I'll give you four, and one of them I knew. Rod Wave, rapper. Belle Delphine, cosplayer. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Okay. Belle Delphine. Belle Delphine no aside Noah Cyrus and Daisy Keats were

the other two in the in the list of four Belle Delphine is listed here as a cosplayer I only know her because she trends on Twitter every once in a while and I I click through to see what's going on and there there are enough details that I decide for my own mental health, I don't need to know really who this person is. Because the details will be like, Belle Delphine is trending for something controversial. And then one of the first tweets under it will be like,

isn't that that woman who scammed a bunch of perverts into buying her bath water i'm like i don't need to know who this is i don't need to know any more information i know about ooh girls did you tell me about them ooh girls oh boy i know a thing that you don't god i just gotta i sit in this like i like this is my belle delphine bath water this is what I like to be in. You don't know about UU Girls. I don't think I do. UU Girls, it's like a very specific type of trend. It's women who look like anime characters, basically. It's a vibe.

It's like in the same way that like Goth was. UU Girls are, they are bell delphine they look like her they have braces a lot of the time braces are very in and they look like young sexualized kids and they do that cross-eyed thing with the tongue out a lot right okay that's what that's what yeah she's like the original girl oh my god yeah there's more of them there's a lot more of them now and she is uh famous oh so famous so she doesn't uh jesus strictly do pornography or she does i don't think she ever does porn i don't think she's ever done pornography i think that was always like she does like implied pornography um which is she makes

that face a lot which is like a sex face uh-huh and then she does videos where like you know where you she's she'll like be pretending to masturbate or you'll just see her body like moving up and down like maybe she's having sex but you you're not actually, she's not, you're not seeing anything. And then there was for a long time, there was like this, well, man,

how do I know all this? There was like, there's controversy where she was going to like, she was going to do porn. Everyone was like rooting for that. All these kids were rooting for it. And she was like, said she's going to do porn.

She got a fan and only fans within like a day. She had millions of subscribers, his only fans. because they're all ready for this video and then she released something that was not what they wanted and there was a revolt like everyone was angry at her yeah i don't know if since then she's caved and done pornography but she she sells implied porn instead of actual yeah fascinating that that's a career path let's keep this list going uh I knew two in this next batch of four. Lily Rose Depp.

Rylan Storms. Oh, that's Johnny Depp's daughter? That's right. Yes! Yeah. And that's why I knew her too, unfortunately. And she's also on that upcoming... It's not HBO, it's Max.

She's on the new Max show, The Idol, with The Weeknd. Oh, right. That controversy riddled thing. Sam Levinson, is that his name who makes that? Yeah, the guy who did Euphoria. Yeah. I've heard it's troublesome. Yeah.

But she is in that. So we both know her. Rylan tiktok star oh hallie bailey r&b singer hell yeah know her she's in the new little mermaid i knew her from that too she's the new ariel the new two hour and 15 minute little mermaid yep the way too long new little mermaid uh i didn't know her from anything before that no in fact i'll i'm embarrassed to say that when the controversy was happening where everyone controversy i say among the right wing where they were all mad that she was going to be black i thought it was going to be halle berry yeah in the role and i was like which seemed awesome i was like okay aging her up but i think that's a great choice give me a fucking 50 year

old ariel let's do it still with these dreams of like when i grow up i'm gonna be i'm gonna be up on the top side still arguing with her dad who has to be 110 it's just like the old man from uh house of dragon like half his cheek is missing he's been in a lot of fights with sharks and stuff by then and he's just so so old he's like ariel he's barely running the sea at that point i just want you to be safe it's all sebastian running everything behind the scenes even he's like a 70 year old crab but i guess that's nothing for a crab crabs lived like 100 all right dang matt smith youtube star no bailey madison a tv actress gracie abrams pop singer no and glow rilla rapper oh that sounds like a name i would remember i knew her

i knew her for sure yeah fucking what i know uh there's somebody that i was expecting to be on this list and i haven't heard her name yet i'm gonna see how old she is oh here's the problem she's only 17 oh okay yeah yeah everybody i just assumed everybody young was 23 right once i saw this list i was like oh 23 is children now okay that's interesting yeah there's a there's a rapper named payday uh who is 17 and i really like her i think she's great there was it was interesting to go through this list and learn about, because it's a list of names, jobs, and headshots. And the headshot for Dream, appropriately enough, is him wearing this giant smiley face mask that takes over his entire head. And that sent me down a rabbit hole of Dream, who is famous for playing video games, I believe,

and for many years obscured his face and just wore this mask. And then one day revealed his face and his fans were very upset that, I don't know, he was either too hot or not hot enough. It's always one of those directions that make people very upset. He didn't look exactly like they wanted him to look and i had that context when i clicked through to see his face and i was like he is a normal looking dude i don't even think that he on that he plays video games i'm pretty confident that he just plays minecraft what is mine what the how fucking old

am i what is minecraft oh boy yeah he's mine am I? What is Minecraft? Oh boy. Yeah. He's Minecraft famous. Minecraft is like the most popular game. It's a game. It is a game though. It's a game. Yeah. But it's just one, it's one game and it's,

it's, uh, you've seen it around without realizing it. It's like very, um, eight bit. It's very blocky and clumsy and, uh,

everything looks kind of like big clunky Duplo legos in it and in this world you build everything so like if you want you start with nothing and then you just like dig and you mine and then you or and you're gonna like you'll get um some elements out of the earth and then from that you can build an axe and then with that axe then you're gonna build you're gonna chop down a tree and then you can build a house. And so like, it sounds like you just start from nothing and you just continue to build up and up and up. And it's all very clunky looking. Um, and if you saw even like an image from Minecraft, you'd be like, Oh, I've seen that on kids' backpacks or whatever. It's the most popular game from, for kids from like age six to S to 18. It's the most popular hands down.

six to 18. It's the most popular, hands down. Yeah. It sounds mechanically very similar to Animal Crossing, which I'm familiar with. Do you interact with other

people? Yeah. It's one of those things where you can be on a headset. You can bring people into your world and show them what you've built? can you like okay yeah you can you it's one of those things where you can be on a headset you can bring people into your world and and show them what what you've built yeah let's see how that works i don't this is gonna be so many people screaming at that do you play why do you know this oh my my nephew plays it ah um and at some point ronan talks about it a lot because he's it's coming up at school and he doesn't talk about it in terms of like, hey, can we try it out?

He just talks about it like longingly, like it's this thing that exists outside of, that will never be for him, which is a place I'd like to keep it for now. Yeah, so here's a couple. You play with other people. You can mine. You can work together in it. You can build whole little worlds in it. And then I'm not sure if that then cross pollinates. I think it does because you can be on headsets in which you're hearing other

people doing similar shit to you, but maybe you're not working together. And so you're getting a lot of that weird toxic shit that would go with all gaming. And so that's something my brother is contending with is that there's other kids either writing stuff or you can hear them yeah that's part of the reason i won't do it i just i can't introduce them to things like that yeah i want i gaming is fine but i want a closed system and then i also want a system that's not designed to uh addict him yeah man it's it, it's, it's, it's tough. I mean, like my, I'm not, I'm not anti video games at all.

Um, but my, like my nephew plays Fortnite or I might be dating myself. He might play something cooler now at this point. And, uh, you want to play Fortnite if you're that age and you want to, to,

to play with your friends. But it seems like part and parcel with that is also getting on a headset and opening yourself up to strangers talking to you and like on on the one hand you want every kid to have some version of a normal childhood but on the other hand it's like oh i don't i don't i don't i i don't want anyone talking to my sweet little nephew while he's playing games it's so it's such a terrible thing because you you also have the problem of uh other kids your your child's age even if your child isn't getting that from like strangers then you've got kids that are your that are your child's age that hear the things that

the strangers have said and then think oh that's just part of the gaming and then start repeating it not necessarily like in other contexts but like within the gaming like they understand like this is the this is the glossary of uh what we do here yeah and so like they're talking about rape and stuff like that and you're like oh no that was so fast that was was so quick. Man. Okay, give me some more people. I gave you all the people. Oh, that's all of them? Okay, I think I got like five there.

I think you did too, yeah. Yeah, there were some. Noah Cyrus, is that a name? Nope. No? That's a name that I don't know what that person does, but I've heard it before. name that i i don't know what that person does but i've i've heard it before and other names that i've i've heard that uh i didn't feel like it felt like stolen valor to say i knew who they were were grace and dolan and ethan dolan i think dolan and they're youtube stars and i think

dolan brothers or dolan twins was something that had come across my Twitter desk at some point. I'm looking at them now. I've never seen these faces in my life. It's so crazy because I do a terrible old person thing, which is at night sometimes, instead of flipping channels on my television, I'll go to the video module on Facebook and I'll just start like scanning through it because at this point it knows that the algorithm is like I know what you like and it'll show me these things that's where I ended up seeing that like the beefs on for or like with these uh rappers getting checked in other neighborhoods and uh I was just like I scroll through there once in a while and I'll come up

with people like Charlotte Dobre who I was like didn't know who that was. And now I'm keenly aware of who that person is. Is that, is that somebody on your radar? No, I'm, I'm also, I, you're still on fucking Facebook.

That's the oldest thing I've ever heard you say. I prefaced it. I said, I know, but it's, it's, I, it's,

it needs to be reiterated. Well, I'm all, I'm not posting anything on Facebook. I'm not. I will say that I do scroll it sometimes. And then I definitely scroll the videos probably like twice a day. I'll just like go through videos on there because it's, I'll watch a climbing video. And then the next second they'll show me um dracula's revenge from uh forgetting sarah marshall and i'll be like yeah i'm into both these things yeah that's

i mean lament whatever yeah i i haven't i think i deleted my facebook in 2017 or 18 when when they were directly responsible for the complete destruction of the comedy website that we both worked for and it seemed like i didn't want to give them any more of my attention or time or money um so do you are are you you don't even post like hey american dad season premiere monday night check it out you don't you don't post anything like that um let me see what the last thing was that i posted i could I still got the icon right here. Oh, geez,

Louise. Sorry. Was it about going to the January 6th protests? Your words, your words, protests. Yes. The last time that I posted was September 5th of 2022.

When the season premiere of American dad was my episode. Ah, and I was very excited about that. So, and I think it's also, I did that because there are also people that I don't connect with anywhere else. By the way, that's like the cop-out answer, obviously, for Facebook, right? It's like, well, I want to see what my high school classmates are up to. I don't particularly care, but I do like them to know what I'm up to right i don't particularly care but i do like them to know what i'm up to um and and i'm not going to the reunion so like yeah this is it so uh yeah i'm

not really i'm not using it for its intended purpose i'm not sharing anything with facebook but i am contributing to their, uh, anyone who's like producing content for that or putting videos up. I'm giving them money. I think, I don't even know how it works. Do you have, speaking of reunions, do you have any milestone reunions coming up? Yeah. Uh, I graduated in 2024 from college.

Yeah. Sorry. No, you didn't. Cause that hasn't happened yet, but you're- Oh God. Almost. I got a test tomorrow. I graduated from college in 2004. So it's my 20th reunion. I have my 20th high school reunion coming up. Oh, it's so exciting. You're going for sure.

Because I'm younger than you, but I play older than you, I think. Yeah, you read as older. Because my skin is terrible and my and my voice sucks no because you're dad o'brien because you've got things you're you're better at scheduling yeah that's what it's up an adult does yeah um yeah i you're going to it you're gonna go to your high school reunion i don't know i have no reason no reason not to. But it's got to be coming right up. Yeah. I didn't go to mine, but I am excited for you two. I think that you have a much better connection with the kids from your high school. I've met several of them.

I do. That's what's strange is that I'm close with a lot of my high school and actually elementary school friends. We stay in like an alarming amount of touch we talk every single day in a 17 person deep group chat um whoa so uh i know uh so those are the people that i i like and love from my childhood in high school i there's no shortage of time for us to be around each other. So, a reunion event would just be about seeing the people that I actively chose not to keep in touch with.

But sometimes that's, it still could be interesting. Yeah. Interesting. I, well, you know, it'd be interesting to just be like a transparent eyeball there, like to just be able to watch and see everyone and look at them and be able to transport yourself from conversation to conversation but owe nothing to the search the situation yeah um i'm i'm i think i'm mostly eager for someone uh surprising to have held a grudge for 20 years and then like spill it out at the reunion. That would be fun. That's what happens in movies.

I feel like, yeah, maybe that's why everyone goes to these. It's like, there was one movie where that happened. There was like, Oh fuck, I'm going from now on.

Yeah. Let me tell you about what we've done. So high school, I'd only gone to a single reunion. I, I don't, I wasn't even like compelled to. I don't know why. It was a very small high school, you know, my barn friends.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I always, I don't know, maybe it was like my, the ethos that my, or that my dad was always like, at some point you will leave here, this small town, and you will go somewhere else and you'll find people who are like you. And, and I live like you. And, and I live by that. Look,

we made a terrible decision to raise you here. Your school is on top of a tree surrounded by freaks. We're very sorry. They sort of did. I mean, like I was not, I was not, I,

I was fine. Like I had friends, but I was not of the ilk of everybody else. These are kids who then went on to be in the x games or to compete in the olympics or to do different like they became professional kayakers and rock climbers and my ceiling was so clear in all of those sports and like i'm i'm somewhat athletic but i was not anywhere near the caliber that everybody else in my school was and it was like oh i can't do this stuff like

i can't keep up with anybody it's it's so telling that you had to leave your small town to be a big fish in the pond of los angeles you were fucking nobody athletic wise in wherever colorado but you came to la and you were dominating everyone that's a really funny idea for a film where somebody gets off the greyhound boss and they're like oh finally i can stretch my legs and breathe you guys don't have frisbee out here yet ah let me show you something yeah uh it was it was it was not where i belonged but uh i forgot where i was going with this no so uh you're you're you you had no my so my reading yeah i didn't have a ton of interest in going back and like i've seen the people that i liked from there uh but college was a very big deal for me like college was where i thought the rest of my life happened like college is where i

went in and i was whole hog on college. I found people that I really, really enjoyed that. And a lot of them stuck around Los Angeles. And then what we would do is we, our first reunion came up after five years, they had these banners up, um, these like canvas banners for each year. And we went nuts that year. Like we, we treated it like we were still in college and not by, we weren't like, hey, do you guys want to do this?

It just happened. Like as soon as we got back, everybody fell into their old roles and got crazy drunk. We ruined a dorm room and we cut down our banner and I became the holder of that banner. And so what we would do each year after that, and this is going to sound sad now that you're your age, but remember that we were younger we were like 23 or whatever we would come and each each year we would come back to oxy put up our banner be like it's our reunion too and then we just like drink with everybody i think i think i never uh quite developed that relationship with college. I loved Rutgers, where I graduated from and made

tremendous friends there and enjoyed my time. But I think, I'm sure we've talked about this before, I spent my first year at Rowan University in South Jersey and then transferred to Rutgers for the last three years for a number of reasons. And I think just that transferring creates a real disconnect because everyone says you form your strongest bonds and make your closest friends your freshman year of college. And I did make tremendous friends freshman year of college at Rowan. And then at Rutgers, you're sort of dropped in with all of the other transfer students who have their like legacy connections to their original schools and no one it doesn't you don't have the the quite the same experience if you're all starting at the same

school your sophomore year of college versus your freshman year of college so they're there it was hard to like really dig in roots in either school even though i had great friends there and love rutgers and rep rutgers till i die and love rowan and rep rowan till i die uh it was still just like i never had any interest in yeah going to a reunion at rutgers unfortunately back on that and it's it's true i mean a lot of the people that i became friends with was all it was freshman year when we met like it once i'd say like after you're 19 you're pretty much full up on friendships except at work usually meeting other people i i think it's staggering that you and i became friends when we did i know we were so old and we weren't working together like we became friends before i started at cracked yeah which is really rare um and i don't know that

i've done that with another person no and i was so suspicious that you wanted to be friends it was like isn't he isn't he like full up at this point what the fuck well that was i here's the deal i had been abroad abroad let me say that let me say that the correct way i'd been abroad uh i traveled abroad and i it was a similar situation where i went in second semester and even that makes a huge difference where i was there for a second semester and it was so being in a new city where i didn't know a single person even at a college where like you feel like everybody's seeing each other all the time. I, it was so hard to make friends there. It was so fucking rough. And I was sad and lonely and I was joining teams. That's why I did a trampoline team

there and stuff because I was like, people have to be forced to be around me. Yeah. And that's the only way this is going to work. Like there has to be people that know me because they have to. No, you follow a similar path that a lot of people do. You move to a new town in Europe, you don't have a lot of friends and you think, ah, I got it. Trampoline team. Yeah. And Ultimate Frisbee. That was the other one I did. And I like forced it. I forced friendships there. And when I came back came back i was like in the same way where i went to a new job after cracked and i was like oh i was not very nice to tom or dave i should have been much nicer and like became like a person who was different um because they came

late and i was like i'm full up on buddies and so when i left there i was like if i like anyone who's coming to new city i realized how hard it And I was like, you just need somebody who's like going to introduce you to people. And so I was like, and when you came, you were this doe-eyed child who had just come out of college who was like, and now I live here and I don't know anybody. And you were also a very kind and nice person. And I was like, follow me. You did. I'm sure we've talked about this before,'s it's such a generous act of your spirit very early on you pulled me aside to say do you have any friends yet and i was like oh man like totally i got a lot of irons in the fire

friendship wise i'm sure any minute now something's gonna pop and you're like come to a party i'm having a party people will be there and you can make friends and uh very early on i was like no i think i'm just gonna make you as my friend you're my friend and that's it i had just been there i had been there and it was like it's so hard and uh i did it i did a little bit with schmitty too when alex came out because he was another like really kind heart where i was like he was your employee he worked you were uh his boss was that your uh your first like direct employee at cracked i think he was no randall was okay um i think yeah maybe it was maybe the two of them at the same time. But yeah, Alex Schmidt came and he was just like this really sweet, nice guy. And I was like, you need friends.

Yeah. Come with me. Come here. Come here. We're going to hang out. Like he broke. He got hit by a car. I was like, I'm coming to your house.

I'm bringing sandwiches. You're going to go to this sandwich box. You're going to love it. Right. Regardless of where he's literally from. He's from the Midwest and he needed help. And you helped him yeah it's and now at my job i do a thing which i never would have done it cracked which is somebody new comes and

i'm like hey i know what it's like yeah i know what it's like to start here and no one tells you shit and like you're just you don't know what you're expected like what's expected of you you don't know anything i'm like here's some things here you're expected, like what's expected of you. You don't know anything. I'm like, here's some things here. You're going to need the template for that. I even told like, write an episode. No one's going to give you that. Do you find, I'm very curious about this. Do you find they need that? The reason I'm asking, I, this is very top of mind.

I've spent the last two days having one-on-one informational sessions with interns at Last Week Tonight. one informational sessions with interns at last week tonight these are people who are college seniors that we just zoomed for 30 minutes and talk and i'm i i have always kept myself open to talk to interns and people who work at the show who want to know more about writing and working on the show. And these fucking kids, they come to me and they tell stories where they're like,

well, I feel a little bit bad because I'm working on a pilot and working on a feature, but I haven't really touched them since I graduated in December. And I'm just like, you fucking 19 year olds, you're fine.

Shut up. Don't, I can't give you any advice you're so much farther along in your career than i was at your point um do you feel that way with the the younger people that you talk to at american dad that they're just so much more advanced than we were at their ages yes yes the young ones who have come in because we also hire people that are like the same age as me. The very first woman who came in after me, Alicia Keatry, I was like, I got you. Like, this is going to be fine. You're going to be fine. And she was like, yeah, I know.

And she was like, she hit the ground running. She's a darling of the show now. She's so good. She's a great writer. She didn't need shit from me. But like, there are other people who have come that have been like me or but you know younger and i'm and they're like when they get there they're like what the what what the fuck is expected of me like they're freaking out a little bit and then it's very helpful to them i think but yes every single person who has come who is young i'm like oh you got in this game early yeah this was smart i wouldn't trade what we did i wouldn't trade like

our glory days no certainly not but there are people that i'm talking to they're like i just graduated from barnard studying double major in late night tv writing and screenwriting i'm like hold on that didn't used to exist i can't i can't help you i can't yeah you're gonna be fine um yeah so like some people come and say it's it is very helpful i think i mean at least they say it yeah but other ones i think are they're they're just fine like they're from the jump they're fine they understand things that i didn't get early on they understand like the the social balance and stuff like that even like right from the start i mean every intern that i see i feel like it's insane that you knew enough in college that you wanted an internship at a late night show.

I was still, I'm still trying to figure out where I'm supposed to end up professionally. Yeah. I'm curious to see where these kids will be. I mean, I'm sure, because I think maybe it was like this for a while. There were people coming out of the Lampoon at harvard and they're like and now uh i don't know which of these six tv shows i want to work on yeah and like that's all they knew and they right away they got jobs right away you just it was this direct pipeline from the lampoon to broadcast television and then they just kept those jobs or they would like leave one and be like

okay well i've got three other offers so now i'll work at one of those and it's just not that anymore right there was that glorious past where someone at like mgm or lionsgate or warner brothers would be like oh fuck i've got all this money but no writers to give it to does anyone want to write some television for for me warner brothers i read a story today uh on vulture about uh the who jackie story i read that too that's i had you heard that story before that article never me neither let me like quickly i think we should talk about it on the podcast at some point. Maybe we'll save it for another one. But I, I was reading that and I was reading that Roseanne at one point had like 32 writers. And I was like,

motherfucker. She was just going to comedy clubs and seeing funny people and being like, you're hired. Come to my show. And now you work on Roseanne. And the show was such a success that they were like 32 writers is fine. Yeah. It's crazy that they such a success that they were like, 32 writers is fine. Yeah. It's crazy that they had a stable that big, especially now with what the WGA is fighting for.

Yeah. Those glory days sound insane. They do. I want to split the difference from the insane glory days to what we have now. I think that would be a fair thing to do. Yeah. Am I allowed to say that during the looming strike have now. I think that would be a fair thing to do. Yeah. Am I allowed to say that during the looming strike? Okay.

I think so. Yeah. I don't think anyone is expecting there to be a writer's room that's over 30 people. No, absolutely not. That's a crazy thing. Okay. I think we should stop talking. That's got to be our show, right?

That's our show. Yeah. This one feels pretty good. Yeah. Okay. You can follow Daniel on Twitter at DLB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD. You can follow our show, Quick Question, at QQ underscore Soren and Dan.

We also have an email address, which is QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com, where you can tell me if NBA Youngboy is somebody completely different than who I just said. You can. You'll be able to get like a passing glimpse of our producer and sound engineer and editor, Gabe Harder, by going to gabeharder.com. And

we also have a Patreon, which is patreon.com. Yeah. That's it. Bye, which is patreon.com. Yeah. That's it. Bye, Dan. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right.

The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Worded over? By a week's notice

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