Sad Boyz - Biggest Fears w/ Heather Wilder

Episode Date: November 28, 2017

Today on Sad Boyz we're joined by our good friend Heather Wilder to talk about our fears. Our biggest and most irrational ones as well as the ones from our dreams. Also, we ponder how god is actually a lot like a podcaster, Jordan plays hard to get with his doctor, and we accidentally make a ton of references to dragon ball z. We're sorry Follow us on twitter @sadboyzpod

Welcome to the sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also i'm Welcome to the sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also, I'm Jarvis. How could that be? He's broken. We just watched someone forget their name mid-name. Welcome to the Sad Boys, a podcast about feelings and other things also. I'm Jarvis, and we recorded four other intros before this and they were way more fun and i'm jordan but i'm scared jarvis the reason that jordan is scared is because we're joined by a guest and jordan is afraid of all of our guests i'm afraid jarvis because the topic this week is fear the topic this week is fear i'm uncomfortable and we're joined by one of our favorite people

who will keep us safe who will keep us safe. Who will keep us safe. She's a knight in shining armor. Before she talks, let's just list out all the things she's achieved. She's an artist of beautiful art. Artiste. A Instagram star. A serial killer? Maybe.

Unconfirmed. Boo. Hi, I'm Heather. confirmed uh heather wilder is joining us today um heather we were about to go through your entire resume i'm no i'm gonna cut that off i think that's why you stopped making heather intensely uncomfortable today we're talking about fear some our biggest, maybe some of our most irrational. But we'll get to that topic shortly. We're going to be touching on things we're scared of, rationally things we're scared of, irrationally things maybe we become afraid of. Perhaps in this episode we'll discover new fears, new dark desires that we can't escape from. Next time on Dragon Ball Z. And the show's over.

Oh, Vegeta yeah the classic episode the episode where it was comedic guy where it was full house oh vegeta i'll be there for you young jarvis yes why don't you explain to me why we're talking about fear me why we're talking about fear? Well, we're talking about fear because it's an important emotion. It's a driving emotion. Yeah. It decides kind of like the way that we exist in the world.

And I'm afraid of a lot of stuff. And I think it's important to talk about. What else should we be saying here? Well, the reason we wanted the reason we wanted Heather Wilder on the show this week is because Heather Wilder is one of my favorite humans because she is so insightful. And fear is a thing that you need a little insight on. So we're going to talk about today is a few of our fears. And then also like the concept of fear, like the overall business. So Heather, you're going to be pretty much doing all of the heavy lifting um me and java's gonna lie down here on the ground we're here we're rosencrantz and guildenstern we're just like comedic relief we're already crying yeah we are

so afraid please explain to us uh why we shouldn't be afraid of all the things we're scared oh no you should oh fuck i need to go well that's a great segue into our topic. How's your week going? Yeah, we like to kick it off talking a little bit about the week. Heather, how the hell? Don't be scared. I know it's a scary word. How's your week been?

My week's been really good, actually. I was a little sick earlier in the week, but I don't know. I'm in bright spirits. I live in an amazing city, and I'm surrounded by good people. And I just got a Crunchyroll subscription. So life is pretty tough right now. The three things you need to remain stable. Food, water, roll.

Anime, roll. Any roll. All rolls. People don't often talk about the Crunchyroll subscription and how necessary it is to happiness. Yeah, that's the thing. Everybody has Netflix. Everybody's checking out the originals. Maybe you dabble in Hulu.

Look. Before you sign up for any of those. maybe you've seen an amazon original just maybe i feel like i have the trinity i have netflix hulu and crunch you're all and i just don't think i need much else oxygen maybe yeah you've got all in theory and on the television but yeah you've got all television pretty much with that i've got miss kobayashi's Dragon Maid. I don't really need oxygen. I just finished it. Now we might weeb out. I don't know if that's a good intro or not. I just learned this word. I didn't know that was a word, which I guess I am one. That's cool.

No shame. I like finding new labels for myself. I think it's fine to appreciate some of the beautiful art that's coming out of Japan these days in the form of anime. So Jordan, how's your week going uh my week's pretty good I'm deep since we're talking a little bit about fear I do want to

touch on this this one concern I have I have recently started manifesting a medical condition that nobody else has identified yet I'm it's a psychological medical condition and I'm coining it here all right it's called uh zoc Oh, okay. Is anybody familiar with the phone application ZocDoc? Yes. So anybody who isn't, ZocDoc is effectively a, it's kind of like Uber for doctors. Oh, I thought it was more like Yelp for doctors. It's exactly like Yelp for doctors. But you can also, you book and you set everything up through this app.

You pull it up and you say, I need a dentist appointment. And then Uber driver kidnaps a dentist and brings him to your house. Gives you his teeth. And now you're the dentist five stars that's how that works if you take a dentist teeth you don't become a dentist you you're wrong well yeah no one knows that for sure i've never tried have you ever seen more than one dentist in the same room at the same time yeah isn't that the plot of highlander yeah it's being passed around there can only be one there can only be one dentist I am immortal I have inside me teeth of other dentists

so far sorry shout out for how insightful a Highlander reference that was nobody's talked about Highlander for 500 years and you were able to pull out an exact quote that's amazing that's incredible I kind of feel like Sad Boys is one part podcast second part medical journal and as a result i want to try and communicate this this

recent discovery so twitter bio um zocdocism is a condition based on it's a combination of how all millennials are terrified of death right but also how convenient everything is so i'm in this constant cycle right now where i will quickly search webmd because i've got an itchy shin oh turns out i have super cancer who knew yeah it's weird it's uh itchiness is most commonly associated with an unknown super disease that is is called super cancer so i have unknowingly picked up a brazilian parasite somehow despite never having been you know if you check in a zoc doc enough you can start collecting real world badges that you can wear on a sash very proudly for every doctor you defeat yeah what do you mean

i have to wait pokemon what do you mean i have to wait 30 minutes from the emergency room i'm a level three you just show that sash get right in the horrible cycle that i'm trapped in is that i will book an appointment because it's so easy usually book it late at night because i'm scared about my itchy shit wait are you saying you're booking these appointments for late at night or you were late i am doing the book i am my least rational point in the day is late at night so that's typically when I've got like adrenal fatigue. Right, right, right. It kind of seems like

I've got an itchy leg. I mean, that's probably... I'm dying, right? For sure. There's no way it's anything else. The most rational thought. There's no way it's me having an itchy leg.

Right. No one has an itchy leg. Something had to have caused that itch. Yeah, it must be something far more macabre. So I get scared, I book a ZocDoc appointment and then the morning comes and I immediately, due to scared, I book a ZocDoc appointment, and then the morning comes,

and I immediately, due to the convenience, cancel that ZocDoc appointment. I recently had to call support to apologize, because after about 15 cancellations, they shut down your account. Oh, wow. I did hit that cap pretty quickly. Oh, wow. It just happened recently. Work was pretty intense, and as a result, I was just kind of...

Intense in like a fun, compelling way, but also just in a, by the the end of the day when you're lying in bed i've got my itchy leg well and a general malaise a general malaise i typed in general malaise turns out that's also super cancer super cancer is actually all symptoms all symptoms lead to super cancer that's the tricky thing about webmd though because historically if you get i mean know, let's just use the flu as an example. If you get the flu, you kind of got a bit of everything because you just feel bad. When your body's bad, you get a lot of symptoms. You get like, hey, is your neck kind of sore? I'm like, well, yeah, because everything's sore all the time.

Yeah, yeah. It's like meningitis. It must be meningitis that's also got that. But no, but I also have an itchy shin. Oh, no. That's the Brazilianzilian parasite i think i've got a whooping cough have you been coughing well no but i by god i could yeah i am i am a little warmer than i should be it is 75 degrees and i'm sweating should i be sweating is that

healthy uh so that's um hopefully somebody listening is a doctor and or lawmaker and they can just lock that in. That's my request. That's the homework for this week. Yeah, wait, are you trying to probably give the request because I don't know what this doctor is. I think Jordan got kicked off of ZocDoc and now he's trying to use our podcast to book new doctor's appointments.

Look, let's not throw accusations around. But if you are looking, if you're in san francisco area and you're looking for a particularly difficult patient you'd like to challenge yourself a patient who plays hard to get are you looking for a patient i'm sure that's their favorite kind i really want to diagnose you what's going on um but yeah hey if you've got like a cooler Latin phrase for ZocDocism, hit me up on Twitter. Jordan Adika. A-D-I-K-A. I want to get this logged in the books.

Let's go. All right. All right. Yes. How in God's name was your week? My week is good. I'm going. So Thanksgiving just passed.

I went to Florida. Very nice. At least that is the plan because it is currently before Thanksgiving. I was bought in. This is such a pivot. The fiction was so rich that we forgot it wasn't Thanksgiving. I was like, yeah, God, that was a really good Friendsgiving. Yeah, yeah.

Shame about all the death. So I'm about to go to Florida for Thanksgiving, getting some things together for work. This morning I read a very long article about a self-improvement guru who is doing a challenge where he learns a new hard skill every month. And he challenged Magnus Carlsen, the chess grandmaster, probably most famous chess player in modern times compared to bobby fisher and gary kasparov regularly to to chess and so he went he was like i don't know how to play i like i barely know how to play chess i'm going to become good enough to beat magnus carlson in a month that's the challenge so i read this article about this guy's self-help thing magnus carlson destroyed him oh sure i guess yeah like it turns out that if you're very good at chess you could beat

somebody that just kind of likes it i imagine he just brought out a checkerboard and was like i'm not gonna do the real thing because i would decimate you we're just gonna do checkers so he convinced so he has done a number of challenges like solving a rubik's cube in under 20 seconds which is like speed solving which is like a whole thing and it's like the things that he's doing are pretty impressive but uh chess is very much a memory game very much you have to be able to like crunch a lot of you know board states it's a whole language yeah yeah it's experience just like a language you gain fluency through experience and it doesn't sound like this cat was putting a lot of time in right so he put in a month so i mean yeah but as far as casper yeah yeah uh yeah that was the weird thing it's like just put in a couple months of practice

you'll be good at chess like do you think it would have like changed if he had had 30 or 31 days unfortunately he did this in april so at 27 days he was pretty good but 28 was when he learned what the knight does so he went into the game like shit um can i ride this put a pawn on that maybe yeah yeah so he he tried to build when he realized that he wouldn't be able he wouldn't be able to become a chess grandmaster in 30 days. Surprise. He started writing an algorithm to simulate Magnus Carlsen's playing style and tell him whether or not he was making good moves or bad moves, which Magnus Carlsen found out about, like the wall street journal told Magnus Carlsen about this. And they,

they like made this whole like public showing. But the problem is he didn't finish the algorithm. What? And so he like ran out of time because he was like doing another challenge like before that. And so we just never. And so Magnus Carlsen went in thinking he was playing a human version of a computer, like somebody who would internalize like a good algorithm for playing against him. And he was like shaking and stuff like he like faked him out like like the psyche game was like really good and then eight moves in it was tied whoa wow eight moves in

it was tied and then uh he made like a really stupid move the magnus cross was like oh okay easy he asked out loud what does the knight do? Yeah, and when. Any tips? He did the thing where you move it once and then ask with your eyes. So it moves in like an L shape? He pulled out the thimble from Monopoly. And he called it a horse. That would be hysterical.

He's a grandmaster, but he hasn't been playing long enough to learn all the words. I'm going to move my little boy. Little boy two steps forward. My favorite part about this, because essentially this of the modern era favorite part is that after he after he demolishes him magnus carlson recreates the entire game that they played out from memory writes it all down and then asks him about his moves and why he made them. He's like, oh, no, no. So, like, remember on move eight when you did this?

Why did you do that? And the guy's like, I don't know. I batted chess. Astounding. But it's like you realize, like, the disparity, the true disparity. He's like, oh, okay. No, no, no. We played 39 moves here. It was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And he just, like, writes it all out. And then he's like, so what did you mean here on move 25? And you're just like, hold on. You have photographic memory. Like what the actual, we weren't playing the same game. But that's the twist. It's only for chess.

He doesn't remember what he had for lunch. He has to have someone help him get home. He doesn't remember where his house is, but he can, but chess. But chess, golden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, I mean, a couple people have asked about a video component for the podcast and the reason we haven't moved on that yet maybe at some point in the future is because most of the show would just be me with my jaw on the ground yeah we like excuse me i do often i do often save my fun facts for the podcast so that jordan can be

completely uh i realize i'm just making faces i'm not actually vocalizing anything it is the face for podcasts i really do now but weirdly every time you change your facial expression it creaks like an old like copper statue yeah like an old door what is it i think the first agent ever told me is like you've got a face for podcast and a voice for silent film. Wow. Wow. Mean dad.

Oh no, he wasn't in the picture. It was definitely my grandma. Oh wow. That's tough. She was famous in the silent film era too. I love the deadpan. That's tough.

That's tough. I mean, I mean, I'm going to do that to my kids. You're just taking notes. Yeah. He meant tough as ineffective. Yeah. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. Wow. You turned out okay. And you ended up here. to do that to my kids you're just taking notes yeah you meant tough as ineffective yeah wow that's

cool yeah wow you turned out okay and you ended up here i'm gonna take a few notes you at least know what a night is in chess well speaking of heather wilder oh as is one of my favorite topics we should contextualize a little more we didn't really talk about who she is and in our lives and who she should be to the listener so uh heather one of our co-workers. We're fortunate enough to work with Heather on a day-to-day basis. And one of our lovely, lovely friends. We've known each other a couple of years now. Almost three years. Wow.

I don't remember what happened three years ago overall. And I'm here too. Three years ago plus is just like, I didn't catch the other marvel movies but i went to go see thor and wagner rock and it's like that you know i was like i don't really know the background but i pretty much understand what's happening marvel it's like yeah the avengers with the tesseract i'm like uh i know that's like a keyword but i i know just so when i get tweeted i've seen all the marvel movies so i can leave me alone don't DM me about this you can maybe solve a crossword so wait so I should so I should delete

the tweet that I was drafting yeah this is the in person tweet no but it's like watching the Avengers and being like oh interesting

these superheroes all seem fun do they have their own stories it's like oh yeah that's the one with Professor Xavier right yeah yeah

got it cool okay Patrick Stewart beats up and they're on the Enterprise yeah as far as I understand got it

I do I can do this man there's no better way to uh indenture ourselves to a nerdy fan base than to get information wrong

that's 17 one star iTunes reviews guaranteed I can hear the thundering herd coming up I don't actually

actually actually they're all they all start with actually it's building on their it's a it's a thundering herd of mansplainers actually actually actually oh my god oh god please you're they're coming through the window it's like a jack-in-the-box and you're just cranking the wheel and you know eventually

and actually is gonna pop out with every crank you spout like a wrong Yoda quote. With there is no doing, only trying. That's why we need a video, because you could have seen me crank. Both of us, to each other. Does this go on the show? I don't know. we just lost 40 minutes i'm just here to watch you guys so we bought some new audio equipment and it's like the best decision we've ever made seriously it's like we're doing a different show it's like it's like a different show this my stress level during recording i'm realizing

is like the things are just happening i don't have to worry about any of this it's it's literally like how in one recording break did we just change everything that was bad yeah there's no more like sitting next to somebody like i wonder if god asks himself or herself or themself that after six days they're like well i've changed everything brilliant if creation follows like the similar creative pattern that i indulge in i'm sure the two of you do it's probably about uh on the first two days god's just like this is great this is brilliant this is definitely it day three fuck oh fuck oh god this is so bad debbie can you come look at this and can you just tell me what you think? Debbie, I think it's great.

Shut up. You don't know shit. Oh, fuck. And then day four, you're like, it's fine. It's not that bad. It's fine. I mean, I can't fix it. Day five comes around.

Shit, why did I put water on that? Debbie, what is that? I think it's a platypus. What is that? It's like a duck? I don't even fucking know what this thing is i was trying to be like improvisational jazz i get two of them i guess shit all right oh god and then like day eight is is the whole noah thing it all happened he's like i fucked it up i'm just gonna delete it i'm just gonna delete the whole thing do Do it again. Cause this is rubbish. And then halfway through, he's like, Oh fuck.

I do like Noah though. I wonder if it was just, I just sketch. Yeah. It's waves and hellfire. All the universe really is. It's just a squiggly little square step going up. It's a weirdly elaborate drawing of an anime character. It's the very first control out delete.

It's the shicka shicka. So friends, Jordan and Heather, we have a topic today. Hello there. We do indeed. We sure do. And Jordan, what's our topic? Great question. Heather, what's our topic?

Jarvis, what's our topic? Our topic today is fear. I don't know why I invite my friends on this show this is really just my time this is really just me this is jarvis speaking the only one who really cares about all this the only boy who's truly sad the only boy who's truly sad i say through tears along my face you know i listened to hamilton the other day and i've heard Hamilton like 200 times probably. And I know all the words to the songs. Okay.

And I was cleaning my apartment and I just listened to the whole thing and I was bawling by the end of it. That makes me sad. But I also, I'm still really enjoying the part where you said, I've listened to it 200 times and I also knew all the words as if you were prepared for me to go,

no, you haven't. You were already prepared. I was like, I don't know what in my face made you feel like you had to be defensive about that. A fake Hamilton voice. I know all the words

and I know all the actors. And actually I can prove it. Don't even ask any follow-up questions. And I can prove it if prompted. Of all the things I would throw back a nuh a not all for why would it be that and i have a receipt for the ticket it's on my spotify offline you can check my browser history on my phone it's just always looking things up like the lin-manuel miranda like

the tweet of mine one time which proves it he wouldn't do that unless he saw me in the audience unless he's seen my tumblr where i secretly post my own two-hour recording of Hamilton. It's just a badly Photoshopped image of him with your face on top of his body. It's me with like a George Washington wig Photoshopped onto my head. You could have just bought one. It would have been so much more work than moving frame by frame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a proper 3D render.

It's so much funnier. Some frames it's just off his head completely and then back on. So we're talking about fear. We're talking the things we're scared of, rational or irrational, and I want to kick things off. Is that okay? May I kick things? Go for that. You can kick things.

This is your place. This is my apartment. I'm going to kick some things. And while I do that, I'm going to ask you a question. What was, as a child, let's throw out seven, six years old. That feels like a good child range that's children right what was your reoccurring scary nightmare if you had one and if not what's wrong with you come on oh didn't have a reoccurring one personally yeah not a reoccurring but one that i most

memorable vividly remember i have one that i vividly remember what is yours uh so mine is i used to sleep on the couch because that's how home worked for me i used to sleep on the couch and i remember feeling like i was in real life sleeping on the couch as i normally would except for neighborhood dogs that are normally behind a cage or chasing me we had a so it was like i was on the couch and they had just running into the house. That sucks. Yeah. And then I was just running away from them.

And the couches, I'm guessing right by the door, right? Like as soon as the door busts open, the dogs are ready to roll. No stairs for them to traverse. And are you feeling that anxiety in the entire dream? Like you can feel them coming towards you? It's just me running. No, no, no. It's just the running.

That blows. That is awful. And you won. running. No, no, no. It's just the running. That blows. That is awful. And you won. Yeah. You're a top 10 spooked. I'd probably outlive those dogs. Joke's on you. That's real, that's real rough.

I really beat those dogs by letting them die. Time is a cruel, cruel thing. Young Heather, what is your, well, I guess not not recurring just number one spookiest the most vivid dream i have and when i when i talk about it out loud i feel so dumb for being afraid of it once i describe the visual but i was um also in my childhood home and in the dream my home was exactly my house it wasn't an amalgamation of like my house or my school. It was my home. And I remember I got up out of my bedroom and I walked down the hallway into the living room and I heard something out in our yard and our house had a hedge in front of the windows.

So I, with my pinky, pulled the blinds, these metal blinds down. We had it in my real house in the dream. Pulled them down and looked outside and past the hedge. There was a man with melting mud skin. With giant, giant eyes. Like eyes almost as big as his face. And bright yellow troll hair. And he. There it is.

There it is there it is sorry got you I was pulled in I was thoroughly compelled we were so engaged we were so engaged oh oh

he got you you bet a spooky mud saiyan well before I knew anything about Goku, I dreamed of him. But in the dream, this scary melting troll man is coming. He makes eye contact with me through the window and he sees me. How tall is his hair roughly? He's an adult man. Honestly, it would be like Chucky hair, but yellow.

Okay. So like troll dolls weren't fully articulated. So did he like waddle after? He had a baby's melting face. And he had no clothes on. He definitely had a blue flannel shirt. And then I went to sleep and had a bad dream. So he did have taste.

And I was like, dad. So he is coming into my house in this dream after he's made eye contact with me because he sees me. And I can't get my pinky unstuck from the metal blinds. So I'm stuck waiting for it. And I woke myself up and was in my actual bed as a child. But that has stayed with me forever. And your reaction is exactly why I don't ever tell it. And I'm so sad I told it now.

No, no, this is, thank you so much for sharing. I will say for the, to screen adaptation, there is one major change you'd make to the costume design. Just get it somewhat distracted. It's the mud, right? It's the mud, get rid of the mud. I just want a blonde man. Blonde from top to bottom.

It has to be neon yellow. like a neon yellow streak in the with the texture of broken cotton candy like just that kind of troll hair how hysterical would it have been if uh 2017 horror hit it came into cinemas none of the trailers showed the hair then all of a sudden he's like you'll drag you'll float too and he just climbs out the sewer and then the kid goes oh that's he's like wait what well it's just your hair is a bit weird isn't it yeah like why do you have don't talk about the hair i mean he couldn't ever enter a room head first he could kill all credibility even jigsaw from the saw movies if he had this bright yellow hair just suddenly not scary saying tobin

bell allison williams his character from get out with blonde hair not as scary for something spooky that is so fucking jordan i do want to just quickly mention i find it very interesting that in both cases you are in your homes, which makes sense because when you're seven years old, it's the only location that exists. It's like four locations and that's the most important one. But it's interesting that you were both, it sounds like you were asleep or at least you were going to bed in your story, Heather?

I don't, yeah, maybe. Was there no particular time of day? It was nighttime, but I don't really have context for that. The other part that caught me was that these kind of dreams are so fundamentally forming that you remembered the finger you got stuck yeah right my arm got stuck in the blinds and the guy was coming no no no i opened it with my pinky which weird move yeah i know your decision to do that um and then it got stuck i think that's fascinating yeah these types of dreams are so sticky they're like so scary and maybe some of the first time that i've felt that type of fear

before yeah i think honestly i don't have any any stories or evidence about this up but i have to assume that a part of it is just a child's brain attempting to push itself to limits right like part of it's cathartic it's somewhat schadenfreude but, but it's also just, well, things are pretty safe for me. I wonder how crazy the world could get. What if there was a mud boy? And then suddenly you've thought of that and the blinds, my finger gets stuck. It's like, it's your brain attempting to challenge itself and condition itself to fear. Well, someone told me, and I'm sure this is backed up somewhere in the world, but someone

told me that, um, your brain always is processing everything you see at any given moment. So you walk down the sidewalk and you might not consciously see all the faces, but your brain has taken in everybody. It sees every detail. It sees everything. And so I think your dreams are a place where your deep consciousness is trying to work everything out. And that's why as I've gotten older and I've had more environments,

my home, my home, if I dream of my childhood home now is also my, the home I had when I was 13 is also my college dorm. Like it's, it's, it becomes more like amalgamous as I get older and nothing is as pure as my night chairs when I was a young child. Like as a young child, everything was very, very crystalline and, uh, and you'd wake up being very afraid of the multi-trol man.

Like Jordan was saying, you knew four places. So the fact that you would just like, I remember being in my school one time and turning super saiyan. And my face melting. And then you came to my house. You were in some girl's dream. And I had bright blonde hair.

Dammit, Jarvis. So the story checks out. Jordan, we haven't heard from you. What's your recurring scary dream? So I actually have a recurring one, one that came up to me again and again that my loyal listener, Joy Cope, my mother, can corroborate. Does it still happen now?

Hasn't happened in years. And actually, interestingly, we can touch on this after I tell my story, but I have not had a nightmare in quite some time. A part of that is just that when you're a kid, everything is bigger than you and stronger than you. So you're scared of literally everything. It's like instincts, you know?

Yeah, you are pure amygdala, right? Just everything's fight or flight. I'm going to die or I'm going to live, run away or fight. Well, never fight, just run away. Just run. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much where I'm at right now. But when I was growing up, I had a... My favorite movie growing up was The Fifth Element. Still love that movie.

It's a weird movie. It's a peculiar movie. Highly recommend checking it out if you haven't. Because we have, like, listeners that are too young to know what that movie is. Oh, please go do yourself a favor and watch this movie. Please check out The Fifth Element. But the thing that stuck with me, there is a sequence in The Fifth Element where there is a blue alien opera singer. Yep.

You know, we're remembering. I'm with you. Spoiler alert for a 48-year-old movie. Is now a good time to say that I haven't seen The Fifth Element? You were too busy haunting young girls' dreams of a melt-in-super-zayn. I slept for 22 hours a day so the weird thing about the fifth element and something that maybe contextualized in why why this particular sequence i'm about to describe was so scary is that this was uh i believe fifth

elements early 1990s maybe mid-1990s so we're pre-ultra fidelity cg we haven't quite reached that point but we've also still putting a lot of money into movies. Money has never been put this aggressively into filmmaking before. So the practical sets are heavier, more realistic, more considerate than ever. It is shocking. Like the brain can't really compute it yet. And I watched this in maybe like 2002. So the sequence that I constantly revisit in my mind is a sequence where the blue alien woman gets, she gets killed and there are stones cut out of her stomach.

Yep. In the movie it's treated like, oh, I was here, I kept the stones for you. It's an important MacGuffin for the plot. So reverent, right, yeah. She's beautiful and she's an opera singer and it's amazing. The only part my brain held onto was, get your stomach cut open and run away and guns and explosions it was just like the most i can still think about it she would turn up in my room slit on her stomach no no blood bizarrely i don't think i have a concept for that yet but just standing in my room

again my room yeah home your sacred space you're invading my safe space and uh she she would just wander in not do anything particularly threatening. Her head would look a bit scarier than usual, but it already has tendrils, so fuck that noise. And she wasn't singing to you? She was not singing. What a bitch. Not even really doing anything. That might be why she was wanting to make a corner of it.

What a dead corpse in this blue alien. What a corpse. What a corpse. What an absolute corpse. But it wasn't like I was being haunted. She wasn't doing anything active. She was just in the room. Oh, that's horrifying.

Yeah. And I highly recommend people watch this movie. That doesn't happen. She does not haunt a mixed race English child. Although, check out the bonus features that might be involved. Yeah, weirdly on the DVD extra. I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen the DVD extra. There's an Easter egg of Jordan's bedroom.

It's in 1999. My nightmare was actually mainly about director Luc Besson coming into my room and filming. Yeah, that was my fear. But to be honest, that's the last nightmare I remember. I just had one this morning. It was so visceral that I woke up at 3 a.m. and I couldn't go back to bed.

Hold on. Hold on. Let me guess. Let me guess. You were recording a podcast with two mixed race boys. Two pieces of shit. Are you kidding me? That's a fantasy.

NSFW podcast. Okay. So what was your actual horrible, horrible night? So I don't remember the full buildup because I really only remembered the very last scary part. But it was, I was in an argument with someone, and oh, I do, I'm sorry, this is going to be really dumb. Someone was using a bagel cutter to... Okay, sorry, this is the troll hair equivalent of this story.

Just take an editor's brush to this story. He had a blade and it was used to cut a bagel into two halves. See, that's the part of lucid dreaming is that I can't lie to myself in the dream because I am so conscious of how dumb things are so that I wasn't scared until it became scary. You're lucid in this dream. Yeah, I'm lucid dreaming. I often lucid dream.

So it was lucid dreaming. And so I realized at first they were just cutting Dune books.'m lucid dreaming. I often lucid dream. So it was lucid dreaming. And so I realized at first they were just cutting Dune books. It was Dune. I don't know why. The novel Dune. The novel Dune. Yes. With a bagel cutter?

Damn. Hard back? But not like, it wasn't like they were, well, I don't know how they were doing it at first, to be fair to myself. No, no, no. But this is like the classic dream story where it's like, no, it it was terrifying it's like there was a baby with an old man's face and then it's like wait that's what ends with the corpse on top of me so it got horrible i that's the teaser trailer it's like it there was a bagel cutter and then there was a corpse come watch

the movie because the middle part's interesting yeah no i'm gonna go ahead and say jump the shark that corpse would never use a bagel cutter they're not very dexterous and you gotta have a lot of like wrist strength to use a bagel cutter anyway they were cutting dune books in half i don't know why and i remember questioning the dream but I couldn't wake myself up. And the person who was doing it came over to me and kept trying to grab my shoulders or like grab my whatever. And we're getting really aggressive and they were screaming in my face. And I don't really remember. And I remember reaching up and putting my hand on their face to push them away.

And my fingers sunk into their eyes or like around their eyes, so into the skull. And then they mummified on top of me. What? Whoa. And their torso fell off, and they were a mummified... It's a process. And it was a clown.

And then he had bright yellow hair. My brain... Bright yellow hair hair he went super saiyan my brain can't render all this sorry i'm freezing in real life see and people hate talking about dreams but i love them so much because i need someone to help me figure out what's no the problem is the reason most dreams are boring to listen to is because they don't have as many twists as that one i didn't know m night shamala directed your dream oh shit i did have a contract with him dang this is our 50 second installation that's what's going on oh my gosh anyway i so yeah i

just had one and it was horrible it was and I guess it was that I pushed this like torso corpse off and I could look into these mummified, like dead looking lizard eyes. And I was like, you have to wake up now and watch Friends. The ultimate self. I'll be there for you. Don't be there for me. It was kind of the office jingle. I was like, I need something clean and wholesome in my head right now. So I've been up since then so now that we've talked about um our fears that live inside of

our dreams now that every listener is crying in the fetal position uh with blonde hair blonde hair and a melting melting faces in both stories this one wasn't melted it mummified you melted his face all right yes now that we've talked about different now that we've discussed like 17 new creepypastas yeah i'm now drafting 45 reddit posts um what are some real world like fears what are your biggest fears yeah in normal sad boys we actually have not rehearsed. We did not talk about what we want to talk about. We only discussed the fact that we want to discuss fear. And I want to set a true Sad Boys precedent, both for the three people in this room and for people that might want to DM or tweet at us.

There are no limits. You hear that, Brad Pitt? You hear that, Brad Pitt? Listening again. Like, I genuinely want to hear intense fears. Like, I want to hear. It can be a thematic thing. It can just be, man, I'm scared to death. fears. Like I want to hear, it can be a thematic thing. It can just be,

man, I'm scared of death or it can be something specific. It can be a thing that you maybe is coming. Maybe isn't it. Let's get there. Yeah. Well, real quick.

And I want Heather, our guests to go first regarding fear. Okay. But, um, when we were talking earlier, we were like, Oh,

you know, all millennials are afraid of death. I'm actually not afraid of death. Uh, so that's an interesting thing in and of itself. But so my fear is completely unrelated to that. But go ahead, Heather. Let's hear that. Yeah, actually, I'm not afraid of death more so that I if I think about it, I am afraid of the vastness of adventure that happens next. It reminds me of it. It's like space for me. It's very exciting. And it makes me think of

death because it's ever expanding and ever unexplorable and equally explored. It makes me think of like the, you know, all the yellow dye I'll need to buy for the afterlife. How will I haunt people without my spiky hair? Well, if the past is any consolation prize, you do a really good job. Also, by the way, guaranteed to dream about that tonight.

So thanks for those. You're so welcome. There's no way I don't have a dream with somebody with yellow hair. This is my gift to you. This is my power. I don't use it wisely. I use it just very flippantly. My fear.

Yes. My fear. Into emphasis. This can be thematic. Yeah, I think truly my fear. I live in fear of, I don't know if I live in fear. I'm constantly worried about hurting someone. Not like physically, but just that, or maybe, I don't know, I'm kind of clumsy.

I mean, we should say you're seven and a half feet tall. Yeah, I mean, I am. So muscular. I just can't ever fit through a doorframe. It's just, I know I. Yeah, hurting someone. Yeah, hurting someone. I really, I just think the

world at large is often not very kind, whether intentionally or otherwise, or just not being present. And I am really worried about hurting people. I really, I don't want to be someone that walks heavily and irresponsibly in the world around me. I want to walk not, not maybe in fear or cautiously, but very cognizantly and that I'm really taking care of the world around me. I want to walk not, not maybe in fear or cautiously, but very cognizantly and that I'm really taking care of the people around me, whether I know them or not, that I am being kind. Do you feel like there's a, there was a catalyst for that fear or is that you don't know where it comes from? It's just something that's really compelling. I mean, I think I've hurt people. I've certainly hurt people in my life because I haven't been present or because like I took a joke too far or honestly, probably, probably mostly I've hurt people when I've been like testing out like comedy, even being very young, like learning, learning your comedy muscles.

Like I sometimes overextended. Because you have no frame of reference. Well, even into my early 20s, I mean, comedy has really evolved for me. And I definitely tried things and was hanging around friends that had like much darker, kind of more like violent humor. Humor is not personalities. But yeah, so I realized that there were things like shock jock humor is just not, I don't have the skill set in which to make it, I guess, palatable. What would be your definition of shock drug? I guess I don't even know if there's a really good definition of that.

But things that are typically, like I think Chelsea Handler is pretty shocking, or Sarah Silverman. There are these really great, or Beth Stalling even is really good. They have this ability to talk about potentially controversial or taboo topics in a way that feels very relatable and maybe sometimes jumps over the line but then they kind of quickly come back.

And I don't think they've been perfect. I do think there's some things that like maybe it was a little farther this time in the long jump. Comedy is about finding that line. But I often think that maybe my venue wasn't right or my audience wasn't right and so maybe i hurt someone and that is a horrible feeling because i actually was just having a conversation with a friend today about does the intention of your words matter or do your words that's just it and i do think your emotional intention matters

um but i also think that you can still hurt someone. If you throw a dagger, like you are still throwing a dagger. Yeah. If you accidentally stab somebody with a dagger, it doesn't matter. See of it. Oh, you didn't mean to.

So I'll just walk to the hospital. I'll take an Uber pool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like a doc doc appointment and then i'm injured that's my i really i just i i want to be and i see people being hurt just in the world at large and i think, I just want people to feel not only safe with me, but that I will be able to protect or take care of someone. I guess I am

really worried about hurting people. That's my fear. Yeah. I think a really big issue, maybe you relate to this, maybe you don't, but I feel like most of the time, if I'm trying to be considerate of, of, of a joke that I'm making, or maybe not even a joke just if i'm providing criticism constructive or otherwise like i really struggle with deciding whether or not it is my responsibility to condition a comment to somebody's like comfort level oh sure like be polite don't be a dick that's pretty universal don't be a dick that's's the overall tip. That's the only golden rule that I think. Golden rule. Golden hair, golden rule. The golden hair rule. Don't be a dick. Don't have a melty face and don't be a dick.

I just sort of feel like occasionally I will be providing, you know, we all work at the same company. And in our company, there is a general tone of candor and feedback. That's something that's pushed as a core behavior. And as a result, sometimes I'll be like providing feedback to's something that's pushed as a core behavior and as a result sometimes i'll be like providing feedback to somebody and trying to be as candid as trying to be as direct as possible and i think well should they just be able to handle that is that their responsibility right right the joke that i make that they can't handle but jarvis can like i make a joke that heather upsets heather but doesn't upset jarvis yeah do i just go like well

heather should be more like jarvis really looking forward to that joke I can't wait I'm very guilty of that I I think I I think one this is a strength of mine that I craft everything for the audience the very specific audience so if I think think that Jarvis can't take that or whatever, then I wrap it in a package that I think would be digestible by that person. But ultimately, the reason I developed those skills of translation and packaging are because I am also afraid of hurting people's feelings. When I was on the playground at seven years old, I found out that somebody hurting people's feelings. When I was on the playground, like at seven years old, I found out that somebody didn't like me and I ran, I chased after them and I asked them,

what could I do to make you like me? Hello, you don't like me. Could you please explain how I could become in your good favor? It there. Hello there, it's me. I do hope you start to like me, because otherwise I'm going to have to do something else. And I don't want to have to do that. And my hair turns gold. And then your face starts to melt. I think that's really interesting.

So you would categorize your key fear as not wanting to hurt people. Or I guess to put it in an action, I guess would be to hurt people. Or I guess if to put it in an action, I guess would be to hurt someone. Yeah. Yeah. Like I,

I hope I operate in a place of compassion and kindness and empathy, but I, and I, I, yeah, my fear is that I would hurt someone. That's, I just, oh.

To date, do you have a particular story or a recent event, be it a few years ago? Oh, I mean, I say dumb stuff all the time. Now, it's happening. Good news. You're on the right podcast. I mean, I love making people laugh. It feels so great to see someone laugh because I know what it feels like when someone makes me

laugh and it's just so great so I love being able to reciprocate that but sometimes it doesn't land or yeah yeah I mean I don't know I don't even know if I have a great example of it I'm just I'm sure I have said something in passing or I didn't think anything of it or I forgot to send a thank you card or just any kind of being a human thing that you just are doing and living and it happens. Um, how do you, cause like I found that there is a certain amount of resiliency to my relationships with people. So if I happen to offend someone, it's not all over, you know, if I happen to like hurt someone, there is recourse for that. So in your like ultimate fear, like town, is this like you've wronged me and I can never forgive you and I,

and we can never move forward. No, I think the relationships I've established now in, in my present moment also feel very resilient and there's a lot of depth to them and a lot of room to make mistakes. And to be just a person who's trying to figure it out like everyone else. I think really it's, it's the not knowing someone else or, or, or walking through life, not in any way projecting that someone is not having as vivid of an experience as mine, but that, but that I'm just,

I'm in my own world dealing with my own day that I don't say thank you to someone or that, you know, just the very small things. I think I really might be misattributing this quote, but I do believe that it was Maya Angelou that said something along the lines that there is no person that you meet that you do not leave a mark upon or that you do not touch. I'm totally not saying the right quote, but that has, the version of that has always resonated in me that I've always believed that no matter who you touch or how you interact, you, there's a thread that you tie to them and you carry that thread with you forever. So we're constantly interconnected. I believe the quote goes, um, no matter how you interact with someone, you will kill a mockingbird. And the quote was written by a bird. Very defensive. So Jordan,ordan uh how about you like what is your biggest fear it's actually very interesting the two of you were talking about a lack of fear for death earlier um in reference to my my zocdoc syndrome identification um because

it got me to thinking actually it's something else i was going to say is my central fear but i think this is much better you two have unlocked it which is i'm not afraid of death i'm afraid of dying that's the thing that seems to crop up a lot the idea that my journey to the abyss would be an obligation for other people would be something that got in their way and lower things and of course joy cope is listening love it to pieces don't worry don't plan on dying so that's not on the cards for me but that that always crops up i think when i'm lying in bed and i'm a little tired and i'm a little fazy i'm like oh well better check what this uh this eye twitch is oh i'm dead i'm already dead i've got i twitched the thing that happened before you die and then i look up web md and i get my right the thought process is not well i'm not gonna be able to

watch the rest of stranger things season two it's i really really don't want to be i don't want to upset all the people in my life and that doesn't limit it to my family it limits it to my connections it limits me to you too that's something that i'm sure would upset you hopefully right yeah you know it's that's the thing that scares me the most. And part of that is drawn from the fact that I'm very thankful for having that kind of network. It feels like a real privilege. Yeah.

And to bring, it sounds so silly saying it out loud, but there's a part of me that feels responsible for all the positivity. Like any love that we share or positive relationship that we foster, as soon as I get like sick or, oh, jordan broke his arm now he's in the way like that yeah it feels like a thing that i did to everyone around me and yeah it's utterly irrational and it's something i think about a lot i don't think it's irrational i would would you say that it's not just like dying but

you just mentioned breaking your arm is it the is it the fear of becoming a burden obligations obligation yeah yeah i'm not crystal clear i mean i have a little speculation on that it could be related to the fact that i'm a single child single mother and despite the fact that she was and continues to be an 11 out of 10 mother right she is the original linda carter wonder woman oh she is straight if there was any question about i mean are we gonna do an entirely separate episode because everybody in this room loves joy cope quite significantly and she's listening to this right now you've got to get your mom on the podcast she's listening to this she's listening to this when's this come out uh week after thanksgiving okay she's listening to this after i turned up to

surprise her for thanksgiving oh she doesn't know she has no idea i get on a plane tomorrow evening to fly over and spook the shit out of her that's the only real goal not there for love no i'm gonna go tp her house real good spook surprise it's me Cope, listening in the future. I scared you. I think that obligation to others and like your responsibilities is natural. I think it's like, I don't want to go away or I don't want to go away because I am beholden to all these other people. They need things from me and that's not going to go away.

That has to die as well. And it's almost like you're dying, you know, a million, like as many friends as you have that many deaths. Yeah, exactly. And that has to die as well. And it's almost like you're dying, you know, a million, like as many friends as you have that many deaths. Yeah, exactly. And that's a lot of responsibility. And you can translate to things outside of death. You can translate that over to, oh, what if I quit my job? All of a sudden, all these people that were either dependent on me financially, or all of these people that were dependent on me just as co workers, all of us had that much of a ripple. And we'll do a whole other episode on this but that's certainly something that i've struggled with in relationships yeah the thing that that wigs me out the idea that i would be that responsible

for somebody's consistency and happiness has on occasion panicked me a little bit i've thought to myself oh my god but what if i this is another person in my life that now if i do get sick or i do have to leave the country, that's another really big one for me is getting deported, is if that happens, what kind of impact is that going to have? Right, right. Now I have plus one person. My wife is now going to be terrified of that.

Yeah, yeah. Which is actually why I've chosen to be single and it's not because everybody doesn't love me. You're just utterly uncharming. Yeah, no, that can't be it. It's actually because- With really terrible halitosis. It's actually because of doesn't love me. You're just utterly uncharming. Yeah, no, that can't be it. It's actually because... With really terrible halitosis. It's just because of a really cool reason.

It's definitely not because I'm thoroughly unlikable and make a lot of inappropriate jokes. You always wear mismatched socks. That's actually pretty true. Little peek behind the curtain on that one. Young Jartvis, how about you, my friend? What is your central fear um so uh the one thing I talk about the most with my therapist and that seems to drive all of my actions is uh the fear that everything that I've built for myself uh will one day like go away all in like a flash um and that's

like the biggest fear that I'll be like sort of at zero with like no skills and no friends and everything that i thought that i had was actually just like a lie yeah is there typically a catalyst for that in this in this fear scenario or is it just it disappears uh i think usually or oh like what causes it yeah um usually it's like the like it could be seen it could be seen as like a big imposter syndrome like people find out that i'm not who I pretend to be or something like that. Sure. And then once they realize who I really am, they're no longer interested. Yeah.

So that's my fear is that everything goes away. And so I think that's why I'm more uh i like need i like sometimes need and i'm working on this obviously but like i need validation from people i need to know that everything's okay because i'm afraid that everything's just gonna like go away if i don't like meticulously take care of it all that is fascinating to me i know we're not in like solution space this is just yeah but i feel like you the place you've gotten to in your life and the comforts and privileges that you've built for yourself are not the result of chance right they're the result of grind of of yeah no no no i i there's parts of me that i think i simultaneously

uh am am proud of myself and think that what i've built is real and sometimes when like the going gets tough i'm like well maybe i was wrong could this be? Yeah. Surely if any bad things happen, I fucked it up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's really what happens. It's like enough bad things go wrong. And then I start to question everything.

I think a phrasing is very interesting because I think everybody is scared of, of, of losing things and of losing progress and things. But your specific phrasing, which I think makes it unique to you is just that it's gone. Ding. Suddenly. Yeah. The world that the tower that I built has crumbled in the foundations. Yeah. It feels like, I don't feel like I've built flimsy relationships, but for some reason, when I like the going gets tough, that fear of everything

actually just not being as strong and as flimsy, uh, or as strong as I think it is, is real. And it's probably related to sort of some of my, you know, like in my life, I've had people very close to me pass away. And I like I've lost people very close to me. And the relationship that I've built from that is that at any point, everything can go away. Like your whole world can just be like, the rug can be pulled out in front of you. But I ultimately don't believe it's like a real, I ultimately believe it to be irrational. Well, I mean, that's the tricky thing about fear, right? Because you can acknowledge that it makes zero sense, but that seems to do nothing, which seems a bit unfair. Right?

I feel like I'm making all the right moves if I say, well, yep, doesn't make sense. Like if you step back for just a second and hear your logical box and you're like you know but then really you can only sustain that force field for a few moments before you're back in the fear you're like oh damn it i'm here again it's like something you have to focus on you have to push it away with your hand and as soon as you reach over to pick something up oh he got a little bit closer like you know that there is no melty face blonde man coming to your home but you can recite that exact story to me in detail it's because i because he's there because he's already inside yeah because he's behind you right now and he's behind the listener right now together i was the man the

now i think this particular episode is going to be a really interesting one for homework i i know i always say this but i am so curious for people to DM the Sad Boys account. It's opendms.com. Yeah, or just tweet us regularly if you're interested in that. Oh, yeah. God damn, because it's all going to be weirdly nuanced. Nobody has boring fears. No, fear is not boring.

It's too exciting a premise. You just can't have boring fears. Heather, would you be down to come back for an episode where we, one, talk about people's fears that they tell us and we like work through some of the stuff that we've been uh talking about i really yeah i would love to do that i would love to hear what what other people's fears are boom so we're gonna do that so now you gotta you gotta send us in your contractually obliged both as listeners and he Heather to come back to the next time. I would never disappoint future joy.

And so the commitment has been made. Well, joy still rattled from me turning up out of nowhere for Thanksgiving. She had no idea. She's joy. We knew the whole time, the whole time. Um,

Heather, thank you so much for being, thank you both for having me. This was so much fun. I'm just, yeah. Heather, um,

where can we find you on social media i believe you have an instagram i do have an instagram you can come hang out with me anytime it's perfectly underscore pippa p-i-p-a uh yeah for a treat hang out and if i'm just oh if i'm just i want another slice of jarvis i haven't had enough jarvis today where do i get more jarvis jarvis uh you can go ahead and find me on twitter at jarvis yep just my first name and i'm on youtube and i'm on youtube at youtube.com jarvis johnson and funnily enough you as of this recording just released a new video which tackles the feeling of not necessarily fear but vulnerability which a lot of people are afraid of yeah i think it's rooted in fear and it was also a video that i couldn't have made without like getting some sad boys under

my belt like sort of getting comfortable with being vulnerable for hours at a time um and yeah no every if you're interested in any of the stuff we talked about with fear one there will be another fear episode two i made a video about vulnerability so go ahead and check that out get vulnerable get weird tweet at us engage send us dms about everything you're afraid of guess what your fear is now probably a melting face troll because fuck me that's mine forever you know what and i never thought about it again if you walk away from this podcast with anything, it's that we all now share the same fear. Sad Boys brings all the sad together. We're going to get the same tweet over and over.

A yellow-faced mud monster. It's just going to say Heather Wilder over and over again. She did it. I'm so sorry. I've hurt all of you. You see how this feeds into my fear i've hurt everyone you hurt sleeping john you know what guys we do have fun we do have fun we do have fun now heather i don't know if you've heard the podcast i honestly wouldn't recommend it personally but

i hear that some people do listen we do a thing at the end of every episode where we say a little phrase and we say it because it's 100 true and javas what is that phrase that phrase is we love you and we're sorry so if you're up for it we will say jordan and i in unison as if we're in some sort of pacific rim like mech where we're drift compatible we're speaking at the same time we'll say we love you and you'll say and we're sorry that seems fitting all right because by god after that story i am so fucking sorry it's so true we love you and we're sorry boom kaboom now i'm gonna go dream