Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - ANNA FARIS Confidently Landed a Solid 3.2
Episode Date: October 3, 2023Our most prepared guest to come on to the pod is of course, Anna Faris! She tells Seth and Josh all about growing up in Washington, the time she got snowed in while visiting Mammoth, CA, her mom's TV ...rules when she was a kid, the scary carbon monoxide incident, and most importantly, she created a choose your own story adventure with the guys! Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips and for the reminder to find your more. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Visit BetterHelp.com/trips today to get 10% off your first month.
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Hi, Pashi.
Hi, Sufi.
Very exciting today. It's not the first time it's happened, but Ana Faris is a podcast host herself.
She's been doing it for a long time.
Yeah, longer than us.
Way longer than us.
Longer than almost anyone in the game.
She got into it very early and a great credit to her for doing a very novel and interesting podcast.
You should definitely check hers out.
But it's also really nice because people who have their own podcast have their tech set up and you just hit the ground running with them.
Yeah.
So thank you to every guest who's been on our show who's known how podcast technology works.
Yeah.
No, it is appreciated.
It's also, I should point out that we're relatively new at this.
And very often when we get on with our producers before we've started there's
an issue yeah and either they can't hear us or we can't hear them or we're not hearing them through
the headphones and nine times out of ten we haven't plugged something in or turned something
on and ten times out of ten it is the fault lies with us and not the producer.
Just sometimes, one time out of 10, it's a tricky thing that we need their expertise.
And nine times out of 10, they're almost embarrassed to ask us. I feel as though they give us, like parents who realize there's more value in a kid figuring out something on their own.
They know that it's just we haven't plugged it in.
But they sort of wait for five minutes because they don't want to have to tell us.
But the other things that might be wrong are so technologically difficult that they might sort of explain and they just sort of make us more confused.
And then they're like, well, okay, if it's not that, are your headphones plugged in?
And then you'll look down and no, they're not.
Yeah.
A real dangler, as we like to call it look down and no, they're not. Yeah, a real dangler,
as we like to call it in the podcast biz.
A dangler.
Yeah.
Josh, we haven't had many disagreements about this show,
but there's something we disagreed on
that I would like to bring up now.
Yeah, sure.
I was of the mindset that
we should tell people at the end of each episode,
hey, now Josh is going to sing a song
that he wrote and recorded himself
based on the interview you just heard
a decision was made that we just go into the song
cold I just worry
that not enough people know
that you are the person
who is doing this someone said to me
I thought you had hired an
outside song parodist
and so again,
we don't have to do it.
We don't have to end each episode,
but I do want people to know,
and this has been true of every episode and it's really impressive.
Josh writes a song each week and,
and he sort of has to jam them out and get them in on time.
And anyway,
I appreciate it.
And it's my favorite part of the podcast because it's the only part,
you know,
I'm not there for.
And so,
yeah,
you know,
stick around to the end,
everybody. Yeah. I just, it would feel weird to me to finish a podcast
where we're talking to, let's say, Anna Faris. And it's like, oh, now also I wrote this song.
Well, I was going to do it. I wasn't going to make you do it.
Yeah. I just don't, I don't want all those.
But I was going to use that voice. I was going to go, and now I'm done writing the song.
So maybe it would have been bad because I definitely, I love that voice. I was going to go, and now I'm done. So maybe it would have been bad because I definitely, I love that voice.
I love using that voice.
Yeah.
Sorry to put you on the spot.
Do you have, because I don't quite know the full number of podcasts we've done,
but do you have a favorite song so far that you've done?
It was Timothy Oliphant.
Yeah.
But now I think it's the Kristen Bell.
I've heard from a couple of people that Kristen Bell is the best one. Yeah.
Mom and dad called me recently.
They had just gone to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where I had
recently been with my fiance Mackenzie and her mother.
And it's just, it's an exceptional museum.
And I suggested that mom and dad should go and they called because they were leaving the Clark and
I was like how was it but all they wanted to talk about was the Kristen Bell song there you go it's
a song that's better than an art museum your words not mine yeah also I forced them to talk about the
your words not mine yeah also i forced them to talk about the uh art institute and uh mom's complaint was that the signage for where you park wasn't good so they parked in a sort of
and like almost an off-site lot but then they had to walk through these beautiful trails
to get to where the main building was and then they had to take a shuttle back to their car
and the whole time she was talking about the parking issues,
dad was harrumphing in the background.
Yeah.
Well, I bet based on everything I know about them,
I bet he was hearing it when it was happening too.
I bet that wasn't the first time.
He parked the car.
Very rarely has something gone wrong for mom
that hasn't been pinned on dad if he's also present yeah that's
her superpower that's her superpower she can pin any old bullshit on dad however innocent the man
might be this might surprise you or it might not josh i'm doing another podcast right now with four
other late night hosts it's called strike force five and we're raising money for our crews. Yeah. And dad just told me he likes this one more.
Oh.
Yeah.
That's nice to hear.
I think all things being equal,
dad every day of the week
would trade four other talk show hosts for you.
Given the choice to hear a show
where the hosts are 20% his sons or 100% his sons.
He'll take the hundo. Yeah, I'll take the hundo yeah i'll take the
hundo yeah and also i think more likely to to get mentions on our podcast although not always uh
putting him in the finest light but they say you know any press is good press yeah and i think dad
lives by that um especially since he only he only gets bad press from mom. He's very used to it.
He's probably happy
just to hear
bad press
from new voices.
Yeah.
Anna Faris,
a delight to talk to.
We hope you enjoy
our conversation
with her
as much as we had
having it.
But first,
why don't you listen
to Jeff Tweedy?
Family trips
with the Myers brothers Family trips with the Myers Brothers.
Family trips with the Myers Brothers.
Here we go.
Hi.
Yeah.
Hey, pal.
Hi. How are you? I just want to start. Hi! Yeah! Hey, pal!
How are you?
I just want to start. This is heartbreaking, Anna.
I had this moment where I said to Josh, have you ever met Anna before?
And it turns out this is the case where I'm way behind.
He's been to your house. He's hung out.
I think we did a New Year's together also, right?
We did some ski trip.
Okay.
I have to do, if you guys don't mind, a slight conversation interception.
I was up until 4 a.m. having imaginary conversations with you both.
And you guys didn't get a word in.
Okay, great. guys didn't get a word in okay great and so i do want to note that in order to tell you
in order to tell us that you immediately had to say i want to make an interception
so you were you were fully living out your dream right off the bat yes and i was counting though
i was i was counting on one of you though to ask the intriguing question of, well, what were you guys talking about?
Oh, yeah.
In your late night sort of head spin.
Yes, in my excitement of getting to be on your podcast and getting to hang with you guys.
Yeah.
What were we talking about?
I'm so glad you asked that question.
And I was going to offer you guys a choice of two different, I wouldn't call them bits because I'm not much of a, you know, bit kind of person.
I don't really write.
I just sort of react, you know.
Sure.
So I wouldn't call them the punchline, but the end of two different stories.
And I'm going to give you the choice of, well, first of all, I prepared for the scenario that you guys didn't deliver on.
Okay, great.
So it's a flowchart.
Yeah.
So, hi, I'm just really excited to be hanging with you guys.
Seth and Josh could either go to a tangent.
Oh, this was going to be my course of action.
Tangent interception.
Does it go well?
I don't know.
Just for our listeners, because this is not a visual medium,
I just want to point out that Anna is holding up a chart right now. I feel like I've been podcasting all wrong.
And she's the first person who's taking
the time to make a visual aid i'm also seeing now that there is a page behind the first page
so this is gonna be two pages that we're gonna describe here at least oh my gosh yeah okay so
then i stayed up i wrote this down in case i forgot my line. I stayed up until 4 a.m. having imaginary conversations with you both.
And you guys didn't get a word in.
Yeah.
That was going to be the pause for laughter.
Now, you guys could have gone to A, what kind of conversations, or just an oh, huh.
Which I think we went with A.
Now, hold on.
So then I thought, okay, I'm going to give you guys the option.
Oh, my gosh.
Now I have written down for our listeners.
This is terrible audio.
This is so much fun.
This is so bad.
This is a third page, handwritten notes.
Yes.
With quotes around them them so these are things
that these are my lines say these are your lines i can't wait to see what happens once you don't
have any more lines you have pre-scripted your podcast answers without knowing what the questions
were going to be yeah yeah yeah uh i sure did um because i think that that's where my brain has kind of gone.
Like, there was definitely a brain, what's a great word sort of for melting, but that's still like a little coagulated.
Anyway.
Okay.
You know, like I had like, you know, time melting, brain melting, like for two years.
So this is what I have to do now.
I have noticed how awkward I am socially.
Oh.
Yes, anyway.
Okay, you can choose between two bits.
Yeah, yes, congeal.
Perfect, beautiful.
You can choose between two bits.
I was chewing on last night, I wrote.
A, come on, homo sapiens.
This is the end of the story, right?
Okay.
I don't want to be so brazen as to say that they're punchlines.
Yeah.
Because I don't think they're jokes.
Okay, gotcha.
They're just sort of endings.
Yes, they're just sort of endings.
And then the other one.
So, come on, homo sapiens.
Or the other one is, or, this is your choice b i i could confidently
confidently land i could confidently land a solid 3.2 in what land what like a jump like a that's
for you to gymnastics and this is all so you does seem like, and let me just venture a guess here, Anna,
that you woke up from these dreams and just started writing down.
They weren't dreams.
Oh, right.
You were awake.
I was awake.
Maybe you should have been asleep.
I should have been asleep.
I should have been asleep.
And I even thought, oh, I'm going to write this down.
And then I did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so did you guys want to hear about any of those stories?
Like the,
you have two choices.
Come on homo sapiens,
or I could confidently land a solid.
I mean,
just out of curiosity.
Or should we just move on?
I mean,
gosh,
I'd love to know what this,
what is the details of any story where you confidently land a 3.2.
But I feel like I'm,
I'm very worried.
You don't know. I do know. Okay. I do know. Then let's hear the 3.2 but yeah i feel like i'm i'm very worried you don't know
i do know okay i do know then let's hear the three i feel like yeah i feel like we should
come to some resolution on one of these okay three points yeah everyone's grasping at straws
right now yeah i'm sure yeah so uh i was an english major at university of washington and
i was the kind of person who would if we had had a 12-page essay due in like four weeks, I would completely put it off.
I wouldn't even think about it.
But I would be really surprised at like when I did sit down at 1130 or whatever the night before, how there was like a nice mental flow.
Like subconsciously, I had been processing it so that's sort of how i thought
this podcast was gonna go because i felt like i could confidently land like a 3.2 pretty much
every time i see that so 3.2 like a gpa situation yeah yeah okay gpa i see so that's pretty good
so that is it i, I will say,
I think I'm more conscious of the fact
that I'm thinking about things
before I sit down to write them,
whereas it seemed like you were surprised by it.
But I do think there's a lot to be said
for putting, letting your noodle sit with it
before you actually sit down and start banging it out.
So I think that's a good way to approach an essay.
Don't you think that most major decisions
in life, like when I decided to study abroad, they start as like truly like a kernel in, you know,
the back of your brain. You're not even quite sure that it's there. And it somehow like takes root,
starts to sprout, fertilize it. And then suddenly,
you know, you're getting married. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I think for studying abroad,
I would say it's not, it's something that maybe the school system puts into your head. You know,
people who have studied abroad previously, you've got some friends who are like, I'm thinking about
studying in Spain or I'm going to go to, you go to France or wherever. And then you just sort of do that as well.
Did you guys study abroad?
We did not.
Did you?
No.
But we lived abroad.
You lived in France, right?
We lived in the Netherlands.
Oh, in the Netherlands.
Where did you, did you study abroad?
I studied.
I mean, I didn't, you know.
You went.
Did you go abroad when you were in college?
Yeah.
Where'd you go? Siena you were in college? Yeah. Yeah.
Where'd you go?
Siena.
Siena, Italy.
Yeah.
What were you supposed to be studying?
The language and art history.
Oh, I mean, those are two good things.
It's true.
I lean hard into the accent, you know. It's very fun did they tell you sort of on the first day we think you're leaning into the
accent too much they they don't tell you that they don't you find out when you get home no and then
there's this like the switch from like my parents i think of like they've they've uh they really
prioritize traveling to italy so much so that I think they spent their retirement packing us into a minivan and driving all over Italy for good times and bad times.
Mostly good times.
But there is definitely, when I say, like, dove è il bagno?
Mi scusi, dove è il bagno? Mi scusi, dove il bagno?
Or whatever, you know.
Yeah.
Where's the bathroom?
Oh, gosh, you are a whiz now.
Yeah.
O studiato italiano di Ece Anifa.
Oh.
Bravo.
Yeah.
So, but the switch from like the assumption that I can speak well to, oh, she doesn't know what the fuck she's saying.
It happens very quickly, you know?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Josh had a Dutch girlfriend when we were living in Amsterdam.
And my impression of Josh is all of their conversations would be three lines before Josh would then then all of a sudden say wait what because
and it was like so show-offy like hey malifia and then she'd be like yeah it is a good one
they'd be like wait what huh yeah i do think that every foreign language teacher one of the first
things they teach all their students to say is i I speak a little whatever the language is. Like,
je parle un peu de français. And I don't think you should teach that until people actually speak
a little French. If that is the only sentence you have other than your name, you shouldn't be
saying, I speak a little French, because then someone might try you. And if it turns out all
you can say is, I speak a little French and my name is josh then you shouldn't say
i speak a little did you speak like none i i just did stand up in amsterdam and this joke i should
preface it this joke did not go well but i said uh i speak in becha dutch like for example i know
the words for a and little good good yeah good. Yeah. No, not good.
Oh, that's it.
That was the end of your joke.
I thought there was something else coming up.
Yeah, it was.
I mean, I like that.
I was like, oh, the Dutch people didn't get this joke,
but it's going to be a barn burner.
Yeah.
Come on, homo sapiens.
Come on, homo sapiens.
I thought there was a network lag, let me just say.
Yeah. So wait, Anna, we're going to bring it down to the studs right now. I loveiens. I thought there was a network lag, let me just say. Yeah.
So wait, Ana, we're going to bring it down to the studs right now.
I love it.
I love it.
Thank you.
You went to University of Washington.
You lived in Washington.
You weren't born there, but at a young age, you were there.
Yes.
Siblings?
Yes.
An older brother.
And I was listening to Amy Poehler.
You guys with Amy Poehler.
It's called a core four, right?
Yeah.
Core four.
You were a core four?
I'm a core four. How much older was your brother? Three years. Okay. So were you close?
We are really close now. We had two really distinct identities of physical extremity.
My social identity was the short girl. Okay. Like the short girl over there. My brother was always incredibly
tall. He was known for his height. And I bet he wasn't incredibly tall when he was born, but
that's true. You know what, Josh, I really hope he listens to this. Yeah. Okay. Always that tall Bob
back to you. Um, yeah. So, but, but we fought healthily.
We fought a healthy amount.
You know, I think that we, I think that because I was born in Baltimore where we lived, we moved when I was six.
My brother when he was nine.
And so I think that it hit a little harder, the move for him.
little harder the move for him so we spent some years kind of adjusting to um what felt like a slightly not that it was uh necessarily upper class it wasn't at all we were very
middle class but we went from uh i think a pretty tight-knit community in baltimore
to a sense of like
financial competition.
Like I started becoming kind of aware of,
of much more of a,
a ranking kind of culture,
but maybe that was just the age too.
Maybe I would have,
you know?
Yeah,
that's true.
I do feel like six might sadly be the time where kids start clocking the
differences.
Yeah.
Yeah. But you, and now were you were you a core four that took trips together is this true that your parents wanted to take
their kids to italy so yeah so my brother and i we took we took a lot of trips we were road trippers
until um until my parents started splurging on italy trips Italy trips when they came into a little bit more money.
But not much.
I mean, I was in the backseat of a minivan a lot.
I was like the way, way back kid, you know, because when you're the shortest, you're in the way, way back.
You're basically luggage.
I'm by far the best directionally in my family.
But why would they put you in the back?
I don't know why you'd put the compass in the back.
Thank you.
I have been attempting to make the argument for Navigator, like chief navigation, because
I like maps.
Remember maps?
I was like weaned off of the Thomas guide in Los Angeles.
Yeah, for those who don't know, this is a real rite of passage. You've got to of the Thomas guide in Los Angeles. Yeah. That's for those who don't know,
this is a real,
a rite of passage.
You've got to get a Thomas guide.
And it was just a giant map that it was like a binder.
It was like a binder that was like maybe two to 300 pages that had grids.
And so you'd get an appointment and it would say,
you're going to like page,
whatever B six.
And you turn to that page and you'd like, you'd follow. It was a, you're going to like page whatever B6.
And you'd turn to that page and you'd like, you'd follow.
It was A through G on the left-hand side and the numbers on top.
And you'd have to figure out where you were going.
And you'd drive around and you'd sometimes have to pull over and put this binder in your lap and sort it out.
I think we were all the final days of the thomas guide correct do you
think that this is a disadvantage because we're in this like tech age whatever and i think all of
the three of us are of that generation where we were kind of right on that cusp and we can't it's
so boring when i tell my kid like i don't know i had the thing back in the day i had to learn or whatever i but uh i do think we
have a particular disadvantage would you agree with this or not of like being on that like i
was using microfiche in college yes right i think the best example i have of this is i was studying
film and we were learning how to edit film by hand
and so that and I graduated college in 1996 like actually splicing film together and I felt like
the day I graduated they just rolled those machines into the garbage like everything I
learned to do was immediately obsolete yeah yep and so then whoever the freshmen were that year
never even saw the machines I was learning on.
There's always those stories of where like a maps app on your phone
will like someone drove into a lake because it told them to.
And I wonder if one day like a bunch of today's children
will just like walk into a lake and be like,
hey, we have to fix something because these kids,
they don't understand anything.
It's just like a lake full of kids who are like,
we don't know.
We don't know what happened.
It was the app.
We don't know.
Yeah.
When you took road trips out of the Washington,
out of the state of Washington,
was it mostly Pacific Northwest?
Were you, I mean.
What a great question.
One year, so we had a big station wagon, the kind my mom upgraded to
the ford astrovan do you guys remember those i do remember they had a very kind of a
snout like appearance yes like it fed like it fed off uh ants and other small insects
so i have four captain's chairs so that was an upgrade for me.
And we took, my parents took us on a six-week journey across the United States.
I've been to most of the United States.
We stayed in, well, so day one, we left Seattle, I-90.
We have, like, I remember my parents packing their espresso machine.
That is the most stereotypical Seattle thing to do
is to bring your, not just your own coffee,
but your own coffee machine.
You can't trust the rest of America to make your coffee.
And Seth, we were house guests the entire journey.
But they love Italy.
So they were probably like, oh oh this cafe is molto delicioso yeah this was pre-italy though no we were like well that's where it probably came
from well so we didn't have any friends in montana so we so we're heading east day one
and like and i'm sitting behind my dad because uh he is dollar you know i'm i'm that i'm the
kid behind the dad and i just start feeling this like mist of my dad kept spraying himself with
water to keep himself awake so did he preload a sprayer with water thinking that this might happen
yeah yep yeah and uh and you know back in those days too uh our entertainment was window
you know yeah yeah yeah um what do you think i would kind of lose myself. I remember like during that particular road trip, I was 15, a tough age.
Wow.
So 15 and 18 going on a six week road trip with your parents.
That is a very risky age to bring kids that age.
Yeah.
Also likely giving up your summer.
Like that's your summer when you might want to be doing other things.
And I did look up where you're from and it's Edmonds, Washington is the town so it's like right on the Puget Sound I can't imagine it being more beautiful than like
it's got to be incredible it is it is it is gorgeous but I do think at that time I was just
I was ready to get out I was ready for my world to be bigger yeah which it did not but you're right
yeah Josh it was um I don't remember like I don't remember ever resisting my parents, like the, like being like,
I don't want to go. I just did, you know, I just got in the car.
I think we were the same. We would not, whatever our parents planned, we would go along with.
Yeah. And, and we were house guests, like all over the country with all of my parents friends which that generation
of friendship i don't know if you're i feel like your parents are similar like did they have like
friends that they've been a couple that they've been close to for since like their 20s yeah even
like my dad's best friend from when he was like five yeah and they're still tight yeah it's kind of remarkable
whereas like if you drove around if you if you drove uh uh your kid around to see your friends
it would just be like west hollywood let's leave maybe it would um seth can i tell you about the time that Josh uh saved my butt your butt yeah yeah okay so
we we are gonna get back to your six-week road trip because I feel like there's a lot of digging
we want to do there but I'm gonna let you talk I'm gonna let you talk about Josh now I wish that
I had like there was an alligator chase in Florida we don't want to hear about that. That's not. There's a podcast that does animal chases.
They do this.
An alligator chase.
Alright, we'll put a pin in alligator chase.
It's not that good.
I'm still here. I got my limbs.
Your dad just sprayed water on the alligator
and he ran.
How did Josh save your butt?
I was
in the middle of shooting
my super ex-girlfriend
with uma thurman and luke wilson we were shooting in new york and it was a really intimidating set
for me it was like i just laid low that was my strategy and so we had a break for christmas
and i josh i can't remember who arranged our mammoth trip.
I think me.
I bet you did.
I bet you did.
So anyway, you're not supposed to go skiing when you're in the middle of filming a movie.
Yeah, as you guys probably know.
Because of injury.
Because of the risk of injury.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So but Josh arranged this trip.
I somehow got invited.
And there was a, I was supposed to be back in New York.
They didn't know that I had gone to Mammoth.
I was supposed to be back in New York, like, the following day or something incredibly stressful.
There was a big snowstorm.
Josh spent about six hours, truly, digging my car out. It car out it was he did you remember this josh
i don't remember the digging out but i feel like you don't no not specifically i'm kind of grateful
actually because i don't think i ever like i was so gripped with panic i don't remember i was
embarrassed to like i i wanted to re-thank you for that because I don't know if I was too preoccupied to really express my gratitude because you were out there for hours.
Yeah, well, I'm a New Hampshire boy, so I'm used to shoveling snow.
There's part of me that likes it.
I was so terrified that I was going to be,, like on the chopping block if I was late,
you know,
that was,
that was,
I was really,
really scared.
And anyway,
you,
you really,
you were just out there.
You made it happen.
You're welcome.
What this says to me about my brother is that he is so chivalrous that he's
probably dug out multiple cars. And that's why he can't remember yours
whereas if i had dug out your car i would be talking about it every single time every time
i saw you on camera on screen yes i could ever tell you the time about i dug a super ex-girlfriend
i was a guy josh is like oh yeah look, I dig out a lot of cars.
Yeah, well, I mean, I could see like, I don't know, I would feel some level of responsibility on a trip like that.
If I had sort of said, come out here and then I feel like I'm sort of on the top line of that trip.
And then if you get sort of somehow pinned in there,
I would feel a level of responsibility.
I don't know.
It was heroic.
And I'm really grateful.
Josh, did you come up with that game?
That was the year that we all brought our worst work.
Oh, yeah.
It was bring a video of you from childhood or something, you know, something, but like, but bad. And, uh, and
everyone had stuff. I want to say I had a, it was so amazing. I think I had a video of my friend,
uh, Craig Bouchard and I had gone to a place in the mall and recorded us lip syncing. Womp,
there it is. And it was just terrible. Our dear friend Rob
Benedict had auditioned for
a 90210 thing.
Oh yes, Rob was amazing.
It was news footage of him
because they were covering
this casting.
But yeah, it was fun.
It was a good event.
The game was just a
film festival of sorts where yeah
yeah yeah it was it was fantastic how many people how many people were bringing uh clips i think
there were like eight of us maybe something like that that's the right length yeah what was yours
anna what was your worst work i can't remember if i brought my regional yammy yogurt commercial or if I brought...
Had to be in the running.
If you didn't bring it, it was in the route.
Or if I brought Lover's Lane, the low-budget horror movie that I participated in.
I get gutted.
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Hey, Pajji.
Yeah, Sufi.
You know, there are times in my life where I know the thing I need most is a good night's sleep. And yet my brain, for some reason, is just hung up on something that is bringing me stress.
And it will not let me get the sleep that
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I have a question real quick about Yammy's.
Is it Yammy's yogurt?
Yammy.
Okay, Yammy yogurt.
Yammy yogurt, yeah.
I did a furniture commercial in Chicago,
and it was like the first time I think I got paid over $1,000 or something.
Not much more over $1,000 because it was a regional commercial,
but I still to this day remember how excited I was when I got it.
Were you over the moon when you booked yammy?
No. No? No.
No?
No.
How jaded.
It's Yammy's yogurt.
Oh, yes, Seth.
Now we are tapping into something.
I know.
I know.
I have like, I do have a dark, simple soul, really.
I was a theater kid.
Like, I was. Did you think it was beneath you at kid like i was did you think it was beneath you
at that time i didn't think it was beneath me but i certainly didn't feel passionately about it like
it wasn't tcdy right they hired me because i was 16 or no no no i wasn't 16 i think it was like
14 but i looked like I was maybe 10
and I had a really round face.
So the whole commercial is just like my face.
And in my memory, I didn't have headgear on during the commercial,
but I think that was during my headgear stages.
Interesting.
So the commercial, a 15- regional commercial for yammy frozen yogurt
yammy was launching their frozen yogurt line and i am eating frozen yogurt like this with a smile
on my face and you hear my mom off camera not my mom an actress say amy are you eating ice cream? And I say, not anymore.
So ninth grade, down the hallways, lockers slammed shut.
Not anymore.
Okay, I forgot.
I did not process that there was a giant downside
to the age in which you booked your first regional commercial.
I was in my mid-20s.
Nobody was giving me a hard time about it.
But that is a disaster.
And this was getting a lot of airplay?
Yeah, it kind of was.
I was very snobby about commercial work.
Yeah.
And I think it was because I didn't feel attractive, as attractive enough.
Or like, it felt like the, you know, it felt, of course, like it wasn't at the meat of the matter of like, you know, the emotional state that I wanted to express.
Did you guys go to your high school reunions?
I went to one of them.
Yeah, I've been to mine.
And I missed one like about five years ago, and I really regret it.
Oh, really?
Why do you regret it?
The first one I went to, it was perfect timing.
I think it was my 10 year, and I had just started on SNL.
So it was my 10 year and I had just started on SNL. So it was really cool.
And I had done,
I had done comedy stuff at,
in high school,
a lot of it with Josh.
And I feel like people in our high school rooted for us and it's always
been nice to go back and see them.
So it was really special.
I feel like you've had the same experience,
right Josh?
Yeah.
I mean,
the last one that I went to,
we were in New York for Thanksgiving and our high school always has the reunions the day after Thanksgiving on that Friday, because people are home to see their families. And we were in New
York with Seth's family and I really wanted to go. So I flew up for a day and I flew up,
I landed, there was a terrible snowstorm uh i had a
friend uh picked me up took me to the reunion i got home i had to start the generator um and i
was at home at the reunion he dug out like 10 cars oh yeah i mean i don't i didn't even get to
catch up with people i was just making sure they could get home he brought i remember when he left
new york he brought two shovels.
He's like, I'm going to bring a backup shovel.
But I had to start the generator,
which I had never done because we didn't have a generator when we were kids.
And I got that thing fired up.
Oh, so you get some cred.
Okay, yeah.
But I had minimal power in the house.
And to have a night at your parents' house,
your childhood house alone with the two dogs.
Right now we're down to one dog there,
but there were two enormous dogs
and we were on the couch
and we watched Caddyshack with commercials
because it was just on TV and it was so much fun.
And then the next morning,
we have a good neighbor friend
who drove me back to the airport
and I flew back to New York
and it was 100% worth it.
What is your, and did you go you have you gone to your reunions?
Isn't it kind of grotesque how you when one asks a question,
you're also secretly hoping that you get asked the question.
Ana, we know exactly what's going on.
I know.
You know, we actually you know what, We owe you an apology because we should have
made our answer shorter
to get to you quicker.
I appreciate it.
But I feel like you were
going to be like,
nobody likes reunions
and we're like, we like them.
By the way,
nothing would make me happier
than if your answer
right now was no.
No.
Uh-uh.
I don't think so.
You don't even know?
I don't know.
So how did it go? When go back are they like are they still
quoting yammies to you oh god i think i went to my 20th i don't i don't keep in touch with
i only keep in touch with one person from high school but and i've always kind of had
that quality of like uh kind of maybe to fault, like a sort of extreme intimacy versus
like a larger social circle. So I didn't really keep in touch with anybody. I also wasn't
nostalgic at all. I was not. I was just waiting to get out. I felt like internally, like a caged
animal. But it was such a relief when I was so I went to my 20th. It was such a relief to be,
it was like, you know, a B plus. It was like a 3.2 of a night.
A tricky detail was it was at this loud, like local bar. And because I'm wildly self-absorbed,
And because I'm wildly self-absorbed, I didn't remember anybody.
And you have to really, so because the bar is so loud, you have to talk closely with people.
And to try to like surreptitiously glance down at somebody's name tag when they're like eight inches away from you is really tough. But the relief of the night, I think, selfishly, was that people recounted how quiet I was.
And that's how I remembered myself.
I was a little bit worried that, you know, because it's hard to have any kind of self-reflection on how you may have come across.
So it was a relief to me that that was a nice confirmation that people weren't like, oh, I remember when you were Anna, whatever.
Yeah, stuck up with all your yogurt money.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But so that was a nice experience to have that confirmed.
And do you still have family there?
Yeah, in Washington. Great. you still have family there? Yeah.
In Washington.
Yeah.
Right.
Do you go home often?
Yeah.
Nice.
Do you bring,
do you travel with your son there?
Do you take him?
Oh yeah.
Okay,
great.
Does he like it? Does he think of it as your,
as his mom's home?
That is such a nice question.
Yeah,
I think so.
That's great. And it's like woods and streams and like eagles and, you know, mud.
It's pretty great.
It's pretty great.
My in-laws are from, my wife is from New Mexico.
And my in-laws are talking about selling.
They want to maybe, they're just, you know, their kids are gone.
They also want to be more on the East Coast where all their grandkids are.
And they're talking about selling the house.
And even my kids, who've only been there a handful of times,
are like, no, that's our favorite place in the world.
But it seems a little unfair to make my in-laws keep a giant piece of land in New Mexico for the purposes of my kids.
Are they going to do it?
Of course.
I don't know.
My kids are pretty convincing.
My kids are pretty convincing.
I think also when you're a grandparent and your kids, your grandkids are like, we love where you live.
I think that's a, you don't want to give that up.
Yeah, that makes total sense.
I was thinking as last night around, I don't know, maybe 2.45 a.m., I was thinking about
how Americana is so sort of a part of a lot of us, I think, that we don't realize much of it until we travel abroad.
And even then, I don't know if we can.
It's more not how we are perceived, but how we perceive ourselves a bit.
And not even just like the typical arrogance.
I think that it is a world.
It's like being beautiful your whole life or something just
simply not knowing what the other one what the other element feels like does that make sense
like we're defined by sometimes what we don't feel i i will only say and i don't know if this
is what you're talking about but i had two incredible years where I lived abroad
loved it and I can't imagine living abroad the rest of my life you know what I mean I did feel
the pull of just I like being here and I like being from here I like going other places but
I just I do feel that tie which is a really lovely being proud, being proud to be American is
sort of like weirdly been co-opted by different elements, but I genuinely feel proud and,
and, and, and love it.
I also feel like, I feel like every now and again, they're like threats from companies
of like, we're going to move overseas.
And it's like, no, you're not like whoever owns those companies runs those companies.
They don't want to live like yes some do
but it's like if people are like we're taking our money and we're going to Ireland it's like go to
Ireland like you're gonna come back you want to be Ireland yeah it's great I do love Ireland yeah I
do love Ireland you know for a week when I was studying in Italy I got a um a really bad concussion
how'd you get a concussion? Or it was, this is,
I like this is going to be another interesting story. You're not going to tell us like the
alligator. My dear friend at the time, he's still my friend, I guess, we haven't talked in a long
time, but Dave gave me this big bear hug and he was pretty wasted. And then we, and it was such a, he like lifted me up and
then we just fell. And so he fell on top of me. I fell on this hardwood floor. The, um, I was okay.
But the next day I started in the middle of class crying uncontrollably, like the kind of like heaving, almost like, you know, like very hard to control your breath.
And so I left class and I couldn't stop.
And I had no particular reason.
There wasn't anything that brought this on.
I found out later that apparently a concussion can also like kind of trigger some emotional
switches a little bit.
So my friend took me to the hospital because I was crying inexplicably.
So I go to the Italian hospital outside of Siena, which.
A hospitali.
Si.
There's some.
Hey, guys, I don't know what you're talking.
I don't know what you're saying.
Oh, sorry, Seth.
It's a hospital and then what
did anna say but then she said see what was that
see she could see the hospital what's going i don't understand you guys yeah that's okay larger
the world's larger than you think so i went to the the hospital. It was one of those moments where I felt
like,
oh yeah, you know, I wouldn't mind being
in a, you know,
a hospital in California.
I had a weird
thing happen, which is when I lived in Amsterdam,
I used to get sick all the time in the States.
And then I lived in Amsterdam's early 20s
and I got
strep throat, which I used to get all the time.
I remember I went to the Dutch doctor and he gave me some medicine.
And then the second time I went, three months later, they said, all right, we're not going to just keep giving you medicine.
Which is what American medicine was happy to do, American health care.
And they took out my tonsils.
And they paid for it.
They said, we think you keep getting strep throat because your tonsils are infected. for it they said we think we think you get keep
getting strep throat because your tonsils are infected and so i had my uh did you get him back
your tonsils i haven't and it turned out it wasn't a hospital it was it was an organ harvesting thing
and not only were my tonsils gone but one of my kidneys oh also yeah it was i should have known
because it was a it wasn't a building it was a
van cool scar i bet i do have a cool scar um oh here's a weird thing i wanted to mention earlier
that i don't even know if it's worth like backtracking to but remember staring out the
window during road trips yeah yeah so what i would do to sort of like, I don't know, I guess kill time.
I would imagine, I would imagine like if we were going through the, you know, the prairies of North Dakota or whatever, I would always imagine myself on horseback keeping pace with the car.
Like wind flying through my hair, like, and I would just, I would sort of like follow that. But did you guys have any like mental places that you would kind of check into during your long road trips?
I'm going to say something that seems like a lie based on what you said.
I always picture myself running alongside a car or a train out the way.
Yeah. ground and I think about where you would have to, if you could run as fast as the car, what
would be the perilous elements of the, uh, of the, of the ground?
Yeah.
Like we're fantasizing about a degree of freedom.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you imagine that you're running next to a car or a train or are you running super
fast or is it like easy?
Like somehow you've, you've got into a stride that just like keeps fast or is it like easy like somehow you've you've got into a
stride that just like keeps pace or is it like you're running full out in my head i am of the
power to run fast as a car and not be sort of it's not very relaxing otherwise it's not relaxing i
mean yeah but like when you look at those like marathon runners, like they're running fast, but it also looks easy and smooth.
Yeah, they would probably they would probably take issue with it. But it does look that way.
Would you guys ever be judgmental about let's say you have in the first five minutes of meeting someone, they tell you that they've climbed Mount Everest.
Okay. Would I be judgmental of the speed in which they brought it up?
Yes. And potentially even more.
I think if I met somebody for the first time, unless they had climbed Mount Everest that month,
in which case I'll give them a pass. I don't want to hear about it in the first hour. Well, that would be in June because the window to climb Everest is in early May.
Yeah, that's true.
Right.
So I guess that's the thing.
If you're talking to somebody and they're talking about Everest.
Late May, June.
If it's not June, they're really pushing it.
Yeah, it also depends on the conversation that you sort of walk into or that
maybe that you're having or you've gone to a national geographic photo exhibit and you're
talking to people about that kind of thing and some guy's there and he's like oh yeah i climbed
out of everest and be like oh interesting like i if it's just a random meeting i I don't know. Like, I think if you're at a party, for example,
and you're like, oh, it's so hard to get a drink here,
and the guy says, well, it's not as hard as climbing Everest,
and I would know.
And then he takes out his phone and is showing you pictures.
Yeah, that's probably.
That's a bad guy, right?
Yeah, I'm also wondering now, Anna,
if you have climbed Mount Everest,
and you think we're long enough into the podcast where you can bring it up.
Guess what?
It's August.
So you're not going to bring it up now.
What's the highest mountain you've climbed?
Have you done any mountain?
No.
No?
Well, I've hiked a lot of trails.
My parents, my dad especially especially would take us hiking every weekend
which uh was really good it was really good for us i think you know and you were excited or did
you was it a dreading it situation or an excited for a situation um somewhere in between yeah i
think the important thing is that you look back on it and are happy it happened. I think that that's a thing. I really liked, I liked the peace and solitude of woods.
I was always, I always imagined myself as a kid that I would, you know, somehow buy a little piece of land up in Yukon territory, become a Canadian citizen and just live by myself.
I have a lot of live by myself fantasies.
Yeah.
Just FYI.
Three kids will do that to him.
Wait, do you, when you would go on a hike with your family,
was it a lot of chatting or were you allowed to sort of enjoy the peace of the wilderness?
My dad is a great conversationalist.
And he does like to tell stories.
And he has a whole, he's got a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things.
And he's a kind of-
We got one of those, a two.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
So, but it did, you know it forced conversation i think and i just liked i think it was the only physical activity that i felt i felt like i could really run up a mountain at one
point in my life you know that's really good at age i think it's important to remember that as an
adult you look back and say oh so glad we did that and you have to remember as a parent you sometimes now have to
force your kids to do things they wouldn't otherwise do with the hopes that in 20 or 30 years
they'll appreciate it seth when you take the kids on road trips like ipad stuff how do you
where do you fall so here's the thing They don't get iPads in the car.
And I feel bad because I think if it was the other way around,
they wouldn't get iPads on the train either.
But on the weekends, we leave the city and my wife drives up in the morning with our baby.
And then I wait for the boys to finish school
and we get on the train.
It's about two and a half hours.
And I just give them an ipad
and they watch something and i read and i love it and my god love my wife who would say do you
didn't do any arts and crafts i'm like no we didn't do any arts and crafts you didn't did you did you bring a crayon when we fly like the last time we flew
my wife uh was in the middle uh so she was in a set of three with the boys on either side and
then i was on the outside i was at the uh an aisle over and she i mean she just brings a bag
of a thousand activities and you know with kids like they it's four minutes
per activity so if you want to keep them doing things it's not like oh modeling clay in your
head as an adult you think 70 minutes no four yeah and so and then that so the backpack where
the modeling clay is in the backpack is the four minutes of space has been taken up by
modeling clay so she's really good but we're pretty i i mean i don't know how much longer
we're going to be able to hold out because i will say and i know this is not a reason to let your
kids watch ipads but they don't know what the fuck any of their friends are talking about
yeah like you know what i mean like they have no frame of reference for no frame of reference that's how i was raised though yeah i'm
not a very restrictive parent um but and maybe part of that is because i was so i mean it like
fun it made me fundamentally uncool definitely a a virgin. My mom was adamant.
I wasn't allowed to watch any television, really.
But when she would go to the grocery store, I would watch.
Usually it was like Golden Girls was on right after school.
And then I would frantically put some frozen frozen peas over the on the television because my
mom would feel it when she got home you cool down the tv yeah this is wildly impressive thinking
yeah i when you said i i took out the frozen peas i want to tell you i had no idea where it was
going yeah on top of the tv and would she come
home and like put her hand on the tv and sort of look around and be like then she got wise you then
she'd go in the freezer and if the peas were hot yeah you're like hey i don't know you want to
explain why the peas are a little hot yeah yeah so that's so funny they were and that was
was it because your parents were um were your parents educators do i have that yes yeah my
my dad um was a professor uh of sociology my brother is uh i think the world's only fourth
generation sociologist my grandfather and my great my great grandfather were all sociologists.
And then we have other academia in the family.
And so it wasn't out of like a sort of, there was morality to it.
My mom was terrified that I would grow up too quickly,
which I now interpret as an adult.
She really wanted me to like not lose my virginity right so the worst
thing you could do is watch the golden girls yeah yeah which was basically like i mean like just the
four sluttiest old women yeah i mean rue mcclanahan was always looking at i mean it was just it was a
story about like just women four women who did nothing but banging, and now they were happy and close with their friends.
And, like, having an older brother, too, anything that I liked, like, if I had any inclination, I was a little too old for, like, Backstreet Boys.
I think I just missed them but if i had for instance like expressed interest in that kind of pop culture
ness my brother would have like just torn it apart you know what i mean and my mom probably
like i would never have like dreamt of putting a fan poster on my wall of anything because it was
just too ripe for the picking.
I recently will say I had never been to a boy band concert of any kind and saw the Backstreet Boys last year.
It was fantastic.
Awesome.
It was the nicest crowd of people ever.
How great.
Everyone knew every song.
I saw zero instruments through the entire show.
The lights were great their choreography
was on point like i was and like these girls next to me were like who's your favorite and i was like
i don't talk to me in like 90 minutes i don't know yet um and does it i would imagine there's
a certain responsibility as one of the are there five i'm gonna guess there's five backstreet boys that they have to you can't really have one guy who completely lets it go right like they have to
all keep it a level of fit where you can do the choreography and yeah not be chasing it but and
maybe you know maybe there's clever you know let's put uh let's let's put howie in the back
and i'm not sending Howie up here.
I'm sure Howie's got it on.
To quote the famous line from Dirty Dancing,
no one puts Howie in the back.
Yeah.
So maybe they could sort of mask someone who was like,
oh, AJ's got a bad hip right now or something.
But I wouldn't have been able to say these names before this show. and now you're just pulling them left and right yeah it's that's impressive
i don't hate that i was late to it and didn't ever have to make a value judgment on it because
i was too i was too old for that moment and that's okay i'm okay with that yeah that's okay
um did you ever with a brother three years old older did you ever have any romantic interest or
involvement with any of his friends no with his friends because I feel like that's got to be a
thing if like you kind of jumped on that like you were like oh all right are we gonna go there
no no no but like was there ever like your brother's got like guys hanging out and it's like, yeah, yeah.
But I laid low at school.
I was quiet, avoided everybody, everything.
I was I was involved in our drama program heavily in high school, but they called us, which I don't know if this is an offensive term.
Bat cavers.
Bat cavers. Yes, because we wore wore black i wore a cape for a while
you know what not only is it not offensive i love it because it's so not offensive i mean i don't
think it's kind but it's so soft in its observation that i really dig it yeah okay yeah i i don't i
don't mind it either um but um oh my god i totally lost my
train of thought about bat cavers were you hooking up with your brother that was josh's brother my
brother and his friends my brother and his friends uh yeah okay which was a christmas tree skirt
by the way okay your cape was yeah i did this was like I did have weird moments of like odd self-expression like that.
That was inexplicable and not particularly attractive.
But like for a while, I would take my bangs and I would pull all my hair back and I would just like slick up this one thing and have it like plastered.
Like a Superman curl, but no curl and coming straight down between your eyes.
Anna is demonstrating this for us right now.
And I just want to say it is working for me.
And I know that's not the purpose of this, but I kind of while you're doing that, I'm thinking if I were a fellow.
Let me just say, I know you laid low in high school.
doing that i'm thinking if i were a fellow let me just say i know you laid low in high school if i was a fellow bat caver yeah yeah i'm a young if i'm a young man you would one of my fellow bat
cavers is doing that with their bangs i think i would go crazy do you think looking back that
there were dudes in your theater group who were just like so enamored with you but maybe uh maybe um oh Seth I wish my brother was kind of naturally popular which was um felt incredibly
elusive I had no idea how that worked I was hovering at like d minus maybe like d plus
c minus social categorization like like the sweet spot, you know?
Yeah.
You were a 3.2 in the classroom and a 1.6.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But again, then if your brother's popular,
he's bringing some cool guys by.
So you have sort of that.
Yeah. I don't need to keep digging on this.
No, no, no.
I did.
I always had a crush.
Always.
But I think his crowd felt too scary.
And if I, not scary, but like playing with fire.
I don't know.
I think there was also, because I was acting with adult actors in the Seattle theater community, like that was that defined a lot of sort of my early perspective because I'm working with all these like bitter theater actors that are like, you know, like and I loved them.
So did that mean that 18 year old boys felt immature to you when you were 15?
Oh, yeah.
Well, yes, but I still crushed hard.
I was always a romantic.
Truly, I was like one of those kids,
I think, like first grade.
You know, Ryan, Ryan G, fastest runner.
Oh, wow.
He was so fast.
He ran alongside the train.
He was so fast.
Would he run, would he imaginary run next to your imaginary horse? Oh, wow. He was so fast. He ran alongside the train. He was so fast. Would he run,
would he imaginary run
next to your imaginary horse
when you were looking
at the window?
Oh, of course,
Ryan would.
Ryan G.
I would buy him,
do you guys,
did you guys have
ice milk,
like chocolate-covered
ice milk
that you could buy
that was like
a substitute
for ice cream
in your cafeteria?
No.
I'm going to say no.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, I would buy Ryan G.
Like, I think they were 24 cents or 25.
It must have been 25 cents.
Probably.
Oh, man.
I love the idea that a school is just constantly giving kids a penny change.
Yeah, for a penny.
I love the idea that a school is just constantly giving kids a penny change. Yeah, for a penny.
My parents splurged on a trip to Hawaii when I was probably eight or nine.
They got some deal at a Sheraton or something.
So we all went to Hawaii and they were so broke.
I think my dad didn't have a job at the time.
Burger King had some deal for 27 cents for a hamburger.
I don't remember how much the cheeseburger cost because we never got to have the cheeseburger.
But we spent the week eating 27 cent hamburgers.
It was a great week though they say when you go to hawaii you gotta
get you gotta get the hamburgers at mcdonald's i mean drilling down a little bit here it does
seem like your parents there were many times where they were stretching a budget but they did
feel like getting out bringing their kids to interesting places.
They were great about that.
And then as a kid, were you aware on a trip like that?
Oh, this isn't how, if we had a little bit more money, we'd be eating somewhere else.
Or was it more just, oh, this is fine.
I think I was.
I think I was.
And what else did you do in Hawaii on that trip?
Like any memories other than the cheapo hamburgers?
Oh man, they splurged on a catamaran ride.
My parents were great about exposing us to all different kinds of, like, I mean, we would,
we would go to, you know, an Ethiopian restaurant or like a Pakistani restaurant and, or, you
know, uh, uh, I don't know, I don't know if we ever went to the opera, but we did go,
they exposed me to a lot of live theater, which is kind of how I started getting involved in that community.
So they were great about probably exposing us to the world to an extent.
I think more so than my peers that really made me want to leave.
Right.
Like the feeling of like there's a big world out there.
I got to get out of here.
When they started taking you to Italy, what were those trips like?
I slept at the foot of my parents' bed.
I am by far the slightest physically member of my family.
I still have the short girl remnants in me.
And my family is tall.
And so a minivan inaly is not an astrovan
in the united states you know so they really they're lean on the mini more than the van oh
yeah and we our bags i mean we had to bring it all you know granola bars, like laundry soap.
And so like my memories of Italy are,
they're fabulous.
They were filled with like,
you know,
mind blowing experiences that were,
you know,
pretty modest.
We stayed at like,
you know,
small inexpensive places.
And I stayed at the foot of
my parents' bed most of the time on some like wonderfully Italian rollaway bed. Right. What,
now where was your brother then? Where does he go? My brother, he, um, he really, you know,
this is like, first of all, he always got to sit in the front seat because he's tall and he claims chronic car sickness.
He is terrible.
You know who else does that?
My lovely bride has car sickness.
So whenever it's like her whole family and me, I'm always in the backseat.
Yeah.
And it's just like the queen has just wait it out to ride up front yeah yeah but um i
remember barely barely being able to see out the windows because i was just i mean they had to
cram me in it was so strategic the so we would show up to some like pensione or whatever it is in Italian.
And like open up the sliding door and just suitcases just falling out, you know, as we like scrambled to get out of the car.
I was always in the way way back, like we've mentioned, with a ton of suitcases on my lap.
But I'm really good with maps as i've mentioned and
i'm the only one in the family who can speak the tiniest bit of italian so when we got lost because
before like ways or whatever like we were mapping it yeah which is amazing to like
you know unfold a massive map of italy while your dad is driving down the wrong side of the street
or whatever.
Senzo Unico dad.
Which you shouldn't be a map for.
You should just know which the right side of the street is.
That's not a map answer.
I think the incident that I'm really recalling
was a Senzo Unico one way
that my dad was going down the incorrect way and my mom
just like
screaming at him
just like Senzo Unico
Jack
oh god
there's a lot of that
a lot of like
my mom has so many
incredible qualities,
but like rolling with the punches, going with the flow,
not always a strong suit.
Our mom definitely has a real startle reflex.
So the way your mom reacted to going down the one-way street
is the way my mom reacts to everything.
Yes.
Loud noise. Yes. Loud noise.
Yes.
Someone walked in the room that she didn't expect or like, yeah.
Right now, the newest thing is my father walks through a room and she lives with him and it scares her all the time.
Don't you think it's interesting how fear, the emotion that you feel a millisecond after you've been scared is anger.
As soon as the situation has been assessed, which happens like that, you're pissed.
Don't you guys think?
Yes.
How do you guys deal with surprise birthday parties?
I beg them not to happen.
Yeah.
I know that my fiance used to actively sort of try to scare me and but i get so angry i'm
like don't do this and she's like you like horror movies and i'm like but that's i go somewhere and
i want to be scared when i'm just like walking into my living room i don't want you to pop out
at me like i might punch you in the face um because'm scared. This might be fun for you guys to try with your dad.
Next time your dad is taking a nap in a hammock or something,
find a small piece of straw, like a wheat stalk or a grass blade will do.
Yeah, we got wheat stalks around here.
We're good.
And just put it up his nose just a little bit.
This is very much a Mackenzie thing.
Let me tell you something about our dad.
In a million years, we would not do what you've just suggested.
Why?
Because our dad is a loving husband and father.
The man has a temper on him.
The man would not find humor in being a nostril strawed.
After he like,
cause you know,
usually it's like the shaking of the head.
You're like,
what is that?
And then you're like,
that irritates me.
And you know,
and then you're kind of grumpy.
Would he ever get over it?
Would he like,
he'd get over it,
but it wouldn't,
there would be no joy.
It wouldn't be worth.
Right.
He's also like a
legendary and i feel like we are as well but sneezer so if you set off a fit of sneezing
then our mother would be upset yeah yeah she'll be scared allowed yeah yeah he's a loud sneezer
which is not his fault and uh every single time he sneezes my mom acts like it is his fault.
Like that he's choosing to sneeze that at that volume.
Yeah.
That I think is, that's love right there.
Not appreciating that someone.
Do you think he like kind of kicks in like 10%?
You think?
I was asked recently to pull back on my sneezes, and I tried, and it's like. Who asked you? Mackenzie. Okay. Yeah. I was asked recently to pull back on my sneezes, and I tried.
Who asked you?
Mackenzie.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was wondering.
It would have been so funny if it was not.
If it was like someone at a restaurant that I was sitting next to.
Pull it back.
They're all real impressed.
So you said you had these amazing experiences in Italy.
Where would you go? Were you going to look at, you know,
ruins or would you just go to beachside towns or no,
we,
we would do the whole thing.
We would,
you know,
go see the David,
the David,
the David,
the David,
you know,
Pompeii,
like we would,
we were doing it,
you know,
we like,
did you see David or like stood in the line.
Did you see David or did you see the David?
The David.
Which, have you guys seen David in person?
I have not seen David in person.
He's a gem.
I want to say I have, but I don't know where he is.
He's in Florence.
Oh, no, then I haven't.
I haven't.
It's true.
I've seen some art, you know? Yeah, yeah. I've been. It's, it's, I've seen some art,
you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Since I like,
you know,
I've been around.
I've seen them.
I've seen some art.
This was,
like,
it kind of sears
into my memory
how impactful
actually seeing David
was in person.
I don't know
if you've ever been
to the Forest Lawn Cemetery
in Glendale.
I love it there.
Me too.
And they've got a David.
They've got a big old Davidid yeah it's huge do you guys think cemeteries are a waste of space uh no i like them i like
walking around that was it greenwood what's the one in brooklyn i'm actually though i am going
to take the uh i'm going to take your side of this ledger and say that i do think cemeteries
are a slight waste of space.
But I don't know what else.
Would I rather it's a strip mall?
No.
That's the danger when you say something's a waste of space is you don't know what they're going to put there.
I do think that they could be multipurposed, though, in a better way.
You could have a ropes course at a cemetery
i look i've always said and josh knows this i would much prefer it just be a big old pile of
bones just an above ground pile of bones that these obviously kids could crawl all i mean it
would just be a fun let's go over to the bone pile. And you could play take a bone, leave a bone.
Yes.
Yeah.
I love take a bone, leave a bone.
There's a tooth.
Does it count?
Were you guys camp kids?
Did you go to summer camp?
You probably have talked about this.
No, we did not go that way.
Josh went one year.
I was not a summer camp kid.
Yeah.
We did a couple sports camps
and i did one like sleep away camp but we were not camp kids i am i have very bad allergies and
i'm i would say historically when i enter a cabin or a anything that could be musty on a bad day
or damp it's a pretty immediate allergic nightmare so i was always very wary
of camps also the few times in my life i've gotten poison ivy i've almost died
that's very convenient isn't it oh it's not i'm not meant for that i'm just kidding no no um uh
were you homesick were you guys homesick kids like if we went away to camp yeah i just in general
even if i went away for like a night or two i was a homesick kid i if we went away to camp yeah I just in general even if I went away for
like a night or two I was a homesick kid I remember I sent a letter home that mom still
has it's on like Cheerios stationary and I was at that sleepaway camp and I was like hey mom this
is what I need can you send snacks here's some ideas of how to do it. Send a flashlight, but remove the batteries,
put a Snickers bar inside. Send toothpaste that you like squeeze the toothpaste out of and like
somehow put chocolate in it. Like I was just like, how can you sneak me treats? Because I couldn't
get them. Yes. I remember I went to like a six week summer program that was academic between my junior and senior year. And my mom, my favorite food in the world is my mom's homemade Chex mix. And she sent a giant tub of it. And I was we were in dorm rooms for the course of the summer. And I had a roommate, none of us had our own dorm rooms. And he very much said, what you're doing is not okay.
Eating Chex Mix from a tub, this very sort of pungent Chex Mix.
And then you're just crumbing our entire.
It was like a stranger saying, pull back on your sneezes.
I felt it was very out of line.
I was thinking about last night.
I was thinking about.
I'm so sorry that this podcast
meant you got no sleep last night we i was so excited you know i've had my like i told myself
i wasn't going to talk about my podcast my journey with the podcast has become truly in like all words sort of the um odd hobby to a nice job you know like yes yeah but anyway so i was really
excited about to talk to you guys because uh it's fun to like not have the pressure i guess
i should also note uh your podcast uh uh on affairs is unqualified you have been doing it
for a very long time and it's for, as we start to do one,
it's very lovely.
It's very lovely to hear that you still enjoy it.
I do, but it definitely, like,
there is a little bit of a bittersweetness to it
because I sort of had this, like, grand,
do you guys remember Chat Roulette?
Yeah.
When I was introduced to Chat Roulette,
I was in New Zealandaland filming yogi bear
3d um yogi were you nominated for an oscar i can't remember yeah did you win it or no i won
okay you want it yeah she won it yogi the waterfall anyway uh at that time chat roulette had about 30 000 users
not and chat roulette was like it was an app and you would just hit a button and then a random
person's video wasn't even an app it was a like a web like a website yeah okay so you just hit a
button and then someone would come up and it would be like, now you're chatting with this random person.
Yeah, okay.
And there was a very small window of time before it was overtaken by journalists, right?
Yes.
And it was like, it was an incredible time, too.
It was like this kind of incredible social experiment.
I would be talking to like a librarian in Texas and then to a bunch of dudes in Nigeria.
It was just, it was amazing.
What percentage of the chat rouletters recognized you?
Oh, I don't think as many.
Well.
But some.
When you're dressed up as a ranger.
It's in the trailer.
Waiting for the 3D cameras to be adjusted or whatever um uh but anyway there was just like
this kind of this really cool social experiment that quickly got uh you know uh destroyed and i
was really mad about it so like when the masturbators first started dominating chat roulette,
I would be really,
I would,
I,
I wanted to irk them.
So I would be like,
you can do it.
Yay.
Let's go.
Come on.
You can do it.
Almost there.
But I do feel like a lot,
there is a unique kind of masturbator whose kink is encouraging park ranger.
Yeah.
So for them you
might have thought is your mom easily embarrassed is her mom easily embarrassed i don't think so
yeah i don't think so either i was thinking uh just now about how see this is the question where
i'm going to answer i ask a question but I'm not thinking about what you guys are saying.
Is your mom easily impaired?
Yes.
Thank you.
We were at a restaurant in Italy, and it was a fancier restaurant.
And we normally didn't eat at fancier restaurants.
And it was on the sea.
It was gorgeous.
It was expensive.
And it was packed.
gorgeous. It was expensive and it was packed. And the waiter came over and told us that this other table wanted to take a picture with my mom. There was a lot of language confusion.
I started to get the sense that somebody maybe had recognized me like and there was some kind of like no she's
not the famous one the mom is they thought my mom was olivia newton john and it it took us about an
hour to figure this out after the fact um because we weren't really putting together my mom was
forcing me to be in this picture
that people were wondering why I needed to be in the picture.
And because they wanted their picture with Olivia Newton-John,
my mom was like gripping onto me with like an iron fist.
You know, she's like clutching my upper arm,
like, don't you leave me.
And so I'm awkwardly kind of in the middle of this picture.
And my mom, I think it's so painful.
She cannot think.
It happened, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago.
And maybe 20.
It's still like.
Harrowing.
It's plucking a cord for sure.
Now, can I ask a question?
Yes.
20 years ago, did your mom look anything like Olivia Newton-John?
Kind of.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's see.
Oh, no.
This is a visual medium, right?
But we'll tell.
They'll know.
Our listeners will know from our reaction whether or not we agree with the Italians who thought your mom looked like Olivia Newton-John.
Fair enough.
Who thought your mom looked like a living.
Fair enough.
Our father used to sign autographs for Mike Schmidt.
Yeah.
Old baseball player.
Old baseball player.
For the Philadelphia Phillies.
Did he pull it off?
I think he'd be like stopped in airports and looked enough like him and has like very nice penmanship.
So I feel like he signed more than a few Mike Schmidt autographs because people would ask him for an autograph and he would just be like, yeah, of course.
Sometimes we look exchange rate famous, which is we don't look enough like the person,
but in a different land.
I love that terminology there.
Anna still can't find a picture of her mom.
Well, this isn't, I'm trying to sort of sort through this,
but this is my mom.
That's Olivia Newton-John.
Also, your dad is gigantically tall.
Yeah.
See what I mean?
I can back up my-
You're showing us a photo album
where it looks like he's leaning to fit on the page.
Yeah.
There's a lot of text in that book as well.
Yeah. Yes. This was a recent of text in that book as well. Yeah.
Yes.
This was a recent gift.
My dad put this together because he's retired and this is what he does. That's very sweet.
All right.
Are you ready for our closing questions?
Yes.
Yes.
Ready for closing questions.
All right.
Here we go.
You can only pick one of these.
Is your ideal vacation, is it relaxing?
Is it adventurous?
Is it enlightening? Or is it relaxing? Is it adventurous? Is it enlightening?
Or is it educational?
Relaxing.
Very good.
I also feel like enlightening and educational are pretty close together.
I thought that, Josh, but this is your question and I didn't want to say it.
So now you're correct.
Ten episodes in, we're going to drop one of those.
Yeah.
Your preferred means of transportation train plane automobile this boat
on foot oh i love this um i i would love to imagine myself as the kind of person who could
sail to hawaii by themselves like like like could handle that much sort of solitude skill wise no but uh i love traveling by train i think it's uh so like
beautifully meditative i haven't been able to do that much but during quarantine i was looking at
videos on youtube i found myself obsessively watching train videos and tsunami videos
wow yeah and you're going through.
So yeah,
I meant to,
I meant to train or a boat,
but I love to drive too.
I don't know.
I like.
In your,
in your fantasy,
when you were taking a boat to Hawaii,
when you get there,
is it still the 27 cent deal for the hamburgers?
Or are you paying full freight?
I'm going to get the cheese.
I'm getting cheese.
You're getting the cheese this time.
Whoa.
I'm getting cheese.
I'm back and I made it big.
Yeah, yeah.
I made cheese money. I'm getting cheese. I'm back and I made it big. I made cheese money.
Alright, if you could take a vacation
with any family
other than your own family,
who would you
go with?
It's a family. They could be living.
I love your family.
Great. We would love to have you.
We'd love to have you.
I sit in the way way back. I'm pretty easy. I be good. I love your family. Great. We would love to have you. By the way. We'd love to have you. They would go crazy.
I sit in the way, way back.
I'm pretty easy, you know?
I like, I'm good.
Your vibe, everything about your vibe would click with my parents.
And I'm not, I'm saying that with all authenticity.
When I've seen them on your show, I, they, they are not only so lovely and loving,
they do remind me a lot of my folks.
And except without all the history.
Yeah, without all the being your folks.
I just would get to be the fun tag along.
I mean, the amount of times I've thought,
oh, I would like them so much more
if they were somebody else's parents.
I don't mean that.
I want to clarify, I don't mean that
because we've established the only two people I know that are definitely going to listen to every episode of this podcast.
That's the kind of supportive parents we have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we wouldn't have to put you in the way way back.
You could have the backseat middle hump.
Yeah.
I'm done with that.
Yeah.
I've been there.
Been there a lot.
Yeah.
Sitting on the sort of backseat armrest was a very popular spot.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we'd love to have you.
If you were stranded on a desert island with one member of your family, who would you like to have with you?
Are we including, like, cousins and...
Sure.
Yeah.
As long as they're family.
Are we including, like, the deceased?
Can I bring just, like, you know, like an urn with some ashes in it?
No, we're going to say.
Josh is going to decide.
What are you going to decide, Josh?
I'm going to decide you can't bring a dead body or ashes.
But if you wanted to reanimate someone who's since passed and bring them, we'll allow it.
Not really.
Reanimating the dead often comes with unexpected
consequences yeah i'm trying to think of the family member who would just listen the best
who's not going to tell me all their stories oh that's good so you want it you want them to hear
yeah i got a lot you know hollywood yeah like so so are you bringing?
I have a step-uncle who is mute.
I'm just kidding.
I don't. I don't.
I wonder if you guys notice a pattern of loopiness increased.
Yeah, well, you didn't sleep at all.
You had podcast jitters.
That's true.
Look at you.
I made notes.
So, yeah, you know what?
I'm going to go with my brother.
I'm going to go with my brother.
A sociology professor was a nice person to spend time on at Dyson Island.
I think that's a good choice.
Might have some interesting things to say.
He sure does.
He has a ton of interesting things to say.
Yeah.
Edmonds, Washington, where you are from, would you recommend it as a vacation destination?
Not really, no.
Okay.
I mean, it's not, you know.
But the cops, the cops were always busting up those keggers.
So not prime vacation place if you're looking to throw a kegger. Vac take vacations which are you know sort of built
around keggers it's fun you know with everything we've heard about the police in recent years it
is fun to hear like my high school complain about them which is they were busting up keggers
yeah that's it was nice when that was my only focus about the law enforcement. Yeah. Which also, from a local cop's point of view,
I bet that was pretty fun.
That's the dream.
When you get a call, a neighbor calls in a kegger.
Yeah.
Well, it also sounds like, from your description of Edmonds,
where we grew up was very much the same,
that if a kegger got busted up, you'd run into the woods, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just running into the woods.
Running into the woods.
To this day.
Covered in nettles.
Just the best.
And the funny thing is running full speed,
no cop has ever chased a kid into the woods with a kegger.
Like the whole point is just to get them out.
Yeah.
Stop the party.
Yeah.
I have no idea how people got the kegs.
Anyway.
No, I was never the person who got the keg.
I want to thank the people I grew up with who were sort of savvy enough to get a keg.
Thank you for the hard work you put in.
Maybe you had to get a hand truck.
Yeah, exactly.
You can't lift that thing.
No.
And Seth, you've got the last, the final question.
Last question is potentially a two-part question.
Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?
Yes.
And do you think it's worth it?
Yes.
Okay.
Most def.
Wait, Josh, you haven't been?
No, no, you have been, but Seth hasn't been.
Yeah, I haven't been, and I don't want to go.
Yes, and I've only looked.
And I haven't fully experienced it.
Do you think it's worth it?
You do think it's worth it, right?
Yeah, I'm desperate to go back and really spend time.
I would like to go to the bottom to look up, I think.
Yeah, I want to go to the North Rim because it's less populated.
Yeah.
And I would love to go rim to rim.
I have a friend who I grew up with who's like a crazy fitness guy.
And he was like, hey, we're running from rim to rim to rim.
And I was like, oh, I mean, yeah, I would like to do that.
Did he also climb Mount Everest?
Yeah.
Yeah, probably.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Rim to rim run.
I would love to say I could do that he's the one at the bar
when you go can i get a margarita with salt on the rim he's like speaking of rooms yeah
wait it was a two-part question no that was it it was have you been and if you've been was it
worth it so you answered it yeah you came on team yes yeah there's a couple of um visual memories
uh that i i think i feel really fortunate to have experienced i don't know if i need to go back
i love our i'm like national park nostalgic like you know an 86 year old so i have that kind of like that element in me um yeah but uh yeah i uh seth um
i think maybe in 12 years maybe in 10 years okay is your i'll reassess i try to reassess every
every uh 10 years where i stand yeah and by the way i'm taking a lot of input and it look obviously
i consider your opinion.
I hold it sacrosanct.
And the fact that you're pro-Canyon is a big push in that direction.
Amazing.
I feel flattered.
Thank you.
A big push, like I'm the guest, you made.
A big old push off the side of the rim.
I did give you a pretty generous time frame, though.
You did.
You gave me a decade to go.
Oh, wait. Son of a gun, i do want to ask you a question because i read something please you got a you rented a house
on vacation and got carbon monoxide poisoning yeah i can't believe we almost left out this is
i mean why we're doing this podcast um yeah it was awful uh it was yeah i mean all jokes aside
it sounds awful yeah it was it was awful it was uh my um dad we were all feeling we were up at
lake tahoe in the winter um and there were 14 family members and and we were cranking that heat.
It was a brand new home.
It was such an unpleasant experience that there's part of me that,
it's not that it's painful to talk about,
but it wasn't a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination.
But I also want to talk to let people know that it truly is an odorless, invisible toxin.
We were all feeling very specifically bad.
How so?
Really sluggish, headachy, kind of moody.
And we kind of chalked it up to the altitude or whatever.
We're like, God, we're all kind of feeling like shit.
And then I
remember my dad had to go to the hospital for it cause he has some heart issues. And so he just
wasn't feeling great. So they went to the hospital, they checked his carbon monoxide levels. They were
through the roof. So we, my husband and I were passed out. Like we were, I remember like eight
fire trucks outside, like ambulances outside of the house, blinking red lights, like
being, uh, being woken up by these firefighters. I had this hazy memory of them, of one of them
saying like, you guys have no idea how lucky you are because the house was like just through the
roof. So is it, was it only because you're, when your dad went and he tested through the roof,
they then sent the fire trucks to the house he'd been in?
Yeah.
Yeah. Somebody was proactive enough to be like, this might not be heart trouble.
This might be, let's check his carbon monoxide levels.
And then once they checked it, they were like, now we got to find out who else is in that house.
Wow.
So I guess the house hadn't been, a final inspection or something hadn't quite been sorted.
So it was just pumping carbon monoxide as
and we were just cranking up that heat so anyway we we do like we travel with carbon monoxide
detectors now and i would kind of encourage i you know it was a specific feeling of uh
shittiness and we had we had been there for about two days and before we found out. So, um,
yeah, I, I, I'm not going to start a nonprofit, but I would like to get the word out.
There you go. That's, I think, you know, you don't, I like profit.
You're going to start a for-profit carbon monoxide awareness. Yeah. You would like,
for a little bit of money you're going
to tell people what the symptoms are you've been a little vague about it today but if you want to
know exactly what they are i should like liven them up a little bit like oh you get like get
these crazy visuals like unicorns or like i don't know i want to do it. Yeah, you're right. I've been micromanoing. Micromanoing?
Micromano.
Huh?
I've got a micromano.
Yeah.
No, but that was scary.
And thank you for letting me talk about it, though, because it was, I don't know, it was
just one of those things that you just don't think is going to happen to you.
No.
Of course not.
No one thinks it's going to happen to you.
I mean, of all the things you worry when you rent a home for a vacation,
I would say carbon monoxide is very, very low on the list.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, so that was scary.
That was rough.
Look at us.
Right at the end, Josh and I managed to ask a question.
Save some lives.
Save some lives.
We finally saved some lives in our podcast.
We love you. This was so our podcast. We love you.
This was so much fun.
I love you guys so much, truly.
Yeah, I hope that we can hang out again.
And thank you guys for not just having me on your podcast,
but having a great podcast.
Thank you.
It's really fun to listen to.
The conceit is great.
All right, we will see you soon then.
Thank you guys for being awesome brothers. You got it is great. Alright, we will see you soon then. Thank you guys for being awesome brothers.
You got it. Bye.
Bye guys. Stuck inside the backseat with the luggage on her lap Was the only one there who could even read a map
For the duration of the vacation
She'd play a game in her imagination
Yeah, she'd play window Look outside, imagine she's riding a horse
She'd feel the wind blow, riding with force
She would think of flying G
Asking him, will you kiss me
And if he didn't want her
I'd slash him
I'll leave her dead at G
She would play with a
Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up
Let's freaking go
Yeah, she'd play with no
Look outside and imagine
She's riding a horse
She'd fill the window
Riding with the horse Yeah.