Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - A Nextdoor Rabbit Hole

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

The guys discuss Soren's novel, which expiration dates are worth paying attention to, and do some digging on the state of the Nextdoor app in 2024. If you love the podcast and you haven't already you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help spread the word. You could also tell a friend! Or potentially hundreds of friends and neighbors on Nextdoor. Follow the show on socials: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcastSoren Bowie: https://twitter.com/Soren_LtdDaniel O'Brien: https://twitter.com/DOB_INC

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C'est facile à utiliser et vous obtenez vos remises par PayPal ou par chèque. L'idée est simple. Les magasins paient Rakuten pour leur envoyer des gens magasinés. Et Rakuten partage l'argent avec vous sous forme de remise. Téléchargez l'application gratuite Rakuten et ne manquez jamais un bon deal. Ou allez sur rakuten.ca pour en avoir plus pour votre argent. C'est R-A-K-U-T-E-N. I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you dare?

When will I be remembered? What's it over? Word it over Why do we know? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it.

I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight, author of Fatified Presidents, and a man exposed, Daniel O'Brien. Joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello! Hello everybody, I'm Soren Bui. I'm the other half of this podcast. I work at American Dad as a writer as well. I don't have any books to my name and i am in circulation do you um a man exposed you you wrote a novel i did uh before i met you do is that uh something

you ever want to do again is that like still an itch yeah i yeah it is uh In fact, at one point, Robert Brockway, friend of the show, friend of Daniel and I, also a very prolific author of books, at one point even reached out to me to be like, hey, man, I like your writing. Would you like me to put you in touch with my agent? And I was like, oh, yeah, I have a book. I would love to do that, but let me like look at it first again. And so I went back and looked at it. And because I wrote it over a decade ago, I'm like, this needs a ton of work because you're never the same person you were when you wrote something. And so I was like, I just would need a ton of work before I ever give it to him. I'll start working on it. So I started working on it, realized like it needed even more work than I anticipated. And then I just never got back to him and I just left it. But yeah, I mean, at some point I would. The trajectory of my book was I had gotten fired from a job. I didn't have any work at all. And I was feeling very down on myself, but I was also reading uh on writing by stephen king at the same time and his his his like one foot in front of the other approach to writing was like eye-opening to me and so i was like i'm just gonna do this i'm just gonna follow the regiment and so i started doing it and i had a book in like that i liked the idea of that i wanted to write i had an agent

that i had been in touch with just like through friends that I taught. I reached out to in New York and I gave him like the first 50 pages. And I was like, what if I wrote this novel? Can we sell it? And she was like, yeah, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And so I wrote not in advance or anything like that. I just wrote this novel while I didn't have work.

And I was like traveling back and forth between Los Angeles and Colorado without work, going home and being with like living at my parents for a little while. And this was like the only thing that was keeping me thinking I was not a failure. And so I was like, that's why I kept writing. I was dependent on it. I was dependent on it because it was my last string to like i'm moving forward i am doing something and uh finished it really liked it gave it to her she was like yes a year from now we will be toasting champagne to this book that never happened like no one wanted it uh no that's never happened in the history of books no one's ever toasted champagne for the success of a book no and we're still waiting on that first successful book in in retro like i i was clear that i didn't start out with the i started out with a story

as opposed to being like what genre would this book be best for and so as a result it was like this book doesn't belong to a genre it has like a ya feel to it but it's also like some very adult stuff happening in it. It's from the perspective of a kid, but like the majority of the story is about the adults. And it just like, it was not for anybody other than me. And it was clear. That's clear to me now.

At the time I was just like, this is another slice of Americana ready for the bookshelves. And it also became clear to me i think in hindsight that this agent quasi friend of mine was likely trying to sleep with me and i was i was like was being helpful in a way that maybe was outsized for what i had written. Well, a couple of things about that. It's certainly possible that the agent wanted to sleep with you, for sure. But as soon as you framed it as you asking the agent, should I write this novel? Can I sell it? And they say, yes, enthusiastically.

That bumped me. And this is not a knock on your talent. I know you're talented. You know you're talented. The audience knows you're talented. on your talent. I know you're talented. You know you're talented. The audience knows you're talented. No agent in history, especially with a first-time author, is going to say no when someone says, hey, should I pour in like a whole bunch of my time and free labor into delivering you a book? No one's ever going to say no to that. I think they would only say no if it was truly like Stephen King,

who was like, I think I want to pivot to poetry. Then they might say no to that. But for anyone else, it's just like, yeah, you can waste as much of your own time as you want writing a book, and then we will try to sell it after that. They'll never discourage you. I mean, I was so young. I was like 24, maybe.

And it was like, I didn't know anything. And I also, it's like, I'm just like replaying the moments that we actually were together in my mind. And I'm like, yeah, this was a person who was flirting with me. This was a person who was like helping because they thought it furthered the relationship, I think. And I was blind to that when I was young, wasn't a thing i was really aware because i wasn't a woman right dan i this kind of thing didn't happen to me right and uh so like i never had to ask myself uh i wonder if i'm actually if this is talent or if this is just a situation in which somebody else wants to have sex right which oh what an awful way to live sorry i know

um well daniel you said um exposed yeah uh so this um i don't know if you've if you've been following the news but over here on the east coast there's there's a there's been a storm and and when i say East Coast, I often just mean New Jersey, because that's where I live. So that's where all the main characters live. But it's actually, if you were looking at weather maps, it was the whole coast for the beginning of this week. Just like, that's how big the fucking storm was. It was just the coast of America. And I live on the beach, which is the most coast. And so there's a lot of rain. There was some snow more inland and a ton of wind.

And like everything, we were fine. We didn't even lose power. And nothing was destroyed in my actual apartment building. The fence we share with our neighbors was completely knocked down. knocked down i woke up to that just like in the sidewalk alleyway where i work that i take to leave my home every day and uh i it is still this is a couple days ago it's still there now it is unclear to me if it's my responsibility to fix that do you know we have like a um so it's a condominium where i live and i think a lot of people i've mentioned this before this is their second home or not even home but like their summer

place to use the the great beach access there's only like six or seven other people living in this whole building right now and And I know like the building manager doesn't live here. We don't have anyone on site that does maintenance. Like you call your own maintenance person to do things. And I'm, I'm unused to this kind of living. I've lived mostly in apartment buildings my entire life that like someone fixes the things. And now every time I walk past this downed fence that I didn't report to anyone, I'm sort of like, boy, they're really dragging their feet on this. It's either got to be my job to fix it or to tell someone to fix it. I don't think this is going to get resolved unless I'm involved somehow.

Right. You saying all that is making me realize that in a zombie apocalypse type of scenario, going to a place where people only travel there in the summer or visit there in the summer is like ideal. You maybe have like 40 people living in your town right now. Right. Well, shit. I don't think this is your responsibility. I don't think fixing it is my responsibility. No, I don't even think telling somebody. I think that you're not even on the hook to be like reporting it. Right, because I don't own my unit, but I also know like the guy who does own it, who doesn't live in this state, has no reason to know that the fence is down. Well, then, and what is it? Is it in your way? Is it an inconvenience to you or is it just not at all no it's just it just looks shitty yeah like then i would i would just leave it i have one more question for you though when you got outside and you saw the fence was down

did you get a little excited yeah yeah absolutely why did i get excited because i think well i mean on like a very bare bones level it's something new like that's yes when it's windy here in los angeles which has been a lot lately and i go out into the street and there are palm fronds all over the road i'm like yes yeah that's devastation like this is new this is we survived something um yeah i think it's also, if for, I'm sure I talked about this kind of thing, but like listeners of the podcast might remember that small talk with strangers is huge and really fun for me. So like a fence down and the roads were so flooded, I was like, oh man, I'm going to

make an appointment at the bank so I could talk to someone so they could ask me what was it like in my town and I could show them the picture on my phone. Yeah. How strong was it? How strong was the weather in your town? Strong enough to take down a fence. And everyone knows exactly how strong that is. I read a thing online, Daniel, that was like a little thing you could do if you ever have to leave your house for an evacuation. You don't ever have to evacuate there, do you?

Not yet. Okay. They don't have like hurricanes or that's not like a real issue for you no flooding is is is a bigger thing well why am i saying no uh hurricane sandy we've and and floyd jersey's been rocked by hurricanes in your lifetime we're still recovering from hurricane sandy oh yeah okay well then there's a neat little trick you can do it won't save you from a hurricane but when you come back to your house if you have to evacuate you put a mug of water in your freezer and it freezes and then you put a quarter on top

of it and you leave it in the freezer and then it doesn't have to be a quarter if you're if you don't have a quarter it can be any change But then when you come back to your house, you open up your freezer and you look. And if that quarter ised i mean and then uh it froze again because the quarter sunk right and then you know whether you need to throw away all that food or not because otherwise you just have no way of knowing it's just your food's cold just food still seems frozen should be fine but it's not sure um speaking of of food going bad, hey, sorry, quick question for you. Okay. What do the expiration dates on your food mean to you? Nothing.

Okay. Like, almost. Care to elaborate? Yeah. If it's something that has no moisture in it at all, like a dry, something like spices, for instance, like i'll keep spices for an eternity and so and i will continue to use the medication same thing i will continue to use it and assume that it will be full effect but if it's something that's wet um i'll i rarely ever look at the date i will only look at the date if i'm also sensing that the food through my other senses is not so good.

Then I will visually inspect to see if the date is what the date says. Right. If something looks different or smells different or feels different, then you can use those senses. I mostly pay attention. I'm the same way with you with medication that I don't know if the expiration date on medication does anything i certainly yeah it feels like it feels like a fraud to me and it's something that like if it's true if it does go bad then that's just poor design on your part because most of the medication that i buy is stuff that i'm not going to use every day until it expires it's stuff like i got sick i bought this thing and then oh

it's years later i need now i need i have another cut i need neosporin again for the first time in eight years uh why would it it can't go bad i'm i'm refusing to believe that it's bad but the food thing i started at a new um food pantry this past week and this is the first time I've been in like the, the warehouse that like sorts moves and distributes the foods that goes to various pantries. So this is where we're really in the shit now. We're really like taking the stuff that people have donated and, uh, organizing it and everything like that and packing it up. But there was a chart at the food pantry where it has like all the different foods separated by food genre and little notes in their chart that'll say like, if it's canned soup or canned anything and the expiration date is X, then it is good for this many years after the expiration date or this many months. Like everything is on the chart.

Yeah. Cheat sheet. Oh, yeah. Take a picture of it and send it to me, please. many years after the expiration date or this many months like everything is on the chart yeah cheat cheat oh yeah take a picture of it send it to me please i almost took a picture for myself to be like i'm going to use this for my home soup i don't like because for for soups it's like two years past expiration date well and already when you get a can or yeah or okay all right soup in a can and other things is like this is good for seven months past the best buy and this is good for 19 months past the best buy all these things it was like why is this information only here in the pantry why are we putting the wrong like i know why we're putting the wrong dates on things

and stores we're putting it so people will throw it out and buy more but it's still it's such bullshit i'm sure we cover this in the old days it. It feels like one of those facts that was in an article about how your grocery store lies to you or whatever. But I have forgotten about that because time passed. And now I'm just looking at this cheat sheet that gives me, that lets me see the matrix of how all food actually works. And it made me so mad. I suspect that within our lifetimes, milk got in trouble for this because i remember when i was a kid and we would go to the grocery store and we'd buy milk and in a carton and i would be like we'd have to like sort through them be like well what's the furthest back date like because it was it was

only like a month maybe that maybe less other than a month for like how before milk was supposed to expire but in my adulthood milk goes for like two and a half three months it's so much further out now i think maybe at some point well either we invented some chemical that's preserving it or they got caught with their hand in the till like they got caught telling people oh no you got to drink this in 48 hours or it will kill you. No, but for the most part, I don't give a shit about dates. But if I had that, if I had like the truth, I absolutely would. I would love to see that.

Yeah. Next time you go back, please take a picture. I will. And we'll be the only ones in the world who know. Yeah, I won't tell you what the actual dates are on the podcast. I'll just send it to you because information was kept from me. And instead of turning into Robin Hood, here's what I do with information. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I will keep this for the elite. I am now in charge of who the elite is. For my wealthy friends.

Right. That's what a real win is. Well, Daniel, I have a question for you related actually more to what we were talking about earlier with neighborhood gossip. I think I've asked you before on the podcast. Do you? Are you on Nextdoor? I am. Yeah, I'm not as active as I used to be because it's it's it's become not great. I mean, it's possible it was never great. I used to love it as like, oh, this is this is a really cool way. It was great COVID entertainment for me. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

To learn like, oh man, it's so cool that all of my neighbors are insane in very different ways. And like, I had no idea because I'd never, they had previously not been given a platform, but now that they have, it's so fun to get these little insights into these absolute lunatics who are passionate about dumb things. Yeah. It was a really fun treat for me to explore every once in a while, the petty things that people get upset about. But maybe it's because I moved out of Manhattan and into a demographically different part of the world it has now just become like the like a a racism app like most apps it's it's now like a dog whistle app about the the certain areas that you can't go to anymore according to these

the wealthy whites who live here as their summer home when you have to consider the type of people who are and you say active you mean like active as a listener the people who are actively typing things out correct sending it off to the world on an app like next door are the type of people who you probably don't share a ton of politics with and they i think that's happened pretty much everywhere if you if la is the if i can have my finger on the pulse here for like what next door is across the world, people have – I would assume that these are right-wing people, but they have a – it's part – everything that they put on there is part of a bigger narrative, which is that cities are collapsing because that's the narrative of the right. It's like cities have fallen into into ruin thanks a lot biden right and so they relish in any opportunity to talk about how the city is falling apart right even though this is a casual reminder that uh looting and and retail theft is down across all but a few cities in america and has been going down for years

just a small little thing that i like to drop in every once in a while because that is not the narrative that you will see even consuming liberal news it is just the media for some reason loves to talk about how looting is going up even though it's going down well that's also the stuff that it's because that's the stuff that bubbles at the top same with next door like because they like that kind of story that's the stuff that's going to get commented on the most that's the stuff that's going to float to the surface like even if it's somebody who's innocently being like hey my uh car was vandalized um this is like this is kind of a picture of the person i actually got it from a ring cam uh and ring cams its own thing its own

political thing but like i got it from a camera uh take a look like let me know if you recognize this guy that stuff will automatically get bubbled to the top because it's it's more proof of a narrative they want to some people want to believe and so it's the same man culturally sorry that news like that's the news that like that's the news that's going to get the most attention because both sets eyeballs both left and right eyeballs are on that and the right's just got like a different reason that they're looking at it than the left go ahead yeah ring state and next next door is is so much scarier and more insidious i think to me than than like nanny state that everyone's always working about worrying about like big brother like the government spying on you this is so much

creepier and more invasive to me the rise of next door and ring cams because you're talking about someone saying like this a package was stolen and i have it on camera does anyone recognize this person there's plenty of times on next door where it's just like a picture of a guy not necessarily doing a crime but just like does anyone know who this guy is? This weird guy. Yeah. Yeah. Was walking up and down my block. I don't know who he is. And like, again, there's like, like, I don't even want to say undercurrents, racial overcurrents about this.

There's just like a picture of a nonwhite person. It's like, does anyone know who this is and why they were walking up and down the street? Yeah. They walked up and then five minutes later, they walked back. It was like, it sounds like somebody went to the fucking gas station and got some like, got a soda. Or like people taking pictures of a car in a parking lot. It was like, this person screamed at me.

Here's their car and here's their license plate. Does anyone know it? And it's like, I don't know. Like the news doesn't even do that. I don't, the police don't even really release, here's a picture of a car with a license plate for someone who may or may not be guilty of a crime. At least when the police do it,

you can kind of assume that it's tied to an actual crime or your best shot at finding someone who is tied to an actual crime or like, or, you know, your best shot at finding someone who is tied to an actual crime versus someone, you know, it's potentially a lunatic talking about another lunatic and taking a picture of their car and their license plate and their face and posting it to other lunatics who all want to play Batman on Nextdoor. Yes. I mean, the very best posts on on next door the most unhinged posts are the ones that you click through and it's already been deleted like you see like the

the lead-in because you get an email or whatever you get a notification and you're like oh this is about to be some crazy shit this person who's writing this is way more dangerous than the person who they're afraid of in this situation. So next door is a nightmare. It should be abolished. I'm on next door a lot, Dan. I'm on it right now. I'm on next door a ton because of the stuff that gets bubbled to the top.

It's all victim crimes. So it's something happened to your car. Someone stole your packages and break-ins. And these things are not common. I need to stress this again. It's not a common thing, but if you run next door, it would feel very common because you're seeing six or seven of Um, and I, I, I, the worst part of me, like, this is not, this is not a, a nice part, something that I like about myself, but fuck it. I like to do it. So I do it. Um, I will look through those and in my mind fantasize about what I would do in the same situation. And like in, it's like me trying to protect myself from a feeling of helplessness of like, oh, if someone broke into my house and this exact thing happened, now how would I handle

that? The same way that like you get, you break your arm and somebody's like, how did you break it? Because the only reason they want to know how is like the edification, I guess a little bit, but also like, like oh i will avoid doing that yeah now i will know not to do that anymore it's like i i do the same thing and then i fan i'm mark walbering like what mike walberging when he after 9-11 when he got two two shots at that and i think between your two stabs we can we can frankenstein his name. I'm Mark Wahlberg.

I'm Mark Wahlberg. When he, after nine 11, you of course remember he said exactly what he would do on the flight and he would have stopped the terrorists. I do the exact same thing, but I do it in a much more local grassroots level. And I just want to like, to give you a sense of this,

I want to like throw a couple of scenarios at you and ask what you would do in them. Okay. Things that I read online that I'm going to have to paraphrase cause I can't find them again, but you wake up in the middle of the night, Daniel, and let's say, uh, let's say Shay is there. Okay. You're so you have somebody else that you are for, uh, sexist reasons you're in charge of sure yeah it's this is

your job um yeah so you you wake up and you hear what you sorry i can hear her laughing in the future when she listens to this episode laughing at the assertion that i'm in charge you hear what you think might be a door opening and you're like oh that's weird but weird. But you're not sure. Like you're like 30% sure. You're like, you're, it's one of those ones where you're going to stop and put, take both your ears off the pillow. Cause you're like,

if I hear anything else, then for sure I will know. Um, and so you hear something, you're not sure what, and then you hear your fridge open. Oh, and you hear,

uh, like a can of something carbonated sneeze like you hear that like somebody opening a can of soda or beer or something what do you do in that situation uh I certainly, I would have to walk out of the bedroom with my bedside bat ready for, I mean, like, I don't want to do violence, but certainly I want to appear like I am ready. To do violence. To, yeah. You want them out. You want them out fast. I do.

Are you going to call 911 first? Ugh. Damn it. out you want them out right i do are you gonna call 911 first uh damn it well your phone's in the bedroom now you let's shay will probably do that shay will do that okay so you're gonna go out there and are you gonna do you want the element of surprise or do you want to like be as big and loud as possible so this person thinks this was a bad idea? Neither of those two. I think I want – I don't want to sneak up on someone, but I also don't want to be big and loud. Because you've outlined a very specific situation that my brain has latched onto. That's why I love it.

That's why I love Nextdoor. Because I know what they're opening because I know what's in the fridge. We don't have any beer. We don't have any soda. If something's making a carbonated pop, it is the seltzer that we make ourselves with the soda stream. Okay. Well, let's say you had like, let's say you had spin drinks in there or something.

Let's pretend for this situation that you still have LaCroix in your fridge. Okay. But I was told I was drinking too much LaC happened did we get in a fight so and so now i'm allowed to do whatever i want yeah yes but like there are other consequences like she you're now like you're out there she's gonna wait a little longer to call 9-1-1 just to see what happens see how this shakes out okay okay it sounds like things are pretty rocky between me and shay so at that point i'm not bringing a bat i'm ready for death whatever you're gonna walk out first we'll see if this is maybe your soulmate see maybe this is somebody that like you right it but like the i liked the hyper specificity and i think this is also a part a product of the police department not being super effectual here where

like people set put their essentially their police reports on next door because they feel helpless like they've got something happened to them they want to put like all the information down as much information as they can so they've already told this story before to police and felt very much like they're not going to do shit i'm going to put it on next door and at least then i'll get some commiseration from all these people so these like hyper specific situations i'll tell you exactly what happened in this one there was a woman who heard that in her house uh no oh yeah, yeah. Her one story house. She heard it. She heard the fridge open and she heard somebody like opening Tupperware or something like that. And she was like, she was very nervous about it. She didn't even see the person because what she did was her room was in the back of the house and there was a window and she just crawled out her own window and left. Wow.

And was like very shaken and called the police and stuff like that. They came. They didn't find anybody in the house. They saw somebody had been there. But like you're dealing with a specific type of crazy. That's like they know somebody might might be home but they're still making noise so like i don't i i'm so i think when you when you talk about fridge and opening food items i my brain thinks this is not this person is not armed and dangerous which is probably like like a

dumb way for me to think i should always assume that everyone is armed and dangerous, which is probably like, like a dumb way for me to think. I should always assume that everyone is armed and dangerous because this is America. But I think this is someone who is unwell, mentally unwell, and is potentially a homeless person who was looking for food and got lucky finding a place that they could break into, assuming that this is that no one would be home. Because that is not the behavior of someone who is here to rob me or murder me. I would think so, too. But then you hear these stories about serial killers and stuff and people who have like a real ritual when they get to somebody's house they don't even go into the bedroom first like they do stuff like they this one guy would organize the plates so that he could put them on the back of the man who was going to

tie up so that he would hear the plates crash if the guy tried to get out from underneath them like that kind of shit where you're like oh there's i mean i can't get inside the head of somebody who's going to break into a house so like already it's such a huge disadvantage. So while like, I understand your instinct to be like, I have to, I have to present, like I have to present in a way that makes,

that's a bluff. That's like, I'm big enough and bad enough that you could be damaging to you. Please get out of this house. But I, I don't think I'm there anymore, especially with kids too. Mike, my instinct then is to, I'll tell think I'm there anymore, especially with kids too. My instinct then is to, I'll tell you what I came up with for my fantasy. If I heard that, I'm going to sneak to my

children's room. I won't even wait calling up yet. I'll sneak to my children's room and I will take both of them into my room. So at least we're all consolidated. I also have access to my attic from my room and then I will as quietly as possible get everyone up into the attic. Try to lock the door to my bedroom and then shut it and then just call 911 and wait up in the attic. Because I just want to be out of the way of whatever's happening here. Because I cannot sense yet like how big of whatever's happening here. Cause I, I have, I, I cannot sense yet like how big of a problem this is. And I don't want to try to figure it out. Probably the smartest thing.

I mean, the other thing I considered was I do have a hatchet in my room. And for the same reason for like, if I absolutely needed an extreme circumstance, would I put all them somewhere safe and then go try to confront this person in like a in the same way you were you were like hey yeah you don't belong here you gotta go like same way you would like an animal like you don't you're not mad at the animal but you're like you gotta go like you're right not to compare people to animals

but if someone's in there i'm certainly thinking like this is look at me i'm not calling the cops yet you but this doesn't go well that you don't you don't want this i mean an animal leave now right as in like i'm an animal too this is how we do it like if there's a bear i am also gonna be a bigger bear i'm gonna be like i just got all i gotta do is be a bigger thing than you um and so i was like well maybe i maybe i do that. And then I confront them. And I was like, I don't want to do that either because this is crazy. Like this is, first of all, there's desperation in it. And desperation is like, even if somebody who's rational can do crazy things when they're desperate. But then also it might just be genuine crazy. And then I don't know what I'm dealing with.

It might be somebody who's like, as soon as I get down there, they're like, what are you doing in my house? And they start doing the same thing to me and then i could come out there like hey you don't want me to call the cops i want you to call the fucking army oh okay all right oh boy okay that was my best move i'm gonna be in my bedroom if you need anything well well joke's on you buddy the phones on my charger in the room so i can't call the cops or the army now what are you gonna do um let me give you another one and this one was actually i think i've talked to you about this this is one that happened to me and i was so dumb in the moment which is i was had my son in the morning my wife had already gone to work he was getting

ready for i was going to take him over to his daycare and I'm getting dressed. I have him in my room. I'm on the second story of a house. I open the blinds and look out and standing in my backyard is a guy. And a guy who's not just like arms crossed like

doing something. It's arms slack at his sides, head kind of tilted. I wouldn't say a homeless guy like he's he's a young kid who's like 1920 but like really just gone like out yeah and he's just staring head like a zombie right um and i was like fuck and like immediately like whoa whoa that was i did not expect that. And my first instinct was I started walking down the stairs to go confront him. And I stopped and I was like, this is not, this isn't a good idea. What am I doing? And so I went back upstairs and I don't know why I didn't think to do this.

I should have taken like video or filmed him or taken pictures or something. But all I did was I like called the police and I was like, Hey, I want you to know there's somebody in my backyard. Uh, he doesn't belong here. I didn't invite him. Um, and they're like, okay. And you know, they arrived like 90 minutes later or whatever. But as it's happening, like I'm kind of keeping an eye on this guy.

And eventually he hops, he like peeks around my house and then he hops back over my wall. I think he was running from somebody, but he hops over my back wall into the street across over this was when i lived in a different neighborhood where um it was there was a lot of gang activity and i had some people in the neighborhood that i knew fairly well who were also either used to have been in gangs or were currently in them. And I go outside and my neighbor across the street is hanging out and I told him what happened. And he goes, oh, oh, and he just went on the other street. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, do you want us to go scoop him up?

And I was like, no. I didn't know that was an option um and i was like it's just like things i didn't even consider and i wouldn't consider but then also like i just made dumb decisions too where i was i didn't even bother to like take video of him or even it took me like a very long time to even call the police about it yeah but man yeah that's that anyway that these are the reasons that i love yeah the scene these narratives play out on next door because i can be like okay now i will be prepared for that situation next time that will never ever happen to me i think one of the one of the things things I do have that is absent from these scenarios that will also inform what I do is if, again, in the first scenario, someone entered my house, was rooting around in the fridge and opening stuff. There's the Jackson of it all.

No one is coming into this house without Jackson barking. And I actually think that that would supersede me going into defense mode. I immediately am getting up to yell at Jackson. And even if I see some stranger in my kitchen eating my leftovers, I'd be like, I'm so sorry. He's really fine. Just like pet him and he'll be fine. Jackson, stop it. Stop it. You said you barked. You did it. Okay. Thank you. No more, Jackson. Hey, again, sorry about him. Hey, are you eating my food? Oh, we were going to throw out that corn. That's expired.

It's not good corn. Yeah. It's on my to-do list for, I know it's Thursday. Yeah. It's on my to-do list. Throw out the corn Saturday. It's bad now though. Don't eat it now.

Don't eat that. We were actually just keeping it in the fridge so that it didn't stink up the trash before trash day. Yeah. I wanted to wait till I get a bunch of trash and then I would throw out the stinky trash i'll be honest it's not store expired that's real expired i've got this little chart look at this chart um all right i'll then let me give you one that i also read that i that that involves a dog there was a woman another woman uh in her house in venice she uh heard her dogs go crazy all of a sudden and then a door slam.

And she looked out in her hallway and the bathroom was shut. And she lived alone in an apartment. And now that she did not shut it and the dogs like going crazy outside the bathroom door. the bathroom door so someone has gotten into the house or in the apartment realized there were dogs and immediately put a door between them and the dogs but now they're trapped in your bathroom yeah what do you do now uh then i absolutely call the police that i have my uh my tools of violence and i call the police and i let the person know that the police are on their way you should leave you should leave now or the police will get here i'm fine waiting here outside of the house or you should or you can like run away right this second because you could probably

beat the cops yeah i wonder if i would if i because because assume the cops are going to take half an hour to 40 minutes to get there. Do you try to negotiate with the person? Do you say, listen, I'm going to take my dog and we're going into our bedroom. I'm giving you an opportunity to leave. I don't think I say bedroom. I think I say I'm going outside. I'm taking my dog. There's only one way in or out of the house. I'm going outside. I'm taking my dog. There's only one way in or out of the house. I'm going outside. I'm taking my dog. Yeah. You walk, you go out the door and you turn right and you sprint.

Yeah, and you go. And that's fine. That's your best shot of getting away from the cops. I mean, you said 20 or 30 minutes. Famously, I live on the beach. So all of our cops are surf cops. So they come, depending on the tide, they could be right there. Right.

If the waves are tasty. Yeah, yeah. You might get a cop right in your window. Okay, okay. And then when you go outside, you want to see this person, don't you? Yeah. On a human level, like you need to see their face. Right. see this person don't you yeah on a human level like you need to see their face right and if they

run out if they they they come down the stairs and they and they run out and it's like and i'll be like it's a a woman criminal ah progress what a time to be alive thank you susan b anthony well amazing a taiwanese get back in there you deserve it all take all everything but the corn i yeah i think that i because you have so much time then i think about these like there was an uh this one was just something i saw online but it was not on next door it was a guy who like subdued a criminal in a he was this guy was like i don't know if he was robbing the convenience store or what but there's this muay thai guy who subdued this criminal and like was sitting on him, like had his arm wrapped around his neck, but was sitting on him and waiting for police to get there.

You have so much time where you're in like this intimate, very close proximity to somebody who was just trying to like do something pretty terrible. We don't know what, I mean, the scale of terror is, I guess, pretty big. So like, it could just be that they're trying to rob the place or it could be that maybe they had other intentions but like you have a lot of amount of time where you're just like you're on one side of a door maybe from a criminal where you're just like okay listen we're both humans here yeah what how do we get out of this situation because i'm not happy here either like let's let's come up with a solution here because we have some time. Um, I don't know. I don't even know if you try to do that or if you like, if that's also engaging is like

making it even worse. Cause if you have somebody who's crazy and you engage in that way, you might be creating a relationship. Right. And then that's also super dangerous. So it's, it's, ah, I don't know, man. Yeah. I have a quick question for you. Remember, I don't want to out him, but a guy who used to work for the same company as us, really nice guy. I believe his name was Mike. That's also

another reason that I can't out him because I don't remember his name, but he's like a full sized Gimli from Lord of the rings red beard red hair stout yeah big guy he came into work one day with uh a black eye and bruises all over his hands and he was like again for for all we knew the nicest funniest not funniest but like a very funny pleasant a great guy to work with and be around. And he said that, uh, someone broke into his house where he and his wife and his kids were sleeping. And to hear Mike tell it, it was just like,

guy came to the wrong fucking house. And like he, I, I, I suppose beat him up and sent him packing like, like, like the alpha bear that he was. And when he's telling this story to me, I, I, I suppose beat him up and sent him packing like, like, like the alpha bear that he was. And when he's telling this story to me, uh,

22 or 23 year olds and you, uh, uh, I mean, at this point we're the same, let's just be the same age. Okay. Uh,

I was like, holy shit. And it was also believable. So my question, do you think he was lying? Do you think he got those bruises some other way? Fuck, what a terrible thing to lie about. I don't know.

It never even occurred to me that it could be a lie. Because that's if, I believe a fight happened, but I think if you show up with bruises and a black eye, that is certainly the best story to tell. That's so much better than I got in a bar fight. I was drunk and I antagonized somebody. Which is not a mark on his character or anything like that. It's just much more common that a human being would get in a bar fight than a home invasion scenario where you defend your house, like Jason fucking Statham or something like that.

Jesus. Yeah. I, I, I, especially at work. I mean, you could get fired for something.

Like if it's, if it's your fault, like you were doing something that was not, like you're such a victim in the other way and everyone just goes, oh yeah, and they have to believe you. Right. Oh man.

I don't know. Just something to ponder. As I get older, I feel like I revisit lots of stories that people have told me in my life. And then I think like, Hey, wait a minute.

That could, could that be true? Just like a fun game that I play with myself. It's like, cause I believe everyone when everyone tells me anything in any circumstances, especially when I was younger. And I'm just, I'm thinking back to all of the,

the people I worked like when I was a 15 year old working at the movie theater and hearing fantastic stories about either sex or violence from the 17 year olds who worked at the movie theater and hearing fantastic stories about either sex or violence from the 17 year olds who worked at the movie theater. And I was like, man, it's so crazy that Travis at the concession stand at the movie theater has been stabbed nine times. That's nuts. But he told me, so it's true. On nine occasions. me so it's true on nine occasions um it's it's funny my son is just at an age where he's starting to get that at school we're like the stories these outlandish stories are coming in and he's like bringing them home and being like can you believe that and we're like no because it's not true there was recently right before christ, there was like an ongoing one.

Fuck, I want him to tell it. I wonder if we should do – no, no, it's not going to work on the podcast. He also may be embarrassed. There was a girl who was a little older in his aftercare, and she kept telling the boys, the the young boys about how in the girl's bathroom someone had been killed and that her and some other girls had seen a body there and then the next day there was still blood but they'd gotten rid of the body and and then there was like more and more details each day that made it so fun uh and there's like one thing about like childhood lies is that stories develop as time goes on days a week will go by and then suddenly there were two

murders yeah they said that once uh she's i think it was like once the blood had gotten cleaned up so funny it was like oh it was that the mirror was cloudy. Like it was darker than normal. So I think like what she was building to was probably that something supernatural had happened through the mirror. But like watching this develop and watching the terror that my son would come home with, he'd be like, and she told us, she told us that someone died. And she, but she did because she saw the body. She did not say, who was it? Was it a child? She couldn't tell because it was in behind the stall. So she could she saw the body. She did not say, who was it? Was it a child? She couldn't tell because it was in behind the stall so she could just see the feet.

But I bet if we just wait a little bit longer, I bet if someone else comes to school with a more interesting story, like someone's grandpa passed away or something, I bet she'll remember the body. I bet we'll get some more clues. That's exactly right yeah yeah if somebody else comes to school and they had just done a trip to hawaii i'm pretty positive there will be new developments in the murder bathroom case um but it is real fun to watch him start to experience that and take it all wholesale

because we all do when we're young yeah Yeah. Certainly. I think there was like a, I want to say like a Power Rangers live show or maybe a live on ice show. And I came home from school because I really wanted to see that show. And I came home from school was like, mom, you'll never believe it. I was talking about wanting to see this Power Rangers show. And wouldn't you know it, George said he has tickets. He couldn't show them to me, but he has them and he'll give them to me for free. He had never mentioned it before. And then it's just, mom, it's crazy how life is, how it all works out all the time. I did something just now that I shouldn't have done which is uh took a peek

behind the curtain and thought what if all these next door stories are lies to fuel the narrative yeah and i there's no reason they can't be certainly true i feel like so many of the first person stories on narrative on next door are, uh, best case scenario, secondhand, something you heard from someone else in a different town, worst case scenario, just you spinning your wheels, uh, either for attention or just like you, you've, you've watched enough horror stories on Fox News or wherever you get your news that you just decided, I imagined it so it could probably happen, but no one's going to care if I just tell them a scenario that I dreamed up. So let me just say it happened to me and then let me get the engagement that comes with that. Not like to go viral, because Nextdoor isn't about going viral. It is just about like whatever dopamine hit people get from people either agreeing with them or arguing with them.

ones that i've read taking them as like perfectly true were probably either yeah at least at least one-sided but also completely fabricated we had we didn't run into that on cracked we would have people who would be in the writers forums or the writers room uh what did they we call it the forums the workshop the workshop we'd have people in the workshop who like had lived these fantastic lives and a lot of it was uh up, if not all of it. There was one person in particular who talked about, we met him. We met him in person when we were in Austin, Texas. I didn't know anything about him at that point, only that he was a writer in the workshop and he had written articles for us.

And he started telling me about the time that he had been shot in war. I know. I felt so bad because we had been sort of sniffing this guy out as a liar on the editorial team for a while. Like we were paying extra attention

to the first person stories he pitched and you weren't in those conversations yet. So I was just watching you like eat it up. Eat this guy's stories up. You were so,

you couldn't believe what an interesting person he was. Yeah. He was English and he had been shot in a war i don't know like the falklands or something like that sure and and then like he also had told me that he was he had some sort of mill by his house it was a giant turning wheel and it could go very fast i don't know what it was for but at one point it escaped its latchings and took off in the town and like started doing devastation to the town started rolling through the town and that he was the only one strong enough to stop it yeah and i'm sitting there just like a jaw on the floor just being like they should make a documentary about

you you've lived to such an insane life and he's older too so like yeah it felt like oh this is an adult talking to me he must be telling the truth adults don't lie this was someone who had pitched an article for a long time about uh making swords this is the one this is where i really by hand professionally i was the editor on that that's how yeah that was like his outing yes and the way he was talking about it other people other because a lot of our article workshopping was done in plain view of the other writers and editors on the site so there were people who were like noticing hey if um if what he's describing is true he would be the only person in the world who could make swords that strong it sounds very fantastic like i'm not a master swords crafter but i know more than most and what he's describing is i believe impossible it's like Excalibur level stuff and he's like a lot of liars when like confronted

he a conversation stalls because then it becomes, he can, a liar can spin it to now you're impugning my honor you can call me a lot of things but you're calling me a liar and that gets me just so pissed off, I'm just so worked up

and then it's like now you've changed the conversation so it's not about proving something. Now it's an emotional thing about us calling you a liar. And that gives him leeway to like, well, I have half a mind to leave. If you guys think I'm such a liar, if you think my character is so low that you would insult my character, then I'll walk away from all this. And I even like DM him when this sword stuff was going on it was like because I've dealt with liars before I was like hey man I believe you I totally I 100% believe you um just take a picture of the sword and send it to me and like we don't even need to put it in the article we don't need to like litigate this in front of everybody else it's

it's just me like we've worked together for years you and i just like just like share it with me it's like i know you believe me man totally i that's i i know you're you're one of the the good ones the thing is i and i took pictures like i said i was gonna i took pictures of the swords on my digital camera but then they called me a liar and i just got so mad that i smashed the camera and now i don't have those photos anymore it's like oh man totally it sucks that you smashed the one camera in the world uh i guess i'll just have to take your word for it yeah he was the i didn't think he'd get better at lying with time and he told stories about like he had had cancer and then he came on as somebody else like his sister or his daughter his daughter and it was like telling everyone like updates on his cancer treatment

and then he got better and yeah all of that he doesn't like all that was a lie yeah uh it was incredible it was like the i just fall for things hook line sinker until i was editing that sword article and then he was talking about how many times he had to fold the steel. Yeah. And, I mean, you fold a piece of paper eight times and you can't fold it ever again. You can't fold it any more than that, right? And he was folding steel 300 to 400 times. I was like, oh, wait a second.

To make this Hattori Hanzo's Kill Bill steel. I don't think you can do that. Yeah, I feel like if you could do that, we would have heard about it on the news or something. But yeah, I get tricked by liars a lot. And this has actually been very cathartic for me, this podcast, because I'm realizing now that I need to take Nextdoor with a grain of salt. Docs are clearly in and have been in for a while. There's just so fucking many of them on so many subjects. And you hear, you get a lot of interviews from just regular ass normal people.

And so many of them, I think, are just liars. You watch documentaries like about murders in small towns and stuff and i i think we're just we're the i don't know what all uh standards of journalism need to be met for someone to like release a documentary on netflix i don't know that there's like a uh governing board of of ethics or facts that is like giving the official documentary seal of of truthfulness on netflix i don't think there is one yeah because there's a lot of this just seems like kooks in small towns spinning their wheels about stuff yeah um i think it's totally possible. I think it's just people with an ax to grind. Just spinning. Yeah. Just like, yeah. And maybe some of it's true, but like the way that you build a story, you can hear yourself as you're telling a story if it's not interesting. And like that, you feel that instinct to be like well let's make it interesting yeah i just want to be able to trust people i know you can't even trust a can of soup soren if you take anything away from this episode let it be that all right let's end it there yeah good episode show episode. The show is Quick Question. Or is it?

It is. Recorded and edited and produced by The Irreplaceable Gabe Harder. Our theme song is by Merex. Their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com. You can still find me on Twitter at DLB underscore INC, although I don't know when I was on there last. The show

is also there, QQ underscore Soren and Dan. Soren is on Blue Sky. You can find him by searching Soren on Blue Sky. I think he's having a lot of fun over there. I do bits. Email the show, QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. Find us on Instagram where we post video clips and

more stuff about the show. We also have a Patreon, patreon.com slash quick question, and you can watch video episodes of this show on youtube at youtube.com slash user slash quick question oh boy no qq pod uh uh wait i do know it it's uh if you go to uh youtube.com slash at QQ podcast. Hey, at. It's not user or account.

Great. All right. That's the show. All right. Bye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I want to hear your thoughts on what's on your mind.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, all all right the answer's not important i'm just glad that we could talk tonight so what's your favorite who did you get oh forget it two best friends and comedy writers if there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here