Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Pandemic-Era Media

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Soren and Daniel discuss Jared Leto's stolen climbing valor, a good movie about air traffic controllers, and the best art to emerge from the pandemic. Everyone but Jared Leto is allowed to support the show and get a bonus episode every other Friday for $5 at www.patreon.com/quickquestion Go to mybookie.website/QQ and use promo code QQ to sign up for free and double your first deposit up to $2,000 plus a $10 Casino Chip. Thanks RocketMoney.com/qq. it could save you hundreds a year. Find Soren & Daniel on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.social Find the show on IG:https://www.instagram.com/qqsorenanddaniel/

I've got a quick quick question for you alright I wanna hear your thoughts on it now what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you alright The answer's not important I'm just glad that we can talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? Who do I pick? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I vote? Who do I be? But what's it out to? Where did all that go? Oh forget it! Sore and booey 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 the great song in here.

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Sorin 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 with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and shielded by the essential oil blend of cinnamon and some shit. Daniel O'Brien joined us, always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello. Hey everybody, I'm Soren Bowie.

And really, first of all, I'm ready for American dead. This episode is sponsored by MyBookie, an online sportsbook with live betting. Get started today by going to mybookie.website slash qq with promo code qq to sign up for free and double your first deposit up to $2,000 plus a $10 casino chip. Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting our podcast Quick Question. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones you don't want. Stop throwing your money away, cancel unwanted subscriptions, and

manage your expenses the easy way by going to RocketMoney.com slash QQ. If for whatever reason you do not watch this podcast only listen to it, you should check in occasionally just to see Daniel's intros and like the weird things he decides to do with his hands and body He makes some very interesting and exciting choices That you couldn't have even seen at the beginning when we were getting ready to do this podcast where he went inside of himself In a way that I don't know how to even describe He brought his hands to his face made fists and then disappeared them, and then came out and started doing the podcast.

And then in talking about two best friends and comedy writers, he frequently does some very fun stuff with his hands where it's like two friends, one podcast type of thing, and then he does like a magic trick with them. Today, he did what I can only describe as he put his thumb and his index finger together to make a hole and then, or an okay sign, and then with his other, took his index finger of his other hand and put it through that hole. Now that's a pretty universal symbol. No, I didn't put it through the hole. I could just graze the outside. Overlapping with the hole to form a queue. Cause that's the show. It looked like, it looked like you were dabbling with the idea of putting it in. So it was like resting on the outside and just sort of like grazing the outside of the

okay symbol and maybe like deciding is this okay? You know what's interesting to me is Learning that I made my hands into fists and I disappeared for a little while because I didn't know that I did that Oh really? that's a completely because and I'm a little I feel a little violated that you saw that because You weren't supposed to see me because I wasn't talking. And the recording hadn't started yet. So in the future, please close your eyes whenever you see me.

No, no. Unless I'm ready to start talking. No, I'm not missing that again. That was incredible. It was like a real, I'm turning on now type of thing and that's great The system rebooted it was ready to go. I wonder what stuff is captured on elevator security cameras on the days that I used to have to go into the office at work. I wonder what I did

right in that moment before the doors open and I Because I'm certain I did something I'm certain I Had to affect some kind of change when I was stepping from private world into work world And I'm deeply curious what that was. It was just like a severance moment. Yeah. Where your body fundamentally changes. Yeah. You know what I was doing in those elevators.

Climbing up the ceiling and hiding rocks. Just touched them. They were already there. I mean, by that point my collection's there. It's just me going up and managing them. Yeah. Making sure they're all there and then also finding the good smooth ones and giving a little finger.

Mm-hmm. Do they get dusty up there? I don't really care about the answer to this question. Now with the amount that I'm handling them, buddy, there's no chance. Uh, Soran, let's get into it. What are your thoughts on the pandemic? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha best art to emerge from the pandemic or if not necessarily about the pandemic but incorporating the pandemic. I'm actually very curious and forgive me for not having seen all the episodes. My show to put us out there, we did like

900 fucking episodes about the coronavirus that summer. Did American Dad, did they do, or with the animation lead time, would it not have made sense, did they do a COVID pandemic episode? Or did it just not happen in that world? It did happen because we do have like throwaway COVID jokes in it, but we didn't address it at all. Nobody's wearing masks, nobody's staying at home, nobody's isolating or anything like that. Nobody gets it. Oh, Roger gets it.

But it's not even relevant the rest of the episode. It's him, I think it's called the professor and the coach. There's a joke where he's in the stands of a football game with Hayley, and he's got his phone out and he's like talking to her about something really deep. And then he gets a little chime and he goes, oh, damn it, I got COVID. And that's fun. Yeah. And that's it. And it's no, I'm excited. I'm not going to tell that story. But there's there's a we do mention it, but it doesn't it doesn't play any sort of it has no relevance in our show

yeah, it's it's a strange thing to think about like like living through a thing and then seeing it dramatized and like I don't even know how I Feel about wanting to see it dramatized in any real way I don't think any of the shows that have tackled it have been have done it well for me. Like the the morning show had a had a coronavirus arc and Jennifer Aniston's character gets it and it's like you watch that show. I fucking love that show. It's so good. Soren is already good is actually good

I don't know or you watching it because it's trash. I don't know that it's I don't think I'll say that it's trash Oh, right. Don't want to burn you bridges. Oh, first of all, I'll say that Billy Crudup is Sensational in it. He's so good I almost forgive him for walking out on Mary Louise Parker when she was pregnant with his child. Fuckin' hell. That's how good he is.

Jen Anderson's good, Reese Witherspoon, everyone in it is really good. It's, especially in the beginning, it wasn't clear if it knew how kind of campy it was. I think it's steered into the campiness a bit. There's a little bit of like Aaron Sorgin's newsroom quality to it because they're like the the show wants to deal with things that are happening now-ish. So there's like the Me Too season. That's what like kicks things off. And then

they tackle January 6th, they tackle tech billionaires swooping in. There's a lot of like we're gonna commentate on the world in real time. But anyway, I don't think there's something about like watching a show that is dealing with coronavirus that is a little off-putting to me at this point. Maybe part of me thinks a show needs more time or a movie needs more time to process and get it right. Or maybe my problem with it is that I don't want to see it. That's still lightly to heavily traumatic for a lot of

us that like it's not a thing that I want to see depicted just yet. But then meanwhile, very unconsciously I found that I've I'm now on my third novel that is not about the pandemic, but is like very clearly written in a world where the pandemic happened to the characters in the book and their, you know, like what it does to them. The first one I read was this book called Romantic Comedy that was recommended to me by Shay's cousin who is, you know, practically going to be family soon. And it's a story about a person who writes at like a woman who writes at a Saturday Night Live asked show, and then she falls in love with like a singer songwriter who hosts the show. And it's their romantic stuff. And then in the middle of the the book, COVID happens, and the second half of the book is

like these same characters in their new lives dealing with COVID kind of thing. And I'm reading Tom Lake now, which is people telling stories because they're quarantining together at a farm, and this book called Wedding People, which is is like barely about none of them are like about COVID. They're just about people who have lived through COVID. So just like like little bits and pieces of characters on two sides of this life-changing event that we all lived through and some people who are just like Just like throw away things about people who was like yeah fucked me up a little bit I was a little bit fucked up for a couple of years because of kovat and it's like very this destabilizing thing and I think novels

Do a much better job than shows and movies about depicting, because you have a much easier time getting inside the head of a person who is living through a thing. And it's not about COVID in the sense that the story is not, and then I got COVID and then I was very, and then I watched my friends die kind of thing. It was just like, no, I'm just like, I'm different now because I lived through this long stretch

where the world was different and it's something that I found very unconsciously drawn to these stories and didn't even realize they all shared this common thread until I sat down and did some investigation about what I'm reading and why I'm reading it. It's really working on me. I recommend those three books. I could see why, man, you read a lot, by the way. Congratulations on that. Thanks, buddy. I think that you're right.

I think that books have a way of existing, I think movies are supposed to provide an answer. Like if they offer a question, it's crazy not for the movie not to also give you an answer to that question. So like, how do you survive a thing like this? Or like, what did this actually event, what did this event mean?

Like you want that from a movie at the end and you don't necessarily from a book. A book just sort of like holds your hand as you walk through the experience and then it's like, and now do with that what you will. They're not really giving you the same type of answers. And in fact, I think they'd seem pretty two-dimensional and kind of bad if a book tried to be like at the end.

And that's why we had the bonfire of the vanities. Whatever the fuck it is. It's not trying to be the final word on a thing. It's just like, this is a snapshot of life and life having to incorporate this thing and because I'm reading about things that are not like before and after of the Kennedy assassination where this is now a thing that I've also lived through them. It's like Yeah, that is that is what it was like. Like little bits and pieces of

all the books and just like... Yeah, it was destabilizing and world-shattering a bit. But also you keep going and you have the concerns that are the same but different. And you see friends and family, other people in your life in a new light because you knew how they reacted when they went through this thing and you could see like the characters that have changed from one side to the other that remind you of the people in your life that changed from one side to the other. It's just fascinating. This has been Daniel's book corner. It is interesting how fundamentally it changed a lot of things and we just don don't ever, like 9-11 was easy.

It was like this one moment we could all be like, and now everything's different. And we could decide everything was different. And that was fine. With the pandemic, it's much harder. It's so, it's like, it's much harder to quantify exactly what sort of damage it's done. And I think a really good emblematic moment of that

was recently there was a standup that I saw a clip from and he was like, come on, did anything really change from the pandemic? And he's like not getting the response that he wants from the audience. So he keeps digging and he's like, honestly, like is anybody's life any worse or better? And somebody gets shot from the crowd, shouts worse.

And he's like, tell me like in some tangible way, like what is something you wish you had from before the pandemic you don't have now? And she was like, my mom. And he, not funny. And everyone is like, oh fuck. Oh yeah. Remember all those people died?

And I mean, kudos to her for shouting that out in the middle of the show. And I completely derailed this dude. But it's like, yeah, you're absolutely right. I was complaining about things like restaurants being closed now that I used to love. And other people lost their entire families. And I'm like, oh, so we should probably deal with that at some point, like collectively. Because it was pretty bad. Yeah.

I feel like I'm trying to think of shows and movies that have addressed it, and there was, like, certainly, like, experimental movies that came out. They were like, this is the movie that is filmed entirely on Zoom to dramat to... to dramatize pandemic stuff and like they had the 30 Rock and the Parks and Rec

and the Happy Endings reunions that were done on Zoom which sort of exists to me as like different things to what I'm I'm talking about or looking f- for I guess Yeah

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Use the promo code qq to sign up for free and double your first deposit up to $2,000 plus a $10 casino chip. Okay, there was a movie that I remember coming out like almost immediately. I was surprised at how quickly this thing got made, but it had like Sarah Paulson in it and Nathan Fillion. Do you remember what this was? It was like a couple and they were in a relationship and they were about to break up before the pandemic and then the pandemic happened.

And like, so this guy decides not to break up before the pandemic and then the pandemic happened and like So this guy decides not to break up with his significant other and then she finds out that he was going to break up with her And they still have to spend all this time together No, that's a good idea. The main character was and boy man. I'm gonna mess this guy's name up because I always do Chiwetel Egea for Chiwetel Gel Egea-4, yeah, that's right. That's okay. Yeah, he's the main character in it. I do not know this movie. Oh.

Um, fuck, what's it? Let me think of what it's called. So also I want our listeners to know how difficult it can be to talk about movies with Soren sometimes, because before this recording, he was saying a trailer for a movie he saw, and he said it was The Quiet Hour starring Jeremy Strong, and I was like, no, I've never heard of that. That's because it's not called that that and it's not starring Jeremy strong. So anytime he describes a movie and like it's what they it's Sarah Paulson and Nathan Fillion. My brain has to first go is this is actually talking to people and then do I know a movie with I don't know Kate Blanchett and Breckenmire what.

Yeah who is close to the people he's thinking of? The movie is called Locked Down. Okay. It came out in 2021. Like it came out so fast. Is it like movie movie? Yes. It's not, it's not filmed on zoom.

It's like. No, it's a movie movie. Some of it is obviously on zoom because they talk to family members and stuff like that in Hathaway's in it. Ben Stiller is in it. Lily James is in it. There's a bunch of people that you would know in this movie.

It's star-studded cast. And it's like complete, from what I understand, completely like a clumsy understanding of COVID because they're just rushed to get a movie out about COVID. So they were just like, I don't know, man. Let's just, somebody should be talking about this. And we had a discussion in the room in the writers room at American Dad do we address this and everyone ultimately was like?

We have no idea how long this is gonna last Art that if we did an episode about it today if we start breaking an episode about it today It wouldn't air for a year and a half is that gonna be crazy. It's how we just decide not to address it I hadn't even thought when I asked you if you guys did an episode about this and you said, we never have anyone wearing masks. That's very funny to me. It hadn't occurred to me that like, an animated show would draw masks on all the characters. And I wonder if like, I wonder if children's programming that has to deal with real-world issues I wonder if any of them if like

Fucking blue or your whomever had to do like the mask season so they can educate kids about the world around them while they're doing it Or if they if if we just all Pretend that David the gnome exists in a world where masks don't exist folks David the gnome was a show from 1991 It's about a bunch of gnomes and a fox fox gets his foot caught in a bear trap in one episode It's it's a it's very traumatizing for everyone my age The show don't whistles like this when he wants Swift the Fox to come and get him. The things that stuck with you from the show.

I want you to just keep going, because this is fascinating. That whistle meant a lot to you. It did. And Swift the Fox getting caught in that bear trap, man. Tough. That's really tough. He didn't gnaw his own leg off, did he? No.

Okay. But like, they opened the trap at one point and you could see like his- his- his flesh is like pink and gnarled a bit. And it's- it's very like really real for a show about gnomes for a kid to watch. So it- do you have like a favorite movie or favorite show that handled? I don't think I have. I mean, I think that's why I've really enjoyed these books. I mean, it was a weird twist of timing that the show Station 11 came out in and around pandemic times because that's based on a book. So that didn't exist as a response to anything. It just happened to be on and it was like pandemic watching for me that I had to pause

because the very first episode is just like people in real time learning about and dealing with a rapidly spreading, very contagious, very serious, fatal respiratory disease. And you like, you see people in grocery stores stocking up on things, you see people coughing as they're like getting it for the first time, you're seeing hospitals get overwhelmed, and it's like, to no fault of the show, it's just like, because they didn't know the pandemic was gonna happen in real life. It's very much just like, we're gonna do what we think is the most accurate depiction of what it would be like

if randomly there was a rapidly spreading disease sweeping through the world and no one knew what it was or how to stop it and I was watching the first episode and I'm like, yep, yep, that's how it would go, that's how it went guys, you got it, you nailed it, that's how it felt I can't watch this right now, I'm still locked in my home I'm gonna put on Game of Thrones again because they don't fuck with shit like this I mean I've watched shows. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, go ahead.

When I eventually did watch it, it's a great show, highly recommend it. It's not necessarily like about COVID, but still captures it somehow. Good. I mean, surely the writers of that show, as the pandemic was happening and like what they wrote is all unfolding.

They must've been like, we fucking nailed that guys. We really did it. I mean, it's great, crazy to write a sci-fi and see that sci-fi come into fruition while you're, it's on the air. And man, we, we fucking, we imagined it just right. I don't think I have a piece of content that tries to address COVID, but there are some that can't help it because it's reality television and it has to come up.

And as you know, I watch all shows late and that's always really a depressing moment when I see a Nathan Fielder or something like that where people are walking around in masks and I'm like, oh, fuck, that's right. Or they can't be in the same room as each other. It really hit me with Taskmaster. Taskmaster was really tough. Yeah. Because there's the Taskmaster episodes

where all of a sudden the chairs are further apart and no one's laughing at the jokes because there's no audience anymore. Yeah, there's no audience. The group can't sit together. So they're not even like, the banter changes because the energy is so different from everybody being so far from one another and

even at some of the the different tasks that they do like you see them arriving taking off a mask and you're just like Fuck this sucks. It's really hard. The one that sticks with me the most is Hard Knocks, which I don't know if you watch Daniel, but Hard Knocks is on Hard Knocks, which I don't know if you watch Daniel, but Hard Knocks is on Max, it's on HBO. Max, the one to watch. The one to watch. And the season with the Chargers is the first season where they're really dealing with it. And that one is hard because you come in and like so much of the show is about preseason and preseason no one is even sure if there's going to be an NFL season.

No one's sure how games are gonna be played, if they can be played, if there's gonna be stadiums of people. The very first thing you see is the coach of the Chargers coming into his team on Zoom and being like, I have COVID, I have it. I didn't know what it was. I was feeling very tired and I couldn't get out of bed

and stuff for like a week. It turns out I have this thing. So it's very serious and then you as these guys come into practice every day they're all getting swabbed when they come in and these guys who are used to breaking fingers and Playing through terrible injuries get one of those swabs up their nose and they're the biggest babies about it I've ever seen it never gets easier Soren. They're such babies about it and like they cannot hang. These guys were like, wait wait wait don't start don't start. Give me a second. They try to like work their way up to it like it's a fucking high dive and uh and that was very interesting but ultimately it that so much of that season revolved just around...

I mean that was the scene they got Justin Herbert and Justin Herbert turned out to be this amazing quarterback. But we spend no time on him at all because all we're talking about is this disease. Yeah. Pop quiz, Hot Shot! Could you name every single subscription you have? I certainly can't. and I'm not alone. I just learned that over 74% of people have subscriptions they've forgotten about. With Rocket Money, I don't have to remember every subscription or worry about forgetting any because I can see them all laid out in front of me.

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Rocketmoney.com slash qq. That's rocketmoney.com slash qq, rocketmoney.com slash qq. What a strange, fascinating time capsule all that is gonna be. I hadn't considered, even though I watched all of Taskmaster along with you, and I know the seasons you're talking about, I hadn't considered divorced from that context of the moment when people are in the future just sort of like going back and binging through Taskmaster and then they just have those weird

seasons. I mean, the people won't be idiots. They're going to remember that there was a pandemic and everything. But these still these strange seasons where it's like, oh, yeah, that was when they then no one was allowed to touch each other or sit near each other and no one laughed at any of the jokes and But they were still in this big theater It was just empty and then they had a season where The laughter was pumped in from another room Because people were allowed to watch remotely and the laughter was just sort of like fed back to them and just like a strange like

unintended document of this transition, this this bizarre period. It's gonna be interesting. I mean, sports highlights. We're part of it too. Sorry to barrel through my own point, but like, seeing our show going from this is a man doing comedy, arguably, in front of an audience full of people to now he is in a white void for the rest of the season until the next year. And now he is in a space again with people, but there are fewer people than there were before because we're sitting the audience farther apart and just like this, this, just this strange, like, again, unintended, unintentional document of this transition of time and life and just like being able to see in a random binge of the show is like, oh yeah, and this is the season where like his hair is a little shaggier because he wasn't getting haircuts before every episode like he usually does and

the the the entire pace of the show has changed because it's not written for people to Stop you with applause or laughter breaks. It's written to just be like delivered as a as a straight through monologue just these these Strange changes that are now preserved forever. Yeah. Because you got to keep making content. This little blip where it's everything feels so lonely, everything, because there's no laughs.

You look around the room, there's nobody there, but you're still doing it. These halls meant for big people people like a lot of people Yeah, it's I think that it's I notice it the most with sports in general just because I watch sports highlights I'm sure you watch basketball highlights and stuff sometimes really these are the best plays of the 2000s or whatever and The bubble the bubbles a very strange experience with NBA highlights where you're watching an actual game being played, an NBA game, maybe a playoff game played, to an empty stadium. And that's super weird. Or you watch baseball and there's like cardboard cutouts of people you don't know all over the place. You're like, what is going on? It's so... it makes it... I don't know if it's stranger or more normal that the cast of Friends never acknowledged

9-11, even though that show... The fact that COVID literally forced all of us to change how we physically maneuver through the world sort of made it impossible to not cover it if you were a Show or reality show that has people in the world you had to have some Suggestion of masks or distance or some shows that have like the the plexiglass things up that wasn't Forced on anyone after 9-eleven, but it's still like it's very It's strange that that the show and other shows made the decision I'm just like no we're just gonna we're just gonna keep we're gonna put Joey in like an I love firefighters or an NYPD

sweatshirt, but like otherwise We don't It doesn't make the world of our show any different for whatever reason. I don't know if that's like If that's better or worse than addressing it I It's real tough on a sitcom to address something like 9-11 Because terrorists don't even exist in that world you they can't right gets you can't it gets too dark and you're like wars Yeah, other than as a this like joke history, like they don't exist now, certainly.

And if you bring it up, then it's like, well, okay, then we have a lot to unravel here because there's a lot else going on. I think it's easier to address something like a pandemic because it's no one's fault, doesn't feel like. And you could just be like, ah, this terrible thing that's that's happening where we're all getting real sick um but you can at least make jokes about it because we were all making jokes about it at the time yeah um but on this podcast yeah but 9 11 that's that's tougher that's i don't think they were smart not to address it they were smart to just change the intro because then you can extend you know that it happened within that world, but nobody has to actually talk

about it. Yeah. When I say change the intro, I think everybody knows what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Twin Towers used to be in the intro and then they weren't all of a sudden. Was that fountain at the top of Tower 2? I don't remember the towers being part of the sudden. Was that fountain at the top of Tower 2? I don't remember the towers being part of the intro. Oh yeah, the very first thing you saw was the skyline of New York.

And it was the towers were right there. And then they changed that portion of the, that b-roll, they changed that portion of the intro and you didn't see it anywhere. Have I ever, uh, have I ever talked about Pushing Tin on this podcast? What is Pushing Tin? Oh, it's a movie about air traffic controllers starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Angelina Jolie, and very early role for Cate Blanchett doing a New Jersey accent. That's a very cool name for that movie.

That's a very Aaron Sorkin name for that movie. It is a phenomenal movie. It's based on a phenomenal article. I think it was a Times article, but it might've been a New Yorker. That was just all about how, what a stressful job air traffic controller is and like a lot of people snap in the middle of doing it and like lose their minds or get very depressed, get very suicidal

because it's so high stakes, high pressure. Especially for an airport like Newark. I think that's what the article and that's what the movie is about the air traffic controllers in Newark who are so stressed because it's really, it's all air traffic controllers that are making sure accidents don't happen. It's not the pilots. The pilots can't see everything, don't really know what's going on. It's the air traffic controllers who are landing hundreds of planes every single day and they're planes that are off course and everything about it is... You don't want to blame everything on Reagan, but you can blame a whole lot of things that are bad in the country right now on Reagan.

And he, like, he made life for all air traffic controllers worse and harder for, like, regulatory reasons that I don't remember very well. But as a result, everyone's stressed, everyone's suicidal, everyone's miserable, and it's like a very... like, it's a killing job for air traffic controllers. The movie is based on the article, and the... it's a phenomenal movie that I like a whole lot. It starts with a quote superimposed on the screen that is something to the effect of you successfully land 9,000 planes and no one bats an eye but you accidentally cause one midair collision and that's

all anyone remembers about you. That's the quote and it's like attributed to anonymous air traffic controller and it is superimposed over b-roll of planes flying around New York. That day sucked for some air traffic controller. Guaranteed. Oh, that's Prussia. I think I didn't see that movie until a couple years ago. I was staying with my parents and we watched Pushing Tin, Tin Cup, and Tin Men. We had a theme going on of movies with tin in the title that I hadn't seen before. And seeing that quote opening this movie and a bunch of airplanes flying around the Twin

Towers in the past. Tin Towers, thank you very much. Seeing that and like just the part of my body that will always be a writer for crack.com was like oh five most unintentionally Prescient or hilarious openings in movie history what can I? The rest can be bullshit I have the one Yeah, that's That's crazy

It also makes me realize that that scene in Breaking Bad where I thought, or that whole season that's based around two planes crashing into each other, where I was like, okay, this is a lot, we're doing a lot here. That's actually probably pretty common, that there's a guy who'll just, one little thing in his external life makes him snap. And he comes in, he's like, I'm gonna make two planes hit each other. Yeah. I mean, there's a guy that

I believe in the article they called Mr. Freeze just because he would every once in a while completely freeze up. And they would just need to like take him off his desk and be like, alright, you go outside now and someone else is gonna sit here and call your planes for a while

and that's just what you have to do. Basically, because, you know, he's not it Just you just snap and like you're you're working too many hours and you don't have a union because fuck Ronald Reagan and your pay is bad because fuck Ronald Reagan and You realize just how many lives are at stake under your control every single day and you're still just like staring at dots on a screen day in day out and you hate your coworkers and you're just like, no I can't, I don't have it today, I got the yips, I got the air traffic control yips. I mean yeah, I get it, It would be an awful job, I think.

But, Daniel, a thing I find kind of charming, belay devices when you're climbing, that little piece of metal that the rope goes through and connects to your harness, it's called an ATC. Universally called an ATC. It's an air traffic controller. That's what it stands for in that world as well? Yes. Ahhhh. Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Early on in climbing somebody was just like, this would be a cool thing to name this. And they did and everyone was like, I agree, we'll just keep it that. Like we don't need like an actual name for it. We're just gonna call it that because it's charming. I think I killed that conversation. No, I'm, I, I'm, I, well, I really want you to watch Pushing Tin, and I was, I was, my brain was just doing free association of you talking about climbing, and then me thinking

about the last person I heard talk about climbing, which was Jared Leto on a podcast and how much he likes climbing. And he climbs with, he climbs like with the, you'll know his name, but I don't, the Free Solo guy. They're like climbing buddies. And Jared Leto was talking about times where he like a thing snapped and he fell and thought he was going to die and just like ended up dropping and swinging for a while until Free Solo came and helped him out. And then I thought, well, I don't want to just tell a half remembered story from another podcast I heard on this podcast, because it's not as good when I do it. And then I thought, so I won't say anything. And then you said I killed the conversation. And so I thought, well, shit, better go back to the to the old well.

That's all I've been thinking about is Jared Leto. I don't like that he climbs, honestly. I don't like that for the climbing community. I don't think that does us any favors. I don't like that he also talked about he's really into into to free climbing and free diving which is my world the water is my world and I don't have the stones to do free diving right now but that's that's the kind where like you you go without tanks you go without the scuba gear I'm really fascinated by it I'm really scared about it and Jared Leto doing it I'm sure for him it's just like I'm just I'm really scared about it. And Jared Leto doing it, I'm sure for him it's just like, I'm just, I'm just a bit of a Renaissance man. You know, I'm an, I'm

an actor, I suppose. I'm a painter, I'm a musician, but really I'm a climber and I'm a free diver. And all I'm, first of all, shut up. Second of all, all I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about him climbing with one of the most famous and successful climbers of all time and diving with, I have to assume are successful and famous divers. I'm thinking about him climbing with one of the most famous and successful climbers of all time and diving with, I have to assume, our successful and famous divers. I'm thinking, those poor fucking divers who are like, we can't let Jared, like our job now is to make sure Jared Leto doesn't die. Our job as free divers are always to make sure everyone doesn't die, but like, we really have to fucking make sure that the 30 seconds to Mars guy doesn't drown in a cave because

he thinks it would make a good story to say that he could hold his breath for seven minutes. It also, I mean, these people are doing these to challenge themselves. They got to be the best and they got to be incredible because this is what they want to do. This is their passion. And this is essentially an escort mission for each of them now. Like their passion, the thing that they love the most, somebody else, a celebrity has attached themselves to it and you can't say no to 30 Seconds to Mars. Like you can't be like, I don't think so. I wanna go and actually do it on my own today.

You have to pretend that it's just as hard for you and that you're taking them on like the worst stuff. You're like, he's not doing the fucking Don wall with Jared Leto. They're hiking up something that's like a little bit of a scramble. And they're like, you okay back there, Jared? That was pretty intense, huh? We'd use our hands for a little bit. Because also when I'm hearing Jared tell these stories about how he almost died

and he was like, yeah, the thing slipped and I fell back. I fell down 20 feet and I was swinging for a while and I knew if I didn't grab onto this rock then that would be it for me and I swang and I missed. And then I swung, ah, and I was swinging for a while and I knew if I didn't grab onto this rock then that would be it for me and I swang and I missed and then I swung ah and I caught it and then I waited for Free Solo to come and help me up but in that time I thought about my mortality and I like really was ready to process and face death and the hosts are like wow brave and I'm thinking I want to hear this story from Free Solo's perspective I want to hear that guy who was like I fucking told him to secure his carabiner. I fucking knew this was gonna happen I also I want to just hear it from a climbers perspective because if he's saying that he's roped in and he fell a little

Bit like he fell like 20 feet or whatever not Uncommon by the way climbing where your gear comes out and fell a certain distance and then like was on an overhang or whatever So he's just like dangling That's not near death 30 seconds to Mars. That's like Someone just lowers you back down with their ATC and everything's fine. You're not gonna die You're not gonna have to dangle there forever. I really appreciate So I don't have the The name for free solo guy and so I'm disrespectfully calling him Free

Solo and you are matching that disrespect by calling Jared Leto 30 Seconds to Mars. If he doesn't get a name, no one gets a name! Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't like that he's doing either of those things. I guess, but like, I gotta let celebrities live their lives. Surely they want to do things that they're interested in. And I'm just like, no, you get one thing. I can't pretend if, if we got really rich and famous doing this podcast or our shows and I had nothing but time and money. I can't pretend that I wouldn't be like, and now I think I'll

scuba dive in the most beautiful place in the world with the people who are the best at it. And I want them to tell me I did a good job also. I want them to officially say- We just watched a whole show of Chris Hemsworth doing exactly that. Uh-huh. And we're sort of like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. They asked 30 Seconds of Mars on the podcast how long he could hold his breath He's like oh easily three minutes easily four minutes even more than that Yeah, and I'm just picturing like the the well-paid free divers when he comes in from the water like

Hey, that's a new record Jared, that's a PR. Oh my god Hey, that's a new record Jared. That's a PR. Oh my god. That's a PR. Wow. Never seen it before Please keep funding our operation That is a that's a PR that's easily 50 minutes Joker. I Think you could hold your breath all the way to Mars bars. All right, well, I don't need to talk about him anymore. I also talk about climbing like it's still my community. I don't climb. I haven't climbed since I had kids really.

Certainly not alone. It's something I used to do. I did one free solo that was terrifying, but that was to get to some ruins. That was a very different thing. But I used to climb a bunch and then had children and completely stopped. And I think my dad did basically the same thing. Like my dad was in Aspen to meet my mom because he was doing all the 14ers in Colorado. And so he was a big climber way into it

and then just stopped in Aspen and didn't leave and didn't get through all the rest of the 14ers and just loved it there and stayed. And then he joined mountain rescue there. And so he was doing a lot of like coming up into the, going up onto pyramid peak or something in the Elk Mountain range where like somebody had fallen

and just peeling bodies basically off of rocks and yeah that was like who he that was who he was like that there's an article in the aspen times about these guys and stuff and they it just sounds like top gun like these guys are like very cocky but also like very badass uh and the best at their sports and they the so good that they go and like save other people who can't do the sport as well. And then my brother and I were born and he was just like this is not worth it to me anymore like I can't do this and he just quit. And I tried to like get stories out of him later about mountain rescue and he just did not want to talk about it just and wasn't

something he was interested in telling us anything about. But yeah, I don't climb anymore. My son, once I had children, I was like, this is dumb. This is reckless of me to be doing. Yeah, I can't do this. It wasn't a timing thing. It wasn't a free time thing. It was it was a. This would be a stupid way to die.

Conversation, a little bit of a stupid way to injure yourself. It would be a very stupid way to hurt yourself because there's a lot that has to go right. And occasionally, no matter how good of a climber you are, there are things that are outside of your control. It's a dumb position to put yourself in, where you're on a flat cliff face. Yeah. So high off the ground that if you fall, you will die. Right. On the spectrum of deaths that couldn't have been avoided, any climbing related death is not on there. Well, should we wrap up the show? What do you think? Yeah, kill it. Great. The show is quick question, but you knew that already. You can find the show on Twitter, you can find the show on Instagram, you can find the show on Instagram, you can email

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now what's on your mind? I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? Who did I meet? I don't remember

What's it out there? Word and order Who do we know? Oh forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here