Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - They Should Have Considered Limits

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

The guys finally do their homework and watch the shows they didn't want to watch and listen to the music they didn't want to listen to!  And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks RocketMoney.com/qq.  it could save you hundreds a year.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up to? Where did all that go?? 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. Writer for Last Week Tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, and stupid, dumb, idiot boy who's so stupid, stupid, stupid, Daniel O'Brien. Joined as always by my friend Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui, right for American Dad. I am, uh, I wouldn't call myself a stupid boy, but I'm a, God, I'm so weak. I'm such a weak coward. I'm a weak coward who can't even lift 30-pound weights.

Come on. What are you doing? What are you doing? You weak, weak, weak little boy. Your boy is what you are. I'm just following your lead here, Dan. Why are you stupid? What have you done? Why are you hitting yourself? I just had one of those, I had like three or four things that I needed to do today. And in the past, I've been able to do all of things like this in a day, like there was enough time. It was work on my script for work. It was pack for a little weekend trip. It was grocery shop and straightening up one of the rooms in this house. And I look at the clock at 6 45 at night when we're recording this podcast

and it's dark and i didn't do jack shit i didn't do any of those things and i'm so mad at myself because now it's nighttime and then when we're done with the podcast i'm not gonna do any of those things i'm supposed to do and i i didn't do anything with that time, man. I was just a big stupid idiot baby dumb child boy today. And I would hate to have like a hidden camera on me today to see what exactly I did. I'm sure I just stare at computer until it was nighttime. Went for a long walk with Jackson. Oh, that makes things count. That was pleasant. That's kind of writing too, by the Jackson. Oh, that was pleasant.

That's kind of writing too, by the way. Yeah, no. I'm sure you thought about your script while you're out there. Nah, I listened to Conan O'Brien's podcast. Okay. Okay. So what I'd like to say is don't beat yourself up over this. I would say that there is no such thing as wasted time uh that everything that you do even when it feels like you didn't accomplish the things you

were trying to accomplish you were accomplishing other things and just not accounting for them even if that was you needed a break you need i think the biggest bummer is packing i feel like i have two packing speeds one of them is weeks in advance out of excitement, and the other one is rushing around at the last minute. And that's what it seems like it's going to be this time around. Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting Quick Question. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones that 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. Are you the type who, when you do that second packing speed, that you forget things, or is it just more onerous on you in the moment? I overpack in that second scenario. Okay. I don't underpack in the super planned scenario okay i don't i i i don't under pack in like the the super planned

scenario or anything like that but i i'm much more thoughtful and judicious and i'm really thinking like like i write down how many like outfits i'm going to need how many days how many like different looks i'm going to need it's like i, I will need, I will need a Saturday running or workout outfit. I will need, uh, you know, comfy clothes each day. I will need the clothes that I'm going to wear to whatever the activity I'm doing is. And I will throw in like options. So I'm not bored by my packing choices. I do. It's all written out. When I went to Cancun, it was like, I was following a script that past daniel had put together now for this weekend trip i don't know i don't have anything written down i'm not gonna write anything down oh no i'm doing laundry in the moment and i'm gonna just transfer stuff from laundry into bag

and i'm gonna get into the city tomorrow and i'm just going to have too much of everything. Yeah. Stupid. I found that. So for a long time, I was doing a thing where I would pack workout clothes when I would go somewhere and then come home and they'd, I'd put them right back in my dresser. Cause I never used them. Whenever I travel,

I think I'm going to work out. I have such lofty ambitions and then I never do it. But I would say within like the last year, I'm actually, I make a point of like working out where i go it's like a whole new can of worms though in that you've got you've got to bring like you can't just bring one workout outfit you got to bring a few because they get destroyed essentially while you're there during one workout you're like i can't possibly put these on again. That would be, uh, I would be doing a disservice to everyone who has to be within vicinity of me. Yeah. And, uh, you, then you got to put those somewhere.

You can't keep them with the rest of your clothes either. No. Yeah. They have to stay in a little plastic bag, which they don't even offer anymore. It's so frustrating. I get similarly ambitious when I was in San Francisco for, for like truly a 48 hour trip where I knew going in a bulk of like an entire night was going to be spent at a Golden State Warriors game. So like that's an outfit done already. That's I shouldn't have almost anything in my suitcase for this trip. trip and when i unpacked i was home i was looking at uh i guess a a previous version of daniel who thought who knows maybe i'll work out twice a day that's not a thing i do in real life under

perfect conditions but if i'm feeling good i might like the option to to run and go to the gym and yeah i should have two outfits for both of those things each day of the trip. I also pack frequently with the assumption that at some point, luck will provide me with a washer and dryer, that that will just show up in my life. I'll be like, I'm going to pack for four days, even though this trip is seven. And at some point, someone will just gift me a washer and dryer in which i can reload my whole outfit uh repertoire when i don't always happen when i was in costa rica with my uh our mutual friend god today my traveling buddy we stayed in two different hotels and then uh ended at an airbnb on the beach and i was so excited this entire fucking trip to get to that Airbnb and do

laundry. I knew they had a laundry machine in the unit that was free for us to use. And I was like separating all my clothes because you're unpacking and repacking so much because of all the moving around we're doing. It's also stupid hot. So everything's getting sweaty and smelly. And I was like on the three hour drive to our Airbnb, I was like, on the three-hour drive to our Airbnb, I was like, are you as excited about this dryer and washer-dryer as I am? And she was like, no. She didn't do her laundry

when we had the opportunity. It was just not on our radar. And I think her thing was just like, I packed the amount of clothes I was going to use and I did it correctly. And now I'm going to go home and I'll do laundry when I'm home. What?

Wait, but. I know. But what about, I mean, maybe I'll have the exact right number of clothes, but if I have the opportunity to do laundry, I'm going to take it because then I have all these extra bullets in the chamber. Like if anything else happens on the trip, I'm all oh that's hot that's I don't think I don't think she realized that I picked this Airbnb because it had a washer and dryer and I was thinking that far ahead like oh I'm gonna love this so much sort of like thinking about

the first shower you're gonna take after after a long hike. Oh, well. Men and women will never understand each other. Well, I don't think you're stupid, Dan. I think it's fine to have a day. It's fine to give yourself a day where you don't get the chores done and you have to give yourself the grace and understanding that when you don't get them done, that you, it's all right. It's not a wasted day by any means.

You did other things that were valuable you played on the computer sometimes you need that yeah yeah you're right i'm i'm the best the best man what's on your mind i want to talk to you uh i want to just start the show is that all right because i we i think we have a lot to talk about yeah um at the end of the year we gave each other some homework assignments and as is our our mo we it took us two months to do that homework a little over two months to do that homework and if you remember uh daniel's homework assignment was to listen to some two different um december's albums i think i gave him picaresque and i gave him uh the crane wife and then my assignment was to watch the show limitless on national

geographic with chris hemsworth and then we were going to reconvene and dan was going to tell me how much he likes the decemberist so dan tell me like a a plus what do you think in here? I want to first, uh, bring up the, the, the gap between the kinds of assignments we gave each other. I picked limitless cause I like Chris Hemsworth a lot. I think it's, uh, a fun,

cool show. And there were a bunch of things in it that I thought would, uh, correct, uh, connect specifically with Soren. Uh, and he,

without giving it a single thought picked two albums uh by a band i've openly been critical of i would say hostile towards yeah uh as what what felt like a a punishment versus the the joyful assignment i gave him i want everyone to understand that well there are different types of teachers out there it doesn't mean one is better than the other uh i also want i want everyone to know that like there there is a version of this where i come in super hot and just stand completely on my ground and say the decemberists are a bad band i was right i i truly came at these albums with an open mind and an open heart. Like I wasn't, this wasn't a thing that I listened to on a run or anything like this. I sat down at my work table and like, I'm going to listen to these two albums a few times and write down thoughts about them.

This isn't background. This is my job. I'm a full-time podcaster. That was very magnanimous for you let me just say quickly and i watched limitless completely embittered from the jump mad that i had to do it i realize even though i picked a thing i thought you would like i understand that i gave you a six-part documentary series and unlike the title of the show your time to view things is not limitless you have very tiny windows

where you can actually consume filmed things especially I gave you a thing that was like maybe Colleen will like it but that but there's a chance she won't and you still have to watch it. You still have to commit to six hours of your life to this show. Right. Yeah. And I do want to talk about it.

I'm excited to talk to you about them at last. But I am curious. Well, first, I think you should probably let people know how you felt about the Decembrists before these two albums, you listened to these albums. Yeah. The things I didn't like about the Decembrists, and I apologize for how critical, I hope Colin

Decembrist doesn't listen to this podcast. I do not like his voice. Yeah. I find it very unpleasant. And I know that might be, well, a couple things. I don't like his voice. Yeah. I find it very unpleasant. And I know that might be... Well, a couple things. I don't like his voice. I think their lyrics are incredibly pretentious.

These were all my previous thoughts. I thought the band was all style, no substance. They were just really going for this very specific indie folk throwback fucking vibe. They just want it to be a vibe as a band, and that's reflected in the way they dress. It's reflected in the types of songs they write and the types of very flashy, old-timey words that they put in the songs.

And it's reflected in the instrumentation. They'll bring out accordions and violins and, I don't know, some fucking bearded loser squeezing an instrument that they stopped making in the 1800s. They do all that. All of that is still true yeah it must have been exciting for you to realize that you were right and your your concerns were valid with the decemberist and i i uh i know it's gonna it will probably sound strange to longtime listeners of this podcast because i am famously pro two very specific things in music.

Lead singers with kind of janky, weird voices and interesting lyrics that I don't hear often. Like down to like literal words that I feel like, oh, you know, they don't, that's not a word I hear in songs very much. That's great. I like that. And I say those two things and I stand by those two things

and I know how that And I, I, I say those two things and I stand by those two things and I know how that must run counter to, uh, like then Daniel, why don't you love the Decembrists? I, it's just something about their fucking vibe, man.

It's, I was right about this whole shit. I will say, um, I started with the crane wife and this is the thing I learned about myself that really bumpedmed me out. Because I, of the two albums, enjoyed this one a lot more.

And I liked specific songs in it. And I feel like it effectively accomplishes what it set out to do. And I'm like, all right, maybe The Crane Wife is the album for me. And then I read about the album on Wikipedia and it was like, oh, it's their most popular one. I'm just straight down the middle with everyone else's taste.

This one connected with me because I'm just as dumb as, yeah. I will say, can I tell you my joke about The Crane Wife before I start reviewing specific things? Absolutely. I want it. My main review, this would be like the top line review. If you're going to write a pretentious album with end songs called The Crane Wife littered with a bunch of obscure artsy references,

you better be talking about Maris. Yeah. I'd read that in pitchfork that is the uh the true gift of this album was me thinking of that joke and then refusing to search if anyone had made a maris or lilith crane joke anywhere man it does feel like frazier and niles would love the Decembrists. Yeah, absolutely. There's so much Iceman Cometh vibes to the Decembrists. Here are my notes. Right off the bat, the name of the first song on this album is The Crane Wife No. 3. And I wrote The Crane Wife No. 3, fuck off. I was so immediately mad that I felt like I was being attacked by this album because there's a Crane Wife number three and a number one and number two.

And number one doesn't open the fucking album. And I was just like, it's so, it's such a choice. They do it on purpose. And I'm mad at this choice. And I don't know what it means. And what did you think of the song itself though? When the other instruments came into that song, it was good.

I did end up enjoying that song a lot in my top three on that album. Here's another thing that made me so mad. The name of the second song, Soarin', on this album. The island, colon, come and see, slash, the landlord's daughter, slash, you'll not feel the drowning.

What? Is that true? That's what it says on Spotify. Song number three, Yankee Bayonet, parentheses, I will be home then. Come on! It's so pretentious. I have to go fucking link these up now. I'm so mad.

These names are just simply unacceptable. The island coming down. Yeah. Yeah. These songs, these song names suck. Yeah. I started writing down. Perfect crime number two. There is no perfect crime number one. No.

I started writing down words they use that pissed me off and then i stopped doing that because there are just too many of them but i wrote curlews arabesques cormorants sycorax parallax and i was and i stopped doing that because like this is this is a game to them this is they're doing it on purpose they like to use their silly dumb words that make me feel like an idiot for having to look up what they mean um what did i like on this album summer song was tight uh perfect crime number two goes that was the part of the album that i had to be honest and complimentary i was really surprised and also very this album makes you acutely aware of their

versatility as a band they they they they aren't just one thing like i i feel like any mumford and son song sounds like every mumford and son song every kings of leon song sounds like a kings of leon song uh which i don't fault them for but the decemberists apart from like that guy's voice and a couple of their instrumentation decisions, they're like, this is like, I thought it was going to be all sea shanty indie bullshit.

And there is a lot of that, but also they do play with a little bit more of an edge and a little bit more progressive than I was expecting them to do based on the few songs I've heard of theirs. Yes, okay. What are my notes here? Crane Wife 1 and 2.

Gotta hand it to them. This song fills me with joy, but I also have to hand it to me for my instincts. I think I'd like it more if he didn't say Crane Wife so many times in the song. Do you know the folktale of the Cr wife uh yes i i looked it up because one thing i i i knew you would okay i didn't do that i think will probably hurt my overall enjoyment of this is i didn't study the lyrics super hard i can tell straight away that like to like this band is to like and pay attention to the lyrics and to know the story that they're they're telling and i don't i don't connect with

lyrics quickly it takes me a while to like listen and figure out what a song is is talking about um but so i read the the wikipedia entry on it to find out the story that it's based on which you can tell really quickly if you want to i've been talking a lot uh no the crane wife story is just that there's a man who uh i think he was married at one point and then his wife is dead he's lonely and he finds a wounded crane he nurses it back to health and it becomes a woman and he marries her and then she starts using the feathers of her from her body to weave something for him i don't know if it's a product that then like they're selling or if it's just something to keep him warm in the winter and she ends up killing herself basically or getting to the point where she can't fly anymore because she's

uh given him all of her feathers yeah um what a dumb idea for an album uh i don't know i got my there's a song called when the war comes that i've written down is uh unlistenable oh valencia is a song i'd already heard before this assignment that was one that i think someone put on uh a mix on for me years ago um so i've in in my brain valencia has has been uh their their hit is it i don't i don't think so but yeah it's it's pretty close it's like that's like the right vein what about the shankill butchers what do you think of that one uh title pissed me off yeah it didn't make it into my notes as one of my favorites or one of my least favorites it's um i think i i can't remember which song it was but there there's one of their songs that i thought maybe if if maybe it's something with the with the production if i can if i could see this live and see what that what they're like as a band because they

can all they all seem like technically good at their instruments i do like their their drummer and a lot of choices he's making um and i watched a video of them and that was a mistake because i see them in all their fucking outfits and i see that violin player just standing on the stage the whole time when she only has like a little bit of violin stuff to do she just stands there like a dipshit they're all wearing their hats soaring yeah they've all got caps yeah um i i wanted to hear i want to hear more um covers of their songs because my my theory that this guy's voice is a non-starter for me right uh i i do want to like give the songs another shot with a with a different singer singing them that's fair there there aren't

really great covers out there um what do i have to do it like them i know what we have for uh picaresque oh that the opening to that album offended me it just opens with some kind of i don't have my phone to play it on but we'll have uh gabe laird in in post it just opens with some kind of i don't have my phone to play it on but we'll have uh gabe layered in in post it just opens with some fucking noise not an instrument it's just some the the infanta is the name of the song and it starts with just some like howling horse shit nonsense horseshit nonsense sketch in the mood man just to get over the right frame of mind for a storytelling you know when when people like me when heroes like me uh make fun of the decemberists uh it's because of songs like the mariners revenge song that is what all of us are thinking before we've even heard word

note one of that song uh if someone had just like described what this band was and they were like now you have to write a joke title for one of their stupid songs. It would be the Mariner's Revenge song. And it would sound exactly like this fucking song sounds. It does seem like satire. Like, if you had to write lyrics for them, you'd be like, okay, this is gonna be a fucking December song.

You may not remember me. I was a child of three. And you, a lad of 18. We are two mariners, our ship's sole survivors in this belly of a whale. Its ribs are ceiling beams. The guts are carpeting. I guess we have some time to kill. If my lead singer showed up with that, I'd be like, hey, I love being in this band with

you. I've always kind of thought we're kidding, right? This proves it. This proves you're not really serious like what are you talking about he chased we are two mariners huh he it's the story of a of a man on a mission of vengeance that chases this other guy down to the point where they're stuck in the belly of a whale together and he's intent on killing him but like i hate that title and i hate almost all of the lyrics i do genuinely love i guess we have some time to kill as like the punch line to that to the opening of the song

we're stuck in this whale and i guess let's chat. You know, that's a fun visual to me, but like that song drives me nuts. I have like an active hatred for that song. Hey, take a minute. Think about how many subscriptions you've signed up for throughout your entire life. And then think for a second about all the ones that you haven't used for what, six months, a year, maybe longer. They're just continually taking money from you and you have no idea. Well, our sound engineer had an experience just like that. He found out that he was paying over $150 a month to Amazon for Amazon subscriptions to his streaming services or whatever, and had no idea and had to cancel them.

So now he knows how much his subscriptions cost. Do you know how much your subscriptions cost? Most Americans think they spend around $80 a month on subscriptions. That's nowhere close. You got to go a lot further north than that. The actual total cost is closer to $200. If you don't know exactly how much you're spending every month, you need Rocket Money. The average person has around 12

paid subscriptions. That's too many to keep track of. I only have 10 fingers. I couldn't even count all of those. With Rocket Money, you can quickly identify and cancel all of those unwanted subscriptions. Rocket Money, formerly known as Truebill, is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills all in one place. Rocket Money makes canceling subscriptions as easy as the click of a button. Simply find the subscription you don't want and press cancel, and Rocket Money will cancel it for you. No more long hold times with customer service or tedious emailing back and forth. Over 3 million people have used Rocket Money,

saving the average person up to $720 a year. Across 3 million people, $720 a year. That, let me do the math real quick. That's like easily a million dollars, I bet. I bet. Not great at math. So stop throwing your money away cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash qq that's rocketmoney.com

slash qq uh you know what song uh sporting life i wrote down give me any other lead singer uh i also have in my notes i can't believe i kind of like a song called The Bagman's Gambit. Never mind. Okay, here we go. Never mind. This one took a turn for the unlistenable. What? Yeah.

The Bagman's Gambit is like, I was very curious how you would feel about that song. For people at home who don't all listen to the Decembrists, this is the story. It's basically the saint in a song. It's like this man who's an internet well we don't actually know we don't know what the genders are here but there's somebody who is an international spy there's somebody in this town who has fallen in love with this spy and is helping them and helping them like get into the like sneak past the gates of embassies and stuff like that and they clearly have had sex at some point but it's also very

clear by the end of the song that this spy is just this is just somebody that the spy is taking advantage of so they can use them in this town like get them to special places in this town and it's such a sad longing song from this person who thinks that this spy is in love with them yeah i didn't i didn't get any of that um 16 military wives is my favorite across both albums. I think that song kind of rules. I don't want to look into it to find out that's their most popular party anthem, and I would feel like it's not.

Not by any means. Dumb comedy again. What about On the Bus Mall? That one did not make an impact on me. Okay. On the Bus Mall is a song that i would when i was like 23 i was out of college and i was listening to this this a lot maybe i was a little older i can't remember but that was a song that like if i needed a good cry i was gonna go listen to on

the bus mall i don't it is it's such a sad song that's's so fascinating. I cannot get to an emotional place with any of this music like you're talking about because the singer is so distracting to me. And I don't know if I will ever get past that barrier for him. I've written it in my notes so many times. Also, they dress like thrift store assholes is in all caps. I must have just found the video at that point because i wrote i would not recommend watching videos of their live performances caps dressed like thrift store assholes i also realized that sometimes when i was listening to it i couldn't tell um if the weird uncomfortable extra vibration I was hearing was from the band or a result of the fact that I live in a very old house that sometimes gets creaky and

vibrates if there's like a large car driving by but the the and Sometimes it was my house vibrating and sometimes it was like some weird additional noise they'd inserted in the production of their song but even like the sheer fact that i don't i can't tell and i have to pause the music to see if that is uh if that distracting weird creaking noise is part of the experience that's that tells me a lot for this band that that it's like it's so weird and off-putting, and I genuinely don't know if, like, I could be having a heart attack while listening to this music and be like, I guess that must be part of it too. I don't know. None of it's supposed to feel or sound good.

I'm realizing now that my taste in music so frequently is built from, this is weird. This is weird. What is it? Like, why is this weird and then listening to the lyrics and storytelling and being like oh there it is it's all redeemed like there it's trying to set a mood and then it's just telling a story this is not clearly a bop like i'm not supposed to dance to this so like animal collective is a band that I also really liked that I think you would fucking hate. And, uh,

and it's so, and then like when I get to that point or like wean, wean is like that in a lot of ways where I'm like, why wean? Why is this song like this? And then as I listen to more, I see them live or whatever. I'm like,

okay, I get it now. And now it's my favorite song. I, I had a, uh, an intense reaction because i was just putting it on spotify and i would i would start it in its entirety over and over again and if i wasn't paying attention when the album was done spotify would move on be like oh i guess he likes this kind of stuff now and they would automatically play some fleet fox's song and i was like no you are not part of the assignment you i don't have to

listen to you you're not spinach out of here get out of here you harmonizers um yeah so on the bus mall for people at home again it's a song about um young kids who go into prostitution because their lives at home are bad and they go and live out on the streets. And like, they're it's the experiences that they're having are traumatizing and dark and deeply sad. And then, but they're, they have each other and like, they're all living together in this group and really feeling very optimistic

about that. But in a way where we, as an audience has to be like, Oh, you're doomed. This is really sad. This is, the things are not going to go well for you.

But them talking, feeling good every once in a while. They're playing in the pool hall. They're feeling good about each other and their situation because they have one another. And there's other people who can commiserate. But this is not going to last. This is not tenable for them. We laughed off the quick tricks, the old men with limp dicks on the colonnades of the waterfront park.

Colonnades, yeah. Colonnades? Yeah. Lord. I know. They had a rat trap hotel where they squirreled away their money and then they slept in on Sundays, Dan. I like that lyric. They slept in on Sundays.

Slept in on the Sundays. i liked that oh love it some good specificity and songwriting i don't i don't mind that but they tell so much more of the story because they get a shun from their families because their families are religious they don't go to church they sleep in on like there's just there's so much storytelling happening in each line like this is what i would emulate my short stories on because i would like read his stuff and i'd be like okay he's saying a lot how do i do that he's really concise overall i'm glad to have been proven right about very nice tastes i'm i'm i uh i feel really bad that i'm that i'm i'm that it's on record that i i hate this guy's voice because i don't like being defined by things that i hate um and i can see how this band brings people a lot of joy with their their their weird shit that is normally right in my cue zone. But unfortunately,

I'm going to have to give the Decemberists for their two albums, Bibliophile and the River of Night, four middle fingers up. Yeah, that's fair. That's fine. I didn't expect that by the end, you would be like, I love this band now.

But I did think that you would have these moments where you're like, God damn it, I like this song. And that's what I really wanted. Certainly, yeah. And that was mission accomplished. Okay. You want to move on to Limitless?

I would love to talk about Limitless. Okay. Limitless, from the very first episode, am a big chris hemsworth fan i like him a lot i think he's very funny i think his improv is really funny and it's on display in a couple different movies i i don't know you see a ton of it in thor maybe some it's hard to tell uh but you get a lot of it in Ghostbusters. Have you seen the two more recent Thors? I've seen Love and Thunder. And Ragnarok? Oh yeah, I've seen both of those.

Yeah, he's very funny in both of those. He's so funny, but his timing's really great and everything. I can't tell of that what is actually improv. Him being like, I lost my hammer, that still stings a bit. Like I can't tell if that kind of stuff is just like him or if he's just a really great actor. The reason I bring up improv though is that this show made me like chris hemsworth less interesting i thought he was not very charming or likable in this at all um he does a lot of straight to camera stuff there's a lot of like i mean everybody in the

show let me give you like everybody run down first what limitless is it's a show about chris hemsworth uh trying to it starts off with him trying to uh defy death basically he's got these big fears about the future and like what his future holds for him and the fact that all of us someday will die and so he's going through all these scientists these sports scientists and meeting with them as they say here are things that we know can help uh yeah help you stay young no matter what like yeah i do think it's important i i think it's important whenever anyone is discussing the show limitless that uh the discussion is framed in terms of like here's what the show says it's trying to do uh because that's important for the fun twist of

and then here's the inexplicable way the show ends because that's what really makes this this whole thing pop for me and the show is you're right just him being like i'm handsome successful physically fit accomplished movie star chris hemsworth uh this almost feels like a vanity project where i'm going to talk to experts about uh living better looking younger feeling younger and in the process i'm going to uh do a bunch of impressive shit and conquer my fears. That is what is being sold to you. I would say 70% of every episode. That's what they're selling you on is like watch Chris Hemsworth,

you know, do a tightrope walk across two buildings. Watch him. Now here he is doing some cool surfing. Now here he is ice swimming or whatever. You know, a bunch of dumb physical stunts for Chris Hemsworth to be like, I didn't think I could do the cool thing,

but there I am doing it. Yeah. All right. Join us next week. Yeah. So for the beginning of the episode, I was like, hey, here's this challenge, Chris Hemsworth.

And he's like, oh, there's no way I could do that. No way. And then two weeks later, and it's him doing it. And you're like, oh, my God, Chris Hemsworth, he really is Thor. He's a god among us. And the challenges are so tenuously tied to whatever he's trying to accomplish. Like, there's one where he, like, they're trying to get his, he trains really hard for Thor obviously, but he's training a lot of muscle fibers that are like not for endurance.

And so there's this one challenge where they're like, we got to work on your endurance. We just got to change the way that you train so that your muscles can overcome stuff over long periods of time. So what we're going to have you do that he's not like running a marathon or anything. They're like, you're going to climb a rope by the end of this. Well, that's not the same thing. That's not the same thing at all. But they wanted to climb a rope up, and it has to be a rope attached to a gondola dangling

30,000 feet over the ground or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, a lot of the challenge is also it's clear that he's got a background in the area, but they're playing against that. They're not really acknowledging it. There's one where he's supposed to be deep sea's clear that he's got a background in the area but they're not they're like playing against that they're not really acknowledging it there's one where he's supposed to be deep sea diving and he's got a it's at the end of him fasting for a week or something like that three days end of him fasting for three days and then he's got to dive uh

400 meters i don't know if that's right. 400 meters, something like that, down into the sea. And he's with a spear gun. He's got to go catch his first meal that he eats. That has nothing to do with the rest of the episode. That episode is about fasting. But we also have to have something action-y and cool at the end that he can accomplish. He clearly does a lot of spearfishing. We never focus on that because he's so good at it that you're like, by the end

they're like, well, we can't pretend that that's something we did teach him. Also, the deep sea diving, he's great at, his swimming is his element. Yeah. I've never tried spearfishing before, but I've watched a lot of videos on it, and it is not something that you can just do. It's not something that, even if you're

a regular diver, even I've seen like regular divers who were like, I'm going to try, I'm visiting a friend. I'm going to try spearfishing for the first time. And it's a real struggle. Yes. Chris Hemsworth is great at it. In his vanity project. Yeah.

So I did like the trajectory of, of the full, the arc of the season, which is he goes in there with the, he's telling the camera he's afraid of death. And so here are the things that can turn back time so that you can last longer. But by the end, you're sort of realizing, no, what he's really scared of is the vanity issue, which is getting old. Yeah. He's terrified of getting old in any way. And he wants to basically live in a refrigerator and just preserve what he's got for the rest of his life.

Understandably, that's his meal ticket. Like he's aside from the fact that he is very funny and he's a good actor. Like he knows why he's getting hired. He knows why he's doing different jobs. He's so good looking and he's so well built and like as a human being just like the way his body's piled up is perfect yeah um and he doesn't want to lose that no yeah and he there's some like we learn throughout this series that like part of the getting old thing is a very specific

fear of i think it's dementia or alzheimer's something that yeah we discover uh he is uniquely um not predisposed to but there's there's something in his genealogy where it's like this this increases the chances that you will get alzheimer's at some point in your life and he really doesn't want that either and that's that's one thing that i feel like is a bit stripped away from the vanity and is a real like oh i need to i need to take care of my my whole self and i need to think about my life differently because uh i'm i'm taking so much time making movies and uh not making memories with my. And one day I might not have memories of anything at all. And that's bad.

So I mentioned that the improv is bad in this. There's a lot of, there's a lot of scenes where it's designed to be improv where it's like designed to seem very off the cuff, these comments and stuff, but they're just not landing at all. It's, it's a weird way where like he's talking direct to camera and he's supposed

to be doing kind of some of these things. And it's, you know why it probably irks me is that it's the same issue I suffer from It's in a weird way where he's talking direct to camera and he's supposed to be doing some of these things. You know why it probably irks me is that it's the same issue I suffer from where I will write something. I want it to sound natural, but as I'm doing it, I'm realizing it's not sounding natural. I'm somewhere in between. I'm in this sort of half-written thing and half pageantry where I'm trying to make it sound like it's off the cuff. So much of the show is just that. And, uh,

it really drove me crazy. It also made me think that he doesn't have true friends because he takes buddies on some of these trips where he takes his brothers and the chemistry just sucks so hard between him and his buddies. They're, it's never good. Those buddies seem like pretty big. Yes.

Men to me. And like just other very fit Australian bros that he has found and collected that, uh, it's quite possible. They're not really friends at all. And like one of those, one of those kids guys could be like,

Hey, yeah, before you scale that mountain, um, real quick, am I married? What are my kids' names? Come on, Chris.

I've been your driver for 16 years. There is one guy, though. I'll say two people on the show that I really, really enjoyed and liked. The last episode features his wife pretty heavily, and she seems so great. And on camera, she's wonderful. She's not an actress, I don't think. No, she is like a stunningly beautiful, very sweet woman who I believe really loves Chris Hemsworth. Yes, and I believe in everything that she said.

I can't stress enough how much of the show is just way too close on somebody's face as they give a monologue over a black background. Yeah. Black background. So a lot of it's just like talking directly to somebody. I'm backing up in my chair because I feel like I'm too close to these people. It's so weird how close they choose to be. But she's wonderful. She does genuinely seem to love him.

She seems like a very humble person and not a super vain person. And also completely natural. And their interactions with each other. She drives him to an old folks home in the last episode because he lives at an old folks home. I'll get into that later. That's the thing we need to talk about. He lives at an old folks home that's made just for him and then they hired a bunch of old actors for it um but uh that him talking to her in the car i was like yes this is what i've been missing the

whole series is like somebody who's this this man actually cares for her um but the other person that i really liked was ross edgley do you remember who he was uh refresh my memory he's the sports scientist who's in a number of the episodes who like he swam around great britain oh yeah yeah yeah yeah this guy is uh he he's not like a crazy person or anything like that he just feels very like a very i mean i think it's because they also have met on this so you're like jumping into this relationship at the same time that they are he just seems like a very nice encouraging and like fun dude yeah i was into him yeah uh we need to talk about the final episode

because that's that's the the main draw of why I wanted you to watch this is the producer Darren Aronofsky I guess like acquires an old folks home slash like a camp and like the framing of it is like Chris Hemsworth you know you're really afraid of dying and getting

old and in the past what we've done is try to like show you ways to uh improve your health to extend your life and to to live better now we're going to take a different approach we are going to make death and getting old less scary for you so we we bought a town and we filled it with actors. Some of them are going to pretend to be this. They're all like committed to the improv in our M. Night Shyamalan village situation where the whole staff, when they look at you, they're going to interact with you as if you were like a fucking 89-year-old, frailil kind of heavier man.

They're gonna talk like you can't hear them very well. We're gonna make you wear these stupid glasses that make your vision impaired and your hearing. And we're gonna make you wear a suit that makes it harder for you to move around to mimic how difficult it is for older folks to move around. We put you in a room that you're staying in that you live here now and we have using set direct decorators dressed it

up to look like your house will look when you are 90 years old or whatever there's like a prop book that you wrote there's Photoshop pictures of your brothers getting older and your wife getting older and your kids being grown up and you're not allowed to communicate with anyone and you're gonna have to do you're gonna have to do all the old people things you're gonna eat the food you're gonna you're gonna do the the kind of exercises that you don't like to do you're gonna do like like group old people home waving your arm exercises and then at the end of this experiment, we are going to stage your death.

So we're going to bury you, put you in a coffin. He's in hospice care. Yeah, he's in hospice care for three days before he dies. But they also... Yeah, go ahead. No, go before like before we even get to like the like they do kind of like prepare him like all right well get in one of the coffins see how it

feels yeah it's like thing things nobody's gonna do anyway but like they're like and now this is like this is what it would be like and they also like they stage his death basically like they get him on a gurney and stuff like that. But before all of that, they really do a number on him because I, I mean, I learned through the episodes kind of how vain he is. And for, I don't want to say vain necessarily,

because I think it's for good reason that he's so concerned with the way that he looks, but he's also, they're like, we also, we were going to surprise him. We dressed up his wife. We aged her up in old person makeup

we like gave her new hands and stuff like that and he doesn't know this and he's gonna see her there and she's gonna like turn around and then they're gonna dance together yeah and they don't know how he's gonna respond to this at the hospice care prom they snuck his wife in and dressed her as a very old person yeah we don't know if she's gonna if he's gonna like see her and go oh yuck yuck or what he'll do but uh they do this this is what i was afraid of my wife not being hot anymore this sucks i was right uh but it is a very touching moment where he touches her shoulder and because she's pacing the other way they're like you need to go dance with that woman.

Because he just goes along with the flow of whatever he's supposed to do with this old book. So he's like, okay. Wanders over to this old lady, touches her shoulder. And the minute he touches her shoulder, you can see it on his face that he goes like, I know this shoulder. You know who this is. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I felt this. That's why a part that strained credulity to me was uh him even walking up to her i feel like if someone dressed someone in my family up in very old people makeup and they were like go talk to that that guy across the, whatever this auditorium is in this small town we acquired, go talk to that person. I could, I know how my brother stands from like,

from down the street. I could see someone I've known for a long time and I've really spent time with, I'd be like, could see like the body shape of a relative of mine from like across a lake and be like oh that's that's that's tommy that's that's how he stands completely still at 300 yards away or whatever um so even though she had her back turned i thought if i'm chris hemsworth uh i'm i'm spotting my wife immediately like right oh she, she's got white hair. But, you know, that's how my smoke show wife sits. Yes.

I think, yeah. You're probably right. I mean, so much of this show is clearly a charade. Charade. Yeah. Charade. I mean, what kind of asshole do you want to be? I think the former.

I think the Decembrist pronounced it charade. Yeah, then I'm going to be the other kind of asshole. There was an episode that pissed me off so much. It was clear from the beginning. This is the thing you pointed out to me as well. They're never going to put Chris Hemsworth in serious danger. Every single episode is supposed to look like he's in clear jeopardy, but there's no fucking way that insurance companies or the Marvel movie cinematic universe would allow him to be in any kind of real danger. A thousand percent, no.

He's not allowed to swim without Marvel standing nearby. Yeah. standing nearby. Yeah. So there's an episode where he's supposed to, he gets dropped off out in a rainforest and he and his buddy have to find their way to a particular site. And it's miles of terrain where they're crossing

and it's like a two or three day trip. As they get out of the plane, they put on their backpacks and they're wearing like big backpacks like they're gonna be out there camping but they they just throw them on it's clear that these things are stuffed with fucking nothing they don't they're just like it's newspaper in there they throw these things on chris hemsworth at no point buckles his waist belt and that's like on a big backpack that's where all your the weight sits it's on that and he does not ever put that on and then at one point they have to jump off a waterfall and so they're

like well we should throw our packs down first and they throw their packs into the water and these packs could not have floated down more gently than a feather like they they hit the water and just settle on top of it and float like a water skipper like there's nothing in these things and they know it's like we get this whole thing where they're like supposed to be camping on top of it and float like a water skipper. There's nothing in these things. We get this whole thing where they're supposed to be camping there. We see tents out of nowhere. We don't know where they came from. They also have dressed Chris in all these episodes. These are not his real clothes. They can't be because he's dressed like every guy from a commercial. He's got a one-under shirt, he's got a button-up shirt that's not buttoned over that, and then he's

got an unzipped jacket over that. Every costume designer loves layers like that. Not a single human being dresses like that. Yeah. Yeah. We don't think about our wardrobe in terms of accent pieces

to put on, but you certainly do when you're dressing a movie star right and the pax thing is is really egregious as as someone who's done a lot of backpacking it's it's the backpack that fucking kills you it's easy to to walk straight and like the elements can be annoying but you can walk and rain the thing that on day two your body is already familiar with how the bag sits and it already hates it as soon as you put those straps on your waist it's like oh yeah i remember this i fucking hate this this is this is i have i have pain muscle memory of of this right now it's torture it's torture putting that bag on the second day clipping that and then

cinching it and you don't see any of that and they're they're and there's just there's no stakes in this episode whatsoever it's them just walking through a forest and so like they're trying to add stakes by being like well they're out there for three days and they don't have any food none of that's true no of course not and it's like, oh, we might die out here. Oh, really? Might you die? We're going to have to get a new Thor because you wanted to do this Nat Geo docuseries? Right.

Yeah. We built this whole jungle, you idiot. The way that they get around is so incredible. They don't have topography maps instead they have pictures they have photographs of the different areas so that they can just hold up this 8 by

8 by 11 and a half picture and next to like a waterfall be like yeah okay that's the waterfall that's where we're supposed to go and then red marker drawn arrows where they're supposed to go it's red marker drawn in arrows where they're supposed to go uh it's so silly it's it's not a way anyone has ever traveled through wilderness at all um that whole episode i was like let's do something else let's let's go kill him and you know that final episode from from the from where the show started and what it said it was trying to do to where it ended, was such a fun journey for me.

And I also thought you would like, I thought you'd like that little twist. And I thought you would connect with him the most in that last episode. Because I do feel like, not when he's doing the faking his own death kind of stuff. Not when he's doing the faking his own death kind of stuff. But I think when he is at the hospice care and everyone is talking to him like you would a very old person. And they're like, hello, Chris. We heard you used to be an actor. That sounds fun. Okay, it's bedtime now.

And talking to him like that and having him move around in this suit that is clearly making movements difficult for him. I'm really, I think he's really pissed off. I think you can really feel he is unhappy doing this. And that's like the only time in the show where I really felt like, oh, the charming Chris Hemsworth thing that he does all the time everywhere. It's starting to slip a little bit here.

He doesn't like not being famous, Chris Hemsworth. And you can see it in his eyes that he could probably be thinking to himself, they're just pretending. You're still tall and hot. They are paid to pretend you're not tall and hot. But he's still so mad about it. He can't shake it. He's like, I don't like anyone talking to me like I'm not a tall, hot guy.

I've been getting that everywhere for my whole life and the other episodes are completely dedicated to him being ripped to him having a shirt off for a long period of time like even points where he doesn't need it like there's just a lot of him shooting the shit in a hot tub and stuff like that and you're like chris could you get your upper body out of the water a little bit further so that we can all see it like that's yeah there you go good and uh and he's used to that and then they put him in this suit that is the silliest looking suit to make him an old man where it's got he's got like this weird helmet on so he can't hear anything terrible glasses and then he's got these suspension

cables to his arms and legs that make it harder for him to walk and move around and the suit looks so silly at the very beginning of the episode, his wife laughing at him in it. And he's walking around a community of people that he doesn't know, strangers. And he's so used to strangers being like, ah, sexually attractive man. And nobody's doing that here. And he's like... And then he's playing ping pong with one of the residents

and the resident is destroying him. And I'm like, man, Hemsworth is pissed to shit right now. I did appreciate that episode and that all the other episodes are like, here are ways that you can help stave off death. Here's like, at the end of the day, you're going to take a 30 second cold shower. Here are like tangible things that you can do

and things that he's like going to talk. He considers doing some of them. And then the last episode they're like, okay, the truth is, is none of that's going to matter. Chris, you're going to get old. You're going to get old and you're going to die. And like misery comes at last to the healthy man. Like that's just the way it is. And so now we're going to help you just deal with that. So like, and that's where like the Darren Aronofsky really comes into it is that you're watching this whole thing you're like

this is why is darren aronofsky even involved in this and then you get to the end it's like oh no this is just helping some man cope with the fact that at some point the inevitable will come for him too yeah ah what a fun journey um yeah but but I was so pissed off throughout a lot of it because that's a long walk to get there. And that other stuff isn't just pageantry. Like we're not just there to like, so that the end pays off better. They're trying to teach you stuff in the other episodes.

And I hated what they were trying to teach us. And I hated the way that they were doing it. All right. So it sounds like at the end of the day, we both gave each other pretty bad assignments. We should do this again. I know. I don't, I.

Well, this isn't, this isn't an assignment, but you should watch the show Kunk on Earth just because it's good and you don't need to think about it. It's good. I do have one other one that I want to give you. I don't need to think about it. It's good. I do have one other one that I want to give you. I don't know if we can do it in this episode, but there's something I'd like you to try to do. There's no reason you would in your ordinary life, but I'd like you to watch the show Bluey. It's on Amazon Prime, so I know you can watch it.

Bluey is a kid's cartoon. Kid's show, yeah. Have you watched any of it before? No. Okay. I'd like you to watch it. and if for some reason you can't watch all of it i'd like you to watch chicken rat an episode called chicken rat chicken rat yeah and then i want to talk about it okay you don't want to give me you don't want to tip me off on anything you won't you want me to sit down and really watch this and i want you to watch a yeah a kid's cartoon and i don't know to tip me off on anything. You want me to sit down and really watch this. I want you to watch a kid's cartoon. And I don't know if I'm sure with your nephews,

like you watch kids cartoons, PJ Masks. Yeah. Oh, boy, do I hate PJ Masks. Yeah, I hate all of them. I hate every kid's cartoon. There's some really dog shit ones out there. But I want you to watch Bluey, and then I want to talk about it.

All right. I don't have one for you, but I'll think of something. dog shit ones out there but i want you to watch bluey and then i want to talk about it all right uh i don't have one for you but i'll think of something i want you to watch kunk on earth not for uh content for our show i think that and hey listeners at home this is something you could do because i consider you listeners the the the third co-host of the show you can also watch Kunk on Earth and enjoy it and just like me and Soren we're not gonna we don't need to talk about it to each other alright

well that's our show yeah Dan and I are still on Twitter but we didn't leave so you can follow Dan at DOB underscore INC. You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD. You can follow Quick Question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. If you have an email for us, it's not going to fit on Twitter.

You can send it to QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. And we, of course, have a sound engineer and a uh i don't even i guess at some point i should ask him all of his roles i always say that he's our our producer our sound engineer and editor i wonder if he cares if those are we asked him at one point and then i just never changed them editor producer yeah producer, editor, producer gave harder. Our theme song is by me Rex and you can find their music at me Rex. No, hold on a second. Let me scroll down. You can find their music at me rex.bandcamp.com or you can just find it on Spotify or whatever else you listen to. And that's it.

We are too bad. Bye. We are too bad brothers Bye We could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it up with? Where did all the good things go? 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 I think you'll have a great time here