Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - When Do Kids Get Phones Now?

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

The guys tackle the impossible question of when kids should get phones and the complicated experience of parenting in a world full of outside influences, plus reminisce about their own extremely dated internet influences, and somehow manage to defend Stone Cold Steve Austin as a positive role model. Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode. RocketMoney.com/qq.  Reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

And she was like, but I am getting married. And I was like, oh, and she goes today. And I was like, oh my God. Whoa. You shouldn't be at work. What do you mean she shouldn't be at work? She's got 18 mounds of feet. I've got a quick, quick question for you.

All right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to know 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. 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?

Who did I meet? Who did you remember? Words without words, word and all that Who did you go to weeknight? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast. Senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents. And still in the process of moving, guy Daniel LeBriain joins us as always by my co-host with Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello.

Hey everybody, I'm Soren Bowie. I'm a writer for American Dad and that's pretty much all I got going on. Daniel, I'm gonna give you one piece of constructive criticism in your intro. You say, last week's night with John Oliver, and then you launch right into the book that you wrote. It really makes it sound like John Oliver wrote that book.

I think if you listen back you'd be like, oh, it sure does. Oh, I do hear it now. Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting our podcast. 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 rocket money comm slash qq You know there's something else I was thinking about as as it pertains to intros so yeah Feed you might realize you might not be all up on this, but we have a Patreon where you can subscribe to us with money if you want to. And if you do that, you get exclusive paywall bonus episodes twice a month. They're a little bit shorter, they're a little bit looser and sometimes more personal. Some of my favorite episodes are the ones that we do.

So if you have some spare cash and want to subscribe, subscribe. I bring it up now as we're talking about intros is because I do the intros for almost every episode of The Main Feed. Sorin does the intros for almost every episode of the bonus pod and yesterday we recorded two episodes of the bonus pod. Sorin did the first intro and I thought I'm gonna be a good pal and I'm gonna intro the second one. And here it was, maybe my second time doing an introduction to this bonus pod in my life.

And immediately into the intro, I was like, do we still need to do these? Can we cut these? We don't need to do these anymore. The instant I'm given just slightly more work to do on this podcast, I'm like, I don't think we need this part. I think it's fine.

There was a moment in the early days of this podcast when we got a new theme song where we were like, oh, the theme song basically describes what the show is. That's kind of nice. We don't have to do that anymore. And then we're like, yeah, but we already do it. Let's just keep doing it. And we just kept doing it. So people really know what the show is before.

And then, you know what? I'll be honest, it's never that it's never what we say the show is going to be. It's quick question is such a stretch for what we're actually doing here. I'm really committed to. Strengthening the intro in 20 it not forgive me. I almost had the wrong year. It's a boo thousand funny thrive. Yes. Forgive me, I almost said the wrong year. Yeah, please. Booth, Ous, Dan, Funny, Thrive. Yes.

The Year of Our Lord, Booth, Ous, Dan, Funny, Thrive. I'm committed to getting a tight, concise intro that isn't a pain for us to do and sets up what the show is accurately. Are you really, you think you can streamline it more than it currently is? I mean, it's already like, you've got it. You've got it locked in.

I don't think it does a really good job of telling you what the show is. You know what's got some good intros, some tight intros? You've got search engine, no question too big, no question too small. We answer your questions, blah, blah, blah. Science versus has a really tight one. Schmitty's secret incredibly fascinating. Makes it very clear if that's your first episode, you're dropped into that show.

He's got an intro where he tells you, this is a show where we find the things that are secretly incredibly fascinating. Today our topic is gonna be zebra cocks. And then you're like, oh, okay, I know what I'm gonna find out why zebra cocks are secretly incredibly fascinating. I didn't know what I'm, I'm gonna find out why zebra cocks are secretly incredibly fascinating.

I didn't know it before and now I'm gonna learn. You've got it in seconds, you know what you're in for. With our show, I don't know, I just say a whole lot of words that if you've listened to the show before, you're sick of and you wanna skip. And if you haven't listened to the show before, probably seem interesting to you. TV writing, book writing, another TV writer. We rarely talk about those. We don't get into that at all.

Well, I mean to be fair, we don't know what the show is, but also I've listened to other people who do shows that are two TV writers or whatever and as a TV writer, even the Inside Baseball, all of it, I find it incredibly annoying, deeply, deeply annoying to listen to them talk about that stuff and just listen to them complain about it. And then I catch us every once in a while because we have complaints. Everybody has complaints about their jobs

and we start getting into it. And I'm like, no, I don't, the show should not be this. It shouldn't be this. I listened to our show today because we had some technical difficulties and eagle-eyed listeners will... Eagle-eyed listeners? You know, the ears of an eagle. Eagle-eared listeners.

You're ahead of the story. But if you woke up late and you didn't catch this we had a technical glitch with the episode so it only released Soren's audio and so I I I was blue-skied this information someone someone added me on blue sky to say hey I'm sure you're already aware of this But there's something wrong with the episode and so I listened to it from that and a couple of things jumped out at me one We have a bunch of ads in the beginning of the show. We must be doing pretty well.

That's exciting. Good for ads. Ads are good. Two, we had like, I suppose we're doing these cold opens now where we say something out of context before the theme song hits. And in this particular episode, whatever the cold open was,

we don't know because we don't have my audio. We have silence and then you out of nowhere laughing, laughing, hauntedly and then the theme song. It's really, really fun. It's like a very evocative way to start any podcast is silence, laughter theme song. And then if it's really upsetting for me to listen to the show without my voice, not because I'm a narcissist or anything like that. But when the show is only the audio of Soren, it's really clear how long and uninterrupted I talk on this

show. I'm like skipping 30 seconds ahead at a time. It was like, man, I'm not even taking a breath. Well, you know what? We both gave each other space to talk. Here's the deal. I think, God, there's a lot of inside baseball again, but you and I, when we go on podcasts or we used to do like live shows and stuff,

there's a good back and forth. There's like a great You're you can speak now for a little while and now you speak and I will listen to you and then later these will make Callbacks to the things that we had said You try doing this kind of thing with anybody else and you're getting jumped all over like cuz anytime that they think of a joke It's like Like squeezing it in there and you're like well see now. I don't think you're really listening to me And so I think what I'm describing is just chemistry there and you're like, well, see, now I don't think that you're really listening to me.

And so I think what I'm describing is just chemistry, but it's allowing the other person time to just to you trust them. You trust them that they're going to do something and they're going to say something that's interesting at the very least funny. And then and then you get to go. I was a guest recently on our friends podcast, Sean Baby and Robert Rockaway, who run one nine hundred hotdog.com and they have the Dog Zone 9000 podcast.

I was a guest talking about airline safety videos and as I do, I went into a fugue state talking and doing jokes, some off the cuff, most off the cuff, some slightly prepared. And then I finished the podcast and my self-report card on it is how I feel whenever I'm the guest on anyone's podcast. And just like, well, I filled up a lot of time. Because for any of these chat shows, that is the value that I as a guest or anyone as a guest provides.

That's why we have Jason come on this show once a year. It's just like, we are tired and would like someone to occupy some space for a while. So it doesn't, it's no marker of how good my contributions were, but I closed my computer and hung up the headphones and I was like, man, that was like 40 minutes that they don't need to think about.

Yeah, we've gone on secretly, incredibly fascinating too, with Alex Schmidt and it's fun because he will have us both on at the same time. And it's fun to, because he's also a very, he does heat checks all the time and like how it's, who's getting, who's talking, who's not. And it's really funny because he will let a bit go and then he'll let a bit die.

He doesn't just jump in to be like, well, I sense the end coming. And he's like, I'm going to take over. It's really funny because he will let a bit go, and then he'll let a bit die. He doesn't just jump in to be like, well, I sense the end coming. And he's like, I'm going to take over. He's like, no, you have your space. Do what you want to do. And then you keep going. And then all of a sudden we will like,

laugh at our own joke and be like, ah. And then there's another five seconds where he's like, anything else you guys want to do here? You have your fucking fun. He will. So he's very good on his feet, but that podcast is also obviously very like meticulously researched and prepared.

And you can tell when there are some things that he assumes will be like juicy raw materials for us to joke about and he'll give space for us to do that. And my favorite thing is to just not engage. When he's like, and then today in this episode of secretly and incredibly fascinating, we're talking about zippers. They were actually invented in a town called Penis, Wyoming.

And then he looks at us expectantly and he's like, I don't think there's anything interesting about that. Go on. I'm not picking that up at all. Okay, alright. We love Alex Schmidt. He is one of our favorite people in the entire world. I love Rocket Money. It was through Rocket Money that I found out about a subscription that I had completely forgotten about. It was a subscription to a website that

plays weird movies that are hard to get anywhere else and I have never used it once. I either signed up for it as a goof or I signed up for it in a strange fugue state and I forgot about it and Rocket Money helped me find it and cancel it. Rocket Money alerts you to it and cancel it. Rocket Money alerts you to increases in subscription price. If you are on top of your subscriptions but you're not keeping tabs on the prices, Rocket Money will let you know and they can even negotiate it for you. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions,

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in cancelled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash qq today. That's rocketmoney.com slash qq. Rocketmoney.com slash qq. One of the worst starts to our show. I think I'm a little bit flustered because Soren,

Yeah. We gotta address something the viewers can see, but the listeners, even our most eagle-eared listeners can't tell. You're sporting some new fashion today. Would you like to talk about it? Yeah, I guess I should. I'm also realizing as I'm like talking to you,

I'm wearing blush on my face. So you might have noticed Daniel that I have on different nail polishes. I have a bunch of pastel colors. I've got like sort of a greenish yellow, a purple and a blue. Yeah, from the beginning, my issue has not been that you're wearing nail polish.

It's that you are wearing Easter colors and it is January. It's not great colors. And I've got on some makeup. This is actually what I want to talk about too. So I guess I have a question for you Daniel. When your kids, your kids, you know your kids, when they are going to want something like a phone or to get their ears pierced or things where you don't think, you want them to be more emotionally mature before they do it. How are you gonna, and how should I deal with that? How should I negotiate that? Do I, because your options are, you keep it from them

and you risk the chance of them fixating on it and then getting very obsessed with it. And you're just like creating a monster out of it. Or you give it to them and with the hope that they're gonna be like they'll play with it like every other toy that they have for a day and then they're like I'm done with this and they move on to something else but there's always the chance that they won't that they're just like and now I'm and now I do my like my daughter this is the example is I got, we gave her nail polish,

we gave her kids nail polish, it comes off in like two days, surprisingly difficult to get off the first, the same day I found today. And- What do you mean, the blush didn't work? And the makeup was something that she had expressed an interest in,

and we really, really had a tough time deciding whether or not to give her some. She is, for the record, four and a half. And she really wanted some kid makeup and we were like, I don't want to encourage this. Now in the end, we just did it. We got her this very safe kid blush and eyeshadow that come in a little pack together with the intention of being like,

she will play with this and maybe she'll just like, that'll be it. She'll get it. She'll play with it. She understands it. Now she's done with it. But I don't know if that's going to work. And I really don't know what's going to happen when both of them are like, can we have phones? I as someone with no children, I, of course, have really strong opinions about how to raise children. Please, give them to me.

I think about the phone issue all the time. I think I, and I really feel like I'm, I'm going to sound so much older than I actually am, but I feel like we need like federal intervention. We need all schools and all parents on the same page about when kids can have phones. Because if you, when I think about how I would like to raise kids and I wanna keep them not on their phone all the time, and I want to keep them not on their phone all the time.

And I would say like, I don't even think they would have a phone until they need a phone like I didn't get a phone till I was a freshman in college was when I got my cell phone. And I know that times are different now. And I'm not necessarily saying that like, every kid should wait until college to get a phone. But need for me is a, it was a very clear hurdle to clear because it was like, well, you're away from home.

And what if there are emergencies? You are for the first time in your life, not within like a 10 mile radius of the house. You need to be able to access your parents. They need to be able to access you. Um, now that the bar for need has shifted because I don't think there's any real reason that a seventh grader would literally need a phone, but if every kid in the school has a cell phone and not having one makes your kid the weird one or makes things very difficult for them socially,

then yeah, that does become its own kind of need in a way that muddies everything up for me. of saying like you don't wanna raise the one Amish kid in an otherwise thriving urban landscape. Right. Yeah, you don't want them to get- And that's why I wanted to be like a school-wide ban on phones. Like if we all just get together and we all decide that none of the kids need phones,

then none of them will be jealous of any of the other kids with phones. None of them will feel like they need to be on a phone to be where the party is or whatever. I, so yes, I think that there's another element to all of this as well that you wouldn't have experienced yet, which is that when you, kids my son's age, who's he's a little older, like 10, that around that age, there are kids who do have phones and there are kids who have unwheeled like the they're unchecked like they have iPads or they have phones and they're just like unchecked with these things. There's no sort of governance.

So they're on everything. They're on YouTube, all of YouTube, not just like the like safe parts of it. And when you have kids like this and they don't have like monitored screen times and everything, just interacting with those kids, you can tell immediately which are the kids who have that and which are the kids who aren't. Which are the kids who still are like, they're not on phones or anything yet. In the way that they talk to you,

in the way that their attention sits. Like it's, I don't wanna say like they have a shorter attention span, but just like the way that they will focus on a thing for a little while and then focus on something else and like the back and forth, the understanding of how like a conversation works, just like, it's all fucking out the window. The minute you are on the internet for a long period of time and you can see it happen. My neighbor and I talked about this where his kids, they went on a vacation and he gave his kids like,

all right, you know, we're on vacation. We're gonna be driving a lot through Pennsylvania or whatever. You can be on your, you can be on these pads for a little while and kind of you're old enough, you can have free rein. And they're watching a lot of like prank videos and stuff. And it immediately, the kids attitudes

and the way that they treat each other and everything got so much more rotten. Like it was just like so poisoned that he was like, all right, we're done with that. We're not doing that anymore. And so I just, I don't know. I know that they definitely have in terms of like a safety thing where you need to be in touch.

They do make a watch that basically has, you could put three phone numbers in it or whatever. And then the kid can call you from that watch, but it doesn't do anything other than that. And that sounds great. That sounds like the next step, obviously, but there's like, there's so many things that are, I just don't want them encountering for a very, very long time. Which I also feel like will get my kids ass kicked in school.

When they're like, do you have a phone? Add me on Snapchat. It's like, no, actually my parents, my parents realized I don't need a phone because I have this watch. I can just call them with a watch and they know where I am. So it tells the time and it also tells my mommy where I am. It's like, no.

I do have room for one more phone number in there. If you play your cards right, it could be you. What time is it? Time for friends? Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Unfortunately, there are neither one of them is at that age yet, but I, like my daughter's interest

in makeup is just a smaller iteration of that where I'm like, no, that's not, don't want that. How do I make you not want that? Why don't you want it? I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm not trying to like, lead you down a trap. Yeah, no, I don't like the gender norms that it creates.

I don't like her thinking that that's something that she needs. I don't like her thinking about her physical appearance and how to make it better at this age. I don't want that. Probably if I just would have thought about it for any amount of time, I would have come to those conclusions.

But I will also say that since, like this morning we played salon essentially, where I went in, I got my nails done, and I got my makeup done. And it's some of the funniest interactions I have with her. Like it's, I would also hate to lose this because she is somehow inherently understands the idea of, of just like chopping it up.

Like at one of these places, she understands what it means to go into one of these places and then you get chatty and like, that's how it works. And I don't know how she hasn't gone to one of these, but I went in this morning and I was like talking to her, I was like, so you have kids? And she's like, yeah, 18. And I was like, whoa, that's a lot of kids.

That's too many. And yeah, I was like, that's a, man, that's a lot. How old is the oldest one? She's like 18. And I was like, okay, and how old are you? And she goes 16. And I was like, okay, okay. And I guess the husband, the guy in the picture,

and she was like, no, he was eaten by a wolf. I fucking hate when that happens. Yeah, and she was like, but I am getting married. And I was like, oh, and she goes today. And I was like, oh my God, you shouldn't be at work. What do you mean she shouldn't be at work she's got 18 mouths to feed. 19 mouths. Yeah and a wedding to now put on it's tough but the things like the things that she says are so they really get me in a way where I'm like it's so unique and funny like he's

eaten by a wolf I was like yeah of, that's the best answer. That's what it should be. That's so funny. And then her just talking about her different, all the different work that she does. It's, and like, I love it when she describes things to me like she's an adult. She's not trying to be a kid about it. She's trying to be very serious and like talk to me.

It gets me so hard. It's, ooh, I'm not gonna say that. What the fuck? to me, it gets me so hard. It's a, I'm not going to say that. What the fuck? It gets me so bad. Like it's so funny. I just, I can't stop laughing to the point where she'll be like, what are you laughing at? Are you asking me as the salon director or is my daughter? It's my daughter. I'm curious. So years ago you had your makeup professionally done in a YouTube makeup tutorial, not for crack,

for a different website where they did like very professionally done Ziggy stardust makeup all over your face. And I wonder if your daughter would find that interesting because like, hey, look, there's daddy in a video getting makeup on. Or if that would also do anything to nip makeup as a gender normative thing in the bud

and also like present it as something where this isn't just like makeup isn't just a tool to get better looking or hotter or whatever it's going to be or enhance certain features. It's like, look, you could, makeup is a fun thing that anyone can use to have fun and be interesting and be silly. I mean, I do remember, I have memories of being her age

and getting into my friend Shannon's mom's makeup with him. And I was just like in the mirror, like doing it. And like, I totally get it. I get where she's coming from, but I want her to, I want her to not want this. Yeah, I want her to like, this isn't, it shouldn't be on your radar even. It shouldn't, you shouldn't have to deal with this. I want her to like, this isn't, this shouldn't be on your radar even.

It shouldn't, you shouldn't have to deal with this. Anyway, yeah. So the phone situation is now like the very, obviously the macro version of it and the internet in general, the internet at large. And for Christmas, my niece just got a cell phone. She's about Gilly's age. She's about your daughter's age. And it is a cell phone that like beeps and boops

and plays a song and has a camera in it. And that's not actually connected to like wireless or Bluetooth services. You can't make a phone call on it, but she likes to pretend that she like takes it out of her pocket, takes a picture, presses numbers on it. And it's a great way to fool a child into thinking they got a phone.

And I'm observing this thinking like, how long do you think we can pull that off? Because she'll grow out of that phone, but then maybe you can give her an iPhone, a fake iPhone that only lets her text mom and dad. Because like, she'll grow out of that phone, but then maybe you can give her an iPhone, a fake iPhone that only lets her text mom and dad. Can we help? For how long will they know

that they're not actually driving the car? I wonder that too. I think I already fucked up. I fucked up in that I use my phone around my kids. I think people who don't, they're not in the same boat. Cause even as a child, like a young, young infant, you're there seeing an adult looking at this little box in their hands and being clearly interested in it

and riveted by it. And I was like, I'm, so a lot of being with an infant is boring. So you're like, everyone's like, oh, let me just check in on what's going on. Oh, some ostriches got loose. Oh, let me just check in on what's going on. Oh, some ostriches got loose. Oh, everybody's doing jokes about these. This is great. Hold on, hold on, you stay there. I got some good jokes for this. And so they're seeing you riveted by this thing

and, and have continued throughout their entire lives. As far as they know, every time daddy checks out, he goes on this little box and they're like, I would like to be on that box. I also would like that. I can't wait to find out what's on this box that's more interesting than me. And a lot of time it's me getting angry at stuff. It's like I chose to be in this place where instead of being with you, I've decided to get angry at something on this little screen. And so I fucked up. I fucked up in that respect. And I don't know that there's walking that back at this point. But they haven't shown a really like keen interest. And the only thing that's really showing, the only version of this that's showing up in my son's school so far is video games. There's like games that other kids talk about that he doesn't have access to. Also because for the same reason, like video games now, a lot of them are designed to be super addictive and you've got a brain that isn't prepared to shield against that.

Mine barely is. And I don't want him like getting sucked into that either. I want him doing stuff, building things, being outside. And you don't want that because my brain is so fucking fried by phones and screens at this point that I will do all of the things that are on my phone. I'll scroll through Instagram until it says there are no new posts, you've seen everything. And then I'll check my email and I'll check, I'll go through like my old photos and my logs on my running app. And I've exhausted all the things on my phone. There all the things on my phone. There was nothing else on my phone.

And instead of getting up and walking away, my brain is always like, I need more stuff on this phone. I need like another game that can really hold my attention because I'm out of things already. So like, is there an app that is just like a button and then the colors change every time I press the button and I can see how many times I press it in a day. I would love that. Sounds great. Yeah. I will get to the point where I'm, I've exhausted

the phone and I'll be like, well, let's go see if the weather changed. Let's go check the weather app. And then I'll be in there and I'll be like, fuck it. I wonder what it's like. My brother lives in Milwaukee. I wonder what the temperature is there. Let's put, let's, let's plug in Milwaukee and get a weak forecast. Dude, there's, there's so many other weathers. It's crazy. Oh, it's going to snow soon. I should text him. I should text him about that. He's going to be so freaked out that I know it's going to snow soon. So yeah, I'm poisoned. I'm completely poisoned by this thing. And I'm like, and I was a poison person trying to figure out how to not let my kids catch

the contagion. And I don't know, I have not, I just don't have a solution for it yet. Yeah, I certainly don't. And it's, it's weirdly a thing that occupies a whole lot of my mind for someone who does not have kids. And if I did have a kid, they'd be so far away from asking for a phone that the time where they want to sell my hypothetical child will want a phone is so far in the future that we might not even have phones anymore. It'll just be some other thing. It's a pretty good gamble. Like we'll have solved it by then or it'll be something completely

different and worse. I'm talking about this in terms of the simplest version, which is that your kids are just glued to a phone all the time. That's not the real, even the issue. The issue is how it changes the way that you see the world and the way that your mindset works. And the stuff you think about, we talked briefly at the beginning of this podcast, before we even got on air, but like Dan and I were just talking about what it like red pill and black pill and like the different people who the different groups of people online who have a really, really toxic worldview. And how easy it is to fall into that if you're not fully formed yet. Like young boys, there's a reason that there's a lot

of young men who are in these groups is because you feel like you're not right. You feel like everybody else is. You feel like there's something inherently unfair in the gender relationship. Like there's these things that seem true to you. And then here's some people with answers and the answers are like, it's everybody else's fault.

And you're like, fuck yeah. And you're into it and you fall in headlong into this thing and I don't want that to happen to my son. And on the other end, I don't want my daughter to be like watching hall videos and thinking that that's, I can make a career out of this or something like that. It sounds, it's just, it all feels so fucked. Yeah, I don't have anything for you, man. I'm real sorry. I agree. I'm just thinking about how, how just a different, the difference of a few years and how easy I personally would have been swept up

in all of that bullshit, but the internet wasn't as strong then and there wasn't, there were more opportunities to grow out of your early and worst influences because socialization was harder to avoid when we were younger because there was less to do on phones and less to do on computers so you you had no choice but to like be in the in meat space in the real world and when you're in made space in the real world interacting with other people a lot of your worst influences that

you pick up from internet forums or from apps or video games or whatever it is, they get shut down pretty quickly. As much as I don't want to say like, I'm not looking at the early 2000s or late 90s with rose-tinted glasses, there were certainly plenty of backwards social ideas and interactions back then. But stuff you could get away with saying on a forum, you couldn't get away with saying at a cafeteria. And we were all in cafeterias, we were all out in the world and you just saw what played and what didn't play.

And you learned by force to sort of grow out of those bad habits that I worry today people don't have the same social forces giving them that opportunity. I hope, yeah. I mean, I- What's this podcast about? I brought a very heavy topic today. Sorry about that. This all came about because I got my fucking nails painted today. But yeah, I think that you're right. I think that it'll, I think back to whether or not this is a parenting thing at all. Like whether

I, when I was young and I was clearly getting influences from other places and they weren't always good. And I was kind of like building that who I was gonna be around them in my mind as a young boy and young man. Did my dad have any say in that? Not really. Like I wouldn't have gone to him

and like looked for him to be my anchor or my, or anything and I, or my mom. It was like, no, they don't know. Their time on this earth is done. It's ours now. And trying to figure it out. And you're getting it from your friends. And you really rely on them to curb your worst behaviors

and impulses. And so I'm just kind of hoping. It's such a crazy thing. It makes those kinds of friends. And so I'm just kind of like hoping... It's such a crazy thing to look back on with any degree of fondness, because I will make myself aware of Jordan Peterson, who is a grifter, garbage lunatic, who is big in the men's rights misandry agenda, whatever fucking garbage he's doing, or Andrew Tate, under house arrest for crimes related to sex trafficking. But he's one of the most popular personalities for young men specifically who is pushing this. He's reaching out to young men who can't get laid and he's talking to them about how it's society's fault and to succeed you have to crush and eat your enemies

and sex traffic, you know, like these terrible influences. And the thing that I say is a strange thing to look back on with any fondness is like, it's such a shame that these kids, these lost 14 year olds who feel alienated by society and unlucky romantically, they have these pieces of trash like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson speaking to them.

They didn't have any of the good influences like I did growing up, like stone cold Steve Austin, who could hold my attention better than anything in the world. Just a good old-fashioned... Did you? ...shirtless, drunk... When you lived in Los Angeles...

...violet man. And I'm like, this fucking guy, this... Thank God I had positive role models, like ex-paca. Like this dude in a Speedo, this guy doing steroids in a Speedo, This fucking guy, thank God I had positive role models. Like X-Pac. Like this dude in a Speedo. This guy doing steroids in a Speedo without a single hair on his body. Now that's a man. Did you listen to Tom Likus at all when you used to live in Los Angeles?

No. Are you aware of that name? No, I'm still not. This was an early seed of I think a lot of this. There was a radio disc jockey. Radio for whatever reason is always way more toxic than the rest of the world as well. But there was this guy who had a radio show, I don't know what it's called, Lycus Report, something like that. But he was like this guy Tom Lycus, James Adomian now does like a really funny version of this Tom Lycus guy. But he was a, he would talk about

how he was single by design. This guy also, I'm just gonna give you some context. This shouldn't matter, but I'm giving you context of who you're dealing with. This man is a, he was like 312 pounds, 50s, and dogged a lot like this. Sure. And was like, I'm, I'm single by design.

But there's not a single night that I sleep alone. And he, he talks a lot about how he much sexy gets. And like, that's his single driving force. How he doesn't want children, how he's like, doesn't know. He never wants to have peanut butter in his fridge because peanut butter is a sign of childhood. It's not like he was an early Andrew Tate basically. And people would call into the show all the time

and he would feed into their worst impulses. He would be like, there's nothing wrong with drunk driving. Like drunk driving, you know what you're doing, it shouldn't be a problem. I encourage you, anybody out there drunk or driving right now, call into me. And like people would call in, they're like,

yeah, I've got a few beers here, I'm just driving for fun essentially. He's like, I love that. And then he also had this thing called Flash Fridays where he would try and encourage women to flash guys out on the road. And then guys would call in with these stories about being on the 405 and getting flashed.

All of it, I guarantee made up. Like none of this, there's none of this, it's just this guy's fantasy. And they're all calling in and telling him about how it happened. And he was awful. But I was 20, 1920, I listened to this guy, sometimes being like, you know,

he's really got it figured out. And it's like a part of you that isn't ready, that you're not mature enough to be making these kinds of decisions about how the world works or like knowing how it works, you're just kind of dumb. And like, and here's an easy answer. And you're like, ah, I understand that, that's easy. I'm going to follow that.

This guy clearly has the light and I'm going to follow it through the darkness. And it's so easy to get, get just like pushed off the trail with these guys at every single turn. And I just worry about my family. Of course. I mean, I was, I think we've talked about this before in the podcast. I was certainly reading a whole lot of Tucker Max when I was in the end of high school and college and like that was my excuses for it now are like I was young and stupid and also if you were,

if you had an appetite for long form comedy as I did, there were very few options. Huh? Not a lot of venues for that, yeah. And like even though he was writing this fratire stuff, this like every story involves him getting drunk and hooking up and treating women like shit, it was still like he was writing it through a comedic lens and I was like yeah, this is the only thing that exists like this, like comedy writing. And of course you go from his writing to a forum where there are a

bunch of people who are there for different reasons. There are some people who are also young writers like I am and people who are younger than me at that time who are just like this guy who is like is a pickup artist who drinks and treats women like shit. This is I am learning a lot from him about how to be a person and you can see how like that would have, like in a different internet, those kids who are reading Tucker Max will go on to Andrew Tate.

You know, they don't all necessarily become violent sex traffickers, but you can, I can see because of how dangerously close I was to that world 25 years ago, how much sense it seems to make and how seductive it is. Absolutely. And thankfully I was rescued by my heroes, Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Grease Man.

Just as you're saying who you emulated and who you looked up to then, I was like, who did I look up to? And my first thought in my head was, oh, I mean, Rufio from from Hook that was who I wanted to be. I thought I was gonna be Rufio. But I don't think that there's maybe there's no answer maybe I mean I here's what I think here is what I'm hoping is that I am a you stay present

enough with your kids and you give them like a moral anchor and you give them like a center around which, just like a sun in a solar system that they can orbit and that they can come back to and like they know where the center is at least. There's like, and then they can find other things along the way that they pick up or want, but that they always understand that like,

no, this is like the real gravitational pull is to goodness and it's right here. Yeah, which I think you will do and are doing. I have no doubt that you will, the details will change, but you'll raise your kids the same way that our parents raised us where, you know, dropped in a woods, you knew the difference between right and wrong and always had that. And I fully believe your kids will too. Unless they are radicalized by their phones when they're away from you. Yeah, must have fucking radicalized.

Which is so easy to do. Yeah, I joke about like, yeah, you're like, when you were young, and I'd say this is around like 17 to 20, you're like one bad friend away from being a massage, like being a bad person, a really bad person. And you see the success that you'd have in relationships by being a bad person during that time, and it was all reinforced. We're like, I remember not having a lot of confidence

when I was young, and then kind of like getting some confidence and being much more aloof about relationships and things like that and not caring. And all of a sudden, like suddenly you have more people who are attracted to you. And it's only because you're showing interest in other things. You're not, there's like the desperation is gone,

but you don't realize that at the time. And so you think, oh, me being an asshole to them is what's working. And like genuinely believing that as a child, it's like really dark. And now- Because Andrew Tate can make some amount of sense. It's just instead of raging against capitalism,

he makes a left turn where he'll be like, we're in a society where your value is completely tied up in how much money you make. This is the society where you need to have good clothes or you can't survive. You need the newest phone. You need a good car. You need to be making lots of money

or else you're worthless as a person. And I'm like, okay, I'm with you. Let's change the system. And the solution is to fuck women because they're objects like, no, man, how did you get there? That's not the thing. That's a big jump. I don't think that's right.

Anyway, I bought my daughter makeup. I bought my children both these watches. They're not the call watches, but they're watches that are, they look like smart watches. They're like, but they're like $25, amazing amount of technology for $25, it turns out. But you can like, you can choose your backgrounds.

You choose, on it you will get the time, the date, the, you can take photos and do video with your watch. Cool. And then there's games on it. And the games was like this ancillary thing where I was like, oh, this is gonna be like Snake and stuff like that. Like my kids aren't gonna play these. Already, my children, every time they get bored,

they're just like, beep beep beep beep beep beep beep and I'm like what what are you playing? I'm just trying to get this car out of this parking lot and it's not god damn it watching them try to do it and I'm like already like you you you're not gonna know what it's like to be even bored you don't even know what that means and I did it to you. Well that's got to wrap us up for today. Pretty pretty heavy episode.

I hope all I said was useful. Like when you watch a sitcom and all of a sudden you get one of those very special episodes. There's some juice there. There's something to get it clean from that. I think without even Googling, I don't feel great that I celebrated the Grease Man earlier. Stone Cold Steve Austin, I think I'll stand by that. Grease Man.

I think even back then, Grease Man was some radio personality that I had been exposed to somehow that wasn't doing like the, oh, let me tell you something about peanut butter. Wasn't doing that kind of thing. He was doing like skits and sketches, but I think if, as memories are coming back to me, some of the sketches might've just been racism.

Yeah, that might've been the entire comedic game of that piece. So shout out to Stone Cold Sea Vospin, Greaseman, shout out pending some Googling. Thanks for listening to the show. You can. The show is quick question. You could find Soren or I on Blue Sky. You can find the show on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. You can email the show at qq with SorenDaniel at gmail.com.

We have a Patreon as we mentioned earlier. Our theme song is by the fantastic Merex. Find them anywhere you find music. Gabe Harder is our engineer, editor, producer and president of podcast operations. You cannot find him. We do this podcast every week and we'll continue to do so until our cancellation or- Where are we going? Where are we going? Yeah, I don't know. If we, after all we've talked about,

part of me kind of wants to pivot to the safest grift in America and just start using our platform to make a hard right turn and make a lot of money doing it? I don't know. What do you think? Can we do that? Well, you know what? We're making money through television. What if we were the other side? What if we were cool and rad to kids, but we were like, and you don't need women yet. They shouldn't even be in your brain. I know society is telling you this is the most important thing. It's on every billboard, it's everywhere that you go,

that you should be in a sexual relationship with somebody. You don't have to do that. No. It's not important for a very long time. And in fact, the less you think about it, the easier it's going to be later. Yeah. You don't need a sexual relationship.

And if you follow our tips, you'll get one. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know 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? When did I beat your number? Words without words, word and all that Who do we know? 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 have a great time here