Quick Question with Soren and Daniel

Old Cracked friend and the only exception to the show’s official no-guest policy, Jason Pargin, returns to join Daniel and Soren for a deep dive into the enigma that is Tom Cruise.

Former executive editor at Cracked.com, Jason is a bestselling horror-comedy novelist and TikTok star whose latest book, There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel, is the fifth installment in the John Dies at the End series. It is in fact a novel of giant crabs.

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Soren has a bone to pick with Tolkien’s naming conventions, so he challenges Daniel to distinguish Lord of the Rings characters from old-timey mobsters. The resulting quiz introduces the Artichoke King, Fatty Bulger, and the identity reveal of a wizard called Sharky.

Plus, the guys discuss getting credit for their writing, the questionable longevity of Robin Hood movies, and why Spielberg’s best work might be behind him.

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Daniel introduces Soren to Year to Beat, a music trivia game that tests their ability to remember when songs came out. After a surprisingly successful round, they try Anthropeum, where Daniel discovers that Soren has a mind for ancient artifacts. Along the way, they discuss the appeal of movies that are just men saying numbers, and why remembering your own life is sometimes the best way to remember history.

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Daniel enjoys his first boys’ night in fifteen months, only to relearn a lesson he already knows: three beers is the right amount. Soren recalls wandering into a stranger’s party and waking up locked in a bathroom. The guys compare the indignities of getting older, from stubborn injuries to the impossibility of recovering from a hangover while parenting. Plus, why Daniel is perpetually sick and how daycare turns children into tiny disease delivery systems.

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Daniel mourns the loss of a beloved bit after a new ferry terminal prevents him from shouting embarrassing encouragement at his wife. Then Soren admits he’s taken some unusually big swings in his latest script, prompting the guys to compare the strange jokes they couldn’t believe survived — including Daniel’s extremely long fantasy about living nude and wet inside an egg. They also discover the horrifying usefulness of simply letting another writer look at your work.

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Daniel and Soren build their own baseball teams, beginning with the Albuquerque Weird Ants and eventually creating Potatoes, a frazzled mascot who sheds potatoes, carries backups in a briefcase, and never quite gets the win. Soon they’re designing stadium traditions and wondering why mascots don’t engage in more psychological warfare against opposing teams.

Along the way, Daniel makes his case for bringing professional baseball to New Jersey and restoring the dignity of the Garden State name.

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Soren finds a lost wallet and decides to personally return it to its owner, only to discover an adult human tooth hiding behind the ID. His good deed quickly becomes a mystery when the owner refuses to explain the tooth — and Soren absolutely refuses to stop asking. Daniel tries to convince him that sometimes being a good Samaritan means knowing when to leave.

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Daniel heads to the Emmys expecting five uninterrupted hours of bad movies, only to discover his “janky flight” has no in-flight entertainment. Things improve in Los Angeles when he finally experiences the privilege of losing an Emmy — leaving him free to enjoy the ceremony, celebrate everyone else, and end the night eating Del Taco in bed while watching Big Daddy.

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Daniel and Soren imagine the deeply glamorous riders they’d demand if anyone actually needed them for a weekend. Daniel wants a 10 a.m. beef stick, while Soren makes the case for a Payday as an any-meal candy bar. Eventually, their ideal accommodations expand to mysterious party mixes — just don’t insult Soren with something as pedestrian as Chex Mix.

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Daniel spends a peaceful morning fishing while two strangers loudly debate California infrastructure and the WNBA, leaving him to wonder whether it’s worth arguing when everyone is trapped on the same boat. Soren has confrontation problems of his own — including apologizing for something he didn’t do at Whole Foods and accidentally discovering that shouting “mango” at strangers does not always mean “leave me alone.”

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Soren finally makes it to the mysterious mining claim his family has owned for decades, bringing his son along for a character-building trip through the Colorado mountains. They find the land and solve an old family mystery—then Soren’s boots fall apart five miles from camp. The boys also debate what to do with 3.2 acres they can’t build on, eventually landing on a surprisingly lovely solution: give it back to the world.

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Daniel discovers that the Cracked archive is disappearing, which sends the guys back through the internet they grew up with and the strange problem of preserving something that was never built to last. Soren argues that younger people should reclaim the abandoned corners of the web, while Daniel has another idea—treat the internet like a dead mall, get a churro somewhere else, and maybe pave the whole thing.

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Soren argues for giving Macklemore one more chance as Daniel recounts the strongly worded daycare letter that ended with his son perched on a throne while a teacher blew bubbles at the king. Along the way, they compare embarrassing phases, protective parenting, and the strange freedom of becoming the annoying parents.

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A million dollars to read an audiobook sounds easy until Soren leaves out one crucial detail. Daniel tries to draw the line between commitment to the text and commitment to staying out of trouble, while both of them wonder if there’s such a thing as the wrong narrator. The boys end the discussion by arguing over whether listening to a book counts as reading it.

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Daniel shares the emotional whiplash of daycare drop-offs before Soren pitches a Christmas movie where Santa spends eternity exploring an empty world. From Bobby’s World to dating Santa Claus, the second half turns into an unexpectedly detailed Hollywood development meeting.

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Soren and Daniel discover that old writing can be harder to revisit than create, from unpublished novels to long-forgotten job packets. Then Soren shares his newest obsession: airport theft videos, where stolen sunglasses, impossible excuses, and “But I have a flight” somehow become endlessly entertaining.

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Soren is convinced he could get a stranger to hand over $100, while Daniel insists $20 and a fake microphone are all you need. The guys workshop increasingly elaborate scams, debate the right amount of gratitude after lending someone money, and discover that sleeping outside is much less peaceful once the sprinklers, rooster, and mystery bites show up—all of which somehow still earns Soren the bravery award.

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Daniel gets back from Italy with an alarming report on the state of America Versus Italy, a country that not only believes in clear allergen labels, but also bottle caps which remain physically connected to the bottle. Plus, the guys compare notes on having a good baby on a plane, the quiet realization you just aren’t going to see Project Hail Mary I guess, and what happens when you put a bunch of Knicks fans from New Jersey on the same flight to witness a historic W.

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Daniel's brushing up on his Italian and looking for shortcuts, so he and Soren nail down exactly which phrases he's most likely to need on vacation in Italy with a newborn. And speaking of newborns, newborn prospector Soren Bowie shares an incredible story of love, family, and brotherhood involving his late father, who, it turns out, has left his sons a piece of mystery land deep in the Colorado wilderness.

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After a brief stretch on podcast etiquette — the wrong ways to listen to them, the hard part of explaining this one — the episode settles into its actual purpose: Daniel telling Soren to stop, basically. In a sorta Tarantino of last week's update, Soren explains and defends his ongoing plan to hide bottles of Just Ice Tea around a Whole Foods so tomorrow’s lunch will be cold, which Daniel correctly points out is the kind of behavior that makes a person memorable to staff. Then Soren turns to the equally manageable problem of youth baseball, where the punishment for winning appears to be more baseball forever.

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