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The Movies That Raised Us (Wouldn't Be Made Now) · Not Right Now

• 0:00
  We did 10 Things I Hate About You, which is incredible still. Also, the scene where she gets him out of class, out of detention, is completely insane.
• 0:08
  We were like, "Children don't do this," where she just flashes her boobs at the teacher. [upbeat music] Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this.
• 0:22
  We'll be talking about/crashing out over topics like... TikTok time limits and the collapse of local news. Have you done your homework, and have I remembered to ask you if you've done your homework?
• 0:34
  Another existential question. It's not an advice show. It's a you're not alone, and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kinda show. I'm Claire Zulkey from Evil Witches.
• 0:44
  And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important Not Important. You can find details on anything we talk about in the show notes or at our website, notrightnow.show..show.
• 0:54
  And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their kids to be quiet, and then drop us a nice little five-star review.
• 1:03
  And reminder, you can send questions or feedback to questions@notrightnow.show. [upbeat music] Hello. Hello. Quick note, we have two guests today. Crazy, I know.
• 1:20
  We figured out how to make that happen. They are Mark Graham and Megan Keene Graham, who are parents. They're married. At least when we recorded they were married.
• 1:30
  And they've got two kids, and they decided to make a podcast with them called Back in My Day, where they present movies to their children and try to defend them, and their children either pacify them or rip them apart on air.
• 1:45
  It is a delight. It's very sweet. I was hoping it's a bloodbath behind the scenes. Maybe not, which is great for them, and says a lot about my parenting.
• 1:55
  But anyways, really a delight to have them, and so thankful they could join us. And as usual, Claire made me record this by myself, so you're welcome. Let's go talk to them. [upbeat music] I'm just coming in hot.
• 2:08
  I don't even have time to talk about everyone I'm mad about today. But on Fridays, this has been a longstanding tradition where the kids get Nutella. This... Just Nutella Fridays, just I thought that would be cute.
• 2:18
  And there's no school tomorrow, and my kids, as a treat, are gonna get to spend the night at a DoubleTree in Skokie, Illinois, for a friend's birthday party.
• 2:25
  So I came down this morning and I asked James what he wants for breakfast, which I already hate because he should have made his own breakfast. Mm-hmm.
• 2:32
  He's a little baby man, and if you let him suffer the consequences, it affects everyone. 'Cause I don't know if your guys' kids get so hungry that they punish the world around them.
• 2:43
  And so anyway, I sa- asked James what he wants for breakfast and he said, "Nutella." And I said, "Well, it's Thursday. It's not Friday." And he said, "But I'm not gonna be here tomorrow."
• 2:52
  And I said, "We're not negotiating. You don't get Nutella just because you're gonna be spending the night at a hotel," a DoubleTree, famous for their cookies. Mm-hmm.
• 3:00
  And anyway, so that's just, that's just the tip of the iceberg, but that's just where I came in with. Are you guys mad at anyone this morning, or you guys are all emotionally balanced? Doing the same child.
• 3:10
  We got a lot of rules in our house that come from our 12-year-old around when we eat pizza and what happens if we don't have pizza on Fridays, and- Mm... if an ice cream chance is missed.
• 3:21
  I think we've been hearing about that for the last two weeks because we offered to get him ice cream and then it's the middle of winter and we haven't gone, so. Mm-hmm.
• 3:29
  The accounting really drives me crazy when they only remember, like, the one thing that you maybe promised and they don't deserve it whatsoever, but they're like, "You said I could," or, "Because my brother got it, that means I also get it," or, "I'm not enjoying the thing that I got 'cause my brother also got it and he should always have less than me."
• 3:48
  Yeah. I want to...
• 3:49
  We have so many things to discuss, but f- like, before we even get into your podcast, Quinn and I were talking about how cute it is and how nicely everyone gets along, and we want to, like, hear from you whether there's behind-the-scenes drama ever about people not participating nicely or, you know, arguing and you guys just edit that out.
• 4:07
  I believe I texted Claire, "I hope it's a bloodbath behind the scenes." Well, there, there tends to be a meltdown after it finishes.
• 4:14
  But we started the podcast because Mark found out that we could get an hour of free recording time at our local studio because it's paid for by tax dollars. And we kind of film it through and then just publish it
• 4:29
  because we are cheap. But we almost ended the podcast before it started because the very first movie that Mark picked was a movie that Mack had already seen and he hated it. Ooh, I love this. This is great.
• 4:43
  Which, which one? Which movie- That pick was Hoosiers, which is a- Oh, wait. I heard... I'm very upset about the reactions to Hoosiers, but continue. It's, it's- I've got a lot to say.
• 4:50
  It's a, for those who are unfamiliar, it's a 1986 movie starring Gene Hackman that's based on a true story about a real-life high school basketball team from a small town in Indiana who miraculously wins the state championship.
• 5:07
  And our oldest, Max, who is 12, is absolutely not a sports guy. So starting the podcast off with a sports movie, one of my favorite genres certainly, as Megan mentioned earlier, uh, did not go off on a good foot.
• 5:23
  But as always, Megan is our de-escalation expert and is always good at handling those sorts of moments.
• 5:29
  Although it was a real power move to start with a movie that not only was Max programmed to hate but had already seen it. Mm-hmm. Like if he hadn't- Mm-hmm... seen it yet, he could have withheld his opinions for a while.
• 5:40
  But- Mm-hmm... previously walked out when it was shown to him. Mark, did you do that on purpose, to do that dad thing where you're like, "I don't care about your feelings.
• 5:49
  I'm watching this movie and I'm gonna force you to talk about it," or what was your thinking behind that? Well, the rationale for the decision came from the rubric or thesis of our entire project.
• 6:01
  So, you know, our podcast is called Back in My Day. You can find it at backinmydaypod.com.And the thought basically went a little bit like this. So both Megan and I are huge movie fans and have been all of our lives.
• 6:16
  Megan was a film critic in a past life. I currently run a website and entertainment brand that is all about watching stuff. It's called decider.com. Watching movies, watching TV shows.
• 6:29
  And so as we learned that our town, thanks to our tax dollars, gives us an opportunity to get into a podcast studio, I started thinking about, well, what could a fun podcast be?
• 6:40
  And so because I'm an editor and sort of I've been... I'd make these assignments all the time, I felt kind of comfortable assigning work to my family for this.
• 6:49
  And again, the thought of it is our son is 12, and what I thought would be a fun sort of o- overall shape for a podcast would be to go back to watch movies from when I was 12 years old, and also from when Megan was 12 years old.
• 7:06
  And because I'm... I can be a little, let's say, overly detail-oriented, I wanted it to line up perfectly. So we did our first podcast in November of 2025,
• 7:17
  and the movie Hoosiers came out in November of 1986 when I was 12 years old. So that was the best movie that came out in November 1986 that I thought my kids might actually enjoy and could spawn some good conversation.
• 7:32
  Okay. Now let's back up a little bit 'cause I do wanna hear... I've actually never seen Hoosiers, so I wanna go into detail a little more about how it was received.
• 7:39
  But talk a little bit about how you guys got the kids on board with doing this podcast because just sometimes, honestly, watching a whole movie, like T to B, like with the... Wait. T, top to... Yeah.
• 7:52
  With the kids is sort of an ordeal 'cause everyone- What the fuck does that mean? What does that mean? Top to bottom. Okay. I, I- Everyone calls it that. T to B. Sure. Yeah. Yep. Uh, top to bottom of the credits.
• 8:02
  Quinn's wife is a screenwriter, by the way, so he has no reason not to know what that famous movie tri- phrase, T to B. Nobody talks to me anymore. Continue.
• 8:09
  But just watching a movie with the kids, like l- at whole cloth, can be kind of a lot of focus and concentration. And are you guys taking notes? You know, are you discussing as you go?
• 8:19
  Are you saving conversation for the podcast? Talk a little bit about the behind the scenes, about how you guys make that work.
• 8:25
  We watch a lot of movies together, and Mark has already loved showing them old school movies that may or may not be appropriate for them to watch at the age they're at, or at the, I don't know, 2026 that we're all at.
• 8:40
  And so we'd been watching them for a while, so they were already kind of in the habit of watching movies with us. And then it was not hard to sell them on it.
• 8:50
  Mark originally wanted to do the podcast just with Max, and I sort of invited myself and Zach along so that it could be a family activity.
• 8:58
  'Cause the benefit to me is just that we get to spend a whole Saturday together filming it, and they are engaged, and then we go out to dinner, and there's usually a meltdown at that point.
• 9:10
  But it came together kind of organically from that. And we take notes. Zach is sort of the nine-year-old mascot of our show, and he's pretty off the cuff. M- Max sometimes takes notes, sometimes takes it very seriously.
• 9:26
  Basically, if he likes the movie, then he has a lot to say about it. Are they famous at school? Do they... D- Are their, like, their classmates impressed that they are on a podcast? They were pretty impressed.
• 9:37
  I remember after our first one came out, a bunch of middle schoolers swarmed the car at pickup and asked if they could be on our podcast. And then I asked Max if they had watched it, and he said no. Perfect.
• 9:48
  He's just really, really excited about the idea- Perfect... of being on a podcast. [laughs] Yep. Yeah. Checks every box for middle schoolers. Awesome.
• 9:55
  Well, the pod- the podcast, you know, is 30 minutes long, and one thing that we're trying to do with this is to try to keep our kids' attention spans from shrinking like everything else.
• 10:07
  You know, obviously our kids are addicted to YouTube, like I think every other kids in the world. But this is sort of a little bit of a respite from that where, you know, movies are 90 minutes or two hours long.
• 10:17
  Trying to get that in, but that's something that I think Megan and I have been relatively successful at doing, but I'm not sure some of our kids' friends' parents are sort of in that same mode or mindset. Yeah.
• 10:31
  Have you guys...
• 10:32
  I mean, you guys haven't released that many episodes yet, but I'm curious how you choose the movies, but also whether you've had any, either for the podcast or just in general, where in your mind you're like, "This movie's a classic," and then you watch it with your kids and you're like, "Oh, this doesn't hold up as well as it did," or, "I only remember this one scene, and the rest of it was so tedious."
• 10:49
  Like, the first time we showed... We tried showing Paul the original Superman, and he was way too young. I think he was, like, four.
• 10:55
  We were like, "Superman doesn't come on the screen for 45 minutes," or something like that. There's, like, all this backstory.
• 11:01
  So talk a little bit about your choosing and, and how things have aged so f- so far with them and with yourselves.
• 11:06
  Well, I think conceptually, again, I'm trying to loosen myself and loosen my rules on this thing a little bit, but originally I had a really hard and fast rule that this movie should come out, or the movies that Megan and I pick should be at exactly the same age that Max is right now.
• 11:23
  So again, as I mentioned before, we did our first episode in November of 2025, so when I was 12 in November of 1986. So I looked at all of the movie releases.
• 11:33
  You know, we hit up Wikipedia to check out to see what was released that month, and I put together a list of movies for Megan to do the same.
• 11:40
  But as we're sort of l- learning as we go and trying to schedule more episodes, we're starting to introduce some theme episodes.
• 11:47
  Like, we did a Christmas movies one with Gremlins, which did not come out when I was 12, but I was watching it when I was 12, certainly.
• 11:55
  And Home Alone, which also didn't come out when Megan was 12, but again, sort of f- fits the vibe.
• 12:01
  Yeah, I think I pretty quickly broke the rule because my first movie would've been, like, The Addams Family, which was fine- Mm...
• 12:08
  but it didn't really mean that much to me when I was 12.And then also Mark's family and my family had different ways of watching movies, so I didn't really go to the movies that often with my family.
• 12:19
  I would watch a movie on VHS, like, years after it came out.
• 12:23
  I'm really curious what happens when we get to the movies that I feel like had the most impact on me when I was younger, which I feel like I sort of came to consciousness of the teen experience when I was 12-ish, around that phase where movies just had consistently had women having their tops blown off.
• 12:45
  Sure. So, like, the movies I remember the most were, you know, Weird Science. Do you remember that Scott Baio movie, Zapped? Mm-hmm. Oh.
• 12:54
  [chuckles] And then the movie I watched the most my entire childhood was probably Just One of the Guys, which- Wow...
• 13:02
  starred no one, but it was about this girl who pretends to be a guy so that she can be taken seriously, uh, as a journalist in a neighboring school. Mm-hmm.
• 13:10
  We owned the VHS, which was just a girl topless with- holding two football helmets in front of her. What a weird time we grew up in. I don't know how- That's like BoMan. Like, same level of problematic, you know? Yeah.
• 13:24
  Oh, no, that's amazing. Wow, Megan, you really manifested, like, your life with living with only guys.
• 13:30
  Quinn, tell me a couple times that you watched movies with your kids that were, like, beloved to you, that they either absolutely got or they absolutely were like, "What the fuck is this shit?"
• 13:39
  Just to set the tone, I mean, I take everything personally. So- Yeah... and I go into family movie night with inappropriately high expectations.
• 13:50
  Not that the movie will hold up, because of course it will, it's frozen in time, but that they will have the same...
• 13:57
  That it'll mean the same thing to them 30 seconds into the credits as it ha- has built up for me over 30 years. Basically, is essentially I want them to plug the matrix in the back of their head and feel that way.
• 14:10
  So I'll do things like, "Oh my God, E.T. is showing on a big screen. We're gonna... I'm gonna take you out of school and we're gonna go fucking see E.T." And we go and we leave, and I'm crying again.
• 14:19
  And he's like, "Yeah, it was good." And I'm like, "What the fuck does that mean? What does 'it was good' mean? Are you kidding me?" And so we rinse and repeat for most of those.
• 14:27
  I'm generally not allowed now to pick most of the movies we watch because of things like that and reactions like that. But it ha- I mean, it's gone fine. So we did Ghostbusters recently. That was- Mm.
• 14:39
  It's a perfect movie. They were like, "It's fucking weird." I was like, "It is. It really is," which is why the sequels are so complicated. They really loved Goonies 'cause it's so good.
• 14:49
  Obviously Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, before he gets eaten. What else? Ha- we haven't done original Ninja Turtles movie, which is perfect, by the way. Mm.
• 14:58
  Which I'm excited to do and I forgot about, 'cause this guy's so high up on a shelf. I have a few other ones. I have Marty McFly's license over there. I've got Henry Jones Sr.- Oh...
• 15:09
  and his briefcase that he uses to push, to make the birds fly away. Whoa, nice. Yeah. Um, there's lots of others.
• 15:15
  To be clear, I- only reason I have this office is 'cause I was told I was not allowed to keep these in the house anymore.
• 15:20
  So- Steve's mom sent h- us his old Star Wars figures, and they were, like, the little, the very little ones. Mm-hmm. And she put them in a diorama.
• 15:28
  And there was something, like a sick day or a polar vortex or something like that. And to be clear, these were not mint condition. These were played with. And, uh- As they should be...
• 15:36
  I, I opened up the dioramas for Paul to play with, and she was so... I think she was mad that we, like, made them uns- Like, but I was like, "You be here with this kid," and, like, now they are in the bath, whatever.
• 15:48
  But whatever. It's what they're for. A dime a dozen. What are we talking about? Yeah, being in the bath, like, getting stuck in the drain. [upbeat music] Hey, it's Quinn.
• 15:57
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• 17:23
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• 17:41
  We depend on it every minute of every day. So thanks for supporting our partners. [upbeat music] Anyway. I don't know.
• 17:49
  A- as usual, I go into things hoping and expecting that they'll be perfect, and I'm completely let down when they're not. But we've had some pretty good experiences.
• 17:57
  We've had some- What is everyone's Ninja Turtle that you most identify with or is your favorite? Quickly, what's your... Who, who are you?
• 18:02
  Well, I took Raphael down from the shelf 'cause he also takes things personally and is too self-serious about it all, and they're like, "Give it a break, bud. Have some fun." So... Which one's the scientist? Donatello?
• 18:13
  Mm-hmm. Yeah, purple.And yeah, I think that's- That's you? Yeah. I think Mark, how about you? Donatello.
• 18:19
  Donatello is also my particular favorite, mainly because Doc, our nine-year-old, when he was four or five, I told him a joke and he repeated it for a year straight, and it goes like this.
• 18:30
  What is the name of the Ninja Turtle that farted? And the answer is Donnasmello. Whoa. So that one was a classic joke in our house.
• 18:43
  Minds blown for years, and it's a little bit obviously of my sense of humor, but also my son Zach's. That's amazing. That's a good one. I'm...
• 18:52
  I feel like one of my character traits is that I always like the least popular member of any group, so I like Leonardo 'cause he has that big sister energy. 100%. You know, like nobody likes him.
• 19:00
  You know, so- What's the Taylor Swift song? Like Elder Sister, whatever the line is, that's Leonardo. I have that same thing. I think I like Jonathan from New Kids on the Block just 'cause he was- Yeah...
• 19:10
  like the one no one paid attention to. That nobody wanted. Right. Simon from the Chipmunks. Our kids are 13, 12, and 11, and so Megan, you phrased this kind of how we eventually learned too, which is we don't...
• 19:21
  We try not to say things that are inappropriate anymore for them. We say they're not app- it's not appropriate for you for whatever. And then we just stopped caring.
• 19:31
  We took the kids on a Christmas trip, and I went to bed early one night, and my wife showed them European Vacation, which if you haven't watched in a long time, has a incredible number of boobs in it.
• 19:43
  And the B plot is around a sex tape. So I woke up in the morning to my children going, "Holy shit, guess what Mom showed us last night?" And that started the whole thing.
• 19:54
  So we're just easing our way into those kind of things. Yeah, that's definitely an interesting component to navigate, especially because we...
• 20:03
  I think our parenting or my parenting style was to be really concerned about the choices I was making with my oldest child. Mm.
• 20:10
  And then to just decide that the younger one did everything at exactly the same time 'cause I got tired of waiting.
• 20:17
  And so we show movies to our nine-year-old that we would not have shown to our 12-year-old at that age probably.
• 20:25
  And he's a real fan of catchphrases and ridiculous things that happen in movies, and it's gonna be interesting when we get to like the John Hughes of it all, like all- Mm...
• 20:37
  of these things that are not exactly, would not be in movies made today. And generally I take the tack of, well, let's talk about what's weird.
• 20:48
  And you know, if they're exposed to it, we can at least explain things to them.
• 20:52
  With the nine-year-old, he's a lot less interested in the explanations, and he's a lot more interested in, you know, the catchphrases from Zoolander. Sure. Austin Powers. My... Yeah, My- Oh, yeah... 13 powers.
• 21:04
  Have you guys done the Austin Powers with them? We just did that recently. Oh, yeah. Like- Okay... they did not... It was an interesting rewatch.
• 21:12
  Like some parts of it were slower than I remembered, and also if the kids don't know who James Bond or, uh- Mm... who are the other- Mm-hmm...
• 21:20
  like the other references, like they just, it's just a weird guy basically, and they didn't like the... I was kinda worried about the whole dick, you know, where he's got a sausage up the whole time. Like- Could you...
• 21:31
  Which part? Is my junk thing. You guys know exactly what I'm talking about, right? It's the one with Hurley holding a sausage on his corpse. Totally. Yep. Yep. And, and- Wow...
• 21:40
  the penis pump, or is that in Austin Powers 2? That, that might be it. Yeah. Dr. Evil was way- The penis pump is a running gag in all three movies. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They like Dr. Evil way more.
• 21:49
  And I forgot that like Dr. Evil's way funnier than Austin. Austin Powers is not really funny himself. Like he's just got weird teeth, you know? Mm-hmm.
• 21:55
  But you know, they also did not live through like the Mike Myers era of anything he did was worthy of a- of attention. But I don't know, did your guys' kids like that?
• 22:06
  Oh, is our nine-year-old's favorite thing to talk about, favorite character of all movies, um, a lucky vagina? Yes. Wow. He does like the catchphrases. That's amazing.
• 22:18
  My kids are kinda wimps, I have to say, like both of them. And so there's a couple movies we haven't shown them.
• 22:23
  I haven't even shown them Ghostbusters yet because I know Ghostbusters isn't like inherently a scary movie, but the opening scene with lo- The cover... like the library ghost is scary, and I think Slimer can be scary.
• 22:35
  Totally. Yeah. And it's just not worth the sorting out yet with us, you know? And Gozer, all that stuff is like kinda scary. And even Ghostbusters II with the goo, I'm like, that is very social media.
• 22:47
  Like I know that's pre-social media, but I'm like to me, goo is the social media where you touch it and you start like getting awful all of a sudden. So even though I have a lot of- That's Steve...
• 22:56
  fond memories of Ghostbusters, well, you know, that's me. But a lot of the movies you guys mention, like we, when we showed the kids E.T. or I think Steve showed them, they were scared of E.T.
• 23:07
  and it made me remember that E.T. is very intense, like with the helicopter. Yeah, the ho- the hospital scene and everything, yeah. Yeah, when he's all pale.
• 23:14
  Gremlins, Steve showed Paul Gremlins, and Paul loved it, and I remember being so scared of it actually. And like, it is, falls in this place of like '80s funny horror. I thought Weird Science was scary too, actually.
• 23:27
  Like I'm, I think I was a wimp as well. I found Goonies scary. So I don't know. Yeah.
• 23:32
  Like we, m- the kids inherited like my wimp- Well, it's really interesting though seeing how the practical effects age over time as well, because Zach is really good about tapping out when things feel scary.
• 23:44
  So he left Gremlins when it got scary, but then he h- heard that they got drunk and were smoking cigarettes and he thought that was so cool that I think he may have like upped his, you know, tolerance for scares.
• 23:58
  We took Max before we started this.
• 24:00
  There's a series in our town called Video Vault where they show monthly '80s movies at the local theater, and the first one we took Max to was The Lost Boys, and he hadn't seen anything scary before, so it's kind of our test run.
• 24:15
  Mm. And at the end of it we're like, "What'd you think?" He said, "It was just ketchup and glitter." The worms, the, the noodles that become worms.Cam wasn't scared of them. Yeah. The maggots? Yes. The maggot doodles?
• 24:28
  Yeah. He was fine. Man, Lost Boys is such a weird movie. It's a really interesting artifact of a time.
• 24:34
  And, you know, one of my eventual goals with this podcast is, Claire, to address your point, to, to make my kids a little bit less of being fraidy-cats.
• 24:44
  You know, I think when I was growing up in the late '70s and mid-'80s, you know, sort of at the same time that their oldest is now, there was a lot less... I guess or a l- maybe more free range parenting, if you will.
• 24:58
  We just had a lot more time to kill when people were not around.
• 25:02
  So, you know, whether it was flipping something on HBO or, or rewatching something from a VHS tape that we had picked up at the local video store, I feel like I got a lot of exposure into horror movies that were broadcast on TV first, like the creature feature kinds of movies around Halloween.
• 25:18
  You know, you'd see edited versions on TV, and then as you got a little bit older or you had friends with older brothers and sisters, you could graduate up that level.
• 25:28
  But our kids, like, Gremlins is certainly the scariest thing that they have ever seen at this point. They won't even watch Jaws. That's something that- Oh...
• 25:36
  hopefully will be on our list at some point here in the future. We just did that recently, but only with my oldest. Oh, that scarred me for a decade. Yeah, that's a wintertime, not near the ocean for a while.
• 25:46
  Although you might still be scared of a bathtub and pool.
• 25:49
  Like, I- I, I wrote a whole column on it because he asked to watch it for the first time while we were sitting on the beach where we go every year when he was, I think, 11.
• 25:58
  And he was like, "Well, I've seen Jurassic Park and I've seen Star Wars and Stormtroopers and all that." And I was like, "I know, but
• 26:07
  this is designed to evoke something else and it's something that theoretically could happen to you. You're not gonna get eaten by dinosaurs. You feel safe even though it can feel scary," all these different things.
• 26:19
  I said, "This is designed..." I was like, "Also, it's about, like, capitalism and small town politics and all these different things." I was like, "But it's gory and it's real."
• 26:26
  And he's like, "I know, but I'm ready to watch it." I was like, "All right."
• 26:29
  We put it off, but I, I thought this whole thing about, like, how it's important to eventually show your kids, like, quote unquote, important movies, you know?
• 26:36
  The difference between watching a bunch of Stormtroopers get mowed down versus, like, the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, basically.
• 26:42
  I was like, "Those are not the same thing, but I know you feel like they're the same thing. They are not. It is to get you as close to that as possible."
• 26:49
  And we did Jaws and he really liked it, but we haven't been back to the beach since. And I was like, "You'll never feel the same." Yeah. "So just be ready." And like you said, even in a pool, you're like, "I can...
• 26:58
  This is a closed facility. All the water is clear. I know intellectually there's not a shark here." And yet- Yeah... you'll never feel the same.
• 27:07
  I was scared of there being a pool in the deep end, a shark in the deep end of the pool for 10 years after watching that. Yeah.
• 27:13
  In high school, the high school has a diving well with a observation, like, window underneath it, and my friend told me that's where they keep the sharks with, behind that glass.
• 27:23
  None of that makes any sense, but, like, still you get that feeling. You never know, they might open the window and let the sharks out into the, the pool. Yeah, my kids were scared of...
• 27:34
  And C- Karate Kid was one of our first experiences showing a kid a movie that I had very sentimental feelings of. They, they reacted to in such a satisfying way.
• 27:43
  Like, at the end, like, when he wins, you know, they both went, they both pumped their fist and I had such a g- it made me feel so good.
• 27:50
  But they were very scared of the scene where Danny is overrun by the gang and they're all wearing skeleton costumes. Mm-hmm. And I think he left the room.
• 27:58
  And then Sister Act was on, and that was one of those movies that we owned the VHS of, so I watched it so many times that I... You kinda lose track of what actually happens.
• 28:07
  But I had forgotten that movie starts with a guy getting executed, like shot in the head. You don't see the sh- you don't see it happen, but you see a gun held to his head.
• 28:16
  And our kids ran out of the room and refused to come back in, 'cause they said we had tricked them into seeing a scary movie.
• 28:23
  But we had just completely forgotten all about that opening part, which is, is scary, but you just kinda like gloss over that kinda stuff as adults.
• 28:31
  And, you know, I don't know if that h- if you guys have res- seen that, other parts of that with your kids where you forgot something scary happened or you didn't see, you go- kinda block something out of your memory like that.
• 28:42
  Well, I think Max is the one that kind of brought it to our attention how, how t- how awful things happen in every Disney movie. Mm. Someone gets killed. Mom dies in every movie. Parents are missing.
• 28:55
  The guardrails are certainly different now than they were back in our days. And so a- again, I think that's part of why I'm interested in doing this with our kids, you know?
• 29:07
  If you can experience something that's a little bit scary or maybe a little bit problematic and, like, M- Megan or I are sitting there, we can, like, foster that conversation with them.
• 29:16
  It helps to build up a little bit of, I don't know, maybe like emotional scar tissue or something like that so that you're a little bit less afraid of other stuff, or just exposed to things that, again, are different now than they were back then.
• 29:30
  Yeah. I love... So you guys, your most recently released episode you did Three Amigos, which I did not watch actually, 'cause I feel like that's not geared towards girls, and I hate to say that.
• 29:40
  But like, you, you know, when you just... When, when you're a certain age, there's certain movies that just aren't geared to you. And I do love Steve Martin, but I never watched that.
• 29:46
  Also, I have an aversion to Chevy Chase in general. And then, but you did Father of the Bride- They're not alone... which was very... [laughs] Yeah. They...
• 29:54
  And I was like, you guys saying that Father of the Bride is, like, responsible for the wedding industrial complex, I was like, that is actually incredibly insightful.
• 30:02
  But tell me about how they responded to both those movies and compared to how you thought they would go.
• 30:06
  Because especially Father of the Bride, you don't think of as a kids movie per se, but talk a little bit about how you guys chose those and that experience with both of them.
• 30:14
  Well, we're trying to stick to Mark's rule, and when he chose Three Amigos, I saw that Father of the Bride was, like, in the scope of my range of rule.
• 30:27
  And I hadn't really thought about it, but, like, that '90s Steve Martin was mySteve Martin that I always associated with. I saw "Parenthood," "Father of the Bride," and then "L.A.
• 30:38
  Story" was another one that I saw pretty young that I really loved. We just decided to do that, and it was so fascinating because it's a- almost like a pre-Nora Ephron movie in that- Mm-hmm...
• 30:51
  she was involved with her husband on that one, and it's all gorgeous but very lived in, and then you get to this kind of intense Nora Ephron later on, just like above and beyond insane kitchens and homes and views.
• 31:08
  Take- Nancy Meyers So... Mm-hmm. Oh, sorry. Nancy Meyers. Mm-hmm. Sorry, sorry. Nope. My bad. Yeah.
• 31:14
  So it was really interesting to see that aspect of it, and the kids were so fascinated because in the movie, that gorgeous, perfect home that they live in is compared to this insane mansion in a different part of town that the in-laws have.
• 31:32
  And the boys think that the main family is super rich to live in a house that big. Yeah. You know, it would... I mean, I guess maybe it was a more reasonable house then, but he was a super successful businessman also.
• 31:44
  Yeah. Um, yeah. And it was cool that he was a sneaker designer. Mm-hmm. I remember that being like such a cool moment when she lifted her wedding gown and she had her gym shoes on underneath it 'cause he was like a...
• 31:54
  I feel like he was supposed to be like a Nike exec basically. That was a core memory of mine. That was a, like a real, you know, what a cool girl. Although girl, literally girl, like the fact that she's 21 is insane.
• 32:05
  Oh my gosh. So young. Well, I think that's one of the cool things about our show here too though is, you know, Claire, you mentioned you, you weren't interested in watching Three Amigos. Definitely a very guy movie.
• 32:16
  You know, the women in that movie have barely any lines and barely anything to do other than just be a plot device. But I, I think that's been the fun balance that I've experienced so far,
• 32:27
  is that, you know, I've been showing movies l- like Three Amigos, like all the Adam Sandler movies, to the boys since they were really little, and one cool thing about this is Megan is bringing more of a feminine energy in this sort of experience.
• 32:41
  Like I would've never shown the kids Father of the Bride, although I love that movie and watched it 10,000 times in the '90s when it first came out.
• 32:50
  But I hadn't seen it since then, and it's interesting to see how they react to more like of the maybe like romantic comedy type genres, and exposing them into that I think is cool and fun too. So I have a daughter.
• 33:02
  We're a boy, girl, boy, and my wife has written romantic comedies.
• 33:05
  Like w- we, I love romantic comedies, but it's interesting, like my sort of initial list, as you're alluding to, wasn't as necessarily as feminine as, as much as we love those.
• 33:13
  But we've really started to lean into some great ones. So we did Clueless last week, which is fucking incredible still. We did 10 Things I Hate About You, which is incredible still.
• 33:25
  Also, the scene where she gets him out of class, out of detention, is completely insane. We were like, "Children don't do this," where she just flashes her boobs at the teacher. 10 things, 10 ways to get arrested.
• 33:35
  Princess Diaries is fucking great still.
• 33:38
  We haven't done any of the sequels to that, but yeah, I mean, there's just some incredible stuff that's still out there that again, it's really interesting to, to see how they'll react, if not even appreciate it, you know, the love story parts of that besides the
• 33:51
  squeamish stuff. That was an interesting test for us. So my wife, among the other things she's done, she's pretty incredible. She co-wrote the two Wicked movies that just came out and- Oh my- So much hard work.
• 34:02
  Just incredible. Okay, now, now we can tell our kids we were on this podcast because Max is a Wicked super fan and he'll care. Well, I love it. Well, here's the thing. We, you know, loved the first one.
• 34:12
  They loved the whole thing. It was great.
• 34:13
  Obviously a little more appropriate for kids type of thing where if you knew what was gonna happen in the second one, and eventually my wife ended up taking them to see the musical so they'd be a little prepared for the second half, which is more complicated, right?
• 34:26
  It is the find out part of fuck around and find out of that story for sure. But there's the sexy scene, and there was always this question.
• 34:33
  In the musical it's even sexier, but we threw this- Oh, sexier than a sex sweater? Oh, yes. Sexier than the sex sweater.
• 34:40
  Nothing is better than listening to the fucking genius legend Paul Tazewell talk about how they designed the sex sweater and why it exists and how it makes her comfortable and safe.
• 34:48
  [laughs] All this stuff, you're like, "Fuck yeah, Paul." Anyways- Yeah... we threw this hometown premiere for my wife, which was super fun. It was like 300, 400 people. We got two theaters.
• 34:57
  We decorated the whole place, all this, and my 13-year-old kept going, "C- could we just have a kids theater?" And I was like, "No, that's a pain in the ass. I'm not doing assigned seats, all those things."
• 35:06
  Until I eventually realized he was right, but not for why he thought he was right. I was like, "Oh, this benefits me because that scene's gonna come on- Damn... and I don't have to fucking deal with it.
• 35:15
  I can enjoy this movie with adults." And we told everybody, "Kids theater, adult theater. If you wanna sit with the kids, your kids are little, I get it. Do whatever you want.
• 35:24
  The kids wanna sit with you, that's fine, but they gotta behave." This movie ended and these kids came out and I said, "How did it go during that scene?" And they're like, "It was awful."
• 35:37
  Like children squealing and squirming and throwing things, and it was exactly as expected. And I was like, "Oh, that's so interesting."
• 35:46
  And it was so funny 'cause a week later my daughter came up to us with this list of other movies she wanted to watch, all classics. Again, some appropriate, let's do it, some not ready.
• 35:54
  [laughs] And she goes, "Well, can I watch Dirty Dancing now?" And we're like, "Oh, no, we can't do that yet." Fantastic but, you know. That whole abortion subplot.
• 36:02
  Well, Mark and I are actually trying to decide on Dirty Dancing 'cause, uh, the Video Vault series in our town is showing it- It's incredible but, uh-... this month.
• 36:09
  Well, I think certain things just go over their heads and then certain things- Sure... are worth kind of pausing and talking about. Totally. So I think Zach won't get a lot of it. Max might. Totally. Did you like it?
• 36:21
  'Cause I watched it kinda later in life and I never clicked with Patrick Swayze.And so I did not love it the way other people did, although I appreciate it.
• 36:31
  We had Chris on from "What Went Wrong," which is a great podcast where they talk about, like, the behind scenes of movies, and they did an episode on Dirty Dancing, which is really interesting about the casting and, like, what an asshole Patrick Swayze was to Jennifer Grey up until the, the end of it.
• 36:44
  But yeah, I didn't have big love for it. Did you, Megan, as a-- when you were younger? Oh. Really? I loved it, and though since watching it as an adult, I definitely kind of associate with the dad now more. Mm. Mm.
• 36:59
  I assume it was 10 years or so. Sure. It was a lot. It was like, oh, you know, that out of the blue to find out about this woman being pregnant, and he thinks it's...
• 37:06
  When- but with the information he's given, he acts pretty rationally, although he's sort of, like, the villain, then sees the error of his ways later on. But he didn't have all the details. Interesting.
• 37:20
  Yeah, I don't know. I can't-- That's a hard one to say for sure. That's-- Yeah, I don't...
• 37:23
  Have you guys shown them anything that you realized that while you were watching it with them that they were like, you're like, "This is above them," or, "We misjudged their interest level in something like this?"
• 37:31
  I feel like Megan would say that I do that to them all the time. But you know, again, I think it's, I think it's important to give them a little bit of exposure into this world.
• 37:41
  Again, I think we should put that on a list. Megan, can we commit to that now? In public? Live? I think we already did. It's on the list. Done. Here, here's the thing, though, that, that the point you're making.
• 37:50
  For, again, better or worse, we were all exposed to this stuff with no rules.
• 37:53
  I think in one night on a sleepover, a buddy and I watched Alien, Bodyguard, and Beverly Hills Cop, and we were just like, "They check every box." And we were in third grade or fucking something.
• 38:04
  But that's what we got from the video store. We did, we actually did have a, an awkward one with Wicked. Oh, yeah? Oh, really? Because our oldest was such a super fan that my sister gifted him the book- Oh...
• 38:17
  because it was- The book is very different... on her shelf, and she gave it to him before reading it.
• 38:24
  And so one night we were going to grab pizza, and I ran out of the car to pick up pizza, and I came back in, and he's-- he had been reading the book, and he said- Mm-hmm...
• 38:32
  "Mom, I just wanted to let you know that Wicked isn't, the book isn't really for kids, but it's okay and I'm almost done. You have to let me finish it." Mm-hmm. And so- Oh.
• 38:39
  This was one-- By the way, this is one of those examples, a-and it's happened in the past, where, you know, they change the cover of the paperback to be the movie cover.
• 38:48
  And this was controversial for all the folks who worked on the movie because they're like, "Hold on a minute. These are really different."
• 38:55
  And there's a lot of kids that are gonna see that pink dress on there and think, "Great, I'll pick this up as my young adult reader." Yeah. Yeah. It, it's, yeah. It's a lot.
• 39:04
  But it-- Sorry, I was just gonna say to your points, so my wife and I, you know, besides just her involvement in movies and us growing up on them, all that stuff, and all the VHS's, you know, we've really, we're real assholes about screen time, and our kids have kinda started to just give up, which is great.
• 39:20
  But we realized eventually we needed to offer alternatives. We can't just say no to everything. And so we've basically said, "If it's a movie, great. I don't care." Because here's the thing.
• 39:29
  They're gonna watch, like, th-they're very able to now go, "Oh, Eddie Murphy was incredible in Shrek and made the whole movie. Now I can watch him in Beverly Hills Cop or 48 Hrs. or, or Raw."
• 39:41
  And I'm like, "Well, we're not gonna do Raw." But what is that compared to f-fucking whatever they're gonna find on YouTube?
• 39:50
  Wouldn't I rather know, well, I know what they're gonna get out of this two hours of there's a subtle abortion part, you know, or Three Men and a Baby, which the B plot is, like, murder and cocaine, basically?
• 40:00
  [upbeat music] I'm gonna tell you a little story here.
• 40:03
  When the iPhone first came out 2007, one of the first apps I tried to convince a coworker to help me develop was what I was calling, and people were calling, a read it later app.
• 40:14
  And that's 'cause we worked all day at ESPN, and we used to print up all the old ESPN Page 2 columns we loved, and then we would go and hide and read them on the company toilet.
• 40:25
  "Wouldn't it have been great, though," is what I said, "if we could just do that on our new touchscreen phones instead of printing them up?" Anyways, 150 years later, I have tried every read it later app. All of them.
• 40:38
  Migrating my archives over and over. But a couple years ago, I found Reader from the creators of Readwise and never looked back. It's so good. It's so fast. It's so smart.
• 40:51
  It works in my browser to save articles and read them and highlight them. It works on my phone and my iPad. I put it on my phone on my home screen instead of social media stuff. It's great. Reader can save it all.
• 41:02
  And because they also built Readwise, all the highlighting and syncing is flawless. Text-to-speech? Sure. Ghostreader GPT so you can ask questions of your stuff? Sure. Here's how you can try it for free in Readwise too.
• 41:16
  Right now, they're offering you guys, my listeners, two free months of Readwise and Reader when you sign up instead of just one month. So when you sign up, you get them both.
• 41:26
  The link to sign up and get that extra month is in the show notes, of course, and it's right here. It's readwise.io/quinn, Q-U-I-N-N. That's readwise.io/quinn. Again, it's right there in your show notes.
• 41:40
  It really is the future of reading. I can't recommend it enough. Probably the most essential thing I use every day. Check out Reader today. [upbeat music] Who cares?
• 41:51
  They're gonna find that in 30 seconds on whatever they find online, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I have found my daughter watching, like, Barbie seven, like, struggling with her fourth child.
• 42:00
  You know, just a YouTube AI shit. And I'm like, "Jesus Christ, man." It's, if it's able to be conceived, that shit's out there. So I- Yeah... sure, great. Watch Beverly Hills Cop. Mark was an HBO household, pretty fancy.
• 42:12
  We did not have a lot. Yeah. Royal threat. The-- Yeah, right? Like, we didn't get those. I grew up on Rhonda Shear's Up All Night movies just because my parents went to bed, it was a free-for-all.
• 42:23
  And watching, like, comedy stand-up shows. You just go down your own rabbit holes. There were just, there were fewer things for us to, to watch then, but we were all kind of raised by TV.
• 42:35
  And nowThinking about what they can find online a lot of the miniature- But it's, it was a little freeing to us when we thought about that, "Oh, we're trying to keep them from something that they've probably already seen or have talked to or experienced in some way.
• 42:48
  We know what it is and what's gonna happen, so, so why not?" You know? Do you guys think... And I wanna hear what you guys have lined up for them coming up, but I was listening to, well, How Did This Get Made?
• 42:56
  Another movie podcast. Yeah. And they just did- Yeah, I love that. I know. And they just watched Return to Oz. I don't know if you guys ever saw that movie. Yes. And it was so dark and scary. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 43:07
  And it made me think about how at least my age or my, like, era of childhood, there's so many really dark kids movies. And I'm thinking of The NeverEnding Story especially, was so- Yellow...
• 43:16
  like, ex- and show- Fuck yeah. Yellow. What else? I mean, Labyrinth, I feel like it's like- Labyrinth for sure... too intense. Labyrinth is dark as shit. Oh my God. Yeah. And I'm just like, why...
• 43:25
  Was that just a weird time of movies where we were expected to deal with these really heavy concepts? Or are movies dark in a different way that I just am not seeing? I'm just like, was that just us? Or was that...
• 43:37
  Like, is that still going on? 'Cause I wouldn't show my kids NeverEnding Story. There's, like, too much, like, between the horse dying and the nothing and the wolf, like, there was a lot of scary shit in that movie.
• 43:48
  Yeah. It definitely feels like Hollywood has changed.
• 43:51
  It, it maybe has to do partially with the rating system and, like, when that came into being, because there definitely, you know, were G movies that were specifically for kids, but a lot of the...
• 44:03
  Like, movies that featured kids became kids movies, but they weren't necessarily made for kids the way they are now. No. Yeah.
• 44:12
  Shrek is made for kids and adults very purposely, like those types of movies, but I don't think it was that sophisticated then. We hadn't gotten that far. Hmm. Yeah.
• 44:22
  And that's weird that, like, I feel like I was scared of certain movies. I remember we sh- some... [laughs] We got shown Nightmare on Elm Street, like, at a grade school sleepover, which was, like, way too scary for me.
• 44:31
  But then again, you're watching these other movies that are like, "What if there's no life after death?" You know? And what happens if, like, you, your childhood ends and you cross through... You know?
• 44:41
  Or, "What if we- Mm-hmm... give you electric shock therapy 'cause your imagination is too wild?" Like, these, the things that we got served were, could be really intense on a lot of levels, for sure. Oh my gosh.
• 44:52
  But such a formative memory.
• 44:53
  My, my sister at her 13- she had a 13th birthday sleepover and they watched Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, and I so wanted to hang out with the big kids and they thought it would be really fun- Hmm...
• 45:06
  to cover my eyes, 'cause my mom told them to watch out for me, so they decided to cover my eyes during the normal parts and let me watch the scary parts. [laughs] So I only saw the violent. It's all maggot.
• 45:20
  My brother and his friends showed me Cape Fear when I was eight. I can't watch horror movies. Oh, God. That didn't go well. What happens in Cape Fear? I've never even seen it. It can't be good.
• 45:28
  It sounds scary based on the name. The, the quote unquote new one, the De Niro one, it's not fucking great. The scene that stuck out to me the most- Stuck out...
• 45:36
  and I've re-watched it since, is when he's dressed as the maid in the kitchen in Garot's... It's not great. It's not great.
• 45:44
  It's- I mean, he puts his finger into Juliette Lewis' mouth in a very sexual manner that I definitely did not understand when I saw that movie in the movie theater with my parents, 'cause they had seen the original Cape Fear and they're like, "Oh, this is gonna be a cool, weird, fun movie," and it was- Yeah...
• 45:59
  definitely more sexual than they were expecting. Yeah. But that one really, that one goes to some very icky places for sure.
• 46:06
  I don't know how it shows, uh, like, shows up to kids nowadays, but I think some of that practical effects stuff, like, can be scarier than any kind of CGI. Oh, yeah.
• 46:13
  Like, I'm thinking of Large Marge in Pee-Wee, and that was, like, a personality test for my kids where I was like, "This is a canonically scary thing coming up," and w- I was like, "J- you might wanna leave the room."
• 46:24
  And Paul stood there and took it, you know, whereas James listened to us. But I think about The Fly when she gives birth to that maggot and it's still- Ugh... like, still seared in my head.
• 46:34
  And that kind of stuff really messes with you, like, in a bad... Oh, and Thriller.
• 46:38
  I haven't even shown the kids the Thriller v- video even though that was, like, one of the coolest things to ever happen to us as a culture, but they can't... We're wimpy people in my family, I'm just realizing.
• 46:48
  Like, Quinn asked us recent- asked me recently, like, what would happen if we were on Apollo 13? And I'm like, "We would all just, like, probably voluntarily kill ourselves rather than try to, to get through that."
• 46:57
  But tell me what you guys have coming up down the pipe. I just wanna... I'm just curious to hear, like, what you guys are gonna be watching with them that you have on the slate so far. Oh, for sure.
• 47:04
  Well, this month on Saturday we're filming our next episode. We're doing Olympics themed, and so my pick is The Cutting Edge, which we just watched the other night. Toe picked.
• 47:15
  Zach has been walking around saying "toe pick" since then. And Mark's doing Better Off Dead, so that, that's gonna be a fun one. Not exactly Olympic themed, but a- again- Yeah...
• 47:24
  also, um, you know, a, a super silly '80s comedy. A great performance from John Cusack. But a lot of adult references in that one for sure.
• 47:34
  I mean, the whole movie is about John Cusack's character wanting to commit suicide because he gets dumped by his girlfriend. Yeah. And all the different...
• 47:43
  He attempts to do it, but then he, something goes wrong and he can't commit suicide. That's the premise of the entire movie. And I know, a- again, when I was that age it flew over my head a lot.
• 47:53
  It didn't fly over Max's head when he first saw it. We actually went to a drive-in movie theater a couple years ago to see a Cusack, a double feature. The Mahoning. It's a great place. Which one?
• 48:05
  Uh, the, yeah, the Mahoning Drive-In. It's in Pennsylvania.
• 48:08
  It was maybe about a two and a half, three-hour drive for us, but we have a friend who does the programming at that, at that drive-in, so they had a, a John Cusack double feature with Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.
• 48:20
  So our kids- Hmm... have seen this one prior, but again, with Winter Olympic themed stuff, there's a big skiing plot in that movie if you guys don't remember that. Yeah. Snorting the snow.
• 48:30
  Obviously not really winter sports. Yeah. But like, str- do you know the street value of this mountain? So yeah, I, I think they'll...
• 48:37
  They, they definitely don't understand that reference, and I know I didn't either, but I picked it up later.
• 48:42
  And that's been part of the fun for us I think in this one too, is watching these movies that, that maybe we watched once or twice or maybe a, a bunch of times when we were younger, but watching them through new eyes and a new lens as parents.
• 48:54
  And it's just as older people around the world, you get more references. I don't know. It's, that's been super enriching and super fun for me.Yeah. Better Off Dead is such a deeply weird movie. Like, it has that fever.
• 49:04
  And isn't there, like, an animated hamburger scene to the Van Halen song? And, and I'm evidently wrong- Everybody Wants Some!! Yeah. Friends. You know Friends, right?
• 49:13
  And this, regarding Cutting Edge, Moira Kelly was, like, the most beautiful woman in the world to me. I don't know where she's been, but I just was like, what a gorgeous human being.
• 49:21
  Like, bookending that movie Chaplin, that Keith recently re-watched and was like, that did not... was not great. But I like that you guys are not doing, like, the usual movies, like the typical Cusack films.
• 49:32
  Like, I was thinking about, one of my favorites is The Sure Thing, and that's, again, I feel like a really problematic movie to...
• 49:39
  I don't know if I would show my kids, that, like, the whole premise is that you're gonna meet this woman who is guaranteed to fuck you, sight unseen. That's wild to me as a movie premise. I know.
• 49:46
  Like, for, like, you know, even it helps me- I feel like we should really figure out some sort of trigger warning for the movies that we pick, because we have a lot of, like, family friends who listen to the podcast with their kids of all ages, and they might not have the same philosophy on showing
• 50:01
  movies [laughs] to them, so... Yeah. I don't know about you, but regarding not including the rubric for your podcast, it makes me feel really good when I show the boys a, a movie that I...
• 50:11
  meant a lot to me as a girl, that they responded to. So, like, when they saw Clueless and loved it, that was extremely satisfying to me. Especially the part...
• 50:18
  Well, the thing that blew my h- mind about Clueless is that it was, like, such a joke that these kids all walk around with cell phones at the time. Like, you were like- It's different... can you imagine? Oh, yeah.
• 50:27
  Like, only in LA, and now you're like, that is normal. That's not weird to them. They don't see that as a joke.
• 50:32
  But they responded really well to Legally Blonde, which Paul was, like, kind of on the fence about at first, but he, I saw that he really did like it at the end.
• 50:41
  And I'm trying to remember if I showed them Romy and Michele's High School Reunion or not. Mm. That's another one that aged way better than I thought it would age. Like, that was... But what- Oh, interesting...
• 50:51
  what have you shown them that you, like... Again, I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm like, "I'm a girl. I know you guys all forget about me.
• 50:58
  I know you're all Star Wars and you're, this is all your li- your guys' house, and I'm just the lady who shows up sometime."
• 51:03
  But sometimes I'm like, "We're gonna watch Steel Magnolias, at least the first half of it, because you need to know," you know? Yeah. And do you make them watch things like that? Well, it's funny.
• 51:13
  So I, I grew up, I'm one of three girls, so there's only one guy in my household. And having two boys, I always wanted to have a daughter, but I kind of also want to raise nice boys.
• 51:25
  So one of the things I've always tried to do is raise them as if they're girls in a lot of ways, in that my mom spent so much time, like, teaching us how to cook and how to prepare for being a wife and all these things.
• 51:39
  And then there's so many men in the world that have no life skills because they just never got taught them. So in both, like, the things that I show them and what I want them to be able to do in life, I just,
• 51:54
  I just think about what you need to do in life to be able to handle the world.
• 51:59
  And so we also are lucky because we have, you know, we have one really sporty kid and one theater kid, so it sort of opens up the aperture of their interests a little bit, and I just kind of show them things that I like, and sometimes they like it and sometimes they don't.
• 52:16
  So yeah, we just... We've seen a lot of things. We saw Clueless with them, and that was definitely a big hit. We haven't seen Legally Blonde with them, have we? No. So good. That's a good one.
• 52:25
  No, we haven't watched that one yet.
• 52:26
  But one of the cool learnings also that we've found out through this podcast is certainly we want to show them things that we think they'll like, but it's actually more interesting for the podcast that there is a little bit of conflict, like our Hoosiers episode when Max hated it.
• 52:42
  I don't know, I think that was our best episode so far because we had such diverging opinions and I was, like, trying to win him over about why this is great and why it meant a lot to me, and he's just, "It was just really boring and slow, and why was that old man yelling at the high school kids all the time?"
• 52:56
  So it's kinda fun when they actually don't like it, even though that's definitely not my goal. I don't wanna show them something I think they're gonna hate. But it is fun if they don't have the same tastes.
• 53:05
  I think that's an issue with culture, and I feel it myself right now, like, where I haven't seen many of the Oscar movies because I am like, well, those sound really heavy or dark or complicated or long, and I don't have that in my...
• 53:18
  I don't wanna partake in that right now. This is, like, the way, my head space. And I'm like, but if this was back when we were kids and it was, like, only four movies, you saw those movies, you know? And you didn't...
• 53:26
  Like, that's what you saw. You weren't like, "Well, sooner or s- I don't wanna see a, like a vampire movie," or whatever, like, it was.
• 53:32
  And so the idea of sitting through something and thinking about it is probably something that's kinda lost a little bit, like, on us as well as kids, for sure.
• 53:40
  I think, I remember seeing Remains of the Day when I was 13, just because that was what was playing at our one movie picture house, and it was the first and only movie I've ever been kicked out of because there was a bunch of 13-year-old girls who could not, like, pay attention to that at all.
• 53:56
  It was like- Yeah... not what we thought. But that's just, you get what you get and you don't get upset. [laughs] Yeah. My mom showed me and a friend at a sleepover Gone With the Wind.
• 54:04
  Somehow she made it, like she convinced us- Oof... as a kid, everyone watch that, you know?
• 54:08
  And yeah, I know, and my parents will do that, or they would do that with my, with the boys, have them over and show them, like, Chariots of Fire or something like that. And I kind of was like, "Well, good.
• 54:16
  You know what? Good. Make them watch this. You're the grandparents, you're the old people, you know, force them to do this."
• 54:22
  Just, like, to kind of touch base a little bit about culture and how it's changed, Mark and I, the reason why...
• 54:28
  Mark, do you remember how we first got to know each other or, like, our original sort of like, how we became aware of each other? 'Cause that is sort of an interesting...
• 54:37
  Well, it's interesting to me, like, where we kind of originally got to, like, where we came to know each other in the culture, cultural zeitgeists.
• 54:45
  Yeah, we were both bloggers, Claire, and got to know each other in the early aughts thanks to blogs.
• 54:50
  I was a big fan, and still am, of all the stuff you were doing over at Xlki, and I ran this, like, humble website, org, and we met ourselves that way. Yeah, I mean, and it's such a... It was funny 'cause my son was...
• 55:01
  He looked at my website. I forget why I showed it to him, but he was looking at it and he's like, "You used to write every day a week for f- like"... And I was like, "Yeah, for free. For years." And I...
• 55:10
  And he's like, "That's cool."And I was like, "Well, I guess." I didn't do it- I didn't get paid for it.
• 55:15
  But I always try to think, I always wonder whether the internet was more fun back then, or whether we just think that because we were younger.
• 55:23
  And I don't know, like Megan, if you knew Mark when he was blogging in those days, like Quinn, what your internet presence was like back in the early aughts. But I don't know, it just...
• 55:33
  Does the world seem harder now because we're all older, or has it all just gotten, like, more deeply darker and complicated, and that's a fact? Yes. Well, it's funny.
• 55:44
  So Mark and I met after What Ev was no longer running. But I had my own little blog called Swamp City when I lived in DC.
• 55:53
  And it's so funny because I was just talking this with Emily Sundberg, who runs a really popular newsletter right now, and people who are the youth now are also doing, you know, expressing themselves online, but they're getting paid for it.
• 56:09
  Like, none of us got paid for all of that work, like that we did, which is wild.
• 56:14
  But I also, I remember when I met you, Claire, what, you were, you lived in Chicago, but we ran into you on a street in Cobble Hill, and it was, I had just read An Off Year, and Mark was like, "Oh yeah, I know Claire Zulkey," and you were this like author.
• 56:29
  I was like, "Oh, wow." And then little did I know that you would become like the creator of one of my like biggest online networks later on- Huh... in life as a parent with Evil Witches.
• 56:42
  Well, it's a weird time of life 'cause I think a lot about, I mean, you guys, we all have kids about the same age, and I- Mm... like we're gonna talk to Emily Gould next week.
• 56:50
  So it's hard not to think about, wow, like things were so full of promise, and we were cranking out like ideas, and had time to invest in these ambitions.
• 56:58
  And I always struggle with, did I, are we giving up or am I giving up? Am I losing it, you know, because my kids require this, my school, their school requires this, my parents require this?
• 57:09
  Or is this, don't worry about it, just fall asleep and, you know, it was good, it was good while it lasted.
• 57:16
  I don't, like I don't know how you guys are in terms of comparing yourself now to where we were pre-kids and what we were doing creatively. That's a big meatball, but yeah. I texted my best friend yesterday.
• 57:27
  I think I'm going to use whatever is left of my ambition m- this year and see how long it lasts, and then dot, dot, dot. That's it. And he literally called, he was like, "Are you okay?"
• 57:38
  I was like, "Why does that text seem out of the blue to you? That's the better question."
• 57:42
  [laughs] So- Well, well, that, you know, get- getting to the whole creative question of it all, that was part of the reason that I wanted to kick this project off in the first place.
• 57:52
  I've been in corporate media for 20 years and some change at this point. And, you know, Claire, back when we met in the early aughts, online first and then eventually in real life,
• 58:04
  that was just a really great outlet for me to get a lot of stuff out there that wasn't... I was working a marketing job at the time, and I started a blog, and it allowed me to scooch into this cool, fun career.
• 58:14
  But, you know, I like my job, and I like what I do, but it doesn't scratch that itch in the same way, because there, it is so, again, I work for a giant, huge multinational corporation, and
• 58:26
  there's so much focus on numbers and revenue and audience growth and all of the stuff that comes with it.
• 58:32
  This project, The Back of My Day, that, you know, Megan and I started with our kids, is we of course would like to build an audience for this thing, but it's definitely not a goal.
• 58:41
  We have, we're not monetizing our podcast. We're not looking to, you know, do tons of promotion for it.
• 58:48
  It's a fun thing for us to do together as a family, and the organization and structure of it is just a real, I don't know, I found it really an important part of our last couple of months, and I'm looking forward to continuing to do it for a really long time.
• 59:01
  Again, 'cause it, it just scratches an itch that I don't get from, fr- from my day, from my nine to five. Yeah. Which is actually more like a nine to- Yeah.
• 59:09
  You're not looking to win a Golden Globe for Best Podcast, new category? [laughs] L- maybe next year. We'll know. Who knows?
• 59:17
  I think a lot about, we were talking about John Hughes, and I don't even know when or where I would start with the kids, or even if I would even try to show them John Hughes movies, 'cause like, it's hard to imagine one that would like- But Home Alone-...
• 59:27
  slot in... is the way in. Oh, yeah. I forgot that Home Alone is a- It really, it checks like every John Hughes box. It opens up the whole thing. I guess I think of him as the teenage movies.
• 59:36
  Like, my personal favorite was Sixteen Candles, which is, you know, aged like milk in a lot of ways. And we're, but- We have that one on our list, so we'll see.
• 59:44
  I mean, I loved it, but also y- yeah, there's so many parts of it that did not, you know, don't hold up. And then Breakfast Club, same thing.
• 59:52
  [laughs] But I always think about Ally Sheedy going, "When you grow up, your heart dies." And [laughs] Judd Nelson says, "Who cares?" And I feel like both of them.
• 1:00:04
  I feel like her- Yeah, two, those are the two wolves stuck inside me right now... and also him. Actually, I feel like the principal more than...
• 1:00:09
  No, I feel like the janitor more than anyone else, like telling the principal, "Get over yourself. You know, you think you're hot shit. These kids don't look at us or see us as any kind of human being whatsoever."
• 1:00:19
  And that's where I am right now, is like... Anyway, sorry, not to get super fun and lighthearted, then creative. One question, and then I'm, I will wrap up my millions of questions. But so Max is 12, right?
• 1:00:30
  So do you guys have him, any kind of issue with him being like a snarky tween who, like y- doesn't take it seriously or tries to be too cool or write things off, or is he not in that realm yet?
• 1:00:43
  I'm just curious where you are with tween kinda stuff. So he, he definitely has a lot more opinions, but I feel like the biggest difference in him the last two years has just been like
• 1:00:56
  the way you can visibly see hormones just like wreaking havoc on his brain. Mm-hmm. Like, sometimes he just is desperate to pick a fight and will just say the most insane things.
• 1:01:07
  And depending on when he catches one of us, we'll take the bait and get into it.
• 1:01:13
  But there, whenever I can see it coming on, I kind of-I'm so happy because if you just completely ignore it, he'll sometimes have a fight with himself completely. Mm.
• 1:01:25
  Like, the less you engage, the crazier he gets when he's... Like, you can just see the struggle of, you know, it's almost like Inside Out or Big Mouth. You can see the hormone monster taking over. Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  I remember last spring I sent him out into the streets with going to school on his bike, like, openly sobbing because I, like, gave him a water bottle but didn't put it in his backpack.
• 1:01:49
  [laughs] And I'm just like, "I'm not taking the bait on this one." [laughs] I can't lose your mind out here. Have you guys done Big Mouth with him? No. [laughs] Okay.
• 1:01:58
  I was gonna say, 'cause I know when it first started, there were so many people who were like, "It turns out this might be the best way to actually talk to my kids about sex, is, like, sitting next to them- Oh, interesting...
• 1:02:08
  and watching Big Mouth. I don't know how much that aged, 'cause obviously that was like 10 years ago, but I was like, I don't know. And then I watched one episode again and I was like, Jesus. Like, I c- Man. Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  I have a very visceral reaction to that show. There's something about the way that the characters' lips are drawn that it really turns me off, and I literally can't watch it.
• 1:02:28
  So I remember when it came out, I would just listen to it like it was a podcast and not- Mm-hmm... watch it. I don't know. The lips. Yeah. Gross lips. Ugh. Yeah.
• 1:02:36
  Also, Nick Kroll was in my class at Georgetown, and I have a weird reaction where if someone is exactly my age and really successful, sometimes I can't, like, engage with it directly, you know?
• 1:02:46
  I'll do publicity, but I can't do Big Mouth, for instance. But Megan, talk just a tiny bit about your de-escalation tactics besides letting them fight amongst themselves.
• 1:02:55
  Mark was saying that when there's a post-pod meltdown, that you can bring things down. And maybe you have to de-escalate Mark.
• 1:03:00
  I know Mark always seems very even-keeled to me, but boys can make their dads a little bit crazy sometimes, I've observed in my experience. Mark just, like, forgets how parenting works and picks fights with the boys,
• 1:03:14
  deciding to tell them what to do. And then I have to figure out a way to make it more interesting. I think Hoosiers was a great example of this.
• 1:03:26
  He just got, he got really excited about doing a podcast, and then he declared that Hoosiers was the movie, and just decided we were watching it one night, and it just blew up from there.
• 1:03:38
  And I think I finally got Max to watch it by letting him know he could tell the world how much he hated the movie and he didn't have to love it.
• 1:03:50
  And sometimes it just requires waiting a while, because there's, like, this battle happening. Mm. It also happened last week when Mark decided the boys should take ice skating lessons, and he texted me.
• 1:04:03
  Like, Mark is also, like, super busy, and so we'll, you know, during the day we interact through, like, Google Calendar and sometimes emails. And he sent an email asking if the boys should take ice skating lessons.
• 1:04:15
  I said, "Sure, but let's ask them if they wanna take ice skating lessons before you buy it."
• 1:04:21
  And he came home that night, and I think there's just, like, a lot happening in his brain, and then he just likes to cross things off his list.
• 1:04:30
  So we got home kind of late 'cause one of our kids had a show, and then as he was putting them to bed, he said, "Oh, guys, you're gonna do ice skating lessons." And when Max objected, he said, "I already bought them."
• 1:04:47
  So not only- That's incredible Right at bedtime. Perfect. Retreat. Fucking incredible. No input to bed. So there was, like, tears and screaming, and he came downstairs, and he's like, "Are you gonna fix it?"
• 1:04:59
  God, I- Wow... do that once a day, I feel like. Yeah. Just, Claire and I always talk, Claire and I always talk about drive-by parenting. Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:08
  Which is your kids are just for once, like, minding their own business, and you just walk in and throw a fucking grenade. And it could be anything.
• 1:05:15
  It could be telling them that, like, their cereal is ultra-processed and is gonna kill them while they're trying to enjoy their Raisin Bran. Oh. Or, you know, a- anything. But yeah, 100%.
• 1:05:24
  The before bedtime, that's perfect. Oh, yeah. Just fuck the whole thing up. That's a good one. Yeah. I read something when Max was pretty young, 'cause we were having...
• 1:05:32
  He's always been obsessed with screens, and he really struggles. Like, he's the worst person after being on screens. Yeah.
• 1:05:39
  And I read somewhere that context switching is really hard for kids, and you can't just pull away the thing that they're doing- Uh-huh... and expect them to join the world again. Yeah.
• 1:05:49
  And so I definitely try and give them notice when things are happening, and let them know when it's gonna happen, and ease them into things. Mm. Mark takes a different approach.
• 1:05:59
  So with the ice skating, I just waited a day. Yeah. And I was like, do we tell them we lied about buying these tickets, or do we somehow mind trick them into doing it? And the mind tricking eventually happened, so.
• 1:06:14
  I, I empathize on both fronts, 'cause and Quinn and I talk a lot about how it can be really hard not to expect your kids to care about and adhere to your to-do list. You know?
• 1:06:23
  Like, I'll have on my notebook, like, they have to finish their school project, but they get home from school, and they don't necessarily want, for some reason, to dive right back into my to-do list so that I can stop sweating about it.
• 1:06:34
  So yeah, it's hard out there. Anyway, you guys, the podcast is so sweet, and I love...
• 1:06:40
  You guys are great parents, that you have this thing that you wanna do with them, and they're doing it, and you are engaging them with it. I don't know, Quinn, other questions or things to, to say that we didn't cover?
• 1:06:50
  I feel like I dominated. No, I mean, I was hoping there was more drama. But I could tell from Hu- Hoosiers that it was starting off problematic, which is great. There's nothing better than...
• 1:06:58
  And, and it seems like we're similar, just, like, coming at something with best intentions, but also a poison pill from the very fucking beginning, whether it's ice skating or the podcast. Like, I, oh man, all the time.
• 1:07:10
  M- I feel like the thing that my wife says most to me is basically just like, "Why did you do that? I don't understand why you would just [laughs] fucking do, why you would do that." I get that.
• 1:07:19
  And I'm like, "I don't know." I genuinely, I am- Like, we could do things the easy way or the hard way. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. And sometimes men just like it the hard way. Nope. Nope, just the hard way. Oh, no. No. Yeah.
• 1:07:28
  So last thing I wanted to share, and you guys said you showed this to your kids, so this is one of my favorite things. Can you read this?It says, "You ain't cool unless you pee your pants." It's Billy Madison, okay?
• 1:07:39
  Amazing. And it's like- If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis. Miles Davis, and his pants are peed, and the action figure, his pants are peed. But here's the thing. Yeah. I, like...
• 1:07:48
  I mean, it came up, I can't remember when I got this. 2020. And, you know, I was like, "Great. Check the box, put it in the office. D- deliver it to the office." Obviously, it doesn't go home first.
• 1:07:57
  [laughs] And then the more I looked at it, like, I've got a little guy with just raging, like, anxiety issues, and some depression, and stuff like that, and this is, like, the best parenting moment ever, is he was just basically, "I'm gonna take the hit for this kid, and I'm gonna turn it around, and just be like, 'Yeah, no, this is the thing to do.'"
• 1:08:15
  And you show them that it's fine, and you tell the other kids, like, "Yeah, fuck off. I- you think I'm the coolest guy. I also pee my pants." And they're like, "Fuck, man, everybody pees their pants."
• 1:08:24
  And then all the kids in the movie start peeing their pants. It's amazing. So this is... That's my thank you to Billy Madison.
• 1:08:29
  But- Yeah, it does sort of raise our kids, considering I think you've shown them every single one of his movies. That's great.
• 1:08:34
  We haven't done them yet, so now I have permission to dive in, which I look forward to getting in trouble for. Wedding Singer. Wedding Singer aged really well. Oh. And that was fun to re- It's really...
• 1:08:42
  I think that might be my favorite Adam Sandler movie, possibly. And Drew Barry- or that's my Drew, favorite Drew Barrymore. It's really sweet. It's a nice... It's a good one. And yeah, recommend that one.
• 1:08:51
  But- Julia Gulia. Julia Gulia. Well, I love the podcast. I hope you guys get, you know, all the ads and all the awards for it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 1:09:01
  And, um, but so, like, kinda mad at you for showing us up for doing something with your kids regularly that's fun, and not just something that you have to do.
• 1:09:09
  That's like- All I could think about, all I tell, ever tell Claire is how, like, how...
• 1:09:12
  And I was, uh, telling you, Mark, before we got on, like, how cathartic this is for me, because it's, one, it's not my other show, like fucking scientists and senators, but two, like, my fucking kids aren't here.
• 1:09:21
  It's so nice to have a goddamn conversation, like, without... It's so helpful. So I'm like, it's so great that you guys are doing that, but also absolutely not. Am I gonna invite my kids to come? No.
• 1:09:31
  N- I need a safe place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Trance state. So. Thank you guys for coming on the podcast. It was so fun to talk to you, and w- we hope you guys are having a good time with it.
• 1:09:41
  It's a great show, and love that you guys are hanging out with those kids. I think it'll... Hopefully it'll tell other parents, prompt them to watch movies like that with their kids, and have the same conversation.
• 1:09:49
  Like, this is making me think we should do that more with ours. So, um, we- And, like, movies can raise you. They can be fucking great.
• 1:09:55
  And just because k- the internet's available doesn't mean you can't show them awesome shit that makes them wanna watch more stuff, you know? There's some really great stuff. Yeah. Is some of it still problematic? Yeah.
• 1:10:03
  Sure. But whatever. Well, well, thank you, Quinn. Thank you, Claire, for having us on. Yeah. I'm gonna get one more plug in. Just, again, if you guys wanna check it out, it's... You can find it at backinmydaypod.com.
• 1:10:15
  It's on Spotify, it's on Apple Podcasts, it's on all those places. But again, we really appreciate you guys in- inviting us on. Claire, it's always great to see you again. We've known each other for...
• 1:10:25
  I've known you longer than I've known my wife, so it's great to see you. And again, thanks so much. We're ho- honored by this. [upbeat music] That's it for this week.
• 1:10:42
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• 1:10:54
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• 1:11:00
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• 1:11:09
  Head to notrightnow.show for more, or send us feedback, questions, horror stories, doxing, whatever it is, at questions@notrightnow.show.
• 1:11:20
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