Nichole: It freaks me out, because different languages have different sounds for different animals.

Nichole: You know what I mean?

Laurel: Yeah.

Nichole: How?

Laurel: How does that happen? You must be hearing it differently because you grow up with a different language. Yes. And so you hear things differently.

Daniel: You compare it to the sounds that you're familiar with. you grew up in a factory, a frog sounds like.

Nichole: okay well, you solved the mystery. I've been wondering that for years.

Song: Talkin bout love and sex and power, All our polyamateur hour.

Laurel: They figured this out because they ran experiments just raising children in factories.

Daniel: That is all of us. We're all part of the big experiment of the factory children.

Nichole: No, thank you. Nicole would like to opt out now. Um, I just can't believe that we actually put a soundboard together. I thought we were joking about it, and then you two like, went right ahead and actually created one.

Daniel: Yeah, we don't have any factory frogs, though. But, we do have now we want, our in jokes to be open jokes.

Daniel: Because this is a polyamory podcast, and we don't want it to be exclusive. It's always

Laurel: better when we explain the jokes.

Daniel: Yeah. I mean, We don't want anybody to miss anything.

Daniel: We believe, maybe this is more like a core, a core tenet. of our philosophy is that when people are being pretentious, they actually secretly want you to spit in their mouth.

Daniel: It's just far more likely that's what they're into. And since I'm the person who always does this we have a loogie hawk from Laurel.

Nichole: That's disgusting. I actually hate it.

Daniel: But now Laurel doesn't have to like, irritate her throat by, you know, doing it every time. And I can make a really dirty joke about irritating Laurel's throat, in which case you would say



Nichole: I literally, as soon as you said irritating throat, I very, I almost went, oh God.

Laurel: It's just, It's just the notion of it is visceral enough.

Daniel: I don't have a, like a um, a catchphrase or anything.

Laurel: Wait, is a Hawking a loogie my catchphrase now? Congratulations.

Daniel: When you walk onto the stage,

Laurel: when

Daniel: you walk onto the stage, there'll be some theme music and like Hawking a loogie as a sample.

Laurel: No, just the audience loves me so much. They all start Hawking loogies. And that's when I walk out.

Daniel: And while you just say. Oh God.

Daniel: So I'm taking recommendations is what I'm saying.

Laurel: I wish we could, I wish we could put, I don't know how to describe your face, but you just did it. And I wish we could put that on the soundboard.

Nichole: I know exactly what you're talking about. It's his expectation face of like, I just made a joke.

Daniel: Is it like, eh, I can do an

Laurel: eh, or no, I think your phrase is, Is either should we call the moil?

Daniel: I said that once, just once. I'm just never going to live it down. I'm like, Mr. Uncircumcised Jew

Daniel: over here. Just, Just looking for the girl that I'm going to moil for. Like, Who is, who's the one I'm walking around. I bring scissors to a first date.

Nichole: That was literally. A storyline in Sex and the City. What?

Nichole: There was an entire episode where Charlotte is dating a man who is uncircumcised. And of course, because it's Sex and the City, they're like, Oh, uncircumcised? And of course, Samantha is Yes, any penis is a penis. Or whatever. And so Charlotte has something like an aversion to an uncircumcised penis.

Nichole: And so he gets circumcised for her. Oh

my god. And then they

Nichole: can't have sex for, four weeks or whatever it is. And then. And once they finally have sex after his circumcision, he's like, all right, now I'm going to parade this guy around town. She's like, what do you mean? And he's like, oh, you're not the only hole I'm going to stick it into lady.

Nichole: I got to go take my new penis out for a spin. This is, This is what I

Daniel: say in the morning when I go for, I got to go take my dick for a run.

Nichole: This is, wow. Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Over the course of this podcast, there will be several instances where I say, that actually happened on Sex and the City, and I will explain.

Daniel (2): We can put that on the soundboard!

Laurel: Should that just be a segment? Actually, that happened on Sex and the City.

Daniel: Um, Today is a very special episode, you know.

it is.

Daniel: It is. Um. I feel like we should, I feel like we should bring the energy level down a little bit. What are you talking about? It's the Polyamateur Hour Yom Kippur Spectacular!

Song: Talking about women, sex, and power, all on Polyamateur Hour.

Wooooo! That's awesome.

Daniel: It's probably, it's not going to drop on Yom Kippur.

Laurel: No.

Daniel: Yeah.

Laurel: Because that would be That's today.

Daniel: Yeah. And we're going to fast from now until the episode drops. Oh God. We figure Why do people have to make Yom Kippur such a bummer?

Laurel: That's always been my, my beef with Yom Kippur. What a bummer. I want to have fun with my atonement.

Daniel: Yeah, you know, we say we like to do the work, right? So this is a time to, to celebrate, get it all off of your chest onto someone else's chest.

Oh God.

Daniel: You're not supposed to do it live. I'm sorry.

Daniel: We have a robot to do this for you now.

Laurel: I've already forgotten everything bad I've ever done. I had to write mine down. I should have. I thought about that, and then

Daniel: I just woke up cleansed this morning of all my previous sins.

Daniel: Do we believe in sins even, or should we call them something else?

Nichole: Foibles. Yeah, I guess in Yom Kippur tradition it is confessing of sins and apologizing



Daniel: all right. So who feels the most guilty? Who wants to kick it off? God, it's gonna be me.

Laurel: You, I feel like, yes, if anyone, you probably carry the most Jewish guilt of all of us.

Daniel: Because of the weight of my foreskin.

Daniel: Just gotta lug this sucker around with me all the time.

Daniel: I'll start with the light stuff

Daniel: so I'd like to apologize to Nicole for the seltzers that I leave I'd like to apologize for the half seltzer that I left this morning. I'm sorry.

Laurel: You already did it?

Daniel: I'd like to Of course you

Laurel: did.

Daniel: I'd like to apologize for the half seltzer I left yesterday. I'm sorry.

Daniel: And then I use my ADHD as a shield. I'm like, you can't change me. My mind just shuts down halfway through a seltzer. I can't even see the seltzer. To me it's just like, it's like the phantom of a seltzer. I look over there, it's like I, it's, I could pass my hand right through it. Through it.

Daniel: Is that how ADHD

Nichole: works?

Nichole: That's how he explains it to me because I don't have it. He's like, this is what it's like.

Laurel: It's like ghosts everywhere. And I believe him. Whoa, you need to apologize for weaponizing and lying about the nature of your learning disability. And then what is To

Nichole: back up. To back him up though, my therapist also has ADHD and she also describes it the same way.

Nichole: She's like, if the mess is in the other room, I don't see it and it doesn't exist. Oh,

Nichole: I get that. I get that. But seeing it as a ghost is different.

Daniel: I like to bring a little bit of magical realism to the game.

Nichole: You do, babe. All

Daniel: right. Who wants to, anybody else got a, a, a, a mini? A mini? Mini bad.

Laurel: I would like to apologize to Zoe for ever leaving her.

Laurel: Zoe is my anxious rat terrier. I've been traveling a lot lately. I have I have a new niece on the other coast, and so this has rapidly increased the amount of travel that I do. And I just feel horrible every time I have to leave my anxious dog.

Laurel: She's very well cared for when I leave, but I feel bad about it.

Daniel: You don't think she knows about the niece, do you?

Laurel: She's gonna be pissed when she finds out. I have not showed her a picture. . She hates children already. She doesn't hate children. I think she just hates children as much as she hates anybody.

Laurel: And there's something like particularly. Bad about a dog. The perception of a dog hating children. They can't defend themselves. Dogs can't. I thought you meant children.

Daniel: The dogs hate them because they're weak.

Laurel: I can smell it on you. I

Nichole: feel like I have to apologize to Zoey then because I really like it when you're hanging out over here and Zoey's not here.

Laurel: Yeah. It's okay. It's like. I think of it as like exposure therapy when I do it for a couple hours during the day, but when it's like an extended trip.

Nichole: Okay, Trying to think of one. Okay. So yesterday, this is a new one. I Judged a couple in the grocery store last night for looking too alike.

Nichole: And I want to apologize to them, but it really struck. It just really struck. Now I'm going to try and justify it. Just really, I was just like, Oh my God, they're both, they were both slight. They were both very pale. They were both very, just like walking slowly and. Like not saying anything to each other.

Nichole: And I was just like it just, it looked like they were like twins from a horror movie, almost. Are you sure

Laurel: that they aren't just the specter of a couple that Daniel saw and then his ADHD made him forget about? I'm

Nichole: not sure. You're right. If they do exist, if they are real, I'm sorry.

Daniel: Um, On theme with the specters.

Daniel: I would like to apologize for anybody that I started dating this year and then totally flubbed it by not texting on a regular cadence. And just popping out of nowhere as soon as my, my brain carousel came back around to them. And I was like, oh, hey, want to hang out tonight?

Nichole: Is that not, is that bad? Because I feel like I do the same thing with friends. Yeah, there's too many people. Like, I have gradations of relationships. And like I have the people who are very close to me and I will be in contact with them on a regular cadence and then I have other people that I'm like, hey, I heard this song in the grocery store and I'll leave them a voice memo singing the song.

Laurel: Aw,

Nichole: that's

Daniel: sweet. But I like text them, I'm like hey, I got horny.

Nichole: Oh. You know. Then yes, you should apologize.

Nichole: Alright, Laurel.

Laurel: Speaking of friends, I guess mine, this is a little more serious, but apologize to all of my friends far away that I don't call enough.

Laurel: Or visit enough. Because I miss them. I even have, I still have a voicemail on my phone from a friend that like, I was even like, call me Sunday. I should be, have time. And then did not have time, and they left me a voicemail, and I've not even listened to it because I feel bad about it.

Ooh.

Laurel: Nicole,

Nichole: don't respond that way.

Nichole: I'm responding in like, I know exactly what you're talking about. I have absolutely done that.

Nichole: All right. I want to apologize to, so there's this guy that I regularly see. At this place that I go to regularly and I ignore him regularly because I have a crush on him and I just don't want him to know.

Nichole: So like he'll like reach out to say hi. I'll go like, Hey. It's yeah, it's not great. And he goes home every night and he's cool. He hates me. Oh, he's not thinking about me at all. But.

Daniel: I think you really need to apologize. To yourself.

Daniel: Um, All right, shall we kick it into high gear?

Nichole: Let's get, Let's get serious.

Daniel: Let's call them loyal.

Daniel: I have, at certain times this year let my jealousy Push me to the point of being a a sassy little bitch. Specifically, I'd like to apologize to Stubert. Everybody who we are anonymizing here is Stubert.

Daniel: For those of you not in the know, you're all a bunch of Stuberts until you Come out of the closet. Put your name on record. Um, so, Stubert came to a one of our Star Trek nights, and I got jealous for the uh, the cozy um, ensconcing that uh, Laurel was doing, because I was like, I wanna be ensconced, and I was like so most importantly, not only did I make Stupert feel a little uncomfortable, I also disturbed the sanctity of Star Trek night.

Daniel: Star Trek night is all about us being a crew on our starship. There's it's the Roddenberry rule. There's not supposed to be any conflict between the primary characters. And I introduced a little bit of conflict.

Laurel: I'm sure Stuber appreciates. Your apology. Maybe. I don't know.

Daniel: Yeah, I mean I've already delivered it in person.

Laurel: Yeah.

Daniel: I just That would be such shit if you didn't. If

Nichole: you just had it on this podcast.

Daniel: Ha! You gotta wait for three weeks.

Daniel: Ha

Laurel: ha ha Ha. Ugh. I have not apologized in person for mine. I My big thing, and actually in thinking about our Yom Kippur spectacular, I was like, this is something I really want to focus on working on this year, which is conflict avoidance.

Laurel: Cause I think that one of the big things, and this, I feel like spans across like multiple relationships is that I avoid conflict to the extent that it's sort of like festers and gets worse. And then becomes a bigger issue. And like specifically in one of my relationships, it was one of those things where it's okay, I'm going to chill girl.

Laurel: This isn't going the way, like we're not spending as much time together. We aren't scheduling time together. And. And instead of insisting that we do that and like have strife and conflict around that, I was just like, I'm not going to care about it. I'm just gonna just go with the flow.

Laurel: And then it became too late to fix. So Stubert, I'm sorry

Nichole: not to give feedback.

Laurel: But please. I'm here to take feedback on my sins.

Nichole: I would say that, I would say that you have worked a lot on your conflict avoidance this year. You came to me with an issue regarding a partner many months ago. And the first thing I said to you was well, Laurel you're conflict avoidant, I don't know how this is going to go.

Nichole: And I have seen you really grow and challenge yourself. And it's been, I know that it's been uncomfortable and I know that it's been. a lot to take on, but you have absolutely made strides in that. Thank you.

Nichole: I think mine is a little bit related. Yeah. But I think I come at it, not necessarily from a conflict avoidance. space, but from an assumption and fear space. I'm very quick to be cool girl. I am the coolest. Nicole's wearing shades right now. In a basement. Yeah. But I have a couple of relationships where I am just not honest about what I would like going forward.

Nichole: I think that I couch a lot of um, my cool girl energy in fear and assumption that the other person just doesn't feel that same way about me. And I tell the other person's story for them and it's really unfair to them because I'm being dishonest and I'm not giving them the floor to be able to express themselves.

Daniel: It sounds like you need to apologize.

Laurel: No, No,

Daniel: all right. I'm going to do a little twofer here.

Daniel: I'd like to apologize to you, Nicole, for not really listening when you tell me that you don't have agency in your work to put down the kinds of boundaries that I want you to put down. Just because I want you to do it, doesn't mean that it's actually possible for you.

Daniel: And I would like to apologize for having that be my knee jerk response. When you share with me your stress around work,

Nichole: But I'm genuinely touched by that because I am in a position where I have to be on call for a lot of people so I really, I appreciate that.

Nichole: Um, we just don't have the same kind of work and I don't get to experience work that you do.

Daniel: Now I'm a crazy creative director. I'm like, give me space to just like lie down and put an eye pillow on,

Laurel: I've literally seen Daniel slack.

Nichole: Nap time.

Daniel: I draw from my dreams That's where all the magical realism comes from and

Nichole: that would be really fucking pathetic if I drew from my dreams to do excel spreadsheets like that's Disgusting.

Daniel: I mean, it would also be, like, really bad for the Excel spreadsheets. Yeah, it wouldn't make any sense. Like, magical realistic Excel spreadsheets are a quick way to torpedo your company.

Daniel: Um, And then I wanted to apologize to you, Laurel, for trying to drag you kicking and screaming into my like, psychotherapeutic processing shit when you were Uncapable of doing it for assuming that you're willfully not talking to me.

Daniel: There's been instances where like, don't you want to talk? Don't you want to talk? I've been thinking. I've been thinking. I've been processing. And forgive me, I was raised by therapists and wolves

Daniel (2): I forgive you, my son.

Daniel: My mom said we're supposed to ask three times. I was like, that sounds really annoying. That would be, like, my fucking neurotic thing that I just described is be like, Are you sure you forgive me?

Daniel: I was going

Laurel: to say that seems like specifically contrary to the nature of what you're apologizing for, but I also like I just pictured in my head that scene in the movie where someone's like, like, And they're like, okay, whatever. And they're like, no, I love you. And they're like, okay. Yeah. And they're like, no, I love you.

Laurel: And then everyone's crying. And then they really love each other. What movie is this? It's just the one in my head.

Daniel: I think that was the Santa

Laurel: Claus.

Laurel: And then everyone's got a fat kink.

Daniel: Sidebar.

Daniel: I once went out on a date with this guy who had this specific fat kink he called it gromming. And for some reason I can't really locate it on the internet. anymore. I've tried since then to like verify that this is what it was actually called.

Daniel: But he really wanted to be called like a fat little pig, things like that. He wanted to, even though he was not fat, he just wanted to be fat shamed

Daniel (2): and

Daniel: his What Laurel is referencing right now is this, is that he told me that his formative experience for this kink was seeing the movie The Santa Clause with Tim Allen, and like the scene where he's just like swelling in the doctor's office and this has haunted me ever since.

Laurel: Yeah, and now it's haunted me too, because you told me about it like several times.

Laurel: Can we have one Yom Kippur Spectacular without bringing up Santa?

Laurel: How did we get here? This is not my beautiful podcast. Do we have

Nichole: a question?

Daniel: Um, are we doing Stubert's question or Stubert's question?

Laurel: Let's do Stubert's question.

Song: If you got questions, don't demur, it's time to ask the amateurs.

Daniel: This is a simple one. I'm wondering how you negotiate sharing time, attention, and intimacy between partners in a way that minimizes jealousy. It doesn't feel like legal arbitration.

Laurel: Legal arbitration.

Laurel: I like this question because whenever people whenever people address this, like the answer is always like Google calendar, air flip. And I don't fuck with that shit. No, I do. I have my own calendar. But everyone's the joke is oh yeah, poly people share a bazillion calendars and spreadsheets and stuff and I do not like that.

Laurel: I don't want you to share your calendar with me. And I don't like it to feel like legal arbitration because then you get to this point where you feel like You're committed to obligations, not to human beings.

Daniel: Word.

Nichole: So that's not what I do, but I'm not going to tell you what I do. I was going to ask what's so wrong with legal arbitration, but I guess that's it.

Daniel: Nicole's really good with spreadsheets. Makes sense. A lot of people are into it. I'm just not. I think sometimes It can end up feeling like legal arbitration. It doesn't have to all the time, but there is going to be crunchy moments, like being poly with multiple partners especially if like me and maybe Laurel, you sometimes forget plans that you've made.

Laurel: Oh, yes.

Daniel: Recently.

Laurel: Yeah.

Daniel: You want to back up and go back into the, I'm sorry that.

Laurel: I'm sorry I forgot that we made plans together on my birthday.

Laurel: You're so pleased with yourself.

Daniel: So we were also talking yesterday when we were batting this question around about how it comes down to like setting of intention, like you can deal with it on this kind of granular level and some people need to deal with it on a granular level, like you can either like deal with it on a point by point basis where I'm going to hang out with you this time. We're going to do this thing. I expect this of you. I expect this of you at this particular time.

Daniel: But it can sometimes be more rewarding in the longterm. If you back up, zoom out and are like, what is my overall intention? Do I want To spend time with this person and centering the intention of either, making sure that you follow through on that intention to spend time with them, or if you check in with yourself and you're like, find that you actually don't want to prioritize them.

Daniel: Act on it, and that's gonna be a shitty conversation, but that's the way that relationships that are not serving either person need to go. Is they need to become phantom LaCroixs that you can pass your hand through.

Nichole: I think

Nichole: The minimizing jealousy part, like, maybe I don't know. I feel like a dick for saying this, but like, not my job. It's not my job to minimize your jealousy of somebody.

Nichole: I would respect a boundary. If you put up a boundary and say, I don't want to hear about this person, or like, I want to practice parallel Polly with them. If you, I would have to seriously consider whether or not that's something that I want.

Daniel: Or if I had been replaced by a changeling.

Nichole: That would be a whole different thing. Um, Polly for me is not managing people's emotions. It's having deeper relationships with multiple people and they get to experience their own relationships. I don't know, and I also don't know that legal arbitration would minimize jealousy, I feel like.

Nichole: Yeah. Like, I don't think, I don't know that the two are connected necessarily, but,

Nichole: and I also don't think a Google calendar would solve jealousy either. Yeah. Because I feel like I've heard I've, I've, Read a lot of polyamory reddit entries that were like I saw this on their google calendar And they didn't tell me about it and I just saw it and it was bad and i'm like, yeah, I bet

Laurel: Yeah, also none of your business I don't know But I mean, they made it each other's business by sharing calendars, but no.

Daniel: Discovered that he was going to see the Santa Claus.

Laurel: And he knows how much I hate Tim Allen. Yeah, no, I feel like there's, yeah, there's, I feel like there's a few suppositions that come with this idea of like balancing time together. And it's one that all of your partners want to spend the same amount of time with you. Or that they all want to be spending more time with you than what they get already.

Laurel: And there's like that big, the big, equality versus equity kind of thing. And I think what does get dangerous, especially in in the Google calendar world that you're thinking of is the idea of like comparison, like when you start comparing how much time your partner spent with their other partners versus you, and then.

Laurel: Like on the end of being someone who might feel jealous about that, you have to stop and ask yourself is it because I actually want to be spending more time with this person or am I just feeling inadequate because I started making comparisons with other people? And I think that's the part where Daniel, you're talking about like the intention and like following through on like your intention and desire.

Laurel: Is what really closes the gap around those things. Cause it's if I know that my partner wants to, and follows through on their attention of spending quality time with me, that's what I really need rather than like. so many days a week or so many days a week compared to this other person.

Daniel: I think those are both really good points.

Daniel: The first one reminds me, I got, here's another thing that I fucked up, I got a little flash of jealousy the other day when you were, you know, you've been dating a couple of new people and I zoomed forward, I was like, what if she gets in a relationship,

Daniel: one mistake that I made was that equity versus equality thing that you were just mentioning that doesn't mean that there is like a third of your time is suddenly going to vanish because you have another partner. And two, I wasn't paying attention to the intention, right?

Daniel: If I get jealous or scared about something, that's usually what it's about at its core, is I just want to know that you want to spend, time with me.

Daniel: And then this comes down to a question that we are always batting around, me and you, Nicole, of Is jealousy something that you should share with a partner? If you are feeling jealousy do you communicate it? And, with the jealousy stuff that I had going on with Laurel lately, you were encouraging me, you were like, No!

Daniel: Never! Never say it! I don't know that

Laurel: I was that dramatic about it. And then she fainted.

Daniel: And then you slapped me. Three times. And then I asked for it each time. It's a very Jewish thing. Slap me again. Slap me again.

Nichole: This is something that we disagree on, though.

Daniel: This is something that we disagree on.

Daniel: Yeah. Which is going to be a, a future segment where we're gonna have some kind of like, like a face off thing. Mm-Hmm. Where it's like, like,

Nichole: no, I want people to vote. Holly debate. I like it.

Daniel: With me. Like I'm a little like you Nicole, where I don't have a poker face, so if I am feeling something like somebody's gonna perceive it.

Daniel: For the most part and I just try and communicate it in a way that's responsible, right? That centers it on my own feelings and doesn't expect definitely a change in action from the other person. And I think we, you know, what you, you told me is that, If I told you that I was jealous, it would change your action.

Daniel: Like it's like the um, one of those uh, quantum physics things, right? Where you uh, observe it and therefore you change its behavior. Oh, I

Laurel: like that. There's that button.

Nichole: I think I still maintain that because it really just comes from my own shit though. I think that I, in the past, I have had partners tell me something and just the act of them telling me made it my responsibility to do something and they just washed their hands of it, I think I'm specifically thinking about a partner I had many moons ago who was a drug addict and him telling me that he was a drug addict and then Clean and blah blah blah like it felt like he was trying to absolve himself And by him telling me I had to like I tried my fucking best not to like take it on like I didn't take him to meetings and I didn't Ask him about it afterwards, but I still feel like it, I felt like his intention of telling me was like absolving himself of the responsibility.

Nichole: Because I was the one person that he was lying to or whatever, right? I think that in the event if you were gonna tell me that you were jealous, I would have to do a lot of work to not change my behavior around it. I would want to give you the space to work on it. And I would also want my response to be gracious because I feel like I am also afraid that my response would be like, yeah.

Nichole: And in order to restrict my, in order to put up a wall, basically, and not try to change my behavior or be codependent about it. I

Daniel: think that you underestimate yourself. It's just like, kind of with my OCD stuff, right? You're really good at not giving me any reassurance when I have something going on that I'm like, freaked out about and I'm like

Nichole: some kind of psycho.

Daniel: No, it's it's or maybe it's like you're a bad bitch, you know, it's like the positive, positive, cool. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm like, Oh, what's this blemish on my hand? I have leprosy. You're like, no, pipe it, and I think that you would probably be able to react that way. I hope if I ever shared.

Daniel: Jealousy but

Daniel (2): you know

Daniel: Because it's a similar thing. It's like it's really about me Sharing a discomfort within myself, and I yeah, I trust both of you to actually Know that and so I would not hold back You know what? I'm feeling I know One, that I'm, would not, never want you to change your behavior based on these negative emotions that I'm feeling.

Daniel: And two, I trust you both to not try and soothe baby Daniel

Nichole: I appreciate that. Thank you. To clarify, I don't tell you to like shut up when you tell me about OCD stuff. I just,

Daniel: You don't engage with it. I don't

Nichole: engage with it, yeah.

Daniel: There's actually something that you say to me, like when I get in this space, that's actually been really helpful for me every time.

Oh God. LAUGHING

Laurel: I was waiting with bated breath like, what is it? I'm curious. I know, I was like

Nichole: what do I say? I'll be sure to say it more often. I'll be sure to put it in my field profile. To show how emotionally mature I am.

Daniel: Nicole knew the gag was coming because my mouth was open. Oh

Laurel: man. I'm still not hip to your jibe.

Daniel: Wow, you misused jive the opposite way that everybody misuses.

Laurel: Oh, it should be jive.

Daniel: This is the first time that I've heard it reversed. This is the thing that I, that keeps me up at night. Is everybody saying it doesn't jive with me. We're like, oh, it doesn't like sing Cab Calloway songs with you?

Daniel: Jive. You just flipped it. Flipped it. You just flipped it the other way.

Laurel: Oh, it's probably because I'm dysgraphic.

Daniel: Sorry to correct people's sorry to correct people's grammar. I

Nichole: might take that soundboard away from

Laurel: you.

Laurel: Just unplug the headphones, then no one can hear it going off.

Laurel: Okay.

Nichole: Yes.

Daniel: Nicole has looked at her watch. And it's time. I think we need a We need a giant clock. I was thinking that we need some kind of musical cue for when Nicole looks at her watch each episode and decides that we need to keep it moving. Bring it along. Alright. What's up next? Is this Polly?

Song: Is this Polly or not?

I did it.

Laurel: This one, this comes from a listener, my favorite German listener.

Daniel: Stubert.

Laurel: Stubert. This one comes from Stubert. We were recommended to watch um, You, Me, Her. There is, A lot of seasons of this, I believe. There are

Nichole: five

Laurel: seasons of this. There's five seasons of this. And so we watched the first two episodes.

Laurel: So we're going to, we're going to start there. And then I think we'll probably circle around in later as this poly segments to update as we go along.

Daniel: In our old age, when we finally get around to watching all five seasons.

Daniel: Who wants to give the synopsis? I mean, Usually we, we hand this, this baton to Nicole because of the spreadsheet brain.

Laurel: Also, Nicole is the most concise speaker of us.

Nichole: Okay. I can do it. Thank you. All right. So this is a show that takes place in Portland, Oregon. It is very obviously filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. And centers around a couple, Jack and Emma, who have been married for quite a while and definitely have a dead bedroom, right?

Nichole: Like they're not having sex very often. And the beginning of the pilot episode has them in a therapist's office where they're talking about fertility and Emma is getting anxious because she's I'm I boom, I'm 37 and fuck, we don't have kids. And we live in a suburb where everybody has kids.

Clip: We're like that couple with no kids in a family neighborhood, and the neighbors kind of think we're pitiful and weird, which is ridiculous because we're objectively so much better than them.

Nichole: Do

Laurel: I look as old as these people?

Nichole: My question too.

Laurel: Do I? No, not at all. Great,

Nichole: thank you.

Daniel: They're prematurely aged by monogamy. Oh yeah, that's very true.

Nichole: It's my, it's the secret to my youthful glow.

Daniel: I eat a baby once a year.

Nichole: Jack and Emma, Just realized that they haven't had sex in quite a while, right?

Nichole: And this is a problem for them. Jack is out with his brother his businessman sleazy brother.

Yeah.

Nichole: He's just like an annoying character. Also, I'm so sorry. Off the bat, very obvious. This is Canadian. I knew the second the people started talking, I was like, this is a Canadian show. And then when I did a little bit of research later, I'm like, yep, this premiered on HBO Canada.

Nichole: Where the show comes from.

Daniel: And they think that they can make it all Portland just by sprinkling in street scenes. Like they just sent like a B crew out here to like Portland at some point. And they're like, let's film the outside. Side of the McMinimums. Let's film the welcome to Portland side.

Daniel: Yep. And.

Nichole: She also, at one point, Emma is taking in the recycling, which is very Portland. Oh yeah. She's got the blue can that says Portland recycles exclamation point. But that version is just like a tiny decal on this giant fuck off can.

Nichole: So. Jack is talking to his sleazy brother who's like, you know what I did when I stopped being attracted to my wife

Clip: It's like a tree falling in the forest, except it's my dick going into another woman. So you, you were with a hooker? No, I'm talking about an escort. What's the difference?

Nichole: Which

Laurel: is like Fucking every other line in the show every other escort. You mean hooker? No, like what?



Clip: I am not a hooker. We're escorts. It's, it's different.

Daniel: This is so this This show struck me as written by somebody who had no experience with many aspects of the subject matter.

Daniel: Like they don't know any sex workers. They don't have any experience of like marriage. So

Nichole: we're going to get to that because I did a little bit of digging on, Oh, the show and how it came about. Ooh. I can't wait. Um, So

Nichole: Jack hires an escort, lies to his wife that he's going to wing out with happy to happy hour. This escort who we learn is a grad student at Griffin college or whatever they're the sub in for read is basically

Nichole: they meet in a hotel room and he's basically like, uh, I can't do this. And she's like, well, you have a mini bar.

Nichole: Let's just talk. And so they start talking and then obviously the talk gets intimate and then they start making out and blah, blah, blah.

Clip: Do you want to make out? Shit. Sorry. Nope. That. Uh. I sound crazy. I promise I won't boil your rabbit.

Nichole: And then he feels real bad. And so he goes home and he confesses to his wife and his wife is like, What the fuck? Who is this? And he's like, don't I get points for telling you?

Nichole: And

Clip: I came clean. Don't I get points for coming clean? Points? I don't know. You want fucking points for that? You get points for admitting to scarfing down the second half of my panini, not for confessing to spending happy hour in a hotel room with a hooker. I was an escort.

Nichole: And she's like, no, you don't get points, which honestly, that was probably the most real line in the entire pilot with somebody saying don't I get points for being honest? So she also looks up the escort and hires her for a date with the assumption of just like checking her out and seeing what she's like.

Daniel: Right. Doing some kind of weird, creepy revenge scenario. I don't know. There was,

Laurel: There was like an app for escorts. How easy is it to find the same escort that like? So this is also

Nichole: part of, it's part of the basis of this show. And the background research that I did.

Daniel: Did you hire an escort to do your background research?

Nichole: I did and this morning. You mean

Daniel: a hooker?

Nichole: So Emma hires. This escort. Yeah. And they meet in a bar. And they do seem attracted to each other. And she gives her a foot job under the table. I'm doing that in air quotes because I've never heard foot job so many times and I didn't know what that was.

Daniel: Another thing I feel like this is somebody who has no experience with sex work.

Daniel: Marriage slash human relationships, or lesbians,

Nichole: correct. So then Emma and the escort, what is her name? Izzy. Yeah, they make out in the bathroom basically. And then Emma's like Emma and Jack separately are both fantasizing about Izzy and then they confess to each other. In a therapy session, that they're both really thinking about Izzy, and they both really like Izzy.

Nichole: And then, at the end of the second episode, Izzy shows up at their house.

Laurel: I love when the conversation where they're confessing that they both have been thinking about her, it just goes from like Jack being like, okay, I saw her one more time to break up with my escort, not hooker, girlfriend.

Laurel: And then Emma being like, oh yeah, I've also thought about her. And they say nothing else. And he's like, wait, are we doing this? And it's like, how did they make the leap from like, yes, I thought about this person I hooked up with extramaritally to Wait, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Daniel: And then she shows up at their door, like magically at that moment.

Daniel: It's like, they said Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice,

Nichole: Beetlejuice. How does she know

Laurel: So it's like when we when Izzy and Emma hook up then we get a couple of scenes where Emma starts to explain like Oh, yeah, actually I am a little bi. I never told you But there was this other girl and then this other girl and this other girl and also I'm so fucking sick of them Referring to this escort as The girl in all of other Emma's relationships with other women as this girl, the girls.

Nichole: I was like, okay well, I can't wait for, you know, the escort to be like, manic pixie dream girl and just come in and fix their relationship. It's one thing that I kind of appreciated is that like, okay well, she's not fully put together and she is like a fucking mess and definitely an alcoholic.

Nichole: I can like, I know that there's going to be like a getting sober storyline later in the series. And she's fucked up. She's fucked up. Yeah. And they're also all fucked up, whatever. So I did a little digging and I, cause I was like, where the fuck did this come from? Yeah. Yeah. Like I had never, I had never heard of it.

Nichole: Mostly because we don't live in Canada and we don't have HBO Canada. So shame on us. This was based this was based on an article from a 2012 Playboy. Issue by, oh God. And the article, oh, I did one of your sound

Daniel: drops

Nichole: accidentally, . I did. The article was called Sugar on Top. Because it is not about polyamory, it is not about triads.

Nichole: It is not about throuple. It is not even really about escorts. It's about the Sugar Baby and the Sugar Daddy phenomenon. Oh, okay. It literally has almost nothing to do with what the show actually is. And I have yet to figure out where that leap came from. I don't understand how they got from Sugar Baby, Sugar Daddy to Thrupple,

Nichole: These writers they probably don't have any experience with sex work or polyamory or human relationships because it's based on a transactional phenomenon that happened at the height of the recession, which I didn't necessarily partake.

Nichole: Participate in, but I definitely went out on dates to get dinners. But this was a thing, like you went to a website that had a profile of a sugar baby as a sugar daddy and you would hire, but yeah. So

Daniel: was this something that you think that was like spit balled in like a producer's, you know, office, right?

Daniel: Okay. All right. What if it's a, what if it's a throuple? We've got to make them more relatable. Oh, if it's a throuple, we got to put them in Portland, Oregon.

Laurel: Wait, yeah, when

Nichole: did this come out? When was this? This 2016.

Laurel: Okay. I was like, was the word throuple even circulating

Nichole: at that point

Laurel: in

Nichole: time? They haven't said it yet in the show.

Nichole: And maybe that'll come later. I'm not entirely sure, but it is mind boggling that this show would come out of a Playboy article that has nothing to do. Yeah. It was also described as the only polyfidelity sitcom on TV. That's the quote, like the opening quote in the Wikipedia article.

Daniel: I'm not going to settle, cause it's the only thing available.

Nichole: I know, but we've talked about most, if you have an actual poly Relationship on screen or whatever it is going to be boring because it is a lot of just scheduling and honest talks with each other like The triad thing is rife with conflict.

Nichole: Yeah.

Laurel: I like at some point when we were watching the episode, Daniel Daniel postulated that it was written by AI. And I feel like if you took that Playboy article and stuck it into chat GPT and you just kept typing and more and more, this is what it would

Nichole: And have them say fuck more because this is on HBO.

Laurel: Yeah, I was Like, not show boobs. I also said, I was like, Daniel was nothing feels real about this. And I was like, yeah, it's like Dawson's Creek dialogue. It's just super overwritten, but then they added some fuck in there to like, bring it back down to earth.

Daniel: Not just because it was filmed in Canada, but just because of the mood, I felt like it was very inauthentically Portland, and I felt a little bit offended. One, because Portland is not populated with these kind of weird AI Suburban entities that are like, I don't know that my wife is bi after 15 years.

Daniel: And this is

Nichole: a problem. Yeah. She didn't owe you that, asshole.

Daniel: Like they, they are not human beings in a way that really stands out to me as these are definitely not, they're not human beings, but they're also really, definitely not Portland human beings.

Daniel: And so I feel like, which brings us. To the most important question here, is this Portland?

Nichole: No, I mean, most shows that take place in Portland are not Portland,

Laurel: you know? Except Portlandia, which is so Portland. Portland's mad about it.

Nichole: And that's the most Portland thing. Yeah.

Daniel: Portlandia is about all the people who moved to Portland. My own private Idaho is about Portland.

Nichole: Yes.

Daniel: All the early Gus Van Sant stuff. That's the Portland that I grew up in. Nobody's dead in the bush on Portlandia.

Nichole: Yeah. I didn't catch that episode. I haven't been able to find any explanation to the creative choices that were made in this show. I do think that was like, Oh, Portland seems like a really, Sex positive city that would have an escort that's also a grad student.

Nichole: Let's set it there You know like I get that I understand that but it doesn't feel like it should take place Anywhere. Like it doesn't, it also doesn't have to be Portland. It could just be like a fucking suburb of Phoenix. Yeah, it

Laurel: could be any anonymous city, but they really make a point of this is Portland.

Laurel: Let's show a Portland landmark as every transitional scene. I don't like any of these people. I hate them all.

Mhm.

Laurel: It's uncomfortable watching them.

Laurel: I realized while watching the second episode, I'm like, I'm really uncomfortable. Every turn that is made, every conflict that comes up, every revelation, I'm just like, no, this isn't a thing.

Nichole: Yeah. There's the quality of the show and then there's the question of is this Polly?

Daniel: Yeah. Should we start asking more questions? like, Is this Polly or not? Maybe that's not the important question. Is it trash?

Laurel: Classic. I'm gonna fix my marriage with a hooker.

Laurel: I can't wait to watch more. This is definitely going to watch more.

Daniel: I feel like talking about this episode was almost a little bit more of a bummer than the Yom Kippur segment. It

Laurel: is. Is it Polly? So far, no. I would say. Right now it just seems like, sad people. Who did a stupid thing to try and fix their sad life and And they're still horny about it.

Nichole: Agreed. I'm gonna say no.

Daniel: I'm gonna say no.

Nichole: Maybe it will get more Polly as it goes on because maybe there will be genuine conflict that gets resolved in, Interesting dynamic wise, my my hopes are not high, but

Nichole: It is shocking that there are 50 episodes of this.

Daniel: And we're going to go watch them right now.

Laurel: Is that it? Do we do it?

Daniel: We did. We answered all the questions. We apologized for all the sins. Um, We uh, got to go and commit some new ones.

Yeah.



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