Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

Hey! Welcome to a bonus interview episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the usually quirky podcast that gives writing tips and life tips. I’m Carrie Jones and with me today is podcaster, actor and definitely a writer, the amazing Jose De La Roca.

Jose has a new book out, START PODCASTING: THE SECRETS OF A RADIO BROADCAST ENGINEER.

Jose has more than 17 years of radio broadcasting experience and now he shares with you all the secrets he knows about podcasting. 

Jose say he is a dad first, talking monkey second, and a writer. He wrote a great book called How to be a Dad without a Dad and he’s worked for radio stations and streaming apps and I’m a little intimidated.

His YouTube Channel has a lot of stuffies and he’s in charge of Dad without a Dad Productions. He’s super cool, super smart, and super fun.

Jose of awesome!

Why are teddy bears never hungry? Because they are always stuffed. Jose

We talk about imposter syndrome, being a doer, the state of the radio industry and using humor as a coping mechanism.

According to the IRS, I’m an actor, voice-over actor, sound engineer and a writer, but all I want to do is provide a better future for my son. Jose

You should definitely check out the interview and Jose’s links.

Jose on YouTube where he is hysterical.

Jose on Instagram where his pictures are stunning.

Jose on Twitter, which is where I met him. Score!

Link to Jose’s interview.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

RECENT EPISODES OF AWESOME AND BONUS INTERVIEWS

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s episode link . 

A bonus interview with Dr. J.L. Delozier, Pennsylvania doctor and writer. 

A bonus interview with poet and coach Fiona Mackintosh Cameron. 

NEW BOOK OF AWESOME

I have a new book out!!!!!! It’s an adult mystery set in the town where we live, which is Bar Harbor, Maine. You can order it here. And you totally should. 

And if you click through to this link, you can read the first chapter! 

And click here to learn about the book’s inspiration and what I learned about myself when I was writing it.

IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, ORDER NOW!

My new book, IN THE WOODS, is out!

Gasp!

It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!

So, um, as you can tell, during the self-isolation, stay-at-home orders of our pandemic, we have descended into the land of the immature. 

Carrie had high hopes of using this time to build up our intellectual skills and read the NYT and Rousseau and Descartes by the light of the pellet stove. But instead we watched Tiger King and What We Do in the Shadows obsessively. 

Which brings us to the topic of our episode.

Farts? 

No. Not farts again. But a Medium article by Niklas Goke entitled

“15 Signs You’re Emotionally Mature- How you know you handle life like an adult”

(The link is in the podcast notes.)

So, Niklas has a bunch of assertions about how we know if we are emotionally mature, which seems a pretty big construct in itself, right? Like how do we as a society define maturity if we as a society can’t even define what is truth? But whatever, we’re just going to go with it because it’s not farts. 

Niklas says that you have to train yourself to be emotionally mature and build the characteristics. He’s got fifteen characteristics because he’s apparently an overachieving guy. But he actually took his questions from The School of Life’s 25 suggestions about emotional maturity. So, it’s all derivative, baby. 

We’re joining in. And we’re condensing them into five.

It’s Not All About You All the Damn Time 

If someone tells you to stop farting in their face, maybe stop farting in their face? It’s good to remember the world isn’t just about you and the immediate release of your gastric discomfort. That’s mature. 

Not All People are Psychics

You might want to think about what your actions and facial expressions are telling the people who are stuck in the room with you. Nikos says we don’t all have a lovely Sims icon over our heads telling people our feelings. When people don’t realize you’re hungry or sad? That’s not always on them. It’s sometimes because you aren’t giving them the clues. Express how you feel so everyone doesn’t have to guess all the damn time. That’s mature. 

You Are Cool In Your Lack of Coolness

You aren’t perfect. You can be annoying. The people who matter will love you anyway. We have so many bad scripts and biases running in our heads. Don’t waste a lot of time or energy trying to pretend to be perfect.  It’s best to admit when you muck up or that you have weaknesses and be open about your boo-boos. It means your strong. That’s mature and also sexy. 

Try To Be Chill About the Dorks

Realize a lot of time when other people suck, it’s because they are lonely or upset or feeling super vulnerable. Try to respond with kindness unless they are really hurting you or a threat. Then respond with a restraining order. You have to protect you, too. That’s mature. 

It’s Cool To Celebrate Things  

It’s okay to realize that there’s no reason to be angry, to compromise, to love others even though they are flawed and appreciate those flaws, those compromises, your own ‘failures.’ Celebrate being alive every day and having enough money to get coffee, to be able to hug your friends, to go through life without a mask on. Those things we take for granted? They are big things even though they might seem small. Appreciation? That’s mature. And also sexy. 

Writing tip of the Pod:

It’s okay to have a mature character once in awhile.

Dog Tip for Life:

It’s okay to be the mature character once in awhile. It’s also okay to fart. 

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

RECENT EPISODES OF AWESOME AND BONUS INTERVIEWS

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s episode link . 

Link to Sam’s interview.

A bonus interview with Dr. J.L. Delozier, Pennsy

This week’s bonus episode is all about the Librarian of Awesome, Cara Sawyer, who talks about the beauties and problems of being a small town librarian with a $36,000 budget (including her salary) in the time of Covid-19.

Cara’s doing a lot of programming from her house. Check it out here.

To find out how Cara manages and learn about the Closet of Doom, listen to the podcast here!

WHERE TO FIND OUR PODCAST, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

The podcast link if you don’t see it above. Plus, it’s everywhere like Apple Music, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and more. Just google, “DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE” then like and subscribe.

Join the 209,000 people who have downloaded episodes and marveled at our raw, weirdness. You can subscribe pretty much anywhere.

RECENT EPISODES OF AWESOME AND BONUS INTERVIEWS

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s episode link . 

Link to Sam Spellacy’s interview.

A bonus interview with Dr. J.L. Delozier, Pennsylvania doctor and writer. 

A bonus interview with poet and coach Fiona Mackintosh Cameron. 

What do you call a person who never farts in front of other people? A private tooter.

What do you call it when someone eats refried beans and onions?Tear gas.

Success is like a fart. It only bothers people when it’s not their own.

How do you say “fart” in German?“Farfrompoopin.”

These jokes are from Fatherly https://www.fatherly.com/play/21-best-funniest-fart-jokes-kids/

Why are we talking about fart jokes? Well, because right now there’s a pandemic and people are dying and economies are crashing and there’s a lot of pain out there. Throughout history, people have been in pain, lived and died, faced wars, pandemics, economic uncertainty, loss of freedom, a lack of human rights. 

And throughout history there have been fart jokes. As writers and humans, it’s good to think about that. 

The oldest joke in recorded history? It was a fart joke. Flatulence is almost always funny unless it is a joke told by Ancient Sumerians, maybe? 

Here’s the joke: 

“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

I am going to be honest here. I don’t get it. 

The oldest British Joke is this one from 10th Century—“What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before? Answer: A key.”

Those naughty Anglo-Saxons, you can tell Shaun’s related to them. Notice their joke is not about farts, but a twist on something anatomical, a set-up and a reversing of expectation. 

Jokes are often about rebellion and not caring about cultural taboos, right? 

According to the author of the article in the Conversion there are certain theories about what makes these sort of jokes funny: 

The superiority theory says that we laugh when we feel “sudden glory,” as Thomas Hobbes put it – a sudden sense of superiority over a person, especially someone to whom we ordinarily feel inferior. Cases of slapstick humor, such as the pie-in-the-face or someone slipping on a banana peel, fall into this category.Kant and Schopenhauer argued on behalf of the incongruity theory, which says we laugh at the juxtaposition of things that don’t ordinarily go together, such as a talking dog or a bearded woman. And relief theorists like Spencer and Freud maintain that laughter is how we relieve nervous tension regarding subjects or situations that are socially taboo or inappropriate. This explains the popular appeal of jokes based on sex, ethnicity and religion.

Last week, the BBC posted a story about Zoom fatigue. Manyu Jiang wrote: 

“Your screen freezes. There’s a weird echo. A dozen heads stare at you. There are the work huddles, the one-on-one meetings and then, once you’re done for the day, the hangouts with friends and family.Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, we’re on video calls more than ever before – and many are finding it exhausting.”

Jiang talked to experts and learned that video chats are hard and tiring because our brains have to go into overtime to understand non verbal cues, the pitch of a voice, and so on. The silence that happens is not natural. It makes us anxious. A 1.2 second delay in response makes people think that you are a jerk.

And most of us are not reality tv stars and we see our face and we feel watched. It is like we are on stage. 

And the calls remind us of how weird these circumstances are. We do not get to hang out with our friends or our coworkers and these video calls remind us of that and not only that the bubbles of our lives (work, family, friends, school) are suddenly all in the same physical space. That can weird us out. 

So tell fart jokes if it is appropriate. Turn off the video if they let you. Put your screen to the side instead of the front of you. Build space around the meetings if you can. And breathe. 

Try to remember the value that happens in humor and connections and fart jokes. 

Writing Tip of the

You know how sometimes you need a real-life friend of awesome who torments you so that you evolve? And sometimes you don’t know how to say that friend’s last name.

That’s Sam for me.

Sam is a research technologist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor and she joins me to talk about evolving, being brave, and how hard it is to be my friend. Just kidding! Just kidding!

Sort of.

Sam does some pretty exciting research with Ron Korstange and the lab itself is doing tons of research and testing related to Covid-19.

RECENT EPISODES OF AWESOME AND BONUS INTERVIEWS

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s episode link . 

Link to Sam’s interview.

A bonus interview with Dr. J.L. Delozier, Pennsylvania doctor and writer. 

A bonus interview with poet and coach Fiona Mackintosh Cameron.

Yeah, I know we give writing tips and life tips on the podcast, but some writing tips are just stupid. And they annoy Carrie a lot and she goes all angry monster about it unless we let her vent. 

Here’s a big one that everyone says. 

WRITE EVERY DAY

You don’t have to. You can. But you don’t have to. Writing is not breathing. You don’t have to constantly do it. This is especially true if it’s your damn job. You don’t tell someone to doctor every damn day. You’re allowed to have a break. 

STAY FOCUSED. DON’T GET DISTRACTED

Distractions are where inspirations happen. Your brain is allowed to wander, to dream and make connections. Whoever thinks differently is a sadistic MF. 

DON’T WORRY ABOUT GRAMMAR

Yeah. You should worry about grammar. Writing is about communication. It’s like talking. You don’t want people to strain to hear you. You don’t want to mumble. Grammar makes it so you don’t mumble or meander like a president on qualudes. If you are in the U.S. and writing fiction use Chicago Manual of Style. Newspapers and journals? AP. But for Gods sake, know what a sentence is.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

It’s like Quarantine Karaoke, you want to be sort of decent or at least find joy in what you’re doing. You may not be a contestant on the Voice or in BTS or whatever, but you can still have fun. Do what makes you happy. Ignore all the rules that say there is only one way to do something. That’s a marketer talking, not an artist.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

You do not have to howl well to howl good.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

Gabby the dog, the co-host that pants a lot.

RECENT EPISODES OF AWESOME AND BONUS INTERVIEWS

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s episode link . 

A bonus interview with Dr. J.L. Delozier, Pennsylvania doctor and writer.

A bonus interview with poet and coach Fiona Mackintosh Cameron.

That’s right! Carrie’s doing bonus interviews every Thursday. And they are so much fun.

(more…)

Hey! Welcome to a bonus interview episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the usually quirky podcast that gives writing tips and life tips. I’m Carrie Jones and with me today is 

Fiona Cameron Mackintosh is a poet from Toronto and manages Elderwood Coaching who doesn’t believe in tame language for wild things, which is possibly the best thing I’ve ever heard. 

What do we talk about? You’ll want to listen but here’s a heads-up:

Poetry. Why do you think people are so scared of it? 

What was the first poem that you remember that rocked your world? 

Is it okay to misquote poetry?

How do you become a poet?

Fiona is absolutely amazing. You’ll definitely want to listen.

Direct Link to Fiona’s Interview!

Fiona’s very cool website and coaching collective.

Another podcast with Fiona

Fiona on Facebook.

This week’s regular episode – The Two Second Relationship Rule

(more…)

EVERYONE! This podcast is explicit because it has a swear in it (Thanks, Shaun) and also has brief embarrassing talk (for me – Carrie – at least because I am uptight) about the male anatomy. 

Okay. We’re married, but we weren’t always married, right? Like it didn’t happen when we were two and the first people we married were – cough -definitely not each other. 

But we’re going to talk about dating anyway. And there is this concept that’s on Shallon Lester’s YouTube videos called the Two Question Rule. Lester is kind of a gossip columnist and sex advice person, but we’re going to be okay with that for this podcast. 

This is not related to the five-second rule where you get to eat food if it’s only fallen on the floor for five seconds. I am so sorry Shaun.

Here’s the rule, simplified thanks to a Medium article by Emma Austin. 

“When you’re getting to know a guy, especially if you’re flirting or seeing where things are going, pay attention to how many questions you’re asking him and how many questions he’s asking you in return. If you routinely ask more than two questions without him asking you any, take it as a sign that he’s not interested in you.”Emma Austin

There are exceptions: 

He’s telling a storyYou’re telling a story and not giving a pause for questions.

Here’s the thing. We all want to think that the other person is actually interested in us and so we ignore the signs that they aren’t.

What are those signs? 

They don’t ask any questions about you.They only talk about themselves and are all preeny like a peacockThey don’t answer your calls or texts for days.They tell you. 

We are creatures of hope and sometimes we’re so desperate to feel loved that we end up with douchebags because we’ve blown off all the signs. 

As Austin says, 

“And a lot of times, you just like someone and it makes you a little too hopeful. You really want them to like you back, so you look for all the little signs that they do — and ignore the bigger signs that they don’t. You project your feelings on them a bit and you find yourself making excuses for their behavior. Because at least the excuses feel better than the truth. You don’t want them to not be interested in you — you’d rather they were just too busy or going through something or having a weird day.”Emma Austin

Writing Tip of the Pod

When you’re having your characters interact and it’s a romance? Remember this rule. Don’t let your heroine do all the questioning? Don’t make her love interest a douchebag who only talks about themselves and never ask about her.

And remember all of this is super heteronormative because we’re quoting Austin and Lester, but this also goes for same-sex relationships and women can absolutely be as trollish as men when it comes to relationships.  

Dog Tip for Life

Try to remember that it isn’t always all about you. Don’t be the douchebag. Give love as well as accepting the treats. Ask the questions. Be interested. Don’t only be about yourself all the time.

WHERE TO FIND OUR PODCAST, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

The podcast link if you don’t see it above. Plus, it’s everywhere like Apple Music, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and more. Just google, “DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE” then like and subscribe. Join one of 201,000 downloads and be weird with us!

RECENT EPISODES OF AWESOME AND BONUS INTERVIEWS

Last week’s episode link. 

This week’s episode link if you can’t see it in your browser.

Last week’s bonus interview with Dr. J.L. Delozier.

That’s right! Carrie’s doing bonus interviews every Thursday. And they are so much fun.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke Fo

With Carrie today is Dr. J.L Delozier who has the afternoon off and instead of resting, she was talking to us.

J.L. Delozier submitted her first story, handwritten in pencil on lined school paper, to Asimov’s magazine while still in junior high school. Several years later, she took a creative writing elective at Penn State University and was hooked. Thriller writer, physician, and cookie addict, we were so glad that she didn’t rest and spent some time with us.  

How cool is she?

Dr. Delozier’s first thriller, Type & Cross, debuted in April, 2016 and was nominated for a “Best First Novel” award by the International Thriller Writers

Type & Cross, is about a virus that starts in China and kills half the world’s population.

If you listen to the podcast, you’ll find out that Dr. Delozier has the writing chops and the medical knowledge to write that book. She worked for the federal government about disaster preparedness and now she’s working at a Pennsylvania hospital dealing with Covid-19 and trying to lift the spirits of both her patients and the staff.

Listen, and you’ll realize that you might want to move to Pennsylvania and have her be your doctor, too.

Here are some places to find out more about J.L.

Her website.

Her Twitter.

And here’s a link to her newest book, CON ME ONCE. It’s pretty amazing just like her.

WHERE TO FIND OUR PODCAST, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

The podcast link if you don’t see it above. Plus, it’s everywhere like Apple Music, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and more. Just google, “DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE” then like and subscribe.

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s interview with writer Jordan Scavone!

My newest adult novel.

When you think about people getting drunk in their underwear, you tend to think of Joe Exotic and the people on Tiger King, the hot-AF Netflix documentary, but the people who are masters at getting completely sloshed at home are the Finns. 

Yes, the Finns. 

They have a word for it and that word is kalsarikännit. That word means pantsdrunk 

They even have emojis depicted half-dressed emoji people holding a beer or a wine glass that they send each other when they are solo drinking in their undies. 

And that’s what is happening to America in the time of Covid-19. Believe me, this is such a thing that it’s a trending Instagram tag and even the Barefoot Contessa is getting involved. 

Here’s the thing. People in northern, isolated, winter-dark, sun-absent climates know all about staying at home. They know about facing the darkness and drinking in their undies. Yes, undies. Not sweatpants. Undies. Part of being pantsdrunk is stripping down. 

On Harper Collins’s website for Miska Rantanen’s book about the cultural phenomenon, it states:

“When it comes to happiness rankings, Finland always scores near the top.  Many Finnish phenomena set the bar high: the best education system, gender equality, a flourishing welfare state, sisu or bull-headed pluck.  Behind all of these accomplishments lies a Finnish ability to stay calm, healthy and content in a riptide of endless tasks and temptations.  The ability comes from the practice of “kalsarikanni” translated as pantsdrunk.”Harper Collins’s blurb people

According to an article by Claudia Alarcon in Forbes, 

“Pantsdrunk is one of the cornerstones of drinking culture in Finland,” says Partanen (an actual Finnish person she quotes). “The Finns are very reserved people, which is why there are jokes in Finland about how social distancing simply means that we keep doing what we’ve always been doing: avoiding physical contact and keeping at least a meter distance from others.”Claudia Alarcon

When you are undergoing constant stress and anxiety, it increases your risk for both physical and mental health issues. You don’t want that. We don’t want that for you. So, it’s okay to find some joys even as the horrifying happens. Build a fort. Sing in the shower. Read books. Snuggle with puppies. 

What’s this got to do with writing other than the fact that the tradition has been immortalized in a book? It’s about letting go, diving into your story and giving your anxiety a giant finger flip. It’s about tearing off your clothes and your devices and writing the raw, naked tipsy story without your internal critic or internal editor standing over your shoulder telling you to go get the seltzer water and put your clothes back on. That’s when you write cool stories. 

This time we are in now, this pandemic, this physical isolation? It can divide us or it can make us closer. We can choose to despair in our systemic issues and lack and we should recognize it, but is just as important to notice the moments of humanity, of how people still find ways to create and communicate and love. 

Writing Tip of the Pod

Don’t give up. Persistence is super in life and in writing. 

Dog Tip for Life

Find your alcohol. Be naked. Live while you can.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

Gabby does not approve of alcohol.

WHERE TO FIND US

The podcast link if you don’t see it above. Plus, it’s everywhere like Apple Music, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and more. Just google, “DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE” then like and subscribe.

This week’s episode link. 

Last week’s episode link.

Last week’s interview with writer Jordan Sca