The Dreyer Drive Podcast

Three’s something that’s been on my mind since like, I dunno, 1986, and I’m pretty sure it’s been camping out in yours too. Flight of the Navigator. You know the one, right? Chrome spaceship that looks like a fancy peach pit, a kid who time-travels by accident, and Pee-wee Herman voicing an alien who just wants to go home. Classic stuff.

But first, let’s set the scene for where this episode came from, because context matters (or so my therapist tells me).

The Marvin Gaye Incident (Or: How I Became Wendy’s Most Embarrassing Customer)

Here’s the thing about spring break: you think you’re going to be this organized parent with a color-coded activity schedule, and instead you end up at Wendy’s at 11 AM on a Tuesday, accidentally serenading the lunch crowd with “Let’s Get It On.”

Yes, that happened. Yes, I’m still processing it.

I walked into Wendy’s with my nine-year-old, heard what I thought was the restaurant’s soundtrack, and spent a solid three minutes vibing to Marvin Gaye before realizing my phone was blasting it from my back pocket the entire time. Thirteen people witnessed this. I can never return to that location. This is my villain origin story.

The moral? Always check your pockets before entering public spaces. Or just embrace becoming the person who brings their own theme music everywhere. I’m workshopping which route to take.

The Cookie Situation (Or: How Ryan Spent $89 on Crumble Knockoffs)

Meanwhile, my brother Ryan, who lives in Okinawa and is contractually obligated to mention this fact every episode, decided to celebrate spring break by baking $89 worth of cookies with his daughter. Not just any cookies. Crumble cookies. Which he’s never actually tasted. Because Japan.

When I tell you this man went to a Japanese grocery store and bought TWENTY PACKAGES of cocoa powder at $6 each because everything comes in Splenda-packet-sized portions, I need you to understand the commitment. The dedication. The refusal to read a room or a recipe.

But you know what? According to him and his 7-year-old, they were delicious. And when you’re on spring break with a kid, sometimes you just need to make some ridiculously expensive cookies and call it a core memory.

Why We’re Actually Here: Flight of the Navigator Hits Different Now

So why are we talking about a 1986 Disney movie that most people forgot Sarah Jessica Parker was even in? (She also forgot, by the way—more on that later.)

Because Flight of the Navigator represents something we don’t really get anymore: a single, linear plot. One kid. One spaceship. One mission: get home. That’s it. No multiverse. No post-credits scene teasing seventeen sequels. No Extended Universe you need a PhD to understand.

David Freeman falls into a ravine in 1978, wakes up thinking only a few minutes have passed, and discovers it’s actually 1986. His parents are older. His 8-year-old brother is now 16 and wearing the FLYEST outfit you’ve ever seen (we’re talking peak 80s windbreaker energy). And David? Still 12. Still confused. Still wearing those criminally short shorts that defined childhood in the 80s.

The Science Is Wild (And Completely Wrong)

Here’s where it gets fun. The movie tries to science its way through the plot… something about time dilation and light-speed travel and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Except they cite general relativity when they should cite special relativity (DISGUSTING NOOBS), and David apparently traveled 560 light-years in 4.4 hours, which is 2.23 MILLION times the speed of light.

But you know what? When you’re a kid watching this on VHS for the 47th time because your family only owned seven tapes total, you don’t care. You just want to see the chrome spaceship and those absolutely amazing alien creatures that Max keeps on board.

Speaking of Max… let’s talk about how they got Pee-wee Herman to voice an alien and he then asked him not to put his name in the credits, instead he chose “Paul Mall” (the cigarette brand) as his pseudonym. As if nobody would recognize that voice. Paul Rubens really said, “I’m going to do my most famous character’s voice and pretend it’s a secret.” Icon behavior.

The Production Was An Absolute Disaster (And We Love That For Them)

Look, every beloved 80s movie has a chaotic production story, but Flight of the Navigator really went for it:

* Two production companies went BANKRUPT during filming

* They had to shoot interiors in Norway because of “blocked funds” that may or may not have actually existed

* The crew showed up in Oslo in February wearing Florida shorts because nobody thought to buy parkas

* Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t remember being in it at all

* The CGI took so long to render that engineers were getting called at 2 AM to restart computers

* They hired a Norwegian child as a body double who didn’t speak English, so everything went through a translator

And somehow, SOMEHOW, they made a movie that cost $9 million and made back $19 million. Not enough for Disney to care (this was peak Disney-flop era), but enough for us 80s/90s kids to watch it on endless repeat.

Why This Movie Lives In Our Brains Forever

I think the secret sauce of Flight of the Navigator, and movies like it, is scarcity. We had LIMITED VHS tapes. You couldn’t just scroll through Netflix for 45 minutes before giving up and rewatching The Office. You had maybe six options, and one of them was Flight of the Navigator, so that’s what you watched.

And because you watched it 6,000 times, it became part of your DNA. You can probably still quote it. You definitely remember the chrome spaceship interior (which James Cameron said inspired the T-1000 in Terminator 2, by the way). You wanted one of those alien creatures Max had on board. You 100% tried to do the Pee-wee Herman voice.

These aren’t just movies. They’re the handful of stories that raised us because our parents couldn’t afford more than seven VHS tapes and we didn’t have smartphones to distract us during the opening credits.

The Deeper Stuff (Because We Accidentally Got Philosophical)

What really gets me about Flight of the Navigator now? Watching it as an adult, as a parent, is how it handles David’s impossible choice. He wakes up eight years in the future. His parents are older. His little brother is suddenly older than him. Everything he knew is gone.

And the movie doesn’t sugarcoat it. There’s this moment where David is back with his “older” family, and he just... can’t. He can’t pretend this is normal. He can’t adjust to being younger than his little brother. So he asks Max to do something incredibly dangerous: send him back in time.

The movie spends the whole runtime telling us time travel is dangerous and impossible, and then David just... does it anyway. Because sometimes the risk is worth it to get back to where you belong.

(I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying. Okay, fine, I cried. I cry at weird things. We’ve established this.)

What Happened To Everyone After?

Joey Kramer (who played David) had a rough go of it. Bullied at school for being “the movie star kid” (ONLY IN THE 80s would this be a reason to bully someone), addicted to drugs by 14, arrested multiple times, eventually robbed a bank on purpose because he was homeless and suicidal and knew prison was his only path to treatment.

The heartbreaking twist? When the arresting officers recognized him from Flight of the Navigator, they reenacted the “what year is it?” scene while booking him.

But here’s the actually important part: he got clean. He got his high school diploma. He reconnected with his daughter. He now mentors at-risk youth and shows up at conventions wearing his original NASA hat from the movie.

If that’s not a redemption arc worthy of its own film, I don’t know what is.

Where This Ranks In Our Growing List of Childhood Movies

Ryan says it’s just below Willow for him, which feels right. It’s got that same fantastical energy… the feeling that anything could happen, that adventure is just around the corner, that chrome spaceships might actually show up in your backyard if you wait long enough.

For me? Top five, easily. Maybe top three. It’s fighting with The NeverEnding Story for the number two slot, and I’m not ready to make that call yet.

(We’re starting a Letterboxd for Dreyer Drive so we can actually rank these properly. Yes, I’m serious. Yes, the profile picture will be us in those ridiculous short-shorts from the 80s.)

The Real Question: What Was In Your VHS Rotation?

Here’s what I want to know from you, dear reader who has somehow made it this far into my rambling: What were YOUR seven VHS tapes?

What movies did you watch on repeat not because they were necessarily your favorite, but because they were literally the only options? What films became part of your personality simply through exposure and proximity?

For us, it was Flight of the Navigator, Willow, The NeverEnding Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and probably Growing Pains Christmas specials that made me cry (they stole everything, even the socks and underwear—I’M FINE).

Drop a comment. Tag us. Send a carrier pigeon. I genuinely want to know what specific collection of movies shaped your childhood brain.

Why You Should Actually Listen To This Episode

Because Ryan tells a story about accidentally joining a gay basketball league and announcing he’s NOT gay during the first timeout. It’s exactly as chaotic as it sounds.

Also because I tell the story of Cecil, my 80-year-old friend who met her second husband AT THE CEMETERY while they were both visiting their deceased spouses’ graves, and then had a wedding where the entire congregation spontaneously started singing “Can’t Help Falling In Love” while walking her down the aisle, and I SOBBED HARDER THAN I’VE EVER CRIED AT ANYTHING.

Oh, and evidence of Ryan’s flashmob proposal, because, as he put it he “got this one right”.

We contain multitudes.

The Big Takeaway (If We Have One)

Flight of the Navigator shouldn’t exist. The production companies went bankrupt. The director had never done sci-fi. They filmed interior shots in Norway for possibly imaginary money. Sarah Jessica Parker forgot she was in it. The science is completely wrong.

And yet, here we are, almost 40 years later, still talking about it. Still remembering exactly how that chrome spaceship looked. Still able to quote Pee-wee Herman’s alien voice. Still wanting to own one of those alien creatures.

Maybe that’s the real magic—not the CGI (which took 10 days to render 30 seconds) or the plot (which is delightfully simple) or even the nostalgia (though that’s definitely part of it). Maybe it’s just that some movies find you at exactly the right time in your life and refuse to let go.

Or maybe it’s because we only owned seven VHS tapes and this was one of them, so our brains had no choice but to absorb every frame. Both can be true.

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Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts (but preferably on platforms that give us data because we’re desperate for validation).

Leave us a 5-star review if you also spent your childhood watching the same seven movies on repeat. Tell us what those seven movies were. Join us in collective nostalgia for a time when plots were simple, shorts were short, and accidentally playing Marvin Gaye in public was probably happening to someone somewhere, just not documented on social media.

And remember: if you ever time travel by accident and wake up eight years in the future, just ask the alien spaceship to send you back. The movie tells us it’s dangerous and impossible, but it works out fine. Probably.

What was YOUR most cinematic life moment? Have you ever accidentally announced something wildly inappropriate during a timeout? What movies lived in your VHS collection? Drop a comment—unlike our other listeners (looking at you, silent majority), actually engage with us.

Until next time, we’ll be here, overthinking childhood movies and sharing embarrassing personal stories with anyone who will listen.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

I need to tell you about something that’s been keeping me up at night lately, and no, it’s not another existential crisis about whether I peaked in elementary school (spoiler: I absolutely did). It’s about two guys named Jim who lived 40 miles apart, never met until they were 39, and somehow managed to live almost exactly the same life.

I’m talking same wives’ names. Same kids’ names. Same dog’s name. Same everything.

And it may or may not be making me question every choice I’ve ever made.

But First, Let’s Talk About Dance Recital Anxiety

Before we dive into this rabbit hole of genetic destiny, I need to confess something: I’m currently experiencing peak parental anxiety about my daughter’s upcoming ballet recital. Not because I’m worried she’ll mess up—no, no. I’m worried about her sister, her 1-and-a-half-year-old sister, who we basically have to treat like an unpredictable aggressive rescue dog at public events.

You know those families who have to walk their dog at 11 PM because it’s the only time they won’t terrorize the neighbourhood? That’s us with our toddler. You never know if you’re getting the sweet puppy or the one who’s going to steal a stranger’s Nintendo switch, the throw an udon bowl and eat the noodles off the floor with her hands.

Yes, that happened. Yes, I’m still processing it. The restaurant is still working with the Authorities.

But, now for a transition, here’s the thing: watching my wife become a drill sergeant about ballet positions (”Grand plié! GRAND PLIÉ! That is NOT a grand plié!”) while I hide in my office stress-eating has made me wonder: How much of who we are is just... baked in?

Which brings me to...

The Tale of Two Jims (And Why It’s Absolutely Unhinged)

Picture this: It’s 1979. Jim Lewis and Jim Springer are identical twins who were separated at birth. Adopted by different families 40 miles apart in Ohio. Neither family knew the other existed. Both families, completely independently, named their baby Jim.

Already weird, right? But wait. It gets so much weirder.

Fast forward to age 39. Jim Springer starts digging around about his “dead” twin (yeah, they told him his brother died because, casual childhood trauma, no big deal) and discovers he’s actually alive. They, naturally, arrange to meet on the Phil Donahue show because apparently that’s what you did in the ‘70s when you found your long-lost twin.

When they finally meet and start comparing notes, here’s what they discover:

Both Jims:

* Had dogs named Toy (TOY! Of all the dog names!)

* Worked in law enforcement

* Loved woodworking

* Married women named Linda

* Got divorced and both remarried women named Betty

* Had sons named James Allen

I’m sorry, WHAT? James Allen? Both of them? We’re not talking about naming your kid Michael or Chris, these are specific, identical life choices made 40 miles apart by men who had never met.

This isn’t a coincidence. This is the universe trolling us.

Nature vs. Nurture: The Existential Crisis No One Asked For

Here’s where it gets really fascinating (and slightly terrifying). A scientist named Thomas Bouchard brought the Jims into his lab and started studying them. He’d ask them to draw random pictures and, but you saw this coming, they’d draw the same thing. He’d give them personality tests and, yup, nearly identical results.

Bouchard’s hypothesis? That identical twins share 100% of their DNA (compared to the 95% that regular humans share with each other), and some things like preferences, habits, what we name our dogs, and kids, and maybe even who we’re attracted to—might just be hard-coded into our brains from birth.

Which leads to the question that’s been haunting me since my failed breakdancing career in high school: Do we actually have free will, or are we all just running on biological autopilot?

We Need to Discuss (Again): The Porter Family Anger Gene

If there’s one thing I know about my siblings and me, it’s that we all got the same anger operating system installed at birth. When something goes wrong, and even sometimes when things go right, we don’t process it like normal humans. We skip right over “frustration” and land directly on “barely contained rage at the entire universe.”

Example: Our brother Dan once had a complete meltdown because our dad took the rental car to Tim Hortons before Dan could do his morning tea run. To an outside observer, this seems insane. But to those of us with the Porter genetic coding? We completely understood. His schedule was disrupted. His carefully calibrated morning routine, the one nobody else knew existed because he’d never explained it, was ruined.

Jacqueline calls it “The Schedule That Cannot Be Disturbed.” I call it “Just Another Thing I Have To Deal With Now” syndrome.

Here’s the thing though, I didn’t realize this was a family trait until my brother’s partner started pointing it out. “Your brother does that too,” she’d say. “He gets angry when he’s hurt instead of saying it hurts.” And I’d be like, “Wait, doesn’t everyone turn pain directly into rage? That’s not normal?”

Nope. Turns out most people feel pain and process it as pain. We feel pain and immediately want to fight the universe about it.

Is this nature or nurture? Did we learn this from growing up in the same house, or were we just born with anger as our default emotion?

The Three Identical Strangers: When Science Gets Unethical

If the two Jims weren’t enough to make you question reality, let me introduce you to an even more disturbing story: three identical triplets who were deliberately separated at birth as part of a psychological experiment.

That’s right…some researchers in the 1960s decided to separate triplets and place them with families of different socioeconomic backgrounds (blue collar, middle class, and affluent) just to see what would happen. You know, normal, totally-not-horrifying-nor-unethical science stuff.

The triplets eventually found each other in college when two of them kept getting mistaken for each other, and a third saw them on the news and was like, “Wait, those guys look exactly like me.”

They reunited. They were insanely similar. And then they discovered they’d been part of an experiment.

The records of that study are sealed until 2066, which honestly feels like the universe saying, “You’re not ready to know how much of your life is predetermined, and neither are your grandchildren.”

Jacqueline’s Catastrophic Cartwheel: A Case Study in Porter Main Character Syndrome

Speaking of genetics, I need to tell you about the time my Jacqueline decided she was going to be the star of her dance recital. She was eight years old, wearing a blue leotard with fluorescent orange fringe and a paper plate painted blue as a hat. A. paper. plate. hat.

The big finale involved three “star students” doing cartwheels from the back of the stage to the front. Jacqueline, naturally, was chosen as one of them. But here’s where the Porter family genetic coding kicked in: she was so confident, so absolutely certain she was going to nail this, that she forgot to count.

So while the other two girls waited for the music cue, Jacqueline just... cartwheeled by herself to the front of the stage. Alone. Off-beat. On camera.

To this day, she wakes up in cold sweats thinking about it.

And you know what? I have my own version of this story. Grade 10. School cafeteria. Dance contest. I’d been practicing breakdancing in my parents’ basement for three whole months on a gold piece of cardboard. When I heard there was a dance contest, I was like, “This is my moment. This is what I’ve been training for.”

I walked up to that stage with the confidence of someone who’d been breakdancing their entire life. I attempted a head spin. My neck immediately gave up. I flopped onto the stage like a fish, then rolled off and ate my lunch in the gym locker room.

The point? The Porter family is genetically predisposed to:

* Overestimating our abilities

* Seeking public recognition

* Catastrophically failing

* Never, ever learning from it

* Getting angry about it

What This Means for Our Kids (And Why I’m Terrified)

The scariest part about all of this? It’s already showing up in the next generation.

My daughter gets upset when her schedule is disrupted. Jacqueline’s son has Daniel’s exact energy. Ours kids are basically miniature versions of us, complete with the same anxious perfectionism and need to be the best at everything.

We can see ourselves—and each other—in these tiny humans. And sometimes, instead of being like, “Oh, that’s a cute trait,” we’re like, “Oh no. Oh no no no. We need to intervene NOW before this kid turns into full Porter mode.”

But can we actually change it? Or is this stuff just hardwired into our DNA, passed down through generations like a cursed family heirloom?

The Question We’re All Afraid to Ask

After diving into this research, talking about the Jims, the triplets, and our own family patterns, I keep coming back to the same uncomfortable question: How much control do we actually have?

If identical twins separated at birth can end up living virtually identical live: same names for their kids, same types of partners, same careers, same hobbies, what does that say about the rest of us?

Are we all just following invisible scripts written in our DNA? Are our “choices” really choices, or are they just biological programming playing out in real-time?

And more importantly: If my toddler is genetically programmed to be chaos incarnate, is there any point in trying to civilize her before this ballet recital, or should I just accept that she’s going to steal someone’s camera and throw a shoe a the pianist?

(For the record, I’m going with acceptance. It’s easier on everyone.)

The Point…

Even if we are partially programmed by our genetics, even if the two Jims were always going to name their dogs Toy and marry women named Linda, I don’t think that means we’re helpless.

My sister and I both inherited the Porter anger gene. We both have that perfectionist streak. We both want to be the main character in every situation. But we’re also both actively working on it, me with my therapist who I’ve probably paid enough money to that he could retire early, and my sister with her arsenal of caffeinated and late night non-caffeinated drinks, and self-awareness.

The hard-coding might be there, but maybe the point isn’t to delete the code entirely. Maybe it’s about learning to recognize it, understanding where it comes from, and deciding when to override it.

Or, you know, just accepting that we’re all a little unhinged and that’s what makes family gatherings interesting… and contentious.

The (Forced) Big Takeaway (If There Is One)

Nature gave us the blueprint. Our childhood added some modifications. And somehow, we all ended up as adults who can’t go to Tim Hortons without it becoming a whole thing.

But whether it’s genetics or environment or some cosmic joke, one thing is clear: We’re all just trying to figure it out as we go. Sometimes that means naming your dog Toy, your kid James Allen, then divorcing your wife Linda and remarrying a Betty, without knowing your identical twin did the exact same things. Sometimes that means catastrophically failing at a breakdancing competition in front of your entire school. And sometimes that means accepting that your toddler is basically a Tasmanian devil in human form and just rolling with it.

The mystery of the two Jims doesn’t really have an answer. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe the point isn’t knowing exactly where our traits come from? Maybe it’s learning to recognize them in ourselves and each other, laughing about them, and occasionally calling them out when your sibling is being “such a Porter right now.”

The question for you: What traits do you share with your siblings that seem too specific to be coincidence? Are you all weirdly obsessed with the same snacks? Do you all have the same irrational fears? Do you all name your dogs Toy?

Drop a comment. Or don’t, because you’re probably genetically programmed to overthink whether your comment is funny enough, just like us.

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Before you go: If you enjoyed this extremely shallow deep dive into genetic destiny and family chaos, subscribe to The Dreyer Drive podcast. We promise more unhinged stories, existential crises about our childhoods, and sibling banter that will make you feel better about your own family dynamics.

Leave us a 5-star rating if you think we’ve earned it, or a 1-star rating if you’re one of those people who gets angry instead of acknowledging pain (we see you, fellow Porter gene carriers).

And if you have a story about being hard-coded for chaos, we want to hear it.

Next episode: We’re watching Flight of the Navigator and probably having another existential crisis about ‘80s movies. See you then.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

Can we have some space to discuss something important?

Every millennial has a box. You know the one. It’s shoved in the back of your parents’ garage or buried in your childhood closet, and inside it lives the physical evidence of who you were between the ages of 8 and 18. Beanie Babies. Choker necklaces. The CRINGIEST love letters. That *NSYNC poster you definitely weren’t obsessed with. And, if you’re like me: journals. So. many. journals.

This episode, I did something I’ve been threatening to do since we started this podcast: I cracked open my childhood journals and turned them into a trivia game for Ryan. And let me tell you, it was simultaneously the best and worst decision I’ve ever made.

The Setup: A Game Show Nobody Asked For

Here’s the thing about keeping a detailed journal from ages 8 to 18: you create a time capsule of your most unhinged thoughts, delivered in the most dramatic language possible. I had five journals. FIVE. Because apparently, I had that much to say about how unfair it was that Ryan was, and I quote, “a brainer volleyball superstar” and I was just... there… in a cow-themed room, listening to Third Eye Blind.

I turned these gems into “Jacqueline’s Journal Trivia”, a 17-question deep dive into the absolute chaos of growing up in a house with four brothers, zero boundaries, and unlimited access to Anne of Green Gables. Every question was pulled word-for-word from my journals, which means Ryan got to experience my childhood voice in all its cheaply theatrical glory.

(Yes, I actually used the phrase “cheaply theatrical” to describe sunny days. We’ll get to that.)

Main Character Energy at Age 10

But first, let me paint you a picture of the child who wrote these journals.

This was a girl who thought reading poetry over the school announcements would make her popular. A girl who left her journal open on her bed, to a very specific page about how mean her friends were being, and then conveniently left the room so they could “accidentally” read it and feel bad. A girl who believed her most impressive skills were “soccer moves and reading poems.”

I was Method Acting my entire childhood, and nobody asked me to.

The questions revealed some truly unhinged moments:

* Why was I scared of Ryan’s friend Jon?

* What did Ryan get me for my 10th birthday?

* How did I describe sunny days at age 14?

Ryan scored 82% on this quiz, which honestly tracks for his entire academic career: showing up completely unprepared and still pulling solid Bs through pure logic and educated guessing.

The Cultural Artifacts We Carried Forward

One thing became crystal clear during this episode: we’re all walking around with weird little traditions and phrases from childhood that make zero sense to anyone else.

For me, it’s beans on toast. Specifically, Heinz beans from a can, poured over buttered wheat bread until it’s completely soggy. It’s my ultimate comfort food, a direct import from childhood that I still eat religiously. Justin (my husband) thinks I’m insane. Ryan dry-heaved on mic. But British people get it, and that’s all that matters.

For Ryan, it’s his inability to not apply logic to everything, a skill that apparently developed from having to survive in a house where his sister was writing dramatic poetry about how the truth is like cold water (”it shocks you at first, but no one’s ever died from it”—which, sorry younger me, but the Titanic would like a word).

And speaking of cultural imports: Hawaiian Haystacks. If you’re from Utah, you know. If you’re not, imagine taking rice, covering it with cream of chicken soup and shredded chicken, then topping it with a chaotic combination of pineapples, chow mein noodles, mandarin oranges, almonds, and black olives. It’s the official food of “somebody has just died and we need to feed 300 people on a budget,” and Justin’s family loved it until one fateful camping trip when everyone got food poisoning and spent the night scrambling to unzip their tents in time.

Nobody’s touched a Hawaiian Haystack since.

The Passive Aggressive Chronicles

The real revelation? I was the MOST passive-aggressive 12-year-old to ever exist.

When my friends were mean to me during our school skit rehearsal, did I confront them? Absolutely not. I wrote a devastatingly sad journal entry, left it open on my bed, and then made sure they “accidentally” stumbled upon it. Peak millennial conflict resolution, honestly. We’re the generation that would rather die than have direct confrontation, and I was ahead of my time.

I also kept a running log at the end of each journal entry about how I felt about each brother:

* Daniel: “Haven’t spoken in two weeks”

* Ryan: “Brainer superstar” (derogatory)

* Jonathan: “Perfect child, never his spot a day in his life”

* Dallin: Simply the word “annoying”

Even at 10 years old, I was out here writing Yelp reviews of my siblings.

The Things That Shocked Us Most

Ryan, discovering I kept detailed records of his teenage crimes: “Wait, you wrote about Jon vandalizing the school?”

Me, reading my own words: “I listened to No Scrubs by TLC 17 times in a row and kept a tally.”

Ryan: “That’s actually the most normal thing you’ve said all episode.”

We also uncovered that I was convinced my sixth-grade teacher hated me because I wasn’t a volleyball superstar like Ryan. Imagine being that self-aware at 11 and still writing in your journal that boys don’t like you because you’re not cool enough, while simultaneously describing abandoned crushes as “Frenching girls galore” when they kiss someone else.

The cognitive dissonance was REAL.

The Broader Life Lesson (Because, if you haven’t clued in from the journal entries, We’re Deep Like That)

Here’s what I learned from revisiting these journals: we’re all just walking around with the weird, dramatic, overthinking child we used to be still living inside us. I mean we are all doing that, right?

I’m still passive-aggressive. I still think I’m funnier than I am. I still keep elaborate notes (now in my phone instead of a journal with a broken lock).

And Ryan? Still showing up unprepared and somehow pulling it off. Still the person people like more than me. Still eating two burgers as the healthy option.

Your Assignment (Yes, There’s Homework)

We want to know: What’s your comfort food that nobody else understands?

Mine’s beans on soggy toast. Ryan’s is peanut butter and banana on French bread. What’s yours? And more importantly, what childhood tradition are you still carrying that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else?

Drop your answers in the comments, tag us on social, or send a voice memo. Bonus points if your comfort food is as disgusting as mine.

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Want more stories about growing up in the chaos? Subscribe to The Dreyer Drive podcast wherever you get your shows, and leave us a 5-star rating if you want to hear Ryan attempt to defend his double burger order while I roast him for it.

Until next time, remember: the truth is like cold water. It might not kill you, but it will definitely make you wish you’d never opened your childhood journals.

Question for my journal peoples: What’s the most embarrassing thing YOU wrote in a childhood diary? Tell us in the comments. We’ll try to collect some non RICO enforceable content from Ryan’s singular childhood journal.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

When Fairy Tales Were Actually Terrifying (And Other Stories We Were Fed As Kids)

[From Ryan:] I need to start this off with a confession: I spent the first 15 minutes of recording this week’s episode thinking my sister wanted to do a deep dive on Wallace and Gromit. You know, the claymation duo? The cheese-loving inventor and his loyal dog?

She did not.

She wanted to talk about the Brothers Grimm. You know, the guys who basically invented every Disney movie you’ve ever seen, except their versions involved significantly more dismemberment and considerably less “happily ever after.”

But before we get there, let me tell you about the absolutely unhinged parables we were told as children growing up in Ajax, Ontario.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Parable (Or: How We Were Brainwashed)

Here’s the thing about growing up in our household: we weren’t just told normal bedtime stories. We were subjected to elaborate morality plays disguised as tales about chocolate cake and the color red.

Stay with me here.

There was this story—we called it “The Parable of the Chocolate Chip Cookies”—about a town where the only two rules were: 1) you couldn’t wear the color red, and 2) you couldn’t eat chocolate cake. That’s it. Murder? Fine. Grand theft auto? Have at it. But chocolate cake and red clothing? Absolutely forbidden.

Enter the troll character (because of course there was a troll) who wanted to corrupt the townspeople. He couldn’t get them to jump straight to chocolate cake and red clothes, so he started small. First, it was chocolate milk—”It’s not chocolate cake, just milk with chocolate in it.” Then pink clothing—”It’s not red, it’s just pink!” Eventually, chocolate chip cookies—”Sure, there are chocolate chips, but the rest of the cookie is so good you don’t even notice them!”

The moral? You can’t even get close to making a bad choice. You need to stay as far away as possible from anything that might lead you down the wrong path. No half measures. No compromises. Just pure, unadulterated distance from anything remotely questionable.

Now, as an adult wearing a full red tracksuit while eating Godiva chocolates, I can see the irony.

The Other Parables We Survived

The chocolate cake story wasn’t alone. There was also:

The Truck Driver Story: Multiple drivers interview for a job, bragging about how close to the cliff’s edge they can drive. Two inches! One inch! Half an inch! The guy who gets the job? The one who says he’ll stay as far from the edge as possible. The intended lesson: don’t get close to danger. The lesson I learned: that half-inch guy probably drives F1 now and everyone talks about him at school.

The Egg Story (which I apparently blocked from memory): According to Jacqueline, our Mom would draw a face on an egg, tell a story about little Egbert who didn’t listen to his mom about not riding his skateboard down the big hill, and then —at the climactic moment— DROP THE EGG INTO A BOWL to demonstrate what happens when you dare not to listen to your mother. The moral? Listen to your mom or you’ll splat like Egbert. The therapy bills? Stacking higher and higher.

These weren’t Disney fairy tales. These were weapons-grade cautionary tales designed to keep us from roaming the streets of South Ajax wreaking havoc. The results? Questionable.

Speaking of Disturbing Children’s Stories...

Which brings us perfectly to today’s actual topic: the Brothers Grimm.

Here’s what I knew about the Brothers Grimm before this episode: literally nothing except that they existed and weren’t Wallace and Gromit.

Here’s what I know now: they were German academics named Jacob and Wilhelm who basically invented the concept of collecting folklore and turning it into bedtime terror fuel.

These guys were responsible for:

* Cinderella

* Snow White

* Sleeping Beauty

* Rapunzel

* Hansel and Gretel

* Little Red Riding Hood

* The Frog Prince

* Rumpelstiltskin

You know, just basically every Disney movie ever made. Except—and this is crucial—their original versions were significantly more violent than anything Walt Disney would touch with a ten-foot pole.

The Original Stories Were WILD

In the Brothers Grimm’s original Cinderella, the stepsisters don’t just fail to fit into the glass slipper. They cut off their toes to make it fit. Because ambition, I guess?

In the original Snow White, it’s not her stepmother who’s the villain… it’s her actual mother. And she doesn’t just want Snow White dead; she specifically requests her heart and lungs so she can eat them to become beautiful. Which is both disturbing and, according to my limited exposure to Sephora, a fundamental misunderstanding of how beauty works.

The Frog Prince? In the original, the princess doesn’t kiss the frog. She picks him up and throws him into a wall, where he dies and transforms into a prince. Romance!

The Brothers Behind the Tales

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in Germany in 1785 and 1786, only a year apart. They were two of nine children, and their father died when they were just 10 and 11 years old.

This is where it gets interesting. Look at any Brothers Grimm story and notice: there are almost no father figures. And who’s the villain? Almost always a mother or stepmother character. They idealized fathers (who were largely absent from their lives) and villainized mothers (who struggled to raise nine children alone after their father’s death).

It’s fascinating and tragic and also explains why every Disney villain is either a stepmother or literally named “Mother” something.

After their mother died in 1808, Jacob, barely in his early twenties, became financially responsible for all his siblings. Both brothers worked for the War Office in Germany, where Jacob’s job included recovering artworks stolen by Napoleon (which is an absolutely wild resume line).

Wilhelm got married in 1825, and then, in a plot twist that would make any sitcom writer jealous, Jacob moved in with Wilhelm and his wife. The three of them just lived together. Forever. Which, honestly, sounds like the dynamic of every friendship group in their twenties where one person gets married but everyone pretends nothing has changed….

The Legacy That Almost Wasn’t

Here’s the kicker: if you asked the Brothers Grimm what their enduring legacy would be, they’d have said their dictionary, not their fairy tales. They worked on it their entire lives. They viewed language as what made people German, that the ultimate bond uniting the German people was their shared language.

Their fairy tales? Just a side project. A little collection of 85 stories they released in 1812 to see how it would go.

Those stories are now translated into 160 languages and are only outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible.

Let me repeat that: The Bible, Shakespeare, and then the Brothers Grimm. That’s the bestseller list.

The Dark Side (Besides the extreme and unnecessary Violence)

During World War II, some of the original stories had anti-Semitic tones, and Nazi Germany made them required reading in schools. Every good German home was supposed to have a copy.

But then, and this is where it gets interesting, after the war, people started using these same tales to fight against the Nazis. They’d say, “I understand how you’d interpret it that way, but here’s what it actually means.” At which point the Nazis banned them entirely.

So these stories went from required reading to forbidden literature in the span of a few years. Wild.

What This Says About How We Tell Stories Today

Sitting here in my house in Okinawa, telling my daughters stories about neighborhood bad guys who jumped fences and family vacations we were mysteriously left out of (true story—I was 14 and woke up to a note that said “We went to Prince Edward Island for your birthday, here’s $25 for pizza, see you in a week”), I realize we’re all just doing what the Brothers Grimm did.

We’re taking the weird, sometimes traumatic, often bizarre things from our lives and turning them into stories. We’re giving them morals, or at least trying to make sense of them. We’re creating a narrative that helps us process what happened and maybe, just maybe, gives our kids a framework for understanding the world?

Except instead of “and then the stepsisters cut off their toes,” it’s “and then daddy and Uncle Dan stole the magic diamonds from Mayor Humdinger’s neck, which shrunk him back to size for the Durham Police to arrest him and bring him to jail.”

Progress… I guess?

My daughter and I tell stories at dinner where we take a sliver of truth from my childhood and just… see where it goes. She adds details. I add plot twists. We’re creating our own little folklore in real-time, and maybe someday her kids will listen to these podcast episodes and think “What the heck were they talking about?”

Which is exactly what I think when I remember the chocolate chip cookie parable.

The Real Moral of the Story

The Brothers Grimm had rough childhoods and used their stories to make sense of the world. They documented the brutal reality of peasant life, then tried to sanitize it enough that it wouldn’t completely traumatize children. They mostly failed at that second part, but their stories endured anyway because Disney succeeded with the sanitization.

And isn’t that what we’re all doing? Taking our experiences, whether it’s being left behind on family vacations, or watching neighborhood kids jump fences and then get arrested, or being told elaborate parables about chocolate cake and turning them into something we can share?

Stories are how we process. They’re how we connect. They’re how we make sense of the absolutely bonkers things that happen in our lives.

And if the Brothers Grimm taught us anything, it’s that sometimes the stories that stick around the longest are the weird ones. The ones that don’t quite fit the mold. The ones that maybe shouldn’t be told to children but are told anyway because someone thought there was a lesson in there somewhere.

So here’s my question for you: What weird stories were you told as a kid? What bizarre parables did your family subject you to? And more importantly: do you find yourself telling equally weird stories to your kids now?

Let us know. Seriously. We need to know we’re not alone in this.

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Listen to the full episode for: Ryan’s confusion about F1 drivers (and his newly assigned favorite, Carlos Sainz), Jacqueline’s deep dive into why Disney owes everything to two German brothers, and Jonathan’s perfectly timed roast of Ryan’s disco-ball Christmas tree.

Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a 5-star review so we know whether to keep doing this or just accept that we’re creating content for AI training data and international cafes that play podcasts in languages their customers don’t understand.

Question for the week: What’s the weirdest parable or cautionary tale you were told growing up? Drop it in the comments or send us a message. We’re collecting material for when we inevitably write our own disturbing children’s book.

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The Dreyer Drive Podcast: Where two siblings process their childhood one unhinged memory at a time. Hosted by Ryan (currently in Okinawa, overthinking everything) and Jacqueline (in her log house in Utah, planning surprise episodes). New episodes every two weeks.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

We Fed Our Entire Podcast to AI and The Results Were... Unhinged

What happens when you give artificial intelligence 45 hours of sibling chaos to analyze? This episode. That’s what.

Ryan (my brother, currently living his best overthinking life in Okinawa) decided to take every single transcript from our podcast—all 37 episodes, 524,829 words of pure, unfiltered sibling energy—and feed it to Claude. His mission? To create our first annual “Unraveled” awards ceremony, because apparently we’ve reached the point in our podcast journey where we’re analyzing ourselves like we’re some kind of cultural phenomenon instead of two Canadians who forgot to mention Tim Hortons more than six times.

The kicker? Claude was excited about it. The AI literally said, “This is going to be fun. Let me dive into 45 hours of dryer chaos and start mining for gold.”

Even robots think we’re entertaining. I don’t know whether to be flattered or concerned.

If you want to follow along with us for this episode, click the image below to be taken to the Unraveled website.

The Moment We Realized We Say “Like” More Than We Breathe

I’m just going to rip the band-aid off here: We said “like” 18,238 times.

That’s once every 8.9 seconds. EVERY. 8.9. SECONDS.

Ryan put it on the screen during the reveal, and honestly, I wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there forever, but was also, like, proud? We were both educated! In Canada! At South Ajax’s finest schools! And yet here we are, verbal tick champions of the millennial generation, saying “like” so frequently that it could be classified as a nervous system response rather than actual speech.

For context, our second-most used word was “right” at 1,581 mentions. That’s not even CLOSE. It’s not even in the same universe. If you graphed it, “like” would be a skyscraper and everything else would be someone’s basement apartment.

But first—before we spiral into existential crisis territory—let me tell you about the other words on our “Verbal Tick Leaderboard”:

* Actually: 926 times (very on-brand for siblings who need to correct each other constantly)

* I don’t know: 546 times (the theme of this podcast, truly)

* Sorry: 329 times (🇨🇦 flag absolutely necessary here)

* Truly: 149 times (that’s me, and I’m not even sorry about it)

* Unhinged: Made it to seventh place, which feels deeply appropriate

McDonald’s vs. Tim Hortons: A National Disgrace

Okay, so here’s where it gets embarrassing for our Canadian heritage.

McDonald’s mentions: 119

Tim Hortons mentions: 6

That’s a 20-to-1 ratio, guys. The AI stamped us with the “Un-Canadian” seal of approval, and honestly? Fair. We deserve it. I mention McDonald’s approximately once every 23 minutes of podcast content, which tracks with how often I think about McDonald’s in real life.

(Ryan, for the record, flexes constantly that he hasn’t been to McDonald’s since 2004, which is somehow both impressive and deeply suspicious. Like, not even once? Not even in an airport at 3am when you’re questioning all your life choices? Sure, Ryan.)

The last time I was in Canada, Tim Hortons had butter tarts that had no business being as good as they were. Ryan also begged our parents to bring him Timbits when they visited Ryan in Okinawa—just buy them at the airport, they’ll stay fresh for 24 hours, he said. Birthday cake Timbits specifically, because sometimes you just need one. Or twelve. Or just enough to feel guilt and shame, at the same time.

I also need to mention the peach drink from Tim Hortons, which is my second favorite thing from there. It burns going down from the sheer amount of artificial flavoring and sugar, and I love it. It makes your mouth taste sweet for like six hours afterward and probably contributes to tooth decay, but that’s future me’s problem. Present me just wants that gas station peach drink energy.

We’re Surprisingly Obsessed With Death

Most Morbid Discovery Alert:

For a podcast that’s supposed to be about nostalgic childhood memories and pop culture, we are *shockingly* morbid. Ryan built this whole section with a flashlight cursor moving around in the dark revealing these numbers, and I was genuinely sweating:

* Ghost: 55 mentions

* Haunted: 13 mentions

* Kill/Killed: 60 mentions

* Murder: 30 mentions

* Death/Dead/Died: 293 mentions

That’s nearly 500 references to murder, death, and general morbidity. We’re going to be suspects in something one day, I swear. There’s going to be a true crime documentary about us where they show slow-motion footage of us laughing on the podcast with ominous music playing. “They seemed so normal,” someone will say. “They lit up every room they entered.”

(They’ll show us literally lighting up a room with a flashlight because we were looking for evidence we definitely didn’t hide, but the editing will make it look suspicious.)

To be fair, we did do episodes on the Menendez Brothers, the Alcatraz escape, and various other crimes throughout history. But still. Maybe we should dial it back in 2026? Maybe focus on, I don’t know, Lisa Frank stickers or something?

Family Mentions: Mom Wins (Obviously)

The Family Mentioned Leaderboard:

* Mom - 726 times (I know she’s reading this with the biggest smile on her face right now. Hi Mom! You won!)

* Dad - beer puke story provider

* Dan - The Chaos King - 443 mentions

* Jonathan - No label, which is very Jonathan of him

* Me (Jacqueline) - “Co-host and Crying Enthusiast”

* Ryan - “Co-host”

* Taylor and her butt tumor

I was actually right about my prediction—Daniel IS the most talked-about sibling. With sound bites like “Daniel energy,” “so on-brand for Daniel,” “Daniel strikes again,” and “this is so Daniel,” our younger brother has officially been crowned the Chaos King. And honestly? He earned it. The man ruled our household with an iron fist growing up, and apparently we’re still not over it.

Also, can we discuss the fact that Dallin didn’t even make the list, but Taylor’s butt tumor did? Our sweet departed beagle and her unfortunate tumor got 31 separate mentions across the podcast. When Taylor was alive, we would desperately tell visitors “don’t look at it, whatever you do, please don’t acknowledge the butt tumor.” Now we talk about it constantly like it’s part of our family lore.

We’re like Eminem in 8 Mile—we’re owning our trauma. “Yeah, we had a dog with a butt tumor! What about it?!”

The Croissant Incident: A Top Three Unhinged Moment

Speaking of trauma, let’s discuss what the AI determined were our most unhinged text messages of 2025.

Third Place: Dad’s “crusty damp panties” response during a game of Ransom Note (I physically cannot type those words without feeling ill, but there they are, immortalized by AI in an animated slide where each word stamps onto the screen one at a time like a ransom note, because Ryan is COMMITTED to the bit)

Second Place: Dad’s comment about mom getting beer puke in her hair and motorcycle helmet from a drunk guy high up on a ride (our family dynamics are truly something special)

First Place: My stroke scare.

Aka THE CROISSANT INCIDENT.

So here’s what happened: I texted the family group chat—not 911, not a doctor, but the FAMILY GROUP CHAT—because I was convinced I was having a stroke. The telltale sign? I kept smelling croissants. Everywhere. Just constant phantom croissant smell following me around my log house in Utah.

Turns out—and I truly cannot emphasize enough how ridiculous this is—I had bought a croissant-scented air freshener, plugged it in, and completely forgotten about both the purchase AND the plugging-in. Multiple layers of chaos here:

* I bought a croissant-scented air freshener (who does that?)

* I plugged it in and forgot

* I smelled it and thought “stroke” instead of “air freshener”

* I texted my family instead of calling a medical professional

* It took me WAY too long to remember the air freshener existed

Ryan built a whole animation for this with croissant emojis floating across the screen, and I have to admit, it’s art.

My Awards Acceptance Speech

Look, I’m not going to lie—when Ryan started revealing all these awards, I felt like that kid in church who won “Special Child of the Week.” Remember that? Where they’d describe you before announcing your name? “This child can paint really good flower pots... wait, nevermind, they painted a hamburger... Jacqueline Rochelle Porter!”

Here are my wins:

🏆 The Crying Achievement Award - 158 references to me crying, including two actual instances of crying live on the podcast. My most iconic tear quote: “I will cry every day until Christmas” (there were still 78 days until Christmas when I said that, and yes, dear reader, I kept my word)

🏆 The Golden Arches Award - For McDonald’s mentions dominating our Canadian identity

🏆 Co-winner of the Unhinged Text Award - For the croissant stroke scare (though I’m giving this one to Dad in the spirit of the Macklemore/Kendrick Grammy moment)

When Ryan showed me all these awards stacking up, I imagined myself doing that post-ceremony press conference photo where one person wins everything and they’re holding like seventeen Grammys. That’s me. That’s my 2026 energy.

The Devil’s Podcast: Our Most Meta Moment

The final award? The one that really sent me?

We mentioned our own podcast 666 times.

Six. Seis. Roku.

Ryan made it reveal like a slot machine, and when those numbers lined up, I genuinely gasped. That’s approximately 18 self-references per episode, which... look, we KNOW we’re bottom-five podcasts on the entire internet. We say it with pride! Our most common self-aware moments include:

* “This is bottom five podcasts on the entire internet”

* “No one’s listening”

* “Why do we always talk about puke on this podcast?”

But here’s the thing—we talk about ourselves constantly because we’re genuinely baffled that this exists. It’s like we’re constantly checking in with each other: “Are we still doing this? Are we still recording ourselves having sibling conversations? Okay cool, just checking.”

Behind the Scenes: Ryan’s Conversations With AI

The true unhinged content from this episode wasn’t even the awards—it was Ryan’s text updates to me as Claude analyzed our podcast.

* “Claude says this is incredible data”

* “It’s literally having a fun time doing the analysis”

* “It keeps reading things by itself and making comments”

At one point, Ryan was working with Lovable AI to build the awards website, and he realized the Taylor’s butt tumor slide wasn’t dramatic enough. So he told the AI he needed “a missing butt tumor animation” and a “better reveal.”

The AI responded—I kid you not—with: “Let me add the butt tumor slide handler” and included in its technical update: “Item #9: Butt tumor tracker - new component added with bouncing peaches animation.”

Ryan is definitely on a list now. And the beautiful thing about AI is that it aggregates all this information, which means Taylor’s butt tumor is now part of Claude’s understanding of human conversation. Somewhere in the future, an AI is going to recommend butt tumor content to someone asking for podcast ideas, and it’ll be because of us.

We’re pioneers, truly.

What This All Means (If Anything)

Here’s what I learned from having 45 hours of my life analyzed by artificial intelligence:

* We say “like” more than I breathe (working on it, I’m truly not)

* I cry a lot and I’m not even sorry about it

* My McDonald’s obsession is worse than I thought (Noa knows Auntie Jacqueline’s favorite food is McDonald’s fries, which is both accurate and devastating)

* We’re morbid chaos agents who somehow convinced even a robot that we’re interesting

* Mom will always be #1 (as she should be)

* Daniel’s legacy of chaos lives on in every episode

* We’re incredibly self-aware about being incredibly un-self-aware

Ryan spent hours building out this whole website experience, complete with award envelope reveals, animations, and bouncing peach emojis. The dedication to making a professional analysis of our deeply unprofessional podcast is *chef’s kiss*.

We’re Making This an Annual Tradition

That’s right—we’re committing to doing “Unraveled” every year. Will we still be podcasting next year? Who knows! But if we record even one episode in 2026, we’re doing this again. I need to see if my “truly” count goes up or if Ryan can go a full year without mentioning Nazis (his 2026 resolution, apparently, which is already concerning that it needed to be a resolution).

Next year, I want to see:

* Word clouds for each family member

* Positive vs. negative sentiment analysis on our family mentions

* A “like” counter live on every episode (accountability)

* More croissant incident-level chaos, honestly

Your Turn

Okay, so here’s my question for you, whether you’ve been here since episode one or you stumbled upon this because you follow creators with zero followers as a public service:

What’s the most embarrassing thing AI would discover about YOU if it analyzed your entire digital footprint?

Because let’s be real—we all have our “like” equivalent. Mine just happens to be documented in 45 hours of audio that now lives forever on the internet, analyzed by an AI that found us delightful.

Leave a comment if you’re reading this on Substack. Tell us who you are and WHY you’re subjecting yourself to this content. We genuinely want to know. We can’t help but love you for being here.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. Leave us a five-star review. Tell your friends about the podcast with 666 self-mentions. Be part of the chaos.

Until next time (like, next time, truly, like)

Ryan and Jacqueline

P.S. - The full “Unraveled” website experience is live and includes all the animations, award reveals, and bouncing peach emojis your heart could desire. Check the show notes for the link.

P.P.S. - Mom, I know you’re reading this. You won.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

We need to talk about something important. Something that speaks to the very core of who we are as a generation raised on VHS tapes, Tang, and the wild belief that wearing a Kangol hat made you cool.

This week’s episode started innocently enough—like most disasters do—with a casual mention of a Kangol hat. And before we knew it, Ryan and I were spiraling down a rabbit hole about early 2000s fashion that neither of us saw coming. (But here’s the thing: we’re workshopping content in real time, people. This is professional podcasting at its finest.)

The Kangol Revelation (Or: Things We Thought We Knew)

Did you know Kangol was founded in 1938?

Yeah, neither did we.

In our defense, Kangol screams 2001-2005. It’s Samuel L. Jackson in every movie. It’s that one friend who thought they were LL Cool J. (It’s me I’m the friend). It’s the accessory that made you feel like you had “made it” even though you were wearing it to a grade nine dance at the YMCA.

But 1938? That’s wild. That’s your grandpa’s generation wild. That’s “we wore these hats while storming beaches” territory, not “I wore this while awkwardly asking someone to slow dance to Usher.”

The best part? The kangaroo logo was only added in 1983 because Americans kept asking where they could buy “the kangaroo hat.” The brand just... went with it. Peak marketing. No notes.

When Your Dog Becomes a Criminal Mastermind

But first—because this is how we operate—I need to tell you about the absolute sitcom-level chaos that unfolded at my house last week.

Picture this: I’m out running errands. My dog Birdie (who is a sociopath, let’s just establish that) is on her lead on the front porch. My father-in-law kindly lets her out because she seemed to be enjoying the sun. Sweet, right?

Wrong.

An Amazon delivery guy FLINGS a package onto my porch—because Birdie is there and he’s nervous—and Birdie, bless her chaotic little heart, thinks it’s a toy. She drags the box onto the lawn (where I can’t see her on the Ring camera) and proceeds to RIP IT APART.

Now, here’s where it gets truly Porter family-level absurd.

A sweet woman from my neighborhood stops by to drop off a Christmas treat (because apparently where I live, people still do this). She finds:

- My front door WIDE OPEN (Birdie can open doors, naturally)

- A COUCH blocking the entire porch (delivered that same day)

- Birdie’s crime scene on the lawn

- Complete silence inside the house

This woman literally walks INTO MY HOUSE calling “Hello? Jacqueline? Are you here?” thinking I’ve been MURDERED.

She then goes outside, starts picking up all the destroyed Amazon items (an electric nail file with bits EVERYWHERE), and—I’m watching all of this on the Ring camera in real-time in abject horror at lunch—SHE STEPS IN DOG POOP.

I watch her wipe her shoe in the grass. Over and over. Then she gets a water bottle. Then she’s sitting on the edge of her car, pouring water on her shoes, STILL in my driveway when we pull up.

“I thought you were murdered,” she tells me.

“Nope,” I say. “I just wish I was.”

The Water Weenie Problem (Or: Why I Can’t Let Things Go)

Here’s something I’m learning about myself at 41: I still haven’t learned to let go of the water weenie.

You remember water weenies, right? Those gel-filled tubes that you could NEVER hold onto? The harder you squeezed, the faster they’d shoot out of your hands?

That’s me with... everything.

Case in point: I planned the PERFECT Christmas scavenger hunt for my work party. Fifty people. Twenty-nine kids. Cute photo challenges like “take a picture with someone who looks like Santa” and “do a pose on an escalator.” I even put MONEY in the envelopes so they could complete tasks like “buy yourself a treat.”

I’m picturing these adorable children having the time of their lives, making memories, being Instagram-ready cute.

We finish dinner. I hand out the envelopes with strict instructions not to open them yet. We all meet at the mall to start together.

I’m the last one to arrive (because I’m talking to the restaurant about the bill, being responsible and adult). I get to the mall and there’s a SECURITY GUY waiting for me.

“Are you in charge of this?”

“...yes?”

“You are not allowed to do that here.”

Fifty people. Staring at me. Waiting for the fun to begin.

Tim the Security Guy (bah humbug, Tim) explains that scavenger hunts “throw off the metrics” of stores. People are supposed to be shopping, not... having fun? Creating memories? I don’t know, Tim. I DON’T KNOW.

I try everything. “What if nobody goes into stores?” No. “What if we’re spending money?” No. “What if I cry?” (I didn’t actually say that one, but I thought about it. Because I definitely was about to start.)

So I pivot. I make up a completely different activity on the spot. Some kids end up just... buying themselves presents with the money, which is fine, whatever, chaos reigns.

But here’s the Porter family part: Three guys from our group decide to do the scavenger hunt ANYWAY. They’re sending pictures to the group chat. They’re singing Jingle Bells in the food court. They’re being DEFIANT.

And when we leave? My son Andrew walks up to the security desk—where Tim is conveniently on break—and tells the woman there: “Tell Tim he’s invited to the scavenger hunt next year. Same time, same place.”

That’s my boy. Mean streak and all.

The Certified Sweetie Man Scale (A Scientific Classification System)

I need to introduce you to something I invented: The Certified Sweetie Man Scale.

A Certified Sweetie Man is a man—usually older—who has NO GUILE. No malice. No hard edges. Just pure, soft, sweet energy. Dad is peak Certified Sweetie Man. He’s the standard by which all others are measured.

My family now asks me after meeting someone: “Is he certified?”

And I’m the only one who can make that judgment because I invented the scale.

Justin, my husband, desperately wants certification. He will never get it. Andrew, my wonderfully mean son who tells security guards they’re invited to next year’s rebellion? Will never be certified. Ryan? Sorry, brother. No certification for you.

But here’s the thing: The Porter family Christmas NEEDS Certified Sweetie Man energy to balance out our chaos. It’s why Mrs. Gerlitz—our childhood crossing guard who somehow became family—was so important. It’s why dad wearing our too-tight tank top and laughing so hard his belly shook like “a can of cranberries” (Ryan’s words) is a core memory.

Speaking of memories that randomly surface...

The **ASPEN** Cologne Incident (And Other Dreyer Drive Classics

You know what just unlocked our brains during this episode? ASPEN COLOGNE. Despite calling it “Alpine” multiple times in this episode.

The green bottle. The copper top. The fact that every Christmas, multiple Porter boys received this cologne and proceeded to empty it within weeks because we were teenagers who thought 53 sprays was the appropriate amount before leaving the house.

Then they’d sneak into dad’s room and steal HIS Aspen.

Why is this information stored in my brain? Why can I smell it RIGHT NOW, 20+ years later?

This is what happens when you grow up in a house where:

- Police showed up multiple times (the marble incident, anyone?)

- Someone threw a VHS tape at your face hard enough to leave blood on the corner

- Your valedictorian speech was recorded over by your brother’s valedictorian speech

- Dad dyed his hair green with Kool-Aid for St. Patrick’s Day and it stayed that way FOR MONTHS because gray hair + Kool-Aid = permanent decision

(Mom and Dad, I know you’re reading this. That last one happened. We all remember.)

Will It Porter? The Hallmark Christmas Movie Game

Okay, here’s where things get fun. Because I watch A LOT of Hallmark Christmas movies. The trashier, the better. Give me a woman falling in love with a ghost rum-runner. Give me someone accidentally handcuffed to a stranger for the holidays. Give me Hot Frosty (a snowman who comes to life, plays men’s hockey, and falls for a café owner—it’s filmed in Brockville, Ontario, and yes, it’s VERY Canadian).

So I invented a game: Will It Porter?

The premise: I describe the plot of various Hallmark Christmas movies that involve siblings, and Ryan decides if the Porter family would find themselves in a similar situation.

Round 1: Three Wise Men and a Baby

The Plot: Three estranged brothers are forced to care for a baby left at one brother’s fire station. They fumble through diapers while learning about responsibility, eventually deciding to decorate their mom’s house for a Christmas lights contest with a “Three Wise Men” theme.

Ryan’s Verdict: “One thousand percent Will It Porter.”

The baby part? Dallin and Jonathan would have NO IDEA what to do. Jonathan wearing oven mitts to change a diaper with kitchen tongs is absolutely something that would happen.

But the Christmas lights contest? THAT’S where it really Porters. Ryan and I would have STRONG OPINIONS about decorating strategy. We’d debate. We’d compete. We’d make it unnecessarily complicated.

Meanwhile, Jonathan would complain while executing everything perfectly, and Dan would show up when it’s all done asking why nobody told him we were decorating.

Round 2: Five Star Christmas

The Plot: A family runs a B&B and thinks a famous travel critic is staying there. They all pretend to be lavish guests and staff to get a good review, leading to chaos and romantic deceptions.

Ryan’s Verdict: “This is any time a guest comes over for dinner at the Porter household.”

THIS ONE HITS DIFFERENT.

Because we DID this. Every single time someone visited Dreyer Drive, it was SHOWTIME. We weren’t asked to be on our best behavior—we were asked to give the BEST PERFORMANCE.

We had our highlight reel of stories ready: The “just punch him in the face” mom moment. The police showing up for marble-related crimes. Someone breaking a bone doing something ridiculous. All carefully deployed at strategic moments during dinner.

We’d even stage cute little fights—nothing real, just enough to give them “the big family experience.”

And here’s the thing: We KNEW we were performing. We were so aware of it. The dining room was literally the SET. As soon as guests left? Someone probably punched someone for real.

But in the moment? Flawless execution. Give us our Oscars.

The Sausage Roll Situation

Can we talk about Christmas Eve food for a second? Because Ryan and I both agree: Christmas Eve was THE event. More important than Christmas Day. And it was mostly about the food.

The pierogies with bacon bits and sour cream. The ramaki (chicken wrapped in bacon with water chestnuts—very 1970s cocaine party vibes). The sausage rolls from M&M Meats that you’d eat seventeen of until you wanted to throw up.

And here’s something beautiful about the Porter Christmas: Things were only ADDED, never removed. Every year, someone would request a new item, and mom would just... add it. No substitutions. Only additions.

By the end, Christmas Eve was this glorious chaos of:

* Meatballs with grape jelly and chili sauce (the “secret family recipe”)

* Porcupine meatballs

* Christmas wreath (broccoli, chicken, cheese in Pillsbury croissant dough)

* Cherry cheese tarts on a tray stolen from a church kitchen

* Auntie Gayle’s raisinless butter tarts (that she made specifically because she overheard me complaining about raisins ONCE)

And mom would check with each of us beforehand: “Ryan, do you want the Christmas wreath this year?”

The answer was always yes. For me, 40 sausage rolls. All of them.

The Asthma Situation (Or: How Ryan Became Certified… Not as a Sweetie Man, But as an Individual With Asthma)

Quick sidebar about life insurance and accidental self-sabotage:

Ryan’s going through the process of getting life insurance in Japan (for the house situation). He needs a health check. He goes to my regular doctor.

The doctor asks how he’s feeling after being sick recently. He casually mentions, “Oh yeah, I went to another clinic and got an inhaler because you guys were closed.”

The doctor writes something down.

He finishes the interview, gets in the car. Seiko opens the letter.

“You have asthma?”

“I do NOT have asthma.”

“It says right here, documented by a doctor, that you have asthma.”

So now he’s officially an asthma man. Once you’re certified as an asthma man, you’re certified forever. The certification never expires.

(Meanwhile, as a child, I was SO JEALOUS of kids with inhalers. Finally got my wish at 40-something. Be careful what you wish for.)

The Main Character Energy We All Deserve

Here’s what I love about growing up the way we did: We had MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY before that was even a thing.

Remember being convinced someone was following you on the walk to the Gilbey’s house—ONE BLOCK AWAY—so you’d walk up to a random neighbor’s door and pretend it was your house? Just in case?

Or the way we’d form these ragtag groups walking to school, picking up more kids along the way like we were collecting Pokémon?

Ryan experiences this now with Noa in Okinawa. She walks home with NINE KIDS, and he’s become the accidental Pied Piper. Other parents have noticed. “Who’s that tall white guy with nine kids?”

Every single one of those kids maps to a Dreyer Drive kid. There’s a Tommy who wants to walk separately and tell Ryan animal facts. There’s the kid who uses words they shouldn’t and looks at Ryan to see if he’ll correct them (he won’t—”guys, I’m not your dad”).

Last week, two kids got in a fight and Noah tried to get Ryan to solve it. His response? “One of these nine kids is mine. That’s you. I will only step in if there’s physical violence.”

This is PEAK Dreyer Drive parenting philosophy.

The Storage Room Theory

Ryan had this thought during the episode that made me laugh and also feel incredibly seen:

He imagines a future where we all come together to sort through mom and dad’s storage room. Going through decades of accumulated stuff. The BB gun Dan used to shoot our cat. The incomplete hockey card collection (because Dan SOLD THEM). VHS tapes with blood still on the corners.

And as we go through everything, all these buried emotions and memories surface. We fight over things. We remember things. We laugh. Someone probably cries.

It’s basically “The Joyful Mrs. Miracle” (a Hallmark movie about siblings dealing with their grandmother’s estate) but instead of a castle in Scotland, it’s a basement in Ajax, Ontario.

And instead of Mrs. Miracle appearing to help, it’s just us, increasingly unhinged, holding a decades-old Santa collection and asking “WHY DID WE KEEP THIS?”

The Big Family Performance Art

Looking back at all of this—the chaos, the performance, the way we’d turn on “big family energy” for guests—I realize we were creating something special.

Not perfect. Not always healthy. Definitely not suitable for a Hallmark movie (unless it’s the chaotic one).

But it was OURS.

And the beauty of podcasting with Ryan is that we get to preserve these moments. The random memories that surface. The way saying “Alpine cologne” can unlock an entire sensory experience. The fact that we can debate whether the Porter family would end up in various absurd situations and the answer is almost always “yes, but make it weirder.”

Because here’s the thing about nostalgia: It’s not about remembering things perfectly. It’s about remembering them truly. The good, the bad, the stepping-in-dog-poop moments, and the Christmas Eve food that somehow holds an entire childhood.

What We’re Taking Into 2026

As we wrap up this last episode of 2025 (and yes, we’re taking a holiday break because even we need to recharge), I’m thinking about what made this year special.

We stuck with this podcast. Ryan and I have tried ventures before—they usually don’t make it past a couple months. But we’re here. We’re still going. Our four listeners (me, Ryan, and two other brave souls) are still with us.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

Or what should be titled: When Christmas Movies Raised Us Better Than Our Siblings Did

Or: How We Learned Everything About the Holidays from VHS Tapes and Nothing from Each Other

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

December hits different when you’re an elder millennial who was raised by a combination of questionable parenting decisions, red food coloring, and whatever was playing on the CBC Sunday Night Movie. And what I wish wasn’t true: Jacqueline literally cannot make it through the entire month of December without crying. Not once. Not twice. Every. Single. Day.

This isn’t an exaggeration. She sees someone hold a door open at Target while wishing everybody happy holidays and she’s reaching for tissues like a Claritan commercial.

The Crying Starts Early (November 30th, Technically)

We recorded this episode on November 30th—NOVEMBER 30TH PEOPLE—and Jacqueline was already sobbing about people being nice to each other not even 8 minutes into the episode. Her daughter is spending her first holiday season in Ecuador, and when someone threw her a surprise Thanksgiving dinner, Jacqueline texted me about it while simultaneously crying about human kindness.

“I just... people were being NICE to her, Ryan.”

Ma’am, it’s not even December yet. We haven’t even gotten to the Hallmark movies. You need to pace yourself.

The Great Christmas Emotion Paradox

Here’s what’s wild about growing up in our house: for 11 months of the year, we were basically a reality TV show waiting to happen (the reality show being COPS). Siblings fighting over computer time. Someone always getting injured over a VHS tape (true story—Dallin gave Jacqueline a permanent scar because of an Aladdin tape). The general chaos of five kids, two parents, one tumor-protruding dog, and exactly zero chill. None to be found anywhere.

But then December would roll around and for approximately three hours on Christmas morning, we became the family we spent the other 364 days pretending to be. The bay window. The tree. The concentrated chaos that somehow felt... right?

It was wild in a household like ours where there was a lot of kh@o$ and we didn’t often get along. But we rallied SO HARD for Christmas. For those three hours, we were that family.

The VHS Tapes That Raised Us

Before we get into the full list (because yes, we’re making an official Dreyer Drive Christmas Viewing Guide), let me tell you about the real MVP of our childhood: the VHS tape that had BOTH Mr. Bean’s Christmas AND Saturday Night Live Season 22, Episode 9 recorded on it.

This tape. THIS TAPE. This was appointment viewing.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean is a 30-minute masterpiece of physical comedy that every Canadian kid knows by heart. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched Mr. Bean terrorize a department store nativity scene by escalating the toys from a sheep to a moving truck to a military helicopter. That’s cinema, baby.

And then—THEN—we had the SNL episode from December 14, 1996, hosted by Rosie O’Donnell with musical guest Whitney Houston. This episode had EVERYTHING: Mary Catherine Gallagher. The Spartan Cheerleaders. Delicious Dish. It was like someone at NBC said, “Let’s make the most ‘90s thing possible and also accidentally create the Porter family’s entire sense of humor.”

The Growing Pains Episode That Destroyed Jacqueline

Okay, so Jacqueline made me promise to tell you about this because apparently she needs the entire internet to know she’s emotionally compromised by a 1980s sitcom.

There’s an episode of Growing Pains—a CHRISTMAS episode—where Ben (the youngest kid) brings home a homeless girl because he learned about being kind during the holidays. The family takes her in, feeds her, gives her clothes, the whole nine yards. Very heartwarming stuff.

Christmas morning comes. All the presents are GONE. The girl stole everything and left. Even Ben’s socks and underwear. (Side note: this “even my socks and underwear” line is permanently burned into our brains.)

But then—plot twist—they find all the presents on the front porch. She couldn’t go through with it. And the final scene? The girl is in a phone booth calling her dad, and when she says “Hi, Dad,” her voice cracks and—

Jacqueline is currently crying again just thinking about it.

She watched this episode the other day to prep for our podcast and texted me: “I AM INCONSOLABLE. THIS GIRL IS RECONNECTING WITH HER FATHER.”

[Photo comparison coming of Jacqueline’s face before and after watching this episode]

The Official Dreyer Drive Christmas Movie Playlist

If you want to have an authentic Dryer Drive Christmas experience (and honestly, why wouldn’t you?), here’s your required viewing:

The Essentials:

* Mr. Bean’s Christmas (non-negotiable)

* Saturday Night Live Season 22, Episode 9 (the cultural touchstone)

* Growing Pains Christmas Episode (bring tissues)

* Home Alone (we covered this extensively last year, but Noah is fully into it now, so it remains valid)

* A Christmas Story (”You’ll shoot your eye out!” was peak comedy for 8-year-old boys)

* National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (though now we side with Margo and Todd, which is how you know we’re adults)

The Controversial Picks:

* The Santa Clause (the perfect “explain Santa to me so I can believe for two more years” movie)

* Muppet Christmas Carol (Jacqueline’s #1 Christmas Carol adaptation and she will fight you on this)

* Little Women (1994 Winona Ryder version ONLY—Jacqueline’s entire understanding of sister relationships came from this movie, which explains... a lot)

The Time Capsules:

* Jingle All the Way (objectively terrible, 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, but we love it anyway because nostalgia is a hell of a drug)

* Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (the old stop-motion one—Daniel is definitely the Abominable Snowman)

The Grown-up Addition:

* The Family Man (didn’t hit right until we became parents ourselves, now it DESTROYS us)

Things We’ve Learned From Christmas Movies

* From Home Alone: Sometimes the most chaotic child is actually just waiting to become an excellent parent who will teach their kids the art of the elaborate prank.

* From The Santa Claus: Neil (the stepdad) is the only person making sense in that entire movie. We side with Neil now. We ARE Neil. And we want his sweaters.

* From National Lampoon’s: Justice for Margo and Todd. They deserved better neighbors.

* From Little Women: Sister relationships look incredibly meaningful (Jacqueline’s words, as the only sister in a house full of brothers).

* From The Family Man: You don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve changed a diaper at 3 AM and suddenly EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE.

The Part Where We Made This About Sibling Warfare

(Because of course we did.)

I stumbled upon a Reddit community called “Siblings From Hell” and honestly? We could have authored half those posts. Some highlights that hit a little too close to home:

* “Sister tried to strangle me and hurt my arm just because of a clothing hanger”

* “Told my sister that she’s ugly for the first time in 22 years”

* “My pathetic sister” (we’re pretty sure one of us wrote this)

But here’s the real tea: remember those hockey cards I got for Christmas? The ones where I got all the good rookies and limited edition cards? Daniel convinced me we should put all our best cards together in one shared album. Very brotherly. Very collaborative.

A month later, the album was empty. Daniel had sold EVERY. SINGLE. CARD.

My Christmas present. Gone. Liquidated. Turned into whatever Daniel bought with the money (probably more mannequin legs, pellet guns, or a digital scale if we’re being honest about his childhood “hobbies”).

And you know what the worst part is? I deserved it. I fell for it AGAIN. Daniel’s superpower is being able to sell you on literally anything, and I am Patient Zero for his schemes.

Why Christmas Hits Different Now

Here’s what I’ve realized as a dad to two girls: Christmas metamorphoses through different life stages. As a kid, it’s pure magic. As a tween, you need movies like The Santa Clause to explain things so you can keep believing. As a teenager, you’re basically dead inside except for those three hours on Christmas morning.

But then you become a parent and the cycle resets. Watching Noa (almost 7) experience all of this. The elf visiting our house, the Christmas lights we can’t find in Okinawa because they don’t make them like they do in Canada, her concern that Santa won’t find our house? It’s like experiencing Christmas through a completely new lens.

And Naia (one and a half) is already showing Porter genes. The other night, she put Kleenexes over her eyes and walked around bumping into things for the bit. SHE’S FULLY COMMITTING TO THE BIT AT 18 MONTHS OLD. She’s walking into doors, the high chair, the child-proof gate, and she WILL NOT take the tissues off her eyes because the laugh is the fuel. That’s pure Porter DNA right there.

The Thing About Siblings (The Serious Part)

(We’re allowed to have one serious part, okay?)

Jacqueline and I were talking about how we didn’t really become friends until we all left home. And yeah, space helped (like A LOT of said space). But here’s what really changed: we got to see each other become OTHER things.

(According to Jacqueline) Not just Ryan the annoying big brother, but Ryan the dad, the husband, the person living in Japan trying to navigate bureaucracy while preventing customer harassment incidents at City Hall.

Not just Jacqueline the sister who read too much, but Jacqueline the mom, the wife, the person who orders “Coke in a cup” (or her hands) at drive-thrus and then just... accepts two cupfuls of Coke instead of saying anything because confrontation is hard.

We got to see each other in roles we were actually GOOD at, and suddenly the childhood versions kinda made more sense. Understanding each other as adults helps explain why we were the way we were as kids.

(We’re not crying, you’re crying.)

Your Assignment

Since we’re in the spirit of spreading Christmas nostalgia like it’s 1996 and we just recorded SNL on a VHS tape:

1. Watch at least one movie from our list that you haven’t seen in years. Report back on whether it holds up or whether you’re now traumatized.

2. Tell us YOUR essential Christmas viewing. What did your family watch religiously? What still makes you tear up? What would you force your kids to watch?

3. Share your sibling chaos stories. What did your brothers or sisters do that you’re STILL not over? What would be your Reddit thread title in “Siblings From Hell”?

Drop a comment, send us a message, or just sit with your own nostalgia for a bit. We’ll be here, crying about Growing Pains and arguing about whether Jingle All the Way deserves its 20% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Oh and just incase you wanted to see the jacket that I sent in the sibling thread, here you go. Diversity & Freedom. #BLESSED

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Come hang out with us on the podcast! New episodes drop bi-weekly (when we feel like it) on all your favorite podcast platforms. Leave us a five-star review and tell us about your chaotic childhood holiday memories. We read every single one while ugly-crying into our Christmas cookies.

Question for you: What’s the ONE Christmas movie or TV special that absolutely MUST be watched in your house every year, and why? We want the full story—the nostalgia, the tears, the family drama it causes when someone suggests skipping it.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

We need to tell you something about your morning cereal that might make Frosted Flakes taste a little, hmmm… conflicted.

You know how sometimes you have a really good idea, and then your sibling steals it, patents it, sues you over it, and then you both spend the next several decades pretending the other person doesn’t exist while living in the exact same town? No? Just us? Well, buckle up, because the Kellogg brothers took sibling rivalry to a whole new level—and accidentally invented modern breakfast in the process.

But first, we need to explain why this episode even exists.

The Episode That Shall Not Be Named

We need to have a little confessional here. Remember how we promised you a Halloween episode about Little Monsters? Yeah, about that. We didn’t record half of it (Ryan’s bad—he apparently has a complicated relationship with the record button), and the half we DID record turned into this weird, dark spiral about child trafficking metaphors that nobody—and I mean NOBODY—wanted to listen to.

Sometimes you revisit your childhood nostalgia and realize, “Oh. Oh no. That was actually deeply concerning.” So we did what any responsible podcasters would do: we ghosted you for a month and pretended it never happened. You’re welcome.

Ryan was literally in a funk for days. He texted Jacqueline multiple times being like, “I feel weird about this episode,” and she was like, “Same.” So we made an executive decision: sometimes the nostalgic things from our childhood should stay buried, along with my basement graffiti demon whose name Ryan will NEVER speak aloud because he’s not trying to summon anything into his current house.

Speaking of haunted houses...

Ghost Stories and Water Bottles: A Family Update

One of our listeners—who happens to be one of Ryan’s best friends and stayed in the haunted basement room at 26 Dryer Drive—messaged him after our last episode. His text was basically: “Bro....... Remember when my wife and I stayed in that room one time during Christmas? Does your ghost have red eyes?”

DOES. IT. HAVE. RED. EYES.

Folks, he SAW the demon. He saw RYAN’S graffiti demon. And he never mentioned it because he thought it was just a dream until he heard us talking about it on the podcast. This man wanted to sleep with the lights on LAST NIGHT because of a memory from like 12 years ago.

Here’s the thing about being an adult: you think you’re too old to be scared of the dark, and then you watch one documentary about aliens and suddenly you’re making your dog walk downstairs with you to lock the front door. We’re in our 40s, people. This is ridiculous. But also, those aliens aren’t getting in through the front door.

Meanwhile, our parents are out here living their best globetrotting life—UK with our younger brother Jonathan, then Canada with Jacqueline, and now they’re headed to visit Ryan in Japan. (he’s already panic-purchased them a Stanley cup for their water bottle problem because he’s STILL finding empty bottles they hid around his house from their last visit.)

The best part? Jonathan said they were on their “best behavior” with him. BEST BEHAVIOR. When they visit Jacqueline, it’s chaos. When they visit Ryan, it’s water bottles for dayzzzz. But Jonathan sets “ground rules” and suddenly they’re model citizens? The favoritism is palpable.

Also, Dad face-planted on a cobblestone in the UK and looked like he got in a bar fight for the rest of their trip photos. But at least he has his cabbie hat to hide behind—a hat that has officially become his entire personality.

Scram Jones and Other Things That Make No Sense

The other day, Jacqueline told her dog to “Scram Jones,” and her son asked why she says that. She genuinely didn’t know. It’s just something we’ve always said—this weird Porter family slang that makes zero sense to anybody who didn’t grow up in South Ajax.

Scram Jones was apparently a DJ? Maybe? Who knows. But it morphed into “Squam” for a while, and we’d just scream it at pets and occasionally each other. Like “skinchy face”—another term that has no meaning outside our childhood home but we ALL know exactly what it means when we say it.

Growing up with five siblings and a rotating cast of neighborhood kids created this strange linguistic soup where everyone just absorbed and redistributed weird phrases. It’s like we developed our own dialect, and now we’re all spreading it to our children like some kind of linguistic plague.

Ryan caught himself the other day telling people about “other architects” doing things a certain way, as if he’s an architect. FTR he’s not. He just really got into house design software. But the way he framed it made him sound like he was part of the architect community. This is sociopath behavior, and while he’s self-aware enough to recognize it he’s not self-aware enough to stop doing it.

The Christmas Tree Incident: A Case Study in Porter Control Issues

Speaking of traditions that reveal concerning personality traits: Ryan’s “family” decorated their Christmas tree early this year. They were SO EXCITED because Ryan had this whole system planned out. Lights first, obviously. Then garland. THEN the Christmas balls. And finally, decorations.

Noa, his almost-seven-year-old, kept trying to help by putting decorations on, and in true Porter form, Ryan kept taking them off. “Not yet, sweetie. We’re not ready for that step.” He was literally following the exact same playbook our mom used when we were kids—this rigid order of operations that turns a family bonding activity into a military operation.

But then Noa put four Christmas balls together in the middle of the tree and said, “Daddy, those four balls are our family.”

And just like that, he melted. Put whatever decorations you want wherever you want, kiddo. (Though as noted by Ryan, he did rearrange that Merry Christmas sign when she wasn’t looking because it needed to face the guests properly. Old habits die hard. And speaking of old habits, here is our very special Porter Christmas playlist that must be listened to every year on repeat.)

This is what we do, though. We bring forward these weird traditions from Dreyer Drive without even thinking about it. The order of Christmas tree decorating. Saying “Scram Jones” to pets. The annual family gathering where someone HAS to fall down (it’s tradition at this point—Dad in the UK, Mom splitting her face open when Jacqueline mocked her shaky hands, Jacqueline backflipping into a garden).

Citizen Grain: A Breakfast Tragedy in Three Acts

But enough about our family dysfunction. Let’s talk about a DIFFERENT family’s dysfunction: the Kellogg brothers.

Act One: The Broom Factory Kid Who Became a Vegetarian

John Harvey Kellogg was a sickly kid from a family of SEVENTEEN CHILDREN. Let me repeat that: SEVENTEEN. Two basketball teams’ worth of siblings. The Kelloggs weren’t messing around.

John only went to school until age 11 because he was constantly sick, so he went to work in the family broom factory instead. (Yes, they made brooms. This will not be relevant to the cereal story, but I need you to know that cereal comes from a broom family.)

Eventually, John left to work for this evangelist preacher who was OBSESSED with “healthful living.” And by healthful living, we mean this guy was anti-fun in every possible way. No alcohol, no tobacco, no spicy foods (because apparently spicy food causes “spicy behavior”), and definitely no meat. John became a vegetarian at like age 12, which in 1850 made him the most annoying child alive.

Imagine being at a family dinner in 1850 and your 12-year-old brother is like, “Actually, I don’t eat meat anymore.” Your 15 other siblings would have thrown him in the broom factory.

Act Two: The Battle Creek Medical Surgical Sanitarium (Yes, Really)

Here’s where it gets weird. John eventually goes to the University of Michigan, graduates, and immediately gets a job at the Western Health Reform Institute, which then REBRANDS as—and I need you to sit down for this—the Battle Creek Medical Surgical Sanitarium.

If you asked a group of 14-year-old boys to name a facility, they would have come up with that exact name.

A sanitarium, for those who don’t know, was basically where men sent their “difficult” wives and where people went to “get healthy” through rigorous exercise, bland food, and—we’re not making this up—YOGURT ENEMAS.

YOGURT. ENEMAS.

John was out here torturing people with flavorless food and shoving yogurt where yogurt should never go, all in the name of health. The man was ahead of his time in some ways (he understood gut health before it was trendy), but he was also promoting yogurt enemas, so let’s not give him too much credit.

Act Three: The Accidental Invention That Changed Everything

John’s wife, Ella, had a test kitchen where she was developing bland foods for the sanitarium patients. They came up with peanut butter (casual), some weird peanut paste thing called “nuholine,” and various grain mixtures.

But John had a DREAM. An actual dream about corn flakes. He woke up one day and said, “I dreamed of a corn-based flake, and we need to figure out how to make it.”

So his younger brother Will (who worked in the test kitchen) started helping him experiment. One night, John left a giant sheet of corn dough in the kitchen because he couldn’t crack the code. When Will came in the next morning, he went to throw it away—but as he rolled it up to dispose of it, it broke into perfect flakes.

Let me be clear: John was like 90% of the way there. He just needed to... break the giant single corn flake, into smaller bite-sized flakes. That’s it. That was the missing step. It’s giving “the fence is locked but it’s only five inches tall” energy from Hot Shots Part Deux.

But they did it. They invented the first breakfast cereal in 1898. Before this, people were starting their mornings with fat, caffeine, and ALCOHOL. A pint of beer for breakfast was normal. The Kellogg brothers offered an alternative: here’s some bland corn flakes to wash down your morning whiskey.

The Great Kellogg War: A Sibling Rivalry for the Ages

Here’s where it gets juicy.

Will, the younger brother, always resented living in John’s shadow. John was this big-shot doctor running a sanitarium, and Will was just... there. Making cereal. Following orders.

Then—SUSPICIOUSLY—there’s a fire at the sanitarium that ONLY destroys the test kitchen where they work. While they’re rebuilding, Will convinces John to sell him the rights to cornflakes. “Let me take care of this, bro. You focus on your yogurt enemas. I’ll handle the cereal business.”

But, not to be forgotten: Will was a marketing GENIUS. His first campaign said, “Wink at your grocer and see what you get”—and he instructed all the grocers to give out free samples to anyone who winked. (In today’s world, this would get you arrested, but in 1898, it was revolutionary marketing.)

Will also wanted to add SUGAR to cornflakes because he correctly identified that kids would like them better that way. John said absolutely not. No fun. No sugar. No spicy behavior.

So in 1906, Will started his OWN cereal company. John’s was called “Kellogg’s.” Will’s was called—wait for it—”The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company.”

Marketing genius? Yes. Branding genius? Absolutely not.

He eventually renamed it “Kellogg’s Company.” So now you have John’s “Kellogg’s” and Will’s “Kellogg’s Company,” both selling cereal, both owned by brothers who hate each other.

This begins a TEN-YEAR legal battle over who gets to use the name “Kellogg’s.” The case goes all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. Will argues that “cornflakes” and “Kellogg’s” are synonymous—you can’t have one without the other.

And he WINS.

Not only does Will get exclusive rights to the Kellogg’s name, but John is ordered to pay ALL the court costs AND is forbidden from using his own last name to market anything ever again. Will literally sued his brother out of their family name.

They never spoke again. Both lived into their 90s (apparently yogurt enemas work?), but they spent decades living in the same town, running competing businesses, and pretending the other didn’t exist.

The Moral of the Story (And Why This Matters)

Every time you pour a bowl of Kellogg’s cereal, you’re consuming the byproduct of a sibling rivalry so intense that it lasted longer than most marriages.

Thank John for the invention. Thank Will for the sugar and the marketing. But mostly, thank them both for proving that you should NEVER go into business with your siblings.

We have “worked together” multiple times—loose definition of “worked,” since no money ever actually changes hands. We just write contracts and pretend we’re professionals. But we both know that somewhere down the line, one of us is going to sue the other over who gets to keep the “Dreyer Drive Podcast” name, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives in different time zones refusing to acknowledge each other’s existence.

Actually, we’re already in different time zones. We’re halfway there.

A Quick Health Update (Because Apparently I’m John Kellogg Now)

Speaking of health: Ryan spent MONTHS preparing for his annual health checkup. He cut out my beloved bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. He switched to what he thought was the healthiest breakfast possible: a giant bowl of granola with two protein yogurts every morning.

He was SO PROUD of myself. He was going to crush this health check. His life insurance was going to give him the best rates because he was THRIVING.

He gets his results back, and not only has his cholesterol not improved, but he has a new “H” (high) marker on something called triglycerides.

He put his entire diet into ChatGPT—because of course he did—and uploaded a photo of his granola’s nutrition label. ChatGPT was like, “Bingo. Found the culprit. That ‘healthy’ breakfast? You’re eating SIX TABLESPOONS OF SUGAR every morning.”

He looked at the serving size. 10 granola pieces. TEN. That’s what you’re supposed to eat. He was eating like 400 pieces a day and wondering why his bloodwork looked like he’d been mainlining Pixy Stix.

So now he’s back to measuring out ten sad pieces of granola, covering them with a tablespoon of yogurt that doesn’t even hide the granola, and wondering how the Kellogg brothers lived to their 90s on this nonsense.

The answer is probably yogurt enemas, which I’m NOT trying.

What We’re Taking Forward

Here’s what I want you to remember from this episode:

1. Your childhood nostalgia might be hiding some deeply concerning content. Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping monsters lie. (See what we did there?)

2.Sibling dynamics never really change. Whether you’re fighting over who gets the bathroom first or who owns the rights to a breakfast cereal empire, siblings are going to sibling.

3. Marketing beats innovation every time. John invented cornflakes. Will made them a household name. Guess which one ended up owning the company?

4. Read your nutrition labels. Ryan cannot stress this enough. Granola is a LIE.

5. Some traditions are worth keeping, some need to die. Christmas tree decorating order? Maybe let it go. Saying “Scram Jones” to your pets? That’s staying forever.

6. Your family’s weird slang is a feature, not a bug. Every family has their own language. Embrace the skinchy faces and the scram joneses of life.

And most importantly: Thank the Kellogg brothers for proving that you can hate someone for decades and still accidentally change the world together.

Next time you’re pouring your morning cereal, imagine John and Will surfing out on a cornflake, ready to tell you their story. Actually, don’t imagine that. That’s weird. Just eat your breakfast and be grateful you’re not in a decades-long legal battle with your sibling.

Though if you ARE currently in business with a sibling, maybe get ahead of it and start the litigation now. Save yourself some time.

---

So here’s our question for you: What’s the weirdest family tradition or piece of slang you’ve carried into your adult life without realizing how strange it is? Drop it in the comments, because I guarantee we can relate.

And if you’re enjoying these deep dives into nostalgic chaos and family dysfunction, do us a solid and subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a 5-star review. Tell your friends. Tell strangers in line at the grocery store.

Just maybe don’t wink at them while you do it. That means something very different now.

Until next time, keep your cornflakes sugar-free and your sibling relationships slightly less litigious than the Kelloggs.

— Ryan & Jacqueline

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

Can we talk about something?

Between the two of us: Ryan currently overthinking everything from his apartment in Okinawa while Jacqueline’s nestled in her log house in Utah—we’ve accumulated roughly 80+ combined years of memories. And here’s the thing: a disturbing number of them involve either genuinely creepy experiences or absolutely unhinged things we did to our younger siblings in the name of “entertainment.”

This week’s episode was pure chaos in the best way possible. We dove deep into the spooky stories, ghost encounters, and downright traumatizing moments that shaped us into the emotionally complex adults we are today.

But First: The AI That Knows Us Too Well

Before we scared ourselves half to death reminiscing about childhood terrors, Ryan did something that honestly made me question whether we should be more afraid of ghosts or artificial intelligence. He fed all our podcast transcripts into ChatGPT and asked it to create the ultimate Dryer Drive Podcast playlist.

Girl. (this will make sense when you listen to this episode)

The results were... uncomfortably accurate. When AI started the playlist with “Thong Song” by Sisqó (which, yes, Jacqueline held up to the microphone during an episode), we knew we were in trouble. But it got worse—or better, depending on how you feel about being psychoanalyzed by a computer.

Here’s what really got us: Around track 10, the playlist took a DARK turn. We went from “Steal My Sunshine” by Len (that Alberta youth conference summer, you know the one) to songs with notes like “upbeat tune, darker undertones—just like your family anecdotes.”

EXCUSE ME?

Then came “Flagpole Sitta” with the specific lyric callout: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well—the Dreyer Drive mental health check-in.”

Sorry, but when did we sign up for therapy with a robot? We were absolutely losing it because every single song hit different. The playlist included everything from “Semi-Charmed Life” (which, fun fact, is about crystal meth) to “My Heart Will Go On” because apparently we’re Canadian and emotional.

The Family Tree Restaurant: Where NPCs Come to Life (Jacqueline’s POV)

Here’s where things get genuinely creepy.

Picture this: You’re looking for a cute family dinner spot. Everyone on Yelp is raving about the scones. You drive 20 minutes to this quaint-looking Western-style restaurant. You open the door and—

The music stops.

Everyone turns to look at you.

AT THE SAME TIME.

Ryan, when I tell you that walking into the Family Tree restaurant felt like entering a video game where all the non-player characters only activated when we crossed the threshold, I mean it. My husband Justin, our boys, and I sat down in a booth, and that’s when I noticed him.

An older man. Sitting on a stool. With a ventriloquist dummy on his lap.

But not just any ventriloquist dummy, this thing was dressed EXACTLY like him. Same clothes. Same aged features. It had wrinkles. It was an old man dummy of himself, and he started playing “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” on a single-note harmonica while everyone else in the restaurant ate in complete silence.

I grabbed my phone and started recording because I genuinely thought I might be hallucinating. In the recording, you can hear Justin say, “I’m leaving.” Then me saying, “It looks like everybody wants to hurt me.”

We literally ran out of that restaurant before our drinks even arrived. And because my brain works in the most chaotic way possible, even while fleeing what I was convinced were either ghosts or cultists, I fake-answered my phone and made up an emergency so I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

EVEN THE POTENTIAL GHOSTS’ FEELINGS.

Later, I Googled “Family Tree haunted” and discovered this place has been featured in FOUR episodes of Ghost Adventures and The Dead Files. It’s an old saloon haunted by “grizzled Western men” and a woman in a red dress who floats two inches off the ground in the basement.

We could have died. We could have literally been trapped in a haunted restaurant with a harmonica-playing ghost and his creepy doll twin, and my main concern was not being rude.

The Great Church Ghost That Wasn’t, But Kind of Was? (Ryan’s POV)

Big bro Daniel was born to be a hero.

Our older brother has always had what I like to call “main character energy,” but this story takes it to another level. Dan and I used to play basketball every Tuesday at our old church with a group of guys. One night, after everyone left, Dan and a couple of friends heard voices coming from somewhere in the building.

Instead of doing what normal people would do (leave, call someone, literally anything else), Dan shifted into full protective older-brother mode. He started yelling vile threats into the empty chapel. Like, genuinely unhinged threats about what he was going to do when he found whoever was hiding in there.

At one point, he called Jacqueline in Utah—because obviously when you think there’s an intruder in a church building in Pickering, Ontario, CANADA, you call your sister 2,000 miles away for backup. She could hear the voices through the phone too. It sounded like people having a conversation, but Dan couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from because it seemed to be everywhere at once.

He circled the entire building (it’s circular, which added to the creepiness), went to his car to get a tire iron, came back in, and continued his extremely creative threats while Jacqueline listened on the phone from her house in Utah, equally terrified and confused about what she was supposed to do about this situation.

The conclusion? Someone had left a recording of a church conference talk playing next to a microphone that was piped throughout the entire building. Daniel had spent 30 minutes threatening to murder a recording of a sweet elderly Mormon woman giving a talk about raising righteous children.

The disappointment on his face when he realized it wasn’t an actual intruder and his chance to exercise the non-existent stand your ground rights was palpable. He WANTED it to be more dramatic, and honestly, he really wanted violence.

The Gnome That Definitely Wants to Kill Me (Jacqueline’s POV)

This one still gives me chills.

When I’d visit home after getting married, I’d always stay in our youngest brother Dallin’s old room. And every. Single. Time. I’d wake up with scratches down my arms. Not like little scratches—these looked like they’d bled in the night. And sometimes did.

One visit, I mentioned it to our youngest brother Dallin, and he just casually said, “Oh, it’s probably the gnome.”

I’m sorry. HHHHUUWHAT.

Turns out, Dallin and his friends had gone to a cemetery one night (as one does), and he STOLE A GNOME OFF SOMEONE’S GRAVE and brought it home. Put it right in his closet. The same room where I was sleeping. The same room where both of us kept waking up with mysterious scratches.

To this day, I believe that gnome was 1000% haunted and actively trying to hurt us. We never did anything about it either. No sage burning. No returning it to its rightful grave. Just... left it there.

So to the current owners of 26 Dryer Drive: There might be a cursed cemetery gnome hidden somewhere in that house. You’re welcome for the warning. Also, you’re welcome for the haunting you definitely didn’t sign up for when you gutted our beloved childhood home.

The Time We Traumatized Jonathan Forever (Ryan’s POV)

Alright, Dan and I messed up. We made a couple of bad decisions that might have done damage to our sweet baby brother Jonathan, who was approximately four years old at the time and literally never did anything wrong to anyone ever.

Mom was out with Auntie Gayle. Jonathan wanted to call her but didn’t know the number, so he randomly dialled some numbers. Wrong number. Some rando picked up on the other end. He panicked and slammed the phone down.

This is where we began sensing an opportunity for chaos, and immediately told him that calling random numbers was illegal and the police were coming to arrest him. I snuck into another room and used that old phone trick (you know the one—dial some numbers and your own phone rings) to make it seem like the police were calling.

Dan answered, pretending to be “Constable Richardson,” saying he was coming to take Jonathan away. Then Dan ran outside and started POUNDING on the front door, yelling police threats while Jonathan hid under a bed, hyperventilating and sobbing.

Mom came home to find her youngest child having a full breakdown because his older brothers convinced him he was going to jail, FOR LIFE, for an innocent mistake.

Jonathan, if you’re reading this (and we know you usually tap out around the halfway point of our episodes), we’re sorry. But you have to admit, it’s a fun story to tell, right?

This incident may or may not be the reason Jonathan is terrified of making mistakes to this day.

The Croissant Incident: When Air Fresheners Attack (Jacqueline and her unhinged text)

Last week, I had a near-death experience.

Or so I thought.

I kept randomly smelling fresh-baked bread around my house. Just catching whiffs of it here and there. Pleasant but weird. Welcomed, but also not? So naturally, I did what any reasonable person would do: I Googled it.

And discovered that smelling fresh bread can be a sign you’re about to have a SEIZURE AND DIE.

Between that and the burnt toast Canadian Heritage Minute that’s been burned into my brain since childhood, I was convinced I was having a stroke. I started planning my doctor’s appointment, mentally preparing for an MRI, wondering how I’d break the news to my family that I was dying from croissant hallucinations.

Until I remembered.

I’d plugged in a croissant-scented air freshener the week before.

Ryan’s response? “I wonder how many people spiral hard forgetting that they bought a candle that smells like a stroke.”

Which is honestly the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. “I’ve decided my new hobby is hiding croissant air fresheners in people’s houses, preferably near air return ducts, so they can experience their own burnt-toast panic attacks.”

When I shared this saga in our sibling group chat, no one responded. The next message—over a week later—was just “Happy birthday, Dan.”

This is what family is, folks.

What We Learned About Fear (And Ourselves)

Here’s the thing about spooky stories from your childhood: they’re never really about the ghosts. They’re about who you were when you experienced them, who you were with, and how those moments shaped the way you see the world now.

Ryan still gets weirdly excited about the possibility of supernatural experiences. Jacquline’s still convinced that most ghosts are friendly and just want to do laundry and bake bread in peace. Dan still wants to go toe-to-toe with a supernatural squatter. And Jonathan probably still has nightmares about Constable Richardson coming to take him away.

We learned that sometimes the scariest stories are the ones we create ourselves, whether it’s terrorizing our younger siblings, running from potential ghost cultists at a restaurant, or convincing ourselves we’re dying because we forgot about an air freshener.

(Ryan’s come-together moment) But we also learned that these shared experiences, and the stories that result, even the weird and spooky ones, are the payoff. Every time we retell these stories, we’re not just remembering what happened, we’re remembering who we were, where we were, who we were with, reliving those moments and how we learned to laugh at the things that once terrified us.

Also, we learned that AI is uncomfortably good at reading us, and that Dan probably shouldn’t be trusted with keys to any building ever again.

What’s your spookiest childhood memory? Drop it in the comments! We want to hear your stories of childhood terror, whether they involved actual ghosts, mean older siblings, or just really unfortunate misunderstandings.

And if you’re loving these trips down memory lane, do us a solid and rate us five stars wherever you listen to podcasts. Our analytics show we’re bottom five on the internet (we say this with pride), but with your help, maybe we can crack bottom four.

Also, seriously, watch Little Monsters with us for the next episode. It’s important.

Until then, we’ll be over here, checking our closets for cursed gnomes and trying not to think too hard about what that AI playlist says about our collective psyche.

Stay spooky (but not too spooky), Krispies.

P.S. - If you smell fresh bread in your house and you don’t have an air freshener, maybe get that checked out. Just saying.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com

DREYER DRIVE PODCAST - EPISODE 033: THE PAPIN SISTERS

EPISODE DESCRIPTION: This week on Dreyer Drive, Ryan and Jacqueline reunite after a month apart to catch up on summer vacations, colonoscopies, and the weirdest things they did as kids to seem "different and interesting." Then we dive into our first spooky season episode about the Papin sisters—two French housemaids who committed one of the most brutal murders in 1930s France. Plus: Ryan discovers his microphone mute button has never worked, and we celebrate his dragonfruit harvest with the enthusiasm it truly deserves.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains detailed discussion of violence, murder, and disturbing historical events. Listener discretion is advised.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:00:00] - Cold Open & Podcast Introduction

Intro music and podcast premise

What to expect from today's episode

[00:01:06] - Catching Up: Ryan's Microphone Discovery

"You are both high and close"

The Ajax slogan that never was

Ryan discovers his mute button doesn't work

The implication for every meeting he's ever had

[00:01:56] - Home Renovation Horror Stories

The one-armed contractor story

French doors and slippery tile installation

Jacqueline breaks her wrist pretending to be a dinosaur

The acid trip encounter with the contractor

[00:08:18] - The Friend Who Lost Her Finger

Snowblower accident and the manicure set prize

Finding humor after trauma

"I love my little nub"

Creative stories about missing appendages

[00:14:25] - What's New: Colonoscopy Chronicles

Ryan's squeaky clean colon update

Being awake during the procedure

Watching your own colonoscopy on screen

[00:15:38] - Summer Vacation Survival

First real summer holidays with kids

The relief of routine returning

Constant "Daddy, play with me" requests

[00:17:23] - The Child Trading Experiment

When mom and dad traded kids with another family

The tomato force-feeding incident

Dan and Ryan's escape plan

"The 90s were a different time"

[00:24:01] - Are You Wearing Deodorant?

Family headstone plans

Daily deodorant checks

Porter family coat of arms in Latin

[00:28:42] - Question of the Week: Standing Out

What weird things did you do to seem interesting as a kid?

Ryan's Christmas stocking socks (unwashed for months)

The tracksuit incident and wearing two outfits in one day

Jacqueline's vintage advertisement phase

[00:37:28] - The "Eat a Beaver, Save a Tree" Story

Laminated advertisements as backpack keychains

Tenth grade naivety meets Spencer's Gifts

"I don't even see color... I don't even see arms"

[00:39:15] - Dallin's Orange Modrobes

Making cargo pants your entire personality

Cutting knees out of all other pants

Wearing the Modrobes underneath everything

[00:42:01] - Main Topic Introduction: The Papin Sisters

Spooky season officially begins

Setting up the story of Christine and Léa Papin

France, 1933, and a dark and rainy night

[00:44:07] - Early Life of the Papin Sisters

Clemence and Gustave's troubled marriage

Three daughters raised separately

The Catholic orphanage years

Amelia escapes to a convent

[00:48:50] - Working for the Lancelin Family

Christine (age 20) and Léa (age 15) hired as housemaids

Seemingly ideal working conditions

The white glove checks

Suspicions about the sisters' relationship

[00:53:40] - The Night of February 2, 1933

"It was, in fact, a dark and rainy night"

The broken iron shorts the electrical system

Madame Lancelin and Geneviève return unexpectedly

Christine "smashed-ed it" into her employer's head

[00:56:21] - The Horrific Details ⚠️

Content warning for graphic violence

The pewter jug attack

What happened next (details intentionally limited)

Discovery by Renée Lancelin

[00:59:40] - The Eyeball on the Stairs

Police mount the stairs to the attic

Renée picks up what he thinks is a jewel

Finding the sisters in bed together, naked

Immediate confession

[01:01:15] - The Trial and Public Reaction

French intellectuals and class warfare think pieces

"Op-ed nation" of the 1930s

Self-defense claims

Léa goes "deaf and mute"

[01:04:03] - The Sentencing

Christine sentenced to death by guillotine

Léa gets 10 years hard labor

Fun fact: Last guillotine execution was in the 1980s

[01:05:12] - Christine's Final Days

Separation from Léa drives her insane

Attempts to remove her own eyeballs

Starves herself to death in 1937

The theory of shared personality

[01:06:16] - What Happened to Léa

Released after 8 years on good behavior

Moves back in with mom Clemence

Gets hotel job under fake name

Lives until the YEAR 2000

[01:08:30] - The Documentary Discovery

Claude Ventura's 2000 documentary

Finding Léa still alive

The stroke that made her actually mute

Ryan visited Paris and might have stayed at her hotel

[01:10:49] - Spooky Story Debrief

"Pepin" pronunciation struggles

Ryan rates the spookiness

"People hurt people"

Preview of next episode's Porter family ghost stories

[01:12:15] - Unhinged Text: Dragon Fruit Support

Ryan's dragon fruit farming adventure

Hand pollination by moonlight with Q-tips

The Porter siblings' transformation from enemies to cheerleaders

"Everyone shut up my show is on"

[01:19:48] - The Porter Family Love Language

Not physically affectionate, don't say "I love you"

Jonathan's accidental "love you" and immediate regret

From hating each other to supporting dragon fruits

"I love your dragon fruits" - the closest they can get

[01:21:32] - Wrap-Up & Next Episode Preview

Two weeks until the next spooky episode

Get your Porter family ghost stories ready

Flashlights and candlelight discussion

Final thoughts on spooky season

EPISODE RESOURCES

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Papin Sisters case (Le Mans, France, 1933)

Video 99 / Coffee Time (Ajax plaza location)

Bunko (the dice game for "sad housewives")

Mawdrops (90s cargo pants)

National Sports (Boxing Day shopping)

Spencer's Gifts (source of inappropriate keychains)

Visual Content:

Crime scene photos (mentioned but NOT recommended)

Ryan's dragon fruit harvest photos on Instagram

Jacqueline's uncomfortable Disneyland photo

Referenced Media:

"I Think You Should Leave" (Netflix)

"Snaps" TV show

Claude Ventura documentary (2000)

CONNECT WITH DREYER DRIVE

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Next Episode: Porter Family Ghost Stories - Get ready for spooky tales from 26 Dreyer Drive

Listener Submission: What weird thing did YOU do as a kid to seem different and interesting? Send us your stories!

CREDITS

Hosts: Ryan Porter & Jacqueline PorterProduction: Dreyer Drive PodcastTheme Music: [TBD]Episode Length: 1:23:46

This podcast is named after the street where Ryan and Jacqueline grew up with their siblings in Ajax, Ontario, Canada. It's about nostalgia, family dynamics, and the weird things that shaped us—with occasional detours into true crime.

CONTENT NOTE: While we approach dark topics with our signature "what-should-Ido-with-my-hands" humor, we recognize the real tragedy of the events discussed. The Papin sisters case involves real victims and genuine trauma. Our discussion is meant to explore historical events, not to make light of violence.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dreyerdrive.substack.com