The Dreyer Drive Podcast

A podcast about siblings and the people, places and pop culture that raised us.
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A podcast hosted by siblings, Ryan and Jacqueline, all about siblings, and the people, places and pop culture that raised us. dreyerdrive.substack.com

  1. Jun 10

    Dreyer Drive #046 - A 90s Summer

    Okay, so I’ve been seeing this thing going around online where parents are like, “We’re giving our kids a 90s summer!” and they post these very aesthetic TikToks of their children catching fireflies in Mason jars while wearing carefully curated vintage Gap Kids overalls, and I’m like—wait, hold on. Is this actually happening or am I in a fever dream? Because that is not what a 90s summer was. That is not even close to what a 90s summer was. A 90s summer was your mom waking you up at 8am to mow the lawn with a rust-bucket lawnmower that required 22 pulls to start while your brother simply turned off his light and went back to bed because he knew she wouldn’t actually make him do it. A 90s summer was eating a peanut butter O’Henry bar and a bag of dill pickle chips for breakfast while sitting on a curb in a strip mall parking lot, trying to figure out whose house you were going to show up at unannounced because “calling on someone” was a normal thing we did. We just... knocked on doors. No text. No “are you home?” DM. Just pure chaos and hope. I swear to you, this is true. I’m not making this up. The Thing About Boredom (And Why Your Pinterest Board Is Lying to You) Here’s what all these 90s summer bucket lists are missing: we were bored. Like, catastrophically bored. And it was that boredom, that deep, cellular, “I’ve been outside for six hours and I’ve already done everything there is to do” boredom—that led to the truly unhinged behavior that defined our childhood summers. You can’t manufacture that. You can’t be like, “Okay, sweetie, today we’re going to experience structured boredom from 2-4pm and then we’ll do a parent-led activity where we pretend to be unsupervised!” That’s not how it works. The boredom was the point. The boredom was what made us turn the community center into our own personal prank headquarters, where we’d flip the breaker panel to turn off all the lights in the squash courts mid-game and then run while some guy in short shorts lost his mind. For the record, I did participate in that. Multiple times. And yes, one time someone from Parks and Rec jumped off the roof chasing us and broke their ankle. I’m sorry about that. I’m using all the electricity at my best friend’s house, I’m eating all the toaster strudels at my other friend’s house, and I’m causing permanent bodily harm to municipal employees. This was a normal Tuesday. What We Were Actually Doing (Hint: It Wasn’t Crafts) So if you really want to give your kid a 90s summer, and I mean a real one, not the Anthropologie catalog version, here’s what that looks like. Jacqueline and I mapped out the perfect day, start to finish, and it is wild how much of it involves either almost getting arrested or eating food that would give a modern nutritionist a panic attack. Morning: You wake up to the sound of a lawnmower that sounds like it’s actively dying. There’s one window-mounted air conditioner in the entire house, taped in with packing tape, and the only room that’s cool is the kitchen. You eat cereal out of a salad bowl because all the normal bowls are dirty. Your mom is like, “I don’t care what you do today, just get out of the house.” Not “be safe.” Not “check in at noon.” Just get out. The door is metaphorically and sometimes literally locked behind you. Mid-morning: You go to the corner store, Becker’s, Dynamite Dollars, Ace Milk, whatever sketchy convenience store is closest, and you buy breakfast: a chocolate bar, chips, and an ice cold Tahiti Treat. You sit on the curb and consume this while contemplating which friend’s house you’re going to show up at unannounced. You settle on someone whose house has central air conditioning and a gaming console. You walk over. You knock. Their parents open the door and are like, “...hello?” and you’re like, “Is Matt home?” and they let you in because this is just what happened. No one questioned it. You spend the next four hours in their ice-cold basement, playing GoldenEye on N64, eating every single chocolate chip cookie in the house, and occasionally reaching into an aquarium to pull out a lizard or like 21 baby rats and stuffing them down your shirt because that was a thing we did. I don’t know why. We were feral. Afternoon: You decide to go to the community center, but not to like, participate in a structured activity. You go to commit minor acts of terrorism. Turning off lights during squash games. Running across the ice rink during figure skating lessons in your shoes. Climbing onto the roof. Getting chased by authority figures. This is the third time today the cops have been called on you, and it’s only 1pm. Then you go play basketball in someone’s driveway, and you get so angry about it, because you’re 12 and you think NBA scouts might be watching from behind a parked car. A girl walks out of a house across the street, and you immediately start playing even more angry because obviously the first thing girls look for in a potential boyfriend is “does he fly off the handle at the smallest things?” Spoiler alert: this does not work. Evening: You make plans to meet those girls at 1:30am. Yes, 1:30am. You are 13 years old. Your parents think you’re asleep in your friend’s basement. You sneak out. You sit on a curb. There is no plan beyond “we are sitting on a curb… with girls” You try to make conversation. You fail. You go back inside after three minutes. You eat more cookies. You pass out in the ice-cold basement at 3am, covered in the smell of freshly cut grass, firecracker smoke, and pure teenage chaos. This is a perfect day. The Stuff We’re Not Talking About (But Should) I also want to talk about the fact that our parents’ schedules did not change during the summer. This is key. These TikTok parents are like, “Today we’re doing a yes day where I take my children to seventeen different activities and we’re all going to bond!” and I’m like, our mom had non-supervising things to do. Our dad went to work. Their lives were completely unaffected by the fact that we were home for three months. We were simply... loose in the world. And honestly? Our friends’ parents bore the real burden. We bankrupted their families with our Havarti cheese consumption. We emptied their pools by creating a wave pool with our bodies and then jumping in from the side. We showed up at people’s houses at 9am and stayed until midnight. One time Jacqueline rode in the trunk of a van to get to the pool because there were too many kids and not enough seats, and we were all just like, “Yeah, this is fine. This is a normal way to travel.” I’m sorry to every parent who had to deal with us. I would like to show up at your door with one of those giant novelty checks and just be like, “Here is $47,000 to cover the food I ate between 1995 and 2000.” The Real Secret Ingredient (It’s Definitely Illegal) But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: the factor that made all of this possible, the thing that you absolutely cannot replicate in 2025 without getting visited by CPS, is that we were hardened by the 90s. We had been raised in an environment where you could just... do things. Deeply questionable things. Things that would get you arrested today. Like, I have a story, just to be clear, I’m not saying I’m proud of this, where neighbourhood kids found abandoned factories in Ajax and we would just go in there and smash stuff. For fun. And one time, someone threw something through a window, and when it shattered, there was a business meeting happening on the other side. And the kids just ran. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t stop to explain. They just ran, because that’s what you did when you were a kid in the 90s and you realized you’d made a terrible mistake. Also, we filled eggs with paint and threw them at passing cars. We locked kids in porta-potties and threw firecrackers in with them. We played “psycho killer” in someone’s house with a real knife. We were unhinged, and no one stopped us because no one knew what we were doing. You can’t drop a modern child into that environment for one day and be like, “Have a 90s summer!” They would be traumatized. They would need therapy. They would file a report with the school counsellor about their unsafe home environment. You have to be raised by the 90s to survive the 90s. Just like our kids will look back and proclaim, “you had be raised by the robots in the 2020s to survive the robots.” A Note on Nostalgia (And Why I’m Lying to Myself) I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “this all sounds deeply unsafe and possibly neglectful and maybe we shouldn’t be romanticizing a time when children were just wandering the streets at 2am in their nightgowns because they were bored.” And you’re right! You’re absolutely right. I would never let my children do 90% of the things we did as children. I am a anxious millennial parent who tracks my kid’s location on an app and has a whole crisis if they’re even 2 minutes late meeting me in the pick-up parking lot. When my kids are older, I am not letting them roam to a different town unsupervised until they find a “block parent” sign and knock on a stranger’s door to use a phone book to call home. But also... I kind of miss it? I miss the freedom. I miss the boredom. I miss the way you could just be without someone recording you or posting you or turning you into content. I miss how you could do something completely humiliating, like, I don’t know, faint in your best friend’s driveway because you made yourself hyperventilate on purpose (a story for another day), smash your face off of a brick, wind up concussed, with blood leaking into your eyeball, and the only people who knew about it were the three kids who saw it happen, and they’re not telling anyone because they’re your friends and also they did something equally

    1h 41m

  2. May 27

    Dreyer Drive #045 - The Thong Song

    You clicked on this expecting another episode recap where we wax nostalgic about Saturday morning cartoons or the correct way to organize your CD collection. But today? Today we’re going deep—inappropriately deep—into what might genuinely be one of the most influential pop culture moments of the late 90s/early 2000s. I’m talking about “Thong Song.” Yes, that “Thong Song.” The one your mom immediately changed when it came on the radio. The one that somehow got four Grammy nominations. The one that made an 18-year-old kid with platinum hair into a cultural icon for exactly one glorious year. Here’s the thing: after researching this topic for way too long (my husband can confirm, I ambushed him with thong facts for an entire evening), I’ve come to a conclusion that our classically-trained musician followers might want to sit down for. “Thong Song” is a masterpiece. And I’m not kidding even a little bit. But First, Let’s Talk About Amazon Addiction Before we dive into the cultural phenomenon that was Sisqó’s only hit, Ryan and I did what we do best: overshared about our recent Amazon purchases and somehow made it relatable. Ryan’s recent haul included chia seeds (obviously), psyllium husk (the glamorous life of a 40-something), and a medicine ball he bought after watching some basketball trainer on Instagram. He ripped it open like Christmas morning, showed it to his kids, and promptly stored it in the workout room where it hasn’t been touched since. If you’ve ever bought something because you were convinced you’d suddenly become great at that thing, you’re not alone. We are your people. My confession? A contour cool leg and knee pillow because sometimes when my knees touch while I’m sleeping, it hurts. Yes, I’m old. Yes, my bones hurt. Yes, we’re related because Ryan admitted he’s been sleeping with a pregnancy pillow for years. We’re basically one step away from those Life Alert commercials, and honestly? We’re making peace with it. The Universal Experience of Parenting on Airplanes Ryan’s recent family trip to Nagasaki gave us one of those beautiful moments of sibling solidarity: when your toddler loses their absolute mind on an airplane and some guy in front of you starts kissing his teeth in disapproval. Here’s what I’ve learned as a parent: there are exactly two types of people on flights with crying children. There’s the grandma who’s been through it and gives you that knowing nod of “you’re doing great, sweetie,” and there’s the person who apparently emerged fully formed from the earth as a judgmental adult who was never, ever a child themselves. We should study them for science. The funniest part? Now that my kids are past the nightmare ages, I’ve become that person who’s like “Can I help? Do you need some stickers? I have a sticky hand in my bag!” Nothing brings me more pure, unadulterated joy than when it’s someone else’s kid melting down and I get to be the supportive passenger instead of the stressed parent. It’s not mine. I can actually enjoy the chaos now. I Don’t Think So, Honey: Our Mini-Rants We each had something we needed to get off our chests this week, and honestly, they tied together in the most interesting way. Ryan’s beef: Everyone on social media becoming an “expert” two posts into their content journey. The whole “I discovered this hidden gem in Japan” when you literally just typed it into Google Maps. The influencers setting up full podcast studios to talk to... no one. Just performative expertise everywhere. His point (and it got surprisingly deep): He just wants people to be comfortable being themselves. Not chasing viral hooks. Not talking into spatulas to get our attention. Just... existing authentically. As a parent, he wants that for his kids too. The ability to recognize and love parts of themselves without needing external validation. And honestly? That hit harder than expected from a conversation that started with spatulas, in a podcast episode about the Thongs Song. My contribution: Performative parenting. You know exactly what I mean—when a parent is clearly parenting for your benefit rather than the child’s. Like the mom on my training run who, as her perfectly-behaved five-year-old rode past me on a bike, felt the need to announce: “Way to go, bud! Way to share the road!” That wasn’t for the kid. That was for me to know she’s a Good Parent™. And here’s what I believe: your kids can see through it. Maybe not at five, but definitely by sixteen. Parent your kids for your kids. Not for the approval of strangers who won’t remember you five seconds after you pass them. The Origin Story Nobody Expected Alright, buckle up, because we’re about to go on a journey that involves Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Eleanor Rigby, and an 18-year-old who had never seen a thong before in his entire life. Yes, really. It’s 1997. Sisqó is a member of Dru Hill (you know, “How Deep Is Your Love”), and he’s only 17-18 years old when he decides to make a solo album. Meanwhile, two producers named Tim and Bob (also known as the Funk Twins, I definitely mispronounced that) are creating a mixtape specifically to present to Michael Jackson. They’re sampling “Eleanor Rigby” from The Beatles catalog, which Jackson owned at the time, thinking this would be their golden ticket. They accidentally put this Eleanor Rigby track on a demo for Sisqó. Sisqó hears it and is like, “I need that song.” They’re like, “Absolutely not, this is for Michael Jackson.” But Sisqó is so determined that he calls them from the airport and says if they give him the song, he’ll turn around when he lands and come straight back to record it. They cave. They give him the track. But here’s where it gets wild. The Night Everything Changed Sisqó goes on a date. Brings a woman back to his house. And for the first time in his entire 18-year-old life, he sees what we would come to know as a thong. He literally asks her: “What is that?” She tells him it’s a thong. He’s never heard this word before. Never seen this garment. So what does any normal teenager do? He calls his friends and is like, “YO, I went on this date with this girl, she was wearing this thing called a THONG.” His friend, and I love this so much, goes goes on a date and experiences the same thing, then immediately calls Sisqó like “THONG THONG THONG THONG THONG.” And thus, pop culture history was made. The Strings That Changed Everything But wait, it gets better. (It always gets better.) Because they’re no longer recording for Michael Jackson, they can’t use the Eleanor Rigby sample without massive fees. So Sisqó contacts a violinist named Bruce Dukov. who worked on Star Wars, and asks him to recreate something similar but different enough to avoid copyright. Bruce comes in, meets this random kid named Sisqó (has no idea who he is), plays the opening bars, and layers it with two other string sections. The entire “Thong Song” is three groups of strings layered on top of each other. Bruce completes his job and leaves, having no idea what he just contributed to. He doesn’t hear the final version until his violinist friends call him months later asking if he’s heard “that song on pop radio that’s all strings.” Full body chills. Every. Single. Time. The Detail That Makes It A Masterpiece Okay, here’s where I lose my mind and possibly lose some of you, but stay with me. “Thong Song” starts in F-sharp major. The verses are repetitive, nothing groundbreaking in the lyrics. But then it builds to this crescendo (Sisqó calls it a climax, but I refuse to use that word), right when he’s running over everyone’s heads in the video. After which it pitches up into G major. Do you understand what I’m saying? The song climaxes in G-string. THERE IS NO WAY THAT’S NOT INTENTIONAL. This 18-year-old kid, this team of producers, they knew exactly what they were doing. That level of musical innuendo is chef’s kiss perfection. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a music theory professor, not from a teenager who discovered thongs approximately three weeks before recording. And yes, I will die on this hill, this Dru Hill, if you will. Put it on my tombstone. Roll my casket into my funeral to the opening violins of “Thong Song.” The Lawsuit, The Legacy, The Lessons Of course, there was drama. Sisqó had assured the producers he’d gotten clearance for the “Livin’ La Vida Loca” lyric. He had not. Ricky Martin and the song’s writer, Desmond Child, sued. They settled for an undisclosed amount, and to this day, Desmond Child owns most of “Thong Song.” But here’s the beautiful part: the song still skyrocketed Bob and Tim’s careers. Michael Jackson actually reached out and said if they could get him a song hotter than “Thong Song,” he’d meet with them. They ended up writing six songs for him (none of which ever saw release, which makes me SO SAD). And “Thong Song” got four Grammy nominations. Four. Can you imagine being Amy Grant or Alan Jackson sitting at the Grammys when they announce, “And the nominees are... THE THONG SONG”? Why It Actually Matters I get it. On the surface, “Thong Song” is absurd. It’s a one-hit wonder from a guy with platinum hair rapping about underwear over classical strings. But here’s what it really was: a cultural door being kicked wide open. Before “Thong Song,” you couldn’t just say the word “thong” on the radio. The label didn’t even want to release it as a single because they thought it was too explicit. After “Thong Song”? We got “Hot in Here” by Nelly. We got increasingly explicit music videos. The boundaries shifted. And honestly, in an era where we were all downloading music on Napster and LimeWire, where distribution was changing everything about how we consumed pop culture, “Thong Song” repres

    1h 42m

  3. May 13

    Dreyer Drive #044 - Cringey 90s Pop Magazines

    Howwwwww did we let 90s pop magazines raise an entire generation of women??? And I’m saying this as someone who spent actual money, like real dollars, on magazines that told me I was simultaneously too fat and too thin. Welcome back to another episode where I force my brother Ryan to understand what it was like to be a teenage girl in the ‘90s. Spoiler alert: it was weird, it was inappropriate, and somehow we all survived despite magazines literally called “Young and Modern” telling us that 24-year-old men were our ideal romantic matches. The Magazine That Raised Me (Unfortunately) --- Head to www.dreyerdrive.com for full article --- 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

    1h 48m

  4. Apr 29

    Dreyer Drive #43 - Cleopatra

    Something has been deeply bothering Jacqueline for approximately 2,000 years (give or take). Everyone knows Cleopatra. She’s literally one of the most famous women in history, mostly made famous by Tal Bachman’s “She’s So High” . But here’s the thing nobody talks about: Cleopatra had a little sister who was an absolute menace. 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

    1h 32m

  5. Apr 14

    Dreyer Drive #42 - Flight of the Navigator

    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 mult

    1h 36m

  6. Mar 17

    Dreyer Drive #41 - The Two Jims; Nature or Nurture?

    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 goin

    1h 31m

  7. Mar 5

    Dreyer Drive #040 - Jacqueline's Journal

    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. --- 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. --- 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

    1h 27m

  8. Feb 18

    Dreyer Drive #039 - The Brothers Grimm

    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

    1h 22m
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About

A podcast hosted by siblings, Ryan and Jacqueline, all about siblings, and the people, places and pop culture that raised us. dreyerdrive.substack.com

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  • Creator
    A podcast about siblings and the people, places and pop culture that raised us.
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    46
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Dreyer Drive
  • Show Website
    The Dreyer Drive Podcast