The Dreyer Drive Podcast

A podcast about siblings and the people, places and pop culture that raised us.

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. 2d ago

    Dreyer Drive #050 - The 50th Episode Sibling Story Special

    The 50th Episode: A Monument to Mediocrity and Sibling Chaos I don’t know if you’re aware, like, actually aware, but we just hit episode 50. Which, for the record, took us two full years to accomplish. I’ve seen people on the podcasting subreddit hit 50 episodes in, like, three weeks. First of all, calm down, no one is that interesting. But also, wait, are we just… extremely slow? Is this an us problem? Spoiler alert: it’s definitely a us problem. But here we are. Fifty episodes of… whatever this is. Jacqueline calls it “secondhand therapy,” which I love, because it implies that one of us is actually going to therapy and then just, debriefing the rest of us so we can all benefit without doing any of the emotional labor ourselves. Which, honestly, is just the cost effective way of doing therapy. Why work on yourself when you can just absorb the insights one of your siblings got from their therapist and call it a day? The Notes App Incident, or: Why Jacqueline Can Never Be Trusted with Context So Jacqueline tried to do what I do: keep notes throughout the week of funny things to talk about on the podcast. And I swear to you, this is true, she pulled up her notes before we recorded and nothing made sense. Not a single bullet point. Here’s what she wrote: * “Tell Ryan on the podcast that Justin committed to the bit and pretended to go into a port-a-potty.” * “Pod, pod, Lawrence Fishburne and Justin’s tooth spray tan.” * “Tell the joke about being traumatized by Bonnie Porter.” * “Subway Nachos.” * “I’m like, what was I talking about?” I’m sorry, what? Jacqueline, in a moment of clarity, was like, “Yeah, I don’t know what any of this means either.” And I’m sitting there trying to reverse-engineer the story like I’m some kind of podcast archaeologist. So Justin went into a port-a-potty as a bit, came out going “ooh, tinky” with toilet paper on his shoe, and somehow this connects to Lawrence Fishburne and a spray-tanned tooth? And also… Subway Nachos? For the record, I spent way too much time imagining Justin emerging from a porta-potty like he’d just exited the Matrix, pants down, one tooth weirdly tan, quoting Morpheus. Annnnnd that’s the quality content you subscribe to. The Canadian Heritage Moment That Made Me Cry at Swimming Class Okay, so speaking of crying, and I do a lot of that, just not on the podcast, which is more than I can say for the other host, I was at my daughter’s swimming class the other day, and I’m scrolling Instagram like a normal person, and I see that Canada is doing new Heritage Moments. If you don’t know what those are, first of all, I’m sorry for you. They’re these short historical reenactments that aired on Canadian TV in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and they were wildly emotional for no reason. Like, you’d be watching YTV, and suddenly you’re sobbing over a dude making a basketball net from a peach basket and casually inventing the sport of basketball. So this new one is about Gander, Newfoundland, and 9/11. For people who aren’t familiar, and honestly, if you’re Canadian, you should be, Gander is this tiny town in Newfoundland, with a population of like 12,000 people, that took in 6,000 passengers when all the planes in the air on 9/11 were rerouted. The population of Gander basically grew by half overnight, and the people there just… opened their homes. Fed people. Let them sleep on their couches. Made potato-based soups and probably a lot of fish. Very Newfoundland. Very Canadian. And I’m watching this at Noa’s swimming class, and I’m like, okay, Ryan, do not cry right now. You’re in public. You’re surrounded by other parents. But it was a triple punch: * It’s an incredible moment in history. * The format is pure nostalgia. * I’m not a homesick person, but it tugged at that one little thread. Like, remember where you came from? Remember the kind of people you grew up around? And then I thought about how relations between Canada and the U.S. are… not great right now. And seeing Canadians be so kind to Americans in their moment of need just what the world, and I, needed. I was sitting there with my phone sideways, trying not to tame my chin quiver while Noa practiced her backstroke. Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, here you go, watch it. Just… maybe not in public. The Red Paint Egg Incident, or: How I Became a Criminal Mastermind at Age 10 So we were talking about the dumbest things we’ve convinced our siblings to do, and I had to bring up the time I convinced Jacqueline to pull her pants down and moon a car. Which, for the record, I did not also do. I spun around, pointed at her, and yelled, “I can’t believe you did it!” and then ran inside to tell our mom. Peak older brother energy. But that’s not even the worst thing I did. The worst thing I did that I can share on this podcast, and I’m not proud of this, but I’m also kind of proud of it, is the red paint egg incident. OWhen I was, like, 10 or 11, I was hanging out with my older brother and the “bad kids” in South Ajax. Not, like, actually bad, but bad enough that we thought egging cars was the height of rebellion. And I had this idea, genius idea, truly, where we’d blow the yolk out of the eggs, fill them with red paint, and throw those* at cars instead. Because, you know, yolk is easy to clean off. Red paint? Not so much. So we did it. We threw a red paint egg at one car, and the guy lost his mind. He pulled over, got out, saw the red splatter on his car, and chased us like we’d just forged his signature on some bearer bonds. We ran through catwalks, hid in garbage cans, the whole thing. My mouth went completely dry, you know, that thing where you realize you’ve done something genuinely bad and all the moisture just vanishes from your body. We were fugitives. We were on the run. And to this day, I think about that guy. I hope he’s okay. I hope he got the paint off. I hope he’s not still traumatized. Dallin and the Adoption Bit, or: Emotional Warfare at Its Finest Jacqueline’s contribution to this category was dark. Genuinely. She used to convince Dallin that he was adopted. Regularly. She’d walk into his room, super casual, and be like, “Hey, so Mom wanted me to tell you, your real parents are coming to pick you up.” And Dallin would lose it. He’d go crying to Mom, and our Mom would be like, “Jacqueline, stop telling Dallin he’s adopted.” And Jacqueline would double down. She’d be like, “Mom, we agreed we’d tell him when he was ten. We’re doing it now. His parents are going to be here any minute.” Dallin, if you’re listening: you’re not adopted. Probably. I mean, statistically speaking, you’re probably not. --- The Most Brother Thing a Brother Can Do Okay, so Jacqueline asked me what the most “brother” thing a brother can do is, and honestly, there are so many examples. But I have to go with Jonathan driving across the border to Buffalo to pick up Seiko when her travel paperwork got messed up. Like, I was sobbing on the phone to him, full hyperventilating, and he just… handled it. Got in a rental car, drove to Buffalo, smuggled my wife across the border (legally, but still), and brought her home for Christmas. That’s peak brother energy. That’s the kind of thing where you’re like, okay, I owe you forever now. I will never be able to repay this debt. And then Jacqueline told the story about Daniel making some kid get on his knees and apologize to her in front of everyone at Coffee Time because the kid took her seat in math class. Which is… insane, actually. That kid was 14, Daniel was 18, and he made him kneel. But also? Kind of the most brother thing ever. Because even though Daniel and Jacqueline didn’t get along at all in high school, he still wasn’t going to let someone disrespect her. That was his job. What We Have in Common, or: Anxiety and Rage (The Porter Family Motto) We ended on a surprisingly wholesome note by talking about what we all have in common. And honestly, the through line for all five Porter siblings is pretty simple: anxiety and rage. Like, we’re all deeply anxious people who also have incredibly short fuses. It’s a fun combination. It keeps things spicy. But beyond that, I think we all share a sense of humor that’s rooted in finding the absurdity in genuinely bad situations. Like, when something goes wrong, we don’t just accept it, we lean into it. It becomes another bit. And I think that’s the thing I’m most grateful for. Because life is… a lot. And having siblings who can laugh at the same ridiculous stuff you’re laughing at? That’s everything. Call to Action (Because Apparently We Have to Do This) If you’ve made it this far, first of all, thank you. Really. Whether you’ve listened to one episode or all 50, whether you’ve listened at 1.75x speed (Jacqueline, I’m looking at you), or whether you just skim the Substack posts, we appreciate you. If you haven’t already, go subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a five-star rating. Tell your siblings to listen. Start your own sibling podcast and try to compete with us (you won’t, but go ahead and try). And if you have a sibling story, something ridiculous, something sweet, something that made you realize your family is just as unhinged as ours, leave a comment. I want to hear it. Because at the end of the day, that’s what this whole thing is about: siblings, and the chaos they bring, and the fact that we wouldn’t have it any other way. Stay crispy. --- Question for you: What’s the most “sibling” thing your sibling has ever done for you? Or to you? Because honestly, both are valid. --- 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

  2. Aug 26

    Dreyer Drive #049 - The Mandela Effect on Millennials

    Sooooo I need to tell you about something that happened yesterday at the gym, and I swear this is going somewhere, just, hold on. I’m standing at the entrance, right? There’s these acrylic gates, wait, is acrylic the right word? Like, see-through plastic gates that swing open when you scan your pass. And I’m holding my gym card up to this metal post, just waving it around like I’m trying to summon something, doing this full circular Ouija board motion on top of the post because I have no idea where the scanner actually is. Ten seconds into this performance, I realize I look completely unhinged, so I just... abort mission. Run through the exit gate. Don’t look back. The thing is, and this is what I need you to understand, I wasn’t trying to be the best at going to the gym. I just wanted to be the best at scanning into the gym. Which is such a low bar, but somehow I still, metaphorically, tripped over it, face-planted, and then had a man literally laughing at me as I fled up the stairs. And like, why? Why do I care this much about a thing that objectively does not matter? Why did I spend my entire workout replaying that thirty-second disaster in my head, constructing elaborate narratives about how everyone at the gym now thinks I’m the stupidest person alive and probably shouldn’t be allowed in public? I don’t know. But I know my brother Ryan gets it, because he’s the same way, which is probably why we spend 90 minutes every couple of weeks talking about the absolutely unhinged ways our brains betray us. The Recording That Wasn’t Before we get into the actual thing I want to talk about today, which is the Mandela Effect and how our entire generation has been collectively gaslit by our own memories, I need to acknowledge that Ryan and I recorded this episode twice. Well, we thought we recorded it the first time. Turns out we spent an hour having what we believed was a podcast conversation, complete with all the energy and storytelling and sibling banter, and then realized... we’d recorded thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes of a 60-minute conversation. So we had to run it back. Retell the same stories. Try to recapture the same energy. Which, honestly, is very on-brand for a podcast about how unreliable memory is, because by the second telling, who even knows what actually happened the first time? This is the quality content you subscribe to, by the way. The Berenstain Bears Broke My Brain Let me ask you a question, and I want you to answer before you Google it: How do you spell Berenstain Bears? If you said B-E-R-E-N-S-T-E-I-N, congratulations, you, like Ryan, are wrong, and also you’ve just experienced the Mandela Effect. It’s Berenstain. With an A. Berenstain Bears. The authors’ names are Stan and Jan Berenstain, and according to them, it has always been spelled that way, and they have no idea why an entire generation of people remember it as Berenstein. I’m not joking when I say this one broke me. I read every single one of those books as a kid, checked them out from the Southwood library on repeat, probably read each one a hundred times, and I would have bet actual money that it was Berenstein. I can see it in my head. The cover. The font. The -stein. But it’s not real. It never was. When Ryan and I talked about this on the podcast, I could hear the confusion in his voice. Even looking at the actual logo, the real one, the one that exists in this dimension, his brain was like, “No. That’s the fake one. Someone changed it.” And that’s the thing about the Mandela Effect. It’s not just misremembering a detail. It’s having a vivid, specific, confident memory of something... that never happened. What Even Is the Mandela Effect? The term was coined by Fiona Broome, a paranormal researcher, after she realized she had a clear memory of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1990s. Except... he didn’t. He was very much alive and became the president of South Africa. But when she mentioned this false memory to other people, they remembered it too. A whole group of people, all confident in the same incorrect version of events. And that’s the Mandela Effect: a shared false memory. A collective glitch in how our brains store and retrieve information. What’s wild is that this seems to be a specifically millennial phenomenon. Not because older or younger generations don’t misremember things, but because we had this very specific media landscape growing up—limited options, repetitive exposure, monolithic pop culture. We all watched the same shows, ate the same snacks, saw the same commercials on loop. Our brains were all being shaped by the same inputs, which means when we misremember something, we tend to misremember it the same way. Plus, we’re super nostalgic. We love to revisit the stuff from our childhood, which means we’re constantly reinforcing these memories, real or imagined, over and over again. Your Brain Is Lazy (And a Liar) Here’s the thing about memory that I learned while going down this rabbit hole: your brain does not care about accuracy. It cares about efficiency. So when there’s a gap in your memory, which there always is, because your brain can’t store every single detail of every single experience, it just... fills it in. Takes a shortcut. Grabs something that feels right and slots it into place. And the thing is, your brain is so confident about it. It’s not like your brain is sitting there going, “Hmm, I’m not totally sure, but I think this is what happened.” No. Your brain is like, “This is 100% what happened. I was there. I remember.” Except you don’t. You’re remembering a story your brain made up to fill a gap. There’s actually a test for this, it’s called the DRM paradigm. Researchers give you a list of related words (like “bed,” “rest,” “awake,” “tired,” “dream,” “blanket,” etc.) and then ask you to recall them. And what happens is that people confidently recall words that were never on the list, like “sleep”, because their brain heard all those related words and just... assumed. When we tried this on the podcast, Ryan did exactly that. I never said “sleep.” But his brain filled in the gap, and he was sure he’d heard it. That’s the Mandela Effect in a nutshell. The Greatest Hits (Or: Things That Never Actually Existed) So beyond Berenstain Bears, what are the big ones? The Mandela Effects that haunt an entire generation? The Fruit of the Loom Logo Quick, picture the Fruit of the Loom logo. What do you see? If you said “a bunch of fruit in a cornucopia,” you’re not alone. But also? There has never been a cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo. Ever. The company has confirmed this multiple times. It’s always just been fruit. But people are so sure about the cornucopia that they’ve gone back and checked their old clothes from the ‘80s and ‘90s, thinking maybe it was a thing back then. Nope. Never happened. Why do we all remember it? Because our brains saw a pile of fruit and thought, “What normally holds fruit? A basket. A cornucopia.” And then just... put it there. “Luke, I Am Your Father” Except Darth Vader never says that. What he actually says is, “No, I am your father.” But we all remember “Luke, I am your father” because that’s how it got referenced in other movies and TV shows. Chris Farley does it in Tommy Boy when he’s talking into the fan. And once that version gets repeated enough, it becomes the version we remember, even though it’s not the version that exists in the actual movie. Shazam vs. Kazaam This one messed Ryan up bad. There was a movie in the ‘90s called Kazaam starring Shaquille O’Neal as a genie. That part is real. But a huge number of people, myself included, have a clear memory of another genie movie from around the same time called Shazam, starring Sinbad. Except that movie does not exist. It never existed. Sinbad has confirmed this. There’s no record of it anywhere. And yet people remember it so vividly that there are entire Reddit threads debating whether the movie was somehow scrubbed from existence or if we’ve all slipped into an alternate dimension. (For the record: it’s probably just that Sinbad wore a lot of colorful, genie-adjacent outfits in the ‘90s, and our brains mashed that together with the actual Shaq movie and created a false memory. But honestly? The alternate dimension theory is more fun.) Why This Feels Personal I think the reason the Mandela Effect hits so hard, especially for millennials, is because it’s not just about misremembering a logo or a movie quote. It’s about realizing that the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives might also be... unreliable. Like, if I can be that confident that the Berenstain Bears were spelled with an E, what else am I wrong about? What other memories have I constructed or edited or invented without realizing it? Ryan and I talk about this all the time on the podcast, how the stories we tell about our childhood have been honed over the years, smoothed down, turned into performance pieces. We’re “playing the hits,” as we say. But at a certain point, are we even remembering the thing that happened? Or are we just remembering the story we’ve told about the thing that happened? I don’t know. And honestly, that kind of freaks me out. But also, and this is where I land every time, I think there’s something kind of beautiful about it. About how our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the chaos, filling in gaps, creating narratives, connecting dots that maybe don’t actually connect. We’re all just walking around with these elaborate, confidently-told stories that are part truth, part imagination, part borrowed memory from someone else’s version of events. And maybe that’s okay. Or maybe we’re all living in different dimensions and the Berenstain Bears are spelled with an E somewhere out there in the multiverse. I’

  3. Jul 22

    Dreyer Drive #048 - Ernest Goes to Camp

    So, I don’t know how to start this, so I’m just going to say it: I recently climbed a mountain that made me question every life choice I’ve ever made, and then I came home and watched Ernest Goes to Camp and cried during a song about rain. This is the quality content you subscribe to. --- Wait, Hold On. Let’s Back Up So, first of all, Mount Nebo. For the record, I didn’t think I was climbing the highest peak in Utah. I thought I was going on, like, a cute hike. A fun girl’s day. Maybe we’d see some wildflowers. Maybe I’d get some Instagram content out of it. Instead, I got altitude sickness, a bruised spine, and the humbling realization that I am not, in fact, “pretty good at hiking” just because I live on a mountain and walk my dog sometimes. The false summit alone—don’t even get me started. You think you’re done. You think you’ve made it. You’re standing there like a sweaty, out-of-breath idiot, and then some guy with walking poles is like, “Oh, that’s not the summit. That’s just the thing you have to climb to get to the summit.” And you’re like, I’m sorry, what? I wanted to die. Multiple times. I told my friends to leave me. I was ready to just sit on a rock and become part of the mountain. But we made it. And when I got to the top, I yelled “HELLO, AUNTIE GAYLE” as loud as I could, because that’s what you do when you’re at the highest point you’ve ever been and you remember your aunt telling you as a kid that if you yell her name from anywhere, she’ll hear you. Spoiler alert: She did not text me. --- Okay, Cool—Now Let’s Talk About Ernest After all that, I came home and watched Ernest Goes to Camp and what I was not prepared for: it’s actually good. Like, genuinely funny. I laughed out loud multiple times. My ten-year-old son is now obsessed. And I realized that this movie—this goofy, $3.5 million budget, kids-making-Molotov-cocktails movie—might be one of the most earnest (pun intended) things I’ve ever watched. Jim Varney, who played Ernest, was a classically trained Shakespearean actor. He wanted to play Hamlet. Instead, he became a guy in a denim vest who talked to the camera and did commercials for dairies and HVAC companies. And he hated being pigeonholed by the character. But you know what he did anyway? He showed up. For hundreds of Make-A-Wish kids. He gave a terminally ill eight-year-old girl birthstone earrings so she could wear them in her casket. He went to the Toy Story 2 premiere bald from chemo treatment and died a few months later at 50. His gravestone says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” I’m not crying. You’re crying. --- The Part Where I Confess Something Unhinged Okay, we’re all sharing and being vulnerable right? Right?? I need to tell you something. And I swear to you, this is true. I’m not making this up. When I was a kid, I had this white wrought-iron bed with three gold balls on the bedposts. And I assigned them personalities. They were Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. From Alvin and the Chipmunks. Except they weren’t chipmunks. They were literally just gold spheres sitting on top of white posts. And I had a crush on Alvin. The gold ball. The bedpost ornament. I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before. But here’s the thing: Ernest is kind of like that. He’s this character who’s so earnest, so genuinely, deeply kind, that he makes you believe in things that don’t make sense. Like bedpost chipmunks. Or turtles in parachutes. Or the idea that a bunch of juvenile delinquents and a guy who plunges toilets for a living can save a summer camp by building catapults and singing about rain. --- “I’m Awfully Glad It’s Raining”—A Scene That Shouldn’t Work But Does There’s this scene in the movie where Ernest is trying to win over the Second Chancers, these kids from juvie who’ve been written off by everyone. And he sings this song called “I’m Awfully Glad It’s Raining.” It’s an original song written for the movie. Jim Varney did it in one take. The cast and crew were crying. And here’s the thing: it works. It shouldn’t. This is a movie where a guy gets a turtle stuck to his nose and later stages a coup involving golf carts and Molotov cocktails. But for three minutes, it’s the most genuine, tender thing you’ve ever seen. It’s the moment where everyone, the kids, the audience, me sitting on my couch with my notes, buys into Ernest completely. That’s the magic of the character. He treats everyone the same. He doesn’t pass judgment. He doesn’t condescend. He just shows up and tries his best, even when his best involves accidentally convincing a Native American chief to sign away land rights because he doesn’t understand what’s happening. (Also, yes, there are some… choices in this movie that didn’t age great. But somehow, Ernest’s heart is so pure that you kind of forgive it? I don’t know. It’s weird.) --- What Happened to Montages and Builder Culture? One thing that struck me watching this as an adult: what happened to montages? This movie has, like, four of them. The “I’m Awfully Glad It’s Raining” montage. The “We Are Bravehearts” montage where they’re building weapons out of junk. The golf cart crashing through various scenes like a recurring gag. And not just montages, builder montages. You know, where characters just… make stuff. With their hands. Kevin McCallister booby-trapping his house. Ernest and the Second Chancers constructing elaborate catapults and smoke bombs. There’s something so satisfying about watching characters solve problems by building things, and I feel like we’ve lost that. Now it’s all CGI and someone explaining the plan out loud while pointing at a hologram. Also, in the 80s and 90s, we just let kids do way more dangerous stuff in movies. Like, these children are literally making Molotov cocktails and launching turtles in parachutes at construction workers. Can you imagine that getting greenlit today? Absolutely not. Liability killed builder culture, dot dot dot. --- Why This Movie Still Holds Up (And Why You Should Watch It Again) Here’s what I think: Ernest Goes to Camp works because it’s about something real. It’s about a guy who wants to matter. Who wants to be seen. Who’s been told his whole life that he’s not good enough, and then he gets one shot to prove himself, and he does it by just… being kind. By showing up. By treating people, especially people everyone else has written off, with dignity. And yeah, it’s also about a guy who breaks his nose on camera (that punch is real, by the way, you can hear the crack) and makes jokes about quiche and Vietnam and gets chased by a driverless golf cart. But that’s the thing about Ernest: he’s both. He’s the guy who makes you laugh and the guy who makes you cry during a song about rain. Also, Jim Varney had a photographic memory and could deliver entire scripts in one take, which is wild. And he was one of the most requested Make-A-Wish visits of his era. And he hated being Ernest but kept doing it anyway because kids loved him. Truly, what a guy. --- A Brief Digression About My Brother, the Engineer So Ryan recently got recategorized by the Japanese government as an engineer. He’s never been an engineer. He “manages” engineers. But he updated his LinkedIn immediately and started joining Facebook groups for engineers in Japan. He also designed a house on a napkin and had AI render it, and the AI gave him three luxury cars in the garage. I just think that’s the kind of confidence we should all have. Like Ernest-level confidence. The kind where you’re like, “Yeah, I’m an engineer now,” and you just believe it. (For the record, I would 100% go into business with Ryan. We’d open a grocery store. I’d run the deli. He’d run produce. We’d constantly have to explain that we’re siblings, not married.) --- The Unhinged Text Message of the Week Ryan sent me a photo of his daughter’s sticker album. The cover says “Let’s Be Natural” and features several rabbits saying things like “delicious,” “tender feelings,” “carefree living” (while hiding its face sadly), and my personal favorite: “there are many things I want to do.” Tag yourself. I’m the bunny who says there are many things I want to do but gives no indication what those things are. --- So, What’s the Takeaway Here? I don’t know. I climbed a mountain and almost died. I came home and watched a movie about a janitor who saves a camp by being kind. I confessed to having a childhood crush on a bedpost. My brother is now an engineer. I think the point is: Ernest Goes to Camp holds up. It’s funny. It’s sweet. It’s got heart. And if you haven’t watched it in 30 years, you should. Bring tissues for the rain song. Bring your kids. Bring your sense of wonder about a time when movies let children build catapults and launch turtles at bad guys. And if you see a mountain, maybe just… don’t climb it. Or do. I don’t know. There are many things I want to do. --- Now go watch Ernest Goes to Camp. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a five-star review. And tell me: which rabbit are you? Stay crispy. --- 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

  4. Jul 8

    Dreyer Drive #047 - Michael vs Jermaine

    When Your Brother Becomes the Biggest Star on Earth (And You’re Just Jermaine) I was sitting in a movie theater three weeks ago, wait, hold on, it was actually four weeks ago because I forgot the movie came out and then remembered and had to scramble to find tickets, watching Michael, and I had this thought that I couldn’t shake for like six straight days afterwards. Like, it just lived in my brain, rent-free, taking up space where useful information should go. The thought was this: What does it feel like when your little brother becomes Michael Jackson? Not just famous. Not just successful. But like, the most recognizable human being on the planet. The guy who can’t go to a grocery store. The guy whose face is on lunch boxes in Slovakia and Guatemala and, according to Ryan, this is true, he’s heard “Billie Jean” blasting from a street vendor’s radio in rural Japan at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday. Michael Jackson is everywhere. He transcends. He’s not a person anymore; he’s a weather system. And you’re Jermaine. The One Who Was Supposed to Be The One Here’s the thing about the Jackson Five that I didn’t fully understand until I fell down this research rabbit hole (and by “research rabbit hole,” I mean I watched like 90 minutes of interviews on YouTube at 1.75x speed while folding laundry, and eating french fries, which is basically a doctorate, right?): Jermaine was supposed to be the lead singer. Like, that was the plan. Joe Jackson, their father, who we’re not going to get into because that’s a whole separate nightmare, thought Jermaine was the most talented. Jermaine had the voice. He was older. He was teenage-heartthrob material. He was the guy. And then Michael gets on stage, and Michael can move, and suddenly the entire trajectory shifts. Not gradually. Immediately. The crowd goes insane. The plan changes. And Jermaine is... still there. Still singing. Still performing. But no longer the guy. I don’t know how you recover from that. Actually, I do know, because Jermaine spent the next 40 years not recovering from it. --- A Sibling Rivalry Disguised as a Career So here’s what happens: The Jackson Five signs with Motown in 1968. They’re huge. Seventeen top-40 singles in five years. Michael is clearly the star, but they’re all in it together, right? It’s a family thing. It’s the Jackson Five. Emphasis on five. Then in 1975, the group decides to leave Motown and sign with Epic Records. Better deal. More creative control. Standard music industry stuff. Except, and this is where it gets messy, Jermaine is married to the daughter of Berry Gordy, the guy who owns Motown. So Jermaine stays. He chooses loyalty to his father-in-law over his brothers. He goes solo. He stays at Motown as a solo artist. And honestly? I get it. I understand the impulse. You’re in this impossible position where your family is leaving, but your other family (your wife’s family) is staying, and also you’ve been living in Michael’s shadow for seven years and maybe, maybe, this is your chance to step out and be your own guy. To prove that you were always talented. That it wasn’t just Michael. That you could have been the one. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t really work. --- Jermaine releases records. They’re fine. They’re not bad. But they’re not Bad records, and that’s the problem. Because the industry, and the culture, and the fans, they’re not comparing Jermaine to other solo artists. They’re comparing him to his little brother, who is currently in the process of becoming the biggest entertainer in human history. In 1976, Jermaine releases a solo album. Michael releases a solo album. The labels literally pit them against each other as a marketing strategy. “Which Jackson will sell more?” It’s cruel. It’s calculated. And obviously, Michael wins. By the time Thriller drops in 1982, it’s not even a competition anymore. Michael is on another planet. And Jermaine is still here. Still trying. Still releasing music. Still getting name-dropped in hip-hop songs as the “real Jackson brother,” the street guy, the one who got screwed. Which is... something? I guess? --- The Victory Tour (Or: How to Ruin a Family Reunion) Fast forward to 1984. Joe Jackson, again, we’re not unpacking Joe Jackson in this essay, but just know he’s a lot, forces Michael to do the Victory Tour. Michael does not want to do this. He’s riding high on Thriller. He wants to be a solo artist. He doesn’t want to be in the Jackson Five anymore. But the family needs money, so they guilt him into it. “Do it for us. Do it for your brothers.” All six Jackson brothers reunite for the tour. Including Jermaine. Who, by the way, is not speaking to Michael at this time, They do 55 concerts. They gross $75 million (which is like $232 million in today’s money, which is absolutely bonkers). Michael refuses to rehearse. He shows up, does the show, and leaves. And then, after the 55th show, Michael announces on stage, on stage, in front of everyone, without consulting anyone, that this is the last concert. No European leg. No Australian leg. We’re done. The family is furious. Jermaine is furious. But what are they going to do? He’s Michael Jackson. He just unilaterally ended the tour, and that’s that. --- Word to the Badd (Or: How to Write a Diss Track About Your Brother and Pretend It Leaked) Okay, so this is where it gets truly unhinged. It’s 1991. Jermaine signs with LaFace Records as their first artist. This is supposed to be his big comeback. Except Michael finds out and immediately flies the founders of LaFace—L.A. Reid and Babyface—out to Neverland Ranch for three weeks. They work on songs together. None of the songs get released. But the point is, Michael ties them up so they can’t work on Jermaine’s record. It’s petty. It’s calculated. It’s siblings at their absolute worst. Jermaine finds out and is like, “Release me from this contract. I don’t want to work with you if this is how it’s going to be.” And then Jermaine writes a song called “Word to the Badd.” Let me read you some of the lyrics, because I need you to understand how specific this is: ”Reconstructed, been abducted, don’t know who you are Think they love you, they don’t know you, lonely stoop superstar Never think about who you love, only think about number one You forget where you started from, you only care about what you want.” And then, and then, there’s this verse: ”Once you were made, you changed your shade, was your color wrong? Could not turn back, it’s a known fact, you are too far gone.” Which is a reference to Michael’s changing appearance, which is... I mean, come on. That’s your brother. And then, because apparently Jermaine wasn’t done, there’s a line that goes: ”The glass has gotten shady, time to make it clear Clean it up, let’s start with the man in the mirror.” Which is a direct shot at Michael’s song “Man in the Mirror.” Like, he’s not even being subtle. He’s quoting Michael’s own lyrics back at him as an insult. --- The song “leaks” to radio stations. They start playing it back-to-back with Michael’s new single “Black or White” to stir up drama. To this day, Jermaine swears he never intended for anyone to hear it. He says it was just for him. A personal thing. A way to process his feelings. Sure, Jermaine. Sure. Michael is furious. He uses his industry pull to get the song pulled from the air. He tells radio stations, “If you ever play this again, you’ll never play my music.” And that’s that. The song disappears. But the damage is done. They don’t speak for years. --- The Part Where It Gets Sad Here’s the thing I keep thinking about: Jermaine wasn’t wrong. Like, objectively, Michael did distance himself from the family. He did prioritize his solo career. He did stop showing up for them in the way they wanted him to. And yes, Michael was paying for the house Jermaine lived in, $25,000 a month, but that’s also kind of the problem, right? Because it’s this constant reminder that Jermaine needs Michael. That he’s dependent on him. That no matter what he does, he’ll always be “Michael Jackson’s brother.” And I don’t know how you live with that. I don’t know how you reconcile being talented, being legitimately talented, and still living in someone else’s shadow. Especially when that someone is your little brother. The one you were supposed to protect. The one you were supposed to lead. --- By the time Michael dies in 2009, they still haven’t fully patched things up. There’s a reunion concert in 2001, the 30th anniversary special at Madison Square Garden, where they perform together and act like everything’s fine, but behind the scenes, it’s all contracts and lawyers and stipulations about how they’ll interact. It’s not real. It’s performance. Jermaine writes a memoir in 2011 called You Are Not Alone: Michael Jackson Through a Brother’s Eyes. He does interviews where he talks about how their relationship was complicated but ultimately, brotherhood was more important than anything. He says all the right things. But you can tell, at least, I can tell, that he’s still processing it. Still trying to figure out how to be Jermaine Jackson and not just “the other Jackson brother.” --- The Michael Movie (And Why Janet Stayed Home) So when I went to see Michael a few weeks ago, again, forgot it came out, had to scramble for tickets, this is the quality content you subscribe to, I noticed something immediately: Janet Jackson is not in it. At all. She’s not even mentioned. Which is wild, because Janet and Michael were close. Like, genuinely close. Michael always said she was the person he trusted most in the world. But Janet refused to be part of the movie. And when I looked into why, I found out that one of the reasons is because the actor playing Michael is Jaafar Jackson. Jermaine’s son. Janet

  5. 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

  6. 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

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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