We're No Experts

Wait...this can't be right--a signal? On this old channel? "Welcome back..."--could it be the return of We're No Experts?! There's only one way to find out, loyal subscriber!

What's it take to get you out of the house? We discuss a bunch of local stuff, and Jonathan coughs incessantly.

What TV show would you most like to live in? Partially inspired by the neverending Cheers rewatch.

Talked quite a bit about norms in this one, with particular emphasis on bathroom norms. The secret origin of the Bathroom Break.

Regarding lying to kids: What are the ethics of just letting your kids win? Is it ever really wrong to grind your kids to dust for daring to step to their parents?

Bask in the glory of our first truly inane prompt: Would you rather spend the rest of your life on a plane that can't land or a submarine that can't surface?

A very timely repeat of an Easter classic, in which we try to figure out why rabbits and eggs are associated with Easter without just looking it up.

You find five million bucks. Is it a good thing or a huge hassle? What are you gonna do with it?

The warm embrace of hiatus surrounds us still. If aliens invited you to come sail away, would you take them up on the offer?

Hiatus continues! How far back could you travel in the past and pass as a native of that time?

While we're on hiatus, it's a perfect time for you to revisit our first episode! We discuss dog thoughts, self checkouts, the idiom "a dog's age," and more!

We are taking a well deserved break for the summer. Please submit topics to mailbag@noexpertspodcast.com! And enjoy this final episode in which we talk about lazy teachers and the dumbest uses we'd make of time travel.

What makes a cyborg? At what point do you cease being "a person with a metal arm" and an honest-to-goodness cybernetic organism? Also: a question of etiquette.

Flipping the script a bit, what would you do if you were the last person on Earth? How would you fill your days? How would you guarantee your survival? What buildings would you burn down?

Jim suggests there are advantages to aging in reverse like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Jonathan ain't so sure. Also a Bathroom Break follow-up and, like, a lot of unexpected dentist talk at the end.

If you could be cryogenically frozen and thawed out hundreds of years from now, would you do it? What would it take to change your mind? What if we told you that you might end up a RoboCop?

Disaster preppers and survivalists are nutjobs, right? There's nothing to that. We shouldn't bother prepping for nuclear armageddon or anything, should we? Let's figure it out.

If you swapped Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks in their respective movies, who'd come out on top?

Jonathan has anxiety about time travel, real ontological shit, and he'll tell you all about it after he's done complaining about his audio book purchase.

Are there any superpowers you'd outright turn down if offered? There are drawbacks you might want to consider. Good, practical advice for real problems is what we're all about.

You down with O.P.P.? Other people's pets? Of course you pet every dog, but there certainly must be lines you don't cross with other people's pets, right? Also: Jonathan slags Bodum.

Would it be better to shapeshift into one specific person for as long as you want or shapeshift into anyone for just one hour? Don't miss the surprise return of a classic segment!

If you could run a contest, what would the prize be? What kind of contestants would you want, and how would they compete? We also cover a few norms: helping yourself to a drink and double-dipping.

Haven't we done this before? No! Following up on Part I, we investigate what we might do differently should the genie's curse give us advance notice of the time loop. Hear Jim praise Jonathan's genius idea.

Jim has a few rapid-fire topics, including: washing new clothes, the battle of the sitcom dads, beef with store layouts.

Is there ever a right time for correcting someone? We've all probably corrected someone's spelling or told them they were misremembering a story. When is that okay, and when are you being a dick?

Santa's list of who's naughty and who's nice fails completely to provide a clear moral framework for children's behavior. We are going to fix that.

Have you ever overestimated your own competence? You ever told someone they were bad at something? What's with our impulse to soften criticism? Also, Jim's got a norm and a question about broadcasting "fuck" on TV. Something for everyone!

The time has come to settle Best vs. Favorite: Thanksgiving Sides! Generally just a whole episode about gabbing about food. Hot meals or hot showers? Only cake or only pie? Don't listen on an empty stomach.

If you had to rob a bank, could you do it? How would you go about it? What's stopping you? Dark stuff!

Halloween 2020 is upon us! If you had to be one of the classic Halloween monsters, which would it be? Is the move to go vampire? Werewolf? Juke into being an alien? Let's figure it out since we can't go to a Halloween party.

Bucket lists as a concept don't make much sense to us, so we attempt to unpack the idea and figure out what the point is with frequent digressions into: trading cards, going to outer space, and top dollar vs. bottom dollar.

Don't be fooled by the excellent episode title. This time around, we address a dense listener email! It's the email that's dense, not the listener. Includes follow-ups on littering and tough decisions about everyone's favorite topic: time travel.

Spoiler alert: We are talking about the morality of spoiling stories and what price (if any) you should pay for it. We necessarily spoil several stories in the process. You've been warned.

If you ever get the chance to zap a new skill into your brain, what's the right move? Do you go straight for the kung fu and gunplay, or do you become the most dominant Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon player in history? We get there after about 20 minutes of digression centered around the filmography of Keanu Reeves.

Urban legends and conspiracy theories spread quickly and stay around a long time. Why is that, and is there any truth to them? Also: assigned seating norms, driving in the left lane, and other tangents.

Why the hell do people litter? What's in it for them? What distinguishes litter from something you wouldn't care about throwing on the ground? We try to get to the bottom of that. Plus, we think it's time we had a little talk about the birds and the bees.

Why the heck do people even dream? There must be a function or reason for it. We puzzle through it and tackle some idioms.

If you had to be an animal for a day, what's the right choice? You don't want to mess up and be, like, an armadillo or something and wind up roadkill. You also don't want to go the draft horse route and wind up doing a bunch of work. Let's figure this thing out.

A listener suggestion brings us the topic of: How would you spend a Groundhog Day-esque loop? There's a lot of fruit on the vine here, so expect us to return to this cheap and easy well of material.

Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, Over the Top--classics of cinema. But which film scores the knockout win in the ring of BEST VS. FAVORITE when it comes to Sylvester Stallone movies?

What are your dream TV show spin-offs? We list several of our top picks and actually manage to stay on topic for almost the entire episode--a series first! Don't get used to it.

You ever thought about where different gestures come from and how they came to mean what they mean? We have, but we didn't bother researching or anything. Check it out!

Listener Ryan asked, "How would you organize society if given the chance?" Folks, don't ask questions you don't want the answers to, by which I mean questions we don't know the answers to.

How much work should you put into maintaining a low-level friendship? What does "low-level" mean in the case of a friend, anyway? Can you assign hard numbers to this stuff?

What would you do if you met someone who could be your twin? Would you be the first to engage? Would you call your parents liars? Maybe take the safest route and instantly attack them? All this and watch talk since we have so much...time on our hands!

Neither of us understands the appeal of camping. Why do people put themselves through it? We try to sort that one out with a lengthy sidebar about jalapeño poppers, then we talk at length about bidets. Something for everyone!

Are you prepared to encounter Bigfoot? It's guaranteed to be a life-changing experience, right? But what does that mean for you, and how would you handle it?

How do cars work? Don't bother DDGing it—just listen as we two ignoramuses try to enlighten you. By the end of this episode, you will be a true gearhead. Or maybe you won't. Probably you won't, but we go out on some hat etiquette, which Jim says is the best part.

It's snowing, which means we couldn't record a full episode. But our commitment to delivering the quality you're accustomed to is so strong that we have managed to put together something for you in any case. Full episode sometime next week!

Inspired by this blog post, when and how do you accommodate a picky dinner guest—in particular children? We also speculate about the origin of the idiom "cold turkey" and muse about Scott Bakula.