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Season 1: Bonus Episode 2 – Asked and Answered?

Elena Hudgins Lyle: Welcome to bonus episode two! What do we have planned for this second bonus episode Harv?

Harvinder Wadhwa: We have a very special guest and I have to say that.

[Elena laughs]

Elena: Why doesn't our very special guest introduce herself?

Rymn Wadhwa: My name is Rymn and I’m Harv’s daughter.

Harv: And?

Rymn: And that's about it.

Elena: Oh no!

[All laugh]

Rymn: I’m Elena’s friend, super close friend.

Elena: Yes, thank you for finally—

Harv: But mostly my daughter.

Rymn: I mean, fifty/fifty.

Elena: Please declare your allegiance.

[Rymn laughs]

Elena: So what are, what are we doing today Rymn?

Rymn: I'm here to ask you guys some questions.

Elena: Yeah!

Rymn: So these are real questions submitted by listeners. Are you guys, ready?

Elena: I guess.

Harv: Yes, fire.

Rymn: So the first question from Ariyana is what are your favourite podcasts?

Elena: Hmm, how appropriate.

Harv: If I have to pick one I will say it's The Agenda with Steve Paikin. And then I have a whole bunch of comedy podcasts which I like, then there is More or Less. It's a podcast on stats by BBC and then they have The News Quiz so these are my top ones.

Elena: What are the comedy podcasts you like? I've never heard of your favourite comedy podcast.

Harv: One is from CBC, The Alt.Com Comedy Lounge and then from CBC we have Laugh Out Loud.

Elena: Cool, you're always listening to economics podcasts too.

Harv: Yes it's actually, I forgot that, that's from LSE or London School of Economics.

Elena: Right. As for my favourite podcasts, I am a huge dorky fan of U2, the band, I know not a very cool thing to be a fan of but there are these two comedians: Adam Scott from Parks and Rec and Scott Aukerman from Comedy Bang Bang who have a podcast all about U2 which is like half like dumb humour and half like analysis of U2 albums it's called You Talking U2 to Me and it's my favourite thing in the world. I also really like Nancy from WNYC it's a an LGBTQ stories focused podcast, really cool. And I love Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, the Canadian podcast that's all about people reading stuff they wrote down when they were a kid, from the cringey, to the sad, to the really sad, to the really cringey.

Ryman: Okay, cool.

Harv: We seem to have similar choices it seems.

[All laugh]

Elena: Okay, yeah sure. I just like to turn on my fave economics—

Harv: By the way I forgot, one of the best ones is also The Debaters from CBC.

Elena: Oh I love The Debaters! That’s one we can share.

Harv: Okay.

Elena: It's like a comedy debate show.

Harv: Yes.

Rymn: Not that anyone asked, but I love Radiolab.

[Elena and Harv laugh]

Rymn: All right I got another question, it’s from Katie, and she says can you tell us a bit about finding yourself on New and Noteworthy on Apple Podcasts?

Elena: Ah so for people who don't regularly scroll through the browse section of their Apple Podcast app or look at podcasts on iTunes, there is a New and Noteworthy list and we were on the Society and Culture New and Noteworthy list which was super exciting. A friend of mine found it and just messaged me and I was super stoked, posted a screen cap everywhere on my socials immediately, all-caps captions. Anytime you see any kind of appreciation, it's super exciting. How'd it feel for you, Harv?

Harv: It feels very good because I feel it is very easy to sell hate and very difficult to sell love. So this I think is the love that must be shared, and I feel, I feel very humbled. I feel very humbled and honoured.

Elena: Oh my god, I just babbled and you’re just like succinct, powerful, I’m going to cry now, okay.

[Harv laughs]

Rymn: It’s okay Elena, we’re just going to edit your part out.

Elena: Yeah of course.

Rymn: Don’t worry about it too much.

Elena: As it always happens.

[Rymn laughs]

Rymn: As, dare I say, the biggest fan of Inappropriate Questions.

Elena: Okay then—

Rymn: It's been so cool to watch you guys both thrive so much and how the podcast really be so like super successful given the fact that it’s completely independent. I don't know it's been so cool to watch both you guys so excited about it all the time. It’s all I ever hear about.

Elena: Awww.

Rymn: It’s like dad, let’s talk about my life, my issues—by the way on Inappropriate Questions...

[All laugh]

Elena: This week on Inappropriate Questions…

Rymn: You know what, why don’t you just submit it. We’ll get to it with the fan mail.

Elena: See, at first I thought this was just a wonderful celebration and then your your speech kinda devolved into a, there's a hurt deep inside.

[Rymn laughs]

Elena: And, and now I feel bad.

Harv: She got me at the biggest fan.

Elena: And you just kind of tuned out after that?

Harv: Yup, yup, exactly.

Rymn: All right, well Maddy asks, has working on IQ made you more comfortable with calling people out for asking inappropriate questions in real life?

Harv: So the first thing is, I have stopped asking inappropriate questions. So that's that's absolutely the first one.

Elena: Woohoo!

Harv: And the second one is that it always bothered me when people asked certain questions that were inappropriate but I was not willing to go take the next step but now I call them out right away.

Elena: Nice!

Harv: Obviously very politely, I'm not looking for a fight but I do call out people.

Elena: Do you have any tips on calling people politely? I feel like that can be hard sometimes.

Harv: It depends because again most of these people are very well known to me they’re my colleagues.

Elena: Right.

Harv: And sometimes I can I say it in jest and the other times I say, “Well you know, you may want to reconsider what you just said.”

Elena: Right.

Harv: Because this can hurt people and then some people have been making fun of me for that as well.

Elena: What?!

Harv: Well again, in a different way.

Elena: In a teasing way?

Harv: In a teasing way but I think I was able to get the message through at least in a good percentage of cases.

Rymn: Alright, okay so we have a question here from Angel. Was there any particular topic that was challenging for you? If so, why and how did you manage that?

Elena: I feel like throughout the season we got more and more comfortable like, you know, practice makes perfect. But I feel like—and you can agree or disagree, Harv—the sex and disability episode, it was just something we really didn't know too much about other than from our research and didn’t have a ton of experience with, and I was super excited to talk to Andrew [Gurza] because Andrew, like I was familiar with his work he'd been on one of my favourite podcasts, Queery, and it was just like “Ahhh, so cool to have like a really cool guest!” But we, as you might have heard throughout the season, we have different kind of touchstones with the topics, right?

Like you don't drink, you know Sabrina's mixed race so she has gotten, “What are you?”, we’re, like a lot of people on the team, are women so we can identify with kind of the sexism we talk about in the episode about having kids or not having kids. You know, I’m queer and non-binary so I knew a lot about the trans topic but for this episode we just had no touchstones in any way, so we were like most out of our depth here.

Harv: I had trouble because talking to you, you are like my daughter. I have known you, I think, for over ten years.

Elena: Yeah, yeah.

Harv: You were a preteen, perhaps.

Elena: Yes.

Harv: So it was it was a very difficult, and again culturally also discussing those topics are somewhat difficult. And yes I am married, so you know.

[Elena laughs]

Harv: The last part...

Rymn: I love being in the same room as my dad for the answer to that question.

[Elena laughs]

Elena: I think the only way to kind of address a topic like that, is to just do a bunch of research, try your best, have a guest who is willing to you know go there with you and be in that safe space and be understanding that you’re a total newb.

Rymn: You know, I got to say though like the whole point of you guys having people who are experts in the topic is so you guys can listen so as long as you're listening and receptive and open to what they have to say, I think you’re doing your job perfectly.

Elena: Aw, thank you Rymn.

Rymn: Speaking of particular topics, here are some questions some of our listeners want to hear us tackle. So Keisha was wondering about questions like, “Aren't you straight?” or “Is pansexuality really a thing?” because she is pansexual with a male partner and it's a type of question she gets a lot.

Elena: I can totally relate, I'm bi—or sometimes I go by pan or just need more than one gender, attracted to more than one gender—and there's a lot of expectations on bi people to pick a side, or to state whether or not they have a preference. You know, there's a lot of people thinking that bi is either a road from gay to straight or from straight to gay and so it's annoying and stressful, and that is something I would love to tackle Keisha.

Rymn: Okay. Katie asks, you guys gotta tackle “Do you actually like sports?” for women in sports media.

Elena: Hmm.

Harv: Recently I have started seeing some women commentators in cricket.

Elena: Yeah?

Harv: Now we have Isa Guha, she is an ex British cricket player and now she's doing commentary and this is something very new and it is nice. I am tired of listening to these men all the time, their monotonous tones.

Elena: [laughs] That’s super cool! Also like women who play video games right, like women gamers. So yeah do you actually, you’re just trying to impress men.

Rymn: It’s probably your boyfriend's console.

Elena: Yeah I know, like are you a real like there's this stereotype of the fake geek girl.

Rymn: Yeah.

Elena: Pretending to like Marvel Comics.

Rymn: It’s just too good to be true.

[Elena laughs]

Rymn: I got to say, as a woman who plays a competitive sport—

Elena and Rymn: Chess.

[All laugh]

Rymn: It's bad! It actually is pretty tough, so I definitely think this is a good one to tackle but to extend Katie's question, what about women in tech which I think is a little closer to home for me.

Elena: Yeah!

Rymn: You know no one takes you seriously, there's a lot of male-dominated fields that I think needs some representation on this podcast.

Elena: For context, you're studying engineering.

Rymn: Yes, industrial engineering at Ryerson University.

Harv: And for the record chess is not a sport.

Rymn: Oof. Why, why?

[Elena laughs]

Elena: Yeah so all sorts of topics that we can explore from the starting point of that question.

Rymn: So Jeff asks Harv, do you ever feel the age difference between you and your collaborators? In what ways?

Elena: Oooh.

Harv: I don't, I actually don't. I consider them like I consider other colleagues of mine. Now, I have to also state that other colleagues of mine are also very, very young.

Elena: Right.

Harv: Not as young as these guys are, but they're, they're in their early thirties and I'm very comfortable. As a matter of fact, I'm less comfortable with the older people and not for because of their age but because of their thinking. And I guess that's what attracted me to this podcast so the answer is, the short answer is no.

Elena: Has there been anything Harv, that you you know we've mentioned and you just felt like out of your depth? Like what is that young person thing?

Harv: Oh, many things. Rymn and you have been trying to explain to me what meme is and now I've just agreed that it’s cartoon.

[Elena and Rymn laugh]

Harv: So...

Elena: Oh it’s so much more complicated.

Harv: And, and the other was when Rob [Molloy] came.

Elena: Yeah?

Harv: And then you guys were introducing each other and about the pronouns and I had no idea what you guys were talking about.

Elena: Right.

Harv: So you had to explain it to me what it meant and it took me time and I slowly stated my pronoun.

Elena: Right, yeah yeah. No, that's such a, that's an interesting one because you don't really think of what your pronouns are until you've had those go-around circles.

Harv: Exactly you guys were rattling it out like you do it whenever you meet somebody that's how you introduce yourself.

Elena: You know what that's interesting because in certain circles, like certain events and stuff, that will be how you start the event. And some people are like, in order to make the world a more equitable place, we got to have those things be a standard when you meet someone.

Rymn: I've been going to a lot of like competitions, conferences, all those sorts of things lately and they always, whenever they give your lanyards with your names on them, they always have the pronouns.

Elena: Right.

Rymn: That’s standard practice now.

Elena: I think that's really cool because if you see someone's like name tag that helps you kind of internalize their pronouns though without being like “And what are your pronouns?”

Harv: Even in engineering?

Elena: Which not everyone will remember to do.

Rymn: Even in the engineering school.

Harv: Really?

Rymn: Seriously, seriously. It said she/her/elle on my last one.

Elena: Oh that's really cool. Very Canadian too with the the French. So yes Harv, slowly learning the ways of us youngins.

Harv: Hey, I know another one.

Elena: Yeah?

Harv: Give me the tea.

[Elena laughs]

Elena: Like spilling the tea, like what’s the tea?

Harv: What’s the tea, what’s the tea, what’s the tea!

Elena: Yeah.

Rymn: So I would ask one more question, just for me, and it is, what is it going to take to get a season two of IQ?

Elena: I'm gonna have to sleep for two months. I don't know about you Harv.

Harv: As I said, I hardly—

Elena: You hardly work, so whatever! Don't even answer that.

[Harv laughs]

Elena: You know we are lucky enough to have lots of topics that we’re interested in and I think when we're excited about something and we all get together we work hard, we we can accomplish a lot, as we just proved to ourselves. So I think the future is hopeful but I want to sleep first and then there's a lot of thinking to be done. But when it happens, you will be the first to know, Rymn.

Rymn: Awesome.

Elena: And if anyone else wants to know, you should follow us on all our social media @iq_podcast.

Thanks so much for coming on Rymn! It's good to see you always.

Rymn: I mean you're welcome, you couldn’t have done it without me. So yeah I love to do charity work.

Elena: You're the glue that ties this podcast together, you're the reason we found Harv.

Rymn: Oh I guess so.

Elena: To end off Rymn, is there anything you'd like to plug?

Rymn: Yeah, my favourite podcast Inappropriate Questions.

Elena: Aw, plugging Inappropriate Questions on Inappropriate Questions. The inception is real.

Harv: It’s a meta.

[Long pause; all laugh]

Elena: It’s a meta, yeah!

[Theme music]

Elena: Thanks so much for listening to season one of Inappropriate Questions. Thanks to everyone who's been involved in making this season not only our producers Sabrina and Cindy, but our guests, webcomic artists, voicenote contributors, interns and associates, mentors, family and friends. We love you all and we couldn't have done this without each and everyone of you.

Harv: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I'm Harvinder Wadhwa.

Elena: And I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

Harv: Thanks for getting inappropriate with us!

Elena: Follow us on all the socials @IQ_Podcast and talk to us!

Harv: We want to hear from you!

Elena: The inquisitive individuals behind Inappropriate Questions are Sabrina Bertsch, Erin Guerette, Cindy Long, and myself.

Harv: We are supported by the Ryerson University Transmedia Zone.

[Theme music ends]

Elena: An inappropriate question is like expecting a new episode of your favourite podcast, but there isn't one.

TRANSCRIPT: Inappropriate Questions - Season 1, BONUS EP 2

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