Josh and Aaron chat about their Thanksgiving traditions. New this season, our producer Dave Hawks is now live in studio with the guys!
Listen here or read the transcript below. FVF’s podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and more.
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0:00:16.9 Aaron Von Flatern: Yo, Josh.
0:00:17.7 Josh Fogelman: Hey, what’s up Aaron?
0:00:18.6 AF: I said yo, Josh.
0:00:19.7 JF: Yo, Aaron.
0:00:20.5 AF: I’m just trying to freshen things up a little bit.
0:00:22.5 JF: I appreciate that. It has stagnated a little bit in here.
0:00:26.5 AF: This podcast needs youth.
0:00:27.9 JF: It does. You…
0:00:30.8 AF: But smart youth. Like, not just any youth. Like, someone like perhaps our producer, Dave Hawks.
0:00:38.2 JF: Who’s that?
0:00:39.0 AF: That’s not… I mean, what a cool last name.
0:00:40.6 JF: They’re pretty good.
0:00:42.3 AF: He’s as cool as he sounds like he is. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see his face.
0:00:47.1 Dave Hawks: Hello.
0:00:47.9 AF: Probably right now. Hello Dave. What’s up, Dave?
0:00:49.4 DH: I’ll make sure to cut to me when you say that, because as you said, I am the producer.
0:00:54.7 AF: This is gonna be a pretty meta podcast where we talk about what we’re gonna cut to in the middle of the podcast.
0:01:00.4 JF: Start talking about what we’re gonna talk about.
0:01:01.9 DH: Yeah.
0:01:02.5 AF: Because we have our producer with us and this is a new feature of our ever evolving podcast, and that is to have a third voice in the room to correct us when we say dumb stuff.
0:01:12.5 JF: Frequently.
[laughter]
0:01:13.1 AF: Yes, exactly.
0:01:14.8 JF: Or at least moderate, like, when to let the dumb stuff roll.
0:01:18.6 AF: Or when to step in and say, “Hey guys, the podcast has been rolling for about a minute and a half. Your phone’s going off and you still haven’t started the topic yet.”
0:01:27.2 DH: Yeah. See, that’s why you need someone to remind you to turn your phone off so that way you don’t get a ding in the middle of it.
0:01:32.6 AF: I mean, producers do so much.
0:01:34.5 JF: They do. I’m so grateful to have them.
0:01:36.9 DH: Underappreciated.
0:01:38.0 AF: Our topic today is thanksgiving, because we’re a personal injury law firm.
0:01:42.6 JF: Yeah. Makes sense.
0:01:43.0 AF: More specifically, we want to talk today about what unique or interesting Thanksgiving traditions, or just Thanksgiving perspectives your family has. And I’m sure the listeners are imagining their own. I’m gonna start with you, Josh. What do you got?
0:02:04.0 JF: So something that you should know about me that you probably don’t, you know, ’cause we’ve been working together for the better part of 15 years now. My birthday falls on Thanksgiving sometimes. I’m a late November birthday. And I don’t say that to, elicit some sort of happy birthday from you ’cause I’ve given up on that.
0:02:27.2 AF: I understand.
0:02:29.0 JF: But here’s what’s great about having a Thanksgiving birthday. This is my perspective. You asked for my perspective.
0:02:36.3 AF: Yeah, this is good.
0:02:38.4 JF: It’s far enough removed from Christmas, where family members can’t give you a joint Christmas-Thanksgiving gift.
0:02:50.4 AF: It’s the worst.
0:02:51.3 JF: And it’s a large and important enough holiday where you get to be with, not just your immediate family, but your extended family. So they feel compelled to get you a birthday gift, knowing they’re gonna see you within a day or two, or sometimes, even on your birthday. So growing up, every time I would go to my extended family’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, I was showered with gifts. So not only is it the holiday where you have license to overeat, which historically I’ve been really, really good at. But you walk away from there fatter, happier, and loaded with presents, which is pretty good.
0:03:44.0 AF: Have you ever had a relative forget that it was your birthday, and then, sort of like, feel guilty and come in with like a huge Christmas present afterwards?
0:03:53.8 JF: You know, I feel like I have pretty amazing family members. And particularly, the people that we would spend time here typically within Austin, did an amazing job of remembering things. So there was no guilt gift giving beyond, the whole guilt gift giving.
0:04:13.6 AF: For anyone who happens to be listening from some other place, I wanna remind the listeners that Josh Fogelman was born in Austin, Texas. Meaning that Thanksgiving for him, and Thanksgiving for all of us who live here now, is typically on like a 75 to 80 degree sunny day experience, right?
0:04:35.0 JF: Usually pretty good. Yeah.
0:04:36.8 AF: Do you think that changes what Thanksgiving means? Like, we don’t live in the north where we’re all bundled up in the kitchen and there’s this like hot, sort of, hearth where the onions and the celery are cooking, and everybody’s like sipping their cocoa. Like, we don’t have that here in Texas, right?
0:04:55.1 JF: I have never experienced that kind of thanksgiving that I can recall. So I don’t really have anything to compare it to because I’ve spent, functionally, like every Thanksgiving in Austin, Texas, for the last 42, almost 43 years. So yeah, ’cause it’s my birthday soon, right? ‘Cause it’s almost Thanksgiving.
0:05:14.9 AF: Is it? I didn’t realize that.
0:05:15.7 JF: See. Here’s the thing.
0:05:17.3 AF: Oh, you just said it.
0:05:18.2 JF: Here’s the thing. My birthday sometimes falls on Thanksgiving.
[laughter]
0:05:23.2 JF: I don’t know if you knew that about me or not.
0:05:26.7 AF: So in my family, we did the typical watch football, cook the turkey. My mom, like, cooked overnight. I feel really guilty not understanding that process, because now, I live with my wife who is an amazing cook, and she is a person who fully boycotts Thanksgiving.
0:05:50.8 JF: Why?
0:05:51.9 AF: Because she’s an amazing cook. There’s sort of this understanding that the world will be fed by her. That she will come up with this amazing plan, that she’ll stay up and, like, baste the turkey at two in the morning, and check the temperature and all that. And so we kind of did that for a while. And then one day, she was like, “I want to be out of the country on Thanksgiving.”
0:06:23.7 JF: I’m not doing this anymore.
0:06:23.8 AF: I’m out.
0:06:23.9 JF: It’s too much.
0:06:25.2 AF: And so… I personally love Thanksgiving. I mean, it’s one of my favorite holidays.
0:06:28.7 JF: Sure, it’s a great holiday.
0:06:31.2 AF: And so, for me, it was a massive sacrifice because I was like, “Look, it’s Josh Fogelman’s birthday.”
0:06:37.1 JF: Yeah. Right.
0:06:39.8 AF: “And I don’t like mashed potatoes.” But she assured me that we could replicate some kind of communal experience like that with our friends. And we’ll do stuff like grill… Or like barbecue or something… Just something just different than the turkey situation. And typically, it’s at a nice location where we’ve taken a vacation, and I can’t complain. I’m waking up and I’m like I’m at a beach, going fishing. And so my Thanksgivings are not traditional anymore, but they are nothing to complain about.
0:07:13.9 JF: Yeah, that’s such an awesome time of the year to travel for so many different reasons. You don’t get that many chunks of time-off where no one’s really working throughout the year, and lots of people are going home. So a lot of the places where tourism is usually challenging for access, Thanksgiving is a great holiday to go to some of those places and not have it be so busy. And I’ve always enjoyed traveling around the Thanksgiving holiday as well. What about you, Dave?
0:07:52.7 DH: Well, I first had a question for Aaron. Did your wife’s… Did Margaret’s decision to start leaving the country coincide with when you met Josh and she realized, “Oh, now this holiday is going to become about Josh and all of us getting him gifts?”
0:08:08.5 AF: Very expensive.
0:08:10.1 DH: So we need to leave so that we don’t have to deal with that?
0:08:13.1 AF: For the price of one Josh gift, you can go on like two vacations.
0:08:16.8 JF: Yeah. This tracks.
0:08:17.7 DH: So my… One of the… We didn’t have any interesting foods. We never did cranberry sauce, which I always was told that’s like a staple of Thanksgiving.
0:08:26.7 AF: It is.
0:08:27.2 JF: It is.
0:08:27.2 DH: But growing up…
0:08:28.0 JF: And you’ve missed out your whole life.
0:08:29.2 DH: Really?
0:08:29.6 JF: And I suggest that you leave this podcast immediately, make your way to Central Market, get some cranberry sauce out of a can, and eat it live on this podcast.
0:08:40.0 DH: Oh, well, maybe, maybe I should do that. So given that it’s called Thanksgiving, my parents were like, we’re going to… Everyone’s going to go around.
0:08:49.7 JF: I have one question for you, Dave.
0:08:51.5 DH: Yes. Yep.
0:08:51.7 JF: Are you a, ‘cranberry sauce with cranberries guy’, or, ‘a cranberry sauce without cranberries guy’?
0:09:00.0 DH: Given that I have never had cranberry sauce. As I just mentioned that it wasn’t a part…
0:09:04.4 JF: What? You’ve never had cranberry sauce?
0:09:04.8 DH: Well, when else would you have it other than Thanksgiving?
0:09:05.9 JF: How was that possible?
0:09:07.3 DH: It just was never a part of my Thanksgiving tradition, and what else would you eat it with?
0:09:10.5 AF: How did he not eat like this?
0:09:11.4 JF: Cranberry sauce is always appropriate.
0:09:13.6 DH: Yeah, well, at what other times do you eat it?
0:09:18.3 JF: 9:30 in the morning.
0:09:18.4 DH: All right.
0:09:19.4 JF: 2:45 PM.
0:09:20.5 DH: To answer… I would probably say without cranberries, because I’m a no-chunks kind of guy in general.
0:09:25.9 JF: But how do you know, you’ve never had it?
0:09:27.4 DH: That’s why I’m projecting.
0:09:28.8 AF: It’s a theory. It’s a theory he has.
0:09:31.7 DH: I prefer no fruit in my yogurt, you know. Although I do like granola. Anyway, back to what I was saying. We would always do the go around and say what you’re thankful for. And so I was always…
0:09:44.5 AF: That’s nice.
0:09:45.2 DH: Having to get prepped to be like, “How do I say the thing that’s meaningful, that will make my parents feel like they’re raising good, grateful children, but also, reinforce the things that I wanted to continue to experience in the household?”
0:09:57.6 JF: So did you just manufacture things that you were thankful for to appease your family, or were they genuine?
0:10:02.9 DH: They were selective for both… To do both things. So I wanted to… I always picked things that made my mom feel happy, because I knew that she would care about me recognizing those things. But then also, that would allow me to continue in the lovely blessings of being in that household.
0:10:25.5 AF: It sounds like… It sounds like he was like, “I’m grateful that I have these nice clothes to wear and the tattoo on my body.” [laughter] That’s what that sounds like.
0:10:40.5 DH: Yeah. You just like get in a confession that you’re thankful for no one’s punishing you for and that’s how you escape.
0:10:46.6 JF: I’m grateful that my parents never found out that I used to smash mailboxes with potted plants.
0:10:52.6 AF: Federal crime, that is. Yes. Welcome back to the law, Josh. Here we are.
[laughter]
0:11:00.9 AF: Oh man, I’m grateful for you guys.
0:11:03.3 JF: I’m grateful for you guys too.
0:11:04.6 DH: How do we feel about Christmas music before Thanksgiving?
0:11:07.9 AF: 100% pro.
0:11:10.1 DH: Pro?
0:11:10.5 JF: I’m anti.
0:11:13.7 DH: I was having this conversation with some of our staff earlier this week about… What about Thanksgiving, other than the day of Thanksgiving, are… Like, what are the traditional parts of the Thanksgiving holiday that are outside of the day of Thanksgiving? There’s no Thanksgiving music. There’s no real Thanksgiving decorations.
0:11:30.9 AF: There’s no plays.
0:11:31.0 DH: There’s no shows that are around Thanksgiving. There’s no really Thanksgiving spirit.
0:11:36.6 AF: There’s like the football season.
0:11:38.7 DH: But the only special part of Thanksgiving is the day of Thanksgiving. Those are like the football games.
0:11:44.6 JF: That’s not true. You have Black Friday and Cyber Monday [chuckle] For which people can retroactively purchase the gifts for me because by then they’ve missed my birthday. Sometimes it’s on Friday, but getting it there on time can be a challenge.
0:12:02.3 DH: Can be tricky, yeah.
0:12:02.4 AF: Not a lot of hoopla about Thanksgiving.
0:12:04.9 JF: Not a lot of hoopla about Thanksgiving. But, I mean, I think it’s deeply associated with fall.
0:12:09.8 DH: Yeah. Especially in Texas where, like, we don’t have close to fall weather for like Halloween. So Thanksgiving, I do think, epitomizes the idea of fall experience more here.
0:12:24.2 JF: Yeah. I love Thanksgiving.
0:12:31.1 AF: I do, too.
0:12:31.2 JF: Well, happy Thanksgiving, guys.
0:12:31.3 DH: Happy Thanksgiving.
0:12:31.4 AF: Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the Thanksgiving season.
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