QAA - Jake’s Takes x Liv’s Gives - Coachella Edition (Premium E333) Sample
Aired: 2026-04-25
Duration: 09:28


=== Palm Springs Premium Episode (09:25) ===

[00:00:03]  If you're hearing this,
[00:00:34]  you found a way to connect to me.
[00:00:36]  Welcome to the QAA Podcast Premium Episode 333.
[00:00:41]  Jake's Takes, Liv's Gives, Coachella Edition.
[00:00:45]  As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakatansky, Julian Fields, and Liv Acar.
[00:00:49]  Well, folks, we finally did it.
[00:00:52]  We brought the rings of power together in Palm Springs, and the three OG QAA hosts got to meet Liv in person for the first time.
[00:01:01]  It was glorious.
[00:01:02]  Great.
[00:01:03]  How long have I been on this podcast for?
[00:01:05]  I haven't met you guys in person.
[00:01:07]  Yeah, like half a decade or something?
[00:01:09]  Yeah, how long has it been?
[00:01:11]  So, 2021, maybe?
[00:01:12]  Oh my God, that's crazy to think of.
[00:01:15]  But Travis is still in the hospital from it.
[00:01:18]  It literally almost killed him.
[00:01:21]  Yeah, he realized he was like, it was kind of like inception, like he was in a dream within a dream within a dream.
[00:01:26]  Well, he thought Liv was like 48.
[00:01:29]  So he actually came apart.
[00:01:32]  He kind of shattered in front of us.
[00:01:34]  Yeah, unraveled, unraveled.
[00:01:35]  Well, I didn't get to go to the dinner because we were driving in late.
[00:01:39]  But how was that?
[00:01:40]  Was that fun?
[00:01:41]  Did you guys have a good time?
[00:01:42]  It was great.
[00:01:42]  Yeah, it was.
[00:01:44]  Yeah, it was.
[00:01:44]  We definitely, you know, used the QAA dime and you weren't there.
[00:01:48]  It's sad.
[00:01:49]  Next time you have to, you know, participate.
[00:01:51]  Yeah, I'll order a patty.
[00:01:52]  I'll get a patty melt on a QAA dime.
[00:01:56]  A patty melt just sounds like you're eating like a dog turd or something.
[00:02:01]  Why do Americans come up with dishes that just sound like you scraped it off the floor?
[00:02:07]  A melt.
[00:02:07]  I will say it was impressive to find a place that's like more expensive food wise than Vancouver.
[00:02:12]  Oh, yeah.
[00:02:13]  Yeah, it does.
[00:02:13]  Jesus Christ.
[00:02:14]  Because the food was like fine.
[00:02:16]  Like it was good, but like.
[00:02:17]  No, but you're also in Palm Springs, which is like a very wealthy kind of suburban area.
[00:02:21]  And we're going to like one of these places that is probably double the price you'd get for the same quality in LA.
[00:02:26]  Right.
[00:02:27]  Yeah.
[00:02:27]  Not like maybe that much, but still, like you're paying a premium for being, you know, if you're like in the OC or in Palm Springs, like you're going to be paying like kind of a very different standard.
[00:02:37]  If you go by the beach, like, you know, Malibu will be like that.
[00:02:41]  Well, you'll get like really whatever Italian food for the price of what you would be paying upscale Italian food in the city.
[00:02:47]  But, Liv, this was your first jaunt into California, right?
[00:02:51]  It was.
[00:02:52]  Yeah.
[00:02:52]  I regret not staying for longer coming to LA.
[00:02:54]  Although, given how destroyed I was after the festival, maybe heading right back wasn't the worst idea.
[00:03:00]  It is the best idea.
[00:03:01]  Liv definitely had Palm Spring eyeballs, getting off the plane.
[00:03:05]  Wow, what the fuck?
[00:03:06]  Because it is very impressive, Palm Springs.
[00:03:08]  You see the mountains and huge and these rows of palm trees.
[00:03:12]  And you're stepping off the plane from Raintown, British Columbia.
[00:03:18]  Raintown USA.
[00:03:19]  Yeah.
[00:03:21]  It will be soon.
[00:03:22]  Yeah, it will be soon.
[00:03:23]  Soon enough, Raintown USA.
[00:03:25]  I made this joke on Twitter about like it being like my impression of California is that it's just Minecraft biomes.
[00:03:31]  Like it's just a new biome.
[00:03:32]  It's like you're these 64 by 64 squares and each one has a distinct biome.
[00:03:37]  If you go to Big Sur, like up the coast, all the biomes are really close together too.
[00:03:41]  So you'll have like, hey, I'm in the plains.
[00:03:43]  Like, oh, wait, I'm on like big rock facades with like crashing waves and oh, I'm in a redwood forest.
[00:03:49]  Everything is within like, you know, meters of each other.
[00:03:52]  The neighborhoods are kind of like that too, where like just like, Very different, like block by block, like it'll look like two completely different places.
[00:03:59]  But what's nice about Palm Springs is like you'll be in the parking lot of a CVS, like looking at one of the most beautiful vistas you've ever seen.
[00:04:06]  Yeah.
[00:04:07]  Like it is, it's a crazy, it's like just like a crazy like mishmash of like convenience and like pure, like unadulterated nature.
[00:04:15]  I don't want to be insulting to it, but it basically shouldn't exist.
[00:04:18]  It's one of these places where, unless like, unless like water can be massively displaced and essentially misused.
[00:04:25]  Cannot exist.
[00:04:26]  I mean, LA is essentially the same thing.
[00:04:28]  A fake lagoon.
[00:04:29]  Yeah, we don't have our own water.
[00:04:31]  Like, we just don't have the water for anything that's happening in California.
[00:04:35]  We're a fake lagoon.
[00:04:37]  Yeah, I was even like standing, there's a big grass field.
[00:04:40]  We took like the shuttle from our hotel to Coachella.
[00:04:43]  And like, there's this big grass field that like it sends you to.
[00:04:46]  And I'm just talking to my friend about like, how much water do you think needs to be maintained for this just grass field?
[00:04:52]  Like, it must be, I mean, like it's just absurd.
[00:04:54]  Like, it's what is, how much of a public good is it?
[00:04:58]  To have this field be authentic grass.
[00:05:00]  Yeah.
[00:05:00]  And in the summer, you need like an ankle high, like building that covers all of the grass so that it can survive like the heat.
[00:05:07]  Right.
[00:05:07]  You need to create like a miniature hothouse for each blade of grass.
[00:05:11]  Yeah.
[00:05:12]  I was disturbed because it was not an especially hot weekend either.
[00:05:15]  It was like 27 to 30 Celsius.
[00:05:18]  No, it was incredibly like temperate for the time of year.
[00:05:22]  Yeah.
[00:05:22]  We lucked out in that regard.
[00:05:24]  There was a sense in which it felt like a very, it felt like a fake city partially because it was just exactly how California is portrayed in the movies.
[00:05:31]  That main kind of highway where it's got the really long palm trees and then the scenic, you know, mountain in the background.
[00:05:38]  Yeah, it's kind of like if Pasadena had vistas, you know, and Pasadena is used as like every town in the USA.
[00:05:43]  And in movies, of course, that means a whole like class notch above reality.
[00:05:49]  But this is like that plus, you know, just being surrounded by these massive mountains.
[00:05:54]  And there's some incredible like hiking trails and stuff like that where you see like mountain flowers, butterflies, you ascend to like.
[00:06:02]  A fucking waterfall that you can bathe in.
[00:06:05]  You know, I mean, there's some stuff around Palm Springs that is truly amazing, but like that main kind of flat land where the city itself is, I mean, that place should have been baked off the map like long ago.
[00:06:17]  Yeah, there's something oddly like it's very beautiful.
[00:06:20]  Like in Vancouver, it's very beautiful as well, but it feels less fake.
[00:06:24]  There's something oddly fake about Palm Springs to me.
[00:06:27]  No, Vancouver would exist.
[00:06:29]  Like it is a vibrant place with plenty of its own water.
[00:06:32]  Yeah, like it had a population, I believe the The lower mainland had like 700,000 indigenous people approximately before it was colonized by Europeans.
[00:06:42]  Like it's a geographically very sensical location to have a lot of people at.
[00:06:47]  Palm Springs, it's like, no.
[00:06:49]  And I'm no specialist, but yeah, Palm Springs would be like a migratory stopping point, maybe if it was being occupied by animals during a certain part of the year.
[00:06:58]  But sticking around there during part of the year where it becomes just the hottest you've ever fucking experienced, like the atmosphere itself feels like an oven, is a totally different story.
[00:07:10]  Yeah, and the history is also strange because it's very like old gay money, like people who survived the AIDS crisis and came out to be like, you know, C executive at Apple or something.
[00:07:22]  I'm assuming you did the gay sex resorts there?
[00:07:25]  Of course, every single one.
[00:07:26]  That's what I say.
[00:07:27]  Yeah, of course.
[00:07:28]  Coachella, quote unquote, right?
[00:07:31]  I see Jake's new mustache.
[00:07:32]  I see Jake's new way of being.
[00:07:35]  They wouldn't let me in with that one.
[00:07:39]  They just give you a little glue on one.
[00:07:44]  It was like back in my 20s, you would show up at the club and they'd be like, no sneakers.
[00:07:48]  You'd have to go figure out something else.
[00:07:50]  This time, there was like, hey, no clean shaving.
[00:07:52]  You need a stash to get in here.
[00:07:53]  Yeah.
[00:07:54]  Liv, did you go to, did you try In and Out Burger?
[00:07:57]  I did not.
[00:07:58]  I don't even know if there is one in Palm Springs.
[00:08:00]  I feel like there is, but maybe I'm wrong.
[00:08:02]  I think there is.
[00:08:03]  I'm not wrong.
[00:08:04]  Did you go to Agua Caliente, the casino in Palm Springs?
[00:08:07]  I did not, no.
[00:08:09]  Yeah, casinos, there's something horrifying to me about a casino.
[00:08:12]  Really?
[00:08:12]  Especially one in Palm Springs.
[00:08:14]  Yeah, no, especially, yeah.
[00:08:16]  But it's like your favorite streams, except older people and they get to smoke cigarettes.
[00:08:19]  Yeah.
[00:08:22]  You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.
[00:08:26]  For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.comslash QAA.
[00:08:34]  Travis, why is that such a good deal?
[00:08:36]  Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
[00:08:44]  For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
[00:08:50]  That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager.
[00:08:58]  With Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
[00:09:03]  It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
[00:09:06]  Travis, for once, I agree with you.
[00:09:08]  And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com/slash QAA.
[00:09:13]  Well, that's not an opinion, it's a fact.
[00:09:15]  You're so right, Jake.
[00:09:16]  We love and appreciate all of our listeners.
[00:09:19]  Yes, we do.
[00:09:19]  And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe?
[00:09:23]  That's not true.
[00:09:24]  The part about me crying, not me being grateful.
[00:09:26]  I'm very grateful.