Custom Video Creator Miss Whitney Morgan

Giantess, Fembot, Wedgies, Bimboification. Whatever your fantasy is, Custom Video Creator Miss Whitney Morgan will fulfill it. We talk the wide world of kink, buying 54 pies and her most interesting requests. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and it’s White Christmas vs. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer as we countdown the Top 5 Christmas Songs of All Time.

Miss Whitney Morgan: 01:28

Pointless: 30:33

Candle of the Month: 45:32

Top 5 Christmas Songs: 52:18

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Interview with Kink Custom Video Creator Miss Whitney Morgan

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, custom videos and Christmas songs,

Miss Whitney Morgan 0:20

for example, the giant test you want to have a shrinking you want to have eating. You want to have feet stepping on them. You want to have, you know, breast mothering or ass mothering. 2400 for three models, two camera men and 5054, pies, plus cleanup. I think it is crazy if any girl does not want to have their feet worship like that is top tier. Let me sit back you massage and worship my feet all damn day long.

Nick VinZant 0:52

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because whether it's wedgies, giantess, Bimbo, ification, whatever you're into she's made a video for it. This is custom video creator, Miss Whitney Morgan. When I look at this from an outside perspective, I had no idea a lot of this stuff existed. Surprise.

Are you surprised by it?

Miss Whitney Morgan 1:39

I'm surprised by the fact that I find out something new and interesting. Still, to this day, even got some new customs last night that I'm like, I How is this? Okay? This is a thing, alright? So I'm amazed by being able to still find something new and interesting. Do

Nick VinZant 2:01

they all have anything similar when we talk about like giantess or wedgies or bad breath Bimbo, focation, these kind of things? Is there something that seems to the

Miss Whitney Morgan 2:11

one thing that I would say does tie it all together is the psychological aspect of it, where most fetishes, not all, you know, all them, they are developed during like puberty kind of stage. So when you're kind of becoming aware of your sexuality, something here, something there, sparked it. They stuck it, stuck in the back of your head, and from there on out for the rest of your life, either you already knew I like feet or, you know, you watched 50 foot woman when you were pre teen, and now all of a sudden, you are really into Amazonian women when you start, you know, yeah, progressing into your sexuality, that seems to be the biggest aspect of it. I mean, I have had fans tell me all the way back to remembering what they were like five years old that something hit them. One example was his teacher made him carry her shoes back innocently after recess, and he got caught have a little sniff. And instead of her going, don't do that, she was like, it's okay to be curious. And was very, you know, motherly towards him, and didn't humiliate him for it. And from there on out, he developed a foot fetish.

Nick VinZant 3:27

It seems like it's more. It's not really about the thing, necessarily. It's about the psychological aspect related to that thing. And

Miss Whitney Morgan 3:37

it is, it is weird, but it happens more to men than it does women.

Nick VinZant 3:43

I don't ever want to sound judgmental about any of these things, but I'm fascinated as to the why. Like, why did that? What is it about some of these? So let's kind of get into them. Um, no, no, particular order, giantess and shrinking.

Miss Whitney Morgan 4:00

The shrinking aspect is one thing where I use some sort of magical power or ray gun to shrink them down as kind of a power control thing, where I am, I'm controlling them. I'm overpowering them. I am, well, we can't reuse really use the word force in our content anymore, but I'm forcing them to become something that I can toy with and make mine like, you know, a little pet or a little tiny man to eat. Toss around, throw in my mouth. Stomp on, squish.

Nick VinZant 4:41

It's about control. A lot

Miss Whitney Morgan 4:42

of it's about, yes, about control. For more of the the mean giant tests, um, there's also gentle giant tests, where you're kind to them, you're loving to them. Um, it's almost like a maternal thing, where you're, you're playing with them. Want them to be your little pet forever, or you are eating them so they them become part of you. I have one custom client that he calls every single freckle on my chest, a tiny guy that I've eaten. So every single time I consume one, another freckle pops up on my chest as a trophy, basically freezing

Nick VinZant 5:22

or getting stuck in places, because I was looking, like, at some of your videos, just the thumbnails and like, it shows you getting stuck in, like a window sill or getting frozen. Like, what

Miss Whitney Morgan 5:32

are those ones? Those are kind of controlling for the viewer, because you are in a situation where you are very vulnerable, and they can do anything they want to you.

Nick VinZant 5:44

Oh, that makes a little bit sense. Is there certain things they want you to, like, Okay, you get, you get stuck in certain situations, or is it? How does that work? I mean,

Miss Whitney Morgan 5:53

think of the mean, step brother, I'm stuck. So now you're stuck in a situation where that that your step brother could do anything he wants to. So it doesn't really matter too much as to where they're stuck. Um, like, I've been stuck in Windows. I've been stuck under the bed. The window seems to be a really popular one, because I can, you can get angles of both my front side hanging out of the window, or either way. I mean, most of them, my front side has been hanging out of the window, the back sides hanging inside the house still. So that gives access points to both, whereas with the stuck under the bed, stuff you're really only seeing like the bottom half, same with like washing machine and dryers or other two popular spots to get stuck. Dishwasher too. Was another one,

Nick VinZant 6:43

the getting stuck. Now, did that kind of go mainstream a little bit? Because I feel like a lot of it's

Miss Whitney Morgan 6:49

in porn now, because it's a good lead into, Oh, she's stuck. Do

Nick VinZant 6:55

some of these kind of more custom, more niche requests, do they make it to mainstream? Or do some of them? No, they kind of just stay where

Miss Whitney Morgan 7:05

they are. I mean, foot fetish has become extremely popular in mainstream. They are. You see a lot more big name studios, uh, really focused, not focusing, but throwing feet into certain sexual positions just to show them off. You see a lot of girls not flat footed. They're pointing their toes a lot or showing off their arches or souls and whatnot. So I do see a lot of that getting put into there as well. That kind of number one I did, that's the number one fetish I see thrown into porn a lot,

Nick VinZant 7:40

they're kind of catering to it without specifically catering to it

Miss Whitney Morgan 7:43

exactly. And I mean, that's a lot of things for like fetish content as well. You don't want to you might want to have one main focus point, but you want to pepper in little things as well to kind of cater to everybody in that fetish again, for example, the giant test. You want to have a shrinking, you want to have eating you want to have feet stepping on them. You want to have, you know, breast mothering or ass mothering. When

Nick VinZant 8:06

we talk, I know we mentioned it briefly, but just to follow up a little bit, when we talk about the vore that's eating things, yeah, are they wanting you to eat something specific, like, do they? Is it them?

Miss Whitney Morgan 8:16

You eat them?

Nick VinZant 8:17

Oh, I didn't know that.

Miss Whitney Morgan 8:19

It's like point of view. Like, if I was holding a little tiny guy right here, right now and then having him literally on my hand, typically shop, I shoot him with a GoPro. Oh, where? Yeah, I would be eating them. Or I do have use, like, little tiny figurines and whatnot, if it's a kind of a fly on the wall, third person view,

Nick VinZant 8:38

oh, I didn't realize it was always a person. I thought it was just like food or something I do

Miss Whitney Morgan 8:42

have, and that's more of the eating kind of mukbang mouth fetish kind of a thing like I do have a custom to shoot later today that wants me to eat oatmeal, very grossly, loud, open mouth, showing it my teeth, that kind of burping with it, that kind of more rudely. I guess what you wouldn't really do in real life be rude and open mouthed and making a mess. But, yeah, but more eating food stuff is there are various food fetishes and eating fetishes, and mukbang is the one where you have everything, and you're more of a sampling. And then there's space stuffing where you just throwing it all in,

Nick VinZant 9:29

I guess, if you're going to want, I know what we were talking about, a little bit either. Like, if you want to see something eaten in a gross way, like, oatmeal has to be up there on that list of like, oh, I don't really want to see somebody eat that

Miss Whitney Morgan 9:40

pudding's another good one too. You want to drip down. Oh,

Nick VinZant 9:44

cottage cheese. Oh,

Miss Whitney Morgan 9:46

I didn't think of that one.

Nick VinZant 9:47

Oh, like, I don't want to see people eat that normally, be honest. But whatever, that's your thing.

Unknown Speaker 9:54

Do your thing.

Nick VinZant 9:55

Whatever floats your boat. Um,

Miss Whitney Morgan 9:58

bimbo.

Nick VinZant 9:59

Vocation. I have no idea what that

Miss Whitney Morgan 10:03

is, um, kind of more of your ditzy valley girl kind of aspect to it, where you're basically like a mindless sex doll. So the BIM of vocation typically goes from being a tomboy, more dominant self, assuring female, where you know you wouldn't want to dress in all pink, have giant tits and Dick sucking lips, to the point where you slowly have your mind melt, and you become a mindless sex doll, um,

Nick VinZant 10:47

robots and Fembot that seems to be picking up.

Miss Whitney Morgan 10:52

That's also another control thing, because typically the Yeah, I do a lot of robot fetish, it's really hard to do because it's monotonous. So it feels like you're feels like you're doing the same thing over and over again, and you shouldn't. You should be switching it up. But it's a lot of repetition as the FEM bot malfunctions, and a lot of times it'll start as like a normal person, an Android, maybe your maid service, and she malfunctions in some way, shape or form, and reverts to a sex bot. So again, another power control where the female, as the femme bot, is there to please and service the male

Nick VinZant 11:37

wedgies,

Miss Whitney Morgan 11:39

which is just fine. I think a lot of that reverts back to the guys being bullied when they were younger. I do have a constant custom client that has me and other girls dress up as school bullies, and then we beat him, beat him up, POV and pretend to pour his lunch on top of them, and inevitably, wedging him. So I always have like, Man panties, tighty whiteies, and we yank him over the screen to show like we're wedging the viewer. A lot of so a lot of that goes back to being bullied. And I think maybe that, if they were bullied back in the day, watching two girls do it to each other is maybe a comfort thing.

Nick VinZant 12:28

Is there generally, kind of what I would consider to be like mainstream sex involved in these there's like, No, it's not really,

Miss Whitney Morgan 12:38

I personally not do anything that would be considered mainstream sex in my content. I mean, I don't even really get naked in the vast majority of my content. That's

Nick VinZant 12:51

interesting to me in the sense that, like, it's something that's sexual, but not sexual. A good way of putting it. Is there a Have you ever had any insight into, like, why somebody would be attracted to a non sexually attracted to a non sexual thing.

Miss Whitney Morgan 13:06

For instance, I do have some foot fetish fans that do not want to see even the legs they want, like leggings all the way down to your ankles, so it focuses more on the feet, and when that is your certain thing, that you, you Coven, you objectify, and you, I don't want to say, require it to come, but it's up there in something that this is, this is all you want to think and focus on in order to make yourself Come, that you don't want the distractions from other things.

Nick VinZant 13:42

That's got to be hard. I feel like is this. I feel like this would be a difficult thing for people to kind of exist with in judgmental society.

Miss Whitney Morgan 13:52

Most certainly, I will say, Thanks to that, though, because that means most fetish contact is not as pirated as stereotypical vanilla porn, because they do have more of a sense of loyalty to those of us that want to learn, want to listen, that are open and understanding about it. You know, it almost makes them feel like they're cheating.

Nick VinZant 14:17

Yeah. Are they like? What do people say to you when they request one of these, first

Miss Whitney Morgan 14:23

always starts off with, do you shoot custom videos and no other detail.

Nick VinZant 14:30

They don't. They don't want the judgment.

Miss Whitney Morgan 14:31

They don't want the judgment. And then it'll be a very vague email after that, when I say, give me the information. And then I normally get up. Well, this might sound really weird, but like, Honey, it doesn't. I said the ones that I reject are the ones that I say are weird. I

Nick VinZant 14:51

want to get into some of the ones that you reject, right? Because that's gotta be really, really fascinating. Um, bad breath. I don't get that one. They just want you to have a. Yeah,

Miss Whitney Morgan 15:00

it's a girlfriend experience, kind of thing, like a dominant well, it can go either way, whether it's like a nice just Good morning babe, kind of thing, rolling around in bed. So more of that's more of a girlfriend experience. There are a lot of those that are very normal day to day, things like hair, washing, shaving, that are more of a you know, a lot of cam models get more of these are more of a connection with a girl for their day to day life. So it's virtual girlfriend kind of an experience. But

Nick VinZant 15:37

are you? Are you interested in any of the things that you do? Like, is it your jam in any way? Without you don't have to get any specifics. But Are any of these your jams? Oh, yeah,

Miss Whitney Morgan 15:50

I definitely have a big handful of them. Like, I love tickling. Is a big fetish of mine. I love being a lead. Take a lead where I get to or tick Aler, where I'm the one tickling somebody. It's just a new year. You have to smile when you're being tickled. It's like a forced adrenaline and euphoric, kind of a rush and boost serotonin, and you're getting some exercise in it. Um, I think it is crazy, if any girl does not want to have their feet worship like that is top tier. Let me sit back. You massage and worship my feet all damn day long. So that just blows my mind. When I get a lot of girls guys emailing me, saying, Help. I don't know what to do. My girlfriend isn't into this. Do you have any advice? That's definitely a big thing, choking I am out into some breath play and asphyxiation, receiving and giving I do, like both switch with bondage as well. I mean, I guess some fairly vanilla stuff is spanking. How

Nick VinZant 16:55

much, like, I would say, for, like, a custom video, like, how much do you charge for one?

Miss Whitney Morgan 16:59

I mean, it really varies base base rate, no camera person, no special effects, no extra talent, just me, myself and I tripod. Basic edits is $10 a minute, and then it goes up from there, doubles in price. If you want a another model, um, I charge for a cameraman. If you want someone charge, obviously for a bondage rigor, if you want me tied up for anything,

Nick VinZant 17:26

what was like the most expensive one you ever did? 2400

Miss Whitney Morgan 17:29

for three models, two cameramen and 5054, pies, plus cleanup.

Nick VinZant 17:43

What were you doing with the pies? Oh, just putting them in each other's faces.

Miss Whitney Morgan 17:48

Yeah, each other's faces, tits, asses. I wanted to be the ultimate Pie in the Face queen and I had two other co stars that we basically a pie fight, but very specifically with the pies, very specific brand of pies as well that have, I guess, the best quality of cream ratio And sticking ability they want it specified where you slam the pie, you twist it so the crust comes off of the aluminum, and then pull it and then wants to watch it slowly drip off. But yeah, 54 pies was one hell of a mess, and so careful the next day, because we did do it on trash day.

Nick VinZant 18:41

Why 54 like, why not 55 or 50?

Miss Whitney Morgan 18:45

Uh, well, they came in a case, well, six, no, they came in cases of six.

Nick VinZant 18:51

Oh, okay, that makes sense, right? Like, so you get so many, yeah, so 54

Miss Whitney Morgan 18:54

or 60 I, yeah, I had to buy them from, like, a catering service company.

Nick VinZant 19:00

What did you tell them? Like, I just need 54 pies. Don't ask me any questions.

Miss Whitney Morgan 19:04

Fourth time going in there and buying and each time it got went up in the amount of pies. So I told them I was a photographer and we were doing a trash the dress shoot. That was the first thing I could come up with on the fly. So that's what

Nick VinZant 19:21

always fascinates me about these kind of things. Is like, but how do you do this in the real world without something like, Well, you gotta get 54 pies. That's a lot of pies. What was the brand of pie? Do you remember the brand of pie chef Pierre,

Miss Whitney Morgan 19:32

which, for my understanding, is the generic mass production quality of Sara Lee pies.

Nick VinZant 19:43

Do you get the sense like, are a lot of these things, your content and others like it is the only out for these people, because I couldn't imagine that this person has a relationship where he's regularly like, hitting his significant other with pies.

Miss Whitney Morgan 19:59

No. Yeah, most of them reach out to us. Again. I get a lot of emails from guys confessing that their girlfriends, wives, partners, are not into what they're into. So seeking talent out like me and others is the one and only way they're able to satiate that fetish. I mean, if there's anything I can recommend to them to try to break the ice with a significant other, I do my absolute very best and hope that they are able to make that connection, to make their life more fruitful. But, you know, some people are just close minded and don't care. I mean, that's kind of an outlandish one. So I could see most women, like, no, absolutely not. But I mean, like little things like tickling and foot worship, face sitting little things. And I'm like, there's a way to make let her at least try and, you know, see if y'all can work on that relationship.

Nick VinZant 20:55

Um, are you ready for some harder slash, listener submitted questions? Sure. Most popular request,

Miss Whitney Morgan 21:01

beaten all variations, beat feet, beat and chastity.

Nick VinZant 21:06

Most interesting request, like, Oh, that was, ooh, not judgmental, just like, Oh, that was I. That was an interesting request, besides the pie one, I feel like it's gonna be pretty hard to beat the pie one. I

Miss Whitney Morgan 21:20

have one where he wants to be transformed into a horse.

Nick VinZant 21:26

And that's it, like he doesn't want anything to be done to him once he's a horse. He just wants to be transformed for

Miss Whitney Morgan 21:31

dramatic effect. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 21:32

okay,

Miss Whitney Morgan 21:33

I am a this is it's interesting because I don't quite understand the psychological aspect of it, and it is something that I've never received from anyone else. The content from a previous one does sell, but I never get any feedback. I want feedback. I want more information. I want to know what's going on. That is the like he has sent me some like artist renderings of, you know the the progression, but he is a innocent male coming to hang out with me, a cowgirl, farm girl on the farm. And I tell him he's never leaving by this I magically start to transform him into one of my ponies, my horse by milking him. And with each stroke, he be more and more and more like my pony, my horse until he drops to all fours, and slowly his body changes. And upon coming, he is nothing but a brainless animal to me. So he stays forever on my farm.

Nick VinZant 22:50

It's so specific,

Miss Whitney Morgan 22:52

yeah, that is one that was very specific, but has always stuck out is, I want to know why

Nick VinZant 22:59

is does he view the being turned into a horse as a punishment or as a reward? A little bit

Miss Whitney Morgan 23:06

of both, because he likes humiliation and degradation, degradation as he turns into it. But then that's kind of a dominance thing is, well, now you're my pony. Now I own you. Now you're never leaving. You're fine. Which a lot of the femdom stuff, a lot of the femdom stuff kind of really goes into that where I'm going to humiliate you, I'm going to put you in chastity, I'm going to peg you, I'm going to basically dehumanize you. But in the end of everything, you're my pet. You're my slave. I covet you, I keep you. So it's a privilege to be, you know, have to serve me or be my entertainment. This

Nick VinZant 23:44

isn't directly one of our questions, but it hints at it like, what is somebody then think when they, like the electrician comes to your house, or like a plumber comes to your house and like, Oh, what is all this?

Miss Whitney Morgan 23:54

So I have a very openly Christian exterminator, and he let me know this information like, I don't know if he had any idea, but was talking about how his underage at the moment, son, like he was distraught, had been peering out of the window and watching porn from the neighbor's house because the neighbor left their windows open, and they seem obsessed with it. And now he is of age, and he works for his dad's company, so he comes here is where I typically store lights, rocks. I have this entire wall set up for like a BDSM Gunton look. I have a five foot teddy bear in a corner. I have a giant bunny head in my closet, a Teletubby comes to. That are sticking out, because I have so much in there, it's pouring out. Um, so I'm sorry I asked that they don't bother in this room. My husband, one day, let them kind of go willy nilly through the house on their own. They came in here. They still come every three months. It's a lot more quick, and we do the job and get the out. So there has yet to have to be a serious explanation. I am lucky that my husband does most of the plumbing and electrician work. Because the last time the electrician was here, I was editing adult content, and he definitely heard some of it, because I didn't realize he was in the other room. I thought he was out of his truck, whoops. And then told me, Don't worry, I'll do the the work with the wire, with the power live, because you are obviously doing something right now, and I don't want to interrupt you, so he knows. And here's a real good one. I hadn't even, it hadn't even been too I'm not even, actually, I don't think it's been that was an entire month living here and I had lightning strike my house. I was not home at the time and had started a small fire. Neighbors didn't even know one of them yet. I think we just exchanged numbers. That was it. That was all neighbors called the fire department. They broke in through one of the bathroom windows, which is very small, and since, quote, unquote, the little guy in so I'm wondering why all of these because I have five firemen standing around me. It's pouring rain at this point. I'm freaking out. You know, luckily, nothing was damaged. I had a million calls from all the neighbors they were coming over. I have five firefighters, including the little one, all around me, asking me if I'm going to be okay. Do you want us to stay here with you until your husband gets home? And humiliating the little guy who was yeah, probably five feet tall, and pull thin so they're making fun of him. Um, they cleared the house. There are muddy footprints in all of the rooms with fucked up shit, and I didn't realize, like, they didn't just let him in. He opened the door and let other ones in as well.

Nick VinZant 27:38

They all came for a look, huh? I now get

Miss Whitney Morgan 27:41

waves from them because I live two blocks from the fire department, which wonderful. They were here in 30 seconds. So my house was burned down, but I can't

Nick VinZant 27:51

wait. Now they all know exactly who you are. Well,

Miss Whitney Morgan 27:55

purple hair and tattoos, don't really you know, make it blend in.

Nick VinZant 27:59

Is that strange knowing or anything? I don't want to put loaded words in there, right? But like, how do you feel about the idea? Like, you know what people are doing with this stuff? Yeah,

Miss Whitney Morgan 28:11

I'm happy about it. I I don't appreciate getting photos or videos of it, because I know what you're doing. That's cool. You can email me and tell me, Hey, which I used to get a sneeze? Because that was one of the first things you asked about me a few weeks ago. I used to get a sneeze client that would let me know down to the second, what part of the clip was his pop shot. I'm like, You know what? That's actually good knowledge. At first you might feel like, but then when you think about like, well, this is really good information, because now I know specifically what you guys are looking for. So when I get messages back saying, you know, when you did XYZ, that was, that was perfect. I love that. That was the best spot. Oh, I explored everywhere, blah, blah, blah, whatever you know connotation you want to put it in. It helps me make better content in the long run. Because I'm like, oh, okay, I should do more specifically that. That's what you guys like. Let me integrate more of that and not focus on other stuff that you obviously didn't message me about so you don't care about that's pretty much

Nick VinZant 29:15

all the questions we got. Is there anything that we you think that we missed, or anything like that?

Miss Whitney Morgan 29:19

I don't know. Again I shoot everything except

Nick VinZant 29:23

set balloons, except balloons. So when people, if people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way they want to all that kind

Miss Whitney Morgan 29:31

of stuff, lots of ways. I am pretty good with my search engine optimization. So typically, if you Google Miss Whitney Morgan, I pop up at least that better, um, Miss Whitney Morgan. Com, Ms. Whitney Morgan on Twitter, because I'm not allowed to have any more characters than that. Miss Whitney Morgan, 3.0 on Instagram, because y'all know how much they love the entertainment industry. Yeah. I mean, I'm on tick tock till they take it down, I'm on threat. Yes, I'm on blue skies, the new fun thing, but all the kids are using

Nick VinZant 30:04

I want to thank Whitney so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media sites. We're Profoundly Pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. And if you want to see some of the things that we talked about, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on December 5 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Are you an easy person to get gifts for?

John Shull 30:41

Yeah, I'm pretty easy. I have a lot of interests.

Nick VinZant 30:44

I have reached a stage where I don't really even want anything. The only thing that I really want is for people to get rid of things. That's the gift to me, is that I'll get you a gift, but in return, you have to get rid of three things in the house.

John Shull 31:01

How does that work out for you? Has that ever been working out? Well,

Nick VinZant 31:05

no, it hasn't worked at all. It's just as shocking to me the sheer amount of stuff that you accumulate over a lifetime. Like, what is all this stuff?

John Shull 31:15

I'm gonna take another angle of that. And actually, as I get older, I'm noticing, especially my wife, God, love her. All the stuff that we, quote, unquote, hoard, a lot of it's coming to use. So I can't, really, can't blame her, you know, I can't, you know, it's I looking at it. I may be the hoarder. Actually, I might be the problem in our relationship. Oh, you

Nick VinZant 31:38

keep stuff. I'll get rid of things. So quick. I can't wait to get rid of stuff

John Shull 31:42

like, I know I keep, like, the things that don't matter, like T shirts, clothes. I'll, you know, blue jeans and any of those type of thing. I'll give them away in a heartbeat. Or if they have a rip in them or something, I'll throw them away. But, you know, action figures, video games, books, I keep pretty much every of every one of those that I've that I've ever owned.

Nick VinZant 32:03

It's hard to get rid of a book like you just feel a little bit dumber if you get rid of a book. I

John Shull 32:12

actually feel kind of smarter when I look at my collection and I see some of the books I've read over the past decade.

Nick VinZant 32:19

It's like an achievement. You have to keep it if you actually read a book, you have to keep that book like there's no way I'm getting rid of a book that I actually spent time to read.

John Shull 32:31

All right, well, I do have some shout outs for some very lucky people. Lindsay, Hey, Michael sun, Nick Eric Green, Daniel Warhol, Jordan, lardon, or it could be Laird, and maybe it's not lard

Nick VinZant 32:46

it's probably Laird, and I don't think you want to be called lardon.

John Shull 32:49

Uh, Hussein, Haji, Jocelyn, June, Brett. Dicke, sure, sure. He never, Brett. She never. Got made awful

Nick VinZant 33:01

whatsoever for him. Yeah.

John Shull 33:05

Actually, a great guy. So he, you know, good guy.

Nick VinZant 33:08

Oh, do you know Dickey Brett?

John Shull 33:10

I do. I do know Brett Dicke, I do.

Nick VinZant 33:13

How does he feel about being named Brett Dicke?

John Shull 33:17

He, you know, he's a very if I had to describe Brett in kind of a couple words, I'd say he's a very well put together nice guy, like, he just goes with the flow. Okay,

Nick VinZant 33:29

how often would you have to be made fun of for you to change your name? Like, where you would go in and actually change your name?

John Shull 33:39

I mean, I so I've never been bullied to that extent. So I don't want to talk for people who have, but I don't think any type of bullying or being made fun of would make me change my name. I just don't think, I don't think I would care enough. Oh,

Nick VinZant 33:52

I think that you probably would if I if it came up in every conversation, I would probably consider changing my name.

John Shull 34:00

What bothers me as an adult is people still can't get my name right the spell it. I'm like, It's not that hard. It's five letters.

Nick VinZant 34:09

I mean, if you were just if I didn't know your name and you said my name is John Shaw, I wouldn't know how to spell it.

John Shull 34:17

Well, first I'd probably slur my words, so I probably sound like I'm saying Jim Shaw.

Nick VinZant 34:22

Shaw, yeah, dude, I don't know how to spell Shaw.

John Shull 34:27

I mean, I think I still have you on my phone as Nick Van Zant,

Nick VinZant 34:30

right? You already have my name correctly. My name is really easy. It's VinZant. Vin Zan, and people misspell that all the time. Shawl is a harder name to spell than VinZant, I

John Shull 34:41

think just because you have the at the beginning of mine, anyways, no one cares. Let's see COVID Haddad, Jack bogaris, Leo Armand and Kelly stoby. Appreciate all of you.

Nick VinZant 34:56

Solid, solid. Kelly, female or male. I. Female,

John Shull 35:00

by the looks of her Instagram picture, okay,

Nick VinZant 35:04

okay. Kelly's one of those names that like, oh, that can really go either way. Logan, one of my son's names also can really go either way.

John Shull 35:14

Alright. Well, got some dandies here for you. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. I feel like we have to start. I feel like I had to bring this up, just because, you know, we do talk about current events in a fun way. So as we know, there's if you're the president or president elect, apparently you can pardon anybody, including yourself, and do anything and get away with it. So my question to you would be, if you had a family member that you could pardon, we'll say for a less serious crime. So not murder, you know, armed robbery, sexual assault, but it was like a less crime, right, lesser crime. Would you pardon them if you could?

Nick VinZant 35:49

I think if it was the same kind of circumstances in that, okay, did he really do this, or was it kind of all played up as part of a political strategy, get to the Father through the Son. If it was that kind of circumstances, yeah, I would go ahead and do it. And also, the guy's what, like, 80 and he's the President of the United States, like, what are you gonna do to him?

Unknown Speaker 36:15

Yeah? Like,

Nick VinZant 36:16

if you mean, I'm a big believer of play the hand that you were dealt.

John Shull 36:21

Yeah. I mean, listen, we don't have to get into the current political landscape. I just think, if I have that much power to par I'm pardoned. Just the most random people, like, I'm just gonna be, oh, you fucked a turkey. You're pardoned.

Nick VinZant 36:33

I don't know about that. I feel like that one should stick right. Like, that's the kind of person that probably doesn't need to be back in society. But, I mean, there's some stuff that people that's kind of a crazy idea of pardoning someone, that you're just like, You know what? Never mind. Yeah.

John Shull 36:53

I mean, forget you. No, I know you did this, but you're fine. You're good, you're kind of rich, kind of powerful. At one point, you're good. You're good to go. The

Nick VinZant 37:02

only thing that I have to say in a political sense of that, and we are not a show that goes into political but I will wade into it briefly, whatever your opinion is, you just need to be consistent. You can't look at this side and say that that's wrong and then not apply the same logic to the other side, right? So you you gotta be consistent. Pick your position and then stick with it. Don't change it based on the team that you personally root for.

John Shull 37:30

Speaking of teams is a perfect segue. The past weekend, one of the dumbest, and I've said this privately for a long time, one of the dumbest traditions in college football, and I'll call it a tradition, is when an away team takes down a rival, and we'll use Michigan, Ohio State, as a Just

Nick VinZant 37:52

one second, my son is playing Zelda, and he needs to show me his latest achievement. So Okay, I gotta talk to you about later. This is very important. Okay, good. Oh, you got the hyaline trousers? No, I got dick. Oh, the champions thing. All right, go play. Just

John Shull 38:12

for you that can't see this. This is amazing. Hopefully you are watching live on YouTube right now.

Nick VinZant 38:17

He got, man, he had a big accomplishment. Man, that's a great I know that's a great honor as a father, that your son is excited and all he wants to do is show you something. I don't care what it is, I'm gonna look at it and think it's the greatest thing

John Shull 38:29

in the world. I'm with you. I'm not, I'm not, I'm more power to you. You're a great dad. Good for you. Oh,

Nick VinZant 38:35

thank you. Thank you. Okay, finish your finish your thing.

John Shull 38:38

Anyways. Anyways, when you have, I don't know where I left off, but college football, you have a rival, playing arrivals, playing the away team, wins. It happened between Michigan, Ohio State, and then there was a fight broke out, and then somehow, in the fight the Ohio State, some Ohio State Troopers got some mace and started macing everybody because they were freaked out. And this was that wasn't the only college I mean, it happens. I think it's so I'm going to go on another 10 second ran. I think it's stupid. I think students should not be allowed on any kind of playing surface in college sports, basketballs, arenas, college, you know, football stadiums, that it should be banned. Everything should be banned in terms of flag planting, you know, goal post uprooting. Like, it's just, it's too much

Nick VinZant 39:25

like, I completely disagree. I think that everybody should have to reap what they sow. I think everybody should have to reap what they sow. And I think all these announcers like, Oh, my God, there's a fight. Oh, they're fighting on the field. How terrible. After they just spent the last however many hours slamming their heads into each other. Now it's somehow terrible because they're getting into a fight. I just think all of this is the most hypocritical thing in the world that like, Oh no, let's get all these people together. Let's give them a bunch of beer. Let's encourage them to be all rah, rah rah, support their team and. Then just when it's over, like we should just be able to wipe our hands with it and oh my gosh, this is so terrible, right? Like, it's okay to get everybody all riled up, but then when the consequences come, suddenly everybody's sewing up against it. You don't get one without the other. I mean,

John Shull 40:19

that's not a bad that's not a bad, bad way to put it, or a way to look at it. I just, I don't know it just bothers me, but it bothered me before Michigan, Ohio State, it's always kind of like Vanderbilt beat somebody this year, so they drag the goal post two miles into the into a river outside of Nashville or in Nashville, like that's just, it's just, it's excessive, I mean, excessive sportsmanship sometimes goes to go

Nick VinZant 40:44

too far. But I just think that the sport, the powers that be, so to speak, whether that's the teams themselves, the announcers, the broadcasters, whoever you want to put in there, they completely encourage everybody to support their team, to tune in to watch this violent game, and then when it turns around on them, suddenly they're clutching their pearls like it's one or the other. You don't get to have both. I can't believe people acted like people how awful this is. I mean, the same time all the players are loving 18 to 22 year old kids anyway, so the ones

John Shull 41:19

that are to get maced, all right? And I'd like to talk to that state trooper that just started spraying mace everywhere because he thought one of the players was getting murdered on the field.

Nick VinZant 41:26

He thought a player was getting murdered. I was surprised. It would be encouraging just bring Mason out of time, right? Like, oh, that's getting out of hand. And those aren't exactly like, those aren't exactly the kind of people you're going to win in a fight easily with. Like, I feel bad for those police officers that have to go out there. You're like, you want me to do what you want me to. Hold on. I'm gonna I'm the person that's supposed to separate these five 300 pound giant people from these other five 300 pound giant people. And it's just me. Everybody's getting maced. I'm not even, like, waiting. I'm just walking onto the field Mason, anybody I can see, because you're gonna lose that.

John Shull 42:06

You're just walking people are being cordial, and you're spraying them in the face. If somebody

Nick VinZant 42:10

had a press conference and they're like, Officer statinko, why did you mace everyone and be like, well, it was the Ohio State football team about, oh, okay, all right. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. That

John Shull 42:21

fly great, because, you know, it's flown so well, alright, this has caught my eye, because you know how much of a Dwayne Johnson fan I am. Apparently he is wearing a body suit for the live action Moana film. And it got me thinking,

Nick VinZant 42:45

Wait, is this this one, or is this the next one? Is this the film that's currently out, or the film that's coming up? This

John Shull 42:50

is a live action, not a not a, what do they call it an animated movie? That's the live action. Yeah. But it just got me to think, like, if that guy needs a suit, like a muscle suit, a body suit, we're all fucked like we're it's all over, right?

Nick VinZant 43:06

Imagine how much roids he would have to take to get to that point.

John Shull 43:09

He's never done roids. Oh, right,

Nick VinZant 43:13

right, right. That's what, like, it's just one of those things, like everybody's gonna lie to you and then expect, then get mad when suddenly you call them out about telling the truth. Oh no, I can't believe these players are fighting after we got them all hyped up, told them the other team is the enemy and to attack them, and that this game where reputation was on the line, but no, now they're in a fight. Here's your pearls. Here's watching your pearls.

John Shull 43:42

Here's something I don't know. You know, I dabble in social media from time to time, as we all do, it seems like there's been multiple UFO sightings in the last two weeks. And I know they're probably all bullshit, but it makes me wonder if the aliens are getting ready for an invasion.

Nick VinZant 44:04

I think it tells you, I think that this is a sign of how stressed out and stretched to the limits our society has become here in the United States, like people are losing their minds. Yeah, people, people are going off the deep end, and we're in for it.

John Shull 44:21

I think we're yeah for it. I think the term from both sides, not just one side, is, you know, fuck around and find out. So I guess we see what happens. I

Nick VinZant 44:29

think 2025, is the year of us finding out. We've been fucking around on a lot of things, and I think we're about to find out.

John Shull 44:39

Do you want to, like, join our families together. We can live in one duplex,

Nick VinZant 44:44

no, dude, I don't want to live with your family. You got all your in laws moving in. I'm not dealing with that.

John Shull 44:50

Yeah, that's, that's a whole nother story. Um, that's for another time. Uh, that's pretty much it. I was going to bring up about how Elton John apparently lost his eyesight. But I don't know. I don't know if anyone cares so well.

Nick VinZant 45:03

I mean, Elton John does. I

John Shull 45:04

mean he cares. But

Nick VinZant 45:05

that's going to be tough man to have a sense that whole time, and then you suddenly lose it. Like I know that we don't talk about this a lot, but I'll make this really quick so there. So I was born without a sense of smell. My wife is telling me there's, apparently now some procedures where they're having luck restoring people's senses of smells. That would be insane. Hmm, one day have us like, never have had a sense for 30 plus years of your life. And then one day you have it,

John Shull 45:31

speaking of, are we ready?

Nick VinZant 45:33

Is it that time

Unknown Speaker 45:35

watch?

Nick VinZant 45:41

It's time the outlaw candle connoisseur Rides Again. Candle of the month. Zip up your pull up. Get serious.

John Shull 45:54

This might be the most when you're talking about candles. This might be the most consequential, important candle that you're gonna buy of the entire year, the Christmas time candle. It's important because, you know, we're hosting people you want your house to smell good. It's getting cold in most parts of the country or world, unless you're, of course, like in Australia. So anyway,

Nick VinZant 46:19

no idea. What downtime like? Do you have any idea about, like, the other side of the world, like, what season it is?

Unknown Speaker 46:26

No,

Nick VinZant 46:27

it's, I know it's summer somewhere, but I have no idea, not a

John Shull 46:32

clue. Think it's summer in South America, like, I know Africa, South of the equator. I

Nick VinZant 46:37

don't know southern hemisphere, I assume. Yeah. Anyways,

John Shull 46:41

so the candle of the month this month, probably a candle of probably a top three candle for me of all time. Bold has a great name that's over at Bath and Body Works. It's on sale right now. Go check it out. Get the three wick. It's gonna cost you about 17 bucks, plus shipping. It's only there for the winter, and it's called the perfect Christmas

Unknown Speaker 47:08

Whoa,

Nick VinZant 47:09

that's a bold statement to get it back it up.

John Shull 47:11

So if I had to describe it quickly but efficiently, it starts off as a Christmas tree, so you get a little bit of pine, little bit of, like, starchy pine, like, it doesn't hit you, but it kind of just flows over things. Then you're gonna get some, then you're gonna get some cinnamon after that, you know, maybe, like, like, kind of a sweet smell, like a, like a nutmeg spice, cinnamon spice type smell, and then you're gonna, then it sues off, and it ends with, like, some, I almost want to call it candy, but it's supposed to be like, Marshmallow, and it's just it takes you through like, like, the best parts of Christmas time. Which are, you know, Christmas trees, winter food, sugar, marshmallows, cake or pie, everything.

Nick VinZant 47:58

It's delicious. That's what I was going to say is, it sounds like it takes you through the Christmas journey of preparing for Christmas. Oh, Christmas is kind of here. You're making cookies, you're making the food. And now it's Christmas Day,

John Shull 48:09

and it was, you know, it comes in a red glass, so once you burn through it, you can always, you know, the glass can be reused for, you know, throughout the season, you can put other candles in it, you know, like I just started doing where, literally, I'm taking candle wax. When the candle gets down to a certain point, right? The wax isn't usable anymore because the wick is it's too short, so it won't burn, like that little bit of wax the bottom. So scrape it up. And after you do that, after five or six candles, you have enough to burn for maybe five or six hours. You know, another candle out of that wax. So that's what I've been doing.

Nick VinZant 48:47

So the part of the show, I would like to remind people that John has had sex with a woman he claims at least twice. He has two children. He has known a woman intimately. Has he satisfied or disappointed her most likely one of those. My money's on one. My money's on one more than the

John Shull 49:07

other. Yeah, it's, it's one of those.

Nick VinZant 49:09

It's definitely one of those.

John Shull 49:12

Let me tell you that, you know, it's not always happy in my house. Um, so,

Nick VinZant 49:16

but when you start this candle here, okay, right? When you say it transition smells is that through as it burns through the entire candle, or just as it's burning. So let's say you're gonna light it for an hour. You'll get all three of those smells in the hour. You have to wait for the candle wax to, like, burn down. You get it in segments, or you get it

John Shull 49:37

as it flows. Yeah, no, you get it as a flows, not You're not like it's not going to go through in an hour. But, you know, I was talking to someone probably a month or so ago about candles because, you know, I really think we should copyright this thing, normal cup, copyright this, but whatever candles are, kind of like records, like most records, take you through a story. Through a journey, candles are the same way, okay? And yes, I have at least had you know love twice. That's a fact. So have

Nick VinZant 50:12

you? Have you ever become aroused shopping for candles or looking at candles? Have you ever gotten a slight chub?

John Shull 50:21

No, not at all. But I will tell you that if any of you out there that are listening see me in the wild at a candle store and you come up to me and call me the candle, kind of candle, kind of sewer, I don't know what I would do. I'd probably start crying.

Nick VinZant 50:36

It would probably be the high I would assume that would be a highlight of your life, marriage, children being recognized as the candle connoisseur. What if they asked you for advice? What if they didn't just receive you, but they said, Hey, John, I know you're the candle connoisseur. I mean, I think I should get

John Shull 50:51

I've had people ask me for like I work in in my personal life. They asked me,

Nick VinZant 50:56

it has to be a random has to be a random person. That's John. What do you think about this? Well,

John Shull 51:01

well, send me a DM, send us messages. We're all we're all over social media. Any of your candle quest? I mean, this is important. This important time of year for candles.

Nick VinZant 51:13

Is there anything that is like as runner up as Christmas to Christmas time is the most important time for candles?

John Shull 51:21

I mean, I can't think of anything on top of my head in terms of, like, new ones. But, I mean, I'm a big pine fan, like piney, like Christmas tree, I would try to find something like that. I mean, think about it, right, what is, what is your favorite? Actually, let me go back two steps. There's a candle called Christmas wrapping paper. Can't remember who makes it, but it literally smells like wrapping paper, like on Christmas morning, like, if you were to walk into whatever room the presents were in, and it has like, that paper smell like, that's nostalgia, like, that's, that's, that's a great smell. Cool. Anyways. Alright, I listen for all of you out there. I could talk candles for days. I could have my own podcast about candles.

Nick VinZant 52:08

You can have a candle connoisseur podcast. I don't understand why it's doing stopping you, besides lack of effort. Yeah, that's

John Shull 52:13

what it is. Lack of effort. Lack

Nick VinZant 52:15

of effort. Okay, everything else, understandable.

John Shull 52:18

You ready for our top five gin? I am ready for a top five.

Nick VinZant 52:22

Gin is so gross. Gin is like the worst. The bottles are the least appealing looking. The name is the least appealing. Like, what do you want? Gin? It just reminds me of, like, gin just seems like leftover alcohol. Like, what do you got at the bottom of this trash heap? Well, we call it gin? No.

John Shull 52:42

I mean, I think I'm a I'm a big fan. Obviously, it's one of my top three liquors, and I enjoy it. I enjoy it nice gin over Scotch or whiskey most days.

Nick VinZant 52:55

Okay, alright. Well, that says a lot. Okay, so our top five is the top five Christmas songs. To number five.

John Shull 53:02

So just for the record, I went with the song, not the person who sings it. Oh, I don't so I don't know if that changes anything, but my number five, I went with rocking around the Christmas tree.

Nick VinZant 53:17

Okay, I got no issues with that. I can understand rocking around the Christmas tree. It's a good song I went with last Christmas by wham, last Christmas,

Unknown Speaker 53:31

yeah, okay,

Nick VinZant 53:33

probably the saddest, popular Christmas song, his last Christmas by wham.

John Shull 53:40

I mean, I know it, but I don't know if I could like if I actually know it. You know what? I mean,

Nick VinZant 53:44

it's hard. It's an emotional journey. Thank you, William, sorry. Okay, number four,

John Shull 53:51

Holly Jolly Christmas. Holly Jolly Christmas. It's the best time of the year. Now go to my house, grab a beer, sit down and let's

Unknown Speaker 54:02

cheer, cheer.

John Shull 54:04

See, there you go. So yeah, Holly Jolly Christmas, my number four. I

Nick VinZant 54:09

don't know if I've ever listened to this full song, but I like this song. It's a good song, White Christmas, Bing Crosby. Bing Crosby, that they like. That's an iconic voice

John Shull 54:23

Christmas Yeah, I would. I've actually had this debate with people, and I don't know if I'm educated enough to have this debate, but I think him, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley are the reasons why Christmas music is what it is today.

Nick VinZant 54:40

I think you could throw in Nat King Cole on that,

Speaker 1 54:43

yeah, for sure. Uh,

Nick VinZant 54:47

Mariah Carey. I would say Mariah Carey has probably been more influential towards Christmas music than any other artist.

John Shull 54:55

I think if I didn't know Mariah Carey, you know, like, not like nowhere, but if, like, I wasn't. Yes, like, with her, like, in terms of seeing her as an artist and things, maybe I'd agree with that, but I don't know why, but she just rubs me in the wrong way. And I don't know why.

Nick VinZant 55:08

I think because you and I are of the generation that remembers that she was pretty out there for a while, like, she had some personal views issues that really kind of like, wow, it's good. You're very talented, because otherwise, what number are we on?

John Shull 55:25

My number three, which is Felice Navidad,

Nick VinZant 55:30

think that's too low.

John Shull 55:31

Feliz Navidad,

Nick VinZant 55:33

that's a great song.

Unknown Speaker 55:35

Yeah, I have

Nick VinZant 55:40

that higher. My number three is easily the funniest Christmas song. Grandma got ran over by a reindeer.

John Shull 55:46

Grandma Got Run Over By reindeer.

Nick VinZant 55:52

You put that on there because you're

John Shull 55:54

from Kansas, that that's kind of up there with the All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Song for me, all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Two Front Teeth. So I have

Nick VinZant 56:08

a son, actually, who lost his two front teeth, and he wants him for Christmas my daughter too. They're destined. They're okay,

John Shull 56:17

uh, alright. My, my, what? Where am I? My number two, so it's a tie, and they're both from shows, so it's, you're a mean one, Mister Grinch and Frosty the Snowman. Okay,

Nick VinZant 56:33

I don't there's not a lot that I would really have a big issue with my number two. All I want for Christmas is you. Mariah Carey,

John Shull 56:41

oh, I left that off. That should be on the list, probably, but I left it off because, like I said, not not a not a big fan. She

Nick VinZant 56:50

can sing, Christmas is her time. She owns Christmas. Turs, sirs, what's your number one? Then,

John Shull 56:57

let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow.

Nick VinZant 57:04

I don't even have that on the list. It's just, it's, I

John Shull 57:07

mean, it's a classic. It's just, you know, and it's, if you know that what I just sang or said, you know the song, and everyone knows that. That quick verse, my

Nick VinZant 57:17

number one is Felice Navidad. I think that's the best Christmas song. It's the most uplifting Christmas song. Yeah? I mean, it's, it's

Miss Whitney Morgan 57:26

globally, it's probably

John Shull 57:29

one of the most popular as well, if not the most popular.

Nick VinZant 57:33

Yeah, I bet it's up there. It might be like the number one overall, globally, really upbeat, happy. I like those. Our American Chris classic Christmas songs are a little bit too slow,

John Shull 57:50

yeah, but mostly I think it's because the crooner made it, made them famous. Good

Nick VinZant 57:54

you have on your honorable mention. I have a ton,

John Shull 57:58

uh, Holly Jolly Christmas, um, Silver Bells, anything. TSO, which, if you don't know TSO, you know, not going to go into it. But what child is, this is one of my more favorites.

Nick VinZant 58:12

What's Tso? I don't know what TSO is. Tran

John Shull 58:15

siber, Trans Siberian Orchestra.

Nick VinZant 58:18

Who do you think wins in a fight Manheim steamroller or Trans Siberian Orchestra.

John Shull 58:26

Well, I've never seen Manheim, but I will tell you there are a couple of kick ass rockers in in TSO, so I'm going to go with TSO,

Nick VinZant 58:37

Okay, keep going with your honorable mention and I'll go.

John Shull 58:41

Alright, I have Mariah Carey on there last Christmas, like you said, Baby, please come home. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Jingle Bell Rock. Jingle Bell Rock, boom, boom, boom. And then I gotta find it, because I can't. I was trying to, I ran out of time. Oh, hallelujah, Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer. And then the song that I have to find real fast because I can't, I can't remember it. Oh, it's Santa Claus is coming to town. Trans

Nick VinZant 59:14

Siberian Orchestra has way more people. Manheim steamroller has six people. Trans Siberian Orchestra has 24 plus 832, 3436 Trans Siberian Orchestra has like 40 plus people. So they could definitely take Manheim steamroller in a ruckus.

John Shull 59:35

How many people are in Manheim steam roller? Six people, but

Nick VinZant 59:38

they play 20 instruments. I would have thought about more than that impressive. I like Trans Siberian Orchestra and Manheim steel Rogers. I wasn't really listening when you were talking. So let me know if I covered any of there. If you already did any of these. Let's consider and finish my drink. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Andy Williams, wonderful Christmas. Time Santa Claus is Coming to Town town and walking around the Christmas tree. Brenda Lee,

John Shull 1:00:05

thought you said you had so many that was like, three.

Nick VinZant 1:00:09

Oh, I thought I wrote them all together. So I thought I had more than I really did. I had like, eight. I try not to make my list too big, right? It's

John Shull 1:00:18

better to be small and compact than big and wild.

Nick VinZant 1:00:21

Don't go tracing waterfalls. That's what TLC said a long time ago, and it's just as two today as it was then. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of Profoundly Pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think is the best Christmas song. John seems to like him a little bit slower. I like a more upbeat Christmas song, like it's gotta be more upbeat and happier for me, less nostalgia, more upbeat.

Sneezing Model Nat and Jasmin

For some it’s a harmless sneeze. For people with a Sneeze Fetish, it’s a massive sexual turn-on. Models Nat and Jasmin create custom content for people who are attracted to sneezing. We talk why people are attracted to sneezing, the different types of sneezes and blowing your nose in public. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Musicians Everyone Likes.

Nat and Jasmin: 01:15

Pointless: 22:32

Top 5 Musicians: 39:30

Contact the Show

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Interview with Sneezing Fetish Models Nat and Jasmin

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, sneezing and singing. And

Nat 0:20

the biggest turn on is that it is a similar to, like an orgasm first

Jasmin 0:27

before this is really bizarre, like, but then I was also thinking, I sneeze every day for free, if somebody wants to pay me to sneeze, hell, yeah.

Nat 0:39

Other requests are just straight up. I just want you to sit there and look at the camera and sneeze and blow your nose.

Nick VinZant 0:44

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guests. This is sneezing, content creators, Nat and Jasmine. You'll hear nats voice first and then Jasmine. So what is it about sneezing? What's it? Why is this a turn on for people?

Nat 1:19

From what I understand the biggest turn on is that it is a similar to like an orgasm. It's like a build up and then that release. Another very good answer is the vulnerability. When you sneeze, you're obviously not in control of what your face looks like. You're not able to convey a sexy look or any you're not controlling what the viewer sees, and the viewer just sees you in your natural, vulnerable state. And for a lot of these guys, that is the turn on.

Nick VinZant 1:59

It's a window into the real you?

Unknown Speaker 2:01

Yeah,

Nat 2:02

basically,

Nick VinZant 2:03

do you feel like you have an unusually good sneeze?

Jasmin 2:07

I've been told it's loud and like, when I say, when I'm just sat in the office at work and I sneeze like it takes people by surprise, basically, because it's just a bit like, whoa. And yeah, it's quite it's quite loud. And then I would say, I've got an aggressive, an aggressive sneeze,

Nick VinZant 2:26

like, how did you get into it? How did you kind of start creating content for this?

Nat 2:31

So I had, most of my content is custom. I have a whole book of ideas that I've wanted to to film and record, but I'm so busy with the custom work that that's basically 90% of my stuff is and I had a fan who had bought some previous work of mine, and he just sent me a message, and he was like, Hey, have you ever heard of this fetish? And at first I thought, like, is he playing with me? Like, this isn't a real thing. And then I looked I looked it up, and I looked into it, and I was like, Oh, wow, this is, this is, like, a real thing. So I made a, I made a custom for him, with me sneezing, and when I wasn't even going to list it for resale, it sold, like, 40 times in one day. And I was like, Okay. And then I guess, because it was out there, I just kept getting more and more requests for it.

Jasmin 3:25

It was really random, but basically I posted a tick tock one day I did two sneezes in this video, and after the sneezes, I just said, Why do I sneeze like a man, and not expecting anything to come from it. And it got loads of like, loads of views, loads of lights, loads of comments, a lot of people saying, oh, Bless you, bless you and stuff. And a lot of people favorite in it as well. And then one day, somebody messaged me on Instagram, and they was like, would you, would you be willing to sell me your sneezes? And I was like, first I thought, this is really bizarre, like, and, but then I was also thinking, I sneeze every day for free, like, anybody can see me sneeze, and if somebody wants to pay me to sneeze, hell yeah, like you can help. So yeah, I started like selling my sneezes to this person, and then they recommended me to a friend of theirs, I think. And then I just kept getting more like messages and things on Instagram and that like requesting sneezes. And in the end, I just decided to set up an only fans, because it's just all in one place, then, isn't it, and people can easily access it, if that's what they want to say, Yeah, I

Nick VinZant 4:54

don't know if I could just like, sneeze all of a sudden. You usually

Nat 4:58

can't, and it's. Funny, because when I do have a sneezing fit, my first thought is, I don't have a camera,

Nick VinZant 5:07

right? Like, if you can't control it, like, Oh, I missed a golden opportunity.

Nat 5:11

So believe it or not, there is something, and I made sure to have it so I could show you. But it's a powder that is like menthol, and it's like all these natural spices and stuff that I'll show you. So when you take it out, it looks like this, and it's just a very finely ground powder. And if you just happen to sniff it a little bit, it will trigger you to sneeze. So

Nick VinZant 5:39

when you get to it right? Like, are you just sneeze one time, and they're kind of doing their thing, and they're trying to time it for right as you sneeze. Or, like, there's

Nat 5:49

been a couple of different requests. So some requests are a little more like your mainstream adults video with the sneezing sprinkled in right. Other requests are just straight up. I just want you to sit there and look at the camera and sneeze and blow your nose. There was, I think, for a 10 minute video at one point, that's all I did, was just sit there, look at the camera, say a few lines that he wanted me to say, and just sneeze. And that was probably one of the hardest videos I've ever made, and took a really long time. 10 minutes took, like, I would say, three hours to film. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 6:30

like, how do you sneak 10 minutes straight? That's got to be really you can't,

Nat 6:33

yeah, you can't. Your eyes start to water and, you know, you're then you start getting, like, you know, mucousy and stuff, and it's hard to talk and stuff. So yeah, you got to take breaks. It's really not an easy an easy video to make. Are

Nick VinZant 6:47

they looking for, like, a specific type of sneeze?

Nat 6:51

So I guess with there is a most there is a popular sneeze. From what I found, no one likes the quiet little, you know, the little demure, girly sneeze, as I call it, they want you to full out sneeze, you know, let it go, loud, messy, yeah, I've had requests to sneeze directly on The camera, like, so there's like, actual, you know, the camera, yeah, it just depends. But mostly, like I said, they don't like the quiet little Dum or sneezes. They want you to go full out. Some

Jasmin 7:35

people like scenarios. So they liked, like, tickling induced sneezes and things. So like, I'd say, use a little feather and tickle my nose, or tickle my feet, or something like that. And they would enjoy watching that, and potentially end the video with either a snot rocket or a nose blow, like just blowing my nose at the end, and that, that would be that really now,

Nick VinZant 8:10

are you, like usually in these are you clothes? Are you not clothed? Some

Nat 8:15

are more mainstream. They want point of view. You know, where it's a more adult, a normal adult themed video, just with the sneezing sprinkled in. I mean, I've had the line, you know, I want you to sneeze directly on my dick. And it was just like, okay, you know, that's, that's what turns you on. Then Sure, that's what I'll that's what I'll do, you know? So it runs the gamut. It could go anywhere from I had one scenario where I was role playing as a teacher, and while the college class is taking their exam, I just am sneezing and interrupting them. That's it. That's the whole video.

Nick VinZant 8:54

Do people kind of are people embarrassed about

Jasmin 8:58

I feel like they are because a lot of people apologize. So when they request something, or when they suggest me to do something, they they'd be like, Oh, I'm sorry. Like, I hope, I hope that's okay, and as if they're asking me for something really abnormal and but it's just sneezing.

Nick VinZant 9:23

To me, that seems like, you know, it's pretty harmless,

Jasmin 9:28

that's what I think it's just, it's just sneeze it like, literally, everybody does it every day.

Unknown Speaker 9:34

Why do you think,

Nick VinZant 9:35

then that there's kind of a stigma behind it?

Jasmin 9:38

Maybe because it is like it is harmless. So maybe that's why people think it's weird to get off on that, because it's just an innocent little thing that everybody does. But maybe they're just scared that people won't get it, but they won't until. Understand why they enjoy watching it and stuff I

Nick VinZant 10:04

don't want to like sound judgmental or make fun of people, right? Because ultimately, like whatever you're into, do you right? Because

Nat 10:10

I have a big saying here and in in my world, we don't yuck on anyone else's yum.

Nick VinZant 10:15

Do you feel like an outlet for people? Because I would imagine that this can't be an easy thing for people to kind of just say, Hey, this is my jam. Oh,

Nat 10:25

yeah. I don't think anyone comes out like in when they're dating someone and, you know, it's like, Oh, hey, by the way, you know, I'm really into when you sneeze. I think it is. It's more of a I feel like it's kind of like how the whole foot fetish used to kind of be something that people didn't talk about, and now you you know, people make jokes, I'm gonna go sell feet picks. You know, that's become more in the mainstream and more acceptable, and I feel like as popular as this kink has is, at least from what I can tell, that this will be something that people will be less and less embarrassed about. But sure i It's definitely an outlet for people who are not comfortable running around telling their significant other, you know what's happening. Could

Nick VinZant 11:16

you do essentially make a whole living just off of sneezing.

Nat 11:22

Oh, god, yeah, absolutely. Well, that

Nick VinZant 11:24

was like a quick yes, huh,

Nat 11:26

absolutely, you could, if it wasn't so hard the setup. The thing, if it came easier to me, I would probably focus on on that, just because I think that someone that is capable of doing it? Yeah, you stand to make quite a bit of money. How

Nick VinZant 11:43

come more people aren't doing it then, right? Like, if it's a gold mine, why isn't everybody rushing

Nat 11:48

the vulnerability? You know, there's a lot of women in general, not just models or performers or entertainers, or whatever you want to call us. Don't like to be seen in any other way, except for our, you know, Prim, beautiful, you know, done up ways. So there's a vulnerability when you're sneezing, right? You're not. I mean, I've laughed at myself at some of the you know, you pause the video, and you get, like, the the outtake, and it's just like, Oh, what is that face I'm making? You know? And to put that out there is, it's hard, you know, it's hard to put yourself to be seen like that, so that. And then, as I said, the third thing, I think, would be just because it is really hard to sneeze for two minutes straight, five minutes straight, 10 minutes straight, it's all it's hard. And I don't, I didn't. I didn't even realize how difficult it was until I made the first video, and it was like, wow, I

Unknown Speaker 12:51

need a

Nat 12:52

break after all of that. You know,

Nick VinZant 12:55

are you ready for some harder slash listeners submitted questions. Sure.

Nat 12:58

Bring them on Are there different

Nick VinZant 13:01

types of sneezes?

Jasmin 13:03

There's pig no sneezing, there's stifles, and there's giant test sneezing. So that's basically like, you just have the camera low down to make you seem like a giant, like from the camera angle. Obviously there's aggressive, aggressive sneezing, spray sneezing. I didn't realize that there was. There's actually quite a few different types of sneezing.

Nick VinZant 13:34

Most popular type of sneeze

Nat 13:36

the loud, obnoxious like no holds barred, sneeze, this

Jasmin 13:42

would probably have to be the pig nose sneeze in. So basically, I just do this. I would just list it like this, just to give a pig nose whilst I sneeze, or a pig nose, a pig nose stifle. So again, it's just, it's the same, so just like this, but instead of like, snips full on sneeze and you just kind of hold it back.

Nick VinZant 14:11

Is that because, like, they want to, they just want to see your nose. They want to see, like, up the nose.

Jasmin 14:16

Yeah, I think that might be, yeah, if they've got, like, a fetish for the nosh doors and stuff. That's probably what I like to see

Nick VinZant 14:24

your most interesting request, like, Oh, that's not to say that it's this or that, just like, oh, that's different in

Nat 14:33

the realm of the ones that I have done. The most interesting one was to combine the sneezing with a tickling and a foot fetish. So that one, that one was, that was a trifecta of fetish.

Jasmin 14:49

Somebody did ask me to sneeze into my armpits, which was okay. So. And but then they said, like, would you, would you maybe grow your hair, like your underarm hair, which I wasn't, I wasn't okay with, like, I was just like, No, I don't want to do that,

Nick VinZant 15:17

but you would have been okay with sneezing into the armpit. It was just like the hair part I

Jasmin 15:21

did, I did sneeze into my armpit, like I after they asked for it, like I did it a few times and but then, obviously, yeah, it got to a point where they did say, like, would you grow your underarm hair? And I was like, no.

Nick VinZant 15:37

How popular would you say? This is I would say it's up there, really,

Nat 15:43

I would say it's up there in popularity, it is still a very taboo. I know it doesn't seem like the thing that would be, but I think because it's something that is so non sexual, yeah, that makes that it's still such a very taboo thing. Whereas you can make the case for, you know, foot fetish or a step mommy fetish, you can, you can see how those things relate with the sneezing, I think it's still so taboo because, like I said, it's just still, I would say 99.9% of the population would never make the leap from sneezing to a turn on right.

Nick VinZant 16:25

Are there other things that kind of go along with this? Like, okay, they like sneezing. They want to see this, this and that. Like, what do people want to see besides the sneeze, so to speak?

Nat 16:37

So there are some, and I have done one or two of these where it's the sneezing and the actual mucus that comes with the sneezing. So there are, there are a sector of of this, fans of this fetish, that are also fans of blowing your nose, or actually watching you blow your nose. I actually did a photo set where it was just photos of me blowing my nose, just with a tissue, holding tissues, blowing my nose in the act of sneezing. So there's also that whole nose and the mucus thing that comes with that too.

Nick VinZant 17:20

So are people trying to, like time their thing right as the sneeze? Because that, to me, seems difficult.

Nat 17:28

So there are certain, yes, there are certain requests to do that. And it is. It takes a lot of camera work, a lot of editing to get it all put together the right way, because it's not as much as I would like to make a video flow and just go, you know, straight through and do the whole 10 minutes most of the time, especially with this fetish that is just, it's not it. That's not realistic. It's not going to happen that way. You know, you're not going to sneeze for 10 minutes straight. And to do the timing right to where you were there finishing while you are sneezing. Yeah, it takes a little, a little movie magic to make

Nick VinZant 18:13

mostly women, mostly men.

Nat 18:14

So my only openly, I actually have two female clients, and one that is openly is particularly the sneeze fetish. Yes, and I just make her sneeze videos, nothing else, just sneezing. That's the only woman I have ever known or ever heard to have this fetish. So do

Nick VinZant 18:40

they ever, are they ever interested in like, oh, we want you to we want you to sneeze, but then stop it. Like, you know, the finger under the nose thing.

Nat 18:46

So it's funny. I actually, you know, when you you are going to sneeze, or you feel like you're going to sneeze, and then it stops, you know, mid sneeze, you don't really stop it on purpose. It just stops. Well, that happens sometimes with me. And it was funny because in one particular video, he had said, Wow, can you do that again? And I was like, I wish I could duplicate that. That was like a natural happening, that was not something that I made happen. But, yeah, they're short. There's people that want you to stop. They want you to go full force. They want you to do the you know, where you you keep like, are going to sneeze, but you don't. There's as many different variations as there are of us human beings. There are as many variations to to this whole fetish i I'm learning.

Nick VinZant 19:35

Do you like? Does anybody? Does anybody? I mean, they're gonna now, but does, does anybody know that you do this?

Jasmin 19:42

Yeah? Like my family, yeah, yeah. And the colleagues that I work with, my friends, my family, yeah, my family were basically the ones who, like, pushed me, like, to do it. Like. After I received that message, off Instagram, off that person, and I went to my brother, well, I told my mama, I went to my brother, and I said, like, someone's asked me for my sneezes, like, I sell sneezes. And he was just, like, do it. Just like, do it sell everything? I was like, Okay, I wouldn't go that far. Um, but yeah. So yeah, people, people are aware my dad, my dad knows about it, and He supports me doing it as well. So yeah, I'm not hiding anything.

Nick VinZant 20:34

Do you ever feel conflicted about it in every way, not to imply that you should or anything like that, but do you ever feel like, should I be doing this? Are you just like, No,

Jasmin 20:46

when, when I was in a relationship, I'm not now, but when I was in a relationship, it was, it was a bit difficult, because, well, in my eyes, I thought it was harmless, like it's just a sneeze at the end of the day, and but the person who I was with didn't appreciate it or want me doing it, because they just saw, like other men, like wanting to buy stuff from me and stuff like that, and they just they didn't agree with that kind of thing. So when I was in that position and situation that was that was quite difficult, and that's why I did end up taking a break from it for a while. But of course, I'm by myself now, so I'll just sneeze away. If people

Nick VinZant 21:33

want to kind of connect with you, they want to get some of your content. They want to learn more. Where can they find it? That kind of stuff. Japanese

Jasmin 21:39

underscore is Tick, tock, and then only fans is Tootsie. It's T, U, T, T, S, I, E, underscore, 29

Nat 21:51

so I am on several platforms, but it's the same name. So if you search trophy wife, Nat all one word, you will find me. I am mainly on many vids, and you will find a lot of my sneezing content on clips for sale.

Nick VinZant 22:07

I want to thank Nat and Jasmine so much for joining us. If you want to connect with them, we have linked to them on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube. And if you want to see some of the things and some of the sneezes that we talk about, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on November 21 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Okay, you don't have to say what, but are you attracted, slash, turned on by something that other people might think is weird? Yeah,

John Shull 22:47

I guess I don't know. I it's, it's hard to it's hard to say if, if, if, it's weird. I guess, because I feel like everybody would say yes to this question,

Nick VinZant 22:59

yeah, but I think there's different levels of it. If you have to think about it, the answer is probably no. I think if you were you would know, like, right away, like, hard Yes.

John Shull 23:12

I think as you get older, there's not much that needs to be done. It just needs to happen at all.

Nick VinZant 23:18

Yeah, it's kind of like, what's the saying about it? Like, even when it's bad, it's still good.

John Shull 23:26

When do you think you hit that age to where that saying like is fully you know, in play, 3231

Nick VinZant 23:36

no like, 17.

John Shull 23:41

That's pretty early for that.

Nick VinZant 23:42

Do you think that 17 year old you or whenever you got your first bite of the cookie, so to speak? Do you think that that version of you would be impressed by current you? Would they look at you now and be like man John, whoo, older John lay in the pipe.

John Shull 24:03

Yes, because I look back on 17 year old John, and I don't know how he ever, you know, had a girlfriend. Ever? I don't know how John, prior to probably 26 ever had a girlfriend, but it happened from time to time, believe it or not, the

Nick VinZant 24:19

first girl I ever kissed laughed at me because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. And I was just like, why is she sticking her tongue in my mouth? And I tried to, like, push it back out with my tongue, because I didn't know what was going on. And she just started laughing.

John Shull 24:38

First girl I ever kissed told me, if I didn't keep kissing her, she's gonna have her brothers beat me up if I didn't kiss her. So when

Nick VinZant 24:45

was that? How old were you? Sounds like you were like, seven.

John Shull 24:51

I think I was 1111, or 12,

Nick VinZant 24:54

okay? Huh? Probably, yeah, probably

John Shull 24:58

too young, right? I mean, at that age. Like, it's, you know, you obviously have no idea what you're doing. But

Nick VinZant 25:05

I just remember, like, my first girlfriend, I think I was maybe in call it seventh or eighth grade, like, I just remember she called me and she's like, you're my boyfriend now. And I said, Okay. And then I never, like, talk to her again, I don't think. And then she broke up with me, like next week.

John Shull 25:24

I remember so Nick and I come from a time for all you youngsters out there, when we had something called AOL, instant messenger.

Nick VinZant 25:32

Oh, you were instant messaging him.

John Shull 25:35

I remember at one point, I don't know, I don't know what night it was, Thursday, Friday, Wednesday, but I remember going down the list of everybody who was online and asking them if they wanted to be my girlfriend.

Nick VinZant 25:49

Did that? How did that? How far down the list did you have to get?

John Shull 25:52

I mean, I think I remember at least one girl that said yes. So

Nick VinZant 25:57

wait a minute, but did you but she didn't see you, or did could she see you?

John Shull 26:02

Yeah, I mean, we you knew, like you knew each other. You went to school with him. I mean, it's not like there were

Nick VinZant 26:07

randos. Oh, okay, what do you in in terms of pursuing the opposite sex? What do you think hurts you more? Your looks are your personality?

John Shull 26:18

Hmm, my looks, I think I have a good personality. I think my personality draws people in, actually, Oh,

Nick VinZant 26:24

mine's like the reverse. I feel like my personality hurts me more than my looks.

John Shull 26:30

I think people just look at me. I mean, I think I have both going for me in a great big world. I think people like big teddy bears, okay?

Nick VinZant 26:37

I keep telling yourself that, keep telling yourself that, uh, results of the poll, not a lot of votes so far, but 100% of people say yes, they are attracted to something other people might think is weird. All right, let's move on. Let's do shout outs.

John Shull 26:57

You know, you've been given the same introduction of shout outs for six years now. All right. Otherwise, you want to

Nick VinZant 27:03

talk about your basement and the weather or baseball or just like, Oh, my God, I

John Shull 27:10

was happy to see that baseball has more followers on social media. No, it's hockey. So, yeah,

Nick VinZant 27:16

right. Like, that's like being, being proud of the being that's like the D student being looking at the f1 thinking that guy's dumb. You're not in the you're not exactly in a great place yourself. Alright,

John Shull 27:29

some shout outs. Ian Hamrick, Logan Tyler. He know Montoya, Lucinda, sing, Mendoza, Dozer, Sean o' Callahan, Catalina Shirley, Tristan, Baker, Natalie, Eichner, uh Rudra Rana, John Ramos and James road.

Nick VinZant 27:55

So wait, was it? Rudra Rana, John, or Rudra is the name and then John Rudra,

John Shull 28:01

Rana, and then John Ramos. Ron

Nick VinZant 28:06

is a cool name. That'd be a good name,

John Shull 28:09

you know, might as well give a few more here. Uh, will Balcombe, Tyler, Howell, Jonah Frayer, and we'll end with a little alliteration here on this episode, Wilson Whitley,

Nick VinZant 28:23

oh, don't hear a lot of W names. Okay,

John Shull 28:27

alright, let's see here. I mean, I feel like we have to talk about this, just because everybody was talking about it. So I'll ask you two questions. You'll probably tell me, give me some smart ass answer. But did you watch the Jake, Paul, Mike Tyson fight? And if you did, were you one of the millions upon millions that had issues with Netflix? No, so you didn't watch it.

Nick VinZant 28:54

I didn't watch it. The only thing that I saw from the fight is Mike Tyson's butt cheeks. Literally, the only thing that I saw from the fight was Mike Tyson's butt cheeks, which three people sent me a video of Mike Tyson's butt cheeks. And I thought to myself, there's no point in watching this. This is the highlight that was the funniest thing that I've ever seen in my life. I think, like just a random shot of Mike Tyson's butt cheeks for no reason whatsoever.

John Shull 29:19

It was, uh, so for those of you that probably know what that is, or have seen that circulating, so what he was wearing was, like the girder. For whatever reason he wasn't wearing the shorts yet, um, but he definitely, like, hugged his son and gave his son a kiss, because that was the guy who was interviewing him. And then as he's walking away, they panned, you know, to him walking away. There's his ass. It was, it was, it was not well done, just like Netflix didn't do a good job at all. And for that company to be hosting two NFL games on Christmas Day and. Taking over the entire WWE platform. They got to get some stuff rolling there. The fight itself was what everyone thought it was going to be. You know, it was nothing. Jake, Paul might be the most annoying person I've ever I don't even know him. I just can he just go away?

Nick VinZant 30:21

I don't understand how some of those people are popular. Like, I've never heard of this. Maybe it's an age thing, but I've never heard a single good thing about that person or anybody talking in any way that seems like they actually like them. It's like, how are you still? I've never heard, but there's so many people that are like that. Like, I've never heard somebody say, Wow, the Kardashians, I really want to grow up to be like that, or I really want to grow up to be Jake Paul. Like, I've, I don't understand. Like, how does this keep happening?

John Shull 30:56

You know, it's, I guess, the sad part, to go back to the event for a second was there was actually some really good fights on there too, and he has turned it. Jake Paul and his production company have turned it into, you know, this was great for boxing and for women, because one of the events was a woman women's fight, which was fantastic, um, but, but at the end of the day, it's just, it's Jake Paul stamp on it, and it just feels icky. And, yeah, what I love is a couple, like, actual world champion boxers have sent him messages publicly on social media saying, you want a real fight, like, let's get in the ring and we'll fight. But I bet you he won't accept any of them.

Nick VinZant 31:39

I think that that's a big problem with actually to go on a whole rant with our societies. It's now entirely dictated by the algorithm, which focuses everything on the amount of controversy that you can generate. It's much better now, I think, to be slightly good at something than it is to actually be good at it.

John Shull 31:58

Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a deep rant. To stay on the surface of it. I'm curious to know, whatever, what our listeners think. But just for me to stay on the surface of it, I feel like social media has made it. You know, Jake Paul can send out one thing that's probably not even real and and that that's it like, like, that's, that's the spoken word. I mean, he made 50, $60 million because he beat Mike Tyson. I mean, 60 year old Mike Tyson for sake, well, and

Nick VinZant 32:29

I was seeing something which, to be fair, I don't know if it's true or not, but somebody got a hold of the contract and was like, he, Mike Tyson is not allowed to throw an uppercut. The fight has to go the distance, like all these kind of things, that it was never a real thing to begin with. And I don't understand that from a personal perspective, in the sense that, like, you've already got a lot of money, why do you want to kind of sacrifice your dignity and embarrassment just to get it more like, what can you buy for $40 million that you can't buy for the 35 I would just look at myself and be like, God, I'm just a joke. Like, that's how I would see it. I guess other people don't think that way. To be

John Shull 33:09

fair, it definitely see, I mean, Mike Tyson had him on the ropes a couple of times, and if anyone even knows Mike Tyson, he would have landed a body shot or gone with an uppercut or something, and didn't. So regardless, they made a lot of money. Netflix effed it up. You know, the fight of the night should have been the fight of the night, and it was. But I just, I'm just over gimmick stuff, you know, like, I guess during the pandemic, it was okay, maybe because, like, it was fun and it was entertaining, and, like, you know, kind of brought people together. But like, let's get back to real boxing. And maybe Jake Paul can go away. He doesn't have to, like, nothing bad has to happen to him. Just maybe he can just go away. That

Nick VinZant 33:50

would be something that I would really like to see in 2025 is for all the people who are kind of fake, quote, unquote, to just go away, to go back to when the people that you heard from actually knew what they were doing or were good at what they were doing, all of the kind of that influencer culture, I could do away with all of it. I could do away with all of it, and we'd probably all be better for it, to be honest with you. But I don't think that that's the thing that I think everybody probably agrees with that at the same time too.

John Shull 34:24

Yeah. But then again, people who agree are the ones who are watching his twitch and, you know, giving money to his boxing campaign. Anyways, I just had to talk about that, because that was the biggest event. That's probably, that'll probably be the biggest event of the year, I would think, Yeah, and

Nick VinZant 34:43

what's sad to me is, like I was a boxing fan, like I would watch boxing, I would watch boxing shows, and now that the sports been destroyed by this. So,

John Shull 34:55

I mean, that's, I mean, that's tough to say. I will say this, that I think it's but. Shit for Mike Tyson, that his records gonna say 50 and seven and his last loss ever is gonna be to Jake Paul. I mean, I but then again, he doesn't care, because he made more money than he's probably made in the last 20 years in one night. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 35:14

that's true. I think that he always runs into money problems too well. And you ever look at it, he's okay with it, his decision. Have

John Shull 35:23

you ever look at his rap sheet? It is. The guy's been through some shit, so do some stuff, right? Alright. So it hurts me to say this, but I wanted to give you a softball so you could just hit it back in my face. Okay, so there was a movie that was just released with starring the rock called red one. It's a holiday movie. Had it had a budget, an operating budget of two $50 million Oh, and it's opening weekend, which, as everybody knows, that's the weekend where you're going to make the most money. Usually, it made $34 million

Nick VinZant 36:01

Oh, his career, he's on a big down slide. It's, oh, my God. It's crazy to me how fast people can turn.

John Shull 36:08

So my question was, or is, to you, does not show necessarily have to be him, but like, that's it, right? Like, there's he's gonna go back to the WWE now, or he's going to do something a familiarity, because, like, yes, he doesn't need the money, obviously. But that has to hurt. Like, that has to sting, no matter who you are, yeah.

Nick VinZant 36:32

And I think the difficulty is, is that when that happens to you, it's so hard to come back, because that's a couple of movies in a row. I think that he's had that didn't go very well. And once that happens, it's hard to bounce back from it. But that happens with everybody, like any big celebrity, once they hit a certain reason, once they hit a certain level, then they're just going to drop. I mean, you can kind of go through, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I think it happens to all of them.

John Shull 37:01

Well, he does have one movie coming out at Thanksgiving that's gonna, you know, erase all of his debt or whatever, but Moana two comes out and that's gonna just blow everything off the, you know, water for him.

Nick VinZant 37:14

I don't feel like it's anime. It's quite as much. But anyway, that's me,

John Shull 37:19

um, alright, a little, a little interesting. I don't know what to call it. Apparently, there's going to be a run on butter this, this fall. I didn't think, out of everything that we've been struggling for butter is going to be a thing, and

Nick VinZant 37:38

probably better for all of us, to be honest, right? Like, is that the worst thing for society, for there to be a butter shortage? So what you don't think so?

John Shull 37:48

Just for everyone to know, Nick proudly supports Robert F Kennedy Jr, and he wants him to take care of the schools and get rid of processed foods. No, I just don't think that. Alright? Borrow Alaska yesterday. The sun set there. The sun will not that city will not see sun until January 22 Why would anyone Barrow? It's pretty want to live there, because that's their home. That sounds terrible, and I I gotta get the sun once a week just to make me feel a little better about anything

Nick VinZant 38:26

I I mean, I'm sure it's a combination of people, a, that's where they like to live. B, it's probably a really hard place to live or a hard place to leave. Like, I don't think that a lot of the people who are there probably really want to be there. I live in Seattle, in Seattle during the height of the winter, or, I guess technically, like December, right? Like during the shortest days of the year, the you're not going to see, the you're going to you won't see, they won't get light out till about eight, and it'll be dark by 445 and that that gets to me. I don't know how you could do with it. I don't know how you could deal with that, like not being light or dark at all, that it's weird

John Shull 39:13

kind of, yeah, it's for me. I leave the house, you know, 737 45 it's still kind of dark. And then when I get out of work at 536, o'clock, it's dark. So that's why I look like this, and then pale and translucent and look like a vampire. So,

Nick VinZant 39:29

so our top five is top five musicians. Everybody likes like everybody pretty much likes them. They're not necessarily the most popular, but pretty much everybody likes them. What's your number five? I'm

John Shull 39:45

going to get hammered for this list, and I know it. I know I'm going to because people are going to say that I'm nearsighted and I'm not thinking enough about things. But you know what? I gave it, I gave it, gave it a gave it a shot here. So. So my number, let me, let me go back here, my number five, John Denver.

Nick VinZant 40:08

Oh, yeah, I think everybody likes John Denver. I don't. I've never heard anybody be like John Denver. Hate that guy's music. Everybody likes a John Denver song. I'll agree with that.

John Shull 40:20

Okay, are good, so that I think we may get somewhere then, yeah, I've never heard anybody, you know, yeah, John Denver. Fuck that guy. Never heard that, right? Nobody's

Nick VinZant 40:28

really mad about John Denver. Ludicrous is my number five. Everybody likes ludicrous.

John Shull 40:34

That's actually not, that's

Nick VinZant 40:36

actually pretty good. Yeah? Ludicrous is like the one rapper you can say, oh yeah. Everybody likes ludicrous.

John Shull 40:43

Yeah. Don't say P Diddy or any of them. No, huh, yeah. Okay. I think ludicrous. I think maybe some of like our generation, maybe think he's a little too Poppy. But I dare you to find one person that's going to be like, Yeah, I don't like one song of his that,

Nick VinZant 40:59

yeah, that's everybody likes ludicrous. Okay, all right, we're off to a better start than I thought. Let's see this go downhill.

John Shull 41:04

Oh yeah, it's, I'm about to, I'm about to throw it right now. My number, my number four is Bob Marley.

Nick VinZant 41:13

Oh, I don't like Bob Marley,

John Shull 41:14

but do you not like, but like his music, right? Like a song comes on and it's just chill, right? Does anything for

Nick VinZant 41:23

me, does nothing for me. But I will say that once something becomes something that everybody likes, I automatically don't like it. I like a Bob Marley type music. I can't say that I like Bob Marley specifically.

John Shull 41:36

Okay? I mean, I feel like anytime a Bob Marley reggae song comes on. You at least know the beats. If you don't know the song and it's just a fun song, usually,

Nick VinZant 41:46

okay, my number four is Michael Jackson. I would have put Michael Jackson all the way at number one, but I do think that his personal issues cloud that a lot, and it's hard to look past that, but I think that everybody likes Michael Jackson's music.

John Shull 42:10

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's kind of what I'm basing my list off, is if people like the music, yeah. I mean, obviously a lot of people don't like him, or didn't like him. But, I mean, it's hard to find somebody that, you know, when one of his main songs come on, at least, even if they don't like it, the person's still going to be like, you know, humming along or tapping along. So,

Nick VinZant 42:31

yeah, you like his music? Okay? To number three, that's fair. I

John Shull 42:35

actually don't have him. I put him on my honorable mention, um, which now I'm wondering, wondering my number three, I went with Taylor Swift.

Nick VinZant 42:46

Oh, I would have agreed with you a little while ago. I don't think that's true. Now. I don't like a I there's not a single Taylor Swift song that I like.

John Shull 42:55

I think I'm confident putting her at three. I think, you know, even, even the Die Hard, you know, red blooded Americans, once again, if one of her more most famous songs, come on. I you know, you may turn it, but you're not going to be like, Oh, this song is a pile of shit. Like, I just, I don't know,

Nick VinZant 43:13

I could see it. My number three is Adele. Everybody likes Adele.

John Shull 43:20

See, I don't disagree with you. Um, well, I might say my number two now, which is Whitney Houston.

Nick VinZant 43:29

Oh, okay, yeah, so, because I feel like bad to say about Whitney Houston,

John Shull 43:34

I feel like there are just some singers. No matter how curmudgeon you are or asshole, you just have to respect them. And like Adele Whitney, Houston, Celine Dion, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, they all kind of go into that bubble. And, yeah, they're just, they're just legendary.

Nick VinZant 43:54

Celine Dion is one. I thought about a lot, like I thought about putting Celine Dion there. Celine Dion on there. A lot. That's harder to say than you would think. Celine Dion on there. My number two is the Beatles,

John Shull 44:09

see, and I left them off the list, and they, they were kind of like Michael Jackson to me, like, maybe should have put them on but, yeah, the Beatles are, you know, they're kind of like the monkeys, or one of those, you know, one of those early 60s, 70s bands. You just music just makes you feel good.

Nick VinZant 44:28

Yeah, I like the Beatles. Okay, who's your number one?

John Shull 44:34

The king, Elvis Presley.

Nick VinZant 44:39

Okay, I don't think that a lot of people know his music. Now. Do you think the kids today know Elvis Presley?

John Shull 44:49

I think if they don't, you hear it once, and you're told it's him, and then every time from then out that you hear it, you know it's him.

Nick VinZant 44:57

I don't know what his big song is, though, the only. Only one that I know of is like Jailhouse Rock. I think, I mean, that's the only Beatles song that I know.

John Shull 45:07

You mean Elvis Presley? Oh, Elvis Presley. Yeah, I mean Elvis. I mean so he had that. I mean a little less conversation burning love, even though that one's kind of bad, because he kind of died on the toilet. So it doesn't really,

Nick VinZant 45:22

he had a song called burning love, and he died on the toilet.

John Shull 45:25

Yeah, jealous rock, suspicious minds. I mean, the thing about Elvis is, is like he he's transcended his death, his family, you know, the drama, it's and his music was just always, it was always upbeat. Usually it was just good music. And you know it, it's kind of like Frank Sinatra and Christmas music, like anytime a Frank Sinatra Christmas song comes on, it just makes you smile.

Nick VinZant 45:51

My number one is Tom Petty.

John Shull 45:55

I can't go against Tom I love Tom Petty. Love somebody.

Nick VinZant 45:57

I would make an argument that Tom Petty is the most liked musician of all time. Everybody likes Tom Petty.

John Shull 46:06

I just wonder, yes, I don't, well, I don't disagree with you. I just you know, like you said to me, Do Do people know him? Like does the generation of today know? Does the generation of today know anyone we mentioned, other than Taylor Swift, probably not.

Nick VinZant 46:21

I bet they know Tom Petty more than they know the Beatles or Elvis Presley.

John Shull 46:28

I mean, I don't want to disagree with you. I love Tom Petty. I love man. There's some songs of his that you just sit back and they just take you on a ride, man. Oh,

Nick VinZant 46:36

I love a storytelling song. Like a storytelling songs are the best. Okay, what's your honorable mention? So, like,

John Shull 46:43

like, we kind of talked about, you know, I put Michael Jackson on there, uh, Aretha Franklin, I put Beyonce on there, um, Johnny Cash,

Nick VinZant 46:56

okay, Beyonce, yeah, I would agree with those. Like, pretty much everybody likes them.

John Shull 47:02

And then I went, kind of off here, off key, and I put Elton John. I thought about Elton John, because, once again, music, you know, most of his songs, his mainstream songs, and then this one was out of left field, but Guns N Roses, I just feel like, once again, they have a couple of anthems that come on and you just know the songs like Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys.

Nick VinZant 47:27

You could make a strong argument that everybody likes Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, I would agree with Queen Bohemian Rhapsody. Like everybody likes those kind of songs, for sure. The other one, I thought of more recent, Lady Gaga wide. I claimed I would say

John Shull 47:48

I would put her at number 1111, if I could. I love Lady Gaga, but I love Lady

Nick VinZant 47:53

Gaga too. What's your favorite song? It's your favorite Lady Gaga song? Let's end on that. Oh,

John Shull 48:01

man, see, it's, it's tough because, like, the club days, like bad romance was a, was a great

Nick VinZant 48:07

one as a banger, that's mine. I would go bad romance,

John Shull 48:11

yeah, well, and I'll say bad romance that that's a good one. Man.

Nick VinZant 48:15

Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. Really helps out the show and let us know what you think or who you think. Rather, is the most well liked musician of all time. I really think it could be Tom Petty. Like, yeah, really, you don't like Tom Petty. Everybody likes Tom Petty. You.


Ice Climbing Champion Catalina Shirley

It’s freezing cold, she’s got knives on her hands and feet and she’s high in the air climbing a slick piece of ice you really don’t want to fall off of. Still, Competitive Ice Climber and 3x National Champion Catalina Shirley couldn’t be happier. We talk competitive Ice Climbing, the dangers of falling and golf gloves at the Olympics. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Holiday Movies.

Catalina Shirley: 01:19

Pointless: 23:04

Top 5 Holiday Movies: 41:48

Contact the Show

Catalina Shirley Instagram


Interview with Ice Climbing Champion Catalina Shipley

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode ice climbing and holiday movies, I

Catalina Shirley 0:21

definitely think we're seen as kind of, like, maybe the crazy uncle of climbing. All of the holds are, like, so precise that if you don't hit them in like, exactly the right way, you'll pop off of them. People sometimes run into trouble because they assume, Oh, ice is just ice. You know, I progressed through the grades in the same way that I would lead climbing outside. Um, but ice like you really need to learn how to read it, and the only way you can do that is by climbing it. I

Nick VinZant 0:51

want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest. This is three time national champion Ice Climber, Catalina, also known as Cat Shirley. Looking at ice climbing from the outside, this looks like a crazy thing to me, like, Why? Why are you doing this?

Catalina Shirley 1:27

I mean, I think the biggest draw for me is that it like allows me to go places that I would never otherwise get to experience and see. So I'm a competitive Ice Climber, so I have been traveling all around the world for that since I was a freshman in high school. So I'm going on nine seasons of that now, and it's taken me, like, to some really cool, crazy countries, and never took quite the hot spots of those countries, but instead to, like, kind of really little towns, like way off the beaten path. And I think because it's kind of seen as, like, an extreme sport, maybe a little bit more dangerous, maybe a little out there. It definitely like attracts a kind of people who are like, really go getters, who want to kind of live their life to the fullest and really just experience everything the world has to offer.

Nick VinZant 2:14

Do you feel like ice climbers are different, even amongst climbers, I

Catalina Shirley 2:18

definitely think we're seen as kind of like, maybe the crazy uncle of climbing.

Nick VinZant 2:26

But is it? Is it really that extreme?

Catalina Shirley 2:29

I think yes and no. I think there's a lot of aspects of the sport that are, like, pretty low key, and people probably don't see that all the time. I think, like, where it gets a little sketchier is when you start, like, obviously pushing the limits, like outside, through like mountaineering, albinism, like different objectives. And so once you get past that kind of like wi five, wi six grade, you're getting into ice that's either, like, super overhanging, which is pretty rare, or like super delicate, thin, like smears, or narrow, like fragile pillars. And I think that's where things get a little more exciting. Is it? How

Nick VinZant 3:12

popular is it?

Catalina Shirley 3:14

It's definitely growing in popularity. I think kind of for a long time people have been ice climbing, but it's always been this really niche thing of, like, you know, mostly crusty old guys going out into the mountains, like climbing, Everest climbing, rainier, that kind of thing. And there hasn't really been as much, like, obviously, the competition stuff is fairly new in the last like, 20 to 30 years. And, yeah, like, crag ice is, I think, kind of becoming, like, more common that people will just go out for a day. So you're a ice Park is a really great place to do that. And so people, like our ice farmers out there, that's actually their job, and their job is to, like, in the middle of the night or the really early morning, like, turn on, kind of the taps to form the ice and then kind of out here on the front range we've now we have an ice climbing specific gym. It's called the ice coupe, and that's one of only, like, three or four gyms in the US that has dry tooling, which is like indoor ice climbing in it. But yeah, there's like, a huge push to try to get it into the 2030 Olympics. And so I think it's like, just going to gain popularity, obviously, up until that happening. And then hopefully, if that happens too, I think it'll kind of explode from there. We'll see

Nick VinZant 4:36

to kind of go back so we can go forward. How do you ice climb like when you so you're approaching an ice climb outside? Like, what do you like? How do you go about doing this?

Catalina Shirley 4:47

There's kind of a lot of like considerations that go into it. I mean, it's like entering the back country in any way. So you've got to check for avalanche danger, check for weather hazards, anything like that. And then, typically, they have, like, a pretty long approach, much to my dismay. So you gotta walk a long time. You finally get there to the ice climb. Obviously, like climbing is very much a sport that you have to do with other people. So it's typically like teams of two or three will go out to do ice climbs. And when you start climbing, you are using ice screws. So these are screws that kind of vary in length from like, you know, pretty short, to, like, pretty long. And then typically, like, people will pitch out these longer ice climbs. So that means the route ends up being longer than what your rope is. So when you get to kind of the top of your rope, or the top of, like, the designated pitch, you can, like, build an anchor with a couple of ice screws, and then you belay your partner up to you, and then you're, like, together on the ice route. And then they can either switch over and take the lead, or you can go up again.

Nick VinZant 6:00

How can, like, how do you know that that ice is going to be able to hold you? Yeah, there's

Catalina Shirley 6:06

definitely like, things that you want to look out for. Like, temperature plays a huge role. Like, there's kind of like a sweet spot for ice. If it's too, like, mushy gushy, like slushy, then it's not going to hold an ice cream very well. But if it's super brittle to it might fracture, and it'll be a little bit harder for the screw to go in. So generally, like around the teens and 20s are, like, a good temperature for ice. And then a lot of it too is like how it's formed, if that makes sense, like, some ice, like, does form, like, really, like, thin chandeliers. Or it's like, pretty fragile, and you can tell that pretty quickly from when you're climbing on it, like, you'll swing into it and it'll, like, shatter and like, sound like glass. Or you'll swing into it and it'll do what's called, like, dinner plating. So you'll get like, a big, like, dinner plate sized chunk of ice will, like, peel off and fall down. It's kind of like assessing, like a snow pack, almost like you kind of have different layers, and they're formed differently, like, based on temperature and precip and like, oftentimes some layers are really good and some layers are not as good. And so it's a little bit about like, being able to read the ice and being able to, like, pick through any ice that's bad to get to the hopefully better stuff that's underneath. How

Nick VinZant 7:28

often would you say that you go up to a climb and then you end up backing off of it because of the ice?

Catalina Shirley 7:34

It's pretty common, more common than you'd probably think. Yeah, and I definitely am, like, a very conservative climber as well, like, I will only climb something if I know that it's well within my ability level. So I'm definitely not, like, projecting. I'm not the kind of person who's like, going to be, you know, really pushing the limits of humanism. Like, I'm more interested in just romping in the mountains and then pushing my limits and comps.

Nick VinZant 8:00

I'm a numbers person, so if you said, like, okay, one out of how many out of 10 times would you say you back off because of the ice quality?

Catalina Shirley 8:09

Maybe three or four out of 10,

Nick VinZant 8:12

that's fairly high. That's more than I thought that you would say that like, Oh, can you fall or like, No, you really can't fall outside.

Catalina Shirley 8:22

You really can't fall outside both due to, like, the nature of the ice screws, like they actually hold, I think, better than people think, like everyone, like looks at it and they're like, No, that doesn't really make any sense. But actually, they oftentimes will hold, and that's great. But the like, real danger that you get into with, like, falling on ice is because you're wearing like, a, it's like a boot, almost like a ski boot, so it's pretty firm, and then you have a crampon underneath that as well. And so it's really easy if you fall to, like, catch the cramp on and, like, break your ankle or break your your leg, just from, like, the force of hitting the ice. If you fall, it's really hard to give like a soft catch ice climbing, but it's really easy to, yeah, injure yourself doing it. And obviously you've got knives in your hands and knives on your feet. And, yeah, you fall, it's generally not the greatest day. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 9:19

so the ice screws, though there's something that they are they more okay, this thing could hold me, or this thing will hold me. Some

Catalina Shirley 9:28

people place them, and it's a little bit more like mental pro than actual Pro. Like it's to maybe make your mind feel good. And obviously it's better to at least try and play something, even if you're not 100% sure it's going to hold or place them like, a little more closely together. If you think there's like, a chance you could fall you start to, you start to, like, mitigate that risk however you can.

Nick VinZant 9:53

Is it more physical or is it more technical?

Catalina Shirley 9:56

Oh, I love that question. I. I think it's more technical. So, yeah, I mean, obviously it takes, like, kind of a base level physical strength, kind of same as rock climbing, like there's, there's some degree of, like, being able to pull yourself up by your arms, primarily that you need, but so much of it is just about technique, especially in the competitions, all of the holds are, like, so precise that if you don't hit them in like, exactly the right way, you'll pop off of them. And so just being able to, like, read the holds and read the route is like, what kind of defines like a mediocre comp climber from, like, a really great one. And you see it like in ice climbing, more than a lot of sports and competitive ice climbing, you see people who are more experienced shining like far above, people who just have, like, the advantage of being really strong, and it's super awesome. Actually, the winner of all all of the World Cups she swept every single competition is over 40 now, and she's able to do that because she's just so good. She's been doing it so long, and when she climbs, it looks like she's not even trying. Like, obviously she's trying really hard, but her technique is just so good, and she's just such, like, a smooth and fluid climber that, like, yeah, that that experience, like, really, really shines, like, far and above, like, any amount of strength you could have. I really, I really believe that

Nick VinZant 11:29

is it so focused on technique that it's the kind of sport where a woman could beat a man, even though men have that strength advantage.

Catalina Shirley 11:40

I think it absolutely is, yeah, that's something that kind of my coach has always, like, instilled into me and into our whole team. Like when we were youth competitors, like there was no, no division between men and women, typically he would have us just all compete boys and girls together.

Nick VinZant 11:58

So when you go, like, when you do a route, is it generally what you think it's going to be as you start going up it? Or do you really have to adapt on the fly?

Catalina Shirley 12:07

I think it's more more about adapting on the fly. So I typically like look and try to identify, like, any moves that I think will be the most difficult. And I draw those out and try to have, like, a solid plan for what I'm going to do. And I typically like, try to have a solid plan for the first, like, two to three bolts, so the first, like, you know, 20 to 30 feet, um, just so I can, like, get off to a good, fast start. Um, but a lot of it is about, like, adapting on the fly, like, oftentimes you get out there, um, and once you start climbing, you realize that, like, maybe a hold isn't exactly what you thought it would be. Maybe it's worse, or maybe it's better. And oftentimes you run into like a hold that can be taken multiple ways, too, and that, like, really, I think, is also what separates like a good competitor from a great competitor, is when, when they get to a move that they can't do, like, do they just get kind of holed into, like, trying the same thing over and over again, until they either time out or pump out and fall off? Or do they try to think outside the

Nick VinZant 13:10

box? Can it be the situation that, like, use my hand as an example. Say, you hook the tool on the middle finger, and you were supposed to hook it on? What's that finger, the index finger, the finger next to the middle finger. Like, if you hook it here, you can do it, but if you hook it here, you can't do it. Yeah,

Catalina Shirley 13:29

sometimes it seriously, is like, two millimeters off, and it's not going to be any good because the pocket is like, so small. Or there's just one good spot, and that's the only good spot.

Nick VinZant 13:42

What makes you good at it? Like, what would you say? This is the put all humbleness aside, right? Like, what would you say is the reason that you're good at it?

Catalina Shirley 13:49

I think I'm good at it because my mental game is really strong. Um, which wasn't always the case. Like, for a long time, I used to get super nervous when I was competing. Like, I think there's a lot of kind of fears that stack up. Like, obviously there's kind of the underlying, like, human just fear of, like falling, and then like, on top of that is like, kind of the fear of, like, not doing well in the competition. So I always, like, kind of put a lot of pressure on myself to, like, do really well, and especially if I was, like, traveling somewhere far away, like, nobody wants to, you know, fly to Korea to fall off the third hold. And so, yeah, I used to get really nervous. And then something just kind of, like, almost clicked for me, of like, you know, you're like, why are you doing this? You're doing this for fun. Like you don't need to be so worked up about this. And I think with ice climbing too, just because it is such an unpredictable sport, like you can hit a hold a millimeter off and fall off because of that. And that happens to everyone, like that happens to the best in the world. And so I think, like my, my real mindset shift was just going. Going from the thought of like, Oh no. What if something like bad happens? What if I hit the hold a millimeter off and I fall because of that, and that's it. Instead of thinking like that, I started thinking like, almost the opposite of, like, you know, what if that doesn't happen? Like you could do really, really well here, like you could potentially win this competition if that doesn't happen. So just that little shift of, instead of like, kind of thinking of the worst that could happen, I started thinking of like the best that could happen.

Nick VinZant 15:30

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions, yes, best places in the world to ice climb.

Catalina Shirley 15:38

I mean, I I'm partial to urae because I grew up so close to it. But if you are looking to get into ice climbing for the first time, like try it for the first time, seriously, go to urae. I think it is the highest concentration of accessible routes, certainly in the United States. So go there. The guides there are awesome. I'm actually one of them, so that's fun, um, but, yeah, go there. Get a guide. They'll set u top ropes, and there's absolutely no stakes. Climb a couple pitches, enjoy it, and then walk right back into town for hot chocolate. It's five minutes away.

Nick VinZant 16:15

Do people free, solo Ice cream? Ice cream? Yeah,

Catalina Shirley 16:19

it's absolutely a thing. Is that not for me, but will

Nick VinZant 16:24

there be people who are regular climbers, so to speak, and like, Oh, I'm not doing ice climbing, though.

Catalina Shirley 16:30

I mean, I there's definitely crossover. I think it's there's just so few ice climbers, even compared to rock climbers, that there's not, like, a ton of crossover.

Nick VinZant 16:39

This one's a little in depth and maybe kind of tricky, but imagine you are at climbing high school. Who's the cool kid at climbing high school, the rock climbers, the TRad climbers, the ice climbers, like who's the cool kid at climbing high school? That's

Catalina Shirley 16:57

probably not the Ice Climbers. It's probably probably the boulders feel like they're the cool kids. They've got their, you know, beanies and oversized sweatshirts, and I don't know, they're pretty they're pretty laid back, they're pretty cool, like nobody really has has an issue with them. I think the the ice climbers are kind of the weird kids, the ice climbers and the dry tours they're

Nick VinZant 17:20

not sitting at, like, the main cool kid table. Where are you guys at? Where are you guys at? You're not, like, eating lunch in the bathroom. No,

Catalina Shirley 17:29

I think we've got our, like, little little table of just us. We've got our little, our little, quick

Nick VinZant 17:35

little table of just us. Do you think it can can you get down to the cool table? Or is no ice climbing is always probably going to be its own little thing. I think ice

Catalina Shirley 17:43

climbing is always going to be its own little thing, which is part of what I love about it, to be honest. Like, I think it's just not super mainstream, because I think there's just so many people who look at it, even if they understand it completely and just say, I have no interest in that. I would never want to do that. Like, good for you, that you love it. But like, why would I go be cold to like, you know, climb up ice with with knives like that just doesn't sound like something that sparks joy for me.

Nick VinZant 18:13

Yeah, that the cold is what gets me. Is it usually really cold?

Catalina Shirley 18:17

Yes, I can't lie about that. It is usually really cold. What do

Nick VinZant 18:20

you put on your hand? You're not climbing bare hands. Are you? No,

Catalina Shirley 18:24

we climb with little gloves. We actually, most of us use golf gloves, which is kind of strange, but nobody really makes like a glove for competition, like dry tooling, but with the competition stuff, you really need like, to be able to, like, feel the tool and be able to, like, grip it as best as you can. And so even just having a, like, a thicker glove there, like makes it so you have to squeeze the tool harder, and then you like, pump out. So the golf gloves actually, like, they're both grippy and they're super tight. You want to, like, skin tight to your hands.

Nick VinZant 19:00

Man, I thought it would be like, the foot the wide receiver gloves or something like that. I guess I don't use I don't go golfing. So what do I know? Um, yeah,

Catalina Shirley 19:08

I don't go golfing either. It's always funny, I walk into the golf store and I'm like, I need a right hand and a left hand. And they're like, you know, you don't right? And I'm like, from ice, what

Nick VinZant 19:17

I do with climbing ice? Are there different kinds of ice, or is ice

Catalina Shirley 19:23

ice? There's definitely, definitely different kind of kinds of ice, super variable based on like temperature and precip and how it forms. And I think people sometimes run into trouble because they assume, Oh, ice is just ice. You know, I progressed through the grades in the same way that I would lead climbing outside. But ice like you really need to learn how to read it, and the only way you can do that is by climbing it. And so climbing it on top rope is like the best way to kind of gain that experience before you're ready to start leading. So I think the common rule is like you. Want to top rope at least 100 pitches of ice before you even start. Like to consider leading ice. And then from there, like you should really be slow and kind of be climbing ice that you know is like, well within your wheelhouse, just because conditions are so variable, like something can be graded wi three one year. But then if you hit it, you know, too early season, too late season. Like, maybe it was a bad pre SIP year, it can look really different from the pictures. So like with rock climbing, you're like, oh, you know, 512 it's always 512 like, maybe if it's a warm day, it's slightly slippery 512 but it's still 512 but with ice, like, it genuinely does vary every single year. And so it's really important to, like, know, current conditions more than just like, oh, you know, I've climbed this route before I climbed it last year. I know what it feels like. Like, no, it can look completely different. Will it be different

Nick VinZant 20:53

hour by hour? Generally? Like, no, it's set up this way this year. It's going to be this way this year and maybe a different way next year.

Catalina Shirley 21:01

Um, it definitely does change a little based on the time of day. Like, typically you want to, like, start and finish in the shade, if you can, unless it's, like, a really cold day, because, like, the sun can start to, like, melt it and change it, and you don't really want it changing while you're on it, but it typically, like, once it's in it's kind of that way for the season, unless, like, it falls down or it gets, like, some drastic temperature, like fluctuations and, like, melts and refreezes in a weird way. So I wouldn't necessarily say hour by hour, but probably, like day by day,

Nick VinZant 21:41

that's pretty much all the questions I got. What's kind of coming up next for you? Where can people find you, that kind of stuff?

Catalina Shirley 21:47

Yeah. So actually, I have a really exciting season coming up. For the first time ever, I am going out on the Whole World Cup circuit. So that's five competitions starting in January. I'll be starting in Korea, then heading to sauce Fauci, Switzerland, then heading to France, then back home to Longmont, and then over to Edmonton and Canada. And so those are all a week or two apart. And so I'm going to be doing this awesome tour of Asia and Europe and North America, competing, trying to hopefully get on the podium again for the US at the World Cups. And yeah, my Instagram is the climber cat there, and underscores in between the and climber and cat. Um,

Nick VinZant 22:35

yeah, I want to thank cat so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on tick tock, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description, and if you want to see her ice climbing, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on November 14, at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Are you trying to become Biff from Back to the Future? Is that your goal? No,

John Shull 23:13

but looking at my my bodily features, I could see it, and that's a compliment to me.

Nick VinZant 23:19

Okay, if you go get a haircut. When you go get a haircut or try, do you bring a picture of like a celebrity or something, and say, I

John Shull 23:27

want to look like this once when I was a teenager, who was it?

Nick VinZant 23:32

Who'd you bring? This

John Shull 23:34

is embarrassing as all hell. Actually, do I do? I have to say I already said it didn't i

Nick VinZant 23:40

No, huh? You just said it was embarrassing. You didn't say who it was. Who did you want to look like?

John Shull 23:47

Just, I want there's a actor from the late eight now, well, he's still an actor, but he was big in the late 90s, when we were impressionable teenagers. The name was Devin Sawa, okay? And he was the guy. He played Casper in the movie Casper.

Nick VinZant 24:03

Oh, and he wanted to have a haircut like him, huh? He

John Shull 24:09

had these, I don't even know what you'd call them now, these bangs that, like, you could mold, you know, you could, like, curl them in the front.

Nick VinZant 24:21

Okay? Oh, I see what you're talking about. Hey, man, if that's what you wanted,

John Shull 24:27

well, I got them, except they didn't look good on me. So okay,

Nick VinZant 24:31

look, we all have, I don't know if I've ever really had, like, No, I had a butt cut when I was a freshman in high school. And looking back on it, that was pretty terrible. Like that was like, Oh, that wasn't, that wasn't a good look for me.

John Shull 24:44

What's a butt cut? I'm

Nick VinZant 24:45

not even familiar with that. You go straight down the middle. It's like, over to the sides. Oh,

John Shull 24:50

so just a part, but a butt, yeah, but a butt cut,

Nick VinZant 24:55

that's fine. I would make an argument that the bowl cut and the butt cut. You. Are the two funniest types of haircuts. Well, a mullet too. Those are the three funniest haircuts. I'm

John Shull 25:07

not entirely sure where that picked up steam and how that became an actual style, either.

Nick VinZant 25:13

No, it never should have been. Okay. You ready to get started?

John Shull 25:16

I thought we were already I thought we were already going. I thought we were nine, a little bit, but

Nick VinZant 25:20

not really. Okay. Do you prefer cubed ice or crushed ice? I mean,

John Shull 25:26

I'm not gonna make this easy on you. I prefer different kinds of ice for different kinds of things.

Nick VinZant 25:32

Okay, okay, go on.

John Shull 25:34

I mean. I mean, like, if I'm getting crushed ice, it'll be with like a fountain pop, but if I'm having like a gin and tonic, I like the bigger cubes of ice.

Nick VinZant 25:45

I think that that's actually correct. I think that's exactly the way to do it. I'm not getting crushed ice unless I'm getting a 20 ounce fountain drink or bigger. Otherwise, it's cubed all the way. But I would say I like crushed ice better overall.

John Shull 26:00

I almost prefer, like, the pellets, like the crushed ice. With our pellets, you know, we're, like, if you go to, like, a, like, an ice cream shop and you get a slushy, and there's, like, the big pellets, like, those type of ice cubes are made, are just awesome. Oh,

Nick VinZant 26:17

okay, all right. We are not alone. 57% of the audience prefers cubed ice. 43% prefers crushed ice. So it's close, man, it's close.

John Shull 26:32

You are not alone.

Nick VinZant 26:33

It's always good not to be alone. I always want at least one other person to be familiar with whatever circumstance I'm generally going through.

John Shull 26:42

There was a point in my life where I wanted to be the best or or have a world record of something. It could have been anything. I just wanted to be the one person with something. But as I get older in life, I don't really care about that anymore.

Nick VinZant 26:58

You just wanted a world record for something. I mean, what? Like, how far did you go with this? Did you put any initiative into it? Or was it just a wish that a wish and a hope, like, someday I'm just going to stumble into this.

John Shull 27:10

I mean, like, I guess I'd have to identify a talent or something that I could do well enough, better than anyone else in the world, but I don't think there is something that I can do better than anyone else in the world.

Nick VinZant 27:21

The only thing that I would say that I like, I would put myself up against anybody else is dealing with customer service. Oh, I think that's one of the reasons my wife married me, because she heard me talk to customer service. I'm great. You ever need customer service? Have me call for you. I'm fantastic at it.

John Shull 27:42

I mean, can you, can you get, can you give us a run through? Like, are you? Are you intimidating? Are you accommodating? Like, how do you do it? The, why are you so good at it?

Nick VinZant 27:50

Cuz I just, I'm good at painting people into corners and then using logic, for example, like they say, well, that's not our policy. Well, it's not a policy handed down by God himself. You can change it if you want to. You just don't want to, and then you use silence. You just stop talking. Silence is the greatest negotiator, I think, that you'll ever find. Just don't talk, and people will fill that silence and do what you want.

John Shull 28:19

Okay, all right? And how many have you ever had a call where you have actually not been successful? No,

Nick VinZant 28:28

wow, I have never spoken to customer service and not gotten what I wanted.

John Shull 28:36

Wow, you may be the only person that I know of that has an immaculate record when it comes to customer service. I'm batting 100 or 1000 or whatever it is. I mean, you've never hung up. You've never gotten angry and hung up. Nothing.

Nick VinZant 28:49

No, no. I come prepared. I come with facts. I come with the policy. I got into it the other day with a bike company. They didn't want to refund the bike. And I said, Listen, I understand that you've done these tests before, but the frame bent on this one. Did you test this specific bike? So you didn't test this specific bike, so you don't actually know if this bike is many is faulty or not. And they refunded all the money. And I kept the bike

John Shull 29:19

see that. I think that's where a lot of people get. You know, when they get to that level, they just get angry and aggressive, like, I mean, that's how I would get sometimes, as you know, you know, the person you're talking to doesn't really know usually the product. But I'm happy for you. I'm happy I'm happy that you keep a level head and you get what you want. It's

Nick VinZant 29:40

my, I would honestly argue it's probably my one true talent. Anyway, moving on, shout outs, yeah, let's

John Shull 29:47

get some shout outs here, as I brought up Devon Sawa, anyways.

Nick VinZant 29:54

All right, I've even heard of that actor before. Never even heard of him. For

John Shull 29:58

those of you who might be who. Wondering who that still is. He was the main guy out of the final destination series as well, the main actor in most of those, also an idol fans back in the day. But anyways, alright, oh,

Nick VinZant 30:13

they had you had a full man crush. Then alright? Rj baldinelli,

John Shull 30:18

dan fight star, Chris Welch, Daniel Galina, Liam, Kelly Keegan, Michael lazardo Velarde, Sam Woodward, Alex Berg, Tommy Foley, Jonathan Madison, Ron horow and Matthew McCafferty. You get the I know I feel like we're kicking off a new season of the podcast with this episode. I don't know why, okay, like, all right, out there, you know? I mean, I was thinking, I was thinking before I logged on here to to do this with you, that we started this podcast in 2018 when Donald Trump was president, went through the Biden era, which we're still in, and now, God willing, we'll be doing this well into Donald Trump's, you know, second presidency. It's just insane. And I say that to say that we've been around a while doing this thing. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 31:24

that's all I have to say, is, yeah,

John Shull 31:25

yeah. It's, it's, man, it's, it's wild. So it's, you

Nick VinZant 31:30

wouldn't think it's been that that long, right? I do think that that's the weird thing about history. Life just goes on, and whatever circumstance you think that you're in, if this is unprecedented and all these kind of stuff. It's really not like everybody's been through it. You just, I just think life just keeps moving. You just keep moving.

John Shull 31:49

History is just it just repeats itself, right? There's no matter what you believe in politics, this has happened before. Life has happened before. Volcanos just because it's 50 degrees in Michigan on November 11, it's happened before, you know, like history just repeats itself.

Nick VinZant 32:07

It just goes around.

John Shull 32:10

Alright, have some, I don't know, some weird ass things to talk about that you know. Okay, okay. First question is, do you believe when you look up at the sky and, let's say, you see something shooting across the sky that you can't explain? Okay, what's the first thing you like say, or with somebody too? What? What would be the first thing you say to that person, like, hey, that's an alien or it's a shooting star. Where does your mind go right away? Like, the first thing you think of when you see something in the sky that you can't explain, oh, a shooting star. Well, according to a poll done by an independent research company, apparently over 80% of the people they pulled out of the 10,000 immediately think it's some kind of alien.

Nick VinZant 32:58

Yeah, I mean, that's not

John Shull 33:02

that's insane to me.

Nick VinZant 33:03

That's that's a lot higher than I would have thought. Like 80% of people think if they see something in the sky, it's an alien. Yeah, it's nuts. I don't know about where they get all this information from polls, not to go back into the election, necessarily. But like, Who are these people? Have you? I've never been polled for a single thing. Nobody has ever asked my opinion about a survey in any way. Have you

John Shull 33:27

not before this election, but I can, you know, once again, not to get into politics. You know, whatever side you're on, I think we can all agree that the amount of and I live in a swing state, Michigan, oh yeah, you got hit. I mean, every single hour you were getting a different text, let's see the rip of the week, because apparently, a famous person now is dying every week, if not every other day, goes out to Tony Todd, just beloved actor, probably most notable for playing the

Nick VinZant 34:04

yeah, I've never heard of him. Jesus, I've never heard of

John Shull 34:08

him. Candy Man, the horror franchise. Candy Man,

Nick VinZant 34:11

oh, that's I Yeah. I don't watch that kind of stuff. So that like, yeah, no, I don't want anything to do with that scary movies. Man, wow, especially like a scary, scary movie, new

John Shull 34:20

rip dead, dead at 69 um,

Nick VinZant 34:29

what age would you? What age would you go like? Oh, that person was young

John Shull 34:34

now, like, if they just well, who was, uh, who was the kid, the kid who was the guy that just passed away from one direction, like, he was in his

Nick VinZant 34:42

mid 30s. Oh, he was in his 30s. That's really young to me, that that

John Shull 34:46

was pretty and that's still, do you know? You you probably don't know, like, the circumstances, like, did he really just fall off his balcony? Was he? No,

Nick VinZant 34:53

I think, I think that there was drugs involved in some capacity.

Unknown Speaker 34:58

That's not, yeah. Yeah, well, that's

Nick VinZant 35:00

okay if somebody's if somebody's in their 60s, are you like, are they that's young? No.

John Shull 35:06

I mean, no, not really. I mean, I'd probably say, you know, 30s and 40s. I'm like, dang, that's really young. And then 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, by then, I feel like you've had a pretty good life, you know, or you've lived a decent amount of years to have had a good life. I

Nick VinZant 35:24

would actually say anything under 75 I'm a little surprised. And think like, oh, they went early.

John Shull 35:31

Wow. 75 okay, 75

Nick VinZant 35:34

I think I, I think they went Young. If it's anything under 75

John Shull 35:39

Well, I mean, you look at some of these celebrities that are still kicking Clint Eastwood 90 something, that's

Nick VinZant 35:46

insane, yeah, making a movie too at 94 Well, you gotta do something like keep living your life. Uh,

John Shull 35:54

let's see. Do you care about the the apparently, the biggest movie of the year coming out this week or next week. The wicked No,

Nick VinZant 36:05

I haven't seen a movie that I've honestly been interested in seeing since dune and that might be the only one since Avengers, Infinity War. I can't there. I mean, I can't think of hardly any movies that have gotten me interested enough that I've been like, Yeah, I can't wait to see that, or wait for that to come out. Dune and Avengers, Infinity War. And I don't think that there's any other movies I can think of that I've been like, I can't wait to see that movie.

John Shull 36:38

I think that I agree with you. I feel like it, it's just weird. Like, I used to be in the movies and I got into TV shows during the pandemic. Now I'm just kind of everything. They come at you so fast. Now, there's so many of them that it's just hard to keep up on anything. So I know I don't get excited about any really. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 36:58

and they're all slightly the same, like, they're all slightly the same movie, right? It's like, this time he's a mechanic, now he's an electrician, this time he's a plumber, like, it's, they're all kind of the same so,

John Shull 37:15

so basically, what you're saying is, it's like the Hallmark, but it's of all movies, is what you're Yeah, it's all

Nick VinZant 37:21

the same movie. We're all watching the same movie at this point.

John Shull 37:25

Well, let's, let's end on, on a, on a, on a fantastic note. Here, I saw one of the most frightening things I've ever seen happen on an athletic field. And I didn't see it in person. I saw the replay, but the Canadian Football League, a quarterback, uh, his name is Chad Kelly, broke his leg, stands up on it, realizes it's broken. Or, I don't really know why he stood up, to be honest with you, but he stands up, realizes it's broken, falls to the ground, and you can see him try to, like, basically, hold his leg straight so it doesn't fall. And nobody, no, I saw the clip. I didn't see the entire clip, like, until trainers got out there, but not one person on the field, not even one of his teammates, are like, Hey, dude, should I, like, maybe just hold your ankle or something

Nick VinZant 38:21

like, hold this together for you, but

John Shull 38:23

it's just, you know, it's it. If you haven't seen the video, it's heartbreaking and terrible. He's going to be okay. Well, I mean, he broke his leg. I don't how great he's going to be, but

Nick VinZant 38:33

was it sticking out of the skin? No.

John Shull 38:35

I mean, it didn't look like it, but it's, it's definitely, I mean, he definitely, probably broke his tibia, fibula, because this is flopping in the wind, and he's like, holding his own leg together, trying to wait for the trainers to come. And I'm just sitting there watching this clip, thinking, like you can hear his teammates, like, like, Oh no, like you're yelling. It just made me think like that just is terrible. Somebody helped the guy. Come on, Canada, what are we doing?

Nick VinZant 39:07

Canada is such a hospitable place, too. You think they would be have better manners, but I guess not. I don't really ever want to see people's legs get hurt. I can't watch that. I can watch an arm break, okay, but legs not at all. Can't watch it,

John Shull 39:22

yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't really watch I don't want to see anything break. I mean, legs are obviously the most visual, because they're, like, the biggest usually, but just, and

Nick VinZant 39:33

it's always grueso looking. It's always like, Oh, that shouldn't bend that way, yeah, arms or shoulders. It doesn't really look that bad, even in slow motion, but like legs that looks always looks so terrifying like, oh God, that looks like it really, really, really hurt,

John Shull 39:48

alright. Last, last question here. This is a holiday related question. But Christmas lights and Christmas tree, if they're up before Thanksgiving, you. Should they be?

Nick VinZant 40:01

Yes, I've got no problem. I think that there is a movement that is happening in decorations right now. I think that people are putting up decorations earlier and earlier, and I'm completely okay with it. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have put my Christmas lights up November 1.

John Shull 40:19

Wow. Okay. I

Nick VinZant 40:20

mean, no problem with it whatsoever.

John Shull 40:22

So I'm going to say this, and I stand by this, is that I probably would have been pretty critical of that five years ago. But you know what? I'm fine with it now. You want to put them up in August. Put them up in like, I don't care if it makes you happy, probably would make me happy walking by your house to see you know your your stuff out there. I'm now Christmas tree. Christmas tree needs to be after Thanksgiving, but decorations I'm okay with before,

Nick VinZant 40:50

I'll agree with you that Christmas tree needs to wait until after Thanksgiving, but I could go Christmas lights as early as the first to no day in November. And if you don't do Halloween decorations and you want to skip straight to Christmas lights, if somebody threw their Christmas lights up in October, I wouldn't have that much of a problem with it.

John Shull 41:13

Or you could be like my wife and just buy lights for our big pine tree out fronts that just change colors so we never have to take them down. And we can have Fourth of July lights. We can have Halloween lights. Can have Thanksgiving colors, Christmas colors. Is

Nick VinZant 41:29

that just because she knew that you weren't going to take them down in an orderly fashion, and we're going to complain about it, and so she just said, I'm going to put these up there, and you're just going to

John Shull 41:37

have to deal with it, pretty much. That's, that's, yeah, yeah, that's the root story there.

Nick VinZant 41:41

Laziness won't get you anywhere, John,

John Shull 41:46

let's move on, please.

Nick VinZant 41:47

Okay, you ready for him? Top five,

John Shull 41:49

I am, it's, it's, I'm ready to get roasted. But yes, I'm, I'm ready. Okay,

Nick VinZant 41:55

so our top five is top five holiday movies, and this can be either Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year's themed, all the holidays, basically, moving forward, what's your number five?

John Shull 42:08

So two things before I start this list. One, this is just my personal preference list. So okay, I

Nick VinZant 42:15

mean, it's going to be a garbage list.

John Shull 42:17

Probably I didn't go based upon any lists, any top 10 list. Secondly, it was really hard for me to find holiday movies that I would put on a top five list that aren't Christmas related. So get ready, it's going to be a heavy list of Christmas related movies. For me,

Nick VinZant 42:34

there's not as many Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve movies as there is Christmas. Yeah,

John Shull 42:39

by but by far. So in saying that my number five, and this is more of a because it's just there in my face and it's been there, but that's a Christmas story.

Nick VinZant 42:54

I have that a little bit higher on the list, but I understand what you're going for. It's, it's, I mean, more tradition, exactly.

John Shull 43:03

And they still have the 24 hours on TBS. And, you know, anyone who grew up blue cloud, blue collar in America, for in the 1990s they looked, you know, you looked forward to that 24 hours of a Christmas story. So that's, you know, that's why it's on my my top five, not, not the greatest movie, by any means, but it's tradition. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 43:26

yeah. It says something that you did. I remember the memory of the movie more than I remember the movie, like sitting and watching it, those kind of things. My number five is Klaus, a recent edition, but that's a really good Christmas movie that should be rocketing up the ranks that

John Shull 43:46

like the one with Vince Vaughn.

Nick VinZant 43:51

No, no, it's animated.

John Shull 43:53

Okay, I I'm unaware of it. Then I guess, oh,

Nick VinZant 43:57

it's a really good Christmas movie. It's, it's, I could see it becoming a top 10 overall movie for a lot of people when, I

John Shull 44:07

mean, when did it come out? Because if I'm not, I don't

Nick VinZant 44:09

have any particular spot. I don't know,

John Shull 44:12

okay, well,

Nick VinZant 44:14

I don't know who's in it. I don't know the names of the people in it. I don't know any of the characters. I just know I like the movie.

John Shull 44:20

Alright? I mean, listen, that's, that's, it's your list, man, you do you do your research. I never seen it. Do you research,

Nick VinZant 44:27

and then you would have

John Shull 44:32

my number four. Once again, a tradition. I don't know how else to put it, but National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It's my number four.

Nick VinZant 44:43

That movie I feel like grows on you as you get older, because you can identify with the different generations represented within it. Like at first, you're the kid, then you're Clark Griswold, then you're the grandparents, and you can kind of resonate how you. Person feels in that movie?

John Shull 45:02

Yeah, it's, I mean, I think you and I are both in the Clark Griswold stage of our life, and that is 100% accurate. Everything that he feels in that movie is 100% real.

Nick VinZant 45:15

Yeah, it's weird how watching it now you're like, oh my gosh, I'm turning into Clark Griswold,

Catalina Shirley 45:25

except, except

John Shull 45:26

maybe for kidnapping, you know, your boss at the end. I don't know if I would do

Nick VinZant 45:32

that part, but the decorations like I got on my wife chastised her about our lack of Halloween decorations compared to the neighbors like this wasn't acceptable. It's the only time I've ever had to have like a sit down conversation with my wife about her wifeing,

John Shull 45:48

wifeing.

Nick VinZant 45:51

How did that go? It was taken well, okay, they were valid critiques. They were valid criticisms. So it went over very well.

John Shull 46:00

Alright, what's your number four? You've

Nick VinZant 46:04

got mail. I would put You've Got Mail higher on the holiday list if it was more specific to a holiday. But You've Got Mail is fantastic holiday movie, fantastic Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, they go through all of it. Oh, I

John Shull 46:23

mean movie, okay, don't I mean, I don't. I don't think that one doesn't stand out to me, but it's, I'm happy for you. You're gonna like my number three. It's a to two for, uh, both Thanksgiving ask movies, but I have planes, trains and automobiles, and Dutch. That's my number as my duel number three.

Nick VinZant 46:45

I don't know what Dutch is. So Dutch is,

John Shull 46:49

I don't know late 90s, early No, early 90s. Late 80s starts at O'Neill. And essentially Ed O'Neill is picking up his girlfriend's like son from boarding school, and they have to drive across the country to get to Thanksgiving. And it's Ed O'Neill, like, married with children. Ed O'Neill. He's hilarious. And it's, it's just, it's just a fun movie to to watch. And obviously you have to kind of like Ed O'Neill's humor, but he's great. So

Nick VinZant 47:20

my number three is a Christmas story. Talks about it already. I put it there solely based off tradition. I don't personally think it's that great of a movie, no, but

John Shull 47:30

it's, I mean, it's definitely a tradition. I'm glad you kind of re brought it up because I wanted to say that I've actually been to the house, and you can rent to the house out as an Airbnb. And I think we should do that sometime.

Nick VinZant 47:43

Is that the movie with the lamp, though, right? It's got the lamp.

Unknown Speaker 47:47

Yeah, absolutely, yeah,

Nick VinZant 47:48

yeah. How much does it cost? I'm not paying more than, like, $100

John Shull 47:53

No, it's more $100 yeah, it's like, four or 500 bucks. I

Nick VinZant 47:56

think, oh, no, I'm not doing that. Then I'll walk past it.

John Shull 48:02

Um, alright, so this is probably the only controversial one I have on my list, and I think it's because it doesn't get the respect it deserves. But my number two is the Santa Claus with Tim Allen, oh, really, once again, personalism. It's, you know, it's a tradition type movie. It's, it's just, it's just a good hearted movie about Santa, like, I don't know I'll spend Tim Allen's great. It's a great cast. It's just, it's really good. I

Nick VinZant 48:38

don't think I've ever seen that. My number two is Muppet Christmas Carol. You got, oh, you got a problem with the Muppets?

John Shull 48:48

No. I mean, I don't have a problem with the Muppets. I just, it's fine. I don't know if it, I don't know if it'd be number two,

Nick VinZant 48:54

it's better than Dutch. I think the world would agree with that.

John Shull 49:00

Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't disagree with you on that, but you know, once again, it's personal preference. Can have it wherever you want on the list. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 49:09

okay, what's your number one?

John Shull 49:11

So surprisingly, to everyone who knows me listens or maybe has followed this podcast for the last few years, Die Hard is not on my top five list. Not it is not. I

Nick VinZant 49:26

thought for sure you were going to put Die Hard as your number one.

John Shull 49:29

I put it on the honorable mention maybe a couple years ago, if you know, I think we did this list few years back. I put it on there, but said no, I stayed with a pretty conservative pick, and my number one is, It's a Wonderful Life. Such a

Nick VinZant 49:44

boring movie, such a boring movie. But

John Shull 49:48

it's I not even in color.

Nick VinZant 49:50

They

John Shull 49:52

do have one in color, but regardless, they do. I didn't know that. I think the theme of my list is tradition. And I think the older I get. Right? The more tradition matters, and it's a wonderful life is it has a it's an it just has a great message. Like, I don't know what else to say about the movie, other than it's fantastic, I can

Nick VinZant 50:11

understand that. It's definitely something about getting older and becoming a parent that, like, tradition starts to suddenly mean a lot that like, Oh, this is what we do. This is the tradition that we go through.

John Shull 50:22

Yeah, and I mean, has one of the best, one of my, one of my favorite actors of all time in it, James Stewart.

Nick VinZant 50:29

My number one is not just the greatest holiday movie. I think it is really one of the greatest movies ever made, planes, trains and automobiles. I might be one of the greatest comedies ever made, and it has an emotional message that keeps you watching that movie again and again. I watch it every Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

John Shull 50:53

I mean, obviously I put it on my list. I love the movie. I would say, I would think one of the greatest ever. Actually, I think it's hard to really discern that from a lot of comedies of that time that were just like that, just just not a Thanksgiving, you know, holiday theme. I mean,

Nick VinZant 51:14

I think that's a the symptom of John Candy, that he is consistently underrated in his movies. He's underrated by the critics because he's not a critic darling. All the snobs don't like him, but John Candy's who doesn't, and the popular people, the people who doesn't like John Candy,

John Shull 51:33

oh, my God, I was just about to sound real dumb there. Where's that?

Nick VinZant 51:37

John Candy was No, I

John Shull 51:38

was gonna say, you know, one of the more versatile actors of his time, because he did Cool Runnings.

Nick VinZant 51:46

I mean, was he ever in any dramatic movies? He was always in comedies. No, he

John Shull 51:52

was always in that, I know of. I mean, and they, they were good comedies, right? I mean, the great outdoors, Uncle Buck. Oh, yeah, obviously, yeah, playing trains. He did that the God, he was at home alone.

Unknown Speaker 52:08

He was, yeah,

John Shull 52:10

there's there. His band gives,

Nick VinZant 52:13

Oh, that's right, the polka band, yeah, Spaceballs, yeah. He's, that's an actor that I would say that I missed. Well, you have anything in your honorable mention, and

John Shull 52:26

it all comes back around because he, he was the co owner of the Toronto Argonauts, which is the Canadian football team of the quarterback I was talking about earlier that shredded his leg. So all comes kind of full circle. Uh, let's see Otto mentioned, Die Hard, Home Alone, frosty Rudolph. You know all of those classic cartoony type movies or movies gremlins. Love gremlins. That was hard to keep off the list. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 52:56

that's up there. That's a good movie. And then

John Shull 53:00

Trading Places, which is another, yeah,

Nick VinZant 53:04

that's a good one.

John Shull 53:05

Eddie Eddie Murphy's hilarious, and that Dan aykroyds I feel, I think I feel about Dan Aykroyd, the Phil the way that you feel about John Candy, like I love Dan Aykroyd, and I think he is so underrated and will never truly get the credit he deserves in Hollywood.

Nick VinZant 53:21

It's a Canadian thing.

John Shull 53:23

And then I just, I, I have a few more, but I'll end with Scrooged, the Bill Murray version.

Nick VinZant 53:30

Oh yeah, that's a good one. That's pretty good. There's some Lego movies that I like. Think they were related to, like Star Wars, like LEGO Star Wars, something with Christmas. I don't remember what the names are. The only one that I had on there that you didn't was soul food. I like that movie and the best man holiday. I like both of those movies

John Shull 53:52

thinking on it. It's, I mean, has there been a good Christmas or not? Or holiday movie made in the last decade, Klaus, that

Nick VinZant 54:04

would be the only one that I could say, that you could make an argument that Klaus is probably the only one that's been good in the last decade. Any of those, like Bad Santa, there's a difference between entertaining and, I think, good.

John Shull 54:15

What's the one? Oh, my God. What's the one where Ryan Reynolds is, like, he's really fat in the beginning, and then he loses all the weight. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, yeah, I don't remember it either. But any of

Nick VinZant 54:28

those, like romantic comedies, like, I don't really have any interest in them, they're all the same movie. I'm

John Shull 54:34

going to bring up one more that's on my honorable mention because you didn't bring it up. But Jingle all the way with Arnold is also a good tradition movie. I hope that. I mean, we're official, we're in it, man, we are in the holiday season. So

Nick VinZant 54:52

right after Halloween, my level of effort in all things decreases by 5% a week. May. Maybe 10 and then probably 10% after Christmas, I'm putting in 10% less effort every single week until the new year.

John Shull 55:09

Well, I was talking to my wife, and for those of you that don't know Nick like he's an outdoorsy kind of guy, and I'm gonna I might get on skis for the first time ever. Because why? My calf still isn't fully healed, so why not just break my pelvis?

Nick VinZant 55:25

Oh, my God. Why are you gonna What are you gonna do? Don't take a lesson. Just go out there. Man, it up.

John Shull 55:31

Yeah, I have some friends that we're talking about just going out and, you know, they they'd put me on the kitty Hill, or something, the beginner Hill.

Nick VinZant 55:39

So, yeah, well, you just make sure they film it, dude, you're going to be there with me. Where are you guys going?

John Shull 55:47

Bye, I can't disclose that. I don't want the hordes of people showing

Nick VinZant 55:52

up. Oh, a hill, like a hill in Michigan, yeah, of course, we're going to go to a small

John Shull 55:55

hill, assuming we get snow, because it's been 60 degrees here every day. Here

Nick VinZant 55:59

we go. Did you mention your basement yet? No, not yet, but it's coming along. Okay, see, and that's the end of the show. Soon as this is a hard and fast rule, as soon as John brings up the weather and his basement while he's wearing a sweater,

John Shull 56:17

I wish I had, like the effects where I could, like, create snow coming down on me right now.

Nick VinZant 56:24

I have things to do. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. Really does help out the show and let us know what you think are the best holiday movies. I just Planes, Trains and Automobiles to me. I know people talk about the Godfather Citizen Kane, but I think that might be the best movie of all time. It's got everything, comedy, drama, characters, suspense, all of it. Perfect movie you.



Professional Ghost Investigator Ross Allison

For more than 30 years Paranormal Investigator Ross Allison has traveled the world investigating ghost stories. He’s conducted more than 1,000 ghost investigations and now he’s here to tell his story. We talk the science behind ghost investigations, the scariest places he’s ever been and looking for ghosts naked. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and countdown the Top 5 Kinds of Cheese.

Ross Allison: 01:14

Pointless: 31:39

Candle of the Month: 49:58

Top 5 Kinds of Cheese: 53:01

Contact the Show

Advanced Ghost Hunters

Parasense Documentary

Interview with Professional Ghost Investigator Ross Allison

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode ghosts and cheese.

Ross Allison 0:20

There are some things in the paranormal world that you just really can't say that wasn't a ghost, that that that was something. And when I shined my light to the rest of the room, I was surprised to see that the room was just filled with dozens and dozens of dead birds, and that was the last time she ever had an unusual encounter. The lamb stopped moving. She never saw her daughter again.

Nick VinZant 0:49

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest. This is professional ghost hunter, Ross Allison, Are ghosts real?

Ross Allison 1:15

Well, I think most society would believe that there is something out there. The belief in Ghost continues to grow.

Nick VinZant 1:22

So is that? Is that a yes for you personally or a no for you personally? Just to clarify?

Ross Allison 1:27

Well, I believe there's something out there. I've been doing this work for over 30 years. I've experienced a lot of strange phenomena, but I'm not one of those ghost hunters that says yes, ghosts exist, because, in all honesty, you have to experience it for yourself. I could show you a video of a ghost walking right up to the camera and going, boo, I'm a ghost. But if you don't believe in ghosts, you're just going to judge my credibility. So really, people have to experience a lot of this phenomena for themselves. All I try to do is present the possible evidence that there could be something out there and hopefully allow people to make their own decisions.

Nick VinZant 2:06

Yeah, like for me, personally, I don't believe in them, but I firmly believe that whatever people think is real is real to them.

Ross Allison 2:17

I agree with you on that

Nick VinZant 2:18

is that kind of what really motivated you, like, Okay, well, what is it that you're experiencing that you're so convinced, is this that or this? I've

Ross Allison 2:27

been in the field for over 30 years. I've been all over the world, spent the night in haunted castles and churches. A lot of you know places that are claimed to be haunted, even some of them that are known to be the most haunted in the world, like, you know, Amityville house, and I've been there, or even the exorcist case, you know, I got to investigate that. And so it really is more eye opening when you go into these places and you have some sort of unique encounter, you know, don't get me wrong, there are things that have happened like you you'll feel that tap on your shoulder and you start to second guess yourself like you know, was it my jacket? You know, could have been a nerve twitch. And I do second guess myself on a lot of things that I experience. But there are some things in the paranormal world that you just really can't say that wasn't a ghost that that that was something one of them, one of my favorite things in the paranormal field is what we call EVP, electronic voice phenomenon. So if you watch us on ghost hunting shows, we go in with our recording equipment, and then we start to ask questions into the air, and you should leave like 12 to 13 seconds of silence after that, because what you're hoping for is, when you play back your recording, you may hear an answer to that question that you had asked out loud. And there have been situations where I will do that, and I have a very controlled way of doing my experiments and research, so I know, when I'm in a haunted place and I make a sound or hear a sound, I'll tag it so that I don't forget about it when I play back my recording. But when you go into a haunted place and you ask, you know, you know, there's somebody here, and you get a clear response I'm here. You know that, to me is like, wow, how do you debunk that you're the only one in the room and you're asking questions into the air, and when you play back your recording, you get a direct response to me that is fascinating, and that's just a little bit of it. You know, there's, I've been done a lot more of the things. You know, with my documentary parasites, the naked experiments, that is fascinating to me, because I actually work with scientists, and we're trying to bring real science into the field. None of this suggested. Evidence that you see a lot on ghost hunting shows, we really want to collect the data to validate that there could be something going on out there. And like I said, we're not trying to say yes, it's ghost because we still are searching and we don't have all the answers, but we're trying to say that there could be something to this.

Nick VinZant 5:18

So if we have what you seem to be indicating is pretty solid evidence of something, why do you think that the public isn't supporting this, like two and two is four? Why do you think that there's skepticism out there?

Ross Allison 5:35

Well, I think a lot of it as unfortunately, we've dealt with far too many charlatans, people using this field for entertainment, such as Allah, the television shows, people using this for their you know, 15 minutes of fame. So and this clear goes back to history. You know, when we had, you know, mediums popping up during the spiritualism times, you know, Victorian era, when all these mediums were popping up claiming that they were talking to spirits. And of course, a lot of them were proven to be fake. So that helped to build a lot of the skepticism towards this field and and a lot of it too, is I finding that a lot of people in this field, or even the audience, is afraid of the science. They don't understand the science that they are. They're afraid that the ones and zeros is too complicated for them. They want, they want the simple answers, or they want the drama, you know, like, Oh my God, what's that? Did you hear that? Or, you know, it's like us driving by a car accident, everybody has to stop and look. So a lot of that has made it difficult for the small majority of us that are being very serious and really truly looking for answers. Okay,

Nick VinZant 6:57

I want to get into kind of the procedures that you go through in terms of like, okay, how do you investigate? But I want to ask you this first, what do you think would happen if you proved, and everybody believed that there was,

Ross Allison 7:11

I think it would put a lot of us at ease, you know, when it comes to death, and that is when our biggest draw for the paranormal is, you know, people are afraid of death. We're afraid that, you know, that we just don't exist anymore. And I think if there's that idea that there is some sort of afterlife that takes some pressure off you, you're like, oh my gosh, you know, I don't have to be so afraid of that, that vital door closing in on me, that I may be able to still have some way to communicate with my loved ones or be able to see, you know how the future evolves. You know that I can still go on in some way? Okay,

Nick VinZant 7:53

so getting into how you do this. So how do you investigate a ghost like, how do you do this?

Ross Allison 8:01

With my latest research, I'm trying to document physical phenomena you know as being the first person in history to try and prove touch whenever it comes to trying to capture evidence, there's nothing wrong with too much data. The more data you have, the more credible your experience becomes and we also try to focus on three points of data. So just because, you know, you go into a haunted place and your EMF detector goes off, and you see this a lot on Ghost, on each shows, they say, oh, that must be a ghost, and that's it. That's all they're going off of. It's just one EMF reading. Or, you know, they just heard a strange noise. Oh, that's a ghost. And that's it. I try to go off more if I'm getting EMF reading, what else can I go to what else can I collect to validate that EMF reading? And if I can get three points of data, that is hopefully enough evidence to validate what we possibly are experiencing. Now, one thing I have to express to people is there's no such thing as a ghost meter. There's no device that has been created that you can put into a haunted location, and it's going to tell you, yes, you have a ghost what we do, the best we can do as paranormal investigators is use devices that help us to read the environment and let us know if there's changes in the environment that we can't explain. Why is there a temperature drop when there shouldn't be one? Why is there a strong EMF reading when there shouldn't be one? So we just take a bunch of these devices and collect as much data as we can around our subject or around the experiment that we are conducting, and that is hopefully enough to at least walk us in the right direction in trying to collect the evidence that is needed. So. Because we don't have enough information right now to even know what a ghost is, what a ghost is made of.

Nick VinZant 10:07

So how many now? How you've been doing this for 30 years?

Ross Allison 10:11

Now? Over 30 years? Yeah,

Nick VinZant 10:12

over 30 years. How many investigations have you done?

Ross Allison 10:15

Oh, gosh, I probably done. I wouldn't be surprised if it's probably close to 1000

Nick VinZant 10:21

how many of those would you say? All right, there's something that I can't explain going on here, versus how many would you say, like, look, I went there. It's a it's a bad air conditioner in the back vent, or something like that. Yeah, I think you know what. I mean.

Ross Allison 10:36

No, I get you, to be honest with you, I'd say about maybe 25% you have to understand with with ghost hunting, it's all about being at the right place at the right time. Like I said, I've been to some of the most haunted places in the world, or what they've been labeled as, and I would not have an experience. Sometimes I'd even spend the night in some of these places and walk away with nothing. Now, I'm not saying that they're not haunted. It's just all about, all about being at that right place at the right time. It's just like, you know, scratching a lotto ticket or pulling the, you know, the lever on the slot machine. You just never know when you're going to have that unique encounter.

Nick VinZant 11:20

Are you ready for some harder slash, listener submitted questions, sure, scariest places you've ever been,

Ross Allison 11:27

like I said, with my as you would ask, you know how many places you would say out of the 1000 that I've done? You know, 25% is probably a good number to say. But even when it comes to Scary Encounters or having those startling experiences. It's even less than that, it seems. And it's funny to me, because when I watch a lot of these ghost hunters on television and sees like every time they go out and do an investigation, they always feel like their life is on the line, and it's just like, Oh my God. But I have to say there's a couple good ones that I do tell a lot of times on my lecture tours, or when I do a lot of these shows. One of my favorite ones to tell is when I actually got to investigate St Louis University, and this was during my lecture tour that I'm on right now, and I got called out to the campus to do my lecture, and I was the first to offer ghost hunts on the campus. So this was a new experience for a lot of the students, so I would take them around to investigate the supposedly haunted places that they have on campus. Well, I was unaware of this when I was asked to do this lecture at St Louis, that this is where the true exorcist case took place. Now we're talking about the case that inspired the movie The Exorcist. Now the story is actually about a little boy that they had named Robbie to protect his identity. It's not a little girl named Linda Blair, just so we know. So I was invited to the campus I do my lecture, and now we're going to do a ghost hunt. So they take me to this building that's right next to the church that was involved in the case. Now the church had owned this building in the past, but they had now sold it to the campus, and so this is what got us access to be able to go into this building. So they take me through all the different floors, and they take me to the fourth floor. And I'm surprised that the fourth floor was completely abandoned. I mean holes all over the place, graffiti everywhere, and it was huge up there too. I mean, you could see where there used to be old classrooms, or used to be old dorm rooms, because when the church owned it, the nuns used to live in these rooms, the old classrooms, or where they used to teach Sunday school, yeah, all kinds of, you know, huge meeting spaces. And I was thinking, gosh, you know, this place is so huge up here. Why doesn't the campus utilize this space? And they proceed to tell me that they stopped using the space because they've had too many problems up here. And when they're saying problems, they're hinting to paranormal problems. I'm like, Okay, this is interesting. So we go through all the different rooms, and the students are following me around with the equipment, and I walk into this one room, and right when I walked into the room, I heard this crunch underneath my feet, and I looked down and I see that I had stepped on a dead bird. Now this is not unusual to run into dead animals, especially in abandoned places, but I didn't want anybody else to step on this dead bird, so I kind of kicked it over to the side, and when I shined my light to the rest of the room, I was surprised to see that the room was just filled with dozens and dozens of dead birds. Now I had been through most of the fourth floor, and I. Not encountered any dead animals until I walked into this one room. Now the other interesting part of the story is security had removed all the doors on the fourth floor. This is because they've had far too many problems with students constantly sneaking up to the fourth floor to scare each other, so it just made it easier for security to make them round, to not have to worry about students hiding in rooms or behind doors. So they just removed all the doors on the fourth floor. So as I'm standing in this room filled with all these dead birds, I realize these birds had access to the whole fourth floor. Why did they all choose to die in just this one room? Well, as I'm pondering this, I realized that none of the students have come into the room with me. I'm the only one standing alone in this room. They're all standing in the doorway. They all are too freaked out to come into the room. And I say, Come on, guys, are you not going to join me, and that's when they tell me that this is the room that the boy had stayed in. Now the story is that the Church believed that they could not perform a full exorcism on the boy in the church because they believed that this could possibly kill him. So they had performed multiple exorcisms on this boy at various secret locations. So I'm now standing in the room where this boy had stayed in and an exorcism had been performed. Creep factors gone up quite a bit. So I'm a little intrigued, you know, as a go center, okay, I'm like, Okay, let's, let's see if we can get something here. So I coax a few of the you know, students to join me in the room. You know, they got the equipment, and we're standing this room for less than five minutes, and I kid you not, all the equipment started to go off at the exact same time we're talking the temperature started to drop, the EMF detectors going off like crazy. We can't figure out what's causing the EMF reading readings. The compass is spinning around and around and around and around, and it will not stop. And I'm going, oh my god, I got to document this. I got to prove that this is really happening. So luckily, my camera shoots an infrared video. So I switch my camera over to video. I start filming everything that's going on, documenting that the equipment's all going off at the same time, documenting what we're getting in the readings, documenting the students experiences and expressions, and then it starts to slow down a little bit. So I realized, Okay, before it completely stops, I want to try for EVP, that Electronic Voice Phenomena. So I start asking questions into the air, and I happen to ask the question, can you tell me whose room this is? Now there's about 12 seconds of silence, then I start to hear crying to left any and I turn and I realized that a couple of the female students have started to cry because it was so terrified being in this room. And I realized, okay, they're uncomfortable, and I'm going to admit I'm a little uncomfortable too, because I don't have my normal ghost hunting team. This is just a bunch of college students following me around, so I'm a little concerned about the safety, so I decided, You know what you guys, let's go ahead and wrap up, and hopefully I'll come back and do my own investigation. So we ended up finishing up the the tour, and I didn't get a chance to go back and do my own investigation, but when I finally got home after my lecture tour, I had a chance to finally sit down and watch all the evidence or videos that I collected at all these different campuses. And I got to that video, and I got to the part in the video where I'd ask, can you tell me whose room this is? Now I'm going to edit this for your audience, but I did get two responses. It says, Fu, it's mine. Oh, I'm not going back there, yeah, but I did. I definitely would go back

Nick VinZant 19:16

yeah. That's too scary for me. Man, I'm not messing with that. That's actually one of our questions. Why did there seem to be any nice ghosts?

Ross Allison 19:24

Well, no, yes, there's lots of them out there this, unfortunately, the media doesn't always tell those stories. Most people will tune in for the scary drama stuff. There's a here's a good story I like to tell. I had a Haunted Museum, so I had collected all these artifacts that people believe that sometimes energy can be attached to an object. So one thing that I had recently gotten into my museum was this little stuffed lamb. And this little stuffed lamb belonged to a little eight year old girl. I don't state her name because I want to protect her identity, but she was one of those kids that was just obsessed with this toy. It was with her every day, every moment, even when she bathed, she bathed with this lamb. So it was with her when she was crossing the street and was unfortunately struck by a car. Her and the lamb went separate ways. Unfortunately, she died later in the hospital, and her mother, wanting her daughter to be buried with her cherished toy, she went back to the scene of the crime, and she went up and down the street, and she could not find that lamb anywhere. Well, unfortunately, the funeral came, and she ended up burying her daughter without her lamb. When she got home from the funeral, to her surprise, that lamb was sitting on her front porch. Now she doesn't know how it got there. No one has ever reached out to her and said, Oh, I found it. I left it on the porch for you. You know, nobody ever reached out to her and told her where this lamb had come from. But she was still grateful to have it, so she brought it into the house and she put it on her daughter's bed. The very next day, the lamb was sitting in front of the TV, where her daughter would always sit to watch her favorite shows. And things like this started happening almost on a daily basis. This lamb would start to show up in different places in the house. You know, where she'd sit in the corner and play with a lot of her toys? You know where she'd sit at the table, it would appear, to eat her meals. And so after she started having all these experiences with this lab, you know, and this is a mother that really didn't believe in ghosts, you know, she was one of those that, you know, she kept an open enough mind that, you know, she wasn't sure, but she had never experienced anything like this, so she really didn't know what to do, so she reached out to a local paranormal investigator, and so what they decided to try for is EVP again. So they set the lamb on the table, they put a recorder right next to the lamb, and they started, you know, to ask the little girl questions. And they wanted to find out, you know, if this was the little girl, you know, what was going on. So they spent about an hour, you know, doing recordings. And when they finally played back the recordings, to their surprise, they captured what sounded like a little girl crying in the background. And so this, you know, after the mother hearing this, she was a little shaken up. In fact, that night, she could not sleep. She just tossed and turned, and so in the middle of the night, she ended up getting up and going into her daughter's room, and she laid on her daughter's bed, and she finally was able to fall asleep, but then she was awoken by a strange noise, and when she opened her eyes, she happened to be, you know, facing the doorway, and she saw her daughter standing in the doorway. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, but she just locked eyes with her daughter, and she watched her daughter just slowly fade away, and that was the last time she ever had an unusual encounter. The lamb stopped moving. She never saw her daughter again, and she believes the reason why her daughter was crying in that recording because she was saying goodbye,

Nick VinZant 23:44

assuming they are real. What do you think they want?

Ross Allison 23:48

The most common belief that when it comes to spirit or ghosts, there is some sort of attachment that could be to a person, to a place or to a thing. So as to, you know, what causes a haunting. We don't have the guaranteed recipe. A lot of people think that, you know, there could be a tragic event that could cause a haunting. You know, a sudden death. You're not aware that you're dead. You know could cause a haunting. That attachment to a house because you were so proud of this house. This is your first big purchase, your dream house, and now you don't know how to let go or attach to a loved one, because you're so worried how they're going to be able to move on without you, or you just want to watch over your children, you know, things like that. Those are a lot of the common beliefs as to, what could, you know, trigger a haunting.

Nick VinZant 24:37

I am a logistical person, and that's always my thing, right? So I looked up one time that there's like 100 billion people who have ever existed like, I feel like we would have a lot more.

Ross Allison 24:46

I agree. I think it's for me. I just believe that it's a certain type of, I don't know, experience, or certain type of want or desire. Or even, you know, some sort of psychology that allows you to carry on in a different element,

Nick VinZant 25:11

getting away from kind of like the, you know, is it real? Is it not kind of stuff. Are there regions in the United States or in the world that seem to put more belief in it than other places are there are ghosts seem to be bigger in certain parts of the country. Well,

Ross Allison 25:29

yes, I think when it comes to America's beliefs, there's far more skepticism. We are dealing with a society where, you know, even religion, some religions are dying out. You know, you see far more churches for sale than filled with, you know, believers. So I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we tend to, you know, steer away from those you know, types of beliefs. But then when you go to other cultures and other you know countries, you know, if you go to Asian cultures, there's very big believers in ghosts. In fact, you know, ghost hunting is a no no. You know, you basically stay away from them, because they believe that that can cause, you know, bad luck, or, you know, problems in your life if you mess around with ghosts. That's why it's so hard to investigate haunted places in a lot of the Asian countries, because they don't want that stuff messed with, because it's such a strong belief. You know, you go to places like the UK, I've done tons of investigations out there, and they're very big believers and ghosts, in fact, it's very laid back. You know, it's a, it's a such a strong belief that it doesn't take much for you to convince them that they just experience something paranormal, like I said, you could hear that knock on the wall, and that's enough for them to say, Yeah, that's a ghost, and they'll totally believe it. They don't need any type of debunking. It's just widely accepted. The funniest thing for me is when I watch a lot of these ghost hunting shows, and they go to countries where English is not the the dominating, you know, language, or even, you know, spoken in a lot of these countries, it's always odd that they always get, you know, EVPs in English. So I always thought that that was kind of odd. So here I am in Italy. I don't speak Italian. I'm in the catacombs, and I'm just communicating in English, hoping something might, you know, hear me or understand me? And I asked, is there anybody here? And to my surprise, when I played back my video recording, I got a response, C which is yes, Italian,

Nick VinZant 27:59

yeah. It really doesn't make sense that they would be speaking English. But like, How come when you Why do you have to play it back? Like, why wouldn't you hear it in real time? What's the and

Ross Allison 28:11

that's one of the mysteries of the paranormal. We don't understand how EVPs are captured. There's been quite a few different experiments done in how audio is captured on recording devices. Some people believe that maybe you don't even need a microphone. Maybe it is, you know, transformed right into the recorder itself, because EVPs go beyond or before even digital recorders were out there. You know, we're talking analog recorders, you know, cassette recorders. You know, reel to reel recorders were the first to capture EVP recordings. So we don't know exactly how it happened, especially since the technology has advanced and we can still claim to capture these voices. So there's got to be a common factor in those devices that allow us to capture this phenomena.

Nick VinZant 29:05

That's pretty much all the questions we got. What's kind of coming up next for you? If people want to learn more, where can they find you? What kind of stuff can they check out?

Ross Allison 29:14

Well, I always encourage people, if you want to learn more about me, definitely follow me on Facebook. Ross Allison, go center. I when I travel, I do a lot of live feeds from my locations that I'm investigating. And I I'm probably when it comes to social media, that's the one thing I'm able to maintain. You

Nick VinZant 29:33

mentioned it before, but the documentaries that you put out, what are those called? Again? So

Ross Allison 29:37

I have the doc, my award winning documentary, persons, the naked experiments. And this is my documentary series that we're still working on. We're actually in the middle of filming the second one, where I actually work with scientists, and we're trying to develop new equipment to help validate the phenomena to. Touch. And a lot of people have always asked me to ask a lot, why naked? And I always have to remind people that if you're trying to validate touch, you need to see what happens to the physical body. You know, somebody is going to say, you know, I felt a pressure on my my shoulder. You want to see if there was a physical pressure, was there any type of, you know, put a fingerprints or anything that shows that the skin moved? Was there a temperature change? We need to see that to validate that. And if you're wearing a shirt or a jacket, it automatically becomes, you know, contaminated evidence. Because anybody who's a skeptic, or even in the scientific world, will say it could have been your shirt, it could have been your jacket. So we had to eliminate that. But also it made sense too, because the skin is the largest sensing organ. It's the most sensitive part of our body. So that helps to possibly even increase the phenomenon, because who's to say you might have walked into a HANA place and a ghost tapped you on the shoulder. You didn't feel it because you're wearing a jacket. Well, now ghost can tap you on the shoulder, and hopefully we can see it. So in all honesty, nudity just made sense.

Nick VinZant 31:15

I want to thank Ross so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have a link to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on tick tock, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. If you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on November 8 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Mentally speaking, where would you say you live most of the time in the past, the present or the future?

John Shull 31:52

I mean, I feel like I have to live in the present because of my children. I feel like if alcohol is involved, I live in the past which alcohol is normally involved. So I would say it's a good mixture of the present and past. I don't think about the future too much.

Nick VinZant 32:08

Oh, I feel like I live more in the future than I live in the past or the present. Like I'm always generally thinking about the next thing that I have to do. I

John Shull 32:19

just don't see what living in the future gets you to me, thinking about the future is angst. It's worries. It's, you know, man, the bills are coming up, or, you know, I have this deadline or that deadline, or I have to do this. I have to do that. Man, you know, it's going to be 35 degrees in a month. I better get outside and finish my lawn like I would rather just live in the here and now and take it day to day. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 32:43

but if you lived more in the future, then maybe you wouldn't see so much anxiety about the future. Like, maybe the reason that you don't want to think about what's next is because you haven't prepared for it, and so then it causes you anxiety because you're like, Oh, I got to do all this stuff because you weren't ready to do it.

John Shull 32:59

I think being prepared for the future and thinking about the future two different things. Like, I'm ready for the future. I think, I mean, in an hour from now, I'm gonna be ready for an hour from now. But like thinking about the future, what good does that do? You? What good does planning really do anyone? That's my that's my question. I

Nick VinZant 33:19

think that you have to have an overall, general plan of like, where you want your life to go, or goals that you have to accomplish. But I do agree with you, like, I don't generally think too much about the future, because everything's just kind of too unknown, like, you never really know what life is gonna give you. So I think if you have too much of a plan, you can't adapt. I

John Shull 33:43

mean, I just feel like, if you over prepare, you know, if you, if you lay out your life and you live strategically, and you live stringently towards, say, a goal, and then you get hit by a bus, what was that all for? I mean, what? What was all the worrying, all the felt like, just live in the here and now. If you want a cheeseburger, go get a cheeseburger. Yeah, dude, but

Nick VinZant 34:03

if you YOLO everything, then you ain't gonna live very long. I never understood that. Saying Life is short, like no, life is not short. It's the longest thing you're ever gonna do.

John Shull 34:13

I mean, for some Yeah, but

Nick VinZant 34:15

still, it's still the longest thing that you're ever gonna do. No matter how long you're on this planet. It's still the longest thing you're ever going to do. I would just

John Shull 34:23

love to have the child's mentality. Imagine if every adult in the world had the child's mentality of just living in the moment and just enjoying that moment for what it was that the world would be a lot better off.

Nick VinZant 34:36

I think the world would probably collapse. Yeah. I

John Shull 34:39

mean, I'm not saying, like,

Nick VinZant 34:41

that's one of those things, like, Oh, that'd be great. Everybody would like to do that, but if you actually did that, then, like, you know what, I don't really feel like building this road. I'm gonna go play hacky sack.

John Shull 34:52

I mean, I

Nick VinZant 34:53

work out well for you.

John Shull 34:54

Obviously, I'm kind of kidding. I mean, of course I think about the the future a little bit. It, but I don't think nearly as much as most people. I'm definitely a here and now kind of person. I think that reflects in my personality. Because I am the Yolo guy. I am the, you know, I am the hey, you know, I may not have the $100 to spend on something, but you know what, YOLO? I'll figure it out later. Or there's seven shots in front of me and someone's challenging me to do it. I'm probably going to feel it the next morning. But you know what, YOLO, that's

Nick VinZant 35:25

a better. That's a good. I don't know which one of our mindsets is correct. I envy your mindset a little bit, but I also feel like my mindset is maybe, am I practical?

John Shull 35:36

I could, I mean, probably, probably smarter, but, I mean, I can tell you as being a dad of young children, I'm kind of getting back to that YOLO stage, like I'm kind of if some if an opportunity arises, YOLO, that's it. Let's do it.

Nick VinZant 35:53

I agree. I do live a little bit more in the moment where I'm around my children, but let's not turn this into a whole talking about our children episode like you always want to let us move on. You're not going

John Shull 36:03

to tell the people that this is going to turn into a dad podcast.

Nick VinZant 36:06

No, because it never will. I know that's what you want to do. 67% of people say they I pulled the audience. Not a lot of votes so far, so I'll update it throughout the episode. But 67% of people say they live in the past. 33% in the present. Nobody has voted for the future. Yet interesting living, live in

John Shull 36:25

the here and now. Man, don't you never know tomorrow's not guaranteed.

Nick VinZant 36:31

It isn't. But if it does come and you're not ready for it, that's gonna that's gonna work out well for you, you just have to have a balance. Man, it's bad that the answer to everything in life is basically it depends, and it's a balance

John Shull 36:45

moderation. I think the word moderation, if you apply that to your entire life, you'll have a good life, because everything's about moderation.

Nick VinZant 36:54

My grandfather used to have a good saying about moderation. He said moderation. He said everything in moderation, including moderation.

John Shull 37:03

Alright, let's give some shout outs here. We'll start with Joseph Benoni Tonio. Just screw that one up. I mean, I think it is. I just think I screwed up the last name terribly Nick like Grable. Luke brazilli, Dan, shown Tuki Lee, not. I don't think tookies real name, but if it is, I don't know why, but I was drawn to that. I've actually heard of a person named Tukey,

Nick VinZant 37:32

really, yeah.

John Shull 37:36

Uh, Michael, Madeira, Maria, lawless Becker, Beckley, that can't be real, right? Becker

Nick VinZant 37:45

Beckley, yeah, can't be real. Well, inside of some of those names aren't good enough to make up. That

John Shull 37:51

is kind of true. Uh, Cade Smith, Johnny Indigo and nella perza kakova,

Nick VinZant 37:59

oh, you did that one. I thought there was no way that was getting out nice nicely done. Nicely done.

John Shull 38:05

Thank you. Y'all deserve the shout outs for the day. Episode, are we? Is it? Tom,

Nick VinZant 38:13

no,

John Shull 38:15

come on. Nobody wants

Nick VinZant 38:18

to hear. The only thing you want to do is talk about your candle. I do have to wait until before the top five. This isn't just about Dad issues and candles, which I know that's all you want to talk about.

John Shull 38:32

I'm just saying, fine. Let's see. I have a couple of things. I'm gonna

Nick VinZant 38:36

say this on the record. Not only I only care about I'm a father. I'm a great to be a dad. It's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I don't care about your kids. I don't care about anybody else's kids. Nobody wants to hear about anybody else's kids. Oh, I mean, I think even your grandparents don't want to know about your kids.

John Shull 38:56

I think if you care about the person, yeah, I mean, obviously I You're not going to care a lot, but I think you still care a little bit if you're a friend, if you're a family, you know, a family member, of course, you care a little bit if you care about the person,

Nick VinZant 39:10

how you and I have been best friends for how long?

John Shull 39:15

I mean, what? 1312, 13 years.

Nick VinZant 39:18

I'm not even entirely sure the name of your children. Oh, well, you know the name of my two children.

John Shull 39:26

Yes,

Nick VinZant 39:27

okay, all right, you say the oldest, and I'll try to guess your oldest. Oh, Logan, Miranda,

John Shull 39:39

that's the youngest.

Nick VinZant 39:41

Joanna is the oldest, see,

John Shull 39:43

and your youngest is Riley.

Nick VinZant 39:47

Oh, well, okay, so you're a better friend than I am.

John Shull 39:49

I mean, you knew my kids names, so I'll take I did know your kids names. Okay, at least. Anyways, I love how you said, Let's not turn this into a dad podcast. And you just you. Asked a question about our children, so let me turn it around on somebody

Nick VinZant 40:02

see if you knew the name of my children. I wondered if you actually knew it. Let me

John Shull 40:07

turn around on things that people really don't care about here. Alright, so by the time this episode comes out, we will possibly have a new president of the United States of America, either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. I don't know why I was going dark on both those names there. Uh, regardless. Do you think I've this is kind of a two prong questions. One, how annoying and out of touch are, uh, text messages and phone calls in terms of voting. You know, while you you look at your phone, you get 10 text messages a day. Now, vote this. Vote that. That's the first question. The second question I have for that is, do you think they actually work? Does anyone look at that text or get the voice mail and go, Man, you know what? I am going to vote today, or I am going to do this because I got a text or a call.

Nick VinZant 40:56

I don't remember who said it, but there is somebody famous who said, Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public. Like I couldn't imagine going all the way up to this with all of the things happening and on either side being like, you know what? I just haven't make up I made up my mind. Yet I just have not made up my mind. What I'm gonna do that to me, is crazy.

John Shull 41:23

I mean, I think it's, I mean, once again, I'm not, I don't want to put my own thoughts into it, but I, I do think that this election, more than anyone else, maybe in history, is the most, you know, divisive. So yes, you're either one side or the other. I don't, I don't think there's anyone in the middle on this, and that's fine, you, do you. But, yeah, I don't think there's, I don't think there's a gray area. It's very black or white to me. Alright, let's see here. I think we need to give an rip. The Rip of the Week goes to Quincy Jones, 91 years old, pass away over the weekend, probably the greatest music producer of our generation, like of our lifetime, in our parents lifetime,

Nick VinZant 42:03

probably, yeah, I don't know any other music producers. No, dude, Is he better than Dr Dre? Yes,

John Shull 42:11

oh, I

Nick VinZant 42:12

don't know if you can say he's better than Dr Dre.

John Shull 42:15

I listen. I'm not taking anything away from Dr Dre at all. He's great. But Quincy Jones worked and now, you know what, I don't know if Dr Dre is, Who's he, who's he's worked with, all in all, but Quincy Jones, His career spanned, you know, a half century, and he worked with everybody.

Nick VinZant 42:35

I don't know. I think that there's some big names that you can kind of put up there when I think of like big time producers, Rick Rubin, dr, Dre Timbaland,

John Shull 42:49

Jimmy I what? Iovine? Iovine, whatever his

Nick VinZant 42:52

name is, Jimmy ivine. I don't know if he was a producer, if he was something else, but I'm the problem is he, Oh, he did you Michael Jackson's Thriller

John Shull 43:01

he did, and that's where you got really famous. But, I mean, he did several others. I mean, wasn't just Michael this is kind of funny, but not really funny. James Van Der Beek, I'm sure we're all familiar with him. Teen heartthrob Dawson's Creek, Friday night or not? Friday Night Lights, varsity blues.

Unknown Speaker 43:23

I don't want your

John Shull 43:27

exactly varsity blues. Poor guy has has announced publicly that he has colon cancer. But it's kind of awkward, because he is doing TV interviews, and he's like, in front of a like, Theme Park Hotel while talking about his cancer diagnosis. And I don't know, I just thought it was kind of weird. And I just want everyone to know that if I ever go on this show and to announce I have some kind of medical diagnosis, I'm going to do it right here, not in front of a theme park background or on a beach somewhere. Yeah, you gotta be in, like,

Nick VinZant 44:03

your house. Like, at least put a background on there. Like, put a zoom background. Like, you can't be like, I would like to say that I have colon cancer, and then, like, The Incredible Hulk roller coaster is behind you. Yeah,

John Shull 44:18

right. Like, that doesn't like, like, what are we like? What are we doing?

Nick VinZant 44:24

I'd like to thank Six Flags for putting me up here while I announce colon cancer.

John Shull 44:30

So a top five I think we should do at some point, are shows that should not have had a second season. I say that the preface this thought Rick, which is why, you know, I've actually never seen an episode of that, but regardless, I've never seen it either. The second season of squid game is coming out, and I saw the trailer for it. If you haven't checked it out, do it. I think it's going to be absolutely terrible. And I feel like squid games should have been a one off show instead of trying. Into making it to, like, a complete show, with series and things.

Nick VinZant 45:03

Yeah, that's one of those things where, like, how are you going to move that forward? Really? It was such a big thing though, there's no way that somebody's going to turn down that money. And even if I, I'm not a super artistic person, but even if I had really super artistic principles, and then somebody came with at me with a truckload of money. I would probably be doing it, like the guy who directed the new Joker movie basically said, like, they just gave me so much money, I couldn't not do it, and I just it was terrible, but I did

John Shull 45:34

it anyway. That's getting a lot of hate, and I haven't seen it, but I feel like it can't be that bad, right?

Nick VinZant 45:42

Oh, man, it must be. I mean, everybody, I do think I understand what you mean in the sense that, like, I do think that sometimes public opinion kind of switches everything. And if the first person who says it sees it says it's good, then everybody else is like, Oh yeah, it's good. And if somebody, first person sees it says it's bad, then everybody's like, Oh, it's so terrible. I think people are very swayed by the person who came before them. Oh, future still has no votes. Everybody living in the past of the present. Okay, got anything else there? One

John Shull 46:11

other thing here, I saw this, Carter five.com listed the worst states to live in. I don't know who they are. To know who they are, to know what they are. Thought it was interesting, and I don't really agree with this, but number one was Alaska.

Nick VinZant 46:28

Oh, I could see it. If it's not, if being outside isn't your thing, it's probably not a great place to live. It's expensive, and it's not like you can get anywhere else. Yeah,

John Shull 46:40

yeah. I just, I wouldn't think. I mean, I would think, and I love my state, but Michigan, New York, you know, somewhere, maybe the large urban metropolis, not, not Alaska, you know, I thought that was surprising. Well,

Nick VinZant 46:53

you have opportunity in big cities, though, even if you have problems with big cities, you still have opportunity. I think that if you live in Alaska, you don't have much opportunity. Like, are you going to go out to the mountains today? Yeah, that's what else am I going to do? You know,

Unknown Speaker 47:09

what were the five states?

Nick VinZant 47:11

What were the five states? So

John Shull 47:12

it was Alaska. Kentucky was was second, which I guess I get, even though I don't know, I think Kentucky is pretty beautiful. Let's see here, Iowa, west of Virginia and Arkansas, were the top five.

Nick VinZant 47:33

The only thing I would say with that is a person who used to live in Kansas and now live somewhere else. I don't think that people who live in rural areas. And grew up in rural areas really understand how much more opportunity there is in bigger places. Because growing up in Kansas, I would always say, like, oh, you can do anything you want here, and then you move somewhere else and you realize, oh, you really can't. It really is different. Yes, you can do everything, but things need to be convenient for you to actually do them. And in rural places, it's not convenient like I could go skiing and snowboarding when I lived in Kansas, if I drove to Colorado. Now that I live in Washington, I can go skiing and snowboarding and I drive 45 minutes. So

John Shull 48:18

which? Which? By the way, I feel like I need to say this, but you said you crashed this weekend on your moped, or whatever you were on. I

Nick VinZant 48:26

crashed in my mountain bike, and

John Shull 48:28

I have to tell you, you're looking good, man. There's no visible scarring. You look good. You

Nick VinZant 48:34

know, I think I didn't realize this as that I've missed kind of being slightly injured, in the sense, there's something about like, going out and doing something, whether that's like working outside or doing something outdoors and getting hurt, like coming home with some blood on you. There's something about that that you're like, Yeah,

John Shull 48:57

I almost I gashed my finger over the weekend with a with a kitchen knife, and I felt kind of kind of badass when I did it. So I feel I know what you're saying.

Nick VinZant 49:06

You there's something about, I think, for men, like getting injured, like, yeah, got hurt today. Like, you need some battle scars,

John Shull 49:17

yeah, you need to just, just put it out there, go run into a tree,

Nick VinZant 49:22

right? Or throw your back out and get hospitalized picking up dog poop. That happens to a lot of people, right?

John Shull 49:31

You know what? My back still

Nick VinZant 49:33

hurts. Since your back still hurt from picking up dog poop?

John Shull 49:37

No, no. I also blew out my calf. For those of you that don't know softball,

Nick VinZant 49:42

playing

John Shull 49:44

softball,

Nick VinZant 49:45

really, you should say being at a softball game.

John Shull 49:48

Oh no, I was playing. I was playing.

Nick VinZant 49:50

Were you though I was okay? All right,

John Shull 49:54

I can also outrun a buffalo, maybe not, right. Now.

Nick VinZant 49:56

Are you ready for

your special. Time.

John Shull 50:03

I know, yes, I'm ready for my special time.

Nick VinZant 50:04

All right, that's the best I've ever done a horse. It's time. The Outlaw candle connoisseur ride Whoa.

Ross Allison 50:16

Birth Rides Again. Candle, that's fun.

John Shull 50:25

Wow, okay, okay, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to follow that. All right,

Nick VinZant 50:29

let's go for it. Go for it. Big horse.

John Shull 50:31

So it's November. What do you do in November?

Nick VinZant 50:37

Have Thanksgiving dinner, I guess. Wait for winter to be over.

John Shull 50:41

You go cut down trees some of us. Oh,

Nick VinZant 50:44

okay. Manly man, alright, okay. So

John Shull 50:47

my candle of the month, kind of unexpectedly but wonderfully, is by Goose Creek. I think I featured them once or twice in the last couple of years. It is called tree cutting. It's a three wick candle, relatively cheap, and it smells like if I if I had to say something or describe it as something, it's kind of like when you're at a tree farm and you're trying to find that perfect spruce to cut down, and the cold air, the crisp air, hits the pine and the spruce, and it just smells, you know, it just smells like a like a tree that you want to cut down and make your own. And that's what this candle will do for you. It's awesome.

Nick VinZant 51:35

What's the price? Tell me that how much broad surprise, how many wicks, three

John Shull 51:39

wicks, I don't think there was any other option other than three weeks in it right now, I $11 on sale from $25 so I don't know if it's going to be this price. Oh, when the episode comes out, but if you want to grab candles now, until probably just before Christmas, is the best time to do it out of all year round, other than maybe Fourth of July, because they have a lot of Fourth of July sales too. But you can get a lot of candles for cheap right now, but definitely get tree cutting. It's awesome. It's okay.

Nick VinZant 52:08

What else did you kind of compare it against for the month? What were some of the other big ones you were looking at? So

John Shull 52:13

I had a I had a really nice Halloween one, and I was like, Yeah, you know, I wanted to showcase it. It's called Spider Web pancakes. And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's sweet, but it's also kind of grungy and Dungy. It was an, it was an interesting scent, I'll tell you that. Okay. And then another one was called cranberry cocktail, and that was more of like a Thanksgiving candle that I thought about putting on here too, because it was very just, obviously cranberry ish, a little bit of like stuffing vibe as well. Hardy, hardy, and can't fit it all in your hand, kind of candle so, and

Nick VinZant 52:53

just for the record, John does have two children. There is some sort of proof that he has had sex with a woman before you ready for top five?

John Shull 53:03

I am. I can't wait to see your wondrous choices.

Nick VinZant 53:08

Mine are all simple man's choices, because I'm a man of the people, not some bougie snobby person. You're probably gonna have all these fancy cheeses that nobody's ever heard of. That's not my list. This is a list for the people, the common man, the common woman, person who's not out there spending $75 for an ounce of cheese. Working people,

John Shull 53:31

are you done? Can we just get to the list? I was

Nick VinZant 53:33

I was running out of stuff. Okay, so our top five is top five cheeses. It's your number one, five or five. This is your number five. Sorry,

John Shull 53:41

I'm gonna redone already. Skip right to the end. My number five is blue cheese. Oh, okay.

Nick VinZant 53:48

My number five is also blue cheese. I think blue like my number five is blue cheese, to me, is also fantastic. Blue cheese crumbles changed my life. Changed my life.

John Shull 54:06

I mean, I enjoy it. I enjoy it as a dressing. I enjoy it crumbles like it's, I think it gets a bad name in the cheese family, but it's delicious. Blue

Nick VinZant 54:17

cheese is incredible. It's, I don't know why people have a problem with blue cheese. It's very

John Shull 54:23

versatile as well number four. So this is probably the only cheese that I think you would have had on your list, and that's just the good old nacho cheese out of a can.

Nick VinZant 54:40

I mean, dude, like, No man, that shits gross, like, just plain, like, canned cheese that is number four,

John Shull 54:48

or, like, the Tostitos, you know, like the, like, the the dipping cheese, you know, some kind of cheese out of a can. Oh,

Nick VinZant 54:55

you're not talking about, like, the

John Shull 54:58

No bro, even though. Oh, that's not terrible. I'm not. I'm not, like, that's not bad cheese that has a place too. But now I'm talking about, like, you know, like, the Tostitos cheese, or, like, you know, nacho cheese out of a can kind of thing. What

Nick VinZant 55:13

do they call that? When the cheese that comes out of, like, you squirt it, you know, I'm talking about like, I

John Shull 55:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You put it on crackers and stuff where you have COVID, crackers, cheese in a can, cheese can spray cheese spray No.

Nick VinZant 55:31

Easy cheese. Easy

Unknown Speaker 55:32

cheese.

Nick VinZant 55:33

I'm gonna go out on the limb and say that if you're eating a lot of easy cheese, life's not going well, like life is not going well if you're eating a lot of cheese out of his can. I

John Shull 55:47

mean, I think it could be worse. I mean, I think you're stereotyping there.

Nick VinZant 55:52

I mean, it could be worse, but it could certainly be better. Like you've you got some soul searching to do if you're just regularly sitting back there eating cheese out of a can.

John Shull 56:03

Would you say that about people that do, like, whipped cream out of a can? No.

Nick VinZant 56:09

I mean, unless you're doing that for, like, drug purposes, but if you're just eating it, that's

John Shull 56:13

fine. All been there. What's your number four

Nick VinZant 56:15

Parmesan?

John Shull 56:19

Okay, that's you can't

Nick VinZant 56:21

I would make an argument that Parmesan is one of the cheeses that we really cannot live without, like you're gonna eat anything Italian without Parmesan on it. Parmesan is an essential cheese. You have to have Parmesan.

John Shull 56:35

I actually, instead of using Parmesan, I use oil and red pepper flakes.

Nick VinZant 56:40

Oh, my God, you're such a snob. Why would you do that? It's still not cheese. It's amazing dumping oil and red pepper flakes over your spaghetti.

John Shull 56:51

Yeah, I am actually, I had it tonight for dinner. Well, whatever I inhaled, actually, before I got on here with you.

Nick VinZant 56:57

Now think about how much better that would have been with Parmesan. I

John Shull 57:01

Not a fan, not never been the biggest fan of Parmesan.

Nick VinZant 57:04

Oh, yeah. Well, everybody has some opinions that are completely wrong. What's number three?

John Shull 57:09

Why are you so angry my number three, and I think this is a very unpopular choice, but I love it, and it would be my number one if it was a more practical cheese, but my number three is goat cheese. Oh,

Nick VinZant 57:23

that's the only cheese that I actively dislike, is any goat cheese kind of thing tastes terrible to me.

John Shull 57:28

Man, you put, you put goat cheese on top of, I don't know, say, like a piece of meat, and you make it a little creamy. Oh, it's amazing.

Nick VinZant 57:42

Keep your personal life out of it. Whatever.

John Shull 57:43

Goat cheese is amazing. And I hope somebody out there agrees with me. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 57:48

I don't like any kind of goat cheese. None of it tastes good. Has that too much of a Leica, yeah, taste to me. God,

John Shull 57:57

dang it all right. What's your number three?

Nick VinZant 58:00

Pepper Jack, the spiciest of the cheese that I'm at least, that I'm able to tolerate. I need a pepper jack in my life

John Shull 58:08

if I was gonna go with, like, a slice of cheese, yeah, pepper jacks, you know. Or, like, what do they make? Ghost Pepper now, or whatever.

Nick VinZant 58:16

Too spicy for me, but that could be good. I thought about putting Colby. I thought about putting Colby on my list,

John Shull 58:24

yeah. Just okay. I mean,

Nick VinZant 58:28

to number two, shredded

John Shull 58:29

cheese,

Nick VinZant 58:32

okay. I mean, not exactly what I was thinking, but shredded you can't go wrong.

John Shull 58:37

Mean, like, kind of like your parmesan argument. How many things do you maybe you don't, but how many things do we put shredded cheese on on a daily basis? Right? I mean, salads, tacos, hot dogs, like all kinds of stuff. Can

Nick VinZant 58:54

you say think? Can you think of a single thing that you would say is not better with cheese?

John Shull 59:01

I mean, yes, there's several things, but

Nick VinZant 59:02

go on then,

John Shull 59:06

I mean, but I'm gonna say we're like, fish fish. No, there's no piece of fish that's better with cheese on it.

Nick VinZant 59:11

I actually make fish sandwiches with cheese. It's delicious. I like it.

John Shull 59:19

Okay, I mean, but you're not putting like a slice of American cheese on top of a piece of salmon.

Nick VinZant 59:27

Oh, well. I mean, I have, I put it on top of a salmon burger. Jesus

John Shull 59:32

Christ. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 59:37

Still wait.

John Shull 59:38

Any ice cream? Anything cold? No, not doing that, right?

Nick VinZant 59:42

What about cream cheese?

John Shull 59:45

Yeah, but not on top of ice cream?

Nick VinZant 59:47

No, but ice cream is an exception. Talking about like an entree.

John Shull 59:51

Hold on, there's cream cheese, like frosting, which technically, if you have an ice cream cake, it's on white top of. Ice Cream. I

Nick VinZant 1:00:01

guess you could say Asian food. Asian inspired food was not really, that's not a lot of cheese in that. Yeah.

John Shull 1:00:07

I mean, you're not putting, you know, a slice of American on Pad Thai.

Nick VinZant 1:00:11

What if it's incredible? Though I had, I thought that peanut butter on top of a cheeseburger would be ridiculous, but it tastes

John Shull 1:00:17

amazing. Peanuts, you don't eat cheese and peanuts like, you don't, don't. Yeah, there's some things,

Nick VinZant 1:00:25

very few. Oh, my number two, yeah, my number two is mozzarella.

John Shull 1:00:31

Okay, yeah, so similar to, like, the shredded cheese, right? Mozzarella cheese? Are you talking about, like, cheese sticks?

Nick VinZant 1:00:38

No, well, yeah, I mean, I'll have cheese sticks. You're not gonna turn down cheese sticks, but mozzarella what's your number

John Shull 1:00:46

one? I hated putting this on, but I feel like it had to be a unanimous number one. I presume it's your number one too, and it's just American cheese slices,

Nick VinZant 1:00:57

plain old American cheese crap. Cheaper, the better

John Shull 1:01:01

process, the crap out processes. And if you get, like, the really cheap kind, the plastic sticks

Nick VinZant 1:01:07

and so, yeah, yeah, actually, I would say, you know, you've gone too cheap. When you can't get the plastic off there, you're starting to think, like, maybe I shouldn't have gotten this cheese craft is as cheap as I'm gonna get, like, great value or something where you're like, oh, it's not even cheese.

John Shull 1:01:29

I go, great value. I'm not afraid of great value. Okay, that's

Nick VinZant 1:01:33

gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out and let us know what you think is the best cheese. I think you got a really hard time being a beating American or cheddar, but we'll hear you out. You.


Paranormal Historian Troy Taylor

From seances in the White House to curses that have haunted families for generations, Troy Taylor studies the paranormal history of the United States. We talk America’s most haunted places, famous ghost stories and how the paranormal has shaped our society. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Most Underrated Halloween Candies.

Troy Taylor: 01:20

Pointless: 31:50

Top 5 Most Underrated Candies: 49:32

Contact the Show

Troy Taylor - American Hauntings Website

American Hauntings Books

Troy Taylor Instagram

Interview with Paranormal Historian Troy Taylor

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode paranormal history and underrated candies.

Troy Taylor 0:21

It seems like every major event in American history, from from war to disasters, they all have a ghost area too attached to them, and it is a big, creepy, foreboding place. And it is the first place that I actually saw a ghost. My favorite president as far as ghosts go, American history. Harry Truman, who was absolutely convinced that the white house was haunted, I

Nick VinZant 0:46

want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he studies something that has been a big undercurrent throughout all of American and world history. This is paranormal historian Troy Taylor. How big of a role has the paranormal played in American society? It's

Troy Taylor 1:24

a lot bigger than most people think its role in in American history, going back to like when the first settlers came to New England. I mean, they brought with them their fear of of witchcraft, for instance, which would lead lead to all of the witch trials and to all of the events in places like Salem. And then in the 19th century, you talk about the spiritualist movement, which was something that was created with the idea that the dead and the living could communicate with each other, that there would be messages sent to the dead that would be returned. And you know, that started in the late 1840s and it became a national fad. I mean, it was a time when the population in the United States was at about 10 million people, and it was estimated that 3 million of them were spiritualists, having seances and talking to ghosts and resurgence in it, interest in it took off again after the Civil War. It would happen again after World War One, not just in America, but around the world. Because, you know, no one had ever seen this kind of death before. You know, the numbers of people that died the first seances in the White House took place when Jane Pierce was there. Her husband was Franklin Pierce and their son died in a train accident on their way to Washington for his inauguration, and she actually was so heartbroken, she had spiritualists in the White House doing seances. Mary Lincoln would do the same thing later when her son, Willie died in the White House, died of a disease, and there are diaries and letters from spiritualists that still exist that say that not only was Mary involved in the seances, but so was her husband, Abraham Lincoln as well. The first person that ever ran for president, or first woman to run for president, was a woman named Victoria Woodhull who did not do well. She couldn't even vote for herself at that point in history, but she was a spiritualist medium. My favorite president as far as ghosts go American history, Harry Truman, who was absolutely convinced that the white house was haunted, he used to send letters home to his wife all the time, talking about how he would hear footsteps in the hallways of people knocking on his door. And during the time he was in the White House, they did a big renovation, so he had to move across the street for a bit, and when they were getting ready to reopen the White House, he actually took a big group of reporters on a tour to show them the work that had been done. And when they published their articles the next day, most of the stories that that were in it weren't about the White House. They were about all the ghosts in the White House, and how President Truman couldn't wait to get back so he could start ghost hunting again. Not Making This Up, it's all true. So it seems like every major event in American history, from from war to disasters, they all have a ghost story or two attached to them.

Nick VinZant 4:19

Why do you think that is? Why do you think what is it something uniquely American about us that we gravitate towards this?

Troy Taylor 4:27

You know, I always like to see that America is a nation of extremes. We we've always been that way. You can take that back to the very beginning, and why people came here in the first place is because there were a lot of extremist religious groups in Europe that came here looking for freedom, and they just kind of brought that stuff with them. We really go to extremes. So when we jump into something and we're fascinated by it, we'll we'll take it all the way. And I think that the supernatural has been one of those things. Americans just love ghost stories. I think that ghosts also appeal to us in another way too. More than any other type of the supernatural, because ghosts kind of the same way that spiritualism did back, you know, in the 19th century. It gives us a little bit of hope, even if we don't dwell on that aspect of it, we're really looking at what's scary about it. Most of the time, we love to be scared, but deep down, we have this idea that if ghosts are real, if they're real, if these things really happen, then that means there's something after this. When

Nick VinZant 5:29

we look at kind of the paranormal History of the United States, does it gravitate in a certain direction, like people have always really gone to ghosts, or they've gone to psychics, or they've does it seem to have a direction overall? Honestly, I

Troy Taylor 5:46

think it varies. I mean, it varies by time period. A lot of it depends on what's going on in current events, as to what we gravitate toward, whether it's ghost stories or whether it's psychic mediums or, you know, reincarnation, or you name it. I mean, we've had it all, but I think a lot of it has to do with what's happening. It can be, you know, historical or a political thing. It could be a war. It could be, you know, some kind of conflict. You see interest go up in the supernatural. It also depends on what's happening in pop culture, too, like in the 80s and 90s, when Ghostbusters and The X Files were hot stuff, everybody was into ghosts and UFOs and anything paranormal. And then later it would be like reality TV ghost things, you know, with the guys on TV running around, chasing ghosts and stuff, it all goes in waves. And I say, like right now, for instance, we're sort of in between waves we have been since the pandemic. Because I don't think since the Civil War, our country has been there hasn't been this kind of divisiveness. When

Nick VinZant 6:52

you kind of look back in history, does the time now remind you of anything back in history, paranormal wise, it

Troy Taylor 7:01

does kind of remind me of the years after, say, World War Two, because there was a real lull in that period, which is odd, because after the First World War, people were just sucked back into spiritualism and reincarnation. I mean, there's just tons and tons of material. It was front page news in the newspapers. There were seances going on. You had people like Harry Houdini, who's running around debunking fake mediums, you know, and getting a thrill out of the attention that it got him. And, you know, chasing people around Scientific American magazine, which we think of, is like this very dry, important thing. They were running a contest in the early 1920s to pay $10,000 to any spirit medium who could prove they could contact the dead. I mean, this was like on the news. I mean, this is every night kind of thing. And then after World War Two, that all sort of changed, and maybe that had something to do with the fact that we just dropped a couple of atomic bombs, you know. And the world was feeling really weird about things. And then people seem to kind of focus away from spiritualism and ghosts and hauntings and things. And they started to look, say, into space, you know. And now we're thinking, Okay, we want something weird. It's going to have to come from somewhere else, because we've already seen this place is terrible, you know. And and it stayed that way until probably the mid 60s or so, when things took kind of a darker turn, and we got really interested in the occult, and not just the supernatural, the paranormal, but a lot of, you know, black magic and things I mean, and that all kind of played out in culture. You know, you had Rosemary's Baby, the founding of the Church of Satan, big pop culture things, you know, The Exorcist comes along, The Omen comes along. That was kind of a dark time in our history. And then it just, sort of, it just keeps going back and forth. So this world we're at right now kind of makes me think about that period after World War Two, because we are not really focusing on, you know, ghosts and the paranormal as much at the moment, but it'll change again. And we always come back to the paranormal. We've been doing it since we were living in caves, you know, we we love things that are out there. You know, in the night, it provides explanations for us, you know, of what's happening.

Nick VinZant 9:22

I do think definitely like, like it. Can see it after the pandemic, after the political situations that we've been going to not get into that necessarily, but like, I can see us heading towards a period of stability where everybody just wants to, like, No, I just want everything to be like the 1950s in that sense that we just want everything to be nice and safe and good, and then we'll kind of go in the opposite direction of that, after that,

Speaker 1 9:48

right, right, yeah, um, you know, it does make me wonder what's around the corner, because we did have that lull there for a while, and then, um, society changed so much. Much after that period, just culture and society with, you know, music and, you know, the hippie movement, all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, things got really dark. You know, by the end of the 60s, things got dark. And it kind of makes me wonder if we're gonna, if we're planning on repeating that history or not. I guess we'll see, hopefully not quite that extreme. I just, I don't want us to end up in the 1980s again, when you know, people believed, without any evidence whatsoever, that, you know, there were devil worshipers and permeating every corner of our country, the

Nick VinZant 10:34

ones where I kind of think of big moments, paranormal moments, so to speak, in US history. I think of the Salem witch trials. I think of the Satanic Panic. Are there other big ones that you would say are out there that maybe people don't immediately know about?

Speaker 1 10:50

It's a period we don't talk about much anyway, in the in the teens, the 19 teens, the only time we've talked about that was in 2020 when we were comparing it to the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Nobody was talking about what came with that, which was this huge resurgence in a belief in ghosts and hauntings and going to see psychics. I mean, that's why people like you know Houdini ended up with a career, because most people could tell you he wasn't that great of a magician, but he was a great escape artist, and he also had this fascination with spiritualism. I mean, this was one of the biggest celebrities in the country, and he got other people interested in it too. Because initially his idea was he wanted to find somebody who was legitimate that could put him in touch with his dead mother. And he went looking, and couldn't find anybody. And he kept seeing, you know, fake ones that were doing things he could imitate on stage. And then he became angry and decided to try and take down the whole movement. And so he started deeply he write, wrote books about how it exposed the fakes he did stage shows and things and but the interest in it around the country is, as I mentioned earlier, I this was front page news. You had wars of words between Houdini and prominent spiritualists of the day appearing in the front pages of newspapers. And our entire country was just wrapped up in this stuff. And this was right in the middle of prohibition, because, well, we needed a distraction, you know, I mean, the roaring 20s were out there. Business was going good. Things were hopping, but you couldn't go buy a drink anywhere, and you had gangsters shooting each other in the street. So what's the opposite of that? Well, how about if I just go talk to my dead aunt, Gertrude at a seance down the street? And people were just just enraptured with the whole idea. And it lasted until about the well, it lasted until the beginning of the Great Depression. Do

Nick VinZant 12:46

you think that we generally seem to be Are we more skeptics or more believers?

Speaker 1 12:50

I think that people in general have become more skeptical. But I think this is something that people can let in a little bit of belief, because it's fun. Frankly.

Nick VinZant 13:01

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions, sure, sure, of course. What are some of the most haunted places in America?

Speaker 1 13:11

Places? I would say I on on my list. I would put the Gettysburg Battlefield near the top of my list. Well, actually, Gettysburg or Antietam. Both of them are well preserved, and that may have something to do with it. But you know, you're talking about places where 1000s of people died in a one to three day period, and you know, there's been a lot of history left behind there, and based on the sheer number of reports over the years, I honestly think that they would rank way up there as one of the most haunted places. Another one, I would say, is the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky. It's an abandoned tuberculosis hospital built back in the 30s, a lot of stories over it. I'm one of those guys who's a real stickler for making sure stories are accurate. I've been doing that for a long time, and while all the stories are way out of control about how many people died there, there were still a lot. And it is a big, creepy, foreboding place, and it is the first place, well, probably the last place, at least, that I know of, that I actually saw a ghost. I actually saw a ghost at Waverly Hills, and that convinced me. Uh huh, you know, I guess there is something to all these stories, you know, but it did. It did frighten me. I'm not going to lie. I I was startled by it because I was walking down a hallway with a friend of mine. No electricity in the building. It's dark, but there's enough light to see, and a man in what looked like a doctor's coat just walked across the hallway quickly ahead of us. Now, he looks so real that we thought someone had broken into the hospital, you know, because it was, it has, it's a real target for vandals and things. At least it was at the time, this was early, 2000s And so we went in to tell the guy he had to leave, and when we went into the room, he was gone. There was the room was empty, and there was no exit door other than the one we just come through. And that's when I realized I've seen a ghost. I've only ever seen one other one ever, if there's more than that, I said, I don't know but, but that definitely got my attention, and I would definitely say it's a very haunted place. The limp mansion in St Louis, that's another one, and that was just owned by a family who were millionaires. They had started a beer brewing empire in St Louis, which was famous for that. I mean, that's where, like Anheuser Busch is based out of but the limp family and their beer no one's heard of anymore because they went out of business start a prohibition but, but the limps were, or were this German American family that you could kind of say were cursed. One of the sons died, followed by then the suicide of the patriarch of the family. Later, his oldest son committed suicide, and then one of the daughters committed suicide, and then another son committed suicide, three of them in that house. And so I've spent a lot of time there at that place over the years. This visiting because it's always been pretty close. And yeah, it's, it's by sheer number of reports, it's got a lot of them. Did

Nick VinZant 16:23

the haunted places, the most haunted places, do they seem to have something in common about them?

Speaker 1 16:28

Yeah, I think every one of them. Because I would also list places like Alcatraz or Eastern State Penitentiary, places like that too. All of them have a lot of tragedy and a lot of death associated with them, you know, and, and it doesn't always have to be, it doesn't always have to be, oh, all these people died there. I honestly think that most hauntings just, you know, chronicling them the way that I have for 31 years now, I think that a lot of haunted places. It's it's really just history. It's just an impression of the things that have taken place there that have left an impression behind. I live in a town called Alton, Illinois, and it's known as one of the most haunted small towns in America, which is funny because back in the 1870s Mark Twain called it a dismal little river town, and the two names go together, and the reason why it's the most haunted is because it was a dismal little river town. We had fires, we had epidemics, we had a the fair state penitentiary in Illinois was here turned into a Confederate prisoner camp during the war. There just been a lot of things that have gone on here, and it's the same way with all of these places that I list as most haunted spots, and I honestly think that most hauntings, I'd say 90% of hauntings, are not what we would call ghosts. They're more like just some energy left behind. I always call them residual hauntings, like sort of like a memory that leaves a recording on a place, and then, for whatever reason, that recording will kick back off and replay itself, and people would hear footsteps, or they'll smell things, or they'll see a ghost, and it's not really a ghost, it's just an apparition of something that was there many, many years ago. To give you an easier example, the most haunted place in almost any supposedly haunted old house is normally the staircase. People always talk about ghosts going up downstairs. They hear them, they see them on the stairs. I think the main reason for that is because back in the days when those homes were built, where were all the bedrooms second floor, so more people spent time on the staircase than probably anywhere else in the house, going up and down, expending energy, and now that energy just is hanging around. But then, you know, I honestly do think that there are cases of, you know, places that are haunted by what we would see ghosts, like on TV, you know, somebody's personality that stayed behind. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 18:56

I've always kind of looked at it like, I'm personally skeptical. I personally haven't had experiences. But my thing is, whether it's real or not, if you believe it's real, then it's real. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 19:06

Yeah. You know they say three out of five Americans have had an experience with a

Nick VinZant 19:11

ghost, if it is so prevalent, though, right? Like we have all these places, we have so many people that, like you said three out of five. Why do you think there is such a skepticism about it such an external skepticism and an internal belief.

Speaker 1 19:24

I think that a lot of people will have experiences that they're not positive about. Sometimes they'll tell them to someone else, sometimes they won't. But if you don't want people to think you're crazy, you keep that stuff to yourself. But yet, when someone asks you anonymously, well, do you believe in ghosts? Well, you're quick to say, Well, yeah, I mean, as long as nobody knows it's me that's admitting to it. So I used to like to say that there are two kinds of people, those who believe in ghosts and those who just won't admit it. But I'm not sure it's quite that cut and dried. It just makes for a funny line. But I think that a lot of. People have an interest in the possibility,

Nick VinZant 20:02

what is your personal favorite ghost story?

Speaker 1 20:05

My favorite ghost story is resurrection Mary. She is just to give it to you. In a nutshell, she is a ghost who haunts the southwest side of Chicago. There's a road called Archer Avenue, and there's a cemetery on it called resurrection cemetery. And for years, I mean, all the way back to the 1930s people claim that they have picked her up and have given her a ride. I mean, she's a vanishing hitchhiker story. She just peers out of the car, often at the gates to the cemetery. Now, I always say, though, that this particular story is a little different than most of the vanishing hitchhiker stories, because it's not a friend of a friend story. There are real names, real people, real places, and it's the only ghost that I know of, or at least that I can think of, off the top of my head, that actually left physical evidence behind. Where she was observed. She was seen standing at the gates to the cemetery by a passing motorist, holding onto the bars, looking out a young woman was, we'll leave it at that. He went down to the police station just down the road. Told him that there was a woman who had gotten locked into the cemetery by accident, probably. So the police went back to look a cop named Pat Homa, as a matter of fact, so there are real names in the story. Went back to the cemetery. They couldn't find anybody. And then he shined his light over on the gates to the cemetery, and the bars, two of the bars where the girl had been standing, had actually been pulled apart. And there were finger you can see in the photograph, fingertips pressed into the metal where it was burned. Because the bars were burned, they had been like a greenish color, you know, like copper does, except now, they had been burned out where it was that were blackened, and you could see the fingerprints in there. But this story is so interesting because there are, like, a couple of different descriptions for the ghost. I mean, some people will say she's a blonde and a white dress. Other people say she has dark, kind of like shoulder bobbed hair, and it's dark, and she's wearing a kind of a light, purplish colored dress. And it's why is there two stories? Well, the weird thing about it is, I'm pretty sure that, and this is again, one I've spent a lot of history, a lot of time working on the history and trying to research it. I think it's more than one woman who died who's now ghost is being picked up along the road. One of the first ones was a woman named Marie Burgo. Oh, gosh, I just lost everything. Her name was Marie burgovi, and she was a Polish immigrant worker who lived not too far away, and she was killed in an auto accident. And in 1934 March 11, 19 434. She died, was buried in resurrection cemetery, and within like a week, the cemetery caretaker had called the guy who'd embalmed her and said, I saw a ghost in the cemetery. And then went on to describe Marie to a T and that wasn't the weirdest part. The weirdest part was, not long after that, people started seeing a young girl with dark hair wearing an orchid, kind of a light colored dress, running out from the cemetery gates, trying to flag down cars to get a ride on the road. And sometimes she would jump onto their running boards and try to climb in the window and stuff. Yeah, no, no kidding. And the weird thing about this was that the people who this was happening to recognized her as Marie bergovi. They knew her because they all grew up in that same neighborhood, and they all used to go to the same place. There was a dance hall down the street called the O Henry ballroom, and when it literally went on to become the Willowbrook but they actually recognized her. And so they're like, Okay, this is we're not going to drive by here anymore at night, because we're seeing our dead friend and in front of the cemetery. So that went on for a long time. And then there were the people who claimed that they had picked up this blonde. There was a guy whose name was Jerry Palus. He met a girl at a dance hall one night. Blonde spent some time with her. She asked if he could take her home. He drove her down Archer Avenue, and they got to the front of the cemetery, and she told him, this is where she had to get out. Well, he thought she meant on the other side of the road, because off the road there were some apartment houses, and he offered to drive her the rest of the way. And she said, No where I'm going, you can't follow. Got out of the car, and instead of going toward the houses, she went across the street and disappeared when she got to the cemetery gates, this guy swore it happened. He swore he spent the entire evening with her. He was interviewed in the newspapers. He was on, I think, like Unsolved Mysteries, one of the TV shows from the early 90s, and he died in 92 and up until that time, he swore, absolutely swore, this really happened.

Nick VinZant 24:50

Does America have certain famous ghosts? Like, who are America's most famous ghosts? I would

Speaker 1 24:55

put Abraham Lincoln on that list. I always say he's the most well. Traveled ghost in American history because of all the places where he's supposed to haunt, from his tomb and where he was buried in Springfield to his home in Springfield to random places all over the country, the places that he stopped at once, or places where you know Abraham Lincoln slept here, well, apparently now his ghost does too, because there's so many stories. Fort Monroe in Virginia. He stayed there a couple times during the Civil War. People claim they've seen his ghost. Ford's Theater, his ghost is supposed to haunt there or the house across the street where he actually died. But if there's any place that he does haunt, we're back to the White House again because it's Lincoln's ghost that everybody has seen. I mean, we're talking presidents, politicians, people who, you know, gosh, Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy. I mean, there's just this long list of people. You know, Truman always thought it was Lincoln that he heard walking around Winston Churchill in December 41 spent the night at the at the White House. Was there to meet with with FDR, and he spent one night in the Lincoln Bedroom, and the next day, he asked to be moved to another room. He said that he was taking a bath, and he got out of the bathtub and was walking around the room naked, looking for a towel. And he looked up, and Abraham Lincoln was standing in front of him, and Churchill claims he said to Lincoln, Mr. President, I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. And then Lincoln smiled at him and disappeared. Yeah. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands spent the night in the White House. She was there to speak to Congress, but she stayed FDR was kind of backing her for political asylum, and she'd stayed there during FDR presidency. And the next night, after her stay at a cocktail dinner, she told the President that she'd fainted the night before, and the President asked her, What do you mean? And she said that at two o'clock in the morning she'd heard a knock on her door, so she'd gotten up to answer it, and when she opened it, and she even said, I know you're not going to believe this, but Abraham Lincoln was standing in the hallway, and she said, and after that, everything went black, and I woke up on the floor. I mean, she had no idea that Lincoln had been this long running ghost who'd been seen. So I put Lincoln pretty high on that list, because they're talking about an All American ghost. I mean, you can't, you can't ask for a bigger one than that. Probably the other one that I would say, though, would be the bell witch of Tennessee. It's one of those stories that we call it a witch, but it was really a ghost. That was the turn they had for it in 1814, when this whole thing started. They were settlers. The bell family were settlers to Tennessee, and for some reason, they were targeted by what they call the witch, and it was this ghost who just wreaked havoc in their house. I mean, tore the place apart, banged on walls, broke things, attacked John Bell, who was the patriarch of the family and his daughter, Elizabeth the ghost, would always go after her too. It would beat both of them, slap them, pinch them. And this would happen in front of dozens of witnesses, I mean, and there are affidavits still on file in Tennessee from people who claim that they saw it happen. And apparently Andrew Jackson himself got involved in this story, because John Bell Jr, who was the oldest son, had served with him in the army in New Orleans at the end of the of the War of 1812 and so Jackson had heard about this ghost story that was going around at the time, and came to visit, and he and his men were actually scared away by what was happening inside the house because of all the violence and activity. But what makes it cool is that it is the only ghost story in American history where the ghost took credit for killing someone because John belt died. He was poisoned. He was he became very sick because of the effect that this ghost was having on him, and at some point, he died, one point during the night, and it was discovered that his medicine had been replaced by this black bottle that had something in it. They didn't know what it was. No one recognized it. The doctor said he didn't prescribe it. So they took some out and they gave some of it to a cat, which immediately died. So it's wherever this bottle came from. It poisoned John Bell, and supposedly the ghost who could speak, but nobody ever saw they would hear its voice, took credit for killing John Bell. That farm is still around. You know, the the foundations of the house are still there. People still talk about the story, because on that property was a cave that the family used to use for storing, like, you know, perishable foods during the summer time. And the the story is, is that the when the when the ghost left the family, it went into the cave. So the bell witch cave is another place I would put on the list. Is one of the most haunted places in America. Not so much. I'm not convinced that it's the bell witch that haunts it, but man, is it a weird place, really weird. I spent the night there once in 1997 I'd never do it again. I mean, this kind of stuff doesn't really scare me, and it's my job, but I spent the night in that cave, and I I wouldn't, I wouldn't stay there again. It was that freaky. I mean, I all night long, I kept hearing voices and people walking around. There was no one in there. I mean, it was empty, with a locked gate on it. Nobody could have gotten in. And I don't know what was going on, but, man, I've seen some, like, weird photographs and things from there, and all kinds of weird stuff happens, and I don't know it's just kind of an anomaly.

Nick VinZant 30:43

That's pretty much all the questions that we have, is there kind of, what's coming up next for you? I know you got a lot of books. I know you got the show, the museum,

Speaker 1 30:50

yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. Got a podcast. I've got, you know, I've got a new book coming out in November about the history of American circuses and side shows and some of the ghost stories that go along with that, but it's really just an excuse to get to write cool stuff about, you know, side shows and carnivals, but it's still got ghost stories with it too, and and that's been a big part of fun, part of the project. But, yeah, I I'm actually going to Houdini seance on Halloween night, because Houdini always said that if it was possible to come back, he would. I

Nick VinZant 31:24

want to thank Troy so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. If you want to see some of the places that we talk about. The YouTube version of this interview will be live on October 31 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show, assuming that they are real. Which Halloween monster? Would you be most afraid of vampire, werewolf, mummy or a witch?

John Shull 32:07

Uh, probably a vampire.

Nick VinZant 32:12

Oh, I think it's werewolf. I think a werewolf is actually scarier than a vampire, because a vampire you're either dead or you're going to be a vampire, which doesn't really sound that terrible, a werewolf, it's just bad all around.

John Shull 32:26

All of those creatures are scary, no doubt, but a vampire can blend in and, you know, they can catch you off guard. I

Nick VinZant 32:37

agree that the vampire is probably the one that's going to get you easier than the werewolf is gonna get you. But I don't think the outcome with the vampire is as bad as the outcome with a werewolf. Which one do you want to be turned into? More a vampire or a werewolf?

John Shull 32:51

Oof. I mean, that's tough to actually be turned into one of them. Yeah. I mean, be kind of cool to be like a running werewolf. You know what I mean, like, I don't think, I don't think I'd want to be a vampire.

Nick VinZant 33:04

I think I would rather be a vampire than a werewolf, although I guess maybe you you're only a werewolf, like once a month, which doesn't sound that bad.

John Shull 33:13

What are the other two options?

Nick VinZant 33:15

Mummy and mummy and a witch?

John Shull 33:17

Yeah, witches don't do anything for me, mummies. I mean, mummies have never been realistic. I don't know how anyone decided that a mummy was going to be classified as a scary thing.

Nick VinZant 33:31

I mean, they were real. Which is odd is that the least scariest Halloween monster is the one that was a real thing, like we add mummies. Okay, well, I did poll the audience about this, so 50% of the audience agrees with me. 50% of the audience said werewolf is the scariest, followed by vampire at 30% which at 17% and mummy at 2% so nobody's really scared of mummies. All

John Shull 33:57

right, let's give some shout outs, and I'll try my best not to make this as uncomfortable as possible. Uh, so we'll start with Lucas, Brazi, Connor, Johnston, Luke, Brian, Tino, Amber, rebaca, see, I'm doing it again. I'm just going monotone. I

Nick VinZant 34:15

need to like and help it, man. I need to try to, like, liven it up a little bit, right? Like

John Shull 34:22

Alright, alright. Let's try. Let's try it. Thomas Pawlowski,

Unknown Speaker 34:27

okay, alright.

John Shull 34:31

Top. Tommy Lee, Brandon Blakely, come on down. Ken Smith, sendo Garcia and Frank Gill,

Unknown Speaker 34:41

all right? I

Nick VinZant 34:43

mean, it's something you can work on, right? I don't know what you're gonna do, but you got to do something. What

John Shull 34:48

you're gonna do. Brother,

Unknown Speaker 34:50

who's that from Hawk COVID? Oh, okay, he's

Nick VinZant 34:57

overrated.

John Shull 34:58

Mr. America. Who could. Can rip his shirt off at the Trump rally a couple of days ago?

Nick VinZant 35:03

Well, dude, it's I couldn't. Could you rip a shirt? If I said, right now, take your sweatshirt thing off that you got. Could you straight rip your shirt?

John Shull 35:15

Ah, I mean, if I had what he always had, where they pre cut it for me, sure.

Nick VinZant 35:20

But could you just straight rip it like I don't think I'm strong enough to just take a regular shirt and just rip it like that at all. And I work out, don't stress your collar out, dude.

John Shull 35:32

I have a million of these, and you work out, okay,

Nick VinZant 35:34

well, then let's see you rip it if you've got a million of them.

John Shull 35:39

I mean, I just don't want to rip my T shirt. I don't know if I could or I couldn't. I think I could. I don't think I could. Let's see. So I have a couple updates in my life that people were okay waiting for, um, here's, here's a here's a tip, don't ever go into traffic court thinking the cops not gonna show up.

Unknown Speaker 35:57

Oh, I was

Nick VinZant 35:58

wondering, so can I give the backstory for this? Really quickly, John got a ticket for doing a California stop, for not completely stopping, and he was wanted. His plan was to go ahead and try to fight it, even though that he admitted during our fake trial that he didn't stop, and he knows he didn't stop, but she went in there to try to fight it for an expired license plate. Right?

John Shull 36:21

I had no idea I've only fought one ticket in court, and it was not a traffic ticket. First off, had no idea that when I walked into court, and I live in a decent sized town, about 45,000 people. I mean, it's not small by any means. I had no idea that every cop that had given a ticket, and I had a court date was going to be there, so, oddly enough, I actually ended up sitting next to the cop, and we were kind of funny. I mean, he's a good guy. I mean, once again, yes, the California roll is my fault, whatever. But we were kind of laughing, having some fun. Then my name gets called, and he walks up there, and he did a real solid thing, man, he he dismissed every every I got three citations, he dismissed two out of the three, and they took my impeding traffic down a little bit. And, yeah, I'm just honest. Feel like, if you're honest, judges and cops are human beings, right? Like they understand, oh, honesty

Unknown Speaker 37:20

is the best policy, man, I'm

Nick VinZant 37:22

glad. I'm glad that it took you 36 years to figure that

John Shull 37:26

out, seven actually, so i This caught me by surprise. I can't believe we're already this time of year, but this Saturday going into Sunday is falling back. Yeah, so are you a fallback guy or a spring ahead guy?

Nick VinZant 37:44

I just wish we kept the same time all the time. I'm just, I just don't see why we continue to do things, just because that's what we did. I would get rid of daylight savings time just because, quite frankly, I don't feel like going up there and changing all the clocks. This is my other question to you, are all the clocks in your house set at the same time?

John Shull 38:04

No, because that's impossible.

Nick VinZant 38:07

Are they close? I'm not saying they all have to tick off 142 and change over at exactly the same time. But if you look, if you go to different rooms in your house, is it always the same time in your house.

John Shull 38:22

Uh, yes, pretty much within a minute or two, but I'm the douche that sets the clock five minutes fast.

Unknown Speaker 38:31

Oh,

Nick VinZant 38:33

so you've confused everybody in the house about what time it is,

John Shull 38:36

yeah. So when I'm like, you know my wife to my wife, McKay. We need to be there in 10 minutes. We actually have 15, you know what I mean. But

Nick VinZant 38:46

why do it? It doesn't work. Everybody just then just knows that the clock is fast. The only way to do that is to have somebody else set the clock and not tell you how fast it is. I

John Shull 38:58

think you're getting way too deep on this. And I don't think it's more than just setting

Nick VinZant 39:02

the clock. Does your wife know that the clock is set five minutes fast?

John Shull 39:07

Now she does? Yes, so then

Nick VinZant 39:09

it completely makes it pointless. Because I'm just saying it's not you're not thinking this all the way through. But when I was growing up, depending on what room if I was in in the house, it could be anywhere between 115 and, like 230 because everybody would set the clocks at different times.

John Shull 39:28

Yeah, I can't have that. My OCD Ness would go nuts. Gotta

Nick VinZant 39:33

all be the same time. And stop lying to yourself about what time it is. Dude, it doesn't it's not going to work.

Unknown Speaker 39:40

Well, it used to work,

Unknown Speaker 39:43

then you figured it out. Okay,

John Shull 39:45

maybe, maybe, maybe within the first year of marriage. Um, oh, other life update. Uh, have I had my last probably bachelor party over the weekend?

Speaker 2 39:55

Oh, how did that go? Did you represent? No. Nobody

John Shull 40:00

got shot, nobody got arrested. So a pretty successful bachelor party.

Nick VinZant 40:07

So just to for people who are not familiar, John has been to a bachelor party where somebody did get

Speaker 2 40:11

shot. My own bachelor party. You're at

Nick VinZant 40:15

your own bachelor party. Somebody got shot. Did somebody get arrested for being

John Shull 40:20

shot? Yes, but they were in the hospital, so, oh,

Nick VinZant 40:26

man, he got arrested. Wait, he shot himself. Went to the hospital and then was arrested for shooting himself.

John Shull 40:32

He was not, not necessarily. I well, actually, he did get charged with reckless dis discharge of firearm, but I think it was more or less the gun charge that they were more worried about than anything. Oh,

Nick VinZant 40:46

he wasn't supposed to have it, huh? He

John Shull 40:48

was not, no, not that kind of caliber weapon. At least new Apple iPhone came out. I'm sure you give a shit about that. Don't care at all. So I wanted to ask you, this is really just a segue. Do you have a Blackberry? Like, what? What are you rolling now?

Nick VinZant 41:06

Uh, I believe I have an iPhone six.

John Shull 41:12

Oh, my God, man.

Unknown Speaker 41:13

Oh, it works.

Nick VinZant 41:14

Does it end there's like, can I text, can I look at the internet? Can I go on social media? That's the only thing I need the phone to do. Like, I don't get any personal satisfaction about like, Oh, I got the new one. So the old ones work.

John Shull 41:28

If I were to tell you that Colin Farrell, apparently, is now the world's sweetheart instead of the world's bad boy, would you believe it?

Nick VinZant 41:39

Yeah, because his performance in the penguin is one of the greatest performances I've ever seen in my life. It's incredible. I donated to his charity because of his performance in the penguin. It's it's one of the best things I've ever seen. It's incredible, really,

Unknown Speaker 41:59

oh yeah,

Nick VinZant 42:00

it's amazing. It's unbelievable how good he is in that he would have no idea that it's him at all.

John Shull 42:10

I mean, who, who was a better penguin? Him or Danny DeVito? Oh.

Nick VinZant 42:15

I mean, each for their time, Danny DeVito is great in that role, but Colin Farrell is like, what the penguin would probably really be like. It's, if you haven't seen it, it's one of the greatest performances I've ever seen, if not the best I've ever seen.

John Shull 42:30

I'm just looking it up. That's the mini series, right? Yeah,

Speaker 2 42:34

it's, it's incredible. Great job.

John Shull 42:38

Alright, maybe what? What's that on? HBO. HBO, okay, alright, Home Box Office, great. It's

Speaker 2 42:46

fantastic. Home Box Office.

John Shull 42:49

I feel the need to tell you this because you're always shitting on it. The World Series is the most watched World Series in nearly 20 years. So looks like baseball is back. Stuff wise, no,

Nick VinZant 43:00

baseball is not back. They have the two biggest teams in the entire market that are playing each other. Baseball is not back. It's just that they have the two biggest things going on. Not anybody more like other people aren't more interested in just the two biggest cities.

John Shull 43:15

Listen, you might be right, but I'm just going to pretend it's back, because

Nick VinZant 43:19

it's how many people watched it? How many people watched it?

John Shull 43:24

Oh, man, I want to say the second game, game two I saw, there was like 13 million.

Nick VinZant 43:30

I mean, that's a lot, but that shows you how really that all any of the leagues really want playing is New York and LA. Every League's dream matchup is just the New York team versus the LA team. That's all they really want. Listen,

John Shull 43:43

I, I'm I'm only going back to this because this kind of explains what you just said. The Detroit Tigers, their entire a their entire wild card roster that was on the wild card team was about 18 and a half million dollars in payroll. They faced a pitcher from the Houston Astros who was making $19.5 million that year. Must have been so that's insane. Must

Unknown Speaker 44:13

have been something really interesting.

John Shull 44:18

Well, it is. If you cared at all about what you say instead of just saying

Nick VinZant 44:21

not there anything, you said, you're completely frozen.

John Shull 44:24

I said you would care if you compare about or care about anything that you said, which is talking about the two biggest teams in baseball facing each other, which is true because there's three teams in baseball that equal about a billion dollars in salary, and then everyone else is far below that combined.

Nick VinZant 44:42

Oh, your entire thing frozen. I didn't hear anything you said. I then you came back all hot.

Unknown Speaker 44:48

You came back all pissed off.

John Shull 44:52

I hate everything. I hate, I hate. I just hate it all.

Nick VinZant 44:58

I didn't hear anything that. You said you were completely frozen. But then I think you heard one thing that I said, and you just got all fired up about it. It just came in all pissed

Unknown Speaker 45:08

off. Yeah, I don't know who could Damn it, mom. I

John Shull 45:15

don't know what's happening. This whole episode has been a Technic, technical nightmare.

Nick VinZant 45:21

It's been a technical difficulty. I enjoyed it. Though. I like watching you struggle.

Unknown Speaker 45:25

It's enjoyable.

John Shull 45:27

I mean, on my end, it's fine, so I don't, I don't know. Oh,

Nick VinZant 45:31

who knows. Okay, so what was your big rant about baseball? Is it important the southern about the Detroit Tigers and how they did what Detroit does, and give everybody a little bit of hope, but, and then ultimately, remember that they're Detroit, and they're not going to win anything ever, ever again in any sport at all. Let's

John Shull 45:47

just, let's just move on. Um, did you see Dwayne? Wait, did you see Dwayne Wade's new statue?

Unknown Speaker 45:54

No,

John Shull 45:56

well, I'll let you look for yourself, but it may be one of the four statues I've ever seen. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 46:00

Oh gosh,

John Shull 46:02

it is not well done. In my opinion. It actually looks pretty bad.

Nick VinZant 46:12

I mean, maybe that's what he's really look like.

Unknown Speaker 46:15

Oh god.

Nick VinZant 46:20

That's terrible. That's bad. Oh, my God, that's terrible. It looks like, it looks like if they took him, put him in a horror movie and then had the main villain, like, cut his face off and wear it is what it looks like to me, like, that's

Unknown Speaker 46:43

awful. Oh, I'd

Nick VinZant 46:44

be so like, what are they gonna do? Like, would you keep a really terrible statue of you up there

Unknown Speaker 46:56

and be like, hey, look dude, you gotta redo that. What are

John Shull 46:58

you supposed to do?

Unknown Speaker 47:01

Well,

Nick VinZant 47:02

I mean, you think this is what I would do if I was Dwayne Wade in that regards to that statue, I would play it off and be like, Okay, thank you. It's a huge honor, because a lot of people did come out. I mean, he doesn't like you, don't this is an honor. We're honoring you, right? Like, this isn't something that you don't you didn't pay for it. So this is a free thing. Like, someone is doing this for you. You can't sit there and complain about it, and I would sit there and be a good sport about it, and then secretly, like, look, I'm going to pay for a new one. Let's put a new one up here, and let's get this done. Like, I can't, yeah, that's what I would do as him, Oh, I see. That's atrocious. That's one of the worst things I've ever seen look after,

John Shull 47:49

after the fact, you'd like have it redone, or you would pay for it to be redone, or something. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 47:54

he's got plenty of money, and I would easily put that down as a thing that I would pay for to be redone. Because that is awful. That is awful. Like, that's embarrassing, that somebody thought that you looked like that.

John Shull 48:08

Well, like, I always wonder, like, doesn't he get to, like, see the bust, you know, doesn't he like to go? Doesn't he get to see it as they're developing it? They must

Nick VinZant 48:16

not. But other people have seen it. Somebody has had to have seen that and thought, wow, that looks awful.

John Shull 48:22

Like, if you're, my immediate thought was, like, if you're the general manager of the heat, they're like, hey, check out the statue we're unveiling in three hours. Like, what do you do? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 48:35

you cancel the whole thing. You

Nick VinZant 48:37

you come up with something. You have to come up with something. Like, there's no way you could allow people to look at that. Oh, that's the worst thing I've ever seen. Like, I'll be so poor guy. But then sometimes I'll see a picture of myself and be like, oh god, that's what I look like.

John Shull 48:56

Oh yeah, all the time for me. Oh, it's humiliating.

Nick VinZant 48:59

I don't really want to look in the mirror in any way past the age of 35 Yeah? Like, I just want to exist without knowing what I look like. I

John Shull 49:08

kind of wish I didn't even see myself recording. Oh, yeah, I

Speaker 2 49:12

wish I could do that too. Yeah. Okay, poor guy. Whoo, yeah. You

Nick VinZant 49:16

gotta change that.

John Shull 49:17

Brother, just see you. Uh, anyways, that's it. Let's move on. Bourbon and coke. Yeah, I

Nick VinZant 49:25

go through phases where sometimes I like to drink it out of a cup more.

Unknown Speaker 49:30

Okay,

Nick VinZant 49:31

so our top five is the top five most underrated candies. What's your number five?

John Shull 49:38

My number five the classic all American good bar that is called the Almond Joy.

Nick VinZant 49:46

Is that underrated? Though I feel like it's making a little bit of a comeback. I like seeing an Almond Joy in the candy stash.

John Shull 49:55

How many people have you been around, including your children, who see Almond Joy? Is, and they're like, Ooh, no, we're not gonna eat that. But they are damn delicious.

Nick VinZant 50:06

I'm not gonna pass up an Almond Joy. It's just not gonna be one of my first choices. The problem isn't that Almond Joy isn't good, it's just that other things are better. Like, can I have this Almond Joy, or can I have a Reese's? Well, I'm gonna get the Reese's every time.

John Shull 50:23

Yeah, I don't. I don't disagree with that, but I think there's a good, good place for that candy.

Nick VinZant 50:28

My number five is a Tootsie Roll. Incredibly underrated candy.

John Shull 50:35

It's garbage candy,

Nick VinZant 50:38

it's delicious. You're underrating a juicy role. Man, that's the problem. You're not respecting

John Shull 50:44

Tootsie Roll. Crap candy, get a tootsie roll.

Unknown Speaker 50:48

Okay,

Nick VinZant 50:49

all right, what's your number four then,

Unknown Speaker 50:50

Pez, I was

John Shull 50:53

trying to figure out what these were called, and I'm not sure I think these, I think this is the correct name, but juicy fruits, you know, I'm talking about, like the they're the hard, kind of gelatinous candy that are in the shape of fruit that kind of tastes like fruit, but they're like a hard, like a hard gel candy.

Unknown Speaker 51:15

Oh, I have no idea what you're talking about. Alright.

John Shull 51:17

Well, that's fair. Anyways, juicy fruits, my number four.

Unknown Speaker 51:22

My number four is 100 grand.

Nick VinZant 51:26

100 grand is a great it's a poor man's crunch bar. Is

Unknown Speaker 51:29

what it is.

John Shull 51:32

Not bad. I mean, it's fine. I've no real issues with 100 grand.

Nick VinZant 51:38

Okay, all right. I could also put payday at my number four. I could have accepted payday as well to number three.

John Shull 51:46

Uh, so I I think these are underrated, but because I think a lot of people don't like them, so that's why they're on my list. But I put Tootsie Pops.

Nick VinZant 51:56

How are you going to be so mad about Tootsie Rolls? And then put Tootsie Pops higher on the list

John Shull 52:01

for two reasons. One, the Tootsie Pops are surrounded in sugary goodness, whether it be strawberry or cherry or even chocolate. Two, anything on a stick is better than a standalone candy. Sorry.

Nick VinZant 52:18

Oh, I would disagree. Oh, so if you get anything on a stick is better than a standalone candy. Is that the position that you're going to

John Shull 52:27

go with? Uh, yes, Dum Dums.

Nick VinZant 52:32

I do like the name Dum Dums. Okay, so then, by your argument, a Tootsie Pop is better than like, a HERSHEY's Bar or a Reese's cup. Anything on a stick is better that's well

John Shull 52:44

than a Tootsie Roll. Absolutely.

Nick VinZant 52:48

Okay, so you're saying that a Tootsie Pop is better than a tootsie roll. I can understand that argument, but don't come at me with some kind of ridiculousness that anything on a stick is going to be better than a candy bar.

John Shull 53:00

I mean, I'd only put one or two kinds of candy above, uh, above it. So,

Speaker 2 53:05

okay, okay, peppermint, Peppermint Patty.

Nick VinZant 53:12

Peppermint Patties are

John Shull 53:12

good. God, you're no, they're not actually very

Nick VinZant 53:17

underrated candy, very good candy, if you get if you're in the mood for it, it can be very good.

John Shull 53:26

Yeah, I don't know, not, not making my list, that's for sure. Okay, alright, what

Speaker 2 53:32

else is on your list? Then? Swedish Fish. Ew. Those are disgusting.

Nick VinZant 53:40

No, no. And I live in an area where a lot of Swedish people live, and so, like, we've got all kinds of Swedish candy around here. None of it's very good to me personally. I would take Swedish Fish. Someone handed me Swedish Fish. I would put it where it goes, which is in the garbage.

John Shull 53:56

You probably hate IKEA too, don't you? No, I

Unknown Speaker 53:59

like IKEA.

Nick VinZant 54:00

I don't want to go to Ikea, because then I'm going to be there for the entire day. But I like Ikea stuff. I got a lot of Ikea furniture. IKEA is a day. If anything involving IKEA is going to take you the entire day, whether it's going to the store and you're going to be there for the entire day, or if you're assembling something and you're going to be doing that for the entire day, IKEA is basically English for entire day. Is what it means in English.

John Shull 54:25

That's just what it means, just entire day, entire day.

Nick VinZant 54:31

My number two is jelly beans. You forget how good your jelly beans are.

John Shull 54:39

You will come to find that jelly beans nor candy corn made my list.

Speaker 2 54:43

Okay, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool. What's

Nick VinZant 54:47

your number one? Then are you on your number one?

John Shull 54:50

Yeah, because anyways, going back to candy corn and jelly beans, ephemeral, all right,

Nick VinZant 54:56

okay, candy corn, all right, right. Even. Candy corn isn't really that bad. It just gets a bad reputation. It's like the kid that just gets made fun of all the time, not really a reason for it. Everybody just picks on that kid, which is candy corn. It's just developed a bad reputation. It's it's kind of like candy corn is the nickel back of Halloween. It's really not that bad. Everybody just likes to pile on it.

John Shull 55:24

Wow, you just compared. I mean, I feel like that's a comparison right there that needs no explaining. Candle,

Nick VinZant 55:30

yeah, Candy Corn is the nickel back of Halloween. Nothing wrong with it. It just gets piled on by other people. What's your number one?

John Shull 55:38

Uh, wax bottles.

Nick VinZant 55:41

Oh, yeah. But like, I just, I understand that those are good. I just have no desire to ever have one of those. Like, I would never pay money for that. And if somebody said, Oh, I got candy, and it's wax bottles, like, such as, if

Unknown Speaker 55:54

you had candy,

John Shull 55:55

yeah? I mean, that's why they're underrated. They're actually quite delicious. And they're just, it's a fun, it's fun to bite the wax off and then check the little juice inside.

Nick VinZant 56:06

Oh, you can't eat the whole candy. You can't eat the bottle. No, you

John Shull 56:10

should. Yeah, you should definitely try to eat a whole thing of wax. That doesn't sound terrible at all, but it's not edible. I don't think so. If it is, I've no one ever told me, and I'm gonna be pissed that's the case. Yeah, I think I gotta look this up. No, I don't think you're supposed to eat the wax bottle.

Nick VinZant 56:30

Well, that's such a waste of candy. Yeah?

Unknown Speaker 56:35

No,

Nick VinZant 56:37

yes, the wax and wax bottle candies is edible, but it's meant to be chewed and not swallowed. I don't, I mean, eventually you have to, dude. I every time I look up one of these AI answers that comes up on there, I feel like they're always kind of wrong. Oh. I mean,

John Shull 56:54

I don't think, yeah, I don't think you're supposed to eat the wax bottle.

Nick VinZant 56:59

Here we have some sort of an answer, you're supposed to rip the wax off and drink the liquid or chew the wax to get the flavor out and then spit the wax out. So maybe you're not. That's why it's way too much work. That's a terrible number one. That's way too much effort for King dude.

Unknown Speaker 57:15

It's still, I don't want

Nick VinZant 57:16

to be putting in effort for candy. My number one is Smarties. I think they're very underrated. I think they're fun.

John Shull 57:26

I don't think they're underrated. I don't think Smarties is underrated at all. I don't

Nick VinZant 57:29

think they get enough respect, though, but you're not going straight to the Smarties. You're going straight to the chocolate. I think Smarties deserve more credit. I think that maybe not. I think one out of every five times you go back to the candy bar or to the candy jug, the candy thing, whatever they call it, I think you should get Smarties, and I don't think that they get enough attention. Do you have anything else on your list? I

John Shull 57:54

put hot tamales on there. Also have Twizzlers, but I don't think Twizzlers are underrated.

Unknown Speaker 58:00

No,

Nick VinZant 58:01

I think they're right where they kind of should be. They are good, but it's like I'd just rather have something else. I

John Shull 58:06

do have. The other thing I put on there were warheads.

Nick VinZant 58:10

Oh yeah, I don't mind a sour candy. Every once in a while, I have a payday. And Whoppers. Whoppers are great, no,

John Shull 58:20

Whoppers are terrible. They're in the same category as tootsie rolls for me. Oh,

Nick VinZant 58:24

my God. Oh, put it on a stick and you'll love it. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are the most underrated candies. I can't think of a candy maybe besides, like licorice or soft Taffy that I would really just say no to. Otherwise, I think it's all great, pretty much. I mean, I'll eat anything i.



Haunted House Designer John Denley

Haunted House Designer John Denley knows what scares you. For more than 30 years he’s been designing and building Haunted Houses for Theme Parks, Casinos and major attractions all over the world. We talk the secret to a great Haunted House, the best Haunted Houses in the world and what scares people more than anything else. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Noodles Dishes.

John Denley: 01:24

Pointless: 21:02

Top 5 Noodle Dishes: 35:09

Contact the Show

John Denley Website (Boneyard Productions)

John Denley Facebook (Boneyard Productions Facebook)

Interview with Haunted House Designer John Denley

Nick VinZant 0:11

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode haunted houses and noodle dishes and

John Denley 0:21

the entire haunt. Haunts were based on spirits, and I watched grown men so afraid of these particular spirits, throw their wives or girlfriends into the performer who was doing this, peeing themselves constantly. People come out the back door and go, Oh, my God, I beat myself. How much can they make? Will rely on their location, how much advertising they do, but there are some fonts out there making millions.

Nick VinZant 0:52

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. Really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he has designed haunted houses for some of the biggest names and scariest places in the world. This is haunted house designer John Denley, what makes a haunted house scary?

John Denley 1:26

What makes a haunted house scary is the fact that you can't predict what's going to happen next one. The environment is realistic, so you're able to suspend disbelief. I'm walking into Wow, this something could happen to me, and instead of walking past scenes like you would in a museum, where you're passing exhibits, I'm walking through that cave, I'm walking through that cemetery, so I feel vulnerable. It's the most important thing. And in the greatest haunted house, they make you feel like something's gone wrong, like you might get an elevator and it's gone wrong, or a fake ending where you go, thanks for coming. You get into the thing, and also in the elevator, you know, something wrong. Where's the great haunted houses, a combination of beautiful scenery, fantastic characters that keep you guessing, and they don't just scare one part of the group. If you go through in a group of 10, if they're properly designed, they'll scare the beginning, the middle and the end.

Nick VinZant 2:18

So I scare super easily. And like, I would not go into a haunted house. It is just personally, like, not my thing. I don't like to be scared. But when you kind of design one, like, how do you go about designing it? Like, where do you start? What's your philosophy? Those kind of

John Denley 2:38

things my philosophy is, is very simple. It comes from a lot a lot of experience. I've haunted everything from Madison Square Garden. I've done casinos. We've put the first haunted houses in Asia. We were the first people to bring haunted houses in Halloween to to Hong Kong. So a lot of it is locality, but locality in in Hong Kong, very different. It's all you know, Freddie, Jason, Michael Myers, that's that. That's nothing. What they are, very spiritual people. So we did our research, and the entire haunt. Haunts were based on spirits. And I watched grown men so afraid of these particular spirits, grow their wives or girlfriends into the performer who is doing this, and then, because it is so intertwined with their culture, they're terrified. And also, the theme you choose can be quite terrified. For instance, terror on the wharf. You know, the only thing scarier than the first half is the second. You know, these, these great little bylines like this. You know, a haunted house that the others can only scream about, you know, so, a super spectacle of hideous horrors. So you really got to kind of decide what you are, who are your audience. You got to win the crowd over right in the beginning. From the beginning, if you don't win the crowd, from the beginning, you're done. You're gonna go. That was no good. So in an indoor haunted house, it might go something like this. So I'll do I'll do it. If I was doing the first scene, I'd say, welcome. You've awakened the master. The rules are simple, touch nothing and no thing will touch you this way if you want to live what we call in the house like a firm handshake. We just won you over from the beginning. Another great one is, one of my favorites is you take what we call a plant, and not like a fern, but a plant somebody who works for us, right? But we take a plant and have them go in with the crowd on the hayride, and we'll just take we have these radiation scene. We had these guys come out of the fog with a fake Geiger counter, and they, they singled out this woman, and of course, they press the button and it's going off, and reach her. They grab her, pull her off the wagon, throw her into this decontamination. Under, hit this button, all the sirens go off, and body pot shoot out the top, and they slap each other five and walk back into the fog. The whole wagon is going, yeah, yeah, it's gonna rock. And the kids are going, mom, they just took that lady from the wagon, and now they feel vulnerable. And they're part of the show. They're not just a spectator. You're part of the show.

Nick VinZant 5:24

I remember when I had the courage to go into haunted houses, like, as I was a kid, I'm in my 30s, like they were it wasn't scary, like it wasn't a big deal. When did haunted houses, would you say, really turned a corner and became like things that now to me, look, oh my god, what is happening in here?

John Denley 5:42

Yeah, it really. People started upping the game in the mid 90s. The 90s, something very special happened. I had no competitors in the early 90s, and then all of a sudden, the trade shows three or four more. Now the trade shows up to 3000 companies that support the haunted house industry, but I think that it goes in line with the movies. To answer your question directly, you saw more people start incorporating things like, well, you know what? This really works. We're gonna we're gonna try some pyrotechnics in the show. We're gonna add animatronics to the show, things that some but people can't do giant dragons and things like this. And companies started providing them. And then, of course, now CGI is involved. So you're seeing, you're seeing, just like the movies people expect more and more. They expect movie quality, theme park, what I would say, entertainment out of the haunted houses. Today,

Nick VinZant 6:35

I want to get into the business aspects of it a little bit later, but in terms of like, all right, start to finish. How long does it take you to design a haunted house? Your average one?

John Denley 6:45

Normally, it might take a couple months to build a really good one. And it really depends on a lot of theme parks come to us and they want several. We put last three years. We put four of them in Ohio and four of those haunts took, I'm going to say, seven months to to build, and then we also had to go install it. So it took, it took about four weeks to install all four haunts, and then we had to go down after the season and take it down. They come down a lot faster than they go up.

Nick VinZant 7:26

When you look at kind of your than the business aspect of it, right? I mean, you look at kind of the average ass price, so to speak, how much does it cost to put one one of these up? How much can one of these make?

John Denley 7:37

How much can they make? Will rely on their location, how much advertising they do, but there are some fonts out there making millions, but they might be able to put something together that is fairly primitive or basic for $100,000 you know, and, and that is, that is, you know, really them doing all the work, you know, not adding a lot, like animatronics, or, you know, $5,000 $4,000 some of them are $20,000 all different scopes for these type of things. And they're, and then incredibly unique situations, like Eastern State, Eastern State Penitentiary, and we're getting a call from them, and he should say, penitentiary. It was very interesting. It was this terrifying building, and you read the history of it, it's even more terrifying. And it takes up, I don't know, four to six city blocks, biggest place I've ever seen. And they were like, So, how do we make this look more like a haunted house and respectively? I had to, like, try to keep a straight face and go, Why would you want this to look like anything else other than it is this building is terrifying. Make it a haunted penitentiary. I would treat people like prisoners. I would de louse them as they come through and spray fog on their feet, and de louse them and treat them like prisoners, and, you know, and lean into the building you have, you know, you don't want to change this. I could, I said it would take me, it would take me a year to make the the walls look like this. What's the most somebody's ever spent? Some good ones are one to spend, you know, $750,000 or million dollars like this, to to do several haunts. But people, the haunts are adding other things. Are finding different ways of adding revenue. And here's what I here was what I I came up with this one, and now other haunts have have added to their to their roster. These are some really funny ways of adding revenue to this as a business. So I came up with the monster protection necklace. So monster protection necklace is right, here's the here's the little ones coming in. So for $5 you can buy that monster protection necklace and the monsters won't focus on you. That's just

Nick VinZant 9:51

kind of crazy to me, right? It's like you can drop a million dollars on a haunted house. There's that many people that are coming through,

John Denley 9:57

yeah? Because, you know, and. And you might not make your investment back the first year alone on that. But, I mean, think about this. You also, you can get corporate sponsorship. You know, you get Monster energy drink to sponsor your event. You know, as a spot money, you can get tombstone pizza. You know, also, you know, like I said, concession food, everywhere this, you're in a queue line. Everywhere that there's you're at the end of a q line there's ready turn there should be another opportunity to sell you something or make more money.

Nick VinZant 10:27

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions, absolutely. What's the scariest one you've ever been to or created?

John Denley 10:35

Oh, easy. Easy. The scariest one I've been to and had the pleasure of working on was Tara on Church Street in Orlando. It was so terrifying. And what made it terrifying was they told you to put your hands on the shoulders in front of you. Everybody had put you the hand on the person's shoulder in front of them, and you had to shuffle through this traction. They said this was your lifeline. At any time, take, you know, break the lifeline, and you'll be asked to leave. So what happened is the person would scare the person's shoulders in the front, because they just get scared, and it'd be a chain. And it'll be a change. A whole audience is scaring everybody by squeezing everybody's shoulder. Everyone's scaring everybody. And the environment was amazing. The actors had movie quality makeup. And I probably went in 10 times in a row. I couldn't get enough of it.

Nick VinZant 11:16

Are there any other kind of like runners up that you look at?

John Denley 11:20

Absolutely, absolutely run us up that are just amazing haunts that gone through, that I've that have been blown away. I would have to say there was a place called fright kingdom that was in that was in Florida, that was pretty terrifying in New England, there is a place called fright kingdom that's excellent. And it's in dual all he tries to endorse it. He has complete control of the light and lighting so, so basically the integrity, I guess that's word of it, of the lighting. So he he can control everything to you and and, you know, there might be something you'll do psychological tricks to you, like something like this, like, Oh, here's your balloon of protection. You know, when they get in the clown house, you know, nothing can happen to you, as long as you call the balloon a collection and protection. And then you go around the corner and another clown pops the balloon and goes, that doesn't work in here, kid. So they give you the security and they take it away, not

Nick VinZant 12:23

necessarily the entire haunt, but just the overall scariest part of one.

John Denley 12:31

Yeah, it was a haunt that was mine years ago, and I just tried something that I just had never seen anybody else do I still haven't seen anybody else do it. So you went up, up the ramp into this part of the upper cemetery, before he went down into the lower cemetery. And there's this old grave digger there with a bottle sitting on a tombstone. He's giving you this speech going, you went to the cemetery. Nothing much goes here anymore. Birds don't gather. Dogs don't go, you know. And again, he's giving you this whole speech that's kind of unsettling. And all of a sudden, underneath you, you're not standing on a floor, or I'll think of this the entire you're actually standing on like inch thick plexiglass, like lexan, that lights up, and the zombies right underneath onto the floor, scratching at you, and people just go, whoa. They feel like they're instantly gonna fall when, when they the floors become transparent, and nobody ever picture something gonna be underneath you. Yeah? So that really terrified people. Oh, I'm scared sitting and and the best part was I still had this great memory of this one guy who did that did this incredible Van Damme thing. His feet went up both side of the wall doing that split that Van Dam always does. And I'm thinking, like, wow, he actually would have made it.

Nick VinZant 13:52

That's one of our questions. Most interesting reactions you've ever seen from people

John Denley 13:57

peeing themselves constantly. People come out the back door and go, Oh my god, I beat myself. Other reactions are, you know, animation comes out of somebody, and somebody gives a beautiful right cross and, you know, punch the animation and or actor or actress, which that's why we have to design things really get in and out before they get hit, or put them in areas where they can't be in a corner. People have had all kinds of bodily fluids dispensed in every possible direction through the haunt. And I have also seen what I what I love is guys, if you look through through the infrared camera, guys, they they grab the girl, their girlfriend or wife, and they grab her by the shoulders like this, like they're protecting her, but they're really not. If you watch the tapes, they they push it in this way. They're doing this way, and they're using her as a human shield against everything that's in there, which is hilarious to me, because. You know, she's getting pivoted this way and this way and this way, getting used as a as a shield, and that, that really makes me laugh. Guys have a really strange fear. It seems way, much more than women do something coming towards their ankles. They absolutely flip out. So this tiny, little like clown balloon in a hot that we did years ago would come out of this hole, you know, you know, those long, thin clown balloons are no one any other, yeah,

Nick VinZant 15:23

yeah, yeah. They like, make them into animals, yeah, yeah.

John Denley 15:27

And they just, just gently touch the guy's ankle with that thing. And the guys would flip out and, like, throw their way. It was so funny to watch. And we have this thing called ankle tickle, which are compressed air that goes with little tubes, which they help. They actually tickle your ankles. And people flip out, you know? And so that is, that is a funny reaction. And one of the best reactions, or the comical reaction that I have seen, was we had or two of them, I say, was one of the haunts I haven't Salem they'd go through the front but when it exits into a mall where my museum is my monster Museum, and I saw a bunch of people that I I think were probably on certain products, and it might have come from a dispensary or two, and they came out the back door screaming, and they stopped, and when they looked around, they went, what? What just happened? We were in a mall, and they, they were, they were more astounded by the fact that they went in a haunt and they ended up in a mall than they were over the attraction, which I thought that that was very funny. And I I did laugh at another one was the they came, the New England Patriots came through, one of my old haunts come through. And these guys were

Nick VinZant 16:52

gigantic, huge guy. I

John Denley 16:54

mean, I'm six feet, you know, 200 pound, but you guys are massive. So they come through. And I was a tour guide up to a point, and I said, my powers can no longer protect you. You must go that way if you want to live. And they go, you ain't coming with us. And I said, I'm sorry. I said, Only mortals are allowed in there. I cannot mingle with mortals. And I just, boom, I disappeared in the Coronavirus gone, and they basically got in the huddle and, like, I'm not doing this. You go first. I'm not doing you go for it. No way you do. You know what? This was your idea. And it was funny that these guys that are twice the size of anybody in this place, and, you know, it took them, like, five minutes to decide who's and he's being pushed first, you know, so that it's a lot of fun. What I love is when they come out the back door feeling some sense of of as a group of camaraderie, like we survived that together. Because, to me, a perfect haunt would be like walking through your favorite horror movie or creepy story and coming out in your survive together.

Nick VinZant 17:59

You know, are there areas of the country in the United States, we're primarily listened to in the United States, are there areas of the country where, like, Oh, this is really big here. Yep,

John Denley 18:10

the Midwest, you'll find most of the largest haunts ever seen. It be, you know, 30,000 square feet, 20,000 square feet. You know, in Salem, you know, there would be three or 4000 square feet, something like that. It's what's available for people expect in New England, but in the Midwest, they're huge. And of course, there's in places like Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania, Eastern State Penitentiary, you know, Pennhurst penitentiary, Randy Bates, the Bates Motel. It just seems to be. There's so many gigantic names and haunts in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, amazing haunts. But the Midwest has to be the king of haunts. Kansas City and St Louis probably have more Hans than I've ever seen. It's unbelievable in that whole area. And they're they're massive, massive.

Nick VinZant 19:12

What do you think the future is?

John Denley 19:14

I think the future of haunted houses is pretty solid. I don't think people are ever going to get sick of the live interaction. But I think what you're going to see is people integrating a lot of things like augmented reality, kind of a hologram type of presence, where there will be characters that will be able to come out of walls and, you know, engage with you, and then I think you're, we're not far away from that at all. And I also believe that there will be a ton. There will be a thing where the strong ones survive, in terms of you either catch on or you don't, and the people who treat it like a business and have a budget, you. And are not afraid to reinvest and plan it out. They'll succeed. You know, I could walk in, I could walk in a hot house in 10 seconds and tell you whether somebody's heart is in it or not, or they're just in it for the money.

Nick VinZant 20:15

If people want to contact you, they want to learn more. What's the best way that kind of stuff? Sure.

John Denley 20:19

Real simple. It's a boneyard productions.com and, you know, like I said, we've done haunted car washes. If you, if you've got it, we can

Nick VinZant 20:32

haunt it. I want to thank John so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on tick tock, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see some of these haunted houses that we talk about, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on october 24 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Do you prefer a hard, medium or soft pillow?

John Shull 21:11

Oh, wow, that's a great question.

Nick VinZant 21:15

Have you never really thought about it before? Have you I

John Shull 21:19

haven't because I haven't had a new pillow in almost a decade,

Nick VinZant 21:25

you've been using the same pillow for 10 years.

John Shull 21:28

Yeah, before that, it was probably, let me put it this way, when I moved to Florida, I was mid 20s, and I was still sleeping with the pillow that I was sleeping with when I was in eighth grade.

Nick VinZant 21:39

Why do you keep a pillow that long? You just get attached to it. Is it your like, your Walmart, you gotta keep it.

John Shull 21:46

Well, she's still around, and it's been a decade. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's definitely a familiarity thing, right? It's a comfort thing. Um, like, I don't think that I keep very many things, um, but pillow, like my bed, is one of those things. Like, it needs to be a certain way. There needs to be a certain pillow, blanket, you know? It needs to be a certain kind of mattress. Like, I'm pretty stingy about my bed spreads.

Nick VinZant 22:10

What do you think is weirder as an adult, water bed or air mattress?

John Shull 22:19

Like somebody sleeping on an air mattress permanently,

Nick VinZant 22:22

regularly. This is your main mattress.

John Shull 22:25

Are you over the age of 35

Nick VinZant 22:29

you're over the age of what I would consider to be an adult, which is 27 I consider an adult to be a 27 year old.

John Shull 22:37

If you don't have a significant other than an air mattress is okay. If you do, then an air mattress is not okay, and a water bed just isn't okay after, like, I don't even think they should be for adults. Like, if anyone's ever had sexual relations on a on a water bed. I mean, I How does I mean, I don't even know how that's comfortable. You just sink in and like, how do you gain any like, how do you

John Denley 23:02

work?

Nick VinZant 23:03

I mean, I had an air mattress and I was able to satisfy. I don't know how you satisfy on a I didn't say another person I, you know, I may have just been me. I'm pretty sure if you're, if you have a water bed. You're not getting anything like, it's just not happening. Like,

John Shull 23:25

I wonder, I wonder, what the origin were of water beds and what made them famous, like, what, what rich person was like, I'm no, I want a bed of water. And then that was it. You know what? I

Nick VinZant 23:36

mean. Okay, let's go into shout outs, where I look up the origin of water bed. Water

John Shull 23:41

Betty, alright. Shout outs here. Appreciate all of you per usual, so pick out a couple of you here. Will Reyes, Flynn Walter, Charlie Carter, Joe, Amanda Sprouse, Tony bussy, let's see here. Aaron Garza, Jordan, Crampton, Arby, Villanueva, Cathy mag, booty, Peter Jones and Chris McCoo. Appreciate you all this week,

Nick VinZant 24:11

I looked up the history of water bed, and about three seconds into it, realized, oh, I don't really want to read this whole thing. So the modern water the modern water bed, was patented in 1971 okay, it was popular in the 1980s 20% of the mattress market was a water bed, and 22% in 1987 is now become not very popular, and by 2013 only accounted for 5% of new bed sales. So the water bed was a big deal in the 1980s

John Shull 24:49

Did you say 27% in 87 22%

Nick VinZant 24:51

in 1987 which is like so that's one in five. One in five people had water bed, which is crazy popular for something that. Not practical in any way. Fascinated by that, alright,

John Shull 25:03

well, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't talk about this, this episode, okay, since we are about, we are less than two weeks out from the election. Oh, I know. I don't, I don't want, I don't care who you're voting for. I'm not bringing this up because of that. I just thought it was funny, and that was Donald Trump going to work at a McDonald's, however, and it makes sense logistically and from like, a news point of view, it makes sense why the restaurant was closed, and all that stuff and everything was kind of fabricated. But it I don't know, does it count? I guess that's my question. Doesn't count that he actually worked at a McDonald's. If everything was made up and fabricated, it does No, right,

Nick VinZant 25:44

like no, it doesn't count. It doesn't like, if you did, you didn't really work at the McDonald's. You were just, it was a campaign event. You weren't really doing anything. And look left or right. This applies to whoever the person that you like is. If you go to something and it's supposed to be you working there, but the entire thing is staged, and the business is actually closed, then you didn't really work there. Like, it's entirely fake. It's entirely fake. So like, that doesn't count, and it's kind of whichever side was gonna do something like that. It was ridiculous. But I can say that I really can't wait for November to be over, and I think that everybody would agree with that.

John Shull 26:28

I will say that I think the sentiment now is from from everybody in America, whether you like one person or the other, is that you almost hope it's a landslide, one way or the other, that way it's just over. Like, yeah,

Nick VinZant 26:42

I do hope that. I do hope it's just a whooping for whoever wins. Uh,

John Shull 26:46

let's see we have, we have one rip to give this week, and that is to Liam Payne.

Nick VinZant 26:52

Oh, that's sad.

John Shull 26:53

Former star of or, I guess he still has a star, or was a star, but former founder of One Direction, which, if you're not familiar with them, they were kind of like the 2000 and 10s British version of maybe the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC back in the boy band era days.

Nick VinZant 27:10

It's crazy to me that we don't really have bands anymore. What's the biggest band of the last 10 years?

John Shull 27:21

Oh, I mean, whereas before, don't ask me, yeah,

Nick VinZant 27:24

there's not big bands anymore. Like when I was growing up, everything was a band, and there wasn't a lot of solo acts. Now it's basically all solo acts. You

John Shull 27:35

know, what's kind of nuts is the the and this is just a total rant of mine, and it kind of goes back to what you said about bands when we were growing up. Ticket prices for anybody are insane. Like I don't want to pay 150 bucks to go watch the offspring. Though I love the offspring,

Nick VinZant 27:54

I don't think I would pay $10 to go see the offspring.

John Shull 27:58

Oh, well, that's your own fault. They're fantastic,

Nick VinZant 28:01

but I'm sure they are. But I wouldn't pay $10 to go see the amp the offspring.

John Shull 28:07

Are there any musicians or bands that you would pay $200 or more to go see live?

Nick VinZant 28:14

No dead mouth for an experience if it was in a city that I wanted to go

John Shull 28:18

see? Okay? All right, that's true, dropping knowledge,

Nick VinZant 28:23

I or a similar act like that. I kind of thing where there's like a lot of energy in the room. I would go, I would pay a decent amount of money to go see something like that. The only person that I really regret not going to see is Tom Petty. I wish I would have seen Tom Petty before he passed away.

John Shull 28:39

I was, I'm right there with you. I had the chance and and squandered it, and here we are. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 28:47

that's a regret. That's a musical regret of mine.

John Shull 28:52

This is completely random, but I saw a video on Facebook and it made me think of I should ask you this question, would you voluntarily get into a shark cage in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean by yourself. And if, if no would there be amounts of money that you would do it for?

Nick VinZant 29:11

I mean, honestly, like 100 bucks I would do it well, because I don't know, like the sharks not getting through metal. I mean, this is the kind of thing that was now, a homemade shark cage,

John Shull 29:22

like, if I built it, I I'm building the shark cage.

Nick VinZant 29:26

No, I'm not getting in it. 100 grand. I would probably do it for but I mean, it's like a safe thing. It To Me a shark cage is like a roller coaster. It's dangerous, but it's not really dangerous. Has there ever been a shark that got through a shark cage or somebody who died because they went on a shark cage adventure? To me, it's like a roller coaster, like it's dangerous, it's this, but it's not really. It's actually pretty much perfectly safe.

John Shull 29:55

I mean, I'm sure that a shark has gotten through at some point. It. I mean, yeah,

Nick VinZant 30:01

I mean, I'm sure it's, it has it has happened.

John Shull 30:06

It's, it's kind of like when you know, the people go exotic game hunting and the lion kill turns on them and kills them. Like, what do you think is going to happen? Oh, I like, you're trying to hunt them. Um, I know you're not the biggest fan of barbecue, but I felt the need to tell all of our Midwest listeners this that there is a barbecue museum opening next month in Kansas City, Missouri, if you want to go check it out,

Nick VinZant 30:33

I wonder if there's, is there an uproar about the fact that the barbecue Museum is in Kansas City, Kansas City. I'm a native Kansan. Kansas City is famous for barbecue, but I don't think that it should be in Kansas City. I think it should probably be in Memphis.

John Shull 30:53

Man, see, that's tough. I've, I mean, I've had barbecue in Memphis. I've never had it in, you know, in in Kansas City, so I don't know. Yeah, I'm the wrong person to ask. I'm sure somebody from the deep south would tell you it should be somewhere in the deep south. It should be in

Nick VinZant 31:09

the Deep South. I would consider Memphis. Well, I don't know if Memphis is or not, but I think that the barbecue museum belongs in the South. I don't think the barbecue museum belongs in Kansas City.

John Shull 31:20

Um, I mean, Michigan has the best barbecue. So, okay, that's a joke, just about it. To get a reaction out of you.

Nick VinZant 31:28

Somebody commented about your Detroit style pizza, and they were like, I live in Detroit, and that's not a real thing.

John Shull 31:34

I'm okay. Well, I don't know who that person is, but they're wrong.

Nick VinZant 31:38

Okay. Well, they live in Detroit. You don't live in Detroit, you live in Madison, heights.

John Shull 31:46

Way to put it out there. Um, nobody's gonna

Nick VinZant 31:48

find you. I'm always obsessed about don't put my address out there. Like, if somebody wants to find you, they can find you pretty easily.

John Shull 31:57

Yeah, and anybody. You can look up celebrities. You could look up a random person. I mean, addresses are everywhere. Unfortunately, I don't. I actually don't think that should be the case, but it is so whatever is alright on to Elon Musk, and it's not his view related, but I thought it was interesting that he is giving out, you know, every event he does which and we if, if you follow politics, you know what side he's on, whatever. I don't care about that, but he's giving out a million dollars to a random person. He says that comes to a rally that he's at. So it got me thinking, if somebody were to go, Hey, if you go to Elon Musk's rally, you're going to get a million dollars. Like, I would have to be guaranteed to get that money, I think. But I'd probably go for a million dollars.

Nick VinZant 32:44

Oh, I would go, even if I wasn't guaranteed, just for the chance at it, like a million dollars. There's not a lot of things I wouldn't do for a million dollars. I don't know if that sentence makes grammatical structure sentence, but you know what I'm talking about, like, the list of things I wouldn't do for a million dollars is not a long one.

John Shull 33:07

I guess the just the problem of it all for me, is like, you know, a million dollars is a lot of money and but it's not like life changing money anymore for most Oh, I

Nick VinZant 33:17

think it is. I think a million dollars you can't retire and live the wealthy lifestyle off of a million dollars anymore, but imagine if you could pay off your house. Man, that. Oh, that would right. So a million dollars is, I think that any, I think 100,000 anything over 100,000 is life changing money. Even 50,000 you could say, is life changing money? Yeah. I mean, laid it all at one time, yeah.

John Shull 33:43

Well, I'm hoping to hit the lottery soon, and then you'll never see me again. I couldn't

Nick VinZant 33:49

even imagine that. I couldn't even imagine the feeling of like hitting the lottery and being like, you just won $500 million what?

John Shull 34:00

So when it gets above, like, 750 I usually play, but I never stay up, usually for the drawing or, like, I never pay attention to it. And I always, like, every the next morning, I'm like, a kid at Christmas, because I'm like, Oh, my God, no one's won it. Do I have the ticket? Oh, wait, the first number was 15. Well, it's a 47 so

Nick VinZant 34:20

yeah, I guess I never I do, like, buy a ticket. I'll buy a ticket every once in a while, and then forget about it. That's usually how I do it, too.

John Shull 34:29

Also, I wonder, and this is going to be an ignorant question, but I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I hope you do, do other countries have the lottery?

Nick VinZant 34:39

I don't know. I don't live in other countries. I

John Shull 34:41

was wondering, like, do they have? I know that the power I don't know, because you're, you're a history major from what does that have to do with history though, Kansas State, Missouri,

Nick VinZant 34:50

first of all, it's Kansas City, Kansas. Oh, the lottery exists in at least 100 other countries. Wow. See. Be, I don't know more than I thought that it was going to be. It's a lot of more, lot more.

John Shull 35:06

Wow. All right. Well, okay, anyways,

Nick VinZant 35:08

okay, so our top five is top five noodle dishes. There's a lot of different kinds of noodle dishes. So what's your number five?

John Shull 35:18

So I have to ask you a question before I get going, it's going to dictate a lot about how our I'm not our lists are going to go here. Um, do you have like individual I'm not answering

Nick VinZant 35:32

any of your questions about it. You need to have confidence in your list and say the list as you want to say it. I'm not answering any questions or divulging any information about my own list, if you accidentally look the fool, then that's your own problem.

John Shull 35:47

I'm not going to bail you out ahead of time. Fine. Then my number five, the the only one that I think you have to put on here on your top five list, because it is the granddad of all noodle dishes, and that is spaghetti. Spaghetti

Nick VinZant 36:01

is not a noodle. Spaghetti is pasta.

John Shull 36:08

I mean, what's the difference pasta or noodles? Yeah,

Nick VinZant 36:12

but noodles are made with egg. Pasta is made with egg.

John Shull 36:16

That's not true. Yes, it is pasta.

Nick VinZant 36:18

I looked this up because I was gonna put spaghetti on my list as well. And I looked it up and it said that spaghetti is not a noodle. It is a pasta. So do

John Shull 36:29

you use eggs to make pasta?

Nick VinZant 36:35

No, you use eggs to make noodles?

John Shull 36:36

Yes, pasta can be made with eggs can be look at

Nick VinZant 36:41

are we going to argue with me? The internet says that there is a specific statement for some some governing body, the International pasta Association, says that spaghetti is not a noodle, it is a pasta. Well,

John Shull 36:53

you know what? Then, I guess we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on our list, because there is

Nick VinZant 36:58

no way to agree to disagree. You're just wrong.

John Shull 36:59

Noodles and pasta are the same freaking things. I don't care. Apparently,

Nick VinZant 37:04

they're not, apparently sensitive subject international

John Shull 37:07

pasta association or whatever. I don't care. Spaghetti is my number five a noodle dish, okay,

Nick VinZant 37:15

well, just so you know that having spaghetti is your number five is wrong, because spaghetti is not a noodle. It is a pasta. My number five is ramen. I love ramen. And I'll be honest with you, I still like the cheap ramen that you got in college, that when I was in college, was like 50 cents. I like that stuff. Man,

John Shull 37:41

I've only had ramen a handful of times, and it's just, it's just meh, just meh. Oh, it's

Nick VinZant 37:46

good. I like it. I like I probably think, really, I just like the salt and the fact that it costs 50 cents, or used to cost 50 cents.

John Shull 37:53

I I mean, my list is gonna seem irrelevant now, but I don't know what else to do with it? Because, well, you've

Nick VinZant 38:01

ruined it because you didn't do any research and probably put all pasta when you should have put noodles.

John Shull 38:05

I guarantee you that it's a very fine line. Some, most pasta is made with eggs. Oh,

Nick VinZant 38:12

yeah, somebody just decided this. It's not like a real thing. Just one person, one day decided that, you know what, spaghetti, not a noodle. It's a pasta. Now and then. Got all uppity about it whenever somebody brought it up, it's

John Shull 38:27

stupid. Um, all right, well, my number four are garlic butter noodles.

Nick VinZant 38:33

I don't know if I've ever had that, but it sounds like a mix of noodles, garlic and butter. It's

John Shull 38:37

amazing. It is, and it can go with basically any any side, any dish that you make.

Nick VinZant 38:43

I looked up a lot of noodle dishes because I was also confused by the whole noodle pasta thing. And I didn't see garlic butter anywhere. I feel like, you just made that up and just went fat kids. And was like, You know what? I like garlic and butter. Put it on these noodles.

John Shull 39:00

You're hurting mama. Show us feelings. All right? You're hurting her feelings.

Nick VinZant 39:03

Oh, it's a hustle. Your mom made it. Your mom, you made me your homemade dish. Did you used to ask her, did you What was your birthday dish? When your mom said, John, what do you want for your birthday? What did you tell her? Like, Mom, I want

John Denley 39:15

this for my birthday.

John Shull 39:19

Fried chicken.

Nick VinZant 39:23

Yeah, mine was true. Mine was cream tacos, which is basically nachos. Okay,

John Shull 39:28

yeah, man, my man, fried chicken is good. Anyways, what's your number four?

Nick VinZant 39:33

I do love some fried chicken. Chicken Noodle. The only, purely, I think, American noodle that I would put on the list of best noodles is chicken noodle.

John Shull 39:44

I don't like chicken noodle soup. Chicken noodle soup.

Nick VinZant 39:47

You got a problem with that? Fixes everything. Read a book.

John Shull 39:53

What does that even mean? Read a book.

Nick VinZant 39:56

No, there's all kinds of stuff. They're always saying chicken noodle for this chicken. Noodle for that, read a book, whatever. I don't know what it actually does, isn't it

John Shull 40:04

with, like, chicken noodle soup for the teenage soul or something, something like that. But chicken

Nick VinZant 40:08

noodle is supposed to fix everything. Imagine if you come in there with a broken arm, and the doctor's just like, I have some chicken noodle soup. Oh, that's gonna fix it. That's what's gonna make it better. Okay, buddy.

John Shull 40:20

Uh, all right. My number three are Drunken Noodles.

Nick VinZant 40:23

Okay, okay, my number three is spaghetti. Let's move on to your number two.

John Shull 40:36

I swear to God, man, I You frustrate me. Sometimes

Nick VinZant 40:42

it's not a noodle, but it can still be a noodle to me.

John Shull 40:45

I mean, you're gonna, I mean, my number two and one aren't gonna be you're gonna have issues with them. My number two is lasagna.

Nick VinZant 40:53

Yeah, dude, that's definitely not a noodle. That's definitely a positive. I

John Shull 40:56

mean, it's a positive but, but don't you call once again. I and I apologize for not knowing this, I suppose, but I always, always thought pasta were noodles. You're

Nick VinZant 41:07

really pushing the bet. No, things have different names for different reasons, right? First off, you have no credibility called a dog because it is not a cat. You have no credibility because

John Shull 41:17

you chastise me about spaghetti, and then you put spaghetti higher on your list than I did, but

Nick VinZant 41:23

I didn't. Would not put lasagna on there. Lasagna clearly not a noodle. In no way is lasagna a noodle that's pushing it too far. You might be able to get away with spaghetti, but you pushed it too far. My number two is mac and cheese. But I don't know if this is a great

John Shull 41:47

so, just so everyone knows.

Nick VinZant 41:50

Oh, I put the completely the wrong thing, description in the in the edit, in our live stream too. It's totally wrong. It's about transformers and sports Nick's names. Sorry about that, noodles.

John Shull 42:03

You know what the what the worst part of everything is about this whole list, my number one's mac and cheese. Your number one is mac

Nick VinZant 42:11

and cheese. But okay, here was the thing is, I looked it up. Is that macaroni is apparently not a noodle either, and is a pasta, but Wikipedia has mac and cheese listed on their list of noodle dishes. So there's some debate. There's no debate about spaghetti, but there seems to be some debate about mac and cheese.

John Shull 42:34

I get the difference, I guess, between pasta and noodles, and that's that eggs are used in some and not others. But I feel like nobody knows the difference, unless you're well equipped in the culinary arts of noodle isms.

Nick VinZant 42:48

It is amazing to me, and we have it on this podcast for people who may be just new listeners. We have interviewed a lot of scientific minds, a lot of people who are, in some cases, the preeminent scientific mind in their field. And the thing that they will tell you is, the more you know about something, the less you actually know about something. Like, if you can get down to the definition of anything, it makes no sense. Like, what's the ultimate definition between a noodle and a pasta? And the farther you get down, the less the definition makes any sense. Nothing in life really makes any sense if you get right down to it?

John Shull 43:24

No, it's all interpretation of what you think of something. You

Nick VinZant 43:28

decide. You create your own reality. Um, I do not have mac and cheese as my number two. I have a real noodle at my number one, which is Pad Thai.

John Shull 43:39

That's a good one. That's all my honor, put it on my honor. I mentioned, um, it's probably one of my favorite Thai, you know, dishes, for sure,

Nick VinZant 43:48

I would say that pad thai is something that completely exposed me to other cuisines as a kid in Kansas, like growing up, like, wait, you can have this, what's this? And it was amazing. And then you try other things.

John Shull 44:04

Yeah, sure. I mean, in Detroit, we were just eating pizza. So would

Nick VinZant 44:08

you say you're an adventurous eater? You're obviously a big eater.

John Shull 44:19

Yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm an adventure cedar. I won't turn something down for sure. Um, you know, I might not eat it again, but I won't turn it down. And, like you said, it kind of shows. But

Nick VinZant 44:30

listen, I know lot of people who know you well, and they all would say that John shell will shove anything in his mouth. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. Really does help out the show and let us know what you think are the best noodle dishes. Obviously, the definition of noodle was pretty loose. Juice. So as long as it's not like lasagna, level noodle and it's more spaghetti, level noodle, let us know what you think are some of the best noodle dishes.


Fear Researcher Dr. Kerry Ressler

Fear is one of our most powerful emotions. But where does it really come from and how can we overcome it. Dr. Kerry Ressler has spent more than 20 years studying fear, phobias and anxiety. We talk what fear does to our bodies and brains, the best ways to overcome fear and anxiety and why our lives may now be ruled by fear. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Sports Nicknames of All Time.

Dr. Kerry Ressler: 01:13

Pointless: 32: 44

Top 5 Sports Nicknames: 52:46

Contact the Show

Dr. Kerry Ressler Website

Interview with Fear Researcher Dr. Kerry Ressler

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode fear and sports nicknames

Dr. Kerry Ressler 0:19

that takes about half a second to be consciously aware of what we're saying. So our awareness is about half a second behind reality. And how can you train your body to calm down, train yourself to believe your behaviors and the facts around you and not your emotions? That about a third to a half of your risk for having really severe fear is genetically inherited.

Nick VinZant 0:42

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he studies something that has a huge impact on all of our lives, fear. This is fear researcher, Dr Kerry Ressler. So why do we feel fear?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 1:14

I would say we feel fear for several different reasons. I think the most straightforward is it is probably the most important emotion for survival, and thus the most important driver of evolution. If, if we cannot be afraid, we would not we would be quickly eaten by predators long before we evolved as humans. I think the human condition is about, how do we have this emotions like fear that can totally take over. And how do we regulate them so we use them when we need to, and not be completely driven by them all the time? You mentioned,

Nick VinZant 1:48

this is something that we share with other animals. Do we feel it differently than other animals? Do we seem to feel it more or less or about the same?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 1:56

I don't know that we know, you know? I think we can. We can, you know, that's the thing about animal research, is we can learn a lot by observing their behavior, but they can't talk to

Nick VinZant 2:08

us. A significant hurdle, right? Fear

Dr. Kerry Ressler 2:10

in humans is mostly a subjective thing. One person's fear is not the same as another person's fear all the time. So we really need to talk about about threat related behaviors, or fear behaviors or fear responses. Because we really do need to separate sort of the subjective consciousness of fear, which can have a lot of the components of anxiety and anticipation and all those things, from sort of the very behavioral component of fear, like that sense of panic, that sense of I'm just running for my freaking life,

Nick VinZant 2:40

do we feel fear in the way that we used to? Because I would imagine, like, back when we were prehistoric times, I was afraid of the lion coming to eat me. Now I'm afraid of social interaction. You

Dr. Kerry Ressler 2:53

know, I think that's both one of the very exciting components of fear and also one of the problems, where I think it gets really interesting, is where we are today as a species. We've gone, you know, in the last 100 years, has been more social evolution than probably all history before, and now we're doing things like online podcast and 24/7 news cycles, and we've got all our smartphones and our computers and everything, and we're all exposed to the whole world all the time. And we're not just exposed to our immediate family or our tribe or the hunter gatherer situation, we're just sort of overwhelmed with what potentially could be fearful events. So that might be everything from feeling scared about a war in another continent, being scared about the potential of the politician that we don't trust going the wrong direction. And so much of current politics is driven by fear or or being scared that people don't like me on social media. And so there's all of these components where there's still this base emotion of threat and fear, but there's now this sort of secondary things on top of it. And I think that, you know, is a large driver why we have such high levels of anxiety and stress today? Yeah,

Nick VinZant 4:03

are we kind of using it in the wrong way, like this thing that was supposed to warn you about the lion is now responding to, oh my gosh, am I going to use the wrong word in this email to my boss? Exactly,

Dr. Kerry Ressler 4:13

I think. So we didn't evolve for the world we live in, and so we had these basic emotions that are really hundreds of 1000s of years old in their circuitry, there's minimal evidence that that human evolution over the last several 100,000 years has changed much of anything particularly related to basic emotions. Is

Nick VinZant 4:34

the flaw with the foundation and the design in it, or is it the flaw with the application that we are now using it for? Does that make sense? I

Dr. Kerry Ressler 4:41

think the simple answer is that we've evolved past our social our social evolution and our technological evolution has evolved past what our biological evolution prepared us for. The big irony, I think, is that the. The evolutionary drive that may have been most important beyond like mating and having babies for survival, may be the thing most likely to kill it to the species, because it's also, I think, underlying fear that drives xenophobia and drives cycle to violence and drives wars. And so it is, I think, quite an interesting observation thing

Nick VinZant 5:23

getting back into, like, less existential questions, what's like when we feel fear, what's happening in our brain? It's cool,

Dr. Kerry Ressler 5:32

because it's one of the best understood neural circuits of how brain connectivity leads to a specific set of feelings or emotions or behaviors. So I'll walk you through an example I often show when giving a talk. Let's say you're walking down so my favorite sort of somewhat funny metaphor to you that my wife is deadly afraid of snakes. So what's going on at these distant we start with the sensory emotion. So in the case of seeing the snake, your eyes are, you know, constantly pulling in information from the world around you on a microsecond, millisecond level, in the first place, the eyes and information is a brain, middle brain place called the thalamus. And the thalamus then has two projections. One of them goes to the visual cortex, higher multiple levels of visual cortex, and then finally up to sort of frontal cortex, and where we have what we think is consciousness and awareness that takes about half a second to be consciously aware of what we're saying. So that, by itself, is an interesting observation. We're always our awareness is about half a second behind reality,

Nick VinZant 6:34

some more than others, I think,

Dr. Kerry Ressler 6:36

some maybe minutes. But at the same time, that middle thalamus region, the first part of the brain that gets information from the eye, sends a project, another neural projection, down to the amygdala. And this is this area just inside the ears, and the amygdala is, is really the part of the brain that that evolved for very rapid emotional, sensory detection of the world around us, and so it's getting the sort of pre processed information, and it very rapidly within two sections within the amygdala sends hardwired projection to many different brainstem and subcortical areas that activate the temperature response, the breathing response, the stomach upset response, the startle physiological response, the sweating response, increasing blood pressure. That all happens in about 100 milliseconds. So before, well before, hundreds of milliseconds before you're consciously aware of seeing that thing, your amygdala, that's that's prepared for the snakes of the world has already set off. This might be a snake. Fire, fire, fire. Will Robinson run, you know? And it actually felt and then you come back, then you kind of become consciously aware, oh, why am I feeling this way? It's just a stick, but your heart's already racing, you're already sweating, you're already doing anything. So that's kind of the thing we all go through all the time.

Nick VinZant 7:54

So we're reacting to it before we even consciously recognize exactly,

Dr. Kerry Ressler 7:58

exactly. It's a driver of our behavior, and it had to be, because it, you know, the systems evolved to have an extraordinarily rapid fight or flight system, right? So that you can get get the hell out of dodge before you get eaten. And you need to be reacting faster than you can think about whether you should run or not. So that's the basics. And then when you think about people, and we all have some level of that, and we all can think of a story in our head, but if you think about things like post traumatic stress disorder, that's a case where somebody had a severe trauma and now they are responding like that all the time, inappropriately, overly generalizably. They can't get out of the house. They're avoiding things. So if that fear reaction has just gone to 1000 and they can't control it. Or with like people with significant general anxiety, they're sort of always feeling on edge, even if they don't quite know why, and it's because that amygdala system is just sort of always ramped up and always feeling like they're at threat, even with or not. So

Nick VinZant 8:57

then how can we control something where our body's reacting before we're even aware of it.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 9:02

You often can't in the moment, and a lot of our therapies, you know, are about that process. So some kinds of therapies, one's called dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, but it's really just emotion regulation, and it teaches you ways of okay, even if I'm feeling out of control. If you know, if I'm feeling like I'm dying, I have to cognitively know that I'm not. And this is the whole range of cognitive behavior therapies. And how can you train your body to calm down, train yourself to believe your behaviors and the facts around you, and not your emotion? So part of it's really just psychoeducation. Your Your emotions will lie to you, and they're often not that accurate that, I think, is, you know, again, sorry for keep coming back to politics. But as you say, We're prisoners of the moment. I think that's part of the issue. You know, politicians that can speak to emotion are much more successful in getting votes than those who speak to cerebral and logical issues. At the end of the day, we may. Decision to buy our emotions, and that's really well trained out through other kinds of therapies, and where we can trigger things like post traumatic stress, you essentially retrain the brain that those cues and the things in the world that remind you of the trauma are not actually dangerous, and you do that in part, just by re experiencing them. So if you're afraid of snake, I keep trying to convince Betsy to do this. You have to, you have to have exposure therapy with phobia. So you would start by maybe sitting in a room with a snake, going to a zoo with a lot of snakes, then holding a snake, maybe having a pet as a snake. You know, you're retraining the brain that these things that I'm naturally afraid of, I don't have to be and with trauma, it's that that was a horrible thing that happened, but it happened that that time by that person in that place. And it's not all the people who look like them, and it's not all cars or whatever. So general idea, when

Nick VinZant 10:50

you kind of look at exposure therapy, is it something that like, Okay, this really works, or this works better than anything else we got.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 10:57

The latter. You know, most things in mental health, nothing you know, don't work as well as we'd like them to work. Yeah, and so exposure therapy is has the best evidence of the types of therapies we use in the phobias, in post traumatic stress disorder, in obsessive compulsive disorder and those sorts of things. And we really think now that our what we call, traditionally, anxiety disorders, and those be like phobias, OCD, social anxiety, social phobia, and then post traumatic stress is sort of the most extreme. We think of all of those as really fear related disorders, or disorders of the fear system

Nick VinZant 11:36

is, is fear more nature or nurture in the sense that like, can you look at someone's physiological makeup of their brain and say that person is going to really struggle with fear, or is it a thing that we like learn as we go throughout life, both

Dr. Kerry Ressler 11:52

nature and nurture, we're starting to be able to answer that more quantitatively by doing large Scale genetic study. So twin studies where you take, you know identical twins, and you follow them over a lifetime, and people did a lot of this in the 70s and 80s, and then now that genetics has gotten a lot cheaper, we mostly do large scale genetics, but the twin study suggests that disorders like post traumatic stress disorder or severe anxiety, that those probably have about a 30 to 40% genetic basis, so that about a third to a half of your risk for having really severe fear is genetically inherited. But that means at least a half to two thirds is environment, is nurture, right? And that's and we know that the environmental component is both, is both early development and that's childhood trauma, childhood adversity, childhood neglect, are often the biggest risk factors for almost everything in psychiatry. But they're certainly not alone, and there's certainly people who have some of those things and turn out fine, but, but it's certainly one of the big risk factors. Another is just level of level of trauma or threat or stress over one's lifetime. So, you know, living in a lower resource environment, having less mental health resources, having, you know, broken families, you know, all the things that are bad with higher risk for all these things, and part of that's because the more unstable, the more uncertain your life has been in the past, the more your fear system is. Sort of like, I don't know where I'm safe and when I'm not. Yeah, it's interesting.

Nick VinZant 13:33

I'll kind of divulge some personal information. I came from a very stable environment, and I'm generally not very afraid of things, and I don't have very much anxiety. Other people that I know who have come from less stable environments have way more anxiety.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 13:48

And just one thing, you know, we so we did a study of about 15,000 people in inner city, Atlanta, and we asked literally 1000s of questions, and we did imaging, and we did biology, we know, inevitably, one of the biggest variable, most powerful variables of significant depression or post traumatic stress in adulthood was a very simple so we'd ask a lot about different kinds of childhood trauma. But if you simply ask, Did you grow up in a stable or unstable household? However you interpret that that was a huge predictor. So saying whatever would make somebody say no, it was pretty unstable in that sort of force. Yes or no. Question was highly correlated with much more risk.

Nick VinZant 14:28

Does it seem to be when somebody develops like one of the more extreme negative reactions to it? Does it seem to be a quality or a quantity thing like this needs to happen a lot or no, you just have to have one or two really bad experiences.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 14:41

It's an additive process which you could probably get through multiple ways, right? So I think one or two really bad experiences may be sort of equivalent to a lot of sort of minor experiences. Yeah, right, but it's some total dose response curve that we don't really understand, but we one. One term in the field is called trauma load. It's how you know, the loading of how much trauma you've had over your lifetime seems to shift you to more and more risk. That said, there are certainly some examples of what we call traumatic growth, or, you know, basically building resiliency, that if you have some level of maybe not so much trauma, but unpredictability or stress, but that you can overcome it or have the right social supports, parental supports, other that those can build resiliency and can build confidence, that you can overcome difficult things, right? And so that's, I think, one of the interesting dialectics of discussion between, well, all trauma is bad, versus okay. Now we have a snowflake generation in which nobody can handle anything, right? Something about independence, something about overcoming difficult situations. But that's very different than obviously being, you know, being physically attacked, being sexually attacked, being bullied all the time in school. So, so it's all about, I think, part as you say that the quantity or the or the level of of of trauma, yeah. It kind

Nick VinZant 16:01

of sounds like you got to get to the proverbial number 10, and whether you get there through two fives or 10 ones, once you get there, you're there. Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 16:11

And that that's mediated in part by and that's kind of how we think the gene, by environment, the nature and nurture work, the nature the genetics probably partly sets what that threshold is for how much you can take, and the nature and the nurture is, how many you know, how do you get to 10? Or for one person, it may be 20, and another person it may be five, yeah, for the threshold.

Nick VinZant 16:34

So when we feel fear, like, what is it that our body wants us to do? There's

Dr. Kerry Ressler 16:40

several different sort of hardwired reflexes to the fear response. So the classic terminology is fight, flight or freeze, and that, you know, pretty much wraps it up. So first is, you know, is defend yourself if you can't escape. The second one is run away if you still can escape. And the third one is if neither of those are going to work, freeze and maybe they won't see you. And so this makes a lot of sense, like with rodents, right? So if you're a little mouse, and there's a you know, you see a snake coming near you, well, they they've evolved, and a lot of this is because your predators use use motion to detect the prey, so that's why they just sort of freeze and hope not to be seen. But once the once the predator is close enough that that's that it's clear they're seen and they're not going to free, they're not going to freeze, then emotion will cause them to startle and run. And so a lot of the circuitry is starting to be figured out about what's the difference between when that same fear input is telling you to startle and run or to freeze, or if it's another animal that might be wanting to attack you again when they're far enough away, if it's maybe two males fighting over territory, when are they far enough away you can ignore them, freeze them or run away, versus when are you going to have to fight? And so yeah, there's a lot starting to be understood about that. Now, as far as humans, how does that work? You know, the fight one kind of makes sense, and you can, you know, certainly see people who are more disinhibited or afraid or fighting the cycles of violence, I think come to that the freezing is a little harder, but an example of that is, you know, giving a giving a talk, or, you know, be on a first date, and your mouse dry, and you can't think of what to say, and you're just kind of stuck and in more severe PTSD, that was like, what we call dissociation. People's eyes may roll back. They're sort of almost feel like they're in an out of body experience. They're just so entirely separated from the present moment when

Nick VinZant 18:33

we feel that fear emotion. Can other emotions override it? Or is this like, nope. This is the only thing you are playing paying attention to that kind of like, when I'm cold, all I think about is the fact that I'm cold. Nothing else matters.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 18:50

Yeah, it can be though it's hard. So panic attack is a good example. So that's we. I don't know how, how familiar folks are with the panic attack, but the idea is, you'll you might be fine, you might be a little anxious, and then all of a sudden it feels like you're you got to get out of there. You're dying, you're you're sweating, your heart's racing, and you just got to escape. But in that panic attack, the treatments that we can tell people are one, there are things like meditation, but it can be really hard when you're when you're all your cylinders are firing to meditate. And then you mentioned being cold. Actually, one of the most interesting techniques is, is ice diving. And you may not go whole body, but they'll, you know, tell people to put, you know, get a bowl of ice water and stick your face in it. And in people who are really suffering with a lot of distress and sometimes complex trauma, they might cut themselves and, of course, not A, not a positive way of dealing, yeah, these are all things that basically bring the sensory world in so strongly that they help you get grounded and kind of take yourself out of your mind. That is right now. Being so much in this fearful space,

Nick VinZant 20:02

you know, have a family member that they can kind of get going, for lack of a better word, but then they'll grab an ice cube, and it seems to like, reset. Yeah,

Dr. Kerry Ressler 20:12

that's exactly, I mean, that's, that's what's about, you know, that basic ideas behind a lot of the tools that are really about grounding tools or distraction tools that are essentially taking a really strong sensory cue and having you focus on that so that sort of takes that attention away from the fight or flight motion. And it doesn't always work 100% but it can. It can be a helpful way of pulling yourself back down.

Nick VinZant 20:41

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions. Go, sure. Does fear change throughout ages? Like, is there an age where we seem to be more fearful than other ages?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 20:51

Most anxiety disorders and therefore most severe fear, you know, have to start in earlier in life, and whether that be, you know, probably the peak of when it really starts to get impairing is in the, you know, teens and 20s and but, but it seems again, back to the kind of nature, nurture thing. Anxious kids often grow up to be anxious adults, you know. And really shy kids often have to grow up to be kind of introverted, you know, kind of quiet adults. And so it doesn't things like PTSD is probably the only one of this beds that seems to go where people are kind of fine and a horrible thing happens, and now they're different. Most of the other spectrum anxiety spectrum disorders have been there at some level, so it's usually pretty early in development. The two differences are postmenopausal, because estrogen has such a huge effect on everything that women who may have had some anxiety or depression pre election, but who were doing pretty well sometimes in the postmenopausal period, a lot of that can come back, and that's what sometimes feel similar to a post partum with the change event, and then with early dementia, also, as people lose some of their cortical ability to sort of control their their emotions, they'll start to get more dysregulated and fearful and agitated. And a lot of agitation in people with dementia is really, I think, anxiety and fear.

Nick VinZant 22:16

What is the difference between fear and anxiety? Is that the same thing or just kind of like, No, this is just a lesser version of fear.

Dr. Kerry Ressler 22:25

The simple answer is, they're more alike than different. But there's interesting other answers. And so there's two different brain regions. I talked about the amygdala. There's another brain region that's a little more forward in the brain and a little smaller, that's kind of in the middle of the brain, and it's called the bNSt bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. You know, you get a neurology lesson today, but so it turns out they both get similar inputs and they have similar outputs. So both regions can drive that panic attack, but the amygdala is more activated by by things that are more close to attacking, that sort of almost immediate attack, and that's what we think of more sort of that immediate fear response. The bed nucleus, the bNSt, seems to be more activated by by distal threats, or more general unknown threat unpredictability. And in rodents, you can model this by the amygdala is more activated if the if the mouse is right up to it, if the AfD attack was right up to it, that's going to more attack. The amygdala, the bNSt, is more activated if there's like a looming bird, or a sound of a something off in the distance, but they can't see it. And so it seems like there's some evidence that these that unpredictability is more anxiety, and that's more of the bNSt, and it's more about distal threat. You know, there's something going to happen, but you're not sure what to do. And that may more activate slowly going away, or going down in your burrow, or kind of hiding out from other people. And the amygdala, which is the close up threat, is what the more fear is about. And that's more than jumping the response, a lot more of the immediate physiological reaction,

Nick VinZant 24:02

is there kind of another shoe to drop, or another cost to pay, and that if we're feeling this same fear and anxiety so much more than we potentially were at the past, or somebody is feeling it a lot more than somebody else, like does that take a toll on our brain or our body in a different way?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 24:18

Yeah, well, at the at the extreme level, well, I mean, I can talk about this in multiple levels. Right anxiety disorders, particularly PTSD, are some of the highest risk for suicide. I also think that a lot of violence is I think about fear and anxiety, and particularly fear. I think the in biologically, people with severe anxiety disorders and PTSD have higher risk of dementia when they grow older. So there's some nature, nurture effect of Alzheimer's and other dementias as well. There's both a biological component, but a lifetime of stress increases that risk as well. And then what we're starting to understand a lot about is the intersection. Of emotions in the brain, with the immune system. And it turns out that people with with severe anxiety, PTSD and fear, are more likely to have a more inflammatory state. They're more likely to have, perhaps, alterations in their appetite. They're more likely to be at risk for other kinds of biological and physiological disorders like cardiovascular disease and even cancer. So that chronic stress, which is often the outcome of dysregulated fear, can be a risk factor for many other biological component disorders too.

Nick VinZant 25:32

Are we more fearful than we have been in the past? I think the emotion of fear

Dr. Kerry Ressler 25:35

is probably similar, but I think the number of things, the number of opportunities we have to be afraid, and the number of things that can drive our fear are much, much more. You know, it's not, not to take away from, you know, obviously being in a war zone, anytime in history, is a horrible thing, or being in an abusive relationship or a dangerous family or something, but, but I think for the average person who may not be in a war zone, etc, your exposure to fearful cues because of social media, because of 24/7 news, because of the increasingly, you know, small size of the world. While that has many positive things, it really has a lot of activation of our fear circuits as well.

Nick VinZant 26:18

What is the reason like, why do we like scary things?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 26:23

I think that's where we're kind of the adrenaline rush. And there are some people who they like that the really, you know, the feeling of the rush, the feeling of their body, the feeling of the adrenaline, but they can also know that they truly are safe. So they're able to both hold both of those things true. Yes, I'm feeling all this as if I'm not, but I know I'm going to be okay, and that actually feels very exciting or rewarding to them.

Nick VinZant 26:46

Have you ever seen anybody that was like incapable of fear, like they just didn't have that emotion whatsoever?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 26:54

I personally have not. I mean, there's stories. So there's some very interesting examples of people who who who have a inborn disorder, where, actually they their amygdala degenerate, and they've they, they don't have the same sense of fear that the rest of us do. They know that there's this concept in the literature about fear, but they don't seem to feel it physiologically or the same way. I think the more common is, at some level, things like, you know, sociopathy, they've been shown to, you know, people with very severe narcissistic personality disorder or associate or sociopath that they don't seem to activate the amygdala in the same way that others. And what that's about, I think, is still not quite sure, the thought that most of those folks probably had a very early trauma, and they sort of probably dealt with it somehow, by just sort of flipping the whole thing. And not, you know, but for the most part, it is very rare.

Nick VinZant 27:51

How does a fear? How does a fear become a phobia? Like, not, not a phobia. That's, you know, I'll use this word. I don't mean this word legitimate, but like, I'm afraid of doorknobs. Like, how does something like that happen?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 28:05

Yeah, we don't really know. Actually, it's because most data suggests that people with pretty significant phobias had them from very early on, so that people with fear of heights had them from very early on. People with fear of dogs or snakes, have them from very early on. So then there's the question of, well, the traditional learning and memory theory is that that phobia is really just an overly learned fear, but as opposed but, but it's very specific in the cues, but there, and there's definitely people like that, for whom, you know, they can say, okay, yeah, I remember when I saw a dog, a dog chased me down the street. And Ever After that, I was I would just get so upset when I saw a dog or whatever. And the but, but the others are less clear. And one thought is that, so there's certainly the possibility that one of the one of the stories in the field is that we perhaps don't, while we're not inborn with specific fears, we maybe have evolved to be more fearful of certain kinds of things than others. So we're generally more likely to have phobias of predators like canines or sharks snakes than we are of, you know, gerbils. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 29:23

that makes, I understand. That makes sense,

Dr. Kerry Ressler 29:27

yeah. And what's interesting is, you know, we're not, there aren't any phobia some guns and cars, and that's what kills everybody. So there's some, maybe some, you know, evolve, evolve predispositions with certain kinds of things and others. The other is that thinking about development of emotion, there's a lot of data that our amygdala is active from very early in in birth, right? And you can see that with brand newborn babies, they're just kind of all emotion. They're either giggling and happy or they're crying and screaming or very easily startled, and it. Mean, but we don't actually develop the parts of the brain for our more explicit memories and our declarative memories until about three years old. So we have three or four years of developing emotional memories and social memories and experiential memories before we have any definitive memory of them. And so you could certainly not plenty of time to have been chased by a dog or seen a snake or gotten too close to a window and gotten afraid without really having a declarative memory about that event. Is

Nick VinZant 30:30

there anything that it would be considered like? What's the universally scariest thing

Dr. Kerry Ressler 30:35

in MRI scanners when you're looking at the brain activation, it is actually seeing another person be afraid. And so you can have people look at all sorts of scary pictures and horror movies, but if somebody has the look of, you know, this full tear that most traditionally activates the fear system. And so the thought is there that, you know, we socially we socially empathize, we socially mimic. And that may be one of the most universal things that make us afraid, is seeing somebody else be afraid. And that's also one of the thoughts about maybe how phobias and some anxiety works, is that it may not be so much. It doesn't have to have been experienced yourself, if you saw a family member or somebody else, you know, you saw a parent, be really afraid of something you have observational fear.

Nick VinZant 31:20

That's pretty much all the questions I got. What are you kind of studying now? How can people learn more about your work?

Dr. Kerry Ressler 31:28

Let's see, I'm at McLean Hospital, so you can look me up at the McLean Hospital website or our Rab website, rescorab.com and we're studying both on the human side, large scale studies of genetics and neuroimaging and post mortem studies. It's a very exciting time in the field. You know, people have known about post mortem studies of neurological disease for a long time, like Alzheimer's and other ways to understand the brain, but we're now have the molecular tools to understand the molecular aspects of brain regions related to mental health disorders, and so that's really leading to a next generation of tools and approaches and understanding, and then we also study at very basic mechanisms, how these regions, like the amygdala work, and can we develop new new medications and other kinds of therapies for decreasing the fear response in a therapeutic way.

Nick VinZant 32:17

I want to thank Dr Ressler so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on october 17 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. If your car was a transformer, would it be a cool transformer or a lame transformer?

John Shull 32:56

Oh, that's an easy question. It'd be a lame transformer because I drive a 2013 Chevy Cruze that I can barely fit in anymore.

Nick VinZant 33:06

Oh, yeah, that would be a lame transformer. But

John Shull 33:09

if I, if I was a transformer, like I transform into a vehicle, which I feel is the better question. Oh, okay, okay,

Nick VinZant 33:18

all right,

John Shull 33:19

I'd be like a fire truck or a dump truck, some kind of big truck. Oh,

Nick VinZant 33:23

I'd want to be a plane. Why wouldn't you just be a plane? You could be a jumbo jet.

John Shull 33:31

I'm just simply going by, like my body mass, and what I would be if I turned into a vehicle, and that'd be some kind of big front loader or something.

Nick VinZant 33:40

Oh, yeah. But even if, okay, okay, even if you had a different body type, would you still want to be like a fire truck? Transformer like, what would car would you want to be? If I

John Shull 33:52

could be anything, it would be a boat.

Nick VinZant 33:56

Are there transformer boats? I don't. I'm sure that there is. I'm not familiar with any transformers. Who are boats, though,

John Shull 34:03

I am not versed enough in Transformers to really talk about it, but I'm sure there is a boat transformer. Let's see.

Nick VinZant 34:12

Okay, so I have a Subaru Crosstrek because I live in Seattle, and if you live in Seattle, you are required to own some sort of Subaru. And I don't think that my if my car was a transformer, it wouldn't become it wouldn't be lame, but it wouldn't be one of the cooler transformers on a scale of one to 10. It would be like a five or a six, I think is where my car would sit in terms of transformer coolness or lameness.

John Shull 34:41

I mean, I feel like, unless it's a sports car or a giant truck or something decked out, everything's going to be kind of in the mid range, like, I don't think it's going to be too cool. And yes, there is a transformer boat, by the way. Uh, legacy is its name.

Nick VinZant 34:56

Oh, what kind of boat is it?

John Shull 34:59

Um. Um, didn't get very hard question. It's a double propeller boat. I have no idea.

Nick VinZant 35:05

I have no idea of a thing. I feel like I know less about boats than any other mode of transportation.

John Shull 35:10

Bet you wish you knew about submarines.

Nick VinZant 35:14

How many books on submarines Do you have? Just a quick check right now. How many books on submarines do you have at the moment?

John Shull 35:18

I don't know, probably about a dozen. I just gave, just gave away a bunch of books, actually.

Nick VinZant 35:24

Oh, that's very nice of you. You know, you don't really have to even buy them. You can just go to the library,

John Shull 35:31

yeah, but, you know, I'd rather support the writing community.

Nick VinZant 35:36

Oh, yeah, I guess that's a one way to put it. Okay, that's but I polled the audience, 55% of people think that their car would be a relatively lame transformer. So you're not alone in thinking your car would be a lame transformer.

John Shull 35:51

I don't think enough people realize that having a car isn't that cool. Anyways, in terms of like, having a really nice sports car. Most people like that's not, that's not a sustainable vehicle for them, No,

Nick VinZant 36:06

I've never really been a car person. To me, the only thing about a car that matters is doesn't have four wheels and will get me to the where I need to go. There

John Shull 36:15

was one point in my life where I actually went to a Lamborghini dealership. And I was young. I lived in Orlando, right before I met you, actually, and, yeah, it was quite embarrassing. Now, looking back on it, I don't know why they even let me get to, like, the pricing option.

Nick VinZant 36:34

Oh, you actually, like, started having a conversation, like you were going to buy the thing. I

John Shull 36:39

mean, I lied pretty much every question they asked me from from the get and they knew as soon as I sat down that I was lying real bad.

Nick VinZant 36:50

Why did you let it get that far, like eventually? Didn't you know that you were just lying to these people like you had no means of affording this thing?

John Shull 37:00

Well, you should go absolutely, absolutely, but I Well, for one, I didn't realize that you can't lease Lamborghinis. They don't let you like they're at least the place I went, they didn't have any leasing on them. It was like, buy them or nothing, um. But they anyway, as soon as I sat down and they were like, Okay, start filling out this paperwork. That's just like, can I test can I test drive one of them real fast, just to see how I how I feel in it? And, yeah, they, they didn't buy any of it. Oh,

Nick VinZant 37:30

my God, you actually went there thinking, Well, I guess there's only one way to find out. I mean, in hindsight, like in my age now, I would look back and be like, Man, you were a dumb kid. Oh,

John Shull 37:41

I mean, I mean, I walked in there probably wearing the cheapest clothes with the cheapest car, and, you know, I mean, but I that I always wanted to, like, you know, I just wanted, I never got what the price was, by the way, like, you didn't even get that far. Oh, no, as soon as they started, like, like, as soon as they handed me, like, a slip, you know, to fill out for, like, a loan or whatever, I was like, What am I doing? What am I going to put my income as 40 grand? Like, what

Nick VinZant 38:13

could you imagine? Like, what they would just tell you to leave? They like, Hey, man, you can't afford this anyway, but you never know, with people like you got to be nice to everybody at the onset, at the Lamborghini dealership, well,

John Shull 38:25

I want to publicly, this is the first time I've done this. I want to publicly apologize to David if he's still there, because I wasted an hour of your time.

Nick VinZant 38:34

Oh my, you wait. You were there for an hour with the guy.

John Shull 38:38

I mean, he wasn't with me the entire time, we'll say, a good half an hour. He was with me still.

Nick VinZant 38:43

Dude, that probably happens to David all the time. Man, he probably went home and complained about you okay on it. Like, how many people do you think in a work setting have gone home and complained about dealing with you as part of their job? My God, this guy

John Shull 39:03

I don't know about. I mean, I'm a pretty fair employee, a pretty good and, like, I don't think they complain, but I feel like everyone says that, so I'll say probably, like two out of every 10, probably okay,

Nick VinZant 39:17

like 20% of people who you have to deal with in a work capacity probably complain about you when they get home. That's not good. It's not terrible. Mine's probably a little bit lower than that, but I could be biased. I would say Mine's probably like five to 10% of people who have to deal with me in a work capacity complain about me.

John Shull 39:37

I mean, you know, but they'll never complain to my face. That's the thing. You know what I mean? Like, oh yeah, I

Nick VinZant 39:42

don't usually cause enough problems that somebody's going to complain to my face. I would agree with that. Okay, alright, let's move on. Alright,

John Shull 39:50

time to the everyone's favorite part of the production, the shout outs. Let's see. We'll start with RJ baldinelli. That's a good. Name, Dan fight star, uh Emiliano Botello, Chris Welch, Daniel gallineia, Liam Kelly, Sam Woodward, or Woodward rather, Tommy Foley, Jonathan Madison, Tari Stefan, Ron Harrow and Braden Brown. Um, even though I gotta tell you a basement story for 30 seconds, I got freaked the hell out over the weekends because I came down and we had turned off for air conditioning. It's getting cold in Michigan now. Um, so it hasn't ran in a couple of weeks or a couple of days. I come down and I smell, it's kind of a weird smell in the air, like a stale air smell. And I walk over towards the refrigerator, and there is a just a puddle of water. And so I freak out naturally. And I go upstairs, and I ask my wife, like, you know, the kind of weird I think the refrigerator, something's wrong with that. And she says, No, I asked our youngest daughter, who was four, to get some ice, and apparently when my daughter got some ice out of the refrigerator, it all went onto the floor instead of in the cup, and that's why there was water everywhere. So heart attack averted.

Nick VinZant 41:15

I'm glad to know thank you. Any point story that people really needed to know about that. Essentially, a four year old acted like a four year old and you had a puddle, a small puddle, of water in your basement.

John Shull 41:25

Any parent out there understands what I'm saying, just because you have I understand. I'm like, you're not involved, dad. I get, oh

Nick VinZant 41:32

no, I'm such an involved dad that that's not even a thing that registers in my brain, like that's just a daily occurrence that you're gonna have to deal with as a parent. If that's the kind of thing that gets you flustered, you got toughen up, man. I didn't say I got flustered by a small you can't be flustered by a small puddle of water. I

John Shull 41:46

just wanted to be known. I regret. I regret the last six years of this podcast with you. Let's move on some Halloween related questions just for you, if you were trapped in a room and the person holding you in the room said you can leave, but you have to leave without a body part. Which body part are you giving up?

Nick VinZant 42:13

Oh, well, my little toe, that's easy. Okay,

John Shull 42:17

let's narrow it down. Uh, both arms, both legs, which, which, what are? What are you giving up to get out of there?

Nick VinZant 42:25

I would give up both legs because I am really hoping that medical science will advance in the next couple of decades, and that I can kind of get some of that back. That's what I'm hoping. I'm really, really in my life, counting on an exoskeleton in the next 20 years.

John Shull 42:43

I mean, I laugh, but apparently they're going to start releasing some kind of robot that's like a partner, like a Sex Robot. You're going to buy it commercially, I guess.

Nick VinZant 42:52

Oh yeah, that's the first kind of robot. It's interesting, though, that of all the robots that we could have designed for humanity, the first one that's going to be released is The Sex Robot. I don't count automation in, like, warehouses and stuff like that, right? I understand that, like, the first personal robot that you can buy is going to be The Sex Robot. Nobody even bothered. I mean, really, if you think about it, the robot really doesn't have to do anything. Kind of has to be there, does? You know, it's not as complicated as, like, doing daily chores. So I kind of understand it, but also think that it's ironic

John Shull 43:24

lazy ass robots always getting off the hooks, right?

Nick VinZant 43:27

That's the problem is that we designed the robots. They're ultimately going to be just like us and lazy. We have to get robots for the robots,

John Shull 43:36

alright? If you were in a horror movie, what would be the scariest form of a killer coming after you to you, would it be like a like a Michael Myers? Would it be like a Chucky doll, a ghost? Oh,

Nick VinZant 43:50

anything like supernatural, any kind of supernatural thing? Because if it was just a human, like, I'm even if you're talking about like Michael Myers or Jason or whatever. Even though they're supposedly, like, superhuman, they're still human, like, I would be the most worried about some kind of supernatural thing.

John Shull 44:10

See, I think it would be them. I mean supernatural. I mean just, you know, I don't know. Guess I've never been that afraid of them, but somebody who, like, stalks you and just never leaves and you can't kill them. That's a, that's a, unless you're Buster rhymes, of course, rip Ah, you just can't, you know, can't do it,

Nick VinZant 44:27

yeah, but they're still a human, you know, like they're still going to do human things, like they're going to forget where you were, maybe they're going to get distracted, maybe they got an appointment that they got to go to, right? Like, if you're human, even if you're in evil thing, like, you still got stuff you got to do, like you got to go wash your clothes. You can't just be there forever.

John Shull 44:48

You know that's I had this conversation with a girl that I dated a long time ago. We were watching Halloween, and she goes, What if Michael Myers? Like, when does he take a shit or. Piss like, I

Nick VinZant 45:01

mean, plenty of that what he has to go to the bathroom. That's why I would ultimately always go with the human enemy, because they have to do human things. How long did this relationship last? Right? How long did it go?

John Shull 45:15

Oh, I don't know, maybe three, four months. It wasn't a good one. It wasn't, I'm, I'm

Nick VinZant 45:19

always slightly shocked that you bring up past relationships while when you're a married man, I don't talk about him at all. I don't bring him up. I don't mention it. I don't even say girls names around my wife. Oh, I

John Shull 45:33

mean, every relationship's a stepping stone, right? Some, well, not everyone, actually, some are terrible to be honest, but they're just memories. Man, they're just things from the past. You can't take them back, so why bury them?

Nick VinZant 45:44

I do always find it interesting that you can have really intense relationships with people and then they just kind of disappear, like there's been relationships that I spent a year or two of my life with somebody and then never talk to them again. I do think that that's interesting. Like you don't just kind of check up on each like you still spent a lot of time with that person, even people at work where, like, you sat next to somebody for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, in some cases, for years, and then just never heard from them again. Like how people just disappear out of your life,

John Shull 46:23

you know? I mean, look at college roommates. I mean, you are in the formidable years of your youth, and you graduate, and a lot of times you don't even talk to them, you know, anymore, like they're just gone. I

Nick VinZant 46:33

did have college roommates, people, three other guys that I lived with for two years, and then we just fell out of touch, and none of us have spoken to each other in almost 15 years, probably, which is crazy, when you think about it, that people just go in and out of your life like that.

John Shull 46:51

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's crazy. It's just once again, I just think every it's just memories. You move on and, you know, look at us. We've been, we've been friends for a decade now, over a decade.

Nick VinZant 47:04

Oh, a long time.

John Shull 47:07

Too long. Actually, way, Dragon.

Nick VinZant 47:09

Dragon, a little bit. Okay, alright, let's move on.

John Shull 47:13

This is kind of a two fold question, but really it's just one answer. Would you ever get in a taxi that is not driven by a person.

Nick VinZant 47:23

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to be the first one to be in there. I'm probably not going to be the first 1000, or maybe even the first 10,000 but ultimately, I trust machines at this point more than I trust people.

John Shull 47:38

See, I don't know, I don't know if I could do that, to be honest with you. Just not, not sure I can get it, you know. Well, I mean, if I'm really inebriated and I get in a robotic car, I'm not sure. Like, I wouldn't know what was going on. Like, I just have no idea, I think, yeah, but

Nick VinZant 47:53

you can say that with people, yeah. I mean, that exact same thing would happen with a taxi driver, right? Like, if, least, if you look at it, the robotic taxi probably is more affiliated with the company, or has more involved in, like, not getting you killed than a person does.

John Shull 48:15

Yeah, I don't know. I I'm, listen, I am not against autonomous vehicles. I'm not but it would, you know, I'm kind of like you. I wouldn't be the first one, first 500 but you know, it's, I don't know, it still gives me the heebie jeebies. I guess, thinking of getting in a vehicle that isn't operated by a human,

Nick VinZant 48:32

I do also find it fascinating that I went from like, not trusting an Uber driver to being like, no, I'll just take the Uber driver and I trust them more than a taxi cab driver. Things switch around, man, telling you we're all going to be, we're all going to be with the robots here pretty soon,

John Shull 48:49

exoskeletons. Um,

Nick VinZant 48:51

I can't wait. I can't wait. I would do it now, honestly, like my back hurts a little bit, I would probably get it all replaced at this moment.

John Shull 49:00

Um, all right. My last thing I want to bring up was a not candle of the month. Oh, okay, Bath and Body Works made some I

Nick VinZant 49:10

saw that some headlines. I wondered if you were going to talk about it. Tell the people

John Shull 49:16

they were. I don't want to say they were forced to, but there was a lot of backlash. They released one of their winter candles called snowed in. And it's, it's up to interpretation. But some people say that the design, which is supposed to be snowflake, the the arrow prongs of the snowflake. People are saying, look like clue. Sorry. Ku Klux Klan hoods,

Nick VinZant 49:42

it does. I saw it. It does, um,

John Shull 49:46

I mean, it's, it's not, not. But, I mean, I think I feel like you go 5050, but I think the company did the right thing, and they removed them from stores, and they're not. Selling them so good on them for listening to their consumers. However, like, whoever I mean, you couldn't find. My first thought when I when I read that story, was, you couldn't find, like, a better snowflake, like, that's what you get. That's what you picked. It's,

Nick VinZant 50:16

it's incredible. So I've worked for big companies, like companies with 1000s of people, and the number of people who see something before it goes out, and the amount of attention to detail that goes into things is kind of mind boggling to me. So the idea that that could happen is is incredible, like nobody looked at that and thought, right, oh, that looks like a bunch of KKK members. Is kind of crazy.

John Shull 50:50

Like no one was sitting around the table when they were drawing this up, going like, guys or ladies or whatever, um, that looks like a hood and that looks like, how old Michigan? So

Nick VinZant 51:03

it looks exactly like KKK hoods. But I do wonder if it's one of those things that you don't notice it until somebody points it out, and then you immediately notice it, like you only see it if you're looking for it. But it's also the kind of thing that when I saw the story, I was like, oh, what's the issue like? Oh, that's the issue that looks exactly like that. Did you?

Unknown Speaker 51:26

Did you

Nick VinZant 51:27

buy some that goes could be collector editions? You should go sweep them up. Candle connoisseur.

John Shull 51:31

I did not, actually. And the most articles, eBay did get involved. And there's a response from them, saying that if any of them are sold or found to be sold on eBay, they that user selling them will be banned because of the rate, you know, the suspected racial undertones of why they are being sold. So have

Nick VinZant 51:53

you ever made, though, like a huge work mistake? Huge work mistake.

John Shull 52:01

I mean, I haven't, because I always triple check myself, but I've been a part of decisions that are not correct, sometimes working in the media. I mean, I'll admit this out loud, because I think we all have, you know, there have been some things information that has been wrong, not always our fault, but no, nothing, nothing like this, you know. And unfortunately, if you go online, there's still obviously a pretty strong community around the country of people who are unfortunately into these types of things, because it's just, it's just insane with that. But regardless, um, yeah, no, I've made mistakes. I don't know if I would have made something this big. Okay,

Nick VinZant 52:46

so our top five is top five sports nicknames, specifically people, not teams. Those would be team names. But anyway, spilled milk under the bridge. There's something for that, where you mix two things that are not correct, supposed to be like spilled milk under the bridge or whatever, anyways, anyway, what's your number five?

John Shull 53:08

Wonder, five is Thomas the hitman. Hearns, love the hitman.

Nick VinZant 53:13

Oh, that is a good nickname. Boxer, I believe correct

John Shull 53:19

Jesus, yes, one of the

Nick VinZant 53:21

greatest ever, right? And he's not Thomas. He's Tommy. Tommy. Hearns, nobody calls Tommy. Nobody calls a boxer. Thomas. Okay, that's Tommy. That's a good one. My number five is the Todd father. I love the nickname, The Todd father. I will never not laugh about the Todd father nickname. Real name is Todd Frazier's a baseball player. It's fantastic. It's amazing. I'm

John Shull 53:52

going to stick on the baseball train here. My number four is the big unit, Randy Johnson. That's

Nick VinZant 53:59

a good one. Also for people who are not familiar with him, he's like six foot 10, and if you ever see a video of somebody throwing a baseball and killing a bird like exploding it, that's the guy who did it, like

John Shull 54:13

a one out of a million chances, and he did it.

Nick VinZant 54:18

My number four is he hate me. Rod smart.

John Shull 54:23

I mean, what a what a career he had.

Nick VinZant 54:26

You could make an argument his whole career was his nickname, really. That should be a problem. If he was a more famous guy and he had stuck around, you could put that, that up way higher, because for people who aren't familiar, like when the XFL started, he was he hate me, and he had that on the back of his jersey, and I think that's still one of the only things that people remember from the entire xxfl Is that guy's nickname

John Shull 54:54

and the weird ass kickoffs where they would both run at the ball and hit each other. But.

Nick VinZant 54:59

Like, Oh, mean, amazing. Didn't they try to bring the NFL back in, like, two different leagues recently, in the spring, and, like both of them, nobody ever heard of it.

John Shull 55:09

Well, they did. I think the rock actually bought, I think he bought both or something, and now it's like one league, the AFL or something, I don't know.

Nick VinZant 55:17

Oh, they combined him, All right, what's your number

John Shull 55:20

three? Chocolate, Thunder. Daryl Dawkins, that's

Nick VinZant 55:23

a good one. That's really good actually.

Unknown Speaker 55:26

Oh yeah.

Nick VinZant 55:28

Chocolate Thunder is amazing. Love it. It's not on my list, but I could put the white Mamba. Brian scalabrini from basketball,

John Shull 55:40

which, for some reason, he has red hair. I don't know how he got to be a white Mamba, but sure it's amazing,

Nick VinZant 55:46

because he's called the white Mamba, and he looks like the guy least qualified to be the white Mamba. Like, that's the guy we picked. Like, our best nickname is that guy. Like, okay, it just, it makes us look even dorkier. No offense. He's probably a great guy. Um, what are we on? Number three,

John Shull 56:06

yep,

Nick VinZant 56:07

I don't actually know what this player's name is. All I know is their nickname is The Time Lord Robert Williams. He plays for the sentence the Celtics.

John Shull 56:17

Yeah, and big old Robert Williams isn't Is he dead? No,

Nick VinZant 56:21

he's the Time Lord man. You can't kill the Time Lord. He's still playing. He's like 97 I think, all

John Shull 56:29

right, I wasn't sure. I feel like he could have been dead, but I

Nick VinZant 56:34

he's been around for a long, long enough time that they call him the time lord.

John Shull 56:42

Um, alright, you know my number two. It's such a tough list, but this one is one of the more, one of the more famous nicknames, and that is prime time Deion Sanders.

Nick VinZant 56:54

Is that really that great? Though, I feel like that's massively overrated.

John Shull 57:01

No, I feel like he was everything, and then some like it would have been different if somebody was nicknamed prime time and just farted out. But he, I mean, he lived up to all the expectations, like he was even now as coach of Colorado, he is prime time, uh,

Nick VinZant 57:17

my number two is Calvin Johnson, aka Megatron. That's a great one. So I

John Shull 57:24

have that one on my honorable mention. That's, I mean, that's a great one, because he, if you ever met Kelvin, I mean, he is a freaking robot, like he is a mountain of a man, and

Nick VinZant 57:35

you have met him, we don't even go into your story, but we don't your dancing partner.

John Shull 57:39

I mean, he wasn't my wasn't my partner, but whatever, we just went to same dance studio. Did

Nick VinZant 57:45

you ever, did you guys ever dance together?

John Shull 57:47

No,

Nick VinZant 57:48

did your wives ever dance together?

John Shull 57:52

No, no, I don't think so.

Nick VinZant 57:54

You missed an opportunity. You said you could have Tangoed with Calvin Johnson.

John Shull 58:00

Yeah, he's only about nine inches taller than me, and had like, 4% body fat. Ah, yeah,

Nick VinZant 58:05

he's a gigantic person. Uh, what's your number what's your number one?

John Shull 58:11

So if you don't know hockey, you're not going to know this name, but it's awesome, and it's the Grim Reaper. Stu Grimson, who was a a defenseman known for fighting his opponents. That was his nickname the Grim Reaper. I mean, how awesome is that?

Nick VinZant 58:28

That is a really good nickname. It's really even that much better when the name kind of matches them, matches who they are. Like,

John Shull 58:37

yeah, for sure,

Nick VinZant 58:38

my number one is Charles Barkley, round Mound of Rebound.

John Shull 58:44

See when I think of that, when I think of him, I don't think of that nickname. I think of Sir Charles, I don't think of the round mount of rebound, which is freaking awesome, though,

Nick VinZant 58:52

the round Mound of Rebound is one of the best nicknames it. I think the round Mound of Rebound is the best nickname because it it it suits him perfectly, even though I could hear that Sir Charles might be his more prominent nickname.

John Shull 59:09

I mean, the problem is, is there are so many good ones. Like, if you just go with the ones that are household names, you could say those are top five. I mean, yeah, there's so many good ones. What

Nick VinZant 59:20

do you have in your honorable mention? Give me a give me a couple too many.

John Shull 59:26

Uh, King James, Teddy ball game, the Black Mamba, salt of swats, the hick from French Lick. That's

Nick VinZant 59:36

good. That's a really good one. Larry Bird

John Shull 59:41

couple that I just put on at the bottom as I was rushing through my list that are personal favorites of mine, penny for Penny. Hardaway, yeah, mailman. Carl Malone, even though he's a I don't think he's a very good person, but whatever,

Nick VinZant 59:54

I think he's pretty widely known as a terrible guy, uh, the night

John Shull 59:57

train, Dick Lane, the the free. Raider, William Perry.

Nick VinZant 1:00:01

That was the one that I really thought about, was Night Train lane. And then I realized that his real name is Dick lane, which almost is better, right? Like, your two names are Dick lane and your nickname is Night Train Like, that's an amazing, just all around set of names.

John Shull 1:00:22

Then a couple others here. I had to go. The Intimidator, Dale Earnhardt. I mean, that's just cool, especially because he drove a race car, the big the big fundamental for all of you scholars out there. And then we'll end here on the Great One Wayne Gretzky. Because, I mean, if you're known as anything great, that's just awesome.

Nick VinZant 1:00:44

That's pretty good. I don't have anything else, ow,

John Shull 1:00:49

can I just keep going? Then, because I have like, five I didn't get to,

Nick VinZant 1:00:52

oh, keep going. I mean, all yours are the ones that have got covered by mine. I mean, pretty much.

John Shull 1:00:57

I mean, Super Mario, Hakeem, the dream. That's good. Charlie hustle to the late great Pete Rose, white chocolate. Jason Williams, that's

Nick VinZant 1:01:09

a good one. And then,

John Shull 1:01:13

you know this one, I guess I'm just a boxing fan, but marvelous. Marvin Hagler,

Nick VinZant 1:01:20

did Mike Tyson have iron Mike? Iron my, I

John Shull 1:01:23

mean, it's okay, great.

Nick VinZant 1:01:25

We Yeah, well, that's one of the worst ones for a big time person. As

John Shull 1:01:31

you said earlier, it's, it's fit him right, iron Mike, but it's just okay. It's not like great or anything.

Nick VinZant 1:01:40

They I would say basketball and baseball have the best nicknames.

John Shull 1:01:45

Um, basketball for sure. I'd say yeah, basketball, yeah, that's a good yeah, basketball and baseball for sure. Uh,

Nick VinZant 1:01:51

okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode. Ran out of breath. That's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review and let us know what you think are some of the best sports nicknames. The round Mound of Rebound just makes me laugh. But Night Train is amazing. Dick lane is also pretty good.



Astrobiologist Dr. Graham Lau

Are we alone in the Universe? That’s the question Astrobiologist Dr. Graham Lau is trying to answer. We talk the search for alien life, the planets with the most potential and why we might be early to the party. Then, it’s “Stone Cold” Steve Austin vs. The Ultimate Warrior as we countdown the Top 5 Wrestling Names of All Time.

Dr. Graham Lau: 01:14

Pointless: 23:49

Top 5 Wrestling Names: 41:03

Contact the Show

Dr. Graham Lau Instagram

Ask an Astrobiologist Website

Ask an Astrobiologist YouTube

Interview with Astrobiologist Dr. Graham Lau

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode alien life and pro wrestling names

Dr. Graham Lau 0:21

we don't even know for sure if life started here on Earth. Maybe there are things alien life could be doing that is happening near us or around us and we're not seeing it, that could bring it and usher in a whole new evolution for our biosphere. It could be a whole new form of human that comes out of such a process through these new technologies and new ways of being.

Nick VinZant 0:41

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he studies a question that I think all of us have. Are we alone in the universe? This is astrobiologist Dr Graham Lau, do you think there's life on other planets?

Dr. Graham Lau 1:15

Yes, considering what we logically know right now, given that we have no evidence yet of alien life. We have to admit that we could be alone, and yet, just given the sheer number of worlds we know to exist in our galaxy alone and all the possible environments out there, it very much feels like we can't be alone, that there must be something else out there in the cosmos to back

Nick VinZant 1:38

up, to go forward, so to speak, what is it about Earth? Like, what elements, what conditions did we have that gave ride to us? Like, what? Why is Earth? Earth, so to speak,

Dr. Graham Lau 1:52

yeah, well, so I will say, first, we don't even know for sure if life started here on Earth. It seems very likely that it did. It seems like life has been here for roughly 4 billion years, given the best evidence we have right now, you know, because of the plate tectonics and the way that our Earth recycles rock, we don't have any evidence on earth of the most ancient signs of life. But we really aren't sure where and when life started on Earth, or if there was just one beginning. There might have been multiple attempts at chemistry to become biology, and maybe some of those temps attempts even merged together at some point and became the life as we know it.

Nick VinZant 2:27

Is that, how we kind of think that it started, is the sense that at some point, just a bunch of chemicals and minerals just combined, and then there it goes. Yeah, it

Dr. Graham Lau 2:37

seems like some something happens, some spark occurred, where you get into this process of selection for certain kinds of molecules and and chemical reactions can be catalyzed by certain things. And now there's a lot of people out there who are studying what those early things might have been. For instance, some mineral surfaces. So some surfaces of minerals inside of rocks are very reactive and act as catalysts. They can actually catalyze reactions and drive processes forward where organic molecules are forming, some other molecules that we think can form rather easily in a lot of abiotic or non living systems, things like, you know, some amino acids that can later be put together to make proteins, some things like RNA. We think RNA might have been one of the early precursors to DNA. RNA doesn't just store information the way DNA does. Some RNA molecules can also act as catalysts.

Nick VinZant 3:32

Man, that is my reaction to all of that. Man, but how come we can't figure it out? Because it seems like one of those things that like, okay, we can just backtrack this, like, what's the hurdle that we can't get over to say, oh, that's where it is.

Dr. Graham Lau 3:46

Yeah, I think myself and many others would say the hurdle is time. We haven't, we haven't been running these reactions in wet chemistry labs for more than, you know, years, decades at most, we haven't had a large system like the size of the Earth, where we can just throw a bunch of stuff together and then wait for millions of years, or 10s or hundreds of millions of years to see what happens.

Nick VinZant 4:07

How do you look for life on other planets?

Dr. Graham Lau 4:10

There's a lot of ways. I mean, so, yeah. So if it's like Independence Day and like the alien spacecraft comes down into our atmosphere tomorrow, then we can say, yeah, those are aliens. They're here. If we go to Mars and we see like a rock, like, get up on legs and walk in front of a camera, then sure that's that's an alien. But outside of that, it can be really difficult. So it's not like obvious, like a huge apparent thing, and it's not moving, it's not making itself, apparently, some living thing. It could be a little bit more challenging. And so that's where we go into the realm of bio signatures, signs of life, things that life creates, that are diagnostic of life being present, the same way that we can look, you know, if you're out, you know, with your children going for a walk in, like a park or a forest, and you you may look down and see some mud. Maybe you see some paw prints or animal tracks in the mud. Those are a biosignature. They're an indicator. That there was a living thing present at some point in the past. And if you know enough of your biology, you might even know what the living thing was. Maybe you can tell it was a squirrel or a rabbit or something. We do the same thing looking at the chemistry of life, so trying to look for a barrage of different kinds of things life might leave behind, and mineral signatures in the way that the rock is changed by life being present, and how it makes different layers of rock form together. We can look for things like the presence of amino acids in certain ratios, the presence of certain isotopes of various atoms that are present in the environment. There's a lot of these, like diagnostic signatures of life that we can look for on a place like Mars or the atmosphere of Venus or in the ocean of Europa. But then on top of that, there's also another realm called techno signatures. So within this realm of biosignatures, all these different signs of life, there's a smaller realm of the signs of technological activity. And so those are things like SETI, like looking for, looking for, like, listening for messages coming from space that are created by a technological civilization, or looking into an exoplanets atmosphere to see if there's like industrial gasses or like chlorofluorocarbons that we had created on earth. You know, like looking for some kind of sign of technology, which could include even maybe one day, finding an alien artifact in our solar system, or flying into our solar system. There's a lot of possibilities there

Nick VinZant 6:24

as well. Do we have a good definition of what life is?

Dr. Graham Lau 6:27

Not at all? Yeah, we've tried there. There's over 300 attempted definitions of life, and one that you'll hear a lot like online. You know, if you go online and look it up, it's also something that's called the NASA definition. Even though it's never been made official by NASA, it's that life is a self contained chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution. But

Nick VinZant 6:47

is there any chance that we have found something that would be life if we had a better definition of it? Yeah.

Dr. Graham Lau 6:54

So there's a very interesting kind of realm to think about. So viruses, for instance. You know, some people think viruses aren't alive, that they're just biological machinery. Others think they are alive because our current realm of defining life doesn't include viruses most of the time. Some some attempted definitions or trees of life do include viruses, though there's another realm called the shadow biosphere, that some semester, biologists and philosophers have proposed that maybe, due to the way that we look for signs of biology on the earth, maybe there's other forms of life that are part of life as we know it, that are here, but they're behaving a little differently, and then, because of that, we're not seeing them. It seems kind of like, you know, far out there to think about, maybe, like a fringe idea, but it is an intriguing idea that maybe there are things alien life could be doing that is happening near us or around us, and we're not seeing it. So like maybe there's some form of messaging or some form of advanced physics that they have where they can communicate through the universe in different ways, and we just don't have the way to see, hear or perceive that.

Nick VinZant 7:57

Yet, is there any kind of debate, slash controversy, in that regard, and that, like, we found this thing, and I think it's life, but you don't think it's life. Is there anything like that? We're like, well, maybe we did. We're just not defining it correctly.

Dr. Graham Lau 8:13

There have been a few examples where something kind of like that has happened. So like the Viking experiments on Mars back in the 1970s we had these two landers, the Viking landers. They had a series of instruments on board these biology experiments, and none of them turned up biology. They were very much looking for life as we know it on Mars, things that like photosynthesize or like us, that take in organic molecules and break them down and make carbon dioxide and breathe that out. They were looking very much for Earth life on Mars. But one of the experiments, called the labeled release experiment, was basically like feeding organic molecules that were labeled with a radioactive element to some of the soil with some water, and then looking to see if this, if anything in the soil, was like eating those molecules and then breathing out CO two, and they got a little whiff of what looked like a positive indicator of biology occurring. But the consensus with amongst the scientists who've you know over the decades, have reviewed that research over and over again, is that it doesn't appear to be a sign of life. It doesn't fit with anything else. None of the other instruments showed any support for it being a sign of life. And so they think it was actually a process of a salt in the soil reacting with some of the organics that we know are there in the process of adding this water. And that was what was releasing the CO two. And so we have a good non life wafer for us to have had that sign. But even the guy who ran the experiment, Gil Levin, he passed away a few years ago now, but up until the time he died, he honestly, very adamantly believed that he had found life on Mars because of that experiment. If

Nick VinZant 9:50

we do find life on another place, does that mean that life like us is inevitable, like, Okay, we found this here. Of. Eventually it's going to become us for that place. Or does it not really work like that?

Dr. Graham Lau 10:05

If we find signs of life from another world in our solar system or beyond, then if we find one other sign of life that alone tells us the universe is probably full of life. It should be everywhere. And if that's possible, and life is everywhere out there, which I personally think it most likely is there's, I think there's lots of little corners of our universe that are probably inhabited in some manner. Then, just given the sheer possibility there, there should be other worlds that have beings that won't look like us necessarily, but should be similar to us in a variety of ways. And if there are, you know, even a million worlds that are inhabited, or a billion worlds that are inhabited, that alone gives a lot of possibility for a lot of different kinds of life, including other things that are very similar to us. I don't

Nick VinZant 10:49

know if I'll ask this question well, but I think, I hope, you'll get the sense of it to have life like us. I'm thinking of in terms of like you can build a car in a lot of different ways, but ultimately, it looks like a car. Would life like us be similar to us? Is there like something fundamental, that if you're going to do this thing, you kind of got to do it this way?

Dr. Graham Lau 11:12

There's this process in evolution called Convergence, or convergent evolution, where there are some forms and functions and patterns and behaviors that life converges back to, no matter what flight is. A good example, you know, so, so bats evolved flight separate from birds and so, so bats and birds did not not evolve flight together. Insects that have flight capabilities, and there's lots of those, did not evolve flight in the same pathway, either, but flight is converged upon. And so I think we'll very likely, if there are animal like creatures, we'll find flying ones out there. It's very likely if there are plant like creatures, we'll find trees out there, alien trees that evolve from different backgrounds, but converged. Are

Nick VinZant 11:57

there certain fundamental things that life like us needs like, Okay, this planet has to have this, this, this, this.

Dr. Graham Lau 12:06

So for life as we know it, yes, we have the basic building blocks of life as we know it, the schnapps elements, for instance. So carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the most common elements in all of the bodies and all the life forms we have on Earth, but there's also a lot of trace metals and other things. So to form life on a planet, we might need to have planets that are evolved enough that when the star formed, there was enough metal, there was enough other elements besides hydrogen and helium, to not only form planets, but also to form planets that had metals at the surface where reaction chemistry could occur so, very early in the universe, the earliest stars that were forming right after the Big Bang would have been composed of solely hydrogen and helium, maybe small amounts of lithium, but mostly hydrogen, helium stars, then they would go through this process of fusing elements together As they're burning this energy inside of themselves, and that would create heavier elements. But it most likely took some billions of years before we got to the point where we could form earth like planets in our universe anyway, because you needed enough of a buildup of metals and other things to make planets like ours. Now, all of that said, in the future, we might be able to alter biology for life as we know it, or even augment life as we know it with artificial life to go out and settle other worlds and so going to like Mars or Europa or an exoplanet sometime in the future. And seeding life there might not mean that we're seeding it with our life. It might mean that we're genetically altering or augmenting the life that we choose to put there to better fit those worlds.

Nick VinZant 13:47

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions. Love it. What planet do you look at right now and say, Okay, that's probably that's our best chance.

Dr. Graham Lau 13:57

Yeah. So people that love that question, I think it's actually a really hard one to answer for a few reasons. One, I think the best world beyond the Earth in our solar system to ever have had life was Venus, but only really long ago. So in the modern day, Venus has gone through a lot of geological and atmospheric change. It went through what appears to be like its entire surface melted sometime in the past, maybe 500 million or a billion years ago, its atmosphere has undergone a runaway greenhouse effect. If it did have oceans, which many of us think it most likely did, early on, it lost those oceans and never had a moon forming event to form a large moon like ours that would help stabilize its orbit and maybe even help drive plate tectonics. And so Venus underwent a lot of different processes than the Earth, but early on, Venus might have been the best bet. Now in the modern day, there are worlds like Europa and Enceladus that have these these subsurface oceans under their icy crusts that are begging for us, as scientists and explorers and people who want to know to go get into those oceans and see if there could be signs of life. Air for Enceladus, in particular, the water from its ocean is spewing out into into space, around the moon and forming one of the rings of Saturn, the E ring of Saturn. And so those could be really great places to look for life. But again, that also depends if life can start in oceans or not. And so right now, it seems like Mars, at least in our own solar system, is currently the best candidate. We can land humans there. We can land robots there. We can explore there really easily. We could bring samples back from Mars pretty easily and explore them and look for possible signs of life. Admittedly, for myself, I think if we find any signs of past or present life on Mars, it's going to be very, very deep in the subsurface, so deep that I don't think we've actually gotten that deep, like, not deep enough yet to actually look for those samples. Are

Nick VinZant 15:47

we early or late to the party? And I think what they mean by that, like, did we seem to develop our life early? Or are we? Like, no, actually, maybe everybody else is already way past us, if there is life in other places. Yeah,

Dr. Graham Lau 15:59

I love that question, and I think we're early. If I had to put money on it, I would, I would be willing to bet a good, a substantial amount. I bet I'd go on the long bets website and bet $10,000 right now that we are very early to the party. Because it seems like I said so. So in the evolution of the universe, at least in the first couple of billion years, it probably wasn't possible to form any other kind of life as we know it. So not only to have the elements of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, that took some time to build up, but to make phosphorus and the sulfur, and then to start forming enough iron and nickel and molybdenum and all these other things, you need a lot of evolution in stars. You need neutron star mergers and supernova explosions. You need stars to go through billions of years of evolution, and then they slough off their outer layers and blow parts of their planets out to space. There's a lot of universal cosmological evolution that probably had to happen to reshuffle all of the elements we needed to start building earth like planets. You know, four and a half billion years ago and our solar system formed, maybe one thing holding back a lot of life from becoming life like us, and having plants and animals and fungi and all these different kinds of modes of operation and stuff like that, is that most of the worlds haven't had enough time yet to get there. There have been some really interesting things that have happened to life on earth over time that have allowed us to form this way. From, you know, the creation of our moon to stabilize our orbit, through early evolution to the development of oxygen in our atmosphere, because of life, you know, life altered our planet, which then allowed for life as we know it, to come around to breathe oxygen and use that as an energy source. And so Earth went through a lot of key things that maybe just don't happen as often for some other worlds. There's an idea out there called the rare Earth hypothesis, that maybe some other planets just don't go through enough of the things that we've gone through to actually get to life like us. Personally, I don't really ascribe to that as much. I think we might find out that some of these things aren't necessary. Maybe having a big moon isn't necessary. Maybe having plate tectonics isn't necessary, but it definitely seems like it was helpful for life as

Nick VinZant 18:02

we know it. If alien life does come here, what do you think? Like? What do you think happens to us? Because I think we're dead.

Dr. Graham Lau 18:11

I mean, if it's like an alien virus or pathogen or or something that that that doesn't have intelligence, but can feed on life as we know it, and is better than life as we know it at competing for resources, they could very quickly, just, you know, destroy all of our ecosystems. There'd be great trophic collapses and the food web things would shut down pretty quick on our planet, in such a case, you know, like on Earth, you know, for most microbes, if you gave them unlimited resources and let them just grow and reproduce as much as they wanted to. You know, most of them can reproduce so fast they could, they could basically eat the entire Earth in like a day. If they had unlimited resources and access they don't, because there's competition. But say, an alien bug, an alien bacterium or something from space or an alien organism comes down and rains into our planet and starts eating resources and is much better than we are competing for them. It could very quickly just destroy all of our life and its own in the process. That said, say, like, say, it is Independence Day, you know. Say, like an alien spaceship, a mothership, comes down to the earth. There's two wildly different possible scenarios. One of them is very benevolent and caring. Maybe it could be a first contact scenario, like meeting the Vulcans, and they want to trade knowledge and information. Maybe they want to hear our stories and hear about our culture and our history, and in turn, they're willing to share technology and knowledge with us that could bring in and usher in a whole new evolution for our biosphere. It could be a whole new form of human that comes out of such a process, through these new technologies and new ways of being, there's the other side of it that they could want to destroy us for a variety of reasons. Now in science fiction, I'll say one thing that I hate in science. It really gets it gets my goat every time when aliens come to Earth for water or they're allergic to water, and we've seen both in science fiction now. So aliens who come to Earth for water are stupid, and I'll tell you why, because there is so much water beyond the Earth in our solar system, like Europa has more water in its ocean than all the water we have on Earth. Enceladus is full of water. Pluto is full of water. All of the icy moons of the outer solar system have oceans and oceans and oceans more water than the Earth has. And then, if you have a species who's allergic to water, who comes down to our planet and wants to fight us, that's also pretty dumb. They should be wearing, like really advanced spacesuits, because there is water everywhere. But one thing that terrifies me when it comes to thinking about what kind of resource aliens might want here on Earth, since there are all the elements we can think of, molecules we can think of are out there, except for our chemistry, it might be that maybe our chemistry for life as we know it is a very unique food source, maybe a delicacy for aliens, or maybe consciousness. Maybe there's something about the structures of our neurons and our brains and our intelligence and the kind of consciousness that we have that either seems like a threat or it seems like an interesting food source or a resource for some alien species to harvest, in which case I'd be terrified.

Nick VinZant 21:27

Yeah? Well, that's a new nightmare that I hadn't thought of before. I'll sleep on that one tonight. Right now, it makes sense, though, right? Like anything else that Earth has is available and more abundance throughout the universe, except for us, so they probably just want us, yeah, which probably isn't very good for us.

Unknown Speaker 21:44

It seems pretty awful.

Nick VinZant 21:46

Could alien life already be here, not in the UFO sense, in the sense that, like, what is it panspermia? Like, is there anything that we think that from life on Earth that, like, Oh, we're not entirely sure that's from Earth, yeah, not

Dr. Graham Lau 21:59

at all. Um, there have been some people who've, like, suggested that octopuses are alien, and they seem bizarre, but they're also, you know, they're beautiful creatures, but there's nothing about an octopus that is alien like they have DNA, they have RNA, they have proteins. There is no evidence whatsoever so far that panspermia has happened since the origins of life here and the long term evolution of life. I

Nick VinZant 22:22

know we're pretty much out of time, but tell me about, like, kind of what's coming up for next for you, who's next on the show, that kind of stuff.

Dr. Graham Lau 22:27

Yeah. So, I mean, so yeah, I host the show for NASA Astrobiology called Ask an astrobiologist. It's a lot of fun. I get to talk with really cool researchers. We're trying to get ADA Limon, the the national poet laureate, on the show, to talk about her poem that's going to Europa here soon, on the Europa Clipper spacecraft. Natalie Cabral, I'd love to have on the show. She's a researcher at the SETI Institute. She has a new book out. There's a bunch of great people out there doing incredible research who I want to talk to and ask questions of, and have my audience ask questions. And then for myself, I'm transitioning my research a little bit right now, more into less of the realm of what is life, and how do we look for life on other planets, and more into the realm of what is consciousness, and how do we look for other conscious experiences out there in the universe? And can we look for them? Can we understand anything more about it? And does the realm of astrobiology help us to better understand what it means to be human?

Nick VinZant 23:20

I want to thank Dr Lau so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information along with a link to his show. Ask an astrobiologist in the episode description, and if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on October 10 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. What do you think you have a harder time doing, letting go of something old or starting something new,

John Shull 24:01

I would say I have a harder time starting something new, but not necessarily doing it, but staying with it.

Nick VinZant 24:08

Oh, like you have a difficulty kind of establishing a new habit, like a new pattern in your life.

John Shull 24:14

Yeah, I have no problem throwing away, like old things. Actually, I would prefer it. There's very few things from my past that I have.

Nick VinZant 24:25

I tend to keep things and get attached to things just because that's what I like, and they usually stop making the things that I like. So like, I kept my first truck for 18 years, all I mean, not because I didn't this, because it's like, that's the truck that I liked. They didn't have another one that I wanted. I

John Shull 24:47

mean, How long haven't you had that motorcycle? For 20 years? I've had my

Nick VinZant 24:51

motorcycle since 2006 and I haven't ridden it in five years, and it's just sitting back behind my house. Someday, someday.

John Shull 25:03

Alright, let's give some shout outs here. Let's see. We'll start with Andy, February, Angelina, tarkoma, Lynn co you're I do say it kind of very robotically. I'm going to never seen

Nick VinZant 25:20

the word before, but she'd like, you're trying to enunciate, man, I get it. I get it.

John Shull 25:27

Christopher Brewer, Johnny India, is that better? Not really. I can do it like a like an announcer. Bob Amadeus, and now starting in shortstop, Ayub, a Louie, was that really

Nick VinZant 25:46

somebody's name? I like that name. Ayuba, Louie. I like that uh,

John Shull 25:50

yucas, pelicir, Jamie, Phelan, Alexander Roberto, and we're going to end here with Connie Smith,

Nick VinZant 26:03

we don't see a lot of Connie's.

John Shull 26:05

Uh, not much of a name. No, no,

Nick VinZant 26:07

that's a name that immediately dates you. Like, oh, that's not a young person. I would be surprised if Connie's under the age of 30.

John Shull 26:17

Uh, well, that's fair. I actually work with a Connie and I've worked with other Connie's. I actually know quite a bit of Connie's or constances. I

Nick VinZant 26:26

don't know if I know a single Connie Connie Cola, that name is familiar to me, and I have no idea why.

John Shull 26:32

It's clearly not a real name. So

Nick VinZant 26:38

Connie, oh, it was somebody I did. Used to work with somebody named Connie cola. That's the only Connie I know.

John Shull 26:46

All right, well, let's I want you to solve this debate, because, for whatever reason, I've had this debate so this conversation with probably six people in the last week. What is the best style of pizza?

Nick VinZant 27:00

What do you mean style of pizza? Like,

John Shull 27:03

if, if you could have any, so you could have one slice of any kind of pizza. What are you going with? New York, Detroit, Chicago,

Nick VinZant 27:13

oh, Costco, whatever kind of pizza Costco makes. I don't know about all these types like New York, Chicago, blah, blah, blah, just give me pizza man. What is Papa John's make? Or what does Pizza Hut make? That kind I like a slightly thick crust, the regular pizza. The best kind of pizza is regular pizza. That's the kind of pizza that I like, all right. And

John Shull 27:37

this week's R, A, P, which

Nick VinZant 27:39

one are you? Which one are you? Can

John Shull 27:40

we give a shout out?

Nick VinZant 27:44

What's your pizza? What's your favorite?

John Shull 27:47

I mean, I'm gonna give a bullshit answer. I mean, I I can go. I have a favorite place for each I have been eating a lot of New York style lately, which is unlike me, but Detroit and Chicago just there. It's really bready man. And as I get older, I don't want to eat 700 calories in one slice.

Nick VinZant 28:06

There's no such thing as Detroit style pizza. Okay, let's see. There isn't. There's New York in there, Chicago, Detroit is not in this conversation. I know that you guys want to try to butt your way into it. No, Detroit style. It's really good. No, it's not okay. It's not nobody, nobody. Nobody outside of Detroit has ever heard of Detroit style pizza.

Unknown Speaker 28:27

Oh, that's fine. Does it

Nick VinZant 28:28

come with getting shot? You get a pizza and they shoot you in the leg. Is that Detroit style pizza? No one cares about Detroit style pizza, but except for people in Detroit,

John Shull 28:38

you better be careful there, Mr. Seattle,

Nick VinZant 28:40

there's no, we're not trying to class it up.

John Shull 28:47

You're right. You're not, you're not at all, um,

Nick VinZant 28:51

it's Seattle style. What is it? It's exactly the same. We just because it's in Seattle, we call it Seattle style.

John Shull 28:57

I don't think Seattle is known for anything,

Nick VinZant 29:01

fish like a specific kind of food. I don't think there's a Seattle dog,

John Shull 29:07

but what is a Seattle dog?

Nick VinZant 29:11

I don't know. I haven't had it. I will tell you this. I've lived in a number of different cities. That sounds like a really DB thing to say, but I've lived in a number of different cities, and the one that had the best food was Tucson, Arizona, by far. Not even a competition. What are you doing over there?

John Shull 29:26

I can't get my camera to focus on my stop moving around. I'm he just came to jittery. Man. I my i came across these energy drink things I'm drinking, like five of them a day, and I just can't stop moving.

Nick VinZant 29:41

What kind of energy drinks are you drinking? You got it right there? Please tell me you have it right there.

John Shull 29:47

Yeah. Can I, can I do like ad placement? Or is that Sure? Sure it's zoas the rock, the rocks company, Oh, God.

Nick VinZant 29:55

How many milligrams of caffeine is in that sucker? Well, that's

John Shull 29:58

the problem. It doesn't say, and I haven't looked up. How many

Nick VinZant 30:02

you want me to Sure? Okay, I'll look it up while you go on to the next thing.

John Shull 30:09

No, I was, I just wanted to give a shout out to in memorandum or memorandum,

Nick VinZant 30:15

that's a lot, dude. How many of you had a day.

John Shull 30:20

I mean, this is my fourth one today. Oh,

Nick VinZant 30:23

my God, they've got 200 milligrams of caffeine. 800 milli you've had 800 milligrams of caffeine today. I i Look at mine like I have three sodas a day, morning, midday and towards the evening, and they have about 40 milligrams of caffeine in them each. So that's 120 for me for the day, and you're rocking 800 plus. Did you have a coffee? No,

John Shull 30:51

no, I've Well, I'm trying to get off coffee. It's

Nick VinZant 30:55

not working by going harder. That's like trying to get off of weed by doing heroin, yeah, not gonna work,

John Shull 31:03

yeah? Well, I didn't. Maybe that's why they don't put it on the can. I don't know. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 31:08

that's Yeah, dude, if they're not labeling something, that means there's a lot or none

John Shull 31:14

you ever seen. What's that Wolf of Wall Street? Boom, boom, boom, boom. Heart's doing. I can just, yeah, I can just feel it, man. It's just a man,

Nick VinZant 31:23

since I usually only have like, a soda, which is about, like I said, 30 to 40, we have a coffee machine at work. And I just tried, like, this one thing, and I didn't realize how much caffeine was in coffee, and I was just walking around like I was a hummingbird just floating through the office.

John Shull 31:46

Are you like the old man now at your work? Oh, the coffee machine.

Nick VinZant 31:50

I am no, if there's a kind, if there's any, if look, if I could, do you ever see those, like, freestyle soda machines, where you can get, like, all kinds of different soda. You press the button, it changes. And they've got like, 400 different varieties. I would be there all day trying every single one,

John Shull 32:10

just to see what what tickles your fancy,

Nick VinZant 32:13

just to see what it is, right? Like I'm going to try, yeah, I'll try 15 different flavors of Fanta.

John Shull 32:20

Yeah, I'll try it. Um,

Nick VinZant 32:22

never know, man, could be delicious. Anyways, what

John Shull 32:24

were we talking about? I feel like this episode is it's a little bit odd. What did I what I have written down here? Oh, missy, Missy Houston, or sissy Houston, who died today? I don't even know who that is, Whitney's mother,

Nick VinZant 32:39

sissy. So,

John Shull 32:42

I mean, I'm sorry, sorry you don't have,

Nick VinZant 32:43

like, Was I supposed to know about that? Is she famous?

John Shull 32:48

I mean, yes. And she also gave birth to one of the greatest musicians ever. Her name is sissy, yeah, well, I mean, that's what she goes by, e, i, s, s, y,

Nick VinZant 33:02

sissy, Houston, that's gonna that'd be a hard name if you were a guy. Do you imagine if you were a guy and your nickname was sissy? Like, what's your name? Sissy? Show, high school is not gonna be easy for you. The alliteration

John Shull 33:15

itself would probably not be the greatest. So, what? I don't know if this is new, but I've never had it before, but I was at a restaurant and I was served by a robot.

Nick VinZant 33:32

What do you mean? You were served by like, like, an actual robot came out, yeah,

John Shull 33:37

like, came over, awesome, said hello, gave us menus. We picked our food, brought us our food, even came back once and asked us if we wanted refills on our drinks.

Nick VinZant 33:50

Was it okay? But how was the robot service? What did you say it's better or worse than a human?

John Shull 33:56

Um, I mean, obviously there was no personality there. My kids loved it. There was no personality there. But, yeah, it was, it's fine. I mean, if that's the future, I mean, obviously it isn't, because you can't put all the service industry out of work. But man, it was okay. Well, I'm not against it. I

Nick VinZant 34:16

do find it really interesting that just within our lifetimes, I've gone from not really wanting to trust the computer or machines to I would rather trust a computer or a machine, 1520, years ago. If somebody was like, let the computer do it, I'd be like, I don't trust those things. Now, people were like, let the computer do it. I'd be like, no, no, let the computer do it. I don't trust the people.

John Shull 34:40

Um, this is just a random question i i have for you. Kind of that heartburn, dude. Oh, it's terrible. And drinking four energy drinks a day, it's just tearing

Nick VinZant 34:52

that under control. Man, you kind of like,

John Shull 34:55

Oh my gosh. So no one cares, and people probably don't realize it. But I tore my calf muscle back in May.

Nick VinZant 35:02

No, and I just bring it up every episode, I just started

John Shull 35:06

going back to the gym, and I did a half an hour of cardio, just did the elliptical, and I got off, and I'm gonna have to take a picture next time I do it. It was like a mountain. The swelling from my calf like went and just stopped at my ankle and it was like, there was a shelf. It was insane. I've never seen anything like it,

Nick VinZant 35:24

yeah, dude, like, you don't just go from zero to 60. You probably should have done like, five minutes seeing how that went. Then maybe tried 10. Not just, like, you know, what's my first day back in the gym. Let's go ahead and do max bench press, and I'm just gonna sprint across the room like you gotta warm my invention 405. No, not many people. Are not many people out of these days. Uh, do you have anything else?

John Shull 35:53

Uh, yeah. So have you ever gone to, have you ever gone to court, to to, like, challenge a ticket. No,

Nick VinZant 36:03

no, I have not. Are you gonna go? I

John Shull 36:06

will let you know it's still, it's still a little ways out. It's about two weeks out, but I will let you know how that goes for me. Well, okay.

Nick VinZant 36:12

Well, give us the situation. What happened? What'd you get the ticket for? Why are you challenging it?

John Shull 36:18

Uh, I got, I got, I got,

Nick VinZant 36:20

oh, let me be the judge. Let's, let's do this. I'm the judge. You're making your case. Okay, let's practice. I'm the judge you're making your case. I'm gonna be hard on you. I'm gonna come after

John Shull 36:33

you. I apologize for everyone that's listening to this. Well, Your Honor. I was pulled over for apparently doing a California roll through a stop sign. Though I had enough time to look at the officer in the eyes and then keep going, so clearly I had stopped a little bit. Oh, by the way, he was parked out in front of a good buddy of mine's house, of which I have doorbell camera video that shows that I did pretty much come to a stop, and then pretty much,

Nick VinZant 37:02

or did, because pretty much he's not, did. So did you come to a stop? Or did you not? Because when I look at this video, am I going to see that you pretty much came to a stop, or am I going to see that you did come to a stop? It

John Shull 37:14

so by Michigan law, and I'm not sure that you would even agree with this, oh,

Nick VinZant 37:18

you're insulting the judge. You're insulting the judge because he doesn't know Michigan law. That's what you're saying. Right now you're going to tell the judge how you know Michigan law better than he does or she does it

John Shull 37:28

some to a complete stop for two seconds.

Nick VinZant 37:31

Okay, did you do that?

John Shull 37:33

I did not come to a complete stop for two seconds, but I stopped. Dismissed. Right to

Nick VinZant 37:37

pay the ticket. You just admitted that you did it. You just admitted that you did it,

John Shull 37:43

Sir or Ma'am, can I? Can I just keep Can we just go on to the second part? No, I

Nick VinZant 37:48

have about 15,000 more of these cases today. You just said that you did not go ahead and come to a complete stop. There's video evidence that you talk about. The video evidence you don't really seem to stop. So this case is gonna go ahead and be thrown out. Oh, I fucked. Are you gonna try to bring in video evidence that shows you kind of doing something? No, I see that I stopped. You didn't know. I slow like you lost. Don't fight the ticket. It's over for you. The reason

John Shull 38:15

why I'm actually taking its court is I'm not I'm not gonna dispute that. Whatever I did that I deserve that ticket, but then I got wrote up for having an expired license plate, but it's because I My birthday was, like, four days, you know, after my plate expired, but you have a month in Michigan to renew your tags, so it's a legal plate, and the cop still wrote me a ticket. So that's why, that's why I'm going to go fight that, because it's more expensive than the rolling through the stop sign ticket.

Nick VinZant 38:41

So, oh, but that's the kind of thing that, like, the cops should know the law on that, like, maybe you messed that up. And I'm not just don't realize it. I'm not

John Shull 38:53

going to say what city it is. And listen, I respect all law enforcement. Don't take it that way. You know, I didn't give him a fit then, and I won't give him a fight if he shows up in court. But you know, it's an expensive ticket when, you know,

Unknown Speaker 39:06

like, how much is it? I

John Shull 39:07

have a month, about 200 bucks.

Nick VinZant 39:12

Okay, do you have to take off work to go do it?

John Shull 39:14

No, I have the I have the first appointment, or whatever, at 8am in the morning, so the judge is going to be real happy.

Nick VinZant 39:22

What day of the week is it

John Shull 39:25

a Thursday? I

Nick VinZant 39:26

think it might be more lenient on a Thursday, Monday. He ate Monday. They're not taking anything. And they not. They don't want any of your mess. Man, by Thursday, they're like,

John Shull 39:37

it's, it is what it is. It's not a big deal. But, you know, I just, you know, it's a lot of money to pay for power,

Nick VinZant 39:46

man, yeah, not even about any money. It's about the principle of it, that you're right. You need to fight the power, but also don't come in there and be like, Did you stop? Well, kind of did. Well, kind of isn't knowing it. So you lost that. See the problem?

John Shull 39:59

Things. I work in the media, so I have relationships with, like the court clerk. So when I called her and was like, Hey, she's like, Oh yeah, you're probably not getting out of that one. But if you know, if you are saying what you say you're saying, you might have a chance at the the license plate one. So I'm like, Oh, thanks. Well, sure,

Nick VinZant 40:15

okay, alright. Well, I mean, fight the power, man. I'll

John Shull 40:20

give you all an update in a few weeks, let you know how, how I lost so make

Nick VinZant 40:24

sure you drink at least, like five, have like five energy drinks and go in there. Just,

John Shull 40:29

do I do I dress up? Do I do I wear a suit? Do I wear just blue jeans? Like go

Nick VinZant 40:34

half and half suit top, shorts in the bottom?

John Shull 40:38

Yeah, cuz I won't get me a then

Nick VinZant 40:39

show up and say, you thought it was a zoom. They thought it was zoom.

John Shull 40:45

Speaking of, do you remember during, uh, during the pandemic with the the attorney with the cat eyes, he loved, yeah, cat filter, yeah,

Nick VinZant 40:52

I do remember that I am not a cat. Like, well, thanks for clarifying that. I mean, that was one of those things that, like all of society, just needs to laugh about, because that was pretty funny. Are you ready for our top five, or do you got something else there?

John Shull 41:05

No, I'm ready. I don't. I need to get into a good place for this. So

Nick VinZant 41:12

for people who don't aware of this, John is a casual bandwagon wrestling fan. Oh, my God, He that attends to know false occasionally I will text him about wrestling things, and he never seen he's very excited. He never really wants to talk about it. So John is a casual wrestling fan. Don't expect too much of him. I'm not even sure if he knows much about wrestling. Um, but we are doing the top five wrestling names of all time. Could you think of were you able to come up with five wrestlers? Casual fan, John, first off, casual wrestling fan,

John Shull 41:47

I don't respond back to you because you usually text me like midnight, because we have a three hour time difference, and all you're trying to do is poke the bear. So that's why I don't respond to anyone who's wondering,

Nick VinZant 41:57

not a wrestling fan.

John Shull 42:00

And yes, I have, it's hard to narrow it down to five, but yes, I have a list, alright,

Nick VinZant 42:06

so top five wrestling names of all time. Who's your number five?

John Shull 42:12

Bam, bam, Bigelow. Oh,

Nick VinZant 42:14

okay, alright. I like bam, bam, Bigelow. I don't I can see it, I can see it. I can see it.

Unknown Speaker 42:24

Okay, what's what's your?

Nick VinZant 42:27

Brutus the barber beefcake. You can't go wrong with Brutus the barber beefcake. I have no idea what Brutus the barber beef beefcake does. I don't know what Brutus the barber beefcake looks like, but I know the name of Brutus the barber beefcake.

John Shull 42:44

I mean, he was kind of a jobber, but definitely walked around with shears. And, yeah, he was, he was around for quite a while.

Nick VinZant 42:52

He was a big time name. He was a big name, Buddhist. You can't go wrong, Brutus the barber beefcake. Like, yeah, that's a great name. What's your number four? Uh,

John Shull 43:02

Greg the hammer Valentine.

Nick VinZant 43:08

It's all right,

John Shull 43:10

the hammer called the hammer. That's amazing.

Nick VinZant 43:13

There's a lot of people. It's not better than Brutus the barber beefcake,

John Shull 43:18

just because, like you said, you don't know what the hell that means. Nobody does. It's

Nick VinZant 43:23

such a good wrestling name, though, like the hammer, the anvil, even like the rock, like it's okay. I want more I want more creativity, like Coco beware, which is my number four. Coco beware is an amazing name. You got a problem with Coco beware? No, I

John Shull 43:45

just that's not one of the best names ever, but whatever Coco beware

Nick VinZant 43:48

is a great name.

John Shull 43:50

I gotta tell you, my my list doesn't get more exciting, because if you're a real wrestling fan, you know why my top five is what it is, but I'm excited to see what you're right,

Nick VinZant 44:00

if you're a real wrestling fan, you like names like Jared, Jared Carmichael, I think that's like an actual famous person, but like Jared Smith, great wrestling name that's exciting.

John Shull 44:13

Anyways, uh, my number three, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Nick VinZant 44:20

That's a pretty good one. That's the only kind of like real name that I could go with, like Steve. He made Steve cool. That's hard to do.

John Shull 44:32

He did. He sure did that

Nick VinZant 44:34

that is not a name that Steve is not a name that anybody expects to see like a real cool guy, right? Do you know anybody who's like a real cool guy named Steve? Like, always, a little nerdy, a little dorky, that's a Steve? No, I don't. Right, sorry, all, Steve, there's not like Nick's a great one. Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying like every, every Steve I know is like a little nerdy and dorky.

John Shull 45:07

I mean, it's better than Steve. So how

Nick VinZant 45:10

do you feel? Do you think Steven is better than Steve? Who do you like more? Steve or Steven? Steve? Yeah, like Steve more than Steven, too, right? Because Steven is a Steve that takes his name too seriously. Uh, my number three is big papa pump. Scott Steiner, oh, big papa pump. No. Good name. You need a name like, uh, Brock, Brock,

Unknown Speaker 45:38

even though his last name, what

Nick VinZant 45:40

is it? Brock Lesnar. Like, that's a great wrestling name you're gonna have. Who are you more excited to see? Brock Lesnar, or big papa pump?

John Shull 45:49

I mean, yes, big papa pump.

Nick VinZant 45:50

Big Papa pump wasn't his brother, also named the dog face Gremlin.

John Shull 45:56

Yes. He was Rick's Rick Steiner,

Nick VinZant 46:00

yeah, I know he was. I'm a real wrestling fan, not a casual like you. Have you heard of WrestleMania?

John Shull 46:06

I heard you so much. My My number two is a tie guys from the same era, the Nature Boy and macho man.

Nick VinZant 46:19

Oh, okay, okay, my number two is gorilla monsoon. That's amazing. You don't like gorilla monsoon? No,

John Shull 46:31

I do. I love gorilla monsoon. He was amazing for the business, but, oh,

Nick VinZant 46:36

I love gorilla monsoon. I think that's an incredible name. What's your number one?

John Shull 46:44

Man? I mean, this was, I mean, it was so hard. But I'm going with a personal favorite of mine, Jake the Snake. Roberts,

Nick VinZant 46:52

uh, it's pretty good, yeah,

John Shull 46:55

because it transcends wrestling. How many times have you been like, Jake the Snake, or Jake from State Farm, or, you know, like, it just, it's good. Like, it just goes,

Nick VinZant 47:05

Yeah, none. I've never done that, but I don't really, I don't really like snakes. So maybe that's my thing. My number one, I think, is really the best professional wrestling name of all time, which is Macho Man, Randy Savage. Macho Man is the best. It's the best wrestling name in my I mean,

John Shull 47:22

it's really number one. Could have been 15 different names. I

Nick VinZant 47:27

really thought about putting gorilla monsoon is number one. That's a great name. My I

John Shull 47:32

mean, my honor, I'll mention is insane. I don't even want to go through all of them, all right. Well, just

Nick VinZant 47:37

give me the Give me 10 of them. Then

John Shull 47:41

the Dynamite Kid, dime diamond, Dallas Page, little bit better. Uh, rowdy. Roddy Piper, yeah, Kamala the Ugandan giant, yeah,

Nick VinZant 47:54

that's pretty good. It has to be descriptive so, you know, like, what that person looks like, like, you know, Brutus the barber beefcake is going to be somebody that's ripped out and probably a little crazy, yeah,

John Shull 48:05

just crazy, the big boss, man, yes, good one, the Ultimate Warrior, yeah, Andre the Giant. And I'll end man like I just have. So I'm trying to pick out, like, my favorite from the list that I had written down. So I'll end here on haystacks, Calhoun.

Nick VinZant 48:30

That's pretty good. I like that one. You know what? One that really we should have put in there, that I just now thought of, is Sergeant slaughter.

John Shull 48:37

That is a good one. That's

Nick VinZant 48:38

a good one. I forgot entirely about Sergeant slaughter. Yeah,

John Shull 48:43

that's a pretty good one. I mean, you could put the iron cheek in there.

Nick VinZant 48:46

That's a good one too.

John Shull 48:48

I mean, The Undertaker, yeah,

Nick VinZant 48:51

the undertaker. The other ones that I have on there are Mr. Perfect.

John Shull 48:58

Ooh, that's rip good one. Good one. Oh,

Nick VinZant 49:01

he's dead. Yeah, he

John Shull 49:03

died, like, 20 years ago. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 49:05

didn't know that. Oh, the this guy, like, it was a good name, I think that he was pretty much been documented as quite the terrible person. But Jimmy Superfly snooker,

John Shull 49:18

I mean, if anyone knows anything about wrestling. Vince McMahon, they're all pretty terrible people. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 49:24

they do seem to be all that. That documentary is like, Oh, wait, they're all kind of terrible. Or at least the promoters all seem like they're a little bit terrible. Um, who else did I have? No, that was it. That was it. I don't I thought about Ultimate Warrior, but then it like, oh yeah, that's okay. Brett the hitman. Heart's pretty good too.

John Shull 49:49

Yeah. I mean, it's you gotta separate the character from the name. That's what makes a great name, like Coco. Beware, sure, because no. One remembers him unless you're a real wrestling fan, which you are,

Nick VinZant 50:03

right? I mean, I knew who Coco beware was. You probably don't even know. But did you know that, not only do they have Wrestlemania, they also have SummerSlam. Have you heard about SummerSlam? You

John Shull 50:14

want me to rage quit because I'm getting pretty close?

Nick VinZant 50:16

Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless, I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. Really helps out the show. We really appreciate it. We also have our Patreon page that I always update but occasionally forget, to remind people that it's out there and let us know what you think is the best pro wrestling name. There's really so many of them, and I think you can make a good argument for a lot.


UFO Tracker Christian Stepien

Over the last two decades Christian Stepien of the UFO Reporting Center has tracked and documented nearly 200,000 UFO sightings worldwide. We talk the pattern behind UFO sightings, government coverups and the most unusual UFO sightings. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and countdown the Top 5 Least Rewatchable Movies.

Christian Stepien: 01:20

Pointless: 26:06

Candle of the Month: 41:53

Top 5 Least Rewatchable Movies: 50:09

Contact the Show

UFO Reporting Center Website

Interview with UFO Reporting Center’s Christian Stepien

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode, UFOs and the least rewatchable movies,

Christian Stepien 0:21

the Prime Directive of these agencies pretty soon became to just debunk everything and make it sound like people were crazy. It's an interesting one, and we highlighted this one because it's actually pretty rare that we get a video as dramatic as that. You know, it's there's this wall against getting to the real the real meat of what the government has collected and known over the years. I want

Nick VinZant 0:46

to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because over the last few decades, he has tracked UFO sightings worldwide. This is Christian Stepien of the UFO Reporting Center. So when we talk about UFO Reporting, like, how many reports have you guys gotten over the years?

Christian Stepien 1:24

We are pushing 200,000

Nick VinZant 1:28

reports. To me, that sounds like a huge amount.

Christian Stepien 1:31

It's a lot, but I still think it's the tip of the iceberg. So you can take that number and multiply it, and then we estimate that probably 5% of people who see something take the time and trouble to report it. So do that math, and you're getting into millions of sightings. You know, just millions. It's extremely common. As a matter of fact, I like to tell people, um, you know, just, just go ask your family. Go ask your friends. Have you guys ever seen something you can't explain in the sky? And almost invariably, you'll find somebody within your circle of acquaintances that'll tell you a story about something that happened years ago, or maybe last week, about something incredible they saw that really meets the definition of a UFO. So

Nick VinZant 2:17

if we're having those so many people who are seeing these things and reporting them. Why do you think there's still so much skepticism out there, right? Like, if it's something that seems to be happening every day, why isn't it treated like something that seems to be happening every day? It's

Christian Stepien 2:30

It's because, you know when, when the UFO phenomenon really started back in the 40s, 1947, you know, with Roswell, when people really started seeing vast amounts of flying saucers and things, the government, you know, started setting up agencies to go and investigate it. There was project sign, there was project grudge, and then there was Project Blue Book. And the prime directive of these agencies pretty soon became to just debunk everything and make it sound like people were crazy. So the government has had a concerted effort to kind of promote that narrative that you know if you've seen a UFO, you might be mentally suspect or you probably don't know what you're looking at. And that really stuck. Society really took that in and bought that up to the present day. Now, there's a lot that's going on right now that we can talk about where that's really changing. You know, some of the congressional hearings and some of the revelations from some of the fighter pilots and David grush and things like that, but it's still that message of, they don't exist. They can't possibly exist. There's no way they could get here, because nobody can go faster than the speed of light. No, all these arguments about why they can't exist are still kind of embedded in the consciousness of the general public. Of

Nick VinZant 3:52

those 200,000 someone that we talked about, though, but how many of them would you say, Okay, this is a UFO versus like this is just something that somebody saw that they can't explain.

Christian Stepien 4:04

We go through a process where we actually look at every report and we flag the ones that we think are the like, you know, holy crop reports like you say, certainly more than 50% are, you know, misidentifications of stars or satellites or airplanes or bugs flying past security cameras, you know, all all these different kinds of things that we get all the time. So I, I think probably from the reports that we get, I would estimate maybe 20% are interesting, real, you know, events that are anomalous and we can't find in, you know, a simple explanation for if

Nick VinZant 4:48

my math is correct, off the top of my head, that's about 40,000 total. You know, some

Christian Stepien 4:52

of the reports we really like to get are, we get a lot of reports from pilots. Pilots are, you know, know what they're looking at, the sky. They're up. All the time, and when they see something strange, you can kind of take their word for it. If you go to our website, you can actually look at all the all the reports are cataloged by, you know, the ones that we think are the best. You can just scan through those. You can scan through the ones that are from pilots. Or you can go kind of look into the reports from your area.

Nick VinZant 5:22

I have your website. Can you see this? Is that showing up to you?

Christian Stepien 5:25

Oh, yeah,

Nick VinZant 5:26

I'm looking at some of these. Now, what really jumped out at me was how detailed some of them are, and that there's pictures and videos. There's definitely so I'm looking at this one. I'm gonna mispronounce that, but I think it's Chelan, West Virginia.

Christian Stepien 5:44

Yeah, this one just came in. I remember this one. And I will

Nick VinZant 5:47

say, like, Okay, I'll full disclosure, like, I personally am skeptical. But this episode isn't necessarily about if it's real or not. It's more about the fact that these people, that people are reporting this at such a high level, but like looking at this like, Okay, I don't know what that is.

Christian Stepien 6:05

It's an interesting one. And we highlighted this one because it's actually pretty rare that we get a video as dramatic as that. It's, you know, people are really not capturing these things on cameras very often, in any meaningful way we get I've probably seen maybe 20 videos that have really impressed me over the last couple years. This is one of them, simply because of the color in the way now it that could be a drone hovering up there with a blue light, you know, certainly. But it's, I think it's the quality of the video that impressed us on that one. But if you keep scrolling through those highlighted reports, you'll find people who write stories, you know, especially if you get into some of the older ones, there's a lot of people who send in reports from things that happened to them 2030, years ago. Now that that one right there. If you bring that one back up a little bit. Just show the picture. This

Nick VinZant 7:01

is one out of Lebanon, Tennessee. I couldn't find the states, and that's what jumped out at me, was like the detail that people put into this, like, this has a drawing. This has a lengthy description,

Christian Stepien 7:14

yeah, and that, that triangle that you're looking at there, that has been reported over and over and over again. But these triangles that are, you know, anywhere from 25 feet on a side to hundreds of feet on a side with white lights in each corner and sometimes a red light in the center, have been reported hundreds, hundreds of times. And these things basically float. They can hover silently over someone's house. They can accelerate instantaneously. Mean they can go from a complete stop to something like Mach Five without any period of acceleration whatsoever. So they're doing things that we simply don't have the technology to do, and they're reported by, you know, credible people. The people who report to us generally, are extremely sincere and are simply, you know, flabbergasted by what they've seen, and they just want to find a place to get it off their chest and put it on the record, because sometimes it's a life changing event for people to see things like this.

Nick VinZant 8:28

I would imagine so. And that's kind of what jumps out into me about it, is, right? Is that you have the one camp that seems to be, I'm going to be dramatic, just for ease of purposes, right? You have the one camp that's like, seems to be like, No, this is absolutely real. And another camp that says like, No, this is absolutely not. But when I look through all the descriptions like this doesn't seem like, necessarily, like a crazy person writing the description. So I'm fascinated by the idea that whatever somebody saw, they absolutely believe what they saw. Yeah,

Christian Stepien 8:57

yeah, most people are extremely sincere and really believe they saw something. And certainly some of them have seen aircraft. Some have seen, you know, maybe even top secret military test aircraft. A lot of people see balloons and think they're UFOs that that that goes on all the time. But there are these reports, like this one, you know, and the other giant triangle reports that you just can't put in a box and say there's anything that can explain it.

Nick VinZant 9:24

This is one out of Cape Coral. And again, like, yeah, look at that. They really went into a lot of detail about about, yeah, does it? Were you surprised by the amount of detail that people go into? Um,

Christian Stepien 9:37

no, I wish more people would go into more detail. Honestly, some people don't give us a lot of detail. They'll just send in a line or two about, you know, I saw something darting through the sky, but it's great when they do, and we really appreciate it. There's

Nick VinZant 9:53

definitely, it's definitely interesting, right? Like, whether you're a believer or dis non believe. Or whatever phrasing you want to use, it's interesting to go through them.

Christian Stepien 10:03

Well, you know, there's an interesting phenomenon about believers versus non believers. The more someone studies the subject, the more they become a believer. If you spend the time and really immerse yourself into the subject, you're going to be hard pressed to walk away as a skeptic, and you know, the government is probably hiding the best of it. By far the best of it is sitting somewhere hidden within the Department of Defense and defense contractors, assuming,

Nick VinZant 10:32

just kind of working with the assumption that all of this is real, right? Does that worry you? Because, to me, it's like, if there's aliens out there, like, wait a minute,

Christian Stepien 10:43

it worries me. I'll make a plug. There's a great book that just came out from Lou Elizondo called imminent. He's the one who got, I don't know if you're familiar with the New York Times article that came out in 2017 where they revealed the Pentagon's OS app and a tip programs, where they were actually had, you know, a $20 million funded project to study UFOs, and they were really under the radar. And, you know, Lou was really, finally, just couldn't take it anymore, and felt he had to reveal this to the public. So he left the Pentagon and talked to a New York Times reporter named Leslie Keane, and she came out with a front page New York Times article, and they released three UFO videos taken by Navy fighter pilots, and they're pretty incredible videos. You know, there's the tic tac video, there's the go fast video, the gimbal and he's, you know, his book really, he's, he was an insider in the Department of Defense who became extremely convinced himself of the reality of this and thought it was just absolutely ludicrous that the government didn't want to deal with

Nick VinZant 12:00

it. That is definitely something that right? Like, I think whether you believe it or you don't believe it, I firmly believe that we should probably have some sort of plan in place just in case. Like, we should probably be working on this.

Christian Stepien 12:12

Yeah, we should. We should be putting some money into it and some put some of our top brains on it to try and figure out what it really is. But, and there's some of that probably going on. There was some of that going on when he was involved, and there were some PhD physicists and things, studying things, but, but it was to a very limited amount, you know, it's, there's this wall against getting to the real, the real meat of what the government has collected and known over the years that even, you know, certain groups within the defense department couldn't penetrate that wall to get to the real what they call the Legacy Project, which is the project that's been really watching UFOs for. You know, what, 75 years from now,

Nick VinZant 12:56

when you look at the reports that come in, would you say, is there, is there a pattern to them like they generally kind of fit into these categories, like this happens. It looks like this, it moves like this, etc. There's

Christian Stepien 13:08

definitely patterns and kind of groups of similar sightings. One of them is the triangles that we talked about earlier. You see these same triangles over and over and over again, doing the same kind of things. Another one that's extremely common is orbs, orbs or balls of light that basically, again, do these incredible maneuvers in the sky that basically go through walls. Can float down your hallway in your house, there's the classic flying saucer, but we're seeing less of those recently. We saw a lot more of those in the past. And then there's just things that are just all over the map, all kinds of weird shapes and sizes and descriptions of crafts. So there's really an incredible variety of things that's that are going on, like, so then do

Nick VinZant 14:04

you, would you look at it like, okay, we're getting visited by multiple different potential alien species, or as, like, the same species with lots of different cars, so to speak.

Christian Stepien 14:13

Yeah, exactly. That's, it's that that's a tough one to answer. You know, it's, it's really impossible to answer those questions, because the aliens, to their credit, or to our dual and dismay, are seem to be extremely capable of keeping their motives to themselves. So everything that we can surmise about them is pure speculation. You know, why are they here? What are they doing? How are the groups now, you know, if you get into the alien abduction phenomenon, that's where you start talking to people who've had experiences, who've seen craft up close, and are sometimes taken on to the craft for some bizarre experiences, and they will just. Describe what I would call classifications of aliens, different, different types of groups. You know, there's the there's the alien everybody's seen with the big almond shape, gray, yeah, black eyes, gray, four feet tall. That's extremely common. People see what the kind of almost human look, looking, perfect looking, you know, six, seven foot tall. They call them Nordics that seem to be in charge praying mantises. Now, whether they're all you know, know each other, whether it's you know, it's like this world, where there's the Russians in the United States, or there's different races, or what, who knows what aliens will tell people, of course, when they're when they're having this experiences and hey, don't worry, we're not going to hurt you. We're here to help you. Sometimes they give messages of, you know, you guys have to learn to protect the environment and take care of your planet. That message is pretty common from them.

Nick VinZant 16:01

I always wonder, you know, the the question of, like, Is there intelligent life outside in the universe? I don't know if I'm more scared by the idea that there is or that there isn't. But when you have, like, when you go, when you look at the reporting, like, do you ever hear from government agencies or organizations or things like that. Like, Hey, what's this one like? Do you ever seem to get follow up from the powers that be? To be dramatic, rarely,

Christian Stepien 16:28

rarely it. You know, they they can go out and read the reports, just like anybody else. We have been contacted by some government agencies who were interested in collaborating with us and investigating some of these, but we have a pretty strict privacy policy, so we don't release anybody's names or, you know, contact information that's that's extremely important to get to people to keep that private.

Nick VinZant 16:58

Does there seem to be more legitimate? And give me some leeway with the words, right, legitimate interest in it, like, Oh, we're really looking at this. Now,

Christian Stepien 17:07

the subject is a whole, I mean, you know, there was congressional hearings last year, and, you know, there's a, there's a dedicated group in Congress now that really is trying to get to the bottom of this. But, you know, it's, it's this brick wall. People hit this brick wall that where you you get so far into the Department of Defense, and then you can't get any farther.

Nick VinZant 17:27

Do you Do you understand why that approach should be taken? Like, do you think that things would fundamentally change if suddenly the government comes forward? Is like, look, you know what? All this is real. Like, what do you think would happen if that occurred, if this

Christian Stepien 17:42

was out in the open, and we can put our top people on it, you know, our best Sciences, our best engineers to, you know, go look at, you know, if they actually have some reverse engineer some some materials that they reach, recovered From craft saucers or whatever, we could make tremendous progress technologically. People have done analysis of the flight characteristics of some of these ships and calculated how much power they need to be doing the maneuvers that they need to do, and they've calculated that. It's absolutely phenomenal. So if we could figure out how they power them. That could be free energy solutions for the entire planet. We could dramatically, you know, improve life on earth if we could crack some of these technologies. But it's all behind these closed doors right now.

Nick VinZant 18:34

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions.

Christian Stepien 18:37

Oh, listener submitted questions. Sure. What reports

Nick VinZant 18:41

stand out to you like? Are there ones that like, oh, that's

Christian Stepien 18:45

an easy one to answer, because again, if you go to our website and you click on that exact page that you showed me, the highlighted reports, those are the reports that stand out to us, and they typically tend to be reports from pilots or military witnesses who really know what they're looking at, who really understand aviation, or people who've seen something at an extremely close range, you know, a huge triangle or a huge flying saucer hovering over their car or their house, doing things that we simply cannot do with any of our technology. Those are the ones that impressed me.

Nick VinZant 19:22

Country you seem to get the most reports from? Well, the United States, for sure. Well, yeah, you're based United States. So it's kind of, yeah, yeah. There's, there's

Christian Stepien 19:29

a map on our on our site, you can go spin the globe around and look at the prevalence of sightings. You know, we get a lot of reports from Britain, the Netherlands, and then it kind of spreads through Europe, but all over the world,

Nick VinZant 19:43

are there states or cities in the United States that you seem to like, Oh, those we are. We're always hearing from those places. No,

Christian Stepien 19:49

it's remarkably homogeneous across the country. And Axio, or access actually ran some statistics. Sites maybe six months ago, where they ran our data against population density and came up with some interesting, some interesting results on where the most sightings per capita are. In other words, for you know, 1000 100,000 residents. What's the number of UFO reports that have come in and those there are some hotspots that show up in there. For instance, in you know, Lincoln County, Nevada, which is right next to area 51 so they may be seeing test craft. But there are also some reports that are clearly strange. From there, some of the more remote areas of southeast Oregon, north north central Washington have a lot. So people tend to see, you know, it's interesting too. Arrow, which is the government's official UFO investigative agency right now took our data and analyzed it too, and came up with some conclusion that, well, people see more UFOs, whether where they have a clearer view of the sky, they're they're farther away from light pollution. You know, so common sense things where trees aren't blocking your view, you know, you're outside more whatever, you know, it's but, but they're literally everywhere. Anybody, anybody can see a UFO if you go outside at night, it's really correlates to how much time you spend outdoors, looking up, you know, looking around the dark night sky.

Nick VinZant 21:36

Have you ever seen one? Have you ever, like, filed a report?

Christian Stepien 21:39

I unfortunately haven't. I've seen things in the sky that are, I know other people have reported to UFOs for since the Star League satellites, which we were getting, just rashes of reports of those, they look like a long line of dots, just like, almost like a train going across the sky. But I have family members who have, I have lots of friends who have, and I've certainly talked to lots of people have, you know, working with newfork. So

Nick VinZant 22:05

are there certain instances that like, oh, that's kind of in the popular culture. Those are the big instances that kind of lots of people look for, like, the benchmarks, or whatever word that I'm supposed to

Christian Stepien 22:18

yeah, there's, there's UFO cases. You know, the Phoenix lights is probably the most one of the most famous ones. I remember that night the center was being just flooded with calls, you know, from all over the metro area and all over the valley. And it was just an incredible night. I actually heard some of the Navajo law enforcement Rangers speaking at a conference where they actually saw the craft a couple nights before flying over the Navajo reservation, described the exact same thing, and this was a massive Delta, or triangular shaped UFO that flew over the valley. Even the governor eventually came out and admitted that he saw it, and it was, you know, a real UFO, you know, Roswell. Of course, everybody knows about Roswell, right? And then you get into, you know, there's a lot of cases that have received a lot of press over the year, when you get abductions, you know, people have probably heard of Barney and Betty Hill, which is one of the first abduction cases there's, you know, different famous UFO cases, Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, all kinds of things that that have been kind of stood out and in the literature for a long time.

Nick VinZant 23:32

This one's kind of existential. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but that's the word I'm going to use. This one's kind of existential. What? What do you think would ultimately convince people, like, what would we need to have to be like, Oh, this is real, obviously,

Christian Stepien 23:47

if you had, you know, an alien standing next,

Nick VinZant 23:50

yeah, the press conference, right, like

Christian Stepien 23:54

that might be convincing. But then again, in this area of AI, maybe it wouldn't, I don't know, you know, the government, certainly, the government being more forthcoming and coming out and, you know, stating on it unequivocally that, yeah, it's real. There are flying saucers. There are things that we didn't make flying around our skies, guys. And we're, we admit it, we're trying to figure it out, you know, but we're not making much progress.

Nick VinZant 24:23

I kind of feel like it would take, like, there's got to be a press conference and the little green man, so to speak, it's got to be standing there with the spaceship behind him, like, that's, do you think it would take that much, or not quite that much? Well, that would help. That

Christian Stepien 24:38

would probably convince a lot of people. It's going to be a spectrum of some people are going to take less evidence to believe some people are going to take more. But again, it's not like the evidence isn't already there. It really is.

Nick VinZant 24:55

That's pretty much all the questions we got. If people want to learn more, where should they go? What should they do?

Christian Stepien 25:01

Well, they should, number one, go to our site, UFO center.com, and the number one thing I would tell your listeners is, please, if you have seen something, and I'm sure you have, if you got you know, as many listeners as I suspect you have, there's probably hundreds or 1000s of UFO reports out there waiting to be, you know, documented and preserved. So please go to our site and file a report and tell us what you saw. It doesn't matter if it was last week or, you know, 50 years ago. We want to collect those stories and make sure they're preserved forever.

Nick VinZant 25:36

I want to thank Christian so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him. We have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see videos of some of these UFOs, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on october 3, at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. If aliens come to earth, do you think that we survive as a species?

John Shull 26:17

Yes,

Nick VinZant 26:18

you do. Oh, I think we're dead as a doornail man. I think if aliens show up here, there's no way we're surviving anything like it's over.

John Shull 26:28

I think the main reason why we survive is, I mean, I've seen a lot of movies, you know what I mean? And right? I don't movies. I don't think you can go into another world's home field and just run it over, you know, like if someone death starred us, you know, just blew us up, the entire planet, okay? But to come and take over, I don't know, I don't know if that's happening.

Nick VinZant 26:54

I think you've seen too many movies. I think the reality is which history has played out even on our own planet. That generally, when a more advanced civilization encounters a less advanced civilization, it doesn't go well for the less advanced civilization. I think that if aliens show up here, we're we're done, like, it's only a matter, are they just going to destroy us, or are they going to just make us, like, do all their work? I

John Shull 27:18

guess that's kind of the thing is, I'm not entirely sure that you know that I think aliens that come here would be that much better than us. Is that naive, probably. But like, where are they getting this technology from? Like, what have they been doing for the last 300 years? Well, dude, they've

Nick VinZant 27:35

been probably traveling here. I mean, I think if you think about how big the universe is and the amount of technology would take another civilization to get here. They're probably going to hand us our ass pretty quickly. Like, I don't even think it's going to be a struggle. The amount of technology needed just to travel here is probably, like, leaps and bounds about what we have. Like, we've got nothing. We got nothing. We there's nothing we can sure. We

John Shull 28:01

do, we send astronauts into space and then we leave them there. It's fine. So

Nick VinZant 28:05

we're gonna send like, yeah, we do send like, we do send astronauts into space and didn't just leave them there. It's terrible. You think that they understood at all when they were so we're talking about the astronauts who are currently stranded somewhere, I'm not entirely sure, but like, that's probably the worst place that I would want to be stranded. Like, you're stranded where in space, oh, nobody's coming to get you. Like, yeah, we'll be there in okay, if you were stranded, what is the acceptable amount of time for someone to say that they're going to come get you?

John Shull 28:39

I mean, I mean, I guess it all depend on supplies. Like, if you're telling me that it's going to be like, six months to come get me and I have, like, six months worth of supplies, I'm probably freaking out a little bit.

Nick VinZant 28:53

Yeah, I guess they have enough supplies. But could you imagine being like, Hey, I'm stranded. When are we going to come get you? About a year and a half.

John Shull 29:02

Yeah, right. They look at their fake watches, well, we'll be there in 2037

Nick VinZant 29:08

I would, I know that it's not possible, but I would, if I was on the International Space Station, someone tell me, yeah, we're going to come get you in about 18 months. I would start to, like, wonder if I could just jump out. Like, could I just jump out and get back? Well, I'm

John Shull 29:24

going to sound completely ignorant, but what did that guy, the Red Bull guy, jump from a while back when he jumped from outer space?

Nick VinZant 29:32

I don't think it was anywhere close. I don't understand the stratosphere and the atmosphere and the lithosphere, or whatever all those spheres are, but I don't think it was anywhere close to where the space station was, because he had enough gravity that he still came back to Earth, whereas the space station isn't being pulled back into Earth, so it's much farther away. I think. Anyway, I pulled the audience. Everyone says, No, the question that. Asked is, if aliens arrive on Earth, do you think we survive? Everybody says no, so you're the only person who thinks that we survive. Aliens arriving on Earth

John Shull 30:10

shout outs. I don't mind. Do you mind uncomfortable silences? I don't mind them at all.

Nick VinZant 30:14

Oh, I can't handle it. I can't handle it. I can't handle Okay. How many seconds of silence can you handle with another person?

John Shull 30:24

As many as we need to. I don't mind it at all. I'll eventually get the the hit hint and be like, alright, well, conversation's over. I'll walk away now.

Nick VinZant 30:35

I don't, I don't think I'll tolerate more than five seconds of silence with somebody. If I have five seconds of silence during a conversation, I'm walking away.

Christian Stepien 30:46

Like, okay, yeah,

Nick VinZant 30:48

I try to actually actively end conversations before we even get to the silence part.

John Shull 30:55

Yeah, see, I'm, I'm cool with it. Like, I I'm, no, I mean, obviously you don't want silence. It's not, probably a good thing if you're having a jovial conversation. But I'm okay with you know, long silences, it doesn't bother me any

Nick VinZant 31:07

Oh, I can't stand it. I'm talking seconds. If I have more than three seconds of silence, I'm getting out of that conversation. I don't know how you just stand there. Like, what do you do? Just keep looking at em.

John Shull 31:20

Yeah, it's, it's really not that bad. I mean, you just, just wait for someone to say something. If nobody says something, then, alright, I'll see you later.

Nick VinZant 31:29

Oh, gosh, I can't do that.

John Shull 31:32

Yeah, like I said, it's, it's not that awkward in the moment. It's not like you're standing there for two minutes looking at the other person and they're looking at you just, you know? Well, I got nothing to say

Nick VinZant 31:43

to me. Every second of silence is five minutes. That's how it feels to me. It's an eternity. I can't handle silence.

John Shull 31:55

Yeah, tell us how you really feel. Alright. Uh, let's see here. Uh, let's start off with some Matthew Christianson, Matthias, the labo Kobe Haddad, Beckley, boy, don't think that's a real first name. I don't know the Beckley first

Nick VinZant 32:12

name. Who knows Beckley? Maybe the

John Shull 32:15

Baxter, Connor Johnson, Angelina, tarcoma, Thomas Lee, leewardsburg, Nahar Inkster, Wayne delofner, Lucas pellier and Alexander Rivera. I only picked literally the hardest names I could to say, but that's part of the fun now, right?

Nick VinZant 32:41

It is amazing to me that after all of these episodes, that you still read the shout outs like you've never heard any of these words before. It would be like I have a computer keyboard in front of me. This is you reading the shout out backspace. Enter. Shift. Page Up, yeah. Well, numb lock, like you have no idea what the word means, or if it's a real word, like you're just saying the thing that's in front of you. I like it.

John Shull 33:19

Well, let's we kind of have a somber section of the show now. We have three different obits to talk about. Oh, very different people. People are dropping here. People are

Nick VinZant 33:30

dropping like people are dropping fast. And there was another one just a second ago that maybe you didn't see. So, yeah, who are your obits on your on your thing? Oh, no, I

John Shull 33:41

got the latest one that, but we'll save that for

Nick VinZant 33:43

latest one that might Oh, yeah, let's, let's decide who's the biggest. So list them off, and then let's talk about them.

John Shull 33:48

Chris Christopherson, dicambay, matombo and Pete Rose.

Nick VinZant 33:55

You also forgot Maggie Smith.

John Shull 33:57

Oh, and, okay, yes. And Maggie, sorry, Dame, Maggie, Dame Maggie Smith,

Nick VinZant 34:01

I don't know what that means. It's hard, okay, Pete Rose, bigger than Dikembe Mutombo and Kris Kristofferson. I think Pete Rose is probably the most well known. Maybe not. It's, I think, in terms of just being well known. I think that Maggie Smith is probably ahead of Pete Rose internationally. But in the United States, I think Pete Rose is probably the biggest

John Shull 34:34

see. I would say internationally, dikamba Mutombo would probably be the most notable, because, I mean, he was, I mean, for a decade, he was, like, one of the best basketball players in the world,

Nick VinZant 34:48

yeah, but he wasn't the type of athlete that his career kept going after he was done, like Pete Rose, it only because of the scandal that was involved around him, like his name stayed up there. Her. I don't think that a lot of people who were like 18 to 25 now, people who were born after his career ended, know who he is.

John Shull 35:10

They know him for like Pete Rose. It's like they know to come in my tumbo for the commercial. You know, not in my house. No, no no. Oh,

Nick VinZant 35:18

yeah. He had a great No, no, no, yeah, he had a he, but I don't think he's Pete Rose level Kris Kristofferson, I think that we can agree is probably the the least famous of those people, even though he was very influential. But I think that he was at the he at the bottom of that heap.

John Shull 35:39

It's hard to say that he is number four because he's probably the most influential in terms of what he gave to the arts industry, probably the most influential person on this list. Um,

Nick VinZant 35:54

he's a lot of songs. Yeah, yeah. I

John Shull 35:57

mean, he's part of one of the most iconic country groups ever. You know, he was an actor. He was a road scholar. I mean, went to freaking Oxford, which I don't think people even realize,

Nick VinZant 36:10

Oh, he's a smart guy. Yeah. So anyways,

John Shull 36:14

and he was in the blade trilogy, just FYI.

Nick VinZant 36:19

I will say that Dame Maggie Smith is somebody that has been old the entire time I've known her.

John Shull 36:25

See, I was having this conversation about Chris Christopherson. I feel like Kris Kristofferson has been 55 ever since I've seen him like he's never changed.

Nick VinZant 36:34

He's always been old. He's always been old. The both of them have always been old. I would agree with that.

John Shull 36:40

I didn't know who Dame like. I didn't know the name. I didn't know the name until just just recently. You know, I always knew the face, but I didn't actually know who she was until just just recently. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 36:54

Harry Potter, hook, some other stuff.

John Shull 36:58

I'm not sure she was most recently, what's the Downton Abbey? That's where I that's where I first kind of recognized her from.

Nick VinZant 37:07

I always think it's downtown Abby. I guess it is known. Okay, so a lot of celebrity deaths, man, yeah,

John Shull 37:15

kind of, kind of wild. Yeah. That's a breaking news episode, because the Pete Rose stuff just broke within the last hour here, all

Nick VinZant 37:21

except for Dikembe Mutombo, though, lived to lived a pretty long life. I think they were all in their 80s, maybe their upper 80s, in some cases. So that's pretty like, if you hit 80, like, oh yeah, that's you were here for a while. Well,

John Shull 37:36

Dikembe Mutombo had brain cancer, which, you know, it's just incredible that, I don't know if anybody knew that, and then out of nowhere, he just dies of brain cancer. Like, holy cow.

Nick VinZant 37:48

There's some statistic that if you're seven feet tall or close to it, that, like, the chances of you living past 60 are almost nothing. There's some statistic that, if, like, if you're really tall, you don't live very long at all. I don't know what that statistic is, so don't do it in any way. But still,

John Shull 38:07

don't worry. I don't think anyone's going to hold all that against you. Um, I do feel like The taller you are, kind of the sooner your death comes as, oh,

Nick VinZant 38:16

yeah, it's a thing. I mean, you got more cells that potentially can have more things going wrong, like shorter people tend to live longer lives.

John Shull 38:24

So I don't have too much to bring up. I did want to ask you one question that are one of a couple questions that I was thinking of. So everyone knows that hurricane Helen hit the Florida the panhandle area Tampa went up into the Carolinas, and this kind of goes along with your space comment. Is there any more of a helpless feeling, you think, than storm surge, because you know it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it. Just get out of its way. It's going to damage everything in your house. There's nothing you can do about it.

Nick VinZant 38:58

I so. I'm a former news reporter covered a number of hurricanes, John Still works in the news. There's nothing like water. Water just it's unstoppable and it ruins everything, like it just ruins everything, and all that comes with it, in terms of the diseases and the conditions and the mold, water just ruins everything. And you can, like at least a wildfire, you can, you know, do back burns. You can try to fight a water flow. There's nothing you're doing against water,

John Shull 39:30

all right, Oasis, they got back together. Do you give a shit? Because I do not.

Unknown Speaker 39:36

No.

John Shull 39:39

Do do you think Oasis is popular because of the time that they produced music in, or because people actually care about two brothers who sometimes are mad at each other break up and then get back together.

Nick VinZant 39:53

I think they're one of those bands that tapped into kind of the spirit of the time. Mm. I think that they did that. I couldn't, I wouldn't know if I would look back on their music and be like, Oh, that was really good.

John Shull 40:07

Like, from a I'm sure there's many people, by the way, right now that are pissed off. Is

Nick VinZant 40:13

supposedly good? Like, I would never be like, man, like I just, is is that, is that, I think that that just tapped into a time speaking,

John Shull 40:25

you have somebody, somebody posted this the other day. I can't take credit for this. That Jelly Roll is just the American country version, male version of Adele.

Nick VinZant 40:37

I don't know who jell and Jelly Roll is, but, yeah, I think you know who Jelly Roll is. I don't know who Jelly Roll is. I don't listen to country music.

John Shull 40:45

But how do you guys even know who he is as a person like he's actually I don't listen

Nick VinZant 40:48

to country music. If you've heard one country music song, you've heard all of the songs for the next five years. You only need to listen to country music once every five years.

John Shull 41:00

But it has, it has nothing to do with, uh, like him just being a country artist, like he's bigger than country music.

Nick VinZant 41:07

Obviously, not. I don't know who he is. No, no, he's that big. I would know who he is. I'm just telling you, man, you listen to one country song every five years. You're good. They're all the same.

John Shull 41:20

They are. I mean, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing. I just can't believe I thought You almost said that you had never heard of Adele either, and then we were gonna have issues. Adele

Nick VinZant 41:27

is a uniquely talented individual with a wonderful personality. I like Adele, don't so whoever Jelly Roll is she? He's no Adele.

John Shull 41:36

Is that true about uh, Adele? Because I feel like I have no idea. I don't know. I feel like, you know, I don't know what to believe last that, or the fact that Taylor Swift is purposefully trying to stay out of the limelight at Kansas City Chiefs games. Now, people now are asking, where is she? All right, you ready to move on to her top

Speaker 1 41:54

five? It's time. The Outlaw candle connoisseur, yes, Rides Again, candle of the month. Man,

John Shull 42:06

I am so happy. I was, I was hoping you would have forgotten, because then I wanted to cut you off and be like, No, it's candle the month time. But you definitely, you came through. You texted me

Nick VinZant 42:19

about it, like four times about Cal, it's candle of the month today.

John Shull 42:22

Yeah, man, I'm excited. Um, so Alright, did

Nick VinZant 42:25

you bring the candle? Like you've been saying you're going to bring the candle.

John Shull 42:30

I did not bring the candle, and I'm I have a reason for that, but it's not a believable reason, to be honest. Okay, well, let's hear the reason. So my father in law was in town last week, and he stayed in the basement, which is where I have most of my candles, and he was moving around like a Tupperware, one of those big blue Tupperware bins, Mm, hmm, and set it on top of one of my candle boxes. Just happened to be the candle that was in there that I was going to be using for this episode. The the the weight from the blue box caved in the top of the other box and cracked like five or six candles.

Nick VinZant 43:07

How many wait you have a box that's just containing nothing but extra candles?

John Shull 43:12

I have two boxes and I have like, two things under my basement sink of candles. So

Nick VinZant 43:19

how many total candles Do you have just sitting in your house at any one time?

John Shull 43:23

I mean, I don't know, probably, probably a little less than 50.

Nick VinZant 43:29

You have 50 candles in your house and a little less than 50. So that really means you've got 7575 that means you have 1000 Wait, if you have 75 candles, let's assume that each one is $10 which is not true. That's $750 worth of candles that are just sitting around your house. That's right, you probably have $1,200 worth of candles around there, right? Because what's your average candle? 20 bucks?

Christian Stepien 43:56

Yeah, you

Nick VinZant 43:58

could say that's $1,500 worth of candles and your house at any one time.

John Shull 44:03

I mean, is, is somebody going to come and steal my candles?

Nick VinZant 44:10

I mean, they will. Now you want to tell me your address. Were you devastated? What was your reaction when you saw your candles had been crushed. He crushed like five, and it wasn't about like candles then,

John Shull 44:26

no, it. It was a pure accident. He didn't mean to do it. He didn't really see you. He didn't really see anything. I found it the next day, and his response was, oh, I guess I, I did hear a couple of things break, but I, I didn't think it was anything important.

Nick VinZant 44:42

What? Wow, what? He doesn't respect you as a man. He doesn't know that's basically just took the thing that you cherish most in life, crushed it, and didn't even bother to acknowledge its existence to you. Yeah, that's what he did to you. You were like, Hey, Dad. Man, look at this thing I painted in school today, and he just crumpled it up and threw away. He just crumpled it up in front of your face and threw it away. Let's

John Shull 45:09

not get into what Papa Shaw used to say, I don't think I'd have candles. I don't think I had any candles when I lived with him. And that's that's nothing against him, just the way that I grew up.

Nick VinZant 45:24

Okay, well, you see, I guess you grow up without candles. You just have $1,500 worth of candle sitting around jobs. Anyway, what is the damn candle I

John Shull 45:32

want? I think that I should get to have a friggin t shirt that says the candle connoisseur with me holding a candle with a whip. Uh, I don't

Nick VinZant 45:39

think anything's stopping you. Maybe Show some initiative.

John Shull 45:45

I don't I'm not, no, that is not something that I'm going to create, because that I think

Nick VinZant 45:49

I should have this thing and someone should just give it to me. I'm not going to put any effort in creating it. I like it.

John Shull 45:56

Yeah, duh. Me being here every Monday is enough for the people, okay? If they wanted more, they would demand more,

Nick VinZant 46:08

okay, all right, hey, man, no, you're worth,

John Shull 46:13

uh, I'm worth a lot. All right, um, so head over to BJs. You Yeah. Why is that funny?

Nick VinZant 46:26

No reason. Somebody, uh,

John Shull 46:29

go to BJs. Somebody

Nick VinZant 46:29

told me name BJ. Told me a good joke the other day.

John Shull 46:34

If you're not familiar with BJ, uh or BJs, they are a wholesaler like Costco or whatever you have around you. I don't know if you have a BJs near you, but you probably do. So they have several different lines of candles. They have one that they teamed up with Yankee Candle, and it's called witches brew, yo. So go to BJs to the deli counter first, and then stop by the candle section. There's

Nick VinZant 47:04

a deli counter in the BJs, there's slang and meat at BJs, they're

John Shull 47:09

slang and mate, um, get

Nick VinZant 47:11

your sausage and BJs, get your sausage cared for it. BJ,

John Shull 47:16

yeah. Anyways, get your Witches Brew candle three. Wick gonna run you about 20 bucks as like a kind of a black licorice cherry type of smell, but goes well so far with all the Halloween stuff we put up, and it just kind of gets you in the season. It's plus, it's kind of cool. The artwork on it is pretty awesome, and I never thought I'd find it. We are Costco members, but we got a free trial at BJs. And I gotta tell you, BJs kind of coming through on some things. So can't go wrong with BJ. Cannot go wrong with true words have probably never

Nick VinZant 47:55

been spoken like it's hard to go wrong, like even if you're not doing it, well, you're still doing it. So it really doesn't even matter, right? It All. Just keep going. Eventually it

John Shull 48:11

all changes when you get older. Um, anyways, I feel less. I

Nick VinZant 48:17

get more. Oh, boy. Um,

John Shull 48:20

I figured you would enjoy that for not only the store name, but also the candle. So that's it. Check it out. BJs, which is brew. It's a good Halloween esque candle.

Nick VinZant 48:32

Did you see the price? By the way, did you see the price? Yeah, it's

John Shull 48:34

about 20 bucks. You know, tax, probably about 22 it's it's normal price. Like you said, I have $1,500 worth in my house. So you cannot

Nick VinZant 48:43

believe you have that many boxes of candles. Don't tell

John Shull 48:46

me to put thought into something. I'm buying candles just to buy effing candles. All right, yeah,

Nick VinZant 48:52

you that's an addiction. You're addicted to just buying candles.

John Shull 48:57

I'm just trying. I just want, once a month our listeners and viewers to have the best suggestion that I can

Nick VinZant 49:05

make. How much time a day do you spend looking at candles on the internet? Like, okay, cuz I do this that when I log on to the internet for the day when I'm supposed to be working or doing something else, like, I'm going to check certain sites. Are you checking four candles every time you log on to the internet.

John Shull 49:25

No, but I'm I, I'm subscribed to, you know, like company newsletters and things so, like, anytime something comes out, I'll open it in my email and it takes me to their page. Or, you know, so funny.

Nick VinZant 49:42

It's not funny for anybody else to do. It's funny for me to do because I just can't believe it. No, do what you like. Man, whatever. I'm

John Shull 49:53

not even if you I'm not even sure how the scandals, not even sure how this even started. Mean, we probably have to go back to 2021 or something. But

Nick VinZant 50:03

oh how candle the month got started some random conversation about something. Uh, okay, are you ready for our top five?

John Shull 50:10

I am. Let's do it. So our top five

Nick VinZant 50:13

are top five least rewatchable movies and TV shows. So something that you watched, you liked it, but I you would never watch that again. She number five.

John Shull 50:25

Number five, we're going to start in the TV show realm, for me, and that is The Walking Dead.

Nick VinZant 50:30

I have never seen that, but I heard that the quality of that decreased greatly.

John Shull 50:38

Yeah, it was, you know, after probably the first or second season. It's almost, in my opinion, like it became just episode filler episodes for eight of them, and then the final, you know, the season finale, was anything that was going to happen happened, and then that was just kind of that recycle over and over again.

Nick VinZant 50:56

Oh, it's like eight episodes, and nothing that everybody everything happens at the last minute, and then it's like, Okay, start over again. You gotta watch a whole another season. Yeah, that's a little annoying. Um, my number five is uncut gems. I just can't handle that much anxiety. Like, I don't want to be that anxious again.

John Shull 51:16

I don't remember, I don't think I've seen that movie. I don't think I have or it's surprising

Nick VinZant 51:22

that it's Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett, like two people you don't think are going to be somehow great, or is Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett? And you're like, oh, they did a really good job in that movie.

John Shull 51:33

I'm sorry, did you say Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett?

Nick VinZant 51:36

Yeah, and they were both great,

John Shull 51:39

like the ex basketball player, yep,

Nick VinZant 51:42

yep, and okay. Then the comedian, they were fantastic in it. They did a great job. Never,

John Shull 51:51

huh, never, ever would have thought that. Yeah, at all. So we'll

Nick VinZant 51:55

watch it, and you'll watch it once, and then be like, I can't watch that again.

John Shull 51:59

I feel like I could put any Adam Sandler movie on my list, really, that I don't have to watch ever again.

Nick VinZant 52:06

You could make a pretty strong argument that Adam Sandler is the most, or is the most unrewatchable star, because pretty much any movie that he's been in I've never watched again. Yeah, I can't think of a single Adam Sandler movie that I've been like, I'll watch that again.

John Shull 52:27

Him, uh, and Seth Rogen are probably up there for me. Like, there hasn't been one Seth Rogen movie I've seen where I was like, Yeah, I'd like to go back and watch that again.

Nick VinZant 52:36

I would agree with that. I don't watch rewatch a lot of Seth Rogen movies either. What's your number four?

John Shull 52:41

Alright? So no one's going to believe this, but this is the Absolute Truth, if you know me, but any of the Fast and the Furious movies after the first one,

Nick VinZant 52:52

oh yeah, there's no reason to rewatch that. That's just like, dumb fun.

John Shull 52:55

Yeah, I just like you. You watch it once you're like, Okay, this is cool cars, flipping stunts. Acting is horrible. I don't need to watch it again.

Nick VinZant 53:05

You can't actually put any thought into a Fast and the Furious movie. Like, if you put any thought into that, it's like, Wait, how did somebody who was a mechanic become a super spy, right? Did they have any training? They just, they're just super spies now, okay, yeah, I would agree that makes sense. I don't have it on my list, but that's a good one. Uh, my number four is Joker. I never thought about watching that movie again, even though I enjoyed it.

John Shull 53:36

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I probably only go back to watch it, just because, you know, I want to see if I missed something. But, yeah, I could see that. Okay, number three. Uh, so this is kind of all encompassing, which isn't fair, but really any of, like, the really popular family sitcoms, like friends, Seinfeld, Big Bang Theory, like, I have no interest in going back and rewatching any of those, like, at all. I

Nick VinZant 54:06

can see that, I think that that's hard, because I think for a family sitcom to be really popular at a certain time, it also has to tap into that certain time, sure, and then once it's over, you really can't go back.

John Shull 54:19

Yeah, right. You're absolutely right. A lot of those are like, like, going back and watching full house now. You're like, well, that's kind of creepy. Like, or

Nick VinZant 54:28

like, for even friends, like, I rewatched an episode of Friends years ago because I was at somebody's house and they were watching it. I was like, Why was this ever good?

John Shull 54:39

Yeah, right. It's, yeah, it's not good.

Nick VinZant 54:41

It's not, uh, my number three is Requiem for a Dream.

John Shull 54:46

Okay, another one where I know I've seen it, but yeah, I don't, I don't tell you much about it, and don't care to, okay,

Nick VinZant 54:52

yeah, it's, it's a hard one to watch.

John Shull 54:57

Um, so my number two, once again, this is kind of a series. Uh, but any of the Jurassic Park movies after the first one?

Nick VinZant 55:05

Oh, I don't even know if I've seen him. I think the first Jurassic Park movie turned me off of all other Jurassic Park movies like, I didn't even ever need to see another Jurassic Park movie like I saw the first one. Oh,

John Shull 55:16

and it was great, right? It's like mind blowing,

Nick VinZant 55:20

right? You couldn't ever do better than that. There was never, you were never going to top the first one. Yeah. So why make it again? Never, yeah, all right. Might be one of those movie, movie franchises where the first one was the best one, and you could, not only could you not, you just couldn't ever make a better movie than that.

John Shull 55:41

Absolutely, 100% not even close. Uh,

Nick VinZant 55:44

what number are we on?

John Shull 55:46

Hey, we're on your number two.

Nick VinZant 55:48

My number two is a tie between a couple of movies because I couldn't really decide, but they're all ones that like, Oh, I couldn't watch that again. That was kind of disturbing. Uh, so my number two is girl with a dragon tattoo Black Swan and then prisoners.

John Shull 56:04

Okay, don't know what the last one is, but I've seen the first two, and I agree with you.

Nick VinZant 56:08

Yeah, those are hard. Let me make sure I got actually the right it is prisoners. I think it's with like, what's his name? Oh yeah, I could never. Maybe that's not the right movie. Oh no, that is I could never watch that movie again. I was like, Whoa. That was a lot not doing that again. Just

John Shull 56:27

yeah, just so out of the three of those movies, if you had to watch one again, if you had to, which one would you pick? Probably

Nick VinZant 56:36

Black Swan. I think was the best of them. But even then, I would be like, Oh, I'd watch Black Swan again. No, I'm not going to watch Black Swan again. Like, no, I'm good. I'm good to number one.

John Shull 56:51

Probably not popular choices, but I have two of my number one, and that is Scarface and the godfather.

Nick VinZant 57:00

Oh, you could why those?

John Shull 57:03

I just, I have no interest, and I've seen them, and I, you know, it's like, those are, those are movies where you pick up, and maybe it's because how, I'm not saying they're not well done movies, but like, I can't go back and rewatch Scarface, like I already know it all. I don't want to see dudes getting chopped up, or, you know, terrible accents, you know, or anything like, I'm over it, I've seen it. Let's move on.

Nick VinZant 57:28

But the Godfather is, like a classic in subtlety, like, that's a movie that you can notice different things each time when you watch it. So I can kind of understand Scarface, like, alright, it's, it is kind of a typical, like, type of that movie, like, oh yeah, this is what happens. Here's the rise, here's the fall, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, right? It does follow a similar pattern, but I don't know why you got the Godfather on the list. That's just what's going to get you that's going to get you insulted. Just to stir it up a little bit, my number one is Game of Thrones. The ending of Game of Thrones completely ruined. Ever re watching Game of Thrones again? Because even though I enjoyed the first six seasons, just knowing what happened in the last two means I can't watch that ruined the whole series for me.

John Shull 58:22

I mean, I think I could go back and rewatch Game of Thrones regardless, just because there's so much happening in the six or seven seasons it was on. So I don't, I don't, I wouldn't let the ending ruin me going back like I may not watch the ending again, but I would go back and watch other episodes for sure. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 58:42

I thought that I could do that, but then I wasn't able to, just because knowing, but like, oh yeah, but that's how it ended. It just had so much promise, uh, what's your honorable mention?

John Shull 58:55

Um, you know, it was really, I mean, it was really hard for me to kind of nitpick. Like, like, specific, specific movies, I can say that, um, I did put, like, any of the Avengers movies, like, yeah, comic

Nick VinZant 59:11

book movies aren't super rewatchable. You can watch scenes on YouTube, but not the movie, yeah,

John Shull 59:16

like, so then it got me thinking, what are like, really rewatchable things. It's really just kid stuff, really like Disney movies. But I also put anything that's one best picture in the Academy Awards, but I don't think that's right,

Nick VinZant 59:36

yeah. Well, those aren't really, like, generally good movies. I'm never like, Oh, yeah.

John Shull 59:45

So what about you?

Nick VinZant 59:49

Uh, Schindler's List

John Shull 59:51

is on there. Yeah, that's a that's a heavy one. That's definitely watch,

Nick VinZant 59:56

not gonna rewatch Schindler's List. I'm. Most of mine I used up in combination with other things, ones that other ones are like, Manchester by the Sea is one that I've heard melancholia is a movie that I started watching. But it was like, Oh, I'm not finishing that. That was too intense. How have you not finished that drink? Yet

Unknown Speaker 1:00:18

it's almost gone. You've been

Nick VinZant 1:00:19

drinking out of that thing like every three seconds for the last 42 minutes and you haven't finished it. What flavor? Yeah, happy

John Shull 1:00:26

now it's gone. I am actually you can't have heartburn, but it's gone.

Nick VinZant 1:00:32

Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. Normally. Here I would give my thoughts and what I really think the number one should be, but I can't do that. I can't do that in this episode because my mind is just boggled by the fact that John has 75 candles, 75 candles in boxes around his house. That's a lot of came the man. The man, there is no place else you should be going for any kind of candle recommendations, because whenever you think about that number, the man knows his candles, you.



Hobbyhorse World Champion Rosie Mulari

Rosie Mulari is the Queen of Hobbyhorsing. She’s won over 300 competitions and is one of the sport’s most popular athletes. We talk the ins and outs of riding a Hobbyhorse, the craft behind making a Hobbyhorse and why the sport is skyrocketing in popularity. Then, it’s Postcards vs. Magnets as we countdown the Top 5 Worst Travel Souvenirs.

Rosie Mulari: 01:24

Pointless: 22:03

Top 5 Worst Souvenirs: 44:50

Contact the Show

Rosie Mulari Instagram

Rosie Mulari Hobbyhorse Camp Registration

Interview with Hobbyhorse World Champion Rosie Mulari

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode, hobby horsing and bad souvenirs.

Rosie Mulari 0:22

When I go to competition, I have a specific goal that I need to make, and usually that is to win. And I'm a 300 time winner in dressage, it takes 22 hours to complete a horse. So it's not definitely that you just throw together, oh yeah, it makes everything difficult. My biggest horse, which I have, which is also my main horse, which has been with me for four years, he weighs seven and a half pounds.

Nick VinZant 0:53

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because she has won over 300 events in her sport. This is hobby horse world champion, Rosie Mullery. What is hobbyhorsing?

Rosie Mulari 1:25

So hobbyhorsing is a sport which includes hobby horses which are like these plush horses on a stick. Usually they're homemade, completely hand sewn. Hobby horse like plushies, which we connect to a stick, and then we ride them. And it might include jumping or dressage or Western, and it has many sides to it, but as short as I can say, it's a sport that involves us riding a hobby horse.

Nick VinZant 1:56

Where did it kind of come from?

Rosie Mulari 1:58

It originated in Finland, and nobody knows how it was, like invented actually.

Nick VinZant 2:04

How did you get into it? What brought you to it?

Rosie Mulari 2:07

It's a funny story. I've been riding real horses since I was six years old or seven years old. I started riding like every week, but horses have been with me for my whole entire life, like real horses. And we had this camp each summer until I was 14. And the last day we were having the camp, we had this little competition with the horses. We had to do a course that involved jumping and going over and under things and like, like, different tasks that we had to do, and I decided that maybe I should try that in real life, because I don't have my own horse. I couldn't ride the course with a real horse. So somehow I took my mother's old sock, filled it up with newspaper, put on some ears and nostrils and like, stick attached to it, and then wrote the course that I was supposed to remember on my backyard. And then a few moments back, like, when I remembered the course, I was like, Hey, this is actually kind of fun. And then a few weeks, like, went by and I was still doing that. And then I was like, Okay, this is my thing. Now, this is really good. And then I realized that there's actually a community. There's people who are doing this as well. And it just started. It was 2014 when I started my hobby horse journey. It

Nick VinZant 3:36

seems a little different. It seems a little different, right? Like, I guess the question that I think would eventually like, Okay, well, well, why? You know? Because when I see it, I'm like, Okay, well, why not just ride a real horse? Why not just do something else? Like, why do people kind of, why are they drawn to this?

Rosie Mulari 3:53

People usually ask that, why don't you ride a real horse? But it's a fact that over 99% of hobby horse destroyed real horses too. But it's it's a completely different thing. It involves different muscles. It isn't like replacing real horses. If you know what I mean, people call us sometimes they call us poor, or you cannot afford a real horse if you're hobbyhorsing. But it's people don't understand that it's a completely different thing than riding real horses, and it's not a replacement for them. It's just a completely different hobby that we enjoy

Nick VinZant 4:31

doing. My personal thing is, do whatever you want. If it makes it happy, leave people alone. Do whatever you want. Does it bother people? Does it bother people in the community that other people might be kind of like, oh my gosh, what are these people doing?

Rosie Mulari 4:46

I mean, especially when it comes to younger people, they are somehow intimidated by that, and they might even quake because of the hate. But myself, I've just grown to be like, the badass OF THE. Community, and I don't honestly care what people think about me, I'm just like, cool if you're replaying my content, and if you're hating and commenting on my posts and hating there, they're just giving me money like they're I always answer to the hate comments like, Thank you for the lunch money. Because of you, I can now order my favorite foods and I don't really care about sadly, it does affect many people in the community that people are so, like, hostile towards us. So, yeah, it does, like, I think that the community has grown in the sense of, like, not giving any F's whatsoever. But before it was even like, worse,

Nick VinZant 5:42

I could see that, right? Like, it's, it's, it's hard to do something until it becomes cool, slash popular, right? Yeah, you think, do you think that the sport can get past that?

Rosie Mulari 5:52

I definitely think so. Yeah, like, it's now, like, now that it's become more like, popular in social media, in TV and newspapers, and like overall, in real life. And the amount of hobbyhorse people have has been growing, especially this year. It's been like I've seen so many new hobbies entering to the scene. But now that I think that it's in the like place that is becoming cool because of, especially in Finland, the people are understanding, what is it about? Because I've been talking to them so so long and so heartfelt. So

Nick VinZant 6:31

the hobby horses themselves are these kind of things that people just throw together, like, no, no, no. These are taken care of. These are people's babies.

Rosie Mulari 6:39

These are like homemade many people produce them at their own home, and it involves a lot of work. I myself, I'm an entrepreneur in hobby horse making and making camps. So it takes 22 hours to complete a horse. So it's not definitely that you just throw together. It's a sports equipment, and it needs much care. Like, when you go outside and it's a little bit of, like, rain going down, usually, like, we put on some blankets so it doesn't get wet. And then when it gets wet and it's like, a little bit dirty, we brush them off. And we don't just think it's a real horse. Like, you know, those football players and hockey players have their precious like ice skates or their lucky shirts. It's almost the same thing. Like, you cannot play play football without a ball. So it's the same thing that you cannot do hobbyhorsing Without a hobbyhorse. So when you look

Nick VinZant 7:37

at the competitions, like, how is the competition? Judge? Like, what are, what are the criteria? Kind of, there's

Rosie Mulari 7:43

many parts to hobbyhorse thing, jumping, dressage and Western. And then there's like shows for hobby horses, on which one is the most like, it has the cleanest sewing, like marks, and which one is the most like, most carefully made, basically. But in dressage, which I specialize in, they usually think that, like, like, when the movement is like, ergonomical and it's not hurting you, but it needs to be elegant high like, it has to look like there's some work involved, and it has to look like a real horse movement. And usually it's like it looks light, it's supple, it's ergonomical for your body so it doesn't hurt. It looks easy, like in the dressage scene. Usually the goal is to make it look as easy as possible, because then you are doing it like correctly, and then people can hate on us, like, oh, that's looks so easy, but it isn't. It's it requires so much work. But in jumping, um, there are two specific things you can judge. There's time, which is like, who goes over the most jumps? Like the most there are, like, 12 jumps in one course, who goes over them the most quickly without, like, falling down or the obstacles not falling down. And then there's style which is like, which looks the most efficient and the most like, supple and easy for your body to do, but you still get over everything. And in western, it's, I don't really know much about that scene, but it's usually like, it looks relaxed, it looks easy, and then how you do the movements it, it just needs to be looking as easy as possible. That's the like main point in every part of like, how you're working out and training and writing,

Nick VinZant 9:40

how competitive is it? Is it super kind of a competitive thing, or is it more like we're having a competition, but this is more like kind of getting everybody together, so

Rosie Mulari 9:48

it can be both. For many people. I myself, I'm a really competitive person, and when I go to a competition, I have a specific goal that I need to make. Week, and usually that is to win. And I'm a 300 time winner in dressage, which is a lot of trophies, and I also have the world's first American Championship in dressage. But there are people who are just like because there are a lot of different things just in a competition. There are sales, tables, food, people, friends you haven't seen in years, free riding. Other people are doing amazing, like, turns when they're competing. So it's a little bit of both. It depends on the person, but overall, it's pretty competitive, and people are training for hours and hours and hours for one competition.

Nick VinZant 10:38

Can you make money off of it? Like, can, if you win the competition, can you make some money? Um, not,

Rosie Mulari 10:44

usually, like, from the competitions, but there are many, many competitions who have gift cards for presents, or they're like, prizes, and of course, like, if you're doing good, you get like, offers and deals and sponsorships.

Nick VinZant 11:03

Can you see your Instagram page?

Rosie Mulari 11:05

Oh, yeah. So

Nick VinZant 11:07

what are we watching here? Like, what's kind of going on? So this

Rosie Mulari 11:12

video is me on my weekly training session. I do a few of these a week, besides going to the gym and walking and running and swimming I work out every day. Here you see a few of the movements that we have in dressage. This is like medium trot I'm doing right now. And in the beginning there was passage and pF, which are the higher level movements. So this is just me training normally. In the My weekly trainings, these usually look almost the same. When I'm riding a hobby horse. I hobby horse train four to three times a week, and then I go to the gym every day besides Sunday, that's my rest day. I

Nick VinZant 11:58

mean, it is does look physically hard like anybody's ever done that, like, oh, that's kind of tiring.

Rosie Mulari 12:02

It requires very much muscle. The first year that I started hobbyhursing, like, for real, it was 2020 I gained 15 kilos, which is a lot of pounds in muscle. And it really shows how much it truly takes. Yeah, it's, it's a full body workout.

Nick VinZant 12:25

What? Now, what? This is a competition here, right? Yes, this

Rosie Mulari 12:29

is actually from the US for the first ever us championships. And this was my closing, um, like movements. The crowd was shouting and screaming. They were so hyped. And, yeah, it's, this is like one part of my legendary, um, like, courses or my routines. Everyone knows those in Finland. Everyone knows that, oh, now she's gonna do that. And everyone's just like, they have this tension, because it's kind of a, like, a strong choice to be doing that. And the music is kind of like aggressive and intensive as well. So it it forms a pretty, pretty good and everyone knows that. And it's almost like an iconic move, like an iconic move, because people know that I'll be doing that every single time, and it's kind of my signature move when it comes to freestyles,

Nick VinZant 13:23

then what's the signature move is which part of it I'm not

Rosie Mulari 13:27

this one where I start to go diagonal, like across crisscross from the court, and then, yeah, it's almost like, when I'm walking, the Tension is growing, and when I turn to left and start to trot like that's the move everyone knows me off like they know that I'll be doing that every time, and they still enjoy it every time, like it just fits. There.

Nick VinZant 13:53

Is there any in here that are the jumping aspect of it?

Rosie Mulari 13:57

It's a old video of me jumping I was a little kid. So this is me jumping, like, 90 centimeters. I don't know how much that is in feet, like, maybe four or 290

Nick VinZant 14:09

centimeters. So that's about a three feet. It's about three feet, I think, okay,

Rosie Mulari 14:12

yeah. So that's a double, which is 75 and then 90 Yeah.

Nick VinZant 14:19

Oh, there is two of them. I thought at first, like, like, because, just because of the angle of the camera, I couldn't see if they were next to each other or one in front of the other. So how? Okay, so if you're doing a 90, like, How high will people get up

Rosie Mulari 14:31

right now? The like, biggest jump that anyone has taken in the SM, which is the finished championships, is 142 centimeters. I think

Nick VinZant 14:45

call that about four and a half feet. That's pretty that's a legit jump.

Rosie Mulari 14:50

Oh yeah, and it's like, when you you know that Olympics on the real horses, they jump like 120 130 so. Centimeters, and then in the SM, we jump 140 many times in the high jump. So there's the people still don't think that it's a sport like that amazes me.

Nick VinZant 15:15

Yeah, does? Does the horse make it like more difficult or not really.

Rosie Mulari 15:21

Oh yeah. It makes everything difficult. My biggest horse, which I have, which is also my main horse, which has been with me for four years, he weighs seven and a half pounds, and jumping with him, like the over three feet obstacles, it's it's hard.

Nick VinZant 15:41

I'm gonna ask this question kind of directly. Do you ever like, Do people ever feel kind of ridiculous doing it?

Rosie Mulari 15:49

Not really like, when we do hobbyhorse, it's like hobbyhorse, people don't feel that. But if people who aren't doing the hobby they try it, they first, they feel really embarrassed, but after a while they're kind of warming up to that. Like, I've done loads of collabs with YouTubers and TV producers and actresses. First they were kind of like, I don't really want to do that. But then they are doing it, and then they're like, Oh, well, this is fun. Actually, this is fun, and the hobbyhorse people, like, we're not ashamed. We're we do not feel like, embarrassed or like, like, uncomfortable. It's like, it's a such a normal thing for us. And, yeah, we do not like, it's, it's normal for us, good for you. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 16:39

right. Like, this is what I like. Leave me alone and let me do the thing that I like. Yeah. Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions. Yeah, shoot them my way. Country that seems to adopt this the most. Like, what country is really into it? Finland. Finland. What? How come Finland like? What is it? Why does Finland seem to just love it?

Rosie Mulari 17:05

Oh, Finland has a lot of different, like, very weird things, um, toting your wife, competitions, heavy metallic knitting, um, throwing the boot competitions and hobbyhorse thing is, like, the least weird thing, and it started in Finland. So I think that people are very proud of it as well. So it has been a big thing here, and it still is. But other than Finland, I think that the hobby has been growing in Poland and in

Nick VinZant 17:34

the US. Do you name the horses? Yeah,

Rosie Mulari 17:38

yeah. We almost every time we do, um, I have a name for all of the horses I own, and usually I like to name my sale horses, which like, when people have kind of an emotion like tie with the horse they're about to buy and the name is good, they're more prone to buy it from you. And it kind of creates a personal aspect to that when you're naming the horses. So, yeah, yeah, we named the horses like most of the time.

Nick VinZant 18:07

Can you share the name? Or is it like, No, you don't tell people the name of the horse.

Rosie Mulari 18:11

Oh, yeah. Actually, my the horse that I have here, which is my star of the show, I have a tattoo of them. His name is MinGi, which is arrow as always song, his full name and his stable name, which is the name that everyone calls him like, for sure, is MinGi. And then I have ru day you and then I had Yona. But Yona is from, like, I sold him a while back. Um, yeah, it's like, and for the sale horses, I love to pick out names for them. I have different, like breeds that have the same, like heritage. They have different, like moms and dads, and they're kind of a like in concept, like some some horses have their names off of like the universe and the space, and other have their names on birds and metals, like copper Hawk, silver bird, Platinum bagtail and everything. Um, yo. So yeah, we kind of spent time on the names, and we like to name them.

Nick VinZant 19:21

How much do you sell a horse for?

Rosie Mulari 19:24

So my prices are from 50 to 500 euro, slash dollars, and every horse gets sold. Um, it's like I'm an entrepreneur. I do this myself. I have my workforce is me, and I'm making about $15,000 per year off of hobby horses alone. And then there are the camps, which are a completely different aspect. There are 1000s of euros in that as well sponsorships like to kids like, yeah, you can really profit off of hobby horses. Here.

Nick VinZant 20:00

Where do you think it goes from here

Rosie Mulari 20:01

in the future? I think that there, there has been talks about hobbyhorse and getting into the Olympics, but however, that's a far, far away the conversation even about that. So if we were to organize Olympics, every country has to have their own Association, which has regional championships, and like the National Championships, we have to do anti doping tests for everyone. It's it's a process. It will happen for sure, but it will take 10s of years, like 10 or 15 years, before we can even consider that. For me, it's now that I'm working with many TV producers, many movie producers, actresses, companies, big companies, and I'm filming this documentary with this iconic, legendary American like person and like there are so many things that we need to do, but I think that the most important part is now to just talk and get rid of the hate and kind of normalize it. So just just being ourselves, keeping doing what we love, keep doing what makes us happy, and we will win. We will win the hate war, but it takes a lot. So that's the next mission we have.

Nick VinZant 21:33

I want to thank Rosie so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media sites were profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, as well as exactly what hobby horsing looks like, the YouTube version of this interview will be live on September 26 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Okay, so think back to a previous job that you have had, one that at the time you were kind of okay with it, but in hindsight, you really didn't like it. How much money would it take you to go back to that job? Like, how much of an increase in wages would it take you to go back?

John Shull 22:28

And it has to be like the job that I hated the most.

Nick VinZant 22:32

No, not the job that you hated the most. Just Okay, so, for example, for me, like, I used to be a reporter in Orlando, Florida, I liked it when I was there, but now you'd have to raise my salary by about 300% to get me to go back. Like I don't think that I would do it for I mean, if it was cash money, and I really started to think about it, maybe I would go back for double, but I really think that you would have to pay me triple or more to get me to go back

John Shull 23:01

the few jobs I can think of that I have no interest in ever revisiting. I made so little money at anyways that my number is going to sound astronomical, but that's only because I made so little but it would have to be 1,000%

Nick VinZant 23:17

500% it really would take me a lot of money for me to go back to a job that I really didn't like, like, you would have to be talking about double, triple at the least.

John Shull 23:28

And I don't think any money, especially as I get older. I just, I have, I have no, you know, I have no desire to ever put myself in a situation like that ever again.

Nick VinZant 23:39

I do think it's interesting, though, how you can be okay with a situation at one point of time in your life, and then looking back on it, would never want to go back. I

John Shull 23:50

feel like a lot of it is, you know, being young and trying to get established in whatever business, or, you know, or or just trying to hold a job so you do certain things, or you let certain things go that you know people who are older, wouldn't I will say that there's one job that I I actually wish I had a do over at, um, because I royally effed it up when I was given the opportunity the first time, and that was being part of a construction crew.

Nick VinZant 24:18

How many job Wait? How many jobs have you been fired from in your life?

John Shull 24:21

Three, three jobs in my my life,

Nick VinZant 24:25

I really feel like you should get fired from at least one job. Like, if you don't get fired, you weren't really maximizing that job to your advantage, and either like not doing the work, or like trying too hard, I've been fired from four I've been so two of them, my contract wasn't renewed, which is the same thing as kind of being fired. One, I was going to be fired if I didn't just quit. I was fired, essentially for stealing alcohol as a teenager from a grocery store, which I technically didn't do.

John Shull 24:59

Yeah, if. Sure? Yeah. I was like, Sure, you didn't.

Nick VinZant 25:02

I bet that guy was so mad because he knew it was me who was doing it, and I just sat in his office. Was like, No, it wasn't me. The

John Shull 25:08

two jobs that I actually got fired from the construction and I worked at a, I don't know if they have them down in Kansas or wherever you lived, but at farmer jacks, it's a grocery store. Jane,

Nick VinZant 25:20

okay, you got fired from a grocery store. Good. Both of us have been fired from a grocery store.

John Shull 25:25

I did, yeah, wasn't for stealing. Mine was probably, I still don't understand the reason, but the shift manager that I was working under that shift walked up to me and said that I was too qualified, and I was making others feel like I was doing too much, and I was putting them down, and fired me for that. So I still don't really know what that was about, but

Nick VinZant 25:46

dude, he just didn't. Did he Did they seem to like you,

John Shull 25:49

yeah, I mean, I mean I was, I was a teenager. I was a kid. I don't know. I just

Nick VinZant 25:57

thought he was doing you a favor. Well, thinking back on it,

John Shull 26:01

I think that I was that, that employee that, you know, if there was an open lane in my lane, you know, if I wasn't helping backing, I would jump into another lane and help. Oh, if somebody I just wanted to stay busy, I was like, I was 1716, years old, 17. I just wanted to help. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 26:20

you can't try that hard at work, especially if it's a job that, like, you don't have to try this hard. You don't want to be a go getter, like, Who's the guy who can sack the most groceries? Man? Like, you're making other people look bad, and they don't like that. I

John Shull 26:33

funny, not funny story. I do remember I did overstep my place with that job probably three weeks in, and and I was stacking, like, like, in the soup aisle, and there was this pretty girl down the way, she was, like, doing cheeses or something, and she looked at me, and I thought, okay, all right, we'll see what I can do here. And I misplaced a can, and basically, like, drove the can I was holding into a bunch of other cans. And it started this chain reaction, and probably 50 cans fell on the floor. God,

Nick VinZant 27:04

so you tried to be cool and immediately look like an idiot, absolutely.

John Shull 27:07

And my blue vest and my khaki pants that were probably too short,

Nick VinZant 27:14

oh yeah, I would say that anytime people pay attention to me, there's a good chance I'm going to embarrass myself. Like, I don't think that I'm ever going like, if somebody ever said, like, do something to make yourself look cool, like I would trip down the stairs or something like that, actually

John Shull 27:26

thinking about it. I mean, the reason why I got fired from from construction was I was, I had never done construction, and I was under the table, and they give me a jackhammer and tell me to cut out a two by two square, square in the in the earth, and I didn't tell them. I had no idea how to use a jackhammer, and it was brutal. It ended up costing the crew, like, $20,000 because they had to, they had to, like, cut up a bigger part of the pavement, and it was just a whole thing. But really wasn't my fault. Once again, you know, it was

Nick VinZant 27:58

your fault. Like number one, you shouldn't have been hired for that place, but then also, you should have sent in, like, I don't know how to use a jackhammer. That's not the kind of thing that you just want to go ahead. It's not like a hammer, you know, like, that's the kind of heavy machinery is the kind of thing you shouldn't be operating if you didn't know how to use it, I wouldn't fire you because you didn't know how to use the thing. I would fire you because you tried to use a piece of heavy machinery that you didn't know how to use.

John Shull 28:24

To be fair, can you actually be fired if you're never a legal employee? I was definitely under the table, and I was definitely handed the jackhammer because one of the guys on the crew was either messing with me or he looked at me and he said, You're a big old guy. You should be able to handle this jackhammer, and that's how it all unfolded,

Nick VinZant 28:46

yeah. Well, I mean, you're not technically fired, but you're no longer employed.

John Shull 28:52

The foreman walked up to my buddy's dad and was like, I don't know where you got this kid from, but he doesn't know what a straight line is. And that was, Oh, my God,

Nick VinZant 29:00

how did you go from being overqualified at the grocery store to a complete incompetent boob at the construction site?

John Shull 29:09

You know, that's a I don't know why, but that's a great word to like use in that context. I don't know why, and incompetent boob, yeah,

Nick VinZant 29:16

that's exactly because that is that incompetent is a word that I like to use, incompetent doofus. Like I love calling somebody a doofus, a boob, those kind of things. Uh, apparently, though our sentiments are pretty accurate with the audience, most people would really want to get paid a lot more money to go back to a job they didn't like. 9% said 10 to 50% or more. 30% said 50 to 100% more. 28% said 100 to 250% more. And then 33% said 250% or more. So more than half of the audience would want 100% or more to go back to a job that they didn't like. Like, money isn't everything. It's everything, but it's not everything in a weird way.

John Shull 29:59

Alright, let's give some shout outs here. Let's start with Angela, tarcoma, Wayne delofter, lex, sarcoma. That seemed a lot different when I put that down.

Nick VinZant 30:13

Sarcoma, I believe, is a type of answer. I bet

John Shull 30:16

you it's not the last name, and my note switched it to sarcoma. So not, probably not let Lex I apologize. Uh, Kenneth Johnson, naive. Shiraz Luca Brazi, Tommy Lee, I looked it up. It's not the Tommy Lee. That would be pretty cool if you listen to her podcast. Uh, Kobe Haddad, Joseph ring guard, Brian McAllister, Rob pluah, and we'll end here with a long time listener of the show, Randy herkowitz. So appreciate all

Nick VinZant 30:50

a lot of herkowitz is also not a lot of Wayne's anymore.

John Shull 30:55

Yeah, definitely not a lot of wings. I actually don't I've never liked. Do you know any Waynes that you actually like?

Nick VinZant 31:04

No, sorry, Waynes. I know one guy named Wayne, and he was an awkward guy. He was hard to have a conversation with. And a friend of mine, thankfully, this was not me, but a friend of mine went on a road trip with him, five hour road trip, and when they got in the car, he turned off the radio and said, Let's spend the next five hours telling jokes. And it was the most awkward. I said, one of those situations I still I'm like, God, thank God I didn't go down

John Shull 31:32

that trip. Yeah, that would have been kind of brutal. Yeah, no,

Nick VinZant 31:36

I don't know a lot of good Wayne's.

John Shull 31:39

I have an uncle Wayne. Wayne. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 31:41

have an uncle Wayne too. He's cool. Yeah, Michael Wayne. He's not just straight Wayne.

John Shull 31:48

I mean, I guess mine's uncle Wayne, and I don't mind disparaging him on a public forum, because he's not the greatest human being. But all I will say is that he was named after John Wayne, so that should tell you a lot about where he was going to go in life. I

Nick VinZant 32:03

always found it fascinating that John Wayne is held up as this symbol of American masculinity and patriotism, but yet he didn't fight in World War Two and stayed home to make movies like we always the opposite of something. I know there's a lot more to it than that, but still, I always found that interesting. It's like he He got famous for making movies about a war that he didn't fight in. And

John Shull 32:25

listen, I'm going to take it well, I debated talking about this or wanting to bring it up to you, but I do think it is important, and I am curious to get your opinions on it, and we can skip past if you don't want to talk about it, but I feel like we have to bring it up because it's the biggest news story, and I think it's going to be the biggest story, maybe of this.

Nick VinZant 32:45

Well, what is it decade,

John Shull 32:46

the Diddy, the Diddy stuff that came out

Nick VinZant 32:50

that's crazy. I don't know exactly what's involved, but you and I, I used to work in the news business. You still work in the news business. Know that if Homeland Security is involved and they're like, raiding your house. You did, like you're gonna be in for it a little bit, but that's insane. He was, man,

John Shull 33:11

you know the it's huge, but it seems like it was well known, and multiple people, hundreds of people, knew about it. And once again, I'm not saying he's guilty or innocent, but like, Nick just said, Homeland Security does, doesn't just raid multiple houses and arrest you, usually for no reason, but regardless, yeah, and then what, what's really gotten me is I've kind of bought into the bullshit, you know, conspiracy theories, where people post videos and like, Oh, hey, Look at Justin Bieber When he was 12 years old, and he stayed two nights at Diddy's house. And Diddy talks about how they're gonna have so much fun. And it's like, maybe there was something there. And everyone just turned their their turn their eyes to it like that. It's terrible.

Nick VinZant 33:57

It's like the Harvey Weinstein thing. This is a part of a slightly broader rant to go all into this. This is why I don't want to hear from any celebrities about any kind of social causes, because, if it behooves them to, they don't have any more principles than anybody else you know, like I did he, like, they all knew. Everybody knew what Harvey Weinstein was doing. Like, everybody kind of knew who did he was. They were okay with it. Now, like, don't give me this show. Now, I

John Shull 34:26

hate to say it, because I'm not. I don't have a lot of facts to back up much of it, but I feel like the bigger celebrity you are probably the shittier of a person you are.

Nick VinZant 34:38

Oh, I think that that's true for just about everything. I don't think there's, there's no clean way to a billion dollars. I think the more successful somebody is, the dirtier somebody probably is, because you have to be willing to step on people,

John Shull 34:53

or sexually assault and do all these terrible things to people. But

Nick VinZant 34:58

was, was. With men, or was he with women? That's the part that I wasn't completely sure of. Or was he just doing all kinds of stuff. I

John Shull 35:08

I mean, it's, I mean, once again, I'm only going by what's trickled out in the internet, and that could be completely false, but it seems like he, he was involved with every, everybody, um, males, females, and then, and then there's clips of different celebrities that would attend his parties, and they'd put stuff out there, you know, about how crazy they were, and the orgies and this and that. And you know the Aliyah story is, is a big one. The the late, well, I guess not late. She died, like 20 years ago. But you know that she, everyone had said that she was groomed, and, you know, she died, and then it all went away, and then you start doing a deep dive, and it's like, man, maybe he really was, like, grooming her. It's just, it's insane.

Nick VinZant 35:53

And he wasn't a guy that had, like, a really an image, like a dirty, shady image, if I remember right, like, for example, Suge Knight, which may be between some maybe before some people's times, but like, Suge Knight was a guy that, like, you always knew that he was kind of a bad dude and that he was maybe running real close to the other side of the law. And there's some other people that are like that too, but I never really remember thinking that way of P Diddy, that he was a guy like that, was on the other side of the law and doing those kind of things.

John Shull 36:26

No, because I think, I think what he did, that many didn't do, was he, at the time, at least, was he got involved with philanthropy, and he had all kinds of businesses and all this other stuff. Then he was a, he's a well known producer. That's,

Nick VinZant 36:39

it's a really kind of that story is going to really keep going. Because how many people did he, did he know and that were there that are really worried right now? Because I would say it's probably a lot, and they're potentially criminally liable for all of that too. Like, if you were at that party, you're criminally liable as well. I,

John Shull 37:00

I mean, I, you know, thinking about it from a law and I'm sure we're getting boring now, but thinking of it from a law enforcement standpoint, holy cow, that investigation had to have spanned years. Oh,

Nick VinZant 37:13

that's big. And the other thing is, too, is that usually when people like clop cop a plea deal or try to get out of it. They have to, kind of rat on the person higher up, but they already got the person at the top. So if you're blow there's nobody to rat on, yeah. So like, you're in a lot of trouble in that regards, too. Because, like, well, I'll give you information. Like, well, no, we already got it. We don't need that.

John Shull 37:38

That's, I mean, and he was involved in movie, I mean, he was involved across the board, as we're you know why the Weinstein stuff was kind of segregated to one, you know, one specific part of Hollywood, Diddy was across the board with everybody. I mean, not, not, not saying this is any implicative, right at all. There's pictures of him with NBA executives and, you know, the Obamas. I mean, who knows, and all these people attended parties. Does that make them accessories? Like, well, yeah,

Nick VinZant 38:08

I think it does. I don't know how much you have to participate in it, necessarily, but like, you were there, you knew what was going on. He's not gonna be like, the only domino that falls. But that's just why I don't like whenever celebrities go on their social causes, like, I just, I don't buy into any of that stuff. Because, like, you knew what he was doing, you knew what Harvey Weinstein was doing, and you didn't say anything. So now don't get on a moral high horse about it.

John Shull 38:36

I mean, I It's, I don't want to jump on, you know, and continue this conversation for much longer, but it's like the Justin Timberlake stuff to me about how he came out during covid and said how tough parenting was. 24/7 like, who can do this? And then he gets a DUI, and now he's trying to be an advocate for, you know, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It's like, dude, nobody believes you,

Nick VinZant 39:01

nobody, nobody's you. Nobody believes you. Like, yeah, okay, it's

John Shull 39:06

anyways. I think it's interesting. We'll probably talk about the Diddy stuff for many weeks to come, because I think it's just getting started. Let's see. Oh, the other part of that that I wanted to ask you about, which is just, it's more fun than anything. So he take away the fact that he used to host these parties, but white parties where you have to dress up in anything white. I I'm a bigger guy. I don't wear a lot of white. I would never even think about going to a white party because I don't want to wear white pants. I don't want to wear white shorts, I don't want to wear white anything. You're just it's

Nick VinZant 39:41

a good party. It's just going to be all stained. All stained, like, I don't understand the practical, like, if you're not rich or a celebrity, you can't have a white party, because you're never going to be able to wear those clothes again if it's a good party, that's how you know you're rich, is when you're going to, like, it's all white, because we can afford new clothes. Like. I'm not going to an all white party, man, I need to wear these pants for at least the next two years.

John Shull 40:05

Well, that's why maybe we should have our own white party. But say like stains are encouraged. Have

Nick VinZant 40:12

you ever worn anything white in your lower half? Like, I don't own a single pair of white shorts or white pants, and I don't think I ever would like, No way.

John Shull 40:25

Not white, no. I mean, I have, like, beige and tan, but straight white other than whitey tighties. No, no whitey tighties.

Nick VinZant 40:33

And that's the only reason you can get away with white titties, because you can supposed to at least wear them. You know, where they're not going to get stained, or where they're not the stains aren't going to be seen. You still have stains on your underwear that you wear. You still have skid marks in your underwear. As an adult, you ever look back there and be like, oh, there's a stain there. I

John Shull 40:51

don't look because I don't want to know. And when laundry happens very answer, I just throw the underwear in a drawer. I don't want to know. I don't think I do, but also I don't check on a regular basis.

Nick VinZant 41:02

What's the longest you think that you should own a pair of underwear? Is there a cap on terms of how many months or how many, how long you should own a pair of underwear before you should just throw it out, regardless of what it looks like?

John Shull 41:17

No, I do have a maybe it's a general rule that I follow. But as soon as a hole develops, anywhere it's gone, it could even be like a small hole and it gets thrown out. Same thing with socks and shirts. I think you

Nick VinZant 41:34

shouldn't keep any underwear for longer than a year, like you just need to throw every year. You need to throw em all out and start again.

John Shull 41:41

I mean, comparatively to other pieces of clothing, underwear are not expensive to buy. So you could do that. Technically, that was

Nick VinZant 41:49

probably do that. Like, if the choice is buying a new shirt or basically redoing all of your underwear, you should probably buy new underwear. That's my official position on this.

John Shull 41:58

The only I expected us to talk a lot about Diddy, which we did the only other thing. We'll skip a couple here I wanted to ask you so they released a video of the Titan submersible being found on the ocean floor. Yeah, that was the one last summer that imploded. Am I? Am I wrong in thinking that no one truly gave a shit about this story, and they just keep jamming it down our throats. For some reason,

Nick VinZant 42:23

I would say you're wrong about that, because the reason is, it's like billionaires or people with a lot of money. It kind of showcases in some ways that, like, Look, maybe these people who are supposed to be held up as being so smart and so all this, maybe they really didn't think this through, because they ultimately signed up for, like, a trip to the bottom of the ocean in a thing that really shouldn't have been going to the bottom of the ocean, right?

John Shull 42:49

A tin can, man. I mean, essentially, I mean, that's what it was, yeah. I guess the only saving grace was at least they died instantly. Because could you imagine, like, drowning? I mean, you're not floating back to the surface at that point, like, I just, Oh, no.

Nick VinZant 43:04

If I was in a situation like that where, like, you were going to run out of oxygen and drown in the ocean, I'd be like, Look. So how are we going to do this? Like, you grab that one knife, I'll grab this knife, and we're going to take each other out before this end comes. Like, I'm going out my own way.

John Shull 43:20

Do you think that you you think you could stab me like that if we tried it? I don't know if I could actually go through with it. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 43:25

don't know if I actually could. I'm not sure. I don't I always think about those things, like a movie on movies and TV shows where they show somebody like hitting somebody else with a bat or a hammer. I don't think that I could do that.

John Shull 43:39

Man, it's funny not to keep talking? But it's funny. You say that because the wife and I were having a conversation about how our attitudes have changed regarding TV shows and movies, specifically with The Walking Dead, how people used to hate that show because they would spend four episodes building up to a main character having to possibly kill another main character for whatever reason, and then they just kind of skated around it or whatever. But it's like, as you get older, it's like, I don't want to have to kill my best friend if they're a zombie, like that sucks, you know? Yeah, I

Nick VinZant 44:13

wouldn't. I don't think I could. If somebody broke into my house and, like, where my family is, I think all bets are off. But I couldn't, like, walk up behind somebody and not walk up behind but somebody, like, hit somebody with like a bat, knowing, like, Oh, what's that going to do to him? I don't think I could do that.

John Shull 44:32

I think if I was in a fit of rage, I could obviously the house thing goes, my dog would get them before I ever got the chance. So I'm okay with that,

Nick VinZant 44:40

but Okay, alright. Do you have anything else?

John Shull 44:43

No, let's, let's go on to let's take a little trip.

Nick VinZant 44:47

Oh, nice or bad. I'm not sure which one. So our top five is top five worst souvenirs, just like things that people buy when they go traveling. And you're just, what is this piece of junk?

John Shull 44:59

It's. Yeah, well, I wish you had said it a little more convicted there. Like, what is this piece of

Rosie Mulari 45:05

what?

Nick VinZant 45:06

What is this? I don't buy things on vacation. I'm not buying anything on a vacation that I'm gonna actually want. Like, what do I want with that anyway? What's your number five? Uh,

John Shull 45:19

so this is the only one that I've actually bought myself, but I regret it every time, and I never wear them. And that is, like, commemorative T shirts. Oh,

Nick VinZant 45:29

I have that much higher on the list. Oh, wait a minute. Now I'm okay. I'm okay with a decent if you're gonna buy clothing, you can only buy, like a T shirt, or, if you're like, shopping at some high end place or whatever, right? You can only buy like a nicer quality one. You can't get the three for 999 or three for 1999 you got to pay more than $20 for a shirt, and it's got to be slightly tasteful. I'll go into this more, but because my have that higher on the list, my number five is a book of postcards. I don't, I don't want any postcards. Like, who are you sending these postcards to? Because if you're, if I know you well enough, like you're just sending me a picture, like, I don't want your stupid postcard. Man,

Unknown Speaker 46:20

who are you sending these to?

Nick VinZant 46:21

Who are you sending these postcards to? Like, they don't want them. If they care about you, they already know and you probably already you sent them pictures. They don't need a postcard. Like, that's just a waste of paper. Can

John Shull 46:33

you can you say, Have you ever received those before? No,

Nick VinZant 46:38

I've never gotten a postcard. I don't think in my life,

John Shull 46:43

wow, okay, that's, I

Nick VinZant 46:44

don't think I've ever gotten a postcard. That's,

John Shull 46:46

do you want me to send you one from the great state of Michigan, maybe a little bit, but I'm gonna send you one. I'm gonna send you one.

Nick VinZant 46:52

Okay, that's, yeah, send it. Make it. Make it a postcard from Detroit. And there's probably, like, a crime scene and a body in the background.

John Shull 46:59

I'll put some gun powder on it. Give you the real smell and effect, real

Nick VinZant 47:04

smell of Detroit, right? And make sure you add in like the collapse of the whole city.

John Shull 47:09

For all of you listening that may not have ever visited, Detroit is not like that at all. It may have been at one point, but it's not like that anymore. It's a great city to come visit, and I recommend it my number four. And I, I actually don't mind these things, but I'll never buy them, and I never want to be given a pair. And that's like, sunglasses,

Nick VinZant 47:31

oh, from his souvenir, yeah. Like,

John Shull 47:34

they can have, like, the city on the side, or they're always cheap, and they, even if you're gifted them, they never last more than a week, because you either lose them or they're cheap plastic and they snapped in half, and it's just and you know what I'm talking about, every major city has those, those stores, you know, like the tourist gift shops, and there's this, the six, you know, the six rotating things that have nothing but sunglasses on them. Do you

Nick VinZant 48:01

still have your third base coach sunglasses?

John Shull 48:03

I don't, and I really regret I lost him at a wedding playing drunk golf, and I regret it, John,

Nick VinZant 48:10

you must have these sunglasses that look like he was a third base coach from the 1990s looked like Boomer esiasons. Not Boomer Esiason, but like the boss is shady, brother in law kind of stuff.

John Shull 48:24

I'm starting to look more and more. I'm starting to look more and more like a third base coach the older I get. So I gotta do something here. You are starting to look like a third base coach. I gotta look at this shit, chia pet hair.

Nick VinZant 48:34

Anyways, yeah, you're starting to look at my number four is any kind of receipt, ticket stubs, boarding passes, anything like that. Like, why are you keeping that? You're gonna look at that someday. Like, why are you keeping that? Other than, like, I'm gonna put this on my wall and you just have a bunch of junk sitting around. Nobody cares about your boarding pass.

John Shull 48:59

This is I thought, I thought you may bring something up like this, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with like, a few things like boarding passes, what do they call it? The things you put drinks on bars. Oh, coaster. I'm

Nick VinZant 49:16

okay with the coaster,

John Shull 49:17

like a coaster, you know, like maybe commemorative programs or something. If you go see a show or a sport or something, I'm okay with those. I am. It has to be, to me, a good souvenir has to be something that is individual and isn't just like, hey, I walked into, you know, the dollar store just to bring you back something.

Nick VinZant 49:39

Are you fighting a hiccup or a burp? You can hear that? Yeah, dude, I can see it too

John Shull 49:45

well. I, well, I had shawarma for lunch, and my heart burns pretty bad. So I don't know if it was a throw up or, like an actual burp, but I just, I did it back down. So we're good. I

Nick VinZant 49:56

can't. I can't eat a big lunch. I would, I don't. I. Would almost go through an entire work day eating nothing but like a light breakfast, like a granola bar, and then I'll just raw dog the whole rest of the day until I get home.

John Shull 50:10

Oh, oh, anyways, raw dog. Um, well, three we're 12 years old. Um, what's I don't necessarily mind these, but these are annoying, and I feel like if you get them, the people who give them to you expect you to display them, and they're magnets. Oh,

Nick VinZant 50:31

I don't mind a magnet for my own personal thing, but don't you dare get me a magnet. I don't want anything from anybody else's trip, like, I don't want your crap that you bought. Just,

John Shull 50:43

yeah, exactly. That's the I don't even need to continue. That is the best way to put it. I don't want your crap. And I don't want, I don't want you to think that, like you were being thoughtful when you were just standing in line and they were right there, and you're like, oh, they wanted, they, you know, they want a magnet from Atlanta. That's cool. And

Nick VinZant 51:06

you probably didn't even buy it in Atlanta. You probably bought it in an airport in Atlanta. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 51:12

that's a good point. God, we

Nick VinZant 51:13

got to get something for John. Where are we gonna get him? Get him a magnet. Like, no, don't get me anything. That's to me is the present. Don't get me anything. My number three is currency, because I have no use for pesos or yen or the denari or any other thing. Like, what do you you just wait, literally just wasting money you're never going to use that. You keep it in your wallet and just bring it out and look at it at times to make yourself happy. Like it's just a total, total waste. Take a picture of it. There you go.

John Shull 51:44

I get it. I I'm okay with it, just because, once again, I feel like it's, it's kind of like one of those individualized gifts. It's kind of cool to see other countries currencies. But, yeah, what am I going to do? You know, what am I going to do with a Denari? Like, is

Nick VinZant 51:59

that, I don't know if that's a real dollar thing, but anyway, but that's not the point. Like, imagine doing somebody like foreign currency as a gift. Like, thanks for this yen. I'm sure gonna use that in Wichita, Kansas. You got me a gift. I literally have no use for

John Shull 52:16

going to the purple pig with this dollar.

Nick VinZant 52:20

Oh, I wonder. I think it closed down. Sambara, you stop. Sorry.

John Shull 52:22

It's called I so I feel like we have to say the right word there, because I don't know what you were going for, but it's, it's just a dinar. Dir, yeah, so you were, you get, you get credit for getting close enough. I think I

Nick VinZant 52:36

got added one extra word, letter to E, I believe, what's your number two.

John Shull 52:42

So I feel like one and two are pretty interchangeable. Probably we have the same mixture, I think. But my number two are keychains. Oh, yeah, that's

Unknown Speaker 52:50

a waste.

John Shull 52:51

I don't want your keychain, man. Like, not at all. No,

Nick VinZant 52:55

I don't want anything to do with it. I don't like I said. I don't know if I said this or not, but I'm gonna say it again. I don't want any gift from anyone else's vacation.

John Shull 53:05

You. You definitely seem like the kind of guy that if I were to hand you, like, I don't know, just name a city, a Charleston, you know, like a keychain from Charleston. You're going to be like, Oh, great. And then just chuck it into the ocean, or

Nick VinZant 53:19

I would like to put it directly in the trash in front of them. Like, hey, got you this Vicky chain from my trip to Boise, Idaho?

John Shull 53:27

Yeah, it's from what am

Nick VinZant 53:33

I gonna do with this? Because at least, like other things, like a T shirt, you can at least use that as a rag or, like, this is my painting shirt or my mowing shirt. Like, what am I going to do with an extra

John Shull 53:46

like, Meemaw Anderson got me this tie dye t shirt from Palm Beach?

Nick VinZant 53:51

Well, I guess I'm going to there's a new rag to clean the kitchen. Yeah. No kidding. My number two is a shot glass, okay? Like, only cool if you only cool if you're not actually of legal drinking age.

John Shull 54:05

I mean, so I don't have shot glass on my list. I haven't received that many. I guess I feel like that was like a older generation thing. I don't know. I don't, I don't receive very many, or people think I'm an alcoholic and don't want to promote it. I don't know. You only

Nick VinZant 54:25

need one shot glass in the house. Need one shot glass in the house, and that's pretty much it. How many pairs of tongs do you have now, by the way,

John Shull 54:35

I don't, I mean, less than 10, probably. Oh, you know, I actually, I did get some pretty sweet salad tongs, which I can put the dressing in the tongue, and as I'm mixing it, I can, like, release a little dressing so it evenly coats the you know, instead of just pouring it in. It's pretty it's pretty awesome, actually.

Nick VinZant 54:55

Oh, okay, that's just total, that's one of those fake. Reasons to enjoy something like no, no. This allows me to really evenly coat the salad. Or you could just use any regular tongs, and it would do the exact same thing.

John Shull 55:10

You know what? I made swordfish the other night, and it was fantastic. So get off my back about it.

Nick VinZant 55:16

Oh, really. Well, I had McDonald's, and that was fantastic. And then I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and that was really good. I

John Shull 55:26

mean, listen, we all, we all put our time and effort into other things you like to get, you know, have some extracurriculars and have a dance party. I like to spend time on dinner. It's fine,

Nick VinZant 55:38

okay. Well, I mean, one's fun, one's over in a second. Uh, what's your number one?

John Shull 55:43

Like, your love life, hey? Oh, wish

Nick VinZant 55:48

over with faster

John Shull 55:50

both parties, right? Like, we've

Nick VinZant 55:52

all been down this road before. There's no reason to make the drive longer.

John Shull 55:58

It's just, it's purely recreational at this point recreational. Yeah, all right, two minutes, my number one. And I thought I thought about putting shot glass, but once again, I don't get enough. But one thing I get plenty of that just I don't even want them, are bumper stickers. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 56:15

forgot about bumper stickers entirely. That's a good one. Like I

John Shull 56:19

don't I'm never going to display it, and they're always, usually some stupid catchphrase that's just corny as hell. And, yeah, I I get that they're cheap, and I get that they're they're kind of flashy sometimes, but, like, I don't want them. Don't give them to me.

Nick VinZant 56:36

I am not a religious person, but I've seen a religious bumper sticker recently that I thought was pretty funny. It was like, I said, I hope you follow Jesus this closely. Like, oh, that's pretty good. Yeah,

John Shull 56:47

that's pretty funny. That's

Nick VinZant 56:48

pretty good. I've seen a couple that were kind of funny. I don't think that you should ever have more, no more than three bumper stickers, no more than three stickers on your car, period. Like, I don't want to see your journey from going running the 5k to the 13.1 to the 26 point. Like, I don't

John Shull 57:08

care it kind of, it's kind of like tattoos to me. I don't care. You know, I'm not going to ask you questions. I don't look at the tattoos. I don't look at the bumper stickers and think like, oh, man, that's cool. You have a dinosaur family. You must have three kids and a husband and a great dog. Like, I don't, I don't care. Like, bumper stickers on cars make no sense to me.

Nick VinZant 57:31

I've seen a baby one though that said, like, baby up in this bitch. And I thought that was

John Shull 57:34

pretty funny. Yeah, sounds hard to get. It's gonna have a great life. Also, you

Nick VinZant 57:38

don't need more than one political bumper sticker. You don't need to have like Obama, Biden and then Harris walls or something like that. Like, if you'd only need one bumper sticker to tell me your political affiliation, you don't need to go down the whole list. I

John Shull 57:56

mean, there's a house not literally within walking distance of my house, that has 27 political signs up. So, oh,

Nick VinZant 58:04

you gotta, yeah, you only need one. And then like, Look, I know the whole rest of the way you're going. There's like, don't you don't need to tell me that

John Shull 58:11

my wife and I always joke. Because what do the neighbors think that that person there's Bob, putting out another side of kids. Like,

Nick VinZant 58:20

once you have more than one, because once you have more than three bumper stickers, or any kind of thing like, you just lose all the effect they'd be gradually becomes the total value becomes less and less and less. All right, what? What's

John Shull 58:31

your number one joke

Nick VinZant 58:33

T shirts?

Rosie Mulari 58:35

Yeah, those

Nick VinZant 58:36

are terrible. Those like you with you have a joke t shirt as a souvenir. It just makes you look like an idiot. Like, those are the kind of shirts that nobody's like, Oh, funny t shirt, Carl, they're just like, man, you're wearing that, yeah,

John Shull 58:51

and like, you're wearing it with pride, like, we're going out tonight, like, why are you wearing

Nick VinZant 58:57

can't have a joke t shirt.

John Shull 58:59

I came, I saw, I conquered Washington State t shirt. You know what I mean? Like, no, you

Nick VinZant 59:04

can't have any of that. Or, like, the B fell off. Like, no, you can't, like, you can't wear a shirt with a cuss word on it. Nobody should own a shirt with a cuss word on it, or any kind of profanity or obscenity. It just makes you look like an idiot.

John Shull 59:22

I once, I just think you wear it knowing you want attention, so I immediately don't want to give you the attention.

Nick VinZant 59:29

I immediately, if you have a one of those shirts, I immediately ignore the shirt in all its forms,

John Shull 59:35

yeah, and usually I'll be Yeah, I'll ignore you too.

Nick VinZant 59:39

Okay. Do you have any honorable mentions?

John Shull 59:42

The shot glasses I have, I don't know commonly these are, and I've received them twice now. But like towels, like be like beach towels or like hand towels that say, like, you know, the city or or the event, at

Nick VinZant 59:56

least it's a towel. At least a towel is always. Useful. Like, I would never if somebody got me that, though I would never throw it away. Because I was like, Look this towel paint. Never know when you're going to need that.

John Shull 1:00:08

Gonna go use this to clean off my sand wedge. And then this is kind of specific to me, but I've been given like, like baseballs, baseballs and footballs that have, like, pictures of the city, or, like, an attraction on it, and I'm like, I don't want these. I'm never going to display them.

Nick VinZant 1:00:28

People don't usually give me gifts, maybe because I don't want them. And they can just tell that I don't want them. Yeah, you

John Shull 1:00:34

definitely have that face,

Nick VinZant 1:00:35

yeah? Like, don't buy me anything because I'm not going to want it. I get out of here not getting things.

John Shull 1:00:42

Well, guess what? You'll never get a gift from me.

Nick VinZant 1:00:46

Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, I don't have anything in my honorable mention. Maybe it's, I actually like snow globes.

John Shull 1:00:54

You want a Detroit snow globe? No, I don't, with real dust and everything in it. Maybe I just got in the crumbling

Nick VinZant 1:01:00

city of Detroit that should be pretty easy to get. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are some of the worst souvenirs. I don't think this is the case where there's a super clear number one, because it does just come down to your opinion. I think those T shirts are ridiculous. But other people, man, they might really hate postcards. So let us know what you think you.


Hand and Feet Model Joelle Graham

From Movies and Television Shows, to High-End Advertisements and Hello Kitty Videos, chances are you’ve seen her hands and feet. Now, meet the woman behind them. Hand and Feet Model Joelle Graham joins us for a behind the scenes look at Parts Modeling. We talk what it takes to be a hand model, the secret to her money-making feet and the oddness of wearing gloves while driving. Then, it’s Kindergarten vs. Senior Year as we countdown the Top 5 Grades.

Joelle Graham: 01:17

Pointless: 15:58

Top 5 Grades: 30:14

Contact the Show

Joelle Graham Instagram

Closeup Modeling Agency

Interview with Hand and Feet Model Joelle Graham

0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode what it takes to be a hand model and the best grades

0:22

they my mother always said, I've had beautiful hands. Nail artists always say, Oh, you have such long nail beds. Doubling, as I said, is a big thing. And so, like, I did a commercial with Jennifer Aniston, and it was, I was for double I do wear gloves a lot, which looks ridiculous in California, and so I'll be at a red light, and people look over and it's like, you know, 105 degrees in Los Angeles right now.

0:47

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because she has some of the best looking hands in the world. This is hand model. Joelle Graham, so what is it about your hands?

1:18

They my mother always said I had beautiful hands. Male artists always say, Oh, you have such long nail beds. I think that's what my agent would say, like, Oh, you have very elegant hands. But I think the long fingers, the long nail beds, long nails, I have a dancer background, so I think I have like, very graceful movements with my hands. And so I feel like I get like, a lot of like, beauty products and things like that.

1:40

I don't know how else to say this. So take this with a grain of salt, right? Like, if I look at your hands are like, Oh, those look like the hands of a rich woman. Oh, okay, yes,

1:49

exactly yes. Like, so probably high end products, like I do. Like, high end jewelry a lot like I've done, John, John desant, you know, engagement rings, Suzanne Cowan,

2:00

for kind of comparison. Like, if you look at my hands, would I be a hand mod? Or, like, oh, man, your hands are,

2:08

I mean, you have manly hands. So I feel like you could do, like, you know, like Home Depot, yeah, like Home Depot, yes, exactly. I think that's the thing. I think that, I think that there is work for all kinds of hands that, having said, there are things that shoot more like, you know, there's a ton of beauty products, you know, so elegant, nice hands that fit well for beauty products. Work a lot, you know, but like, if you have a special skill, like, my partner is a professional musician and during the pandemic, when he was working in theater and everything closed down, he was out here, and I asked my agent. I was like, hey, you know I was gonna cut up his hands, because I say he has, like, I don't know how he plays guitar with these fat makers. They were like, I was like, hey, is there any work for a musician for hand modeling during the pandemic? And he's like, send me pictures. You never know. He was like, something comes up and they're asking, like, hey, we need, like, a highly skilled guitar player for this shoot. Then Absolutely, y'all, you know, I'll just keep him in mind.

3:10

So not only do you have to have kind of nice hands, but you it's better to have, like, nice hands and some skills along with it

3:16

exactly, exactly like I also I have drawing skills. So I do, one of my clients that hires me a lot is Hello Kitty Sanrio. And they have a whole YouTube channel where they do, like crafting videos and baking videos. So I do those a lot because I don't know that there are a lot of hand models with drawing skills and like with OPI, with nail stuff too. Like, even sometimes it's just print. It's not video, you know, but you want to like, they want you to hold it elephantly and polish right here, you know, you can like, how can you hold this bottle? So that it looks beautiful, you know, so that it sounds silly, it instantly, but, but it comes in handy. And also, because I, I was an actor, so, you know, just, I think that's probably one of the the more difficult things, I think for people who don't already have experience on set, I think it's like, you really need, all you really need to do is, like, have nice hands and like, hit your mark, right? So if I'm like, you know, like, the new whatever, and action, you know what I mean? Like, I have to hit that same spot every time.

4:25

It has to be exactly there to match where the light and the camera is right. It's like,

4:30

you know, you want to get the right glint. See the clinch on that. So that's not covering the label.

4:37

So it's positioning of it. Like there is some technical ability that has to go along with this a little

4:42

bit. And it's one of those things where, you know, as an actor, you're on set, you're like, oh, I have to, like, hit that mark, and also remember my lines, and also cry, no, like when you're when you're a hand model, like you already have the experience. You're like, oh, yeah, I just have to hit that mark. Great. And if he's like, Oh, can you. Wonderful, great job. And you're like, Oh, okay. And

5:03

for people that maybe, like this might sound like a foreign language too, like, when you're shooting things with a camera, they're probably on. I always get micro, macro confused, but a really small focus. So like, if you're a little bit off, the whole picture is off. So like, being in that exact spot becomes much more important than, like, Well, wait, why? Just move the camera? No, no, you gotta be right there. Yeah,

5:27

for phones too, like, I, I was on the hair model for, like, at&t, on a lot of commercials, and when you bring it up, you know, the glare on the phone, but they're going to, like, it's usually, like, upgrade screen, or, like, just a black phone, but they're going to put something in it, you know. And so if that glare is in the wrong place, or whatever you they won't be able to do that, you know, in post. So,

5:49

so how did you like, how did you get into this? Did you know, like, were you destined to be a hand?

5:57

I mean, I was, I was an actor. I studied musical theater in college, and I went into theater, and I toured a lot, and then I came out here on the West Coast, and I stayed after being on a Broadway tour and the commercials as an actor and stuff. And I on set one time a woman was like, because, you know, if you're actually in the virtual sometimes they'll use your hands for close ups, whatever. And I remember a DP or something saying, like, Oh, you have great hands. You should be a hand model. And I was like, because I didn't really know that was like a thing. I thought, well, like, maybe, like, real models, you know, fashion models, whatever, also obviously do the hands. And some of them do, um, but it's a very specific thing, because, you know, having like, the face you want always doesn't equate to having the hands they want for, you know, especially for like, fashion and things like that. And that's sort of how I fell into it. I didn't think it was a thing, but then, like, I started to ask around, and I heard, oh, people just do hand bottling, their hand bottling agents. And so what I ended up doing was, like, compiling a little video of, like, a lot of the commercials and like films I had done where they teach my hands doing something. And work started coming in pretty quick after that. So that was just sort of how it happened.

7:05

Okay, put all humbleness aside, just for, like, our perspective. So, like, on a scale of one to 1010, being the highest. Like, where are you? Kind of in the demand scale of hand models,

7:19

I don't know where I am and and the demand of things I do, you know, like a good month for me is, like, I'm working like, four or five times, four or five shoots, you know. So I'd say that's pretty, pretty average. So like,

7:32

kind of, like a regular, full time kind of living thing,

7:36

it pays really well. I mean, I just to give you a better idea, maybe on the low end, you're making like 800 bucks for like an eight hour day, or like 600 for four hours. But like on the higher end, like I think I did like a weekend shoot for commercial that, like, ended up making 10 grand.

7:57

So what is it like? What what is the company need a hand model for like is in the sense of like, okay, if you use my hands instead of yours, the product's not going to sell. Like, is that how they look at it? Well,

8:11

I think that it's just like in the close up shots. You know, you want everything to look good, especially for beauty and that sort of thing. Like, you want it so you want a nice hand that can hold things well. So I do think that's, it's really important to have, like, you know, a good looking hand holding the product the company wants that

8:31

it sets a tone for who you think is using the product.

8:36

Yeah, it's like, they want someone who's like people want to be or people, you know what I mean. The other thing too is, you know, doubling, as I said, is a big thing. And so, like, you hire a hand model on set, say, like I, I did a commercial with Jennifer Aniston, and it was, I was for double, right? And it's not because she has perfectly lovely hands, but they pay her a lot more than they pay me, right? So it's just easier for them to hire me. Yeah,

9:04

it's a lot better to pay time and a half on 100 bucks an hour than 1000s of dollars an hour. Does doubling happen a lot, or is that more? No,

9:12

that's a big thing in industry, for sure. Doubling I just did. Can I say this? I think so, because the trailer's out Ariana grande's Hands in, like, a couple campaigns for, I don't know if I'm gonna say the products, but the products that are, like doing campaigns along with the wicked film that's coming out. Um, so I was her hands in, in those shoots. You know, had done gross I'd done Natalie Portman. I'd done, I did a bunch of Jergens ads for a long time, and it was Leslie Mann. I did an IHOP commercial, and I think she's she wasn't there. My shoot was on a different day, but she was in the main part of the commercial. And then I did the hands with the close up the pancakes.

9:55

So now I know you do hands, but now do you do other parts as well?

9:59

I just. Feet pretty often. Um, that's usually choose,

10:02

is feet any different than doing hands?

10:05

I mean, there is an acting as, I know it sounds stupid, but there is an acting aspect to all of it, because the energy you emits, you know, comes through in your parts, you know, as you're speaking and everything. So there is something, you know, like, that was a very sexy commercial. And so, like, you know, if you just kind of, like, you have to think you do it with your whole body, but they're just doing your feet, you know, yeah, like, often times, like, I'll, you know, if you watch me doing it, like, I'm acting in my face and my whole body, but they're just shooting the feet, you know, because it it reads,

10:39

does the feet thing get weird? Though

10:43

it can well, but the seat too. I mean, I have nice feet. And I think obviously a lot of people who do foot modeling have nice feet, but even on camera, feet are just kind of weird, and people don't look at them that much. I have really, I have really long toes, which my partner makes fun of. He says, I have alien feet. I was like, these alien feet make money, dude,

11:03

it's a good response. Um, are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions. Sure. Is there someone who is considered the greatest hand model of all time? There's

11:13

this chick who I think was the first hand metal I knew about, and she had been doing it for a really long time. I'm gonna forget her last name, and I started following her on Instagram, and it's like Adele Adele something, but she's one of those hand models who's worked on both coasts for a really long time, and I, I feel like there would like a lot of articles and stuff done about her. You know, that's how I sort of knew the hand model was a thing in itself. Adele Udo, yeah, yeah.

11:42

Maybe that's it. How much does the complexion make a difference? Is there, like, a complexion, like, Okay, if you have this complexion, oh, you're getting a lot of work.

11:50

I think, like, all of these skin tones were, like, really a big trend for a long time, because it looks good on camera, you know. And I do think there's a lot more for African American skin tones and Asian American. I'm part Filipino, so that's sort of where my olive, olivey tones come in. Indian I know there's a lot of East Indian cam models in my agency, and so I think darker skin tones are really trending right now, but it's like with everything in the industry, you know, trends change. So I don't think there's one particular. And again, with doubling, you know, you you need all kinds, you know, because there are celebrities of all kinds, and they're doing commercial and they need a hand double. So

12:35

are your hands insured? They're not. But I was recently wondering

12:39

if I should do that? Um, yeah, that is something I should do. Maybe because, yeah, that, you know, if something would happen to my hands, you know, that would be a

12:53

problem. Do you like specifically not do certain things? I'm

12:59

very much a DYI girl with everything. So I do a lot of things, but I have taken a lot of protections, you know, like, I do wear gloves a lot, which looks ridiculous in California. Um, I'll be, like, at a red light. Always driving. I have my gloves. And because you're the sunlight through the windshield, you get so much sun, right? And so I'll be at a red light, and people look over and it's like, you know, 105 degrees in Los Angeles right now, and always driving the other day with my gloves at the red light, somebody looks over at me and they're like, I'm like, yeah, yeah.

13:32

Look away. Look away. These hands make money, man, leave me alone. And

13:37

so I've always felt like really silly doing that. But now I do it, you know, cooking, like always, like frying stuff, you know, the oil will splash up or whatever, and I'll be like, oh, man, like that, a little burn. And I have, like, a regimen now, like, I know, like, madderma skin cream is something I use all the time when I get like, a scratch or something, because it heals things up really easily. A girlfriend told me about that she got it when she was pregnant for stretch marks. She's like, it's so good. I have also the cat, so an occasional cat scraps or something, you know, and cat when you're a fan model, I love cats, and I love cactuses, which is like, should be like, a total No, no.

14:20

I have to ask you about, like, the gloves, though, like, are we talking like you're wearing mittens around? Are you just, well,

14:26

like, my I have like, a pair of, like, leather driving

14:30

Oh, so it's not like you got like, big kitchen mittens. Just

14:36

that would be hilarious if I wore like five holders around. You

14:39

know what, though, but I used to live in Arizona, which was obviously incredible. Incredibly hot, and people would do that. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, you'd see people like, because you get in the car and your steering wheel's so hot, yeah, but so that's pretty much all the questions that I got. What's kind of coming up next for you? How can people learn more that kind of stuff?

14:56

Well, I guess you can follow me on Instagram. I'm always like posting my. Hand modeling stuff there. I'm Joelle Brianne, J, O, E, L, L, E, B, R, I, a, n, n, e is my instagram name? Um, I have a Hello Kitty shoot coming up soon. I don't know. Like, like I said, the industry ebbs and flows. Like, August was crazy busy. Even after Labor Day, it kind of slowed down. So I'm kind of like, oh, I don't really know what's next. Other than that, Hello Kitty shoot, where I'll be drawing Hello Kitty character.

15:28

I want to thank Joelle so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media account. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of joelle's hands plus an extended version of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on September 19, at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Scholl and get to the pointless part of the show, outside of your family. How many people know your middle name? Many

16:07

actually, because I have a kind of a peculiar middle name, so if you hear it, you usually don't forget it. It's Euclid, isn't it? It is Euclid. Yes,

16:19

I don't think more than 10 people know my middle name, even including family. I

16:25

know it, but I think, think I've forgotten it. Is it Anthony

16:28

no kazmer? It's a Polish name, named after

16:33

my grandfather. What's my wife's middle name? Even every girl

16:37

that I've ever dated or been in a relationship with, I should actually just say every girl I've been in a relationship with, including my wife, has had the middle name Michelle. Every girl, every single one, it's not a lot, but every single girl that I have been in a relationship with has had the middle name Michelle, well,

16:56

and that name almost ended. My wife and I's first date before it even got going. So, oh,

17:04

wait, what? Why Michelle call your wife the wrong name.

17:09

So I was pseudo dating another girl named Michelle when I went on a a date with my wife, and while we were sitting at, you know, dinner, I said, Well, Michelle, it's been really nice to getting to know you. And I tried playing it off that, you know, I was nervous. And for anyone who knows my wife now, Melissa, you know that she knew, she mean, she knew exactly what had happened, but tell you what I did. Went home and ended things with Michelle because I knew that my Melissa was going to be a keeper.

17:45

Yeah, you can't really date people with similar names. There's just way. There's just way too much of an opportunity for a mishap I have also in a previous relationship called the new girlfriend by the old girlfriend's name didn't go, didn't go over. Well, it was like she almost got in a car accident, and I yelled the old girlfriend's name on accident.

18:08

So here's something else to make fun of me about. I was down, or I was outside cutting some some branches off of a large tree we have, and I had an ax, and I was feeling very manly about myself. Okay, alright, good. Well, my neighbor comes over, who I've talked about on this podcast before. God love him, and he brought me a Sawzall because he said it looked like I was struggling. Oh, you

18:34

had another man tell you that he thought you were struggling with an ax.

18:39

Well, his his exact words were, you've been out here for a while. You must be tired. I have a Sawzall. But he already had the saws already. It wasn't like, Hey, I have one too, by the way, but it wasn't like, Hey, do you have one? Do you need one? He was just like, hey, you know, use my sawza He brought an extension cord to plug it into a power outlet on the side of my house.

19:02

Okay? Was he being friendly, or did he legitimately realize that you were struggling?

19:07

I first of all, first off, I don't think I was struggling. I was sweating, I was panting. But, I mean, what

19:13

were you trying to do? Let's, let's get the parameters here and decide, let's find this out. Okay, so you were trying to do what

19:21

cut uh, trying to trim a tree. I guess you could say because with an ax? Well, I because I didn't know where my, god damn it, I didn't know where my sawzall was. And okay,

19:32

there all right. So look, I'm gonna just keep a strike. I'm gonna keep a tally. Okay, so that's Strike one. Man should know where his tools are. So that's Strike one.

19:42

My wife had made me angry because she had said, letting

19:46

this situation get letting this situation get to you. Strike two,

19:50

I had a chainsaw, and she told me the branches are too small for a chainsaw. And I was like, I don't think they're that small for a chainsaw. So let me got into a little bit of a spat. Yeah, I grabbed

20:01

having somebody else tell you how to operate your tool, strike three, grabbed a

20:05

grabbed an ax, and I said, I'm gonna go cut this.

20:10

Well, wait a minute. You were, did you were you gonna try to actually cut down the tree, or were you just gonna try to, like, swing the AX up above your head and cut the tree? Well, that's what I

20:18

was doing when I was well, that's not gonna work. It did work. I got like five good size, you know, limbs down.

20:25

There's a difference between something working and doing something enough that it actually starts to work. I

20:30

can tell you, though, if you've ever done that, the whole sheet, the whole tree shook and was just coming down at me like it wasn't smart.

20:40

How many swings of the AX did it take you to cut through each branch off?

20:46

I mean, I don't, I mean, I'm gonna say between 20 and 40

20:50

to cut through each branch. Yeah. I

20:52

mean, they were, it's a pretty thick I'll either take a picture and post it somewhere so people can look, including yourself.

20:57

I don't, I Is it a giant redwood? Is it General Sherman out there, the biggest tree in the world. Because, okay, 20 swings for that. If you're talking about cutting through a part of a tree that was too small for a chainsaw, and it's taking you 40 things with an ax,

21:14

do, okay, okay, oh,

21:17

that's like, that's three strikes, right? Now, you're at six. That's three strikes individually, that's

21:22

fine. I don't think anyone cares about this. I just wanted your opinion. Yeah,

21:27

dude, that's your bad, right? Because here's okay to sum up, here's where you were on. Number one, you lost your tools, not paying attention to where your tools are. Number two, you weren't using the right tool for the job. Number three, obviously, your neighbor had to step in like another man. Had to see what you were doing and say to himself, Oh no, he's embarrassing all of us. The way that he's doing this, he's hurting the entire gender. I've got to step in here to make sure that everybody else in this neighborhood doesn't decide to swear off men just because they look at him and say, Wait a minute. That guy is not doing, is doing such a poor job. It's reflecting on me, it's like a really terrible car showing up to a car show, and then everybody else is like, no, that car can't be here because it's bringing everybody else down. That kind of sounds like what you were doing with this law and work?

22:16

Sure. I mean, I was, I was actually enjoying it. It was, if you ever swung an ax, it's, it's very therapeutic,

22:24

very manly, right? It's, it does make you feel like a man. I have an ax in my room. Actually, literally, have an ax under the

22:33

bed. Do you still have the katana in your trunk?

22:36

I do. I have a ninja sword that I bought while inebriated, that I thought that was going to be a good idea, but I didn't want to have it in a house full of a eight year old and a five year old. So I put it in the car. So I have a ninja sword in my car.

22:50

Wow. Well, anyways,

22:52

can you imagine if somebody, like, there's a road rage situation, and somebody's like, Come on, let's go and I go to the back of the car and bring out a ninja sword.

23:01

No, I actually that's kind I don't want to say that's a fear of mine. That's one of the reason why I have, like, parking lot anxiety is because I don't want to get into, you know, a skirmish with somebody, and next thing I know, they're busting out a sword. Could

23:16

you imagine if you're like, Hey, buddy, you cut me off, and they turn around, open up their trunk and bring out a ninja sword. No,

23:24

that that would be terrifying to me, because, for one I'm not going to get away from them. They're probably going to run faster than me. Oh, catch you. I think that's no once again, I feel like I have to put a disclaimer on this. I've never been shot, stabbed, whatever, but I feel like being stabbed or or hit by a sword is probably one of the most scary things that could happen. If

23:49

I saw somebody coming at me with a sword, and they started to swing the sword at me, I think I would actually die before it even made contact, like, just the idea of being hit by the sword like I would just die mid swing, sure they wouldn't even have to hit me. Uh, back to our poll results, though I asked people, How many Okay. The question was, how many people know your middle name? 35% said one to five people. 32% said five to 10. 16% said 10 to 25 and 16% said 25 plus. So really, there's not that many people who probably know someone's middle name.

24:33

I just feel like, like it's kind of like no one really cares. Like, why do you need to know someone's middle name. I You just don't need to know

24:42

it. Why would you want to know their thoughts, hopes and dreams? It's about knowing who somebody really is, a part of somebody. And you I'm gonna

24:50

go part of them. I'm gonna go on a limb here. And so I'm pretty dumb, but I don't even I think if you got rid of everyone's middle name wouldn't matter. No one would care or miss them.

24:59

I. Mean, there's a lot of people probably named John Scholl like think about all the people named like Josh Smith. You gotta kind of have some way of demarcating them.

25:10

Yeah. I mean, there's probably only one Nick vinzant, though I've

25:14

never actually seen another one. I've never actually seen another one that had the same name as I did. But anyway, let's move along. Uh,

25:22

alright, let's give some shout outs here. Shelly shout outs, outs, outs. Someday, I'm going to get like a good intro to this. It's only been 195 episodes, but let's see Connor, Connor Johnson, Bob Amadon, and Joe tarkama, Joe zario, Joseph ring hand, naive Shiraz, Johnny Indigo. Don't think that's a real last name, but it's pretty cool nonetheless. Sammy Garcia, Tommy Lopez, Ken Smith, Natalie vallando and Frank Gill congratulations. You get nothing except me screwing up your names this week. So thank you.

26:12

What an honor. What an honor.

26:14

Uh, Tito Jackson died. Rip who's Tito Jackson? Jesus Christ. I

26:20

don't know who Tito Jackson is. That's not like a famous name that I'm supposed to know. Is he the father of is he Michael Jackson's father? Like, I don't know who Tito Jackson is. I know the I know there's I understand that there's a Jackson Five and that they were very famous. The only one that I know is Michael. I don't know Tito Jackson. It's like that common knowledge that Tito Jackson is, who is he?

26:44

I mean, he's, he's, obviously, I mean, where do you want me to start one of the Jackson Five? He's, you know, obviously. Let's see. Okay, let me see if I can do this. So it's Michael Jermaine.

26:58

Oh, Janet. I know Janet Jackson, don't go, like, Look, I'm not going all the way down there to get to Tito Jackson. Tito Jackson, I'm sorry. I'm sure he's a great something. I'm sure a lot of people like the guy, but I you,

27:15

but you do know that that Tito Jackson, or Janet Jackson, was not one of the Jackson Five, though, correct, right?

27:21

But she is, is she Michael Jackson's younger or older sister? She's gotta be his younger sister. Yes,

27:26

I believe she's was is the younger sister you you're the only person that I've talked to, and I've talked to at least 10 people about TV. You talked

27:36

to anybody under the age of 52,

27:40

people who at least knew who he was and what he was involved in Tito Jackson and the last person we talked about last week dying, which is James Earl Jones on the same wavelength.

27:53

No, they are not, not Tito's

27:57

not up to James Earl Jones's pedestal, but they're at least in the same realm. I feel no,

28:07

not at all. If James Earl Jones is a level one, Tito Jackson is probably like a four or five. Um, wanted

28:16

to ask you, what is the best? In your opinion, the best era of clothing like decade, decade wise. So and I obviously there's plenty of decades that you and I have been a part of, but I broke it down into three, the 70s, the 90s or now, which decade really?

28:35

Yeah, 100% I would 100% go with now is the best time of clothing because I can wear pants to work that look exactly like dress pants, but are actually like workout pants. And it's amazing. I can wear stuff to work that is essentially like. It looks like it's dress clothing, but it's basically like gym clothes. So now, because of the comfort and because of the ease of everything.

29:02

So once again, this has a story. I'm going to a wedding on Saturday, and it is 70s themed. Gosh,

29:08

let me go ahead and tell you how long that wedding's going to last. If you're doing any kind of themed wedding, the over under on your relationship is five years.

29:19

I you know what? I'm not going to comment on that. I wish them the best, but I

29:23

say it if you're, if you're having a themed wedding, that relationship ain't lasting more than five years, no, because you, because you're getting married around a shared interest at that time of your life. And you change as a person as you get older. And so that theme that you all kind of agreed upon, upon and coalesced around, may no longer apply as you get older, you might not be that same person, and that's why I don't think that the theme things work for that kind of stuff. Good

29:52

use of the word coalesce, by the way,

29:54

I did, well done. I also used another word, I think I used divergent. Oh. Oh, aggregate. I've used the word aggregate today, coalesced. No,

30:04

no one really believes it, though, so it's fine, uh, or believes you saying it, um, that's about it. That's all I had this week. Good, good, good conversation. Okay,

30:13

alright, so our top five is top five grades. So we're talking about, like, kindergarten, third grade, fifth grade, those kind of things. What's your number five?

30:25

So I feel like this may be too high on the list, but I also don't know where to put it, because it's probably the easiest grade, and that's kindergarten. So that's my number five.

30:35

You have kindergarten is number five? I

30:39

do just, just because it's like, the, you know, it's, it's a lot of people, it's their for a lot of people, a lot of kids, it's their introduction to school. It's fun. You really don't have any real responsibility, but, like, you're not doing a whole lot. You're just, you know, it's kind of like just a glorified daycare to a certain degree.

30:58

My number five is second grade. I think second grade is great because you're kind of figuring things out. You're kind of establishing yourself a little bit, but you don't really have any real responsibilities, like nobody's really expecting anything from you. You're in second grade. But also you're in second grade, you can kind of venturing on your own a little bit with no real repercussions for mistakes.

31:22

Uh, my number four is the ninth grade.

31:27

Oh, freshman year,

31:29

yeah, because you know you're there, you've made it, you're in the you're in the show, but, like, you're just in the show. And it's probably going to be a real rough year, even if you're one of the cool kids, while you try to adapt to everything, but it's, it's one of those grades, or maybe the only grade like that, which is the ninth grade, where, like, this is it, like, after you go, you know, you're you're in the same building for four years. I guess some high schools are 10th grade, but I'm going nine through 12. Like this is it, once you hit the 12th grade, you're done, man, life is going to hit you.

32:03

I would actually say that I think being a freshman year is one of the worst. I think that's one of the most awkward times of your life.

32:11

No, I don't disagree with that. I think it's awkward. I think it's but I also think it's exciting. I think high school provides a lot more opportunities than say, you know, junior high or or whatnot. So, yeah, it's awkward, it's scary, but it's also exciting. Like you're, you're on your way to to being a full fledged teenager.

32:31

My number four is middle school. I feel like sixth, seventh and eighth grade are all kind of the same. Okay, there's not much separation. I don't think there. It's kind of all just waiting to go to high school. You're not in elementary school. To me, like sixth, seventh and eighth grade all kind of fall into the same realm.

32:51

Okay, I we'll come back to that. My number three is the 12th grade.

32:57

That's my number three is also senior in high school, because,

33:01

you know, I think a lot of seniors, especially nowadays, and I can't speak for them, because obviously I'm not a senior of today's times, but regardless, I feel like there's so much nerves and angst and, you know, you don't know what's what's going to happen, and you're saying goodbye to your friends, and if you go away to college, and it's Like a very worrisome grade, but also it's like what you've been building 12 years towards.

33:25

I wonder how much it's different for people who are seniors in high school now, because when we were at least when I was a senior in high school, you were kind of an adult as a senior in high school, it wasn't, I don't think that you're really an adult now as a senior in high school, like, people don't look at you the same way, but as a senior in high school, when I was you were an adult, and you were kind of treated like an adult. When

33:47

I was a senior, it was like, kind of half and half, you still the kids that were very immature. Then you had the other kids that, like, already had jobs that, you know, yeah, were already smoking and had beards. You know what? I mean,

33:59

I would not be surprised if someone made an argument that a senior in high school now is equivalent to a college senior or a senior in high school in our day is now what a college senior is today, viewed in the same way that you're kind of starting your life a little bit.

34:20

Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I could be completely wrong, but I'll agree with you. What's your number? Uh, oh yeah, you said your number three, that was a 12th grade, right? Yeah, yeah. So my number two, and this might be a cop out, but it's 11th grade.

34:37

Oh, I can. I actually, really, really thought about putting a junior in high school too. That would probably be my best year. Honestly,

34:46

yeah, I feel like that is most people's best year is the junior year because you're an upperclassman, but you don't have all the worries of being a senior yet. For a lot of people who go to traditional high schools like. That's when you play varsity sports for the first time as a junior. Or, like, you know, if you're in plays and stuff like, that's your first big performance. So, yeah, junior, junior is pretty important here.

35:11

Okay, yeah, I forgot about, I didn't know about the play angle. Didn't think about that.

35:18

You're looking at Buffalo Bill here, so be Be careful, right?

35:20

Like, like, it doesn't look I'm not trying to make any light of anybody who's in theater or anything like that. I'm making fun of John being in theater. Like, it's not other people doing theater or drama, it's you specifically doing theater or drama. My number my number two, is a junior in college. Okay, I think that's a great year, because you're probably turning 21 you've got a lot of responsibility, you're starting to kind of get things together, but you don't have the full thing yet, like you can still I think that is like peak fun of your life in terms of just going out and enjoying things. Is a junior and junior in college?

36:01

Yeah. I mean, I don't have any of the college years on here, because I just went grades instead of, like, 1314, 15/16, but I don't disagree with you.

36:13

What's your number one?

36:14

The sixth grade? Sixth grade. Yeah, because you're why, because you're still a kid. You know what I mean? Like, that is the year I feel like, once you get into middle school, like, that's when you, I mean, that's when most kids start hitting puberty. Your voice changes. You start growing things, you know? You start being really inquisitive. Like, you're still a kid in the sixth grade, and you're innocent and you're dumb and everything's still awesome, you know, like it's just and then once you get into middle school and high school, the gloves are off.

36:49

Would you agree with this statement? Do you think that kids today are expected to be older, when they're younger and younger when they're older? Like we put more responsibility on kids when they're younger, and have started to take off responsibility on kids than when they are older. So like, what we would expect from a second grader is more, but we expect less from an 18 year old.

37:15

I don't think less from older. I do think by far, with you and I having younger children, that there's so much more expected of them. And I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeonal man, but like the fact that, like, my kids bring home an iPad every night. I mean, I feel like social media and YouTube and things like that's only led to them, like, getting older faster. And I know that may not make sense if you don't have children, but if you do, makes complete sense.

37:44

My number one is kindergarten. I think kindergarten is the best year. I just remember getting snacks and taking naps.

37:53

I mean, yes, it is. I mean, that's why it's on both of our top five lists. Yeah,

37:58

I think it's number one. Do you have anything in your honorable mention?

38:02

I mean, not, not. I mean, I have the first grade, but that that's really kind of like a kindergarten. I also, well, I did. I did scribble out the eighth grade, but because, you know that's like you're going into high school, then you know what I mean, like it's, but

38:19

see, I went, I transitioned schools when I went into high school. So freshman year for me was not like a great experience because I was going to a new school, yeah?

38:29

Well, that's a whole nother level. That could almost be a whole nother top five. Like, what grades would be the worst grades to transition to a new school, to Oh,

38:39

freshman year? I would think, yeah. I would say freshman year of high school would be number one.

38:44

There's a whole movie about that now, inside out too, or whatever it's called, inside out that franchise.

38:49

Oh yeah, I don't watch that stuff. I'm an adult. I watch intelligent programming, like documentaries.

38:55

Oh yeah, I'm sure you do. Oh, okay, that's going to

38:59

go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out and let us know what you think are the best grades. I would really go back to junior year. I think that's the best year, either junior year or kindergarten. I.




Sports Betting Expert Dr. John Holden

Over the last decade Sports Betting has grown from an illegal activity run by bookies and organized crime to a $100 billion dollar industry run by powerful Casinos and Political Lobbyists. Sports Betting Expert and Gambling Researcher Dr. John Holden has studied that change. We talk the influence of Sports Betting on Sports and Society, how the Gambling Industry gamed the system and the scandal that could bring it all down. Then, it’s Chili vs. Apple Pie as we countdown the Top 5 Fall Foods.

Dr. John Holden: 01:22

Pointless: 27:46

Top 5 Fall Foods: 43:44

Contact the Show

Dr. John Holden Twitter/X

Interview with Sports Betting Researcher Dr. John Holden

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode, sports betting and fall foods.

Dr. John Holden 0:21

We think that the leagues knew that their best customers, the people who watch the most sports, are betting on it. So the amount of money being wagered is in the 100 billion dollar range. You know, one of the things I don't think people want to admit is that we have undoubtedly had fixed games over the years that we don't know about.

Nick VinZant 0:46

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he studies a $100 billion industry that is having a massive effect not just on sports, but society. This is sports betting researcher, Dr John Holden, when we look at sports betting, how has this affected sports it's a little

Dr. John Holden 1:26

bit of a chicken in the egg. Sports and sports betting have always gone hand in hand. If we look back to, you know, like even ancient Egypt, people are betting on sports. So this is not something new. It's only really new in a legal environment in the US. But this has been going on for 1000s of years, and really almost every ancient culture has indications that people were betting on games of some type. So this is really sort of this modern idea that this is something prohibited and taboo. Do

Nick VinZant 2:02

you think that it has changed anything now that it's legal? Certainly,

Dr. John Holden 2:07

anyone who watches television, listens to the radio, reads print media, has noticed things have changed. The advertising of commercials is incessant, and it's really been over the top. So I think, you know, even for non sports fans, they're being inundated with sports betting content. I think when we look at how it's changed sports some of the things that we see is some of the negative externalities that come with sports betting. And, you know, sports betting can be an emotional experience for some people, and some people do not let that out in a healthy way

Nick VinZant 2:48

before it was legalized, did leagues kind of secretly embrace this? So

Dr. John Holden 2:52

that's kind of one of those. I don't know if I want to call it a conspiracy theory, but, you know, it's something that people like me who study this from an academic perspective, we think that the leagues knew that their best customers, the people who watch the most sports, are betting on it. And you know, it's fairly intuitive, when you think about it, right? Who's most interested in sports? Well, people who have their own money riding on the game. So we've known for years that sports bettors, fantasy sports players, they consume more sports the the leagues are multi billion dollar enterprises. They have research teams that are as good as research teams at any top university in the country. So they undoubtedly had knowledge of this. I think, you know, the the opposition to sports betting for a long time was okay, we don't want this to roll out in a fashion where we don't have a say in the control over it. Where

Nick VinZant 4:03

are we kind of with legalization right now? Is this legal everywhere? Is this legal for every sport? Or where do we kind of sit?

Dr. John Holden 4:09

So we're legal in 38 states, DC, Puerto Rico, but we don't have legalization in California or Texas. So when you're looking at much of the country as legalized sports betting, but there's still some sort of big places out there with huge interest in sports that don't have legalized sports betting. So we are approaching sort of the adolescent years of sports betting in the United States, and as we're maturing as a sports betting market that's legal and regulated, we're starting to see some of the negative consequences that come with sports betting that I think a lot of people really. I overlooked in the rollout of sports betting, or downplayed sort of you know, thought that maybe we would be different than what happened in the UK or in some countries in Europe Australia, where we could roll out sports betting in a way that doesn't result in increased calls to gambling helplines and things like that. And we're starting to see that we aren't exceptional. And this is happening, and unfortunately, sort of, one of the great downfalls of this rollout has been the lack of resources that have been allocated to those issues. Why wasn't

Nick VinZant 5:39

there a better plan for it? Like, why didn't we kind of have things in a row? Did we not understand it? Did we just not do it? Like, why was it a kind of in more anticipation? In that regard,

Dr. John Holden 5:51

we came into sports betting through two, two sort of key events. The first was, we didn't get sports betting through the federal government lobbying and repealing a law. We got the Supreme Court striking down a federal law that had frozen sports betting as it existed in 1992 because the Supreme Court struck it down. We didn't have this federal lobbying process where we get uniform rules throughout all the states. So we have each state doing this on their own. When each state does this on their own, I don't know if a lot of people realize but a lot of state legislatures are composed of legislators who have other jobs most of the year, so they aren't experts on things, and they don't have sort of the same knowledge background as our federal legislators. So basically, they rely on lobbying groups to tell them what to do. And I think, you know, the gambling industry really rolled into town and was like, This is how you should do it. And so we got laws that are largely favorable to the gambling country companies, and sort of the one big pushback that we saw was less so with regards to restrictions and more so with regards to tax rates. So states that did push back, effectively push back saying, Well, we're going to tax this at a very high rate. And so that's kind of how we've gotten here. And then the second factor that played a role in the the rollout was the the growth of daily fantasy sports. So if you watched TV back in 2015, around this time, the start of the NFL season, there was a daily fantasy sports advertisement being aired roughly every minute on television. And so FanDuel and DraftKings emerged as these new products. They looked a lot like sports betting. The companies lobbied very hard they were not sports betting, that they were fantasy sports. And you know, one of the things that they did was they basically convinced the major leagues, teams and leagues themselves, that this wasn't going to end the world, and the leagues invested in them. It

Nick VinZant 8:31

kind of sounds a little bit in the sense that, like we did, it more towards an eye of, how can we make how do we tax this and make money off of it, rather than, how can we do this safely? Absolutely.

Dr. John Holden 8:42

And, you know, the pandemic, really, I think, exacerbated this. Every state was concerned that, you know, their tax base was going to be permanently damaged, and this was a way of raising new revenue where it wasn't a increase in income tax, it wasn't an increase on property taxes. And you know, states saw this as a way that they could do things like raise teacher salaries, bringing in sports bag money. And there's certainly research that shows when states roll out gambling products to do things like raise teacher salary that doesn't sort of typically hold up long term. And in fact, what tends to happen is they just spend the teacher salary money elsewhere, and we sort of revert back to the mean after a short time. But so I think that there certainly were states that wanted to roll this out responsibly at the beginning, and then the pandemic took over, and there was also this almost hysteria in some states that if you don't legalize this now, your neighbor is going to legalize it, and all of that tax money. Will go next door. And I think that led to a lot of reliance on the gambling industry itself to come in and tell people, you know, how should you run this? And you know, there's a lot of good people in the gambling industry, but the gambling industry is in the interest of are in the business of making money off of gamblers, and there's no denying that

Nick VinZant 10:25

the states that haven't adopted it, why haven't they done it?

Dr. John Holden 10:30

I always sort of explain it as the states where this was going to be easy, it's been done, and it's going to be easy in places where there isn't a stakeholder that either opposes gambling or opposes how this would roll out. And so if we look at California, the issue in California is not that California doesn't want sports betting, it's California has a large number of gaming tribes that have casinos and back. The last election cycle, there was a ballot initiative, competing ballot initiatives, and one would have allowed the tribes to have sports betting on their properties. The other would have allowed online companies to come in, and billions of dollars were spent defeating these two initiatives, and each ran at around 20% popularity. So there's huge money in this. And so there's huge interest in ensuring that in a state like California, it rolls out how the stakeholders want it to roll out. And when you have the the gaming tribes in California and the online gaming industry going head to head, those are two very well resourced groups fighting over this. And what ended up happening was essentially just blowing the whole thing up.

Nick VinZant 12:02

The two were fighting so much they ruined it for both of them. Yes,

Dr. John Holden 12:07

when we look at Texas, Texas has a lieutenant governor named Dan Patrick, who is a staunch opponent of gambling. So even as many stakeholders in Texas, including the Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, has come out in support of legalizing this. They have never been able to sort of get past the lieutenant governor. When you look at other places, a state like Utah, Utah's has a has a large Mormon population, and so has a religious opposition to gambling. Every state has that sort of unique reason why they haven't crossed that line right now, and so certainly, I think at some point, many of these states will legalize sports betting. The big question is, what exactly will bring groups together to do this? When

Nick VinZant 13:08

you kind of look at it like, who's the bigger fish? Is it the casinos, or is it the online in

Dr. John Holden 13:14

California, it's the casinos, and that's one of the big things that a lot of people don't understand. With sports betting, you hear billions of dollars wager, but really the revenue from that, historically, is about 5% so casinos aren't making you know, running a sports betting business isn't the best casino game that you can offer. You can do much better offering slots or something else than sports betting. But a lot of people sort of foresee the legalization of online sports betting as a gateway to online casino, and so brick and mortar casinos like those that many of the California based tribes own, would be severely hurt if online casinos were to come in, especially run by groups other than themselves. So there, there is very much this idea that if you give up on online sports betting, online casino is at somewhere around the corner, and that could really be be devastating for a lot of these tribal communities that rely on gaming revenue to do a lot of things for Tribal members.

Nick VinZant 14:39

Are there that many people gambling.

Dr. John Holden 14:41

So the amount of money being wagered is in the 100 billion dollar range.

Nick VinZant 14:50

That sounds like a ton of money. Is that a ton of

Dr. John Holden 14:54

money being wagered? And I think it's more than a lot of people. Realized,

Nick VinZant 15:01

have any states really, like benefited from this? Like, you could point to this state and say, You know what, this has actually really helped people out in that state. I sounds like a no,

Dr. John Holden 15:14

yeah. I mean, I, I don't think if you are looking at states that have raised a lot of tax revenue from taxing sports betting. New York is at the top. They have exceeded their expectations, brought in more than a billion dollars in tax revenue. They could undoubtedly do a lot of stuff with a billion dollars. New York is a big state, so it doesn't go as far as they wouldn't say Oklahoma, but a billion dollars is nothing to shake a stick at. Is that offsetting everything else? Is that a great win? I don't know. I think it's probably premature to say, if you look at some of the other states, like, if you look at like a Delaware or Rhode Island, has it been worth it for them? I don't know that. A million bucks, 2 million bucks, 3 million bucks, 4 million bucks. It's a lot to be but it's not a ton of money and revenue to a state. And there's a lot of costs that come with this. I mean, you have to create some sort of regulatory agency to oversee this. Those people need salaries, and they have travel expenses and things like that. So undoubtedly, there are jobs that are created by this. But you know, in terms of, I don't think it's some huge boon for states all over the country.

Nick VinZant 16:50

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Sure, has this been good or bad?

Dr. John Holden 16:57

So I'm in the camp that thinks this has been good, and the reason I say that is because we are watching it now. Prior to 2018 we had sports bang in this country, lots of it, but because we had sports bang happening almost exclusively in unregulated markets, there was virtually no one watching it. We have people watching it now. We have the leagues watching it now closely protecting the integrity of games. We have people less afraid to call those help numbers and get help because they don't feel like they're telling on themselves for doing something that might be prohibited. So, you know, in breaking down those stigmas for an activity that I think is happening anyways, I'm of the belief that this is a net positive over continuing to let this exist in the shadows. Is there

Nick VinZant 18:02

any statistics in regard to is this more a lot of people doing it, or a relatively smaller number of people now doing it a lot? It's

Dr. John Holden 18:12

both. We have a lot of people doing it and we have a small number of people doing it a lot. I

Nick VinZant 18:20

might be the only person I know who doesn't gamble on sports. Of my friends I grew up with, and know now I think I'm the only one. Yeah.

Dr. John Holden 18:30

I mean, I work on college campuses. It's is everywhere, and it's hard to avoid. And I think, you know, this has been one of the things that we are going to grapple with as a country in the next 10 years of legal sports bag is, I don't know if it's how do we put it back in the box, but how do we find a way that this is less omnipresent and people are able to detach from this more easily than what we're seeing right now.

Nick VinZant 19:06

What league do you think has embraced it the most? What League has kind of stayed away from it a little bit?

Dr. John Holden 19:13

So the NBA is probably the most bullish. The NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in 2014 wrote an op ed in the New York Times where he basically said, we should legalize this. It should be noted that he wrote this op ed while he was suing the state of New Jersey trying to stop them from legalizing it. He wanted a very specific type of regulation. Wanted it his way. Yeah, he did, but he has been very vocal about how he sees the future of NBA basketball. And he has talked about, you know, wanting fans to receive the opportunity to have unique bets in stadium and things like that. So the NBA, by and large, is. Of the four major professional leaks in the US, the biggest embracer of it, the NFL has always been the least bullish on it. And you know, I think some of that is the NFL has always been the most valuable League. They as the most valuable perhaps they have the most to lose from a gambling scandal. And maybe the NFL also knew that it has always been the league that gets bet on the most. So it's always had that out there that I wouldn't say they embrace it now, but they've come along to accept its existence.

Nick VinZant 20:48

Thing you can't believe they allow people to bet on some

Dr. John Holden 20:51

of the Super Bowl prop bets like color of the Gatorade, is not something that should be encouraged to be allowed in the regulated market. In my mind, you know, one of the things that when we're regulating sports bank, we want to ensure that there's not a market for inside information, right? So a number of people know what color of the Gatorade is going to be. We don't want information like that. We don't want to be able to be able to bet on it. And many states don't allow betting on the color of the Gatorade. But some

Nick VinZant 21:31

do. Wasn't there somebody in the Super Bowl who kind of rigged something where he there was a bet about, I think it was like a streaker, and then he became the streaker, and he like rigged this system. There

Dr. John Holden 21:45

are certainly stories about this that perhaps my favorite one, and a good example of why I don't think we should allow these exotic one off prop bets is there was a goalie in one of the lower divisions of English soccer, and he was seen eating a pie on the sidelines, like a meat pie. And so some sports book over in England decided to offer a prop bet on whether or not the goalie eats a pie the next game, he found out about it and intentionally ate a pie during the next game. The problem with that is that's essentially match fixing. You are fixing a market because you are predetermining the outcome.

Nick VinZant 22:40

Do you think all the shoes have dropped? No,

Dr. John Holden 22:46

we have still largely avoided a major scandal. We've had some big one. We had an Alabama baseball coach who was providing information to someone to bet on games. We had a gambling scandal involving Iowa and Iowa State football. We've had johnte Porter in the NBA, but we have not had a major, major scandal yet. You know, one of the things I don't think people want to admit is that we have undoubtedly had fixed games over the years that we don't know about, and that's because we don't have these mechanisms in place that we have now. We have more technology, more people in place, better knowledge than ever before with the regulated market. So I think that'll be a devastating blow to both sports and the regulated gambling market. By Do you think sort of the regulation and having regulators in place will in the long run, be better than had we not had them?

Nick VinZant 23:58

What do you think would have to happen in order to put it back in the bottle, maybe

Dr. John Holden 24:04

a fixed NFL game, or a series of fixed NFL games. I think the NFL is really the only sport that could move the needle.

Nick VinZant 24:14

Do you think that any societal issues would would do it, or would it just have to be corruption within the sport itself? Sadly,

Dr. John Holden 24:24

no, I don't think that we have the stakeholder groups representing those societal interests that would move the needle enough you

Nick VinZant 24:36

think it's inevitable that all states do it, except for Utah. Like I feel like you're

Dr. John Holden 24:40

gonna we hold out there is unlikely. Eventually everyone else which

Nick VinZant 24:47

state surprises you the most that they haven't like I can't believe this one hasn't. North

Dr. John Holden 24:53

Carolina is surprising. Some of the states I'm more surprised. Don't is one of them's Missouri. Uh, Missouri has tried very hard, basically since 2018 to legalize sports bank and has not been able to get it done. It sounds like they might have a ballot initiative this year that could do it.

Nick VinZant 25:15

I don't know if you can do this or not, but like, how how often are games fixed?

Dr. John Holden 25:19

Oh, we have no idea. It's not often. I mean, I don't think, I don't think there's NFL games being fixed regularly or anything.

Nick VinZant 25:29

What about, what about NBA? NBA is, NBA is the big conspiracy one, isn't it?

Dr. John Holden 25:34

When we're looking at sports where I think fixing probably happens. You know, college sports are always going to be vulnerable, right? It wasn't until 2021 that college athletes could be paid any money, which, you know, one of the things that we know about match fixers is that they want to fix as cheaply as possible and do so as easily as possible. And you know, one of the easiest things to do is pay someone who's not getting paid. So college sports is all was, historically, I think, the most vulnerable, and certainly the the numbers that we see coming out have indicate that right, most of our big scandals of fixing in the US have been college sports related, Arizona State basketball, Tulane basketball, Toledo football and basketball. So, you know, I think some of that market has probably been protected through college athletes being able to monetize their n i l rights and stuff. But you know, that's really nil. Deals are largely concentrated in big dollars, in a small handful of athletes. So I, I still think you know where, where we should be devoting a lot of our attention is to college sports and protecting athletes there. What's

Nick VinZant 26:56

kind of coming up next for you? Like, what are you researching now? What are you working on?

Dr. John Holden 27:00

So I'm working on some NCAA stuff, sort of looking at what we can do to help protect athletes from harassment online. It's kind of one of the big projects that I'm excited about. Other than that, just teaching some classes.

Nick VinZant 27:19

I want to thank Dr Holden so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on September 12, at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Scholl and get to the pointless part of the show. So do you hang up your T shirts, or do you fold them?

John Shull 27:53

Hang them up if, if I'm even going to get the ones that are hung up, I don't mean to sound gross here and maybe unhygienic, but if I wear a shirt just to work, like a dress shirt, I don't see the need to have to wash it unless it gets dirty. Yeah?

Nick VinZant 28:10

But dude, you're still sweating in it. Are you wearing an undershirt?

John Shull 28:14

Oh yeah, always, I'm not like, you only skinny guys don't wear undershirts. Oh

Nick VinZant 28:18

yeah, I don't wear undershirts, but I don't hang up my shirts at all. I don't understand the point of hanging up a t shirt to me. That's just, you're asking to stretch out the collar on the neck. I can't stand a shirt with a loose collar. Man, if I get a loose collar, that thing's going in the trash.

John Shull 28:32

I hang my shirts up. It's just, if it's in the regular rotation, if it's in the weak rotation, I'll just throw it in a pile and like, if I, if I happen to maybe wear it on a Friday after wearing it on a Monday or something, or a father following Monday, so be it, it's not dirty. Okay,

Nick VinZant 28:50

here's my other question. So I'm going to be starting a new job here in the next couple weeks where I have to go back into the office for the first time in like, four years. Do you think I can get away with wearing the same clothes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? Like I'm gonna have my Tuesday clothes, my Wednesday clothes and my Thursday clothes, and just wear the same three outfits every single

John Shull 29:12

week? No, I think it's a new job. I think I think maybe, if you are, if you become established, maybe I never think, unless it's pants, I never think you should wear the same shirt multiple days in a row.

Nick VinZant 29:28

But how, okay, how many weeks Do you think I could do this before people notice, like, how many weeks could I wear the same thing on Tuesday, the same thing on Wednesday, the same thing on Thursday, before somebody would notice the pattern.

John Shull 29:44

How many people are you going to be working with? There's 1000 people in the company. I would give it a month, and then people will start to notice, I think I would

Nick VinZant 29:55

say a month, if it was five days a week in. The Office, maybe six weeks. If you're going into the office three times a week, that I could pull it off, because other people might not be there in the same days. So I'm gonna give I would give myself six weeks. Is okay? What do you think the percentage is? So I pulled the audience. What percentage of people do you think fold their T shirts? What percentage of people do you think hang up their T shirts. I'm

John Shull 30:21

gonna say 6040 in favor of hanging.

Nick VinZant 30:25

Oh no, very close on the percentages, but you just got them wrong. 64% fold and 36% hang.

John Shull 30:34

I I'm curious to know, what is the like do? Do women wash their clothes more than men like the outfits they wear on a regular basis.

Nick VinZant 30:45

I'm the wrong person to ask this, because without a sense of smell, I wash anything. If I wear it for five minutes, I'm gonna wash it because I have no way of knowing if it smells or not.

John Shull 30:54

I tell you what. That's an experience, by the way, friggin Little League Soccer got my first dose of that this past weekend. Holy Hell, that's

Nick VinZant 31:05

that's not a recreational activity. That is a business. That is, I mean, that is a business.

John Shull 31:11

I mean, God bless him. But the other team, they were playing one of the teams, the coach, these are six years old. Six year old kids coach is running formations. I'm

Nick VinZant 31:24

like, Oh, that's too much.

John Shull 31:26

I'm like, Man, calm down. And anyway, I ended up becoming an assistant coach. It's great. It all worked out. So, oh, are

Nick VinZant 31:33

you gonna so what are you gonna? Are you gonna try? Are you gonna try to assert the power? Are you gonna try to become the head coach? You gonna try to weasel your way in there? No.

John Shull 31:41

And actually, I didn't want to do it. I was happy sitting on the sidelines with my beer and my koozie, by the way. Is that not is that an okay to do to bring alcohol to a kid's soccer game? No,

Nick VinZant 31:52

you shouldn't probably be drinking alcohol or bringing alcohol to a kid's soccer game. What time does the game start?

John Shull 31:59

Uh, Sunday was two o'clock, and then they had one at, like, four o'clock. So two and four, I

Nick VinZant 32:05

mean, you can't make it a regular thing. I feel like, if you really go for that and you're doing it all the time, like, oh yeah, he's drinking at this little kid's soccer game all the time. Might be nobody pushing more from a you're, you're the problem is, is that you're going more from a guy having a good time to the person kind of like, oh, he might have a little bit of a problem. Nobody

John Shull 32:25

knew it, though, and I guarantee you. And for those of you out there, judging me, if you've ever been in that, if you've ever been in that spot, there's always, if you haven't been one of them, there's always those people that, I mean, on Sunday afternoon, it was the first Sunday of football. I just wanted to have a celebratory drink.

Nick VinZant 32:44

You may not think everybody knew, but everybody knew. Nobody knew. Not everybody knew. They all No. Nobody said anything to you. They all knew. Nobody

John Shull 32:53

knew what's that you

Nick VinZant 32:54

can you can tell by the way, somebody's drinking, like, if you're drinking water versus drinking a beer, like, you know what somebody's doing. Everybody knew like, so here's the assistant coach out here drinking beer. Yeah, dude, well, I

John Shull 33:07

didn't take it. I didn't take it over there. I didn't take it when I was coaching. Not that much of a putz. Uh, you ready for? You

Nick VinZant 33:13

ready for shout outs?

John Shull 33:15

I mean, I was born ready? This is shout outs number 187

Nick VinZant 33:19

I think, Oh, it's a lot. We're probably getting up there to be honest with

John Shull 33:23

you. Uh, so let's see. Let's start here with Jeff flex, Christopher Brewer, Ken Smith, Joseph zorio, Luca, Brazi, Jack, Nissan, Brandon, Blakely, sendo, Garcia. Though I don't believe this is a real name. I picked it out anyways, because I love it. Uh, Magnus Leinart. Magnus could be a real first name, right? Magnus

Nick VinZant 33:47

is a real name. I believe that's a Norwegian, Nordic thing.

John Shull 33:52

I hear we're huge in those countries. Uh, Sean McElroy, Joe Rocco, Maria lawless and John Shaban, hm,

Nick VinZant 34:04

solid. Lot of solidness. Lot of solid names there. Okay, alright,

John Shull 34:09

let's, let's talk some things here. Let's, let's just get to the one that's probably the most saddest on the list today, and that is the the passing of a legend, a cinematic legend, today. James Earl Jones passed away. Oh,

Nick VinZant 34:23

that's a big name.

John Shull 34:27

I did pick out what IMDb claimed were his five best roles of all time that he did. Okay, okay. Two of them are voices. Three of them are acting credits. So obviously from the voice acting, you know, obviously Star Wars and Lion King, yeah, yeah. And then acting, acting, I guess, if that makes sense, uh, sandlot, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Coming to America, yeah. And filled of dreams, yeah.

Nick VinZant 35:00

He's kind of like, and he made that a little bit, you're like, Oh, if he's in it, it's probably pretty good,

John Shull 35:05

yeah. And his age shocked me. I, you know, I felt like he'd always been around forever, but when I saw that he had died at the age of 93 I was like, man, he had, you know, he he'd been around for a minute, um, and probably a guy that really he had, like, the the favor of not having to reinvent himself. He was literally giving, given, a God, given talent with his voice, it sound like he had to keep trying different things. People came to him and also, wasn't he the the guy, the voice guy in our the Arby's commercials, Arby's, we have the

Nick VinZant 35:44

meats, no man that's being reigns.

John Shull 35:50

Are you positive on that

Nick VinZant 35:52

100% we have the meats that's being reigns. Let's

John Shull 35:56

see here. As we all know, Beetlejuice came out, if you haven't seen it, like I haven't check it out. What struck me here is AMC, like any company trying to make more money than they probably need to, charging $31 for a Beetlejuice drink. I would I won't pay $10 for like a movie theater soda, let alone $31 for a Beetlejuice drink. No,

Nick VinZant 36:23

that's not the kind of commemorative movie either like, Okay, if you're gonna get away with that, with maybe Star Wars or something like that, where you can really sell commemorative stuff, I get that a little bit. But Beetlejuice, ain't it. I don't understand how, why anybody would like if you were a movie theater owner, this is what's baffling to me. To go on an entire rant. It's like, wow, going watching entertainment at home is more convenient and cheaper than I don't know about cheaper, but more convenient than ever. What should we do as a movie theater owner? Well, let's make it difficult and Jack all the prices up. That'll get them to come in. Like, I don't understand that at all

John Shull 37:01

well. I mean, I mean, I think, like any business, right, they had to figure out how to survive the pandemic. And, you know, I mean, I don't get it. It's 20 bucks for like, a medium soda and popcorn. Now, that's kind of crazy. That's a load of nuts. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 37:17

I wouldn't pay that. Man, that's too much not paying those high prices.

John Shull 37:21

Let's see. I thought this was interesting. People are dying from complications of having six pack surgery. That seems like a great idea. Let's implant different kinds of collagens into our intestinal area and think nothing's gonna happen. So

Nick VinZant 37:42

I didn't even know that was one of those that was possible. I remember some episode of, like, true life way back in the day about a guy getting calf implants. And I thought that was crazy, but I don't understand getting six pack surgery, because, like, what about the rest of you? So then, if you're the rest of you, kind of gets big, you still got this six pack that's just like, super glued onto your body, like you're wearing some kind of, like, Halloween outfit armor. That's a little strange.

John Shull 38:08

I mean, I'm sure it's kind of like anything, right, like ozempic or any kind of these drugs. Like, I think you have to meet a criteria. Like, I don't think they're going to take me and just automatically say, like, Hey, we're going to give him a like. It's not going to, it's not going to look natural like, unless they're shaving my body down. Of course,

Nick VinZant 38:25

I always go back and forth on that stuff, right? Like, that sounds ridiculous, but if that's really what's going to make you happy, okay, I probably wouldn't risk my life for it.

John Shull 38:35

Um, so no more Pat Sajak or Alex Trebek officially, like they're they're done. The seasons are over. They've moved on. Alex Trebek is dead, right? But, I mean, like, as a duo, like, you know, because when you think of Jeopardy and wheel of fortune, Oh, I see what you're going for. Okay? You know, you don't think of those shows without them, too, even though Alex has been dead for a few years now. However, my question to you was, and anyone out there, will there ever be a greater one two punch when it comes to game show hosts than them two No, like, do people? I

Nick VinZant 39:13

don't know anything about it. I don't think anything about it.

John Shull 39:15

Well, I mean, I mean, come on, will a fortune and in jeopardy used to be like must see TV for lots of of people,

Nick VinZant 39:25

yeah, okay, Don't come at me with that weak stuff of wheel of fortune. Okay, the only two game shows that I'm interested in are Jeopardy and Family Feud. Wheel of Fortune is a distant third place to wheel to family feud and Jeopardy. It's not in the same class, right? Family Feud and Jeopardy are pro level, and we get down to high school level when we're talking about Wheel of Fortune, don't care.

John Shull 39:54

It has nothing to do with the level of intellectuality it takes. To do the game. It's the legend, the legendness of the two games.

Nick VinZant 40:05

What I'm the only thing that I really have to think about Wheel of Fortune is the idea that Vanna White's getting like, ten million to essentially walk across the stage like that has to be and good for her, the highest return on investment that anybody has ever gotten in terms of you're getting paid this to do this, because she's not really a big factor in the show, right? It's not like, Are people tuning in to be like, Oh, Vanna White, what's Vanna gonna say? Vanna is funny. Like, maybe she is. I don't know. You're the super fan of wheel of fortune, but to me, like, is there anybody who gets paid more for doing less than Vanna White?

John Shull 40:47

I mean, I mean, good for her? Like, I don't know. I mean, but I mean, it's not like she made that. I mean, she's been on that show for what, 30 years, 35 years,

Nick VinZant 40:57

yeah, but still, like, that's the kind of thing that when I went into con, okay, this is just me. If I went into contract negotiations and I was in though of all to be like, I want this much well, like, you don't do anything. You're not getting it. How about you take 100 grand and be okay with that, because you're not really doing anything, okay? I mean, I wouldn't ask for any I'd be like, well, I'd be happy with what I got for what I was doing. That's just me. So

John Shull 41:21

I get what you're saying. I definitely, I mean, this is going to sound terrible. I feel like I have to say it. Vanna whites are unfortunately, like a dime a dozen, right? If you sat down in contract negotiations and were to say, hey, we're only going to pay you a million instead of 10 million, she may walk right. And you can find someone else to do it. However, it comes back to my point that the Wheel of Fortune itself, it was its own legend. Show without van and without pads, Pat Sajak, it doesn't have the name recognizability that that it has.

Nick VinZant 41:57

I could see that argument and that she is the name that you know with that show. So in some ways that maybe she's not doing anything, but the show got to where it was because of who she was. I can see that argument kind of, yeah, but I brought the fame to this.

John Shull 42:14

Let's see last thing I have here, this. This was just weird. Walmart has released a throuple costume for Halloween. I don't even know what that is. It's a three person costume. It is a smore. So somebody is, you know, someone's the graham cracker, somebody's the marshmallow and somebody's the the chocolate and bottom graham cracker. But it's all connected. It's a little weird, little weird. It's

Nick VinZant 42:40

a lot of effort. I don't generally try to put any effort. I'm not putting more than 15 minutes of thought and 15 minutes of effort into a Halloween costume. I

John Shull 42:55

mean, it's fun, I guess. I mean, I don't know. I'm not against it by any means. I mean, I I don't really want to partake in it, but I'm not against people who like it, who want to do it.

Nick VinZant 43:05

Yeah, I'm just not going to put I like Halloween. I like seeing people dressed up. I think some of the costumes are cool. I'm just personally not going to put any more than 30 total minutes of effort into it. But I feel the same way about cooking. I'm not going to put more time into making dinner than I am eating it.

John Shull 43:24

Man, I will spend hours if I ever get the chance on, on just cooking. It's, it's fantastic,

Nick VinZant 43:31

yeah, well, the No sense of smell thing just does it makes it meaningless for me. Uh, do you have anything else? Are you ready for the top five?

John Shull 43:39

I mean, speaking of smelling and tasting. Mm,

Nick VinZant 43:43

okay, so our top five is top five fall foods. Your number five. So

John Shull 43:47

my number five. You're not going to agree with it, but I put it on the list, and I don't care. It's still, it's still a kind of food. And I went with like a fall coffees, like pumpkin spice coffee, apple crisp, mochiados from Starbucks, any of that kind of seasonal coffee, that's my number. Oh, no.

Nick VinZant 44:05

I'm sure a lot of women have that on their top five. Okay,

John Shull 44:09

okay, you know what? It's delicious, and you should try it. Get yourself a, you know, an iced apple crisp, oat milk, shaken Espresso from Starbucks, and you'll thank me later. First

Nick VinZant 44:19

of all, if I'm going to drink coffee, which I don't, I'm going to have straight coffee, black for sure, of course, not going to do that. What kind of alcohol you want? You want a nice little cosmopolitan? You want a Manhattan? You want strawberry daiquiri? No, give me whiskey. Neat, straight up. Maybe, maybe I'll put a dash of warm water in it, but it's gotta be from a garden hose. What toughen up? What's your number not drinking no fruity drinks? My number five is not proud of it. What's

John Shull 44:54

your number five?

Nick VinZant 44:55

My number five is hot chocolate. I don't actually really like hot. Chocolate. I like the idea of hot chocolate.

John Shull 45:05

I mean, I there's no difference in what I just said, comparatively to hot chocolate. Coffee and hot chocolate are one in the same, almost.

Nick VinZant 45:13

I don't just I completely disagree.

John Shull 45:21

I Yeah, well, I mean, you can disagree, but I still think you're absolutely wrong. I

Nick VinZant 45:25

will say I can't finish a thing of hot chocolate, like, it's too much by the end of it. Like, you want a whole glass of hot chocolate, like, now I'll have, like, half of it.

John Shull 45:35

I mean, the problem is, is I drink it too fast. I mean, there's been some times when I've been out with my kids, my wife, and it's 10 degrees outside, and you're drinking hot chocolate, and it tastes like the greatest thing you've had in your entire life, but it just goes too fast. It's just the the reward is not worth the effort, in my opinion.

Nick VinZant 45:54

Okay, okay, what's your number four?

John Shull 45:56

Uh, anything sweet potato related?

Nick VinZant 46:01

I actually have sweet potatoes as my number four too. I think sweet potato is actually the dominant potato. I think that sweet potato should replace all other potatoes. It's the best potato. Ah,

John Shull 46:15

yeah. I mean, it's not as versatile as, you know, say, you know, yellow potato or Russert, but it's, it's still, I mean, they're delicious. They're it's my favorite potato.

Nick VinZant 46:27

Yeah, it's the best. Although there is something like a yam. That's not a sweet potato, that's actually a yam. I don't know, somebody at the grocery store confused the crap out of me the other day about it. It's like, oh, that's not a sweet potato, that's a yam.

John Shull 46:39

Oh, boy. What? Anyways, my number three, and this is specific, probably the only real specific one I have, and that is pumpkin soup.

Nick VinZant 46:50

Oh, I've never even heard of that. I mean, obviously, I've heard the idea of having pumpkin soup, but, like, I've never heard of somebody eating pumpkin soup that sounds gross. It's like, you know, it's

John Shull 47:00

like squash soup, pumpkin soup. I mean, they're, if you can find a good recipe, they're delicious and worth it, by the way.

Nick VinZant 47:08

Okay, my number three is the only fall fruit that I think should be on the list, and that's pears. I don't care about your apples. They're not that great. Apple is the most average fruit that you can get in the world that's like, oh, okay, great, it's an apple. Pear is pear is fancy,

John Shull 47:26

okay? I mean, I am against pears, because when we moved into my house, there are two pear trees in the backyard. And every other year, those things sprout off, like 300 pairs, and they're an asshole to pick up in November and December, but I could see it. Pears are fine. They're they're, I have no real issue with pears, just the fact that I live in a yard with pear treats.

Nick VinZant 47:48

Normally, I would make fun of you and say that that is ridiculous. But if you've ever been in the Pacific Northwest and dealt with blackberries, blackberries are like this. Well, vegetation that if you get it in your yard, you are not getting it out. Oh, and it's blackberries. Oh, yeah, you can't do anything with that. They, like, that thing is going to take that would take over the world, I think, if it could. And so nobody here, like, I don't eat blackberries because, like, dang it, I've pulled so many of those and they got big thorns, and you get hurt. Like, you're not, you're not pulling all the blackberries out of your garden without some blood coming off of you.

John Shull 48:25

Have you? Have you bled? Oh,

Nick VinZant 48:27

100% I did it. I did it. On Friday I was bleeding.

John Shull 48:32

Well, hell yeah, hell yeah. Then good, good on that blueberry Thorn for getting you. You deserve Blackberry,

Nick VinZant 48:37

Blackberry. And if you're out there working in your yard and you don't come back a little bit bloody, then you didn't work in your yard. That's how I feel about it.

John Shull 48:48

My number two is, I feel like it's a cop out, but you have to have it on the list, and that's a good pie, like, if it's an apple pie, you know, just some, some kind of pie, preferably, probably Apple.

Nick VinZant 49:03

Apple pie is the only pie that I'm going to accept any other kind of pie, if we're talking about like pumpkin pie, or pecan pie, or any other kind of pie like that. It's just a waste of time to me, because I just rather have chocolate. Like, do you want this pumpkin pie? No, I'd rather have something that's actually good.

John Shull 49:21

I mean, I don't know if that's fair to say, pie is very good. Oh, pie

Nick VinZant 49:25

is good, but only certain kinds of pies. I just don't understand the concept of, why would you have something besides the best thing that you could have? Like, do you want this? Boysenberry pie? No one apple pie.

John Shull 49:38

Are those even real berries, boysenberries. Oh

Nick VinZant 49:42

yeah, boysenberry, boysenberry, there's huckleberries. There's all kinds of berries. Man, you got boysenberries, huckleberries, dingleberries, cranberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries,

John Shull 49:54

blackberries,

Nick VinZant 49:55

blackberries. Did you hear me throw in dingleberries and see if you'd catch it?

John Shull 49:59

I. Did I just, I wasn't really listening. What's your number

Nick VinZant 50:04

two? Chili?

John Shull 50:06

Okay, that's my number one. Is chili. Yeah, I

Nick VinZant 50:08

thought she would put chili as number one. But my number one is the bread bowl. I love a bread bowl. I think a bread bowl is one of the greatest inventions that we've have as a society. Have ever, ever come up with.

John Shull 50:20

But okay, so here's here's how everyone out there can tell the kind of person you are. Do you eat the bread bowl? Yeah, okay, alright, I'd ask. I've been sitting with people who do not eat the bread bowl because they don't want to eat the carbs.

Nick VinZant 50:37

Did you take the bread bowl and then shove it in their face like you should have, because as far as I'm concerned, not eating the bread part of a bread bowl should be something that you should be banned from a restaurant for. No, I like, No, you're not coming back here, sir. Think

John Shull 50:50

that's assault, but I thought about it, if that matters, but I think it's assault.

Nick VinZant 50:54

Yeah, I think that you should have, if you don't get the you gotta eat the bread bowl. Man, that's ridiculous. Uh, yeah, that's my number one. What do you do? You have any honorable

John Shull 51:02

mentions? You know, they're really just comfort foods. Now that I look at it, I have, like, good donuts, macaroni and cheese, like a good, like, we're not fall as unnecessarily Thanksgiving, but like, like a good, like, hearty sandwich, you know, like, like a good Thanksgiving sandwich. What's so funny?

Nick VinZant 51:25

What is it?

John Shull 51:27

Hearty, hearty sandwich, like, you know, like a good like Turkey, mashed potato, stuffing topped with cranberry sauce on bread. It's delicious.

Nick VinZant 51:37

But what kind of thing is it?

John Shull 51:41

A sandwich.

Nick VinZant 51:44

Are you golfing sand wedge? Is that a Michigan thing? Is that a Michigan thing? Like, do you pronounce it differently than other people who live in the area that you do? Because to me and you're saying sand wedge,

John Shull 52:00

I mean, you can clearly tell no one's really ever called me out before, so I'm guessing probably not. It's a sandwich. It's a sandwich,

Nick VinZant 52:07

sandwich, sand, sand sandwich. Okay, sandwich,

John Shull 52:13

which sandwich?

Nick VinZant 52:15

Yeah, that's how, that's how you say it. But you say sand wedge. I don't know if I have sandwich. I don't know if, well, I'm from Kansas, which is the kind of notorious for having, like, the most average dialect of all time. So I don't think that there's something that I pronounce that other people in other regions like that. Somebody would say, Oh, that's a regional pronunciation of that.

John Shull 52:38

Holy hell though I do say sand wedge. It's a sand Oh

Nick VinZant 52:42

yeah, you say sand wedge.

John Shull 52:46

Ferg, man,

Nick VinZant 52:47

is this gonna change your life? You've been saying that this whole way, this whole me out on

John Shull 52:52

a on a few things. I mean, let's not forget we are kind, kind of close to Canada, like, so, you know, maybe I picked up some dialect I don't know. Like, maybe Michigan has its own dialect. I also really don't know.

Nick VinZant 53:06

I Yeah, you never noticed. Nobody's ever said to you that you say sand wedge instead of sandwich. Yeah,

John Shull 53:13

no one's ever said no one's ever, I mean, not that I can recall. No one's ever picked me out like that. How

Nick VinZant 53:17

are you going to take this news? What are you going to do? You change your lifestyle. You're gonna cry in the corner. You're gonna like, no, revolutionize the world and try to make it sand wedge instead of sandwich. I'm actually upon living. I'm

John Shull 53:28

probably gonna keep on living, and I may actually leave you now to go have a sandwich.

Nick VinZant 53:34

Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are the best fall foods i i would put chili at number one if it wasn't for bread bowls, which, like I said, are arguably one of the greatest inventions mankind has ever come up with.


Fantasy Football Researcher Dr. Brendan Dwyer

The new NFL season is here and that means the return of Fantasy Football. But Fantasy Sports aren’t just a fantasy, they’re a massive industry that has changed the way we watch and consume sports. Fantasy Sports and Sports Betting Researcher Dr. Brendan Dwyer joins us as we talk the impact of Fantasy Football, the dehumanization of athletes and the lure of Fantasy Bass Fishing. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and it’s Darts vs. Pool as we countdown the Top 5 Bar Games.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer: 01:28

Pointless: 21:59

Candle of the Month: 36:24

Top 5 Bar Games: 44:24

Contact the Show

Dr. Brendan Dwyer Website

Dr. Brendan Dwyer Google Scholar Page

Dr. Brendan Dwyer Twitter (X)

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Center for Sports Leadership Twitter (X)

Interview with Fantasy Sports Researcher Dr. Brendan Dwyer

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode fantasy sports and bar games

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 0:21

because of those players, they are competing against their best friends. They're competing against their family members. So it's pretty personal. NFL player in fantasy sports, if you're a top tier running back or quarterback and you get hurt in week one, the fantasy sports you know population blames you for getting hurt. One of the most interesting things I've found about sports bettors and the research we found, is they all think they win.

Nick VinZant 0:49

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener. Welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because with the NFL season kicking off, fantasy football is back, and our first guest studies the impact that fantasy sports have had not only on sports, but on society as a whole. This is Dr Brendan Dwyer. How has fantasy sports impacted sports?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 1:31

I would say fantasy sports has really changed how fans watch sports, right? So do you play fantasy sports?

Nick VinZant 1:39

I do occasionally, like I'm kind of on again, off again with

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 1:43

it. Okay, so, I mean, it's been around for a long time. Started in baseball, really started out with really hardcore nerds of baseball, but then in the late 90s, early 2000s it really transformed into a popular cultural phenomenon where you had a lot of sports fans, primarily in football that played. And it took the traditional fan of being, you know, someone who's a fan of the Minnesota Vikings or New York Giants, and it took them from being a singular focus of just that team and maybe that team's rival, to watching all of the NFL games, because now they have players that play on the Arizona Cardinals and the Miami Dolphins, and because of that, and their interest of those players that are watching games on Thursday night and Saturday night sometimes, and Sunday and Monday and on The Holidays all over the place, and those interests go beyond just those players, but because of those players, they are competing against their best friends. They're competing against their family members. So it's pretty personal, and that interest, you know, has taken a league that was already really popular and made it even more popular.

Nick VinZant 3:01

I'm a big numbers person, so like, on a scale of one to 10, one being the lowest, 10 being the highest. Like, how big of an impact would you say fantasy sports has had?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 3:12

Oh, gosh, it depends on the league. I would say the NFL was already extremely popular when fantasy football took off. But I would say in terms of increasing its value and increasing the value of the media broadcast rights, I would say it's probably a six

Nick VinZant 3:34

that's pretty high, that's higher than I thought that she would say, necessarily. Why do you think that it's had that big of an impact,

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 3:41

I would say a lot of that has to do with the media broadcast rights and the importance of things, of how fans watch games. I also think that at the time when fantasy sports took off, betting and sports betting was not legal. That doesn't mean that it wasn't happening. You know, sports betting is in the NFL in particular is really set up for sports betting. Though they play weekly, they're always showing the lines. Are always showing, you know, the different prop bets, everything associated with betting. But it wasn't, you know, ubiquitous. You couldn't do it everywhere. You couldn't do it on your phone. But, you know, fantasy sports, you could and the number one revenue source for professional sports is media rights. It's the Fox Sports, the ABC ESPN, it's NBC Sports. And those that play fantasy sports and those that bet they watch games, they watch more games and they watch games longer.

Nick VinZant 4:42

Is this the kind of thing that leagues knew what they were doing, or did they kind of stumble upon this?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 4:48

I think they may have stumbled upon the interest. I'm not sure they realize how important impactful, impactful, fantasy sports was to. To traditional sports fans. I'm not sure they could have predicted in 1995 how popular would have become in 2009 Yeah.

Nick VinZant 5:11

Have they embraced it completely, or have any? Oh, yeah. It's kind of like, No, we're not doing this. No.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 5:16

I think every league has. I think every league has completely embraced it. I think some leagues, it's more popular than others. I use football as an example because it's kind of a gateway fantasy activity. I think if you play football, then all of a sudden it transitions to, I'll play I'll try basketball because I like basketball. I'll try baseball because I like baseball. What's

Nick VinZant 5:36

kind of the dark side or the downside? Whichever one of those you want to look

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 5:40

at, I think the one that, I think popular culture has talked about is dehumanization of players. I think, and we've studied this, we've done a couple of studies on the potential dehumanization of players. I think, you know, Twitter and the dark side of social media has pointed out a number of bad instances where, and even, I think the players have highlighted it too, especially the NFL players that have been, you know, the ones that get injured, right? You know the players they can't. They trust me, they don't want to get hurt either. But if you're, you know a highly sought after NFL player in fantasy sports, if you're a top tier running back or quarterback, and you get hurt in week one, the fantasy sports, you know, population blames you for getting hurt, and they'll, you know, they not only will they come after you on Twitter and on Instagram, they'll go after you in the stadium and they'll make comments like, you ruined My fantasy season. You know, they're obnoxious. It turns out that's a small minority of the million, 10s of millions, that play fantasy sports. But that's one downside, is that intense connection to playing fantasy sports. I also we have found instances that the increased attention across the league has taken away from that favorite team fandom, right? So who's your favorite NFL team if you have one, Buffalo Bills,

Nick VinZant 7:13

all right? And I say it like that, right? It's hard to be a Buffalo Bills fan.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 7:16

I love there's a couple, yeah, there's a couple, of fan bases and sort of interrupt there's a couple fan bases that have had a rough run, right, the Buffalo Bills, the Minnesota Vikings, right? And I always commend those fan bases, because they stick with them. But yes, there's some research to suggest those that play fantasy, especially teams like the bills the Vikings, the Bengals, the lions, that have had tough seasons that all of a sudden, as the season goes on, or years go on without success, they then lose interest in their favorite team and just become fans of the league or fans of their fantasy team only.

Nick VinZant 7:53

How did you get started looking in this like, why did you decide to research fantasy sports?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 7:58

I don't know if you know any fantasy football participants or anyone that plays fantasy sports? They're kind of like people who watch documentaries, and if you know anyone that watches documentary, the first thing that they want to do is tell you all about it. Fantasy Sports participants are the same thing like all they want to do is tell you about their fantasy team. Doesn't matter if you have any positive feedback for them, or reinforcement of nonverbals. They're going to tell you all about it, the bad luck they've had, the good luck, the scores, everything. And I realize one that's going to be really easy for me to do research on, because I'm going to find really, I'm going to have tons of research participants also, I also realize they're crazy. I lived in Los Angeles for three years when they had no NFL team. So everyone that went to that I would go to a bar to watch NFL games was all people from Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, you know, Washington, DC, and they were all there to watch their favorite team and to watch their fantasy and I'd watch them every Sunday in this like conflict in their head of watching their favorite team and saying to themselves, and also watching their fantasy team and saying themselves all right, if this quarterback scores two touchdown, but my favorite team also does this at the same time, I'll be good. And it was watching that irrationality that I was like, This is really weird. What kind

Nick VinZant 9:31

of I guess. What have you learned? Like, what would you say your big takeaways are from studying fantasy sports.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 9:36

People play more for the social interaction than they do to win money, right? Everyone thinks that you play fantasy sports to win the the cost you $100 to buy in you could win, you know, $800 you could win $600 but that's not why people play. They play to stay in contact with friends, to make new friends, to interact and with their friends. That's a primary reason. Play, and that doesn't matter if you're male female, that's the number one reason.

Nick VinZant 10:04

How did the players generally feel about it? Because I could see, like, we kind of talked about, like, okay, Aaron Rodgers hates that. He's getting yelled at because he got hurt. But then also, somebody knows who the third running back on the Miami Dolphins is that they maybe wouldn't have other so how did the kind of the players feel about it?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 10:22

I think it's mixed. I was probably say, if you I think some of the players are coached well by their teams and organizations to embrace it. I think they realize that it's beneficial to them and it's beneficial to the league. So they say, okay, I get it. We have to go along with it. I think there are some that truly despise it because it had a bad experience. They've been chastised because they got hurt or they had a bad performance. They underperformed what their expectations were. They're also, you know, NFL players, Major League Baseball players that play it, you know, you know, there's the Austin ecklers of the world that is a huge proponent. He plays for the Washington commanders. Now used to be with the Los Angeles chargers. Now he's one of the biggest proponents of the game.

Nick VinZant 11:08

Does is there seem to be in your research, is there, is there a scientific rhyme and reason to winning at it, or is it ultimately, kind of just a little bit

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 11:18

of luck? Fantasy football, I argue, is 65% luck, we asked fans that this almost every survey that we do like, what is your perception of luck to skill ratio? It's a perception, right? The more experienced a fantasy participant, the more aligned with that 60 to 70% luck. So yes, the less experienced. Believe it's more skill, because they believe the more time and energy you put into it. But the ones that are more experienced, they're like, Yeah, I get it. Like, you can't predict who's gonna you're not gonna predict who. You know, the weather, you can't predict the referee, you can't predict your opponent. You can't predict so many aspects of it. When it boils down to it, we're playing a game within a game, and there are so many we can't predict who's going to win one game, much less a game within a game, a daily fantasy sports game, I say a daily lineup game like basketball, hockey, baseball, where you make transactions every day, because there's games on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the skill does increase because there's just more variables to interact. I would argue baseball's closer to 35% luck, 65% skill, and then hockey and hockey and basketball are 5050,

Nick VinZant 12:51

is there a difference? Would you say that there's a difference between the in the type of person who does the NFL, kind of weekly versus the daily stuff?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 13:01

Yeah, there definitely is, I think, the traditional sports fan and the ones that play fantasy sports are generally older. They have they are less avid sports fans. They have a less illusion of control of what's going on, right? Where those that play daily fantasy sports, they feel like they have some sort of inside information, right? They feel like they know more than other people. They have that illusion of control. Where, like I have some inside information, or I know fantasy sports more than another person. They're generally younger, they're highly educated, they have more money, so they're the ones that play daily fantasy sports. But as I mentioned, as sports betting has taken off, and now we have 38 states and the District of Columbia that you're allowed to bet on sports. You know, daily fantasy sports has died down in popularity.

Nick VinZant 14:00

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions, sure. Sport that has embraced fantasy sports the most, sport that has kind of shied away from it, football has

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 14:12

embraced it the most. I don't know if there's one that has shied away from it, but I will say one of the benefits to studying fantasy sports as I had to dive in. Well, a couple different reasons. One is, there's any sport on I can always be like, it's research. But also, I got to try, or I tried a lot of different fantasy sports. I did, you know, for some people that aren't huge sports fans, I tried a lot of different things. I did, fantasy NASCAR, fantasy golf, fantasy bass fishing. I did fantasy Premier League, and my favorite that I did a couple years ago was fantasy mushing, which, oh, yeah, the Iditarod is tennis is not just Iditarod. It is a seven race circuit. Uh. Of dog sledding. So yes, fantasy mushing is the the low point of my used to be fantasy bass fishing was my low point. But fantasy mushing, which, if you do a little bit of research, shockingly, you can pick the winner of

Nick VinZant 15:12

the editor, what would you say has had a bigger impact on sports as a whole? Fantasy sports or sports betting?

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 15:18

Oh, sports betting.

Nick VinZant 15:19

Not even close,

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 15:21

yeah. I mean, it's just been around so much longer, I think, yeah. I mean, especially as it relates to, yeah. I mean, you can go back to the scandals associated with with sports betting, whether it's Pete Rose or the, you know, the the Black Sox with Chicago black, black socks, to even this, the current ones we're dealing with now, like there are issues with the scandals, but also, you know, sports betting plays a role in favorites and underdogs and the stories associated with sports that I think sports betting is, by far fantasy sports has been, you know, It was a niche activity that was created in the, you know, 70s, 80s, and it blew up in the late 90s, early 2000s and it's now part of popular culture, but it is nothing compared to sports betting.

Nick VinZant 16:11

Even if you looked at it just from, like, the last 20 years, it's still not even it's still sports betting by a mile. Yeah, I would say this one's going to be tough. One man, best team name you've ever heard. Oh, god,

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 16:25

that's funny. You brought that up because I by winning my favorite, my most important League, I have to name the team that got in last place for tomorrow, because our draft is tomorrow, and so I have to name his team, and I'm going back and forth between what I should name him. This has got to be embarrassing or humiliating, what I should name him. There are so many good ones out there. I mean, obviously the trend is to use a player's name, but I so many of them have inside jokes and that sort of stuff. The one that I like use before. It isn't even that creative. But I always like with touchdown there, which sometimes takes a while for someone to get but that's why, the reasons I like it

Nick VinZant 17:13

now, now, okay, yeah, touchdown there, like, that's a good one.

Does fantasy sports have a connection with betting? Is it like, you

know, the thing though, is, like, is it a gateway? Yeah.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 17:23

I mean, I do think there's always going to be a connection to it. I think there it is, especially with the transition from fantasy sports to daily fantasy sports. Yes, there is a potential gateway. We've never really studied longitudinally that would be actually very interesting to look at, especially for age, because I think a lot of people, they start with fantasy sports, like the younger generation. Like, for instance, my son, who's 10, just did his first fantasy football draft yesterday. I'm not gonna lie, part of me was like knowing his personality. Like, what did I just do? Because, you know, 15 years ago, for a 10 year old, there was no, you know, sports betting on television all the time. You know, did I just start someone in fantasy football that is now going to be bombarded with sports betting that when he turns 18 in eight years, is going to all of a sudden have a huge interest in, you know, putting money on uncontrollable outcomes. So I we've never studied that longitudinal impact of starting in fantasy sports, but there has been, we have done research on how playing, starting in fantasy football has impacted your interest in playing in other fantasy sports and daily fantasy sports, and that is certainly a case there, that if you start playing in one fantasy football league, the chance of you playing in other fantasy sports and then daily fantasy sports is certainly much higher. I do know, the one thing that I really do like that I've heard as being a trend is that when a team wins, like a player wins their fantasy team championship, is that they donate a portion of their winnings to their the team, there's always a player that carries you to your championship, right? There's, you know, let's say you won last year, and it was Christian McCaffrey that was your the guy that really drove you to the championship, because he was amazing last year. Well, you know, there's been a trend of taking 25% of your proceeds from winning your league and donating it to his donation, his charity. That's pretty

Nick VinZant 19:37

much all the questions I got. Is there anything you think that we missed, or anything like that.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 19:42

I The only thing I would add is one of the most interesting things I found about sports, betters and the research we found is they all think they win, like they all. They all have and the phenomenon is called selective memory. It's a combination of select. Good memory and illusion of control, but the question we always ask is, at the end of the month, give us what your balance is from sports betting, are you up $100 are you down $100 and almost every single one is in the positive. Now we know that isn't the case, right? Like there's the reason Las Vegas looks the way that it is. I mean, there's a reason that these sports books survive, is because they win the majority of the time. But according to the people that we surveyed, and this is 1000s of people that we surveyed over years, they all in their minds. They're because of selective memory. They only remember the good months or the good the wins that they and this has been true from fantasy daily fantasy sports participants and Sports betters. They month to month, only remember having positive outputs. So

Nick VinZant 20:57

would that be? A

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 20:59

lot of that has to do is they have a higher level of illusion control. These are individuals that believe that they are dictating what's happening week to week. In the NFL, they believe that they know more than the traditional fan.

Nick VinZant 21:11

I may have missed it, but that's unique to sports gamblers, as opposed to somebody who's gambling just like on poker or blackjack.

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 21:17

No, it's certainly not unique. It's as traditional, non sports better. So all of betting, whether you are blackjack or, you know, playing at a casino, the same thing happens. It's just we find it at a higher percentage in sports.

Nick VinZant 21:34

I want to thank Dr Dwyer so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on September 5 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show ready to go.

John Shull 22:05

This is the last episode of my 36th year on this earth. Oh,

Nick VinZant 22:11

you're trying to put out there a birthday thing for yourself. Then, right? You're trying to drop birthday hints. No,

John Shull 22:16

no, no, no, I'm not trying to drop it. I just this is the last you know, if you think about it, the fact that I've been alive for 36 years. I mean, that's kind of I mean, that's a story in itself. In

Nick VinZant 22:29

in honor of your 37th birthday, let's ask this question, do you think that you have wasted the first 36 years of your life? No,

John Shull 22:36

actually, I would not have traded any any moments in especially in my 20s and early 30s. Okay,

Nick VinZant 22:43

okay, so you didn't waste the whole thing. But what percentage of your life do you feel like you've wasted? I

John Shull 22:48

don't know, probably less than 20% so a fifth. I do

Nick VinZant 22:53

feel like I've wasted a significant portion of my life by not really remembering a lot of it, in the sense that, like, okay, not only going out and doing that stuff when you're in your 20s, but I should have written down or kept some sort of a journal of things that I've been doing, because I would say that, I would almost go out in a limb and say, I don't remember 90% of my life.

John Shull 23:16

Wow. I won't say that. I will say, think about your day to day. I don't disagree with you if you're doing it that microscopically, but there are definitely moments in time where somebody will say, Hey, you remember when this happened? That happened and it was a big moment to them. But I don't remember it. I have started keeping a journal, though, I do keep a journal now. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 23:43

keep a journal too. I write down something. I try to write down something from every single day.

John Shull 23:47

You know what I kind of wish is that I would have taken I can't believe I'm saying this, because I hate myself in photos, but I wish I would have taken more photos throughout the years.

Nick VinZant 23:58

All right. Uh, okay. Well, it says, move on.

John Shull 24:01

Doesn't that scare you? This is a conversation I had with a complete stranger about 12 hours ago that like people don't know like we don't we already don't know how to talk to each other, and some people can blame the pandemic, whatever. But isn't that scary moving forward in life that the generations well below us or after us may not communicate at all in person.

Nick VinZant 24:24

I don't know. Man, I think that every generation thinks the generation above them is idiots, and the generation below them is idiots, and that has been standard for the all time. I think that every generation thinks the other Gen there's something wrong with the generation coming up. Is that true or not? I don't know. I mean, I would say that there's definitely some things that people younger than me do that I wonder how that's going to pan out. But I think people older than us probably wondered how that was going to pan out for us, and we turned out just fine. Every generation thinks. Every other generation's terrible, and that's just how it's always been. But so you don't communicate with other people, well, we adapt and we evolve, and everything's probably going to be fine. So

John Shull 25:09

our generation's definitely been through some shit, though, but we can, we can move on.

Nick VinZant 25:13

I mean, millennials have, but the thing is, is, like, I don't understand how one generation thinks that if they were in that other generation, the things would really be any different. Everybody's a product of their time. If we were 20 year olds, we would be acting just the same way as 20 year olds do now. It's not like we were doing something great. You're all a product of their time. It's just how it is.

John Shull 25:33

Does history repeating itself every 15 years

Nick VinZant 25:37

it does. Man, all the trends are coming back, right? The thing that I don't understand is the hate about socks.

John Shull 25:45

Enlighten me, because I'm not, I guess, familiar with it.

Nick VinZant 25:47

So listen, apparently there's a big thing that ankle socks are not what you're supposed to be wearing, and ankle socks, socks aren't cool. But I don't understand that as well, right? Like, if ankle socks are the way to go, no show is the way to go. I don't understand the idea of having these big, long socks like that's just not as convenient. It doesn't look as good, it's much more uncomfortable. That's the only generational thing I would push back against, is about the socks.

John Shull 26:15

I mean, I just I don't listen. I don't care what kind of socks you wear, but it doesn't long socks just aren't comfortable. Like they just they don't look good, and they're not comfortable, and they get too hot.

Nick VinZant 26:27

I 100% agree. I that is a hill that I am willing to die on. I understand younger generations may prefer longer socks, but longer socks are just not the way to go. Like, every generation does things differently, but this socks thing, like, No, you're doing it wrong.

John Shull 26:44

You're wrong. You need to wear, stop wearing whitey tighties as as well.

Nick VinZant 26:49

Oh, man, I love whitey tighties. I rock those into my 30s.

John Shull 26:53

Alright, here's some, here's some shout outs for this week here. Okay, as we enter September. Uh, Josh renow, Will farraball, Gabrielle, duva No Julian Council, Justin Huxford, John Skelly, Alexander Haman, Dave Klassen, Jake Quesada, Jaden hooker, Ryan Graham, and give a special shout out to someone who's been a listener of this podcast for quite a while. Kent Culbert, oh yeah, Kent, yeah. So appreciate all of you, not just Kent, but everyone on that list. So alright, well, I don't you probably, oh, go ahead.

Nick VinZant 27:40

You don't see a lot of Kent's. How old is Kent? Do you know how old Kent is?

John Shull 27:47

Oh, man, you're gonna get me in trouble. Oh, boy, I know he's near either he's near 50 or just after 50,

Nick VinZant 27:55

that's about the age that I would think that somebody named Kent would be. No offense to Kent. Kent is Kent is is in like you can kind of tell how old somebody is by their name, a little bit Kenson name that precedes us. Will it make a comeback

Unknown Speaker 28:11

eventually?

John Shull 28:12

If I had to ask you, is Kent Culbert? What? What's a heritage? Do you think he is? No idea he's Irish. So Culbert,

Nick VinZant 28:24

I don't know what that like. I couldn't ever guess somebody's nationality by their name unless it's like, oh, Shaughnessy.

John Shull 28:30

Well, I just feel like Kent's like, there's, you know, Kent's a pretty Irish specific name. I feel,

Nick VinZant 28:36

Oh, I don't know. I would never associate Kent with being Irish. I mean, if his name was, like, Connor, like, I don't, yeah, like, Oh, his name's Kent. He has to be Irish,

John Shull 28:52

alright. So I don't, I don't know if you remember what we had talked about last week. Nope, but we're gonna do we're gonna in America the NFL, kicks off in a couple of days. It's actually going to kick off the day after we release this podcast, this episode, Thursday

Nick VinZant 29:08

the fifth, I believe, Thursday

John Shull 29:10

the fifth. So we had talked about, I'm going to bring up some awards, you know, like most valuable player of the year, and I'm going to give you who I actually think it will be. Oh, okay, good. All right, you, you had said that you're going to come up with a list that makes no sense, and you're still going to be better at the end of the year in terms of who you picked than me and I did research. You said she'll do some research and come to the table with something. So here, here's what I'm proposing to everybody out there, whether you listen to episode, whether you're watching us on YouTube, whatever, come up with your own list. And let's compare. Man, I'm sure we have some T shirts laying around somewhere that we do have t shirts. Actually, we do have t shirts. So I guess we'll start with probably the lowest one. So there's five. Put five, four awards in the Super Bowl winner. So okay, let's start with probably the lowest award, or valued Award, which is Rookie of the Year of the NFL. Who are you going with?

Nick VinZant 30:13

Well, who's the rookies? Like? I don't know. I don't know any of the players. Oh,

John Shull 30:18

I don't know why I expected you to Bob a lingo. Bob alongar

Nick VinZant 30:22

is my favorite player, so I think he's great. He's definitely rushing the outside. You know, he runs a four, three. He's six foot, 12 and 397 pounds. I believe he plays a wide receiver. So that would be my pick for offensive Rookie of the Year. Is Bob olingo. Bob along our

John Shull 30:40

I'm sorry, was there a Baba lingar in there? Baba

Nick VinZant 30:44

lingo, Baba. I have no idea, dude. Like, I don't know this. This is the problem is that you went way too specific on a list that I have no idea, right? Like, who do you think is going to be the best player in the baseball draft? I don't know. I don't know a single one of them.

John Shull 30:56

Your idea last week.

Nick VinZant 30:58

This was not my idea. You said you were gonna do something. No, you said last week to do this.

John Shull 31:04

So go back and look, I

Nick VinZant 31:05

didn't do any research. Yeah, I did no research for this. So how would I be able to do it? Like, who do you think is the offensive Rookie of the Year person who did no research? We're here. Don't even know any of the names of the players.

John Shull 31:15

I tell you what you take Jaden Daniels, I wrote down Caleb Williams. They're the two favorites, both quarterbacks. Caleb Williams is the rookie quarterback for the bears, so he's, I'll go, probably gonna die. That's who I went with. You're getting Jaden Daniels, who is the Washington commanders quarterback. I

Nick VinZant 31:32

don't want Jane Daniels. I want Caleb Williams. I'm picking Caleb Williams for my rookie of the year. Fine.

John Shull 31:40

They were both picking him, and I'm writing that down.

Nick VinZant 31:42

B Sean Robinson is bishon Robinson and rookie,

John Shull 31:45

no, we'll get to him, all right.

Nick VinZant 31:47

Martin Harrison Martin's playing.

John Shull 31:50

You're not going to know anybody. Defensive Player of the Year.

Nick VinZant 31:59

Who's, it's good old. Who's it, brother of what's its name? Who's it?

Unknown Speaker 32:04

It does John, who's

Unknown Speaker 32:05

its I'm

John Shull 32:06

great player. I went with TJ watt.

Nick VinZant 32:10

Who's he? Is he JJ Watt's brother?

John Shull 32:12

Yes.

Nick VinZant 32:13

Oh, is he really? He's actually his brother. Oh, okay,

yeah, him. He's great. I love him.

John Shull 32:19

Just so you know everyone, when Nick starts talking shit to me about the NFL, saying I'm not a fan. Remember this episode where he couldn't name you one defensive player?

Nick VinZant 32:29

I don't know specifics of it, but I bet I get the games right. Okay,

John Shull 32:33

Offensive Player of the Year. Then,

Nick VinZant 32:37

oh, some quarterback

John Shull 32:40

just what a Dave, what that you've

Nick VinZant 32:43

heard? CJ Stroud,

John Shull 32:45

perfect. I went with Bijon Robinson,

Nick VinZant 32:48

who's that? Oh, I dropped that guy's name. Isn't he a running back? He

John Shull 32:52

is for the Atlanta Falcons.

Nick VinZant 32:55

Okay, yeah, I love it. Just so everyone knows

John Shull 32:57

that's Nick's first actual answer, other than I.

Nick VinZant 33:01

You gave me no options. Like, just pick some random guy out this thing that I'm like, Hey, okay, tell me your favorite, uh, badminton player.

John Shull 33:09

You told me to do research and that you were just going to go off the top of your head, yeah,

Nick VinZant 33:13

but I don't know any of the people who are involved. Okay,

John Shull 33:17

well, this is the last person, and

Nick VinZant 33:19

then we'll get way too this is like you have to have parameters for these things. You gotta set these things up correctly. It's gotta be multiple choice, not just open end multiple choice. MVP, the league. Oh, probably Patrick mahomes, alright, cuz I wins every year.

John Shull 33:33

That's who I have as well. So I'm gonna change it. I'll give you my homes, and I will take Jalen Hurts from the Eagles.

Nick VinZant 33:43

Oh, that's a terrible pick. His team's terrible.

John Shull 33:45

Probably, all right,

Nick VinZant 33:46

if things raise to the level, well, I know it's a bad idea, then you should definitely know it's a bad idea. Like, no, he's not going to be the team that like. But didn't they get like, they did terrible last year. They're suddenly going to be good this year? No. Like, no, yeah, that's not going to happen. My Offensive Player of the Year is Caleb Williams. My Defensive Player of the Year is probably going to be Michael Parsons. Did

John Shull 34:07

you just look up a list? Where did Michael Parsons come from?

Nick VinZant 34:11

Yeah, I've heard that name before.

John Shull 34:13

All right. Well, all right. Well, let's, uh, this might be too advanced. I don't know who's winning the AFC in the NFC for you.

Nick VinZant 34:21

I don't know which teams are in which division. Okay,

John Shull 34:23

who do you have winning the Super Bowl then?

Nick VinZant 34:25

Oh, probably I don't want them to win at all, but probably the Kansas City Chiefs. I mean, they seem like they're probably the best team, and doesn't seem like anybody else really got any much better. So probably them who I would want to win is the Buffalo Bills. But I don't think that's going to happen.

John Shull 34:42

Probably not. I went to the Detroit Lions. That's not going to happen over the Baltimore Ravens. So the Detroit Lions will

Nick VinZant 34:51

eventually remember that they are the Detroit Lions like they're not. I don't think it's actually legally allowed for Detroit to win at anything. I.

John Shull 34:59

Yeah. I mean, not in this decade or last decade. Well, last decade they did win a Stanley Cup, but it doesn't matter. All right, listen, that's, that's all I had. I wrote down your I wrote Baba lingo, babala, and I'm gonna look up to see if anyone even comes close to that name. Oh, he's

Nick VinZant 35:15

a great guy.

The thing that I've always heard about the NFL is generally like, whatever you think is going to happen is wrong. This is my rant about sports analysis analysts. I can't stand them. I don't think that any of them have any idea what they're talking about, and they're wrong most of the time. They make weather people look like they know what's going on, like sports analysis, like, who knows? Man, they don't know. I

John Shull 35:40

can tell you that whatever college football's done to itself, it's terrible, because college football may be the worst product out there on the market.

Nick VinZant 35:49

Okay, do you think I would? I mean, they are also like the second biggest sport in the world, I think not in the world, but in the United States. I think it's foot college I think it's NFL football and then college football. So they seem to know what they're doing. No, I

John Shull 36:02

don't think that's right in the world. No, not in the world. No, in the United States,

Nick VinZant 36:05

though I would. Oh, it's probably NFL football, and then college football,

John Shull 36:09

like the NBA is in there. But I don't really know. Move on. I had a question

Nick VinZant 36:12

that I was going to ask you, and I completely forgot about it. Good.

John Shull 36:16

So my plan's working. Oh, it's back to you.

Nick VinZant 36:20

Are you ready for? Oh, are you ready for? What time it is? Did you remember

John Shull 36:27

that? Of course, I remembered this before you get into the intro. This is, this is get this is something I don't even know how to describe it, but it may be, it and it's easily a candle of the year. Nominee, wow. So anyways, let's go candle

Nick VinZant 36:45

of the year. Contender, Okay, it's time. The Outlaw candle connoisseur, I can't do the table thing when we're live. The Outlaw candle connoisseur Rides Again. Candle of the month.

John Shull 37:04

So hold on, let me. Let me grab a quick drink here. Okay,

Nick VinZant 37:10

um, hydrate. Make sure to hydrate. So

John Shull 37:11

this, I don't even know how to describe this candle and how it came to be, other than it ended up by accident that the family and I were going out to breakfast one day, and the two places we went to or wanted to go to two places for breakfast. No, we went to the first place, which is the place we really wanted to go to. They were out of power. They weren't open. So then I look on the outage map, and we're like, Okay, let's go to another place across town. So we go over to the other place, and they had had, like, a ruptured water line, and it flooded their kitchen. So now we're like, What the fuck do we do? Right? Let's just go home and I'll make pancakes. My oldest daughter, out of nowhere goes, I want piggy pancakes.

Nick VinZant 38:10

Yeah, you gotta, you gotta put that. You gotta, yep, no, well,

John Shull 38:13

guess what? Restaurant has piggy pancakes,

Nick VinZant 38:16

pigs in a blanket. What are piggy pancakes? I don't know what that is. They're kids

John Shull 38:20

pancakes, but they put them and they look like a pig. Oh, you

Nick VinZant 38:24

had to go looking around for something that specifically makes you had to, like, drive around and do all that stuff. Like, I'm not doing that. Like, tough luck kid. I did I did it. We did a stick of wood you can get and chew on that.

John Shull 38:37

My wife did a quick Google search, and we found a one, one restaurant, at least, that has them on their menu publicly, and that is Bob Evans. Ah,

Nick VinZant 38:47

okay, okay, so to buy hot for people who don't know we're

John Shull 38:53

in Bob Evans and we're eating, and, you know, whatever I we go to pay, and they have a counter. It's kind of like a Cracker Barrel, like you have to kind of go into a little store to pay or whatever. It's not really a store, but they have merchandise, and sure as shit sitting right next to the cash register or Bob Evans candles. Oh,

Nick VinZant 39:13

my God, are you going to tell me that the candle of the month, potentially a candle of the year nominee, is something from Bob Evans,

John Shull 39:22

no, not only am I going to tell you this, but I I'm going to tell you that I don't see them sold online, which means you have to go to the store to buy them. There's several different kinds. I got the buttered maple syrup, one wicker candle, one wick candle. And it is, I mean, it is delicious. I mean, it is, right now in Michigan, it's going to about 80 degrees in the daytime, and goes down to about 5565 at night. And, man, you like that sucker at night, and it just makes you feel. Little homey. Makes me feel like I'm eating, eating, you know, pancakes with maple syrup and butter on them. It is delicious.

Nick VinZant 40:10

Part of me is very upset with this. Part of me understands it. The part of me that is very upset with this is like, this is a Bob Evans candle. This is supposed to be candle of the month. You're supposed to be the outlaw candle connoisseur, and you're essentially telling me, like you're a restaurant critic who's recommending me McDonald's. Like, have you ever heard of McDonald's? Right? Like, that's what you're doing right now. But the other part of me understands, because the best spaghetti sauce that I've ever had in my life that I am addicted to is the cheapest crap that I can get from the local grocery store here. So I understand that sometimes you can find hidden gems in unexpected places.

John Shull 40:54

I mean, it's not like I wanted this to happen. I mean, to be honest with you, I had a very nice candle from another online company that I was going to have on here. This has happened in the last couple of weeks. Hmm,

Nick VinZant 41:06

I just don't know how I feel about it. I kind of feel like we're selling out for no money.

John Shull 41:12

I mean, listen, if people have trusted me for the last two years with this candle kind of sewer title, okay, trust me on this one,

Nick VinZant 41:21

putting your reputation on the line is what you're doing. Don't, don't

John Shull 41:24

get butter, maple syrup, then get the farmhouse scent.

Nick VinZant 41:27

Oh, my God, you know, how long did you spend looking at candles? At Bob Evans,

John Shull 41:32

I mean, it wasn't more. I mean, they only had two or three cents to choose from. But, you know, it was a joke. My wife laughed at me, right? She's like, Oh, why are you getting a candle? I'm like, I don't know. Let's give it a try, you know, man,

Nick VinZant 41:47

and it was, did you make it awkward for the cashier? Did you talk to him too much about the candles? Did you make it awkward for the cashier?

John Shull 41:54

Actually, it was a great experience, and

Nick VinZant 41:58

for both of you, or for just for you. Well, I

John Shull 42:01

had asked because there was a little dust on the top. And I'm like, people don't buy these too often, do they? And the poor the woman was like, No, I don't remember the last time anyone bought one

Nick VinZant 42:12

of those. God, and you're going to say that it's a great candle, telling

John Shull 42:16

you sometimes you find the best things, the diamond and the roughs and the roughest of of things like you don't expect it, and I didn't. I didn't expect this to be good at all, but my house, a week later, still smells like buttered maple syrup pancakes. Wow,

Nick VinZant 42:35

that good. I mean, I did meet my wife on match.com so you do never, kind of No, but I'm going to be pretty skeptical. We're going to need somebody from the audience to try out the Bob Evans candle. How much was it? How much was it? I think 895,

John Shull 42:50

oh so cheap. Yeah, it was not expensive, and you didn't have to pay for shipping, you know, you like, I could just take it home. I could just burn it. I mean it, you know. I know I've had some other store bought candles on here before, but I do showcase a lot of companies and a lot of sites that are, you know, websites. So

Nick VinZant 43:07

okay, all right. Well, we'll just have to go ahead and see what we hear.

John Shull 43:11

I get your hesitation, I get it, but trust me on this one you if you can find it, you won't regret it.

Nick VinZant 43:19

That's a cheap that's all you kind of had me sold a little bit cheap. That's all I really need. I seriously doubt that Bob Evans makes the candle. They probably just like, Hey, Bob Evans, you want to put these in your store and put your name on it? Like, yeah, they probably make the same candle for like, 10 other companies.

John Shull 43:34

I mean, I mean, you could argue that. I mean, that's all candles kind of smell the same after you really get down to it. Yeah, candies.

Nick VinZant 43:41

Are you going to start going around and checking out various stores to see if they have candles? We've

John Shull 43:48

had this conversation. I don't think I've ever been to an IHOP.

Nick VinZant 43:51

Oh yeah, IHOP. I don't think I've ever been to a Bob Evans. I've never been to a Cracker Barrel.

John Shull 43:58

I've been to a Cracker Barrel. I've only been to a waffle house once, and it was on the outskirts of Nashville, only because the person I was with was, like, we have to go to a waffle house. It's a Tennessee thing, yeah.

Nick VinZant 44:09

So no, it's a that's a cultural experience, that's great. You need to go for like, Waffle House at certain times of the day. Is dinner and a show like, that's an entertainment thing, okay, our

main is that it that? Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it. Alright? So

in honor of football season, starting up top five bar games, I think that's what they're called, and we're not talking about, like, flip cup or things like that. Like not drinking games, bar games, like stuff that you do at a bar besides drink. What's your number five?

John Shull 44:45

So I think this is a newer edition, at least in last decade or so, maybe not. But my number five I have cornhole.

Nick VinZant 44:54

That's what I have. My number five is also cornhole, and that's not a new edition that's existed. For like, years. The only reason I put cornhole as number five is because I don't really think that there's that many. That's where it goes. Like cornhole is number five by default for me, not because I actually enjoy the game. It's just

John Shull 45:14

one of those games where, no matter how much I try, I still suck. I could be playing somebody with no arms, one leg and half ahead, they're still going to beat me.

Nick VinZant 45:26

Oh, you're that bad at it. You

have poor depth perception. I wouldn't

John Shull 45:30

say depth perception. I just say, the more I drink, the less I care.

Unknown Speaker 45:34

Oh, yeah, that's where some

John Shull 45:38

of these game or some of these activities I have further on the list I know not to be too drunk at because I want to do well. That's

Nick VinZant 45:46

I have CO that's what, like, cornhole is my number five, but only because, like, I just could never see myself, like, really trying hard at cornhole. Like, I really want to win this game a cornhole. Like, I'm not motivated by it.

John Shull 46:01

Yeah, it's just, no, I'm good with it. That's where it should be. My number four. And this is kind of, you know, once again, it has to be on the list somewhere. So I put it just above cornhole, but it goes no further for me. So my number four is darts.

Nick VinZant 46:18

Oh, you have darts. And number of darts is a classic game, dude. I think if we were overseas, I think overseas, other countries are really into darts. I will say there's a video on the internet that, if you ever see, like, the best round of darts ever. I think it's called that looks like the greatest atmosphere I've ever seen in my life. I want to go to, like, the world's darts championship. I don't know if I've ever had more seen more people having fun. It looks amazing. Yeah.

John Shull 46:44

I mean, some of these small, niche sports, like, they can get, like the it's fun. It's a good time. My number four is shuffleboard. Okay, alright. I like shuffleboard. Shuffleboards fun for sure.

Nick VinZant 46:57

I would have put shuffleboard higher, but it's a little harder to find. I don't know enough places.

John Shull 47:03

I unfortunately think it just gets edged out on my list. But I like shuffleboard. I do. Okay,

Nick VinZant 47:08

okay, number three,

John Shull 47:11

air hockey.

Nick VinZant 47:14

I'm glad you have it at number three. I think that it should be higher on the list, but I'm glad that you have it. I'm glad that air hockey is getting a little bit of respect. My number three is darts. I would have put darts a lot higher. I like darts a lot, but I think that the two and one are just like, No, you those. Those need to be there. But I love darts. I think it's great. It's funny to

John Shull 47:34

say that, because I think my one and two are the only options for one and two. So, oh, okay, me having air hockey at number three. I think of air hockey was in more bars, it would have creep maybe gotten to be my number two, but I haven't been in too many bars that have had air hockey. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 47:51

I would agree with that. I think that probably even though we don't have it, I think most people would say darts is number one.

John Shull 47:59

I think that's fair. That could be fair. Okay. Oh, go ahead, my number two is pinball. Oh,

Nick VinZant 48:10

I like pinball, but it's a game that, like, I can't it's not social enough. That's why I think Pinball is held back as a bar game, because you gotta, gotta be, you gotta be invested in it, like you gotta be paying too much attention in pinball. That's why my knock on it.

John Shull 48:29

Yeah. I mean, I don't disagree with that. I also think, though there's a pinball machine in almost every bar, and there's, it's always, there's always people playing it anytime of night, it's just, and it can get competitive. And you know, you always have that one person on every night that's like, I'm gonna break the high score, and they never come close.

Nick VinZant 48:47

No, it's much harder. My number two is skeeball. I love skeeball. Oh, play skeeball all day. It's like bowling, but easier and quicker and less activity.

John Shull 48:58

But see, I don't, I don't, I don't, haven't. I haven't I haven't been to that many bars that have skeeball. Well,

Nick VinZant 49:02

you're going to the wrong bars.

John Shull 49:03

I mean, maybe

Nick VinZant 49:04

you're too busy googling piggy pancakes when you should be Googling skeeball. That just makes

John Shull 49:10

me a good father, okay, makes you a pushover. I

Nick VinZant 49:13

mean, whatever. Too bad kid. You can have what you can find in the car seat. So

John Shull 49:19

I think we have the same number one, then probably, no, I

Unknown Speaker 49:21

don't even know

Nick VinZant 49:23

what your number one is going to be. I don't even know what it's going to be. Oh, I know what it's going to be, and I completely disagree. Okay, what's your number one then,

John Shull 49:32

well, my number one for Best bar games is pool.

Nick VinZant 49:37

Yeah, I would agree that most people would put that up there. I don't particularly enjoy it.

John Shull 49:44

So what? What's your number one then air hockey.

Nick VinZant 49:48

I love air hockey. Air Hockey needs more respect. Air Hockey is a great, great game. I love it.

John Shull 49:56

So here's my here's my thing with air hockey. I enjoy it. I. Like it. But if you're playing it as an adult against another adult, it gets to be a little annoying, because half the time you're hitting it so hard that the puck just flies off the table. I think

Nick VinZant 50:12

that you need to really just reevaluate your life and what you're doing,

John Shull 50:18

like, maybe you're not hitting it hard enough?

Nick VinZant 50:20

No, maybe I try to actually play the game instead of just trying me, John, me hit ball hard. It's not just actually try to use some finesse.

John Shull 50:29

Well, mate, you're right. Maybe I'm not playing it right, or I'm not playing it right with the people that I'm playing

Nick VinZant 50:33

it with. That's what the problem is. You're not doing it right. Air Hockey is a game of strategy, speed, reflexes, ability, thinking it's fast chess is what air hockey is. You got to know math geometry, if they had the reaction time of a Formula One driver, this eyesight of a hawk, the body control of an Olympic gymnast. Air Hockey is the ultimate game.

John Shull 50:57

You know, every one of those attributes is definitely something I think of when I think of being at a bar, playing at

Nick VinZant 51:04

a bar, playing air hockey. My wife and I may drive 30 minutes out of our way to go play dollar air hockey at the University of Washington. We have a table in the back and we can that sweet though, that's actually pretty good deal, right? People who live next to college campuses, you should be going to those college campuses and, like, going bowling there the game rooms, because they're always cheap. That's like a life hack. Go to the college campus where you can get Bowling for $3 a game.

John Shull 51:34

I mean, yeah, that's, I feel like here, though, it's more expensive, like we have the University of Michigan kind of, kind of near us, Wayne State, but that all those places are pretty expensive or they're locked out to non students.

Nick VinZant 51:48

No, dude, they're not. You gotta, know, you just gotta go down there. There'll be, like, all that we have went through the University of Washington one time at the Student Union down there, and they would look like they were closed, and the guy's like, hey, we'll open up for you. It's $2 like, it's just, it's great you gotta go to college campuses and play on their stuff more, man, act like you're a student. Just act, I feel like, honestly, if you just go through your life acting like you're supposed to be there, nobody's going to actually really ask you any questions and kind of just let you do whatever you want.

John Shull 52:17

I mean, that's isn't that? Kind of just, isn't that? How many people have done a lot of things they're not even supposed to be there.

Nick VinZant 52:25

Act like you're supposed to be there, right? Like, how many people at their job, like, really know actually what you're doing? Like, not that many. Just act like you're supposed to be there and life's gonna be okay. Air Hockey is the best. Pool is stupid.

John Shull 52:40

I mean, I'm not good at pool, but pool, when you think of a bar game, I feel like it's darts and pool.

Nick VinZant 52:45

Yeah, I would much. I'm a more active. I like a more little more activity in my games. That's

John Shull 52:52

where I don't fast pace. I don't want to be active at a bar unless I'm moving my hand, you know, 90 degrees to my mouth,

Nick VinZant 53:00

12 ounce curls. I would have put ping pong as number one if I would have thought ping pong can get if I could get away with it.

John Shull 53:06

Yeah, no. Ping pongs in the bar game,

Nick VinZant 53:08

yeah. What's on your honorable mention?

John Shull 53:11

Uh, let's see here I have that. I don't know what it's called, but the like the basketball shooting game,

Nick VinZant 53:17

yeah, that's, I

would say that's more arcade game. I believe it's called basketball. Generally refer to it. Let's

John Shull 53:25

see. I do have shuffleboard on here. And then this isn't, this is an outside bar game, but bocce ball, I

Nick VinZant 53:35

don't know what that one is. It's kind of long,

John Shull 53:37

kind of complicated, but essentially you're just trying to hit a ball with a wooden, wooden, like, bracket type thing, through a couple of wooden hoops.

Nick VinZant 53:48

I was in, like, croquet, yeah, kind of Yeah. Okay, that sounds Wait. Am

John Shull 53:54

I getting croquet mixed up with bocce ball? I

Nick VinZant 53:56

think you're getting croquet mixed up with bocce ball. I think bocce ball is something you like, is like, oh, hold, but bowling,

John Shull 54:03

no, croquet, not bocce ball. Looks like there are nothing. You don't hit anything on bocce ball, you throw the balls,

Nick VinZant 54:07

yeah? You're like, it's like, I don't know how to play that. Anyways.

John Shull 54:11

It doesn't matter, horseshoes too, but horseshoes, horseshoes is fun, but you don't really play it in a bar or outside,

Dr. Brendan Dwyer 54:17

yeah, um, you

Nick VinZant 54:20

know what was, honestly, was huge at a point was golden T, I that was a big that had a moment I played

John Shull 54:30

golden T in the last year at a bar. So, oh,

Nick VinZant 54:33

I don't know if I've played, I would. The other one I could put on there is Buck Hunter, like a shooting game like Buck hunter. I went to an arcade the other day and somebody left $50 in Buck Hunter.

This the left it 50 bucks.

John Shull 54:49

What you know that somebody who rage quit the shit out of

Nick VinZant 54:53

that? Oh, they must have been like, really, or they didn't know they, like, paid on a credit card and didn't realize that they had $50 Thought it was five. Oh, my I would never leave $50 in a like $50 but they had to leave all of a sudden. How we could play $50 with a buck Hunter sitting there fly we played for like three games. I was like, this is way too much. I can't play this

John Shull 55:19

buck Hunter. Man, tell you what Golden's

Nick VinZant 55:21

big. I haven't played Gold team by like, 20 years. Not you got anything

John Shull 55:25

on your list, only

Nick VinZant 55:26

golden t and I would say Buck Hunter. Some people like put Jenga. But that to me, I don't understand that. Why do I want to get drunk and pick up?

John Shull 55:37

Yeah, there's a couple of bars locally here that you play board games. And I'm like, I don't want to get drunk and play games that I have to really think about.

Nick VinZant 55:44

Yeah. I mean, this is Go fish. I play Go Fish.

John Shull 55:48

Also I feel like I have to say that I did write this down. I wasn't going to bring it up, but blockbuster had the social media of the month, I feel. And it's Labor Day, and their their tweet was giving all of our employees the day off to celebrate Labor Day.

Nick VinZant 56:06

That's pretty that I can't believe they still exist. There's

John Shull 56:10

one left, I think, up by you, right? Oh,

Nick VinZant 56:13

I don't know. I think there's one left blockbusters,

John Shull 56:17

man, listen, we don't gotta talk about it. But some of my, some of my favorite moments that I actually remember were blockbuster included, oh,

Nick VinZant 56:26

I don't, can't remember ever going to a blockbuster. Well, I think I know about blockbus fart, no dude, because I know how to use technology. Wow. I could drive to this place and rent a video, or I could just click this button.

John Shull 56:42

We didn't. We didn't have that back in the day.

Nick VinZant 56:45

Maybe you didn't in Detroit, which is a third world country, which is why the Detroit Lions are going to do anything, and everybody knows it. They had one good year because they played a bunch of bad teams that were already injured. It's a complete fluke. They probably won't even make the playoffs, not just this year, but ever again. I don't I would be more willing to bet, if I had a choice between the Detroit Lions will someday win the Super Bowl or the Detroit Lions will never make the playoffs again ever. I would pick, oh, probably never again, ever. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless, I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are some of the best bar games. I'm partial to air hockey. That's my number one. I love it, but I know it's really probably not number one. I think it's really between darts and pool. But let us know what you think you.

Skiptrace Investigator Jon Dalman

Skiptrace Investigator Jon Dalman specialized in finding people who don’t want to be found. We talk skiptracing, what being a Bounty Hunter is really like and the hardest type of people to find. Then, from Halle Berry and Jon Hamm to Jerry Rice and Fiona Apple, we countdown the Top 5 Celebrities with Food Names.

Jon Dalman: 01:23

Pointless: 34:06

Top 5 Celebrity Food Names: 46:31

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Wanted Podcast

Interview with Skiptrace Investigator Jon Dalman

Nick VinZant 0:12

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode skip tracing and celebrity food.

Jon Dalman 0:21

So for the people that we go after, someone else has already tried to find them, and so the ones that come to us are the kind of hardest of the hard. A lot of people dodge subpoenas. They're being called because they are a witness to their boss's affair, or it's the accountant for someone who's been arrested for fraud. Think about like a bell curve and people who have a lot of money and people who have no money, those are the ones that go off grid.

Nick VinZant 0:52

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he specializes in finding people who don't want to be found. This is investigator John Dahlman, So how hard is it to find somebody?

Jon Dalman 1:24

It's the hardest part of the job. Finding people who are intentionally trying to not be found are very difficult, especially in this this day and age, and if they have a little bit of money, they have a network of family and friends they could stay with. It could be very difficult.

Nick VinZant 1:43

Why? Why is it hard? Is it hard because people are good at kind of disappearing, or is it hard just No, it's just a hard thing to do. These people aren't good. It's just a hard thing to do.

Jon Dalman 1:54

So for the people that we go after, someone else has already tried to find them. So to find you or another, what we call a citizen, isn't particularly hard. You're like, oh yeah, he's in the white pages and oh look, he pays a phone bill here, and he gets mail here. He banks here. His cards are registered here. That's no problem. That's easy to find the folks that come to us our last resort for our clients, and that's usually attorneys, and so when they come to us, the cops have already tried and failed. The service attempts our background is bounty hunters. It's the same skill set that goes around. The same things that it took to catch a bail jumper are the same skill set, the same tools, the same mindset is involved to catch people who are running on service documents. And so the ones that come to us are the kind of hardest of the

Nick VinZant 2:58

hard on average, like, how long would it generally take for you to find somebody so you get the phone call? How long does it usually take to like, before you can track them down?

Jon Dalman 3:08

That's good question. It's funny because it could vary wildly. We'll have a case where we work it for two, three weeks of leads and possibilities. And Alex finds a traffic ticket in another county, and they put an address down, and we see, oh, you know, he was staying at a house there. Who's this woman he was staying with? Find her on Facebook. Look at her Facebook friends. Oh, he's not tagging Oh, that's his ex girlfriend, just down the line. Until it finally kind of comes to fruition. But there are times when Alex is open soon, Peter says, Yeah, this file came in. They've done this. They can't find them, and in five six minutes, she's getting a cup of coffee. Says, Yeah, I found out he's, he's, he's staying at his brother's house over in this place. And my time in the field depends on how many hits and misses we have until we figure out someone's schedule. And so that could be multiple attempts. And the attempts aren't really time conclude, really intensive, but the getting there and everything else, the logistics of travel can be time consuming. I would say we have a case like right now. We probably have about 30 open cases, and that rotates all the time, and we probably close 10 to 15 cases a week. Let

Nick VinZant 4:33

me kind of back up a little bit. So the call comes in. We need you to find, let's just use my name. We need you to find Nick vinzant. Like, how does this whole process work?

Jon Dalman 4:43

So the call comes in, Alex is the best. She's like, takes the call, handles. It says, Okay, send me what you got. Email comes in. She starts looking, she's like, looking at prior services of entry, of failed services that the sheriff has made that. Their servers have made any information they have booking sheets from if there was a crime associated to it, prior arrest, little background check, then initial searches begin on databases for addresses. We have the same access to databases as private investigators that, like the police would have, so you could type it in. It's not just like Facebook or yellow pages or white pages that you just type it in. Oh, and this is where they live. We have access to people's address history, and then we could go to their relatives history as well. And then it kind of starts going to social media, and that really does help close a lot of cases, or at least fill in some big gaps of what's going on in our people's life. You might think, well, he used to live here. He's divorced from this person. He's got a mom that lives here. He's unemployed now, and if you could find his social media most, most of the time, Facebook is the best for this, and fill in those gaps. Okay, he's got a new girlfriend, and he's got a new job, and he stays here, those kind of things. Fill it in. And then Alex is able to kind of pinpoint some addresses for me to go knock on doors. Why

Nick VinZant 6:21

are you usually trying to find these people? Like, what's the reason that they're usually trying to be found

Jon Dalman 6:27

for us now? So, as you know, for seven years or so, seven, eight years, we were we work for bail bondsman, doing the same thing. So when people would fail to appear for court, the bondsman would contract Alex and myself to find the defendant, and then for me to go find him at their house or wherever it is, put them in my car and take them back to jail for the bondsman, the people now are dodging pay. Well, that's it's a great question, because some people are voiding service accidentally because they are so kind of viscous in their living situations that people just can't find them. They stay on other people's couches. They don't have a car registered to them. They work labor jobs or off the books. They don't bank their phone is kind of pay by the minute. We can't really pinpoint them, so they're kind of avoiding service just by default of the way their lifestyle is. Most people that are dodging have something to lose, child support payments, child custody modification, emergency hearings for people subpoenas. A lot of people dodge subpoenas. They're being called because they are a witness to their boss's affair, or it's the accountant for someone who's been arrested for fraud, and they're being sued civilly, so they want to get them and they're not making themselves available for service. A lot of times. Also, tort we've had some cases dog bites, slipping things where people have been injured, have been wronged, and they need to be and the people who are responsible for that need to be served, and they don't want to be any part of that.

Nick VinZant 8:13

Did they now, the thing that I always see is like, from what, like, what I know about, did they have to identify themselves and say, like, my name, or like, how can you serve somebody? Or, like, kind of bring closure to this, right?

Jon Dalman 8:25

That's a good question, because I get of a lot, actually, from even people who are getting service, they'll say to me, Well, I didn't tell you my name, or you didn't say you've been served. Like, I'm like, watch too much TV. Man, it's not like that. All the research we do, we have pictures of the people involved, and I can, if I can identify you positively, and you won't take it, I'll just drop it at your feet. I'm like, oh, that's no problem. I run the body camera and I'll say, okay, they'll say, Well, I'm not Nick, no way. I'm not him. That's my brother. I'm like, Okay, no problem. I'm just, if you want to take I'm just gonna drop him at your feet. Alright, have a good day. And I walk off. We have a video of it. We do an affidavit. I'm like, I identified the gentleman as Nick he was six foot tall, 180 pounds, which lines up with what we saw this and that I identified him, his car in the driveway, his license plate was this, which is his car that's registered to him, and that we fill the affidavit out, and if you say then it's happened, and it's one of the most glorious things of our job. Is when someone denies that they were identified properly or served, and they tell their lawyer and our lawyer and their lawyer get together, and our lawyer says, Well, let me show you the laptop footage here of your client screaming in the yard. I'm not me, and it's amazing. It's like just a chef's kiss for our job. And that happens.

Nick VinZant 9:49

How do people usually take it? There's

Jon Dalman 9:52

no rhyme or reason for it. There's people who are it's arguably the worst news they've ever had in their entire life. You. I served a gentleman last week divorce papers, and we caught him at his new girlfriend's house, and I give him the documents, and he's just like, Okay, thanks. I'm like, Have a good day. He's like, Yeah, you too, and we part ways. You think he might go bananas, but that's that. But then there might be someone whose insurance is covering something. It's a minor fender bender. They're just been avoiding service because they don't think it's fair that people still sue you whatever it is, and they lose their minds, screaming, yelling, dodging, whatever. It doesn't happen very often. Knock on wood. Probably, I think last year we served personally 1200 1300 people, and we're above that. This year, I would say, if we end up getting say just 1300 again this year, I would say hostile, probably 200

Nick VinZant 11:02

how does that kind of different from when you were a bounty hunter? Like, how did those interactions of like, Oh, I found you. How do those differ between the two of them? So

Jon Dalman 11:12

you could it's, I didn't. When I was bounty hunting full time, I prided myself on not being a hard ass, not huffing and puffing and going bananas on people and just being polite and again, try not to insert myself and getting them to open the door, but if they couldn't, I saw my guy in there. There was options. You could kick a door. You can do things like that, not very often, but those it was more wide open because the defendant themselves had signed a fourth amendment waiver, the right to privacy. Everything was all you were kind of like, you just go, but process service is completely different. At the door, you don't have any of those options. You're not kicking the door. They haven't signed anything over there. They haven't done anything wrong, you know, they're just don't want to see you. So it takes a little bit more Verbal Judo or a little bit more seduction at the door, a little bit to kind of get it to happen. You know, we put about 600 people in jail while doing bail for seven years, full time, I guess six, 700 people, whatever it was. And just through all those numbers, all those people, there becomes a point where there's nothing you really haven't seen on people you haven't dealt with. So your skills, kind of you have to just be fluid and change your thing. If someone's yelling at you, or someone's being nice to you or this kind of got to be malleable in your approach, and it's the same as process service. Ultimately, though, the the fact that you don't have to throw them in the car and take away their freedom does make process service a little bit easier to close. But with bail, you had some rules, or lack of rules, that kind of might have made it easier to get there.

Nick VinZant 13:10

That makes sense. You had a little bit like, you could, kind of, the system was a little bit more in your favor. You could do a little more, right?

Jon Dalman 13:17

And you had financial leverage over people. If they were staying with their co signer, they're like, Listen, man, that's fine. You don't have to bring him out of his room. That's fine. The bail bond is going to send you a demand letter tomorrow for $25,000 so that's okay. Let Junior stay in the house. So if you tell me he's not here, that's fine. I'll be back tomorrow with the demand letter that you signed. Your right to even fight it in court. I'm gonna bring that to you for $25,000 tomorrow, so I'll see you later. You have that leverage bail is wild.

Nick VinZant 13:47

The one thing that I like when somebody kind of goes completely off the grid, right, like,

Jon Dalman 13:52

right,

Nick VinZant 13:53

how do they even live off the grid? So to speak, like, did what? Like, I don't know how you would even exist without that like, or like, you're not using a credit card, you're not on social media, you don't have a job. Like, how do these people who are really hard to find? Like, what are they doing?

Jon Dalman 14:09

That's to the point. That is to the point of who's hardest to catch. Type people are the ones who are, like, totally off the grid. And how they do that is, think about like a bell curve, and people who have a lot of money and people who have no money, those are the ones that go off grid. Most people, the 90% of the people in the middle, are easy to find. It's the ones that have a lot of money, the resources, who are like, Oh man, the process servers come to my house every evening. This would be a good time to eat, to go to Chicago for a week. I'm gonna go visit my family in Florida for two weeks. They can just go. They have the means to just take off. People who have absolutely close to nothing are very hard to find as well, and those Absolutely. Like street like, door to door, human Intel to close. You've got to get someone you got to get a hotel manager. You got an apartments maintenance guy. You got to get a disgruntled baby mama, whoever that is, to say he's staying over at the Motel Six on Jimmy Carter. That's how you get those guys, the ones with a lot of money, you're patient, and if you have a lot of money and you're running around and you actually are staying close, I'll get you at a social arrangement. I'll get you at a child custody drop off. I'll get you when I know you're going to be somewhere that you're associated to a charity or something like that. I'll get you in public.

Nick VinZant 15:44

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions?

Jon Dalman 15:47

Oh yeah.

Nick VinZant 15:48

So kind of going in along that line, we were just talking about most interesting place that you've ever served somebody,

Jon Dalman 15:55

I would say gentlemen's clubs. We've had a number of cases that involve strip strip clubs, I would say, suing, like naming, like the entire city council of a city who has been named in a civil suit, and walking into the middle of like public comments in A in a city meeting, like a city council meeting, one feet, doing that type thing, just walking down the line, handing them out to Commissioner, commissioner, Commissioner, like that. People's work, every line of work, also inside people's houses. I know a lot of people don't like to do that. I'm pretty comfortable with it, because my background in bail, but inside people's houses can be really weird, like it gets a little off the rails, because there's that there's an invasion of privacy of sorts, that they're like, you might not want to come the door and you know your your roommate says, Oh yeah, he's in the bedroom. And you're like, No, don't let him in the house. And all of a sudden, I'm in there. It gets really weird. That's where you live, and not where I live, and I'm there, and you know what I am. You don't want to deal with this. It gets kind of, it's, that's when things kind of can get really wacky. Typically, like, if there was a weirdest, we do some stuff where we jump paramours, like the like the girlfriend or the boyfriend involved in a divorce. Those are the ones that are kind of crazy. Where you're, you know, they're trying to subpoena a girlfriend, a side girl in a divorce, hitting them, getting them that could often be in their house or their work or whatever that is, those get a little bananas. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 17:53

I could see that, because now you're involved in somebody else's drama, and I bet that person is pissed.

Jon Dalman 18:00

Oh, absolutely. Or, you know, you're an accountant for someone who's doing bank fraud or what? Or you're the accountant for a couple that are divorcing, and one guy's been hiding money on the side, getting ready to leave his wife, and all of a sudden, you're just doing your job, and you get sucked into this whole thing. They're not happy about that. I mean, they're pros. They could do their thing, but it's still just unpleasant.

Nick VinZant 18:28

Do you have somebody that you just can't find? Like I never found that person.

Jon Dalman 18:33

The only reason we don't find someone is because the client will say, Okay, that's enough. I don't want to put any more money into this just by an affidavit of due diligence, and we're gonna make them fight it. So an affidavit of due diligence would be, you take off from Mexico, and I can't get you in Mexico or but we do have people who serve down there, but for whatever reason you're out of touch, we kind of know where you are, but we can't get you. And we're like, okay, yeah, buy John a plane ticket to to Mexico and he'll go serve this. They're like, how much is that going to cost? We tell them. They're like, just, just, right. There's not enough money in the case for that. There's not a deep enough pocket to pay you that money. So we could all make money. So just write an affidavit saying everything you did, where you think he is and what the evidence is to support that, and we'll file it and make their attorney fight that. So as far as not finding one, that doesn't really happen,

Nick VinZant 19:30

yeah, so it's more a financial decision than it is a logistical decision. Absolutely, it's

Jon Dalman 19:35

just resources, biggest length

Nick VinZant 19:37

someone has gone to to hide from you on

Jon Dalman 19:39

the bail side of things, I mean full hiding on their beds, hiding in garbage cans, hiding. I had a guy one time in attic crawl space. He was a little guy, but he actually crawled inside a big toe. Like this big Tupperware thing she store Christmas lights in. It's like that. And was literally in the fetal position, hiding in one of those to avoid jail. And then on the the process service side, people will will take off, leave the country, things like that. People, again, people on that side of the curve that have the money to do so, but just people who will try to jump in their car and run as fast as I can. I've been hit by three cars in four years. You've been hit by

Nick VinZant 20:30

a car three times? Yes, um,

Jon Dalman 20:32

ironically, all luxury cars. I got hit by a BMW x5 I got bit hit by Mercedes s5, 50 and brushed by on a 911 GT, 3r all of them involving very wealthy business guys. Two were involved in being sued by former business partners, and another one was a want, demand for more alimony, whatever it was, like that a family law case,

Nick VinZant 21:04

for some reason I would feel like the more quote, unquote, successful people would have, the harsher reaction to it. You're

Jon Dalman 21:10

absolutely right. And there's an entitlement thing there. I think if you're used to, if you're successful and you have a lot of money and you make things happen, you you're used to getting your way in a lot of things, and there's an entitlement that comes from that. And not wanting to be served is like, I don't want that. You know? I shouldn't have to take that there those guys, if I think about it, if I had to write a list of the people who were the most bananas, it would be on the socioeconomic scale, on the higher end of that,

Nick VinZant 21:44

I could see that right, like, they don't feel like they should have to be doing this. Like, how dare you. Like, I could see that kind of reaction.

Jon Dalman 21:53

And the folks on the lower side, it's just another day under the sun for them. Like, I got served papers because my old car, I got in a wreck, and I rear ended someone, but my phone's also turned off. I'm getting laid off from work. I'm back on this. It's just there's like a just a blindness to the stressors of your life, just to know that this is just one more thing. Have you

Nick VinZant 22:19

ever not serve somebody because of a situation. The only thing like, Oh, they're playing with their kid in their park. I'm not going to do it here. Like, do you ever do that? Or like, No, you got to do it when you got the chance.

Jon Dalman 22:29

I'll do it when I do it. And I, if I see you, I know it's too hard. You only get so many bites at an apple, so if I saw you and your son going to kindergarten for the first day of school. Would I jump you at the door the kindergarten? No, but I would wait till you got back to your car, and I'd be like, hey, got some documents for you. I have served someone at a funeral before, in the parking lot of a funeral, and it had to happen in that case that the statute was coming up like in a day, they were fully avoiding service, dodging. Mom was dodging for it. Was covering for them. Alex did her work, found our defendant, posting on Facebook about her friend who was killed in an auto crash. Alex goes back, pulls police records, finds the friend's name, finds a funeral parlor holding the funeral, and there I'm in the parking lot waiting fire defendant to show up for the funeral. Just got to make it happen. You're like, oh, that's kind of terrible. You served her. But then you read the documents, you're like, Oh, you and your boyfriend were driving drunk and hit a school bus. And so I make there's no sympathy for it to me there, you know? And, yeah, I've tried everything's different. I try not to make a big deal. I'll always say, hey, you know, how can I make this easy for them? What's the best way to make this as flawless and kind of like, non invasive as possible. But then again, if I'm involved, you've kind of waived your right to just opening the door, saying thank you and taking it, because other people have already tried that. And when someone yells at me and they're like, this Thanksgiving Day, how can you do this? I'm like, It's not about November 24 at Thanksgiving dinner. It's more about September and October when you wouldn't open the door for the five other dudes that tried to do this. Is

Nick VinZant 24:33

bounty hunting, like they show on the TV shows. Like, how often does that? Like, I'm kicking in the door running through the

Jon Dalman 24:40

what bounty hunting is really like is, I'll say this, because I'm a I'm technically, I'm a bail bondsman myself, just on paper, and I've worked in that field full time for six years, seven years, and put at least 600 people physics. Into the car, and probably another closed another 1000 cases, on technicalities, on paperwork, found them in other jails, got them to pay their bail bond. Because the thing to remember about Bail Bonds, Bail Bonds is about money. Bail Bonds isn't about justice. You're it's like having a car repoed. The bail bondsman isn't out for justice. The bail bondsman is out to get their money, their surety back, having said that, and as a former bondsman, what bail bonding is really like. And had this discussion with a bondsman one time that kind of ruffled them off a little bit, but I'll tell you, it's it's kind of predatory in a sense, and that the cycle of people going probation, jail, bail, probation, jail, it can be you're working with a pot a marginalized population that doesn't have access to the resources someone with money might have. So I'll start it off like that, that the people that you're unusually fail to appear are kind of on that lower socioeconomic spectrum. So there's that. And the 600 people that we put in jail, I only got to fight like nine of them, and four of those, four or five of those were all at one time, so not that many fights. But I don't scream, I don't yell, I don't degrade people. You see it on TV, it's very spectacular for folks to say, oh man, kick the door, fight 'em, chop on 'em, taze, punch 'em, whatever. That's just not how I would do it. The reality was, hey, I'm here from the bonding company. I've got a failure to appear benchmark for you out of Fulton County, Atlanta. I've got to take you back. It's not an argument. You know, this is going to happen. I'm not looking for feedback on this, but I will treat you with respect. We got to go tonight to the jail. What do you have to do? Do you need to make some phone calls? You have jail shoes. A lot of guys have jail shoes. They already have shoes with no laces in them, because they know they go to jail so often they have grab your hoodie. You know it's cold and booking. That's how bail bonding was for us, and why we walked away knocking wood, relatively scot free. The sensationalism you see, like on most bounty hunting shows, the kicking, the screaming, the fighting, six dudes jumping on a guy who's running on a $1,200 parking ticket that that's TV stuff. And if there are people who operate like that, and I'm sure there are somewhat operating like that. It's just not how we did it, our business model. It was, first of all, it's just myself and my wife, and she's five foot, 405 pounds. We're not going to it's me going through the door by myself. I didn't have a whole stack of dudes behind me, and so our technique was much more of centered around de escalation and respect and nothing personal, strictly business. I know this sucks for you, but I'm not going to make it any worse. It's really probably

Nick VinZant 28:16

the better way to handle it, people and they'll they'll act like people. Yeah, the

Jon Dalman 28:22

world's a big fat mirror. Man, you treat people with respect and you'll get it right back. For the most part, I mean, there was guys. I mean, clearly it's not all unicorns and rainbows out there. There's some dudes who on site, we were going as them. That was just what it was, that's the game. But for the most part, when given the opportunity to communicate with someone they don't want to fight any more than you want to fight. And almost every person we put in a car, we'd be driving them in, and Alex and I in the front seat, they'd be talking. They're like, I'm so glad this is over. Just you're, you're, they're relieved it's over. And especially the way it went down with having some people that would just say, Hey, I'm forcing this situation upon you, but I'm not going to try to make it any worse than this already is on its surface,

Nick VinZant 29:12

longest you've ever had to look for somebody. We've

Jon Dalman 29:15

had some folks who've run for a year, 13 months, and then finally, Intel hits. All of a sudden, new address pops up. You know, you've been going to their mom's house. You've been going to their old work. You go the brothers, you go to grandma's house. They're getting tired of you. I've hit houses so often. They know my name. They're like, Hey, John, how's it going? He's not here. I don't know. I'm like, well, on Facebook, he was here four days ago at your birthday party, you know, or whatever. I don't know where he's at. I don't know. I'm like, he has your grandchild. You don't know where your grandchild lives. I don't know. I don't know. So, okay, no big deal. It's not personal. I get it. But then finally, that Intel breaks filed for you know. Did a new address pops up. Bang, there it is, finally, about 13 months, I think is the longest.

Nick VinZant 30:08

What's, oh, what's the most interesting way you found somebody like, oh, we tricked them, or

Jon Dalman 30:14

catfishing people. Cap, yeah, fully catfishing people a number of ways. You know, the whole setup. Hey, I saw your boat was for sale on Facebook marketplace. Oh, yeah, come on over. Come on over for the boat. Sorry, divorce papers or whatever it is, and the other way is, and it's one of my favorites. It's my wife is very attractive and very good at this. She'll get on the computer, she'll find one of our defendants on a dating site and be like, Oh, saw your pick ha ha tea. And then it goes back and forth, and eventually it's like, yeah, we should get together for coffee sometime. And there he is sitting in a Starbucks, you know, waiting to meet this young woman. And I walk in, I'm like, Nick, hey, I got some documents for you. It hit them with it. We did it in bail all the time, and we done it in process service a couple times. The funniest part of that, though, to me, besides the obvious, like that needle scratch kind of wreck, you know, moment, is the people that we catfished and we were talking to them afterwards, driving them to the jail, they never put it together. They never put together. Like, seriously, like, they not a single one. They would be in the backseat going, I can't believe this. This girl is coming to meet me pretty soon, and Alex would be in the front seat wearing a baseball hat and body armor. And I'd be like, Oh, that's crazy. Sorry to ruin your day, bro. And they're like, Man, this girl was hot too. I can't believe it. I'm like, Oh, that sucks. Maybe you'll be out of jail soon. One guy we had in the back seat, we let him use his phone. He starts calling Alex in the front seat, saying, Hey, man, I'm going to jail for some old warrant stuff I have. It it's, it was, it was bananas. It was absolutely, I couldn't believe it was happening. What

Nick VinZant 32:05

was that like when he calls and she's in the front seat, in the phone? Did he pick did he put it together? No,

Jon Dalman 32:12

never did. Never did. And it happened more than what that was the only time someone called her in the front but literally, every person we catfished in the back seat had the realization of, or did never, never realize it. They were just like, I can't believe this happening today. Of all days I'm supposed to have this girl come over to the house like, oh, man, that sucks. Man, sorry, bro.

Nick VinZant 32:36

Um, that's pretty much the whole thing, man. It's like, I don't know if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to kind of do that stuff, how can they do that? What's the best way?

Jon Dalman 32:46

Best way, if you want to see a little insight into the day to day, my Instagram is unique, underscore skill set, and I don't really post much anymore, but I'll run stories all the time of what we're doing in the field, kind of like a snapshot blog of what we're up to, cases Atlanta, things like that. Our podcast wanted podcast. We actually just got new microphones. We're actually going to start doing it again. I believe we took a break. It was real big for us, but we got so busy, but now we're going to start adding it back in. So that was wanted podcast, and that's on all the normal podcast applications, but wanted podcast is a great way to hear some of these stories in an hour long

Nick VinZant 33:38

version of it. I want to thank John so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on August 29 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. What seasons clothing do you like best? Like do you like winter clothes, spring clothes, summer clothes, fall clothes? I mean,

John Shull 34:21

I don't mind, like, a good fall outfit, you know, like maybe a good pullover, some blue jeans, some boots, but it's probably a far second to just a t shirt and shorts and sandals.

Nick VinZant 34:36

Yeah, I think it's really hard to beat summer clothing just because it's so minimal, but I would say that my favorite overall clothing look is socks and socks and sneakers, shorts, t shirt and a hoodie, which to me is like early spring, early fall. Yeah. So I would say early spring, early fall, is my favorite seasonal clothing.

John Shull 35:06

Yeah. I mean, I'll go, I'll just go fall for my favorite seasonal clothing. But I like, I'm also one of those people that will wear shorts all year round. Like, I'll go shovel snow in shorts.

Nick VinZant 35:18

The only reason that I wear pants is to avoid other people's looks and questions. Otherwise, I would wear shorts year round with I don't think any difficulty at

John Shull 35:27

all. I'm going to say this with confidence, and that is, obviously, I work in the media. You used to work in the media as well. There's like, I think that's one of the last professions where it's kind of a mandate that you have to wear pants if you're in the office. And when I tore my calf, I couldn't really get into my pants, so I I've just been wearing shorts. And I gotta tell you, it's there's really no need to wear pants during the summer if you work in an office building, like there just isn't. I don't,

Nick VinZant 35:57

yeah, I don't understand how we made the decision that somehow shorts weren't very nice.

John Shull 36:03

They can't, I mean, they can be. I think

Nick VinZant 36:06

that shorts should be more acceptable in an office environment. That would be like my political campaign, is to have shorts become more acceptable in an office environment, all

John Shull 36:16

right. Well, uh, we'll make this nice and easy today. I rehearse this so hopefully I don't screw any of these names up. Okay, Sean Dano, Charlie Murphy, Arthur, pale Ayub aluy, David zedrick Ho Joseph Rivera,

Unknown Speaker 36:37

blew it. I blew it.

Nick VinZant 36:39

I didn't get like five in there though. RV,

John Shull 36:42

Villanueva, Charlie Carter, Wayne, Erasmus, teams, Tim sweet, I'm trying not to but I'm I'm just butchering this. Michael Hurst and John Shaban, appreciate all of you for being the shout outs this week.

Nick VinZant 37:00

Very, very good. At least you've messed up all the easy ones, like Tim,

Unknown Speaker 37:07

right? Tim. Tim

Nick VinZant 37:09

also like to give a special shout out to the people who signed up for our Patreon page. I am not good enough with the Patreon page to know who those people are, but we will give you a special shout out once I figure out if I can see what your name is or not. So but thank you for signing up for our Patreon page. We appreciate the support.

John Shull 37:30

Well done. Uh, all right, well, let's, let's talk about some things that are completely useless but interested me. Uh, how scary as shit would this be? Uh, you're at a Six Flags restaurant or Six Flags Theme Park, and you know that ride that where you sit in the swing and it picks you up and you're like, 200 feet above the ground, and you just swing around.

Nick VinZant 37:53

I'm aware of it. Well, I would never go on it. A

John Shull 37:57

few days ago in Mexico City, at the Mexico City Six Flags, uh, apparently there was some thunderstorms in the area. It's debated. Nobody really knows what caused the ride to malfunction. I think maybe a lightning strike in the area that shut down power. But regardless, the ride stopped with about 50 people suspended 250 feet above ground or in the air as they were just sitting there, dangling in these little seats, I would worry. I don't even like, what do you call it? You you active people to go to the top of a mountain. What are those things called? You get in the cars, cable cars,

Nick VinZant 38:32

a gondola, gondola. I

John Shull 38:35

don't even like getting in gondolas because they swing back and forth. I'm good, like I'm I'm fine staying on the ground.

Nick VinZant 38:42

I generally also want to be within a few feet of the ground. The older I get, the closer to the ground that I want to be. I'm not going on any amusement park rides. I'm certainly not going on amusement park rides that are in countries that I don't think have the best standards, or I might question some of their safety standards, but I was on, I was in Whistler at a ski resort, going mountain biking, and I was on the ski lifts, and that's one of those things that, like, it's perfectly safe, but I'm kind of surprised that all of that still is all like, allowable, like, that's not you're just kind of sitting there, like 4050, feet in the air. Sometimes it's not really anything hold me on, not really like you're perfectly safe, but it's a little bit questionable.

John Shull 39:28

Is there? So I've never been on a ski lift, so excuse my ignorance. But is there like, a lap bar that goes across, like,

Nick VinZant 39:35

yeah, what

John Shull 39:36

if you've Okay, God, I would say, like, what if you've had a few drinks and you just kind of lean forward a little bit. I mean, you're not just going to fall out.

Nick VinZant 39:44

I think a ski lift is the kind of thing that it only takes somebody to be 10% stupid to get injured on. Like you're essentially counting on large numbers of people not being 10% stupid. Just,

John Shull 39:59

oh. Um, but, I mean, you're gonna fall into snow, right? You're gonna fall into a snow bank or dirt. You're not gonna fall like, on concrete or something, right? I

Nick VinZant 40:07

mean, if you fall in thick enough snow, I think that you're gonna be all right. But if, like, you're going mountain biking, like we were, like, No, you're dead. I

John Shull 40:14

also kind of think that that would be one of my worst nightmares. Would be to, and I've just realized this, in talking about this, be going on a ski lift and fall into a deep bank of snow and never be found? That would be absolutely terrifying.

Nick VinZant 40:27

Oh yeah, man, nature's like, don't mess with it. Also

John Shull 40:32

this, this should bring something up now that's been bothering me, but on my one of my social media feeds, I clicked on a story about a guy who got stuck in a cave and died. I don't want to hear it. All right, fair enough. I know you're I know you're into that. So I

Nick VinZant 40:47

can't handle the idea like, Okay, I live in almost downtown, urban Seattle, and I have had three conversations with my children about getting stuck in caves. Don't go into a cave. There's not a cave for 50 miles that terrified. That scares me more than anything else, the idea of being stuck in a cave,

John Shull 41:09

I just, I never have to worry about it. Being a bigger guy. I don't even think I could get into the opening doorways of some of these caves. I just, I don't get I would actually love to hear from someone that does it? Because I, you know, I don't, I don't know what the thrill is to, like, suffocate yourself or move two feet in two hours. Like, I don't get it.

Nick VinZant 41:31

I don't even want to think about that. That is the stuff of nightmares for me, the idea of being, like, trapped in a small I'm not claustrophobic, but just the idea of being in a cave? Nope. I don't care how big that cave is. I don't care if it the cave is the size of the state that I live in. I'm not going in it.

John Shull 41:50

Yeah, I'm. I'm actually kind of right there with you. But once again, I don't have to worry about that, because I'm not the kind of person that would go into caves in the first place. Um, I thought this was interesting, just because it kind of affects most of us. But Apple's going to be releasing their iPhone 16. Like, when is too much? Too much, you know what? I mean, 16 models of basically the same product you got. I know you're still on BlackBerry. So I know this doesn't technically count, but

Nick VinZant 42:24

this is an iPhone six. I have an iPhone six.

John Shull 42:30

I don't. Oh, my an iPhone six. I

Nick VinZant 42:33

think it's actually nine. I think it's actually an iPhone 6s. Could be an iPhone seven. Oh, I'm sorry. It works just like does it take your phone call? Does it connect? To the internet? Does the exact same thing yours? Does fancy pants look. Companies got to make money. They have to make money. And this is my rant about companies. Is that at some point they went from providing us with a service or a product and earning our business to finding ways to rip us off and get in our pockets. And that's what all companies are doing now. They're not servicing us or providing us with a good product. They're not like helping us in any way. They're just trying to find ways to rip us off, and they got to make a new iPhone every couple of months. Kind of

John Shull 43:14

some sad news to report from the restaurant world, Red Lobster, apparently, is on the brink. Yet again, they have less than 500 stores worldwide now, and that kind of makes me sad, but I don't really know why. The only

Nick VinZant 43:27

time I've ever eaten at Red Lobster, I felt nauseous afterwards, like it was good, but it was so much like I don't want but Red Lobster and Olive Garden and all those kind of places because, like, why go there? Because it's, I don't understand the idea of being in the middle of something. Like, either go nice or go cheap. Don't go like average. Like, I want to pay $20 for food that I won't even remember very much. Like, average, to me, is a waste of time. Either have it, good or bad, I

John Shull 44:03

feel like we have to give a quick rip to a WWE wrestling legend, psycho Sid, passed away the other day. Rip, he's infamous for literally snapping his leg in half in a wrestling ring when he worked in the old promotion. WCW, if you've never seen the video and you want to, you should google it, but it'll make you

Nick VinZant 44:24

sick. Uh, is he the guy who slapped the reporter, or is that somebody else who looks kind of like him? Who's the guy that was asked if it was fake and he slapped him? Oh,

John Shull 44:34

yeah, that was, uh, no, that was not him. Uh, God damn. Who was that? Um, what are slabs? I gotta look it up now, and I'm going to kick myself because I should know this.

Nick VinZant 44:46

John Stamos. No, that's not John Stamos Full House, but he looked like psycho Sid.

John Shull 44:53

He did kind of it was a old wrestler named David Schultz. Oh, okay. I believe? Yeah, but anyways, I mean, listen, man, don't, don't come at it. It's still real to them, damn it. It's real, still real to some of us. Let's see. Do you care? Does anyone care that JLo and Ben are getting a divorce? Because that's been all over my feed. Only

Nick VinZant 45:17

thing that I care about is how miserable he looks in all pictures, he looks like a man that's just had it, that has just absolutely had it. And I do like, I don't know them, obviously, but I do like when a celebrity that you kind of secretly feel like JLo was always the I'm from the block and like, No, you're not. You're absolutely not. And I do like it when the chickens come home to roost and a celebrity that you didn't like, all of a sudden, everybody else turns again, and you're like, Yeah, finally, I'm waiting for for people to turn around on Taylor Swift. They're

John Shull 45:53

they're never going to and maybe they shouldn't. Maybe she really is that good, like, maybe she really is a good like person, in addition to, you know, being a great entertainer, uh, that's pretty much it. We'll talk NFL next week, because next week the NFL gets gets kicked off. So bring your predictions, everybody, and you too, Nick. And I want your honest opinion, not some garbage where you just try to gaslight me.

Nick VinZant 46:18

Oh, you mean about who's going to win the NFL season. Yes, oh, okay, I'll give you my predictions.

John Shull 46:24

Yes, well, we'll do we'll do that next week, when, right before the okay game Thursday. Okay, okay. Are

Nick VinZant 46:30

you ready for a top five

John Shull 46:32

I am, em, I'm excited about this one. A lot of choices too.

Nick VinZant 46:35

This is a good one. I like this one. This was suggested by a viewer slash listener, and it is top five celebrities with food names. So they have to have a food name somewhere in their name. This person is not on my list, but I would suggest Sean Bean, the guy who's famous for always getting killed off in movies. He was Ned Stark from Game of Thrones. He was Boromir and Lord of the Rings. That would be like an example of it. But anyway, who's your number five?

John Shull 47:05

So this is a homer pick for me, a personal favorite of mine. Maybe he would make the list anyways. But my number five is meatloaf.

Nick VinZant 47:13

I knew you were going to put meatloaf on there.

John Shull 47:17

I mean, he, I mean he kind of deserves to be on the list. I mean, he is. I don't know if he's a Hall of Famer, but the dude's been around for decades. He's had, like, you know who meatloaf is? Like, you just know it, even if you don't know him, you know who meatloaf is,

Nick VinZant 47:31

but would you know who he was if his name wasn't meatloaf? That's what I thought about meatloaf, is that he either shouldn't be on the list because he's cheating, or he should be number one, because you can make an argument that the only real reason you remember meatloaf's name is because his name is meatloaf,

John Shull 47:50

yeah, but I mean, that's, that's it though, like, that's why you remember him. Is, I don't even know what his real name is anymore, but I know that his name is meatloaf.

Nick VinZant 48:01

But did he have any other song besides? I can do anything for love.

John Shull 48:07

Two out of three. Ain't bad. I mean, that bad out of hell. Bad out of hell too. Both those albums were fantastic. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 48:15

just never really sat down and listened to meatloaf. It's interesting. I would love to know, like an analysis of his career, if being named meatloaf helped or hurt him, like, I'm gonna listen to that guy's name's meatloaf for like, why would I listen to him his name's meatloaf?

John Shull 48:31

I mean, I feel like he came up in a generation where like that was okay, like that that helped him right, like, the Aussies, Boston's, like, all these kind of catchy, simple names, like, you know they like, nowadays, people would probably go meatloaf. I'm not gonna pay $80 to watch this guy sing,

Nick VinZant 48:50

yeah. But no, my number five is Jerry Rice.

John Shull 48:56

Okay? I, I mean, I have him written down, but he didn't make my list.

Nick VinZant 49:01

He's the greatest receiver in NFL history. I mean, he's the most prolific or most productive receiver in NFL history. I would make an argument that the best receiver in NFL history is probably actually Calvin Johnson, another person who the Detroit Lions managed to find a way to ruin their entire life and career.

John Shull 49:17

I mean, I have a great Calvin Johnson story, but we'll save it for another time.

Nick VinZant 49:23

Well, I mean, don't say I have a great Calvin Johnson story and then not tell the story. Well,

John Shull 49:28

hold on, let me I want to say, Why? Why meatloaf? Call meatloaf? It's because his father said he looked like nine pounds of ground chuck and convinced hospital staff to put the name meat on his crib.

Nick VinZant 49:40

Oh, man, that's like both hilarious parenting and terrible parenting.

John Shull 49:46

Sounds like something my father would do. Anyways, my Calvin Johnson story, it was the summer of 2016 I was getting married, and my wife had this idea for us to take dancing lessons and ballroom dance. Lessons, and the couple after us was Calvin Johnson and his fiancee. So him and I, you know, I think we did 12 sessions or 10 sessions, but I would say at least half of those, him and I just sat there, like two dudes, just kind of talking about our wives and how dumb it was that we were there, and how we were wasting money and how it didn't matter. And, you know, and it was, it was, it was cool. I mean, especially being, you know, him, being who he is, and me being a Detroit fan, it was like, you know, the guy's massive, by the way. I mean, I'm no small guy, but I he's, he's six foot six, 250 pounds of just brick shit house. I mean, holy hell. But yeah, that's my Calvin story. Kind of cool.

Nick VinZant 50:41

I don't know. Yeah, that's kind of cool. You're just sitting there talking to Calvin Johnson all the time while you guys are getting ready to get married. Yeah?

John Shull 50:47

I mean, you know, I'm not gonna name the dance studio, but for whatever reason, the dance instructor, we both had his them and me, my wife and I, he really liked to, like do solo stuff with our wives. So, like, he would, at the end of the session, he would, like, spend a little extra time with my wife, and then, and then Calvin's wife would kind of join in and learn a couple of some things. And Calvin, I would just sit there, like, you know, on the floor, and just be like, what are we even doing here? Like, I don't want to do this man how, I

Nick VinZant 51:16

mean, but he couldn't have been moving in on your wife, because you're not going to move in on somebody's wife, especially not going to move in on Calvin Jones, Calvin Johnson's wife. I was

John Shull 51:24

gonna say, if you're moving in on any guy's wife in that situation, it's mine, 1000 times over,

Nick VinZant 51:29

you're not gonna mess with Calvin Johnson's wife. Like, whose wife should I try to pick up this one or that one?

John Shull 51:36

Anyways, my number four. I mean, it's so hard, man, I wrote down probably 30 of these. There's

Nick VinZant 51:41

a lot more than you'd think. Um, my number four

John Shull 51:45

is OJ Simpson.

Nick VinZant 51:46

I wondered if you were gonna put OJ Simpson on there a bold choice, but he is, you'd have to make an argument. He's one of the most he's a very recognizable person, right?

John Shull 51:58

He's, he's kind of like meatloaf, like all you have to do is say OJ, and 98% of the population knows who you're talking about.

Nick VinZant 52:07

Yeah. Oh, he's dead. Now, isn't he? He died. He did die. He did die. Yeah. Rip. My number four is somebody that you might not necessarily think about, but Halle Berry,

John Shull 52:20

it's funny, I had her and Chuck Berry on my honorable mention.

Nick VinZant 52:24

I guess if you're going to go with Halle Berry, you also have to include anybody else with the name Barry, but she's no. Chuck Berry might actually be more famous and influential than she is.

John Shull 52:36

I mean, probably more influential, maybe just in terms of the musicianship. But, I mean, she's done a lot for entertainment, and in some of her, you know, nonprofits and stuff, it's hard. That's hard to say, okay, who's

Nick VinZant 52:51

your number three man? So

John Shull 52:53

this, this is where it gets so tough. So I'm going to go with another Homer pick here. I know I said number five was going to be my only one, but my number three is going to be John Candy.

Nick VinZant 53:05

I have John Candy at number two. I think that he should have been higher on your list.

John Shull 53:10

I don't know. I mean, I'm pretty happy with my list. Yeah. Who? Who's your number three. Then

Nick VinZant 53:19

my number three is Steph Curry. Okay, my

John Shull 53:22

number two is Kevin Bacon.

Unknown Speaker 53:27

Oh,

Nick VinZant 53:29

well, that's, I wonder who you've got. Who are you going to put it number one, if you have who I I don't know. I have a really hard time with where you have put Kevin Bacon and John Candy, because I think not only are those very famous people, but you don't have to have any kind of a stretch to see how their name relates to food. And I evaluated it based on basically, like the influence of the celebrity, the name and the importance of the name. So like, John Candy was a huge celebrity. It's candy, which is great. And so, like, those two things go together. So I had Steph Curry three. John Candy for me is number two. I think John Candy should be number two, and my number one is Kevin Bacon. I don't think that you get a better food based name than Kevin Bacon.

John Shull 54:29

I mean, it's, it's good. I mean, my number one is, is it's just a name of a celebrity who has a food named after them, or herbs are named after a food that I just it's just phenomenal. You know, synonymous, synonymous, synonymous with with celebrities in food names, and that is my number one, Vanilla Ice.

Nick VinZant 54:55

You could make an argument that Vanilla Ice is the only person with two food. Names, because it's vanilla and it's ice. I mean, you could, like, okay, ice, maybe not, but yeah, I could, I could, okay, I don't agree, but I could see your argument. Okay, I don't know, but what's his real name? Isn't his real name? Something crazy. No,

John Shull 55:26

I was like Robert something. I think. What is Vanilla Ice?

Nick VinZant 55:31

Let's see Vanilla Ice's real name. It's something like Robert durstfeld,

John Shull 55:36

Vanilla Ice. His real name is.

Nick VinZant 55:40

Why you are looking that up? We have some suggestions for people. Ty Cobb, famous baseball player, Jimmy Buffett. But Jimmy Buffett is more kind of that's more a type of restaurant like that's kind of there and CD lamb. Football player, CD lamb,

John Shull 55:59

yeah, for sure. So his name's Robert Van Winkle,

Nick VinZant 56:06

yeah, and this, and then what's you going to change your name to Vanilla Ice, like, oh yeah, from like, the dorkiest to, like, that's cool.

John Shull 56:13

I mean, it's legit, man. All right, you I wrote down a lot, so okay,

Nick VinZant 56:20

you just start, you start going, and I'll just interject with ones that I have, because there's a ton. Let's see Alec Guinness, yeah, original. Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. I believe.

John Shull 56:32

Brie, Larson, sugar, Ray Leonard, yeah. Daryl, strawberry, yeah. Condoleezza Rice, yeah, that's a good one too. Uh, Rosemary Clooney, oh, I

Nick VinZant 56:47

don't know who that is, though that's an old, tiny actress.

John Shull 56:49

It's George's mother, but yes, um, corn, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, salt and pepper. Oh, yeah. John ham

Nick VinZant 57:00

Yeah, I thought that for a second. I thought you were going to put John Hamm as your number one. I was going to get pissed.

John Shull 57:06

No, he doesn't deserve that. And then let's see, I had Steph Curry on my revenge and, Oh, I almost put him on the list, but I didn't, because I think he's creepy. Maybe he isn't Carrot Top. Oh,

Nick VinZant 57:22

yeah, yeah. Both of those are, those are both correct assumptions. Like, yeah, he might be. The only ones that I had that you didn't have was Fiona Apple singer,

John Shull 57:35

I get Okay, so all of the 90s alternative fans out there are gonna hate me. I get her mixed up with Alanis Morissette all the time. She's

Nick VinZant 57:44

like the slightly, maybe artistically more talented like I think that her albums and things like that, they get, they come out to more acclaim, but I think she's also less popular version of Alanis Morissette, so I could see it. There's a long, a long way I'm seeing if there's anybody else. Oh, not. Let's see. I'm checking really quick. Give me a second. Alyssa Milano, Milano, crackers or cookies, or whatever they want to be called. We had Halle Berry, Heather Graham. I don't really feel like Graham cow. It's like, that's too That, to me, would be an example. What happened to Heather Graham, by the way, she disappeared completely.

John Shull 58:36

She going, yeah, she's, I mean, she's like, kind of what we're talking about the other day, or the other episode with nev Campbell, Jennifer Love Hewitt, like they're just gone,

Nick VinZant 58:46

just you don't hear anything about some people anymore. There's a lot of ones named after cheese that I don't feel like that crowns damn strawberry is a good one. If

John Shull 58:58

I were to tell you that Heather Graham is 54, years old. She has not seen 54

Nick VinZant 59:03

she has not seen 54 but at the same time, you also only remember them as like from their prime, not what they necessarily are right now. Uh, there's somebody named peaches geldorf people. I've never heard of Cherry Jones. Oh, you got Carrot Top. Carrot Top is Jack Oh, Ginger Rogers, if this was 40 years ago, she would probably be way up there. I think she was a famous, super famous actor, actress, yeah, she

John Shull 59:31

was, for sure.

Nick VinZant 59:32

I don't know who. Some of these people never heard of him before at all. There's a lot of curries. There's a lot of rices. Uh, okay. Well, that's it for this episode. That's all I got. Do you have anything else, anything smart to say?

John Shull 59:47

No, bring your NFL predictions. Everybody out there. We're expecting a big crowd next week.

Nick VinZant 59:52

All right, NFL prediction time. We're gonna drop

John Shull 59:55

we might as do college football, at least something with college football too.

Nick VinZant 59:58

Let's do this. Two you do lots of research, you make thoughtful picks on what you think that is going to be correct. I'm going to do absolutely nothing. Not even going to look up like who's good, who's bad, anything like that. And at the end of the season, let's see which one of us is more correct. Okay,

John Shull 1:00:17

I'll tell you what. And if anyone's out there is watching this, well, you might as well do it as well. Maybe we'll send you a t shirt. I

Nick VinZant 1:00:24

don't know we still have t shirts. Check out our Patreon page if I ever find a link to it that I forgot about someday, someday. Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are some of the best celebrity food names. I get Vanilla Ice. I get it, but I still think that Kevin Bacon is really the dominant food name, also we've put a link to our Patreon page in the episode description. Really appreciate the support. Thanks.

Dating, Divorce and Infidelity Private Investigator Lisa Olson

Do you think your significant other might be cheating on you, Private Investigator Lisa Olson of Pink Lady Solutions is the one to call. We talk catching cheating spouses, how to tell if you’re being watched and her most interesting cases. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Celebrities Named After Birds.

Lisa Olson: 01:15

Pointless: 28:24

Top 5 Celebrity Bird Names: 47:39

Contact the Show

Pink Lady Solutions Website

Pink Lady Solutions TikTok

Interview with Dating, Divorce and Infidelity Private Investigator Lisa Olson

Nick VinZant 0:12

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode, catching cheaters and celebrities with bird names

Lisa Olson 0:21

and then with infidelity. Some people are just certain their spouse is cheating, and if you say no, yeah. Um, so he was married, his mistress was also married. Um, my mentor taught me if you're going to be in a neighborhood for an extended period of time. He said, print out a picture of a car. I

Nick VinZant 0:45

want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. Really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest. This is private investigator Lisa Olson of Pink Lady solutions. So as a private investigator, what are you in? What are you investigating?

Lisa Olson 1:16

So I started my agency because I wanted to help, like it was infidelity and child custody and all the other PIs. Were like, you're not going to last. I was like, This is my passion. This is what I'm going to do. About six months into it. I was like, Oh, this is horrible. People are kind of crazy. Like,

Nick VinZant 1:37

what is it about it, though, what surprised you so much about people's behavior when you got into it.

Lisa Olson 1:42

Let me back up. I became a private investigator because I went through a horrible divorce and child custody battle. And so my thought was, I want to help other people that are going through this, because I know the courts, I know the system like mine was horrible. I ended up with full custody, so I wanted to help. And I realized that when it came to child custody, every parent was saying the other parent is doing bad stuff on their parenting time. I mean, I need you to prove it, and that's not always the case. Sometimes when they consider bad behavior, the courts don't care, like, oh, the dad went to the bar, brought the kid to babysitter. It's that's not against the wall. And then with infidelity, some people are just certain their spouse is cheating. And if you say no, I had one where she said, I know he's cheating. I saw he's going to this hotel at this time, so I had an investigator go out, sat there at the hotel. The dude walked into hotel room by himself with a bag of to go food in his work bag. He wanted to get away from his wife. He just wanted peace and quiet, and so I told her, I was like, hey, good news. You know, he's not cheating. He just needed a long time. She's like, No, you missed it. They're like, No, that there's one door in and out in the hotel room. Nobody came and went, and she was mad.

Nick VinZant 3:06

So he was just in there, in the hotel room, like, just eating what he wanted, doing what he wanted, yes,

Lisa Olson 3:13

yeah. And I thought she would be happy, and she was mad.

Nick VinZant 3:16

So when you talk about, like, doing an investigation, so like, how do you do it? Yeah, so

Lisa Olson 3:21

someone will call me and say, look, I think my spouse is cheating. And I'm like, Okay, first of all, are there any changes in the behavior, which, if there is, it doesn't mean you know that they're cheating, but it could be an indication. So I kind of want to know if their routines have changed. And we talk about that, and then if, because, look, it's not cheap to hire a private investigator for surveillance. So for them, I try to narrow down the time. So it's, do they disappear after work? Do they disappear on Saturdays or Sundays? And try to narrow down when we should be watching them. Because I'm not trying to rip people off. I'm not trying to say, oh, let's watch them 24 hours for a week, no, pinpoint the times they are disappearing or something is off, and that's when I'll have an investigator go and so we'll sit either outside their house, not directly outside their house, because that's dumb in the neighborhood, and watch them, see where they go. Sometimes I'll have two investigators, so we can switch vehicles, so it's not the same car, you know, following them the entire time, and then just kind of see where they do, get video, get pictures, that sort of a thing.

Nick VinZant 4:33

So it's mainly just kind of, it's, it's essentially, kind of just following somebody for the most part,

Lisa Olson 4:38

yeah, if it's, you know, infidelity, something like that. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 4:41

are other cases. Are other kinds of cases, different I mean,

Lisa Olson 4:44

like slip and fall investigations. That's generally not following someone. It's going out and taking measurements, taking pictures. I did do one again for a friend. Can you go watch this guy? This guy has claimed in his insurance company. He has. Traumatic brain injury. He can't get out of bed, he can't take care of himself. And so I sat outside his house, and the other investigator weighed, I think, like where we thought he was going, where he was headed. And this guy got out of his house, bent down, put his bag down, unlocked the door to his truck, back, you know, bent down again, picked up his bag, got in his truck, drove to work to build swimming pools, and got pictures of all that, and, you know, the concrete or whatever's on his back, you know, getting out of the truck. And I just thought, oof, you're gonna have a hard time explaining that in court.

Nick VinZant 5:39

Oh, my gosh, yeah, that's like, I have workers comp. Why are you carrying these bags of cement? Then, if you have workers comp,

Lisa Olson 5:45

I mean, the the extent of what he said his injuries were, it wasn't like, Oh, my back hurts like traumatic brain injury, and can't take care of yourself. Jesus, don't leave your house if you're claiming that and you're trying to get millions of dollars in a settlement. Sit your ass in your house and don't go anywhere.

Nick VinZant 6:04

But when you do investigations, like, Are people usually that kind of blatant about it? Like, when you catch somebody doing whatever, it's like, this was very obvious.

Lisa Olson 6:13

Yeah, I had one. A girlfriend called me. It's like, I think my boyfriend cheating. He goes to Sac State. I'm like, Alright, cool. So I got a backpack. I went to Sac State, and, you know, hung out, and I got all kinds of footage of him with a girl, let her know, hey, this is what's going on. It's just, I need more. It's your money, like, if I don't think it's necessary, but okay. And then, you know, she was like, you know, you have to be really careful, because he's really paranoid, and he watches everybody, and he's really observant, like everyone thinks that. But okay, and so this really observant guy, we caught him dancing with his non girlfriend, female friend, in a parking lot outside of, like a Panera, like in it. We didn't even need to catch it at that time. It was just good timing of pulling up and he was like, dancing with her. And it was like, Oh, that was easy. And he's not observant. He's in a public parking lot dancing with some chick.

Nick VinZant 7:17

How much does this cost? So I charge 125 an hour. That adds up quick. Yeah,

Lisa Olson 7:24

which is why I, for my clients, I try to narrow it down. Like, I mean, they could be millionaires and they might not care. I'm like, no, just follow them, you know, non stop, we can, but let's not waste anyone's time. I'm not trying to price gouge anybody. Let's, you know, pinpoint these hours, these days, something like that.

Nick VinZant 7:43

So like your average client, they're going to spend how much,

Lisa Olson 7:47

1500 2000 and that's kind of just for, like a basic I'm going out of town for a couple days. Can you see what my husband's doing while I'm

Nick VinZant 7:57

gone? If you had to put a number on it, like, what percentage of the time is the person's suspicions Correct?

Lisa Olson 8:03

Probably 95 because we have gut instincts. We like, we know when something doesn't add up. What

Nick VinZant 8:10

do they usually say to you when they call about, like, infidelity,

Lisa Olson 8:15

they usually feel crazy. Which breaks my heart, because, again, I've been there, they feel crazy. They'll say something isn't right. His behavior is changing. It just doesn't feel right. I just want to know what he's up to, or what she's up to when I'm at work or when I'm out of town,

Nick VinZant 8:32

what's usually their reaction when you present him with the evidence?

Lisa Olson 8:35

Um, that's part where I've had to learn to business is business, and I can't have emotions in it. And so it's he met this girl this time he kissed this girl at this time. She did this one time I had a woman hire me. Wanted to watch her husband was visiting California, and so she said, Hey, can you watch him while you know she lived in some some other states. He was here at business pleasure. Forget what it was. She said, Hey, can you make sure you know he's not, you know, bringing a girl home with him from the bar, because he's going to go to the bar. Followed him to the bar, hung out with him at the bar. He ended up buying shots for everybody. And then I was like, This is great. He's not talking to any females. Sat there, you know, a little bit longer, started watching and went, Oh, wait a minute, this is not women. He was going, like, massaging guys. And I was like, oh, friendly. And then just got weirder and weird. And I was like, oh shit, he's not cheating with women. Oh, so it's, you know, I It's facts. I can't talk, you know, about emotions. It's, you know, he went home. A boy went, you know, a male went home with him. They never left. How did she take that? People usually upset and cry, but that's where it's, you know, I kind of have to. I'm not their therapist. I'll listen a little bit, but if I listen a little. Sometimes they just keep going, and what should I do? And and I'm not a therapist, so I try to, these are the facts. I'll send you the pictures done.

Nick VinZant 10:08

Do you ever try to sugarcoat it a little bit? No, I

Lisa Olson 10:12

don't sugarcoat any aspect of my life to anyone. That's not how I operate. It's, you know, they're coming to me for the facts. So I'm going to present the facts, and in a professional manner to where it's, you know, it's the facts. I can't I can't sugarcoat. I can't make it seem not as bad it is what it is. The one client who at this school saw him, and then, like at a Panera parking lot saw him, she was like, No, I need more. And I had to stop her and say, anything else I provide is probably porn, and I'm not filming that like I am done. And I think it's just the denial that that we all we don't we. We think someone's cheating, but we don't really want to believe it, so we need more and more proof.

Nick VinZant 11:01

Does it seem to bring people any kind of closure?

Lisa Olson 11:05

Yeah, for, you know, for a little bit. And it because I do somewhat build relationships with these women or or men. I mean, you know, it goes both ways. Um, so sometimes I'll reach out, like, hey, just want to check in. How are you? And they're like, oh, great, you know, I took him back, or I kicked him out. Like, okay, just wanting to make sure, you know, and that's just with some case, depending on how much I bonded with them during it.

Nick VinZant 11:33

Do you ever have repeat clients? Like, oh gosh, Stacy's calling me again. She's got another guy that's like, this,

Lisa Olson 11:41

I had one. He hired me off and on for two years.

Nick VinZant 11:47

The same person,

Lisa Olson 11:52

yeah, so he was married. His mistress was also married. It it was, it was crazy for two years. So people like, Hey, can you see where she's going on her lunch break? You're probably home to her husband.

Nick VinZant 12:12

Yeah. Why would he be worried about his mistress, who was also married, cheating on because he

Lisa Olson 12:17

was going to leave his wife and she was supposed to leave her husband so they could be together. And then I ended up so he did file for divorce. I served the the wife like it was just insane. I don't know that that mistress ever left her husband to be with him. I doubt it is

Nick VinZant 12:37

it harder to surveil somebody than you would think because of me, I'm like, okay, park a couple houses down and get some binoculars and just sit there and watch them. Like, is it harder or easier than you? Than somebody might think both.

Lisa Olson 12:49

It's easier because humans are so selfish and self absorbed in looking at their phones, they don't know what's going on around them, even if they say, I'm super observant, you're not, however, neighborhood watch if you sit in a neighborhood for long enough, someone's going to come out and say, Hey, like you're parked in front of my house for four hours. Can I help you with something, you know, something like that. I had one person come out and take a picture of my license plate. It's fine, but so at least in California, if we're doing surveillance, I like to have my agents call local PD and say, Hey, a private investigator, I'm doing surveillance in this neighborhood, so that way, if someone calls the cops, resources aren't wasted on an officer coming out to a private investigator. And I like to have an excuse. I think my excuse that day was, oh, I'm on my lunch break. Sorry, I'm just eating, you know. Just want to get away from the office, you know, something like that. I'm just working from my car. I don't want to go home. My kids are home. Have some sort of excuse. My mentor taught me, if you're going to be in a neighborhood for an extended period of time, he said, print out a picture of a car. And then when someone comes to your car, because they're going to like wearing my neighborhood, you show them this picture of some fancy car, and say, I work for a repo company. This car is supposed to be coming through your neighborhood. Hey, if you see it, you know, drive through. Can you come tell me? Can you help me out? Because then people like, they're excited, they're part of an investigation, and they're like, watching out for some car that isn't doesn't even exist.

Nick VinZant 14:27

Has it ruined any of your faith in humanity? No,

Lisa Olson 14:32

I, my brain is wired to always think the best, always give the benefit of the doubt, which is why I wasn't a horrible marriage for too long. I can't say it's jaded me. I wake up happy, I love life, and I don't let shitty people ruin that. I guess

Nick VinZant 14:51

that's the best way to look at it, right? So, but as a like, as a private investigator in California, do you have any kind of like? Special dispensations or, like, oh, private investigator can do this. Normal citizen can't. Like, do you get any privileges along with it? Like, akin to law enforcement? No,

Lisa Olson 15:10

I had an office in Ohio for a year. And in Ohio, you have to have a badge as a private investigator. In California, absolutely not. That you can. California will not offer badges to PIs, and I think it's because it could be abused. You know, flash a badge. People don't know what it is, and they could pretend to be a cop, I guess, um, I need process serving, but that's for anyone. So we can get into gated communities, like you cannot keep a pi out of a gated community if we're trying to serve someone court papers. But that's the same as a, you know, a process server. It's just, it's a court thing.

Nick VinZant 15:48

They're like, what would you say that certain like, is there a certain characteristics? That characteristic that, like, good private investigators have? For me,

Lisa Olson 15:56

the biggest thing is a gut instinct, because so I don't have any fear. When I was doing a lot of criminal defense, I went into the worst neighborhoods talk to like the drug dealers and the gang bangers, and I didn't have any fear. So for self preservation, my body hasn't built in really good instinct. So I could drive down a street and know if I should go out of my car or not. Same with following people. You know, sometimes we lose people when we follow them, and so you get to a fork in the road and you didn't see where the car went, you have to trust your instinct, like, I think they went this way. Excuse me, there's a gut instinct that you kind of have to have.

Nick VinZant 16:39

Is it different when you're doing a child custody one versus an infidelity one like, Do you have a different approach to it overall?

Lisa Olson 16:48

Yeah. So a lot of it like with trackers. So in California, we can't put a tracker on a vehicle. It's like infidelity unless that person hiring me their name is on the vehicle. So basically a vehicle has to be in the husband and wife's name. So the the wife can say, Hey, can you go put a tracker? Technically, your name's on it. Yeah, I can. Um, with child custody, we can't put trackers on children, per se. Um, so it's putting if, if the one parent wants to know, you know, or like, you know, I think, like a wife hired me and said, Hey, this guy that you know, child's father, I think, is, is bringing, you know, my daughter to a drug house. Like, okay, well, I can't put a tracker on your child. Obviously, um, favorite stuffed animal. I am going to track this stuffed animal and see where this stuffed animal goes while that stuffed animal is with, you know,

Nick VinZant 17:50

your ex, you can kind of get around

Lisa Olson 17:52

it a little bit, yeah, so it's kind of knowing the gray area and not breaking any laws.

Nick VinZant 18:00

Well, most of, like, well, most of what a private investigator does, if it goes to court, will it hold up in court?

Lisa Olson 18:05

Yeah, yeah. Um, I've only had to go to court once, and it was the other side that brought me in, which was super weird. I got it was a family court case, and I don't even remember the husband or wife's, you know, working for them, the opposing party brought me in. I was like, I proved you left the state with your child. Like, why would you want me here? And I think she was probably on drugs. I think it was the I was on the husband's side the matter. And the ex wife brought me in, and I think she was trying to say, I illegally used her social security number to to find out where she was living, which we have access to social security numbers. We're licensed to deal with this stuff. And so I think she brought me into like, hub, you got my social security number, and I was like, Yes, and I tracked you to another state. I like, I was so confused why I was there. The judge was like, You're You're done. Like, thank you. I think we were all, I think we were all like, what? Like? What did you smoke before court? It made no sense.

Nick VinZant 19:25

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions,

Unknown Speaker 19:28

yes.

Nick VinZant 19:29

Oh my goodness. Let's start off with the juicy one. What's your most interesting case?

Lisa Olson 19:35

Either the one that went for two years or that, you know, the married man and his married mistress, and it got so much weirder than that. Like, hey, I think, oh, okay, wait, I got a better one. Okay, um, that one was bizarre. I had to report one client. I had to fire him as my client and report him to the police department because I was an event he wanted, like a welfare. Checked out on his mom. He said, My mom lives at this address, and I haven't heard from her in a while. And I'm like, Okay, sure. And I ran a report and I called him. I said, hey, it shows your mom. It seeks. He's like, well, but she's not really, because I have this metal box that she communicates with me through. And I was like, oh, mental health and he's like, you know, and I drive by that house every day, and, you know, I've knocked on the door, and I look at the cars, I take pictures of the cars. Basically, he's stalking this house. So I had to say, I can do this, and you're going to have to find someone else. And I went to the police department said, Look, this guy has mental health issues, and he is stalking this

Nick VinZant 20:39

house. Worst case of cheating you've ever found I

Lisa Olson 20:43

hate. Worst ones are when I can prove over and over. So sometimes it's not the person in the relationship hiring me, it's family members. Many times I've had family members hire me, and I could say, Yeah, there's definitely infidelity, and the people stay, you know, the the aunt or uncle or mom or dad, whoever hires me can can go to the person say, look, you're being cheated on, and they're like, Well, I don't believe it. Or he said they were just friends, or she said this, and they stay. Those are the worst timing that but they just won't believe it.

Nick VinZant 21:21

How does it get this far for people like, how does it get that far that you're hiring a private investigator? God,

Lisa Olson 21:30

lack of communication in a relationship. Because if I think my man is cheating, I'm gonna be like, Where were you? There's I'm not going to hire a I mean, I could, I could easily send one text and have his ass followed, but it's communication, and I almost I don't understand how it gets so bad to where you have to hire a private investigator. There has to be a lack of communication, lack of respect. Yeah, I don't know.

Nick VinZant 22:02

What would you say you've learned about people from this?

Lisa Olson 22:05

People are not observant. People are on their phones so much that I think they just they're not as observant as you know humans used to be.

Nick VinZant 22:19

Have you become more obvious than knowing that, like, as people have gotten more oblivious, have you become more obvious? Like before, I used to hide behind a tree a block away, only on this day, and now I just, like, stand in the front yard and I can just videotape them, and they don't even know. Like, is your job easier because of that? Now,

Lisa Olson 22:38

yes, but I also think my job is easier because I'm a female, um, like, when I always do a lot of process serving. I once served someone. I was at my friend's pool, you know, in a bikini, tanning, and I'm like, Oh, shit, I gotta go serve someone. I put like, a wrap over me, and I went and served because noone is expecting someone in a bikini in a wrap to be at the door to serve them.

Nick VinZant 22:59

Yeah, that would throw you off, right? I for some I

Lisa Olson 23:03

could be out in plain sight, or I used to bring my my daughters, um, they're older. They're not, like, two. I'm not, like, using my two, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, a child, um, you know, go. We had to go look at a neighborhood. And so, like, I was walking a dog, and my daughter was on her phone taking selfies. She was taking pictures of houses for me, sometimes being out in the open is best, because no one's going to think the mom at Starbucks, the mom walking her dog, you know, went to my Starbucks. I had my girls. I was like, you know, say cheese, let me take pictures. And I was actually filming the people behind them. And my girls knew what I was doing, so they were just being dumb and making silly faces. You know, yeah, like preteen. They think they're like, 1312, um, so sometimes being obvious is better. Are

Nick VinZant 23:54

there many women in this field?

Lisa Olson 23:58

There's not enough. There is not enough. I know a few. Um, and I think because of covid, a lot of pi male pi businesses closed down because if they're retired cops, they don't need to be PIs. So during covid, a lot of them just close up shop and like, there's going to retire and be happy. Um, so I have, I have online courses to hopefully get more women into the industry. So I'm going to take some women under my license, because I'm supposed to have to pay it forward. I have, like, a training course on there. And also to grow businesses, because I'm I love business more than I love the PI work. I love, I do love that pi work, but like i My passion is business. So to help people become help, mainly women become private investigators, and then to help them build up their agencies.

Nick VinZant 24:49

Would you say is like, is it? Is that? Because it's harder to do it as a woman than it would

Lisa Olson 24:58

No, I think women don't think about. As a career, like, I wish, like, I want, like little girls to, like, grow up like, I want to be a PI. Your little boys, I want to be a PI. It's almost like it's a dying industry, because no one knows what they are really what we are. They all think it's, you know, man in a trench coat, you know, smoking cigar, you know, and that's just not it at all.

Nick VinZant 25:24

Do you ever do dating background checks like, Hey, I'm thinking about dating this guy or this girl during covid,

Lisa Olson 25:30

I made a good amount of money because everyone was online dating. You couldn't go out and meet anyone. Um, so I was doing background checks, and one time, someone contacted me. Said, Hey, it's not for me. My friend is planning on getting in her car and driving two hours to go meet this guy. Can you do a background check for me? For my friend? Absolutely, there were so many, like domestic violence and drug charges. I was like, like the most I'd ever seen. And so I sent it to the friend. I was like, stop your friend. She cannot get in the car and drive two hours to go meet this guy. So she did, luckily,

Nick VinZant 26:10

oh my gosh. Best movie or TV show about private investigators, like it shows what it's really like. Worst movie about private investment.

Lisa Olson 26:19

Show there's Okay. When the movie knives out came out, my boyfriend, he was like, There's move. It's moved about, like a private investigator, like, we need to see that. And I was like, Cool, let's go watch knives out. I walked out of there. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? I hope I can cuss on here. Okay, I go. Really, the private investigator was hanging out with the cop in the cop car, and he was just like, oh my god, Lisa, it's a movie. And I was like, No, that was dumb. He's like, everyone raved about this movie. I'm like, I will give it another chance. So I watched knives out again, and I thought, This is so dumb. I was it bothered me so bad. I have never seen a PI show or movie, was like, Yes, that's what we do.

Nick VinZant 27:04

Is it more boring than people would think?

Lisa Olson 27:08

That's probably true, and that's why there's no movies about someone sitting in a car for eight hours.

Nick VinZant 27:14

Do you have like, disguises, not

Lisa Olson 27:16

disguises, but I absolutely change like little things like so I do undercover work for a county, and it is so much easier as a female to go into establishments, play dumb, look like a wreck, if it, if it's like a bad neighborhood, I will put my hair on a messy bun. I will wear some dirty shoes, and I will go. And again, it's, you walk into somewhere, and, yeah, you get sized up instantly. And if I have, you know, jeans that are torn up, dirty shoes, my hair, I look, you know, I look like hell. No one's gonna think I'm in there to do anything that they wouldn't want me

Nick VinZant 27:57

to do. I want to thank Lisa so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have a link to her on our social media accounts. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on August 22 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. How long does it take you to find a new TV show, like, how much scrolling Are you going to do before you find a new movie or a TV show to watch?

John Shull 28:39

I mean, if I don't go into it with a game plan, like, if I'm just scrolling, it's not happening. I'm either going to YouTube or movie trailers.

Nick VinZant 28:47

I think that if I'm going to try to find something new, I'm going to scroll on each platform, like Netflix, Hulu, whatever else you got. I'm going to be scrolling for at least 10 to 15 minutes.

John Shull 29:00

Last night, I set a milestone in my life. I actually bought a or rented a movie at full price through Amazon. Because in my mind, and I'm probably four years late to this, it's the same thing as going out to the movie theater. It's cheaper because I get to stay at home, and I don't have to, you know, I don't have to put up with people. I don't have to put up with popcorn prices. I can just spend the $20 and it's right here in my living

Nick VinZant 29:30

room. You but you paid full price. You didn't wait. I wouldn't do that. I would wait for it to come out on streaming. What movie was it that you couldn't wait?

John Shull 29:40

This is embarrassing. I'm sorry, uh, twisters.

Nick VinZant 29:45

Oh, that's, that's the first movie you're gonna go ahead and pay full price for, is twisters, yeah.

John Shull 29:51

I mean, listen, it was a great night. It was a great date night with me and the wife, like we made it work. And it was 20 bucks, I mean, and it was, I know, I'm probably super late. To the game on this and I've rented stuff before, just have never rented anything above $10

Nick VinZant 30:09

I don't know if I've ever rented a movie outside of like Blockbuster or Netflix when they used to actually mail you the DVD like that's the only time I've ever rented a movie and I would never pay full price for one? Okay? Well, I polled the audience about this question. 8% of people said it takes them less than a minute. I don't really believe that you've got to already have something picked out. 24% said one to five minutes. 18% said five to 10 minutes, and then 49% so a huge majority said more than 10 minutes to find something to watch on TV.

John Shull 30:49

I don't believe anybody that's under a minute that's just that's a no go.

Nick VinZant 30:55

The only way I would believe that that's actually happening is if you already know what you're going to watch and the thing just came out, and you're like, oh, yeah, I'll watch that. It's got to be on your list.

John Shull 31:03

Yeah. I mean, if you have a list, I feel like this question doesn't these are for people that just turn it on, not knowing what they're going to watch. I will say this and kind of what I said earlier. If I do turn it on, I have no idea what I want to watch. It's either going to be a YouTube music video, some sort of documentary or a movie trailer.

Nick VinZant 31:24

I go through phases during the week. Like, to me, Monday and Tuesday is the documentary kind of days, like, there I want to see something real, and then I gradually want more and more fiction as I go out through as I go through the week.

John Shull 31:39

I don't have that kind of

Nick VinZant 31:42

I think I just realized what it is. I think I just realized the thing that it is. I think I like to watch more kind of non fiction stuff on Mondays and Tuesdays, because I like the idea that someone's life is worse than mine, like, oh well, mine had a bad Monday, but at least I'm not this person who's like missing in wherever. And then I want to detach from real life as I go throughout the week, so I gradually watch

John Shull 32:06

more and more fictional things. Yeah, not me. I'm all over the place. I don't have one set day for anything. I can watch Starship Troopers tonight, and then Wednesday, I can watch dune and Thursday, I can watch Halloween. Like, I'm all over the place, no set days or moods or anything.

Nick VinZant 32:24

I feel like I just went on a journey of self discovery. Like, oh, I didn't know that about myself, okay, did

John Shull 32:33

not know that about myself. Uh, was that it? We already on the shoutouts. Oh, that's it. Already on the shoutouts. Man, moving, fast, moving. Uh, all right. John Shaban, Amber rebacca, Matthew Christensen, I know this isn't a real name, but I thought it was funny. Tubby Mac I guess it could be a real name. Tubby is not people named Tubby.

Nick VinZant 32:57

There's a couple of people like, how do you get that nickname? Like, Well, okay,

John Shull 33:01

well, Tubby, uh, let's see. Luke thornburn, Mario corrupt, Chris DeSantis, Lucas, pellier, hunter, Patton, and let's see. We'll end here on a good old American name, Peter Jones, because it could be English too, but,

Nick VinZant 33:21

yeah, that's pretty you don't see her. A lot of Peters man, not a lot of Peter is still around.

John Shull 33:26

Not a lot of Peters hanging around. Alright, let's talk about some things here. I feel it's only, it's only due process if we acknowledge the legend that the world of media lost this past weekend, that being the one and only Mr. Phil Donahue rip

Nick VinZant 33:48

I was kind of that was one of those people that I was surprised to find out that he wasn't already dead. Like, oh,

John Shull 33:54

he's still alive. I Okay, fine. I tried acting like I knew. I was also very surprised he was alive still, and also I didn't realize this, like, what he actually did for TV and, like, the talk show and help show genres, he was kind of like one of the founding figures of it.

Nick VinZant 34:16

Yeah, I have no idea. I don't know anything about it. I feel like everybody's great all of a sudden after they're dead, right? Like, everybody's always great afterwards. It's always the best look. Listen. I'm a former news reporter, and I used to go out to crime scenes all the time, and only one time in like, hundreds of crimes, maybe 1000s of crimes, that I covered, where you talk to somebody that something was going on, only once did I have somebody really come forward and say, You know what? He was a jerk. Everybody else was always the life of the party. The class count the person everyone could count on, the best guy you knew funny like, everybody's always great when they're dead, but you. In reality, like anyway. That's no disrespect to Phil Donahue, I kind of tangent, but I just always remember only one time that I have a person that we interviewed about somebody say that person was actually a pretty big jerk and nobody really liked him.

John Shull 35:14

I mean, nobody wants to say stuff about somebody that's dead, right? No one wants to come out and be that person on a soundbite that says, Yeah, little Johnny was a complete Nutter douchebag. I'm glad he's dead.

Nick VinZant 35:26

But if you could somehow view this after you died, would you rather hear like an exaggerated version of you, or would you rather hear what people really thought of you? I'd much rather hear what people really thought of me.

John Shull 35:42

Nah, keep it nice. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I mean, tell me the mean stuff. Now, I don't want to be, you know, somewhere and have to hear them talk about how angry and bad of a person I was.

Nick VinZant 35:52

Oh, I'd much rather know, like, what people really thought of me. No, I'm good. What did they really think?

John Shull 36:01

No, I'm good. I don't. I don't need to know. I don't need to know what that's all about, just sunshine and rainbows when I eventually die here in 10 years.

Nick VinZant 36:10

Yeah, you're pushing it. You're you're definitely going early. Do you feel like you're gonna go early, average or late?

John Shull 36:19

Honestly, I think I'm gonna go average.

Nick VinZant 36:24

I think I'll probably get 78 to 82 that's what I'm shooting for. 78

John Shull 36:28

to 82 isn't it? The average like 76 or seven. I

Nick VinZant 36:32

think it's slightly below that. I think it's slightly below that for men.

John Shull 36:37

I mean, listen, much love to my father, but he may be one of the he's not a health and and he is living well into his almost 70s. Um, so I'm pretty confident I'll be at least average. I think, okay,

Nick VinZant 36:53

yeah, I want to go slightly above average, but I don't want it to go too long. I don't want to be 90 even 88 you're like, Whoa, man, you're getting up there. Yeah,

John Shull 37:03

it doesn't mean that I want to live deep into my years. I mean, you know, anyways, it's kind of a depressing topic. Let's get on. Go on to another depressing topic. Okay, okay, um, the news came out over the weekend, maybe late last week, that Matthew Perry, you know, who died a few months ago that they charged five people in his death for basically overdosing him on ketamine. I feel like a terrible human being, because when that came out, I literally sat back in my office chair and I went, of course, like of course somebody was prescribing him it. Like, he didn't just take it because he wanted to. Like, why does it surprise people?

Nick VinZant 37:49

I'm surprised that somebody actually got charged. That usually doesn't happen. So that person must have been really egregious. And like, I said, like, John works in news. I'm a former news reporter, so we do kind of, like have a little insight into this, that people usually don't get charged for that kind

John Shull 38:07

of thing. Yeah, they don't, um, but the the fact that they charge six people, including the main doctor, um, you know, there was just so much surrounding his death, of, you know, conspiracy and this and that it's like, no, apparently they were just giving him ketamine to try to take away his anxiety and problems and other things. It's just, it's just insane to me that there's still people that are taking the social media that are defending, you know, the fact that he was taking this like, No, it's not good for you. No one should be taking this for that, like that.

Nick VinZant 38:40

I think that there's some stuff around that. Though there's a whole micro dosing thing. I don't know anything about it, and I feel like that's the kind of thing if you don't know anything about it, you should probably just, probably

John Shull 38:50

just keep your mouth closed. I do agree. Well, still rip to Phil Donahue and Matthew Perry. Uh, alright, here's, here's another positive, uh, concept here today. Holy hell. Um, how would you feel if you owned a house on one of the coasts here? And next thing you know, it's being swept into the ocean. What do you do in that instance? Because that's happened three times now in the North Carolina region, just in the last week alone, to do two different things. It was Debbie, and then it was torrential flooding like I would, I don't even know what I would do. I would just sit there and just be like, yep, there goes my house.

Nick VinZant 39:24

I think the only saving grace to that is like, there's nothing you can do. I mean, there's something you can do in the sense that you probably should have realized that living on an erosion prone area right next to the coast is not the best thing for the longevity of your house, especially with the current climate, but otherwise you're just like, well, there it goes. Like, I don't know what else you're going to do besides laugh about it. Like, well, there goes my house. That

John Shull 39:51

sucks. I was reading something from a from a real estate point of view, that the insurance on those. Houses is almost as, almost as much as the interest that is being charged on those houses. Like, it is insane how much insurance you have to pay just to have one of those houses.

Nick VinZant 40:10

Look, man, I don't feel really that much sorry for people when those kind of things happen. Like, you know how the climate is changing. You know where you live, if something like that happens to you, then you were risking it. The only thing that bothers me about it is I don't think that rest of us should have to pay higher insurance rates because you want to live right next to the coast on a mountain where it's going to fall into the ocean any second. Like that's your bad choice. Why should I have to pay for that?

John Shull 40:36

So if, and this is a question for anyone out there that's watching, if you had to live in an area that's prone to, you know, to, I don't want to say cultural, weather issues, but, you know, we'll say that, which area would you take the the chance on? Would you live on the coast? Will you live like in a hurricane area, you know, like Louisiana? Would you live in a like California, where there's wildfires? Where would you take your risk at?

Nick VinZant 41:01

I would probably take the risk of where I live right now, which is Seattle, which, if anybody knows anything about the Cascadia Subduction Zone, we're overdue for basically the largest earthquake in all of human history that's going to destroy the entire area. But nobody here has earthquake concerns, and you just kind of hoping it doesn't happen while you're alive?

John Shull 41:24

Yeah, I that would be terrible, and the podcast would cease to exist if your computer got molted by lava. But you

Nick VinZant 41:31

it's a risk thing, right? Like, do you want to live in an area on the coast or in the mountains, or someplace where there's more things generally to do and there's a little bit of a risky situation. Or do you want to live as a person from Kansas? I feel like I can say this, do you want to live in Kansas? Like, do you want to risk the chance of having an earthquake in a fun place? Or do you want to live in Kansas where you're kind of safe, but you live in Kansas,

John Shull 41:56

but see, are you safe in Kansas? Aren't that? Isn't that in the middle of tornado alley?

Nick VinZant 42:00

Yeah. But I mean, I've been through a bunch of tornadoes. Ain't that? Jesus,

John Shull 42:04

I don't know. I just watched twisters and they look pretty freaking scary to me. Yeah, they're

Nick VinZant 42:09

pretty scary, man, but you just prepare for it like this is the thing that I would since we're seem to be on this kick now about how, talking about how we used to work in news, or at least I used to work in news, you usually find out that when something happens to somebody, there was a way that they could have avoided that situation, and they didn't. It's usually you can tie it back to somebody's fault that like, Oh, my house got swept away in this hurricane. What a freak accident. Well, you built it on stilts next to an eroding mountain. That's probably why that happened? What

John Shull 42:40

do you think's gonna happen? It's,

Nick VinZant 42:43

it's like, what did you think was gonna happen? So people are usually pretty much at fault for their own circumstances in life, when you get right down to it

John Shull 42:51

true. All right. Uh, there's actually a couple of fun things, believe it or not, on this list. Not. All Okay. Uh, would you ever would you rather have one long arm or one long leg. Oh, one long arm,

Nick VinZant 43:06

because I could reach things, and if you had one long leg, that would throw off your whole balance, like you could exist pretty well with just one long arm, I would almost say it'd be handy. You'd be great at things. Almost be better to have one long

Unknown Speaker 43:19

you just be just

Nick VinZant 43:23

right. Like, think of the amount of like, if you had one long arm and you were a baseball player, like, the amount of whip you could create with that way better. I think to have one long arm or just one long leg is useless unless it's in the middle.

John Shull 43:39

Well, yeah, remember, it's a PG podcast here. Let's see last question, believe it or not, we're getting, we're just moving through these things. What is the more useless animal? And these are, these are house pets, a gerbil, a goldfish or a cat?

Nick VinZant 44:04

Well, I mean, a cat in a gerbil, at least, you can kind of potentially, like, snuggle up with or pet, or have some sort of physical comfort from them, in some way, like a goldfish, to me is like, why even get that as a pet, especially if it's just one goldfish. Like, maybe it's your first one. I could see getting it for a little kid, but I don't know why an adult would get a goldfish. Like, just, just tough it out, right? Like, don't half ass it that much. Either get a real pet, or don't get a pet at all,

John Shull 44:38

or just be like my parents and show up randomly one day with Piranha, because that's apparently what people kept in their fish tanks.

Nick VinZant 44:45

They just wait. They gave your kids a piranha, or they just showed up at your house with a piranha. My

John Shull 44:51

parents brought home like four piranhas and put them in our fish tank. And then my dad was shocked. When they started destroying everything in the Can we, can we swear on, on YouTube, live, I think you can on the fucking fish tank and like, then he was afraid to clean the thing, because these things became, I mean, they're naturally aggressive fish. Like, what do you think is going to happen? Dad, that

Nick VinZant 45:17

was, he didn't think that one all the way through. He just didn't think that one all the way through, right? Like, I wouldn't buy a piranha and be like, Oh, it's just going to get along with these other fish perfectly fine. Like, he probably, he should have done a little bit of research,

John Shull 45:31

probably, but, I mean, I'm his spawn. So, I mean, you see, doesn't fall too far from the tree in the show household. I don't think,

Nick VinZant 45:39

Okay, what percentage do you think you are different from your parents?

John Shull 45:44

Oh, man, that's a loaded question. Um, percentage difference. I mean, I mean, I guess, I mean, I guess I'll say I'm at least 50% different.

Nick VinZant 46:00

Oh, I think it's, I think you may be 50% now, but I bet as you get older, that that number gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I wouldn't, I would say, maybe I could say maybe 50% but I think my number's going down pretty quick. I do some things. You're like, Oh God, I'm becoming, like, my parents. No, I

John Shull 46:23

mean, see it, I try my best not to my My thing is, is I'm like, a physical, like, cop, win of my father, so that's my problem.

Nick VinZant 46:36

Oh yeah, that's hard. Like, that's hard. I have some of the same, like, physical mannerisms as my dad, like I move kind of in the same way that he does, or I sit in the same way that he does. But that's, yeah, I would say 50% but it's getting up there. It's, it's increasing in that, like, nobody wants to become their parents.

John Shull 46:56

No, nobody does. Nobody wants to. And even if you say you do, that's an F and lie. F and lie, yeah, unless your parents like, really rich. Well, you want to be. We do have a, you know? We do have several ways you can donate to the podcast, so just give us some. Oh, we got a Patreon now for exclusive content, right? Yeah?

Nick VinZant 47:17

Well, exclusive, ad free, like one of those words that it supposedly means something, but it's not. It's not really, but it's ad free. We have a Patreon. I probably should have thought ahead of this and gotten the link for it, but I didn't do that, but we do have a patreon. Now, if anybody wants to

John Shull 47:31

support us, we appreciate that. Alright, well, speaking of let's get to the the best part of the show or so. Okay, so

Nick VinZant 47:37

art, so our top five is top five celebrities named after birds. Who's your number five?

John Shull 47:44

So my first question to you is, did you go with the most known actors and actresses with bird names, or did you go with like the best ones? I

Nick VinZant 47:55

went with the most significant celebrity with a bird name. But then if the bird name, if there was like close, then I chose who had the better named bird. So for example, these, neither of these are on my list. But if you had like Jay Leno and Cheryl Crow, and I thought that they were exactly the same, I like the J more than I like the crow, so I would have put Jay Leno above Sheryl Crow.

John Shull 48:24

Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Well, in saying that my number five, I went with Dan Quayle.

Nick VinZant 48:34

I thought about Dan Quayle because his name is Dan Quayle, yeah, like, and he couldn't for people who maybe are younger and don't remember, like, that was the guy who was a vice presidential candidate under somebody I can't remember, but he couldn't spell potato, no,

John Shull 48:49

he he was, he was the vice president.

Nick VinZant 48:53

Oh, he was, yeah, under George

John Shull 48:54

HW, from, uh, whatever, 89 to 93 um, yeah. Okay, I

Nick VinZant 49:02

could see Dan Quayle. I mean, you could make an argument that, like, he had a significant impact, if you really kind of knew about things like that. Otherwise, I wouldn't, quite frankly, put him in my top 10. Oh, I

John Shull 49:12

I only went with it because a quail. I mean, he has to be the only famous quail in the end ever, right? I mean, come on, but he doesn't spell it the same way that you spell quail. He does not know, but it's spelled a little differently to pronounce it the same way. So it's good. In my book,

Nick VinZant 49:30

my number five is Russell Crowe, in my mind, responsible for one of the single greatest movie scenes of all time, when he says. His name is Max's Decimus meridis. He turns around. That's one of the greatest movie scenes, in my opinion, of all time.

John Shull 49:47

Well, unfortunately, they're about to ruin that movie franchise, because they they're making gladiator two, so that

Nick VinZant 49:55

didn't need a sequel. That's one of those movies that like the. Didn't need a sequel. No. Like, not

John Shull 50:02

even close. Not even close. It's like, who, in their right mind, was like, Yeah, we're gonna make a part two to this. I mean, come on, man, it's terrible,

Nick VinZant 50:10

but they got some big name actors for it, which makes me seem that, like, okay, the kind of actors that probably had some choices, so maybe they looked at the script and was like, Okay, this is actually good.

John Shull 50:22

Yeah. I don't know. We'll we'll see. Okay, who's your number four? Um, my number four is Larry Bird. I

Nick VinZant 50:30

don't think that Larry Bird should be on the list. I don't think he counts.

John Shull 50:35

Why? Because his last name is, is just a bird,

Nick VinZant 50:37

yeah, but he's not named after a bird. His last name is bird,

John Shull 50:41

but technically he is named after bird. Because, okay,

Nick VinZant 50:45

okay, so look up on Google and show me the bird that is just named bird. I

John Shull 50:51

mean, I'm sure there's a bird just named bird. It's

Nick VinZant 50:54

just called Bird. That's why I don't think that Larry Bird should be on there, because he's not named after a bird. His name is bird. There's no bird named bird, so I don't think that he should count.

John Shull 51:08

What's your number four? I'm trying to find this out here. Steve Martin, okay, all right, that's a good one.

Nick VinZant 51:15

Martin, I would have put him high. That's an example of somebody who I would have put him higher on the list. Except a Martin isn't a bird that I really even know what it is. So I think that while he is very high up there, the bird he is named after brings him down a little bit.

John Shull 51:32

Well, it's funny that you have a Martin in your list, because my number three is Martin Sheen.

Nick VinZant 51:39

I just don't think of a Martin as a bird like I don't even know what a Martin looks like. Do you know? No, have no idea, right? That's what I think holds them back. I don't know what a Martin even looks like. See here. Now, I have to look it up. What does a Martin even look like? Uh, my number three, though, while you're doing that is Taylor Swift,

John Shull 52:04

oh, I had it up. What did you do? There it is.

Nick VinZant 52:12

Oh, did you mess it up? No, I

John Shull 52:13

brought it to you. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 52:14

wasn't looking I was looking at something else. I was looking up. Oh, a blue, purple Martin,

John Shull 52:20

yes,

Nick VinZant 52:21

oh, yeah, that's an okay bird. I don't really feel like, did you find Did you now, did you in your research, did you decide to agree with me about Larry Bird, that he shouldn't be on the list because bird isn't like, there's no bird that's named bird.

John Shull 52:37

It's fine. I mean, it's sure. I mean, I can replace him with several others. So technically, technically, you're right, yes,

Nick VinZant 52:46

yeah, my number three is Taylor Swift, who's number two?

John Shull 52:48

Uh, Robin Williams, oh, that's

Nick VinZant 52:51

my number two too.

John Shull 52:52

Okay, yeah, it's weird that we have the same number two.

Nick VinZant 52:55

I think that probably means we have the same number one. Who's your number one

John Shull 53:02

has to be on the count of 3112, Tony Hawk, Ethan Hawke.

Nick VinZant 53:12

You put Ethan Hawke above Tony Hawk

John Shull 53:15

and Robin Williams. I mean, I think it's a it's a cool last name a hawk. Tony Hawk, too. I forgot about Tony Hawk. It could be Tony Hawk. Forgot

Nick VinZant 53:24

about, I think it's Tony Hawk, because if you look at the industry that he was in, he was the most consequential person in that industry. Yeah, people we've talked about,

John Shull 53:34

I we've never done this, but I'll go the same one too with you, because Tony Hawk, I forgot about him. But, yeah, he, I mean, basically on that list. I mean, you can say Rob Robin Williams, Larry Bird on my list, were super influential in their professions. But I mean, skateboarding mainstream is what it is because of of what Tony Hawk did and started,

Nick VinZant 53:57

yeah, he was the biggest name in his profession, like, you could make an argument like, okay, Robin Williams was very famous, but somebody else probably could have kind of done that, you know, if it wasn't him, it would have been somebody else. I think Tony Hawk was really one of a kind. What? Why would you put Ethan Hawke above Robin Williams? Because I was trying

John Shull 54:18

to think of like, like like birds that are strong, you know, like Falcon Hawks. It was like, oh, Ethan Hawke and I completely misplaced, you know, Tony Hawk didn't even come into my vernacular.

Nick VinZant 54:31

Yeah, I don't know how you do that. He's almost the first one the way. Okay, when I think of bird name celebrities, name with bird names, though, it's definitely for me. Tony Hawk, Larry Bird, I don't necessarily think about like Robin Williams or Jay. Leno

John Shull 54:46

Russell Crowe, yeah. I mean, like any of the Martins, you know, like, I don't think I didn't even know a Martin was really a bird till I looked up a list. So, yeah, I

Nick VinZant 54:56

didn't really know it was a bird either, to be honest with you, looks like a crow to me. Looks like a fake crow. Who's on your honorable

John Shull 55:02

mention? Let's see. So I put on Lynn Swann.

Nick VinZant 55:07

I thought about that. That might be along with Tony Hawk the best like name, name, yeah, Lynn Swann's a good name.

John Shull 55:16

That's a pretty good name, uh, Sheryl Crow Russell Crowe, Jay Leno and I did have Martin Short on here, but I like Martin Sheen better, so that's why I gave him the nod. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 55:27

I would go with Martin Short over if I was going to rank my Martins, it would be Steve Martin, Martin Sheen, and then last would be Martin Short.

John Shull 55:37

We could have put Martin Lawrence on here, I guess.

Nick VinZant 55:40

Oh, I would put Martin Lawrence above both Martin Sheen and Martin Short for me personally, I love that show. My it's a good show. Uh, the only people that I didn't name that already, Sheryl Crow, Florence, Nightingale. That's a great

John Shull 55:59

name. That's, yeah, that's a that's a solid name. Okay, that's

Nick VinZant 56:03

gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out and let us know who you think are some of the best celebrity celebrities with bird names. I always have trouble saying that, because I want to be clear that it's not celebrity bird names, like somebody named their bird after a celebrity. It's celebrities who are named after birds, which is why I don't think that Larry Bird should ultimately count as a celebrity with a bird name. He's not named after a bird. He just has the name bird. It's like, if your name is house, you're not named after a house. You're just named house. Let me know you think you.

Swinger Lifestyle Advocates Dan and Lacy

For some being a Swinger is taboo, but for Dan and Lacy it’s a way to explore their sexuality, come closer to together and show the world who they really are. We talk becoming a Swinger, why you probably know a secret Swinger and getting into the best Swinger clubs. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Forgotten Celebrities.

Dan and Lacy: 01:23

Pointless: 37:16

Top 5 Forgotten Celebrities: 52:41

Swing Nation Podcast and Website

Swing Nation YouTube

Interview with Swinger Lifestyle Advocates Dan and Lacy

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant, coming up in this episode swinging and forgotten celebrities,

Lacy 0:20

when everyone found out we were Swingers, people came out of the woodwork that I knew, that I would have never guessed that I was a swinger, but I had no idea that they were swingers. I would

Dan 0:30

say, for most people, when they enter this space, they are looking to fulfill sexual fantasies or desire. Swinging

Lacy 0:37

is not immune to that. 100% we've met people where you know either the husband or the wife. A lot of people think it's the husband that's pushing but sometimes it's the wife. I want

Nick VinZant 0:49

to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guests, because while they live a lifestyle that some might say is taboo, it's also really popular. This is swinger lifestyle advocates, Dan and Lacey. So what is swinging?

Dan 1:24

Swinging is non monogamy. You can kind of use those interchangeably. I guess it's really hard to pin down exactly what it is, because I think it means something different for everybody. But in very general terms, it means you're open to sharing your partner with somebody other than yourself.

Nick VinZant 1:40

Is it? The meaning of it changed over time, like, why is it different for different people? Well, I

Lacy 1:46

think it's different for different people, because it doesn't matter how you choose to do it. It's still swinging. Like for Dan and I, we typically couple swap. So we meet a couple, we form a connection, and then we will swap partners. But for another couple, the husband may not be interested in sleeping with anyone. He just wants to see his wife have sex with someone else.

Nick VinZant 2:06

Is it fundamentally a sexual thing? Is it more sexual? Is it more emotional?

Dan 2:12

I would say for most people, when they enter this space, they are looking to fulfill sexual fantasies or desires, and that's kind of the reason they entered into this space. But what they find is they actually end up forming bonds and friendships. And many swingers have friends that they've been, even our self included, that they've been friends with for for years and for decades. And you know, even when we first started swinging, we used to say, you know, we're sexually open, but emotionally monogamous, right? We only are emotional. We're only going to form an emotional connection with each other. But over time, what ends up happening is you develop friendship with people, and you care about your friends and if they needed my help, or if you know a tragedy happened in their family, like we would be there to support them, just the same way, probably you would for your close friends. The difference with us is we, we may or may not have sex with them. Does that

Nick VinZant 3:04

complicate things in it? It can.

Lacy 3:06

It can very much complicate things. Yeah. I mean, for the most part, it's usually pretty good, but when you're sleeping with your friends, I mean, how can that not complicate things?

Nick VinZant 3:17

Just I'm a big numbers person. Okay, so let's imagine there's 10 instances of swinging. And forgive me for the words, right? But you get the idea that I'm asking so like, how many out of every 10 that's going to get complicated for us? Not many.

Dan 3:33

Yeah, I think it's hard to answer that, because it depends when life, when couples first join the lifestyle and their own experience, their first few experiences, they might have drama every time because they don't know their own rules, their own boundaries, they don't know what type of emotional reactions they're going to have to their experiences. But the longer you're in the lifestyle, and the more you kind of figure it out, I think the less and less those kind of drama situations happen.

Nick VinZant 3:58

Is this something that people kind of do a little bit or no, if you do it, you're all the way in both.

Lacy 4:03

Yeah, yeah.

Dan 4:05

It depends, I think it depends on a lot of things. It's some people's stage of their life. So maybe if you're younger and you have young children, and you can't get away much, you might only you know, we know people that will go on one cruise a year, or they'll go on one vacation a year, and that for that one vacation, that one week, they'll be, you know, engaging with other lifestyle people, Swingers and swapping and having a grand old time. And then they'll go home, and they're perfectly normal, monogamous couple for the other, you know, 11 and a half months. And then there's couples that go out almost every weekend. There's couples that go out once a month. I think it all depends on kind of what stage you're in your life you're in, and then, like you personally, how how much, how often, or how much do you want to engage?

Nick VinZant 4:46

How would you say this is kind of viewed generally by society, badly.

Lacy 4:53

I think that the younger generation that is up and coming, early 20s are definitely embraced. Sing non monogamy. They don't like late labels. They just want to be like fluid and free with their sexuality. But I think the general population looks I think the word swinger is looked down upon, and especially I see that if you go to any of our social media, go to my Instagram like right now, it is insane, the things that people are commenting, and these people are the people that in their bio have Bible verses and talk about love and loving one another, but in my comments, they're just ripping me apart for owning my sexuality and being open to this lifestyle.

Nick VinZant 5:34

I'm happily married, been married my wife for 10 years, like for me, this is not something that that I would be interested in, but I don't like, do whatever you want. Like, I don't care do what you want. Yeah. Why do you think people have a reaction to it like that, instead of just kind of having a reaction to like, well, it's not my business.

Dan 5:53

I think it cuts against the grain of everything you've ever been taught, right? So even us, from a young age, you're taught you're supposed to find one partner, you're supposed to grow up, you're supposed to get married, and then that one partner is supposed to fulfill all your needs and desires and wants. And if you ever have any fantasies or desires outside of that, then you're sinner and you're bad and you're failing at your marriage. And the truth is, I think if we're all open with ourselves, we all have fantasies and desires. I don't know too many men that could honestly look at you in the face and say, I wouldn't like to have a threesome with two women, right? I think most people, when you're you sit down and you're honest with yourself, that's probably a fantasy you have. And so us, what we believe is, if I can communicate to my partner that I have this fantasy, and they trust me, and we've, we've developed this foundation of a relationship, where we can go out and we can explore those fantasies together, and it can be a positive experience for both of us. Why not do that? Right? And so we're doing that, and I think people see that, and they just think it goes against everything they've ever been taught. So there must be something wrong with it, even if they don't understand it, there's just something wrong with that.

Nick VinZant 7:00

Are couples usually completely on the same page? Or does one partner usually seem to be driving it more than the other? I

Lacy 7:09

think in the beginning, usually one person is going to bring it up to the other. It's you don't just come to this epiphany and have the same idea at the exact same time. So I do think sometimes it might take someone else a little bit time to get more comfortable and kind of be on the same page. But I don't necessarily think that's a negative thing. I just think as long as you're communicating with your partner, and we always say, play down to the one who is the most reserved, if one really wants to do it, and the other one is like a little unsure, and is kind of, like a little timid about it. You're gonna play down to that person. You're not just gonna jump in. You're gonna take very baby steps until that person is 100% comfortable. And if they never get there, then you don't ever do it.

Nick VinZant 7:53

Is that one of those things though, that, like in theory, that works, but in reality, do you have situations where somebody's really pushing it, and somebody's like, you know, I don't really want to Oh, yeah,

Lacy 8:06

that happens. I think that that happens with everything in life, you know. Like, I mean, swinging is not immune to that. 100% we've met people where, you know, either the husband or the wife. A lot of people think it's the husband that's pushing but sometimes it's the wife, and they are really unsure, and it's very obvious, and it is a huge red flag when you see it. And personally, if we see a couple that's like that, we are going to go the opposite way. And I would say most people in the lifestyle would probably feel the same way. That's a huge red flag. And that's when you have situations like you mentioned before, where there's drama or issues that come up. If you engage in couple with couples like that, things are gonna happen. So we just tend to just go the other way.

Nick VinZant 8:50

How do you kind of like so how did you get started in it?

Lacy 8:54

So we are both in the lifestyle separately, I met, I was dating a guy, and we had like, this awesome sex life. And I remember one night we had had this great sex, and we were laying in bed, and he was like, you know, there's this club in Nashville, Tennessee that you can go and watch people have sex. And that sounded hot to me, like it was like, live porn. You know, it didn't dawn on me that it was a swingers club. I just thought, Oh, we could watch people have sex, and maybe people could watch us like so I thought it was, like, super hot. So I remember catching myself still thinking about that. And I had never done anything really super naughty at that point. I was pretty straight laced vanilla, you know, pretty normal type of person when it came to sex that just stuck with me. And I can remember bringing it up to him like, that sounded really cool, and that's all it took. He was like, she's in you know? And so we started doing research, and we decided to plan, like, a little trip around that. So we actually went to this club. It was a swingers club I found. Only figured it out that it was the swingers club, which I was fine with it. We had talked we didn't know anything about boundaries or rules or anything, but we did talk about the fact that if one of us was uncomfortable, we would leave. So we go, and I loved it. I thought it was like a super sexy atmosphere. Everyone was respectful, but he was very uncomfortable. So we ended up leaving, and we never talked about it, really. We never did anything. We were never Swingers, nothing. But it just kind of like I stored it in the back of my mind as something that I thought was like a super hot experience. And then him and I ended up breaking up, you know, months later for other reasons. And so I was single, and I was like, you know, let me, let me look into that. And so I started doing research. Figured out you could be a single person in the lifestyle. And so that's what I did. And I was a single female in the lifestyle, which is called a unicorn. So I was pretty sought after. A lot of people are looking for a single female to join, like the husband and wife couple. So I was pretty successful at it. It was a lot of fun. Do you want to tell how you met or how you got lost out, and then we'll share how we

Dan 11:07

met? Yeah. So a very similar story for me is I was in a married in a monogamous relationship for 13 years, and when my marriage, you know, dissolved, I was kind of broken on the whole idea of monogamy, on the whole idea of marriage. And I had gotten married right out of high school, so I kind of also turned into a big slut a little bit, you know, I was exploring my sexuality and all the things I hadn't done over the years. And through that, I was, actually was dating a girl, and in conversation with her, her and her ex husband were Swingers, were in the lifestyle, and so just in conversation, she was like, Would you Would that be something you would be into, like sharing and group sex and things like that. And I'm like, fuck yeah. Like, that sounds hot to me. And so she kind of showed me the websites, and we actually met a few couples, and we did a little bit, not too much, but we explored a little bit into it. Me and her broke up for reasons nothing to do with with the lifestyle, but again, like Lacey, it stuck with me. And so I went on the website and change the account from a couple's account to a single account. And then me as a single male, I started engaging with couples myself. And then one day, I was traveling for work, and this, this cute single female messaged me on this website. And I was like, There's no way this is real. There's no way this beautiful girl is messaging me on a swinger website, and then later that night, she ended up showing up at my hotel room. And here we are, what, six, seven years later, or something, and we've been pretty much inseparable

Nick VinZant 12:32

since, in general, like, were you both pretty sexual people to begin with? Or was this like, no, it, it's just this thing, and that's that gets me going, I

Lacy 12:40

always enjoyed sex, but I was never, like, super sexual by any means. I mean, I would say just average, depending on who I, you know, I I was married, and, you know, we had normal, married people sex, and then, you know, I dated outside, you know, once I got divorced, but there were, I was never with anyone that we just had this like crazy amount of sex or anything like that, was pretty average. I

Dan 13:05

was always pretty sexual. And to the point in I almost felt weird because of it, you know, like it made me like I had fantasies, you know, like group sex and things like that. And I always felt like I'm not supposed to have these fantasies, like there must be something wrong with me. And so when I met a partner that was open to those ideas and in kind of loved and supported me and was willing to try all these things, or actually had already been trying all those things, it kind of like opened up a whole new world to me and and, you know, we talk about it a lot, it's the first time I've been in relationship where I felt like I can truly be my authentic self, like I can tell Lacey any fantasy I have, I could tell her any desire I have, and she might be like, well, that's a little weird, but like, I love you, and I'm here for it, and if you want to try it, let's do it, you know. I mean, and that's such a rewarding thing, you know? I mean, and I didn't think that was possible. I think I always thought, like, you know, you were gonna you had to hold some part of yourself back from your partner. Um, but in this relationship, I really don't feel like I have to do that at all. I didn't

Lacy 14:09

even realize I was holding parts of myself back, you know. I just thought I was, you know, you just don't talk about stuff like that, you know, you see, like, a hot person walking down the street, you don't say, you don't look at your partner and go, like, Oh, he's hot. I'd like to you know that just not stuff that you do. So once you realize that you can, like, just say and be and do all the things that you're actually feeling, it's, it's super rewarding. Do

Nick VinZant 14:33

people repress it at all? Do you find people kind of repressed to come into this lifestyle?

Dan 14:40

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, we've met preachers daughters and we've met preachers, you know, yeah, there's all kinds of people in this lifestyle, and some of them are from probably a repressed upbringing, but some of them are from completely normal upbringing with with parents that are liberal, and you let them do whatever they want. I think you meet all kinds of people. Um. Yeah, but I think it is one of the draws to this, this community or this lifestyle, is the fact that you can be in in a in a community with people and be your authentic self and without judgment.

Nick VinZant 15:13

Can you have, I'll use this word for lack of a better one. Can you have a normal relationship, slash life like the wife and kids and picket fence and all that kind of we have all

Lacy 15:23

of those things

Nick VinZant 15:24

you can have, like it can be, I guess, for me, from the outside, right? Like looking at it as somebody that that it's not my thing, right? Find that it's yours, but it's not mine. Like, I wouldn't see, I can't see how that would work for me, but you can make it work for other Yeah.

Lacy 15:39

Well, honestly, we are public now, but most swingers are not public. Your next door neighbor or your kid's teacher is more than likely a swinger. You would be shocked at the amount of people, nurses, doctors, teachers, please, firefighters, like so many people, are Swingers, and no one in their life has any idea they are 100% mom and dad at home, they do everything like any other normal parent would, or or daughter, or however, teacher, but every so often, they slip away and nobody knows what they're doing. Yeah,

Dan 16:13

it's an estimated 5% of the US population engaged as a non monogamy. So something like 10 million people in America are actively engaging in this, this lifestyle.

Nick VinZant 16:24

Yeah, that's a decent amount of people, right? This, would you say it's more popular?

Lacy 16:29

I think that most people realize, yes. I mean, even personally, when we when everyone found out we were Swingers, people came out of the woodwork that I knew, that I would have never guessed that I was a swinger, but I had no idea that they were Swingers, like family members. I mean, like, it's insane the amount of people that would start they felt comfortable to reach out, because they knew they knew our secret, you know, so they felt comfortable telling us. But yeah, I think, I think the average person would be shocked to know who all is actually Swingers, or at least has tried it at some point. Yeah, and

Dan 17:05

it's hard to say exactly what the catalyst is, but I would really say somewhere around covid, you really started seeing more and more people open up about it. I know, if we look at events, most of the people that we know are that are event organizers and do event groups. They're reporting record numbers of attendees attending these events and things like that. I think part of it's, you know, covid and people were at home and probably just Googling and looking up stuff. I think part of it's social media, you know, now that people, more and more people are talking about it and being open about it, I think that kind of makes more and more people feel comfortable with it, or, you know, more comfortable exploring it, but it's a lot. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that are either curious about this or are actively engaging in it.

Nick VinZant 17:48

Um, are you ready for some harder slash, listener submitted questions, sure. How can you keep this from causing issues in a relationship, like, because we talked about in the idea of, like, okay, sometimes this kind of goes bad. How do you keep it from going bad?

Lacy 18:03

So first thing is, you have to communicate every step of the way, and then once you're done communicating, you have to communicate more. And I think that is a huge thing that I don't think people realize that you're literally talking about everything, and if you're not willing to talk about everything, then it's probably never gonna work at all. But we also have super clear boundaries, so we know exactly what we can do, what we can't do, we so if anything is stepped over those, then that is a huge that's a huge issue. So we do all of those things to protect our heart, our feelings, our relationship, what else? No,

Dan 18:43

that's, that's it. I mean overly communicating and then setting clear rules and boundaries, I think, is the biggest thing. And even that can get great, right? Because you might set a boundary of, like, no texting somebody of the opposite sex outside of a group chat, right? And that's, that's actually one of our rules and boundaries. But sometimes guys have texted her to try to, like, set up a surprise birthday thing for me, right? So it's like, it's still great. All these rules are gray. So, you know, communicating, being open, being honest. You know, sometimes guys will text her on the side and say, you know, when Dan's not in town for work, what are you doing? Like, what are you what are you up to? When that happens. The first thing she does is come to me and says, you know, Bob, this guy, John, or whoever, you know, he texted me, and this is what he said. Here it is, right? And you know, sometimes, you know, so sometimes we have to address that, sometimes we don't address it. It just depends on the situation. But me and Lacey are on the same page with everything. And if, if somebody comes along and they think that they're gonna sneak one in, or, you know, talk to one of us and the other one's not gonna find out, like they're this. We are an iron wall together in everything, and you really have to have that to protect your your primary relationship.

Lacy 19:52

We also don't play separately. We do everything together. Some couples play separately, and that works for them, but for us. We feel like it protects our relationships when we're together. Not only do I like seeing him engage with other women, because it turns me on, it's also nice to know like if I'm seeing what's happening, my imagination is not getting the best of me. I'm not at home twiddling my thumbs thinking that they're getting married and running away together. You know, if I'm there and watching it and engaging, that just kind of eliminates those feelings.

Nick VinZant 20:27

This is kind of a lighter one, but it might be funny, so I have to ask it to you, do you ever critique each other's sex in the sense that, like, Hey, Dan, you really good form the other day,

Lacy 20:41

I think so, I

Dan 20:41

think we compliment each other. Or we'd be like, it was really hot when he folded you up, like a pretzel,

Lacy 20:46

yeah. Or I'm like, that you were too much, like, you got to chill out. That was like, You went too hard with her, you know, like, or give it two or more.

Dan 20:58

So yeah. And I guess in some ways, we do that. It could be complimentary. It could be,

Lacy 21:02

I'm usually not, not so much critique. Yeah, I'm not like, you did a shitty job when you bit her over like that. Like, not, we don't do that, but we definitely, well, talking about the experience is half the fun, like going back and, like engaging back together and then talking about, like, that's one of my favorite parts after swinging. Yeah,

Dan 21:24

it probably sounds crazy to people, but literally, we will go back and for the next week, dirty talk about, Oh, was it hot? Did his cock feel good inside you? Like, oh, was her pussy tight? Like we I don't know if I can say those things on your podcast, but those are the type of conversations you lay down that we have, um, regularly, and it's a turn on for us. It's hot for us, and

Lacy 21:42

but for somebody that's never swung, that's probably like mind blowing. Could you imagine,

Nick VinZant 21:49

to me, that sounds like what it's high? And

Dan 21:53

so there's a concept they call Compersion, which is kind of the opposite of jealousy, and it's when you get pleasure from seeing your partner be pleasured. And really the only way I can describe that is, if you've ever done something like nice for your wife, like, you know, cooked her a nice meal, or something like that, and you give it to her, and you see like, the joy and happiness in her face. And when you see her happy, it makes you happy. This is kind of a similar thing. Is when I know Lacey's getting pleasure and being pleasured. It brings me pleasure, but you, you kind of, you have to get rid of the jealousy and insecurities to get to that place. But when you can get there, it really is a beautiful thing. And it's you

Lacy 22:32

don't always get there the first time, you know, like, the first time, you might be like, Okay, that was hot, and I enjoyed it.

Dan 22:38

I'm not sure how I feel. I liked it, but I'm I, yeah, I feel tingly, but I'm not sure if this is okay.

Lacy 22:44

Yeah, that's more what you're gonna feel the first. You don't, I think, like, once you you do it, and then you're like, Okay, we still love each other, we still have good sex. Like, we we're okay, right? We're okay. And then, like, you do it again, you're like, No, we're really okay. And when you

Dan 22:58

do it once, and then you have hot sex for the next, like, three weeks, yeah, and you're like, oh, there's something here, yeah.

Nick VinZant 23:04

Does it make it does that? I mean, does it make your added average run in, though, at the home,

Lacy 23:09

but not at all.

Dan 23:10

Well, in the funny, we've talked about this a lot before, too, and people ask us that a lot, and I don't think it's fair to compare Wednesday night sex after we get home from work and we're tired and the kids have been a pain in the ass. That's not fair to compare that to an orgy with 10 hot couples in a public playroom, right? Like you're comparing playing catch in your backyard to, like, playing in the Super Bowl, you know? I mean, like, they're not the same thing. And I think, yeah, you have to recognize that. You have to say, like, it's okay if we just have normal Wednesday night sex because we're horny. Like, that's okay. We don't always have to be swinging from the rafters and having 10 people and doing all these dirty things. And I enjoy that Wednesday night sex with me and her connecting just as much, and sometimes more than I enjoy the group orgies with a bunch of beautiful people. It's just they're not the same thing. And I think you have to realize that,

Nick VinZant 24:03

is there an average age, like, is there an age in life where people generally kind of tend to participate this? And it is across the board,

Lacy 24:10

I definitely think 30s, 40s is probably going to be your average age that you see at, okay, well, somewhere 30s, for late 30s, not early 30s. So yeah, we're, we're 40 years old, and I say we're probably the average age. But depending on where you go, some parties or some clubs will skew younger. Some will definitely have an older feel.

Nick VinZant 24:34

Could, could, like, a person who's not a swinger, could I just, like, show up and just walk around? Yeah, I think people, I would be interested in just seeing what's going

Lacy 24:42

on. That's how I was when that my guy that I was dating with said that, honestly, I think people think that, like, you walk into a swingers club and you're like, Get naked, you got to start fucking. That's not the case at all. Honestly, is really very similar to like, a regular club or a regular party,

Dan 24:59

like these one. Your clubs, you can go, you can dance, you can dress up, you can have fun. There is zero obligation to have sex, but there is, in most of the clubs, not even all of them have a place where you can go have sex. But in a lot of clubs, there's these back rooms where if you'd like to go, you can go back there, and there's going to be people having sex, but

Lacy 25:15

you do not have to go. And you can go and not engage. You could go and just sit and watch, as long as you're not being like a weirdo, you know, you can sit and watch and just, you know, enjoy the scenery or like, let's say, husband and wife. You're not Swingers, but you enjoy having sex in rooms with other people, having sex like you could engage with just your partner in a room with other people, no one will touch you unless you give them permission to touch you. And I think that's a huge misconception about swinging. I think people think that one we hook up with just about everybody, that it's a free for all, that everybody just jumps in the bed and it's just dicks and boobs and all the things flying. And that's not the case at all. It's all about consent. It's all about respect. And sometimes we go, we don't have sex with anybody. Sometimes we go, we have sex with six people. You just, it kind of just depends,

Nick VinZant 26:13

yeah, like, how often in a month or in a week or whatever? Like, How often would you say that you generally swing roughly

Lacy 26:19

once a month is about what we always say,

Nick VinZant 26:23

can you just find these online? Yeah, does it have to be secretive? No, they're

Lacy 26:26

not like, I

Nick VinZant 26:27

feel like there's got to be a password or something. People like, what

Lacy 26:30

do we got to do to get in? It's not like

Dan 26:32

people will email us and be like, how do I get into this? Like, what? Like, like, vet me in, like,

Lacy 26:37

and there's not like, a secret handshake. Like, honestly, you can Google, you know, you can type in swingers club, and pretty much any match, like, large metropolitan city is going to have some type of swingers club, and it's typically, could be right around the corner, and a lot of people don't even know, unless you live in, like, the Bible Belt, and everybody tells everybody

Nick VinZant 26:57

I'm googling right now, Like, I live in Seattle, oh yeah,

Lacy 27:00

oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But most cities will have, oh yeah. They're everywhere, yeah. And then they also have groups that do, like, hotel takeover. So they will essentially rent out an entire hotel and then resell the rooms to Swingers, and then, like, maybe have the the club party in the ballroom, and then if you want to engage with another couple, you take them back to your room. So there is 100% and like anybody can go on their website, as long as you meet their criteria. Because, like some, you know, sometimes it's age, sometimes you have to have a partner to go. You know, every Club's a little different. And as long as you meet that, you buy a ticket and you just show up, like, it's not, like, you don't have to, like, do all this fancy stuff to get in. You just go and you're you, just as long as you're respectful and you follow the rules you're allowed to be there. Yeah, there's

Dan 27:52

some big events. I don't think people realize, you know, naughty in New Orleans, which is one of the larger lifestyle kind of conventions, every year, has about 3000 people that are in attendance. Um, there's, there's swinger cruise ship takeovers where, you know, they take over some of the large cruise ships. Um, those can be anywhere from 3000 people to, I think the big ship has like, 6000 people on it. Um, we host parties at different resorts in different places across the country. Um, so a typical club night, there might be anywhere from 200 to 567, 800 people at a club in a night, um, you know, an event down at like secrets, which is a resort that, you know, usually close to 1000 people will show up to that.

Lacy 28:29

They also have resorts outside of the country that you can go to and, like, you can tell your friends you're going to an all inclusive resort in Mexico, and you show up and it's swingers resort. They have a Jamaica, I mean, clothing option. You can walk around nude. You can have sex wherever you want.

Nick VinZant 28:48

This one says, How can you spot a swinger in the wild? And I think what they mean by that is like, Oh, how can you tell, like, can you look at a couple walking past? We've

Dan 28:56

had several tick tock viral tick tocks off of playing off of, Oh, okay.

Lacy 29:00

So, okay, first of all, an upside down pineapple is, like the unofficial, official swinger symbol. So if you see a pineapple and it's flipped upside down, either they're joking with you or they're actually Swingers, that is the first thing. But we always joke like, if the Weiss tan and has fake boobs and they have like, a hot tub, and they have hot friends that they hang out with all the time. They're typically Swingers, stuff like that. But truth be told, is again, another misconception when we're like normal, like, if I'm running to Walmart or Target or whatever, I'm just going to target in Walmart. I'm not in there looking for potential Swingers, you know, I'm just in there to get my groceries and get out of there and go home. But people think that when we're out in, like, real life, that we are, like, we got to find a couple today, because we just really got to fuck somebody. You know, they think they. People think that we're just out there looking for someone to have sex with, or, like, if we go to, like, a school function, we're going to sleep with someone's. Husband because we're swingers. Truth be told, I don't want your husband. I might want you, but I definitely don't want your husband, you know, like and also, we're not going to cross those lines. We look for swingers at swingers clubs. We look for swingers at swinger events, like our website. On swinger websites, we're not going to a normal bar in hopes to meet another swinger couple to take home. If it's not a swinger bar, we're not going there to find swingers.

Nick VinZant 30:28

Why a pineapple? But to me, just Well,

Lacy 30:33

yeah, you're not allowed to do this. But hospitality. A pineapple is a symbol for hospitality. Flip it over.

Dan 30:41

It goes back. So the pineapple is the symbol of hospitality, because it used to be super expensive, because you used to have to get on a sailboat and, like, you know, sail to somewhere in the Caribbean to get a pineapple, and then pick it and then sail it back to, like, back in like, early America, only rich people had pineapples and to share. Like, when people, like guests, came to your house, if you fed them pineapples, that was like you were being very, very hospitable, because you were giving them something that's pricey, right? And so that's why swingers kind of have adopted this, that if I'm going to share you my wife with you, this is probably the most valuable thing to me, right? Is my wife. And so if I'm willing to share her with you, that's that's a very hospitable thing for me to do, slightly,

Nick VinZant 31:21

well, not slightly, but a more serious one, like D but do you feel like anything has been lost by not just having a completely monogamous relationship? No, I

Lacy 31:33

think the opposite, so much

Dan 31:34

has been gained. Yeah, I can't imagine going back. It's like, once you open Pandora's box, there's no way to put it well,

Lacy 31:43

like, and even if we have like, time off, like, even if we are home for, you know, a couple of weeks or we don't, it's almost like I'm itching for some naughty fun. And it's not even the actual sex that I'm like, it's just like, it's like, being flirty. And I don't know, how do I describe that? Yeah,

Dan 32:05

no, I don't, I don't know either. It's definitely, it's a thing.

Lacy 32:08

It's like, it's not even, yeah, it's the build up. I just want to, like, feel cute and feel wanted. And that part is, I don't know, it gives you like, you get excited, you get like, almost giddy. It's kind of like when you're dating someone new, you know that feeling you get in the very beginning, it's like, you get that, but you get it, but you're doing it together. Like you both feel that way. There's

Dan 32:32

literally, like, I'll walk out of the bathroom sometimes and she'd be like, You need to go change your shirt. That's not sexy enough, yeah. Like, I don't think Emily's gonna like that. Like, go put a different shirt on, right? And I'll do the same thing. I'm like, you know, Lacey. Like, it's

Lacy 32:44

like, we're helping up a little bit. Like, take

Dan 32:45

your panties off. You don't need to wear panties. Take them off. Go put them away. It's

Lacy 32:49

like, fun. It's in it's like, a build up together.

Nick VinZant 32:52

Are there hot spots in the United States? Like, oh, that's a big swing or hot spot? Yeah?

Lacy 32:56

Atlanta, uh, Florida, Florida, yeah, a lot of Florida, the

Dan 33:02

villages. I don't know if you've heard about the villages, but it's one of the villages in the country, yeah,

Lacy 33:07

um, yeah, Florida. Atlanta is really big. Texas. It seems like there's a lot of people from Texas. It definitely seems like the South, for sure, it has, which is hilarious, because the Bible Belt and conservative infrastructure.

Dan 33:20

So you would think, like New York City or somewhere like that, would have a ton of clubs. And honestly, there's not as many as you would think. There are some, but not as many you would think there'd be a bunch in a whole bustling community. But you know, most of our friends that live up in the Northeast come down here to the south the party and come to events. So it is interesting that you would think in the conservative south, that, you know, there would be less of that. It seems to be the most, yeah,

Lacy 33:46

because there are hiding, like, the harder you repress. Pops up somewhere else, right?

Nick VinZant 33:50

Like, that's that seems is, is this a uniquely American thing in any way? No,

Dan 33:57

no, it's, there's clubs, events you can go to Europe. They're probably more, probably more open about it's probably a little less taboo for them. They

Lacy 34:04

seem, it seems much more normal to them, like America makes it taboo. That's

Nick VinZant 34:12

pretty much all the questions we got, except for this last one. So tell me, like, why'd you decide to become advocates for this? Tell me a little bit about that. In the swing nation podcast, we

Lacy 34:19

needed, like, a sexy outlet, because we, we were Swingers, you know, but we do everything together. So he's gone. We're not swinging right now, but we needed some sort of sexy outlet. So I made an only Vance. We thought it'd be hot, like, not really to make money, but to, like, have guys, like, compliment me and talk to me and like, be some videos and pictures and him, be able to log in and like, see that interaction. You know, it's just like a way for us to still be sexy, but not actually engage with other people. And the next thing I know, we, you know, we have a ton of followers, and it was just this. This huge thing. And I would go tick tock live, and I would answer questions, just like we did here. People started saying, You need to make a podcast where you just answer all of these questions that people have. And Dan was home at the time. He had gotten home from his deployment, and he was like, Okay, let's do it. And so he bottled equipment, researched how to do a podcast, and we started on the podcast, and it became super successful very quickly, yeah,

Dan 35:26

so now it's one of the number one you know, swinger lifestyle podcasts out there when, you know, a few million downloads later, a couple years later, now we have a business where we host swinger events across the country. We have the podcast. We do this full time. I retired from the military. Lacey's left her job, and this is what what we do. And the more we've gotten involved in the community, the more we've seen needs for for advocacy, and, you know, people really speaking out. So we've actually got involved with some nonprofits and stuff like that. And there's, there's nonprofit called Open love.org and they're starting to push anti discrimination laws in different cities across the country. You know, because we know people within the community that have gotten fired. You know, when people find out that they're they're public, we know people in the community that their ex spouses try to take their kids away and things like that, when they find out that they're swingers. And so, you know, now there's a lot of advocacy being done, and there's anti discrimination laws being passed, and it's really become quite just this amazing thing. And it's, it's, it's fun to see, and we love it. And it's, I think, you know, anything, when you make it a job, it can be stressful. And sometimes I think there's days like, What the fuck are we doing? But then at the end of the day, it's like, we're throwing parties that bring people joy for a living. Like, you know, I'm not, not in Afghanistan getting shot at anymore. This is way, way, way better, and so I don't think we're going anywhere for a while.

Nick VinZant 36:50

I want to thank Dan and Lacey so much for joining us. If you want to connect with them, we have linked to them on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included their information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on August 15, at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Do you know somebody that if they suddenly turn into an alien and got picked up by a spaceship, you wouldn't be that surprised either.

John Shull 37:30

There's multiple people I know. I wouldn't be surprised if half of the people that I know turned out to be aliens. To be honest,

Nick VinZant 37:39

I can think of at least three to four people that I know in real life that if they turned out to be aliens, I wouldn't be totally shocked. And I can think of a number of celebrities that if they got picked up and turned out to be aliens, I wouldn't be completely shocked either.

John Shull 37:57

I was just reading a story about two guys in the 70s that claimed that they were abducted by aliens, and like nobody believed them, but they they until their dying day, they claim they were abducted by aliens and had a thorough exam done to them.

Nick VinZant 38:15

Do you think if you were abducted by aliens? Do you think that you would be able to convince anybody. No, but have you ever had something happen to you that you couldn't convince anybody actually happened

John Shull 38:30

only one time, and I don't even know if I believe myself anymore, the older I get, but I could have sworn I saw that sounds crazy, even saying it, I don't know a ghost, an angel, something at some point in my life, you know. And who knows what it could have been. It could have just been somebody walking fast. It could have been just my imagination. I have no idea

Nick VinZant 38:55

where did this happen? Detail,

John Shull 39:00

no, I mean, I was younger. I we were walking to her car. We were at a K Mart, and we were walking to her car. And, you know, you're just a kid, but I remember this like it, like it was so vividly. For some reason, I couldn't stop staring at this man. And we I stared at him. He walked by me. I turned around probably three seconds later, and it was, you know, one of the long grocery aisle line or lanes, and he was gone. Like, just gone. He could have darted in between cars, you know, but, you know, when you're a young person or whatever, like, Oh, did he just disappear? Did he, like, smile at me? Was that an angel? Blah, blah, blah. Like, I have no idea, man, but I've told that would be, I've told that story to several people, and they're like, Yeah, you're full of shit. Like, it's probably some homeless guy that passed out and fell in between cars or something, or, you know, like, so, yeah, that's about the only one that I can think of. Probably your

Nick VinZant 39:55

imagination, dude. I think that there's definitely times where there's a couple of things. That I have dreamt or have happened in real life, but I'm not sure if it was a dream or if it actually happened.

John Shull 40:08

I mean, I'm all about Deja Vu and dreams and things like that. I think that's, I think that's just your memory or your mind projecting, kind of, you know, your feelings, and then when they happen in the moment your mind and your I don't know, outer self Connect. I'm all about it. I'm all about deja vu. I get that all the time, hmm.

Nick VinZant 40:29

I don't really believe in any kind of supernatural stuff personally, but I do have a firm belief that just because it's happening in your head doesn't mean it's real, like that's everything kind of happens in your head. If you think about it like everything is going on in your head.

John Shull 40:43

I mean, when you really this is a deeper conversation than you and I could ever possibly have, but when you really get down to it, our brains are probably the most part, most powerful thing on the face of the earth. I mean, what your brain can do is is incredible.

Nick VinZant 41:02

I've always been fascinated by the idea that you're essentially just complete. You're essentially, like your whole body is just a puppet for your brain, like it's just this thing in your head controlling everything. I mean, like, it's not like you've got, like, it's just moving you around. You're basically just a puppet for your brain. You ever

John Shull 41:19

seen that the Men in Black movies where it's like the little alien inside of the human skull, and it's just this little alien that's controlling his entire body, like, that's what I feel like we have right now. That's essentially what we are. All right? Well, something I never mess up our shout outs. So here we go. Jordan Rivera, Sherry Timmons, Brian Coleman, Valerie delotti, Heidi Vance, Christina, Neil, Eric Duong, Penny Arneson, Mary Fowler, Mark Macchio and Zoe Reyes, all right, well, let's, let's talk about some current events topics here. This one is literally fresh off the presses. Noah Lyle, if you're familiar with him, hopefully you already he lost the 200 meter. Actually, he came in third place. That's not the reason I bring it up. The reason I bring it up is he's blaming his his his loss. He was he was favored to win. He once said that the 200 meter race to him was his wife, because he was so dominant in the race. Well, he got a bronze in the 2024, Olympics. So I guess your wife left you for a faster man. It is what it is, regardless. The reason he lost, he says, is because he has covid, and he tested positive for covid, and he still ran with covid, and that's why he's saying he lost.

Nick VinZant 42:48

Yeah, we have kind of it's crazy to me looking back on it, how big and how pervasive and how game changing for everything in society that was, and then it's just over. That's the weirdest thing about life. It's like, this thing is the absolute most important thing in the world, and then it's just over. It's

John Shull 43:10

still infecting people. You're still getting sick, but the mindset has changed, just a 180

Nick VinZant 43:17

Yeah, it's completely switched. That's why that's that's like, probably, to me, at least one of the first instances of that that I've heard of, and I don't really know how to feel about it, because on one hand, it's like, Hey, man, you shouldn't have been competing. Like, what were you doing there? You shouldn't have been there. And then on the other side, it's like, well, we are kind of moving past that. And it does seem like, now that's a little bit like the flu. And people wouldn't really bat that much of an eye if he said, like, oh, I have the flu. I'm sick, right? So he's kind of like, I don't know. I probably wouldn't have said that. If I was him. I would have kept that particular like, oh, I wasn't feeling well, because there's, there definitely is still a reaction to, like, wait a minute, if

John Shull 44:00

you're not familiar with him, he is a very adventurous, outspoken, charismatic person.

Nick VinZant 44:09

I guess I do kind of subscribe to the theory that if everybody knows what time it is, then whatever time it is is okay. Like, if other people knew it and they were okay with it, and that was what everybody was doing. Then, all right, like, the game is the game.

John Shull 44:23

And then my, my last thought on this was, if you were one of the six people that finished behind him without covid, you probably should just retire from racing. Then,

Nick VinZant 44:33

yeah, like, it's that big, but that's crazy to me. When you looked at, I don't know if you've seen that 100 meter, but basically, like, you really couldn't tell who won that how close you have all of these people, the eight best people in the world, and they're that close to each other, like he lost by an eyelash or won by an eyelash over the other guy. Well,

John Shull 44:55

let's go from covid to fast food. Do. Have you? Have you had fast food lately?

Nick VinZant 45:01

No, I've never been a big fast food eater.

John Shull 45:05

I took my kids to McDonald's the other night because it was a long night. It was like 930 we've been working out in the yard all day, doing stuff for two Happy Meals and a Big Mac just the sandwich. It was $16 this

Nick VinZant 45:23

is going to get me fired up. This is going to get me fired up because it is like we are potentially now looking at the possibility of a recession because all of these companies raised all of their prices with really no reason. I think what this is my dime store theory. I think that when covid hit, we were no longer having to commute to work. We were saving money because there wasn't a lot of money to be spending on, and the government was helping out, like people had more money. And so all these companies raised all of their prices. Well, now we're going back to work, and now we're doing all of those things, and we can't afford those prices anymore, and now all those companies are whining about it, like, well, people aren't shopping. People aren't buying this, yeah, because you made everything unaffordable. So essentially, greed, just like, crashes the whole system. Like, if you just would have been happy with $5 million a year instead of five, $6 million all of us would be fine, like we never learned this economic lesson that greed just crushes us every single time because somebody's got to go too far, like they never have an idea of what enough is. Enough

John Shull 46:34

Well, and that's, you know, that's the thing is, you know, luckily, you know, I am in the position where I can afford that, but there are many people who can't, and it just got me thinking. And I know it's a tale as old as time, but it's like, how do these companies stay afloat? You know, by raising the prices for a product that probably only costs. You know, a Big Mac is probably what, $2 and they sell it for 599 making a $4 profit. I mean, come on,

Nick VinZant 47:04

because everything is just geared towards the investor, right? Like a company has to show endless growth, or the investors aren't happy about it, and that's all we do. Like, making a ton of money isn't good enough. You have to make money for the stock market, and if you don't do that, it doesn't matter, and we just screw ourselves over time and time again, like we do not learn our lesson.

John Shull 47:28

All right? Well, back to back to the Olympics, um, I saw a couple of, uh, well, a guy and a gal fall during the hurdles competition, and that looks pretty brutal, and I don't really have any other questions other than I don't think I could ever do a hurdle. I will never try to do a hurdle. But I also think falling or tripping while doing a hurdle would be one of the more painful things that can happen to you.

Nick VinZant 47:55

I have unique insight into this and that. I don't know if you know this or not, but you are talking to a person who, at one time, was the third fastest hurdler in the state of Kansas. I was at the state track meet. I got third in the 110 meter hurdles. I have no idea what time it was. It was one of those kind of things that's like, true, but not accurate. Like, you can make that claim, but if somebody really like it's, it's total bull BS, when you get right down to it, but it doesn't hurt that bad. I mean, it's just like falling down running. It's not like the hurdle really makes it that much worse. It just makes it more complicated.

John Shull 48:30

But I just feel like the thought of jumping and then getting caught in the air and just stopping immediately and fall. I mean, tracks, some of them are cushioned, right, or have, like, that layer of rubber or whatever. I wouldn't say that

Nick VinZant 48:42

they're cushioned, but there's a certain amount of give, yeah,

John Shull 48:46

like that. I just feel like the instant stopping and bam. And then one guy I watched what it was a steeple chafes, and then he's like, shielding in the fetal position, hopefully, hoping that he doesn't get stepped on. Like, it just looks brutal. The

Nick VinZant 49:02

steeplechase is an event that needs to deserves more credit. That's a fun race to watch, and something like that hurdle isn't like the other hurdles, like in the 110 or the 400 meter hurdles like that thing's not going anywhere. You hit the smaller hurdles, that thing's gonna knock down. It's probably not gonna be that bad, but you hit that thing, and it's more like hitting a road barrier, like, Oh, you're going down and you're probably going to get hurt.

John Shull 49:28

Let's see moving on here, because we're taking up enough time. Thought this was interesting. Cate Blanchett was on one of the late night talk shows, and she was asked a question, which opens to this, basically, what movie had you made the most money for that you've been in? And the talk show host said it has to be Lord of the Rings. And she laughed and said they didn't pay any of us anything for Lord of the Rings. So I don't know if she just has a bad agent, or if that actually happened, because I think Orlando Bloom. Got paid. Think Vigo mortson got paid. I just, I'm surprised that Kate Blanchet would come out, and she's defending it, saying that she has made nothing from the Lord of the Rings movie series.

Nick VinZant 50:12

I feel like that. Like, I get that, right, she didn't have a huge part in that. Not a huge part in that. Like, if you look at her screen time. I doubt it's very long compared to anybody else. So even though she's a big name, and that's a really famous movie, like, Yeah, you didn't do like, I know nothing about this, but I would assume that that's the kind of thing. Like, she probably shot that in a day or two. Like, I don't think it took that long, but, but, I

John Shull 50:40

mean, then that that's on her, right? That's on her agent to, mean, why are you having your client work for free, right? I mean, come on, now, I never

Nick VinZant 50:48

know how to handle those kind of things. Like, it goes back to the thing is, is, everybody knows what the game is, then you can't complain about the game. Like, okay, it's not this, it's not that, but you were a star and you had some poll, you could have said no, but at the same time, they could have just gotten somebody else. Those are, like, hard lines to walk, right? They kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

John Shull 51:11

I because say you pass it up, and then it goes to somebody else. And they are, you know, like we know Cate Blanchett was in Lord of the Rings, like she got the name recognition before and after that movie, but, yeah, didn't have it, you know, to who knows what would have happened.

Nick VinZant 51:27

Sometimes you gotta take a step backward, takes a couple steps forward. But I think that that's sometimes, like, right? Like, that's the opposite of what we're talking about with the stock market, where, like, sometimes, you know, you admit it's not everything has to be about money.

John Shull 51:41

I We are in a materialistic world that is for sure, where people value, seem to value possessions and the green stuff just over each other.

Nick VinZant 51:52

Yeah, more competitive. We're not all in this together, even though we should be like we could have everything would be so much easier in society if we all just work together, but like, that's just not how we do it. That needs

John Shull 52:05

to be the tag for all of us of this episode. We can all be successful if we work together.

Nick VinZant 52:11

But that's the crazy thing about it. I wonder how this is going to play out as we move forward in life. Is that we now at our point where we kind of have enough resources for everybody, maybe not water, because we're running out of that, but, like, we could all live a pretty good life if we wanted to, but somebody's always got to take more than their share.

John Shull 52:32

I mean, I mean, like, Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

Nick VinZant 52:37

That's crazy to me, how easily one person can ruin things for everybody. Okay, are you ready for our top five?

John Shull 52:42

I am. You know, you need more. No, no, I I'm ready. I'm just surprised because you had, I thought you had questioned if there was enough of this, of these, and there are plenty. So let's, let's do it.

Nick VinZant 52:55

Okay, so our top five is top five celebrities. You wonder what happened to like what happened to them. What's your who's your number five? So

John Shull 53:06

once again, there are so many. So I try to stay away from the childhood actors. There are a couple in here, but I tried not to include all child because you could just do childhood actors that you wonder where they where they went to. So my number five. And this might be a little high for him, but I was never a fan regardless. Jonathan Taylor, Thomas,

Nick VinZant 53:30

oh, I don't remember which kid from Home Improvement he was, but he they all disappeared.

John Shull 53:35

He was Randy, the middle child, I believe. Oh,

Nick VinZant 53:40

he was the one that seemed like he had the brightest future of the three.

John Shull 53:44

Yeah, and he did some Disney stuff after that. But then he just, and by the way, I didn't look up anybody, so I can't tell you, actually what they're doing. Now, hopefully all of these people are alive. But regardless, I have no idea what Jonathan Taylor Thomas is doing. Now,

Nick VinZant 53:58

I don't know what this guy's name is, but it's the main character from Starship Troopers, Casper,

John Shull 54:07

maybe, yeah, Casper Van Diem,

Nick VinZant 54:09

like, what happened? Like he seemed like he had a bright career, like he had the he seemed like he had the look, and then just nothing, I don't know, did he? Was he ever in another movie other than that one,

John Shull 54:20

yeah, he just, I actually am a big CVD fan and

Nick VinZant 54:28

first of all, if your initial you have his collectibles, do you have a base? Do you have a celebrity fucking trading card of him?

John Shull 54:34

I have a Starship Troopers action figure of him, actually.

Nick VinZant 54:39

So what happened to him, paying boy. So

John Shull 54:42

he, he, he, and, you know, he was part of that mid 90s action, you know, on the tail end of all the the true action heroes, the guys that would do their own stunts and blah, blah, blah, and he kind of just fizzled out. You know, he never hooked on to, you know, when Marvel and DC were coming up. He never got an opportunity there, and he just kind of did B movies, and you see him every now and again in a B or C movie, but yeah, he he will never have, he will, he will always be known as that guy, who's that guy from Starship Troopers, like, that's all they'll ever be known as. Everybody

Nick VinZant 55:18

knows he's the guy from Starship Troopers. Yeah, which is crazy to have that level of kind of there's lots of celebrities that you don't really know who they are, but who have had longer careers. It's interesting how things don't work. They just didn't work out for some people,

John Shull 55:32

yeah, I mean, but most of them made some money, and then it's like, what did they what happened to them after they made the money?

Nick VinZant 55:40

Yeah, I mean, if I made a whole bunch of money, I would just disappear,

John Shull 55:44

like my number four, who is Frankie Muniz,

Nick VinZant 55:49

oh Malcolm in the Middle guy.

John Shull 55:51

So I know what he's doing now, just because I'm a fan of racing, but I would expect nobody else to know, but he's actually trying to be a professional race car driver. But for, for, you know, I don't know how old he was when he got done with Malcolm in the Middle, but from that time of him being a pubescent boy to being a mid 20s man, have no idea what he did. Have no idea.

Nick VinZant 56:15

Would you say that he is on the level of like Ralph Macchio, the guy from karate kid who was somebody that was super famous at that age and then never translated as they grew up like it, just they didn't keep it with it. So

John Shull 56:33

I don't, I don't actually know how popular, I mean, I know how popular Malcolm in the Middle was, but I don't know if you can put it on that level with like, the Karate Kid in terms of cult fandom, oh, but probably not. But you know, he's definitely, you know, Frankie Mina is definitely in that conversation. But no, I would not, I would not say he's with Ralph Macchio.

Nick VinZant 56:53

Were you a better looking kid or a better looking adult,

John Shull 57:00

adult, for sure. I mean, I fucked up, I fucked up teeth as a kid, you know, wearing the triple X t shirts as a nine year old. I'll take what I look like as an adult. Yeah, still isn't great, by the way.

Nick VinZant 57:15

Oh, I have like, atopic dermatitis, which goes along with my asthma and my lack of sense of smell, right like so there's, there's my personality right there. But like, I had some problems as a kid, I would say that I'm much better looking as an adult than I was as a child.

John Shull 57:30

I feel like as an adult, we can control a little more what we look like, too. You know what I mean. But you want to lose weight, you can work to lose weight. If you want to gain weight, you can gain weight if you want to cut your hair. You know you know, you have a lot more control over your body than when you're a younger person. But

Nick VinZant 57:45

there is definitely some people that, like, they were cute kids or cute or like, good looking as younger people. We all went to high school with these people that were like, Oh, they were good looking in high school. And then, like, what happened?

John Shull 57:59

Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna point anybody out, but I actually think a couple of them listen to this, this podcast.

Nick VinZant 58:06

Oh, well, you kind of just did insult them. They're gonna know that's where

John Shull 58:10

they are. Sorry. Anyways, what's your number four? One? Number

Nick VinZant 58:13

four is Emilio Estevez, or Estevez, ah, see, he just disappeared. He was big. He was in some big movies and then gone, yeah.

John Shull 58:22

I mean, you want to talk about like sibling rivalries. I mean, I'll never understand how Charlie got so much more career opportunities than Emilio, based just upon what I know about both of them.

Nick VinZant 58:39

But was one a better actor, or was one just more in the news? Because Charlie Sheen, obviously was more, kind of like the gossipy, whatever you want to call it, but I don't know. I feel like Emilio Estevez was. Emilio Estevez did play a character more Charlie Sheen was kind of just Charlie Sheen.

John Shull 59:01

Well, I think Emilio Estevez got into the writing and producing. That is where Charlie Sheen got hooked up with that one show Two and a Half Men and set his career forever. I don't

Nick VinZant 59:14

have anything else to say about that. What's your number three? Boom, my

John Shull 59:18

number three. See, I'm, it's tough. So I want to say Taylor Lautner from Twilight, but I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to say Tara Reid.

Nick VinZant 59:33

Oh, she did just completely disappear.

John Shull 59:37

Yeah, she's, I mean, she was died. She died,

Nick VinZant 59:41

no, she tried like she's not somebody that disappeared, I think because they wanted to. I think things just didn't work out.

John Shull 59:48

Well. She was, you know, for our generation, men our age now, she was a heartthrob, right? She was in the American Pie. She was in a couple other those teen movies, you know, she was a, you know, I. A girl that all of us young boys, you know, thought about, and then she did a couple of horror movies. I think she was hooked up with Freddie Prince Jr. I don't actually know if that's true. And then you hear nothing else from her.

Nick VinZant 1:00:14

Yeah, I just didn't think it worked out same.

John Shull 1:00:17

I kind of put her, I kind of put her in like the the nev Campbell type group, and nev Campbell had a pretty successful career, but, like, after 2007 you didn't really hear from her till lately,

Nick VinZant 1:00:34

you could say that I'm going to miss Miss mess up their names because I'm not entirely sure of them, but you could say that about a lot of those kind of people in that age. Like there was nev Campbell, Tara Reid, and then the singer from aerosmith's daughter, and they all were kind of known, and then just gone live. Tyler, yep, right. And then just disappeared. Like, what they don't think they did anything again,

John Shull 1:00:56

just help. Just gone. Man, wait, is it ever was That was my number three. Now it's your number three.

Nick VinZant 1:01:04

I kind of know where this person is, but I just wonder, like, what happened to them? Carrot Top? Like, what what happened and what happened, right? Like, what happened and what happened?

John Shull 1:01:19

I mean, that dude got hooked on steroids and thought he was gonna have a career resurgence, I feel, and never did. He was jacked, though. Yeah, he was. But, I mean, it didn't look natural, right? It didn't look anything close to natural.

Nick VinZant 1:01:34

Something was going on. There's, I'm not going to name names, because I don't think that you should really talk about people's appearance that much, although I just did talk about carrot tops appearance. But like, there's another celebrity right now who is very famous, who's kind of going through that you're like, What are you doing? Like, they suddenly start looking a lot different, and what are you doing?

John Shull 1:01:55

Hmm, okay, all right, I'm not picking up what you're putting down, but we won't put them out there. My number two is a twofer. We're staying in the females or with females, and it's a Eliza douche coup and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Oh,

Nick VinZant 1:02:13

I don't know which one the first one is.

John Shull 1:02:17

Well, I can tell you, I think, once again, every boy our age, except you had a crush on her, um, see if I can bring her up real fast, douche.

Nick VinZant 1:02:27

Yeah. She was one of those names like Eliza E L, she

John Shull 1:02:30

was in Buffy. I think she did some really shitty horror movies. Let's see. There she is. She's Albanian.

Nick VinZant 1:02:39

Oh, yeah, okay, I don't remember her.

John Shull 1:02:45

Well, some of us do. So that's my number two, Jennifer Love Hewitt, who I think became pretty successful as a business, as an entrepreneur, after acting and then obviously, Eliza Dushku. My

Nick VinZant 1:02:58

number two is Rick Moranis.

John Shull 1:03:01

See I I saw him on a list. I was like, Ah, I think he's still, I mean, yes, he disappeared from acting, but I think behind the scenes and in acting, he still did all kinds of stuff. He

Nick VinZant 1:03:12

left to take care of his children, essentially, like his wife unexpectedly passed away and he left. But that was, like, he just kind of was, boom, yeah. And he was, like, people liked him a lot. Nobody's got a bad thing to say about Rick Moranis.

John Shull 1:03:29

No, not at all. And he's kind of a small man, isn't he,

Nick VinZant 1:03:34

yeah, but apparently, okay, now you got to hear story time. So I used to work as a reporter, and I was working in Phoenix, Arizona when they had the Super Bowl, and when they have the Super Bowl, there's like the parade of celebrities. They all come in. Every single female celebrity that I saw was way taller and thinner than you would think, and every single male celebrity, and talking about, like movies and TV stars, was way smaller than you would think. So I'm five, eight and three quarters, as measured by USA life insurance, out of USA life insurance. And there were people that were supposedly like, 5758 and I towered over them. Like, if a celebrity says that they're five seven or five eight, that means they're like, five three.

John Shull 1:04:16

Okay, yeah, I mean, and if an actress looks skinny on film, she's gonna be even skinnier. In person, they were way taller,

Nick VinZant 1:04:24

way taller and thinner than I thought that they would be.

John Shull 1:04:28

So my number one, I feel like I have to, I have to say this, my number one would have been, would have been Brendan Fraser, but obviously he had that the whale movie had a comeback last year or whatever, and kind of researched his career. So my number one, which I think is going to be controversial, is Dan Aykroyd.

Nick VinZant 1:04:53

Oh yeah,

John Shull 1:04:55

because, go ahead,

Nick VinZant 1:04:58

he didn't go. Chevy Chase crazy, though, right? Like, Chevy Chase kind of disappeared. But it turns out he was pretty much like a huge jerk, and everybody hated him. Dan Aykroyd just disappeared.

John Shull 1:05:08

Yeah, I actually looked up to see what he did. So he's had some cameos right in the recent Ghostbusters, but he hasn't had like, a featured length movie role since the mid 90s, and he just took his money and he retired to Canada, and he's been raising as well. He raised his family, but he raised his family, and now he just lives in Canada, you know? I mean, arguably, he was part of some of the biggest franchises ever in history. Yeah, just just stopped, just just ended it.

Nick VinZant 1:05:37

I think that's really, honestly, one of the most important things you can learn in life is when enough is enough,

John Shull 1:05:44

it's it's, I actually learned that gambling, believe it or not, and I know that's kind of stupid

Nick VinZant 1:05:50

to tell you exactly how you learn it. Like, when you lose all your money, like, that's probably enough.

John Shull 1:05:55

I'm like, I could win $5 and if I lose $1 in the next 10, I'm done. I'm like, Yep, I'll take my $4 winnings, because I know if I keep going, I'm going to have zero.

Nick VinZant 1:06:03

Like, I think this is a little bit of a cop out, but I also consider this to be my number one. My number one is any celebrity that has gone super left or right wing all of a sudden or gone like hardcore anti vaxxers. Like, I just wonder what happened to like, what happened like, how did you suddenly have these beliefs or suddenly go in this direction? Were you always that way? Or Did something change? Like, I just wonder what happened to those people that, like, whoa, you went off the deep end, quick.

John Shull 1:06:40

Well, I mean, it's, I feel like most of those people that do that are celebrities who probably always felt that way, and when they see an outlet or somebody that they think they can latch on to, or whatever they do, it

Nick VinZant 1:06:53

to me that seems like you're burning the candle at both ends. Sure? Why did you decide that that would be a good idea to just Were you always like that? Or did you become like that? That's the what, that's what I wonder about, right? Do you have anybody in your honorable mention?

John Shull 1:07:07

I do. Polly shore,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:13

oh yeah.

Nick VinZant 1:07:14

He disappeared. Jamie

John Shull 1:07:16

Lynn Spears, Brittany's sister. Where did she go? Nobody knows

Nick VinZant 1:07:20

the game it cares either

John Shull 1:07:24

Taylor Lautner, who I kind of mentioned earlier, and then two childhood actors, Danny from The Shining Jack Nicholson son and Jake Lloyd Anakin Skywalker from Phantom of the menace.

Nick VinZant 1:07:37

Oh, he disappeared. And you know who else disappeared as Joffrey.

John Shull 1:07:43

Oh, yeah, yeah,

Nick VinZant 1:07:45

he was gone. He was good, yeah, he was, like, a good actor.

John Shull 1:07:50

He's a Gleason, though he's gonna have no problem ever getting acting roles. Oh, is that who he's related to? Yeah, I think his great grandfather, grandfather was Jackie Gleason,

Nick VinZant 1:08:02

all right, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know who are some celebrities that you just you just wonder what happened to them, either in terms of they just kind of disappeared, or they're still around, but aren't anybody that you recognize anymore. You.




Art Theft Detective Richard Ellis

Fine Art Detective Richard Ellis has spent the last 50 years finding stolen works of art all over the world. We talk the biggest cases of art theft, the smartest criminals and the one case he’s still trying to solve. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and countdown the Top 5 Kinds of Doors.

Richard Ellis: 01: 24

Pointless: 34:29

Candle of the Month: 53:02

Top 5 Doors: 55:59

Contact the Show

Interview with Fine Art Detective Richard Ellis

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode art theft and doors.

Richard Ellis 0:20

I always work on a basis of looking at a crime, how it was committed, and asking the question, are we dealing with a thief or an art thief? Very well thought through time, the paintings weren't taken for their historic value. They were taken because they were the ones that would fit through the first real window. But they had a list of the kind of Forbes, most richest people in the world that they were going to be offering the National Gallery collection too. I mean, they were seriously dumb.

Nick VinZant 0:52

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because for the last 50 years, he's investigated some of the biggest art crimes in the world. This is Art detective Richard Ellis, so How common is art theft?

Richard Ellis 1:25

Art theft is relatively common. You have to appreciate 80% round about that mark of art theft occurs from people's homes, from churches. And they are not all the iconic works of art that you read about in the news headlines

Nick VinZant 1:43

when we talk about art theft, right? So my mind immediately goes to like the movies and these big heists and things like that. Is that usually what we're talking about when it's art theft? Or is it? No, it's more mundane than that. The

Richard Ellis 1:58

major thefts are the ones that make the headlines, they're the ones who read about they make movies about. But by far and away, most art theft is less alone works usually 10,000 pounds or under in value that are very easily fed back into what is still a global market.

Nick VinZant 2:19

When you kind of look at it like when people steal art, do they generally know what they're stealing, or is it just like I'm breaking into this nice house, there's a piece of artwork I'm going to grab it.

Richard Ellis 2:31

That's a good question. I always work on a basis of looking at a crime, how it was committed, and asking the question, are we dealing with a thief or an art thief? An art thief always knows what they're going to do with the objects they steal, and a thief is struggling to dispose of what is, generally speaking, identifiable property, which requires a specific type of marketplace to be sold back into.

Nick VinZant 3:03

How can you tell the difference, like going into a scene, so to speak, like, how can you tell the difference between, okay, that was an art thief. This was just a thief.

Richard Ellis 3:10

Most burglars would allow themselves no more than three minutes in a house, and in that time, they will tear around, they'll pull open drawers, they'll have a good look good rummage. They'll grab the electrical, the computer, the camera. They'll grab the stuff that glitters, silver jewelry, and, of course, cash. They're very unlikely unless they know what they're doing to take the painting above the mantelpiece. If the painting above the mental piece has gone, then you're likely dealing with somebody that knows what their knows what they've taken

Nick VinZant 3:47

in the things that you've investigated was the criminal, usually pretty smart in the sense, like, oh, they did this, they did that, or, like, no, they just broke a window and opened the door.

Richard Ellis 3:55

Well, you know, sometimes breaking a window or opening a door is the easy way in. If you look at the break in at Blenheim Palace a few years ago where they stole the golden toilet named America, the criminals knew how long it would take for the police to arrive at the scene. They knew how long they got to force an entry to actually get up to Blenheim Palace across country, breaking their way through two sets of iron gates that were held in position with hydraulic rams. They knew exactly how long it would take them, and they didn't go in through the door. They went in through a window, which gave them, dropped them into a corridor and right in front of the doorway, in into the room in which Winston Churchill had been born, through into the adjacent anteroom, which took them into the next corridor, where the closet was where. Where America was fitted, and they simply ripped it after its fittings, rolled it back through the two rooms and out through the window and away before the police had arrived. So it wasn't a sophisticated burglary, but it was the easiest and quickest way in and out, and that's what you're looking at some some burglars can be incredibly clever. I always think of there were good few years ago, about 10 years ago now, maybe even 15, there was a burglary at the Van Gough Museum in Amsterdam, and there the criminals climbed in. They broke in through the roof, through a skylight. They descended two flights of stairs, grabbed these two Van Gogh paintings out through a window and absail down to the floor below, driving off in the waiting car as the police arrived. Very well executed burglary. Very well thought through time, the paintings weren't taken for their historic value. They were taken because they were the ones that would fit through the first real window. It

Nick VinZant 6:09

is convenience at the end of it, right? Like they plan it out, but they are going to do the simplest possible way and grab, yeah, yeah. I

Richard Ellis 6:17

mean, they, they could have, they had the choice of the museum, you know that they they took those because they were en route to the window and they fitted those two Van Goghs that they took. Happened to be two incredibly important Van Goghs, as it turned out. But they, they didn't really know that the marketplace into which they were selling them was the Amsterdam drugs market. So they had a buyer lined up, who, unfortunately for them, was killed before they had time to sell it to him. So they sold it to another Italian drug trafficker, and the paintings made their way to Italy, where ultimately they were recovered, buried in the wall of a mafioso kitchen. That's

Nick VinZant 7:04

what I was going to ask. Is like, when you talk about stealing art, like, if you're stealing these really valuable pieces, who are they selling it to?

Richard Ellis 7:11

Well, that's the lesser known works of art, the 80% if you like, of what gets stolen on a daily basis can be turned around and put back through the art market. It may take a little bit of moving around, crossing a border or to whatever, but you can very quickly get a not particularly well known work of art, which still may be worth a few $1,000 pounds, whatever you like, because it's an international commodity. The other the Van Goghs of this world, they line up a marketplace which is entirely criminal, and these objects are going to be used as collateral within the criminal world, they're not going to fetch anything like their market value. But even so, that's a percentage, and when you're dealing in large sums, you know, as a percentage, is still a lot of money. And they can use these objects generally get used as collateral or as a currency in their own right, paying for other criminal commodities, like drugs, like arms, like people trafficking. You know, it's just a means to an end.

Nick VinZant 8:22

So when somebody's stealing something, that's probably worth a lot, is that more professional? Those are kind of like, they're doing this all over the place. They're involved in other things. Yeah,

Richard Ellis 8:32

you're going to you're going to be looking at organized crime, but you're going to be looking at, again, criminals who understand art and how to use it again. There was a phenomenally cleverly executed theft about five or six years ago at a bonded warehouse at Heathrow Airport, and the criminals broke in through the roof, they abseiled down about 3040, feet without setting off any motion detectors. They knew exactly what they were looking for within this warehouse, which were three trunks being shipped from Italy to New York, and they contained Rare Books belonging to three specific book dealers, Italian book dealers, and they were en route to a Book Fair in New York, and they broke into these trunks. They took a large number of books, and they left by the same way they came in without setting off any of the alarms. Three or four years later, every single book was recovered, buried under a path in Romania. So you were looking at organized crime. Criminals were arrested in Romania, in Italy and London, in a joint Europol exercise police exercise. So they got the criminals, the criminals themselves. Recognized the rarity, the value, but then found, actually, we don't know what to do with the things, so they buried them until perhaps, you know, Mr. Wright came along, being the buyer, and they could, could make some kind of sale, but they just didn't know what to do with the things. So that's the difference between your art theft and, you know, your art thief and a thief don't

Nick VinZant 10:21

do they ever get sold on the I don't know what like do they ever get sold to private collectors? That's like, okay, person X, who's a millionaire billionaire, like, I'm gonna buy this thing secretly.

Richard Ellis 10:36

No, I've been doing this for, you know, nine or 50 years now, investigating art crime, and I think I've recovered more than anybody else, any other individual investigator in this field, and in all that time, I've never come across the collector who openly buys stolen goods or commissions the theft of of iconic works, they just don't exist. That's, that's a myth of Hollywood.

Nick VinZant 11:06

I guess it makes sense, right? Like, if you're going to collect it, you got to show it off, and you want to show it off to people who know what it is, and if they know what it is, then they're going to tell somebody that that was stolen. And like, Hey, and don't

Richard Ellis 11:17

forget, if you're, if you're commissioning, if you're commissioning, thieves to commit a crime. You're dealing with criminals from the outset, and generally with iconic works of art, the institution or the government or the insurers will offer a reward for their return. And most criminals will find a way in which they will shop like if someone's commissioned a crime they've executed. They will shop their their commissioner and claim the reward as well. So, you know, they're not going to stand by and say, Oh, well, we we're not going to tell anybody where this is. You know, there's an extra few 100,000 of a reward on offer. We're not going to touch that. Of course, they'll go for it. They'll shop the the collector, if, if, if anything was actually commissioned, but it, you know that it's just a most people, when they suffer a theft, even museum curators, they can't believe that such a rare object has gone from the museum's collection, and they instantly assume that someone's going to play to actually pay what it's worth to have it, but they're not. They don't. These things will always go from, as I say, quite a small percentage of their actual value. And you know, these collectors just don't exist. What you're dealing with is organized crime.

Nick VinZant 12:40

So how did you get into this?

Richard Ellis 12:45

Well, first and foremost, I joined the police, Metropolitan Police in London when I was 19. When I was 20, my parents home was burgled, and the family silver was stolen. And I knew the first available marketplace, because I always had an interest, you know, a hobby in art, antiques. And I knew the first available market that this stuff could be sold at was, you know, within 36 hours, I happened to be working nights, I went straight down to the market, recognized the family silver, and arrested the stallholders. We then arrested a incredibly professional art and anti Art and Antique thief. And, yeah, you know, I've been doing it ever since.

Nick VinZant 13:31

So how do you investigate an art theft? Is it different than other kinds of crimes?

Richard Ellis 13:38

Yes, it is different. Actually, one of the big differences, actually, is that the the owners are very interested in recovering their stolen property, even if it's objects of little value. They've come by them because, you know, they like to go out and buy they've started a collection, and these pieces mean something to them personally, or they've inherited them. And then, of course, there can be an even bigger attachment to them, because they've come down through the family. So people actually want it back. If it's a computer or, you know, that's been stolen, most people are pretty glad that it's annoying. You know, they may have lost what was on the computer, but if it's all backed up somewhere on the cloud, they can get that back, and they end up with the insurers paying for the latest model. So actually, they're quite happy about that. So that's the first and foremost that people want the stuff back. The other thing is, of course, that unlike your computer, which is devaluing by the day as it gets older and new models are brought out, antiques tend to increase in value the older they become. So from a police perspective, you have those two elements to deal with. There is a conflict of interest between the police, generally, and the owners, because the owners want to get the things back first and foremost, the crew and the police want to get the criminals first and foremost. And sometimes where they get the criminals and prosecute them, but don't get the property back, they don't bother to then, you know, continue looking for the stuff that's kind of very much left up to the owner or the insurer or the institution to continue looking and hopefully to recover the stuff.

Nick VinZant 15:31

Is it usually harder to get the criminal or harder to get the stuff back?

Richard Ellis 15:35

Oh, both can be extremely difficult. I've said you know that the art market is a global market. Objects tend to move. They can move big distances. They can move move across international borders, and that makes the investigation of them difficult because the formalities that law enforcement have to go to to be able to conduct investigations in other countries can be, you know, quite they can be difficult. Let's put it that way. It's not made easy for law enforcement, whereas it's very easy for the criminals to move these things across the borders. Then you've also got the other aspect of jurisdictional law that applies to the recovery of these objects. So if you recover your goods stolen in America, let's say, and you find it's being offered for sale in Switzerland, you've got big problems, because you've got different laws that pertain to ownership. So it gets very complex, and it can become very, very difficult to recover objects, and that's before you start applying statutes of limitation, which again muddy the waters.

Nick VinZant 16:56

So what would like, what would your success rate be I find it 80% 10% of the time, 50%

Richard Ellis 17:04

I'm not saying my my personal success rate, but the success rate in the recovery of art and antiques is abysmally low. It's round about the three, five, maybe as high as 7% which means that you're talking in the 90% of stuff that does not get recovered, and that's across the board, that's in most countries. That makes

Nick VinZant 17:30

sense to me, actually, why it would be so low. Because, like, how do you even find it? Because it could be anywhere. Is it usually the kind of thing when you catch somebody that, like, okay, they stole it from a museum, and it turns out to be the brother of the security guard, right? Like, is it usually some kind of connection that allows you to figure this out

Richard Ellis 17:52

depends on the object. Largely, we've recently seen this theft from the British Museum that is not entirely unique to institutions, libraries and museums where they lose objects is quite a high percentage of those objects are taken by members of staff and for all sorts of different reasons. Museums, institutions tend to have the bigger security budget, and so little is stolen, if you like, by the front door. It goes out the back. When you start talking about people's homes, private collections, religious institutions, it's the reverse. You know, most stuff goes out through the front door, like,

Nick VinZant 18:44

if it's going to be something with a big security, right, it's got to be somebody who kind of knows how that security works. But if it's some place, like home or church, could just be anybody, largely,

Richard Ellis 18:54

but also, you'll, you'll find that where they're going, for the big numbers, the criminals do a lot of research. If you take the screen, which was one of the paintings that I was involved in the recovery of stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 the man that organized that theft made repeated visits to the gallery to assess security and work out the easiest way in which to steal that painting. So they will go and they will check on the security and where you have a major art theft, you will find that the criminals have been in they will have reconnoitered. They will have seen the Achilles heel in security, and that's what they'll go

Nick VinZant 19:36

for. How do you then investigate that you're just kind of looking through security footage and CCTV

Richard Ellis 19:41

can help you. Maybe you know, for instance, an increasingly facial recognition might tell you actually who the names of the people are. You're looking at the forensic examination of the scene of the crime, hopefully to find some DNA or other. Or, you know, fingerprints or other identifying evidence that you'll be able to utilize. I personally, you know, I am of an era where, you know, today's methods of investigation, you know, DNA was only just coming in when I retired from law enforcement, so I was much more reliant on, shall we say, a much more old fashioned way, which was talking to people and learning from informants, you know, criminals that I would know, that I would go and talk to and ask questions of as to what they knew about the crime and who committed it,

Nick VinZant 20:40

and that this word kind of spread fast work

Richard Ellis 20:43

and spread very quickly. You may even get advanced warning. A few years ago, there was going to be an exhibition, a diamond exhibition, at the Natural History Museum in London. They were forewarned of the robbery that was going to be attempted on that exhibition, which would have put not just the museum staff but the public at risk in its execution, so they simply canceled the exhibition and it never took place. So you know, you can get wind of these things in advance, but otherwise you're reliant on playing catch up.

Nick VinZant 21:21

Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions. Yes, fire away. What's your biggest case?

Richard Ellis 21:27

I think probably the biggest case, just in terms of the value of the objects, the length of time I was investigating it, and the difficulties connected with the investigation, was something called the sev silver. There's a horde of Roman silver that was when it came on the market in 1990 it was said to have come from the Lebanon. There was also a rival account of it having come from Yugoslavia, or, to be specific, Croatia, as it later became. And another claim from Hungary, all claiming this horde of Roman silver came from their jurisdiction, from their territory, and every single one of them saying it's part of our national patrimony, we must have it back. That was finally resolved in 2017 it was a highly complex investigation, which I continue to work on after I retired from law enforcement on behalf of the Hungarians. And you can see the sev so silver today in the National Gallery in in Budapest, as it was found to have come from Hungary.

Nick VinZant 22:37

Is there is that common to have a big argument among countries about, well, whose is this really?

Richard Ellis 22:42

It can be particularly with antiquities. You know, we've largely been talking about fine art and antiques, but when you start looking at the world of Antiquities, these are archeological items generally, then they come to the market with no provenance, nobody knows exactly where they've come from, and it is very, very common to then have rival claims and for matters to go through the courts, who are left to decide who has who has the better claim. And again, part of the investigation scientific evidence to support the claims will all be important to that court hearing.

Nick VinZant 23:26

Smartest criminal, dumbest criminal, oh, I

Richard Ellis 23:30

think that I can answer the letter first. The two dumbest must be the two guys that thought they'd break into the National Gallery in London one night and came to London armed for the occasion, with dummy grenades, imitation handguns, handcuffs to tie the guards up with, and some gemmies to force open the back doors. They arrived nice and early in London and parked their car and went off to buy some cigarettes, and when they came back, it had been clamped. And they were acting. They would. They used one of their gemmies to try and force the wheel clamp off. And the police arrived and arrested them for causing damage the wheel clamp. But when they opened the car up, they found all this stuff to go and break in and they get, they admitted they were going to, you know, they were targeting the National Gallery, but they had a list of the kind of Forbes, most richest people in the world that they were going to be offering the National Gallery collection to. I mean, they were seriously dumb. So I think that's the easiest one.

Nick VinZant 24:38

Man, there is no end to dumb criminals,

Richard Ellis 24:44

the brightest crimes like the Van Gogh Museum, a chap called Durham was his name, Dutchman. He admitted ultimately, I mean, he was caught because when he hit the ground and. Abseil down the front of the building, the cap he was wearing shot off, and they were able to recover that and got his DNA from from his hat, so he was identified, and he went to prison. Then it wasn't till after he came out from prison that that the paintings were ultimately recovered in a in Italian guarded a financier investigation into this mafioso, and there they found these paintings walled up that he was going to use as a Get Out of Jail Free card, you know, negotiate his way into freedom by handing back these paintings so his wasn't to be used as collateral or anything like that. It was for other criminal purposes. But, the guys that actually committed that Durham, it was a well researched and executed crime. It wasn't violent in as much as you know, they didn't shoot the place out. They wouldn't threaten anybody personally, it was well researched, well executed, and they dispose of the goods, you know, you know, hats off to him. That was a well carried out crime.

Nick VinZant 26:06

Why are the major ones usually found? Is that just too many people looking for them? Like, why are the major ones usually found? Yeah,

Richard Ellis 26:14

the major ones are found for a number of reasons. When you have something like the screamed, always most important cultural object, really, when that gets stolen, the resources the Norwegians put behind recovering it were enormous. They were fortunate in that, you know, I was on the Art and Antique squad at Scotland Yard at the time, and we sat down and discussed, is the screen likely to come to London? And the answer was yes, because London is by far and away Europe's largest art market. Therefore it attracts by far and away Europe's largest number of art criminals as well. They go hand in glove. So the chances were that it was going to come through London. So we prepared an undercover operation with the help of the Getty Museum. I say I was working a lot out in LA in particular, and had good relations with them, and they supported us, and we were able to then execute that undercover operation and recover the screen. So, you know, huge resources were applied to its recovery, far more so than you would have found if it had been, you know, well, my family's silver stolen from our house, you know, when I was 20. You know that that was only recovered because I spent so many years cleaning the damn stuff, I'd recognize it anywhere. And there it was, sitting on a on a stall in a market. That's the difference. It's the kind of resources that get applied because of the importance of the object. When an object gets stolen from a major institution, it's it's in the institution because it's an important object, and that generally fires up major investigations. They'll be covered by gov by government indemnity, in terms of insurance and governments want their collections back.

Nick VinZant 28:07

Do you have one that got away, like I never figured that one out?

Richard Ellis 28:12

Yeah, the one that has defeated all of us investigators in art crime, the Isabella Stewart garden Museum in Boston, 1990 St Patrick's at Eve that the eve of St Patrick's Day, two guys went into the museum disguised as Boston police officers, tied the guards up and walked out with, you know, a phenomenal art collection, which has never, ever been recovered. There's today, there's a ten million reward on the information that lead to the recovery of those works of art. Not a whisper,

Nick VinZant 28:54

no clues, no nothing.

Richard Ellis 28:57

And that's since 1994 there is the risk that they could have been destroyed. Of course, but no, that's that is the big one. That's the holy grail for art investigators.

Nick VinZant 29:09

Do you think it will ever happen? Or is it like so much time has passed, like I don't know.

Richard Ellis 29:16

No, I'm funny enough. I was asked to give a talk about that particular crime to a group in Boston only this past April, and I used as a an example, there a painting by a Cornish artist my family a Cornish called John Opie, and it was stolen in America 3040, years ago, and it was recovered last year. And so these things can go missing for a very long time and still come back. And that particular painting came back in very good condition. So and again, there was a mag. Nificent Picasso that I recovered, together with a colleague I work with in in Amsterdam that had been stolen in 1990 in France, and we recovered it in where are we? 2019 in Amsterdam in near perfect condition. So these things can go missing for a very long time and still come back. So yeah, you know, we haven't written off the Gardner Museum paintings, but we love to get some indication that they're still still about is

Nick VinZant 30:33

it more common now? Is art theft more common now than it was in the past? It's

Richard Ellis 30:37

a difficult one to answer, because, you know, statistically, law enforcement have never kept specific records relating to the theft of art and antiques. So it's that's a difficult one to answer. What we do know from the statistics that have been made, for instance, in cultural heritage objects, I think the instances of crimes against cultural heritage have increased dramatically, and that's because people have they're much more able to travel than you know they were a century ago. They get around to go and see these places. The places themselves are more exposed than they were. Objects are more available. So I think, yeah, you know, with the sort of general quickening of the pace of life generally, so the increase in crimes against dark antiques have increased at the same rate in terms of the iconic works of art, this tends to go in kind of cycles, really. And since covid, you know, touch wood, the instances of art theft, of iconic work of art, have fallen since covid.

Nick VinZant 32:01

This is a little bit of a lighter one movie scene that drives you nuts. It

Richard Ellis 32:05

kind of relates to the type of scene that drives me nuts. But it's almost the reverse of it. It's a kind of acknowledgement James Bond in not Dr No, and he's just arriving at blofels underground lair. And as he walks up the steps, he sees, there's the step that the painting of the Duke of Wellington by Goya that was stolen in 1961 and when that film was made in 1961 was still missing. And he kind of pauses and looks live to say, that's where that went but there's a definite acknowledgement that, you know, it's this megalomaniac master of organized crime who was responsible for its left. Is

Nick VinZant 32:51

there any ever instances like where the movie stuff is kind of right, like where they're dodging the laser grid to get to the painting and replacing it with a replica. Like, is that stuff? Is any of that stuff even close?

Richard Ellis 33:06

Sometimes you can say things get replaced with a replica. Not so much in institutions you know, you have curatorial staff that keep a pretty close eye on their stuff. It gets looked at in terms of conservation. So it goes to the laboratory to see whether it's deteriorating or whether it's in good condition, or if anything needs to be done and by way of a restorative treatment. So, you know, things, they get recognized pretty quickly. They've been the audience instance where, you know, copies have been re used to replace the original. But it's it's more a thing of myth than fact. That's pretty much all

Nick VinZant 33:49

the questions I got. Is there anything that you think we missed, or anything like that?

Richard Ellis 33:53

Oh, not really. No. All I would say is, if anybody wants help in the return of the Isabella Stewart garden Museum. Let me know I'm still available for that one.

Nick VinZant 34:06

I want to thank Richard so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and if you want to see some of these works of art that we talk about. The YouTube version of this interview will be live on August 8 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Do you have an animal nemesis, like an animal that has always bothered you or caused you problems or difficulties or anything like that, yes,

John Shull 34:46

but only because I we've done it to to ourselves here at the show household, and that's the family of skunks that lives under my front porch.

Nick VinZant 34:55

You have a family of skunks. How? How long have they lived under your front. Porch.

John Shull 35:02

I mean, at least before covid. So I'll say five years.

Nick VinZant 35:06

Do you know if it's the same family, or is this like now a generational family of skunks that are just all

John Shull 35:10

living under your house? There might be great grandparents attached to this family. Now, every every winter, for the last couple of winters, you see the baby skunks and the mom skunk and yeah, we had a chance to to get rid of them, but we didn't do it. So now they're part of our family.

Nick VinZant 35:29

So my animal Nemesis would be birds, specifically Hawks. I've been attacked by hawks on three different occasions.

John Shull 35:37

I feel like you have to give a little bit more to that story than just I feel like if you get attacked by a hawk, that's a pretty serious thing.

Nick VinZant 35:44

So the first time I was attacked by a hawk, I was out playing golf, and I think that they had just had their young, and I hit the ball close to the Hawks tree, and so the hawk dive bombed me a couple of times. The second time I was attacked by a hawk, I was just walking home from the gym, and I don't know what I don't know why it attacked me, but I was also attacked by a hawk the second time. And then the third time, I was out at a beach, and again, I think I was near a tree where they had their young, and it attacked me. So I've been attacked by a hawk three times in the last 10 years. Do you

John Shull 36:21

think it just has to do with them just seeing you and saying that guy looks dive bombable? So I'm going to do it.

Nick VinZant 36:28

I have always had a depreciation but a tenuous relationship with birds. I don't think that birds seem to like me. Most animals seem to generally like me, at least most dogs or cats, but birds never seem to have liked me very much. I think birds have it out for me. There's just something about me that birds don't like.

John Shull 36:48

I don't even know where to start with that one. Ah, but

Nick VinZant 36:52

there has to be something. Because look, I polled the audience. I polled the audience, and 56% of people said that they had an animal nemesis, going through some of the comments just really quickly, flies, mosquitoes, crickets, crows, ducks, crabs, crabs, spiders. Somebody put ticks and then somebody put sheep as an animal nemesis, a sheep.

John Shull 37:20

Jesus, a sheep.

Nick VinZant 37:22

I don't know why you would the problem with a sheep would be, I mean, if you're causing problem with a sheep, it's probably your fault. I

John Shull 37:29

want to know more about the crabs. Like, are we talking about, like sand crabs?

Nick VinZant 37:32

I think they're talking about crabs that are not necessarily of the specific animal kind, more of the Saturday night fun time, regret time, times I would say

John Shull 37:44

that's a good one, though that'd be like we were doing top five animal nemesis. I feel like you'd have to put crabs on any list, just in case.

Nick VinZant 37:50

Yeah, he would have to put that because you got to cover all your bases. But I've never understood why I was attacked by birds. It just happens.

John Shull 37:58

I will say, I've only been, I've only have been made to bleed by one type of animal in my entire life, and that was a fish. So

Nick VinZant 38:10

were you fishing? Go on,

John Shull 38:15

well, no, I think I've been stung by a jellyfish too, but to actually bleed? Yeah, we were fishing actually, when we lived, when I lived in Florida, I went on a deep sea charter fishing boat, and I reeled in a really nice, I can't remember the name bonita, I think it was, and I went to go grab it by its mouth, not realizing was very much angry at me. And, you know, I was used to catching bass and walleye. I mean, you know, Midwesterner, Midwestern fish, right? And lakes, and this thing just chomped down. And I still have the the scar actually on my thumb where it bit me.

Nick VinZant 38:54

Hmm, I feel like you kind of deserve that. I feel like that doesn't count, because if you're fishing or hunting and the animal gets you, the animal gets you. The animal is just trying to protect itself, like it's not just out to

John Shull 39:06

get you, sure. I mean, I was just trying to pose with a picture that I was going to let it go. I mean, I still let it go, but I didn't get my picture. Well,

Nick VinZant 39:15

you didn't even get a picture of it biting you. That would have been a better picture, I'll be honest with you, like mid bite, if it got you right in the middle

John Shull 39:24

of it, yeah, that's, I will say the animals that creep me out the most are cats. For some reason I just don't like cats.

Nick VinZant 39:34

I don't have a I'm ambivalent about cats. I wouldn't say that. I have a problem with them. I'm suspicious of some people who have cats, I would say my problem with cats is more some of the people who have them, it's not the cat itself. Birds maybe have always kind of creeped me out a little bit. Maybe that's why they don't like me, and I've been attacked so many times by birds.

John Shull 39:55

Alright, let's, let's get these done here. Uh, Marcus, Chung, i. Yes, will brown uh, Darcy lubins. Don't hear a lot of Darcy's, but I feel like couple of Darcy's. I know they're pretty cool people, so

Nick VinZant 40:08

I only know one Darcy. Yeah, only one Darcy. My entire life. Have I ever known only one Darcy Parker?

John Shull 40:19

Well, good luck, Darcy, whatever you're doing now. Uh, Luke McKeever, Marius Hornbeck, Tosh Locky, Amelia randoza, Abby Johnson, Josh Berg, Emily orric, and we'll end these shout outs this week with Belinda McDonald, because I don't know why, but I've always liked Belinda's as well.

Nick VinZant 40:44

That's a very old school name. Man, it

Unknown Speaker 40:48

is. Man, Belinda,

Nick VinZant 40:52

okay, I can't say like I when I hear that, I'm thinking of somebody that's, you know, pushing it. That's pretty far up there in the age range, but that's what you're doing. That's what you're doing. Man, live your life.

John Shull 41:05

Alright? Man, let's see. Got some things here that I want to I want to talk to you about, okay? First one has to do with, well, I'm just going to get to it. There is a French pole vaulter. His name, Anthony amarati. If you're not familiar pole vaulting, it's where you run. You know, plant the pole, then you try to go over a bar. Well, this poor guy, who apparently was a metal favorite at the Olympics, which are ongoing, cleared the bar, but on the way down, his junk hit the bar and ruined his opportunity for a medal. So I want to get your opinion on that. I also it came out today that apparently a company offered him half a million dollars to be a porn star for them.

Nick VinZant 41:55

Well, do we know it's specifically that big, or is it one of those things that like optical illusions. Like, maybe it just looked like that in a certain light because of it. Like, has anybody actually like, have we somebody has had to have broken down the film and analyzed it? Like, do we have a size? Are we sure that he's packing heat?

John Shull 42:17

I mean, I will say this. It seems like there's been more attention drawn to male genitalia this Olympics than there have been in the past. There's been two or three stories that have come out about, you know, look at like one was a swimmer who had a little bit of something, you know, and that picture went viral. I mean, so Yeah, who knows if they're actually packing real heat, or if they're just average, but because they're on a national scale, I have no idea. I will say that if I was a pole vaulter and my junk caused me to get, you know, eliminated, that's something you you just quit right there. You just end it like you can't. You'll never do it again. You've reached the echelon of sport.

Nick VinZant 43:00

I don't think that that's a bad thing to happen, right? Like, if ever, if all the world knows that you're packing heat, that's a pretty good problem to have. Like, I don't think that you're gonna be like, Oh, I lost the gold medal, yeah, but now everybody thinks you got a huge one, so that's probably better. People are gonna forget about the fact that you have a gold medal. They're not going to forget that you might be rocking around town with some ammunition, so to speak. So I think that that's like a Pyrrhic victory, right? Like he lost the war, but he won the battle. Well, no, yeah, he may have lost the battle, but he won the war.

John Shull 43:35

I just think about in like 20 years, you know, what's a better story to tell your friends and your family while you're sitting around having beers. Yeah, I want a gold medal, or I lost a medal because my junk was too big. I mean, come on,

Nick VinZant 43:50

what are you going to say? What are you going to say? Like, Grandpa, Grandpa, how come you lost? How come you didn't get gold? Got

John Shull 43:58

a big one, got a

Nick VinZant 44:01

got a big one, and it just got in the way. That's the thing, man, I think, like, I'm not somebody who's packing heat, right? I think I'm right around average. But I think it would actually be inconvenient to be packing heat all the time, like having that big old thing in your way. I won't, I wouldn't want to, like, a huge one,

John Shull 44:21

alright? Well, I'm just gonna keep moving on there. Alright, a couple of TV things here, squid. Squid game, season two coming out around Christmas. So I don't think you're a fan of squid game. I know you know of it, though. So my question to you is, how far do you think you would make it in a, you know, do or die reality TV show where your life was on the line? Do you think you'd make it, you know, say, semifinals, finals, would you be out in the first round?

Nick VinZant 44:57

Well, I mean, it depends on, I guess, what's going on? On, I would say that it has been my experience to just give you an honest answer. I tend to stick with things a little bit longer than most people, so I think that would be an advantage, but I also don't generally push myself as far as other people. So I would make it to the semifinals or quarterfinals, I think, and that's about it.

John Shull 45:24

I I probably wouldn't make it past the first round, so I'm alright with that for

Nick VinZant 45:29

your calf muscle taking five steps. So yeah, dude, you're not even getting to the round. You're injured before you even got there. Like, is he going to make it? No, he got hurt early on. So he did

John Shull 45:39

not even sure it was five steps, to be honest with you, which makes it a little worse. Um, so now let's jump to this. Everyone's familiar with Mr. Beast, I'm sure, uh, apparently

Nick VinZant 45:52

that, go ahead, that is, that's one of those things that, all right, he's supposedly like the most famous person on the internet or the most subscribed remote watch. I've never seen a single video that any of those people have done, and I have an issue with those kind of adults who create content based around children that, to me is always kind of should be that should be monitored, and people in the powers that be should be doing more about that, because they're creating stuff that's basically like addictive for children, and nobody's supervising that whatsoever. So I have a problem with that right off the bat. But anyway,

John Shull 46:28

there's my right well, you might have a problem with this then. So apparently Amazon got behind him for his own kind of game show, similar to squid game however, you know, people don't die in it, because it's a real game show. However, apparently, after the initial round of filming, contestants were made to literally sign. I don't know if this is normal, so maybe I'm reading too much into this, but contestants were made to sign a waiver, basically saying, if you were to die, you can't hold the show or the company liable for your injuries. Um, made me think I would never trust one of these type of shows, let alone Mr. Beast, who, by the way, I don't, I wonder what his real name is. Oh, I don't wire why? Why is he Mr. Beast?

Nick VinZant 47:16

That's one of those things. At least he doesn't, but he does something right? Like, I think that he got famous for giveaways or something like that. But that's one of those things that, like, I've never seen a single one of those videos because they're aimed for children. And, like I said, I I just find that whole thing to be strange. Like, why are you creating addictive content for children? I shouldn't be doing that. I would. I don't know. And I think to me, it's like those drug commercials where they go through the list of side effects, and when they're like, your eyes are going to fall off and your skin will peel over. Like, if there's that much of a warning, then you should probably start to consider if that's something that you should be

John Shull 47:54

doing. Yeah, it's like the ozempic and Mongolia commercials with at the end they're like, you could develop ulcers, cancer, HIV, diarrhea. 35 seconds later, they literally have gone through almost every ailment known to. Man,

Nick VinZant 48:06

yeah, I think if you're signing that much of a waiver, you should probably be a little bit concerned about what you're doing.

John Shull 48:14

Iceman, it's a whole thing with me, a whole rant. But you know, I I feel like people are they want that. They want to be famous without really working for it. You know what I mean? Like, what's, what's an easy way to do that go on a television dream? Yeah, exactly. It's the, that's

Nick VinZant 48:30

the American dream, man, that's but so many people are famous for not really working for it. So, like, that's the thing. Like, a lot of people are famous for not really doing anything. So why couldn't it be you?

John Shull 48:42

Alright, this is, this is kind of creepy. This caught my eye. So in Tokyo, they're making life life like robots. However, they have started developing skin and muscle tissue in a laboratory, and now they're putting that tissue onto robots, specifically their faces, and basically giving the robot muscles and tendons and things. And it looks creepy as hell, because it looks like a actual person smiling at you, but it's a robot, if that makes any sense. This,

Nick VinZant 49:17

this, to me, is the big problem that we have as a society right now is that we finally reach the stage where we need to start asking, should we be doing this? And in all the past, we've just been asking, Can we do this? Now we need to start asking, should we do this? And the answer for a lot of these things is probably no. Like, should we design AI that's smarter than us? Probably not. Should we make robots? We can't tell if they're human beings, probably not. Like, that's just, I don't understand how that even comes about. Like, let's make a robot. Okay, that's, yeah, that's a good idea. We can make a robot. Let's make it look like a person. Well, why?

John Shull 49:56

Because I think that. I think that's it, man. I think that's, I mean, if you think of the mark. Kits that are out there for robots. How much money can be made to have lifelike robots for any kind of circumstance? I know all you sickos out there, your minds are going to a place.

Nick VinZant 50:12

There's only one reason you would make a robot with lifelike skin like there's only one reason you're trying to do that, not so they can pass off as human, not so they can be your friend. There's only one reason you're trying to design a hue a robot that seems like a human, and that's to have sex with it. It's the only reason that you're doing that.

John Shull 50:30

Yeah, I don't I'm not man. I hope what that I I hope I never have to entertain that idea ever. I hope I get the bypass that part of my life. But

Nick VinZant 50:42

what could be any other possible advantage of having a robot with human like skin and features, like, what's? What's the possible reason other than that so that it does,

John Shull 50:56

because it might what? Maybe it's like a blending in type, type thought, where people, yeah, maybe people will be more, well, welcoming of AI life, like AI technology, if it looks like a human,

Nick VinZant 51:12

I would think the exact opposite, that if you made something that was an AI type, robotic human, and then you made it look like us, oh, I'd have a big problem with that. That's the uncanny valley, which I never that's one of those things. I don't actually know what it means. I just hear that. I just know that that's a word. Well,

John Shull 51:29

I also read down in the article that they've only just started to do it with the face. So, I mean, they got a long way to go before they cover a entire, you know, robot body and fabricated human tissue and skin. So they're

Nick VinZant 51:45

going to start with the face, and then they're going to go downstairs, because that's what that robot is for. Well, that's what you're going to

John Shull 51:53

do. Anthony almoradi from from France, can can help them out. I

Nick VinZant 51:58

don't know who's Anthony almarani.

John Shull 52:01

He's the French pole vaulter with the big package. Oh, Jesus. All right,

Nick VinZant 52:08

yes, if you but if you listen, if you were going to design a robot, Ding Dang. Would you make it one size, or would you make it like, it like adjustable?

John Shull 52:17

Well, I think, I think I would make sizes, and then people would have to, like, continually buy the sizes, and I would make more money.

Nick VinZant 52:25

Oh, you would have, like, a subscription service, like you get the three incher included, but then you can size up. You can buy different sizes if you want to. That's how you make money. Oh, yeah, could you imagine that if one day you got to be out there changing the ding dang on your profile,

Speaker 1 52:44

John, go out there and get the seven, the six was too not enough. You know,

Nick VinZant 52:50

screw it on a robot. No, I,

John Shull 52:54

I hope I never lived to see that day that would be. That would be pretty bad. Okay, you know what time it is. Oh,

Nick VinZant 53:03

this is our very first live episode where they've done can where we have done candle of the month. So wait. How do I do it, baby? It's time the outlaw candle connoisseur Rides Again. Candle of the month

John Shull 53:27

got a good one here too. By the way, we're just going to jump, just jump into it. So it's by Diamond Candles. So head over to Diamond candles.com and the candle of the month this month is everyone's favorite delicacy, cinnamon roll.

Unknown Speaker 53:45

Oh,

Nick VinZant 53:47

that's a bold choice, though, for an late summer, early fall candle, cinnamon roll feels, I know, like an October, November candle, to be honest with you,

John Shull 53:59

I know, and I, once again, I it was one that struck me, because you burn it in the morning, and then it lingers throughout the night, throughout the day, throughout the night, and it's just fantastic, and it's not overbearing. I don't know a lot about Diamond Candles. My first diamond candle, and it was actually recommended to me by a friend of mine who went overseas, who happen to to pick one up. I don't know how they got overseas. I don't think they're an overseas company, but regardless, and they're like, you should check em up. Went on the website. They had a deal going on. It's a one wick, one wick candle, but it lasts, you know, 15 to 25 hours, and you'll be paying, you know, 15 to 30 bucks. And they have all they have all kinds of scents, but cinnamon roll is the one I went with, because who doesn't love a cinnamon roll on any kind of day, whether it's hot, cold, anything,

Nick VinZant 54:53

doesn't that just make you hungry all the time, though, I wouldn't want a food based candle because I would just be hungry all the time.

John Shull 54:59

Well, you know, when you got, when you when you got a lot of lot of meat there to feed, you know what I mean,

Nick VinZant 55:10

okay, does it smell like? How much does it smell like a cinnamon roll? 1,000%

John Shull 55:16

it is. It is, arguably, you know, this will not be the first diamond candle that I buy, I can tell you that this and once again, they don't, you know, I feel like, because we're doing this live now, I need to put the disclaimer out there that, like, we don't make any money or get anything from these companies. But, yeah, I will be going back for sure, for for some more.

Nick VinZant 55:37

Wow, did you bring the candle to show it off, like you said you were going going to

John Shull 55:42

no and I effed up. And I really kind of a tragic story. I messed up, but starting in August or starting in September, alright,

Nick VinZant 55:52

so target date for that is probably March 2025, are you ready for our top five?

John Shull 56:01

I am. It's going to sound Yes, yes, let's just get into it.

Nick VinZant 56:05

Alright, so our top five is top five doors. We'll see how this goes. What's your number five? What's your fifth favorite door?

John Shull 56:16

So my fifth favorite door on the list, and listen, I have a lot of them. This whole thing is just full of of of things, a lot of doors, right? Yeah, there's a lot of doors. Uh, so my number five, I went with a doggy door.

Nick VinZant 56:33

I thought about doggie door, didn't put it on my list, but I can understand doggie door very convenient. Is that the reason you put it on there conveniency,

John Shull 56:41

you know, in the summer, you can just, you know, if you have a dog that can fit through it, just open the door, and they come and go and they want, yeah, it's just a convenience. It's, it's probably one of the better invented ideas for a door, maybe ever.

Nick VinZant 56:58

My number five is a trap door. I've always thought it was so cool to have like, a trap door. I've always wanted a house with a trap door in there. Think about like you could have so much fun with that. The only reason I couldn't put it higher is it's not like you can find a lot of places with trap doors.

John Shull 57:17

Yeah, I feel like trap doors now are only in theater. I don't think you will find any house made, you know, after 1985 that has a trap door in it. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Yeah, I don't

Nick VinZant 57:31

think they're making a lot of houses the trap doors anymore. Have you ever been in a house with like,

John Shull 57:37

a secret room twice, twice, yeah, and one was, is a mansion and not too far from where, where I live here in Michigan, and like the owner, built secret hallways and doors just so he could scare his guess.

Nick VinZant 57:54

Okay, what's your number four?

John Shull 57:55

Uh, my number four is, I went with a revolving door because those are the only doors where I actually have fun and I enjoy going through them.

Nick VinZant 58:06

I think a revolving door should have been higher on your list. I have revolving door. I think it's a great door. It's fun. It's the funnest door, right? It's the funnest door.

John Shull 58:17

It's by far the most fun, and it's probably the only door where I'll just keep going around and around, if you just let me, because it's just fun. It's just makes you feel like a child again. Do you do the thing where you try to trap somebody? Yeah, of course, my children now, but yeah,

Nick VinZant 58:34

it is the funnest door. It is the funnest door. Uh, miner four is a screen door because it just reminds you of simpler times, like when I think of a screen door, I think of kind of relaxing, letting the outside inside, to taking it easy. Might be a little bit hot, but I think it's summertime in the screen door.

John Shull 58:55

I like screen door. I I'm fancy and I have the screen door that can be a glass door or a screen door.

Unknown Speaker 59:02

So wait a minute, what

John Shull 59:06

it's just? I don't I it's just, I don't even know how to describe it, but I have the screen I can just pull down the glass pane, and when I pull it down, this a screen comes up.

Nick VinZant 59:17

Wait, so the door is both glass and a screen or is it a screen door behind a glass door? Or is it a screen door combined with a glass door?

John Shull 59:26

It's a, yeah, it's a screen slash glass door all in one.

Nick VinZant 59:33

I don't even understand. I have to look this up. I don't even honestly understand how this is possible.

John Shull 59:37

Well, I'm not gonna have a screen it to make any sense, that's for sure.

Nick VinZant 59:43

Oh, okay, yeah, the way that you made it sound, at least to me, was like it was some fancy thing, like you got this thing from the future, and nobody else has ever heard of it when you built your basement. Listen,

John Shull 59:56

I don't have any money. I'm not buying anything. Okay, that is tipping any scales, alright at all. So

Nick VinZant 1:00:04

is it my number three, or is it your number four? No,

John Shull 1:00:07

it's my number it's my number three. Oh, okay, okay, yeah, because I went doggy door, revolving door, and my number three probably the only door on the list that you could say is of any taste, and that's a French door.

Nick VinZant 1:00:24

Oh, yeah, that's the fanciest door. Snobs

John Shull 1:00:27

I know. Well, don't worry, it goes way down from here, so don't worry. Okay,

Nick VinZant 1:00:32

my number three is saloon doors, like you see in westerns. Oh, I

John Shull 1:00:39

knew it. I there is no way

Nick VinZant 1:00:41

you can go through that door without thinking of your imagining yourself in a western movie.

John Shull 1:00:45

I mean, I put that on on my honorable mention just because I think it's kind of tacky and hokey. But I get it. I get

Nick VinZant 1:00:54

all, okay, sorry, Mr. Fancy Pants that it doesn't have glass and a screen that in the old west, they just had to make do with what they had. I also love

John Shull 1:01:01

how anyone that knows anything about doors is going to be like, French doors aren't even that fancy.

Nick VinZant 1:01:06

I know this is probably the fanciest doors that I can think of. Let me make sure I'm even like, I think Dutch. I

John Shull 1:01:13

think Dutch doors are are nicer. Those big wooden ones are probably nicer. Like, you know, oh,

Nick VinZant 1:01:20

like the big oak doors. Oh, French doors are pretty nice. That's fancy. Yeah, I automatically assume anything that's French is just fancier than us. That's my automatic default assumption. Is it my number two or your number two?

John Shull 1:01:38

Uh, it's my number two. Now, okay, which this is tough for me, but I'm putting a garage door as my number two. I

Nick VinZant 1:01:48

had garage door on the list. I just didn't put it. But I think garage door should be on the list. I agree with you,

John Shull 1:01:53

but only if you have it that you know, you press the button and it goes up and down, not one that you have to manually do. Did

Nick VinZant 1:02:00

you ever have the kind of garage door where you had to, like, from the inside, you hit it, and then you got to run, but you got to go under the door, but jump over the laser sensor. So you got to do that, like jump duck thing to get out.

John Shull 1:02:14

No, I just pressed a button and my garage door shuts. I don't have to jump over the sensor button or the sensor,

Nick VinZant 1:02:22

not even as a kid.

John Shull 1:02:24

Nick and for all of you out there wondering this, jumping wasn't really one of the things I did well,

Unknown Speaker 1:02:33

so no, see that. I know, man,

Nick VinZant 1:02:36

you just lived a privileged life, privileged life with your non with your friend, yeah, doors and your doggy doors. I don't have any of that kind of stuff back. If we didn't even have doors, it's a window like a man.

John Shull 1:02:50

So number one, just an air door.

Nick VinZant 1:02:53

My number two is revolving door. I think you had it a little bit too low on the list. I think a revolving door is a great door.

John Shull 1:03:00

Well, after what, I think's been a pretty fantastic list, my number one is the most boring, but it's by far my favorite kind of door, and that is just a sliding door.

Nick VinZant 1:03:11

Oh, just a regular sliding door,

John Shull 1:03:13

yeah, just, you know, just a regular sliding door.

Nick VinZant 1:03:17

Think that's a pretty big mistake on your part. Number one to me, is automatic doors. The only doors you don't have to do anything with. They open for you make you feel like a king. You can pretend like you have the force. Automatic Door is the best door, man,

John Shull 1:03:32

yeah, I don't disagree with you, but I nah, I they're not. Nah. Did

Nick VinZant 1:03:38

you forget about them and now you don't want to just admit it? Okay, absolutely. The only other ones that I had no that's pretty much covers all of them I had sliding on there. I would have put sliding, but it's too basic, man, I don't know what you even call a regular door. That's

Unknown Speaker 1:03:54

a consistent door.

John Shull 1:03:55

I mean, I have a steel door, a wood door, glass paneled

Nick VinZant 1:04:00

door, glass door is pretty fun. Barn

John Shull 1:04:04

Door, Dutch door, pocket door, we're on my honorable mention.

Nick VinZant 1:04:09

Let me see if there's any other constant doors. There's 42 different kinds of doors. How is that even possible? Oh, my God. Like, how do we have so many different kinds of everything? Does that get nauseating to you? Or do you like it? Do you like having a lot of different options? Or does it make you sick?

John Shull 1:04:30

I mean, I like having options, but at the same point, I'm a hypocrite, because I like having options, but then I can't decide what I want.

Nick VinZant 1:04:39

I like having options, but I can never find the exact thing that I want. So I like having a lot of options, because I want to get what I want, but all of the options are generally not the thing that I want. That's what bothers me about

John Shull 1:04:53

it. And I'm apparently the Bougie one here.

Nick VinZant 1:04:57

I am a simple man. I like the simplest look. Look what I. Yeah, just a plain gray t shirt, not out there dressed up with your fancy cinnamon roll candles like you are,

John Shull 1:05:06

your Diamond candles.com. Check them out. Oh, okay, that's

Nick VinZant 1:05:10

gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are some of the best doors. I really think John just straight up forgot about automatic door because I don't know how that's not number one. But as we mentioned in the pointless section, we have launched a Patreon page. We'd really appreciate any support you can give us. So a link to that page is down in the episode Description.

Olympic Race Walker Robyn Steven

Olympian Robyn Stevens is one of the fastest walkers in the world. The two-time Race Walking Olympian can walk at more than 10 miles an hour. We talk how to Race Walk, swiveling your hips and being a Professional Walker. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Villains We Wish Had Won.

Robyn Stevens: 01:18

Pointless: 16:24

Top 5 Villains: 27:20

Contact the Show

Robyn Stevens Instagram

Interview with Race Walking Olympian Robyn Stevens

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode, Olympic race walking and villains who should have won

Robyn Stevens 0:22

our body are using all of the muscles we're engaging, all of the muscles that a sprinter, a middle distance runner and a distance runner are utilizing, but all at the same time, even if you have a lot in the tank, physically, you have to sacrifice that or sacrifice a higher place just to stay in the race.

Nick VinZant 0:40

There is some swilling of the hips there. Isn't there? Yeah, yeah. So

Robyn Stevens 0:43

like a former coach of mine, Susan Armenta, she used to say, merengue. Merengue, if I didn't have enough hip flexibility to remind me just kind of relax into the hips. I

Nick VinZant 0:54

want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're new to the show, welcome. If you're a longtime listener, I want to thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest. This is Olympic race Walker, Robin Stevens. How do you race walk? Is this just walking fast, like, if I was in a hurry, or is there a whole technique to it?

Robyn Stevens 1:25

Oh, there's a whole technique to it. So usually, if we're gonna teach youth how to or beginners, we'll say, like, just pretend that you're at the pool. And they say, you know, the snow cone place just opened up and everybody's jumping out. And they're like, don't run, you know, walk, don't run, and you're trying to hurry over to it. So that's how you start. You know, walk as fast as you can to get there, but to not get thrown out of a race, there's two rules. You have to land with a straight leg and then keep it straight until it passes underneath the hip, and then, but one foot has to be on the ground at all times. And that's how it differentiates from running, obviously. So get sometimes confused, because when you say that, people will start walking like a Frankenstein, yeah, and um, but it's that's where I like to just incorporate the dance. If you're thinking of a manga, you land at the straight leg, drop that hip, let it pass. As you're pulling that back, you know your other leg through, and then you can bend that last one as you're straightening the other one. And then that's how you get that, that smoother rhythm.

Nick VinZant 2:30

It seems like a sport that would be easy for somebody to cheat,

Robyn Stevens 2:33

no. So we have minimum five judges on a course at all times. That way, that there's always a judge that can see us, and then it has to be by that so for the one foot off the ground there, it has to be by the judge's eye, and there's like a fourth of a second that the human eye can't see. So if you see, if you slow down videos of professional race walkers, if you like, watch the Olympics, and you slow it down and you see a side profile, profile of us. Or if you see pictures, you might see like, oh, that they're cheating. I see them, they're just a little bit off, and that's by the judge. So that's the key, is like, by the judge's eye, because they're not going to be able to see that seconds. Now, we're not doing that on purpose. That just happens naturally at the speeds that we're going and it's just going to go up. So the judge has two paddles. They can give us the yellow is a warning. That is a courtesy. They don't have to give us that. That's just to let us know we're we're in danger of getting red carded, and if we don't fix it, they're going to red card us. So those rules make it so it's hard to teach, because there's people watching us all the time and the last 100 meters, you can get dequeued whether or not you have previous red cards. So that's why you're not going to see too many of us like this. Is one of the things I loved doing when I was running competitively, is I love a strong kick, so I still like to do that with race walk, but I have to be really careful, because judges don't like it if you if you switch, if you significantly change your pace, and because if you change your pace, your technique might change a little bit too, and they don't like that. They like to be like you know that it just, it just seems that they don't, they don't like it as they don't appreciate as much. So even if you have a lot in the tank physically, you have to sacrifice that, or sacrifice a higher place just to stay in the race. Because it could mean, if you sprint at the end, it could mean that that Chief Judge doesn't like how you look, and they'll just throw you out that last 100 meters.

Nick VinZant 4:33

So you really have to maintain a certain pace. Yeah,

Robyn Stevens 4:38

it's all like I'm doing a constant body scan the entire time. There's no checking out mentally. So

Nick VinZant 4:45

if you have people who are the best in the world at this and they're still getting those red cards, is it the kind of thing where you got to push it and you got to see and go right up against that line and just see how much you can get away with?

Robyn Stevens 4:59

Yeah, yeah, we're pushing, and that's part of our training, is just figuring out where we can how much and what that feels like to push that line and know that we're, we're technically sound, and most of us at that level where we are technically sound, but, you know, judges are human, and different. Judges have their preference on what they like and what they consider good technique. They're, you know. So, you know, we might be fine in one country, but then another country's judges, like, they interpret the rules a little bit differently. So you're, you're probably going to get carbs because you are going super fast. I mean, we're going sub seven. The women are going sub 715 per mile pace. The men are going sub seven minute pace. You know, about 650 so we're, we are going fast. So one of the things that we'll push for is how, you know, it's almost like you've aced it if you can walk. You know, the two cards is almost like a badge of it's not a badge of honor, but it's like, it's like, you know you you know you're pushing yourself. Because if you're not getting any cards, maybe you know, it's almost like, Well, are you pushing yourself enough? Yeah,

Nick VinZant 6:11

you're bumping up against that edge all of the time. And if you're not, well, you're not really trying. That's

Robyn Stevens 6:17

something I'm trying to figure out for myself, because I cross the finish line with so much energy still left in the tank, because I'm still trying to figure out what it feels like to push that edge with the energy that I have. How did you get into this? I started in junior high. I had ran a cross country race in Dixon and had beat a little boy that in the race, that youth coach had wanted to humble, and so she came over, and she was a club coach, and I had only ran for junior high, you know, for the school system. I never heard of club track and field. And so she came over, and she was just like, hey, you know, I run a club team. I'd love for you to join, if you stick with me, I believe that you have enough talent that you could make an Olympic team and even get into any college that you could ever dream of. And since it's a club team, they they purchase all those events. So you know, are going to have all of the events that are in the Olympics. So she would teach all of her athletes every single event that's in the Olympics. So all of us learn throwing, all of us learn race walk, all of us learn, you know, the only two that she couldn't teach us was hammer throw and pole vault, because there was no access to the the items, oh, and steeple chase, because there was no steeples.

Nick VinZant 7:34

So putting all humbleness aside, what makes you good at it?

Robyn Stevens 7:39

I think I just picked up on it from all the years of dance that I had done. I started dance class when I was two, and when she discovered me, I was in competitive dance. So I was doing tap, jazz, ballet and hip hop. And I think just with all of that, just years of dance, I was able to take to it. It was nothing. It didn't feel any different from, you know, like, a lot of people are like, Oh, don't you want to run? Or, or, you know, how do you race walk? Like, doesn't it make you want to just break into a run? I'm like, No, it just, it feels like a, like an athletic endurance dance. So it just feels, definitely, I don't get it confused of running,

Nick VinZant 8:19

there is some swilling of the hips there? Isn't there? Yeah, yeah.

Robyn Stevens 8:22

So like a former coach of mine, Susan Armenta, she used to say merengue and merengue, if I didn't have enough hip flexibility to remind me, just kind of relax into the hip. Is

Nick VinZant 8:33

there a prime age, like a certain age range, where people are really at their best? So

Robyn Stevens 8:38

race walking, we don't usually hit our peak until late, mid 30s to early 40s. I took a few years off from the sport. I retired in 2004 came back in 2000 officially 2016 and what encouraged me to come back was I had learned that one of the Olympians that I had watched I didn't realize she had made her Olympic debut at 42

Nick VinZant 9:04

What is it about race walking like what? Why can people compete so late in their life, athletically speaking,

Robyn Stevens 9:12

because it's low impact, and so the body can handle a lot more and recover faster.

Nick VinZant 9:18

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions. Sure. Is there trash talking and race walking?

Robyn Stevens 9:25

Oh, probably more on the men's side, I believe the the women are more we just focus on what we need to do. So we're either going to be friends or we we're just in our own little we just kind of keep to ourself on race day. But the men definitely like to have, like, playful, playful banter with each other. And

Nick VinZant 9:44

can you spot a good race Walker in public, like, if you see somebody walking to try and catch a bus? Oh,

Robyn Stevens 9:50

yeah, totally, uh, I mean, that's how a lot of us race walkers who ended up in the sport got, you know, head hunted, as you know, a coach sauce or someone's sauce, and thought. Oh, you would make a great race Walker. I see it all the time. And when we're training out on, you know, on the trails and the bike trails, sometimes kids or other people will try to try to mimic it, or try to, you know, go along with us. And there are times I'm like, wow, actually, that's really good. She's doing pretty good. You're doing pretty well.

Nick VinZant 10:19

Can you make a living off of this? Like just earn a living doing nothing but race walking,

Robyn Stevens 10:26

you can a very humble living very, very humble. So like, the average that we might make is at most, not average. The most that we might make is 25k so it's really humble. Couldn't live in Silicon Valley on it. The highest paid American race Walker was John Nunn, and that's because he worked for the army. So he actually was a salaried Walker. What

Nick VinZant 10:56

would be your top speed? Like the fastest you can go.

Robyn Stevens 11:02

We don't normally race anything faster than a mile, and once we hit the elite level, it's not often we're going to be doing anything less than the 3k like two miles. But there is, like, once a year, there's the Melrose games where we'll do a mile. And so that's the only thing I can judge off of, um, the fastest that a male is gone is a 531 and the fastest a woman is gone is 618 that's

Nick VinZant 11:29

like 10 or 11 miles an hour. And if I go to the gym and try to, like, walk at three miles an hour, I feel like I'm moving

Robyn Stevens 11:38

pretty quick. I mean, so what's interesting for a lot of like, when so our body are using all of the muscles we're engaging, all of the muscles that a sprinter, a middle distance runner and a distance runner are utilizing, but all at the same time, and then our turnover is as quick as it about like between a 408 100 meter runner. So actually, a lot of a lot of sprinters race walk really well. A lot of sprinters like take to it quickly. Oh,

Nick VinZant 12:08

just because of the just because of the turnover ratio,

Unknown Speaker 12:12

yeah,

Nick VinZant 12:13

do you generally walk fast everywhere you go?

Robyn Stevens 12:17

I'm told I do. I never really noticed. But my, you know, I'm short, so my dad always seems super tall to me because he's six one, and so when we would go camping and hiking, we do a lot of camping and hiking. Growing up, I was always constantly trying to keep up with him, because I talk a lot, and I'm trying to, you know, tell them my story, and I couldn't keep up with them. So my best friend Ashley, she always just likes to, she'll laugh about it, because people always she's shorter than me, and people are always like, why do you walk so fast? And he's like, Well, my best friend is a professional race Walker, and I'd always have to try to keep up with her in the hallways in high school. So, so I think the key is, like, if you're around someone taller than you, I think you're just gonna naturally be a faster Walker everywhere, because you're just trying to keep up with the taller walkers. So I'm told, I walk pretty fast. I know I get really annoyed when I'm in the shopping, you know, the grocery store, and like, oh yeah, I can't. It's a big pet

Nick VinZant 13:21

peeve. Oh, that would be so awful if you were walking in a crowd. I

Robyn Stevens 13:27

can't stand crowd speak if they can't walk fast, you know, I don't like the the idly, especially the the packs that walk in, like, groups of five, oh yeah. And then they're all on their phones and they're just walking super slow. It's like, can you walk single file or learn how to walk faster.

Nick VinZant 13:42

Where do you think race walking ranks, in terms of coolness, like, if this was Olympic High School, where does race walking sit there

Robyn Stevens 13:52

in my mind? Or where do they actually rank? Because they rank pretty low in in most people, unless, unless you're from Japan or from Spain, or from parts of, you know, South America, or from Russia. You know, race walking is ranked pretty low, but I think it's because a lot of people, most people, don't understand what's going on. And once you understand what's going on, it's really fascinating, and it's really interesting, and that's why I've gained a new appreciation for baseball, because I used to think baseball was super boring. And I'm like, how can people think race walks boring when people watch, like, four hours of this, just people standing around on a field? I also think that with race walk at the elite level. I mean, since we're using all the muscles of like a sprinter, middle distance and distance and distance runner, our build is going to be similar to a dancer or, you know, I used to get mistaken for a gymnast when I was younger, and I just think that, like, the musculature is just really esthetic. Ly beautiful. And when you see, when you see it done right, it's, it's gorgeous. Who is

Nick VinZant 15:05

the Michael Jordan slash LeBron James of race walking, like the best race Walker ever. In

Robyn Stevens 15:12

my eyes, it's gonna be Jesus Garcia of Spain, because, like, He is the true goat of race walk in my eyes. Because, I mean, some people would argue that it's Jefferson Perez. Some people might argue that, you know, it's somebody more current. But I think, Oh, well, Jesus Garcia is current. I mean, he was at the Olympics at 52 he's made every Olympic team and every world's team. He's been in the top like, I think his first one was in 1990 or No, I think it was 1991 or whatever. But, I mean, he's been doing that ever since, and he's always in the top 30, like now, because he's in the top 30 now, but back then it was like the top eight. I mean, I just think he's remarkable, and he's just incredible.

Nick VinZant 15:55

I want to thank Robin so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. And if you want to see what high level race walking really looks like, the YouTube version of this interview will be live on August 1 at 12:30pm Pacific on YouTube. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. What do you think is weirder not wearing underwear or wearing socks without shoes?

John Shull 16:36

I actually have an easy answer to this one, because I just started the no underwear club recently, and I have to tell you, it is enlightening and amazing. So I'm gonna say wearing shoes with no socks, to me is would be weirder.

Nick VinZant 16:52

How did you make the decision to go commando? That's actually

John Shull 16:57

a good question. I'm not really sure the true answer to that, other than it's just kind of makes you feel free.

Nick VinZant 17:04

I have been a commando person for a long time. I have gone Commando, I would say, at least, at least for the last five years. And it is very freeing. It also feels a little bit cooler. I haven't personally ran into any difficulties with going commando. Maybe other people have, but I personally haven't ran into other any issues.

John Shull 17:29

I mean, I haven't either, and, you know, I'm new to the club, so please accept me with open arms. But yeah, it's, it's, I feel like we sometimes could put too many layers on. I'm getting, the older I get, the less layers I want on. Does that make any sense?

Nick VinZant 17:46

Yeah, I would agree with that. I generally don't want to really have to deal with any kind of hassle in anything, whether that is just tasks or clothing or whatever. I just want my life to be a lot easier, and that's one step. Like, not putting on underwear is one step. I don't have to

John Shull 18:04

do Commando. There's something to be said for going commando. It's good. It's not it's not else. It's not as bad as you think.

Nick VinZant 18:11

No, but I would never wear shoes without socks. I would never wear shoes without Yeah, to me, that's like the grossest thing. Like, I can't stand that feeling.

John Shull 18:24

Yeah, I never, I never would.

Nick VinZant 18:26

I don't go around my house without socks on. I don't really. I'm almost never barefoot unless I'm going to bed. That's the only time I would say that I'm barefoot.

John Shull 18:36

I mean, is there a reason? Why is it just,

Nick VinZant 18:40

I just don't like the idea of like, I don't know what's on things like, people who walk outside without shoes on that That's crazy to me. It's crazy to me.

John Shull 18:49

I'm going to say this, and I hope some people out there know what I'm saying, but I think I have soft feet. I don't, I don't think I have hardened feet to doll like, if I, if I'm to walk, you know, on the sidewalk without shoes on or socks, I'm, I'm that person that's like,

Nick VinZant 19:07

ooh, ah, e ooh, oh yeah, I can't walk if it's not, like, perfect concrete. I can't walk on it. Like, if there's any sort of unevenness to it, or any sort of small rock, we're talking like, grains of sand, my feet are hurting like I'm maybe that's why, because I baby my feet. I take care of my feet, man, I think that's the most important parts of your body,

John Shull 19:28

alright. Well, let's, let's go to some people that hopefully don't have bad feet. Gonna give some shout outs here. Archie Barton, Chris Pabst, Cole McLaughlin, Paul Rinaldi, Sky Smith said, Yes, sir. Fabian Han David Larson, Carter, England, Aaron Yang in Zane Whitson and. Congratulations.

Nick VinZant 20:02

I forgot about this, but I polled the audience asking them, what's weirder wearing shoes without socks or going without underwear? 56% said no underwear. 44% said wearing shoes without socks. So wearing underwear, not wearing underwear, is apparently weirder than not wearing socks. But this was a big vote, 2000 votes. Wow, pretty close, honestly.

John Shull 20:25

Alright, well, let's, let's go to some some current topics here. I literally, so I've been keeping, I'm changing this up, and I've been keeping, like notes of things throughout, throughout the last week, of things that I think are interesting, so we'll see how. Okay, so Hulk Hogan, we all know what he did at the RNC, but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about his new beer line. Would you and I wanted, I want to bring up for two specific reasons. One, do you consider Hulk Hogan, and hopefully he's listening to this or watching this? Do you consider him to be a washed up celebrity? And two is the whole him getting his own beer line strictly a money making venture because he wants to be relevant and needs the cash.

Nick VinZant 21:18

I always wonder about celebrities when they do stuff like that, like, are they broke, or do they just need the attention? Yeah, because I don't understand a lot of it. Like, we obviously have a podcast, but there's a lot of people who start podcast, and I wonder, like, why are you doing this? Because if I ever had an opportunity where I hadn't had millions of dollars, you would never hear from me again. Like, why would you start doing that? Like, I guess maybe it's they need the attention. Or some people just the thing is, is, like, I was very lucky in life to make this a whole rant, and then I learned very early on the idea of when enough is enough. And I think some people never learned that, because if you can't find the happiness with the things that you have, like that black hole is never going to be filled. Like you're never going to have enough money, you're never going to have enough attention. And I think some people just they never learn when enough is enough.

John Shull 22:14

Well And for somebody like him, or you are literally the top person, maybe in the world in terms of entertainment, for five to 10 years, and then the last 30 years have been the downfall. I mean, I just don't know how, I don't know how you do it if you're that person,

Nick VinZant 22:32

but then, but you have to have a concept of when enough is enough. Like, you were one of the most famous people in the world for a little bit, like, that's not good enough for you. That didn't fill that hole. You got to keep doing this and selling like crappy beer, like I would want to just ride off into the sunset by that time, like you had your run. Let somebody else have a turn.

John Shull 22:50

All right, let's, uh, let's talk. Let's talk about something that has me completely mind boggled here. Okay, last week in Winstead, Connecticut. I've no idea where that is, but I do know where Connecticut is. Somehow, someway, an adult black bear and its cub became locked inside of a car. After opening the door, got inside the car, the car, then the door then shuts, and they're locked inside. So as as typical bears would do, they literally ate themselves out of the car to get out, breaking the windows, eating, you know, eating the interior. I have a lot of questions about this one, but apparently it's a true story, but I don't know how bears get in and shut the doors on themselves. That's the first question I have. I don't get it well,

Nick VinZant 23:39

I mean, they do have, like, pause. It is possible maybe they, like, push the door too hard. Like, you know, if you push the door too hard, it bounces back and then shuts. I don't know. Man, it's like, that's a mystery. That's just one of those things. Like, how do you even explain without video? Like, how do you explain that to the car insurance company? Like, um, everything was torn apart. It looks like something ate my upholstery and broke all my windows. It was a bear. Like, okay, sure, it is. What did you really do? Right? Like, that's a hard one to explain. Don't mess with animals. Man, they'll always find a way to do something.

John Shull 24:16

I remember I was in college and I hit a deer coming back home from college, and I was able to lie to my parents and the sorry, by the way, parents and the insurance adjuster that I hit a tree, like the tree came down on top of my car, and they totally believed it, even though I totally cracked a deer driving on the freeway. Why

Nick VinZant 24:38

did you lie about it? Though? Like it wasn't like, hitting a deer was your fault.

John Shull 24:42

I was your fault. Probably. I mean, you know, I don't really remember it, but I remember, oh,

Nick VinZant 24:50

wait a minute, was one of those,

John Shull 24:54

something like that? Anyways. Oh, okay,

Unknown Speaker 24:56

let's stand guys.

Nick VinZant 24:57

I don't know why you needed to make up that. Lie. Like, did you hit a deer? No, tree fell on it. Like we don't care. Man,

John Shull 25:05

I remember the deer hair stuck in the grill. And the adjuster was like, Yeah, I don't really believe you, but I just don't want to be here anymore. So here you go, yeah,

Nick VinZant 25:15

you got to remember that, as much as you don't care about your job, not saying your current job, but as much as you don't care about your job, other people don't care about their jobs either. Man, we just want to. Everybody just wants to check the boxes. Just let me check the box so I can go on about this my life.

John Shull 25:30

That's it. Man, that's it. Nobody, yeah, nobody really wants, nobody really wants to work. I think the days of loving your job, not to say we don't, I guess. But the days of actually loving your job and committing everything you have to it, I feel like that generation is kind of trickling out. And I'm not saying us, but I feel like that generation is slowly dying off to where they're just jobs now, people just clock in, clock out.

Nick VinZant 25:57

I have always been baffled why jobs. Ask you why you want to work here for money. Like, nobody wants to, like, why are you making me lie to you? All right, let's

John Shull 26:07

move on to Rhode Island, where, apparently, this past weekend in Westerly Rhode Island, because apparently we're just giving all the Atlantic States love today, say you're laying on the beach enjoying a nice day, 79 degrees water, sun, and the next thing you know, there's a million dragonflies all conversing onto your one little, tiny beach spot, forcing you to run into your car and never come back. That sounds like a horror movie to me, and hundreds of people lived that nightmare on a Rhode Island beach this past weekend.

Nick VinZant 26:44

Okay, I don't know, what are you going Dang.

John Shull 26:48

That's like, something out of a horror movie. Like, that doesn't happen. Like, Oh

Nick VinZant 26:52

man, you've never been like, Oh well, I guess, because I've gone hiking in Canada in the summertime and like, Yeah, that happens.

John Shull 27:00

Oh, yeah, I, like, most people don't know that. Most people don't know what happens.

Nick VinZant 27:05

Well, I mean, if you go to like, if you're going up north in a wet area in the summertime, like, you should not be surprised that there's mosquitoes. Man, don't mess with the planet. Well, don't mess with animals. Don't mess with the planet. You're gonna lose every time. Uh, so our top five is top five villains we wish would have

John Shull 27:24

won. My number five I have Magneto.

Nick VinZant 27:26

I agree. I think the only question about Magneto is where to put him on the list of top five people, villains who should have won.

John Shull 27:34

I always felt he was misunderstood. Magneto.

Nick VinZant 27:39

My number five is caster, Troy from face off. That's

John Shull 27:43

a how do I ever get caster Troy, that's a good one. That's a really good one, actually. Caster Troy, solid top five pick one before shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore.

Nick VinZant 27:54

Why do you want shooter McGavin to win? Because you

John Shull 27:58

know what, not the biggest Adam Sandler fan. And you know what? Happy shouldn't even have been on the tour. Alright, that was shooter's tour to win, and he kept getting boned around and sure he tried hiring that big, giant guy to, you know, kill Adam Sandler didn't work. But shooter McGavin, that's my number four.

Nick VinZant 28:17

Shooter McGavin, he felt like he deserved it a little bit more. That's my number five is somebody who I or my number four rather is someone who I think really deserves it. And that's Wile E Coyote. Wile E Coyote needs to win. Same with Tom from Tom and Jerry, like they both, I always root for the both of them. I root for Wiley Coyote and Tom from Tom and Jerry, like they should win. The cats should win over the mouse.

John Shull 28:46

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go Anakin Skywalker as my number three.

Nick VinZant 28:52

Um, are you going at specific Now, see, now listen, I know a lot more about Star Wars than you do. So this is gonna get this is gonna get ugly. Here. Are you talking about specifically, Anakin Skywalker. You talking about Darth, Vader. I'm

John Shull 29:03

talking about when he was making the transformation in number three.

Unknown Speaker 29:10

I think of the Sith, and,

John Shull 29:12

you know what, he's fighting Obi Wan and, you know, like, you kind of just want, like Anakin just is doing it out of love. He's just doing it, you know, for his mother and for, you know, for Padme and Damn you, Obi Wan, you always have to get in the way. But

Nick VinZant 29:29

see, Obi Wan tried to teach him about the high ground. If you really look closely like Obi Wan teaches him about the high ground. And Anakin didn't listen. Obi Wan was probably, yeah, I'm gonna go full Star Wars here. Obi Wan was probably aside from Yoda, the only person who could have beat Anakin in that circumstance, because he knew him. He knew how to play him. But I would agree. I want Darth Vader to win everything like I don't know if I want Anakin Skywalker to win, but I want Darth Vader to win all the time.

John Shull 29:59

I mean, I don't know if I wanted Darth Vader to win, but I wanted Anakin to have a better time than he did. That's for sure.

Nick VinZant 30:08

My number three, I don't, I can't quite remember his name. I think it's Bodhi, but Patrick Swayze, character from Point Break. Okay,

John Shull 30:15

that's, that's a solid choice. But I mean, I mean, the character, if I'm remembering right, it's just an okay character. I think Patrick Swayze is the reason why you truly care about that character.

Nick VinZant 30:27

I don't know what the difference is. I would never describe Bodie or Patrick Swayze is an okay character.

John Shull 30:34

Definitely should have won. I mean, why can you give him a little bit of the jackpot? But that's why he's a villain, and that's why he died. He's a villain.

Nick VinZant 30:42

I feel no need for the villain to have to lose. I'm completely okay. Because in real life, it's not that the bad the good guy wins. It's just that the good guy, the the person who wins, becomes the good guy, because they get to tell the story. It's not like the villains really lose in real life,

John Shull 30:59

no, I mean, but we, we've created this. When I say we humanity, you know, good versus evil, what else keeps some people going, besides Good, good verse evil, right? I mean, yeah,

Nick VinZant 31:10

but I think the truth is, is just whoever wins becomes the good guy. Whether they were the good guy or the villain to begin with, you just become the good guy.

John Shull 31:19

Well, speaking of my number two is Bill butcher from the Gangs of New York.

Nick VinZant 31:26

Oh, okay, yeah. No, I liked him more than I liked Leonardo DiCaprio, his character, he was much more interesting

John Shull 31:35

by far. And I still don't know if he was really a villain, you know, because he just, that's just his character, like, but he apparently was a villain. I know he's the antagonist, but, like, I don't he was just doing what he had to do to survive. Once again, does that make you a villain? I don't know

Nick VinZant 31:53

my number two. I don't know if it's technically going to count or not, but I'm going to put it as my number two. My number two is the white walkers. They should have won the game of thrones. And that's the way that that show should have ended, because when they started it spoiler alert, and they killed off that one character that nobody thought that they were going to kill off in the first episode that set it up, that this was a TV show with different stakes, and it should have continued, and the white walker should have won the white walker should have won the game of thrones. You

John Shull 32:24

know, what's ironic about this is I also have a Game of Thrones character as but they're my number one.

Nick VinZant 32:33

Oh, okay, who's your number one? Then who are you there? Because there's so many people you could pick. I don't,

John Shull 32:41

and once again, you're gonna hate it and never and everyone else is gonna hate it, and I'm gonna get shit for it. But I love this person for some reason, and they should have won. And that's Cersei Lannister,

Nick VinZant 32:52

okay, I am also a big Song of Ice and Fire. I've read some of the books. Well, I've read all the books. I don't know if you've read all the books, but in the books, Circe is a little bit different. She's portrayed as much less cunning. It's much more obvious that she's like, not only morally doesn't deserve it, but also intellectually, doesn't deserve it. That like, Oh, she's not somebody who should be in this position.

John Shull 33:18

I haven't read all the books, but I'm going strictly based off the TV show, and I know she's a terrible person, but once again, she's doing it all for family. And, you know, I don't know what, I'll say that show is one of the greatest shows ever. For one Secondly, you know, I mean she, she's not only like the worst person, but her spawn was a terrible person. You know, they were all awful, like, so, yeah, so and, and, plus, you know, she's a great character. And, yeah, so she, she gets my number one villain that I wish would have won.

Nick VinZant 33:52

My number one is Thanos.

John Shull 33:55

I knew it. I knew it

Nick VinZant 33:57

when he I completely lost interest in that entire franchise. As soon as Thanos lost, completely lost all interest. He was the best thing about that.

John Shull 34:07

Well, I mean, what? What was it just this past weekend, Robert Downey Jr is coming back as Doctor Doom now. I mean, that guy just keeps getting roll after roll.

Nick VinZant 34:16

Yeah, I can't believe they cat recast him as Doctor Doom. Like, what's the point of doing that? Like we already saw it. It ruins everything.

John Shull 34:24

Yeah, right. It's, yeah, this is a discussion for another time, but it's like, what, what's going to be made up next? What's going to be redone from our childhood next? Like, they don't need to redo. Dr Doom they just don't.

Nick VinZant 34:36

Well, I mean, as a comic book fan, like all the doctor dooms have been pretty terrible from the Fantastic Four. They need to actually do Doom right? And I don't think that they have done that with Robert Downey, Jr, no offense to him. Like they just gotta get somebody else. Get anybody else, which,

John Shull 34:52

by the way, one of my honorable mention, I know I just cut you off, but one of my honor mentions, speaking of doom, was the rock from.

Nick VinZant 35:02

Him, Oh, I thought you were gonna go the rock the movie that general, he that in honorable mentions, he had a pretty good case, like, oh, he kind of should have won. He wasn't really, like, he had a pretty good point. Was

John Shull 35:13

that Ed Harris, that played him. I think,

Nick VinZant 35:17

I can't keep track. That's one of those actors that I know them, but I don't know what their name is. Yeah,

John Shull 35:21

I think it was at Harris, which is, yeah, that's, that's a good movie, another underrated Nicolas Cage movie, by the way.

Nick VinZant 35:29

What else do you have in your honorable

John Shull 35:31

mention? Dr Evil from the Austin Powers, okay, okay. Franchise, the Joker from Batman,

Nick VinZant 35:42

yeah.

John Shull 35:44

And then I, I put on this, this was a top five on all the list I looked at. But Hannibal Lecter,

Nick VinZant 35:52

he kind of won. I don't know how he lost. How did he lose? Yeah,

John Shull 35:56

because at the end of the movie, right, isn't he like,

Nick VinZant 35:58

he escapes, like, that's kind of winning. I think. Um, I haven't seen this movie, but a lot of people put this in suggestions. Was Robert De Niro's character in heat. Okay, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know anything about it, but a lot of heard that a bunch. Um, Denzel Washington's character in training day, Alonzo Harris.

John Shull 36:20

Alonzo Harris. Man, yeah, that's, God, what a great movie. That is

Nick VinZant 36:25

also Walter White,

John Shull 36:30

okay, I mean, once again, he's borderline villain slash not villain. But, I mean, man, he would be a top five I actually thought of him as a villain. Maybe that's how good of a job he did. I didn't think he was a villain.

Nick VinZant 36:44

I think that he was the villain. Now, I will admit that I watched all of Breaking Bad, except for, like, the last season, and I just never watched

John Shull 36:54

it, because everyone else watched it, and you just can't do things that everyone I just,

Nick VinZant 36:58

I just completely lost interest in it, and I never watched the end of Breaking Bad. I was like, nah.

Unknown Speaker 37:06

F this not happening today with that.

Nick VinZant 37:08

Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate it really does help us out and let us know who you think are some villains that you just wanted them to win you.



Rhythmic Gymnastics with Rhythmic Gymnast Serena Lu

Rhythmic Gymnastics may look easy to some but in reality it’s an incredibly difficult Olympic sport. One that requires athletes to train more than 60 hours a week. We talk the four events of Rhythmic Gymnastics, training 10 hours a day and the rivalry between Rhythmic Gymnasts and Artistic Gymnasts. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Summer Olympic Sports.

Serena Lu: 01:15

Pointless: 27:08

Top 5 Olympic Sports: 45:11

Contact the Show

Serena Lu Instagram

Interview with Rhythmic Gymnast Serena Lu

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode rhythmic gymnastics and the best Olympic sports, rhythmic gymnastics,

Serena Lu 0:22

if I were to explain it is a combination of artistry and coordination and dance, because there's you're doing a routine to a piece of music, you have to have a pretty strong connection to your music and understanding of the music, and that's what I loved about it.

Nick VinZant 0:39

How high do you throw that up in the air? Like, how high is that in the air? I couldn't

Serena Lu 0:43

give you an exact measure, but we often have a hard time finding training facilities because the ceilings are too low.

Nick VinZant 0:50

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest. This is rhythmic gymnast, Serena Lou what is rhythmic gymnastics? Because I see this and it looks incredibly impressive, but I don't really know what's going on

Serena Lu 1:24

rhythmic gymnastics, if I were to explain, it is a combination of artistry and coordination and dance. And there are four different apparatuses that you are required to compete with, and those are hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon. So

Nick VinZant 1:42

how does it different than the kind of the gymnastics when I first think of the Olympics or gymnastics like, how does it differ from that? Okay, so you need this school skill set for that gymnastics. You need this skill set for rhythmic gymnastics. There

Serena Lu 1:57

are quite a few differences. I guess visually speaking, rhythmic gymnastics appears to look a little more like dance. I think artistry is a big component of the routines. There is an artistry component actually in the score. I think in rhythmic gymnastics, it's a lot more about kind of the gracefulness you can have a strong routine, but it's you are not supposed to be flipping at all. There are rules against that. Actually, you are kind of judged on criteria of different body elements as well. We have jumps, balances and turns for your body difficulty, and then you also have the apparatus component, which you're handling with, throwing it, you're rolling it, if it's the ball, you're flipping it, if it's the clubs, you're doing spirals it. There are different, I guess, parameters surrounding each apparatus. Do

Nick VinZant 2:52

most people start out specifically in rhythmic gymnastics, or do they start in artistic gymnastics? Like, yeah, not

Serena Lu 3:00

necessarily. I know people who started in artistic and then pivoted because rhythmic seemed like more of a fit for them. I know people who started directly into rhythmic gymnastics if they knew that it existed. For me, I started because my parents saw an ad in a newspaper, and they just kind of brought us there and we liked it. I never did artistic gymnastics in my entire life. Rhythmic is, I think, a bit smaller in the US, yeah, it's a bit less known of a discipline.

Nick VinZant 3:29

Yeah, in the United States, I would say it is. Would you say that that's the case in other countries, though,

Serena Lu 3:35

definitely not. It's more popular in certain countries. In Europe, it's probably a lot more popular than it is in the US.

Nick VinZant 3:45

Does that? Does that bother you? Does that create kind of an image around it, or anything like that? Or,

Serena Lu 3:52

I think when I was younger, it definitely bothered me. But I also think that as a sport, we've grown, and I am actually having a lot of fun with that now, realizing that it's great to be able to show something new to people who haven't seen something before. And I think there's a greater recognition in almost the legitimacy of what we do. I think people interpret that it's quite an easy sport, that some people said it wasn't a sport, um, that it's too much like dance. But I think the constant exposure of it through things like social media and just like greater I guess awareness of it helps people realize that it's actually a very difficult sport, because it requires a lot of different elements, and you have to make it all look very easy and fluid and continuous. That's something

Nick VinZant 4:42

that like, from a personal perspective, like when I saw the sport when I was younger, I'll be real direct. I was like, What is this? Like, what is this? And then as I got older and saw it some more, and realized what people were doing that looks incredibly difficult, like the timing of things. Things and stuff like that. Do you think that people understand that part of it?

Serena Lu 5:04

I don't think as many people understand it to the degree. I think acceptance of this, for understanding is obviously growing. I think, I think that has improved. But I also, I also know people who still don't consider it as much of a sport as some some other sports.

Nick VinZant 5:22

So kind of backtracking a little bit. You got into it from an ad on the newspaper.

Serena Lu 5:29

Yes, this was a long time ago,

Nick VinZant 5:32

couple of weeks. We'll give you a couple of weeks, right, when

Serena Lu 5:35

newspapers were still

Nick VinZant 5:38

how well then, what made you stick with it? What did you like about it?

Serena Lu 5:41

So when I was a kid, I did a lot a lot of different things, a lot of them related to the arts. And I think the sport really pulled me in, because it combined everything I loved about the various art forms I was doing. I played piano, and because there's you're doing a routine to a piece of music, you have to have a pretty strong connection to your music and understanding of the music, and that's what I loved about it. I also did acting, and so the drama of your expression and the emotions you're able to kind of put forward in a routine really stuck with me, too. And then I did dance, and it just all kind of fell together. And then there's the the competition element of it, it's it's a sport, and I love being an athlete, and I think it was just something that felt really right.

Nick VinZant 6:32

What makes you good at it?

Serena Lu 6:34

I think it I have a very personal tie to my sport, and I think I have very personal feelings towards it, and through that, I think comes great passion and great dedication and perseverance to stick with it. I think, um, I also, like many people who excel in the sport and willing to do whatever it takes. I'm willing to spend the long hours in the gym, not lose sight of my goals, and just work really, really hard every day, because it is something that your dedication can waver, because we train six days a week, we're in the gym like 10 hours a day, and that's that's kind of like a normal training day. And I remember when I was preparing for World Championships, we had these crazy lawn days where they just, like, didn't seem like they would end. And it's very taxing mentally and just physically.

Nick VinZant 7:38

Why does it require that much training, like 60 hours a week. Like, dang,

Serena Lu 7:42

it's a lot.

Nick VinZant 7:43

What is it about it, though,

Serena Lu 7:45

by how many hours we train, I think because it is such, such a diverse sport in terms of what you need, you need the apparatus, coordination, and that takes so much precision, it also takes a lot of smart repetition to be able to get your throws that precise, and also just to get the foundation of apparatus work. And then there's four apparatus there. You have to master all four of them to be a competitive rhythmic gymnast. And then there's your body. You have to from a young age, you're training everything from strength to flexibility. And then there's an element of, like, artistry, and then you have your routines, and you put that all together. And it's, it's 90 seconds, but it's 90 seconds that are jam packed from beginning to end, um, and every single little detail, every single step, matters, so that, like, refining process takes a lot, a lot of time.

Nick VinZant 8:41

You mentioned a personal connection, like, what's the what's for you is so personal about it? So

Serena Lu 8:47

my personal journey in the sport has kind of been all over the place. Um, I started very young, as many do. I started when I was five, six, and that journey took me from Minnesota, where I grew up, to New York, where I currently still train. And I've been an 11 time national team member, which is a lot of years, but I had a five year retirement in the middle. So I actually retired from the sport competitively in 2017 and didn't return a competition until 2020, 2022, and I think I just had a lot of like, pent up sadness, like burned out, a little bit anger, all of it when I finished the first time, just because it's you put so much into it. You put so much of yourself into it. And when I came back, it just requires me to have a very personal reason for coming back, and I think that's where my perseverance comes from. Now, is that, in its essence, I'm doing it for myself and for the reasons that I've established for myself, and it's a very personal journey.

Nick VinZant 9:56

So if we can, let's run through the. Some of the different events. There's four events correctly, yes. So like, when we talk about the who, like, what's you're trying to do? What? What's the difficulty, that kind of stuff,

Serena Lu 10:11

I think this actually applies to every single apparatus you have, a set of body difficulty that you must fulfill. And you'll see that is in three categories, jumps, turns and balances. Every routine has those you can use the same ones in each routine. Hoop specific things would include roles. So you'll see the role rolls across the body roles on the floor. You obviously do not want the hoop to roll away from you and high throws. So high throws are called risks, which I think is funny, because they're risky. And in every apparatus there will be apparatus difficulties.

Nick VinZant 10:53

Okay, that makes sense to me. Let's watch this a little bit.

Serena Lu 10:58

I can go through and tell you what each thing is. So this is, this is a turn, this is part of a body difficulty. And then this will be a jump, which is another body difficulty. Each one is worth a different amount of points. And those are kind of connector steps into another turn. And in these set of rules, you have to have dancing steps, which actually are still a thing in the last set of rules that I did. But the dancing step, we don't have to go into the nitty gritty of it. So a dancing step has to fulfill certain criteria of balance. And now this is a risk. So there would be, there'd be a high toss with a number of different rotations underneath into a catch. That's

Nick VinZant 11:39

incredible to me. I don't even understand how you do that. Like, throw that up with your foot. How high do you throw that up in the air? Like, how high is that in the air? I couldn't

Serena Lu 11:50

give you an exact measure, but we often have a hard time finding training facilities because the ceilings are too low. So that is a struggle for athletes in the US. A lot of them do not have stable training facilities with proper ceiling and enough space, because the carpet is massive and the ceilings have to be very tall, and it is better if you're able to throw higher

Nick VinZant 12:10

that was high enough that it was in the air for three seconds. Yeah. So like, how long does it take before how many times do you practice something like that before you can do it.

Serena Lu 12:20

Oh, so many times. Yeah, repetition, like I said, is a big part of our sport. Um, smart. Repetition is a really big part of our sport, because you, if you over repeat, you can get injured very easily. And I learned that the hard way.

Nick VinZant 12:36

Okay, so after the hoop, there is then,

Serena Lu 12:39

then you have the ball. So the ball is not a bowling ball. That is something I get asked way more than I'd like to admit. The ball is quite similar to the hoop, because you can also roll it. So rolls are a big part of ball as well. And you'll see that where the rolls usually have to go across two large body parts. So that can be two arms, your trunk and your legs, one leg, the other leg, any sort of formation of two large body parts. And I think Visually, it looks a little softer. Um, I don't know. Let's explain it just is a little like smoother. Um, okay,

Nick VinZant 13:24

so let's watch this.

Serena Lu 13:26

Yeah, and the cool thing about this, for is you can be very creative. Um, and creativity is really fun to watch. That's it's that specific thing I train. I can remember how many times I trained that. And honestly, there are people who do that from a huge, large toss now, which I didn't need with these rules. But people do that catch with with many rotations under the toss too, which is very impressive. I will be completely honest, I do not remember if this routine was good or not.

Nick VinZant 13:59

I mean, really impressive to me.

Serena Lu 14:01

Thank you. So that is what's called an apparatus difficulty, with a role.

Nick VinZant 14:07

Are there required things? Like, you have to do this, so many times you have to do that, so many times

Serena Lu 14:12

you have to have, in this set of rules, 20 apparatus difficulties. I'm like watching this, and I just, I see so many mistakes.

Nick VinZant 14:21

But weird, okay, but to me, like, watching it, like, what are you noticing that? Like, oh, that was a mistake. That was a mistake. Just to me, this all looks like, okay, great, yeah.

Serena Lu 14:30

So I'm very good at this. I'm very picky, um, so that would be an execution deduction for shape and for a large step underneath, I'm, like, exposing myself. Um, there was a hop. See, like it was a small, minuscule hop, but the rest of that element could be not counted. So there's just, like, execution deductions on that,

Nick VinZant 14:54

but not the kind of thing that any casual person would notice. No,

Serena Lu 14:58

this will all be things. That a viewer who knew the rhythmic rules would really be able to tell I think even watching this routine, I'm getting stressed.

Nick VinZant 15:08

But did you catch that with your legs? You did? Yeah, that's crazy. So when you do that, right, like when you make one of the throws, are you throwing it to a specific spot. Like, is it just perfectly timed, or are you making adjustments all over the place to make that happen? I

Serena Lu 15:28

think when you do a toss, how I approach it is, I try to remember the sensation of when I'm throwing it to the correct spot, coupled with kind of my baseline technique, making sure my arms are, for example, for that toss, my arms are extended, that I'm square, like my shoulders are square with my hips, because common mistakes, like, if you're off by a degree or two, the toss will not go the direction you want. It's also important that the toss is forward of you, because you can get a deduction for trajectory if it's not precise in front of you, you can also get deduction for not you can also not get credit for the big toss if you don't fulfill your rotations underneath. So these are all very specific things, and because of that, yes, in Long story short, I do direct my throws to a very specific area of the carpet.

Nick VinZant 16:22

So you're trying to throw it up to have it land on this spot, as opposed to, like, I'm going to throw it up and then I'm going to do what I'm going to do, and adjust to where the ball is.

Serena Lu 16:34

I think you have to be flexible. So what makes a lot of athletes in the sport stand out is their ability to adjust. So you cannot be perfect. Tosses will go far or they'll be too short, and you'll see very incredible saves from great gymnasts, because they're able to adapt quickly underneath the throat. They're able to adjust their bodies. That's how you can tell someone is, one, a great competitor, and two very seasoned is because they're able to adapt their body to how far the toss is. Yeah, a lot of elements can affect it, but the ribbon, when the AC is on, can go every which direction we actually I we do consistency, I guess, drills, consistency, markings for ourselves during training, like I will practice each risk, each throw multiple times, every practice of every single apparatus, because you do need them to be that precise.

Nick VinZant 17:26

Now, okay, when we talk about these clubs, like, the first thing that I'm thinking about is like, bowling pins.

Serena Lu 17:31

Yep, yep. They do look a little like bowling pins. They

Nick VinZant 17:36

do look like bowling pins, but how big are they? Like, how big? How heavy? In real life,

Serena Lu 17:40

it's funny because I'm watching these videos and I'm just like, cringing a little, but I feel like it. This was my second year back from competing, and there were a lot of things I had to figure out, like, what worked for me and what didn't. So some of these elements in my routine I don't have anymore because they just didn't work for me. So

Nick VinZant 17:59

for example, like, okay, the person who wins the World Championship or wins the gold medal in this competition, like, just from my perspective, like, what are they doing that you would not be doing?

Serena Lu 18:15

At least from my experience, back in the day, when we would, we would train with these girls, and they would this sport would be like their entire life. And it's very different in some of these countries, where they are able to make training their priority, whereas I wasn't able to do that. I had to go to school. Athletes in the US don't get paid enough to live off of, yeah, just speaking, so, yeah, I have a day job. I train at nights, and I think that's kind of like the biggest thing, all

Nick VinZant 18:53

right. Last one the ribbons, this is the one that I noticed the most. That's the one I feel like I usually see. This is

Serena Lu 19:00

the most identifiable out of all of them. That's why, whenever I explain rhythm gymnastics, usually first thing I say will be, it's with the ribbon.

Nick VinZant 19:07

So what's the goal? Like? You're trying to just constantly keep it moving the whole time? Yes,

Serena Lu 19:12

so part of the technique in ribbon is keeping it moving and making sure your patterns are precise. So if it's if you're making these little loops called spirals, they really are looking for how clean and how tight and how many spirals are happening. And if you're making a snake, which looks like the zigzag, it's the same thing. So they're evaluating kind of based off of how your ribbon is moving as well. Do

Nick VinZant 19:46

you have to have a different outfit for every single one? Like, is it hard? Is it hard to find an outfit that matches the ribbon?

Serena Lu 19:53

So we we get these custom made most people, I think, at an elite high level.

Roles. Basically, almost all come from Europe, Europe and Asia. I think you never know what's going to happen in the Olympics, but the front runners, based off of scoring from this year, are from Bulgaria, Germany and Italy. China has very good gymnast as well, particularly the group within the US California has the has a lot of rhythmic gymnast. They have a lot of gyms. There a lot of different teams. Um, yeah, I think, I think I would, if I had to place money on it, I'd say them California. That's

Nick VinZant 25:37

pretty much all the questions we got is or anything that we missed? I

Serena Lu 25:41

know we touched upon the leotards and the music selection. Oh, I think the music selection is another thing that's a big thing in rhythmic if,

Nick VinZant 25:48

yeah, what's Why is? Well, why is music so important?

Serena Lu 25:52

I think, I think some gymnasts oftentimes select music that they want to tell a story too, like I said, and I think that is a portion of the sport that's just really interesting. For example, my programs this year, one music was written specifically for me, and the other one was arranged specifically for my routine, and the other two, one is kind of a a montage to my Chinese heritage and background, and so I think the choice of routine and the pairing of leotard really just sells a story. I think a lot of religion is that's like a huge part of the sport and where a lot of appreciation for it comes from. I

Nick VinZant 26:39

want to thank Serena so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media accounts. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. If you want to see Serena do some of the routines that we talked about. The YouTube version of this episode will be live on july 25 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Okay, what percentage of people do you think like you

John Shull 27:16

probably 90 to 95%

Nick VinZant 27:19

that's ridiculously high. There's absolutely no way that 90 to 95% of people like you. I would agree that 99 to 95% of people may act like they like you, or may appear to like you, but I don't think that many people actually like you. I would say 25% of people probably like me.

John Shull 27:40

No, I'll go, I'll stick it. I would say nine out of 10 people that I meet like me.

Nick VinZant 27:46

Oh, I think you're vastly overestimating how many people like you, or you're or you're deceiving yourself about how many people like

John Shull 27:54

you, nine out of 10 people like me. But how many people would actually want to be my friend? Maybe three or four out of 10. Oh,

Nick VinZant 28:02

I still think that's pretty high, man. I still feel think you're overestimating it. I would say two to three out two to two to three out of 10 like me and maybe one, maybe five out of 100 would want to be like my friend?

John Shull 28:18

Do you need friends. I'll be your friend.

Nick VinZant 28:21

I think everybody needs friends as they get older. I think that's really I think it really becomes harder to have friends as you get older. See, this is why I think that you're vastly overestimating how many people like you. So it polled the audience. This was one of our highest votes. We had over 1000 votes already. Uh, 39% of people said zero to 25% 25% of people said 25 to 50. 26% said 50 to 75 Only 9% of people said 75 to 100% of people like them. So most people think only 25% or less of people like them, which I would, I would agree, if you kind of go with no actually liking you rather than tolerating or being friendly with, I think it's far lower than what you're estimating.

John Shull 29:11

Once again, I think there's a difference in someone liking you and actually moving on beyond just the like,

Nick VinZant 29:19

uh, you ready for your shout outs, or whatever you going to do next? Shout outs,

John Shull 29:23

where people come to hear their names spoken by the guy that everybody likes. Uh, let's see here. Uh, Heath, Baldwin, Ken Lewin Shane root. Don't know if that's an actual real name, but I feel like there's not enough Shane's in the world. And I kind of like that name, Shane,

Nick VinZant 29:44

yeah, but that's one, also a name that there can only be so many if it loses its power. If there's too many, Shanes can't have too many shades. Uh,

John Shull 29:55

Richard Klein, Chris Michou, uh, annas. Asia boyganovich, that's a tongue twister there.

Nick VinZant 30:04

Justin area Russian. That sounds like a Russian name, Justin

John Shull 30:08

Mariano, Peter Jones, and we're going to end here on Norby Vasquez. Now you don't hear very many norbys too often. No,

Nick VinZant 30:18

huh? I knew a guy named Jeff Norby. Way back when that's the only thing that I knew was his name was Jeff Norby. That's, there's a lot of people that I've realized in my life, the only thing that I know about them is their name. Like, oh, that's just their name. That's, I can't put any single other characteristic to them. I have two shout outs. Oh, shout out number one, the first person you mentioned, Heath Baldwin, who will be competing for the gold medal decathlon.

John Shull 30:44

I was kind of stole it, but I was going to segue into an Olympic rant. But you know what? Never mind not going I'm not going to No

Nick VinZant 30:51

Okay, so shout out to Heath. Good luck, USA, baby, USA. And then I'm going to mispronounce their name, I think, because I'm doing it right off the top of my head. But Kurt or Curtis, whichever one you're going by Holmes home. I don't have the email right in front of me, but said, this is a very nice email. I appreciate that. Thanks. Man.

John Shull 31:09

Did he say that he thinks he would like us if we met in person? Uh, one of us? Well, you are the face that runs the place. I'm just the side rhyme. I am just the sidekick that could be thrown into the vat of acid, and I

Nick VinZant 31:24

needed to come up with a rhyme for that. If you would have said the face that runs the place and the sidekick that something, I don't know what you could have rhymed it with, but if you would have been able to rhyme it that would have you know, that would have upped your likability.

John Shull 31:36

I definitely feel like Rhyming is kind of like Olympic break dancing. You don't think you need it in your life, but when it's there, you have an appreciation for it.

Nick VinZant 31:46

Oh, you always got to find the time to rhyme. It's sublime when you find the time to rhyme,

John Shull 31:53

that's damn fine. Well, now it's time to talk about some current events. Uh, anyways, he couldn't, so

Nick VinZant 32:05

you almost got it. What rhymes? It's hard man. Nothing right. I could never rap event. I don't know how people rap at all. I could never rap like the most amount of right lines that I could possibly rhyme together is maybe three, just off the top of my head.

John Shull 32:23

I mean, I could, I feel like I could rhyme a little longer. I mean, you get it's pretty easy. Cat, bat, sat mat,

Nick VinZant 32:30

no, but like an actual rap, not just like repeating words that rhyme, like the frog on the log, watch out for the smog the bog. Yeah, your

John Shull 32:43

dog chilling in a bog in the fog. What's up? Dog? I don't know. Anyways, you

Nick VinZant 32:48

see, you threw dog out there three times in the space of five sentences. Man, like it's hard. I couldn't rap at all.

John Shull 32:54

Nobody knows. Well, there's a reason why no one's ever approached us to do any of that. Alright, let's start. Let's talk a little current events here. Uh, the RNC. I don't want to talk about anything political related, but I have to mention Florida Congressman Matt Gates's face. And I don't know if you saw the before after pictures, before and after pictures, and I'm not going I'm not making fun of him as a person, so no one take this as a political anything. Uh, but the dude looked normal before his speech at the RNC, somehow between him doing an interview and actually giving the speech, he had Botox done on his face, and he looked like Meatloaf From from that one music video where he's like a demon. I mean, it looked terrible.

Nick VinZant 33:45

Every once in a while, there's a celebrity that does some kind of celebrity, or a public figure, or however you want to define it, that does something to their face. And you're like, What the hell were you thinking that? Like, every once in a while, I remember that carrot top guy came back and, like, what? He didn't even look like a person anymore. Dude. Uh, Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, did something. I

John Shull 34:09

mean, yeah, like, what do you do then? Like, like, if it's an accident, you're just, I guess you gotta man up. You just have to keep going with their plans.

Nick VinZant 34:17

I don't know. Like, I would just pull a hammy like, oh, I sprained my leg or something like, I'm not going out there looking like that. I think that without getting into politics, because we are not a show that gets into politics, but I think that all of us can agree that there has to be some sort of consideration of what the hell is going on on on every direction you can go. Like, I don't know if it's the media that just is hyper focused all the time on any little thing that anybody says, like people misspeak. It happens all the time. You call Jim, John. You call John Jim. Like those things happens, not a big deal. But. Like, What the hell is going I cannot wait for this to be over. If I could be put into a coma and wake up in December, I absolutely would. All

John Shull 35:12

I'll say is, I can tell you from someone that is still actively in the media. Every day brings a variety of good stories, bad stories. It's it's going to be a wild ride till we get to November.

Nick VinZant 35:25

There is definitely something about the old adage that if you get a bunch of people together, we will always somehow find a way to make the worst possible decision. And that seems to sum up the state of American politics in every single direction, whichever way you want to go, the more people you have involved in decision, the worse that decision is going to be.

John Shull 35:50

Yeah. I mean, I don't think that's just politics. I feel like that can be applied to any decision for anything group of people,

Nick VinZant 35:56

the more people involved, the worse the decision will be. Okay, all right, let's

John Shull 36:02

move to something that's a a little fun here. Um, you're a museum guy, right? You like history,

Nick VinZant 36:10

not really. I mean, I like history, but I would never go to a museum. I like any even the word museum like I'm bored by the if I knew how to is it m, e, u or M, u e, how do you spell Museum,

John Shull 36:23

M, M, S, U M, E, M, U S, e, u m,

Nick VinZant 36:28

m, U S, I don't know. Dude, are you sure? Yeah, dude, museum,

Unknown Speaker 36:35

it's m,

Nick VinZant 36:37

U S, anyway, M, U S, e, u m, I am bored by the s in museum. By the time somebody gets to the second syllable of the word Museum, I'm already bored. All right, like you want to go to a music

John Shull 36:51

Well, what if I know? Hey, Nick, let's hop in the car and go to the pusium. And it's in Arizona, and apparently it is a pusium that specializes in poop.

Nick VinZant 37:09

They just, I don't know, I don't want to go see that at all.

John Shull 37:11

It has a variety of displays ranging from termite poop to massive poops that weigh 20 pounds.

Nick VinZant 37:20

What? Who's taking a 20 pound poop? I mean, probably elephants, elephant, that's probably massive. I don't, I don't ever want, I don't want to see poop at any at any time. Mean,

John Shull 37:31

once I feel like, I feel like, if you, if you've been a parent, or if you've been around a child, I mean, you're, aren't you? Like, kind of poop sensitized? I guess the word is,

Nick VinZant 37:42

I still don't want to see it, like, I'm not like I ever want to. I don't have a sense. Why

John Shull 37:46

not?

Nick VinZant 37:48

I wouldn't I mean, I don't have a sense of smell. Poop affects me in no way whatsoever. I still don't want to see it. I certainly don't want to go see like, fossilized poop, like, I'm just not really very interested in it. Although poop can tell you a lot about what's going on in your body? It's a very healthy medical tool, but I would never speaking

John Shull 38:05

of Healthy People. Britney Spears, apparently, is back at it, and yeah, this time, she got called out by another stable person that being the Osborne family, Ozzy and Sharon, and I just got to know, when's this going to stop with her? I mean, we all say she has some kind of psychological problem, right? But she's been doing this now. I think it's like a year where she just releases these videos of herself,

Nick VinZant 38:36

yeah, that's, that's like, like, to me, is that's become a train wreck, and I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to be a part of that. Like, I don't. I don't want to watch, like, I somebody who may or may not need mental health help. I don't like, I don't want to be any part of that.

John Shull 38:55

Yeah, I Yeah. I just don't. I guess some of the reason why I really brought up with I was surprised that the Osbornes would come out and just kind of voice their opinion on it when it's been happening for a year now. Like, why wait? You know, seven months into it to finally say something, it just and why say anything at all? It makes no sense.

Nick VinZant 39:14

What do they got look whenever you hear a celebrity say something about another celebrity, the ultimate question is, when's their next album, movie event coming up?

John Shull 39:22

Like, Hulk Hogan,

Nick VinZant 39:26

see, right? Like, that's just all they're doing. They're just, it's just pre promotion. Like, they don't really,

John Shull 39:32

what, what? Once again, not, not, not bringing politics into it, but Hulk Hogan, for everyone who thought he stood up on that stage and just did it for Donald Trump. Paul Cogan is on a national advertising tour right now for his beer. So, oh,

Nick VinZant 39:49

I mean, it's, it's, there's always a con man. There is always a con going on somewhere, right? Always, somebody's always selling something same as anything else you.

John Shull 39:59

Uh, all right, uh, in the cinema world, any interest in twisters?

Nick VinZant 40:08

I'm from Kansas, bro, I've seen real twisters. I've seen real tornadoes. Why would I want to go and see the movie, this fake stuff? What's also from classes. I'm from Kansas. Like, I don't care about, like, the movie Twister. I was, like, you ever seen the movie Twister? It's like, No, man, I'm from Kansas. I've seen a real one.

John Shull 40:27

All right, so tell me a story. Tell us a story. What's, what's the closest you've ever gotten to a tornado? And I don't mean like, you know, it was three miles away, you know, and you heard the sirens? Like, were you ever within where, like, you could see the the the funnel cloud coming at you?

Nick VinZant 40:46

Oh, yeah. Like, I don't know how many funnel clouds that I have seen. The closest that I have ever been to a tornado was 2008 maybe 2009 I was working as a news reporter in Kansas, and I was storm chasing, and I was in between two cities and driving towards Greenberg, Greensburg, Kansas. And as I got close to Greensburg, Kansas, I felt the back of the car start to go up, and then I ran over a telephone pole that was on the ground. And then eight people were killed by that tornado. So, oof, yeah. Now, don't

John Shull 41:25

you feel like a jerk. I mean, like, oh, you

Nick VinZant 41:28

never seen tornado. Yeah, I've seen a bunch of people killed by one. No, I

John Shull 41:31

didn't. I never said. I just wanted to know the story. I mean, it's a tragic story, but, man, that's a that's a crazy story. Oh,

Nick VinZant 41:38

yeah, those things are they? Usually aren't fatal. They're generally, not usually fatal because they like, there's something about, like, a big city or populated areas. They don't, usually don't. They'll stay away from them because the heat pushes them away. I don't know, I'm not a meteorologist. They just don't usually hit big cities, so they don't usually cause, cause a lot of damage. But they're not usually fatal, because people in Kansas are ready for them. But that one wiped out. Think it was 96% of the town. The only thing standing was a grain elevator, which is like made out of solid concrete. Literally, the whole town was destroyed,

John Shull 42:14

damn. All right. Well, I guess we'll have to,

Nick VinZant 42:16

I need to see your Twister movie, man, real life.

John Shull 42:22

Well, I'm not, I'm not going to go see it, actually, because I don't really want to see it. All right. Last thing here, this is Olympics related,

Nick VinZant 42:30

okay,

John Shull 42:31

uh, can you name the oldest gold medalist to ever win a gold medal at an Olympic Games, winter or summer? No. Oscar swan.

Nick VinZant 42:46

Can I guess the sport?

John Shull 42:50

Yes. Do you want to know older you try to guess the age and the sport I'm

Nick VinZant 42:54

guessing? Well, give me the I'm guessing, in his late 40s, early 50s. No. Older than that, older than that, yes, then it has to be something like archery or bad or shooting.

John Shull 43:09

It is shooting. Yes, yeah. I

Nick VinZant 43:12

mean, that you could do. I could see somebody doing that their entire life, I mean, until your eyes go bad, but then you just get glasses like I can see somebody being a gold medal shooter in their 80s. How old was he?

John Shull 43:24

So he was 64 when he won a gold medal, but he competed in the Olympics when he was 72 years old. Yeah. I mean,

Nick VinZant 43:34

that's not like a physical I'm sure it's physical, but it's not a physical sport. In the same way, like track and field as a physical sport. We had a person on here a couple of years ago that was a speed Walker, or race Walker, or whatever they're calling it. Now. They change the names every once in a while, and they said that actually people don't reach their prime until their 40s in that sport, that it's a much older sport, even though it's very athletic.

John Shull 43:59

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I could see that. I mean, this was deer shooting where they actually shot deer.

Nick VinZant 44:08

That was, oh, they actually shot the deer in the forest in the Olympics.

John Shull 44:15

From my understanding, they brought these deers to the range, and then would set them free and you had to shoot them.

Nick VinZant 44:23

Oh, that's a pretty can't do that now, peanut, it's

John Shull 44:28

not our fault. It's not my fault. Don't be angry at me. Look, we

Nick VinZant 44:33

have made progress in a lot of areas. Okay, that's why my general message too, no matter what the world seems like, we're doing all right, like you're doing fine, you're doing all right. We're all just doing the best that we can.

John Shull 44:49

Yeah, exactly sure. Are everybody,

Nick VinZant 44:51

everybody's just doing this is my philosophy of life. Now that I want to segue into this, nobody knows what we're doing. You. Nobody knows what they're doing in life, and we're all just doing the best that we can.

John Shull 45:06

Well, I feel like that's a perfect time to segue into our top five of this week. Okay,

Nick VinZant 45:10

okay, so our top five is the top five Summer Olympic sports, and we're going to name the sport, but then also, if applicable, applicable, you have to name the event in that sport, because a lot of them are like, okay, so it's this, like, say, track and field, but there's tons of events in track and field, so you gotta name the sport and then the actual event. What's your what's your number five?

John Shull 45:38

So I have two different running events on my in my top five. Oh, god, my number five is the 200 meter dash.

Nick VinZant 45:49

Oh, that's an interesting pick for your number five. Why? Why that's a big track and field event. So I used to run track and field in eighth grade, so I feel like I know a lot about track and field. That's not one of the more popular events. That's probably in the top 10 track and field events.

John Shull 46:12

That's okay. I mean, I feel like in the Olympics this and the other one, which I'll get to later, especially nowaday track. And once again, I only follow it on the outskirts. They're the quickest, they're the most intense. You literally can't mess up, usually. And the 200 or the 100, because you're done from the get go, if you have a bad start, it's over. It's just you have to be on your best in that moment to win it.

Nick VinZant 46:41

That's I would be so nervous to get that start right. My number five is diving, specifically the three meter springboard. I think that's just the coolest thing. Like the way they go up to it, they do the little bounce thing, they do the flips. They go in like, no splash. Like, to me, that is kind of an epitome of human ability, like, look what we can do.

John Shull 47:07

Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm gonna seem probably nonchalant in a couple of these things. I don't mean it to be that way. Diving, to me, is more of an art than it is a sport

Nick VinZant 47:20

that makes no sense. That makes no sense to me. How is it more of an art than a sport? Because

John Shull 47:25

you are judged based upon your entry into the water, in your in your form, going into the water, I'm not saying once again, I'm not saying that it's non athletic to be able to twist your body and do all those things, but a perfect dive is like a drop of water going into an empty cup, and it makes no sound like that's an art to me. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 47:49

kind of, I see a little bit what you're saying.

John Shull 47:52

It's like soccer, basketball, uh, golf, even those are sports, right? Yes, diving is a sport, but the way that the Olympics have made it, it's like figure skating, it's like gymnastics. It's almost an art within a sport.

Nick VinZant 48:08

I could see that a little bit what you were saying, okay, all right, that makes a little that makes more sense. I see what you're saying. Initially, I was going to be like, What are you talking about? But, like, I kind of get it that you have to perfect this. Yeah, I mean, what's your Go ahead?

John Shull 48:24

No, I was just saying it's, diving is kind of like sprinting. You only get one chance most times. Well, actually, you might get like, three attempts, but, you know, you really only get one chance right to pull off a perfect dive. And it's, it's pretty awesome. It's, it's quite, quite intense. I would imagine it's cool. What's number four? Oh, man, it gets so hard for me. But my number four, I'm gonna put fencing at number four. Oh,

Nick VinZant 48:55

I also have fencing as number four. But fencing I put in there is kind of like a combat sport tie, where I actually put it, my number four, fencing, karate wrestling and tae kwon do. I think all of those are kind of the same in the sense that, like, they're really cool to see, but I'm not going to sit there and watch the whole thing. Like, if I see two fencing matches, like, Alright, I got it, two karate matches, like, Alright, I got it.

John Shull 49:18

Yeah, I'm, you know, the reason why I put fencing kind of exclusively on the list is there's just something about the intensity of when they, you know, jab each other and they just scream, you know, like, once again, I'm not taking anything away from wrestlers, taekwondo, folks, you know, judo, that's also intense. But fencing, it's just you gotta be so fast and you gotta be precision. And it's, I, don't I just, yeah, just, it's amazing. All this amazing, if

Nick VinZant 49:48

anybody is interested in learning more, we interviewed a Olympic fencer, Jackie dubrovich,

John Shull 49:55

oh doobers,

Nick VinZant 49:56

she's going for it. She's going for gold. She's really good. Good. I think she got silver last time. So, I

John Shull 50:02

mean, go, Jackie. Jackie, what's your number three? Specifically, specifically, Summer Olympic related? I don't think this would be on my overall top five, but Summer Olympics specific, I gotta go with rowing. What?

Nick VinZant 50:30

Why that's so boring, like they're still rowing, it's not, and they're still rowing.

John Shull 50:36

It's not they're still rowing. It isn't, to me, it is intense. And I, I don't know why, but I, I'm just glued to the TV. What can be two? Man four. Man one. Person. I'm just interested in the television. Oh,

Nick VinZant 50:50

I don't find that that's one of those things that like, all right, tell me. Tell me a later, like, I that I have no interest in watching that whatsoever. That's like, the the 10,000 meters, like, all right, we're gonna be going around the track for the next 30 minutes. Stay

John Shull 51:08

tuned. You're really gonna think my number two is probably pretty boring then, but we'll see. Oh, but

Nick VinZant 51:14

if it's what you're hinting that it is, I've actually watched the entire thing before. There's a story behind that, if it's what I think you might mention. But if it's not, my number three is Ping

John Shull 51:27

Pong. Is awesome. My number two is table tennis.

Nick VinZant 51:32

Oh, sorry, I should be using the official table tennis. But, okay, the reason that I put table tennis, aka ping pong, on there is, I think it's one of the sports that clearly shows you how much better the Olympian is because some of those other sports, like archery or like, oh, maybe I could do that. Like, you don't really realize how much faster those people are, but when you see table tennis, you're like, Whoa. I can't do anything like that. They

John Shull 52:02

are incredible. I mean, they are amazing. It's, yeah, there's nothing else to say. They are incredible athletes. What's your

Nick VinZant 52:10

okay? So your number two is table tennis, yeah, my number two is gymnastics, but specifically the floor exercise.

John Shull 52:20

Okay? I, you know, I should have probably put gymnastics on the list. I did not have gymnastics

Nick VinZant 52:25

on the list.

John Shull 52:27

I do not at all. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 52:28

think you have to gymnastics is probably that might be the biggest thing at any Olympics. It's tough to tell if gymnastics is the biggest thing or if it's the most marketable thing.

John Shull 52:45

I think, I think we think it is just because it's an America and we always push, and rightfully so. We always especially push the ladies teams. But I don't, I don't think it's the most populous, and I don't think it's the, you know, I don't think it's the thing that drives the Olympics. I think swimming is more sought after than gymnastics. Oh,

Nick VinZant 53:05

swimming is, to me, is very boring. Like, I'm not interested in watching swimming. That's fair, like, it's just more like, it's just more efficient to run like, and there they go, and he's gonna be swimming for the next 20 minutes, back and forth,

Unknown Speaker 53:25

back and forth. Okay, back. Let

Nick VinZant 53:28

me know. How is Michael Phelps still competing?

John Shull 53:32

No, I don't think so. Thank you. Did

Nick VinZant 53:34

you compare the last Olympics? Yeah, uh, what's your number so are you ready for what's your number

John Shull 53:38

one? My number one is the 100 meter dash. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 53:41

that's, that's my number one, the 100 meter dash. I think that is the biggest. I think that that not only is that the biggest event at the Olympics, but that is the biggest test of athletic ability in the world. Like that is the ultimate like, If weight lifting didn't have weight categories, and you just had, like, the overall strongest person, I think that would be a big draw, but like, who's the fastest? Who's the fastest person in the world?

John Shull 54:12

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say what you said, but I will say that it is by far the most exciting, at least 10 seconds of any Olympic sport that's played. Probably, I don't think you have to be the best athlete. And once again, hold on, hold on. Obviously have to be. You have to be, you have to be a non human to be an amazing sprinter. But, I mean, I'm probably going to put triathletes above them. I'm probably going to put decathlon athletes above them, you know. I mean, problem is, there's such different disciplines, it's hard to really, you know, I

Nick VinZant 54:52

I think decathletes are generally considered to be probably the best athlete at the Olympics, because you have to be really good at a. Variety of things. I think they're generally considered to be the best overall athlete, but the fastest person on earth. Like, what would you be if you're Usain Bolt, you're the fastest person who has ever lived?

John Shull 55:12

I mean, once again, that we know of right? I mean, there's probably some guy or some girl and some country that probably runs a nine one that will just never get the chance to

Nick VinZant 55:24

I mean, if you're that fast, you're probably, I understand what you're saying. I feel like now you probably get through like, oh, that person's really, really fast, yeah, especially if you're the fast yo world. One

John Shull 55:39

thing that I think, go ahead, I'll say one thing that I think I love the most about the Olympics is, you know, watch it in a couple of weeks, or whenever the 100 meter final is for men and women, and see all the different countries represented like it. It absolutely is a corner to corner, you know, of the world competition. I mean, you're gonna have somebody from Botswana running against somebody from Jamaica. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's awesome. It's just an amazing, it's amazing.

Nick VinZant 56:10

It's also cool to me in the sense that, like, with some of those events where you'll have, like, but then one country dominates it. Like, I think Jamaica went 123, in some sprinting events, and there's only, like 100,000 people in Jamaica. It's not a super I think it's a fair. What's your honorable mention? Why I look up the population of Jamaica?

John Shull 56:31

Let's see. So I do have gymnastics, specifically the flora tuna. I also put on the pores, because I feel like that would just be, it's incredible when they do backflips and somersaults on that thing and still maintain their ballots. I just don't get it. What's the what's the population of Jamaica? 2.82

Nick VinZant 56:54

point 8, million. So that's a lot more people than I thought.

John Shull 56:56

Just a couple other things I have, water polo. Water Polo is always fun to watch for some reason, just because you never know what's going to happen. I'm a big fan. This is a newer sport, but skateboarding, I think that's pretty awesome to watch nowadays. And then the triathlon, Decathlon, all those athletes, the marathon, I'll watch the marathon.

Nick VinZant 57:23

I've actually watched the I thought that was going to be your number two. I've watched the entire marathon. It was when my son was born, and I had to be up really early, like watching him. But I watched the entire marathon. It was actually somehow kind of interesting, like, two hours of it like, Oh, they're still running. I

John Shull 57:39

mean, you that's a whole another conversation, just being able to run 26 miles at you know, in under three hours. Are you serious? They

Nick VinZant 57:50

run that in like I saw one thing where, like, That guy's world record pace, or whatever, was basically running at 13 miles an hour for two and a half hours. That might be all of the other Olympic feats are very impressive. But in terms of like, oh my god, I can't believe we can do that, that would probably be the marathon. Just like, how far and how fast people can run, that's incredible.

John Shull 58:14

It's not even fair. I can't even walk up my stairs without breathing heavy, and these guys are running 13 miles an hour for three hours.

Nick VinZant 58:21

Can you walk up your stairs yet? Or do you still have to? I

John Shull 58:24

can hobble. I'm hobbling. I'm getting there. Are

Nick VinZant 58:26

you in a boot? Do you have a boot?

John Shull 58:30

I am out of the boot. No, all right, yes, I'm out of the boot.

Nick VinZant 58:32

What do you think, though? How does it feel? Watching the Olympics meanwhile, you tore your calf muscle, running three steps, playing softball.

John Shull 58:44

Uh, I really have no feelings about it, because I'll become very depressed,

Nick VinZant 58:50

right? Like, here's the pinnacle of human athletic ability, and then here's this guy who tore his leg walking off a baseball mound.

John Shull 59:01

Yeah, I got nothing. You're absolutely there's no way to put it. You're absolutely right.

Nick VinZant 59:05

Okay, put the Winter Olympics in this okay, what do you think is overall, what did I don't know if there's any, for me personally, I don't think there's any winter Olympic sport that even comes close to the

John Shull 59:16

um, I don't think I yeah, I don't think anything. I don't think anything beats the 100, but some of those short track speed skating competitions would probably be short track speed skating would probably be in there a big fan of ice, luge, you know the luge? Oh

Nick VinZant 59:31

yeah, that's kind of cool. Downhill skiing. I could put the only Winter Olympic sports that I think would make a top five for me, of overall Olympic sports would probably be curling. There has to be a certain amount of like, oh, I never see this otherwise, outside of the Olympics, oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. Is, if you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. Really helps out. Help helps out the show, possibly with some speaking lessons, and let us know what you think are the best Olympic sports I I don't know how John doesn't have gymnastics on the list. To me, gymnastics and the 100 meter dash are one and two, but the other ones, that's what's cool about the Olympics. Like the other ones could be anything like I wouldn't really argue with very much if you put other ones in the top five. I.

Modern Pentathlete Olivia Green

Lasers, Swords, Horses, Swimming and Running. The Modern Pentathlon is one of the most unique Olympic Sports. Pentathlete Olivia Greens joins us as we talk the unique history of the Modern Pentathlon, training for five very different events and new changes to one of the oldest sports. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Movie Montages of All Time.

Olivia Green: 01:22

Pointless: 24:26

Top 5 Movie Montages: 46:13

Contact the Show

Olivia Green Instagram

Interview with Modern Pentathlete Olivia Green

Nick VinZant 0:00

Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode the wildest Olympic sport and movie montages.

Olivia Green 0:23

When I tell most people what's in the pentathlon, they say that's really random, such a random array of sports, when you come into the shooting range, you have to take your body to the opposite extreme of that. You have to calm your breathing right down. Calm your heart rate right down. This is my third year, and I'm still learning hard lessons, which are costing me competitions.

Nick VinZant 0:47

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show if you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because she participates in a sport that is just fascinating to me. It has lasers, swimming, swords, running, all of it. This is modern pentathlete, Olivia Greene, so the modern pentathlon like this looks like, to me, a wild mix of different events. How did these like? How did this come together?

Olivia Green 1:35

Modern Pentathlon is an old war sport, and basically it's designed for if you're in the military, you're supposed to be able to sword fight, ride a horse, shoot a gun, and then if you're being chased by someone, you have to be able to run away or swim across a river. Did the sports go together when I tell most people what's in the pentathlon, they say that's really random, such a random array of sports, but if you think about the skills that you would need to go to war, they actually fit together. So it kind of works like that. I need such an array of skills to be able to be the best at each discipline.

Nick VinZant 2:23

So how did you get into it?

Olivia Green 2:25

So when I was young, I used to run and swim a lot, and in the UK, we have these schools by AF ones, and it's just basically for school kids. You go and compete at running and swimming, and then it's basically modern pentathlon's way of recruiting people. So I did those competitions. Did quite well, and they had taster shooting sessions, taster fencing sessions, and I kind of liked it. I was like, This is so cool. I'm shooting a gun here and stabbing someone with a sword. I was Yeah, young me was absolutely loving it.

Nick VinZant 3:05

It does when you kind of think back to it, right, like early 19th century, like, Oh yeah, that makes complete sense. Maybe it's just now that it seems like kind of a more random mix of things. I guess it seems like a really interesting sport. Is it popular? Or is it not a super popular sport?

Olivia Green 3:24

I think it's more popular than people would imagine. The problem with it is, obviously, it's really time consuming doing five sports, and I would say the top level, there's quite a few of us, and it's really the standards really high, but I guess it kind of misses that intermediate level where, when you go to a run club, you see people with all sorts of abilities, but in pentathlon, you don't really get people, too many people doing it as a hobby. You get the odd few, but not so many people do it as a hobby. Yeah,

Nick VinZant 4:02

there's not like local events, like I can think of here in the United States, like we have local triathlons all the time. I don't it's kind of like you're either at the highest level or nobody's doing it. Yes,

Olivia Green 4:13

I think in the United States as well. I actually don't think Pentathlon is very popular. It's a lot more popular in Europe. Is

Nick VinZant 4:22

it a sophisticated sport? For some reason, to me, it seems like a like a gentleman or a gentle woman sport? Yes,

Olivia Green 4:28

I would say so. I would say so. I don't want to sound snobby or anything like that, and I want it to be as inclusive as possible. But yeah, it does feel a bit like that sometimes, just because to well, to get into pentathlon, you have to have some sort of money to be able to buy the kit and go to the training sessions. Obviously, I'm fully paid for now because I'm part of Team GB, so that's not a problem. Them. But when I was growing up, for my parents, they had to be. They've been so supportive, having to take me to all these different training sessions, because I absolutely loved it, and then I was always like, oh, I need a new epee for fencing, or I need some new trainers. And it definitely adds up,

Nick VinZant 5:20

yeah, and I could see that's one of the reasons, maybe, why it's not more popular. It's like there's a barrier to entry. But I think that there's a lot of sports that there's a barrier to kind of entry in that regard. So if we can, let's kind of go through the different sports. So for the fencing part, what are you doing for the fencing part?

Olivia Green 5:38

So the fencing is Epee fencing, and you fence there's three types of fencing. There's epee saber and Foyle in the Olympics, and yes, pentath one has Epee fencing. And in the Olympic Games, 36 athletes qualify, and you fence those athletes to one hit. So you just fence everybody to one so it's 35 matches, and it takes two and a half to three hours. Takes quite a long time, and you get points based on how many hits you've got. For example, if I had 18 hits and someone else had 17 hits, I would have five more points than them. And you just get five more points for every single hit that you get.

Nick VinZant 6:23

So, oh, I should have, should have done this, really from the beginning. But there's, is there an order to it? Like you always go, this, this, this, this, this, in terms of the sports Yes,

Olivia Green 6:31

there is yes. So I'll just talk about the Olympic Games format, because that's the easiest day one of competition is the fencing ranking round. So that's when you fence everybody to one hit, and then day two of competition will be the semi final day. So you ride, and that's a show jumping course of 10 jumps, about one meter 10. Then you do the fencing bonus round, then the swimming, which is 200 meters, and then the laser run, where you do five, six hundreds running with shooting in between. Oh,

Nick VinZant 7:14

you're doing the cross country running. So you run five or 600 meters, then you shoot, then you run, then you shoot. The

Olivia Green 7:21

total is five, six hundreds with four shoots. So it's 3k run total.

Nick VinZant 7:26

Do you carry the firearm or the laser, or whatever it is with you? Or do you just, no, it stays there. You

Olivia Green 7:31

grab it. No, you just leave it on a table. Which one of

Nick VinZant 7:36

like if you look at those events, which one would you say is the hardest event?

Olivia Green 7:40

They're all difficult in their own right, and I think different athletes find different sports more challenging than others. So I would say, for me personally, I find the shooting to be most challenging. Because when you run before a run race, and any runner will know this, yeah, adrenaline's really high, and you're ready to run hard. You're kind of shaking a bit with the stress. And then you run, and you kind of release adrenaline as you run, and your heart rate goes up, your breathing goes up. But then you have to, kind of, when you come into the shooting range, you have to take your body to the opposite extreme of that, you have to calm your breathing right down, calm your heart rate right down, not panic, try and decrease adrenaline so you're not shaking and just be totally and utterly focused on what you're doing and your process. So I find that change from being really pumped up to run hard to then the super focused, calm athlete, quite difficult to muster, to be honest. Is

Nick VinZant 8:46

there any kind of strategy in that regard? Like, okay, I could run faster, but then I will miss the shooting.

Olivia Green 8:53

I don't think it's a case of, if I run faster, I will be worse at the shooting. I think it's more you have to pace your run so you don't run out hard. But any you would do that in any running race as well. But I don't hold back on the run because I don't want to waste the seconds I want to win. So I go as hard as I can, over 3k basically, but about 2030, meters from the range, from the shooting range, I will slow down. I will shake my arm out. I have a thought process, which I go through as I come into the range so I'm in the correct headspace for when I pick up my gun, to make sure that I am focused. How

Nick VinZant 9:37

much time is usually going in between the time you stop running and then start running again. Like how long does that all take when

Olivia Green 9:44

you run into the shooting range, you want to take as little time as possible to take the first shot. You also want it to go in so you have to make sure that your sights are lined up and you're calm and collected. So you have to designate. Time for that, but you want to get your first shot off as quick as possible, and then it's five shots, so you have to hit the block of the target five times before you can move on. And you get 50 seconds. If you take 50 seconds, you time out, and then you just run anyway. But you don't want to spend 50 seconds there people generally a good target. Some of the best athletes have shot it down in six seconds.

Nick VinZant 10:27

So when you look at kind of just for a comparison sake, right, how well do modern penned athletes generally compare against the athletes who are doing individual events at the top right. So for example, the 200 meter you're swimming. What somebody who's swimming the 200 meter just in the swimming events? What are they swimming? Because

Olivia Green 10:51

pentathlon, it has a weighted point system, and it's more heavily weighted towards fencing and running than any other sport. So I would say the standard of fencing and running is the highest in pentathlon, because they are the most important. But everybody has strengths and weaknesses because it is five sports. So I'd say, like the top swimmer, for example, over 200 probably isn't far off Olympic standard for the 200 swimming, but you do get a range of abilities, so the average time will be quite a bit lower than the Olympic swimming 200 time we

Nick VinZant 11:37

had, I don't know if this episode will come out Before or after this, but we had a decathlete Track and Field decathlon. They do the 10 events. We asked him kind of the same question. He said, we're not at the top, but all of our times would be respectable. Like the 100 meter champion would look at my time and say, That's not world class, but that's pretty good. Would it be kind of the same? Yeah.

Olivia Green 12:02

So I'd say that on average, if you look at the average times, it's not Olympic standard, but you would look at it and think, yeah, that's, that's a really respectable time.

Nick VinZant 12:13

Is it a pretty consistent sport, like the people who are the best are usually always at the top, or can it be just all over the place, I

Olivia Green 12:22

think compared to other sports, it's not consistent with who's at the top, because there are so many variables with it, and there's so many elements to master, from technical to physical. And there, there is a certain amount of luck with the horse draw, because we don't ride our own horses.

Nick VinZant 12:41

You know, ride your own horse. You just, like, get somebody's random that can't be easy, though. Like, here's this random horse you've never had before.

Olivia Green 12:49

So there's a horse draw. So the competition hosts have to provide horses that can and they're all test jumps by their owners beforehand, so they can all do the course, they've proven that their horses are able to do the course. And then the horses all get a number, and basically there's a random draw of which athlete gets which horse. And then you have 20 minutes beforehand to warm up the horse and get used to how it rides and try and form a connection with it, and then you have to go and do the show jumping. That

Nick VinZant 13:24

makes it a lot more challenging. But even amongst that competition, even though all the horses pass the test, do the competitors kind of like, Yeah, but that's the good one.

Olivia Green 13:31

Horses are like humans. They all have different personalities, and they don't, you don't know what mood the horse is going to be on that day. You don't know. You might not ride them in the way that they're used to being ridden, and they might not like it. There's so much variability, because they're an animal at the end of the day, and you have to, I think it's really important that you form a connection with them in the 20 minutes that you have beforehand, because they're so sensitive, and if they sense that you're nervous or scared, that's more likely to influence how they perform.

Nick VinZant 14:09

Is that fair or unfair? Like, that's just how the sport is.

Olivia Green 14:13

That's just how the sport is, to be honest.

Nick VinZant 14:15

Can you, like, give them a carrot or an apple or something beforehand, like, Hey,

Olivia Green 14:19

I take polos sometimes, you know, the Polo mints, they're like, just little circular mints, basically. And I just, oh, like, a

Nick VinZant 14:27

little piece of candy, yeah,

Olivia Green 14:29

like, a little, you know, like, Do you know what a mint is? Like, a little mint?

Nick VinZant 14:33

Do you feel kind of crazy doing that? Or, like, no, everybody's doing that. Like, everybody's trying to do that.

Olivia Green 14:39

I am a crazy horse lady, to be honest, yeah, some people, yeah, some people don't. But I always ride well. In the past two years, I've been one of the most consistent riders on the world stage, I would say, so that always brings my score up. So. I'm just gonna keep doing what I what I do. It seems to be working for now. Is

Nick VinZant 15:05

there, like a prime age for most modern pent athletes like this, is when people are usually really good,

Olivia Green 15:11

I would say, particularly in the women, I would say late 20s, just because normally in other sports, it's early 20s, but because there's five disciplines to master, experience is so important in pentathlon, and yeah, I found in the past year, I'm 24 and I've just I'm still learning things. I've been on the international world circuit for this is my third year, and I'm still learning hard lessons which are costing me competitions. Basically,

Nick VinZant 15:48

how much like, what's your usual? Like, what's your training week or day or whatever? Like, how do you train for five different events?

Olivia Green 15:57

Yes, my week looks pretty hectic To be honest, I'd say we train. We do about three or four sessions a day, one day, for example, we fence in the morning for two hours. So that's fencing training. And then we swim train for about an hour and a half with some people before stretching and things like that. Then we have lunch, and then I normally have a nap for about an hour, and then I'll come back. I'll either have a fencing lesson with my coach, which normally lasts half an hour, or I'll shoot for do some shoot training for about 45 minutes, and then we'll have a run session in the afternoon, which we normally cover about 10, 11k, in that session, we are trained up. We train day after day, and we're all very fit, but the mental stress that a competition takes is so much more draining than training.

Nick VinZant 17:03

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions,

Olivia Green 17:06

yes.

Nick VinZant 17:07

What is your favorite event? What is your least favorite event?

Olivia Green 17:10

Favorite event is either running or horse riding, mainly because I'm good at them. Least favorite event shooting, because it's the most frustrating spot in the world.

Nick VinZant 17:28

That's one thing that I've never quite understood in terms of, like, shooting or archery. Like, once you got it, it seems like you should have it, right? But like, why is it more complicated than that? Because to me, it seems like, okay, you can do it. I hit the target. We'll just do that same thing again. But why is it more difficult than that?

Olivia Green 17:47

I think with shooting, it's so psychological, and dealing with pressure and shakiness, basically, nerves, is just really difficult for me in the shoot, and I feel as if some sports, you work hard, you get your award. And I don't feel like that's the case with shooting. It is something that you either have or don't have, and it's really hard to be to have it, to try and have it, if, like me, I've really struggled with shooting, and I'm finding it really hard to improve, because it's just not something that you can work hard at. And it improves. You have to be really clever about training for it.

Nick VinZant 18:34

Is there an ideal body type? And I think what they mean in the sense is that, like, Okay, if you were going to design a modern pentathlete, they're going to be this tall, they're going to be this big. I

Olivia Green 18:46

think Modern Pentathlon is one of the most varied sports for body type. So quite often you look at runners and you see they're absolutely ripped, they're really lean, and you kind of see that generic body type. But I would say Pentathlon is really quite varied, just because, I guess there are different things, and if different people are better at different things, they might have a body type that suits that their best event more. But I would say you have to be quite strong to be a bent athlete. We spend quite a bit of time in the gym. Just our bodies need to be robust to deal with the amount of training that we have to deal with so we don't get injured. Okay,

Nick VinZant 19:27

if you could switch out an event, what event would you get rid of? What event would you bring in?

Olivia Green 19:35

Well, I'd definitely get rid of shooting. But it's funny, you should ask that question, because basically at the last Olympics in 2021 the Tokyo Olympics, there was a big fuss about the riding, animal rights and things like that. And there was this incident with a German girl who was. Kind of crying on the horse, she was in the Olympic gold medal position, and if she'd had a good ride, she would have won the Olympics, basically. And the horse, she wasn't getting on with the horse for whatever reason, I think it had been upset by a rider that had been up, that had ridden it previously. And essentially, there was a big uproar about riding. So the international body of pentathlon, the kind of governance of pentathlon, decided to get rid of horse riding out the sport, and replace it with obstacle course racing. So this comes into effect in 2025 after the Olympic Games. So after this Paris Olympics, horse riding is gone, and it's the introduction of OCR. That seems

Nick VinZant 20:50

like a huge switch. That seems like a totally different kind of thing. Yes, I

Olivia Green 20:56

think it's really sad, because I think there's a lot that could have been done over the years to improve standards of horse riding, improve everything, basically from athlete welfare to horse welfare to just so many different things that could have been done. And the governance of Pentathlon the international board kind of just did nothing, and they've just sat back for years, and then they've kind of gone once there's been a big problem. They've been like, right? Well, let's just take out the sport and do something else we can't be bothered to deal with it. So yes, there was a bit of an uproar from the athletes, because we were like, What are you doing? This is a sport that we've been training for for so long, and it's just not it's been like this is the sport. It's been like this for 100 years. It's one of the old, oldest Olympic Games sports. It's a really traditional sport. And I know there's so many more modern sports coming in now, so it'd be nice to have the contrast between the modern sports at the Olympics and a really traditional sport. But it's kind of, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like taken, like, this modern twist, I guess. And yeah, no more horse riding from after this Olympic Games.

Nick VinZant 22:16

That seems to me as an outsider, right? Like, that's a totally different thing. You know, it's not like, All right, we're gonna switch out the 1500 meter run for a 2000 meter run. That's like, Okay, we're gonna switch out horse riding for boxing or for weightlifting. Like, that's totally diff. Do you think that will just completely change the dynamic of the way that the sport is,

Olivia Green 22:42

yeah, it does just make it a whole different sport, really. And I do think it's going to change the dynamic of the sport, because one of the most exciting things to watch in the pentathlon was the ride, the ride, and the laser runner definitely the best things to watch. So hopefully they can. I've kind of got over it now, because this went through about a year ago, but I'm just hoping that they can make the obstacle course racing really interesting and really engaging for a new population of athletes. Basically,

Nick VinZant 23:18

oh, miss this one. What is the first thing someone says when they find out you're a modern pentathlete?

Olivia Green 23:26

What's that?

Nick VinZant 23:29

Yeah, I would say, so. Is there, is there a country that you'd say this country? This is the country for modern pentathlon. They love it more than anybody else.

Olivia Green 23:40

Probably Hungary. It's a really random sport in a random place, but I think Hungary as

Nick VinZant 23:47

a history major in college, for some reason that makes complete sense to me. Yeah, it seems like that kind of old world sport, so to speak. Yeah, I want to thank Olivia so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media accounts. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. And if you want to see Olivia do some of this events that we talked about, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on July 18, at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. So what facial change like, in terms of you could never imagine yourself growing facial hair or getting like an ear piercing, dyeing your hair, like, what kind of change to your physical appearance? Because you never imagined doing probably

John Shull 24:45

getting Botox or something, or filler, you know, something put into my body that's not supposed to be there to make me look younger, or cure wrinkles, or something I just, I don't think I will ever entertain that.

Nick VinZant 24:59

I don't. I could ever get any kind of piercing like I could never imagine myself with like, pierced ears or a nose ring. I could never see myself doing that.

John Shull 25:11

I mean, I've been, I've been in the chair for for piercings and tattoos, and have backed out every time. So I think, I think I could, for sure, get piercings, without a doubt,

Nick VinZant 25:24

you've backed out twice, though. Yeah, the

John Shull 25:27

piercing was over a girl, or with a girl, rather. And at the last second, I was like, do I really want my ear pierced? You know, and I know that they can close up over time, but you know, in the moment, you're like, man, is she going to be around in a year? I'm going to have this hole in my ear. Like, what am I going to do? Oh, were

Nick VinZant 25:45

you just going to do one ear? Are you going to do both? I was

John Shull 25:49

just going to do one ear at the time. Hmm,

Nick VinZant 25:52

yeah, I wouldn't do that for a girl. I don't think I could get a piercing for a girl. I don't think that I would do anything for anybody else in that regard, like get this tattoo for me? Nope.

John Shull 26:06

So how would you feel? So the wife and I are watching this show on Netflix right now called sprints, and it's about, you know, obviously sprinters, Olympic sprinters, and the 2020, Olympic champion in the 100 meter dash, his wife has their their kids names tattooed on her body, but she has their son's name across her neck. Like, is that a little weirder, or is that just me? I

Nick VinZant 26:30

thought that was his name. I've seen this, and I wasn't sure. But then if you What about the other children? That's what I don't understand. If you're gonna get one kid's name tattooed across your neck, which is highly visible, then where do you get the other kids? Like, oh, sorry Tim, but you're down, like on the lower calf. Like you're kind of, you're saying which kid is your favorite? Essentially, by where you get them tattooed on your body.

John Shull 26:54

Well, I think she has, like, the son's name on her forearm or something, I don't know, but it's just or the daughter's name on her forearm. I just don't know why you have, like, one on your neck and the other one's, like, on a forum. I don't get it.

Nick VinZant 27:08

I guess, for me personally, I don't need that much of a reminder that I have children. Like, oh no, I remember that. I have a kid. I don't need to, like, oh yeah, Tim. I got it right. Okay, that's his name. Like, I don't need that much of a reminder. Whatever people want to do, man, it's your body. Do what you want

John Shull 27:25

with it. I that is one thing I don't think I'll ever do is tattoo someone's name on my body. No,

Nick VinZant 27:32

I don't even think that you could pay me enough money. I mean, if we're talking like a billion dollars, like, Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Would you okay? How much money would it cost for you to tattoo another man's name on your forehead,

John Shull 27:46

like, just like a random name? Do they just have meaning? Is it just a random their names,

Nick VinZant 27:54

their name, and it has to say property of how much would you how much money would it take for you to get property of another man's name on your forehead?

John Shull 28:08

Oof, I mean, I'm probably not going to work ever again if, no,

Unknown Speaker 28:12

I mean, I mean,

John Shull 28:15

it would have to be at a starting point of like 20 million.

Nick VinZant 28:18

You would it'd have to be enough money that you would never work again for your life, and that anyone who knew you would immediately understand that, like, I got paid this much money. That's why I did this. It have to be like 50 million, which is probably 20 million in cash. I would do that for

John Shull 28:39

though. I will tell you that if I was gonna get any man's name tattooed, your name would be up there. So imagine

Nick VinZant 28:45

having property of Nick right?

John Shull 28:50

No, I couldn't, actually,

Nick VinZant 28:52

I don't think I could ever. Yeah, it would have to be a lot. You might have to be 100 million plus.

John Shull 28:59

Yeah, because nobody could.

Nick VinZant 29:00

And I think that somebody would kind of raise a question if you were in the double digit millions, but if you were in triple digit millions, I don't think anybody's asking you a question like, Why do you have that tattoo? Got paid 100 million for it? Oh, okay,

John Shull 29:13

I know, right. Like, yeah, why do you get that? I don't know. I got paid like, 400 million for it. So suck it.

Nick VinZant 29:20

Yep, agreed. Alright. Well, let,

John Shull 29:24

let's give some some shout outs to names that we're not going to tattoo on our foreheads, but still deserve recognition. So we'll start with Jackson Bailey, skip Mick friendly, don't get a lot of skips anymore. Hudson Turner, Evan Wiley, Sydney, Fisher, Nicole Anderson, Aurora churnoff, I like a good Aurora, like, I feel like that's,

Nick VinZant 29:49

that's a good name, very

John Shull 29:50

popular name nowadays. Yeah, there's

Nick VinZant 29:52

not a lot of them.

John Shull 29:55

Santiago casillo, and let's see. We'll end here on. Rena Zanny, appreciate all of you this week. Okay,

Nick VinZant 30:03

I don't think that skip is a lot like I don't think that you would ever name your child skip as a first name. That has to be like a nickname ish kind of thing.

John Shull 30:13

Yeah, I don't I skip has to be definitely a nick. It cannot be your first name. Actually, how many like famous skips? I don't even think I know a skip other than a baseball player.

Nick VinZant 30:25

Skip to my Lou, he was like a street ball player back in the day. Can you see that I took my son to karate camp today, and that when he got back, I asked him, like what he learned, and he kicked me right in the face. Can you see the mark that he left right in my face from getting kicked in the face by my son after karate camp.

John Shull 30:45

Oh, is that the, is that the mark right there before on your forehead? There right in

Nick VinZant 30:47

the middle of the forehead, right in the middle of the forehead. It was a good it was a good kick. I'll give him that. I figured we

John Shull 30:54

try something a little different now that we're doing, you know, live shows. Oh, okay, maybe we would just talk about current events. I don't

Unknown Speaker 31:01

know see

John Shull 31:02

what happens. So I picked up 567, 12 topics, and we'll either breeze through them or spend 12 hour talking about them. I'm not sure.

Nick VinZant 31:10

Okay, okay, okay. So I feel

John Shull 31:13

like we need to, we need to at least bring up three deaths that happened this past weekend, and I would hope you know who they are. Uh, Richard Simmons, Dr Ruth and Shannon Doherty

Nick VinZant 31:28

all like icons in their own way, right? They were all iconic at a certain point in people's lives. I think Dr Ruth is a little bit before my time. She's somebody that, like, Oh, I knew who that person was. Richard Simmons was somebody that, I mean, like, that was just a dude, like, enjoying his life. I don't know what happened towards the end of it, like something went on, or there was all kinds of confusion. And then Shannon Doherty was what she was. They were all iconic in their own way.

John Shull 32:03

Well, Shannon Doherty, I think, got got her break, or became famous on Beverly Hills, 90210, and then she, yeah, Charmed, yeah. I was actually, I was trying to figure out what happened to Richard Simmons, like he kind of went into a state of depression, and just like never surfaced. There

Nick VinZant 32:21

was something with his family. I don't know. It was all a confusing situation that like, what exactly was going on. People didn't know where he was. I don't know, and I could look it up, but I'm not gonna. It's probably best

Unknown Speaker 32:37

that you don't. I wouldn't

Nick VinZant 32:38

say they were, well, he was probably Richard Simmons, who was the other ones, who are the others who died,

John Shull 32:45

Dr Ruth and Shannon Doherty. Richard

Nick VinZant 32:49

Simmons, the most famous of those. Then probably Shannon Doherty, then Dr Ruth, but Dr Ruth was very influential in terms of, I think that she was kind of like Dr Spock, like introduced people on how to do things like, Oh, she was a voice for that cause, so to speak. Yeah,

John Shull 33:06

I think Dr Ruth is probably the most influential and popular of the three. Richard Simmons started a whole like, he made exercising and caring about your diet cool when it like, didn't have to be right in the 80s, yeah, dancing and jazz, you did something.

Nick VinZant 33:23

I don't know if I would go cool, but he brought it to people in detention. Like, I never looked at Richard Simmons. Other people may do what you like, but I never, personally, Richard sim looked at Richard SIMMON and be like, I want to be like that. But other people were, I mean, I mean, he was motivational, man, anything. Look doing anything is better than doing nothing.

John Shull 33:42

Hey, the three keys of losing weight, love yourself, portion control and and be active every day. The Richard Simmons playbook right there for you.

Nick VinZant 33:53

Yeah, that's pretty much. That's a good advice. I mean, that would work. That would work. All right,

John Shull 33:57

let's see here. Uh, soccer for a second, just for a second gone two things so the euro and Copa America tournaments just wrapped up. For all you sports fans out there, don't know why those are Spain has a 16 year old superstar, and I can't even imagine I was playing Pokemon at the age of 16. This kid is scoring goals on the biggest stage. It's insane. Apparently he was recruited when he was four years old.

Nick VinZant 34:24

That's that's a little much here. That's incredible. Here's my thing about soccer. I don't care about soccer. I don't care about soccer. And I don't think that the rest of the world should really think that they're hot for how they do in soccer. Because if we wanted, if the United States wanted to be the best country in the world at soccer. We would be the best country in the world at soccer. All of our best athletes are doing other things, but if we took our best athletes and had them play soccer, you're not stopping some guy running a four two down the a 422, 20 pound guy like the rest of the world is good at soccer. Only because we have decided not to be that's why, that's my soccer thing. If we wanted to, we would be the best. We don't want to.

John Shull 35:07

I disagree. But anyways, disagree.

Nick VinZant 35:10

We have the best athletes in the world. The United States has the best athletes in the world. Would you that there's other countries that I think can have just as good as athletes, but I would say that, on average, the US has the best, best athletes in the world, whether that's for whatever reason or training. I don't think other countries are touching us. We're bigger. I mean, like we got three, 50 million people. It's a size thing.

John Shull 35:33

I think it's hard to argue, though, because, you know, but take away American football, basketball is pretty competitive, especially with some European nations, Australia. Um, if you, if you want to do rugby, like we get our ass beat and rugby, which is kind of football without pads, but we wouldn't

Nick VinZant 35:53

be if we took our football players and had them play rugby, yeah, that's where you kind of lose that like that, yeah, but okay, I think that being big and strong and fast works out in just about every sport

John Shull 36:11

except for soccer. I mean, where you have to be finessed sometimes tall and skinny and quick. What are

Nick VinZant 36:17

you gonna do when six foot eight LeBron James comes down, and they're just like, just kick it up in the air, and I'll get it like you're not. What are you going to do to that?

John Shull 36:27

Listen, I'm not. I'm not disagreeing with you. And as American myself, of course, I want to you know, but to say that we could be the greatest at I just, I don't, just, I don't, I don't agree with that. I'm

Nick VinZant 36:39

gonna go ahead and say that if we took all of our best athletes and decided, You know what, let's really invest in soccer, we would be the best. Within five years, we would be the best. It's like we're one of the biggest countries. It's just a population thing. We have more people to choose from.

John Shull 36:58

All I'm gonna say is, India has a billion people, and they are not good at soccer at all.

Nick VinZant 37:05

Well, who knows what's going on over there, right? Like, I'm not in depth, they're playing cricket, man, I think they like cricket. Anyways,

John Shull 37:12

this they do. The second part of this was, uh, Sunday night's final. The Copa America final had to be delayed two hours because Columbia fans and Argentina Argentinian fans literally broke down the gates of the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami to get into the stadium. It got so bad. And this is per reports. I didn't fact check this, but per reports that security was not checking people for weapons. They weren't. They weren't scanning tickets. They just let everybody in because they couldn't control it. This is an American stadium less than two years out from us hosting the

Nick VinZant 37:49

World Cup. Wait, that was here in the United States that happened? That was in Miami. Oh, yeah, they should have known better than that. Like, because we're not that is one thing that I do, I would say, is that I don't think that people in the United States understand how much people in other places like soccer and how into it that they are in other sport like we don't have a level of fandom of any sport that rivals Other countries, love of soccer.

John Shull 38:21

Yeah. I mean, I, I think because we re once again, if as a nation, if we loved soccer, we could rival it, but I feel like we're so regionalized, right? Like, with sports. Like, if you're a Detroit Lions fan, you're a Detroit Lions fan, you're not a Seattle, you know, Seahawks fan. Like, the you know what? I mean, the whole country was a Seattle Seahawks fan. Like, imagine how crazy it would be if they actually ever won anything.

Nick VinZant 38:44

Yeah, we don't have the same level of passion, and we're not used to it, like we don't. We're not that into it. We don't realize that, like, how much other countries love soccer. That was we messed that one up is pretty much what it goes down to.

John Shull 39:00

Let's move on to to the dumb criminal of the day. Oh, I

Nick VinZant 39:04

do love a dumb criminal. Uh, Aiden Studer,

John Shull 39:07

18 years old, from New Hampshire, arrested and charged with pushing over a porta John that contained a four year old and her mother, uh, according to the police report, the mom and the four year old obviously were inside when the Porta Potty was tipped over a kid, and when they came out, they were both covered in feces.

Unknown Speaker 39:33

That's a bad day.

Unknown Speaker 39:34

That's a bad day

Nick VinZant 39:36

when you go into a porta potty. Do you ever wonder, like, what would happen if you fell in there.

John Shull 39:42

Yeah. I also always think about like, first off, it's It's difficult enough to get your kid to go to the bathroom and then to get them to use a porta potty and then some little shit. No offense. Aiden might actually be a cool kid, I have no idea. But regardless, then somebody comes along and flips the Porta Potty. I think I would be, I would be irate.

Nick VinZant 40:02

I would Oh, yeah. That's one of those things where, like, you are, if they park a car in front of you, you feel like you're gonna tear through the car. Like, just pure unbridled rage, like,

John Shull 40:17

yeah, just Oh, you're going

Nick VinZant 40:19

after something. You can't do that. Why did she tip? Did she know that they were inside? Did she do it on purpose? Yeah. I mean, obviously she tipped it over on purpose. But did she know who was inside? Like a

John Shull 40:30

he and yes, yeah. Apparently he didn't know who was inside, but he knew what he was doing and that there were people inside

Nick VinZant 40:37

that. That's one of those kind of things where, like, Look, if he just gets a public beating, nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna feel bad for that. I would just lay there and like, Alright, everybody come for it. Oh, you feel so terrible. Yeah.

John Shull 40:50

I mean, if you know, to a kid, I presume he's a dumb kid, right? A dumb you know, he made a mistake. But it's like, man, being a parent, if I was in that situation, man, you just see red. And I feel like every other parent would agree in that situation, like, Oh, if you're not covered in the blue dye stuff and shit, like, it's over, you're going, you're going after somebody,

Nick VinZant 41:14

yeah, that's, that's, oh yeah, you're, you're moving Heaven and Earth for that one poor kid. Oh, son, somebody does something nice for him.

John Shull 41:22

Uh, let's see. There is a Dutch startup company that apparently is trying to develop a fully electric plane. I'm

Nick VinZant 41:31

not going to be the first one on it, right, which, like any kind of technology, I'm not going to be the first or the 1,000th, or wait till the millionth.

John Shull 41:43

Once again, politics aside, as a new, newer, new owner of an eV myself, it's actually kind of cool, like I'm kind of a fan, and I was never against them. I was hesitant, but so far so good. So if I was offered one of the first rides on this EV plane whenever they come out, or whenever, whatever, I probably do it. Why not sure put me on there? Beat me up. Scotty, I

Nick VinZant 42:08

mean, I agree, right? Like, I'm all about embracing technology. I'm just not going to be the first one to do it. I'm just like, let's make sure we got that down before I'm getting on the plane. What if, 10

John Shull 42:19

years from now, we are sponsored by this Dutch startup company, and they go, Nick and John, you guys can be on the first plane ride ever make history. Would you do it?

Nick VinZant 42:31

Yeah, man, somebody's giving me a check that changes a lot. Like, oh yeah, I'll do that. But can I have like, a parachute?

John Shull 42:39

Oh, my God, man, just in case. Let's see here. I thought this was interesting for all you climate folks out there. Apparently it's been proven that the melting polar ice caps is changing the way the Earth spins, which is making our days longer. So really, by us not taking care of the earth, the earth is like F you, I'm gonna make your days longer.

Nick VinZant 43:03

I would say, without getting into the left or the right or any kind of politics or any kind of viewpoints in that regard, don't mess with the planet like we're gonna lose that battle. And I think that sometimes people maybe get a little bit they forget what we're really talking about, we're not worried about the earth, the earth is going to be here. We're worried about our ability to live on the earth. Those are two different things, right? Don't mess with the planet, because nature's going to hand you your ass.

John Shull 43:34

Yeah, right. That's the thing. Nature's always going to find a way, always going to rumble us.

Nick VinZant 43:39

I just general against messing with the planet in any way, whatever that way is, don't mess with it.

John Shull 43:45

Like a week ago and my power just went out for no reason, just because

Nick VinZant 43:48

you live in Detroit, dude. And is it even considered to be a is it a third world country? One last, one last

John Shull 43:57

thing here, and this one just caught my eye because the headline. But apparently, along the Atlantic coast here in the United States, they are using drones to search for sharks, because they've had some shark attacks recently. Well, apparently it's not about what you see on the ground, but what's coming through the air and hitting these drones, which are birds. Seagulls are attacking these drones, sometimes breaking them and ruining them 1000s of dollars just destroyed by a friggin Seagull, which may be the most annoying bird bird on the face of the planet.

Nick VinZant 44:33

I live in Seattle. I live fairly close enough to the water where seagulls will kind of make their cell ways in. They're huge. They're big birds. I mean, I don't know how much a bird weighs comparatively, but you look at it and you're like, I bet that thing weighs like 30 pounds again, man, don't mess with nature. Like, don't mess with it, right? Birds. Birds can bring down a plane. They're gonna, really gonna do a drone.

John Shull 44:57

Well, next week, I'm, we're gonna top. About something that I didn't get to look up, but seemed cool. And hippos, apparently can jump pretty high, and I didn't realize that that,

Nick VinZant 45:06

yeah, these powerful animal. Man, they look like they're big and fat, but they're not. They're a lot of muscle. If you ever get a chance look up a picture of a pic hippo like what it would look like if its skin didn't look like that, if it wasn't so thick, and it's basically a beast, like it's an animal. Man,

John Shull 45:20

those things are not about anything. Take away my fat and I look like a must, no, but like you,

Nick VinZant 45:27

yeah, well, no, but I'll give you. I'll give you that. But like, don't mess with a wild animal. Man, you're going to lose, I would lose a fight for my life with any animal over 45 pounds. Yeah,

John Shull 45:42

you said 40 you say 4500 or 4545 oh, I don't know about 45 I mean, I

Nick VinZant 45:49

think a wild animal. I'm not talking about a dog. Like a wild animal you think you're gonna beat a 45 pound Fox think is gonna kill you if it wants to.

John Shull 46:01

Let's have unfair advantages four legged animals. Like, how are we supposed to defend against four legged you can't. You can't do it. Well,

Nick VinZant 46:07

not without technology, no. Like, we're losing that fight. Okay. Are you ready? Are you done?

John Shull 46:14

I yeah, let's this one please. Y'all enjoyed it, and it should be an interesting top five for sure. So

Nick VinZant 46:21

our top five is top five movie montages, only talking about evaluating a movie based on the Montage itself, not the quality of the entire movie, but how good is the Montage itself. What's your number five?

John Shull 46:36

It pains me to put this on the list, but I feel like when you're talking about movie montages and memorable scenes. This one has to be on there. So my number five is the volleyball scene from Top Gun. Oh,

Nick VinZant 46:54

yeah, okay, I'm not gonna. I think five is the right place for that. I think, I think if you're going to put it on the list five, is the right place for it. It's not on mine, but it is probably the most memorable part of a very memorable movie.

John Shull 47:12

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it obviously gets a lot of criticism for a lot of things, but it's just memorable. I mean, it's just a memorable montage. And agree too. By the way,

Nick VinZant 47:23

I would agree with that. My number five is Scarface, the push it to the limit scene, okay, where he's building the business he's getting the money. Ooh. That makes you want to, that makes you want to engage in that lifestyle.

John Shull 47:37

You know, that's a funny. It's funny you bring up Al Pacino, because I feel like him and Robert De Niro, when they do end up, you know, passing away, we're going to look back on their career and their lives and be like, Man, they really did some great work. Like they've, they've contributed a lot to, like, cinema and and, you know, theater and things

Nick VinZant 47:56

they have, interestingly enough, I would say, like throughout their careers, really had great movies. Where somebody else that you would have said a couple of years ago that really had great movies would have been like Brad Pitt, but he's really fallen off. He hasn't had a lot of like, really great movies. And up until Oppenheimer, I would make an argument that you could say that about Matt Damon, George Clooney, you could say that about too like, their careers haven't been as good for as long as those two guys,

John Shull 48:25

well, and yeah, I mean, I agree De Niro and Pacino six. I mean, they were successful in any kind of role like, and I know the other actors kind of too, but like all encompasses, like Tom Hanks, like you might as well for me, put De Niro and Pacino just up there with Tom Hanks because, you know, they're great in almost any role they're in. They've done some shitty movies, but almost every other movie is good.

Nick VinZant 48:51

Yeah, they've done some, they had some, like a phase that they went through, but overall, the the length of their career is pretty good, like they've done pretty well throughout the length of their career. What's your

John Shull 49:06

number four? So I was looking at some other lists, and I wasn't going to put this on my top five list. But then I decided, You know what it is, catchy. I still find myself singing the jingle to this day, and that's a Team America. America, yeah,

Olivia Green 49:21

yeah. That's

Nick VinZant 49:22

a good one. That's a good one because it was a parody of a montage and it was a montage at the same time,

John Shull 49:28

yeah, and it's, once again, if you've seen the movie, you know the jingle and you know the song, and it's just, just lives rent free in my head for the most part. Okay,

Nick VinZant 49:38

my number four, I'm gonna go a little bit out of left field here. I'm gonna go Devil Wears pride. Devil Wears Prada. Devil Wears Prada where she's, like, classing it up, and she's learning how to dress. I don't care at all about clothing or fashion, but I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Devil Wears Prada. I'm gonna throw it out there is

John Shull 49:56

that in the beginning of the movie where, like, she's just coming in. To the to the city, and just dealing with, no,

Nick VinZant 50:03

I think it's like, if it's, if it's an hour and a half, it's maybe like 30 minutes in,

John Shull 50:09

that's my guess. Maybe for the beginning, it's

Nick VinZant 50:11

not that's like a little bit closer to the it's in the middle. It's in the middle, between the beginning and the middle.

John Shull 50:16

Okay, all right, fine. Uh, my number three, and man, this was the toughest number to do, because my one and two are pretty much, I feel like they're interchangeable, okay, but my number three, I put down. I put Ghostbusters.

Nick VinZant 50:31

I don't remember the thing in Ghostbusters at all. Oh

John Shull 50:35

yeah, it's, it's the scene where, you know, where Ray Park, where that song is first introduced, and they're driving through the streets and the in the, you know, the Ghostbuster mobile. And it's awesome.

Nick VinZant 50:46

Yeah, I don't remember it. I don't remember at all. That's why don't it. Doesn't it speaks to me the quality of the montage that I do not remember a montage scene in there at all. Um, my number three is Requiem for a Dream. Okay? That montage basically ensured that while I would finish that movie, I would never watch that movie again.

John Shull 51:08

Okay, I mean, that's that is up there with, like, for me, if I had to compare it like the Kill Bill montages, like, where they're just so violent and just so crazy, yeah, just different that you look back. Okay, I saw it once, but I don't think I have to watch it again. What

Nick VinZant 51:26

movies have you watched and enjoyed? But said I could never watch that again. If you need a moment, I can think of a couple that I've seen, uh Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, girl with the something, something, whatever the ending of that was. I was like, prisoners. I think it was like a Hugh Jackman movie that I was like, Oh, that was good. I will never, ever watch that again.

John Shull 51:49

I mean, I'm gonna go out and live here and say pretty much any DC or Marvel movie, like once I've seen them once, I don't need to see them again. I would

Nick VinZant 51:59

agree with that. I would never watch the whole movie, but I'll watch YouTube clearly. YouTube clips of it.

John Shull 52:04

Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, maybe Guardians of the Galaxy, I'll re watch but like, Avatar, like those movies, I don't need to rewatch them, like I've seen them once. You know, I don't need to see them again.

Nick VinZant 52:14

What movie Have you seen the most amount of times?

John Shull 52:19

That's not a child's movie, not a kids movie,

Nick VinZant 52:21

right? Like a movie that you've watched the most, the highest number of times.

John Shull 52:25

It's going to be a tie, and it's going to be either Titanic or Jurassic Park.

Nick VinZant 52:34

I've never seen Titanic. That's why I refuse to watch it, because people talk about Titanic. Mine's a different one. Mine's the gentleman. Just an easy movie to watch, right? Well, if you're going through Netflix, I'm like, okay, I can watch that. It's pretty easy. It's easy. You don't have to think it's entertaining enough, but smart enough that you don't feel like

John Shull 52:52

an idiot. I don't think I've ever seen that, to be honest with you. Oh, it's

Nick VinZant 52:56

a good movie, man. You should see that.

John Shull 52:59

Uh, alright, my number two for all time movie montages, I put the the Rocky series. But if I have to get specific, I'll say rocky four.

Nick VinZant 53:12

I don't understand how that's your number two.

John Shull 53:16

My number one's a dark horse, but it's, it's, it's my number one. And it's actually, I think it's a good number one when I talk

Nick VinZant 53:22

about it, okay, I'll do my two in one, because you kind of already brought it. My number two is the Godfather The Baptism scene when he kills all of his enemies. That's a great movie montage. Like, oh, that's really good. And I would almost say it's so good that you can't count it as a montage, even though it is kind of a montage. But my number one is, I don't understand how anything isn't, how you ever even hold any kind of candle to Rocky four. I don't if that movie was just that montage. I would still it'd still be a great movie,

John Shull 53:57

all right. Well, and all of that, my number one is the movie up.

Nick VinZant 54:02

Oh, sad though

John Shull 54:06

it is, but it, but it's, it's, it's, it is sad, but it kind of lays out the entire movie in three minutes. It's well done. It gives you the feels, and anyone who struggled in fertility or anything like that, like, it's, it just hits home and like, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a montage out of everything. I could watch my my top five over and over, but I could probably have that on repeat, and I don't think I would ever get tired of watching it.

Nick VinZant 54:31

That's too sad for me. Man. I don't know how you go that sad. I don't know how, but to me, like Rocky four. Rocky four is, like, if you were gonna put montage in the dictionary, like, you would have the rocky four montage there. Don't

John Shull 54:48

get me wrong. I mean, I also put up the montage in the beginning of the way as my number one, because it's the only montage that I remember watching that kind of caught me off guard, where I was like, Oh, I didn't. Spec this and, and it's just stayed, you know, Rocky, you know you're getting something right, Ghostbusters, you know you're going to get something throughout the movie, like, with up. It was like, Oh, damn. Like, yeah, I didn't expect them just to hit me like this.

Nick VinZant 55:14

Yeah, that's too tough, man. What's in your honorable mention?

John Shull 55:18

I limited it. I mean, I could have gone for 50 movies, but Deadpool,

Nick VinZant 55:24

oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, actually,

John Shull 55:27

that could be top five material. Like, that's really well done, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, both dancing scenes and then Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Unknown Speaker 55:38

Yeah,

John Shull 55:39

that one's that one's fun too. Yeah, I kind of capped it there, though I could have put a ton more on there.

Nick VinZant 55:46

The only other one that I would add in there that you didn't mention, because this actually has two montages, is predator. Because they've got the montage where they're, like, getting ready for the group to fight the predator. Then they've got the montage where they're getting where Arnold is getting ready to fight the predator. Predators probably the best movie we've ever made. I don't want to see any top five movie list without predator.

John Shull 56:17

It's spoiler alert.

Nick VinZant 56:18

What's what's wrong with predator? Tell me where predator goes wrong. Tell me when your mind where predator fails to be at the one of the best movies of all time. Well, I

John Shull 56:30

mean, it could start with the fact that it's about an alien that lands in the jungle. Uh, discrimination.

Nick VinZant 56:36

That's discrimination. Talking right there, right? Oh, alien. I don't want my movies to be unrealistic.

John Shull 56:42

No, I love predator. I mean, I can't say anything negative about predator exactly

Nick VinZant 56:46

any other movie you can kind of say something negative about you can't say that about predator. Maybe

John Shull 56:52

that should be next week's Top Five is movies that are near perfect. Top

Nick VinZant 56:56

five reasons why predator is the best movie of all time. Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. Really helps us out and let us know what you think are the best movie montages. I I don't I can't believe John didn't have rocky four at number one. I think that that is, oh, I mean, that is the movie montage in my mind. But I also think predator is the best movie of all time. So there you go.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai