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
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.