Ghosts, Monsters, Alien Abductions, Secret Societies, New York Times Bestselling Author Colin Dickey studies them all. His goal is to discover why we’re so fascinated with things we can’t explain.
We talk the most haunted places in America, how Secret Societies have shaped our lives and what our obsession with Bigfoot and other cryptids really means.
Then, it’s Wall Runs and Grappling Hooks vs. Double Jumps and Magic as we countdown the Top 5 Video Game Powers.
Colin Dickey: 01:11
Pointless: 26:34
Top 5 Video Game Powers: 48:44
Unexplained Researcher Colin Dickey
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant, coming up in this episode the unexplained and video games,
Colin Dickey 0:21
ghosts, they help ameliorate our fear of death. Monsters demarcate the edge of the known world, without a doubt, one of the most bad vibes place I've ever been to in my life. We as a we, we as a democratic society. Fundamentally believe in democracy, but don't believe it works very
Nick VinZant 0:45
well. 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. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he has written about and studied extensively, everything from Ghosts and hauntings to secret societies, alien abductions and cryptids. This is author, Colin dickey. Why are we fascinated by the unexplained? You
Colin Dickey 1:14
want on some level, kind of mastery over a thing. And the problem with the unexplained is that it it resists that mastery. So I'm fascinated with why people sort of continue to try and explain the unexplainable, and what that says about us.
Nick VinZant 1:30
What do you think our kind of fascination with ghosts like? What does that say about us?
Colin Dickey 1:35
Ghosts do different things to different people, but like, broadly, I think you could say, for example, they help ameliorate our fear of death, right? You know, if, if ghosts are real, then death is not the end in some form or another, and that's comforting. It also helps us manage, like, grief, you know, spiritualism and like, the belief that you could, like, communicate with dead loved ones through, you know, table seances and stuff like that. I mean, that got a huge boost after the Civil War, when traditional sort of burial rituals were interrupted by the war. So you know, your son, who you know, died, quote, unquote, before his time, you know, at an Antietam or whatever. You know, 100 miles, hundreds of miles away from you. His body has never recovered. You can't give him a proper burial. You didn't get a chance to say goodbye. He's He's young, so all of these sort of normal things are interrupted. And what you do instead is you have a, you know, a seance, and you, you reach out to him, and he tells you, you know, Mom and Dad, I'm in, I'm in Summerland. I'm doing fine. I'm happy. I love you. Goodbye, and so, you know, so ghosts kind of help deal with grief. They help deal with our fear of death. I think they also kind of explain, I mean, for me, on like, a fundamental level, they help explain weird architecture, like they like when you we've all been in just kind of buildings that just felt weird or off, you know, and that is just kind of a thing that's, that's, I, you know, I tried to sort of put in into words, but I find like a thing you come back to a lot of times, does
Nick VinZant 3:16
the United States seem to, in any way think about mysterious things differently than other places. But
Colin Dickey 3:24
a lot of these ghost stories, and particularly the more popular ones, a lot of them become ways for us to deal with our own kind of traumatic, unprocessed history that you know does not get sort of mentioned in the light of day and takes the form of ghost stories. And in the United States, like one of the most famous and obvious example is the the stereotype of the Haunted Indian burial ground, right? This whole idea that shows up in horror movies over and over again, you know? And it's, it's all predicated on the idea that, you know, Anglo Americans, on some level, are aware of the fact that, you know, the land that they built their houses on are is not, is not theirs, and so that that comes out in these stories of haunted Indian burial grounds. But it's not necessarily a direct sort of confrontation or acknowledgement of the Native American genocide so much as it is a kind of way of, like recognizing it while setting it aside, you know, so yet, so that it's a kind of cool spook story. But there, you know, but there's, there's no, no direct head on confrontation with with history and trauma and our sort of role and responsibility of and so it just sort of gets told as a ghost story instead. Does it
Nick VinZant 4:43
say something broadly about the person, if they really believe in these things?
Colin Dickey 4:47
I you know people who believe in ghosts, usually, in my experience, they fall into one or two categories, either they had an experience that they just can't explain, or they really want to have had an. Experience that they just can't explain. And those are both kind of different, you know, psychological profiles, but I but that those seem to be the kind of two types that I talked to the
Nick VinZant 5:08
most. Have we kind of always been obsessed with them?
Colin Dickey 5:13
You know, we have recorded ghost stories going back to Pliny the Younger and, you know, living and renting a house and finding a ghost. And then, you know, the ghost, like, led him to the spot in the backyard, and he dug it up and found these, these bones, and, you know, didn't know who they were, but gave them a proper burial, and the ghost went away. That's, you know, that's ancient Greek. Like, we've always had these stories of ghosts, yeah, and they're, they're pretty universal across culture.
Nick VinZant 5:38
Is there a similar kind of metaphor, so to speak, going on with the monsters, the cryptids that we believe in, ghosts.
Colin Dickey 5:46
Ghosts live in houses. They live in urban areas. They live in, you know, hotels. I mean, yeah, they live in cemeteries too. But they are, they are coterminous with human habitation and human settlement in some form. The thing about cryptids is they always live kind of on the edge of civilization. So they live, you know, in the Redwood Forest north of San Francisco, you know, like, so it's, they're close, but they're not, they're not in civilization. Or, you know, lock you know, Loch Ness, or, you know, Mount Everest, where the Yeti lived, you know, like so they are less about human civilization and more about the edge of human civilization. They are, you know, if you think of like the old medieval maps of the world, where you would have, you know, Jerusalem and Europe in the center of the world. And then as you got further and further out, you would get, you know, depictions of dragons and monsters, and this idea that, like, you know, monsters demarcate the edge of the known world, and those maps literally monsters meant you'd reach the end of the world. But I think we keep that, that myth alive when we're, like, looking for Bigfoot or whatever. And I think there is this, it's more of this kind of longing that people have for belief that they're still kind of unspoiled, you know, wildernesses, that they can go out and sort of, you know, reconnect with a kind of more primal landscape, you know, I think of like the opening of Heart of Darkness, where the narrator talks about, you know, like at that time, there are still white spaces on the map, you know, and That, like, that's people want, that people want to believe that there's some unspoiled white space on the map where they can still go out and adventure.
Nick VinZant 7:27
Is that the same or similar to why we kind of focus on alien abductions,
Colin Dickey 7:33
aliens and UFOs also mark the edge of the known universe? I think that what's really fascinating to me is that you know you either, you either believe in the Loch Ness monster, you don't. But if you believe in the Loch Ness monster, you you think that it's just a creature who is elusive, right? Like he's just, you know, underwater most of the time, or she's underwater, she's messy. Whereas if you believe in UFOs, you automatically, I don't think, I don't think there's any other way around it. You believe that there's a government conspiracy. Government Conspiracy, you know there's, there's no way to believe in UFOs, and also not think that somehow the government is hiding at least something. And I think that's a really fascinating distinction between these two kinds of beliefs, that one of them requires conspiracy theories in a way that the that you know cryptids or ghosts really don't.
Nick VinZant 8:24
Do you find, though, like, which one is the cart and which one is the horse? Do they believe in the UFO and then kind of go into the conspiracies? Or do they go into the conspiracies and then the UFO comes about?
Colin Dickey 8:39
I mean, historically, no. And historically, it was the UFOs and then the conspiracies. Because, like, in the late 40s, when we first started really getting, you know, UFO flaps, like, you know, Kenneth Arnold's sighting over Mount Rainier, that was national news. And then, you know, you started hearing more and more of these things. I mean, everybody just assumed it was a matter of time. You know, it was like, everybody's like, Oh, we're seeing them in the skies every day. It's just going to be a matter of time before they land. And is, you know, it's a little bit like the rapture, right? Like, it's a little bit like Jesus is coming any day now, right? Like all the signs are there, you know, it's imminent. And then when Jesus doesn't come, then you have to make up a story for why Jesus didn't come, right? You have to say, like, oh, well, you know, we weren't pure enough in our hearts, or there's too much wickedness in the world, or, you know, we made the calculations wrong. So, so the longer this, this imminent, expected thing goes on, the more you need to come up with a story to explain why it didn't happen. And with UFOs, that just became the government. You know, at first it was just we were, we were going to see this thing. It was going to happen immediately. But it, it never did. They never landed. They never came out and said, We come in peace. And so if you're going to cling to that belief, you have to have a an explanation for why they've, they've been seen in the skies now for over you know. Know, 75 years, and yet, you know, we don't have definitive proof. Well, the only thing you can come up with is, you know, the government's keeping it from
Nick VinZant 10:08
us. Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions, yeah, sure. What would you consider to be the most haunted places in America?
Colin Dickey 10:17
I mean, what do we mean by haunted? Is the first question, like, ghost per square foot, objective scariness of said ghosts, most traumatic, you know, unsolved murders in the same house, like, what? Okay, so of the places I've been so, you know, that's a hard it's a hard question to just understand the parameters
Nick VinZant 10:41
I would assume they probably mean, like, the scariest,
Colin Dickey 10:44
yeah, like, what I can say is, one of the places I went to was the Moundsville penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia, which was an active prison from like, the mid 19th century until the 1990s and Was it, was, it haunted, I don't know, but in without a doubt, one of the most bad vibes place I've ever been to in my life, just taking a tour there and like, and like, some of that is just the because it was built that way. It was built the sort of belief of kind of, you know, prison philosophy at the time was part of your sentence, part of the, you know, it wasn't just doing time. It was that you would be doing time in a place that was meant to invoke melancholy, so that you would be like you would be made to sort of emotionally suffer as part of your prison sense. And so prisons were built. And you know, if you've been to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, it's of that same era and that same model, prisons were built to just make you feel bad physically. And so this place just had, like, it had like, low ceilings, it had narrow walls, it was this big stone fortress, and it just felt bad to be there. And then you see these cells that were designed for two people. Had two bunks on the wall. But they had, like, by the end of the prisons run in the 90s, they had four prisoners to a cell. So they would have one guy sleeping under the lower bunk on the floor, and then another guy on a mattress in the middle of the room. And you just, like, you just got the sense of just like, like, this was a, this was a place built to generate bad fives, and then it just got worse and worse over time that like, so that like, and that place just felt bad to be in. And, you know, I think, like, you could say, okay, that that's, that's ghosts, and certainly, a lot of awful things happened there. A lot of people were murdered. Lot of terrible people who, you know, were terrible criminals did time there. You know, there was a, there was a, like, a corner that was used for executions like but that was definitely one of the, just like the places that I just felt awful being there and kind of couldn't wait to get out,
Nick VinZant 13:00
whichever way you kind of believe whether these things are real or not really real. Was there a place that made you feel the other way, like, oh, I don't believe this, or I do believe this, but this place that kind of made me feel differently?
Colin Dickey 13:16
Well, this is, this is also in ghostland, the one place that I came closest to seeing, for whatever it's worth, sort of definitive evidence was I got, I got hired by Maxa magazine to go write a feature about the owner of the brothel, the Mustang ranch. And so I spent three days hanging out in the moth in the Mustang ranch with the women who work there. And the feature never came out. They killed the feature. But while I was hanging out, I was just talking to madam. She mentioned casually that the Mustang Ranch was haunted. And so, of course, I'm like, I'm like, Tell me more, you know. And you know, she was describing the various things that she saw or like or that, you know, people claim to see. And there was, like, one, one wing that, you know, people always saw ghosts in. And like, The parking lot is haunted, because some, like, I got shot there and all this stuff. And like, the other thing while I was there was because I was, you know, trying to understand what it's like working in a in a brothel. And like, you know, I started to see just for the women who work there. And I, you know, I don't think this is that surprising, but just how psychologically, you know, emotionally difficult that job is, you know, I mean, like to set aside the physical aspect. It's just, you know, I said at one point I was like, it sounds like what you guys do is sort of like, like, 90% emotional labor. And the women all said, no, no, it's 100% emotional labor, so it's this very emotionally taxing job. And when I was talking to madam about the ghost, she said, you know, like, well, you know, a lot of times it's the girls who don't who aren't really working out, who are really struggling, having a hard time with this job. You know that? See the ghosts. And so I said to her, I was like, Oh, well, that kind of makes sense. Maybe this is, like, it's just a way of, like, you're under psychological pressure, and this kind of, you know, it manifests itself, you know, the stress and the anxiety manifests itself in, like, seeing ghosts. And maybe that's, it's just a psychological thing. And she was like, no, no, I see them too. But, like, but then she she grabbed this woman who was walking by, and she's like, hey, hey, hey, go, go get your camera or go get your phone and show them the videos. So she comes back with this video of this woman. So this is in outside of Reno, and this woman lives in Los Angeles, and she comes up for like, a week or two at a time to work, and then goes back to LA and and she's a boyfriend, and so she sends her boyfriend videos while she's up there. And so she was recording this video for her boyfriend, and it's just her and like lingerie, just sort of like dancing in front of the camera, and there's this like glowing orb, like this little ball of light that obviously she can't see, but is visible in the video. And it's just sort of like fluttering around her head, and she pays no notice of it. And then, like, 30 or 40 seconds in the video, it, it goes off screen, it flies off screen, and then a couple seconds later it, like flies rushing back on screen. And the moment it hits her temple, she falls over. In the video, it's really funny and like, and like, she, of course, like, she's just like, I don't know, at the time, I just thought I had lost my balance. And it wasn't until I looked at the video that I saw this orb, but she, you know, and I was like, wow, that's, that's certainly a video I just watched. But yeah, so,
Nick VinZant 16:36
yeah, that's one of those who's like, Well, how do you explain that one again.
Colin Dickey 16:41
Like, that's why, I think, like, getting into the question of, like, you know, Are ghosts real, is sort of just less interesting, because if you believe in ghosts, there's nothing anybody can say that will convince you otherwise, whereas if you were a skeptic, there's nothing, there's no proof anybody can offer that will make you a believer. And like, it's, you know, it's like religion. It's like, fundamentally, just a thing you can't it just feels really personal. And so I just kind of try and size up that question altogether, kind
Nick VinZant 17:06
of getting into your newest book. This one deals with that, how would you say that secret societies have affected us? Like, how have they changed America?
Colin Dickey 17:14
I did this book on ghosts, and then I did this book on UFOs and Bigfoot. And as I mentioned, as I move from the kind of more politically neutral questions like ghost and ghost and Bigfoot into UFOs. And I was like, Oh, you there's, there's, this gets straight into conspiracy theories. And I started out really broadly. When I started researching that book, I just sort of said, Okay, I'm going to look at any, any secret society real or imagine that is, you know, not visible and above board, but which has, you know, attempted, or is accused of attempting, to subvert American democracy or American law in some way, and, you know, and I was thinking very much about the Freemasons and the Illuminati, and, you know, the anti Semitism that runs through this country, but I found quickly through that lens, some things that that fit that criteria that I wasn't expecting. Were like the Underground Railroad and the CIA in the 1960s you know, these were like, you know, secret groups that were intentionally violating American laws for various reasons. And so the what I found when I started to really add all these things up, is that we, as a we, we as a democratic society, fundamentally believe in democracy, but don't believe it works very well. And secret societies, and that's happening right now too. Secret Societies are a really good way for you to convince yourself that your belief system is right, and the only reason that it's not popular is because the will of the people has been subverted in some way. So you know, you know everything from you know the Jews control the media, or the Catholics are buying the vote, or, you know, the Illuminati are in charge of everything. Like these are all ways of convincing yourself that what you see right before your eyes isn't actually true, and they get invoked frequently throughout American history. I think when you know, for the most part, we're sort of raised to think that there's the Salem Witch Trials of 6092, and the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s those were the two moments in which this kind of paranoia of invisible groups kind of boiled over and and became a kind of hysteria. But in fact, these things happen all the time, you know. I mean, I grew up in the 80s with the Satanic Panic and the idea that Satanists were running, you know, daycares and involving your children, and, like, awful satanic rituals. And like, you know, these were, these were daycares that that supposedly these rituals were. Having in basements. And the daycares didn't have basements. There was, there was no basement. It was built in California. California homes don't have basements So, but it didn't matter, right? Because it was because people were so spun up about this idea of these hidden Satanists, and that these hidden Satanists were like a catch all explanation for everything that was going wrong in the 80s, you know, and so, and that just happens over and over again, and we're dealing with it now. So you know the answer, like, What? What? How do secret societies, like affect us? They are. They are repeatedly, in my opinion, used to demonize and bash certain segments of the population, usually, usually, but not always, by the right attacking the left to stifle social progress and social change.
Nick VinZant 20:44
Do you think our monsters will change? Yeah.
Colin Dickey 20:48
I mean, sure, we, we always got to have new monsters. I mean, like, you know, like, when I was looking at cryptids, right? I mean, you know, I think of, I think of the the canonical cryptids that I grew up with in like, the 70s and 80s with, like, you know, Bigfoot and Loch Ness monster, and, you know, it's just like the Yeti and, like, maybe the chupacabra. He's kind of a newcomer, but, you know, he's, yeah, but now, you know, like, what people are like, I, you know, I met these guys who are, like, talking about dog man. And dog man's a big, big, cryptic guy, right? But like, dog man is like, unlike Bigfoot, who is like, supposedly, just like, a missing link. We just haven't taxonomized him yet. Dog man is like, straight up supernatural. Dog man is like, can talk. There's no sense of like, how dog man evolved. But dog man, these guys were like, Yeah, we were in the woods, and we saw dog man fighting Bigfoot, and Bigfoot was trying to save us from dog man. And I'm like, All right, you guys are kind of gilding the lily, like it's cool and creepy when you say you just saw a pair of red eyes. That's cool and creepy. But when you're describing a full on like Mortal Kombat action sequence, less less compelling, less convincing to me. But yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. These things change all the time, and they and new generations tend to have new kind of monsters to suit the need. Do you
Nick VinZant 22:11
think that will happen with the things that we think are ghosts or hauntings? Like, will it change in a certain way? Or, like, No, it'll always kind of be the same.
Colin Dickey 22:22
Well, yeah. So I mean, like, when you think of like a haunted house, I'm guessing, I mean, nine people out of 10 are gonna think of a Victorian,
Nick VinZant 22:31
yeah, I'm gonna think of an old house.
Colin Dickey 22:34
So one of the things I came to the conclusion of is, like, part of the reason a building comes to be haunted is because it outlives its moment, right? Like the Victorian that doesn't get torn down and just kind of persists because nobody needs to tear it down. But there, that's how it gets haunted. Or, you know, the the the Kirkbride asylums, which is a kind of asylum built in the 19th century, that were very popular most cities had one are these massive buildings, and they're physically difficult to demolish. So even as the field of psychiatry changed and people decided, well, this is not how we want to institutionalize people anymore, in this context, we're going to build new kind of more modern hospitals for for people with mental health issues, you still have these buildings, right? You still have the and they're still stuck there. And so I think that a haunted building is one, in many ways, that has outlived its time, and that's going to change with time. I mean, like, you know, there are buildings that we're building now that seem sort of on the, you know, cutting edge of architecture and style that will probably be around in 100 years when, you know, tastes and functionality have moved on, but we'll still be sitting there, and people probably like, want to think of them as
Nick VinZant 23:54
haunted. I've never really thought about hauntings being kind of all about architecture.
Colin Dickey 23:58
It's so much of so much of our lives are just spent in buildings, right? And like, and over the years, they're kind of adapted for kind of certain use habits, right? So, like, so like, one of the most basic things when I was like, when I first started looking at like, weird houses and sort of thinking about why these houses made me, like, uncomfortable, is like, Oh man, this house has like, a bathroom off the kitchen. That's not where you put bathrooms. That's just weird, you know, like, you put the bathroom down the hall, you don't put the bathroom in the middle of the kitchen, like and like, and so it's like, stuff like that. Where I was like, I was like, well, there's nothing physically wrong with that. I mean, it's fine, but it's weird and it doesn't feel right. And I just started to notice that the houses that I was most predisposed to think of as haunted were often houses that were built or structured or arranged in such a way that just felt like non standard and like off, you know. And I think that and when you look at famously haunted houses or famously haunted hotels, you often find. Some kind of architectural quirk that I think plays into you know, that that how that building's reputation
Nick VinZant 25:08
growing up, my house had a bathroom in the kitchen, right? I could picture it perfectly green, green and white tile floor with a bathroom in the kitchen. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. That's pretty much all the questions I have. Is there anything that you think that we missed? What's kind of coming up next for you? Where can people find the books, that kind of stuff,
Colin Dickey 25:28
books are books are available wherever, and get them on, you know, whatever, whatever bookstore site that you like up next? I mostly, what I'm doing right now is I do a series for Alice obscura called Monster of the month, where every month I, like, delve into another, another story. So you know the Fresno night crawler, or, you know, the chupacabra, or something like that. Those are a lot of fun. People can check those out through Alice obscura. And I also have a column with them called eerie feeling, which is more about, like, weird places and like, Why? Why is this place weird, and what's the story behind that? So? So, yeah, but I'm around and Yeah, feel free to say hi and share a story.
Nick VinZant 26:11
I want to thank Colin 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 we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version of this interview is available now. Okay, now let's bring in John Shull and get to the pointless part of the show. How many people do you know that have been to or are in
John Shull 26:44
prison? So we're not talking jail, we're talking prison, prison, right? Not
Nick VinZant 26:49
jail, prison.
John Shull 26:53
I mean, I can think of four off the top of my head.
Nick VinZant 27:00
I only know two people that I've for sure have been to prison, but I can think of maybe one or two other ones that probably have been in prison, and I might just not know it like they just seem like they've had the kind of life where, yeah, they, I wouldn't be surprised if they've been in prison. So I would say I know three. Do you think you know more than five?
John Shull 27:22
Yeah, the more I'm thinking about it, the more Yes,
Nick VinZant 27:26
is there a certain number in your mind that if you know this many people who've been in prison, it says something about you?
John Shull 27:33
I mean, I don't think that's fair to say really. I mean,
Nick VinZant 27:37
i i With, with the caveat that it changes based on the financial situation that you were born into. So like, if you were born into poverty, I think that you can have a higher number and your circle can be a little bit narrower. But if you were born rich, then you have to have a lower number, and your circle expands. So like, if you were born impoverished, you can know 10 people and only, like immediate family and people you hung out with count. But if you were born rich, then you only get, like, one or two and anybody you know counts, yeah.
John Shull 28:16
I mean, I think that's fair. I think I'd say those are good guidelines.
Nick VinZant 28:22
I don't think that you if you're middle class, solidly middle class, I don't think you should know more than seven people who have been in prison.
John Shull 28:32
That's fair. I mean, I'm right around there. I think,
Nick VinZant 28:35
I think that if you go beyond that, though, that's a sign that you're you've been hanging out with the wrong crowds.
John Shull 28:41
Doesn't matter on the length of prison sentence.
Nick VinZant 28:46
Yeah, if they're doing life, I feel like that should count one and a half, maybe even two. If they're doing like life in prison, if it's multiple, you get an extra half a person for every life sentence. So if somebody has 25 years to life, you get one and a half people. If somebody's got like five life sentences, then you get more than that. Let's cap that at three though. I mean, maybe you just like happy to go to school with a serial killer.
John Shull 29:21
So I didn't, I don't have the pleasure of knowing somebody that I know of that is like a full on serial killer.
Nick VinZant 29:28
What's the most amount of time somebody you know has gotten you think anybody's? Do you know anybody who's doing life in prison like they're never coming out?
John Shull 29:41
No, nobody, life. Well, the longest was, I think, 55
Nick VinZant 29:46
years. Oh, I mean, that's pretty much life. I
John Shull 29:50
will say that I really hope I never do anything terrifying or terrible, because prisons just sounds absolutely horrifying.
Nick VinZant 29:59
It. Oh, yeah, we're not cut out for prison. Like we're not. I'm not cut I would, I would be destroyed in prison.
John Shull 30:09
I'm just That's because you're a smart ass,
Nick VinZant 30:13
yeah, not big enough to pull it off.
John Shull 30:16
Never know, never know. You're kind of kind of feisty, wired. That
Nick VinZant 30:20
didn't help you a lot when you're up against four people like being feisty just gets you hit harder.
John Shull 30:28
I will say I had a friend for a while who was a warden, or not a warden. He was a correctional officer when in the warden's office in a prison in North Dakota. Oh, stories he would tell me were insane.
Nick VinZant 30:45
I pulled the audience about this. What do you think most people answered? The options were less than five, five to 1010, to 2020, plus. What do you think most people answered? Five to 10, 85% said less than five. 5% said five to 10. 10% said 10 to 20.
John Shull 31:09
I mean, once you start getting into double digits, I feel like that's a lot.
Nick VinZant 31:13
Yeah, I don't think that you should know double digit numbers of people in prison. You should if you know more than 20 people who are in prison, you really need to reevaluate your life choices.
John Shull 31:27
I do feel like you have to, like, Nick's, drug charges,
Nick VinZant 31:32
oh yeah, like, things like, yeah, I would agree with that.
John Shull 31:37
But serious, like, I don't want to say more serious, but more serious crimes,
Nick VinZant 31:43
violent crimes, yeah, yeah, like,
John Shull 31:47
all right. Was that it?
Nick VinZant 31:49
That was it? I know once, no one person that I know who is in prison is probably there for life.
John Shull 31:59
I actually thinking back on it. I think I do know. I think we both know somebody that is serving a life in prison.
Nick VinZant 32:06
So we had a co worker who went to prison for having inappropriate online materials. I think people can read into what this was like. John and I weren't friends with him. We just but does that person count? Like, we know him, but that's like,
John Shull 32:24
I mean, we worked in a small office together. You get to whether you're friends or not, you get to know them.
Nick VinZant 32:34
Yeah, we do know him. I wouldn't have ever thought anything they were different, but I wouldn't have thought
John Shull 32:42
that isn't that what the MO is. Or, you know, unfortunately, when the news goes to the family of a serial killer or a mass shooting suspect, and we didn't know anything, he was just normal. He seemed to bet off that day. But other than that, he was normal, like no, nobody knows.
Nick VinZant 33:02
I think that people can get a sense. I think that people are very good at getting an immediate sense, and then they kind of find reasons to ignore it, a little bit like I wonder if we had just met that guy at a party or something like that. If we met him in a limited capacity, would we have still thought that he was normal or seem normal ish and had normal instrument interests,
John Shull 33:28
the people you got to watch out for, the ones that you think are the creepers, because they probably are.
Nick VinZant 33:35
Yeah, yeah, there's something right. He didn't work in an industry that anyway, we should probably just move on. That's all I got.
John Shull 33:44
All right. Well, let's get to the some shout outs then, huh? Okay, okay. All right, we're gonna start off with Jim Robinson, Austin flowers, Alvaro Tellez, who I like it, Jamal boumatay, fancy Claude, Claude Sorrells, Phil Matheny, Josh Junker, William Wamsley, Steven McComber and Aaron Amond.
Nick VinZant 34:14
Could you do those from memory without looking at your piece of paper? No, don't look. You just looked at your piece of
John Shull 34:21
paper and you do, yeah, I can't do them for memory for Absolutely not. I
Nick VinZant 34:26
can remember numbers very well, like, if you quoted me a number about something, I can remember that pretty well, but I can't remember people's names for shit. Half the people in my phone right now new additions. Half of the new additions into my phone contact list are from my son's soccer teams, and most of them are listed as like Brian, I don't know Ryan. I'm not sure, because I have to have a lot first and a last name to have somebody in my phone.
John Shull 34:51
Children's soccer, if you're a parent or a soon to be parent with children that want to play soccer. Her get ready for at least three hours in the weekend to be probably the worst three hours of the weekend.
Nick VinZant 35:09
It's going to ruin a substantial amount of your weekend. I have friends that I grew up with who live still in Derby, Kansas, which is a town of about 25 30,000 people, and I think that is literally the only thing they do all day, is go between practices and games, but then they sign their kids up. They'll have, like, football, and then they'll have soccer, and then they'll have basketball, like three games today. Like, what are you doing that's insane to me.
John Shull 35:36
I mean, I can't I mean, like our Tuesday through Saturday is practices or games, whether it's soccer, karate, like it's just, it's one thing after the other.
Nick VinZant 35:50
Oh, that's why you get to me, in my mind, my children, they get one practice in one game a week. That's it. If you show me you're going to the league, then we'll step that up. But until then you're going to one practice and you're going to one game. I'm not driving across the country for, like, to go to your soccer game so that you can maybe start in high school.
John Shull 36:14
I mean, but it's the world to them, right? Like, so that's why we do it.
Nick VinZant 36:19
I don't really know about that. If it's the world to them, I think the world to them is what we expose them to. And I think that if you gave them other options other than just playing baseball or soccer all the time, they would probably do that. I can't really say that. I particularly super enjoyed sports when I was playing them. I like playing sports. I could care less about going to practice and going to like, I gotta go play the game. Can we just play pickup whenever we feel like it? Pickup games are the best. Alright?
John Shull 36:47
Alan Iverson, practice, practice. We got a game, and y'all want to talk about practice
Nick VinZant 36:53
that's going to be timeless, that's going to be a timeless quote.
John Shull 36:56
Okay, let's see. So we got to give a quick rip to musician, Legend of the music world that passed away a couple days ago, Ace freely.
Nick VinZant 37:07
I don't know who that is. I don't know who ace freely is. I don't know every musician. If you're not lead singer, I don't know who you are. There is only maybe three or four people who aren't lead singers that I know who they are.
John Shull 37:25
I first off he wasn't a lead singer.
Nick VinZant 37:30
Well then i That's why I don't know who he is. He was the what did he
John Shull 37:33
was the lead guitarist for one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Wham. My God, people can't see my face, but I just, I just want to crawl into its corner. Wham, no,
Nick VinZant 37:50
okay, so what? Yeah, kiss. Oh, who cares. What's their one good song? I want to rock and roll all night. They got one good song. If they didn't dress up like they did, nobody would know who they were. They're famous for the way that they dress. They're not famous for their music. Besides, I want to rock and roll all night. What's their other good song? I mean,
John Shull 38:17
it's a gimmick band, okay? Do we? Do we really want? Do we want to do this?
Nick VinZant 38:23
Yeah, I want you to give me, give me three good ones, and then I'll say, like, Okay, that's a good band. I wouldn't, I could not make in any argument that they're one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time, not when you've got wham out there. I
John Shull 38:37
just don't like i Okay, wham had what? They had two songs, I think,
Nick VinZant 38:44
last Christmas. Okay, hold on. I don't know any, any other ones, actually, now that I think about, I know, let Wait, take me up before you go go, or something like that. Go go something. I don't know what they actually
John Shull 38:56
say before you go, go. Anyways, right? Right. Where's the kiss song night?
Nick VinZant 39:03
Okay? Give me another one.
John Shull 39:07
I literally have not rock city,
Nick VinZant 39:13
right? So now we get down to it. If they didn't, if it wasn't called Detroit Rock City, you wouldn't know who they are. But because it says Detroit, and because you're a Detroit poser who no longer lives in Detroit, you automatically vault. I don't,
John Shull 39:25
I don't disagree with you that they were a gimmick band, but I think that they transcend, like pop culture, like they, you know, like they are bigger. They became bigger than just music musicians.
Nick VinZant 39:42
Oh, I would agree with that, but if they didn't dress up like that, they wouldn't have I
John Shull 39:47
mean, probably not, but the same could be said for David Bowie when he became Iggy stardust.
Nick VinZant 39:55
Oh, I didn't know those the same people, okay,
John Shull 39:59
all right. Right, that's it. We'll just, let's just move.
Nick VinZant 40:02
Actually, I would like David Bowie also is one where I what are his big songs? I didn't get David Bowie. I can't say that I ever got David Bowie. Great in the movie Lambert. No,
John Shull 40:12
that movie you want to watch a Halloween movie that will haunt you. Watch that?
Nick VinZant 40:20
Oh yeah, it's scary. I think things are scary, so they don't mean to be scary. Okay, so what was he? He was the drummer, he was the bassist, he was the keyboard player, he was the roadie, he was the
John Shull 40:31
lead guitarist.
Nick VinZant 40:34
Oh, okay, he's not slash, no, he's not slash. He's not Keith Richards.
Speaker 1 40:41
Okay, exactly. I would
Nick VinZant 40:44
make an argument that there's not debating. I don't. I'm just saying that there's only a few bands that I can think of where I actually know two people in the band, slash Guns and Roses. Is it? Keith Richards for Rolling Stone flea for Red Hot Chili Peppers. And that's really, that's really it where you know somebody who's besides the lead singer. Okay, for me, sure.
John Shull 41:14
I, you know I was gonna bring up about Sam rivers passing away too, but I don't know who that is. He was the basis for Limp Bizkit.
Nick VinZant 41:27
Was he the guy that put, like, the weird contacts in his eyes and make had really big eyes?
John Shull 41:31
Uh, no. I believe his name might have been or his stage name might have been monkey. Oh, well, anyways, I appreciate your effort. You tried. You gave it your good old college try. I did write good Halloween question here. How much is too much to spend on a costume.
Nick VinZant 42:03
Oh, I think you got a cap it at 50 bucks. I'm not gonna go over 50 bucks. I'm pretty cheap, though. My 50 is really probably 25 which means I don't think other people should spend more than seven. If you're going 75 It better be pretty good, and you better get multiple years out
John Shull 42:20
of it. Why? So the follow up to that is, why haven't we bought a spirit of Halloween franchise, and just, you know how many 1000s of dollars they make just in a month?
Nick VinZant 42:33
That's a crazy I don't understand how that happens. They must have such amazing turnover in those things that you can essentially just put up what I wonder how much they lease a building for. We literally have a goodwill here. I would like to actually know that
John Shull 42:49
we have a goodwill near where I live, that for a month and a half becomes a spirit of Halloween.
Nick VinZant 42:58
Oh, they just they, man, there's plenty of why do they use the goodwill? There's so many abandoned buildings in Detroit, they could use them almost anything. It's insane, man.
John Shull 43:09
So, okay, so $25 in a costume?
Nick VinZant 43:14
Yeah, I'll go to 50. I'll go to 50 for sake of argument, because you can't get anything for $25
John Shull 43:20
how much do you spend, or are you willing to spend on treats to pass out, to your to your you know, kids coming with trick or treating, $25
Nick VinZant 43:30
$25 I'm gonna make one trip to Costco. That's it. You need 25 bucks, and that's it. What have i How much are you gonna
John Shull 43:38
so you you clearly don't buy bags of candy or whatever you buy for to pass out a bag of chocolate only at Target, like, I'm talking like Kit Kats Reese, $24 for like, four for one bag pieces.
Nick VinZant 43:59
Oh, I'll get four bags of candy. Then I'm not spending I don't know what, what do you no way you're not buying 25 pieces of candy for $25 or 40
John Shull 44:09
but it kind of comes out. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense.
Nick VinZant 44:16
Are you getting full size?
John Shull 44:17
Yeah. I mean, they're not Mini. Is there the full on candy.
Nick VinZant 44:22
Oh, well, that's different. Oh, okay, I would agree with your pricing structure there. I thought you were talking about, like, the fun size ones, and you were getting 40 for $25 I was like, What are you that's that's you buying Swiss
John Shull 44:35
chocolate. I don't know what to tell you. Anyways, let's move on.
Nick VinZant 44:40
You're pet, your wait, you're passing out. You're the you're the full size bar guy in your neighborhood.
John Shull 44:46
I mean, I'm not the only person, and I actually think I'm switching it up this year. One of my friends had this idea last year to give out baseball cards. So that's
Nick VinZant 44:56
Wow. Would you I guess you want people to hate you. Idea it's, it's,
John Shull 45:02
I don't know. Kids love cards. They still love cards.
Nick VinZant 45:07
No, they don't. They want candy. Nobody wants that. You're like the person who's out there handing out nutritious snacks, like, oh yeah, thanks. I really want that. Hey, Riley, who's happened to be right here? Riley, Riley, focus. Pause your game for Halloween. Do you want candy or a baseball card? That's first of all. First of all, that's a great answer, okay, but you can only have one candy or a baseball card. Candy. No kid wants your baseball cards. Dude, you're gonna be that guy in the neighborhood. Don't be that guy. Oh, kids, I got you this excellent crossword puzzle. Others will feed your body, but I will feed your mind. Like, thanks, buddy. Throw this away.
John Shull 45:52
I mean, I whatever.
Nick VinZant 45:54
Stop yourself. Stop yourself. You're, you're 75 year old. Man, in a minute, you can't go down this path, John, you're already talking about the weather too quickly. You talk about your basement too quickly. You injure yourself too quickly. Now you're out here passing out baseball cards, and now you're going to want to tell every kid who comes up a story. You can't go down this path. Actually,
John Shull 46:13
I don't really even like talking to people on Halloween, because I don't. I don't like interacting with people.
Nick VinZant 46:19
Oh, okay, also, yeah, okay. I agree. I agree. I like. I don't really want to pat just take your candy and go, kid,
John Shull 46:26
all right, uh, I feel like everyone missed this, and I have to give Al Pacino shoutouts for this. So, okay, I don't know if he's married, but his partner is 31 years old, and I was thinking about this randomly, because Bill Belichick is getting a lot of shit for dating a 25 year old or whatever, right? And he's like 70, but if you're him, would any of us like nobody, like if that was you, or that was me, or that was a random person, whether you're a man or a woman, say it's an 85 year old woman dating a 21 year old man. No one's hating why are we hating on these, on these people?
Nick VinZant 47:13
Because I don't, it's not appropriate. It's not, I don't think that it's appropriate if two people can find genuine, true love in that circumstance, then you love the person that you love and fine, but it's, it's not appropriate for that you don't, you're, you're, because it's, it's, it's so obviously a manipulative situation in one way or another. It's just like, it's not No, Whoa, no, and look, he's 85 and she's what, 30, and he's probably with her, because of the way that she looks, I would imagine. But if I'm 85 I don't have the energy be doing that. I'm 40, and sometimes I'll pass on like, Nah, I'm pretty I don't really feel like that. So I mean, like, you're 85 years old. Riley, we don't need any commentary. Man, he was so upset I whooped him in Smash whooped him. No, he was upset. He tried to stop the game. Took a beat. You better be practicing. Yeah, I had a strategy. That's the one thing he knows, the moves, but I can beat my children. Strategy. I'm very proud of the fact that I can beat a six
John Shull 48:39
year sounded like he's saying you used a super Hulk. Hogan, all right, you ready for top five?
Nick VinZant 48:48
I am ready for top five. Are you ready for top five?
John Shull 48:50
We'll see.
Nick VinZant 48:54
So our top five is top five video game powers. I'm really excited about this one.
John Shull 49:00
Mean, I got a little, I
Nick VinZant 49:03
know you weren't right, because you and my wife are, like, the same person. If I'm excited about something, you guys aren't.
John Shull 49:08
No, it's fine. I just, I got, like, I was a little confused on, like, it, does it have to be just video game powers? Like, is it just powers in general? So
Nick VinZant 49:18
it's a little bit, I understand it's a little bit confusing, but I will ridicule your choices when
John Shull 49:24
I know I trust me, sorry. So my, I mean, once again, I tried like I looked up video game powers, and none of these made sense to me, so I came up with my own. Okay. So my, my number five is going invisible.
Nick VinZant 49:48
Oh, that's solid. That's a good one. Not very common in video games, so not a lot of video games, you can go invisible. What game
John Shull 49:55
are you like? You know, when you're say, like Mario, right? You can become a ghost. Mario. Or whatever. You can go invisible, etc. That's what I was thinking of, very good.
Nick VinZant 50:07
Oh, we got Falco Falco punch. That's a great. I love Falco punch. Okay, I'm doing something. My number five is a grappling hook. A grappling hook can make a video game. I love a grappling hook in a video game,
John Shull 50:25
okay, all right, couldn't tell you any video games that use grappling hooks, but, all right,
Nick VinZant 50:32
Zelda, Ocarina of Time, a grappling hook will make a video game. And I think one of the funnest things in a lot of Zelda games is the grappling hook. Metroid also has a variation of a grappling hook. Very fun. Castlevania, okay, the whip that would count that as like a grappling hook. Grappling hooks, incredible,
John Shull 50:54
all right. My number four is flatulence, farting. Most famously, I think, from the earthworm gym series.
Nick VinZant 51:06
Oh yeah, I do remember Earthworm Jim. They haven't made that any more of those. It was a big game when we were growing up. My number four is the tiger uppercut, the one that like Ryu and saga you're getting, the one that, when you're not, yeah, the one that you're when you're not, really very good. You can't do it very often, and it's always pretty exciting when you actually do the uppercut, right? Okay, just a great move, like, I dare you to jump on me. You bait him into jumping on you. Then bam, okay, Tiger
John Shull 51:37
uppercut. Your uppercut. Nobody would have guessed you're gonna,
Nick VinZant 51:42
you're gonna tell me you've never, like, pretend done a tiger uppercut to somebody.
John Shull 51:47
No, I don't think I actually have, oh,
Nick VinZant 51:50
man, that's why that's the best joy about having boys. I spend at least I'm gonna hit one of my sons with a tiger uppercut and a Hadouken at least once a day. What the hell is a hadook in fireball thing that Ryu does,
John Shull 52:06
all right? My number three is the ability to manipulate time.
Nick VinZant 52:12
Oh, very good. I mean, I enjoy that can be a little complicated, which is why I would think it couldn't be higher on the list. But can be a little bit complicated. My number three is a wall run. Wall runs are good. Oh, whenever you can run up the
John Shull 52:26
wall, yeah. Wall runs are pretty awesome.
Nick VinZant 52:31
Okay, how you feel about me when? How you feel when you talk about singers, is how I feel when you're talking about video games. It's like, oh, yeah, that's good, yeah. Let's move let's move on. Let's move on.
John Shull 52:46
My number two is being able to breathe underwater.
Nick VinZant 52:52
You and breathing underwater,
John Shull 52:54
I mean, it's when is the deal with
Nick VinZant 52:57
every, every you've incorporated breathing underwater until at least five or six different lists that you've been able to
John Shull 53:04
do. I think every time we get on any kind of anything involving powers or abilities, yeah, water, just water. Alright.
Nick VinZant 53:14
So if you go to the lake, are you just sitting there? Like, man, I wish I could breathe in the water. I actually did you. Like, stick your head underneath the water. Like, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.
John Shull 53:27
I don't have a lot of confidence in my swimming ability, so I don't, I don't usually get go in the water a whole lot.
Nick VinZant 53:35
Oh, you're not a good swimmer.
John Shull 53:36
I mean, no, I may, I might be, but I don't have the confidence, so I don't
Nick VinZant 53:42
even try it. I once watched my wife almost drowned on, like, a routine swim that me and my two sons, who are six and nine, were able to make, like we swam out to a dock in a lake. It wasn't really, I mean, it was a little bit far, you like, you would think like, Oh, can I make that? Oh, yeah, I can make that, no problem. And the six year old and the nine year old made it. And I turn around and my wife is like, floating on her back, like, trying not to down.
John Shull 54:09
Yeah, Jerry, you you must killed your wife.
Nick VinZant 54:14
Oh, sink down and jump off the bottom. Not that deep,
John Shull 54:19
but there's, there's always, there's all kinds of nasty stuff down there.
Nick VinZant 54:24
Oh yeah. Well, tough it out. Papa VinZant, that was his advice for everything. Sink down and jump off the bottom. We're in the middle of the ocean. It was probably an island down there somewhere. Like, has your dad reached the stage where he can't lose an argument, even if he's completely, clearly wrong.
John Shull 54:44
My dad just hit the stage where he doesn't even talk to anymore. He just sits there. My home doesn't even
Nick VinZant 54:51
get that involved. My number two is sub zero's ice power. Sub Zero is ice freeze. The first time I saw that, that was the coolest thing. That was the coolest thing to
John Shull 55:05
God, your number one is going to be like, some stupid thing from Zelda, isn't it?
Nick VinZant 55:11
No, it's not. I would actually maybe, maybe the fireball isn't the like, it's basically the fireball, but sub zero's ice ball, second maybe only to sub zero slide. Like, just a quick slide. You were like, That's cool. I just slid it. This is insulting to you. I
John Shull 55:29
haven't really ever spent a lot of time with Mortal Kombat, so
Nick VinZant 55:35
I can tell too busy playing. What do you
John Shull 55:38
play? Don't really play much anymore. Pocket pool tabletop games, all right? My number one is tabletop sports games, the ability to have magic, cast spells, make your opponents, you know, confused, things like that.
Nick VinZant 55:59
Okay, my number one is the double jump. Nothing's cooler than a double jump. You could jump, which was awesome, then you could jump again, like right as you thought, right as your opponent thought you were done. You jumped again. Guess I don't, can't reach that thing. Use the double jump. What
John Shull 56:16
like in Mario is that what you're referring to
Nick VinZant 56:20
in lots of games. I believe Metroid had a double jump.
John Shull 56:24
Okay, that's another game you want me. I didn't play a lot of was Metroid.
Nick VinZant 56:30
I'm gonna get you a list of games with a double jump. You have anything in your honorable
John Shull 56:34
mention, uh, just some system, basic stuff here, telekinesis, being able to summon monsters or demons, but that's kind of the along the magic lines. And actually, I wanted to put this on the list, but I I didn't know if this was a superpower, but being able to have something that regenerates your health.
Nick VinZant 56:56
Oh, that's a really good one. But I always felt like it was a it was a little bit cheating, a little bit like I play the new Zelda, where if you kind of been playing a lot, you kind of can't die. You just have so many resources. Celeste, Cuphead, Jack and Dexter, Castlevania, Super Mario titles all have double jumps. 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. Let us know what you think are the best video game powers. I just really the only thing that I'm a little bit conflicted of is if I should have put grappling hook at number one instead of the double jump.