Everyone has an accent. And your accent says so much more than simply where you are from. It's a window into who you really are. Erik Singer studies accents and has taught some of Hollywood's biggest actors how to speak with a new voice. We talk how accents develop, America's most famous accents and where new accents are appearing and old ones are disappearing.
Then, we talk becoming our parents and countdown the Top 5 Foods that are Better as Leftovers.
Erik Singer: 01:24
Pointless: 26:53
Top 5 Leftovers: 48:27
Interview with Accent and Dialect Coach Erik Singer
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, accents
Erik Singer 0:21
and leftovers. So we get this basic linguistic Maxim, which is that people sound like their peers, not their parents. So we are looking at this is something the research on, this is still kind of new and emerging, but we're looking at something that seems to be a kind of continent wide shift, if it matters to people, in your individual sense of who you are and your identity, you know how you identify what that is. It's going to be there in your
Nick VinZant 0:47
accent. 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. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he has a fascinating knowledge of accents from all over the world, where they come from, why we speak the way that we do, and also how to teach people, including some of Hollywood's most famous actors, how to speak with A new accent. This is dialect coach and accent expert Eric Singer, does everyone have an accent, like whether they know it or not? Does everyone have an accent?
Erik Singer 1:30
Everybody has an accent, whether you know it or not. An accent is just the particular ways that we realize the sounds of a language variety that we speak, right? So you know the vowel and consonant sounds and intonation and melody, that's an accent. It's the sounds, but that's an accent, and you can't not have one unless you're not talking. How did they kind of develop? The fundamental rule of thumb is this basic bit of human code that we've got, which says, talk like the other song. We've measured this. Linguists have measured this over and over and over again, in place after place, in language after language, in context after context, and it basically always happens. If we're face to face talking to another human, our accents start to converge towards each other. But that phenomenon, which people think is a sort of like, Oh, it's so funny, when someone goes somewhere and they start to sound more like the place it is actually what accounts for how we acquire native accents in the first place. We learn language very, very, very early, right, from our early caregivers, but very quickly, as soon as we start having, you know, other other kids our age, right, that we're going to school with, nursery school, kindergarten, we start to sound like them. So we get this basic linguistic Maxim, which is that people sound like their peers, not their parents. And it's funny, because it's, you know, and this, this is something I think it's a point that's sort of worth lingering on just for a second, because, you know, very, very frequently people ask me start, you know, want to ask me a question about their accent, or their husband's accent or something like that, and they always start with a little biography that always includes where their parents are from. And it rarely matters. It's it's usually a non factor. So when
Nick VinZant 3:05
I think of kind of accents in the United States, like the big ones that jump out of me are, like the Boston, the BA, or, however you say it, like the southern accent. Do those places have they retained their accents more so I feel like that's a place that has more of an accent, or is that accent just recognizable? And I don't realize that where I'm from has retained its accent just as much. I just don't think that I have one the
Erik Singer 3:33
accents that sound to us, you know, in general, like, oh, that's less of an accent, or less strong, or less pronounced in accent. It really just does mean that it's higher up on that scale of social prestige. Probably is the one spoken by more people who have college degrees, especially like college degrees from fancy colleges, right? It just maps onto that at the same time, there is a lot more accent and dialect diversity on the east coast of the US than there is on the west.
Nick VinZant 4:07
How are they generally like, segmented? Is that broken up across like, state lines, political lines, geographic lines, like, how does it determine, in general, where an accent is going to kind of start and stop, if that makes any sense,
Erik Singer 4:24
as soon as you start looking for the difference and sort of, you know, kind of pulling things apart, you're starting to draw smaller and smaller and smaller circles. And if you're from a place, then, you know, you're probably really, really, really good. Your ear is really attuned to making those fine distinctions, to be like, Oh, you're from that side of the river versus that side of the river, in terms of how linguists are drawing these, these distinctions, right, these bigger or smaller circles and saying, like, here's where one dialect begins and one dialect ends. They're looking for deep structural patterns. Like, for example. Half of North Americans have what's called the cot caught merger. And you can hear, by the way I pronounce those words that I do not have that merger, because I say cot, C, o, t and caught C, A, U, G, H, T, differently.
Nick VinZant 5:13
How about you? I caught the apple. I sleep on a cot.
Erik Singer 5:17
If you're not merged, you're real close. You're like, right? Like, in progress,
Nick VinZant 5:21
right? Like, it sounds like, okay, maybe there's a difference, but I don't really like, It's not much.
Erik Singer 5:28
Do you think there's one when you say, when you say the name, the names Don and Don, like, do? Are those the same name to you?
Nick VinZant 5:34
The sun rises at dawn. I met my friend, Don,
Erik Singer 5:38
yeah, they sound pretty identical to me. We, you know, we'd have some instrumental measurements of a bunch of different tokens to like, really make a
Nick VinZant 5:44
call. Where'd you grow up? Midwest, Kansas, Wichita. Great. So you grew
Erik Singer 5:49
up in an area that has had the cot caught merger for some time, right? It didn't always, but it has had it for a while. So people born 20 years ago, like a much higher percentage of Americans who are only 20 years old have the cot caught merger, most of them than 50 or 75 or 100 years ago, right? It's steadily progressing, and you can look at kind of heat maps as this has changed through the generations. But this is one thing. This is the kind of deep structural thing, because, like, if you have the merger, you have one fewer sound. You have one fewer total vowel sound in your inventory, right? So it's, and it's funny, because it's like this merger actually tends to pass under the radar for most people, and yet it's a deep structural factor. So that's the sort of thing that people are doing when they're sort of drawing, you know, dialect maps on the basis of accents. You can also draw them on the basis of, you know, grammatical features or lexicon. Those are very, you know, popular and deeply, deeply researched, like, what words do you use for Roly polys or fireflies or things in this place or the other place, or what do you call them the median divider in a highway, or things like that, right? So sometimes you're using those other linguistic sort of dialect features. Sometimes you're just using accent features. A great, great, great linguist named William Labov, who's the founder of social sociolinguistics, basically did a massive, massive project with some other researchers, produced something called the atlas of North American English. And this is sort of the standard, really, for kind of looking at these. And he's using only sound features. And what you find is that accents do not map. We knew this already, but you know, you can, you can see it vividly, right? Do not map along political boundaries. What they do is they follow natural boundaries, right? So, you know, mountain ranges are going to cause a break in communication. Bodies of water are going to cause a break in communication. And settlement patterns which follow those natural boundaries. So these boundaries persist, these boundaries from kind of ancient settlement movement patterns, and sometimes contact, you know, just like it was talking about at the beginning. Sometimes, you know, the we accommodate more when we like someone we don't when there's something sort of blocking that, right? And so we see that writ large. But yeah, they they accents and dialects, they follow history, they follow settlement patterns of settlement and movement, and then contact, and what kind of contact that is. And so we can find in any individual person's accent. Can trace all of that. It's all there.
Nick VinZant 8:11
Can we kind of go through some major American accents, what you think about them, like certain characteristics about them, and then, like, Okay, if I was trying to do that, how would I do that?
Erik Singer 8:23
Sure, Boston, first of all, it's what we call non rhotic. You could divide all accents of English into whether they pronounce RS after vowel sounds or not, right? So an accent like mine, when I pronounce all the RS if they're there in the spelling, right? So I say car and here and there and everywhere, and there's an R there all the time. That's a rhotic accent. Non rhotic accents are accents like southern British English, where you say car and here and there and everywhere. I might get a link R If the next word starts with a vowel, but otherwise it's just car, right? And that's where we get pack your car and have it, yeah? Now Boston knights love to point out you cannot actually park your car in Harvard Yard. But that's not why we're using that phrase, why it became a famous phrase. It's because it has a lot of Rs in it that aren't there, right? It's a non rhotic accent. Instead, what we have is a vowel sound. And that's the second thing that I think is kind of interesting here, is that the vowel sound itself is not a vowel that's in the back of the mouth, like ah, which is what a non rhotic New York or even Rhode Island accent would use, right? I'd say, park your car and Harvard Yard be ah, ah, that's the open vowel that that is there instead of any r sound in Boston, is a front vowel, meaning your tongue is kind of cupping low in the bottom of your mouth, like right behind your front teeth when you go, Ah, right. So pack your car, right? So New York, park your car. Boston. You wanna try it? Pakeha. Pakeha, that's really good, actually.
Nick VinZant 9:46
Oh, it was good. Yeah, no, it was good.
Erik Singer 9:50
We don't know for sure, but it seems at least plausible that the reason for that being a front foul in Boston is Irish immigration. I. Last thing I'll throw in for a Boston accent, because we were talking about the cot caught merger already, Boston and New England generally, certainly eastern New England is one of the primary original areas of the caught cot merger. But where, in much of the west of of the US, you'll have it with just an ah sound like yours, right? So walk and talk and coffee, right? Those are words like caught. We use the same vowel sound, right? Those are just ah. This is an open kind of ah sound in Boston and eastern New England. The sound is rounded, so we've got Ah, right, so we've got caught and caught, right? And walk and talk and coffee. So if you happen to not have the caught, caught merger, you use two different sounds. You might hear a Bostonian saying certain caught words, the ones that have a little rounding, like walk and talk and coffee and think, Oh, they're like me, except that they also do it with the C O T words, like stop and hospital, right? So, stop, hospital, walk, talk southern
Nick VinZant 10:57
which one? When I think of a southern accent. I don't think of Florida. I don't think of South Carolina. I think of Alabama. Okay, and I couldn't do it save money. That's yeah, like, just kind of a sugar, I don't know. I can't do accents very well.
Erik Singer 11:16
Great. Something to go off of, actually, because we've already built the foundation for. We're talking about one big like sorting mechanism we can use, right, which is our sounds, right? So we've got, we've got non rhotic Southern accents, like you just did sugar, where there's no R sound, and then we've got rotor rhotic Southern accents where there is an R sound sugar. And this has shifted drastically in the last 75 years, basically, kind of since World War Two, and picking up speed in the latter half of the 20th century. Latter, latter 25 years, even in the 20th century, the classic southern accent, the thing that most non southerners think of as a southern accent, certainly most non Americans, right, is a non rhotic southern accent. If you think, obviously it's played by Vivian Lee, an English actress. But if you think of scarlet, you think of scarlet O'hare and Gone With the Wind, or Blanche du bon Streetcar Named Desire, we're talking about a non rhotic, very old fashioned kind of non rhotic southern accent. If you think Foghorn, Leghorn, something like that, right where we're talking about is Benoit blanc was, you know, kind of the glass. He's using a historian named Shelby Foote. He's using an actual model for that, and we don't need to get into how accurately he's doing it or not, but the choice of model alone, it's part of it's a major aspect of the design, right? Because that's one of the things that makes that character feel a little anachronistic and out of time and heightened and weird in a way that I don't necessarily think is unintentional, but it's because he chose a model that is a representative of an accent that barely exists anymore, certainly not for anyone under the age of 90. So non rhotic Southern accents, at least for white Southerners, are they barely exist anymore. There was a rapid re rotization So certain parts of the south, the inland south, the mountain south, places where the Scotch Irish settled a lot, the southern Appalachians on down into parts of Texas, because there's a lot of sort of settlement direct, you know, in that direction the basic, basic, broad division between Rhode and non rhotic. Historically, Southern accent used to be coastal versus inland, and especially upland and mountain, right? Where those, those are the accents where you had hard hours, you know, kind of all the time, right? Interestingly, a lot of vowel shifts and some other things like the pin pen merger, which is now universal in the south pan pen, right? Is that an ink pen or straight pin? So you got to specify those start. That just started in Tennessee, just one little place in Tennessee, and it wasn't part of a southern accent in like, you know, the night, like in Civil War, kind of post Civil War, like it didn't exist, right? It spread out from there to become general. So that inland area of the South has had a lot of influence, and it was always the hotbed of verticity. And now most Southern accents, even on the coast and places that were historically non rhotic, are rhotic California. This is into the weeds, but it starts to get really friggin interesting. So linguists started to observe a shift in Southern California, first in Southern California, actually it was first in Northern California, then it was Southern California. Then it was thought to be just urban areas in California. And then it was like, Oh no, it's just California, and then it was like, Oh no, it's just California generally to different amounts, another of these really radical, fun vowel shifts, where the vowels start start, like shifting around their location in the mouth in a systematic way, and rotating the whole thing. So if you think about your really stereotypical like surfer dude or valley girl kind of thing where you have a really open mouth, a bunch of vowel sounds are opening up. They're being pronounced with a lower tongue and jaw. So eh, as in, for me, dress is starting to sound like ah, as in, trap. Or if I were to use words that you know would sound the same, like bed and bad, right? So bed in a kind. California accent starts to sound like bad, and bad is getting even more open and going like bad, so almost like BOD, like halfway to bod. At the same time, this caught cot merger is happening like it's it's general across California has been for some time, tiny, little carve out area around the Bay Area where it's making inroads, but like, you know, they're still holding on, with a distinction to some extent there. But for the most part, has this caught, caught and like Boston, they're starting to go to use, like a slightly lip rounded vowel, so caught right for both, right? So walk and talk and coffee and caught and lot and hospital and stop, right? So that, and then you've also got the what's a back vowel, which is Ooh, traditionally, starting to come way forward into something like do right? So you've got dude, and what that ends up doing is we can actually draw a visual map of where your tongue is in your mouth. And linguists do this all the time to understand what's going on with these movements of valves. The California vowel space has gotten shorter front to back. It's compressed on the horizontal axis, and it's lengthened on the vertical axis in kind of the same way as if you look at, like still stock photo images of stereotypical surfer dudes and valley girls, they generally have open mouths, right? So there's that kind of open mouth posture. And by the way, smiling, like pulling your lip corners back, also has a similar acoustic effect to many of these things. Crazy thing is very similar changes, not the goose fronting, but the open vowel things and the cock cut merger happening in Canada. And relatively recently, some socio linguists started going, Wait a second. We've known for a while that this California vowel change and this Canadian vowel change are like really similar to each other, maybe happening for kind of similar structural reasons. People are now going, Wait a second, they're the same thing. And there's not isolated to California and Canada. So you you can find in this, especially younger people with very similar all these key structural phenomena that are changing in really similar ways, kind of across North America. So we are looking at this is something the research on, this is still kind of new and emerging, but we're looking at something that seems to be a kind of continent wide shift, not happening to the same degree, you know, in the same place at all times, necessarily. But they are connected, and they do broadly seem to be coming arising ultimately, you know, a big part of it is that caught caught merger because of the way that that's removing one vowel from the system, giving the others a little more space to spread out.
Nick VinZant 17:35
Are you ready for some harder slash, listener submitted questions? Shoot, bring them on. What was the hardest accent you ever had to teach somebody?
Erik Singer 17:43
There's hard for me and there's hard for someone else, and they're never the same thing. There's three factors that determine whether an accent is harder or easier. One is the distance you have to travel, right? How similar or different is it from your own accent? The more similar it is, obviously that comes with its own difficulties. But broadly speaking, the more similar it is, the easier time we're going to have getting there. The other thing is exposure. It's familiarity, right? So Americans have heard, you know, lots of all the different American accents, right? Americans have very often never heard a Welsh accent. So Americans tend to be, I wouldn't say there's anything particularly, specifically difficult about a Welsh accent compared to, you know, I don't know, some Scottish accents, Irish accents, different English accents, but American sense of struggle real hard because it's just like, so unfamiliar. It's like, what does that help sound like? So we do a lot of listening, but like, everything you've done up to the point where we start to work matters too, right? So if it's already really familiar to third factor is identification. It's the imaginative component, because as complex and technical as all, all of this is ultimately doing another accent, especially doing it like really fully embodied means fully imagining yourself as someone who talks like that. So you break all that down into such an individual thing and, like, yeah. I mean, that said, when you have to travel a far distance, like, you know, American actors working on Scottish accents tends to be really hard. Welsh tends to be hard. The tricky ones really are, oh, Geordie Newcastle is a really hard accent. I actually have never had to sort of perform in that or teach that myself. So it's sort of Terra incognitive, like, I know some of the technical aspects, right? But, like, I could not slip into a Jordy accent right now, so maybe I'll leave it with that one. Which one's Jordy? I'm not sure what Northeastern England kind of, just south of the Scottish border. I can't
Nick VinZant 19:31
even think of what it sounds like. I'm not gonna do it. I was trying to get you to you didn't bite, you didn't bite.
Erik Singer 19:37
But, you know, we this. So the the recent zombie follow up. 28 years later, they're all do Jordy accents in that Jodi comer, who's, I think, originally from Liverpool, but who's just absolutely brilliant in accents. Just completely, completely nails it. I have it on good authority, not my own assessment, but she's if you want to hear what a Jordi accent there, obviously First, your first stop should be look up actual people from. Newcastle with Newcastle accents. But if you want to see it in a movie and see an actor doing a great job, Jody comer is like, absolutely nailing it, and 28
Nick VinZant 20:07
years later is what's that kind of the most unique one you had to teach somebody.
Erik Singer 20:13
The most specific that we get, of course, is idio elects. Is you're playing Obama, you're playing Muhammad Ali, you're playing Elvis, you're playing Bill Clinton, but yeah, that's definitely the most specific kind of thing. Is one particular person's, you know, super famous, very familiar way of speaking. We got to try to match that. That's the Yeah, that's the high wire act.
Nick VinZant 20:33
What would you say then, I guess would be in your mind, if you only looked at it in terms of accent, the greatest acting performance in terms of, oh, they nailed that accent, like they got that accent better than anybody else.
Erik Singer 20:48
Think Jody comer is Jordy in in 28 years later, is truly, truly phenomenal. The you know, the people that that everybody talks about as being great accent performers, your Meryl Streep senior, Daniel Day Lewis's and your Philip Seymour Hoffman is like, yeah, every single performance in an accent, every one of them has ever done, no, they're not all the same. They're not all the same degree of absolute, flat out superb. But what I would say is this, what makes a truly great accent performance, something like the best work that you know, people like that have done, like, you know, Meryl Streep, Sophie's Choice, right? Her Polish accent and Sophie's Choice. Daniel Day Lewis, and number of things, I think, you know, there will be blood always springs to mind for me, my left foot. It's great one. You know, Heath Ledger's Brokeback Mountain, which is, which is, I think, incredible. Philip Seymour Hoffman is true his Capote, there's it's getting everything right first, getting it completely and fully embodied, right? So it's like it is inside this person's body and soul. This person could only talk that way, right, which has its own force when we're talking about an accent performance. And then there's this third layer. There's this third level that makes like a truly great accent performance, once you have those first two things, which is always what we're working on, right, which is when there are character and thematic reasons for why that person sounds that way, they made connections between the way this an example I've used before elsewhere, you know, is Philip Seymour Hoffman's oral posture, the twistedness and tightness over his mouth as this character who had twisted himself into knots to hide and not reveal and not and be not, you know, and that whole, that whole character journey, what the entire movie was about was there in the character's use of in relation to language and the sounds of language, and the connection to his identity and what he wanted and needed and everything that had come before him in his life. So I think, I think when we see the truly great accent performances, it's not just like that absolutely is spy level, like you would not get caught and shot if you were a spy and your life depended on it, right? That's perfect accuracy and authenticity. It's perfect embodiment, which is an aspect of that as well, right? It's not just sort of layered on top. It could only be that way. And then this final thing that it really is, like connected up in ways that feel like we can feel that we can feel that connection.
Nick VinZant 23:25
Are there areas of the country where new accents seem to be popping
Erik Singer 23:28
up? The quick first answer is like, yes, of course, because that's happening all the time. We are losing, you know, a lot of older, more traditional place bound, rural regional accents as people move away, you know, I think, oh, here we go. Okay, some of your listeners might be familiar with an accent known as multicultural London English or mle. Does that ring a bell for you? It does not, basically, since the kind of mid to late 80s is really the earliest we could kind of say this is an accent now, and it's developing, which is called mle, or multicultural London, English, which has a lot to do with with, like multicultural immigration, right? People from all over the place, right? A lot of Caribbean immigration, a lot of African a lot of South Asian, right? But there's a stew that sort of first noticed and described in London that then is now like has become a way that basically working class youth of all races and ethnicities talk in London, right? And it's and that's new, that wasn't there before, and we're finding that in a lot of other European cities with similar immigration profiles, and we seem to be now starting to find it in especially some Californian cities. So that's another kind of super new at least as far as linguists are concerned. Thing that we're starting to catch up with and be aware of is happening is these, we call them, generally multi ethnolects. So there seem to be some multi ethno likes forming in some North American cities, especially on the West Coast, and that might be the next.
Nick VinZant 25:00
Thing that's pretty much all the questions we have, is there anything that you think that we missed, or kind of what's coming up next for you? Where can people find you learn more that kind of stuff?
Erik Singer 25:09
People can find me on my website, which is just ericsinger.com, I am also, I have started doing some short form video I did, you know, a bunch of videos with wired some years ago that did very well, just about first, about first, about accents and movies, talking about some of the stuff we've been talking about today, and also talking, there's a map tour of North America. Those are still out there. I started doing short form video myself on Tiktok and on Instagram and YouTube shorts. I think they're pretty easy to find. I will have a book coming out probably next year. I'm in the just got it back from my editor from the full manuscript. So we're, you know, we're getting through this kind of editorial process, and it's, it's about everything. Because, you know, if you've made it this far in the conversation, you probably got a sense that accents do touch everything, like everything about what it is to be a human where that, where they come from, how they work, where people come from, how history is reflected in it, the choices that we're making, what it's like to be a teenager, and how we get through that, and how important that is for language change. Because teenagers lead language change, you know, all these cool, weird things about like, what the eight year olds do when they get together in this place where there isn't an existing accent, and they make it up from scratch, like all of that, right? Because accents really do touch on everything. So it's accents as a lens into everything else that's important about like, sort of who we are and what we're like and how we work.
Nick VinZant 26:31
I want to thank Eric 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. Okay, now let's bring in John Shull and get to the pointless part of the show. Are you slowly
John Shull 26:54
becoming your parents? I'm turning into my parents. When did you first
Nick VinZant 26:59
notice that you are starting to become your parents. It
John Shull 27:01
seems like, let me ask you this question, do you feel like if you are like your parents, you exhibit their good traits or their bad traits, or some of both?
Nick VinZant 27:11
I think ultimately, it's some of both. The thing that I noticed where I'm becoming like my parents is more in kind of mannerisms and like how I'll stand or how I'll sit, things like that. I think the reason that you become your parents, ultimately is because as you get older, you don't have as many peer groups to refer back to, and so your parent is still the model for your behavior. And so you kind of start to go back to the example of somebody who came before you, and your parent becomes your default example, whereas when you were growing up, your peers are your default example.
John Shull 27:48
I think physically, you're gonna look like one of them, or both of them combined, but you don't have to act like them mentally. Oh yeah,
Nick VinZant 27:58
right, like I definitely do some things that my dad does, and then also, specifically don't do some things that my parents do, but you definitely like, usually I've started to notice it. I'm like, Oh my god. Mostly in just mannerisms that I have, like, I'll stand a certain way.
John Shull 28:16
Attitude wise, I'm kind of like my father at times, but I try my best to quell it in the moment and and move
Nick VinZant 28:23
on. Did you get this skin cancer thing removed from your face? I did my nose. That's what it is. Well, that doesn't look too bad. Well, something about the rest of your face now,
Erik Singer 28:38
yes,
John Shull 28:39
it's actually I have Vaseline on it, like a boxer, because it just wouldn't stop bleeding today.
Nick VinZant 28:45
Well, dude, sunscreen. I'll tell
John Shull 28:47
you one more funny joke. For any of you out there, I'm that aren't going to see a video of us. I'm a pretty pasty white guy. Like, Oh yeah, right. Like, yeah, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm pretty pasty. I'm German, I'm Irish. Whatever. I thought I did a good job this summer of having a decent tan. And while I was getting checked out this morning, I wear a like a like a Garmin watch or whatever, and that she asked me to take it off. And Nick, you're going to see this. I don't know. You won't post this probably, but shall I Nick my wrist? Look at the difference in color, right?
Nick VinZant 29:24
Okay. On the other side, it's really noticeable. So you are pale, like, like, it hurt my eyes.
John Shull 29:32
I take off my watch. I'm thinking, like, like, look at this tan. And she's like, You are really white. Yeah. Anyway, so apparently I'm not as tan at all that I thought I was, and my sorry holiday ashamed of me this morning. So thank you very much. Sorry to hear
Nick VinZant 29:49
that you're not as tanned you hoped you are. I got
John Shull 29:53
a decent job this summer of being out in the sun and getting you know well you did.
Nick VinZant 29:58
You just got skin care. Answer. Remove you did. You just didn't answer.
John Shull 30:04
And it just went straight to the worst side effect me being pasty. But it's, it's just it was a it was a setback. All right, all you ready, people out there, just know that I'm with you in spirit. So do you
Nick VinZant 30:16
think the pasty people struggle? I've never been a pasty person. Do you feel like pasting this is a struggle that other people don't understand.
John Shull 30:25
I mean, sure, yes, it's like anything I feel. I mean, I if I don't wear sunscreen in a Michigan Sun, which is nothing like a Florida sun and Arizona sun, you know, whatever, I will burn after being outside for 30 minutes like an extreme burn. It's that okay?
Nick VinZant 30:44
Let's rank this so in terms of, like, physical let's just call them issues. I don't know what else you want to call them. You've got bald, short, pasty, overweight. Where are you going to put pasty in terms of bald, short, overweight, pasty,
John Shull 31:09
my top two for sure. I don't know what you order, but my top two would be overweight and pasty. You would put pasty ahead of bald? Yeah, I do not want to be bald and I don't want to be short now. I don't want to be, like, extremely obese.
Nick VinZant 31:24
Oh, I see you're picking it in terms of, I was saying, like, what's the biggest problem? Oh, rank them in terms of, like, number one is the biggest problem and to the worst problem.
John Shull 31:33
Okay, so the so I'd probably, I'd probably go baldness, being overweight, being short and being pasty, being last,
Nick VinZant 31:42
yeah, pasty is definitely the last of those. Yeah, because you can always like, pasty is not that big of a problem
John Shull 31:50
well, and I've also never been in a tanning booth or on a tanning bed, so
Nick VinZant 31:54
you should try it out. Go 20 minutes. I don't know how long it if that's a lot or not very much. But go 20 minutes and just, oh, raw dog. It raw dog, a tanning
John Shull 32:05
definitely, definitely not having it on mine. Well, anyways, power to the pasty. Power to the pasty Ness out there.
Nick VinZant 32:12
I just didn't realize pasting this was such a struggle, I guess. Sorry to hear that.
John Shull 32:18
No, your your feelings are, are heartfelt. Alright, let's give some shout outs here. Hold on. How do I have the worst internet in America? It makes no
Nick VinZant 32:29
Detroit, which is the worst city in America, and the most of your questions were answered right there. All right,
John Shull 32:37
you're such a such a douche sometimes. Arden Patel, Patricia Hayes, Angel Abbott, Bradley, Kane Cooper, but I don't think it's the Bradley Cooper we're thinking of. Probably not Deanne Farley, Cassie Jefferson, barrel, Stevenson, I picked barrel because I like, I like the name barrel. I don't know why barrel. Barrel, yes,
Nick VinZant 33:04
like, that's his first How do you spell it? That's the first name of somebody.
John Shull 33:07
I believe it's a woman via her social media profile.
Nick VinZant 33:12
But I don't you can't name something. You can't name people after inanimate objects. Barrel, doorway, well, sunglasses. It's like, you ran out of me.
John Shull 33:24
It's B, E, R, Y, l, by the way, not barrel. It's maybe, well, maybe it's burl. I don't probably burl. Well, Barry burl for butching it. Butchering your name.
Nick VinZant 33:36
VinZant is enough of a last name that I have to constantly explain to people I don't want to be named barrel, like, how does it alright? Burl burrow.
John Shull 33:46
I just want to yell it for some reason. Borrow Alright, Phyllis Mercer, Esperanza Ferguson and Chi Chi Wagner. We're going to end with chi, chi.
Nick VinZant 34:01
There's no way Phyllis is under the age of 65
John Shull 34:05
I mean, I don't know she liked one of our videos this week, so she may know what it is.
Nick VinZant 34:12
I would like Phyllis let us know if you're under the age of 50.
John Shull 34:17
It's the algorithm. We're hitting the older population again,
Nick VinZant 34:20
in the older generation, huh? That's maybe it has to go to be considered to be attractive. We got to go to the 65 year olds.
Speaker 1 34:27
Maybe we're, do
Nick VinZant 34:28
you think you still got it? Do you think you still got it like, have you gotten a look from a 20 year old?
John Shull 34:35
Well, let me, let me. Let me say two things. One, I never had it, okay. Uh, but yeah. I mean, there's been multiple occasions in the in the past few years where there's been, you know, one where my wife has actually been with me on a couple of those occasions so she can
Nick VinZant 34:52
back, hit on huh? One was open,
John Shull 34:56
blatantly, openly, in public. We were at a Starbucks. Drive through, and I've known the barista for a minute because it was my local Starbucks that I go to maybe once or twice a week, and I pull up and she goes, Oh, who's that next to you in the seat? Is that your friend? And clearly, my kids are in the back seat. My wife's in the passenger seat, and my wife just my wife got so angry. And if you, oh yeah, if you know my wife, to get her mad takes a lot. It was, but it was, it was, it was pretty
Nick VinZant 35:29
awesome. Was she mad at you? Was she mad at the other lady?
John Shull 35:32
She was mad at the other lady, so, oh, but you,
Nick VinZant 35:35
she's mad at you too. Like, there's no way that. Like, if that happens to me, I'm catching all the blame. It doesn't matter if I've like, have never seen this person in the world like, it doesn't matter I'm catching all the blame. She's like, What do you want? Well, you worked out once that's your fault.
John Shull 35:56
I mean, we you know, there was a conversation after as to why I didn't correct her in the moment. And I was like, You, she's being kind. What was that? What was I supposed to cut her off to tell her you're my wife?
Nick VinZant 36:08
Like, no, you should have said that's my ex girlfriend,
John Shull 36:13
ex wife's sister. My wife died yesterday.
Nick VinZant 36:15
Oh, God. Like, I'm just taking care of her kids.
John Shull 36:18
Yeah, my wife would have killed me. Anyways,
Nick VinZant 36:21
your wife is your ex girlfriend, and see how that goes over. That's my ex girlfriend.
John Shull 36:27
I'd like to sleep in my bed this week, so I'm not gonna do that. Okay? Uh, I this just caught my eye over the weekend, and I just felt like talking about it, because, out of all things you're going to steal in the world, why would you steal a three foot Humpty, Dumpty statue from a miniature golf course?
Nick VinZant 36:51
Well, I mean, substances are involved, whether those are a liquid or otherwise, I've stolen somebody's Christmas decorations before I was in high school, maybe I was in the first years of college, but I got drunk and I stole somebody's Christmas decorations, and then I brought them back the next day. And even when I was doing it, friends were like, Why were you, why would you do that? Like, I was like, that's that's not wrong. That's not right. And like, these are not the most upstanding gentlemen gentlemen in the world, either. And even they were like, That's not, you can't do that. That's, that's, you gotta take that back. I did the next day. I was like, sorry, Chris,
John Shull 37:31
you took them back. I had to deliver Baby Jesus back to my colleges administration office because one of my suite mates stole it one night, and then they just left it in our room. Like, what were we gonna do with a baby Jesus statue?
Nick VinZant 37:47
How big was it? Like, how big of a statue we talking?
John Shull 37:51
Well, for, sorry, let me it wasn't a stat. It was like, you know, one of those, like, nativity scenes. Yeah, nativity Baby Jesus women from, like, a Nativity scene. So it was probably two or three feet, you know, long or whatever, but it didn't weigh anything. Was that then plastic? But I woke up, there's Baby Jesus just in the middle of our room.
Nick VinZant 38:11
So I did. I didn't Wow. I did the right. There he is.
John Shull 38:16
That Monday morning, I walked into the admin and building and said, Listen, I don't know how this got to me,
Nick VinZant 38:22
but here did they believe you?
John Shull 38:26
Ah, I, you know what? I don't know. I didn't get question. I gave it to like a landscaping like a maintenance worker. He took it and said, thanks. And that's all that happened.
Nick VinZant 38:36
I guess I wouldn't really be we had our patio furniture stolen a couple of weeks ago, and I, if somebody did, they just brought it back. Was like, Hey, man, I was drunk. Thought this was going to be a good idea to steal your patio furniture. Felt bad about it. I brought it back. I wouldn't be like, it would depend on what they looked like and how old they were, right? Like, if I could clearly tell that this was somebody like, this was habitual, right? Like, if you're tweaking coming up to my yard, that's a little bit different than somebody that maybe just like, hey, I just, I don't know what I was thinking, I'd be like, Oh, I just put it back.
John Shull 39:11
See that. So that's where it's slightly different. I had my car broken into Not, not too, too long ago, and I swear to God, every person I see coming down the street now I like Eagle Eye. I'm like that person. Are those yellow shoes? Because they might have been brown shoes, I don't know, but I think they're yellow. Are you wearing yellow shoes? Because I'm gonna tackle you. If they are. Wow.
Nick VinZant 39:35
Neighborhood Watch over there. Just make sure it's not in the sun. You'll get burned.
John Shull 39:39
Well, once again, I I'm an idiot. Left the car doors unlocked. Have not left my car doors a lot of since then, for that, you're sold.
Nick VinZant 39:49
You're an adult. I think. Mike, alright, unlocked, right now, actually, I should probably check
John Shull 39:53
this. Yeah, if they're gonna steal your patio furniture, they're gonna steal your car.
Nick VinZant 40:00
So that would be the kind of thing, though, that if I just could find out, like, why you thought, how you did it, and why you thought it was a good idea, and why you did it, I would almost be okay with like, you can keep it, just tell me, like, how you did it and why you did it, and then it's yours, these two couches. Like, would you steal two full couches that were locked together? It's a mystery. Like, how did
John Shull 40:26
they do it? I don't even have a car that you could get to, like couches in. I don't even know how I would steal
Nick VinZant 40:33
them, right? That's, that's the thing. I don't know how they even did it. Like patio furniture. It's not like a couch couch, like you could pick it up by yourself, but lock two couches locked together? I don't think so.
John Shull 40:44
Anyway, did you question your wife? Maybe she's trying to pull one on you so she can get new furniture.
Nick VinZant 40:49
Oh, she's not
John Shull 40:52
just saying you might want to ask her tonight.
Nick VinZant 40:54
Track that down.
John Shull 41:00
I just, we've, we've established that many years ago
Nick VinZant 41:04
that every man is all talk when it comes to his wife.
John Shull 41:08
This is another weird one. So in Ghana, when you die, you're not going to get a, you know, a normal burial. You're not going to get a wooden casket. You're gonna get a fantasy box. They call them over there. You can get a grasshopper, you can get a fish, you can get a lion to be buried in.
Nick VinZant 41:31
What's the point of doing that? Like, why are they doing that?
John Shull 41:35
Apparently, and once again, I'm not gonna pretend it. Pretend know anything about the Canadian religion, or any you know, anything like that. But apparently, the more colorful the box or the more extravagance, the more you will be received in the afterlife.
Nick VinZant 41:53
Oh, well, then go for it. Man, get solid gold. Grasshopper. I don't really care what they do, honestly. Like, you could just bury me in the ground without anything around me, I'd be okay with that.
John Shull 42:05
The ocean just had this conversation. I I don't think I want to. I just, just put me in a, in a in an incinerator, put me in an urn, and just let me sit somewhere next to Nick forever. I imagine if our urns were next to each other,
Nick VinZant 42:19
you gotta mix our ashes, so that we'll be get together for all eternity. That would be why? What if you and I decided to get buried next to each other and not our wives, like you could have me and you on they could have we could have, like, two plots next to each other, and then our wives could be on the other side.
John Shull 42:39
I wouldn't care. I mean, I My wife has to both worlds. That's how we do it. I don't know how your wife in a row. My wife, wouldn't
Nick VinZant 42:47
I gotta be buried next to John. Well, she can be buried next to you, just on the other side. We just won't tell them that we're secretly buried next.
John Shull 42:59
Well, I'm naturally going first. So it would be the out of the you three who would go next, and then one of you would have to, you know, like, it had to be my wife. That way. You have to spill the beans to
Nick VinZant 43:10
your wife. Oh, no, you'll be gone first.
John Shull 43:14
Yeah, absolutely. Let's get hit by a bus anyway. Okay, yeah, way to go down a crazy hole. Last week we I briefly brought up the rock in his crazy weight loss.
Nick VinZant 43:31
You bring this up? Have you brought this up the last three weeks? I just want you to know that three weeks in a row,
John Shull 43:36
when question about it, he said, and I quote, I've always been this, this way. It's just the way that the that people have perceived me, and the way that maybe I've been shown on camera before has made me look larger than I am.
Nick VinZant 43:54
That's the biggest bullshit lie that anyone's ever heard, yes, right? Like, that's the biggest crock of bullshit that I've ever heard, like I've always been this way. Okay, get on the scale then, because you're about 50 pounds lighter, like I just couldn't imagine. I don't know if I could do this. And from celebrities to politicians to whoever you want to talk about, I could not just sit there and bold face lie to somebody, not because I couldn't just do it, but like, I would not be willing to compromise who I am that much, that I would just tell a lie like that, that I would just lie so clearly and obviously when, like, no one would ever believe you, he's always been, like a bigger guy and, no, this is just me. This is the real me. You just haven't seen it for 30 years. I've always been this way, like
John Shull 44:51
I was a little thrown. I almost think it wasn't real until, like, it was sourced by two different. Publications that were at this film festival asking him questions. And I was like, Okay, well,
Nick VinZant 45:05
seeing could not just do that. I don't know how. Again, anybody who's in the public eye, whether it's a celebrity or a politician, which could just bolt this just straight, lie like that, and clearly and obviously lie like nope, like like, holding the match and the gasoline standing next to the house that's on fire, and being like, it wasn't me. Well, I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't do that.
John Shull 45:33
I mean, we don't have to talk about the current state of the world. But nobody with a public, you know, with a with an avenue to the public tells the truth anymore. If they ever
Nick VinZant 45:44
do, it's a big problem. Well, I don't think that people really want to hear the truth that much either. Great.
John Shull 45:51
Let's just move on. All right. We need to pay homage to a Do you know legend? I was trying to think of how to describe him, but I'll just say film Legend, Robert Redford, who passed away today.
Nick VinZant 46:09
Oh, he died. I get him and Paul Newman confused, because Paul Newman is the guy that's got the salad dressing.
John Shull 46:20
Jesus man, right, yeah, you're technically correct, but come on.
Nick VinZant 46:26
Man, okay, name me the big Robert Redford movie that you watch all the time, because I can't think of a single one.
John Shull 46:33
I mean, there's two, the shit. Thank you. Hold on a bridge too far is one of them never heard All the President's Men.
Nick VinZant 46:45
Okay, I've heard of that. He's eight, 619, out of the six. He was
John Shull 46:52
old Africa, the natural. He was the natural. Then he was in the MCU for a minute. So 89
Nick VinZant 47:04
oh, wait a minute. I'm going through his 20 essential movies, which looks like a big, massive they must just have these things ready when people die. Actually, I can tell you that, as a former news reporter, there are certain people that you get, like stories ready for when they're gonna pass away, so that you can just air it right afterwards. And it was always interesting to see, like, who we had ready to go. Me, like we just ready to go, just in case, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But I've never actually seen any of these movies. Hot Rock. Never heard of it. Jeremiah Johnson, I watched that movie for like, four hours and didn't even know what happened, like
John Shull 47:45
I would, I would be more aligned to say he is along the lines of a Gene Hackman, almost.
Speaker 1 47:55
I think he's probably better, right? He's a bigger, yeah, but,
John Shull 48:01
you know, like that level of, you know, a fandom, a
Nick VinZant 48:05
decent proposal, the horse whisperer. I mean, he does, does a lot of movies that, if you look at just the title, you're like, What is this even about? Like, why would anybody want says,
John Shull 48:17
well, he passed away today, 89 years old. So rip Robert Redford,
Nick VinZant 48:25
sorry, I'm being Rob. Alright.
John Shull 48:27
Are you ready? Are we doing our top five? Ready to talk a little food?
Nick VinZant 48:32
Oh, yeah. So our top five is top five foods that are better the next day, like you can have it fresh, but it's almost somehow better than next day. What's your number five?
John Shull 48:42
This is probably a cop out number five, but I feel, I feel like it has to be, like they have to be on the list. But it's like cake, like next day. Cake is, if let me go back a hot second, anything in the fridge. Usually the next day is better. I find so saying that cake is number five for me, I
Nick VinZant 49:07
can't believe you like cake.
Speaker 1 49:10
I love cake. Give me all the cake I
Nick VinZant 49:13
can. Yeah, we people know,
John Shull 49:18
hey, I picked the grown man up and threw him I you know, I caught a man mid
Nick VinZant 49:23
errors of all. Yeah, I'd like you didn't pick him up. You caught him. Caught him. Static strength is different than concentric strength. I don't know if those are the right words, but you can hold a lot more weight than you can pick up. So let's pump the brakes here. And you probably blew out your back. You just don't know it yet, but still, it was good job. I still have to watch that. I keep forgetting. Why wouldn't you like any any dessert? There's not a lot of desserts that really lose their tastiness. Any kind of cake, Brownie, I would make an argument for cookies. I only like cookies when they're like, fresh out of the oven and they're super gooey. But otherwise, I don't think there's many de. Desserts that really lose their flavor.
John Shull 50:02
Oh yeah, you like, you like gooey things I do.
Nick VinZant 50:07
I'm not going down that road with you. I don't like the word gooey. Now that I kept saying it, my number five is mac and cheese. Mac and cheese blends together like the next day and it tastes good. Okay?
John Shull 50:20
I'm, I'm gonna jump into my number four because it's along those lines. But my number four is like, leftover, like brisket or or pulled pork, because the fat will coagulate, and you melt it and, you know, like, you just eat it. And you're like, I don't want to eat this. I'd rather have it melted, but, man, because it's just pure fat, but it tastes so damn good.
Nick VinZant 50:43
Well, you're not like when it cools down and you can see, like, all the fat there, you're not, you don't pick that off. You just eat that. I mean,
John Shull 50:50
it depends. Sometimes we'll pick it off, but like leftover barbecue, cold is, is pretty damn delicious.
Nick VinZant 50:58
Yeah, my number four is slightly along those lines, salmon. I like next day cold salmon. It's good cold. I think it's actually better cold.
John Shull 51:12
I mean, I love sushi and sashimi and the Geary. But thinking of just like you making a Costco plank of salmon, and then eating it cold the next day
Nick VinZant 51:24
makes me want to throw up little mustard on it. No, bro, jam. All right, what's your number three?
John Shull 51:32
Like Thai food, Chinese food. I will eat that the next day cold. No problem. Now I don't like spaghetti or like red sauce, stuff cold, but I will eat Thai food, Chinese food, the next day without a problem.
Nick VinZant 51:48
That's on my honorable mention is essentially any Chinese food, any Asian food next day. I'm okay with that. I like the way it tastes, but my number three is pizza. Okay? I like pizza heated up on the grill.
John Shull 52:02
I have pizza on my list a little bit higher, actually,
Nick VinZant 52:06
yeah, well, that's because you're not thinking outside of the box, but you're number two.
John Shull 52:10
Then what does that mean? My number two is pizza.
Nick VinZant 52:16
Oh, okay, I can, I can, I can see it going as I think a lot of people would probably have that in their top three they would have next day. Pizza is pretty good.
John Shull 52:24
Pizza is, I mean, it could be any pizza, thin pizza, round pizza, square pizza, triangle pizza, octagon and all pizza.
Nick VinZant 52:34
Think that's pretty much all the kinds of pizza, all the shapes of pizza, right? My number two is chili, but I could also extend that number two to any stews or soups. They just gel together over the next couple of days, and they seem to taste better now.
John Shull 52:53
This is gonna make no sense to anybody, but I will eat next day barbecue, but next day soups, if they start to like, you know, break apart. No, man, I can't do it. It grosses me out too much.
Nick VinZant 53:08
Oh, well, I reheat it. I mean, I'm reheating all these. I'm not eating anything cold, except for the salmon. I'll eat that cold,
John Shull 53:14
which, that makes no sense. That's like, the one thing you should like, reheat. That's what I like.
Nick VinZant 53:23
Okay, here against your number one, you're just gonna wait. You're gonna wait it out. Well, I'm more cancer.
John Shull 53:33
That isn't cool.
Nick VinZant 53:34
Man, that was, that was, that was too rude. That's too rude. That's my van.
John Shull 53:38
Um, what up? No, so my, my number one's pretty simple, and it's just hamburgers, fast food hamburgers, regular hamburgers. There's nothing like a good next day hamburger, man, it's just delicious.
Nick VinZant 53:57
What do you do about the bread? Though? The bread is what ruins it for me, like you can never get bread to reheat the right way.
John Shull 54:05
Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong, you're not wrong, but you're not right.
Nick VinZant 54:12
Well, you can't take you can't change out the bread either, because it kind of sticks to everything. So that's why I wouldn't even put anything. I wouldn't put anything with bread in my top 10 because you just can't reheat the bread, and you can't really, like, peel it off the right way and replace it with new bread. So I don't know what you're doing.
John Shull 54:30
Man, I don't, I don't know why, but it's freaking delicious.
Nick VinZant 54:35
Okay, my number one is spaghetti. I will actually cook spaghetti on a Monday and then not eat it and then reheat it on a Tuesday. I'll even do it the same day. I'll cook it earlier in the day, wait for it to get cold, then reheat it in a frying pan, spaghetti the next day, like in a frying pan, is so much better, so much better.
John Shull 54:58
It's interesting. Mm. Never, never tried that. But, like I said, I'm not a big fan of red sauce leftovers.
Nick VinZant 55:07
Well, okay, I don't have anything else left to say. Do you have any honorable mentions?
John Shull 55:13
Chicken, like any, any grilled something like hot dogs. I mean, obviously hamburgers, my number one. But hot dogs, sausages, like a little sauce before you go to bed.
Nick VinZant 55:24
Sometimes, I'm sure you do okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless, I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out and let us know what you think are the best leftovers? Like, what foods make the best leftovers? I'm telling you I would rather have leftover spaghetti than fresh spaghetti. You.