How do we remember? Why do we forget? What’s making our memories change over time? Memory Researchers Dr. Akira O’Connor and Dr. Christopher Moulin have spent their lives trying to answer memory’s biggest questions.
We talk how memory works, why we forget things and the best way to preserve your memories.
Then, it’s 67 and 420 vs. 007 and 8675309 as we countdown the Top 5 Meme Number Combinations.
00:00: Introducing Dr. Christopher Moulin and Dr. Akira O’Connor
01:21: How Does Memory Work
03:59: How Good is Our Memory
07:19: How Memories Changes
09:16: Why We Forget
12:42: Reexperiencing Memories
14:17: Are Memories Ever Lost
17:42: Music and Memories
20:01: Pictures and Memories
21:18: The Best Memories
28:05: Pointless
45:16: Top 5 Meme Number Combinations
Interview with Memory Researchers Dr. Christopher Moulin and Dr. Akira O’Connor
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, memory and number memes
Dr. Akira O'Connor 0:20
as like an orchestra, each instrument is is playing a tune at the time of the memory.
Dr. Christopher Moulin 0:28
And certainly that's, that's one of the aspects of memory which is interesting. Each time you retrieve something, you get something back from memory, you will be, without doubt, kind of modifying it slightly.
Dr. Akira O'Connor 0:40
That leads to something called a reminiscence bump. We remember those things from that reminiscence bump.
Nick VinZant 0:49
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. So I want to get right to our first guests, because they study something that I'm just fascinated about. How does our memory work? Why do we forget certain things, and what is it about our memory that makes it change over time? This is memory researchers, Dr Akira O'Connor and Dr Christopher moulin, how does memory work?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 1:23
It doesn't work like a video recorder. What it does work like is taking everything that you have in your mind at the time at which you're experiencing something, and trying to knit that together into a kind of pattern of neuronal activity that is recorded in a part of the brain called the hippocampus and then gets kind of cascaded out into the rest of the brain, so you get these patterns of activation that become kind of initially laid down, kind of tentatively and then offline. So when you're away from whatever it is you're remembering, you get this kind of replay, this consolidation of those patterns of activity, of that, those patterns of activation, this often, often happens when you sleep. So people often find that they can remember stuff a lot better when they've they've slept on something, and so that's when you get, you get the kind of strengthening of the memory. And then when you're when you're kind of bringing it back to mind, what you're trying to do is you're trying to find a way into reactivating some part of that pattern that then kind of reactivates the rest of it, and that's what leads to you, kind of often re experiencing a memory in quite a kind of sensorially rich way.
Nick VinZant 2:51
It kind of sounds to me like we write it down in pencil a little bit. We sleep on it. Decide if we're really going to write it down in pen, but then we have to come back to it to keep it going. Is that,
Dr. Akira O'Connor 3:05
that that's that's definitely one way of thinking about it like or you could think about it as like a, as like an orchestra, where where each each instrument is, is playing a tune at the time of the memory. And if you decide that that thing is particularly significant, that thing is important, that thing needs to be remembered, then that that tune that was being played by each instrument kind of goes into into a kind of soft storage, and that's where you start, like practicing that tune a bit you did all of those instruments kind of keep working on it until they can hopefully get back to exactly the tune they were playing. When you're trying to remember that thing.
Nick VinZant 3:59
How good would you say our memory is?
Dr. Christopher Moulin 4:02
I'd say our memory is, is brilliant most of the time, it gets most of the things correct. And I think when it goes wrong, it can cause pretty difficult problems, family dinners, that's a good example of when it goes wrong, because two people, me and my sister can try and reminisce about the same situation or the same event, and we'll have different memories of the same event. One of us has to be right and one of us has to be wrong, but kind of, our own personal memory serves us well for what we want to remember and what our like story is from that event. So in that way, memory is great. It's our best friend, and it serves to, like, maintain who we are and what we need to know about their past, but in terms of something objective, because it's not an exact copy of something from the past, it is fallible, so it's a wonderful system. Most of the time, you won't know when it goes wrong, but every now and then, everybody's. That experience of remembering something differently from somebody else, which just goes to show that there's always a bias in your own memory towards yourself,
Nick VinZant 5:08
even though we have that memory bias. Is our bias correct in the sense that like, are we recalling the things that we'd paid attention to as they happened, or are we even influencing our own bias? Like, no that. I can't think of an example. But does this make sense? Like, are we remembering something as it happened through our lens, or are we changing the memory as it comes in and gets recorded?
Dr. Christopher Moulin 5:40
Like one of the things, of course, we do, just like a computer system, is trying to reduce the amount of storage that we have to do. So we make generalizations. So we want, instead of, you know, remembering a specific instance of a specific time, if it's something similar to something else, we'll we'll kind of construct a kind of general pattern or a general picture. And in fact, in in family arguments about memories is often like that. It's because you will say, Oh yeah, well, you know, Uncle Peter was there, because uncle Peter was usually there, but then somebody will have a member memory of him not being there, then you'll have a stupid debate about whether your uncle was present at the at the dinner, or not. So. So that's a great question, but I think there's, there's biases which are due to in the moment and your where your attention is, and what you're looking at and what you're thinking about. But then there's also these kinds of biases which are added, you know, later on down the line.
Nick VinZant 6:33
Would this be a way to kind of summarize it in my mind, is that, like, our memory is kind of like a puzzle, and if we're missing the puzzle piece, our brain just fills it in with what we think probably would have been in there, whether it was actually there or not, right?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 6:49
Exactly, exactly. And you think about that puzzle, you think about that puzzle as a movie, right? And then you've got this, this kind of spotlight of attention moving around during that movie, you're kind of filling in all the gaps based on where the attention has been, what you've noticed before. You're assuming nothing has changed. And you're also filling in all the bits that you never attended to at all because they were just pretty normal.
Nick VinZant 7:19
Is there a way to quantify like how much a memory will change over time. Like, if I go back to it, the home run that I hit was 300 feet, and now it's 320 feet, yeah, and now it's 350 feet.
Dr. Christopher Moulin 7:34
I don't know if there is, for any one individual, a way of doing that, and certainly that's, that's one of the aspects of memory, which is interesting. Each time you retrieve something, you get something back from memory, you will be, without doubt, kind of modifying it slightly and then laying it down differently for the next time that you get it. So the more you think about these things, and the more you repeat them, usually, the more they drift away from what the actual like, truth was at the start of the of the memory,
Nick VinZant 8:04
is this a big problem? Like, do you view this as a big problem that the idea of like, well, what's true? And the answer is, we kind of don't know.
Dr. Christopher Moulin 8:14
I I mean, obviously we can all generate times when it is a problem. But in general, I mean, I'll go back to what I say said before. I mean, memory is brilliant. It's not a problem. It's it's evolved like that. It's supposed to be like that, and it's like that. So you can act on your feet quickly. You can make quick decisions, you can make generalizations. You can maybe even predict the future a bit better based on, like, kind of making an average of everything you've encountered in the past.
Nick VinZant 8:42
To maybe crystallize this in my mind a little bit. It's the kind of thing where you don't need to remember if the Tiger had 13 stripes or 15 stripes. You just need to know that the tiger was dangerous. Because if you get caught up on the idea if it was 13 or 15, you're wasting your time. Just run. Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Moulin 8:59
I think that's a good, a good way of looking at it. We only need so much information to act appropriately. And then, you know, we need to be scared when we see a tiger. We don't need to say, hey, wait a minute. The last Tiger I saw I want to see. You know, yeah, how
Nick VinZant 9:16
does our brain kind of decide what we're going to remember and what we're not going to this is
Dr. Akira O'Connor 9:20
one of those mysteries, right, of of of psychology, of neuroscience. But that process of of deciding what you're going to remember is is actually a really important part of kind of filtering what's important and what isn't. So there's a certain amount of of that consolidation, that that offline process when, when you're not actually going through something, that that kind of prunes away irrelevant stuff, that there's probably an awful lot of frontal input. So the frontal cortex is the part of the brain that that we think about as. Being responsible for higher order cognition. So it keeps our kind of hopes and dreams going whilst we're we're kind of navigating the world and trying to kind of just deal with all of the sensory input that we're dealing with. The frontal cortex almost certainly feeds into this, this kind of pruning process, allowing some bits to fade away into obscurity, and other memories to kind of stand the test of time.
Nick VinZant 10:26
So when we remember something, I think of like a computer, and some sort of physical process happening in my brain when we remember something, is there a physical thing that is happening, like, oh, the brain just created a new memory and it put it here. Can you see that? Or is that not how it works?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 10:48
Well. So the hippocampus is really important, right? Without a hippocampus, people can't lay down new memories. So the hippocampus is almost like the kind of the recording head on an old fashioned cassette recorder. Without that, you can't lay down, lay down new memories. But what we what we know, is that we get this, this shift away from the hippocampus and into the kind of the rest of the brain, the further away in time we get from the point at which that memory was laid down. So there's initially this reliance on, on a kind of region of the brain to do that, that the heavy work of, of kind of recording that memory. But then later that that memory kind of becomes part of the kind of the fabric of our brains, and it just becomes another layer onto which we start layering more and more knowledge. So there's, there's undoubtedly distinct patterns of neural firing that that replicate what was happening when, when the memory was being encoded. Those happen when we're when we're retrieving memories, but by the time those memories become become kind of consolidated and part of, let's say, part of yourself, your idea of yourself, that they're just part of the the the kind of overall pattern of activation that your brain might, might might kind of slip into
Nick VinZant 12:42
when we remember something. Let's take an emotional memory or a strong memory, for example. Are when we remember it? Do we experience it in the same way, like so we first time we got on a roller coaster, we released dopamine if we remember that first time we got on a roller coaster, is our brain doing the same thing? Like, is it going through the actions, or is it just simply, you did this thing?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 13:07
There's an interaction there with with some memories, you get this really vivid reliving of that experience. And there's almost certainly a kind of an emotional component to that you don't, you don't tend to get that for, for kind of mundane, kind of,
Nick VinZant 13:27
where do I park my car? Right, like,
Dr. Akira O'Connor 13:29
right, right. But those kind of seminal experiences, those those experiences that might be particularly, particularly transformative to you, particularly, particularly stressful, particularly emotional. People do talk about the vividness, and then there's evidence to suggest that the vividness is much higher in those memories and and that can cause problems, right? Those sorts of mechanisms are the mechanisms that lead to the problems associated with PTSD and flashbacks and and those those kinds of things. So so there's absolutely total variation in in how some memories can be encoded and retrieved compared to others.
Nick VinZant 14:17
So does our brain, even though we actively remember something, does our brain keep all of it we just can't get back to it? Like, can I if I somehow, is what I had for dinner three weeks ago somewhere in my brain, even though I could not think of it at all. Or does it actually just nope, that's just gone. It's deleted.
Dr. Akira O'Connor 14:41
That's that's a, that's a really big question. Undoubtedly, some of it is getting prudent away. But the kind of, the counter example to all of that is, is, when you get that, you know you're you run across that path. Combination of thoughts that leads you to remember something that you haven't thought about in 15 years, in 20 years, and suddenly you can, you can remember.
Nick VinZant 15:09
It is that kind of how our memory ultimately works, like you need to be able to access the memories. You need other new experiences to kind of reinforce that memory.
Dr. Akira O'Connor 15:18
Yeah, so that's to reinforce the memory, to to re encode the memory, right? So, so one of the analogies that you can you can think about when it comes to to re consolidating memory, is, is tracing paper so you have your original memory. You've got, let's say, a picture drawn on that sheet of tracing paper. Then you put another one, another sheet of paper over it, and trace it out again. That's going to be ever so slightly different, but it's going to, broadly speaking, look like what you had underneath. But you think about that thing, or you talk about that memory over and over and over again, that's a new sheet of tracing paper, over the top, over the top, over the top. Eventually, what you are remembering is going to be probably a caricature of what you had originally. And that's if it's if you're being kind of generous. It might be that you've you've just missed out some things all together. It might be that it looks totally different. And that's all about kind of how you how you have re encoded that memory every time you've brought it to mind. So you've got this idea of of brain, of kind of memory plasticity in there. Every time you bring a memory to mind, you bring it out in a in a kind of fragile form, that what you do with it at that point makes a difference to how it's going to be kind of laid down and remembered again in the future. So it's one of the reasons that there are, well, depending on, on, depending on the country you're in, the police force you're dealing with there, there are quite strict rules about how, for example, police can interview you about about something that you might be asked to testify about in court, because they can quite potentially influence that by asking you leading questions and shifting and altering your memory, getting you to kind of draw these bits that they want you to talk about bigger or miss out the bits that they don't want you to Talk about. To use that tracing paper analogy. Ooh.
Nick VinZant 17:42
Are you ready for some harder slash, listener submitted questions. All right, go for it. Why do we remember music so well? Why can I just suddenly recite the lyrics for a song that I haven't heard in 15 years?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 17:56
That there's probably a few different ways to answer this, right? So one is the emotionality of music. Music for depending on the song, depending on the person, depending on the time of your life. It can be a really emotional experience. That emotion adds another hook, another way of getting to that combination of kind of neuronal activity that that leads to, that leads to a memory being retrieved. So that's one way of looking at it. Another is that experience of of knowing a song inside out that you knew when you were that you listened to when you were 18, when you were 25 that's, that's a really common experience, that period from 15 to 25 that leads to something called a reminiscence bump, whether it's music, whether it's the players that played for Your favorite sports team, whether it's the nights out you had, we remember those things from that reminiscence bump 15 to 25 better than any other period of our life. So that's that's when our our brain is healthiest. That's when there's, there's really significant stuff going on in our lives. Lots of hooks to attach, attach those memories to and and it's just one of those. It's as close to a rule within a law within psychology as we've got 15 to 25 leads to a reminiscence bump. It leads to really memorable memories?
Nick VinZant 19:44
Yeah, I can remember those years very, very well because they're new experiences kind of going out in the world. Your brain is fresh. There's emotions to it, yeah, love for the first time, right? Etc, etc,
Dr. Akira O'Connor 19:57
etc. You're feeling things deep.
Nick VinZant 20:01
Lee, does looking at a picture make you remember the picture and not the actual event?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 20:07
Yes, yes, it influences your memory Absolutely, whether or not it entirely shifts your memory to that picture is, is a is a different question, but there have been all sorts of studies, for example, where this this effect, has been tested even for things that never happened, right? So, for photoshopped pictures of, for example, someone riding in a hot air balloon in their childhood when they never did you can show someone that picture, give them a bit of time, and eventually they will come to believe that that that actually happened.
Nick VinZant 20:48
This is my wife. Is a huge she looks at the picture right after. I never will look at it. I'll never look at it.
Dr. Akira O'Connor 20:54
I find pictures almost painful. Actually. I don't know why I take pictures, but I I seldom look at them and and I think partly that's that there's something painful about that experience lost almost, you know, no longer I'm not no longer there. It's no longer part of me. But, yeah, I
Nick VinZant 21:18
feel the exact same way. That's exactly the way that I feel that, like, No, I don't want to lose that. What is the best memory trick that you know, like, if you want to remember something that is the best memory trick,
Dr. Christopher Moulin 21:31
anything that you relate to yourself is something that you will remember better. So anything that you process deeply, that you think about, that you reflect on, you integrate into your life, your story, anything that has meaning to you is is, is better remembered and and that's the most powerful kind of memory effect, and the most reliable thing that will predict whether you'll remember something or not. It's like how much you've worked with it, how much it means to you, how how much you can integrate it into your life story, or what it is you're doing, or what it is you're good at.
Dr. Akira O'Connor 22:09
Have you heard of memory palaces? No, no. A memory palace is, is one of these mnemonic devices. So to do you know this device of memory that you can use to bootstrap off to make your memory really, really good. What you can do is think of a house that you know really well. For a lot of people, this would be like might be their current house. It might be their childhood home, right? And plot a route through that house so you go in the front door, you go into the hallway, you go into the sitting room, you see various things. You do this for every single room, right, every point of interest in that house, in that memory palace, you can attach a memory to right so you can think about if, if you're trying to remember a particular the title of a particular book, you can think about placing the words for that, the title of that book, in specific locations in your memory palace. That way, when you come to, kind of, when you come to trying to remember that thing, you're you're taking that route through your house, and you're trying to use all of these things that you know so well to to act as cues, to act as reminders to those specific things that you're trying to remember.
Nick VinZant 23:53
Are there, are there certain things that we generally remember better, like, you're going to remember colors better than sounds or places rather than faces. Like, are there things that our memory seems to be more geared towards remembering than other things?
Dr. Akira O'Connor 24:08
Yeah, so there's that, there's a lot of variation, but a lot of the time what we tend to be universally quite good at is is spatial memory. So memory for how we'd navigate to places. It's It's why a lot of memory researchers do who do translational work? So who do work in in animals and try and translate that knowledge into into humans that they will often do, for example, spatial tasks in rodents, because that's, that's the kind of best analog for human memory. That's, that's, they might argue, the building blocks off of which human memory is built. So, so spatial memory is really good. And. And spatial memory is also part of the kind of mnemonic devices that that I was talking about. The memory palaces rely on routes through a memory palace, routes through, for example, a childhood house, because we tend to remember those patterns better. We tend to find it easiest to remember those those things,
Nick VinZant 25:21
oh, even just sitting here, I can't, like, thinking back to my childhood home. I can't remember what color the couch is, but I remember how far away from the TV it was, right, right? Are we more defined by our ability to remember or our ability to forget?
Dr. Christopher Moulin 25:36
OOF My goodness,
Nick VinZant 25:38
I know that one was like, oh, that's deep.
Dr. Christopher Moulin 25:41
So it's a philosophical question.
Dr. Christopher Moulin 25:49
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think since the 19th century, an American philosopher stroke psychologist William James. He said that if we, if we remembered everything, we'd be as bad off as if we forgot everything. So obviously, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fudge it a bit by saying the best response to that is that what you need is the correct balance between remembering and forgetting. You want to forget the bad things that happen to you, and you want to remember the good things. And you want to be able to control what comes to mind and when, and you don't want to have to dwell on bad, negative stuff so and also, you want to remember what's important, not what, what, not what's important and like. Again, it's not such a exciting example, but we often talk about like, your memory wants to work so that you can remember where you parked your car today. You don't want to remember where you parked it yesterday. That's of no use to you. When you go back to the car park, you want to remember where you park your car today. So again, I think that's that's how I'm going to answer that we need to get the right balance between remembering everything and forgetting everything, and just the balance between what we need and what we want to remember and what should be forgotten.
Nick VinZant 27:11
I want to thank Dr O'Connor and Dr moulin so much for joining us. If you want to connect with them, we have linked to them on our social media sites were profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included their information in the episode description. I also want to mention that we're doing something different with these interviews. So not only did Dr O'Connor and Dr moulin study memory, but they also specifically focus on Deja Vu and other types of vous. We're gonna have that discussion in our next episode that will come out on March 19, doing that in my head really quick. I hope that is correct, but it's right around March 19. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. What do you think is the worst day of the week?
John Shull 28:08
It's a mixture of Tuesday, for sure, and Sundays have become quite stressful as well, just because I'm already looking to Monday at like noon on Sunday, like, it's a me thing, but, like, I'd say Sundays and Tuesdays are probably the worst days of the week for me.
Nick VinZant 28:27
Oh, you can't let that build. You've got to, like, prepare on Friday for Monday. Like, I'm not leaving Friday until my Monday is kind of set. I'm not gonna let my Sunday be ruined by my Monday. You gotta, you gotta put a stop to that right now.
John Shull 28:43
Yeah, no, Tuesday is the worst. But I think Sundays are getting up there for me, for sure,
Nick VinZant 28:47
can't, you can't do that. You have to have, I'm not the kind of person who uses this word very much, but you have to have more of a work life balance. You can't let, you cannot let Sunday be ruined by Monday, you can't do it.
John Shull 29:03
I didn't even know. Apparently, there's something called the Sunday creepies that
Nick VinZant 29:07
I have heard of this
John Shull 29:10
my or so I'm sorry, Sunday scaries that my wife has recently told me that I have so
Nick VinZant 29:17
yeah, don't you can't let the Sunday scaries get to you. You've got to be prepared, or either you have to prepare or you have to just be able to walk into it willy nilly and be able to adapt to your situation. I polled the audience about this. 88% said Monday. 13% that math doesn't math, but 13% said Tuesday. I don't know how a computer could get that math wrong, because 88 plus 13 is 101
John Shull 29:47
Wait, not 80 Monday is the dominating like, worst day?
Nick VinZant 29:52
Monday? Yeah, I I think that most people would say Monday. But I think if you could actually take the process of going. Going to work out of it. I don't think most people would say Monday. I think Monday is really a warm up for the worst day that is Tuesday. If you're, I've, I've been lucky and been able to work remotely, so Monday is not that bad. Tuesday is the bad day. I think if you could take the commute out, Monday would not be the worst day.
John Shull 30:21
Yeah, I don't think, I don't think the book end, like Monday or Fridays are bad days at all, because one starts your week and you're still feeling okay, and then Friday by the you know, Fridays obviously heads into the weekend. So I yeah, I wouldn't, if anything, it like I said, it would be the ends or the the beginnings, like Tuesday is the worst Sunday is you're getting ready for for a new week.
Nick VinZant 30:44
Yeah, Tuesday, to me, is number one, but I would put Monday at number two, just because, only because it's a reminder that you have to do stuff. That's all I've got.
John Shull 30:53
What is, I don't think favorite day of the week,
Nick VinZant 30:57
besides the weekend, obviously, well, the favorite day would be Friday. That's kind of easy.
John Shull 31:04
Yeah, I don't, I don't know, man, I think my favorite day is probably Saturday.
Nick VinZant 31:08
But, well, yeah, that's easy. Because you're not working on a Saturday, you have to consider it to be a work day. Like, that's like asking, like, what do you think is worse eating poop or having cake? Do I
John Shull 31:23
think you'd be surprised. I think a lot of people's favorite days are sprinkled through the through the week.
Nick VinZant 31:27
I don't think that anybody is going to say their favorite day of the week is a day that they work.
John Shull 31:34
I think you'd be wrong.
Nick VinZant 31:35
I don't think so. I would be willing to bet all of the money that I have that people are not going to say their favorite day of the week is a day that they go to work.
John Shull 31:45
Well, why would it be Friday? Then you go to work on a Friday?
Nick VinZant 31:48
Well, I just assumed that you were talking about work days because it was so obvious that a day that you're not working is going to be a better day than the days that you have to work.
John Shull 31:57
Like a decade ago, my favorite day would have been a Thursday.
Nick VinZant 32:00
Your favorite day overall would have been a Thursday. Well, yeah, that's a little bit different. If you're single and don't really have a family, because you don't really have anything to do on the weekends, it's kind of different, like, work is kind of your social life. So that's a little bit different.
John Shull 32:13
Don't just be so fabulous, oh, gorgeous the weekend. Like, no, I don't
Nick VinZant 32:18
think we've already established many times that you have bad taste. That's okay. We've already established many times you don't have any taste at all. So there, there. I do have a sense of taste. I have less of a sense of taste because I don't have a smell than you do, and I still have better taste than you do.
John Shull 32:32
It's not true. It's not true. You know how to make one thing, pancakes.
Nick VinZant 32:37
I'm stepping it up a little bit. I'm also chilly dogs pretty
John Shull 32:43
well, all right. But you have, like, how are you cooking
Nick VinZant 32:45
the hot dogs? I put them in the toaster oven.
John Shull 32:49
Okay, you need a hot dog roller get you know, I
Nick VinZant 32:52
can't believe you. I'm still fascinated by the idea that you have all these extra appliances that you then keep in the basement, have to spend all this time walking back up and down the stairs for that's why you're tired and cranky all the time when we record this, because you're spending all your time wasting it.
John Shull 33:07
No, it's because we do this at, you know, 830 Eastern Standard Time. After a full day. You ready to do your shout outs? Yeah, I'm ready to do some shout outs. Let's give some shout outs. I got a good one here right off the bat. I got a Danny.
Nick VinZant 33:19
You got a good one right off the bat. So everybody else just sucks.
John Shull 33:23
Why? Why are you the way you are?
Nick VinZant 33:26
Because it's just fun to pick apart the things that you say.
John Shull 33:29
I know I I looked up a text that you sent me in August of 2020, because I was trying to, I was trying to find the length of the podcast because I've been doing some spring cleaning, and I deleted, you know, my browsing history. And in August of 2020 I asked you, I said, Hey, I'm gonna do like, shout outs a different way. And your response was, you could do it any way you want. You're still gonna mess up the names.
Nick VinZant 33:58
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that that's mean or insensitive or any negative connotation, I think that's that's just pointing out facts.
John Shull 34:04
So I have decided for the next nine names, I am going to get them grammatically correct, just to prove you wrong.
Nick VinZant 34:12
Six years I thought we usually did 10. So are you going to mess up one of them?
John Shull 34:16
Well, no, I already did. I already did. Okay. Danny Jacobson, so
Nick VinZant 34:20
Okay, let's say pressures on get these perfect, because you can't go super slow.
John Shull 34:26
No, I won't. I'll talk normal pace. So like Valerie Schneider, Isaiah, small Sally, Valentine, Eddie Ramsey, Jacob Silva, bonita, Cabrera, Claudia, Knight, Raymond McKenzie and Shirley Monroe.
Nick VinZant 34:45
Okay, that was pretty good. I mean, I was really looking for anything. I mean, there was some slight, like, seeing the facial expressions for people who maybe couldn't see it. There was a slight, like, little bit of hiccups, but not enough to, like, officially call out. It was pretty good. Congrats. Congratulations. This is our 400th almost episode, and you finally managed to do shout outs, right? Would you 400 which is better record than most Detroit sports teams?
John Shull 35:09
Congratulations, God, here we go. Would you say like public speaking is probably the the most nerve wracking thing?
Nick VinZant 35:18
No, not for me. It does. It generally doesn't. Generally doesn't bother me that much. I mean, I used to be a news reporter. I kind of got used to it. I also work in PR, and that's kind of what my job is. It doesn't particularly bother me. I am not. I am okay. What? What bothers you more? Speaking in front of a group of people you don't know, or speaking in front of a group of people. You do know?
John Shull 35:45
I mean, I'm more comfortable in a group full of strangers, but I'm not uncomfortable in front of my friends. It's just it's a different kind of conversation. But I'm great in front of strangers. I mean, yeah, that's kind of my bread and butter.
Nick VinZant 36:00
Oh yeah, I'm better off around people that I don't know than people that I do know. I feel more nervous about, like, getting up in front of people that I do know than people that I don't. Doesn't bother me at
John Shull 36:12
all people that I don't know. Let's see here, Nancy Guthrie is still missing.
Nick VinZant 36:18
Oh, is she that's faded out? She's, I don't, yeah, that's, I mean, that's terrible, but I don't think that she's gonna
John Shull 36:23
be found. That's kind of like, you know, once again, you don't realize how vicious and quick the news cycle is when you're in it. But, I mean, yeah, that was, you know, this is the worst way to put this, but that was, like, the, you know, story of the month last month, yeah. Now it was certainly up there. Yeah. Now, Dak Prescott breaking up with his girlfriend before his wife, his fiance before their wedding, is above it on TMZ.
Nick VinZant 36:51
Like, I mean, it's like, it's good, good that he broke, broke up with her before the wedding, I guess.
John Shull 36:57
Yeah, well, it's Dak Prescott.
Nick VinZant 36:58
I've always been fascinated with a lot of professional athletes get married much younger than I would have thought. A lot of professional athletes get married very young.
John Shull 37:09
I mean, deck Prescott is probably early 30s. I mean, he's not that young,
Nick VinZant 37:13
yeah, but I bet the average marriage age for professional athletes is less than the average marriage age for other professions.
John Shull 37:24
Carolyn, baby. Carolyn, I don't know
Nick VinZant 37:26
about how early curlers get married, but like Drake May, the guy for the Patriots already married. He's 22
John Shull 37:33
Well, that's because Jesus, touchdown, Jesus, oh, yeah. Well, well, I'm not, I'm not touching it. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's see. Did Do you even care about Rihanna?
Nick VinZant 37:45
I didn't even know what Rihanna has possibly done. Yeah, I like Rihanna. I like the fact that Rihanna made her money and then just pieced out.
John Shull 37:54
Well, apparently there was some kind of so police gonna call her at Rihanna's house. Apparently, some woman, who they they say, is not like, have any relation Rihanna shot up her house just randomly. Like, one o'clock in the afternoon, it's like, that's scary as hell. Like, what's it gonna it happens all across the country, right? I'm not saying it doesn't the Barbados. No, no, it's in Orange County somewhere, California, but, oh, Los Angeles. But, man, just like, that's just crazy. Like, I and I bring this up to say I wanted to get your thoughts on this, but I feel like the line of reality between, like, movie stars, musicians, athletes. Like, I feel like people are starting to, like, kind of intertwine. It like there is no separation anymore. Like people are like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find out where Rihanna lives, and I'm gonna go shoot up her house.
Nick VinZant 38:53
Like, oh, I think that there's certainly a certain detachment that you kind of mostly these people. You watch them through a screen. You kind of have no idea if they're real people or not. Yeah, right. Like, like, if you were to just find out that all these celebrities and people you see on TV aren't actually real, would that really shock you that much? Like, is that really a real person you have? I think there's a huge disconnect that you don't realize that that's like a real person.
John Shull 39:20
I mean, some of them look like aliens, like you ever seen men in black?
Nick VinZant 39:24
Yeah, dude, well, yeah, first one,
John Shull 39:27
oh man. How many are they to make it? Of those three,
Nick VinZant 39:29
four, they made a lot. They only made the first one. In my mind, they only made the first one, and then I think they made half of his second one, and then they just kind of lost interest.
John Shull 39:38
I mean, that's the problem, right? Like sequels, there aren't there are maybe, what, a dozen sequels that are better than the original, probably less,
Nick VinZant 39:48
not very many, not the only sequels that I can think of, right off the top of my head, that I would say are better than the first one, Star Wars Empire Strikes Back. You. Godfather two, you can make an argument a little bit. I don't know if you can or not, but I think you could say that Godfather two is a sequel that's better, or at least right up there, and that's the only ones that I can think of off the top of my head.
John Shull 40:14
Did you see this thing about Jim Carrey's face?
Nick VinZant 40:18
I saw no, not really, but he looks it. But was it real? Because I thought there was something that like it was not actually him,
John Shull 40:28
so that people were, well, I haven't seen any verified information that it was like a stunt double or something, but he doesn't look like himself. He is also in his mid 60s. So like, Sure, Botox and facelifts and things are going to look a little different on him at that age, but did not look like him.
Nick VinZant 40:49
No, there's definitely like and he's not somebody that you would think would get plastic surgery. He seemed to be out of the limelight a little bit, but I did not know those like, whoa. I'm not saying if it's like, there's other celebrities that have obviously gotten plastic obviously gotten plastic surgery that you can say good or bad. And I don't know if his was good or bad, but he certainly looked like a completely different person, completely different person.
John Shull 41:11
Yeah, that's crazy. This was just a weird one that really is probably not gonna go anywhere. But do you use chopsticks when you, you know, have a meal where you would use chopsticks? Are you a fork?
Nick VinZant 41:27
Guy? I try to use chopsticks, and I am just not able to manage it. And so eventually I just give up and go to the fork. I try, I give it an effort, but I don't succeed. And then I just give up.
John Shull 41:41
So I, what I end up doing is I try to right, but then I end up just stabbing it and eating it like a like a skewer. Because I'm like, like, Fuck this. Though I am pretty decent. I would give myself a rating of like three out of 10 for my chopstick skills,
Nick VinZant 42:00
okay, but you bring it down when you just start stabbing it right, like, it's fine to not be able to use it. But then don't go Neanderthal and then just stab the damn thing like me not know how use me. Smash like no. You can use other utensils. You are a civilized person. You have the capability to just do other things. You don't have to smash John. No, smash John. Remember, we
John Shull 42:24
were out eating somewhere, I think you with your fiance at the time, or girlfriend, I can't remember what she was, and you said that I ate like a
Nick VinZant 42:33
Neanderthal. Yeah, you don't hold utensils correctly.
John Shull 42:38
I mean, how are you supposed to hold you? I hold it like the way
Nick VinZant 42:41
that, like I can't I could just show you if I have a utensil, but the way that you were doing it is not appropriate, like you looked like Thog trying to use eat beans from a soup cup or something. It was, it was it was bad. It was the kind of thing like, oh, you can't do that. Manners used to be a big manners, I feel like used to be a much bigger thing. I don't know if, like, etiquette and manners is still taught. And I don't mean the idea of, like, being nice to people, being a good person. I mean the sense of, like, get your elbows off the table. Kids today. I'm not going down the kids today thing, God, you're such an old man that just wants to explain about stuff. No kids today. They don't even truck their napkins.
John Shull 43:21
You were the ones saying that.
Nick VinZant 43:23
I know, but shit like, I'm not going down this road with you. I'm not following you down this road. I don't care what the kids today do. The kids today are doing the same thing you did when you were their age. They're being kids today. Leave them alone. It's not any different than when you did. You just don't understand it.
John Shull 43:37
I didn't go after the kids. You went after the kid. You
Nick VinZant 43:40
go, you, you, you're going after the kid. You're trying to slip it in there. You're trying to bring it up constantly. Hey, what do you think about this and this and this? What do you think about the baseball strike zone being automated? Wasn't like that back when Horace Wagner used to play blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, are you done? You're an 80 year old man in a 40 year old man's body.
John Shull 44:06
Are you done? Yes, you brought that up. By the way, you were like,
Nick VinZant 44:12
going on the rant about brought it into me. And now I'm now I'm angry about it. I let my guard down and let my guard down for a minute, like, Okay, I'll play along with this. And then you went, old man complaining. Tell me about some submarines.
John Shull 44:28
Let's see what's what's the temperature right now in Rio,
Nick VinZant 44:31
what is the temperature right now in Rio? Do you think you can guess it? I have no idea what the temperature is.
John Shull 44:36
86 I'll say 74 Okay, all right. Let's see here.
Nick VinZant 44:41
I can't believe, for people who are new to this, John keeps the temperatures of various different cities throughout the world so and then earlier, he was complaining about how he wastes time. And he wonders, why?
John Shull 44:53
What did he put those two and two together and see if we get what did I say 74 and you said 86 Yeah.
Nick VinZant 44:59
What was it? 75 oh, is it nighttime? There? No, it's raining, though. Okay. I feel like, well, no, no, no, no, not doing this. Are you ready for our top five? Yes. So our top five is meme number combinations for people who haven't heard about, like, 6767, which my two children, who are seven and nine, say constantly, meme number conversations. And before you go into the kids today, thing we had them too. Everybody has some weird number convert combination for every generation that they get all excited about. What's your number?
John Shull 45:40
Yeah. I mean, mine aren't always memes, but they're definitely, you know, definitely popular. So my number five is 369,
Nick VinZant 45:52
my number five is also 369, Little John,
John Shull 45:57
Damn, you're fine. Girl. Keep it rocking to me one more time. Get low.
Nick VinZant 46:01
That's your number five. Yeah, my number five is 369, Little John can't like, if you don't know, you don't know. But if you know, you know the power like 369, which I still don't know, what it represents. Do you know what 369 represents?
John Shull 46:20
I'm guessing they were just numbers that rhymed. So he put them in there.
Nick VinZant 46:24
You think that's all it was. You think 369 is just because they rhyme. It's not because, like, it's some kind of code for something,
John Shull 46:31
unless it's, like, maybe an area code. But I doubt that, John, let's see 369 area code.
Nick VinZant 46:39
I'm already doing it. You look up the area code, it doesn't mean anything,
John Shull 46:50
yeah, 369, I'm just gonna run
Nick VinZant 46:54
it's a classic. What's your number four?
John Shull 46:57
My number four is probably the most boring one on my list, but I feel like it needs to be on a list. And that's 3.14 pi.
Nick VinZant 47:04
I don't feel like that should count. That's why addicts. It's not a meme. That's just a math. That's math.
John Shull 47:13
Sure it is. Every time that stupid day comes around, everyone's like, you want some pie. It's Pi Day, 3.1479 go. Fuck yourself.
Nick VinZant 47:22
No one has ever said that to me. I don't know what you're doing, that anyone has done that to you, or where you're hanging out, or any situation in which that has been brought up, but you're doing something wrong. No one has ever said something like that to me.
John Shull 47:36
Well, maybe that's different. I didn't grow up in Kansas.
Nick VinZant 47:40
My number four is 8008135, put that into a put it into a calculator, and turn it upside down, and you'll know what it is.
John Shull 47:51
Yeah, I almost did the what is it? 43110, for like, hello.
Nick VinZant 47:58
Oh yeah. 4311, was hell. Oh yeah, spells hell. 8008135, put it into the calculator, turn it upside down,
John Shull 48:09
and you're welcome. You're not You're not gonna like my number three then either. But my number three is 6660,
Nick VinZant 48:18
I don't I feel like that's biblical. That's too biblical to count.
John Shull 48:23
But okay, that's like, everyone's afraid of that. Like, that's a number combination that everybody knows. But like, everyone's afraid of it. It's like, oh, it's associated with the devil.
Nick VinZant 48:33
Like, I guess I'm okay with you putting 666 I just don't understand why you would put it at number three and not number one. Like, if you're gonna go that route, I don't know how that's not number one.
John Shull 48:45
Well, my number one, you're gonna hate So, but it's fine.
Nick VinZant 48:49
My number three is 8675309, okay, Jesse's is that Jesse's Girl? No, he said, 8677530,
John Shull 49:01
that Jesse's Girl? Yeah, no, it's by Tom Tommy two tone. Jesse's Girl was by Rick Springfield.
Nick VinZant 49:08
Oh, What's he singing about? 8675309,
Speaker 1 49:12
I want to make you mine
Nick VinZant 49:17
the song. I don't know any of the other numbers. I don't I wonder if the younger generation knows about 8675309,
John Shull 49:26
well, let me get back to that. One. My number two is 69
Nick VinZant 49:32
my number two is also 69 let's not discuss that and just move on that. We both have it at 69 because that makes us look
John Shull 49:41
like Sure. So my number one is 86753090,
Nick VinZant 49:46
I don't think that that's number one worthy at all. I don't think that's number one worthy at all.
John Shull 49:52
I think it's catchy. I think it's, you know, I think it's worth it. And I mean, it's probably not worth it to the generation below us, but if you know. It. You. You love it.
Nick VinZant 50:02
My number one is 420 because I think that might be the most timeless of them all, the 675309, the six seven, that's gonna pass, that's gonna fade. But I don't think that 420 is gonna fade as much. I think that's kind of like that stuck.
John Shull 50:21
I should have put that on my list that I've completely forgot about 420
Nick VinZant 50:28
Well, do you have any honorable mentions?
John Shull 50:31
Yeah, that one, and I'll also say so. The song, you know, that has 8675309, came out in 1981 so I think that stayed around for quite a while. So when you say it's going to fade away, I don't know if it's going to fade away, because what, what are we coming up on 50 years?
Nick VinZant 50:50
Yeah, but I don't think that you could go up to somebody who's under the age of 20 and be like, hey, 8675309,
John Shull 50:58
what's that mean? You know, Nick, it's the youth of today. There's a problem with them. Yeah, get off my lawn.
Nick VinZant 51:05
Kids going down the road. The only other ones that I had was double, oh, seven.
John Shull 51:11
Oh, that's a good one, yeah.
Nick VinZant 51:15
187, I think was big for a minute, but I think that was, I think that blipped in and out. I don't know about a six, seven thing. That's just kids being kids. I think whatever we say about them, like the point is for you not to get it. That's the point.
John Shull 51:29
I'll put 313, on there. Detroit's area code. No one cares about that. Everybody cares about that is
Nick VinZant 51:38
that the amount of people that were shot today, three, I'm ending it there. Okay, that's gonna 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 is the best number combination, I think fair warning, it's gonna really date you. But let us know anyway, because I'm fascinated by like, there's just some things, some numbers, that, for some reason, just catch on.