They were born more than 13 billion years ago but ancient stars are still shaping our Universe today. And without them, we wouldn’t be here.
Astrophysicist Dr. Anna Frebel has discovered some of the Universe’s oldest stars. We talk how ancient stars created life as we know it, the chaotic conditions of the early Universe and what the next generation of stars will look like.
Then, in the Pointless part of the show, it’s Just Do It and Where’s the Beef vs. Got Milk and I’m Loving It as we countdown the Top 5 Company Slogans.
00:00 Introducing Astrophysicist Dr. Anna Frebel
01:25 What Ancient Stars Tell Us About the Universe
03:37 How Ancient Stars Created the Universe as We Know It
06:43 The Odds All This Would Happen
07:56 First Generation Stars
10:00 Our Sun
12:16 10,000 Generations of Stars
15:41 The Best Star in the Universe
17:39 What Every Astrophysicist is Trying to Find
21:21 Pointless
42:47 The Top 5 Company Slogans
Interview with Stellar Archaeologist Dr. Anna Frebel
Dr. Anna Frebel 0:01
Nick, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick Vinzant. Coming up in this episode, ancient stars and company slogans. The sun has the combined elemental output of 1000 generations of stars in it today. I think so, because you know physics is really amazing. It just kind of works, and you can't - it's inevitable for things to happen. Probably almost all the elements were there from day two and a half, but only tiny, tiny amount. Then, with every stellar generation, a little bit more of all the elements got added.
Nick VinZant 0:53
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate it, really helps us out. So I want to get right to our first guest, because she studies something that, to me at least, is the foundation of the universe. Because without these stars, we wouldn't be here. This is astrophysicist Dr. Anna Freeble. What can we learn from ancient stars? What do they tell us?
Dr. Anna Frebel 1:27
Ancient stars are really fascinating in our Milky Way galaxy. We actually have 200 to 400 billion stars, that's that's a lot, but ever so often one of them actually is almost as old as the universe, so they have survived because they're really small, and really small guys live very long, and so we can, we can explore the early universe by looking at the chemical composition of these rare stars in the Milky Way today.
Nick VinZant 1:55
So, what would be the compost chemical composition of like the oldest stars versus newer stars?
Dr. Anna Frebel 2:01
Let's consider quickly what actually happened in the universe. It started with a big bang, and the universe was just made from hydrogen and helium. And then the very first stars turned on, and they were really big, which means they had actually a very short life. Massive stars party really hard to explode as a result of that fairly quickly, but the nice thing about that explosion is actually that in their course stars create heavier elements from nuclear fusion for gaining enough energy to shine, and all these newly created elements are dispersed in the explosion, so if you think that with every stellar generation that forms, you get a little bit more of all the elements over time.
Nick VinZant 2:49
I did not know that. I had always just assumed that all the elements were there from the beginning.
Dr. Anna Frebel 2:54
I know, but it's not the case. Well, actually, let's be, let's be detailed about that. Probably almost all the elements were there from day two and a half, but only a tiny, tiny amount. Then, with every stellar generation, a little bit more of all the elements got added to the universe. So that means that today's universe actually looks a little different than yesterday's. That means that the sun, which is a relatively young star, 4.6 billion years old, has a very, very different chemical composition than the guys that I'm looking for, which have almost nothing of the heavy elements in it.
Nick VinZant 3:37
So then, like, did these stars essentially create the universe as we know it today.
Dr. Anna Frebel 3:43
They have certainly, you know, created the what we call the chemical and driven, really, the chemical evolution of the universe, and that is this steady increase of the heavy elements with time, which ultimately led to the formation of biological life on the earth, because you know we are made from heavy elements, also hydrogen, but in the water, of course. The universe could not form planets very early on, because there wasn't enough carbon, enough iron, and enough nothing available, right. So it took quite a few billion years for the for the universe to for the stars collectively to to produce all this material.
Nick VinZant 4:29
How does the storm form the element? Like that's one of those things that you say that and I just like, oh, okay, but I have absolutely no idea how that could happen.
Dr. Anna Frebel 4:38
Yeah, so this is the the nuclear fusion that generates the energy, that's how stars make, make elements all the way up to iron. Any heavy elements, that's a whole different story. You can ask me about that too.
Nick VinZant 4:48
Yeah. Well, now I have to, right? Like, how do they make the really heavy ones? Then
Dr. Anna Frebel 4:52
I can't give you the full answer, because it is actually still not known how all the heavy elements are made, and in what exactly. What processes and where and how much, that's what keeps me in the job, in part, but the basic idea is really fascinating. So, in fusion, you throw things together and the final atom will weigh a little bit less than the constituents, and that little mass difference gets converted into energy, that's how the star gets the energy and shines after iron, that doesn't work, you would need to put, you know, basically gas into the tank to run this, but the star doesn't have any spare energy to give, so it needs to come up with a completely different process, and this is where it gets kind of curious, so you take your iron atom, let's say, and if you are in a violent situation where two neutron stars merge, which is a very crazy situation, really, then there are so many neutrons flowing around at such high density that they will basically bombard this poor iron atom with neutrons, and it will swell and become really big, but it's radioactive, so don't touch it. Once the neutron flux stops, it will decay, and then you will have created, let's say, a barium isotope, a barium atom, and although the other elements, which is the majority in the periodic table, is created this way through neutron capture in one way or another, and that's that's a really complicated process, and it requires extreme conditions in the universe, and so it's really hard to model and to figure that out, but it's also really cool stuff.
Nick VinZant 6:43
Is it surprising that all of this happened? Like, if you were to estimate, what are the chances that all of these things would happen that ultimately led to us? What would you kind of put that percentage at? Like, is it surprising that these happens? Like, no, this was going to happen eventually, don't worry about
Dr. Anna Frebel 7:00
it. Oh, that's a great question. I, yes, and no,
Nick VinZant 7:07
right? Like, eventually it would have, but we could be in 70 billion years from now,
Dr. Anna Frebel 7:13
I think. So, I think so, because you know, physics is really amazing. It just kind of works, and you can't, you, it's inevitable for things to happen,
Nick VinZant 7:25
kind of going back to the ancient stars, right? So the oldest one that you have been able to find is how
Dr. Anna Frebel 7:32
old we unfortunately can't really put an age number to it, even though we would like to, but I have found a whole bunch of what we plausibly call second generation stars, so stars that formed after the very first stars had had their fun, exploded, and then seeded that primordial gas with a sprinkle of these heavy elements. Is
Nick VinZant 7:56
there a chance those first generation stars are still out there?
Dr. Anna Frebel 8:00
Probably not, but again, never say never, especially in astronomy, where we're in the business of finding that that one odd thing in the cosmos, there is a lot of theory and a lot of physics that makes good sense, namely that you have to cool the gas to make a star, and some simulations have been run to figure out. Okay, how far could we push this? Maybe in the making of a big star, when it kind of starts to clump, there's a little something breaking off that could possibly become a small star and survive until today we haven't found one of those yet, but that would be the only way to make one. What it would look like, I don't know. We have ideas, but the universe was really crazy early on, and it's hard to predict.
Nick VinZant 9:00
Yeah, like, what would the early universe have been like? Like, when these stars were formed, would it have looked different than it would today?
Dr. Anna Frebel 9:09
Well, it was definitely hotter, and it was smaller, much, much smaller, and stuff was much closer by, right? So the first stars formed at the same time, sort of the first galaxy starting to form, and the galaxy in this case is just a bigger gas cloud that was also gravitationally contracting. They, there were sort of blobs that were a little bit more massive than the rest here and there, and much closer behind. One of the bigger blobs formed the Milky Way, and, of course, in other regions, whatever the biggest blob was, formed a different galaxy. The universe was actually pretty brutal back then. It still is, really, because the biggest one, the bigger one will eat the smaller ones, so.
Nick VinZant 10:00
If you found the second generation stars, for kind of my understanding and perspective, like what generation would our sun be? What generation would we be making now?
Dr. Anna Frebel 10:10
So the sun probably formed after something like 1000 generations, but again we have to consider, sort of, you know, in one spot,
Nick VinZant 10:22
yeah, it's a generation in each location, not a generation for
Dr. Anna Frebel 10:26
the right, because we have to ask the question, what contributed to the chemical enrichment, the element enrichment of the birth cloud that brought forward the sun.
Nick VinZant 10:36
I was really hoping you were going to say, like, seventh generation, and I wouldn't have this existential fear of the vastness of the universe, like, oh, it's 1000 generations,
Dr. Anna Frebel 10:46
much if you think about it, right? I could have said 10 billion, because I mean, there are certain more than 10 billion stars around, right?
Nick VinZant 10:55
Maybe it's the way that I think that, like, 1000 if there's no difference in my mind between 1000 and a billion, like that is such
John Shull 11:01
a
Nick VinZant 11:02
massive time scale of time that I can't even imagine it. Well, so if our son is the 1,000th, around the 1,000th one made today would be around the what,
Dr. Anna Frebel 11:13
10,000
Nick VinZant 11:17
This is where I just. I can't. it's not like no, somebody forgot to carry a one somewhere, like the universe is really like all this big and this old, that just I can't even understand, like I believe it, and all that, I just can't even comprehend it, I can't even comprehend
Dr. Anna Frebel 11:36
it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I mean, let's, let's think about our own ancestors, right? I mean, I probably have 1000 generations in my ancestry. I mean, I haven't actually done that, but that would be fun to look into. And, of course, we have to, we have to remember every generation takes its time, right? We, we are born, and then we have children, and then we die, and then the next generation comes, and the same is true for stars, right? And that's why it's only 1000 over the course of about 9 billion years, right?
Nick VinZant 12:11
Yeah, that's what we are. It's
Dr. Anna Frebel 12:12
actually quite, quite reasonable
Nick VinZant 12:16
when you look at kind of the different generations of stars. Are there certain speaking like universally, right? Like, are there certain generations that kind of stand out in, like, oh, that's when that happened, that's when we think that that happened, like Generation 713 whoo, that was a big
Dr. Anna Frebel 12:36
one. Yeah, I don't really think so. I mean, the first generation, that was definitely special, right? Because the form from this different gas, just the hydrogen and the helium, we like the sun because that's our home star. Otherwise, it's really just kind of plugging along, plugging along, as I already mentioned, not all stars are the same, and certainly they, they're, you know, with every generation, there will be stars that are small and then bigger, more massive stars, right? There's always some variety within a given generation, and they will, they will go through life differently, faster, shorter, they will produce different elements and in different ways, so they certainly all leave a different mark behind, and mass is really the big indicator there, right? The very massive ones explode as supernova, the small ones, they don't produce much, and they eventually become white dwarfs, like the sun, which just means they're just going to be, you know, a really dense, they're sort of collapsing into just some hot core, and they're going to sit around in the universe forever,
Nick VinZant 13:52
but so if you need these kind of more, let me just use the word extreme, for lack of a better word, environments to create these things, wouldn't the big bang have been like the most extreme environment, so wouldn't why wouldn't they all be there right then, or were they all then? And then they were destroyed, and then we made that.
Dr. Anna Frebel 14:11
That's a, that's a great point. So, let's think about what happened during the big bang. The universe started basically with from this, and then it expanded really, really fast, and everything in it got basically stretched away from each other in neutron capture and generally nuclear synthesis. You need the opposite, you need stuff bombarding rather than, you know, taking away. This is what exactly why the universe stopped at helium in the big bang, because it got too cold, because the universe got expanded too much, and everything was flying away from each other, cooling down rather than being hot so fast, and you know, hitting each other, because you need to hit each other, you. You want to create something new.
Nick VinZant 15:02
Yeah, yeah, it does. It's like maybe it was there, but then when it expanded, it cooled it down enough that it was gone.
Dr. Anna Frebel 15:10
It was definitely, yeah, there weren't enough neutrons targeting just one proton, which is a very deliberate process in a way. It was definitely too diffuse. The neutrons were around, but they were too diffuse to really hit something to create a heavy element.
Nick VinZant 15:26
This is my thing with space, that like I love to think about space and find out about space for about five minutes, and then it just scares the shit out of me. Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions?
Dr. Anna Frebel 15:39
All right.
Nick VinZant 15:41
What is your favorite star?
Dr. Anna Frebel 15:44
Oh, yes, I have one. I have one. It's my baby star. It's the one that I discovered during my PhD. It's called He 30 and 27 minus 2326 Please repeat.
Nick VinZant 15:56
A good name, good name.
Dr. Anna Frebel 15:59
That, that is one second generation star. It was the first, it was a second second generation star ever found, and it was my big discovery. And actually, I was at the remote observing with my telescope in Chile on Monday night, and we observed it again. I like to say hi once a year. Take a spectrum of
Nick VinZant 16:24
it. How long would it take light from that star to reach us?
Dr. Anna Frebel 16:28
Yeah, so this guy is actually fairly close. Let me think. I think it's a few 1000 light years away. Only if you have a good small amateur telescope, you could, you could take a picture of it.
Nick VinZant 16:40
Is there anything about the Milky Way that we would have more of these than other places? Like, is there errors? Like, not really.
Dr. Anna Frebel 16:49
It's hard to say. I wish I had an answer. I can only speculate. I mean, the Milky Way seems to be a fairly ordinary galaxy. I mean, I know we like to be,
Nick VinZant 17:00
I know, right? Like, we are one place in a universe
John Shull 17:03
of
Dr. Anna Frebel 17:04
trillions of one is really boring star, and that's actually a really good thing, because we'd be sweating literally a lot more if there was even as much as a little blip in the sun, it would get a lot hotter here, and the galaxy is fairly ordinary, so I would say, yeah, unless a galaxy, for some reason, had a lot of gas early on and made a lot of stars, and hence made a lot of elements, you know, faster, so had a faster chemical evolution, probably all the same.
Nick VinZant 17:39
What's kind of the holy grail of this research, like, what is everybody trying to find?
Dr. Anna Frebel 17:44
Well, we, you asked the million dollar question, is there a surviving first star that, that would just be kind of cool. Now, I mean, we would, we would learn from that, that these stars exist, and I think that would be really nice. It would certainly confirm our general view of how the universe got started, but we can also live without it. The sun has the combined elemental output of 1000 generation of stars in it today, and so that that's the direct fingerprint of the first stars that we can never observe directly, because they died instantly. Pretty much the old star you asked me, the first question you asked me is right. What, what's interesting about ancient stars is that they, they give us the snapshot, the fingerprint of what came out of a supernova. We can probe what comes out of a supernova with these stars, that's cool, because we learn about element production, we learn about star stellar evolution, we learn about explosion, you know how the gas gets dispersed and mixed, it's the whole shebang.
Nick VinZant 18:56
What is your wildest theory about ancient stars, the one that, like, you would only bring up if you've had a couple with your astrophysicist buddies, and, like, hey guys, what about this?
Dr. Anna Frebel 19:09
I'll tell you about something crazy that that we don't understand. So, I mentioned uranium already, and we have thorium as well, so we can observe those really heavy elements all the way to thorium and uranium in some of the oldest stars, and they have altogether sort of the fingerprint of one particular process that probably is the one that happens in these merging neutron stars, and so we have, we think that in general we have a good idea. Do we understand the details? No. And here's, here's one interesting piece. Some of these stars have too much thorium in it compared to the other elements, and we're like, where's this thorium coming from? Now thorium is ray. Active has a half life of 14 billion years, which means half of it has decayed by now, if it was formed 14 billion years ago, which is roughly the age of the universe, right? So early on, so what we're observing right now isn't even the full amount, it was even more back then, and thorium, as far as we can tell, cannot be produced in isolation, because you can't tell the universe, make just that element, right? it, it either you have this neutral bombard, or when you have this neutron bombardment, it builds up all the elements in some kind of, you know, chain reaction, basically, and thorium and uranium at the very end of that, and so for many years now we're very puzzled by where's that extra radioactive thorium coming from. Some theorists actually need to come up with a crazy theory, not me as the observer. I just tell the theorists what to do to tell to explain to me how on earth, how in the universe that is possible.
Nick VinZant 21:06
I want to thank Anna so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have a link to her on our social media sites. We're Profoundly Pointless on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. Okay, now let's bring in John Scholl and get to the pointless part of the show. Do you overestimate or underestimate? Like, which one do you generally do?
John Shull 21:34
Probably an underestimator.
Nick VinZant 21:36
Oh, I'm an overestimator, but I do overestimate slightly on purpose, like if I think something's going to cost me $3,000 I'll tell myself it's going to cost me five, and then when it costs 3500 I'm like, oh, wow, who, that wasn't so bad. So I deliberately overestimate,
John Shull 21:56
I definitely underestimate any, anything that I ask of anybody, you know what I mean, like, I know if I ask somebody for anything, I don't, I don't think it's going to be more than I expect. It's always less, usually, but I can't remember the last time where I was like, "Man, thanks for going above and beyond. Maybe I'm not hiring the right people, I don't know. Oh,
Nick VinZant 22:17
I hired some people to do stuff around my house, and they did a fantastic job, and I was pretty happy with that, but I would say, if I would say, in general, I'm usually disappointed by the things people do for me in a professional capacity, like that's what you did.
John Shull 22:35
Do you really want me to old man rant right now about customer service?
Nick VinZant 22:39
Oh no, not really, because I'm sure that this is like, okay, give me 30 seconds of your old man rant on customer service.
John Shull 22:46
Well, I think the biggest thing for me is, how can you be a customer service representative if you have no idea nor care about the product that you are giving customer represents representation to? That's all
Nick VinZant 23:02
I completely agree that customer service is worse than it has ever been in my lifetime, but I also understand it and respect it in the sense that people who are doing those kind of jobs have been de-incentivized, like they're not getting anything out of it, they're not getting paid a lot of money, why should they care either? So, yeah, customer service is bad, but we've also kind of created the problem in the first place, so I both understand it, am annoyed by it, and respect
John Shull 23:31
it. That's a good other, other side of it, you know, in terms of, yeah, they're not getting anything, and it must be brutal to sit there. It's kind of like, how many robo calls a day, do you think you get,
Nick VinZant 23:43
oh, at least three to five, but I like to answer them. I love answering spam calls. I love answering spam calls,
John Shull 23:52
and what a terrible job that is to sit there and just cold call people, knowing every time they see a number that pops up as spam, they're going to hate you automatically.
Nick VinZant 24:05
Oh yeah, I feel bad for the people who have to do it, like I kind of.. I always kind of.. I love answering spam calls and giving them a hard time, and then I feel slightly bad afterwards, because, like, man, it's just some guy trying to do his job.
John Shull 24:22
I mean, I'm never rude, and I'm the same way, and actually, I'll admit this. I had to learn kind of like the etiquette of, you know, appreciation for jobs like that, and you know, like, but yeah, I'm 100% cordial now. I never hang up. I don't answer, usually, but if I ever do, I always get tricked by the numbers that look like a number that may not be spam, but then it is spam.
Nick VinZant 24:49
Yeah, I'm not that old. I still pretty can identify a spam call pretty easily.
John Shull 24:54
Also, why is that called
John Shull 24:55
spam
John Shull 24:56
spam when spam is spam? And if you know what spam is, you know what I'm talking about.
Nick VinZant 25:04
I don't even want to just discuss this with you, to be honest with you. Like, once you say a word so many times, like you said spam so many times in a row, I can't even, like, my brain starts to shut down,
John Shull 25:18
like
Nick VinZant 25:18
after the fifth time you said spam in a 10 second period, Mike. I just started to lose consciousness slightly.
John Shull 25:26
I did see your eyes, kind of. You were definitely zoning out there. For
John Shull 25:30
I started to
Nick VinZant 25:30
glaze over, I started to glaze over a little bit. I started to glaze
John Shull 25:34
early, too early for you to be drinking Spam, the mystery meat. Check it out,
Nick VinZant 25:40
I don't really have a problem with it. Tastes good, it's all right.
John Shull 25:43
I mean, comparatively to other things we eat, it's probably not that bad, really.
Nick VinZant 25:50
Tell me about your garden. You want to talk about your garden? Do you actually have you actually succeeded in growing anything? Are you just like, I'm going to plant a garden?
John Shull 26:00
I mean, we've had one the last few years. I mean, I'm not going to take sole credit for it, but I am. I do plant the stuff for the most part, and I make sure it's watered, and so, yeah, I guess I am doing it solely, so slowly this year. Yeah, things have grown. My thing with the garden is, unless it's a native plant or something that comes back every year, every, I mean, the prices are ridiculous to go out and buy, buy plants.
John Shull 26:32
Yeah, yeah,
Nick VinZant 26:38
I cannot pretend to care in any capacity. I cannot pretend to care about your garden in any capacity, because honestly, in my mind, it's a whole lot of work that produces an amount of food that you can't possibly consume in the amount of time that you have it. It's like, oh man, I've been working for 20 hours on my strawberry plants, and then they produce 1000s of strawberries. You can eat about 50 of them, and then the rest you've got to be like, "Oh, crap, what am I going to do with all these strawberries that really aren't as good as the ones that I could just get frozen for 499 for 12 pounds of it at Costco? It's just entirely like, if you want to garden for mental health or garden, because that's just what you like it, but don't garden as a way to, like, "Oh, I'm really saving money here, like, you really
John Shull 27:21
don't do it, you don't, you don't do it for a money, for like saving money, but I think the price, the shot in the beginning is, it's like, man, like, but it's 100% worth it. It's great to see things grow organically, you know. It's like, it's, it's awesome to see.
Nick VinZant 27:40
Yeah,
John Shull 27:41
I haven't attached a GoPro to one of my things to watch, like I'm going to put together a time lapse.
Nick VinZant 27:48
Please, someone steal that. Please, someone steal that. I hope that on the last day somebody steals that, like right before you pick them, you go inside, you get ready to check your GoPro, and then I hope someone steals
John Shull 28:04
it. I don't know why you're hating. I, it's gonna be fantastic.
Nick VinZant 28:08
Like, what are you gonna do with that? Like, what are you really gonna do with this GoPro video? You're gonna be like, "Whoa, look at this strawberry grow. And then
John Shull 28:17
that's it.
Nick VinZant 28:17
You're gonna watch it, they're gonna come back and watch it years later. You're gonna sit down and, like, hey kids, you want to see something Grandpa did this couple 40 years ago. Let's watch my GoPro time lapse. Sit down, gather round, and then everybody's got to do something nobody wants
John Shull 28:35
to do. Don't know why. I mean, it's.. I'll send you a picture of my garden, and you'll be.. I think you'll be impressed. Well, you won't be impressed, but
Nick VinZant 28:45
I won't. I'll be like, looks like he got some weeds in there, and those aren't really looking like they're going to be that great.
John Shull 28:51
Well, anyone out there that gardens knows they're on my side.
Nick VinZant 28:57
Please steal his GoPro, steal his GoPro 737 Evergreen Terrace.
John Shull 29:04
Are you done? Are you done making fun of my garden while as I'm creating sustainable life here?
Nick VinZant 29:11
Yeah, congratulations. I'm sure it's going to be a great two days when you get to eat all that. Like, you want peppers? We've got 50 of them, I had to.
John Shull 29:22
I do give some to my neighbors, just FYI.
Nick VinZant 29:25
They don't want
John Shull 29:27
them. That's not true. That's not.. I have a.. and I'm only saying this because it makes sense. I have a Venezuelan neighbor, elderly couple that lives behind me. In every August, when I give them bushels of vegetables, they're very thankful.
Nick VinZant 29:43
Well, I'm glad you did all that hard work for somebody else. That's very nice of you, but just don't pretend like you're gardening like honey. No, this garden is going to revolutionize our finances. Like, just don't pretend like it's something that it's not. Enjoy your hobby, enjoy giving some gifts to your little neighbors out. There, but like, let's not pretend that you're just turning into a grocery store over there, okay? That's what I'm saying.
John Shull 30:06
Are we? Are we fast? Could we move on to shout outs?
Nick VinZant 30:09
I've been waiting for 10 minutes.
John Shull 30:11
We are, we are taking up some time here. All right, let's hear. We'll start with Brooklyn Chin, Emmanuel Villanueva, Monroe Melendez, some of these names, when I read them back aloud, don't sound like real names. Everly Nelson, but Everly is E V R or E V E R L E I G H. You don't usually see Everly spelled like that.
Nick VinZant 30:36
I have a problem that when people start to spell things to me, I just like my brain shuts down, like I cannot follow along when someone tries to spell me something that I'm not familiar with. I'm just like, e v, let me try to resell e, okay? I'm e ever e v e r l i g h.
John Shull 30:58
Yes,
Nick VinZant 31:01
I don't understand why people spell things differently than they're supposed to be spelled, like you're spelling. I'm sorry, no offense to you, Everly, but spelling names differently doesn't make you special. And everybody, even if you're like, it's not Everly, it's Everly, nobody's gonna pronounce it that way, it's not Everly, it's Everly, because I spelled it with an I G H.
John Shull 31:25
Well,
Nick VinZant 31:26
I don't know if that's actually how that works, but
John Shull 31:28
well, we just lost one of our two listeners, so that's that's that. Let's just move on.
Nick VinZant 31:32
Sorry,
John Shull 31:34
I'm just glad that you adopt me for once. Hunter Chang Lyric Ballad, that can't be a real name,
John Shull 31:42
that's
Nick VinZant 31:43
probably not a real person, but it's a
John Shull 31:45
great thought.
John Shull 31:45
They were actually pretty active on YouTube with us this past couple of weeks,
Nick VinZant 31:51
right? So I'm talking about, I like their name,
John Shull 31:53
Lira. This
John Shull 31:54
one's my.. this one was my favorite, Julissa Murphy. I like a good Julissa because it sounds like Julie and Melissa combined.
Nick VinZant 32:02
Julissa, yeah. Well,
John Shull 32:06
Lila Page and Harper Casey.
Nick VinZant 32:11
Harper is an underrated name. A Harper is a girl that you marry.
John Shull 32:18
Would you say, and I know you just said that, Harper, but are there just some people when you meet them you're like they should be married just based on their names alone?
Nick VinZant 32:28
No, not on their names alone, but there's definitely like things that add up, like some people should be like, oh, that's a, that's a, that's a good catch. Somebody's gotta jump on it. My neighbor, for any women out there looking for a man, he makes good money, he's tall, seems like a successful guy. I saw him carrying his niece inside his house one day, seems like a nice guy. If anybody's looking for a man, 737 Evergreen Terrace, 737 Evergreen Terrace, hit me up. I'll introduce you to Dane.
John Shull 33:05
Oh, oh, Dane,
Nick VinZant 33:07
no, but he's a good one. He's not a Dane, like Dane can go, Dane can be Dane is the Harper of men. I don't know a lot of douches named Dane, Derek, yeah, but not, not Dane.
John Shull 33:23
Hopefully, your neighbor doesn't listen to this, because we just merged his name.
Nick VinZant 33:28
No, I think that's actually a compliment. Try and hook him up with some ladies, man, who's got a problem with that?
John Shull 33:34
I mean, if nobody, apparently,
Nick VinZant 33:38
can I call you Big Red, since you've been out in the sun and have clearly turned red, like, can I just start calling you back? No,
John Shull 33:44
it's so bad, man. It's so bad. I don't know what else to do.
Nick VinZant 33:47
Do you have you thought about sunscreen?
John Shull 33:50
I did put on sunscreen on Monday, FYI. You'd be.. you would have been proud of me.
Nick VinZant 33:56
You don't put on sunscreen every day when you go outside. It's 2026 man. God, dude, you just
John Shull 34:04
even had.. I've even had things removed from my body as well, but I'm not saying that, like, as a proud thing. I just.. I don't think
Nick VinZant 34:15
you don't believe that. You think your body is stronger than the sun. You're like, you know what? The sun overrated. I can. I'm tougher than that thing.
John Shull 34:23
Like I'm sure I'm trying to give an example. Like yesterday we had baseball practice, and then a softball game. I didn't put on sunscreen because I'm wearing a hat. Right, Monday we were at a splash pad. Of course, I'm gonna put on sunscreen.
Nick VinZant 34:45
Yeah, dude, just put it on every day. Just get in the habit of putting everybody should put on sunscreen every day. I'm 57 and I wear sunscreen every day. Look at me, 57
John Shull 34:56
You're translucent, that means it's working
Nick VinZant 34:59
right. It, yeah, dude, put on sunscreen every day. Don't be going outside like an idiot without sunscreen on.
John Shull 35:05
You know what this means, right? This means you truly like me because you care about me.
Nick VinZant 35:09
I'm getting upset because, like, all I see is like big red juicy fruit over there.
John Shull 35:15
I, I will have lights next week to where I don't look like big red juicy fruit, which, by the way, used to be my favorite kind of wriggly gum. And then I realized how actually unflavorful wriggly gum is after the first 30 seconds, and now I don't chew it. I haven't chewed it in a decade.
Nick VinZant 35:34
Oh yeah, juicy fruits really good for about the first 15 to 20, and then after that it's gone.
John Shull 35:39
Yeah, okay. all right. What I got, got one thing here for you, because I, it's kind of in your wheelhouse,
John Shull 35:48
okay? And I'm
John Shull 35:48
sure you're gonna butcher it, but I was having a conversation with a neighbor, actually, he's a gigantic Marvel Universe fan, apparently, and I was completely out of my realm, but I tried to piece along a conversation, and when I say he's a fan, he has a giant statue of Captain America, like in his basement, and he showed me a picture. This thing is six foot tall, all
Nick VinZant 36:20
right. He's, yeah, he's definitely a fan, that's, that's a little, that's, that's significantly beyond where I am,
John Shull 36:28
but so he asked me a question, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pose the same question, you, because I thought about it after, I'm like, okay, that was a good, like, I don't really know him that well, but it was like a good conversation piece, which I had butchered, so anyway, so if you're building like the perfect superhero villain, you know, just all together, if you're building the perfect person from the Marvel universe, right? What is the most important quality? Where would you put, like, all your, your XP points or whatever into it? Would it be like, you know, muscle leadership skills, you know, stamina. What would be the number one most important thing to you?
Nick VinZant 37:10
If I.. this is where that I would do it first. You would do reality warping. You've got somebody like Frank and Richards, you've got the Molecule Man that are there. Those are some of the most powerful people in Marvel Universe. Then you have telepathy, right? You're talking about Professor X, you're talking about Nate Richard or Nathan Gray. Telepaths are generally very powerful, like if you're ranking them in terms of how you're going to look at this. So reality warpers, telepaths, and then you have somebody like the Hulk that's just raw peer strength, because strength is also going to translate into durability, because if you can, you know, lift a lot, you can move very quickly, and you're also pretty durable. So that's the way that I would go. Reality warping telepath, and then strength.
John Shull 37:50
Well, I butchered it, and the reason why he brought up Captain America was because he asked me that question, and because he was like, "Are you a fan? And I said, "Yeah, you know, I.. I've seen the movies, I know a little bit of the back stories, blah blah, and then he asked me that question, and just out of nowhere I looked over the left, and one of my neighbors says American flag, you know, hanging up or whatever, and I just go, Captain America, he's like the embodiment of of everything, I was like, oh my god, I sound like a complete dunce,
Nick VinZant 38:20
oh yeah, oh yeah, you're a noob, he probably thought to you, look at this noob, look at this big red juicy fruit over here coming in. Nah, I don't believe in sunscreen, but I do believe in Captain America, I like it. Yeah, that's the wrong answer, Captain America and Batman. If I can go on a quick rant here, like Captain America and Batman, if you put plot armor aside, would get the crap kicked out of them like instantly. Like Batman's just a normal guy going up against Superman, who's faster than the speed of light in circumcises. Like, he's not going to be like Superman's just going to destroy you and tear you apart. Batman doesn't win that. It's only like through plot armor that he does it, but we can really get into this. This I can get into much farther than you and your gardening, so we should probably just stop. But yeah, saying Captain America is like that's not he's laughing at you. I just
John Shull 39:12
froze. I just.. I froze, man. I don't know if you do that, but I try. I'm trying to be neighborly. I'm going to be hosting a neighbor, like, like I live in a cul-de-sac, so I'm gonna be doing like cul-de-sac barbecue, trying to be neighborly.
Nick VinZant 39:30
Oh yeah, I don't care about things like that.
John Shull 39:33
I know you don't.
Nick VinZant 39:34
I don't. I kind of just like
John Shull 39:37
I want to make a proclamation on this show, no matter how many years it takes, but there is a show that is taking over everything right now, called Off Campus.
Nick VinZant 39:50
I've never even heard of
John Shull 39:51
it. That's fair, because why would you? But open up your.. so, well, I guess you have to be in the algorithm. It doesn't matter, it. It's a series of romance novels. I think this year and next year are going to be the year of the romance novel adapted to TV. I say that watched off campus, I kind of liked it, but now it doesn't matter, because you don't even know what it is. So I'm talking to a mirror, so that's all I'll say about it.
Nick VinZant 40:21
Don't know anything about it. I don't regularly read romance novels, but if that's what you like to do in your spare time when you're not gardening, then go ahead. Like, this is not setting up for you well, like you're reading romance novels, you're gardening. Just go ahead and complete, like, if this is you, go ahead and do it. Live your life the way that you want to, but John just complete the transition
John Shull 40:45
candles. I got submarines, though, right? Submarines kind of hurt me a little bit.
Nick VinZant 40:50
No, yeah, a little bit, right? But you have gardening candles, and you're watching off campus. What have you decided what your female name would be, if you were a woman, what name would you want?
John Shull 41:05
False, that's tough. I want something sultry, like something excitable, like.. like every time I think of an excitable woman stuff, but it's like, you know, like Shakira or J Lo, you know, something like
Nick VinZant 41:23
you are not Shakira or J Lo material, man. Come on, Stacy.
John Shull 41:28
No, I'd be like I'd be like a Molly or a Helen.
Nick VinZant 41:32
I could actually see you as a Helen. You could use
John Shull 41:36
you look like a Helen.
Nick VinZant 41:39
You look like Helen. I would like to think that I could pull off Mia
John Shull 41:50
Man. People enjoy this podcast, because how the hell are we on this topic right now?
Nick VinZant 41:59
Just happens, man. You never thought about what you would be named if you were a woman.
John Shull 42:03
No,
Nick VinZant 42:04
to
John Shull 42:05
never. And what Helen
Nick VinZant 42:07
is perfect for you.
John Shull 42:08
I'm laughing. I'm not making fun or bringing any light to people that you know are going through these things.
Nick VinZant 42:15
Yeah, I've lived your life.
John Shull 42:16
I've never thought about changing my name ever, especially to, uh, to a woman's name, but
Nick VinZant 42:24
Doris, you could also be Doris, you would be like Barbara, you would be an old timey name, Helen, Barbara,
John Shull 42:35
man,
Nick VinZant 42:37
Dolores,
John Shull 42:38
I bet you,
Nick VinZant 42:40
God, you would be a Deborah.
John Shull 42:42
No, that's my mother-in-law's name. I'm not doing
Nick VinZant 42:44
it. Yeah, not doing it. Can't tell the difference, honestly. Looking at the two of you, I'm not even sure which one you are.
John Shull 42:50
You take that's friendship ending material right there.
Nick VinZant 42:55
That's
John Shull 42:56
don't you
John Shull 42:56
say that.
Nick VinZant 42:57
All right, let's just go. You ready for our top five?
John Shull 43:00
Yes.
Nick VinZant 43:02
So our top five is top five company slogans. I didn't realize how many of these I knew off the top of my head before I started looking them up, so my, my criteria wasn't just if it was good, but if it motivated me to do something, like it couldn't just be memorable. I had to be like inspired by it. So, what's your number five?
John Shull 43:25
Literally, I don't really have a criteria. I just went with ones that have always stuck in my mind, or that I've have had some kind of meaning on me. I do want to throw out, I'm going to start by saying an honorable mention, one, but I wanted to put this in my top five,
Nick VinZant 43:44
okay?
John Shull 43:45
But I couldn't, but it's Sega, and theirs is, or theirs was, the more you play with it, the harder it gets. So just figure I'd start with that.
Nick VinZant 43:57
They did
John Shull 43:58
not
Nick VinZant 43:59
really use that, but that's one of those ones that somebody's like, yeah, go ahead and do that, we'll pretend like it was some stupid mistake, but we knew exactly what we're doing
John Shull 44:08
here, yeah, attention grabbing for a couple of months, right, like
John Shull 44:14
sell
John Shull 44:14
some consoles, all right, my number five in, I'm just putting this one on the list because it needs to be on any slogan list, though I despise this company in this place, it's Disney, and it's happiest place on earth.
Nick VinZant 44:31
Yeah, I agree with you. I thought about putting it on my top five, but I ultimately just didn't, because I don't like Disney either. And one of my nightmares, like, if I was to wake up in hell, it would be Disney World in the summer, like that would be my hell.
John Shull 44:47
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's not the happiest place on earth, but for some reason we all go there like sheep.
Nick VinZant 44:57
Oh, I refuse to, I refuse to, they. Been several offers to take my children to Disney World, and I would have said no every time, like, nope, you have to wait till I'm dead, not going, not doing it.
John Shull 45:10
Take the urn with you, because I'm not going as a living, breathing human being.
Nick VinZant 45:14
God, I could see one of my sons is a way to spite me sprinkling my ashes at Disney World,
John Shull 45:19
if I'm still alive, I'm gonna make sure that happens now.
Nick VinZant 45:24
Sprinkle my ashes at Disney World. Oh God, that'd be.. I would be.. I would rise from the grave. I would ride.. I would reconstitute myself from the ashes to have my revenge. That's how upset I would be. Minor five is Taste the Rainbow. Anytime I hear Taste the rainbow, I do think, like, oh man, I could have some Skittles.
John Shull 45:45
Let's, it's not necessarily the slogan for me, it's how they used to portray it in the commercials, you know.
Nick VinZant 45:52
Yeah, I agree with that.
John Shull 45:53
Yeah, like nowadays that probably isn't. Is that still a slogan? Is it still Taste the Rainbow?
Nick VinZant 46:00
I would assume so. I don't know why you would change it when it's one of the best slogans of all time.
John Shull 46:05
It's just, I don't know if you can get away with that now. Just, you know, a whisper of taste. I don't know when I say that. And then my number four, it's not like this one is without controversy, but my number four is KFC is finger licking good.
Nick VinZant 46:22
My number four is, where's the beef?
John Shull 46:25
Oh, that's a good one. It
Nick VinZant 46:29
still makes me laugh a little bit. Where's the beef?
John Shull 46:33
Where's the beef? It's fantastic.
Nick VinZant 46:36
Where's the beef, Wendy's?
John Shull 46:38
That,
John Shull 46:40
that goes with Arby's to me, with you know, we have the meats. My number three is probably the most known slogan, at least of our generation, and that's Nike with just do
Nick VinZant 46:55
it. I have that as my number two.
John Shull 46:59
Okay, now,
Nick VinZant 47:01
yeah, I'm surprised I really had to justify not making it number
John Shull 47:11
one. My number one, I think, is is right, right fully there. My number two is kind of a personal pick, so that's why that's why I stuck it at three. I mean, obviously, you think of most brands in America, clothing shoe related. I mean, unless you really know the brands, which I'm sure you do, but like, what other clothing brand, shoe brand, can you just say the slogan of? There aren't too many that are still around.
Nick VinZant 47:39
No, I have no idea what, like Reebok or Adidas or New Balance or Hoka, or any other kind of clothing brand is. I have that's the most iconic clothing brand.
John Shull 47:52
Hold on, I gotta see what New Balances is. Just because, for some reason, I always think of New Balance, and it's the same shoe that women wear,
Nick VinZant 48:03
they only make one shoe, they only make one all white tennis shoe. New Balance slogan should be like "accept
John Shull 48:13
it. Their their slogan is "we got now"
Nick VinZant 48:21
should be like we got arthritis, that's what it should be. Are you gonna put Pure Michigan as your number two?
John Shull 48:33
Come on, why are you ruining it?
Nick VinZant 48:34
Because when you said Homer pick, I immediately thought of Pure Michigan as like he's gonna put Pure Michigan number two, like anybody wants to go to fucking Michigan. Who
John Shull 48:45
think that that slogan is? I mean, it's okay, but it's the parody account of it. If no one's ever seen it, if you're not from Michigan, look up like Pure Michigan, pure bullshit on YouTube, and it's hilarious. It's
Nick VinZant 49:04
Michigan. Is not a tourist destination. Nobody's like, you know, where I've always wanted to go - Michigan. I've always thought of going to Michigan.
John Shull 49:17
What's your number three?
Nick VinZant 49:18
Got milk?
John Shull 49:21
Okay,
Nick VinZant 49:21
huge. That was huge for a while.
John Shull 49:26
Yeah. Hey, I left it all. It's all my honorable mention, you know, the commercials in the what were they, the late 90s, early 2000s where you had all the celebrities with the mouth mustache, and it was a silhouetted background, and all that. Like that was cool, but yeah, I don't know, it's just kind of, it's like white milk to me, it's just kind of bland,
Nick VinZant 49:46
it's faded away a little bit, but it's memorable. What's your number two going to be? Then
John Shull 49:51
it's PlayStation, live in your world, play in ours.
Nick VinZant 49:58
The only reason I can't see that being. Number two is the thing that I remember only about the PlayStation is that little entrance music that they had, PlayStation. I would have thought that was actually their slogan, was just PlayStation, PlayStation.
John Shull 50:15
No, it's, I mean, I, it's an awesome, like, you know, one liner, and it, yeah, as we know, Sony and PlayStation kind of have defined the video game genre, other than Nintendo, but Nintendo is kind of a global thing to me. I don't think PlayStation is as global as Nintendo,
Nick VinZant 50:34
I think,
John Shull 50:36
but yeah, that's so that's it's a Homer pick, because I was a self-confessed gamer growing up, so that's why it's my number two, my number one now, right?
Nick VinZant 50:48
Yeah,
John Shull 50:50
let me make sure that I say it correctly, so it's Apple, and it's just think different.
Nick VinZant 50:59
Oh, interesting. I, I would have put just do it above that.
John Shull 51:09
I mean, both brands have done, I mean, yeah, they're self-explanatory, and what they are, but I feel like, in terms of cultural significance alone in terms of what Apple has done, especially for our generation. I mean, everyone, well, you don't have an Apple product, but maybe
Nick VinZant 51:31
are you not seeing this iPhone that has tape on the back of it? Right there, the dog got it a little bit, so don't say to me that I don't have an Apple product, when I'm sorry, here rocking an iPhone 6s E,
John Shull 51:46
my bad, my bad, I'm just saying, you know, it's I, it's like Nike, you can go one way or the other to me on either those slogans, but to me, I remember when Steve Jobs and all them, you know, they, they came out with the first iPod, and all that, like it, I don't know, I don't know how to explain it, but Apple is the number one for me, for sure. I think it's fantastic, it's so simple, but it's so deep at the same time.
Nick VinZant 52:12
Okay, I want you to look at my phone, which has tape on the back of it, holding it together. The dog got the top of it, you can see, it's kind of the dog got a little bit of it, and it's starting to peel apart. So, this is May 2026 How much longer do you think I can keep this?
John Shull 52:32
I
Nick VinZant 52:33
mean, you think I
John Shull 52:34
got probably two more years. I mean, the problem is, I don't, I don't think the physical, like, I don't think the physical body of the phone is ever going to give out, I think it's you're going to be left behind on software upgrades soon.
Nick VinZant 52:47
Oh yeah, I've already can't install any new apps or anything like that, like anytime I try to even update things, like I can't do it anymore, like this software is no longer available, it's only 10 years old, it still works great. My number one, and I went with this as a number one, because I think it captures this place, and it kind of inspires you. It makes you think about going. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. You start thinking about going to Vegas again, like when you hear that "just do it" doesn't inspire me to go buy new shoes.
John Shull 53:29
No, but I mean, I can't argue, I can't, I can't really say anything against that, especially because Vegas now is considered a major, you know, whatever, around the world, it's not just America, plus, yeah, how many people say it? Everyone says it, right? Like everyone that goes there says
Nick VinZant 53:53
it, that's why, when I started thinking about it, I was like, oh, that might be my number one, because I would have went and just do it. There's a lot in your honorable mention, I mean, what are some in your honorable mention?
John Shull 54:05
Let's see, I mean, we've mentioned a couple of them already. I don't think we've talked about Taco Bell, think outside the bun.
Nick VinZant 54:12
Oh, I thought it was runway to Border, which they kind of got rid of for understandable reasons.
John Shull 54:19
It's
John Shull 54:20
2026 Nick, where are you?
Nick VinZant 54:23
Can't have that one anymore.
John Shull 54:25
Also, you, you kind of have to know this. This company, but De Beers, a diamond is forever.
Nick VinZant 54:35
Kiss begins with K is another one you could think of.
John Shull 54:39
Red Bull gives you wings, e eat eat fresh at Subway if they're even still around, and then I put Walmart's Save Money Live Better, but
Nick VinZant 54:53
Walmart slogan. The only other ones I had in my honorable mention were Breakfast of Champions from Weed. These, but I also think it was better eat your Wheaties at one point too, and if I feel like this is iconic, only because if I know what the slogan is for a product that I have never used, never thought about using, never bought, never thought about buying, maybe it's Maybelline, like maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline, like when you know the slogan for something that you've never ever used, I think that's pretty big.
John Shull 55:26
Yeah, I mean I'm gonna add, I want to add two more now that I'm kind of going back through the list. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Nick VinZant 55:35
Yeah, it's pretty good.
John Shull 55:36
And America runs on Duncan.
Nick VinZant 55:39
Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of Profoundly Pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it, really helps out the show. And let us know what you think are the best company slogans. To me, it can't just be a good, catchy saying, like Wheaties with Breakfast of Champions. It has to be something that motivates me to use that product.