Hand Model Talia Wray

From movies and TV, to social media and magazines, you've seen her hands everywhere. Now, meet the women behind them. Hand Model Talia Wray joins us for a behind the scenes look at hand modeling, how to care for your hands and what makes her hands so in demand. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Fingers.

Interview with Hand Model Talia Wray

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

hands, people, finger, model, pinkies, long, ring finger, skin tone, wave, job, feel, nails, questions, commercial, product, world, thought, big, legs, nice

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host

Talia Wray: Hand Model and Actor

Nick VinZant  00:15

Hey everybody welcome to Profoundly Pointless My name is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, we're gonna talk modeling with a professional hand model and then count down the top five fingers.

Talia Wray  00:27

So that was really like the first time that I was booked for like a hand modeling job is like you don't want to be distracted from the product. So something has to come in that is cohesive and has like this rhythm. And people assume that hand models have certain direct can take certain direction and have like an elegance. The leg and foot job is the same client for me and I actually been looking under my feet for To see if anything has come up. And I haven't got anything weird yet, but I know that it's a really big thing.

Nick VinZant  01:10

I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it. It really helps us out. So real quick if you're in a safe position to do this. Take a look at your hands. Have you ever really thought about your hands? Have you ever really looked at somebody else's hands? Have you ever really thought about the hands that you see in commercials, and TV and movies and magazines and all that kind of stuff? Our first guest has a fascinating story into just how much thought companies put in to the hands that you see all over the place. And it's just this it's such an interesting look into the behind the scenes world that I find just just fascinating. This is to Talia Wray. She's a hand model with close up models. How did you become a hand model?

Talia Wray  02:07

I started off doing commercial work and acting. And the casting directors always kind of have us put our hands up to our face. And there's a couple myths about why that is. The one that I heard that I like and stuck with was that somebody got booked for a McDonald's commercial and didn't have a Pinkie. So the casting directors always asked to see our hands and I guess they just noticed that I had really nice hands and brought me in to do a casting for Samsung. I ended up booking that commercial and ended up doing like almost every product they came out with for a couple years. So that was really like the first time that I was booked for like a hand modeling job officially and got into that world.

Nick VinZant  03:00

Did you ever think to yourself before this, like, Oh, I have nice hands? I mean, was it something that you had ever thought of before?

Talia Wray  03:08

Yeah, um, actually, my mom made me aware that like, My hands were very unique. And also my dad tried to get me into piano. So the whole thing was like, kind of having like the really long slender knuckle list kind of fingers that were really like appealing to just my parents. So when, when that was brought to my attention, I was just kind of made aware of it, then it's like, everywhere you go, kind of like the nail lady is always complimenting like, your nail beds and like, my nails are very strong and they grow long, naturally. You tend to get a lot of compliments, but I just never knew what to do with them. You know, I was just kind of like, Okay, cool. Never thought about making money.

Nick VinZant  03:56

Yeah, I would imagine like, hey, you've got great eyelashes. Like, oh, okay, what do you do? Whatdo I do with that?

Talia Wray  04:04

I just kind of took the compliments.

Nick VinZant  04:06

We kind of you talked about this a little bit but what about your hands? Like why? Why are they nice?

Talia Wray  04:13

Yeah, I think me knowing and like being in the world now for a while I know it's like this like smooth even skin tone. It's that the knuckles and the the skin where your nail starts. There's like no discoloration, it's just all the way down is like even then, like this skin tone is like a perfect medium color. So it's kind of like you would represent the medium girls then it's the nail bed is really long and flat. That's like something very appealing to I would say like nail polish companies and like higher ends like Chanel Unlike how they sell perfume you would see like long nails and if you look on trends with like, like household products and like whatever you're trying to sell it kind of goes with like either an everyday kind of look of a hand which would go with like a shorter nail and like that luxurious brand that might choose like to have longer nails or just like very well manicured.

Nick VinZant  05:24

When you talk about the medium skin tone, we're talking about like essentially for any ethnicity in between the lightest skin tone of that ethnicity and the darkest skin tone of that right?

Talia Wray  05:37

Exactly, you know, a while back it was only really like lighter skin tones, and they were een like airbrushing or spraying their skin to be medium or dark. If if like that a product appealed to like those clients. So I would hear a lot that like Like these white and Asian girls would work as like the medium or dark girls too, because they just didn't want to pay or use darker skin tone models. But nowadays, it's like fashionable to have every color of the rainbow. But my Yeah, my skin tone is like that is like the medium, but I could also go dark, because I tan very quickly and easily. So I can definitely like range between medium and dark.

Nick VinZant  06:29

Has that been, I mean a struggle in terms of like getting more diversity in that for like a product? Well, no, you don't have to have a white hand holding this. You can have a dark black hand or a Hispanic and has that changed recently.

Talia Wray  06:43

You know, I see that there are prejudices between like, I probably would never do certain things like I just know it. I would never work for certain people because like if you see the forecasting of like, just How they shoe or, or what they're trying to sell to, it's not going to be like a demographic, they don't want to sell to people who look like me, basically. Sometimes it's also like, I'm matching the spokesperson of their, their commercial, like, if my hand is going to be Kerry Washington, it would just be whatever's closest to her skin tone. So it's very on trend of like what's happening in the fashion world and like, who they're selling to and who they want to buy their products. So there is definitely prejudice in that regard. It's definitely become more popular to have like a medium skin tone. And there's a big disadvantage. I would say for people with darker skin tone.

Nick VinZant  07:48

Do you feel like that's fair? Do you feel like that's unfair? Is that just that's just how it is?

Talia Wray  07:53

I have my own opinion, but I would say that I understand from like a marketing standpoint, when you look at everybody on there. have, like their diversity board. Like, there's not even a lot of women and women of color. So I think it doesn't even make sense. Like, if you want to change an ad, you have to kind of change what you're doing within the company. So I feel like it definitely is reflective of what's happening in the world. And for that reason, I don't get offended because if you don't, if you don't want me to be part of the project, then I don't really want to be part of it either.

Nick VinZant  08:30

In terms of like getting jobs, is it a subjective thing? Like one client will say, Oh, you have nice hands. And another client will say no, I don't like her hands. Or is it pretty much if you have it, you have it,

Talia Wray  08:40

you know, I know that I have. So I'm pretty confident. But I know that I kind of appeal to everyone looking for my like, if somebody's looking for my skin tone. I feel like I'm really at the top of my game with like, the top And models I've done every job that I kind of wanted to do when I started when I, when I even fantasize and like got my first job I started thinking like, what is it like to be like the top hand model? And you think of like certain people like Adele and Christina and certain people who had just done every job out there. And I thought to myself, what what would they be doing? And like, what are the jobs that they booked and I kind of imagined on my own like, what are the what are the products I'm using? What is it that I want to see myself ads and I just started booking those jobs and I would see some I would see some emails as well about me and like people are very enthusiastic when they see my hands, but I have had clients say in front of me Wow. Like your your nail bed isn't as good Flat as like hers, like a girl sitting directly next to me. You see that right in front of you? Yeah, I had a client do that to me once. And she was just like, so upset that my nail bed wasn't completely flat, and it had a curve to it. And it was for a nail polish job, I guess.

Nick VinZant  10:23

I mean, do you get offended by just the sheer rudeness of it, or is it?

Talia Wray  10:27

So personally, I was I was offended because I was just like, wow, it's something I really can't change. And I don't even know what to say to you because it's so rude.

Nick VinZant  10:38

Yeah, what are you gonna do?

Talia Wray  10:39

Yeah. And I immediately told my agent because I was so upset because it was actually like one of my dream clients. And I had worked with them with a different creative team separately and like, love that team. But when I met her, I really never wanted to work for that company again.

Nick VinZant  10:59

Can, can you like become a good hand model? Can you do something else to the hand itself?

Talia Wray  11:08

Like physically? I want to say no, some people ask for certain positions. Like, for instance, with Samsung, a lot of the jobs I were doing, I was doing, I was under a table of this set. So it's like I have my hands up and I have to do things and I can't even see the screen and I have to hit certain marks and you just kind of have to like have like just the sense of space and direction and a lot of dance training actually helped me with this, like hitting my marks and being fluid with my hands. So there's certain things direction wise I can take but I don't think that like hand modeling is something that like everyone can do because some hands are just definitely not as a as appeasing as like others are.

Nick VinZant  11:59

It's one of those things that as soon as you notice, you really notice

Talia Wray  12:03

Yeah,you just can't stop looking.

Nick VinZant  12:07

No, I'm looking at some of your pictures. I'm like, oh you do have really nice hands. Looking at my hands, I feel self conscious.

Talia Wray  12:16

Yeah, it really it sucks when you become aware of it, but in my daily life, I don't really let it get in my way.

Nick VinZant  12:24

What do you do to take care of your hands.

Talia Wray  12:28

I've been doing a lot of hand masks which are really nice and they just feel really great and they they help like maintain just like the smoothness just like how you would kind of take care of your face. I've been trying to treat my hands the same way and like use similar products on my face in my hands. Maintaining just like my cuticles are really important cuticle oil, cuticle oil and like cutting the cuticles, I would say are the best things. You can Do and I just love a good shaping. And I only kind of let certain people shape my nails because it can just really take a long time to grow out.

Nick VinZant  13:15

are your hands insured?

Talia Wray  13:17

They're not but I've been trying. I've actually been looking into doing it and I should have just done it so many times I've been thinking about it a lot, because it does pay my rent.

Nick VinZant  13:29

Are there things that you like, Oh, I, I avoid doing that. Right. Like I imagine you don't go rock or something.

Talia Wray  13:36

Yeah, so there are things that like, I get a little nervous about, like, my roommate bought me rollerblades and I was like if I fall because I also do leg modeling and foot modeling. So I'm like if I fall on any part of my body like it would take months to repair it like I just don't think it's a good idea or bowling could be really like difficult. I'm a shoe So, I don't really care. I don't really like pay attention too much about like the knives and things. So I like in the kitchen, but I know people who don't cook and like will not touch knives. And they're just really sticklers for it. But yeah, there are things that I'm I'm made aware of, but I pretty much do everything.

Nick VinZant  14:22

Essentially, how much do you get paid for a shoot?

Talia Wray  14:25

Um, I get paid anywhere from like 500 to I think my highest job was about 2500 were really a yeah whoa

Nick VinZant  14:41

oh, a day

Talia Wray  14:43

Yeah.

Nick VinZant  14:44

Wow. And I mean, it was that a that's a day like I'm there the full day or Hey, here I am. I'm gone in 10 minutes kind of thing.

Talia Wray  14:52

Well, it's like some jobs. I've done like five minutes of work and I've been sitting around all day. Some jobs like, I'll literally shoot for two hours, and then I can go. So it really depends. But some days could be long some days could be like 8 to 12 hours. So it'll, it'll really feel like you're you're shooting like a whole campaign or commercial for you know, full body models is about the same time.

Nick VinZant  15:23

I mean, at that rate, so this this can be a full time living then right?

Talia Wray  15:26

It can, um, I don't know a lot of people who only do it, but I do know people who only do it and have made like a lifestyle out of it. A lot of the people who are like newly in the game, also do it hand in hand with like, their regular modeling or just like side hustles and stuff, but like there's I definitely do other things, but it definitely pays my rent.

Nick VinZant  15:54

Are you ready for the harder slash listener submitted questions? The first one is do you hate Seinfeld?

Talia Wray  16:03

Wow, because of that hand. That hand.

Nick VinZant  16:06

Yeah. Yeah,

Talia Wray  16:09

I thought it was really funny. I've been sent it a couple times. And I obsessed because of how excited I was when I first booked my job and first like, got into it and like, started dreaming up all of these jobs that I wanted to do. I got really excited. So I understand where it comes from. And I grew up watching Seinfeld so No, I do not hate it.

Nick VinZant  16:33

Who is it, and go ahead and say if that this is you? Who has the greatest hands of all time? Is there somebody they'd be like? That's, that's the ultimate there.

Talia Wray  16:44

Oh my god. of all time. I would say my friend Adele has pretty great hands. She does like she has a fair skin tone. And when I started. I was like, if I meet her and when I meet her, and if I work with her, I know like, I've made it. And we ended up working together last years. So that was like a pretty big deal for me. She doesn't even know this story. And so she's probably gonna think this is so funny because we're friends now. But for me, she's like the ultimate hand model

Nick VinZant  17:24

in the parts modeling world who is the cool kid of parts modeling High School, the hands, feet legs, who's like the cool kid.

Talia Wray  17:37

I thought it was legs. I think legs are pretty impressive. And everyone is has this whole thing about height, and like seeing women's legs is really sexy. So I thought legs were like the ultimate part. So I would say the cool kid his legs.

Nick VinZant  17:58

Now you do that too. Does one pay than the other.

Talia Wray  18:01

So I just, I, this was my first leg job that I got. Was this not this year? Yeah. Was it the beginning of 2020? rip? And so I started doing leg modeling. Do they pay more? No, not necessarily. It depends on the clients though. But hopefully from these photos, I'll start booking more legs and we'll, we can talk about that later.

Nick VinZant  18:31

Is the foot modeling one though, does that kind of end up? Because people have a thing with feet? Right? Does that lead to some weird places?

Talia Wray  18:40

Ah, you know, I, the leg and foot job is the same client for me and I actually been looking under my feet photos to see if anything has come up. And I haven't got anything weird yet, but I do know that it's a really big thing. And industry like the whole foot fetish thing. So it hasn't come up yet.

Nick VinZant  19:06

coolest product you've ever modeled

Talia Wray  19:09

iPhone.

Nick VinZant  19:10

Yeah, that's that's got to be a good one too, right? Yeah.

Talia Wray  19:13

And I've heard like the, the, the clients that I've worked with on the job like doing my nails and makeup said that they remember like when Steve was like on this set of those commercials and I just like Wish I could have been there for that. But yeah, iPhone was like, for me fell big.

Nick VinZant  19:34

Where have I probably seen your hands and not known it?

Talia Wray  19:38

Maybe food commercials like dunking french fries and ketchup.

Nick VinZant  19:45

Oh, yeah. I guess you don't think about all the times you just see pictures of people's hands.

Talia Wray  19:51

Exactly. Because there's so many McDonald's commercials that are only hands and you don't even realize it.

Nick VinZant  19:59

So they won't use them. But it's it's hardly ever the actual person I see on TV.

Talia Wray  20:04

Oh, no. Yeah, they would they would almost Oh wait, I think as something as big as McDonald's and when they're doing food close ups, they always hire hand models.

Nick VinZant  20:17

Why do you I mean, I guess why is that? Am I going to be turned off if I see.

Talia Wray  20:22

So that's what is like you don't want to be distracted from the product. So something has to come in that is cohesive and has like this rhythm. And people assume that hand models have certainty dirt can take certain direction and have like an elegance rather than like models who can just who Strike a pose or like a lot of people complain that models don't take direction well, but I think it's kind of hard for a full body model to not be able to take direction well and get jobs but I don't really know why that a They would do it other than like it's more appeasing and it just doesn't pull focus from the food. If you see something that is off about the hand,

Nick VinZant  21:09

Do you have good dexterity? Like do you have to be able to put this finger in this position and this finger in that position?

Talia Wray  21:16

I found a lot of times, I struggled in the beginning because of so many positions that were uncomfortable to me, and that I couldn't even that were just so unnatural. So it is kind of uncomfortable to the point where you're just kind of like you, you think like you want to reposition your fingers like surgically

Nick VinZant  21:42

Did somebody come in and like move like no, I need your left index to be open. 

Talia Wray  21:47

They will really almost always they'll be like we need it like this. We like it like this or just like literally pick up and move my finger and just be like, stay there and take the photo. Which can be irksome, because for me I'm just like, do my job. But I get it. I get it and I have been better at looking and noticing that everything is kind of like my fingers are evenly spaced and like looks pretty.

Nick VinZant  22:17

What finger is the best finger?

Talia Wray  22:21

The middle finger haha

Nick VinZant  22:23

It's definitely the most it, definitely has the most wide array of uses.

Talia Wray  22:32

But actually the most important finger I would say is that, yeah, the thumb is probably always in use, just like when you're holding your phone. It's always in the front. The thumb is very important. I think if you don't have a thumb you can you basically can't do the job

Nick VinZant  22:50

Now you've done some acting work too, right? Yeah. Is that is that kind of the the future career path or what's the What did what are you going to be? What is the main goal? I guess?

Talia Wray  23:02

Yeah. So my main goal is definitely in the acting world. I like being expressive and like writing my own work and like working with other actors. I really like just love storytelling. I think the part of the reason why I do it is a therapeutic aspect. I think it's very lovely to watch people creatively, emo and be able to get something back from that. So that is my main passion in life in the future in the present.

Nick VinZant  23:41

Yeah, it certainly seems like it would be good exposure.

Talia Wray  23:45

Oh, for sure. For sure,

Nick VinZant  23:55

 if I send you a picture of my hands, will you tell me what's wrong with my hands?

Talia Wray  24:00

Oh my god haha Okay, let me know when it shows up. Okay. Okay!

Nick VinZant  24:14

my hands are okay they're not bad

Talia Wray  24:10 I'm surprised to hear so well manicured during an epidemic or pandemic or life crisis, whatever we're dealing with now. I would say are you purposely making like this? Almost like the Star Wars symbol?

Nick VinZant  24:37

No.

Talia Wray  24:39

Okay because I was gonna say this spacing is just a little off between the the index and the middle finger or the ring finger in the middle finger.

Nick VinZant  24:51

Oh it does now I'm looking at it in real life it does kind of come apart. Are my knuckles bad?

Talia Wray  25:04

 I would say. I would say you could probably work like dad jobs they have like these jobs that you're like clearly like it's a dad feel like

Nick VinZant  25:14

that's a huge compliment and crush my soul at the same time.

Talia Wray  25:21

Cuz I'm saying, like, you look like you have like these like hard working hands like home improvement hands. Yeah, like I feel like those are like the kind of jobs that I would shake your hands for.

Nick VinZant  25:35

I felt Okay, I took it as like I'm getting old, because I'm at that age where I start to feel like I'm getting old.

Talia Wray  25:42

No, I mean, young people do the dad jobs too. So you know.

Nick VinZant  25:48

Ah, I feel good. I feel better about myself.

Talia Wray  25:51

Yeah, it's weird when you think when you notice it and then you kind of think about it.

Nick VinZant  25:55

Um, that's that's pretty much all the questions. I got what's coming up next for you.

Talia Wray 26:00

Well, I say with my agency, Close Up Models in LA, we're doing a bunch of different campaigns for holiday coming up. So I'm really excited to go back home and start doing that. So when I get back, I'm going to be shooting a bunch of stuff for holidays.

Nick VinZant  26:20

I want to thank Talia so much for joining us if you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media accounts, or Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And I'd also like to thank close up models for helping connect us with Talia. I find this whole thing just endlessly fascinating, because it's definitely to me one of those things that you never think about until you notice it, and then you really notice it. We've also included both tullius information and close updadf models information in the RSS feed that's on this podcast. If anybody's interested in this I'll put up a picture of my hands just so you can tell. Have some perspective about what we're talking about.

Climatologist Dr. Gavin Schmidt

Climatologist Dr. Gavin Schmidt is the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. In a wide-ranging interview, we talk Climate Change, melting ice sheets, fossil fuels, the impact of COVID-19 and why people in movies don't listen to scientists. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Kinds of Cookies.

Interview with Dr. Gavin Schmidt on Climate Change

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant - Profoundly Pointless Host

Dr. Gavin Schmidt - Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Note: Transcription is not 100% accurate. Please consult the episode for exact quote

Nick VinZant  00:12

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant, coming up in this episode climate and cookies,

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  00:20

Climate it's everything that we see outside. And it's statistics and its processes. You know, it's the atmosphere is the ocean, it's the, the ice that floating on the Arctic is the ice sheets, you know, the trajectory we're on is putting us on a course for a climate on earth that has not been seen in millions of years. The scope of working for NASA allows you to think about things in a much, much broader context, then, then you would you'd be able to do in any other settings.

Nick VinZant  01:01

I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out. This is a really special episode for us. And I just want to start it off by saying thank you to everybody who has taken time to listen to the show. The guests that have come on the show, people who have commented, we really appreciate every single one of you. This is our 100th episode. And we definitely got farther than we ever thought that we could. And it's it's all because of our listeners and our guests. And I just want to say right at the beginning that we really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. This is also a really important episode for us because we're going to be talking about something that is a huge issue now and is going To be a huge issue for the foreseeable future, climate change, what is going to be happening to our planet and what is happening with our planet right now? Our first guest is the perfect person to talk to about this. This is Dr. Gavin Schmidt. He's a climatologist, a climate modeler, and he is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. When we talk about climate, like I think I know what we're talking about when we someone says climate but what are we really talking about?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  02:37

It's everything that we see outside. And it's statistics and its processes. You know, it's the atmosphere, it's the ocean, it's the, the ice that floating on the Arctic is the ice sheets, the deep oceans, it's the stratosphere, and all the things that kind of intersects between all those realms. To give us the patterns of weather and climate, we can understand in a more colloquial sense

Nick VinZant  03:07

Climate is obviously that that's very different than weather, right?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  03:11

So I think people get a little confused about the difference between weather and climate when it comes to forecasting. And, and they see the limits to weather forecasting. So we can't we can't make good weather forecasts beyond 10 days and not much, much beyond that. And, and they think, Well, you know, but the weather time is the same. So we can't make climate forecasts but but we're trying we're doing something very different or making a climate forecast. What we're doing there is is trying to say how the the average things are going to change how the patterns are going to change, not not the specifics of any one storm or or one hurricane or one weather system. And so the predictability and climate comes from a very different place. So the predictability of climate comes from the fact that you know, energy is conserved mass is conserved, that we understand radiation in and out of the atmosphere. Whereas, you know, the predictability of weather comes because we can, you know, we can track you know that like these big, Eddie's these big turbulent Eddie's in the atmosphere from one day to another, which is a very different kind of skill, but they are very related. I mean, we don't make tire predictions without including all of the weather. inside those those calculations. You talked about all the things that kind of go into into climate is there one that influences it, more than any of the others, like this thing has the biggest impact that doesn't really make much sense to us, because the interesting things about the climate are the emergent properties of what happens when it gets going, you know, the interactions between the ocean And the ice and the atmosphere, the wave patterns, the the variations, the El Nino patterns that you see in the Pacific, all of those things emerge because of the connections between the different realms and the different processes. So you know, if you take one thing out, then it's a very different system. And it has different properties. But we're really interested in the properties of the whole system. And it turns out that almost all of the interesting ones are coupled in, in various, sometimes subtle ways between all those different avenues.

Nick VinZant  05:37

So we're recording this towards the end of May right now, what are you kind of seeing in terms of changes related to COVID-19? What kind of an impact is that having?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  05:48

Right, so so what's happening so basically a lot of activities that would have taken place or not taking place Now, some of those activities would have used fossil fuels, right? driving around in cars, public transport, all of those things have gone way down. So that means that the the emissions from those activities have gone down. We're also the air pollutants from those activities have gone that we're also not doing some things that we would have done otherwise. Right? So for instance, in this time of year, quite often in places like California, they do controlled burns of forest areas to try and avoid larger burns later on the season. Okay, we're not doing that. So there are there are some odd things that are happening in terms of the atmospheric composition, emissions that impact climate and air quality that are quite noticeable right now. So for instance, you know, air quality has improved, you know, pretty much across the board LA, New York. northeast northern Italy, Europe, China, India have all had huge reductions in the amount of air pollutants. And that's mainly from car driving. But But carbon dioxide emissions they've gone down a little as well. But the interesting thing there is that coming dockside is accumulating so and we're putting so much more into the atmosphere than the planet can deal with that even you know,  a10 percent 15% reduction in global emissions it's still the conductor demand is still gonna go up

Nick VinZant  07:36

We seem to be heading a certain direction in terms of climate change, correct me if I'm wrong, has what's been happening with the reductions made any dent or are we still headed in the wrong direction?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  07:49

No, it's like, it's like you're filling a bath and somebody is like kind of slightly turned down the tap. But really, the bath is still continuing to fill And what you need to do is turn off the tap is completely. And that's the only way that the tablet the bath is going to stop rising. So that's a huge task. And I don't think anybody is unaware of how difficult a task that's going to be. And it's a task that needs to be sustained over not just a few months, not just a few years, but for pretty much the rest of the century. So I, you know, we were, we're seeing this decrease this year. That that's, that's clear. But to the extent that it helps in any important way, is the extent to which any habits that have been ingrained right now, stick or that when we kind of restart economic activity that we do so in a way that puts us on a more sustainable path going forward. And those Those issues really very much still to be determined.

Nick VinZant  09:03

When we're talking about climate change kind of as a way for me to understand it on a scale of like one to 10. One, everything's gonna be fine, don't worry about it.  10 kiss your butt goodbye kind of thing life as we know, it is changing forever. Where are we kind of at now?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  09:22

I'd say about eight.

Nick VinZant  09:23

That bad?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  09:25

Yeah, I mean, you know, the trajectory we're on is putting us on a course for a climate on Earth, that has not been seen in millions of years. Right. I mean that and let me let me discuss, you know how long the period is like. So humans have only been around in our kind of modern form for about 200,000 years. The environment in which, you know, Homo sapiens evolved You know, the the African savannas, the ice ages coming and going the end of hills, all of those things, you know, all of those things have kind of fit in the last, you know, 3 million years a, where we're going in terms of climate, it goes back even before that, right. So it goes back to the prior scene, maybe even the minor scene, you know, periods that were significantly warmer where there was very little ice on the planet, or much less ice on the planet. sea levels were, you know, perhaps 20 meters so what's that 60/65 feet higher than they are now? You can still see the Paleo shorelines you know, where the where the beaches used to be on the east coast. And they're in the middle of New Jersey, not anywhere near where the present day coasters. So you know, that's kind of where we're headed andan only with You know, pretty dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions will we avoid it

Nick VinZant  11:06

Is this something that we can really solve? Or are we just kind of gonna treat the symptoms of the disease and not the disease itself, so to speak?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  11:16

Well, okay,so you know what it was told me that so so we're not going to stop it, but, but it is within our power to slow it down so that, you know, we have time to adapt. You know, part of what's happening now is that it's changing much faster than civilizations ever had to deal with climate change before. And that means that it's, you know, it's more of a challenge, you know, it's harder to get things moving faster or to adapt, when things are moving fast and not stopping. Right. So can we can we ameliorate the problem can we act and reduce the impacts is going to have absolutely we Gonna just make it go away entirely? No, never.

Nick VinZant  12:03

How big of an impact does the melting of the of the ice sheets have? Do we do we kind of fully understand what that could do? Or are we still kind of figuring that out?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  12:13

So the melting of the ice sheets is one of the big components in rising sea level is rising because the ocean is getting warmer and they expand right that's about a third of the of the situation right now. We're also melting, you know, mountain glaciers around the world that's adding to the problem. we're extracting groundwater that's adding to the problem but the biggest, you know, about a third of the of the issue right now is melting of Greenland and Antarctica. Those are both both of those continents are adding water into the oceans at around 250 Giga tons of water every every year from from both from both ice sheets. And what we anticipate is as as the planet gets warmer, that those rates will increase. And so you're having an accelerating impact from the ice sheets on sea level rise. So that's that's a big concern. Right? So, do we know what it can do? Yes, obviously, I mean, like, you know it, I mean, if they all melted, it would be, you know, it'd be many, you know, maybe 100 meters of field rise now, that isn't going to happen anytime soon, thankfully. But there's there's plenty of ice and there's plenty of opportunity for that to do major damage to coastal infrastructure around the world. But I, you know, do we know everything about how the specific eye seats and the eye social cavities and the and the dynamics of ice sheets are all kind of interacting to produce that result? No, we don't. So we're spending a lot of time trying to understand those projects, those those processes better. We're spending a lot of time and effort and money are measuring those processes. You know, that's sending you know, unmanned autonomous vehicles underneath the ice sheets underneath the ice shelves to see what's going on. It's flying over the ice shells and ice sheets to see how the height is changing. It's measuring the velocity of these things from space, seeing how, you know, the math of these ice sheets is changing from gravity measurements in space. So we're, we're, we're studying this enormously hard. But, but there are there are still a lot of unknowns,

Nick VinZant  14:31

whether they're cities, countries, organizations, anything like that, because obviously there's going to be like, you kind of talked about winners and losers. Is there anybody that's kind of advocating for this, like trying to actively stop people from stopping climate change?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  14:47

Well, yeah, they're not generally, you know, people as you would understand them, but they are, you know, people who are very invested in the resource industry and the countries that are benefit enormously. From the resource industry, and they just want to sell their product and the climate be damned. It's very short term thinking. It's, but But yeah, I mean, obviously there are, there are administration's and countries that that are doing that. But, you know, there's also a lot of pushback against that. Because there are people that do have a longer term horizon that can see where things are going. And, you know, this notion of, you know, having an economy in a situation where, you know, sea level is rising out of control. That doesn't make sense for a lot of people. How did you,

Nick VinZant  15:37

how did you get into studying this?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  15:39

I was slightly planning by accident. I was, I was a math major. In college, I started doing applied maths, working to on on kind of, you know, relatively simple ocean models of various sorts, and then you No. And I've kind of gravitated to more and more complicated more and more realistic issues where, you know, you don't get an exact answer. But you do get answers much closer to the question that you really want to have answered.

Nick VinZant  16:13

Are there's some specific areas that were that are really in trouble when we talk about climate change.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  16:19

Yeah, it depends a little bit where you are, I mean, so places that are kind of Mediterranean climates where it's still pretty arid, they're generally going to get drier and so that's going to be a problem for them and their water resources. People that rely on mountain snow for water resources. Okay, well, that's going away. So now you're going to have to deal with, you know, kind of earlier spring melts and drier summers. That has implications for wildfires. If you're in an area that's prone to wildfires. You know, if you're in the far north, then you know, you have to worry about permafrost melts and you have to Worry about infrastructure that that relies on the frozen ground, you know, like the ice the ice roads to go to, to the north coast of Alaska, you know, those are much less possible now than they used to be. But if you know, you know, if you're a cruise ship owner and you want to do the northwest passage through the Arctic, well now you've got far more opportunities to do so though. I wouldn't recommend it. for for for various reasons.

Nick VinZant  17:28

I got distracted a little bit by my three year old. We did we talk about ways that we can kind of reduce it. Have we covered that I'm blanking for some reason all of a sudden?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  17:39

No, well, we didn't discuss it but but the answer is not difficult, right. The answer is we have to reduce emissions. And we have to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide for the most part, but also we think that oxides now you know, reducing carbon dioxide emissions means no, no more fossil fuel. So no more coal, no more oil, no more natural gas and replacing those energy infrastructures with something else, whether that's solar or wind or combinations or nuclear power, or geothermal or better efficiencies or need the energy in the first place. All of those can play a role in, in moving us away from fossil fuels. Now there's there's one additional thing that you could be doing, which is capturing the carbon emissions and burying it somewhere. So theoretically, that works. But, you know, it's it's one of those solutions that really only works when you have a price on putting carbon into the air, so that it makes it worthwhile to not do so for the companies involved. And we are a long way from having such a market in the US.

Nick VinZant  18:59

Do you have a A couple more minutes for some listener questions. Sure. Like, let me warn you ahead of time our our audience is very nice. They're very smart. They're a little bit quirky. There. So some of the some of the questions are a little interesting. Um, yeah. This first one is best movie where a scientist warns people of a disaster and no one listens.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  19:27

Like every single science, every single movie with the scientists, like that's, that's the stock roll. You know, whether it's Jurassic Park day after tomorrow jaws toward the Dante's peak, and we like it's a stock roll. So anytime you see a scientist on it on a TV show, oh, you know, they're they're going to be the ones that are telling people what's going to happen and nobody's going to believe them for dramatic effect. So, you know, we, we play that role on TV a lot. And you think people Look at it by now,

Nick VinZant  20:01

what is that like for, for you or other scientists, when you're kind of telling somebody about something, that's a real problem, and they just push it aside? Does that get just incredibly frustrating? Like, how do you keep doing that over and over and over again?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  20:14

So, I mean, sometimes, you know, people arguing in bad faith, you know, it's just a waste of time. Right. So, as far as trying to try and avoid that other times, you know, there are really genuine questions behind that stance, overwhelming, you know, comments that people make, and, and sometimes those are worth kind of going into in detail, you know, why? Why do we think that these that we have confidence in these predictions, you know, how do we tell these things, you know, what is the difference between weather and climate? Why can we do these predictions out longer? I mean, that's, those are those are real questions. And, you know, for people that haven't thought about it very much. You know, I'm happy to, to explain these things. And you know, and sometimes you know, you can get feedback and, you know, and questions that seems sensible to somebody and you think, Oh, well, actually, we've, we've never really answered that in that particular way. So, you know, that kind of leads you down a kind of more productive path. And, you know, quite a lot of my research work and an outreach has been in answering questions that the community as a whole hasn't really answered to people satisfaction. So there's, you know, you have to listen as opposed to just be talking. And then that makes the whole communication thing kind of more

Nick VinZant  21:35

interesting. This might get a little bit more into weather than climate, so to speak, but best Where do you think has the best weather slash climate in the world?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  21:44

New Zealand is looking pretty good right now.

Nick VinZant  21:53

Yeah, they do look really good, don't they? There's one that just says how long before we're doomed.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  22:01

Oh that's an odd thing to ask in the middle of a pandemic. I, you know, like, we're not we're not doomed, you know, the future is created by the choices that we're making today. And while there are still sensible people who have, you know, decisions to make, that can make things better or make things worse, and there's still enough people, you know, making decisions that are pushing us in a better direction, then you know, then that's that's that's positive, and we're never going to be not in that situation. So, you know, I don't I don't have a lot of sympathy for the over dooms, like just might as well party type of attitude. I don't I don't think we do. I think we just have to make better decisions.

Nick VinZant  22:50

This these two kind of go together a little bit. coolest thing about working for NASA. Has there ever been a moment where you are just working like Wow, that's really cool.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  23:04

Um, so yes. So let me let me betray my, my slightly geeky side. working for NASA is indeed quite cool. You know, I've interacted with, with astronauts, I've interacted with people who've designed like the most amazing machines. We've, you know, we were on the receiving end of reams of data that show us things that that we never even dreamed were possible, let alone that we would actually see. And the scope of working for NASA allows you to think about things in a much, much broader context, then, then you would you'd be able to do in any other setting. You know, I mean, I've written papers about the possibility of ancient terrestrial civilizations and whether we know that they existed in The geological record, I've worked with people who are thinking about how habitable Venus was, until actually, relatively recently in solar system history, I'm working with people who are trying to work out what the techno signatures of an alien civilization around the planet on a planet around another star would look like. And I'm working on, you know, trying to see where what we're doing to the climate fits into all of those things. And so, you know, that's, that's, that's an enormous range of, of intellectual interest and joy, that we can do these things. So I love working for NASA.

Nick VinZant  24:49

Do you guys I mean, do you study like if we had to go to another planet? What planet would be suitable for us? Like, do you guys look at the client? Yes.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  25:00

Getting off just, it's extortionate. So there's no we're not we're moving to another planet. It's much, much better to fix the one that we're on. You know, we're interested in about habitability of Mars and Venus and, and all of these other planets that we're seeing, but none of them are as habitable as this one right here.

Nick VinZant  25:17

I always kind of felt like those pursuits, like looking for how we can move to another planet would be like, mowing the yard while the house is on fire kind of thing.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  25:28

Well, no, it's it's like designing a lawn mower for a lawn that doesn't exist while the house is on fire.

Nick VinZant  25:34

Yeah. Um, is there anything that we should be talking about that, that, that maybe you haven't covered or anything like that, like,

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  25:42

you know, I mean, the technology that we're putting together to see what's going on is extremely cool, right? So if you're interested in cool technologies, then look into that. But, you know, this technology, our understanding doesn't exist in a vacuum, right. It exists. You know, in the context of, you know, how society works, how society functions, you know the inequities in society, you know, who benefits who loses, who, who gets impacted and who doesn't get impacted. And we're seeing that writ large with the pandemic, you know, when when the stress comes along, you know, society fractures along the fault lines that already existed. And so if you're interested in you know, how society is going to cope, look at what's happening with the pandemic, look who's who's being served, look who is start looking was getting services, look who is getting, you know, who, you know, where, where the suffering is most and it tells you that we have a long, long way to go. In terms of, you know, fixing society and fixing the way things work, to do deal with with stresses like the pandemic or like climate change.

Nick VinZant  27:00

I want to thank Dr. Smith so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts where Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included his information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast.  I think it's impossible to say enough about just how important dealing with climate change is going to be for all of us moving forward

Professional Golfer Hailey Ostrom

She didn't have money. She didn't know anyone. She only knew that if she wanted to pursue her dream, this is what it would take. Professional Golfer Hailey Ostrom joins us. We talk golf, her journey to the pros and why you shouldn't wear jeans on the course. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Things People Lie About.

Interview with Hailey Ostrom

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, golf, lie, LPGA, golfer,play, person, professional golfer, grocery carts, movie, sports, walk, golf course, punching, throwing, talking, feel, bag, meeting

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant – Profoundly Pointless Host

Hailey Ostrom – Professional Golfer

Nick VinZant  00:13

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, we're going golfing and counting down the top five things people lie about.

Hailey Ostrom  00:24

So for me, I think the hardest part was the fact that I just basically threw all of my belongings in a car and drove down to Arizona, and I took a huge leap of faith there and just went for it. How do you make that jump? And be, you know, the top golfer on the LPGA Tour, versus somebody like me, who's currently, you know, scrambling on many tours, what's the difference between me and those golfers and there really is a small difference. You know, this person gave up their life. They they fought for our country and I got to share his story while I had the bag people would ask about it and I got to talk about him and share his story and meet his his parents.

Nick VinZant  01:12

I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it. It really helps us out. So have you ever wondered if you have what it takes? You're good at something. But could you be really good? Could you be a professional? Could you be a professional on the highest level? Our first guest is going through that journey right now. And I think that she has this incredibly inspiring story about pursuing your dreams and really going after something that you want, while also giving back to a lot of people at the same time and having a huge impact that way as well. This is professional golfer Haley Ostrom. So was golf, the first sport or did you come into this later?

Hailey Ostrom  02:03

I grew up playing pretty much every sport known to man. My dad got me into the game when I was really young, but I kind of played a little bit of everything soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis, everything and then I didn't start playing in tournaments until I was nine years old.

Nick VinZant  02:25

Are you pretty athletic?

Hailey Ostrom  02:27

I like to say that I am athletic. I like to try new new stuff. Just recently, I've started learning how to snowboard and then last week, I went and wake boarded and learned to wake surf for the first time. So I'm definitely always curious about new sports.

Nick VinZant  02:49

When we talk about like in relation to other professional golfers though, like art, is it athletic ability, like do you have an awesome vertical or something or is there something else that makes a good golfer?

Hailey Ostrom  03:03

Well, I definitely do not have an awesome vertical. I have white girl hops all the way. But I would say yes, in the grand scheme of things a, you know, General athletic ability that I have, but I don't think that golfers necessarily have to be athletic and well rounded in all sports. I think it's such a specific type of athlete that is a good golfer. So I don't know most of my professional friends. They're good golfers, but they probably aren't very good soccer players or basketball players. I think it's it's not a general athletic ability in golf.

Nick VinZant  03:46

When you kind of started to pursue this more seriously, was it because you really liked golf more than other sports or was it because you were better at golf

Hailey Ostrom  03:57

It was definitely because I was better. Better at golf. And I think I just one day kind of realized that this was my ticket to college. And in my household growing up college was not an option. It was that it's that that's what you're gonna go do. That was what my parents were going to provide for my brother and I. But golf is going to be the way that I can kind of choose the college that I want to go to, and be different, I guess. So. I played volleyball as well as golf in high school. And it wasn't until my junior year that I decided I'm gonna stop playing volleyball and I'm just gonna focus on golf, because that's gonna be my ticket.

Nick VinZant  04:46

When did you start considering it? Like, Okay, I'm gonna do this professionally now.

Hailey Ostrom  04:50

Yeah, I would say it wasn't until going into my senior season. George Fox university that I realized I had It improved so much over the course of those three years. And then my dad kind of put that idea in my head like, hey, maybe if you keep improving this year, this is going to be your breakthrough year. You know, I believe in you, your coach believes in you. If you keep improving, you could really have a shot at a future and golf longer than your college career. And so I think my my senior year was that test run of like, Alright, this is make it or break it, like if I played really well, my senior year that I'm getting serious about it. But I think had I not had a really good senior year, maybe I wouldn't have continued to pursue it in professional golf.

Nick VinZant  05:44

Did you have an easy transition into the professional ranks? Or has it been a struggle?

Hailey Ostrom  05:50

I wouldn't say that it was easy, but I also wouldn't say that it was a struggle. I think it's probably hard for anybody to Try something new and, and crazy for yourself and pursue something so different. I mean, there aren't that many people after college who pursue a professional career in a sport. They might they, they usually just take their degree and go pursue that. So for me, I think the hardest part was the fact that I just basically threw all of my belongings in a car and drove down to Arizona. And I took a huge leap of faith there and just went for it. 100% I didn't know I really didn't know my roommate that I was about to live with. I didn't know her brother, who I was also going to be living with. I had never been to Scottsdale before. I didn't have a job and I barely had any money in my bank account, but I just took that leap. And I would say, that was the hardest thing for me to do. But also the best thing for me, I think that was one of my biggest decisions I've made In my 26 years, that that really helped set my path. But as far as playing, went, I had such a strong team behind me, my parents and my whole family and my college coach still supports me today. And I was able to find the right coach in Arizona, and he became my support team here. So from there, I just kind of built a little family and a little team in Arizona and and went with it.

Nick VinZant  07:36

How do you become a professional golfer, like is there a tryout to see if you can get on the tour? Do you qualify? Like, do you just show up? What do you do

Hailey Ostrom  07:47

You just show up

Nick VinZant  07:40

Just show up with some clubs and say here I am huh?

Hailey Ostrom  07:52

Yeah, so golf is a lot different than any other sport and I think a lot of people don't actually know that the answer to that question So with golf, you can pretty much sign up for any tournament as a professional. But once you do, so there's no going back. So, tournament entry fees are more expensive when you're a professional. And once you turn pro, you can accept sponsorships and money. But you can no longer ever play an amateur events again. So you're giving up that right. So for me, my first year I decided to remain an amateur when I moved to Arizona and I played on the cactus tour as an amateur. So my entry fees were a lot cheaper, but I couldn't accept any sponsors. But I figured for me, I didn't think I was gonna go out and win a bunch of money right away. So it was worth it for me to save the money on the entry fees and get some experience under my belt. Then I started realizing I had potential to Receive sponsorships and my first one was actually Nike. And that's when I decided, Okay, this is serious, you know, my social media has kind of taken taken off right now. So I decided to enter into my next event as a professional. And that's that's basically all you have to do, but it wouldn't. It's not that everybody can be a pro there would be no benefit for somebody to go sign up in a tournament as a professional and then just go walk around claiming that their professional golfer

Nick VinZant  09:35

but like, if I wanted to, I could technically do it.

Hailey Ostrom  09:41

Technically, yes, but you wouldn't have any status on any tours. That's why you get status on a tour you have to go compete at q school or qualifying school. So for the women we have LPGA qualifying school, you go it's three different stages. The first stage is one tournament of four days. And you compete against hundreds of other women and try and make it into stage two. Stage Two is another tournament, you go there, do the same thing and then try and make into the final stage. And that's where you can earn your LPGA status. So if you are just some random Joe Schmo on the street and you want to be a professional golfer, great, they'll sign up in a professional event. Probably not, you're not gonna get anywhere with it until you go get status on a tour.

Nick VinZant  10:30

How much of a difference is there between like a really good golfer and you? And then somebody who say is mid level or top level on LPGA?

Hailey Ostrom  10:43

Um, no. So there is not a big difference at all. And that's, that's kind of the the big question I guess in in golf is how do you how do you make that jump and be, you know, the top golfer on the LPGA Tour versus somebody like me, who's currently, you know, scrambling on many tours. What's the difference between me and those golfers and there really is a small difference. And trying to narrow down like what I can improve on is so hard sometimes that might might be the hardest, hardest issue. If I go out on on the driving range, and I hit balls, next to Lexi Thompson and all the other big names on tour, you probably wouldn't be able to pick me out and be like, oh, that girl clearly doesn't belong here. Like I my swing is is solid. I have a good game. But the difference is so small. It's just, you know, those girls making more birdies or who can handle the pressure or who can make the leap down the stretch. It's really small. differences. I think the difference between an amateur golfer or like a weekend warrior versus a professional golfer, though is big.

Nick VinZant  12:10

When you look at it and reflect on the differences between you and an LPGA player, do you see something that you need to improve on or does it just depend on the day?

Hailey Ostrom  12:25

Yeah, I so I keep all of my stats, and I evaluate where I go wrong on the course and the differences. And I always I love playing with golfers who are better than me, who doesn't, right, you want to get better and improve. So when I play with golfers that I consider to be better than me or have better status than me. I really focus on where they score and how they score. And I think what I have come down to is those girls are making more birdies. So when I have a birdie putt opportunity I may make it may not when they have a birdie putt opportunity, they're going to make it so birdie opportunities usually like 10 feet or or closer. They're going to make those putts. So mine's like maybe a 50/50 chance if I make it or not, they are going to make it and I think it's not that they're better Potter's. I think it's a mental check that they know that they need that birdie or they have worked hard to put themselves in that position to get that birdie. So they're going to make it whereas for me when I step up to that point, it's like I really want this birdie. I kind of want it too much. I'm putting a lot of pressure now on myself to make that so I might make it or I might not. So it's kind of figuring out what mental approach works best for you. I'm a true believer in the mental game and and it's a huge aspect to Professional Golf and probably any professional sport,

Nick VinZant  14:04

Do you think that golf is more of a mental sport than other sports?

Hailey Ostrom  14:09

Yeah, 100% I do just because golf is so different where there is not action the entire time you you spent I think, I don't know the statistic you're the the numbers on this. But I think it's something like during your entire round, you only really spend like 40 minutes or maybe even less than that. really focused on the shot. And actually, it might be a lot less than that might be like 20 minutes, you spend like 20 minutes, but around could take four hours. So you have all of that time to walk up to your ball and think about whatever is going to come into your mind. You have to train yourself to stay focused when you need to be focused, but to let go when you need to let go. So that's it. thing that I struggled with for a long time is I would be focused the whole time. And I it was like a little, if you could just picture my mind, it would be like a fist, a ball of, you're putting your fist in a ball, I was just clenched up all the time. Like, I'm going to focus, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna, you know, whatever, so intense. And that's not how the game needs to be played. You cannot be that focused and that intense for four hours, you're gonna I used to be exhausted by the end of my rounds. And so I think mental game with golf is you have to know when to focus, which is when you get up to your shot. Now you need to clear your mind focus in dial in on what you need to accomplish focus while you hit the shot. And as soon as the shot is gone. You have to release and just pick up your bag and walk to the next one.

Nick VinZant  15:52

So for you, what's the ultimate goal?

Hailey Ostrom  15:56

For me, the goal is to make it on the LPGA I think not only has that been something that I've wanted for a while now, but it's something I think I could make a difference in and kind of change the game a little bit. And help, you know, use my platform for good. I have built a small platform with my social media and it's so cool to see that I have impacted some younger women younger girls and some way and helped them in some way or inspired them even the slightest bit. So I think, if I were to make on the LPGA I could reach so many more people.

Nick VinZant  16:40

You do a lot of stuff for charity, what inspires you to be so involved?

Hailey Ostrom  16:45

Um, I feel like I have just been impacted in my life to see the good and some of the charities and what these organizations do and they have, you know, helped me get through some As far as, for example, I will just give this example. In college we were given the opportunity to carry a golf bag of a fallen soldier. So we all had our own team golf bag and then we had one extra bag that had not our name on it, but it had Lieutenant Mark Jennings daily on it. And one player got to carry that bag each week to the tournament. So whenever I got to carry the bag, it just was such a good reminder for me, that you know, this person gave up their life they they fought for our country, and I got to share his story while I had the bag people would ask about it and I got to talk about him and share his story and meet his his parents. And it just reminded me that there are such greater things in life than then a game of golf and it helped me put that into perspective and not get so frustrated on Golf Course anytime I hit a bad shot or, or I want to get mad or, you know, slam my club down, I would see his bag over there with the American flag on it. And I was like, okay, that's a ridiculous thing to get upset about. And it really did just help me put that into perspective and learn more about perspective. So, from that moment on, I figured I wanted to help give back to organizations like that. And I actually got involved in now work for backswing golf events. And a lot of our probably 90% of our events, we go out to charity events and help raise money for the charity. And it's so much fun to go out, you raise money, you have a fun time out on the course that day you get to hit shots and interact with people and meet new people. And then at the end, you go in and you give the tournament director, the money that you raise for that day and we raise a lot of money. For these, for these charities, we we raised a million dollars last year. So we, you know, walking in and giving that money over and seeing how happy they are and how excited they are. It's, it's really cool that you can make a difference, you know, and, and for me, it's great. It's like a win win all around because I get to work on my golf game and be outside and meet new people and help charity

Nick VinZant  19:24

is golfing like other sports like do you have a physical prime?

Hailey Ostrom  19:28

No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that golf has a physical prime. I mean, look at people on tour right now look at Phil Mickelson, Phil's 50 he's in his 50s now, and he's still out there just crushing it. So I would say that when you're younger, obviously it might come a little easier because it's probably easier to gain muscle and be fit and strong and healthy. You have to work a little bit harder as you get older for those things, but I wouldn't say that there's a physical Prime so many people play me my grandma's 84 years old and she still plays golf.

Nick VinZant  20:06

Are are you ready for the harder slash listeners submitted questions?

Hailey Ostrom  20:11

I am

Nick VinZant  20:13

Do you get tired of walking?

Hailey Ostrom  20:18

I actually prefer walking on the golf course especially when I'm in a tournament because I think that gives me time to be by myself and just enjoy being outside and just kind of part of nature I guess. So no, I don't get tired of walking but I work out enough to make sure that I don't get physically tired.

Nick VinZant  20:43

Favorite golf course.

Hailey Ostrom  20:44

My favorite golf course is crosswater is Sunriver, Oregon. I grew up playing there and then my senior year I won our conference championship there so I have a lot of good memories there.

Nick VinZant  20:57

Popular golf course. Other people seem to Like that you do not.

Hailey Ostrom  21:02

Oh, ah, I feel like I do have an answer to this. I just have to think about it for a second. There's a lot of courses in Arizona that I feel like get so much attention and I'm like I don't really like the hype. For example, one course that I have yet to play very well is true north. I can't even think of which side it is but it's a treat to to go out there because it is very nice. But I have not played it well yet. So I can't say I love it. But it is very, very nice. Another course I would say talking stick here in Scottsdale is really popular and not a huge fan. I think it's a little overrated. I like hidden gems, the ones that aren't super popular, but when you go out you just have such a fun time. It's a nice surprise

Nick VinZant  22:03

question from somebody. Do I need to wear pants to impress my friends when golfing? Will that help me out and make me look like a better golfer than I really am?

Hailey Ostrom  22:15

Hey, look good, feel good play good, right? That's, that's my motto. No, you don't need to wear pants. But I would recommend not wearing jeans on on any golf course even if they allow it probably just don't wear jeans. But you can wear shorts. I think that that's fine.

Nick VinZant  22:36

I've always had a problem when people like really show their socks like when they were like the ankle socks. I feel like that. Like that got that person's not going to be a great golfer.

Hailey Ostrom  22:48

I think if you just you know really rock your look with confidence Go for it, but I think they're I would just look up like some of the Nikes models or something Nike golf models because I think their their mind right now is so new and hip, and it's like a new version of golf. And they're kind of remaking the golf look. And so it's more athletic nowadays so you can wear high top golf shoes and cool shorts and a nice collared shirt and look really legit and look like an athlete rather than, you know, looking like your 80 year old grandpa who's been playing at the country club every week.

Nick VinZant  23:35

wearing shorts he's had since 1990.

Hailey Ostrom  23:39

Yeah, exactly.

Nick VinZant  23:41

best movie about a golfer. Our best golf best golf movie, worst golf movie,

Hailey Ostrom  23:48

best golf movie, my favorite Seven Days in Utopia. A lot of people don't know that movie, but I would definitely check it out and it's all about the mental side of golf. It's also book it was a book first but seven days you type utopia for sure.

Nick VinZant  24:05

Worst golf movie.

Hailey Ostrom  24:09

Um, I don't really have one that I really dislike but I will probably get so much hate for this but Happy Gilmore is just not my favorite.

Nick VinZant  24:21

Yeah, if you would have said Caddyshack, I was thinking of hanging up.

Hailey Ostrom  24:27

Oh my gosh, no Caddyshack for sure. is in. But Tin Cup is in. But Happy Gilmore is probably my least my least favorite out of all of them.

Nick VinZant  24:38

I could see that. It's kind of what did it get worse for you? Because I feel like Adam Sandler made some movies later on that kind of ruined his earlier movies in some way.

Hailey Ostrom  24:50

Yeah, I think it's just like that stupid funny, you know? And so after a while, it's like, okay, it's not that funny. But it's okay. Like, I have still watch it and I still like doing the Happy Gilmore swing and I appreciate it for the golf world, but it's my least favorite,

Nick VinZant  25:08

favorite club in your bag.

Hailey Ostrom  25:12

Every club in my bag is my favorite. Now I'm just kidding. Every club in my bag is not my favorite. Definitely, I've known for my driver, I love my driver. But I would say my putter is probably tied with my driver just because you have to fall in love with your putter. It's the most important club in the bag.

Nick VinZant  25:35

So I'm not nearly a good enough golfer to really know the difference but I mean is can you hit basically every club like as a as a professional? Is there really any difference? Like do you hit one club like, man, I can really hit this five. I can't hit this four.

Hailey Ostrom  25:52

No, actually, it's funny that you asked that because I think until up until like, maybe a year ago. I Oh had one club in my bag that I just didn't like as much as the others. There was always one. And so you feel like that one club comes up all the time and around, you're like, shoot, I don't want to hit this club. This is my least favorite club. But now I think I've just kind of made that turn in my game where I don't have that anymore. It used to be something where I had to work on that club a lot because I would be you know, stressed now when that yardage would come up and now I'm like, I'm not afraid to hit any shot and I know I can pull off any shot so yeah, it doesn't really affect me anymore. But that definitely was the thing for me, especially in college. I always had one club I just didn't like as much

Nick VinZant  26:46

are you? Are you actively thinking like during the swing? like okay, tuck my elbow twist my leg or is it all muscle memory point?

Hailey Ostrom  26:54

Oh, definitely don't want to think about mechanics during your swing. That will not help you. So I always have one swing thought. And it doesn't even have to be about the swing itself. It could just be, you know, Target or tempo, or, you know, breeze or whatever. But I always have one thing. A lot of times I'll think about keeping a shorter backswing I get, I tend to get really long with my backswing. So that's something that is more swing related that I think of, but that's it. I won't, I won't think of anything else.

Nick VinZant  27:31

Um, best golf trick that you can do.

Hailey Ostrom  27:34

I can't do that many check shots. So I would say my go to i can i can juggle and I can juggle between the legs and stuff and hit out of the air, but I can't do that many cool things. So my go to trick shot that looks pretty cool. Is juggling and then I can catch the ball in my hat. I flip the hat around and let the ball fall through the little pony detail spot. And then I continue I kept getting Chug, juggle it again. But that's honestly like so simple. Anybody can learn it. You can check it out on my YouTube because I did a full tutorial.

Nick VinZant  28:13

I mean, that sounds actually really impressive.

Hailey Ostrom  28:16

It looks cool and it looks like Oh, that looks like a cool trick shot like that looks fancy. But it's one that you can probably tell it's not that hard and it makes other people want to try it. So I think it's a good one

Nick VinZant  28:29

is I don't know if this is the right word dream golf foursome. Is that

Hailey Ostrom  28:34

Yep. Okay. So my dream golf for some I was I feel like I change it all the time. It just depends on the day. I always include my dad because i think if i he's the one that got me into the game, so if I'm gonna go get to play with with some cool people, then he should get to come with me. So it would be myself and my dad. A problem. Gonna have to say tiger. If I'm gonna have those three then it needs to be Phil. Phil tiger, me and my dad I think would be so fun, but I get to ride in a golf cart with Phil.

Nick VinZant  29:13

You're gonna take Tiger over Phil.

Hailey Ostrom  29:16

Yeah, because Tiger would be so intense and I would probably be so nervous. And I wouldn't want to say anything stupid. So I think with Phil I could just joke around, can have a drink or to have some fun.

Nick VinZant  29:32

Have you ever lost to like a random person?

Hailey Ostrom  29:34

Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, I can't think of anything. Anyone on the top of my head. But yeah, there's there's people I actually one of my my friends. His name is Terry. He's like, I think he's 73 years old. And he plays golf here in Arizona and I met him through one of my got my special girlfriends and he invites me I'm going to play with him tomorrow morning. He gets me out once in a while, go play with him and he is such a good golfer. And he can beat me he hits the ball about the same distance as me. And he can beat me on any given day. He's shot his age many, many times.

Nick VinZant  30:14

So, like, do you have, do you have a handicap?

Hailey Ostrom  30:19

No when you're a professional, you don't keep a handicap because you don't need it anymore for tournaments. But I just I play to a scratch, you know, play, play part off but

Nick VinZant  30:28

Lowest that you've ever shot?

Hailey Ostrom  30:31

69 is my low.

Nick VinZant  30:33

That's really all the questions that I have and what's what's kind of coming up next for you.

Hailey Ostrom  30:39

So, you know, because of everything, I don't really have anything right now on the schedule I had. My April and May are my two busiest months for work. And that's kind of when I work really hard to save up a bunch of money and then I'm prepared for the rest of the year for golf tournaments and everything got canceled as you can imagine. So So I don't know right now the tour, I think the Wi Fi tour is supposed to start in June LPGA canceled all of their Monday qualifiers for anybody who doesn't have any LPGA status. So those were at the top of my list for this year, and now, I can't blame them. So I'm i right now my goal is I'm focusing on q School, which got moved to October, and I was gonna make sure I'm prepared for that.

Nick VinZant  31:31

I want to thank Haley so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have linked to her on our social media accounts, or Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included her information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast. She's got a really cool YouTube page. It's really cool. It shows you exactly what goes into being a professional golfer. And there's a lot of creative stuff on social media there as well. We've also, we've noticed a lot of our guests are now creating tic tocs. So we put her tic toc in there as well. And we created a tic toc for this podcast. And because I think that we're kind of too old to get it, we're going to be the awkward people on social media. If you want to check it out, like we'll see how just out of touch we can be for a little while. Hopefully we'll get at least let's try to get five followers by 2021 because I feel like this is gonna go really, really badly for us.

Adventure Photographer Paul Zizka

From the peaks of the Canadian Rockies to the isolation of the Antarctic tundra, Adventure Photographer Paul Zizka explores the world through photographs. We talk photography, exploration and waiting years for one photograph. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Kinds of Cheese.

Interview with Paul Zizka

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, photography, places, images, photographer, photos, mountains, moments, antarctica, avalanche, shot, move, Greenland

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant – Profoundly Pointless Host

Paul Zizka – Paul Zizka Photography

Nick VinZant  00:13

Hello everyone welcome to Profoundly Pointless my name is Nick coming up in this episode, we're gonna go on an artistic photographic journey to all seven continents, and then count down the top five kinds of cheese.

Paul Zizka  00:27

And I just fell in love with the mountains and the possibilities for exploration. Eventually, I realized that photography just really made those outdoor experiences even more powerful that there's a danger in a creative sense. There's a danger going to those places that you're just going to repeat you sort of microwave what you've seen online a million times as opposed to create something that is more you. It's, you know, the mountains are dangerous and they send you constant reminders of that I was on a glacier in Jasper Jasper National Park, and there was this huge avalanche coming down the biggest I've ever seen.

Nick VinZant  01:08

I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like download, subscribe, share, it really helps us out. We really appreciate it. Our first guest is an artist. I don't think people necessarily immediately think about photography as an artistic expression. But our first guest absolutely captures the artistic side of it, because some of the pictures that he takes, and the places that he takes them from are just incredible. And he has this really fascinating story about not just pursuing what it is that you're really passionate about, in some cases, taking years, years to take one photograph. This is Paul Ziska. So for you what kind of inspired the career path Was it a love of photography or love of the outdoors?

Paul Zizka  02:03

It was first and foremost a love for the outdoors. I moved, I'm from Eastern Canada, and I came out to check out the mountains, like every Easterner does at some point in their teenage years, and I just fell in love with the mountains and the possibilities for exploration. And right away, I thought, Okay, I need to make a life here. And if I'm going to make a life here, how can I be outside as much as possible? And so I narrowed it down to a few career paths, such as guiding and photography. And eventually I realized that photography just really made those outdoor experiences even more powerful. And so I it just became sort of the obvious way forward for me at that point.

Nick VinZant  02:50

Were you good right from the bat, or was it something that you really really had to work on?

Paul Zizka  02:55

I was a good observer. I would get the odd comment. You know, when I would share images, I would get the odd comment from people saying, you know, you should maybe consider taking this a little bit more seriously, you have a good eye, you, you sort of provide an interesting perspective on things. And I didn't take any of that, too seriously. You know, when friends and family tell you, you're good at something they're not, you know, they're always a little bit biased. Mostly, I think I was, I was driven more than more than I was a talented photographer. I think I just one size, set my eyes on that as a career path. I just wanted it really badly. And I kind of think that that sort of proved more useful to me than any kind of natural talent initially.

Nick VinZant  03:43

You know, we've interviewed a number of people on this podcast and a number of our listeners seem to have kind of struggled with that same kind of question about like, how do I, how do I really know when to pursue something? Was it something that just kind of clicked or how did you know that this was something You could do,

Paul Zizka  04:01

I knew that I had the passion, the passion was there that was clear. I absolutely loved going out there. And especially once I realized that photography could be so much more than documenting that, that it could be a creative outlet and I could have an impact on other people through a body of work and all that became quickly became addictive, that it that was more of a matter of, you know, how can I make it? How can I make it make a living of it, without starting to hate what I'm doing. And because I only had myself to worry about at that time, I didn't really need too much of an income to make it work. So I sort of saved up and save up some money. So I was able to kind of ditch everything else and live and breathe photography and do just that for a full year and take lots of bad photos and experiment and go out and figure it out for myself. And as I was doing that, I started to monetize a little bit and I realized That at least for you know, for just a guy living sort of on his own time that that would be enough to to make things work, I was able to cobble living together and eventually, you know, I got married and have kids now it's like I was I found other sources of income and other ways to generate revenue that support us as a family and I don't hate it yet. So it's I think it's working out okay.

Nick VinZant  05:26

Are you mainly trying to go to places and explore places that maybe people haven't photographed before? Are you trying to take more unique images of I don't mean this word, but pop more popular places.

Paul Zizka  05:40

For me photography is very much tied to curiosity and exploration and actually I would probably put exploration ahead of the head of photography even so I like to go out there and explore. First and foremost, if I get If I if it, if it gets me to places where nobody goes, then then that's great if I get good images out of it that that's sort of a convenient by product. But I found that my happy place is when I explore and when I go somewhere that I've never really set eyes on. So that's that's usually my primary goal. And then and then after the fact, I'll try to, if I do get some good images, I'll try to monetize in one way or another. I don't. I don't sort of I don't avoid the iconic locations. I live in a place where there's a lot of those sort of trophy shots that people come and shoot repeatedly. And they do people go to those places for a reason. Those places are absolutely fantastic, incredibly photogenic that there's a danger in a creative sense. There's a danger going to those places that you're just going to repeat you sort of microwave what you've seen online a million times as opposed to create something that is more you and you those places, sort of encourage you to stray from your creative path and your own voice a little bit. And I think it's that's where it's it's becomes a real challenge. How do you how do you pursue that creative voice and you don't sell out but still find a way to, to monetize? In the end? It's a delicate dance for sure. And it's I think it's something that all photographers struggle with. And there's days where you you do the dance very well, and days where you strugglea little bit more.

Nick VinZant  07:27

You instruct people a lot. What's the mistake that people are usually making?

Paul Zizka  07:31

That's an excellent question. The mistake that people are usually making, well, one of the most common mistakes I think I just I just sort of touched on is they go to a place and their main goal is to recreate something that that they've already seen someone do an emulation as part of the creative process. You know, I think it's, it's, it's a very natural thing to do. I sure have just, you know, went out there and try to recruit images that others took when I first started, definitely. But I think a mistake that a lot of people take especially make, especially in this age of social media, is that the they get stuck at that step and they have trouble moving beyond that and creating a body of work that's truly theirs. So that's, that's one thing that that's one mistake I can think of that people make. And also, I think is just, people don't commit the time, as much as they used to, I think in terms of you know, connecting with nature, getting a real sense of place. I live in a place that sees huge amount of visitation millions and millions of people every year. And it seems like increasingly, people including photographers are just in a rush to move on to the next thing and to try to fit in as men as much as they can in their itinerary, which doesn't really allow for to work as a photographer doesn't allow you to work with intent and to commit you know, what's the time that it takes to create reading next Level images. So I'd say those are the main two mistakes that that I see people making in my field. What's the longest that you've ever spent taking one picture? Well, there's pictures that I've visualized. I've pre visualized. And it took years, you know, for the right conditions to align in to allow those images to come to be in terms of, you know, being in on location and waiting it out. I would say, you know, probably probably hours just sitting by the tripod and waiting for things to come together waiting, waiting for waiting for the Aurora to come out maybe the clouds to move out of the way or just to just just getting into position and preemptively and waiting for just darkness to come. There's also you know, of course, there's photos that required a little bit more physical work, so just getting to the location may have taken hours or days, but there's definitely some now having said that, not not all the images Is that I'm proud of required that kind of commitment. There's images where, you know, I was driving around and the light was amazing. I pulled over to the shot and I went home and it didn't have to break a sweat. So the mix of a mix of the two, but I think the more you shoot, the more you realize that great images take commitment, sometimes you're just gonna have to really put in the work and commit a lot of time for your vision to to materialize.

Nick VinZant  10:28

Is it more technical skill? Or is it more just having the eye to find kind of a unique composition?

Paul Zizka  10:37

I think the technical side of things that becomes second nature pretty early in your journey as a photographer, you know, if you shoot a lot, after a year or two, I think you don't really think about the techie stuff nearly as much it it's it just sort of happens. And it's not something that makes you pause a lot in the field or anything. What wants to once you've acquired that don't have that kind of second nature skill, then I think it's it's really what makes you progress as a photographer is read a more abstract stuff like yeah, like, like your own vision and being able to anticipate possibilities and being able to being able to work with intent, I think is a big one, as opposed to just trying to just as opposed to being scattered. I think I was a lot, I was a lot more scattered when I first started and now work, I work with a lot more intention. And I do the more I shoot, the less I shoot in the sense that I the camera stays in the bag a lot more than it used to be just because you're you're always looking for, for the extraordinary and your standards sort of get get better and better. So I think you know, the technical stuff. Once you're a few years into it. It's not really what bogs you down. It's not the limiting factor for anyone. I think the limiting factor is how am I going to get the body of work That is that is my own and that that sort of stands out.

Nick VinZant  12:03

How do you feel when somebody just assumes that your pictures are good? Because you have a really nice camera?

Paul Zizka  12:10

I think that's I'd say it's flattering really. If you've been in the industry if you benefit tog refer for a while, you heard you've heard that one. So, so many times that you feel a little bit immune to it, but I think it's a great opportunity to educate people and to just put a put a positive spin on things and let people know that you know, it's really not it be lying if I said, gear doesn't make a difference. It does. It does really help but really, it's one of so many factors involved in the making of a great image. And then usually when I point that out, people they get it.

Nick VinZant  12:54

Do you have kind of a basic philosophy when it comes to photography

Paul Zizka  13:00

I put the experience ahead of the art, I would say, I've been guilty many times, especially when I started, I was guilty of going out with a specific image in mind. And I was tunnel visioned into seeing that image come to life. And I refuse to accept that the conditions didn't really align for that image to come to exist. And because they, I would go to a place and that didn't get the beautiful light or the nice colors I was hoping for I would go home disappointed, which after a while, I thought was was really a shame because, you know, I thought, well, how is it that I can go to a place where millions of people dream to go once in their life and I couldn't home with a negative experience. I owe it to the rest of the world to not do that. And then I realized, well, that's because I put the results ahead of the experience. And I think as the years went by, I started putting the experience ahead of everything else. In seeing the photos more as a as a byproduct, you know, seeing, you know, going out there making sure that making sure that you know, every day in the mountains is a good day, and he's just any Sunrise by a lake is a good experience. And if I get if I get the photos to show for it, that's great, but I can't I can't afford to come home with a negative experience from that. So I think if you if you put the experience ahead of the photographs, and sort of the journey, the whole experience ahead of the results, then then you win every time. And that's the philosophy I tried to abide by him.

Nick VinZant  14:37

For you. Like what would you say is your best photography experience? Like the thing that jumps out to you? Time and time again?

Paul Zizka  14:46

Oh, gosh, it's hard to pick just one but in a general way. I would say the best photo experiences I've had are the ones where I've been able to have both both inexperienced both both memories that that there's still vivid to me, as well as some photos that I look back on, you know, 510 years later, photos I look at and Andy take me to take me right back to a specific moment. And they stand the test of time, technically, they're strong. So not only do they just, you know, sort of allow me to relive those moments, but technically there are images that are compelling that are that stir up emotion not just in me, but in other people as well. I think if I've had the experience and photos that have that kind of quality, then then those those will those experience. Those are the more powerful moments that I've had in my career.

Nick VinZant  15:40

Have you ever felt like you've gone too far for a photo so to speak, like, have you ever put yourself in a situation that looking back on like, whoa, I maybe shouldn't have done that?

Paul Zizka  15:50

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I live I live in the mountains and I spent a lot of time in, you know, in in sort of remote areas, in places where there's a little Bit of objective hazard and more than once I've taken a photo or ended up not taking it and drove home or sort of walked away from the location thinking yeah, that was not the smartest moment the smartest decision of my life to sort of tried to make that image happen sometimes you get so caught up in the process, that it you can kind of lose track of the danger. You know, if you're into mountaineering photography, well, there's inherent dangers and if you if you play in the mountains and photograph in the mountains long enough, well, you're you're just, you know, it's always always a bit of a gamble. I mean, is it dangerous just because of like avalanche, or you're like on the side of a cliff or what is it about it? Yeah, you know, there's there's objective hazards like, like avalanche, rockfall, you know, if you do if you're if you head out on the glaciers, you've got the crevasses there, always A potential danger. Just exposure in general, just the elements getting lost. Yeah, falling rappelling accidents. I mean, the mountains, the mountains are dangerous. And it's, you know, the mountains are dangerous and the sand do constant reminders of that. You've been to all seven continents.

Nick VinZant  17:23

Which one kind of stands out to you?

Paul Zizka  17:26

Gosh, that's a great question. I'd say the one that stands out the most probably Antarctica, just because there's really nowhere else. There's nowhere else like it that kind of offers that. That sort of feeling of remoteness and that end of the world feel where it feels like if you go a little too far, a little further, you're just gonna fall off the planet almost. I've, I felt like I felt so far away from and so cut off from the world, the times that I've gone to Antarctica and just just the dish sheer beauty and just being able to wit being able to witness what the what the wildlife can do if it's left alone and to do to do what it wants, what what it would naturally do, it's just really eye opening. So I feel like nothing, nothing really compares to Antarctica. I my favorite place outside of the Rockies is probably Greenland. So I would say if I can just single out Greenland from the rest of Europe, that's probably the place that that has the most that that's the most magnetic magnetic for me, because it's got so much untapped photo potential, so much wilderness, and it doesn't have the restrictions that Antarctica has. So you're sort of you're you're free to explore at your own risk and and just create at your own risk in in Greenland and there's no boundaries that way. So that's, that's a place that you know, if Greenland was a continent, it was it would come out ahead of everything else, but otherwise Antartica is pretty special too.

Nick VinZant  19:01

Are you ready for the harder slash listeners submitted questions?

Paul Zizka  19:06

Absolutely fire away?

Nick VinZant  19:08

How do you feel about extensive editing of photos? Like do you feel like that's cheating? Do you feel like that's straight photography? Or do you feel like that's more of an art composition thing?

Paul Zizka  19:23

I think the most important thing is to know where you stand for yourself and to be open about your process. When people ask. I have nothing against people who do compras at work, you know, it's not it's not my thing. Or what you what some people would call illustrations, you know, where maybe, you know, you borrow, you borrow a full moon from Banff and you you add some Aurora from Greenland and a landscape from Mongolia or something. You know, it can lead to beautiful results. If it's done, right. There's lots of people doing an amazing job at it. I just know it's not it's not for me. For me, a lot of the a lot of the joy in photography comes from the chase and trying to put yourself in a position where those incredible moments will align in front of you in nature and and that's what kind of keeps me going out there. And I think if I was to put those moments together, you know, in front of the computer at home, I think the the, the art form would lose some of its appeal for me, but people lie to some where different on the spectrum and I'm standing I totally respect that some people are more purists. And they will not do any editing at all. I think I'm, I'm somewhere in the middle. But I've been trying to be very open about my process. But for me, I would only create images where you know, the elements you see in the shot are the elements that were there at the time. Now I might do a little bit of a little bit of blending or change, you know, Adjusting contrast and but I think overall ethically I'm I'm probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum

Nick VinZant  21:09

Do you have to kind of when you're doing this, you know, adventure mountain photography, you have to have a lot of other kind of skills like rock climbing and mountaineering and stuff like that.

Paul Zizka  21:19

It certainly opens up a lot of possibilities to be able to get to get to those those places and to be able to access those angles. But I mean, there's a lot of people who shoot in the mountains full time, and they do exclusively roadside photography under body of work is absolutely incredible. So you definitely don't need to get into all those activities in order to create good mountain imagery, but there's certain angles certain perspectives that you can only you can't you'll only be able to document if you if you learn the basic you know, if you learn mountaineering and glacier travel and trouble. And if you're able to travel through steep rock, ice and snow,

Nick VinZant  22:04

biggest shot that you missed,

Paul Zizka  22:07

oh, there was there was a huge I remember I was on the I was on a glacier in Jasper Jasper National Park. And there was this huge avalanche coming down to biggest I've ever seen on snow dome. And I had I had a fellow photographer I was getting out with on a moraine in front of me. And right away my brain kind of identified the you know, the composition as having this huge amount of potential. And I, I had you know, of course, it was one of those moments where I had the I had the wide lens on, and then I thought, Oh my gosh, I should reach switch to telephoto, that would be the shot of the year for me. And I just thought well, by the time I switch to telephoto, the moment will be gone and unfortunately it was one of those moments where I hesitated for like Three seconds before I switched it on. And then I realized that the thing would actually have gone on for long enough for me to get the shot. But I didn't pull the trigger early enough. And there's, there's a lot of those, there's a lot of those moments where you know that that reminds you that maybe you're not quite as ready and adaptable a photographer, as you think you are, even though you've been doing it for a while you're, you're reminded that there's, there's always room for improvement. And I think part of it is just you know, you have to be able to appreciate a scene with your own eyes, as opposed to just seeing it through the camera all the time. And I think any sort of more experienced photographer will, will will. That's something that you'll hear from a lot of experienced photographers that sometimes is just accepting that, you know, I'm not even gonna bother, I missed this and I'm just gonna take it in with my own eyes and just go home with a memory

Nick VinZant  23:51

For somebody who's getting into photography, they're thinking about getting a camera or something like, not something like that, but they're thinking about getting a camera. I mean, is there Something about it that they should look for like you should get this guy and you should stay away from this.

Paul Zizka  24:07

Oh gosh, I think I think you're better off just going out there with a camera that's pretty basic that doesn't require a huge financial commitment and just take the time to figure out what appeals to you what what genres of photography you're really drawn to. And then you know if you figure out okay, I absolutely love Astro photography, then go drop, you know, a little bit of money on a on a really good fast lens or a camera that shoots well at at high ISO, or you know, if you're drawn to portraits, go get a great lighting kit, but I think so many people pour thousands of dollars in you know, I often teach people who are just starting and their gears way better than mine. And the the, they're, they have yet to figure out where their passion really lies within the realm of photography. So I would say you know, at first You really don't need a good a good setup to to figure out what you what you're really drawn to.

Nick VinZant  25:06

How do you feel when people take pictures with an iPad?

Paul Zizka  25:10

Ah, gosh, you know, I think whatever whatever device you have at your disposal is fine with me. I don't judge people who have iPads. It's there's just you can take absolutely beautiful photos with an iPad. There's just no way to be elegant doing it. That's the only thing but if people are okay with that, then that's fine with me.

Nick VinZant  25:34

Every my dad does it and every time I see him, I'm like, damn it, dad.

Paul Zizka  25:42

Yeah, it's amazing. You can spot the iPad from from a kilometer away. There's just yeah, there's just no, there's no way you can look like a cutting edge. You know, a badass photographer with an iPad in your hand.

Nick VinZant  25:54

That's pretty much all the questions I got. Is there anything else that you think we missed? what's coming up next for you?

Paul Zizka  26:01

what's coming up next, you know, we're just waiting for the dust to settle on this whole pandemic thing really, I think nobody really knows what the world of photography is going to look like on the other side of this. So what what we're doing at our end is just trying to be ready to try to be ready to act and respond quickly. Once we're once we have a glimpse into what that new landscape, what the landscape of the photo world would look like. But for now, we're just kind of being patient and just catching up on those those projects that have been on the back burner for a long time. I think that's what a lot of photographers do. And we're, we're going to be ready to hit the ground running when the the earth starts to spin again.

Nick VinZant  26:44

I want to thank Paul so much for joining us if you want to connect with him. We have linked to him on our social media accounts were profoundly pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You have to check out his Instagram just to see these pictures. Like there's a lot of good people pictures on Instagram. And then there's his pictures, which are a whole new level. And they're so inspiring. Because, yeah, these places that he goes to, are a little bit difficult to get to maybe really difficult to get to, but they're not impossible. Like you can get there too. So it's such a great, it's such a great source of inspiration.

UFO Investigator Tim Doyle

When people see something in the sky they just can't explain, he gets a call. UFO Investigator Tim Doyle joins us. We talk UFO sightings, aliens and Area 51. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Fictional Aliens.

Interview with UFO Investigator Tim Doyle of UFO Seekers

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, alien, ufo, dinosaurs, military, roswell, feel, ufo community, ate, happening, watching, sky, evidence, fly, ufos, talking, real, government, life

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant - Profoundly Pointless Host

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)

Note: This transcription is not 100% accurate. Please consult the episode if quoting

Nick VinZant  00:13

Hey everybody welcome to profoundly pointless My name is Nick coming up in this episode, we're going to go on a search for UFOs and then count down the top five fictional aliens.

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  00:25

We've been to area 51 we've been to Roswell and we pretty much spend our time now on a daily basis sky watching for UFO activity. She was driving in this year in the mountains at night and saw to basketball sighs dim dim lights. And right before it hits the windshield he like leans over swerves, it goes around the side of his car, like looking in the driver window and then just stays in the road and watches the car go by. And that's all he saw.

Nick VinZant  00:58

I want to thank You guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it. It really helps us out. I think like a lot of people I have always struggled with two big questions. Are we the only intelligent life that's out there? And how do you explain these things? That seemed like they just can't be explained like what's, what's really happening there. Our first guest is trying to answer those questions. This is Tim Doyle. He's a UFO investigator with the group UFO seekers. So when did you start looking for evidence of UFOs?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  01:41

Well, I guess in my personal life, probably would have been decades ago, when I was like a late teenager started diving into probably a lot of people's most famous first conspiracy book which was behind the pale horse and more recently, What people see publicly with UFO speakers that all started in 2016. And what had happened is just had some changes in my personal life and ended up moving to a different location in California, I moved to Bakersfield. And that's where I met my current partner in life. Tracy, and when we first started dating and hanging out, I guess you could say, about 45 minutes from our houses the Mojave Desert, Edwards Air Force Base, plant 42, the Air Force production plant. Vandenberg Air Force Base is like the other direction where they're doing rocket launches and missile tests and stuff like that. And the mountains here right next to our home like 15 minutes away, is also where they're doing military experiments. So like in 1986, an F 117. The stealth fighter before it was public actually crashed about 15 minutes from my house. Here. And so with all of that kind of military activity and strange stuff happening, then we just ended up started seeing things and I've simultaneously I developed a passion for finding the truth behind UFOs going out sky watching looking at the sky, and our content on YouTube kind of started to take off and people started watching and we started gaining subscribers. And that's kind of where we are now it's about three years later, and I've been to places like area 51 and Roswell Of course it's me and my partner Tracy so it's a we we've been Terry 51 we've been to Roswell and but we pretty much spend our time now on a daily basis sky watching for UFO activity, but mostly we spend our time just using camera equipment like military grade, night vision, optical cameras, full spectrum, stuff like that.

Nick VinZant  03:58

So when we're talking about it UFOs are we talking about aliens? Are we talking just about something that's in the sky that we can explain?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  04:06

You've literally just asked like the the kryptonite question. You know because if you watch you know television or you're talking to kind of a quote unquote like UFO celebrity, it's you know, very popular for people to say UFOs are real. And it's like a thing like this UFO is like a thing and it's real. Over the years, I've kind of tamed myself better and being what I would consider like a serious investigator. What I like to say is UFO sightings are real. So there are real people who see real observations in the sky. And those sightings are real things. Now, when we're talking about what those are, I tend to fall like to the military side. And if we wanted to put it like in statistics, I would go on record to say like 90 percent of things that people see are related to military, atmospheric phenomenon, private space programs, private contractor programs, but then there's still like 2% that people can't explain or maybe we don't know where they are if we wanted to go into a philosophical discussion, instead of just saying aliens, which is kind of what I consider, like a post modern view of aliens, because if we're looking back to like the early 1900s, and we're reading newspaper articles, or looking at people who would have debates or speculate on the topic of aliens, it was called Martians. And that's because like telescopes were evolving and we started getting closer and closer visually to seeing what was on Mars. People were expecting that these quote unquote aliens were Martians, and that's what everyone considered them was Martians. So if we want to get downlight into a philosophical discussion about what those unexplained things are, you know, to me, it could be a god, it could be the Creator, whoever created this, if it's a computer simulation, and they're running coding, and someone who's tasked with watching what is inside of the simulation, I mean, if they're inserting themselves into the coding, like we'd see in a movie like matrix, you know, maybe that light in the sky or a light that burns an object on the ground, maybe that's the watchers or the angels or whatever phasing in. So I really try not to get stuck to that postmodern, you know, Ancient Aliens History Channel version of what these aliens are, because I feel that's more of like I said, like a more modern Hollywood take on it. And I don't think it's that narrow. I think it's more broad. And like I said, being someone who believes in intelligent design because I don't believe that Something can come from nothing. I don't believe that order, and systematic repetitiveness comes from randomness. So I'm not a big believer in just random evolution, I believe that there's an intelligent design behind what we're looking at. And I really think that kind of gets overlooked when we're talking about these UFOs. And those things kind of parallel themselves.

Nick VinZant  07:23

So when you see something that that you feel like you can't explain, it's not the kind of traditional thought that somebody might have is like, oh, there's a little green man up there.

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  07:33

Correct. And in fact, it became, it almost became it's something I couldn't see before. So before I was a UFO investigator and spend time in the field, looking at the sky, capturing photos of things I thought were a UFO and then ran home just to find out it was a Janet flightline landing at area 51. One time we were sky watching, we caught an object to re entering the atmosphere. And burning up in the atmosphere. There was no explanation for it you could call it a UFO but four days later, we confirmed it was an Iridium communications satellite that had got retired and deorbited. So there's been so many times where I've seen something and kind of been disappointed you know, once it came to review, so I don't like to point straight to one answer over the other although there are strange things happening out there. For instance, right now Tracy and I have been investigating a sighting here in this year in Nevada mountains back in February of this year. He was driving in this year and about mountains at night and saw to basketball sighs dim dim lights like flying next to his vehicle. So this guy is driving through a mountain Canyon steep canyons and up above his car, 50 feet 100 feet and next to the car. He's He's to basketball. Side lights flying next to him. One comes down into the road in front of him while he's still driving full speed and then starts coming back towards him towards the windshield. And right before it hits the windshield, he like leans over swerves, it goes around the side of his car, like looking in the driver window, and then just stays in the road and watches the car go by. And that's all he saw. And so there are weird things happening like this. And trace Ian and I, the only weird thing we've really captured in our perspective within the same general area, and it was back in 2017. We were watching low flying jets practice and this year in about a mountains. Because we spend so much time in the field we kind of know where they fly and their practice routes. So we had spent time photographing jets, military jets, and later in the afternoon after they were done. We were randomly taking pictures all over the place. And upon review, we saw this spherical, cloudy type ball, like 20 to 40 feet in diameter, in rapid shot pictures in about a second, one second to come from out of the sky. And travel probably, I want to say like a fifth of a mile in a downward direction into a canyon, where there was people like camping. So these low fly jets will fly over people. You know, it's commonplace up here if you're local, and you know, we all know about it. But this was that same type of object and then add on top of that if people have watched our YouTube videos, there was a gentleman from the 80s that we covered, who gave us witness testimony, where he was fishing near Beale Air Force Base, which is north of us still in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and him and his cousin were fishing and a spherical ball that was transparent and barely lit, floated right above their heads like 10 feet above their heads and just floated there, and then went out over the water and then up into the air. And I have more of these ball type sightings. So you know, out I never knew before there was like this UFO community. And so I am very hard to digest for a lot of these people, because I'm not willing to just jump off the cliff into a theory or to speculate on something. And I would be way more comfortable saying that these are military, because I know definitively, a military exists and I don't have definitive scientific proof of an alien that has been presented to me scientifically. So that's why, you know, we try to kind of waver towards the military perspective. But in saying that you can see how there are strange things happening which are very hard to explain

Nick VinZant  11:59

In your opinion. And how come when there is something that is hard to explain? Why does some people seem to go that this must be, you know, aliens or UFOs or anything like that, and other people just discount that? And say, no, this thing that you can't explain must have some explanation that's simple that we just don't know about, like, Why do people seem to react in such stark differences?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  12:25

Right, I think that's more of just primal, like our, our primitive, deep down belief systems. And it's deeper than just the UFO topic. It's almost similar to what you could say about partisan politics. Or if you're looking at a judgment in a court where you present evidence you always have like a 5050 split down the middle where one you know, people see one thing and others see another and unfortunately, I think the majority of us I be One of those people before I started this journey, who only look for reinforcing evidence to reinforce what we believe ourselves, you know, we're not looking, you know, dissenting evidence. And that's kind of who I am at heart is I am, unfortunately, like the guy who searches for the dissenting evidence. And when everyone's on one side of the ship, I'm kind of on the other. So you nailed it, though. That's, I mean, that's how it is, unfortunately, there are people who kind of monetize the reaching of the conclusion. And so they need to bring people along. And for those in the UFO community who no UFO seekers, we don't participate in like UFO conferences, you know, those big like celebrity conferences where people come to kind of hear your theories or they go through workshops, stuff like that. So just know that where I'm coming from, for you and your audience. We aren't the type that participate in that. We literally 100% just spend our time in the field, looking for UFOs activity, truth, what's going on at these military bases, we try to put it into the videos, and bring people that in reality, real scientists and people who take these things serious, who are constantly looking at the sky, and they aren't seeing the things that were shown on, you know, paranormal caught on camera on the travel channel. And all these shows, which tell us that there's something happening every second around every corner. And so we really have have tried hard by spending our time at these main facilities. To show people it's not so common place for these types of things to happen to help the UFO community find the real evidence, but it's providing this evidence to people to kind of help take away the ammunition of the well paid solution. He's out there who are on TV who kind of use people's belief systems to sell tickets.

Nick VinZant  15:08

When you get reports of UFO sightings? Is there a general pattern that they seem to follow?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  15:15

No, no, I wouldn't say so. There. There's so much different. Unfortunately, I think if you're a serious investigator, if someone wants to know what it's like, they should just watch cops or live PD. And kind of that same percentage is misleading. And I really hate to like tell people this, but I do consider myself serious. There are people who will lie. that's similar to when you're watching cops and they catch someone and the guy says like they're not my pants. When there's something like in his pants that he has on you and the guy is like, these aren't my pants. Like they're you still have that kind of similar percentage. So as a serious investigator, you really need to make sure that you're smart enough to hold back and not get yourself involved in what's being reported. And then finding those real ones like the one I told you about these basketball objects appearing next to the gentleman's vehicle, this guy called me for weeks. And I do that to these people. So there's, there's there have been scientists who have studied the topic of UFOs. For a long time, people should know, like, almost 70 years now. And so they've managed to kind of pick out the commonalities that exists in the UFO community, such as investigators, or people on social media or television who just promote everything. And that's a problem. Because then there's no look at what is serious and if you just promote everything, then everything has to be taken as real. And so we really try to slow down. We don't let people just say That's a picture and then we regurgitate it, because that's kind of where you end up promoting hoaxes. So for instance, in 2017 2018, there was this Peruvian mummy that was going around online, promoted by the biggest celebrities. One of the nation's top radio paranormal shows this Peruvian mummy that had been uncovered and it was an alien, it looked like an alien and it was getting promoted, like it was an alien and come to find out that it was actually a mummy that they had taken pieces of other things and actually created little bone structure pieces and attach them to this mummy and then taking pictures and taking video of it. So just that example, people can use to see that even high level individuals will lie and use the topic to make revenue or to get something or be famous or to get on a TV show. So you really have to be careful slowed down, and really pick out, you know, who you feel is telling you the truth. But still, I mean, you don't even know. This is one of those scariest topics I've ever been involved in. And people should know that you know, me and you have been talking about this alien question. And I'm really glad that you picked me to talk to you because now I'm going to make it dead serious for for people so they understand the military value of what we're doing. And it's something I didn't understand before. And I always wondered why a UFO investigator would like get killed by the men in black or would you know, disappear. Now, the true reality is with UFO sightings. The military is interested in these things because they could be military. I want people to think about Roswell and then think about that they've never heard of a foreign craft crashing on American soil. And I want them to think hard about how the government could keep you thinking that you're in a utopia and a foreign enemy could never Reach the United States soil and start thinking to yourself, how could the government use the topic of aliens or UFOs to kind of cover up things like that that might happen. And so intrinsically, UFO sightings are extremely valuable to the government. And that's where it becomes dangerous because what we're doing is going out and following around Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and they have all of these secret tests and operations going on. And inherently, you're capturing these operations going on Global Hawk testing, new UAS system testing. And so, so there's lots of secret military operations that are 50 years ahead that people don't know about. And so a lot of what is involved in these UFO sightings is that technology and people observing those things. Now, if you go back to 1960 s, and the SRS 71 the SRS 71 actually had an awesome autonomous drone that attached to the back of it and attached between the rear tail thin wings, the upward wings and the SRS 71, which was using self paint, right because stealth was actually invented in like 1941 by a scientist who created paint that could absorb radar frequencies or radio frequencies. And so the ASR 71, which was already stealth, and a stealth aircraft, could fly to about 70 to 90,000 feet and had an autonomous drone that looked just like a third SRS 71 engine and would detach, and using radio control in the 60s, the government would fly this thing autonomously. So now I want people to take that into perspective, and how far beyond our thinking the government in the military is, and that's a lot of what we're looking at here. So it's not just about being stuck to this alien question. It's not just being stuck to the creators of whatever we're looking at and until And design. It's also being extremely wary of the government in the military and what they're doing out there, because that's what we're seeing.

Nick VinZant  21:08

Are you ready for the harder slash listeners submitted questions?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  21:14

I am ready. Totally ready.

Nick VinZant  21:16

What did you think of the storming of area 51 that was going on that whole topic that kind of rose to prominence last year, or was it? Is it last year's this year? Last year, right.

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  21:27

I think was last year. Time is moving so fast. Now.

Nick VinZant  21:31

What did you see? What did you think as you kind of saw that built up or build up rather?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  21:36

Yeah. See, and that's, we weren't fans of that happening at all, like zero percent. I mean, I don't mean to get harsh about it, but I'm going to get harsh about it. You know, to me, I viewed it as a terrorist attack, like a domestic terrorist attack on an Air Force specific facility and I view it as extremely dangerous. You Promoting such activity to the public. But that's what happens. When celebrities are telling people things exist. They're definitively. I mean, the whole reason people were there was because there's a Las Vegas journalist who calls himself a journalist who was telling people, zeta particular aliens have been in area 51 for decades and had been here on earth for 10,000 years. So it's not hard to think that the public or people who take them serious because they said they're serious, to want to go find out these things. I mean, especially the impact on society. If you unveiled into Alien Evidence, it would change religion, our perspective on the university would change science, it would help the poor with the alien technology. So it makes sense that people would want to go retrieve that. So that's why we're very cautious. In fact, people would probably Look at the content I have online and frown upon it because there's lots of video pictures, the military facilities. But it never comes with negativity towards the military as if those people are hiding something from me. Obviously, I think the leadership in the military makes bad decisions are the ones who have secrets. I really think the military just burns our money and has tons of technology that would change our economy in a good way. I think the military has trillions upon trillions of dollars is spent on underground facilities. I have family members who've been in them. They have railroads, they have freeways. They have cities underground that no one knows about. And that's where all the budgets went. And so it's those things that I feel are very concerning. And I wish that the passion that people had towards picking out that Alien Evidence from area 51 would be point Towards the government and the policies of the military and what they're doing with this money.

Nick VinZant  24:05

Do you think when you look at some of the kind of well known kind of alien sighting, UFO sighting, things that have happened throughout history, you know that people know about the Phoenix lights, Roswell? Do any of those kind of stand out as you as being real

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  24:21

Oh, I don't actually think that one was real, or haven't has an easy explanation and people No, I think both aren't real. I will tell you right now they both aren't real. People can go look at the Roswell testimony. Okay, first off, they need to stop listening to people who weren't there. And if they want to listen to someone who was at Roswell, they should read Mack Basil's testimony that exists in the newspaper. And now what most people won't tell you was Brazell had already found two weather balloons on his property. So if we're going to go to Roswell, Mack Brazell was out There he was around and just like where I live in Bakersfield, no different. Okay, it's an agriculture a ranch cattle place. Same thing here in Bakersfield. And so this really nice guy. Mack Brazell is just a ranch hand and he's out moving cattle. And he finds this is written in the newspapers, brass balls testimony. So don't believe anybody else go pull the newspapers or you can go on my website and read the newspapers. Brazell himself says that he came across sticks and a foil foil looking material. Nothing more than like three feet in size. No burning, no fire. No. No depression from a heart impact crash. He literally just found materials, these little twigs sticks and an aluminum foil type material spread out throughout shrubbery and brushes. So Brazell collects them. puts them like in a ball and stuffs them under a bush. And so Brazell brother in law tells him about this reward of $5,000 for pieces of a Martian UFO. Martian spaceship, because that's what everyone thinks it is. And that's when Brazell takes his family back with his kids and they go and collect this, the sticks in this brush some of them and then they call the Roswell Sheriff who comes out. They go they pick up some more of it, then they call the Roswell military guy. They come out they take it to the Roswell military guy, and it's an Army Intelligence Officer. Okay. Brazell in the newspaper articles. tells the military guy this is not a UFO. I don't say nothing. I don't want to say it's anything. I found these pieces. I'm an American and I want to help my government. Here are the pieces of this thing and I found on a ranch. Plus there's a reward. If it's something the Army Intelligence Officer destroy Brazil's life Brazzaville, his family and the ranch owners who own the ranch and kills the entire world, they found a flying disc, and just leaves it at that. So the government completely threw him under the bus. Because White Sands Missile Range is right there. And they didn't want anybody looking. And they didn't want anybody looking at the sky anymore. To see the supersonic jet technology they were creating. I mean, it was 62. They were already flying the X 52 space. And that's what they're trying to stop people from from looking. They want you to believe the guy on TV, who tells you the gray aliens are everywhere, because they don't want you to go to Edwards Air Force Base, and look at their airplanes and kind of help this disinformation. I mean, if we're looking at the Phoenix lights, it's a flare. It's literally like eight flares, right? You're looking at a video of the mountain and you're watching eight flares or however many it is. I don't know the number offhand. I'm just guessing. Falling down behind the mountain. I mean, am I crazy? I feel like I move got to and Zoo lander, and I'm going all the looks look the same. I mean Blue Steel Magnum, it's the same look. And I'm looking at the Phoenix lights going, Hey, these are just flares falling behind a hillside. But you do have like this hysteria that gets built up. And so there's an investment in the marketing behind these sightings. If there ever is kind of a little green man, so to speak, that just appears on a press conference one day that like everything is confirmed. What do you think happens to society? Well, honestly, I don't think anything changes. I mean, Star Trek has already been running for. Since what the late 60s. I honestly I don't think anything changes at all. The only thing that's going to change is technology. And that's the good part about it. So I don't I don't view aliens. extraterrestrials as a negative thing are a threat. Sometimes I even wonder if they just look like you and me, Nick. Like, who's not to say that we fly out into the universe and land on a planet, and they just look like us? I mean, who's to say it's not just farther back and there's dinosaurs there? Why does it have to be always this gross, distorted looking scary. communists never wears any clothing so they all look the same and are branded the same type of alien races. And that's what really doesn't make sense to me. And anyone who's watched Star Trek First Contact there,it's so funny because they they put two different versions of when the Vulcans first came down because the humans made warp drive, and the Vulcans were flying by and detected the warp signature. And so the Vulcans flew down to earth and came to see who made the warp engine and talk to them, because that was unlocking of the next step to traversing the universe. And there was Two different versions when the Vulcans landed. And one was when the Vulcan came out of the spaceship, the people attacked him. And then there was another version, where everyone was excited to see them and the warp drive inventor went up and shook their hand and initiated first contact. And so I really see, you know, those two separate sides, we have people who consider this a threat and want you to attack the Vulcans. And then we have other people who want to embrace the diversity of the universe. And and let's see what's out there.

Nick VinZant  30:31

Anything else you think that we've missed, or anything else that you'd like to add or anything like that?

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  30:36

You know, a lot of the times I feel like the Grim Reaper. It's like, you know, 99.9% of the people I meet, think I'm a full believer because this is what we do. Investigating UFO sightings. I'm a full believer in the alien that exists now. And I just, I don't want people to view me as the Grim Reaper where I'm Destroying series, their beliefs, or other speculative beliefs. There are strange things happening. No one has an answer. I just really want people to know to look for evidence. So when someone tells you that in Egyptian pyramid was made by an alien race, all I ask is that you look for the proof of the aliens doing it. You know, the UFO community is a joke. And it's a joke to society. I know because I drive around a car with UFO seekers on it. And I get left constantly. And I work every day to try to change that perspective and that point of view by teaching people and educating people, such as in this discussion we're having right now, and that is going to lead us to the real truth.

Nick VinZant  31:51

Do you think that more people believe I'll use this very broad springing but do you think that more people kind of believe that there is something else Whatever that's something else could possibly be out there then would let on say make fun of the UFO secret car but secretly also believe that something could exist.

Tim Doyle (UFO Seekers)  32:11

Oh, yeah.Oh yeah hundred percent and being philosophical type person like I am. You know, I'm looking at why they're laughing. They're laughing because what I'm searching for is a threat to their belief system.

Nick VinZant  32:24

I want to thank Tim so much for joining us if you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts were profoundly pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included his information on the RSS feed that's in this podcast. You can also check out his YouTube channel. And there you'll see some of the videos that he's talking about. I think just going back and forth in that conversation. It's I think it's such a fine line. Because there was definitely times where I felt like oh, I don't know about that man. But there was also times where I thought you might be right. And that's such a fine line. And that's why I think that ultimately when we're talking about a subject like this, something where you really can't maybe fully explain it, and it just comes down to what somebody believes. It does ultimately tell you so much about that person based on what they believe, like a believer is going to believe. And a skeptic is just going to push it aside. And I think that you can probably extrapolate that throughout so many other things in their life as well.

Opera Singer Isabel Leonard

She has a voice that can move you to tears. Grammy Award winner Isabel Leonard is one of the most in-demand Opera Singers in the world. We talk Opera, finding your voice, pop stars who can really sing and her Karaoke skills. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Music Genres. 

Interview with Opera Singer Isabel Leonard

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

sing, opera, people, singers, hear, music, voice, silverware, sounds, listen, opera singer, thought, gator tail, screamo, longitude, song, country, call, feel, pretty

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant – Profoundly Pointless podcast host

Isabel Leonard – Opera Singer

Nick VinZant  00:13

Hey everybody welcome to profoundly pointless My name is Nick coming up in this episode, we're gonna go to the opera and counting down the top five genres of music.

Isabel Leonard  00:24

And that was pretty terrifying you know, I was there on stage by myself singing the one Aria that my character had and that was it. It was like sink or swim go. One of the strongest connections you know, from human to human is the voice and is the the transmission of emotion through I always say one animal cry to the other. You know, you're hearing you're hearing like emotion and words all tied up into one and coming out with this sort of soaring sound.

Nick VinZant  00:55

I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance like Download, subscribe, share. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. I think the best way to introduce our first guest is to hear her sing. This is Grammy Award winning opera singer Isabel Leonard, when did you know that you could really sing?

Isabel Leonard  01:52

I think there's sometimes there's this. This thought that opera singers are just sort of like found with these big voices. That's not exactly always the case. I think sometimes they're found if they've been training and nobody knew about them in the first place. But generally, you know, opera singers come to, come to this world, like any other singer does, you know, musical theater or pop or jazz or any of those things is that they start because they can sing and they can carry a tune. And then they get into the genres that they like, and then they go on training and learning to sort of vocal technique and style that is, that is connected to the genre, right? That they're that they're singing. So I mean, like, as an example, you know, I I went in high school, I was of course, singing a lot of musical theater. And I could have gone to cap 21, which was the NYU musical theater program or Juilliard, and I chose Juilliard because I thought, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm going to want to have a really solid vocal technique. I think this is where I'm going to be able to get that technique. And so I went there. had I gone to cap 21 I probably would have been in musical theater world. It's like, I knew I could sing and then it was What I'm going to do with my voice, I wasn't entirely sure, in the very beginning, I just knew that I wanted to have a good technique so that I could then later make those choices.

Nick VinZant  03:08

So it's not as if an opera singer just has this fundamentally amazing voice. It's more of a training slash career interest kind of thing.

Isabel Leonard  03:18

You know, ultimately, at the end of the day, it's like those 10,000 hours that you put in, it's really it's, I think, at its fundamental it is training muscles. And I just think that yeah, it's finding people that kind of have the raw gift and then kind of building from that point.

Nick VinZant  03:32

So what kind of like for the training what, what do you do?

Isabel Leonard  03:35

Well, I mean, vocal training looks a little different probably for everybody. I mean, we do things like we do, we have vocal exercises, right? It could be as simple as singing scales and doing breath exercises where you learn how to take a very deep breath and in the correct way that allows you to have a free we call it a free voice like free singing where You're not using your neck muscles to control the sound that you're creating, that you're really singing from your, your full body. And we have all sorts of things that we do, you know, as a teacher, because I teach as well, but there are so many things that you can do with students to sort of help them get to that place. But it's not like you say to a student here, do this, and then all of a sudden they do it. And it's better, right? It takes hours and years of practicing this until it becomes a habit until this sort of muscle memory kicks in. And it becomes a habit, you know, as you think of Tiger Woods and his swing, right, this swing is broken up into so many different parts, right? It's the same thing was singing, you have like the inhalation at the beginning. And then you have your exhalation which is really when you're singing, and then all the things that are attached to the singing like the articulators of your mouth, which are going to say, and say the words and make the different vowels and consonants and things that you've had that we have to do it right in order to communicate language. And again, I always I always refer back to the athletes I think it's kind of an easier way to see that it's actually quite the same. The biggest difference is that there's less visual when you're teaching somebody like a singer, that you can point out to the public because it's all happening inside the voice. Right? So, unlike with an athlete, you could look at, you know, a basketball player, a golf pro, or whatever. And you can watch them go through their process and go through a day of training. And you could see very specifically, the movements they make with their body that are supposed to help them get better. With it, you can do this with a lesson and I just think it's a lot more subtle. So it doesn't it's not always as as blatant as what we're doing right.

Nick VinZant  05:42

So what was it about opera that drew it that drew you to it?

Isabel Leonard  05:46

I sort of fell into opera. I went when I went to Juilliard. Like I said, I wanted to, I wanted to have a good technique. That was my first and foremost goal was to get a good singing technique, and then a Juilliard was a classical based education we did a lot of, we started off course, like everybody was the Italian art songs and we which is this good basically a book of like it sounds Italian songs that are used. Traditionally, when you're learning how to sing when you're learning about technique, it would be like, you know, somebody learning how to really do a correct walk, you know, or like, in learning how to run properly and run efficiently in any sport so that that basic thing is really well taken care of, right. It's the sort of the same idea. And it Juilliard. It was a lot of the classical music. And, of course, we worked on operas, and and all this this classical repertoire, and I sort of fell into it from that point, I did my undergrad and once I was entrenched four years into that I stayed, I did my masters, I was lucky enough to be able to go back for my masters. And by that point, I was really, you know, fully entrenched in the opera world.

Nick VinZant  06:57

How do you get an opera part? Do you? Is it an audition? Is it like, it's not like a job application or something like how does it work?

Isabel Leonard  07:05

No, they're all auditions. Once you get to a certain level, you generally if you're lucky, you stop auditioning. And the companies will come to you or your manager and they'll say, Hey, we're doing this production in a year or two years time can and is she available for this role? Would you like to sing this role? Here are the dates. A lot of times, you know, you might want to do it, you might not be free. And so then those are the negotiations that go in into that. And in the beginning, when you're a young artist, you, you know, you basically try to stay in school kind of as long as you can, because you're developing and unlike, again, unlike athletes, this time, singers develop a lot later, I would say like into your mid 30s is when singers really come into their own and really figure out their vocal technique. And so that's kind of a ways to wait. So singers tend to go from their master's program if they went to a master's program into things that we call young artists. programs or apprenticeship programs, and lots of big opera companies in the United States and all over really have these programs like, they're really I really like the word apprenticeship. Because at that point you're older, you're know, you're in your mid to late 20s, perhaps, and you're working for a company. And you're getting, you're still getting coachings, and you're working on your voice and you're doing maybe scenes from opera is not full operas. But if you're lucky, you also get to sing the small roles in the mainstage OPERS, with the mainstage singers that come in as guest artists throughout the seasons. And so then you're really learning a lot, you know, trial by fire, so to speak,

Nick VinZant  08:37

the fact that singers kind of come into their own a little bit later, is that because of a physical reason, like there's the body, does the voice change, or is it just being practiced enough in it?

Isabel Leonard  08:48

You know, that's a really good question. I actually am not entirely sure if it is something to do with the musculature if it has to do with the development of the vocal cords. Perhaps the vocal cords may mature continue to mature into the 30s more than we realize, I think that singing it's such a finer muscle training that perhaps it just takes longer to finesse the coordination of the of the whole thing I do know Like for example, I sounded not so different but quite different in tambor from when I was in my early 20s, mid 20s to like what I do now, and a lot of that has to do with use that has to do with you know, use and experience and just muscle muscular usage, but it has to do with hormonal changes and shifts in the body and getting older and, you know, like, again, like any muscle in the body, the vocal cords are a muscle and they are, they will be subject to what the body is subject to.

Nick VinZant  09:55

What was that first kind of big performance like for you? What do you remember about it?

Isabel Leonard  10:00

You know, when you're when you're a singer, and if you're going to, let's say, an artist program, you're performing little things here and there. And you're, you know, there's never really, for most people, it isn't like all of a sudden you weren't doing performances, and then all of a sudden, you have this one big show, right? And you have all of a sudden started, it usually starts in smaller ways than that you start with a little concert here or scenes program. I was very fortunate that for me, I was able to start working really soon. And I was able to sing sort of like the equivalent of like, supporting actress roles in the sort of the second kind of like the Second Lady roles in most of the shows that I was doing. And so I was able to go in as a guest artist and sing these roles. And I was I was thrown into the deep end of the pool very, very quickly, in my career and in relatively unusual path for singers. But I debuted at the Met I think I was either 25 or 26. I was really young. And it came out from a recital that I had done in New York. My manager who I had also met pretty young, had invited Peter gal who is the general manager of the Met to my recital. And at the end of the recital, he told me that he had been there. And then from that recital, he hired me, basically for the following 15 seasons met. And so that was really, I mean, that was like, it was lucky, but it was being prepared right place, right time and having some great people supporting me along the way. And so I was able to debut in that house very, very quickly. And that was pretty terrifying. You know, I was there on stage by myself, singing the one Aria that my character had, and that was it. It was like sink or swim go.

Nick VinZant  11:41

Is opera. Is it kind of a cutthroat world? Is it really competitive? Or what's it like?

Isabel Leonard  11:48

You know, I stay away from all that kind of nonsense. So if it is I wouldn't have noticed. I just don't play into people's insecurities and problems and Because I think as performing artists, we have so many of them as it is on our own, that the last thing you need is to add anything else to it. We, I would say that amongst my friends and myself and the people that are in my close circle who are in the business, we're all very supportive of each other. And we're all extremely aware that, that everybody's different, you know, everybody's voice is like their thumbprint, completely unique, very much their own. And everybody has a different way of telling stories and of singing. And the best way I think, to get through any kind of performing art career is to not be in direct competition to the person next to you because there's actually no growth there because it's jealousy. It's frustration, right? But if you're in competition with yourself, like to continuously do a better job or to continuously study and hone on your technique and do all those things. And that's, that's good. I think that's really good.

Nick VinZant  12:56

So I seem to see kind of two different kinds of things of what means As a person with no knowledge would consider to be opera one where there's somebody that's just standing and singing in front of a microphone. And then another word seems to be almost like a play, or those both the same thing or what's, what's the difference there?

Isabel Leonard  13:15

Well, so technically in opera, we do not use a microphone ever.

Nick VinZant  13:19

Really?

Isabel Leonard  13:21

No, no, no, yeah, that's the whole thing. It's an acoustic, it's an acoustic art form. So there are no mics in opera. And so if you hear an opera singer in front of a microphone, there's usually a reason for that they're probably in a venue that is way too big or outdoors. Or it's a broadcast of some sort, you know, they need different sound sound levels, right. So, yeah, so and I would say, These days, opera is definitely a singing play. It is people on stage, you know, moving and in costume and acting and telling the story that is the opera, Vice singing in an opera. They're constructed different You know there, there are offers in which the characters sing all the time. There are operas in which there's a little bit of dialogue. We have their structural things in the music they have our arias right and our duets and things like then trios and stuff. As well as something that we call Reggie tattoos. And it's a basically a reciting reciting of text and it tattooed is when you sing text. Now, you would say, well, that's what you're doing anyway, right? It's like, yes, yes, it is. Singing text all the time. But a lot of times in the recitation as we shorten them to say rested, because we shorten everything in the opera world. We never say anything fully. We'll never say like Don Giovanni will just be like, Dungy, or like, or we'll just say, or we'll just say like Giovanni instead of saying because even today, we'll just say because he do a lot of that kind of thing. So but the rescue team is usually when the if there were to be dialogue in a show, that would have been the dialogue itself. Time is still some right but it is more free, musically and rhythmically so usually the rest of it is done with a harpsichord playing chords, and then the singer singing their text, essentially over these chords to notes that are written down in the music, but their rhythm is a little bit freer. So there are a lot more open to interpretation of a singer and they can be a lot of fun. So we have I would say in the opera world we do operas, full staged operas, costumes, lights, orchestra everything. We have concerts in orchestra and Symphony halls in which we stand at the front of the stage in front of a giant orchestra or Symphony. And we work we do different pieces there. Usually we don't sing opera will sing concert repertoire, which is different, or will sing, or retort to some, you know, so sometimes you're seeing religious work or non religious work or you'll sing. Sometimes there are songs that were written by composers that they also set to an orchestra and you can do those with an orchestra as well as with piano For a recital, for example. So there's a lot of like, really fun permutations within the music that we sing. And they can sort of translate into those different, you know, opera stage concert stage recital stage venues.

Nick VinZant  16:13

What do you have to do to care for your voice?

Isabel Leonard  16:17

Well, you Well, not over abuse it. I would say, not yelling. Not not screaming and yelling, not over over singing. Having a good technique is, you know, tiring, and I don't know, I try not to be too neurotic about my voice.

Nick VinZant  16:37

Like after a longer performance or a regular performance. Can you talk normally or do you like wear it out or anything?

Isabel Leonard  16:44

No, no, no. I think if you're wearing your voice out after a show, you're doing something wrong. I would say that After After Show, generally, singers and particularly because it's so late and we probably haven't eaten since. three in the afternoon. We all tend to go get some food. The thing is to go to a quiet restaurant is really ideal. The biggest issue again, is going to like a very loud place loud restaurant loud bar. Because that's really detrimental for a singer, especially if they and even more so if they have to sing like the next day. Right? So it's one thing if you just sang a show and I got a loud bar, it's like, maybe you have the next day to recover. It's still not a good idea. But it's better than for example, like if you were to say, hey, let's go to dinner the night before your show, I would be like,

Nick VinZant  17:29

Are you ready for the harder slash listener submitted questions?

Isabel Leonard  17:34

Yeah.

Nick VinZant  17:34

Is your voice insured?

Isabel Leonard  17:38

Yes.

Nick VinZant  17:39

How much is like how much do you ensure a voice for Can I ask?

Isabel Leonard  17:44

Ya know. I don't I don't really know. I mean, it's it's one of those things that I started, I think, I think, I think I'm thinking harder about it. Now, I think it is insured. I mean, we're talking basically about disability insurance, right? Because it's my it's my career. So it's it's basically it's disability insurance and you try to insure your voice for what you're making, you know, through the course of your life, hopefully, and because God forbid, you have to stop short. And what are you gonna do? Right? It's like it would be like an athlete would do the same thing. a pianist will insure their hands. violinists will insure their hands. They will all musicians will do this, because it's their livelihood. I mean, this is serious stuff.

Nick VinZant  18:24

You know, it's one of those things, I guess it sounds a certain way. But then when you think about, it's like, oh, that's makes complete sense. And I would do the exact same thing.

Isabel Leonard  18:33

Of course, I think when you realize, you know, I think that's one of those things is that there's still stigmas, you know, behind becoming a musician, you know, and I remember even in college, I had friends whose parents were very supportive and I had friends whose parents were not supportive at all right? And they were like, you're never gonna have a good enough career or like, you're never gonna make enough money and it's, it's really tricky, right. And I also think that it's very difficult in this country, right, our, our music, you know, the arts are They're not government subsidized, like they are in Europe. And so it is a difficult business, I think in this country, you have to be a savvy business person, and you have to, you have to figure out how not to be taken advantage of, and how to save your money. And for for all of us, we're all independent contractors, you know, we, we pay quarterly taxes we have, we're an independent contractor status. So this whole thing now with COVID, and all of us being out of work has been very tricky for people, because they may be able to file for unemployment in one of the states that they worked in. But the companies themselves aren't going to pay us unemployment because we are not employees of the opera companies that we work at, because we work at so many. So there's a lot of it's a real big issue. So when you think of it that way, and then you'd go Did you ensure your voice like hell yes. Yeah.

Nick VinZant  19:51

Right. Yeah. What is the hardest opera to sing?

Isabel Leonard  19:55

Oh, I have no idea. I don't know how to answer that question because it's different for everybody. That's like asking the questions. What's your favorite opera? Those are the kinds of questions that we all kind of go don't start asking me.That's all. I know. But here's my question to you. Why do you want to know?Like, if I were to say to you, here's my favorite and here's my hardest would that make you more? Would you go and listen to that one? Probably right? Maybe,

Nick VinZant  20:24

I think maybe from like a lay person's perspective. It gives me like an an idea of a new appreciation of what I'm really looking at or listening to.

Isabel Leonard  20:37

Yeah, Interesting. Interesting. I guess. I guess I've always, you know, those questions are hard, because, again, you know, we are constantly evolving, and we're constantly changing as artists and our techniques are constantly evolving. So, you know, the first five years of my career, I could have said, I definitely find this particular role to be difficult. But then five years later, it's not so difficult, right. It changes So, so my answer to be honest with that question of like, what's your favorite or what's what do you think is the hardest opposite for me in terms of favorite, it's whatever it is that I'm working on. So and I really get entrenched in the piece that I'm working in, I'm focused in on it. And in order to play these characters, honestly, I really feel like you have to be in it and you have to be loving what you're doing. You'd have to kind of love the character you're playing, no matter what kind of character they are, but you have to love who they are, and and go with that, as her hardest opera. I mean, hardest maybe technically vocally.I'd have to think about it. I mean, Marnie was really hard. This piece that I did this Nico muli piece that I did. That's been streaming for the last 24 hours on the met on live demand. Live on demand, sorry, it was like Yoda speaking. Met live on demand at midnight. The that's on their website and that was a contemporary opera written by Camila who's a contemporary of mine, very gifted, gifted, gifted composer. That's a very hard thing. Technically, technically very hard sing very difficult notes to find. Very modern, very difficult. So yeah, I mean, I would say, okay, that could be an answer. That could be a hard, a hard piece. But again, I think in retrospect, I look back and everything has its challenges and everything has easy moments.

Nick VinZant  22:24

How do you feel about people doing karaoke? Can you listen to it or does it bother?

Isabel Leonard  22:31

That is hilarious. I will listen to people. I have no problem with karaoke. Just don't ask me to do it. You won't.

Nick VinZant  22:39

Yeah, wonder like what's that like for you? If somebody say doesn't know what should they try to? They try to get you up. They're like,

Isabel Leonard  22:47

Yeah, no, I just don't, I can't. I can't. I just don't know enough like pop culture, songs like with all the music that I know is probably coming from I mean, aside From the upper world comes from like from the 1930s to the 1960s. And so I don't really I can do some of it like 70s 80s and 90s things, but I'm just not very good at it. So I'm like, you know, it's totally fine. I can leave it to somebody else. I can sit here and watch. It's not a big thing for me. Personally, I have friends who love it, who are an opera world and who love it and get a kick out of it. So

Nick VinZant  23:22

can a lot of people can they not sing because they just fundamentally like you just don't have the voice, your voice? Isn't that great? Or do they just not know how to do it?

Isabel Leonard  23:32

That's a really good question. I don't Okay, so now I don't have like a scientific answer, which I wish I did, because I think it will be good to have one. But I do know that so much of singing and has to do with just matching pitch, right? And I think when when kids are little This is when you teach them to match pitch matching pitches, just an aural skill. Like aural right is our ear. It's a matter of hearing something and then replicating that sound, which is something that babies do. Do anyway, right because they learn how to speak. And they learn how to create the sounds in the language that their mother or father, whoever is taking care of them is speaking to them, right. And all of those things happen through the ear. And then they create the shapes and the sounds that they need to create with their mouth and their tongue in order to replicate those sounds. So, in my mind, I would think that with enough, we call it ear training. You could get somebody to match pitch if they were perhaps before having trouble matching pitch. Now, could you get that same person to go from a situation in which they weren't matching pitch to them singing on an opera stage? Maybe, I don't know. I've never tried. I mean, that can be fun. It can be good, you know, reality TV crazy show. But I think that there's so much of it has to do with the being an active listener and trying to match pitch. I mean, that's the basic right? That's the very first step of the whole thing.

Nick VinZant  25:04

It does seem like a lot of it would be able to hear the difference. And I think that for me is an untrained person who knows, like, I can't hear the difference necessarily.

Isabel Leonard  25:15

hear the difference between

Nick VinZant  25:18

pitch like I don't, I couldn't tell you if I was I don't even know what, where to even begin.

Isabel Leonard  25:25

That's really interesting. That's like, did you sing as a child? like did you sing at school or anything? Like did your parents ever say?

Nick VinZant  25:32

No, but that yeah, that the ability has skipped the VinZant family by a long way,jumped over it by miles.

Isabel Leonard  25:44

That's hilarious.

Nick VinZant  25:45

Some of the other ones that we got.Best Movie about an opera singer.

Isabel Leonard  25:53

Best Movie about an opera singer. I don't use they're a movie about AI are there even movies about it? Here's I mean, I feel like Julianne Moore just did the bell contem movie and it was so she's played an opera singer. It wasn't really about an opera singer. Um, um, I would go and watch the callus documentary that was just made. It was pretty fantastic. And she's really interesting. She's got her obviously a really interesting history. You know, Meryl Meryl Streep just made this movie. What was it called? She was playing. They call this woman like the worst opera singer she could so here's a situation like she could not sing into this woman. But she loved opera. She very much loved opera and anyway is a real story. But Meryl Streep was playing this woman is very funny movie. But it's not exactly. You know. It's not exactly showing what the actual you know, trained kardex you know, opera singer is doing right. It's just this one, this one particular story so many of it that you know, juxtaposed with the kahless documentary can be really fun.

Nick VinZant  27:08

Can you shatter glass? Can you shatter glass with your voice?

Isabel Leonard  27:13

Ah, I don't I have never done it. I feel like it's gotta be possible, right? Because we're just talking about vibration if you get if you get maybe a thin enough glass, a crystalline enough glass perhaps right that because again, it's just vibration, right? So you know how if you like when you look at a rock concert, right and you the speakers are vibrating, you know, because the bass is so loud and you can feel a vibration in your chest. It's because what's happening is your tissues are vibrating at the same rate that the music is playing, right that those vibrations are coming in so loud, because vibration is sound waves and sound waves travel through the air. They actually right. So there's in my brain, I'm thinking Why not? If that's the sound wave that travels through air, if I'm singing very closely to stained glass, and I'm singing, I have to find the right pitch. That's the other thing, you'd have to find the right pitch that would make that glass and vibrate, right? Because every object has a vibration point. I think, I don't know how to explain this scientifically, but every object can vibrate at a certain frequency. And so if you find that frequency, and I bet if you sing it loud enough, you could probably make

Nick VinZant  28:27

sounds. Sounds like you just did it.

Isabel Leonard  28:31

I dropped one of my son's trucks. I'm sorry. Yeah, and I'm thinking you maybe if you were lucky enough, right next door glass, maybe you could probably good

Nick VinZant  28:41

acoustically speaking which theater was your favorite?

Isabel Leonard  28:46

Oh, it's a good question. There are so many good theaters out there and there's so many great acoustics as well. I don't know if I have one favorite. This last season before everything. shut down. I had performed Where did I go? I was actually at the Detroit Symphony. They have a fantastic Hall. Cincinnati has a fantastic Hall. I love singing in San Francisco and I've sung there many times and I adore the symphony. I mean, the Met I gotta tell you the Met has a fantastic acoustic and is a huge house but isn't fantastic acoustic. And let's see what else there are lots of actually there are some really great great halls, especially the symphony halls, the ones where the orchestras play. Those are really great. And then in Europe, you've got all these wonderful jewel house we call them like jewel house opera theatres because they're a little bit smaller. You know, they're not as massive as the Met for example. And they're beautiful, of course, and they're old and architectures beautiful and some of them have like all this gold inlay and the walls and it's just you know, these stunning, that's why they're called jewel boxes, right? You kind of it's like if you'd open the lid it would just be this shiny. Beautiful box. And a lot of those tend to have great acoustics also, just cuz they're just naturally smaller, right? You don't have to worry too much about singing into this huge space.

Nick VinZant  30:12

What do your neighbors think of you? Do the you annoy them with your singing?

Isabel Leonard  30:18

I hope not. If I'm annoying people by singing, I better stop. No, actually, we are very close friends with our next door neighbor and she likes it. She likes it when I practice. So she's always very happy. So he's very happy. I always get a text from her after I've been practicing one day she's like, I heard you. But you know, everybody's different. And it depends on where you live. And I would say that singers are very respectful of, you know, the kind of practicing that they have to do. And you know, it's we're no less or more annoying than having somebody sing musical theater or jazz or anything else. Because if the voice is good, and the voice is good, if the voice is not so great, then it's a little annoying, right? Just like if you're listening to a clarinetist play the same way If over and over again and they kept on like honking away at it. Now that would get annoying, but if they were a beautiful clarinetist, you would listen to that all day. Right?

Nick VinZant  31:07

something that I've always wondered about and I'm, I'm not a big music person I kind of never have been. But there is something about an opera singer or something about somebody who can really seen that can almost bring me to tears. Like what is that? Why do you think that is?

Isabel Leonard  31:25

I mean, I personally think that there is one of the strongest connections you know, from human to human is the voice and is the the transmission of emotion through I always say one animal prior to the other, you know, you're hearing you're hearing like emotion and words all tied up into one and coming out with this sort of soaring sound. And it's, it's extremely touching. You know, it's, it's why we love Frank Sinatra sing in New York, New York. You know, we will have you know, we listen to you We have all of these iconic voices from history and that we hear and we know who they are right without even they don't even have to be singers performers you know you think like Martin Luther King you hear his voice you know it's him. You know you hear I'm trying to think some other people off the top of my head but i think you know what I mean right? Yeah. Your voice is so identifiable and I think because of that you can immediately be drawn in and feel close and feel heard and feel feel touched and almost feel like that person is singing directly to and for you only. And I think that that's what singing really does and can do. It's just this it's like one wolf crying out to another wolf. Across the forest. They hear each other and they feel each other and, and they are communicating.

Nick VinZant  32:50

Favorite none opera song to sing.

Isabel Leonard  32:53

Oh favorite non opera songs say that's Good question. I mean, I love I love all the ladies of Gershwin like ladies of jazz. I used to sing in the jazz band when I was in high school and I love all the standards. I love all those.

Nick VinZant  33:13

You don't have to. You don't have to name any names. Can can pop singers sing? Are they good singers or not?

Isabel Leonard  33:20

Yeah. Yeah, there are some that are really good singers. Totally. I think like Ariana Grande is a great singer. I think she can sing really well. I think I've always really surprised like when I hear a pop singer who really has a lot of vocal freedom, and it's usually the ones that when they get on to like a talk show or something and they don't have like auto tune and they're not on recording and they're not, you know, on a mic where there's all these other things going on, and they all of a sudden sing something and you really hear their voice. And it is exactly how you've been hearing it in recordings and you go Aha, you know, like that's for real. That's a real that's the real deal, right? Because they can sing, you know without having to worry about anything else kind of creating sounds around their voice. Right. Um, I think it always makes me laugh like when I hear I think, isn't it Seth Meyers? Seth Meyers the one that does the voices for a family guy is that

Nick VinZant  34:09

Seth McFarland?

Isabel Leonard  34:12

You know, I have been screwing up people's last names left and right over the last two days. I am ashamed.Seth McFarland

Nick VinZant  34:22

I know what you're talking about. He can really sing

Isabel Leonard  34:27

Yeah, so that's it. Like he can totally say, like, I would do a duet with him in a heartbeat or anything. I don't care what it is. I will sing with him. You know, I'll say with Ariana. I would say with JLo i like i like JLo. You know, come on Jenny from the block. We're from New York. You know? I mean, Bronx, Bronx, Manhattan, whatever. You know, um, I would I've always been a big fan of Madonna. And I haven't heard her sing recently. But I just think she's kind of incredible by how, how much she's evolved over the decades. Um,

Nick VinZant  34:58

is there anyone you think that could just jump right into Opera. They've got the voice to it.

Isabel Leonard  35:06

Ah, good question. I'm not sure. I have to give it some thought. I have to give it some thought

Nick VinZant  35:19

from any musical genre than anybody that you could think of.

Isabel Leonard  35:24

I mean, I guess like, I don't know, I have not listened to Tony Bennett in a long time. So I don't know what he sounds like, right now. Maybe like a young I mean, I would have said, like Frank Sinatra in the beginning, but he was also trained at some point in his career by an opera singer. He took lessons like he took lessons from an opera singer to learn good technique.

Nick VinZant  35:44

How can opera be more relatable? Do you think it needs to be more relatable?

Isabel Leonard  35:50

Yeah, I think I do. I think it does. I think I think the audience needs to know that they are welcome and they, they can come and they can get into the stories. Even if it's in a different language like, like not to let that bother you or or, or, you know, deter you from coming in, but that the stories are awesome and they're so touching and they're so deep and like, it's like watching one of those just like watching like great films, and some of them are 30s. And I'm we're, you know, tragically sad. And to be totally honest, anybody that's like, oh, opera is too long. If you've all watched Lord of the Rings, movies, opera is not too long. Those movies are frickin long, they're like three and a half hours. And that's pretty much as long as you would need for an opera and at least you get to get up in the middle of an opera and go get a glass of wine, which, granted, obviously, you could do that if you're watching those movies at home, but you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, you can get up and you know, a glass of wine and make kind of an evening of it and get dressed if you want or not, you know, I mean, please wear the clothes. Like I mean, get dressed up, get dressed up nicely, versus like, just be cash. I do think it needs to be relatable. I think that it needs to be promoted, more like sports. Players are promoted. I think that individual singers need to be promoted more to the audience so that the audience can really start to, like, get to know the people, the people behind those characters and the, you know, the actors. It's like we know, you know, actors, actors that we love. And we know everybody thinks they know who they are, right? Well, we owe so um, so Oh, he's a method actor. I know so much about so and so. Right. And it's the same kind of thing. I think if we got to know singers a little bit more on that level, people would feel more kind of confident perhaps about coming into the houses and theaters coming to see these people live. You know, also, I gotta say it's, it's, it's such a rare thing. The live art form is still unique. It is still magical. And like you said, that listening to a human voice right can bring you to tears, and it could be a happy song and it could still bring you to tears. And there's something so magical about being whether it's feet away or a couple hundred feet away from listening To a live singer with an orchestra. And it's just it's like nothing else.

Nick VinZant  38:04

That's pretty much all I got what's coming up next for you What's kind of on the horizon?

Isabel Leonard  38:10

Technically, I will be going to Houston in September October to do my very first Carmen down in Houston, Grand Opera. So it'll be my role debut down there as well as my debut at the Opera House. And then I have a, I have a tour coming up after that, and I should be back and Sam, back in LA in January for a concert. And then in a little bit after that, I go back to the Met to do a new production of Giovanni, I've done Giovanni. And so that should be fun. And yeah, so I think everybody should get on to like the met on demand. And check out the live streams that are happening right now because Peter is streaming live one opera every every day or every other day for 24 hours so people can kind of see To watch these things and get to know them and feel like they're getting to know it without feeling like they have to do any sort of financial commitment yet. And then later, you know to do I think it's like $15 a month or something to have them that on demand on all times. And then you can put it up like on your big screen at home, you can turn up the volume and listen to these people. And you can see their faces up close, right, which is also pretty rare, especially for a place like that, because normally you're, you know, sitting way far away, and it's hard to see. And it's like it's really like nothing else is it's very cool. It's very, very cool.

Nick VinZant  39:34

I want to thank Isabelle so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have linked to her on our social media accounts. Were profoundly pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included her information on the RSS feed that's on her podcast. She's got she's got these really cool a series of Instagram chats that she's been putting up on her social media. If you want to hear more More of her singing. She has a YouTube channel. It's really cool to check out. I'm, like I mentioned, I'm not a huge music person, but just to hear somebody who can really see. To me that's just, it's such a amazing experience.  

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