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Interview with Wildfire Researcher Dr. Mike Flannigan
Speakers
Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host
Dr. Mike Flannigan: Wildfire Researcher
Nick VinZant 0:13
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, fire tornadoes and Nicolas Cage
Dr. Mike Flannigan 0:23 on average, we're going to see a lot more fire. And the thing is, there's no vaccine for wildfires, we have to learn to live with these fires, and associated smoke. These are high intensity fires. And flames can be hundreds of feet in size. And these are the ones that are possible to extinguish. And this is where we're moving. Because you know, people say, hey, if we keep on getting more fire, the trees won't be able to handle it. And they're absolutely right, the trees will disappear. But what will replace it shops or grass. So in some respects, we're moving to a grass world as we see more and more fire, grass is gonna be the winner, and grass can burn every year.
Nick VinZant 1:05 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 I don't want to sound dramatic. Because I think if you turn on the news, if you look at social media, the world is ending every day. Right? But the more I talked to our first guests, the more I learned about this subject, the more I just kept thinking, Man, this sounds really bad. We should really be doing something about this. Because it is something that we've heard a lot about recently, historic fire after historic fire lives lost forest burn billions of dollars in property damage. But there is a solution. It's just going to take a lot of work. Our first guest is an expert in wildland fires, and what we can do about them. This is Dr. Mike Flannigan, when we look at wildfires now I keep hearing this, it's historic, its historic, are these really historic? Or is this the new normal for us?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 2:13 Now, I would use the term unprecedented, as well as historic for some regions like California and Australia should go back in time before our modern records. There are indications that, you know, the landscape did burn frequently. But, you know, there was a lot of grass in the valley. It's now a culture. So it's kind of comparing apples to oranges. So yes, these are, we're in uncharted territory. You know, some people like to say new normal, I don't like that, because there's nothing normal about this new reality, perhaps things are going to get worse and worse. So that's why I don't like normal,
Nick VinZant 2:54 when you say things are going to get worse and worse kind of helped me understand in terms of Alright, one, everything's fine. teen, this is the worst it could possibly be. Like, where are we at right now? Where do you think we're gonna be in the foreseeable future?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 3:11 Where we're, you know, we're probably seven or eight. But there's, there's room in the scale may go beyond 10. That's what we're afraid of. And I don't want to give the impression now, like, there was terms like apocalyptic in the newspapers, when those orangey reddish guys from all the smoke. Not every year is gonna be like this year, okay, some years are gonna be cooler, some years gonna be wider. But on average, we're going to see a lot more fire. And the thing is, there's no vaccine for wildfires. We have to learn to live with these fires, and associated smoke. So you know, why am I saying all this? Well, the research that I have done, and May my colleagues have found a relationship between temperature and wildfire. And here I'm talking about the warmer get the more fire we see. And people say, Well, why is temperature so important? And here I'm not talking about individual fire like the campfire or the Creek Fire, where wind and the day to day weather plays a major role. I'm talking about a larger area, like California, over a longer period of time, like a month or fire season. And there's kind of three reasons and you may find out fire people love threes. The warmer it gets, the longer the fire season. The fire season stirred earlier this year in California, as it did in Australia. Last year's fire season for them. The warmer get the more lightning you see the more lightning you see the more lightning talk fires. You see, enlightening played a major role in the Australian fires. And in this historic unprecedented California wildfire season. The third reason is probably the most convoluted the probably the most important as that Pure warms. And this summer, it was a record breaking heat wave for the southwestern United States, including California, the more efficient The air is, it's sucking the moisture out of fuel. And unless there's some rain to compensate for this drying effect, our fuels will be drier. And this is critical because the drier the field, the easier it is for fires to start, whether it's by a lightning strike, or by a campfire, it's just easier to start and spread. And it means more fuels dried out, that means there's more fuel to burn more energy to be released. higher intensity fires, like those Pyro cumulonimbus, we've seen fire generated thunderstorms, very intense, erratic, dangerous, these are difficult to impossible to extinguish. So as we continue to warm, our fuels are going to be dryer or lightning. And California has moved to a year long fire season. So that's why we say we're going to see more fire in the future.
Nick VinZant 6:03 And just to kind of clarify, when you say fuels we're talking about basically like, plants and trees, right?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 6:10 Yeah, so you know, when a fire starts, I'll use the forest as an example to start from the forest floor. And there's usually a bad needles leaves, it's dead stock, that's where the fire typically start. And so that can carry up into the shrubs. And then right into the trees, particularly the conifer trees in Scotland. And then the Crown's of the trees, the tops of the trees get engaged. And we call these crown fires, these are high intensity fires. And flames can be hundreds of feet inside. And these are the ones that are possible to extinguish directly through retardant or foam or water from planes. Even though it makes a great pitcher. It's like spitting on a campfire. If the fire is large, and the conditions are dry, and the fuels are dry, the only tool fire magic has called a burnout operation, which is very effective, you get in front of the wildfire, where it's going to go, you start a new fire, but backing into the winds, what's lower intensity, and you can manage it, and the wildfire and the burnout meet, it's got more fuel. So very effective, the problem becomes, if the winds are shifting, then it's a dangerous operation because the fire you start may slip to a head of fire, the higher intensity fire that you may no longer be able to control. So now you've got a wildfire and new fire that you can't control. It's fire management's challenging. And it's gonna be even more challenging in the future with climate change it climate change is definitely the cause, right? When we look at this, is there any serious debate about this? Or have basically all the researchers like yourself kind of coalesced around this idea? Like, yeah, this is climate change is fueling this, I'd say there's consensus, there are still some people who do not believe that climate change, I want to make this distinction clear. It's not solely climate change. But climate change is the biggest player, here we go, the way we manage our landscapes does play a role. And I'll give you an example. There's been a drought in California, a multi year drought, and millions of trees have died. And sometimes this happens with outbreaks of path. And so you now have large volumes of dead fuel, a fire come through, it leads to these high intensity fires. So managing your landscape does play a role as well. A research done by some of my American colleagues suggests that about 55% of the increases we've seen, are responsible to climate change. So it's the biggest player. Now, to give you perspective, what's going on in the western United States, every burn has quadrupled, that have increased by a factor of four since the 70s. California has increased by a factor of five since the 70s. So we're on this trajectory of more and more fire, and I don't see anything changing. And you know, if you are downtown Los Angeles or downtown San Francisco, the likelihood of your place burning down to a wildland fire is almost zero. But that smoke from these fires can smoky out for weeks and air quality can go you know down the tube. And the more we know about wildland fire smoke, the more we know it's really bad for our health. Is there anything we can do there any good news? Absolutely, that there are things we can do. So, you know, maybe I'll start here with you know, whether you're in Australia, the Arctic, the Amazon or California, there's three ingredients for wildfire to Know how you need these three things. It's just like the recipe, the stuff that burns the fuel, needles, the leaves, the shrubs, the trees, how much you have, what type, how dry it is all important aspects of that feel factor. Second, ignition. We've talked a bit about lightning, but people also start fires. And the third is hot, dry when the weather or conducive fire weather dry and windy will work as well. And you get all three and you get a wildfire.
Nick VinZant 10:32 So what can we do?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 10:33 Well, first thing, from a climate change perspective, we can stop emitting greenhouse gases, or at least reduce greenhouse gas emission. But the thing is, even if we stop today, emitting greenhouse gases, we're the earth is gonna continue to warm for 50 years or more because of the lags in our climate system, particularly the ocean. So we're going to continue to warm. So taking away the climate change aspect, we really can't do much about the day to day weather, look at the ignition, we really can't do much about lightning. But human caused fires, we can do something about and we can reduce every human caused fires preventable. And a number of these fires in California, Oregon, this year and other years have been started by either people directly, or our infrastructure power lines, for example. These are preventable, we can bury powerlines Yes, is expensive. But how expensive was it? What's the cost of burning downtown like paradise, California, all human caused fires are preventable. Things like building materials, and how you plan your community. You want fire breaks around the edge of your community, whether it's golf courses, baseball, diamonds, green grass is a very effective firebreak. So you can plan it so that you have this buffer zone where it's unlikely to burn or if it does burn is lower intensity and fire management. So around communities, you can reduce the risk by reducing the fuel load, or the fuel type if it's particularly flammable. And you can do this with prescribed burning, cutting down trees, you can use goats and other animals for grazing just to reduce the amount of available fuel for that fire. Now, there's been a lot said about prescribed burning. And yes, it does produce smoke. And but the argument is a little smoke now versus a lot of small player. But in those areas that are particularly sensitive. Like some of the parks, where you have a lot tourists, you can use mechanical treatments and reduce the field load.
Nick VinZant 12:51 When you talk about like, you know, the development aspect of it, are we building in places that we really shouldn't be building? Or are we just getting bigger, and this is kind of the natural process of that
Dr. Mike Flannigan 13:03 It's both there was something that LA Times about three or four years ago that we're continuing to build in wild lands and fire prone lands. And and they kind of used the analogy of building in flood plains. And it's not a complete analogy. But we are building in areas that we should think twice about a bridges, what we call the wildland urban interface. That's, you know, at the edge of communities, you're in the woods, and I've lived places like that. And it's gorgeous. You've got trees, you got wildlife, you got flowers, wild flowers. But the problem is that some of these places, you're at much greater risk from wildfire, unless you take some precautions. You have a much riskier environment and insurance companies. if they haven't already, they will say, No, we will not insure your home for a wildfire. Because the risk is too high.
Nick VinZant 13:59 Is there a general way that a fire is going to spread? Like is there a pattern to it? Or does it just burn everything around it?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 14:07 So it depends on how dry the fuels are, as to know where where it will spread, how intense it will be. And the wind helps the wind and topography help dictate where it will spread. So if you were a grass field, and the grass is all bad, it's yellow. You drop a match, there's no wind, it would be a circle. It just spread out in all directions. But once the wind starts to blow, well that takes the shape by the lips. And the most intense part is that the head of that fire, and that's the directional spreads. We have miles of fire growth that were quite well most circumstances so we can have a pretty good idea. If you have a weather forecast. We know what the topography is and we know the fuels.
Nick VinZant 14:56 Do fires generally like to go uphill. downhill,
Dr. Mike Flannigan 15:01 generally uphill. And that's because the winds generally during the day met the fact that burning period, normally is the winds go up Valley upslope. And that's why canyons are so dangerous. Lots of people. You know, I was in San Diego County last year, you know, I was in a number of canyons. And if a fire started the base of that Canyon spread up, you're trapped, you have no escape route. So yes, fires typically spread up hill, and you think about the flames are bent over closer to the ground, depending on the slow so that it gets more radiation. It's more efficient, spreading up hill as opposed to downhill.
Nick VinZant 15:43 Are we developing new firefighting techniques? Or is it just more people, bigger trucks, bigger planes? Like Are there new ways of doing it? Are we just improving upon the old ones
Dr. Mike Flannigan 15:55 Going back in time there was programs Smokey Bear program, and not Smokey the Bear but Smokey Bear. And you know Smokey Bear has a couple of messages on is that fire, only you can prevent forest fires. And that's a great message. So that's talking about human caused ignitions. The other part is that it's inferred that fires bad fires are enemy we have to put out. And that's not the case at all. Okay? fires natural in many of our forests in Canada. And that's just Mother Nature work. Anything is beneficial, it kills disease, and insects. And it's the cycle of life that just resets the clock, lots of trees and other species are adapted to fire. And we've been okay, we don't want more fires, we put them all out. And that's creating a real problem. Because these systems are used to fire you've now removed it. But with climate change, fire is coming back, and we can't stop it. So principle behind fire management is to determine if it's a wanted fire or unwanted fire death, I actually said wanted fire. And then places in Canada and national parks and in the States and Canada, and some of our jurisdictions say, make a determination would that fire be beneficial, then we'll monitor now a fire starts two kilometers or two miles from Redding, California takes half a second to state that unwanted fire and UI hit hard, you want to hit fast, you want to report it right away. So that if you get to the fire when it's small, you know the size of an office or a typical yard. It's easy for for fire match. But once the fire gets the size of a football field as hot, dry and windy, the fuels are flammable, like conifer trees, we now have a serious problem. Okay, so there's a window, sometimes that window is as small as 15 minutes, you got a 15 minute window, think about structural firefighters, they get a call and your house is on fire. If they get there within 15 minutes, they can put that fire out. If you get there after 15 minutes, your house may be lost. The same thing about a wildland fire if you get there quickly you can put up to get there layer the horses out of the bar. And that fire is now running. And you know, you got to start planning accordingly. But you your opportunity to put out greatly decrease that your you'll be able to pull it out anytime soon.
Nick VinZant 18:39 We have some listener submitted questions. Are you ready for some listener submitted questions?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 18:45 Sure.
Nick VinZant 18:45 What is the worst place for fires? Currently,
Dr. Mike Flannigan 18:48 this is kind of a value judgment here. The worst place in terms of how frequent they are or how much impact in terms of impact, I would have to say. Currently California and Australia not too far behind on Arctic for different reasons. And Amazon, okay. You know, if we think we continue to burn the Amazon, and the land clearing tool for agriculture and grazing for cattle, this forest with all its biodiversity may flip to cereda, which is like a Savanna. And this is hard to imagine but that's where we're heading now in the Arctic. Because there's a lot of peat fires going on. And Pete is organic material is 40 centimeters or more in depth. And if you've done any landscaping, sometimes you've got bags with peat, peat moss. Well, these are carbon that has been building up over thousands of years now they're burning and releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. So the argument here is you know, the warmer we get more fire with the more fire we see the more greenhouse gases As we get which feeds the warming? So that's why I said that in Australia. While there's lots of people, number of people die, the smoke impacts that call from smoke was actually higher than the direct fire death toll, which was in the 30s.
Nick VinZant 20:17 How is the Arctic burning?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 20:19 So these are mostly lightning fires. And they, I'm not sure if you're aware, but there was a record breaking heat wave in Siberia. And once again, that relationship between temperature and fire, and there was a lot of lightning fires. They detected lightning near the North Pole now, because there's lightning detection since global systems. So if this virus Dart, and this peat, the fire can smolder and actually burn through winter, we call they've been coined zombie fires because they keep on going, even though they should, they shouldn't. And so they just continue to smolder, smolder. And when conditions right, it's flaming combustion, and it just burn and burn and burn. And in fact, in pea fires are common in Indonesia. And some of those peat fires have been burning for 30 years or more. And they just continue to smolder until the water table reaches to them, which maybe never, so I didn't see, it sounds pretty bad. And, you know, I do want you to be aware and your listeners, that the amount of area burned globally, it's about 400 million Hector's that's the size of modern day India. Okay. It's a huge area. And much of this is done in Africa, Australia. And, unfortunately, the Amazon. I love its cultural and some of its clearing fields. And the actual Larry Bird numbers, different estimate from remote sensing, you know, have been trending down globally, because it changes primarily in Africa, converting wild lands, to egg culture or urban areas, and some new policies to restrict burning of fields. So the numbers gone down, but we're seeing increases in places like western United States, Australia, Canada, Siberia. So even though the actual area bermed has been decreasing, globally, the impacts are increasing significantly. And 2020, maybe turning the corner, because 2020 seems to be higher than previous years. But these are estimates from satellites, and you have to take them with a grain of salt.
Nick VinZant 22:41 So is it just are the trees and plants changing at all? Is that contributing anything?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 22:48 Yeah, it's situational. It depends where you are. I'll give you some examples, or at least one example, from Hawaii. Hawaii is a great place. And but they have fire. And when people say fire, and if you've been to the Big Island, dry sighs Yeah. Well, that makes sense. But no, almost every island in the chain has had fire. And in part, so it's natural, but some of its more recent due to human caused fires. And because invasive grasses, okay, they're competing with native grasses. But these grasses are very flammable. They live and then they get, they die. And then they burn, but their root system survives. And then they come back even stronger, and the native species aren't used to fire are competed. And the worst thing is a change from a species to these, you know, invasive, exotic species that's promoting fire that's happening in western United States that's happening around the world. And this is where we're moving. Because, you know, people say, hey, if we keep on getting more fire, the trees won't be able to handle it. They're absolutely right, the trees will disappear. But what will replace it? shops are grass. So in some respects, we're moving to a grass world as we see more and more fire grass is going to be the winner, and grass can burn every year. Many of our forest systems in North America are used to fire but fire is too frequent. They cannot regenerate. So we may lose some of our forests in the process here if we continue to see more and more fire and arguably it's already happening in places
Nick VinZant 24:29 is there have been any place where you thought like oh, there's no way that place is gonna burn. And then it it has recently like it's changed so much that places you didn't think could burn are burning.
Dr. Mike Flannigan 24:41 So some of the dip into Australia a number of times some other rain forest. Yeah, this is never gonna burn. But you know, I guess the same could be said we're close to where you live. There's some temperate rainforest. You know, this will never burn the dripping wet as hell So green, but severe drought actually can burn and Wilburn. And we're starting to see that on Vancouver Island. You know, on the, on the west side is, you know, like the Olympic Peninsula, it's very wet, typically, but in the summer, you get these bunkers, of dry weather, you get some lightning strikes, which seemed to be more common now than they used to be. We do get fires in these areas where, hey, you know, it's too wet.
Nick VinZant 25:30 Or at least I thought it was. Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you weren't gonna get out of it? No. And this is interesting. Firefighters in Canada do not carry emergency shelters. Okay. Our Americans, cousins usually do. And the reason is, we believe we should never be a position you have to deploy, you should always have your safety routes. You should never be a dangerous spot that you have to do emergency shelters. So it's a little different philosophy. I've never felt unsafe. I think I've seen extreme fire behavior. Pyro cumulonimbus just incredible. But I was on this, I was upwind downwind from the from the system. So I was, you know, like watching a tornado. From a distance you find it and you know, it's moving away from you. But if you're on the other side and so No, I've never felt threatened. what's what's Pyro?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 26:44 Pyro CB for short. It's a fire generated thunderstorm. And you may have seen pictures of it from some of the recent California fires. In fact, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning a fire generated tornado warning this summer in California for the first time and on record. So the pictures you would see would be kind of smoky, you know, close to the earth. And then you kind of see that white below we call a flower look of a cloud sometimes with an animal sometimes not. That's a fire generate thunderstorm. Pyro cumulonimbus, Pyro being fire cumulonimbus being the term for thunderstorm. So fire generate thunderstorm, these are erratic, high intensity, very dangerous and difficult to well, essentially impossible to extinguish through direct attack.
Nick VinZant 27:42 What do you what are you working on? Not right now research wise, what are you looking at?
Dr. Mike Flannigan
So I do a lot of climate change work and I'm still working on climate change. I'm also looking at using machine learning artificial intelligence if you have a smartphone if you use any of the software, if using artificial intelligence to have a way of doing an early warning system, to identify when we're going to go through those periods of severe extreme fire weather, and where we can expect new fires to occur. So we can put resources on whether it's planes, helicopters crews, in the appropriate spot. So we're ready for it. And let's get the resources there. So we can deal with these fires quickly. So we don't have homemade escape buyers, threatening communities.
Whiskey Critic Richard Thomas
From $11 bottles to $100,000 dollar glasses, Whiskey Critic Richard has tried over a thousand different spirits. We talk hidden gems, great values, industry secrets and more. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Cheap Beers.
Interview with Whiskey Critic Richard Thomas
Speakers:
Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host
Richard Thomas: Whiskey Critic and founder/editor of website The Whiskey Reviewer
Show notes and topics covered
How should you drink whiskey
What is the best value whiskey
What does a $100,000 dollar whiskey taste like
What are the best whiskeys you have tried
Nick VinZant 0:12
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, good whiskey and cheap beer.
Richard Thomas 0:22 And it was just very good stuff, not great stuff, but very good. And it was only $11 a bottle. And for $11 a bottle, it was the best buy on the planet. A lot of times what a novice in particular is doing is they're Miss identifying the effect of too much alcohol on their senses as being this, you know, like kind of harsh taste. And this caused the whole business to crash. Both in Scotland, Ireland, United States, Canada, everybody was sitting on top of a ocean of whiskey.
Nick VinZant 1:04 I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So if you're anything like me, you've been drinking at least a little bit more over the last couple of months. Now I I always go cheap. I drink the cheap stuff, because I'm just generally a cheap person. But it got me thinking about Alright, well, what's what's really good? What do the experts say? Is the really good stuff to drink. Our first guest is an expert in whiskey. He runs the website, the whiskey reviewer, and he has tried thousands, thousands of different whiskies. And not only does he have this fascinating insight into what makes us particular drink good. But he's also got some inside secrets about really what goes in to making all of the different drinks that you see at the liquor store and at the gas station or wherever you buy your alcohol. This is whiskey critic, Richard Thomas. So how many whiskies do you think that you've tried in your lifetime?
Richard Thomas 2:21 That's a difficult question to put a finger on. But I did a book called American whiskey, which was about, you know, distillers from coast to coast. So I've done notes on over 800. And so therefore, including the stuff I haven't done notes on, because it hasn't been commercially released, or, you know, I was just enjoying dinner and didn't want to bother with it, or what have you. That would probably push it into the four, low four digit number range, somewhere between 1200 and 15.
Nick VinZant 2:52 Wow. But how different are most of those? Right? Did they all kind of run together eventually?
Richard Thomas 3:00 Yeah, well, within a particular category, maybe? You know, it's kind of like if I were to be talking about comparing bourbon to scotch, which are the two big ones. Yeah, I mean, basically, if you try to do 300 Bourbons, and then you try to do 300, scotch whiskies, they will be very different from each other. And you will not be mixing the two in your head in any way, shape, or form. Our own perceptions of what we taste and smell and experience can change with a lot of other subjective factors, like basically, you know, what did you eat? How are you feeling physically? And then of course, there's just simply what you like, what you don't like, some people have genetic issues, like, you know, there's a genetic tag i was i was reading about last year. And I would point to people about this if they didn't like particular things that really, really amps up the negative response to bitter flavors, which means there's a whole, you know, swathes of food and drink that just, they don't like it, period, and there's no way that they can, because these things are very variable, and you have to try to take your time with them in order to, you know, mitigate that.
Nick VinZant 4:21 So when you like when you evaluate a whiskey, what are you doing, kind of walk me through the steps that you're looking at, like, how do you go about tasting it, that kind of stuff?
Richard Thomas 4:32 Well, you know, basically, I will pour now pour a simple DRAM size or shot size, so we're talking like 30 to 50 milliliters. And the first thing I will do is give it just a preliminary nosing just to see if the alcohol content is too strong. This is especially the case because cask strength, and entry proof whiskies which can be very potent indeed, have become more and more powerful. popular in recent years, and sometimes No, basically, it's a, it's a good bargain, especially if the quality of whiskey in question is quite high, because you've got more stuff in your bottle, you know, like a concentrated cleaner, as opposed to the regular strength, I mean, you know, bring it up, and it burns your nostrils. So there's that check, which is basically like, Okay, do I need to dial this down or not. And then, you know, you do the same kind of thing that you would be told to do on any distillery tour or guided tasting with a brand ambassador with someone like me, which is, you know, you start by nosing it, you keep your mouth open a little bit to allow for that olfactory circulation. And you get acquainted with it that way. And you take a little sip, and then you notice it some more, and then you start sipping on it. And, you know, you draw that out, because as you proceed through it, you know, you'll pick up on things that you didn't notice at first, it's, it's really much like, you know, you get acquainted with people, especially with a new whiskey, it's basically like going out on a first date, getting to know someone, so you take your time with it. When I'm doing an evaluation of something that's new, it usually takes me 45 minutes to an hour.
Nick VinZant 6:21 So the first step necessarily, like that's not really gonna give you an idea of what it tastes like.
Richard Thomas 6:27 Yeah, I mean, spirits in particular, are very high proof. Even, you know, like basic spirits that are bottled up like 40%, alcohol by content, or 80 proof. They do have a tendency to, at least initially overwhelm your senses. A lot of people, for example, when they're dealing with bourbon, there's this flavor call that they like to call barrel char. A lot of times what a novice in particular is doing is they're Miss identifying the effect of too much alcohol on their senses, as being this, you know, like, kind of charish taste.
Nick VinZant 7:10 So why whiskey? What about whiskey drew you into it?
Richard Thomas 7:15 Well, that's, that's very much tied into my youth. I mean, I was born and raised in Kentucky, and I am a Gen X her. So you know, I'm a very mature kid of the 70s in the 80s. Now, in this state Back then, I mean, that was like the Nadir of the whiskey business around the world in the 70s. The taste of the boomers in particular began to change. It's something that people in the alcohol industry talk a lot about, actually, you know, they moved away from whiskey and towards clear spirits like vodka, and got more and more into wine as well. And this caused the whole business to crash. Both in Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, everybody was sitting on top of a ocean of whiskey that they couldn't sell, you know, it was looked at as a very kind of working class blue collar kind of drink. So it wasn't a celebrated as this, you know, source of regional and national pride the way that it is today. And so for me, the beginning of all of this was one day when I was 17 years old, I was looking at feature on a map called Glen's Creek. And I thought that that would make for some good outdoor exploring. So I drove my car over there, I parked it on a road called McCracken pike and I got off my bicycle a lot of back and began pedaling around for way that I thought I could safely access Glen's Creek because it was all on private property. And I didn't want to get you know my mind, but shut up rock salt, by some angry local farmer. So I'm trying to figure out how to get down there. And as I'm pedaling along, I came across a trio of what looked like abandoned industrial sites, one of them very industrial looking, but the other two were quite different because they had these you know, one of them was a kind of pho castle that was falling into disrepair. When I came back from this trip to like, what the heck was going on down there? I discovered that these were three distilleries and the fact that two of them were even as you know, kind of, you know, already falling into disrepair, semi ruined, you know, complexes were quite beautiful. And that kind of gave me my first hint that there was more to this story of Kentucky bourbon than I had been led to believe. And those three distilleries in the road today are now Woodford Reserve, capital and key and the Glen Creek distillery. They're all they've all they've all been renovated.
Nick VinZant 10:00 So how do you tell the difference between something that's bad necessarily or just not for you?
Richard Thomas 10:10 Well, that actually is a really good question. And my usual answer to that, because I'm not a snob, is, um, you know, basically, if you like it, it's good. That's, that's the simplest way to get at it, if you will like it, it's good. And, you know, it's I encourage people to not let people like me, for example, influence their thinking on things too much. You know, I, in fact, I think that, you know, if you find a critic who is very snotty about these things, and insists that I know the difference that everyone should adhere to, as far as what's good, and what's not what's excellent, and what's terrible, and, and they tell you that only one type of glassware is really all that good. I mean, you know, Jimmy Russell, he was, you know, quite an institution in the Kentucky bourbon industry. I mean, you know, he's the master distiller wild turkey for decades. And the first time we ran into Jimmy was hanging out at keman, which is the local horse track, you're in Lexington, Kentucky, and he was drinking as well turkey out of a Dixie cup. So some things you know, are good tools that help you get the most out of your experience. And of course, having nice trappings is fun. But at the end of the day, snobbery is defining how much you love something by how much you hate it. So, and I would rather not spend any time hating on anything. So as far as what's bad, I mean, I tend to approach it from I don't think most people will like this, you know, as you're reading, but different people say about different things, and developing your own tastes, you should try to gravitate to the people who mirror you the most. And then you have a good buy.
Nick VinZant 12:05 I mean, I remember when I kind of first hit legal drinking age to go into a store and actually buy it. It seemed like there was just a couple of brands, you know, jack daniels, Jim bean, and maybe one other thing. Now you go in there, and there's aisles full of it. Like how do you sort through it all?
Richard Thomas 12:23 Oh, well, that's, that's where the having the internet around is certainly a big help. Because you know, as you're sitting there looking at it, you can just whip out your phone and plug certain stuff in and find out what's what. One of the bigger issues these days with the plethora of brands that are sitting on the shelves and liquor store now is, you know, who made what, which comes up a lot. I mean, basically, just because it says that we're from old timey whiskey distillery doesn't necessarily mean there really is a old timey whiskey distillery. A lot of companies are basically just bottlers. You know, they'll buy stock whiskey aged out of distillery. And that isn't theirs. And, you know, they'll take charge of blending it, which is an underappreciated art in the United States. I mean, basically, you know, when you ate a barrel of whiskey, how it's, you know, to always come up within certain parameters, but exactly what you'll have at the end of that process, you know, it's not necessarily fixed proposition, the best example, in fact of trying to control for that would be Maker's Mark, those guys spend a lot of money on labor, in terms of doing what's called barrel rotation. So they have their warehouses, and they're moving their barrels around the warehouses in a pattern that is designed to achieve, you know, the most consistent maturation possible, so that the difference from one barrel to another is almost nil. And so when they dump all those barrels into a tank, and the tank feeds into bottling, they don't actually have to do this process of trying to try and tune it. So you know, they put a lot of investment in how they age it so that you know, in terms of moving stuff around in the labor that's involved that so they don't have to do a lot of work at the end of the process, when they have to bottle this stuff. Most other people do it kind of differently, where they'll have like a nine floor warehouse. And you know how the barrels at the top of the warehouse come out will be very different from how the barrels at the bottom do and that's predictable. But two barrels that are sitting right next to each other because of wood or any other factor could also come out quite differently. And taking like 500 of the things in a batch and fine tuning that so you wind up with a consistent product but you know bottling run after bottling Run after Baldwin is both uh, you know, there's a lot of skill and a little bit of art to it. And a lot of Americans don't appreciate that very much the way that the Scots do because the Scots the idea of buying whiskey from like, you know, 20 or 25 separate distilleries, each with their own separate identities, and putting it together into a single product is normal. So over here, you don't get that. And so you have a lot of companies that do this business, they'll source the whiskey and they'll bottle themselves. And, you know, if you don't actually look up who they are, what they're doing, you don't really know what is what it is that you're actually getting.
Nick VinZant 15:40 I didn't know that I just assumed that whoever's name was on the bottle was controlling the whole process of making it all the way to shipping it.
Richard Thomas 15:48 Now there's a there's a distillery in southern Indiana these days, they call it MGP. It's leftover from the breakup of the secrets Corporation, some 20 years ago. And basically, they are at this point, the single largest producer of basically, I guess you could call it whiskey available on the open market, I like to call that stock whiskey. So more or less if you're, if you want to start up your own whiskey brand, and you don't want to build a distillery and you need to get hundreds of barrels of whiskey that's been aged for at least a few years to get started. More than likely, you're going to go to MGP and ask them for a lot of brands that are around especially in rye whiskey are based in this way. And for a long time, they were pretty much the only source for this stuff. But as demand for their own products picked up. They increasingly had to close that spigot, because they needed their stock for themselves and for their own products. So there was no need to sell to anyone else. But nothing, you know, because the demand is so high other players have entered the market. I mean, there's a distillery. It's now one of the largest in the state down in Bardstown Bardstown bourbon company. And their primary business model is being a contract distiller for sourced brands, um, you know, basically, they've, I think the last time I talked to them, they had 30 something clients, and, you know, more or less, they were just like, you know, they, they, they make a deal. They make what the client asks them to make they agent in their warehouses, and they either ship it to the client for bottling or arrange bottling, you know, themselves. And, yeah, that's, you know, like, when you look at the liquor store, and they're, if they're doing 30, something brands, it's a pretty good bet that several of them are now customers of Bardstown bourbon company, and several more, our customers GP up in Indiana, and a few more or sourcing from somebody in Canada or sourcing from, you know, some small, smaller distillery that might be closer to them, or what have you. So a lot of brands, you know, they don't actually own a distillery, or they want to, but they, you know, that's another thing that's a part of this, you know, a lot of the smaller companies is basically, you know, they want to get it still in business. But that's a lot of investment, and hardware. And then you have to make the whiskey and you have to put it up for maturation for two years, four years, six years, eight years. It's a lot of money to tie up with the process. And certainly you don't want to start building up your brand. Only once you have a good product to sell. Because that could be a decade later.
Nick VinZant 18:51 That makes sense. Because I always look at these companies and like, wait a minute, this is a new thing. Yeah, they start making this 10 years ago. And that kind of exact question, right? Like they just so you can essentially start up a brand and six months later, you've got a 10 year old whiskey.
Richard Thomas 19:08 Yeah, yeah, you can do that. At this age finding 10 year old whiskey that's, you know, stock whiskey, you know, in barrels is available for that kind of thing. That would be hard to do and very expensive. But you could find four or five year old stuff, and you know, buy a bunch of it and bottle some of it now and then do your 10 year old A few years later, something along those lines. That's what a lot of people are actually have been doing. Since 2014 2016. You know, a decent American whiskey, it's mature at about four years that's properly aged at six to nine. middle aged at about 9012. And it's really old about 15 years, and scotch and Irish. is even more so. So it's a business where you really kind of you can't even, you don't have to be thinking about stuff that's so far in the future that you have no way of really knowing what's going to be happening by the time that you get there.
Nick VinZant 20:15 Yeah, that would be a definite challenge, right? Like, let's make the product for 2032. We actually have a bunch of listener submitted questions that I think kind of cover a lot of topics as well. So Okay, are you ready for some listener submitted questions?
Richard Thomas 20:31 Hit me,
Nick VinZant 20:32 most expensive whiskey you have ever tried.
Richard Thomas 20:39 Just a few weeks ago, I was writing a piece about what the most expensive scotch whiskies in the world are. And one of the things that got like, at the top of this list was this 50 year old MacAllan. But you know, it was it's both 50 years old and a 50 year old collectible, because the version that I'm talking about was bottled in 1983. So basically, it's like, I think when this stuff the market, it could be remembering this wrong. But like in 1983, it was being sold for 50 British pounds a bottle. And nowadays, if you want to get this stuff, it's over 100 grand. Holy. Yeah. I've tried that. And I think that is the most expensive thing that has passed my lens. Was it? Was it worth it? Like, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy it. And in fact, at the time that I tried it, it wasn't where it was, it was worth five figure amount of money, but not a six figure amount of money. But yeah, it was one of these things where I was at a show and someone was like, Hey, I have a little flask of the 1983 50 year old MacAllan. And so we sat down, and he's the kind of person that would have it would be bringing it to this kind of place. And so yeah, I got to try it. And it was the blind. But you know, keeping in mind the fact that the amount of money that it costs them was the equivalent of buying a nice new car. And now it's the equivalent of buying like a super luxury car. You know, the questions of whether or not it's worth it entirely and scaled what your disposable income is. I mean, you know, if you have the kind of money where you think that dropping 300 or $3,000, on a bottle of alcohol is, you know, not going to hurt you. It's not going to be painful. But yeah, it's totally worth it. But if that is a lot of money to you, and it's a painful expense to park with it, then No, it's not. You know, those things are very relative whether or not it's worth it. You know, is it was it worth it? Yes, it's worth it. Is it worth $100,000? a bottle? I don't have $100,000 to spend on anything. So no, not to me.
Nick VinZant 23:17 That makes sense. And I guess like the person, the person buying it for $100,000, that's probably like, 100 bucks to somebody else.
Richard Thomas 23:24 Yeah. You know, people are just fazed by things like that, not me.
Nick VinZant 23:30 Is, is when you look at though, like the price range of whiskey, is there a sweet spot in there where you can get something that's a really good quality, but not that expensive? Like, is there a sweet spot pricing wise,
Richard Thomas 23:44 there are certain items that are a little pricey, but I think they're worth the amount of money that you would pay for it. One example of this is, mixers, 10 year old rye, which is a single barrel. I love that stuff. And if you can get it for $150, because some retailers will mark this up steeply. But if you can get it for 150, I think it's worth 150. And there are a lot of things that you know, that are in that kind of range where they're like $100, or $150 or $200. And for most people that is like, you know, a birthday present to sell, or Christmas presents itself kind of price range. You know, it's it's expensive, but it's not terribly so it's not you know, it's the kind of thing that you know, you can splurge on it realistically,
Nick VinZant 24:35 what's your favorite, cheap whiskey, like the kind of rott gut stuff?
Richard Thomas 24:44 Um, my drinking is, I guess you could call it subsidized because, you know, people sent me things that they want me to try them. But let me try to think I that's the question I haven't thought about in a long time, like what's actually really, really cheap. You know, like, sometimes Simple like Jim Beam white label, you know, it's I treat it as sort of the benchmark for what bourbon is supposed to be because it is the best selling of the bunch. And it's not very expensive. You know, where I live, it's about $13 a bottle. And I mean, you know, seriously, there's there's craft beer, getting a six pack will cost you more than that. And it's not remarkable, but it's still just plain good stuff. You know, when I get asked, like, what is an example, right gut, one of the things I like to point to is this stuff called Kentucky gentleman. And there are actually two different types of Kentucky gentlemen, one is a bourbon and that is a very subpar bourbon. And then underneath it is blended whiskey. And the blended whiskey really is just awful. I do not like it at all, but there's a lot of cheap stuff that is good. And presents big, big bargains for the amount of money that you spend. Of course, the best examples of that are disappearing one by one, there used to be this thing here in Kentucky, it was the kind of it was something that you know, if you're coming, coming from out of state, you should go to a liquor store trying to find it and buy a cap case and take it home. It was made by Heaven Hill, it was Heaven, Hell, six year old bottles bought, which was only a Kentucky really, you couldn't get it anywhere else. But here. And it was just very good stuff. Not great stuff, but very good. And it was only $11 a bottle. And for $11 a bottle, it was the best buy on the planet. They don't do that anymore. You know, worried about it started to get around. And so more and more often, you know, you weren't sure people had it, because tourists would grab it. Which, you know, I appreciated that very much. I was basically like, well, it makes my life a little harder. But that's okay, you know, more people enjoying it, that's fine. And, you know, I I know how to take care of my needs. So that's okay. And then, you know, haven't held caught on to how popular this stuff was getting and decided that they could do something with that in terms of marketing. So they would do it. They turned it from a six year old into a seven year old. They released it nationally and they raised the price from $11 to 40. And that's that's the kind of thing that happens with these, these sleeper whiskies that are really cheap, and they're really good. These days, they can't stay that way for very long as a few years of people buzzing about them.
Nick VinZant 27:57 better better way to add water to whiskey straight water or an ice four.
Richard Thomas 28:04 Oh, well given that I spend a lot of time not you know, out in the summer and not in air conditioning, I have absolutely nothing against putting big blocks of ordinary ice into a glass of whiskey. And I do tend to look at that as primarily a climate thing. You know, like when it's when it's wintertime, you know, autumn early spring I'm not drinking chilled anything. So I switched strictly to putting a splash of water
Nick VinZant 28:43 coolest person you've ever had a drink with
Richard Thomas 28:47 just just the most all around cool time I ever had drinking somebody before. was a you know I was up in Scotland and I was meeting with Alan Winchester is the master distiller at the Glenlivet and that was just one of those situations where between him and who else was there that was the coolest you know bottle of scotch at overkill just simply because you know the conversation was so great. The time was so interesting you know it's just a very very well spent kind of thing where you came out you disrespect that was that really hit the nail on the head that was just an awesome time.
Nick VinZant 29:32 Last last question for me if you had to give a top three what would be in your top three?
Richard Thomas 29:41 Well, my top three I get that a lot like what are your favorite things to drink? What are your things to do this that or the other thing and I tend to think of it in terms of go to you know, it just basically like because go twos are more accessible, right? Like I could I could talk about the the all time mind blowing experiences like you know, the the super expensive MacAllan that I just mentioned before or drinking 28 year old Irish single pot still whiskey straight from Port pipe at the new Middleton distillery, things like that. But you know, that's not like normal stuff that everybody can appreciate. And what's on my shelf right now in terms of go to what have I got out? Let's see Well, before I mentioned the mixers, 10 year old rye, I've the mixers, 10 year old, single barrel bourbon, and that's on my shelf. And that's the priciest thing that's there. Right now I've got a large toasted barrel because it's new, and it's wonderful for kind of like a desert whiskey. I've got conus brimstone, which is super smoky. If you're into that kind of thing. Wild Turkey Rare Breed rye. And I brought this up because they just reinstituted it. knob Creek, small batch nine year old. And you know, any of those things would be on my list of go to favorites.
Nick VinZant 31:14 That's really all the questions I had. what's coming up next review? How can people kind of find out more about you?
Richard Thomas 31:21 Well, let's see. So my writing is here, there and everywhere. I'm the owner and the editor of the whisky reviewer, which is this point of fairly well known whiskey issues website. And of course, they're the books that I've written or contributed to the last one, which, like I said, we launched that aquarii is American whiskey. And right now in writing fairly steadily for chilled magazine, and Vine, Pear.
Nick VinZant 31:52 I want to thank Richard so much for joining us if you want to connect with him. We have a link to him on our social media or Profoundly Pointless on Instagram and Twitter. And we have also included in the RSS feed that's on this podcast
Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Corrie Moreau
Some insects lick each other's butts. You’ve probably never seen a male ant. If that sparked your curiosity, joins us as we explore the natural world with Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Corrie Moreau. We talk evolution, biodiversity, conservation and animal behaviors that will blow your mind. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Insects.
Interview with Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Corrie Moreau
Speakers
Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host
Dr. Corrie Moreau: Evolutionary Biologist and Entomologist
Show Notes
What is the most evolved animal on Earth
What is happening to the Earth’s biodiversity
What do Evolutionary Biologists study
Why does our world look the way it does
Why are certain animals only in certain locations
What is the most interesting ant species
Why is there only one male ant
What is the most dangerous ant
What can insects tell us about ourselves and our world
Nick VinZant 0:13
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, insects and evolution,
Dr. Corrie Moreau 0:22 we're just trying to understand how the natural world around us came to be. So how did all the species form? Why are they distributed where they are on the planet, many of their baby behaviors are so similar to behaviors that we ourselves exhibit that it was easy to connect with them, right? They wage battles, they care for their young, they gather food, they build architecture, so long ago, ancestor some primordial sludge in the you know, soup of the sea. That's where all of life on this planet came from their big conspicuous ants, they actually will actively watch you in the forest. So it's always a little freaky to like, stumble into one of their nests.
Nick VinZant 1:03 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 do you ever just kind of look around and wonder why. Why did these animals live in these places? Why does this insect look the way that it does? Why do we look, the way that we look? Our first guest studies exactly that. And she has this fascinating insight and a masterful way of explaining things that I just during this whole interview. I just found myself going. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's amazing. There's so much that goes into the world around us. And I think that, that just kind of peeling back that little bit, even a later layer of that just reveals so much fascination, I think and you can kind of walk away with just this marvelous wonder at the world around you. After listening to her, oh, and she knows a lot about ads. Like a lot about ads, stuff that you had no idea could possibly be true. And this makes you go what this is evolutionary biologist Dr. Corrie Moreau. So when we talk about evolutionary biology, like what, what exactly are we talking about?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 2:28 In my mind, when we're talking about evolutionary biology, we're just trying to understand how the natural world around us came to be. So how did all the species form? Why are they distributed where they are on the planet? I mean, if you think about it, why isn't everything just equally found across the globe and an equal numbers and all of the different organismal groups? I mean, if you think about just insects, there are more species of insects than there are of mammals. So trying to figure out those sort of patterns and understand the processes that lead to the diversity of life we see
Nick VinZant 2:58 when when you kind of look at like evolutionary pressure. Is it evolutionary pressure from outside of the organisms group, like other organisms? Or is it from within, like, they're competing against themselves, so to speak,
Dr. Corrie Moreau 3:12 both of those things, plus one more thing, which is the environment itself, right? So you can think about, as you know, aerification happened in some of our desert regions, we had animals that had to now adapt to an entirely new environment, or they didn't survive, right. So things either went extinct, or they changed to live in these new habitats. But again, we also know that there can be interspecies competition and conflict, which might sort of drive either species to diverge away from one another, if it's things like, you know, conflict, or they might become well adapted to living together and become a mutualism. And even within species, you know, sort of conflict and cooperation can lead to this divergence, right? So now two populations may no longer interact, which in the longer term might lead to a speciation event.
Nick VinZant 4:01 I don't know how to ask you this question necessarily, but kind of give me some leeway. Like how big of a pressure does there have to be before something becomes an entirely new species?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 4:12 Yeah, that's a great question. Usually, what happens is you need some amount of time. So the way I like to think about it isn't imagine had a population it was all just one species. And it was distributed across a wide geographic range. And maybe a mountain rose up in between them or a river change course and split them into two populations now, but they're still the same species, right? They're just in different locations. But now if they have some sort of a barrier that doesn't allow them to mix anymore, mostly, of course, thinking about their genetics, what will happen is, each of them will start to accumulate new mate mutations, either by random chance, or maybe because one of them is on the drier end of the distribution, right. And so you start accumulating more mutations that help them be successful in this Dry adapted environment, and maybe the others in a wetter part of the environment. But either way, you need some amount of time for those populations to become so incredibly different from one another that if they were reintroduced to one another, they no longer can even mate anymore, they become distinct species. And so the amount of time that needs to pass, of course varies. Many people think it's probably on the order of a million years, sometimes it happens really quickly and could happen in you know, hundreds of thousands of years. Sometimes it might take millions of years for those populations to drift far enough apart, that they're now no longer one species.
Nick VinZant 5:36 Is there one species that you look at and say that's the most evolved species of all?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 5:41 Well, that's a misnomer, because in evolution, nothing is more evolved than anything else. And so it's this idea that all of life on planet is equal, it's just who they're most closely related to. And so you can have relics that don't have very many close relatives around anymore. So they'll seem kind of bizarre. So if you think of something like a field account, right, it's, there's not a lot of things that are very highly similar to a seal a camp, where other things like you might think of fruit flies, and they kind of all look alike to you. But there's lots and lots and lots of species. And so, you know, how would you sort of decide which is is, you know, more at the pinnacle of evolution, they're just in different trajectories,
Nick VinZant 6:24 they kind of each go as far as they need to. Right. Is that? Does that make sense?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 6:28 Sure. And of course, you also have to keep in mind, lots of things are going extinct through evolutionary time as well.
Nick VinZant 6:33 When you look at kind of, from the aspect of biodiversity. Do we have as much biodiversity as we used to? Is that just going away? Like what's happening to all these species?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 6:46 Yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, I would say, unfortunately, humans have a pretty negative impact on biodiversity. And we know that we're losing species because of, of, you know, our involvement on the planet. And not always an unnecessarily intentionally bad way, right. And so we know some organisms just don't do well around human built environments where others actually thrive, right? So we can think about things like cockroaches and, and they've done extremely well in the human and made environment where lots of species actually go extinct, either locally or globally, when, you know, their environment is perturbed too much. So do I think our planet holding all the biodiversity? It could? Absolutely not. And unfortunately, that's probably our fault at this moment. But if we were to sort of back up, you know, a few thousand years, I would say that we probably were, you know, holding quite a bit more biodiversity.
Nick VinZant 7:38 I mean, is there something that we, as a human species can do to save this? Or is it just like, our mere presence is going to have some kind of effect, right, like, no matter how much we tip toe, something's bad is going to happen, so to speak?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 7:52 Well, I mean, of course, if we tiptoe, we're gonna cause less than negative pressures on on biological diversity. Then, of course, there are things that individuals can do right, you can be quite mindful about how you live on the planet. But I really think to sort of stop the the large changes that are happening, and we'd have to invoke policies at the global level, right? We know that climate change is one of the leading factors that's currently impacting species on the planet, but we'll certainly continue to in the future, where, you know, a lot of us have now thought about things like, you know, planting native plants in our gardens to attract pollinators, right. And so I think there's a level of knowledge that each of us individually can gain to make sure that we're promoting and helping support biodiversity. But then there's also things that just because of the sheer number of people we have, we're going to always have industrial farming at this point, right? As much as all of us would love to eat locally and shop locally, it's like impossible to do that entirely for the majority of the planet. So I mean, I think that each of us should do our small part, but we should also be advocating for policy change at the highest levels.
Nick VinZant 8:59 What kind of policy changes do you think that we need the most?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 9:03 I think we need to think about, you know, how do we how do we get our sources of energy, I think we need to think about how do we feed people effectively while still being mindful of the planet and not just being greedy? I think that we have to be thoughtful about where people live in reside. And, you know, and, and recognize that not, you know, not everyone can have, you know, equal sizes of property and, and, and still support, you know, biodiversity on the planet.
Nick VinZant 9:42 How was this something that you got into what attracted you to it?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 9:46 to biology, or thinking about our impact on the planet.
Nick VinZant 9:51 Well, I feel like one is just an existential crisis that we all have. So let's go with biology.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 9:58 Sure. So growing I loved nature, I thought it was just the coolest thing. I grew up in New Orleans. But I didn't. I didn't know scientists, my parents didn't go to university and or college. And so it wasn't like I had this idea like, okay, step one, you do this, then step two, you become a scientist, it was more just that I thought nature was cool. And back then, you know, I'm older than and then probably many of your listeners, we didn't have the nature channel and animal planet, we just had PBS. And I remember every single major show that came on on PBS, I was glued to the TV. But I also thought that, you know, that PBS had all the scientists in the world on it. And that's probably all the scientists that we needed in the world, I didn't realize all the ways that you can use research and science. And so it wasn't until I went away to university that I, my eyes were open to just all the cool things that you could do. And, and maybe it's because I grew up in an urban environment, I just love bugs, because I could find them anywhere. And so, for me, I went away to university and thought, Okay, I'm going to study nature, but I really want to focus on bugs. And I don't know what I'll do with that in the end. But, um, you know, I sort of thought maybe I could teach high school or maybe work for a pest control company. But you know, I didn't know that there were so many ways that you could use insects to study important questions on the planet.
Nick VinZant 11:18 What can insects tell us about our lives?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 11:23 Well, I mean, of course, in lots of different things, in one way, you know, many species are bio indicators for whether we have healthy habitats. And so that's important, of course, we also know that if you think about the impact of, of organisms, on human commodities, of course, insects are a giant pest, but they're also important pollinators, right. So they have lots of beneficial and harmful roles for things that humans care about. I don't do applied research, most of my research is actually much more fundamental, or basic. And what I'm trying to just understand is, why are there so many species? And why are they found where they are? And and how does species interactions explain how they may shift into new habitats or onto novel diets? And I'm just trying to understand the world around me.
Nick VinZant 12:08 So from an understanding standpoint, let's say one, is we basically know absolutely nothing about the world around us, the species around us. 10, we've got this all completely figured out. Where do you think that we are right now?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 12:25 Oh, goodness, maybe at a three. Yeah, I mean, think about the fact that how many species of invertebrates there are in a rainforest that we know nothing about are all the bacteria that are found globally distributed, we know almost nothing about. And let's not even talk about the bottom of the oceans, there's so much diversity down there that every now and then we get a glimpse of because maybe we send some sort of a submerge vesicle down there, or a fisherman find something bizarre, but I guarantee you, there's 100 fold more diversity out there than any of the things we've even just began to sort of study. I mean, I imagine biodiversity in my mind as much like an avalanche. We are only seeing what's above water right now. That's all the scientists have been able to discover and describe. And the majority of it's still hidden underneath the ocean. And really, like, you know, there's so much incredible knowledge to gain from studying that diversity.
Nick VinZant 13:22 So what was it about ants that appealed to you so much?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 13:25 Oh, well, I think for me, it was that even as a kid, I could watch them engaging in behaviors. So not that I was asking sophisticated questions, I might have been just putting out cookie crumbs and noting how many came and how many, how long it took them to carry them away. But I loved that I could actually studying them doing something in real time. And despite the fact that they often weren't as beautiful as some of the butterflies or beetles I saw. Sometimes in one summer, I might find one beetle and not see it again till the next year. So I couldn't actually like observe things about it. So I think that's what first captivated me to answer. I also think it was that many of their baby behaviors are so similar to behaviors that we ourselves exhibit that it was easy to connect with them, right? They wage battles. They care for their young, they gather food, they build architecture. So I think I just was naturally attracted to them, because they, they did all these amazing things.
Nick VinZant 14:20 I mean, they are kind of the coolest, right?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 14:22 Yes, definitely.
Nick VinZant 14:24 Which one? All right, though. Well, I'll ask you this later, because we have some listener questions that are kind of focused on that a little bit. But I was reading just some of the research that you did that the ants were 100 and 40 million years old or something.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 14:38 That's right. Yeah. And so we use a set of statistical, you know, tools to help us figure that out by using both molecular data DNA data coupled with the fossil record. So ants have an incredibly rich fossil record. There are 10s of thousands of ant fossils, and the oldest ant fossils about 100 million years old. And what's interesting is that belongs to a group that's still around today. So really, what it appears is that amps sort of appeared on the planet from their closest relatives. And we're kind of, you know, doing okay, probably not in high density or high species numbers. And then as the flowering platform is sort of expanded across the globe, this was a perfect niche for them to live in. So if any of you've ever spent time in tropical forests, you know that answer everywhere. And so it really provided a niche both in the places they could live, but also in all kinds of new food resources for them. So ants really sort of went through this explosion in species correlated with the expansion of the flowering plant for us across the globe.
Nick VinZant 15:42 Do we have any idea how many ants there are on the planet?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 15:47 individual or as a species?
Nick VinZant 15:50 I guess both.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 15:54 So, species wise, right now, scientists have given names to about 15,000 species of ants, we know that numbers at least double and maybe triple. So there are a lot of species of ants. And I want to sort of contextualize that, there are more species of just ants than all the birds and mammals add it together. And so, you know, there's a lot of really interesting behaviors and structures to study within them. Now, if we talk about individuals, there's been some like, you know, crazy back of the envelope calculations, and it's in the trillions that we actually believe are probably on the planet. Now, some people have speculated that between ants and termites they, they have more biomass than all the humans on the planet right now. Meaning that if we put all of the ants and termites on one side of a scale, and all the humans on the planet, on the other side of scale, the ants and termites would outweigh the humans. What, why are there so many? Do we need that many of them? Are they this that good at reproducing? Like, why? Why are they so dominant in that regard? Yeah, so they are living social structures, right? So since their social species, every nest is essentially one individual, right? So you have a queen in there, who's laying all the eggs, and then you have all the workers in the nest that are performing all the important roles, whether it's feeding the on or building the NASA or gathering the food or waging the battles, right. And so each nest is essentially one super organism with lots of individuals in it. Now, as to whether we need them all, I would argue We absolutely do. They're important ecosystem engineers. And so, you know, I often tell people that they're really important for soil health and likely more important even than earthworms. So you know, they're whenever you see an ad going into a hole in the ground, there's essentially an upside down skyscraper underneath that soil, right? So they are building tunnels, they're aerating the soil, they're letting nutrients flow in into the soil, they're bringing nutrients up towards the, the, you know, soil surface, they're letting water permeate that. And that's just the answer. They're living in the soil. And so they also perform lots of important roles for plants, like dispersing seeds, and breaking down and helping decompose organic matter. So I think we need them all,
Nick VinZant 18:06 when you look at kind of the evolution of species necessarily, is it still the remaining like, did we all come from the same place at the same time, and it just branched off, and eventually, we got all of us.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 18:18 That's right. So all of life on this planet, is from a single, you know, long ago, ancestor, some primordial sledge in the you know, soup of the sea. And that's where all of life on this planet came from. Now, of course, it broke off into different branches of the tree. So we can think about fungi and animals are more closely related than they are to plants. And of course, then there's all kinds of microbial groups that, you know, also, you know, diversified and have lots of species and important roles on the planet. But yeah, all from one evolutionary origin.
Nick VinZant 18:49 So I'm going to use the proverbial they in this, but like, how, how are they able to determine the difference between like, okay, we all originated, I'm just gonna name my hometown. We all originated from Derby, Kansas somehow, as opposed to like, Oh, no, no, this happened to different places at the same time, and they all came, like, how did they separate out the difference?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 19:10 Yeah. So of course, there's all kinds of hints of you look at external anatomy, but really the and so people had long been speculating that that was probably the case. But the DNA data is actually what's really sealed the case. So we can actually use DNA. So just like if you imagine if we wanted to say, Okay, how are all are you in all of your relatives related to each other? So you wouldn't have to tell me, you could just give me a sample of all of your DNA, I could figure out who your Dad Mom was, I could figure out who their dad mom was, I could figure out who their siblings were right, from using that genetic evidence. Well, that's just at the scale of one family. Now, we can sort of do that across the globe. And we can ask the question, how is life on the planet related to one another, and there's, of course hints in the fact that the genetic code is all highly similar, but in addition, we can reconstruct that family tree and actually see how life evolved on the planet. It's called phylogenetic, it's actually really an amazing tool to sort of understand the diversity of life,
Nick VinZant 20:10 Do human beings have much bio diversity, are we pretty much all right in the same place? Or is that a big controversial loaded? Question?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 20:18 Oh, I don't think it's a controversial loaded question. I mean, we're all one species. That's for a fact. Of course, just like lots of other species, we have population genetic level differences, right. It's becoming blurred, the more global and more mobile we are, we're mixing a lot of that diversity more and more. But of course, we know that, you know, humans originated from Africa, they migrated out some, you know, individuals sort of landed in Australia, right, essentially, became isolated there for quite a long time. So if we look at the DNA of them, we can see the distinct signatures of being from Australia versus being from North America. But we're still all the same species, right? If we put this back together, we can interbreed quite easily, we still share much of our DNA, it's, you know, some obscene amount, like 99.999% of our DNA between any two humans on the planet is identical. I mean, that's pretty remarkable.
Nick VinZant 21:15 When scientists first figured that out,were people shocked that it was that high.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 21:23 They were shocked. But then, of course, you know, coming back to that question you'd asked me earlier about, like, you know, which is the most evolutionary advanced species. When we first started having the technology to sequence genomes? Well, people had made predictions that because humans had these sophisticated social structures, because we had language because we had art and music, we knew that we probably need a lot more genes to encode for all of those unique things that make us human. And once we started sequencing lots of genomes and looking at gene content, we were shocked to find out that our gene content isn't much different from almost anything else. And that was something that people hadn't expected, we now know and even knew, then that one gene doesn't coat for one trait. Usually what you have is many genes contributing to particular traits. And so any one gene is more like a letter of an alphabet, you might use an E to spell one word this, you know, in this sentence, but you're going to use an E again, and then st next word in the same sentence. And it doesn't give you the same word. And so now we just know that sort of the interplay and communication between all of our genes is what leads to complexity, not the number of them,
Nick VinZant 22:37 like okay, how much of our DNA do we share with an ant? Like, do they have somebody measured that?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 22:45 I am, I'm not sure if anybody's measured it, we could measure it, I mean, but to give you perspective, like our next closest relative is a chimpanzee and we share like 97% of our DNA with our closest relative. So if we were sort of to extrapolate out, I would imagine, we probably share something like 60% of our DNA with ants, I mean, they're an animal, you have to remember that. So you know, all the things that are animal share a large proportion of their DNA.
Nick VinZant 23:12 So I'm dating myself a little bit, but in terms when I was growing up, evolution was still kind of this big thing. And full disclosure, I went to a Catholic school, and evolution is not real, is that still a thing that is around or people I've scientists pretty much dispelled that. And
Dr. Corrie Moreau 23:29 I would argue scientists have long dispelled that there are still people who question it. And you know, it's always interesting to me that people question evolutionary biology, but they don't question astronomy. Because really, we're not trying to solve How did the, you know world come to be and like, what's the origin of the universe? That's astronomers, but nobody pickets astronomy conferences, but they still do come to evolution conferences from time to time and try to, you know, say that, you know, our work isn't real, because they can't be related to a monkey. Right. And, and that's not how evolution works, Nick VinZant 24:08 Are we talking about just the same one person ormultiple people
Dr. Corrie Moreau 24:13 Oh, it's usually a very small group. And, you know, it's, it's definitely decreased through time. I think that you know, it's funny, because people who even question evolution, they have no problem trusting medicine. And where do you think most of that medicine comes from? Or how we understand how epidemiology happens, or how we have you know, pandemics that's all through the lens of evolution, we're watching how these things evolve. Nick VinZant 24:42 Are you ready for some of the harder slash listener submitted questions?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 24:46 Bring them on?
Nick VinZant 24:48 most overrated ant Dr. Corrie Moreau 24:51 oh, that's an interesting question. most overrated and maybe army ants. And I think it's because people like you know, they've seen You know, like, Temple of Doom or Raiders of Lost Ark, whichever one were supposedly like a human was consumed by army ants. And so people often ask me like, could army ants kill me? And the answer is no. So I think that's why they're overrated.
Nick VinZant 25:16 If we're an ant High School, what ant is the jock? Who's the nerd who's the cool guy? Who's the loner.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 25:27 So first, I'm gonna say if it was an ant High School, it would be a high school be an all girls high school. Because all the ants you've probably ever seen in your life, our female males are only produced once a year solely for reproduction. So if you've ever seen an ant out, waging a battle, or carrying food back to the nest or building the nest, those are all females. If you saw an ant without wings, it's female. So only once a year are males produced, they have wings, and so did the new queens and they go off on a mating flight, the male's never contribute to the care of the colony or gathering food. Their only job is reproduction. So after they copulate, or reproduce, they die almost immediately. So now you have a new queen, she flies off to find a suitable habitat to start her whole new colony of all females, and then digs down in the dirt and starts laying eggs. So if we go back to your high school analogy, that's a tougher one. Because thinking about the dynamics of an all girls high school, of course, you'd have the the jock would probably be the soldier ants, right? The ones that are just brute force. If we had the nerds that would be the scouts that are out trying to figure out where's the next best food source to come from? I don't remember all the other categories
Nick VinZant 26:41 who would be the cool kid of ant high school
Dr. Corrie Moreau 26:46 I think all of them. Nick VinZant 26:48 What if there was a coolant amongst cool ants, you had to pick one like this, this species of ant or this, this ant is the cool one.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 26:58 Oh, gosh, I guess I'd have to pick the queen, because the colony doesn't exist without her. That being said, I think she has the worst job of the entire colony because remember, once she sort of mates, she digs down the soil and then just lays eggs the rest of her life. She never leaves the nest, she never reproduces again, she never gathers food. She just sits there and lays eggs.
Nick VinZant 27:20 Yeah, kind of sounds awful for the Queen and the man doesn't. Yeah. What what would be the reason though? Like, what's the biological or evolutionary reason while only having this one man? Why? Why would that be advantageous to them.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 27:37 So this has to do with several things. One has to do with their meeting structure. So when we meet or reproduce, right, we have one set of chromosomes that comes from our mothers, our maternal line, and one from our paternal line or father's. And we could do get some mixing, but more or less, you're kind of getting one chromosome from each parent. Well, in social in the hymenoptera, which are the ants, bees and wasps, they have a different meaning structure. So when a queen lays an egg and sperm is united with it, it becomes diploid. So it has two copies of all of the chromosomes, and it becomes a female. If she lays an egg and does not unite sperm with it, it becomes male. So males are halfway, they only have one copy of all their chromosomes. So first, the genetic structure of determining sex is actually quite different. In addition, now you have these females that are deployed, right, they have two sets of chromosomes. And because of that system, all of the individuals in the nest and up highly related to one another. So they're invested in sort of taking care of both the Queen but also the older sisters, because of that high relatedness. So it's turned into this odd system where males are really only utilized for essentially reproduction.
Nick VinZant 28:55 Guys, kind of the same with us. In some ways. I feel like you really, you really don't need men. I mean, you really don't. Is that kind of true throughout the species? Like you only need one man for every how many women?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 29:10 That's I mean, reproductively. That's certainly true. I wish we could tell our global leadership that that
Nick VinZant 29:16 best movie about an ant.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 29:18 Oh, interesting. Wow. I mean, so I have so of course, my first thought is all of the movies that are not done well. Yeah. I mean, think about things like Bug's Life and ants, right? It shows this whole male Task Force on these strong male soldiers. And all of that is totally not true. Those are all females. I'll say that. Of course, I like classic movies. So of course them is really exciting to me. There's a few things I really like about it, partially because they use scientific names for ants, which is, you know, pretty nerdy, but I appreciate and they make the entiende, the entomologist studying them really an expert in ants, which of course i think is cool, but at As much as I often complain about Ant Man, because it's not at managed to be at woman, I did appreciate that a lot of storytelling around the skills and tools of these different ants actually was based in some amount of reality of what those species actually can do. So I liked that they did a little studying and so that you're actually learning a little bit about and diversity while watching the movie,
Nick VinZant 30:23 the species with the farthest evolutionary journey. I guess, technically the furthest because it's not a measurement of actual distance. But anyway,
Dr. Corrie Moreau 30:36 That's an interesting, there's lots of ways to answer that question. Because again, as I sort of explained earlier, no species is more evolved than anything else. So we could sort of talk about species that are these anomalies on the tree of life, right, meaning that they didn't leave a lot behind a lot of species and that we still don't understand much about them. So there's a species of a couple of pieces of ants that are early divergent lineages of ants that left not a lot of clues about what their life was like when they first evolved. So those ones are pretty interesting. Of course, the first thing that jumped in my mind was the Bulla ant, which is para poner cavada. And this ant is amazing, because it's just one species, but it has a distribution, essentially, from southern Mexico through all of Central America and all of South America. They're big conspicuous ants, they actually will actively watch you in the forest. So it's always a little freaky to like, stumble into one of their nests. They are incredibly painful things. So most people try to avoid interacting with them. That's why they're called bullet ants. It feels like you were shot by a gun. But what's really interesting is there's only one species in that not only the just the genus and the entire sub family, just that one species that survived. So it begs the question, sort of, why did the sort of relatives of that go extinct? yet? This one has been incredibly evolutionarily successful? Is that the Siafu ant? I still remember some documentary that like they carry away children or something. Oh, no. Siafu is the African army ant I think there's been like one case, supposedly, it's never been fact checked that a farmer had a newborn and put it out in the shade, but in the field, and then wandered off to do some work in the field. And then the army ants came along and found this plump, little juicy child sitting there, and stung it and bit it but didn't carry it away.
Nick VinZant 32:38 Oh, that makes me feel much better. Biggest thing you learned from E.O Wilson?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 32:45 Oh, that's a nice question. I think it's to appreciate curiosity. And to cultivate it in yourself. I think that we often think of science as this really rigid process where, you know, everything was sort of has to conform to some experimental expectations. And what he really promoted was that observing the natural world, and getting to know what's happening around you actually informed your questions. And so you can ask better questions when you actually know what things do in nature and, and being curious about organisms or being curious about habitats actually will lead to the most powerful insights. So I think that's probably what he taught me the most. Let me follow up that great question with would you rather be a wasp or a hornet? Well, a hornet is just a type of a wasp. So I guess the question is, doesn't matter.
Nick VinZant 33:48 Man, right, when our audience was looking really smart, then they came across this way to let us down. Um, I don't know if this is your area of expertise. But I remember I said our audience is a little quirky. It just says, What's going on with a platypus?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 34:05 Oh, that is a great question. I mean, I totally agree that has to be one of the most bizarre looking animals. And, I mean, with some really interesting life history, but I mean, I think to me, what sums up the platypus is that the first time one was collected by European explorers and and sent it back to to England. They thought it was a gas they thought that literally the as a joke, the Explorer had taken multiple different animals and glued them together, and then sent it on as if it was a real species. And what's interesting if you look at what now it literally looks like you've glued connected pieces of animals together still, even when they're alive, and I've seen one a live and it does not look real. So I agree the platypus is crazy.
Nick VinZant 34:53 I'm looking at one right now. Like he really does like what like Hey, watch this guys, I'm gonna send this out, see what this thing looks like? What are your research right now? What are you working on?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 35:09 Yeah, so we're doing a few different things. What I am most excited about is we're trying to understand how symbiotic interactions actually helped ants become so successful. So ants have symbiotic relationships with other animals, with plants, with fungi with bacteria. And what we want to understand is, when they engage in those symbiosis, is it always beneficial? Is it always negative? And then what impact does it have? So interestingly, some work in microbe we've looked at and plant interactions, but we've also looked at microbe interactions. And so the micro work is revealing some interesting new insights. So lots of animals, as we all know, now if you hear about the microbiome, we have bacteria that live in and on us that are important to our own health, right, of course, some are not helpful, but many of them we need in order to be healthy. And so we've been studying in groups of ants that have actually transitioned from their earliest diets, which were predatory. Some have become generalists, but then some have even become entirely dependent on plant based diets or vegetarians. And so we tried to understand, how do you make that shift, and in almost all the cases we've been able to study, they actually have to take on the symbiotic bacteria that synthesize the essential amino acids or proteins that they don't get in their own diet, in order to survive entirely on a plant based diet. But what's cool about that is that by transitioning on to this entirely plant based diet, you have opened up all these new niches that you no longer have competition with other ants for food resources. So now you can diversify or speciate again, so it's this sort of interaction, but the environment and the with the symbiotic microbes in this case, that have led to some groups of ants being incredibly abundant and incredibly species rich.
Nick VinZant 37:00 If you were wanting to impress somebody at a party, and you were going to hit him with your single greatest, in fact, what are you going to go with?
Dr. Corrie Moreau 37:11 Well, I probably would go with my fact that almost every am they've ever seen as a female, but since I've already shared that one with you, I'm going to go to my backup question my backup sort of an fact. And I'd share that, and that have these gut microbes that they need, they have to have a mechanism for ensuring that their gut gets seated with them whenever they you know, sort of our new individuals are born. So how do they do that they engage in something that's called truffle access. And so truffle Ax is is just sharing liquid sources back and forth. So you can have oral oral, social travel access, which is just social food sharing from, you know, one mouth to the other. But in the case of the ants that need these gut microbes, they have to do oral anal truffle access. So they have to have another individual to acquire the right microbes. Nick VinZant 38:03 So basically ants go around licking each other's butts.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 38:07 just the vegetarian ones.
Nick VinZant 38:11 hey, look, however you got to survive is how you got to survive.
Dr. Corrie Moreau 38:15 Exactly.
Nick VinZant 38:16 Um, anything else you think we missed or anything else like that? Dr. Corrie Moreau 38:21 Um, I would say that I hope all of you have developed a greater appreciation of the little things that run the world. And, you know, maybe in the next time you see an ant running around, take a moment to actually watch what it's doing, try to observe what it looks like, because they're actually remarkable animals.
Nick VinZant 38:38 I want to thank Corey, so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have a link to her on our social media accounts, where Profoundly Pointless on Twitter and Instagram, and we have also included her information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast.
Kinesiologist Dr. Joel Seedman
What works. And what are we really capable of. Those two questions are at the heart of this conversation with Kinesiologist Dr. Joel Seedman. In an in-depth interview, we talk training and nutrition secrets, optimizing your performance and the latest research on the human body. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Things Kids These Days Wouldn't Understand. And remember, leave a review for a chance to win a free t-shirt.
Interview with Kinesiologist Dr. Joel Seedman
Topics addressed in this episode
How many sets, reps and exercises should I be doing. What is the ideal number of sets and reps
How low should you squat. Is ATG (ass-to-grass) squatting overrated
How fast should I lift
Do I need to do cardio
What is the best overall exercise
What is the best exercise people aren’t doing
What is the most overrated exercise
Can I wear jean shorts to the gym
Can you make someone into an athlete
The benefits of eccentric exercise
Nick VinZant 0:14 Hey, everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, we're getting in shape. And going back in the day.
Dr. Joel Seedman 0:23 most people never even come close to optimizing their human potential, because their training is not ideal. Our body really doesn't know if we did three sets of 12. Or if we did 20 reps, or if we did 10 reps, all it knows is quality tension. And so instead of rushing through the exercises, rushing through the repetitions, one of the best things individuals can do is just slow things down. You know, I think that that's the key is the basics are still the basics, because fundamental principles, the foundational elements that have produced success for decades, are still kind of the go to methods. And if we deviate too far from that, I think that's where we start running into issues.
Nick VinZant 1:02 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 recently, I have realized that I am a shell of what I once was, physically speaking, I can barely bend over without my knees hurting. I can't catch up to my four year old. And I'm a shell in the sense that I'm a much bigger shell, like 40 pounds bigger shell. So trying to get back into some decent kind of shape. And looking at different websites and watching things. It seems like all the advice is contradictory. You're supposed to do this, no, you should never do that. You're supposed to really be doing this. And it seems like this endless back and forth about what really works. So we wanted to take this episode and find out all right, what really works. Our first guest is an expert, in terms of what really works for exercise and nutrition. He has a PhD in Kinesiology and is the founder of advanced human performance, or he trains everybody from regular people to professional athletes. This is Dr. Joel Seedman. When you look at exercise, basically what are people doing wrong?
Dr. Joel Seedman 2:20 Oh, that's a good question right there. So I think one of the main things that people, I wouldn't say do wrong, but maybe they just don't have the education and the knowledge from you know, mainstream fitness, because they tend to rush through their workouts, they tend to think that, you know, if they get the quantity and if they get the you know, number of steps in, if they get the particular amount of volume and say, you know, four sets of 10, or three sets of 12 on an exercise, that they're they're completing the necessary workout, and they're creating the proper stimulus, and they're going to get the results they want. And unfortunately, you know, the muscles in the in the body and our physiology. It's not that simple when it comes to you know, how our muscles and how our body responds. And the stimulus that we create, our body really doesn't know if we did three sets of 12. Or if we did 20 reps, or if we did 10 reps, all it knows is quality tension. And so instead of rushing through the exercises, rushing through the repetitions, one of the best things individuals can do is to just slow things down, really focus on creating a smooth control, lifting tempo, taking out the momentum and feeling those muscles really do their job and trying to target the muscles that they're they're intending to hit instead of just kind of mindlessly going through the exercises. So, you know, I just what we've kind of heard for years now from from bodybuilders really, even back in the day is you know, squeeze the muscle feel those muscles work, don't just mindlessly go to the exercises
Nick VinZant 3:45 is it as simple as if, if I feel like I did something I did something,
Dr. Joel Seedman 3:51 you know, it is to an extent when it comes to caloric expenditure, and just trying to, you know, kind of burn calories so to speak. It is however, when we're trying to change your body composition substantially, that does require additional muscle growth, whether you're a female or a male or you know, General populations, increasing our lean body tissue or lean body mass is one of the best things that we can do for health, for injury prevention, for increasing our metabolic rate at resting and during working conditions. So when it comes to actually stimulating that, that hypertrophy or that muscle growth mechanism, it does require higher quality of work for the most part, unless you're kind of a genetic freak, muscles can respond to a lot of different stimuli.
Nick VinZant 4:39 I mean, when somebody kind of approaches it is it is case where I do three sets of 10. But if I did four sets of 10, I would be completely different. Like do you have to just take it that extra little bit? Or like can you screw it up basically?
Dr. Joel Seedman 4:57 The answer to that is no. You really can't. There's a lot of research on different training protocols, what the ideal rep ranges with ideal number of steps is, and there's really no conclusive empirical evidence suggesting that one particular rep range or set range is optimal over another. In fact, they've done some research showing that if the intensity is high enough, if the quality is high enough, that one set of a really effective movement can actually produce very similar usually not quite as effective. But it can produce similar results to two or three sets, or even four sets of an exercise. So it's not like oh, you know, if I do one set, I'm only going to get 30%. If I do two sets, I'm going to get 53 sets 75%. And then to get 100% of the benefits, I have to hit force that actually it's about 80 to 90% of the benefits can be reached with one really hard set. And then you know, you do a second or third high quality set, you get the rest out of it. If you've done high quality, and you're taking everything control, you're not using a lot of momentum, if you're really focusing on that muscle mind connection and your technique is proper force that usually for an exercise is too much two or three really good stuff is going to be more beneficial for most individuals, provided their quality is higher.
Nick VinZant 6:13 From a kinesiology kind of perspective, do we pretty much have the body figured out? Like, do we know how it works?
Dr. Joel Seedman 6:20 Wow, that is such a, a deep question right there, it would seem simple. And I would say, on one hand, we learn a lot the last 10 years in kinesiology, Exercise Science is kind of a new field, relatively speaking to a lot of other fields, you know, medicine, and, you know, biology and biochemistry and all that. So it's really, really the last, you know, few decades, Exercise Science has kind of emerged, and we've continued to learn a lot. But at the same time, because it's kind of new, and it's still in its relative infancy stages, I would argue, there's still so much that we don't know and, and even the research that comes out, there's so much mixed research, there's there's a lot of conflicting data. And it kind of creates this confusion in the industry where, you know, some people say, Oh, well, there's, you know, all this research showing that, for example, I was like used to squat analogy, because that's a big one. That's one that I'm known for creating a little bit of controversy over. You know, there's some research out there that shows that astagraf squatting or squatting as deep as you can with maximal range of motion is suggested or beneficial. And then there's another group of research that shows that that's not the case that actually squatting to 90 degrees or parallel is, in fact, the best way to do it. So you kind of have these mixed sides of things. And you really have to look deeply at the research to kind of see, hey, why didn't Why do we have these conflicting views? And this is this is for many different topics. And then you have to say, Okay, why is it that and then you have to examine the research. And you can usually kind of figure out which side is ideal, but you have to examine it pretty intently. So I think we have so much learning and field of Kinesiology is exciting, because, you know, we still have a lot of potential growth.
Nick VinZant 8:09 Like when you look at how much we know about the body, one is absolutely nothing. 10 is we've got this thing locked down, figured out, like, Where do you think we are right now?
Dr. Joel Seedman 8:20 Oh, I would say a four, or a five. And I think we have just enough knowledge that if we don't use it just right, it can actually put us in a little bit of jeopardy. And we can we can abuse it because it's you back even the SWAT analogy, you have a lot of people taking some of this information, and they use it. And they they destroy their joints, and they have to get surgery and it's you know, people will say, Oh, well I heard this from you know, mainstream fitness or from fitness experts or fitness gurus and the research substantiated, but now my my knees are shot, my neck, my hips were low back is fried, what's going on here. So we do have to be very careful. And taking the research and saying, well, based on some of these studies, it was suggest that this might be a potential potential way to do something. But yeah, I would say four or five. And I would say even the same thing for nutrition because it's funny. Every few years, there's these nutrition recommendations in the industry. And then several years later, we see different recommendations that not only disagree but actually recommend the exact opposite. It's kind of a funny parody in the field, but it's actually similar in the field of Kinesiology too. So I think we have to be careful of, you know, realizing that we still have a lot of work to do and a lot of research to be done.
Nick VinZant 9:41 Even though that you know, that kind of high end necessarily seems to be changing all the time. Or the basic still the basics, like the basic stuff works, right like you want to lose weight, eat less calories, you want to get stronger lift weights, like are the basic still the basics or does even that change
Dr. Joel Seedman 9:59 you know That's that's the key is the basics are still the basics, because fundamental principles, the foundational elements that have produced success for decades are still kind of the go to methods. And if we deviate too far from that, I think that's where we start running into issues. In, you know, some of these kind of extreme diets that we see are these extreme training protocols are these really exaggerated? Kind of methods that we've seen in really unique programs, it's like, Okay, this is deviating so far now, and maybe, you know, it doesn't have to necessarily be purely old school and looks simple, it just has to rely on kind of foundational elements of the practical sciences, you know, you have to look at basic elements of, you know, muscle physiology, for example, and human physiology things that we've known now for for decades, even possibly, you know, close to a century now, things in the field of biomechanics that relate to physics, which we've known for decades, if not centuries now. I think dealing with neuro muscular physiology, and then neurology, and then we have to say, Okay, now let's take some of the current research and compare and contrast it to what we know to be true about some of those foundational elements. And if they match up, I think we're good to go. If they they really contradict each other, then I think we run into issues. So I think, you know, on the head, I think, you know, we do have to stick to the basics, we can't deviate too far. But that doesn't mean we can't gradually improve, improve on the basics, as long as we don't go too far away from them.
Nick VinZant 11:29 Are people's bodies really that different? Like, do they really respond that differently to certain things? Or is it more of a mindset kind of thing?
Dr. Joel Seedman 11:40 This is this is a topic of much debate in the industry, among strength coaches, and practical of kinesiologist. And I would argue that the human body from person to person is very, very similar. And you'll have different fitness experts and different researchers, they will everybody's different. There's individual differences, individual differences with anthropometrics, and joints, and, you know, our anatomy or structural anatomy and, you know, the way we function, you know, I mean, some people are more fast, which some people more slow twitch, some people more carbs messages from people or, you know, have great insulin sensitivity where they handle carbs really well, from what I've seen, in my condition going on 17 years now in this industry, is that generally speaking, the human body is the human body in, you know, you kind of maintain 90%, of what you do with clients and with individuals and athletes is actually going to be very similar. And if you start to have to, you know, adapted so much, where it's like, oh, my gosh, this is totally different for this person compared to, you know, this other client of mine is like, Whoa, why is that much different? The human body is still the human body. Functional anatomy is still functional anatomy, physiology is still physiology, yes, there are some subtle, individual differences, but they're much, much more subtle, as I said, and much smaller than what a lot of people in the field suggest, you know, some people will say, Oh, well, this person should only squat, you know, 90 degrees, but this person, because they can, they should squat, you know, astagraf. And I think that's one of the things that we have to watch out for. Just because we can do something doesn't mean it's optimal. And just because it's possible, doesn't mean it's ideal, we have to kind of find and hone in on what are more for the human body. When we do that. We see that is very, very similar across individuals, particularly when it comes to strength training, and even even nutrition to a certain degree.
Nick VinZant 13:39 What is you basical philosophy when you look at exercise in nutrition?
Dr. Joel Seedman 13:45 Well, I guess I can touch on the more simple one first, which would be nutrition. I like to recommend foods to clients that pretty much have not been processed or have been very minimally processed. I usually like to recommend a slightly higher protein diet, but not too high. You see some pretty extreme recommendations out there. So typically, one gram per lean pound of body weight or per pound dependent, halleen, individualized, and then moderate carbs, you see also a lot of suggestions, you know, taking the carbs down to a very bare minimum, and then some people not even touching carbs, I like to go moderate on the carbs, and then even on the fat kind of moderate, so I like to play things a little bit more conservative, because as we've seen with these huge fad diets, and even some of the research is so mixed and conflicting. And as soon as we start eliminating the food or really going overboard and a certain food and in hardly touching another food or you know, just barely even eating it. I think that those extremes are where we start running into issues. Strength training, on the other hand, my approaches is probably a little bit different than than most I really like to focus on biomechanics and muscle functioning and quality of movement. And when we lock that in, we teach a person how to move correctly how to fire their muscles properly. and activate them in their proper way, that's when we start opening up all these doors, that's when we start, you know, we can get a lot more advanced, we can get a lot more creative with them, we can push them, we can really progress them quickly because their muscles are performing their job well, when it comes to anything from, you know, increasing muscle mass, if the muscles not activating properly, it's very, you know, you really can't grow muscle if it first hasn't been activated. And then even from a health longevity standpoint, and joint health, if the muscles are not doing their job properly, which a lot of people you know, they run into these issues where they've been training six months, a year, two years, their their bodies are banged up, their shoulders hurt, their knees hurt their hips are and a lot of that comes down to technique, and biomechanics. So if we can, if we can fix biomechanics, and really correct them and perfect them as close as we can, in a realistic fashion, enables us to train long term without running into these, you know, plateaus or run into these obstacles of, you know, having our joints hurt having to take multiple steps back because it's getting injured. So for me, the biomechanics and the movement patterns and learning how to move correctly is a key foundational aspect of things.
Nick VinZant 16:11 How do you kind of create that, that mobility and, and being able to move correctly? Because it sounds like a lot of, you know, exercises in themselves seem to like, lock into the machine so to speak?
Dr. Joel Seedman 16:25 Exactly. No, it does. I think, you know, machines are great. And a lot of people do use machines, I have nothing against machines provided that they're biomechanically sound, which a lot of them are not, it does lock you into a specific path, which is why I prefer using freeways for the most part because it forces the individual to have to basically create a strong mode reprogramming their central nervous system. For example, kind of go back to squat here, if someone does not know how to squat properly, chances are, those issues can be seen and observed in their basic walking gait and their basic movement in their in their posture, the way they pick things up off the ground, if they're playing sport, we can probably see how it transfers into the running form into their jumping. So if we can correct their movement, with strength training with basic, foundational, you know, movement patterns, such as the squat, and unless they have a neat collapse to the ankles, class, they don't know how to load their hips, well, if we could correct it on the squat, we see start to trickle into everyday life. And as well as competition, playing on the field for sports, you know, if we can teach them how to fire their hips, during a squat, it transfers and translates into other things in the other movement patterns, because it's foundational, almost, that's why it's so important that we take foundational movements such as squats, hinges, lunges, presses, rows, overhead presses, pull downs, and basically perfect the movement on that. And I'm a big believer in not using excessive range of motion, but using optimal range of motion. A lot of people think that, you know, maximal range of motion and maximal mobility is the goal. It's really not just like everything in physiology, there's a balance, we never want too much or too little of anything, we always want the optimal amount.
Nick VinZant 18:10 Can you create an athlete? I mean, can you can you like take somebody and really create them into an athlete? Or are you just basically improving somebody?
Dr. Joel Seedman 18:22 That's a good question. I think there is that there's a range here, I think, when it comes to high level performance, I think there is an element of genetics that have to be in place, because we know now that yes, we can cause muscle fibers to adapt, they can become more fast twitch and slow twitch, you know, we can improve, you know, motor unit recruitment, we can we can improve, you know, intramuscular coordination, we can improve all these different elements of performance, but there has to be certain genetic elements in place not With that said, most people never even come close to optimize their human potential, because their training is not ideal. And so if you take an athlete who let's say they have decent genetics, but not great genetics decent and you give them incredible train, and they do everything to the tee, and they follow, you know exactly what you lay off for them, chances are, they may actually be able to play at a pretty high level, provided they continue to stay consistent with their training. Now, you could also have an individual who has incredible genes, and just everything kind of fell into place with their genetic pool and their DNA. But if they don't have the right training, you know, things oftentimes don't work out for them. We see this with, with athletes in every sport, you know, you have these people who should have been superstars and they never pan out because they didn't put the correct work in then you have other athletes who, genetically were not as gifted, were not as blessed. And they actually have great success because their training was so much better. I think that the flip side of that, too, is if you take someone who just has really poor genetics, and you know, I know it's probably not the most politically correct thing to say But they just didn't get blessed with the optimal gene pool. They're not, you know, you can you can train them to the hilt, and they still aren't gonna be able to maybe be that high level athlete, will they be athletic enough to be able to have fun with their sport and do it recreationally without injury? Yes. 100%? So that's a good question.
Nick VinZant 20:18 How do you kind of evaluate both you and both researchers in the field? Like, how do you evaluate what works necessarily? Are you like measuring the size of the muscle the weight that's lifted? Like how do you tell what is working?
Dr. Joel Seedman 20:35 There is such a complex answer to that seemingly simple question. But there's so many assessment methods out there, there. You guys trained coaches that will spend hours assessing folks, I used to actually be one of those, I used to do a lot of assessment, say, we're going to go through all these different muscle screening processes and, and really look at your movement and analyze and go over deeply before we start training. And what I realized is that the need to assess, and to only assess, I should say, because basic assessment is good, the need to really assess is oftentimes a little bit unnecessary. If we teach the person how to move properly, let's say they let's say they come in, they have, you know, really bad hip pain and knee pain, you know, we could spend hours and hours if not days, analyzing them and assessing the daylights out of them and sending them to 20 different, you know, experts and getting 20 different results, you know, the recommendations would be, and you could just drive yourself nuts with that. And they could still walk away having no solutions, still having the same amount of pain, still not having the ability to have high level of function and do their athletic events that they want. But in contrast, we can say, hey, let's just take a real quick look at your movement here and kind of see some underlying things. And then once we just kind of take a blank slate, teach them how to fire their muscles properly, teach them how to, to set their their biomechanics, set their hips to work on their alignment, to get their feet locked into to create those neutral positions, then we have them start moving and firing their muscles. And literally within a, sometimes a session, we can start to see some improvements where the client is saying, Wow, my hips feel better, my knees don't hurt as much, I'm starting to see improvements, like it feels so much better, I can squat out without having pain, you know, I've never been able to squat, or at least the last five years have been able to squat without pain. And now they can do that. And they start buying into it and they start to see those immediate improvements. I think for me, that's one of the biggest kind of measures and indicators that I look at is the level of function, the level of pain and how you know, it feels for the for the client, because of our sense of feel is so important. So underrated in the feedback that clients give you from that sense of fuel, that progress or feedback is so important.
Nick VinZant 22:48 I was looking at your Instagram, which is fantastic. And some of the exercises like I've never even seen that before. Do I? Do I need to be doing that kind of stuff? Or can I just like, I just get by on the elliptical machine
Dr. Joel Seedman 23:05 I do put up a lot of unique exercises. And I always say that, and I get a lot of haters out there who was like, Oh, this is ridiculous. Why don't you do the basics, like, Hey, I often state and I often put in my post that 80% of about 80% of what I do with my athletes or my clients, even myself are the basic foundational movements and nothing too crazy. And then the other 20% we do get a little bit crazy, we can get a little bit unique depending on their their levels and their their capabilities and where they've progressed to. And oftentimes, those really advanced variations, are they absolutely necessary? No, they're not absolutely necessary. If people just focus on the basic math in them, that would that would do the job generally speaking, but sometimes, those really advanced unique movements, they do a few things. First off, it can oftentimes expose issues that we may have not seen with something else. Like if we do a really difficult single exercise and maybe is offset in a certain way where we have load on more of more on one side of the body and the other it makes those a weakness in that particular side of the body or that region of the hip or the ankle that we may have not seen with other things. But the other thing that I The reason I like to post some of these advanced exercises is it shows what's possible when you have mastered the foundations when you have mastered the basics. It opens up all these doors and like I tell people, the reason my clients and my athletes and any myself can do these kind of crazy and wild and advanced stabilization drills that require a ton of coordination and a ton of precision is because we have spent so much time mastering the basics even just a basic bodyweight squat, a basic goblet squat, a basic launch. If you get those down, you become so common and with those you open up the doors and then any other movement that even closely resembles that your body is capable of doing that kind of movement in a nutshell is like hey, if we mastered the basics We can go play any sport we want, we can go run, we can kick, we can throw, we can we can jump, and our bodies will be capable of it as long as we've mastered the basics. So that's one of the key things that I like to focus on.
Nick VinZant 25:11 Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions?
Dr. Joel Seedman 25:15 Oh, okay!
Nick VinZant 25:18 Let's start with the easier ones, I guess. Um, best exercise, people aren't doing.
Dr. Joel Seedman 25:24 Ooh, best exercise people are doing, I would say, well, I've just been recently using these a lot myself, just an overhead power holder are really good at basically taking a heavy weight and holding it overhead for you know, 15 to 30 seconds period, really simple. Everyone can do it. It really strengthens just about every muscle in the body, especially the core and the upper body, and it produced a lot of good strength and muscle hypertrophy.
Nick VinZant 25:46 most overrated exercise.
Dr. Joel Seedman 25:50 Ooh, most overrated exercise. Ooh, I would say the front squat. I would say the front squat. The front squat is a lot of people advocate that saying that, you know, easier to do for me. And for a lot of folks, that can be awkward if they've mastered the other squat variations. The front squat is not as necessary.
Nick VinZant 26:08 Do I need to do cardio?
Dr. Joel Seedman 26:14 Ooh, interesting question. I would say it's not necessary. Although it is beneficial, do it. If someone is training very intensely with their strength and conditioning components in a lot of my clients in the law that I work with the train is pretty, it's pretty intense, we go to a pretty good pace, I don't think it's necessary to have to do a lot of additional cardio provided that they're still physically active. What I mean by that is they still have to be moving throughout the day. And I always like to tell people to try to accumulate 30 minutes of walking every day. Everyone's trained, trained intensely several days a week, and they also walked 30 minutes every day, the need to do cardio probably wouldn't be quite as great. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, because it is very beneficial, but absolutely necessary. Probably not.
Nick VinZant 26:58 Can I wear jean shorts to the gym.
Dr. Joel Seedman 27:04 you can I wouldn't recommend it on upper body days. Probably not a bad probably wouldn't be a big deal. But you might get some unusual looks that could throw off your confidence. You know you that confidence is a big thing. You don't want people looking at you like you're a freak though.
Nick VinZant 27:19 This is I like this one. You trained a lot of athletes, most athletic person you've ever trained just somebody that you looked at and like wow, that they are different.
Dr. Joel Seedman 27:30 Amir of doula. He's a player of the Vikings. He's a genetic freak. He's, I mean, he just watched him do any exercises like wow, this guy is 3% body fat. He's got incredible muscle control even before we started training. Yeah, I think he can have a genetic freak. Nick VinZant 27:50 You can just tell right when they walk into the gym.
Dr. Joel Seedman 27:53 Yeah, totally. Totally. There's certain indicators certain certain telling signs for sure.
Nick VinZant 27:58 How do you feel about bro scientists on social media?
Dr. Joel Seedman 28:05 Well, I mean the bro scientists we have a love hate relationship that I think on there and what they feel is probably more of a hate than a love I'm pretty I'm a pretty loving caring guy, you know, at least I like to think so. But I you don't hold a hard feelings or I don't like to disrespect people, but they tend to be a little bit overly zealous in their training methodologies and they like to rip other people's methods who are different than theirs and I think they tend to maybe get a little bit insecure as well. If they feel I don't know maybe threatened or, you know, like your your what, what you're saying is, you know, kind of telling them that their methods aren't quite right and that my methods are better but you know, they tend to get a little bit of a chip on their shoulder so I don't mind them I think a lot of the the methods and protocols they put out maybe aren't the best or beneficial for a lot of people but at the same time a lot of what we know in the field of Kinesiology actually can stem back to bro science like you know Arnold's things that which a lot of what he did was still pretty solid so I can't rip on the bro guys too much.
Nick VinZant 29:13 This this is assuming pre COVID do i do i need to wipe down a machine if I don't sweat?
Dr. Joel Seedman 29:22 Oh man. I am kind of guilty this but I would say yes. I think out of courtesy and just general gym etiquette. I think it is important especially now as I said before, probably guilty a few times not doing it myself. But I'm a pretty big sweater. So once I start sweating, I definitely wipe down but nowadays got to
Nick VinZant 29:42 what do you think of the kind of thing that I see the lifting every day fad? Is that is that a real thing? Because I remember growing up is like you work out once and then you wait a day.
Dr. Joel Seedman 29:54 Yeah, it's, you know, I A lot of folks can't do that. It's just not practical. For schedule. So I don't always like to recommend that I think it is, can be beneficial. I personally do it because I, you know, I pretty much live in the gym so to speak. So I have the luxury of being able to train every day, it's not necessary, I think, you know, three times a week of work working out and training hard will do the job, if you have the luxury of training 567 days a week and you programmed correctly, and you're providing enough rest, you know, for certain movement patterns. So basically, you wouldn't want to crush the same muscle, the same movement patterns every single time with maximal weight. But if you if you ever want to be able to train everyday you can do and it can actually be very beneficial, but it has to be done right. And technique and form have to be locked in. Because if it's not, you're setting yourself up for disaster with a lot of injuries.
Nick VinZant 30:46 strangest exercise you've ever seen someone do in a gym.
Dr. Joel Seedman 30:51 Oh, man. Shoot. Oh, there was one on posted on Instagram. Somebody brought in like a sword like a real sword. And they were on the elliptical machine. And they were like, flinging it around and doing like, I mean, it was like hardcore combat Lee and they were either training to be an extra in like Game of Thrones, or they had some serious anger issues. They wanted to take advantage. I don't know, man. It was a little freaky. I remember seeing on Instagram, probably about three or four months ago. So that was that was that was pretty crazy right Nick VinZant 31:25 there. Is there like an age where you can see like, oh people this is when somebody's gonna physically declined. Like, is there an age where you can almost pinpoint like, 31? Man, you're done?
Dr. Joel Seedman 31:37 Yeah, it's I would say there is definitely ranges because you will see some some pretty unique. You know, some people can go into their 50s and 60s with bad form and get away with it. You got some kids now you're seeing even high schoolers or even middle schoolers actually start to get injuries. It's really weird that we're seeing so many injuries in young population. So you know, I think people would have said, you know, a decade or two ago, as soon as you hit, you know, your 30s or 40s, you know, things really start to break down. I mean, that's still true. But it's it can start to varying degrees as young as 10 1112 years old now, it's insane. But I would say generally speaking, what I've seen with my athletes and populations, and even in my own body, mid 20s, once those kind of mid 20s hit, if you've been been training hard and you haven't been doing it right, if things start to break down, it's exactly what happened with me it's actually kind of was a blessing in disguise. That was what kind of prompted me to, to go further in this field. Do my own research.
Nick VinZant 32:33 That's really all the questions I've got what's coming up next for you. I know you got a lot of things happening.
Dr. Joel Seedman 32:40 Yeah, no, it's it's an exciting time right now. I've got some good good products on my website I've worked over a long time on I have my book that came out not too long ago, a little over a year ago, movement redefined. I literally spent eight years on that it kind of represents my life's work when it comes to the strength conditioning because it kind of documented everything that I've done over the last 17 years and all the research I did the last eight or nine years and it includes all my training methods and really everything that I do with my athletes and clients including the practical side of it, as well as the the science with hundreds and hundreds of studies to kind of support and explain why I do things the way I do them. So that's that's a big one. It's really been a big seller for me. You know, I got a lot of different athletes I work with baseball season, there's one up here so get someone baseball guys back. And then you know, there's a lot of, I think right now the thing that I'm kind of interested with is we have a lot of injuries going on in the NFL. Fortunately, none of the guys that I've worked with, but I was saying this when COVID hit several, you know, well, I guess months ago now I was thinking this to to all my athletes and to really everyone I would have this discussion with is Watch out when the NFL season and all these sports come back there's going to be a lot a lot of big injuries because guys were not prepared, right, they took a lot of time off and then combined with a lot of the training methods that we see in these professional sports which are subpar. In my opinion, it was just a recipe for disaster. So I think we're gonna have a lot of guys that we got that we got to work on. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on some of these guys that got injuries and help them kind of rehab and get back to where they were in beyond with proper training methods. So I think a lot of IT professionals in this field and kinesiologist are going to have to work it off in this next year with all these injuries that we're seeing.
Nick VinZant 34:32 All right, last most important question. How much you bench? Oh,
Dr. Joel Seedman 34:39 man, I mean I haven't maxed out for so long. It would be over 200 pounds let's put it that way. I rarely max out, if I can't do something with a good ecentric isometric hold and and really be able to lock it in for good quality. I rarely touch any more just because the consequences are They outweigh the benefits. So I just don't even I don't even do it.
Nick VinZant 35:05 I want to thank Dr. Seedman, so much for joining us if you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts, or Profoundly Pointless on Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included his information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast. He has a lot of really cool information. I mean, even if you're just checking out his Instagram, some of the exercises there, they just, they give you different ideas, besides just hopping on an elliptical machine walking endlessly, basically, it's cool to kind of check out.
Political Violence Researcher Chelsea Daymon
With the Presidential election fast approaching, tension are rising everywhere. But when do those tension spill over into violence? Political Violence and Terrorism Researcher Chelsea Daymon joins us. We talk domestic extremists, religious terrorists and the internet's role in all of it. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Interview with Political Violence Researcher Chelsea Daymon
Show Notes and topics covered
What is the most dangerous terrorist group
What is the most dangerous extremist group
Is the United States seeing a rise in domestic terrorism
How are terrorists using the internet and social media
Is terrorism increasing
What is the goal of political violence
Is the United States seeing more far-right terrorism
Nick VinZant 0:11 Hey, everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless, my name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, we're going to take a look into the dangerous world of political violence, and then count down the top five Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Chelsea Daymon 0:25 And since then we've seen more religious violence, which there is a theory that violence that has a religious angle to it tends to be more lethal. There are a handful of elements broadly, that are looking at the concept of governments and their ideas that the government is too big or too involved in American society. And therefore it needs to change. And more extreme elements may say that it needs to change by bringing down the whole system. And I don't feel like in my lifetime, I've witnessed a time where people are so divided.
Nick VinZant 1:11 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 we usually stay away from politics on this show, just because people get mad, and I don't think that you're going to whichever side you're on, I don't think that you're going to convince anybody. But it's also that mindset. That is something that our first guest studies. Because when you when you look at the current world today, I don't think that anybody would make an argument that tensions aren't high. And those tensions can spill, this can spill over into political violence. Our first guest has some fascinating insight into that world, both domestically here in the United States. And also in terms of terrorism all over the world, and the way that terrorist organizations are using the internet to really get their message across and to recruit people. This is political violence researcher, Chelsea Damon, when you look at political violence right now, are we in a more violent time,
Chelsea Daymon 2:22 We can't really say that we're in a time that's more violent or less violent, there's always been political violence and terrorism throughout history. And today, of course, we see a lot more, mostly, in part because we're so connected as a society. So it's much easier to see what we see on TV or on the internet, and think we're in a time of increased violence. Of course, we have seen a bigger uptick in certain types of political violence, or, as we like to call it terrorism as well, especially since 911. And the whole al Qaeda period that we saw. And then, of course, more recently, in the last number of years, we had ISIS come onto the scene, which really increased a lot of the publicity that we heard about terrorism as well as attacks, both mostly in Iraq and Syria, of course, but also overseas in European countries majorly.
Nick VinZant 3:27 So when we talk about political violence, like what constitutes political violence and terrorism, exactly,
Chelsea Daymon 3:33 so there's debate on that there isn't really an agreed upon definition, although many experts and academics will agree that there are certain elements that equal political violence or terrorism. And that usually includes using violence, most of the time against a population of civilians, and sometimes also government entities or areas, say like a embassy or a base, a military base, but using violence to create either political change or get a message of wanting political change. So using it also almost as what they call a theater of terrorism in the sense of many groups know that if they commit an attack, or what we saw years ago, and especially in the 80s, of hijacking airplanes, that that will get news and it will make the news and it will help the group's message whatever that message might be get more publicity and reach a broader audience that potentially can help them with their cause or gain supporters to their cause.
Nick VinZant 4:51 When you look at kind of the main groups behind political violence all over the world, like who are the big ones that we're talking about,
Chelsea Daymon 4:59 well, that's it. Very loaded question because there are many groups with many different ideologies across the spectrum, currently, or seeing violence that is both causal in the sense that there's a cause back behind it, as well as violence that is based on causes, but also with a religious tinge. But when I say religious, I don't necessarily mean it represents the religion that a group is saying that they're representing. And so there have been waves of terrorism, as they call it. And right now, we do see an uptick in jihadist terrorism, which we've seen for a number of years. And since then, we've seen more religious violence, which there is a theory that violence that has a religious angle to it tends to be more lethal, because there is less restraint in the sense that it is something that potentially in a group's ideology is condoned by a higher power. So there's less restraint in the sense of victims and the types of victims. However, we've also seen political violence that does have angles of more right wing, white supremacist leanings, that's something we're also seeing an uptick in. But it also gets quite complicated because, of course, in the States, for something that may be from the outside looking at it, from seeing it on the news or hearing about it in a newspaper, we might think right away, well, oh, that's terrorism. However, our justice system, sometimes it's much easier to try someone in the court of law, not on terrorism charges, but more on Hate, hate crimes and so forth, just because of the way our justice system works. Some of the shootings that maybe someone would say, No, that's terrorism, because they do have an angle that's trying to change some sort of part of the political society, however, isn't like a, an attacker isn't charged on terrorism charges. So
Nick VinZant 7:12 when you kind of look at what's happening in the States, is domestic terrorism, the biggest, the biggest kind of cause for concern? Are we still more worried about foreign terrorism,
Chelsea Daymon 7:23 I would say that foreign terrorism is always a potential issue. I mean, we do have a lot of implementations that we've established here in the States since September 11, which does make it a lot harder for groups to overseas groups, let's put it that way to stage attacks in the US. And I think that's also partly why we saw less ISIS or ISIS inspired attacks here in the States versus what we saw in the last number of years in European countries. However, that doesn't mean that we won't see potentially threats that are either called homegrown threats, or lone wolf is another term. There's a lot of debate on what we should really call them. However, we also have seen a huge uptick since Obama was elected in more right wing extreme right, whatever you want to term it groups or militias here in the States. And we have not actually seen those groups or even leaderless movements reduce, we have seen an increase in attacks that needy it might be on the part of one individual or a couple of individuals. However, it falls under some of the ideas of this extreme right. And the concept of like a leaderless movement. And it gets very tricky, because in the States, we of course, have the First Amendment and freedom of rights and freedom of speech. And when it comes to foreign groups, we have a foreign terrorist list that groups are designated on that list. And when you get into more propaganda and things found on the internet and content on the internet, it's a lot easier to take down content that is attributed to one of these groups on the foreign terrorist list.
Nick VinZant 9:26 When you look at those kind of groups, the ones here in the States, the right wing, white supremacy, like what are they trying to accomplish? What's the goal behind the violence?
Chelsea Daymon 9:36 Once again, that is a loaded question, because it's, it's hard to say that each group or each movement has the same goals. There are multiple branches if you could call them that, or narratives or ideologies that stem from a greater Greater concept, but that all have sort of different things that they're aiming for, I can highlight some of the main things that we see broadly over the more right wing, white nationalists, and all of the other things that fall under that spectrum. One is, of course, the issue of race, and, of course, white power. So a lot of the things you see with neo nazi groups, etc. There are a handful of elements broadly, that are looking at the concept of governments and their ideas that the government's is too big or too involved in American society. And therefore it needs to change. And more extreme elements may say that it needs to change by bringing down the whole system, and then rebuilding. So it's this idea of almost a utopian idea of create or escalate violence, or elements that will escalate unrest so that eventually the system falls, and then a group of individuals will come in and rebuild society into this idea of what they think it should be. And there's a lot of debate in the field about a concept of acceleration ism. And I am not an expert on that. But I can kind of give you a brief idea of the main concept, although there's a lot of elements within that that certain scholars and academics debate on. But acceleration ism is this idea that you accelerate the process of a societal collapse. So therefore, you can rebuild the society into what you think it should be. And while we see that with groups here in the States, we also could say in a sense that certain jihadist groups could also fall into that. And I know this will be very controversial. But if you look at ISIS per se, ISIS had its goal of creating a caliphate during its heyday and ruling land and having this so called state. Of course, the lost the territory, as we've seen now, although the trying to regain some of it. However, ISIS also had an apocalyptic angle to its message and its goals. And will McCants wrote a great book called ISIS apocalypse that's all about this. And if you think about that, the idea of bringing on the apocalypse or the collapse of society, it's almost something that a lot of groups, at some point have in the back of their minds of collapsing society or having an apocalypse then therefore, you build a utopian society afterwards.I mean, a lot of the narratives here in the states that we're seeing is also very anti immigrant, anti the other, there's this concept of othering, in psychology and social sciences of groups, look at themselves, as you know, you're a member of a group, but everyone else that's not a member is outside of the group, they're an other and when individuals take othering to the extreme, because of course, we could say, looking at as an analogy of sports teams here in the state, someone could say that they like baseball team a. And then you have a friend that likes baseball team B. And you know, each one is a member of or supports a different group. And yes, you can see that your friend that likes baseball, Team A is the other and it's more a fun thing. And you know, you joke about your team that you better and so forth. But if you take that to the extreme, and we see this with violence, in general, and in terrorism studies, you can actually look at the other and start dehumanizing them as an individual, we see this with hate crimes as well in terrorism. And when you look at someone so much as an other and dehumanize them, then it's much easier to commit acts of violence against them because you don't really see them as human. And we're seeing some of this to an extent, like I said, with rhetoric on anti immigrant, and so forth and individuals from different nationalities and races, unfortunately. And it's it's hard to times separate some of this rhetoric with things we do here in in coming from politicians, because we have seen a lot of debates on immigration here in the States. And so I think while that comes from more of a political debate, sometimes these ideas She will, more extreme elements to take on these narratives and adjust them to their own liking and their own messaging to gain support.
Nick VinZant 15:11 So when I look at some of the ones, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but some of the ones here in the States and other places, it seems almost as if like, it's the dog chasing the car, so to speak, like with these groups, if they got what they want, would they really even know what to do? Right, like, let's say, this movement in the states takes down the government. Well, now what? Like, did they have any kind of organization? Are they just kind of trying to start the revolution and see what happens?
Chelsea Daymon 15:41 That's a really great question. And I personally cannot answer that. I don't think I mean, some will probably disagree with me. But I don't think that a lot of these movements in the States, at least in their current form, are strong enough have the resources and the manpower to actually overthrow the governments. I think some of them have capabilities, enough to create more civil unrest.
Nick VinZant 16:08 How were some of these different groups using the internet? I know, that's one of the things that you kind of study.
Chelsea Daymon 16:13 Yeah. So it's interesting. Once again, it's similar and different, depending on the types of groups we're talking about. I'm sure some of your listeners at least have heard about the Islamic State ISIS. And their use of the internet, because they really kind of took the internet and what it had to offer to the next level, ISIS came on the scene, of course, during this age where there is much more fluidity, and you could be your own propagandist and own content creator, where they were actually very smart with their media capabilities. And this was from everything from using these platforms, to also using software and creating videos that were actually really most of them really well done. Not all of them, but they they had capabilities, where the editing, and the way that they the stories within these videos, and the way the videos were done, were very dynamic. And depending on where you stood on the spectrum, like if you were someone that potentially was looking at ISIS as a group that you might want to join the videos, in the heyday of ISIS were really well done to the extent that they were engaging. I mean, even as a researcher, you can see the difference between older groups and how they used media and videos between ISIS group videos and groups, as well as using platforms like they used to use more social media platforms that were not as heavily encrypted. They later moved to encrypted platforms, but before they were on Twitter, and had a very strong presence on Twitter until about 2016, when Twitter heavily crackdown on ISIS accounts in any ISIS supporter accounts. But before that, you know, they were disseminating content links to content across other websites and and sharing sites and other social media platforms where you could also get content. And so they really knew how to utilize these platforms to spread their message spread their propaganda, hijacking, hashtags like for at one point, they hijacked a Justin Bieber hashtag and flooded Twitter, with ISIS propaganda. So if anyone went to this Justin Bieber hashtag, they started seeing ISIS content, change the game a little bit. It made ISIS and its supporters move to encrypted platforms, which their favorite one was telegram and on telegram, it still allowed them to disseminate all of their content, including everything from the videos, to newsletters to magazines. ISIS inspired gifts and memes. And so it gave them an environment of supporters and like minded individuals. It also cut down on how much they could recruit because it was or it is telegram is an encrypted platform and therefore, you need to have access to it. And then when you have access to it, you have to find access to channels or chats that are ISIS supporters or ISIS news agencies and so forth. But as as researchers and the tech companies and industries realized what was going on, through the years it's they've become much better at getting rid of content and preventing From being spread across different platforms, there's a organization gifts si t that works with some of the big names like Google and YouTube and also smaller entities to share information when when something is posted on one website. So say like a video was posted on YouTube, they can identify that content through digital hashes. And then the digital hashes are shared amongst a whole consortium of tech companies and social media companies, etc, which can take that content off of all the platforms all at once. But they do tend to try to go to platforms that are a little bit more secure, that have some sort of encryption. But they also are on platforms like Tick tock, and we've seen them on WhatsApp and rocket chat is another one. So when we think of content from more of the right wing, white supremacist groups, once again, that gets a little bit more complicated because of freedom of speech and laws on being able to post things, especially here in the States. So a lot of content tends to stay on platforms unless it violates their terms of service, or use, which as a user of say, Twitter or Facebook, when you have an account, you agree to abiding by these terms of service or use. So that's a whole nother can of worms.
Nick VinZant 21:38 Are you ready for the harder slash listener submitted questions?
Chelsea Daymon 21:44 Oh, my Oh, okay. Yes, let's let's try this out. Hopefully, I'll be able to answer them.
Nick VinZant 21:48 What scares you?
Chelsea Daymon 21:51 Hmm. Wow. You know, no one has ever asked me that question. And I think that's a fabulous question. And it can go in so many directions. But I, for me, personally, what scares me is not necessarily related to say, terrorist groups political violence. It's, it's more looking at, especially here in the States, I'd say, I feel like there's a greater division of society, then. I remember growing up, I mean, I'm American citizen, I've lived overseas as well. But I've spent most of my life in the States. And I don't feel like in my lifetime, I've witnessed a time where people are so divided. And I feel like Unfortunately, the division is creating. I wouldn't say culture, that's not the right word. But it's creating an environment that it's it's very hard to have a rational conversation with individuals about topics, whether it might be politics, or say, like the protests we've seen here in the States. And I feel like facts and entities and individuals that we used to be able to look at as figures that would provide straight facts and reliable facts. Like we don't always have that anymore. And and as someone that kind of sometimes does a deep dive with extremist groups and cycle psychology of individuals involved and narratives and propaganda and so forth. If you do see that, somewhat. And so I think that scares me is that that lack of rational thinking that I'm witnessing in our society here in the States?
Nick VinZant 23:51 Is there a kind of a common theme among people who get sucked into these different groups?
Chelsea Daymon 23:57 Ah, you know, that's something that all of us, including researchers from years ago, before my time, people have always wanted sort of a profile of someone that will become a terrorist. And I think maybe people that watch, especially TV shows that have to do with true crime or shows that are based around investigations and so forth of crime. You know, there's this idea that there's a profile of a serial killer or proof profile of a race, rapist. And people have tried to come up with a profile of someone that will get involved in in terrorism or political violence. And to this date, we do not have one. It's all the research we've seen. It's very much a personal process and very individualized. There are some things that people might have in common, but once again, it's not everyone. It can be everything from we've seen people that are disgruntled about something that they see in their society or their their environment and and this level of disenfranchisement or or disgruntlement can lead to more feelings of anger, where they get to the point that they think the only way they can express these feelings is through violent actions. We've also seen where, especially, for instance, with individuals that traveled to ISIS from foreign countries that were not involved in Syria or Iraq, so what we call foreign fighters. Like individuals, we saw a handful of groups of friends that went from countries like the UK, and they traveled together for ice to ISIS to join the group. And, and this kind of falls into this idea of sometimes people, it's, it's going with a crowd, or going along with their friends, or looking for an adventure, or also the concept of being involved in something that they think is bigger than themselves. So when you kind of look at individuals that have relayed their story of getting involved in groups, a lot of the time you can actually point relate to some of the things they say like sometimes people truly thought that a group and their motives was for a good cause.
Nick VinZant 26:30 feet to the fire, you had to pick one. Who's the most dangerous group out there right now?
Chelsea Daymon 26:35 Oh, wow. Um, I'm not sure I could say there's a most dangerous group, because they all are. There are a lot of active groups, they all have different motivations and different things that they want. I mean, if you had asked me that question, say a couple of years ago, I would would have said ISIS just because they're highly active and fairly well organized in the sense of getting individuals and motivating Angel individuals to join them, and then also commit acts on their part. But now, I don't know if it's necessarily a specific group, I do see the rise in this extreme alt right, right wing narratives that we're seeing as dangerous. I wouldn't necessarily say they're dangerous on the level of attacks. Like, I don't I don't see that. It's on the level of like, what we saw on 911, and so forth. So I, I couldn't really say that there's the most dangerous group, I think there are a lot of active groups. And we will probably see groups across multiple spectrums take advantage of governments that are preoccupied with COVID-19. Because that is kind of what's putting a strain on a lot of countries right now.
Nick VinZant 28:03 That's pretty much all the questions I have what's coming up next for you.
Chelsea Daymon 28:07 Oh, next for me is continuing my PhD, which I'm highly involved in. So that's a long process, of course. So dissertation research and writing and so forth. And then continuing research, of course, specifically on groups use of the internet and platforms. And other than that, I guess it's it's kind of like a day by day thing at this point.
Nick VinZant 28:33 I want to thank Chelsea so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have linked to her on our social media accounts. We're Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And we have also included her information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast.
Backup Singer Sara Mann
From touring with Miley Cyrus and performing with WIllie Nelson, to singing in Rogue One and Frozen 2, Sara Mann is the renowned voice behind some of your favorite entertainment. We talk the life of a backup singer, touring with pop stars and singing in movies. Then, we unveil a criminally good Top 5.
Interview with Back Singer and Session Singer Sara Mann
Speakers
Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host
Sara Mann: Backup and Session Singers
Episode notes
How do you become a backup singer
How do you become a session singer
How much does a backup singer make
How much does a session singer make
What’s it like to tour with Miley Cyrus
Are backup singers better than the main star
What are artists looking for in a backup singer
Backup singers that became major stars
Do backup singers also do solo work
Nick VinZant 0:12
Hey everybody welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, we're gonna go on a musical journey and count down a criminally good top five
Sara Mann 0:24 as a backup singer. There's more to it, I guess than just the music part of it. There's also I guess, a look and an energy on stage. I mean, like frozen to shore. I knew that was gonna be a big one. And those those were probably the most stressful sessions to date for me of my life. Like that was more nerve wracking for me to go into that room and sing on that that movie than being in a stadium singing in front of 20,000 people as Miley Cyrus is backup singer. There were so many screaming kids, it was just kids and like glow sticks for days and miles. And it was amazing.
Nick VinZant 0:59 I want 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 our first guest has done just an incredible amount of stuff in the music business. And she's someone that you have probably seen and heard and just not realized it. Because she's been on tour with everybody from Miley Cyrus, Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson, and appeared in movies like Rogue One and frozen two. This is backup and session singer. Sara Mann, what essentially are you doing? Like what's the purpose of having a backup singer?
Sara Mann 1:40 I mean, the music has been pre recorded, usually and there are already harmonies and things that have that are on that record. So then if you go live and you go see the concert, you kind of your ears used to hearing whatever you heard on, you know, on that record, you're used to hearing the melody And then there's oohs and ahhs and all sorts of stuff and obviously the lead singer can't do that on his or her own. So then there are backup singers and backup singers fill in the other harmonies and the other parts that are that were written in the song, but I just wanted to add as a backup singer, there's more to it, I guess, than just the music part of it. There's also I guess, a look and an energy on stage. You know, there's, there are stereotypical backup singers that are you know, we're dancing and we're smiling and we're in tight, you know, maybe some are in little black dresses. And, you know, there's kind of like a stigma to it, where it's, it's also adding part of the show. So there's, there's that as well. Part of the entertainment of it. In regard to what I'm doing now, I do less backup singing than I did 10 years ago, because I'm a mom now and I have kids. For the past at least 10 years I've been more of a session singer doing recording stuff in studio, instead of going out on the rode, I don't go I don't tour as much. I do a little bit, but not like I used to.
Nick VinZant 3:04 So a session a session, I'll be able to pronounce this eventually. session singer is what
Sara Mann 3:13 Basically a session singer is a studio singer, where basically we are, we go into a recording studio or like right now we're singing from home in our own home studios. And there's either music put down in front of you and you sing what the composer wrote or you're singing, you know, some backgrounds that maybe you came up with on your own or were discussed, and you're recording it into a microphone, as you know, versus being on stage live singing. session singing also, you know, when you hear when you're watching a movie, there's you know, choir going on in the background in the score. I don't know if you've ever noticed that or not. But that is there's a group of singers that's actually recording that choir sound
Nick VinZant 3:59 I was looking at that in your bio. You've worked in some really big movies recently. I mean, alita battle angel, venom predator, Rogue One.
Sara Mann 4:08 That's all yeah, those are all choir. Those are all big, big choirs with lots of lots of singers. So do you ever go back and listen, you'll go Oh, because when I was younger, I sang on a couple things when I was in elementary school, like home alone, I think on those movies. And that was, that was my first I was well, first of all, I was in choir when I was in elementary school and high school and college. So I learned how to, you know, that's how to blend and you know, you start reading music when you're young and doing that. And then I had a choir teacher at my high school who knew the vocal contractors in town who knew the composer's in town and they said, We need some kids to sing on a couple films. And so I was chosen with a couple other kids to go and sing. You know, like, I kept that bell sweet sour bells like that kind of stuff. So I did it when I was younger, and then my career kind have changed I wanted to be on Broadway in the middle after after high school and then I decided I wanted and then I fell into backup singing and you know,
Nick VinZant 5:07 can you go back in and can you pick out your voice like that? That's me on Rogue One. That's me, right?
Sara Mann 5:13 Oh no, not at all. There are no not for something like that. There are movies that I can that but I was paid, you know, more as this or hired more as a soloist? I have some friends that do. I think a lot of like, I'm not a soprano, but a lot of Sopranos. There's more solo opportunities for choir film, work solo stuff, like there be one beautiful lilting soprano voice kind of you know, soaring above the others. You've probably heard that in a film maybe not even realized it just to I'm not going to demonstrate it because that's not my forte but that is something where you would be able to go Oh, that's me. You know if that's me, I got to do that. I don't do that. That. That's not my my wheelhouse, but I've done a lot of voices and stuff so there are times there are things like for example saying the movie saying and I know you have kids there are I did I did a lot of different little voices in that movie with a couple girls and we did primarily the most well known one are the three bunnies that go out my gosh, look at her, but
Nick VinZant 6:25 I know exactly what you're talking about.
Sara Mann 6:27 Yeah, that's it. That's a moment where the first girl that talks the way that they mixed it we didn't i didn't know for sure who was we didn't know who's gonna get picked for what but the way they mixed it in that movie. The first Bunny is me. And then the second Bunny is another girl and the third Bunny is another girl. And we did so that's that first funny I know is my voice so I can always go That's me. And then we also did the spiders and we were there's these little foxes that come out and they sing. I think in Japanese that they're like okay and IKEA, IKEA. They do this. They keep trying to audition to be in To show in the movie and that's us. We did. We did a handful of stuff and we sang backgrounds on all those songs. So yeah, that's the movie where I'm like, Oh, that's me, I can hear me. There's some Disney like, teen beach, those that like, you know, those kind of movies where this team I can't talk easy movies where, you know, once in a while like I might have been alone on my part, which is an alto part or something and I'll go Oh, that's me because I was the only one singing that note. But I'm the only person that would really know that. Really? Yeah. A recent thing that's kind of cool is frozen to the making us that's on Disney Plus, they we sang on that there were some different sessions with group singers. And if you watch the making of you'll see me in there, which was kind of fun because I know they had cameras on us he so now I don't know what Episode Episode Three or four and there's some there's a couple of shots of the choir, I'm standing in there.
Nick VinZant 8:02 So when you go into these different projects, like do you know if it's gonna be a big thing or not? Going into it
Sara Mann 8:08 not always no. I mean, you obviously you hope that even big thing meaning monetarily speaking,
Nick VinZant 8:16 I would say just overall, right like it's gonna be big a lot of people are gonna pay attention and it's gonna be big.
Sara Mann 8:22 I mean, like frozen to shore. I knew that was gonna be a big one. And those those were probably the most stressful sessions to date for me of my life. Like that was more nerve wracking for me to go into that room and sing on that movie than being in a stadium singing in front of 20,000 people as Miley Cyrus is backup singer like that. That wasn't like singing in a recording studio for frozen two was more scary for me. But that's probably because of the stigma with that movie. But we don't a lot of the times we don't know what we're going to go into saying the day we go in. We have no idea what it is. They don't generally try not to tell You've just for, you know, NDA purposes you go in, and then there's usually some kind of announcement like, this is what you're singing on today, sometimes, you know ahead of time.
Nick VinZant 9:09 So I'll be really direct, like, how much do you get paid for this?
Sara Mann 9:14 That all varies. It depends on if it's a if it's a film, or if it's TV pays differently if it's a giant choir of singers you get paid less than if it's just you by yourself, you know, solo, there's a solo singer scale, and then there's a three to six and then, you know, are you asking like specific numbers?
Nick VinZant 9:36 Sure, if you want to give them yeah,
Sara Mann 9:38 I don't think I know that, um, off the top of my head.
Nick VinZant 9:41 It sounds basically like a comfortable living.
Sara Mann 9:45 Well, that depends on how often you get to work. If you if you're doing one session, and honestly, I do think many of us have other jobs that we do. For example, my ex husband and I opened two restaurants together while I was on tour as a backup singer for Miley Cyrus, so while that was being a backup singer certainly paid the bills and was able to support both of us during that time, he was able to go open the restaurants while I was on the road singing. But now, I mean, there are times when I'm not on the road, you're not making any money at all. So that money, usually, you know, you have to be smart with it, put it in the bank. If you go on tour for three months, you're not going to go on tour again, right after that. And artists generally tours, maybe a couple times a year, or maybe one big tour a year and then they go home and they record a whole record. And then they release that record and then they have to do promo for it. And then maybe comes a tour assuming that the record does well or if it's a big artist, there's always a tour. But those are like once a year kind of things. So you're making a big chunk of money for three months. And that's all you have for that year. Let's say if that's the only artists that you work for, this is the backup singing world. Talking about. So, you know, having another job is not a bad idea. The same thing goes for session settings. If you do one session or maybe two sessions a month, maybe you're making, maybe you're making $500 on that day for that one session, and maybe the next time you do it, you made another 500. So that's you made $1,000 that month, you probably need another job, whether whether it's residuals coming in from other sessions you did or you sing in a choir that pays or you teach on the side, I think many of us do other things, which is why I was going back to the restaurant thing for me. That was my, you know, I was always I did waitressing and hostess saying and I was a receptionist. I had so many jobs like, my resume looks fortuitous. But I also I also did a lot of things that that's not on my website. You know, if I were to be like, Oh, yeah, look, I was on tour with Miley Cyrus but I was also a receptionist at Tata yo in Hollywood. Nobody knew.
Nick VinZant 12:00 Did you ever get discouraged throughout your career? Did you ever feel like you needed to try something else?
Sara Mann 12:06 I have done quite a bit of pounding the pavement throughout my life. You know, wanting to out of college, I wanted to be on Broadway. I moved to New York. I lived in New York, I auditioned for everything. I got called back for everything. I didn't get cast in most of those things. And there was a lot of disappointment there for me and then you kind of have to pave your own way. With one No, you know, comes a yes in a different form. I auditioned for Aida on Broadway. I didn't get the part. But the piano player liked me and said, Do you want to come audition for Harry Belafonte? And I was like, Sure. So then I went audition for Harry Belafonte. And I got a job as his backup singer. So I was like, you know, they're my, my lifelong dream of being on Broadway flipped to Okay, well, at least now I'm making money as a backup singer from for, you know, an amazing humanitarian and activist. So I'm not going to complain about this. But you know, I There's but there's still that little thing inside of me. It's like, I wish I would have, you know, stayed in New York and tried test a little bit harder to, you know, so I don't know, maybe it's that kind of thing. Maybe it's you maybe I should just go back to New York and but Broadway's not really working anyway.
Nick VinZant 13:17 Damned if you do, damned if you don't
Sara Mann 13:21 just become a doctor 60 by the time you graduate from med school, but that's okay.
Nick VinZant 13:27 As my as one of my uncle's said, you can always just sell drugs. Thanks. Thanks, uncle. That's really helpful. Um, how did you kind of get started?
Sara Mann 13:39 Well, that was it in a nutshell. I Went, went to college for musical theater. Once he graduated, moved and worked at a couple recording studios because I was still this is the thing I was still in college, but I'm still playing guitar and piano and writing my own songs. I got a record deal right out of college with MCA and recorded some stuff for them moved to New York. still wanted to be on Broadway. I mean, I was kind of doing this chameleon thing where I was, you know, whoever wanted me, whatever, whatever was going to pay the bills I would do as a singer. And then I had this, you know, audition, and the, like I said, the piano player was like, hey, Harry Belafonte is looking for a backup singer. Right now. We're having auditions tomorrow, you should come. And so my agent got the materials and they were messengered over to me, and I learned the stuff and it showed up the next day and I went through series of callbacks for that. But I ended up getting that gig and that led to, you know, more opportunities. For me, like I'm on an airplane going. I remember coming home from Puerto Rico or something with Harry Belafonte. I was sitting next to a guy who, when you're on the road, you always have luggage tags, numbered like luggage tags. So it's like You know, maybe there's 50 people on the tour, everybody gets a number one through 15. Usually, let's say Harry's number was number one, and I was in the band. So I had number eight, and I had all my bags have these tags on them. And the guy sitting next to me, whom I didn't know, had a number tag on his bag from a different tour. And it was a low, it was a low number, meaning, the more important you are, the lower the number is. So I knew this guy's was like number two or something on his bag. And I thought, okay, I wonder what I'm saying. And so I started, of course, he probably didn't even want to talk to me. But I started talking to him, and just got out the information out of them. He's the tour manager for Brian Setzer. And I was like, you know, in my head, I was like, Ding ding, ding, meaning, you know, this is a good opportunity for me to network, although I hate doing it. But I started talking to him. I got his name or he, you know, he said he might be looking for a new backup singer in a couple months. And I was like, Okay, great. You know, here's my info and I followed up with him. I got the audition. I went down to some recording studio in LA met Brian Setzer saying for him, didn't get the job. But then six months later, they had fired the girl that they did hire and they hired me. So, there's just another example of like, you know, right place, right time or right amount of, you know, the bigger the balls. I don't know, that was just me going. Okay. I better say something to him.
Nick VinZant 16:24 When you're auditioning when people are looking for a backup singer. Yeah, I would imagine that they, they want somebody who's obviously really good at it, but did they want them to not stand out too much at the same time?
Sara Mann 16:38 You mean vocally or physically?
Nick VinZant 16:40 Both, I guess.
Sara Mann 16:41 Right. Yeah. Vocal, you know, that's a that's a tough one. I don't know if I want to go on the record with any answer to that. I think it depends, I think, for look for Harry Belafonte. I had was just coming out of college. They, I mean, he, he must he has the biggest heart because I don't think I was really in an attractive place in my life. Like I think I was wearing this is like during Kurt Cobain, like Doc Martens and Levi's and flannels, I cut my hair really short. I were really dark brown lipstick. It was like the late 90s. And I thought, you know, I probably had like 15 pounds to lose. So but but vocally you know, I went in there and I was the right one for the job as a singer. So I but physically, I'm not sure if it really, you know, they kind of had to do a little bit of a makeover on me. I remember. They took me to like the Mac makeup store in New York and I got makeup lessons and they bought me all this stuff and they asked me to grow my hair out. I was asked to lose weight, actually, not specifically by Harry but somebody else on the team thought that it wouldn't be a bad idea if I maybe dropped 10 pounds. That was the first time in my life I'd ever heard something like that. I think that then there are other jobs that I've had where I was asked to double the lead singer. So, yeah, I had to be if just as good if not better than the person that I was singing with. And then physically, I mean, you kind of have to, you definitely don't want to stand. I mean, I don't know, I don't think anybody stands out that more than the star that's on stage. I mean, they don't have to light you that much. You can be in the dark if you want. But then again, you know, a lot of those backup singers are a lot better than who they're the lead singer is. You know, I but I know a lot of these people. So I really can't. I mean, I think, right. I mean, there's a movie called 20 feet from stardom that really touches on all this stuff. And if you've seen it Yeah, I mean, a lot of times the backup singers are a lot better than the person that they're Behind but that's that's just the, you know, I've had a couple of those jobs to where I'm, I'm just going, Oh my god, you know, you're just trying to help the person stay in tune that you're singing backup for.
Nick VinZant 19:12 But there's definitely instances where the backup singers would be better than the main singer.
Sara Mann 19:18 Oh, yeah, i a lot I'm sure a lot of the time, it's like that. I'm usually I think saying back up for Katharine McPhee for years. And I still, you know, anytime that I would be on stage with her, I would just be standing there with my jaw dropped because her voice is so gorgeous. Just like oh my god. So that mean that's an instance where I'm like, oh, God to have her voice, you know, like, I don't sing I don't sing like her. But I also you know, that you know, you can't sing if you think back for Celine Dion, you're definitely you're probably not better. You know what I mean?
Nick VinZant 19:53 That makes sense. To me. They're like, there's there's probably some people that are kind of studio creations and then there's Ones that like oh, wow, they are. Oh, they are the real deal
Sara Mann 20:04 Yeah, I mean I don't know if there are really studio creations anymore. I mean that because the the music business is so different now. I don't really know if I've given much thought to that to be honest because we're all up there. Even if somebody's not the greatest singer, like to be, to be really honest, I think Billy Eilish is super amazing and, and genius and talented and all of those things, but do I think she's the most amazing vocalist? No, I mean, she's, I think she's just got a package of all of this stuff, these amaze these songs and she's self produced all those and, you know, there's a whole thing there, but do I, you know, I don't think it's that hard to say, you know, do you do some of that kind of singing is like, okay, you know, I don't but she can't, but I would, you know, sing back up for a second. You know, because she's, she's an artist. And that's valuable.
Nick VinZant 21:02 Are you ready for some of the harder slash listener submitted questions? You've been a part of. Let's see Harry Belafonte, Miley Cyrus Billy Ray Cyrus, Katharine McPhee, Sheryl Crow, of all the tours that you've been a part of which one was the funnest tour for you?
Sara Mann 21:24 I'm gonna say Miley. That was just I mean, those being on tour with Miley is like an upper echelon of touring that I hadn't had a chance to do yet. Just flying private and being in like the most amazing hotels for seasons and you know, staying in these hotels and go we really went around the world, which and I had done that with with other people as well. But I think Miley the group, the band, we were all kind of little family and there were only seven eight of us and it was you know, it was fun we had we had some really good good times good tour bus parties and stuff. It was at a good time in my life. I was newly married but having you know, just just feeling like you're kind of in you're in the swing of things, you know?
Nick VinZant 22:21 Yeah, kind of prime of life so to speak.
Sara Mann 22:24 Like 30 years old and just sort of really in you know, no kids yet no major responsibility.
Nick VinZant 22:31 Like the world is yours kind of I know. The feeling right? like everything's kind of clicking was when Wait, which tour was that one was that the wrecking ball? Sara Mann 22:41 tour time was fine. wonderworld Miley worlds I think it was Miley world, or wonder. No wonder world. I'm calling it Miley world, but that's not right. This was like the tail end of the Disney stuff. So we did the climb, which was from her Hannah Montana. The movie We did party in the USA and then wreckingball was after. Okay, so this was a tour like right before that stuff. This is right before she the hair she she went rogue. It's Yeah,
Nick VinZant 23:15 that's like, right. It's kind of before she got really, really super famous, but also when she was kind of in her prime before people were like my Miley,
Sara Mann 23:24 I mean, she was super famous when we were on tour there, but it's a different there were so many screaming kids, it was just kids and like glow sticks for days and miles. And it was amazing. And stuffed animals and like all sorts of stuff. And I haven't been on tour with her in years, but I'm sure it's a totally different group of those kids now grew up, you know, they're in there, whatever they, you know, some of them are in their 20s because she's, she's what in her 30s now, I think so. So Low Earth, Earth 29 or something she was like 18 or 19 when we started when we run tour together it's been 10 years.
Nick VinZant 24:02 So when you go on these tours, is it like people imagine like Rock Star Tours? Who's having fun all the time and alcohol and drugs and crazy stuff? Or is it something else?
Sara Mann 24:13 Definitely a little bit of that? With Yes, but it's it. There's a lot of hard work though that I think people don't, don't realize that we're also doing like, for example, we maybe wake up at, let's say 4am for a lobby call. You drag all your stuff down to the lobby, you go you get on a bus or you Whatever it is, you get to an airport you get on an air first flight out at seven, you fly wherever you need to go if it's you know, sometimes it's like not a private plane, it's just a normal flight. And then you know, you get on and you land in Detroit and then you do as you know, you could go directly from the airport over to soundcheck which at the venue so it's like two o'clock and you do some kind of soundcheck for a couple hours. And then you might maybe have like an hour of downtime and then you go and you have dinner, then you kind of do hair and makeup, you get ready to go. You're really tired so at some point you'd probably tried to catch a nap whether that was on your tour bus if you had one or in the in that like I've I've literally taken folding chairs and put them together in a row like four of them in in my dressing room. And like take in my piece to take when with Harry's to take my costume was so big, it was like this big fluffy dress with different ruffles and stuff. And I could lay it over my body like a blanket and fall asleep like that. Or if it was winter, I would just use my winter coat. But like that's you know, you need if there was no couch for example in the room because a lot of these are like locker rooms for at stadiums and stuff. They're not like cushy dressing rooms the artist now has like they have all their furniture and stuff but you know, I'm just we're stuck in some room that like maybe some hockey team was playing in. So anyway, you could take like four folding chairs so you do that you get a nap you go then you get You've maybe you go have dinner, you go, you do your show the show's over at 11 o'clock at night, and then you finally get to go to bed. And maybe that's only for like five hours. And then you have to get up again and do the whole thing over again. If it's like if you're flying around, or sometimes you fall asleep on the bus, and you wake up that next morning at 7am or something and you're parked in Las Vegas where your next show is and you haven't taken a shower yet and you're not going to take one on the tour bus because nobody does that. But you have to wander inside the venue find you to find a cup of coffee, if you can, I mean, it's there are parts of it that are very, that can be rough, you know you're up there. I don't know how to explain there's, you need food, you know, there's sometimes there's food on your bus, but sometimes you know, you have to get an Uber and go find somewhere to eat breakfast because there's no breakfast on your bus. There might be some cereal and milk or something. But then there are moments where you have a couple days off and you're put up at four seasons insane St Louis or something, and you know you could to go and just see the town for a couple days which is lovely. And then that night you'll probably go have a nice dinner with your band and you know, go to the pool or whatever you know. And so it's, it's, there's a lot there's a lot of hard work there that traveling stuff, the scheduling, the lack of sleep, the lack of food, you don't really know when you're going to get it from where I used to just have snacks in my bag all the time. That kind of stuff. Even down to like when you're going to do your laundry, you know, I would wear my underwear inside out if I had to if I didn't have a chance to do laundry because you're doing it at the venue in a washer and dryer that you find or you have to find the time to go to the laundromat and do your clothes which is also not that glamorous. You know, it really varies. Or you throw down 20 bucks at the next hotel that you're at if you have two days there and you let them do your laundry which is nice to do or you go buy yourself some new clothes and just leave the old ones in hotel rooms. I would do that to get so tired of wearing the same things. I would just leave them somewhere, go here. Here's some jeans
Nick VinZant 28:08 Your favorite song that you've been on?
Sara Mann 28:10 favorite songs that I've been on?I say Hang on. Well, I sing on lady in the tramp, the remake of that recently. And we got to sing some of the original cues over again, which was like a really amazing moment for me that was one of my favorite movies as a kid. So I would say that stuff I also think some of the demos so I didn't get to sing. It didn't go final or anything but I got to sing all the he's a trained and I love him done.Hey, the trail. You know, all that. Janell Monet ended up doing it for the movie, but I got to sing all the demos for it which was like really cool for me.
Nick VinZant 29:00 So, this one's kind of interesting.Um, you don't have to say if this person is good or bad, but person who is least like their public perception,
Sara Mann 29:12 a person who is least like their public perception. I don't think I've worked with anybody that's not quite true to who they are. You know,
Nick VinZant 29:22 obviously you've done a lot of backup work, but you put out some solo stuff as well, right?
Sara Mann 29:28 Yeah, I have. I have a couple of different records over the years but I have a couple singles that I put out recently I did. There's one called human there's another one called the rack like these are just songs that I write and then I we produce them and I just put them out just because I feel like I need to keep keep the wheels turning, you know the other stuff, which is my my own creative stuff. It was, you know, always more of the dream for me to be the lead singer, not the backup singer. But you know, life works however it works. And I did put out a record, which is super close to my heart called lullabies, which is, I did a duet with Billy Ray Cyrus on it actually. And that's on iTunes also. That's a whole other story, but it the proceeds for that record, go to the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation, my ex husband and I had a son who died from polycystic kidney disease. So, at the time that all of that was going on, I wanted to do something kind of healing for myself. I felt like I had singers block like I just couldn't make sound after he died. And there was a good year where I was kind of, you know, not silent, but just couldn't sing. It made me want to cry every time I had to sing. It just brought up that that emotional stuff I guess singing in itself can be very emotional and anyway, so I decided to make a lullaby record and I, that's, that's another thing that I've done. That's there. That's my solo stuff.
Nick VinZant 31:08 Pretty much all the questions that I have, honestly, we kind of covered everything else. what's coming up next for you?
Sara Mann 31:16 Well, I'm gonna be doing some banana bread later. And
Nick VinZant 31:21 sounds really good actually. Can't go wrong with banana bread.
Sara Mann 31:25 I'm cooking some banana bread and dinner for my four children I'm singing on I'm doing some home record stuff. It's a lot of hard. It's a lot of work to that we've, you know, been so grateful to have but there's that's uh, you know, just that kind of stuff you know you're given a song and they go okay sing it you have to record yourself now. So now not only am I supposed to have my voice on this, I also have to engineer it. And you know, that takes input you know, kind of self produced the vocals and It takes it's a whole other skill that I've, luckily I learned how to do some of that a few years ago when I started doing voiceover work. But now we're like everybody's recording from home. So it's there's a real learning curve.
Nick VinZant 32:13 I want to thank Sara, so much for joining us if you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media, or Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we've also included her information in the RSS feed that's on this podcast. I just think that her story is so fascinating. Because here you have someone that has just been a part of such huge musical and entertainment moments. And there's so much that happens behind the scenes that you just don't know about. And I think that she just has an interesting perspective on all of those things.