38 Burst results for "Athletes"
Over the Next Hill Fitness
Carla Welcomes Dr. Jesse Easley of Schupp Chiropractic
"Today we're going to talk to Dr. Jesse Easley. Jesse is one of the practitioners at Shupp Chiropractic and Sports Injuries. So let's listen up and see why it's so important for you to visit there. Welcome to the show, Jesse. Hey, thanks, Carla. Glad to be here. It's so nice to have you here. I wanted to get some of your expertise, opinion on chiropractic and ART and all that stuff. I've been coming to the complex since 2014, and I'm pretty sure they opened in 2012. So yeah, I've been a patient for a long, long time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Longer than I've been there. Yeah. Not by much, though. I remember when you started. But if it wasn't for you guys there, I wouldn't be able to continue to run. So I wanted to really explain to my listeners the importance, obviously, we should be doing foam rolling, but sometimes we need a little bit deeper step. And so that's why I come to you guys. And I know that your office sees a lot of the badgers. Is that correct? We see the runners, track and field, cross country. OK. And then you do see some Olympians as well, don't you? Some of the people that went to. We do. A lot of the collegiate athletes continued on to run professionally. And so there have been quite a few in the last five, six years who have gone on to run for Olympic teams, both with the United States and then quite a few Australians and a couple other Canadian heptathletes. And yeah, but yeah, a couple. It keeps things interesting. know So I I've done, I think, everything you guys offer, the chiropractic, the dry needling, the ART, the Graston, the laser therapy, kinesiotaping, and cupping. Is that everything? Mostly. We do a little bit of rehab. I think that is everything that we currently offer. In the future, we'll be adding a few things, but yeah, you've gone through a lot. I don't know if it's fortunately or unfortunately got to experience everything that we do. Yeah, I know. I'm kind of probably your biggest minor, I'm sure, when you're working on me. Close, not quite. So of these, is there one in particular that you specialize more in or that you gravitate more when you're working with a runner? Well, a couple ways to answer that. Within our clinic itself, all three of us do most of the same thing. And I would say the biggest difference between provider is our backgrounds. And so Andy ran collegiately and has the deepest background in endurance running. Phil plays rugby and does a lot of mixed martial arts, and I have done a variety. I ran track and cross country, I rock climb, we're into motor sports, all sorts of different things. And between then our office and other offices in the Dane County area, there's quite a lot of difference. Yeah, that for sure, I know. Why do you feel that it's important for an athlete to maybe get off the foam roller if that's not working and come to your office? Yeah, so a foam roller can be a useful tool. I would say that if you've been foam rolling an injury for any lengthy period of time and it hasn't seemed to change anything. If you had a nagging hip or calf or whatever it may be and you've been foam rolling for three, four weeks and nothing's changing, it probably won't change. And so you need some type of more targeted or different intervention or potentially just diagnosis. It might not be a connective tissue injury that you're dealing with. It could be a bone injury, it could be a nerve, there's a variety of things.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Fresh update on "athletes" discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"I'm discouraging my kids from attending college. If they want to be a doctor or attorney, I understand it's necessary, but for the most part, I don't see the value there and you're 100% right. Schools, especially higher education institutions, even the supposed Christian ones, they're making socialists and communists out of our kids at an alarming rate. There is no excuse if you live in this country. I have a number of friends that now have American citizenship. They came here illegally, which I understand why someone would do it. If I lived in Mexico, I would do everything I could to come here and bring my family with me. There is no excuse though because you just live within your means and you don't have to have a brand new car. You don't have to have a fancy car. My wife and I were the couple who had one 27-inch tube TV. We got married in 1998 and we did not have a big screen TV until about 2010, I think it was. So many Americans, and especially the young kids, I am fighting this materialism. The pop culture is all about materialism and I am constantly battling this, trying to properly train my kids and teach them the value of the dollar and the importance of living within their means. In America, it is a very simple formula. Number one is get out of debt. If you cannot afford it, sell it. Number three is move towards cash. If you cannot control credit cards, I still use a credit card, but I pay it off every single month. If you do not have the discipline to control that, go to cash and stop going further and further into debt. You know, much of our young generation that is in college and graduating from college, they want the standard of living that their parents and grandparents had, but they don't realize that it took their parents 20, 30, 40 years to get to where they are at. And so that is something that I am constantly trying to, you know, ingrain in my children is you are living a very great life now and we expect you to work, but you cannot expect to have the same standard of living when you graduate high school or, you know, potentially go to college that you have right now living in our house. It took us decades of hard work to do that. The other thing is really for people to start thinking from a more entrepreneurial spirit. I think the concept of a side hustle and owning a business is lost. You know, our government really does not promote entrepreneurship. They want a bunch of sheep that, you know, pay taxes that come out of their paychecks so they aren't aware of what they're paying. You know, I've got a 16-year-old son and I just helped him file his taxes within the last couple of months. He was on an extension and he didn't have proper withholding since he had to write a check to the government. And it's amazing, the more my teenage son works, the more conservative he becomes because I go over his pay stub with him and I show him, this is what you're giving to the government, like it or not. And I understand we need to pay taxes. We live in the greatest country in the world, but I think the amount of taxes we're paying is way out of control. So helping today's youth especially realize that it's not just about being an employee, it's about having that entrepreneurial spirit and finding some type of side hustle because there's a lot of benefits from a tax standpoint if you own a business. It doesn't have to be your sole source of income, but it can be something that you can leverage. You know, Robert Kiyosaki, the genius behind Rich Dad Poor Dad, he talks about that really one of the only ways to build wealth is to have the advantages of owning a business. What are some of the most frustrating financial patterns yet fixable ones you see where you in your coaching, in your experience, you see self-destructive behavior that can be fixed in a moment? Doesn't take Harvard Business School. It doesn't take any sort of mastery. It's simply a decision. What are those things? Debt, number one. Number two is when people raise their spending to every increase in income that they get. One of the most important things that every one of us can do is to save up so that we have an emergency fund. This is talked about by Dave Ramsey and pretty much all the financial pundits that are out there, but very few people have $1,000 in the bank, much less a legitimate emergency fund of three to six months. And then what I have seen happen is, let's say someone's making $60,000 a year. And so, let's see, doing some quick math, that's $5,000 a month. So, they might have a $15,000 emergency fund, three months based on $60,000. Well, over time, their income goes up to, let's call it $120,000 to make the math very simple. Well, they don't increase their emergency fund to $30,000. They keep it at $15,000. Me times, their spending habits increase all the way up to that $120,000 level. And then when a catastrophe strikes, they go to their emergency fund and they realize they're woefully unprepared. And so, really forcing the discipline of saving every single month so that you can have that ideally six-month emergency fund, and this is what I tell people, is you will never regret having too big of an emergency fund. I realize you might be able to make more money if you were to invest it. Maybe you're making 3% or 5% in some type of money market account, and you could theoretically be making 10% if it was invested. But if you lose that money, it's no longer an emergency fund. And people assume that things will stay the same or better. And what we know is that doesn't happen. So, I think the lack of an emergency fund is a huge problem. And once again, it's fed by this instant gratification culture that we live in. And honestly, it's something that we as parents, we have a moral obligation to teach our children the discipline of delayed gratification. And when you don't teach children delayed gratification, then young adults don't naturally develop it on their own. And then you have grown adults that are in their 30s, 40s, and beyond, and they still don't practice delayed gratification. The seven disciplines of uncommon freedom, embrace them to reach your potential and build a life you love. When people tell you, but I don't have the money, I'm barely making ends meet, I'm sure when you start to go through budgets with people, you start to see a fair amount of expenditures that are unnecessary. For example, double and triple streaming subscriptions going out unnecessarily to eat, spending money on diminishing returns and expenses, buying new cars instead of used cars. The lack of financial literacy in this country is remarkable, and it is being rich starts with a mindset more than anything else. It doesn't just happen to you. Do you agree with that, Kevin? A hundred percent. I mean, the reality is that if you don't have good habits, if you don't have financial discipline and your income goes up, you're just going to be broke at a higher level. The reality is the mistakes and the ability to recover is a lot harder when you start making six-figure mistakes or seven-figure mistakes than when you're making five-figure mistakes. If you're making $50,000 a year, you're only going to get loaned so much money. At some point, you're going to run out of credit and you're going to realize, okay, I have to get to work to pay this off. Well, as deep as the hole is you're going to dig might be a couple of hundred thousand dollars. How many times have we heard about pro athletes that were making seven, maybe eight figures and because they lacked the discipline and the habits financially, they created a hole that is maybe eight or nine figures deep? Honestly, I can understand why some people end up committing suicide. Obviously, they lack a deeper meaning in life, but when you think about digging a hole that deep, the amount of despair and potentially embarrassment that that creates is really tragic.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from Diners: The Most American Establishment?
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh, I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Fresh update on "athletes" discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"Um, and I think you're going to see that much or more and what the NBA does next. So I think the same way the NFL moved digital and has had a lot of success, I can't imagine the NBA does anything. I think they do that or more, not less. So you're definitely going to see a shift in how these games and, and the other thing is, um, I think one thing that doesn't need to happen is one thing that frustrates the shit out of me as a fan. Is, you know, it's so hard to find out even where to watch a game. And it's like, it's, it's, it's too complicated. This needs to be simplified. Like I want to be able to, to go one place and be able to watch, you know, most of my sports. So, you know, that's obviously the dream we have for fanatics long-term, but we're not even thinking about that today. It's just, you know, it's a, a big bold dream and then you forgot how to make it happen over, you know, many years. The baseball playoffs were tough with that. Where it's like, as soon as it was time for a game, you had to do this basically roulette to see what channel it was on. It's not just, sports are tough for that. It's hard to find where you want to watch games. Is it TBS? Is it, what are, oh, we're on ESPN tonight. And by the way, I owned part of a basketball team before and I can't figure out where to watch a basketball game sometimes and where to watch a, a baseball game sometimes. And so, yeah, it's, it's, I think that's an opportunity as well. And the one thing, if there's one thing that I didn't know enough in the beginning of my career that I really think now is you got to think about the fan first and everything you do, and then back into the business model from that. And that is something that we talk about religiously for next today. That's a different conversation than five years ago. We're just, you know, you got to think about what's in the fan's best interest. And if you start there, I think you have a better business longterm. So you gave up your stake in the Sixers. I did. Is it true that being a minority owner just means that you have season tickets? No, definitely not. I mean, look, I was obviously, you know, this cause you follow this business closely. I was probably, you know, you were pretty hands on for minority owner. Yeah. And that wasn't by design. It's just kind of what happened. You know, look, business is about relationships. And, you know, I suck at a lot of things, but I generally have pretty good relationships. Seems like it. And so I think in the first five or six years, I wasn't that involved. And then as time went on, you know, I kind of got more involved. And look, my relationship with Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer was and is incredible. And I think, you know, we all kind of, you know, do what we do best. But I was very involved in the last couple of years. And, you know, certain things went as planned and certain things didn't go as planned. And I could tell you what didn't go as planned. We never want to have any guesses. Well, we never won a championship and that sucks. And, you know, when you own a basketball team, you own a sports team, you have one job, which is to win a championship. And each year that you don't win a championship, you failed. Right. And you should look at the end of the season and say, we didn't achieve our goal if you didn't win a championship. And so, you know, to me, I was involved with it for 11 years and, you know, we got bounced in the second round of the playoffs. You know, too many times. And so we never achieved our goal. And that's something I look at as a personal failure because I was deeply involved with it. You certainly owned an interesting team. We did. That's the story of my life. I mean, I think I'm used to having... You just spent the Pistons where like nothing happened year after year. Your team was like a soap opera. Yeah, well, I mean, sports has a lot of that that follows it. And I feel like I have a lot that just follows me with that as well. So, yes. Were you trying to mediate the hardened thing at the end or did you know this ship had sailed? Look, it's no secret that I'm incredibly close still with Josh Harris and David Blitzer and the Sixers organization and Daryl and also with James. I thought there could have been a really good solution in it. That didn't come to fruition. At the end of the day, I'm happy now that the Sixers are happy and doing great and James is happy. He got what he wanted. I'm more bullish than you are. I think the Clippers will be better than you just told me the Clippers were going to be. I'm the opposite of bullish. Yeah, you're very negative. So I'm un-bullish. Yeah, so I'm bullish and I'm going to put that out there. Look, James, James, you know, it's very easy. Bearish? What's the opposite of bullish? Bearish. Bearish. Yeah, you're showing the Clippers short. I'm sold already. Yeah, I have all the shorts on it. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Well, I'm more bullish than you are. I think it takes time. If there's one thing I learned that I didn't know in the beginning of the Sixers, to get multiple stars to play well together in jail, that takes time. And something that I think James doesn't get enough credit for is the way he adjusted his game to fit into the Sixers. And, you know, look, Joel is a incredible basketball player. He's, you know, great, not very good. And James came in there and figured out how to change his game to really, you know, support Joel and support the team. And I think that was working pretty well. What would be interesting is to watch, you know, and by the way, to see the way Reese is, you know, stepping up now is a beautiful thing. And he's, you know, he could be one of the best humans in the planet. I mean, that guy is a, you know, he's a born leader. He's always happy. He's always got a smile on his face. He's going to make the All-Star team. And by the way, no one deserves it more than he does. And he's working his ass off. But, you know, it's interesting. You got to get through a season, you know, without injuries or without, you know, season ending injuries. And you got to get through and, you know, shit goes wrong in any season, in just about any team. It's very hard to keep a team healthy for, you know, the key guys healthy for an entire season. So, you know, to me, you know, the measure of success for the Sixers is going to be how do we progress and, you know, not be bouncing the second round of the playoffs. And, you know, I'm rooting for great outcomes for both. I mean, for me, you're out. You're never owning a team again. I'm never owning a team again. I think, you know, fanatics is such a bigger opportunity. I'm fortunate to sit in the middle of sports, technology, the greatest athletes in the planet. I love what I get to do. I learned so much. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I did it from 2011 until 2022. And I'm so happy to not be part of it anymore. It doesn't sound that much fun. I mean, the ego part sounds great. You get sick court side. You get to potentially win the title. Those are the good things. And then the bad things are literally 90 things. The fact that players can become unhappy within six months and now your whole season's upended, or you have a basically 29 and 30 chance of not winning the title year after year. Here's the reality. It's not fun because if you think it's fun, you don't have the responsibility of every night going to bed and every morning waking up saying, how do I win a championship? And the stress and anxiety that goes along with that fans who are just like, they're looking at you, it's like they're doing their job saying, win a championship for me. God damn it. Right. And so, um, you know, I learned so much from it. I think it was actually helpful to me in the early parts of my career and from a development perspective. And by the time, you know, in the later part of it, it was so complicated with Fanatics getting into the online sports betting business with Fanatics, having direct deals with 3000 athletes, which is, you know, violates all the league rules. So it was definitely time for me to move on. It took, I had, in addition to the stress of wanting to win a championship and not succeeding for the city of Philadelphia, then I had the stress that I knew I was violating all these league rules and, you know, what legal letter was coming each day from it. And so it was very clean. It was time for me to move on. And now I'm in the best position in the world because if there's a situation I care about, I can help behind the scenes. And so, you know, my, and my relationship with, you know, I think still I joke around people all the time. People still like, if you were an NBA star, when I owned, you know, when I was the third largest owner of the Sixers in a very visible, you know, part of the organization, people looked at you a little bit sideways. Now, no one looks at you sideways anymore. Everyone just looks at you as neutral, which is the way I need to be as the leader of Fanatics. You occupy such a weird territory in the sports world because you have, you're probably, you could make the case you're the most powerful person in sports because you have the relationships literally with every league, every commissioner, all the, all the famous stars, right? But you, you don't have a lot of the negative responsibility of that, right? It seems like your role is additive in all of these different things. People call you, they ask for advice, or you're trying to help them from a business standpoint. There's, there's nobody quite like you, but I always wondered, like, I wish there was a sports czar that could basically be for the, for the sake of just how sports would run, things that make sense, that could just be like the sounding board for people, but we don't have that job. It doesn't exist. You're kind of like the de facto sports czar, even though you're not the czar. Does that make sense? Um, first, thank you for the kind words. I don't look at myself like that at all. The people that are the most important people in the sports organization are the athletes, these incredible talented athletes that do what they do. We'd have no, but we'd have no, we'd have no, like one thing I'm very aware and humble about without the thousands of incredible athletes that do what they do, we'd have no business. We'd have nothing to do. Okay. We wouldn't have people to buy merchandise from us, to buy collectibles from us, to buy, um, to bet on sports with us. We'd have nothing to do. And without the sports organizations, the leagues, um, we'd have no business either. That's it. I think what is where I'm finally in the right place in my life is I've got rid of conflict and that's a great place to be. You're the only one, everyone else has some sort of conflict. I think, you know, a lot of what I do is the behind the scenes stuff that, you know, we never talk about and that, that, that, and I enjoy that. And I learned from that and I grow from that. And, you know, I, look, I don't think there's a lot of people that have really good relationships with the commissioners and also really good relationships with the people who lead labor. Okay. Cause naturally there's tension, you know, between those organizations a lot of the time. And I think, um, you know, there aren't, you know, I don't have much complexity anymore other than I'm waking up every morning, going to bed every night, you know, focused on one thing, which is how do I better everything that we do for next week? We have so much to be better at. Um, but I think I look at it as a, um, as a opportunity and something that I love doing that so many people come to me and say, Hey, what would you do here? What do you think about this? You know, and, but I learned as much from each person, you know, the way I work and people don't really get this about me. People think I'm just being self deprecated. I'm not, um, I legitimately barely made it out of high school. It's a miracle that I graduate. I went to college. I posted my, you know, my, my 1.87 GPA that I had in the one semester. I'm a little like, I can't read. Like someone just said to me, yes, so you should read my book. And I said, I need to actually, um, without getting into who it was, I'm going to listen to it on audio. And I haven't even done that for, I haven't read a book since ninth grade. The way I learn is by getting great people around me and by they learn from me and I learn from them. So I'm always picking up different data points from people. So that's the way my brain works. You know, get a really differentiated group of people around you that all have different backgrounds and different things they can add and try to help make their lives better and then learn from them. And that's a lot of how the ideas that we get at Fanatics come from. That's how a lot of my growth comes from. But I want to make sure I'm always giving more than I get in every time that I can. Would you call yourself a problem solver? I think it's one of my best skill sets because I'm street smart. It's like, you know, look, look, you obviously, you can't be dyslexic, not be able to read a horrible student barely made it to high school, didn't go to college. And then also, you know, you have to have some positive traits. My positive traits are relationship skills and like common sense and common sense solves problems. So yes, I think I'm generally a very good problem solver. I've also learned you can't solve everyone's problems and you can't fix everything. And that's something where I work on average 18 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, people always see the fun microwave and they see the shit on Instagram. They see, you know, my white party, this Fanatics Super Bowl party. You know, they see me with, you know, some people that are strategically important to me or some good friends of mine. They always think I live a fun life. I'm like, what I love to do is get up, work my ass off and then do it again the next day because that's the one thing I'm good at. I'm not a good, I'm a terrible athlete, I'm a terrible student, but that's the one thing I like doing. And so, but you also learn at the same time, you can't, you know, you can't fix everything. You can't solve everyone's problems. The Vanity Fair just, or Vanity Fair wrote about the white party a couple months ago, which you revived. P. Diddy had it, like he, it stopped in 09 and then there was like a Hamptons white party void and then you stepped in and now this is like the party every, what's it, July 3rd every year? Well, it's your change. It depends on where the holiday falls. But you know, it's funny. I had not even thought about the Diddy had done the party. And obviously he had an amazing party, but it stopped in 2009. And at that point I was just working in my old company, you know, 24 seven. Nobody else did it for 10 years. I don't think so. Look, I bought a house in the Hamptons in 2020 and, um, I just decided to, you know, I think I just picked up from one of my friends said, Hey, Lorne Michaels used to have them in like the seventies. Right. Then you have a, like, there's like a tradition. I can tell you, like, look, it's a great idea. One of the things I love to do is bring people together. Yeah. I like, I actually really enjoy that. Whether it's different pockets of that's exactly where I was going. I love bringing people from different backgrounds together because what happens, you all learn from each other. And whether it's, um, you know, whether it's a dinner that's got, you know, a bunch of athletes from different sports, a bunch of friends, some, you know, really successful business people and some, you know, collectors and we're all learning from each other. Whether it's, you know, the, you know, I remember the first time I introduced Robicraft from Meek Mill together and we flew to Miami for something and they're learning from each other. So, but we, these are always, you know, I think what's a loss is if the really successful people in the relationship aren't always learning from everybody around them. So if you sat with Robicraft and you were on that flight, the first time they introduced them to Meek Mill and they were going and we were going to, um, Miami, I remember just listening to how many questions Robert was asking Meek. And it's like, Meek had all these questions you want to ask Robert, but this went on for two and a half hours. I barely said a word because I knew each of them. So you're just delighted. I was, I loved watching him. It's just like a great conversation. And, you know, Robert's learning about, you know, the culture in the background that Meek comes from and Meek's asking Robert business questions. And it's like, I love stuff like that. And so we do a lot of that. And the white party is really just a big manifestation of that in a lot of ways, because you have so many different people from different backgrounds. You've got some of the best and most iconic business people in the world, some of the best investors in the world and some of the most well-known athletes in the world. And then by the way, people get to have fun as well. And that's a fun thing. What's the single best story that's happened at the party or that you can tell, I guess. Great question. Single best story. There's been one where you're like, I can't believe this. I feel like I'm on Mars. Yeah. I mean, the whole event makes you feel that way, to be honest. I mean, you, when you see so many great people come throughout the world, I mean, I think just, you know, for me, um, I feel really fortunate and lucky that so many people just want to come together and, you know, hang for 12. It's actually a 13 hour party starts at 5 p.m. and goes till 6 a.m. in the morning. And most people go the entire time of it. Um, you know, uh, for me, I just like seeing the relationships get formed from the people told me, I met this person there. Um, you know, funny story. I just, Mo Obama's now in the Sixers. Um, he came the first year. He's now married or engaged the person he met, you know, at the white party. I love that, you know, it's amazing. Um, but I mean, there's so many incredible stories, probably none worse than when, uh, Camille, um, you know, um, fell off. The stage and had to go to the hospital in the middle, middle of the white party. Oh my God. But I knew she was going to be okay. She didn't know that. So I was trying to stay behind and make sure all my friends were having a great time. And, you know, I got, I was told I need to immediately go with her. I would be a bad for the relationship. Yeah. It's seen that way. Your guy, Bob Kraft, the Pats might have a chance to have the worst record in the league here. This is not, not what he's about. This is the worst Patriots year since he's owned the team. I'm a giant Patriots fan. This is part of the process. We knew when Tom Brady left, we knew we were in, we were in the first class of the airplane cabin for 20 years, having a great time with Tom Brady. And then eventually you get moved to the back of the plane. It's part of the process, but he's probably not handling this while I'm guessing. Look, here's what I'll tell you. To do what they did. Robert need to be the glue in a lot of places. And I watched that firsthand. Yeah. Okay. And I can tell you the person that I learned, learned the most from in sports ownership was absolutely Robert. It's not the stuff that people see. That's what happens behind the scenes is how you keep shit together. It's when people want to kill each other and they actually don't kill each other. It's when you stop bad stuff from happening. And so, um, for me, I was, I've always been a big student. Like I study, you know, lots of tricks that Robert has and I've watched lots of things. I can tell you he's a perennial winner. Yes. This has been a horrible season. He will be a perennial winner. Yes. Tom Brady, greatest quarterback, greatest NFL player of all time. There's to me, there's no debate about that, but I think if you asked Tommy, he would say he alone that Robert was, you know, glue and helped, you know, keep everything to where they were able to win six championships together. If it's a six Super Bowls, got to get my vernacular, right? If it's an absentee owner, do Brady and Belichick make it until through 2019? No. When do you think they break up? Um, I don't want to get myself in trouble, but, but far before 2019. It is amazing. But now it's like the big controversy in New England is, well, Brady won the Super Bowls and I, to me it was both of them. I think I give them equal billing in the six Super Bowls. So how about this? I give the three of them. Um, and look, you're going to say fair. The person who had the most responsibility is Tom Brady. I got to tell you something, I'm fortunate enough to really have got to know Tom really well in the last few years. I have never seen someone who, when you spend a ton of time with them, you see why they've got the outcomes that they've got. He's truly extraordinary. And I've seen other athletes that have won, um, a lot of championships. I think they've maybe been more athletically talented than Tom was. Tom did it from an absolute will to win. And I'm not going to fucking give up and I'm going to win that game. And just watching him and his work ethic, um, is truly, uh, extraordinary. And I will tell you, I don't think there's another person that's like from an, from a people who've played sports, he could be the person who motivates me the most. I hear from him the earliest in the morning. Yeah. Okay. There's, you know, there's generally a text before six AM for one of the, one of the two of us, but even in the West Coast, he's always. He's, he's just, and he's always working and pushing and whatever he's doing. And that, that's a, that you realize why he's got that outcome, but that said, he alone, um, would not have done that. I do think that, you know, addition to Bill, that Robert, uh, really, um, added, there's so many things that I know that he did that people will never understand to keep, to get the outcomes they got. Well, I hope at the next quarterback, it's somebody who's super competitive and a freaking maniac. Cause I, I'm convinced that's like 90% of it. For somebody to be great at that level, at that position, it can't just be about the talent. There's, there's these extra pieces that come with it and you can kind of tell when somebody doesn't have it and you can tell by the way people talk about them and their teammates and their coaches. look, the best confirmation of what you just said is what happened when Tom Brady went to Tampa. I mean, this guy went to Tampa. That was a very weird situation. Yeah. And he wins a super ball the first year he's there. With playing with a bunch of guys who he was 20 years older than we had nothing in common with. Yeah. And you watch that and you watch that leadership come through from him. And that's the thing again, like when we started, we do a company meeting once a quarter where we bring our 18,000 employees together and we bring a guest, uh, in front of our, um, you know, in front of the 18,000 employees. Every quarter, my first guest was Tom Brady. Yeah. And I think when Tom came on, people would say like, Hey, you just like trying to showcase, Hey, we have a great relationship with Tom Brady. No. What I want to do was ask Tom, okay, how do you deal with high pressure situations? Could you learn from someone better than Tom Brady on how to deal with high pressure situations? Um, you know, um, how do you, you know, what are the things you do to lead and get better results from getting people work together? What are you doing? People aren't working well together, you know, and his answers were spectacular. I asked him for an hour, all these different questions about leadership, management style, work ethic. And I mean, so many people were side texting me and email me saying that was spectacular listening to him. Um, and that's again, why he got the outcome. Did you ever hear him talk about playing in the Superbowl? How it took him like five or six times to realize that the halftime was longer and it was screwing up his mental whatever. And so then when he went into like the last couple of Superbowls, he figured out how to crest his energy after the halftime because he was too hyped. But for the first half, but then it would dip and then he couldn't get it back. So he like put all this weird mental energy into like, all right, here's what I have to do. And I have to be super calm and then do this. And then third quarter I crest. I didn't, but who else would think like that? But I just heard him tell the story, um, last week about what the different things he went through in his brain when they were down 28-3. Yeah. Against Alana and just listen to math and just listening to how, um, he first didn't want to be embarrassed. Yeah. And then he realized, okay, we can win this game. Let's go. Just we're down 19, six plus two, six plus two, three. We're there. Correct. Correct. And it's just, and just how he knew he was going to win that game. She's an incredible story. Um, since the last time we talked, which was almost two years ago and you were just getting into collectibles back then. Something I've cared about my whole life. But now you're like deep in and it seems like you have the book. I couldn't help. We're at your house. Couldn't help but notice. It's among cuts up. You have some proudly displayed cards, but do you have the bug? Are you in? I absolutely have the bug. I was as a kid, I training cards was my first bit. And I like remember terrible student, terrible athlete. I was the last person being picked on every team. I couldn't do well in school. So business was the only thing I was good at, but the business I loved the most as a kid was buying and selling trading cards to my friend's parents. That was the business. Okay. They had the money. I found the customer with the money and I bought and sold cards like crazy as a kid. I didn't get back into this until three years ago. I can tell you I've never had so much fun. I mean, this is a incredible industry. You know, collectors are the best fans in the world. Like there's nothing I love more than going to collectible shows, talking to, because these are the best fans in the world. You talk about someone. You're a collector. You're definitely buying a lot of sports merchandise. You're, you're investing in, in cards, memorabilia. I might've gambled a couple of times. I mean, this is, this is the fanatics. These are the fanatics most important. I'm your wheelhouse customer. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So you saw, you must've looked, you saw what everybody who was in the collector thing, and when I was at ESPN, I see the photo essays from the convention and part of the comedy of it was just, you know, it was out in 1973. You really felt like you were in a time machine. There was no woman to be seen. It was the most depressing place in the planet. And yet there's tens of millions of dollars of product in here and some of the best stuff and all these people who they've been waiting the whole year to go. And it's like, why isn't this cooler? What are we doing wrong? Why isn't this better? I've never seen an industry with more passionate collectors that have been so underserved than this business. And to me, that just creates so much opportunity. And we've done, look, we've only, we came up with this idea only three years ago. We only bought tops, January 1st of 2022. It's not even two years that we've owned tops and we've done so much so far. We haven't even got started yet. So you buy tops, everybody goes nuts. Then Panini's involved. Now there's been some battles with Panini, right? Like, how does that, how does that all work out? Different sports, like, is that an obstacle or is that something that eventually works itself out? Yeah, I mean, for me, we're just focused on doing what's in the best interest of the collector. So for us, like, let me tell you what we saw. Okay. When we looked at the business, we saw a business where you had sports properties and players giving the rights to, um, tops, Panini, upper deck. These companies were all selling cards to distributors who then picked where the cards go. And they weren't selling the hobby shops. They weren't serving the breakers. They weren't serving the retailers directly. It made no sense. Like would Nike ever sell to a distributor to sell it a footlocker or just sell it? Well, there were middlemen who used to like, just mark it up. Right. And so they were taking money away from the collector and the hobby shop. So the first thing we saw that we said, this makes no sense. We need to collapse that and service the hobby shops directly, the breakers directly, the retailers directly. I think when we bought tops, they served 300 hobby shops. I think today we service 800 hobby shops or something like that. They're all happy that you did this. Elated. They can't. Yeah. They're the, yeah, they, they want to get product directly from us because they, they need that direct relationship so they can get the allocation of what they need to build their business to best support their collectors. And we'd rather give them the margin. You know, if you'd say there was a big incremental margin to split, most of that margin went to the hobby shops, the breakers, to the collectors, you know, to the industry. It didn't sit with us. We kind of passed it on. So that was very obvious. The players were getting kind of shortchanged too. And now they're making a lot more money because we're paying them on a much higher sales. The second thing, and this was crazy. I didn't know what a redemption was. Okay. Now you're going to laugh at me and if you're not a collector, you know, people are going to bore people here. But, um, you know, everyone kept saying to me, Michael, you need to get rid of redemptions. And so it took me like a, you know, a couple of weeks to figure out what a redemption, which is basically an IOU, you know, I bought, you know, a case of cards, a pack of cards. And you know, in that card came, um, your, um, Joel Embiid year two, Zion, you know, card. And there's an IOU for it because they didn't have the card signed by them. And, um, there were so many redemptions out there that collectors were like maddened by this. So I went to, um, you know, baseball, which is our biggest business today. And I went to the head of the union, Tony Clark, you know, I went to our organization, said, we need to eliminate redemptions. And they're like, okay, explain to me how this works. What do you need to do? You need to have a much better relationship with athletes to give you an example, when we launched tops, you know, Chrome, this is a rough number. But like, you know, a year ago, we probably had 30,000 redemptions. And that means 30,000 I use this year with less than a thousand, we reduced it by 97%. That means when you buy cards and you're not chasing us for cards. It's part of the motto is they were hoping that people wouldn't chase for the card. And then they just got to keep the card. I can't speak to what other people do. What I can tell you is we want to delight our customer. Last thing we want to do is a customer chasing us for card. And by the way, if we need to get them a card, we want to get it to them very quickly. So we've reduced our redemptions as top since we bought the business is much bigger than it's called twice the size. And the absolute amount of redemptions is down by 75, 80%. And in all the new releases, it's down by 95%. So I was just like focusing on our relationship with the athletes to get cards signed more quickly, making it a better experience for the athletes because you're worried about the collector. So that's where your relationships help. And it's where fanatics relationships help. And by the way, we're focused on it because we care so much about the collector. The next thing was like product innovation. There had been no material product innovation. Like I remember this is actually basically just the Chrome cards. And it was what in the late 2000s, 2000s. Well, I'll just give you an, I just give an example of like how entrepreneurial we were. Mike Mahan, who's the CEO of our collectibles business. He called me last December. He said, Hey, I've got a great idea. Every time a baseball player takes the field for the first time, I want to put a debut patch for one game on the Jersey. When they get off of the field, I want to take that debut patch off and put it into a one-on-one card. I said, wow, that's an amazing idea. So what are we doing? He said, well, you know, I spoke to the tops organization. They told me it will never, ever happen. There's no possibility. Like, what do you even waste your time? Wait, you're going to try to put a patch on the uniform and like every rookie that ever played. You think, you think that the, the league's going to be okay with that and the player's going to be okay with that. He said, but I like, it makes complete sense. So I called Rob Manfred. I called Tony Clark that minute. I called Tony. I said, Tony, I got a great idea. I said, I want to put a debut patch on the Jersey for the first time, you know, a player plays their, their, their, their major league game. He said, that sounds like an amazing idea. You make the Jersey's go do it. Then I called Rob. Rob said the same thing. We launched that four months later. Wow. These are the most valuable cards today. There's each year, three to 400 people debut in major league baseball. They play the first game and think about if you got, so it's almost like the jump man card, but it's a debut. Oh, Tony's debut. If you, if you had the only one in the world, if he had a patch from his first game, that patch was in a card. You had that card. Okay. That card is worth millions or tens of millions of dollars more sense to me than when they would just grab, like, it's a piece of dare cheaters Jersey on a card. And by the way, a lot of times they say they're game warm because the guy put the Jersey on his body for one minute in the park. We stopping all that stuff. So look, by the way, do we still screw things up every day? Yes. Cause it's, you know, we've only owned tops for less than two years. And then we bought, there were so many problems just in the manufacturers. We bought the biggest printer of trading cards because there were so many problems. You were having misprinting of cards delays. Like you should watch trading cards. Like you launch a video game launch or shoe launch. Okay. So Nike says this Travis Scott shoe, or this Jordan's launching on this day. And that's an event when we launch cards today, we have a giant launch coming up on 12, 12 with Bowman Chrome and what's going to be Brady day for us. And it's going to be insane. You'll see all this. You're going to actually text me at 12, 12 and say, wow, that was awesome. Okay. Cause we take our launch and we turn them into events. Well, the basketball has been the opposite where it's like, it's coming out soon and you never know. And it's like, can I just get a Zion rookie box? Yeah. Can you just tell me when that's coming out? If you, here's what I would say. If Nike did the same thing every year and they just had evergreen business, the business would fade. Okay. But they keep innovating. So what we need to do is have great product breakthroughs. I'll give you another example. Um, in a base card. Okay. It like in baseball, on the base card, um, there are, you know, many base cards of, of a player. Okay. So, um, you know, our CEO and the team come up with something called the MVP buyback program where the cards used to trade for 50 cents or a dollar for these cards. And we said, Hey, we're going to buy the back. We're going to give the hobby shops a credit of $20 for every MVP each year. So, um, you know, uh, uh, Kuna, um, uh, Tony, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to give, um, last year, Pope, uh, Paul Goldschmidt, we're going to give a, um, you know, $20 credit through the store. So now you're driving all these people into the stores, um, who returning tens of millions of dollars at retail of these cards to get store credits. And what do they do? They buy that much more cards. It wasn't that complicated for, you know, our team to come up with that. But it's been like, if you ask a hobby shop, they'd say it's driving demand like crazy. And then just marketing, like we are marketing collectibles and trading cards for the first time. And so I think overall, this was a sleepy industry with no innovation. We're coming in and saying, we're going to innovate products like crazy. We're going to innovate, um, marketing, we're going to fix the consumer experience, and then we're going to worry about the collector and the hobby shops, uh, and the breakers. And so, you know, for a business that we came up with an idea three years ago, we had our first dollar of revenue less than two years ago. We're making great progress, by the way, there's lots of things to still fix. You know, you know, we bought, you know, this really big company that makes, you know, packages, a lot of cards, you know, we have to keep pushing quality and say, you know, the quality needs to be amazed. I told you a little bit ago, we're going to put a chip in all high end cards going forward with a unique identifier. So you can't counterfeit a card, so you can't steal cards. You know, there's so many things we can do to improve. So the counterfeiting is the biggest issue, which has been the biggest issue for 30 years. It's not the biggest issue, but it's a big, look, if you can't invest in something and know that it's authentic, okay, then why am I invested? So take that example. We created this debut patch and let's say, you know, you had, let's say we did that when Otani or Aaron judge, you know, had their rookie years and you had that debut. Well, that card is going to be worth millions of dollars. So we better put a unique identifier in that card to make sure that no one can, can, you know, come up with a counterfeit version of that card. So we're very focused on doing what's in the collector's best interest. It'll take time, but we are, I mean, we've doubled the team at TOP since we bought the company. Uh, we're, we've invested so many times the capital in, in the manufacturing. We, they, we just moved into a brand new facility to really fix quality, fix timeliness, eliminate theft, eliminate counterfeiting issues. And, you know, we're a lot better than we were, but you know, you still, you wake up certain days, you work up certain days, you're like, can't fucking believe this just happened. Like, you know, shit goes wrong. Cause you know, you've got new companies that you're working to perfect and get right. I told you I was on the TOPs board for a couple of years and I was always surprised. The goal, it seemed like of the entire card industry was just people like this stuff. Let's just keep serving the burgers and fries. Don't get crazy. Let's just keep going out. Let's try to turn a profit. Let's not, let's not think outside the box at all. And that was the case in the eighties, the nineties, the two thousands kind of protect your lead. And now you're, you know, basically throwing a chainsaw in the whirlpool here, but has the response been, have you felt like a little, whoa, whoa, this is too much. You guys are acting too crazy or you feel like everyone's welcomed the innovation? Neither. So I'd say it's been overwhelmingly positive. Yeah. But there's still negativity. First of all, collected, like I look at a collector, like the ultimate sports fan, they care about their hobby and it is their hobby. The same way, you know, you know, for a sports team, it's their team. They care about this more than anything in the world. You almost can't win with them. No, I think you could only lose. I think you can win, but they have really high expectations because they deserve to have, they're investing in this hobby. I think people give you a lot, like we're getting so much credit for the debut patches that we did and how much people love these cards and people love Finax live. The live commerce platform that we launched, people love the marketing that we're doing and, you know, hobby shops told us the MBB buyback program is the best thing that we've ever, that anyone's ever had in the hobby. People love the marketing we're doing. But then when you screw up, they tell you as well. But guess what? Great. That makes us better. You know? So what would I say? Well, one of the things that was the national with me, you would see thousands of people showing appreciation for what we've done, but when we screw something up and we still make mistakes, you know, you know, people tell you and they have the right to tell us. Yeah. One of the things now, and it's not with you guys necessarily, but just like these box breaks, it's a whole thing now about, did they fake, did they fake that one? Oh, how did that person end up with the card in this box? And here's what I'm going to tell you. So how do you, how do you fix that? So let me give you a great example. So, first of all, breaking is a big part of the collectibles industry. If a collector doesn't... A big part of Finax Live. Correct. And if a collector doesn't like that, then they're just not being realistic because you'd say there are three distribution points for primary cards, right? Breakers, hobby shops, and retailers like, you know, a Walmart or a Target. That's been, and before it was hobby shops and the retailers, it wasn't the breakers. The breakers now have a, you know, important, you know, and by the way, it's great marketing. So, you know, for us, we understand the math of you take like, you know, a big break or one guy's doing 15% of the business, they're going to get 15% cards. So what we did, people always question the integrity of what we do. So this year for the first time, we said, Hey, let's take our auditor. I think we hired Deloitte and Touche. It wasn't Deloitte and Touche. One of the auditors, we're going to hire you. I think it is Deloitte and Touche. We're going to hire you. We're going to pay you to audit all the results the same way the NBA audits their draft lottery. That's cool. And we did that this year. Okay. Now we haven't really broadcasted, but we started doing that this past year. We now have Deloitte and Touche coming in, auditing everything to make sure that everything is random as it's advertised. So that was a great thing for us to do. We just added a cost for the authenticity, the hobby. Does everyone know we did that? No. Did we make a big deal out of it? No. But it's important to do things like that. Absolutely. I always say anytime someone has a right, we should listen to it, figure out whether they're right or wrong. If they're right, we should act on it. If they're wrong, we should still hear their perspective. So what do you collect other than James Harden cards? Well, you only saw some of the new displays that we're working on. So you saw my 86 Jordan downstairs in the basement. And, you know, for me, I like to collect things with my friends. So, you know, big Brady collector, you know, obviously Joel, you know, I'm not friends with Jordan, but, you know, you can't be a collector, not have an 86, you know, 10, you know, Jordan card. And for me, what I want to actually collect, honestly, are the really interesting things that we're making for the first time. So we have some Brady cards coming on 1212 that are going to be spectacular. Okay. And we have some, um, you know, some of the innovations that are coming next year, just things that I'm like, I need to own this because they're so cool. Because it's more like, to me, like, you know, look, I've got into art in the last couple of years for the first time in my life. I feel like these are things that make me want to say, I want to own this instead of art because I can display it the right way. It's a piece of history. And that's what I think, you know, is so great about collectibles. Do you have a 2000 Brady yet? Um, I do. Just a couple, couple of good rookie cards that of course I didn't get in the moment. We didn't talk before we go, we got to talk about gambling quick. Cause you got into that too. What have, uh, would have been your, your thoughts as you dive into the business? What, what surprised you? I haven't been surprised to date if I'm being blunt. I think it's a really big industry. I think there's, you know, um, some really good companies and there's certainly FanDuel, DraftKings are, you know, really good at what they do. You know, a lot of respect to, you know, MGM, you know, the different competitors in the space. What I tell you is I think we do have some real competitive advantages. First, our offering to the fan is more rewarding. We give on every bet place. We give 1% on a straight bet up to 5%, depending on the type of bet back of the gross bet back to you in fan cash that you can then go place other bets by merchandise, by trading cards. Um, so we have the most rewarding offering of anyone out there. Cause if you say the rest of the economics are the same, but on every bet you make, you get, you know, you get fan cash, which is essentially cash back to either bet more or, you know, buy other things from the Fanatics ecosystem. I think that's incredible. You know what, look, I knew this was going to be really hard. People, you know, people said to me like, Michael, you know, FanDuel and DraftKings have 80% of the market. You really, I think you have a chance. I'm like, I can read I'm fully aware of it. Yeah, look, we have more than a hundred million customers. Right. Um, you know, we talked to those customers a fair amount of time. Um, we have a lot of relationships in this business and we're in it for the longterm. We want to be, you know, a real player in this longterm. We're going to be, by the spring of this coming year, we'll be in every state that FanDuel's in from an online sports betting perspective. We'll be in every state that, um, from an iGaming perspective. So we're going to have a full, you know, the Fanatics sports book will be out there in the middle of doing transitions now because we bought points, but we're transitioning that over the Fanatics brand. So it's going to take us a little bit of time. I think, um, I have no patience. That's not a strength of mine, but if I'd say, what have I learned? You just have to be a little bit patient, even though I'm not. Well, as you know, I have a giant FanDuel tattoo on my back, but there's room for more than FanDuel. And you were trying to have a Fanatics tattoo and you just somehow ended up with it wrong. You started with the right first letter, but then somehow, you know, it got screwed up after that. You had the first two letters, right? Were you surprised, first three, were you surprised that the, uh, the sports have embraced gambling like this? No. Even when you see it on the NBA, the studio shows? Not the slightest, because every conversation I was having five years early with everybody who mattered was already embracing it. Everyone knew it was coming. Guy gave Adam Silver tremendous credit for going out and being so open about why it made sense to embrace it, but it was the most logical thing on the planet. So it was obvious it was coming. It wasn't a question of if it was a question of when. Everyone knew it was coming, but ESPN. Um, I thought you said that. I had to. It was sitting there. It was a funny joke. It was relatively funny. All right. So you have gambling collectibles merchandise. Is there anything coming that you can't hint at yet? No, what's coming right now is deep focus on being great in each of those businesses. And we have a lot of work to do in each of those businesses. And then over time, when we're ready, when the businesses are more mature and we feel like, you know, right now we have so much to do, we haven't even launched the right shed. If you look in the collectibles business, you know, today we have baseball F1, Bundesliga, UEFA Live, UFC launches. Uh, next year, we still, then we still have to launch WWE. We have to launch, you know, NBA. We have to launch NFL. Uh, so we need to get all of those properties moved over. We need to do a great job. We need to all the product innovations that we've done in baseball. We know baseball when we bought tops was the number three player. Yeah. It's now number one by far and away. Okay. NBA and NFL have dropped quite a lot and baseball has grown tremendously. Um, because of the product innovations, the market innovations, the distribution innovations, the consumer focus, their elimination of, you know, such a high percent of redemption. So we needed that same thing in the, um, in the new sports that we're taking on. So we have so much to do in the three business room. We're not doing anything new for a long time. What do you gamble on? Cause you're, you're prone to a six AM Vegas. Yeah. So are you blackjack? I haven't gambled on sports since 2009. But you're, you're like a cards guy. I like blackjack and Baccarat. Baccarat cause how fast it is. What are you like James Bond? Yeah. It's just so fast. It's the, you get maximum amount of action in the least amount of minutes. And if you ultimately want to get back to work and just do it for a quick change in mental, you know, stress levels for something else. I like Baccarat cause it's the fastest game. But all that, the NBA players are mostly blackjack, right? Yeah. I mean, we, yeah, yes. There's a lot of blackjack and do you have a seat? Are you like a third base guy? Are you middle of the table? Where are you? Um, I generally have to be on, um, that's, that's, I think that's an individual sport. Gambling is an individual sport. So when I'm playing blackjack, I generally like to play on my own. Um, but if I'm, So nobody at the table. Look, I'll, I'll just play differently, more conservatively. I'm going with a big group. So you're one of those guys. I mean, you, you, you want everyone to do whatever they want and don't ever tell someone what to do. But if you're really going for, you know, a lot of action, then you want to, you want to control your destiny versus others. But so when I'm with my friends gambling, I'll probably gamble a little bit differently. And then someone puts too many drinks in me. I might not care and just go all in no matter what.
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"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh, I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Fresh update on "athletes" discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"All right, Termini, are you with Eddie Johnson tomorrow? I am. Eddie took the day off today. We brought in Sam Mitchell or I think as you referred to him at one point, Mike Woodson. So Mike Woodson, Sam Mitchell, they're very interchangeable. But yes, Eddie is going to be back on the show here to break down the mid-season tournament. Please, please give him my worst and tell him to settle down on the Suns. Justin, good to see you. I'm very nervous about Phoenix making a run here to the mid-season tournament. He's going to act like it's winning an NBA championship. So let's keep our fingers crossed it doesn't happen. All right. Thanks for coming up. Thanks, Bill. We're supported by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV. Don't change your team when you change your town, get NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV, where it's easier than ever. Keep up with all your favorite teams on Sunday afternoons. Now you can get the mid-season price starting at one hundred seventy four dollars for the rest of the twenty three season when bundled with YouTube TV. Think about the dynamic duos this year. For me, it's been Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown having them on the same fantasy team has been has been wonderful. Tyrico, Jalen Waddle, that's been really fun. Maybe Mac Jones and Pop Douglas, maybe not near the top of the list for people. But you can pivot to another great duo. NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV. And if you love football, you can get the rest of the season at a lower mid-season price. Thanks to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV for sponsoring this segment. It's been my friend for this football season. It's truly the best place to keep up with all your favorite teams out of market Sunday afternoon games. And again, right now, you can watch the rest of the NFL season for a lower price. Get NFL Sunday Ticket for only one hundred seventy four dollars when bundled with YouTube TV, where you get even more football. Sign up right now at YouTube dot com slash BS. Those are my initials, YouTube dot com slash BS. Lowest price on YouTube TV with base plan terms and embargo supply. No cancellations. I'm here with Michael Rubin. We do this like every two years, every two and a half years. I thought you loved me more and wanted me every year, but I'm on your two and a half year cycle. I got to be good. Well, I want it to be special every time. Every time you're on. I'm always interested in what you're up to, because it feels like you're at the vortex of all these different sports things that I care about. But just it's sports fans, something like it's not quite Amazon, but it's all these different pieces of things that I care about as a sports fan. And you just keep adding. And every time every time you add, I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Well, right now we've taken a lot on. I think as a company, Fanatics has an incredible opportunity. We feel like we're just in the early, early innings of this game, which seems crazy. I mean, people look and they're like, oh, Fanatics has become somewhat of a big company. We feel like an entrepreneurial baby company just getting going. Today we're in three business, what we call Fanatics Commerce, which is really a merchandise business. That's where we started. We have Fanatics Collectibles, which is primarily the trading card business. Then we have Fanatics Gaming, which is our online sports betting and iGaming business. And all three businesses are pretty early on and we've got a lot to do. So is this one of those things where you're nailing the merchandise side and then you're like, all right, what else can we add? What else is out there? Or is there some master plan that you can't totally reveal yet? Well, there is a master plan that we can reveal. And I'd say we're nailing nothing so far because we need to be better at everything that we do. You know, look, our vision is how do we give the digital sports fan anything they want in one place? So what's our dream? In five years or 10 years from now, you go to the Fanatics Sports app and you can do anything you want that you can buy your merchandise, you can get your collectibles, buy them, trade them. You can bet on sports, you can get tickets in one place, you can watch live sports, you can do it all in one place. And, you know, really give that digital sports fan anything they want in one place. You know, I think we're 20% into that journey so far, 15% in that journey. You know, our most, our business we've been in the longest is Fanatics Commerce, which is the merchandise business. But we have so much to do in that business as well. I still think, you know, maybe we're a third of the way into that business. What have you done that you wish you were better at on the merch? Because it seems like the merch side is better. I wish you were better at everything. But look, from my perspective, everything you do, you need to be unrelenting to be better at. And I think as we get bigger and we have more scale, we recognize the opportunity to be that much better. So what are the things I really want to do? Number one, I think what we've done in the merchandise business is the same thing that had been done better. What we haven't done is just broken through from an innovation perspective. So I think... What does innovation mean? Yeah. From a product perspective, when we deliver incredible products to consumers, they react and they buy. And so when we put really special things out there, the customer response that we have, we need to do a lot more of that. I'd say the licensed sports business historically has been an evergreen business. People want to buy jerseys. They want to buy t-shirts. They want to buy hoodies. They want to buy hats. What we see is when you design incredible products, then there's incredible demand for that. So an example would be just a few weeks ago, we had a Princess Diana and Mitchell Ness Eagles jacket, and we did that in a limited drop. I think we had 2,400 units of it and it was gone in 10 minutes. You have so much fan demand for that jacket. And then you say, okay, well, what are the other things I can do? And so my point is, we want to drive the business through innovative product. We had a... So you're talking instead of just concentrating on scale, stuff that's also cool, and maybe there's only 2,000 things of it. Yeah. If you look at Nike's business, they have a big business, but they do a lot of really innovative things. I'm wearing Travis Scott's shoes today. Every time he drops a shoe, that's a shoe that there's tremendous demand for. So I think... So you think that could translate to... So if there's like the Red Sox Win the World Series and there's 500 t-shirts. Well, you could do multiple. When the Red Sox Win the World Series, certainly we're going to have the more traditional t-shirt and hoodie and hat. But the question is, do we do a special edition Mitchell Ness jacket drop and a special edition hoodie drop? And do you do a collab with someone who makes a tremendous amount of sense in that market? Right. So there's a lot of interesting things you can do. I think from a consumer experience, you know, today we own, you know, a lot of people don't know this, but, you know, we have in addition the Fanatic site and the league sites that we operate. We also are the majority owner of Lids. You know, we make today the Nike merchandise in the NFL and in Major League Baseball and in NCAA starting next year. But we want to keep expanding the assortment, broadening what we do. I think, you know, to be honest, I wear one type of clothing. I don't, you know, I like to be a little bit more fashionable now. I don't always find things that I want from what we sell. So we need to have more culturally relevant, you know, product that we're selling. I just had somebody at my house an hour ago who told me about doing a really interesting collab with Mitchell Ness. So I think there is a big opportunity to drive through product innovation. And then from a consumer experience perspective, we have a big opportunity to just go from good to great. We've been better than everybody else, but that's been good. We haven't been great. We need to be great. That means when you buy from us, you know, how the package gets delivered to you, the speed that it comes to you in. And by the way, as a company that's grown a lot, we've also done some dumb things over the years, too. And so what do I wish we'd done differently? What's a dumb thing? Give me an example. You know, I think we want to cover all sports fans. So, you know, certain fans want to lower in t-shirts and maybe we sold 1999 t-shirts. Maybe we just shouldn't have been in that business because they weren't high enough quality, as an example. Gotcha. And so we're always looking at ourselves saying, how can we be better? How can we deliver better for the fan? How can we innovate for the fan, both on the consumer experience and on the product side? And that by the way, that's not our biggest business, which has grown from a $250 million business to almost a $6 billion business today. And I feel like we're just getting started. We have so much to do to be better. So this was happening in shoes really starting in the mid 2010s. Kanye was pushing the envelope a little bit, the Travis Scott's. Are you watching this going, what's our version of this? Can this translate? What does it look like? I'm definitely studying it, paying attention to everything and saying, how can we bring that into this business where there's been no innovation like that before? What we've seen is when we do great things, consumers react in the most positive way. And by the way, when you screw things up, fans tell you as well, you know, we sold, you know, I'll just give you an example because I like to be hard on myself. We sold 4 million units of vehicles of power in the last 12 months. We had a t-shirt that came out that got misprinted by, you know, one of our, you know, factory partners. And we had 36 units that were misprinted out of 4 million and fans killed us. But you know what? They deserve to have perfection and that's what they want. And I agree to that. And so we always need to keep pushing ourselves to be better. How do you think as we head into the mid 2020s, like who are the competitors that are coming up? Like, are you learning anything from people that are trying to challenge you or you feel like you have almost a monopoly at this point? No, we don't think we have a monopoly in any way, shape or form. I think this is a highly competitive market. It's a, you know, 30 billion dollar global market today. You know, you know, we have about 20 percent of that. And I'd say what I want to do is learn from people outside of the licensed sports market, because I don't think there's enough innovation within the licensed sports market. What I want to do is see what's happening in fashion, what's happening in performance. How do I study all the different things and how do we bring those into, you know, our category? So you asked about, you know, you know, a couple, you talked about Trav as a, you know, as an artist, who's one of the most, you know, best consumer products people on the planet. Trav and I spend a lot of time talking about what we can do together in the sports business. And so and there are many other, you know, relationships, companies, brands that we think we could bring into this category to bring a lot of innovation. So, I mean, that's one of your specialties is the athlete relationships, but I haven't really seen that translate into... Stay tuned. Merchandise. Yeah, stay tuned. Absolutely. What does that look like? Like a clothing line or like specific things? I think, yeah, I think you're going to see several things. I'd say what are our goals in that business in the next couple of years? One is, again, to take the just the everyday consumer experience for that evergreen fan from good to great. I think we serve most fans very well, but we're not perfect and we need to be better in everything that we do. And that's our responsibility. The second thing is, I think, from a product perspective, I think we have a big opportunity to bring artists, athlete collaborations in it and other great brands into the business. We found when we brought other great brands into the business, we've had incredible success. You know, I'll just give you a small example. Vineyard Vines. They never made licensed sports. I met the guy in the Bahamas. He came up to me. He's like, hey, I own Vineyard Vines. I want to make licensed sports. Great. Now that's that's a big business. We do that together. There are so many examples if you go brand by brand. I don't want to give out things that we're doing that we haven't publicly announced yet, but there will be brand collaborations, artist collaborations, you know, athlete collaborations that I think can really move the needle with innovative product that can add a whole new layer of growth onto the business that fans will be so excited about. Well, you also have like this war chest of mailing list. I mean, what is your how many people do you have the information on at this point? I mean, we have 150 million. We have over 100 million fans today. So do you know about their habits at this point? I look at that and say, we're just getting started because, you know, eight billion people ish in this world. So, you know, billions of them are sports fans and they should all be fans of Fanatics. And so we have a lot of work to do. We want to become a beloved brand today. I think Fanatics has been too transactional. We want to just, you know, you want to go out and get a patch for my home's jersey, a CJ Strah jersey, you know, kind of to come to Fanatics. But we haven't become that beloved brand here. We have a lot to do to earn that, you know, from a customer. But that's what we're working hard to do. What is the mailing list? What are the advantages of that other than the obvious ones? Yeah, well, I think you can really best serve a fan because you can personalize. You know what that fan wants. I mean, you shouldn't go to the Fanatics site or the NFL shop and have an experience that's not completely custom to you. And so I think over the next year or two, you're going to see a very personalized experience, not just in the email marketing, but in the whole web experience. You know, I know what you're a fan of and what you're not a fan of, and I know what your habits are. You know, I hate the New York teams. Yeah, well, that makes the A.I. I'll know that immediately. That makes. Yeah, that makes both. Don't send him Yankee stuff. By the way, if you go to, you know, you're a basketball guy. If you go to Fanatics and the first thing you see is Knicks versus who your favorite team is, that's a mistake on us and a miss on ours. You know, who's your, you know, who did you grow up being a fan of? OK, so I hate Celtics. Yeah, but if you had the misfortune, actually, you actually had the fortune, not the misfortune, but if you had the fortune of growing up a Celtics fan, actually, and I actually love Tatum and I love Wick. So actually, I'm a I'm a fan. You were a part Sixers owner. I'm not a fan of the Celtics. I'm a fan of Jason Tatum, a fan of Wick. I'm a fan of my friends who are, you know, who are involved with the organization. But, you know, if you grew up a Celtics fan and I know I should know what types of memorabilia you would like, what types of training cards you'd be interested in, I want to send you things that are very personalized to you. So I think the benefit to know so much about sports fans, we can really personalize the experience to them. Does A.I. and the advancements in the last year, does that help you? Does it transform it? What does it do? It's it's a big opportunity. I mean, I think any company like ours is creating a lot of content, you know, has a massive opportunity from an A.I. perspective. But I think in each of our business, probably collectibles, the business where we probably have the biggest opportunity. But, you know, we create a ton of content. You know, we have two million. People don't realize, you know, in Finax Commerce, the merchandise business, we carry more than two million different products today, two million SKUs. That's insane. So we carry we have about a billion and a half dollars of cost of inventory that we carry to best satisfy fans. I think about that with all of that, we're still not satisfying fans as well as we want to. So that shows our opportunity. But, you know, the future today, you know, we bring a jersey in, you know, that we make and we bring it in by player. We made them one at a time here. The future is going to be you're going to have a robot. When someone orders a jersey and take that blank jersey, you're going to make that robot with automation. And by the way, that content is going to be created with A.I. So there's so much opportunity for us to to push it. And I'm sure the A.I. will be able to tell you exactly what the habits of, oh, this team is about to win the NLCS. Here's the window. This is 15 hours. You need to get these seven things ready to go right now. You probably have some of that already. We do have a lot of that. But I mean, again, we're not even in the first inning of that. We're not. I think we haven't got to the national anthem of that. You know what's cool? Like I was thinking about this watching the Black Friday game and they're putting the QR codes up Amazon. And I was like, you know what? This is just smart. I see what they're doing. It's a little manipulative, but I get it. And this is probably where sports is going over the next 20 years, right? They're going to have commercials. The QR code will come up right away. Like you were watching this right now and it's 15 percent off. That's it feels like the future, right? Yeah, I think that the not too distant future is you're watching a game and anything you do, you can you can click on that that item to buy it. OK, whether it's on the field and it's the jersey, whether it's on the sideline. It's the sideline here. You can buy it right off a player. I think you can make player props, your bets right off off of it. I think you can collect a collectible right from the show. You can trade it, trade it. I think you've got card prices going up and down based on player performance that you can action the show. You have marketplace from the from from the broadcast. And that's why for us, when you think about where this company can go, it's such a baby company about where finance can go, the opportunity to kind of create that fanatics app where you can do anything in one place. There's so much to do for digital sports fan. And that's really what our opportunity is. I was thinking of you with the QR codes, because, I mean, at some point you have to be involved in sports rights in some way, because that would be the final piece of this right where I'm watching a game and you're able to offer me I can bet on it as I'm watching it. I can buy the hat of of one of the players in the sidelines because I like it. I can just do all these different things based on this experience I'm having on your app. So two thoughts. One, I hope it's definitely never the final thing because there will never be a final thing. Because we'll always be pushing. That's number one. Number two, I think right now we're in three businesses where we have so much to do. So if you think about what we have to do in the commerce business, what we're already talking about, everything we're doing have to do in the collectibles business. And then the same goes in the online sports betting business and the iGaming business. We, you know, we can't take on anything more today, but I think we're studying that business. We're watching it. You know, we're seeing how things develop. And yes, it's a massive opportunity. Long term, do we absolutely want to be able to have live sports where you can bet on the sports, buy the products, collect them, trade them, you know, get tickets in our platform? You know, absolutely. Now, by the way, we don't need to do everything ourselves as well. Like, you know, we look at a company, you know, you know, like a live nation ticket master that we could partner with to put tickets into our platform as well. Because, you know, they have such a you know, they have such a breadth of assortment of tickets that that that fans want. What we want to do is give the consumer what they want in one spot. I just assumed tickets was coming at some point. Yeah, I think tickets will come as a product that we offer to a consumer. I don't think we'll be the ticketing platform. I don't think that's a business that we should be in on our own. I think there's too many companies doing it. And I think we can more partner to get the product into our platform to satisfy our fans. Not that we need to do it ourself. I, you have opinions on all the sportswright stuff that's happening, I'm sure. I definitely do. Like a fan or a student or this is down the line, I might be involved. But I'm sure you're watching like the NBA. What do they do? Like what when you see the I know you're tight with basically all the different types of people in the NBA. But when you see like the position they're in, what would you do if you were the NBA? How would you want people to see your games? Who would you part? Who would you want your partners to be? Yeah, so I look, I'll say a couple of things that I don't want to comment on what the NBA or Adam Stratus should be. Let me say this. First, I'm absolutely a student to all this. You know, it's nothing better to say, hey, let me get some popcorn, be on the couch and just watch because I've got so much to do in the three business we're in. I don't want to take anything new on. But at the same time, I want to study. I want to learn. But it's all the things you like. Yeah. So I love, I love being a student of this. And I like, there's nothing more fun than watching how, you know, NFL is developing on Thursday Night Football on, on, on Amazon and watching how Sunday Ticket's developing with, with, with YouTube, YouTube and Google. And watching the process that the NBA is going through right now. Look, I think the NBA is in an incredible position because it's, you know, truly a global game. Um, you, they have a very digital audience, so I think they've got the, you know, you know, an incredibly digital audience. And I think they've got not only all the traditional bidders that want to be missed with them, but they've got, you know, all the digital bidders that have all watched what's happened so far and been, I think. I think it's been good for Amazon, right? I think it's been a win-win. I think it's been great for everybody. Well, I, I look and say, you know, I think NFL is blowing past what they thought the viewership was going to be, and I think Amazon's getting better results than what they thought. And I think they're each doing a great job with it. And I think it's been an incredible partnership. So, you know, hats off to Andy Jassy and the crew at Amazon and to Roger and roll up in the team with NFL. So you're not giving me a prediction? Well, look, here's the prediction I would give you is, um, the NFL a few years ago did not have Sunday Ticket with YouTube. And did not have a partnership with Amazon and those are doing great.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Heroes
"If you have your Bibles today would you turn with me to 1 Corinthians 1 26 through the end of the chapter and I was thinking today on heroes in honor of our Remembrance Day there are blessings to any country that will make the God of the Bible their God and abide by his truths as laid out in the Scriptures. These truths though initially sated by David towards Israel can apply to us as Gentiles as if we're obedient to them and Psalm 33 12 blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord and the people whom we have chosen for his own inheritance and the truth is there are great blessings in being a child of God. I understand this if you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior we are entered into the promises and blessings of Abraham and we will enter into that lineage so that's a blessing there. I was thinking of a hero, a hero is a man or a woman of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger or fortitude in suffering a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event hence a great or illustrious person. A little further on this a pastor and author recently wrote that our society has lost the meaning of the word hero he said that we think that if an athlete can put a ball through a hoop they're a hero. If a musician can play eight chords on a guitar they're considered a hero and if an actor can pretend to be something they are not they're considered a hero in Hollywood. This pastor wrote I remember watching a well -known journalist interview an actor about his recent movie which featured a politically troubled region of the world. The journalist asked the celebrity what he thought should be done about the political situation there the actor responded who cares what I think and went on to point out that he was an actor. This pastor said real heroes are people who actually do something sacrificial or courageous he points out that God does not seek out heroes to accomplish his purposes God isn't looking for a strong man or woman per se rather he's looking for someone whom he can be strong on behalf of. Amen end quotes there and that came by Jim Sandel but I think about some other heroes of the past. One of the heroes that rates highly in my mind is John Wycliffe. He continued his reforming attempts and particularly began the very significant step of translating and writing out the New Testament in English a radical step as it brought the Gospels close to the ordinary person who could not understand Latin and remove the church which would be the Catholic Church at that time as the interpreter having God's Word available to the public in the language of the common man English would have meant disaster to that church no longer would they control access to the scriptures if people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue the church's income and power would crumble they could not possibly continue to get away with self indulgences which is the forgiveness of sins or selling the release of loved ones from a church manufactured purgatory people would begin to challenge the church's authority if the church were exposed as frauds and thieves the contradictions between what God's Word said and what the priests taught would open the public's eye and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the institutional church held salvation through faith not works or donations would be understood the need for priests would vanish through the priesthood of all believers the veneration of church canonized saints and Mary would be called into question the availability of scriptures in English was the biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church neither side would give up without a fight end quotes John Jeffcoat English Bible history as he recounts the history of the Bible through the centuries now when we really consider the idea of a hero or a person to whom we characterize as a hero whether secular or sacred we think of men and women who've denied themselves for a greater cause this cause they saw worth fighting for much to their own detriment much to their own adversity and they may have thought with or without weapons those who go to war for the country do so out of duty and the heroes are not just those who died but those who have stood tall in the face of evil the Christian hero is the person who does not stand out in front of and herald their greatness or absorb the plazas of men rather it is the person who's faithful to Christ irrespective of the dangers they were called to encounter behind all of these feats these harrowing feats and these determinative there actions lies a person an ordinary person like you and I whose love for Christ I'm speaking of Christians as heroes particular Christians to whom Christ was preeminent in their life now may we not seek to be heroes may we just seek to be faithful until the day we breathe our last it is an attitude that has gained much applause respect of others of the heroes of the faith Hebrews chapter 11 we'll deal with that passage tonight here in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 26 for you see your calling brethren how that not many wise men after the flesh not many mighty not many noble are called but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world and things which are despised that God chosen yea and things which are not to bring to not things that are why does he do this the no flesh and glory in his presence but of him are you in Christ Jesus who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteous and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written he that gloria let him glory in the Lord you think about the ones to whom Jesus decided to use as apostles tax fishermen collectors everyday citizens these were not of your upper elites now I understand there was Luke who wrote the book of Luke and he was a very intelligent man it was a doctor Paul an apostle was also very intelligent but overall God would use some fisherman with sometimes some very sour attitudes cranky attitudes he would use a tax collector who was hate noted as being a scoundrel in communities God would use these men to turn the world upside down they weren't some theological pinnacle of excellence the only pinnacle of excellence in their lives would be obedience to Christ but yet while Christ lived they forsook Christ at the moment he most needed them it's not about us it's about Christ you think about Revelation chapter 2 verse 10 as he tells the Church of Smyrna be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life first Peter chapter 5 verse 6 humble yourselves therefore into the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time and we still talk about those 12 apostles today Judas we obviously don't talk about in a positive light but we talk about the Apostles in a positive light men who hazard of their life for Jesus Christ and turn the world upside down and you and I might think I could never do anything great for God because it's not about you it's about the God that we worship I want to look at three qualities today of a true biblical hero it's an interesting study may we seek to be devoted not promoted and there are so often times in Christian up does in Christianity pandering a to elevate an individual it's not about elevating an individual it's about elevating Jesus Christ heroes who are heroes those on the battlefield are everyday men and women who answer the call to go to war they go to war they learn all that they need to they go to war and they perish sometimes but they're like every one of us same flesh and blood I trust today that we would seek as verse 31 says he that glory let him glory no Lord let's pray dear only father Lord I love you Lord Jesus I yield the state of thee God I pray that you'd work in my lips my thoughts to preach your word faithfully I pray that we would be found worthy more than pleasing to thee would help us to be an example to others behind us of faithful Christianity it doesn't matter how we started our life doesn't matter all the turmoil of what we've done in our lives but God may we be faithful found faithful into death Lord Jesus I yield this time to thee I thank you for being our gracious Savior in your name I pray amen.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from Selects: Who were the Buffalo Soldiers?
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do Hall of Famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here with a Saturday select - selection? Yeah, that works. This week I'm going to go with Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers? This is from January 2020 and I love my history episodes that we do and this is one that I really enjoy doing because we dug in, didn't know anything about this topic, and those are always my favorite when I go in kind of blind and learn a lot. So check it out. Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Action Jackson Bryant, right? Sure. And then there's Jerry over there, The Flash. That makes this Stuff You Should Know. That's right. If there's one thing people say to me is how much I'm like Carl Weathers and how speedy Jerry is. Why do I want to say that Carl Weathers had one arm in Action Jackson? I don't think that was the case. Has he ever had one arm in any of his, oh, I think his arm gets pulled off in Predator. I'm conflating the two. That sounds about right. I saw Predator, but just once like, you know, when it came out. I saw it within the last 12 months. I think it's even better now as a grown up. Oh yeah? Yeah. Okay. I can really feel the tension like you're in the jungle there with everybody. It's amazing. Have you been singing the Buffalo Soldier song like constantly in your head? Despite my best efforts, I can't stop. Well, I looked up the lyrics because I was just, you know, I know some of them, but I wanted to kind of see where exactly he was probably talking about the soldiers. And there were some kind of on the nose references. Sure. You mentioned San Juan. You mentioned San Juan. What else? You know, fighting for America, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival. Sure. I always got it wrong though. I thought he said dreadlock rock star. No. No, he says dreadlock Rasta. I know. I learned that today. Dreadlock rock star. I've been singing. Well, I thought he was talking about himself. That's hilarious. I was singing it wrong. I mean, he was singing about himself. No, he was singing about the Buffalo Soldiers. They weren't Rastas.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"And, you know, that was difficult, you know, seeing your friends go on and realize this dream that, I suppose you'd shared that journey together and seeing almost getting left behind, that was tough. And I stuck with the sport for another couple of years. I started into open water. As a result, I needed a fresh change. So moved from 200 meters up to the 10 kilometer event, which is the Olympic event for open water. But I didn't see those opportunities to compete for my country or those pathways. We actually had a guy who was top three in the world. So, you know, I wasn't gonna be getting in front of him anytime soon. So I actually, I left the sport in 2016, feeling quite unfulfilled and that I'd let a lot of people down who'd paid a lot of, spent a lot of time in me and, you know, invested a lot of faith into what I'd been doing. And I think that transition for a lot of elite athletes into the everyday world is quite a tough one. I'm an accountant, so I ended up throwing myself into my work, doing the long hours, taking on the CPA or the Chartered Accounting Studies. So, you know, a day's work would be, you know, they say it's nine to five, it never is. I'd leave work at about 7 p.m. and have to study a book on tax for another two or three hours every night for the space of three years. And, you know, I did it and I didn't really have a life for that period of time. There wasn't much balance, wasn't doing much sport or seeing my friends as much as I should have done. And yeah, it resulted in a fair bit of burnout and, you know, something that didn't happen overnight, but, you know, it wasn't a sustainable lifestyle and a few key events happened, you know, breakups with a partner, losing some friends to suicide. You know, a few issues at work, not really spending much time with family. And yeah, I sort of, yeah, crashed quite hard. And for me, I was fairly lucky. I had some good people around to help me through those times. I ended up going, and like you say, Dave, I took some time out to go backpacking. That was something that was always a dream of mine to do, to go see more of the world and managed to see 30 countries in the space of 10 months, which was quite a lot of looking back at it. But yeah, fortunately enough, COVID brought me back to Australia. Obviously it was a terrible thing, but some good things came out of it for me. And one of those was getting back into swimming. You mentioned the breakup with a partner. I was watching the live stream or the stories that were coming off. And I think it was your sister. I can't remember who it was. One of the people on the boat was advocating for the fact that you were single and maybe deserved a partner to be joining on. So yeah, ladies who are listening to the podcast know that Andy is definitely single and definitely has some high performance abilities, both in the water and probably elsewhere too. Traveling from Scotland across the country, it was a fun side note there that I thought was pretty hilarious. And obviously I'm trying to add some levity to what is a very, I don't wanna say sensitive subject because it's something that you've done and articulated through your content and these challenges that you've been pursuing and shining light on the fact that this is something that people have to deal with. Mental health has become more of a conversation over the past decade or two, obviously with athletes across the globe here, putting it at the forefront and making sure that people are talking and having these conversations, despite the fact that maybe being difficult.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"I think it always comes back to your, what's your why? Why are you putting yourself through this? One of the things we wanted to highlight was the incredible support that we've received from Caldera Labs. If you haven't noticed, my skin's looking a little nicer. The beard's looking a little fuller. I actually want to highlight two products in particular that Caldera Lab has changed the game on. The first one, the beard. It's a conditioning oil that not only helps the hair on the outside, but the skin underneath it. Stay rejuvenated, refreshed, and looking youthful. I've been using it every single day. I can't get enough of this stuff. The other stuff we've been using is the icon. I've been using the icon every single morning, and it keeps me looking refreshed. Caldera Lab creates high-performance men's skincare products, and the regimen leads off their product lineup, a twice-a-day routine to transform your skin. Whether it's cleaning, hydrating, refreshing, these products do it. I can't get enough of them. They know that the skincare world is heavily female-driven and has long been in the wild, wild west for men. That's why we're making the solution simple, and that's why you folks can receive their best offer right now, get 20% off by using the code AP20 at checkout. And guys, you gotta let me know what you think of this stuff because I'm loving it. I want to know if you guys like it as well. It would mean the world to me. Also means the world to me that you're tuning in to this episode of the Athletes Podcast. As you know, we have our athlete agreement. It simply means that you have to hit that subscribe button for watching this episode. We don't ask for any payment, anything else. We just ask that whether you're watching on YouTube, listening on Spotify, Apple, you hit that subscribe button and you share this with an athlete, coach, or an individual that you think will benefit from hearing it because on our journey to educate, entertain, and inspire, we need your help along the way. And I really appreciate you folks for tuning in. Here we go. You're the most decorated racquetball player in U.S. history. World's strongest man. From childhood passion to professional athlete. Eight time Ironman champion. So what was it like making your debut in the NHL? What is your biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes? From underdogs to national champions. This is the Athletes Podcast where high performance individuals share their triumphs, defeats, and life lessons to educate, entertain, and inspire the next generation of athletes. Here we go. You've got Guinness Book of World Records. You've got swim championships. Like, dude, I've been trying to figure out how I would wrap my head around introducing yourself for this episode because it seems like you could check off so many different boxes. I know before we started recording, you were talking about your swim maybe being your better suited athletic endeavor, but Andy Donaldson, welcome to the Athletes Podcast. You embody who I wanna feature here on this show and someone I'm very grateful to be able to chop it up for for the next 45 hour long conversation here, but I'm gonna let you introduce yourself, who you are, the incredible human being that you are, because what you've done, dude, recently is crazy. 33 kilometer challenge this past week. Along with the seven Guinness records that you have, swimming across every body of water, it seems like Andy Donaldson. I'll let you take it from here, dude. Well, David, it's an absolute pleasure to be here and to chat. I know we've been talking back and forth and looking forward to jumping on this with you here for quite a while. So it's an absolute pleasure and very kind words that you've just had there. So I suppose I'm just a guy from the West Coast of Scotland who got into swimming from a young age and pursued the Olympic path. Didn't quite make it, stepped away from the sport for a number of years, but during COVID, found my way back to it. And initially it was just a real passion for the sport and doing it for enjoyment. And as I got fitter and faster, and I revisited a few old goals, which has taken me into ultra marathon swimming and doing, I suppose, some crazy swims around the world to support causes which are close to my heart including mental health. So yeah, like you'd mentioned, swam the world's seven toughest channel swims in the space of year last year. And I'm just a week off, week fresh off a charity challenge here in Western Australia, which is where I live, which was a 33 kilometer swim run, swim to raise money for sick kids in Western Australia.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from How Scuba Works
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh, I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and it's a good old -fashioned barn burner whiz banger of an episode. I ran out of weird colloquialisms. Oh, yeah? Yeah, just now. Didn't you hear? Yeah, but I just figured you were still doing them in your head. No, I was frantically grasping for another one in my head, and it was just dust and a tumbleweed. So this is sort of continuing our underwater series, we'll call it. Yeah, this is so Stuff You Should Know. We've done stuff that's much more specific about the general category that we're talking about, and now we're finally doing the general category. Yeah, we did the diving bell. We did the butterfly. We did cave diving. In fact, cave diving was released as a select just this year. Yes, such a good one. And do I need to remind you about the other related episode? I forgot about that. I'll give you a hint. I remember the scuba cat episode. Didn't you interview scuba cat? Oh, yeah, I mean, for those of you who don't know, the short version is many, many years ago in the very early days of the podcast, occasionally we were sort of told to do certain things as episodes. Unspeakable things. And two of them really stand out to me. One of them was scuba cat. I know what you're going to say for the other one. I know you do. Which was this guy who trained his cat to scuba dive, and it's literally like a blurb or maybe a little fluffy news piece at the end of a news program. And they're like, do a Stuff You Should Know episode on this cat and this guy. Why, though? Do you remember? Did they just want page views or something? I guess, or else that guy happened to be friends with whoever owned the company at the time. All right. So I think there was an article on the website we worked for, and they were probably just trying to drive people to that. So we did one on scuba cat. I would really love that just to be scrubbed from the archive. Well, way to go bringing it up, then. What was I going to say, Chuck? Oh, wasn't this thing in like a little submarine kind of? Isn't that what the scuba diving was? I don't think so. I think he built him a little outfit. Oh, OK. Wow, I don't remember that. A little thing with like a big bubble mask. OK, that's worth an episode. We should redo it. We should do a scuba cat redux. What's the other one? I know we're going to say it. We could say at the same time, I think it's going to be... Three, two, one. Tenovators. Tenovators. Yes. What can you do with an Altoids tin? Yeah, for real. Like, I don't know how that one came up either, but we were instructed to do an episode on tenovators, and they were interesting, but not episode length interesting. Even when they were six minutes long. Yeah, and an attenovator, just for those of you who don't know, they take Altoid tins and they do things with them, like turn them into radios. Maybe they hold coins instead of Altoids. It's just repurposing. Yeah, exactly. It's repurposing an Altoid. Tenovation. Very well. And we always talk about jackhammers in the sun. That's because we're literally too ashamed to even mention those other two, but here they are. Go listen to them. Just quickly wanted to say I got back from Mexico, and I did not scuba dive. I snorkeled. Oh, yeah, it's fun. And I didn't... I mean, I love the experience, but I learned that I, and especially my daughter, are free divers. Oh, yeah? She couldn't do it, man. We got her... I mean, she loves to swim more than anything, and we got her in all the gear, put her in the water, and she was pitched a fit, quite frankly. Oh, like she couldn't breathe through the tube? She does it in pools. It just... When you're eight, things happen, and you can't explain why a kid will dig in, but she wasn't into it. We were very frustrated, did not handle it well. She asked to get back on the boat. She got back on the boat and cried while we snorkeled. We're like, we're out of here. We're going to do it. You know, you'll be okay. And then once we were done, she asked the scuba guys or the snorkel guys, can I just get in with my mask and free dive? And it was in Mexico. And they were like, sure. Right? And she did, and she turned into a dolphin. And I recounted this on Instagram. I took some great pictures of her just swimming like no kid has ever loved swimming before. And it was just a big lesson for everybody. I know what happened, though. I think, unless I'm misreading it, she got claustrophobic from having to breathe through that tube. No, she does it all the time in pools. What it was, I think, was wearing the life vest keeping her up on the surface. Oh, okay. Well, you left that little detail out. Well, I mean, that's part of snorkeling is you got a vest on so it keeps you up top. And she was like, no, no, no. I belong down there. My home is the sea. I see. I got you. Okay. Well, that makes a lot more sense. I guess I was just projecting onto her because I used to get claustrophobic trying to breathe through a snorkel. Well, a lot of people on Instagram supported that and said, you know, I have a hard time with this equipment, too, and I love to swim. But it was really that life vest, I think. Okay. All right. Well, we finally established the root cause then. Yeah. But here we go with scuba. Oh, okay. I guess. Okay. So what does scuba stand for, Chuck? Self -contained underwater breathing situation. Appomattox. Appomattox. Apparatus. That's right. Scuba. It's actually like an acronym, but it's so used, so widely used now. It's a lowercase word. I'm not sure. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, like, it's not. Nobody does it with capitals and periods or anything like that. It's just lower. It's a word. It's its own word now. It's almost lost its meaning as far as, like, the acronym goes. And yet, it's gained so much meaning over the years because as scuba has been around for over the decades, more and more people have found the joy of going underwater, and I heard you laugh at me, by the way, and breathe. If you breathe fully underwater, no snorkel, like, your head is nowhere near the surface of the water. And it doesn't need to be, like, significantly distant from the water. It can just be, like, a foot below the water. But you're breathing underwater. It's an amazing feeling for sure. And a lot of people have discovered that over the years and said, scuba's the life for me. Well, as of December 2019, you had scuba dived once. Yep. Have you done it since? No. And I'm actually a little troubled because I read that you're supposed to go, like, three or four open water dives, and I only went on one. So I've been under the impression that I've been certified to scuba dive all this time, and I'm like, is that true? Like, I can't remember where my card is or anything. So I wonder if I actually wasn't fully certified. Hmm. Or satisfied. I would find it very dissatisfying if that were true. Well, do you want to do it again? Because I didn't get a good read on you in 2019. I didn't know you then like I know you now. Maybe, because before the reason I didn't like it is because it made me seasick. Like, the air mixture did not sit well with me. And then getting on the boat in between dives made it even worse. Mm -hmm. So I was like, I don't feel like doing this ever again. But I think enough times past that it's possible I would try it again. Well, I want to get certified now for sure. I did anyway before, and we thought we'd wet our beaks with snorkeling. Mm -hmm. The big problem I had, man, was the fins. I mean, there were a lot of currents, and I just felt like I couldn't go and get anywhere. Yeah. And then at the end, when Ruby was free diving, I did the same thing. I took off all my stuff except for my mask. Mm -hmm. And I went down there, and I was like, all right, well, I feel like I can swim again. Yeah. It takes a lot of getting used to, because it's meant to help you, and it does if you are familiar with it and comfortable with it. But if not, it's all encumbrance. It makes everything difficult. And, like, yes, you just want to take it all off and just free dive, like you're saying. Yeah. Emily was cruising around. But, you know, we saw a little, my first, like, coral that I've ever seen, like live coral. Uh -huh. And it was beautiful. And, you know, the little stripy, bright fish, and I was in there with those guys for the first time. And it was remarkable and amazing. Was it a Dory or a Nemo that you saw? Oh, I don't know. It had, I think, yellow stripes. I don't think it was technically a clownfish, although maybe they're all types of clownfish. I'm not sure. What's a clownfish? I think, like, a Dory or a Nemo. I saw this one big thing that was, like, the size of a dinner plate, another big, flat guy. Oh, wow. He was cool. And then Emily saw a sea turtle, which I did not see. Oh, neat. And then we also saw their efforts to, you know, with artificial reefs, with, like, these PVC sort of pyramids that they were building down there.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh, I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from Selects: Are Election Laws Designed to Suppress Voting?
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our episode from May 2017 on voter suppression. Once in a while we do a topic where no matter how hard we try, it just turns out to be a one -sided thing. We don't pick those topics because they're one -sided, they just turn out that way despite our best efforts. So take a gander at this episode and see what you think about all that. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Over the Next Hill Fitness
What Angel Cona Wish She Knew As She Embarked on Her Running Adventure
"What piece of knowledge do you wish you would have had in the beginning of your running journey that you know now or, you know, what's the best thing you've learned or what would you like to learn? I've learned a lot about learning how to kind of fuel for races and shoes. Shoes are definitely a really important one. To start out running, I was very much, like I said, it was kind of a decision of, oh, I'm going to go run a marathon. So I started out not knowing anything. And a lot of stuff I've learned, like from my friends and everything, you know, like about eating every so often during a race or carrying the gels. And that's a huge help for the longer races. I also kind of learned with the whole calf issue to take a little bit more time between races. And if I signed up for a race and I realized that, hey, maybe I shouldn't do this race back to back, that it's okay to, you know, not run that specific race. And that was really hard to learn the first time because, you know, the 49k was supposed to be my first ultra before Peru. And I realized at mile seven that it wasn't going to happen. And I was mad about it. I was not happy. You know, my friends, of course, were like, no, you did the right thing. I knew I did the right thing. I did not, I wasn't happy about it. But so I kind of learned this year to, you know, if you don't think maybe two races that weekend is a good idea, maybe don't do. It'll be there next year. You can go back next year. Well, good for you for listening to your body and listening to your friends, you know, the experienced people. Because sometimes, you know, we can get stubborn as athletes. That's typically the case. So good for you. Yeah, I'm definitely, I have a lot more stubborn than I do running skills. And I don't listen very well. And I try, like to say, you know, this is kind of like my family at this point. And I try and listen. But I'm not the best at listening. So, you know, I'm trying. But at least you're honest and you know you have room for improvement.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from The Harlem Globetrotters: American Treasures
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, we want to let you know that that great LP, The Vinyl Record of Stuff You Should Know About How Vinyl Works, it sold so well that Born Losers Records has printed more, right? Yeah, we're in our second pressing, Chuck. That's how great it was. And they're printing 500 more, and now's the time to go get them. You can order them now, and they're in two new awesome color slash styles that you can go see. Go check out our website, stuffyoushouldknow .com, and click on the button SYSKVinyl, and it will give you all the facts and info you need, or just search Stuff You Should Know Vinyl, and Born Losers will come up too. That's the official site. So if you got shut out from the last press, well hallelujah, here's pressing two. You're welcome.
Fading Memories: Alzheimer's Caregiver Support
A highlight from Vibrant Living: Brain Health Strategies Matter Even in Memory Care
"Are you struggling on navigating the complexities of specific dementia behaviors? Well, join me and my guest, Krista Montague, the brain behind Dementia's Success Path, as we unravel this tangled issue. Krista, with her riches of experience in dementia care, shines a light on the intricacies of caring for dementia patients. From handling physically active patients to dealing with violence in caregiving, we delve into the importance of balancing physical and emotional needs, and how fostering one -on -one relationships with recreation therapists or activity directors can revolutionize patient care. Welcome to Fading Memories, the podcast for caregivers of loved ones with dementia. I'm your host, Jennifer Fink. My mom had Alzheimer's for 20 years, and when I went looking for answers, I had the start a podcast to find them. Join me as we navigate the challenges of dementia caregiving together. This podcast is your beacon of support and empowerment. Let's share our experiences, find solace, and discover the strength within us. Get ready to embark on a transformative caregiving journey with Fading Memories. If you're looking for additional advice, be sure to sign up for our weekly email newsletter. It's brief, gives you great advice, you can read it in less than five minutes, and you know where to find the link in the website, on the show notes. We're working on subscriber -only information and specials, so you're not going to want to miss out. When I learned that despite eating as healthy as possible, we can still have undernourished brains, I was frustrated. Learning about neuro -reserves, Relev8, and how it's formulated to fix this problem convinced me to give them a try. Now I know many of you are skeptical, as was I, however, I know it's working because of one simple change, my sweet tooth is gone. I didn't expect that, and it's not something other users have commented on, but here's some truth. My brain always wanted something sweet. Now fruit usually did the trick, but not always. One bad night's sleep would fire up my sugar cravings so much they were almost impossible to ignore. You ever have your brain screaming for a donut? Well, for me, those days are gone. I believe in my results so much that I'm passing on my 15 % discount to you. Try it for two or three months and see if you have a miraculous sweet tooth cure, or maybe just better focus and clarity. It's worth definitely a try. Now on with our show. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I know you're going to love today's episode. With me is Krista Montague. We are talking about challenging dementia behaviors. And for those of you who know, who have listened long enough, you know, I had a few of those with my mom, so we'll be talking about those and others. So thanks for joining me, Krista. Oh, thanks for having me. So why don't you introduce yourself, tell us about your company, maybe your background with caring for somebody with dementia, and then we'll dive right into the topic. Yeah, absolutely. So I run a platform and a business called Dementia Success Path. The reason I started it is when I was very first getting started with my career, I ended up working in Jerry Psych. And that's where you run into the most challenging of dementia behaviors. That's why they're there at the hospital and my job there as an activity therapist was to provide natural intervention. So what to say and what to do to get them to come to a certain baseline in order for the doctors that work there to really be able to correctly prescribe medication. So anyways, that is how I got into the space. And over the course of many, many years, I cared for thousands of dementia patients with challenging behaviors. Thus, now I help caregivers on the Internet with said challenging behaviors now. So that's that's a little bit about me and my background. Awesome. While you were talking, I remembered a different scenario, so I hope I'm not going to throw this out of left field because this was a really challenging behavior. And I want to keep it as anonymized as possible. So a resident who was very tall, who had been a what do they call like a endurance athlete, did those like endurance marathons for people who are not watching the YouTube video. This is a very I don't want to do that kind of face. And he got very agitated if he couldn't get a hold of his wife on the phone and she was out of cell reception and he got so agitated, he pushed over another resident who broke a hip. We all know what happens when older people break hips. And this was an issue she had with him. It's just like he had obviously greater than average. What is the word? Oh, it's Monday and my brain's not going to work. He just had a ton of energy and he needed people to like take him running or he needed a way of getting rid of the energy. But he was out of stage of his dementia that taking him out wasn't necessarily safe for himself or others. So just off the top of your head, what do you think you would do with that? Just we're going to start off with the hard question first. Yeah, well, so I guess I'd be curious to figure out some of some of the why behind that, because ultimately behavior is just communication. The main thing with most of the dementias, whether it be Alzheimer's or from a temporal or blue body or whatever, is that it takes away language if you stick with the disease process long enough. So over time, those behaviors become a way for them to say, hey, something emotionally or physically with me isn't right. And I can't tell you any other way than maybe to shove this over or something like that. So it sounds like a couple of things are there, which is he has a physical need of moving around if that's been a part of his life and that's not being that that could definitely be part of it. The other part is maybe an emotional need that's not being met, which is he's wanting to get a hold of his safe person, the person who he feels gets him and can help orient him. And it's not happening. And I can just feel so overwhelming when you've lost control of everything else in your life with dementia. So as far as tackling those issues, I usually like to start with the physical issue first before I tackle the emotional one. So I understand it could definitely be challenging to get them to maybe run around the block, but I know where I happen to work, we had a pretty substantial backyard area, a garden area that people could walk around or even like a little mini trampoline event. That'd actually be a great idea if you can't move anywhere and he's like, there's nothing physically wrong. He has no mobility issues going on. Just have him bounce on that trampoline and just count it out, like almost treat it like a workout he's having like he might have had in sports or something like that, or maybe run laps a around few times or make it like some type of competition, like he's beating himself with it. So there's all kinds of ways that you can help productively put that energy towards something where it's safer. That was a lot of my job is figuring out how I could safely get these folks needs met so that if things continue to be an issue that then the doctor would come in with, say, like your Ativan or your Seroquel or, you know, whatever, things like that, it's a delicate balance trying if you're a psychiatrist that specializes in geriatrics to really get that right. And he really depended on us trying everything before he gets the medications. We're like, OK, so roughly we probably need this amount. But I was so I'll go there first with getting this physical needs. If he has a lot of energy and he just needs it met, there's there's always a safe way to get it done. It just takes a little bit of creativity and knowing a little bit about his life and his background and what would make the most sense for him. So all that's very important. And then beyond that, the emotional need could be maybe he feels like there isn't anybody else that just sits and talks to him. And I know it's challenging facilities. I get it. I worked in a facility, but at the same point in time, that's really where your let's just say your recreation therapist, your activity director can really be helpful with that. Chances are maybe he could like wall that person's activity planning or something like that could be sitting next to to her him or whatever and help him with these ideas and really building that one on one relationship so that it's not such a desperate bid for that person. You know, ultimately, there's always there's always something you can do. But I hear you. There's always going to be challenges when you're looking at an institutional place with staffing, training, all that type of stuff. But, you know, every single person's different. And it was it was rare when there was ever a person where I'm just like, no, we can't we can't help them. But it was it was very, very, very rare that that would ever be a situation that we find ourselves in. I'm wondering if they actually had gone to a geriatric psychiatrist. I'm thinking no, but I didn't know everything about their situation, obviously. Sure. That probably would have been a really good solution because he'd been in one memory care community and they just I'm not sure they tried very hard. That one used to be a mile down the hill from my home and there was a reason my mom wasn't there. And the one my mom was at, he had been moved there. So the whole incident with the shoving was in the person who got shoved was the parent of a client of my husband. So it was like, it was all the dramas. Yeah, it resolved. It resolved pretty well. I mean, there wasn't lawsuits or everybody was level headed and came to some some agreements that were positive. So that was good because I was like, oh, God, we don't. We're like, do we really need to get lawyers involved? Because, you know, this is just a really ugly situation. But I question whether whether they had a psychiatrist because that might have helped because they did have a really beautiful outside courtyard. I don't know that it would have been enough space. I mean, it was basically the size of an Olympic pool, so he could have run down and back and around. But I'm wondering if he would have felt like like a hamster on a wheel, just kind of going in a circle. But I like the trampoline idea. It depends on the context you're putting it in. It really does. If you're really treating it like, hey, this is, you know, a workout that we're doing together, like a training workout, if he was a big sports guy, then it could make sense for him. It just depends. As far as, I'd say it's unlikely the facility had one. And the reason being is in the place that I worked at, it's a hospital, so it was meant to be short term and that's usually how it goes. Oftentimes we see, rightly so, medication being a very last resort because it could take someone like him who is nothing's physically wrong with him. He's extremely physically active and it could mess with his balance and make it so he becomes a fall risk. So it's almost like you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul when you're introducing medications. Oftentimes the folks that come to our hospital, they were violent, like they were spitting, they were fighting, hitting people, danger to themselves or others. Like it was very, very extreme situations where they'd be like, OK, like the drugs are like the very last resort to managing this. And I can understand in, you know, memory care or skilled nursing or something like that, it's challenging to have somebody so physically strong around with a bunch of frail people around, for sure. He certainly had quite a few of those. Yeah, he's really tall and then none of the caregivers, most of them, like 99 % of them were women and they weren't, none of them were more than average height. Most of us were pretty, yeah, we're talking like five foot two to five, six or seven at best. So it's not like they had like big, tall, you know, burly women to control him, which, you know, physically controlling him isn't really in the options either. But yeah, it was just, it was one of those situations where it's like, you know, his care partner was just at her wit's end and she was out of cell range because she was doing something for herself and their religious community. And so the fact that she freaked out that he couldn't get ahold of her was really unfortunate. But, you know, and I'm hoping that they learned something, you know, like all of this happened in like 2019 and then we had the pandemic and my mom passed away. It was like, oh, like, it was just, it was like a whole lot happened in a couple of years. But you were talking about violence. And so now we're going to shift back to mom, my mom. And the more we, so we talked a little bit about this, the more help she physically needed. Now, my mom walked fine with no AIDS. She had nothing physically wrong with her either. She had just had Alzheimer's for nearly 20 years. The more help she needed, the nastier she got. She didn't want people to help her. She didn't think she needed help. And if you pressed the wrong way, she literally scratched people and drew blood. So a little bit violent. They were always so surprised because like, oh, she's so easy going. I'm like, you're not talking about my mother. My mother was never easy going. She was, she was a very lovely, nice lady. Did lots of things for the community, loved her family and all that. But don't piss her off because that was a bad idea. And it did not help after Alzheimer's if you pissed her off. So I know we're kind of going back to lack of training, lack of time, lack of staff, which, you know, is actually has gotten worse since my mom passed away. But they never seem to be very good at diffusing the anger that came up kind of quickly. And it was always, it always made me feel so bad when she's, when she drew blood on the gal that took care of her. Because that gal put up with way too much garbage. So it's, go ahead. I was going to say, when you've got somebody who doesn't think they need help, that was the worst with my mom. It's like, you know, and I actually experienced it. We'd come back from, I always took her out. We went and watched kids in the park or whatever. This was what gave her the most joy. And we came back, she needed to use the restroom and she was, you know, she was still fairly continent, but she needed depends, just in case kind of thing. And as we all have happened, you know, her toe gets caught in the elastic and she's grunting and groaning and pissing and moaning, trying to pull the, first off, she crossed her legs and then tried to pull up the, you know, the incontinence underwear. And I'm like, I know exactly what's going to happen if I help her because she's going to get angry at me. And so I let her fuss and fume for a few minutes and I thought, this is ridiculous. And I went in and I said, oh, you just have your toe caught. That happens to me all the time. And I like grimaced and I bent over and I unhooked her toe and I literally backed up and stood up as quick as I could. Thankfully, I did not get smacked. That was what I was expecting. And I left the bathroom. I left her to do the rest of her stuff. She had her clothes back on. She comes back in her room, absolutely spitting mad. And I'm like, you know, this is ridiculous. It's not like I, I didn't even touch her. All I did was unhook the elastic from her toe, which, you know, if she didn't have Alzheimer's, she would have understood that that was the problem. But she was so mad. She was like, right, right, right, people come here. And she stomped out of her room and I thought, okay, well, I guess I'm going to go home now. And she made a circle around. The residents came back in her room. She goes, oh, hi, what are you doing here? I was like, oh, crap. Now we can start the visit all over again. Like, should have left a minute and a half ago. Oh, no. Oh, man. Yeah. So, you know, it's funny. I was actually having this discussion recently. I don't know if you've heard of Dan Salinger. He's pretty big on TikTok, like a really big caregiver on TikTok. I was just interviewing him on my Instagram. And we were talking a little bit about really how memories aren't quite as straightforward as a lot of people initially think. Something I really noticed with a lot of people with dementia, like all kinds of dementia, is that while the dementia stole the information aspect of their memories, and memories are really both comprised of both emotions and information. So you notice that a lot of the emotions behind their experiences would really linger. So, for example, if I'm sure if mom like so my thought when you're talking about mom is it's possible, maybe somebody else pissed her off earlier in the day, and she didn't necessarily hang on to the information of what made her mad earlier, but she was maybe hanging on to the emotion from it. And it's possible that maybe the her toe getting stuck in you helping her. She's like, no one respects me like this is just like the fifth thing that someone's disrespecting me with. And now my daughter's doing it to me like gosh darn it. For emotionally, her it feels like this is I'm just so tired of not having any control over my life, or I'm just so tired of like people telling me what to do all the time, talking to me like I'm a little kid, like just all those are very valid feelings of anger. But since the information gets like poof out of their brains, all it looks like is, wow, they're really overreacting to that being stuck in their pant leg. So sometimes it's not always the easiest to try to discern like, was I the fifth thing that pissed her off? Because she probably won't be able to tell you. But anyways, how I guess Dan and I came through that is he noticed that like maybe when after he got his dad to shower and his dad is mad, the anger would just kind of linger for a few hours afterwards, even when he completely forgotten he even had a shower. So it's just so, yeah, it's so interesting how all that works. It could be both helpful and unhelpful simultaneously as far as them forgetting things or the emotions lingering. So anyways, those are the thoughts I've had. The lack of control, something that she had. So she was the oldest of four kids. And so, you know, she was always responsible for the younger siblings. And I mean, I'm the oldest of two, so I can relate to that. My dad wasn't the easiest person. He, you know, he worked. My mom took care of my sister and I, and he kind of kept control of things. And whenever she wanted to do something, like if she wanted to repaint a room in the house, she'd think about it. She wouldn't talk to anybody, but she'd think about it. And then she would announce, tada, I'm going to do this. It sounded like, literally like it came out of the blue and I knew that it didn't because I think about things and then say, I think we should do X, Y, Z. Like our closet door, it's irritating. And it's like, we're going to put a barn door on here. So I talk about it, then I research it, then I share the research. So I'm not like, bam, we're going to do this. And it sounds coming out of the blue. So I don't think she felt like she had a lot of control, like her whole life since she was a teenager, probably, or maybe younger. Um, you know, like both my grandparents worked. So my, you know, both my uncles were kind of rowdy. She had the rowdy cousin that wound up. So yeah, I don't think she felt like she had a lot of control. So even if it wasn't the fifth thing that pissed her off, even if it was only the second or the third thing that day, yeah, I can totally see where that would have. That would have been an issue. So I've learned so much since she's passed away. It's like, dang, I really wish I'd known this five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. I find that anytime, regardless if they have dementia or not, if there's like a huge reaction that feels disproportionate to the situation you're in, chances are, it's probably not about you. It's probably about a bunch of other stuff. And it's very much the same with our folks with dementia. And that's usually the fastest way I can get them calmed down from anger is I would say it sounds like there's just a lot of things that are frustrating you here. Let's just go outside and you can just tell me what's on your heart. And usually I was right. There's usually like six different things that were all pretty valid sounding that was pissing them off. And it was really relieving for a lot of them to have someone actually really sit down and listen to them. And it was a very unique position to be in as far as the facility goes. To actually be the person who had a little bit more time to spend with, with my folks to really understand where they were coming from a little bit more. I was really special. And it's really unfortunate because COVID, many of the other things COVID has taken out has also taken out this particular facility as well, which it stinks. But, you know, COVID did a number on all of it and everything on everybody on all the things. I guess I want to circle back real quick when we were talking about the staff and the training and things like that. Something I notice oftentimes just because of maybe because it's just severely underpaid they're asking their folks to do is you and oftentimes you'll find culturally people who maybe came from more of like an authoritarian type parenting background and they see these adults who are acting like children in their eyes. So they almost instinctively go back to like this authoritarian style parenting to these adults. And it just doesn't work. It just it just doesn't work. And that's why, you know, the training is so, so important. But now it's just rough when you live in a country where everything is all about the dollar. Yeah, my so where my mom lived, my husband's a real estate broker and we were talking about this exact topic because the people that did the hands -on carrying on my mom did not get paid worth beans because some of them worked at Starbucks for eight hours and then went and dealt with these, you know, these people with dementias. And like I could barely deal with my mom for two or three hours at a time much. And that was on top of what all the other stuff I did, but I didn't work at Starbucks for eight hours and then come deal with my mom for eight hours. Like, nope, that was outside my abilities. So I always, you know, tried really hard to, like, make their life easier. But the gal that my mom was always drawing blood on, she just worked at the community and she was freaking poor at it, you know. And I had a really good relationship with the executive director. If he was making big bucks, he wasn't spending it. He had an older model Honda Accord. You know, he wore polo shirts and khaki pants, you know, not dissing pennies. I shopped there, but that's kind of where he looked like he shopped. You know, he wasn't wearing suits. And I always, I thought, I don't know how you do this job because you've got the staff to deal with. You've got the residents to deal with. You've got the residents' families to deal with. Like, there are too many people to try to make happy. There's not enough money for you, but somebody's making money. And so I had my husband, like, pull up the property taxes and when the building was built and we, like, kind of assessed, like, their expenses. And it was like, God, I don't know how anybody's making money doing this. And it was expensive. We paid $5 ,600 a month for my mom. And then she moved in March 2017. So every March she was reassessed. The memory care director was very kind. Always, you know, when you kind of got somebody who's in a range of needs, always kind of scaled it to the lower end. And my mom fell, broke her leg, was bed -bound, wheelchair -bound, and she still skewed everything, like, as minimal as she could. And the fee was going from $5 ,600 to $7 ,200. And I've said this a lot. I think my mom had a moment of clarity where she realized there was this COVID thing going on. You know, people were not allowed to come in to the community. We weren't allowed to take them out to go watch kids in the park. She was going to need this wheelchair. The fee was going to, oh, forget it. I'm out. I really seriously think she had that moment because she died March 31st. The new fee was supposed to take place April 1st. So she saved us some money. Yeah. I was like, man, you've done that just right, honey. I mean, and it just, yeah, it just seemed like there just had to have been a moment of clarity. So yeah, it was crazy times. We were very blessed. They let us come in. I saw her the day before she passed away. They called me on the 31st and said, come now. She passed away before we got there. But literally, so this is March 31st, 2020. We're still in the initial stages of quarantine, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve. All that, if you guys remember back then, it's like, I almost forgot that was the beginning of the year, basically sitting at home. No, we were so innocent back then. Yeah, we thought we were doing really good sitting at home, baking sourdough bread. Oh, I was most certainly not doing that at that time. I was working with the ventilation staff. Oh, wow. Oh, so yeah, nope. I was doing my same stuff, but there was 10 of us. So there was my husband and I, my daughter, son -in -law, my sister, her kids and husband, and one, my mom's sister and one brother. And my aunt wore a mask. So this was a little bit before masking because my aunt took care of my grandmother, who had vascular dementia, lived on grandma's social security. So when my grandmother passed away, I don't understand why my family made this choice. Still don't. Well, obviously when my grandmother passed away, my aunt didn't have a career or money. So my aunt lives in subsidized senior housing and she has her own mental health struggles. She obviously knew that maybe wearing a mask was a good idea. And again, great relationship with the executive director, but that man looked like he was about to have a complete stroke because literally there's 10 of us standing outside my mom's room, including two kids. My niece was a teenager and my nephew was almost a teenager. And he never basically said, get the hell out. But it was very obvious on his face. That's what he wanted to say. But a lot of people didn't get to see their loved ones at all. So I felt really blessed and that must've been really, really hard for them.
Fading Memories: Alzheimer's Caregiver Support
A highlight from Vibrant Living: Brain Health Strategies Matter Even in Memory Care
"Are you struggling on navigating the complexities of specific dementia behaviors? Well, join me and my guest, Krista Montague, the brain behind Dementia's Success Path, as we unravel this tangled issue. Krista, with her riches of experience in dementia care, shines a light on the intricacies of caring for dementia patients. From handling physically active patients to dealing with violence in caregiving, we delve into the importance of balancing physical and emotional needs, and how fostering one -on -one relationships with recreation therapists or activity directors can revolutionize patient care. Welcome to Fading Memories, the podcast for caregivers of loved ones with dementia. I'm your host, Jennifer Fink. My mom had Alzheimer's for 20 years, and when I went looking for answers, I had the start a podcast to find them. Join me as we navigate the challenges of dementia caregiving together. This podcast is your beacon of support and empowerment. Let's share our experiences, find solace, and discover the strength within us. Get ready to embark on a transformative caregiving journey with Fading Memories. If you're looking for additional advice, be sure to sign up for our weekly email newsletter. It's brief, gives you great advice, you can read it in less than five minutes, and you know where to find the link in the website, on the show notes. We're working on subscriber -only information and specials, so you're not going to want to miss out. When I learned that despite eating as healthy as possible, we can still have undernourished brains, I was frustrated. Learning about neuro -reserves, Relev8, and how it's formulated to fix this problem convinced me to give them a try. Now I know many of you are skeptical, as was I, however, I know it's working because of one simple change, my sweet tooth is gone. I didn't expect that, and it's not something other users have commented on, but here's some truth. My brain always wanted something sweet. Now fruit usually did the trick, but not always. One bad night's sleep would fire up my sugar cravings so much they were almost impossible to ignore. You ever have your brain screaming for a donut? Well, for me, those days are gone. I believe in my results so much that I'm passing on my 15 % discount to you. Try it for two or three months and see if you have a miraculous sweet tooth cure, or maybe just better focus and clarity. It's worth definitely a try. Now on with our show. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I know you're going to love today's episode. With me is Krista Montague. We are talking about challenging dementia behaviors. And for those of you who know, who have listened long enough, you know, I had a few of those with my mom, so we'll be talking about those and others. So thanks for joining me, Krista. Oh, thanks for having me. So why don't you introduce yourself, tell us about your company, maybe your background with caring for somebody with dementia, and then we'll dive right into the topic. Yeah, absolutely. So I run a platform and a business called Dementia Success Path. The reason I started it is when I was very first getting started with my career, I ended up working in Jerry Psych. And that's where you run into the most challenging of dementia behaviors. That's why they're there at the hospital and my job there as an activity therapist was to provide natural intervention. So what to say and what to do to get them to come to a certain baseline in order for the doctors that work there to really be able to correctly prescribe medication. So anyways, that is how I got into the space. And over the course of many, many years, I cared for thousands of dementia patients with challenging behaviors. Thus, now I help caregivers on the Internet with said challenging behaviors now. So that's that's a little bit about me and my background. Awesome. While you were talking, I remembered a different scenario, so I hope I'm not going to throw this out of left field because this was a really challenging behavior. And I want to keep it as anonymized as possible. So a resident who was very tall, who had been a what do they call like a endurance athlete, did those like endurance marathons for people who are not watching the YouTube video. This is a very I don't want to do that kind of face. And he got very agitated if he couldn't get a hold of his wife on the phone and she was out of cell reception and he got so agitated, he pushed over another resident who broke a hip. We all know what happens when older people break hips. And this was an issue she had with him. It's just like he had obviously greater than average. What is the word? Oh, it's Monday and my brain's not going to work. He just had a ton of energy and he needed people to like take him running or he needed a way of getting rid of the energy. But he was out of stage of his dementia that taking him out wasn't necessarily safe for himself or others. So just off the top of your head, what do you think you would do with that? Just we're going to start off with the hard question first. Yeah, well, so I guess I'd be curious to figure out some of some of the why behind that, because ultimately behavior is just communication. The main thing with most of the dementias, whether it be Alzheimer's or from a temporal or blue body or whatever, is that it takes away language if you stick with the disease process long enough. So over time, those behaviors become a way for them to say, hey, something emotionally or physically with me isn't right. And I can't tell you any other way than maybe to shove this over or something like that. So it sounds like a couple of things are there, which is he has a physical need of moving around if that's been a part of his life and that's not being that that could definitely be part of it. The other part is maybe an emotional need that's not being met, which is he's wanting to get a hold of his safe person, the person who he feels gets him and can help orient him. And it's not happening. And I can just feel so overwhelming when you've lost control of everything else in your life with dementia. So as far as tackling those issues, I usually like to start with the physical issue first before I tackle the emotional one. So I understand it could definitely be challenging to get them to maybe run around the block, but I know where I happen to work, we had a pretty substantial backyard area, a garden area that people could walk around or even like a little mini trampoline event. That'd actually be a great idea if you can't move anywhere and he's like, there's nothing physically wrong. He has no mobility issues going on. Just have him bounce on that trampoline and just count it out, like almost treat it like a workout he's having like he might have had in sports or something like that, or maybe run laps a around few times or make it like some type of competition, like he's beating himself with it. So there's all kinds of ways that you can help productively put that energy towards something where it's safer. That was a lot of my job is figuring out how I could safely get these folks needs met so that if things continue to be an issue that then the doctor would come in with, say, like your Ativan or your Seroquel or, you know, whatever, things like that, it's a delicate balance trying if you're a psychiatrist that specializes in geriatrics to really get that right. And he really depended on us trying everything before he gets the medications. We're like, OK, so roughly we probably need this amount. But I was so I'll go there first with getting this physical needs. If he has a lot of energy and he just needs it met, there's there's always a safe way to get it done. It just takes a little bit of creativity and knowing a little bit about his life and his background and what would make the most sense for him. So all that's very important. And then beyond that, the emotional need could be maybe he feels like there isn't anybody else that just sits and talks to him. And I know it's challenging facilities. I get it. I worked in a facility, but at the same point in time, that's really where your let's just say your recreation therapist, your activity director can really be helpful with that. Chances are maybe he could like wall that person's activity planning or something like that could be sitting next to to her him or whatever and help him with these ideas and really building that one on one relationship so that it's not such a desperate bid for that person. You know, ultimately, there's always there's always something you can do. But I hear you. There's always going to be challenges when you're looking at an institutional place with staffing, training, all that type of stuff. But, you know, every single person's different. And it was it was rare when there was ever a person where I'm just like, no, we can't we can't help them. But it was it was very, very, very rare that that would ever be a situation that we find ourselves in. I'm wondering if they actually had gone to a geriatric psychiatrist. I'm thinking no, but I didn't know everything about their situation, obviously. Sure. That probably would have been a really good solution because he'd been in one memory care community and they just I'm not sure they tried very hard. That one used to be a mile down the hill from my home and there was a reason my mom wasn't there. And the one my mom was at, he had been moved there. So the whole incident with the shoving was in the person who got shoved was the parent of a client of my husband. So it was like, it was all the dramas. Yeah, it resolved. It resolved pretty well. I mean, there wasn't lawsuits or everybody was level headed and came to some some agreements that were positive. So that was good because I was like, oh, God, we don't. We're like, do we really need to get lawyers involved? Because, you know, this is just a really ugly situation. But I question whether whether they had a psychiatrist because that might have helped because they did have a really beautiful outside courtyard. I don't know that it would have been enough space. I mean, it was basically the size of an Olympic pool, so he could have run down and back and around. But I'm wondering if he would have felt like like a hamster on a wheel, just kind of going in a circle. But I like the trampoline idea. It depends on the context you're putting it in. It really does. If you're really treating it like, hey, this is, you know, a workout that we're doing together, like a training workout, if he was a big sports guy, then it could make sense for him. It just depends. As far as, I'd say it's unlikely the facility had one. And the reason being is in the place that I worked at, it's a hospital, so it was meant to be short term and that's usually how it goes. Oftentimes we see, rightly so, medication being a very last resort because it could take someone like him who is nothing's physically wrong with him. He's extremely physically active and it could mess with his balance and make it so he becomes a fall risk. So it's almost like you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul when you're introducing medications. Oftentimes the folks that come to our hospital, they were violent, like they were spitting, they were fighting, hitting people, danger to themselves or others. Like it was very, very extreme situations where they'd be like, OK, like the drugs are like the very last resort to managing this. And I can understand in, you know, memory care or skilled nursing or something like that, it's challenging to have somebody so physically strong around with a bunch of frail people around, for sure. He certainly had quite a few of those. Yeah, he's really tall and then none of the caregivers, most of them, like 99 % of them were women and they weren't, none of them were more than average height. Most of us were pretty, yeah, we're talking like five foot two to five, six or seven at best. So it's not like they had like big, tall, you know, burly women to control him, which, you know, physically controlling him isn't really in the options either. But yeah, it was just, it was one of those situations where it's like, you know, his care partner was just at her wit's end and she was out of cell range because she was doing something for herself and their religious community. And so the fact that she freaked out that he couldn't get ahold of her was really unfortunate. But, you know, and I'm hoping that they learned something, you know, like all of this happened in like 2019 and then we had the pandemic and my mom passed away. It was like, oh, like, it was just, it was like a whole lot happened in a couple of years. But you were talking about violence. And so now we're going to shift back to mom, my mom. And the more we, so we talked a little bit about this, the more help she physically needed. Now, my mom walked fine with no AIDS. She had nothing physically wrong with her either. She had just had Alzheimer's for nearly 20 years. The more help she needed, the nastier she got. She didn't want people to help her. She didn't think she needed help. And if you pressed the wrong way, she literally scratched people and drew blood. So a little bit violent. They were always so surprised because like, oh, she's so easy going. I'm like, you're not talking about my mother. My mother was never easy going. She was, she was a very lovely, nice lady. Did lots of things for the community, loved her family and all that. But don't piss her off because that was a bad idea. And it did not help after Alzheimer's if you pissed her off. So I know we're kind of going back to lack of training, lack of time, lack of staff, which, you know, is actually has gotten worse since my mom passed away. But they never seem to be very good at diffusing the anger that came up kind of quickly. And it was always, it always made me feel so bad when she's, when she drew blood on the gal that took care of her. Because that gal put up with way too much garbage. So it's, go ahead. I was going to say, when you've got somebody who doesn't think they need help, that was the worst with my mom. It's like, you know, and I actually experienced it. We'd come back from, I always took her out. We went and watched kids in the park or whatever. This was what gave her the most joy. And we came back, she needed to use the restroom and she was, you know, she was still fairly continent, but she needed depends, just in case kind of thing. And as we all have happened, you know, her toe gets caught in the elastic and she's grunting and groaning and pissing and moaning, trying to pull the, first off, she crossed her legs and then tried to pull up the, you know, the incontinence underwear. And I'm like, I know exactly what's going to happen if I help her because she's going to get angry at me. And so I let her fuss and fume for a few minutes and I thought, this is ridiculous. And I went in and I said, oh, you just have your toe caught. That happens to me all the time. And I like grimaced and I bent over and I unhooked her toe and I literally backed up and stood up as quick as I could. Thankfully, I did not get smacked. That was what I was expecting. And I left the bathroom. I left her to do the rest of her stuff. She had her clothes back on. She comes back in her room, absolutely spitting mad. And I'm like, you know, this is ridiculous. It's not like I, I didn't even touch her. All I did was unhook the elastic from her toe, which, you know, if she didn't have Alzheimer's, she would have understood that that was the problem. But she was so mad. She was like, right, right, right, people come here. And she stomped out of her room and I thought, okay, well, I guess I'm going to go home now. And she made a circle around. The residents came back in her room. She goes, oh, hi, what are you doing here? I was like, oh, crap. Now we can start the visit all over again. Like, should have left a minute and a half ago. Oh, no. Oh, man. Yeah. So, you know, it's funny. I was actually having this discussion recently. I don't know if you've heard of Dan Salinger. He's pretty big on TikTok, like a really big caregiver on TikTok. I was just interviewing him on my Instagram. And we were talking a little bit about really how memories aren't quite as straightforward as a lot of people initially think. Something I really noticed with a lot of people with dementia, like all kinds of dementia, is that while the dementia stole the information aspect of their memories, and memories are really both comprised of both emotions and information. So you notice that a lot of the emotions behind their experiences would really linger. So, for example, if I'm sure if mom like so my thought when you're talking about mom is it's possible, maybe somebody else pissed her off earlier in the day, and she didn't necessarily hang on to the information of what made her mad earlier, but she was maybe hanging on to the emotion from it. And it's possible that maybe the her toe getting stuck in you helping her. She's like, no one respects me like this is just like the fifth thing that someone's disrespecting me with. And now my daughter's doing it to me like gosh darn it. For emotionally, her it feels like this is I'm just so tired of not having any control over my life, or I'm just so tired of like people telling me what to do all the time, talking to me like I'm a little kid, like just all those are very valid feelings of anger. But since the information gets like poof out of their brains, all it looks like is, wow, they're really overreacting to that being stuck in their pant leg. So sometimes it's not always the easiest to try to discern like, was I the fifth thing that pissed her off? Because she probably won't be able to tell you. But anyways, how I guess Dan and I came through that is he noticed that like maybe when after he got his dad to shower and his dad is mad, the anger would just kind of linger for a few hours afterwards, even when he completely forgotten he even had a shower. So it's just so, yeah, it's so interesting how all that works. It could be both helpful and unhelpful simultaneously as far as them forgetting things or the emotions lingering. So anyways, those are the thoughts I've had. The lack of control, something that she had. So she was the oldest of four kids. And so, you know, she was always responsible for the younger siblings. And I mean, I'm the oldest of two, so I can relate to that. My dad wasn't the easiest person. He, you know, he worked. My mom took care of my sister and I, and he kind of kept control of things. And whenever she wanted to do something, like if she wanted to repaint a room in the house, she'd think about it. She wouldn't talk to anybody, but she'd think about it. And then she would announce, tada, I'm going to do this. It sounded like, literally like it came out of the blue and I knew that it didn't because I think about things and then say, I think we should do X, Y, Z. Like our closet door, it's irritating. And it's like, we're going to put a barn door on here. So I talk about it, then I research it, then I share the research. So I'm not like, bam, we're going to do this. And it sounds coming out of the blue. So I don't think she felt like she had a lot of control, like her whole life since she was a teenager, probably, or maybe younger. Um, you know, like both my grandparents worked. So my, you know, both my uncles were kind of rowdy.
The TechPod
A highlight from The Magician Brand Archetype
"Welcome to the take part related to the brand archetype, where we explore the different based on that brand adopt to connect with the other audience, today we dive into the magician brand archetype, I'm your host, Sir Jules César Ingolo and in this tremendous episode we will take a closer look at how brands like Nike, Tesla and Disney embody the magician brand archetype. The magician brand archetype represents transformation, innovation and improvement when you can brand captivate your audience by creating experiences and projects that seem extraordinary and almost magical. Let's start with the first of all of them, Nike. Nike is a global sports apparel and equipment company, they have mastered the art of invoking a sense of wonder and inspiration. Nike's Just Do It campaign is a testament to their magician archetype, with their acts featuring athletes overcoming challenges and pushing their limits, Nike taps into the power of transformation, motivating individuals to believe that they too can achieve greatness. Their brand message encourages customers to unleash their inner potential, transforming themselves into champions. Now, let's shift our focus to Tesla, a leading electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla under the leadership of Elon Musk has revolutionized the automotive industry by introducing cutting -edge electric cars. Tesla embodies the magician archetype by enchanting customers with their groundbreaking technology and sustainable vision through its sleek designs, advanced autopilot features and commitment to renewable energy, Tesla trade and other worldly experiences for its customers. The brand electric vehicles make individuals feel like they are part of the magical movement, transforming the way we preserve transportation and environmental sustainability.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from Selects: How Mummies Work
"Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do Hall of Famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast. The groundbreaking podcast from iHeart Media's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, did you ever want to know how mummies work and how you mummify a person? Well, you can learn if you listen to this one from March 15th. Hey, look at that date. March 15th, 2011, how mummies work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're about to do this Stuff You Should Know thing. Yeah. Did you like that? I did. How you doing, man? Great. Now that I've switched out my foul -smelling microphone cover. Yeah, this is actually take two. This thing's nasty. I'm not getting near it, but I can only imagine. Yeah. Something's putrefacted on the mic cover, the P -Clipper cover. Weird. You know, in real studios, they change these out every now and then. These things have been running for at least a year now, right? Probably like 50 cents. All right. Chuck. What's your sterling intro? Speaking of 50 cents, do you remember when we were talking about fossils? Oh, yeah. And we said that every once in a while, something happens so that a fossil naturally occurs and that it's desiccated. The skin is dried out. That's a mummy. Yeah. Who knew? I knew. Yeah, me too. Actually, when we talked about that, I was like, we have to do how mummies work. Yeah. And here we are. I'm kind of surprised this one has slipped under the radar for so long. Yeah. This is right up our alley. Yeah. I went and looked. I'm like, surely we do have it. And bing, there it was. Gruesome. Yeah. It's like stuff you should know died in the wool. Yeah. Yeah. And you're about to hear why, dear listeners. Because we're about to talk about all the things that happened to a corpse after death, which we've done before, but we need to go over again. Mummies are cool, though. They are very cool. So, Chuck, let's say that you were stabbed in the stomach enough times so that you could not move any longer. Okay. You couldn't walk back home. It was out in the woods. And the one person you were with, the very person who stabbed you left you there to die. You bleed out. You're dead. Things start happening to your body, right? Yeah. Pretty quickly. Up first is autolysis. Yes. That is kind of gruesome. That's when your organs that have digestive enzymes actually say, well, this is what we do, so we're going to start digesting the organs. Right. And not like my stomach is eating itself because I'm hungry, like my stomach is actually eating itself. It's rupturing and oozing, and it's being reduced to nothing.
The Charlie Kirk Show
A highlight from THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 19 Are College Sports Ruined? UFC and Bud Light? Da Jesus Book?
"Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here. Are you new to investing and have savings you need to protect right now? With the Middle East war, the Ukraine war, and maybe Taiwan soon, you need a new playbook that is safe. Allocate some gold now and avoid the frenzied panic of the unprepared. When fear reigns, gold protects the wise. Noble Gold Investments offers a free 5 -ounce America the Beautiful coin with new IRAs this month. Shield your savings with a Noble Gold Investments IRA. Go to NobleGoldInvestments .com. NobleGoldInvestments .com, the only gold company I trust. That is NobleGoldInvestments .com. Hey everybody, happy Saturday. Thought Crimes, College Athletes, Being Paid, Jesus Book, Bud Light Blake, and more. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk .com. Subscribe to our podcast, also download the rumble app, that is the rumble app, R -U -M -B -L -E .com. Remember, this is a Thought Crimes episode, so the conversations are a little spicy, unscripted, and not always appropriate for the home school audience. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk .com, and subscribe to our podcast. Buckle up everybody, here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from The Compton Cafeteria Riot
"Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do Hall of Famers like, oh I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast. The groundbreaking podcast from iHeart Media's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. It's one of our overlooked history editions. And Chuck, this is your pick and hats off to you. Wigs off to you. Yes, it was my selection to pass along to Livia to help us with, but this is a listener suggestion. This came from Gigi Cowland. And big thanks to Gigi because I, and I'm sure you will agree with me, found that not only is the story of the Compton's Cafeteria Riot interesting in and of itself, but sort of the larger story or a part of the story is the fact that how we preserve history because Compton's Cafeteria Riot happened in 1966 and was almost lost to history. Yeah, I agree with all that. Which is crazy to think about, something that happened in 1966 in San Francisco could be lost to history, but it almost was, if not for the efforts of one Susan Stryker. One person. Yeah, this may have really gone away. Oh, totally. I mean, it had gone away and she managed to clutch together a bunch of just different tiny little scraps of mentions of it or like the neighborhood and just over the years cobbled together all this little stuff and finally got an idea of it and was able to corroborate it. Like, it was Gonesville until Susan Stryker came along. Yeah, and we'll talk about what Susan Stryker did with this information, but hats off to you Susan Stryker and to Gigi and here we go with the almost forgotten Compton's Cafeteria Riot story. Yeah, and the reason why it's significant that it's almost forgotten or it was forgotten for a while is that the Stonewall Uprising, which was a really great episode we did on that too, that's considered like the watershed moment of gay rights in history. Like the riot at the Stonewall Inn, that was it, that was what started it all. The thing is, when you think of things that way, it erases the stuff that came before that. And one of the things that came before Stonewall was the Compton's Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco in 1966. And there wasn't a lot of difference between the two. It was based on, it was a reaction and a response to police harassment that had been building over the time. It was a multiracial group of LGBTQ people like fighting back against the police that spilled out into the streets, like it bore a striking resemblance to Stonewall and yet, like you said, there are reasons that we'll talk about that it was just pushed into the dustbin of history. It's very interesting. So as a way of setting this up, we'll talk a little bit about the area at the time in San Francisco called the Tenderloin. This was in the 1960s. The Tenderloin has long had a reputation and even still does today in some ways. In the 60s, it was a place where you could go buy drugs or deal drugs. You could go do some illegal gambling. You could get involved in sex work on either side. It was a neighborhood that didn't have a lot of money. And it was a neighborhood that attracted transients, people that, teenagers namely, who were either, you know, run out of their hometown because they were LGBTQ or maybe even run out of their family or maybe even run out of a different neighborhood in San Francisco to sort of collect in the Tenderloin where they could turn to sex work because they couldn't get other jobs. And they could turn to each other for support in community. Yeah, community developed of essentially what one of the people Susan Stryker interviewed described as like the lowest drawing on the ladder of not just society, of like including LGBTQ society at the time. These unhoused were teenage street trans people. And like they had no rights. They had no respect from anybody. And yet they still came together and looked out for another and formed that community you were talking about. But they lived in really dire straits day to day and yet they still formed that community. And the reason why they all kind of ended up in the Tenderloin is because there was a few square block section of the Tenderloin that that was the only place they could live. And even there they got harassed. But like if they strayed out of it, they were beaten. They were, you couldn't leave that area if you were trans in San Francisco at the time. And I think Susan Stryker compared it to a ghetto, essentially, that was a trans ghetto in San Francisco in the 60s. That's right. And just the myriad people that were interviewed from the time, it's clear that the cops basically could do whatever they wanted in there. They could arrest someone for, quote unquote, female impersonation. One was arrested, I believe, Amanda St. James, who was a trans woman there, ran a residential hotel, was arrested for obstructing the sidewalk. I saw in this documentary that we're going to talk about later, you know, any kind of cross -dressing or drag, they could arrest you for having the buttons on your shirt on, you know, what they deemed the wrong side because, you know, traditionally the buttons on like men and women's shirts and clothing is reversed. I never understood why. Was it to draw a distinction between the two when you're shopping? I think it's just to be difficult.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from The Philly Decade, Lamar On Fire, the Best Game Curse, NBA Awards, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal
"Coming up, Sunday nights with the cuz, we're going to talk some football next. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. It's the best time of the year with football in full swing and basketball returning soon. FanDuel, the best place to bet on the action. The app is safe, secure, and easy to use, and when you win, you get paid instantly. Get exclusive offers every day. Jump into the action at any time during the game with quick bets and take home a fast W. Plus, check out the Explore page for the simplest way to start betting. Download the app today. Bet with America's number one sportsbook. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Visit TheRinger .com slash RG to learn more about the resources and help lines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit TheRinger .com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by our friends at State Farm. There's no playbook when it comes to life or any of the other stressful tasks that adulthood throws your way. So many of us lay awake at night going through a list of what ifs. What if something happens to our home? What if I get into an accident? If life gives you a bad bounce, State Farm has a play for every what if. You can reach them 24 -7, you can file a claim on the State Farm mobile app, or you can simply call your agent with questions about your home or auto coverage. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Call or go to State Farm .com for a quote today. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where if you missed it, we did the big NBA preview podcast with me and Russell in house last week. We put all of it on YouTube. The entire podcast is on there. All you have to do is go to YouTube .com slash Bill Simmons. We put a lot of video up there. We might start putting up full podcasts on there a little bit after they run here. So stay tuned for that. I don't know. We're messing around. Just trying stuff. It's the end of 2023. You know? I don't know. You just start trying things. Why not? Who cares? Hey, new rewatchables come in Monday night. I'll just tell you what it is. It's a movie from 1993. Yeah, another one. Another one that did really well in the box office. So you'll find out Monday night. It's a good one though. I'm excited to drop it on you. So we did that true crime podcast, Wedding Scammer, hosted and created by Justin Sales. And it did really well. People liked it. And it makes me super happy because Justin Sales is a great guy. And he's been with The Ringer pretty much since the beginning. But it's nice when somebody works their ass off on something and it actually pays off. So I'm glad people like it. Check out the first episode. It's not that long. It's really well done. And you will definitely 100 % enjoy it. Okay. Let's bring in the cuz. Let's talk some football. Let's talk some wound licking with some bets, some Eagles, all kinds of things. It's all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam! All right. We are taping this. It is 830 Pacific time on Sunday night. Cousin Sal is here as always. He's wearing a nice, fresh Oregon hat that I think you probably bought probably this weekend. You went to visit your son? Smells very new. Yeah, I went to visit my son. I'm not happy with the way my hair looks. And I think the hat's an improvement. So what am I going to do? It looks great. We just watched Dolphins Eagles just now. And at the same time, Rangers Astros was happening. And it really felt like, I don't know, it felt like a great October sports night there. And then Texas blew it open in the end. But next week, we'll have basketball. There will be baseball going on. It'll really feel like October. The Eagles though. So right as I start sending texts to Eagles people in my life wondering what's going on with Hurts and what's going on with this team, and then they just turn it on and they win by 14. It's weird. Eye test wise versus the stats and just looking at the standings and stuff. It's a team that doesn't seem like they have all their shit together. And yet it doesn't matter because they have so much talent. They can just kind of pick and choose. And then all of a sudden they win anyway. I know don't what other team in the NFL is like this. Do you see that too? Yeah, absolutely. And it's a bummer because I think you agree. The Dolphins are, I don't know, favorite team to watch if you have to cut everything else out. Best offense, so much going on, like dynamic, Tyreek Hill, anything. Tua. But when they play a game like this, when they go to Buffalo, they're just going to get beat in the trenches. And like what you said is it doesn't really matter if you're so physical, Philadelphia, offensively or defensively. And like Tua's getting swallowed up in the pocket on third and ones. And where Philadelphia could just run that tush push like it or not, it's going to move the chains every time. So, yeah, it sucks. Yeah. The less flashy team wins. And they happen to be in my favorite team's division. But that's what's going to happen in January. Ten turnovers for Hertz. He had eight off last year. There's times where, you know, like sometimes, and I don't know whether he's protecting his body or what's going on, but he'll kind of duck away from taking hits, which is smart. And then he'll have weird throws. And I texted Solak today during third quarter. I'm like, are we going to find out that Hertz has had like torn rib cartilage since week two or, you know, he doesn't look right sometimes. And then in the fourth quarter, all of a sudden looks great. And I don't really know what to make of it. And I can't get a feel for it. But on top of it, they have this tush push thing that in the big drive of the game, they're able to get two straight fourth and ones on their own side of the field. I know we, you and I have talked about it. You've talked about it incessantly. And at the same time, it feels like it is the most important NFL invention in the last five years, this play that nobody can stop ever at any point. If he does, nobody else can do it. I know it's weird. And we likened it to the Tom Brady thing. There was no reason why Tom Brady should convert fourth and one and a half every single time, you know, physically and everything else. But except they had their shit together, the Eagles, they really do. And if he does have cracked ribs, I hope it's from his own teammate, smashing them over the line of scrimmage there. Yeah, it was just wear and tear on the back of his body from several guys. Yeah. So they're performing the Heimlich on him like every eight minutes. So I guess if you're taking the takeaway from the Eagles is nice when they needed to have it, they're also supposed to win. But the AJ Brown piece of it, the fact that they traded, you know, a first round pick basically, and then they paid him. And I don't know, he's one of the four best receivers in the league now. Is he one of the three? He's somewhere on the shortest possible list. I have him on multiple fantasy teams, and it's gotten to the point where I'm just expecting 100 yards in a TD every game. But that turned out to be one of the better trades, I think, of the last 10 years. Just kind of took him from Tennessee. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was ridiculous. And he is such a great possession receiver. And it's like, it's scary, too, because you'll forget about him, too. You probably put Justin Jefferson in the top three. And then every time Cousins drops back the pass or any snap, you're like, all right, this has to go to Jefferson. Otherwise, it's going to go for nothing out of this offense. And then eight tush pushes in a row. And then you see AJ Brown's like, oh, my God, I forgot about this guy. What? He's got 120 yards. It's nuts. So, yeah, dynamite. I like, yeah, there's like four different kind of catches he can make, too, which I think makes him stand out because they can throw those bubble screens. They can just put them right over the middle, like for seven, eight yards. It seems like whenever they want, they can send him deep down the sidelines, which he seems to love. And then that kind of deep over the middle with two guys on him and he can make plays anyway. But he he has, like, I think the biggest bag of any of the receivers right now. Yeah, personal. I don't know. I got these guys. Yeah. Yeah. I hate this team. I don't know. I don't even know what to say anymore. Like, you know, the Miami have what, 10 or 11 penalties? It's just like it's a it's like a mind fuck, too, when you play him, too, because you can't get out of a can't get out of your own way when you play against them. Kyle, don't turn on the tick tock camera for this. Has Philly replaced Boston for most interesting sports city? Like, look at all the shit they have going right now. Right. Right. They're they're about to make the World Series. They have this Eagles team that made the Super Bowl last year and it feels super relevant again, is definitely going to be a final 14 worst case scenario. And then they have this NBA team with this James Harden saga that God only knows how he's going to sabotage things over the next month. But and then you look at my team where my city where I have the the you know, we have a great NBA team, it looks like. And then other than that, completely forgettable across the board. I think Philly's kind of grabbed the mantle a little bit. I don't like it. I don't like it right now. That's not good. And it's not good for their fans because their fans are supposed to just hate the other team, not supposed to like their team. So it doesn't matter if their team is good. Right. Yeah, I don't know. It's a bummer. Although I'll say that they were in this position last year, too. Right. Phillies win the World Series. The Eagles win the Super Bowl. This has been this is the 2020s has kind of been the Philly decade. I don't like it. It's upsetting to me. And fortunately, the Sixers are it seems like they're going to go in the tank. But I got to say they have great crowds like the the Phillies playoff crowds are way up there. That's about as good of a baseball crowd as you're going to get. It really feels like if they can have like a do or die game or a must win game or a clincher at home, you feel like they're going to get it. And whatever happened with Bryce, you know, pretty special, like to sign that guy from another team and he becomes the signature athlete in your city. We had a little bit of that with Manny Ramirez, where we kind of took him from. We paid for it, but took him from Cleveland and he kind of became one of the symbols of that run. But pretty nuts that they just took him from another team and he became what he became. Yeah, it's a great crowd whenever they I mean, I thought the Rams crowd today was dynamite, too, against the Steelers. I thought they really showed up. It's really loud. Yeah, yeah, it's been proud to be from L .A. Yeah, I have a I know you don't want to talk about Phillies, so I'll move on. I have a Tyree question for you. What's your all time receiver list for receivers you've watched just where you're like, that guy's fucking amazing? Because for me, it was always Rice number one and Moss two and then a drop off. And then some people like Tio's three for me. I'm like, cool. Tio is like an absolute franchise murderer and was a huge head case and you couldn't trust him. And as the years pass, the stats will be great. All the fucking drama that he brought to every situation he's in, that stuff will kind of die off. But for me, I think Tyreek's unequivocally three now for me. Every single game, it just you just feel like he's going to have 250 yards as you're watching it, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Unstoppable, Tyreek over Calvin Johnson, that type. Yeah, I think like where you would put him. Yeah, I think for me, he's definitely over Calvin Johnson. Michael Gallup is three, four. I'm trying to see where I would put these people. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think he's got to be number three. Although if you look at like Antonio Brown, who's now a punch line, he had like six of the best seasons you'll ever see in a row. But but in terms of presence and being unstoppable, Rice, Moss, Tyreek Hill, it's a good three. That's how I feel. I think, you know, Sharp, I think, could have gotten there in the Packers way back when in the 90s. And then, you know, he hurt his neck and he basically only had like a six or seven year career. But I thought in the 90s, I thought other than Rice, he was the second best guy. Your guy, Irvin, was great. There's no question that team was loaded. We've had some good ones over the years, but Tyreek, the speed, how he just tilts the field over and over again, how scared the other team is of him. How much space he opens up for everybody else. I think he's three. I don't think he'll ever get over Moss or Rice for me, though. I'm trying to think who could pass him, though, now at three. I mean, we've put Justin Jefferson up there before. Now that we haven't seen him for a few weeks, we've kind of forgot about him in the right now. But Hill's done this now for, you know, six, what's it, six years since he's on the 18 Chiefs. I can't remember how many years he's been in the league, but yeah, he'll be stride for stride with two defenders. And then, like, if the ball hangs up there long enough, he's now seven, eight yards past them. Oh, I know who's number four. That's a nice little advantage. Pooka. He is? Guys, see that catch he made on the sideline today? It was pretty great. Before the Rams realized they were going against a force greater than any satanic force or anything, the Pittsburgh Steelers. You want to talk about that? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So they're four and two. I've watched every play of all six games. I have no idea how they're four and two, but they've hit the point now where I feel like they're going to win when there's no signs. Like that guy missed the extra point today for the Rams and made it nine, three instead of 10, three. I'm like, oh, here we go. Steelers come down. All of a sudden it's 10, nine. They have five first downs because they get the TJ Watt, you know, the pick that sets up the touchdown. And you're just like, here we go. They're doing this. And we've seen this before because this was the Eli Manning. Danny Heifetz was the first person to point this out. This was the Eli Manning recipe for years and years that I can't believe that team's winning. What the fuck just happened? He only made two throws. How did he do it? They're four and two. I totally believe in them. And I feel like they're going to go 12 and five and have a negative point differential. Well, the good thing is we're making money off them, right? We've been and we saw them. Plus, I mean, I thought they'd be favored last Sunday night. I thought they'd be favored, but they're not. So we're doing that thing, but also just taking them because the Steelers. But I found the gem and I gave it out on ringer wise guys, Rams first half Steelers to win the game 10 to one. You know, I'm positive that their bullshit is going to pay dividends and 10 to one. I think it'll hit like three more times. Like you're right. That TJ Watt interception brings it down to the eight. We see some separation from Pickens on a receipt, like the little one drive you wait for all game and it happens. And then that terrible spot at the end, it didn't give him a chance. That that was beyond really big. McVeigh also probably should have had a timeout left. I know. But, you know, what is it important to be like, hey, listen, we could get this right, but we'd rather teach you a lesson, coach, to save your timeouts. Like, I don't, this, the spot thing bothers me more than missed pass interferences because it's an old man jogging eight yards and he has to see between 20 bodies. And then like, you know, he sticks his foot in the mud and says, here, this is like a surveyor from 1835. He's like, this is where your property in, sir. Like we got to put, there's a chip in the ball. Isn't there a chip in the ball? What's it for? It's funny that we figured out Wimbledon. We figured out we've in U .S. Open, we figured out how to measure serves immediately, whether they hit the line or not in football, which seems like it would be really easy to just have some sort of magnet that was attached to the chains. The other thing that was weird about that for the people who didn't see it, the Steelers did fourth and one, they had the lead. There's probably like a little more than two minutes left and they run the QB sneak play, kind of the Brady play where you, you kind of put your head down, but you go left. But he slipped and fell on his knee and his knee went down. And it wasn't one of those when you're watching it where you're like, oh, I wonder if he got it was like, you knew immediately, oh, he didn't get it. He slipped. And then they come in with the spot and then like, oh, he might have gotten it. And they did that. I couldn't believe it. And I'm rooting for the Steelers. But I was like, oh, my God, it's the worst spot of the year. I thought they deserved to win anyway. But but that was pretty tough for the Rams. We need some clarification. And I get it because McVeigh didn't have timeouts and it wasn't actually the two minute warning yet, even though it did wind to that after that. But is there a ref in the sky? Is there this guy in the sky or is this everything has to go back to New York? Like, I feel like we're told three different things. It's a bummer because that could have been overturned. But you're right. Ten to one we hit. Let's just keep doing it. You know, you know who else would have gotten that fourth one? Eli Manning. He would have fallen down a half foot in front and somehow would have gotten the spot. The Rams kicker was the MVP of this game for the Steelers. He missed two longer field goals. They were like 50 yard field goals, but he missed about them. Then he missed that extra point. And then Tomlin just, you know, he threw away the challenge. He screwed up a challenge, which is the Tomlin staple.
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 19:00 10-22-2023 19:00
"When professional soccer player Marcus Rashford injured his shoulder, he turned to Resil's virtual reality sports training program. Resil's technology has helped him and athletes of all levels maintain their skills while recovering from injuries so that they can return to the field with confidence. Rashford says, after my shoulder injury, Resil VR was key to my training and helped me get back to the game. These are the ways athletes are using the Metaverse today. Learn more at meta .com slash metaverse impact. Broadcasting 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Asia for this Monday, October 23rd in Hong Kong. Sunday, October 22nd in New York and coming up today. Markets brace for volatility with concerns of a widening crisis in the Mideast. Honhai says it will work with Chinese authorities on probes into its parent Foxconn. Australia will suspend its WTO case over Chinese wine tariffs. U .S. concerns about the Middle East war expanding, sending more forces into the region, aid getting into Palestine but not enough. Former speaker McCarthy says disarray is embarrassing. This is Evac Xamarin. I'm Ed Baxter with Global News. He's a top -ranked golfer looking to buy a piece of Manchester United. I'm Dan Schwartzman. I'll have that story and more coming up in Bloomberg Sports. That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia. On Bloomberg 1130 New York, Bloomberg 99 .1 Washington, D .C. Bloomberg 106 .1 Boston, Bloomberg 960 San Francisco, Sirius XM 119 and around the world on BloombergRadio .com and via the Bloomberg Business App.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"CrossFit has that famous saying like the person that finishes last gets the loudest cheers because we want everyone to work hard and cross that finish line. Hey, welcome back to the athletes podcast. This is episode 198 featuring Rebecca Pucilier, a CrossFit Games athlete in 2016-2017 as a junior as well as most recently in 2022. She is an incredible athlete to say the least. Probably one of the most jacked females we've had the pleasure of having a conversation with here on the athletes podcast. We actually flew down to Dallas, got some barbecue in Fort Worth, had a fantastic conversation with Rebecca, got to see the Bolts gym where her and Matt train. A special shout out goes to Andrew Stallings at Athleto Group for putting it together, putting us in touch. Amazing conversation again. I keep saying it but she was fantastic to be able to work with. Pucilier is a name that you will continue to see on the CrossFit Games leaderboard podium and I can't wait to continue staying in contact with her as she continues performing her best in the sport of CrossFit. This episode is also brought to you by Caldera Labs. If you haven't noticed my skin looking pretty damn good right now and the beard filling out. I know it's because I've been using Caldera Lab. They have the beard product, they have the good serum that I put on every single night. They have an incredible line of men's products for you to enhance your skincare routine. Phoenix has been commenting every night on how well nourished and hydrated my skin looks. This is not something I'm used to receiving so if you can tell I'm blushing a little right now. I was blushing during the episode at times because of how impressive Rebecca was and the fact that she can probably outlift me but that's besides the point.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"First thing I said to him, I was like, all the Canadians I know, they don't talk a lot. They drink a lot. Is that the same with you? Oh, no, no. I host a podcast, man. I talk a bit. Uh, but dude, it's, it's cool. Cause it's like, even you said Oregon don't be lumping that in traveling the U S over the past year for the AP tour. We drove from Toronto to LA, went through Nashville a whole bit. And that's how we met Bobby. That's that's why I'm here right now. If we hadn't done that here, you've met him at the creator summit, like life happens, vibrations, energy. It's wild. It's so interesting to see, like, I met Bobby again, the guy, Bobby Ryan, the guy that's putting on this whole thing at an NIL summit in 2022 of July. And like, I was like, I don't want to go to that. Like, why would I go to that? I almost went to that. Oh really? And I have no, like maybe CS at Cookstark management, like our female athlete agency, that was the only reason, but we couldn't make it happen, but it would've been wild because I would've met you there, but yeah, it works out. It's just interesting to see like something I didn't even want to go to. I ended up going to meet multiple people, have multiple connections. And now through one connection, I'm meeting eight other guys who then probably gonna get me more connections. So that's what I say to people is just try to meet as many people as possible, especially young in your career. Charles Kissie was the basketball coach for Brock. He came into our first year class at Brock sport management. And he was like, you're not trying to network. You're trying to build relationships. And like, I think that's what stood out to me, right? You're like that on a t-shirt you, cause you can spend all day on socials, hitting DMS, whatever it's, it's not the same sitting here, having a conversation. I've learned so much about you. You know, we find out that, you know, we've had previous, uh, individuals on the pod connected with and like, dude, that's the coolest part because there's one thing to be friends on social virtually it's another to be able to be boys afterwards, right? I think the cool part is with what I'm doing to what he's doing, there's so many different things we're getting out of it. So on his side, right? Like his network book is so much bigger than mine because the amount of people, right, you're about to hit 200 people networks already at 200, right? But for me on my side, like the more sets and reps I've had on the video side is something that's so different. I don't have as many connections. So it's just so interesting. And I think for people out there that wanted to get into content creation, like figure out exactly what you want to do and then just attack it. Just fucking start. So I always say to people, I don't give a fuck if you have iPhone four or a Hollywood camera, just start. Like same when I was, I was out here listening to your guys, pod with Dom, like he knew he wanted to do a podcast. He didn't know what name and he knew that would change. So he started with days with Dom. Just start. That's what I always tell people. Just start. That's going to be the start of the episode. Yes. Fucking rights. This has been sick. Fucking rights. I love it. I'm fired up. I just, I think the passion's there, right? I think it comes from the Italian background. I probably said that over a hundred times this whole trip. Uh, but just Italians are passionate about what they're passionate about. My mom always told me that like, never be afraid of what you're passionate about. And even this and just food and working out. Like I just love talking to meet new people and just being passionate about what I'm passionate about. I love that. Love it. I love it. Yo, the way we wrap up every episode on the pod is we ask our guests with their biggest piece of advice is for the next gen, but I want to make sure that if there's anything else you want to share with our community, our audience right now, for the fans, as you would say, for the fans, for the fans, and I'll make sure I look through my notes to make sure I didn't miss anything. Yeah. Let me know. We can, we can ask another question. I think for the next gen, man, I just think creating is getting to a point where it's so accessible. Like I remember back in 2017, I knew I wanted this to be my job, but I couldn't tell anybody that they'd be like, you want to create YouTube, YouTube videos for a living, they can't do that. There's so many ways to create and make this a thing now. It's so cool. And I thought even 2017, I thought I was, I thought I was like, dude, there's so many people creating, not anymore, but for the next gen, man, just pick up the camera and start, I don't care if you want to be a cook and then you eventually you want to make lacrosse videos, you have to start somewhere. We've been saying it here a lot this weekend, compounding sets after reps and just continuing to do that, staring at a Ronnie Coleman picture and just continue to attack it, man, all this little success that you're gaining is going to compound it in my trajectory of starting in 2016 to now of having 65,000 subscribers has just been like this, just continuing to ride this wave of building a steady cemented structure in the base. Cause you never want to build a house on toothpicks and just continuing on the upward trajectory and never looking back, you're going to have videos that flop. You're gonna have videos that kill it, but you just got to keep moving forward. And if there's a female out there who wants to build a family with that a solid base and pump out five pell keys, you know, five little Italian sausages, Mitchell Pelkey on Instagram, every platform, please reach out. I love it. I love it. Yo, and Mitchell Pelkey everywhere. Feel free. If you don't want to subscribe, if you do want to subscribe, we appreciate it. Uh, buy the merch. We've got some camps coming soon and yeah. Yeah. Don't forget about the athlete agreement on here. We don't charge people that consume our content, but we ask that they hit the subscribe button because you know, it's important for us to be able to do that. That's what's going to drive everything right. Big dogs loves his nine to five, but the end goal is the podcast. Yes, sir. You know it. I love that. Appreciate it, man. Let's do it. That was dope. I don't know about you guys, but that was a ton of fun during this episode for me being able to chop it up with Mitchell for 45 minutes, just tough to not be smiling when you have a conversation like that, big ups and thanks goes out to Mitch for coming on the show, sharing his time while we were training down on Cape Cod. What a weekend that was big shout out to Bobby Ryan and the rest of the boys that were in attendance, uh, something that we're going to talk about for years to come many more events like that in the future that I'd love to be able to bring out folks like yourself who are consuming this content to train, come work out, learn from, listen to apply all the things that we're fortunate enough to be witnessing on a weekly basis. And it's the 194th episode of the athletes podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is David Stark, host of the athletes podcast. Big shout out also goes to our incredible producer and editor, Phoenix Wayland for doing everything that she does because she's amazing and you guys don't even see all of that. So maybe we'll have to get her on another episode here in the near future so that you guys can see all the incredible work she's doing as well. Let's wrap this up. That's the pod. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next week.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"Appreciation for the human experience, you know in the life that we have because you always hear that like, you know, like Appreciate every moment like it could be taken away from you at any second. But for me like it actually was like Ladies and gentlemen boys and girls welcome back to the athletes podcast This is episode 193 featuring Dominic Fusco Dom is a former Dickinson College football player He's the host of the pure ambition podcast He's a former strong safety now turned strong human being the Phoenixville, Pennsylvania Native has spent the past year as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. He's joined a health and wellness startup He's completed the Philadelphia Marathon. He also just suffered cardiac arrest There was a ton of articles published about this, but we dove into it in person We were able to talk about his journey going back across what it felt like the experiences It's been about a month since it occurred Like I mentioned I was fortunate enough to be able to link up with Dom this past weekend in Cape Cod Wild weekend put on by Bobby Ryan and these other Incredible individuals fortunate enough to call each one of them my friends now this episode is a doozy Dom is a legend. All we ask is that you hit that subscribe button I can't wait for you folks to listen to this episode of the athletes podcast number 193 featuring Dom Fusco. Here we go Oh Hey, let's go Black coffee a little black cup of gel a little swap cat. Yeah, swap cast can't beat it outside Grounding rounding our oh my god sun exposure. We won't show that we won't do the sun sack No comment Cape Cod brings everything out of the boys. Oh my gosh training camp training camp. It's been legit It's been legit. You came Across the country into another country across the continent across the continent as it was a miss I'm not gonna lie. You said BC British Columbia, and I thought that was the East Coast side of Canada And I realized I was wrong but we got a nice Canadian geography lesson, I was gonna say geography You're you're probably not worried about what's going on up north down in the south. No. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be able to long down in, Texas I'm a long way from long way from the Great White North, but what is crazy dude is I'm still blown away by the Fact that 90% of the Canadian population lives within a hundred kilometers of the border That's just absolutely absurd some fun Canadian facts for you folks Just just tuning in here to the athletes or the pure ambition pod athletes and pure ambition Collab I love it. It's a well long overdue probably like what a year and a half at least Yeah about that because we connected on LinkedIn. Yeah, and then Instagram and then Bobby yeah, who's brought us out here to his spot Cape it's legit, and it's so funny podcasters to like we just we know oh, yeah You know that guy you know that you're not girl of course like most connected people in the world And The war on oats yeah thing you know bringing Louisa and Nicola in the into the picture. You know yeah wow I don't know where we got a where do we start for this where do we start um so I mean dude? Why like why podcasting for you? What was it for you that made you want to start podcasting and then I guess I'll kind of just share like my story of Why I started doing it too. Yeah, cuz you just experienced a recent health thing so we got to dive into that For sure, but it's interesting because we started podcasting probably around the same age ish Maybe you might have started a little bit earlier than me Age wise I got the I got the jump start right after school Just realized that I still wanted to be involved in the sport world still wanted to chat chop it up with athletes knew that I Had more to deliver to the world than going to work a corporate job nine-to-five My boy Gary Vee was preaching podcast during that time 2019 Finished up the undergrad of sport management at Brock University I was like you know what I feel like I know enough people to at least start a pod Chop it up. Talk to people locally in Niagara And it was sick because it was just like 45 minute conversations with people learning Way more doing some research and then COVID hit so went from virtual to or sorry in-person pod that was local because you know didn't didn't really have a travel budget at the time and then Everything virtual once COVID hit so then it became global you could reach out to anyone power social media and then man been rolling ever since once a week and I I just Felt like I wasn't good enough to go to any sport professionally, but I played everything growing up so I was like I know enough to chop it up learn from these people and I Really wanted to make sure that I shared with the next gen the Lessons that I wish I knew growing up like at 15 12 when I wanted to become a professional hockey goalie or make it to the PGA Tour like I wish I had conversations interviews with the best athletes in the world to learn from and You know it wasn't out there, so I'm like screw. Let's make it happen Let's you know if no one else is gonna do it. Why not do it ourselves, right? What's been the biggest struggle that you've faced along the way? It's a good question balancing Everything I think spinning a couple plates in the air not letting anything fall having relationships Not as many you know like close friendships when you're bouncing around North America trying to podcast People don't necessarily have the same aspirations. I'm sure you feel that We were talking about that earlier and just around like you know if you want to achieve extraordinary things you have to put in extraordinary work And Not everyone shares those same Aspirations put it that way All right, so I want to just like piggyback over that so you mentioned like just balance, and I think for me there You think about the word balance to you think about in the word like homeostasis You know it's bringing bringing the body back into balance like you're always oh you got a nice fly Yeah, exactly cricket protein, baby So you think about balance like you think about homeostasis and like you're constantly just trying to bring the body back into balance But I mean you you've interviewed some of the top high performers in the world right they don't get to where they're at Through balance. I'm Kobe Bryant rest in peace was my biggest inspiration He talks about in his in the book the Mamba mentality how there was no balance It was you know wake up at 3 a.m. and go Train from 4 to 6 and come back and then train again from like 8 to 10 and like his life was Completely out of balance you look at Michael Jordan He was completely out of balance and like these are obviously like the the goats But you've interviewed still like a ton of professional athletes and high performers there is seasons of imbalance That allows them to excel And this is me from like my perspective and my take on balance is like there are seasons where you need to push to Get to a point where you can then come back to balance because you think about these athletes too like there There is a time period where they go back and they do find balance like Michael Jordan even talked about After a season he would take like you know what like a month at least at least a month Wouldn't touch a ball wouldn't do anything and then he would come back and he would get right back to work, so Do you feel like you've been able to you know kind of? Navigate through like seasons of imbalance a little better as you've been doing it for you know coming up on like what for four years Now yeah like we just celebrated our fourth. I didn't really celebrate. I'm bad at celebrating like anniversaries and birthdays now I just like I get a little anxiety around it because I'm like shit. I wish I was doing more but Yeah, this season's thing I've heard you talk about that on so and I like I I Definitely have tried to embrace that I think it's also trying to share that with others and ensure that you like maintain the relationships you do have with family friends and I'm of the perspective that like I even I I can go hard Season of imbalance and still I I try and make sure that that's an end point of emphasis is still like you know Phoenix or producer editor But I haven't been the best boyfriend in the world over the past two years necessarily at all times But I try and make up for that at other moments and I think the more you can do that and have people understand that hey, this is only a moment in time and At a certain point like you and I we've both realized the power of compounding is crazy And you know what in a couple years We're not gonna have to send 20 emails every day outbound trying to source out new people to come on the pod It's gonna be the inverse right and you're gonna have inbound But it doesn't happen overnight and people realize that hey like, you know Sometimes you got to put a lot of effort in at the beginning to reap the rewards in the long term So, I don't know if that answers your question I look back at like a guy like Mitchell Hooper world's strongest, man. We chatted with him in Barrie, Ontario and At athletic culture gym shout out to them and He said something similar. He's like man No one else has done what we're doing right now like no one else has lifted the weight that he's putting up and so no one actually knows what the long-term effects are gonna be of That and until you actually go and do it. You don't know what you're capable of achieving So until You know we interview all of the goats until we feature every we're not gonna know what we're capable of doing And building and I think that's the the power of the unknown is what's so exciting about it. I love that dude, so something that just came to mind was like one thing I've been really into is just like how you put yourself into like a frame of mind or how you prepare to like be at your best in Whether it's competition whether it's a podcast whether it's a meeting whatever else like any Like we all have points in our lives where we need to show up like at our best right, and it's so interesting I've always been very fascinated by athletes and high performers and like what they do To prime themselves to perform whether it just be for a training session whether it be for a game Whether it just be for like their day to day How you prepare it like ultimately dictates like how you're gonna be able to show up like for this You know we we got up, and we got our water. We got our electrolytes We got our movement in like I got my walk in you got a little bit of run in We got our black coffee like that I got like a couple minutes of just deep breathing like just to put myself into the present moment like that for me like I Know that I can't just like be on my phone scrolling before I hop on like a conversation with somebody like I'm not gonna be able To show up just like if I'm about to go for a long run I'm not gonna like eat five donuts because I'm gonna I'm not gonna be able to perform my best on that so long winded question, but like would have been some of the really interesting ways that people have shared with you on like how they're able to Kind of prime themselves to perform at their best Yeah, I think Alex Hormozi has this great quote and he talks about how You know people underestimate the power of 20 minutes of preparation whether that's professionally whether that's Socially whether that's for a podcast whether that's for working out like people don't realize that you know those 10 15 20 minutes prior to doing something are Integral like even the Wim Hof frozen alive yes theory video We were watching last night you have to mentally prepare yourself for whatever you're going to go it go after whatever you're looking to achieve and You can set your intention in a positive or a negative way and I think everyone the biggest thing I've learned after a hundred and ninety two episodes is that everyone in Some way shape or form has their own routine some people like drinking water Alex hasn't sucked back any of the supplements we have here at training camp But that guy's biohacking to the tenth degree right like and you know other guys are juicing back fucking creatures of habit and every other substance that they can and so I Person is the same as another and everyone has their own kind of specific routine that helps with them And if they haven't found it yet, then you should be trying to search out what other people are doing But if you found it, there's no reason like don't fix what's not broken, right? but I got to ask what your routine is because you've got a couple different and I'm like Flabbergasted when you talk about Kobe being your guy as a football player that in I wasn't expect I was thinking maybe like a Ray Lewis Yeah, so Routine in in what sense let's start with Pre-pod and like your morning routine actually I don't even like your content creation because I think that's one of the underestimated things that You've got going on right now is the fact that you're creating some sick content that people appreciate.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"No. Like the long distance is not easy. You just wanted to reiterate that. Yeah, no, no, cause it's so hard and like I don't wanna like make it seem like it's rainbows and butterflies cause it's not all the time. This is kind of what we are trying to do on the athletes podcast, right? Is pro sport, relationships in it. It's not all is as glamorous as it seems on Instagram. And I think, you know, as we continue to have more conversations like this, people will realize it, people will understand and appreciate it that much more what you're doing. Zana, you know, thank you so much for coming on the athletes podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me. The way we wrap up every episode is we ask our guests what their biggest piece of advice would be for the next generation of athletes. I'd love for you, as we overlook the Pacific ocean here on Hermosa beach to share yours. Okay, I've said this once, but I believe in it very firmly that you have to find the balance between hard work and enjoying the process because there's a balance to it. And I've been on both sides of the spectrum and working so hard that you're not enjoying anything and that your body hurts and that you're miserable isn't always worth it. And I've also had too much fun sometimes and that's also not fulfilling at all. And so finding that balance is a really delicate thing but it's kind of beautiful when you can find it. That was beautifully put. Thanks. Thank you for sharing. Do you wanna share any of those too much fun stories before we leave? Oh my God, college is a dark times. No, no, I don't know. It's not even that I had too much fun. It's just that I wasn't focused. And like, to me, like I am goal oriented and I love like achieving things. And when I'm not focused on like whatever is next that's not a very fulfilling space for me. It's like, I wanna be doing things and working, I love to work. And so sometimes like you can be distracted by like, oh, but I wanna have fun and I wanna go build a chicken coop and I wanna go on vacation. But to me, I don't find myself as fulfilled when I'm doing those things. You got a good head on your shoulders. Thanks. Kudos to you. I wanna wrap up by giving a shout out to your grandfather. He made both Phoenix and I shed a tear today when you shared a story about the fact that he gave your parents flowers before you were born because he knew that if you were as beautiful as both they were, as your mom and your grandmother were that you would receive a ton growing up. And it made us shed a tear. Oh my God. My grandma just texted me like a few days ago and was like, we just listened to your podcast and grandpa cried. My grandpa is like not a very sensitive guy. Like he said, I love you like three times to me in my life. Like he's really means it when he says things. And he's like, she said it made him cry when he heard that I said that on the podcast. So that's so sweet. And yes, he is a gem and it was a very sweet sentiment. Yeah, Micah make sure you have flowers. That was awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. That was awesome. And that concludes the 192nd episode of the athletes podcast. Thank you for being a part of it. Listening to today's episode. I can't thank Zanna enough for coming on the show. She was a delight to have. Sharing her thoughts, whether it's from chicken coops to sustainable farming practices and the food we're consuming on a daily basis. I learned a lot. I can't thank her enough for taking time out of her day mid season to come in, chat with us. We'll be getting her boyfriend on the future for those of you who've been asking for it. Micah, big shout out. It also goes to our sponsor Rooted for putting this together. If you're interested in working with the athletes podcast, becoming a part of our organization, we bring it on an intern. We have an amazing producer, editor behind this camera right now, Phoenix Whalen. She's incredible. You too could be a part of the team. Shoot us a message. Let us know if you got ideas for us, whether it's social media, marketing, website stuff. We're open. We're always looking for new ideas, fresh starts. I'm your host, David Stark. Thank you folks for tuning into the 192nd episode of the athletes podcast. We'll see you next week. Bye. We'll see you next time.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"You know, Mexico, we had one there, which is great, super cheap, easy, not a long flight time. Then we went to Portugal and we were stuck in airport hotels for three nights because all of our flights got canceled. So we're paying for new flights late last minute and we're paying for late last minute hotels. And then it just sort of stacks. The other fun thing about a qualifier is you pay your way and if you make, if you qualify, you get a hotel. But if you don't qualify, you pay for your hotel. And so we didn't qualify. Portugal is not like the cheapest place. And then it's also this pickle, like do I buy a return flight and just bank on us making Sunday or do I just wait and then buy a last minute super expensive flight? And end up getting pulled into the black room because you're flying, booking a flight 24 hours less. Right, you wanna share that story? Wait, which one? I heard you, yeah, where you booked within less than 24 hours and they pulled you. I didn't know this, but I think cause it's a lot of, it was cause Turkey's really close to the Middle East. When you buy flights 24 hours before the flight, it's like flagged. And so I was going to visit Micah and his team, within his contract, I get a certain amount of flights. And so I was like, hey, can you buy me a flight for tomorrow? And so they bought my flight and I get there and they're like, hey, like, can you come with us? And they're like all like in their SWAT gear and I go into this dark room and they like question me for like 20 minutes about why I'm going. And I'm like, I'm just like going to see my boyfriend. But it ended up being no big deal, but I guess just, I guess, I don't know, people do sketchy things. So they gotta do these protocols. Yeah, these AVP volleyball players are out here doing some dice. And they had all this info on me. Like they were really doing research and I'm like, I promise, I'm just like, I need to go see the guy, it's been too long. How is, I guess like, what is it like doing long distance at times? Oh my gosh, it's super challenging, but also been the greatest thing I think for our relationship. I'm very needy and spoiled and codependent. And I think that we would not be where we are if we hadn't been forced to like figure out some of my own stuff on my own. So it definitely is really challenging at times, especially with a 12 hour time change. But we have found a way to make it work. And I think we're just so much more grateful for each other and for what we've put into this relationship. I always say like, you have to love the person more than what the person can do for you. So a lot of times like, they can't do all the things that you would like from them, but you have to like love them and be like invested in them. And so like, for me, the first couple of years, I was not as invested in his like journey. And now I'm like, no, you can't come home. You gotta do this. You gotta, you know, like you really have to like love what they're, you know, be invested. And so Micah does that for me. He coaches me, he's like, we watch film. And so we've both equally invested in each other's journey that it's really made long distance a lot easier. Yeah, and you guys are training over 50% of the time together, right? Like it's crazy the amount that I've heard you share that you're doing together from a training perspective. Totally, yeah. Like, I mean, we watch film together almost every night. Like I've watched all of his Team USA films and he watches my practice every day. So like we'll make dinner and then watch film together. And I don't offer him a whole bunch of feedback, but I'm like, great to hit, honey. Hey, that's support. And sometimes that's what us guys need. Yes, girls, listen up. All they wanna do is really just stroke the ego sometimes. No, I'm just kidding, Micah, I love you. It feels good. Micah, I'm with you, don't worry. Yeah, so we are super invested in each other's careers and it's like we've found a good balance of it and it works. That's amazing. Yeah, but not easy.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"It's a little bit less schematic and tactical and it's just hard on your sleeve. You gotta just balls to the walls trying to get that thing to not touch the sand. And I am a hard on my sleeve type of person so I feel like it's a character trait that it resonates with me. Yeah, I love that. I had to ask, it was like, yeah, we're on the same wavelength. K.M., I'm assuming this is Kimberly86. Oh, I was like Kimberly Meno, that would be my fault. Yeah, she asked one, I'm not gonna bring that one up. No, she said, do you have any future partner plans? I do not have any future partner plans. I think I played with Deanna this season and we had a great time. I don't think we'll be playing together anymore, we may, but for now, no future partner plans. Okay, good to know. Elizabeth Ray underscore T says, I love you. I just wanted to share that with you. Wow, thank you, I love you too. It seems like you have a great community that you- I have the best community. I swear, like I said earlier, I'm so lucky. Just like the support that I have from the people that I'm close with and love. So many people, because I did grow up here, but the people that come to Manhattan every year or Hermosa, I cry every year because I'm like, how did I get so lucky? And that people support me in this dream that I'm pursuing and I definitely like in mid game, I'm like, okay, just chill for a second and like look around. Like this is so sick and like, yeah. So I am very lucky and to all my people, I'm very grateful for you. Yeah, how about that earthquake that we experienced today? Wait, what? The hurricane slash earthquake. Yes, wild. That was, there's weird things in the air these days, I feel like. I mean, it kind of was a regular rain day for Vancouver. So- Yeah, no, it was nothing here. Okay, I just had to make sure you have the same- It kept saying like 29, 30 miles an hour and we'd go outside and I have like sunflowers and they were like going like this. And I'm like, yeah, 32 for sure. I think given what had just occurred in Hawaii, there was probably a little concern for that. So I shouldn't be too hard on the US, but yeah. We over exaggerate. You said it, not me. Hey, I just want to say thank you for sharing being an open book, honest with our audience here, because I think that's important. I wanted to give you also some space to share that weekend you brought it up, what it was like, obviously where you grew up competing here, but what were the emotions this weekend like going through? Obviously you're wearing your heart on your feet. I think that Larissa, or no, Lily, her wife, she's a Brazilian beach volleyball player and she posted an Instagram recently and it was, she plays on the AVP as well, but she posted an Instagram talking about one day you feel like you're on top of the world and the next day you don't want to leave your bed. And I feel like that for beach volleyball is so true because it's like this season has been super challenging in so many ways, it hasn't been my best on the court. And I've played in four international qualifiers, which for people who don't know, to get into a lot of these tournaments, you have to play in a qualifier, it's single elimination, you pay your way. It's one and done. If you lose, you go home, you make no money and all of the expenses are on you. So I went to four international tournaments this year and I lost in four qualifiers. So that's like been super challenging and it hasn't been the best year, but then it's like I won on stadium core in Manhattan beach and I felt like I was like flying. And then the next day we lost 21-12, 21-13 to a team that I really wanted to be. And it was just like, it is just like a kind of a rollercoaster and it was that high of like being able to play in front of my family was, outweighs the next day by tenfold. But when she posted about that, it just like hit so hard because that is, and so many people commented it. I think like every beach volleyball player liked it and commented on it because we were like, damn, she said it. And she like said it so well because it is, you feel like you're on top of the world and then some days you're like, I can't do anything right. And so I feel like that's kind of been how my season has gone this year. And along the way, always picking up things to learn and improve on and seeing beautiful countries. But yeah, that was like the, okay, yes. Like I remember why I do this and this is like so fun and I love it. That was kind of one of those days on Saturday. Yeah, just for context, can you share what it would cost to attend one international qualifier, roughly approximately? I, first of all, don't travel cheap. So that's on me. I heard that you could be a travel agent in your future. Yeah, so that's on me, but I have no choice but to most of the time. So I think to Portugal, it costed us like 5,500 bucks and we made zero. So that was, that's tough. But anywhere from like two grand to six grand, I would say.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"And so, yeah, it's a interesting place in the professional sports world right now because I've now spent like, in the beginning, I was like, I'm not doing social media because I'm an athlete and I wanna focus on being an athlete and that's not like my identity but it's now like, okay, I gotta do this because if I wanna be an athlete, I gotta do the social media side of it too. So yeah, I don't know, it's interesting for sure, it's weird. There's a couple points there, it is weird. I think you're being a little humble. You went from court three in college to now being arguably the best defender as far as you guys volleyball players. Thank you. 7.4 digs per set, no big deal. Lead the AVP in digs percentage last year. I think you saying what you said there is you're just having to adapt to the times. Right, yes. And ultimately, it's a game. Totally, yes. Both on the court and off and you gotta play the game. Totally, yes and I'm learning to play the game. I was resistant for a long time but I'm in the game now. So what pieces of advice would you provide to young athletes, young beach volleyball players to get ahead of the game then and what would you maybe recommend for them in the meantime so they can get that head start? Let's take a minute here to talk about our sponsor, Rooted, whether it's electrolytes, immunity, hydration, whether you're male, female or expecting mother, we have the best product for you and that's Rooted. Everything you need all in one, stop taking 20 different supplements in the morning, evening, just take this ready to go pack with your breakfast and you'll feel amazing throughout the day. I take it every single morning. My parents are on it, Phoenix's parents are on it. It's the best stuff. We can't thank you enough. We actually got it hooked up to have their best discount code available. So if you use the code AP20 at checkout, that's rooted.com and use the code AP20 at checkout, you yourself can get 20% off. Let us know down below what one you use and when you prefer to take it during the day. Now, let's get back to Zana Muno, episode 192 of the athletes podcast. Thanks for being here. I think you have to develop the social media presence and it doesn't have to be hard or forced. I think do it authentically is the best advice that I could give. I think that since I was in college, I've been pretty authentic in my social media presence. And at times when I'm trying to figure out my own identity, it can be challenging to be authentic, but trying to remain true to that is like the biggest thing that I think has helped where I'm at in my social media because people respond really well to when you're honest and truthful. And so I think like developing your identity on social media, whatever that may be and whatever you're passionate about and whatever you love, but just start doing it organically and what feels right to you, but start doing it. Since you are talking about being honest open, I have to ask, are you able to make enough for it to be a full-time job? Are you having to source out other opportunities? Is it like brand deals? Is it like a 50-50 split? I think in the next few months, I should be able to do it, I think, full-time. That's definitely the plan and what I'm working towards. But I think that if I were a little bit more open with what came my way, I could do it full-time, but I've been pretty particular with what I choose to represent. And so that has also been challenging because I don't get the dollars right away and I don't have a long list of supporters, but I have supporters that I really align with. And I think that's more valuable and creates long-term brand deals instead of just spin-offs, which are more lucrative in the long-term and are also feels right to me. And so that feels good. And I'm happy that I've done that. It's been hard sometimes where I turn down things. Who goes to you for doing that? Yeah, no, it is definitely challenging because sometimes, especially when the dollars aren't big in my profession and something comes my way, it's like, oh, wow, that is shiny and nice. And that would be super helpful and could help do X, Y, and Z. But I think in the long run, it's starting to show that it's been worth it to sort of stave off those. I could not have said that any better and you look way better saying it than I did. So thank you for highlighting that because we've been doing this for four years. We see shiny objects coming through all the time and it's tempting. Totally. Trust me. And you know it probably better than we do. And it's difficult to say no in the short term, but like you said, those long-term deals are worth so much more and your audience will appreciate the fact that you're not selling snakes' oil. That's the way you continue to build your reputation. So keep doing that. Thank you. I promise it'll work out. Not always easy for sure. But it's worth it. And I think that it's so in line with what we're trying to do, educate, entertain, and inspire that next gen. That is the way that true athletes and athletes are gonna be able to regain that power ultimately. Because like you said, you have that one brand that you're working with from the beauty side. Yeah, Corsica sense. There we go. I know we needed to highlight them, right? Because that's, well speak to that because that is a relationship that you have. And they're an all natural beauty company. So they use completely cruelty-free and completely natural products. And that's something that I'm super passionate about and I'm not into harsh chemicals or all of these terrible things that are in so many of our products. And even on the food side of things, like I've turned on a lot of different companies that their labels, I would never actually eat that product. And so that's something that I'm really passionate about. I'm very passionate about food. And just like what goes into our body and what we put on our body goes into our body. And so this brand, it's all driven from natural oils, argon oil. And it's like when I first met them, I'm like, yes. Like I'm on board with this. This is something that I would love to share and that I will actually use and that I feel like so good about sharing. And it's like, again, it's hard for me to create content. It's not something that's natural to me, but when it's something that I actually believe in, it becomes a lot easier. And so that is also something that I've found because it's like, okay, how the heck do I promote this weird bar that I'm never gonna eat? But it's like, oh, this like lotion bar that I love and that I take everywhere I go, that's easy. So it makes it a lot easier too. And so I'm super grateful for that partnership. And it is when it does align with what you do, it feels so much better. Speaking of nutrition, what you put in your body, now that we've covered what you put on your body, I know this is something you're super passionate about. Obviously you've got your, I think your mother to 12 chickens, I believe I heard. Outside of the chickens, what else are you putting in your body from a food standpoint? Are you going organic? What kind of diet? Give us the breakdown. I always follow the 80-20 rule, which is like 80% of the time I'm pretty disciplined. I eat paleo. I don't eat a ton of processed foods. I don't eat very much at all. It never makes me feel good. I'm not obsessive about it at all. There's just things I don't even take a second look at, like a lot of bars and mixes. I just like whole real ingredients. My brother ate that way in college and he saw such great benefits. He taught me, he's taught me a ton about sports and just wellness and mental. That's a whole nother thing. So he told me about it and how great it was for him. So then I started eating paleo. And then 20% of the time I eat ice cream and candy and whatever I want and eat pasta. So that's kind of my philosophy. But yeah, I do try to eat organic when I am at the store. Kind of live by not going into the inside of the grocery store. Just sticking around the perimeter. And I also grow a ton of my own food. I'm super passionate about gardening. And the food system itself is something that I'm really passionate about. I think that as a whole, we're really disconnected from where our food comes from. And so I try to get as close to the source as possible. So farmer's markets or growing it myself, or trading with other people who grow things is something that I'm really passionate about. Because as a society, we are so disconnected from, we don't even know, we have this fantasy of we go to the grocery store and it's perfect and pretty and it sits there and it's shiny and we just get it every day. And especially in America, we have no idea what seasonal eating looks like. Or we expect strawberries 12 months out of the year. And if they're not there, we're pissed. And that's not reality. You don't even think about what's being sprayed on them and the fact that the water that comes off of it when you rinse it could be used as a pesticide again. Right, it's scary. It's a really scary place I think that we're in as a society, but something that I'm passionate about and love sharing and that I try to do for myself. And so yeah, one day I would love to make that a really big part of what I do. And probably after volleyball, I would love to keep educating people on where our food comes from and how to make it easier in our lifestyle because it's not easy to eat properly these days. And it's not cheap. No, it's so expensive, it's crazy. Talk about a double-edged sword. Hey, you're dealing with a sport where you're having to try and fight battle for every dollar that you make. And then, oh, hey, by the way, if you wanna eat healthy, you're gonna have to spend two, three, four X to just eat the same high quality food that you'd expect anywhere instead of eating that processed crap. And it goes beyond food in that regard. It's like, oh, you want a great trainer? Well, they cost this amount of dollars. You want a good coach? Oh, it costs this. You wanna treat your body right and get massages or do a cold, all of that. It's like, we wanna play at the highest level and most of us are willing to do it. It's just like, most of the times we just don't have the means to do so. Well, and it's, yeah, it's just such a vicious cycle. And the only way to get out of it is if you start doing that and then you're like, okay, how do I make sure that I'm still staying true to what I originally wanted to do without giving up, ah, I get fired up. It's hard too, I think, because health and wellness is trending in just society and especially in LA, now it's just driven prices of everything that we would do normally is everybody else is like, oh, this is so great, which is great, everybody should be doing that, but it's made it harder for us to maintain that. And that's why the athletes podcast is gonna stay free forever. We're never gonna charge people because I wanna stay true to that. And I think having access to conversations like this, learning from professionals like yourself who know and understand the value of health, wellness, fitness, putting the right stuff in your body will attribute and lead to success in so many different areas. You talk about health, what you put in your body, it's also gonna impact your mental health. Totally, yes. You talked about your brother helping you with that, obviously growing up in a family where you've got, seems like hundreds of athletes. Tell me about the most memorable place this sport has brought you. Oh, wow. The most memorable place. I went to Youth Olympics, did the Mac, I don't know if the Mac and Mary's talked about that at all, but we went, it was in Nanjing, China. I don't, that, Nanjing, China wasn't the most memorable place, but just the facilities and the experience as a whole was very, very memorable. It was all different sports, thousands of athletes, all the countries, opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies, dining halls, it felt like the Olympics for us. And so that was like, it gave us that like, everybody wants to go to the Olympics and then going to that, I was like, oh my God, no, I need to go. So I think that was the most memorable experience. We took a fifth, I think we lost to the twins. But yeah, it was just like, it was a very inspiring moment. It showed me how much, how incredible sports are and how it brings people together and how it's so much larger than just the one sport and something that I like look back on and I think I'll forever be grateful for. And yeah, definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity that I'm super, super grateful for. Yeah, that's amazing. That's why we had them on Before You. No, I'm kidding. Cause they beat me. I think I've never beat them, so. Sounds right. I'm kidding. No, you guys did win national championships both in 2018 and 2019. Tell me a bit about what UCLA is like. We talked with Chase Griffin, who's a QB there and like, there's some about being a Bruin. That's something special. It is something special. Growing up in LA too, it was like SC or UCLA and I've never had SC blood in me ever. It just never felt right. So the Bruins, I don't know. I think there is something about the history of winning there that is very special. I think you're also just surrounded by elite athletes in every field. You're surrounded by elite students as well. It's just as a whole, the community strives for greatness and excellence. And I think that surrounding yourself with that is very, very important and inspiring. And I'm super grateful for the relationships that I met within volleyball, but outside of volleyball as well. Like other athletes, my boyfriend played volleyball there and also just like all the different athletes that I met as well as like, I was in a sorority and I met a ton of incredible women who are now killing it in their respective fields. And it's just people who are like high achievers and doers. And that to me is kind of what UCLA is about. It's just about people who wanna change the world, do things and be great and are gonna work for it. And so that is what I feel like makes UCLA really special. Yeah, it's same vibes I get from everyone that I talk with. It's crazy. We should also let people know we had to transition because of the sun. We didn't just wanna get more comfortable. My back is hurting sitting on the bench. We do have some questions from the audience that I have to bring up. Thank you for sharing that also. Yeah, did you get any from? We did actually, an incredible amount. Let's start with one that is from Massa Rajavec and she asks, do you think that I can be a professional beach volleyball player that is, if I am five foot five? Yeah, totally. I think Kristin Ness is like the greatest example of that. And I'm all for hyping up other players on the tour because there's so many incredible women and athletes on the tour, but she's a beast. And I don't know how tall she is, but she's not that large. And she's just like mastered what she's good at. And I always speak to like, you don't have to have what somebody else has, you just have to do you and do it as best as you can. And she isn't jumping out of the gym and bouncing balls, but she does her so well. And so I think that if you're willing to put in the work and to figure out what makes you, you and how you can win doing that, then of course you can. Yeah, I completely agree because you see athletes of all sizes getting out there and at the end of the day, if you have the heart, if you have the desire, there's ways you can make it work. Lorena Cruz asks, do you have a dream partner? Oh my gosh, yeah. I don't know if I can, I mean, there's a lot of girls I would be like honored to play with. I got the opportunity to play in one tournament with Kerri Walsh and we were supposed to play in the whole season together, but she got her unfortunately. And that was definitely obviously my dream partner. And just even that one experience or the few months that we spent practicing together, she was everything that I kind of imagined and was so much more. And I learned so much from her just in how she operates because I've never encountered somebody that I would consider a goat like her, like a Kobe Bryant and a Michael Jordan, I would put her in that same category. And I've never been able to spend significant amount of time with somebody like that and obviously very few people do, but she operates different. And so getting to see that and witness how she operates was so inspiring and so cool. And I was like, this all makes sense. If there's one thing you could point out about how she operates, what would it be? I think just her, everything for her revolves around greatness and being the best and winning. And I think I'm an extremely competitive person, but winning doesn't drive everything that I do and it drives her so deeply. And it goes far beyond the volleyball court and that's what I've learned from her. It is like a way of life. And so I was super grateful for that experience and that was definitely a dream partner. Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing. PB Quina Nola asks, how different is NCAA beach volleyball from professional beach volleyball? I think it's significantly different. I think that it's changing. I think when I was playing, it was still new, especially in my first couple of years. By the time I was a junior and senior, it was a really high level. I mean, it was the whole way, but it is changing. It's becoming even more of a high level sport. I think the blocking and serving is the biggest two difference. I think there's tons of great defense and hitting and all of that at the collegiate level, but the blockers at the highest level are significantly stronger, which changes the game as a whole. It changes defense, it changes your offense, it changes everything. And then serving is another one of those things that's just a notch up at the professional level. So I think it's getting better and these college girls scare me every day. I'm like, oh my God, they're so good. But there is a difference and it's changing and the college girls are getting so darn good. It's wild. I heard you say on a previous interview that you loved playing defense and that if you could play defense all the time, you would. I resonated with that as a hockey goalie and never being able to play offense, only strictly being the last line of defense. What is it about playing D that you love? I think it's just like, it's all heart. It's just like you, it's you versus the puck or you versus the ball.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"And I don't know. I have a little bit of mixed feelings where I think that there are sports like basketball and football where they earn that money and they have the right to that. But then I don't know. I think for smaller sports where it's not creating this millions of dollars revenue for the school where getting like a Nike Christmas when you walk in on your first day of freshman year, that is like enough. And I don't know, we just live in a world of excess that I feel like, I don't know. I have mixed opinions on it. That's a great way to describe it. I'm constantly hearing, oh, it's great because we're getting athletes paid, which is great. Totally. Don't get me wrong. But I also kind of share that opinion not having gone through it. So I'm speaking, having just viewed and seen a lot but it does change the dynamic. Yeah, for sure. You do now have 18, 19, 20 year olds choosing where they're going based on how much money they can make. Not based on the education they're receiving. They're now making decisions. Their parents might be making decisions on their behalf. So all of these things come into consideration and it's such a difficult thing. It is interesting. There's a lot that goes into it too. And I think even at the pro level, it's difficult because you have, like I talked about this with Phoenix Copley starting goalie for the LA Kings around equity and athletes and how they perform could dictate what a team's worth. And like Washington commanders just sold for $8 billion and the players that played on that team didn't receive any of that money but they contributed towards how that franchise continued to gain monetary value. So it's always an interesting dynamic, right? And I think, I don't know, it's not as prevalent in beach volleyball maybe to your point but it's a fine line and I think hopefully it can be figured out. It's still so new, right? That's the one thing. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's good and bad to everything and I think that's one of those things. I think too, again, as a professional athlete who is sort of trying to find her way, I think it also takes away from the professionals. It takes a lot of the money that there is and it pushes it towards kids who already have their coaching, their travel, their food, everything paid for. And so I think that's like a selfish thought but that is something that does lure in the back of my mind when thinking about like these resources going to kids who already are on a full scholarship with a stipend and all their resources are given to them already. Well, and now content creators are getting money instead of pro athletes and they're receiving it because they can get those million views on TikTok despite not having any of the athletic pedigree. Which is such a shame. Spencer Didwitty of the NBA, the Nets, I believe, he just launched this app website called Catalyst which is like a web3 based thing. I don't know if you've heard of it and they're focusing on trying to compensate athletes, content creators, the same because especially female athletes and this is something I really wanted to highlight is the fact that like there is not enough support as far as brand deals because I think I saw some crazy stats where it's like 80% of female athletes rely on brand deals. And you probably know this better. Totally, yeah. How difficult is it for you acquiring brands? I know you're working with Andrew in Othello group and how has that been helping? Yeah, it's been great. I think, yeah, like you said, it's just tough because as I talk about this all the time but we've lost our value a little bit as athletes to brands because it used to be like, oh, they were seen on, you know, we'd share the views of how many viewers watched our game. Instead now it's how many Instagram followers do you have? And it just like discredits the athlete and what their value is as an athlete. And I even struggle with it on, you know, this is like a lucky place to be but I have a lot more Instagram followers and a lot of other players and it's hard for me because it's like, no, these players are better than they've accomplished so much. They deserve like so much because they're great athletes. And again, I'm grateful and I'm not like complaining by any means but it is like, I feel like it's almost undeserved or I don't know, the value of your work really gets diminished by social media and it's just like a, it's a sad place to be for athletes I feel because Instagram models or content creators who, which are incredible. I have tons of respect for content creators because I've tried to create content and it's fricking hard. So again, I have so much respect but we lose value and so to survive and to play our sport, we need that value and now I'm like playing up the social media game because that's how I can find a means to do what I wanna do. And so it is, it's definitely super challenging and it is like the way that I would say 70% of beach volleyball players support their beach volleyball career if they don't pick up a side job.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"Lake Louise. Right, I've seen that. Gorgeous, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to come to Vancouver, that's amazing. I know, I want to visit the Twins. It's definitely on the... I'm kind of shocked they haven't brought you up there. I know, it's so rude of them. Yeah, I feel like you've got to give them a little... Yeah, we'll let them know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll see this and realize they need to get you a flight up there right away. I'm curious, growing up here, spending all this time on a beach volleyball court, obviously playing ABP now, do you look back and you're like, God, do I wish I should have played soccer? Or do you, it seems like you love this sport. No, yeah, I would not change anything. I still have a deep love in my heart for a lot of different sports. I still love track and I still love soccer. I think I just love sports and I love competing. And that's something I love about my wife. We both love to compete all the time and to be playful. And so we're always playing games every night and we'll go play pickleball or we'll go play paddle in Poland or basketball in Turkey. And we're always playing. And so that is something that I'm grateful for him for. And I feel like I get my fix by just playing something all the time. Yeah, I feel like you and Micah are living the dream. Yeah, we do. Paddle in Portugal, pickleball in Spain. Like, man, not a bad life. No, it's not. We've been really in our, we are so lucky phase because we really are so lucky. We live such an incredible life. And don't get me wrong, playing professional sports is not a cakewalk and there's tons of ups and downs. But in the grand scheme of life, we are both so fortunate and we've both been like, okay, we need to just like count our lucky stars right now and don't like, we are living the life. So yes, we are very lucky. Phoenix and I are trying to do something similar. We've been on the road for the past year, recording podcasts everywhere and anywhere, whether it's on the beach or I don't know, on the side of a mountain in Utah. And we kind of are like frustrated at times because you're living the nomad life. It definitely has its ups and downs. Right now, summer for us is like peak season. We're like, I live in large. And then in winter, I'll be in Turkey by myself. I don't speak the language. I don't know anybody. And I trained by myself in a random gym. And there's tons of highs and super grateful, but there are harder parts. Or like, Micah's always complaining that he doesn't have an address. He's like, where do I send things? Where do I put my insurance card? Where do I send it to? These little things, I just would like an address that I can always send mail to. So just little things like that, but it's worth it. There's a trade off with everything. Pros and cons. And I think one of the things that has changed is the NIL rules in sport. Maybe the opportunity to monetize. I heard you had like an interesting opinion on it though. So I was curious. Wait, have I talked about this on other things? I don't know. But yeah, I do have an interesting opinion. I don't know. I feel that I was so spoiled at UCLA. I was given so many opportunities. And I think maybe it's in retrospect, I feel this way because of Beach Volleyball and the very limited resources that there are. I feel like we were given so, so much. And I feel that there's something really special about playing for a school and just being grateful for getting your education paid for. Because I know a ton of people who would have died to not have debt when they graduated college. And I just think that it loses its value a little bit when high schoolers are signing for millions of dollars. I just feel like there's something really special about then becoming pro.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"You have to find the balance between hard work and enjoying the process. What'd you think of that quick clip that Phoenix threw in there at the beginning of the episode? This is the 192nd episode of the athletes podcast and today we're featuring Zanna Muno, a professional beach volleyball player who's playing on the AVP tour currently, traveling across the world, being the incredible person that she is. She graciously gave us an hour of her time back in her hometown of Hermosa Beach, California, where we were able to sit down, dive deep into what makes Zanna tick, a bit about her boyfriend, a bit about her plans after volleyball, and her thoughts on NIL, whether athletes should be compensated to the degree that they are. We'll leave the rest of that for your imagination and to listen to this full episode. I'd love to know what you think during this episode. So if you leave a comment with your favorite part, I would be very grateful if you're able to do that. It means the world to us whether you're listening on Spotify, Apple, YouTube. After you're done leaving that comment, hit that subscribe button. If you're new here, it's part of an athlete agreement that we have. We don't ask for anything in return. We're not trying to sell you anything. We'd really appreciate if you hit that subscribe button. Right now, less than 5% of you watching are actually subscribed and hopefully we can change that number. Without further ado, this is Zanna Muno, professional beach volleyball player, back-to-back national champion with the UCLA Bruins, here with us today on the athletes podcast episode 192. Here we go. Hey! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It's like, I think it's probably a decent place to start, Zanna Muno. I know it's not like maybe a super positive upbeat spot, but like this is part of what we're trying to do here with the athletes podcast is highlight the ups, the downs, maybe where there's opportunities, room for improvement. Sounds like there is on the ABP tour. You just were in this weekend competing. I know you didn't have the result you were looking for, but we were just nearby. Phoenix was watching, saw the crowd cheering you on from your house. Thank you for coming on the athletes podcast. It's an honor to chat with you today. I'll let you start, introduce yourself. I'm Zanna Muno. I live in Hermosa Beach. I grew up in Hermosa Beach, like a few blocks away from where I live and I'm playing beach volleyball professionally. When you grow up here, it's kind of something that you see every day. I think that some people, nowadays beach volleyball is growing and people are finding it from all over, but I just sort of fell into it because it's in my backyard. And I went to UCLA, have a brother and parents who play sports and sports has just been a really big part of my life. I played three in high school and so I'm really excited to be on this podcast. Thank you. Yeah, no, you have a crazy family full of athletes. Your mom missing her tour card by one stroke, your brother playing in the White Sox organization down in the Mexican league right now. You guys, obviously you said you fell into it. We're overlooking about 18 different volleyball courts right now. What a place to grow up, hey? Yeah, oh my God. It's like the dream. All of my friends who grew up here, we're all like, where do we go from here? How do you go up from here? It's like kind of idyllic and it was definitely a really great childhood. And then yeah, my dad played football in college at Rutgers. And then I have like 10 cousins who played division one sports. So it's definitely a really big part of who we are and our family. So I'm excited to be on the athlete podcast. I feel like I resonate a lot with it. I love it. What were those family reunions like? Oh my gosh. We used to have like a little grass volleyball court in our backyard and oh, so competitive. Like people who never played volleyball were like yelling and screaming and everybody's so good. Like my grandpa's picking it up so fast and it's really fun. It makes her a lot of entertainment and a lot of like familial support cause we've all kind of been in the sports world. So we support each other really hard, which is amazing. That is amazing. I got to start off by asking, are you going to be able to hook Phoenix and I up for the chicken coop? Yes, yes I can. I would love to. I'm like so down for the chicken coop. So whatever you guys need to know, how I can help you build one, whatever you need, I would love to help you. So we were listening to the sandcast podcast, hopefully that's correct. And I was doing, listening to some of the ideas you have to generate income because beach volleyball isn't necessarily the most fruitful when it comes to dollars being supported. So we were trying to find out different ways to support you, whether it's kids' lunches or the chicken coop idea, which I love both of those, mainly because the lunchables should not be what kids are consuming. I mean, that's a whole other bridge. We can get into that, but I don't know. It's a dark rabbit hole. It's unfortunate the way society has progressed in that fashion, but we'll keep it positive. We'll talk about maybe a bit of your upbringing, time at UCLA. You mentioned the McNamara twins. They were episode 32 on the athletes podcast. I don't know if you knew that. I did not. I grew up probably 20 minutes from them. They were in South Delta, I was in South Surrey. And so one of the OGs, we had them online, wasn't as nice as in person. So we'll have to get them on again and chat, but maybe let's start from elementary, high school. You played every sport under the sun. So let's- Okay, yeah. So I started out playing soccer. Soccer was like my first love. I did like all the youth national, youth USA stuff. And I was like, so gung ho on soccer. And I started club at third grade. And then by seventh grade, I was done. I was just like, this is too much. I was kind of consumed me. And so I was like, I want to try something new. And our family friends were Mike and Patty Dodd. And if you don't know who they are, they are, Mike was an Olympian, a silver medalist, and I believe the 96 Olympics. And his wife played at UCLA. And she was, both their names are on the pier. And I had no idea all this about them, but they knew I was athletic enough. And they were like, okay, we'll take you to a volleyball tryout. And I didn't get on the ones team, but they convinced them just to let me on. And they were like, I promise she'll be good. She's terrible now, but she'll be good. So they kind of vowed for me. And then I got on that team and I've been playing volleyball ever since. So I'm super grateful for them. And then in high school, once I got to high school, my brother actually went to Notre Dame High School. And he went because he wanted to play more than one sport. He wanted to play baseball and he wanted to play football. And most schools around here were really specialized and they didn't want to let him do that. And Notre Dame High School encouraged that. And so it's like a 22 mile drive from my house, but it took about an hour and 30 minutes of traffic. So yeah, so we did that and he did that. And so I followed Sue and I played soccer, volleyball, and track there, and also played club volleyball and club soccer. So I was really active to say the least. And then my summer going into my sophomore year, I committed to UCLA. In retrospect, it was like really early. I think that they've changed rules since, but it was like 16 or 17. And I feel like I'm glad that they've changed those rules because I don't know what I wanted when I was a freshman in high school. And then when TCLA for indoor and beach, that's a big reason that I chose it. I wanted to do two sports. I was still not ready to just commit to one. And they gave me that opportunity and played four years of indoor and three years of beach. And then we won two national championships and called it a wrap. Mike dropped there. No big deal. No, I had another year of eligibility, but I was kind of exhausted from playing the two sports in college was a lot. And then now I've been playing on the AVP and a little bit of the world tour since. Playing with so many different partners, crushing it with everyone. Doesn't seem to matter who you play with. No, I have had the opportunity to play with a ton of people and that's kind of been my M.O. I've been trying to change it a little bit, but I have had the opportunity to play with a ton of people and had like a lot of fun and been able to learn from so many people. So I definitely would not have changed that. But I did play with McNamara's at UCLA and they're such good friends now. It's always like the best when we're like, are you going to this tournament? And they're like, yes. And we're like, yay, like we'll like hang out, we like both love food and we get to go to like good restaurants. It's kind of nice because we met each other I think when we were freshmen or sophomores in high school. We did like a youth national team tournament in Puerto Rico. I think that was the first time we met. And so then we've been playing against each other since then, which has been quite a long time. And so just to like have these journeys that have kind of gone alongside each other and we've really been in the trenches and in the highest moments together. And so we've created this great friendship and now when we see each other, we can really like bond over all the things we've been through and where we're at. So it's really fun. Yeah, I feel like despite the fact that the sport doesn't pay super well or is not yet at least maybe after this, we're gonna work on it, get some sponsored dollars behind it. But it does bring you to some amazing places. Oh my God, yes. And I've heard you talk about the fact that it's tough to be upset even if you don't perform the way you want to because you're in incredible places like this and it's your backyard. Totally, it's part of the reason I love this sport. It is like this weird inner conflict sometimes. Like we were just in Portugal. It's like somewhere I've always wanted to visit. And then we lost in the qualifier and I was like devastated. It was not a cheap way to get, you know, it was tough. And then I'm like, I've always wanted to go here. So it's like, do I sit and feel sorry and sad and like really like resonate in this loss or do I like go to the beach and like go like not party but like enjoy my life? And it's like kind of an inner conflict but it's also like so magical. Like we went, I've been to the Maldives. I've been all over the world which has been the biggest blessing in my life. Like being able to see so many cultures and places I'm extremely grateful for because I have never really left LA and that's given me the opportunity to see other places and get a good perspective for the world. Yeah, I mean, you just saw Edmonton, Canada. Yeah, the dream, the spot, place at the dos and don'ts where to go or not to. I mean, you did see Kelowna though. So that's a nicer area. Yeah, your brother played for the Falcons, West Coast League. Kelowna is gorgeous. And I've been to Toronto, Kelowna, I think, and Edmonton. I think that's all of Canada I've been to but I do want to see more. My family, we want to do Banff. Oh, so beautiful. That's on the plan. Canmore, Banff, it's beautiful. It's worth it. Yeah, we did a hike there. Tent Ridge, it was incredible.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"I love it. So I'm curious as an undrafted athlete, what that process was like for you. Normally we like to bring up with that draft story, how you had experienced, but I'm curious from your perspective, and I think it's, again, a testament to your hard work. Was it disappointing? Was it something that was even on the radar? Did you think it could happen? Is it like looking back, are you glad you weren't so that you continued to work hard? Yeah, it wasn't really on the radar. To me, it just was what it was. Obviously you want to get drafted, like that'd be a good first step to achieving your goals. But when it didn't happen, I don't remember it all being ever like bummed out or disappointed. It was just like, that's not my path. I'll just keep working and try and make it happen another way. So I was fortunate at Michigan Tech. I think, like I've said, Steve Schultz helped me. And then because we got to go and play in some big tournaments, like we did one in Christmas, the GLI. And that helped kind of, we played big schools and that. And I think that kind of helps get your name out there and you get kind of more exposure in those situations. So that definitely helped. And then, yeah, the Capitals came to me early on in my second year. And at the end of the season, they had an offer for me. And so I really had to think because I wanted to get my degree. I saw the value in getting a degree, but at the same time, my dreams were to become an NHL player. And that was a step to that. So it was a tough decision, but when that opportunity came, I had to go for it. Any significance to the number 29? 29 was the first number I had as a goalie. So most every other number I've been given to me in pro. And then when I got here, I was able to choose one. And so chose 29. It's not super significant, but it was just kind of a full circle, I guess, from when I started playing goalie to now I've got the same number. Kevin Woodley said you were one of the guys who treats their bodies the best in the NHL that he saw. So obviously you're doing something right. You're drinking the tea. You talked about your diet earlier. What are you incorporating specifically? Are you supplementing? Are you eating specific foods? I like to experiment. I mean, right now I like to do mostly meat and fruits and veggies, but I'm constantly seeing what works best and kind of tweaking things. And so, yeah, I think like I've gone through phases where I just try different things. The biggest thing for me is just eating clean, trying to eat meats that are sourced properly, that the animals are raised sustainably and raised, fed good stuff so that I'm not eating junk through the animals and eating plants that are grown organically and not sprayed with a bunch of chemicals and stuff. So for me, it's just trying to eat as clean as possible. And then from there, I'll just experiment with what I'm eating and what makes me feel good. So is that where the 1.5 mil goes? It's just strictly food.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"And then from there, I went to Tri-City Storm, Des Moines Buccaneers in the USHL and then it was college. So that's kind of a quick version, but yeah, it's been kind of a wild ride and hockey and sports in general can take you to some cool places. And yeah, I'm happy to be here and just enjoying the ride. Recently signing a $1.5 million deal with the Kings. One year, kind of a prove it deal after putting up some ridiculous numbers last season, 24, six and three, I believe, right? We're heading into the playoffs. Just featured on In Goal Radio with Woody's little selection there. Thought I'd try and shine light on who you are as a human being, how you've been able to get to this position today, overcoming what would be to most probably an improbable situation coming from the North Pole. I was chatting with Drew Harding earlier, just like trying to figure out how the heck you A, start playing hockey up there and then end up making it to the NHL. Because most people probably don't have those even in their mindset, the aspirations, like what's it like growing up there from a competitive standpoint, playing with other kids? Is it even a thought? Obviously it was for you. What was that process like? Because I think most people are very interested from that to start and then we'll dive into Michigan Tech. Yeah, from an early age, I don't know how it got in my mind, but playing in the NHL is what I wanted to do. I don't know exactly what put it in my mind, but having my brother playing together growing up kind of pushed me. But in Alaska, hockey's big up there, but there's just not a lot of kids playing, so there's two or three teams we would play against. The other two teams were in Anchorage, so we would have to go down there and play, which is where I'm from, about a six hour drive. It wasn't probably as convenient as Toronto or Minnesota where there's all these teams and it's new opponents. I was playing against the same guys growing up down in Anchorage for however many years. So it's a little bit different in that regard, I guess. We would go play tournaments. We'd come down in Southern California, Chicago. We'd go to BC, play tournaments there. So we would do stuff like that. But other than that, it was all playing against the same guys as we were growing up. So I think that's probably a big difference from being in a hockey hotbed. But yeah, I know everyone I played with, that was always our goal to play juniors, play college, play pro, get to the NHL. And so it was just kind of, I think, natural as a kid, that's the dream, the sport you're playing in, to make it to the top. What is it with attendees and being able to overcome some craziness? I mean, Carey Price getting flown to practices. I don't know if it was six hours in length to get there. You're crossing ice roads, I'm assuming. Like, what's that Verney? Six hours, is that just for Anchorage? How far away is your practice rink? I'm assuming there's only one rink. Yeah, so there's three rinks. North Pole is 20 minutes from Fairbanks. So Fairbanks had two rinks, North Pole had one. So we had a decent amount of ice availability. And then when the weather isn't too cold, we skate outside and have fun there. So it wasn't no shortage of availability. And there was, you know, it's kind of a hockey community up there in Fairbanks. You know, that's kind of the only entertainment in the winter, it's dark and cold. And so there's a junior team up there, there's a college team. And, you know, when I was up there growing up, that was the fun times. We'd go into those games where it was always really fun and watching those guys and, you know, it kind of gave us something to aspire to, to, you know, reach those levels and beyond. Not only the starting goal tender for the LA Kings, but also the co-founder of Athletes Apothecary. Tell me about your tee journey, man. What the two of you got going on with the tee game, because we bought a couple packs, I've been crushing it. We don't have it down here in Los Angeles, but I love the stuff. And I think that's something that a lot of athletes don't necessarily understand the impact of hydration. And I know that's something that you found back in 2017, something when you lost 19,000 a game. Yeah, so yeah, it was kind of some circumstances led to the creation of that. It was 2016, that season, I was dealing with some cramping and dehydration issues. And, you know, it kind of, throughout the season, I was aware that it was happening, but I didn't really look into how to solve it or how to, you know, overcome it. I just kind of went business as usual and drinking a lot of water, drinking a lot of Gatorade, sweating a lot, and then dealing with these cramps in intermissions and after games. And then it was in the playoffs that year. In the first round, we had a double overtime game. It was a hot day. I was in Hershey and, you know, after a double overtime game, I weighed myself and I had lost 18 pounds. And it was just, you know, I was feeling drained and fatigued. And so I drank a bunch more water, a bunch of Gatorade and, you know, back at it. And then in the second round of that playoffs, I ended up tearing a muscle off the bone. And I think it was just a culmination of, you know, kind of running my body down without having any awareness of, you know, nutrition, diet, what I'm drinking. I was just drinking a bunch of water and a bunch of Gatorade. And so then being injured like that, it kind of gave me time where I couldn't train. I couldn't really do much. So I didn't like just sitting there. So I started to research into how I can prevent that from happening. And so, you know, the first thing that popped out was diet, gotta clean up my diet. So I started doing that. And then I was looking into how to hydrate better. And I had learned that drinking a bunch of water can actually dehydrate you. Just chugging a bunch of water can actually pull minerals and electrolytes out of your system. And then drinking a lot of sugar, having a lot of sugary beverages can kind of do the same. It can dehydrate you. And those are like the two things I was drinking the most was Gatorade and water. So I was, I kind of like started looking into that. How can I fix that? And smoothies seemed to help me a lot. And then I started drinking tea and tea seemed to help me a lot. Because with tea, the hot water actually, it breaks down the plant material a little bit. So you're getting those, the nutrients and the electrolytes and minerals from the plant material. And so you're not just drinking straight water. It's now got minerals and electrolytes in it. And so I started to drink tea and these smoothies and everything kind of started to feel better. The cramps started to go away. I started to drink teas and intermissions of games and kind of smoothies throughout the day. And it all seemed to kind of fall in line better. And I started to feel better. And so in Hershey, there was a farmer's market we were going to, and they had a little section that had a loose leaf tea ingredients that you could buy like in bowl. And so we started to kind of mess around with that, Jess and I, and we ended up making our own blends, just experimenting, getting a bunch of peppermint, rose, chamomile, lavender, and just kind of seeing what it was like and what we could come up with. And then after a while, we were kind of like, this is kind of a cool thing. And I think this could help a lot of people. And so a lot of other athletes who are kind of, because the big thing is, it's like Gatorade and all these drinks. They're good, but there is so much sugar and so much chemicals and artificial ingredients that it can actually do some harm if that's all you're drinking. So we found that tea was a good alternative that's all natural and that can provide that kind of hydration, but in a natural way without all the chemicals. And so we decided to start making the company and we wanted to make it available to more people. And so that was kind of the start of Athletes Apothecary was to make those ideas available to more people because we hadn't seen anything where there's tea focused for athletes. And so that was our idea and that's kind of how it got its start. It's fitting on the Athletes podcast to have Athletes Apothecary, a little promo in there. I just imagine, in the D room, you're sitting there with a nice cup of tea in between intermissions. Players automatically already question whether goalies are a little cuckoo, as that confirms it. As you know, did you always want to be a goalie growing up? I was a forward at the start, my older brother, when we were at home, he would be needing someone to shoot on. So that's a pretty classic goalie story, the older brother shooting on the goalie at home. So that's how I got my start. And I remember I always really liked goalie gear, watching the goalies and watching the big pads and the helmets, the cool paint jobs, that kind of attracted me to the position. And then when he needed someone to shoot on, I was kind of just fell into place and then playing at home, I decided to give it a try on the ice once. And the organization I was playing with gave the kids gear who wanted to play for the seasons. So got to try it and I just really enjoyed it. I loved it. And so that was all she wrote. I'm a tendy also. I was attracted to the gear initially. And then obviously Hutch, so casing, talking to goalies, I was like, oh, okay, now I really got to dive in. Clearly didn't pan out for me making it to the show, but now I get to live vicariously through guys like yourself. Who was the goalie that you looked up to, inspired, maybe you tried to emulate growing up? Marty Brodeur, I wouldn't say emulate, but Marty Brodeur was the guy that is a hard one to emulate. But he was the guy I loved watching growing up. Just, he was so steady. I remember watching him try to score and then score growing up. And for some reason that just really attracted me to him. And I liked how he played, but I never was that style of goalie. It was just kind of like his generation, I think. But yeah, he was always the guy I liked watching. And Richard Brodeur is the one that caught your attention on the athletes podcast. You get to follow along. What'd you think of that one? It was good. It's cool to hear old goalies talk because so much has changed. And in their time, they were playing with such different gear and such a different game, right? So it's cool to hear those kinds of things where the history of the game, I guess, is what interests me in that regard. But yeah, that was good. He was funny during that conversation. I don't know if you remember too, too much of it, but he was throwing some jabs at the current call tenders about the RVH and sitting far back. And then now he's like, oh, you gotta be out cutting down the eggs. Yeah. Oh yeah, my stepdad was a hockey player back in the day and he was a forward, but he would always eat. I mean, he still does eat. Gives me crap when I give up a goal upstairs because I should be standing up. Like, why are you going down? You gotta stay on your feet. So it's kind of funny. I think that's just like the old school mentality a little bit, but there is also something to it. Man, it is tough, but they also had goalie coaches tying robes around their neck, around the cross part to keep them up. Yeah, yeah. And I've heard of like adding weights to the stick because if you get scored on the ice, then they're tying or taping weights to the stick. So you don't lift your stick, but. Is there anything crazy in your training that people would look at and say, oh man, what's going on here? Like, are you referencing pro reads on in goal mag? What's the Phoenix Copley's recipe for success? I mean, I'm always trying to get better. I'm always seeing what I can learn from other guys and other trainers and what guys are doing. It's awesome that there's such a wealth of information out there right now with the pro read stuff. You can literally go watch and other guys will tell you what they're doing, what they're thinking, how they're training. And that's really cool because it helps goalies everywhere. It helps everyone get better. Everyone has an equal chance to hear that information and then use it however they see fit. So I like doing that as well. But as I get older, I think I've gotten smarter at understanding what will work for me and what won't. Everyone has their own style too. So if a way you want to play doesn't fit your style, then if you're going to force it, it's not going to work for you. So you have to kind of be aware of that. And I think with the more experience, that kind of comes where you can understand what fits in your game and what doesn't. No, I ain't playing against a guy like Zegress who's trying to pull pucks around and do the Michigan on you. You ever... That's just kind of like, there seems to be more and more of that in hockey now where guys are trying that kind of crazy stuff that you guys probably wouldn't even think about trying five, 10 years ago, but now it's like... Light you up. Yeah, but now it's like you're seeing every game someone's trying something like that. So I think it's just how it's going until someone puts a stop to it. But it's also, some of it's kind of impressive that guys can do that kind of stuff, the lacrosse stuff. It just is what it is. You gotta be able to defend it. Matty Hutch is doing it in warmup, Hutch's son. I don't know if you've seen the clips of him. I'll throw that in there, a little plug for him. He's out in Montreal right now doing a CCM shoot, probably where you should be too, but I... A lot of people say that McDavid looks like me. So I'm curious, is that consistent? I can see that. Yeah. When I first saw you, I was like, what's he... Oh, oh. You're like, why is he interviewing me? Yeah. Is it intimidating going up against a guy like that? Do you worry about that at all? Are you seeing the speed? What's it like going and competing against guys like Emmett McKinnon? The way I look at that is I want to be the best. So in order to be the best, I have to play against the best. So whenever I get to play against these guys, it fires me up because it kind of shows me where I'm at and what I need to work on. Because if I can do well against the best, then that's where I want to be. So playing against the best players in NHL fires me up.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"I want to be the best. So in order to be the best, I have to play against the best. Hey, welcome back to the 191st episode of the athletes podcast. Today, we feature Phoenix Copley on the show, starting goaltender for the LA Kings and someone who I'm fortunate to be able to call a friend now. Just a super standup guy, graciously gave us time during August, his off season. We were able to chat up top of his rooftop. Unfortunately, the airplanes did not agree with our timeline so we did have to patch up some of the audio, but the content is still there. It's amazing. Phoenix shares insights, knowledge, wisdom, his patience, expertise in the goal-tending world and it was an honor to be able to chat with him on the show today. If you're new here, we do have an athlete agreement. Something that we do, we ask is that instead of charging you for this stuff, we simply require you to hit that subscribe button. Whether you're listening on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're consuming the athletes podcast content, we really appreciate it and the way we're gonna keep doing this on a weekly basis is if you hit that subscribe button over here. One of the things I wanted to expand more on during this episode was the fact that Phoenix did tear a muscle completely off of his groin and he had to go through a two-year recovery process. We didn't dive specifically deeper into that, what it was like, the pains, et cetera, but one of the things that he did emphasize was his knowledge that expanded on nutrition, diet and how it can help in that recovery process. One of the things we bring up is Athletes Apothecary, the tea that he and Jess have created, started, the Dream Big, the Nourish and the Revival Tea. We have all three, they're incredible. Phoenix, our producer and I are drinking it every single night during the day when we wake up. We can't get enough of it honestly and I wanna make sure that you folks know you can purchase this online. We really stand behind what they've built here. It's nutrition as nature intended. That's their tagline, couldn't agree more. I wanted to make sure that you folks know that this is something that you can be doing to help yourself, whether it's performance, hydration or simply feeling better throughout the day. Phoenix and the rest of the Los Angeles Kings organization are striving towards a championship this year. You can tell during the episode, that's his goal. That's what he's looking to achieve. He's willing to work to be the best in the NHL to be able to perform at the top. Without further ado, let's get to episode 191 featuring Phoenix Copley, here we go. Hey! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. The NetMinder from the North Pole, Phoenix Copley. Thanks so much for coming on the athletes podcast, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to dive into what life is like for a North Pole native to be down here in Southern California now enjoying LA Kings lifestyle. A bit of a windy road to get here. Why don't we start off by letting you share a little bit about yourself, your journey, starting at Corpus Christi, ice raising the NAHL, getting to the Tri-City Storm and then the journey along after that. Yeah, so I actually, the first time I left Alaska to play for a team, it was in Southern California. I played for the Simi Valley Titans, which it's like an hour from here. But yeah, so that was the first time, the first shock, I guess, to the system. Came down to live in Southern California and it was a good experience for me. The following year is when I was in Corpus Christi, which again, that's another nice and warm place. So yeah, I've liked getting out of Alaska to the warm places.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"Yeah, he didn't stay very long, and obviously, but it's a great documentary for people to go watch. How much film do you watch? Explaining the rise and fall. Well, first of all, we're in here every day watching film in the morning, and we stay later to watch more film. Then I go home and I'll probably watch another two hours, maybe two and a half hours, depending on the day of more film. So it's a lot of time watching, but you're watching yourself, you're watching your opponent, you're watching tendencies, you're trying to pick up on things, you're trying to watch maybe other players or other teams, what they like to do scheme-wise, or we also have access to some NFL tapes, so we can watch some great pass-off shows, like when I spoke before about Max Crosby, so I can go and watch him, what he does. So yeah, you're often on the iPad, just working away, but when you, like I said, when you love something, and it's just easy to open up, and I'm watching football, that's my work, it's like, it's a blessing, and it's not like a task that's hard to do, it's like, all right, let's get after it, you know, so. Yeah, and that's not a, that wasn't a chirp to Johnny around the zero hours watch thing, being the leader, like that's just, hey, part of the gig, right? And he's mentioned, I think you even mentioned it last night, it's like, hey, they fed the monster, right? Oh yeah, I would definitely, no, I suggest people go watch it, because it kind of explains the whole machine that the NCAA is, obviously now the system kind of is changing, I don't know if it's good or better, with the whole NIL deals and stuff, but no, Johnny, definitely his rise was huge, and his fall was probably harder and bigger, so it was something for people to maybe go reflect on, and just understand maybe the life of student athletes, and especially the big stars that rise up, and they play good, and they win a Heisman, and then they're evaluated to go first overall, but there's a bunch of red flags, and so. There was probably a couple of red flags there that Cleveland should have picked up on, on that text. Oh, hello, yeah. I, you know, win some, you lose some, right? Yeah, I wouldn't say that, but it should. The other Untold documentary that you watched that was a previous guest on the show was the Danbury Trashers. Another wild story, for sure. What'd you think of that one? Oh, that was, that's another one where I watched twice, because I couldn't believe that story at first. Just, first of all, an 18-year-old kid, being handed the keys to a semi-pro East Coast team, and then just building that roster up, and then the players that he had, and who was funding it, and that whole story, and obviously I'm a big fan of hockey, and I've always also liked crime docs, and stories of that nature, you know, there's a bunch of them on Netflix, so it's like the mix of both worlds. I was like, yes, I wanna watch this. So that was definitely something that I enjoyed watching, and it was a good show, for sure. What'd you think of it? Dude, AJ's hilarious. I think just that whole, his basically playing NHL GM mode with a franchise, he's 17, 18, and I don't know, to me, that's just such an incredible story to be able to tell, and despite all of the back end, how it came to be, it's like, they lived it, they're basically the mafia of Connecticut. The real Sopranos. Yeah, I asked him about it, he avoided the question smoothly, put it that way. What also was crazy was his 10th birthday party, he has like Triple H, and a bunch of wrestlers, pro wrestlers at his birthday party, I wish I could've gone to that birthday party growing up. Right, it was Triple H, Dwayne Johnson was there, who else, that was crazy. Maybe Brock Lesnar or something, I'm not really sure, but yeah, that definitely was a birthday party. Yeah, I'd turn 10 again for that.
The Athletes Podcast
"athletes" Discussed on The Athletes Podcast
"We had the same interaction, Lee, and I was basically like, hey, let's, obviously we're aligned trying to do similar things for yourself. Like, was there ever a point where you questioned what you were doing or was it always you're like, I know I love this. I feel good. What I'm doing is impacting people positively. Those ups and downs I'm referring to you, like those downs moments. People don't see, people obviously don't typically share those on social. So it's wise to put this in context for a very, for most of my career, I'm the trainer and it's my livelihood and the client in front of me. And that's really all there is, right? It's easy to think now with some of the other trappings of status as I put it, even though I don't like people thinking in terms of status, the fact that I write for what I do, the public speaking, it can sometimes feel like those things were always there. They were destined to be when in fact, like I have to go back in time to remember being the trainer at that commercial gym and the ups and downs. I mean, I was always busy. Like I think after about a year, year and a half till the time I was done, I did the most training sessions year over year in that company. There are other people who are pumping them out, but my bandwidth to do the that and to keep myself busy was very high. But even within that, there were periods where there were problems I had. Some good managers intersperse with a lot of really bad managers. I had managers who had brought in a multi-level marketing scam and they were recruiting, very predatory recruiting. There was a lot of, there was sexual harassment in that environment a lot. And those were frustrating battles to where, because I wasn't tolerant of these things and trying to push back while being fearful for not losing my job on my livelihood and my connection to my clients, which are of course, even though we had the relationship there, bound to the gym in terms of the sessions. And I didn't at the time, early days, have, oh, I could just go over to an evolved strength, open my own business. So a lot of it, there was a surprising amount of survival mode to just keep my head down and manage it while trying to balance out the threats that were going on there. And there was a point where I got a job, a second job, just because things were a little slower. Me and my friends, we'd been going out to the bars a little too much, it was a long time ago. And so we decided, all right, let's just work in them. So we started working as bouncers all in this one club. And it was fun. I actually met a lot of really great people. I have a lot of great friends in my life to this day because of that, and I'm very grateful for it. But crap happened there too, and that wasn't really a great environment in the long run. And thankfully things at the gym settled down, but eventually I had to leave because the level of harassment directed at me was so bad that it's like, I need to control my own fate and I need to be able to do the best I can to preserve the relationships that I have with my clientele, do it honorably. And so ultimately I left and thankfully my clientele chose to follow me because of the strength of the relationship. It's a testament to your work, yeah. But that stuff was forefront. So you'd be surprised at how much of this was very focused. I mean, it's being of service and understanding the impact and loving it, but not having a concept of any road to being able to scale its magnitude through social media or any other long-form media. I wasn't thinking about those things. I was thinking about livelihood and changing lives on a smaller scale, right? Now I look at it and the livelihood is substantially more secure than it was in those days. And again, I have all these other outlets. Those are great. I feel very fulfilled by them. I enjoy them a lot. I never lose sight of the fact that the client in front of me is still the most important thing that exists. And it's what has allowed me to do the other things. But for a big chunk of my career, and it's easy for me to forget that it was livelihood and service, if that answers your question. 100%, livelihood and service probably should be at everyone's top priority. Absolutely. And I allude to, again, I don't begrudge the young trainer who wants to make a greater impact. I know that's a generational difference. People will complain about millennials and now it's iGen, I'm a Gen-Xer, where, oh, they don't wanna pay their dues or they don't wanna grind or they don't, blah, blah, blah, they want all these things now. The flip side is they're also less tolerant of putting your head down for low pay, doing shitty jobs in the old economy where you were promised that if you do this for long enough, you will earn disproportionate rewards later. That's sort of like, that world doesn't even exist anymore. You don't think so? I mean, not in the same way. So we're talking about the industrial, a lot of the industrial age of work for the same company, learn the skills, pay your dues, work your way up, get the, your retirement. You gotta take care of number one. Your retirement plan, retire with the golden watch, all that sort of stuff, that kind of the factory mentality, whether it was a literal factory or even the white collar factory of the 80s, 90s of the business world. That dynamic is no longer the prevailing thing. There's less loyalty to companies. Job security is nowhere near what it used to be. Good luck if there's a pension plan involved. And so a lot of people now, younger people, there's more of an entrepreneurial spirit to it, right? If that makes sense. Yeah, 100%. And so the young coaches in more of a hurry, often enough to maybe think that, well, if I blow up my social media, that'll get me the clients that I wanna get. And then I think all of those coaches are in a bit of a hurry to go online as opposed to just do it, work the hours on the gym floor. And I think maybe you don't have to do it the way I did it, although there were a lot of benefits to it. But I also think that the rush for the social media status is not the answer either. And I think you still have to focus on the person in front of you, be of service. You do a really good job that more people will show up at your door because you'll be referred business. People will see what you're doing. And if you document it through your media and let people see it, then generally speaking, more people start plugging into it. If you get really good at capturing the wisdom, the experience, the knowledge into something that people will consume, whether it's podcasts, whether it's a long-form writing, whether it's short pieces of video-based or written-based content on whatever social media platform you're using, whether it's Instagram or obviously TikTok, more video-based, and you get good at that over time, then it generates leverage for the long run. That right there was, you hit the nail on the head. It's like consistent effort over time. You're not trying to be transactional in your efforts, and at the end of the day, if you can be serving and providing them with that experience, wisdom, you're gonna pay dividends in the long run. I took out one of your tweets to ask you about that.