Cameron Hanes

The episode opens loosely. The conversation turns to a hat decorated with an American flag, a skull and camo, and someone says it connects to the 250th anniversary. A participant admits that the matching socks are the only pair brought on the trip, with no underwear. That prompts a story about washing socks in a hotel sink with shampoo and wearing them while still wet.

Talk then moves to fighters training outdoors in heavy, humid air, with Amin Zahubi and Ilya named as examples. Someone remembers seeing thunderstorms at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs as a kid. Thunderstorms are coming, and the speakers worry about the canopy over the cage. One of them says they are "more worried about a terrorist attack than I am of fucking lightning," then concedes that lightning probably deserves more worry.

The lightning stories are specific. A friend named Remy is said to have been hit. Another account describes someone 500 feet up who heard electricity sizzling nearby and rushed inside. The speakers also bring up a video of a man who gets hit by lightning, wakes up, walks a bit further and gets hit again, though they are unsure whether the clip was time-lapsed or how long he was out.

The most detailed close call happened on a summit attempt with Tanner. Their trekking poles started "ticking" with electricity, and they hurried off the mountain. On the way down they warned a group of kids heading up to wait, and they noticed that a girl's hair was standing on end.

The claims about range come with hedges. One speaker says "I think lightning can hit from 10 miles away" and that it can travel sideways. Another describes a man in Florida who died last year from what is called "blue sky lightning" while standing on a beach under clear sky near a storm. That speaker says they looked it up because they spend so much time in the mountains, and reads a passage saying Florida led the US in lightning fatalities (12) and in strikes per square mile (76). The year behind those figures is not stated.

The conversation moves to Florida body-cam footage of a man who ran from police into the water and was attacked by an alligator. One speaker argues that being shot would be better than being killed by "a fucking dinosaur." A bullet hurts and you go into shock, but an alligator takes a long time: it rolls you, drags you under, and you cannot get free even if you try to poke its eyes.

Another clip shows a man who lost an arm to an alligator. In the audio he describes the animal grabbing his forearm and snapping its head, and says "She drugged me under three times." The speakers point out that he then wandered for three days through a swamp full of alligators and snakes, wonder how he did not bleed out, and make fun of the news narrator's dramatic repetition of "He says he fought for his life."

When they go back to the police footage, the viewing is narrated live. The gator lunges at the swimming man and bites him, and the narrator calls it a "full-on attack" on both arms. A second Florida story follows: a man in a high-speed chase stops on a bridge, jumps off and lands on an alligator. The broader claim is that Florida's fresh water is "filled with alligators." Disney World has to check its water constantly, and a child is remembered to have been killed there a few years ago.

The speakers explain the behavior with an analogy. A dog at the dinner table listens for crumbs, and alligators wait the same way for something to hit the water, especially anything that seems to be struggling. They call them "Opportunists" and compare this to fishing, where you match a fly hatch to get a strike.

Recalling an alligator hunt a few years earlier, one speaker says alligators are "everywhere" and "vastly overpopulmonary" [sic], and that they "need to be killed." The speakers discuss whether a bow would work. Dudley is said to have killed alligators with a bow in Florida. The shot has to be close, around 20 yards, with a fixed blade, placed "right behind the head," roughly halfway between the eye and the bump at the back of the skull. They describe one advantage of a brain shot: a miss tends to ricochet harmlessly. A missed lung shot that hits the stomach, by contrast, could leave the animal to a miserable death or let it live wounded.

This leads to how tough wild animals are. The speakers mention a three-legged bear and the idea that alligators bite each other's legs off. They contrast that with people, who need antibiotics "for like a hang nail," and one speaker guesses that human microbiomes are "probably all fucked up from washing it all the time." They offer this as speculation, not as an established finding. They also note that wild animals seem to get fewer infections than people or farm animals, with an exception during the rut.

The rut gives concrete examples. When field-dressing elk, hunters find puncture wounds full of pus. One elk shot at Tahone had a back leg "just filled with pus" from being stabbed. The speakers explain that these wounds usually land in the hindquarter because the losing bull turns away and the dominant bull "gets a jab in." They point to 1,100-pound Tahone bulls and to how thick antler bone is, saying a broken antler shows how much force is involved. On this view, bulls locked in a fight barely react to an arrow, especially one that passes between the ribs without hitting anything, until they start to feel woozy. A Squarespace ad runs in the middle of this section.

A trip to the Everglades about three years earlier is described as unlike anything else. The speaker had expected alligators to be hard to find, but they were "fucking all over the water": an estimated 15 to 20, "maybe more, maybe 30" on one outing, with eyeballs surfacing and dark shapes ducking under. The group went out with guides, by truck and boat, into dense, hot, muggy terrain. Since they had not found a "honey spot," the speaker wondered how many alligators the whole Everglades must hold.

The contrast with the city is part of the point. An hour and a half after being "infested by dinosaurs," you can be in Miami eating steak and drinking pinot noir, "half a day's drive from monsters." Asked what would happen if the boat sank, the answer is short: "Oh, you're fucked."

A childhood memory adds history. One speaker lived in Gainesville from age 11 to 13 in the late 1970s. At the time alligators were endangered and could not be killed. One took a neighbor's dog near Lake Alice, and kids threw marshmallows to them from a dock. The speaker remembers them then as interesting but not dangerous. The conversation drifts to the old pool-hall image of a well-dressed man in his "gaiters" (gator shoes). The speakers find alligator dress shoes stranger than exotic-skin cowboy boots, and bring up Ric Flair ("Rick Flair" in the transcript).

Ric Flair's name leads to an apology. One speaker says someone falsely claimed to represent the podcast and told Flair he would be booked as a guest. The scheme is described as an email promising a podcast appearance, sometimes with a fee such as $3,000, and asking for bank information so the scammers can "empty your bank account." The speaker does not know whether Flair lost money.

Tim Dillon is cited as another target. Someone claiming to represent Amy Poehler's show invited him on, and he doubted it was real before the request for bank details appeared. Another participant describes a similar email about appearing on Pat McAfee's ESPN show. It seemed believable because of earlier contact with people connected to the show and because McAfee had worn the participant's gear on air. Someone close to the show eventually confirmed it was not legitimate. Along the way, McAfee is praised as unfiltered and free to ignore bosses, a guy "that's got fuck you money that says, fuck you."

If you get an email asking for your bank account information, it's not me.

After a DraftKings ad and its required gambling disclaimers, the speakers admit there is little to do beyond warning people. One declines to explain how guests are actually booked, to avoid giving imitators a template. They extend the warning to impersonations of Anna Faris ("Anna Ferris" in the transcript), Amy Poehler and Tim Dillon, and joke that offers of free elk meat are fake too.

Bear meat and a stack of notes for the conversation come up briefly, then one speaker is asked about a gold tooth. They describe years of fixating on perfect teeth, including whitening strips, and say they have now stopped caring how they look. They also note that "the game still goes on." The original tooth broke in high school when a basketball hit the back of a girl's head while they were kissing, leaving pieces of tooth in her lip. The speaker had a fake front tooth from then on.

The gold tooth came about by chance. A dentist suspected a cavity under the composite tooth, took it off, and found no cavity, leaving just a filed-down post. At a dental office in Springfield, a staff member said her husband Nate made good gold teeth and offered one as an alternative to a white one. The plan was to keep it "just a day or two," but it has now been months. The speaker jokes that "this is like my savings account," something they could sell in a bind even if they lost everything else.

The other participant describes a cracked molar that had a root canal and then a crown, which also cracked, and says they will copy the idea with a gold replacement in the back. They add that it will only show during big laughs, and they laugh a lot.

The last stretch turns to work ethic. One participant says that, given the success, most people would ease off, but the other keeps working hard. The answer frames the podcast as a rare opportunity that carries obligations. Audiences want variety: scientists, athletes, fighters and many other perspectives. The speaker says they feel connected to those listeners and responsible for keeping the show going. They describe resetting each day with gratitude rather than resentment about having to show up, and call failing to capitalize on such an opportunity "a terrible tragedy, a travesty." They say they have held the number one podcast spot for "six or seven" years and plan to continue "until the fucking wheels fall off."

The other participant links this to bow hunting. Once you have earned respect, people will want your position, and the response is "come get it." They recall a dismissive "good luck with that" aimed at someone who threatened to challenge them to a race, and explain the confidence by pointing to 40 years of grinding in a pursuit where they are "further down the line than anybody."

The reply disagrees with the "taking the spot" framing. Everyone is on their own journey. Wanting to replace someone may motivate you, but it carries a negative charge. The speaker acknowledges that the view "sounds like very hippy." The alternative they offer is to study and celebrate people who excel, whether in guitar or stand-up, and ask what they do that you could learn from. That beats dismissing them as frauds, steroid users or liars about how many miles they run.

If you don't have an actual personal beef with someone and you hate them just because they're in a position that you wish you are, you're wasting energy.

The speaker backs this with a personal admission: as a young fighter they were "100% a hater." Everyone in their own weight division was dismissed as a "pussy," and only fighters outside that division could be admired. They could not even celebrate national or world champions. Looking back, they call this a waste. Analyzing what rivals do well is a better source of energy, even though the ego pushes toward finding flaws. The segment ends on the idea that energy is "very critical."

You have to be selfish with your energy.

This part of the conversation starts with energy. One speaker says that everything in life depends on having energy, and that envy is a way of throwing it away. The examples are ordinary: someone who can win a fight, shoot a bow further, run further or play guitar better. The speaker says the right response is to ask what it would take to reach that level, not to resent the other person.

it's a trap because not only does it take away energy, it takes away progress.

The other speaker agrees and calls energy "a resource that we have to protect." The idea comes back later as a theory of how people get good at anything. Whether the skill is archery, pool, martial arts or podcasting, both speakers describe it as repeated practice and failure, done with tight focus.

It's all reps. It's all experience and it's all like being like super focused on what you're trying to do.