Cover Your Hole

conan o'brien needs a fan want to talk to conan visit teamcoco.com call conan okay let's get started hey philip welcome to conan o'brien needs a fan hey guys hey philip how are you i'm doing well how are you i'm just gonna comment right away and i encourage our listeners to watch the video you've got one of the most neatly curated beards i've seen in my life i mean thank you it's incredible i feel like you had a jeweler come in and maintain your beard yes impressive yes very impressive um philip uh tell us a little bit about yourself where do you live where are you coming to us from right now so i live uh in the williamsburg virginia area so colonial williamsburg if you've ever been here right right in that area the eastern eastern virginia so yeah this is live at and tell us about yourself what okay what makes you tick philip all right well i am uh i grew up in this area so i've always been a huge fan of of history yep so love history um i live here i'm married to my wife karen she's a high school math teacher i have two teenage boys we love being outside uh whether it's in the woods hiking boating whatever it may be so that's that's kind of our world okay i feel like this is a dating app now and uh i like um you swipe right if you're at sitter left right right right you swipe right if you're really interested you swipe up for a super swipe get out yeah that's right i just swiped you up philip yeah because you like history which i which i love now i see in my notes here it says you're a relic hunter i don't really know much about that um what do you do so it's it's a hobby uh it's so relic hunting if you it's kind of like using a metal detector to go out and find okay you go out looking for well i guess if you're in western america you're going to find a relic hunter and you're going to well i guess if you're in williamsburg virginia you've got lots of stuff i mean mostly there's a lot probably civil war stuff and there's probably also revolutionary war what else absolutely i mean absolutely that sounds like you'd hit pay dirt go ahead yeah so growing up in this area it was sort of all around me i live right between jamestown colonial williamsburg yorktown uh cold harbor all the all the battles outside of richmond area so i kind of grew up right at the epicenter of that that sort of history and so what do you find about the history of the war and the history of the war that's so fascinating when you got your metal detector what are the things you're you're pulling out of the ground that are exciting to you um also we find bullets civil war bullets american revolutionary uh bullets um uh we find buckles sometimes old cannonballs and artillery shells and buttons and coins and all sorts of things what's one of the coolest things you ever found like you pulled it out of the ground and you thought this is awesome um one of the coolest things i found was uh a posy ring it's called a colonial posy ring is the name of it it's a gold ring that uh they would have a young man would have shared with a a young woman uh back in colonial times and when i first found it i thought it was just simply just i'm not sure what it was and then when i got home and cleaned it up i realized what it was and uh inside of it it has some old gothic script uh i think it says i choose the um i actually have some stuff over here i have it in my bag and i'm like oh my god i'm gonna have to buy it i'm gonna have to buy it i'm gonna have to that is so cool that's that's amazing how well you can see that and now yeah i swiped up and now you're proposing to me that's right that's how things happen on this this is one fast app um that is so cool and poignant and sad and sweet at the same time you know yeah well i mean i found it in a in a field and so oftentimes you know people got married much younger during those so it was much smaller and probably as she got older she would wear it as a necklace or a charm and it fell off at some point and laid there for probably 200 years until one day i dug it out of the ground right god and does her ghost haunt you now no no that's what i would worry about when i pull something out of the ground is eventually the ghost or zombie um would come looking for it zombie um and it says here you once found a live grenade yeah so you find all sorts of things did the grenade say i choose thee no it did not fortunately um the one thing i would say there's a sort of a you're so proud of yourself yes yes sorry so proud you know it's whatever it's what i do it's what i do nice uh nice ceiling there michelangelo uh that's what i do um it's what i do um sorry so what happens when you find a live grenade don't you have to call the police uh i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know yes you do um when you're digging you find all sorts of stuff and one of the things i would say is most of the stuff you find when you go hunting or relic hunting is trash you find shotgun shells and beer cans and more beer cans and anything metal you can think of that's been in the ground for a long time so you don't you don't most of what you find is not worth keeping right um it's not civil war or american revolution but this particular day i i dug a hole and pulled out of realized quickly we we live if you know anything about the hampton roads area that's a lot of military bases sure in this area for for a very long time and realized pretty quickly what it was and moved it i don't know i sort of got told i shouldn't have done this later i picked it up and moved it to a tree line and stuck it next to a tree i don't know why i did that i started juggling it and kicking it like a hacky sack yeah you kicked it like a hacky sack for 20 minutes yes yes while you were listening to a fish album there you go you okay there sona and laughing pretty hard sona when you laugh don't move away from the mic get those laughs right in there i work hard for those for the record yep okay for the record let me just say sona has the best laugh she does have the best laugh she has the best but philip you know what drives me this philip this drives me crazy let him continue what i'm saying is i'll get i'll say something she'll laugh real hard and she does this she fades away from the mic and i'm like those are my laughs give me my milk mama you're here wow that's sweet milk you hear them you want other people to know i'm laughing at you that's what that is with me with me not at me uh anyway philip um we got off on this sidetrack thing i was talking about sona's laugh yeah let's continue with that yeah let's get off the civil war stuff yeah let me just say okay i know i could hear you sona before they call me in the room and they told you guys there's a civil war with relic hunter and you're like oh i i knew that was going to happen with you but that's okay because i wanted to know but my goal was that she would laugh at some point because you guys listen real quick we're getting off the relic hunting stuff for a moment uh i listen to you guys all the time in the car on xm radio so i listen to you guys there you go a little plug for xm um i listen to you guys so you guys are the voices in my car and so we've talked about sona has the best laugh you know what i will agree you have the best laugh sony you've always had the best laugh and i considered you one of the treasures i pulled out of the car and i'm like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry does that work as a compliment it was so close it was almost close you were when i met you you were dirty yes i get you know that right i get what you tell people i like jumped out of a bush but you had soil on i was yeah there was a maybe the first year of me knowing you was me brushing you clean oh that's so sweet thank you so much thanks for making me human but she had a great laugh i was the live grenade you picked that you were in a way but wait back to the grenade yeah okay what vintage is the grenade is it uh it's not a it was korean oh good okay korean war air grenade is what i found out later um and so again set it next to this tree new uh i'd spent uh over 20 years in the fire department i these sort of things happen in this area again because of all the military bases so i knew what needed to be done so i called called it in uh they there's a lot of the military base nearby us sent their their bomb technicians over who examined it and quickly determined that it was a live grenade and that uh it was actually the pen had been pulled out of it and thrown but i guess somehow it hit just right it never exploded and i moved it with a shovel uh and so the guys were not they were like you moved that you should never move that uh and but what was really cool i mean these guys got out of the truck they look like they were extras in a military movie i mean tall the mustache the whole deal and they go over and they basically did a thing of c4 and sandbags around it and um i have a video of it they blew it a whole fire in the hole yeah they did fire in the hole fire in the whole fire hole and blew it up and i asked him where the little wire was that went from the c4 to the little like explosive thing he goes no we do that all by bluetooth now and so they blew it up with their phone oh my god that's not that cool no but no it is cool it sounds dangerous to me like i'm i'm there setting up my c4 and i'm packing it around the object i want to blow up when someone near me accesses a song on bluetooth and my half my face gets blown off because they wanted to listen to fish yeah whatever you know fish just because david needed to hear hillary duff i have to die hey some things are worth it can you imagine having that job where your job is to blow things up yeah you know you have c4 and you have a van and you get to drive around and okay i gotta go blow something else up in a field yeah that's what a great job is it great i think it'd be fantastic oh i didn't know if you were gonna say great or terrifying no i love that you get first of all your time's your own you get to drive around it's probably a company car you get c4 that you don't have to pay for it i don't know i just like a company car kind of this could be fun and you get to see stuff blow up which would be fun yeah i don't think that ever gets old how do you do because how do you even know where to look how do you do i imagine there's some kind of research involved in finding out what's a good place to try and find relics what will be fruitful because you can't just wander around a big state like virginia hoping that the thing that sets off your metal detector is a civil war civil war heirloom you have to do some research i would think right yeah that's that's over half of it is just spending the time to study it's really dorky but it's a ton of fun um but just look at old maps and history and uh library of congress has maps that you can access online so you're looking at those and then figuring out where you can go but then uh getting permission to go to those places obviously you can't go to any national parks or state parks or anything like that so it's it's finding private property farmers people that own land that you ask permission can i come on your property and i can go to your property and i can go to your property and i can go to your property and dig holes um and can i can i search for search for for relics for for old things that might be on your property and a lot of times they'll say no and sometimes they'll say yeah okay and do they have a deal like if you find something valuable they get to they want to keep it sometimes it sort of depends uh some of them most of them actually don't really care they you know what i've run into is they just kind of go i don't really care i'm not you know that's your thing it's not my thing so whatever you find there's others who have said hey i'd really like to see fine and then there's others you can maybe work a deal with and go hey let's split whatever whatever it is we find i'm intrigued there's part of me that would want to go around and fool guys like you like drop things in the ground do you know what i mean go out and buy you know uh go and buy like a what looks like a knight's helmet and then drop it in a hole hide and watch them and then hide in a bush and and watch you guys come by and think that you've found oh my god king arthur's court out here in williamsburg virginia i i know that's a bad thing i'm admitting to but no there's people that do that no really no no there's a guy no there's a guy here locally uh who has like been known for decades as one of the best replica makers of civil war buckles and things like that right and if he made one that wasn't quite perfect he is was known to go in the cold harbor area and bury it and hide it what it did and people would find it and lose their minds oh i love this i love this guy yeah i will hey can this guy contact me i will fund your operation yes yes gary you know i would be drawing up like a fake gettysburg address and then dropping it in a hole oh you know stuff like that a fake lincoln's beard and a note that says if you find my beard contact a lincoln 1600 pennsylvania avenue just i would want to see people freak out 1600 was he he didn't live in the way did he live in the white house lincoln yeah yeah the white house was there who is the first person to live in the white house good question thomas jefferson oh okay i didn't know that um so no there's a lincoln bedroom it's like what the most famous i knew that i just thought it was i'm sorry i was i wasn't sure it's true you thought he lived in a split level condo in recita california yeah i saw him at the hot tub the other day the communal hot tub sorry yeah see i asked questions i'm curious um yeah uh this is i mean this is fascinating to me i just there's a because whenever you examine something you find out that it's a whole ecosystem there are probably really good um you know artifact hunters but they're also probably ones that give you guys a bad name do you know what i mean that i break some of the rules i imagine yeah well i mean it's like in the other oh you just got mad so much behind that yeah you got mad yeah so much behind that well don't name names don't name names no i mean there's like any other niche or subculture there's etiquette and there are people that that hold to that etiquette and do it respectfully and there's others that just simply don't what is the etiquette of uh you know treasure hunting like this well one of the things would be uh just if you dig holes you cover holes um and you'd be just surprised how many people will dig holes in somebody's yard and just leave them which if they have animals like horses and livestock they could step in it and get hurt yeah terrible um what yeah and so that didn't feel sincere no i meant that's bad that's bad okay no my rule if if man my rule number one is cover your hole you know i've always i've said that since day one and when i meet a guy that doesn't cover his hole i'm out i'm like cover that hole dude cover the hole yeah and then every now and then etiquette yeah i say that all the time in my regular life and i'm rare guess what i'm rarely outside when i say it hey dude cover your hole i'll cover my hole you cover your podcast before i don't like it when someone covers my hole that's where i draw the line don't cover my hole if i said you can't cover my hole don't cover my hole you cover my hole i'll cover your hole how much more do you think i can go on this i don't know but it needs to stop i don't think it does i think it needs to go more i think it's just stop yeah but anyway um never heard you say hole so many times well i'm just saying cover your hole um that is the rule that is the rule guess what guess what philip people here are laughing and acting like it's a joke but it is the rule and it's a simple rule to live by cover your fucking hole you know what i mean or i'll come over there and cover it for you you know i'm saying i've got a whole cover in my pocket it's a little brass plate um so you cover the hole i love you you know i love i love that you just said so my favorite thing about this whole interview is philip finally going so and you think you're gonna get away from the topic and then you said you gotta cover your hole so you brought us right back can we also talk about what else he does which is he's also a preacher i spent over 20 years in a fire station there is little that these ears have not heard you gotta you gotta cover your soul you gotta cover your soul and if you don't cover your soul i'll come and get a preacher to cover your soul so you live by two rules cover your hole and cover your soul these are the rules that philip lives by are you a fire chief yeah listen we'll get to that we've got a lot to get you know we've got a lot to cover here it's yeah we really do um preacher uh yes so i hope i didn't offend you with my cover your hole run but i think it can be taken many different ways uh and so i'm not worried about it um and what is your uh religious uh denominational uh acceleration non-denominational non-denominational got it very good you accept all kinds all kinds i'd be welcome as a catholic you would be welcome okay absolutely i like that i like it very accepting absolutely um and how long you've been preaching for 12 years i think it is 13 years something like that and before that you were a firefighter i was bivocational for a while i worked in the fire service and i worked at a church simultaneously um and did that for a period of time and then as the church grew uh it was a church plant so it started from scratch um and as things grew then i um that i was full-time here as the preacher you seem like you'd be a good preacher you seem like you're very uh someone that would be very uneducated and you seem like you're very uh someone that would be very uneducated and you seem like you're very understanding accepting uh a cool guy good sense of humor um i think you'd be very good at that i hope so i i will tell you this i grew up and my dad uh did not go to church very often and one of his biggest things was he was like he'd meet preachers and he would go that preacher doesn't know anything about real life he doesn't know anything about me he doesn't understand anything because they live in his little world he just reads the bible all day and sits in his office and he's like i don't know anything about real life he doesn't know anything sings hymns or whatever and uh and so i was determined from the beginning that i wouldn't be that guy yeah that's one of the reasons why between the fire service and just real life just to just be a regular just a regular dude just a regular guy regular dude out there digging up grenades i get it man it is not it's not the sexiest uh hobby i get it i love it it's actually pretty cool i think it sounds great i'm sorry you heard me make that voice that's not what i meant at all i thought it was just more like conan's gonna geek out i don't care i don't care she was mocking me for being a civil war history no that's the typical response i get whenever anyone finds out that i dig holes and find old stuff so i completely it's the it's sort of it's the it's the reaction i get from my wife when i bring stuff home and there's mud and i bring it in the kitchen and i'm cleaning stuff up that i found and i'm dorking out over it and my wife just like could you uh-huh uh-huh could you just please get that out of the kitchen so i get it it does not offend me at all oh good i good i i mean i just know conan was gonna get really excited about it i am excited and i feel like you want to go out with philip and like dig holes in virginia i do i tell you what you come to eastern virginia i got another metal detector we will go out and dig holes we'll find something cool and we'll cover them we'll cover them up and we will make sure that every single one of them is covered gotta cover them up every single one of them is covered that's right no one plugs a hole like me alright I think we broke it Phillip it was lovely talking to you by the way when this airs you will no longer be a preacher so you need to find yet another vocation cause that is over when our little who's on first routine plays but it was really nice really nice talking to you and I'll see you on down the road sir hey man I really appreciate the time of course it's good to see you guys seriously I listen to you guys all the time thanks for listening to us I've followed you since I was since I was like in college so I just oh cool thanks for just taking a few minutes just to hang out let me talk this was a joy for us seriously really fun talking to you appreciate it alright take care Phillip bye bye take care thanks a lot bye Conan O'Brien needs a fan with Conan O'Brien Sonam Ovsessian and Matt Gourley produced by me Matt Gourley executive produced by Adam Sachs Jeff Ross and Nick Liao incidental music by Jimmy Vivino take it away Jimmy supervising producer Aaron Blair associate talent producer Jennifer Samples associate producers Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm engineering by Eduardo Perez get three free months of Sirius XM when you sign up at Sirius XM dot com slash Conan please rate review and subscribe to Conan O'Brien needs a fan wherever fine podcasts are down