Live in Salt Lake City: Skinwalker Ranch, Caving, & Weiner Dog Races

Hello? Hi, Rosabelle. It's David Farrier. How are you? Oh, hi, David Farrier. I'm very good. How are you? I'm good. Now, I don't mean to put the pressure on, but Rob and I are about to go on stage in Salt Lake City, Utah. Okay. And I'm wondering, Rosabelle of New Zealand, what do you think when you think Salt Lake City, Utah? Oh, no. Oh, no. I actually know nothing. I don't know anything. Is there a salt lake in it? That's actually an incredible question. That's an incredibly good question. There must be. I don't know that. I feel like it's the city of Salt Lakes is what the name suggests at least. Mm-mm-mm-mm. Look, you pose a very good question. Is there anything else about Utah that comes to mind? Utah. U-T-A-H. Something about tires, maybe? Like car tires? Yeah. Is that, I don't know. Is Michelin from there? Rosabelle, another good question. I have no fucking idea. It probably isn't. I know nothing about, I don't even know where it is on a map. I don't even know where it is on a map. Flightless Flightless I'm a flightless bird touched down in America Flightless Oh, flightless I'm a flightless bird touched down in America I'm a flightless bird touched down in America I'm a flightless bird touched down in America Hello! Thank you for coming out on a beautiful Sunday night. It's always nice when people turn up to a show, so genuinely thank you. This means a lot. I can't believe we can come to a city and have people turn up to listen to our show live. So sincerely, thank you. Yeah. Just quickly, no tires. And I'm right, right? No tires. There's no tires. I don't think they have tires here. There's tires. There's definitely no Michelin. And there's nothing else. But there is a big Salt Lake. Yeah. They don't have any Michelin restaurants. I did look that up. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I know. But the food is good. Food is good. What else is here? Best Friends is in Utah. I don't know if you listened to our Best Friends episode. That was unusual. But me and Rob have been sort of settling in. We've been seeing what's happening here. Do we like it? I like it. Yeah. We learned that Charlie Kirk was here 40 minutes before he died. Yeah. And I was sort of complaining. And moaning to Rob about how intense the security is here. And, yeah, I can sort of see why. And kudos. This venue is amazing, by the way. They've been so great settling us in. So, thank you to the venue. And we're very glad to be here. As usual, every city we go to, we kind of want to have a little exploration. We got here yesterday. I got here two days ago. Oh, you got here. I came a little bit late. Yeah. But yesterday we had a little bit of a look around. And Rob's going to take you through one of his infamous slideshows. Slideshows? Yeah. There's Mormons here. You probably know this already. Yeah. It kind of blew my mind how prominent it is everywhere. There's so many buildings. Yeah. There's a lot. Yeah. Which, when we were looking up places to go, I read it as LSD. It was confusing. I was really excited. What is this? Trippy show. It was still pretty trippy. I got to say. Where else did we go? Here are the five wise virgins. You don't need to laugh at that. No, you're the sixth, not the fifth. These are the five. I'm the sixth. That's the gag. I've messed it up for you. I'm sorry. Terrible. Brigham Young statue? Yeah. What a guy. Yeah. Then David stopped for sweet treats. He's got the same diet as my four-year-old. This was violating. I mean, I stopped into a supermarket. Yeah. I bought some supplies, and it was private, and Rob decided to gather them all together and take a photo, which is, this is pretty much my diet and how I survive, and it is a little bit embarrassing. To be fair, this is how I found the counter at our Airbnb. I did not stage this. I am a child. This is accurate. This is a lot of candy. And then we headed over to the Tracy Aviary. What a beautiful place. I love this. We almost bought this giant. It was a bald eagle, but it was $250, so we decided not to. It was out of our budget. I got this kookaburra instead. This is actually not a New Zealand bird. It's from Australia, but it's really cool, and so I bought that instead. More affordable, $35. This is David pretending to be a kea going on an expedition. The kea is one of the best birds in New Zealand, and it kind of blows my mind that most cities we go to, they seem to have this bird. I've seen so many of them. Yeah, Rob's like, I'm sick of having to look at these kea birds all the time. Like, move on. But they're beautiful, and I love them. Do you want to explain what's going on here? Cute, right? This is a little lorikeet. They like nectar, and if you go to this aviary, they come out and they suck down nectar from these little cups they give you. They really took a liking to you. They went to you even without nectar, because you're just so sweet, Rob. You really are. Yeah, the next was the Gilgal Sculpture Garden. Incredible place. Yeah. Like, this was like an LSD trip. So that's, I read this as LSD sculptures in someone's backyard. Yeah. But it was not out there. This is Joseph Smith's Sphinx. We also accidentally walked into someone's backyard when we were trying to get in, and she was obviously had about a hundred different people that had done this before. Just like, this is private property. Get out. Yeah. But we found it eventually. Some more sculptures, I'm not sure what's going on here. Yeah, more trippy stuff. And then, um, the turnout was amazing. Uh, no King Salt Lake City turned up. I mean, I'd heard it was a pretty conservative city, but you guys showed up and it was amazing. Yeah, we also learned there was a shooting at the last one. Yeah. Not yesterday's. Peaceful, wonderful, safe. But the turnout was really incredible, and it was kind of the best way to see your Capitol Building. You know, there's people there standing up for keeping this country under control. So did any of you guys go? Yeah. Great. We actually bumped into a few people that were like, we really love the podcast. We're like, are you coming to the show? And they're like, no, we didn't. We didn't get to know how to take that. You said we didn't get tickets in time. Yeah. And then the pressure was saying, like, we've still got some tickets left. We didn't want to pressure them in the spot. But it was a very funny situation. I really enjoyed it. Oh, actually, one thing I did want to mention as a side dish to this. You guys have so many come trees planted. And it's not like you did this years ago and learned not to do this. There's new come trees being planted everywhere. Outside of EMBNB, there's young come trees. So write in to your senators. Just tell them to stop planting these trees. Get them to listen to the Flightless Parade episode about why this isn't a great idea. Just a note. Just a note. I had my first dirty soda backstage, which was incredible. I've sort of been getting into mum talk recently, and it's a trip. Wait. What does that mean? It's kind of like mum talk. It's a lot of Mormon mums are on there. And it's kind of just the lifestyle, how it's changing, how it's the same. And obviously, no alcohol and these little soda beverages. Apparently Mormons survive primarily on sugar instead of alcohol and caffeine. Wait. So this is a group chat you're on? No. Mum talk. It's a whole group of them on TikTok. All social media platforms. I'll send it to you. You'll love it. Thanks. And I bought a load to give away after the show in the lobby. But you have mince and cheese pies here from New Zealand. There's this bakery, Sagado Bakery. Do you know this place? Yeah. They make mince and cheese pies and sausage rolls. And I bought some. And I'm going to give them to you after the show. Not for everyone. I bought five sausage rolls, five pies. That would have been crazy to feed you. I'm going to feed you all. But very excited. Something we like to do in every city that we're in, it's riffing on Florida, man. And we like to look at. the local men of a town and in this case salt lake city man we want to know what he's been up to all right so our first headline salt lake city man charged an attempted arson of fox 13 news truck little clap there i get it i get it it's tempting isn't it it's tempting it's thoughts that run through your mind um assault lake city man allegedly placed an incendiary device under a fox 13 truck last month was charged on september 26th with attempted arson authorities found a one and a half gallon gas can with a multi-foot long fuse underneath the news truck um the can of views were placed under the truck at about 4 15 a.m said an agent with the fbi but the fuse self-terminated before it reached the gas can nothing blew up failed attempt all right next we've got salt lake city man arrested after allegedly robbing a salt lake city maverick of three slim jerks I just thought this was a wonderfully american headline uh which I appreciate it's also in a world where everything feels like it's falling apart I kind of like an old school pure crime story with no death and this kind of just fulfills that salt lake city man arrested monday evening after allegedly robbing a gas station at night point his alleged target slim jims william brown 46 is booked into the salt lake city county jail on first degree felony charge for stealing the slim jims it seems intense according to charging documents he was holding a two-inch silver knife during the incident during the search warrant police say they found box cutter blades a lighter burnt straws a used syringe no slim jims this is pretty wild and this feels like more of a florida man than a salt lake city man salt lake city man allegedly attempts to attack with wooden stake claims victim was a werewolf which is confusing because stakes are usually for vampires right you got confused which is quite funny so this happened last year june 16 a man was jailed without bail after allegedly assaulted a victim multiple times then produced a wooden stake with a nail in it quite gnarly do you have that word here gnarly yeah yeah it's big in new zealand we love using it and began telling the victim he is a werewolf and he was trying to pierce his heart five people calls 911 about this the victim attempted multiple times to retreat but prayers pursued and placed the victim in a chokehold he then produced a wooden stake with a nail in it and began telling the victim that he is a werewolf and he is going to pierce his heart the victim fought back and was able to escape a happy ending prayers fled with the victim's backpack this is a weird detail in the story that they never explained the victim's backpack was full of rocks they sometimes when you write the story it's like just delve a little bit deeper because i feel like the victim also had a really amazing story to tell or it was maybe a werewolf or it was a werewolf using rocks to kill people finally salt lake city man accused of kidnapping child striking him after being pranked at home now deeply american story the most american and a pastime that rob used to partake in a lot by the way a salt lake city man has been arrested on child abuse and child kidnapping charges incredibly heavy after he allegedly chased a boy who had ding dong ditched him over the weekend tom burnstone 58 was arrested on saturday and is accused of striking the boy several times police said a group of kids were having a sleepover on friday they decided to doorbell ditch nearby homes including his home at around 9 45 pm after the group rang the doorbell burnstone allegedly chased after the boy who had ding dong ditched him after them on a bicycle very dramatic eventually grabbing the victim by the shirt and yelling at him while striking the child three times in the face and punching him in the stomach overreaction i would argue awful when police arrived on the scene burnstone admitted to having pushed the victim up against a fence and slapped him a couple of times to stop him running away police arrested him read him his rights he refused to admit the assault only saying no comment what do you think about their action overreaction isn't it yeah yeah for ding dong ditch yeah did you ever have any adverse reactions when you did it to people no you run away you don't ever meet them face to face no maybe this kid didn't run quick enough or something has anyone ding dong ditched you yeah yeah what did you do not in california but in chicago yes you just answer the door no one's there you didn't go and assault them and slap them around no no no it does seem like an overreaction finally and i'm sort of including this in the salt lake city and segment with these live shows we always try and customize the live show to fit the city we're in and um i was thrilled to learn that squatty potty was invented in your beautiful town here's a photo of you using one yeah rob give rob a laugh for this he was so proud of this photoshop job really excited so i did what i usually do when i try and book guests i reached out to squatty on social media very similar just trying to book a rep get you involved and they responded in incredibly um helpfully david that sounds awesome exclamation mark a lot of these brands shut you down straight away if you're not like a giant giant podcast so i was incredibly thrilled by this seen here if you see thrill so much effort and again thrilled um can you provide me with your email so our team can reach out to you i provided my email and then things went incredibly dead just nothing and i was like where is squatty potty where are they that was the sound i made but we still had to bring them out tonight right no they're not here so in short yeah a couple of days after that enthusiasm i'm the co-creator of the squatty potty toilet has been charged in federal court for allegedly receiving videos and photos depicting the sexual abuse of children i don't need to go into details of that but yeah that pr department sort of vanished from me and so i decided also probably best not to have them as a guest i should note just so we don't get sued squatty potty did go into damage control very publicly and they made it clear that the owner arterian who owns squatty potty now has nothing to do anymore with robert edwards because it was squatty potty was sold off so officially they're in the clear but still not a great vibe it's like it's the last person you want like you're like the last thing you want your inventor or your spokesperson to do it's like jared fogel with subway right yeah it's like it's just like don't my god do you guys use squatty potties yeah okay i hear they're great i might try them still give it a go um okay in the lobby when you walked in uh you may have filled in a card that casey a wonderful person who helps out with our patreon got you to fill in this is the audience participation segment of the show the first audience the first of many casey could you please present the cards of uh please give casey a round of applause casey you're wonderful because it's always good if we're in a city just to kind of learn thank you casey you're wonderful okay rob you start oh all right weirdest thing about the city soaking of course iconic you explain soaking david i don't know what it is i understand soaking is kind of a way to get around um sort of having sex without having sex where you genitals are inserted and instead of any sort of thrusting the um the other partner is sort of moved in some way potentially the bed is kind of moved a bit friend to jump on the bed yeah jump on the bed a bit and so you can get some friction which i hear you need for sex would you do that without would you i'd love to with any friend i've been trying to do it for years yes so that is i suppose part of this town somewhat rebecca the amount of fraud or scam crimes the highest per capita in the u.s despite its squeaky clean image naughty naughty all right um everyone knows about the mormon church how about the sumam church oh hello real mummification when i was a child my mom did the founder i played at his house i played with his now mummified dog get out i played in the pyramid before it was gilded i know nothing about it that was 44 years ago okay i would like to chase that up anyone who um saves a dead pet in any sort of form has my interest and enthusiasm two and a half hours away says liz is the topaz internment camp was the largest u.s government japanese internment camp in the u.s over 11 000 people were incarcerated there holy shit had no idea fucking hell pretty weird the absurd amount of sugary drinks oh insane i support it fully i don't see the problem with any of that brilliant magic underwear of course of course we have a guest who um is involved tonight in the mormon church and so and he's been very open we can ask him anything so i'm thrilled to have him on soon uh robert the alcohol laws and all of the young mothers i personally had five children at age 27 so weird oh my god so they're sort of saying they're weird for having that many kids that early yeah holy shit that's a lot of kids that's a lot of kids amy a girl in my class school had 10 kids which like really surprised me at the time tens a lot she was catholic yeah catholic okay yeah big time how many kids do you have eight wow doing well aaron and shannon say there are tunnels running underground between the church offices and the capitol building that's amazing that's like very mollish behavior which i'm a big fan it's weird how many cities have that i did not realize because seattle has yeah completely these tunnel systems you can see how during covid and sort of that q anon time people got very obsessed with the being underground networks of tunnels with children being drained for adrenochrome and stuff i mean i don't really see you believe it no i don't i don't believe you have yeah i get a lot of tunnels in america uh the salt lake city wizard wow he's popular we had a very popular wizard in new zealand gandalf well played that's lord of the rings no we had a wizard um in wellington now capital and people loved him he dressed up as a wizard he was always on the news talking about things he ended up doing i can't remember what and i don't want to speak out of turn he did something very bad and we no longer have a wizard but anyway there's a wizard here yeah can anyone explain he's in sugar house he just wanders around same with our new zealand guy maybe it is our new zealand guy maybe when he does crime in new zealand i love that liz oh no i've just looped around back in the beginning that was my last one too oh my god um it's a weird place i think there's enough weird things here we can chase that was a solid weird list compared that was solid what we normally get some cities weirdly yeah san fran nothing really weird there was very very dry okay i'm excited about this because we're getting into our live guests now which for me are the the thrill of all of this one thing i find and i don't need to go on about this too much i ramble sometimes but rob and i are both very conscious doing a live show we don't just want it to we don't want it to be sort of two bros just chatting so i think it's too much chat and so we like to have like having a beautiful musician open for us it's like holy shit we get to do that and the guests i feel are like the meat in the sandwich and i'm incredibly excited about this you said sandwich instead of pie i'm becoming more american despite being a man of logic and science i david ferrier am deeply fascinated by skinwalker ranch skinwalker ranch is a property of approximately 512 acres located about two and a half hours southeast from where we sit right now its name is taken from the skinwalker a malevolent witch and navajo legend over the last 60 years it's been a hotbed of paranormal and ufo related activities and i think it's a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be there have been reports of vanishing and mutilated cattle ufos floating orbs and dog-like creatures who smell of sulfur and my favorite thing goblins with long pendulous arms which is just a really good image lord of the rings before you write this stuff off as woo the dod invested millions looking into the stuff and in 2016 a man called brandon fugal purchased the whole thing and thanks to him we have the documentary series the secret of skinwalker ranch i don't know why brandon agreed to do the show but he did and i'm over the fucking moon because he has much better things to do with his time please welcome to the stage the owner of skinwalker ranch brandon fugal brandon thank you so much for being here it's a pleasure what an honor i and i followed your work for quite a while since we we first connected yeah we connected of all places at a nine inch nail show you're a nine inch nails fan yes i'm a nine inch nails fan of course you know trent resner is one of the most genius musicians artists of all time i see a nine inch nail shirt in the audience there shining out of me very cool yeah so yeah i see the brand and he's like what do you do i'm like i make a podcast i'm like what do you do he's like oh i own skinwalker ranch yeah i'm curious you know how would you describe yourself because i know you've done very well in the property game um you are an ep of a tv show about skinwalker you own skinwalker right how do you describe yourself well my day job since i was 18 has been focused on commercial real estate it's uh i'm the chairman of the largest commercial real estate enterprise in the intermountain region and it's kind of a an unexpected turn to buy the world's most scientifically studied paranormal hotspot i would have never imagined being put in this this role because i've always dealt with brick and mortar and those things that you can really safely anchor yourself in but uh it's been an unlikely journey and wow every year gets stranger i'll tell you that what did your clients think when you bought that ranch you know so so i i kept it secret when i bought it i bought it as a total skeptic at the time i truly believed that there was nothing going on that would be considered supernatural or unexplained in fact i was convinced at that time nearly 10 years ago so this this next week april 1st april fool's day 2016 that this marks the 10-year anniversary of buying this ranch from an elusive billionaire out of las vegas an aerospace tycoon named robert bigelow but anyways when i was brought the opportunity to buy the ranch and flew down to vegas to meet with this uh this enigmatic figure i told him up front i said i don't believe any of this stuff i i'd read the book hunt for the skinwalker and i told him i said look i believe that if people simply apply scientific method and critical thinking skills they're going to find that there's a natural prosaic explanation for virtually anything that you think is a mystery in this world at the time i'd gone through a faith crisis of sorts as well and was grappling with really organized religion and had reached a similar conclusion to a degree so i i entered this realm of buying skinwalker ranch as a total skeptic i was going to debunk it and donate it to the boy scouts of america at the time for a scout uh kind of like an eagle scout scariest retreat of all time i was on the board yeah i was on the board of the national parks council the boy scouts and i thought i'm gonna just donate it for a buck a year you know the free use but i wanted to spend six to twelve months to fully debunk it bring in a team of scientists to prove that there was really nothing unusual going on and move on but i did it all in secret i didn't want my name associated with these topics at all how long did that take then to debunk it uh well for the first six months i was flying out secretly in my helicopter to get briefed and even though my team had captured you know some interesting things some ufos on camera and had reported some some unusual experiences i didn't feel anything strange for six months going out there every month i just found it to be a very beautiful pristine environment i mean anyone familiar with it knows that there's this mesa plateau that runs the entire expanse of the property that has cave systems in it and there are these old pioneer homesteads that are kind of scattered across the property it's a really diverse strikingly gorgeous landscape and i thought look it's just peaceful every time i come out there there's nothing spooky there's nothing unusual or strange and i'm going to thoroughly debunk this and show that it's just either the product of groupthink or what i would call an adult scientific snipe hunt if any of you know what a snipe hunt is who was in scouting okay so you know what what i don't know can you tell me um that's right you from that's a very new zealand thing um i would think uh well when you're in scouts there's a tradition that uh the eagle scouts would indoctrinate the younger scouts in their first scout camps they bring them out and they would trick them and make them think by the end of the night that they were hearing this elusive creature that was on the border of the scout camp a snipe and you'd go out and hunt this snipe and you'd convince everyone and everyone as a group by the end of the night had been thoroughly convinced that they were here and they were going to hunt this snipe and they were going to hunt this snipe and they were going to hunt this snipe and they were going to hunt this snipe and they were going to and seeing things that frankly weren't real i mean it's a good illustration of why why people the human mind is a powerful thing we can psych ourselves out to believe so many things that aren't really real absolutely um and i thought that this was no different than that and then six months into it everything changed one visit shifted me from being a skeptic to not a believer but an experiencer and at that point in time i had to make a decision either i'm going to lean into this and i'm going to put millions of dollars into finding out what is really happening here and why skinwalker ranch why this place in northeastern utah or i can simply put it aside plug myself back into the matrix and simply go about my workaday existence which would have been easier wait so what what took place that shifted you because i'm so for the i'm incredibly skeptical about everything the skinwalker and i've watched some of the rock series and i have had friends visit through you like that experience some stuff there and it's made me go like this is whatever is happening in this space something is deeply unusual that. Right. Can you tell us what happened before you bought it? So the Shermans were there? Yeah. So the property had been cursed. Back in the 1800s, there was a falling out between the Ute and the Navajo, where the Ute had sided with the United States government and had also enslaved the Navajo people. And it really boiled to a point where the Navajo left and they cursed the property. They placed a curse on this particular property and the ridge or the mesa, calling it Skinwalker Ridge, essentially cursing the property that would be forever in the path of the Skinwalker, which is, you explained it pretty well, kicking this off, a Native American witch or warlock that essentially sells their soul for immortality or the ability to take on the skin or shapeshift, most often into the form of a werewolf or a bipedal type creature like that. So that was the 1800s. Then it became homesteaded. There were early homesteaders that came in and built the structures that are still standing for the most part. And by the way, the first accounts of bizarre cattle mutilation I've documented back to 1930s, which is actually one of the most intriguing parts of the property. And then the Myers. There was a couple, Kenneth and Edith Myers, that lived there their entire lives from essentially 1940 until they passed away, ultimately in the early 1900s. And their estate sold it to the Shermans. The Sherman family came on. It was their dream to raise their prized cattle on this property with their children and really create a prosperous farm and ranching operation. And almost immediately, they were accosted by everything from strange wolf-like creatures that were attacking their cattle to actual surgical mutilation of their prized herd. Well, and they had found deadlocked. Windows and doors. Oh, yeah. Yeah, all sorts of strange things that they found upon taking occupancy of their ranch. Just a convergence of everything from UFO sightings, bizarre cattle mutilations that were literally causing them financial distress. I mean, they were having their most prized head of cattle mutilated with surgical precision, with no sign of any predator activity, no tracks. Yeah, which is all documented. Like, there's. There's photos of this shit. Well, and I've got reports. I have a whole file folder full of necropsy reports where veterinarians came in and actually conducted full analysis, and it's disturbing. The cattle mutilation phenomenon is a whole other topic, but I would say it is arguably the biggest unsolved crime spree in the United States to this day. Over 10,000 documented incidents, and there are a number on this property that have occurred, and no one's ever been. No one's ever been caught. No one's been prosecuted, no one's been caught, and it's been going on for a long time. Yeah, it's like whatever is happening, it's something deeply unusual and unknown, whether it's otherworldly or from here. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Wild Alaskan. I don't know about you, but when I go and buy fish from the supermarket sometimes, it just doesn't live up to the fishy expectations that I have. It doesn't really taste how I want it to. I feel like it's not fresh enough. It's just not the fish that I want. And that's where Wild Alaskan Company comes in. It offers the best way to get wild caught, high quality seafood delivered to your door on your schedule. Each Wild Alaskan box that arrives comes with individually portioned, vacuum sealed, easy to prep, and great for any meal, no matter how quick or elevated. All fish is quick frozen, fresh from the Alaskan waters, which helps lock in the freshness and the texture the flavor and key nutrients. 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No. So what happened was one of my consulting scientists reached out to me and said, hey, I'm friends with the former surgeon from Area 51 and the number one thing on his bucket list is to visit Skinwalker Ranch. He had previously reached out to your predecessor, Mr. Bigelow, and had been turned down multiple times. Would you be willing to host him? And I was like, yeah, you had me at Area 51 to host the surgeon from Area 51. Area 51, absolutely. But I did say, hey, full disclosure, I don't believe anything strange is really going on. I've owned it for six months and I have yet to experience or even feel anything that is unusual out there, but I'd be happy to pick his brain and have him come out. So we hosted him. He came out with two security professionals that were there for the day, and that day everything changed. Right off the bat, once we entered the property with he and I, people started malfunctioning. People were starting to feel strange. I mean, almost like vertigo sensation. And then when we were taking photos out at Homestead 2, right after we were trying to take photos, our smartphones were all dead. Like literally went from like 80% to zero, all of them. And so we're like, you know how it feels when your phone's dead and you're in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the day. It's your lifeline. So we're frustrated, took them all back to the security trailer to plug them into the but proceeded to go out to the ranch. The big security professional, there's a six foot four guy who is the former head of the California Hells Angels that was there as kind of attending security. And he ended up being rendered catatonic for like 10 minutes. What? Just out to it? Yeah. Literally checked out, frozen, upright. And it was a strange thing that I witnessed. And then as we were traveling back across the ranch at about four o'clock in the afternoon of 2016, the other security guy was in the backseat of this Polaris open air ranger UTV that I had. And he started yelling, stop the vehicle. He was waving his hand up in the air. I was looking back. I'm like, what is he? Do we have a flat tire? Have we picked up something? So I bring it to an abrupt stop. And I remember dust flying everywhere. And he's pointing, he says, look, look, look. And right ahead of us, right above the Mesa, about a hundred feet above the Mesa was a silver, a 40, 50 foot long. Silver disc object, a flying saucer. You're looking at this. I'm looking at it pointing. The other guys are looking at it. They're like, are you seeing what we're seeing? It is clear as day. It isn't just some little blinky object or some fuzzy light up in the sky. It is literally in broad daylight, hovering right above the Mesa, right in front of us within close proximity. And within seconds, it changed position, the blink of an eye shifted to the left. And then a few seconds later it dropped and we were all amazed and we all looked at each other. Are you seeing this. And then after a few seconds, it darted right and a few seconds later it was gone it either darted off at like mock 1000 or it cloaked itself or shifted out of this dimension into another dimension i don't know what happened but it was gone in the blink of an eye and we were all sitting there stunned having witnessed this that's a game changer where your whole reality shifts yeah and it's funny even talking about this because i as i said i'm i'm incredibly skeptical about things what i find fascinating about you is you are someone who doesn't need to be spreading the story anywhere like you're incredibly it's a liability but you're like you're very good at what you do you're very wealthy you are good you know you have a business it makes zero sense for you to start spouting off against about any of this right well my competitors have tried to use it against me so it's funny yeah right when i came out of the closet went public uh after the history channel executives jedi mind tricked me you in 2020 to do the docuseries which i would have never imagined doing in my life but when i came out and decided to finally go public with it my competitors i mean they one of them took out an ad and they said we don't work with ufos we work with ceos kind of ribbing yeah pointing fun trying to take me down and uh well just pretty you're trying to attack my credibility and i've tried with the series especially we have stuck with facts i mean we have not allowed any anything to be faked contrived fabricated manipulated i didn't want to be part of some ghost hunters deal with a bunch of people with night vision goggles stripping over themselves in the dark i i just want the truth and that's why i told the history channel and now we're season seven launches i think probably this may june with 14 episodes which are going to be revelatory i think people are going to be shocked at what we unveil in the months ahead you outdid dark tourists by six seasons yeah okay there you go it's it was top 10 of all cable so one of the things that's most unlike last year we were top 10 of all cable programming how do you so something else i find interesting like you're mormon right right you're yeah how do you how do you reconcile those two things like you've got that religious belief but you've also got a belief in what potentially aliens or other sort of spiritualities how do those marry up in your mind and are you unusual in your religion and how you have these other interests i guess yeah and other people in your faith skeptical of you and what you bring into it probably yeah i here's the thing i was raised to believe that there are worlds without number that we're not alone in the universe that's one very peculiar and interesting thing about mormon theology is it's one of the only religious traditions that is unabashedly vocal about the fact that that we are we are not alone in the universe that we live in a divinely constructed intelligently designed reality and uh and a lot of that is strangely consistent with what we're documenting and these topics are right so for you it's not like a crazy rewiring of your belief system no if anything it's then i guess you could say in some respects it could be faith affirming although i didn't buy it i didn't buy the ranch and and i'm not doing anything to try to prove any faith tradition i think that no one has a corner on the truth i think there are many paths to enlightenment and i'm not taking that away from anyone i just found it was very strangely in alignment with what i was raised with yeah right and everything came kind of full circle this is a weird segue and i know i've got to get another guest on soon but just very quickly another thing that i was drawn to you over was your love of pop culture yeah because i mean you're also essentially like a big nerd right probably the biggest of all and you have some of the best shit i've ever known about from a private collection of memorabilia and just you bought a couple of things can you just quickly explain what is on stage right now so i'm a child of the 80s i don't know how many of you in here were raised as children of the 80s so the best i i like to say i was raised by george lucas and spielberg and james cameron and francis ford coppola ridley scott you name it and so i'm a product of that era and so i've been on a quest to buy all of the cultural artifacts the movie props the actual physical pieces from the poltergeist clown to indiana jones bullwhip you name it to darth vader's mask but here what we have on stage that has been part of my journey of acquiring these artifacts that shape my world view this is from hellraiser this is the actual reference bus that the caught that the makeup artists would use when they were preparing the actor who played pinhead and that next to him is does anyone know what that cube is what is that called anyone know it's called the lament configuration it's uh it's we got hellraiser fans here or is this falling salt lake city isn't the place it's a demonic puzzle box that unlike for like hellraiser holy shit okay you know it unlocks portals to hell and the other world so so that's the actual screenplay of the movie and it's called the lament configuration it's uh it's a demonic puzzle box it's a demonic puzzle box that unlocks portals to hell and the other world so so that's the actual screen used lament configuration demonic puzzle box from the original hellraiser 1987 and then back there you've got chucky that's the original chucky doll in fact it's the only chucky doll that i've ever seen go on the market from the 1988 horror movie child's play which spawned another franchise you've got the hellraiser franchise the child's play franchise insane and uh this chucky was actually in a glass case in planet hollywood i believe for a reason i don't know over 20 years in vegas before they shut it down and put it up for auction you slipped in and grabbed it yeah well they they put it up for auction i was fortunate to be able to acquire it the funny thing is about chucky you know i put it in a guitar stand you know what a guitar stand oh you've got one over here you kind of lay it back in a guitar stand and it kind of sat there for a while until a few weeks after i bought it and it was shipped to my office right in the middle of the day i witnessed it i mean i called everyone in that doll jumped like three feet and landed right at the foot of my desk face you were in the room when it happened yeah and it like slapped i heard i'm just sitting there typing on my keyboard and all of a sudden i hear this like thud right next to the desk and there's chucky and the guitar stand was i'm not shitting you the guitar stand was like three four feet away and i didn't even get up i just screamed to everyone outside my office because i'm in a fishbowl at this big glass glass office and i i called everyone in and i called everyone in i said you guys got to take pictures because i'm not making this up the other thing the poltergeist clown anyone seen poltergeist yeah okay 1984 phew there's only one evil clown so they only made one clown for the movie for filming that had the evil face when the clown basically came alive and strangled robbie freeling so it took delivery of that and that clown instead of the middle of the afternoon at about like two in the morning when i was at the office alone and the lights were off that clown not only started moving i i noticed something out of my peripheral vision and all of a sudden i turned to where it was seated and the clown literally lunged forward and flopped down and i thought oh you're just surrounded by the weirdest shit all the time yeah my entire life i've wanted this stuff to happen to me i would love to see something incredible i have something i know and happen nothing so i you walk into the room it's taken 50 years yeah okay i just gotta get a little bit older yeah and don't keep your skepticism alive because i think for whatever reason it comes when you least expect it especially if you're skeptical the people that have the greatest skepticism and sometimes animosity toward these topics that visit skinwalker ranch end up in the hospital with mysterious illnesses injuries or they have an experience that is life-changing there's a reason why it has been locked down since 1996 with armed security okay i mean okay we need to go right next time we're here just quickly rob i know you're you were scared of chucky as a kid right yeah as a kid how is this for you it's fine it's a doll oh very brave yeah okay um brandon before we send you off just really quickly and this is going to be like a weird segue into our next guest there is a cave system in utah that i've been obsessed with for a very long time as someone who is fucking terrified of of caves and claustrophobia if i say nutty putty wow we got a clap wow just really quickly you and i didn't know this about you until we were talking backstage you've been in there yeah i when i was i was an eagle scout and we took the scouts out to nutty putty cave with the scout leader who was the most crazy out of all of us and i remember one of the most terrifying moments in my entire life i mean you've had a few things this fucking guy's lunch top three skinwalker run exactly um one of the most terrifying experiences i've ever had was getting caught in the birth canal of nutty putty cave and i remember you get really religious all of a sudden when you're and i couldn't move my body had basically gotten wedged deep in the earth in this nutty putty cave system and i remember it took about 10 minutes for me to be eased out of this place and i i never prayed harder in my life it was terrifying how long ago was this this was when i was this was 19 1988 when I was 16. And that's part of the system where you essentially have to exhale to let your body get through. Yeah. Okay. So there are some really mysterious cave systems in Utah and also very dangerous, and that's a tomb now. But I don't want to screw it up for the next. You're not screwing anything up. You're amazing. Brandon, we're going to have you come on at the end for a Q&A. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Ask me anything. Anyone who wants to ask me anything. Thank you for being open to this. Brandon, Hugo, my God. So I'm just deeply excited by Hellraiser and everything. I get very excited by this film. You're one of four people. I'm one of four people in Salt Lake City that enjoys it. Our next guest is big into caves. And I have him here because I know that Utah is full of a lot of big stuff, big rocks, big walks, big salt lakes, and big. Caves. And I'm interested in caves because essentially the idea of going into caves, including Nati Padi, which is one that exists here in Utah, is my biggest nightmare. I'm claustrophobic. I have an extraordinary fear of death. And the idea of voluntarily going into these systems just makes me deeply unsettled. I think, Rob, you're maybe similar? Yeah, same level of. Yeah. We're both not brave. We're both not brave, essentially. What was your nickname, though? Don't worry about it. Brandon Koalas is a cave explorer, an award-winning cartographer and photographer, and author of Cursing at Mountains and Fragile Frontiers. He also has a deeply personal connection to Nati Padi and what happened there, which we'll get to. He's here to make all of us pretty much either more scared or less scared of caves. I'm not sure which of the two. Please welcome to the stage Brandon Koalas. Yes. Another Brandon. Yeah, stay away from Chucky. Please. I'm waiting for him to jump. I'm deeply aware that he could jump. It's freaking insane. Brandon, hi. Hey. Just square that little mic into you there. You are the opposite, I think, of Rob and I in that you love getting into claustrophobic spaces. I'm just wondering, in the context of Utah and caving, what this state. What does Utah mean to you as an area? So Utah is really unique in that there are a lot of states that have caves in them, but the great thing about Utah is just the diversity of caves. So you've got everything from lava tubes that are formed by volcanic eruptions and then lava flowing and then those tubes emptying out and draining. You've got alpine caves that are vertical, cold, deep, and then you get really mazy, warm caves out in the desert and then also caves where. where you have rivers going through. There's a cave up in the Uintas that floods every year. And if you go, the entrance is about 100 feet in diameter. And every year, the thing is, you can't even see the entrance because it's full of water. So a big diversity of caves in Utah. What got you into caving? Have you been doing this since you were a kid or is it more recent? Yeah, yeah. So my parents back in. It probably would have been in the 90s. So I grew up in Illinois and Iowa. There's a state park out there called Makoketa Caves. Oh, big fan of the cave over there. So it's great. It's this park and they've got caves all over. They give you a map and you just run around and you crawl in these different holes. And for me. Terrible idea. You say that so casually. I know, yeah. You shouldn't be running around and crawling in holes. Stay away from the holes. How old were you at the time? I was probably 17, you know, like teenage hormones running through me. And I'm like, not afraid. Not afraid of anything. So, yeah, you know. So, yeah, that started like a spark. And I think going into Makoketa Caves, like it was just this thrill of like, I don't know what's around the next corner. I don't know what I'm going to find. Does it continue? Does it end? Does it get big? Are there formations? And so we moved out to Utah and immediately I see all this rock. And I'm like, there's got to be caves up there. So my brother and I, we started wandering up into the mountains just above Pleasant Grove, American Fork, to see if we could find caves. To find a place where no human being had ever been before. Is that part of it, the idea that you're somewhere where no one has been? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that really is the drive. And for me, nowadays, like I used to go caving every weekend and then got married, had kids, needed to prioritize that. And so I have fewer caving trips, but the priority now is virgin caves. Caves that no human being has been in. And so I have friends that will wander around the mountains where there's limestone. And the right conditions. And we've found a handful of caves over the years that are pretty significant. And to be the very first human to lay footprints in that is really exciting because you have no idea what you're going to find around the corner. What's the craziest thing you found? There's a lot of diversity, but I think probably my favorite cave to go into was, it's a cave called Main Drain. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Tony Grove area up Logan Canyon. So it's up in that area, high alpine cave. And several years ago, I was in a cave called Main Drain. And several years ago, it was back in the early 2000s, a friend of mine called me up and said, dude, like you got to check this out. Like this is getting big. And we either, it was my friend who actually, his name was Ryan Schertz. And he sort of ties into Nutty Putty Cave down the road. But Ryan and his dad had poked into this cave. So it's a 270 foot pit. You get to the bottom of the pit and he and some friends had gone into it. They knew about the pit and he's waiting at the bottom. As he's waiting, he's poking around. There's a slot in the back that goes up about 50 feet coated in ice. And so he does this sort of like chimney up this narrow passage. And at the top, there's a hole that goes back, this tight squeeze where there's air ripping out of it. And so he climbs back in and hits this other pit series. And that's when he and his dad called me and said, we don't think we can do this alone. Can you come help us explore this? So we went out and going into this cave, every time we'd go in, we'd drop down a pit and then survey some slots. And then we would drop down some more pits. And every time we had no idea what we're getting into. And I remember at one point we got to, I don't know, it was probably about the 800 foot level. So 800 feet deep. Too deep. No, no. So the deepest cave in the world, like over 2000 meters deep. So it's just a little baby cave. Jesus. So we get back. Sorry, continue, continue. Yeah, yeah. So we get back in there. And I remember on one trip in particular, we come to this room and the water we can't hear the water because we're following the water down through the cave. And all of a sudden the water's gone and it's dry. And so we climb around the room and off in the corner, there's a hole. And so we chuck some rocks down it because that's what we do. Like we're boys, we like to throw rocks at stuff. And you listen and you hear you throw the rock and it's just like, boom. And they were like, dang, that's deep. So we get the rope, throw it up there. And I was the first one to go down there. So I'm rappelling down. And all I can see is the wall in front of me around me. It's black up above me. It's black and down below it's black. And we don't even know if we have a rope that's long enough. So I rappel down and we tie a knot in the end of the rope. So you don't accidentally rappel off the end, rappelling down and get near the bottom. And about 10 feet below me is this rope just kind of snaking in the air. And all I see below is just darkness. So then we switch around, climb back out. That was probably some of the most thrilling, amazing caving that I've done here in the state of Utah. - I might be dreaming this. I feel like when we talked a while ago, you were talking about how you went down at some point and there was like a rope fraying. - Oh yeah. - On a rock, which is like my nightmare. Was that you or someone else? - No, that was me. That was me. So just to describe quickly the cave. So there was that 270 foot entrance pit, 50 foot climb, 200 foot narrow slot that you rappel down. And then it opens into this really cool slot canyon with these cave pearls, look like little white marbles all over. And then you meander down that, you go over a couple of waterfalls, and then you get to a point where you come to this pit we call Frayed Knot Pit. And it's about a 250 foot rappel into a room that's, I mean, the pit itself is probably about the size of this room, but down 250 feet and up, it just goes up maybe another 80 feet and then pinches off. So I go up first, I get to the top, and I need to explain how we rigged the rope. So back in the earth, early 2000s and before that, cavers would use these tag technique. Tag is like Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia. They have a lot of pits. They just throw the rope down. And then they put rope pads on the edges so that the rope doesn't rub and then slice itself in half while you're climbing up. Nowadays, we bolt to redirect so that there are no rub points. But back in those days in this Frayed Knot Pit, there was this horn that was sticking out, like a big rock, jaggedy rock thing that was sticking out. Now to the side of the pit. So we're like, oh, that'd be perfect. If we can kind of climb over there and get the rock over this horn, that'll get us out of the waterfall. And then we won't get wet. And the water in this cave, the cave is about 35 degrees temperature wise, and it's wet. So as much as we can get out of the water, great. So we threw it over the horn. We all went down and we're coming back. I climb up and I get over this horn. You got 250 feet of wet rope. What I didn't notice is that the rope pad had slightly rotated Thank you. just a little bit to the side enough that i couldn't see that down below the rope pad it was touching the rock and it was a really really sharp rock so this guy is climbing the rope it's fraying and none of us had any clue what was happening until so the rope's bouncing as he's climbing he gets up to maybe like 20 feet and he sees this big giant fuzz ball he's like what in the world is that he sits there for a second and he's like shoot and yeah it's the rope fray exactly he's like oh no so he climbs a few steps and he's like i'm gonna die i'm dead and and so he just like pauses he breathes for a minute and then he takes it really really slow gets up to the to the fray gets above the fray and looks at it and it had sawed more than halfway through the core of the rope so just probably a few more minutes you and he would have fallen 250 feet and everybody would have been stranded below and that would have been the end of it now luckily then he tied a butterfly knot everybody climbed up and we all lived happily ever after but see you're describing why you shouldn't cave and this kind of brings me to my next point and it's something it's weird to talk about because i've thought about it so much it's kind of almost become unreal in my mind but i want to talk nutty putty which is a caving system where something truly horrific happened and i i don't want to bastardize this too much because i don't know what i'm talking about but essentially a gentleman went caving in nutty putty he took a wrong turn went and ended up in this position in the wrong part of the cave face down couldn't reverse which is this is my version of hell you were called in and you were part of the rescue to attempt to get this work done and you were called in and you were part of the rescue to attempt to get this work done and you were called in and you were part of the rescue to attempt to get this person out who ended up passing away what can you just talk me through what that was like and how you even how you got the call and what your part was in that yeah yeah so i i remember it was the day before thanksgiving in 2009 and i got a call early in the morning from some friends of mine that were part of the utah cave search and rescue that work with the utah county search and rescue and uh he called and he said hey we've got an incident that's going on and i'm like out there we need some small guys who can climb back in into these tight areas and help with the rescue they called and they're like we are really desperate we really need you down here so i'm like okay so i drive down and get to the cave and i think at that point john jones had been trapped for it's probably uh 12 to 18 hours in the cave and the big danger here and the big issue with the john jones uh incident was that he was in the cave and he was in the cave and he was in the was there are lots of people that have been trapped in the cave before but nobody that have been trapped upside down in a tight spot and a lot of times what happens is when you get in these tight areas you just you freak out and then when you freak out your whole body tenses up and then you're stuck essentially if you just like relax and loosen yourself loosen your muscles up you can usually pop right out of what you got stuck into so in talking to the paramedics they said typically a human doesn't survive more than 12 to 18 hours upside down because of the fact of what happens is the body is designed to pump blood standing upright or laying down when you're upside down it's fighting against gravity it can't circulate the blood and so the blood begins to sort of die off and become toxic and then eventually it hits a threshold where you die so we're racing against the clock so i go back in to the cave and at this point everybody's it's pretty dire and i think it was right at that point when i was going in ryan's shirt so i mentioned earlier who had discovered the breakthrough into this main drain cave the big cave he was coming out bloody because the bolt that they had tied to rig a pulley system had burst out of the wall and smashed him across the face and knocked him unconscious while he was down in the same area where john jones was because they'd had an elaborate pulley system to try and like pulley him out right they did you can't grab him by the feet and sort of pull him back you had to have like the mechanics that would get him out the pulley it managed to raise him a little bit but the thing is you got so many twists and turns so when you get back into nutty putty there's this area where it's wide enough and big enough to stand up and right in that area it goes off to the right into the birth canal passage which brandon had talked about getting stuck in it's a pretty tight passage but not quite as tight as what's beyond where john jones was trapped from that stand-up area there's a crack you climb into just a narrow crack you have to kind of duck down and then it goes up into a passage that's probably about that big in diameter goes up 45 degrees to turns down 45 degrees for maybe 15 feet and then it gets kind of flattish and we're talking like maybe 10 inches 8 to 10 inches tall and then at that point it goes through an even narrower hole that's probably about maybe seven to eight inches and he had squeezed through there he's like a 200 and i think it was 210 pounds and right beyond that it drops suddenly down a 70 degree slope in this tight narrow area so i had gotten back in to where he was feet were right next to where i was and at that point he was kind of in and out of conscious he wasn't really coherent at all and so i assessed try to figure out like how are we going to do this because looking at the cave the pulley didn't work because there's so many twists and turns that even with the pulley there's so much friction that 10 guys pulling on the rope couldn't budge him and so i look at it there's there's really nothing i can do try to figure out other scenarios where like we could try uh jack hammering if we can go back 20 feet and jack hammer through the rock we tried that and after two hours like we got two inches of rock off the wall so it's like this is going to take forever at that point i go back in and i'm there with him and then he passed away right there how do you think about that now as someone that's still that was in that situation and you're still caving and you're in these situations where you there is obviously danger everywhere for you and for other people does it did that shift the way you think about what you do i don't know if it necessarily shifted the way that i approach caving what happens like for me when anybody that i care about or even that i'm close to in my life dies it causes me to reflect on my own life and and really how am i living my life because the reality is we're all going to die eventually and nobody knows when that's going to happen some of us maybe sooner than later um but uh just be able to come to terms with that and accept that there is risk in life like no matter what we do it's it seems like to end this life not having taken any risks would be a huge disappointment in my mind so i think it was really sad at the time john jones was this young 20 year old had a child and his wife was pregnant and this happened and it's like it can happen at any time so for me it's made me reflect on life and just live life to the fullest i think and anytime i go in a cave like i know there's risk there and i do my best to mitigate it but i don't worry because i mean it's eventually it's going to happen to all of us and this this caving system is closed now right you can't get in there unless you really put in in some effort that's right yeah so it's the the cave was managed by the state trust lands right and they're not a land management agency they basically sell lands to raise money for schools so they're like we don't want to deal with this anymore let's just cement it and that is now his permanent uh tomb thank you brandon i feel like i'm not comfortable with caving i wasn't comfortable before and i'm not comfortable now really but thank you um we're going to get one more guest on we're going to bring you back in about 10 minutes for q a thank you so much yeah you bet you're amazing stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors flightless bird comes from tushy you've got a smart mirror tracking your reps a mug that keeps your coffee exactly the right temperature and a lawn robot cutting your grass there's probably a vacuum cleaner zooming around but you know what you're still rubbing your bum with dry paper it's absolute madness why are we still doing this i got a tushy bidet last week i've been using it ever since and my whole life using toilet paper just seems like ancient weird history from thousands of years ago having a tushy bidet is just so efficient it's 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notes myself are you ever shopping online and suddenly a discount that helps you save pops up it makes your day sometimes even your week want that feeling month after month well new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to progressive save hundreds cue your happy dance get your quote today at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company affiliates and other insurers not available in all states this is uh this is a slightly um unusual segue we don't have another brandon but we have a brad another b three bras on stage um i don't know if this is a jarring segue actually but we're just going to do it i was unaware of this until a couple of weeks ago but you guys have wiener dog races do you know this hundreds and hundreds of wiener dogs released to race one another and i have a brad wheeler that i want to introduce onto the stage now who runs this whole fucking ridiculous thing brad welcome to flightless bird there's no wiener dogs there is a brad so the annual wiener dog race i told you it was quite a segue uh happened yesterday yes um brad was there kind of corralling the whole thing they called me the commissioner of wiener dog racing as you do primarily i want to know how it all went and what it takes to wrangle that many wiener dogs in one place it was amazing i don't know if you guys know but the last two years we've had 150 wiener dogs come to the race and this year we broke a record for the nation's largest wiener dog race 270 wiener dogs showed up yesterday so are you a lifelong wiener dog fan i i am not i've only become exposed and i don't own a wiener dog usually that's the follow-up question you obviously own a wiener dog right i'm a cat guy you can't race cats though you can't raise cats yeah we talked about that if i could i probably would do that but uh what does it look like because i couldn't make it yesterday i went in too late what does it look like they're all at a starting line starting how how far are they racing how long does it take for them to get to the end meter course and it depends like some dogs will just break right off the starting line and some dogs will break and stop right in the middle and just look and some dogs actually went the other way and just like ran underneath the stage every dog is kind of different you don't have no idea what they're going to do and how long does it take until there's a winning wiener exactly it could be a minute it could be five minutes i mean it depends i mean the dogs can just stop in the middle of the course and then it's just like shouting at them to try and go across the line the wiener dog are they a smart dog or are they stupid i think they're a smart dog i mean when they when you show up first they're just yappy just super super yappy and they're just uh kind of i guess getting to know each other i don't i don't know and i think they're genuinely intrigued too like holy shit there's a lot of us here you know what i mean it's kind of like you can kind of feel that and uh and then when it's time to race and you put them on the course it seems like they instinctively know like oh my god yeah we know what to do we are here and some of them are just barking and just so excited i mean their owners are at the finish line and some of them have treat somebody showed up with a loaf of french bread yesterday at the finish line another guy's just shaking a jar of jiffy peanut butter another guy had his car with the wheels just running so the dog would come after it yeah who ended up winning his name was dennis he was from michigan we had dogs that showed up from italy we had dogs that showed up from antigua we had dogs that uh came from all over i couldn't believe it dogs from wendover dogs from provo yeah it was amazing holy shit that's what i said too that's exactly what i said too the hardest part is the false starts i mean the sometimes they just want to throw the wieners out there you know before it's time to go and then there was one lady i've it was hard to tell her yesterday but that dog is not a wiener she's like man i'm my vet said this dog is a wiener and i'm like i'm sorry your vet is full of shit this is not a wiener yeah nice try yeah she put a costume on it to try and get it to pass through like a little bun you know but that's not a wiener um you you run another thing during the year and i'm just quickly curious about this pie and beer day which is that's you you look after this and that's the celebrating the pioneer mormons that came here correct what pie and beer day what actually takes place on that day it feels deeply american as well when i moved here in 1980 there was a family that kind of sponsored our family they were the moors and i was fascinated by them less more and sharing more and uh mr moore said you know on the first 24th of july we're like what is this this is bigger than the 4th of july what is going on and he's like this is pioneer day but for the rest of son it's pie and beer day he just told us as gentiles this is our holiday so uh thank you yes and uh it's something i always kind of did on the 24th of july and then uh one time i was tasked with coming up with a fundraiser for a radio station and uh they're like we got to raise some money and i was like why don't we have a pie and beer party and they said that is the grossest dumbest thing we've ever heard you say and i was like i i think it's golden what are you talking about it's great so they said go and try it so i made a little promo for it and in 24 hours the new york times called me and wanted to do an interview about pie and beer day really good and it just blew up you were talking backstage about how one thing can just make something blow up and completely it completely blew up if you could have one day your wiener dog racing day or pie and beer day what one would you keep oh what are you most passionate about what is the most american of the two days you can only have one i would probably have to say pie and beer i mean it just has that long tradition it does i mean wieners aren't particularly american the dogs are they but there's something amazing about wiener dog racing like you there is no there's no lip tart or maga there's i mean it's just pure wiener dog it's just pure emotion and it's just so joyous it's contagious can they move fast the wiener dog they can move pretty fast they can fly yeah and they look beautiful when you play them back in slow motion it's almost like addictive it's just something like what is going on like yeah you asked about how i got into it uh my everybody knows kevin at the heavy metal shop right yeah kevin at the heavy metal shop had his i think it was his 30th anniversary and uh kevin has had this wiener dog that he has at the shop for years and he decided he wanted to have a wiener dog race and uh he's like i want you to do it i'm like why me he's like well i know you have a mega fowler and i'm like and i feel like you could just do it so i said okay you have a great voice but thank you thank you i mean kevin's a charismatic guy he's kind of hard to say no to as well so i think like seven wieners showed up and uh we went off to the park to the side of the heavy metal shop and i lined everybody up at the start and finish line and the wieners just went the wrong directions and then when i figured out just to line everybody up the other way and i saw them take off i instantly instantly i had never seen them in that light before and they were always to me kind of a little annoying animal you know what i mean people that own wieners seemed a little different but now and now i realize it's a cult it's a total cult you have a new appreciation for wieners what i'm the commissioner of wiener dog racing now yeah i love this so much it seems like an appropriate time to bring the two brandons back and we kind of battle it out with a q a i imagine you have questions i mean you don't have questions for these three people i don't know what is wrong with you um brandon and brandon can you come back please and we'll sort of have a little bit of a um a quick fire i think you sit here you wrangle chucky because this is an incredibly precious creature right here welcome back welcome back i figure we don't have a mic for the crowd but i'm just going to kind of point to someone that i see raising their hands you're going to yell your question i'm going to repeat it back into the mic forever and we're going to see how this goes. any of these handsome men on the stage? Sir, front row at the end. Second Brandon, Kaver, do you feel scared yourself? Do you get fear? Because that's something I also want to know. I have in the past, but I think it's like any fear. I mean, the more you face it, the less scary it becomes. And that's something I've sort of applied to life. It's like the more I try things, like the less that I even worry. And then the fewer fears that I have in my life. But there are still times like if I get into a situation where I start to feel a little uneasy, like it's really just a matter of stopping and breathing and then reassessing and calming myself down. Most cavers or non-cavers that get into caves, like get injured or in trouble because they freak out. If they would just calm down and think through it, like they would figure it out. But yeah, at this point, like I really don't get scared in caves anymore, but I have had moments for sure. Have you watched the horror, The Descent, about the monsters in the caves? Yeah, that's happened before. I'm not scared of monsters anymore. Oh, my God. What are you scared of? Well, I'll tell you that the most terrifying caving experience I've had in the last few years. So my kids were really interested in going caving. And so I took them out into the desert. There's like a 60-foot pit called Pink Lime Pit. And I took them out there. Don't take them out there. They loved it. And it builds character. What better way to build resilient kids than to go into a cave? And I put them on a rope and threw them down a pit. So putting them on that, set up the rope, set everything up, had my wife go down. She went down first. And so she's the belayed as a backup. But just like watching them step over and thinking, did I tie everything right? I hope I did my knots right. I hope that the senders all connected and then sent them off. And they loved it. They were so terrified. My daughter was bawling as she's stepping over. She's like, I don't want to do this. I'm like, you don't have to do it. I want to do it. Oh, my God. Two more psychopaths you're raising. That's right. Any other questions? Yeah, Brandon, another UFO sighting that stands out to you. We had the Salt Lake Astronomical Society come out. And they brought their, I mean, tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. And all their equipment malfunctioned. And frankly, the star chart that was on their closed system hard drive was completely deleted above the ranch, would not allow them to see any of the star charts. We got this all on camera. And then there was a UFO that appeared right above them in the triangle, right when all of the equipment was malfunctioning. There seems to be a correlation between electromagnetic anomalies and equipment malfunctions. And I don't know whether it's attributed to the propulsion system that these craft or these objects are using or what. But I don't know whether it's attributed to the propulsion system that these craft or these objects are using or what. But there seems to be a correlation. But we've had a lot of, we had a couple of people from the USS Nimitz who had gone before Congress in the congressional hearings that came out to the ranch. And in broad daylight, they all saw this huge, bright, orb-like object appear. And it was witnessed by everyone. I mean, they got it on camera. There were dozens of people there, the whole crew. It was really unexpected. So it happens, but it's unpredictable. We've had shaman come from both the Navajo and the Ute tribe. We've had a rabbi, a world-renowned rabbi, come out and pronounce certain ritual prayers. If anything, it seems to amplify what they're trying to do. So if you think of the ranch as like an amplifier of intent, almost like a wish-maker, wish-granter, but a little bit more complex. And we've seen strange things happen when the spiritual leaders come out. So we've attempted to do a little bit more of that. And I think it's a little bit more complex. So we've attempted it, but it's only seemed to agitate or amplify things strangely. It's backfired. Yeah. It not really backfired. It's just things have happened. Everything from wind, all of a sudden a dust devil appears or wind spins up. Or when the rabbi was there, and this is on the series, when we had this rabbi out, we had this $35,000 thermographic imaging camera that was monitoring, that was documenting it. While this rabbi was pronouncing this prayer, this rabbinical chant that's supposed to open portals to other realms. And all of a sudden, this in the middle of July, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees all around Homestead 2. And then right in the doorway of Homestead 2, it went black on the thermographic image, which was deep freeze, which is below freezing. So everyone ventured, everyone stopped the ritual and proceeded to go toward Homestead 2. And they were like, They all described it as if they were walking into a deep freezer. And really unusual things happen within the environment when you bring people that have focused intent and are probably gifted as well. Thanks for the question. It's a good question, though. Thanks for the answer. Ma'am, at the end. Yeah, the question is another adventure for all three guests. I think we already are in therapy. Or therapy. Therapy or a new adventure? I'm in therapy, but I had no adventures planned. Yeah. I don't have any time for therapy. I'm too busy adventuring. Okay. Kaver, you need therapy. No, caving is my therapy. It teaches me how to deal with life. Do wiener dog races lead you to therapy or are you doing okay? I don't know if you know, I meditate. I'm a Buddhist monk when I'm not racing wiener dogs. So yeah, no problem with that. Yeah, one more question. So we don't annoy this wonderful venue too much. Wow. Up there. Well, I'm a little bit scared, but I enjoy the enthusiasm up there. Up there. What is your question? Ah, which someone was going to ask if we do a wiener dog races, can walk around. I'm. I thought we could heal everything out there. That sounds bad ass. Heck yeah. Yeah, I would definitely. I've been to, to, we did some caving in Mexico and, uh, the locals. So we work with the locals. We develop relationships first. And, and usually after like half a day, they're like, yeah, we've got some caves on our property, but just so you know, they've been cursed and there is Spanish gold hidden on them. So if you don't die, you need to give us the gold. So we're like, sign me up. We're going in and you can have all the gold. I would tell you. Brandon, I, I have a property on big Island. I bought three and a half acres because it has two entrances to deep lava tube cave systems that I believe haven't been fully mapped out that, that actually ultimately go to the ocean, but, um, and somewhere empty out in the cliffs. I would totally pay you to map the cave system. If you're game, heck yeah, you can send your kids down first or send some wiener dogs. Yeah. Yeah, there'll be the canaries. Screw canaries. It's a pager on them. They go right down in there and come right back. One final question you had originally done here. Yes, sir. Yeah. Were there any other decisions as far as, um, saving the cave that got stuck in nutty putty? What was the thinking around that? So at the, at the time when I got there, they like, it takes a while to set up a pulley system. And before that they had tried several things that the biggest problem is that what they were racing against time. Because he was upside down. So really the last ditch effort, once the pulley system had broken was, can we blast our way all the back, all the way back to where he is widened and enough that we can get more people to get him out. And at that point he had died. So I, and there's been a lot of comments on, on my article on my, on the website and yeah, I, I, we couldn't think of anything at the time that we could do more than what we had done given. And a lot of people are like, well, why didn't you do this? And why didn't you do that? Well, you really have to be there in the, like stuck in a cave where you can't move at all. And it's like, what can you do given you can't move and everybody behind you and in front of you can't move more than just a few inches in order to haul a 200 pound person out of a little hole. So yeah, really, there wasn't really much else that we had thought of at that time. An intense question. There was a question around why can't you break his legs? Because that would give you more sort of an angle to bring him out. So even if you were to break. His legs and make him more flexible to get out, you still have the issue of 210 pound person and only people like my size that are 130 can get back in there and you're in a tight spot and you've got to be able to lift this. So even if he was like just jello, you still like trying to lift that kind of a weight through tiny holes and getting caught on edges and things like it's just, it was impossible. Matt, I respect for you to even be down there trying and communicating with someone that isn't. in that situation, like it's fucking incredible. to you. I thank all of you for agreeing to come on stage with Rob and I to do a weird show about American culture. All of you. Thank you so much for coming to Flightless Bird Live. Thank you for being here and the wonderful questions. And tell everyone about the world's best podcast, Flightless Bird. Thank you. Thank you. Somewhere between confidence and self-deprecation. You know what I mean? I say it, then I flip through the station. And she's looking at me. But I'm looking for the feeling. And I feel it spinning. But I know that we're on different roads. And I want to cry in the arms of somebody that knows me. I think I've been trying But I don't want anybody to know me No, I don't want anybody to know me © transcript Emily Beynon Somewhere between Burning out in self-isolation I don't know what that means But I'll bite my cheek Until I can taste it I think I like me But how I think that I might like everybody But I'm looking at me And I don't think that I know how to love me And I want to cry In the arms of somebody that knows me ♪ I think I've been trying, but I don't want anybody to know me, no I don't want anybody to know me, no I can't let anybody know me. ♪ © transcript Emily Beynon Radio player, I fell asleep Drums in the basement Turn up the TV I tried to listen to what they were playing I tried to sing in my sleep Radio player, do you listen to me? A visit to where we used to live Break in and enter, low river gets in And if the guy next door was a kid From before now you're speaking We better run quick Radio player What trouble you're in The house Isn't there anymore And I don't know if it ever was But memory is a fickle thing When you cope with the damage Like us Radio player Look what we've done Radio player Look what we've done ¶¶ ¶ Radio, radio ¶¶ Radio, radio When I fell asleep it was dark Now light is coming from the TV When I fell asleep it was fine Now the dog is crying out with a feeling ♪ And the clock stopped blinking at four ♪ ♪ And a wonderful light tries to open the door ♪ ♪ But I put my back into it in a heartache ♪ Hi. ♪ The word inside is gleaming and I hear it say it loves me ♪ ♪ But it wants me to stay dreaming ♪ ♪ When I fell asleep it was dark ♪ ♪ Now light is coming from the TV ♪ ♪ I told you that I saw a ghost ♪ ♪ I just need you to believe me ♪ ♪ I just need you to believe me ♪ ♪ I just need you to believe me ♪ ♪ I cut my hair but I still don't look like you ♪ ♪ I burned the map ♪ ♪ Now the north is a sound ♪ ♪ And the blood's not blood ♪ ♪ It's the juice from a cherry ♪ ♪ And it hurt my mouth ♪ ♪ Sucking stones ♪ ♪ Spitting weary ♪ ♪ Empty, empty ♪ ♪ We break like belonging ♪ ♪ We're broken like bread ♪ ♪ When you look, you don't see it ♪ ♪ Don't know where we've been ♪ ♪ From two of us brothers to both of us dead ♪ ♪ Way to rest in the '90s in the back ♪ ♪ Seat of a van ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And the time will pass ♪ ♪ Old punks in comfortable shoes ♪ ♪ But your hate is fixed ♪ ♪ To a haste ♪ ♪ Gettin' sick from the thorns that you chew ♪ ♪ And the blood's not blood ♪ ♪ It's the juice from a cherry ♪ ♪ And I spit it out ♪ ♪ Sucking stones ♪ ♪ Gettin' weary ♪ ♪ Weary ♪ ♪ Weary ♪ ♪ Weary ♪ ♪ Weary ♪ ♪ Weary ♪ ♪ We break like belonging ♪ ♪ We're broken like bread ♪ ♪ When you look, you don't see it ♪ ♪ Don't know where we've been ♪ ♪ From two of us brothers to both of us dead ♪ ♪ Way to rest in the back ♪ Laid to rest in the 90s In the back seat of a van Ask a complicated question of the witness I think that he is here with us I keep feeling like I'm getting to the party Just when everyone is leaving I don't need an audience for every feeling But God, I know this one I do I can see why you are doing what you're doing I can see a part of me in you Could it be that we'd arrived at truer places Once we'd stopped following the map Couldn't arrive at myself without you Maybe you could feel like that Maybe you could feel like that Maybe you Maybe you Could tell me I'm right Tell me you like it Will you tell me that I am a good person And take me out when I fight it Say what you mean To hide it is violent All the people that I told all my secrets Now just stare at me in silence Sometimes I can go a week without feeling I come to with a gasp during small talk It's not that I'm crying over weather It's just that I don't know where the time goes Think I've found what's at the bottom of the spiral I think it's when there's no witness No one to see you at the party with your hair long Spinning in a new dress And knowing it's a new dress Spinning Spinning Spinning And I'll tell you my name When it's in a new language Will you tell me on your favorite version of me And then watch while I change it Blink twice for yes Swim out at high tide All the people that we told all our secrets They all cheer from other timelines