We Checked Time's Best 100 Podcasts and We Are Not On It ;)

Bruce and Sonny return with a midweek episode from their Midwest studio on a scorching 94-degree day, choosing podcast recording over lawn mowing while discussing earthquake statistics, cat photography, and unusual health tips.

• Latest seven-day earthquake report shows 2,391 quakes of all magnitudes, including 11 significant ones measuring 6.0 or higher
• Bruce discovers Time's 100 Best Podcasts list and confirms they aren't on it, officially making them "the worst podcast in the known universe"
• Recommendation for cat lovers to check out "City Cats of Istanbul" photography on ThisIsColossal.com
• Discussion of Alice Walton's new medical school in Arkansas teaching doctors to treat the "whole person"
• A surprising 194 celebrities have passed away in 2025 as of July 24th
• The unexpected health benefits of walking backwards for 15 minutes daily

The best way to support us is to share the show with someone else. If you'd like to support us financially, visit our website and click "support the podcast." Pray for those suffering from earthquakes, fires, and floods—or take five minutes to think positive thoughts about people and life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Ugly Quacking Duck
• 3:18 Hot Day in the Midwest Studio
• 8:34 The Weekly Earthquake Report
• 14:53 Time Magazine's Top 100 Podcasts
• 17:36 Photos of Istanbul's City Cats
• 20:34 Alice Walton's New Medical School Approach
• 24:16 Celebrities Who Passed in 2025
• 26:11 The Benefits of Walking Backwards
• 28:57 Closing Thoughts and Community Support

Transcript

Bruce: 0:05

yes, that's right. Yay, it's the ugly quacking duck podcast time. Yay, the worst podcast in the known universe that's right, we are back yay, yes, we. We. Thank you for tuning in, whether you've just now found us or whether you've heard us many times before, and you're a returning friend. Thanks for being here, oh yeah.

Sonny: 0:39

Getting excited, are you, Bruce?

Bruce: 0:42

Yes, I am Getting excited. Are you Bruce? Yes, I am Getting excited. I like to you know, I like to do podcasts. Every episode is different and it's fun.

Sonny: 0:55

Well, I like it too, and I really appreciate you letting me come along. It's really fun.

Bruce: 1:05

It's really fun. Well, I just want to thank everybody for being here and welcome you to the Ugly Quacking Duck Podcast.

Sonny: 1:15

Podcast I can do that too. Welcome everybody.

Bruce: 1:20

All right, we did that quite well. We run it in the ground and we are coming to you live. It's a recording, is it Memorex? We're coming to you from where Sonny.

Sonny: 1:33

We're coming from our Midwest studio and I'm Sonny.

Bruce: 1:41

And I'm Bruce and you got that right. We're coming from the Midwest studio here in our home, just a little bit outside of Mount Vernon, Illinois, and I think we're having fun. I hope we're having fun. This is our day that we actually have off. We had a doctor's appointment this morning, so we decided this afternoon not to mow, since they're saying the hottest day of the year so far. So instead of mowing, we decided to work on our podcast and yes, I know it's not been seven days.

Sonny: 2:25

No, it hasn't Bruce. What are?

Bruce: 2:31

you thinking Gosh? Well, yeah, we did one just this last Monday, and we had Lily come over. That was awesome. We just didn't realize that Friday we was going to have another day off because it was our doctor's appointment. So that left us with what are we going to do? Are we going to do another podcast? Wait till Sunday, and Sunday would have been a great time to do it. However, I've got a personal appointment to go to Sunday afternoon, so my time's going to be limited there again, and I didn't want to, you know, run out of time, so I figured I'd work on it today, on Friday. If I didn't get it done, I could finish it up Sunday sometime and get it posted, but that's the plan.

Bruce: 3:21

so whether you're hearing this right after we've uploaded it or a week later, uh, we really appreciate you being here and that is my story and I'm sticking to it boy, you're such a funny guy not yep, I know I'm such funny guy and I just turned the air off to start this recording and boy, it's getting hot in here quick, so I may have to pause the recording right down where I was at, turn on the air, let it cool down again and then do a little bit more and go back and forth like that because it is warm in here, forth like that because it is warm in here. This side of the house faces the east and when it gets this time of afternoon that sun just bears down on the house. Really bad. I looked it up and we are at 94 degrees and it's partly sunny. It's a little bit cloudy.

Bruce: 4:30

They're giving the chance of thunderstorms this afternoon, not a high chance but a little bit, but it feels like it's over 100 outside. It's nasty weather and we always give a comparison to our brother or sister city in Phoenix and it's 106 there and very sunny. We have 62% humidity, they have 6%, our wind's at 7 miles an hour and their wind's at 5 miles an hour and their winds at five miles an hour. Our alert at a little air quality is 66 and theirs is at 23 oh boy, are you losing ability to talk?

Bruce: 5:15

we can all hope well, no, we don't want to hope that. I mean, you're aggravating me. I, I know, just like Shannon does, but if I lose my ability to talk, how are we going to podcast?

Sonny: 5:31

Well, don't worry, I'll take over, I'll do the podcasting, you do the editing. The recording, we'll have it made.

Bruce: 5:42

Oh well, I guess we could do that, but I have a feeling people might get tired of hearing your high-pitched voice.

Sonny: 5:52

Well, I can take care of that. Next time I morph, I'll change it.

Bruce: 6:00

Okay, we'll see about that. I don't know if I'm ready for that, but we'll see. Since we did a podcast Monday, I'm going to keep this one short. That's a promise. I'm really going to keep it short. I've also put the earthquake report, that seven-day report I do for the year 2025, 2019 and 2018. I put that together and already posted it on the website. So if you are a subscriber to that website, the ugly quacking duckcom then you have already got a notification in the email and all you have to do is click on it and go back and look at it. But we will highlight that real quickly, that report, but we're not going to go over it like we usually do. That will save us some time and it won't bore you to death. If you're not interested in hearing the earthquake report, I can tell I didn't get much sleep last night.

Sonny: 7:10

Oh, that's what it is. Sure, Maybe you got too much sleep or maybe your brain's just not working. You did say you went to the doctor. Was it a psycho doctor?

Bruce: 7:23

I'm not sure that's the right way of using that, but it was not a psycho doctor, a doctor that's psycho or a doctor that sees psychos. It was just my regular doctor and he gave me a decent bill of health.

Sonny: 7:41

Sure he did. He probably said don't come, come back, you're looking horrible wow, you are a little bit ornery today.

Bruce: 7:51

What's going on with you?

Sonny: 7:54

I'm fine, fine, fine, fine, but it's hot.

Bruce: 7:59

Even I am hot yes, it is hot and all you folks is having to go out and work today. I'm sorry. Please drink lots of water. You probably need to eat lots of salt also. Get some of that mineral back in you. That's important. But don't dehydrate, Because if you get dehydrated that will affect you the rest of the summer long. It's a horrible thing to do to yourself.

Sonny: 8:30

I agree. Well said, bruce, who knew you was a doctor.

Bruce: 8:38

Not me, that's for sure. Well, let's briefly go over the earthquake report, while we're even mentioning that.

Sonny: 8:46

All right, that sounds like fun. Can I tell them where to go?

Bruce: 8:54

Uh, how should I answer that? If you're talking about finding the seven day report, yes. If you're talking about something else, no alright, I'll be nice.

Sonny: 9:06

okay, everybody, if you're listening to my voice, go to theuglycrackingduckcom. Click on the menu at the top or the left side of the page and go to the post and early edition page. That's the post and early episode. Yeah, I said that wrong Early episode. That's the menu link you want.

Bruce: 9:41

All right, he's right. Do the post and early episode link. Click on that and you'll see our new post. It's the seven-day earthquake report and it was posted today, 7-25. And it's got a little explanation about what's going on. And then I've got a PDF file of the report and I'm just going to go over this year's information for you real quick. I won't go over the other two years. They're on the paper. Look at them. We may cover it later on sometime.

Bruce: 10:22

But for the year for 725, the last seven days we had all magnitudes 2391, which is 23.9 percent. 2.5 earthquakes were 435 435, which is 18.2 percent. Yay. And then a 4.5 magnitudes and over was 216, which which gave us a 9%. And then we had several. I think there was 11. I forgot to write it down, but there was 11 earthquakes, 6.0 and over. I'm not going to go over each one of them. If you're still interested in that kind of thing, go look at the paper. But there was 11 of them, which come out to 5.1 percent. So, um, quite a view, and we had quite a few numbers on 2019 and 2018. Go back and look at them. Maybe you'll, uh, start seeing what I've seeing.

Bruce: 11:34

But on the 30-day report, since this is the podcast for the end of the month, hopefully. How many days are in this month? Yeah, because next Friday will be the first, so I'm going to do it this month today. So for 30 days, all magnitudes for 2025 was 11,548. For 2019, it was 36,533. And then for 2018, it was 30,000. That was a weird even number. I don't know how that come out, but it did. But for 2019 and 2018, the 6.0 and over only added up to one for 2018 and one for 2019, and then two for 2018. Or 2019 and then two for 2018, so not a whole lot, uh, which is uh why it looks like they. They did not have as many, even though there was a lot of smaller ones.

Bruce: 12:47

All right, folks, there may be a little bit of background noise in with my voice and, uh, we're going to try recording this with that. Um, I'm going to turn that fan off. That fan is very, very noisy, but I got the air conditioner down the fan on low on that one, so maybe to pump up enough air that I can stay a little bit cool. It definitely is heating up quick in here with that sun hitting the side of the house. But one last thing about the earthquakes. There's been a lot of litt. There's been one in tennessee, one in kentucky. Um, it's been hitting quite a bit not as much this week as it has been. There was quite a few before, so maybe it's going to ease up a little bit. Who knows, boy, once the smaller ones stop, it seems like there is a bigger one.

Sonny: 14:07

So let's pray we don't have one of those yeah, the last time the madrid fault went off, uh, the mississippi went backwards and bells were heard ringing all the way over to the east coast. So we don't want that that is true.

Bruce: 14:28

We don't want that at all. Russia is still having their earthquakes also, and Alaska is having all kinds of little ones still. I guess it's a good thing they're having little ones, that they start slacking off. Look out, hey Sonny.

Sonny: 14:48

What Bruce?

Bruce: 14:51

Guess what I run across on the Internet. Oh, good grief, there's no telling well, that's true, but I run across times timecom and you know that magazine time, uh, anyway, they have a publication post, however you want to say it, of the hundred best podcasts. Um, and the author put this together and I went and looked, you know, and you know something I didn't see.

Sonny: 15:27

Um, what A million dollars.

Bruce: 15:31

No, I didn't see our podcast.

Sonny: 15:34

What we're not in the best hundred. Oh no, you know what that means, Bruce.

Bruce: 15:42

Yeah, that means we are the worst podcast in the known universe.

Sonny: 15:47

Yep, we got proof.

Bruce: 15:48

now we don't even get listed in the hundred best yeah, well, if you knew how many podcasts there was, that would be a big feat to be listed in the hundred best. But if anybody's interested in seeing what they've got listed, I thought was kind of curious that there was a lot of the same podcast creators their names were coming up with a bunch of podcasts which you know. I don't know if I can accept that. If you know one or two, maybe you know because they've got a good thing going they recreated on another podcast. But if they've got five or six I mean literally some of them was five or six podcasts under the same name then you start wondering how they're getting listed.

Bruce: 16:43

And yeah, and I can hear that little buzz going on behind my voice and I'm sorry folks, but I've got to have air. I'm sorry folks, but I gotta have air, gotta have it. Don't sing, don't sing. Whatever you do, don't sing. Anyhow, if you want to go check that out, go to timecom, t-i-m-e dot com and just do a search for the 100 best podcasts and you'll bring it up and you can look at all of them and see which one you like. If you like any of them, maybe you can find a new podcast and listen to them. So how many cat lovers are there?

Sonny: 17:33

Oh, I used to love chasing those when I used to fly. It was a blast.

Bruce: 17:40

Yeah, I know you went and chased all of our kittens and, yeah, running around. But anyway, if you're a listener and you like felines, kittens and cats, anyway, if you're a listener and you like felines, kittens and cats, there is a website called thisiscolossalcom and you can spell that T-H-I-S-I-S-C-O-L-O-S-S-A-Lcom. Look that up, go to that page and there's a menu selection at the top right it's in green and there is a button that says Photography. Click on that and it will take you to Choices. And right now, at this time of the posting, there's a.

Bruce: 18:44

The third one over in the top column to the right has she I don't know Captures, loving portraits of feisty, feral felines in City Cats of Ishtambul. Go check it out. They're pretty good pictures. They're clear and they are cute and they're pretty well put together. I mean, the backgrounds are good, they've got them staged and it looks like the photographer was a male and I apologize to him because I wasn't sure, but they are very well taken and they actually caught the cats in a very good stare on each picture. I think he did a good job. But anyway, if you like cats and you like pictures, go check that out. It's good, it's worth a look.

Sonny: 19:48

Aw, you're giving the pictures a big promotion. You are so sweet.

Bruce: 19:56

You know I'm not liking this little attitude of yours.

Sonny: 20:00

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Bruce: 20:03

Whatever, we'll move on. Yeah, I wanted to cut it short but I wanted to throw in a few stories because I like doing those stories and having everybody look at them and talk about them. It gives you something different to look at besides the evening news, which is all corrupted in order to get your emotions going, get you to think a certain way. Don't buy into it Now. Since I went to the doctor today and had a doctor's appointment, I've always found doctors kind of a curious lot. I'm not going to go into that, but this story I found was very curious.

Bruce: 20:53

On july the 14th, 48 students walked through the doors of a new medical school and guess where it was? At bentonville, arkansas. Yep, it was started by Alice L Walton. She's got a new school of medicine and she has started it, opened it up, and they just started on July 14th.

Bruce: 21:24

Now she happens to be the heir to the Walmart fortune and she will be training the students over the next four years in a kind of slightly maybe radical different way from most traditional medical schools. Teach the students to doctor the whole person, the entire person, from their medical to their mental, to their living conditions, their lifestyle choices, to the whole well-being, which that may be a good thing, especially if they attack what we're eating, what we're breathing, that kind of thing. It might be a good training because, uh, most doctors are run through medical school with, uh you know what's wrong and what can we prescribe for it, and that leaves out a lot of stuff. But I won't go into all that. But maybe this is going to work out. We'll see. It's going to take a while to get those students going.

Sonny: 22:48

We'll go from there then. So you mean, in the next four years they're going to teach doctors something different.

Bruce: 22:54

Yeah, the next four years may produce some better students, but they have more school after that. So if that education is not accepted in another school, then it's going to be all for not. The brainwashing will continue. Now I run across this article and, oh, this one just gave me the creeps. Um, I've not looked into this in any other year so I don't know how it stacks up to the past years, but as of July, the 24th that's when this article come out peoplescom, that's P-E-O-P-L-E-S. Peoplescom. You can go look it up if you want. You can go look it up if you want.

Bruce: 23:50

They did an article, a tribute to the celebrities, mainly the deaths of the passing of these celebrities in 2025. So, as of July 24th from January to july, there was 194 on the list. So look it up, go through and look at it. There's a lot of them that I didn't even realize had passed and there was a lot of that I didn't know, and many of them have been getting older. I'm not going to say they're old, ancient, but older. We had Hulk Hogan just pass, ozzy Osbourne, and they were getting up in their years, but there was a lot of younger folks on there too and, like I said I didn't look at past years to see if it's stacked up the same, but also run into a tiktok audio audio tiktok video of a girl talking about the same thing and she said what's going on? So I don't know if she looked up any of the past years or not, but it's a sad thing, it really is.

Sonny: 25:12

Well, you remember when the big C was happening, back in 2020, don't you?

Bruce: 25:21

Oh, now you better be careful, you might make some people mad. I know where you're going with this Yep, yep. And one last little um story. I thought was very interesting and since I was again as a doctor, it seems like all these have been more about medical than anything today. But there was an article come out and if you want to find out more about it you'll have to look it up. It's on YouTube. Of all places I run across this and it's the—ready for it. Are you really ready? The Surprising Benefits of Walking Backwards Yep, that's right.

Sonny: 26:11

You can't even walk forward, let alone backwards.

Bruce: 26:16

Yeah, well, you're going to have to be nice to me.

Sonny: 26:20

Oh, I do, do I.

Bruce: 26:22

Well, you should be.

Sonny: 26:24

All right, I'll be nicer. We'll have fun together. How's that?

Bruce: 26:30

Okay, I like that idea better. But yeah, they say there's a surprising benefit to walking backwards and people ought to walk backwards 15 minutes a day and it helps your back, it helps your strength, it helps your mental capabilities. I mean, they had a whole long list of things. So I'm I'm going to start trying that. Um, I may have to wait till it gets cooler and go outside and walk backwards, but I'm intrigued. If it helps me walk forward, it'll be worth it. So I'm going to try it. I'll get back with you guys after a while and see how it helps, if it helps. But there you go. That's our news for today. That's our podcast. Um, this is the ugly quacking duck and I uh, again, I want you, if you still enjoy listening and learning about the earthquakes, go to our web page. Look that up. I may start posting the bigger. What am I trying to say? I may start posting the details on the web page and just skimming over it on our episodes. That way we can save some time and not bore you to death.

Sonny: 27:54

Oh, come on, Bruce, we're not gonna bore him. We're going to insult him. No, we're not.

Bruce: 27:59

Okay, maybe we won't there you go, but anyhow, we appreciate everybody being with us and if you've stuck with us the whole episode, thank you.

Sonny: 28:11

Yeah, you did a miracle, guys, really.

Bruce: 28:16

Probably so. All right, shout out to all my friends, all my coworkers, seven Brew people. We really appreciate it and I hope I get to talk to you again. Tune in to the next episode on the rebound. We'll see you on the radio. Okay, guys.

Sonny: 28:37

Yeah, we'll see you on the radio.

Bruce: 28:40

All right, son, are you ready to say bye? I am All right, let's do it together. Ready, one, two, three, bye. Ready one, two, three. And you thought you was going to get out of here without me asking you to support us. I'm not going to do that, because that's what builds the community. So if you like the show, the best thing you can do is share it with somebody else. Come back and listen to us for the next episode. Um, if you feel led to and you want to support us financially, go to our website and do the click on the support the podcast. And there's several different ways you can do it. Go, do it. And if you want to be mentioned on our podcast, you can, uh, email us. Or if you got a podcast 2.0 player, there's a link on our details that will let you send us a text. We'll read it out loud. All right, guys, there you, there you go. That was short and sweet. I hope you have a good weekend or week, whichever is coming up.

Bruce: 29:57

Pray for the homeless. Pray for the ones that are suffering the earthquake and the fire and the floods. There are still more of those. Pray for those people. All right, if you don't believe in praying. You think it's senseless. That's okay. Think positive. You can sit down for five minutes and think positive about people, about life, and let's get some good energy going also. Okay, thank you for being here. This is bruce and we're out of here. 73.