Deep Dive Pod 42, First Year Recap Birthday Show

This week, we celebrate ONE YEAR of the Deep Dive Podcast! 🎉

To mark the occasion, we’re taking a look back at some of the memorable moments, stories, guests, laughs, and questionable decisions from our first year in the Deep Dive.

For our newer Deep Divers, it’s a great way to discover some of the content you may have missed along the way.

And for the old, varnished Deep Divers… well, consider it a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

It’s also a good reminder that Brad’s voice just keeps getting dreamier.

Thanks for diving with us for the past year. Here’s to many more!

ENJOY!!!! 🎙️🍻

You can communicate with us at deepdivepod2025@gmail.com or be part of the Deep Dive Community in our Facebook Group Deep Dive Podcast https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1JGiMUC7bq/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Well here we are boys. Just red. It's going alright. Here we are. We're having our anniversary show. One year. John, that was a nice card you put out together that kind of a synopsis of our show. It's kind of crazy to look at some of those numbers and think.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Yeah, who would have thought, right? Remember, we did this on a whim, not even intending to publish, especially the first one.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Right. And here we are. Yeah. Still doing this. I thought I signed up for a pilot. I know. Right. Right. 40 episodes later.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

So the the first episode was basically getting the microphones out and getting the recorder out, and then just kind of playing like we were doing a podcast. And um, I think the only instructions we had was like, all right, let's just act like we're out of the club 76 and have a discussion.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

No one had a lucrative contract or anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

No, it seemed it seemed like the brief was do what you know how to do. Yeah. And I think we've stayed fairly true to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah, we are a year later.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

But yeah. So I yeah, I think that and I even said, you know, I I don't we'll see how this turns out, but I, you know, this is just to kind of stretch our legs and see how all of this feels. And um and we ended up publishing it. I think it was all right. You know, it's I think that our first dive or the first one's just kind of a a rehash of what we thought a dive bar was, um, and to try to keep it as real as we could to as a discussion like we'd have sitting around.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

So right before we go any further, can I just acknowledge I mean part of part of this is like the tech, and we we were we've been working through the kinks, but we just did a pretty significant setup for this. Yeah, because for what I would usually call our listeners, there's actually like we're taping this thing, which is kind of awkward, yeah, right. But it's fine, right? But look at our backdrop here and what Becky did to our studio, which started off as if I remember right, it was like beach towels on the table. Yeah, we had a green and black. And um, you know, we had some um nuts and crackers and something to snack on in the middle, like on a paper plate, and that was the the size of our studio activity. Right. And now we've got like a 25 minutes. We've done some pretty significant upgrades to the Deep Dodds Deep Dive Studio, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Green room that Brad was in for 30 minutes doing. And then he puts on after he clean all done.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Clipping of the nose hairs, all the things. Jeez. It's insane the production value.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Yeah, it's really unbelievable. I feel like we should uh we should have a cheers here.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Absolutely, cheers, guys. One year, 40 episodes. Drink to that.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

So, yeah, and I suppose this is not uncommon for podcasts, but that very first episode that we recorded with no intention of ever making public is one of our highest downloaded non-guest episodes. So it's just kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

And maybe that's common for people to go back to day one, but um so just a kind of review, we we discussed what we thought was a dive bar, and um and we've kind of integrated that with every guest we've had, or every time we've done a field trip, we've kind of asked what they thought was a dive bar. The thing that changed my thought concept the most was when we sat down with Ben Mummy at the Deadwood and we asked him, like maybe using the first question, like, what do you think a dive bar is? And he his answer kind of stopped me in my tracks and it kind of changed everything since then. But he said anytime that you have a community of people that care for each other and um rely on each other and they know you when you come in, that's a dive bar. And he pointed out the fact that he thought that Cheers, the fictional television show, was a very successful dive bar, even though they had brass railings and uh all the pull taps and uh everything that uh Cheers would have been a great dive bar.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

That was an interesting perspective for sure. And we've referenced that several times since the places.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

We were talking about it earlier. I mean, I know we're probably leading into our next show, but I mean, we were just at Baxes in Sutliff, and that was my takeaway was everybody seemed to know each other, you know? And it it has all the trappings that we would call traditional dive bar in terms of you know the dollar bills on the ceiling and the stuffed animals, yeah, cash only, yeah, all the things.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Now I wouldn't want to contradict a dive bar owner and expert, but I was in Boston a few weeks ago and I went to Cheers and it it's a tourist trap. It sucks. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

There's no norm, there was no right, but I yeah, but the spirit of it for sure.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

So yeah, for uh for getting together with a show that um we didn't know if it was gonna be a published show or not, and we ended up one of our better shows. So um we're encouraging you all the shows we're gonna talk about today. Yeah, you're welcome to go back and and sift through them. Um, our second show was the uh what the hams bear does in the woods, which was uh a focus on marketing and commercials and beer. Um, and that was a pretty well-received uh podcast, too. Um it is kind of interesting to go back and listen to all of those commercials now. What was the the Hams commercial was done by a guy that like worked in shipping or something like packaging? Yep, and it was and he was actually hitting a cardboard box during the song.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Draw that yeah, we haven't gone back too often and revisited certain themes, but that is one because immediately after that show, as we've got our first real engagement from people that had other beer campaigns and ads and stuff. So we've talked about going back and revisiting that. So year two, we'll have to do another show and pull some some other campaigns and some other spots to play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

What uh like w I know we talked about Ben Mummy saying, you know, uh cheers being a dive bar, is there anything else that was kind of um opened your eyes to uh not just beer, but anything else that uh we talked about, even with our guests?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Well, I think you know, one if you've listened to the episodes and if you joined late and you've maybe heard something that's a kind of a recurring feels like an inside joke, but we did talk early on in that first episode about things in a dive bar. Right. And Brad famously that cardboard cut out of a Formula One driver. Right. And we I I've made a dedicated effort to make it not just dive bars, but I think every establishment I've been in in the last 12 months. Any bar. And I haven't seen a single F1 driver cardboard cut out. And did we see an Elvira? Because you pivoted to saying you thought that was Elvira, yeah, not a race car driver. And no, hard to find an Elvira too. But no, I that's okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Those are great callbacks. That even came up today, like when you made reference to the sh the schlift light, and Brad goes, I guess I don't see it. You said it's right next to the Elvira cutoff. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Exactly. Yeah. No, I'm I'm in search of that, and that's a that's a goal. That's that's gonna be a big big goal for me in this coming next next period of time, yeah, next 12 months, next 40 episodes, we're gonna we're gonna find that.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Maybe we need to go further south to some dive bars, and then we'll we'll mask car drivers.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Or Transylvania.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Isn't there a major race in Iowa this weekend at Newton Speedway? You'd think that there would be all kinds of cutouts on the bars. Could be. Yeah. Could be. So um our first guest that we had was Jeremy Ferricks, who was uh with Club 76, and Club 76 was definitely one place we wanted to get to. And I guess that I kind of that's kind of our home base. I mean, we spend more time there than probably any other place. Um, and when we met with Jeremy, it happened to be a night of uh either the Cubs got into the playoffs, the playoff game.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, yeah, big big game. So we had a lot of uh background noise going on background. It was a live and learn.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

That was lessons in A V. Right, for sure. I wish we need to go back and revisit because I think the the the discussion was fantastic. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

Jeremy's excellent, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

But the audio was tough for sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

So I was just out there um Wednesday. He uh had a uh little video. Yeah, he had an impromptu uh oyster event. I don't know if we're like halfway to Oyster Fest or what, but he um that earlier that day he sent a picture, he was sitting at my desk at work and um so I knew that he was in the building, and then uh at some point, oh I wished him happy oyster day. And he goes, Oh, really? And so by three o'clock, he had spun up an oyster and caviar feed.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

So he just had that on the ready.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

I guess, yeah. I mean, he had probably two or three hundred bucks worth of caviar.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah, well, we talked when we spoke with him and prior to about elements of a dive bar, and we did talk about the food program is significantly elevated at some of these places. Yeah, boy, walking into club seventy six and a caviar, right? Right could be disqualifying, but obviously not. We've landed on it being a liberty.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

That was a backroom thing. That was sure, but uh yeah. If you get if you go out to Club 76, which is just northeast of North Liberty, um if it is not absolutely swamped, make sure you get the bloody Mary. It is the best bloody Mary ever, and it's stacked and it's got food in it and everything else.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

So the first time I had it, uh my wife and I went out and we made the mistake of thinking that we should order other foods to accompany our brunch. So we got like wings and I think something else. And by the time we got through all the food on the on the Bloody Mary, Mary. We were yeah, we were stuffed. So it's like we ate a couple wings and took the rest home. But yeah, it's a it's a meal.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

It's got everything, like including a donut, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah, donut, shrimp, bacon, all the things.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

You name it, it's got yeah, fantastic. We know caviar.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

I hate to hop around here, but um uh episode number four was the boys do shots so you don't have to. And um that was we went to great lengths to discuss the Malort craze that uh was going on, the Chicago handshake, and um that was kind of an interesting one too. I'm I probably uh I'm glad we went long on that. I'm glad we had an opportunity to sober up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

And and thinking about that, two things come to mind. I I do think we had some good fun with tasting shows, and it's been a minute since we've done one, so John and I we we were talking about this tonight. Yeah, I think we should get back to uh to a sampling, to a sampling menu of of some sort, which which was good fun. But the other thing is we've talked about it, you know. Um again, we thought this was just gonna be a pilot audience of single single digits initially that that eventually climbed a little bit, but like sponsorships, you know, if we kind of want to take the spread out a little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

So who are some of the sponsors you think?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Well, I mean thinking about the shots, you know, Jepson's Melort would be an obvious one.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Um I think that they're they would be a a great sponsor. Tang.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Tang would definitely tang.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Tang and Jaegermeister would would be good. Um, those those spring to mind for sure at the top of the list. Um I don't know. We talked about like some some more local places and you know, basically anybody who's got something we can taste on air. Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

What were those eggs that you guys got? Yeah, what were they? We're here for you, Herb. Legitimate. Yeah. Yeah, we had some good pickled eggs today. We'll get into that in the next episode. Yeah, we didn't want that. We did. Wisconsin brought a strong product.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, you talk about recurring themes to the show, and our you know, listeners who've been with us from day one know this, but the shots episode, I think, is where we first established how recipe challenged Brad was. Right. And who can forget our resident Irishman concocting a Guinness and Bailey's drink and not having the ingredients for an Irish carbom correct? Completely forget that there's Jameson whiskey in it or never knew. I think it's even more impactful. He never knew he's drinking whiskey when he drank an Irish carbom. And then the kind of questionable mix of a Jaegerbaum or a Tang. Tang bomb. Yeah, was it? Yeah. We had three ingredients, one of them being the water. And then didn't you even after that on Rag Right, try to go outside the box and put powder in a shot glass with mixing tang? Yes. A mixologist, I am not.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, so we're not I'm properly on the other side of the we probably won't get any better than the endorsements here. No.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

Well, hop up a little bit, a couple episodes. You you boys did a bike tour at the check report. We sure did. In which you used uh holy water in the tank bombs. We did. He had the recipe right there, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah. It was yeah, spiritual. Yeah spiritual experience.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Next level. You know, the the one thing that came out of that episode, and is you would you know when I asked you, did you discover anything? For me, that was the biggest thing to discover that in the Czech Republic people will keep a live carp in their bathtub for three to five days. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, around Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I know you've spoken about how you feel like this magnetic energy when you go to uh Moab. But I'll tell you what, be lost in the woods and have nothing but holy water and tang and Jaegermeister make something of that. Holy ghost course into your veins. Right. Get you back on the trail.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Absolutely. Yeah, that and a little uh what was it, the onion and uh lard soup we had that day that we had the holy water tang? Really nice pairing that probably is overlooked by many.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Yep. Brad, do you think that there's gonna be a day when you get to the early gates and they're like, listen, Brad, I'm gonna cut right to the chase. Yeah, and they pull up a picture of you standing outside this little holy water fountain.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

At the border. At the Austrian border.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

Listen, it's not really kind of a sin, but look, it's irreverent, all right? And so because of that, yeah. I'm out.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Good try.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

All right. Well, yeah. So your Czech Republic that actually had some nice numbers too. That was uh that was fun. And we also learned that that when Brad sleeps, he looks like Count Dracula, and he can hold a beer all night on his head sound asleep.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah, yeah, I think there's some pictures like that just as recently from Ragri.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

I was gonna say, I think Becky's mother's basement has a similar uh similar photo for sure. Yeah, at least I wasn't wearing my helmet.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

I know it. I don't know if it was our second guest, but I think it was right up there. We had Joe in to talk about whiskey tasting.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

We did, yeah. We went heavy on the shots and whiskies in the early seas part of the season, but that was fun. And yeah, we sampled everything from Irish to Scotch to bourbon and got a little bit of an education for dive bar aficionados like us.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Absolutely. You know, it was I think the the one thing I took out of that episode that was so crazy was the fact that the countries of origin or distilleries will put distilled spirits exclusive to airports. Yeah, and I had no idea that that was a thing before. And Joe had pointed out, you know, if you want to have um who was it, Frank Sinatra whiskey distilled by this, the only place you can buy it is the Las Vegas Terminal, right? That just blew my mind. But didn't you? What did you bring?

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Uh I had some red breast that was like cascaged that you can only get at the Shannon or Dublin airports. Yeah, right. That's right. And to your point, the Jack Daniel Sinatra blend is uh duty-free exclusive. You have to get it at international airports.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

If we ever interview the um Cedar Ridge people, we'll have to see if there is a Cedar Ridge only uh something you can pick up at the duty free there. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

That's definitely a goal. We've we've reached out, and I think we're gonna probably have um Murphy Quint, who's the brother of a colleague of John and I's um do a tasting for us. And I know they've got a new um I think it's called Fever. Yeah, like it's like a fever bourbon that I think they're only distributing right now in Indiana, but maybe we can get a little insider taste of that for uh yeah, and I think they've produced a couple award-winning bourbons.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

So that'll be a fun show. It'll be uh yeah. Look forward to that one. Coming up in the weeks ahead.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

Yeah. Um, we did uh an episode on Halloween and what it was like to be a Gen Xer in Halloween, some of the costumes, the um the masks.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

That I so I did have a guest uh listener shoot me a message saying they thought a fun guest question for some of our celebrity guests would be like your signature Halloween costume as a kid. Yeah, that's a great question. Interesting talking about Gen X Halloween and how times changed.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah. I think it was our last guest, Chris Chris Ash, was talking about getting the Joe Montana JCPenney outfit, and that was really his Halloween costume, and that was really his kind of began his fandom of Joe Montana. No relation to Hannah.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

No relation to Hannah. And Brad has since learned who Rudy is.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

After I Jed listen a good buddy of mine from the Chicago, my time in Chicagoland, uh chastised me immediately. Um that I did not know who uh the last name of Rudy, which I still can't tell you.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

Right. Um, yeah, so and then episode 10, we had uh Ben Mummy, who we um talked about earlier. Uh Ben really was a an outstanding um guest, just like Jeremy was. Um, really kind of gave us kind of an idea of what it's like to have a bar in a college town. You know, Jeremy's was um uh first of all, it's an American Legion post, but uh it's kind of sets outside of a town and it's kind of a destination place. Uh Ben has a bar in a college town. Yes, he does. And we kind of our discussion was focused on dive bars, but not too long after we interviewed Ben, we were downtown Iowa City on a Friday night. Yeah, and boy, that place didn't look like a dive bar. I mean, it was absolutely packed with college goods, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

It was swamped. Yeah, that bar's kind of a shapeshifter because you can go in there during the day. In fact, just Friday night, Becky and I went down for dinner at Pullman. Uh it was another festival downtown, so it was crowded and a little bit of a wait to get to the counter. So we went across the street to have a beer at Deadwood, and it was every bit the dive bar, you know. It was a couple locals in there and uh chatted at the bartender for a little bit, had a rolling rock, and waited for our text message to go across the street for dinner. But that was it was a complete dive bar. But then you go back in, we walked out after dinner, and you could tell it had morphed itself in again into uh I don't even not say straight college bar, it's maybe grad type. But pulls a mixed mixed crowd. And yeah, so which is fun and that's cool. And we've obviously we can talk about we've gone down after football games and stuff, and it's kind of fun to see the dive bar transformed into a happening place for a few hours.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

That's that's uh uh George's and the Deadwood is your your base, right? Yeah, yeah, oh for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

I think the other element of the discussion with Ben, not only because we're big fans of the Deadwood and what it represents downtown, but his discussion of his dad's place, mums or mummies, as many called it. I mean, I think it really I I remember going there you know, before like an Iowa football game or something with some folks from Washington County pre-Tailgate.

unknown 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

And um it made me wish that we still had the mums were still gone.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I think you know that's a lost thing. We talked about this, I don't know if we talked about on air, two of our early guests, Ben and Doug Alberhaske, yeah, who are kind of curators of institutional downtown Iowa City businesses.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

And talking to Ben, as you recall, he puts great concern into like removing any wood paneling or painting, and he does do the bathrooms, even you know, paint the patina, right? Don't know how much feedback he gets on that, but he didn't want to change anything else inside. And then Doug, who has very much preserved the history and integrity of John's grocery and all of your side, however, he also has made the challenging decisions to do remodeling and refreshing and you know, do things to carry that business forward. So it's kind of interesting to see their different, somewhat different perspectives, beginning kind of the same end with different means, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

So our Doug Alberhaske episode um episode 12. Um we we spoke with Doug. Doug um spoke with us about his movie that he produced called Death Uh Of a brewer, right? Yeah. Yep. And um it was a major motion p well, it was a motion picture. Yeah. Had Crispin Glover in it. And I can't remember who Mira Savino was that the other person. Um and it I think the thing that came out of that episode, um, a lot of great information, but the fact that Doug, I the first time we heard about it was um out at Oysterfest, out at Club 76, and he said that he was going to try to put money together to make a movie. And boy, you know, um, and Doug is a very sober man. I mean, he you know, he's he doesn't goof around a whole lot with his intentions. Um, but a lot of times you hear people with kind of big ideas, yeah, and it it's just hard to get momentum going and get everybody to buy into it. And at the point the next time we saw it, maybe five or six months later, he had a good chunk of it. Yeah, he had a good chunk of it. Yeah, a lot of people and absolutely, and you know, then at that point we're like, all right, we got the money up, we can start talking to actors. Then that's when you're like, you're gonna actually make this happen. So for me, Doug's interview was a real inspirational um takeaway. Is like, listen, it's never too late to chase your dreams. Yep, like you can make it happen. Yep, um, and you can get people to believe in your vision if it's uh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

I don't know how there's enough hours in a day for Doug Alberhaski with all the things he's got going on in the community and the movie. And obviously, spoiler alert, we're gonna have Doug on here again in the very near future because I do believe the movie's in like a final CG scrub or what and is you know getting ready for release. So we want to update on that. And then there's just been a lot of happenings in the north side, you know, since we last talked to Doug, and he's obviously a real driving force in that neighborhood and the evolution of it. So uh we're due to revisit that and we'll do that up.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

And he's got Oktoberfest and Soda Festing up.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

And before we get off of that, I perhaps one of my favorite episodes we did all year was the holiday pairings with the wine and beer team. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was so much fun. And obviously that one's coming up again as we get closer to that season, and that was a good time. And we recorded that back when we had dozens of listeners, if we even had that. And the feedback was uh the deep dive nation went in there and bought all of the wine that we talked about during the pre-Thanksgiving show. There you go. So hopefully they're gonna order more at John's this year, because I'm sure once we drop that episode, the Ralph Anim will be in there to buy them out again.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

Right. Um let me see here. Uh at some point we talked about Christmas traditions. Obviously, that was in the uh January or I'm sorry, December area. Um and we at that point we talked about uh Christmas catalogs. And we kind of did a deep dive into everything that showed up in Christmas catalogs, including um the fact that you can buy a lot of smoking stuff, like pipes and tobacco stuff. Um there was a lot of uh guns that you could buy through Montgomery Wards, yeah, um, and bullets. Um what was all the lot of decanters that were filled with alcohol, which I think that probably at the point that was I don't say a lot, but there were some that at some point some kid probably thought, you know, if all I have to do is fill out this card and this catalog and I can get like a a pheasant head made with Jack Daniels, I'm gonna give it a shot for 25 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

It's worth giving it a shot. Yeah, and we never had that kid that showed up at a you know teenage party with a pheasant of Jack Daniels, you know, but there probably was a kid that did that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

What a what a great party you have to bring. But whenever you hear people talk about the good old days, those were the good old days.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Ray, I think one of your catalogs might have gone missing for a little bit because you asked me if I had the you know Sears and Robuck uh you know 86 edition or whatever it was. Did are you whole now? I mean, did you did you put lay hands on that? Because you you got a little bit you got a little bit nervous about it.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

That's not uh yeah, I'm not I haven't found it yet. But but I also have a Volkswagen that has um golf clubs from when I played in high school.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I mean it's in that was it could be in there something. Yeah, it's a it definitely well we talked about the recent cleaning thing that happened while you were in Lagbry. So I hope for God's sakes, my fingers and toes are crossed right now. No, if it's anywhere, it's in that Volkswagen. There you go. It's in that Volkswagen.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

So well, and on that time we talked about how childhood slumber parties you clearly establish the social hierarchy by who had flame retardant pajamas and who didn't, right? And Brad pointed out that in the women's lingerie, none of that was flame retardant. And sure enough, we had we hadn't looked at those pages as closely as Brad, but he was absolutely right. Stuff was meant to burn.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

Yeah, so and if you didn't hear that listen to that episode, the reference he's making is that uh there would be um oh, let's say six pages of children's clothes, uh children's um pajamas, sleepwear, sleepwear, and and there were two pages and it said all pajamas on these two pages are flame retardant, which meant all of the pajamas on the other four pages were not flame retardant. Like about a $4.99 price point. If your parents didn't have that to spend, you were in petroleum-based firebombs, right? You're one static electricity shock away from going up in flames. So, yeah, that was kind of fun to see what everybody's childhood Christmas was like, and if they opened up on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. So we also did a an episode about Christmas movies, and I found out that um uh I do not watch the Hallmark channel as much as my my co my co-potters, they seem to have.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Let's be very clear about that. Well, do we do like favorite Christmas movies or something? I threw out like four that were these like love sappy things, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Maybe one.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Maybe one black and white French film or something.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

I will say that they were all one because the four of them that you loved all had to do with like a woman whose whose parents had a Christmas tree farm and she went back to help them. And then her knuckle-headed arch enemy from high school, they fell in love, and her big city hus or big city fiance came to visit.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

As our one of our great fans, Dean Scheifus would say, Man cards need to be turned in. Well, Brad, I did watch one of those, and um it was as terrible as it sounded.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Yeah, well, it was uh the other night when I called Brad.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

No convergence though.

SPEAKER_03 29:02

I said, What are you up to? And he goes, I'm watching a movie, I'm in the middle of a movie, and I said, Is it on Hallmark channel? He goes, No, it's not on Hallmark channel. What do you want? Um all right, so um we had an episode called Snow Days that was really kind of a um punctuation on the difference between being a Gen X um person and how we found out that there was a snow day and you know, opposed to getting a text. And really we kind of found out the morning of uh which now you know weather casting is advanced enough that uh and I think they probably want to help people find daycare and stuff. Sometimes 24 to 48 hours, you know you're not gonna have school. But we also did a deep dive into what you did when you didn't have school, like the stuff you did outside with your friends and the hustle, the um going out and trying to shovel walks. I mean, if you had a snowy winter, man, you could bank some curious cash enough to get you through uh with that and Christmas, you can get through a lot. So um all right, so that brings us up to our next guest that really moved the needle. Um, I'm not sure where this where all these people came from, but Craig Sermack was our guest, and he came on to talk about the um the the automobiles and trucks and vehicles of our 1970s and 80s television shows and uh movies. Yeah, and I mean it was like watching Rain Man, like you would just throw out a uh television show or a movie, and Craig knew what exactly about the vehicle, the Grand Trino and Starsky and Hutch. And he even knew like what the when you took the top and the doors off of a whatever car that was a balance or on fantasy island, what it was called.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

I think that kind of tested the uh the trust we had at each other because Ray, as our kind of our producer, I think you were a little skeptical and we said, We're just gonna bring this guy in. Yeah, trust us he knows about cars. Yes, and you were like, Well, I want to ask him about the fantasy, right? Like no, don't cue him up, give him no hints ahead of time, just throw it at him and he's and he knocked it out of the park. Yeah, he did.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

John and I know this because we work with Craig. And Craig's the kind of guy that when he comes into your office and says, Do you have five minutes? You kind of mentally say, Yes, I have 45 minutes. Right. Because he's he's just gonna riff. And so you were to your point, John, you know, raised the ultimate like um, let's be prepared and ask him about this, ask him about that. No, with with with with Craig, he showed up. Yeah, he got a slice of poly ice, right? He sat down, and then he went off on cars right off the dome, right? And unstompable, right? Right. He knew something about he knew something about every car, and that's just and then we brought him back again. Same deal. Like you you you said, well, I want to hear about this and that, and he's like, Okay, I can get I can give you I can give you a whole show on the minivan.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Yeah, he was everything that you guys said and more. It was like watching uh a genius at work, just kind of like throw you know weaving knowledge together of automobiles and and transportation.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

And I would two things I would just say if that if you've not heard that episode and this sounds at all interesting to you, you definitely need to go back and listen to that one. It I mean, it had it was a great draw, but we've had many episodes probably that drew more downloads or hits, if you will, and we've certainly had legitimate celebrity guests. But Ray, you feel a lot of our feedback. I don't know if we had as much engagement on any episode other than Craig. I mean, immediately we were peppered with emails, text messages, Facebook messages, this car, that car, bring him on again, bring him on again. Exactly. And don't worry, we heard you and he's coming back again.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Right. It was it was immediate. Like you didn't ask him about the 18 van. Like, well, dude, we got like an hour show. We talked about 16 vehicles. Like, yeah, we got a lot of feedback, and yes, Craig is going to be on again, and it is great.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

So then Becky, my wife, who loves the show, was skeptical. I'm I'm not interested in cars, but she absolutely because Craig is just so entertaining. Yeah, you know, so even if you don't think you love cars, it's a fun listen.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Right. Yeah. Um, I will tell you the uh when we get into our Gen X stuff, we get um a lot of interest from kids, younger people. That seems I mean the Gen X people get sentimental about stuff, um, but it's the younger listeners that kind of um they kind of have this interest and look at us like a dog looking at a phonograph, like but uh we did uh what Gen Xers did on sleepovers, and um I think the main thing that I took from that was um there were several times during John's childhood he probably could have gone to some sort of probation penitence, yeah. So sort of good old-fashioned juvenile delinquency was part of a sleepover. Military school, right? If if you weren't coasting a full bicycle with a mannequin in the a heavily trafficked intersection, you weren't having a sleepover. Right. And every time something we brought something up, the the delinquency got more and more and more. But uh yeah, so my uh both of my kids were pretty amazed at what a sleepover was like in Gen X. But then over half of that front group went on to be police officers.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

I was gonna fly say you have the you have the like principal's kid, pastor's kid, policeman's kids.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

So um our next uh kind of big thing that we had happened was um we had uh Iowa Hawkeye, Hap Peterson on uh was with the 1985 Rose Bowl team, and Hap came on and um talked about some of the craziness that happened during those early Hayden Fry years and what it was like to be part of a Division I football team. You know, it it was really crazy stories. Um, oddly enough, that same night uh he brought with him Jay Norvell, who was coming fresh from the practice facility.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Well, yeah, Colorado, but he had he came to the deep dive studio straight from the football complex, right? Where he had officially joined the staff, which was pretty awesome. Right. If you listen, it's two episodes, and you'll see that Jay comes in about two-thirds of the way through part one. Yeah. And that's why, because he was officially joining the staff, which was a lot of fun here in studio. Now they didn't make that public for like almost two weeks or more.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

Yeah, we had to set on that for two weeks that information.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

So, but it was fun. It was kind of great to have that interview at the time. No one else knew that we were interviewing a new member of the coaching staff. But in does anyone laugh better than Jay Norvell? That the guy's got such an infectious laugh. And if you've heard his interviews or other interviews with people in the football camp since he's joined the staff and it's all been public, they talk about the energy and enthusiasm and culture. And boy, we saw that like immediately when he showed up here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

And I would put hap in the category of of Craig in terms of you invite him in, you crack a beer, you turn the mics on, and and he's game, he's a gamer. Like he doesn't, he, you know, we've we've had him on with a couple different guests, he can draw out the best stories. Yeah, he's got the gift of uh of storytelling. And like he's he's I think we would all agree he's got an open invitation to join us at the in in the deep dive uh studio at any point because he can go, we could do multiple episodes with Hap, and he just his network is huge and his um yeah, his zest for life and just storytelling's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

You wish that we had like mobile mics on us because we've run into Hap a few times downtown, like on Saturday morning bike rides. We're running a pl and 30 minutes with him is totally pod worthy because it's the stories are great. Yeah, it's yeah, it's like the mics always on us. No prep needed, he's ready to go. Yep, and so he'll be back for sure, hopefully numerous times.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Yeah, I'd love for him just to sit in seat four and just he's he you know, there's uh he reminds me of um Christmas present in the uh Christmas story, not Christmas story, but uh he's got this big personality, and he's just fun and you just you want to be in his orbit, man. When he's in the room, you just want to be part of his action. So I'm sure he'll be on future shows, I'll guarantee it. So uh all right, so we have um this is kind of interesting. This seems way out of order, but um we have Dave's foxhead. So we actually got into Dave's Foxhead, and this was a bit of a golden grail for us. Um we tried to get into this uh very famous Iowa City die bar several times. I mean, there's maybe five times where we drove past it, one of us would get out at a stoplight and pull on the pull on the handle and then be locked.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Yeah, yeah, or stumble down from Georgia's. Oh no, the door's locked, right? Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

So we finally get in. Um, there's five bars that were granted liquor license within uh the first nine days after uh prohibition ended. And the Foxhead is one of the um still existing uh liquor license, and it's still in the same place. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

So that place was absolutely graduate. Yes, and it ended up being such a fun night because we had some of our most frequent listeners were happening to be there that night too, and so it ended up being kind of a fun deep dive party there. And yeah, uh not only do we get another beers, we got the foxblood, uh oh yeah, the signature drink, which we had no idea.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

That the uh bartender had pulled out the old index card that it was handwritten on the recipe and crafted it for us. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Yeah. We um right before Rag Bri had a few friends come to town and spent the night with me on the Friday night before we did the drive out. And so my buddy Tom Schmatickey and his his daughter, um, they live in Houston, came in and a buddy of mine from from Seattle came in, and I I just wanted to give him like a little mini dive bar tour. And we did we did the Tang Bombs at Deadwood, which you kinda gotta do, which they loved. We went to Georgia's, gotta do. And then we hit the foxhead in those three. And they they they they perfect. They both um, you know, they both were super impressed and like even wrote me notes post-Rag where hey, thanks for that dive bar tour. It was uh it was great. I would add Baxa, which we just did today, and we'll talk about more in a future episode, but yeah, um, it's not quite as walkable, drivable, bikeable, but um I would put it in the same categories, those three.

SPEAKER_03 40:01

For sure. Part of the Foxhead patina that I um that I love so much was the fact that it looked like at some point during the 60s, 70s, 80s, maybe even 90s, that they put a case of beer like on top of their cooler or refrigerator or whatever. Yeah, and they just never took it down. Because I mean they had um cases of beer that are on top of their refrigerator that the companies haven't been in existence for 25 or more years.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Well, and remember they had some tools like a level and some things that were from construction of the bar, of the bar sitting on the back bar. Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

That was that is just the absolute craziest part of that. They're like, all right, we're done building the bar. Let's set the tools over in the corner. We're gonna need them at some point.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

So the only thing current in the place was a 24-inch flat screen TV hidden in the corner that really set Brad back for a couple minutes.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Because it had been it had been a tube TV in the past, and so it didn't work. But what was great and what was like in in in keeping with what you would expect from a dive bar owner. Um, so it's an Alberhasky, right? Who who who owns Dave, Dave, Dave Alberhasky. Um, and we asked the bartender, like, hey, we would love to have Dave on the show, and you know, told him about kind of the theme of of our pod and how do we get a hold of him? Well, yeah, he doesn't email, yeah, he doesn't text. Um, yeah, the best thing you can do is I can we can write a sticky note and put it on the register because he comes in every morning or whatever. But it's like the way of getting in touch with him was very much like the 1960s, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Well, it was more like getting a note to a girl in the lunchroom, is what it was like. Right. And I told you, Brad, you should have folded that into a swan, he would have gotten back to us.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

If you um have the opportunity to go into the Foxhead, please notice that everything that originates from the electrical standpoint is on the west wall. So there's like three power strips on the west wall, and then all the electricity runs east from there by drop cords. Yeah, so like all the a lot of the lights are on the west side of the building, the cash registers on the west side of the building, and then as you go further east in it, there's fewer and fewer things that require electricity, even the bathrooms.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

I think yeah, and there will never be a sanctioned billiards tournament there because there's a fault line running underneath the pool table and it slopes noticeably to one direction, but that's all part of the best jukebox in town.

SPEAKER_03 42:33

Oh, yeah, best jukebox in town. Great juke is a legitimate old record jukebox. Yeah, and it's uh, you know, I think God, who'd have it? It had Wilco or somebody in it, yeah. That was relatively, but it was. It was basically like 2007. They're like, All right, what do you guys want to do with this jukebox? We're going out of business. Like, well, I guess we'll just keep it.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Yeah, keep it no changes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:55

Um, so then that brings us to Dave Zolo, who is our first musician. So both Brad and I have a uh relationship with Dave Zolo.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

And um yeah, awesome show. I mean, he again, he's he's the sort of guy, he didn't need any problem, you know, just ask him about his his life experience and his journey. I mean, he loves Iowa City. Um, he's got connections to the writers workshop, he's got connections with other artists in the area. He went on on tour and yeah, his his stuff was great. And love to have him back too. He's been he's been a good friend to to our group and supported you know, bike ride I do for a mutual friend of ours and who passed away, and he always plays that. It's coming up. We're gonna do that again this this uh football season. And yeah, Dave's been Dave's a great Iowa City legend. I remember I remember seeing him and his band play at the old yacht club back in the day. And um, yeah, he's a local treasure.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

And he'll be a great repeat guest again. We had him early enough in our production cycle that we didn't feel like well, one, we didn't do video, and we didn't have him do any music because of Christ. We didn't know if we were set up to even really be able to do that. So um hopefully we can get him back again and maybe we can get a little music and stuff going in the deep dive studio since we've worked those kinks out of the system.

SPEAKER_03 44:09

You know, that's something I think that I I'm really blown away by is you know, people have guests for their podcast that they'll have come in on Zoom. And we've had people actually here with us. I mean some pretty to have having somebody to come to you is a big ask. Yeah, right. And we've been very lucky to have the time they give us for sure. You know, and we should talk about Kevin at this point too, our second musician. Yeah. Um, I've known Kevin for a super long time. Probably one of the most solid human beings in you know that I know. And uh um and he's super busy. And I had him on during COVID. I used to do these little um Friday night shows during COVID to kind of like get re you know, real information out about what was going on, but I'd always bring in somebody that was interesting to kind of keep people around. And Kevin came on, man, and he did I asked him for 50 minutes worth of time, and he did like an hour and a half with us, and he was great. And so I knew he was gonna be a good interview going into it. Absolutely, but man, just such a solid human being, so good for our community. He's just just one of the very, very best.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

He's got like Iowa football connections, he's you know, he's he's a legend in town. His his his the blues instigators were a big band back in the same time as Dave Zolo and High and Lonesome were. Um but then like the fact that he did three live musical performances, which we weren't expecting. Like we didn't we didn't suggest necessarily that he bring his guitar with him, but he comes rolling in with his guitar. Yeah, and and and he did yeah, he did a couple of his own original songs and then he like made one up on the fly with fantastic and it was yeah, he felt fantastic up, not just with the stories but the sound, and it was great.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Yeah, it really was.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

It came through great.

SPEAKER_03 46:15

And I think he has um his new album out now. So um I saw he just came back from Europe. So um, if you are waiting for that Kevin Burt album, it is out. So um either visit his website, Kevin Burt, or you can um go into Spotify. I I think it's there too. So uh but anyway, yeah, hopefully we'll have him back again. But a super, super solid human being. So um all right, so then we uh we have a drinking holidays where we talked about St. Patrick's Day and um a couple other, you know, I think it was right around the Super Bowl. I don't I can't remember where it was. Where did we drop that? Oh yeah, it was it's around March, March 16th. Yeah. So um yeah, that was kind of uh fun. You know, I I I don't know if I'll ever think of the uh Kentucky Derby again without thinking, yeah, there's a bunch of booze associated with the Kentucky Derby. Same with Groundhog Day. Yeah, Groundhog Day. But yeah, that was kind of fun to that was a fun episode. And then we followed that up with the um Girl Scout Cookie March Madness, where we got a bunch of Girl Scout cookies and then we kind of decided which um we picked our Girl Scout cookies.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

We established that Brad is not a fan of anything mint.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Right, right, which thin mints, not my deal.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

Right, sorry. Then we brought in like uh Keebler and Toll House and other like and uh yeah, so and you don't do you even embrace any mint during Christmas to peppermint not big on it.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

No peppermint mocha. No. How about catnip? Do you do any catnip? Moving along. No catnip.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

No catnip. All right, so the next episode was your guest, John. It was uh Nate from uh from England, and we talked about British customs, British pubs. Yes, um, and he also talked about how they contrasted against American dive bars.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Yeah, that was that was great having him on. He had you know, we had been over there for a work engagement, and Nat had taken us on a tour of old London City pubs, which was fantastic. So we kind of revisited that tour on the pod. And Nat's a great guy, great character. Uh, if you'd listened to that episode, he went to college in the States, spent some time in the States. So um he had some American dive bar culture references and kind of compare and contrast, and uh obviously didn't have much to think about the Parisian dive bar scene or Parisians in general, but that'd be to be expected, I guess, from a Londoner like himself.

SPEAKER_03 48:57

Yeah, and he was a super knowledgeable guy. He I mean he knew like stuff from like 600 years ago, solid information. It's kind of hard to think that there's bars still open from 600 years ago, but it's England.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Yeah, some of those establishments were fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Um so any more about that?

SPEAKER_01 49:17

I was just gonna say I I was satisfied in my search for which I think maybe around the time of the pandemic, Bass on Tap became a missing link in in Iowa City area. Then I figured it out that uh you know Chris Chris CQ from um from the Wig and Pen, which is where I used to get my bass on tap on the regular, says it's not, you know, it's not in distribution, and I I couldn't kind of figure that out. And I think John, you and I both kind of looked far and wide in our travels and couldn't couldn't find it on tap anywhere. And then we get to the UK and it was kind of the same story. It was it was you couldn't see it in many places, but we did we did find it and have it. The uh it was cask, the the cask version, of course, which is the original way to do it, and um scratch my bass itch. So so thank you, Nathaniel, for making that happen.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

And I think we determined that even in the UK, it's cask only. Yeah, you don't find it in bottles, you don't find standard tap. You have to find it at cask, cask at a pub. And if you find it, it's awesome. But it's hard to find.

SPEAKER_03 50:21

We uh yeah, so the the next episode we did that was um interesting. I don't know how it was received. We didn't get a whole lot of feedback on this, but it was a trivia pursuit episode. So we got hold of a um original copy of Trivia Pursuit, talked about the history of trivia pursuit and what kind of impact it made on board games in the um early 1980s. And so we actually we didn't actually play trivia pursuit, but I threw some questions out there that were um very contemporary for the time. And it was, I don't want to say bleeding edge, but like if you got it for Christmas that year, there was still like Michael Jordan's questions in it, stuff that was you know pretty recent. So it was kind of fun to go back and look at to see what was um new technology or who the stars were.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

It reminded me that I always tried to land on orange no matter what direction it was on the board, and right now I still felt the same way after we played that night. And it I want to say it's appropriate that Lewis is making a cameo in the background barking upstairs, as he's prone to do if you listen to most of our episodes. At some point in time, he likes to let you know he's here.

SPEAKER_03 51:27

Wants to be on show, we gotta get him a Lewis on mic for that's right. So um, and we might come back and do a trivia pursuit. That was just a standard trivia pursuit. We might come back and do uh another kind of either board game or just a different type of trivia pursuit. That I thought that was kind of fun, but um, and it also gives kind of an insight of what Gen Xers went through. So uh you could talk about Hat Peterson's second appearance, what he brought Mike Hate. Sure did, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Another fun session, and uh those guys crushed some uh an ample supply of wings in Miller Highlights for us, which was a good time. More great stories uh of the not just the Hawks, but I thought Mike's stories of his NFL time, some of those Jets stories and Gastino and Bridget Neil said those are some there's some really good stuff in there, right?

SPEAKER_03 52:16

No, Mike was a good guest, so um, we talked a little bit about what concession stands were like in Little League. Um that has kind of been a uh recurring topic. Um Little League and concession stands, and um, I think we still owe people. We told them during the concession Little League concession stand that we would come back and do sodas, and we still haven't read we haven't taken a deep dive into sodas of our childhood. So yeah, um we gotta come back to to that at some point. Um, and I think that this is the beginning of our high water mark this next uh episode, which was episode 35, and it was Jan Jensen. So, Brad, that was your guest.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Yeah, Jan was great, and I knew I mean every a lot of people know Jan as Iowa women's basketball, you know, came into the forefront with the the Caitlin years and kind of the the system that they built and the the national and maybe even you could argue international um acclaim they got from from Caitlin. But you know, Jan to me, on top of being like a legendary athlete in her day when she was a star in Kimbleton, Iowa, and then went on to Drake and did really well, and then obviously joined the the women's team as an assistant to Lisa Bluter and then became the head coach. All those things are fantastic. But just like I've gotten to know a different side of Jan because we share a yard side yard, right? She's she's my next door neighbor, and she's just a salt of the earth person. What you see is what you get. And um, I knew rather than to pepper her with the Caitlin Clark questions, which I think she's probably had a million times, we should just go a different direction and kind of talk about what it was like to grow up in small town Iowa and what women's basketball was like then, what it's like now, and and to talk about like her brother Doug and the die bar he had in Kimbleton, which we as as as we've talked about on the pod, we had a chance to visit on Rag Bry. So one of my favorite episodes just because I think it just shows and people who who talk to her and meet her, like you what you see is what you get. She's just uh we could have her on again easily, I think.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

So much. I thought it was great to your point. Um, all the stuff just about her upbringing and some other stuff. But even if you were tuned into that as an Iowa basketball fan, I think there was a lot of content about the culture and the behind the scenes of Iowa Women's basketball without ever talking about X's and O's, death charts or Caitlin Clark, right? And so it was kind of cool. Um she talked about a lot of things, uh, both sports and non-sports, but with a totally different twist and in a totally different perspective.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

And if there's any major takeaway I got from there was it's all about the tonic. That's right. As much focus is put on the gin. Yeah, the tonic is the important part.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

So I would say just from a self-promotion standpoint, if you love Iowa Women's basketball, you haven't heard that, I guarantee you that is a different app a different interview with Jan Jin's than you've ever heard anywhere else. And I went to listen to it, and the feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

I guess the other thing that you did the research on, um, Ray, and I I guess I probably kind of knew this, but Jan's background is in communications, right? Like she sh her her major in in in college was in in journalism and and communications. And she was on, she had her own radio show, which we we kind of feature on the pod. And you get that because she's just if you've seen her speak in public or you've watched interviews and press conferences and so forth, she's like, I don't know that she ever had to go through, I'm sure I will provide media training for folks, but like she's just so um comfortable and natural and authentic on camera and on mic. And it's just it's just who she is. She's just she's just great. And I think that's probably an advantage for her because we talked a little bit about this in terms of like recruiting. She's very plugged into how kids communicate and like being in touch through Twitter and social media and all those things, which I think is an element that not all coaches are super savvy at, and she's she's got that going for her for sure.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

It was really on brand for our podcast because it was a true professional communicator in three knuckleheads.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

Right, exactly. So I'll I'll pull back the curtain a little bit here with what we're you know, I said we try to come off sounding like the way we sound when we're at the bar talking with each other, and um we want that to come off sounding as natural as possible. And but there is a lot of preparation that goes into these as well, right? And when you hear our guests, and if you are one of those people that are frustrated that we don't talk X's and O's, um, I don't want to say it's on purpose, but we really when we have a guest on, we want to figure out who they are. We already know they're a great coach, you know, or a personality or whatever. We want to know how they got to that point. And John always asks a great question, like, what books do you read? Who inspires you? Um, but we we won't when we do our interviews, they're going to kind of be focused on the the soft part of their who they are and not necessarily the coaching part. There's a ton of those podcasts out there now. If the discussion just kind of organically gets to the X's and O's, we're gonna follow that, especially if it's really good stuff. Um, but if you're frustrated with us that we're not asking about uh why they're not going after certain recruitment or ship, yeah, it's um that's not um when we get somebody on, we tell them we want it to be like you're sitting at a table with us talking about uh Christmas catalogs. That's right. Absolutely. So um, all right. So yeah, and Jen, I think was it it definitely gave us a little bit of credibility, no doubt. Yeah, she was awesome. So um our next person was Matt Phiffen, ragbri director, really super great, interesting person. All three of us are ragbri riders, yeah. And you know, he gave us a lot of insight into what kind of preparation goes into planning a multi-day bike ride across the state of Iowa. Um interestingly enough, man, a lot of the challenges that he talked about in our podcast hit the ride the first two days. I mean, they did the first two days were mass sag days. The heat index was like 106 and there were hills, and um, you know, those first couple days, people aren't in rag bra shape, you know. Um, and some of the very topics we talked about in our podcast 14 days before um Matt showed why you have what you know, why you have to go into this and be very, very sober about um your preparation. And it was a great rag bra. This this year it was a great rag bra. And I think it was a safe rag bra, too. I think I didn't hear anything.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

Yeah. Yeah, and highly relevant in the sense that um, you know, and sometimes we talk about this when we're when we're off mic and stuff, like we're definitely a Midwestern, Iowa centric pod, right? And so we've made a lot of references through the episodes to Ragri. And we often have to say, so for those who don't know, Ragri, you know, Ragride's a great bike ride across Iowa, sponsored by the register, etc. And so highly relevant because it is the intersection of like Iowa and what Iowa culture is, and it is the intersection of, you know, we're all cyclists ourselves, and it's got you know the athletic side of it, and and and so I think it was great to hear his perspective. And I I think you know, there's also kind of like we can talk about ragbri in terms of segments of different ridership, right? You know, there's the there's the teams that are about getting in early, there's the teams that are about eating a slice of pie in every town, there's the people who want to go and you know see the local performances, and you know, there's there's lots of different segments of ragbri, and I know I know where it falls on that list.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

Um but there's the people who end the day in bowling shoes, sleeping in a bike helmet.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:46

Exactly. Uh, but it was great. It was great, it was great having um Matt on. And uh and I think Ragbri is a um for those who haven't experienced it, or even if you haven't ridden it, if you've been to a ragbri or hosted someone on ragbri, it's something you you don't forget. It's it's it's a cool thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

Yeah, and maybe we have Matt on again. I mean, he's seen the state of Iowa. I'm sure there's probably like a dozen different topics we can talk to him about that's not ragbri specific.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

And you talk like behind the scenes a bit. We had a list of other kind of behind-the-scenes ragbri director stuff we want to talk to him, but yeah, you know, the show's an hour long, right? So we could have gone probably three times as long uh with content. So, and there'll be another ragbri, and we'll certainly need to have Matt on again. And there's always great dive bars along Ragbri, too.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

We discovered a few this year.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:34

So uh these last couple of people um are really high profile. The Tim Lester, I University of Iowa Hawkey's um offensive coordinator for the ball. Um, Tim was uh nice enough to sit down with us when you told us that he had signed on. I was like, oh boy, this is going to be this is like how do we pull this off and still, but you know what, man? He was he was one of us. I mean, he was a Wheaton guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

Absolutely. Yeah, he you know, I reached out to him and he enthusiastically replied, was willing to, you know, and again, time is precious for these guys before the season starts, and he was up at his lake house, but was anxious to get on Zoom with us, and I just a great interview. Uh like he said, he it was just like we were sitting at George's having the burger and the beer, and uh and I think he really appreciated that and kind of liked the format. Yeah, uh so it was a great, it was a fun interview. Uh we've you know exchanged some messages with him since. I'm quite confident that he'll be joining us again and we'll have another follow-up with him because it was there was a lot of great stuff, and as is always the case, we could have gone three, four, five times as long, uh, but time's valuable and it's an hour-long show. So we'll get Tim back on again. But it was another one of those. Again, if you're an Iowa football fan uh and you haven't listened to that, it's just you get a different content out of Tim that was really entertaining, I thought, and very insightful. And um, yeah, it was a great, great interview, great personality.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

I think we educated him on a few local Iowa spots, you know, Iowa City area spots. So I think he's agreed, right, John?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:05

That like followed up that he wants George's little experience the burger at Georgia's, and so we're gonna find maybe the next little bit of breathing time. We're gonna make that happen and we'll report back on the pot about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:14

Right. Oh man, that's I really hope we're the first people to have a burger with him at Georgia. So we go to the other side of the ball, the other side of the football, and we have a Tumwa native Chris Ash, yeah, who is Notre Dame's defensive coordinator. Yeah. And um, that was you know, he's a young dude, man. He's very accomplished a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:37

Been around the block for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:39

And you know, his he has coached with some pretty Hall of Fame worthy coaches, and yeah, uh, he might be on that trajectory himself. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

Yeah, he'll be a head coach again, yeah, no doubt for long for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

So and and I think that also elicited a decent amount of uh feedback from some listeners. I know John Langland, a local uh Atoma graduate, had some feedback on the um Chris not having the lyrics to the acumen to finish out the uh high school fight song.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:15

Yeah. Um and John actually posted uh he has a hoodie of Bubba's. I don't know how old that thing is, but he still has a Bubba's hoodie. So that's where Chris said that he would want to take uh who do you want to take?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

He's gonna take Nick Saban there.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:28

Yeah, he wanted to bring Nick Saban to the Bubba's bar.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

So you talk a little bit behind the scenes because we this didn't, I don't think we were recording when we had this conversation with Chris before he turned the mics on, but he was in the new facility he was telling us, and they were literally still putting things on the walls. And he, if you see the video of it, you can see that he's got a plain white wall behind him, and then about three days later, Notre Dame dropped the video release. I don't know if you guys have seen that this thing is unbelievable. They do like fly throughs of the new facility. The deep dive had the first coaches interview from the new facility. Right. Scooped it. That's right. Love it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:05

We uh yeah, no, and I think that um one of my a lot of the southern Iowa people texted me and let me know they remembered these smoking monkeys underneath the water towers. Right. Yep. So anyway, all right, boys. Well, we've got one year down. We got um some stuff in the can, we got some interviews lined up that I think everybody's gonna be excited about. Um I think that we're gonna have some more Gen X stuff that's going to be kind of funny and humorous. Uh but yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to this this next year with you guys. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

It's been a lot of fun, and I just want to say thanks, Ray. So you put you put a lot of work into the pretty like this doesn't happen, even though we kind of did it super grassroots, kind of organically uh sprung up, but it takes it takes a lot to to edit a show, to to do all the A V work that you do. So appreciate all the time and prep you put into it. And it's it's just a good time because like I think we have stayed pretty close to the spirit of it should feel like we're having a beverage and we're happy we're shooting the breeze like we might, but uh to make it happen takes a lot of work. So thank you, Ray, for all the stuff you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:19

Echo those sentiments. You know, you said a minute ago, Ray, a lot of prep goes into this, and let's be very clear, Ray. Ray does a lot of the prep. Brad and I just kind of show up here and tag along. But all the effort and everything behind the scenes that makes this work, editing everything. Ray, you do a fantastic job, so thanks for that. And got to shout out our listeners because this thing has kind of grown leaps and bounds, and the passionate listeners that continue to feed us with feedback and content and ideas and all the things is we appreciate it. It makes a lot of fun. Hopefully, you guys enjoy it as well, and we look forward to uh continue to push it forward in year two.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:55

Well, thank you for the kind words. Thank you for the kind words out there. As John said, if you guys have any suggestions for people that we should have on the deep dive podcast, you can communicate with us at deepdivepod 2025 at gmail.com. That's deepdivepod 2025 at gmail.com. Boys, you got it all out of your system.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

I think the only other thanks we should throw out is like I mean, I know John, you did a lot of the work, but Becky was the driving force behind like the upgrades to the studio engineer.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:26

To the studio.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

So thank you, Becky, for uh for hosting us and putting up with uh making a mess in your basement. And John, thank you for the food.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:35

John does all the hosting, the he's the uh uh bank for all of our hosting for uh the deep dive pod. All of our video stuff has to it cost us money to host stuff. So if you like or subscribe or get your friends to like and subscribe, that will eventually help us out. Uh so keep doing that. But John does the uh the the bank part of the deep dive pod. I have so many reward points with funyuns. Right. All right, guys. If you don't have anything else, um thank you for joining us again, everybody, this week. Uh make sure to like and subscribe on YouTube, uh, Spotify, and Apple Podcast. If you want to talk to us or be with other deep divers, you can do so in our deep dive podcast Facebook group. And you can get hold of us, as I said, at deepdivepod 2025 at gmail.com. Until next time. Bye boy.