A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Am I Drinking Too Many Energy Drinks? ft. Emily Fleming

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Today, Josh is joined by Emily Fleming to talk about their love for energy drinks and how much caffeine is.. too much. Thanks to OURA for sponsoring part of this video. Discover how OURA can help you better understand your long-term health and wellness at http://ouraring.com/hotdog. *This episode was shot after Nicole left for maternity leave, but don't worry, she'll be in a few more episodes this year!** Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Check out the video version of this podcast: http://youtube.com/@mythicalkitchen To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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orders, Instacart, groceries that over deliver. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Get to know yourself and your roots better with Ancestry DNA. Want to know where your family comes from in northern France? Maybe you'd like to see how your genes influence certain traits like diet, fitness, and allergies. There's so much of you and your heritage to discover. Visit Ancestry.ca and get started with an Ancestry DNA kit today. I drink three red bulls for breakfast. Is that bad? You're keeping count? This is a hot dog is a sandwich.

Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome back to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show. We break down the world's biggest food debates.

I'm your host Josh Cher. I'm Emily Fleming. I'm subbing in. You're subbing in, but no, you're not a sandwich. substitute. Well, if you are, you're like the cool substitute that rolls in. I am definitely the substitute teacher that pulls out the TV on the little, on the wheelie thing. Yeah, yeah. That's how we watch the movie Troy. Still one of the greatest

movies of all time. Oh, cool. Yeah, but we're not talking about the movie Troy today. Unless unless you really want us to because like, listen, Brad Pitt, so he fights we're going to talk about movie Troy. Brad Pitt in one of the opening scenes, he fights a wrestler named Nathan Jones. It's where he does that cool little sidestep and then he jumps in the air

and kind of gets them in the back. I guess I've never seen troll. You should just come on my podcast to talk about troll. Okay, yeah, go to Emily's plug your podcast. Free with ads. We're talking about Troy. Yeah. Wait, I would love that. Yeah, we should do troll. Is it Troy or troll? I thought you said troll. Troy. It's like the Iliad. Oh, yeah, I've seen Troy.

Oh, yeah, I've seen Troy. Free with ads somewhere. God, I'm so in. You're coming on soon. We're not talking about that today. Unfortunately, we're talking about our energy drink consumption habits. How many of you drink? Dude, I I'm going to back up a little bit, I currently have the caffeine shakes, not from energy drinks from a bunch of coffee that I drank this morning.

Oh, God. Now you're going to do this morning. Now I'm going to drink this. But I have had a caffeine addiction probably on the better part of 20 years since I was in middle school. Absolutely. And that is coincidentally when energy drinks really started hitting the market. I remember seeing energy drinks for the first time in a store. I knew Red Bull kind of existed, but I kind of knew it as like a weird thing that, like, adult strength.

This is in like 2000. Well, I'm older than you because. It was like, I think that, okay, don't sound so. You, okay, in your geriatric stage of life, what have you learned? There wasn't really, I don't think there were energy drinks when I was in high school. It was like Coca-Cola. Like, you would just shotgun. Were you around for surge?

Surge, Minnesota? I was, but I never really went for it. That was kind of like the American attempt initially at energy drinks because what happened was Red Bull. It's an Austrian company, right? Okay. And so Red Bull, that's why they have the Flugt I've seen Red Bull's Fluk Tog? No.

It's a German tradition. And they like jump weird crafts into the water. Oh, the sports that they play and stuff when they have the Red Bull challenges. Yeah, the Fluk Tog. Oh, wow. Yeah, Shliba in a Fluk Tog. I love how you didn't preface it with the Red Bull, like, sports challenge. You just said Fluk Tog.

Well, Fluk is a specific thing where they're building very strange crafts, like almost like homemade go-karts. Yeah. But they're like launching them into the water. And then they try and, like, fly. That's fun. It's like the box car races that, you know, kids used to do. And so the point is Red Bull, it's an Austrian. It was started in 1987, and it's kind of credited as the first energy drink in Europe slash like the general West, right?

And then it gets to America in 1997. So depending on how old you are, I'm never going to ask a lady her age. No, I would have been 11 at that time. I'm 39. I'm getting to 4. I don't like that whole not telling your age thing. How much you weigh? Actually, I don't know now.

I think I'm at 180. How tall are you? 510. 510, 180. That's good because you got like a good amount of reach but still have like the strength of people. I'm not, a gust of wind ain't taking me nowhere. Here's the thing, I'm not part of the body neutrality movement.

I'm part of the universal body athleticism movement where I judge every single person's body based on what sport they could do. Well, yeah, also, I will say this. Irish hurling. Okay, I'll take that. I'm going to say Irish hurling. I think it's kind of like field hockey meets football.

Huh. Beat each other with clubs. Maggie looks like she'd be good at the club. Oh, thank you. Yeah, Maggie does look like she could kick someone's ass. But yeah, no, I wanted to say that I've been, I'm like running. So I do interval running, and I'm trying to get down to three, 10-minute miles in a row.

Hell yeah. I'm at 35 minutes. That's pretty damn good. We're going to see if I can get down. That's pretty damn good. So 1997, you would have been how old, 11? 11. And do you remember seeing Red Bull for the first time?

I don't remember seeing Red Bull for the first time. I do remember the surge commercials. I do remember, but I didn't. I guess I didn't notice that it was supposed to be caffeinated. I thought it was just another soda commercial because it kind of, it was yellow. It kind of looked like Mountain Dew. And I don't think Mountain Dew is caffeinated. No, Mountain Dew is caffeinated.

I'm going to look up how. I don't know how much in each can, but Mountain Dew. Because Sprite is not caffeinated. Sprite is not caffeinated. But something like 70% of American sodas are already caffeinated. Okay. And the interesting thing here is like, so a can of Mountain Dew, for instance, that's 55 milligrams of caffeine.

Okay. FDA recommends that you keep under 400 milligrams of caffeine per day. So there's 55 milligrams in a Mountain Dew, so you drink seven of those, which certainly some people do. You're at your FDA limit. A cup of coffee, it's so variable on the amount of caffeine that's actually in it because a blonde roast has more caffeine than a dark roast because heat, denatured's caffeine. There's sativa. There's Indica. If you drink an indica, you'd be Indica couch, if you know what I'm talking about.

But no, if you brew it stronger, right, then it's going to have more caffeine per ounce. Yeah. But typically something like 80 to 100 milligrams of caffeine per cup of coffee. Wow. So a Mountain Dew is like half a cup of coffee. Okay. Mountain Dew is like five ounces. What's a Coke?

What's a Coke? That's got to be more than Mountain Dew, right? No, less. 34 milligrams of caffeine in a can't cook. Oh, wow. Yeah. But all of them have, and Coke was originally supposed to be a stimulant drink, right? It was literally cocaine in the cola.

And the cola nut actually has natural caffeine. So, like, this all, you know, all this exists because humans love caffeine. Yes. Well, I guess we always, I think that especially in this day and age of late stage capitalism, competition is like a big thing. Everybody wants to be the best that they can be and the most jacked we could possibly be to like, to be like, I'm on the money. I'm doing a good job here. I'm like, I'm go, go, go kind of thing. And I think that that amazing market.

It certainly does. And I think, like, talking about the idea of late-stage capitalism, author Michael Pollan, who wrote Omnivore's Dilemma, he's written about a lot of other, like, psychopharmacological things. But he writes about the role of caffeine in capitalism and how it literally, he doesn't think the industrial revolution would have happened in the way that it did without the use of caffeine. But even before that, caffeine, so if we trace it all back,

every culture is pretty much found a natural stimulant in their environment, whether that's the coca leaf in the Andes, whether it's like, you know, the betel nut in like central and northern Africa, I believe. Of course. Tea, chamelea senensis and China is caffeinated. Oh, yeah, tea. And then you don't get coffee until some think it was Ethiopia, some think it was Yemen, but they basically share a very thin border with a straight.

It's the straight body of water that goes between two things. Anyways, so they're very close to each other. But coffee eventually makes its way around the world because the giant European colonial powers were all competing to see who could grow it and where. So the term Java. Java's literally an island in Indonesia, and that's where the Dutch started growing their coffee.

I didn't know that. And then the Spaniards and the Portuguese started growing their coffee in South America because they had colonial holdings there. So all the great coffee growing powers, basically, were Western European colonialists trying to figure out where they could grow this kind of stuff. But then that gets exported to Europe.

And if you can imagine, like, Europe didn't have a form of caffeine. Tea only came from China and was more rare at the time. Then when coffee hits Europe and they start building these coffee houses, people are gathering and suddenly they get this jolt of energy

and they can think clearly. And they're like, oh my God, this is incredible. And so you have a lot of these like enlightenment thinkers, like Voltaire hosting salons at coffee houses. And apparently legend has it Voltaire would drink up to 50 cups of coffee a day.

And he writes a lot about it. Little cups. A little demitost is a coffee. So he wasn't like, you know, ripping a bunch of bang energy drinks or whatever. I bet everybody's breath smelled crazy. I bet it was awesome, you know? Hand-rolled cigarettes and coffee, the French way. Rough.

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telling in the year of our Lord 2025. Yep. Yep. You know, and it's kind of a logical and conclusion. Like these things are all, they have these hyper visible color palettes on them to stand off of shelves, they're making new weird promises, whereas the thing in coffee that really gets you off is caffeine, but then this stuff, it's got carnipure carnitine, whereas this one only has L. Carnotene, which is where Red Bull literally gets its name. None of these things are real to me. It's like when I'm on TikTok and people are like talking about serotonin. I'm like, that's not a thing. I just don't think it is because I feel like I see the biggest idiots talking about it, and I'm like, they don't know.

I feel like serotonin is definitely a real thing. No, it's not. It's just they made it up so they could get us to do stuff. What do you mean? I think like selective serotonin if you buy this and if you do this. But there's like drugs that help serotonin re-upic, like SSRIs. Sure, and that's, yep, and I'm on those. Thank you so much science.

I feel like serotonin's a very real thing. I know, but if you're on TikTok, it's not. I'm sorry. Anybody who's like on TikTok and they're like, this gives you a real boost of your serotonin. I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. fair point. Like, I just know you don't. Well, now seems like a good time to check my aura ring daily scores. What is that? Well, so I'm checking out my stress levels. Like, for instance, I drank a ton of coffee this morning and I can actually check to see how it is

affected both my body temperature and my heart rate. And ding, ding, ding, my average resting heart rate is about 54 because I'm a highly tuned athletic machine. But yeah, I did jump up to about 59, which is something that, you know, for me, I don't necessarily think is terrible, but also I do need to know how it affects me throughout the the day. For instance, if I'm drinking a lot of these in the afternoon, you get to that like 3 o'clock post-lunch sleepy time. And I'm like, I have a bunch of work to do.

Let's rip an energy drink. But then I'm noticing my sleep scores, and it's like, hey, you're not actually getting deep sleep. You're laying in bed for a while. So I think I might need to start cutting these out in my afternoon. Okay. I'm going to see if you can do it. I'm not confident. I'm not

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You haven't had any energy drinks today? Well, we have a bunch of energy drinks. Not yet. I've been saving myself for this. We should try some of these because I want to talk about how much crazy variability there is on the market. Crack won't open, but I've... Okay. We'll do the classic first. Red Bulls zero. So Red Bulls tend to have, I believe, 87 grams of...

Sorry. I believe Red Bulls have 87 milligrams of caffeine per standard can, which is like, what, 8.3 ounces? 8.4 ounces. It's 250 milliliters because it says a European company. And so, like, they literally had to settle a lawsuit because of how little caffeine there was in a Red Bull. So I don't know if you know this. The founder of Red Bull, I'm going to yet for a second.

The founder of Red Bull was actually inspired by a Thai energy drink because energy drinks hit the market a lot earlier in Asia. So it's one that's like credited for starting. It's called Lipovatan D. And I used to drink. Very catchy. I used to rip lipopatans all the time when I was interning in a little Osaka. Now it's called Sautel Japan Town. But I was interning at like a burger restaurant there and their corporate offices, which are just above the. burger restaurant. I used to get paid in burgers.

It's not legal anymore. How are burgers over there? They're literally my favorite. It was my favorite burger restaurant in L.A. But there was a little Japanese convenience store next to it, and they used to sell Lipotan, and I love weird energy drinks. And so I would rip them all the time. That started in the 60s in Japan. And so, like, Red Bull, by the time it got here, it's named after Torin, which is what was initially in Lipotan, which is kind of like it could improve mental acuity. It could do a lot of things, but it's not really scientifically proven in double

blind studies. And so for me, like, energy drinks are about the caffeine, but this only has about as much caffeine as a standard 5, 6 ounce cup of coffee. Okay. And so you get to, Ghost actually doesn't even have the most, but Celsius and Ghost both have 200 milligrams of caffeine in it. Oh, God. But then if you get to like... I've been drinking so much Celsius. Oh, no. Celsius has really taken over the market, but I remember the rise of bang energy. Oh, yeah. I'm for bang. And then there's a competitor called Rain that they have 300 milligrams of caffeine each. Good Lord. It's a crazy amount of caffeine. Americans consume

caffeine, like nobody's sense. People talk about like, I think Finland or Norway consumes most cups of coffee per capita. Uh-huh. Do you coffee, there's cups of coffee, you're tiny. Uh, a Starbucks venty blonde roast has 420 milligrams of caffeine in it. That is absurd. Americans are obsessed

with caffeine. Is that how much all of those kind of drinks? Because I'm not a Starbucks girly. I don't, I don't want sugar. I want to feel something. Yeah. And, um, Which I guess you feel something from consuming sugar because it's nice and tasty. But are they all like that? Is that like how crazy?

No, and I'm glad you asked because people tend to not ask these questions. Okay. So espresso, right? Espresso is like a one and a half ounce little shot of very concentrated coffee. Same. And an espresso shot probably has around 60 milligrams again depending on the strength, depending on the roast. You know, I said I didn't do like the bougie, sugary drinks, but that is not true. I got to backtrack.

I do a chai tea latte with two shots of espresso. So it is lit. So that probably has, no matter how big it is, if there's only two shots of espresso, that's only going to have about 120 million grams caffeine, whereas a venty blonde rose drip coffee. Because it's huge. It's huge. And it's all coffee. You're drinking a bunch of milk and delicious sweeteners and sugars in that chai latte or whatever,

but you're not getting this crazy blast of caffeine. Yeah. I will say that I'm noticing, okay, so I drink a lot of Celsius, and I started drinking Celsius when we were rehearsing for the tour. I remember that. I remember introducing you to Celsius. It blew my mind. I was like tired because it was just a lot of repetition when we were rehearsing.

Yeah. And in kind of a cold, big rehearsal space. And I was like getting sleepy and not in the game. And I was, I had one of those. And I was like, I've never felt better in my life, like ever. This feels so good. There's something about it. And I had a second one.

And Rhett was like, did you have a second one? I was like, yeah, why? and he goes, do you how much caffeine is in that? I'm like, no, is that why I feel amazing? So there's 200 milligrams in a can of Celsius. However, the 200 in Celsius hits like 300 elsewhere, and I don't know what exactly it is. It hits different.

Maybe there's whatever. There's Torin. What are all these made-up things? Yeah, well, so that is actually like the devil being in the details of all the additives are kind of why, right? We're talking about, are we drinking too much energy drinks? Yeah. Or are energy drinks really bad for you?

there's such an emerging market that have only been around in America for about 20 years, that there isn't these long, you know, lifestyle studies associated with it. But there was one initially that the American Heart Association wrote about that showed that people who drink 200 milligrams of caffeine worth of energy drinks experience a much more rapid blood pressure rise and heart rate rise than people who drink the same amount of caffeine and coffee. So there is something different with the... Oh, well, there's always something in there.

And that can be due to a lot of different factors, right? Yeah. Do you think there's something about drinking hot caffeine versus cold? I can't imagine. I know heat does temper caffeine, but I think it has to do more at the roasting process. Okay. Because I can drink Celsius's like crazy and still take a nap. But when I drink a cup of coffee, for some reason I can't.

My eyes won't shut, right? Interesting. They won't. I don't know what that is. I'm not sure. To it, science. You heard it. You heard me. Because my biggest question about our energy drinks bad for you is what makes it different from coffee. And so I've been like doing a lot of research about this. And I tend to have a, I'm a scientist and I could be a doctor one day.

Ooh, hang on. I got to talk about this Celsius. Do you like it? I like this flavor. What is this one? Sparkling Fruit Punch Edition, Cosmic vibe. Cosmic vibe. Keep it around, Celsius. Well, so I think the thing that makes energy drinks potentially more dangerous than something like coffee is your reaction to that. Yeah. It's how fun it is. I'm a sucker. It's so much more fun.

We're all suckers. I'm a subject to this. Marketing works really well on me. And so there have actually been studies about the amount of hospitalizations due to energy drinks. Oh, yeah. Remember the, what was the, the coffee shop? Panera. Remember that thing?

Exactly. Did you research that? I researched it. So Panera had lemonade that had basically the same caffeine. And I never got to have it. Me neither. I'm so bum. I forgot what exactly they called it, but it wasn't clearly marked how much caffeine was in this lemonade.

And you would have people, there's free refills at Panera, who would just be getting refill on refill. Oh, it's because the free refills. Yes. Oh, no. So they would sit there. There was one of the women who was hospitalized, I believe, talks about working on her laptop from Panera, and she'd buy this lemonade and she would just drink 48 ounces of lemonade and consume 600 milligrams of caffeine. No. And the reason I think you can.

consume that much caffeine in this form versus coffee, is coffee at the end of the day tastes bad. Like, it tastes good, but it's bitter. In bitterness, bitterness is your body's response saying this is poison.

And caffeine by itself, this is incredibly dangerous. Don't do what my buddy in college did. He bought a thing of pure caffeine powder. And he just wanted to save money. He was like, I don't want to brew coffee, I don't want to buy energy drinks. He would put pure caffeine powder and water,

and it was so bitter that he couldn't get it down that he started mixing it with ketchup and he would wake up to a shot of caffeine ketchup. Disgusting. Chris, you're a madman. Is he alive? Have we checked on? Chris? Yeah, he's doing great, man. Oh, good. Yeah, I mean, I'll say, don't do this also.

I, we talk about, you know, neurodivergency, which I also think is a made-up word that maybe isn't great. But, yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I take a stimulant. I have taken one for, God, how many decades? How many decades am I alive? And you're really not supposed to drink. a lot of caffeine when you're on a stimulant, but guess what? Guess who's bulletproof, baby? I don't recommend doing it. If you take a stimulant, try your best to not do the caffeine thing.

Because it does make, it kind of, I think, hinders the effectiveness of the medication or something. But I am just continuing to elevate your heart rate and blocking your body's natural response to your team. Or it's just for me, it's a dopamine thing. I want to keep feeling more and more and more. And so I'll be on set to shoot something and I'll be like, I need another Celsius. I need to stay excited and stuff and like in the zone. When I could probably just do that without it if I just tried. But nah, I don't want to do that. It's kind of like if you track the history of the need for caffeine, like to say the industrial revolution and then in the enlightenment, people being like, hey, let's think through these big problems.

You know, caffeine's giving me the energy to do it. You fast forward all the way to now, we're in like the most stimulated environment that a human has ever been in in the history of humanity. And also like people continue to have less and less work, life balance or tends to be more and more economic pressures on people. And so it's just like, what can I consume right now to make me feel better about all that? And then you see this just brightly colored can raspberry cream ghost with carnipure carnitines. So I know you're worried about the carnipurity of your carnitine. that you're consuming. Carnotine.

Y'all just making stuff up. I'm going to make one up today. Carnotin. I want a carnatatine. Plumeride. Get you... Sorry, what did you make up? Plumeride.

And now what does plum ride do? Well, it's an extract from the plum. Oh, indeed. Well, I actually remember reading something about the plum extract, but tell the people, because they need to know. So, if you're ever... If you need to move your bowels along, everybody knows prunes are good. But, like, what if you need everything to move faster? Plum.

It's, um, so you are going to be so, um, energized and focus, you will be crapping yourself all the time. But, well, if you actually look, I mean, if you look at the Romans, right, like in the Coliseum, everybody knows about the vomatorium in there. But what actually, like, a Roman soldier would do is he would crap his pants. Yes. Before going into battle. And yeah.

There are rumors I did read that they were eating these plums in Ashley Gr Wild, and that's where plumoride? Plumoride. And that's where Plumoride comes in. Yes. Yes. That sounded real. Yeah, Marcus Aurelius drank Plumoride every day and rate meditations while shitting his pants.

And that's what we believe. By Josh and Emily's new Plumoride-filled energy drink. Yeah. You'll be unfilled after getting filled. I think the perfect example of all this here is this. Okay, we got a Starbucks. It just tastes like all the other things. Let me try.

It's just fizzy and has fake sugar and citric acid in it. and it's brightly colored and reflective. But Starbucks, I don't know if you know this. Starbucks used to make something called coffee. I just sound like every hack. The old man comedian now. But they also used to have these refreshers or whatever in cans. Yeah, yeah.

This is the new... I don't like it. It doesn't taste like the one that I used to get. I used to get... It was like when I worked in retail. I worked in retail for a long time in New York. And you've got to make commissions. So you got to be like at the front,

getting everybody. Like, it is... And I would drink those refreshers all day. Yeah. And those were, they tasted amazing. And then they stopped making them. I don't know what they did, you know. The whole they tasted amazing thing, I think, is actually a really key part to this.

This doesn't taste amazing. Caffeine in nature exists as a defense mechanism for plants. It tastes like those lollipops that my grandmother had at the bottom of her purse that were sugar-free and they had dust on them. Yeah. Grandmas love dusty candy in their purse. I mean, but it was like inside the plastic it was dusty. like why that's what this tastes like no thank you no thank you even if this is not calibrated to your own taste the fact that there is this balance of like sweetness in citric acid you know

in fizziness they're all things that are meant to engage you yes versus if you wanted to drink let's say 12 ounces of straight espresso you could do it it would be a slog it would be a lot yeah it'd be work you know what I mean it would be work because that's how it's sort of meant to taste in nature we're sort of like defying god's will by taking coffee something that naturally existed through a lot of human ingenuity to spread around. But we're taking that and we're taking the drug in it that people like

and just putting it into these brightly colored cans that are filled with artificial tropical peach flavors and stuff like that, which I think makes it dangerous for like kids, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't think. But we were drinking Coca-Cola's when we were kids. But Coca-Cola had like one, 55

or no, 34 milligrams of caffeine. But we were drinking them with every meal. That's the thing. It was all day. You would need to drink, you would need to drink nine cans of Coca-Cola to equal one bang energy drink. Well, we didn't even do the cans. We had those giant pizza party, you know, big old, what are, how many liters is that? The big ones, the Coke thing? I don't know if Coke made three liters.

The generic store brand sodas is like three liters. Yeah, yeah. I love that stuff. R.C. Cola has a zero sugar version now and it's at my grocery store and I get it all the time. It's pretty good. R.C. Cola, God bless him for hanging in there. I mean, that they're still able to compete with Coke. When I played softball as a kid, that was, and you had the concessions.

They didn't have Coke. They had R.C. Cola, and they had Warheads' lollipops. Hell, yeah. There is nothing better than an R.C. Cola and a Warheads' lollipop. I'm telling you right now. Amazing. That'll make you feel alive. I mean, Warheads, it's like, why are we eating that?

It's probably to make a... Stimulation, you know? It's stimulation, for sure. Similarly, like, sour is your body sort of recognizing... And spicy. You know, spicy, yeah. That's why we're all... like we're also stimulated all the time like it's fiendish for like blowing our mouth up with

stuff no it really is and also like these companies to compete have to keep innovating this is really interesting this is the original design of the celsius can i like that so the original design it looks like a fat burner supplement right it does because that's what it was supposed to be i really like that that umbrae color effect at the top that's kind of what i do with flemgens i'm going to take that color grade but like look at this design versus the new design of their like retro vibe one is a lot more viby one looks a lot more sciencey yes you know so now they're like trying to tap into a form of culture where it's like you want to sort of be seen drinking this yeah whoever designs the stuff for celsius it's my favorite like it's very clean and white but then the fruit looks cool and then

the black top of the can i think is super cool it's a very attractive aesthetic can't don't look as cool but they're all they're all trying to attract a certain market right like Monster. I remember going to Howie's Game Shack Gaming Cafes and just drinking monsters because this looks like what a 13 year old boy who's playing Battlefield 2 would want to drink. It looks like an ad hardy shirt. It still looks like

a arm band tattoo from somebody from Nickelback. Oh, it 100% does. Like, what do you call those? What do you think we were listening to in my buddy Anthony's mom's car on the way to Howey's GameShad? Do you know what I was listening to? I have a cleaning soundtrack and the nickel back song from the Spider-Rexam

Man soundtrack, Hero. It's so good. It's so good. Nicholbach does great work. It's so good. We're going to plow through these, right? Do it, do it, do it. Because there's a couple new ones here.

Like, Ghost, I remember. So Ghost makes weightlifting supplements. They make protein and pre-workout and all that stuff, which is interesting because dietary supplements are legislated different than food and beverage. They basically get a lot more leeway, but now energy drinks are walking a weird

line of like, is this a drug or is this a food? Yeah, yeah, drink a... It smells weird. I don't like it. It smells... It's the creamy thing. You said there's creamy in this. Yeah, yeah, it's creamy raspberry. Oh, no. Let me try it. Raspberry cream.

See what it looks like. Perfectly clear. Love that. No. That's something, dude. That smells awesome. God. Oh, wait. This is taking it. So, no, no.

this is interesting because this is probably the newest energy drink here, except maybe is this Alani new. But this is so much sweeter and so much more acidic than every other energy drink here. And so, yeah, this is ghost. Yeah, it tastes like a bowl of vanilla ice cream that someone took a lip smacker's chapstick and they cut it and then put it in there and smash it in. That's what it tastes like to me. This is utterly fascinating.

Like truly the levels of citric acid on there. like, wow, but God, it is so engaging to the palate. I feel a lot. That's crazy. So you're now sort of in this like arms race where every energy drink company has to compete to make theirs tastier than the last. And they can't make it taste better, but what they can do is they can make it taste more. Oh, that's interesting. And being that caffeine is naturally bitter, they do obscure the bitterness of the caffeine by adding more sour and a lot more fake sugar.

I'm going to try the salani thing, and I'm starting to feel really jazzed. You ever have a go-girl energy? It's an energy drink, but for chicks. Is that what it says? No, but this has similar branding to go-girl energy. It's the pink can. Yeah, I'm very susceptible to that. If you market it to me, I will buy it, and that's bad.

Rockstar once had a lady rock star that had a pink can, and it actually had a straw that was attached to it, so that way you could not mess up your lipstick. I kind of love that. What's His Face? You know, who has, he did The Godfather movies. Marlon Brando No Francis Ford Coppola There it is

He had a little Sophia champagne That he made And they were cans After Sophia Coppola's daughter And it was little cans of Champaigns

And they had straws That came with it And boy I loved it I loved it But okay So real fast This is delicious

The I'llani one Yeah Let me try it The marketing works Do you remember These pink rock star cans No I don't But I wanted

immediately. A little straw in it, man. That looks like the soul of Avrilavine is, like, stuck in that can. Oh, this Alani knew. What pink slush flavored? I like it a lot. How much caffeine? I think these are 200 million grams per.

I love that they have big labeling on it. I do love that. Sometimes they obscure it. So, if we're talking about, like, our energy drinks actually bad for you, are we drinking too many of them? Like a lot of things in life, it is so new that we don't have a lot of really good data to back it up. What we do have data on is incidentally, more kids end up in the hospital with a rhythmic events or gastrintestinal distress drinking energy drinks, then they do coffee.

I think there is something about the fact that not everything that comes from the earth is good for you, but the fact that coffee tastes as bitter as it does. I know a lot of people add a lot of cream and sugar to it, whatever, but I think that literally is a natural stopgap in getting you to not just drink 1,000 milligrams of caffeine today. Yeah, that's true. And I think there's something reasonable that. I think we're sort of rewiring codes and reward systems when we have energy drinks like this. I'm like the coffee of people. It's naturally a little bitter? No, also like, sorry, I just had a stroke.

Yeah, you find a natural stopping point at some point. But I do want to say this. I just had the monster juice and it's like an apple juice type thing. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. And while we're about to wrap up, I'm, I got to get this out here now that I'm all jacked up on caffeine. I have a business proposition for you, Josh. Yeah.

Hear me out. Okay. We were talking about you, you were talking about the gamer place that you go to? Yeah, yeah, yeah, game shank. And I makes me think about Dave and Busters. I want to open a gym that is all of the games that you would play at David Bust, like a whole dance dance revolution room. Just so you get a membership and then you just do that. And then the basketball thing where the thing moves back and forth.

And then the thing where it's like all of the circles and they light up and you have to punch them all, it's like a grid of circles. Like that. What do you think? I think that would make people work out more than anything else. You just kind of want to open a sweatier Dave & Busters. Yes. I mean, it would be a lot of cleaning. Especially the locker room.

And there probably be like really annoying maintenance guys who have to come in. They're like, oh, this is the model. from 2006. Amen. All right, let's do it. What should we call it? Plumeride. Plumeride.

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until your flight is over. Fly Emirates, fly better. All right, Emily. We heard what you and I have to say. We're back, but with headphones. Now it's time for a little segment we call. Opinions are like cuckaca casseroles. Bam bam.

Bam. Bam. Bam. So that's, yeah, that's all. Jeez and rights. God dang, come on. Gotting energy. You're spilling the goddamn energy drinks.

Shut of a biscuit. Well, that has. Oh, no. It's the ghost one that you spilled too bad. I know. That's value. That's at least 30 milligrams of caffeine that have been spilled on our table now. I hope that you don't want to get sponsorships from the ones that I've... Listen, ghost. I'm not on this show ever. So, you know, don't penalize Josh for this. Oh, God. You ready to hear some people's opinions? I would love to. Let's go to the people. Greetings and salutations. YouTube brother. I'm calling today with a great appetizer for the hot dog nation. So what you're going to do is get your You're yourself, a box of tootino's pizza rolls.

Okay, a lot of the way says that. Don't matter if it's pepperoni. You're going to air fry them to the point where they almost burst their bellies, but not quite. You take them out, you toss them in some buffalo sauce, or hot sauce, or some barbecue sauce. Ooh. Freakle on some of that Tony Saturi seasoning. Put them back in just for a minute, warm it back up, get a little glaze on them, take them out, and go to a hundred. I'd get some Parmesan cheese on that, too.

Yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah. I would put some Parmesan cheese on that, though, and put it on a baking sheet, and then, you know, that would be... It's kind of like a toasted ravioli almost. It really is. What I love is, one, the way you say Totinos, I love where you put the emphasis on the syllabels there. But, two, the idea of taking a pre-made product that's already, like, quite hyper-seasoned, and then re-glazing it in something smart. I call this the Chili'sification of food

because what Chili's has done recently is we didn't know we had the technology or the moral turpitude to do this but Chili's decided that you could fry a brick of mozzarella cheese and then take that and toss it in a sauce like a boneless wing and so you can now get Nashville hot

mozzarella sticks. We did step about this. Yeah, we made our own fancy fast food. Do you remember how freaking good that was? It was amazing. Oh my God. Those egg rolls like, oh my God. But yeah, everything tasted.

Insane. Man. That's definitely, I think that goes up there in the episodes for me of how good the food. That was some of the best food. And very spiritually similar to these bar, I like the idea of barbecue sauce glazing, because then you get like sort of an extra. I don't know if I could do that, but it does sound like. The sugars caramelize a little bit. Yeah, I think the buffalo sauce sounds good, but I guess that's a little drier than a barbecue sauce. Yeah, the barbecue sauce has some sugar that gives you that sticky and tackiness. But man, because I'll tell you what, normal tootino's pizza rolls, they don't really do it for me anymore. I feel like when I was a kid, they were more exciting. And now I'm like, if I've kind of been there or done that, this is a way to spice up the relationship.

Hell, yes. I love it, brother. Thank you so much for that. I'm going to do that for a party or something. We got more? Hey, Josh and Nicole, Wyatt here. Just listening to you guys talk about Carl's Jr. And the fact that I now live in like southern central Pennsylvania and there's no Carl's Jr.,

no Jollybee, no gym boys. It really makes you miss some fast food. What are other fast foods that you think your life would just be? be a little bit less beautiful without. Oh, that's an interesting question. Mine's Jim Boys. I don't know Jim Boys. I don't know what that is.

I'm a little bum. Anyway, I have a great rest of the pop. Thanks. Thank you. You didn't say hi to me, but that's fine. Also, yeah, hey, Nicole, miss you. Yeah, I think that in Nashville, the thing that I miss most is Crystal. We used to have crystals.

I've never been to one. And I like the other one. What is it? The night one? Castle. White Castle? I don't even know the name of it. I don't care about it so much.

But the crystal chicks, the crystal spicy chicks, they were little fried chicken sandwiches that I would get after volleyball practice. That was because they were little, and you could just pound a bunch of them. And it was like something about the way it was breaded or whatever. And then you got a little bit of mayo and one pickle. on each of those and it was like there was no better reward after working out

and then it went away and I'm so sad it does still exist in certain places and recently I saw they had social media my mouth just got so wet did you hear that

there was social media for it I think there's a TikTok and Ray J or was it Cisco or Ray J are doing like ads for them

and I was like all right so they're trying to stay in the game Cisco is from Maryland I know that Yeah, well, I don't know where they still have them, but it's, God, I miss Crystal. Man, so Jim Boys, I have never heard of it. Jim Boys tacos, they're like a kind of mid-sized chain looks like they have probably like 30 or 40 locations up in like North Central California.

Okay. So it looks like they're all centered around, is this Fresno? Yeah, around Sacramento area. Crazy. And then there's a couple in Nevada, but none in SoCal. I think I'm taking like a California road trip this winter because this is going to be really exciting. but I want to check out gym boys That's fun

For me, in and out All's out of my heart Because I have so many childhood memories Associated with it You win a basketball game Someone drives you through It's a lot of after sports stuff Is when you would get fast food

It wasn't a regular thing For my family, I feel like No generally not Well I mean if my dad was like working late My dad used to like drive a limo late at night He'd like work as a substitute teacher And then he would like drive a limo To make supplemental cash

What the Just when I think I know everything about you There's something else you pull out Yeah, and then like I had a neighbor who worked for I have a lot of fond memories of this I had a neighbor who worked for jack in the box Our name was Blanca And Blanca would just like

If she knew my dad was out driving late at night Did she some jack in the box? She would like come home from her jack in the box And she would just drop off like giant sacks of jack in the box to me and my brother We didn't have jack in the box in Nashville That's not a very southern California It started in San Diego

It is amazing It is the most, it's the cheesecake factory of fast food It's just the cool They've cut down their, like, they got rid of their terriaki bowl, I think. Yeah, I think that's a good call. The chicken fajita pita is incredible. Yeah, it's good stuff.

We had a Mr. Gatties. Mr. Gatties. It's not fast, I wouldn't say, but it was a pizza place. Yeah. And I guess they came from Louisville, Kentucky. And there's a Mr. Gettys. There's usually like an arcade in them. Yeah.

And there's one in Louisville, Kentucky that has like a huge, like, arcade. and I guess a Ferris, not a Ferris wheel, or what's the one where... Mary-Go-round, Carousel? Yeah, a carousel in there. And I'm like, God, I've got to go to that before they all disappear. So if you've got a Mr. Gaddies, you've got to comment, the chocolate pizza. My favorite local fast food is called The Habit Burger Grill. Yeah, that was something there.

They've been expanding a lot lately, but they were just from Santa Barbara originally. I think they just still make one of the best fast food burgers. Or is there other stuff? No, they're trying to be more, like, upscale, fast casual. So they'll have, like, chicken salads and they're a hamburger salad. Yeah, boy, those fast food salads. I ate the Wendy's ones when they came out I was really into those

From their frescata menu Yeah we did that but I mean Nothing beats from Wendy's the It's just the bacon ateer Man It's so good I'm hungry Josh I'm all energized and now I want to eat

Hey Josh and Nicole I keep calling you Nicole I know my name is Greg Colin from Philadelphia I want to know which chain This guy needs an energy drink As the best fish sandwich and why the fish sandwich doesn't get as much love as the chicken sandwich.

I mean, because it's fish, my dog. Sorry, I'm giving this guy a hard time. Because I'm all jacked up on energy drinking. That's a good question, though. Like, why isn't fish nearly as popular as chicken, I guess? Do you think it's, like, distrust in the idea of fast food fish? I think that it's not as fun to chew fish in a sandwich. I think fish is way fun.

It falls apart in your mouth. I love that about it, though. But I like chicken because I like the, I guess, the elasticity and the chewy. I like the experience of masticating chicken. That's a good point. As opposed to, like, fish feels like something you don't, you put on a salad or something. Yeah, no one's putting, like, a mahi-mahi or a swordfish in a fast food sandwich. You really got to sink the teeth into her.

Damn, I love swordfish. I had that, like, once, and I was like, holy, it's so good. A flaky fish, and I love a fast food fish sandwich. To me, the best one was Macad Popeye's had a Nashville hot. flounder sandwich. Whoa. That was awesome. But like Carl's Jr.,

they did a collab with, I think, Red Hook IPA and did a Red Hook IPA battered fish sandwich. That was awesome. Arby's deceptively had... You know, it's funny is I wrote and pitched the episode for GMM about fried fish sandwiches.

Really? Because it was during, you know, Easter or whatever, when it's like, you know, on good Friday, on Fridays you have fish sandwiches. So it was like, Those are kind of limited things.

Not all those fast food places have it year round. Like McDonald's does, supposedly. But then there's a lot of places that would only have it around that time period. So we managed to – I think I pitched it one year, and then they were like, ah, it's past Easter. Ah, man. And now – so we had to wait another year. But, yeah, they're pretty good. Popeye's flounder fish sandwich, I think it was the best of all time.

I think the worst thing you can do, though, is put too much of that, like, sauce on it. Just too much hot mayonnaise, a tartar sauce? The tartar sauce. Putting too much tartar sauce on there is, you know, kiss a death. The filetal fish is, like, I have a soft spot in my heart for a flea fish. I will say it's the one fast food item where you can really tell if they're changing out the oil. You get a dirty oil filo fish. Man, that'll ruin your day.

You got a clean oil filo fish. This Popeye's one that we're looking at the flounder, oh my God, that looks amazing. I think it was after Popeye's had introduced their new buns for the chicken sandwich. Yeah. It was like during the height of that craze and it came out of this flounder sandwich. Love a fast food fish. Okay. Well, now I'm kind of, you know, I'm swayed. Now I'm swayed. Let's go get some. Do let's franchise along John Silver's. I think there's only one left in LA.

Then we can get the gym and the back. You know, you eat the fish sandwich and then you go barf on a dance dance revolution. I mean, this is a handshake agreement. And with that, we're officially business partners. Thank you all so much for stopping by a hot dog as a sandwich. We've got new episodes. Gosh, all the time. Every week. Plumeride merch coming soon. Plumoride merch coming soon. We got audio episodes on Wednesday, video episodes. It's coming out on Sunday. Emily, now you tell them what number they can call to leave a voice message.

All right. If you want to call in for opinions are like casseroles, please dial 833 Dog Pod 1. Maybe I don't see more on my face. Just like walk around local public parks. I like to shoot hoops there sometimes. No, I was at a bar yesterday and people recognize me and they told me they see you at Ralph's a lot. Oh, that adds up. I love being at Ralph's.

I love shopping around. real grocery head out here in the sheets and the streets uh follow us on youtube mythical kitchen see all next time