So... Alright - Ephemeral Ants

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Geoff no longer believes in Bigfoot. Sponsored by Raycon http://buyraycon.com/alright , Draftkings Sportsbook Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use code ALRIGHT Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, I mentioned on the, uh, the F*** Face podcast the other day that I've realized and decided that I no longer believe in Bigfoot. Many of you probably say that it was ridiculous that I ever did believe in a Bigfoot, uh, and I guess I would tend to agree with you. However, I would counter by saying, do you know how much fun it is to believe in shit? Like, honestly, Bigfoot, aliens, Atlantis, Loch Ness monster, ghosts, the whole thing. It's, it's way more fun to believe that shit than not believe it. And I, uh, I like to have fun, right? What can I say? I, anyway, this is gonna go, uh, this is gonna be like dominoes falling through my life, uh, throughout the course of this as I, as like, as my, uh, discovery that I no longer believe in Bigfoot, uh, knocks down some walls for me, unfortunately. Uh, first off, I don't know why I don't believe in bigfoot anymore it i mean i guess i do like if i

think about it i can understand the reasons why someone would or wouldn't well i can understand the reasons why someone wouldn't believe in bigfoot but i'm still kind of sad about it you know sure it's dumb the idea that there's a hidden species of animal out there that is so standoffish and bigger than humans right like some sort of evolutionary link between probably humans and uh a thousand different evolutions uh throughout our history i don't even i don't even know where they all fit together anymore because they keep discovering new uh like new iterations along the evolutionary chain you know and that it's uh it's somehow survived by hiding i guess in in national forests and caves which i listen i get it now are not even speaking about the rest of the world

right just in america alone our national forests are so big that trying to find a Bigfoot, especially if it's a small population, would be like finding a needle in a haystack factory, right? I get it. But also, and I think what killed me, and it wasn't like an inciting incident, I just woke up one day and in much like, do you ever have that thing where your brain just does something for you with or without you wanting it to i don't know if that makes sense but i can i'll give you an example i actually have two examples they're the only two examples i think i have that this has happened to me but when i was i want to say 18 or 19 i was in the common area in the barracks at fort hood where i was stationed fourth public affairs det. And I was shooting

pool, like I said, in the common area by myself. I was pretty, I liked pool a lot. I used to shoot a lot of pool. And I was practicing some shots. And for some reason, like the balls just stuck out to me for a second. And I paused, like involuntarily, I just kind of paused and found that I was just staring at the balls intently. And I didn't really, there was like some sort of a thing going on there. And I was just like, what the fuckently. And I didn't really, there was like some sort of a thing going on there. And I was just like, what the fuck is going on? And then like a light bulb went off on my head or not even like a light bulb,

like a finger snap like that. And I went, oh, I know how to juggle now. And I picked up three balls and I had never once in my life attempted to juggle before. And I picked up these three balls through pool balls, and I juggled rudimentary, right? Like I wasn't a great juggler and I still am not. And I can only juggle one way, but I just, I just knew instantly, like something happened where my subconscious was like working on it in the background. And then it just was like zeroed

in on those pool balls and said, Hey, pay, pay attention to this. I'm working on something here. those pool balls and said, hey, pay attention to this. I'm working on something here. It was fucking awesome. The next time that happened to me, I think I was like 32 or 33. And I have hated spicy food my entire life. I grew up with a grandfather who loved spicy food so much he had a pepper garden and he would grow like 10 different kinds of peppers. He would eat them with every single meal. He brought a little tiny Tupperware container with him and he would have his jalapenos and his habaneros and his like scotch bonnets or whatever. And then he would have these things called seven year peppers that were his favorite. They were like the size of, um, like almost like sugar peas. And they fucking were so hot. They were tiny and they were so goddamn hot. And I ate one when I was a kid. And I was like, that's it. I don't think I touched

spicy food again for probably 20 years. But I just I grew up hating spicy food. And I was around people that loved it, I guess the point I'm trying to make. And one day I was at the movies. And I might have been with Gus, I don't remember. But I was at the movies, I was like 32, 33, and I might have been with Gus. I don't remember, but I was at the movies. I was like 32, 33. I think I was 32. And somebody got nachos around me and I was looking at the jalapenos on the nachos

and my brain just did the exact same thing. And it said, hey, pay attention. There's something going on here. I'm working on something. You like jalapenos now. I had never in my life craved a jalapeno. I had tried them many times I had uh some friends that were really into spicy food that I had a friend that got really really into spicy food and tried

to bring me along for the ride and I was you know I would try every once in a while and I fucking hated it I hated spicy food I didn't like the flavor I didn't like the spice and then that in that moment I discovered I now liked out of the blue i i now like jalapenos and then suddenly i couldn't eat spicy enough food and then i was on the journey we've got a store in austin called tears of joy that just sells hot sauces and rubs and i started going there every week and trying to find something hotter and newer and exploring and then i was like it was like four or five six years where i just got tried to get hotter and hotter and hotter and tried to build up my stamina. And I couldn't ever like satiate that. And then it leveled off. I think it probably helped that I met somebody like

Adam Baird, who has a tolerance that fucking dwarfs mine. And I you think you're a badass and you meet your match, I guess. But also, I just I just kind of like, I don't know, the flame died out. I still like spicy food. I still enjoy it. I like it way more than when I didn't like it. But I'm certainly not obsessed with it in the way that I was there for a few years. Oh, you know what? I think it happened one other time.

Not a lot less fanfare, a lot less exciting than learning how to juggle or eating spicy food. But one day i i just my brain told me i liked raisins and so i was like maybe 36 and since then i've been eating the shit out of raisins i've you know never had any interest in raisins before that day anyway boy did we get on an off ramp where was i going with that oh so i woke up and i just my brain told me you don't believe in bigfoot anymore i didn't like watch a report or a tiktok or read something on reddit i just woke up one day and my brain said hey we're done with bigfoot that thing's over and i was really kind of bummed about it and i looked

into it and i thought like nah maybe i can trick myself and i can convince myself to get back into bigfoot i couldn't not that i was ever like hugely into Bigfoot. Mind you, I was way more into ghosts and aliens still am way more into aliens than I ever was into Bigfoot. I just think it's fun. The idea that there's this mountain monster running around that's an evolutionary link to the past. It just it's it's exciting, but not anymore, I guess. And I don't know why I just it's like my brain will no longer allow me to consider it as a possibility. Pragmatically, I get it. Because if I think about it, we know so much about the world right now. We have technology that's outpacing our understanding of how to use it. It's insane what we're able to discover about the world right now with LIDAR and radar and satellite imaging and like Google Earth. We're uncovering civilizations left and right.

We're learning that we had figured shit out wrong and then we're correcting it. It's insane. I read an article the other day, actually, that we understand the pyramids, like why they were built, the secrets inside of them, what their true uses are.

And by the way, I don't think we really understand the pyramids all that well. But scientists now think that we understand the pyramids better in 2024 than Cleopatra did when she reigned in Egypt. And that might sound like insane to you, right? But think about it. She ruled in Egypt from, I think, in Egypt from, I think, 51 to 30 BCE. Was that? When I was a kid, you always thought BC stood for before Christ, but then I think I learned that it didn't. But there's BCE and BC. Let's get to the bottom of that real fucking fast. Before common area. Okay. Before current Christian area. All right. So BC versus, is BC now called? Okay. just like we use ce is a more secular way of saying 80 we use okay it's a more inclusive way of saying bc got it uh anyway so she fucking lived from not it lived

that's not correct she reigned she ruled egypt from 51 to 30 bc or bce uh that was i looked it up that was 700 and i asked by the way, I asked Google how long ago was 30 BCE? And Google just told me the days. And so it was 749,866 days. Feel free to check that. And so I had to do the math myself. That is approximately 2,054 years ago. So she ruled Egypt 2054 years ago. However, when she ruled Egypt, the pyramids were already old as fuck. They were built like at 2600 BCE. So technically, that's more time between when they were built and she reigned than when she reigned. And exist now. Like we're closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the pyramids being built. And so they didn't know what the fuck they were for.

I mean, they had, you know, scrolls and shit, but everything gets lost to time, especially back then when they didn't have the ability to preserve information in the same ways that we do now. But that really kind of fucked me up because to think about the fact that we're now 5 000 years from those pyramids being built some of them longer but we understand them better than her because of technology if we

have that kind of technology don't you think we'd have found some bigfoot bones or like some fossilized bigfoot stools or a, or like some rudimentary tools, or fucking anything. Like I said, I understand that our wilds are vast, but come on, man. With everything that we have, you can't tell me Google Earth wouldn't have found a little Bigfoot farm

somewhere in the middle of like, I don't know, the Yukon, where they're all fucking sitting around a fire, you know, cleaning bones and shit. I can't believe that that wouldn't have been discovered. I can't believe that this far into human existence, if a Bigfoot existed, we wouldn't have some sort of a record about it. So this is an ad to help support this podcast. No matter your relationship status or your thoughts on Valentine's Day,

we can all agree that some things are just better together. Peanut butter and jelly. Burton Ernt. I do like Burton Ernt a lot. A blockbuster movie and a bucket or seven of popcorn. You know what else is a perfect match? Listening to my favorite podcast on my Raycon Everyday Earbuds. I use my Raycon Everyday Earbuds truly every day, and they are still the ones that I love, the one that I want, ooh, ooh, ooh, and the one that I need. With optimized gel tips for the perfect in-ear fit. I have sensitive

ears. Historically, they've gotten sore with earbuds, but these ones do not hurt. And they I don't get like I don't get fatigue after wearing them for a while. They're so comfortable and they actually also stay in your ears, which if you've got ear canals like mine is kind of difficult. And like any serious love story, your Raycons are here for a good time and a long time with eight hours of playtime and 32 hours of battery life. So enjoy the earbud tap function. Enjoy the noise isolation. Enjoy the awareness mode. Enjoy Raycon by going to buyraycon.com slash all right today to get 15% off your Raycon order plus free shipping. That's buyraycon.com slash all right, A-L-R-I-G-H-T,

to score 15% off and free shipping. Buyraycon.com slash all right. Are you looking for a super offer for Super Bowl 58? Well, DraftKings Sportsbook has you covered. New customers can bet on the big game and turn five bucks into 200 instantly in bonus bets. I'm not a I'm not a big gambling expert or anything, but it looks like San Francisco 49ers are favored to win just a little bit. The negative 125 versus Casey's plus 105. So I guess the bean counters in the gambling world seem to think that the 49ers are going to win. I don't know, man, hard to bet against Andy Reid

and Patrick Mahomes given their success over the last, you know, six or seven years. It's a big decision you have under your hands and you can you can make it and then download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use the code ALRIGHT. that's A-L-R-I-G-H-T. New customers can bet five bucks and like I said, we'll get 200 instantly in bonus bets only at DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of Super Bowl 58 with code ALRIGHT, A-L-R-I-G-H-T. The crown is yours. If you have a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or in West Virginia, yours. If you have a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or in West Virginia, visit www.800gambler.net. In New York, call 877-8-HOPE-NY or just text HOPE-NY. That's 467-369. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling by calling 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

Please play responsibly on behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus age varies by jurisdiction, void in Ontario, bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. See dkng.com

slash football for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms, and responsible gaming resources. Download DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use code ALRIGHT. New customers can bet $5 to get 200 instantly in bonus bets. And that completes the ads that help support this podcast. All right. This episode is brought to you by Peloton.

Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at one Peloton dot C a slash bike slash rentals. All access membership separate terms apply. And that's what kind of fucked me up and sent the the dominoes falling because that got me thinking. What else probably isn't real? I'm not ready to throw in the talent aliens now especially now

uh when when things are just so interesting and we're looking so uh intently at the stars and and really trying to to explore them again that leaves like the loch ness monster and ghosts and i don't really give a shit about the loch ness monster one way or the other but ghosts uh man i've been believing in ghosts my whole life i saw a ghost when i was a kid but i got to thinking how many people have died like across all of existence i looked it up i'll let you guess for a second if you want to get i'll tell you this right now there are eight billion people on earth today eight 8 billion people alive today. How many people do you think in throughout the course of human existence? And obviously, we don't have census data that goes back to the beginning of time. So a lot of it is

all of it is estimated. But, you know, scientists are pretty fucking smart. So I think it's, you know, we've got some pretty solid estimates. The answer is 109 billion people. Think about that. 109 billion people have lived and died on the planet Earth. That's a lot of people. 117 billion people have existed. So that's basically 109 billion people plus the 8 billion that are alive today, right? So you get 117, think about that, 117 billion people have existed on this planet throughout history. 109 billion, that's like 98% or something, 97% of those people are fucking dead. Where's all the ghosts? dead where's all the ghosts when i had that realization in my head the other day i got so fucking sad because i i had a ghost hunting show it's one of the highest production value things roosterteeth has ever done and we did two seasons of it we went all over the united states we went to england and we went to aust Australia. We covered the world hunting ghosts. We had weird shit happen. Jeremy in Louisiana got scratched by a demon. I'm like 98% sure. But the just the sheer thought of 109 billion people having died.

people having died and there being like a few ghosts around like come on even if like what is a tenth of a percent of 109 billion people all right what is a god damn i'm gonna do math so even if a tenth of a percent of the people that have lived on this earth are ghosts like everybody else everybody else went to heaven or hell or wherever they they made their connections and they are and but but like a tenth of a percent that's such an infinitesimally small amount in the grand scheme of things that would be 109 million ghosts it would be so goddamn loud in every house every night at midnight when the lights go out and all the ghosts come out and start knocking shit over and start banging into stuff and start whispering and making the rooms cold there would be a hundred and a third of the population of america should be out haunting

the world right now that's a lot of ghosts you would think if there were 109 million ghosts and we're just adding to the pile right like i guess the only way to get rid of a ghost or a demon or whatever would be to exercise it or like figure out how to right the wrong that kept it on earth all these years and i don't think there's a lot of people that are running around trying to solve 150 year old murders or right wrongs or reconnect like a doll with a dead kid or whatever requires to help these entities move on to the other life. So it's just scaling, growing and growing and growing. We're adding to the ghosts every time people die. And I'm just throwing out one-tenth of one percent. It's probably way higher, right? It'd probably be

like a percent. Good Lord, there'd be a billion fucking people out there haunting the eight billion alive people. You'd have like a one in seven or one in eight chance of being haunted, which got me thinking, how many people have seen a ghost? So I looked that up and that answer actually lends some credence to it. I think 18% of Americans believe they've seen a ghost. Now, we have to take into consideration that that's just Americans and Americans are pretty fucking dumb, but I'm one of them. I've had multiple ghost experiences. I've only seen a ghost once, but, um, but I definitely did. And 18% of Americans also think they've seen ghosts, which is, you know, that's a pretty high number. Uh, also two, two and five people, they say, believe ghosts are real. I'm just having trouble with this number though. It's too many ghosts.

I'm sorry. It's just too, ghosts can't be real or there'd be too fucking many of them. God, that sucks. I really want to believe in ghosts. I saw a ghost. I've never told you the story of when I saw a ghost. Let me tell you the story. I was, you know what? I'm going to look up the movie because I remember the movie I saw. The Lone Ranger. I can tell you exactly when I saw a ghost. Well, it wasn't 1956. There you go. Legend of the Lone Ranger, 1981. In 1981, I was six years old. old my parents my mom and my stepdad at the time took me to see the lone ranger i thought it was very good i remember thinking tonto was way cooler than the lone ranger i remember thinking the lone ranger was pretty fucking cool too i don't remember

anything else about that movie uh other than their faces i can remember their faces and and thinking it was pretty fucking rad anyway i'm living in jacksonville florida off the saint john's river and in a swampy street like it's just a like a green a lot of spanish moss a lot of water moccasins it's where my my paralyzing fear of snakes began. Uh, it was actually a pretty fun little area to grow up, but like real fucking, just like, I don't know, man, kind of like midnight in the garden of good and evil, uh, vibes is how I remember it when I lived there. And so we're staying in this house, like at the end of a street, a long street, like real woodsy. And I only say that because it's all I remember about it like i don't remember how old

the house was it could have been 100 years old it could have been 20 years old i don't remember i kind of remember the layout enough to describe what i'm telling you but i don't really remember anything else about the home other than that there used to be snakes under the uh under the front porch like you'd have to go up on this deck to get into the house and i saw a snake like two or three times under there and it made it hard for me to go into the house sometimes because I was fucking terrified. However, we go to see the Lone Ranger and I'm fucking flying high from seeing that probably.

Coming home with my mom and my dad, it's night. You know, it was a nighttime movie. It's probably only kind of Friday or Saturday night, I think. And they, I remember my mom or or whoever my stuff that opens the door and I run into the house. And when you walked into that house, you walk into the house and it's like a sideways hallway where you can turn left and go to the bedrooms. Yeah, bedrooms and bathrooms. And then on the right, it goes to the kitchen and maybe like laundry room or garage, I believe. And then on the right, it goes to the kitchen and maybe like laundry room or garage, I believe. And then there's just a wall in front of you. But behind the wall is like a sunken in living room area. And there's like a door a little bit down on the left and a door a little bit, not even doors, just like opening areas, a little bit door on the right.

I hope I'm explaining that right. It's almost like you walk in the front of the house and it's sideways and you just walk into a in the middle of a hallway and you can turn left or turn right. And then if you turn left or right, either way couple feet in there's a cutout that lets you go into the sunken and living room and i remember my mom and my dad they walked in i remember the keys jangling and they walked in and they went to the kitchen probably to like grab a drink or i don't fucking know whatever they were doing maybe checking the voicemails on the phone or something and if god in 81 did we have a voicemail machine probably not i would have probably been before that i don't know interesting uh well anyway so they go that way and i i walk towards my bedroom so i go to the left the other way and as i'm walking in the corner of my eye i see somebody

in that cutaway. I see somebody in the living room. I turn and I look and there is a lady with dark hair and some sort of a robe on her that I don't recognize, but that's's kind of dressed traditionally and with like dark hair and like the little like a little fabric thing over her forehead with some like some beading on it and like a sarong or something that goes over her side. And I put her anywhere between 35 and 50 years old. Um, and she is sitting with her hands in her lap on the arm of like a lazy boy or like a, just a chair, like a big puffy chair. She's just like popped a squat on the arm and just kind of sitting there with her hands in her lap. And she's looking at me. She doesn't say anything. She's looking at me and I'm caught by surprise.

First off, because there's somebody in the house that I don't recognize. And secondly, because she's dressed very strangely. I don't think I had seen an Indian person or a person dressed like that. I should say at that point in my life yet, certainly not in middle of nowhere, bumfuck Southern America. right? And so I was wasn't until a couple years later, then I saw some somebody in

a movie or something. I went, Oh, fuck, that's what the lady was wearing. Now I understand how she was dressed. And I realized years later what it was, I just didn't understand at the time. And so I saw her and she looked at me and we just made eye contact. She was across the room and I was still in the hallway. And my first instinct as a kid was just to go to her, right? Like I, so I walked into the room. I remember walking down and I walked up to her. I got like maybe 10 feet from her, eight feet, something like that. And she just sat there perfectly still looking at me. And I said, uh, are you, are you, hi, are you here from my mom and dad? And she just kept looking at me. And suddenly I got real nervous. Like I remember getting real tingly and feeling really, I guess, threatened would be the word. And like, she never said anything. She just looked at me,

but the gaze started to feel really ominous. And I felt like I was in danger. I got really fucking like, like intensely scared. I remember that like blood running cold, kind of scared, scared. And suddenly I felt like, I remember looking around like my periphery and thinking just like, what the fuck out of here. Right. And, uh, and I said, uh, can I help you? And she just kept looking at me.

And so I screamed, mom, dad, there's a lady in the living room, and I just fucking ran toward the kitchen to tell them, and I go like, you gotta come in here, you gotta come in here, and they're like, what are you talking about? And I bring them back, and there's nobody there, right? And she was just gone, and I never saw her again.

I never had any kind of paranormal experience in that house again. I never had another paranormal experience until I was in my, uh, in my late twenties, actually, uh, mid to late twenties. And I can, maybe I'll tell a ghost stories episode or something, but I had a bunch of weird shit happened to me in the house. I, I owned when Millie was born and, um, never saw anything just, uh, experience some weird things, never saw anything, just experienced some weird things. But I never saw another,

quote unquote, ghost. And I still get a little creeped out when I think about it, even to this day. I can still see her pretty well. In my mind, I can still kind of see the room pretty well. I can still I mostly I can remember the feelings, you know, like they kind of stick with you. But and I don't really have an answer for who that lady was. I don't think she was a real lady who walked into the house, got caught breaking in or anything like that. Like it wasn't that vibe at all. She wasn't hurried by anything. She never moved. And when I left the room, she didn't like run out the house. There was no doors opening or closing or anything like that. So she would I think she would have been seen anyway because i was raising holy hell when i started screaming and running into the hallway and uh and i uh i guess i'll probably die never really understanding what that was but with 109 billion people dying i just find it hard to believe in ghosts. It really sucks.

Also, 109 billion people have existed throughout the course of history, approximately. If you ever needed a fact or a numerical figure to prove that your existence matters fuck all in the grand scheme of things, that's got to be it. We really are ephemeral ants. All right.