The Zach Nichols Podcast - Vendettas Episode 12 Review + the Ben Davis Interview! | ZNP EP. 164

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

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Welcome back to this Zach Nichols podcast. Remember, guys, June 6th, the summer solstice. Alamo draft house in Wrigleyville, Chicago, be there, B Squares. It's going to be a hell of a lineup. We're going to have a lot of fun. Yeah. And if you're lucky, you might just be able to come golf with us. Kick off the summer right.

Don't give them, get their hopes up. We might. We might. Kick off the summer right. If you're lucky, you might take home a big fettuccini. And I ain't talking about this. this, yeah, how I'm saying? We can't say that on here anymore.

Oh, yeah. You guys, that's not true. That is true because you might be able to go to Olive Garden with me after the show. But anyways, seriously. I will not be at Olive Garden. I don't go to those restaurants with Pierre anymore because of what happened to me in Arizona. You co-signed chilies. I did.

And that was the first and last time. If I think about that salsa, I'll bar up right now. All right. Anyways. There was chunks of something in the salsa. We don't know what. I don't want to dis chilies because I love chilies. I'd actually love a deal with chilies.

But Olive Garden is on a different tier, okay? I was never a huge fan of Olive Garden. You know why? You didn't go there with the right person. No, no, no, no. Listen, I probably throughout my life in college, I've had pretty much everything on their menu. I really have.

No chance. Maybe, maybe like, obviously. I've had the fettuccini. I've had the carbon. Have you had the lasagna, Frida? Do you know what it is? I have not had that. But here's my thing.

Here's my thing about Olive Garden. Don't dislike. I have nothing against Olive Garden. But I do have a gift card from Olive Garden that I've had for 20 years and I haven't used it. And I don't even know if it's good anymore. How's it not in my hands? You can have it. I don't care.

But with Olive Garden specifically. So if you're talking about food like chilies and you're talking about food, like there's chilies. There's chilies. Outback is kind of like similar. Like there's choices, right? And they're all kind of the same. But their food is very similar. If you're looking for that type of food.

looking for Italian food, there's always a better option for Italian food. I'll agree with that. But in terms of like, yeah, but in terms of like reliability, you can always, no matter where you're at, you can always go ask a local, be like, where's the best Italian food? And you can go there and it's going to below Olive Garden out of the water. I think, to me, there's something said about old reliable. That's why I like chains. I can know what I'm getting.

But anyways, besides the point. Chains have gotten worse in the last. 15 years, 20 years. Some of them have. They used to be legit. Name a chain that hasn't gotten worse. I mean, I would argue that Olive Garden has gained market share.

I mean, you know, Albeck is not as good. Definitely not as good. Yeah, Albeck's not as good. I love Outback, but it's not as good. I love Outback too. I think Outback is the one chain that I would still consider

for the cheese fries, the Cucabarrow wings, and the potato soup. But the potato soup is in as it used to be. Guys, let us know your favorite chains of food because I want to know where I stand if we're on the same level. So the only chain that I have remained reliable to. Jimmy Jones.

You are Jimmy John. I do like Jimmy Jones. You like that gargantuan. I get the biggest one, yes. And I get either the spicy Italian, if I have nothing going on the next day or the Italian nightclub. The spicy Italian just gets me the next morning. Oh, yeah.

You'll be. Dry heaving out my ass. You'll be doing what, what Nisa said that Trichel does. You'll be, you'll be Vaseline in that little, that area. No, you sunblock. It's so hot.

50 SPF. Dude, I'm telling you, that one gets me. But if you take activated charcoal, it helps. But if I have something going on this day, I just get an Italian nightclub, but I do have, I love that spicy relish, that pepper relish, but I can't always eat it. I used to eat whatever I wanted,

had the stomach like a billy goat. Getting older, man. It's not easy. Vendettas. We're in the nitty gritty. Like I said, welcome to the show. This is arguably one of my

favorite episodes to watch back. This is pure bullying in this episode. 100%, but so funny. It is really funny. We come back after the second mercenary appearance of the season to find Natalie once again flocking to the power, sitting on the floor. She's apologizing to Nelson after his victory.

And yeah, she's in tears because she really maxed him Nelson. She feels so bad. She felt guilty, I'm sure. Yeah. Off to the Daily. It's a badass spring in the middle of Spain. Dude, the location is on this season. This has got to be one of the coolest seasons for location.

Pristine. So southern Spain is amazing. Spanish treasure, it's called, where you guys jump off a rock into a, into a pond. The water was freezing. Oh, yeah? Yeah, cool. You had to dive in deposit balls to raise a treasure chest.

Yeah, and for the grenades, this is the important thing you've been talking about this. For a while, Cam chooses to use her grenade. to time crunch Kara. No surprise there. But this is before she knows that the teams will be chosen

after the grenades are set. Brad? We didn't want Cam on our team because she can't swim. But we wanted Brad on our team. So we assured him you're going to be on our team. And he asked a question.

And again, like I'm still maintaining this relationship of Brad where he thinks we're number ones. I clearly know we're not. He's not even in my top four. And so I'm like, okay, like, I just sent, but he's pissed. He didn't talk to me after that elimination run. He was mad because what happened to Brittany.

Like, that was dirty, obviously. And I'm man enough to admit it. Not proud of it, man enough to admit it. Shout out Big John. That's a Big John thing. Yeah. Not proud of it. Proud of it.

Man enough to admit it. That was a dirty. What is an example of something that he's not proud of, but man enough to admit? Going to the Don's. What's the Donalds? Oh, McDonald's. Oh, McDonald's. McDonald's.

Yeah. Going to the club. Puk it all over himself. Because he's supposed to be eaten clean. Oh, okay. What's something that you're not proud of, but man enough to besides this? Oh, there's a lot. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. There's a lot. I'm not

proud of a lot of things. But I'm not mad enough to men right now. Okay. Not proud of, not proud of a lot of the things I did on this episode. Man enough to admit it. Well, part of that. I'm out of it happy I did it though.

Sometimes it feels good to be bad though. Yeah. Tranka gets Burger King. We didn't know even know that until afterwards. But so when Brad and not like is like, well, I don't know what I'm going to use it. It didn't matter because he could have used it. But see, I think what he wanted was he wanted to steal the cash from someone. Because if we didn't say anything, he's just going to steal the cash.

I think that was one of them, if I'm not mistaken. So we were like, but at the same time, like I was spoke up right away because I'm like, I got to mend this relationship. We got to Brad. We got you, Brad. You're good. And like Brad also, remember earlier in the season when we were swimming underwater, he was one of the people that finished it. And so diving down, a lot of people can swim down. But not a lot of people can dive down into water. Diving down is tough. Mm-hmm. Holding something with air. Like, you got to have that strength to swim down. And I'm not even going to lie to you. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to do this. How far down? It looked like about four or five feet. Way farther than that. Oh, really? 10, 15. Was there a rope? and you weren't technically you weren't you weren't the rules were this you weren't allowed to grab the rope or the net to aid yourself and going down the one thing you could do was you were able to grab it to put it in there but if you use it to pull yourself down they they said they would have disqualified you another thing that they this um they didn't show in this episode was the our team actually went second oh okay we didn't go first so we watched them first which is why more of us weren't laughing because I kept telling Devin, I'm like, dude, shut up.

Because I was like, this is probably really hard. Because I don't know if you've ever tried to dive down and actually, like, swim down 10 feet while holding a ball that's poignant. Oh, I was going to say, like, this is it. That makes this way harder than it was very, it was very tough. So the Rings Challenge to me, like, obviously you guys talked about how hard it was, but the fact that you could use the ropes, not as hard.

Right. You know what I mean? Nothing was pushing you up. Right. Yeah, that, exactly. Yeah. But it was just, dude, when we were picking the teams, we couldn't even keep a straight face.

We were laughing so hard because we were like, Leroy, obviously, I mean, he got down to the ring, swim five feet. Kayla didn't do great in that challenge. Cam, horrible, Nelson can't swim. Kara can't swim. Anyone that's played water basketball in any capacity knows how hard this challenge is because you bring that buoyant ball down below. The further down you go, the harder it is because that ball is, you know.

It has that gravity. Pressure and stuff, yeah. No, very hard. So why did Brad choose Kyle over Nelson or Leroy for the time crunch? Because Kyle was working with us. Okay. And he had more probably, he knew he probably had a better relationship. So he wanted, he didn't want, because if Kyle was on our team, we probably choose him in the Troika.

Got it. So Brad knew if I do this, I can get into the Troika. Yeah. So even if you told him you're good, we're going to put you on our team. if he puts the if he puts the the time crunch on someone else you guys could still have Kyle

and say Brad oh well and also Kyle can swim very well so I think he wanted to ensure he's going over there so they're going to have all the bad swim because Brad's not dumb right understands the game and how to move right he just had no power he had no relationship

yeah I just didn't understand it because I'm like well Nelson and Leroy you know I thought he was why I thought it was cool with Kyle that's why they really didn't communicate very much in that season Well, Kyle gets pissed, calls him a prick. Well, yeah, because Kyle saw, like, I could have been on the winning team. Because Kyle would have been, you know, we could have done that. Had he tied up Nelson or them, we throw Brad over there.

But also putting Brad over there, you never know, like, what if Brad can single-handedly win this one, right? Because the other rule was not everyone even had to go. So Brad could have literally kept going back and forth, back and forth and doing it. And we knew this guy is a monster. He's huge, ripped, all muscle. He's going to sink anyways. We need him on our team to win this. And I wanted to just blow them out of the water

and make it not even close. Yeah. He set up the teams to do that. Oh, it was so funny. We were, they were literally getting saved by rescue canoes. Like, Cam was holding on to the tree that was dangling over the water to save herself. It was. That concludes the free preview of the Zach Nichols podcast.

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