Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / The Art Of Storytelling With Jonathan Phoinex | The Christian Reeve Podcast #235

Transcript

The Art Of Storytelling With Jonathan Phoinex | The Christian Reeve Podcast #235 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:03
  Podcast. Today's guest is an author,
• 0:06
  podcaster and storyteller hailing all the way from South
• 0:09
  Carolina. But before we get into that, a
• 0:11
  quick reminder to go and follow the show on YouTube, Spotify,
• 0:17
  Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts. Wherever you listen to the
• 0:20
  podcast, make sure you leave us a review.
• 0:22
  If you like this episode and other episodes that we've done,
• 0:26
  it really, really helps the show.
• 0:27
  There'll be a link to Pod Chaser in the review section down below
• 0:32
  the description. And make sure to subscribe to us
• 0:34
  on YouTube. All of that support really,
• 0:37
  really helps out the show. Make sure to join the Discord
• 0:40
  and also join our Patreon. OK, I think I'm done with the
• 0:43
  plug. Now back to our guest author,
• 0:45
  podcaster, and Storyteller hailing all the way from South
• 0:48
  Carolina. Jonathan Fenix, welcome to the
• 0:50
  show. How you doing buddy?
• 0:51
  Doing great. Thanks for having me.
• 0:53
  It's a pleasure to have you. But that quick promo thing, like
• 0:58
  I keep forgetting to do that and I'm trying to get into like the
• 1:02
  how you say like what's the word I'm looking for?
• 1:05
  My brain's just going right now. The rhythm of doing it or, you
• 1:09
  know, like doing it at the beginning or the end.
• 1:11
  And you know, like we all have like these processes that we
• 1:14
  need to adhere to and like try different things and whatnot.
• 1:17
  And I don't know, I always, I always kind of forget with that,
• 1:19
  like I have my process, but then sometimes I kind of like forget
• 1:24
  with these things. What's your process?
• 1:26
  So when I'm doing the podcast, I try to throw it in at the end.
• 1:30
  You know, as I'm wrapping up, I'm like, hey, remember to go
• 1:33
  remember, head over to D Care a lot of storyteller.com.
• 1:36
  Check out the podcast. Check out the links.
• 1:38
  Check out the merch. Check out the books.
• 1:40
  Get the information on my guests.
• 1:43
  But sometimes yeah, I'm like, Oh my pocket, we've run really long
• 1:47
  this time this one a little bit over.
• 1:50
  Thanks for listening. Stay spooky, my friends.
• 1:52
  And that's that's the end of the that's the end of the podcast.
• 1:56
  You know it's it's just and I'm like I didn't, I didn't ask for
• 2:00
  any plugs. I didn't ask for reviews.
• 2:01
  I didn't remind anybody about the website.
• 2:04
  How are they going to know? Because it really does.
• 2:08
  It really does help us out as podcasters.
• 2:10
  Just when you leave that review, you know, letting us know what
• 2:15
  you think or if you share it or if you subscribe, it really does
• 2:19
  help us out. It allows us to, you know, get
• 2:23
  enough to put back into the podcast because it's it's not
• 2:27
  exactly cheap to do this. I know.
• 2:30
  I'll tell you now, I've not earned a single penny from this.
• 2:33
  I love doing it. I would love to earn money from
• 2:35
  it. But yeah, you're you're not
• 2:37
  kidding, man. It's a lot of hard work, a lot
• 2:38
  of investment and who knows if it'll go somewhere, right?
• 2:42
  But one quick question I have to ask you before we sort of delve
• 2:45
  into your show and everything else.
• 2:48
  How long ago did you start sort of plugging?
• 2:50
  Like did you plug from the very beginning or did you sort of do
• 2:53
  it later on? And then, yeah, let's start
• 2:57
  there. I think I plugged a little bit
• 3:03
  from the beginning because I was the I was an author first.
• 3:07
  I started out when I started out writing, I was on TikTok and I
• 3:13
  released, you know I've released two books and then I started the
• 3:17
  podcast. So it was kind of a hey, if you
• 3:20
  want to know more you can go check out my books and and this
• 3:25
  and so I was always I was plugging my books from the
• 3:27
  beginning. When you're an author, you plug
• 3:31
  your books every chance you get. You know, hey, go, go.
• 3:34
  We're reading my books Through the Flames and Redcoats.
• 3:38
  Every chance you get, you should read Redcoats.
• 3:40
  It's a great book, especially if you're British and you want to,
• 3:45
  you know, get revenge on a Shanks for the Revolutionary
• 3:48
  War. It's a great book.
• 3:51
  I I asked because like I guess I've only just started doing
• 3:56
  this specific type of plugin. Like I've always kind of plugged
• 3:59
  here and there, but I used to just like to have the attitude
• 4:03
  of let the content speak for itself.
• 4:05
  But then I changed my mind a couple of years ago, mostly
• 4:08
  based on feedback from my wonderful viewers.
• 4:10
  Love you guys. Thank you so much and listeners.
• 4:13
  And I don't know like it, it works a little bit for me, but
• 4:17
  it's not like completely changed everything.
• 4:20
  I guess I just wanted to kind of speak to you a little bit on
• 4:22
  that for a minute like. It's got to be natural.
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  And there's nothing wrong with giving your audience a call to
• 4:28
  action. They're going to listen.
• 4:31
  But you know, letting them know, letting them know how important
• 4:33
  it is to you and how much it does mean to you, does give them
• 4:37
  that call to action to go and say, hey, you know what, we're
• 4:39
  going to, we're going to help out Christian and make sure that
• 4:42
  we support him so that he keeps making episodes.
• 4:45
  And when you're doing this, you know, one of the problems I
• 4:50
  found this is that I don't get a lot of interactions from my
• 4:53
  audience. You know, I have a couple of
• 4:57
  friends that do listen to the podcast and the most interaction
• 5:01
  I'll get is them coming up to me like, wow, that was a really
• 5:04
  good episode. That was really, that was really
• 5:07
  good. I really liked that story or I
• 5:08
  loved this story or I wasn't into that story.
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  But that's the feedback that I get.
• 5:14
  And you know, it's like I would really love some more feedback.
• 5:18
  We we podcasters, we need the feedback.
• 5:21
  Because it tells us what we're doing right and what we're doing
• 5:23
  wrong. It's really a learning thing,
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  even for people that have been doing this for four or five, ten
• 5:30
  years. You know, it's always an
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  evolving craft. I've found.
• 5:35
  And you know, I'm finishing up my first season with my podcast.
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  You know, I have. I just released an episode
• 5:43
  today. I've got two bonus episodes and
• 5:45
  two full episodes, and then my finale on Halloween night.
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  And I'm done until January, you know, And I'm taking, you know,
• 5:54
  two months off to make sure I work on next season and and get
• 5:57
  some good and some good content going.
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  But like, I've learned. I've learned a lot.
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  Like I've learned that, you know, sometimes the interviews
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  are sometimes instead of me just telling the story, me having
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  someone in to talk about the story I'm telling does better.
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  And sometimes the story sells for itself.
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  You know, sometimes they need that little back and forth,
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  sometimes they don't and it's it's a give and take and I'm
• 6:25
  still learning as I go along. So which I think it's always a
• 6:28
  learning process worse and as artists and content content
• 6:32
  creators, we're always growing and becoming something new.
• 6:37
  That's nicely put. Yeah, I totally agree.
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  I think the interesting part about this as well like to speak
• 6:42
  to what you just said is that your your audience is divided.
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  So like there's people in my audience who are very vocal and
• 6:49
  more say you know what they like, what they dislike etcetera
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  and it's brilliant, it's really helpful.
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  I do also think though there are like a there is always going to
• 6:57
  be a subsection of your audience who are just quiet.
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  You know they they really like the content.
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  Obviously they keep listening, they keep watching but they
• 7:06
  don't necessarily common and that doesn't necessarily reflect
• 7:09
  in a negative way. It's just that, you know, you're
• 7:11
  just listening, you know? It's the same way that if you're
• 7:15
  maybe your favorite live streamers, for example, maybe
• 7:17
  you just kind of want to sit, listen to it, have it on in the
• 7:20
  background, whatever. But you don't always necessarily
• 7:22
  want to engage. I know of myself when I listen
• 7:25
  to live streams, I don't tend to engage, mostly because like
• 7:28
  there's about 1000 comments, so you'll never get seen.
• 7:31
  But it's that kind of thing of like, you know, people interact
• 7:35
  with content differently, you know?
• 7:38
  Yeah, absolutely. And then let's not forget that,
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  like you said, you know, you might be think, they might be
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  thinking, oh, there's 1000 contents.
• 7:44
  I'm never going to hear from this person.
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  You know, when I started doing interviews because, you know, I
• 7:52
  started off, I was just going to tell stories and I had someone
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  say, hey, you should, you know, do podcasts with other people
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  and you know. And get some of their stories
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  and some of their feedback. So I reached out to an author
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  and a friend of mine, the demon folklorist Victoria J.
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  Her book comes out next month. She's a really good friend of
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  mine. And I was like, hey, do you want
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  to do my podcast with me? You have a podcast?
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  I have a podcast. I would love to have you come on
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  my show. Especially because you, you're
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  the demon expert and I've told some ghost stories that could be
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  demons. And we want to.
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  Passed that out and she was like, yeah, sure.
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  And she was supposed to be my first guest.
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  And it kept getting pushed back and kept getting pushed back.
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  And I ended up having another guest on.
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  He was a paranormal podcaster out of Tennessee and just so
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  happened I got him on the show after telling a story of Julia
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  Brown. Who was a voodoo priestess in
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  the early 1900s in New near New Orleans.
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  And she predicted that a town was going to be destroyed on the
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  day she died or as she was at her death she died.
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  And on the day of her funeral a hurricane came up and literally
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  swept 3 towns in New Orleans off the map.
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  And of course, everybody said, oh, she cursed the town.
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  But, you know, looking at who she was as a person, she was
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  warning the town. More than likely she knew
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  something was coming. Somehow, some way, she knew.
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  And you know, we had a really good conversation.
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  My entire episode was about her cursing the town, but after
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  talking to somebody who knew the background and had the
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  information because he grew up in that swamp where, you know,
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  the legend came from. And he's like, yeah, it was
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  probably more along the lines. You know, so getting the guests
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  in really changes things because you learn so much and I really
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  love doing it. Now I have to just ask you on,
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  on that specific story, were there any major clues in sort of
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  her particular life story that would lead one to believe that
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  that would be the kind of the final outcome for everybody?
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  What's interesting is, is that. The the, you know with ghost
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  stories and this is one of the things that I love doing about
• 10:31
  my podcast because you learn more when you start digging into
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  it. So with Julia Brown in
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  particular, the legend is, is that as she was getting older
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  and dying, she was mad at the town because they took her for
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  granted. And so she would sing songs, and
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  she began to sing a song about how this the town was going to
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  get wiped away when she died. The town was going to go with
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  her when she died and she sung prophetic songs.
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  Well, The thing is, is that Miss Brown, based off of her history,
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  she was a, she was a wet nurse, she helped birth kids.
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  She helped take care of people. You know she was she did
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  practice voodoo. But you know, the stigma around
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  voodoo is that it's bad, but voodoo is actually a religion
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  of. Peace, harmony and help and
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  voodoo actually integrates in with Catholicism.
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  It's it's something that's kind of been mixed in.
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  There are a lot of voodoo practitioners that are devotely
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  Catholic because it's not supposed to be a bad thing.
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  We only painted as a bad thing in the movies because it makes a
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  good scapegoat. And so.
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  Being that she was this, you know, very giving and caring
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  soul, it doesn't make sense for the sudden switch at the end.
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  So the evidence based on her past and how she treated her
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  family, how she treated the town is, is that when Auntie Julia
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  was sitting there singing the songs, she was trying to warn
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  the people and they didn't listen.
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  And you know it. Remember, if she was such a bad
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  person, there were 26 people at her funeral when the storm hit.
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  They went to evac. They went to run and hide in a
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  train depot, and the train depot was destroyed.
• 12:36
  You know, these people were there, you know, celebrating the
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  end of her life. Not celebrating that she was
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  gone, but celebrating her life. You don't get a group of people
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  coming to celebrate your life if you're a horrible person, you
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  know? So she was paid.
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  She was paid respect. She was treated with respect.
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  And for some reason she knew that a storm was coming.
• 13:03
  You know, you can take that any way that you want.
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  She made a guess. She was right and nobody
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  listened to her. Hurricane came and took the
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  towns away. And it's very interesting
• 13:17
  because the level of destruction from the hurricane is similar to
• 13:21
  the level from Hurricane Katrina.
• 13:23
  So when you start looking at it, you go, wait a minute, they knew
• 13:28
  that something like this could happen because they had it
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  happen almost 100 years before and they didn't do anything
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  about it. So when you look at Katrina,
• 13:35
  you're like, oh, this wasn't a surprise to them.
• 13:38
  This wasn't new. They knew something like this
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  could happen, as in like just, but they've taken the the.
• 13:48
  Instruction that a hurricane could cause, you know, everybody
• 13:53
  and a lot of people in the, the government surrounding New
• 13:57
  Orleans tried to say that they couldn't have ever expected
• 13:59
  something like this to happen. But then when you learn the
• 14:03
  history, something like that happened not even 100 years ago.
• 14:07
  Well, 100 years before it was 1915, I think, is when the
• 14:13
  hurricane wiped out. The towns in the Man Truck swamp
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  and in 2004, Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, 30 miles away.
• 14:23
  The same level of destruction, basically.
• 14:25
  Only it was a grand or the same type of destruction, basically
• 14:28
  only on a grander scale because you had a higher population base
• 14:33
  and no preparation. You know, it was once again, why
• 14:39
  didn't you pay attention and listen?
• 14:42
  No, no, I mean it's a good point.
• 14:44
  Especially if if if a particular location is is ill prepared, it
• 14:50
  just it just affects you in in in a different way.
• 14:52
  I mean, this is not even remotely the same thing, but
• 14:57
  when there's snow on a pretty big scale in London, they're
• 15:03
  always really, really ill prepared for especially like
• 15:07
  travel, like trains, stuff like that.
• 15:08
  It's pretty much all just out of service at that point, whereas
• 15:12
  the rest of the country is very used to having snow, let's say
• 15:15
  in the north it happens every year.
• 15:18
  Now we're starting to see that change.
• 15:20
  Certainly over the last, I'd say 10, maybe 15 years, it's it's
• 15:23
  changed considerably. But when I was a kid, like snow
• 15:26
  in London was just very like, you get like a laughable amount,
• 15:31
  you know, like nothing. But it's amazing how it puts
• 15:34
  everything to a standstill. And there's just basic things
• 15:37
  that people that that that you don't have, that you would have
• 15:41
  elsewhere. Like things are just having
• 15:43
  making, making sure you have the salt that you need to like melt
• 15:46
  the snow and stuff like that, and just like clearing the roads
• 15:48
  and so on. I live in the South of America.
• 15:54
  If it snows down here even the slightest bit, we think that
• 15:59
  it's the end of the world, like we start seeing snow.
• 16:03
  Nobody knows what to do when there's snow around here.
• 16:07
  You know, this far South snow is like apocalyptic to us.
• 16:12
  We we, you know, the kids love it.
• 16:16
  But anybody over the age of 18 is just like, Oh no, it's snow.
• 16:20
  We people don't know how to drive.
• 16:22
  Everything shuts down. It's just it's a mess.
• 16:26
  When it snows down here, the scare is scarier.
• 16:29
  Like the further away you are from, I suppose like inner city
• 16:34
  stuff like that, you know, especially if you're in like a
• 16:36
  rural location. I mean, you're just you're
• 16:39
  screwed really. Like, you know, access to to
• 16:43
  resources and stuff and yeah. You went to the grocery store
• 16:47
  yesterday, right? Yeah.
• 16:48
  Like stuff like that becomes a very real problem in those
• 16:52
  instances for people. And it's, it's, yeah, it's
• 16:55
  interesting. It's interesting though.
• 16:57
  Yes, it is. Let's go back to talking about
• 17:00
  your podcast. I want to just kind of shine a
• 17:01
  light on this. So it's called Let Me Tell You a
• 17:04
  Story, which is brilliant. I love, I love the name.
• 17:08
  Talk to us a little bit about like how this came to be like
• 17:10
  the idea behind it and and like I know you've sort of explained
• 17:14
  a little bit about the structure, but just kind of
• 17:16
  expand upon that a little bit for us.
• 17:18
  So I've always been a bit of a storyteller.
• 17:24
  I used to love hearing ghost stories and legends.
• 17:28
  And things like that. When I was younger, I grew up in
• 17:31
  Georgetown, SC. If you're not aware, it's 60
• 17:35
  miles north of Charleston. It's all just swarming with
• 17:40
  history and legend. Revolutionary War and everything
• 17:43
  took place there. Civil War and everything took
• 17:45
  place there. So you you grow up and you hear
• 17:48
  all these stories, and the way of telling stories by word of
• 17:53
  mouth is an art. It's an art form.
• 17:56
  And so I would listen to these stories and I'd wanna be able to
• 17:59
  tell the stories. So when I got older and I had
• 18:02
  kids and I had nieces and I had nephews, every Halloween would
• 18:06
  come around and I would sit around and I would tell the
• 18:09
  stories to the kids. I had this at one point.
• 18:13
  I had this Metallica skull that I called Frank.
• 18:16
  And it was, it was supposed to be an ashtray, but it was
• 18:20
  Metallica. And I put a little candle in his
• 18:22
  mouth and light the candle and I'd sit prank down and I'd tell
• 18:25
  the ghost stories to the kids every year at Halloween.
• 18:30
  And until the youngest was 12, I think, you know, just keep
• 18:34
  telling the stories. And then eventually, you know,
• 18:37
  it would come up and I'd tell the stories to friends and I'd
• 18:39
  tell stories about my time as a firefighter.
• 18:42
  And I was on Tiktok. I had just finished my second
• 18:47
  book, or no, I had just. I had published my second book.
• 18:51
  I was working on my 3rd, and I was telling a story about
• 19:01
  Lavanya Fisher, who she's a serial killer from Charleston.
• 19:06
  I can get into that later. But one of my coworkers looks at
• 19:10
  me and goes, I love listening to you tell stories.
• 19:14
  You should do that. And it was just like, OK, I'll
• 19:21
  do that. So I recorded 4 episodes and it
• 19:27
  was Lavanya Fisher. I told the story about fighting
• 19:33
  a fire. I told the story about a time I
• 19:36
  I dealt with a ghost and I told another story.
• 19:38
  Can't remember what the 4th one was, but those were the first
• 19:41
  four episodes and I kind of had those all lined up ready to go.
• 19:45
  And then I started the podcast with those lined up to come out
• 19:49
  every week and then started just recording different stories.
• 19:52
  And based off of, you know, the Lavanya Fisher was a huge hit.
• 19:57
  The firefighting story didn't take, didn't really go very far.
• 20:02
  And so it's kind of been just okay, I'm going to go with this
• 20:07
  story. That story didn't do that good,
• 20:09
  okay, let's try back this way. And it's kind of course
• 20:13
  correcting all the way through. But.
• 20:15
  That's really where it came from was somebody looked at me and
• 20:18
  said I love hearing you tell stories.
• 20:19
  Do it again and and if Nikki happens to see this.
• 20:25
  Thank you Nikki. Nikki's also my one of my only
• 20:29
  Patreon supporters. So thank you because that was
• 20:31
  your idea. This is all your fault.
• 20:35
  I gotta say that there's something to be said for.
• 20:39
  How captivating it can be when you find someone who knows how
• 20:44
  to tell a good story, and you mentioned that earlier about how
• 20:49
  it takes a certain kind of skill set to be able to tell these
• 20:52
  stories to people. So I guess my next question to
• 20:56
  you is, in your opinion, what does it mean to be a good
• 20:59
  storyteller? You have to get animated in the
• 21:05
  story. You don't necessarily have to do
• 21:08
  the voices, but it is a lot about delivery.
• 21:14
  Sometimes you got to take that Shatner ask.
• 21:17
  You know cadence. You know, if you know William
• 21:19
  Shatner's cadence, you know the. Oh God, stop this from
• 21:24
  happening. That would be Brad Shatner's
• 21:27
  cadence is because of his medical issues.
• 21:31
  But that cadence, the dramatic pauses, the knowing when to
• 21:36
  stop, knowing how to enunciate. It takes a lot of getting
• 21:40
  animated in the story, knowing how to deliver it.
• 21:43
  And some of that you can't learn, it's just natural.
• 21:47
  And others you have to practice over time, watching how others
• 21:53
  do it, seeing how they deliver their stories.
• 21:56
  I do a lot. I do listen to a lot of podcasts
• 21:58
  now, which I didn't before because I want to hear what
• 22:02
  everybody else is doing so I can improve what I'm doing.
• 22:06
  I like to, I like to listen in and go, OK, all right.
• 22:10
  I like how this was delivered. I didn't like how that was
• 22:12
  delivered. I like what they did there.
• 22:15
  You know, some people, they they do the voices and they can
• 22:19
  change their voice and doesn't go that pure.
• 22:21
  They can go down here. I'm not really good at that.
• 22:25
  I'd tell you pretty good. Sounds pretty good.
• 22:28
  My son is really good at that. I'm mediocre, but you know, they
• 22:33
  do all the different voices and I I don't do the different
• 22:35
  voices. I had to find my own take on it
• 22:40
  and I had to make it my own. And you know, when I'm doing a
• 22:45
  story, I do the research. So I'll give you the story or
• 22:49
  legend as it's told, and then I'll give you the facts, because
• 22:55
  I find that's the more, that's the more entertaining part.
• 22:59
  And now granted, if you know I was trying to scare somebody,
• 23:02
  I'd just tell them the story, leave the facts out.
• 23:04
  Who needs the facts? Stories better.
• 23:08
  I gotta say though, like there is something to be said for like
• 23:13
  the way a story's been told and obviously you covered some of
• 23:15
  that with your example. There were the cadence and the
• 23:18
  pauses, the dramatic, you know, for instance, I always bring
• 23:21
  this up, but I'm a huge professional wrestling fan and I
• 23:25
  gotta say that some of my favorite wrestlers.
• 23:29
  Or wrestling personalities have often been amazing storytellers
• 23:35
  and it's something about a combination of of their
• 23:39
  intensity, maybe their conviction, their passion, all
• 23:42
  these different things. And they will do it in different
• 23:44
  ways. So few examples for the
• 23:46
  listeners at home. CM Punk, Jim Cornett.
• 23:50
  Some good examples of good storytellers who they do it in
• 23:54
  very different ways. Jim Punk as an example is very
• 23:57
  passionate and and he can kind of win you over and pull you in.
• 24:02
  And he often uses the example of, you know, like he's going to
• 24:08
  bring in the house, which is like a resting term for like
• 24:11
  this is how I bring them in the building, you know, bring them
• 24:13
  in, lure them in into, you know, caring essentially.
• 24:17
  Whereas Jim Cornett was always very heated and passionate and
• 24:20
  he often played a bad guy and were kind of.
• 24:24
  You know, shout you down and stuff like that.
• 24:26
  Another good example is Jake the Snake Roberts, who to our point
• 24:31
  right about the whole he, instead of every other wrestler
• 24:36
  in his time, was like, I'm going to kick your ass and do the best
• 24:40
  pay for. You like all that, but Jake
• 24:43
  would just be really quiet and just be like, there's one I'm
• 24:47
  going to do to you the next pay-per-view.
• 24:50
  I'm going to lower your end, brother, and then we're going to
• 24:52
  go one-on-one and you're going to know that I'm serious because
• 24:56
  when I lose you in. It'll be the end of you, and
• 24:59
  it's just like really intense and you feel like a sinister
• 25:02
  kind of undertowing in there. And it's like that, whatever
• 25:08
  that element is being able to maybe like, convince people.
• 25:15
  That you you mean what you say, or being passionate in some way?
• 25:19
  Or do you know what I mean? Because like I often find
• 25:21
  sometimes when you're telling a story, the story doesn't even
• 25:24
  necessarily have to be that good.
• 25:26
  But the way you tell it is everything.
• 25:30
  Well, remember, nothing sells a story better than a good
• 25:33
  villain. Sure.
• 25:34
  And in the and particularly in wrestling, you know a lot of
• 25:40
  people give give wrestling a lot of crap, but there is a lot of
• 25:44
  artistry that is done not just in their movements in the ring,
• 25:49
  but in how they talk and how they deal with each other.
• 25:52
  If you ever see these guys outside, you would not believe
• 25:56
  that they were the people that were that were just on stage
• 26:00
  trash talking to each other. And not only that, but the ones
• 26:05
  that can change their characters.
• 26:08
  A good example is Paul the Voice, Hunter, Hurst Helmsley,
• 26:14
  Shawn Michaels, the two of them going from being single
• 26:19
  wrestlers to the goofy DX to the just downright degenerate DX.
• 26:27
  Then you know Shawn Michaels going to the Professional
• 26:30
  Commissioner with DX backing them the changes that these
• 26:34
  characters were able to make and evolving.
• 26:38
  Another good example would be the Undertaker's character,
• 26:42
  which and not only continuously evolved throughout his career,
• 26:48
  but he was able to give you there was a real story with that
• 26:53
  character. Even when he went from being the
• 26:57
  dead man to the American badass riding around on the motorcycle,
• 27:01
  you know there was no more hat and gloves.
• 27:04
  You know, he was just this big dude on a motorcycle that just
• 27:07
  beat people up. Even when he went to that level,
• 27:12
  he was still to giving you a story.
• 27:17
  Dwayne Johnson to Rock Johnson. You know, great at delivery
• 27:23
  Macho Man. Randy Savage, you know.
• 27:30
  Oh yeah. The Macho Man is here today to
• 27:32
  tell you something, brother. You know, he was able to just he
• 27:37
  he delivered in such a way that for one, you always knew it was
• 27:43
  him. You didn't have to be in the
• 27:44
  room. You heard that voice and you
• 27:46
  knew it was Macho Man. It didn't matter if he was in a
• 27:51
  cartoon, didn't matter if he was in a movie fighting Spiderman,
• 27:56
  no matter where he was. You knew Macho Man.
• 27:58
  You knew if somebody was, if somebody even said the words, Oh
• 28:02
  yeah, you immediately went Macho Man.
• 28:05
  You knew what they were talking about.
• 28:07
  He was iconic in that delivery. Another good example is Sting.
• 28:14
  Sting did it without saying a word.
• 28:17
  Sting put on Sting, put on the crow makeup and then the crow
• 28:23
  outfit and literally just did his entire storytelling for
• 28:30
  years with just his mannerisms, his look, his body.
• 28:35
  There's a lot that goes into professional wrestling when it
• 28:40
  comes to telling a story. And you know, a lot of that you
• 28:45
  bring into when you're telling the story to something that
• 28:47
  those are the things that make a good storyteller is, you know,
• 28:52
  these professional wrestlers are great examples of it.
• 28:56
  You know, you point out actors all the time, Oh, this actors
• 28:58
  great, that actors great. And put that actor up on up in
• 29:04
  front of a whole bunch of people and let them go go see somebody
• 29:06
  on Broadway. They're great.
• 29:08
  I think something that's really like, yeah, I totally agree with
• 29:11
  all of that. I've spoken on the show about
• 29:14
  storytelling with wrestling. I'll defend wrestling to the
• 29:16
  end. I don't care.
• 29:16
  Wrestling is amazing. It's brilliant.
• 29:19
  Wrestlers don't get nearly enough credit for the amount of
• 29:22
  hard work they put into commitment to character acting,
• 29:26
  method acting, their storytelling, everything.
• 29:29
  Like it's There's so much in wrestling from a psychological
• 29:32
  perspective to dissect, and it really is.
• 29:36
  Incredible what some of these people pull off, and I'll never
• 29:39
  be I'll never stop being amazed. But one thing I find that that's
• 29:44
  really interesting, that I've not really seen anywhere else in
• 29:46
  wrestling is these shoot interviews.
• 29:49
  So for anyone who doesn't know what that is, you can go on
• 29:52
  YouTube and you can find like hundreds of these interviews
• 29:56
  with professional wrestlers. Who basically to shoot in the
• 30:00
  wrestling industry is when you tell the truth, when you like,
• 30:04
  you actually tell behind the scenes stuff or you know, you
• 30:09
  kind of reveal things maybe that you shouldn't.
• 30:11
  You know. And in the context of on a
• 30:14
  wrestling show, they would often do this in order to kind of pull
• 30:20
  you, lure you in with the story because everyone know, all the
• 30:22
  fans know that it's it's a work, it's not real, etcetera, right.
• 30:26
  But with these stories, the whole point was to kind of lure
• 30:29
  you in, where maybe 2/3 of the story you're being told, you
• 30:33
  know, is to be true. But then that third element is
• 30:36
  the lie, the work. And it's like, oh, I know this
• 30:40
  is true and I know this is true, but hang on, they're telling me
• 30:44
  this. Oh, I don't.
• 30:45
  And that's how they lure you in and bring you in to invest it in
• 30:50
  the story. Mick Foley was good at that.
• 30:53
  One of the when he when he broke, when he broke away from
• 30:56
  just being mankind and you know, they started introducing him as
• 31:01
  Mrs. Foley's baby boy. He literally would be like, let
• 31:06
  me, let me talk about, let me talk about all these things I've
• 31:09
  done in my career that none of these other guys would do that
• 31:13
  has made me the person I am. That shows me, that shows you
• 31:16
  how dangerous I am, All these things that I've done.
• 31:19
  You know, I started at this age and I did this and and Mick
• 31:23
  Foley would deliver his stories in that way, you know, doing
• 31:27
  callbacks, the things that he did.
• 31:29
  And then he'd bring it forward and then he'd start getting a
• 31:32
  higher pitch and start getting more excited.
• 31:35
  And you know, he he kind of the anger in him would, you'd seem
• 31:39
  like the anger was rising and his pitch would get higher and
• 31:43
  you know, the things that he would say would just get more
• 31:44
  and more violent. You're like, oh wow, he's crazy.
• 31:50
  And it's actually a very carried individual and a loving father
• 31:52
  and Oh yeah, you know. Yeah, what you were saying
• 31:55
  before about how how wrestlers and and and like how they are in
• 31:58
  real life are two different things.
• 32:00
  I mean, with some wrestlers they live the gimmick.
• 32:02
  Like Hulk Hogan is just Hulk Hogan.
• 32:04
  Ric Flair is just Ric Flair. Like, that's the real let's talk
• 32:08
  about, well, no, Ric Flair is just Ric Flair.
• 32:12
  I've actually met Ric Flair four times.
• 32:16
  Damn. I am.
• 32:18
  And. What is it?
• 32:20
  Sorry, is, is that the last time that I met him?
• 32:24
  He remembered me and I'm just like I'm you know, I I've met
• 32:28
  him and it it had been several years.
• 32:30
  I player frequented Myrtle Beach where I grew up.
• 32:36
  So I I had seen him at the Garden City Pier before.
• 32:40
  I had seen him at another appearance.
• 32:43
  I had actually gone to a WWA WCW show and seen and met him and
• 32:50
  several other wrestlers. And then I went to a hockey game
• 32:54
  in Charleston and it was Ric Flair night and person I was
• 33:01
  with wanted to go get their photo with Ric Flair and I walk
• 33:04
  up and he's like, John, how you doing?
• 33:07
  And I was just like. Wow, that's lovely.
• 33:10
  And I was, I was, I was was a date night.
• 33:14
  And you know the photographer wanted to put flare in the
• 33:16
  middle. And he's like, no, I'm not doing
• 33:18
  that to my guy. I will stand over here with my
• 33:21
  guy. We're all going to holler
• 33:22
  together, you know, I'm not going to get, no, I'm not going
• 33:25
  to do that to him. We're going to do the photo like
• 33:27
  this. And you know, he's just a very,
• 33:30
  he's always flare, but he's not always flare, if you know what
• 33:37
  I'm saying, there are like Hulk Hogan is always Hulk Hogan.
• 33:41
  When I when I say like he flair is always flair, what what I
• 33:44
  mean is obviously like he's not like bad guy trying to screw you
• 33:47
  over flair. I mean more like the partygoer
• 33:51
  gimmick like that that is legitimately him as a human
• 33:55
  being as more, well, he's he definitely is a party guy, but
• 33:59
  he also does have a laid backside to him.
• 34:01
  He's not the He's not the kiss. Stealing, Wheeling and dealing.
• 34:05
  Right. Yeah he is the he is the
• 34:07
  limousine riding you know jet flying.
• 34:10
  You know good time having and very friendly very genuine
• 34:15
  individual and he's very humbled by the love that he gets from
• 34:21
  his fans. He he really does.
• 34:24
  He's come from you know he's come up from the bottom.
• 34:28
  He's become one of the biggest names in an industry.
• 34:33
  Everybody knows who Rick Claire is.
• 34:34
  Everybody knows the Woo. Everybody knows the Four
• 34:38
  Horsemen. When you hold up before they
• 34:39
  know what that means, he's become an iconic symbol.
• 34:45
  Even the people that don't know wrestling, they know Flair
• 34:48
  absolutely. And you know, sometimes he's
• 34:50
  used as the look at this guy, obviously he's the reason
• 34:54
  wrestling is back. He's even used as you know, the
• 34:57
  derogatory for look at how horrible this is.
• 35:00
  Look at him, He hit the guy, glow blow the guy, you know, he
• 35:03
  did this. He did that.
• 35:05
  That's the best stuff about wrestling.
• 35:06
  What? That's a clear for you, you
• 35:09
  know, dirtiest player in the game.
• 35:11
  That's the best thing ever. Yeah, it is.
• 35:16
  He's also a very humbled individual by it.
• 35:20
  And so, you know, I was really meeting him was probably a great
• 35:25
  experience for me because I got to see that, you know, these
• 35:31
  people that you see on the television that you see and
• 35:36
  these things, even when you see them in the promos there,
• 35:40
  there's a different side to them that you never get to see unless
• 35:43
  you meet them in person. A modern wrestling example which
• 35:47
  I thought was really good to this point was are you familiar
• 35:50
  with Eddie Kingston, the A W wrestler Kingston?
• 35:56
  He was in he was in N.W.A for a bit and then he's he's been on a
• 36:01
  W television. He's I it's difficult to explain
• 36:04
  his gimmick. He's kind of a brawler.
• 36:08
  I think he's from New York so he's got that kind of like the
• 36:11
  you know Brooklyn kind of vibe or sorry I don't I can't
• 36:14
  remember where he's from but that's kind of his setup.
• 36:17
  He's like a brawler you know kind of kind of deal.
• 36:20
  But I remember one time he was talking about his character.
• 36:25
  And he said his character is essentially what he was like
• 36:29
  when he was like 1819 years old, amped up to like the mth degree.
• 36:36
  You know, like that's not him as a human being now.
• 36:38
  But he went to the point, took inspiration from his life, took
• 36:43
  something that was real, and turned it into something.
• 36:46
  And I feel like a lot, a lot of these wrestlers tend to do that.
• 36:48
  Like sometimes they just create a character out of nothing like
• 36:52
  Sting did with the crow, which was obviously, as we know was
• 36:55
  based on the crow, but also other elements and he they put
• 36:58
  it together right. And then you get you get these
• 37:01
  wrestlers who will take elements from their real life and try to
• 37:06
  blend it with fiction or amp it up in some way, and then that's
• 37:10
  what creates the character. I always find that interesting,
• 37:13
  particularly when they take elements from their real life
• 37:15
  because it's blurring the lines a little bit.
• 37:17
  It's like where does the character end and then the human
• 37:21
  start and and vice versa. Because sometimes you just, you
• 37:24
  learn about a completely different person.
• 37:26
  Like, for example, Gray Wyatt, who we lost recently, is a good
• 37:31
  example of this because when he passed away, we're hearing all
• 37:37
  these stories about the man, Wyndham Rotunda, and what?
• 37:41
  He was like and it's like night and day is like obviously and
• 37:45
  obviously because like the The Fiend and Ray Wyatt was a
• 37:49
  character. But you know I think the only
• 37:52
  real, and I'm just theorizing here but like the only element
• 37:55
  of Wyndham that was in that character was his mind for
• 37:58
  storytelling and and his creative mind and and that was
• 38:05
  all him. But then the character is a
• 38:07
  character kind of thing. Yeah.
• 38:09
  So he's he's a great, again, great example of a good
• 38:12
  storyteller and a great example of, you know, the difference
• 38:19
  between the character that you see and the real person.
• 38:23
  Another good one is Andre the Giant.
• 38:25
  You know, he was OK, so everybody saw Andre the Giant.
• 38:29
  He's Andre the Giant. Oh, I Big Dog.
• 38:32
  You know, and he was always the bad guy.
• 38:34
  He was supposed to be this unstoppable bad guy.
• 38:36
  He didn't really do a lot of promos.
• 38:40
  Have you ever heard of the movie The Princess Bride?
• 38:43
  I have heard of it, yeah. I've not seen it, but I've seen
• 38:45
  clips. I've seen his part in it and
• 38:47
  everything. So the cast of The Princess
• 38:52
  Bride spent a lot of time working with Andre the Giant,
• 38:55
  this big man who are in granted wrestlers too have talked about
• 38:59
  him. Andre as a person was a very
• 39:03
  peaceful, kind, you know, nonviolent soul.
• 39:08
  He was, you know, Andre as a wrestler was this big hulking
• 39:12
  guy. He slapped that hand on you, you
• 39:14
  know, You know, he started with freaking big hand moves.
• 39:19
  He was just a monster you'd be terrified of.
• 39:22
  But as a person, as just an ordinary, as just an ordinary
• 39:26
  guy, he'd me out on the street. He was just a lovable giant, you
• 39:32
  know? He was, yeah, he was huge.
• 39:34
  You know, Billy Crystal said it right when he looked at him and
• 39:36
  went you law, the Brute squad. He was the Brute squad.
• 39:40
  But, you know, he didn't want to be.
• 39:46
  He wanted to be everybody's friend.
• 39:49
  He wanted to be nice to everybody.
• 39:51
  He wanted to. He wanted to.
• 39:53
  He wanted to, you know, be kind and generous and caring.
• 39:56
  And he was up until his untimely passing 90s and, you know, a lot
• 40:02
  of wrestlers. Who worked with him, remember
• 40:05
  him fondly and you know, a lot of wrestlers looked up to him
• 40:09
  because he was able to deliver the big man who, you know, put
• 40:16
  on this, the big man who was so terrifying but still be himself
• 40:22
  outside of the ring. And I think he inspired a lot of
• 40:25
  the big man wrestlers that we've seen in the past.
• 40:30
  And and I'm not up on the current wrestling, I've kind of
• 40:33
  been out of it for a few years. I get it.
• 40:36
  I I, I my, my favorites have all, you know, gone to pasture.
• 40:41
  They don't even get in the ring anymore.
• 40:43
  So it's kind of like it's a new, you know, I look at it every
• 40:46
  once in a while and be like, I remember the days when you know,
• 40:51
  the rock would come out and say it doesn't matter what your name
• 40:55
  is, you know, or Stone Cold would say.
• 40:57
  That's the bottom line. And you know, I'd get all
• 41:00
  excited. NWO would come out.
• 41:01
  I remember those days. What in the world are they doing
• 41:03
  now? What do you say?
• 41:04
  Who is this? I don't know who this is.
• 41:07
  Modern wrestling is is very hit and miss.
• 41:10
  There is still excellent storytelling and wrestling going
• 41:14
  on, but where it used to be, you know, pretty much the whole
• 41:19
  card, now it's like. Small segments or certain feud,
• 41:26
  certain matches like that. Wrestling is still alive and
• 41:28
  well but it's just not, you know it's just not the attitude error
• 41:34
  anymore. It's not the golden error
• 41:35
  anymore. Like the things different and
• 41:37
  obviously things change. I think.
• 41:39
  I think the problem with modern wrestling, I mean I could go on
• 41:43
  all day about this. I did an episode recently that
• 41:47
  people should check out on on wrestling.
• 41:50
  The biggest problem? Is that there's too much focus
• 41:53
  on the in ring product and not enough focus on the tangible
• 41:58
  story being told. Now to be clear, you can tell a
• 42:01
  story in the ring. You can absolutely do that.
• 42:04
  You can have two guys just or two girls get in the ring, have
• 42:07
  a fight and you can tell a story as you go along.
• 42:10
  But they don't even do that. There's a between Mankind and
• 42:13
  Undertaker told the story. There you go and there.
• 42:18
  And there was a story going into that as well.
• 42:21
  So, right. I always look at it as like
• 42:24
  investment. You know, the story pulls you in
• 42:27
  and then the match is like the conclusion or the continuation
• 42:31
  of the story, you know. And a story obviously has a
• 42:34
  beginning, middle and end and there you go.
• 42:37
  But that's what always draws you in the stakes at hand, all the
• 42:42
  different things that happen along the way.
• 42:44
  If, for example, very basic story, but if it's a person,
• 42:47
  champ, chasing the championship. Then it's, you know, what are
• 42:51
  the struggles that they had to go through to get there?
• 42:53
  A good modern example right now, which is being told over a long
• 42:57
  term period, is Cody Rhodes trying to become the the WWE
• 43:02
  Champion and he's already lost against Roman Reigns.
• 43:05
  The big guy, the main guy, right.
• 43:07
  We've already seen that loss and a lot of people walked out in
• 43:10
  that going, oh, it's over, then the story's over.
• 43:13
  It's not going to happen. And now he's got to have to come
• 43:15
  back. Exactly.
• 43:17
  This is what Triple H said at the end of WrestleMania in the
• 43:20
  press conference I believe, or sometime afterwards, he said.
• 43:23
  The story continues and that was, and just recently on the
• 43:30
  past Smackdown, they had like a bit of an altercation, like a
• 43:33
  bit of a stare down and I was like oh, and already that's
• 43:36
  brought people in. They're like excited because
• 43:38
  this is the first time they've been face to face for a long
• 43:41
  time and that's and it's reignited a fire in there.
• 43:46
  Because it's part of a longer story arc and and so I'm going
• 43:53
  to get away from wrestling a little bit.
• 43:54
  Yeah, please do. Yeah, I just use it as an
• 43:56
  example, but but wrestling and comic books kind of work in the
• 44:03
  same way. If you look at it and the comic
• 44:05
  books have had their, you know, you had the Golden Age and you
• 44:08
  had the Silver Age, and to a lot of people, the Silver Age comics
• 44:11
  are ridiculous. Then we got the Bronze Age,
• 44:17
  which was the 80s, dark and gritty.
• 44:20
  Then we hit the, you know, then we hit the kind of what do we
• 44:26
  call it, the dark, the dark times.
• 44:28
  And now we've got the modern age of the comics, you know, the
• 44:32
  Bronze Age. You had your Your Killing Joke,
• 44:38
  Dark Knight Returns, Dark Phoenix Saga, and then as it as
• 44:45
  it started transforming, as it started transitioning, you
• 44:50
  started getting into comic books that really started messing with
• 44:52
  you. We killed Superman.
• 44:55
  We broke Batman's back. We got a new Spiderman.
• 45:02
  You know, we we did things. Captain America died.
• 45:06
  We did things that, well, not we, but they did things in the
• 45:11
  comics and in these stories that were these long running stories
• 45:15
  that affected major change. But they also changed the
• 45:21
  stories with the times and a lot of people, they pick up a comic
• 45:25
  book and they go, oh I don't like it anymore.
• 45:26
  It's not this and it's like you, you don't understand.
• 45:30
  Stories have to evolve. You know, your characters aren't
• 45:33
  always going to be the same because the story is going to
• 45:36
  evolve. You know, if Batman was still
• 45:39
  the Batman he was in 1930s running around using guns, you
• 45:45
  know, he wouldn't be the character that he is today.
• 45:49
  You know, if he was the Batman from the 1960s, you know, he,
• 45:54
  the Batman from the 1960s was a duly deputized officer of the
• 45:57
  law. You know, he, he had a badge.
• 46:01
  He worked with the police. He wasn't a vigilante.
• 46:04
  He was a cop. He was a cop and a costume.
• 46:08
  That's who the Batman was. Outrageous accusations.
• 46:13
  That's good. It's it's the truth.
• 46:14
  It's true. It's the truth.
• 46:17
  Adam West's Batman was a cop in a costume.
• 46:22
  But Adam West was a great Batman.
• 46:25
  Adam West was probably If you were to rate them all on their
• 46:31
  delivery of the character, Adam West may be the best Batman.
• 46:35
  Now, is he the best overall? No, no.
• 46:41
  That argument can be given to Keaton.
• 46:43
  You can say that it was Bale. You can say that it was Affleck.
• 46:49
  You know, honestly, it was Kevin Conroy.
• 46:53
  For anybody who doesn't know, Kevin Conroy voiced him in
• 46:56
  Batman The Animated Series, and he's gone now.
• 46:59
  But Kevin Conroy is the best Batman, period.
• 47:03
  But you know that character changed and evolved, and it
• 47:09
  wasn't the same character that Adam West played when Michael
• 47:14
  Keaton put on the bat suit when Kevin Conroy voiced him.
• 47:19
  The Joker wasn't the same character in Cesar Romero's time
• 47:23
  that he was when Jack Nicholson played him or when Mark Hamill
• 47:28
  voiced him or when Heath Ledger delivered his performance.
• 47:34
  Yeah, that's all I want to say about the Joker.
• 47:39
  You know, in the comic books, these deliveries of these
• 47:44
  characters, as they evolve over time, it's storytelling changing
• 47:49
  with the times. And when you're telling a story,
• 47:52
  sometimes you have to change your approach.
• 47:54
  So the story is always going to change.
• 47:56
  So I can tell you a story and then you go deliver that story
• 48:01
  to somebody else and your delivery is going to be
• 48:04
  different than mine. Your story is going to change.
• 48:08
  You might find, you know, parts of the story that you think
• 48:12
  deserve more attention than I do.
• 48:15
  You know, you might decide the character needs to shift a
• 48:18
  little bit because it is a story.
• 48:20
  And going back to this, my first episode is on Lavonia Fisher.
• 48:27
  Now Lavonia Fisher in Charleston is called, rumored to be
• 48:31
  America's first female serial killer.
• 48:34
  Yes, her first female serial killer, Levani Fischer, was
• 48:38
  executed. Well, she executed herself
• 48:41
  really. Because on the gallows she
• 48:43
  looked at people and said if you have any messages for the devil,
• 48:47
  give them to me now, for I shall see him directly.
• 48:50
  And then she walked off the gallows.
• 48:53
  She didn't let them hang her. She hung herself and the legend
• 49:01
  is that she planned all these murders and she did this and she
• 49:04
  did that. But the truth of the matter is
• 49:07
  Lavonia Fischer wasn't executed for murder.
• 49:11
  She was executed for Hwy. robbery because she was accused
• 49:15
  of being part of a gang that were robbing of highwaymen that
• 49:21
  were robbing merchants coming into Charleston in the early in
• 49:26
  the early 1800s. Just before the War of 1812.
• 49:31
  She was accused of killing these men.
• 49:34
  She wasn't accused of killing these men, she was accused of
• 49:36
  robbing them. There was never any murders tied
• 49:42
  to her, but there were so many unsolved murders and so many
• 49:49
  bodies found that 12 years after her death, a writer came in and
• 49:57
  changed the story. He told his version of the story
• 50:00
  and his version of the story. Lavanya Fisher, who was a very
• 50:03
  meek woman who, you know, obedient to her husband, very
• 50:08
  pretty but not really dolled up, became this very strong willed
• 50:13
  woman who dressed to the nines, who planned out these murders so
• 50:20
  meticulously that in some versions of the story she had a
• 50:24
  mechanical device so that when she pulled the liver, the bed
• 50:29
  that her victims were sleeping on would drop out from
• 50:31
  underneath them and they would fall into a pit of spikes and
• 50:33
  die. Oh.
• 50:34
  My gosh. And then they would expose,
• 50:38
  dispose of the bodies and she would take all their, all the
• 50:42
  old gotten gang. And she was just this murderous
• 50:47
  woman. And supposedly she strolled
• 50:49
  through the streets in her pristine white dress with her
• 50:52
  held head held head up high. And you know, when they paraded
• 50:56
  these people through the streets, it was so that the
• 50:59
  townsfolk could kind of ridicule them and yell at them.
• 51:02
  But no one dare spoke when Lavanya walked because they were
• 51:07
  all afraid of her. In reality, she wrote a carriage
• 51:11
  from the courthouse to the gallows.
• 51:15
  She was protected the entire way, so nobody could.
• 51:18
  She was very meek. She was dressed probably in a
• 51:21
  very torn and worn dress, and up until she realized that no one
• 51:27
  was going to save her, she still thought that, you know, it was
• 51:33
  when she hit the gallows that she flipped and started cussing
• 51:37
  and yelling and screaming and fighting because she realized no
• 51:40
  one was going to save her. She honestly thought that this
• 51:44
  can't happen to me. Nobody's going to hang me.
• 51:47
  My husband's going to stop it. Well, her husband was already
• 51:49
  hung and dead because he was one of The Highwaymen.
• 51:53
  He accosted someone and they got caught.
• 51:56
  So it's really interesting how there's a bunch of dead bodies.
• 52:03
  So Lavonia Fisher is the serial killer in the story, but in
• 52:10
  reality, no one knows where the dead bodies are.
• 52:14
  No one knows who killed the dead bodies.
• 52:17
  Lavonia Fisher was executed for being associated with a gang of
• 52:21
  highwaymen who are responsible for several robberies, several
• 52:28
  murders that are unsolved, and we're all executed together.
• 52:32
  She was executed with the gang because her husband was the
• 52:35
  leader of the gang. She may have never had any
• 52:39
  involvement whatsoever, but she died by association.
• 52:45
  But in the legend, she's a vicious, murderous person.
• 52:49
  And that's how stories evolve sometimes.
• 52:52
  And that's also one of the things I like to do it with my
• 52:55
  show, is I like to go okay. Here's this legend.
• 52:57
  It's a great legend. Oh, by the way, here's the real
• 53:00
  story, just so you don't go around thinking I'm besmirching
• 53:05
  this person's good name. Well, here's what really
• 53:07
  freaking happened, Okay. Just just calm down.
• 53:11
  She's not really out there walking around in a white dress.
• 53:15
  She might be walking around in something else, but it's not her
• 53:18
  okay. There you go.
• 53:23
  Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it.
• 53:25
  I I think it speaks volumes about as you said like this idea
• 53:31
  of like how will you tell a story.
• 53:33
  You know like it's it's that and also just the fact that, you
• 53:37
  know, it's been like Chinese whispers really.
• 53:38
  A story gets told a million times and it evolves and changes
• 53:41
  to something where sometimes it's so far removed from what
• 53:44
  this story actually is that it's not even.
• 53:46
  It's just a work of fiction at this point.
• 53:49
  If it's based on a true story, I mean, yeah, but also, you know,
• 53:55
  we get our legends, we get a lot of our history.
• 54:00
  All of it comes from storytelling, you know, and you
• 54:06
  know in 100 and 5200 years, will they think that a man from space
• 54:14
  actually leap the Empire State Building and stop the
• 54:17
  locomotive? Will they think that some guy
• 54:19
  dressed up as a bat to fight crime in a drugadled city, You
• 54:24
  know, in 3-4 hundred years are they going to think that?
• 54:28
  No. But they might still be telling
• 54:29
  the stories. You know, they might know that.
• 54:33
  You know it's it's not real, but those stories will still be
• 54:37
  there. You know, we tell stories today
• 54:40
  of, you know, the gods of Olympus, Zeus, and it's
• 54:46
  Thunderbolt. You know, we tell stories of
• 54:49
  Beowulf, you know, fighting the Grindle.
• 54:54
  You know, sure, maybe something along those lines happened, but
• 54:59
  it probably isn't as grand as the story that we make of it.
• 55:03
  But the story is what spreads the legend and it's what keeps
• 55:07
  the history alive, because there are aspects in the story that
• 55:13
  have a deeper meaning, you know. And that's that's the beauty of
• 55:19
  storytelling. And that's one of the reasons
• 55:22
  why I do it, is because I'm keeping in the stories alive.
• 55:26
  And you got some brilliant stories.
• 55:27
  I want to kind of pick your brain on that and and try a few
• 55:30
  different avenues on this, on this perspective.
• 55:35
  Scariest paranormal story You've you've either experienced or
• 55:41
  been told. So there is an episode called
• 55:45
  The Graveyard on my podcast and it is something that actually
• 55:49
  happened to me. The the long and short of it is
• 55:53
  my friends and I went into a graveyard one night and we were
• 55:57
  challenged to walk around the graveyard.
• 56:01
  I ended up being the only one to actually complete the walk.
• 56:05
  Everybody else kind of jumped the fence and ran, but as I was
• 56:10
  walking, someone came up behind me and was kind of coming
• 56:15
  towards me. I couldn't really see who they
• 56:17
  were, but I like screamed at them and kept on walking and I
• 56:20
  thought it was my friends. They all tell me that it's not
• 56:24
  them. I'm mad because I think they're
• 56:26
  lying to me. And so I go back towards the
• 56:30
  graveyard because I'm going to go back in there and prove to
• 56:33
  them that it was them. And we were across the street
• 56:37
  sitting in front of 1 church and the graveyard was on the other
• 56:39
  side of the street. And I walked across the street
• 56:42
  and I put 1 foot on the sidewalk and they were all trying to stop
• 56:47
  me. They were like no, don't go in
• 56:48
  there, don't go in there. And just the scream erupted and
• 56:51
  we it sounded like it came from the graveyard.
• 56:53
  I don't know where it came from, but they all ran and I took a
• 57:01
  couple of seconds to evaluate my position, my life, the things
• 57:06
  that were going on. I was 12 at the time.
• 57:08
  Oh, my God. And then I ran too, and I booked
• 57:15
  it. And even though I was typically
• 57:18
  the slowest, I beat all of them back to the house, up the stairs
• 57:20
  and into the room because I wasn't staying around to find
• 57:24
  out by myself what was going on. And to this day, I still don't
• 57:27
  know what actually happened. You know, I know what I heard.
• 57:31
  I know what we all experienced. And I know that we all got so
• 57:34
  scared that we ran a block and a half back to my best friend's
• 57:37
  house to hide from it for the rest of the night.
• 57:43
  So that would. I would, I would say would
• 57:45
  probably be the scariest experience I I've ever really
• 57:49
  had. I think the scariest tale that
• 57:55
  I've ever told may be Lavanya. I think she may be the the
• 58:03
  scariest one. I a lot of the the thing with a
• 58:06
  lot of ghost stories is they're not always scary.
• 58:10
  Sure. Yeah.
• 58:11
  I suppose sometimes they just leave you with just endless
• 58:13
  questions. Just yeah.
• 58:17
  Don't. Get good thing in a bad thing
• 58:18
  depending on your your outlook. Well you know there are there
• 58:23
  are occasionally ghosts are you're more sad when you hear
• 58:28
  about the ghost. You know, he's like, really?
• 58:30
  Like they've been doing this for 200 years.
• 58:33
  Like, really? Man, that sucks.
• 58:35
  You know, wow. You know, there's not a lot of
• 58:38
  the ghost is going to rip your face off stories, really.
• 58:41
  You know, the more read, the more deeper stories is this
• 58:47
  person went through these horrible things, you know, or
• 58:50
  this this trying time that this person had, They lost their life
• 58:54
  and now they're stuck here. They're just reliving it
• 59:00
  constantly. I remember when I was living in
• 59:02
  Europe, there was someone I knew who allegedly could speak to the
• 59:08
  dead. And she told me that in this
• 59:12
  particular place she lived, there was a guy who
• 59:16
  unfortunately had passed away from like a road accident or
• 59:20
  he'd been run over or something like that.
• 59:24
  And this guy would frequently come to her the ghost and would.
• 59:31
  Ask her like, what's going on? Where am I?
• 59:33
  I don't understand. And she would keep saying and
• 59:37
  communicating with him and saying that there's nothing I
• 59:41
  can do. I don't.
• 59:42
  I don't know what. How can I really help you?
• 59:44
  I can't. There's nothing I can say or do.
• 59:47
  And but there was like, and this is what really fascinated me
• 59:50
  about this, was this idea that the ghost would ask questions,
• 59:54
  but not it wouldn't really. Take on board anything.
• 59:58
  It there was just, it was just perpetually in a state of
• 1:00:00
  confusion. And people often talk about when
• 1:00:04
  they hear about ghosts. Either they see a ghost or, you
• 1:00:07
  know, experience it or even communicate with it.
• 1:00:09
  Often what they talk about is this idea of an echo.
• 1:00:14
  It's not even like something you can interact with.
• 1:00:17
  It's more just like. A flash in time.
• 1:00:20
  Maybe it's repeating something that happened.
• 1:00:22
  Or maybe the ghost is trapped in a perpetual state.
• 1:00:26
  You know, we hear about, like, trapped spirits and this idea
• 1:00:28
  that they just keep repeating. They keep, you know, walking
• 1:00:32
  around the halls of whatever area that they maybe even they
• 1:00:36
  died in. Or maybe it's a familiar space
• 1:00:39
  home, something like that. Or or even the ghosts that
• 1:00:42
  supposedly haunt places. You know, people talk about this
• 1:00:46
  idea that the energy stays there.
• 1:00:49
  It's trapped there, like bringing it back to wrestling as
• 1:00:51
  an example. I'm always fascinated with that
• 1:00:54
  the the story of Bruiser Brody and how in those showers where
• 1:01:00
  Bruiser Brody was stabbed, allegedly, because that's still
• 1:01:06
  left open and I don't understand that.
• 1:01:08
  But yeah. Anyway, I remember hearing Tammy
• 1:01:13
  Sitch tell a story thereafter about how her and Chris Candido
• 1:01:17
  had gone wrestling there in like the early 2000s and they've been
• 1:01:21
  told, oh, you have to go check out the showers.
• 1:01:25
  You have to go check it out. It's really it's, you know, you
• 1:01:27
  got to go experience it for yourself.
• 1:01:29
  And she said that, like in Puerto Rico, apparently, it's
• 1:01:33
  like always like really, really hot.
• 1:01:35
  Like there's no real air, you know, It's just very sweaty kind
• 1:01:40
  of feeling wherever you go. If you're wrestling in in arenas
• 1:01:44
  there it's like everywhere is hot.
• 1:01:46
  But she said as soon as she walked into the shower, it was
• 1:01:49
  like deathly cold. And that had no business being
• 1:01:53
  cold. There was no air conditioning,
• 1:01:55
  There was no windows, there was no nothing.
• 1:01:57
  It was it was just suddenly really cold.
• 1:02:00
  And I often think about what I just outlined there before, this
• 1:02:03
  idea that maybe energy stays there in some shape.
• 1:02:08
  Okay and and you know whatever happens, whatever that is, throw
• 1:02:14
  that into the story. When you put that into the
• 1:02:16
  story, the feeling that that gives you know the thoughts that
• 1:02:19
  that that that draws in and then that that's you know that's
• 1:02:23
  where these stories and these legends get us is you know it's
• 1:02:28
  not the necessarily the events that lead up to it.
• 1:02:32
  It is the tragic. You know, loss of time that this
• 1:02:38
  person has, that they're still, you know, here they're not.
• 1:02:43
  They're not able to move on. They're not able to get past it.
• 1:02:45
  They're stuck reliving this, this horrific event over and
• 1:02:50
  over and over and over again. You know, the media likes to
• 1:02:56
  grab hold of all these, you know, the poltergeist, the scary
• 1:03:00
  things. But the really scary thought.
• 1:03:04
  Of a ghost story is the idea that if something like that
• 1:03:10
  happened to you, you would be stuck for hundreds of years.
• 1:03:18
  You know there are ghost stories in England that have been told
• 1:03:20
  what you guys have got, ghost stories that are 7-8 hundred
• 1:03:23
  years old. You know, imagine.
• 1:03:25
  Thousands of years of standing around a castle, watching
• 1:03:28
  everything else going on and not being able to do anything about
• 1:03:31
  it. And I was suddenly you see some
• 1:03:32
  kid walking around with a Nintendo Switch and you remember
• 1:03:34
  back in your day all you had was a stick.
• 1:03:39
  What another thing with that as well as like, let's suppose for
• 1:03:42
  a minute that ghosts were able were conscious of.
• 1:03:47
  What's going on? You're right, yeah.
• 1:03:49
  Yes, that there would be no basis for connection.
• 1:03:54
  I mean obviously there's always going to be a basic connection
• 1:03:56
  between humans regardless of time.
• 1:03:59
  But you know, you separate if you, if we were to if me and you
• 1:04:03
  were to go back in time 800 years, right, and try and
• 1:04:06
  interact with people, well, firstly we wouldn't understand
• 1:04:08
  what anyone's saying and vice versa because English language
• 1:04:11
  has changed. But more importantly, our basis
• 1:04:15
  for connection would be severed somewhat or maybe not basis for
• 1:04:21
  connection but like. We would be in an alien world,
• 1:04:27
  yeah, like like the where we draw.
• 1:04:33
  How can I put this our basis for comparison?
• 1:04:42
  Or you know, like being able to relate to one another, so on and
• 1:04:46
  so forth. We could only really relate to
• 1:04:49
  each other on the very most basic of things I remember.
• 1:04:53
  I remember one time someone said like, oh, if, for example, it
• 1:04:58
  were possible to talk to animals and like they could talk in
• 1:05:01
  English, we wouldn't be able to understand them anyway because
• 1:05:05
  their frames of reference, that's what I was trying to
• 1:05:06
  refer to. The frames of reference would be
• 1:05:09
  so different that it just would not be something that you could
• 1:05:13
  even possibly even hope to comprehend.
• 1:05:17
  Yeah. And and that's exactly right to.
• 1:05:23
  You know, there are things today that to someone in the Middle
• 1:05:30
  Ages would be considered magic, demons, all kinds of, you know,
• 1:05:36
  a car. Are you kidding me?
• 1:05:39
  A car, an automobile, Something we're used to seeing.
• 1:05:41
  Every day, Billions of people drive around, You know, they
• 1:05:45
  clog up the streets, They pollute the place.
• 1:05:47
  You drive one of those through 13th century England.
• 1:05:52
  And watch how fast you got a whole army wanting to kill you.
• 1:05:56
  Drop one in the middle of Egypt, all of a suddenly they're
• 1:05:59
  building you a pyramid. You know these things.
• 1:06:04
  And these are this is how everything evolves.
• 1:06:08
  And This is why it's important kind of, to tell these stories.
• 1:06:14
  Because we have no. You know, our connection to the
• 1:06:19
  past is merely in these stories. Once we go to a new age, that
• 1:06:24
  past is done. There's no going back.
• 1:06:27
  You know, you can't go back to before there was a car.
• 1:06:31
  I mean, you can try, but the world's already found the car,
• 1:06:35
  and we already know what it is. If we go get on horses now,
• 1:06:39
  we're going to be like, man, cars were so much cooler.
• 1:06:45
  You know, we can't go back to before there was flight.
• 1:06:49
  We already know we can fly across the ocean.
• 1:06:51
  We can't go back to before America was discovered.
• 1:06:56
  It's already been done. You can't, you know, just go
• 1:06:59
  back and go. No, America wasn't discovered.
• 1:07:01
  If you go that way, you're going to fall straight off.
• 1:07:04
  Some guy gets in, a boat goes that way.
• 1:07:05
  Oh, look, America discovered it again.
• 1:07:07
  Now you can't discover it again. It's already been discovered.
• 1:07:10
  It's populated. We can't undo.
• 1:07:13
  The past or we can tell stories and try to explain to not only
• 1:07:22
  each other but to those coming behind us what the past was
• 1:07:27
  like, what they had to live through thing and try and get
• 1:07:31
  into that mindset through the stories.
• 1:07:34
  You know, I can tell you all day that you know, oh, you know,
• 1:07:40
  18th century. Americans didn't have running
• 1:07:45
  the water and had to cook with fire.
• 1:07:48
  But I can't take you. But I can't just give you the
• 1:07:51
  facts and make you feel the story.
• 1:07:54
  That's just I can stay facts all day long.
• 1:07:56
  You know facts aren't going to get you into what it was really
• 1:08:03
  like without the story. Moving up forward, what's the
• 1:08:09
  most inspirational story you have or that you've ever been
• 1:08:14
  told? That's a tough one.
• 1:08:25
  I don't have any inspirational, any real inspirational ones on
• 1:08:31
  my podcast, but you know there is.
• 1:08:40
  A story about this it is. No, I don't like that one
• 1:08:52
  either. Probably the most inspirational
• 1:08:56
  story I would have to take say what would have to do with, and
• 1:09:02
  I'm trying to remember it now because it has to do with an
• 1:09:04
  Olympian who came back. And she was the gymnast.
• 1:09:12
  And I can't remember the story now, but it was back in the 90s.
• 1:09:15
  And she came back. And no, I'm not talking about
• 1:09:18
  the ice skater, Nancy Kerrigan. That wasn't really
• 1:09:20
  inspirational. That was that was two chicks
• 1:09:23
  fighting. No, it was this gymnast.
• 1:09:25
  And she had like this really bad injury.
• 1:09:27
  And she came back and I think she won the gold.
• 1:09:30
  And I was really, I was really touched back as a kid.
• 1:09:35
  Other ones would be. You know stories of people who
• 1:09:40
  survived events like 911, like there were these two guys, they
• 1:09:44
  were inside of the buildings when they came down.
• 1:09:48
  They were two ports authority cops and they were the last two
• 1:09:53
  brought out. They had the buildings down on
• 1:09:57
  top of them for I think it was almost 72 hours.
• 1:10:01
  You know, if people digging through rubble trying to find
• 1:10:03
  them, they were. Pretty much considered dead by
• 1:10:06
  that point, you know, And they ended up finding and rescuing
• 1:10:09
  them. And I met them and another guy
• 1:10:17
  on October 6th of 2001, NASCAR, back when it was the Winston Cup
• 1:10:25
  Honored firefighters. Little known fact.
• 1:10:29
  I was a firefighter for several years and I was asked to
• 1:10:33
  participate in this event and brought up to Lowe's Motor
• 1:10:37
  Speedway free tickets. Got to go on a race and asked to
• 1:10:40
  you know walk out and basically be thanked for what I did is my
• 1:10:44
  job by NASCAR and the NASCAR bands.
• 1:10:48
  But in that I got to meet three of the guys that were in Ground
• 1:10:53
  Zero and meet these guys and you know?
• 1:10:58
  Their survival enough is, you know, inspirational.
• 1:11:02
  But hearing their story, talking to them, you know, talking about
• 1:11:05
  the battles they had to do just to get back to being able to
• 1:11:08
  show up to an event like this, you know, is that's majorly
• 1:11:13
  inspirational. Yeah, that was inspirational for
• 1:11:16
  me, particularly as a firefighter because, you know, I
• 1:11:21
  it felt like a big hit and a big personal hit.
• 1:11:26
  Considering how many of my brothers were lost in that
• 1:11:30
  event. But still we came back and we
• 1:11:33
  kept fighting. And another good one is the city
• 1:11:38
  of Charleston after the events of the Sofa Superstore fire in
• 1:11:44
  2008. You know, in 2008, I'm sorry,
• 1:11:49
  2007, nine firefighters lost their lives.
• 1:11:54
  In a commercial structure fire here in Charleston, the town
• 1:11:59
  obviously was devastated. But the fire department,
• 1:12:03
  rebuilt, reorganized, restructured, came back and has
• 1:12:08
  become one of the best departments in the country
• 1:12:12
  simply because they could not let those men die in vain.
• 1:12:17
  They had to do something about it.
• 1:12:19
  Those are stories of inspiration.
• 1:12:23
  And it's hard to pick just one. Thanks for sharing.
• 1:12:27
  Yeah. And I think it kind of speaks to
• 1:12:30
  the idea that, you know, that often the the greatest stories
• 1:12:33
  are just from everyday people like you and me that just, you
• 1:12:36
  know, living their lives and they do something to help one
• 1:12:39
  another, you know, in a meaningful way.
• 1:12:42
  And it it literally changes lives, saves lives even.
• 1:12:44
  So it's it's incredible. Yeah.
• 1:12:47
  I'd like to talk a little bit about your time as a as a
• 1:12:50
  firefighter. Let's start with what would you
• 1:12:54
  say is the most memorable moment for you as a firefighter?
• 1:13:00
  There was a accident in late 1 evening.
• 1:13:05
  I had worked a full shift and then responded out to a call
• 1:13:09
  afterwards which was a structure fire and I was leaving the
• 1:13:13
  structure fire on the way home. I was planning to go home, get
• 1:13:17
  some dinner and go to sleep. It was ten 11:00 at night.
• 1:13:23
  And we're coming home and on the way back from where the
• 1:13:27
  structure fire was, a intoxicated driver ran into a
• 1:13:34
  family of motorists or family in a motor vehicle and it was a
• 1:13:42
  mother and five children, and these children were from six
• 1:13:48
  months to 15. My patient was a a four year old
• 1:13:55
  little girl. She couldn't tell me she was 4
• 1:13:59
  because one because she had a bad laceration to her hand and
• 1:14:03
  she couldn't hold up one of her fingers.
• 1:14:07
  I bandaged her up, took care of her, I I took care of that
• 1:14:10
  patient. I wasn't.
• 1:14:11
  I wasn't even. She was my patient, you know.
• 1:14:18
  I she sticks with me that that whole scene sticks with me.
• 1:14:23
  At first we didn't know where the baby was.
• 1:14:26
  The car seat had actually been ejected from the vehicle and the
• 1:14:30
  baby was just fine. Just chilling, you know, Wasn't
• 1:14:34
  crying or anything. So that's why we didn't know
• 1:14:35
  where the baby was. Baby was just fine.
• 1:14:37
  Just chilling, filling the car seat.
• 1:14:40
  What's going on? Where is everybody?
• 1:14:41
  I see all the flashing lights. She was dazzled by all the
• 1:14:44
  flashing lights. I rode in the ambulance with my
• 1:14:51
  patient, the infant who was perfectly fine and the oldest
• 1:14:56
  child, the 15 year old son. And you know, we went to the
• 1:15:03
  hospital. I met with the father, I told
• 1:15:07
  him where, where his, where his wife and everybody was.
• 1:15:10
  The worst injury they had was some minor neck injuries that
• 1:15:14
  the mother suffered. Because the brunt of the impact
• 1:15:18
  was on the driver's side, of course.
• 1:15:21
  And I think the son had like an injured leg.
• 1:15:25
  I believe his, I believe he had a fracture to the lower leg
• 1:15:29
  tidbit is what we call it. But other than that, he was, he
• 1:15:34
  was, you know, fine, everybody walked away with minor scrapes
• 1:15:37
  and bruises and of course, you know, it was miraculous.
• 1:15:43
  Now, of course, the drunk guy. He walked away with nothing
• 1:15:48
  except for a nice trip to jail for, you know, nearly killing
• 1:15:55
  five people. But we had a guy that used to
• 1:16:01
  work with, I used to work with. He was a paramedic.
• 1:16:05
  And he gets on scene. He's this big call.
• 1:16:09
  You know, he's kind of, he's kind of skinny, but you know,
• 1:16:11
  he's muscular. And he gets there and he sees
• 1:16:15
  that we're working on a kid and he hears he was drunk and he
• 1:16:22
  gets angry and turns to go after the drunk guy.
• 1:16:27
  And I'm like, oh, no. And his wife happened to be on
• 1:16:31
  the scene and she's like, Clint, no, no, no, no, you can't do
• 1:16:34
  that. Leave him alone.
• 1:16:36
  And I'm like, oh, this would have been interesting to watch,
• 1:16:40
  but. Fortunately, the drunk guy got
• 1:16:43
  dealt with by the police and not by the paramedic, who likely
• 1:16:46
  would have been much harsher than the law was.
• 1:16:53
  But yeah, that that one sticks with.
• 1:16:54
  That one has always stuck with me.
• 1:16:56
  That was my first year. That was pre 2001.
• 1:17:00
  I was I was like brand. I was brand new, maybe six
• 1:17:04
  months out of the Academy when that one happened.
• 1:17:08
  Well, thank you so much for sharing.
• 1:17:09
  I really appreciate it. No, no problem.
• 1:17:11
  It's the follow up question. What would you say is the
• 1:17:17
  biggest lesson or take away from your time as a firefighter?
• 1:17:27
  Every life is precious, you know.
• 1:17:33
  Lots of people, they don't value life like they should, you know.
• 1:17:42
  There are things that can happen in the blink of an eye that can
• 1:17:45
  change your life and you can have no control over it.
• 1:17:52
  So you need to kind of not only value your life, but value the
• 1:17:56
  lives of those around you, of your loved ones, your friends.
• 1:18:00
  Because you never know what is going to happen outside that
• 1:18:04
  door. You never know what's going to
• 1:18:05
  happen inside the door. You do not have control over the
• 1:18:09
  future. We we cannot predict fate.
• 1:18:11
  We cannot plan these things out, and not everything is in your
• 1:18:18
  control. We like to imagine that it is,
• 1:18:21
  but it's not. So you need to take life at what
• 1:18:26
  it is, which is an extremely valuable and important thing,
• 1:18:30
  and cherish everyone, even the lives of those you don't like.
• 1:18:36
  You know, you need to understand that life is, it's a very finite
• 1:18:40
  thing and once it's over, it's over.
• 1:18:43
  There's there's no coming back. We don't get a redo.
• 1:18:47
  We don't get a respawn. We're not coming back.
• 1:18:49
  This isn't a video game. You know, I have worked on
• 1:18:56
  patients that were 90 some odd years old and I have worked on
• 1:19:03
  patients that were less than a year old.
• 1:19:06
  I've had saves where they were in their 70s.
• 1:19:10
  I've saved them when they were four or five.
• 1:19:13
  You know, it's it's it's not a look of the draw.
• 1:19:17
  It is literally just when it happens, it's going to happen.
• 1:19:26
  You can't be prepared for it. You have to understand that if
• 1:19:31
  you're not treating it. As valuable as it is, you're
• 1:19:38
  gonna miss it when it's gone. Thanks for sharing couple of
• 1:19:43
  final questions for you that I ask every guest.
• 1:19:46
  Okay, what's the biggest mistake you've made that you learned a
• 1:19:51
  valuable life lesson? From I never took care of
• 1:19:59
  myself. As I said, I used to be a
• 1:20:03
  firefighter. There's a reason that I'm not.
• 1:20:06
  It's because I suffer from PTSD. Well, I.
• 1:20:09
  Was thinking of asking you about that, but I didn't want to
• 1:20:11
  press. But yeah, please continue.
• 1:20:12
  Yeah, I I have I'm I have cptsd and other issues because I
• 1:20:21
  allowed I didn't do the things that I needed to do to take care
• 1:20:24
  of myself when I needed to. If I could give anybody any
• 1:20:29
  piece of advice, it would be to take care of yourself.
• 1:20:31
  And again, that's why I said like this, so precious, because
• 1:20:39
  I can't. I've been through therapy.
• 1:20:41
  It's, I'm going on five years of therapy now.
• 1:20:45
  I still can't do the things that I used to do.
• 1:20:47
  I can't. I still have those, you know,
• 1:20:53
  issue warning alarms that won't let me go out and do what I used
• 1:20:57
  to do. I can't.
• 1:20:58
  I can't run into a burning building anymore.
• 1:21:00
  I can't ride on a fire truck anymore because the sirens, the
• 1:21:05
  sounds, the sirens, they they all are.
• 1:21:08
  They all are triggers. These are things that I love,
• 1:21:11
  things that I things that I lived for at one point in time
• 1:21:15
  and they've been taken away from me because I didn't take care of
• 1:21:19
  my mental health. So mental health is very
• 1:21:22
  important and if you don't take care of it, it's going to become
• 1:21:26
  a problem. For sure, no, no problem.
• 1:21:32
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 1:21:38
  The best advice I've ever received is that you don't fail
• 1:21:45
  until you quit. You know the Tumblewimber's got
• 1:21:52
  a song. I get knocked down, I get back
• 1:21:53
  up again. As long as you were getting back
• 1:21:57
  up again, you're not done. Fight's not over.
• 1:22:01
  You only fail if you give up, you know?
• 1:22:06
  Yeah, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and
• 1:22:08
  over again, expecting different result.
• 1:22:11
  But sometimes to when you got to be a little insane, you know we
• 1:22:16
  we even mentioned it before Cody Rhodes lost the fight.
• 1:22:20
  But it's not over unless Cody gives up going for that title,
• 1:22:23
  right. So failure only happens when you
• 1:22:28
  give up now lose kind of failure.
• 1:22:34
  That's a lesson. That I need to hear that right
• 1:22:37
  now. Thank you.
• 1:22:37
  Hey, no problem. What's the biggest life lesson
• 1:22:42
  you've learned so far. Biggest life lesson that I've
• 1:22:49
  learned so far is that you don't need to be huge.
• 1:22:59
  You don't need to be the best to be successful.
• 1:23:02
  You know success is what you measure.
• 1:23:08
  You know, I it was it was actually one I learned recently.
• 1:23:15
  If you take and think of what you think of as successful in
• 1:23:19
  your mind at 1st, and then you go, well, OK, this is this
• 1:23:24
  thing, what makes that successful?
• 1:23:25
  And then you compare it to you know where you are.
• 1:23:28
  A lot of times you'll find out you are successful.
• 1:23:32
  You just have this imaginary thing in your head of what
• 1:23:34
  successful is. And because you're not there,
• 1:23:37
  you don't. You don't appreciate your own
• 1:23:40
  success. You know, you don't have to be a
• 1:23:44
  movie star to be successful. You don't have to be the
• 1:23:46
  greatest cook to be successful. Take pride in the smaller
• 1:23:51
  successes, you know, be proud that you've got five years of
• 1:23:54
  podcasts and have an audience. You know, Be proud that you know
• 1:23:58
  you're talking to guys from, you know, halfway around the world
• 1:24:02
  about firefighting and wrestling and storytelling.
• 1:24:05
  You know, these are things that not everybody does.
• 1:24:07
  These are things that are experiences that you know, show
• 1:24:10
  that you're successful at what you do because you've got some
• 1:24:14
  guy from across the pond jumping on the freaking chat with you.
• 1:24:24
  Success is measured by you, and you don't have to measure it
• 1:24:32
  against anybody else. You know, if if I had spent more
• 1:24:38
  time thinking about all the things that I did do, right?
• 1:24:43
  You know, I became a firefighter.
• 1:24:45
  I became a fire instructor. I was a dispatcher.
• 1:24:48
  I was a medic. I'm a father, You know, I've
• 1:24:52
  written two books. You know, if I looked at all my
• 1:24:56
  successes, then my failures don't really mean anything, you
• 1:25:01
  know? Sure, I wrote two books and I
• 1:25:03
  have 10 that I've just given up on because I didn't think they
• 1:25:07
  work. So what?
• 1:25:08
  I've got two that are out. I've succeeded twice, you know,
• 1:25:14
  So what? I don't have 10,000 followers on
• 1:25:16
  TikTok. I've got 8900.
• 1:25:20
  That's 8900 successes. They liked something and started
• 1:25:23
  following me. And that's where you have to,
• 1:25:27
  you have to understand is that measure your success against you
• 1:25:36
  if you have done something and one that's success and when you
• 1:25:42
  realize that, you'll be a lot happier.
• 1:25:48
  I think so. It's interesting the way the
• 1:25:52
  universe works sometimes. This is definitely exactly what
• 1:25:56
  I needed to hear. And I know my listeners, people
• 1:25:58
  that follow me will be thinking right now.
• 1:26:01
  See. Told you so, yeah.
• 1:26:04
  Thank you so much, man. I appreciate that no problem.
• 1:26:07
  Final question for you. Do you have any upcoming
• 1:26:11
  projects or final thoughts that you'd like to share with our
• 1:26:13
  listeners? So we have pulled through the
• 1:26:18
  Flames. I've discontinued my partnership
• 1:26:21
  with Olympia Publishing, which is actually there in London and
• 1:26:27
  it's going to be rereleased here in the next couple of months
• 1:26:29
  with a new cover. Its follow up will be coming out
• 1:26:34
  and it's going to follow through.
• 1:26:35
  The Flames of course is about firefighting and it's follow up
• 1:26:38
  is going to follow the main character, Wayne's son, as he
• 1:26:43
  goes through the fire Academy. So both of those books will be
• 1:26:46
  coming up probably sometime in the next year.
• 1:26:50
  Of course my second book, Red Coats, is still out.
• 1:26:54
  Red Coats is a horror novella that focuses on a group of
• 1:27:01
  British soldiers. Of course, Redcoats coming back
• 1:27:04
  to take revenge on the city of Georgetown's teenagers after
• 1:27:09
  they're awakened some 200 years later in the 1990s.
• 1:27:14
  And yeah, it's it's a fun, it's a fun little horrific tale.
• 1:27:20
  Of course, you can catch my podcast at the Carolina
• 1:27:23
  storyteller.com. We're wrapping up season one
• 1:27:26
  now. Season 2 will begin in January.
• 1:27:28
  Don't have an exact date yet, but you can catch all of the
• 1:27:31
  episodes for season one. There's some bonus episodes this
• 1:27:34
  month because it's Halloween. We have, let me tell you, the
• 1:27:38
  movie, which is me and my son Adam going over horror movies.
• 1:27:43
  So far we've done Child's Play and Friday the 13th, Who knows
• 1:27:48
  what the other two bonus episodes will be.
• 1:27:50
  I'm not. I'm not giving them away.
• 1:27:51
  But they'll be showing up before the end of this month.
• 1:27:56
  It's been an absolute pleasure and an honor.
• 1:27:57
  Thank you so much for appearing on the show and sharing your
• 1:28:00
  stories and just kind of giving us a an insight into
• 1:28:04
  storytelling and also your experiences and everything in
• 1:28:07
  between. Thank you so much.
• 1:28:09
  Well, Christian, thank you for having me.
• 1:28:10
  I really appreciate it. And to your listeners, I hope
• 1:28:12
  you guys enjoyed it. Absolutely.
• 1:28:15
  And to my listeners and followers, thank you so much as
• 1:28:18
  always for listening to to the show or watching the show.
• 1:28:21
  I sincerely appreciate it. Please go out of your way to
• 1:28:24
  check out Jonathan's work. He's clearly very talented as as
• 1:28:27
  we've heard and it's your opportunity to hear more and
• 1:28:31
  more stories so. There you go.
• 1:28:33
  Go check out his work. I'll make sure to leave links in
• 1:28:36
  the description. In addition, if you would like
• 1:28:39
  to support the show I mentioned at the beginning, but if you'd
• 1:28:41
  like to support the show, you can do so by leaving us a review
• 1:28:45
  on Pod Chaser or alternatively on YouTube, Spotify, Apple
• 1:28:49
  Podcasts. Wherever you listen to the show,
• 1:28:52
  please leave us a review. Please leave us your comments,
• 1:28:55
  Let us know what you think. It really, really helps to show
• 1:28:58
  out. In addition, check out the
• 1:29:00
  discord. Become a member of our
• 1:29:02
  community, join the patreonpatreon.com Christian
• 1:29:06
  Reeves support the show and get access to bonus content.
• 1:29:10
  And most importantly, be safe. Be well and I'll see you in the
• 1:29:16
  next one.