One day, you realized Steve Buscemi was in every weird movie that got stuck in your brain. The VHS your older cousin wouldn’t rewind. The cable re-run you caught at midnight. The indie DVD your film-major roommate wouldn’t shut up about.

This episode starts with one question:

How did Steve Buscemi become the backbone of modern pop culture?

From there, Mickey, Christian, and Jacki slide down a Buscemi-shaped rabbit hole involving:

• His early days on Not Necessarily the News, when cable was still figuring itself out
• Awkward stand-up attempts, bus accidents, and the acting classes that changed everything
• Reservoir Dogs turning “Mr. Pink” into a crash course in character acting
• Going from grimy indie sets to big-budget blockbusters with Con Air, The Big Lebowski, and Armageddon
• The deeply human weirdness of Trees Lounge, Living in Oblivion, and Ghost World
• Sliding between prestige TV and cult comedy in The Sopranos, 30 Rock, and more
• Voice work that  raised a generation on animation and late‑night cartoons
• And the part where he disappears from Hollywood entirely… to dig through rubble with firefighters after 9/11

Along the way, we ask even more questions:

• Why does Buscemi feel “indie” even when he’s in the loudest Michael Bay movie on earth?
• How did he become the patron saint of oddballs, losers, and guys who never get the girl... but somehow still get your whole heart?
• Why does every director who works with him seem to level up creatively afterward?

If you grew up thinking Steve Buscemi was just “that weird guy in that one movie,” this episode is your corrective lens. It’s a nostalgia-fueled, career-spanning tour through the roles, risks, and random detours that turned him into the most unlikely throughline of the last 40 years of film and TV... plus the off-screen choices that prove he’s even better in real life than any character he’s ever played.

You never planned to watch USA Network, did you? You just ended up there... Like the mall food court, Blockbuster on a Friday night, or your friend's house with the mysteriously free cable.

This episode starts with one question:

How did the USA Network get started?

Which sends Mickey, Christian, and Jacki into a rabbit hole involving:

• satellite technology
• cable pirates
• Kay Koplovitz changing TV forever
• Psych
• Monk
• The Dead Zone
• Suits
• Paddington Bear
• Bronies
• Bluey

And not to mention, the things USA Network was always showing:

• A fake psychic.
• A detective with OCD.
• A lawyer with perfect hair.
• Wrestling.
• Golf.
• A movie you've seen six times but never on purpose.

Things we forgot existed:

• Stealing cable from the neighbor.
• USA Up All Night.
• Reality TV before anyone knew what reality TV was.

Meanwhile, Kay Koplovitz is over here helping invent the modern cable business while the rest of us are memorizing every episode of Monk without realizing it.

Somewhere along the way, we also ponder:

• Is Paddington Bear the last universally good character?
• Why does Bluey make adults cry?
• Is Suits an actual show or just the natural state of hotel televisions?
  • We still haven't seen it. 

If you were anything like us, USA Network lived in the background of snow days, sick days, lazy Sundays, and every afternoon when nobody could agree on what to watch.

Join Mickey, Christian, and Jacki as one simple question turns into a nostalgia-fueled expedition through cable television, pop culture, and the strange realization that an entire generation was emotionally supported by sarcastic detectives in sport coats... and still are somehow. 

If you suddenly want to watch Psych, y'all, don't blame us.

Blame USA Network.

Why are so many people obsessed with the Roman Empire?

In the debut episode of Everything on Nothing, Mickey, Christian, and producer Jacki start with a simple question and somehow end up wandering through wolf-raised twins, political assassinations, slave revolts, Christianity, Napoleon, modern corporations, artificial intelligence, and the uncomfortable realization that Rome may never have actually gone away.

What begins with Romulus and Remus quickly spirals into a conversation about propaganda, power, rebellion, and how one ancient civilization became the blueprint for countless empires, governments, and institutions that followed. Along the way, the hosts explore Julius Caesar, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and the stories history tends to forget while asking a bigger question:

Was Rome a place... or was it an idea?

From the Roman Republic to modern politics, the discussion connects thousands of years of history with the systems that still shape our lives today. Because the deeper you dig into Rome, the stranger it gets. Every empire seems to borrow from it. Every revolution seems to fight against it. And every generation somehow ends up telling the same story all over again.

The Roman Empire fell.

Then it came back.

Then it changed names.

Then it showed up everywhere.

Listen to Episode 1 of Everything on Nothing and find out why the ghost of Rome is still haunting the modern world.