Everything on Nothing

Slippery Stairs is a SPORT?!

What makes something a sport? A ball? A scoreboard? Or just a staircase covered in lube and someone brave enough to give it a go?

Mickey, Jacki, and Christian tumble down a rabbit hole of weird sports history, following a winding trail of oil tycoons, hockey legends, questionable business deals, and television executives that leads to ESPN, the X Games, and the gloriously bizarre world of obscure competitions. Along the way, they uncover the money, egos, and unexpected stories behind the sports we watch—and the ones that make us ask, Wait, that’s a sport?!

In this episode:

• • Is Slippery Stairs a sport? Discover the Japanese game show origins of Nuru Nukaidan, the viral slippery stair-climbing competition, and how it made its way to ESPN.
  • The strange history of ESPN: Follow the money, risky investments, and unlikely connections that helped launch the 24-hour sports network.
  • The Getty family fortune: Oil money, family drama, and the real-life kidnapping behind All the Money in the World.
  • From hockey legends to the X Games: Explore the people, business deals, and counterculture that helped shape televised sports.
  • Weird sports you have to see to believe: Teqball (soccer meets table tennis), inflatable T-Rex racing, death diving, World Chase Tag, Red Bull Soapbox Race, and extreme hurling.
  • Wait, that’s a sport too? We also get into pop darts, Microsoft Excel championships, human curling, diving chess, chess boxing, and the World Housekeeping Championships.
  • What makes a sport worth watching? From slow-pitch softball and demolition derbies to tractor pulls and professional wrestling, we unpack why great commentary, understandable rules, and a little human chaos can make almost anything entertaining.
• Turns out, sports history isn’t just balls, scoreboards, and victory laps. It’s money, egos, weird ideas, and people convincing the rest of us that watching someone attempt a lubricated staircase is perfectly reasonable entertainment. So, is Slippery Stairs a sport? Listen in, explore the wonderfully weird world of obscure sports, and decide for yourself.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

What that cell do? 

A lot, actually. 

Mickey, Jacki, and Christian zoom way, way in to explore the tiny factories keeping us alive, the scientists who figured them out, and the very human drama behind some of science’s biggest discoveries.

In this episode:

• The powerhouse of the cell: Meet the mitochondria, ribosomes, and other tiny workers with very important jobs.
• Cell theory has drama: Discover how scientific credit, antisemitism, and some very big egos shaped what we know about cells.
• HeLa cells: One woman’s cells changed medical research forever (and the story is complicated)
• Stem cells and gene editing: From reprogramming skin cells to CRISPR, we get into what science can do and what it should do.
• Who gets to design a human? Gattaca, eugenics, and the uncomfortable questions that come with changing our genes.
• Document your work, people: Because having the right answer doesn’t mean much if someone else gets credit for it.

Turns out, one tiny cell comes with a billion years of history, a whole lot of science, and more drama than you might expect.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

How much do you miss looking through the TV Guide and reading it cover to cover and doing the puzzles and highlighting things? Is there anything comparable to that today?

We came here to talk about TV Guide. We left with newspaper gangsters, media empires, corporate monopolies, antisemitism, and something called ham water. So, a pretty normal episode.

This is Part Two of Two, featuring special guest Bossman Zach, host of Reasonably Afraid Podcast: a comedy-horror podcast exploring the strange, unsettling, and downright ridiculous corners of horror. Naturally, he fits right in as we trace the history of people figuring out how to control what everyone else gets to read, watch, and believe.

In this episode, we get into:

• The newspaper hustle: Immigrant brothers, protection rackets, and the road from selling papers to building an empire.
• Media bloodsport: William Randolph Hearst, Pulitzer, and the cutthroat fight for readers.
• Control the pipeline, control the people: Why owning distribution can matter more than owning the thing being distributed.
• Blockbuster vs. the little guy: Mom-and-pop video stores, corporate muscle, and capitalism doing what capitalism does.
• History’s darker corners: Child labor, antisemitism, religious loopholes, and some truly questionable business practices.
• The weird stuff: Six-year-old gangsters, neighborhood grudges, the King of Prussia, and enough ham water to ruin your lunch.

The TV Guide as we knew and loved it might be gone, but the battle over who controls our attention is very much alive. Turns out the media business has always been a little less What’s on tonight? and a little more Who owns the damn thing, and how do they plan to screw us?

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

How much do you miss looking through the TV Guide and reading it cover to cover and doing the puzzles and highlighting things? Is there anything comparable to that today?

That’s the question.

And answering it obviously means we have to discuss Neanderthals, whistling, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, electricity, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, telegraphs, Morse code, the Titanic, phonographs, radio, French potatoes, Star Trek, Riker’s beard, Rotten.com, AI, Wikipedia, Kevin Bacon, Eric Roberts, 30 Rock, and one extremely evil businessman named David Sarnoff.

We get into:

• How humans went from yelling and whistling to communicating across the world.
• Benjamin Franklin, Volta, batteries, and the long road to electricity.
• Thomas Edison, light bulbs, power plants, and making an absolute shitload of money.
• Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse, AC vs. DC, and the electrical grid.
• Morse code, SOS, and why “Save Our Ship” is apparently bullshit.
• Marconi, wireless telegraphy, and the legend of David Sarnoff saving the Titanic.
• Phonographs, microphones, speakers, and how you eventually turn a voice into a radio signal.
• The first radio networks and why the first big thing they broadcast was a goddamn boxing match.
• How technology keeps replacing the people who used to do the thing.
• David Sarnoff realizing that the real money isn’t in radios—it’s in controlling the radios.
• RCA, NBC, CBS, ABC, GE, AT&T, Westinghouse, and the giant tangled family tree of American broadcasting.
• Edwin Armstrong inventing FM radio and Sarnoff basically saying, “Yeah, but I own that.”
• Why television didn’t just happen—it was pushed, marketed, patented, licensed, and shoved into everyone’s living rooms.
• Charlie Chaplin, silent-film stars, and the horrifying possibility of a leading man having a Mickey Mouse voice.
• Color television, corporate competition, and why the best technology doesn’t necessarily win.
• Star Trek, The Boys, Riker’s beard, and why everything really is connected.
• Wikipedia, the seven-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon problem, and falling down an information rabbit hole until you accidentally know everything about World War II.
• AI, the internet, and why the future keeps looking suspiciously like the dystopia science fiction warned us about.

Also: Black Mirror, Current War, Coney Island, French potatoes, rotten potatoes, robot arms, radio stars, monopoly power, and the strange fact that three of the biggest television networks in America can trace their roots back to the same tangled technological garden.

So.

How much do you miss looking through the TV Guide and reading it cover to cover and doing the puzzles and highlighting things? Is there anything comparable to that today?

Listen to Part One and find out how we got from Neanderthal grunts to David Sarnoff deciding what the entire country gets to watch.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

Who was Indigo’s PR agent?

That’s the question.

And answering it obviously means we have to discuss Isaac Newton, ancient Persia, India, British colonialism, Gandhi, Nazis, blue jeans, birds trying to get laid, Pluto, Prince, and some deeply cursed crayons.

We get into:

• Aristotle and the original rainbow.
• Persian scholars adding colors to the conversation.
• Indigo: the plant that isn’t blue.
• British India and the indigo trade.
• Gandhi, courts, and fucking with the system.
• BASF, synthetic indigo, and blue jeans.
• Nazis, forced labor, and German industry.
• Isaac Newton and his magic seven-color rainbow.
• Roy G. Biv and indigo’s big break.
• Carl Linnaeus and horny birds.
• Pluto catching a stray.
• Crayons that smell like mother’s tomb.

Also: Prince, Seven Nation Army, color theory, history, and the question of whether indigo actually belongs in the rainbow.

So.

Who was Indigo’s PR agent?

Listen to the episode and decide for yourself.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

Is cheese political?

That’s the question.

And apparently, the answer requires Mickey, Christian, and Ian to discuss ancient Rome, government cheese, raw milk, war, capitalism, comedy, mold, Upton Sinclair, American food, and the horrifying process by which humanity apparently discovered what was safe to eat.

Also, Jacki isn’t here.

This is the first episode of Everything on Nothing without her, so obviously things go completely off the rails.

Mickey has a question about cheese, and because Mickey is Mickey, answering it means going all the way back to the beginning. Cheese turns out to be tied to politics, war, trade, government regulation, food safety, cultural identity, and some truly questionable decisions made by people thousands of years ago.

Along the way, the conversation takes some very necessary detours into:

• Comedy bombing, Big Tim Murphy, and the strange science of making people laugh.
• Raw milk, government cheese, and why apparently cheese is an American political issue now.
• Moldy cheese, oysters, mushrooms, and the eternal question: Who was the first person to eat that?

And because this is Everything on Nothing, we eventually end up talking about Alexander the Great, Rembrandt, Marvel cookbooks, television, teaching, technology, and why there are apparently too many podcasts.

Everything is connected.

Nothing really matters.

Is cheese political??

Listen to the episode and decide for yourself.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

Are the Dutch evil sons of bitches?

That’s the question.

Mickey, Jacki, and Christian attempt to answer it, which obviously means we have to discuss swamp people, imperialism, weed, cheese, Civilization, Nazis, Taylor Swift, and approximately 2,000 years of Dutch history.

We get into:

• Neanderthals. Obviously.
• Rome, Germany, and defensive wars that get… less defensive.
• The Netherlands: literally the Lowlands. Wet!
• Dikes, windmills, and telling the ocean to fuck off.
• William of Orange and why the Dutch are so aggressively orange.
• Amsterdam, money, drugs, and keeping extremely good records.
• The Dutch East India Company and capitalism doing capitalism.
• Colonialism, imperialism, and Civilization making genocide look weirdly fun.
• Gandhi. Nuclear weapons. Somehow.
• Napoleon, Corsica, Genoa, France, Italy, and salami.
• Dutch resistance fighters and the very ugly reality of Nazi occupation.
• Weed. So much weed.
• Comedy festivals and collecting comedians like stray cats.
• Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, billionaires, and celebrity worship.
• Dolly Parton having more money than anyone needs.

Also: Florida is basically Dutch. Disney World is built on swamp. And at some point we start questioning whether the Dutch are actually evil or just extremely committed to spreadsheets.

So.

Are the Dutch evil sons of bitches?

Listen to the episode and decide for yourself.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

In this Everything On Nothing episode, we tackle the question:

“Is Dropout TV the most ethical streaming service out there?”

We talk:

• Dropout TV, CollegeHumor, and the increasingly unusual idea that a company might actually like the people who work there
• Brennan Lee Mulligan’s “Evil is boring” philosophy and why being good turns out to be considerably more complicated
• Sam Reich, creative control, and what happens when the people making the shows get to keep making the shows
• Profit sharing, loyal crews, and the radical proposition that employees might deserve some of the money they helped make
• Channel 101, ComedySportz, and the strange little comedy incubators that somehow keep producing famous people
• Donald Glover, Derrick Comedy, Community, SNL, and the sprawling Hollywood family tree where apparently everybody knows everybody
• Hollywood consolidation, streaming, and the thrilling prospect of having approximately six companies decide what the entire world gets to watch
• AI-generated entertainment and the bold new future of making things cheaper so nobody has to enjoy making them
• Gary’s filmmaking adventures, WWE NXT, Full Sail, and the glamorous world of running cables while other people get to be on television
• Ryan, vinyl, Dungeons & Dragons, and the suspicious number of hobbies that can become a career if you refuse to get a normal job
• Los Angeles, Channel 101, Harmontown, Santa Monica Pier, BMX, skateboarding, police chases, and other perfectly normal activities 
• Why weird little creative communities matter, especially when nobody in them has any idea what they're going to become
• How artists build something together, become successful, and eventually discover they are the system they spent ten years complaining about
• Why treating creative people like human beings might be a surprisingly effective business strategy
• And several other tangents that absolutely did not need to happen but did anyway

So is Dropout really a better way to make entertainment?

I (Jacki) vote yes. 

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

In this Everything On Nothing episode, we tackle the question:

“Why did Ske Lo want a ’64 Impala?”

We talk:

• Skee-Lo, “I Wish,” and why he walked away from the music business
• The Good Life Café and the LA hip-hop scene that came out of it
• Why the 1964 Chevrolet Impala became such a big deal in hip-hop
• Lowriders, hydraulics, murals, candy paint, and cars that cost more than the house
• Black and Chicano car culture and why the Impala meant more than just looking cool
• Redlining, segregation, the Civil Rights Act, and how all of that somehow ends up involving cars
• How an affordable family car became a status symbol and cultural icon
• Eazy-E, Skee-Lo, ’90s rap, and the six-four showing up all over hip-hop
• Grand Theft Auto, California road trips, the Salton Sea, Slab City, and other completely necessary detours
• The music industry, Motown, Eminem, and the many ways artists get chewed up by the machine
• Why supporting weird little creative communities actually matters
• And several other tangents that absolutely did not need to happen but did anyway

So why did Skee-Lo want a ’64 Impala?

Because that car comes with a whole lot more history than you might think.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!

In this Everything On Nothing episode, we tackle the cursed Facebook classic:
“Why do women get so mad when they see a man relaxing?”

We talk:

• Slammed screen doors, stolen Saturday morning cartoons, Catholic indoctrination, and Mickey getting trained young that if someone is working, you get your ass up and help
• Mr. White Christmas the belt, paddles with holes, fly swatters, the springy Tupperware ladle, and how the “beating utensil” always seems to evolve
• My secret Facebook thread on this exact question, with Mariah’s “kids feral, dogs barking, dinner cooking, bro get up and help so we can both sit down” and the cis het mom’s “women have 1,000 tabs open, men have 10” brain
• The stay-at-home breastfeeding mom “fighting for her life with the kids” while her ex golfs, comes home, naps, and still finds time to criticize
• Mickey’s cortisol breakdown, traffic, construction crews, lazy coworkers, and why your brain spikes when you are working, and someone else looks like a frozen NPC
• Our house rules: my “no one in the kitchen while I am cooking or I go feral” reality, Mickey’s doorway brain resets, forgotten laundry, and our post-work kitchen check-in to keep the twitchy at bay
• Periods, perimenopause, and moms who only called it “lady stuff,” plus Clancy in yearbook class teaching teenage Mickey that sometimes it is just not a jokey day
• Cats, consent, and why “the kitten bit me” somehow makes more sense to people than “she might be struggling inside, how can I help”
• World War II factory women, 70s feminism, men’s liberation drifting into men’s rights and the manosphere, and how women got shoved back into the house while still doing everything
• The inventors behind Kevlar, frequency hopping, paper bags, windshield wipers, and Monopoly, and how that rhymes with me pitching ideas in meetings that only land when a man repeats them
• Girls on Mickey’s football and soccer teams running through boys, crushing nuts, winning games, and then getting spun off into their own leagues once they proved they were good

By the end, that “why is she so mad, I’m just sitting here” line hits a little different.

Got a question for us? Ask it here!