Nice Pull!

Chris goes to Milwaukee and discovers two things: the airport issuspiciously pleasant, and the city has erected a bronze statue of Fonzie — finally giving future civilizations proof that America once worshipped a tiny man in a leather jacket who could start a jukebox by punching it.

Naturally, this sends Jeff and Chris careening into the proud history of fake television bands: Leather Tuscadero, Johnny Fish and the Fins, the Brady kids, Captain Kool and the Kongs, and the shocking revelation that Sha Na Na somehow played Woodstock without everyone immediately packing up and going home.

Then things get angry.

Jeff and Chris re-convene an emergency tribunal from Episode 43 to answer one of rock & roll’s most uncomfortable questions:

At what point should your childhood musical heroes stop charging $150 to shuffle onto a stage and whisper the lyrics to songs they recorded 40 years ago?

David Lee Roth. Axl Rose. Vince Neil. Bret Michaels. Loverboy. The Who. Journey. Steve Miller. Nobody is safe.

There are replacement singers, teleprompters, mystery session musicians, unwanted 45-minute jam sessions, Joe Jackson playing beloved classics on coffee cans and kazoos, William Shatner talk-singing, and the horrifying possibility that the concert you just bought tickets for may actually be three original members, four guys from Craigslist and somebody’s orthopedic surgeon.

Meanwhile, Mick Jagger continues sprinting around the planet at 137 years old just to make everyone else look bad.

Episode 83 begins with elementary-school teacher smoke shows and Shotgun Tom Kelly and somehow crashes headfirst into Grape-Nuts, whole milk, Casey Kasem, cassette-tape piracy, beer snobbery, Vikings, and Stand By Me,

Jeff defends IPAs while Chris bravely stands up for beer that doesn’t taste like somebody dissolved a pine tree in it. Then the guys conduct a long-overdue financial audit of Smokey and the Bandit and discover that transporting an 18-wheeler full of illegal Coors across state lines in a gas-guzzling convoy may not have been the brilliant criminal enterprise we were led to believe.

Eventually they arrive in Mayberry, where apparently violent crime was handled by Barney Fife, diversity was handled by nobody, and domestic violence occasionally qualified as a punchline.

Episode 82 begins with the innocent topic of dreams and almost immediately wanders into the weeds—which, at this point, is basically the NICE PULL! mission statement.

Jeff and Chris examine the grim reality of getting together with old high-school friends and realizing the conversation has somehow shifted from reckless teenage adventures to sleep apnea, sciatica, retirement accounts, mysterious tingling, and who among the group is statistically most likely to die first.

From there, they attempt to understand the bizarre garbage our brains manufacture while we sleep, revisit some deeply questionable Freddy Krueger mythology, and wonder why every minor symptom in 2026 apparently means you have high cortisol—or, according to the internet, six weeks to live.

There are pharmaceutical commercials. WebMD diagnoses. Cannibalism. Devo.

The possible de-evolution of mankind. And, inexplicably, an actual landline telephone rings during the podcast.

It all culminates in perhaps the most suspenseful cliffhanger in NICE PULL! history:

Will a rotary telephone still work in 2026?

Please do not Google it. We desperately need you to come back for Episode 83.

Episode 81: The Truth Is Out There… and Jeff Apparently Already Knew About It

After a brief hiatus caused by life, old-man responsibilities, and Chris losing a fight with some loose gravel, NICE PULL! returns with an episode that goes considerably deeper down the rabbit hole than anyone probably intended.

This week, Chris and Jeff finally tackle UFOs, aliens, flying saucers, government secrecy, Area 51, Close Encounters, In Search Of, the Bermuda Triangle, extraterrestrial biological entities, and the increasingly reasonable possibility that the guy working the graveyard shift at AM/PM isn't from around here.

But there's a twist: Jeff isn't just some guy who watched The X-Files and bought a poster.

Back in the 1990s, what started as a trip to a UFO convention looking for stand-up comedy material somehow led Jeff into the early Disclosure Project, where he helped edit hours of videotaped testimony from military and government witnesses claiming firsthand knowledge of UFOs and extraterrestrial technology. In other words, Jeff went looking for 20 minutes of comedy material and accidentally took the red pill.

From there, things get weird.

Really weird.

Jeff tells Chris about alleged secret programs, reverse-engineered spacecraft, aliens working alongside humans, compartmentalized government projects, technology that could completely upend the world's economy—and one genuinely creepy incident involving Jeff's wife, a security-gate salesman, and a telephone call that somehow ended up connected to a friend working inside a secure government facility. At which point Jeff's wife essentially issued the only sensible order available: We're done with UFOs. We have kids.

Chris begins the episode as the reasonably skeptical guy asking how anyone could possibly keep a secret this enormous. By the end, he's basically received his freshman orientation packet for Alien University and admits he's now both more interested and slightly more terrified.

And somehow all of this eventually leads to the most important question of the episode:

Why does Jeff have a problem with Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Stop the presses. Call your editor. Alert the authorities.

Episode 80 of Nice Pull! uncovers something previously thought impossible a middle-aged white guy talking about growing up in the 70s and 80s.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not one, not two, but THREE of them in the same room. Experts are calling it unprecedented. Historians are scrambling for context. The internet may never recover.

Jeff and Chris welcome Gen X Jono, a man who hassomehow built a massive following by doing the unthinkable reminiscing about being a latchkey kid and surviving it. Armed with nothing but memories, mild trauma, and an alarming number of near-death experiences, Jono dives headfirst into the chaos that was Gen X childhood.

But the real scandal erupts when Johno starts confessing. Underage drinking in open fields. Hitchhiking at 12 like it waspublic transportation. Running a fully operational bar as a teenager with zero adult supervision until state troopers crash the party after a drunken accident blows the whole thing wide open. Licenses threatened. Parents notified. Consequences suggested but never fully delivered. Somehow everyone walks away alive and ready to do it all again next weekend.

By the end, Episode 80 reads like a tabloid exposé on a generation that probably should not have made it this far butsomehow did. Three guys, countless bad decisions, and a mountain of stories that feel equal parts hilarious and legally questionable.

This is not just a trip down memory lane. This is a full-blown investigation into how Gen X survived itself.

In this historic (and long overdue) episode, Jeff and Chris finally break their accidental two-year streak of hosting a glorified sausage fest by welcoming their first-ever female guest—and not just any guest, but psychic stand-up comic Karen Rontowski, who kicks the door open like she’s been booked since 1987 and you guys just lost the paperwork.

What starts as a standard Nice Pull stroll through Gen X nostalgia—complete with Star Wars vs. Star Trek debates and the emotional trauma of turning 60—quickly spirals into something far weirder. Karen arrives armed with a haunted witch doll named “Emerald” (because of course she does), casually drops that it’s worth $400 now, and then proceeds to tell stories that make The Exorcist feel like a Hallmark movie.

From possessed roommates getting roped (literally) into the air, to demonologists hanging out at wolf sanctuaries (as one does), to the revelation that ventriloquists might need separate hotel rooms for their dolls (hard pass), this episode lives in that magical space where comedy and “should I sage my house tonight?” collide.

Karen breaks down how she accidentally created a booming career blending tarot readings with stand-up—basically turning “what’s your sign?” into a full-blown business model—while Jeff leans all the way into UFOs, ghosts, and the kind of stories that make Chris reconsider every life decision that led him to hit “record.”

Somewhere in the chaos, there’s a strangely profound takeaway: maybe psychics, comedians, stock traders, and nurses are all just tapping into different versions of the same weird human intuition… or maybe we’re all just one haunted doll away from losing it completely.

Either way, this episode delivers:

• Nostalgia ✔️
• Existential dread ✔️
• Demon-adjacent rope incidents ❌ (we hope)
• And one unforgettable guest who proves that reading tarot cards on stage might actually be the most normal thing she does.

By the end, Chris is questioning reality, Jeff is ready to book a tarot reading, and Karen is off to her next sold-out show like she didn’t just casually ruin everyone’s sleep schedule.

Bottom line:
Episode 79 is what happens when Nice Pull! opens the liquor cabinet and accidentally lets the supernatural in—and honestly, it’s about damn time.

Chris and Jeff celebrate surviving the great odometer rollover with the kind of wild birthday behavior you’d expect from men entering their prestige era: seafood, appetizers, quiet restaurants, and a deep spiritual appreciation for nobody making a scene.

From there, things immediately drift into the beautiful wreckage of aging, including the horrifying realization that people in their 60s used to look like they fought in the Civil War, while somehow these two are still mentally hovering around age 19 with worse knees and stronger opinions.

Along the way, they wander through the usual sacred Gen X territory: grandparents who seemed ancient at 61, the psychological warfare of driver’s license photos, the strange moment when you realize young people are impressed that you can send an attachment, and the grim truth that no one ever says, “60 is the new anything.” It is just 60. The check engine light of adulthood.

But this episode is not some soft-focus Hallmark meditation on growing older. No, sir. It also contains righteous fury about traffic, public annoyance, old people with mysterious urgency, and one absolutely unhinged suburban mystery involving a giant skeleton that refuses to leave one man’s block and possibly has darker plans. There is also some surprisingly hopeful talk about late blooming success, creative second acts,and why the future might still be weird enough to make getting older worth it.

So, if you enjoy nostalgia, low grade rage, existential comedy, and two vintage humans trying to make peace with the fact that they are now closer to senior discounts than rookie cards, episode 78 has your name all over it.

It starts like any respectable Nice Pull episode should: an opening monologue that roasts your childhood, your attention span, and Hollywood’s obsession with rebooting everything you loved until it’s unrecognizable and somehow… more expensive.

Then Chris drops the inciting incident: his daughter watches Star Wars for the first time—but not the way nature intended. She goes chronological, which means the “big reveal” arrives pre-spoiled like milk left in a 1970s station wagon.

Soon the boys are debating vibes (utopian sci-fi vs. mythic fantasy), characters, cultural timing, and what “better” even means when one franchise is about humanity’s potential and the other is about space wizards with family trauma.

And just when you think it’s going to end like a clean little tie? The episode casually drops a theater-related horror story that will make you grateful you live in the age of streaming… and deeply afraid of projectors.

Jeff and Chris stumble out of the holiday fog and immediately start arguing about the real meaning of Christmas (spoiler: it’s not peace on Earth, it’s commercials, trauma, and whether mall Santas used to look like they were assembled in a JC Penney stockroom).

From there, the episode ricochets through a sacred trio of seasonal touchstones: the “I can’t believe you’ve never seen that” movie confession, the annual rewatch that somehow still hits like a brick, and the childhood memory that proves the 80s/90s were basically a prank we all agreed not to report.

Somewhere along the way, Jeff upgrades his “I’m in a spaceship” delusion with a truly irresponsible piece of nerd décor, and the guys take a respectful-but-unhinged detour into sci-fi nostalgia… including one observation that, once you hear it, you cannot un-hear it. (You’ve been warned.)

Then the vibe shifts into a year-end wrap: a few “we lost legends” moments, a little love letter to creators who basically raised your brain, and a rapid-fire set of recommendations that proves two dudes “pushing 60” can still hand you cooler watch/listen picks than most algorithmic homepages.

They close by teasing a 2026 debate that will absolutely end friendships, marriages, and possibly several galactic treaties.

You know. The usual wholesome Nice Pull! stuff.

Jeff and Chris start with the news that MTV has “scaled down” (which is a polite way of saying the network has finally admitted it’s been cosplaying as its former self for about two decades).

From there, it turns into a glorious Gen X memory stampede: the first times they saw music videos “in the wild” (before MTV hit everywhere), the weird magic of having to wait for afavorite video like it was a solar eclipse, and the way MTV didn’t just play songs—it basically re-wired pop culture,from fashion to film editing to how commercials and TV started cutting like they’d been shot on espresso.

They hit the golden era stuff without getting too precious about it—more like: “Yes this mattered… and also look at us, two grown men passionately discussing people’s haircuts from 1983.” There’s a running thread about how MTV made careers, made certain artists unavoidable, and also exposed the darker, dumber sides of the machine (including the era’s… let’s say… “selective” inclusivity and the brutal reality that once MTV got huge, it got less interested in your weird little cult bands).

Then the episode really turns into a deep-cut buffet: the kind where you suddenly remember a song you haven’t thought about since a couch smelled like indoor smoking and wood paneling.

If you grew up with music videos as a life event, this one’s a fun ride. If you didn’t, it’s still a fascinating glimpse into why Gen X reacts to certain synth riffs the way sharks react to blood in the water.