Ben Dancin' with Katie Nolan

Scotty, you ready?

Gertie B., I'm ready to laugh and laugh and laugh.

Driver intentionally crashes into Kroger just to use the restroom.

I could see myself doing this. Me too. You gotta go. You gotta go. Let's get into it. Beep, beep. It's a brand new episode of Bananas.

If I said.

Something bad with your world on its head, would you believe me?

Guys, gals, non-binary pals, welcome to another episode of Bananas.

I'm Kurt Braunohler.

I'm banana boy number two, Scotty Lannis. Thank you for listening to the silliest little podcast there ever was. Oh, especially to the good and decent people of, and this is in your neck of the woods, Kurt, Lock Arbor, New Jersey, including an animal named Manny Bravo, which is one of the great names. I surf in Lock Arbor.

There you go. Population, 224. It's very, very.

Small, and I didn't know it was that small.

But I surf there. It's in between Asbury Park, where I.

Grew up, And Allenhurst, where Mike Merrill lives.

Okay, great. I love that. Thanks, Manny Bravo. You're on the map. And Locke Arbor, you're officially on the map.

And also Chicago, October 15th. I'll see you at the Cutler Club. Now, listen up.

Yes.

Our guest today.

Wow.

Is an Emmy. I'm very excited.

Emmy award-winning sports host, comedian, writer, podcaster. She's hosted shows including Garbage Time with Katie Nolan on Fox Sports. Always Late with Katie Nolan on ESPN. NFL Film Presents. She's also been a finalist because she's a smarty on Celebrity Jeopardy. She now hosts the delightful Casuals podcast on SiriusXM.

Please welcome Katie Nolan.

Yay, what an amazing intro. Thank you, guys. Thanks for having me.

Oh, we're so happy to have you. Casuals, I have started listening to casuals. I'm not a casual sports fan. I'm a big sports fan, but I think that podcast is fantastic. Do you want to just give us the briefest of what is casuals?

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for listening to it and for liking it. The premise was I've worked in sports for a really long time. I took, you know, 2020 was a weird year. It's sort of, I threw everything into flux and I took some time away from sports and realized that there was no entry point for people I was talking to that seemed to have a curiosity about sports or you could tell they were maybe could be interested in sports, but nobody had gotten them into it. And so I wanted to come up with a podcast that was a welcoming space in sports that did not quiz you on what you knew or make sure that you had, like, how long have you been a fan and name three players, but was more just like,

you don't have to know anything. We're going to talk about it in a way that isn't over your head. It also doesn't talk down to you. So if you do love sports, it also is listenable, I think. Scotty, you can say whether or not that's true. It's excellent. Yeah, I just wanted to do a more, like, you know, casual sports conversation that, you know, I'm not a casual sports fan. I was just telling you guys before we started recording, I'm in a miserable mood today and thrilled to be here because the Red Sox embarrassed themselves last night to our rivals.

The Yankees are tough, yeah.

Yeah, whatever. We're stupid. So I've just been in a bad mood about it, but I'm happy to be here and to laugh at some silly stuff and... And yeah, the point of casuals is if you think you might like sports, but every time you watch something on sports TV, you're like, this is not talking to me. That's right.

My goal is to make it talking to a different audience.

Yeah.

I love that the description, even in the description, it says that you don't have to have old white men in sports jackets yell at you.

Yeah. And, you know, sometimes people like that, but it seems to be kind of every day. Either sports jackets or now, you know, tank tops, sleeveless tank tops on ESPN all day screaming about sports. We try to be a little different.

Yeah, or if you're from Baltimore like I am, it's just guys wearing purple, white, and black snow camo pants yelling at you about the Ravens and parking lots and why it's a Ravenstown and not an Oralstown.

I would love to imagine the situation which purple camo pants keeps you hidden.

Just a field of lavender that you need to hide.

You'll never find me out here.

Snowy lavender. Everybody should listen to Casuals. And Katie, I said... Before, I do listen to it. And one of the big things, and we like to gas our guests up a little bit on the podcast. Two things. One, you do talk about social issues and things going on in the world, the extended world of sports. I think you do it extremely well. I think you do it with a common sense approach that sometimes when I'm listening to the pod, I'm like, It's crazy that this host has to even say these things. But the way you say it, it's like you don't get exasperated. You're very clear in your messaging.

And I think it's very necessary these days. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is you have to talk a lot. You have multiple shows. And sports is so fucking constant that you just have to always have a take and all these things. I'm a screenwriter. Not a comedian, not a professional talker. Bananas is just a joy I do with Kurt.

He's very good at professionally talking, though.

It's not true. And I will say, as somebody that just listens to the way people talk, especially in sports media, I've got to give you a round of applause for it. You find interesting and original ways to say things in a funny way. You're not just grabbing the sound bite that's going around. At the beginning of the season, you'll just hear the former athletes all say, same fucking five phrases and you don't do that. So those are two things that stand out to me as a real sports fan listening to casuals.

Thank you, Scotty. That's the whole goal. So that means I did it, which means I can check the box, which means I can stop doing it. So that's the end of casuals.

It's done. That's a wrap on casuals.

One compliment. That's what you're all, you're doing it for all this time.

I need the validation and I finally found it here on the dance.

That's what we do. Congratulations.

Um, Curdy B, why don't we get into what we do best? Very dumb news stories.

This one, I'm not doing, I'm not actually going to do that story that I just read because the whole story is, uh, he, it was locked door and he drove into it to use the bathroom and then he was arrested.

Is it a PT cruiser? Was it in Texas?

It is a PT cruiser, Scott.

I saw this story.

Which I have a joke from 2013, I think, which is never race a man. Driving a PT Cruiser, because that man has got nothing to lose.

Here it is.

This is the real one.

It's called The Last Pay Phones Are Taking Goodbyes. This is sweet and beautiful and just right up our alley.

Okay.

It's from Atlas Obscura.

Great.

Written by Alexis Wood, who I know she's the best in the biz after reading this.

Best in the business. Here it is.

At the edge of the forest in Altadena, a payphone, a working payphone. A payphone in Los Angeles already feels rare.

Yes.

It feels almost surreal like the city forgot to erase one small thing. I fell in love with that phone before I really understood why. Maybe it was the setting, a metal box with a dial tone set against dry brush and hills. Maybe it was because it felt useful and forgotten at the same time, which is evidently exactly the kind of object that triggers my vulnerability. Mine as well, I would say. The Altadena payphone became the first physical portal for the goodbye line. a participatory art project Adam Tranel and I created, inviting strangers to call from working payphones and leave the goodbyes they never.

Got to say.

So yes, this story is a little different from the other Atlas Obscura places I visited this summer. I'm not arriving as an outsider, blah, blah, blah. Adam and I were finding payphones, checking for dial tones, placing stickers on working relics to invite strangers to call a toll-free number and say goodbye to someone or something.

The idea was simple.

A public phone, already overlooked, already built for voices, could become a place to leave the lingering things people had nowhere else to put. The phone would not answer back. It would just listen, and the call started coming. First it started as 10, then hundreds, then thousands, now tens of thousands of goodbyes, spanning the spectrum of human experience.

Adam often describes the line in the simplest possible way. The line just listens. It doesn't judge. It doesn't interrupt. It doesn't try to make things go okay. And it all started in Altadena, the one at the edge of the forest, the one that changed the way I thought about phones. It is a very long article, folks. It goes on for maybe another half hour.

Okay.

Read it, read it, read it, read it.

It is.

So I'm not going to read the whole article, but that is the idea of it, is that you can just call. And they're all across the country now, these loan pay phones that still work, which is fascinating that I didn't even know that there were pay phones that still worked anymore.

Me neither.

That's beautiful. I think this is a really beautiful idea. I also would love to know the people who didn't use it in the beautiful way that we're all thinking. You know, the people that call the line. I just would love a little... you know, the outtakes of the people that called and said something else, you know. What the fuck is this?

I hate you.

I needed to make a real phone call.

Yeah, just grandmas calling their grandsons for their birthdays and just talking to nobody but saying the whole message. That's so sweet though. It really shows how trapped we all are. The fact that you just want to say goodbye to anything and that this many people would take time out of their day to do it. That's really... Yeah. It kind of goes back to, Kurt and I are huge fans of snail mail. We love postcards and mailing things.

And there's something about mailing that's like a pay phone where it's like, it's a far call. It might not go through.

It's affordable.

It can get lost in the shuffle, but it's sort of just the act of approaching it, getting inside the box, closing the door, touching the disgusting buttons, putting the receiver up to your phone. They're so heavy. They really were weapons.

Yeah.

It's cool. It's cool.

Is there anything either of you would say goodbye to in your life?

Oh, boy.

On the goodbye line? And if this is too personal, we don't have to do this part.

No, no.

I think it's a good question. I said, oh, boy, because my first thought was not the most beautiful and lovely one. My first thought was the 2026 Boston Red Sox. Yeah, that's a good one, though. I wanted to have a more deep and insightful thing to say, like a love lost or a... But no, it's that team. And it wouldn't be kind or loving. It would be a lot of screaming into the receiver. I'm sure there's another that I can find while Scotty gives his wonderful answer.

To the question. Oh, sure, sure, sure. I would call and say goodbye to Hewlett Packard printers. They are the worst investment. They really are. I didn't know how bad they were. Until I got one. And so I print, I like to print hard copies of my outlines before I write scripts. And I, so I got this one like two years ago and it was like, you can scan, you can copy, it's wifi, it's phone, it's all the shit.

And then I printed a script and I got an email halfway through printing. So 110 pages. That was like, you've exceeded your page count for the month. It's going to be 39 cents for every 20 pages.

In my house?

In my house.

In your own house?

If, uh, Katie, we don't know each other. I'm calm all the time. I think I've yelled three times in my whole life ever. The fury. If somebody, if somebody had broken into my house at that moment, I would have ripped them in half. I was like, you're charging me for page count, not even ink replenishment page count.

I threw it in the trash can. I'm sure I should have recycled it. I unplugged it, walked it up to my trash can and, And I got a brother. And brother, sistering, brothering.

I switched as well from HP to brother.

Yeah. It's so much better. It doesn't break. It never breaks. And it doesn't warm up for 15 minutes. It doesn't charge you for printing in your own home office.

You already have to buy the paper. You have to buy the ink. You bought the printer in the first place. Where did they get off?

They're telling you that you have to pay per page.

10 pages a month.

You wouldn't own a printer if you only needed to print 10 pages a month. You would go to the whatever they call the combination of physicists now.

Yeah, I'd go to Kinko's. Kinko's Pizza Hut. Quickie printie.

That's crazy.

Oh, yeah, that's terrible. So goodbye, Hewlett Packard. Hello, brother. That's mine. I love it. I love it. Also, I got to say the Red Sox calling Altadena like the mountainside of Altadena, that's perfect because it is the opposite of Boston in every way. It is a dry desert. It is far from the ocean. It is full of happy people hiking.

People that are outside and connecting with nature instead of sitting at home in a dark room watching the screen and screaming at it when your manager takes the picture out way too soon in a playoff game against the Yankees.

I mean, the worst, the worst team to lose to. I went to UMass during the Pedro Martinez years, the years where you guys were losing to them and also started winning against the Yankees. And win or lose, it would either be mattresses fly out the window, every piece of paper in a dorm room, or some kid, some asshole would jump off the dining hall or try to get on a police horse or whatever and break an arm.

break a hip, and it was the next day in the Daily Collegian, it would be like, Red Sox lose, Southwest dorms burn. And then it'd be like, Red Sox win, Southwest burn. We're sickos. You guys just need to.

It's also, it's part of the other half of the ethos of casuals, which is that I think for a lot of people, men especially, it's a, sports become a place where whether they're conscious of it or not can put their emotions first. where they can express their emotions safely without it being tied to them being emotional, which seems to be something that society rejects when it comes to men. And so I advocate for sports being where you feel your emotions, but then when it happens to me and they're my emotions... It's upsetting and I don't like it and I run from it.

But you have a platform. Kurt, what's your goodbye?

Yeah, Kurt. I think my goodbye, I think I guess would be a sappy one to say goodbye to my life in Los Angeles.

Okay.

You know, I don't feel like I ever really did. I kind of left in the dark of night, you know?

Yes.

And I don't.

Necessarily miss living in the city, but I do miss all my friends there.

I miss you, Scotty.

Yeah, there is a void. We can feel I'm going out with our two good friends, Rob and Rich, tonight. And you would be the fourth, so I'll pour a beer on the barstool next to me. Just the whole damn thing.

That just made me sad, Kurt. That just gave me FOMO that they're going out without you.

Well, I'm staying in without them, so it's going to be fine.

Yeah, we're of that age where I'm like, that does sound pretty good. Should I cancel?

I was going to say, if those friends called and said, hey, Scotty, I don't think we can make it tonight, you'd go, oh, darn.

Oh, toots. Oh, toots. Yeah, well, that's good. Kurt, should I go to that phone? Do you know that phone? You were a big hiker in the Angeles mountain range.

Oh, man.

I don't remember. Angeles National Forest.

I still, to this day, I can imagine a future of myself writing a book on the Angeles national forest because no one, there is no book that like documents what, like all the different trails and what's been going on, but taking in there, I would camp there, Katie, I would, um, I would like spend overnight in this place. That's literally was 20 minutes from my house. And it would, it would just be, you were in wilderness, you were in just wilderness and no one utilizes it that much other than for people to race their like Ferraris on the road that goes through it, which.

Is the craziest use of that space.

So that is, I can't imagine, but I do love that. And no, I have not seen that.

I'll go take a look for it. That seems like a good little day trip for me to go out there and hunt this phone down. And just hang up and see if it rings. But you can still... Nope.

You can still call normal numbers from all of these phones. It's just a sticker above the phone. Which is nice that they didn't disable it.

The reason I like this story is because if you think about it, theoretically... Mm-hmm. We all have a thing in our hands that we could call this number from every day. But because it's at this physical location, it makes it feel a little bit more special and a little bit more whimsical. It also makes me more willing to do it than if it's just a text blast that says, call this number and say goodbye. It'd be like, oh, maybe I'll do that, but probably not.

There is now something with everything, especially now with AI, every single thing is at your fingertips.

Like effort.

creates emotional experiences more than anything.

And so it's like coming, and that's.

Why it's like, I just do think, I really do think that we are like on the precipice of people really wanting to be in a space with other human beings, experience something together. I think so. As this goes, I think it's going to be great for standup comedy. I should selfishly saying that, but I think it is going to be that because people will want a genuine experience that cannot be replicated in any other way.

I think you're right. And I think, I also feel the same way about movie theaters and everybody's always like movie, but I think people are starting to enjoy going to the movies and like, Horror movies are leading the way, which is great. But they had the Minecraft movie and all the kids were just going ballistic when they did the chicken jockey or whatever.

And those kids are going to remember that moment and be like, oh, movies have that collective experience in the future.

Exactly. Agreed.

So keep making kids movies of very popular franchises.

And let them trash the place. Popcorn's cheap. You can afford more popcorn.

You're creating consumers in the future.

That's right. Get them hooked now. James Taylor sent this one in. Katie, you did rhythmic gymnastics.

I did.

As a youth.

I did. You did? I won a Junior Olympic gold medal at.

The age of 10. Yes, you did. Are you kidding? What was your apparatus?

There's Junior Olympics?

I know, and I don't know if they were, like, officially sanctioned. I was 10, so they told me I was going to the Junior Olympics, and I was like, I'm basically an Olympian.

In the Olympics, yeah.

I've never looked back into it, so I don't know if it's, like, just, like, a fake made-up thing. But anyway, we went to, we, I did, the ribbon was my, was the actual thing. one of the harder ones because the rules about the ribbon, I don't want to bog you guys down.

No, no, no, no, no.

This is what this podcast is for.

It's an educational podcast.

The entire routine that you see someone dancing with a ribbon, the ribbon is not allowed to stop moving at no point.

Can you stop?

You have to do a flip while still doing this.

Constantly has to be, you're supposed to get like six spirals when you do the, and then also the tosses and stuff, those are my favorite. It's the easiest of the apparati, I guess, to toss up in the air is a ribbon. My least favorite apparatus was clubs. It was these two very hard plastic things. They're now made out of rubber, but when you first start out, it's like hard plastic things. knobs that you'd have to toss in the air and catch. It was very dangerous. But I liked the hoop. Now, many call it a hula hoop.

I would say that's disrespectful.

It's a hoop. It's different.

There's no little beads that make noises inside of it. These are just regular hoops.

Do you hula hoop with it though?

Sometimes. That's like a cute little fun moment in your routine. But there's a lot of like tossing it. There's a lot of like wrapping.

It around your body.

Yeah, that's the best.

Okay.

It's a fascinating sport that half the people on earth have never heard of and the people who have heard of it mostly think it's a joke. And so it was a fun gymnastics to do as a child to every time I told anyone I did gymnastics. They were like, oh, can you do a back handspring? I was like, no, but watch what I can do with this hoop. Check out what I can do with this little ball.

I can catch this ball in the back of my leg and the crook of my knee.

I can toss this in the air and then catch it without looking at it, but grabbing it between me and the ground, and nobody was impressed.

That's pretty awesome.

Kurt has a little experience doing some ribbon. Oh, yeah.

I think when I first started... writing comedy this is like 20 years ago um and like i think one of my first like stand-up bits or not stand-up it was more conceptual than that yeah but it was me ribbon twirling um like while i don't even know if i was telling jokes i don't even know what the i don't know why i was but i definitely was a lot of ribbon twirling i thought it was just the most fun and funny thing I did get pretty good.

I think I was ribbon twirling as a bird at one point.

Wow.

Yeah, we really started.

A concept piece. I love that.

Very alt-y.

Yeah.

Brooklyn was an interesting time. But the reason I mention this case, because here we go. James Taylor, not the singer, the great banana animal, sent this in. Nigerian man dances nonstop. for seven days to win world record.

That's a big world record. Jesus Christ.

This was in the BBC. That's real. Can't be fake. Written by Makuchi Okafor. Yes. Very good. Maybe related to Emeka. We'll never know. A Nigerian dancer has completed 168 hours of dancing in Lagos in a bid to set a new world record. Benjamin Daniel... Known as Ben Dancer. All right.

Nice. That's his name or his Instagram handle.

That's his name. It says Benjamin Daniel, who's known as Ben Dancer. There's no at sign involved, just Ben Dancer. And also, get to the fucking point.

Yeah.

If you're a dancer who's going to dance for seven days, you're Ben Dancer.

Yeah.

That's it. There's no other way to do it.

It's actually a missed opportunity. It could have been called Ben Danson.

Yes, or Ted Danson, yeah. Ted Danson. So Ben Dancer aimed to dance for seven days to break the Guinness World Records title for longest dance marathon by an individual.

Wow.

Cheered on, and there are some caveats. I'll explain the rules. Yeah, you would die. Yeah. Cheered on by friends and supporters. We would have been front row for this. Every day from probably about 10 a.m. until 11.30, then we would have gone and gotten a three-martini lunch. Cheered on by friends and supporters at Lagos is Freedom Park. The 33-year-old reached his target time at 3 p.m. local time, but continued dancing for another nine hours, his team said.

Another nine past target time.

Wow. That's Ben Dancer, baby. Yeah.

Can't stop the feeling.

Expect the best. The physically exhausted dancer has now gone to the hospital for a medical checkup. He's very strong, but he's not as skinny as I would have guessed. I would have guessed a very lithe, thin. He's very muscular. Yeah. And he's worked Very handsome man.

You probably body needs to consume its own muscle if you're dancing for seven days straight.

I need to know about these rules. I don't mean to skip you ahead in this article, but I need to know about the peeing. I need to know about the eating and the sleeping.

The sleeping is the hardest one.

And what constitutes dancing? Like at any point could he have just taken a break and done this? Like a little shake of the finger?

He was really dancing. I would say he was moving. His team said he was elated and emotional after watching him complete the challenge, which was live streamed on social media. Greatest thing in the history of the internet, probably.

Seven days of live streaming?

Wow. 168 hours. Young people gathered in recent days to cheer him on at Freedom Park, filming every move, dancing along behind their ears, which is cool. That like people would come and dance with him. Like that is cool.

Have you guys ever watched college gymnastics?

Sure.

This is such a random poll, but there's one of my favorite things about college gymnastics is when somebody goes out and does their routine. Sometimes you'll see the entire team of gymnasts behind them watching the routine. But because they've seen them do it so much, they're sort of doing it as well behind them. It's the coolest thing.

This makes me think of that.

That is true.

Yeah.

And it would make it easier. It's like when they started playing music during NBA games. I'm like, well, I love this. This is way better than just you squeaking and the occasional grunt. Okay. I'll get to the rules and we'll go back to the other stuff.

Dancing for seven days.

I mean, there are.

Everybody's dancing with him.

Afrobeats was a constant presence, okay? Okay. So, they was listening to Afrobeats. And he was doing... I mean, this article... Oh, he was also dancing with some Fuji, some Jazz, and some Zouk guys. Nice. Kurt, I know you're a huge Zouk head. Constantly. Constantly Zouking it up over there.

Zucophilia, I think, is what you're into.

Here's when we get into some stats and stuff. So he underwent intensive fitness training before the attempt, changing his diet, focusing on carbohydrates and cardiovascular conditioning. Great. During the dance-a-thon, he ate lightly and drank fluids. He was allowed to take a five-minute rest for every continuous hour of dancing.

What?

Still pretty incredible.

So in 24 hours, if he danced one 24-hour straight, he gets.

What is that? Five minutes.

He gets an hour.

Five times 24.

He gets an.

Two hours.

He gets two hours?

Yeah. No.

And then he tried to sleep during that time?

He chose to dance for several hours at a time, and then he would take an accumulated rest with a medical team present. So if he danced for... four hours he would take a power 19 minute nap get up and start dancing.

Whoa that's crazy.

So he really did this like yeah it i would have thought it was like well you have to dance from like sun up to sun down and then you get to sleep and then you can come back but this actually makes it feel more real to me if he's doing it in chunks and then little naps but i i mean that's crazy imagine if you yes this you can only do this if you don't struggle to fall asleep which is something i fight every single night and i spend more time trying to fall asleep than i usually spend asleep if you've only got 20 minutes to sleep he better fall asleep right away.

He's trained he's i feel like if you've been dancing for five days straight you probably are able to kind.

Of drift off pretty easy.

Yeah collapsing into his 19 minute nap.

Also, you have to take a nap like you're just like, I'll be right back to the thousands of people dancing, watching you. And then you just walk off stage like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Okay, I'm back. The scene around him was something. It's so insane. It's like.

I've never heard of something like this. What's the world record for someone staying awake? Is it 11 days?

Yeah, but that guy lost his mind.

But he was like broken afterwards, right?

Oh, really?

Yeah, he never was the same afterwards.

Just some young guy, some young guy in America. Ruined his life?

Was he trying to break the record? That was the goal?

Yeah, and he did it.

And he went nuts?

And there's no way to bring it back.

We haven't checked in on him since we did the story, but... Yikes.

For sure, it did get better.

It did, I don't think so.

Was it worth it, though? You got that little plaque that they give you from the Guinness Book of World Records.

We're still talking about the nameless guy who we don't remember his name. We know who Ben Dancer is, and I promise everybody on this podcast will never forget Ben Dancer. That guy should have been called Johnny No Sleep, and you'd be like, Johnny No Sleep? Lemonade? Yeah, no problem.

Wow.

Okay. Ben Dancer, Marano Numbo Akudu, repeatedly visited to support Ben Dancer throughout the week, said she was impressed by his determination, but did worry about the physical toll.

Yeah.

Quote, it's actually insane, but I am so proud of him, she told the BBC.

Yeah.

She noticed a striking change in the dancer's energy. On day two, you could start to see the stress. Even after three hours of dancing at the location myself, I wondered how he could keep going. So just dancing for three hours and you'd be like, really?

Yeah.

Another six days and 20 hours?

Yeah. If you had a permanent limp or something permanently wrong with you, after this, was it worth it to have to always explain when someone says, what happened to you?

I danced for seven days straight.

And then I was like this after.

Well, the reason my right leg is a little bit longer than my left leg is because one time when I was 33, I tossed on some Afro beats, brought in a thousand of my closest friends, and I danced for seven days straight with a 19-minute power nap every four hours. That's right.

I did the Tootsie Roll from Tuesday to Thursday in 2026, and I just haven't been able to walk straight since. Okay, so this is an interesting detail. This other man named Emmanuel Uleilu, great name. They have beautiful names over there, said on day two, you could see the stress. But when he returned 16 hours into day five, he said Ben Dancer appeared more energetic than before. Interesting. Cocaine. Interesting.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly drug use.

It reminded me that we're all capable of doing unbelievable things.

That's pretty great.

It is interesting to think of if you're... How many total days was this? Seven days?

Seven.

It is interesting to think which ones would be your least favorite days. And I do think with more thought... Two and three would be the hard days because it's when you start to go like, I mean, the end is not close.

Yeah.

What am I doing? This is so foolish. I'm exhausted. I've never danced for this long.

That's right.

Whereas by the time you get to five and six and you're on seven, you're like, I'm almost there. This is... I'm almost euphoric. Do you guys remember there was somebody... I genuinely don't remember who. I wish I did because I know I'm talking to comedian folk. But there was a comedy pair who told like the same joke over and over a bunch of times once as a bit.

The bit was that they just kept telling the same joke. And I feel like by the seventh time they do it, the audience is going like, what is this that I signed up for? This sucks. And then by the like 20th time, everyone thinks it's the funniest thing on earth. I feel like that's the.

Yeah.

Kristen Schaal and I did that with.

That's exactly what it was.

It was.

That's why I was afraid.

Kristen Schaal is a horse. It was me.

It was me and Kristen Schaal.

And I would go, I should have known that. Of course it was.

But it wasn't.

It really wasn't a joke. It was like a song that just repeated and it was very simple. And I would sing it and she would dance.

And by the time.

It gets absurd, it gets like, okay, this is actually the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.

We toured the world on that three minute bit.

Amazing.

But it got longer. And then at their, how many anniversary was that?

The 12th anniversary of our show, we did it for 12 minutes, which was the longest we had ever done it.

And did you get a Guinness world record for it?

They should.

That's a miss by them.

They should have been there.

We should. Guinness is very difficult to work with. I don't like them at all.

We've reached out. We tossed most tampons at the same time in history. We donated. We've done so many things.

We had the most people wearing bras on their.

Heads at the exact same time. On their heads spinning in circles. Spinning in circles.

Damn, you guys are really committed to this.

Yeah.

I mean, like, it's our thing.

It's now the time to tell you. I had one. What? I had a Guinness World Record, but it got broken.

What was it? Who do we have to kill?

The... Gelman, the producer from the morning show.

Yeah. Good Morning America. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. Live.

That's who did it. It was most donuts stacked after a minute blindfolded.

Whoa. And Gelman beat you?

Yeah.

And how many was yours?

I genuinely don't remember, but I want to say it was like eight. It was like seven or eight. That's pretty good. You had to be blindfolded. They had to be these like bespoke donuts. They couldn't be glazed because that would be like glue. They couldn't be frosted. You weren't allowed to, and you had to, what I didn't realize until I was executing it is that you had to have them standing after a minute. So when I got the stack done and I pulled my hands away and they didn't fall, the lady from Guinness was like, well, they, you've got 30 seconds left. And so then I was like, Should I touch it again? Should I not? What do I do? And I panicked. And then I thought I had lost it. And when I pulled my hands away,

she was like, you've done it. And I was like, what?

I lost my mind.

I was so excited.

Freaking Gelman. I've had it up to here with Gelman.

And then it got broken by Gelman, who already had a Guinness World Record for most morning shows produced.

Sure.

You got one, buddy. Let me have this little donut thing. But it's gone now.

But did you get a plaque at first?

I did, yeah. It's in storage, but I did have one.

Put it on your front door. Make it a doorbell.

Yes, that's right. Cut a slot out around your doorbell so they have to read it when they push the button. You have an O in your last name right on the O in the Olin. Okay, I'll just finish up with this and we'll get a thumbs up. So this all started because Nigeria has developed a strong relationship with Guinness World Records. Because in 2020, very recently, because in 2023, a Nigerian chef named Hilda Bakchi, B-A-C-I, Bakchi, Bakchi, cooked continuously for 93 hours and 11 minutes in Lagos, which Guinness officially recognizes as the longest continuous cooking of all time.

And her achievement sparked this surge of interest of record attempts in Nigeria, even though others have already surpassed her. They've had 1,500. Gelman's going to go to Lagos. I'd like to see him leave Lagos after breaking that record. Cookathons, reading, singing, crocheting, over 1,500 new applications have come within Nigeria within two months of her breaking that record. Wow. Nigeria is all about, it should be called the Nigerian Guinness Book. Look at that.

Wow.

That's amazing.

The Guinness Book of Nigerian Records.

Pretty cool.

Yeah.

Very cool.

We call this episode Ben Dancin' with Katie.

Nolan, all right?

Yeah, Ben Dancin'. Yeah, for sure.

That's great.

That is truly inspirational and also one of the most physically arduous tasks I think we've covered on Bananas, which is hard to.

Beat, Scotty, so congratulations.

Definitely, that's a good one.

I'll tease just into some thumbs up.

Please do.

We'll stick with the Guinness Book of World Records.

Why not?

Five generations of Iowa family share a single birthday.

That's weird. Yeah, it is very weird.

It's a pretty simple story, though.

Okay. Yeah, I guess. I can kind of guess how it happened. Thumbs ups. Michael wants to give a... Katie, these are our fans shouting themselves out or people in their lives. Just a little attaboys. Michael wants to give a potassium-loaded thumbs up to his badass wife, Rebecca. a day one bananimal, huge Green Bay Packers fan.

Ooh.

They live in Charleston, South Carolina, and they're part of a Packer fan club called the Charleston Packer Backers.

Nice.

Perfect.

Cute.

I love it. Good name. So get this. The thumbs up is the Packer Backers all get together to watch the Packers in bars, and when they do that, they do a weekly raffle, and they do a 50-50 split, and a different local nonprofit gets 50% of the raffle income. I love this. Great. Rebecca ran it this year and has already successfully booked every single weekend for a different local nonprofit for the entire season.

That's amazing. Congratulations.

Thumbs up, Rebecca.

Also, if I was going to choose, since I have no affiliation to any sports franchise, if I was going to choose one for football, I would choose the Green Bay Packers. Just because that they are owned by the people.

I would give it a year, Kurt.

If you're going to do it, maybe wait a year. Take a season off.

Yes. Also, the Bears are really good this year. Caitlin Butts, B-U-T-T-S, and we get to it at the end. Don't worry. Is giving herself a huge thumbs up for getting a job offer the day of her graduation. She got her master's in biotechnology.

Look at that.

She ain't dumb. Uh, but she has to move across the country, which in Canadian terms means she's moving from Ontario to British Columbia.

Okay.

So, you know, whatever that would be. Detroit to Seattle, kind of. I think BC is a fun place to live. Actually, that is what it is.

Yeah.

Um.

So she's going to move for the job. She's starting right away. And she says, yes, her last name is Butts. And she is going to tell the Banana Boys if she does go for her PhD and becomes Dr. Butts.

Oh, my God.

Please do.

Dr.

Butts.

Dr.

Butts. Let's go.

You got to do it. You got to do it.

You got to do it. You got to.

Also, getting the job on the day of graduation, do you think it's because the person doing the hiring was like, what, are we not going to hire Butts? Butts has to get in the door.

Get your butts in here. Yeah, I think that's right. Get your butts in the door. Dr. Butts, you have to do it. I'm sorry, Caitlin. One, we can tell you're really smart. Two, congratulations, thumbs up. You know what?

I live across the street from Norbert Butts.

Norbert Butts. I don't know which one's funnier.

Norbert Butz is an amazing name.

He is an actor. He was in Bloodline. Did you ever see Bloodline?

Oh, he's a great actor. He's one of the brothers.

He's a great actor. He's my neighbor from across the street.

Does he go by Norby?

No, I think he goes by Norbert. I think you actually have to say Mr. Norbert Butz every time. His wife refers to him that way.

He is so good on Bloodline. He's so good. People didn't watch Bloodline. I loved Bloodline.

I was like fully hooked Bloodline is I think maybe one of my favorite TV.

Shows I know it's so good I.

Watched it but it was so long ago and I've watched so much since that I don't remember Norbert Butz I'm gonna look him up.

He's the he's one of the brothers yeah he's like the alcoholic younger brother who's trying to he's a Broadway guy he's a theater.

Guy he's on Broadway right now I think yeah Nice.

Also, Butts, of all the silly last name, of all the ha ha ha, Butts is the best one. I'd rather be Butts than Wiener.

Yeah, definitely.

For sure.

Can't tell people it's called Bits. You could tell people it's called Wiener.

Nope.

True.

Butts.

It's butts as butts, baby.

It could be boots, I guess. You could say it's an mm sound, but that's not better. It's butts as what's up.

Last but not least, Jones Shammy. What a name. Jones Shammy, you're making my great names list.

It is.

Wants to give two big old thumbs ups to, I believe it's her husband. Sorry, Jones. I'll say their husband, Paul, and his best friend- Partner and second spouse, Steve. Again, I don't know if they're a throuple or something. I think they're just like hetero life partners like you and I are, Kurt.

Sounds good.

They won best podcast for the second year in a row at the Dramatic Action Awards.

What?

I was unaware of these, but congratulations to Steve. They have a podcast called Film Fights with Friends.

All right.

Sounds fun.

It sounds great.

I'd watch that or listen to that.

Jones is so proud of these two besties. They use their unique friendship, their film and stunt nerd knowledge, and share it with others. And it's just about the joy of humanity. Film fights with friends, good guys talking stunts. So if you need a new podcast that might be something totally new, besides casuals, check out Film Fights with Friends.

Thumbs up.

Thumbs up, Steve.

Very cool.

Nice work.

And of course, thumbs up.

We are here with the fantastic and wonderful Katie Noland.

How long ago?

You started Casuals last year, 2025. Is that true? I think so.

That sounds right. It's, you know, when you, as you guys probably know, when you're doing as much of making as much stuff, it's sort of you lose track of time. But I think it's been about a year, maybe a year and a half.

Nice.

And it's on Sirius and also available as a podcast. Comes out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Is that the truth?

Yes. But if you're a person who's, I know the kids are doing podcasts on YouTube. We put those out the day after the audio comes out. So Wednesday and Friday, if you're on YouTube. But otherwise, every other platform, it's Tuesday, Thursday.

And you're a big Massachusetts mass haul. You just had a.

You just had the classic Mass Holes, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on, didn't you?

Yeah, yeah. Very stressful to meet those two in person. Right? Just the amount of, yeah, like they feel like family in the sense that, you know, we all love them. They are the Mass Holes that we lift up and that we praise. The local boys who made good.

Yeah.

But they're also, you know, movie stars.

Big stars.

It was a little stressful, but yeah, just getting to talk to them like regular sports fans about their thoughts on the Red Sox and the Patriots was a dream come true, honestly.

It is really funny when you identify with someone who's a movie star and you're hanging out with them in real life and you want to... treat them the way you think they.

Are, right?

But you, but you, but they're a movie star. You can't just be like, shut the fuck up, asshole. Like, you know, you want to say shut the fuck up, asshole, but you can't because they are a movie star.

Because it's Viola Davis.

But she is being an asshole.

She does.

When I shook Ben Affleck's hand, I said, I like, not even on purpose. It just came out of my mouth. I looked him right in the eye and I said, I'm going to throw up. I'm going to puke right now. But he was very kind about it. He was like, not the first time I've heard that.

I took my dog on like a super long walk, explored the neighborhood. I see this woman walking, a beautiful white furry dog, same size as my dog. And I was like, oh, that'll be fun to say hey. And I look up and as we're passing, I realize it's Regina King, Academy Award winner, Regina King. Oh, I love her.

One of the greatest.

Oh, I love her.

And I've loved her for, 30 years. She's so good. And my just dumb, dumb, I just went, hey, hey. And she goes, hi. And we just kept walking. So it's actually a perfect interaction.

Yeah, good job. She probably appreciated that you weren't like, oh my God.

Are you her?

I love your work.

But yes, I got out a hey, hey, and I was like, you know, not the worst. Yeah.

Could have been a lot worse.

Could have been way worse. But you know, Matt Damon is such a movie star that when I take out projects, I don't even mention him. They're like, who do you think in casting? I've never once ever said Matt Damon because I'm like, I'm not getting it.

You're not getting Matt Damon.

Well, and you're also like, I think it's understood that if he were interested and available, yes.

Yes, he could play all the parts.

He could make it a one-man show of just Matt Damon. Otherwise, here's the other actors I had.

That's right. Every other actor. I'm like, call Denzel. Get that goofball on the phone. But yeah, Matt Damon is such a star that I do not even bring him up.

So charismatic. So talented.

Good interview.

Just really wonderful. And again, just them being local boys. You know, the goodwill hunting of it all. That movie was like so huge for us. It's so good. So good.

Scotty? Oh, sure. Here we go. Let's keep it away from sports. Let's give Katie a break. Jason, wrestler.

Oh, wait.

I didn't give us five generations of Iowa family.

I was about to say. You said Scotty.

Jesus Christ.

Here it is. I just follow your lead, brother.

I'm going to start calling UPI Oopie. Because we get a lot of stories from him.

Oopie doopie, got a new story here.

This was an oopie by Ben Hooper.

He's the best.

That's the truth.

Hooper is the best in the biz.

Five generations of Iowa family share a single birthday, and Iowa family is being recognized by Guinness World Records for an unusual distinction. Five generations sharing the same birthday. The record-keeping organizations confirmed Fred Harlow and his family... officially hold the record for the most generations born on the same day.

Harlow was born September 14th, sharing a birthday with his grandfather, Wilbur, his mother, Addie, his daughter, Emmabelle, and his grandson, Arthur. You know, when you have children, yeah, they're a gift. This is a very unique gift, Harlow told MTV.

Okay, that's Iowa.

We always thought it was pretty cool, but I never thought much of it as far as a record holder.

Just kind of figured everything happened for a reason.

Emma Bell said it was only after the birth of her son that she decided to obtain official certification. She had earlier learned, then I think this article should be about Emma Bell.

And not the guy who doesn't give a shit.

Why is it the patriarch, not the woman who did all of the work together?

That's right.

He's just like, yeah, I guess it's cool. Pretty cool or whatever.

She did some stuff. Her fart, yeah.

He said everything happens for a reason, and it sounds like the reason is they're having sex on New Year's Day.

Every single time.

That's how they're celebrating and ringing in the new year.

And that's it. And so that's pretty much the whole article.

There is no more information other than they're all born on September 14th, and now they have.

A little plaque that they do use as a door knocker.

Yeah, I'm September 12th, and it's like the third most popular birthday in America. Interesting. But it's to your point, Katie. It's New Year's. Never forget to remember.

Yeah, Gus is the 15th, September 15th, and my mom was September 13th.

Look at that.

It's all right up in there.

Look at that. My best friend from high school is September 10th.

Look at that. Virgos lead the way, guys.

We should call this Look at That.

Look at that. Ben dancing with Katie Nolan. Yeah. But here it is. I looked it up because I always hear this stat, and I guess this is true. To have a 50% chance, if you have a room of strangers, 50% chance at least two people share the same birthday, you only need 23 people.

Whoa. Wow.

Now, if you want a 99.9% chance that you have this many strangers in a room, that they share a birthday, you need 75 people in a room. So if you have 75 strangers, there's almost a 100% chance there'll be shared birthdays.

Did you just pull that information out or are you reading it from somewhere?

I'm reading it. I wouldn't know that. I can barely read. I'm not even sure that these numbers are right. You can barely read, folks.

This is from Google AI.

This is from Oopie. No, this is from Better Explained.

That's interesting.

I heard this stat. Everyone, I think, has heard this at this point where if you're interviewing for a job and the person recognizes that you share a birthday, your odds of getting the job go up by a certain percent. That's crazy. It's like an understood connection between the two people. I don't know.

I was a telemarketer in college for about a year, and I was very good. The way that they did the pay scales, you started at $ 4. 50 an hour, but you got an extra dollar per hour for every lead you got during that shift. So if you got six leads, you got $ 10 an hour or whatever, $ 10. 50 an hour. So I would always try to at least get four or five leads so it made it worth my time.

And my strategy is to that point, I would look at their street address and say my last name was their street address's last name.

You liar.

That's crazy. So Kurt, I won't dox you. What's a street address in New Jersey nearby? What was your childhood? street address, Kurt? Coudere. Coudere. Yeah. I would say, hey, this is Scotty Coudere calling you from Country Insurance. Just wanted to give you a car insurance quote. And no matter what it was, and I got– there was a woman named Ruth who had a raspy– sultry, Lana Turner-esque voice.

She got, like, 20 leads a night. Like, hey, I'm calling you from Country Insurance, and people were like, okay, ma'am, I drive a Neon. But I was the second best in that office, and my only strategy was to use their street as my last name, unless it was, like, Highway 7. I wasn't like, this is Scotty Highway 7. Hi, I'm Johnny 59-18 at the half.

LAUGHTER That's a queen's address.

Interesting.

You scammer.

I was a scammer. It worked. It was just for car insurance quotes.

And it was innocent and harmless.

I was a college kid. And the third best guy who I've mentioned on the pod, he would say famous names, but Either the full name. So if it was Michael Bolton, the singer, he would say, this is Mike Bolton. Or if it was Michael Jordan, the basketball player, he'd say Mike Jordan. And he would just, Daniel Marino, he would say whatever the famous person's is, but the longer, shorter version of it. That seemed to work really well. He got in trouble for that. So he just went as Corey Charisma.

What? What?

They were like, you can pick one name because we need to track this when we listen to calls. So he'd be like, what's up? Sorry to bother you during dinner. This is Corey Charisma calling from Country Insurance.

Click for me.

Immediate click.

I know that's not your name. Get out of my face. Don't tell me that you're charismatic.

Click. Yeah. So it was like me doing mental games, Ruth silently seducting them, and Corey Charisma just confusing them into giving them their license plate numbers. Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Really beautiful stuff. Just read us one and send us home, Scotty.

You got it. Jason Ressler, you sent this in, and Jason and I will do this on the next episode of Bananas, the whole thing. We say that.

Every episode, and we never do.

So rarely. So rarely, but they got their name in the last two minutes of a podcast.

Scotty confidently lied to them.

Every single time.

Again, my takeaway about you, Scotty, is that you can really lie to manipulate emotionally.

That is so accurate. Or is it? It isn't. No, it isn't. No. Art collector bids $ 4, 000 on a broken vacuum cleaner only to discover it was trash. Beautiful. Jason, I will do this on the next episode of Bananas.

I think we'll record that tomorrow.

But yeah, a guy was in a contemporary art museum and saw a vacuum cleaner and put an offer of $ 4, 000 on it, and it was a busted, broken vacuum cleaner that was being thrown away. That's where art is.

That's crazy.

I love that they let him bid on it. They're like, yeah, whatever, Tom.

Should we tell him?

No. Take the money.

Yeah, it's a ninja. It's not even a Dyson. Katie, plug away. Where can everybody find you, your podcast, your socials, whatever you want them to find?

You can find Casuals every Tuesday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts on audio mediums. Again, if you listen on YouTube, you can get that on Wednesday and Friday. And on Instagram, I'm at Nadie Colon, and that's mostly it. I'm sort of not really– I mean, I'm looking at all the socials, but I'm really not actively on them as much anymore. They're all sort of going meow. Yep.

Great.

So natycolon on Instagram if you want to toss me a follow. But you guys, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. It turned my whole day around.

Beautiful.

That's great.

Come on back anytime. Yes. This has been Bananas Man. Bananas is an Exactly Right Media production.

Our producer and engineer is Katie Levine.

The Catchy Bananas theme song was composed and performed by Kay Han.

Artwork for Bananas was designed by Travis Millard.

And our benevolent overlords are the great Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstart.

And Lisa Maggett is our full human, not a robot, part-time employee.

You can listen to Bananas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please feel free to rate and review as many times as you can. We love those five stars. Bananas!

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin