Special Forces aired their finale last night, and I gotta say, boy, I can admit when I’m wrong, and I was dead wrong about this one. Like I didn’t think after probably episode two or three. Gia, Judas. Was ever going to last very long on this show.
Not to mention, especially after her mother left, I figured she was a lost cause. She would want to be there with her mother. The fact that she made it to the end and did as well as she did, it’s not like she like skated by. She was one of the stronger contestants out there. Her and Sean Johnson were the two winners this season.
I’m kind of amazed that Brianna Chicken Fry quit with 10 minutes left. Obviously, I don’t think she knew if they would’ve told her going into the Buried Alive portion of the episode last night that, Hey, if you make it through this, you’ve completed the bootcamp. My guess is she would’ve gone through with it so.
I, I’m, I’m surprised. I’m sure she regrets that. Now I know that the final, I know that the final five are on the vial files today. That was already, you know, prerecorded Cody and Andrew and Brianna, Sean and Gia are all on Nick’s podcast today. Talking about the ending. So I’m curious to see what Brianna says.
She’s gotta be just kind of kicking herself, you know? How could she not? She was 10 minutes away from passing this course because I don’t think if she would’ve gotten through that, they would’ve said, no, we don’t. You don’t pass you, you fail. While accepting Gia and Sean, again, surprising that Cody and Andrew made it as far as they did, and then were basically removed.
And told by the staff, you didn’t do your job. Like, I can’t believe those guys. I can’t believe those guys did that. I can’t believe they gave in. Again, they had to have known they were right there at the end. Right. Why were they so stubborn, and why were they so willing to just let their comrades basically take a fall?
That was so weird. I just, I, I couldn’t believe that I, I was shocked that Andrew and Cody left or were eliminated when they were, but Gia probably, GIA and Brianna impressed me the most, and I’m not saying that Sean didn’t impress me, but I kind of expected that from Sean because she’s an Olympic athlete.
The Olympic athletes have always done well on this show. People like Brianna, people like Brianna Chicken Fry, and Gia, Judas who are, you know. Insanely rich or I, I actually, I don’t know if, if Gia is insanely rich, but obviously Brianna’s got money. She’s done really well for herself with her podcast, but she’s not someone that I think a lot of people would come across saying, yeah, she’s gonna do well in a bootcamp situation.
You know, total girly girl, isn’t she? She’s about, she’s kind of a girly girl, right? Gia, again, once her mom left, I thought she was gonna crumble and I just never. Kind of all season. I was just like, I didn’t see it. And then towards the end I was like, wow, she’s actually really doing well for herself. So I was dead wrong about her.
So those two probably impressed me the most. Sean was still great, but I almost kind of expected it as an Olympic athlete. Like she’s been through it, she knows what training is like, she knows how to be pushed. People like Gia. Brianna, the lives that they’ve led and the lives that they currently lead, I can’t imagine, are very, you know, pushed to their brink very often in their daily lives.
So that’s why they impressed me the most. But two winners this season, and we were 10 minutes away from getting three woman winners this season, but Brianna could not hack it, didn’t wanna be buried alive, and said, I’m done. So she voluntarily withdrew. So I’ve had some unbelievable emails come through.
Since this Back to the Future thing started with me a couple weeks ago where I was giving facts every day and talking about it. You remember the story of the guy who tells me that because he was listening to my podcast and because I was drilling back to the future and people’s heads that. He told me the story about him and his then girlfriend saw it the day after it was released back on July 4th, 1985.
That woman is now his wife and after listening to my podcast, took her on in 1985 themed date where they actually went and saw the 40 year anniversary showing of it, and he just wanted to thank me for that. I thought that was super cool. I wanna read another email that came through last night and if you thought the other one was cool, man, this one’s even cooler.
She said, I’m not sure if I shared with this this with you before, and I can tell you spoiler alert she did because I, after reading her email today, I remembered after the first time I talked to Brad, she messaged me a couple years later and told me this, but she wanted to remind me of this. She said, I’m not sure if I shared this with you before, but your first interview with Brad Gilmore totally changed the course of my life for the last five years and counting.
I know you couldn’t quite remember when you first interviewed him, but I can confidently tell you it was around the Q1 Q2 transition in 2020. You know, right around when COVID started. I know because listening to that episode inspired me to create a podcast about the National Treasure Franchise. You know, the movie with Nicholas Cage.
I literally heard the interview, thought I can do that about National Treasure. Referring to Brad’s back to The Future Show and immediately called my former college roommate to start the process of making it happen. She’s my co-host. Now, five years later, the project has grown immensely beyond the podcast, which is called National Treasure Hunt, by the way, in case you wanna take a look, we’ve interviewed more than 20 actors and creative team members from the franchise.
And we’re even invited to cover the red carpet Premier of the National Treasure Spinoff Show. That came out in 2022. We’ve published a book, which is sold at the US National Archives, a landmark featured in the film, and my second book comes out next spring. National Treasure’s Director John Tur, wrote the forward.
We host a biannual walking tour in Washington DC and we tour the country giving lectures and educational escape room style events. I’d be lying if I said National Treasure Hunt was my full-time job, but I wish it could be. It has also done a lot to help my mental health in the past few months since I lost my job as a civil servant in the US government following the mass layoffs that have been happening.
This is probably way more information than you’re interested in hearing. But I just wanted to say thank you for doing that interview back in 2020. It literally changed everything for me. I mean, this is what I mean when I say I’m so glad that I’ve been able to talk about this for the last two weeks and hear these stories from people.
I remember her coming to me. I think maybe. A year or two later and telling me, Hey, when you had Brad Gilmore on your podcast back in 2020, it inspired me to start a podcast about my favorite movie, national Treasure. And she had, at that point, she had basically told me, I think she said she had gotten started.
I mean, I’d have to go look for the email, but it looks like she’s accomplished even more since the first time she emailed me and you know, getting to interview 20 actors and creative team members from the movie. I remember those movies. I saw the first one in the second one once each. I know that for a fact.
I know that they were trying to steal the Declaration of Independence in the first one, right? I don’t even remember what the second one was about. But I remember liking them. I’ve just seen them once. I could not tell you the first thing about any of the plots or who was in it outside of Nicholas Cage, and I remember the dude from Hangover, Justin Bartha.
I know he was in it. I don’t remember who the woman was in their group. But regardless if you wanna check it out, if you’re interested in that movie and you wanna hear more about it, go to their podcast, national Treasure Hunt. And Aubrey, thank you so much, uh, for reaching out. I’m actually gonna forward this on to Brad, if you don’t mind as well, because I want Brad to know that just him being such a fan of Back to the Future and starting a podcast and writing two books about it had inspired somebody else to do the exact same thing and look at the success that, that you have come from it just because you heard a podcast that inspired you.
So that’s really cool to hear. And. Again, the more I hear about this stuff, the more I know I under, the more I know that what I’ve done for the last two weeks is having an effect and, and there’s so many emails I haven’t read you guys of what people have sent me in regards to watching it, taking their kids to either the 40 year anniversary or just watching it on Netflix.
By the way, all three movies are leaving Netflix at the end of this month, so. You can buy them on Amazon Prime. I know that, but they’re leaving it at Netflix for free at the end of this month. But just the stories that I’ve gotten, the emails that I’ve gotten, and I, and I do understand that there’s probably a lot of people that are just like, Hey, spoiler boy, just tell us what’s going on in Taylor season.
Look, when I have information on Taylor season, it’s the first thing I start off any podcast with. I always start off with Bachelor or Bachelorette News if I have it. If I don’t, it’s just straight into pop culture, entertainment, news, and then whatever else. So I understand there’s probably people that are sick of the back to the Future talk, and I don’t wanna turn people off to this podcast, but it’s, you know.
Kind of inspired me to start the Patreon. ’cause for the longest time I had Dave telling me, you gotta do a Patreon and Stephanie, which she’s all batch telling me, you gotta do a Patreon. And I was just like, I don’t know what to do though. I don’t know what people would pay for to have me unless it’s just like, can you give us the spoilers first?
And I was just like, I do spoilers. If they have three shows a year, that’s three days of spoilers. Like, what else am I gonna charge for? And then when I started talking about Back to the Future and I started seeing the response to it, I was like, huh, what if I’m able to do this? And then the whole thing about putting my Thursday podcast up for the Patreon members, you get to first access to it.
I’m not gonna take that away. From people who don’t wanna sign up for the Patreon. It’s always gonna be there Thursday morning at 9:15 AM Eastern Time. But the Patreon subscribers get it early ’cause maybe Thursday morning, and they don’t listen to it until Fridays, or they wait till the end of the week, but maybe if it’s up on Monday or Tuesday, they can listen to it earlier.
It’s easier for them. So that, and then obviously any sort of Bachelor podcast that I do, breaking news during the day of any major events happening. Whether it’s entertainment or bachelor bachelorette related, I’ll pop on my Patreon, uh, and, and do a live or something like that, or just record something and put it up on my Patreon.
So again, I thank you all for joining in and those who have signed up, you could still, obviously you could sign up whenever, but just know that. Tonight, if you wanna be a part of tonight’s, tonight’s live rewatch, you just gotta sign up before 8:00 PM Eastern time tonight. And I’ll be putting out another, you know, reminder on my socials today to sign up for it, because we’re gonna have fun tonight.
It’ll be a lot of fun. We’ll even have, uh, popcorn, hopefully in my DeLorean. And then finally, I want to end it with this. This was so weird because, and this just happened to me. Because I, I, I actually don’t know why it just happened to me, but I got a message when I went to go check my Twitter dms.
Someone sent me a Twitter DM the other day, but to get to it, Twitter said, you now have to put in a four digit passcode. I was like, okay. So I put ’em a four digit passcode, but then my Twitter dms showed up differently. They showed up as all unread groups or requests, and I’m like, rec, there’s a request folder for Twitter dms.
When did this happen? So I click on my request folder for dms, and I swear to you the first one on there is from 2018, and every single Twitter DM request is from 2018 or earlier. And I’m scrolling through the through this. This is the first time I’m seeing this. I literally saw this two days ago. When I had to type in a new passcode to access my Twitter dms, I some went to request folder.
So I never saw these, and I’m looking at these from 2018. The amount of tips that I got in 2018 for whatever season was airing Bachelor Bachelorette Paradise, my Twitter DM request folder is loaded with them. Now, I’m not gonna go over these, but. I could not believe every single one I went to was like, Steve, here’s the, here’s information on this, Steve, here’s information on this.
I’m like, what? Why didn’t I get these? And every single message has the same thing except block or report or delete. So all these messages from 2018 and before, I never accepted, ’cause I didn’t see them until two days ago. So why hasn’t anything been sent to my request folder in seven years? But I have a shit ton of message requests.
And when I look at them now. They were all loaded with spoiler information. What the hell? Twitter, that is so random. I mean, just scrolling on this, I can go all the way back and just click on this one. This was August 20th, 2018. There are so many in here. So if any of you are listening right now and you used to message me on Twitter DM back in the day and I never responded.
Um. Hey, just, uh, just know is because I didn’t get it until yesterday. Oh, my. And I bet you if I scroll down far enough, I really wonder if there’s, uh, there are people that reached out to me that are, you know, podcast hosts now. And I, I really probably should spend some time on this. I, you know, I scrolled through about 50 of them, but this goes all the way back.
So, uh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna scroll back and see who contacted me. Oh shit. Here’s one from 20 20 17 from a guy that I used to work with back in radio in la. What the hell? I, I’m so bummed that I missed all these, so I’m gonna start looking through these and, uh, see, hell, there might have been old contestants that contacted me through Twitter, dm.
’cause back in the day, 20 17, 20 18, that was the way to go. ’cause Instagram people weren’t really messaging each other. It’d be interesting to see if I’ve got anything in here from former contestants or whatever that are just hit me up with, uh, this is, this is so random. Here’s one from my mother. What the hell?
From 2017, my mom messaged me on dm. Pretty sure my mom had my phone number at that point. Why didn’t she message, why didn’t she text me?
I, oh my gosh. Okay. Anyway, just seeing all this, every single message seems to be like, I don’t wanna say every single message, but it seems like three out of every four messages that I click on are just like, Hey, I’ve got some information on this contestant and I’m not seeing it until now. Great. Thanks Twitter.
Anyway, thank you all for listening. I really appreciate it. Follow me in Apple podcast. Also, rate and review, but you gotta hit play. It’s the only way it counts as a download Daily Roundup coming up in an hour from now. And then, as you know tonight, patreon.com/reality. Steve Live rewatch of Back to the Future.
You can join $5 a month or $48 for the year. We’re gonna do more Rees next week. I’m already telling you, the rewatch is going to be the Saved by the Bell episode where Jesse Spano takes a bunch of caffeine pills and freaks out on everybody. It is. It is an absolute train wreck. But we gotta watch it again.
And then there’ll be more rees of eighties and nineties movies and some 9 0 2 1 oh episodes more Saved by the bell episodes. Uh, we’re gonna hit a lot of the stuff from the eighties and nineties on my Patreon channel, so we’d love for you all to be there and join in. So anybody that wants to. Again, patreon.com/reality, Steve, and I’ll see everybody tonight.
So thank you all for listening. Have a great weekend, everybody. For those that are joining tonight, I’ll talk to you tonight. Everybody else, I will talk to you on Monday.
