[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Friendly Competition, a podcast discover the best of all time. I'm Nick Carey, alongside my co host and best friend, Cody Lena. Discuss various pop culture topics and narrow it down to truly the best of all time.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Or as we like to call it, the boat. Before an answer. Foot on the boat. We put them into a sweet 16 style tournament. We argue each round till we decide a winner. Nick.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: What?
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Catch you to be used when we decide to steps. Foot on the boat.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Whatever the hell we want. Cody, do you want to tell them what we're talking about this season?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. There are plenty of things in this world to be scared of. Murderers, bees with guns, the dark shadow man who comes to you in the night. We're not talking about those things. We're talking about other stuff that you probably shouldn't be afraid of.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: But, like, why someone is.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Somebody is.
What do they know that we don't?
We all know about the shadow man and the bees with guns.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: But did you know that you could be afraid of dinner parties and the conversation that ensues? Someone is. Someone is. And that's what we're here to talk about, folks. We have here in group B our silliest phobias. We went back to chat GBT, and we said, you know what? You gave us real phobias. Now I want you to give us some silly ones. It gave us 16. We sent it to our brachatologist. They randomized it. And here we have folks in group B. So go back and listen to group A to see who the champion was of that. But here in group B, we have diponophobia, the fear of dinner parties or dining conversation. Going up against the 13 seed spectrophobia, fear of mirrors or one's own reflection. We have the five seed heliophobia or hyleophobia, which is the fear of trees or the forest. And then we have the twelve seed anobolophobia, which is the fear of looking up. Cody, where do you want to start?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Let's start with heliophobia, trees, and the fear of looking up.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Okay, I get it, man.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: And I don't get the fear of looking up because I've never been scared of stuff up there. But there's no reason to ever look up in your life. What are you missing out? Some fireworks occasionally. That's fine.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Watch buildings.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, there's nothing up there for you. You can't get up, so why look up?
[00:02:28] Speaker A: An eagle majestically flying across the sky, a king of its own domain.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: You can't get up, so why look up?
[00:02:34] Speaker A: What about planes. You can't get up.
But I'm in a plane. I am up.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: No, the plane up.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Plane up.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: I'm on plane.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Okay, so you're not actually looking up, obviously, but you are up.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: You don't seem to understand what I'm saying.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I am just struggling here. Why don't you run me through it again?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Okay. There's nothing worth it.
I'm saying you don't need to be afraid of looking up, because there's no reason to ever do it your whole life.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: To be fair, I think the fear of looking, it's going to come from the sky, right?
Whatever. The bad thing is where it's going to come from. If you got to bet land, sea or sky of where it's going to come from, right?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: For land, we have massive earthquake. Okay. Metal, tough sea. We have waves. And the kraken.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Cthulhu as well.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yeah, and Cthulhu, the sky, everything else.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: So dragons, tornadoes, tornadoes, comets, falling, space debris. Just the stuff we put up there.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Oh, shit. What if a meteor hits us, but it brings the dinosaurs back?
[00:03:42] Speaker A: That would be sick if the meteor was just a spaceship that took the dinosaurs out to party. And now when it lands, it brings them back, and they're like, oh, we were gone for way longer than we meant to be. Wow. So sorry, everybody.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah, dog. We thought we were just dipping over to Daryl's for the night, but we caught a real wave, and we just rid know.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it was one of those bender know where you just find yourself. You're like, I guess we didn't plan to go to Vegas. Well, intergalactic Vegas, way different than yours.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: But there we in our. In our time, we've only been gone for about six days. So what we miss here? 6 billion, billion years. Oh, wow.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: You guys really did do a lot with the place. It makes sense. It makes sense now that you say that. 6 billion years. Because, yeah, we weren't building this stuff, but it is our place.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: I'd go to space Vegas right now, dog.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: I want to go to Space Vegas. Space Vegas. That's the fifth element, right? Wherever they go in the fifth element.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah. That's got to be it.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: That's got to be Chris Tucker yelling at me with a weird. Whatever that hairstyle is. How did that not catch up?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I watched the fifth element for the first time recently.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: I don't know what you all were on. That movie's bad. It's not good. Chris Tucker's character doesn't matter. I can't talk about this movie otherwise.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: This is what that I really can't talk about this either because I haven't seen it recently, and I remember it being, I won't. I don't need to hear your lies. Okay, so we have looking up to me. Makes sense. I think that's where the worst stuff is going to come. Then you have forest, trees, the givers of light. This is one where I feel like.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: What if, though, I could see this being a real fear. What if you could hear what trees had to say? Because I don't think trees are happy with us.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: No, you'd hear them.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: You walk into the forest and the trees are like, oh, if I could move, I would cut that man. So I would just get him his whole family, his whole lineage. And you're just in the woods trying to enjoy the squirrels and stuff. And I'm over there, I can't hear the trees, so I'm like, la la la. Look at that bird. Oh, my God. And you're just over here like, I'm going to fucking gut you like a fish. You're so lucky I can't move the.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Whole time trying to break this branch off so it'll fall on you.
I'd lose this whole branch if I knew it could fall on your stupid fucking picnic. Kill you and your whole family. I want your dog and your little baby to die, too. I hate you all so much.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Oh, my God. This place used to be beautiful.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: It'd literally be in Lord of the Rings, the scene with the eneographs or whatever they're called. Like the trance. Yeah. Was it just trance? I thought they had a bigger name.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: No, dude, what are you on.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Anyo something or others?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: No, bro.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Just the trends.
Trends what they were. Oh, man. Well, we can move on because I guess I'm not a cool lord of the rings guy.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: You are not. You never have been. And that's got. Got to lock in the fear of trees, though, because I don't understand the fear of looking up. I was trying to give it to him. I was trying to find a way. But I guess you're kind of right. The worst stuff might come from there. But, dog, you got to look death in the face and smile.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not going to help if you can't see it. What if the meteor. Because a lot of times the meteors are only, like, when they hit the ground, like the ones that are coming right now. Not like the one that destroyed the dinosaur, but like, the ones that do hit the ground right now.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: The ones that are bringing the dinosaurs back.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Yeah, but the ones that are hitting right now are like, generally speaking, like the size of like a softball. If they make it through all that atmosphere and burn up, generally speaking, it's the size of a softball. You could dodge a softball if you look up pretty easy. I could do it right now if you pop flied 1000 softballs. This is my guarantee. Pop fly 1000 softballs at me one afternoon. I'm not going to get hit by a single fucking one of them. That's how simple this is. And I will pay anyone to do this. Set it up. I will show up. If you think you could trick me with a pop fly softball, I'd like.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: To see, you know, even. I'll. I'll double it. I'll bet a $1,000 that you can have two guys hitting pop fly softballs at the same time and Nick still won't get hit by one.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: I'll take that money as well. Let's go.
Let's set it up. Set it up. That's why you radio DJs who need a cool thing to do.
I'm telling you right now, you can get your two best softball players.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: No.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: To be somewhat of a pop fly or deep field.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Nick's going to stand out in center field and $10, you can hit ten balls at him. And if you hit him, you get $100.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Exactly. That's all I'm saying. But I'm telling you, I'm probably going to block it. Not block it, I'm going to not get hit by it because I'll be looking up.
And then I want every phobic person who has this to come and watch me and understand, this is why you have to do this.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. I got to lock in trees because the fear of looking up is too abstract, it's too wild. But if the trees decide that they want revenge, I get it. We're fucked.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Very fair. Very fair. All right, next up, we're going to move to dipnophobia, which is the fear of dinner parties or dining conversations, going up against spectrophobia, the fear of mirrors or one's own reflection. Now, are you just afraid of looking?
It's got to really be the fear of looking like an idiot, right? Of just saying something so stupid at a different. We've all done it. We've all said something. Especially, like, if you're someone like Cody or I, where there's always like, a little bit, or like, you're like, you want to say something kind of funny, and you say something, and you're just like, yeah, I actually think Princess Diana should have got shot in her fucking face. Everyone just is like, hey, wait, what?
And it just. You're like, oh. Because we were just talking about princesses and stuff, and I was just doing a joke and like, okay, but that.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Was too much, dude.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: That was a lot, man.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: You get sent to the naughty room.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's fine. You just got to go take a break. Let them restart the conversation. You can just pop back in and. You know what?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Don't give up on that bit, though. There's something there. You got to workshop it while you're in the naughty room. Punch it up. We got to figure out why. How can we make princess Dana getting shot in the face a good punchline.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's the thing. That's the beautiful part about conversations. Usually there's going to be callbacks, and that's where you're going to get them. Something's going to come up again, and you're going to have an opportunity.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Hey, although, real talk, this Israel advice, if you say something stupid, it makes you look like an idiot. That sucks. But you can use that as a callback to take away the sting.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Exactly. Yes, it is true.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: You got to use that. Right.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: You got to let them know that you are also in on that. You did say something kind of stupid.
Just say it. Don't defend it. That's the thing is, don't get defendant. Just be like, oh, okay. That kind of killed the party step. Say, you know what? I'm going to take a step out. I'm going to use the restroom.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Please.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Thank you. That's the naughty room.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: What would be the most mundane thing you could see in a mirror that would freak you out, dude.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: I mostly just wanted to say my bit about that because I'm going 100% on spectrophobia.
There is nothing here.
I understand this because I've done mushrooms, okay? Yeah. And one of the things that you learn is usually someone will, after the fact, never before the fact, always after the fact. Tell you, oh, yeah, you shouldn't have looked in that mirror. Yeah, it probably messed you up.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Lost in it.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: You get lost in that, boy. I lost myself. I got to see other alternate realities that I was living in, and I was just like, damn, this is wild. These are mirror. This isn't a mirror. It's a fucking doorway to the other sides of me, man.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: What if you looked in the mirror, though, and the guy was just. It was you. Everything's the same, but he's wearing a different shirt.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Dude, I was bald, okay? I was bald in the other unit. I watched my hair separate from my head, and then I talked to bald Nick while my hair floated above me, okay?
So don't you tell me that. Oh, what if it's a little different? No, it's always very different, Cody. That's the point. That's how I know it's an alternate reality, because there is a bald nick living out there. And I'll tell you right now, he did not seem happier than me.
Bald Nick, not a great not. He did not win. It was a bummer. That was his opportunity to meet up with another alternate reality. And he's like, oh, man, I have an alternate reality with hair. What the fuck, dude? At least that was what my mind was saying.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: I understand the fear of dinner parties. Conversation is it sucks, but get over it. This isn't funny. And it's not funny enough that you can get away with it. Just don't.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: I guess, also, this feels like one of those, kind of like we were talking about with public speaking back in the last bracket.
You don't have to do it that often.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: May. Oh, God. What if you grew up with parents and the only game they let you play was clue? So all you know is that every time there's a dinner party, like I'm saying, when you're a kid, you guys, like, role played. Clue. So every time there's a dinner party, you think someone's going to die.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: So to set the stage here, your family owns and operates a dinner theater. Like an experiential dinner theater company. So every weekend all you did was go out to other people's homes and run these dinner parties where someone murder mystery dinner parties. But your parents neglected to tell you we don't actually kill someone at these parties. That's just one of their friends that plays dead.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: No. Never told you that.
Every weekend, you're like, I would go to houses every weekend and my parents would kill a man, and then they would all try to solve it. And I knew it was my parents. It was every weekend.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Every weekend. And they'd always pin it on someone else. They always said it was someone else in the room, but I know it was them. I watched them talk to that person, and then the next thing I know, that person's fucking dead, dude. They're fucking dead every time.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: And you want me to come over and have spaghetti?
[00:13:59] Speaker A: I ain't fall for this shit. I ain't falling for it, okay? I don't know who you're trying to get rid of in the friend group, but I ain't doing it. Okay? Is that going to be me? But also, check under the couch cushions. The clue is always there. It's a really great spot.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: I got to lock in spectrophobia, too.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Dude, I get it.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Mirrors, sometimes you just get lost in the sauce.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Because, let's be clear. No one knows how mirrors are made. Or let's. We can be a.
Let's all. Let's all take down the vernier of.
Okay, and let's stop acting like we know. I know. Here's what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, Nick, it's sand. Oh, is it? Oh, step two then, motherfucker, step two.
Oh, weird. You don't fucking know, do you? Because no one does. Somehow someone told us it was sand. And some of you are like, maybe it's heat. Oh, you just melt sand and make reflection. Try again. No fucking way. Like, just one more time, please. No. We don't know how mirrors work.
These portals to another dimension, these things that can at once make you look like yourself or make you completely distorted. Like, I'm talking your fun house mirrors. These are not the truth, but we internalize them as the truth.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: I know a lot of witches, okay, and they all told me, do not have mirrors on the walls that face outside your home. Why would they say that? Why would they tell me to do that?
[00:15:33] Speaker A: That's something. It's not nothing.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: That's not nothing.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: It's not nothing. So we have spectrophobia going up against hylophobia, the fear of trees. Now, here's the thing I can totally understand about the fear of trees or forest is, like, if you were dropped off in the canadian wild just deep north, you're up there in Saskatchewan, but, like, way deep, right? If you just got dropped off and all you had around you was forest, that would be terrifying.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: It's disorienting. It's confusing. I understand.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: They're so big.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: But, okay, if you have these fears, I can imagine. If I'm a spectrophobia, I have no mirrors in my home, right? I could get rid of the mirrors easy.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: But if I have Cody, what about that little black mirror that's in your pocket?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Oh, my God. That phone that I destroyed with a hammer because I couldn't look at my own reflection. No, but I'm telling you, if you have heliophobia, what are you going to do? Destroy every tree that you can see.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: From your house, would that feel better if you learned that the people who started the paper industry, if the reason why expansion went so violently aggressive, and we never once talked about sustainability until more recently, was because there was, like, a couple people were like, fuck them. Trees, dog.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: I'll get out of here. What if you. Okay. It's your first day as a lumberjack, right? Everyone's out there, like, you know, I love this job. I love being out in nature. It's great. Oh, I love it. Yeah. What about you, Terry? I fucking hate these trees, dog.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Yo, I'm out for blood, dog.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: I'm here to get some fucking revenge. A tree killed my family. And until I find that tree, until I find him and get revenge, all trees are on watch. You're all on blast, dude. If a tree killed your family, I think you should know which one it was.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: The only way I can imagine a tree would kill my family is that she would have to have fallen and to kill them. So in itself, I would assume, is also gone. But. I understand. But in a situation in a very classic movie moment, just because the tree that took out my family is gone, it doesn't mean that I'm okay with all Bat. It's classic. Right?
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Batman was never going to be done solving crime if he caught the person who killed his family. Right.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Nick, you have a family member who's really allergic to tree nuts, right? You're at a picnic. They have Kool aid, a tree, a breeze, also a tree. And a small piece of tree. Nut falls from the tree into their drink, kills them. Do you blame the tree?
[00:18:10] Speaker A: No.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Is that tree a murderer?
[00:18:12] Speaker A: That feels like God. That one.
I got to give that more to God.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: So what you're saying is, if you get killed by a tree, God wanted you dead?
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's why we got to go. Spectrophobia. They know something in that mirror. They can see things we can't see, and they have secrets. And if you learn the secrets, Cody.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: We went in the mall of America. There's a place called Winkworld. It's not where they're going to show you buttholes. I'll tell you right now, don't spend your $20 if you think it's about buttholes, because it's not. But it is an experience where you go into six different rooms, all basically the same layout, where there's mirrors and something else, like some fun art installation. Lights, lasers, spinning orbs, whatever. You can't tell me. That was done beautifully and we had a great time. We got to express love. But that could have gone so south and menacing.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Very bad.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: So fast. We gave them so much trust. But all of those mirrors and being able to see yourself and infinity, when you make infinity with mirrors and you can't see to the end of infinity, and you're like, that's the point. You can't.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: It's infinity.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Like trees. I know where the end of a tree is. I see it. It's right up there.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Right up there.
I feel like if a tree is going to fall and kill me, I can get out of the way. I feel like it's so loud, it's so slow. I'm not going to get got by a tree. You're going to have to be way better, way tougher before I get got. So I'm going with spectrophobic.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: You want to know what will get me every time?
[00:19:44] Speaker B: If the mirror people decide to come at me, I ain't going to be expecting it.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Come through the mirror. Bald Nick comes to take me so he can live my life. Make me go live his bald ass life.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: I'm not worried about mirror Cody. That guy's kind of easily.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: I could turn around bald Nick's life. That was the thing. I'm like, fucking do it, dude. I will turn around your life. So when we meet again and you're like, ha.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Done that. Suck.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: You had to live my life. I'm like, oh, no, dog. It turns out because I had hair, everyone loved me again. Very quickly, I repaired all those relationships with your mom, your dad, your family.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Ex lovers have come back completely different.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: I was thinking that when he comes through the mirror, he crawls down your throat like some sort of monster and then rides your body like a crang.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Oh, no. I was thinking he grabs me and then we do like a swap.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: A swap? Yeah, like a parent trap.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Kind of like that. But also, yeah, he's going to live my. I mean, it's going to be a bummer for you because I don't think bald. Like I said, this guy seems like a bummer. He's probably going to be like, oh, I love. He's going to find out that I'm doing a podcast. He's going to love it. But he's going to turn real Joe Rogan real quick.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I believe that. That's why I got a lucky spectrophobia, because that is my fear, is that bald Nick kills you and takes your place. And my dumbass doesn't notice.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: I like that my hair is also like, it's pretty different. I change the style of it a, like bald. If Bald Nick showed up with a bad wig, you'd still be like, oh, so you're doing something real stupid with your hair now, I guess.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that's dumb. You had good hair. But if this is what you got to do, I'll let you go for it.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not going to control your life.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Yeah, man, I got to move spectrophobia on as well. And that is it, folks. Spectrophobia. Moving on as the group B champion. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of friendly competition. If you want about your boys, a few things that you can do. As always, share with a friend, tell a friend, wherever you're listening to this, make sure you hit that like that. Follow that. Subscribe and give us those five stars, please.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Absolutely. Follow us on all of our social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Just go at friendlycompod. If you have an idea for all 16 team tournament you'd like to see us do, email those to us at
[email protected].
[00:21:57] Speaker A: As always, shout outs to charizard for that intro music. You want to hear more of their stuff, head over to Bandcamp, type in charizard and replace the vowels with sixes. That is going to be it for us, folks. We got a new episode coming out on Monday, but until then, I've been Nick Carey.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: And I'm Cody Lena. See you on the boat.
