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

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

Then things get angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will a rotary telephone still work in 2026?

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