Spencer kicks things off with a rousing game of "What Makes the Sound?" (a cow makes a moo, in case you were on the edge of your seat). From there, we meander gloriously through soda reviews. Kevin tries Dirty Mountain Dew and hates it, Spencer demolishes an entire can of Cuban Iron Beer soda like a man who has found religion, and somewhere in between, Spencer confesses to eating 900 calories of bread because Whole Foods lied to him about having strawberry pretzel cream pie. In between all of this, Spencer delivers breaking analysis on the collapse of American political discourse, explains why British panel shows are secretly the peak of human civilization, and provides a surprisingly detailed update on his indie video game development, which now features 625 hexagons and a working raycast-based selection mechanic. Kevin, for his part, earns the wrath of the Discord chat by admitting he's never given hot Dr. Pepper a fair chance, and bravely promises to revisit the issue despite clearly not wanting to. The episode wraps with Spencer pitching a spinoff podcast called "Spenpai's Spleen Pod" dedicated entirely to lore about The Spleen, a brief meditation on whether their intro music is weeding out the right people, and an anime recommendation about an anxious J-pop idol whose house is a disaster. It's a chaotic, deeply human hour of podcasting that somehow holds together through the sheer force of two guys who genuinely like talking to each other. Subscribe on YouTube.

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In this episode we manage to accomplish absolutely nothing of substance with remarkable efficiency. Spencer digs into his mysterious origin story as "The Spleen," a once-promising radio personality who got "cited" (not commended) back down to the evening drive slot. Along the way, we continue the debate on the legitimate athletic performance benefits of hummus, Kevin recounts being handed a fluorescent green cantaloupe slushie at a Vegas convention when he clearly asked for a Coke (he just took it and walked away), and Spencer gets judged for shopping at Walmart, where he heroically tracked down the elusive "Dirty Mountain Dew" by following a suspicious old woman's suspicious bottle inspection behavior.

Spencer also delivers an impassioned monologue about learning to code in Godot, where he has successfully produced hexagons that are in the wrong place, and is absolutely thrilled about it. We then pivot to a surprisingly thoughtful discussion about AI as a "fascist artifact," the strange permanence of internet content, and why neither of them can accept a compliment without immediately becoming suspicious of the person giving it. Somewhere in there we also vow to retroactively fix their September 11th episode by literally editing ourselves traveling back in time into it, which they probably won't do.

Emails are read, a mystery Taco Bell sign remains unaccounted for, and Spencer wraps things up by abruptly leaving the Zoom call.

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We return from what may or may not have been a long break. Honestly, we recorded some episodes out of order, so nobody really knows where we are in the timeline anymore. Before figuring out our own lore, we have some bad news: The Spleen is in the hospital after crashing an Uber at three times the speed limit. His prognosis remains unclear, though he was reportedly administered 30 cc's of Funyuns.

From there, we meander through Spencer getting bitten by a large dog whose elderly owner was being dragged down a hiking trail like an upturned Koopa shell, a coworker who died and was eulogized via workplace intercom sandwiched between parking reminders and a car show announcement, and an airport encounter with a man who was absolutely convinced that eating large quantities of homemade hummus was directly improving his tennis game. Kevin then arrives at his Las Vegas hotel to discover Mr. Beast staring at him outside his window, and somehow this is the least weird part of the episode.

We debate whether their podcast intro saying "white lives" is giving undue prominence to white lives, and discuss the chaotic teenage internet figure known as "Clavicular," who has been bone-smashing, meth-smoking, and tying backpacks to his genitals in pursuit of physical perfection. Spencer also reveals he has relapsed into smoking weed, while learning game development in Godot partly to spite his father, and has committed to invoking "Michael Jordan Flu Game" as a life philosophy. Listener emails round things out, including a fan whose wife assumed Spencer was "an educated black man."

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In this episode, Spencer and Kevin finally record in the same room for the first time in what feels like eons, which immediately throws us both into an existential crisis about where to look and whether we're supposed to be making a podcast or something else entirely. We're in an apartment that calls itself "luxury" with the same energy a gas station hot dog calls itself "gourmet," complete with an extensive list of fines in all-caps and bizarrely secretive key-hiding instructions.

To celebrate our physical reunion, we attempt a power hour featuring an alarming quantity of novelty Peeps flavors and five hot sauces including an Italian wolf-themed one that becomes our favorite by sheer force of garlic and vinegar. We eat while we're trying to talk about geopolitics, resulting in a chaotic blur of snack takes, Middle East tensions, and Spencer discovering mid-episode that he is, in fact, allergic to pecans. We also cover Spencer's grandmother keeping ham inside her boot. You probably don't want to miss that.

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The Spleen welcomes the brilliant Kate Freund to his Oubliette, and she's here to talk about Pretty Lethal, her action film about ballerinas who have to fight their way out of a very bad situation without the help of any dads whatsoever. Before getting into the cinematic deep cuts, the gang covers the important stuff: Kate's obsession with plant-based buffalo wings, the surprisingly rich cultural history connecting Roger Corman's grindhouse empire to the founding of IHOP, and the existential crisis Kate had after watching Taken and realizing her father's skill set was more "destroy a car dealer with paperwork" than "Liam Neeson."

Kate walks us through the absolutely heroic 15-year journey of getting Pretty Lethal made: from a 2011 draft involving a trapdoor to being told by an executive to just change all the women to a boys' baseball team. She didn't. The film, now top two in the US on Amazon, features five ballerinas, razor blades on pointe shoes, Uma Thurman doing knitting between takes, and a signed jar of Skippy that Kate will never, ever eat. Tune in, put on a tutu, and watch the damn movie.

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Join us with comedian/podcaster Kyle Ayers for a chaotic episode where where we cover tennis judging, Apple Store warfare tactics, and the existential terror that is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Kyle stops by fresh from refereeing children's tennis matches (he's basically a scarecrow with authority) to discuss his podcast Never Seen It, creating comedy segments out of thin air, and that time he opened for a houseplant named Colby. The gang bonds over their shared Apple Store trauma, where we learn that corporate empathy training actually works on kindergarten tennis players.

We also tackle the hard-hitting questions: Are monarch butterflies the real villains? Did Courage the Cowardly Dog predict modern anxiety? And why does every important childhood memory involve either Rocco's Modern Life or nitrous oxide?

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Comedian, writer and talk show host Mary Houlihan is back! Mary shares insights from cosmetology school, explains why Tim Dillon might actually be more helpful than your favorite Hollywood liberal who posts trans flags but won't sign anything, and makes a compelling case for why shame-based persuasion is about as effective as a car in an oubliette. The conversation meanders through topics like why famous people are weirdly silent about genocide, how fighting with people online is basically the political equivalent of stress-eating cheeseburgers, and why more leftists should steal Joe Rogan's audience instead of just complaining about him.

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Spencer's car got broken into, he's unsure if he's accidentally racist, then nearly killed an elderly jaywalker, realizes he's midway through a slow flanderization into a caricature of himself, and ate some restaurant food that tastes like bleach. We also touch on why there's a healing fantasy about strong man politicians, parental wounds being capitalist tools, and how Magic: The Gathering's stack system works. Also, we're on YouTube now.

https://www.youtube.com/@ThatHappensPod/videos

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This week we invite filmmaker and Channel 101 show runner Sevan Najarian, to talk his new film "Mars" by The Whitest Kids U' Know. He goes pretty deep into the internals of producing a movie with a lot of challenges, breaking his back during a wedding proposal, managing 20 employees working out of his house, and why every video editor is secretly obsessed with making broth. There's also an extended detour into the ethics of using AI to resurrect the voice of a cast member who died during post-production, the cult-like aspects of growing up in a religion that forbids philosophy classes, and why holding your breath during podcast intros is actually very bad for your kidneys.

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The Spleen broadcasts live from a stadium dumpster and becomes a white mage of Tinactin and banana peels. We try to figure out what makes sense of the recent Epstein files drama, the government's bold strategy of just lying about everything, make some predictions that are sure not to age poorly, and try to figure out why we both have had bad experiences with smoked Gouda cheese.

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This week, the Spleen attempts to cover the Grammys from an increasingly questionable "red carpet". Between intense discussions about yakasoba bread (yes, it's noodles in a sandwich with pickled ginger, yes it's amazing), we somehow stumble into surprisingly coherent discussions about: the lack of imagination in conservative thinking, why every accusation really is a confession, the absolutely wild Epstein files, ICE raids in LA, and whether small business tax fraud is morally different from billionaire tax fraud (spoiler: it's not).

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