Dan and Nicole are back for EP144 and the wallet is taking hits. Gas prices have hit a four-year high (Dan's now coasting home in neutral), Minnesota became the first state to ban "nudification" apps (and yes, it's as dystopian as it sounds), McDonald's is quietly killing the self-serve soda fountain (RIP, suicide drink), and an 82-year-old Minnesotan named Anita just got the "Grandparents Happy Hour Bill" passed so nursing homes can serve booze. Plus: the public habit France is now FINING people for. It's called bare-beating, and your first guess is wrong. We promise.

Episode 143 of The Still Spinning Podcast is back after a week off, and Dan and Nicole are catching up on a packed lineup. Nicole returns from a New York City vacation where she actually disconnected (gasp!), saw Rocky Horror on Broadway from spit-zone seats, caught Oh, Mary! with John Cameron Mitchell and Simu Liu, and toured the Severance filming location in Red Bank.

Dan, meanwhile, did "absolutely nothing" except start a brand new project the day before a trivia gig (because that's just how he rolls).

Then it's off to the rant zone:

• Airline nickel-and-diming: Some carriers now want to charge you for overhead bin access. Dan's been preaching this gospel for years. Nicole shares her nightmare Newark luggage tram saga that should be its own short film.
• The $34 Taco John's incident: Two meals, a couple Mexi Rolls, and a fully malfunctioning AI drive-thru that tried to sell Dan two large Diet Mountain Dews when he ordered one. America is broken.
• Starbucks goes Nashville: The coffee giant is dropping $100 million on a new Nashville HQ and asking Seattle employees to pack their bags or take the pay cut. Plus, Dan reveals his Starbucks Reserve Black Card (yes, that's a real thing, and yes, he's in the top 1% of customers worldwide) and pitches his big idea: top-tier customers should automatically get bumped to the front of the mobile order line. You're welcome, Starbucks.
• Goodwill gold: A Chicago carpet cleaner buys a $5 plate at Goodwill and turns it into a $4,000 to $6,000 Sotheby's payday. Dan tells his own thrift store treasure tale that his wife will absolutely use as ammunition.
• Childhood chaos: Foam glider planes, M-80s, and the kind of stories that make you marvel anyone born in the '80s made it to adulthood.
• The fake "secret" menu: Starbucks emails Dan their official Devil Wears Prada secret menu, which... isn't a secret if you blast it to millions of people, guys.

Plus, after 143 episodes, the duo finally lands on the podcast name they should have used all along: Wait, What?

Tune in, laugh along, and remember: tell one person about the show. Just one. (And if you hate it, tell someone you hate. They'll probably love it.)

Keep spinning!

The Still Spinning Podcast - Episode 142

Dan and Nicole are back with a chaotic, tech-heavy episode that somehow turned into a meditation on how much the world has changed in a very short time. Despite a rough start with Facebook going sideways and a frozen video stream (blame Dan), they powered through with four solid topics.

First up, Dan dives into the story of Claude Mythos, a new AI model from Anthropic that the company has decided is too dangerous to release to the public. The model reportedly discovered thousands of previously unknown security vulnerabilities across major operating systems and browsers, and could allegedly turn anyone with access into an elite hacker. Anthropic is sharing it only with about 40 handpicked organizations under something called Project Glasswing for defensive cybersecurity work. Dan and Nicole debate whether this is a responsible move or a brilliant PR play, and things get philosophical fast: is any AI company really the "good guy" when every tool can be flipped?

That leads naturally into a broader AI conversation about how the different chatbots stack up. Dan breaks down the personalities: ChatGPT is an over-affirmative yes-machine, Claude is polite but also increasingly complimentary, and Grok will just straight-up call you an idiot if you ask it to. They also discuss the growing trend of people using AI as a substitute for friends and therapy, with one woman in a featured story described as preferring to "word vomit" into ChatGPT rather than talk to actual people. Dan raises a genuinely spooky point: while AI platforms are being used for emotional support, they're also quietly collecting all of that data and learning from it.

Then comes the RV bubble collapse. The used RV and van market is now basically a garage sale, and Dan had called this years ago. He explains why the pandemic van-life dream fell apart: RV manufacturers rushed out units with no R&D to meet demand, leaving people with technologically outdated rigs missing things like solar panels. Add in decision fatigue, the reality of Starlink subscriptions, and figuring out where to dump the tank, and full-time RV life turns out to be less of a golden-hour Instagram dream and more of an exhausting second job. Dan admits he's evolved on the topic and now just wants an RV as a show vehicle to skip hotel stays on gig trips.

Finally, the episode wraps up with the story of Pickle Fart, the TikTok hero you didn't know you needed. A TikTok user going by the name Pickle Fart (real name: Billie Jean Tuomi) has been scrolling through videos and leaving comments when she notices signs of thyroid problems in creators' necks. She's done this dozens of times, and at least four of those tips led to serious cancer diagnoses. One woman, a wedding baker from San Antonio, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer after Pickle Fart's comment and was cancer-free within a year. Turns out Pickle Fart is a thyroid cancer survivor herself and is just out here doing the Lord's work in the comments section. Dan and Nicole debate whether a person named Pickle Fart should be taken seriously, and whether approaching a stranger about their health on the internet is helpful or overstepping.