True Crime Conversations: Robin Warder, Nina Innsted and John Mattos

Shaun Hello and Happy holidays! We realize this isn't our normal release day, but this is the second in our two part series where John and I sat down with some friends from other podcasts. We're releasing this one on Christmas Eve, only a day after our missing at the holidays episode. As a bonus for our listeners, in the first of these episodes, I talked with Javier from the pretend podcast and Kristen from Murder, She Told, and we had a great conversation. So make sure you go back and listen to that one if you missed it.

John In this true crime conversation, I got together with two longtime podcasters who are very well known in true crime, Nina. Instead, from Already Gone and Robin, water from the trail went cold. We talked about our passion projects, how we got into podcasting, what we have in store for twenty twenty six, our favorite holiday traditions, and even shared some things that our listeners might not know about us. You'll definitely want to take notes on Robin and Nina's passion projects. I know I'll be going back and listening to them. They sounded really fascinating. You can listen to Robyn's podcast, the trail went Cold at the trail went cold, and you can find Nina's podcast. Already gone at podcasting. Gone. Once you're done here, head over there and give them a listen. I know you will love their work. So without any further delay, here's the conversation we had. Let us know what you think. Email me at dot com or Sean at. Sean at. Com and we'll be back next week with another episode. Happy holidays. Whatever. You celebrate our awesome listeners. And as always we remind you what happens here happens everywhere. Hello everyone. You're probably wondering who this is or whose voice is coming out of your podcast app. Well, my name is John and I am with a podcast called Sins and Survivors. If you're not one of my listeners, welcome. And I am here with two of my lovely co-hosts, and we're doing a podcast collaboration, so I will let them go ahead and introduce themselves, I guess let's go in reverse order by how long we've been podcasting. So I guess, Nina, you would go next.

Nina I'm Nina instead, I'm host of the Already Gone podcast. I'm a Michigan based podcaster telling stories about Michigan and the Great Lakes region.

Robin I'm Robin Warder, I'm host of The Trail Went Cold podcast. I cover a cold cases and Unsolved Mysteries. Uh, at the time of this recording, I'm only two years or two months away from my ten year anniversary of the podcast, and I'm based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

John And I'm like ten months away from two years. So that's not true. Actually, we, uh, we passed two years finally.

Nina But congratulations.

Robin Congratulations.

John Thank you. Yes, it's been a short but exciting road. Um, so I guess you want to start out by talking about how we each got into podcasting, like you said? Um, Robin, you want to start us out? Since you are the the senior podcaster here?

Robin Sure. Uh, I've told this story many times, but it bears repeating. Uh, I was originally hoping to start out as a YouTuber way back in twenty thirteen, when there were very few podcasts around. I pondered the idea of doing a YouTube series called The Unsolved Mysteries Fanatic because I was a huge fan of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries, and I literally dressed up as Robert Stack in front of the camera wearing a trench coat, and I would talk about some of the cases that were featured on the show, and I would jump back and forth with original clips from the Unsolved Mysteries segments, where I would talk about the facts and analyze them. And, uh, we launched it. We released our first episode during the summer of twenty thirteen, and within about a half hour or so, we received a takedown notice from Cosgrove Muir Productions for copyright infringement for using their footage there. That company is notoriously anal for not wanting people to use their footage, so we tried to explain that it fit under fair use because it wasn't just footage, there was footage of myself as well, but they still wouldn't let us do it. So we kind of had to abort the project for a few years, figuring out how we were going to do it. And then in early twenty sixteen, it kind of hit me, why not do a podcast where I can save all the trouble of appearing in front of a camera and filming all this stuff, and just sit in front of a mic and record? And of course, my good friend McGill Foote. He was an editor by trade, so he had filmed the original YouTube series, and he said he would edit the podcast together for me, and I didn't know if anyone would want to just sit listening to me ramble on for an hour about Unsolved Mysteries. But apparently they did because we released it within a couple months. We started getting a ton of downloads because we were lucky enough to be featured in a BuzzFeed article about aspiring new true crime podcasters. And here I am, nearly ten years later, still going.

John That's amazing. Back when they were BuzzFeed articles about aspiring true crime podcasts.

Robin Yeah, I think a lot of the podcasts that started out back then got featured there, and it turned out to be a big break. Uh, Nina, were you featured in that article? Do you remember?

Nina I do not remember. Maybe you.

John Should. I've been in a column.

Nina I should.

John I should reach out to them and demand they feature you retroactively.

Robin Yes, exactly.

John Yeah. If you do that, mention me too.

Nina I will. But no, I don't I don't remember, I know I've been featured in a couple of articles over the years, but it's been, like you said, almost ten years. And I got my start not long after Robin did. And I actually Robin's podcast was one of the podcasts that I was listening to. Um, my daughter developed agoraphobia, which is a fear of leaving the house or a fear of wide open spaces. And she wouldn't leave the house, and I had to quit work and stay home with her. And I was losing my mind being home. So I was listening to podcasts while I was taking care of her and I. After a couple of weeks of this, I was like, I have a nice voice. I can write a script, I can do this. Um, it took me a week or two, but I mentioned it to my husband that, hey, I think I want to start a true crime podcast. And he literally came home from work that day. He'd stopped at Best Buy and bought me a microphone.

John Oh. That's nice.

Nina It was really nice. Yes. So that's how I got my start recording in my dining room, because I didn't know any better. Um, editing, using Skullcandy headphones because I didn't know any better. And that was April of twenty sixteen.

Robin And that is an expression that all podcasters use. We didn't know any better when we were starting out, and I'm sure you'll probably say the same thing I do is that when you go back and listen to your earliest episodes, you cringe about some of the choices you made and some of the ways you talked. Yes, yes.

John I know I do. And mine was only a couple of years ago. Um, so Sean and I, Sean is my co-host and my wife, um, we started a couple of years ago, and we went to the true crime podcast festival. Lanie's Festival, uh, three years ago or something. Uh, just as attendees and, uh, interested parties, um, and, uh, we were talking to some of the podcasters there and as we listened to all the, you know, all of the panels, we realized that little background, uh, our podcast focuses more on domestic violence, uh, based crimes, uh, here in the Las Vegas area. And my wife worked in domestic violence for has, has for many years. She, um, did the fundraising for, uh, one of the local shelters. She wrote, uh, grant applications for them. Very good at it. And, um, what we realized was that all or many of these cases had a domestic violence component, but there wasn't really any direct. There wasn't much in the way of dealing with that topic directly. Um, so by the end of that festival, I was like, I kind of had a moment like you did where I was like, I feel like these people, you know, maybe need an expert in this area and you could be their expert. So I kind of, um, she she likes to say that I bullied her into it, but I think she was on board with it. Um, but, um. Yeah. So we, uh, it was October of twenty three, I guess, for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and I think the podcast festival was like a month before that or something. It was like, or maybe a couple of months before it was like July, I think. Um, so we came home and we kind of kicked around. We were like, ah, maybe the beginning of the year. And then then it got to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And she was like, what if we did it this month? And I was like, oh my gosh, that's really fast. So I had to go out and buy microphones and all that stuff. And we mostly do audio. Like we haven't been doing a lot of video. We do some of this like with our our extra bonus content, where we kind of talk about, uh, stuff, you know, the making of and whatnot. Um, but yeah, we bought the stuff. We still we're not in the living room. Exactly. We're in one of our extra spare bedrooms, which is fine. And we, you know, whatever. We have double pane glass, so it's not too bad. Occasionally, like, a garbage truck will drive by and we'll have to pause. So professional. Um, but, um, I think we we have only been featured in one very obscure magazine, and I can't even think of what it is yet, but it was it seemed very thrilling at the time. Um, but yeah. So we only started a couple years ago. Uh, it is really hard getting started in podcasting, and I know that I've heard many people say that if you're thinking about starting a podcast, my advice to you is do not start a podcast. Which that's not my real answer, but, uh, there's I guess the real answer is like, if you think you're going to start a podcast for the like, for the financial aspect. Probably. Don't do that. Probably. Probably don't do that. Um. Not now. If you have a time machine, maybe do it. Like maybe go back fifteen years and do it. Then you have a little more luck. But if you're passionate about a topic like, um, you know, I think we are all passionate about the particular areas we focus on. Um, then. Yeah. Why not throw your hat in the ring? It's hard to build an audience, though, man. Even even a couple of years in, it's very slow going. We got like, like new subscribers so slowly, but I'm like, well, directions going in the right. Yeah, it's going in the right direction. So I guess that's good.

Robin You just never know when your big break is going to come, because even Nina and I, when we started in twenty sixteen, there were so few podcasts that we weren't sure anyone was gonna listen to ours. But then it just a boom happened when there was a big audience for it, and they started to become very, very popular. And that's why a lot of the podcasts that started out in twenty sixteen are still around today and wound up finding a lot of success. But of course, we didn't realize that at the time, and I think it was probably after that when podcasts started being successful, that a lot of people started getting in thinking they could make instant money. But I think now, like in your situation, you know that, well, I'm not going to expect to see a lot of money, uh, starting out. So I want to do it, uh, because I love it. Because it's a topic I'm passionate about.

John Absolutely.

Nina I did not know how to check downloads when I first started, so I had no idea how many people were listening. And that's probably a good thing, because I think if I'd known that, like, six people listened to my episodes, I would have been like, no, I'm done. Um, but I'm I'm very grateful that I've stuck with it. And I'm very proud of the work that I've done over the last ten years.

John That's awesome. And did you guys feel like your audiences exploded during the pandemic? Ironically, when was your growth explosion?

Robin Well, my growth explosion was a couple years before the pandemic and ironically enough, I think our downloads, my downloads at least went down a little bit, uh, surprisingly, right after the pandemic started. And I think the explanation was people aren't commuting anymore, that they're not going to work. So I think people like stopped listening to them. And some of the time, some of these people, if they were trapped at home, weren't in the mood to listen to true crime podcasts. They wanted to listen to something more upbeat. So, uh, a lot of people were expecting that, that, uh, the downloads would increase now that people didn't have as much to do. But I think they just were not in the mood for true crime at that point. Yeah.

Nina And I've seen a real shift from the episodic true crime that Robin and I do to an interest in long form true crime. I feel like the the genre's evolving a little bit, and you're seeing more people looking for those one story told over five or six episodes, or stretched out to nine or ten episodes as we've seen happen a lot. Um, but I think there's more interest in long form. And I think we're seeing a little bit of a shift in the in, in what people are looking to listen to.

John I agree, I love listening to those. We did a the longest one we've ever done. Do you guys do all episodic right. Have you ever done anything long form any like multi-episode?

Robin I have yeah I've only done like a couple two parters and three parters. But I generally do the format of one case per episode.

Nina Yeah. I did a long form series about the Oakland County child killer called Don't Talk to Strangers. And, um, John, you and I talked a little bit about that before Robin joined us. Um, I am re I've taken that series down, I have re-edited I'm going to rerecord, remaster and rerelease for the fiftieth anniversary of the Oakland County Child murders, and that's in February of of twenty six.

Robin That's a great idea because you'll also introduce it to a new audience who may not have heard it the first time around.

Nina Right?

John Right. I have a question. Do you guys.

John Go back and do that a lot? Now I'm just picking your brains, but it's fine. Um, like, do you do you go back and remaster your episodes? I am really obsessed with going back to my older episodes and like re-editing, remastering, even sometimes rerecording things that I don't like that we did. Um, it's a long process because now we have I mean, this is the time to do it because we only have like one hundred and four episodes. But, um, do you guys do that too? Do you go back to your old episodes and revisit them, rerelease them maybe as like a flashback sometimes. Do you ever do anything like that?

Robin I should, but I haven't, I guess because I've got so much don't have the time to do it and I'm too busy working on new content. But sometimes I think, well, if someone goes back and listens to one of my earliest episodes, they're probably not going to get a favorable impression of the podcast and listen any further, because my early episodes were rough, I know. I think my first who had a headset Mike, a very cheap one. So I think the audio quality wasn't that good and my delivery is bad. But that's the message I like to send to podcast listeners. If you're trying a new podcast, please try the most recent episodes, because the earliest ones will not be an indicator of quality because we didn't know what we were doing. So they're going to be a little rough.

Nina Yeah, I stuck my first probably sixty episodes. So about my first year of episodes, uh, over on Patreon, so that people who really love me will listen to them. And it's not the introduction that someone gets to the podcast, but I have selected a few unsolved cases from that first sixty that I have rerecorded and rereleased because they're unsolved. They deserve to be in my active feed.

John Makes sense. All right, so we we have been given a couple of prompts to, uh, to talk through. So I guess so the first one we've been given is, um, are there, uh, like, what is the case or cases that keep you up at night and or the one you want most to be solved, which I think is not really fair because I think we want all of our cases that we cover to be solved if they're unsolved, we really want them solved, of course. But, um, maybe it's better to say, like, what are the ones that keep you up at night?

Robin Well, I'm anxious to talk about my choice right now because it's currently in the news. Uh, it's the controversial conviction of a man named Tommy Ziegler, who is currently on death row in Florida for a quadruple homicide that took place fifty years ago in Christmas Eve in nineteen seventy five, where his wife, Eunice Ziegler, his two in-laws, Perry and Virginia Edwards, and a man named Charlie Mayes were all murdered together at the Ziegler Furniture store. Um, and it was a massacre. There were twenty eight shots fired. There were four or five guns found at the scene that had been wiped clean of fingerprints. And Tommy himself was inside the furniture store. He was the one who called police because he had a gunshot wound to his abdomen. Uh, he claimed that he had been attacked when he walked inside the store, but by multiple people. But it was so dark in there that he couldn't tell who it was. And also because his glasses were knocked out, and he claimed that he grabbed a gun from the desk because it was his family's furniture store, fired off a few shots before he was shot in the abdomen and then passed out. And, uh, he came to believe that Charlie Mays, one of the so-called victims, was, uh, personally involved in the attack, was one of the people who murdered his wife and his in-laws. And that when he fired off his gun a few times, one of the bullets hit Mays and in self-defense, and that his accomplices killed him and finished the job because they knew they wouldn't be able to take him to a hospital. But the police did not believe this story. They thought that Tommy committed the murders himself. Self-inflicted gunshot wound on his abdomen and killed Charlie Mays in an attempt to frame him for the crime. So he was convicted at trial. He was sentenced to death for all four murders. But because there was so much controversy surrounding this case about whether he was wrongly convicted, the, uh, the execution has never gone through. So he is officially set an American record for the longest amount of time spent on death row. He's been there forty nine and a half years. He's currently an eighty years old and very poor health, but they recently did around a DNA testing, which seems to go in his favor, which seems to show that he didn't kill his family, that Charlie Mays was probably involved in the murders of his family. So just this past week, right before we sat down to record this, they had a hearing where they presented the results of this new DNA testing and the evidence to a judge. And sometime within the next few months, she is going to have to rule whether or not this is strong enough to overturn his conviction and give him a new trial or release him from prison. So I'm kind of on pins and needles right now trying to wait how this is going to turn out, because this has been my biggest passion case. I covered on an episode number fifteen and sixteen of the Trail went cold and have been obsessively following it ever since.

John Wow. Yeah. So you covered it like ten years ago?

Robin Yes. And I even consulted with his defense investigator who is trying to get his name cleared. And, um, she loved the episodes. And I kind of felt that as a validation point that if the people who were personally involved in these cases are liking the episodes, that I'm probably doing something right. And it is such a convoluted case that it's very hard to like, uh, tell the events that took place in a coherent fashion. That makes sense. But everyone who listened to him just thought that my episodes were great. They found the story to be fascinating, and I don't know if Tommy himself has been able to listen to them on death row, but I know that he's aware of these episodes and that his defense investigator sent him the transcripts. So he's very appreciative that I've been advocating for him all these years. And, um, another crazy aspect of this story is that during the pandemic, he got Covid and was deathly ill on death row. He was hospitalized for a few weeks, but he's still hanging on. He's still alive even though he's in a wheelchair and using oxygen. So I think a lot of his supporters have taken it as a sign that he will get out of prison alive at some point, because he's held on this long.

John And how old is he now?

Robin Eighty years old.

John Wow. My gosh.

Nina Have you corresponded with him at all?

Robin Not personally? No. Uh, I probably should that you should send him, like, a postcard. But I'm hoping, though, that, uh, he'll be released and I can correspond with him outside of prison walls when he's a free man again. Because if he is released, just imagine how overwhelming that'll be when you're cooped up for fifty years, and the world is just a much different place, and you have to adjust to everything.

Nina Yeah, absolutely. So my case, not surprisingly, is the Oakland County Child killer. Um, when I was a little girl and again, I'm showing my age, um, nineteen seventy six, nineteen seventy seven, four children were murdered in Oakland County, Michigan. One of the girls that was murdered was, uh, named Kristine Mihelich. And she lived in Berkeley. She attended Pattengill Elementary. I lived in Berkeley and I attended Pattengill Elementary for kindergarten. Well, part of kindergarten. Um, the case is not solved. They have never named a suspect. They have never named a person of interest. But it's one of those things where everybody knows who did it. And they've been dead for decades. But Michigan State Police, Oakland County Sheriff, the FBI, the Oakland County prosecutor, no one is talking and they are fighting, releasing anything related to the case. So we're coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of four children being murdered and dozens of children were sexually assaulted by these people, and it's all unresolved. There's never been any official announcement of, look, we know this person did it, but they're deceased or even, hey, we're pretty sure this person did it, but they're deceased. So I covered it as a long form series in twenty eighteen into twenty nineteen, and I'm rereleasing it starting at the end of January of twenty twenty six, because February is the fiftieth anniversary of Mark Stebbins disappearance from Ferndale. Now, today, going off on a little bit of a tangent, um, I went to an estate sale in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and the estate sale was held at the home where one of the main suspects lived and died. So I got I got to go through the basement of the house, which was super creepy. And the house is very strange in that you drive up the driveway and around the back of the house and down a hill under the house, into the garage. So if you were transporting children that you were going to hold for three to twenty one days, you could just drive them right into your house and no one would ever see you. Wow. And I got to go into the bedroom where he committed suicide in nineteen seventy eight and got to see the whole house.

Robin I'd be chilling. I mean, we're not one hundred percent sure that he is the killer yet. It's never been officially confirmed, but correct. Refresh my memory. Is there DNA evidence or forensic evidence that could potentially link him to the crime, even though he's now deceased?

Nina So what I have been told is that the evidence was contaminated. The DNA was extinguished. We have a partial profile, and There is not a lot of motivation on the parts of the Oakland County prosecutor, the Michigan State Police, or the Oakland County sheriff. They're not super motivated to do anything because it's a fifty year old case. So they're like, we're busy. We've got these new cases to worry about, but we still have four dead kids. So it's there is potentially DNA to be worked, but no one is working the case. And you see these cases, we've all seen them. They come to close because of a DNA break, because of genetic genealogy. You have to be doing that work for that work to be successful, and they're just not doing the work.

Robin And that's just incredibly frustrating because like you said, we've seen so many cases get resolved in recent years, like the Austin yogurt shop murders a couple months ago, where they linked DNA to a suspect who had been deceased for twenty five years but were able to conclusively solve it so they could do it here if they wanted to.

Nina If they wanted to. Yeah.

John Super frustrating. A lack of desire or a lack of funding or both. Like what's the.

Nina They're not motivated. So the the primary suspect and I'm not naming him, although I will name him in the series that I'm doing. His father was the chief financial officer of General Motors. And in the seventies, General Motors was like Google or Meta is today, you know, the biggest company in the world, and you just don't go after the son of the CFO of General Motors in nineteen seventy seven. You just don't. And there were also some political donations that were made that may have motivated people to be less interested in prosecuting him. So it's very, um, there's a lot of corruption. There's a lot of back door dealing. It's just super frustrating. There's a blog on the case. Catherine Broad, the sister of one of the victims. She has all of the information, all of the details on her blog. If you're interested in the case, I suggest you take a look at that or listen to my coverage starting in January. It's just it's shameful that we let these, not just the four kids, pass away, but what their parents and siblings have gone through is just awful.

John And their parents have got to be quite old at this point, I'm guessing. But siblings are probably like my age. Your age around. Yeah. You know, um, and they are, are are any of them actively pressing for for the case to be.

Nina Yeah. Cathy Catherine Broad with her blog is pressing. Her family fought the good fight for years with Michigan State Police and the Oakland County prosecutor, and just got shoved back down every time. So it's you can't make. You know, we've all seen this on various cases. You can't make people do a job they don't want to do. You can't physically make them do it.

John It's horrible.

Nina Yeah. So that's my case.

John I'm adding both of those to my list. I was furiously googling while you were talking. I was like.

Robin Major rabbit holes. Both those cases. Yes.

John Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. Um, so, uh, I have one case. I have two cases. One is fairly recent, about fifteen years old, but the the first one we actually covered twice. Uh, once. Um, I think like in we only had three seasons, but, uh, once, uh, in like, uh, twenty, twenty three, we covered it. And then on the thirtieth anniversary, just about a year later, we actually covered it again. And it's the disappearance of Camille Darden's, um, Dotson. So she disappeared in September of nineteen ninety four. Uh, the reason that she came across our radar. Speaking of DNA, she was originally married to a man named Gary Dodson, who was the first person ever exonerated by DNA evidence. Ever.

Nina That's why his name is familiar.

Robin Yeah.

John Yeah, yeah. He was accused of a rape. The woman who accused him eventually recanted, and that didn't get them to reopen the case. Another thing where the prosecutors don't want to reopen the case, even though they have the person who accused him originally admitted that it was all made up. Eventually, via DNA, he was exonerated. And then he met Camille. There is absolutely zero evidence that Gary Dodson had anything to do with Camille's disappearance. None. They were long divorced and she was living in Las Vegas. So she moved here and she was involved with a fairly seedy crowd. She worked at the Crazy Horse two strip club as a cocktail waitress. Um, at that time in history, there was a lot of mob Involvement, and she was in trouble with the law. And she was involved with a man who was abusing her. There's a lot of documented domestic abuse in their relationship. She was actually picked up and put into the Clark County Detention Center, and she was released in September, and after that she was never seen again. Gary and Camille have a daughter named Ashley. Ashley has been looking for her mom for thirty years. She was young at the time, but she remembers growing up, um, with her grandma coming to Las Vegas asking around where where Camille lived and in her circles. Like, has anyone seen Camille? Is anyone you know? So they searched for her for years, and it's been thirty years now, and there's never been any information on what happened to her. Interestingly, though, one of the things we have for this case is a phone list of phone numbers that Camille had, and one of the phone numbers is actually the local FBI field office. So the theory is that she might have been working with the FBI, and she was working for a mob controlled strip club. So there's some theory that the mob was involved. Her family has a website. Find Camille. Com. You can read more about the case there. We also covered the Gary Dodson case, and that case has become our most popular episode. At one point, we had this alarming spike in downloads that we called a witch's hat that we've never seen again. And it was like, it's a mystery. I thought, like some some bigger podcast, like mentioned Gary Dodson and people searched and they found us and they ended up listening. We have no idea if anybody out there knows or has heard of that episode. I'm so curious. The other one that kind of sticks in my craw a little bit, actually. You covered Robin in the early three hundreds. It was the disappearance of Steven Koecher. Steven disappeared December thirteen, two thousand and nine. He was a thirty year old young man from Utah, Mormon young dude just out there living his life. Apparently everyone who met him said he was just the nicest guy. Super involved in his church. Friendly as can be. Always willing to help people. He had a roommate who was nothing like him. Quoted at one point as saying, we get along well, but we're not very similar. He's Mormon and I'm from Chicago.

Robin Yeah, but.

John But they, like, got along well. They, um, they played softball together in two thousand and nine. Stephen was having trouble keeping a job, got laid off from a software company, and he started driving around between Utah, Arizona and Nevada and in in September. Oh, I'm sorry. In December, December thirteenth, he drove his car from Saint George, Utah, where he lived to Henderson, where I live only about twenty minutes from where I live. And he parked in a neighborhood in kind of the far south end of the valley called Sun City Anthem. typically a retirement community, but a non-retired people live there also. It's like a planned community here, and the last thing we saw of him was some grainy, vintage two thousand and nine security camera footage of him, presumably him, getting out of his car. You can't really tell, but it looks like him. It matches his height and you know, it looks like it could be him. His family believes it was him, and after that security footage, he was never seen again. His cell phone pinged across Henderson, our town, for a couple more days. We're not sure what that's about. No one's sure what that's about. Um, but, um, his his car was just left in that neighborhood where he had no ties. He didn't apparently know anyone. Um, it contained a bunch of groceries and Christmas gifts for his family that were all labeled, and they never saw him again. There were extensive searches in the area, and there was no evidence that he left voluntarily. And there are theories about what might have happened. People think he might have been delivering a package, possibly drugs, to a house in Henderson, but there's really no proof of any of this. That's one of the ones that really like another one. Where is he? Where the hell is he? People just don't disappear. This man is somewhere. He didn't just walk into the desert because that's not a thing that people do. He wasn't depressed. Also, he was in an area where like to get to the desert or really more accurately, a hiking trail, because that's what there is down there. It was like a two mile walk. So, ah, I don't know. The theory is that he like, possibly knocked on the wrong door, I don't know, some sort of delivery deal gone wrong. We don't know. It's very frustrating.

Robin I think the most baffling part about that story, when I covered it a few years ago, was the fact that he went on some unexplained road trips the days before he went missing, where he was driving throughout the state, going to all these different locations and nobody knows why. And he was suffering from serious financial problems at that point. And buying all that gas would obviously cost money. So I think that has caused like a lot of the speculation that maybe he was delivering drugs or something he wasn't supposed to, and making all these trips, because even though he was described as a very honest, law abiding person who never would have broken the law, but he seemed also like a very proud guy who didn't want to ask his family for financial assistance. So could he have been roped into doing something he ordinarily wouldn't have done, and it wound up costing him his life?

John Or was he doing some sort of a delivery job, didn't know what he was delivering because he was just this, you know, wide eyed kid from Utah and then ended up knocking on this house and it all went wrong. But you're right. He like, took this road trip like two days before he went and saw an ex-girlfriend in, like, northern Arizona and stayed with them on their, their ranch and had dinner with them. And he was like, oh, I'm going to Sacramento to meet some people they didn't know, didn't go there. Sacramento like. And he never went there. It's so weird. Yeah, I don't know.

Nina It reminds me a little bit of David Glen Lewis. I think that's his name. You know who I mean? From Texas. That ended up in Washington state getting hit by a car like it it. You can't assign any logic to it because there's nothing logical about what happened.

Robin I remember learning about that case because someone made a Reddit post about it, and then they tagged me, saying, Paging Robin Warner. This is the ideal case for you to cover.

Nina Yes it is.

Robin I'm really fascinated by cases where people travel to locations they have no reason to be at, and they either die or they they go missing. It's like, that's the it's two mysteries rolled into one. What happened to them and why did they travel there in the first place?

Nina Yes.

John I was actually on a, um, on a road trip with Sean one time, and, um, we got to talking about, like, uh, we were in, like, a really weird circumstance, like, I can't remember what it was, but, like, if people saw what was happening to us, it would be one of these mysteries. Like, why were they in that location? What were they doing? Why was there a cake in the car? Like it was like all this, like strange set of circumstances that we would definitely end up in some Reddit thread somewhere being like, what happened to them? What? Oh my gosh, what happened? Did did he just go? Did he just run away? And is he just living off the grid now? Who knows? Ah yeah. I often wonder that like now that I've experienced a few of these and learned about many of them, like, I feel like, uh, everyone is just one or two weird circumstances away from being a Reddit thread.

Nina Yes.

Robin I see stories like that where people go missing and details which might be completely innocuous suddenly become more ominous. They'll say, oh, a couple months beforehand, they read a story about a fictional character who disappeared to start a new life. Maybe they were getting ideas to do the same thing, when it might just be a coincidence.

Nina Well, and if they look at any of our browser histories.

Robin Yeah.

Nina Forget it. Oof!

Robin Yeah, we are missing. then they're going to make a lot of speculation about us. Yeah.

Nina Yes.

John For sure. So there were a couple of other prompts. Tell the people out there what you're looking forward to in twenty twenty six.

Nina Well, I'm really excited to share that. My first book, Unsolved Michigan, releases March sixteenth.

Robin Nice.

John Amazing.

Nina I'm super excited. I'm working with the history press, and I was able to highlight some really important stories of unsolved murders and missing persons from all over the state of Michigan. So that's coming in March. And if you're interested, it's available for pre-order at bookshop.org or on Amazon.

John So cool.

Robin Well, I'm looking forward to my ten year anniversary in February, and I usually have made it a tradition when I do my anniversary shows that I like to do a famous historical case, usually a two or three parter, and this particular one. I'm going to finally tackle the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which.

John Oh, wow, a classic.

Robin Yeah. Which I've always found fascinating. And it's unique in that it's officially considered to be solved because a suspect was tried, convicted, and executed. But a lot of people have figured there's more to the story, that he could have been innocent, or he could have had accomplices who got away with it. And there are even theories that maybe Lindbergh himself was more involved in the kidnapping than he was letting on. And, uh, this past summer, I took a trip to new Jersey. This is kind of what a weird life I live. I went there to see WWE SummerSlam at MetLife Stadium, but then decided to do a side trip to Hopewell to see the Lindbergh home, and also a lot of the locations where the crime took place, to kind of prepare myself to be working on this, and I'm looking forward to it, because I really love digging into the historical mysteries that happened a long time ago and trying to look for fresh takes on it. Uh, then find material that people haven't really talked about all that much on podcasts.

Nina You know, Robin, I have to say that something I've always admired about you is when you travel, you don't just go to a location. You're like, what's here that I can learn about with regards to true crime? Like when we were in, I think it was in Denver. You drove up to Janelle Matthews house?

Robin Yes.

Nina And I was like, what? But that's wonderful. And I've always loved that about you. So do not change.

Robin Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, I remember sending you a photo a few months ago when you watched the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders documentary, because we were at the True Crime Podcast Festival in Austin and the plaza where the yogurt shop was, was only a couple miles away. So I decided to pay it a visit and the yogurt shop was no longer there. I think it's a tanning salon, but they did have a memorial for the four victims in the parking lot that I took a photo of, and it gives you just a weird feeling knowing that such a horrible event happened in this place that now seems completely normal. So, uh, yeah, just now that this case has been solved, it makes the whole experience all the more poignant.

Nina Yes.

John Wow. So for us, um, we are looking at and I don't know when we're going to be able to do this. Hopefully it's going to be in twenty twenty six. But for now, let's just assume it's going to happen in twenty twenty six. Um, there are fifty one people on death row here in Nevada. And interestingly, right around fifty one weeks in the year. So our plan, yeah, you already figured it out. Where we're planning to do is dig into each one of those death row cases and find out what we can. Some of them are very old, and there's very, um, very little information about them. But the idea would be to go through and look at these death row cases and, um, and kind of cover them one by one. Um, and I think we'll use it as also an excuse to talk about, uh, the death penalty in general and our sort of thoughts on the death penalty and how it's disproportionately applied and how it's, uh, you know, by race and socioeconomic status, etcetera, etcetera, which you both probably know. Mhm. Um, but yeah. So that's we're looking at doing a separate series. Um, I'm not sure if how we'll release it, it might be a part of the normal podcast, might be like a separate related podcast, I don't know, but both of us have full time job, so we'll figure it out somehow. But that's what we're trying to do anyway. In twenty twenty six.

Robin Maybe you'll find your own Tommy Ziegler, your own white whale on death row and say, oh, this case is a lot bigger than I expected. I'm gonna need an entire year just to cover this one.

John Oh, that would be interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, some of them are so old. They're like from the nineties. The eighties? Yeah, that's.

Nina Not that long ago.

John That's true. That's true.

Nina Now, Michigan doesn't have the death penalty. And the one person we did have on death row, Marvin Gabrion, was only on death row because he committed a murder in one of our parks, which was considered federal property. And we have a case blowing up in the news right now, the disappearance and murder of Rebecca Park from northern Michigan. And it appears that her body was found in a park on federal land. So there's lots of speculation right now. Are her killers going to be tried? You know, will the death penalty be on the table?

John And I'm going to say yes, given the political, political climate. Yeah.

Robin You can see that.

John They love their death penalty at the federal level at this point. Unfortunately, um.

Robin And here in Canada, we haven't had the death penalty in decades. And I covered a couple years ago kind of the case. That was the major turning point. And that's when a fourteen year old boy named Steven Truscott was, uh, charged with the murder of a twelve year old girl named Lynn Harper. And they sent him to hang. And a lot of people thought it turned out he was probably innocent. But they're thinking, even if he's guilty, we should not be hanging a fourteen year old boy in that kind of played a role with his sentence being commuted and them abolishing the death penalty.

John Yeah, that's so civilized.

Nina It is though. They're Canadian.

Robin Yeah.

Nina Very civilized.

Robin Yeah. It's crazy to think they were still trying to hang people in nineteen fifty nine like that. Sounds like something from centuries ago.

John Yeah. That's crazy. And I don't know, I have so many thoughts on the death penalty. It's going to be an interesting series.

Nina We could do a whole new. We could do a whole episode just talking about the death penalty. The three of us.

John Yeah. Especially when, like, so many of these cases get overturned in the future because of DNA evidence and, ah, you know, whatever, prosecutors not doing their jobs, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. Okay. So I have two more prompts. Let's start with the fun one. So if you had to solve a mystery and you could work with anyone alive or dead in real life or fictional. So that might include a prosecutor, a forensic analyst, investigative reporter, detective, what have you. Who would be your dream team to investigate your case?

Robin Well, I have a fictional and a real life one. Uh, the fictional one. I'm going to choose Benoit Blanc from the Knives Out series because I saw Wake Up Dead Man just a few weeks, a few days before he recorded this. And I kind of wish we had more inspectors like that in real life, where you can just bring them into a room of suspects, they go over the whole thing in their head, and then they just figure it out and pick out the killer. Because unfortunately, real life murder cases do not work that way, but they're certainly fun to watch. Uh, Daniel Craig, when he's doing it, he's awesome. And a real a real life one is one of the most unusual cases I covered on my podcast was the nineteen forty five disappearance of a woman named Mary Jane Van Gelder. And surprisingly, I did that right at the request of her granddaughter, who, uh, never got to meet her, but was asking podcasters and YouTubers if they would share her story to get word out, because she had never been officially reported missing at the time.

Nina Wow.

Robin And actually got a police officer named Adam Turner, who worked with the department in Shelby, Ohio to take on the investigation even though it was seventy five years old at that point, and there was nothing to work with, and he wound up solving it, believe it or not, that, uh, he wound up just getting the right tip in where he discovered, uh, her. He looked on the Findagrave website and found a woman that was named in Mary Jane's personnel file. Uh, had a wife, uh, buried next to him, who happened to be named Mary Jane and had the same birth date as Mary Jane Van Gilder. And he tracked down their family, used DNA evidence to figure out that this woman was Mary Jane Van Gilder, and that she had disappeared voluntarily, started a new life with a new family, and then died of natural causes in nineteen ninety. And, uh, even though she'd been dead, he used DNA testing to figure it out. And it's like, wow, we we cover so many cold cases where the police don't want to do anything. And here was a guy who solved a seventy five year old missing persons case with no evidence. And when they had the press conference to announce this, his captain said, if you're a criminal, do not commit a crime in Shelby, Ohio, because Adam Adam Turner will solve this case and catch you. So yeah, if you want to get anyone to work on a working person's case, he's a guy I would tell you to get in contact with for sure. Yeah.

Nina So, Robin, you will probably remember this gentleman's name because I think his name is Jim Smith. He was the Ontario Provincial police officer that got Russell Wilson to confess.

Robin Oh, okay. I'd forgotten his name, but yeah, that's a good I think it was Jim Smith.

Nina And he looked at Russell in the eye and got him to confess to murdering those women. And just. You can watch the confession on YouTube. It is masterful. And he's one guy that, like, if I could buy anybody a drink, it would be him for how great his work is. Um, I'm also a big fan of Joe Kenda, so I would love to work with Joe Kenda on a case. Um, and for my fictional person, it would be Quincy for Medical examiner, because we all need a little more Quincy in our lives.

John Obviously.

Robin Yeah, I've never watched that show. Unfortunately.

Nina It was a staple at my house as a child. Jack Klugman.

John Nice. I went all fictional on my list because I'm weird. Um, so for an investigator, um, I, I chose, uh, Adrian Monk. Um, he is, uh, I, I love him. Uh, I think I just I love the show. I love the actor. So, uh. Yeah, monk was definitely, um. And I think he thinks, like I do, a little bit. Um, so definitely wanna work with him. Uh, for prosecutor, I chose ally McBeal because I feel like she would be fun to work with, um, for, uh, um, Temperance Brennan from bones because she seemed to always solve cases in under sixty minutes, which I love. Um, so she could get through a great many cases. And for a reporter, I mean, I think the obvious choice is Lois Lane.

Nina Oh, I love it.

Robin Oh, yeah.

John The award winning Lois Lane. Those are. Those are my choices. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, uh. Yeah, I don't have any real life people. Uh, I didn't want to, you know, I don't want to offend anybody with, uh, not choosing them. I'm sure I could do some.

Nina Well, and I have to say, I got everything wrong. His name is Russell Williams, not Russell Wilson.

Robin Oh, okay. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that.

Nina Yeah. So sorry about that.

John Cool. Yeah. Um, so the last thing I have, uh, the last question that we came up with was, uh, what's one thing that, um, one thing about you that people might not know, maybe not related to, um, to to true crime. Like maybe. Robin, I didn't know you were a WWE fan, but I love that. I know that now.

Robin It's kind of funny. I've done a lot of Q&A episodes for my podcast, so there's a lot that my regular listeners probably already know. But, uh, I'll come up with one now that I'm not sure I've shared before. Uh, a lot of people know that, uh, before I took, uh, became a podcaster, I got a postgraduate degree in script writing from Algonquin College in Ottawa. That was actually my goal is I wanted to be a screenwriter and write for movies or television, and never thought I would be applying that to writing a podcast. And I always like to say I don't want to call writing scripts for podcasts easy, but when you went through so many years of having to dream up fictional characters and fictional situations, that it kind of felt like a break to just write about events that actually happened where you didn't have to create anything in your head. But I started script writing when I was in high school and used to write like action movies, horror movies, and they wrote about a dozen scripts, though none of them were ever published. And I sometimes get a laugh when I go through some of the ones I wrote in high school just to see how bad they are. I think once I found one that I wrote in grade eleven and action movie where I named one of the villains Mr. Wheat, so that they could do a scene where the hero dropped him in like a giant fan so that he was shredded and he could yell at the one liner Shredded Wheat. So that was my screenwriting expertise back then, and I don't know why I didn't make millions from that.

Nina Um, so mine is that I have a degree in history and in the early two thousand. I actually applied to Wayne State University to do doctoral work in modern Asian history. And I submitted all of the paperwork and had plans to learn Mandarin. And Wayne State lost my paperwork and told me that I would have to reapply and resubmit everything. And I went. Not doing that. And I ended up being a school teacher. So I taught.

John Middle school teacher for.

Nina Uh, off and on for about twelve years.

John Oh, wow.

Nina Yeah, I was a middle school teacher, so you can't scare me. I was a middle school teacher.

John Yeah. That's terrifying.

Nina Yeah.

John I did that for a while. Yeah, she spent a couple of years teaching middle school, and. Oof! Yeah. English in middle school. Yeah, it's very stressful. Wow. It's a lot of work.

Nina Yeah.

Robin My mother was a middle school teacher for thirty years. Joey. She identifies and she retired in two thousand and one and has said, I'm always so grateful I haven't had to do any teaching in the past twenty five years.

Nina I bet.

John Yeah, yeah, man, that toughens you up, I bet.

Robin Mhm. She got out just before cell phones became a thing with kids. So. Right. Time. Yes.

John Yeah I know how they do it now.

Nina Yeah. And before I taught middle school, I was an admissions coordinator for an inpatient psychiatric unit. So again, I worked inpatient psych, and then I taught middle school. I don't flinch.

Robin Yes.

John Wow.

Robin It's fine just sitting here writing about podcasts and speaking with law enforcement investigators. You've got a lot of experience to toughen you up.

John Yeah, yeah. And also, you got out before, uh, AI took over the world. The best and worst thing that's ever happened to us as people.

Nina Yes.

John Yeah. I don't know how teachers do it now. I mean, I guess they use AI detectors, but.

Nina So what's your little known fact about you?

John Mine is. So I couldn't really think of something I. Mine's pretty boring. Um. Uh, just that two things. Number one, I'm a part time fitness instructor. I teach group fitness for fun. I teach bodypump, which you may or may not have heard of. It's like group fitness with barbells. Um, so I love doing that, but it pays like nothing. So whatever. It's, it's like my side passion project. It's like my other job besides my full time job. Yeah, right. And then my, my most important part time job is pickleball. I play a lot of pickleball. Um, it's it's it's alarming. Now, I probably play about ten hours a week now.

Nina Wow.

John Yeah. Yeah, it.

Nina Cuts.

John Into.

Nina Your podcast time.

John It does? Seriously, it seriously is kind of becoming a problem. And, uh, Sean is so she's, like, so super supportive about it, but I it's definitely cutting into it. I gotta I gotta rebalance things. Um, but I don't really talk that much about it, but I'm obsessed with it. I'm always thinking about it.

Robin So a pickleball podcast coming up in the future for you? Oh.

John Oh, my God, that would be amazing. Um, yeah. We went recently to the, um, the, um, the PGA tour event here in Las Vegas. Um, and, uh, got to see all the, uh, the pickleball superstars.

Nina All the pros.

John Yeah, it was really fun. And, oh, this is really fun, too. Uh, related. I was at, uh, Pickler, the pickleball gym, and, um, I met Andre Agassi.

Robin Oh, wow.

Nina Because they live in Vegas.

John Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Steffi. Living, uh, living. They live in Henderson. They live, like, right near me. Like we see them at the grocery store.

Nina Yeah. They're neighbors.

John Yeah. So weird. That's cool. Like he was. He's so good. Oh, my God, he's so good at. Obviously he's so good at pickleball for, I don't even know, forty years. Like, ever since he was a young youth. Um, but he was, like, just playing with a friend of his on, uh, whatever on court number one at Pickler and Henderson. It was awesome. And I, like, walked up to him and was like, ah, hello. Can I get a photo? And he signed my paddle. And then I immediately was like, ah, now I have to get a new paddle.

Robin So yeah, I'm not gonna use that one again.

Nina No.

Robin Yeah.

John I'm not I'm not using that at all. And the funny thing is he does have his own brand paddle. He has like a ULA has a paddle. He was like, it's not a you don't have a paddle, huh? And I was like, it's on my list. It's on my list. But he gave me a hard time about it.

Nina Oh, that's awesome though. How fun. So cool.

John Yeah, he was super nice.

Nina Do we want to do the weird holiday prompt?

John Oh. Oh, there was another prompt, right? Do you have a favorite holiday tradition? Bonus points for weird that you would like to share.

Robin This isn't really weird, but I always visit my family. We used to live in the town of Orangeville, Ontario, but now my parents are living in a condo in Waterloo where, uh, my brother Phil and my niece live, and we actually just did this tradition right before I sat down to record this. But since I often can't be at home at Christmas while they're decorating the tree, we will do a FaceTime. Well, they'll call me and then show me the footage and my niece will be over there. Like helping decorate because we used to decorate the tree together all the time before I moved away. But this is a way to keep the tradition alive. And every year when I visit my mother, the two holiday classics that we always watch are the Mr. Bean Christmas Special. And our favorite Christmas movie is not often ranked on the all time greatest Christmas movies, but it's considered to be one of our favorites. Have either of you ever seen Ernest Saves Christmas?

John I don't think I have.

Robin Do you remember Ernest the COVID-19? Yes. Yeah. Jim Varney yeah. And my mother and I watched it in the theater. It came out in nineteen eighty eight, which, believe it or not, was thirty seven years ago. Way to make me feel old. But it involves Santa Claus traveling to Orlando to find a successor to take his place, and he gets into some trouble and Ernest has to save him and single handedly save Christmas. It's very stupid, but I love watching it at Christmas and, uh, I don't see it ranked alongside the classics like Christmas Vacation and It's a Wonderful Life and stuff, but it's one of my favorites to watch every year with my family.

John Wow. Let's add that. What is what is your favorite Christmas special or Christmas like television or movie thing that you that you, uh, that you love the most? I think that's worthy. That's a worthy.

Nina Oh, yeah.

John Oh, God. Yes. Die hard.

Robin Christmas movie. It's probably my all time favorite movie. Not just Christmas movies. So I watch that every year as well.

Nina Yeah, big fan of Die Hard. Big fan. Yeah. Um, so my holiday tradition, that's kind of weird. We actually haven't done this in a few years. But when my kids were younger, we belonged to a swim club, and every year they would do a Fourth of July potluck. And we thought that was boring and lame. So we volunteered to purchase, smoke and pull forty pounds of pork every fourth of July. And we did this for years that they changed the name of the event from the Fourth of July potluck to the Pork of July Potluck. So we would provide all of the protein and the other families would provide, you know, side dishes and desserts and beverages and stuff. But we would we really got excited about smoking all of this pork. Uh, pork. But for the holiday event. And it was just great to feed everybody and have everybody be happy and eating and a little greasy. And it was just good fun.

Robin Nice.

John I love it. Are there any other, um, shows or movies that that you must see.

Nina Big fan of Die Hard I am not. Um. There's nothing particularly like I don't have any real Christmas routines. We usually go to Florida for the holidays. I don't know if we're going this year. We haven't decided yet, but it's what, the sixth. So we need to make up our mind, because we usually rent a house down in the Florida Keys for a week, and that's our yearly vacation. Nice. Oh, it's really fun. Um, but I don't know if we're doing that this year. Um, so, yeah, I just I work really hard to make sure my kids have, like, a really wholesome, traditional Christmas with the tree and the trimmings and, you know.

John The nice.

Nina Normal, normal, normal stuff.

John Nice.

Nina Oh, and, Robyn, how old is your niece? Do you mind me asking?

Robin Uh, seventeen.

Nina Oh, wow. So she's. She's getting big.

Robin She is? Yeah. Like, uh, you probably see me post photos of us together on Facebook. Years ago when she was just a little girl. But it's blowing my mind that she will be leaving to attend college like just over a year from now. So she grows up so exciting.

Nina Yes. Oh my gosh.

John That is crazy. That's the same age as, uh, as our son. Um, he's busy applying to colleges right now. Same thing. And he's, like, six foot two. I've no idea how that happened.

Robin Oh, wow.

John It's. I come up to, like, here on him.

Robin Oh, man.

John I am not a tall man. But that's all right. Um, okay. So I guess, um, my tradition, uh, our traditions here in this house, uh, as far as, uh, I'll leave entertainment for last, but we we have several trees. We have, we have four, but really three main Christmas trees. The first is our standard tree with, you know, the standard, um, decorations, whatnot from vacations and all that sort of thing. Our second tree is. It's a black tree. It's short. It's probably only four feet tall, and it's decorated. It's been decorated for the past few years with Las Vegas Aces ornaments. So every year we we create these Las Vegas Aces ornaments. These are the ones that I'm replacing for this year. Um, people that have left the team. Sydney Colson, we love you, but you left the team. So.

Robin Um.

John Kelsey Plum, who I met at, um, who I met at target one day, a nice lady. Uh, so the players that have left the team this year anyway. So I'm replacing those this weekend, and we'll put them on the, uh, the aces tree. Uh, so we have that tree, um, and then we have a humanist tree, that one. We also make the ornaments for that. There are like little stars. Um, so people who are humanists who have, you know, positive impact on the world, living or dead, doesn't matter. Um, so we have, uh, ornaments for John Cena, who's apparently a wonderful, wonderful guy. Uh, Chadwick Boseman, uh, Kristen Bell, Isaac Asimov, Rosa Parks like people through history, uh, who, uh, have a sort of humanist ideals. So we have a humanist tree. So that one's that one's a six foot tree. That one used to be like just a little tiny tree. And we were like, are we gonna upgrade this? Uh, there's that. And then the other thing that is, uh, I don't think it's weird, but when I tell people about it, they're like, that's weird.

Nina Robin and I will decide if this is where.

John We also celebrate Festivus every year.

Robin Oh, okay.

John On the twenty fourth. Um, the. And if you don't know what Festivus is, it's the holiday from Seinfeld. There's an episode of Seinfeld where, um, they, uh, sort of reveal that George's family used to celebrate this, um, holiday Festivus. Right? Uh, so we have a six foot extruded aluminum pole that we have in our living room. So we have Festivus pole, and we actually put our presents not around the tree, but around the Festivus pole. Okay, so, um, yes, we have Festivus pole, and that.

Nina Might be a little weird.

Robin As long as you don't yell at each other like George and his family did.

John No, no, no, but we do. Okay, so some of the Festivus traditions were, um, um, having red foods. So I make on Festivus, I make my lasagna with my, the sauce, I make the sauce, and I make lasagna. That's kind of a thing we do. Um, but we don't do feats of strength like they did on the, uh, the episode. Um, it's probably better now that Nate's huge. It probably wouldn't.

Nina Probably.

John Wouldn't work out so well for me. Um, but we definitely watched the Festivus episode every year. That's one of the things we definitely can't miss. Along with the, um, the Schitt's Creek episode, the Christmas episode of Schitt's Creek. I don't know if you guys watched Schitt's Creek. Lovely show. Yeah, but the Christmas episode is nice.

Robin Sorry to say that I haven't watched it, and as a Canadian, I think my citizenship should probably be revoked. I guess I wouldn't.

Nina Say that too loud. Yeah. You're going to get in trouble.

John You're probably gonna get a knock on the door. I definitely recommend it if you're looking for, uh, for some good, wholesome entertainment. But I think. I think that's it. Oh, and the other thing is, uh, on Christmas Day, normally, what we do is we will see a movie and eat Chinese food. Vegan Chinese food, weirdly.

Robin Oh, okay.

John Yeah, we're vegetarian, but vegans close enough. So yeah, we'll go out for vegan Chinese food. Kind of a tradition.

Robin I know. It must be weird for you, from our perspective, that you have to spend Christmas every year in the hot Las Vegas without any snow. Yeah, cause we're from Michigan and from Ontario, so we're used to the wintry Christmases.

Nina Yeah.

John Mhm. Yes. But it definitely gets cold here. It's like sixty one degrees here today. Oh I'm sure it's much thing. It did it get into the thirties this week and it like made the news. Wow. They're like.

Nina I think we have a high temperature.

John That freezes.

Nina Yes.

Robin Yeah.

John They have to remind people that eventually the water will freeze. And you should be aware of this.

Nina Yes. This is called ice.

John Yes. This is what happens to water when it gets too cold. Yeah, but we never, like, drain our pools or anything. Like, just leave it. It's fine. No, it's never going.

Nina Do you even close your pool? No. We go in the pool.

John So, like, we'll go in the hot tub. Like I'll fire up the hot tub and actually go in it.

Nina Nice. We had a workman at our house who walked out of the, uh, utility room and looked at me and went, where's your hot tub? And I'm like, I don't have one, because apparently the previous owners had a hot tub and there's a switch in the utility room labeled Hot tub. Oh. And I was.

Robin Like.

Nina Oh no, no hot tub here.

John I have a crazy idea.

Nina We should get one.

John Get a hot tub.

Nina Yeah, that would be the deer. Would love it. Yeah.

John Yes. Can you see the northern lights from where you are in Michigan? I have a friend who has an Airbnb in Michigan, and she sent me a picture last night of, um, not from like several weeks ago. I guess they could see the Northern Lights a few weeks ago.

Nina So just recently we've started to be able to see the Northern Lights. I actually saw them for the first time last winter. I had never seen them before, and it was one of those bucket list things. Robin, you're further north and east. Do you see the Northern lights?

Robin I don't think so, no, I can't recall ever having seen them.

Nina Okay. They're cool if you get the chance.

Robin Okay.

John I totally want to see them now.

Nina Yeah, they were really.

John They were awesome.

Nina Yeah.

John Anyway, that's random. Not true. Crime related.

Nina Well, thank you for hosting us.

Robin Yes. Great.

John Of course. Um, yeah. Thank you for, uh, being willing to chat with the, uh, the, the new podcast guy, the podcast, the baby podcast.

Robin That's what's great about these is talking with the veterans and the newbies just to share our experiences, and we talk about podcasting. Then it turns into stuff like Christmas tradition and pickleball. So you just never know how these conversations are going to lead.

John Everything turns into pickleball when I'm here.

Nina Andre Agassi shows up and you know, he's gonna listen to this and be like, Holy shit.

Robin Yeah, we'll find out. Andre's a fan of the trail. Went cold or already gone. Or maybe sins and survivors. Maybe he didn't know who you were when he met you.

Nina Right. That would be amazing.

John Yeah, that would legitimately blow my mind. And, oh, my gosh, he could join my local pickleball meetup, too. I know he he I know he joins one of the other local pickleball meetups sometimes too, because they have a photo with.

Nina Him to join yours.

John Yes, he really does.

Nina Yeah.

John All right. Well thank you guys for your time today. And, uh, happy holidays. Happy holidays. You celebrate. Happy holiday. And, um. Yeah, I'm sure we'll talk soon. All right.

Nina Stay warm, y'all. Happy holidays.

Robin Bye.

John All right.