Hoot’n & Holler’n With Matt Mitchell

The gang is playing along at home this week as we run the whole game show gauntlet — from the daytime classics you watched while faking sick to the chaos of late-night Japanese TV. Matt, Eric, Drake, and Joey get into Price Is Right, Wheel of Fortune, and the Pat Sajak / Vanna White era, then argue about Steve Harvey's reign on Family Feud (and every host before him — Richard Dawson and that very...

A Southern Guide to the 4th of July The South does Independence Day different, and we've got the receipts to prove it. This episode breaks down why TNT Fireworks (the nation's largest fireworks distributor) calls Alabama home, the unwritten rules of haggling at a firework stand, and exactly when it's socially acceptable to stop shooting off Roman candles in your neighbor's driveway. We also get in...

A vault episode from the early days, back when we were still calling the show Scattered and Covered and recording on location instead of in a studio. This one comes from Gamers Guild, a game shop in Jasper, Alabama, where we sat down in the middle of a Sunday night card tournament and talked to the folks running it. We get into trading cards and the people who collect them, a binder that turned ou...

You don't walk under a ladder, you don't break a mirror, and you sure don't walk on a grave — not because anybody explained why, but because Grandma said so. This week we get into Appalachian superstitions: death coming in threes, black cats, cows lying down before a rain, holding your breath past the graveyard, and eating turnip greens for money on New Year's (still hasn't worked). We don't belie...

Child Labor & Other Fond Memories Everybody's first job was technically a crime scene. This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n, the crew gets into first jobs, worst jobs, and the ones we quit in record time, the gigs the government knew about and the ones it definitely didn't.  From hauling boxes of truckers' trip logs and choking on Bondo dust at a body shop, to practicing golf on company time, su...

For half the South, there's no debate: it's Gatlinburg or nothing. This week we make the great Southern pilgrimage up to G-Berg — Sevier County, Tennessee, a.k.a. the Smokies, a.k.a. the only vacation some families have ever taken. We get into all of it: the saltwater taffy and the fudge, the moonshine that took over the strip, the airbrush tees and glow-in-the-dark mini golf, the great debate ove...

We climbed into machines bolted together by strangers, ate things on sticks that had no business being on sticks, and lived to talk about it. This week on Hoot'n and Holler'n, we're talking carnivals and county fairs. The guys swap stories about the rides that shouldn't have been legal (the Scrambler, the Gravitron, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the one that was just a circle that spun you until you got a han...

Summer in the rural South wasn't a vacation. It was a system. You got dropped off at grandma's in the morning, ate something, went outside, came back in for more food, went back outside, and came in at dark. Every day. For three months. In this episode, the boys break down everything that made a Southern summer in the 80s and 90s what it was. The ice cream truck. The Little Hugs from the deep free...

Most of us remember the 90s NBA as a Chicago story. The Bulls dynasty. The Dream Team. The commercials we still quote at each other thirty years later. But spend a little time digging into the decade and a different picture comes together...one that doesn't get talked about nearly as much. Michael Jordan was from Wilmington, North Carolina. Scottie Pippen grew up in central Arkansas. The teal and...

It don't get more American than going to the yard sale and the flea market on a Saturday morning. But the version we had down here in the South was never quite the same as the one they had everywhere else, and somewhere around 2010, it just stopped. This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n, Matt, Eric, Drake, and Joey walk one more lap through the sacred aisles of the Southern flea market. We get into t...

Out in the rural South, a real arcade was a 45-minute drive and a pilgrimage to Charles Entertainment Cheese himself. The rest of the time, you made do with what you had....and what we had was one Pac-Man at the Pizza Hut, a Street Fighter at Dips and Dogs, and a beat-up row of cabinets up front at Walmart next to the kiddie ride that smelled like feed and chicken pox. This week on Hoot'n & Ho...

He's not a man. He's a Chicken Boo. On this episode, we're looking back at the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons. That sacred five-hour window between 7 AM and noon when kids across America parked themselves two feet from the TV and disappeared into a bowl of sugary cereal and animated chaos. We're talking Doug. X-Men. Animaniacs. Masters of the Universe. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rugrat...

There is no experience more uniquely Southern than Little League Baseball in small-town Alabama. Everywhere else in the country, it's a program. Down here, it's a situation. This week, Matt, Drake, Joey, and Eric are taking it back to the dusty infields, the borrowed helmets, and the army-green duffel bags of Dizzy Dean and Dixie Youth baseball. We're talking about the equipment that barely worked...

Spring break in the South meant one of two things: Panama City chaos… or a fried bologna at Meemaw’s.   This week on Hoot’n & Holler’n, we’re diving into what spring break really looked like growing up in the 80s and 90s before Cancun trips and credit card debt. From AEA Week in Alabama to road trips fueled by Shoney’s breakfast bars, Tiger Electronics, and empty threats of “don’t make me turn...

We’re back in the vault.   This episode of Scattered & Covered comes from one of our live, on-location recordings where we basically set up, see who walks by, and let it rip.   This time, we met a garbage man who chases tornadoes.   From the Boston Celtics to trash truck mechanics to real-life storm chasing in Alabama, this one goes everywhere and somehow keeps getting better.

Somehow… this became a full episode. What started as leftover clips from our last recording quickly turned into something we couldn’t ignore. We went off the rails, stayed there, and now you’re listening to the results. In this episode, we bounce between mariachi bands playing “Achy Breaky Heart,” an ongoing rat situation that may or may not be escalating, the chaos of Costco, competitive eating l...

Before Google, before smartphones, before you could fact-check anything in 2 seconds… we just believed stuff.   In this episode, the guys dive into the wild world of pre-internet urban legends—the rumors, myths, and straight-up lies that somehow spread across the country with zero proof and 100% confidence.    From Marilyn Manson being that kid from The Wonder Years, to Pop Rocks and Coke “killing...

What is the greatest movie ever shown on cable TV?   In this episode of Hoot’n & Holler’n, we build the Ultimate Cable TV Movie Bracket to settle one of the most important debates in television history: which movie dominated basic cable for decades?   From action classics to endlessly replayed comedies, we debate and rank the movies that basically lived on TBS, TNT, USA, and FX. The bracket in...

In this episode of Hoot’n and Holler’n, the guys dive headfirst into one of the greatest cinematic debates of our lifetime: what actually counts as the greatest comedy movie ever made?   From Anchorman and Superbad to Borat, Step Brothers, and a few deep cuts you may not have thought about in years, we look back at the era when comedy movies dominated theaters and every line instantly became quota...

This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n we're reaching back to the not-so-distant past to a time when riding in the back of a truck, wandering the woods all day, buying cigs for your parents at the gas station, and drinking straight from the hose felt completely normal… and somehow nobody called the authorities. The guys swap stories about growing up in an era where the main safety plan was “try not to...

What happened to Happy Meal toys… and why did they used to be so much better? In this episode of Hoot’n and Holler’n, we’re heading back to the golden age of McDonald’s — when PlayPlaces ruled, Boo Buckets were a necessity, and the toy inside the box was engineered like a NASA space shuttle. We dive into the surprising history behind the 90s Happy Meal “arms race,” when competing designers were tr...

This week on Hoot’n & Holler’n, we dig into the wonderfully awkward world of childhood Valentine’s Day to discuss the era of Big B valentine's, pocket chocolates, and stuffing handwritten love notes in your underwear. From elementary school crushes to the bizarre unspoken rules of classroom Valentine exchanges, we revisit the stories that somehow still live rent-free in our heads. It’s a nosta...

🎮 Sleepover, Part 2 — The Video Game Years In Part 2 of our Sleepover series, we go full couch-co-op nostalgia and relive the golden age of growing up with a controller in your hand and a CRT TV buzzing in the corner. From split-screen GoldenEye chaos and screen-watching accusations to all-night seasons of NCAA Football, Tecmo Bowl, and Super Smash Bros, this episode is a love letter to when vide...

Sleepovers (or "Spend the Night" Parties) were a childhood rite of passage, and in this episode of Hoot’n and Holler’n, the guys look back on why they were either the best nights of your life or absolute disasters you still think about years later.   Hosts Matt Mitchell (SEC Roll Call, Bless Your Rank, It’s a Southern Thing), Eric Nix, Joey Prestley, and Drake Pittman share stories from the golden...

This week on Hootn and Hollern, the guys kick things off with a serious journalistic investigation into Taco Bell’s ever-rotating menu and whether a quesadilla can, in fact, ruin a man’s afternoon. From there, things spiral—naturally—into a deep dive on early MTV, including a genuinely surprising revelation about which artist absolutely monopolized the network in its infancy (spoiler: it’s way mor...