Hoppy Thoughts

Thin crust, New York, or Detroit — which pizza style actually wins? Chet and William settle it in this week's "What is Best…" debate, then tackle the least-terrible place to go number two, and whether one week of training is enough to land a plane, defuse a bomb, or perform heart surgery. It's the Hoppy Thoughts variety show: true crime, gaming history, and unhinged hypotheticals...

Most Likely To… Survive a Waffle House Ban | Hoppy Thoughts Podcast The superlatives are back and somehow more unhinged. This week on Hoppy Thoughts, William and Chet hand out the awards nobody asked for: Most Likely to win a hot dog eating contest, Most Likely to get kicked out of a Waffle House, and the all-time champion — Most Likely to try to politely end a phone call, get sucked into a new to...

This week we ran the show through three "would you rathers" that got way more heated than they had any right to. First up: do 3 flat years in prison, or stay locked up until your mom beats a Dark Souls game you get to pick — a sentence that could end in a month or outlive you. Then we settle the timeless question of unarmed combat: deaf alligator in a kiddie pool, or blind gorilla in a f...

He built a career out of a video game. He became a star before graduating high school. And two days after prosecutors believe he killed a 14-year-old girl, he released his debut album. This week, we're covering one of the most disturbing cases in recent true crime memory — the story of David Burke, known to millions as D4vd, the homeschooled Houston teenager who went viral on TikTok, signed to...

"The Fighting Game Community (FGC) didn't start in a stadium — it started with 40 people, a Street Fighter cabinet, and a dream. In this episode of the Hoppy Thoughts Podcast we tell the full story: how Street Fighter II accidentally invented the combo mechanic in 1991, how EVO grew from a California basement tournament to the world's largest fighting game event, and how a 26-second c...

What does a Japanese word for "your house" have to do with a global entertainment empire? Why does a community of people who draw animal characters raise more money for charity than most Fortune 500 companies donate? And how did a 13-year-old break a video game that had gone unbeaten for 40 years? This week we're going deep on three gaming subcultures that the mainstream has spent de...

It's Memorial Day weekend, and we're doing what we do best: asking the questions nobody asked us to ask. This week, your hosts crack open something cold and wade into the murky waters of war — who starts them, why they start them, and whether the reasons we're given ever hold up to scrutiny. No sacred cows, no easy answers, just two guys trying to make sense of history one sip at a tim...

"What do a tomb raider, a princess, a bounty hunter, an AI, an android, and a sworn housecarl all have in common? They're iconic, they're unforgettable, and this week on the Hoppy Thoughts Podcast — we're talking about every single one of them. This episode is all about honoring the female video game characters who shaped the culture and stole our hearts along the way. We're s...

In this episode, we're taking a deep dive into one of the most legendary illegal races in American history — the Cannonball Run. From Brock Yates' rebellious vision to the wild cast of drivers who actually lined up and floored it from New York to California, we're breaking down how this cross-country sprint went from a middle finger to the establishment to a full-blown cultural phenome...

Hoppy Thoughts Podcast is back, and this week we are fired up. We're sitting down for another unfiltered, no-holds-barred conversation about the current state of American politics — and what we're seeing from the right isn't pretty. From broken promises to culture war distractions, the playbook isn't working, and we're calling it out. We dig into the headlines, share our honest...

This week, we put our taste buds to the ultimate test with a full blind liquor taste test challenge. Mystery shooters, zero hints, and way too much confidence from people who probably should've done more research before agreeing to this. The rules are simple: take a sip, figure out what spirit you're drinking, and — if you're feeling bold — try to name the brand. Whiskey or tequila? To...

Who is the King of Fast Food? 👑🍔We finally settled it. In this episode, we put ALL the heavy hitters — fast food, casual dining, and everything in between — through the ultimate tier list and ranked them from best to absolute trash. No mercy. No sugarcoating. Just real, unfiltered opinions and plenty of arguments along the way. Taco Bell, Skyline Chili, Whataburger, and a whole lot more all got...

This week, we're diving into the weird, wonderful, and occasionally unhinged world of Steam reviews. We're talking about the games you know and love — Baldur's Gate 3, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Elder Scrolls Online, Battlefront 2, Destiny 2, Doom Eternal, and Dark Souls 1 — but not in the way you're used to. We've trawled the depths of Steam so you don't have to, and pul...

Billions of people know Pokémon. Almost nobody knows the man who created it. This week we're pulling back the curtain on Satoshi Tajiri — the reclusive genius, retro gaming obsessive, and unlikely visionary who gifted the world one of the most beloved franchises in history. And trust us, his story is every bit as compelling as the universe he built. We dive deep into Tajiri's early life gr...

We finally did it. The complete Resident Evil franchise lore breakdown — RE0 through RE Village — in one episode. Every game, every virus strain, every villain with a god complex, and every plot twist that made us pause and say "wait, what?" We cover the Progenitor Virus, Umbrella's rise and fall, Albert Wesker's entire arc, the Mold, the Winters family saga, and everything in be...

The premise is simple: find the funniest content on the internet, watch it together, and don't laugh. The execution is a disaster. Every episode, we go through videos, clips, posts, and moments that have absolutely no business being as funny as they are — and we do our level best to stay stone-faced through all of it. We never make it. Dry commentary, genuine suffering, and a running body coun...

Sports have rules. Most of them make sense. Some of them absolutely do not — and we are here for it. This week we're diving into the weird, the wacky, and the "wait, that's actually a rule?" side of sports history. From obscure regulations that somehow made it into official rulebooks to the man who turned chaos into a business strategy, this episode has it all. That man? Bill Vee...

A research paper dropped last month and somehow managed to spook Wall Street, rack up 16 million views on X, and get Michael Burry posting "and you think I'm bearish." We're talking about Citrini Research's "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis," a wildly viral piece of financial writing framed as a memo from two years in the future, where unemployment is sitting at...

In this episode, we're diving into two of the internet's most obsessed-over mysteries — the Dyatlov Pass incident and the bizarre string of missing persons cases in America's national parks. What really happened to nine experienced hikers in the Soviet mountains in 1959? And why do so many people vanish without a trace in places they should be safe? We break down the wildest theories,...

What happens when you drop Chet into wildly unhinged, hyper-specific fight scenarios against some of the most dangerous animals on the planet? In this episode, the premise is simple but the circumstances are anything but. Chet is asked whether he could defeat various animals in hand-to-hand combat — but every scenario comes with bizarre environmental twists, strange handicaps, and cinematic levels...

In this Black History Month episode, we tell the complete story of Jesse Owens — from his childhood in Alabama and upbringing in Ohio, to his record-breaking college career, and ultimately his historic performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Owens didn’t just win races — he changed global perception. Competing in Nazi Germany in front of Adolf Hitler and the world, he captured four Olympic gold m...

In this episode, we enter the internet’s most chaotic moral battleground: Reddit’s r/AmItheAsshole (AITA) — where strangers present their real-life conflicts and millions of people act as judge, jury, and sometimes unhinged executioner. We read a collection of the wildest, funniest, and most unbelievable AITA posts involving relationships, marriages, roommates, coworkers, friendships, neighbors, w...

Sink your teeth into this fin-tastic episode as we dive headfirst into all things shark. From pop culture “loan sharks” and celebrity name mashups to absurd wordplay and unexpected shark facts, this episode is equal parts clever, chaotic, and chummy. Whether you’re here for the jokes, the deep cuts, or just to vibe in shark-infested waters, we’re circling the topic from every angle. No cages. No c...

In this episode, we take a deep dive into the incredible story of Michael Larson, the legendary Press Your Luck contestant who famously cracked the game and changed television history forever. We break down how Larson figured out the pattern behind the show’s board, what his win meant for game shows moving forward, and why his story still fascinates fans of television, psychology, and probability...

In this week’s episode is a full-on grab bag of topics, opinions, and questionable takes. We kick things off by diving into the new food pyramid and what it means for how we’re supposed to be eating now—what changed, what stayed the same, and whether any of us are actually following it anyway. From there, we move into the world of unnecessary-but-fascinating tech with a discussion on AI-powered sh...