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Big CatBig Cat

The only way to effectively lose weight is to completely cut out carbohydrates

I say this as someone who fluctuates weight more than Oprah. Any, the only time it's ever worked for me, which I've been doing recently, is just during the week. It's no carbs... If you don't eat carbs, the weight will come off.

While low-carb diets are a valid weight loss method, saying it is the 'only' way is factually incorrect as calorie deficits work through various macronutrient ratios.
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MaxMax

Cheese is orange, not yellow — I looked it up

I like cheese and I wanted to take it, but I looked it up and the first color it said was orange.

Cheddar cheese ranges from pale yellow to deep orange depending on annatto coloring. Calling it orange is defensible but most people would call standard cheddar yellow.
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MaxMax

I am going to replace Hank as the person who gets killed and fucked in this Dungeons and Dragons adventure

I just know how this is gonna go. I'm just gonna replace Hank is the guy who gets killed and fucked.

Max's eagle dies in this episode, though Max himself survives, successfully fulfilling the 'suffering' part of the prediction.
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Big CatBig Cat

A Jimmy Carter 'not awake' report is effectively a death notice

Jimmy Carter, who it was reported the other day that Jimmy Carter is no longer awake every day... isn't that just dead? The guy just let him die. He's been in hospice for like a year and a half... grandson, don't wake him up next time he is not awake for a day. Don't wake him up the next day. Just let him sleep forever.

Carter remained in hospice through his 100th birthday in October 2024, outlasting Big Cat's 'effectively dead' sentiment.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

People catching and eating cicadas at baseball games will be a viral trend this summer

We're gonna see more and more, I predict this summer of just cicada cam. Just people just grabbing a cicada and eating it on camera. . . normalize it.

Cicada eating did see a minor spike in viral videos during the 2024 double-brood emergence.
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HankHank

I will find a middle ground with my sleep schedule to avoid missing shows

The first incident sleeping in too late kickstarted my fitness documentary journey, which has me waking up early, which then forced me to be tired and sleep late. So I just gotta find that middle ground. But I'm gonna find it.

Hank continued to have occasional sleep-related show issues throughout 2024, showing the 'middle ground' remained elusive.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

Amphibians have ears that connect directly to their brains

One thing I know about lizards and amphibians, they've got ears that connect directly to their brain. Could I sing a note so high that the vibration of it kills everyone's tadpole?

Many amphibians and reptiles have simpler auditory structures (like the tympanum) that connect to the inner ear and brain, but it's not a unique 'direct' connection in the way he implies.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

The reason Hank is grumpy is because the current weed supply has been nerfed by a virus

I actually know why Hank's grumpy... weed's on my Hot Seat. There's something called a hop latent viroid going around and it basically nerfs potent weed... the nerfing of the weed is going around right now... [it's] affecting like 90% of marijuana plants in the country.

Fact ClaimLifeMediumSarcastic
The hop latent viroid (HLVd) is a real virus affecting the cannabis industry, though its direct link to Hank's mood is humorous speculation.
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The Wonton DonThe Wonton Don

One teenage hippo can successfully take on three or four ghouls in combat.

I think one hippo can take three GULs or four... I think that's a solid matchup.

The hippo 'Mode' (played by Max) assists in the fight but is eventually killed by collateral damage and rocks, making the 'take' on its solo capability debatable.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Orcas are attacking boats to train their young to hunt, not for revenge

Update on those orca attacks. Turns out the orcas may be using the boats that they're attacking to train the younger orcas, how to hunt. It may not be some sort of retribution situation.

Many marine biologists have indeed suggested the 'play' or 'fad' theory rather than 'vengeance', though the exact motive remains a scientific debate.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Seasonal aggression is a real phenomenon where people get angrier when it's hot out

Seasonal aggression. Yeah... angry... just gets hyper... no one should be judged for their actions when their heart rate's over 150 beats per minute. I agree with that. That that's what I believe.

While 'seasonal affective disorder' is usually associated with winter, studies do show a correlation between high temperatures and increased aggression/violence.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Sloth bears are more vicious than honey badgers

I've been going on a deep dive and rabbit hole on sloth bears. They're the most vicious animal on earth. I think more vicious than a honey badger. They fight tigers and tigers are literally scared of them.

Sloth bears are indeed highly aggressive and known to stand their ground against tigers, though crowning a 'most vicious' animal is subjective.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

The East River is full of prehistoric bison bones dumped by a developer

Dirty Water Don... he's found a bone. He found a jawbone of a steppe bison, which is just a prehistoric, gigantic bison. He found the jawbone in the East River. So that means that it is true. There were tons of bones dumped there.

While a bone was found, the claim that it was 'dumped' by a specific developer is part of an unproven (though popular) local theory.
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Big CatBig Cat

I am going to lose more weight than you can imagine after football season

I'm gonna lose so much fat fast. ... I'm just saying I'm gonna lose more weight than you could even imagine. ... Once football's over, I'm back.

Big Cat's weight fluctuates annually with his 'diet season' and 'football season' cycle, but he rarely loses 'more than you can imagine.'
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

I am getting hair plugs to combat my balding

I'm gonna go one way or the other. I don't wanna stay where I'm at right now. I'm in no man's land... All right. I'm gonna get hair plugs.

PFT has joked about this for years but hasn't noticeably undergone a full transformation, though he did eventually start using hair growth products sponsored by the show.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Humans can outrun horses in long-distance races

Humans can outrun horses in long distances. Just it's a thing. Trust me. ... The humans were able to run farther distance over time and that's why they became the apex predators.

This is partially correct; in ultra-marathon distances (typically 50+ miles) and high heat, humans' ability to sweat gives them a physiological advantage over horses, though horses win shorter races.
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Liver KingLiver King

Sunning your balls can improve androgens and is 'pretty primal'

If you sun your balls, there is a study. It's an older study, I think it's from like the fifties or sixties that shows that it does improve androgens, not necessarily testosterone... I think it's pretty fucking primal. Right? I mean, we, we didn't evolve essentially with clothes... I think it's pretty primal to do.

While some studies exist on UV exposure and hormones, the scientific consensus on 'testicle sunning' as a viable medical treatment for testosterone is not established.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

You cannot go to Antarctica if you still have your appendix

Fact, you can't go to Antarctica if you have your appendix. ... because they don't have medical technology down there. So if it starts to rupture, you're gonna die.

This is only true for doctors and certain staff overwintering at specific stations (like the Australian station), not for all visitors or day trips.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Icing injuries is actually bad for recovery

Turns out ice is bad. I'm actually going to write a blog on that. There's tons of ice and cold is terrible for healing. It shuts down your inflammatory response, which actually is healing... ice is bad for like muscle gaining and like cold plunges are kind of good, but it's not you.

Modern research suggests inflammation is part of the healing process and ice can delay it, though it's still debated for pain management.
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Big CatBig Cat

The mob deserves a better reputation because they built Las Vegas

The mob, shout out the mob. Mob gets a bad rep. They built Las Vegas for us. That's a fact. Say what you will about the mob. They built Las Vegas. Okay.

Hot TakeLifeHotSarcastic
The mob's historical role in developing Las Vegas is well-documented, though the 'bad rep' being undeserved is an opinion.
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Big CatBig Cat

Everyone craps themselves right before they die

[PFT Commenter]: Then he craps himself before he died. [Big Cat]: As everyone does before they died. Jake tried to eat his, but—

Relaxation of the sphincter often occurs at the time of death, though 'everyone' is an exaggeration.
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Tracy McGradyTracy McGrady

I was born with natural God-given talent that allowed me to excel at any sport without even practicing

I was born with a natural ability, natural skillset. Like you could drop, God just dropped me on earth and was like 'son, you could play baseball, basketball, football, pick your choice'. I could throw a football 60 yards. I could throw a baseball 88 miles per hour in high school. I ran a four four or four five. And I could play basketball. This was without practicing to anything.

It's a fact claim about his own past abilities; while his professional success is documented, the claim of zero practice is hyperbole.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

The PMT office 'jeans ripping' trend will end in a legitimate fight

We've found ourselves into a jeans ripping problem on this podcast... It's going to end poorly. I don't know how it's going to end, but I just know that no one's going to be happy and we're going to get into a small fight about it. And then it's going to be no more pants ripping.

The jeans ripping bit did eventually fade out without a public massive blowout, but it was discontinued.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Grapefruit-sized Joro spiders are going to invade the East Coast by flying in on parachutes

Grapefruit-sized spiders are going to be invading the East Coast flying in parachutes. They're called Joro spiders. And if you look it up on YouTube, there's a bunch of really funny redneck shooting them with guns. And it's very funny.

Joro spiders are an invasive species that have spread across the SE US, and they do 'fly' using silk threads as parachutes. However, they are not the size of grapefruits (their bodies are about an inch long, though their webs are massive).
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Hank the Tank the bear cannot be relocated and will die if forced into the wilderness

Hank the tank is a 500 pound black bear... He doesn't know how to hunt because he's so dependent on humans. He cannot be relocated to the wilderness or he would die of starvation because he's completely has zero motivation... Plus he's fat as fuck.

Wildlife officials initially considered euthanasia because relocation often fails with habituated bears, but 'Hank the Tank' was later found to be three different bears, and 'Hank' was eventually moved to a sanctuary in Colorado in 2023.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

I'm going to get jacked and start dressing like an adult in 2022

I'm getting jacked again and starting to dress more like an adult... Look what I got for Christmas... It's a satchel. It's not a backpack. Adult steps.

Billy remained fairly consistent in his casual dress and fitness habits through 2022.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Robots can now reproduce

Cool throne is robots. They lost their virginity. Not much more that we need to explain there. Robots can reproduce now. They just released it. There was a scientific research experiment. There was a scientific green robots that created. It's a thing.

The claim refers to Xenobots (biological robots made of frog cells) which can 'reproduce' by gathering loose cells, but it's far from the sci-fi implication Billy suggests.
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Caeleb DresselCaeleb Dressel

Pool water isn't actually blue; the lining is white and the water is clear

No, the water's clear... I think the walls, the walls are white, the bottom's white and the water's clear... This is the hill I'm dying on right now. The teas were definitely black... the water is clear and the lining of the pool was white.

While water is clear, Rayleigh scattering makes large bodies of water look blue. However, many competition pools use white or light grey liners, making the 'blue' purely a reflection of lighting or depth.
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Jake MarshJake Marsh

You must heat all Italian deli meats to 165 degrees to avoid the risk of salmonella

CDC just sent out... that you have to heat up all your Italian meats to 165 degrees [for] salmonella. No more like a cold Italian sub right now. Everywhere.

While the CDC does recommend heating deli meats to 165°F for high-risk groups, the recommendation is primarily to prevent Listeria, not salmonella, making the claim partially accurate but slightly misattributed.
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Big CatBig Cat

Porn is the driving engine behind the internet

Anytime they try to take porn off of the internet, it's like that's what the internet was... The driving engine behind the internet is porn. It is. It's like trying to shovel a driveway in Antarctica. If you took all the porn off the internet, people would just not be on the internet anymore.

While hyperbolically stated, the adult industry has historically driven significant internet traffic and technological innovation (streaming, payment processing).
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Black bears are 'pussies' that humans can beat in a fight

Black bears, actual pussies. I saw you. You were right on that video. You could beat the shit out of a black bear. You snuffed that out. I appreciate that. Black bears would run like pots and pans get rid of black bears. Black fight back. brown lay down lay down white say good night boom there it is that's how you handle bears.

While black bears are generally timid and can be scared off, calling them 'pussies' you can beat up is an exaggeration. The mnemonic is correct advice.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

The keto diet is 'neuroprotective' and can help ward off diseases like Alzheimer's.

I read this study that when your brain runs on ketones, it's neuroprotective. So it wards off stuff like Alzheimer's.

While there is scientific research into the neuroprotective effects of ketogenic diets, claiming it definitively 'wards off' Alzheimer's is an oversimplification of complex medical research.
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Jake MarshJake Marsh

Vacations are back now that Israel is fully vaccinated

Cool throne would be vacations. There's going to be fully vaccinated out in Israel. Vacations are back.

While vaccinations were a major step, international travel and 'vacations' remained highly restricted and complicated for many months after March 2021 due to variants and varying global protocols.
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Big CatBig Cat

The Houston Astros officially cursed the city of Houston

Do you think this has anything to do with the Houston Astros have now officially cursed the city of Houston? Because James Harden and now Deshaun Watson both want out of town... It all goes back to the Houston Astros and their cheating scandal.

The subsequent years saw the Rockets and Texans enter deep rebuilds with little success, though the Astros themselves remained a powerhouse, somewhat debunking a total city curse.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Bats can predict the future using spatiotemporal echolocation

Bats can actually see into the future because they predict where the insect [is going]. They've gotten so good at using echolocation, they can predict where an insect is going by processing the spatiotemporal information. It's like a quarterback knowing where a receiver is going to be.

Billy is referencing a study about how bats use echo-acoustic models to predict prey flight paths. While 'seeing the future' is a dramatic overstatement, the underlying science of predictive tracking is real.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

There is an active war going on in the ocean where orca whales are specifically ripping out sharks' testicles

Whales are ripping out the testicles off the coast South Africa... there's some sort of war going on in the ocean. They're practicing Eugenics. They're not there disabling their ability to breed.

Orcas in South Africa were famously documented killing great white sharks specifically to eat their livers (which are high in nutrients), not their testicles.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

Sports could save millions of lives by providing a model for solving COVID-19

Sports might save millions of lives. And this is definitely not just me talking insane because I haven't had any sports on TV... Because if you can test, if you have a test case and a model for how to solve it amongst a given population, you can expand that out.

Hot TakeLifeScorchingSarcastic
While the bubble model (testing/isolation) was successful for sports, it proved nearly impossible to 'expand out' to a general population in a democratic society.
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Big CatBig Cat

2020 is going to continue to get worse and 'run up the score' on us

2020 is going to go the fuck out. You imagine if 2020 hasn't even gone to fuck off yet? Do we haven't got the aliens yet? ... A nuclear attack would be just a heat check from 2020.

2020 did continue to be difficult with waves of the pandemic and civil unrest, though nuclear attacks and aliens (mostly) did not occur.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

A grizzly bear would easily defeat a gorilla because of its massive weight advantage

I researched this very intensely and a gorilla can only get up to like 300 or 400 pounds. Whereas a grizzly bear can get up to 1,500 pounds depending on the subspecies... get the big grizzly bear... the Kodiak bear can get up to 2,000 pounds.

Kodiak bears can reach 1,500 lbs, but 2,000 lbs is rare. However, the weight advantage over a gorilla (400-500 lbs) is factual.
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Big CatBig Cat

I want to buy a Wiffle ball league and become the Vince McMahon of Wiffle ball

I want to buy a wiffle ball leak and I watched probably three hours of this Wiffle ball league in Michigan... I want to be the Vince McMahon and Wiffle ball and and bring them all together and make a national Wiffle ball league because you know what? I actually think Wiffle ball could just be the new sport.

While he didn't start a national professional league, Barstool did eventually host several successful Wiffle Ball tournaments/content series.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

Weights are physically heavier in 'shitty' gyms with no air conditioning

He trained in the shittiest gyms. And I think that those weights are, in fact, heavier in shitty gyms. If you go to a place that's 100 degrees inside, that's got cobwebs and dust and shit everywhere, you're going to get a better pump than if you go to a Gold's Gym in Manhattan Beach.

A pound is a pound, but the difficulty of the workout increases due to heat and environment, which is the spirit of the take.
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Big CatBig Cat

The bathroom is the safest place to be during a thunderstorm or tornado

Somewhere along the lines I was told that you'll get electrocuted if you [shower in a storm]. I don't think that's true at all. I think that there's probably no safer place to be during a thunderstorm or tornado than your bathroom.

While bathrooms are often interior rooms and thus safer during tornadoes, lightning can actually travel through plumbing, making showering dangerous during thunderstorms.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

Delaware is only known for tax shelters and Joe Biden's corpse

Delaware number one a number one Delaware. What is in Delaware? Those people are tax. They've got a heart attack... all that's in Delaware is I guess Joe Biden's corpse and those weird tax companies credit card companies.

Delaware is indeed famous for its corporate tax laws and being the home of Joe Biden.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Bears recycle their urine and feces into carbohydrates while they hibernate

They recycle their poop and pee while they hibernate... we don't poop and they turn it into more carbohydrates while they hibernate.

Bears do recycle urea back into proteins (not exactly carbohydrates) to maintain muscle mass while hibernating, and they do not defecate or urinate.
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Billy FootballBilly Football

Hot water, lemon juice, honey, and Tylenol is an effective strategy for treating COVID-19

I'm recommending also hot green tea, lemon juice, and honey three times a day because the hot water washes down the virus... and if they have a fever give them Tylenol anyway, that's all I have to say.

While honey/lemon can soothe symptoms, the claim that hot water 'washes down the virus' is medically false. Tylenol is a standard treatment for fever.
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Dr. Anthony FauciDr. Anthony Fauci

Developing a safe vaccine will take at least a year to a year and a half

Safety is paramount. . . We really are on a very very fast track to get a vaccine. But even on the fastest track, it's going to take a year to a year and a half.

The vaccines arrived faster than his 'fastest track' prediction (approx 9 months vs 12-18).
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Big CatBig Cat

The sports void will feel better once the usual March Madness window passes

I think it will get better after two weeks when we aren't in the March Madness Zone, but Thursday morning. I'm going to need you all to text me and check in check in with your friends, because that's going to be a tough one for me to wake up.

The 'sports void' didn't really get better in two weeks; it arguably got worse as people realized the long-term nature of the pandemic, though the initial sting of missing the tournament did fade.
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Big CatBig Cat

Antarctica is always freezing, and it is weird to suggest they have a 'summer' where it isn't cold

I was always taught that Antarctica was just always freezing. No one lives there. It's a continent that no one lives on because it's all ice... I assume that it was always cold... there's no houses there, people don't go vacationing there.

While Antarctica is always cold, it does have a 'summer' season (Dec-Feb) where temperatures are significantly warmer than winter, though still below freezing in most parts.
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Big CatBig Cat

Peeing in a pool is safer than getting out because it prevents slip-and-fall accidents

You're more likely to injure yourself getting out of a pool and getting back in than you are if you just stay in the pool and pee. If you walk through the house after being in a pool, you're creating an enormous slip and fall hazard... you're basically putting a gun to their head. So pee in that pool.

Fact ClaimLifeHotSarcastic
While slip-and-falls are a real risk, peeing in pools creates cyanogen chloride and trichloramine, which are respiratory irritants. It is a health trade-off.
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PFT CommenterPFT Commenter

Next summer will be even hotter than this year's record-breaking summer

It's the hottest summer ever. That's a fact. Again, it'll be even hotter next year. Next summer.

Global temperature trends generally support the idea of successive record-breaking years, though 2020 was slightly cooler than 2016 and 2019 globally, it remained one of the hottest on record.

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