Zero Blog Thirty the immensely popular veteran-run and veteran-focused radio show hosted by Barstool Sports, featuring the talents of Uncle Chaps, Kate, and Captain Cons recently came to an end after an 8.5-year run with the crew putting out 644 episodes that focused on veterans issues.
With the show recently winding down, Chaps, Kate, and Cons sat down with Connecting Vets to reflect on the experience of "Zero Blog Thirty," discussing the good times and bad, as well as how they changed personally while doing the show.
The show started in 2016 when Chaps was hired at Barstool Sports.
"Dave [Portnoy] does a good job of letting you figure it out because it is a weird company and you get your own weird niche," Chaps said. After getting started on a sports show he decided to start an "online version of a VFW" where people could get together and discuss veterans issues. With that, Zero Blog Thirty was born with Captain Cons on as co-host from the beginning and Kate coming on board a year and a half later.
"What I'm most proud of was during negotiations with Better Help I got them to offer every Gold Star family six months of free therapy," Chaps said when asked for his reflections on the show, pointing out that they had a lot of conversations of the show about veteran's mental health. "That's easily the best thing we've done as a whole."
When asked about the most shocking moment he experienced on the show he said, "Being a dumbass from Florida and not having any real media training I think the most shocking thing is that it lasted for 8.5 years." Cons chimed in with another shocking moment saying, "Then there was the time that Kate and Chaps interviewed [Congressman] Duncan Hunter and he all but admitted to war crimes on the show."
"He did," Chaps confirmed.
Chaps went on to say that the most shocking experience on the show for him was interviewing members of Congress and seeing how dumb they actually are. "How do you get to be a congressperson and you can't write? So many of them are just stupid."
In regards to the highlights of the show, Cons mentioned all the interesting people he got to interview for the show such as former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and former Ranger Matt Eversmann who the film Black Hawk Down was partially based on, and Dale Dye who was a Marine that transitioned to Hollywood and got involved in the film industry. In other cases, Cons got to interview World War II veterans and hear first-hand accounts of Iwo Jima.
Kate also mentioned all the different veterans she got to meet through the show, including lots of travel around the country.
"Even when the Taliban took Afghanistan back over, I just poured my heart out on the show and got so many messages from people saying that they feel the same way," which made her realize that veterans are not as isolated or alone as they sometimes think. "So many cool veterans," was her answer as to the highlight of Zero Blog Thirty for her.
"Over the course of 8.5 years I think that all of my opinions have changed," Chaps said when asked how the show changed him. Because he hosted Zero Blog Thirty he was much more engaged with news and politics. The result was that he changed inside and that was a big part of why he decided to stop doing the show.
"I look at the world through a different lens and there is so much negativity in the veteran's space online and I just want to get away from it. You see these special operators going at each other online over who is the bigger hero, and I have zero interest in that," Chaps said. "I just want people to be good people."
As far as where the veteran's space is heading in the future, "I think it will be worse, markedly worse," Chaps said, pointing toward government discourse about who is the tougher veteran. "I don't give a shit was your adjectives are about your service. Just being a veteran is good enough for me," Chaps said.
"I think from when I first got out [of the Marines] to today, I am a completely different person," Kate said about how she changed during the duration of the show. "My views and things have changed on everything and I think it is because as you get distance from something, your perspective has to change if you are growing." Being an Afghanistan veteran, she came to feel disillusioned with the war, while also looking for a silver lining in her own personal experiences.
But what comes next for Chaps, Kate, and Cons?
Chaps has moved on to a new show called Drop A Pin on Barstool Sports. "Each week we pick a place on the globe and interview someone from there or has been there, or has a good story," Chaps said. Some episodes sound like locked up abroad, but others are fun like the mole people who live under Las Vegas. "But we will still do serious stories," Chaps explained, saying that he will always advocate for veterans and veterans issues, but not on every show as he did with Zero Blog Thirty.
As far as what comes next, Kate joked that she was on "Only Fans" where she was known as "katiemoneygrabz." She is on one of the most successful shows on Barstool Sports called The Yak which is on daily.
Cons is moving on to create a new military-themed podcast, with two veterans as co-hosts who are already established in their field. "There is still so much great in this country, and we're going to highlight the great...I want to be that beacon for veterans," Cons said. "Stay tuned."
"I'm just really grateful to all the people who listened," Kate said, mentioning all the people who wrote in as the show was closing down. "There is no group I love more than military veterans. I love a good smoke pit sesh to this day."