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Okay, let's get started.
Hey, Philip.
Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan.
Hey, Philip, how are you?
I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm just going to comment right away.
And I encourage our listeners to watch the video.
You've got one of the most neatly curated beards I've seen in my life.
I mean, thank you.
It's incredible.
I feel like you had a jeweler come in.
And maintain your beard.
Yes.
Impressive.
Yes.
Very impressive.
Philip, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Where do you live?
Where are you coming to us from right now?
So I live in the Williamsburg, Virginia area.
So Colonial Williamsburg, if you've ever been here, right in that area, Eastern Virginia.
So yeah, this is where I live at.
And tell us about yourself.
What...
What makes you tick, Philip?
All right.
Well, I grew up in this area, so I've always been a huge fan of Of history.
Yep.
So love history.
I live here.
I'm married to my wife, Karen.
She's a high school math teacher.
I have two teenage boys.
We love being outside, whether it's in the woods, hiking, boating, whatever it may be.
So that's that's kind of our world.
Okay.
I feel like this is a dating app now.
And I like you swipe right if you're interested or left. right right right you swipe right if you're really interested you swipe up for a super swipe get out yeah that's right i just swiped you up philip yeah because you like history which i which i love now i see in my notes here it says you're a relic hunter i don't really know much about that What do you do?
It's a hobby.
Relic hunting, it's kind of like using a metal detector to go out and find old things.
If you're in Williamsburg, Virginia, you've got lots of stuff I mean, mostly there's probably Civil War stuff and there's probably also Revolutionary War.
What else?
Absolutely.
I mean, that sounds like you'd hit pay dirt.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
So growing up in this area, it was sort of all around me.
I live right between Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg Yorktown, Cold Harbor, all the, all the battles outside of Richmond area.
So it kind of grew up right at the epicenter of that, that sort of history.
And so what are you finding when you got your metal detector?
What are the things you're, you're pulling out of the ground that are exciting to you?
Um, also we find bullets, civil war bullets, American revolutionary, uh, bullets.
Um, we find buckles, sometimes old cannonballs and artillery shells and buttons and coins and all sorts of things.
What's one of the coolest things you ever found?
Like you pulled it out of the ground and you thought, this is awesome.
One of the coolest things I found was a posy ring.
It's called a colonial posy ring is the name of it.
It's a gold ring that they would have a young man, would have shared with a young woman back in colonial times, and When I first found it I thought it was just simply just.
I'm not sure what it was.
And then when I got home and cleaned it up, I realized what it was.
And inside of it, it has some old Gothic script.
I think it says I choose the I actually have some stuff over here.
I have it here.
That is so cool.
That's that's amazing.
How well you can see that.
And now I swiped up and now you're proposing to me.
That's right.
That's how things happen on this.
This is one fast app.
That is so cool and poignant and sad and sweet at the same time, you know?
Yeah.
Well, I mean.
I found it in a field.
And so oftentimes, you know, people got married much younger during those times than they do today.
And so it was much smaller, and probably, as she got older, she would wear it as a necklace or a charm.
And it fell off at some point and laid there for probably 200 years, until one day I dug it out of the ground.
Right.
And does her ghost haunt you now?
No, no.
That's what I would worry about when I pull something out of the ground is eventually the ghost or zombie would come looking for it.
Zombie?
And it says here you once found a live grenade.
Yeah, so...
You find all sorts of things.
Did the grenade say, I choose thee?
No, it did not, fortunately.
You're so proud of yourself.
Yes, yes.
Sorry.
So proud.
Whatever.
It's what I do.
It's what I do.
Nice ceiling there, Michelangelo.
That's what I do.
That's what I do.
Sorry.
So what happens when you find a live grenade?
Don't you have to call the police?
Yes, you do.
When you're digging, you find all sorts of stuff.
And one of the things I would say is most of the stuff you find when you go hunting or relic hunting is trash.
You find shotgun shells and stuff.
Beer cans and more beer cans and anything metal you can think of that's been in the ground for a long time.
Most of what you find is not worth keeping.
It's not Civil War or American Revolution.
But this particular day, I dug a hole and pulled out of the ground.
I wasn't sure what it was at first.
And realized quickly – we live – if you know anything about the Hampton Roads area, that's a lot of military bases that have been in this area for a very long time.
And realized pretty quickly what it was and moved it.
I don't know.
I sort of got told I shouldn't have done this later.
I picked it up. and moved it to a tree line and stuck it next to a tree.
I don't know why I did that.
You started juggling it.
Kicking it like a hacky sack.
You kicked it like a hacky sack for 20 minutes.
Yes.
While you were listening to a fish album.
There you go.
You okay there, Sona?
Laughing pretty hard.
Sona, when you laugh, don't move away from the mic.
Get those laughs right in there.
I work hard for those.
For the record, let me just say, Sona has the best laugh.
She does have the best laugh.
She has the best.
But philip, you know what drives me this philip?
This drives me crazy.
Let him continue.
What i'm saying is i'll get, i'll say something, she'll laugh real hard and she does this.
She fades away from the mic and i'm like those are my laughs.
Give me my milk, mama.
You're here.
Wow.
That's sweet milk to me.
You hear them.
You want other people to know I'm laughing at you.
That's what that is.
With me.
With me.
Not at me.
Anyway, Philip.
We got off on this sidetrack thing.
No, I was talking about Sona's laugh.
Yeah, let's continue with that.
Let's get off the Civil War stuff.
Let me just say, okay, I know.
I could hear you Sona, before they called me in the room and they told you guys it was a Civil War relic hunter and you were like oh.
I knew that was going to happen with you, but that's okay.
Because I wanted to, no, but my goal was that she would laugh at some point because...
You guys, real quick, we'll get off the relic hunting stuff for a moment.
I listen to you guys all the time in the car on XM radio.
So I listen to you guys.
There you go.
A little plug for XM.
I listen to you guys.
So you guys are the voices in my car.
And so we've talked about Sona has the best laugh.
You know what?
I will agree.
You have the best laugh, Sony.
You've always had the best laugh.
And I considered you one of the treasures I pulled out of the ground.
Does that work as a compliment?
It was so close.
It was almost close.
When I met you, you were dirty.
Yes, I get it.
You know that, right?
I get what you tell people.
I like jumped out of a bush.
No, but you had soil on.
Yeah.
Maybe the first year of me knowing you was me brushing you clean.
Oh, that's so sweet.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for making me human.
But she had a great laugh.
I was the live grenade you picked up.
You were, in a way.
But wait, back to the grenade, Philip.
What vintage is the grenade?
It was Korean.
Oh, good.
Okay, korean war air grenade is what i found out later.
Um, and so again, set it next to this tree.
Knew uh, i'd spent uh over 20 years in the fire department.
I, these sort of things happened in this area again because of all the military bases, so i knew what needed to be done, so i called, called it in.
They there's a lot of the military base nearby us sent their, their bomb technicians over who examined it and quickly determined that it was a live grenade.
And that is actually the pen had been pulled out of it and thrown.
But I guess somehow it hit just right.
It never exploded.
And I moved it with a shovel uh, and so the guys were not.
They were like you moved that, you should never move that, uh.
And but what was really cool?
I mean these guys got out of the truck.
They look like they were extras in a military movie.
I mean tall the mustache, the whole deal, and they go over and they basically put a thing of c4 and sandbags around it and I have a video of it.
They blew it up.
They did a whole fire in the hole.
Yeah, they did fire in the hole, fire in the hole, fire hole and blew it up.
And I asked him where the little wire was that went from the C4 to the little like explosive thing.
And he goes, no, we do that all by Bluetooth now.
And so they blew it up with their phone.
Oh my God.
That's not that cool.
No, but it is cool.
It sounds dangerous to me.
Like I'm there setting up my C4 and I'm packing it around the object I want to blow up, when someone near me accesses a song on Bluetooth and half my face gets blown off because they wanted to listen to fish.
Yeah whatever, you know fish.
Just because david needed to hear hillary duff, i have to die.
Hey, some things are worth it.
Can you imagine having that job where your job is to blow things up?
You have C4 and you have a van and you get to drive around and okay, I gotta go blow something else up in a field.
What a great job.
Is it great?
I think it'd be fantastic.
Oh, I didn't know if you were going to say great or terrifying.
No, I love that.
First of all, your time's your own.
You get to drive around.
It's probably a company car.
You get C4 that you don't have to pay for.
You like it?
I don't know.
I just like it.
You just want a company car?
Kind of.
It's just going to be fun.
And you get to see stuff blow up, which would be fun.
Yeah, I don't think that ever gets old.
How do you do?
Because how do you even know where to look?
How do you do?
I imagine there's some kind of research involved in finding out what's a good place to try and find relics.
What will be fruitful?
Because you can't just wander around a big state like Virginia hoping that the thing that sets off your metal detector is a civil war.
Civil war heirloom.
You have to do some research, I would think, right?
Yeah, that's, that's over half of it is just spending the time to study.
It's really dorky, but it's a ton of fun.
Um, but just look at old maps and history and uh, Library of Congress has maps that you can access online.
So you're looking at those and then figuring out where you can go, but then getting permission to go to those places.
Obviously you can't go to any national parks or state parks or anything like that, so it's finding private property.
Farmers, people that own land that you ask permission, can I come on your property and dig holes?
Um, and can I?
Can I search for, search for, for relics for, for old things that might be on your property?
And a lot of times they'll say no.
And sometimes they'll say, yeah.
Okay.
And do they have a deal?
Like if you find something valuable, they get to, they want to keep it.
Sometimes it sort of depends.
Uh, some of them, most of them actually don't really care.
What I've run into is they just kind of go, I don't really care.
That's your thing.
It's not my thing.
So whatever you find.
There's others who have said, hey, I'd really like to see what you find.
And then there's others you can maybe work a deal with and go hey, let's split.
Whatever it is we find
I'm intrigued.
There's part of me that would want to go around and fool guys like you.
Exactly drop things in the ground.
Do you know what I mean?
Go out and buy, you know?
Go and buy like what looks like a knight's helmet and then drop it in a hole and then hide in a bush and watch you guys come by and think that you've found oh my god, King Arthur's court.
They hung out here in Williamsburg, Virginia.
I know that's a bad thing, I'm admitting to, but
No, there's people that do that.
No, really?
No, there's a guy.
No, there's a guy here locally who is, like been known for decades as one of the best replica makers of civil war, buckles and things like that.
Right.
And if he made one that wasn't quite perfect he is was known to go in the cold Harbor area and bury it and hide it.
And people would find it and lose their minds.
I love this guy.
Hey, can this guy contact me?
I will fund your operation.
Yes.
Yes.
You know, I would be drawing up like a fake Gettysburg address and then dropping it in a hole.
You know, stuff like that.
A fake Lincoln's beard and a note that says if you find my beard, contact A Lincoln, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Just I would want to see people freak out.
1600, was he?
He didn't live in the way.
Did he live in the way?
Lincoln?
Yeah.
Yeah, the White House was there.
Who is the first person to live in the White House?
Good question.
Thomas Jefferson.
Oh, okay.
I didn't know that.
Sona, there's a Lincoln bedroom.
It's like the most famous room in the White House.
I knew that.
I just thought it was... I'm sorry.
I wasn't sure who the first president was.
You thought he lived in a split-level condo in Reseda, California.
Yeah, I saw him at the hot tub the other day.
The communal hot tub.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble.
See, I asked questions.
I'm curious.
Yeah.
This is, I mean, this is fascinating to me.
Because whenever you examine something, you find out that it's a whole ecosystem.
There are probably really good um, you know, artifact hunters, but they're also probably ones that give you guys a bad name.
Do you know what i mean?
That break some of the rules.
I imagine yeah well, i mean, it's like any other.
Oh, you just got mad.
So much behind that.
Yeah, you got mad.
Yeah, so much behind that.
Well no names, don't name names.
No, I mean there's like any other niche or subculture.
There's etiquette and there are people that that hold to that etiquette and do it respectfully.
And there's others that just simply don't.
What is the etiquette of treasure hunting like this?
Well, one of the things would be just if you dig holes, you cover holes.
And you'd be just surprised how many people will dig holes in somebody's yard and just leave them which, if they have animals like horses and livestock, they could step in it and get hurt.
Yeah, terrible.
That didn't feel sincere.
No, I meant that's bad.
That's bad.
That didn't feel sincere.
No, my rule, man, my rule number one is cover your hole, you know?
I've said that since day one.
And when I meet a guy that doesn't cover his hole, I'm out.
I'm like, cover that hole, dude.
Cover the hole.
What's wrong with you?
And then every now and then.
Yeah, i say that all the time in my regular life and i'm rare guess what?
I'm rarely outside when i say it hey dude, cover your hole, i'll cover my hole, you cover your podcast before.
I don't like it.
When someone covers my hole, that's where i draw the line don't cover my hole.
If i said you can't cover my hole, don't cover my hole, You cover my hole, I'll cover your hole.
How much more do you think I can go on this?
I don't know, but it needs to stop.
I don't think it does.
I think it needs to go more.
I think it's stopped.
But anyway.
Never heard you say hole so many times.
I'm just saying cover your hole.
Um, that is the rule.
That is the rule.
Guess what?
Guess what philip?
People here are laughing and acting like it's a joke.
But it is the rule, and it's a simple rule to live by cover your fucking hole.
You know what i mean, or i'll come over there and cover it for you.
You know what i'm saying?
I've got a whole cover in my pocket.
It's a little brass plate, So you cover the whole.
You know what I love?
I love that you just said, so.
My favorite thing about this whole interview is Philip finally going, so.
And you think you're going to get away from the topic.
And then you said, you got to cover your hole.
So you brought us right back.
Can we also talk about what else he does, which is he's also a preacher.
I spent over 20 years in a fire station.
There is little these years have not hurt.
You got to cover your soul.
You got to cover your soul.
And if you don't cover your soul, I'll come and get a preacher to cover your soul.
So you live by two rules.
Cover your hole and cover your soul.
These are the rules that Philip lives by.
Are you a fire chief?
Yeah.
Listen, we'll get to that.
We've got a lot to get.
You know, we've got a lot to cover here.
Yeah, we really do.
Preacher.
So I hope I didn't offend you with my cover your whole run, but I think it can be taken many different ways uh, and so i'm not worried about it.
Um, and what is your uh?
Religious uh denominational uh acceleration non-denominational, non-denominational got it very good.
You accept all kinds, all kinds.
I'd be welcome as a catholic, you would be welcome okay absolutely, i like that, i like it very accepting, absolutely.
Um, and how long you've been preaching?
For 12 years, i think it is 13 years, something like that, and before that you were a firefighter.
I was bi-vocational for a while.
I worked in the fire service and i worked at a church simultaneously and did that for a period of time.
And then as the church grew, it was a church plant, so it started from scratch.
And as things grew, then I was full-time here as the preacher.
You seem like you'd be a good preacher.
You seem like someone that would be very understanding, accepting, a cool guy, good sense of humor.
I think you'd be very good at that.
I hope so.
I will tell you this.
I grew up and my dad did not go to church very often.
And one of his biggest things was he was like he'd meet preachers and he would go that preacher doesn't know anything about real life.
He doesn't know anything about me.
He doesn't understand anything because they live in his little world.
He just reads the Bible all day and sits in his office and Sings hymns or whatever.
And so I was determined from the beginning that I wouldn't be that guy.
And that's one of the reasons why, between the fire service and just real life, just to just be a regular, just a regular dude, just a regular guy.
Regular dude out there digging up grenades.
I get it, man.
It's not the sexiest hobby.
I get it.
I love it.
It's actually pretty cool.
I think it sounds great.
I'm sorry you heard me make that voice.
That's not what I meant at all.
I thought it was just more like Conan's going to geek out a word.
She was mocking me for being a Civil War history geek.
That's the typical response I get whenever anyone finds out that I dig holes and find old stuff.
It's the reaction I get from my wife when I bring stuff home and there's mud and I bring it in the kitchen and I'm cleaning stuff up that I found and I'm dorking out over it.
And my wife's just like...
Could you just please get that out of the kitchen?
So I get it.
It does not offend me at all.
Oh, good.
I mean, I just know Conan was going to get really excited about it.
I am excited.
And I feel like you want to go out with Philip and like dig holes in Virginia.
I do.
I tell you what, you come to Eastern Virginia.
I got another metal detector.
We will go out and dig holes.
We'll find something cool.
And we'll cover them.
We'll cover them up.
And we will make sure that every single one of them is covered.
We'll make sure that every single one of them is covered.
That's right.
No one plugs a hole like me.
All right.
I think we broke it.
Phillip, it was lovely talking to you.
By the way, when this airs, you will no longer be a preacher.
So you need to find yet another vocation, because that is over when our little who's on first routine plays.
But it was really nice, really nice talking to you.
And I'll see you on down the road, sir.
Hey, man, I really appreciate the time.
Of course.
It's good to see you guys.
Seriously, I listen to you guys all the time.
Thanks for listening to us.
I've followed you since I was in college.
Oh, cool.
Thanks for just taking the few minutes just to hang out and let me talk.
This was a joy for us.
Seriously.
Really fun talking to you, sir.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Take care, Phillip.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Thanks a lot.
Bye.
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