Shaq, Sinbad and Shazaam: Why a (Fake) Genie Movie Feels So Real

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

It's not a fake movie.

Right after this ad.

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So, Dave Gardner, thank you for being here.

Thank you.

First time, long time.

I want to initiate you into a tribe of people who take stupid things very seriously.

These are my people.

Because you've brought us here a story about

movies.

Yeah, it's about two movies specifically.

One is one of my favorite movies from my childhood.

It came out in 1996.

That was was the year that Space Jam came out.

Everybody wanted to be like Mike.

I wanted to be like Shaq.

I was from Tampa, Florida.

I was an Orlando Magic fan.

The pinstripes, of course.

I had the Shaq shoes from Walmart.

I was a blistering four-foot power forward for my Episcopalian elementary school basketball team.

Fearsome.

I look at you right now and I'm like, this was a real intimidating force on the block.

I heard that this movie was coming out called Kazam, starring Shaq.

In a deserted building.

the voiceover is the first most important part.

You know, there's going to be one.

You just know.

In a whirl.

He served some of history's most notorious tyrants.

Always the great premise for a children's movie: somebody who's served tyrants.

What if dictators had a genie?

And together,

they're about to fall

into something big.

Something big.

There's smoke screen.

A child has fallen through several floors of a building.

And here's Shaq wearing a turban of some sort.

Has inherited a genie.

CGI, incredible.

He does have lightning coming out of his fingers.

He does, yep.

A happy deal.

Wait a minute.

A happy deal?

So his first wish is that he wants for junk food to rain down from the sky.

And I guess they didn't have the rights to happy meal as a middle term.

Yep.

Perfect.

This is a low-budget movie.

They spent all their money on Shaq.

Flying bicycle, of course.

The child comes out of his drinking water in a glass for some reason.

here's a tip.

Who's the point of shoes?

This is, it's lighting up pleasure centers of my brain that really only got activated when I too was a young basketball fan, wondering,

are all movies going to be like this forever?

And in case you're wondering, do they wink to the fact that Shaq is a real life basketball player?

He takes one of his enemies.

Wish not granted.

Now watch him become a basketball.

Oh.

And the two-handed tomahawk for the finish.

Into a garbage chute?

What language is that?

It's not clear.

I don't think it was clear.

It was the language of the other, David.

I may be one of the few people in the world who genuinely enjoys this movie.

Do you want to give a guess for the Rotten Tomato score?

I'm going to, I will go with 32.

32 would be high, but I appreciate the Shaq reference there.

Yeah, 5%

is the number.

You said that this is a show we're doing here about two movies.

Yep.

Your second movie, this is a high bar you've set, is what?

So the second movie is a very similar sounding movie, both from a title perspective and from a plot perspective.

It's called Shazam.

It was also a 1990s family comedy.

This is not the DC superhero.

Correct.

This is not 2019 Shazam.

Exactly.

This is 1990s, vague, for reasons that we'll get to, Shazam.

And it also involves a child with an estranged relationship with his father who stumbles upon a magical genie.

The two of them embark on some journey together.

Life lessons are learned.

Relationships are healed.

And instead of Shaq in the eponymous role of genie, we have one of my other childhood heroes, the comedian, the actor, the legend, Sinbad, is starring as the genie genie in this movie.

Jingle All the Way is actually a good movie.

Jingle All the Way is a Christmas classic in my family.

I mean, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was on a heater for kids' movies back in the day.

They were running through malls trying to get Power Man.

It's Turbo Man.

My son wants one too.

You know, it's all the floyd, don't you?

Turbo Man.

Yep.

I'm sorry.

So I you clearly never got a Turbo Man as a child.

I admit that my memory here is a little, is a little fed.

Yeah.

And it's interesting that you say that because this movie

nobody's seen it there's no trailer online there's no vhs copy in somebody's attic there's no imdb page but there are a ton of people who vividly remember having seen shazam starring sinbad in the 1990s they can tell you where they were when they watched it they can tell you what the vhs cover looked like they can tell you who the actors were in the movie they can describe the plot in detail and yet

they've never seen this movie.

Certainly, this is the part that made me say, David Gardner, it is time for you to crawl inside of this fake lamp and help me, help grant me the wish of figuring out what the f is happening here.

Why do so many people claim to remember this movie that clearly does not exist?

A movie that should not be confused with any other major motion picture, of course not.

And also, does Shaquille O'Neal himself have any idea

what is happening?

Let's find out.

What's up, listeners?

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It is safe to say that we live in an unprecedented era at this point of misinformation, of government-controlled hurricanes and armies of blue-check bots, and everybody secretly being a transgender AI clone of John F.

Kennedy Jr.

or something.

It's actually gotten to the point where you now see real actual news on your timeline about how, say, the best post-game show in sports history inside the NBA is suddenly ending.

And the default assumption

is that that news must be fake.

But it's true.

Turner Sports lost the TV rights to the NBA after being outbid by NBC.

And so this season of Inside, which begins with Turner's preseason games tonight, marks the last time we'll see Chuck and Ernie and Kenny and Shaq at their legendary and enormous desk.

The show is fundamentally inimitable, as evidenced by the many failed attempts to engineer knockoff versions.

And all of this

brings us back around

to Shaq.

Shaq, the star of Kazam himself.

Who has never discussed this story in public, it seems, and who also remains the the childhood hero of reporter David Gardner, who's written for Sports Illustrated and the New York Times and GQ and the Washington Post, and yet remains singularly obsessed with the phenomenon of an extremely fake Shaquille O'Neill knockoff movie

called Shazam.

Like so many wonderful and confusing things on the internet, it traces its origin back to Reddit.

Yeah.

The online fascination started here.

There's a user named Epic Journeyman on Reddit.

And about eight years ago, he posted a very long post in which he described the details of this movie.

And he also claimed that he worked at a video store at the time and he remembered both ordering and stocking this movie onto the shelves.

So because there's no trailer, because there's no movie, people have taken to various levels of photoshopping VHS mock-up covers, should we call them.

There's a Chinese version of IMDb, and it had a listing for this movie, and it listed actors for this movie.

And you'll also notice David Atkins, that's his Christian name there, instead of Sinbad.

So, I love how it says David Atkins, dot, dot, dot, genie/slash in parentheses, Shazam.

As if they're two different characters, like the genie is a Shazam persona, or the other way around.

Everything about this is solid gold.

So, then we've got some people who have gone out of their way to create fake VHS covers.

Now, my favorite thing I think about this one is that the review, which is very believable, is just family fun exclamation point.

Yes.

I also want to zoom in on the person who delivered the review, a family fun exclamation point, because that would be

Roger Ebert.

That's right.

So this is legit.

All right, we've got another one here for you.

Even better.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

Absolutely it is.

So they're standing back to back.

Yep.

JTT and Sinbad.

Although the first one I think is like a laudable Photoshop, this one, like Sinbad's head is too big for the genie costume.

Yeah.

And Jonathan Taylor Thomas's fingers like disappear beneath the genie lamp.

But Me Weekly assures us that this movie is outrageously funny.

Sinbad is just in giant red letters here, just to say, if you were wondering who this is, it's Sinbad.

And if you're wondering what the title of this movie is from this movie poster, Actually, it's not clear.

There is no title on this movie poster.

What's the real Kazam's tagline there?

The world's world's most powerful genie has just met his match.

Damn.

He's worked for tyrants, remember, but 14-year-old Max is his match.

Yeah, Paul Pot had nothing on Max.

So, okay.

You mentioned the name of a perfectly named online character named Epic Journeyman.

Where is that guy?

Where did you end up going?

So I DM'd Epic Journeyman on Reddit.

I was in the Reddit DMs.

I'm in the mines down there for you, Pablo, just to let you know, sliding into DMs of these poor souls.

So Epic Journeyman originally agreed to do an interview with us, but unfortunately he backed out over time.

His journey was too epic for us.

Absolutely.

Unfortunately.

But I did find someone else who has a very similar epic journey to go on with us.

So my first job was at a video store.

And as a kid, I just absolutely loved movies.

Like even before I worked at a video store.

Her name is Melissa Garza and she also worked in a video store.

she also remembers ordering this movie she also remembers watching this movie and so i gave her a call to talk about it i remember seeing like um information in the booklets that we would get at the video store before it actually came out and so i knew it was coming out um i liked sinbad i liked to stand up so it was something i looked forward to seeing so the first time i remember getting it was when i worked at the video store i remember watching it a few times and I even remember watching it on HBO.

In fact, in 2004, it was on HBO when I watched it.

And she actually worked as a movie reviewer online and even wrote a review of the movie, Shazam.

So this is a 1700 word review.

This is a serious business.

If you were wondering how into this review Melissa, reviewer for scared stiff reviews at scaredstiffreviews.com was, the answer is extensively.

It begins like this.

After talking with a few of my movie buff friends who are tearing their hair out and feeling insane while remembering the film Shazam, I decided I'd put myself 100% out there.

Somehow, this film disappeared off the face of the earth.

So knowing I'll be called a nut, I've decided to write what I remember because I saw this movie several times.

It aired on TV.

It was in video stores I worked at.

It was a fun little film.

As for the plot of the movie, yes.

So from what I recall directly, there was no mother figure in the film.

When I think about it.

The film starts with Sinbad, parentheses, genie, close parentheses, in his lamp/slash man cave.

There were purple curtains or blankets on the wall, a large round bed and a TV across from it.

Sinbad saunters over, sits on the bed with two waiting female genies hanging out with him.

Sinbad says, quote, let's see what's on TV.

It zooms in as the opening credits roll on the TV.

The song that played reminded me of the theme of the Adams family movie, but it wasn't the the same tune.

I don't recall hearing it on MTV or the radio, but if I heard it today, I'd know it.

So while the son goes to the attic, he's moving some boxes as they're moving in.

He comes across the lamp.

He takes it.

He puts it in his room.

He goes and he rubs the lamp and Sinbad appears.

The kids start making wishes.

The son wishes to go back to his school,

his original school, where his friends is and where his girl is.

He

goes back with Sinbad, but it's kind of like Scrooged where nobody sees them, but they can see what's going on.

Sadly, like the kid sees that life has gone on without him.

Sinbad asks if he wants the wish to be permanent.

John says, no, forget it.

Sinbad means to snap his fingers, but says, Shazam.

Parentheses, I think that was the magic word and not Sinbad's name in the film.

Here, I may be wrong.

When I think back to the father, the actor I think that is closest to the portrayal is Sam Watterson.

But

this was around the time of Serial Mom.

I know he was in the middle of the day.

She remembered Teddy, the best friend from Full House, Michelle's best friend from Full House, as the neighbor, the annoying neighbor in this movie as well.

So she's remembering these people.

What happened once Melissa put this out into the world?

So basically it went viral.

I mean, she said it's the number one review that she ever posted.

And the curious thing is in the comments, you can see a bunch of people are talking about how they vividly remember seeing this movie that's being reviewed.

I think we should be clear about this too.

As this community of people is all testifying publicly to this being their memory as well,

Sinbad

has what to say about this.

I mean, unfortunately, Sinbad is pretty unequivocal.

This movie never happened.

And to answer the million-dollar question, did I do Shazam?

No.

Did I look like I do Shazam?

Yes.

Did I do Shazam?

No.

This feels like a pretty persuasive argument for Melissa to hear.

You would think that.

It's bizarre.

I have no idea.

I wish Sinbad would come out and be like, yeah, I did this movie.

But

he doesn't remember it, I guess.

Or did they wipe Sinbad's memory clean?

I have no idea.

It's weird.

Like, Sinbad, I just love the idea of him being haunted by these people who refuse to give up.

He even went so far as to do an April Fool's Day video a few years ago where he recorded himself as Shazam.

Don't come any closer.

Okay, this is what we're going to do.

We're going to start all over, right?

I'm going to introduce myself.

I am Shazam.

I'm the genie of the lamp.

You're not a genie.

Genies aren't real.

Every time I come out the lamp, I hear the same thing.

And so again, I ask ask you, what did Melissa think of that?

I asked her.

So when I saw it, yeah, you know, I love Sinbad, I thought it was funny.

At the same time, there was that like part of me and me saying, no, it's real, though.

Stop, you know.

The only part of that that irks me is when people will take that and write like proof that Shazam existed and use that for clickbait.

And you go and you're like, no, you know, this is something he did five years ago.

But otherwise, I thought it was funny.

So just to recap here, my assumption was that everyone is just shit posting.

Like it's a fake movie, but people are saying it's real in the way that JD Vance, you know, f that couch.

I thought this is all just a joke that everybody was in on.

Pablo, I am troubled to report to you that these people are 100% true believers.

Sinbad denies doing this, unsurprisingly.

He's now parodying everybody who believes it.

And everybody who believes it is this community of people that seems to be so much larger and so much more sincere than I ever dreamt of when you first came to us with this premise.

Yeah, it's a troubling trend, but there is some research behind it that I'd like to tell you about.

But to do that, I'm going to have to ask you some questions, Pablo, starting with a question about Pikachu.

I don't like where this is going.

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So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

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So this is where I admit that I know a lot about Pokemon.

Fantastic.

And Pikachu was where you left me before the break.

So where are we now?

Yeah, I know that you're the host here.

This is your show, Pablo, and I'm the guest, but I am going to turn it around on you, and I'm going to ask ask you some questions here.

Okay.

As promised, we're going to start with Pikachu.

So I'm going to show you three images, and I want you to tell me which one is Pikachu.

So for listeners, there is a Pikachu with a little red in his tail at the base of the tail.

On the left, in the middle, there's a Pikachu just with a straight yellow tail.

And on the right, there's a Pikachu with black at the end of his tail.

Right.

And which one is Pikachu, Pablo?

The one in the middle feels like the right Pikachu to me.

I'm sorry to tell you that the answer is A.

It is the Pikachu on the left with a little bit of red in his tail right there.

That is shocking.

For clarity, this is not a bit.

Yeah.

I've never seen these photos before.

You came in blind.

I came in blind.

The one on the left is the one that looked least likely to be real.

Yeah.

Let's see if we can get you again, okay?

So now let's look at the Monopoly Man, okay?

You've played Monopoly.

I love that boot.

Yeah, for sure.

That's your

go-to.

Absolutely.

Bootstraps.

On the left, we've got Monopoly Man with a monocle.

In the middle, we've got Monopoly Man with glasses.

On the right, we've got Monopoly Man, no eyewear.

At the risk of falling into what feels like a psychological trap.

Definitely.

I'm going monocle.

Yeah, and unfortunately, you'd be wrong about that.

The Monopoly Man has no monocle, no glasses.

I don't like, I really don't like this.

Okay, let's do one more here.

Did you do Where's Waldo as a child?

I did.

Okay, let's take a look at Waldo up on the screen.

We've got Waldo with nothing in his hands, Waldo with a cane in his hands, and Waldo carrying an umbrella that has stripes on it that matches the sweater that he wears.

Right, right, right, right.

I am going to go for the cane.

Okay.

Pablo, does this restore your sense of reality?

That is the correct Waldo.

You have found him.

Thank God.

I feel like we would have had to take a pause in the taping if you had gotten all three wrong.

This episode wouldn't run.

For sure.

Yeah.

If I had gone over three on this.

Absolutely.

You'd have to kill that.

The obvious takeaway here is that I thought I knew from my childhood,

I am 66.6 repeating percent wrong.

Yeah.

And so this goes to some research that's been coming out of the University of Chicago.

I spoke to a professor there who ran the research.

Her name is Wilma Bainridge.

And I'm an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

And she has been studying this thing called the Mandela effect.

So the Mandela effect is when you have this really striking false memory that you're very confident about, but you're actually very wrong about.

And also these Mandela effects occur across many, many people, cross-culturally.

So it's usually a false memory that's not just...

your own, but one that tons of people have.

And so the Mandela in question here is Nelson Mandela.

Yes.

It gets its name from a group of people also on the internet who really stridently believe that the South African civil rights leader died in prison in South Africa in the 1980s.

Which, again,

all of what I know and consider real is a bit shaken right now, but he became the president of South Africa, I recall, sometime after that.

Correct.

Nelson Mandela to be released tomorrow.

And as you might expect, that is a moment that this country will not soon forget.

After 27 years in prison, he served as the president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

He didn't die until 2013.

So that's not a trick, Pablo.

You are back with us in base reality now.

Okay, great.

Got to confess, I don't like the dynamic that you've created here.

Yeah, it's a troubling reality, and that's what Wilma set out to research.

So she set up a series of four experiments.

And in the first experiment, they showed people Mandela Effect items and they showed that they would consistently choose the wrong image as you did, unfortunately, Papa.

Yeah, this is me with the Pikachu red tail thing missing that and the monocle I presume was on the Monopoly Man.

Exactly.

And an interesting thing here is that the more confident people were in having the correct answer, the more likely they were to be wrong.

And for the Mandela Effect items, we found people consistently chose the wrong one.

They chose the same wrong one.

They're really confident that they're really familiar.

So they all say that the Monopoly Man has a monocle and they're confident about it.

So that showed us, okay, the Mendel Effect is real.

So this is a verified pattern that Wilma Bainbridge is finding at the University of Chicago, in which people are very convicted in their belief, despite not at all having a grounding in reality.

Absolutely.

And so in experiment number two, what they were trying to find out was, is this something where our brains are just filling in the rest of the image?

And they had people on computers and they were showing them the images and having them very specifically look at these things, like the fact that the Monopoly Man has no monocle.

And even after showing them the complete image and emphasizing this, people were still making the same mistakes and choosing the same wrong images.

Right.

I still don't believe the Pikachu red tail thing is real.

Yeah.

So in experiment number three, what they try to figure out is, is this just an internet phenomenon?

Like we've been talking about, like, is this just a meme, right?

So we basically did a Google image search of all of the Mandela Effect items and like looked at the top hundreds of results and then scored which ones were the correct version versus Mandela version.

And basically a majority of them were the correct version.

So it seemed unlikely that this Mandela Effect is some like amplification of like someone uploads an image and that causes everyone to have a false memory, et cetera.

So why, again, is this happening?

Right.

Why is there this stickiness that makes this not just some meme, but something that is actively replacing what they otherwise should and would have probabilistically have seen as somebody who was online?

Exactly.

And before we get to the fourth experiment, which explains this a little bit more, I want to see if I can get you one more time.

So let me set the scene back in your childhood again.

Probably not consent.

You're just moving forward, but I guess we'll go with this.

Yep.

So there's a famous scene in The Empire Strikes Back, maybe the most famous scene in all of Star Wars, maybe the most famous scene in all of cinema.

cinema.

Luke has just lost his hand.

Darth Vader, the towering, sonorous James Earl Jones voice is playing.

There is no escape.

Don't make me destroy you.

And he tells Luke something stunning, something startling that changes the course of the Star Wars universe.

What's that line?

As somebody who has seen every Star Wars movie and can do a pretty good RIP James Earl Jones.

Yeah, the line line is,

Luke.

I

am your father.

It's like he's in the room with us right now.

I mean, that's pretty.

It's pretty good.

Right down to the breathing.

I mean, I'm

killed.

Labored breathing.

Let me show you the clip.

No.

I am your father.

No.

Is also my first reaction to hearing him say no.

Yeah, it's deeply disturbing.

I certainly remembered it as Luke, I am your father.

I feel like I have a 1700-word blog post in me.

Definitely.

Yeah, we're going to get you back under the desk ready to write.

Damn.

Pablo, there's plenty of these Mandela effects that are out there.

People remember C3PO without a silver leg.

He has a silver leg.

The fruit of the loom logo, a lot of people remember it having a cornucopia in it.

There's no cornucopia.

Berenstein bears, it's spelled Berenstain with an A-I-N at the end instead of E-I-N at the end.

And people are confused about all of these.

As they should be.

Definitely.

This

pattern that you've established, which I, which many of us, I presume people listening to this are not leaving me alone here and just laughing at me.

No, I presume that people are in on this with me.

In on the sensation of,

okay,

what dimension are we actually in?

Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that because I asked Melissa a sort of similar question, and this is what she had to say.

So I would say

that

the only logical

conclusion I can come to that my brain understands is computer simulation.

It is hard to avoid this feeling that I'm in the company of outright conspiracy theorists.

Yeah, what's interesting is that I think Melissa is kind of a sympathetic test case against that idea.

Like she did talk about conspiracy theories, but she herself doesn't believe in these conspiracy theories with the exception of Shazam.

That I don't have any rational explanation for, especially when you have somebody like Sinbad, who I love, I think is great, saying that, in fact, he's never done that movie, you know, that I don't know.

Like, I don't see a real reason for this film to be something that had to be like wiped off the face of the universe.

It just, I think, shakes a foundation in me where I'm seeing something that I can't come out with

even a rational

answer to in my faith, which isn't the most rational of faiths to begin with.

I do like the part where she is apologetic towards Sinbad, for sure.

As if she doesn't want to impugn his credibility here.

How has he gotten caught up in this mess?

She's concerned for him as well.

And I think, Pablo, you know, while I've still got you in the guest chair here for a second, I do want to say one of the most popular theories of why this is happening among people on the internet has something to do vaguely with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

And they sort of have this theory that we split off into a parallel universe, one from which Shazam was made, into one in which there is no actual Shazam.

Yeah, I mean, what we're getting to is something that is

also

shockingly mainstream.

And by that I mean, I would suppose you would call Elon Musk and Joe Rogan at this point the closest thing we have to main characters online.

And they say shit like this.

This could be some simulation.

It could.

Do you entertain that?

Well, the argument for the simulation, I think, is quite strong.

The theory, basically, for people who don't know, is that if you can imagine a future in which we as humans are able to create a universe via computer like The Sims, except The Sims are sentient, right?

What are the odds that someone hasn't done that to us as well?

Games will be indistinguishable from reality.

The idea that there's a glitch in the matrix, what I am reckoning with is the idea that there is a glitch in our brains way more often than we would like to admit.

And there is something where

an image, an idea, some sticky concept replaces the truth.

And this does, of course, connect to conspiracy theories as a concept, but it does speak to the power of our feelings to overpower the facts.

In that weird inversion of, you know, again, I hate to quote another of these online gremlins, but like Ben Shapiro.

These are facts and facts don't care about your feelings.

It's the inversion of that.

It's actually feelings don't care about facts.

Researchers have shown that they can implant false memories into people.

Yes.

Research has consistently shown that eyewitness testimony is far less reliable.

You can watch really funny psychology videos online where even like short-term memory, like you can see there are experiments where a guy comes up to an office to take a test and a white person gives him a clipboard and then he ducks beneath the desk and then he comes back up and it's a black person and they haven't noticed the difference.

Our short-term memories can be so faulty and our long-term memories can be even worse.

Yes, instead of our brain being this objective camera,

it is a selective mechanism that we are choosing at times to reject.

This is fundamentally a story about remembering and forgetting.

Yes.

Because Wilma's fourth experiment goes and shows that even people, when they haven't thought about this, even when they haven't been primed, they will still come up with these Mandela effects.

It's not exposure to a meme.

It's not anything like that.

Because the fact that we can induce a Mandela effect in someone who doesn't even know the character, it's unlikely they see Pikachu, and then during the experiment, we leap dimensions and then they have like a Mandela effect.

So, this shows that it's really something about those images that just cause us to save them in memory in the wrong way.

But, Pablo, to quote another great movie, I think that the time has come for you to choose either the blue pill or the red pill.

This is your last chance.

After this, there is no turning back.

You take the blue pill, the story ends.

You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland,

and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I feel like we're resembling the political discourse in all of these ways a little too closely.

Yeah.

But I will be red-pilled by you if that's what you're offering.

No, I'm going to take us back from the Large Hadron Collider to the big Aristotle.

And what do you know about rapping?

I know a few things.

Yeah, right.

My name is Max, so get these facts.

I'm on my heavy BMX and I make some tracks.

That's swag!

I do want to remind you, David Gardner, that this is a show about journalism,

about investigations and interviews, and not just cruel psychological pranks that you pull on the host.

Although that is fun.

Debatable.

But I do want to point out here that your quest to find Sinbad, your quest to find the people on these movie posters,

getting to Sinbad was not exactly as easy as we thought because Sinbad's life himself in reality had taken something of a turn.

Yeah, so in 2020, Sinbad had a stroke and it was a pretty severe medical episode.

The great news is though that he's made a recovery.

He's learned to walk again.

He's started making public appearances again and he's posted messages to his fans.

It's wild that the kids even know who I am.

That's beautiful.

Thank you to everybody who's been praying for me and saying good things

and supporting me during this time in my life.

It means a lot to me.

Thank you so much.

It seems like he is on the mend, but has perhaps more things on his plate than answering interview requests from me.

And just to be clear, we 1,000%

understand truly why Sinbad would not be able to get back to us.

I was mostly just glad to see this iconic figure from my childhood recovering well.

What proved to be more frustrating, though, for a show that prides itself on investigative journalism, as aforementioned, was how difficult Shaq was to get a hold of here.

Because we tried for months to get David Gardner's childhood hero to talk about both Kazam and Shazam.

And we kept on getting false starts and bad leads and no response.

And it was maddening.

It was.

It was the opposite of summoning a genie.

At one point, we thought about ambushing Shaq with a microphone in real life, only to think better of it, at least because it seemed like the dude just didn't want to talk to me or David.

But then

I got an idea.

I got an idea to try one last source, one last hope, named Adam Lefko, who is a great host over at TNT

and also, crucially, the co-host of the big podcast with Shaq.

And we made a wish.

My good friend Pablo Torre has a show, Pablo Torre finds out, and he's doing a story, and he needed help with research.

Got it.

First question.

It has been 30 years since Kazam.

What do you think the legacy is now?

Do people still come up and ask you about this movie?

Yes, and no, I get mixed reactions.

I get from you weirdo adults who shouldn't have been watching the movie anyway.

It was terrible.

But I get from guys that are adults now that were kids say, oh, that was one of my favorite movies.

Just want to clarify for those not watching on YouTube or the DraftKings Network, Shaq is wearing sunglasses and pajamas.

Absolutely.

With a shirt that has his name across it.

He looks phenomenal.

Number two, have you ever heard of a Sinbad movie called Shazam?

And do fans ever ask you about that?

They say they mix it up all the time.

Oh man, when I was a kid, I watched Shazam.

Like, no, Kazam.

So they actually get it mixed up all the time.

And you've heard about this Sinbad movie.

Yeah, but I didn't hear about it from Sinbam.

Shazam used to be a cartoon.

You don't remember that?

Where the guy used to look up at this guy, open his shirt, and say, Shazam, and then

he hit the thunderbolt.

So, what's weird is this Shazam Sinbad thing, it's a fake movie that's never existed.

Oh.

But people swear that they've seen this movie.

Do you think people are confusing it with Kazam?

No, I think they are confusing it with the cartoon that used to be called Shazam.

This is Billy Batson, star reporter for station WIZZ-TV.

He has been picked by the aged wizard Shazam to carry on the Wizard's lifelong crusade against crime and the forces of evil.

When Billy speaks the wizard's name, Shazam!

I was not prepared for any of how

Shaq would be unfamiliar

with this thing we've now spent 50 minutes discussing.

As far as I know, he's really never been asked about this.

And my favorite thing about his answer is he is totally non-plussed by the existence of this fake movie.

He's like, that's fine.

That's fine.

I think it's the cartoon that they're confusing it with.

I didn't expect him to go this deep a dive into this line of questioning.

And he actually took us one step further, which is helpful because there has been this confusion, right?

There is a more recent Shazam movie like we talked about at the top of the show.

Freddy, I swear it's me, okay?

Look, I know we're not really close friends or anything, but you're the only person that I know that knows anything about this Cape Crusader stuff.

Shaq Shaq actually met the actor who plays the current Shazam, and it's a phenomenal story.

So we were in the NBA All-Star Green Room one time, and the actor that was Shazam was in there.

And then Ernie goes, hey, Kurt Warner, because the same actor played Kurt Warner, and Shaq looks at me and he goes, is that Kurt Warner?

And I go, no.

He goes, who is he?

I go, he's this guy in this movie, Shazam.

And he does the classic, like, Shaq thing where he winks at you, where you're like, he's going to do something with this information.

And the guy sat down and Shaq goes, I'm Kazam, you're Shazam, we're brothers.

And the dude's face lit up.

He's like, you know about it.

He goes, oh, yeah.

And then he looks at me and winks.

And I was like, he just, this, this actor now is like, Shaq knows my movies.

And I have to say, if this is a computer simulation, if you wake up as Shaq, you're staying plugged into the Matrix, baby.

That guy is living his best life.

I'm going to say,

whatever fake, alternate, hypothetical world we've been musing about,

I just know that it pales in comparison to the world in which Shaq has woken up, put on those pajamas and a shirt with his name on it, and said, what are you guys talking about?

That's his exact attitude in this question.

So let me just say, Pablo, again,

I'm not on the computer simulation theory train, but there is one part of this story that just

deeply troubles me.

And we had Adam ask Shaq about it.

A 1993 Rolling Stone story said you had a Rottweiler named Shazam.

Is that true?

Yes.

Okay, what good boy?

Yeah, good boy.

Okay.

Is it spooky that it's the same name as this fake movie to you?

It's not a fake movie.

Shazam was a freaking cartoon.

I did.

Okay, but no.

I'm just asking.

Shazam was one of my favorite characters besides Superman.

So that was like a birdman.

Yeah, Birdman Bird.

Yes.

And what was Shazam like?

Shazam would just,

like, all the characters were similar.

White guy, working in the office, gets mad, just says a word, or just does something to split.

But like Shazam, you saw, we just open.

You'd always have to look at the guy and go, Shazam, and then Thunderbolt would hit him.

Okay, so Pablo, just to be clear, just so I can recap here for you what's happening.

Shaq was in a movie called Kazam.

Sinbad was never in a movie called Shazam.

This all did and did not happen in the 1990s, a time during which Shaq had a Rottweiler named Shazam.

I just want Melissa to know that I didn't mean to further radicalize you.

Yep.

But I get it now.

Yep.

I think that she's going to come away firmer in her beliefs after this.

And I think that many of our listeners will as well.

David Gardner, thank you for reporting this story.

Thank you for being a good boy.

You're welcome, Pablo.

It's my absolute pleasure.

My tail is wagging beneath the desk.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.