Good Job, Brain! - 102: The Need for Speed

Episode Date: March 20, 2014

Turbo charge your ear-holes with our episode about things speedy, fast, and instant. Find out about the weird origin of FedEx (hint: it involved some Las Vegas craziness). And exactly fast are the fastest things in the world? Play our Price-Is-Right speed test, and can you hold on to this FAST word puzzle? Colin captivates us with the wacky and illegal world of coast-to-coast racing. And what actually makes instant noodles instant?  ALSO: Carmin San Mateo, Lobetrotter You can be our wingman anytime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, musical, muscular and or mustached muchos, mudskippers, and muffins. This is Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Today's show is episode 102. And of course, I am your humble host, Karen, and we are your orating orchestra of original organisms orbiting ordelons. I am Colin. I'm Dana.

And I'm Chris. All right. Time for our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. And I had a random Tribal Pursuit card, and you guys have your barnyard buzzers. Here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What 1980 Blondie hit was originally a Jamaican pop.

song recorded by the Paragon's in 1967. That is, the tide is high. Yes. Oh, I wouldn't have gotten that right. All right. Pink Wedge for pop culture. Cigar entrepreneur Bill Rancick, Rancic. Rancic.

Rancic. All right. Was the first winner of what TV competition, Chris. The Apprentice. Yes, the apprentice. Yellow Wedge. What sort of giant sound? Did Ross Perrault claim the United States would hear if NAFTA passed?

Is it a giant sucking sound, right? Yes. It just said sucking. What's that giant sucking sound? What is NAFTA? North Atlantic Federal Trade Agreement. North American Free Trade Agreement. Makes it easier to exchange things both Canada and Mexico.

All right, Purple Wedge. Cynthia Brimhall. was the first Playboy Playmate to appear in her centerfold free of what? Chris. Cubic hair. No.

That's what I was going to guess. Maybe it was. Oh, no, I was going to say the bunny ears, but I don't think that's it either. Underwear? It's not about her. It's mostly about the magazine. Oh.

Staples? Yes. Oh, okay. I see. It's just kind of far from cuba care. So it's really more of a magazine production. Yes, the magazine switched to a glued binding with the October 1985 issue. Oh, that's a good one.

That's pretty late, 85. Wait, oh, so that means there's no, like, staple holes. Right. You don't need to worry about what's covered up or what would have been shown had there not been these unsightly stapled holes. Right underneath that staple. There's something really good. They always hide it underneath the staples. Green Wedge for Science.

A famous photo of Albert Einstein Taken on his 72nd birthday Shows him doing what In the backseat of a car Is that the photo of him sticking his tongue out? Yes Okay Doesn't look like it's backseat of a car

I didn't know that I didn't know that Seems like a portrait Yeah Alright last question Orange Wedge I'm gonna not let Chris answer this I'm gonna let Dana and Colin

I shall put our buzzer down Okay video games Name three of the five fruits that appear for bonus points in the original arcade version of Pac-Man. Worked together. You can work together.

So, cherries is one. Strawberries, orange. Peach? Pretzel, but that's not a fruit. So we're going to go three. So we know cherries. There's definitely an orange. Definitely an orange.

No orange. Oh, wait. Miss Pac-Man has the orange. I played Miss Parries. I think one was a peach. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Apple. Was there a strawberry?

Oh, okay. Strawberry, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Watermelon? No, last one was grapes. Grapes. Grapes. I assume it's a cluster, not Yeah, yeah, a cluster.

That would just be a plum or, yeah. Good job, brains. Oh, that was a good one. And we have a lobe-trotter fact. A lobe-trotter postcard. Loeb-trotters are our fan club members who got the fan club pack last year. They get to send in a cool fact.

It's a real Sophie's choice, too, because you made this, you made this, the postcard is really elegantly designed, and it's a cool little piece of good job brain memorabilia. And they have to send it back. They have to send it back to you. So this is from Scott and Bailey. They said this.

Greetings from Detroit. Detroit has the only floating post office in the USA. The J.W. Westcott's second docks just south of the Ambassador Bridge along the western shore of the Detroit River. She is America's only floating zip code. That is cool. 48222, delivering for over 100 years and was originally formed to inform ships of changes and orders. Today, the ship duties include mail delivery, freight delivery, and passenger delivery to large vessels.

She has even been known to deliver mid-river pizzas. That's awesome. I know. I was like, oh, my God, you get pizzas on this floating thing. Thank you, Scott and Bailey for your awesome fat. So this week, our topic is suggested by Colin. Yeah, so you know I've been interested before in things that move fast, things that travel fast. I want to talk all about speed.

I feel the need, the need for speed. So got you jumping off the dead, shoving in the overdrive. Highway through the game is on. You guys can keep doing that. But Dana and I are not going to do that with you. I'm sorry. We can try to do it. All right.

So I have a quiz for you guys. All right. I would say it's tangentially about speed. All right. I found a number of words that have the word fast somewhere in the word. Oh, great. Oh, word puzzle. Yeah, I love a good word puzzle.

So I will give you a clue about the word, and then you guys buzz in, and tell me what it is. All right. All right. Molly Ringwald, Sillian Murphy, and Audrey Hepburn were all in movies with this word in the title. Colin. Breakfast. Yes. Oh.

Breakfast Club. Breakfast on Mars with Sillian Murphy and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Mm-hmm. This word originally meant disagree. disagreeable, distasteful, and later it meant disgusted. The current meaning, very attentive to detail, dates from the 17th century. Chris. Fastidious.

Fastidious. I think it's funny that originally it meant disagreeable and distasteful. Like, people who are fastidious are often also disagree. I'm just kidding. Gollet, throne. That's right. Shots fired. Just to relax, okay.

It's going to be okay. Come on. Just a quiz. Yeah. Baton, flange, frog, Pemnut, treasury tag, and wedge anchor are all examples of this. Colin. You guys are good. Fasteners?

Fasteners. They're all types of fasteners. I like flange. Flange. Yeah. In Pokemon. Yes. Yes.

This ability raises the Pokemon speed stat by one stage every time it flinches. I have never played Pokemon. Wait, is that a buffer attack? All right. I'm so embarrassed. It is steadfast. I'm sure a lot of the kids out there got that. Yeah, that's right.

I feel very good about themselves. They should. A number of people in Christian denominations practice this during Lint. Karen. Fasting? Yes. This band was known for their 1998 song, The Way, about the disappearance of an elderly married couple, Karen.

Fastball. Yes. What's up, 1990s? music. That's right. Okay. The 1966 Ford Mustang and the Tesla Model S are examples of this type of car body shape.

That is a fast back. Yes. It's like the slopy, like a hatchback kind of but a little bit slicker looking. Kind of angled. That's one letter away from fat back. It is. Which, there's some fat back right in this room right now that we're going to put

into the sausage later on this evening. They're making cheddar sausage. Yeah. Good job. you guys. We took a little detour into sausage land at the end there. It's top of mind. Yeah, nobody ever minds the detour into sausage land. That's what she said.

Cheddar worst? More like cheddar best. Oh. That's for a different episode. Maybe we need to explore the wonderful world of sausage. Yeah. Oh, just puns. Just sausage puns.

Right, right, right. Chilbasa, I don't even know her. What? That doesn't make sense. Listen, you tried coming up with a second sausage pun. Just seconds after the first sausage pun. You don't see the links between the two. There you go.

Slow clap. When we talk about speed, there is one company, especially in the United States, that is synonymous with speedily delivering something, getting something to you at the absolute top rate of speed. It's really, FedEx. FedEx. It's become a verb. Oh, FedEx it over to me.

Yeah. You never thought about it. Yeah. Yeah. One of those good problems to have where your brand starts becoming a genericized term and you want to prevent against it. But at the same time, it means you're synonymous. You're owning that world. That's true.

And in fact, Federal Express, the company, which was founded in the early 70s, really started the idea. the idea of you need this thing immediately and we are the people who are going to get it to you immediately. So when FedEx was founded, its founder's name is Frederick Smith and he's still the CEO of FedEx. It was all because of the emerging computer world, the landscape of computers. More and more businesses were relying on computers to get things done. And what this meant was what Fred Smith kind of understood was that if your computer's broken, then you're reliant on computer parts. You've got to get your computer fixed, which means that this small part, they've got to get it to you fast, and you were going to pay a lot of money to get you that

thing fast. If you think about it, prior to this, there really wasn't that big of a need for you to get something. You've got to have it overnight. I've got to have this overnighted to me. What was the need for that? You needed shoes for your horse, you know, the guy next store made shoes for your horse. It wasn't, it wasn't like there was only one company in America that serviced everybody. It's like, you know, you got it from your local business and that was fine. Right. I thought it was going to be documents, the urgency of documents. Because now when you FedEx stuff, most of the time it's, oh, the deed or I need to get this notarize. Yeah. And certainly Fred Smith also perceived that that was something, but there was actually a reason that he couldn't

get into that business first, which I will, which I will talk about in due time. Yes. But thank you for bringing it up. 1971 was when he founded Federal Express. He had the idea when he was a student at Yale University. Right, right. And he actually wrote a paper about it. The situation at the time was, if you wanted to get something from, I don't know, California to New York, and you wanted to get it there as fast as you possibly could, it had to go through many different companies. Because there was no one company at all that will...

No private company. There was no private company. There was the United States Postal Service, and they were flying packages, you know, by mail. But if you wanted a private company to really like... courier this thing and get it there as soon as possible, it would have to go on an air freight plane, somebody would have to put it on the plane, and then some other company would have to come in and pick it up. And all of these little things would just delay, delay, delay. And so, he realized, gee, if there was, or he hypothesized, really, at this point, if there was one company

that owned the trucks and they had a centralized, you know, sorting system, and that they were basically an airline. They would use the hub and spoke system and have a centralized hub. The item would go there, it would get sorted, then would go on the plane, then he writes the paper about it, and he got a bad grade. Right, right. I mean, apparently, the professor was just sort of like, yeah, this is not feasible. And there were reasons why it wasn't totally feasible, which again, we'll get to. In 1971, he founded Federal Express.

He had a significant advantage because his family was rich. And he was actually able to, he had $8 million in family money that he was able to invest. You know, if you want to burn through $8 million, start an airline, right? So he had to buy a bunch of planes, he had to buy everything else, offices around the country, trucks, everything. And they burned through that pretty fast. And in fact, there was a point, I mean, like a lot of startups, they weren't profitable at first. There came a time in 1973, two years after he had founded Federal Express. The company was down to its last $5,000 in the bank at the beginning of a weekend.

It was a Friday. And what they were facing was they were not going to be able to fuel the plane. on Monday. They were not going to be able to make payroll on Monday. And they just didn't have enough cash to do it. They were kind of between rounds of venture capital. They just didn't have a lot of cash. And I mean, you have to have cash to keep the doors open. As you say, things like jet fuel and running trucks. It's not cheap. Yeah. Like credit. Yeah. So Fred Smith faced with this problem going into the weekend decides he takes the $5,000, goes to Las Vegas, Nevada. And he plays And he plays blackjack.

Yeah. On Monday, he wires $32,000. Back to FedEx. It is enough to buy the fuel. It is enough to make payroll. It is enough to keep the company going. This man's a gambler in every sense. Oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, people asked him about it. They were like, you did what with the what? And he's like, it didn't matter. It didn't matter. We were going to, $5,000 or $0. We weren't going to be able to make payroll. We weren't going to be able to buy fuel. It didn't matter.

At least he's a good blackjack player. He was a great blackjack player. apparently. It's true. Yeah, $5,000 is the same as $0 at that case. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But 32 was enough to keep the doors open. And then that was the turnaround. They were able to make it to the next point where they needed more venture capital. They got it. And then they were able to get profitable. Now, as we have teased a couple of times, there were two major regulations that FedEx believed were really keeping it from like exploding. Number one, there were federal government regulations on what size airplanes that a cargo airline could use.

The jet they were using was called the Dassault Falcon, and they were small. In 1977, after, like, heavy lobbying from FedEx, Congress backed off of these restrictions. That same year, FedEx went out and bought seven Boeing 27, seven 27, that was seven times as big as the Falcons. Yep. The other thing holding it back, prior to 1979, it was illegal. to use another means of sending someone a letter. Whoa.

It was illegal to compete with the Postal Service. So there was private cargo and private goods, but no private letters. Yes. You could send a package via something else, but the Postal Service had a government-ordered monopoly on the sending of letters. But in 79, there was a lot of pressure from businesses saying, you guys, you're not good at your jobs.

Like, you're not... We need to be able to send documents, like, overnight documents it's really important and you know it took years but yeah in 79 they said they changed the regulations and they said that a private company could deliver letters just as long as it had to cost at least twice as much as first class mail or if it was an overnight urgent overnight delivery in 1981 FedEx introduced overnight letters service and that must have just been opening the floodgates for them oh yeah now ironically right now if you send U.S. Post Service Priority Mail or U.S. Postal Service Express mail, any of the travel in the air,

FedEx handles that. They outsource it. They have the, yeah, they contracted out to FedEx. So all of the air travel that this mail does, not the ground travel, because that's in your mail trucks, right, but all of the air travel is, which they were sort of forced to. They actually, they just won the contract again in 2013. They'd had the contract for a while, and they just got it again for the seven years. Because there's no.

Yeah. They realized they couldn't compete. You see a FedEx plane flying around. It's got your FedEx, and then it's also got your postal. Yeah. Any priority in Express. So, again, as we've talked about, lots of fascinating stuff here. Federal Express, as in the company that delivers things overnight, is not named that anymore.

Right. And it's actually called, and you've seen this on the boxes, FedEx Express. It is a redundant recursive name. Federal Express Express. It's called FedEx Express. FedEx Express. It is now just one of many companies operated by the umbrella group, FedEx Corp. And the other companies, you probably worked with them a lot, too.

As we got into the late 90s and the early 2000s, a couple of things started happening that really started affecting FedEx's bottom line. Number one, people stopped really needing to send overnight letters to people because you can just send an email, right? So that bottoms out. Number two, the good part was people stopped, maybe people aren't sending as many, like, super urgent overnight documents anymore. But with eBay and Amazon, people are now not only buying a lot more stuff online, the average person is now becoming a small business and, like, sending stuff out online, selling their possessions on eBay. So there suddenly became more of a need for slightly less fast shipping, for shipping that was cheaper, but not quite a.

as fast. So FedEx, there were two, you know, big acquisitions. One was the copy shop, Kinkos, right? Which they then changed into FedEx, Kinkos, and now I believe it was just called FedEx Office. The reason for buying it was not only because, yeah, it's sort of the same thing, you know, your business, you got to get copies made, you got to send things. It's sort of all, you know, of a piece. But it was having FedEx drop-off locations for big parcels all over the place. The other acquisition was RPS, the ground delivery service. I used to see yellow RPS trucks out and about. Maybe it was more of an East Coast thing, but they bought them.

And so that's how they start competing with UPS in terms of the slower ground delivery. So I see FedEx ground with the name of a separate company operated by FedEx Corp. Those two acquisitions were really important in terms of because their revenue transitioned, significantly from the overnight business being most of it to, you know, be the lesser and lesser percentage because now they have to do these cheaper things for people. Got it, got it. And all told, an average of 10 million packages a day

go through the FedEx system. They also have flown pandas. They flew pandas from the United States to China. Do they call that Panda Express? They did not I thought panda sat on the plane Like the cushion seat Yeah

And then they get drinks and nuts and stuff Yeah yeah yeah yeah Gonna go ahead and say no to that There was a viral photo Yeah that's what I saw Oh no no they outfitted a whole FedEx cargo plane With a special panda delivery Yeah

Yeah I thought that was weird because I saw that one viral picture And I was like that was a fake That photo that was circulated yeah So keeping in line with the theme of speed and quickness and fast. I have assembled a quiz for you guys called How Fast? Real fast. How fast is it?

And what we're going to do in this quiz is I'm going to ask you guys questions about various speed records and how fast certain things go and you're going to give me your best estimate. And here's a little twist is we're going to do this Price's Right style answers. So it's closest to the actual answer without going over. Okay. Okay. So we'll rotate who goes first here. So no one's at an advantage or disadvantage. So Karen, we'll start with you going first and we'll rotate from there. Okay. All right. So you all have a pad and pen and you're going to write down your answers. These are all going to be in miles per hour. Okay. These are all going to be in miles per hour. And I've rounded them all off. And, of course, I will exercise judge's discretion as needed. Okay. So to the nearest mile per hour. Why do you guys use kilometers? Because we're American. All right, here we go. Give me your best estimate.

What is the record for the fastest pitch ever recorded in Major League Baseball history? I am so bad. You got to lock in your answer. You got to lock something in. Price is right style. So Karen will give her answer and then Chris and Dana get to see it. Okay. All right.

Karen has guessed 114 miles per hour. All right, Chris's turn. I'm good with visualization, but like, speaking. is such a you know you can't you see something go by i just i know i know i cannot understand 131 miles per hour all right all right and dana is guessing one i'll say one 15 okay so you're all over uh but karen is the closest so we'll give the we'll give the point to karen no no one gets the point no one gets the point well do we need an exception for when you all go over No, no, no.

So that's a... The fastest officially recorded pitch was 105 miles per hour. I almost said 104, too. I was like, ah. Our oldest Chapman, who plays for the Cincinnati Reds, yep, through that pitch in 2010. And for our non-American listeners, that is a little bit over 168 kilometers an hour.

Oh, okay. When we talk about supersonic jets... Which we do a lot. Which we do. We have more than once. Of course, that means jets that travel faster than the speed of sound. Oh, man.

Give me your best answer. Okay. This is not a sports question, so you can't dig me for that. What? This is almost like... What is the speed of sound? And I will, for you scientifically minded people,

this is in dry air, at sea level, at normal temperature and pressure and all that stuff. I, like, don't even know where to begin. What's the speed of sound? And Chris is going first. All right. He wrote a long thing. Chris has written 953 miles per hour.

Dana has written 300 miles per hour. Karen, 1,000 miles per hour. Dana was closest without going over. It is, in fact, 767 miles per hour. I won, but I was pretty far off. That's the beauty of Price is Right-Stylesport. And again, with the conversion to kilometers, that is 1,234 kilometers. Oh, 1, 2, 3, 4.

It is, yeah, one, two, three, four per hour. Wait, this is a good mnemonic. So, like, planes, you think about planes traveling sound, 767 is a plane model. Right, right, right, right, yeah. Although you might forget in, say, 747. Yeah, but you're close. Yeah, you are close.

It's 767, and then kilometers is one, two, three, four. I think we accidentally came up with a mnemonic there. Usain Bolt is rightly recognized as the fastest human in the world. He currently, in case you aren't aware, he currently holds the world records in both the 100 meters and the 200 meters. So tell me, at his peak in miles per hour, how fast does Usain Bolt run? I think Karen knows. And I can give you a hint to you want the average person.

I know minute per mile, which means I have to do some conversion. So the generally accepted number is like a human in good condition can sort of peak at around 23 miles an hour Okay Dana has answered 32 miles an hour Karen has guessed 80 miles an hour Chris has says 33

Again you're all over Oh What is it just under 28 miles an hour So I should have guessed one mile Yeah right As the last person Well I had I mean you know From a game

You know theory standpoint I had two potential options right I could guess one Which means that it's under Dana Or it could guess 33, which means that it's between, in that big fat zone between Dana's and yours.

Right, right. Or after Karen. No, no, that's crazy. That's crazy talk. Yeah. At 80 miles an hour, he would be faster than a Cheetah. And once more, the kilometer conversion, that would be just under 45 kilometers an hour. I really appreciate your kilometer conversion for me.

Because you're so continental. I mean, like, I know miles because that's the distance I run in, but in terms of like scaling it for cars and planes. I've no... Oh, interesting. According to Guinness World Records, how fast

is the fastest production car in the world? Production. What does that mean? So, production car means we're not talking about a one-off Formula One racer or something like that. So production car has a very specific definition in terms of Guinness's rules. Like, this is a car that, if you had enough

money, you could buy one of these. I mean, it's got to pass a missions test. It's got to have you know, headlights and turn signals. And also one other stipulation is it has to be a car that there are 30 of them produced, you know. So this is sort of to get around companies producing cars just to break this speed record. So to the nearest mile per hour, how fast? Now, these are super performance, super expensive cars, way faster than you and I ever drive. Karen has guessed 130 miles an hour. Okay.

Chris has guessed 218 miles per hour. What? $1.00. Dana's got it. There you go. Dana's guessed 131 miles an hour. Chris is closest. And even Chris is still below it by a good bit.

Yeah. That Guinness recognizes the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport as the world's fastest production car with a recorded top peak speed of 268 miles per hour. Now, when they do these speed tests, they do these on, like, landing strips. Yeah.

I mean, because they need that much space to get up to speed. And this record actually is not without a little bit of controversy. Just last month, this past February... Did a car take steroids? The Hennessy boutique car manufacturer. They make a car called the Venom. The Hennessy Venom GT recorded a peak speed of 200.

170 miles per hour at a speed test at the Kennedy Space Center on the run where they land the space shuttles. So even though it did peak faster, it doesn't qualify for the Guinness record for two reasons. One, they're not making enough of them to hit the production level limit. They're just making below that number. And also, Guinness requires you do two runs in both directions and then they average them out to cancel out any wind effects or anything like that.

And unfortunately, the Hennessy people, they were only able to secure enough time to do one length of a race. NASA wouldn't let them do another race the other direction. Oh, yeah, because they got a space shuttle. Yeah, yeah. Well, folks, we're about to get runway clearance. There is a sports car on the runway, but we've been told we're next in line. Yeah, we're just going to circle around one time, just sit tight. And that speed record, again, converted to kilometers, is 400.

131 kilometers an hour. What about Usain Bolt driving when it is? Whoa. With a cheetah in the trunk. Wait, I guess that wouldn't make it faster. What if there was a plane going the speed of sound, and then Usain Bolt was in the car at the back of the plane, and then drove forward in the plane?

With the cheetah. With the cheetah. That's right. How fast does the earth rotate? by which I mean at the equator relative to its access. Science facts, you're supposed to know, man. Does the Earth rotate? I can almost hear people yelling at us in the car.

We had this question before. We have talked about this, right? And again, this is one where if you had the right, I mean, you have one piece of data. You know a day is 24 hours. So you really just need to know the circumference of the Earth to kind of back this out. So who's up first?

Chris is up? Chris has answered 97,580 miles per hour Dana Dana said one mile an hour I say $1 $1.

And Karen No! You got to go $2. What is it? Karen, I think you should stuck with what you originally had. Okay, hold on.

I remember it's one and a bunch of zeros. It's either 6 zeros or four zeros, either 1,000 or 2. 10,000. You put 100,000. Karen put 100,000. Uh-huh.

That's the answer. The answer is 1,000 miles an hour. I got it. I told you. Put it put $2. You're not game fearing this thing. It's actually slightly over 1,000 miles an hour.

But yeah, the circumference of the circumference of the Earth at the equator is just under 25,000 miles. And again, lastly, that is 1,600. kilometers an hour, a little bit over, how fast they are throat takes. Didn't even put the right unit.

She said one dollar, not even miles per hour. Dollar a mile. One dollar a mile. This is the good and the bad of Price's Right style scoring. Good job, guys. Well done. Wow, thanks. Thank you.

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You're listening to Good Job, Braves. And this week we're talking about things that are speedy, things that are fast, and things that are instant. All right, I'm going to ask you guys this question first. According to a poll in the year 2000, the Japanese believed that their best invention of the 20th century was what? 20th. Instant noodles. Yes. Oh, darn it.

I thought people were going to be like, oh, it's the Shinkansen train or whatever. You got it. Instant noodles Yeah Instant noodles we know here in America Mostly are the Nissan cut noodles Yeah Or like Maruchan, the sort of like brick of noodles

In a plastic bag Cup of noodles And then that's it That's it That's the only two Back in Taiwan growing up The variety is insane And it's fancy

Things get fancy It's still cheap Like what? They actually can add meat And meat is in like stewed meat in a pouch That you can open And put over your noodles

I grew up really liking the weird kind of Chinese herbal medicine flavored noodles. The noodles themselves, like, they range from vermicelli, they ranged from egg noodles. But, I mean, they're all instant. I would say that was one of the disappointments of coming here in America. I was like, well, you guys just have these cup kinds. We're my fancy kinds. Sorry, they're in Japan. They're also in Japan, too, yeah.

So Instant noodles were actually invented by a Taiwanese person. in Japan. The inventor, his Chinese name is Hu Bai Fu. He changed his name when he moved to Japan. To Johnny Noodles. Johnny I. Noodles.

I for instant. This is back when Taiwan was still was under Japanese occupation. There are a lot of people who people who would move to Japan or Japan moved to Taiwan. and he had a Japanese name. It was actually a literal translation of his Chinese name,

which literally translates to 100 Prosperity or 100 Luck. His Japanese name also literally meant that from his Chinese name, which is Momo Fuku. Oh, okay. His name is Momofuku Ando. That's his Japanese name. And you might know Momofuku because that is a celebrity chef David Chang and his ramen restaurant and Asian restaurants in New York City.

It's called Momo Fuku. I had no idea. That was the connection. It also means Lucky Peach. 100 luck, yeah. Well, that's what I thought it meant. Lucky Peach, right? It was a nod to the inventor of ramen.

Wow. Or instant. Sorry, instant noodles. This is how it works. So you have the noodle dough, pretty basic, you know, starch and water, extruded out into noodle form. And the fresh noodles made is basically dunked and flash fried in oil. Oh. And that's the, that's the, quote, cooking process.

And the noodles themselves, they're dried from the flash frying process, goes from your average kind of moisture content of 30% to 50% after frying to 5%. That's a lot. The flash fire really takes a lot of the water out. And this is why a lot of people say that it's not very healthy, which it isn't. It has a high starch content and a high oil content. I don't think I knew that they were, yeah, fried. You're eating a soggy fried food.

Yeah. That's where you're eating. You're like, oh, it's boiling noodles. is no, you're putting water in a side item. It's flour and water now. No, nope, deep fried. And in 2005, instant noodles in space. They modified

instant noodles for astronauts and it's called space ram. Or I guess space rom. Space ramen. Space ramen. Oh, I see. But they call it space rom. Space rom. Which is space rail. They didn't really understand like where the brakes in that word

of her. Yeah. Space ram. The modifications are clever. So, you know, when we have instant noodles, it's usually a brick or a big chunk, right? They made little balls of ramen. They separated big chunks into little, little balls. They had to make the soup thicker so that it wouldn't spill in space or it wouldn't be messy in space. They modified the starch content in the noodles so that it can be cooked with not boiling water. Cook with hot water, but not boiling water. Because water cannot boil in space. So that to come up with a way that you can,

cook the noodles with a lower temperature of water. I looked at pictures for this. It doesn't look very good. But I think most astronaut food doesn't look very good. Most space food, yeah. It's not about the presentation. Yeah, no. And of course, in addition to Asia, instant noodles are super popular in countries like Nigeria and

Brazil and Mexico. This is why this is one of the best inventions of the 20th century because it's cheap. It is satisfying. It has enough calories in it. For a lot of countries, this really helps with their hunger problem. It doesn't go bad sitting on the shelf. It doesn't go bad. Yeah, it can last for a while.

And one of the experts say that they're cheap, they're tasty, and they're tweakable. And that's a thing. Oh, sure, yeah. And therefore, you can change the flavors for a lot of different countries according to their own taste. That's right, yeah. In Brazil, the really popular flavors are four cheese and tomato bacon. Oh, delicious. That sounds good.

And for us, it seems kind of. weird like whoa not tomato does I was like yeah why not because you're so used to like chicken or beef or like a little bit out there shrimp or something

right yeah and I got one last fact oh actually a question for you guys per capita what country consumes the greatest amount of instant noodles hmm

like what's your theory of guessing my theory of guessing is that it's a trick but I'll go with the obvious answer I'll guess Japan I was going to guess Japan but how about Taiwan I guess the US

because we eat so much It is South Korea. Oh, okay. So in between. Close. In between Japan and Taiwan. You know, you got one hand on the mouse, the other hand on the noodles. There's a lot of really good noodles, though.

Korean-style ramen. Yeah. Yeah, the kimchi flavor. You know what? I bet the Starcrafting, I would love to see, like, some sort of study about, like, e-sports and gaming and in state of food. Yeah. Well, I'm such a part of their population.

I mean, here, I just, I mean, here, I just, yeah. That to me is... I think it's college food. It's true. It's true. It's both. It's both. Yeah.

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Yeah. Nobody, no one here has seen it. I don't even know what the movie is about. I know what it is, but I, sadly. Does it have Bert Reynolds? It does have Bert Reynolds. Dagnet Coleman? Dom Delo.

Yes. That's what you're thinking of. You're making the classic Dabney-Colman Dom Deloese speech. I just like, I remember bright colors and cars and like people finding things funny that I didn't understand. Like I remember that movie. And he just described. I have, I've never heard of this and have no idea where it is. The premise of the movie is a coast-to-coast auto race. And it is, I mean, it's an all-star cast. As you say, Bert Reynolds, Dom Deloese, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr.

Jackie Chan is one of the racers in the movie. Terry Bradshaw, Roger Moore. Wait, Terry Bradshaw, the football player? Yes, Terry Bradshaw, the football player. And budding actor at one point. And the plot of the movie was about a group of racers racing from Connecticut to California and, of course, the hijinks that ensue along the way.

Oh, that actually sounds fun. And illegal. Yes, highly, highly illegal, yes. When did it come out? 1981, it was an absolute smash hit at the box office. It was the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1981. There were sequels to it. It spawned a whole sort of genre of wacky auto race movies and stories. Now, what you may not know, even if you've seen the movie several

times, is that the Cannonball Run was directly inspired by a real life, coast-to-coast race of the same name. Several times over the course of the 1970s, they ran Cannonball Baker C to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. Informally was just called the Canaan. all run. So let's back up a bit. Okay. Let me tell you about Erwin Baker. Erwin Baker was a race driver and kind of all around gearhead vehicle nut. From the 1910s to the 1930s, he set dozens and dozens of driving records. And he was particularly interested in cross-country distance driving record. In 1915, he drove a Stutz bearcat from L.A. to New York City, just a little bit over 11 days. Over the course of the years, he got that record down to a week.

And I want to point out, this was before the interstate highway system. Okay, so this is on regular city roads, maybe a two-lane highway here and there. Yeah, so just to put it in perspective. Okay, does he sleep? He would sleep on the multi-day trips, yeah, certainly. He did get to the point, though, where he was trying to go essentially non-stop, like just stopping up just to gas or, you know. So dangerous. I know.

For everybody, yeah. There are... That means he pees in a seat. You can... It does not necessarily mean. You can pause for a minute. You can pause for a moment. You can stop and pull over and peeve by the side of the road.

But they're not sleeping at all. It's so dangerous. You wouldn't just fill it with the smell of human urine. The peak of his achievements was his 1933 drive, where he went from New York City to San Francisco in 53 and a half hours. Wow. Zooming. Were there any national speed limits at that? that point in the 30s? This predated national speed limits. Yeah, by decades, right, which helps,

of course. The car established its own speed limit because it couldn't go that much faster. You're right. And this was the drive that would later inspire the Cannonball Run, named in his honor. So the first Cannonball Run was in 1971, and it was conceived by a guy named Brock Yates, who was a racer and a writer. He wrote for Car and Driver, and Steve Smith, who also was affiliated with car and driver magazine. And they came up with the idea of, you know what, let stage a grand spectacle of a coast-to-coast race, kind of sort of celebrate the fact that we do now have an interstate highway system, and we'll write about it, and we'll cover it in car and driver magazine. But it's still illegal? It is still highly, highly illegal. So when you do these

races, you kind of have to do it on the down low. You don't publicize it until after you're done. So there was only one team running the run the first year. And over the course of the 70s, as it got more and more publicized and popularized that the number of teams grew. The rules were pretty much wide open. You could take any route you want. You could drive however fast you feel is necessary. Any type of vehicle you want. Speeding tickets were your own responsibility. Everyone had to leave from the same starting spot. And the ultimate destination was a place called the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California. And it really captured people's imaginations. Like even if you weren't a racer or a car nut, it was just the idea of the

spectacle of racing flying across the country. Fastest coast-to-coast. time in a cannibal run was set in the very last one in 1979, made it in 32 hours and 51 minutes. Wow. And that is fast. That was an average speed of 87 miles an hour. Whoa. Yeah, from all the way across the country, 3,000 miles.

And that's average. You know they went way. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And largely after the publicity and popularity of that last race is what kind of triggered Hollywood came calling and came to Brock Yates, and he agreed to let them use the name for the movie. And they also sort of decided, you know what, this is too high profile now. We need to shut

down the Cannonball Run. Because at this point, cops are going to be on the lookout, the whole nation. Right. Okay. So Cannibal Run retires. After the last Cannibal Run, after they retired it, one of the racers who had run a couple of the earlier races decided, no, we need to continue this tradition going. So his name was Rick Doherty. And what he did is he created a race called the U.S. Express, which was functionally and spiritually almost the same as the Cannonball Run, right. Yeah, you're leaving from New York or Connecticut, racing down to California. So in the first U.S. Express in 1980, Rick Doherty, his driving partner ended up being

none other than Chris knows. Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims and other such fine video games. Were they friends? They were. They were. They knew each other through the circle. Apparently each of them had... With a racing circle?

Yeah, yeah. Eighty-three was the last year they had it. But by the last year of the U.S. Express, the coast-to-coast, the fastest official coast-to-coast time was down to 32 hours, seven minutes. After this last U.S. Express, a lot of the coast-to-coast driving attempts, they got really serious about it. And it got less and less about the, oh, the kind of the fun, wackiness of a group race into dedicated single teams doing single-team driving records. Who do training. Secretly, highly illegal. Lots of preparation.

I mean, and I'm talking about modifying the car, larger gas tanks, you know, radar detectors, once they became available GPS. So that last record from the 83 U.S. Express stood until 2006 when a racer's name Alex Roy and Dave Marr broke that record, 31 hours and four minutes. They waited almost a year to announce this, mainly because they wanted to wait for the statute of limitations to expire on all of the traffic violations. that they most assuredly broke along the way. Just a few months ago, the record was broken again. Oh, really? By a big margin, driver Ed Bolian and his two-man support team. They completed the trip in 28 hours.

Oh, man. 50 minutes. So they're the only people who've done it under 30 hours. They are the only people who claim to have documentation of doing it sub 30 hours. In interviews, they've asked Ed Bolian, they said, you know, like what's the hardest part? Is it going without the sleep? Is it having to pee? And he said it was the preparation.

They modified the car. They took out the back seat so they could fit a 67-gallon gas tank in this car. They had multiple GPS units. They had a police scanner. They had radar detectors. They had a laser jammer for jamming a laser speed detection. They had a CB radio so they could listen to truckers talking. And on a couple occasions, they would impersonate truckers, actually, to help trucks get out of their

way. Oh, wow. Nice. Yeah, they would get on the CB, yeah. And like, hey, can you move aside for me? Yeah, right, right. Again, these are not legal modifications to your car. There's so much gas in that car and they're going so fast.

What if they had a car accident? There are a lot of people who really say this is a shameful activity. We shouldn't be glorifying. They could have killed people. They could have hurt people. Fortunately, nobody has ever been injured. There have been no serious accidents to any of these coast-to-coast attempts. yet. Fair point.

Fair point. Not to be fair, they are really, really, really, really, really good at driving. They said that one of the biggest keys to their success was they had scout cars and lead cars. So they knew the route they were going to take, and they had enlisted friends and associates to drive at various periods 100 or 200 miles ahead of them. They only waited a few weeks to announce their record.

And so it is still right now, actually, a little bit of an open question of, is it possible some jurisdiction somewhere may decide to come after them? But I'd like to wrap all of this up by looking at how far we've come in less than 100 years. So, I mean, I think it bears repeating that none of these records would be possible today if it weren't for the interstate highway system. Even though there were pieces taking shape earlier, it wasn't until 1956, the Interstate Highway Act was signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower, who really felt, you know what, the nation needs a coordinated interstate highway system for many reasons. And

And going way back before that, one of the early experiments happened in 1919. The U.S. Army conducted an experiment to see, is it even possible to drive coast to coast? So the Army sent out a convoy of trucks from Camp Meade, Maryland, driving to San Francisco, California. The trip took them two months. Wait, when was this? With an average speed of seven miles per hour in 1919. Now, to be fair, it was a convoy of trucks and their army trucks. Yep, they all have to stay together.

Yes, run that. They have to go with the pace of the slowest one. And the officer in charge of this convoy experiment, a young Dwight Eisenhower. Oh. So he's like, we need some roads. He had a vested interest from decades back. It was a long two months. It was a long two months at seven miles an hour.

So that is the long and yet fast story of coast-to-coast driving in America. I can imagine the next benchmark someone's going to try and get it. it under a day. What if someone needs to poop? You I know everybody's asking that question in their heads. What do you do? Adult diapers. They said that they brought bedpans with them just in case they needed them. It sounds like they didn't need to use them.

It's not nice for their cool guy's status. Yeah, I've pooped in a train. Yeah, they'll tell you all about every single law they broke. As to whether or not they used bedpans. If they did, they're probably not going to make that in the official report. Of course, we here on Good Job Brain have no need for your earth cars because we are in possession of a time machine. As you know, constant listeners, if you've been

following along the past couple of weeks. Not just any time machine. Not just any time machine. The fancy and ridiculous time interloper system, the fartist. Yes. Has been stolen by our nemesis, international thief, Carmen San Mateo. Carmen

and one of her, one of her, the hoodlums in her gang, supermodel and cat burglar, hide a clue. have stolen It's so good It's just so good Last time we got a tip From

from Macapella The non-instrumental Non-Infringing musical group That we had to Solve the anagram There was an anagram And the words of the anagram Were high

Nine Rice Nibbler Yep And they let us know That we would have to Figure out how to Anagram that Into a famous four-word phrase used by a United States president in a speech.

Yes. And thanks to listeners who lots of you guys saw this, this is tricky because the anagram is not in English. It was not in English. It was an anagram of a forward phrase in German. Yes. And that phrase turned out to be, as again, many of you got, Iq bin ein Berliner.

Yeah. uttered by John F. Kennedy means I am a citizen of Berlin. Now, there was an um-actually here because a lot of people think that he actually made a mistake that he should have said, I'm bin Berliner, and that I'mein Berliner means I am a jelly donut. Yes. It would actually, if you really wanted to say, I am a jelly donut, that is what he would have said.

And of course, if you listen to, if you actually listen to the recording of the speech, people, they don't laugh at him, they applaud him. So, like, they're not, yeah, they didn't think it was a funny joke. Luckily, we were able to enter in the correct date, which was 06261963, and that's June 26, 1963. Punching that into the emergency backup fardis, we were off to scenic Berlin, Germany in the 60s. This is what transpired when we got there.

Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest most is I'm being I'm Beelina I uh I uh Ah Brain people

Oh you found me You must have also deduced what I was after All this time Lincoln Kennedy The two American presidents Share too much in common

For it to be a coincidence Lincoln was elected in 1860, Kennedy was elected in 1960, both of them had vice presidents named Johnson, Lincoln was shot in Ford's theater, while Kennedy was shot riding in a Ford Lincoln. If I could figure out what connected these two men, I could become president and then steal all of America's gold. Can you believe that Carmen called me crazy?

She said something about confirmation bias, and then she ditched me here in Berlin and took off in the fartis. Maybe she's got a bigger plan, but I really thought that my scheme was perfection. A better, easier scheme, but it really takes higher devotion and youthfulness. Anyway, you might have caught me, but you'll never catch Carmen, not unless you find the clue that I hid in that last sentence. All right I feel like Well I mean first of all we were able to apprehend

Hide a clue Yeah She is in She sounds kind of familiar She's in a weird way But what does she say? Yeah her scheme was pretty bad She's cray craye

Yeah And you know what she should have aimed for 2060 If she was going to keep the pattern Right right right Yep yeah true well The two presidents were assassinated Does she want that? Yeah also true

I really don't know what that what the plan was. All the beauty, but not a lot of brains. Yeah, stealing America's goal. I think she thought that if you become president, you just get to walk into Fort Knox and walk out with the gold. I don't know. I don't know what she's thinking.

It's inside the mind of a dangerous criminal. But we still need to get Carmen San Mateo. And luckily, you know, true to her name, hide a clue, hit a clue for us. What does she say? A better, easier scheme, but it really takes higher devotion in youthfulness. It's a weird, it's a weird bit of phrasing, for sure. A better, easier, not a better and easier, but a better easier scheme. But it really takes higher devotion, youthfulness.

Well, there's something in there. All right, listeners, you guys got to help us out. Of course, we'll update our fartists on the website, and you can, if you know the code, you can punch it in and see if we can track Carmen San Mateo down. And that is our show, everybody. Thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot of stuff about fast things, instant noodles, Cannonball Run, FedEx, and you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud,

and on our website, goodjobbrain.com. Thanks to our sponsor, Linda.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast. I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world. These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Magellan, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark, and so many other famous and not so famous adventures from throughout history. Go to Explorespodcast.com or just look us up on your podcast.com.

podcast app. That's the Explorers podcast.