Good Job, Brain! - 223: Braving the Elements

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

It's elementary, my dear Watson! Find the hidden element name in Colin's quiz. Karen discovers her beloved childhood TV elementals have a strange and strong tie to Bruce Springsteen. There are 11 periodic elements whose symbols are not represented by their names. Chris finds out how and why that is, while sharing some bonkers facts about how some elements got their names. Relax the mind and play "Oh you mean...?" - the debut of Dana's very experimental homophone phrase game where we completely lost it! And it's our last Carmin San Mateo puzzle as we inch closer and closer. Good Job, Brain is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. For advertising inquiries, please contact [e-mail]! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Howdy, Howlits and Hawkbills, howling for hawthorn berries. This is Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Today's show is 223, and of course, I am your humble host, And we are your shrew crew of two times two, a crewing a slew of clues about do-do for you. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

We're going to start the show today with some shoutouts and some quiz questions from our purple Patreon pledges. And first off, a big thank you to Dan H from Waterford, Connecticut. Oh, hey. Waterford, Connecticut. Like the crystal? Oh, the Crystal Waterford is in, I believe, Ireland. That was a learnedly question from last week. But Dan H is from Waterford, Connecticut.

He doesn't have any trivia for us. But I noticed that he's been a Patreon supporter for the last 70 months. Whoa. Oh, gosh. Seven zero months. Wow. He forgot. Thank you.

That's longer than some of us have had children. And then next we have bamboo jungles from Farmingdale, New York, and Bamboo Jungle has two questions for us. Bamboo jungles here wrote a note and it says, I'd like to know how well you guys do pub quizzes. And if you still do them, you're the smartest group I know and wanted to know if you dominate in pub trivia quizzes. Also, what is your pub trivia group name? I'm so glad you asked It's on Wikipedia We have a Wikipedia

The stupid thing we wrote down When Karen and I wandered into a pub One day and played trivia What's our team name? Oh baby dog time Oh yeah baby dog time of course It's on Wikipedia Baby Dog Time BDT

If you have a dog I'm sure you've done this Where you hold them like a baby And you rock them That's what is referred to as baby dog time. And if you haven't, definitely dry it. Yes, please. They love it. Sometimes. Never. So, do we dominate? I wouldn't say we dominate, but we perform. We acquit ourselves very well. Sometimes we do dominate and it feels embarrassing and

terrible. Like, where it's like, oh man, these people have never played trivia before and we're playing again. Yeah, we have a podcast about trivia. We shouldn't be playing right now. When we shifted, When we shifted from Elephant and Castle to the street food park, that's when it became a little. Because Elephant and Castle, it had many, many teams that were very serious about it. And we were all in deep competition with each other. And then we went to the street food park. And it was pretty much like us, like super, super serious about it and everybody else. Like, oh, I guess we play some trivia here.

Oh, that looks fun. We should do trivia. Yeah. We just wanted some dinner from the food trucks today. Yeah, we didn't know we were going to be spanked by these jerks. They rolled into trivia. They used to call us like, what, Manchester United? Yeah.

Of pub trivia. Like the evil bully soccer team. But towards the end of it, there were like good job brain fans who like played at Street Food Park too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Those people tended to be really good. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. The doctors from Canada. We had Simba the dog and Simba's dog parents played with us. With kids and then with COVID, we haven't been together to play in-person pub trivia. It's been a long time. And virtual Zoom trivia is not it. No. It's not it, guys.

No, it's not the same. I will say the one area that we did dominate was in harvesting drink coupons at the outdoor. Because first prize was, if I remember correctly, it was a credit for two pitchers of beer. Two pictures of beer. I'm the only one of us who regularly drinks beer. And I just, I mean, I'm only one. Man, I just cannot on a Thursday night consume two pictures of beer. So we have a stack.

We have a stack. I'm not exaggerating about an inch thick of the little credit card, coupon cards. Yeah. What a long time ago, guys. It was, right? Yeah. We were so young, so fresh from that children. So free of responsibilities.

All right. So Bamboo Jungle has a second question. This is a quiz question. Buzz in. if you know the answer, guys. You have your barnyard buzzers. Here we go. This food creation was a result of a microbiologist trying to discover a way of feeding

cows by freezing cow feed with liquid nitrogen. Oh, my gosh. Once again, I'll read it again. This food creation was a result of a microbiologist trying to discover a way of feeding cows by freezing cow feed with liquid nitrogen. The rooster, Chris. Dipping dots. Yes!

Yeah, yeah, woo-hoo! All right. I was thinking maybe astronaut ice cream, but I ruled that out, but, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's what I thought too. Yeah. So the whole idea is transporting and making this whole process more efficient of storing and distributing cow feed or farm feed.

not just limited to cows. Turns out it was a cool idea to use it on ice cream. Do cows eat ice cream? No, no. I'm just kidding. Well, dip and dots, sadly, they filed for, I think, Chapter 11 in 2011, so not that long ago. However, after this bankruptcy, they started a subsidiary company called Dippins. dot cryogenics and instead of focusing on ice cream it focuses on on the science and equipment of

freezing people not people just in general not yet not yet they're working up to it right like when you get you get sick when you're old and you're like I'm going to head down to I believe the science of freezing people is cryonics oh cryogenics I believe is just the the the field of very, very, very cold stuff, yeah. Okay, okay. Put that in my will. I don't want to be dip and dots, please. So dip and dot, the cryogenic subsidiary for the freezer tech was established in 2019

and was in the news pretty recently because it helped with COVID vaccination storage. Oh, right. Yes. The freezers developed by the subsidiary company. it requires super super super cold storage right dip and dots cannot be stored in your normal freezer it has to it's a little bit colder than your normal freezer for the for the dots to retain their dots form and so they really focused on freezer technology that is like super freeze so a lot of medical facilities providing a lot of medical services and equipment so yeah so smart pivot for

them to use the technology for that it's funny that they kept the dip and dots in the same thing yeah yeah all right well i got more questions here let's jump into our our general trivia segment pop quiz hot shot here i have our regular random trivial pursuit card you guys have your barnyard buzzers still let's answer some questions Colin is actually calling in from uh Seattle and i'm very proud of him for bringing his buzzer That's right. Oh, my gosh. You have no idea.

I was packing the stuff up, and then it was literally the last thing. I was like, oh, the barnyard buzzer. Wow. I appreciate it. Here we go. Let's answer some questions. Blue Wedge for geography. Which of the following cities is the furthest north?

Boston, Amsterdam, or Vancouver. Oh, man. Yeah, one is three chances. I have no idea. That was Colin. I'll say Amsterdam. Correct. It is an Amsterdam.

Thank you, damn. Well, well, well. Pink Wedge for pop culture. Which subject of Tina Faye's pitch-perfect impressions struck back by spoofing 30 Rock in 2015? That is Dana. Is it Sarah Palin? It's Sarah Palin. Oh, right, of course.

Uh, yellow wedge. Which 20th century U.S. president wrote a novel titled The Hornets Nest? Oh. Oh. Hmm. I wonder, uh, the girl who kicked. Yeah, it would help to know what you hear this card is from. We could at least rule some people.

Oh, 2016. Oh, okay. All right. 20th century president. Okay. Who wrote a novel. I don't know. The hornet's nest.

All right. This is not the horniest nest. Hornet's nest. That's a different. Horniest nest. Right. Data. I feel like this is just a shot in the dark.

Is it Ford? No. No. Okay. Clinton just co-wrote or had a ghostwriter maybe of a novel, I think. But that's not it. I think so.

It doesn't seem like it's an autobiography or a... No, like a fiction, like a novel. Yeah. No, no, no. Colin. Just because I know he wrote one other bestseller, I'll guess John F. Kennedy. Incorrect.

Chris, one last guest, 20th century present, Hornets Nest. Jimmy Carter. Correct, it is John. Wow. Renaissance man. Yeah. It was close.

Purple Wedge. For which piece of furniture are designers Charles and Ray Eames best known? Oh. That is Dana. She looks at establishing eye connection. Yes. Dena, yes. The Eames chair.

Yes, chair. The iconic Eames chairs produced by Herman Miller. Fetch a pretty price. Green Wedge for science. Which global celebration takes place each year on April 22nd? Colin. Is that Earth Day? It is Earth Day.

Oh, okay, okay. All right, last question, Orange Wedge, Sports and Leisure. Since the 1980s, Games Workshop has been getting kids of all ages to paint and battle miniature soldiers in what grim sci-fi game? Chris. Oh, what, Sci-Fi game? Is it Warhammer or no? Warhammer what?

Oh, gosh. Karen knows. Oh, it's got something, something 80. Yeah, what is it? Yeah, what is it? It's Warhammer 40K. 40K, all right. You have to say 40K or you don't get the credit for that?

The card says, and at $5 and up for a single miniature, kids also learn about capitalism. I don't need your commentary card. Yeah, how much does the Trivial Pursuit set cost? Is it knowledge-free trivial pursuit? All right, good job, Brains. This week's topic, I believe it's a suggestion from Dana.

We're taking a look at things that are elemental, A broad topic So we usually don't know What each other is doing For the episode Like we kind of have a very vague idea But we really don't know For this show

It could be periodic table of elements It could be like classic elements Like water, fire, earth Could be elementary school So I'm curious to see what you guys are doing Because what I prepared is very very weird All right Oh really?

I think I might top you, but we'll see. Oh, okay. All right. All right. So this week, we're braving the elements. I'll start us off here. I've got a grab bag quiz for you all called It's Elemental. And this is a quiz about famous.

people, things, concepts, what have you. And the answer to every question will include the name of an element, okay? Element as in like a kelm. An element, yes, an element from our periodic table of the elements. This will be somewhat lightning round here. Once you guys get your barnyard buzzers ready, we will try to proceed more or less from easy to not so easy. here we go this legendary entertainer was born i knew it farouk balsara but came to worldwide fame under what other name i see smiles in everyone's face but i heard dana first dana who am i looking for

freddie mercury that is fredi mercury and the element of course being mercury frediom yeah fredium fredium look i mean if there were if there were some queen fan who discovered an element i could see them naming it Fredium. Yeah, you know, I did not know this until looking this up. Of course, we all know who Freddie Mercury is. I hope. He did legally change his last name to Mercury. I mean, it started as a stage name and a great one at that, but he actually legally became last name Mercury. All right, moving right along. This fictional substance from a superhero comic has become synonymous with the term Achilles heel. Chris

Cryptonite That is kryptonite From the Superman comic Mythos world The Elements of course Well Krypton is an element Yes No

Yeah it is That's right It is I found out something interesting About kryptonite Is that it didn't actually appear In the pages of the comic The first appearance of it

Sort of in the public Was in the Superman radio show in the serialized radio show in 1943. Although Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman, I guess he had come up with sort of the idea before that. But yeah, it debuted, if you will, on the radio show in 1943. It didn't appear in the comics until 1949.

So, yeah, I mean, it's been there for a while. But yeah, there was a good gap there before they actually finally rolled it back into the base comic. That's a good trivia question. And I'm sure all the comic nerds in the 1940s, were extremely insufferable about it if you tried to suggest that. It's non-cananical.

It's not, yeah. This is not canon, you guys. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was famously known by what stern nickname? Karen. The Iron Lady, starring Merrill Streep. That is.

The Iron Lady, with or without Merrill Streep. That's right. That's right. If someone is obsessed with paranoid plots or conspiracy theories, you might suggest they wear this type of headgear. Laughter. Dana, what do we got? A tin foil hat. That is right.

A tin foil hat. I have a picture of myself when I'm a very young kid wearing a tinfoil hat. Why? Not because I was, you know, into conspiracy theories or anything. Lucking the rays. It had a little, like, Viking style on it. But it did, in fact, keep the government out of my head, just as a side of them. Okay.

It worked. Yeah. In 2009, Billboard magazine named this band, the top group of the decade. They had seven number one songs. Oh, my gosh. They also named their signature song, the top rock song of the decade. This is one of the highest-grossing Canadian acts of all time. Oh.

Dana. Is this nickelback? It is nickel-back. It is nickel-back. You know, look, they certainly are easy to hate on out in the Internet at large. But if you look at their stats, man, I mean, those guys sold a buttload of records. I was really impressed looking at. at this article by looking back on the decade. I mean, like the artists ahead of them, you know,

like Alicia Keys and Eminem. I mean, like just, you know, really, really, yeah, yeah, truly, truly one of the most successful bands of all time. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I only got it because you said Canadian. And that came up a lot about that. All right. Well, we'll come down south of the Canadian border here. This American blues musician who rose to prominence in the 1930s often build himself as the king of the 12 string guitar Okay American king of the 12 string guitar

Oh oh oh oh Karen I know the element Okay I think the element is lead Oh okay Is it like wolf or belly or something Are we talking about lead belly?

We are talking about lead belly Yeah Oh and wolf I'll hold off there that you guys jointly construct that one. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Lead belly. Born Huddy, William Ledbetter.

And now it seems, you know, like, oh, lead better, lead belly. But there are, in fact, a good half dozen proposed explanations for how he came upon the name Leadbelly, ranging from, indeed, his last name, to being shot in the belly once. yeah, some buckshot, to, you know, sort of lazing around when he was on the chain gang in one of his numerous stints in prison. Led Belly led a pretty interesting life. I encourage you to go read up on this man. He was definitely an American success story.

Oprah Winfrey was among the group of powerful TV executives who co-founded what cable network launched in the year 2000. Chris. Oxygen, oxygen. That is the Oxygen Network. That's right. Oxygen Media created the oxygen network. What's the pitch? So originally they were sort of a mix of reruns and original programming, like a lot of the cable networks are when they kind of get started.

You know, it's sort of had a sort of health, wellness, kind of maybe skewing a little bit more toward a female audience. Like, you know, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, moving right along. Jennifer Lawrence became the second youngest winner, the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performance in what 2012 film? Dana. Silver Linings Playbook.

That is correct, the Silver Linings Playbook. That's right, the David O. Russell movie. Yeah, yeah. It's like Winter's bone. Winter's bone. No, that's not an element. Do you know who is the youngest winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress ahead or behind, I suppose, Jennifer Lawrence?

Oh, geez. Anna Pacman? It's... Winner of Best Actress? Or winner of Best Lead actress? Best lead actress, the youngest. That is, she's from Mill Writer. No, no, that was also supporting.

Yeah, you're right. She was the youngest at nine years old. It is Marley Matlin in Children of a Lesser God. Yes, youngest. lead actress. She was like 18 or, right? Oh, like 21, 22. Oh, okay.

Yeah, okay. We're all thinking kids. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. All of the, all of the kid awards. Yeah, right, exactly, like Tatea and O'Neill and so on. Yeah, those were supporting. Okay, all right, couple more here.

Here we go. The fictional tech companies, Huli, and Pied Piper, are featured in what hit cable TV show? everybody on the buzzer there Dana Silicon Valley Silicon Valley I know you knew it I know you knew it

that's right that's right All right All right All right All right The scientific name For this venomous

North American snake is agistrodon Contor tricks But it is commonly known As much Chris Copperhead Copperhead. Copperhead. The Copperhead snake. Yeah. Yeah. Specifically, the eastern copperhead. Yeah. Apparently there are several snake species around the world that can be kind of colloquially called copperheads. But yeah, the one in North America, the eastern copperhead. And they are, in fact, coppery colored, kind of red and brownish. Yeah. Do they actually have copperheads? Yeah. Yeah. They do have very, very good camouflage. And if they're, you know, laying in the leaves or, you know, on some dirt or something, you got to be careful. I read.

I read that unlike other, some other, anyway, venomous snakes, their response to feeling threatened is not necessarily to flee or to make motion, but they freeze. And that's kind of one reason. It makes it worse. Yeah, that's kind of one reason that they think it might contribute to a number of bites. Because, like, you know, you walk along the path, the snake freezes, you don't see it, you keep on walking, and next thing you know, you're up in its business.

Yeah, that's right, getting bit. Have you guys ever gotten bit by a snake before? No. Have you? Neither. No, no, no. I'm just curious. I didn't talk about it all the time if that happened. I don't feel like I even see snakes. I saw a rattlesnake one time on one of my trips to Utah a few years ago. And it was, it really was like my heart just kind of stopped. Oh, I was, I don't ever remember being that just instinctively viscerally scared out in the wild. Yeah, I was I was walking along the path and it was we were doing something maybe a little silly, which is, you know, we were hiking. at dusk and like out in the desert, you know, you got to be careful because that's when some of those animals do their hunting. And about, I want to say maybe just 10 feet in front of me on the path, I hear the, and I saw it kind of slither. And I saw him right on the path. And I just said

to my hiking buddy, I'm like, stop. Don't move. Let's just back up a little bit. There's a snake on the path. And he saw us and slithered on. And then we just sort of stood there for a couple minutes just to make sure he had enough room to kind of vacate the area. Yeah. Yeah. Bring some friends back. All right. Well, good job, guys. We got everything there from, let's recap. Let's recap.

We got Mercury and Freddie Mercury, Krypton and Kryptonite. We got iron in the iron lady. We got the tin in the tinfoil hat. Nickel in the nickel back. We got lead in lead belly. We got oxygen in the oxygen network. Silver and silver linings playbook. Silicon in Silicon Valley.

And copper in the copperhead snake. Colin, what also comes up a lot in trivia, I mean, we get a lot of trivia questions about periodic table of elements, and certainly one of the things that comes up a lot is the abbreviations for standardized abbreviations. Yeah, everyone has one. And now some of these are for English speakers like us, it's like, well, hydrogen is H, oxygen is O, neon is N-E. So, I mean, some of this stuff is a little easy to memorize. But there's 11 elements. on the periodic table whose abbreviations are not derived from their English language names. And so there's a little bit of a, yeah, let's kind of run these down. I'll share a couple of mnemonics, things like that to help you maybe get it to stick in your head what some of these mismatched or seemingly mismatched element names and their official abbreviations are. And maybe you'll remember some of them next time, you know, next time points are on the line. next time two pitchers of beer are on the line.

So basically, so the elements just quickly are sodium is N-A, which we know from our episode about salt. Potassium is K, iron is F-E, copper is C-U, silver is A-G, tin is S-N, Antimony is S-B, tungsten is W, gold is A-U, Mercury is H-G, and lead is P.B.

What do all these elements kind of have in common? They're old. They've been known for a long time. Exactly. They've been around for a while. They're not like conceptual elements. You know what I mean? Like they're not.

There's something you could pull out of the ground and hold in your hand. You don't need like a Hadron Collider or something to make it. Right, exactly. Right. You can find them in nature or you can make them using very old ancient processes that were known for a long time. which means that a lot of these elements just have old names that have stuck around. But that's not the case for all of these, interestingly enough.

So there are many of these that are simply from Latin. So iron is F.E. Because in Latin, it's pharum. And we started, you know, I mean, you've probably heard we talk about, like, you know, things being ferromagnetic or attracted to iron, things like that. Tin was Stannum, which is why it's S.N. Stannum Stannum Yeah

Copper is cupram in Latin Which originally referred to the island of Cyprus So the island of Cyprus has tons of Copper and that's literally what copper means It's like the metal that we found on Cyprus Like that's all it means Yeah Gold is Orum

A-U-R-U-M And of course the Spanish Oro for gold You know kind of comes from this And that's where we get like El Dorado You know the city of gold Also where we get the extremely made up word Dorito, which is, like, the little golden one.

Like, that's what it's supposed to be. That's really good. Right. Right. And the James Bond villain, Goldfinger, whose first name was Orric. Orick. That's right. Oh, wow. Lead is plumbum. Now, that's very easy to remember if you think about plumber or plumbing. Yeah. Because the pipes in your house used to be lead. It used to be lead pipes. And so it was the person who worked with the lead. Silver is Argentum. Argentina is a silver. rich country, and it's the only country named after an element. Now, Mercury is HG. Silver is

AG. Mercury is HG. And that is because the HG is an abbreviation of hydroargyrim, hydroargyram, or water silver. That's what the HG is. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. Okay. Yep. Now, some of these are just what the element is called in other languages, because, you know, like sodium is natrium, like in many modern languages, they call sodium natrium. Tungsten is often called Wolfram in other languages. I wish I could find a really good story. Wolfram is German, but, like, etymologists are like split on where Wolfram came from. The wolf could be a wolf, but maybe not.

Like, it might be a wolf or it might be something else. Yeah, the ROM could be cream or soot or foam. It might just have something to do with, like, the process of, like, refining tungsten. can't even be wolf raven people are like oh it's wolf raven like the nordic uh yeah it's really strong biological creatures yeah yeah yeah i have a better story though about antimony antimony is s b sb is short for stibium okay so i so i go in i start looking this up stibium comes from the ancient greek word stibby okay what's that me.

It comes from the ancient Greek word, Stibby, meaning Antimony. Antimity is a metalloid. It's a really shiny rock-looking thing. Okay. Okay, well, all right, so it comes from Stibby. Well, where did the Greeks get the word Stimby? What does that come from?

Eventually, minutes of agonizing Wikipedia research, I find a source saying that Stibby came from the ancient Egyptian word, setem. And setem is spelled a capital. is ear, an owl, and an eyeball. Okay. Because it's written in hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics.

Yeah. Naturally. Yes. Right. And Setum means to put on eye makeup. And Antimony was a major ingredient in the ancient eye makeup that you see on the ancient Egyptian, you know, women and men in the, you know, with the sort of pointy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is still used today. I mean, in some cultures. So the one that I always found kind of funny, though, was that potassium was K. Let's talk about why that is. So I want everybody, quick experiment. Everybody just run outside, go get some pieces of hardwood.

Okay, so just like go grab some oak or some hickory or something like that. Okay, got it. Got it. Good. Got it. Okay. Okay. So what we're going to do now is we're going to burn that wood until we're just left with a big pile of ash.

Okay. So just go ahead and do that. I'll give you some time. Okay. So now you have a big pile of ash. Let's put it into a big clay pot. It's whatever clay pot you have lying around is fine. Okay.

Put it all in there and then fill the rest up with water. Okay? And let's just let that stand for an hour. So if you want to pause the podcast, let it stand, come back. Okay, I assume you're back now. Go ahead and siphon off the solid should have floated to the bottom of your clay pot at this point. Go ahead and just siphon off the water, leaving all the solids on the bottom. Okay. Now boil that water until it has totally evaporated.

And now look back in the pot and you will see on the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. of the pot, a fine, pure, white, ashy substance. You have pot ash. Oh! Hot ash. That's what pot ash is. No. Leach wood ash into the water, and then take the water, and then burn it, and you get potash.

And potash is potassium chloride, which is an ancient, known for a long time, fantastic soil fertilizer, has many other uses. The word potassium comes from... No. Hot, yes! Potashium. It's right in front of us the whole time. Yep.

So what's K? K. K stands for calium. Kalyam. Kalyam. It's callium. It's an alternate word for potassium. The words potassium and calium were both kind of invented at the same time, early 19th century. Somebody was like, I'll call it potassium for potash.

I was like, no, I'll call it calium. Why? Well, it comes from alkali because potassium chloride, because potassium chloride. is an alkaline substance. And guess what alkali means, what the etymology of that is? It's from the Arabic. Al-Kalai, which means the plant ashes. Okay.

Also, legally, don't make potash at home, unless you're really sure of what you're doing. Please put down the hardwood. People do make their own potash, but like, you know, please, please be careful. So it's potash in both the cake version and the potash. Because it's, yes, because they called it calium for alkali. How about that? I thought when you said, okay, and then boil all the water so it goes away and look in the pot, I thought you were going to be like, you see the letter K there? That's what?

This is a good trick, man. Oh, my God. What a weird. And is this your card? I just always, always, always just figured it's just one of those old-timey words and never bothered to actually look into it literally. ash in the pot, pot ashyam. That is left in the pot. Yep. Man, how do they come up with that?

Just a lot of time on our hands. Just a lot of trial and error. There's just a lot of nothing to do. Why are your tomatoes so big? I just put this random wood water on there. Let me try. All right, let's take a quick break. And we'll be right back.

Steve Cubine and Nan McNamara's podcast from Beneath the Hollywood Sign. Mary Astor has been keeping a diary. Mary writes everything down. And so this torrid affair with George S. Kaufman is chronicled on a daily basis. In great detail. And I. Pulse out a box and gives McAllister a ring saying, here's something to remember me by. This article caused Daryl Zanick to hit the roof. Actress Ruth Roman followed that up with playing a foil to Betty Davis in Beyond the Force.

I mean, if you can stand toe to toe with her, boy. And she does because she plays the daughter of the man that Betty Davis kills out in the hunting trip. And it's directed by King Vidor, so he's no slouch. How do you go wrong with that? Speaking of the Oscars, talking about what I call Beginners Luck, it's all about the actors and actresses who won an Oscar on their very first film. Get your fix of old Hollywood from Stephen Nann on the podcast from Beneath the Hollywood Sign. It feels really good to be productive, but a lot of the time it's easier said than done,

especially when you need to make time to learn about productivity so you can actually, you know, be productive. But you can start your morning off right and be ready to get stuff done in just a few minutes with the Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day podcast. You'll hear advice on everything from how to build confidence to how to get the best night's sleep. New episodes drop every weekday, and each one is five minutes or less, so you only have to listen a little to get a lot more out of your weekdays. Listen and subscribe to Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. That's Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to you.

good job brain smooth puzzles smart trivia good job brain and we're back you're listening to good job brain and this week we're talking about elements whatever whatever that means to us here we go guys It's my turn, and I'm going to be telling you a story with a little quiz at the end. This is a story about how Bruce Springsteen, the boss, is connected to some very familiar elements that a lot of us 90s kids grew up with. Okay, yes, very intriguing, very mysterious, can we to share. That's a good clickbait headline, Karen. 90s kids won't believe how Bruce Springsteen is connected. to. Yes, exactly. So Bruce Springsteen, American rocker, singer, songwriter, the emblem of the American

working class in rock history, the pride of New Jersey, as I learned. Oh, is he from New Jersey? His name. You know, a very honest disclaimer. So I'm not very familiar with Bruce Springsteen music or or any music from that 70s, 80s hole. But, you know, growing up, I knew who he was. He was like the bandana and the jeans born in the USA. So Bruce Springsteen and the East Street band, like many other bands, struggled initially. They put out two albums that the critics loved, but the sales were pretty slow. So they toured while toiling away on their third album, which eventually became born to run.

their spoiler alert it's like big big success it shot them to become a household name during that struggle period before born to run it or working on born to run you know the band toured they played gigs and they noticed this woman in the crowd who was almost at every single show um for a whole year and they noticed this lady who enjoying their music having fun but also snapping away on her camera. She was taking a lot of photos of the band, of the crowd, of the shows. Her name is Barbara Pyle. And this is her recount of her going to Bruce Springsteen shows.

She says, I first saw Bruce and the East Street band by accident. I was blown away by their music. For the next year, I drove to as many of their gigs as I could reach. They jokingly started calling me their official, unofficial, photographer. I knew I was witnessing history in the making. Barbara said she felt like she was supposed to be on this mission to document this unknown band from New Jersey. And eventually she went from unofficial photographer to like official photographer. Bruce and the band started asking her to be at shows at some of the events. And so she was there to document. But more importantly,

she was the only person who's ever been given access inside the recording studio with the band and so while they're making what became born to run she was there snapping pictures and so she basically

photographed their journey from nobody's to massive stardom and actually back in 2015 not that long ago she published she finally published a book of these rare photos that she had of Bruce Springsteen. So who is this Barbara Pyle?

She definitely was a Renaissance woman. And even though she has multiple claims to fame, she probably was mostly known for two things. Her photojournalism career and for something else, which I will tell you. In 1980, she got a gig for photographing America's Cup, which is the sailing, the race, the big race tournament. The yachting, yeah.

And she met media mogul Ted Turner. who founded CNN and then and then Turner broadcasting, you know, and TBS. Ted Turner, I learned used to be a really accomplished skipper. Yeah. You know, sailor. So Ted Turner was at America's Cup competing. And Ted Turner met Barbara Pyle while she was taking pictures of the event. And they both were really, really passionate about like environmental issues and media.

And he eventually just hired her to become the VP of TBS. heading environmental policy and social responsibility. So in 1989, drum roll please, Barbara Pyle and Ted Turner came up with an idea that turned into these elements I'm about to play that may sound very, very familiar. Wind, water.

Captain Planet He's a hero Gonna take pollution down That's right Barbara Pyle and Ted Turner co-created Captain Planet And the Planet

Tears You know they turned their sights From the adult audience at CNN And into a younger audience They had the idea to create this cartoon Featuring of course Captain Planet Who only gets summoned

And, you know, he's not, he's not really the heart of the show, but he only gets someone, like, at the end of the episode. But the five main kid characters, you know, combined their powers as Earth, fire, wind, water, and then heart. The kids, the main characters, were all inspired by real people that Barbara Pyle knew and met, you know, while she was, she used to work on documentaries. And Captain Planet, big, big success went into syndication. I actually watched the dubbed version. Karen, I have to ask, is Captain Planet based on Bruce Springsteen? No, but you know what? It might.

Kind of looks a little bit like Miss Springsteen now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, the mullet. Those buns, man. Oh, the tight jeans. Yeah. Captain Planet went to syndication, dubbed in different languages, including Mandarin, which is the version I watched,

spawned a foundation, merch was made, and under Barbara Pyle's request that the merch was made sustainably, which is, you know, this is like, yeah, on brand. Really 90s. Yeah, yeah, very on brand. So I learned from a profile in the New Yorker that in 2005, another car crashed into Barbara Pyle and caused her brain injury that affected her memory function. So here I quote, New Yorker, for a time, Pyle forgot the detail. of how to walk and talk. She forgot that she'd made Captain Planet, forgot that she had joined Bruce Springsteen as a photographer during his bands born to run tour. But then on June 20th, 2020, which is last year,

she woke up from her memory fog. Really? Wow. Just out of the blue. She was out somewhere and just the memory started to fill in. Oh my God, man. The brain is, that is truly wild. That must be so.

so disorienting. I mean, you must be really happy, but at the same time, like, all these memories come flooding back, you know? That's... Yeah, and it wasn't like she didn't know who she was. She just didn't know parts of her life that people would ask her about. So she is quite the remarkable person. She's worked with the UN, a lot of philanthropy, invested in social issues, reproductive health. Yeah, so from Bruce Springsteen to Captain Planet. So, so as I said before, what I didn't know as a kid for good reason because I grew up with the Mandarin version, the dubbed version of

Captain Planet, is that in the first season there were some major stars who voiced the villains on the show, the big bads were all voiced by like real stars. Here to end the segment, I have a quiz about the villains on Captain Planet. Get your barnyard buzzers

ready. So the names are so funny. Okay, verminous scum, and that's with a K, scum. Verminous scum is a human rat hybrid born out of a toxic environment. The actor who voiced him also famously played a human animal hybrid in a David Cronenberg film. Oh. Uh, Colin.

That must be Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum. Okay. The fly. The fly. And also verminous scum. Okay. Second question.

So Gaia is famously the female spirit of Earth, the mentor to the planeteers, and she is voiced by this eGOT actress, who you might know as Sister Mary Clarence. Dana. Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi Goldberg. That's just her voice. Yeah, I knew that. I knew that one.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Was she doing Captain Planet then at the same time that she was on Star Trek Next Generation? maybe oh yeah she was guinen on star trek and guya gyan so next villain we have zarm zarm zarm zarm is actually like the antithesis of guya he's kind of like a like a god spirit and he's a spirit of war and destruction and is voiced by this mononym singer whose real name is gordon matthew tomness I wonder. Everybody. Sting. Sting.

I didn't know he was doing voice for a show. Wow, that is, yeah. He seems like a hard get in 1989. I think there was a lot of, like, publicity. Like, this is going to be the big thing, like environmental concerns, which is so huge. Tetran. There's so much money behind this. They were like, oh, we're going to get this big name.

You know, you got to do it because, you know, saving the planet, sting. Yeah. You got to voice this. Yeah. Well, and turns out his voice on the show for Zarm is like kind of through like a vote coder. Like it's like through some sort of auto tune filters. So he sounds like a kind of like metal box. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Next one. Dr. Blight is a mad scientist who conducts unethical experiments and voiced by this veteran rom-com actress who played opposite of Tom Hanks for three times in the 1990s. Oh. Chris can only be Meg Ryan. Yes, Meg Ryan. Can you name the three movies in the 90s?

Oh, gosh. So, sleepless in Seattle. She's got male. And is it, it's not Joe versus the volcano, is it? It is Joe versus. Yeah. Okay, all right. Hey, look at that.

Look ended. So Joe versus Volcano, 1990. You Got Mail 1999. Oh, wow. Look at that. The Ryan Hanks bookends. All right. Last question here.

Duke Nukem, not to be confused with the video game character. Duke Nukem is a yellow rock skin mutant representing misuse of nuclear power. He is voiced by the late gray actor, famously Al from the 90s sci-fi show Quantum Leap. And from the 2000 sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica. Oh, what's his name? He recently just passed away. Oh, Colin. That's Dean Stockwell.

My mom used to work in TV and film years ago, years ago, and she knew Dean Stockwell. And she always said that he was one of just the loveliest, just nicest humans that she ever met. Yeah, which kind of, it seems like after he passed, a lot of people were saying the same thing. Just a really, just a good, generous guy. So, yeah. Other people who also appeared. And, you know, the famous people only appeared in the first season.

Right, right. Yep. You got it. Yeah. Other stars include Tim Curry, John Ratzenberger, Pixar's Fave, Ed Asner, Martin Sheen, A.K.A. President Bartlett. Wow, wow. Yeah, so that is my story of the elements I grew up with and loved. I was back to Bruce Priesty.

Barbara Pyle. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the go network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. And we got one last segment. Dana, you promised a weird one. A weird one. So it's weird because it's an experiment.

Okay. This is like, I thought of this and it made me laugh and I tried it out on my husband. And he was like, I hate this, but he doesn't like trivia. He kind of liked it. So, but I was like, I want to try it. This one I'm calling, oh, you mean? And it's. So the word elemental, like I said it to it.

I was like, what should I do? Elemental. like just started coming up with all sorts of nonsense phrases instead of elemental and I was like, okay, this is the segment that we're going to do. So basically, I'll describe a concept and the answer is a phrase that sounds like the word elemental. So, yeah. When you answer, you have to say, oh, you mean, and then say the phrase. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Got it. All right. All right. So maybe it will not work at all, but we'll try it. We'll see how this is. I think this is a good group of people.

Yeah, yeah. I do too. I was like, you guys like trivia. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. Let's start. So I'm thinking of an elm that's tall as a Tolkien tree. An elm that is as tall as a Tolkien tree. Oh, oh, oh. Chris. Oh, you mean an elm that's ent tall? Yeah.

I'm thinking of the letters 12 through 15. Letters number 12 through 15. Karen. Elemeno. Elemeno. You got to just relax the mind. You got to let it just kind of wash over you. All right, here you go.

Mama said knock you out rappers pants size. Oh, you mean, oh, you mean L.L. Mentol? Yes. L.L. Menstall. Yes. There we go. I'm thinking of a mincey cigarette from Southern California. Oh, oh. Chris. You mean an L.A. menthol? That's good.

That's so good. Spanish she referred to French her. Oh, you mean Ea mentel? Yeah. Elementel. Okay. Someone from Oakland describing therapy. Oh, oh.

Oh, you mean. Oh, you mean. hella mental people who are not who don't live Oakland hella is is a word we we say a lot describing something that is very very great quantity

to a great extent I was at the Oakland Zoo and I saw a mother holding her little like little two year old like up so she can see some of the animals and the little baby is like points at like the lions like oh big

And the mom is like, yes, it's hella big. Okay. The last one's not a phrase, but I loved it too much to not include it. Okay. I'm thinking of a cheese from Switzerland. Everybody. You mean? Oh, you mean.

Emmental. Emmental. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Okay, that was bad. No, no, no. That was very good. That was excellent.

Bring it back. Thank you. Dana, that's a good quiz structure. I could see that one recurring here. Yeah. That's hard, though. To make. Yo, yeah.

Yeah. I was just like, oh, these are real tortured. Like, you have to work real hard to get there, but you know. But we got to the answer. Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised your non-trivia liking English as second language learning husband does not like this game, yeah.

Filled with pop culture references. Oh, all right. That was hellimental. That's our show. Can't end the show yet. We're still trapped in outer space. Don't you remember? Oh, no.

I've got me as to being here. I'm not going to recap it, but last time, if you listened to a previous episode of where the heck in space is Carmen San Mateo, we got a clue from Carmen's hench person, D.D. Convict that. Carmen wanted to get her kicks on a dwarf planet that could support life, had a lot of pebbles, and was full of lucky charms. And we adrift in space trying to figure out where to go next to catch Carmen. We just didn't know. We had to ask you the listeners.

And fortunately, a bunch of you were able to solve this puzzle and navigate us to such a place. And you figured out what Carmen was getting at with these clues. There's only a few dwarf planets out there in our solar system. And one of them is named series after the Roman goddess of agriculture and grains. And that's where we get our word cereal from, which is what Carmen, I guess, was referring to with all of her references to kicks, pebbles, life, and probably the giveaway lucky charms. So we set a course for series, boarding our fancy and ridiculous time interloper system or fartist. We land on series. series, interesting,

series was the first asteroid ever discovered. Oh. It's because it's big. It's big. And at first, people thought it was another planet. But then we realized that, yeah,

it's big, but it's not big enough to clear out its own orbit, making it not a planet. But it is big enough for gravity to make it into a sphere, hence it is a dwarf. Oh. So the shape is not like a weird

oblong shape. Right, exactly. It's a round. It's, yeah, it's all. own gravity makes it spherical. So we head over to Ceres. We get down onto the surface of Ceres, the dwarf planet, and we do see down there something strange. It's a very tall cabinet, like really like a whole set, like a whole big wall full of tall cabinets, like 10 feet high, 20 feet long, big, big, big set of like IKEA bookshelf cabinet sort of thing, doors with doors on them,

each with like a silver handle sort of a thing. So we don't know what's inside of these. And as we We walk up, we leave the Fartis, and we walk out in our space suits, obviously, to the cabinet. We stretch our arms out to one of the handles to see what's inside. Just as we're about to open the cabinet, we hear the telltale sound of the Fartis starting up. Oh, no. We realize what has happened before we see it. We whirl around to see the Fartis about to depart without us. Now, in our earpieces, which are really good, they're really very fashionable.

We look really cool in these spacesuits. It's looked really good. We hear this. Ha! That was almost too easy. I've got your prize. I have got your ship, and I've got you right where I want you. Stranded.

Now I can commit trivia crimes and no one can stop me. But before I go and leave you here to rot, I believe I'll finally open this prize. Let's see. It's a pretty small envelope. I bet it's a gift card. I hope it's to Panera bread. Hmm, it's a card.

Something's written on it. Here we go. The real pub trivia prize was the friends we made along the... For the love of James Holtzauer. Are you kidding me? What a kick in the pants. Well, looks like the only prize I'm getting is this fancy new time and space travel device. Welcome to your grave, suckers.

San Mateo out. What are we going to do? No. We turn back to the only other thing that's on the planet. those big cabinets. We open up one of the cabinets, grab the silver handle, open it up to find rows and rows and rows of shelves of breakfast cereal. Ha, Carmen was right. As we look in the cabinets, we realize they're filled with what appears to be every breakfast cereal in existence. It's the beginning of boxed breakfast cereals. It's overwhelming. There's everything in here.

But as we look, there doesn't seem to be anything immediately that can help us get off this dwarf planet return back to Earth. But just when it's seeming impossible, we see a tiny golden plaque on one of the cabinets, with some words engraved into it. We read the plaque, and this is what it says. This cabinet was placed here to commemorate the following spaceflight missions. Atlantis 2, Apollo 6, Gemini 5, Discovery 9. And we're stuck. We're not getting any cell phone reception out here, so it's hard to look any of these things up or what.

So once again, we must turn to you, listeners. figure out what's going on here and get us off this cursed rock. I check the reserve oxygen. I think we have like a week. I mean, it was probably a lot, but, you know, we overpacked. But something has got to be going on with this. I'll read it one more time. This cabinet

was placed here to commemorate the following space flight missions. Atlantis 2, Apollo 6, Gemini 5, Discovery 9. So if you guys can figure out what it is we're supposed to do here with this giant cabinet full of

breakfast cereal and that plaque that might help us somehow, let us know. I'm going to go snack on my favorite cereal, which is golden grams. Okay. While we wait. All right. Karen goes and snacks on some golden grams. Nothing happens. It's very dry.

There's no milk. There's a cow floating near the cabinet. You can squeeze some if you want to, but again, yeah. It's a girl cow, yeah. All right, folks. It's a white cow. That's not helpful. All right, guys, you know the drill.

Help us solve this puzzle and find out what to do next. You can head on over to good job, braine.com, and follow the instructions there. And that's our show. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learned stuff about old element names, about Captain Planet, about L.A. Mentholz and you can find us on Apple

Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and on all podcast apps and on our website, good job, braine.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like Big Picture Science, infamous America, and subtext.

And we'll see you guys next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Have you ever wondered how inbred the Habsburgs really were, what women in the past used for birth control, or what Queen Victoria's nine children got up to? On the History Tea Time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and LGBTQ plus royals explore royales, explore royal family trees and delve into women's medical history and other fascinating topics. Join me every Tuesday for History Tea Time, wherever fine podcasts are enjoyed.