Good Job, Brain! - 257: We Got Beef

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Rivalry! Spitefulness! Meat products! Let's agree that disagreeing can lead to bizarre facts and bonkers quizzes. Snikt and pow your way through Karen's comic book villain lightning challenge. Find out how the humble lobster almost started a war. Colin shares the most outrageous and strangest country border disputes. And of course, surf's up and mayo's down in Chris' regional beef sandwich quiz, "Beefin' USA." 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. Hello, bunch of brain buffs, embracing beefy, brilliant bits. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 257, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your meteoric, meat-cuting meatballs, meatpacking meters of meatloaf. I'm Colin. And I'm Chris. So I have another installment of our Let's Correct Ourself segment, which we know, which is known as Um Actually.

I'm Actually. Um, actually. What you said just wasn't true. Um, actually. Do you mind if I'm. I correct you, because actually, factually, and quite enthusiastically, I was right, and you were wrong. That's exactly what inspired me to write this, um, actually song, you were wrong.

I'm un-actuallying myself. Oh, self-report. It takes a real man. I was listening to our flat episode, and I had been reading about the malleability of different types of metals. and I had been reading about titanium and, like, titanium jewelry, and I've been reading about tungsten jewelry. And I meant to talk about tungsten jewelry, but I said titanium instead. If you have a titanium ring and you hit it with a hammer,

you are definitely not going to crack it. Obviously, it's made of titanium. Titanium literally synonymous with a very, very strong metal. However, tungsten rings, I'm like, oh, this tungsten ring is so cool. They accidentally wrap it on a table or something, and it just cracks. Titanium is not very malleable, but it's also not very brittle either, but tungsten is very brittle and will crack under compressive stress. So I meant to say tungsten. I remember there was an influx of men's tungsten jewelry.

Yes, yes, I'm just going to say that. Because part of the marketing is this is the strongest metal. It is very strong. It is very strong. but it's very brittle. Part of the allure that it was weighty. Oh, so it says here, tungsten is Swedish for heavy stone.

Uh-huh. Chris, I have to thank you. Oh, you're welcome. On our way back from SporkelCon, me and Chris got to wait for a flight in a fancy airport lounge. She did. I was in the other term of, I'm pulling up to the bar and I'm like, okay, I'd like a domestic beer, please.

And they're like, here you go, 1165. Then I'm getting texts from Karen and Chris. They're like, here's my falafel and fresh vegetables. And I got little, oh, I haven't even hit the hot bar yet, you know. And it's like, oh, come on. What's going yet? I'm drinking free beer I've never even heard of. Yeah.

I'm drinking like this like German, yeah, it was amazing. It's incredible. So, yeah, I hope you guys had a good time there. We really did. Thank you. We did. We really. did thanks to our credit card companies that gave us that perk um i mean we were just killing time i was

doing new york times crossword and chris was playing a weird game on his phone and i've never seen it before and i was like what is that it is also a new york times game chris what is it oh it's it's connections the york times connections yes super good job brain the premise is you have 16 words and there are four categories. They don't tell you what the categories are. You just have these 16 words and you're trying to piece together and logic out what the four categories could be.

Yeah. It's really fun. I really urge everybody to try it. I think I enjoy it more than Wordle. After playing Myrtle a lot, it's just the same game over and over and over again. But with connections, because it has to be kind of like

carefully constructed and they can be clever things with it, It's always, it's always a different kind of challenge. It's one of those games where you're smiling as you go through it. And like, even at the end, you're like, ah, I see what you did. And you're smiling, you know what I mean? Like, it kind of has that payoff throughout the game or you're really mad. That too, that too. All right.

Well, without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have a box of random trivial pursuit game. cards you guys have your barnyard buzzers your kids are going to inherit this bin of cards someday karen they're going to be like yeah i don't know what my mom used these for but they must have been really important to her for some reason they are they are important all right buzzin with the right answer here we go jumping in trivial pursuit this is copyright 2016 blue retro geography with over 35 million residents what is the most populous city in the world over 35 million residents most pop-

Did that change? Chris? I mean, I was going to say Tokyo. It is Tokyo. It is. Okay, all right, yeah. The last time I heard this stat, it's like, one quarter of the population of Japan lives within commuting distance.

It's incredible. That's incredible. Correct, as of the time of the card, is all you're being held to. It is still correct. I'm just double-checking now. It is still number one. What's number two? Number two is Delhi.

Okay. So one, two, three, Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai. What's the highest North American city on the list? Oh, interesting. Mexico City. Oh, okay. Oh, you mean U.S. I'm curious about U.S. too.

New York City. All right. Big Apple. Next question, Pink Wedge for pop culture What is the boy? What is the full name of Australian boy band 5SOS? Oh. All right, ready?

Here we go. Okay. Five sons of Sydney. Oh, that's really good guess. It is five seconds of summer. Oh. Five seconds of summer. Next question.

Yellow Wedge, which sought after snack took eight months to return to shells after its parent company hostess declared bankruptcy. Oh. Colin. That's the, uh, the Twinkie, right? Yes, Twinkies made a comeback in 2013. Purple Wedge. Next question.

Which musical shares a title with a deaf leopard song, but the song does not appear in its production. Oh my gosh. Okay. Musical shares a title with a deaf leopard song. Oh, man. Ready? Yeah.

Rock of ages. Rock of ages, the show named after the song. That's not even in the show, even though the whole premise of the show is a jukebox musical. Yes, 80s rock songs. Yep. All right, Green Wedge. What is the name of the astronomical tool created over a thousand years ago and used to compute time and the position of the stars? That is a sex tint

No, let me read again What is the name of the astronomical tool Created over a thousand years ago And used to compute time and the position of stars If you are a Game of Thrones fan Oh, is that an astrolabe? Yes, it is an astrolabe The spinny thing in the credits

Yeah, yeah, the cool kind of multi-piece Yeah, yeah, it's actually an astrolab interesting all right uh last question on this card orange wedge which quarterback set the all-time mark for most passing touchdowns in an NFL career in 2014 2014 most touchdowns the most famous quarterback in 2014 yeah man well or somebody at the end of a very long career Tom Brady incorrect the only one I know I know I no that's not true. I know more. Do you want me to guess some more? Yeah.

Peyton Manning. Correct. It is Peyton, yes. Yeah. Nobody asked me any other quarterbacks. That's it. Two supplet answers, including the right answer there. Yes. All right.

Today's episode, Colin, our trusty topic picker, what did you choose for us? We got beef, which is all about arguments and disputes. and however, however you define attention, we got beef. With differences of opinion, I thought that would just be a great topic. Or meat. Yeah. Or, hey, or just regular beef, you know? Like, we can traverse all avenues here on the show.

And so this week, we got beef. So I. I was just reading about right in our backyard, there is a somewhat famous example of something that I love, which is a spite house. Oh, yeah. There's something, there's something when people and neighbors get so petty, it almost becomes joyful and entertaining in a way. Yeah, just, yeah, how far are you willing to take your beef with your neighbor? So, yeah, a spite house, the idea being you are using your house as a thumb and someone's, eye. As someone who did you wrong, you've got to gripe with, you're going to use your property.

You know, a classic example is the person who puts up a 30 foot high, 40 foot high wall or an enclosure on their property just to block out someone's sunlight or just to make it, just to take away their view. That's so mean. It's just, it's so, and there are examples of this around, around the country, around the world. There is a spidehouse very close to us. It was someone who had a piece of property that was radically diminished by the city of Alameda.

They were expanding and building streets out there. A person named Charles Frolling, he ended up with a strip of land. And he felt, apparently, the story goes, that his neighbor was really not very helpful in kind of resisting the city's fight. Because the neighbor was kind of like, yeah, do what you want. It doesn't affect me. So he had his house built on this strip of land. It's 54 feet long. It's 20 feet high, so two stories, and it's 10 feet wide.

It is 10 feet wide at the base, and it is built right up, just right up to the property line. I mean, and it takes away the neighbor's sunlight. In fact, he even had a stained glass window facing out over the front door. it says, in case it wasn't clear, spite house. Now, you can't build something like this anymore. Oh, really? Why not? Just zoning, zoning restrictions and building codes. Like, you just, you can't, you're no longer allowed to do something like this, like even as a, you know, a stunt or even if you feel you've got a legitimate gripe.

You have to have increased distances between your neighbors and there's minimum sizes and things like that. So, but a lot of these spite houses that exist were grandfathered in because they were, you know, legal when they were built. It looks so funny. Yeah, it does. It just, it looks like someone cut a house into like thirds or a half, yeah, and just dropped half of it. It's like, oh, it's like when you're playing Tim City, you know, and you've just got like this just ridiculously shaped building just because it fits the parcel of land or something. Yeah. But that is not the spite house that I wanted to share with you guys today.

This fight house, this saga started in 2012. There was a woman in England with the absolutely fantastic name of Zippera-Leal mainwaring. Just fantastic, fantastic name. So she was 71 at the time of these events. She was a well-to-do developer. She bought a townhouse in Kensington, a rather upscale area of London, as you may know, several million on this house she bought. And she wanted to turn this house from a three-story building into a two-story house

and a two-level basement, okay? Her neighbors were not happy with this plan. I think partially because of the noise and the dust and all that. And also partially, it sounds like in this neighborhood that she was in, they were very protective of the character of the neighborhood. So I'm just laying the groundwork here. So they, so she had to. file her plans, like I want to do this yet approval. Her neighbors were not helpful. They were very

vocal in their... But they can't really stop her from applying. They can certainly show up at local council meetings and say, we don't want this to happen. If it goes up for public comment, they can comment in the negative. As it turns out, the local council denied her application for the plans. All right. Now, Ms. Lil Maynewering insisted that what happened next was not done as a troll job by 2015, she ended up painting the house in big, bold, vertical red and white candy stripes, like the entire front of the house, like from the sidewalk all the way up to the roof, probably eight and ten inch wide red stripes. It made everyone so mad. People were so angry at this

troll job she was cited by the the borough under the town and country planning act. Again, she was in trouble again. They basically gave her four weeks and said you have to paint your house back to white. Like this is not acceptable.

You're violating, again, the spirit of the neighborhood. All right, now I got I got to pause here for a second because I almost forgot my favorite part of this troll job is she painted it red, white, alternating candy stripes but she left the last stripe unfinished if you look up a photo of this house you can see it's got you know a dozen or so red stripes across and the last one goes up halfway

and stops and like if i woke up as an angry neighbor it's bad enough i have to look at these red stripes every day but just it would make me twitch that extra little bit that she didn't finish the last light i know i'd be like oh it's just you're just twisting the the night there Like, at least finish the stripe. She dug in her heels. And she, like, she said to the council, you know, like, no, you can't make me do this. This is my house. I don't really care what you all say.

She appealed the decision to a higher court. She won her decision. So this was like 2017. She had spent years now sort of bickering with the local council and her neighbors over this red and white striped house. she finally won the ability to do what she wanted with the structure. After all this, I think she had finally had enough of it. And she did, in fact, end up repainting the house to a much more modest color, partly out of feeling she had maybe proved her point,

but partly out of like it was just a headache of people coming by and looking at it and giving her grief. The insistence on her part that it was just done out of the spirit of levity to make the neighborhood a happier place and not trolling is what just makes it the perfect troll job in my eyes a new a new way of thinking about a spite house if i were to do a spite house or even just my regular house if i were if i were bold enough i would do like paint the whole house in lime green so it can be used as a green screen that'd be so funny all right let's get our brain juices flowing i have a quick lightning round quiz all right rub it rubbing the

brain. We've talked about comic book villains before. I have an obsession with Batman villains. I think the Rokes Gallery is so cool. I love their insane backstory or origin story. Colin, you shared about Pacepot P. Crazy Quill is one of my favorites. Comic book culture and comic book stuff has become such a force in pop culture now.

Oh, yeah. More so than 10 years ago. Yeah. Definitely part of the zeitgeist now. Oh, yeah. So here I have a quick lightning round quiz. I'm going to focus on the villains. The villains got beef with our beloved superheroes.

I'm going to give you their real government name, and you tell me what their moniker is. Okay. Okay. These are all villains that had beef with a superhero at some point. All right. Buzzers at the ready lightning round. here we go. Eddie Brock.

Oh. Colin. That's, that's, that's, uh, uh, venom. Correct. Orokusaki. Chris. Shredder. Shredder.

And a fun fact, a wrestler slash actor, Kevin Nash played Super Shredder in, yes, in, uh, Teenage of the U's, too, Secret of the Ouse. Yep, that's diesel. Remember your old WWF. All right, here we go. Pamela Isley. Chris. Poison Ivy.

Oh. Norman Osborne. Collin. Norman Osborne was the Green Goblin. Correct. Next one. Eric Lemcher. Oh, Eric Lensher is Magneto from the X-Men.

Correct. His middle name is Magnet. It's really convenient how, like, naming is destiny in the world of comics. You know what I mean? Like, if your middle name is Magnus, you're going to have, like, magnet powers. Like, that's just how it works. What about this one? Dr. Harlem, Francis Quinzel.

Chris. Harley Quinn. Correct. Wilson Fisk. Oh. I've heard that. Colin. That is the Kingpin.

Kingpin. Daredevil and Spider-Man, to a lesser extent. Okay, this one is funny. Alexander, Joseph Luther. Oh. Chris. Lex Luther. Yes, it's Lex.

Lex is short for Alexander. Alexander. Yes, yes. Julian Gregory Day. Julian Day. Julian Day. Oh, is Colin. Is Julian Day?

Is that Osiemandias? That is Calendar Man from that man. Oh, Calender Man. Day, of course. Julian Gregory Day, very good. Next one, Emil Blonsky. Amel Blonsky. Oh.

A male Blonsky. Played by one of my favorite actors, Tim Roth. It is. If you watch She-Hulk, it is Abomination. Abomination. Okay. Next one, Jonathan Crane. Chris.

Scarecrow. Correct. Cletus Cassidy. It is carnage Okay Darren Cross Darren Cross Oh

Darren Cross Man why do these all sound so familiar If I gave you the superhero name It's impossible to think of their real name Ah Darren Cross Villain in the Antman universe Like yellow jacket

Was that one of the words? Jacket, Yellow Jacket. All right. Last one. Cain Marco. What villains have not come up yet, I guess. Cain Marco is better known as Juggernaut. Oh. Oh. Oh. I just never thought he was like a person. There is humanity. Just a man wearing a really weird piece of armor. Yeah. Julius Day calendar man. Incredible. Julian Gregory Day

Yes, as in the Gregorian calendar You feel like once you see it In retrospect, like, ah, yes It's, oh, it's a real Yeah, it's a real face palm Yeah, okay It's a chef's kiss A chef kiss face palm

It's like when you hiccup and sneeze at the same time You have to find a way to it, yeah It's just really uncomfortable Yeah All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. When planning for life's most important moments, sometimes the hardest part is simply knowing where to start.

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funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. History never says goodbye. It just says, see you later. Edward Galliano was right when he said that. Events keep happening over and over again, in some form. And that's the reason I produced the podcast, My History Can Beat Up Your Politics. What is it?

We take stories of history. and apply them to the events of today to help you, perhaps understand them better. We are also part of Airwave Media Network. I've been doing the program since 2006. That's a long time, and the show has a long name. My history can beat up your politics. Find me wherever you get podcasts. You're listening to Good Job Brain.

Smooth puzzles, smart trivia. Good job, brain. And we're back. This week, we got beef. Who's got beef next? I have some beef for you guys because I did not hear. I'm very literal. So when, you know, Colin was like, this is all about.

beef I'm like great as in meat that comes from cows fantastic I love doing food segments and it just instantly I could think of nothing other than I wanted to do something about regional beef sandwiches the United States of America because Americans no matter where America is a big country America is very diverse country America is like 50 different countries colonarily speaking but we all love our beef sandwiches. We've just arranged it into many similar but ultimately very different types of sandwiches. Now, of course, the most important thing when you're doing a quiz like this is to come up with a really good title. Agreed.

At first, I was like, I'll call it regional beef, you know, which was pretty good. I started thinking about, I started thinking about like, oh, let's, I could call it like, where is the beef? Like, where is it for, like, here's the beef from? Then I kind of, my brain kind of went to, like, oh, beefing from coast to coast or something like that. And then, and then as lightning struck and I was inspired, that is by the title of this quiz is, Beef in USA. Everybody's from Beefing. Beef in USA.

This is the. joy of working with Chris Kohler is you get bespoke cover theme songs. All right. I got my new ringtone now. There you go. Okay. So anyway, let's go. Let's get into it. Beef in USA. The hottest new game show. Ten questions. All about regional beef sandwiches. You guys know I have the Wikipedia sandwich list. And you've got and you've had your like your state marathons, Karen. So I feel like you've been training for this moment your whole life. Exactly, all right. So the other, the fun thing is that, of course, this being America and these being like these hyper-regional sandwiches, so layers on layers here, there's sometimes beef about the beef, you know what I mean?

So there's sometimes fights over, you know, the beef sandwiches. So I'll let you know if there's any beef beef happening here as we go through. Beefception. Grab those buzzers. Number one, despite its name, what famous beef sandwich originated in Los Angeles? in the early 1900s. Karen. The French dip.

The French dip, yes. Oh, Colin, I thought you were going to snag that from me. I was just, I was half a second too late. I was half a second behind you. Yep. Thin roast beef generally served on a French baguette with with the thin gravy. Yeah. The beef around this sandwich, and Colin, maybe you know what the beef is here.

There's two restaurants in L.A. that both claim to have invented the French Dip sandwich. You have Coles and Filippes. Oh, I love a good French Dip sandwich. French Dip, yes. Next question, originating in Iowa and also known as a tavern sandwich, what sandwich made with ground beef shot to national fame when it was featured extensively on the sitcom Roseanne?

Karen was in a little bit early. Slopinjee. Yes. Incorrect. It is not the sloppy Joe. Okay. Colin, you want to take a... No, I was going to say Sloppy Joe, too.

It's not the Sloppy Joe. It is, no, it is the loose meat sandwich. The loose meat sandwich. Very well known in the Midwest. It is ground beef with sauteed onions, like all mixed together, they're on a bun. It's like a sloppy Joe, but it does not have any slop. Got it. There's no slop.

It's seasoned and it's flavored, but there's no slot. Okay, it's less wet. Yes, they opened up, and Roseanne, they opened up a loose meat, you know. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next question. Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, well known for its chicken wings, but also for a particular beef sandwich. In fact, the national chain Buffalo Wild Wings was originally called BW3 or Buffalo Wild Wings

and Blank. Oh. Buffalo Wild Wings. Buffalo Wild Wings and Blank. Or BW3. Something W as a solving aid. Do you know this? Wellington.

East Coast. Oh, well. Interesting, yes. This is a, this is a Buffalo area thing. They've got it up in Rochester as well. The sandwich is called Beef on Weck. Ifon Weck, W-E-C-K. So Buffalo Wild Wings was originally called Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck.

Wow. What is Weck? Weck refers to a Kumow-Weck role. And Kumow-Weck is a roll that is topped with salt and caraway seeds. The Kumil is caraway seeds. If you're in Buffalo or Rochester, this is served everywhere. Very, very famous. Ooh.

Yeah, how about that? I love it. staying in the great state of New York, if you were to make the New York City bodega sandwich known as a chopped cheese, you would begin by putting what on the grill? I thought the chopped cheese was like just meat and cheese, basically. I thought that was pretty much all there was, too. But what do you put first on the grill? I'll see what you're saying.

What is the major, like, ingredient that this starts with? I'll say cheese. The answer is a pre-formed burger patty. So the chopped cheese is made not with like putting ground beef onto the grill. It's like a pre-formed. Like a frozen burger patty, which would ordinarily be made to make burgers and putting that on the grill. And then letting that, you know, develop a crust and then chopping it. Got it. Okay.

Chop cheese. You know, very well known in the New York City bodega scene. almost entirely unknown outside of that. Incredibly good, though, and made correctly. If you, let's travel a little further south. If you were to walk into a steak sandwich establishment in Philadelphia and ask for WISWIT, what two toppings will your sandwich have on it? It would have cheese whiz, like spread, and it would have peppers. Incorrect.

onions. onions is correct Whizwit is short for Whiz with onions Peppers or mushrooms or stuff like that would be you'd have to call that out That's a higher tier of

But they ask you if you want it with or without They're really they're asking about the onions Now of course there are lots of Beefs over the Philly cheese steak Yes A whether or not Gino's or Pats is the best steak in Philly But also the ongoing debate over whether the canonical cheese on a cheese steak should be cheese whiz,

as in the processed cheese sauce, versus provolone. Because there's a lot of people who would tell you a real Philly cheesecake would use sharp provolone cheese. But then, of course, a lot of people would tell you a real Philly cheesecake uses cheese whiz, and we're not going to be able to resolve that here. We are not taken aside. Next question. The character, Tracy Turnblad, sings good morning to this city,

which boasts its own regional beef sandwich known as the pit beef. Heron. Good morning, Baltimore. Good morning, Baltimore, opening number in the musical hairspray. Yes. Very nice.

Baltimore's sandwich, the pit beef, contains charcoal-fired roast beef with onions and horse radish sauce. Yeah. Next question. The website emerales.com features a roast beef variation of this sandwich. Roast beef, Emerald.

Oh. Colin. Is it a muffoletta? It is not a muffletta. Oh. I'm going to guess po-boy. Correct. It was a post-boy.

Yeah, could have gone either way on that one. Emeralds.com being the website of Emerald Lagassee, famous for his Creole cuisine of New Orleans. Yes. The beef, by the way, the fight over the po-boy of late is how you spell it. Oh. AP style, the Associated Press says P.O. apostrophe, boy. Yes. But many New Orleans spell it without an apostrophe at all, just connecting it together.

Oh, just P.O. Or with a dash, like, Po boy with no punctuation at all, or Po dash boy. There was a big fight over that. Again, did not really get resolved. Hitzburg's regional beef sandwich, which usually made at restaurants like Primanti Brothers, is full of beef pastrami, tomatoes, cheese, coleslaw. and what? Aaron.

Like fried onions. It is not fried onion. Oh, man. Oh, French fries, French fries. That's what you were getting at. Yeah. The classic Pittsburgh sandwich has pastrami.

And they're tall. I just remember them being really tall. Well, when you're stuffing a big fistful of French fries in the sandwich, it tends to get pretty big. The coleslaw makes it kind of slippery, too. It's a real challenge. A two-hander, as they say, right? Yeah, yeah. So, speaking of which, next question, an open-faced sandwich that is built of Texas toast, a beef patty, French fries, and cheese sauce called The Horseshoe was created in what city? The city is the last one Abraham Lincoln lived in before he moved to the White House.

Okay So Karen is buzzed in It's going to be Illinois So it's going to be Either Chicago or where he looked like Springfield Springfield.

Okay, yes Yeah, okay Springfield, Illinois is it Yes, Springfield, Illinois Nice Home of the regional beef sandwich known as the horseshoe Again, that is

Texas toast on the bottom A beef patty A big pile of French fries and then cheese sauce. It's an open face sandwich. It is technically still a sandwich. I would not call the Rochester garbage plate a sandwich because there is no, you can't make a sandwich out of it, but the horseshoe. It just sounds like a bunch of burger stuff, but all in one plate. It's more efficient though, Karen. Doesn't have that top bun to slow you down. You just get right down to business with the horseshoe. Yeah. Just the way honest Abe would like it.

And final question, of course, two different bars in Minneapolis both lay claim to the invention of this rhyming sandwich that features cheese stuffed inside a burger patty. Ryming sandwich. You buzzed in with authority. I believe this is called a juicy Lucy. Oh, my goodness. You are correct. It is a juicy loozy. Karen, you are just, you're playing this day.

on another level. I cannot hang with your sandwich knowledge. This is amazing. The Juicy Lucy. The juicy Lucy and the beef over this. You'll love this, Colin. The beef over the juicy Lucy. Of course, there's two bars, which are both, you know, say that they invented it with no help from anybody else. The two bars are Matt's Bar and the 5-8 Club. At Matt's Bar, the sandwich is spelled J-U-C-Y, L-U-C-Y. So Juicy is misspelled. Okay. Whereas at the 5-8 club, juicy is spelled with an eye. And at the 5-8 club, they have the motto, if it's spelled right, it's done right.

Whereas, apparently at Matt's bar, they have the motto, if it's spelled correctly, you are eating a shameless rip-off. So I don't know. Again, I'm not getting involved. It's great for them. Congratulations. I'm surprised there's not a third cheese-filled burger outfit, and they call it Juicy, spell, J-U-I-C-Y, and then Lucy, L-U-I-C-Y-Y. There should be. Maybe we should start that. Room to horn in on the market. Juicy and Lucy. We're just forming the Juicy Lucy District at that point. Yeah.

Right. I love that you found the beef over the beef. Like, that's fantastic. Well, anyway, thank you all for playing Beefin' USA. If everybody had cheese-stay across the USA, then everybody'd be beeping like Philadelphia. You'd see a meeting to lose me eat. Hurst be bar boy too. Juicy, Lucy and French'd say.

in USA I know I know that you probably spent as much time on that as everything else combined and I just want to say well worth it absolutely would not do it differently. I did the little title

the singer thing like this morning when we're getting the kids ready for school and I absolutely didn't have the time to do it but I did it anyway because I couldn't get out of my head and then by the time that I was done with work and came home I the fill like I mean the fillet I couldn't. I'm like, I have to do this.

So I, yeah. Now everybody has to make theme songs for your quizzes. Y'all, you know, I am very tuned in on lobster news. Oh, yeah. I've talked about lobsters extensively on the show. I want to ask you to, just when you picture a lobster in your head, like in the ocean, in the water, how would you describe lobsters moving? Oh, no. Kind of just crawling along, sort of just at a state, at a stately pace.

Like, not, like, not doing a lot of moving, just, like, just, just sort of chilling on the bottom and like, like the mob boss and Goodfellas, like, only as, only as cast as they have to. This will come back. This will come back. In 1960s, many African nations that were under the French colonial rule were becoming independent, right? which also means that there is less ocean area in Africa for France's fishing industry. A lot of the French seafood supply became limited, especially lobsters. And they're like, we got to go find more lobsters. So the French sent large fishing vessels to explore and look for potentially more lobsters. And boy, did they find them.

They found some hotbeds of lobsters, about a hundred miles off the coast of Brazil. That's a long way from France. Yes, it is a long way from France. And Brazil got pissed. Hey, these are our lobsters. What are you doing in, what are you doing near us? But are they actually Brazil's lobsters? So, have you heard of the continental shelf?

Do we know what that is? Yeah. The continental shelf. it's the stretch of the seabed adjacent to the shores of a country so let's say you're going to a beach right you go to the beach you go into the water and then you kind of swim out and then you notice that all of a sudden the seafloor drops significantly right so the continental shelf is pretty much everything up to that point before you get the big hole drop and so yeah the stretch of seabed that is adjacent to the shores of of a particular country. So the Geneva Convention granted nations the right to all resources, including plants and animals, if they are in constant physical contact with the continental shelf of the country,

which means everything within the seabed area belongs to the country. Maybe there is a seaweed that's growing off a beach in Japan. That seaweed is owned by Japan. So Brazil says, lobsters crawl. They're like oysters. They cling to the bottom of the floor and that's where they move. Therefore, in constant contact with the continental shelf. So these lobsters are Brazilian property, right?

French were like, no, lobsters are like fish. They swim. They swim about in the open sea. Prolicking hither and young. Yeah, they cannot be considered as part of it. of the continental shelf. And that was the beef. This weird argument of how do we classify the movement of lobsters?

This went on for like two years. Brazil sent out a fleet of six destroyers and patrol boats to kind of like shoe away to drive away all the foreign, the French boats. And they actually captured three French ships. So then the French sent a destroyer on their own. Nothing's really happening, though. They're still fixated on how. How do we define how lobsters move?

Of whether they touch the ground when they move or not this. Oh, my God. And so, yeah, and Brazil brought in an oceanography expert into its diplomatic committee. So it's this oceanography expert. He said something really funny, the admiral Paulo, Mora de Silva. To say that the lobster is like a fish whenever it comes off from the sea floor to swim is like saying a kangaroo becomes a bird whenever it hops into the air. The conflict started 1961.

Finally, there was an agreement in 1964. And how was the dispute resolved? No shots fire, no war, kind of anti-climatic. Basically, Brazil extended its territorial waters. And, like, I still feel like I need to go and, like, do my own observation here now. Like, how do lobsters move? Yeah, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Square.

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what's not, and what's next. Because when you're doing big things, your tools should to. Visit square.ca to get started. We got one last segment, Colin, where's the beef? The beef, we're going international. Chris has beef in USA. We're going to take the beef around the world.

I love Karen. This is a great segue here, and we don't coordinate these, I swear. But I love the international beef you've described here. I in particular am very fascinated with border disputes. Oh, yeah, they got petty too. So petty over sometimes the least desirable pieces of land. It just becomes such a matter of principle and national pride. And sometimes it leads to some very funky outcomes.

There are a lot of border disputes that end or at least have shooting wars involved. There's a lot where there's a lot of bloodshed. I wanted to find a few examples of things that have turned out in unusual ways. Let me put it. So I got a few examples here of border disputes and how they have sort of settled or maybe not quite settled. So we're going to go way north to start here. We're going to go to a very tiny little chunk of land called Hans Island, tiny, uninhabited, cold chunk of rock. It is in the middle of the Nairis Strait separating Canada and Greenland.

Oh, okay. So way, way, way up there by none of it. And for many years, there was an active, somewhat good nature dispute over who owns this little chunk of land where no one lives there, like maybe some birds land there occasionally, no one lives there. Traditional people in the area, the Inuit were well aware of it, but there were no resources on there, it was uninhabited. And so the Canadians were like, hey, yeah, that's obviously our island, Greenland, essentially controlled as an extension of, the Danish government's like, yeah, that's, that's our island, actually. It's funny that you think that. In 1984, things took a little bit of a turn here, and it was the start of what they call

the whiskey war, okay? Some soldiers from Canada had traveled to the island. They planted a Canadian flag, and they left a bottle of Canadian whiskey behind. Okay. And made it known that they had done this. So later that year, the Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs, because I cannot let this stand. So the minister traveled out to Hans Island left a Danish flag,

left a bottle of Danish schnapps, and like a note that basically said, hey, you know, welcome to Danish territory. You know, thanks for, thanks for visiting Hans Island. Over the following years, it kind of continued somewhat in this vein. Like it was sort of open, public, it's kind of jocular. And, you know, like you would see representatives from the countries, like, you know, talking about it, like answering,

questions at a press conference, they're always just kind of smiling and laughing when they talk about it. Like, oh, yeah, you know, at some point, I'm sure we'll settle this. It's our island, though, for real. Like, just to be clear, it's our island. You know, like, they always make sure to end with, like, just to be clear, it's our island. So finally, in 2022, all right, just happened, in large part as a show of how nations can solve problems amicably, you know, of against the backdrop of Russian invasion and things going on, you know, you know, if we can put our differences aside over this little piece of land, then other countries can do the same. There are no stakes.

Yeah, exactly. It had also just been going on for a very long time and they're extremely low stakes. So, yeah, representatives from the Danish government, the Canadian government, they got together, they basically split the island in half. Oh, my God. It's not exactly 50-50. Denmark slash Greenland got the bigger chunk. So they fared out better.

They got about 60% versus 40% to Canada. But most importantly, everybody is happy. No shots were fired. Nobody was hurt or killed or lost or anything like that. I have a question. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. This rock.

They split it in half. So like here's the line in the middle. This is Canada. This is Greenland slash Denmark. Does that mean they border each other now? Yes. So, Karen, there have been some, so this, so this is what I love about the story. So it created some really interesting new trivia here.

So for one, this island is now the third shortest land border between any two countries. And it established a second land border for Canada, which previously only had a land border with the U.S. That's right. And it established a second land border for Canada. for the Danish realm as well, which previously only had a border with Germany. That's right. So now each country, each realm now has another additional land border.

It is also apparently the northern most international land border in the world. Oh. I want to go? Yeah. It's made it cooler now. Yeah. Made it cooler. It is cooler.

If someone could open up a gift shop there and some, sustain it. Yeah, good luck. Good luck to them up on, yeah, on Hans Island. So let's travel a little bit. We're going to go south, a good bit south, in fact, to pheasant island, like the bird, pheasant. Fessent Island. Now, Hans Island is tiny. Fessent Island is minuscule. Fessent island is 660 feet long. It is 130 feet wide and it sits right in the middle. of the Bidasoa River, which forms the border between France and Spain. It is an eroding, uninhabited, just little chunk of dirt and trees and land. Very small.

No one lives there. It is, as I say, it's right in the middle of the river. And often when there's land in a river, it's pretty clear which side of the river. It's on, generally speaking, if it's past the midline, it goes to one country, if it's past the other midline. But this one's right in the middle. This is my favorite solution to a potential border dispute. Rather than fighting about Fezant Island with guns or soldiers or whiskey or schnapps, France and Spain take turns running Fezant Island.

Every six months, control of Fezant Island alternates between the government of Spain and the government of France. And they just do it in a very orderly way. there is an official schedule and every six months changes over. It sounds like in practice, though, on a day-by-day basis, Fezoned Island is effectively run by the mayors of the two towns closest to it on either side of the border. I wonder if they have a sign or a light that tells you currently under control of... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How cool would that be? That would be pretty cool, actually. Yeah, I looked at some pictures of it. I can't say it's a very impressive looking parcel of land. All right. I want to close here with this to me really felt like a good job brain story. This is a border dispute that has created a very interesting turn of events in the world. I'm going to tell you guys about a region of land known as Beir Tawil, and this is a pocket of land, very small, and it sits right on the border between Egypt to the

the north and Sudan to the south. Okay. Okay. I'm going to give you a real dime store thumbnail history of the region. In 1890, the local government of Egypt and the United Kingdom, which up to that point had been a major power in the region, colonial power, were essentially deciding on the line of demarcation between what would be Egypt or what would remain Egypt and what would be Sudan. And they agreed, as countries often do, they chose a line of latitude. And they said, all right, the 22nd parallel, the 22nd parallel, right, it's already pre-decided. We don't need to survey it. This will be the border. Like anything above the 22nd parallel is Egypt. Anything below the 22nd parallel is the region of Sudan at the time. Great. Seems at least very

unambiguous and easy just to decide. Nice straight line, runs all the way out to the Red Sea. Boom. Yeah. Yep. Right. Okay. Rather than leave well enough alone, three years later, the UK government drew up a separate, quote, administrative boundary map. The goal of this map was to sort of recognize the facts on the ground of how the land was actually being used by the peoples who lived in those regions. Just to throw a wrench in the works here, it did not follow the same line as the 22nd parallel line. All right. So it was not a nice straight line. The new line in this administrative boundary went most of the way straight. And then it kind of dipped south a little bit below the 22nd, just for a little chunk, came back up.

That little chunk is Bertawill, and we'll talk about this in the second. Then it went up a good bit to the north of the 22nd parallel and enclosed another chunk of land called the Halaibre triangle, substantially bigger and substantially more designate. and bordering the Red Sea, this really complicated things, because now both countries wanted access to the Halaib Triangle. They both wanted this nice big chunk of land, which was already sort of nominally in Egypt, in Egypt's mind. So they basically didn't agree, and they kept fighting about it, kept fighting about it. After the independence of Sudan in the 1950s, continued fighting about it, to this day,

it is disputed. And here's where it gets really interesting. So Egypt wants to recognize the 22nd parallel line. And they say, we clearly own the Halaib triangle, the big area. We do not care anything at all about Birtowil. That's your territory, Sudan. Sudan wants to stick to the administrative boundary, the one that goes up and down and gives them the Halaib triangle. But in order to claim that, they have to renounce control over the region. called Bertha Will because they don't want it. And if they say they take it, they are in effect agreeing to the 20 second parallel boundary.

Okay. So this dispute has created a situation where there is a tiny little pocket of land below the 22nd parallel. Neither country wants it. They don't want to put people there or develop there or lay any claim to it. So it is one of the very few areas on the entire planet that is not claimed by any country. It's not claimed by any international state. This little kind of four-sided region and neither country wants it because to claim it means you have to give up the bigger space. Give up the bigger

side. So well then then what about the triangle? I don't want to say it's de facto Egypt territory, but it is above the 22nd. I think Egypt currently exerts the most control over it. Let me put it that way. Yeah. It is disputed. It's disputed. And if you go look even on, you know, Google Maps or Google Earth, you'll see that it's drawn in a little bit different line there. You can see the larger Halaib triangle, and then you can see this tiny little chunk that's the Beirtowil region. Neither country wants the small one. They're like, no, it's up for grabs. We should go get it. We should go plant our flag and a bottle of whiskey and come up with a beef sandwich, yeah. When I name myself, glorious president for life.

And that's our show. Thank you all for joining me and thank you, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learned stuff about loose meats, the lobster war, pheasant Island, spitehouses, and comic book villains. You can find us on all major podcast apps and on our website, good jobbrain.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like The Explorer's Podcast, Movie Therapy, and plotting through the presidents. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye.

Bye. tells part of the story. The big picture questions and the most interesting research in science. Seth and I are the host. Seth is a scientist. I am Molly and I'm a science journalist. And we talk to people smarter than us and we have fun along the way. The show is called Big Picture Science. And as Seth said, you can hear it wherever you get your podcast.