Good Job, Brain! - 270: ALL QUIZ BONANZA! #54

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Triv it up with a hodgepodge of quizzes delivered straight into your hippocampus! Let's play "Literally Speaking" where you wildly guess the even wilder origins of very plain everyday phrases. Karen invites you to name that TV show theme song but beware, we're kicking up a notch in difficulty. No Gimmies! Tony award-winning Broadway musicals quiz, Jason Statham and his bees, and the debut of a new sports league. 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, panoramic panel of pandas with panash and pants. This is good job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Today's show is episode 270. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And we are your fellows all a glow from mellow yellow. Yo. I'm Colin.

And I'm Chris. Well, during our break over the winter, we got a lot of mail, not letters mail, I guess, like, chatter. The chatter on the internet is male. From fans and listeners, let's play this clip. This is an old clip of Good Job Brain from episode 10. Wow. We're episode 270 now. This is episode 10 from 2012.

What year is that? Oh, my gosh. So let's just play a short clip. Here it is. So, like, the world's almond supply depends on beekeepers who live in North Dakota, you know, coming to California. I love the involved nature of these kind of things, but I had no idea that it was so dependent on this other, whole other industry in the growing... Wouldn't it be cool to be the driver of said precious bees? Yeah. It's like, what's your job?

It's like, you know, I'm the bee handler. Like, I drive these bees around. I get them to the different gigs. They're like the roadie. They're like me rodies. I smell a Jason Statham movie. Jason Zathe is. Buzzed.

Everyone. Colin, you called it. This past January, January, 2024, there was a release of a Jason Statham film called The Beekeeper, where yes, he plays a. beekeeper in the movie. This place was crab grass and weeds and you brought it back to life. Well, that's not good.

Beekeepers is a special program outside the chain of command. I protect the hive. When the system is out of balance, I correct it. Somebody was really listening to us. I'm going to go spend my $13 and see if I have a credit maybe

somewhere at the very end of that movie. I wonder if you can write to the movie studio and be like, Can I have a ticket? I guess it's no longer in theater. Mr. Statham. Oh, how funny. A lot of people were like, I was screaming when I heard this.

Honestly, I had completely forgotten that, totally forgotten that. I mean, that was 12 years ago. That's incredible. Right. And, of course, Dana in perfect. Yes, so clever. Putting the bow on it. Yeah, putting the bow on it.

Yep, exactly. It's the Dana Chef Kiss. Usually I'm very hesitant. to listen to back episodes unless I, like, I really have to because I'm kind of like embarrassed by it. But, but, but, but just listening to episode 10. Like, you guys sound the same. Yeah, true. No personal growth in 12 years.

Absolutely none. Jokes are still the same level of bad. Yeah. We did also, we got some sad news, um, this week, uh, a person that we've mentioned, actually on episode, uh, 208, I think, Shige Ichi Nogis. was the inventor of Karaoke, Karaoke. He has passed away. He was 100 years old.

Wow. Passed away, actually, in January. He invented the first karaoke machine in 1967. He was 44. Wow. Yeah, had a hell of a run. And I remember you telling us, like, it was, yeah, it was a rocky road for him. You know, I mean, it's just one of those things, like, in retrospect, it seems like, well, how could this not exist in our world?

But, like, this guy had to, like, fight to get it to even exist, right? He had the idea, but it was basically, it was kind of difficult because he was essentially muscling in on a business that already existed. Because there were already these guys who would go around to all the bars in Japan and they would play guitar so that the customers of those bars could drunkenly sing popular songs at the time. So he was coming in and replacing them with a robot. You know what I mean? So they were not thrilled with that. Certainly has had a profound effect on my life. Pour one out for an inventor of karaoke.

And, well, without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have two random, a trivial pursuit cards from the box, and you guys have your barnyard buzzers. Let's answer some questions. Listeners, play along. the cards for this week are 20th anniversary edition and baby boomer our favorite

all right well let's let's boom it up all right Blue Wedge for TV who drove Sergeant Vincent Carter crazy during his days in the Marine Corps TV this is from the baby boomer card

yes baby boomer okay all right important television show boomers watched it's about Marines, unless, I don't know, Sergeant Vincent Carter, yeah. Would it be like a... Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you read it one more time, Karen?

I'm sorry. Who drove Sergeant Vincent Carter crazy during his days in the Marine Corps? Colin? Is it Gomer Pile? It's Gomer Pile. Oh, there we are. Okay, nice.

All right. Pink Wedge, what member of TV's MASH cast played Santini in the movie Blackboard Jungle? Gosh. Chris Only one I know Alan Alda No All right

It's the other one I know I'm exhausted Why Colin Name another actor From that Harry Morgan

Jamie Farr Jamie Farr The funny one Yes Yellow Wedge What U.S. Vice President Was the first politician

from outside West Berlin To visit the city after the wall went up. The first to visit, the first U.S. politician? Vice President. What U.S. vice president was the first

politician from outside West Berlin to visit the city after the wall went up. We all remember when it went down. And we remember Kennedy, of course, you know, being there, but okay, Chris, what do you go? Chris. Yeah, so it's like, what vice presidents

do I know? Yeah, there's Um, yeah, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it LBJ? It is. Yeah, that's a good guess. Okay, all right. Lyndon Johnson. I don't know why they didn't put the B in. Okay.

Oh, Lyndon B. Johnson. Yes, yes. Oh. Wow. Okay. Brown Wedge. What did you count instead of calories to shed pounds with 1972's Dr. Atkins' diet revolution. Chris?

Carbohydrates Carbohydrates Wow 19792 It just seems like it's such a 2000s craze It was a 2000s thing for sure But like yeah he wrote that book a long time ago Wow

Literature Green Wedge What did Vista stand for And that's big all caps Vista V-I-S-T in literature In L-T I don't know what L-T is Leisure Oh man Maybe. Leisure time, yeah.

Vista. It's an acronym. Chris. Venezuela Institute for the study of tiny apricots. It's a very good nonprofit, yes. I love their cause. Volunteers in service to America. Okay. I'm sure there are boomers in the audience like, oh, yeah, come on, we have dumb kids, Vista.

Come on. Dumb kids, we're like in our 40s. Why do they listen to the show? If they're going to, yeah. Okay, last question on this baby boomer card for RPM Records music. What were Chad and Jeremy's last names? Oh, man. I don't know who they are.

They were like a pop duo. Okay, Chad and Jeremy. Yeah. Oh, man, I don't know that. And they don't have the same last name. Never, never heard of them. Okay. Stewart and Clyde.

Oh, okay. I learned it and I'm going to forget it I already forgot I pledge to you now They're both double firsties Yes I was just going to say they're double firsties Maybe now we will actually encode it and remember Very good All right next car 20th anniversary edition

Blue Wedge Who's depicted with a tray of instant coffee shoe polish and peanut butter in Baltimore's great black wax wax museum Colin. It must be George Washington Carver. George Washington Carver. There we go.

George Washington Carver. Pink Wedge. What TV program was hyped as, quote, the only show devoted exclusively to crappy fishing? What TV program was hyped as being the only show? Oh, like the fish, right? There's a fish called a crappy, right? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Crappy as a not C-R-A-P-I-E.

Not crappy fishing. Yeah, we're fishing crappies. Oh, my gosh. It is crappy university. Wow. Okay, sure is. Yellow Edge, what California city testing Y2K preparedness accidentally flooded a Millennium Eve Party site with three million gallons of raw sewage. Oh, no.

Okay, okay, alright, say this again, I'm sorry. I've never heard of this, so this feels like something we have to research. This is like a segment, yeah. Yeah. What California City testing Y2K preparedness accidentally flooded a Millennium Eve Party site with three million gallons of raw sewage. I don't know. Call it. Sacramento.

Oh, your hometown, Los Angeles, California. Oh, man. Wow. I mean, again, I need to know how do we, we need to test our Y2K preparedness, and then you get to... Whoops. Even one gallon of raw sewage. I don't understand how that's a byproduct of testing your Y2K preparedness. Incredible.

Brown Wedge. What troubled linebacker inked a $200,000 book deal to pen a memoir titled To Hell and Back. Oh. Colin. Is that Ray Lewis? Incorrect. You're our only hope, Colin. Man, I felt pretty good about that guess.

I don't know. I'm sure I'll know it when you say it. Lawrence Taylor. Oh, of course. Of course. LT. The original superstar troubled. Yeah, okay.

All right. Yeah. Okay. Green Wedge, what outfit overtook Compaq as the world's largest PC maker in 2001. Oh, Chris. Dell.

Dude, you're getting a Dell. Could not escape that guy. Orange Wedge, last question. What Pennsylvania high schooler did the Lakers get draft rights to after shipping Vlaid DeVac to Charlotte? Help me out here, Colin. Oh, I was going to guess. Oh, go for it.

Chris, Chris. Okay, all right. Oh, no, wait. I was going to say LeBron James, I don't think I would. What Pennsylvania High School? schooler, did the Lakers get draft rights to after shipping Vladdy DeVoc, Divac, to Charlotte? That is Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant.

And how am I supposed to, how should I pronounce that name? You were much closer on the second take there. Okay. Yeah, I think the closest we can get here is Vladay Divatz. Oh, DeVats. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.

All right. Good job, Brie. Today's episode Every fifth episode Is our special All-Quiz Bananza We've all prepared our own Games quizzes and questions

To stump each other It's always a good surprise To see what you guys have in store So this week, it's all-quiz number 54 Okay, I have put together a quiz. Just right when you talked, it started screaming up. Oh, gosh. All right.

It was like if someone just had a soundboard behind you. Okay, so I have a quiz. I've been commuting back and forth to work. I've been looking for. more music to listen to and um i came across all of my like broadway CDs and stuff like that oh we perfect for the commute right like just get all these on my phone and can just listen to act one driving to work act two on the way back and uh so i was just like oh what what kind of quiz oh you know what let me let me do a quiz on best musicals so i'm going to have a 10 question quiz

for you guys and the answer to each question is the title of a winner of the Tony Award for the best musical. All right, so get your barnyard buzzers ready for this fun. What's up? Do you feel like this quiz is a little unfair? I feel like Chris is going to toss me a lifeline. He's going to find a way. He's going to find a way to make it fair.

Okay. I think a lot of these questions, I think that Colin has heard of the... We're going to find out. We're going to find out. All right, so question one. Here we go. Mark Hamill sang Luke Be a Jedi Tonight in the Simpsons parody of this musical. Uh, Colin.

What? What? You guys, it was sort of the same time. No, I was like one second. Okay, Colin, go for it. There's a delay, Karen. Oh, wait, but no, that was the parody of, uh, you don't get to go. You buzz in, and then you're like, oh, I don't know.

That's, that's what you do all the time. Guys and dolls. Guys and dolls. Yes, of course. Luck be a lady. Luck be a lady tonight. Yes, of course. All right.

All right. Question, question two. Andrea McArdle, Willa Crawford, and Sarah Jessica Parker have all played this title role on Broadway, although actresses do tend to age out of it very quickly. Colin. Little orphan Annie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Annie. Okay, all right. But yes, yes, yes.

That is interesting. I mean, it's kind of fascinating to me because it's just like, oh, like you are playing the lead role. in this Broadway play and then like and you're done now you're unplayable get out of it's got like put them in a freezer at night

and it's just yeah don't grow anymore yeah yeah pretty much next one a real estate agent makes a deal with the devil to become a star baseball player in this musical Karen

damn Yankees damn Yankees what a strange premise. It's a Faustian tale, right? Yeah. All right. The 1999 teen movie, She's All That, was based on the same original source as this 1956 Broadway musical. Karen, authoritatively. Well, the musical is My Fair Lady based on the play Pygmalion. Yes, based on the Gersmerichaw play Pygmalion, which inspired My Fair Lady.

and the 1999 movie, she's all that, amongst other things. Hugh Jackman played the lead role of Professor Harold Hill in the 2022 Broadway revival of this 1957 show. I saw him live. I did, Colin? That's the music man, right? It's the music man, is the music man. Shout a friendly greeting to a surrealist,

and you're saying the title of 1964's best musical. Karen? Hello, Dolly. Very good, very good. Thank you. Hello, Dolly. Spell different. All right.

A 120-mile-wide crater on the surface of mercury named Sholam Alecum is named for the writer of the stories on which this musical was based. Karen got in there faster. Fiddler on the roof. It's fiddler on the roof. Hiddler on the road. I'm sure he's up there and having an incredibly proud of the 120 mile wide

crater on the surface of mercury looking down at his mercury hole and that's cool. Thanks. 1974's best musical titled Raisin is a musical version of this play. Holland.

Uh, raisin in the sun? A raisin in the sun, yeah. And now, I wish that it had been titled Raisin with an exclamation point. Yeah, Raisin, yeah. Karen and I both did the jazz hands when we said it, too. Yeah, you got to be jazz hands, yeah. But no, there's no exclamation point, just raisin, yeah. All right.

Ease on Down the Road was the breakout hit song from this 1974 musical based on a novel from the year 1900. Everybody is ready to go. That's the whiz. That's the whiz. And final question. The winner, the Tony Award for Best Musical for the year 2004 was, of course, the Broadway phenomenon, Wicked. Oh, wait. No, it wasn't.

It was this one with a bunch of puppets in it. Oh. Aaron. Avenue Q. Avenue Q. I was scrolling up and down the list looking for Wicked just to find out what year. And it obviously won best musical that year. And it didn't.

And it didn't. Wicked Lost to Avenue Q. Shocking to me. Anyway, good job. Good job, Brains. Nice. That was good. Tony Award.

I felt like I knew a satisfying number of those, even if I wasn't the fastest on the buzzer. Chris and I used to watch Broadway shows that come to town when we were younger. We watched Wicked together because I remember I, like, ordered a drink during intermination. I was like, oh, I'm an adult. I can drink one of those intermission alcohol beverages. And I didn't know you can't bring it back to your seat. So you're pounding like a cocktail. $15 glass of wine.

Yeah, it was like a double Jameson or something. And like, and then we're all like chatting. And then the lights start flashing. Like you get back to your seats, idiots. And I'm like, I'm like, oh no. I mean, it was so expensive. You know, I was feeling so. Nancy. I was like, I got to drink this. So I just downed it. Oh, no. Second half was real

different. Oh, man. So, you know, what's funny now is, of course, you can bring the drinks in because I think there was enough pressure. They put a lid on it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People were, no, not really can you bring the drinks in, but you, you order them at your seat in San Francisco theaters. They got a QR. They got a QR code slapped on the the back of the seat in front of you and you order it with your phone and they bring you a drink in the middle of the show. Okay, my turn and I prepared a music quiz. We just did musicals.

Now we have our, can I name that tune, music round. Excellent. And we've had this type of round in pub trivia and on the show before, but I've made it harder. So this round, you're going to be listening to TV show theme songs. Okay. And not only are they just TV theme songs of pretty famous shows, they're also performed by an already established music artist. Okay. All right.

TV show theme songs performed by an already famous music artist. And it's your job to identify the show. For some of these, it will be pretty easy because the show title might be in the song. Or maybe there are no words at all, and then you have to guess. And then you have to identify the music artist. Okay. Okay. All right.

You can listen to the voice if you're not familiar with the song. These people are all famous before the show. Does that make sense? Yep. Yep. These were celebrity theme songs when they were created, right? I know off the top of your head, you probably already, you're kind of predicting what's going to be in this quiz.

And I'll tell you, most of them aren't going to be in this quiz. You might be like, oh, Big Bang Theory is Bear Naked. ladies, not in this quiz. Malcolm in the middle is they might be giants. Not in this quiz. So I've blocked the more known ones. But these are still famous. No freebies, no freebies for us here, Chris.

Okay. So nine questions. It's a buzz in. Here we go. Let's listen to theme song number one. And Colin? All right. All right, so we're doing show and artist, right?

Yes, yes. Okay, so I believe this was C-S-I Las Vegas. Performed by who? By, that's right, Karen, performed by the who. I see that incorrect show Chris for the steel the steel I believe it's uh it's so yes the who and uh CSI Miami I yes of course of course David Caruso with his yeah yeah and his sunglasses we won't get fooled again and if you didn't know all the CSIs have the who songs as their show themes so there's yeah the original Vegas there's Miami and there's also New York as well

New York, I think, is like Boba O'Reilly. But yes, they're all, they're all Who's songs. Pretty good. I would say that's probably the easiest one on this list. So let's jump into theme number two. Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggedy dog. Hot dog. We're splitting the scene.

We're full of beans. So long for now from Mickey Mouse. That's crazy. Chris. So that's the show. show is the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Correct? I believe that it was,

they might be giants. It is. They might be giants. Did Malcolm and Mill and they also did the hot dog Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song. If you're a parent, you're probably very, very familiar with that song. Now it's going to be stuck in your head

for the rest of the day. Congratulations. Okay, moving on to clip number three. Oh, you know what? I didn't say this, but I'll say this now. We're listening to nine songs. We just listened to two. Just want to let you know that there is a repeat.

There is a repeat artist. Okay. All right. All right. Theme number three. Whatever happens, predictability. A milkman, the paperboard, the evening TV. Everywhere you look, everywhere you know, there's a heart of all.

I had to hold on to Well, I know the show Yeah. But I did not know that it was a famous artist or musical actor. I guess it sort of makes sense. What is the show title, please? Oh, the show title. The show title is Fuller House.

Yes, Fuller House. Not Full House. Not Full House. The reboot. The reboot. Continuation, whatever. It's Fuller now. It's a Fuller House.

Ariana Grande. It is. Carly Ray Jackson. Oh, cool. All right, moving on to clip number four. California, here we come, right back where we started from. California. California.

Colin? That is the O.C., I believe. That's the show. And the song was performed by Phantom Planet, I am pretty much. Yes. Phantom Planet. Yes. Can you name the celebrity member, the actor celebrity member of Phantom Planet?

Yes. In their come up, it was Jason Schwartzman. Yes. Moving on to theme number five. Check, now this is just an introduction before we blow your mind. The show was all about, and yes, we do it all the time. So sit your beauty on the flow. When it's there, grounds a wind of the air, I just don't go nowhere, because everything we do.

It's all of that. Oh, well, I know the show title was not aware that, again, it was a famous. On you for this one, Chris. Okay, well, the show is all that. Correct. All that is kind of alluded to in that clip, starring Keenan and Kell, big, big breakout stars of all that. from the 90s. Yeah, so, yeah, like, let's go back to the era, right?

So, yeah, this was like... Sure. Okay. Mid-90s. This is, I would say this is a girl group. TLC? I mean... It is TLC.

No way. There we go. TLC. Performing the all-that theme song that was... That's a good get for them. Lisa Left Eye, Lopez. Wrap it over there. I think for the show theme, they did speed it up.

So, so Chip Monkey, you know what I mean? Keenan Thompson has been in sketch comedy like his entire life. Oh, I know. Since he was a child, he was a child in this show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And speaking of shows, you know, I'm trying to get a big range of shows for this quiz. So, yeah, we got kids. We got 90s, maybe some current.

Here we go. Let's play theme song number six. If you're out on the road, feeling lonely. so cold All you have to do is call my name and I'll be there Uh, okay. I'm pretty sure it's Carol King.

Maybe. It's certainly sounds like a Carol King or like a Neo-Caryl King. I don't recognize the show. Yeah. Carol King and there is another, another singer also that's duetting with her. Oh, really? Louise Goffin. Her daughter.

Her daughter, because this is a show about mother and daughter. Gilmore Girls. Yes, it's Gilmore Girls. Okay. Between Chris and me, we've probably watched... Hey, I've never watched this movie. All right, I'm proud of us. I think out of these nine clips, I've watched probably only three,

and one of them is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. So these are... The shows that, you know, trivia fans should all be kind of aware. Yeah, yeah. Well, I just, I know Gilmore Girls is one of those shows that has a very devoted fan-based. So, yeah, I'm sure the listeners out there screaming it screaming at there. Yeah. All right.

Theme number seven. Here we go. Hmm, okay. I sound a little familiar. Yeah, well, it's the Daily Show. Yes. It is, well, more specifically, this is the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Oh, okay, okay, okay, right.

Which is a remix version of the original Daily Show with John Stewart. That's why I might sound familiar. Definitely did sound a little remix, right, right? Hmm, celebrity. Who are you going to get to? There's actually two artists. There are two artists involved. Huh.

This is very interesting, but I don't think I'm going to get it. Is it like daft punk or somebody? I mean, this is remixed by super producer Timbaland remix of the original Daily Show theme song written by and performed by They Might Be Giants. Really? They might be giants. You know, not only had their rock music career, but. but also had their children's music career and also TV

theme song. That's the way to do it. Yeah, yeah. That was my double. That's a good double. Yeah. I'm not dancing in the daily show. What a range. All right, moving on to theme number eight. And if we focus on our goal, you can decide we can make it.

Just remember that you can't. Two He's a different Oh, well Chris Well, the show is a The show is a different world Correct

Spinoff of the Cosby show The artist Tina Turner No, but you're close It is a A legend Yeah, it's Miss Aritha Franklin, right?

Aretha Franklin Yeah The Pipes Queen And here we are at the last theme song of this quiz. Here we go. Theme number nine. Yeah, I guess this might well be in.

Heaven knows I try. Probably the most recent show of the bunch here. most recent Apple Plus Oh, okay Very recent That was for Ted Lassow Ted Lassow

Performed by his friend Marcus Mumford from Mumford and Sons Jason Sadeakes's pal That was good one That was a good one You were right Karen No yeah

No gimmies in there No gimmies Yeah I remember going through this type of round at Pub trivia multiple times And it's like, ah, it's this one.

You do. You hear the back from the middle on every, it's, on everyone. Rembrandts, you know, friends. You know, Rembrandts, they were a band, but really friends theme so on put them on the map. Whereas these people are already on the map. No, I like that angle. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right. All right, good job. Well, with that, let's take a quick break. And we'll be right back. No frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at no-frails.ca.

Hi, my name's Afline. Did you know the pandas people 100 times today? You're listening. Good job, bring. Bye. All right, my turn. I went back into the Colin Archives here for a quiz format. I was inspired. I was reading an article online that I'll all.

I'll get more to on that in a second. And it reminded me of a quiz I had done a few years ago. So I went back. I saved a lot of these in my Google Docs Drive. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm resurrecting the quiz format from a quiz I first did in 2015. Yeah, this is a word nerd etymology kind of quiz. I called it, I called it literally speaking.

It's literally speaking part two. And I'll take you guys back here. The format of this quiz is I was really interested in words of phrase. of phrases that we use in English, we have some sense of the meaning that the words feel right, but the original meaning has sort of dropped away, sort of the literal original meaning. And, you know, we use these words metaphorically, these phrases metaphorically now. They're sometimes staring us right in the face, the original meaning, and it never dawns on us. Like, oh, that's what that word means. So I'll give you an example. From literally speaking, I was talking about

a milestone. So, you know, like, if you're working on, like, you know, a big project at work or lengthy project, you know, you'll talk about major steps in the process or the milestones. Like, oh, we can see this big milestone. That's right. And then the question was like, literally, literally speaking, what is a milestone? What is a milestone? Where does that come from?

And the answer is, was, still is, that in the olden days, you would literally have markers on the side of the road marking off. the miles. And as you're, you know, in your caravan or traveling, you know, okay, another mile, here we go. You know, you didn't have a map, GPS, anything like that. And so you can see how very easily the metaphorical meaning of a milestone in your life or project derives from that. So I have assembled a set of common phrases and words that we use a lot that maybe we don't always think about the original literal meaning or, you know, literal slash original meaning here. The word itself is not a secret.

It'll be right at front in the question. And I want you guys to buzz in and tell me, maybe you know. Maybe you want to take a good guess of what is the literal slash original meaning of the word in question. New original. Yeah, the new originals. Get your buzzers ready. We'll try and start with a little easy one here, maybe just to get the juices flowing. Well, I think all three of us at one point or another in our careers, we have all done freelance work, which is to say we have.

worked, you know, in an independent capacity for a big company doing work, getting paid. Sometimes you've got to do what you got to do to be a freelancer. Some people love being a freelancer. They never want to go in-house anywhere. Literally speaking, originally speaking, what is a freelancer? Where does this word come from? Chris. Like a knight that's not attached to any certain, you know, person.

So, like, he'll fight on your side. If you pay him. He's a freelance. You got it. You got it. Oh my God, I never thought of that before. You were for money. A mercenary.

Yeah, essentially, that's right, a mercenary. Like, you know, going back to, you know, medieval era, the idea of you've got your lance. And yeah, maybe you're, you know, in the service of a lord or a king or, and maybe you're not. You are free to lance it out to whoever, yeah, has the coin. That actual word in English may only go back to Ivanhoe. the book, Sir Walter Scott, but the sense of it and the meaning goes all the way back to medieval times.

Yeah, the sense of it as sort of a freelancer and, you know, a contractor or independent worker looks like only to the early 1900s is when they can find early references to that. What are they called in Game of Thrones? The Cell sword. Cell sword. Yes, yes, yes, yes, for you Game of Thrones fans.

A Cell sword, freelance. Here's, we'll get to the article that inspired me to dig this quick. up. I was, I was recently reading an article about a super collector and it described this collector. No, well, I mean, you're going to laugh here when I get to the payout here. So it described the collector sitting on a mother load of Star Wars memorabilia. Now, I, I certainly have some probably more than the average person of Star Wars memorabilia. I would not describe what I have as a mother load. But it was perfect for this article. The person had a lot. But yeah, you know,

the mother load like you know the we see this a lot in the collecting world uh maybe no surprise just the most impressive source of something or just you know a giant resource of something of a mother load but literally speaking what is a mother load what is what does what does this word mean karen i think it's to describe like a big source of ore like if you're mining you know you might find pieces of little gold or little minerals but then then there's the big chunk that's right. And it's L-O-D-E. That's right. Yes. Yes. Yes, you're right. L-O-D-E. That's right. The mother load. Generally, two words. You will sometimes see it spelled as one word. But yeah, that's right. It is like the main mother-parent vein of especially something really precious, silver gold, right, of ore or something really valuable. That's right. The mother-load. Again, you can see, especially after, you know, mining booms and silver and gold booms, how metaphorically the motherload of Star Wars memorabilia.

Yeah, it's really been devalued, I would say, from, you know, a giant vein of gold in a mountain to, like, Kenner. Yeah, a pile of Boba Fett's, right. We are recording this episode in March, and here in the U.S., it is, of course, Women's History Month. Oh, that's going to be my quiz kind of later. Oh, really? All right. Well, hopefully we don't overlap here. But indeed, at my daughter's school, she's in kindergarten now, but they have been covering some prominent women trailblazers in history, in U.S. history, in particular. This is a great word. I love the word trailblazer. It's just, it's so satisfying to say, very powerful, you know, good basketball team as well out in Portland, the trailblazers. We all understand the metaphorical meaning of a trailblazer. But literally speaking,

What is a trailblazer? What does it mean to blaze a trail? Oh. Well, it's like if you're going, you know, through the forest, the trailblazer is the person who's up in front setting fire to all of the, you know, the, maybe it is setting fire to all the brush and the, you know, the trees and all the stuff in front of you and literally like, you know, clearing out the trail that you and your wagons and your horses and stuff are going to walk on.

You're really, really, really close to the actual meaning, but you're absolutely correct in sort of the spiritual meaning. And that is a very common folk etymology that a lot of us, myself included, that was, you know, it makes sense. Like the trailblazer is someone, well, you're on a trail. I know what a trail is. And, okay, well, how do you make the trail accessible for people? Well, they're blazing it. They're burning their way through, right? It makes a lot of sense.

That's not actually, it is not burning. I'm thinking like someone with a machete and chopping off. vegetation yeah you're you're actually that's much closer to the meaning so trail blaze is a compound word obviously trail is trail uh blaze in this sense has a very particular meaning of marking the path through the woods or the trees and to to blaze a tree means to put a mark on it by cutting away cutting away the bark so there's a visible white stripe. It can also sort of by extension mean putting a stripe of white paint on a tree if you want to do it in a less destructive way. But the idea is that people following you, or maybe even you, the second time you come through, you have the visual markers of, you know, the way you might have rock cairns on a stone trail. You know, you see the blazes on the tree. Yeah. So it's not necessarily clearing. It's marking. Really, you're marking the trail with some, you know, extra curricular clearing.

That's right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's not to say you might not need to burn some brush or clear some brush. But right, yeah, the blaze has the very particular meaning up to mark. And in fact, the blaze in this sense of to blaze a trail is taken from the sense of blaze. We'll talk about this in horses. Have you heard this? You know, it's like a blaze, like a light spot or a white patch like on the horse.

Yeah, that's the same meaning. It's sort of metaphorically from there to the white, yeah, to the light. Mark on a tree. Yeah. Karen, when we are out at trivia and we get flag questions, there's no doubt, there's no doubt, all eyes, we pivot to Karen, we slide the sheet over, we let you take the first crack because flags and vexilology in general, it is fun, but it is also, it's right in your wheelhouse, right in your wheelhouse, a common way of saying, you know, you're well

suited for something, you know, you're comfortable doing it. You know, someone, someone gives you a job at work and you're like, oh, yeah, that's right in my wheelhouse. I'm going to, I'm going to nail it. I got this one. You hear this term a lot in baseball as well. I know, you know, at least one of you is baseball adjacent. You know, you talk about the, you get a pitch. It's like right in the hitters, right in their wheelhouse, you know, right in the sweet spot there.

Literally speaking, what is a wheelhouse? Where does this term come from? And why do we want to be there? I don't know. You stump me on this one. For a lot of these, I feel like I can kind of work it back and... Is it like a parking space? Oh, I like it.

This is your designated parking space for your... Oh, like a carriage or a garaging space. You know, this is one where I definitely... It had no real solid sense of it, but I always thought it was something related to driving or garage as well, right? No, so it's not. No, so the sort of dating back to at least the 1800s, we can find the little kind of structure or the casing or little mini house

over the steering wheel on a ship or a steamboat is the wheel house. It is the house where the the captain's wheel on a boat is. And it's going to be very kind of, you know, often small. It's not going to be big. The pilot house, in other words. You may have also heard this term as well. So that's the wheelhouse. And so from there, the idea metaphorically is that it's somewhere you're right at home.

This is right in my wheelhouse. I've got this. Like, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. up the difficulty maybe a little bit here. I mentioned we're in March. We are right on the cusp of March Madness, the big yearly college basketball tournaments, plural.

If you are a hoops fan, there is no way you can catch all of the games. It is just not possible, but you can always catch the highlights. Yeah, the end of the day, and catch the highlights show. Or maybe you got two days until the next meeting of your book club

and you have not finished the book. at all. And you're kind of asking the internet to, you know, give me the highlights of this novel. Break it down for me. Give me the good part. We know what the highlights means. The important part, right? But what are highlights? Literally, where does this come from? Karen, what's your guess? Okay, okay. I'm going, I'm going broad, broad, broad. So I feel like maybe originated from actual lights, like on a building. I don't need to see all of the building. I just need to see the edges of a building maybe you're flying or you're traveling by car it's dark at night like i i just need to know kind of what the outline and where they are i like it give me the side lights the high you know

maybe they're high up on the air just tell me how tall they are i like that that's really good that's chris what's your guess i'm seeing like almost in like the theater or something like that like the high high lights which sort of illuminate what about like marquee right right right or is it like Oh, like the highlights above the... One night only. Yeah, my first thought was like maybe a circus reference, you know, like on the trapeze or something, you know, like the highlights, you know, like bring your attention up there.

But no, it's none of those things. These are all great debts. In fact, it even predates electric lighting altogether. Yeah, the highlight highlights, this term dates to at least the mid-1600s from the world of paintings, painting. The highlight were the brightest part of the painting. We thought too big. Yeah, yeah, too literal.

This is like hair, like hair highlights. Exactly. And then it came really directly from there into the visual arts, into other, into photography and other means of very literally what's the brightest, highest light to what's the part where you're focusing on visually to what is just the most important part to. Just show me all the home runs from the baseball game, you know, or something like that. Yeah, metaphorically. All right. In reading over contracts or other legal documents, which is always super fun. I find as an adult, I have to do this more than I ever thought I would.

I know. It's what you get when you sign up to be an adult. Yeah. All of a sudden. Do you remember before DocuSign? Oh, man. Do you remember that world, like, of taxing? Right.

Yeah. And then you're like, oh, God, and this is kind of early days where it's like you don't have a smartphone. So it's like, now you take a picture and it'll just auto convert into a PDF. We lived in a time where, like, we had to fax. There was a special service where you fax your stuff into a number, like a special number. Yes. Yes. They scan it into a PDF and email back to you. I remember using that with my Yahoo email address in like, yeah, the 2000.

As you were reading these, you'll often see long passages of. text, often a very small font size. That is basically the same language used across multiple files. We call this boilerplate, boilerplate text. And you, if you are a writer or in any kind of content generation related business or field, you at some point have had boilerplate text in your life. You know, it's a starting point for a document or something you just have to use over and over. Disclaimers is a real, you know, this product is not intended, you know, whatever. boilerplate. What, literally speaking, is boilerplate, and how can we imagine the path from whatever it originally meant to repeated text? This one is really fascinating. Okay, so, I mean,

plate makes me think of printing press, but I don't know where the broiler comes from. Do you know, what is a boiler? It heats water? Yeah. It's hot. Yeah. They are, generally big and extremely sturdy. Oh, do they like engrave it on a big broiler and they roll the broiler

onto the paper to print? I like how you're trying to solve both. Yeah, I like it. I like it. No, no, I get it. Right, right. It's stamped in there. I like how you're trying to answer both halves at once. No, I'll save you here. So literally, boilerplate is the was the big plates of metal, iron steel, big plates of iron that were giant rolled into sheets to make steam boilers, like on an industrial scale that you might have in the basement

of a building. So how do you get from metal making giant steam boilers into repeated legal text? This one is very fascinating to me. This comes from the newspaper industry. So as early as the late 1800s in the newspaper industry. You had to fill pages, right? You know, and you're producing copy. You're setting up your own type setting. And it started to become popular to place pre-cast, pre-stamped stories. This is like early syndicated content.

Okay, so especially if you're running a smaller newspaper. and what you could do is subscribe to a supplier who would basically give you an early version of like wire stories. And when you, it's on to you to actually print the pages, they would give you the block of text in a big chunk of flat metal that to the workers in the type rooms and the print rooms are like, oh, it looks like a piece of boilerplate, this, you know, thick piece of metal that we're dropping into print along with the copy that we're setting up ourselves. It's fascinating how forward thinking and manual, oh, syndication, now we can have the same story. We'll just, you know, it's like a PR release these days. We'll just blast it out. But in those times, they're smart enough to be like, we should blast this out.

But the format is not an email. The format is a huge metal thing. Yeah. They have to store. Yeah, yeah. There's a bit of a bit of once or maybe maybe. Yeah, right. Exactly. But multiple copies all around the country. And it's not like you're going to, you know, see the same one. You're going to see your town's newspaper, you know? Wow. I found a passage here that made me chuckle here. This is from 1887 describing this phenomenon. So this is from 1887 already looking back. Within the past 10 years, quote, plate matter has become more and more popular among out-of-town papers. And the more enterprising are discarding the ready prints and using plate matter.

instead. For a long time there was a prejudice against boiler plates, but editors of small and even prosperous papers began to discover that better matter was going out in the plates than they could afford individually to pay for. And it was found that the reading public did not care so long as the reading columns were bright and newsy, whether they were set up in the local office or in New York. So this is 1870s, 1880s. already people looking for content mills to help, you know, keep it. Yes! The problems are still current. The needs are still current. That's insane. Yeah, yeah. That one was quite a journey to take the word on from, yeah, making steam boilers to repurposing text.

All right, last one. Here we go. If someone is working against you or at cross purposes with you, especially in a sneakier, covert. way. They might be said to be undermining you. It's like, I've got this, got this rival at work is undermining me. Every time I try and move ahead, what literally is undermining? What is the connotation here? Chris has it. So, okay, you're digging your mind. You're looking for the mother load. And then somebody comes in and he digs underneath the mine that you're already digging, very dangerous, but trying to get to the mother load before you get to it. And they're undermining you. Oh, I like it.

They drink your milkshake, if you will. Exactly, exactly. Oh. That's close. Okay. You're definitely in there. Oh, you think mine like mining, mining ore. I was thinking like landmine.

You're getting closer kind of spiritually to the. meaning, yeah. So to undermine, I mean, it is to literally go under and mine, Chris, write on it, of course, comes from the word meaning dig. Yeah, you are digging under. But to undermine has a very, very specific military connotation where if you are laying siege to a castle or a fort or a walled city, one of the things that you can do in addition to sending projectiles or people over the top of the walls is you can send diggers under the walls

and they can do any number of things on there to make it unstable and one thing that was very common to do you would get under there you'd have to be skilled at doing this and you do this surreptitiously and this is the connotation of sneaky and clandestine is because obviously

it takes a long time you've got to be quiet So you would get under a wall and put in timbers or wood enough to hold the weight where you had removed the dirt and the stone. You would coat those timbers in pitch or oil or something flammable. You would come out of the hole that you've dug. You would light it on fire, hightail it out of there. And then as the fire burned and the timbers collapsed, then the wall comes down with it. Okay. And this is one element in the sort of toolkit of laying siege.

Now, this technique progressed along with military capabilities into all of more modern wars once we did have modern explosives. They didn't historically try to dig down and travel under the wall and pop out on the other side. That was a technique as well. That was a technique as well. I mean, but they want to get rid of the wall. Yeah, that was right in this sense. Right. And that was, you know, one of the, not the only, certainly, but one of the.

the advantages of having a moat on your building as well is you're adding another it's it makes certainly you got to be a little more determined to get you got to get under the moat at least you know right you can swim yeah yeah that's right or you can swim oh so the moat was not necessarily like couldn't swim over it they can't they can't dig under oh you're under water while that's happening it is certainly part of the appeal not not not the whole appeal of the But yeah, absolutely. And this was something that you would have to watch out for. And they would have, you know, very specialized crews of armies going all the way back to do the mining under.

And they would also have special crews to listen for mines and to monitor for vibrations. You know, there's a whole, some really cool stories of techniques of you would lay, you know, set jars of water like along the base of the stone on walls. And, you know, we'd have people watching the water and look for vibrations. No way. Yeah, I mean, you take it really, you don't want your wall collapsing, right? Not nearly as dramatic if somebody is trying to, you know, one-up your report at work by undermining you. It's frivolous compared to trying to take down old stone castles and war in siege. It's like.

Yeah, oh, it's just my PowerPoint. It's okay. Yeah, it's just my PowerPoint slide. It's like writers, you know, they're like, oh, you're unemployed. Oh, no, I'm a freelance. I go, oh, you're on stabbing people? Well, I stab them with the power of words. All right, that was good.

I'm glad you guys journeyed with me down this little word nerd hole. Yeah, I had a lot of fun sitting on my mother load of Star Wars memorabilia over here. There are really many reasons to listen to our podcast, Big Picture Science. It's kind of a challenge to summarize them all, Molly. Okay, here's a reason. to listen to our show, Big Picture Science, because you love to be surprised by science news. We love to be surprised by science news.

So, for instance, I learned on our own show that I had been driving around with precious metals in my truck before it was stolen. That was brought up in our show about precious metals and also rare metals like most of the things in your catalytic converter.

I was surprised to learn that we may begin naming heat waves like we do hurricanes. You know, prepare yourself for heat. heat wave, Lucifer. I don't think I can prepare myself for that. Look, we like surprising our listeners. We like surprising ourselves by reporting new developments in science and while asking the big picture questions about why they matter and how they will affect our lives today and in the future. Well, we can't affect lives in the past, right? No, I guess that's a point. So the podcast is called

Big Picture Science, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. We are the host. Seth is a scientist. I'm a science journalist. And we talk to people. smarter than us. We hope you'll take a listen. All right. Last quiz. I'm just going to ask a few questions and we'll get to my my fun fact. All right. Okay, Columbo. Okay. One last, just one last thing. Okay. In The Simpsons, what is the name of Springfield's hockey team? It's a homage to the city's nuclear plant and activity. The Colin.

Isn't it the ice oatopes? Like, which is a cell for, yeah, okay. It's funny. Springfield ice ootopes, isotopes, isotopes, ice totes, ice tops, ice tops, ice hockey. All right. Next question. Here is a short summary of a film. Please name the film.

Derek Thompson is an arrogant and hard-charging minor league hockey player. When Derek discourages one young fan's dream, he's sentenced to one week's worth of hard labor as a real what. This was a movie starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He's a hockey player. Sentenced one week's worth of hard labor as a real what. And in this movie, he becomes the tooth fairy. Okay, I do remember this one. Yes, which is a bonkers premise.

It's not like he died. And the fairy world, Julie Andrews punishing him by making him become the tooth fairy. Wow. Yes. Pulling Julie Andrews out of semi-retirement to bless this movie. Yeah. It's got the rock and Julie Andrews. In the Mighty Ducks universe, coach Gordon Bombay swapped out goalie Goldberg with whom in the final shootout against Team Iceland.

Dramatic moment, Team USA, Team Iceland. Goldberg is the Mighty Ducks trusty goalie and Emilio Estabez swaps him out for Airbud. Stanley Pup. Her name is Juilli, Julie the cat Gaffney. Oh, my goodness. And this links to what I'm going to share with you. I mean, that probably was one of the first time for many people to see a female hockey player.

And it's such a, it's such a cool moment because, like, Mighty Ducks is beloved franchise. People grow up that a couple of trivia points for you, because this is for sure going to show up at Pub trivia or your learned league or something. this year because this is big year for hockey and for sports. It's the inaugural year of the PWHL, professional women's hockey league. There were like women's league before, but PWHL was birthed from the players association. And so they're aiming for a more unified league, stable and actually can pay salaries and has resources. But yes, right now it's March, Women's History Month. And it's really interesting and really exciting to see, to really see we're making hockey history.

We're making some like women's sports history here. So this league, PWHL, Professional Women's Hockey League, is a partnership between the Players Association and business groups owned by L.A. Dodgers owner, Mark Walter. And what tennis legend? this tennis legend is partial owner of this professional women's hockey league tennis legend and champion for equality Colin Martina Navratilova Incorrect Chris Women's tennis legend and champion

Oh Serena Williams Oh that's a good guess Colin Oh, but okay, Colin, Colin's going to get a thought because I know what you're going to say. I hope so. Is it, is it Billy Jean King? Billy Jean King. Yes, a very, very passionate about bringing this league to life. I think it's super cool.

And just like the NHL this year, they're launching with, you know, what they're calling the original six. So an NHL a long time ago, they also started with six teams. There's three Canadian teams and three U.S. teams. As of right now, they don't have team names or mascots. They're just named after the city or the region. And I think I've read in interviews that they don't want to rush on that. They want to develop the identities. It's also such, I mean, like the playbook of generating the fan interest.

You have like the naming contests and you unveil the colors and the logos. And like, yeah, you can really gin up a lot of PR with that. Yeah. I was describing this. If you work in tech, this is what we call an MVP. minimal viable product right this is like let's let's set it out let's see what happens then we'll do the kind of the add-ons um big checklist and just number one ice that I all right got it you know yeah just right yeah got it people cross it off the list but yeah okay three teams Canadian

three teams US now try to guess what cities these are maybe you see maybe Chris see see why I can name them together here all right I mean is it are there are there like outlier ones or are we thinking like traditional hockey cities. All right. Okay. Let's see. Let's see we can brainstorm this here too. Okay. I'm going to say Boston. It's Boston on that list? Okay. All right.

New York, New York City region? Ding ding ding ding ding ding. Okay. Now it gets tricky here. For U.S. So Boston, New York and Michigan or something like that? You know what? You're closer. You're closer. Minnesota.

Of course. They're called Team Minnesota because there's Twin Cities, St. Paul, and Minneapolis. So, yep, Minnesota, New York, Boston, Canada side, three. Toronto in there? Okay. Ottawa? Yes, yes, that's the hard one. Woo!

Okay. Montreal. Montreal. Ding, ding, ding. Got them. I love these kind of league, sports, team stuff. Yes, support women in sports, support women hockey. This is the first year, so gear up.

There will be trivia about. the professional women's hockey league and that's our show thank you guys for joining me and thank you listeners for listening in you can find us on all podcast apps and on our website good job brain com this podcast is part of airwave media podcast network visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like triviality tumble science podcast for kids and queen's podcast and we'll see you next week 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 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.