Good Job, Brain! - 273: You Can't See Me!

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Notice the unnoticeable! Weird facts about things that are clear and invisible. Learn about the secretive clear cola that came decades before Crystal Pepsi. We've all probably tried the ol' lemon juice invisible ink before, but can it help you outsmart and rob banks? "Before & After" hidden word game, and can you see right through Karen's crystal clear quiz? And yes, there is a real John Cena cameo in this episode. 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, enlightened, light fast, lighthearted, light bulbs. This is Good Job, Brained, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Today's show is episode 273, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your cacophony of quiz Crunchy Cookey cohorts I'm Colin And I'm Chris

Oh we continued the alliteration It always works well whenever she has the Oh yes Karen Colin and Chris I just realized that now I was looking at my notes I think this is from episode 68 Remember I was like really into

bad kids jokes. Yeah, that one website. Yes, I think they, they rebranded as kids, right jokes. It used to be bad kids' jokes. And it's not, they're not necessarily bad. They're just kids jokes where it kind of doesn't make sense. Yeah. I felt some that I think I shared with you all in the show before, but like I started reading them and I lost it.

Let me share some, right? Before we head into the quiz. Okay. Please. What did the doctor say to the platypus? What? Sir, you are in quite a pickle. I was expected maybe a bad, like, Bill joke or something, like, mangled.

You know what I mean? Like, like, the kid maybe understood the bill, but no, that's even better. Even better. Why was the cow's dress wet? No. Because she washed her boobies one hour ago, exclamation. Like there is something there with like Her back she just yeah

Utter milking Yeah We still say chick-an Chequins One joke that was like What did the what did the man say to the To the chicken when it went to the restaurant It was like what

Sorry sir we don't serve seeds here Only chicken What What stuck in our household was, it was something like, oh, what do you do if the, like, the spider climbs into your bed, into your blankets or something? Do farts. Do farts. Do farts.

That's right. Do farts. All caps. Yeah. I did a fart. Do farts. All right. Let's jump into our first general trivia segment.

Pop quiz. Hot shot. Here I have some random trivial pursuit cards. You guys have your. Barnyard buzzers, buzz in with the right answer. Here we go. We have Silver Screen. Okay.

I think this is from a time long ago in Trivial Pursuit Genus 4. Let's do Silver Screen first. Get it out of the way. All right. Blue Wedge. What were the boys in where the boys are? What were the boys? I guess what were the boys?

Oh, geez. I'm now I'm blown away here because I just I've never seen the film but I assume they were boys sorry sorry where where were the boys oh I'm sorry totally totally changes oh gosh okay where the boys are all right just a general geographical area you just general all right all right all right uh Colin Florida it is Florida It was way in the back of my brain somewhere, yeah. Okay, okay, here we go. I think you'll get this one.

What 1960 movie chronicled the adventures of four college girls on Easter break. Yeah, one more time? What 1960 movie chronicled the adventures of four college girls on Easter break? 1960. I'm sure we've heard of this movie, but I, but it's like I've probably heard of the 100% sure. Sure. Okay.

Okay. Because it is where the boys are. Okay. So mad at myself. You could have known this. Of course. So for screen cards, you're only supposed to read like one question. Yeah, yeah.

Your cards are all themed. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, all right. Now we're on notice. Stacking one of our core beliefs here. Right.

All right. Here we go. Yellow Wedge. Which star of Where the Boy is? are quit acting and went where nuns are oh oh oh interr i have no idea i don't have a guess i don't yes dolores heart oh okay dolores did not did not have that one all right uh puce wedge what color were superman's boots as worn by christopher reeve oh uh chris i believe they were red they were red they were red they were Yeah, red cape, blue suit, red boots.

Greenwich, who sang the title song to where the boys are? All right, 1960. Girls having fun. Oh, gosh. Go for it. Peggy Lee. I have no idea. Oh, good guess.

Colin? Connie Francis. It is Connie Francis. Nice. Woo. I was going to turn the camera to her. reveal a massive where the boys are. The giant like

frame poster. The Boys are shrine here. Signed by the cast. Yeah. All right. Last question on the silver screen card. Who played Burt Gordon? Eddie Felsen's manager in The Hustler?

That's not where the boys are. You say Burt Gordon or Burt Gordon? Burt. Burt. Who's Burt? Well, I don't know. Oh. I have no idea.

Well, the hustler that was Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. Right? If so, then I'm going to... Oh, I think so, because it was color of money was like a spiritual sequel. Yes, it was the sequel, right? Yes. No, right. No, sorry.

So, right, Paul Newman was being managed, so Jackie Gleason would have been the manager. It says here, George C. Scott. Oh, okay. All right. Next card, genus four. People in places, Blue Edge. What New England State made whistling underwater illegal after much debate. Oh.

is that even possible these questions are so dumb these silly laws weird laws yeah yeah yeah how am I supposed to I don't know okay well I mean look okay New England state somewhere from New England Connecticut no it is Vermont

oh man they landlocked they have they still have lakes and bodies of water I thought it was maybe in the ocean but why would you whistle underwater why would you whistle why would you whistle Why would you care if someone else whistled under the point? Yeah. All right. Pink Wedge, Arts and Entertainment.

What was the first primetime network TV series to show Bear Bottoms? Oh, interesting. What was the first primetime network TV series to show bare bottoms? Call it. You know what? I'm not going to look at the answer yet. Okay. Yeah.

Maybe we can reason now. Okay, sure. I think it's like babies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, like I Love Lucy shows like Ricky Jr.'s butt or something like that. I'm going on the assumption they're talking about adult bare bottoms. I am not. And I think it might be a lot later than we think, like into the 80s.

Like I think it could be. Maybe like a sexy alien on Star Trek. Well, I mean, don't remember there was like the, maybe you don't. There was like a big deal about like Dennis Franz's butt on NYPD Blue. Oh, yeah. Oh, I do. You think that could be it? I'm saying it could be.

I'm saying it could be like if Dennis France's butt is the the barrier breaker you know yeah I remember that and I remember or the sort of the hullabaloo about that and if we were at trivia having nothing else I would say we need to write that down because if it's not it we're going to be kicking ourselves but the idea of it being a kid's butt is very intriguing right like a baby in particular I mean NYPD Blue was such a I mean I was too young for that show but also let's be clear that clear. It's a primetime TV series. Right? So it's not like, it's very, it's narrowing it down to like a series, which to me is like, that's not like the news. That's not a special. That's not a criminal series. Okay, here you go. It's right. NYPD Blue. See? That's what I'm saying. Good reasoning. Yellow Wedge. Who greeted sunny Bono's election to Congress by saying, quote, politicians are one step. below used car salesman. Ouch. Who greeted, greeted. Share.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Okay. His ex-wife. Yeah. Yes. Purple Wedge. How many shipboard watches per day does the U.S. Navy observe? How many shipboard watches per day?

Right. Like third watch, fourth. Yeah. Oh. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, rule of numbers. Yeah.

You have to pick a random number what we go with. Go with three. Times two, it's six. Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay. That's the, yes, the rarely observed coroll area of go with three times two. Green Wedge for Sports and Leisure, what company sloganized, quote,

Nothing says Lovin like something from the oven. Oh, my gosh. Oh. I mean, I think it's. Colin. Do you want to go with it? I'm going to guess Pillsbury. That's what I think it is.

It is Pillsbury. It is. Oh. Nothing. A little Pillsbury dough boy. Yes. Woo-hoo. Yeah.

It's kind of sensual. Yeah. That's the thing. I think they, I feel like they came up with that. And then they're like, okay, we're going to go with this. This is what we're going to go with. And then, like, five seconds later, after it was far too late, it was like, oh.

Whoops. That, you know, I just realized. kind of sounds like. All right, last question on this card, wild card, orange wedge. What do most restaurateurs call the clear plastic shield between faces and a salad bar? Oh, yes. Chris. The sneeze guard.

It is the sneeze guard. Good job. Brins. Who has a salad bar anymore? You have to reach under it to get things or sneeze on stuff. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

You know, before the kale craze of the 2000s, like remember the health craze of kale, because we're still kind of in it. But before that, one of the top uses for kale is to dress the salad bar. Oh, yeah. It's decoration. Right. It's hardy. It's durable.

Yeah. No one's going to eat this. Just put it right back there. It's fine. You take the kale, you staple it to the side of the wood. Yeah. You put it up on Monday. It's good to Friday.

Yeah. You don't need to take it. get down every day it's fine you just leave it it's fun uh all right so today's episode i was going through my hard drive i had this old good job brain folder and i'm like looking through this and it was just kind of tripped down memory lane and i had a lot of i like a lot of photos of chris i don't know what it was or maybe we had a lot of photos to you something but there was a photo of you adult you next to a very very young john sina do you remember the photo i remember the whole thing. So it was E3, 2004, I think, video game trade show. I, you know, had various press

appointments and stuff like that. And one of them was that it was at the THQ booth because they made the WWE games. And they were like, oh, do you want to talk to John Sina? And then another interview that I had that day was Stacey Hebbler. And the thing is that John Sina, yeah, and John Sina, he had not won the WWE championship yet. I mean, he was a mid-card guy, like mid-tier wrestler that he was at E3 talking to me. He was, I loved him. He was so, he was so talented. And this was when he would freestyle rap in the ring.

And so I had him do a freestyle rap about old video games. And then we took a photograph. And that was it. And I was on my way. And that was the time that I met John Cena and I had him do a freestyle, freestyle rap about, about video games. I'll play it for you right now. here it is. Do you have it? Oh yeah, I got it. Let's all listen to it. Here you go.

This is John Cedar. Every door in your red. You want the retro video games. It's cold with hand. You know, that's right. It's a site with hits from the days that hate bints and fucking mashes. Anything else? That's a straight disaster. Yeah, we blowing it up slow like the bootleg contra code. I got lights to spend. Up down, left, right. Select start. Now I'm ready to fight like Mike Tyson's punch out wrist and Honda was troubled. Yeah, that's right. We had to fight him with the double. Glass Joe, yo, I pass it slow. I overheating like a sight bike, so let's go and throw me to another alley like Hogan's. Yo, I'm crazy. And the old school style I'm

throwing you straight back to the days of 16 color palettes in a maze and ways like Mega Man. That was the jam and mighty bomb jack. Yeah, that's right. We're taking you back. Yeah, mess with me and I'm a swillage your soul. And I used to cheat the hell out of Tecmo Bowl. Looking at people's joystick up an A button. Yeah, that's right. My defense. was nothing ripping through fools like stuffing and they face raw yo I used to play RBI baseball Tony Harmes was nasty 46 homers that's right yo we shout at your dawn kid yo we straight hall of fame and my objective is like everybody else destroy the mother brain Metroid is a pain in the ass like hemorrhoids it was twisted

at the end when the chick was a girl yo I couldn't defend the rights nintendo but that's i bro i can still slow on the crazy tip beat bits graphics was sick and the inner play was amazing. I'd be lacing you with the ill flows as a freestyle position. Listen, while I run like rad racer, first place a straight hall of fame namer, John Sina, the Hill kid straight gamer. I do any freaking Nintendo trick like the ill 8 bit, double cartridge, double click, I blow on it so it works because it used to jump. You're a straight jump if you ain't paying Nintendo. Jarsena with the Hill freestyle flow. Act like you go. So yeah, so that happened. Wow.

That was 20 years ago. I was not expecting. Wow, the techno bull line was. I mean, I just asked him out of nowhere, and that's what he did, you know? Wow. I guess you weren't really expecting that story. Yes, that's right. John Cena, of course, his catchphrase during his wrestling days was, you can't see me.

You can't see me. You wave your hand. So this week, our topic is about things that you can't see. Things that are invisible, things that are clear. So this week, you can't see me. I'm doing the thing. And they can't see you doing it. All right, cool.

All right, in keeping with the theme of things that are invisible or difficult to see, I have a word quiz for you. And I'm sure you kind of know the format of this quiz, which is I will give you a word. And then I will give you another word. word, and your job is to find the missing word that goes between those two things that creates two common phrases, basically. It's like a reverse before and after.

Well, no, you're getting the before and you're getting the after, and then you're just trying to figure out the missing or invisible word in the middle that I'm not saying that I can't see, okay, are we all, this is, this, this passes the smell test for being themed. Okay, great. So again, I give you two words. out the word in the middle, but ends up making a common phrase, you know, with, with, uh, the word I give you, and then that word at the end, and then a common phrase with that word at the, you know, missing word at the beginning. And then the second word, you guys get it. You

listeners get it. You've heard it all before. Here we go. Question one, I've tried to make these as funny as possible. Oh, we're going to do buzz in. Once you, somebody who gets it, they can buzz in and then, but then write them down. Because there is a theme. All of the answer words above and beyond here you go word game number one uh bathtub worm bathtub bathtub worm bathtub worm bathtub uh huh bathtub is a really specific word is isn't it there's a whole lot of phrases that start with bathtub and end in one other word but there definitely is one Ah, Colin. Is that ring?

That is ring. Bath tub ring, ring, ring worm. Yeah, yep, yep, getting it started off nice and gross. Yep, I'm going to write it down too. You know, at first I thought it was gin. I was like bathtub gin. Oh, bathtub gin, gin, gin, yep. Bath tub gin.

Oh, yeah, also this word game, the QA process of this is that there is none. So we'll see, you know, maybe you'll come up with an even better answer, and I'll have to hastily make a retreat. So, okay, next one. Salary off. Salary off. Salary. Like, you tell me your salary?

I'll tell you my salary. Salary off. Salary off. Salary. Salary man. One of those things where the, the one of the, Colin? Well, cut, salary cut, cut off. Oh, see, here comes the Q&A.

Yeah, I don't have been a celery cut, yeah. It's not a set phrase that you might hear. No, it really isn't. Cut off. Cut off is about as good as the actual answer that I have. Cap, range. It's cap, it's cap. I'm going to give it you, it's cap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cap off, yeah, yeah. Cap off, yeah, yeah. Cap off, yeah, yeah, yeah. Celery cap, good, good. And cap off. All right. Jumbo Lee.

L-E-E-E-E is spelled no L-L-I. Thank you for checking. Lee, L-I. Yep. Jumbo Lee. Jumbo. Jumbo. Pallin again?

Uh, is that jet as jumbo jet? It certainly is. It is certainly. Jumbo Jet and Jetley. Yep. All right. We move along. You're writing those answers down.

Yep. Turn room. Turn. Turn. Room R-O-O-M? R-O-O-M. Yep. Not broom.

Not broom. Turn-room. Room. This might be a little tough. Turn, turn out. Back room. Room. What's room?

Not really. Back is not bad, but it's not the one I was looking for. But it's okay. Oh, turn back and back room. This is tough. This is tough. Turn key, key, key room. Turn.

No, not quite. Yeah, it's no. Yeah. You know what? It might have to be, I might have to give you guys this one because this might be, because this might be, I mean, especially with like, yeah, turn back and back room. Oh, oh, oh, oh, wait, do you have a good one? Is it coat?

You know what? So, yes, it is, except for its cloak. So I knew that the problem is, oh, I wanted cloak, but then I realized that turn coat and coat room is like the exact same thing. So it could be coat, but for purposes of this, let's put cloak, okay? Okay. For purposes. Oh, I know the theme. Oh, what's the theme?

You got it immediately. Let's wait until the end. Now I can reverse engineer. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Okay. Maybe you can. Maybe you can. Okay.

Title off. T-I-D-A-L. T-I-D-A-L, T-O-O-O-O-O-O-O. Yeah, yeah. Cairn. Wave? Correct. Correct.

You wave, wave off, and title wave. Okay. Apex Drone. Ha-ha. Karen Predator Yes Apex Predator

Predator Good And Predator drone This I'm not too fond of But red cartridge Red cartridge Red cartridge I wonder if there's a

I know I wonder if there's a better answer for this But Red Ink Yeah Oh red ink Ink ink

red ink ink cartridge yes yes yes all right just a couple more of these horrible things under under hanger

under under hanger is I mean I feel I feel silly saying coat again but undercoat and coat hanger

pants oh pants you know under pants and pants hanger why did you say pants hanger

you say coat hanger what's the generic term for that. Clothes. Wire, underwire, wire, wire hangers. Clos is what I was going for. Oh, see, that's really good.

That's way better than mine, but it doesn't go with the theme. Go with clothes. Karen's got the theme, so she's got one up on me. Karen's got the theme down, so she does. And finally, karma twist. Karma twist. Oh, no. Karen.

No, I was going to say chameleon. Correct. Oh, what's a chameleon twist? It's a lovely game for the Nintendo 64. Oh, God. Having now gotten all of these, that's ring, cap, jet, with a lot of assistance from me, I'm saying, no, not that one.

No, not that answer. No, no, no, no. That was really good. Well, what I was really thinking of us was with. So we get down to, with an assist, ring, cap, jet, cloak, wave, predator, ink, clothes, and chameleon. So.

They turn invisible. Yeah, Karen, Karen gets it. You have your ring, and Lord of the Rings which turns you invisible. The cap of invisibility, which is shared by Greek myth and Super Mario 64. Wonder Woman's, of course, Invisible Jet. Harry Potter's Invisibility cloak.

Waves are things in real life that are invisible as in radio. The predator can certainly turn himself invisible, Invisible Inc. The invisible clothes worn by the emperor, can only be seen by really smart people. And then, of course, a chameleon who can turn himself, let's just say, invisible if you're not, if you're not looking, you know.

Yeah. No, no, not that one. No, no, that, that one. Not that one. Turns out it's really hard to make one of these quizzes when there's a theme and you're trying to do it off a certain list of words. And you run yourself into a corner of like, what can I do with cloak or ink? You know, it seems, it seems so easy in the beginning.

You did, you did a very good, you know, dad, parent maneuver of the good, but no, guiding us. Yeah. Yes, yes. All right. Y'all, well, longtime listeners may know that even though we are a very, very, strong trivia team when we're together. We're not great with U.S. president's trivia. And this stuff is studyable. Real hardcore trivia people like, no. Oh, what's the 26th president? They're like, oh, it's this. And it's between the years and this. There's no reason not to know.

It doesn't change that often. But I want to talk about Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a U.S. president, if you didn't know. And this is what I do know about Dwight D. Eisenhower. His nickname is Ike. He planned the invasion of Normandy. He was the president before JFK. And thanks to good job, Rain and you, Colin, I learned that he set up the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Yes. And that he was played by Robin Williams in Lee Daniels, the Butler. I did not know that. Well, now you know. Yeah. Okay. All right. Before he was President Eisenhower, played by Robin Williams, in 1943 during World War II, he was U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stationed in Europe, in 1943, he sent a telegram to make an urgent request.

This request, it wasn't for more troops. It was for Coca-Cola. And he didn't just request, hey, give me some bottles of Coke. he requested 10 portable factories bottling plants to be set up near the front lines so the troops could have access to Coca-Cola. Don't send us a couple of cases of Coca-Cola. Send us the ability to make Coca-Cola here.

You know, we're here fighting at war. So the Coca-Cola company was on board, and they actually helped establish these makeshift bottling plants near the front line. And thanks to like heavy lobbying in Congress and the massive blast of advertising and marketing, Coke was treated as a wartime necessity and was then allotted larger sugar rations during the wartime. Because it is a wartime necessity. Keep the boys fighting. Right. They had so many different and unique ads during World War II. They all expressed this kind of

feel-good feelings of people coming together and Americana and soldiers and locals, wherever they were, New Zealand or Alaska and Philippines, like hanging out together, drinking Coca-Cola. And so six months after Eisenhower's telegram, a Coca-Cola employee flew to Algeria and started drafting up construction plans. Then Coca-Cola sent out 200 employees out to build the portable plants to run the plants and to distribute Coke to the U.S. troops. And don't forget, these plants are set up near the front lines. These Coke employees, they're not soldiers. They're like civilians. And they had to wear military uniforms and they actually had to have rank. It's called technical observer. So they're like civilians, but they're like civilians working with the military.

I'm imagining, you know, how like the UN has like the like the blue helmet, you know, for people in war zones that like there's like the Coca-Cola we're having like a little like the red and white strike yeah exactly helmets to oh those are coke workers yes and they had this reputation they're like oh it's you know colonel coaks you know and they were really popular yeah yeah not a lot of things that remind you of home or not a lot of things not necessarily luxury but but a nice item to have right i mean look when you're in the army on the front line most of the people that you come in contact with are either yelling at you or shooting at you so if you've got someone bringing you some nice cold cold busy Coca-Cola yeah and so this is when Coca-Cola

cemented their they're like Americana status to the world right World War II and and there's a term for this it's called Coca-Colaization oh sure yeah America in the 20th century blue jeans rock and roll and Coca-Cola like that's just became an icon I read a report that in today's money. Coca-Cola lost $87 million doing this. Okay. To make Coke available just in terms of the materials and sending people out there and all that. I mean, essentially, they lost money. It wasn't like they're trying to be like, oh, let's, you know, like increase our profits. This is like, let's try to supply Coke to the troops. Did they really lose money, though? I mean, oh, no. This is like they're buying their brand or reputation. Generations, for

generations. And so what does this have anything to do with today's topic? Well, on the subject of clear and see-through things, fads and products, we have to mention our old friend Crystal Pepsi. It's something that always comes up. Launched in 1992 was a see-through Pepsi. It was Pepsi without the coloring. And this sparked, this craze of clear stuff in the 90s, clear electronics, more Or sodas. Yes. Zima. Zima.

But 40 years before Crystal Pepsi, Coca-Cola had already made a clear cola in secret, in kind of a secret. Mm-hmm. Towards the end of World War II, you know, because of Eisenhower and Coca-Cola's efforts. A lot of people's and places, you know, around the world, outside of the U.S., had their first taste of Coke, including the Soviets. The Soviets. Georgi Zukov, the marshal of the Soviet Union, which is kind of like Eisenhower's counterpart,

Zukov, the marshal of the Soviet Union, he helped drive Nazis out of Stalingrad, and he became a giant Coke fan. But it's inconceivable. It's preposterous, and there's no way in heck he could be seen drinking an American bottle of Coca-Cola. Right. Now is the symbol of America. American imperialism Capitalism

just writ large according to the book titled For God Country in Coca-Cola So Zuccov, his strong love of Coca-Cola was made known to a general Mark Clark a U.S. commander in Austria and Zuccov was kind of like

Hey, can you like hook me up with a line to the Coca-Cola Corporation It's like, you know, on LinkedIn, people are like, hey, can you share this contact with me? And he got in touch with the Coca-Cola Corporation. And he requested and he asked if Coca-Cola could produce Coke from its European plants. We already established that there are Coca-Cola plants now kind of stationed in Europe and North Africa.

Can you just make Coca-Cola for me, but just make it look different? But, you know, maybe like, like change up the bottles, change up the cap. How about making the soda clear? So it kind of looks like vodka. So Coca-Cola work with a commiss to take out the caramel color. They started production in Brussels, and they put the clear cola in straight bottles, not the curvy, you know, the Coke bottles. The bottle with the waist. Straight edge.

Absolute vodka. I mean, that's the shape, the absolute vodka bottle, you know, the vodka bottle shape. The bottle caps were white bottle. caps with a big red star. No labels. It's a clear liquid in a vodka-like bottle with a white cap and a red star. And this was colloquially known as white Coke. Even though it's clear, the bottle cap is white. This is white Coke. And Coca-Cola was given free passage to Soviet areas without any bureaucratic red tape troubles. If you make this for us, we'll make it easy for you to get it to us, to the Soviets.

They produced 50 crates of white Coke. And this is all for Zuccov. This is all for him. It's not for, it's not for distribution to the troops. It's because he was a giant fan. But in terms of the clear cola wars, Coca-Cola made their clear-cola decades,

decades before Crystal Pepsi. And it was because they had to make the secret clear-cola, non-American clear-cola for a Soviet appearing. Wow. Yeah. Do you know if any bottles still exist? I tried looking. I was like, oh, man, maybe it's on eBay. I don't think so. I don't think it survived. Or maybe he drank it all. You know what? Good on him, right? If you're going to get your 50 cases or whatever, you drink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You drink that stuff. The next time, if you're traveling abroad and you're enjoying that icy, cold, refreshing can of Coke, just know that President Eisenhower, played by Robin Williams.

played a part of it. That is, that is really incredible. Like, it's so American. Yeah. We need to have front line Coca-Cola being made here to keep, keep our troops going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Comfort. And, I mean, I'm, I'm smiling like, like, ear to ear here.

It's just such a, just a hilarious American. And it worked. It worked. Yeah, it worked. Yeah. So, so Coca-Cola in the 90s, and I did mention this, um, in a previous episode, about Zima and a hard seltzer. Coca-Cola didn't have a Coca-Cola clear version in the 90s.

They did have TAP Clear, which is their subsidiary Diet Cola brand. So they tap clear. This is clearly a bad idea. We're going to do it anyway, but we can do it as TAB. That's fine. You can have this one, TAB. You guys have betrothed. You guys have partners.

I cover my wife. Your wives are of the Taiwan backgrounds. We do a weird thing. And I don't know if it's just our family or a lot of Asian families. When you have a cold and you have a cough, you make Coke tea. And so you take you take Coke, normal sugar Coke, not Diet Coke, and just normal Coke. You put in a pot and you slice up some lemons and you boil the heck out of it. All the carbonation is gone.

and you drink it like it's tea and it's supposed to help you with your sore throat. Hmm. Yeah. That would taste pretty good. Yeah, I mean, it just, it tastes like really sweet tea, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's take a quick break.

It will be right back. This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed, walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways We're not going to find it in the news

Because the police covered everything all up On August days This is where the story really starts Weapons 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. Hey, we're back.

This week we're talking about things that are clear, invisible, things that you might not notice. I'm glad you laid the path down for me here, Karen, with a tale that leads to the invisible. So on January 6th, 1995, there were two armed bank robberies in the area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Oh. The Fidelity Savings Bank in Brighton Heights and the Mellon Bank in Swissvale were both robbed, armed robbers. These robberies were carried out by the same two men, in fact, MacArthur Wheeler and Clifton Johnson. They were fairly straightforward bank robberies, at least by the standards of TV and movie. They went in with a gun.

One of them had a gun. One of them kind of stood in line. They made off with some money and went on. and got away. In big sacks with a dollar sign on the floor. Yes, right. Tied at the top. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, you know, we'll come back to that in a moment, actually, of sort of the classic burglar image. Right. Right. Right.

Yes. The local TV crime stopper program, in fact, aired surveillance images from one of the bank robberies just a couple months later. And within an hour of airing the crime stopper segment. footage on the 11 o'clock evening news, the police had received enough anonymous tips to arrest MacArthur Wheeler. Yes, yes. Now, so what's particularly notable about this robbery and the subsequent tips leading

to the arrest is that in the surveillance images, it is clear that MacArthur Wheeler and Clifton Johnson were not making any attempt whatsoever to disguise themselves, okay? And now, MacArthur Wheeler, I should note it here because every news article that I read about this made this same note that he was 5'6, 270 pounds. He was fairly easy to identify when the tips came in, especially when he was not making any effort to disguise himself. No ski mask, no fake mustache, no U.S. President rubber mask. when the police arrested him and they showed Mr. Wheeler the surveillance camera images of him standing there robbing a bank, playing his day, he was shocked. He couldn't believe it. And it wasn't that he couldn't believe there were cameras. It was that he believed he was invisible. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And the reason. The reason he believed he was invisible to the cameras was because he had applied a liberal amount of lemon juice to his face. Oh, my God.

In the belief that slathering your face with lemon juice would render you invisible to camera. Like invisible ink. Yes, very much. When you're a kid, you dip a cue tip in lemon juice. and, oh, it's invisible, then you put it over a light in it. Yeah, oh, my God. Very much like that. Yes, that's right.

I'm quoting here from an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, but I wore the lemon juice. I wore the lemon juice. A puzzled Wheeler told the even more puzzled detectives. The detective's confusion turned to incredulity as Wheeler explained about his would-be lemon aid. see what you did there someone told him that if you put lemon juice on your face it makes you

invisible to the surveillance cameras and now all right you might be thinking to yourself all right surely this grown man in his 40s whatever his challenges in life would not think

that rubbing lemon juice on your face would make you invisible would you but but he did now in his defense he was at first, anyway, a little bit skeptical. He was at least skeptical enough to do a test mode, to do a little trial, right? Like if someone tells you before your big bank robbery, before your two big bank robberies about this invisible juice you're going to use, you've got to test it out.

So, MacArthur Wheeler, at home, he covered his face with lemon juice, got out his Polaroid camera, took a photo of himself, and said that he did not see himself in the photo. Now, it is, it is not clear what happened. Like, did his camera have a bad film? Did he maybe point the camera away from his face right at the moment that he snapped the photo? It's not clear. Nobody knows exactly why he believed this would work.

But he did. He thought it would work. He and his accomplice thought it would work. They put the lemon juice on. He said the lemon juice was burning his face, burning his eyes. He was having trouble seeing. He was squinting trying to squint his way through this robbery here and keeping his cool. And, you know, after you get through the first robbery, right, where you put the lemon juice on, you get through.

You're like, hey, all right, that worked pretty well. Let's go do another one here. So, all right, long story short, I don't need to tell you guys that lemon juice does not render you invisible to me. any kind of camera, whether in a bank or not. Mr. Wheeler was exhibiting what we would probably now all refer to as the Dunning-Krooger effect. In fact, you may have heard of the Dunning-Krooger effect. It gets checked. It gets name-checked a lot on the internet, on social media a lot.

And the basic premise behind the Dunning-Kroger effect, I'll summarize it very briefly, is, let me put it this way. the shorthand version of it, and this is not fair to it, but the shorthand version of it is stupid people are too stupid to realize they're stupid, okay? And that's a very reductive way of looking at it. So these robberies, as I say, took place in 1995. In 1996, Professor David Dunning of Cornell was reading a year-end summary of wacky and offbeat news stories. And it included this tale of McCarthy Wheeler, Clifton Johnson, and their invisible lemon juice. This exact story was the spark that led to what is now increasingly commonly known widely as the Dunning Krueger effect. Yeah. So David Dunning, he was a professor of

psychology at Cornell. Justin Krueger was his graduate student. They basically They were so taken with this story of, is it possible that someone can be competent in many areas of life, but have a blind spot in a certain area and be so incompetent that their incompetence masks how incompetent they are? And they went on to write the paper titled, Unskilled and Unaware of It, How Difficulties of Recognizing One's Own Incompetence lead to Inflated Self Assessments. This was published in 1999, and very, very quickly, it hit upon a concept that a lot of other people didn't really have a way of framing. And they went on to study a lot of other examples of this. many, many, many examples of this that Dunning and Krueger documented beyond just dumb criminal stories. This affects all of us to some extent or another. If you read about the Dunning Krueger effect, you'll often see a very handy and informative little chart, a little line chart. The

X and Y axis here, right? Which is how much experience do you have in a certain domain or skill mapped against what is your self-assessed competency in that skill? Okay. So if you start looking at this chart, like, you know, they start going up, you know, pretty much at the same angle. Like the more you learn, the more competent you are. And for most people, at a certain point, you will reach a sharp edge where your self-assessed competence is going up and up and up.

And then you reach a point and you're like, oh, crap, I don't know as much about this as I thought I did, you know? And this affects beginners in a variety of fields, music. Maybe you're learning an instrument. And at first you're picking me up really quick. And you're like, oh, yeah, I'm a savant. I'm going to nail this. I'm going to be, you know, you know, and then you're maybe three months in.

And you're like, oh, wow, this is way hard. I'm not Mozart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's the sort of thing. It's like you listen to somebody playing piano. And it's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to learn how to play piano. Oh, yeah, I'm pretty good at this. But then once you get that experience of this is how hard it is.

to do just this baseline, then you listen to somebody who was a master at it, and you're like, oh, no. The third eye opens. Right, exactly. You become like all of a sudden you become aware. Whereas in the beginning, you wouldn't have had a sense of how much it would take to get to that point. Right. That's it.

You don't have the ability to understand what good is. Exactly. Exactly. Right. That's right. That's right. There's a quote that I've seen in a couple places by David Dunning himself. And very cheeky. He said, the first rule of the Dunning Kruger Club is you don't know you're a member of the Dunning Kruger Club. And what's interesting is a lot of people who write about this effect, they note that there's sort of a corresponding effect at the far end, which is a lot of people who are very skilled and very experienced will. underestimate how competent they are because they have traveled that path. The saying, right, you know, the wise person knows what they don't know. And there's a lot of truth in that. For some people, they never make that realization.

They get to that point where they should be hitting that cliff and it just delayed for some people. And that affects musicians. It affects computer programmers. It affects bank robbers as well. Well, this story of the wacky dumb criminals thinking that lemon juice makes them invisible are what prompted the birth of the Dunning Krueger effect. We don't know what we don't know.

We're recording this the 1st of March, and it was just a couple days ago. Have you guys heard of the Willy Wonka interactive disaster? This like magical interactive experience that you can buy a ticket to, And it turns out it was really crappy. That's a perfect example, again, of, like, how hard could it be? How hard could it be to put on a museum of ice cream? I could do that. Yeah.

You can have the AI generate your art. You just get a couple of actors and you have AI generate a script and you hand them the script. And how hard is it to write a script? Yeah. We'll have to write a script anywhere. We'll buy some props. We'll buy some props and then we'll get people to come in. And as it actually turns out, it is quite difficult and quite time-consuming.

And in fact, you have to have a great deal of experience in doing that. It looks like worse than like a high school prom, you know, like a high, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Way better. High school prom actually has, like, mood lighting. This didn't even have that. This was just like a bare set in the middle of the afternoon with sunblazing and like a couple of dollar score props in it.

The high school problem is low effort, but it's complete coverage. Like this, this was low effort and like patchy. Huge venue to the extent of like, I mean, Again, if you have not heard about this, I mean, literally, it's like, they promised, like, sweet treats galore for kids, because, again, well, the A, I promised that anyway. I am not even making this up. Each kid got one jelly bean and one half of a cup of lemonade until it, until the jelly beans ran out. They called the police, the parents that were at this thing, called the police. called the police.

It's just mind-boggling. The part that got me was they were interviewing one of the women who was the like the umpalupa, you know, like manning the little umpalupa station and she was saying how like... The one oompa! It was like a giant

red flag that like they ordered costumes for them just like costumes off the internet and she's like it was all the sexy versions of the costumes. So it was like it wasn't even, it wasn't even bad enough that it was a regular, regular quote, umpalupa, but it was sexy umpah lupa on top of that.

Yeah. Oh. You just don't know. And you can't, you can't, like, grade your competence unless you have a little bit of experience. But it's true. And this plays into, I think, imposter sing. Yes.

I was just going to say, I wonder if it says, as Colin, you said, you know, as time goes by, you become more experience. Your assessment actually goes down because you're kind of overwhelmed. by like, oh my God, and they underestimate their abilities. Yes. That's imposter syndrome. It is, it is twinned and, you know, the other side of the coin, however you want to say it with imposter syndrome.

That's right. Yeah. So that's just, that's the other end of the scale of the Dunning Kruger effect. I like have imposter syndrome every day. You want me to do what? I'm in charge of this? You want me to take care of a kid? I'll figure it out.

Yeah, you just, yeah. We'll see. Figure it out. Well, to be fair, I mean, to be fair, being a parent is. not imposter syndrome, that is just being an impostor. We all agree on this, right? It's like, you have the kid and you're like, oh, oh, I have to pretend to, like, be a parent. Oh, oh, crud. Oh, man, what do I do? Can the baby eat chicken nuggets? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. I googled crazy things. I googled crazy person things.

Like, anything. I mean, you're just like, oh, God, what is it? Then you have this. The second canon, it's just like, you know. A whatever. You put them in there, you put them in there, puddle of mud and, you know, give him, give them a, you know, piece of French bread pizza and you'd be on your way. 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 nofrills.ca. And here I have a quiz, a crystal clear quiz. I'm calling it questions to ask a crystal ball. I got a quiz about famous crystals. Oh, all right. Here we go. Get out your barnyard buzzers. Let's buzz in.

Let's start with the definition. What is a crystal? Oh. Chris. Sparkly rock. No, it's like a geological formation that lines up with some kind of geometric, like, a flat surface. A lattice. A solid material where the makeup of the material, whether if it's ions or atoms or molecules,

they're arranged in a lattice in a highly ordered structure. Okay, okay. And it is so regular that that is a crystalline structure. So yes, that is what a crystal is. Next question. Actor and comedian, Billy Crystal, is known for many things, especially for hosting the Oscars a whopping nine times. But that's not even the record.

Who holds the record for most Oscars hosted at 19 times? Oh, okay. Was it, all right, I'm assuming it's from a, I mean, different era, 19 times. Colin. Was it Bob Hope? Yes, it is Bob Hope. Okay. All right.

Salt is a very common example of crystal and crystalline structure. Speaking of salt, who turned into a pillar of salt when they look back at the City of Sodom Colin That was a lot's wife Right And then lots

She didn't have a name She did not have a name Really? She did not have a name She's lots wife Oh so it's just lots wife Oh jeez Wow

Wow It's funny This is like one of those classic Oh yeah I don't know If it's the right term But I'm just calling it Like the don't look back stories

Oh yeah Like mythology Like oh I'm gonna walk through a I don't know, but like you can't look back or else you're going to lose whatever or you're going to die or something. But yeah, always do it. And someone's like, oh, I'm just going to look a little bit. I'm just going to look a little bit. Yeah, now you're a pillar of salt.

Orpheus is another story. Yeah, the don't look back stories. It's like I feel like every culture has one of these. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Next question. Two methods. One called high pressure, high temperature, H-PH-H-T, and the second one called chemical vapor,

deposition, CVD, are two processes to do what? Oh, Chris. Make diamonds. Yes. Lab grow, grow diamonds. High pressure, high temperature, HPHT emulates what happens, how diamonds are made naturally, like high pressure, high heat. The instant pot.

Yes, it is the instant pot for diamonds. And then you have the chemical vapor deposition. Oh, this is so cool. First way to do, you take a diamond, you slice it super thin. So how to make a diamond first, you need a diamond. You get a diamond. But you know, one diamond gets, makes a lot of more diamonds. And it's funny.

They call it diamond seeds. They're called diamond seeds because you're growing from them. And they're just little wafers, tiny, tiny thin wafers of slice diamonds that they have to slice with the laser. and then they put it on a dish and then a container goes over it and then they flood it with like carbon rich gases so like methane and so all the carbon atoms will glom onto the seeds and start literally growing it's so cool it's so cool that's so cool and then you pop them out raw diamonds are not the prettiest thing it's not what you think diamonds look like but then it's like a hunk it's they grew it and then you just polish it oh my gosh

gosh, it's amazing. It is. You watch like a time-lapse video. It's like, oh, you're a little diamond grow in there. Yeah. Okay. Singer and songwriter, Crystal Waters, released what mathematical house music mega hit back in 1994. Mathematical. That name is in, it's in, it's in there somewhere. Crystal Waters.

Math. It's 100% pure love. 100% pure love. Crystal Waters on the pioneers of house music. All right. Last question.

What kind of crystal is used in many watch and clock devices. Ooh, Colin. I believe quartz. Yes, it is quartz. Okay, I'm going to confess, this episode was already a little bit segment heavy, and that's why I made this into a quiz.

But really, this is like my weird way of making this kind of a segment. This is so interesting, because it's truly one of those TIL, today I learn, and it blew my mind. Growing up, I always, I see clocks. I see clocks watches that says quartz. No idea what that meant. I assumed, I mean, in my kid brain, I assumed it was like, oh, because it's like the outside, the glass encloses the clock is like crystal, you know, like it's clear, but really it's just glass.

I thought maybe that was like quartz. I had no idea. Quartz crystal, a specific type of crystal called quartz, there's something called Piazo electricity. When stress and pressure is applied to quartz specifically, it emits a small charge, electrical charge. Reversely, when an electrical charge is applied to a quartz crystal, the crystal will oscillate at pretty regular intervals because it's a crystal, right? Everything's very regular. Just so happens with quartz, this material, it's exactly one pulse per second. And this blew my mind.

It's so cool. Like I know watches in the old days, like you have to wind them up. And I never really realized when did that stop. And there is something in history called the courts, depending on where you are, depending on what country you are in history, there's something called a courts revolution. Oh. Or a court's crisis. It's a courts crisis when you're Switzerland.

Courts kind of came up in, you know, 70s when Seiko debuted a watch that was quartz-powered. You don't need the crazy mechanical gears and winding up. For all the timing, for the timing mechanism. Before that, Switzerland had the stranglehold on pretty much timekeeping tradition and technology and mechanical timekeeping industries of the entire world. They were neutral, remember, during World War II. And so they provided everybody with all the sophisticated timekeeping equipment. And so they really had a monopoly in the watching time, or his time industry until courts.

It never occurred to me that that would be like somebody's like, you know, crisis. Yeah, I mean, why are you ruining our stuff, man? We got a good thing going. And it's like you screw it up with this with this courts technology. How wild is that? And so Japan's just like, yeah, we can make watches too. Courts this, courts that, courts this. And pretty much at one point, it's like every timekeeping device in your normal household is quartz powered.

Take that, Switzerland. Yeah. And then Switzerland is like, well, fine. Yeah, we'll just start charging $100,000 for our watches. So, you know, yeah. We'll have a, yeah, TikTokers do ASM. on watch cleaning take that

well that is my crystal quiz and that's our show thank you all for joining me and thank you listeners for listening in hope you learn stuff about clear cola

about before and afters and about not robbing banks and put lemon juice all over your face because it won't be invisible you can find us on all major 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 The Explorer's Podcast, movie therapy, and plotting through The Presidents. And we'll see you next week. Bye. This is Jen and Jenny from ancient history fan girl, and we're here to tell you about Jenny's scorching historical romantasy based on Alaric of the Visigoths, enemy of my dreams. Amanda Boucher, best-selling author of the Kingmaker Chronicle, says, quote, this book has everything, high stakes action, grit, ferocity, and blazing passion. Julia and Alaric are colliding storms against a backdrop of the brutal dangers of ancient Rome. They'll do anything to car.

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