Good Job, Brain! - 284: Your Guide to Guides

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Quizzes and weird facts about guidebooks and guides! Colin drives us through "The Knowledge" - the fascinating and grueling steps of becoming a London cab driver, known to be one of the most difficult exams in the world. How do you like them apples? How we escaped the Red Delicious' flavorless grasp, and the one apple ranking guide to rule them all. Come travel with us from page to page in Chris' quiz about those literary maps you'd find in the beginning of books. From POÄNG to MEATBALLS, can we all make it through Karen's IKEA maze quiz without a meltdown? Also, check out Colin's game, now about to enter its second printing! 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. Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Homebound homies, honing homework in Hoboken wearing haute couture. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 284. course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your yearlings yearning for year-end yearbooks. I am Colin. And I'm Chris. We have some hot listener mail.

I think you guys will get a kick out of this. Jonathan wrote in our lobetrotters fan group, he said, just finished listening to title this episode, and the UK title segment from Chris reminded me of the fact that in Sweden the Mel Brooks film, The Producers, some people know it as Broadway show, but there was an old version, 1967. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Was released in Sweden titled Springtime for Hitler. Okay, yeah. The musical in the musical, I mean, in the movie, right. Yeah, yeah. So it's like the fake musical in the movie is called Springtime for Hitler, and they actually marketed and named the movie that. Interesting. Jonathan writes,

that movie was so popular that subsequent. Mel Brooks films all had the same title format. So, here can you guess which Mel Brooks movies these are? Okay, sure, yeah, yeah. Springtime for the sheriff.

Blazing saddles. Yep. Spring time for space. Space balls. Spring time for Frankenstein. Young Frankenstein. This one I don't know. Springtime.

for lunatics. How was it high anxiety? His sort of his vertigo not parody. Oh, I mean. Oh, high anxiety. That's funny. But thank you, Jonathan.

And without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. Here, I have a random Trivial Pursuit card. You guys have your barnyard buzzers. Everybody, let's answer some questions. Here we go.

Blue Wedge for Geography. what are the three colors of the pan-African flag uh chris black green and red correct colors that have been adopted for the flags of several african nations pink wedge which ben afflick thriller is based on the true story of a CIA team that posed as a Hollywood production team Uh, Colin. As an Argo. Argo. Not to be confused with Fargo. Based on a wired story. Whoa.

Yes, it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2013. Yellow Wedge. Julia Gordon Lowe founded which organization to, quote, build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place. Uh, Colin. Is that the Girl Scouts? What is the official name? The Girl Scouts of America. The Girl Scouts of the USA.

Ah, okay. All right, Purple Wedge. What is the name of the pirate ship in J.M. Barry's Peter Pan? Oh. Oh, man. Okay, okay. Is it just the Jolly Roger? It's the Jolly Roger.

Green Wedge. What billionaire tech mogul owns 98%? of Hawaii's smallest accessible island. Oh, Colin. I know this one. This is Larry Ellison of Oracle. Yes, says Larry Ellison. The Oracle founder purchased the 88,000-acre Isle of Lanai. $300 million.

Yeah. Orange Wedge, which Major League baseball player spent his entire 14-year career with the Yankees without winning a championship. Hmm. Oh, man, I'm sure this is a Jimmy. I know. If we were at trivia, we'd all just be looking at Colin right now

and like, save us. We'd be saying things like Colin, literally whatever you want to write down is good with us. This is where we would be like writing down every famous Yankee we could think of, right? We would just be brainstorming every Yankee name and then crossing out the ones that we know won a championship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, good tactic. No, I already told you what I'd be doing. 14 years. Does that place you, does that give you a clue on what era? Okay, yeah. How about Don Maddingly? Like, it is Don Maddenley. Okay.

Chris, Chris Kohler, ladies and gentlemen. Holds it out. Well, we watched the Yankees when I was a kid and Don Mattingly, like he was the guy who was always with the Yankees. Yeah, yeah. But during that time, they didn't, they weren't winning championships. Oh, yeah. Yeah, wow. This is how up trivia works.

Yep. Yep. Talk it out. No bad answers. Good job. Brains. That's so satisfying. Yeah.

Bravo. All right. Well, Colin, there's something in the last episode that... I was wait. You know what? I was sort of waiting that you might call me out here, Karen. I didn't catch it. We're going to have our corrections errors omissions segment.

um actually this is a very fervent um actually from my husband Colin in the last episode you mentioned something about the motor here and this might be a first I was listening to our podcast our own show and I heard myself on the show say something and I immediately thought I was like wait a minute that's not right what was I that's not right and then and then my second thought was oh man all right well I know our listener someone's going to catch this so I guess in some ways I'm glad that it came from inside the family here. So I... Yes, the call is coming from inside the house.

In my haste to talk about how slow, the old modem that I used to have, my 56K modem. I mixed up some numbers here. I mixed up my bits and my bytes. A bit, of course, is one-eighth the size of a bite. So what I was describing in terms of the file sizes and speeds were actually one-eighth the speed that I should have been talking about. I've been getting DMs. I've been getting complaints from inside the house.

Y'all were right. You were right. No, I, I goofed it, and I'm so mad at myself. It's right there in the notes, yep. Hey, it happens. Happens to the best of us. Well, long-time listeners of the show, you know, I'm contractually obligated to mention my camping trips,

at least once per season. The, this week's topic kind of came to me growing out of that trip. You know, we nerd out when we go on these trips, my camping partner and I, we rented a four by four, and had like four different modes of navigation. We've got like the National Geographic map. We've got a four by four trail book map like wirebound. We've got the Google Maps on the device.

And then of course I had two additional GPS tracking apps on my phone and a little Garmin with us. So like we were just joking at one point about like, oh, we're getting a little nervous. We're off trail here, you know, but we don't. also have like five, five means of navigation. But I was like, oh, man, guides, maps, navigation. What a rich, rich, deep, wide topic for the show. So made a mental note when I got back that I would put that in the hat here for topics.

Guidebooks, yeah, maps, exploring, directions. But most importantly, Colin, on your camping trip, we're dying to know. You always want to know. Yeah. What did you poop in? Yeah. Yeah, what did you spend this year? You know what?

I got to tell you guys, this was a little bit of a luxury, a little bit of a luxury for us in that we had sanctioned, sanctioned allowed to bury our poop in the soil poops here on this trip. So we were in a part of Canyonlands National Park out in Utah, one of the most remote places you can get to in America, in fact. And when we're talking to the ranger, and he said, all right, well, you know, when you're up at the campsite, of course, you've got to follow normal, you know, pack it out rules. You've got your little wagbag or what have you. He's like, now if you're, if you're hiking down into the canyon, if you have to do your business down there, you are allowed to just dig and bury it. You know, just, you know, stay away from water and be

responsible. We both kind of looked at each other. We're like, oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I'm definitely going to open the maze. Yeah. But yeah, we were both kind of like, oh, we're definitely going to make sure that that happens down. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. So we had a lovely time. hiking down into the maze, saw some amazing rock art that is as old as 8,000 years, perhaps, truly mind-blowing, older than the pyramids, just incredible. And, you know, we may have left a deposit down there as well. Would you say you left a little piece of yourself there?

Yeah, yeah. Anyways, this week. Anyway. This week, it's your guide to guides. Okay. You guys love reading books. I love reading books. It's not necessarily an indication if the book is going to be good or bad or what, but it's always nice when you open up a book for the first time. And the first thing you see is a map. Yeah. A map of where we're going to be, where we're going to be going to be going, all the cool places that are going to be in this book. You know you're going to be flipping back to that map at multiple points. Exactly.

Where are they? How far did they get? Okay, cool. So literary maps, they call them, right? This is a quiz about those maps that what they got in the beginnings of books. And what I'm going to do is it's going to be one of these quizzes where I'm going to start reading off names of places or things that are written on the map. And as soon as you think you know, you can buzz in an answer. But what I'm looking for, that what I really want to know is, what is the land or the place that I am driving?

Okay. Not the book title. You want to say the name of the book, too, fine, but I'm not really as I'm not really as. Okay. Okay. All right, all right. Unless you're digging so hard for the name of the land that all you can come up with is the name of the book, then begrudging sort of a half a point, I guess, at that point, right?

right well it might it might spark the other one of us if one of us can only get that exactly well let's try it out so i have five there are five places or things written on the map per map you know again buzz in as soon as you think you know it if i was keeping track of this it's like you would get more points for answering earlier you know what i mean so just okay let's not even worry about it if that guy who keeps track of points is still listening Let's say that you get, if there's five things and you get it on the first one, you get five points, and then four points, three points, two points, one point, and so on, okay? If they get the name of the world or the map correct, then it's full points,

but if they only can get the name of the, like the book or the book cycle, and then it's half of whatever those points were. I love that you're crowdsourcing our scoring, okay. Here we go. First map. All right, get your bar. yard buzzers ready let's roll all right all right winky peaks Karen amazing the land of Oz is the land of Oz wow wow well done well how are you selecting like are you going for lesser known to more known well I'm yes I'm trying to go from lesser known to more known but you know if you know the obscure one you could you could yeah I having just finished reading the entire seven

book, Wicked Cycle, plus all of the sequels. I would have known that right off the bat, too, but I wanted to see how you guys would do. Yeah, Winky Peaks, the Great Sandy Waste, quadling country, poppy fields, and then the last one would be Emerald City. Okay, next map. Flint's Finger, the bite.

The new gift. Oh. Colin. Is this Westeros? It is Westeros. Oh. Westeros. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yes, yes. Yeah. The Bight, the new gift, Sunspear, and then King's Landing would be the best. Mm-hmm. Okay. The farm. Zoo of Death. Cliffs of Insanthropes.

of insanity. Oh, God. Fire swamp. Colin, we can discuss. The cliffs of insanity, man. It's like, yeah. Why do I know cliffs of insanity? Is this like Princess Bride, or is it like never,

never ending? Colin. Is it the Princess Bride? It's the Princess Bride. Now, do you want to go for it? What is the land? Do you remember? The land.

Oh, sorry, yes, of course. All right, Karen. It's two warring, it's two warring neighboring countries. I don't know. Two neighboring countries are Florin and Gilder. Oh, yes, Florin and Gilder. Those are the two. And the last one I was going to say was Miracle Max.

Miracle Max is Billy Crystal is noted right on the map there. Yeah, Florin and Gilder. All right, here we go. Iron Hills. White. Downs Mirror mirror Karen

Middle Earth Middle Earth Oh nice Middle Earth It's the IR The ears There you go See

It was getting Yeah Fair Miramar mirror Boromere White Downs Mirror mirror Mirkwood And then

and then the Shire at the end Yeah Okay The last one Should hopefully Give it away But you know

All right North Inlet Cape of the Woods The Spyglass Hill Oh I don't know the land Do you want to say Oh I thought it was his dark materials It is not no no no it's not the Amber Spyglass

No no that's not it So we had North Inlet Cape of the Woods the Spyglass Hill Misenmast Hill Before I say the last one Before I say the last one I want you to think about these things

I mean these are all like pirate or you know ship terms right Spyglass mizzenmast The first two are North Inlet and Cape of the Woods Where Peter Pan lives No which is oh

Neverland Island Treasure Island? But what's the land? What's the place? Oh, it's not... Okay, all right, Treasure Island. Yes, so the last one is Captain Kids Anchorage.

It is from the book Treasure Island. So here's the question. Do you know the name of the island from Treasure Island? Because I did not actually know this. It is not Treasure Island. What is it? It's an island that had treasure on it, and that's the title of the book. The name of the island in Treasure Island, you ready?

Name of the island is Skeleton Island. Oh. Very pirity. Okay. Right, right, right. Okay, so Skeleton Island. Okay. All right.

A few more for you here. Okay. Nice for picnics. Big stones and rocks. What is the, the, the, it's such a cute. Yeah. Is it like poo woods? is it like what's the

That's what you do in the woods I think it's from the poo books Karen A hundred acre wood Thank you A hundred acre wood You can see things like Nice for picnics

Big stones and rocks Oh E tree Rabbit's house And Okay Pooh trap for Hefellos Are all marked on the map

Yes Such a simple guy It's a very good map. It's a good map. You've got to look at the map. Because it's got like Eeyore's depressing hole also, like kind of like in the corner as well. Whatever it's, I don't know what it's called.

I'm not looking at right now. All right. E-Yors, yes, seasonal affect disorder. Hold. Oh, boy. Eton's Moore. Ooh, can you spell that? E-T-T-I-N-S-M-O-O-R.

Ekins Moore. Okay, okay, okay. Glasswater Creek Karen Narnia It's Narnia Nice job Wow

Now did you Did you know that or were you kind of No I've never read any of those books Wow It sounds British And then also the The iciness of glass creek It gave me an icy image

And I was like oh what's icy Yeah Etton's more Glasswater Creek shuttering woods Witch's Castle and Aslan's Camp Oh, okay. Yes. Yep.

Here's another one. Bownown. Bownown. Lorath. That's L-O-R-A-T-H. Hmm. L-R-A-T-H. Oh, that sounds fun.

Wow, why does that sound so familiar? I don't even read that many books. I can't it must be something I've read Okay Court of Ibn I B-B-B-E-N Court of Ibn But we're in Pirity

Yeah it's Yeah It's E-T That's Y-I Space T-I Not necessarily like British or English

Or I do the You know Dead giveaway at the end Bown Lorath Port of Ibn E.T. Valeria.

Oh, Valeria. But we already had We already had Westeros. He did already have Westeros. Esos? It's Esos. Oh, man.

It's Esos. We already had Westeros. We did not have Esos. He did have the whole map for the whole... Yep, he did. I didn't give you Sothorios. So I think you're right, Karen. Oh, it's a West and the East.

Yeah. It's a West and East. Oh, you got it. Yep, it's Esos. Good job. Okay, one final map for you all from a fictional book. Westchester County. Long Island Sound.

Flushing. Karen. Great Gatsby. Great Gatsby. Yeah. Oh, nice. I didn't even get to. But we're looking for the place, though, right?

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, so actually, New York. New York. Yeah, no, no, thanks for keeping me honest. Thanks for keeping me honest. Yeah, yeah, I just figured it. I guess, Westchester County, Long Island Sound,

flushing, Valley of Ashes and West Egg. Egg. All right, well, good job, everybody. That was fun. Good job. That was good. That was real good. I don't really remember maps,

but I remember as a kid really clearly, do you remember Jurassic Park, the book had like the fractals in the chapter markings like that's etched in my brain i recently re-read that and i just i was so i i remembered the fractal things i'm like oh so good it's such it's such a clever idea yeah Jurassic Park the book man if you have never read Jurassic I have never read the book I guess I should oh Colin you really should it's not like the whole I've read other I read other Crichton I just yeah the first the first The first book is, you know, it's a really thinky kind of thing that takes a long time to get

to the dinosaurs, you know what I mean, but it's super smart. It's really good. Yeah. All right. All right. I'll pick that one up. Also, what's very funny about it is, of course, I was reading this as a kid, I'm living in suburban Connecticut, I read the book. I'm like, okay, cool. And then, like, reading it, like, as an adult a couple years ago, it's like, oh, ha ha, funny, this is all about Silicon Valley biotech firms. There's so many, like, early references to things happening like Palo Alto and stuff like that. It's like, oh, cute. Okay. Yeah, read it, read it. All right, my turn in this guide episode, your guide to guides.

This may seem random. So when you go shopping for apples at the supermarket these days, what do you see? You see so many options. Yeah. And they all have cutesy names like Sugarbee, you know, Gala or Evie. Cosmic crisp. Cosmic crisp. Yeah, I love a good cosmic crisp.

That's a great. Oh, they're so good. There are so many commercially available apple varieties out there. And gosh, if only there was a guide that could review and rate apples out there. And your wish is granted. In comes apple rankings.com. Oh, thank you. This is a special shout out to my friend and coworker and good job brain listener,

Johnny, who told me about this. So Apple rankings might be, maybe, the most comprehensive Apple Variances. Apple Variety Review Guide. Wow. Written by comedian Brian Frange, who is not only funny, seriously is obsessed with apples, like a real passion for apples, and designed this comprehensive scoring system. Wow. And has reviewed pretty much all commercially available Apple varieties.

This is right up my alley. I can't believe I haven't heard of this. Now, so if you grew up in the 90s or before the 90s. these, if you wanted to get apples at the supermarket, you have two choices. Yep. You had green and you had red. Yep, those are the two. Do I want red and mealy, or do I want green and make my mouth puckered?

Which of these delectable choices do I opt for? By red, I mean the classic variety, Red Delicious, the iconic kind of emoji cartoon symbol of the apple. And then the green apple, like you said, Colin, was undoubtedly Granny Smith. Yes. By the way, named after a real Granny Smith. Oh, is that right? It wasn't just a marketing creation. All right.

Not a marketing creation. She's an Australian fruit cultivator. She grew the Granny Smith apple. But yes, we didn't even use the variety names back then because we didn't even have that many options that required unique names to, you know, differentiate which apple. It was green or red. I remember once a. at the supermarket with my mom, and I said, we saw a yellow apple. And, like, my sister and I

just about stopped in our tracks. And it's like, what, there's a, there's a third color apple, though? Yeah. And like you said, the red apple, the red delicious was not delicious at all. Yeah. But for almost a century, a hundred years, almost a hundred years, the red delicious ruled the apple production industry in the U.S. But it also has been universally. dislike. Back to apple rankings.com. So Brian Franch, the Red Delicious Apple Review. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Believe it or not, the coffee grinds in a leather glove known as the Red Delicious Apple was once a robust firebrand credited with reinventing the apple from mere cider fruit to a full-fledged lunchworthy sidepiece. It even won the Stark Brothers Apple

contest in 1894. Likely your great-grandma's favorite apple. Apple. This once flavorful Prometheus has been mass produced into desolation. And it's a short review, but it hits on a lot of points, especially about the history of Red Delicious. By the way, the score out of 100, Red Delicious scored 25 out of 100, and the score category of despicable. So how did something this undelicious also become like, the most common omnipresent apple in our stores or in American culture, right? Yeah. You think of like the big, curvy, red apple and you're like, oh, yeah, that's it.

As you said, it is the iconic image, at least for an American, of what an apple is. Yeah. So here's the thing. The Red Delicious used to be delicious. The V1 of the Red Delicious came about in the 1870s when a farmer in Iowa, a discovered mutated seedling. And years later, it fruited, and it was really, really cool. good, and the farmer called this apple the hawk eye.

It's important to note, and this was in the Apple Rankings Review, that apples up to this point, they weren't bred for eating raw. Most of the apples were being bred for cider production. Yeah, yeah. Just an alcohol. People, of course, ate apples, but the traits of a juicing apple is very different than, like, an eating apple. So the Apple ranking review also mentioned that the apple was so tasty that it won the Stark

Brothers Apple contest, which, did happen. Stark Brothers was an agricultural industry nursery. And immediately after the contest, the Stark brothers got exclusive rights to distribute the Hawkeye Apple. And it was rebranded and renamed as Red Delicious. Because at the time, there was the Golden Delicious that came out. And they're like, oh, if they're the Golden Delicious, we're going to be the Red Delicious. And it became a commercial success. Again, this is V1 of the red delicious apple and it was actually delicious. The launch edition. Yeah. You know, what they say, mo money, more problems. Decades and decades of then selective breeding occurred. Growers started to focus on cosmetic traits like, oh, there's a mutation

that made the apples more red. Oh, a darker red. Where we're breeding the apples to have more uniform in color so it's not splotchy it's all red and oh we want a certain shape oh we're breeding for skins to be thicker because it's prettier and helps the fruit from bruising can be stored longer and the apples became prettier and prettier but the taste became less important and that's how we ended up with Colin how did you describe it was like just mealy yeah spongy thick skin what upset the apple cart. So a couple of big things happened in the decades leading up to 2000s. There were advancements in shipping and exporting apples from overseas. Japan, New Zealand, and this started introducing more varieties onto the supermarket shelves. Everybody was kind of getting tired

of the Red Delicious. Institutes and universities trying to breed apples for taste at a bigger scale, at a commercial scale, which takes decades. I remember I was an older kid and my mom gave me a Fuji apple. It wasn't all red. It wasn't all green. It was like a mix of like yellow and green and red. And to me, I was kind of brainwashed to think like, oh, something's wrong with this apple. Yeah. I took my first bite and it was like like a mythical apple detonated. Yeah. And I do like slow-low footage of like apples exploding or a bullet shoot. That's what like happened in my body. Are they allowed to be good? It blew my mind. Yeah. And so again, And kids, we only had the gross red and the gross green.

Yeah. Nothing else for a long time. Yeah. The turning point was 80s, 90s when the honey crisp apple became the first modern Apple. Oh, that was kind of the first breakthrough one. It developed in University of Minnesota. And it's interesting because if you think about the new era of apples, this current

era of apples, you can even tell the newness from just their names. You know, older apple varieties have names like, like people names, like Jonathan and Macintosh, or like their appearance, like the Russet. And these new apples have very market research names. They're focused on texture and taste and positive associations. Jazz. Jazz apples. Ever crisp, crunch a bunch, sweet tango. It's starting to sound like street names for drugs.

If you feel like these apples sound like brand names, you are completely correct because people figure it out, okay, you can patent apple trees, but the patents expire and trees take a long time to fruit. But you can trademark an apple name. So even if someone grows the same type of apple, they can't use that name and the brand power behind the name. So if you own the trademark, you get to control who gets to grow and your special apple and call your special apple by its name. And hopefully, avoiding the mistakes of the Red Delicious. They want it controlled. They don't want everybody to just have access and then breeding their own weird things. Yeah, yeah. They want to keep the high quality of fruit. When we think about the apple agricultural

industry, it's like there's this idyllic imagery of cider and orchards and rural farms and picking apples and farm stands when in fact it's just like any other large commercial industry. It's a huge operation, huge amounts of money. There's scientists, there's government contracts, there's labs, there's a big legal operation. You need a lot of lawyers, patents, trademarks, and nationwide distribution deals and marketing. Yeah, yeah. I now live in Washington State.

Big, big, big Apple Hub and the big pride and joy of Washington. Washington in recent years was the debut of the Cosmic Crisp. Big deal up here, Cosmic Crisp, develop in Washington State University. And this was the state's big push and hope that this becomes the quintessential eating apple in America. It was bread for flavor, bread for crisp, and it was bread for staying power. they say that the shelf life of a Cosmic Crisp is a year. What?

Is a year under some conditions. Okay. Cosmic Crisp apples can last a long time. Like not on the dashboard of your car, basically. No, no, no. Yeah. Where did you keep your apples, Chris? Yeah.

Wow. That's cool. They spent $10 million on marketing on investing in this big bed. First Apple to have an Instagram account. There was a launch trailer They did market research And that's where actually the name Because someone said it looked like a galaxy

Swirls of galaxy with little stars And if you look at the skin That's what it kind of looks like I didn't know any of this stuff I just saw it in the supermarket and was like Oh I'm on a space apple Yeah They got you

Yeah they take it home and eat it like Oh dang yeah it's good Even though Even though Apple rankings Called the Cosmic Crisp the most overhyped apple of all time with the middling score of 74. Oh.

If Cosmic Crisp earned a 74, what's the highest? What is, I need to know. What's the best apple? Tell me. I was going to leave you hanging and be like, oh, you got to go find out yourself. I'll tell you. It is the sweet tango.

Oh, I have not had that one. Yes, also developed by a University of Minnesota. His only gripe was, I think he said he's annoyed that it's sweet tango, not sweet tango. And you have to kind of say it together, sweet tango. Points off. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, but that's how why you want to say, I want a sweet tango apple. You want to be putting that little stop.

You don't want that pause. No, yeah. Yeah, sweet tango, sure. A sweet tango. I don't have a millisecond to spare. Trademarked. Of course. Also easier to trademark, right, the custom spelling name, right?

Marketing says that it has a bit of spice, cinnamon, brown sugar, like a hint of that spice. This is on my to-do list now, Karen. Sweetango? I'm going to be hunting for a sweet tango. Have you ever seen, have you had one? Have you seen them in? No, I'll tell you, out of all of these, I've definitely had Cosmic Crisp, NV, Opel, which is the yellow apple.

Apple ranking says it tastes good for an unwiped anus. All right, guys, we got to, we got to find some sweet tangos. We got to find some sweet tangos. Tangoes. I was just saying to my friend, like, if I could go back in time and tell my like seven-year-old self, like, don't worry. Yeah, the apples, the apples get better. Yeah, I promise you. It's insane.

I can't believe we were okay with that for so long. You don't know what you don't know. Yeah. I don't think we were. I wasn't okay with it. I just didn't like apples. You know what I was like, gross. I don't want to eat an apple.

They had a whole, the whole PR thing about how people thought they would eat it and, like, not get cancer, you know. Oh, apple a day. Keeps the doctor away. So people were like, oh, I better eat like an apple a day. And it's like, yeah. Yeah. Take my medicine. All right.

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Smooth puzzles, smart trivia. Good job, brain. we're all friends here right is it is it okay to engage in some light spoilers for a 2017 family movie is that okay sure yeah okay light plot elements if you have not seen this movie have you all have you all have you all seen the movie paddington two i have not i have not watched any of them and i heard they're really good they are in my opinion not just in my opinion, but also in my opinion, they are extremely good movies. Well-acted, well-directed. Let me pause here. Let me pause here. For those of you who may not know anything about Paddington or what I'm

talking about, I'm talking, of course, about Paddington, the beloved bear from Peru, who makes his way to London from a series of many, many beloved children's books and other media, including a smash-hit movie and its smash-hit sequel from 2017. And by the time of the events of Paddington, too, he's really well-established in the neighborhood. He knows everybody. He's out, you know, and he's integrated himself into people's lives. And one of the friends that you see he's made, Mr. Barnes, the rubbish man, the garbage man. And we see Paddington hopping on Mr. Barnes's trash truck, his rubbish truck, and riding along with him and they're chit-chatting. And as they ride, Mr. Barnes is shown studiously looking over a roadmap guide to London while he works his shift on the garbage truck.

And it is made clear that he is studying to become a London cab driver. That's right, a black cab driver. And then in fact, here's where we're getting to some spoilers. Later in the movie, his knowledge of London streets helped save the day when he's able to help deliver. Paddington to his namesake train station in the nick of time to chase down the McGuffin and the villain and you can watch the movie and see how it all unfolds from there. So this was not an invention for the movie. This was not just a clever way of setting something up to pay off in the last act of the

movie. This is an extremely traditional part of the life of an aspiring London taxi driver. And I had heard growing up from my dad, of course, oh, it's tough to be a London cab driver. You really got to know your stuff and they put you through the ringer. But I really had no idea until I dove into the details of exactly what is involved. And credit to my dad, he was right. He did not exaggerate. In fact, if anything, rare for my dad, he undersold how hard it is to become a London taxi driver.

Yes. Since 1865, aspiring London taxi drivers have had to master, quote, the knowledge. That's what it's called the knowledge. The knowledge is, in fact, one of the hardest and longest entrance exams for any job, anywhere in the world. That's amazing. It is really, really, really something. It requires a level of dedication. and desire and commitment.

You've got to put yourself through it while you're going through it. You know, it's not like a paid apprenticeship or anything. So, all right. So for comparison, if you want to become a cab driver in, say, New York City, you've got to undergo your background checks, your drug testing, you know, you have to do a driver education course that's anywhere from a day to a few days, your vehicle training, and then the exam. And then more or less, it's, okay, well, you know, you passed.

Here you go. Good luck. And enjoy driving a cab. By comparison here, to become a London taxi driver, and by which I mean the classic, you know, they call them the black cabs, the black taxis, even though today a good many of them, I mean, possibly even the majority at this point, are not necessarily black anymore. But we're talking about the same, just classic, iconic London black cab. I'm going to quote here a little bit from the Transport for London, official government city setting here. London's taxi service is the best in the world, in part because our cab drivers know the quickest routes through London's complicated road network. There are thousands of streets and landmarks within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.

Charing Cross is generally considered the historical center of London, so it's kind of where they center these measurements. Anyone who wants to drive an iconic London cab must memorize them all. all the knowledge of London. What is involved here? What are we talking about? So let's say you get it in your head you want to apply to become a London taxi driver. You apply, you pass kind of, you know, the requisite background checks, medical checks, etc. Verify you are who you say you are, all that kind of stuff.

And then they will send you, among other things, what is called the Blue Book. and the blue book contains 320 routes or runs within that six-mile radius of Center of London, Charing Cross, and you are expected to learn every single one of these 320 routes, all of the roads, all of the landmarks within a quarter-mile radius of the start and end points of each route. So you not only know how to get from anywhere to anywhere along these routes. You got to visualize it. But to visualize it and know, like, if someone says,

I want to get to this attraction or this point of interest, that's near one of these routes. You need to know how to get there. Right. So it's, apparently, it's 80 pages. And you are, again, you're expected to memorize these. You're not relying on GPS. You're not expected to be looking down at a little map here.

Right. Everything. hospitals, hotels, theaters, like museums, all of it. This is a seven-stage process after you get the Blue Book. It takes most applicants three to four years to finish this process. Roughly two-thirds of applicants either drop out or are not able to make the cut or just are not able to sustain it for a three-to-four-year effort. Yeah. Stage one.

Okay, so you get the Blue Book. Within six months of starting, you are. are allowed to take the self-assessment, all right? And you have to do it basically as a step, but it doesn't really go on your official record. It's basically a way for you to gauge, am I ready? Do I think I'm ready to take the next step? Right. Do you want to waste our time? Yeah. Do you want to waste everyone's time? I learned about what are called affectionately knowledge boys and knowledge girls. And you will see knowledge boys and knowledge girls riding around the city on mopeds, drilling themselves

on all of the points of interest and roots. And again, got to give credit to my dad here. He correctly pointed one of these out to me once on a trip. He saw a guy on a scooter and he had a big clipboard on the front of his like, you know, the little windshield of the scooter. And my dad's like, oh, I bet that guy's training for the London cab exam. Like he's quizzing himself. And sure enough, that is exactly what these people, that's what they're doing. I found a blog and website run by a London guide who was a cab driver. And he talks in great length about his experience going through this. He said it took him nine months to work up the confidence in the Blue Book to advance to the next stage.

So nine months of cramming on maps and driving around the city and just trying to get the knowledge in there. I have a question. Yeah. Is this job a well-paying job and this is why people want it or is it like a badge of honor? You know, Karen, I think it's a really good. question. I think it's somewhat a mix of all of those. It is a good living. I mean, again, the author of this blog, in his words, he said, I was never expecting it to make me a wealthy man, but that's not why I did it. There is a great deal of pride in being part of this tradition of

I earned it. I passed it. I passed this hard exam. I did it. You are in many ways, sort of your own master on the job here. It is a very stable, solid job. If you get all the way through the process. You've kind of made it. Like you can drive a cab basically, right, unless you don't have any some serious, you know, infraction. You can drive the cab as long as you want, and you're kind of your own boss. You know, you can buy a cab, you can rent a cab. You get sort of preferential treatment in the transit system. And, you know, I mean, we could talk a whole other conversation about how Uber and, you know, sort of the ride share companies have changed the economics of being a cab driver, even in London. But even in London, the traditional black cab tax drivers have a lot

have priority privileges that the other drivers don't so i first heard about this when hearing about uber coming into london essentially and it was like you know you've had these guys who drill for like three to four years build up a total encyclopedic knowledge of not only where everything is but what is the most efficient route by which to get there and then uber comes in and it's like randos with gps and it's like here you go and it's like the question is to what extent has that deep ingrained knowledge kind of been just replaced by here's a computer that can just do it for you.

So, you know, some of the advantages are obvious maybe, like, you know, they can pick up passengers just hailing them on the street, which an Uber or a lift are not allowed to do. They're allowed to line up in preferential places at airports and museums and things like that. So, all right, so you have self-assessed at being ready to go to stage two,

which is the written examination. And I'm taking these stages again. from Transport for London. So stage two is the written examination where you actually sit, you come in, you write it down, you're tested on your knowledge of the Blue Book and major landmarks.

It's a multiple choice, and you need to get 60% or higher to pass. Oh, okay. It is difficult, however. Now, you have two years, basically, from when the clock starts, when they send you your Blue Book, to say, I'm ready for the written examination, okay?

stages three through five are what they officially term appearances, which are basically just in-person interviews. Okay, they're interviews. One-on-one interviews with a, with the special examiner. It says each appearance usually consists of four questions about the shortest route between any two points in London. Jeez Louise. It's not just the blue book. It is literally any two points in the city of London. They're going to give you, here's your starting point, here's your end point. Tell me the best way to get there. Yep. And very often, tell me some of the sites along the way. Tell me, tell me, you know, tell me what are the points of interest? Why might I be going this route? This takes about 20 minutes.

So in these appearances, you get a score from A to D. And then depending on your score, your grade, you accumulate different number of points. Okay. There's a lot of emphasis on points in this system and in earning your way up through the stages. As you get more and more points, you move to the next stage, and then the interviews become increasingly frequent. Division. That's right. Yeah, it's almost so you're getting promoted. But conversely, if you get too many low scores, too many Ds, they can bump you down.

They can relegate you down to an early, exactly, to an earlier stage. All right. So by the time you get to stage three, your interviews are about two months apart. At stage four, they're about once a month. At stage five, they're every three weeks. So I read one account of an interview with a notorious examiner who asked the person taking the test to take him from point A to, quote, the longest stained glass window in London. That was his point B. Oh, my God.

That's amazing. Not the biggest, the longest. Yeah. Oh, man. Not the longest. Yeah. I kind of like this. there's like a like an Atlas Obscira trivia in history yeah kind of a tour guide as well you're like

oh that is that's the highest spire that's the longest stained glass you know and you got to be a nut for this one person talked about having to know not just the theater district but the order of all the theaters right you need to know like oh okay this one comes first then this one comes this is like for the people that get in the cab and it's like hey where you going i don't know And I just said it's getting in the cab and I don't know, yeah, where should I go? I've seen so many short stained glass windows on my previous trip. I just, do you by any chance? I don't know.

Maybe you can hook me up. It's probably a long shot, but. So you make it to stage six, which is the suburban examination. So this is like, okay, all right, now you got to kind of. of you need to tack on an additional 25 routes that cover sort of the outer ring, right, of London's suburbs, because, yeah, you're not, you know, you're going to need to cross the line. And there are two, two types of badging and licensing. And what I'm talking about is the sort of the main center of London badging system, right? There is another system for people who want to only get licensed for the suburbs. But if you're, if you're city of London, you got to at least sort of, you know, have some familiar with the suburbs. If you pass that, all right and you're now approaching the end of conservatively 34 months possibly as much as four years you pass that stage seven is the final application for your license so all of this has just been applying to to train to accumulate the knowledge to apply for the license and i

should mention you know in passing here this will not surprise you that there is an entire parallel industry set up of knowledge schools. Oh, sure. So these are not run by the city, multiple schools, and they're very popular and well attended. And the students will help each other out with study sessions and like, oh, what was your interview? What was your in her appearance?

Yeah, it is. It's very much like a med school in atmosphere. You're right. Like, this should be a documentary, fresh-faced class of hopefuls and documenting their journey. You, right. I mean, now at this period, you've spent longer doing this than many people spend in law school. You are ready.

You do your final application. Let's say you pass. Here you go. They give you your badge. They give you your license. They give you kind of a pep talk. You know, again, this is their official description is you get a pre-licensing talk is what they call it, which is where you join a group of other successful candidates to receive advice about your responsibilities

as a taxi driver from a knowledge of London example. And you can go by your taxi. You are your own boss. Drive around. Eventually, maybe you retire to become a trainer or a knowledge school instructor. Yeah. That is the end-to-end story of what it takes to become a cab driver in London. I was trying to find a satisfying explanation for why is it so rigorous?

Like, okay, yeah. I mean, it's great thing to doing this for, you know. What happened in the past. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, every set of regulations tells a story, right? Yeah, I'm not vouching that this is 100% true, but the best way I read is that after the great exhibition of the works of industry of all nations,

which is one of the very, very early world's fairs. Okay. This is the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, the very famous Crystal Palace. Apparently, many of the attendees from around the world were complaining that the cabmen did not know their way around the city well enough. All right. Now, these would have been horse-drawn carriages, horse-drawn cabs, of course, in 1851.

So the city of London, yeah, felt we need to formalize. We need to represent. So that's definitely plausible. It is certainly plausible. And then London has no grid system, historical London, certainly. and it has thousands of tiny little streets, dead ends, little curves, hook arounds. It does kind of make sense like, all right, this is the perfect city that if you need to establish an agency to really make sure people know what they're doing, yeah, I could see it.

And much better than getting in a cab in the U.S., which is usually like, hey, where are you going? Okay. How do you get there? I have to say, like, having lived in New York for a while, I did like the experience of getting a New York cab take me to JFK or LaGuardia or whatever and oftentimes the cab driver is do you have a preference how we go which is basically code for I don't want you yelling at me in 20 minutes that I took the wrong route yeah it's like I know how to get there I know how to get there but the meter's running do you have a way you want to get there yeah yeah I don't want you yelling at

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cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. All right, time for our last segment. And we're talking about guides, guidance, maps, directions. and so what's a store that guides you through an expertly crafted maze? IKEA! That's right, everyone. It's time to take an imaginary trip together to IKEA.

Of course, the Swedish flat pack furniture, DIY furniture, Swedish meatballs, giant. Extra-ling and very jam on my Swedish meatballs, please. We've talked about a foundational trivia about IKEA before. know, the founder, Ingvar Combrad. But here, I have a quiz about how they guide the customer through their stores. And the format of this quiz is as if we're going through an IKEA store together. Entrance to exit. Almost every IKEA store is laid out and built very similarly. There are some exceptions, but chances are the IKEA, you go to an Emeryville ordered in the same way as the IKEA in somewhere in

Sweden. It matches my experience for sure. All right y'all. So imagine. We just parked the car. Maybe we're giving ourselves a pep talk. You know, like, let's do this. We're feeling good. We're walking towards the store. Question. IKEA opened its first U.S. store in Plymouth

Meeting Mall of what state? Ooh. The first U.S. IKEA store. Plymouth Meeting. Plymouth Meeting Mall. Colin

Massachusetts Incorrect Clue The current Ikea North America headquarters is also in this state It is

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Interesting The largest Ikea store By the way is located in Passay City

in the Philippines Oh Yes and the smallest store Is in Hong Kong We've got a whole spectrum of IKEA store Makes sense. All right. Here we go. We're walking. We're going through the automatic glass doors, you know, to the lobby.

We step into the store, and right in the lobby is an escalator and an elevator on the side that takes you upstairs. Immediately. Immediately. You go in, you're like, oh, time to go up. But before you go upstairs, there is another key space in this lobby, which is the... Yeah, the kids, the kids room. Yes. Every child care facility and every IKEA has the same name. name. Very fitting name in Swedish. Do you remember what's it called? I do not. It's kind of guessable. Yeah, but when you say it, your boxer. Yeah. It's small land. Oh, that's right. Small land. Small land. Small land. Small land. Which literally in Swedish means small land. Yeah, that's great. Also, the province where Ingvar Kempred is from. So it has like double meaning. It's like a real place. But it's also, you know, for kids.

It's a small man. I love that. We get up on the escalator. Bam, congrats. We're now on the upper level. And this is the first sequence of what's referred to as the IKEA maze. In a regular store, when you want to buy something, you just go to that item section. Yeah.

Like, hey, I want some cereal. I'll go to the cereal aisle. No, no, no, no, no. But IKEA, they have designed this very long, windy path that makes you go through every everything yes and in the order they have set the path is meant to feel like meandering and natural and there's like a flow like you said and there are shortcuts for for convenience but those doors are always located in very unnatural places yeah we call them secret doors yeah yeah and it feels like you're going against the stream or you're doing something naughty like they make it feel

like it's bad it does the upper level is essentially the the showroom right it usually starts with like fake design rooms, example rooms, all furnished with IKEA stuff, giving you the vibes, and then you have these showroom spaces where they put all the similar furniture together so you can like compare in contrast. Speaking of furniture, question,

in 2020, IKEA collaborated a hot collab with Pizza Hut, and they released a table shaped like what? This is only available in Hong Kong. Okay. Hint, it's not a pizza. Oh. Okay.

Colin. Mm. A calzone. Incorrect. A zone. Release a table that you could build. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Shaped like what? With pizza height. It's white. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Oh, is it the little pizza, little pup tent thing that goes inside?

It's a pizza saver. They made a table that looks like a pizza saver. which not that big of a stretch because a lot of tables ready look like the pizza saver. That's cute. Very cute. So usually upstairs the order is living room stuff, dining room stuff, kitchens, bedrooms, and the upper level maze ends with kids' rooms. Yes.

And it's in this kids' room section that you will find the now TikTok famous global sensation, the Blauhaj, spelled Blahaj. A Swedish pronunciation, I looked up. Blah High, and it's B-L-A-H-A-J, which is what? TikTok famous in the kids section. An uber popular global sensation. There may be one in my house, and I don't even know it. It might be.

It's not that chair, right? It's got to be something like... It is the stuffed shark. Oh. That shark has become... Yes, the IKEA shark. Yes. You know how in Asia, like a lot of things have mascots.

They like a few animal mascot. People are waiting for the bins to fill up with the sharks. I've seen that online. They would like set all the sharks in the dining room showroom and they're eating dinner and they would dress the shark up. It's like a whole thing. All right. So we're at the halfway mark. Congratulations of our IKEA trip.

We haven't broken up yet. Not a lot of fights. We finished the upstairs maze and now we're a bit. about to go downstairs via elevator or stairs. But wait, question, what is expertly located at this transition? The, well, there's the shopping carts, right? And the bags, right? Is that what you mean?

Or what do you... There is the restaurant. Oh, of course. The IKEA restaurant, you exit the kids and immediately used to smell, used to see in the cafeteria, which is such a pro move. A, you don't want customers to get hungry and frustrated while shopping at your store. Also, they just did a whole big meandering maze run, right? So they're probably hungry.

B, it's a good place to rest. So more importantly, it gives you a chance to talk over big decisions. Ah, yeah. Which are we going to get the bed? Are we going to get the... Yes, yes. What size? Should we get the queen or should we get the king?

These are a very, very big decisions in a very chill and charmed. farming environment, right, while you're eating. We've discussed what we want. Now we're heading down to the ground floor. First part of the ground floor is the marketplace, which is like a warehouse store, right? You buy the smaller non-furniture individual items. Now you've already like made some decisions on some like larger stuff that you're going to get. So now that you're already spending money, it's like, oh, well, these, you know, wine glasses are

only like 50 cents each. So I might as well just get these while I'm here. This is what's called. a micro yes the entire IKEA experience even when you stepped into the fake rooms you're like wow this is nice that's already a micro yes because you're like oh I like this I already have a positive feeling you're making these micro decisions that are yes and it's building up to a bigger yes which is spending more and more money for big ticketed items right so the marketplace you can get a bunch of pillows and flatware

and like picture frames, organizer cubes, you know, planes and stuff. Yeah. And it's very common to see all these items piled up in a big heap in a bin. Yes. Frames are just in this huge bin or like flower pots just in a big bin jumbled up. No order. This is a technique called Bula Bula Bula Bula Bula, Bula, kind of means like bubble. And it's to give the appearance of abundance.

Right. There's so many of these. Oh, man, they're so affordable. When products are in a big pile, they look so plentiful and also inexpensive. You're like, oh, yeah, well, I'll just grab two. I'll grab, there's come a couple. Yeah. Oh, I need forks.

You know, I'll just get eight forks. So now, yeah, so now we're walking through, we're leaving the marketplace. And the final boss fight is the flat pack storage warehouse area. You've made the decision. You're like, buy the bed. I got to go to B. 31 and find all the parts the micro yes builds up to this point i'm getting the mental energy i feel good we've already sunk in so much time yeah yeah let's just get this yeah this is probably the

thing you came to get right did like at at the very end of the trip all the way through and now you've got a cart full of other incidental stuff and like what are you going to abandon that no first not you're going to lug it across the finish yeah right yeah we've checked out who good job everybody we look down at our stuff and wonder oh god what have we done the thrill of shopping kind of just dies down and now we feel the dread we have to stuff it in the car we have to get at home and then we have to open all these cardboard boxes deal with recycling now we have to build all of this furniture question ikea acquired what techish company headquartered in san francisco that might be able to help you out.

Colin? I believe it was TaskRabbit, yes? Correct. Ikea has a lot of non-furniture ventures, and one of them was to invest in TaskRabbit. I think it was really smart. Hey, we know you're lazy. We'll have people do it for you,

and you don't have to worry about it at all. And they probably knew, like, what percentage of TaskRabbit tasks are literally just people asking, come to my house and build my IKEA furniture. it may be because you're a single person and you just bought this giant bed that you really need another person you know it's in the manual when they have the two got you know the two yeah yeah you got to take two people to lift this and maybe you're like I just need another person to like hold this and I know and I've been there in college it's like the you open the manual the two people you need two people and it's like I can do it with one I'll use I'll just prop it up my bad it's fine yeah I've always been able to do it with one per there's always a way you can and figure out how to do it. Yeah.

I'm glad we survived our IKEA trip, guys. I've always said this is like a test for relationships is if you can like survive Disneyland and if you can survive IKEA. Totally. Colin, you've been a busy guy and you've been working on something else. I have. So you may remember last year on the show I was talking about my tabletop game that I designed with my game design partner, who also happens to be on my.

camping partner to tie that together. Oh! Yes, yes. This is my game, Bear Bones, which is a deck building and dice rolling game. We were very excited to debut it last year. We have sold out our entire first printing. Yeah, it was great. We're very proud of ourselves.

We're very happy. We have been eager to do a second printing, make it bigger and better. Well, better anyway, if not bigger. But we have a Kickstarter campaign for an upgraded, revised, second addition of the game, as well as two expansion packs. This Kickstarter campaign has started literally today within the last 24 hours, as you hear this episode. And I would be honored and humbled if any listeners would love to go check it out.

What are some of the changes, the upgrades? Because I love the original. The main changes are material upgrades, you know. So the first one, again, being a very kind of scrappy independent production, was we improved the quality of the dice, and we're making the cards better. Maybe you missed out my announcement last year. This is all brand new to you. Maybe you went to our store and it was already sold out.

Maybe you want to buy another copy. We're happy to have your support in any way that you want to give it to us. Woo! Woo! Go to kickstarter.com search for Bear Bones. You can also go to our own website, which is barebones. game.com slash Kickstarter.

I know that's a mouthful, but you're all very smart people. I trust you can find your way there. And that's our show. Thank you all for joining me. And thank you listeners for listening in. Hope you learn stuff about maps and books, about the London cabbie Somali med school exam,

about red delicious, red undilicious, and about IKEA. 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 Wiser World, Southern Gothic, and The Past and the Curious. We'll see you next week. Bye. Spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming

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