Good Job, Brain! - 293: Down On The Farm

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

We're Old MacDonalding up in here in our trivia-filled farm! Sure Westeros had The Wall, but in the Americas, we have The Screwworm Shield. And squeal for joy in Chris' kid lit segment. Unusual trademarks and the John Deere company, and take Karen's quiz about ~unusual~ farms. 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, probing professionals prone to procuring provolone cheese. Welcome to Kajab Brain, your weekly quiz show, an off-be trivia podcast. This is episode 293. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your moody mooing moonshiner's eating moon pies and moosly under the moonlight in mu-moos. I'm Colin. I'm Chris. I'm having a really hard time.

What's a food or a thing that starts with P-R-O? And I was like, Provolone. Done. What movie was that? It was like White Man Can Jump where Rosie Perez had to list foods that start with Q. She's trying to get in Jeopardy. Yeah, she's trying to get on Jeopardy. Foods that start with Q.

What is key? Quince. Césidia, quail. Anyways, hello everybody. Cudoba. Does that count? Nice. Quaker Outs.

Oh, oh, uh, Quinoa. Quinoa. Quinoa, yeah. Kinwa, yeah, of course. Don't, don't email me. Man, that's really good. All right, while speaking of trivia in jeopardy, let's jump into our first general trivia segment.

Pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have a random, a trivial pursuit card and a TV buff card you guys have your barnyard buzzers listeners come on in and answer some questions here we go blue wet for geography which landlocked pennsylvania town shares its name with the famous new jersey coastline which landlocked pennsylvania town shares its name with a the famous new jersey coastline famous Colin Atlantic city incorrect Chris Jersey Shore Pennsylvania Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. I was really overthinking that one.

Okay. No, no, wait, wait. No, are you kidding? Is that literally it? It's Jersey Shore. Get out of town. Okay. Honestly, that must be so annoyed.

Where do you live? I live in Jersey Shore. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. One of my high school friends, we did like a reunion of those of us who were in the drama club of North Brantford High School, North Brantford, Connecticut. We had a little online reunion session and one of my great friends from high school was like, well, I'm acting, and I live in Paris, Maine.

It's no wonder you, Chris, that you were a... The theater kid? Oh, yeah. Very few theater kids go on to the theater, but some of them, if they're lucky, get to do trivia podcasts. Yes. Pink Wedge for Pop Culture, which reggae star appears on most of massive attacks releases. Wow. Oh, that's a deep cut. Colin Reggae fan. I believe that is Horace Andy. Correct.

Horace Andy. Yes. Wow. Legend. Legend. All right. Yellow Wedge. Which significant department in the U.S. federal government was formed in November 25th, 2002.

Say it again. Oh. Unless Colin just knows it. Yeah. Go for it, Colin. Department of Homeland Security. Correct. Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security says here by President George W. Bush in response to 9-11 attacks in 2001. All right. Purple Wedge, which popular fruit's name comes from the Arabic word for finger? Chris. Banana. It is banana. That makes sense. I just had to think about the shape, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Green Wedge for Science in Nature, which small aquatic. animal is able to withstand the vacuum of space and generally makes its living sucking the juices out of plants. Oh, my

mortal enemy, Colin. Is this the tardigrade? It is the tardigrade. Oh, yeah, the water bear. They're so cute. They're so cute. I remember, yeah, very early on the show, Dana, our former host, did a segment on tardigrade. Oh, I should have

mentioned this earlier in the show, but now that we're talking about it, there was a a new story recently where they successfully tattooed tardigrades. They were able to tattoo tartagrades. Not like sick tribal patterns. They're like dots on the side of their body. Last question on this card, orange wedge. What was the first toy to be advertised on television?

Oh my God, we've had this so many times. We've talked about this so many times, Colin. Was that the potato head or Mr. Potato Head? It is Mr. Potato Head. Okay. Where you're supposed to supply the potato. Yeah, it was like a box of, you know, face parts. B-Y-O-P.

Moving right along, let's have a little bit fun. TV buffs pretty hard. These are TV buff questions. Here we go. The first one is a quote. Can you identify the show? Clear eyes, full hearts can't lose. lose.

Chris? Is that Ted Lasso? Ooh, no, before that. Call it. Oh, okay. I think that is Friday night lights. Friday night lights. Next question.

TV buffs, which member of the Spice Girls guest starred in Sex and the City? Which one is it? I'm trying to remember the episode. Chris? Victoria Beckham? Incorrect. Save answer. Ooh, okay.

You got to give me the name, not just what kind of spice they are. Okay. Oh, interesting. Scary spice. No, you have to give them the name. Mel. Okay, Mel B. Do I have it right?

That is scary spice, but that's not it. But that's not the right. All right. Two down. Baby spice. Emma. Is that her name? It's Emma. I believe Emma Bunting.

No, not it. Not it. Not baby spice. Jerry Hallowell. Jerry Hallowell. is, I shouldn't say was. I mean, once you're a nice girl. Ginger, of course.

Okay, you have to identify the show. A cartoon about Prince Adam, who transforms into a powerful hero to defend the land of eternity against evil. Chris, please. Please, Chris. Oh, can I? The name of the cartoon is

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Correct. Not just He-Man, He-Dash Man, and the Masters of the Universe. Indeed, indeed. Next question, who is the writer and creator of the BBC drama series, Line of Duty? That sounds like when all the video game publishers were trying to put out World War II games, you know, like during that one thing, and everything was a riff on like Hall of Duty, Badge of Honor. Line of Duty, totally.

Yep, Line of Duty. Band of Brothers. I don't know if I know this one. Jed Mercurio. Next question What song Did David Brent Record professionally

With his redundancy money In the office UK Oh yes This is definitely a series of British cards Oh man Yeah what What did It's a song by a British artist

Yeah Oh man I'm gonna be so mad when you say it If you don't know me by now That's right If you don't know me by now by Simply Red. Simply Red.

Here we go. Last question, TV buffs. Which actor connects Homeland, Band of Brothers, life, and billions. So the Redhead guy, right? Yes. Okay. What is his name?

What is his name? Oh, gosh. I've watched more than one of those shows. Damien Lewis. That's right. Damian Lewis. Damian Lewis. Good job, Braves.

All right, Colin, this week's episode, you chose a topic for us. Farming. Going onto the farm, around the farm, agriculture, things related to animal husbandry, what have you, crops, anything related to farm life. So this week, we're down on the farm. No, that's not a farm animal. Is that a cuck-a-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-hru-harm. I grew up between two farms. Like, my house was literally, like, on this side was, like, a dairy farm, and then on the other side was another farm. Is that right?

I don't think I knew that. Oh, yeah, we used to go down and get milk from the, you know, from the dairy farm next door. We were not on a farm. Like most American kids, all I knew about farm life was what I read in books, you know, about farm life. So I want to take you guys to the world of farm-based children's literature. Oh. And one in particular. So I want to run a quick thought experiment on you, which is if I were to ask you to name a book for children,

that takes place on a farm, what book would you name? Charlotte's Webb. Charlotte's Web, they say simultaneously. Absolutely. Charlotte's Web, written in 1952 by E.B. White. At one point in 2001, before all the Harry Potter stuff really got rolling,

Charlotte's Web was the best-selling paperback children's book of all time. No way. Wow. Still ranks on the list of best-selling books. It's like way over like 50 million copies. So I'm not shocked that you'd both simultaneously say Charlotte's Webb. And I was going to do a quiz about children's books that take place on farms. But like, really, Charlotte's Web is like, it's not the only one, but it's like the ultimate, you know. Yeah, because they're all the characters, they talked.

They're all like farm animals. Exactly. It's very, very memorable. So let's do a Charlotte's Webb quiz. Write down quid. Oh, Karen, you're going to run away with this. It's been just, yeah, all right. Okay, all right, here we go.

You know what? I read the book, but you know what is mostly in my memory is the cartoon movie. Sure. With Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte. Yep, yep, yep. All right. So we're going to do a buzz-in quiz, and I specifically am saying this, Karen, because you lost your cousin. Yeah.

Yeah, my baby took away my buzzer. Baby took the buzzer. We've been trying to look for it, like everywhere. Like in the bathroom, every single chore. We're like, we just can't. We just, we're like, her range is not that big. It's got to be here. I don't know.

She's, she's kind of wild. And so we still couldn't find it after a week of searching. But I was like, okay, what else makes noise in the house? So I brought this. I have here a playable accordion. Yeah. that I'm going to use as a buzzer, okay? Let me give it a little test here.

Okay, all right, a little squeeze box. I already got the button box. Yeah. I want to emphasize for our listeners that this is a child's accordion. Yeah. But it works like a real accordion. I'm delighted to see you holding it. I'm not complaining, Karen.

I'm just trying to paint a full picture here for our listeners. Wait, wait, here we're here. What, playing it? Yeah, yeah. look at you you're playing it that's great that's great so that's Karen's buzzer for this for this buzz in Charlotte's web quiz now the plot of Charlotte's web put simply is that a lot of stuff happens but Wilbur the pig is going to get slaughtered he he does not want this so his best friend Charlotte the spider weaves messages about Wilbur into her web that talk about what a great guy

Wilbur is so he becomes famous and not dead later in the book she weaves words into her web like humble and radiant and terrific but the the first thing that she weaves into the web is a two word phrase what is that two word phrase oh uh Karen some pig some pig that's some pig you know people just believe whatever they read off that's the takeaway no one was like this spider is a genius so the last name of the human main character fern is a english word that means land suitable for growing crops hmm what is that last name ooh fern on the farm what is their name yeah what is their name Colin arable it that is correct what You got that from knowing that word?

I reasoned it out, and then my brain was kind of like, that sort of feels right. That is it for an arable, the arable family. Wait, how do you spell that? A-R-A-B-L-E. Now, over on to Charlotte, since her webs are circular in shape, to what family of spiders does Charlotte belong? Oh. I didn't know the spiders are classified by the shape of the.

Circular. These ones, ones that weave circular webs are known as this type of spider. Colin. Is that an orb spider? You know,

it's called an orb weaver. That's the, that's the, that's the operative for us before. Okay. She is an orb weaver. That is a family of spider.

Specifically, she is a barn spider. Her full name in the books is Charlotte A. Cavatica. arrived from the Latin name of the type of spider that she has Corraneous Cavaticus which is a barn spider Cavatica is Latin for cave

These are spiders that usually weave their webs indoors Inside of caves or structures Where they got a lot of little nooks to Attach to What are other spider types? Sorry, I just know the one Okay

I researched this one kind of spider That's it Like cut me a break So E.B. White, in addition to Charlotte's Web, wrote two other children's books with animal main characters for one point each. Name them. Oh, right. Accordian lady. Elements of style. Yes. Elements of style with its famous talking giraffe.

He did, though. He did, he did co-write. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. Famously updated strunks elements of style, and I would notice he strunk in white, indeed. Oh. Oh, boy.

One of these you have 100% heard of. Yeah, it was with, it was with birds, right, right? One of them has a bird. Yeah. The other one has a rodent. Okay, well, the first one stars a mouse is called Stuart Little. Oh, God. Yes, of course.

And the other is the trumpet of the swan. The swan. Trumpet of the Spine. Yeah, I could picture the cover with a little... Yep. Yep. E.B. White. Those are the three children's books. He wrote a lot of books, but those are the three kids' books.

Yeah. So in 1973, Karen, as you have already noted, Charlotte's Web was adapted into an animated musical with Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte, and songs provided by what pair of brothers who also provided music for Mary Poppins in the Jungle. Karen. The Sherman Brothers.

The Sherman Brothers did that memorable music for the Charlotte's Web, 1973. Wow. Animated musical, yeah. I have got to chase this one down. I've never seen it. Weirdly enough, it ended up, like, getting a sequel movie in, I think, 2003 or something like that, because weirdly, the Charlotte's Web movie, like, had a really lengthy half-life. And it became very popular, like, on video in the 1990s without them really, really

even trying, you know, it just, it really just kind of kept going. And like, that's why they ended up making a sequel because they kind of looked and they're like, wow, this movie is still really popular. Now, again, you know that Debbie Reynolds played Charlotte. I'm going to ask you about another actress that was in this animated film. She played Kane's mother in Citizen Kane. She played Samantha's mother on Bewitched. And she played the goose in the Charlotte's Web movie. Karen, accordion did in first. Rosemary Clooney? It is not Rosemary Clooney.

Colin. Is it Agnes Moorhead? It is Agnes Moorhead. You know, Karen, 40 years ago, she would have been... Well, I mean, it's just like, she is one of those people that was just, like, absolutely world famous. Yeah. And then, but it doesn't matter, like, like, how famous you are.

That's right. You know what I mean? You can be, like, absolutely wildly, completely. household name and that a few decades later you'll be a really difficult trivia question. Agnes Moorhead, Agnes Moorhead. Debbie Reynolds,

again, she was active for seven decades and but by the end of her career she said when she would do a signing event, most people would bring the Charlotte's Web, you know, tape or soundtrack or whatever. Not like seeing in the rain or yeah.

No, because by that point, that was not as relevant to even young adults, as Charlotte's Web would have been. Right, right. So Charlotte's Web was then turned into a stage musical with lyrics by Charles Strauss. The trivia question is Charles Strauss's first Broadway musical was this one. It's about a teen idol who gets drafted. Is it Bye Bye Bye Birdie?

It's Bye Bye Bye Birdie. Bye by Birdie, but Charles Strauss also did Annie and then also did the Charlotte's web stage. musical later in 2006 charlotte's web was made into a live action film playing the role of fern was this then 12-year-old actress who still is a major star today uh as an adult oh Karen Karen which one Dakota fanning it is Dakota fanning fresh off doing the voice dub for my neighbor Totero I think a couple Yes. Two more questions for you. The song, Ordinary Miracle, appeared on the soundtrack to this film, performed by this well-known champion of animal rights. Well-known champion of is it... Collin buzzed in. Is it Sarah McLaughlin? It is Sarah McLaughlin. Yes.

It is Sarah McLaughlin. Saving the animals. Saving the animals. Saving the animals. Exactly. That's great. Wow. And final question, since this was 2006, as a tie-in to this movie, a Charlotte's Web video game was produced for what two Nintendo handheld gaming systems? You got to get them both for one point. Oh, 2006? 2006.

Okay. Nintendo DS. Yes. And Game Boy Advance. Game Boy Advance. What did you have to list a platforming? It was a platform game in which you alternated playing as Wilbur or Templeton the rap. Shout out to some of my current coworkers who worked on that game.

Wow. Well, good job, everybody. Good job on the Charlotte's Web Quiz. Good buzzing, Karen. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for making it a buzzing quiz. No problem.

No problem. Show off my skills. Happy to pivot if necessary. Yeah. Yeah. I know Karen's like on that when I see her inflate the accordion as you're asking the question. She's getting ready. We need a set of three lockout accordions is what we need.

All right. I have a farming segment here. I have a bit of a reputation here on Good Job Brain. I think we all do. I mean, we've been working on the show for over a decade now. We each have like developed our own. thing, you know, our own areas of expertise. For example, Chris is all about literature, word games, puzzles, video game trivia, a lot of stuff about like appraisal and value. Colin, you're

like our storyteller, our historian, you know, always highlighting amazing achievements and people. Dana was our pop culture goddess and there's me. I love trivia about geography and trivia about animal reproduction. For this segment, I got both. Yeah, so guys strap in, I'm going to be talking about some animals doing it for the good of the world. But first, a little bit of geography trivia. Do we know what the Darian Gap is?

Have you heard of the Darian Gap? Colin, you look like you might know. Yes, I have heard of the Dary and Gap. The Darian Gap is. where South America and Central America meet. It's between Columbia and Panama. So Panama, the southernmost country of Central America, it is a roadless terrain, is extremely difficult to traverse.

It's dense with jungle. There's like mountainous terrain. It's so hard to cross. People have said that it is the most inhospitable place on earth. Because it's so hard to cross, It acts as a perfect biological barrier, hard for things to spread, hard for animals or people to get from one side to the other. And so I'll come back to this.

Now, for some animal trivia, meet the new world screw worm. Commonly called the screw worm. It is not a bad name for someone that you don't like. It is literally called the screw worm. But it is not a worm. It is not a worm. It is actually a fly. So when I say screw worm, I'm talking about the fly.

I got to think about fly, okay. Normal maggots like fly maggots, they feast on decaying matter, right? Necrotic matter. Screwworm maggots have a taste for a living flesh, so quite the opposite. So the female screw worms thrive in places like cattle farms. There's a lot of animals, there's a lot of life flesh, a lot of real estate, so to speak. And the screw worm specifically lays her eggs in open wounds of cattle. Yeah.

Volume. It's just so many cows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like heaven. Target rich environment. Exactly. The eggs hatch and the maggots will start eating the flesh, the live flesh of cattle causing infection, deadly infestation. This was a huge problem for the first half of the 20th century, you know, in the 1900 years.

So here's the problem. How would you get rid of these screw worm flies? You know, one female can lay up to 3,000 eggs. And the males can mate multiple times. They fly so they can spread out. So even if you're like, let's eradicate and kill them all, like, how would you even do it, you know, against those numbers? Just the scale is so big. So in the 1950s, two American entomologist, which are scientists who study in.

X, they developed a pretty clever way to solve this screw worm problem. It's so smart. No pesticides, no comically large sticky traps or contractions. This is what they did. They grew their own population of screw worms within like a controlled lab environment. They would use x-ray machines and they would zap the males with gamma rays. The zap made them sterile. without killing them, without affecting their ability to mate.

So it's like they can still go on and do the deed. But nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen. So then they release the sterile males. The female screw worms, even though they can lay up to like 3,000 eggs, they only mate once in their life. And so if she mates with a sterile male, that's it. That's it. She's not going to lay any viable eggs.

None of those eggs will hatch. This plan went gangbusters. Wow. I love it. And so by 1966, that species was considered extinct in the United States. That's great. I love that. So effective.

Incredible. And since then, the U.S. have been flying and transporting these sterile male flies across Central America and helping all those countries eradicate screwworms. So now, let's go back to Panama. Let's go back to the Darian Gap. So the U.S., they set up a sterile screw worm farm in Panama, and like Panama proper. They would farm these sterile males, and then they would fly and release these flies every week for the past decades.

Every week they would fly. They would transport by plane these flies from their Panama farm to the Darian Gap. So this creates a constant cloud of sterile males that just lives in the Darien Gap. Incredible. To overwhelm any possible invading males from South America. This is the entry point. Pretty much everything north of Panama is safe. All the screwworms have been eradicated.

They're the safety valve or the last resort. Last resort. And so they've been doing that every week. Wow. However, as of May 2025, which is now, actually two days ago, cases of screw worm infestation reported within Central America. And right now, the cattle industry is freaking out. It's like, what? I thought we got rid of this existential threat, yeah.

What does this mean? It means that maybe the Panama Shield has been breached. This may suggest illegal cattle trafficking, not enough regulation and monitoring. But yeah, this thing that we like got rid of decades ago is coming back. Life finds a way. I guess the next step is finding an animal that eats them, right? Isn't that usually where this goes in the stories? Oh yeah, cane toads.

Yeah, sure, no problem. Yeah, what could go possibly wrong? that's right what's the simpsons oh my god i have to tell you guys i went to pub trivia two days ago and one round was simpsons and oh boy oh no i did okay you acquitted yourself well i did okay one question i did not get was millhouse's dad was fired from his job because he lost told them they don't hire uh people yeah this type of people and i was like people with glasses Single, single people, of course. Right, yeah, yeah.

Because he just got divorced, yeah. Oh, I see. What was another one? Oh, oh, what is Marge's natural hair color? Well, gray. It is gray. Yes, that's right. Not that wrong, too.

She's been gray as a mule since. I was at Trivia on Wednesday, and we were doing decent, but as usual, the music round, We got demolished because we didn't have you on the team, Karen, right? We didn't have, we, you know, we didn't have our top 40, so we didn't have our hip hop. We didn't have our dance track specialist. So what were some of the things you missed? Oh, geez. What did we lose points on?

We lost a point on a soldier boy song. But yeah, every time we're there, I always say, oh, we need Karen here. We did, of course, all get Pony by Genuine, so that was, that was good. Everyone, everyone got that one. Oh, I miss doing trivia because we're so good. We're so good together. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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Smooth puzzles, smart trivia. Good job, brain. And we're back. We're talking about trivia and facts and quizzes about the farm, Colin. Let me start here with a little bit of a callback. We've talked on the show before. about non-traditional trademarks. Do you guys remember this topic?

Let me give an example of what a non-traditional trademark is. So beyond your company name and logo, et cetera, a non-traditional trademark includes things like a shape or a sound or a color or a... Orange handles on the Fiskar scissors. You got it. That's right. That's one of my examples. That's right.

Some other very, very commonly cited examples. that I know are familiar to you all. The triangle shape of Toblerone chocolates, for instance, is a non-traditional trademark. If you try and market your new candy bar in that type of shape, they are going to come after you. Or the MGM Lion Roar. These are also good examples of non-traditional trademarks.

But, right, colors are very fascinating to me in particular, Karen. Right, the orange handle scissors. Another great example is the Robbins Egg Blue of Tiffany and company. Oh. If you open up your own jewelry company and try and use those colors, they are going to come after you because if I open like a chocolate store using that color, that's not. Correct.

That's fine. All right. I have a semi-trivia question for you guys here. I think you can tackle this one. If you are on or near a farm and you see a green and yellow tractor, what company manufactures this piece of equipment? I mean, I can only think of one. Right.

John Deere. That's right. Right. John Deere, Deere and Company. I can't even name another. You can hardly even name another. That's right. The green and yellow color is in fact a non-traditional trademark for John Deere, the Deere and company. They've had it registered for decades now. They've defended it in court even as recently as 2018, another company that they, they didn't accuse them of doing it. They were doing it. They were using green and yellow. And John Deere took him to court and said, hey, we've, we sort of own. these colors in the sphere of farm equipment and court-sided with them. Yeah, they basically said, yeah, you got it. The other company couldn't do it. Is it the use of the two colors together? Yes, that's a really good question. I wasn't going to go down this little side avenue, but you're right. They did also try and claim the use of just the green alone, and that's not enough. If you go to the John Deere website, and you just look at all their equipment for say,

it's all green and yellow. It is just they own those colors. And like you, I could all also scarcely name another manufacturer of farm equipment and farm gear. So like many good job brain stories, this story at its core is about an invention that was both super simple and incredibly transformative, much like sterilizing male screw flies and releasing them into a cloud. So who was John Deere? John Deere was a man. The company was actually named after its founder, John Deere, as a young man.

he apprenticed to become a blacksmith and eventually opened his own blacksmith business. And he worked for a while. He got married, had children, was running his business and sort of fell on hard times. He had four children and a pregnant wife. And in 1837, he decided to head west and sort of start new and seek his fortune there and eventually, you know, bring his family out to follow him. A very popular sentiment at the time. How west? He moved and said, set up a new blacksmith shop in Illinois, west from Vermont. You know, let's talk a little bit about plowing here, okay? Now, 1830s, you did not have a lot of mechanized equipment.

You had horses, you had, you know, beasts moving your stuff around. You're right. And the main use of a horse or an ox or your beast is pulling the plow. Is it making holes on the ground? It is making lines in the ground. You're, think of the plow as a blade. that you stick into the earth and you pull with great force across the earth

and it kind of cuts open. Furrows, you've got to have those furrows. You've got to have the furrows. You're turning over the earth and you're doing it in lines back and forth. That's where you're going to do your planting and then you will eventually cover up your crops and watch them grow, hopefully.

You cannot have a farm without plowing and hopefully you have an animal to help you do it, but you also need a good plow. And so as a blacksmith, working in and around farming communities, a lot of your work would be making plow the metal part anyway, or fixing plows, the metal part anyway. Eastern soils tended to be sandy and rocky.

Okay. So if you were farming on the east in Vermont, where deer made his bones, you needed a very tough plow that could push through the soil, push through the rocks. But Midwestern soils were different, denser and muddy and sticky and compact. The plows that worked well back east, did not work so well further west. If you've got an old-style plow,

which would have been cast iron, all right, it would get gummed up and sticky and covered in soil. The farmer has to stop and clean it constantly. And Deer's insight, after noticing some of the repairs that he was doing and working with plows is, hey, what if the soil didn't stick to the plow so much?

That's it. But how? But, I mean, the key question is how? Great question. At the time, many, most plows would have made out of cast iron, like a lot of farm equipment. Steel was known. People used steel, but it was used in very specific ways for certain tools. In 1837, Deere came across a broken steel saw blade. He's like, if I make the plow, the business end of the plow, the plow share and the mold board, as they say, the metal part, Out of steel, I can polish it up as opposed to the rough-hewn cast iron. Oh, and make it smooth. It seems so simple. But, you know, someone had to be the person to drive it forward, right?

So to succeed in business requires a lot of things to go right. You need some luck. But beyond that, you need a product people want, which Deere knew he had. And you need to know how to market it, all right? Both of these things. Now, his polished steel plow was not, in fact, the first one available for sale. There were other cases documented of other blacksmiths, you know, cottoning onto this idea. But he was the one that made it succeed on a commercial scale, okay?

And it was partly due to the quality of his product. Everyone agrees he made a very high quality product. But the other part of his success was he decided to kind of change the way that plows were made and sold. Again, these ideas in 2025 seem very obvious, but in, you know, 1837, if you needed a plow as a farmer, you would visit your friendly neighborhood blacksmith. You would order up a plow and they would get to making it for you. Now, this takes a lot of time, right? Because you are doing serial production one at a time. Deer realized, if I want to expand and build up my business and my company, I need to build up an inventory of ready to sell plows.

God, no way. And cut out that entire loop. You know, you want a plow? Here you go. It's already in the store. Take your money out the door. On to the next one. That's right.

And he took it this direction and he started on a very small scale, not quite mass producing, but multiple producing these plows. He opened a store. Yes. He was in a blacksmith. That's right. He's like a store. You got it. This didn't just change an individual farmer's life.

The steel plow was a huge part of the Westwood. expansion of America. Oh. Like, it made it possible for especially smaller farmers or small family farmers to profitably run a farm. And just the productivity gains were incredible. So, so long story short, John Deere sold a ton of plows. Every year, sold more, made more, got the name out there. He smartly relocated his factory nearer to river transport routes because he, again, Again, marketing mind, more people. That's right. Whereas a lot of blacksmiths of the time were content to just serve their local communities. Neighborhood town, yeah. That's right, you know.

Whereas he had the vision of, no, I'm going to, I'm going to eventually mass produce these, get them on boats, get them out to the country. And I want every farmer in America to know the name John Deere. And before long, that is what happened. Every farmer in America, whether you own a John Deere or not, you know the name John Deere. Inescapable. Not the original plow of his, but one of his original plows is in the American History Museum and the Smithsonian. It had, I mean, it was displayed in a place of honor. It really, he is credited with being a father of westward expansion in our country. It's truly incredible. And making a lot of money along the way. So, of course, after plows, which as I mentioned, once upon a time, were drawn by animals when it was clear that tractors were the

Wave of the Future in Farming, John Deer moved immediately into the tractor business. So that's the beginning and the middle part of this very American story. And so the sort of the modern part of this story is that deer and company is a technology company in some very interesting ways. Karen, I don't need to tell you, everything these days, right, can talk to the internet or has a processor in it. And, you know, tractors and farm equipment are absolutely no exception. You know, they're Wi-Fi-enabled and they're digital, semi-autonomous, fully autonomous, some of them, but they are high-tech pieces of equipment.

Waymo tractors. Yes. Self-driving tractors, yeah. They have self-driving tractors, yes. And there are many farmers who have stories of using fully or semi-autonomous, yeah, farm equipment. Being so entrenched in the farming industry has led to a little bit of controversy when it comes to this part of the technology. You guys have probably heard about the concept of right-to-reported. repair. Chris, I know for sure you've heard about it in the video game console.

Sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. So we'll use a video game console example. Karen, you remember the red ring of death on the Xbox, right, for many years ago. Now, if your Xbox red ringed, was your machine still under warranty if you wanted to get in there and fix it yourself? No, it was not. If you wanted to get your red ring fixed, you had to send it to Microsoft or one of their authorized repair centers and they had to fix it, right? The same thing, broadly, is true and has been true with John Deere and company equipment for a very long time, that if something goes wrong with your deer equipment, you need to take it to a Deer authorized dealer or repair center. And this has been true for decades. It's, in fact, it was part of John Deere's success

model. But as things have gotten more technologically advanced, it's gotten very contentious because some farmers, frankly, feel they're being squeezed a little bit that I've got this broken piece of digital equipment and you're not only telling me that I can't repair it myself without breaking my warranty and voiding all this other stuff and you're not only saying that I have to pay, I don't know, maybe more than what I feel is a fair price. The Deer Company has gone so far as to say that if you try and mess with it,

you're breaking the law. You're not just voiding your warranty. you are interfering with our intellectual property because software is IP and these things run on software. This is very much the same sort of mini controversy that's been in the atmosphere around the McDonald's Flurry Machines. You know, I don't know if you guys go to McDonald's a lot. There's a whole thing about how it's always broken.

It's always broken. The reason, Karen, the reason the flurry machine is always broken is because the McDonald's parent corporation does not, historically, did not allow the individual franchises to fix their own flurry machines. They have to send someone. They had to do it through the authorized repair channels and they either didn't want to pay for it or they couldn't get in there and fix it themselves. There's right to repair.

So in many industries, the end users of various types of technology, whether it's a flurry machine or a tractor or a video game console, have been pushing our government to fight for the right to repair. In fact, in January of this year, the Federal Trade Commission, in conjunction with the attorneys general from Minnesota and Illinois, of all places, sued deer and company on behalf of the many, many farmers over what they call unfair practices that increase costs and lock the farmers into the ability to fix things themselves. So the dam is starting to break a little bit.

So that is the somewhat long-ish short history of deer and company. Trademarking colors. And trademarking colors. I think Cadbury Purple is also trademarked. Yeah, I think you're right. I read that Starbucks applied and got a non-traditional trademark for the outline of a coffee cup with a green circle on it. Oh, my God.

That's so smart because that's the icon. That's right. they were trademarking the icon with the oh my gosh actually they they applied in a very Starbucks move I read actually that they applied for that but that they also applied for just the green circle just the green circle alone they said no without the melusine and they said no to that but they gave them the outline of the coffee cup with the green circle yeah Tetris has a sound trademark on basically like the first few notes of the you know a certain Russian folk tune played in a chip tune you know video gaming

sound so it's like the the folk tune is a you know public domain folk tune but in that style but essentially they've got a yeah a trademark on you can't like have it in a video game like beat be that's a good one get to toronto's main venues like budweiser stage and the new roger stadium with go transit thanks to go transit special online e ticket fairs a ten dollar one day weekend pass offers unlimited to travel on any weekend day or holiday, anywhere along the Go Network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go transit.com slash tickets.

I have one quiz to close us out on this farm episode. In the past, we've talked about weird ingredients, weird substances. that come from animals or plants, like a snail mucin for skin care. I've talked about that before. Ambergris from whale, which is almost like whale vomit. A Tyrion purple dye that came from sea snails.

That was a great segment. So here I have a quiz about unusual naturally occurring ingredients. And perhaps, you know, some unusual farming and harvesting methods. This will be a write-down quiz. Here we go, starting with a trivia classic. You know, trivia heads might know that the most expensive spice in the world by weight is... Saffron?

Saffron! Yes, but what kind of flour is saffron harvested from? That's my question. It's a flower type. It's like the genus name, but it's also a common name for that type of flower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's not a rose. but you know

So we all know Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world by weight. What kind of flour is Saffron harvested from? Green thumbs would know this. Yeah, I know. I should know this. Shown it out.

Just put a flower. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Answers up. Colin put orchid and Chris put daffodil. Both very good guesses. It is crocus. It is the crocus flower.

Orchid is the plant Where the second most expensive spice comes from That is the vanilla Vanilla Orchid That's the plant is where vanilla is from All right next question Rubarb Rubarb delicious for pies and jam

Nature's dessert celery It looks like celery But it's like for desserts Rubarb is a plant native to Siberia But was well cultivated in England In an area a nickname the rhubarb triangle in west yorkshire so the sweetest the pinkest the most tender and the most prize variety is known as the yorkshire forced rhubarb this is like the gold stand of rhubarb the yorkshire

forced rhubarb please uh tell me what does the forced refer to in the name there the name of this rhubarb is Yorkshire forced rhubarb what why is it forced why is it called forced something about how rhubarb rubarbs are grown or cultivated what is it forced to do okay all right answers up chris has put shape yeah Colin has put fake light cycle oh question mark Colin you're more correct forest is because the yorkshire forced rhubarb and many rhubarb grown in the rhubarb triangle are grown in the dark. They're forced to grow in the dark. They're grown in forcing sheds.

And so the plants, they spend two years outside when they start growing. The carbohydrates that they get from photosynthesis are stored in the roots. And then they move the rhubarb into these sheds. And basically, they want to stop photosynthesis. Chlorophyll has a bitter taste. They want to keep rhubarb growing in the dark. The rhubarb is just like, oh, my God, there's no light. I just have to keep going up and going up and going up and growing up to maybe find light.

In the dark, they grow so fast that you can hear them grow. Wow. Once light is introduced, like sunlight, it's game over. They do not want photosynthesis. They want their carbohydrates stored in the roots to get. converted into glucose. Yeah, to sugar. Or there's something called rhubarb forcers, which is, let's say you're growing rhubarb and, you know, you don't have a forcing shed and you got to grow your rhubarb outside. It's a huge urn that you put over

the rhubarb to keep the sun out. Yeah. And so they're forced to grow in the dark. All right. Next question. One of the most prized natural ingredients used in perfumery is agar wood. agar wood it's wood from the aquilaria tree soaked in its own like protective resin um and this happens because farmers will inoculate the tree with mold and so the tree is like oh god i got to fight all this mold so i got to like produce this resin to protect myself and that's how they basically farm agar wood uh agar wood is also best known as what three letter word name oh It's one of the premier ingredients in perfumery. It's a weird word.

It's three letters long. This is usually what Agarwood is called. Hmm. Hmm. Three letter ingredient. Yes. Common name. Yes.

Maybe you're reading a profile of cologne. It'll say like here are the top notes. Here are the middle notes. Here are the base notes. Oh, okay. Okay. And there's this weird word. Hmm.

Hmm. All right, answers up. Just give me three-letter word. It's not weird by any stretch. No. No. Chris has put yak, and Colin has put oak, and Colin has the most letters in common. It is Oud.

O-U-D. Oh, I've heard of that word, like, in Scrabble context, but I'll be honest. I don't think I knew what it meant. Agarwood. I want to go smell it now. I'm going to go like, yeah. It's very polarizing, and I think it depends on what type of oud. I get it.

I get also, that's why they mix, you know, the notes together and, yeah. It's like Wood B.O. That's how I would describe it. Okay, okay. You know, B.O kind of has a little bit of a weird appeal. It's like a sweetness to it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's weird. You're not using much of this in your perfume, a little bit, yeah.

Just a little bit, yeah, would beo. All right. Here we go. Question number four, you can't farm fog, but you sure can harvest it. Collecting water from fog helps areas that are arid due to high altitudes, but still experience a lot of fog because they're close to the coast. Perhaps the most famous fog is in San Francisco. It even has its own name and its own social media. This is not the question because I know you guys already know. It's Carl the Fogg.

The San Francisco Fog is called Carl. The Fog is named after the character, Carl, Carl the Giant, from what 2003 Tim Burton movie? Oh. Why is it called Carl the Fog? It's because the creator named the Fog after this character in what 2003 Tim Burton movie. Oh, my gosh. Carl the Giant It is a live action film

Okay, all right Things A little easier Huh Helena Bonham Carter is in it That's not really a hint Because she's in every Tim Burton movie

Right I'll tell you who else is in this movie Allison Loman Ewan McGregor Okay, I'm going to stop there Wow Wow Danny DeVito.

All right. I don't know. I got nothing. I can't even answer to guess. I'm sorry. Chris, no guess. Colin Big Fish. It is Big Fish.

You are correct. Yes. Called the giant from Big Fish. Wow. I had no idea that there was a connection. He's a giant. People are really scared of him. But turns out he's just lonely.

Last question here about weird farming. There are. vampire bat farms it's super controlled usually in artificial caves or or in a lab setting it's willy-nilly it's just they let them out yeah it's a rearrange vampire bat yeah so the scale is pretty small we're talking like dozens here we're not talking like hundreds or thousands okay okay obviously not farmed for meat based on that scale they are farmed for what Excretion in particular. Ooh.

Oh, okay. Lots of possible excretions, secretions, excretions. There's a lot, yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Vampire bats. Spaceptia. Vampire bats. Specifically. Vampire bats.

Okay. All right. Answers up. Chris put guano. Colin put guano. Both are excellent guesses. Guano is bat poop. Uh, great use for fertilizer, but that is not.

Ooh. I have a second guess. I have a second guess. Is it like their saliva for like anti-coagulant effect or something? Yes, that's exactly it. They're being farmed for their saliva, for their skin. I was like, she emphasized vampire for a reason, yeah. Because vampire bat saliva contains a compound, there's a boring name, which is Dismoda plays,

but the nickname is Dracula. When vampire bats feed, they're sucking the blood. from their food source, the draculine in their saliva prevents that blood from clotting. So they're able to, you know, to drink it. And so draculine is the anticoagulant. Draculine. It's used in research surrounding strokes. Oh, sure.

A blood vessel studies. It sounds cool, but it also sounds tedious because first they make the bats salivate through like food stimulation. So they got to get all these bats being like, whoa, I'm hungry. I'm, you know, drooling. try to make them drool as much as they can and they collect the drool from the surface. And that's it, that's it.

That's like, that's how they farm them. So it's like they're not milking them. They're not milking them. They're just waiting for them to drool. They're not physically stimulating it out of them. They have to, yeah, yeah. They only need a small amount. Wow.

That's it. Yeah. Yeah. And then hopefully they let them have their little snacks, you know, eventually. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. I feel like life is pretty sweet. They just kind of drool a lot. Wow.

Dracula is awesome. Awesome. It's just totally made up name. It's fantastic. And that is my unusual farming quiz. You guys have to find a video or a sound bite of rhubarb growing. It's so weird. It's so, you can't see it, but you can hear it. Could you watch it with like night vision goggles? Well, they use candle. So that's like how the Victorian people grew rhubarb is they would harvest with candlelight. Do you want to, like, drop some audio in here?

Oh, yeah. Oh, I should. Okay, okay. All right, let's splice in some rhubarb growing as our end of episode little treat here. And that's our show. Thank you all for joining me and thank you listeners for listening in. Hope you learned stuff today about Charlotte's Webb, Templeton, and the gang about John Deere, about vampire baths, and about the mating habits of the screw worm. You can find us on all major podcast apps and on our website,

Good JobBrain.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwagmedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like The Film Vault, Minute Earth, and SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.

And here's the moment of Zen. Here's some rhubarb growing audio. It feels really good. It feels really good to be productive, but a lot of the time it's easier said than done, especially when you need to make time to learn about productivity so you can actually, you know, be productive. But you can start your morning off right and be ready to get stuff done in just a few minutes with the Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day podcast. New episodes drop every weekday. So listen and subscribe to Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts.

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