Good Job, Brain! - 38: The Man Show

Episode Date: November 20, 2012

Grrah! Get ready to punch trivia in the face with your MANLINESS because we are celebrating MAN stuff: important moments in beard history, etymology behind BBQ, snacks designed for men only, innovations in urinals, and the classic(?) American folktale of Paul Bunyan. ALSO: Pepsi's new fat-blocking soda, collective nouns, and what exactly does "begging the question" mean? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, warm-blooded wardrobe wards, warlocks, and warblers. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Off-Bee Trivia podcast. This is episode 38, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And we are your weekly Wikipedia. wielding weevils. I'm Colin. And I'm Chris.

Oh, no, Dana. She hurt her back. Throughout her back. And it's, exactly, and it's having some trouble getting around. We're wishing her a very speedy recovery. So, as you may know, our previous episode focused on the mysteries of language. And a lot of you actually wrote in and made comments to the effect that we did not tackle, the oft-misused phrase begs the question.

And in fact, we actually did cover that in the recording session, but it became such a tangled knot of us going back and forth of, no, that's not what it means. We got so sidetracked into our own side clarifications. That we forgot to actually record it and lay it down in a way that was easily digestible. So here's the thing. Yeah. So here's the thing. People always misuse the phrase, begs the question.

And they use it to mean raises the question. Like, hey, Dana's not here. That begs the question, what happened to her? No, it raises the question what happened to her. Leads to, right. Begs the question is this. It is when you are trying to argue something. thing and your proof of your argument is just restating the premise that you're arguing in the

first place. So there actually is a website dedicated to this called begthe question.info, which is dedicated to making people use this phrase in the right way. And the example they gave is, that person's unattractive. Why? Well, they're ugly. You're just restating. You're taking as a given the thing that you're supposedly debating, right?

So this example was good, too. Women shouldn't be permitted to join men's clubs because the clubs are for men only. And in one sense, that's true. Right. But, yeah, you are begging the question of if they should be for men only. Right. You are assuming that the thing that we're arguing, you've already answered and you win. Right.

That is the use of begging the question. So you're begging the question because there is actually no question. Right. You are begging me or you are asking me to just sort of give up the question that we're already talking about. Don't get too hung up on the literal interpretation of the words. People have said that it was, yeah. Yeah. People have said that it was badly translated in the first place, like out of Latin.

So, like, that's why people get very confused as to what it means, because whoever translated it or came up with the phrase begs the question, did a bad job. Yeah. Well, anyway, this segment is over because we're done talking about it. Yes. Zing! Speaking of people writing in, one of our Facebook users actually brought this to my attention, and I thought it was a really strange and delightful headline. Pepsi's new fat blocking soda released in Japan, and this is from Forbes. And apparently, there is a new Pepsi product.

They're selling it in Japan, and supposedly it has claims of it will block fat, and if you drink it, you will lose weight. Here's the skinny. It is a fiber-infused soda. So they pump in dietary fiber, claim to help reduce amount of fat that's absorbed into the body, which is kind of true. It helps move things along out of the body. Dietary fiber is... So is this like drinking metamusal Pepsi? I think so.

So naturally occurring fiber that you find in oatmeal and fruits and veggies and stuff can help block cholesterol absorption. Okay. Right? We know that with soluble, insoluble fiber. But there is no proof that synthetic fibers can do the same. Oh, okay. But you mean it's added in. And the name of the drink is Pepsi colon.

Actually, it's Pepsi Special. It's really called Pepsi Special. There is the truth that it will make you feel fuller. But that's it. I don't think it's actually absorbing all your fat cells. It is in a very handsome looking bottle, gold and black. And it's marketed for men. It is not for girls.

Huh. That's weird. Without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. This is the Colin Crits Showdown. Yeah, exactly. It's just going to be a... Man versus man.

And here I have a random trivial pursuit card, and you guys have your barnyard buzzers ready. Here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. In what city can you climb the Spanish steps? Those are in Rome, Italy. Correct. I've climbed them. Okay, pink wedge for pop culture.

What beetle wrote and sang, here comes the sun. Chris Culler. I'm going to go with George Harrison. That was a George. Correct. Yellow Wedge. What animal was often given by China as a diplomat? diplomatic gift.

Is it a panda? Yes. Really? Panda, yeah. And actually, there is a proper term. The practice became known as panda diplomacy. Yeah, panda diplomacy. Interesting.

Purple Wedge. What symbol takes its name from the Greek for Little Star? What symbol? Oh, I know. Is it asterisk? Yes, asterisk. What are thinking about it? I was like, oh, oh, that makes sense.

Astrology. Never thought about that. Green Wedge for Science. computing, a joint photographic experts group is more commonly known as a what? Together.

A JPEG. Yes, JPEG. Joint photographic experts group. Yes, they're the one who created the spec for that file format. And if you're interested as well, MPEG is motion photography experts group. Oh.

Yeah. What's a GIF? That's a graphic interchange format. Interesting. Which originally, I think, was developed by CompuServe. And that is GIF or GIF, however you pronounce it, is the Oxford English Dictionary's Word of the Year. Yes.

That's right. I actually don't know if you pronounce a GIF or GIF. Apparently, no, you do they. In the graphics world, this was really hotly debated, at least, I remember. It was like, and some people are like, I mean, however you feel about this, you really feel strongly. So I went looking to see, all right, what side does OED come down on? Yeah. And they actually do say that their listing is primary pronunciation as GIF, because the original developers sort of

as like a pun on GIF, like the peanut butter. Oh, really? And also last question, Orange Wedge. What athletes are you watching if you are at a PBR event? Oh, bull riding. Yes. Professional bull writers. Not Papps Blue Ribbon.

Although I don't think it needs to be pointed out. That's a golden marketing opportunity. The Venn diagram is very interesting for that one. So before we get into this episode, I'd like for your edification to present you, with our table of contents. Ready? Barbecue, Beards, Bunyan, Break, food, drink, peeing, Elvis.

In case you're in a hurry, I need to just skip to a portion of the show. So stay tuned. Today's show is a little bit of a grab bag, but it is still themed, and our theme is a manly theme because it's about manly stuff. What a man, what a man, what a man, what a man is smooth like Barry and his voice got baked.

A body like a partner with a denzel bait. He's smart like a doctor with a real good rep. And when he comes home, he's... Something is stereotypically men or maybe. Associated with men, yes. Well, I guess not all stereotypical. Colin and I, as research for this episode, went out and talked to some men to find out what that's like. I put an ad on Craigslist, and let's just say there was some.

responses I got were not what I expected. Friendly, local men willing to answer some questions. Chapter 1 of the Man Show. Barbecue, when you think about men and grilling entire animals

over a fire, then eating them with no utensils or plastic utensils. And or. So, the first thing I wanted to, when as I started looking up, what was I going to research, barbecue? It's such a huge kind of category and I started looking up okay well first things first

etymology right where does this come from the word barbecue has several very fanciful and totally false etymologies attached to it I've definitely read some different ones so here's the thing one of the ones that I have heard presented as actual total definite fact is that it comes from French and because they cook the entire animal at the same time they would say in French de la barb a cue right from the beard all the way to the tail, right? I've heard that. Oh, that is, I like that.

I know, doesn't it sound great? It sounds too pat. That one sounds too pat. And also, uh, pigs, pigs don't have beards. But, you know, either way. Let's just, let's just pretend that they did. I have also heard, and this, this is ridiculous. Somebody had come up with the idea of, oh, well, pool halls in the United States used to

advertise that they had bar, beer, and cues. That was a little bit of a stretch. That was a lot of a stretch. As it actually turns out, we're talking about now the Taino, which were the indigenous peoples of certain Caribbean islands from before Columbus came over. People disagree on what exactly the word was, but they seem to all agree that it came from there. As you might imagine, catching an entire animal and digging a pit and putting a fire in it and roasting the animal over that is an old, old, old tradition. But apparently, according to one source that I read, they had a word that was pronounced. Barabiku, which just meant sacred fire pit.

But I couldn't find, I could find sources for that, but I found maybe even stronger sources that their word actually was not Barabiku, but it was actually barbacoa. Right. Which if you go and get... Yeah, if you go and get burritos and they have barbecued or slow roasted beef, basically whether or not that was the specific indigenous people's word for it, somehow that was what it became once it entered into Spanish.

Right. And the Spanish did have a lot of contact with Taino. Yeah, oh, exactly, because they were the ones who went and down into the Caribbean islands and also Florida and those places where those people were. Either way, I grew up in Connecticut, which meant that I had no idea what barbecue actually meant. Now, here's the thing. So this is a word that is very, very, very old. It even entered into English in like maybe the 1600s, maybe even earlier, you know, like it's an old, old, old word. So when people try to tell you that barbecue means one certain.

certain thing or another and that, oh, that is barbecue and that's not barbecue, they're kind of attaching their own regional sort of assumptions onto it. They're begging the question, if you will, of what barbecue is. That's not barbecue. Why? Because barbecue is a slow roasted pig that's cooked over smoke. Right, right. It's the question.

It's not the food. No, it's the sauce. It's not the roasting. The thing is, it's a super old word that is used in a lot of different places to mean different things. So I, again, grew up in Connecticut. I grew up having basically zero knowledge of what the word barbecue actually meant because when we used it, we just meant, oh, we're having a barbecue.

We're going to cook hamburgers and hot dogs on a grill. On a grill in the backyard. That's having a barbecue. At that point, you know, eventually like moving out of Connecticut and like going to places that served actual barbecue, you started to realize that in other parts of the country, it was not just grilling food on a grill. Also, before I even get into that, our British listeners, our listeners from the United Kingdom, they, when they hear barbecue, that actually really does mean in Britain,

cooking things over an open flame on a grill. And for them, grilling is what we hear in America call broiling. It's having a hot open flame and putting something, yeah, putting food underneath it. So they call that grilling and then outside is barbecuing. But in the southern United States, it means cooking something low and slow, either over smoke or over a really, really low heat for a long, long, long time. And essentially, the process is taking tough meat and making it very, very tender. So you'd think that the American South would be total.

united as far as what barbecue is and you're not completely utterly wrong. Okay, clearly you guys in this room understand because from region to region in the American South, what constitutes barbecue is very completely different. There are many, many, many, many little local styles of what they do, but there are generally considered to be, you know, food historians basically say there's four major regions of barbecuing in the South. Oh, can we guess it? Yeah, sure. What are the four major regions of barbecue? North Carolina. Carolina is one.

Memphis. Memphis is one. What's a really big state? Well, Texas. So Texas is the third. Kansas City style. Okay. All right.

As in Casey Masterpiece, the brand of barbecue sauce, is Kansas City. So what actually distinguishes these things? Now, again, I'm sure that everybody's going to write in and tell me all these different things because all these different – I mean, Texas is a big state. It's divided into many different parts, and they're all going to do things a little bit differently. These are the big top – General. Big top line.

definitions. Texas style is like you can have pork or beef. Beef, obviously big in Texas. It can be a big part of Texas barbecue, beef brisket, beef ribs. But the important thing is what they absolutely do not do in Texas is take the barbecued meat and take barbecue sauce and pour it all over it before they serve it during the cooking process. That would be like taking your order of French fries and just like squirting ketchup all over it after the cooking process. You know, once they're done, they don't just pour it all on. Because it's good on its own. And you would have sauce in the side, maybe you want to pour a sauce all over it, but that's your personal kind of choice.

So it comes naked. Exactly. Now, the exact opposite of that is Kansas City barbecue. What they do is, they cook, you know, beef and pork, and they take a very, very sweet and sticky molasses-based barbecue sauce. They just

pour it. So when it comes to your table, it's dripping and really, really sticky molasses-y sweet sauce. What's the major difference now between Kansas City, Texas, and Memphis and Carolina. See, I only, the only division I knew was like the wet, dry division. I didn't, I didn't know it more fine-grained than that.

What is it? Carolina is vinegar-based. Oh, okay. So, sauce-wise, yes. Carolina sauce is vinegar-based. The main distinction between the two of them, though, is a lot of people in Memphis and Carolina style will tell you that beef cannot be barbecue. Oh, pork is barbecue.

In Memphis, which is generally you're going to get pork ribs or pulled pork, just in one of those two styles. In terms of Carolina style, what they do is they roast the whole hog, as, you know, the expression goes, as the saying goes, take all of the meat off of it, all of the different cuts of meat, the ribs, everything, the shoulder, then they cut it all up into fine pieces and mix it all together. This is Carolina style. This is Carolina style.

And then add a light vinegar-based sauce. And what they say is this is really, it's like the most difficult to do because, you know, It's really the flavor of the pork that's coming through. And because it's everything all mixed together, you've got to make sure you cook that entire pig evenly. Within these regions, there's a lot of smaller ones, but it inspires all kinds of fights. I've definitely seen co-workers, yeah, you know, like the one coworker from Texas and the other co-worker from Kansas City. You don't know real barbecue. No, this is, no, this is what barbecue is.

Yeah, yep, yep, it can be a real point of contention. Man. Man. Man. Man. Speaking of more man stuff, I think for me, the defining man characteristic would probably be facial hair. And so Cynthia Dorocco on Facebook, and along with a lot of other people, ask me specifically, why did I put a mustache on the Good Job Brain logo? I just chose it because I thought, oh, we like old-timey stuff.

It's whimsical. You picture a guy in the top hat and mnemonicle going, oh, excelsior. Yeah. You know, twirling the mustache, like thinking. trying to answer questions. Yeah. So that really is the reason. There really isn't like, oh, because I'm a big mustache aficionado or whatever.

So I figured I'd talk about some stuff related to facial hair and shaving and especially beards. So, of course, beards throughout history in almost all cultures, it does have some associations with wisdom or manliness or virility. It always was regarded as some sort of male symbol. Whether if it's to mean very wise or to mean very masculine. And this has been going on for, you know, long, long, long time. The big breaking point in beard history is probably during the time of Alexander the Great.

And because he was a big proponent of smooth shaving is actually no facial hair at all. And of course, his reason is very, very logical. He ordered all his soldiers to be clean-shaven, fearing that their beards would be used as a handle. for enemies to like grab your face or it might get caught. And so really for him, it was like, let's be efficient, let's be functional. Everybody shave off any facial hair you have just in case. Sound military tactics. And so the practice of shaving became pretty widespread.

And even kings and older merchants and even philosophers who've been sporting beards this whole time kind of adopted that rule from Alexander the Great. And so that became kind of the, I guess, the smoothface era. And a big other point in beard history is with Peter the Great, the Russian Tsar. He implemented what he called a beard tax. And this is back in the days of late 17th century when he was trying to get Russia to be more modernized, to look and appear to be more European. And trying to shed off the old Russian tradition. missions and ways and to hopefully modernize and energize the whole.

Just integrate a little bit more. Yeah, the whole nation. And so he ordered a lot of his prominent courtiers and nobles to shave off their beards. That's funny. I remember having heard about the beard tax, but I don't think I realized it was part of a modernity push or overhauling the national image. I think I just thought it was like a tax raising initiative or a way to get money into the government coffers. Well, what can we tax? Let's tax some beards. Taxing it highly in order to discourage the behavior, right? Yes. Right. And of Of course, the people who do want to sport a beard, they would pay the beard tax. And actually, what they got was a token.

Oh. And the token is a special, like, Russian coin on one side. It actually has a face with a beard on it, like some sort of legal document. Yeah, you could present it to people who wanted to collect the beard tax and be like, I'm paid up and pay it up on my beard dues. You know there were guys, like, pushing the boundaries, too, of like, how long can you get your sideburns before it counts as a beard? It's like, oh, no, this isn't a beer. These are just two really long sideburns

that meet in the middle. I had to get away with that. I have a great beard accountant. Yeah, I know a good beard guy. I got a beard guy. I'll hook you up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in fact, if your beard, it wasn't solid

and had a hole in it that was known as a loophole, hence, that is such a lie. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, everyone apologize. It's folk etymology. Yes, it is. And, of course, today, you can grow a beard if you want to, except professional airline pilots are required to be clean-shaven.

Really? And this is to facilitate a tight seal with the oxygen mask. Oh, okay. And which makes sense. Oh, sure. Similarly, firefighters as well, because they might have to wear a mask and maybe having a full beard or something could not have a good seal on their face. That is really fascinating.

So it is a safety thing. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Some beard info for you fellas. Chapter 3, bunyan, comma, paul. So, yes. Speaking of beards, there may be no more famous large stale beard than Paul Bunyan in American culture anyway.

And in case you don't know, especially if you're outside the U.S., Paul Bunyan is held as an example of a classic American folk hero, just literally larger than life, this giant sized lumberjack. He has his giant blue ox named Babe, and there are just reams of exploits about him. And they're usually sort of in the comical format of, you know, he was so big as a kid. he had to have wagon wheels as buttons on his shirt or there are the stories of when Paul Bunyan was a baby, his parents had to use an empty wagon as his crib because everything was just so outsized scale. What's interesting to me about Paul Bunyan is that in a lot of ways, he's almost a reverse folk hero. And what I mean by that is instead of something like the grim fairy tales, where they actually had really strong legitimate folk roots and then kind of moved out into Cinderella or Sleeping, Beauty and things like that that got commercialized, Paul Bunyan went the other way. So virtually every scrap that we know about Paul Bunyan, all of the stories, all of the

imagery, all the little details of his life and backstory were created for advertising campaign. Whoa! And made their way back into the folk hero level. Wow. I grew up thinking that somehow Paul Bunyan was a very convenient storybook solution to a lot of like, creation myth. Why does the Grand Canyon exist? It's because Paul Bunyan rested his axe. Absolutely. And there are all of these stories about that. Yeah, like he carved out Puget Sound in Washington or he, his footsteps made the Great Lakes or you're right. But those are all relatively new. Those are all in the last, in the last hundred years. There is a tiny little kernel of actual folk hero and folk narrative in the Paul Bunyan story from oral tradition. It wasn't anything that was created. Here's the source. We can show where it came.

from. And that's really not true. So the first printed reference that anyone can find for Paul Bunyan goes back to 1910. Only back to 1910. There's no printed evidence anywhere before that. He appeared as a character in a story called Round River Drive. This was written by a newspaper writer. It was really just kind of a foxy little tale that he wanted to write based on a character that he had sort of heard before. But it was not the Paul Bunyan that we know today of this giant. It was basically just a story about a group of of lumberjacks, and he was one of their crew, and they would kind of have these silly little tall-tail adventures. And they were really intended for like a woodsman lumberjack audience.

Flash forward a few years, there was a man named William Laughhead who worked for the Red River Lumber Company. They were kind of looking for a trick or a gimmick to sell their lumber. And so what William Lafhead did was he sort of vaguely remembered some of these simple, simple style tall tales that he had heard when he used to work in logging camps and said, you know what, let me spin this up into something a little bit more whimsical. And so they created these pamphlets to advertise the Red River Lumber Company. And this was when the stories really kind of started to catch on and get a little bit of a wider audience. But again, he wasn't cartoonish. It got picked up in 1922 by the Kansas City Star. And that really seems to be the moment when it crossed over

from this sort of in-joke, in character, in lumberjack circles, to something that kids could have stories about. Once the Kansas City Star covered the pamphlets, sort of becoming more popular, Other newspapers around the country started running their own Paul Bunyan stories. And people would start writing in with Paul Bunyan stories. And they would sometimes take old tall tales that they had heard growing up and recast those as Paul Bunyan stories. It was like a fad. It was sort of a fad. And as these stories started growing in popularity in newspapers around the country and people would publish their own collections of books,

they got more and more and more cartoony. And he got bigger and bigger and bigger. And the things that he did got more and more outrageous. and the stories of, well, he needed six barrels of syrup just to cover his pancakes, you know, things like that, which were not at all part of the original kernel of tale. I'm so surprised it dates only to 1910. Yeah, it is amazing how fast it really happened, especially with, you know, just newspaper publication and stories. It's not through the oral tradition.

Like, it's actually, that's kind of what I thought it was. I thought it was like, oh, you know, tall tales told in the frontier settlements. No, it was from 1910, and it was published in newspapers. Yes. It's actually not. It's a mass media tradition. Yeah. And in fact, you know, in the folklore industry, there are some people who get really worked up about this. And, you know, there's the term fake lore is often used to describe the phenomena like Paul Bunyan, where most of what we know about it does not have an oral tradition. It comes from, it was either for hire or for profit or for a writer trying to sell lumber for his lumber company. Man, nice. It does seem that there is some kernel of it that grew into these tales. So he's not 100% fake lore in that sense. I prefer to think of him as more of an open source folk hero.

Oh, my God, that is so nerdy. In that he's been contributed by just hundreds and hundreds of people over the years. But yeah, he's not nearly as old as I thought, nor is he have as, quote, real a folk tradition as a lot of people talk about. Wow. And there are a lot of these weird explanations of like, oh, no, it comes from a French name of Bonjean. And, oh, no, it came from the Papineau. Lager Rebellion, and these are all really hard to trace down, as you might imagine. It's like, sure, you guys.

Yeah, sure. All right, time for a break from all this man talk. And I want to bring back a quick section that we did a couple of episodes ago. What is this amazing book you found? So a lot of our listeners really like that segment. So if you are a fan of collective nouns, I highly recommend this very old book. It is called An Exaltation of Larks. written by James Lipton.

And yes, that James Lipton from inside the actor's studio, he, when he was younger, I think back in 1968, wrote a book all about collective nouns, trying to hunt down the history and the reasoning of why some things are called what they're called. And it's fantastic. And it's all illustrated. It is. It has all these old-timey ink print. Yeah, engravings.

A lot of ammo heads on people bodies, just really. strange, but it's really a great read. So I just want to share some of my favorites from the book. Do you guys know what a group of angels is called? Angels? Angels. Can't, is it going to be one of these? Is it going to be something where you're going to say it and we're going to go, oh. It is a host of angels. Oh, yes, I have heard that. Host of angels. Okay. So James Lipton here with all his research, the word host is derived from the Latin hostess, meaning enemy. because angels are the army of God. Oh.

Oh, there are just so many good ones. We know pod of whales or a gam of whales. And one of the explanations for why it's called gam of whales is because when whalers, back in the olden days, it's very rare for whalers to see other whalers, right, out on sea. And so when they do see another whaling ship, they would kind of, they would stop, they would chat, and hang out for a while. And so that little party or that little conversation is kind of, they would kind of, they would stop, they would chat, they would, and hang out for a while. called a gam, which is very similar to how whales, when they see each other, they kind of play for a little bit or meet up for a little bit. Yeah, they're social.

The gam of whalers then got applied to a gam of whales. And lastly, a muse of cat houses. Wow! There we go. So, exaltation of larks by James Lipton. The James Lipton. The James Lipton. That's fantastic.

The creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the Minute Earth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had, but once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve? Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms? And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to? Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time. Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation, jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. Subscribe to Minute Earth wherever you like to listen. There are really many reasons to listen to our podcast, Big Picture Science.

It's kind of a challenge to summarize them all, Molly. Okay. Here's a reason to listen to our show, Big Picture Science, because you love to be surprised by science news. We love to be surprised by science news. So, for instance, I learned on our own show that I had been driving around with precious metals in my truck before it was stolen. That was brought up in our show about precious metals and also rare metals,

like most of the things in your catalytic converter, I was surprised to learn that we may begin naming heat waves, like we do hurricanes. You know, prepare yourself for heatwave Lucifer. I don't think I can prepare myself for that. Look, we like surprising our listeners. We like surprising ourselves by reporting new developments in science. And while asking the big picture questions about why they matter

and how they will affect our lives today and in the future. Well, we can't affect lives in the past, right? No, I guess that's a point. So the podcast is called Big Picture Science, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. We are the host. Seth is a scientist. I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us. We hope you'll take a listen.

Let's continue our man chat, or our man show. The man show. The man show. Food for men. Food for men. Earlier I talked about Pepsi special, which is the fat blocking soda in Japan. For men, this isn't the first time that food explicitly designed and marked. marketed towards men.

Right. Things that might not otherwise be gendered. Yeah, I mean, I'm not talking about like muscle milk or bodybuilding powders and stuff, because obviously that is market as men. Which is to a certain aim that happens to be more attractive to men. No, no, no, no. You mean like food for men and advertised for men only, no girls allowed. In Japan, to this day, you know, Pocky, right?

Yes, of course. The chocolate-coded crackers that they enjoy in Japan. Yeah. So Pocky with dark chocolate in Japan is called men's Pocky. Mm-hmm. That's one of the big examples. So culturally, it does seem like sugar and sweet things are always associated with kids or with women. And so in some cultures, like, you know, what is mature and masculine in terms of flavors are like things that are very salty or very bold or very spicy or hearty somehow. Yeah. When you look at your product and you realize most of your customers are women, you start thinking, okay, well, how can we take this product and tweak it and get men to buy it? Right. Yeah. So there's a Nestle classic for men in Russia, which is a chocolate bar. What I love about these products is that it assumes, and it's probably right on the money, that men are so simple and dumb.

If we won't buy a product, all you have to do is just put for men on it. And we're going to, oh, yeah, okay, I'll buy this. Hold on, I'm a man. Can't be seen without this. The Nestle Classic for Men is, like, filled with hearty nuts. And you're like, oh, yeah, manly bars. Crunch the nuts. That's your strong man teeth.

And relatedly, I'm sure our listeners in the UK are very familiar with the Yorkie bar, which is also a chocolate bar. The tagline is it's not for girls. And it has a logo of a female, like a bathroom female with a cross right in front of her. Like this thing is for dudes only. You don't eat this bar for enjoyment. You eat this bar because you need food substance in your body. You don't eat this bar. You tackle it.

Yeah. You have to punch it in the face five times before it can even go in your mind. You show this bar whose boss. And we see this, too, in Snickers or other types of candy bars where it's like, oh, satisfy your hunger. Because men are hungry. Also from Japan, Doritos for men. These Doritos are different than what we usually eat because the chips are a lot thicker. They're a lot chunkier.

And they also come in very salty flavors. And they also have a really strong wasabi. flavor. So it's like real men like hearty chips and also burn your nostrils, you know, that kind of, that kind of feel. Gives you a coronary five years faster. So there you go. Some food designed for men only. No girls allowed. It's funny. Like as you were talking, I was having a hard time thinking of ones in the U.S. that are specifically marketed. But I could, the only ones I can think of are the sodas. It has to be more subtle here. They don't say men's soda. They do, though. They have the new Dr. Pepper 10. They are

overt. They say, this is for men, not for women. And they're very tongue in cheek. In that case, you're right. Yeah. Action stars and football players, but that's, they're owning it. They're all, this is a soda for men. Right. But originally, I mean, that came from Coca-Cola Zero was essentially the first one, right? Right. Right. This idea of, okay, men would drink soda with no sugar because they don't really want to be chugging sugar either. But the problem is diet Coke appeals to women. And the word diet is just hitting female customers in its turning men off because they're like, I don't know, diet, man. So they introduce Coca-Cola Zero, which is, it's a different formulation, right?

And they advertise during sports, and they have, I mean, the tenor of it is very clear. They don't come out and say, man-coke, but they do it in a more subtle way. It looks like they're saying-man-cote. You're right. The Coke Zero does not explicitly, and I think Pepsi Max is Pepsi's version. They don't explicitly. The Dr. Pepper might be the only one that does come right out and say, this is for men. Right, yeah. And they're being, as you said, they're being tongue-in-cheek about it, but it shows that it's caught on. Yeah, you're right. It shows them this caught on, the idea of they now have different

formulations of diet, no sugar, no calorie soda that just appeal to men. It just so happens that that's how it shook out. And even if you look at like the packaging and stuff, they're always in dark colors like Coke Zero is in a black can. Pepsi Max is in a black can. It's kind of like, oh, it's classy. It's no sugar, but it's for man. Well, I think you hit on something that you're absolutely right. It's like some of it is not overt. It's sort of just the subtext of what you're advertising. I think we're kind of dancing around two things here. One is something that is marketed primarily to men and something that also has a light or a diet role, which is light beer. And this is just an awesome intersection of psychology and marketing

and a little bit of innovation research. The history of light beer is so fascinating. One, did you guys know that light beer as a category is by far the number one selling category of in the world. I had heard that. Yeah, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. There was a story that hit the wires earlier this year that Bud Light had finally gotten past as the number one selling beer in the world. And I'll give you guys a million trivia points if you guys know what the number one selling beer in the world.

In the world. In the world. And I'm going to tip my hand a little bit of just recently overtaken, large market. You might be able to guess it's a... Is it Sing Tao? It is a Chinese beer. It is... It is...

It's a tiger. Snow beer. snow beer but until just recently bud light had been the number one selling beer in the world i had just assumed that this is how it had always been but it only really like in the 80s into the 90s that light beer as a category really took off and again like all beer in general it's overwhelmingly men that drink light beer regular beer any kind of beer and as you had just mentioned talking about the soda the idea of diet does not fly with men for a product or a drink or anything so i had always sort of assumed, I mean, I consider myself a beer

aficionado, and I don't really drink light beer. I had always sort of assumed it was just watered down regular beer on some level, and that's not really true. It is actually, it's a different production process. It's made differently. They don't just water down real beer. There's a man named Joseph O'adies, and his claim

to fame was that in the mid-60s, he invented a new brewing method that produced beer with fewer calories. Without getting too sciencey here, basically he had isolated a new enzyme that made the yeast eat up more of the starch and the malt. So less starch and the residual beer, fewer carbohydrates.

So he was working for Rheingold Brewery. They marketed this under one of their sub-brands, basically as Gablingers, which already you're in trouble, is Gablinger's diet beer. Oh, God. It was a diet beer. And they, it was a bad Willy Wonka creation. It was a flop. It was a flop.

And they had TV ads for it and they had ads. And the whole campaign was, you know, you show the guy. I stereotypical kind of blue collar schlubby guy, getting at the idea of, oh, he's got to watch his weight. Well, drink the diet beer. Don't remind you guys, they have to lose weight. And the problem was, is they quickly realized is that for men, whether it's an image or the reality, is that men didn't want to be seen as caring about counting calories or they didn't care about counting calories. It seems like a sissy thing or like, oh, that's women care about counting calories. That's not for me.

The recipe ended up getting passed on to Meisterbrow, but the real turn came when Miller brewing. company bought the rights. They bought it out. And one of the first things they did was, all right, guys, we were going to market this as Miller Light. And that was in 1973, right off the bat. I mean, it was just a big hit. The main thing that they... Just a change of one word. It was two things they did. It was changing the focus from diet to light. Actually, Meisterbrow had had the light name as well. But it was the slogan, tastes great, less filling. They changed the whole pitch of reduced calorie beer as not that you can drink it and not get fat. It's you can drink more of it and not get full.

And that's really the subtext under light beer is, you know, we don't want to come right out and encourage you to be binge drinking alcoholics. But here is a product that you can drink more of this product. So you're consuming the same amount of calories in the wrong way. Get more in before you feel bloated. Yeah. In pretty short order, Miller Light became their best-selling beer. Coors Light jumped on the bandwagon in the 70s as well and Coors Light again to this day is their best-selling beer

Budweiser as well Bud Light for all of those sort of the big three American breweries The light has surpassed the normal The light is by far their highest selling category Now here's the other part of light beer That isn't really like a dirty little secret Because it's public knowledge But they don't really advertise this as strongly

But light beer has less alcohol In terms of the ingredients in beer The thing with the most calories is the alcohol. So if you can reduce the alcohol, you reduce the calories. So, you know, on average, the light beers have about 4.2% alcohol by volume compared to up to 5% for the regular varieties. It is less filling, but it also has less alcohol in it too. So some of the newer ones they have out, like MGD 64, are down to under 3%. Does 64 refer to 64 calories? Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. So the calories, yeah, there's, although, you know, some people are like bubbly water when they're

Somebody will have pointed out online that, yeah, really, the difference in calories between an average light beer and an average regular beer, it's not that huge a difference. But, again, where it starts to become a difference is if you're drinking five or six of them, you know, and they talk about in the early days of the ads for light beer, they were always sort of had to be careful not to imply that any one person had actually drunk more than a few beers, you know, like you would say, taste great, less filling, and he'd show the guy with all the empty bottles, whatever. But, you know, you had to sort of imply, oh, me and my friends drank all these. You know, it wasn't just me sitting here by myself. Well, thank you, Colin. I have to say that your topic flows directly into chapter six, which is, of course, peeing. You know, look. Trickling down.

When you're a guy, you spend a lot of time in front of urinals and not knowing where to look or what to do. Because you're just sort of like staring at the blank wall. front of you. And of course, a lot of entrepreneurs, again, having the time on their hands, staring at a blank wall, we'll use that time to dream up. What would it be good if there was something on this wall in front of me, which is how we got advertisements that Karen, you may not know this. No, I do know. Right at eye level above the urinal. So, I mean, some like sports bars will take the day's sports page and put it in a frame above the urinal so you can read the front sports page. Oh, that's pretty clever. Which I was out. That was really clever. Some, they will put

small flat screen TVs above the urinals playing whatever games are playing. Yeah. You're just the captive audience. Captive eyeballs. That's right. That's right. Desperately pretending the other people are not there with you. The Japanese gaming company Sega, along with some other companies recently, have started to introduce interactive urinal games. Whoa. Yeah. So they put a screen up above the urinal and basically like there's a target inside and basically like, you know,

you try to pee on it. You try to pee on the target and it cause it. You're playing a game. So like there could be a game where you're like one of those little statues that peas and he's filling up coffee cans. Or woman, a news reporter is doing a report and you're causing the wind to blow her clothes around as you're being. This is being sold. You can experience it in Japan right now. It's called toilet. T-O-Y-L-E-T. It reminds me of the little like the squirt gun in the clown's mouth at the carnival, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly. So another really interesting thing is If you have gone into Terminal 4 of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, anytime over the last 10 years, and used one of the urinals, you would have seen something interesting in there.

A tiny little picture of a fly on the inside of the wall. I'm so happy you're mentioning this. So you've seen that. Two or three weeks ago came back from New York. And, in fact, that was the first time I had seen that was I was at JFK and coming through in the same spot in each urinal, a little painted, fairly realistic, little fly. Yeah. And I thought, oh, this.

This is where they want me to pee. Bingo. Without telling you how to do it, like, basically they have just discovered that it actually put this little fly near the drain of the urinal, and it reduces spillage, what they used mystically called spillage, by 80%. That's amazing. I don't want to have to be the guy who puts down the paper towels and then picks up all of the pee off the ground and then weighs it to determine how the exact percentage. But why is it in Terminal 4? Because Terminal 4 was owned and operated up until, I think, very, very recently by ski pole, a Dutch airport company. This was essentially invented or pioneered in the Netherlands, and a lot of bathrooms in the Netherlands use this.

The urinal fly. So sometimes it's a sticker, and sometimes it's painted, and sometimes it's actually embossed right into the porcelain, like burn into the porcelain. What people are saying is it taps into a primal urge in the man brain to kill insects. To aim at things. Oh. To like to aim at a target. Yeah, that makes sense. Video games.

Wow. Yeah. And so, again, if anybody out there runs a business where you have like a public bathroom or a bathroom that your customers use, you can buy little urinal fly stickers. And if you're sick of cleaning up the bathroom floor, it is an incredibly cost-effective way. Good job, brain urinal fly stickers. Yeah. Little mustaches on me. Flies with mustaches. And that was our very complete man show, I would say. Yeah. As advertised. I think we, oh, yeah, I think we covered it all. on august first may i speak freely i prefer english the naked gun is the most fun you can have in theaters yeah let's go without getting arrested is he serious is he serious no the naked gun only in theaters august first and colin you have a final quiz segment for us i do it features the return of our good friend elvis yay and for those of you who may not remember elvis is our simulated

dated computer voice, who will sing opening lines of popular songs. Reed. Yes. More like Reed is supposed to sing. Elvis doesn't sing. All right. Got a variety of genres, including a hip-hop song today. Yes. It's tough for Elvis to do hip-hop because it's usually pretty obvious. Chris versus Karen, the showdown. All right, here we go.

She's into superstitions, black cats and voodoo dolls. I feel a premonition that girl's gonna make me fall. Ooh, I think Karen got that. She bangs by Ricky Martin. Oh, you're so close. It's Live in LaVita Loca. It is Live in LaVita Loca by Ricky Martin.

Oh, almost. Almost, so, yeah, it's just like a little glimmer recognition. All right, number two, here we go. What will you do when you get lonely and nobody's waiting by your side? You've been running and hiding much too long. You know it's just your foolish pride. Chris. Layla, by Derek and the Dominoes.

Oh, tricky. What cracks him with this one is he can't say waddle. He's all waddle you do. What will you do when you get lonely? All right, here we go. Number three. Two jumps in a week. I bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?

Flying on your motorcycle, watching all the ground beneath you drop. Oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. Watching the ground beneath you drop. That's the line. Ground beneath. Karen. That is, oh, God, radio head. Yes.

High and dry. Yes. Wow. Man, you just see the gears turning. At first I thought it was like a girl seeing it because I remember it was really soft. And then that's, oh. Girl or Tom York. Good job, Bray.

Well done. Well done. All right. Here we go. go another classic and now the end is near and so I face the final curtain my friend I'll say

it clear I'll state my case of which I'm certain Frank Sinatra is my way it is Frank Sinatra's my way well done alright here we go next one love is like a bum baby come on get it on living like a lover

with a radar phone looking like a tramp like a video VALAM. Demolition woman. Can I be your man? That video van, oh, to my... Oh, God, I'm so bad at this without the music. Yeah, you want me to tell you? Clue. Think one-arm drummer. Oh, Death Leppard!

Yes, it is Pour Some Sugar on me by Def Leppard with a radar phone. A little bit more current song here. I remember when I lost my mind, there was a... something so pleasant about that place. Even your emotions had an echo in so much space. Chris. Narls Barkley, crazy.

It is Narls Barkley, crazy. Wow, wow. Here we go. Next one. Just waking up in the morning. Gotta thank God. I don't know, but today seems kind of odd. No barking from the dogs.

No smog. Karen, already smiling. Today was a good day by Ice Cube. Correct. It was a good day by Ice Cube, indeed. All right, good job, guys. And, you know, I didn't want to do this last one, but Elvis, he's so big on being trendy. He really wanted to do something that the kids are into.

So we'll see if you guys can figure what this one is. is that gungnam style it is gungnam style by sigh elvis you know he just wants to be hip it's just it's kind of sad he's multicultural yeah yeah uh well good job guys you got every single one there all right oh elvis and that's our show thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys listeners for listening in uh hope you learn a lot about urinals and beer and food and beards paul bunyan Lots of great man stuff this week. And you can find us on Zoom Marketplace, on iTunes, on Stitcher, and also on our website, which is Good JobBrain.com.

And check out our sponsors, bonobos.com. Speaking of men, they sell manly clothes. So there you go. Indeed. And we'll see you guys next week. See you. Bye. Have you ever wondered how inbred the Habsburgs really were, what women in the past used for birth control, or what Queen Victoria's nine children got up to?

On the History Tea Time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and LGBTQ plus royals, explore royal family trees, and delve into women's medical history and other fascinating topics. Join me every Tuesday for History Tea Time, wherever fine podcasts are enjoyed.