Good Job, Brain! - 62: So Fresh, So Clean

Episode Date: May 21, 2013

LATHER UP for some amazing quizzes and facts about things that are squeaky clean: famous cleaners on TV, infomercials, marketing deodorant, the rise and fall of a surprising cleaning product... and what exactly IS soap? Learn about the massive undertaking of cleaning the Statue of Liberty, and the after-dark secretsssss of tidying up Disneyland. ALSO: Music Round! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, bodacious bunch of buds with big bouncy brains. Welcome to Good job, Brain. You're... I'm glad you said brains. Yeah, weekly quiz show and off-beat trivia podcast. This is episode 6. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your quasi-qualifying quartet

who quibble over quizzes, questions, quandaries, and casidias. Oh, that didn't really work. It's not quesadias. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. I'm Chris. Without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot.

Here I have a trivia pursuit card with a picture on it. Darn it. All right, I'll come up with something. And you guys have your buzzers, so let's answer some questions. Let's see how I can reframe this. Blue Wedge for Geography. Okay. Skip it?

No, no, no, I got, okay, okay. Okay, okay. What legume's name literally translates to twig bean? Literally translates. twig bean from what language do you know there'll probably be too much information from Japanese

oh edamami yes edamami soybeans same thing it's a picture of it got it what is this okay what is this all right pink wedge

for pop culture what baseball player coined the phrase you gotta believe I have no idea everybody's looking at call it I'll guess Yogi Berra it is tug McGraw.

Oh. That's a fake name, by the way. Yeah, yeah. No, you're thinking, Tug McGraw. Tug McGraw is a real guy. Tug McGroight. That's good. All right.

Yellow Wedge. What is Times Square named after? Chris. The New York Times building. Yes, New York Times. Before the Papers headquarters opened there in 1904, the area was known as Long Acre Square. Purple Wedge. What Ian McEwan novel became a movie starring Kieran Knightley and James McAvoy?

Was that, uh, Bend It Like Beckham? No. Is it Pirates of the Caribbean? Oh, man. Are you guys just naming Kieran Knightley movie? Yeah, pretty much. Why? Oh, was it Domino?

No. No. Shoot. What was it? It's atonement. Oh, yes. It was like, they were in a movie together. What was it?

In Sircy Ronan. All right, Green Wedge for a science. What do you say? suffer from if you have dichromatic vision. You have colorblindness. Yes. Last question, orange wedge. In golf, what is the American equivalent of the British term albatross?

Oh, Chris. A double eagle. Yes. Double eagle. A score of three under par for a hole. You wouldn't know, I hate golf. I think we had that in trivia before. We did.

So they're the same thing. just yeah all right good job brains so we're in the last month of spring we have one more month to do all your spring cleaning even though i've never ever ever cleaned there is a rumba and that's it i'll turn it out i'll press a button turns on it works hard for it's in my two big dogs we thought this week we're going to focus on cleaning my arch Nemesis. Now I go cleaning windows to wear an honest bulb. For a nosy Parker, it's an interesting job.

Now it's a job that just suits me. A window cleaner you would be if you can see what I can see. When I'm cleaning windows, honeymoon in couples. Last week we talked about mornings, your other arch nemesis. I know. Mornings and cleaning. It's the kryptonite to my Superman. I believe that I will start us off with some, like, quizzing about cleaning products.

All right. How about that? This super absorbent cloth is sold by many names, but pitchman Vince Offer gave it this one. Dana. Shamwow. The shamwows. Now, when I was a kid, they called it the Amazing Shammy on TV. But it was still the same thing.

An extremely absorbent cloth. Shamwow is just like... It's a brand name. It's a shamwow brand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Germans made it gem wild.

They always make good stuff. Pitchman Billy Maze was best known for selling this all-purpose stain remover. It seems like Colin. That is oxy-clean. Oxy-Clean, yes. This wood cleaner pitched by Maze is made of citrus oil. It was sold by Billy Maze on television made of citrus oil. Hmm.

Sounds familiar. Oh, citric-clean. Oh, if only. It's orange glow Really, Mays here in orange glow, yes. Finally, if you're having problems with hard water build-up, Billy Mays, will sell you this explosive bathroom cleaner. Oh, what is it called?

Don't use the word explosive. And the word bathroom in the same sentence. Explosive bathroom cleaner. It's the one that builds up the little air bubble. It's called like the Kaboom or something. It is called Kaboom! Oh, yes. Caboom!

This naturally occurring cleaning product, was originally hauled out of Death Valley, California by teams of 20 mules. Colin. Borax. Borax. Yes. Which is a naturally occurring substance called borax.

Where does it occur in nature? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a mineral. And they are famously in the package, 20 mule team borax. Exactly.

That is the trademark of that particular brand, but anybody can use borax to refer to the substance. The package of this package of this popular cleaning product used originally on boats depict a man based on an image of a U.S. Navy sailor.

Not a genie. Oh. Well, Mr. Clean. Oh! Yes. Yeah, it's Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean was not a genie. Mr. Clean is just sort of based on an image of a sailor with an earring and stuff like that. Yeah. Here's a

question for you guys. And I want to see what answer I get out of this, because they do a lot of research into this. All right. What is soap? What is soap? What do you mean? What is it?

It's fat. It's a mixture of... Life. Not quite... It's a mixture of lipids and bases. Yes. And it has like surfactive properties. So it lowers the surface tension of water.

No, not what does it do? Oh, okay. But what is soap? It's base and lipids. A cleaner. A basic cleaner. So it is the... It is the alkali.

salt of a fatty acid. Now, of course, I have no idea what that means, but you're right. It is when you combine a base or an alkali, right, with fat, what results from the chemical reaction that occurs is soap. Typically, beef tallow. That is the cheapest kind of fat. You'll see like sodium tallowate listed in ingredient, and that's actually soap. When ivory soap says that it's 99 and 44 100ths percent pure. What that means is 99.44% of it is the alkali salt of fatty acid, that stuff. And the rest of it is just other minerals that happen to get in there during the process. You can see Don Draper turning the board around.

So, no, it's not impure. It's 99% pure. Now, the FDA lays down the definition of, like, this is what is soap versus this is what is a detergent versus, like, body wash. for trade purposes. However, as it turns out, if your product does what soap does and is used by people for what they would use soap for, you can just call it soap. Got it. Yeah. You might not have very much soap in your bathroom right now. Right. Like if you have like liquid soap and shampoo and body wash, unless you've got like things that are like a bar of ivory, where most of it was made by combining lie and beef tallow, you don't actually have actual soap. The process of combining lie and fat

to create soap is called saponification. Put saponification. Sappho is Latin for soap. Oh. Yep. Put that back there in the memory banks. Might come up one day. Actually, it would, yeah.

Saponification. So speaking of Don Draper and Mad Men and old school tricky marketing, one of the personal hygiene products that always had had trouble back in the day of appealing to the masses is deodorants and antipersprins. You don't imagine, from our standpoint today, thinking back thinking that they would have trouble marketing. Yeah. In the 1900s, even though it's kind of, you know, the dawn of a new century, it's still within kind of Victorian proper etiquette mindset that just people didn't want to talk about body odor. Oh, sure. Okay.

They don't want to talk about sweat. They don't want to admit that that's a problem. Right. Because anything bodily was very taboo. Yeah, it is. And also, nobody ever, I mean, we don't. don't smell our own body odor. We smell other people's.

So you and I can, well, I mean, you can't, you can, but you don't notice your own as much. So do you guys know how antiperspirants work? Basically, I think they short out your electrical system, right? Whoa, what? We're all robots. That's why a lot of them have like aluminum oxides and things in them, that they react with your body's electrochemical reactions was my understanding. Yes.

So most antiperspirants contain ingredients, uh, that are basically in the family of aluminum salts. And the main way is put it in your pits. It dissolves sweat and it creates a thin coating of a gel-like substance and it covers up the sweat glands. So you actually... So it goes in your sweat holes and doesn't come out. Yes, your sweat holes.

Okay. Shut your sweat hole. And this coating reduces the amount of sweat that is released onto the surf of the skin. Therefore, you won't smell as bad. Do you guys know what the first commercial deodorant is called? First commercial deodorant in America I'm going to guess that it's one that still exists Stop it is one of the earlier ones

Yes but not the first one First one is called Mum M-U-M-M Okay And you know when we talk about deodorants We're thinking of like a stick And we just put it in our armpits Most of the deodorants were like

A cream or a gel That you have to spread with your fingers In your armpit holes So here's the challenge of actually marketing deodorants, a copywriter, very madman-esque, his name is James Young, a guy. He wrote copy and tried to market deodorant for ladies. And this is an ad that showed up in a 1919 edition of Ladies' Home Journal,

not beating me around the bush. Like, it is, it is very straightforward. He says, A woman's arm, poets have sung of it. Great artists have painted its beauty. It should be the daintiest, sweetest thing in the world, and yet, unfortunately, it isn't always. This advertisement goes on explaining that, like, hey, if you want to appeal to guys and you want to keep a man, you better not smell bad. Right.

Yeah. Right. So this advertisement actually shocked a lot of people. It seems so tame now. Well, I'm reading to you guys, you know, of course it'd be like, oh, my God, like, to keep a man. They're not shocked about that. They're just shocked that someone is addressing the problem. of women, sweating, and smelling bad.

So they're all offended. And so a lot of people even canceled their subscription to the magazine. A lot of James Young, the copywriter, a lot of his female friends wouldn't even talk to him. They're just really, really pissed off at him. You know, about like, how dare you bring up this problem? But the thing is, it worked. It totally worked. He was writing this ad for a product called odor.

Oh, no. And sales rose. And it was actually successful in terms of selling. the product. To appeal to women, marketers trying to play on the insecurities of women and you got to keep your man. Well, then how do you market deodorants to dudes for a really, really long time? Sweat and odor is kind of associated with manliness. Like people who've worked on the farms and labor. It's got that musk of. Yeah. Man. How do we shatter that idea of it? So then this is what marketers did. In the Great Depression, uh, in the 1930s, men were really worried about losing

their jobs. And so ads focused on the embarrassment of being stinky and how unprofessional it is and how growing is important. Don't have this be the reason that you lose your job. Exactly. Because you're going, you're going into an office. You're going into a working at a desk type environment versus working in the field. It's tricky because they also had to really set the mail deodorant apart from female deodorant. Because if they're selling deodorant, we're like, oh, that's for ladies. No, no, no. That's like perfumy and flowery.

So in addition to all the marketing attitude, they did a lot of stuff to make the product appeal to men, including one example is this company called Seaforth. They sold the deodorant. And like I said, it used to be a cream. They would sell them in whiskey jugs. Whiskey is man. Therefore, this is your product. I could see a marketer doing that today, actually.

I could see Old Spice or somebody having a line. Yeah, sure. Just sold on a whiskey jug. Absolutely. But now it's so funny because it's like almost not, I wouldn't say it's a necessity, but it's not taboo to buy deodorant. Like, who cares? Probably is taboo not to.

Exactly. Because they've brainwashed us thinking that we really need it. It reminds me of the Listerine thing. Stinky breath wasn't a problem until it was identified as a problem and then everybody got self-conscious about it. What I like about all these ads too is they all have sort of the neutral kind of third party. It's many people are not aware that their breath smells or that their armpits stink. You know, it's not, hey, you might not be aware that you stink.

Well, I want to talk to you guys about the fall and then rise and then fall and then rise again. Whoa, roller coaster. I like it. Phoenix. Yes, it is. Yes, like a multiple phoenix. I mean, just a quintessentially just American story. I love this one.

And as I tell the story, you guys may sort of sniff where I'm going with it, but just play along, play along. Simmer down. Yeah. Yeah, just stick with me to the end. Pretend to be interested the whole time. I can normally do when I'm talking. Pretend to be interesting. Wow, cool.

If you have something to say, say it on the inside. Until around 1950 in America, you know, most homes used coal for heating. This was before gas and oil. This was just a very efficient, cost-effective way to heat your home. Coal is cheaper and heats more efficiently than wood, for instance. If you lived in the part of the country where you needed a stove or a furnace, you were using coal. Oh, got it. Not like in the fireplace.

Right. Yeah. Not for warm fire. For warming your house. Cheap and largely effective. But one of the problems with burning coal is there's soot and coal dust everywhere. But from a practical standpoint, having coal in your house means that your walls get covered with soot. And there's coal dust all around.

And it's a big deal of keeping your house clean from soot and coal dust. What was a very common way of doing this was, you know, you would have sort of a household mixture. A common recipe for cleaning soot and coal off your walls would you would make up a compound that was flour and water and some salt and some borax, good old borax, which we talked about before. So you'd kind of, you know, you'd need these together and it would make like a paste. And what you would do is you would... I know where you're going with this.

Yeah, I figured you might. Okay. And you would roll the paste up and down your wallpaper in particular, and it would pull the soot off and the dust off. And it was a very effective way of cleaning your wallpaper. Of course, before long, some companies got in the business of selling pre-mixed wallpaper cleaners. You go to the store, buy a jar of it, save yourself the hassle, disposable and cheap. I want to tell you about a man named Cleo McVicker. And Cleo McVicker was a young salesman working for a company called K-T-O-P-T-O-L.

Yes. K-Tol. K-T-L products. In 1927, Kut-Tol products was not doing well. The company, they sold mainly soaps, cleaning supplies, household stuff, and the company was was failing. They basically tasked young Cleo McVicker to sell off all of their remaining inventory. They're like, dude, just go here, clear us out yet as much as we can, and then we're going to shutter the business. Because he was so young, he was naive, he thought, no, I'm going to make this

work. And Cleo McVicker turned out to be such a successful soap salesman that he convinced the bosses to give the company another try. He's like, I can make this work. Look how much soap I just sold for you guys. He brought in his brother, Joe, and Joe and Leo, sort of kept the Kutal company going. In one of his many acts of brashness, Cleo brokered a deal with the Kroger's supermarket chain. And he basically went to them, and Kroger's up to this point had been selling their own kind of brand

of Kroger's wallpaper cleaner. And he went and said, hey, look, you know, let us supply your wallpaper cleaner. We'll give you a better product. We'll cut you a good deal. The Kroger's reps are like, oh, okay, you know how to make a good product. And Klio's like, absolutely.

So then Cleo comes back home. He's like, Joe, we've got to figure out how to make some wallpaper cleaner. And as I say, it wasn't a big secret or anything. They sort of just modified some of the homemade recipes. Sure enough, with their foot in the door at Kroger's, they were selling a lot of Kutal wallpaper cleaner, and it kind of became one of the name in wallpaper cleaning compounds of the day. So that was in 1933.

And, you know, moving forward a few years, things are going along swimmingly, selling a lot of wallpaper cleaner compound. And then the company kind of had to face two really bad things happen. One, Cleo Mifaker died in a plane crash in 19, 49. And the second thing was, as I mentioned, you know, we're post-World War II now and we're reaching the 50s and coal was rapidly being phased out as a way of heating your home in America, particularly. People were converting over to oil and gas furnaces. And the coal industry really

started to go down. He was making buggy whips at this point, right? No one was buying, no one's buying his wallpaper cleaner because they didn't have soot to clean off the wallpapers anymore. So around this time, Joe McVicker, Cleo's brother, his wife, uh, spotted an ar article in a homemaker's journal magazine kind of thing. And the article was talking about cost-effective ways of decorating your home for Christmas. And they featured a little tip. You know, you might imagine kind of like a Martha Stewart living kind of thing of using wallpaper cleaning compound to make your own Christmas ornaments. So you roll it out and you could use like cookie cutters and stamp it out. And it would semi-dry and hang it up that way. And she realized,

wait a minute, we can have a whole new life of this wallpaper cleaning compound as a craft. and toy and arts and craft supply. So Chris, I'm pretty sure has sussed out where we're going. They decided to rechristen this product under the new name. Play-Doh. Oh, I was going to be like Elmer. Yes. And, you know, sure enough, stories started coming in that a lot of teachers in classrooms

like, oh, yeah, I use it with my kids because it's safe. It's non-toxic. It's made with stuff that you can mix up at home. If the kids eat it, you know, which a lot of kids do. It tastes good. It's made flour and water. It does not. It's not taste good.

It's so salty. I actually like the way it tastes, so I will admit it. Kids are boogers, though. Yeah, that's true. That's why Colin likes it. It reminds me in boogers. I'm on a 30% booger diet. By volume.

Yikes. So they have... Sorry. By volume. Ew. Not by weight. Not by weight, because that would be gross. They're just kind of loose.

Like, anyway. They're like kale. Yikes. All right. So they started distributing the product of Play-Doh under the name Rainbow Crafts because it came. And in fact, there is still the classic pack of came in three tins of red, yellow, and blue Play-Doh.

And you can mix them together, as you know, if you know, your color theory, to make any other variety of colors that you want. And it is still non-toxic. It is still largely the same ingredients. And everything in there has a function. The borax works to prevent mold from growing in the Play-Doh. They add a few more things to it in the modern formulation. They add some oils and other things like that and, you know, obviously artificial colors and, you know, some fragrance.

But it is essentially the same stuff that started off as wallpaper cleaning compound. Yeah. Wow. Which you can now use to clean your wallpaper. Yeah. Oh, yeah. P.S. You can still use it to clean soap.

If you have any soot. If you're still burning coal, if you're that one family in America that's like, I'll be a coal man until the day I die. This newfangled oil. From the 50s, all the way. more or less in a straight line. It was just success after success for the Play-Doh company, now owned by Hasbro, I believe. Wow.

That's cool. Too bad Cleo didn't get to see that. It is, just the very cusp of, yeah. I think he would have loved the reinvention of the company, absolutely. Dana, you shouldn't play with Plato because has gluten in it. I don't eat it. That's a big concern. That because there is gluten allergy.

Yeah. I guess if you're handling it, yeah. If you have a severe gluten allergy, then yeah, I might. Wow. That's genuine. Wow. Not fake glass. That was the one out of ten case there.

All right, let's take a quick break. A word from our sponsor. I'm Chris Hadfield. I'm an astronaut, an author, a citizen of planet Earth. Join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world. Real conversations with real people who are shaping the future of energy. No politics, no empty talk. just solutions-focused conversations on the challenges we must overcome and the possibilities

that lie ahead. This is On Energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed, walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways. We're not going to find it in the news because the police covered everything well-up. On August days. This is where the story really starts. Weapons.

Welcome back. You're listening to Good Job Brain. And this week we're talking about things that are clean, so fresh and so clean. All right, I have a quiz, so fresh and so quick. Surlution got. Gator Belts and Patty Melts and Monty Carlos and El Dorado. All right. I have a quiz for you guys. I call it as clean on TV.

It's about... Wait a minute. It's about characters who are maids or butlers or housekeepers on TV shows. Oh, man. I'm glad I didn't think of the pun as clean on TV. Well, I also had like, I only clean on TV, clean on TV, like, lean on TV. me and then I was like if I have to explain it it's a bad pun we don't want to see how the sausage is made Dana yeah yeah say it say it in you're right all right all right first

one so I'll give you the name of the TV show and maybe what the domestic role was and then you tell me who the person is who the character is all right the Brady Bunch the maid everybody the jefferson's the maid Karen Rosie. No. Florence. Yes. You're thinking of the Jetsons. What'd you say?

The Jeffersons. Oh. Yes. Florence. Sorry. Frazier, the housekeeper. Chris. Stephanie.

Yeah. The Adams family. Karen. Lurch. Yes. Oh, okay. Who's the boss? Tony.

Tony Moselli. Tony Micelli. Yep. The Simpsons. Chris. Sherry Bobbins. That's the nanny. Oh, I'm talking about the janitor.

Sorry. Groundkeeper. Oh, okay. Downtown Abbey, the butler. There's a lot of household staff on that show. I mean, Bates is the valet, but I don't know who the burs. That was what I was going to say was Bates, yeah. Mr. Carson.

Oh, Mr. Carson. Yeah. Okay. Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Butler. Was that, uh, Jart. Jart? Jeff. Jeffrey. Jeffrey.

Jeffrey. Oh, Jart is the. to Iron Man. Jart. Jarts. Jarts. Is it Jorts? Batman. Butler. Alfred. You know what's the last name? Pennyworth? Yes. Pennyworth.

Wow. Pennyworth. All right. So this is a special little category. I have two women. They were both maids in the original show. And then there was a spinoff show that they were on. And they were not maids on that show, but they were the same character. All right. Okay. All right. Whoa. I'm with you. All right.

First one, Maud. Collin. That was Florida, who later went on to Good Times. She was the mom on Good Times. Yes. Wow. Florida, Florida Evans. Yeah.

And different strokes. Edna Garrett. Yep. Who was their housekeeper and then went off to Facts of Life. Here's another little special subsection. These are butlers who are also the titular character. of the show Okay, sure

All right This is a butler to a sports writer's family Chris Mr. Belvedere Yes Oh, you're Chris now Do we switch names?

Zip zap Zip that name This is a butler to a prince Jeeves No Oh that might Nope This is black adder

Oh Yeah that's good Oh All right Butler to a governor Colin. That's Benson. Yes.

And this is a bonus. Benson was a spinoff of another show. That was a spinoff of soap. Yes. Wow. You guys watch a lot of TV. About domestic. Well, so Karen, earlier, you were talking about deodorant and underarm application.

So I would like to talk about what may be the most famous armpit in America. Totally. The Statue of Liberty is armpit. Oh. That's a big deodorant. There was a 1980s, you know, raise your hand if you're sure. That's right. They showed Statue of Liberty with her, you know, with her arm up.

But no, in all seriousness, I want to talk about the mammoth undertaking of cleaning the Statue of Liberty. They're cleaner? Some small-scale cleaning at home. Not just her pits. Not just her pits. They don't clean her as often as they should. As it turns out, in advance of her 100th anniversary in 1986, that's right.

And we should interject, you know, in case you have forgotten Chris is a major, Statue of Liberty. Nerd. I'll say fan. Fan boy. Yeah, fan boy. So, yeah, feel free to jump in embellish as I go. Little crush.

Call them Liberty heads. Oh, yeah. Liberty heads. Little torches. In the early 80s, they realized, wow, you know, we're coming up 100 years here. We've got to do a restoration and really clean this up for the big celebration that they had planned for 4th of July, 1986. Did she look crappy?

Well, they had never undertaken a serious cleaning or restoration from the day. From the day that she was installed until the 1980s, they had done virtually no maintenance cleaning and upkeep of it. And when they started inspecting it, a lot of things they found really scared them. I mean, there was metal being eaten away in places and buildup of, you know, oxidization and debris. I mean, it's right by the sea. Yeah. So, you know, lots of salt water. Right.

Right. And, you know, made with 1880s engineering knowledge and technology. Right. You know, in some respect, it's amazing that it held. up as great as it did. And so, you know, I was, I was a kid, but I was old enough to remember when this was going on, and it was a big deal. Like I say, they started in 1982, so they had a four-year plan.

They announced, you know, like, they announced, you know, the Statue of Liberty is going to be closed to the public for a year, solid year. So they started the plan, they put up this giant scaffolding that covered the entire statue. They took the torch down for restoration. Now, I have a confession to make to you guys, and I don't know if I've ever told me about this, but as a kid, so when I heard, like, oh, they're cleaning the statue of liberty, you Take her clothes off.

No. I had this vision. Guys, Karen has a confession to me. Five seconds ago. That's what I would think if I were a kid. They were put her in a shower. Just spray her down a giant bottle. Some green boobies.

Yeah. I was under the impression that when they say clean, they're like, oh, it's like they're going to get rid of all the green. You know, like, oh, they're going to scrape all the green off. You know, because I knew that, like, copper, you know, as we've talked about, she is made of copper. Copper oxidizes. So I quickly learned at the time when adults told me, like, no, they're not taking the green off. The green, do you guys know what the technical name for the green patina on copper is?

It's Verdigris. Verdegris is a good thing. It actually protects the copper. And, you know, more to the point, it had been 100 years of people associating green with Statue of Liberty. Oh, it's true. Oh, people don't know that the Statue of Liberty was not originally green. Yeah, yeah. Were there pictures of it?

Like of a brown? They were black and white. Yeah, they were black and white. Unfortunately. They say it took a few years after being set up. They say it was not, I mean, it was not very fast. Yeah, it took a while. But yeah, once it was set in her green color, they wanted to protect that for many reasons. And in fact, most of the cleaning I learned was taking place on the inside of the statue. They did very little cleaning on the outside. As I say, the very degree does a pretty good job protecting the copper. You know, they'll clean off the bird poop and they'll, you know, get off just dust and debris. But that's not a four-year project. so the biggest job was cleaning the paint off the inside of the statue which was like seven layers thick in some places and had toxic paints it had coal tar based paints and so when they're like all right we've got to protect the inside to protect the metal from rusting we've got to do this in a way that doesn't use any harsh chemicals you know they didn't want anything that would leach through and damage the patina on the outside they went through a lot of alternatives of like different chemicals or sandblasting and all these things turned out to be unsatisfactory. when they're exploring them, and they came up with all I thought is a brilliant solution for cleaning off all the old paint on the inside. What they did is they sprayed the paint with liquid nitrogen, which instantly freezes the paint solid. It shrinks and cracks and loses

all of its, and just falls off. Right. And I thought that was such a brilliant solution. It took them 3,500 gallons of liquid nitrogen. I mean, she's a big lady. Billy Mays here with liquid nitrogen The last couple layers of paint though As I say were really tough They couldn't get them off Using the liquid nitrogen trick So they again

They had to be really delicate and careful Play-Doh Not a bad yes It was a very common household substance They used Lint rollers What? What they used what? It was a very common household substance

They used baking soda They used a commercial grade Apparently of baking soda Oh yeah Donated by Arm and Hammer, Natch, of course. Brilliant, brilliant opportunity to get their name in, good American company. So, yeah, so they essentially, you know, sandblasted the last couple layers of the really sticky gross paint off using baking soda. You know, I mentioned earlier that there were some places where they had just eaten all the way through the sheeting.

Like, you know, it was just holes in the fabric of the outside. What the restoration team did is they, in some places, patched up the holes with copper that they took. from the rooftop of Bell Labs. So the famous, you know, scientific peer research, Bell Labs, they had a copper roof that had almost the same degree of patina and almost the same color verre degree. And they worked out a swap where the Statue of Liberty supervisor said, we'll give you some of these old metal that you guys can use for a researcher study

if you give us essentially patches, little swatches of your roof, that they can plug in from the inside of the statue and that from a distance you wouldn't be able to tell. They said there was one interesting thing they noticed when they were cleaning. So I mentioned they were using the baking soda. You know, it's not airtight. And so the baking soda would come out through the rivet holes or some of the gaps in the sheets. And they had to be careful.

If they don't wash off the baking soda, it turns the patina blue. They would just wash off with water on the outside, but it kind of complicated the process. They'd clean from the inside and then wash it off because, like, people don't want a copper-color statue of liberty, but they sure as heck don't want a blue statue of liberty either. Yeah. No frills delivers Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders Shop now at nofrills.ca

I want to talk about another large-scale cleaning operation And I'm going to start by, obviously Is it your bedroom? The Roomba has that covered. Don't worry about it. Oh, right, yeah, sorry. So I have a quote here from Walt Disney. And he said, when I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say,

But why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty. I told her that that was the point. Mine wouldn't be. It wasn't until I read this quote that was like, that is true. Disneyland, to me, is impeccable. It's cleanest place. So clean.

And I compare it to other amusement parks or, you know, similar places. And it's like, man, those places are great. You have, like, gum everywhere, trash everywhere, and... Cigarette butts. How do they clean Disneyland? And it's an amazing operation. Disneyland is pretty much open every day of the year. So, you know, when do they do the cleaning?

They do it when the park is closed. Everybody goes home. That time window, midnight or so, to 8 a.m., is when they do all of the maintenance, the cleaning, the gardening, everything in the dark. And it's amazing. So they have, for Disneyland in Anaheim in Southern California, they have a crew of 600 people, gardeners, painters, custodians, decorators, mechanics, engineers. And for the gardeners, this is when they trim, they look for aphids, everything in the dark.

They have headlamps and floodlights. I was imagining like a little army of custodial crew with night vision goggles, you know. It's like zero dark 30, but they're trying to take out wads of gum. It's almost kind of dangerous because you can't really see that well. Everything's in the dark. And they have decorators who check the gates, who check the paint. And they have a special type of paint that will dry before the guests enter the park and they would apply it when needed.

And speaking of gum, gum is actually not sold anywhere in the park. Oh, really? Okay. All right. Very smart. But, of course, that doesn't stop people from bringing their own. own gum and there still is gum so they have people who would scrape gum everywhere they would check bottom of the handrails you know on the street yeah in the trash can and of course i mean

Disneyland is a eccentric place so you also have eccentric specialized cleaning crew that is needed including for certified divers who collect trash in attractions that deal with water features yeah Yeah, jungle crews and what used to be called 20,000 leagues on the scene now. It's Finding Nemo. Divers who go in with oxygen tanks pick up trash that people throw. We were just at, this was at Tokyo Disneyland. Somebody had dropped something into the water. And you very rarely see this.

Somebody who drops something into the water by the place where you board the boats. And as our boat was coming back in, we see a dude. He is wearing the most ridiculous crazy contraption. of a thing underwater grabber you've ever seen in life. And basically, it has the arm that grabs whatever it is in the water. But there's camera attached to it, and he's wearing, like, glasses that have the camera. So, like, he's seeing underwater with this thing. I snapped a picture of it.

It was nuts. So, yeah, they've got some serious, like, equipment for cleaning and or pulling things out of the water. They don't mess around. Right. And this is a little more mundane, but I think, you know, we've got to mention, too, that, like, even just the army of guys with the little sweeper broom, a piece of paper hits the ground, it is picked up. That's the thing.

So you're talking, we're talking about, like, oh, well, they clean in the eight hours, you know, between closing and opening, but it is clean all day. It is. You can never find a cigarette butter or wad of gum or a piece of trash in the ground. And you know people are throwing stuff on the ground, but they just clean it up so quickly. Indiana Jones is a ride in Disneyland where it's very, it jostles people. Sure. People would drop things.

I didn't know this was a problem until I read this. And from an L.A. Times article, they actually went to go see what happens after dark in Disneyland. In Indiana Jones, it's a lot of special effects, right? There's a room. There's these ghosts that are projected by light on screens and supposed to be spooky and scary. Apparently, a lot of people like to spit on the ghosts. Huh. Oh.

Like Hawk Lugies. What? Is that a cultural thing? On what ghosts? And so the Disney cleaner. or custodial crew actually developed a special saliva cleaning solution to clean the spit that gets caught on the screen projecting the ghosts. Is that gross?

It's gross. Maybe it's like, yeah. It could be a cultural thing. Yeah. It's like bad love for something. Yeah, superstition or something. Like enchanted tiki room, which is a room full of robot birds that sing of one guy who's a mechanic would play that through and through all night to make sure every see and there's hundreds of bird robots to make sure each robot is functioning it's clean the wings are flapping the right way they're turning their heads the right way you can't mean you know you always go to other amusement parks and you do something like that and like one thing's broken yeah yeah yeah not at disney

oh not at disneyland and speaking of mickey mouse that's not the only mouse that's in the park uh rodent is a problem wherever there are people yeah wherever there are people but somehow you years ago. And it's kind of a mystery. Feral cats started showing up in the park, maybe because there's food, maybe because there's a mouse population and there's also like different little natural places that the cats can seek shelter. So they live in by the park's trees and shrubs during the day out of sight from the people. And at night, they venture out. I think as a five years ago, it's estimated 200 cats live in Disneyland and California Adventure Park. And do they sort of have, like, the tacit approval of the... So instead of actually evicting or getting rid of the cats,

they're animal wranglers, they control the feline population, and they would bring, they would make sure that these cats are spayed or neutered, and they would find homes for all the kittens that are actually born, you know, on the premise. There are dedicated feeding stations on the property that feed these cats that live in Disneyland. And then they do the rodent control. And they keep the rodent population down. Got it. That's smart.

Yes. And that makes me think, oh, man, do all the other amusement park have a giant rodent problem? They do the same thing. What's really cute is they make all the feral cats wear the little Mickey Mouse Hacks. Oh, they take them in to fix them. That's part of, yeah. They glue the hats to their head. That's so cute.

So they can pretend they work there. They do. Well, they belong there. They're cast members. Yeah, they'll do pin trading with you. Yeah. You can find one. They'll never break cats.

They will pretend to be feral cats all day long. Yeah, all the way to the ER, yeah. And they attach themselves to your face. Happiest place on her. Disneyland has never disclosed how much money is spent on the after-hours maintenance, but it's probably up there. It is probably up there. I'm sure they spend more on the maintenance and cleaning than some other companies spend on their entire operation.

Yeah, totally. Amazing. That is really. That's really cool. I'm actually surprised we didn't talk about cleaning butts. Oh. Oh. Oh, like, I'm very proud of us.

Yeah. I actually did look up toilet paper. Yeah. But there was nothing really. It got a little bit too gross. One thousand. Yes. Probably wasn't too hard to get people to buy toilet paper.

It wasn't like a tough marketing pitch. What's the use case for this? I'm a corn cob man and I'll be a corn cob man until the day I die. I like how you were like, I'm proud of us. And then you make us talk about it for five minutes. You know that we will. The moment you bring it up, it's like, oh, yeah, let's talk about cleaning poop, butts and poo. All right, time for a last quiz segment.

Is there poop involved in this one? No poop, other than what you guys bring to it. Okay, all right. Sorry, you guys. Sorry, you listeners. I put together a music quiz for you guys. And even one better, it's our favorite kind of music quiz. It has a theme to it.

All right, now I want you guys to bear with me on this one. This one's going to be a learning experience. I'm telling you right off the bat, there are some one-hit, wonder, tricky ones in here. Okay. So don't feel bad if you don't know the name of the band or the name of the song, but I guarantee you, you have heard almost all of these songs. So even if you don't know the artist or the name, keep working on the theme.

And I think you guys will get there in the end. All right. So what I'm going to do is I will play you guys a short clip of a song. And your task is to tell me the name of the song and the artist, singer, or band, performing the song. That's your, that's goal of the first. goal of the second is to tell me what the theme uniting all of these songs is at the very end

So again, going to be some hard ones Don't get dispirited, stick with me All right. Here we go. We'll start you off with an easy one. Song two. Blur. Yes. Blur. Song two.

I got my head checked. All right. Here we go. Next one. And I dare you guys not to smile or laugh when you hear this song. All right. Challenge has been set. I have no idea.

Y'all ready for this? Close. See-and-see? No, not C-N-C. It's something else. Is this C-N-C? It is not. There's a lot of Wonder-Winder.

Jack Jams. J-Jams, number one. It is, get ready for this. Oh, my God, something boys. Two. You're on the right track. Two What is it?

Two Unlimited. Two Unlimited, yes. The number two. Two Unlimited. Nice. All right. Here we go. Next one.

Oh, okay. Oh, so the theme. Yeah. There may be some red herrings. Okay, we'll see. Here we go. Next one. Hey!

Hey! Man. No idea. What's the song? Yeah, Gary Glitter, right there? Yes, Gary Glitter. Oh, yeah, Gary Glitter. Yeah, that's right.

Yes, the proper name of the song is Rock and Roll Part 2, but colloquially just called the Hey song. Okay. Is there a part one? There is. There's rock and roll part one, rock and roll part two. But that's the one that everybody goes. All right. All right.

That is Survivor's Eye of the Tiger. Indeed, Survivor's Eye of the Tiger. And again, all of these songs are prime pub quiz trivia songs. They love the one hit wonders. Yep, yep. Here we go. Next one. Na-na-na-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-na-na-na-ha.

Yeah, we all know the chorus there, yeah. Everybody seems to know. And you want to take a stab at the band or full name of the song? I do not. Goodbye. This is Nana, hey, hey, kiss him goodbye. Oh, okay. By Steam.

Steam. File that one away for your pub quiz. My mom has a pair of drumsticks that were signed by the drummer of Steam. That is the most awesome thing I've heard in a long time. Connecticut band maybe, I don't know. They're living on those royalties to this day. Yeah, because that song gets covered left and right. All right, here we go.

Next one. Everyone, they did. Oh, that song. Yeah. What is it? Anyone want to take a stab? Don't even. Don't feel bad.

This is a tough one. This is zombie nation. Yes. Yes. We talked about this before. And they say the lyric zombie nation in the song by Kerncraft 400. Oh, my God. Yes.

With two Ks in there. Kerncraft 400. Of course. All right. I won't close this out. one here you're a boy make a big noise playing in the street

gonna be a big man someday you've got mud on your face your big disgrace kicking your can all over the lady singing We will, we will rock you And that one of course Queen, we will rock you All right, so...

It's not the number two. It's not the number two. That was my maybe too obvious red herring. Three. Jock Jams, sports songs. Or stadium songs. Yeah. Stadium songs.

That's right. These are all songs that are frequently, perhaps to the point of death, played at sporting events and stadiums and arenas around the world. All right, well done, guys. Yeah, jock jams. I love jock jams. All right, and that's our show. Thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys, listeners, for listening and hope you learn a lot about armpits,

armpits of Statue of Liberty, cleaning products, cleaning characters on TV. You can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website, which is good job,brain.com, and check out our sponsor at bonobos.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. See you. Spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and more time actually watching and playing what you want with the IGN Daily Update podcast. All you need is a few minutes to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games, movies and television with news, previews.

reviews and reviews. So listen and subscribe to the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. That's the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts.