Good Job, Brain! - 64: Itsy Bitsy, Teenie Weenie

Episode Date: June 5, 2013

Shrink ray, pew pew! Toy dogs, woof woof! Mini golf, putt putt! We celebrate the things that come in smaller packages around us. Trivia about the invention of the miniskirt (oo la la) and weird laws around tiny liquor bottles. See if you can name the baby versions of top cartoon shows, and how many movies about shrinking people can you think of? ALSO: Brainiacs Book Club Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, fabulous, fantastic, fearless, flightless, and featherless fact fanatics. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 64. And, of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your coop of loops and snoops who sometimes talk about poop. Sometimes. Sometimes.

All the time. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. Super packed show today. In addition to our book club later and our topic of the week and our pop quiz hot shot and a bunch of stuff. I'm going to squeeze in here a special listener fan shout out.

Listeners, Nick and Jessica, recently. got married. And just days ago, Jessica was rushed to the hospital where they found a brain tumor and immediately underwent emergency surgery. Thankfully, it was benign. She's still facing recovery and all this before their honeymoon. So to Jessica, we're all rooting for you. You go, girl. And I hope our show helps bring a bit of laughter and learning to your day during your recovery. And know that you are surrounded by great company, including your friend, Tom, who's the one who wrote in to tell us about your touching story. From our brains to your brain.

Right. Oh, all right. Let's jump into our first trivia segment. Pop Quiz, Hot Shot. This time, it's not the Star Wars trivia card. I was very proud of you guys, by the way. I greatly enjoyed listening to you guys, work your way through Star Wars trivia. Is a hut a species?

Yeah, last week I grabbed the wrong trivial pursuit card and actually grabbed Star Wars, which was a train wreck. Blue Wedge for Geography. What country did Indonesia gain independence from in 1949? Chris. Written? That would be my guess, too. Incorrect.

Yes, Dana's right. Oh, that's right. That makes sense. Dutch. Pink wedge for pop culture. What movie earned 11-year-old Anna Packard? win a best supporting actress Oscar in 1994. Dana.

The piano? Yes, the piano. All right, yellow wedge. Who was the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence? I believe that was John Hancock. Yes. Purple Wedge. The Bloomsday Festival held every June 16th honors a character from what famous book?

Oh, that's from Ulysses. Yes. Yes. It's coming up. What shape is a half twist that produces a continuous loop with only one side? That is a Mobius strip. Yes, a Mobius strip. All right. Last question. Orange Wedge. What is the common culinary term for the fried thymus gland of a pig?

Chris. I mean, is this sweetbreads? Yes. Fried thymus glands. The name sounds so delicious. I know. Oh, no, it's, yeah. Neither sweet nor bread.

It's a classic, like, really pleasant euphemism for non-pleasant things. Yeah, it sounds too good. You're like, wait, why is this called sweet breads? What is it really? All right, so this week we'll be talking about, it's going to be a fun show. We're going to talk about mini things. Yeah, typically when we say this is our mini episode, I mean it's like two minutes long. It is a full-length show.

Good job, we're an episode, but we're talking about mini, smaller, tiny versions of things. So here we go. This week, Honey, I Shrunk the podcast. It's a small world after all. It's a small world after all. Oh, little lady, oh, lady, oh. I'm really looking forward to this segment of Collins where he's going to actually show us all of his Star Wars figures one by one. Oh, no.

Let's instead start off with a story that was in the news. a few months ago. Here's the headline from the New York Daily News. JFK workers busted in theft of 100,000 tiny liquor bottles. Oh, really? Yeah. Some airplanes?

I guess it's Well, you know, I mean, they really are kind of conducive to theft. They're so tiny. Yeah. They're fairly valuable. It's if you, if you dig into the article and you actually read a little bit more, it becomes clear that it was, it was really 100,000 items.

A lot of duty-free items is what the workers, it was actually a conspiracy between some airport workers and some workers on the delivery services, and they were basically just lightening some of the loads of a lot of perfume and cigarettes as well. But the tiny liquor bottles, I think, I agree with the editors at the New York Daily News. It's more sensational. It makes for a better copy. They did, in fact, find one of the gentlemen, one of the bandits at his house, 500 garbage bags full of the tiny liquor bottles. Yeah. So it's not just, you know, like, just like shoving a couple in your pockets here and there. This was an coordinated theft. I mean, it was $750,000 worth of stolen goods. What were they going to do with it? Were they just going to drink it? I fenced it, I would imagine. Yeah. You can't really sell it.

These guys did not. Somebody to sell it to. Yeah. That wasn't really the goal to speculate on how we can make money stealing tiny liquor bottles. But I am interested in the tiny liquor bottles. And I'm sure I'm like a lot of other people where I've heard. first got fascinated with the tiny little liquor bottles, because my dad had a collection of them. But, yeah, I mean, I remember as a kid, like being on flights, like, it's like, oh, hey, mom, you know, have you ordered this one yet? You know, like, I just, I had this subconscious desire to see the collection grow, even though I couldn't contribute to it. She's like, are you trying to get me drunk? So, yeah, I'm sure it looked so suspicious at the time.

You know, if you encounter these tiny liquor bottles, like these days, it's overwhelmingly going to be in one of two places. You're on an airplane or the hotel mini bars, you know, it's a big place. models, like, they really started off their history. I mean, this isn't any crazy, complicated, weird history. They started off as samples. You know, most of the liquor companies would make smaller versions in various sizes as samples to give away, either to the distributors or, you know, giveaways to frequent customers. It wasn't anything crazy about it, but they found an amazing life on airplanes. I mean, I think all of us even to this day, you know, it's funny that you said, well, aren't they complimentary? And it's hard to remember now, in the early days, they really were complimentary, like all the way down to coach, even for a lot of airlines, with the full fare of your ticket. Yeah, flying on an airplane was very expensive, and it was, I mean, people wore suits to fly an airplane. You know, very quickly, you can see, like, if you're serving drinks, especially something

that's on a drop for drop basis more expensive than soda, it's going to be cumbersome pouring out of a, you know, a giant bottle of shivas or something on an airplane, so that the little tiny bottles make sense for so many reasons. Like, they save weight, they save space, there's no waste, and you can price them individually. It's like, here you go, throw it at the customer. You're not pouring a shot of liquor. Nobody's going to get into an argument with the flight of hint that she's not pouring enough liquor into the glass at 30,000 feet. It just makes sense.

As airlines started cutting costs, this is one of the first and easiest things to cut as well. Free liquor is easy to cut costs to free liquor and coach, and then it kind of worked its way. And so what tickles me is, you know, doing some of the research on these is now the alcohol beverage industries have kind of come full circle again now. And they've really rediscovered the value of them as straight out. samples, you know, especially because so many of the brands are diversifying. Oh, yeah. Different flavors. Yeah, you've got cherry bourbon and honey whiskey and, you know, peach vodkas and all kinds

of crazy flavors. And it's a good way of, you know, well, I know the brand, sure, maybe I'll try their crazy flavor for 99 cents or a dollar for a couple ounces. And it's a good way for them to market on wary consumers perhaps. Of course, there's also some more nefarious uses for these bottles. They're easy to sneak into places where you maybe are not supposed to have alcohol. Sporting events, movie theaters, right. Right, right. Bargets, buzz.

But really what cracked me up the most in my looking into just the awesome history of liquor minis is the crazy relationship that South Carolina used to have with mini liquor bottles. And this just opened my mind to some crazy avenues of how liquor laws in this country have evolved over the years. So, you know, there were a lot of vestiges after prohibition, after the end of prohibition. You know, as you guys know, we've talked about before, a lot of states had various blue laws. as to certain extent, limiting alcohol. You know, a lot of times it was, you can't buy liquor on Sundays. It was very common, you know, and these were mostly states in the South, Utah as well. South Carolina had some of the weirdest requirements I have ever heard.

From 1933, when Prohibition ended, up until 1973, you weren't allowed to sell liquor, like meaning hard liquor in South Carolina, by the drink. So if you wanted to drink whiskey, vodka, whatever it is, at a bar, you would bring your own liquor to the bar, and they would supply the mix-ins and all the supplementary stuff. B-Y-O-B. It was B-Y-O-L, right, exactly. You would B-Y-O-B to the bar. They would mix

it up for you. They would supply the ambiance and the environment. But they couldn't pour you drinks of liquor. In the 70s, people started getting worried about over-drinking, drinking and driving. There were still a lot of religious overtones, people who just didn't approve of

drinking for whatever reason. So the South Carolina voters passed a law that Okay, you can't serve liquor by the drinking bars, but it has to be in pre-measured predetermined amounts that are capped at a fixed amount. So we know, quote, people aren't drinking too much. So South Carolina in 1973 then started serving liquor and bars, but it had to be by the mini. So if you were to go drinking in South Carolina, you would have tons and tons and tons of little tiny mini liquor bottles. And it sounds crazy to order, you know, a whiskey at a bar and the bartender opens up a little, airplane-sized bottle. But that's literally what was going on in South Carolina. The average

mini is about 1.7 ounces, 50 milliliters. Is that like a shot? Well, that was equivalent to one drink, one shot. That's right. And what's funny is that the law was proposed as a way of moderating alcohol income, an intake rather. But it very quickly became the case that in any other state that had self-pouring, the average shot was about an ounce, 1.2 ounces, whereas South Carolina, you were fixed at that 1.7 ounce. And if you got a double, that was two 1.7s. So South Carolina quickly became known for having some of the strongest drinks in the nation because it was fixed at this sort of the upper limit of a large size shot. It was not until 2005. Someone noticed it. This law was on the books until the end of 2005. Holy cow.

So it's just been, you know, not even 10 years that you can go into a bar in South Carolina and get a drink. poured you know normally compared to many other bars and then of course there's the question of well now are the drinks less strong in south carolina than they used to be and i would say yes that depends bar to bar that probably depends place to place where you go so south carolina wait so this whole time until 2005 they were 70s until 2005 serving many bottles that's correct liquor in south carolina in a public venue was always part of these little tiny bottles and it just sounds comical there are reports of people who were like yeah my whole time in college their, you know, or my whole professional career there.

So you go to a bar, behind the bartender, there's, like, big bottles, beautiful bottles of alcohol that you can point and say, but they're just little bottles. Well, you know, right, you would say... For show. Right, right. I don't think they would keep the whole inventory up on the shelves behind them. Voter-approved law until 2000. Wow.

It seems wasteful to use so many bottles. Well, you know, it's funny. That was a big push, actually. I was a big part of it. Like, one of the things was like, you know, look, it's 2005. Not only is this silly, but these are just clogging up the landfills. And some of the lawmakers arguing, they would bring pictures in things. It's like, look how many of these tiny little bottles these barge are throwing out every night.

This is just outrageous. Well, I have a quiz themed around the subject of things being smaller than usual. It's called tiniest tunes. Oh. And as you may know, there is something of a trend in cartoons to produce a cartoon spinoff of something where the characters are aged down. Yes. Baby versions.

Famously, of course, Muppet Babies, which actually is credited with kicking off the trend. Yeah, that was the earliest one I could think. Huh. Yes. And so, beginning with Muppet Babies, we actually saw a whole lot of cartoons have versions in which the characters were aged down,

and so I'm going to name some cartoon, some cartoon, mostly animated cartoon franchises, definitely some movies, maybe some comic books and things like that. And I will tell you the version in which they are older, then you tell me the version in which they are. Younger. Okay.

All right. Oh, let me first ask this question. The show Muppet Babies was actually based on a scene in what feature film. Oh. Huh.

I would assume a Muppets movie. It is. Do you want to guess which Muppet movie? I'll just Muppets Take Manhattan. It is, yeah. There's a scene in Muppets Take Manhattan in which Miss Piggy imagines what it would have been like

had she grown up knowing Kermit and they showed them all his babies. All right. Scooby-Doo. What is the name? Of the show in which Scooby-Doo is younger. Yeah, man. So I know he has the small sidekick.

That is Scrappy Do, but that is a separate character. Yeah, this is baby Scooby-Doo. Indeed. Scooby-Babies. All right. Man, I cannot remember. Puppy-Doo. In a close, it is actually a pup named Scooby-Doo.

See? Yeah, you do remember it. All right. Up and Scooby-Doo. Indiana Jones. Oh, Karen. The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. Yes, yeah.

That's right. The Flintstones. Oh, I didn't know that was... Again, it's all some variation on this young Indiana Jones or Muppet Babies, but it's like, what specific variation? The Flintstones. Oh, gosh. In college?

You might think of the theme song of the Flintstones vitamins for the answer to this one. Oh, Flintstone Kids. Yes. The Flintstones kids. Now, this also introduces, as with the Muppet Babies, continuity errors, because these characters were not supposed to have actually known each other as children. Right. But, yes.

Looney Tunes. Carrie. Tiny Toons. You have fallen into my trap. You fell right into the trap. The Dana actually anticipated before this began. I could see it and look on her face. I was like, wait a minute. Those aren't actually Bugs Bunny. You are absolutely correct.

In Tiny Tune Adventures, the original characters like Bugs Bunny, et cetera, are all in there. They're same age. It just revolves around the younger kids that they teach at Akmi Lovir City. So, however, there is a show in which Bugs Bunny. et al are younger do you know what that is Looney babies It's called Baby Looney 2

So imaginative Tom and Jerry Yeah I don't remember that one I think I do because they had big heads It's having other kids Like cheeby style Similar similar Little Tom and little Jerry

No Time and Jerry kids Tom and Jerry kids That's it The X-Men Oh well Well at home actually Well, there's the high school version.

The X-Kids. I'm thinking of specific stories that are actually in the X-Men comics occasionally. There is actually a ex-babies. No. Oh, that's right. Really? They're really disturbing. Right.

Because, yeah, there's like baby Cyclops, and it's like, he's in his same uniform as grown-up uniform as we just shrunk him down to, like, toddler size. I mean, comical toddler. They're really weird. I have seen those ex-babies. Cyborg Beast Boy et al. Karen. Teen Titans. Teen Titans.

Yes. I didn't mention Robin because that would make it too much. Yeah. Finally, Yogi Bear. What was the name of the cartoon that featured Yogi Bear and his house aged down? I'm going to guess like Yellowstone or Jellystone Playground or Jellystone Kids or something. That would be good, but no. Baby Bears.

No. Yogi Bear Jr. No, the name of the show was Yo Yogi. Oh, no. Also, and finally, this is a show in which the characters started out young and they were aged up. So I'll give you the name of the show in which they were aged up and you tell me the show in which they were young. The name of the show in which the characters were 11 and 12 years old was all grown up. Oh, my rats.

Yes. Oh. Yes, indeed. And that is the tiny cartoon quiz. Nice. That's good. I cannot not talk about food. And I came across this term.

I want to refer back to a previous episode. I believe, Chris, you talked about the Cadbury cream egg. I did. And how throughout the years, people were kind of like, hmm, did these shrink? They seem a little bit lighter. But Cadbury is like, no, you're just an adult now, you know, for a kid. And then finally, they realized, they announced that. Someone blew the lid off the scandal.

The size is smaller, but only by a little bit. So over the years, companies have been downsizing their products in a sneaky way for a while. I'm not talking about companies introducing like a smaller size or a smaller version of an item and call it like, oh, here's the smaller version. The fun size.

Yeah, the fun size. It's not that because that's on purpose, here is a smaller item for you. This is sneaky kind of, you know, making something lighter, making something less voluminous, and then passing it off as its original version or its original self.

There is a term for this. It's called, Grocery Shrink Ray. And this was first coined and used in the consumerist would document and notice and have people write in. Here are a few examples of products that have shrunk. Bounty from 60 towels to 52 towels. Just eight towels difference. Purina dog food, 20 pounds to 18 pounds.

Glad trash bags, 96 bags to 80 bags. Skippy peanut butter, 18 ounce to. 16.2 ounce. And not to put two final point on it, but the outrage is that the prices don't always go down with a commensurate amount. Right. Well, the whole

point of it is that they don't want to raise their prices so the only way to cut costs is to lessen the amount that you get. The issue here is that a lot of these products still have the same price tag. And this, of course, angers or annoys a lot of consumers, you know, the principle

of, hey, wait a minute. I'm paying more dollar per volume unit. And here's a sneaky thing, too. Tropicana, orange juice, they went down in fluid ounce to seven fluid ounce. But they do, a lot of products do things to kind of disguise it or mask it. So Tropicana introduced the easy pour lid. And it's like, oh, it's a new design. So hopefully people won't notice that in the fluid ounce, it's gone down a little bit.

There are a couple of reasons why this happens. Obviously, number one, profit, right? They don't want to raise the price of an item, so they decrease the amount. There might be a portion demand. And we see this with a lot of snack foods, like the 100 calorie packs or even the cream egg. Going down, like people are very, very conscious of calorie numbers. So if you give them a round number, like 100, people are probably more attracted to just the easy 100 calorie item. If you can knock your item down from 310 calories to 290, you know.

Now it's like you went down 100 calories. Yeah, yogurt has been an interesting example because back in the day, yogurt was probably maybe 140, and they went down to 120, and now they're around 100, and then now they're down to 80. And they're like, oh, yogurt's so healthy. It's like, no, they're giving you less yogurt. Right. Well, I think we've also talked on the show before, specifically with regards to Coca-Cola,

that they sell a lot more of the 100-calorie cans than they ever did when they marketed them as the, you know, eight ounce or seven and a half ounce cans, right? It's a easier unit for people to understand or health-conscious consumers to understand. Another reason is to make up, I mean, like profit, it might not just be, oh, you know, we want to make more money. A lot of the things may be a cause and effect. So for Skippy peanut butter, and actually Peter Pan peanut butter, so peanut had a rise in cost.

And so to offset that, they downsized their peanut butter volume and, and, and, you know, still charge people the same amount as they did. And it's funny because obviously a lot of these consumers have written into companies complaining about this stuff. And some of the excuses are really funny. One notable potato chip company, their spokesperson, said that they needed to reduce the amount of chips per bag because the chips were going stale in the bag design.

If the company line is we're reducing it for your own good, they're probably lying. Yeah. They also introduce sometimes the packaging is exactly the same. They just have to change a little small print, right? But sometimes the packaging is different. And some of the packages, especially with shampoos or hygiene products, it looks bigger. Right.

Even though the volume is smaller. Curvier bottles to look like there's more volume, but really there's less. Obviously, if companies are reintroducing package and a new size, you have to factor in a lot of the manufacturing costs too, right? they have a new production. If you're putting less yogurt, then you have to recalibrate machines or have a new package. Those easy open cans don't design themselves.

So there you go. The groceries shrink ray. Next time you go to the supermarket, you might notice that maybe your ice cream is a little bit lighter or your cabaret cream is a little bit smaller. You might try to tell you're crazy. And you might be. This episode is brought to you by Square.

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This is Jen and Jenny from Ancient History Fan Girl, and we're here to tell you about Jenny's scorching historical romantasy based on Alarik of the Bissigoths, Enemy of My Dreams. Amanda Boucher, best-selling author of The Kingmaker Chronicle, says, quote, this book has everything, high-stakes action, grit, ferocity, and blazing passion. Julia and Alaric are colliding storms against a backdrop of the brutal dangers of ancient Rome.

They'll do anything to carve their peace out of this treacherous world and not just survive, but rule. Enemy of my dreams is available wherever books are sold, so for our episode on um little things and in miniatures i'm going to talk about the smallest type of dogs they fall under the category of toy dogs i'm so excited they also fall under the couch they fall into the refrigerator oh no they're also called companion dogs by um some kennel clubs and there was kind of a push to change the name of toy dogs to companion dogs because they want to frame it as these are these dogs are your friends they're not toys oh wait so is toy dog like no

longer PC like that was the term I always heard they were going to try to change the name they tried to change it to companion dogs but people were like I still like toy dogs so they didn't change it but I thought that was an interesting thing that came up there um people's lap dogs they're hunting dogs they're convenient pets their most toy dogs actually fall under those categories either being hunting dogs or companion dogs and so I'm going to give you the names of toy dogs, and you tell me whether you think they're a companion dog or a hunting dog. Oh, okay. And for some of them, I have interesting stories.

I think interesting stories about what they're up to. Okay, one finger for companion. How about two for companion because they're together, two things. Oh, yeah, one for hunting. Guns. Yeah, and then a gun. That'll get you suspended from school these days, right? Yeah, seriously.

So here we go. You ready? The first toy dog, Chihuahua. Is it a companion dog or a hunting dog? What would it hunt? I mean, I think... That's going to be the question for any of these, though, right? Yeah.

All right. So Colin and Chris say hunting dogs. Karen says companion dog. It was braised as a companion dog. Yeah. There's some stories about it hunting rats, but they didn't actually use it for that. There are some dogs where they actually were used to hunt. How about the Australian sulky terrier?

Everybody says a hunting dog, yes. It hunts rats and snakes. It was bred to hunt. I think most terriers are for rat or pests. See, I was going the other direction. I was going to say most things from Australia are to hunt something. Oh, that's true. Abishon Frize.

Oh, man. Everybody says companion dog. Yes, it's a companion dog. But it's a companion dog for sailors. People would take it on a boat in all times. I guess it's like working as a friend. Well, it's kind of like, you know, like the Dalmatian, you know, at the firehouse. Okay.

An English toy terrier. English toy terrier. Okay, Colin says the companion dog, Karen and Chris say a hunting dog. It's a hunting dog. Yes. So terriers, yes, they're mostly hunting dogs. I knew they were. I was thinking like, oh, maybe it's a toy version of a hunting dog.

The Havanaise from Havana, Cuba. I have a theory. All right. Whoa. Colin and Chris say companion. Karen says hunting. It is a companion dog. Oh, darn it.

I'm curious what the theory was. I thought, like, in Cuba or tropical places where they have a sugar cane farm. There might be like sugar cane snakes or some sort of pest and like a dog can go through. It's an interesting theory. The dog is the cutest thing in the world. How about pugs? It's one or the other.

Well, yeah. Well, I'll explain in a second. All right. So Colin and Chris say hunting. Karen says companion. It's a hunting. It's a guard dog. Like, it guarded things, and it kind of...

Maybe it's not just a good hunting dog because it has a really short snout, right? So, it probably can't smell. Sniff. Well, see, I was thinking that it wasn't, like, strong enough, like, with its jaws, but that maybe it could, like, hunt out, like, I don't know, truffles or something like that. That's why I was being peachy about, you know, truffle pugs.

I guess, yeah. I think pugs, to me, like, are the epitome of ugly cute. They have all sorts of health issues. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because of their noses. How about toy poodle? Oh

So Colin and Karen say hunting Chris says companion It's a hunting dog The normal poodles It's a water retriever You were hunting in the water stuff Oh wow How about a Pomeranian?

Okay So Karen and Chris say Companion dog Colin says hunting dog It's a companion dog Yeah, too cute Too cute Like little hair

All right last one The King Charles Spaniel Oh, I don't know if I know, though. You know them. All right, I'm just going to go with whatever Karen says. King Charles Cavalier. Karen thinks confidence. It's Charlotte's dog from Sex and the City.

Oh. It's like a little Cocker Spaniel. Okay. Everybody says hunting dog. It's a hunting dog. But, so it still has its hunting instincts, but it's very low energy. So it's like, oh, okay. They've read all the hunting in the movie, but then he's just like, I don't want to do it.

Good job, you guys. All right, let's take a break. And we're going to jump into our. Brainiacs book club segment where we share our favorite book picks from Audible, our favorite books dealing with trivia and facts and interesting histories. So my pick, I love Disney and Disney parks. And so one of the interesting books I read and actually listened to as an audiobook is called The Dark Side of Disney. Here's a little disclaimer. It is not for kids. It is definitely there is some adult materials there.

Not in trees. Yes, it's How to Have Fun in Disney as an adult. Oh, God. Probably not sanctioned by the Disney Corporation. No, not at all. There's a lot of tricks and scams or things that maybe you can do. But there's also a lot of stories and tales of people trying to scam their way in and get kicked out. I shared the story about someone who snuck in to take pictures of abandoned parks and structures.

And so a lot of different weird eccentric things that you can do to have fun in Disney. That's not necessarily family friendly. It's from a block. So the way it's written as I'm reading it, it's not perfect reading material, but it does make for a good audio book because it's more, you know, how people would describe things, you know, orally and casually. Versus when you're reading it, it's a little bit hard to read. But definitely very interesting and very intriguing. Yeah. So there you go.

Dark Side of Disney by Leonard Kinsey. All right. Well, one of my picks for our Audible Book Club is one of my favorite books in print going way back is Fast Food Nation. Oh, yeah. By Eric Schlosser. It's everything just behind the world of fast food, I mean, particularly in America. And there's a lot of dark sides to fast food culture and corporations, as you can imagine. But even if you don't actually like fast food, it's just an amazing story of technology.

and science and demographics and corporate history, just everything about how the food is made, how it's put together, how the companies copy each other and try and outdo each other. It is very American. It's a distinctly American industry, and it really, yeah, yeah.

So that is on Audible as well. Okay, my Audible book is, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. It's the latest David Sedaris book, and he writes autobiographical stories. And he's really into weird stuff. I think would strike a chord with any of us and possibly some of our listeners. So one of the things I learned was that you are not allowed to have taxidermied owls or birds

of prey in America. And in France, he can't in France either. And he said you found like albino peacocks and all sorts of other. He's really into taxidermy stuff. So that comes up. And then it made me look at look up the thing about the owls. So like even if you find an owl by the side of the road and you want to get it stuffed, you're not allowed to.

you have to get rid of it. Only museums and schools are allowed. And it's funny. It's a funny book. So a little while ago, I read a book called The Billionaires Vinegar, which I think that our listeners would really enjoy. It is a nonfiction book. It is a super, super high-end wine. Basically, it starts off at an auction at which a bottle of wine, purportedly from the 1700s and purportedly from the collection of Mr. Thomas Jefferson was auctioned. You know, still this still sealed bottle of wine. Ooh. From this auction...

No, Karen, wine doesn't go bad. Two hundred years old. Sometimes wine goes bad, but if properly stored, it doesn't go bad. But still. Unless something goes wrong. It talks about the super, super high-end wine world from, you know, super high-end wine auctions to the type of people who spend $10,000 on a bottle of wine and drink it, and then we just meet all of these various characters.

And people researching the... bottles of Chateau Lafitte that was supposedly owned by Jefferson trying to research Jefferson and researching the winery itself and like, you know, could it be possible that he really owned these bottles? And then what gets introduced into the story is the possibility that the bottles were faked, you know? And so like, how do you tell all of that kind of stuff? It is a, it's a thriller. I mean, it's really a thing. It's also a hits your buttons, Chris. Oh, totally. Yeah. Appraising things. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, in that case, too. It totally does, you know, appraising things. Oh, yeah. I didn't mean drinking. I didn't mean. I mean collectibles and drinking and brilliantly written. And so it really, it hits all those things. And I would really heartily recommend it. The billionaire's vinegar. The billionaire's vinegar. Yeah.

It feels really good to be productive. But a lot of the time, it's easier said than done. Especially when you need to make time to learn about productivity so you can actually, you know, be productive. But you can start your morning off right and be. to get stuff done in just a few minutes with the Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day podcast. You'll hear advice on everything from how to build confidence to how to get the best night's sleep. New episodes drop every weekday and each one is five minutes or less, so you only have to listen a little to get a lot more out of your weekdays. Listen and subscribe to Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day wherever you get your podcasts. That's Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, welcome back to Good Job, Brain, and this week we're talking about all things mini, small, and tiny.

Well, you know, a lot of mini things, despite how they're marketed, aren't as fun as the full size. They insist on calling the fun-sized candy bars at Halloween, and it's like, well, they're smaller, I'll grant you that. But I'd much rather have a full-sized candy bar than a fun-sized candy bar. But there's one thing for me that I absolutely, hands-down, prefer the miniature version to the full-size, which is miniature golf. Yeah. Like, I go and play, you know, full-size Big Boy Golf, and I'm not very good at it. I try not to let that bother me, but I love miniature golf. Me too.

I only, I just play miniature golf. That's real golf for me. Surprisingly, there's very little skills transfer between the two. Yeah, you don't encounter a lot of 70-foot-tall windmills out on the course of real golf. A real big boy golf had like a giant sphinx and a clown whose mouth opens, like, that sized up and scaled up, I would totally watch. Yeah, I would do that. I would play that game. That's the only reason I play. So where did it come from, Colin? By all accounts, this is a American phenomenon of just the modern miniature golf course. Originally, they had like small

putting courses in Scotland. They did, you know, and they did. There is, and I should say, there is, in fact, a tradition of smaller kind of obstacle-based courses. It was kind of sort of the inspiration was hybridizing some of the little obstacles and gates and pathways. And there There were. There was even some commercial version called golfstacle. Yes. As far back as the turn of the century, our doc got it back as a golf stucle. How are you holding your club? I actually, so I heard that the very, very early ones were aimed at women because the societal convention said you, you know, women shouldn't be raising their golf clubs any higher than their shoulder, basically. Yeah. So, you know, you do a little putting course for them so they can not risk their honor. Either either for genteel reasons or for practical reasons if they may not be able to and they're tightly fitted. Yeah. Yeah. Possible. But no, that's right. There were in, you know, some that were marketed or not marketed. Some were designed with women in mind, things like that. But there were no, there were no chomping gaiters. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. There's a man named James Barber in, uh, he lived in North Carolina in the early 1900s. And a lot of people credit him with sort of the first wacky,

elaborate course. He created a course. Now, the only reason I would say that he's not sort of the modern father of miniature golf is that this was one thing. It was on his estate, essentially. He had enough room on his, you know, private estate. And it was kind of invitation only. Like, if he liked you or wanted to show off this thing or he was having a garden party or, you know, a newspaper reporter happened to be there, it really took until the 1920s for a man named Garnett Carter, who made this a thing and made it an American runaway phenomenon. So Garnet Carter, he had built a resort

in Tennessee called Ferryland and it was a themed resort you know, sort of spiritually similar like a Disneyland. Theme park. It was, yeah, marketed more as a vacation resort destination as opposed to an outright day trip kind of place. But one of the things that he built

in Ferryland was an attraction that he originally called Dwarf Golf. It quickly became known as miniature golf. I think it's just, it's a better, better name anyway. He built it as an addition to Fairyland, and it had mechanical contraptions. It was fun and weird and kooky and bright colors. And here's what's interesting, though, is that he designed it for kids.

This was an, like, oh, this is a thing for children to play, and it was really elaborate. And he very quickly noticed, there are a lot of adults playing this thing to the point of crowding kids out, and they're better at it than the kids are so they can move through. it faster. So from this one original course on his Ferryland Resort in Tennessee, he christened the industry. He started the business as Tom Thumb Golf, which was, again, pretty good marketing. Right. So this is how popular this was. So he set up a company and a factory that produced a lot of the equipment that you need to set up the course. So it was very much like a turnkey operation so you can franchise it and build out very easily. It was very smart. And credit does actually need to go here

very quickly to a man named Thomas Fairbaron, whose claim to the world of miniature golf was he came up with the artificial turf that would simulate grass in all of the earliest horses. You don't have to plant grass anywhere. Right, and this was before Astro Turf came along. So let me just give you a sense of steel here. So 1927, the first one in Fairyland, by 1930, three years later, Garnett Carter had started 25,000 courses across the nation. It was a boom. It was a

boom. It was absolutely a... It all franchised out. Well, you know, he had a lot to do with him. The franchise model was a little different in the 20s than it is now, but certainly he was not running 25,000 of them himself. That's right, but he would supply them and sell the equipment, and they were predominantly in the South, but they were all over. I mean, they, you know, 25,000 in three years. At one point in New York City, there were, it was like, there were reported to be 150 miniature golf courses in New York City. That's right.

They were on the tops of buildings. I'm glad you mentioned that. Rooftop miniature golf was a huge thing. And this is one of those awesome localized things, exactly. And this was really sort of separate from the root of Garnet Carter or any of these other people that we talked about. Yeah, so that's the proud predominantly American history of miniature golf. And now I want to go play out. But we need to find the wacky ones with King Kong and a banana.

And so today I have a tradition with my friends. Whenever we go to Las Vegas, we will go play miniature golf for money, you know, skins style. Do you guys know what skin style golf is? Naked. It's not like shirt versus skins. You call it skins like you put money up for each hole. So when we go play, we'll play miniature golf. So we each chip in a dollar per hole.

Whoever wins the hole wins that pot. And if there's a tie, it rolls over to the next hole. I imagine if we had a good job bringing mini golf course. There would be one where it's like a giant butt of a beaver. That's right. I get the golf ball into his butthole. The 18. You get it in the butthole and then it's gone forever.

That's right. That's right. So I'm going to talk about two minis. One is the mini car and the other one is the mini skirt. And they are related to each other. Huh. Yes. So first I'll talk about the mini car.

So it started in England or it was made by the British Motor Company. The Mini Cooper? I'm talking about the Mini Cooper. Okay. But when it first came out, it wasn't owned by Cooper. It was the mini and it was owned by the British Motor. company. It was under production by the BMC from 1959 until 2000, and then BMW got the rights to it and then started distributing it. It was really fuel efficient, which was super important

because of the Suez crisis, the 1956 Suez Crisis, where Britain and the French and Israelis had kind of a diplomatic military dust up. There was a petrol rationing going on in the UK. Oh, how very British have you. So the big British cars were going out of style, and the little German bubble cars were rising, were booming, because they were way more fuel efficient. The British motor company did not like that German cars were becoming. Don't step.

They wanted to compete. So they came up with a little car that could fit in a 10 by 4 by 4 box. I mean, I just want to jump in and say, like, if you're just thinking, like, this is an earlier version of the modern minis you see today, No, these, these are small, they are way smaller than the current. Oh, really? They are tiny. If you see, like smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle, basically.

They are smaller than a beetle. They're closer to, like, those smart cars than they are to a beetle. Oh, wow. Yeah. But it was a huge hit. It was a huge hit. Rock stars and famous people were driving them. Everybody loved them. They were British and they were fuel efficient.

So they were really the car of the 60s. Very mod. Yeah. Like, you think of, like, Mod Squad kind of, yeah. So how is it related to the miniskirt? Go on. Mini skirts were also a British invention of the early 60s. And, you know, people had worn short skirts before.

In the ancient times, like, it's not new that people were wearing thigh-bearing, you know, outfits, both men and women. But the mini skirt became this fashion craze in Britain. This woman named Mary Quant is a designer, and she's known for inventing the miniskirt. And she named it. And she named it the mini after the car. Oh, because it's so popular. Yeah.

It was her favorite kind of car. So she named the skirt after the car. That's right. My skirt is to regular skirt. So what the mini is to regular cards. That's a good bit of branding. That's a really good trivia question. I bet one day that's going to come up.

Our podcast is nearing the end. And I have a last quiz segment. And this is about shrinking and miniature stuff. So get your buzzers ready. I want to preface this with the actual science of shrinking. We see in a lot of sci-fi stuff and in literature about, shrink ray guns and pew, pew, pew, and you know, you turn small or superheroes doing that. Not to burst your bubble, but it's impossible.

No. It is impossible. Shrinking actually doesn't make sense because unless you have to miniaturize the atoms. Right. You can't miniaturizing atoms. The mass has to go somewhere otherwise, yeah. Exactly. And Isaac Asimov actually had a really good analogy kind of illustrating the difficulty of it is if you shrink a dude down, a tiny brain and

tiny man would be the size of an insect composed of like a stupidest person. He would be a stupid person because you can't shrink the atoms and it only can take as much space. So, you know, you'd be smart as an ant. Not to say the ants are dumb, but, you know, why mean? The other thing I always remember reading like with regard to like, you know, Gulliver's Travels was like if you were a tiny, small, you know, lilliputian, let's say, you wouldn't actually be able to exist in our world because things like the surface tension of water don't scale down to your size. You could drown in like a few drops of water because it would cling to you. You wouldn't be able to control fire

because you can't build a tiny little fire like that. Fire burns at the right fire burns. Things are in the world around that don't scale with you. Oh, okay. So here I have a quiz about famous movies, about shrinking. Get your buzzers ready, and this is our last quiz segment. What Family Movie featured the extremely iconic Cheerios scene? Honey I Shrunk the Kid?

Correct. Honey, I Shrunk. shrunk the kids. What character got miniaturized in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, full name? Chris. Mike TV. By what invention for a bonus point? Oh, that is Wanka Vision.

Yes, Wanka Vision, the television chocolate camera. All right. What are the three items that Alice and Alice in Wonderland used to make her body grow smaller? named three items there was a potion that she drank there was a mushroom

that she could become smaller and I don't know it was a cake right or a piece of cake a pastry something no the cake made her grow bigger it was a fan a little fan that she was a fan

herself until she, that's right. What Zany 80s sci-fi film was produced by Steven Spielberg and starred Meg Ryan? Oh, inner space. Correct. And Dennis Quaid was the shrieking, yes. Technically, what was the space referring to? The inner part of the body of Martin Short. Correct.

Yes. This was played on HBO every day. All right. What studio Ghibli Japanese animated film was based on an English children novel called The Borrowers. This is the secret world of Arietti. Yes, about tiny people who lived in the walls and floors of normal humans.

Yeah, very good. Excellent film. Great score. If you guys love film scores like I do. All right. Lilliputian is another word for describing something tiny in size. Where did the word first appear in? Dana

Sculliver travels by Jonathan Swift That's right I actually never thought of that The Little People Making Fire It's not like a mini fire It's fire You didn't scale a bubble of physics Around with you

Good job you guys That is the end of our show All about mini things Thank you guys for joining me And thank you guys listeners for listening And hope you learn a lot about Tiny Liquor, Tiny Golf, Tiny Dogs, Tiny Tunes and you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, and on SoundCloud,

and of course our website, goodjobbrain.com, and check out our sponsor,audible.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. What does Sputnik have to do with student loans? How did a set of trembling hands end the Soviet Union? How did inflation kill moon bases?

And how did a former president decide to run for a second non-consecutive term? These are among the topics we deal with on the My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast. We tell stories of history that relate to today's news events. Give a listen. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics wherever you get podcasts.