Good Job, Brain! - 66: All By Myself

Episode Date: June 18, 2013

Are you lonesome tonight? Well, these people sure are! We salute and celebrate the ones who tend to do things by themselves: the crazy solo life of the hermit crab (and its nightmare cousin, the coconut crab), the physical and psychological effects of human isolation experiments, the amazing trail-blazing lone wolf game designers of the Atari age, and of course, famous band members who struck it big with their own solo careers. ALSO: marathon mnemonic and factoids, and E.L.V.I.S. music quiz! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, meritorious merry makers and mer people. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and off-be trivia podcast. This is episode 66, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your flavorful flank of fledglings flabbergasted by flannel flapjacks and flattulants. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

Quick disclaimer for everybody today. I just ran a marathon this morning. So I might sound a little loopy. She literally still has her number. She does. Her hat, everything. I didn't even change. Encrusted in dried sweat.

Her number says, yay, Karen. Yeah. You get to customize your bib. then I put, yay, Karen. So I was running, everybody's like, yay, Karen. I was like, oh, I know, I'm so great. They should put that on everybody. It's a good idea.

It's very positive. It is. But there is a silver lining on my train right here. I came up with a mnemonic for the marathon. Do you guys know how many miles is actually a full marathon? 26. Something. 26.2.

Just 26.2. One decimal. 26.2. Yes, 26.2. And do you guys know where it came from? Like, why is it such a random number? Is it a distance between two cities in Greece or something? Yes.

It is? That's the story that I heard. It was like after the battle, right? This is a legend. I don't know if someone actually really did do this, but it was a legend that passed on. There was actually a battle of marathon, and it was between the Greeks and the Persians. And the Persians were defeated. And so they sent one of the soldiers as a messenger.

So this dude also fought in the war. And then he got tasked with, you got to run. to Athens and tell people that the Persians have been defeated. So after battling, probably covered in blood and sweat and, you know, tired, he ran 26.2 miles, didn't stop, probably in very uncomfortable sandals or something. And he busted in to Athens. Hey, we won victory. Now the marathon race is commemorating this event.

Just imagine if he had to record a podcast after all that. No. People don't know this, but he actually died like Friday. After he got to Athens, he, like, collapsed. I think I've heard that. This was kind of sad. And they don't know if it's true or not. So the mnemonic I came up with.

Oh, yeah. For marathon equals 26.2 miles. The first time I ran a marathon, 26.2 miles is a lot. And it really puts your body in shock, even with all the training. People react differently when you're exercising so much. So the first time I did it, I mistakenly ate a lot of breakfast before my run. And so by miles. That's what television has taught me to do.

Yeah, carve up. Right, yeah. You better carb. So I was like, oh, sure. You know, weedies is part of this complete breakfast. And it's like, you know, the bowl of weenies. Right, yeah, like two eggs, bacon. Milk, orange.

Yeah. So I had a big breakfast and I just didn't realize that after running around, you get jostled a lot and I felt really sick. And so by mile six, I basically had to run to like a cardboard trash can and I just threw up. I blew chunks. After I recovered, my mouth still tasted like puke. And so later on, I puked again. So I vomited twice for my first marathon. And so here's my nomadic after that lovely story.

26.2 miles is too sick puke twice. So it kind of sounds similar. That's going to work for you. Yeah. So if you're Karen, this is a very helpful. Well, now that you've heard my story. about puking twice and you'd be like too sick puked twice 26.2. Wow. And you finished the race after peaking twice? I did. You gotta. 26.2, too sick, puked twice. Wow. Enough of my marathon talk.

Let's jump into our first trivia segment, Popquoise Hot Shot. And I have a random trivial pursuit card here. And you guys have your Barnyard buzzers? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Okay, let's get ready to answer some questions. Blue Wedge for geography. What Alaska Town elected Sarah Palin mayor? Oh, Chris. That is Wasilla Alaska. Yes, Wasilla.

Pink Wedge for pop culture. Who sang the hit duet? Islands in the Stream. I don't even know this song. I believe that was Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. Correct. Oh, right, of course. Such a good song.

Very good job. Yellow Wedge. In what war did the Tuskegee? Airmen fight. Dana. World War II. They're African-American pilots. Yes.

It was a big deal. It was a big deal. World War II. All right. Purple Wedge. Now in Art Museum, the Musei d'Orsay in Paris was formally what kind of public building? Oh, I knew this. Man, it was a train station.

Yes. Oh, that's right. Green Wedge for Science. what bird Okay, this is a wrong Oh, really? Yes, you'll pursue Red flag

Shame on you All right, let's guess what the wrong answer Okay, all right, okay What bird gives its name To a group of Spanish islands Everybody The canary iris Which we've talked about

In the show before That is false It's canines Yes Canary islands were actually named after dogs Yeah. I can't.

Do they have any wiggle room? What's the wording? What gives its name or shares its name? Gives its name. Oh, yeah. So that's, I could see them not fact-checking it being obvious. Like, oh, obviously it's the bird. Oh, it's clearly.

Yeah. This is a good object lesson, though, right? I mean, you know, we talk about anticipate what they're asking. Exactly. All right. Last question. Orange Wedge. In what year did Kobe Bryant first lead the L.A.

Lakers to a championship without the help of Shaquille O'Neal. Uh, first one without Shaquille. Everybody else can guess, Dana, 2006. Incorrect. Uh, I think the first one without. Oh, oh, all right. Sports. You have to buzz in calling.

Sorry. Uh, was it 2008? No. One year off, always one year off, 2009. That's right. Says here that... That's right. Nine and ten like I know.

Oh, it says here that O'Neill played with the Phoenix Suns that season. So they weren't together Right, right All right Good job brains Good job Kobe Bad job card This week

We each researched Bits and factoids and stories About things in the world That are lonesome Lonely solo This is about people doing things alone Whether they want to or not All by myself

No one way all by myself anymore I think I only know like six words out of that song Don't want to be Yeah, yeah All by myself Don't want to be Oh, any more than be

Oh, great, seven words So when we were kicking around topic ideas for this episode And we settled on all by myself One of the first things that came in mind was this thing I remember learning about in college Research into human isolation. You know, how does your mind and your body react to being isolated, not just from other people, but from light and sound

and everything that we take as part of being part of culture. How does that affect you? And I remember really clearly learning about a man named Michel Cifre, and he was a French scientist. He was a geologist by training. He did a lot of the groundbreaking work on extended isolation. Oh, this is going to take a dark turn. It's not that dark, really. I mean, it was literally dark because he was underground for long stretches. So it was literally groundbreaking. Wow. I was waiting. I see what you did there, Dana. He was a geologist by training. And in the 60s, you know, there were a couple things that really got him to thinking about isolation. And it was both the space race. How can people survive out alone for long stretches? You know, what is it going to do to you? Are they going to come back crazy or

debilitated? The other thing I was going to say, you know, the space race, but also the idea of fallout shelter. So this is like early 60s, a very cold war mindset, you know, going in two different directions, like, how could we survive if we had to for weeks or months or indefinite periods, tiny little rooms? So he decided, all right, I'm going to go study this myself. And so he wasn't kidding around. So in 1962, he was young. He was in his 20s. He went 375 feet down in a cave in the Alps. That's pretty far down. That's pretty far down. I mean, there was no natural light, no natural light, no natural sound. I mean, he was effectively totally cut off from the surface. And he was connected by electronic connections. So he had communication with the surface. And he didn't sort of just wing it and go off by himself. Like he had a support staff up top. And he spent two months down there, two months. And the idea was just to kind of see how does he adapt? You know, what sort of sleep cycle is he going to end up with? Is he going to go crazy? And he would check in with his team, I think it was very limited. He would let them know when he woke up. He would let them know when he was eating. But for the rest of the time, he was effectively isolated. And, He had books and some records to sort of keep himself busy.

And what's really interesting, among the other things, they learned a lot about muscle loss, but was your sense of time. Your sense of time gets really distorted. Oh, I bet. When they let him know, you know, like, hey, the experiment's almost over. Like, he had grossly overestimated how long he had been down there. They noticed that despite the lack of any clock or anything like that, he settled into about a 24, 25 hour a day. Oh, wow. And 10 years later, he's still, still interested in this research.

He went down for six months. six months by himself in a cave in Texas this time. And again, same thing. This guy must be really curious. He is really curious and really motivated. And, you know, one of the reasons, you know, he said in interviews, one of the reasons that he decided that he himself would be a good candidate is because he was a spalunker and an underground explorer. So he didn't have a fear of the caves. He wasn't worried that he was going to get claustrophobic.

He talks about that after one or two months down there, he's sort of teetering on the edge of madness at a couple points. having some weird semi-lucid states, but he kept it together, and it was good that he had contact with people on the surface. So here's what's interesting. When he was in the longer session, he eventually settled on a 48-hour sleep cycle. And yeah, 45 to 48-hour sleep cycle, just when he was sort of left to his own devices. Like he'd be awake for 24 hours and sleep for 24 hours? He could, yeah. Or, you know, he might be up for 30 hours and sleep for 10 or 12, something like that. Yeah, it was really weird. Then that got a lot of people thinking of like, well, maybe we can train people to sort of modify their sleep cycles for like long military deployments or, you know,

things like that. In 1989, there was another woman that you've got to volunteer this time. They were interested in choosing a non-scientist. I hope they paid her. She's a volunteer. Are they just hanging out in total blackness with like nothing to do? They have artificial lights that they're allowed to turn on when they want. But the idea is, yeah, and this sort of, you set your own schedule. Right.

You eat when you're hungry. You sleep when you're tired. You wake up when you're rusted. What do they do? They would bring books. You know, when Sifre went down in the 70s, he had a record player. Actually, when his record player broke and died from the humidity, he just about lost it. I bet.

I mean, he was really just, I mean, you can imagine, like, this is your one grasp with something to keep you grounded. Yeah, and entertained. So this volunteer, Stefania Fellini, she went down for four months. And she also, when they let her know the experiment was up, she's like, oh, I thought it, you know, had only been two months. I couldn't believe that four months had elapsed. You lose track of the weeks and the months, even. if you settle into a normal daily cycle. Her menstrual cycle stopped, but she also settled into a 20, 25-hour sleep cycle. So it's weird. There sort of seems to be something that we're programmed for, maybe not

surprisingly, for around a 24, 25-hour sleep cycle. But it just gives you a hint that even when you know you're connected to people on the surface, you can kind of lose touch with reality pretty easily when you're just by yourself. Taryn and I are just back from the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Yes. The E3, the video game industry's big trade show down in Los Angeles, we got to see the future of video games, basically, because they had the new Xbox 1 and the PlayStation 4, the new game consoles that are going to be coming out. And, you know, what all the games for these consoles have in common is that as video games are getting more and more complex, they are just being created by many more people. It takes many, many, many people to create just, you know, one of the huge blockbuster games. So to give an example, Assassin's Creed 4, Black Flag, a game that was being shown at E3 that's coming out later this year, was created in eight different game development studios all around the world.

So if you're walking around in Assassin's Creed 4, that part of the gameplay was designed by people in one country. Then as soon as you board a ship and start sailing, that was designed by people in a completely different country. Assassin's Creed 4 is being made by people in Montreal and Quebec in Canada, Kiev in the Ukraine, Singapore, Bulgaria, France, and Romania. Wow. Then just all those disparate parts, you know, are all kind of stitched together. And that's kind of what it takes to, like, make a huge video game right now. Now, this was not always the case. And what I'm getting around to is that for the Atari 2,600 and the very early video game console,

sold's made in the 70s, it was actually more typical to have games made by one person. Everything was done by one guy. The art, the music, the programming. You had to be capable in all of those things if you wanted to create games. And the people who created the best ones, not only could they do graphic design a little, but they could do music a little, and they could do really a lot of programming. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the environment. So the Atari 2,600, piece of trivia here, was not.

the first gaming platform that used interchangeable cartridges that had programs on them. It was called the Fairchild Channel F. But the Atari was very early. When Atari made the 2,600 or the video computer system, the idea of a video game console, as we now expect it, because they're going to bring out the Xbox one, the PlayStation 4, and we all know what to expect. They're going to sell that same box for like five, six, maybe seven years and continue to produce bigger and better games for it. When the Atari was in production in the mid-70s, what Atari kind of assumed was, oh, well, this is just sort of a sort of an upgrade to what we're making already, the Pong systems that we're selling, which we sell for one holiday season and then we replace them with a different model because all the games are built in, right? So you sell the box, it just plays Pong, and then the next year you sell Super Pong.

That's a weird concept to. Yeah. Because we're so used to, like, you have one machine and it'll just last for a couple of years. Right. You're making an investment. You're going to build a library of games. Those games are going to get bigger and better. So what Atari figured was, okay, well, because we're letting people do programmable cartridges, that will give us, like, two holiday seasons with this machine before we have to replace it with another piece of hardware. Maybe three if it's really popular. As it turns out, that is not how it worked. They really kind of stumbled into this, like, massive business opportunity because people wanted to buy the Atari and then buy games for it. keep buying games for it for years and years and years. And so by 1982, there was still a lot of money to be made five years later in selling

Atari games. And one of the absolute best designers of Atari games is a guy named David Crane. You probably heard of games he wrote like Pitfall, a huge, huge game. David Crane was actually a designer at Atari. He worked at Atari, and he and some of his fellow designers thought, you know, hey, what we're doing here for Atari is like writing books. or making movies, and we should be credited the same way. But Atari's policy...

Radical, radical thinking. Yeah. Atari's policy was that you're just somebody doing work. You know, we just put the Atari name on the games. Yeah, and your name does not go on the box. That still happens places. Oh, sure. For sure.

Yep. Yeah. But David Crane and some of his fellow designers, they quit, and they formed a company called Activision, which was the first ever third-party, you know, independent maker of video game console software. And even today, it is a huge force in the industry. It makes Call of Duty and it makes Skylanders. Yes, Activision Blizzard because it merged and makes World of Warcraft also.

All Starcraft, yep. Never heard of it. But at the time, they were super indie. They were, you know, four guys who had sort of gone their own way because they wanted to be credited. Now, what is really fascinating about the Atari 2600 is that the Atari 2600, as I kind of alluded to earlier, was never meant, if you think of David Crane's pitfall with a guy running on the screen and swinging on vines over alligators and collecting treasures, the Atari 2,600 was never meant to do any of those things. When they built the Atari 2,600 in the late 70s, there were like two kinds of video games.

There was Pong, and there was tank with two tanks shooting at each other. Very similar. Yeah. And so what they actually designed the 2,600 to do, like, in the hardware, was the 2,600, it could create five different objects on screen. It could create players, player one and player two. It could create missiles that were shot from the player one and two. And it could create a ball. Right? So player one and two were either paddles or tanks and they either shoot at each other or there could be a ball bouncing between them. That's it. And if you couldn't find a way to shoehorn your game into that model, you were just out of luck. Exactly. There was just nothing. There was nothing else.

Technically, you weren't supposed to be able to do much else. But they didn't, they thought that was fine, because they were just going to make a couple of games. It was going to sell in the holiday. A little upgrade for next holiday season. Yeah, they wouldn't sell any between January and October because nobody bought video games, then people just bought them for Christmas, and then they just do it again. But no, actually, people decided to try to figure out new and interesting ways. And so if you were one of these, you know, lone wolf programmers who could really,

really tweak the Atari 2600, you could design some crazy stuff. and other people would not necessarily be able to figure out how you did all of that, right, without getting too, too technical, because this is kind of interesting. Almost every other video game system, the way it works is it draws the screen, the whole screen in its memory, and then it outputs that screen to your TV, and then screen after screen after screen, overlaid on top of each other to create the image of motion. The Atari 2,600 did it, like, pixel by pixel.

And they did it this way to save money because it would have cost too much money to do screen, screen, screen. They just drew the game. You know how your TV, the old TVs, have a raster gun in them, right? It starts at the upper left hand corner, and it just draws, draws, really, really fast, and then starts over again. Yeah. Do you ever try to take a video camera and, like, point it at your TV back in the day? Oh, has lines. Yeah, it has all lines that run through it.

Because it's out of sync with the raster gun that's drawing things, you're seeing the movement of the gun. Yeah. That's also how, like, duck hunt for the Nintendo. That's how it knew where you. you were pointing at the TV with the light gun because it knew where the duck was because it knew if it was drawing the duck with the raster gun and it was just sending a light signal to the gun your gun wasn't shooting the TV and that's why it doesn't work now you can't hook up duck hunt for the Nintendo and use it on an LCD television because it because there's

no raster gun in there yeah that explains why my scores are terrible yeah that dog's always laughing at you what they figured out though was because it was drawing the screen from top to bottom. If you, you could draw something at the top of the screen and then when the Raster Gun moved down, you could move that image down below and draw it again. And if it were like every other game system, you'd see the thing moving from the top of the bottom. Oh, traveling. Yeah, but the image stayed on your TV screen. It was still there until the gun went back up to redraw that part of your screen. Because it was doing every pixel at a time. That's how the Vine works. Let me tell you about the Vine. The Vine. The Vine.

in pitfall when you're swinging, that's using the quote-unquote ball image, which is just supposed to be a tiny little sprite. So they just draw a ball and then another ball, and then another ball, another ball. And the ball is gone. Once they redraw it, as far as the Atari is concerned, that ball has moved. But as far as your TV is concerned, it's still there. And you couldn't have like a couple people working on an Atari game because you can't just build, oh, I'm going to build this portion of the game and you build that portion and we'll put it together because you had to time everything perfectly so it had to be all in one person's head basically there was an exploit it was an exploit it was almost every Atari game that you play

unless you're playing combat or pawn like almost every Atari game you play they are hacking they're you're using an exploit that the thing is not supposed to do again so important that one person did this because these programs would be so impeccably organized and perfectly timed I have an amazing new level of respect for John Madden with all the programming he must have done on John Madden's book in those early years. That's, wow. All right, let's take a quick break.

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Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast. I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world. At the Explorers podcast, we plunging to jungles and deserts, across mighty oceans and frigid ice caps, over and to the top of Great Mountains, and even into outer space. These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Magellan, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark, and so many other famous and not so famous adventures from throughout history. So come give us a listen. We'd love to have you. Go to Explorespodcast.com or just look us up on your podcast app.

That's the Explorers Podcast. So are you guys ready for the return of an old friend? Who is? It's our old friend, Elvis! Yay! The electronic, lyrical, vocal interface system or something like that? Something like that, yeah. Yeah, something like that.

Elvis, of course, for the uninitiated, is our computer voice friend who loves to read the first lines of popular songs stripped of all their emotion and soul. He tries to sing them. He does his best, but, you know, he has a very, very limited range. 80s robot. 80s robot, yes. Not even a good, modern robot. This is trailing edge technology here. In the spirit of today's show, all by myself, Elvis and I have assembled a quiz, where the theme is famous singers who were also at one time members of famous bands.

So they broke out. They're all by themselves now. Yeah, just to force that point home. Yes. Wait, how does it connect to the topic? So I will play some tracks for you. These will be Elvis reading the opening lines of the song. So you guys tell me who the artist is.

And then you also need to tell me what band or group that artist was a part of. And these are all very famous people who were members of very successful bands. All right. So these are their solo songs. That's right. These will all be, so two pieces of information. And if you want to show off and tell me the name of the song, you can. So artist and the band that they were once part of.

But no extra points for that. Oh, sure. I'll give extra points. Oh, what do you turn your points in for? I'm worried that you're like, these are all famous artists and famous bands. Oh, no. Because so if we don't get it, we're not good. I would say there's maybe only one band in here that's a little tricky, but I have confidence in you guys.

We'll just yell at Elvis if you don't like it. Here we go. We'll start with one that's hopefully a little easy. Here we go. Talk to me. Tell me your name. You blow me off like it's all the same. You lit a fuse

And now I'm taking away like a bum I think that was Karen I think it is Ricky Martin Yes She bangs She bangs And Ricky Martin was part of

Menudo Yes One of the one of the approximately 700 members of the band over the years So we laugh about Ricky Martin But that man can sing He's currently on Broadway And Chris saw him I did

I actually saw him in Evita. Yeah. Oh, I saw he in Avita. Yeah. Very good. Well, good for him. All right, here we go. Big hit from the 80s.

Love, I get so lost sometimes. Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart. When I want to run away, I drive off in my car. It's not so sad. It was featured in a very famous scene from a very famous movie. Play one more time. Love, I get so lost sometimes. Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart.

When I want to run away, I drive off in my car. Karen. All my instincts, they return. And the grandfassad, um, his name is in your, Peter Gabriel. Yes, in your eyes, Peter Gabriel, correct. He was in Genesis. That's right. What was, oh, the movie was John Cusack, right?

That was the 80s movie. Say anything. Say anything. Yes, yes, yes. Great. Yes, and he was the original lead singer of tennis as Dana said. All right, here we go. Next one.

Another big hit. Up in the club, we just broke up. I'm doing my own little thing. You decided to dip, but now you want a trip. Cause another brother noticed me. Dana. It's Beyonce, or single ladies. Yes.

And I was about to say up in the club. And it's Destiny's Child. She was in Destiny's Child. Yes. Up in the club. Yes, broke up. I want to see him in like that weird off-shoulder, Leah. I want to see his little robotic hand, like turning back and forth.

It looks like a little fork just like rotating. It's like a dollick. Yeah. A little egg spitter. So here's a big hit from the 90s. how many times do I have to try to tell you that I'm sorry for the things I've done but when I start to try to tell you that's when you have to tell me hey this kind of troubles only just begun

I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I get the song oh my god hey Dana it's Annie Linux yeah it from your rhythmic yes it is why Yeah. Oh, yes. Wow. She's so much more soulful when she sings. That's when you have to tell me. Hey.

Hey. All right. Go back a couple decades here for this one. Holly came from Miami, FLA. Hitchhiker way across the USA. Fluck her eyebrows on the way, shave her legs, and then he was a she. And then he was a she. It's very matter of fact.

Anyone want to buy it? Uh-uh. I know you guys know it. Really? She's got legs. I'm just kidding. I know how it's hard? No.

But, like, I mean, those are really very specific lyric. I think I would know the song. They're saying in a very laid-back style in the song, which may not be why you remember them. That is, take a walk on the wild side. Oh. Okay. That's right.

By the great Lou Reed. Yes. A founding member of Velvet Underground. Well, that totally makes sense now, actually. Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll close it out here with one. And now this song was covered by many people, but it is indisputably, I think, linked with one person in particular. And that's who I'm looking for.

Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train. And I was feeling near as faded as my jeans. Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained. It wrote us all away to New Orleans Baton Baton Rouge Also to jeans and New Orleans So this is the signature song

For a lady by the name of Chris Janice Joplin Janice Joplin, correct Me and Bobby McGee Yeah So this is probably the trickiest one of the badge Headhunters something

Kid in play. No. Is there going to be like Janice Joplin and the Blank? No, it's not. It is somebody in the something, but it's not Janice Chopin. It's Big Brother and the Holding Company. Yes, that's what it was. Yeah.

Great trivia band there. Huh. Yes. Great brother. Big brother. Big brother. And the holding company. And the holding.

Yeah. Big Brother and the Holder. So like, take a piece of my heart is actually by them. It's not a Janis Chopin's solo song. Yeah. Summertime also. Like a lot of hits. You're like, oh, those are Janis Chopin songs.

That's a good psychout. Pupt trivia question. Yeah. If they play, I mean, music around. They say it's a band. And you're like, Janice Joplin and the Joplin ears? Janice and the Joplin's? The Jopliners.

It's her and her band. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good job, guys. There we go. Wow.

Thanks, Mr. Gee, thanks. Thanks, Elvis. Thanks, Elvis. Let's keep this party rolling with them. Rolling with my homies. I like mixing my metaphor, keeping the party rolling. What is this supposed to be?

I don't know. I just sounded wrong after I said. I get the party rolling. All right. So I will give you the name of a band, and you tell me who became a solo performer from that band. Who became maybe more famous. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the lead singer. It doesn't necessarily need to be.

Okay. All right. You ready? We're going to do it lightning rounds down. Okay, right. Miami sound machine. Oh, everybody. Gloria Estefan.

Yeah. White zombie. Colin. Rob Zombie. Yes. Wings. Paul McCartney? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Stone ponies. Oh. That's, uh, uh, uh, uh, Linda Ronstad? Linda Ronstad. Oh, man, I'd pull that one out.

Buffalo Springfield. Oh, that's, uh, uh, Neil Young? Yes. How about NWA? Oh. Oh, which one? We go on and on. You could say more than one.

Ice Cube. Dr. Dre. Yep. Easy E. Oh, yeah. Okay. Wham. Karen.

George Michael. What is the name of the other guy? I still don't know. Andrew Ridgley. Oh, nice one. Nice one. The Smith's. Colin.

Morrissey. Yeah. How about them? Them? Uh-huh. Him? No. It was Van Morrese.

It was Van Morse. Morrison. Oh, we had it in a music quiz. I had it. Oh, my God. How about whole? Karen. Corny love.

Yep. The impressions. Oh. James Taylor or somebody. Curtis Mayfield. Oh. What's the band called again? The impressions.

The impressions. Oh, so, okay. You can see why I would mix up James Taylor and Curtis Mayfield. They're so similar, stylistically. How about the sugar cubes? Oh. York. Yes.

The Supremes. Chris. Diana Ross. Yes. Digital Underground. Karen. Humpty. Tupac Shakur.

Yes. Tupac was in digital underground. No way. The Bay Area Band. Bay Area Band. No. Yeah. The Stoge's.

Oh. Iggy Pop. Yes. Yes. And lastly, Oingo Boingo. Karen. Danny Elfman. Yay.

It comes full Elfman. Yeah. Everything's coming up, Eltham. Awesome. That's like, just to me, like, quintessential pub quiz fodder right there. Yeah, that's a good matching round. Absolutely. 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. All right. We're going to end this episode with a last alone. a lonely segment and i'm going to talk about one of probably the most mind-boggling animal in my mind when you think of lonely solitary animals what do you think of what's the number one thing you think of i don't know like wolf like the lone wolf oh sure like a praying mantis

because they eat the other one one yeah yeah none of these answers are the most i'm expecting but oh you didn't tell us it was a leading question you need to specify So I'm going to talk about the hermit crab. Hermit crab, very, you know, solitary animal. For those of you guys who don't know, hermit crab is the little crab that has like an outer seashell that acts as their home. Right. And they live in the seashell. It's their little house.

I know how it looks in cartoons at least. Yeah. Yeah. Until I researched this, I never knew what a hermit crab looks like outside of its shell. It looks crazy. So the first half that you see coming out of the shell looks like a crab, like kind of like a crawdad. very crab-like. So the back half of the body that's hidden in the shell is soft.

And that's why they need the shell to protect their abdomen and their organs. And it looks like the second half is like a cinema bun. It's like a cinnabund. It spirals in. Because it like fills the shape of the shell. Yeah. And it's a soft, squishy bit. And it looks crazy.

It's like half cinnabund, half crab. There are many, many different types of hermit crabs. They're the ones that are marine and there are ones that live on land. And researchers actually at the University, California, Berkeley, go bears. Go bears. Our school, they found out that the terrestrial hermit crabs do socialize, but they don't socialize for like drinks or to have fun or like the terrestrial hermit crabs, they socialize with the purpose of trying to find a better shell or a better house.

Oh, really? So it's kind of mean in a way. They socialize just to upgrade their shell because they grow. I mean, they grow in the shell, and sometimes they have to keep upgrading because their size gets larger. They can't fully retract into the seashel. This is like Animal Crossing. You say that. You think you're joking.

So there's this crazy phenomenon if a couple of land-based hermit crabs are hanging out, or especially if one hermit crab finds just an empty new shell, that it's going to move on to. Somehow they have hermit radar and all the other hermit crabs come and congregate like a conga line. They do a little hermit crab conga line. They line up from the largest shell crab to the smallest, and they would trade and upgrade the shells one by one. It's not so orderly.

Yes, it's amazing. If one crab finds a bigger shell, then the second biggest. one gets a line and takes his shell, and the third one gets a line, takes his shell, and so forth. Wow. Sometimes they're not very nice, and sometimes the hermit crab will kind of eye, oh, that's the better shell. Let's gang up on this other hermit crab and compete for that shell. So that happens, too.

But they have a little conga line. It's so cute or gross. I don't know. No, I think it sounds cute. So where are they getting the shells? Are these like snow shells? Yeah. So the thing is, the land-based hermit crabs, their resources are a little bit more rare,

Because they're not by the ocean. By the ocean, there's a bunch of, like, sea snail shells all around. So the land-based ones, it's rare for them to finally find a seashell or sometimes they use snail shell. But most of the time, that's why they have to swap. They're mostly from sea. Well, they die if they don't have a shell. I mean...

They will die. They will die because of predators. They're more vulnerable from birds and coming up and picking them up and they can't retract into their shell for safety. Right, right. Well, especially if they look like a cinnamon bun. That sounds pretty tasty. I know.

Yeah. The Congo line actually has a name. It's called Vacancy Chain. Oh, that's good. Vacancy chain. Wow. That's great. Not only do they just move into the new shell.

They remodel their shells. The little hermit crabs do some redecorating inside their shell. Sometimes they break down the walls. Make it roomier. They would make it room here so that they can grow larger or lay more eggs. They would slowly chip away kind of the edge of the opening so that can fit as they grow. I'm curious if they, like, jack any snails for the shell. Like, they see a big snail and they're like, I want that.

Yeah. Well, they do it to each other. So why not a creature without any pinchy arms? So there are a lot of species of hermit crabs. Some of the hermit crabs don't even need a shell, especially one particular species I'd like to talk about. And it's called the coconut crab. Oh. You might have heard of it.

I remember Colin having a very negative reaction to a picture. This is a nightmare creature. You said, you saw a picture of this. You're like, I would cramp my pants. I would cry my pants. They actually don't have a shell because what happens is their abnaments actually start growing harder. So actually they don't need a shell for protection.

Also, they're huge. They're the largest land living arthropod in the world. How big are they? They're like bigger than your head. Yeah. I saw a photo of one covering a trash can lid. Yeah. Can you match tag me out of your trash and you're like, oh, my God.

I'm not touching that. In sci-fi. I came out the morning and they were like, on my car, I would just sell the car. You know what? The crabs have it now. Even after it left, you could never get back in that car. Yeah. You know, in video games or science fiction, you read about head crabs, right?

Attaching your face and attacking your face. It looks like that. It totally looks like that. It's huge. And they do develop a tough exoskeleton so they don't have to carry a shell in more. And when they're smaller, they would. But they grow so big that they don't really have any predators anymore. Yeah, they're just kind of just walking down the street.

They're like, what? But you talk about the trash can, Colin, they have amazing sense of smell, these crabs. And they eat almost like, they eat a lot of things. They eat, you know, fruit. They actually do eat coconuts. So that's why they're called coconut crabs. They smell trash and they feed on carry and stuff sometimes. And so they would hang out in trash cans.

They're like tropical raccoons. They are. No thanks. No thanks. Oh, man. Colin didn't tell you, but we have a coconut crab here today. He's backstage. He's been listening to the show.

Let's bring him out. He's been in the green room this whole time. So they do eat coconuts. They're so smart. They know how to basically prepare a coconut. Like a coconut falls on the ground. They know how to strip away the husk with their claws, and then they would climb the coconut tree with coconut in its claw, drop the coconut so it would break. Isn't that crazy?

That's amazing. And that's just adaptive behavior. They just know. They just totally know. I just wait until they did that, and I run and steal the coconut in the run away. Thanks for opening it, suckers. That's the hardest part. Suckers.

Sweet coconut. Yeah. You come out the next morning. and there's 40 coconut crabs in your driveway. We hear you got something of ours. Dead silence, only the clicking of 40 calls. So scary. One more.

Last scary tidbit. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, known as TIGHAR. Great acronym. This group has approximated the whereabouts of where Amelia Earhart could have crashed and landed. or ended up, they said that she probably most likely died on an inhabited tropical island in the Caribati area. Some users wrote us and said that Kiribati is supposed to be pronounced Kiribati. Right.

I think after we talked about it on the show, someone said Kiribat or Kiribati. Yeah. So I double check. You can say it both on Kiribati slash Kiribati. Anyways, they're guessing that Amelia Earhart probably ended up there. And one of the theories why they can't find her full. remains is because coconut crabs probably ate her bones and her flesh. I mean, I was so, I was so much better off not knowing that.

Tropical raccoons, man. We get in there. Nightmare fuel for everybody. Wow, thanks. Yeah, cool. Coconut crabs, remember that. Do we have anything good to say before we leave? Oh, yeah, something on a positive, no.

Yeah, I just close to show. You're just trying to look for a wrap out. I was like, ain't coconut crabs probably ate her body. Goodbye, everyone. It was like, Jesus Christ, we bid you a safe journey if you're driving, listening to this car. If you're listening to this on a flight across the Atlantic, don't worry. You'll be fine. Now you know about coconut crabs.

Yeah, if you crash land on a deserted island and you see coconut crabs, just walk away. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot of stuff about solo artists. Stay away from coconut crabs. Appreciate that old Atari game pitfall. You can find our podcast on iTunes, on Stitcher, and on SoundCloud. And also on our website, goodjobbrain.com.

Join us on Twitter and Facebook. We're having lots of fun there and lots of fan mail. And you can also email us at jb.podcast at gmail.com. And I guess we'll see you guys all next week. Bye. Bye. Have you ever wondered how inbred the Habsburgs really were, what women in the past used for birth control, or what Queen Victoria's nine children got up to? On the History Tea Time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and

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