Good Job, Brain! - 97: BYOT

Episode Date: February 5, 2014

It's a free-for-all this week as we decided to bring out own topics for this episode. So naturally, it's a nutty grab bag of some jaw-dropping trivia. Where else can you learn about the birth of the smiley emoticon, how to grow a pineapple in your own house, the jellyfish that is IMMORTAL, and why do people call the Academy Award "Oscar." So bust out your suspenders because this week is crazy pants. ALSO: Immortality quiz, Hawaiian mystery candy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, Posse of possibly pogoing possums. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 97, and of course, I am your humble host, Karen, and we are your Barky Arky Ark of Snarky Marks and Larks I'm Colin I'm Dana and I'm Chris Chris you're back

I'm back from Hawaii We had a we had a dolphin encounter I touched a dolphin Just platonically Okay we We um I think dolphin encounter does conjure Non-plotonic context

Yeah It's like I don't know no no no Not the kind of the dolphin Like a casual encounter with a dolphin Right right right Lifetime original movie Touched by a Dolphin And we went snorkeling.

There's a bay where the coral reef gets really, really close to the shore. Oh, Hanama Bay. Hanama Bay. And all of the fish are super tame and they don't care that there's all hell of people in the water. Two days before we went there, there were many, many, many box jellyfish in the water. And 50 people got stung in one day. Oh, my goodness. And then they closed it.

And then it opened back up when we went there. And there were zero jellyfish. the jellyfish had left, whether of their own volition or having been given a stern talking to, or I don't know. Do you know what else is in Honolulu, Hawaii? The offices of the Tetris Company are in Honolulu. Tetris company. That Tetris. Yeah, that Tetris.

They're in Honolulu, and they still make Tetris games. In the office, which we got to go visit, is the original old Russian computer that the original version of Tetris was developed on. Did you just freak out? geek out. A little. It was a small office. I didn't want to cause it any damage.

You just start crying. I knew it was there. I knew what I was going to be seeing. It was pretty amazing. It was like making a pilgrimage to the weeping wall or something. No, that's a big deal. It was a big deal. You write a wish on a piece of paper and you stick in the disc drive.

You fold it into a shape. You fold it into an L shape and put it in the disc drive. Yeah. Oh, I forgot to do that. Anyway, you know going to some exotic location. means on good job brain, because I have a plate here. Mystery candy. Mystery Hawaii

candy. What could be under this thing? It will not be, I don't think it will be as bad as Sweden. It will be slightly different, though, than Sweden. Pineapple taste the box jellyfish. I can't feel my tongue. You're close. No, so we went to,

I mean, I was thinking, like, okay, well, I've got to bring back some, like, traditional Hawaiian candy. So we went to this little store that they have on a Wahu called Walmart. art. Okay. As it turns out, as it turns out, the candy

they eat in Hawaii is pretty much the candy that we eat here. So it was actually a little difficult to find something weird, but we did go into like this gourmet candy store. I mean, everything else was just like

macadamia nut-covered chocolates. Yeah. But this is the weirdest thing. Okay. Whoever feels bravest can remove the lid here. Karen is going to do it. It's a crab. Oh, I know what it is.

Oh, I know what do you think it is? So it looks like these beige white shreds. like long, probably two inches long shreds. One end is dipped in chocolate. So it looks like a jellyfish. I bet it is dried squid covered in chocolate.

What a mean prank he would be playing on us. That's what it looks like, or cuttlefish. Colin is correct. It is cuttlefish. No, you have to. You have to. These are the rules. It smells like fish.

I don't want to. Oh, no. Wow, we found the, wow. Colin, so far, and good job, brain. Colin has eaten a a gum that is almost older than here, B, those crazy Swedish candies, but this is it, huh? That's where I draw the line.

Wow. I have a hard time with, like, the squid and cuddlfish and that, just in that family. I'm just going for it. So feel free to openly mock me. It's really hard to, how do we even eat it? Because they're large, you know. Have you had this? No.

You haven't eaten, this looks crazy. This is part of the good job brain tradition. You buy candy that you won't eat, but you make that see. Karen ate it. She did it. It's very Asian. You can see. smell it pretty strongly in the room

right now. It's not bad, but I'm probably not going to eat anymore. How about that? Okay. Okay. Oh, Karen likes it. She likes it. Look at her. She's like... I'm good. I don't like that. Chocolate and fish. You got your chocolate in my fish. You're your fish in my chocolate.

That's right. Let's separate them and never talk about it again. One great and one mediocre taste together. A little bit more housekeeping. We have our usual correction. or addendum segment called Actually We have an um actually

A lot of people wrote in Last episode we shared a lobe-trotter tidbit We explained on the show Weebelow is actually a portmanteau of We Be Loyal But there's a little bit more information to that So Weebelo actually does stand for We Be Loyal but We Be Loyal is a shortened version of We'll Be Loyal Scouts

And so the correct term is Weebelose That is the singular and plural version. And here's a fun fact, actually. Weebelos originally stood for Wolf, Bear, Lion, and Scout. The three Cub Scout ranks, Lion is now obsolete. And the first Boy Scout rank. And so there is a bit of a backonym or a retcon of what Weebelos stood for now that lion is obsolete. So thank you, Christopher McBride and others who have written in to give us a little bit more info on Weebelos.

Hello, thanks. All right, everybody, time for our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. And here in my hand, I have a random trivial pursuit card, and you guys have your barnyard buzzers. Let's start the show with answering some questions. Here you go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What Las Vegas Casino is named for an Egyptian temple?

Everybody. Lossor. Loxor. It is the Pyraman. mid-shaped casino and hotel. Funny enough, we will be heading to Las Vegas this weekend. Yeah. This coming week.

Yeah. For soon. We're doing our special pre-100 special Vegas topic show, and we're also having a fan meetup. So if you're in the area and you're interested in our meetup info, you can check out the site for some more RSVP info and where it is and when it is. It is the Saturday. And hopefully we'll see some of you guys. there and we'll awkwardly talk about trivia.

What's your favorite trivia? Actually, that would be if you have a bunch of trivia, geeks in a room, would be like, the gin and tonic, did you know that tonic used to be? Yes. Yes. I'll stop you there. That's hilarious. Got it. Got it. Quineine.

Alleria. Okay. Pink Wedge for pop culture. What kind of dance originated with clowns dancing to hip-hop music at Los Angeles birthday parties? No, is this? Is this crumping?

It is crumping. It sounds like it hurts to crumping. It's kind of a violent dance. Lots of, like, jerky movements and stuff. Yeah. A lot of core work. Okay, Yellow Wedge. What did the first Vatican Council declare the Pope to be?

Colin. I'm guessing the infallibility. Is that what they're getting at? Yes. Infallible. Okay. I don't know what that means at all. It means that basically...

If the Pope says it, that's the word. Right, right, right. So if the Pope puts $50 under the free parking space, then there's $50 under the free parking space. You can't. Is that official or not official? No, it's not official. Do you put money on free parking?

No, it's not in the rules at all. People just made that up. I hate playing that way. Are you talking about Monopoly? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's like, let's take a game that's already super long

and find a way to make it last even longer. Right, right. I like it. I don't like it. I'm a purist. All right. This is what things to look forward to on Saturday in Vegas. Lots of pedantic arguers.

Come on down. Let me tell you why you're wrong. Potato, potato, let's fight about it forever. That's right. What are we? Oh, is this still the trivial pursuit? Purple Wedge, in the sound of music, which is not one of Maria's favorite things. All right.

Multiple choice. Strudel. Packages. Tea or snowflakes. It is 100% final answer, Regis. T. Correct. Yes.

Oh, okay. Brown paper packages. You just tied up with snowflakes that stay on your nose and eyelashes. Chris, apple strudels. Chris, it strudels, yeah. And then da-da-da-da-da-da-s. Schnitzel with noodles. Yep.

Right. Tea does come up in one of their songs. Right. Yes. Yeah. But not that one. Not that one. Tea, I drink a jam and bread.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, green wedge for science. According to the CDC, which I think center for disease control. Oh, really? Centers for disease control. Oh, okay. All right. Speaking of.

Because there's multiple. Dr. Padanto. It's their super power. All right. According to the centers of diseases and control for disease and control. CDC. In 2007, what percentage of U.S. high school students had had sexual intercourse, multiple choice? Okay.

38%, 48%, or 58%? Back in 2007. Dana. 38%. Incorrect. Oh. Colin. 58%.

No, it's 40%. Oh, okay. Always the middle one. Always in the middle one. Geez, kids. We're getting a little racy here on Trouble Pursuit. All right, last question on this card, orange wedge. What signature two-word phrase did Philadelphia Philly's broadcaster Harry Callis,

Calis, used to call a home run, K-A-L-A-S? Two-word. Signature two-word phrase for a home run. Oh, this is not going to be right. Grand Slam? No, that's a different thing. That's a thing where they're all loaded, yeah. Hmm.

It's out of here. Yes. Oh, is that it? Yeah. Out of here? Out of here. Because out of instead of out of. Right.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. There you go. Another weird question. Yeah, it is.

All right. Good job, Brains. So this week, this is the first time we're doing this. We've never done a non-theme episode other than our all-quiz episode. This week we decided to do bring your own topic, B-Y-O-T. We all picked our own topics. and we're going to talk about it and I have no idea

what other people are doing so this will be quite the surprise. Right. So it's bring your own topic day. And if you don't like it, we'll never do it again. Oh, yeah. Right.

Oh. Let's invite people to criticize this show. It's your thing. Do what you want to do now. I can't tell you who to sock you. Ha! That's nice.

Good news, everyone. So in all seriousness, we are very happy to announce that this past Thursday, we attended the Stitcher Podcast Awards, and believe it or not, largely thanks to you, our listeners, we came away winners in our category. I still don't believe it. I know. Our listeners are amazing. Yes. Oh, yeah. It was great.

We were up against some very good competition in our category, games and hobbies. We ended up walking away with the trophy. It was so great. Thanks so much, you guys. That was awesome. Everybody who voted, everybody who listened to the podcast through Stitcher. I mean, that was great. That was all clutch.

We could not have done it without you guys. I really want to stress. We feel so great about it. So I've had award shows on the brain for the last few days. And since this is bring your own topic, I figured I was going to talk about some good, good ground for trivia fodder, which is award shows. And we definitely, you know, these questions come up a lot, you know, years, what came first, what do things stand for, all that. Who's the only person? Who's the only?

Yeah. Right. Right. Rather than focusing on the winners, I have some questions for you guys and a little bit trivia about the awards shows. Oh, okay. I think, losers, yeah. That's what we are. Yeah.

What? In particular, sort of the four big ones, the four big awards shows. Which are, right, right. We got the Oscars. The Tonys, the Emmys, and the Grammys, which are in order for motion pictures, for stage productions, for TV, and for music, right. And they do call it the EGOT, if you have all four of them. Yes, yes. Watch the Oscars this year because Robert Lopez, who did the soundtrack for Frozen, Disney's Frozen, is if he gets the Oscar, he will have the EGOT.

Really? Yep. Because he has an Emmy. He has a Tony. for, you know, I think Avenue Q was his Tony, or Book of Mormon, because he did both of those. Wow. And he has a Grammy for one of his soundtrack albums, so...

It's an exclusive club. It really is. It really is. I believe Mel Brooks is in there. Whoopi Goldberg. The Goldberg is an Egot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So of the four major award shows here, I want you guys to... You can do this collectively. I want you to list them for me in terms of oldest

to most recent. So, Oscars, Tony's, Emmys, Grammys. I want you to put them in order from oldest, oh man, to newest. And talk it out. You guys... Yeah, well, okay, okay. So, I think the Grammys are older than the Oscar.

You're right, because it's recorded music. I would think Emmys is the last one. I agree. Emmys has got to be last, unless there's something weird happening that I don't know about. Maybe something with the Tonys. Like, they didn't give awards to something. So if it were me, I would say, I'm going to go with Tony Grammy, Oscar, Emmy. I'm going to go with Tony Oscars Grammy and then Emmy

I am going to abstain You guys are actually not close at all Wow really The Oscars by a fairly wide margin are in fact the oldest Yes So movies The first Oscars were given out in 1929 Okay

Tonys are next The Tony's first awarded in 1947 Oh, wow. Okay. Emmys, next, the Emmys close after the Tony is. The first Emmys were given out in 1949. Okay. And I agree with you.

It does seem a little counterintuitive. Yeah, you know what it is? It's that they started awarding themselves before they really became, like, big mainstream things. Those shows were not only to, like, recognize what they were doing, but also to, like, puff themselves up a little bit. Absolutely. Absolutely.

There's a lot of self-congratulatory nature of these things. Totally, yeah. And then Grammys are, in fact, the most recent. The Grammys have been given out since. 1959. And I think we had this question at pub quiz not too long ago, as which is older Emmys or Grammys. And we got it wrong then too. That's what I thought. And then I got confused. I was like, I guess maybe they're old. But. Okay. All right. So, uh, let's try and climb back out of that wreckage of the timeline. As you guys probably know, uh, those are

sort of the colloquial names, generally speaking for the award. Ah, yes. So my next challenge for you guys is. Let's get to where these names come from. So we can do a nanny order. I think probably the easiest one would be the Grammys. The gramophone. That's right. Right. Oh. You just got that. The award trophy is a gramophone, right? Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was named after someone's grandma. Yeah. No, as Dana, you're absolutely right. The award is shaped like a little gramophone. and they aren't, the official name is the Gramophone Awards originally. I feel like I just throw eggs on myself.

Oh, I have some. Okay, let's quit shaming people for being wrong. This is a bad. Okay. Oscar. Let's raise each other up. Yeah, sorry. Okay.

Yeah, so the Grammys are the Gramophone Awards. Do you guys know, where are the Tony Awards? It's named after Anthony somebody. No, I think it's named after Antonia somebody. Oh, you guys are so close. Yeah, the full official name is the Antoinette Perry. Award for Excellence in Theater. Yeah, I knew it was a woman.

Antoinette Perry was an actress and a director. More to the point, she was a co-founder of the American Theater Wing, which is one of the organizations that jointly gives out the Tony Awards. And she actually died the year before the first Tony Awards were given out. Oh, no. So they were really named as a way of honoring her and her place. So what have you guys maybe heard about where the Oscars name comes from? You ever heard any stories about this one?

Not a gosh darn thing. It's actually kind of disputed. They don't really, really know for sure. There are a few common stories told about this. Who is the Oscar? I had always heard this story that originally one of the members of the Academy, the executive secretary actually, commented that the statue, oh, it looks like my Uncle Oscar.

It kind of stuck from there, and a newspaper columnist sort of spread it from there. Maybe. There's another story that Betty Davis, famous actress, that she named it after her husband, Harmon, Oscar, Nelson. possibly There are some other people who theorize that it was named after Oscar Wilde Which seems maybe a little strange

Given that he's an Irish playwright And he's not really connected with the American film industry Perhaps unsatisfactory answers We don't really know What it's called the Oscar Emmy Emmy? And Emmy Emmy anyone any guesses

This one is really obscure Well then let's not even try I was like maybe it's not actually Anything that begins with the E It's like, how you spell the word M, the medium, whatever, something. Emmy is the only one that is not a nickname. It's not a shortening for anything. They've been called, they are the Emmy Awards.

Okay. Okay. So, but where does Emmy come from? So when they originally were trying to come up with a name for, hey, we have this award, what are we going to call it? They were sort of latching on to naming it after technology in the industry. So the original name they proposed was the Ike, I-K-E, which was short for the iconist tube, which was a popular tube in the time. But they

sort of, and they're like, no, we can't call it the Ike because this very famous World War II hero, Dwight Eisenhower, that was his nickname. Ike. Obviously, he of course went on to become president, so they wanted something that wasn't going to be associated with him. So then they're like, oh, okay, no, we'll call it the I-M-I-M-M-M-Y, which was short for the Image Orthocon Tube, which was a early,

video tube used in cameras. And I think they wisely decided, you know what, let's humanize it a little bit more. And so they did. They feminized it and changed it from IMI to Emmy. Yes. So it means nothing. It doesn't really mean anything, right, but the root was Imi. And it is a statue of a female figure holding up an atom. So, you know, you could

sort of retroactively say that she is Emmy. Yeah, so that is the origin and timeline of the four EGOTs. And let me just last, I'll close with one little fun Oscar tidbit for you guys. Did you know that you are not legally allowed to sell an Academy Award if you win one? It is part of the legally binding agreement of if you accept the Academy Award and Oscar, you cannot sell this. Why would you want to sell it? Money.

To make money. Yeah. you want to sell it, you are obligated to offer to sell it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for $1.00. And they, of course, will buy it from you before you can put it out on the open market. And if you don't agree to those terms, you don't

actually get the statue. And part of the reason that this policy has been in place since 1950, because there were some of the early Academy Awards that ended up on the open market. And they felt it kind of trivialized it and cheapen it. So, Karen, you ask who would want to buy an Academy Award? The record Orson Wells' Academy Award that he won in 1941 for Screenplay for Citizen Kane

sold at auction for $861,000. And I'm guessing that it passed to a descendant of his who was not legally bound by those terms that could sell it. There was a fight, actually. There was a court fight between his, yeah, between his descendants and the Academy. So, yeah, I mean, Academy Awards that predate 1950 are sort of in that gray area. Oh, I see. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, so for my Bring Your Own topic topic, I chose immortality. Oh. So later on I have a quiz for you guys about immortality stuff. And there was one fact that came up and I was like, whoa, that's so cool. I will tell you about an immortal animal. No.

There is an animal that can live biologically forever. Biologically. So I have to qualify it. Okay. You know, I don't know if this animal has a soul, if it's like it's immortal. You know, I don't know. But for sure, I can tell you. But for sure, I can tell you, biologically, it can live forever. It's a type of jellyfish. It can go backwards in its growth. It's like Benjamin buttons where it will, if it gets injured or it's starving or something like that, under really extreme circumstances, it'll become younger. It's cells become younger. They become different types of cells. And it will go all the way back to its basically egg state. You know, summarizing. And then it'll grow again. It'll grow again. It'll be a lot. It'll grow again.

It'll regrow back through puberty, back to adulthood. Oh, my. Okay. Yeah. So it's this little jellyfish called the, I'm going to try to pronounce it. The turotopsis domli. Yeah, sure. It's found in the Mediterranean and off the waters of Japan.

It's about as wide as the human pinky when it's fully grown. We're all looking at our pinkies. How wide is that? How wide is the green pinky? It's pretty small. They've known about it since the 1800s, since 1810. But they didn't know that it could do this until the 90s. Now I'm curious what other things can do this, and we just don't realize.

Oh, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, what if cats can do this, and we're all just... We're just being fools. It's just been the same cats this whole time. So I want to make it clear.

These things can die. Like, they can die. They can be eaten. Yeah. And then they're done. But if they just get injured... Oh, yeah, yeah. It's not like the fish eats them, and then they just...

They're immortal, so they kill them. fish or whatever. It's like they can't die. Yes. They're not that kind of immortal. No. Right. They can't die of old age. They're not invincible. But if they're able to keep their cells, they can regenerate, basically. They go backwards in their development, and then they go back

forwards in their development. It'd be cool. If cats can do that and they can revert back to kittens? Oh, my God. Wouldn't that be? It would be so weird. That would be. So the thing with this thing is, like, it goes backwards in its development, so it loses its tentacles. It loses like the dome. It goes, it changes

it sells back into like the egg and sperm cells back into like the pollen. It's, it would not be nice to watch a kitten go back to fetal kittens. No, no, not that back. Not that far back. Like fuzzy cute kittens. So I don't think we get to pick and choose how far back we get to go back. I'm a little bit fuzzy on this. I'll be honest with you guys. I'm a little bit fuzzy. It sounds like it goes back to its egg state and becomes a cluster of eggs. And then when it goes forward, it has created a bunch of copies of. It has created a bunch of copies of itself. Like, it's reproducing asexually.

But they usually don't reproduce asexually. This is only if they triggered this extreme survival mode when they do it. Interesting. Yeah. It's like a paradox, right? Like, when is so much of the organism or whatever is replaced slowly, like, is it still the same thing? Well, we are constantly getting replaced slowly, right?

Like, our cells die, and then our body makes new ones. As time goes on, our body starts to lose the ability to make, like, good new No, we want to get really freaked out. This is a solvable scientific problem. It's like a super hard problem, but like somebody at some point might figure it out. Like, oh, I know why our cells, as we get older, stop making better copies of ourselves. And here's a pill you can take. Yeah.

And now you're just immortal. Oh, how intense. Ooh, hemi-jeeves. Anyway, there you go. I thought that was very cool and weird, and it reminded me of the animal trivia that you like to give us, Karen. I love it. Surprisingly, I actually.

for bringing your own topic today's episode. I actually did not choose an animal. I want to talk about the smile. A simple act of smiling. And more specifically, the three important people

behind the smile. Maybe you guys can guess. Like, who would these three, what did these three people maybe do that is important? The smile. Emitted braces. Oh.

Are we talking about Leonardo da Vinci and the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa? You know, I thought about, I thought about Leonardo da Vinci. It is a very iconic smile, but something that more like impacts kind of everybody in the world. Oh, is it the smiley face? Yes. Well, let me start off with Mr. Guillaume Duchyne, who was a scientist during the mid-18th century. In his research, he identified there are two types of smile. A Duchenne smile.

The Duchenne smile. The Duchenne smile involves the contraction of two muscle groups. One is that it raises the corners of your mouth. Okay. So it raises the cheeks in around your eyes. Yes. So your eyes get a little bit. Smizing.

This is how you know if somebody is smiling because they're happy to see you or smiling a fake smile. Right. Yes. Look at the eyes. Look at the eyes. This is the guy who came up with the research and theory. And figured out, physiologically, what determines a fake smile and a real smile, an emotional, a genuine sign of emotion. And so a non-Duchin smile or fake smile or sometimes called the Botox smile or sometimes called the pen and smile is the fake, polite, yeah, smile.

And how you can tell between a fake and real one is you see if their eyes are engaged or not. Because we think of a smile as being the corners of your mouth turn up. So when people want to fake a smile, they force their mouth into a smile position. But the rest of the faces. But the rest of the face. Yeah, nobody's thinking about the eyes. The funny thing is the two different types of smiles are actually controlled by two completely different parts of our brain. The say cheese or the fake smile is controlled by the motor cortex.

So it's just like, okay, I know I have to move my mouth into a. a smile. Here I go. And the Duchenne smile, the natural smile, is emotion related and is controlled by the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. So it's controlled by two different parts of your brain. Hence, you know, one naturally will squint your eyes because you're actually happy. And one is just like, I'm telling my brain to curve my mouth because I need to pretend to have a smile. So that's Guillaume Duchenne. Oh, all right. And of course, the next guy I'm going to talk about is Mr. Harvey Ball. Harvey Ball, inventor of the classic yellow smiley face that you see everywhere. And the birth of the smiley face is kind of really a weird

story. So what happened was, why did he get the gig or how did he come up with design? Actually, there is a company, State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, Worcester. Worcester. Worcester. Worcester. Worcester. They purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. So it was a merger. And what happened was people weren't really happy about the merger who worked in the

company and there was really low morale. So in order to solve this, they hired Harvey Ball as a freelance artist to create something that is cute and that could uplift people's morale, maybe like a smiley face, something to use as like chotch keys like a button or for post it or something and Harvey Ball just took less than 10 minutes and drew eyes and a smile and be like here you go and the smiley face was born and this was putting out into buttons and was given out to employees and actually did make a difference people were a little bit happier and it's cute and it was really popular and the people who worked in the company started giving these pins to other people and just kind of blew up.

up. And what year was this? This was 1963. Okay. However, Harvey Ball, I don't know if it's a however or not. I think it's a however. Harvey Ball never applied for a trademark. Oh, okay. And he was paid less than $50 to come up with the design. It only took him a few minutes to do it.

I know, it did. Yeah. It seems also sarcastic. Like if somebody's like, you know, we would need to make our employees feel happy. Like, we should just, like, something cute. And you're like an artist and you're like, here you go. yeah 50 bucks for you know two minutes of work sure yeah great the design we now see is trademarked and it was trademarked by a frenchman franklin lufrani who used the image in news stories and his newspapers to signify this is a happy news story and he placed the trademark right and you know it's

trademark it's not he's not he's not claiming copyright saying i'm using this in my business to show you that it is my product yeah his company now turns over a hundred million dollars a year for the smiley face and was actually in a copyright dispute with Walmart because remember Walmart was using the smiley face for a long time? You know, Harvey Ball and his whole family, they never regretted the whole thing. They just thought it was fun. It was cool. And of course, it took him 10 minutes. But like, he was just happy to to make the smiley face. Right. And that became really popular. No regrets. And the last smile person is Scott Thalman. Here's a hint. He was a computer scientist at Carnegie

Mellon University. What do you think his contribution to the smile was? Computer scientist. Computer scientist. Facial recognition maybe or something? That seems... He was the first person. Oh, believe to be... Oh, okay.

An emoticon? Yes. Oh, okay. Scott Falman is credited originating the first smiley emoticon, which is colon, close, close, and then

close parentheses. Colons has a nose. Oh, he put a nose in. So he proposed the use of colon dash parentheses and the sad face too because there's a crungy melon message board and there's a lot of stuff going on and this is in the 80s.

And so he proposed, oh, let's use this to signify that this is a joke or this is a not joke. Okay, oh right. Yeah, well, you know, it's, yeah, it's important. And this was, this post was posted in 1982. It dates back

that far long ago. And, of course, people might have used typography and used symbols to make art that looks like humans or, you know, they've done some stuff. But he is the one who we have a record of saying, let's use this for this purpose. I remember being like a child, like back in, I think we got our America online account in 1993, you know, so very early, early days. Didn't even have the World Wide Web at that point. And I remember, like, instant messaging with somebody else.

and they were like, you know, colon capital D. And I had to ask them like, what's, what's colon capital D? He's just like, it's a sideways smiley face. I'm like, oh, my, my, yeah, yeah. I got really into the capital B and then the, um, close parentheses. Oh, because sunglasses. Sunglasses. So cool.

This was real cool. Oh, once I, man, once I discovered Japanese emoticons as a carrot underscore carrot. And they, you could read them the right way. my life never was the same again. I feel like I saw somewhere, somewhere on the internet, of course, that someone had dug up, I'm sure it was like somebody like Victor Hugo or somebody way, way, way predating, like had done this on a typewriter or had done it before. But certainly it sounds like he was the first in the camera. Or was it a hoax? Oh, right. Yeah, it's true.

Actually, I think it was something relating to Lincoln in a typed speech, there was a typo that had a semicolon and a close. parentheses and they're like, oh, that's the first squeakling face. And it's like, mm. There was an open parenthesis in beginning.

It's a time traveling emoticom. You know what they say? Infinite Lincoln's and infinite typewriters will eventually produce a smiley face. Yeah. Or a be cool. Or a tea. It works with so many things.

That's right. He's like, don't worry about it. Be cool, guys. You got to bring that back. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't seen the B-smiley face in a long time. No, no. I would think that's glasses, like a nerd smile,

versus a cool sunglasses now. Well, so there you go. The three very important guys. The Mount Rushmore of smile. Yeah, but only three of them. I guess the other one can be Leonardo da Vinci for Molisa. Okay, yeah, sure. Oh, is she smizing?

Is it reaching her eyes? She is definitely smizing, for sure. Well, then she's smiling, right? Yep. It's a real smile. All right, let's take a quick ad break. A word from our spot. Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast.

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So I went to Hawaii, as we know. They have a lot of pineapples there. And we went to, we went to the Dole Plantation. A lot of the pineapples that we eat now are actually not from Hawaii. They used to be, but they don't, it's Hawaii doesn't even kind of rank at this point on the, yeah. We went on this audio tour of this botanical gardens with little, like, audio tour things you hold up to your ears. And they, like, they barely work. Oh, yeah.

It was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, right? Totally. my life is now trying to find things for good job brain. So, I mean, this, this, like, rattling off of all this interesting trivia. I was like, oh, and I'm like, honey, we got to do a segment on pineapples when I get back home. She's like, yeah, keep talking about work on our honeymoon. We were telling, you know, some of my relatives like, oh, you know, we're going to go to Hawaii. We're going to go to the Dole Plantation.

They were like, well, don't get hit on the head with a falling pineapple. And it's just like, you know, right, right. And they were just like, no, do pineapples grow on trees? Now, I think as we discussed before, they do not grow on trees. They just grow out of a plant like in the ground. And so, but I did not really know a lot of factoid about, like, how that all works until we learned on this dull tour about the pineapple stuff. So the way that you grow a pineapple is you twist off the crown of a pint. So you need a pineapple.

First start with a pineapple. Okay. To grow one pineapple, first start with one pineapple. All right. Twist the crown off, the part with all the leaves on the top. Okay. You can cut it off, but they said it was better to twist it off because it leaves all the stuff there. And then you plant it.

That's it? Well, it's not it. You plant it and you wait. You wait two years. Nothing will happen for 18 months to two years. And then after that long, long time. If it survives, yeah. Yeah, basically.

a pineapple will start growing in the middle of the crown that you planted, just one. Holy crap. And so basically, that pineapple, after 18 months to two years, that pineapple will be ready. If you want to wait another year, you'll get another pineapple, but it'll be smaller and sweeter than the first one. And so generally what they do is they only grow two crops out of that pineapple. Sometimes they grow a third, and that means that plant. plant will have been producing three pineapples in five years. Oh, my God.

Well, because the pineapples aren't as good the second, third time around. And then at the Dole Plantation, if they do a third at that point, they pull them all up and they replant new pineapples. I had no idea. It was so intensive just for such a small reward. Yeah, yeah, basically. Well, that's the way you've got to, you have to plant tons and tons and tons of them because each plant is just, you're only going to get the one pineapple. Why are pineapples so cheap? They seem like they should be so expensive. But it's so hard to make them.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it's not a difficult job, but they have figured out, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even the local pizza place in Boston or whatever can put pineapples on their pizza. Yeah, well, I mean, as it turns out, they're not really hard to do. So you can actually grow a pineapple. I mean, you, good job, brain listener, no matter where you live, you can grow a pineapple at home. What? Yeah.

So there's ways you can look up how to do this. You start with the crown. You put the crown in water. Roots will grow out of it. Then you can plant it in a certain decent soil with nutrients. and you just, you can have it indoors. And, you know, you just have to wait. You just have to wait forever for a pineapple to show up.

And then you get your one pineapple that you grew. I would never want to do it. You've been living with it for so long. I know, it's like a friend. It's like your pet. Or it's going to go bad. Now, going back to the idea of don't get hit on the head with a falling pineapple, there is actually a pretty rational reason why people might think pineapples grow on trees.

Because in Hawaii and other places, there is a tree that is known as, The fruit of the tree is known as the the Hala in Hawaiian, H-A-L-A, or the pandan fruit. Yeah. The pandanis, or the screw pine, which is my favorite name for it. And this is known in some cultures as the false pineapple, because the tree itself looks like a palm tree. And then growing all over this tree are things that from the outside, and especially if you're standing on the ground looking up the tree, they look like pineapples. Pineapple size, you know, they sort of like segmented outer. bodies. Tourists who don't know any better look up, they see it like, oh, pineapple tree,

and they walk away thinking that pineapples grow on trees. The fruit itself does not resemble the pineapple on the inside. Okay. That's curious. But it's edible. It is edible. It doesn't taste that great. It tastes okay, but it's not like a delicious treat like the pineapple is. In fact, in Australia, where they have these trees, they call them stink nuts. Why? Because... From the screw pine. From the screw pine, sink nuts from the screw pine, when these things, when these things rot and they ferment and they fall off the tree and hit the ground, the smell is pretty bad, apparently. But yeah, the false pineapple tree. I like that.

Fool's pineapple. Yeah. Yeah. So we're currently recording this episode a day before the Super Bowl, the grand American football tradition. And by the time you're listening to this, it should be after the. Super Bowl. So the game will be over. And with the power of sound editing, we just want to congratulate the winning team. Seattle Seahawks. You guys did awesome. We knew you could do it. Yeah. Yes, we are indeed just about 24 hours away from kickoff. As you say, it's not just the

biggest sporting event in America. It's biggest cultural event. I mean, they call it it's America's America's secular holiday. Let me start off here with a question for you guys. Without thinking too much, I want you guys to each go around, name a famous football player. From any era. Can be from any era. Joe Montana. Oh, uh, Joe Namath.

You have to name it Joe now. Oh, I do? No. No. Colin Kaepernick. Okay. All right. You guys did what I was hoping you would do.

You all named quarterbacks. That's right. Oh, nice. That's right. Okay. And certainly the quarterbacks are. Generally speaking, the biggest stars of the team. Well, I was actually a little worried because you did fantasy football this year, Karen,

that, yeah, you would name somebody else. But you didn't let me down. You guys all named quarterbacks. I think you guys can handle this. What is the primary ability or primary skill to be a good quarterback? They throw the ball. They throw the ball. I was going to say photogenic.

Yeah. They throw the ball, and that's what you do. So, I mean, it's hard to think back to a time when that really was not a prerequisite skill for being a football player. Oh, sure, yeah, that's right. And in fact, you used to not be able to throw the ball. So let's go back here. Football really kind of came into its own

in the late 1800s. American football, again, I should specify, was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869. And if you were to see the footage of this game, obviously doesn't exist. It would not really resemble the football that we know today. It was kind of an amalgam of rules from rugby, some from soccer.

There were no cheerleaders. No cheerleaders. No Coca-Cola commercial. Yeah. Well, I mean, not only that, there were no helmets. There were no pads. Right, right. They say, like, the most, the highest level of protective gear might just be some heavy woolen pants.

Really, it wasn't until the 1880s that some of what we would consider some of the more modern rules changes sort of crept into the game and sort of standardized it and really moved even further away from rugby. It made it less of just like two indiscriminate groups of people punching. watching each other in the face. Oh, yeah. Well, call it a sport. Yeah. I mean, like, as, as brutal or violent as a sport as you may think football is today,

it was just an order of magnitude, more violent and more brutal in the old days. It's only, like, strengthens my belief that rugby and football are games made by drunk men who want to fight each other. I mean, rugby, there's, like, picking up people by the short. It's like you just saying. And the cops show up, and they had to, like, invent a reason why they were just playing a game. We're just playing. Just engaging in a drunken brawl.

It's really fight close. Walter Camp is considered by many of the father of modern American football. And in the 1880s, he really was responsible for a lot of the major rules, like the snap, the line of scrimmage, the concept of downs. And, you know, I know you guys are not huge sports fans, but you have at least heard of these concepts as they relate to football. Right, downs. Like Madden? Yeah, yeah. Well, let's travel back in time to 1905, all right?

And 1905 was really a pivotal year in the history of American football. It was a brutal, brutal, tough sport. No rules really governing personal fouls. You could, you literally could punch people in the face. You literally could jump up and drop kick them with your feet. And at most it was kind of like, oh, that's not a gentlemanly thing to do. But there was nothing in the rules that specifically forbade you. like jumping ground hockey.

You know, I mean, we laugh a little bit about it now, but it got to be a big concern in 1905, there were as many as 19 fatalities. Oh, my God. Related to people playing football. And so just to give you a little flavor, as I say, you know, this was before the invention of the forward pass. The primary way of advancing the ball down the field was you would get it back behind your line, you would form, you'd get a running start.

And just as a team, you would try and bowl through, run through, burst through, whatever you could do to just get inches, feet, yards, just bit by bit, and it was bloody, it was brutal, it was tough. Here's an account from the Minneapolis Journal about one of these aforementioned fatalities from 1905. Just one. Just one. The numbers vary a bit, but it was definitely a significant amount of deaths. This is an account of John Somergill, who unfortunately died playing a game in Pennsylvania. Somergill was first rendered unconscious by a blow in the stomach. He was resuscitated and resumed playing. About 10 minutes later, he was accidentally kicked in the temple and again lapsed into unconsciousness.

Go home. He revived again, however, but instead of continuing play, he watched the game from the sidelines. After the game was over, Somergill was sent to the hospital where he died. from a hemorrhage. Yeah. Stories like this were, unfortunately, not uncommon. It was then, as it is now, a game for tough, macho guys. And, you know, yeah, you know, you get the wind knocked out of you.

As soon as you're conscious again, get back in and play. By 1905, this has kind of reached the level of a national problem, all right? I mean, you can't have, you know, at our nation's premier universities and high schools, people dying from this increasingly popular sport. None other than President Theodore Roosevelt got involved. Who was a tough dude? Who was a, yes, indeed. A hard-living. Rough writer.

He was a rough rider. Yep. And himself a Harvard alum. And he basically said, if the fathers of the game cannot find a way to make the game safer, I will abolish it. And that really was the threat. He's like, if we can't figure this out, we can't have our nation's young men dying from this game. I will just outlaw it. So he summoned, you know, leaders from predominantly the Eastern universities.

They came to New York and they were charged with, all right, we got to make this game. safer, got to find a way to make it work. They did. They had a workshop. You know, and so some of the changes that they made were just as simple as shortening the game. And the most striking change, though, was implementing legalizing the forward pass. Wow. So the forward pass was a presidential edict. It came out of that.

Right, yeah. The actual man who suggested implementing it was, you'll probably recognize this name, was a man named John Heisman. Ah. Heisman trophy. The Heisman trophy, yes, which is still given out annually to... What is it for? It's for the most outstanding college football player. So it really took the, almost took the intervention of the president himself to set in motion the legalization of the forward pass leading to our modern era of quarterbacks.

One evolution of the skill of the quarterback. That's right. That's right. From the dude hiding with the ball now to the guy who's like, you know, statue-esque and throw him. Right. Wow. The new Bimo V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more.

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Well, we got one last quiz segment. Still on immortality. You got immortality on the brain. The topic that will never die. That's right. Oh. That's right. So I have a quiz for you guys.

Okay. And you guys can buzz in. All right. According to Greek mythology, who did Orpheus try to recover from the underworld? Oh, man. Persephone. No. She was also there, too, though.

Yeah, she was there. She was there. But she was not his, I'll give you a hint. She was not his wife. Sorry, sorry. I got my myths mixed. Eurydice. Yes, Eurydice.

And he was unable to rescue her. Right. Do you remember why? Like, how does he botch this rescue attempt? Oh, he botches the rescue attempt because they tell him not to look back as he's rowing her away and he can't help but look back. Yeah, to see if she's there. To see if she's there. And then she disappears.

Yeah. It seems that they could have worked that out ahead of time. Just tap me on the shoulder, honey. Yeah, I know. Oh, that's true. Yeah, I know. Yeah, there's so many ways around that. What a bummer.

I know. It's a sad story. It really is. All right. The magnum opus, or the great work, in alchemy is the process of producing what? The magnum opus and alchemy. Oh, I see. Producing gold, right?

Indirect. Before that, there's a thing that it's trying to produce. Oh. A middle stone. It is the Philosopher's Stone. Oh, the Philosopher's Stone. And you use the Philosopher's Stone to create gold or silver. And you also use the Philosopher's Stone for what?

To live forever. Yes, to create an elixir of life. Right. In America, it's called the Sorcerous Stone. So that's a Harry Potter reference. Speaking of Harry Potter. Of course. Yeah.

Voldemort hides his soul in Horcroxes so that he may live on for a long time, right? According to Slughorn, Professor Slughorn, How was a horrocks made? Karen. With a crime slash murder that is so horrible that it splits your soul apart. Almost word for word. It rips the soul apart. Wow.

I was like, man, is she reading this? And then after the murder, a spells cast, and it infuses part of the ripped soul into that object. All right. Cryonics is low temperature preservation of humans that cannot be sustained by contemporaries. medicine, in the hopes that eventually they'll be able to be resuscitated. Okay, as of 2013, how many people have been cryogenically preserved in the world? It's multiple choice. Okay.

Is it 60 people, 130 people, or 270 people? This must be expensive. I'll go with 60 people. I'll go on the high side. I'll take the 270. I'll take the middle. It's 270. Whoa.

It's a lot of people. And it's a lot of money. And it's a lot of fitness. faith too because I mean they admit we're not sure that we're going to be able to undo this process right right right yeah oh of thawing them we might not be able to get ice crystals out of their brains yeah yeah and then I was reading an article and apparently it's mostly men it's like three to one that men want to do this and many of those men are non-religious white men who are also in software engineers like they really believe in in the idea like storing the data

and aren't there I think I mean this was in the news not so a few years ago when ted williams the baseball player died and aren't there like two levels of service there's like the whole body or just the head just the head right which is the cheaper route i guess oh yeah so the entry level the entry level so did they have to decapitate yeah oh my god i thought this is just like in shows and cartoons i i believe that's right no that's where it came from oh just preserving the brain yeah yeah yeah so in futureama fry the main characters whole body is accidentally frozen in a crisis chryogenic chamber.

Yes. What year is he awoken, Karen? 3,000. No. 3,00. No. It is 2999. It was New Year's Eve.

It was the day before 3,000. Oh, that's a good question. I went the wrong direction. I'm like, how's one year off? Which Spanish explorer is connected with the fountain of youth? Oh, no. Chris? Ponce de Leon.

Ponce de Leon. According to legends, where did he find it? California. No. What? Florida? Florida. Yes.

He was the first governor of what territory, U.S. territory. Oh. Puerto Rico. Yeah. He was the first governor of Puerto Rico. He did not find the founder. He found. He did not.

He found. Somebody wrote about him much later and kind of associated him with this legend that people had already been talking about. Right. Right. But he didn't really, obviously, because he's dead. He didn't, you know, he got the floor at. He's like, this is way better than Spain. And he just wrote a little later, like, found the found of you, not coming back home to see it.

Yeah, he found oranges. It's like, oh, sweet. This is it. Yeah. Yep. When life gives you lemons, you make orange juice. The lickser of life. All right.

And then finally, this is the last question. This was the one that kind of kicked me off on the whole immortality or like living on after you die or not dying. What is the only necocracy in the world rule by a dead person? Necrocrosy? There is a necocracy in this world where a dead person is the ruler. Is the ruler? Yeah. Whoa.

Wait, there is a place where their president is a dead person. Ha. Ha. It's not like the embalmed body of Lenin. Right, right. It is North Korea. Kim El-sung is the eternal president of the Republic. Of course.

They added a thing to their constitution. It says, under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Korean people will hold the great leader, Comrade Kim Il-sung in high esteem as the eternal president of the republic. And they bestowed this on him four years after he died. He's been president for 18 years or 19 years now. Wow. Yeah. You thought unseeding an incumbent in your district was hard. Yeah.

He will always be the president. They no longer have that office because he is the president of North Korea. There you go. And that is our experimental bring your own topic show. Big grab bag. We got jellyfish, we got football, we got pineapple, we got the smile. And you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website. Good JobBrain.com.

And thank you to our sponsor, Warby Parker. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Hey, Vegas. 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 feed up your politics wherever you get podcasts.