Jordan, Jesse, GO! - Pre-Eight, with Griffin McElroy

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

This week, we’re ringing in the annual Max Fun Drive with special guest Griffin McElroy for a conversation about The Hobbit, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and much more. Become a member today at maximumfun.org/join.  *Follow Griffin on Instagram. *Grab Griffin's latest book, The Stowaway.  *Listen to My Brother My Brother and Me.  *Listen to The Adventure Zone.  *Listen to Wonderful.  *Check out what’s new on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn. *Check out more Amazing Spiderman content from Jordan. *Order Jordan’s new Web of Venom comic.  *Check out Jordan’s comic Predator: Bloodshed. * Order Jordan’s new Predator comic: Black, White & Blood! * Order Jordan’s new Venom comic! * Donate to Al Otro Lado. * Purchase signed copies of *Youth Group* and *Bubble* from Mission: Comics And Art!   ~ NEW JJGo MERCH ~ Get  Bronto Dino-Merch! Get our ‘Ack Tuah’ shirt in the Max Fun store. Grab an ‘Ack Tuah’ mug! The Maximum Fun Bookshop! Follow the podcast on Instagram and send us your dank memes! Check out Jesse’s thrifted clothing store, Put This On. Follow producer, Jordan Kauwling, on Instagram. Thank you to engineer Gabe Mara! Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinjjgo

Give a little time for the child within you. Don't be afraid to be young and free. Unto the locks and throw away the keys and take off your shoes and sucks and run you. Welcome to the program, Jordan Jesse Go. I'm one of the two hosts, Jesse Thorne, America's Radio Sweetheart. And me? Well, I'm the other host. Jordan Morris, Boy Detective, just matching in Jesse's energy.

Okay, I want to say, I'm feeling great for a few reasons. Yeah, you seem unusually pumped. Number one. What's, where's this guy? bed. I'm three excetrons deep. So by that third excetron, that's like four espressoes for a guy that doesn't otherwise have caffeine. So I'm ready to punch a fucking hole in a wall. Oh my gosh.

I also had some steroids squirted into the base of my brain yesterday. Okay. I don't think those affect my mood. I think they only affect my occipital nerve. But maybe they're affecting my mood. It could be a reason as to why you're so pumped and presentational. Number three, I bought a Roku stick for the TV in my office. We figured out why you're so pumped.

Because you're streaming, buddy. A free week of the Hallmark Channel. You've joined the streaming generation. It says that on the box of the road. A free week. Not even a month. A free week of the Hallmark channel. It says on the front of the box.

How many Christmas movies do you think you can get through in that one week? I mean, I can only jack off like two or three times a day. I'm 44. Yeah, I would suggest, since you've only got a week, Uh-huh. Practice your edging. Okay. Just so you can prolong the amount of, you know, sexy stories about a big city gal who's so busy but has to move back to her small town.

And a fat, fuckable Santa. Big jolly motherfucker. So you're going to want to make sure to take down as many of those as you can. So you got to sting it, bro. I got it set up. You got to sting it. Jordan, here's the secret of getting it set up. First of all, be mad for 55 minutes.

then realize that if you plug an Ethernet cable into it, it will only update over Ethernet, then you can plug that back into your computer and use the Wi-Fi to stream in 4K. I have no idea why the three-second update process required me to plug in the blue cable, but I did, and it worked. And I figured that out by myself.

It didn't say that in the instructions. I just tried it, and it worked after 55 minutes of being mad to roughly one hour and 20 minutes of being mad. Thorne, welcome to the streaming generation. Also, Jordan, I was singing in my office and a car drove by and it was listening to Lucini, This Is It by Camp Lo, which is one of my favorite songs ever. Okay. Do you ever, do you have like a thing, do you have a thing that you type in to YouTube over and over and over until YouTube thinks that you only like that? Oh, you know, I have, and I'm embarrassed at how basic

this is, so just know that I feel shame. I shake it off by Taylor Swift. Shake it off by Taylor Swift. I got to, you know, okay, let's rank the eras, right? Let's rank Taylor's eras. Yeah. And then Godzilla's eras. Two icons who have had many eras. And then Sandy Kofax's ERAs. Oh, this is going to be a juicy episode.

Let's tell our guest to leave because I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I have gotten really into when I need something on in the background, just doing lo-fi beats to chill out and relax. Relax too. Oh, because you like how that little lady pulsates. I like her cat and I like all of the kind of various cats that she has. There's like different playlists. This is lo-fi girl we're talking about. Yeah. But who by the way, not that lo-fi nor are her beats. Relatively high-fi, in my opinion. You quibble with the naming of the channel. The characterization of the fidelity, yes. Yeah, but no, I do feel, I do wish I had a more interesting answer to this question. Like, I wish

I had some kooky like, you know, squash gardening. I just can't get enough squash gardening. But I'm like, no, just that thing that everybody puts on in the background. I put that on in the background. So now my YouTube recommendations are that. And because I was car shopping recently, it's like car reviews. And guess what has the most boring men possible hosting it? Oh, I've seen these videos.

I've seen these car reviews where they open and close the doors. Uh-huh. These things are 25 minutes long. Yeah. And they cut between them standing by different parts of the car. I have never, there's never been a more vast and sucking charisma void than the men who host review videos for like, you know, I'm looking at like hybrids and light SUVs. You know, maybe the guys who review, you know, the latest Lamborghini Kuntash have a little, you know, Guy Fierry-esque showmanship. But these are some real tech-vested cargo-shorted, normal ass, airline receding men.

I subscribe to a few subreddits about cars R-slash weird wheels, R-slash-Battlewagons. Oh. What's battle wagons? Battle wagons is like station wagons that people jack up and then they drive in like rallies or in off-roading. That sounds cool. Yeah, yeah. They put a bunch of fog lights on it and shit. All for no reason.

It's like almost purely aesthetic. Sure. Except for the jacking. That's a reason. But anyway, I subscribe to these kind of like oddball. And sometimes they have, someone will post a video from a YouTuber and their YouTubes are car guy YouTub, but it's car guy YouTubes that are like, we built a car out of four washing machines and a skateboard we ordered from Tamu.

Yeah. And that is pretty fun. I bet that's fun. That is kind of fun. The videos are generally of bad quality. Sure. But these guys have built some amazing bullshit. It'll just be like we took the body off a car and we're just trying to balance on the axles.

Sure. Or something like that. Should we introduce our guest, by the way? Because it's, Jordan, it's Max Fun Drive time. Oh, yeah. Please go to Maximumfund.org slash join so that we can spend our time watching these car videos. By the way, I often type in Lucini, this is it by Camp Lo. Yeah.

The other one is don't let it go to your head by Brand Newbian. Okay. One of the members of Brand Nubian turned out to be a monster. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. I mean, I just imagine what it's happening more and more these days. To be the friends and loved ones of Lord Jammar. Oh, my God.

The other members of Brand Nubian, can't speak to it. Not confident. Let's assume, let's not look at this. Let's not look into it. Yeah. Let's not look into it. Let's continue to not look into it. Our guest on the program, maximum fund.org, by the way, is the URL.

Head there. Go to there, become a member of Maximum Fund. are our friend and the author of the brand new Choose Your Own Adventure Book, The Stowaway, number one New York Times bestselling author, host of Wonderful, The Adventure Zone, and my brother, my brother and me, Griffin McElroy.

Hi, guys, thanks for having me. What a love maybe a little bit more buffer between you talking about which members of this music group have turned out to be monsters. and then introducing me, I worry if someone's hitting like skip 15 seconds, skip 15 seconds, maybe the runover will be confusing for them, bad for me? This is a great question. You got two brothers and a wife you podcast with, plus your dad.

Who's going to become a monster first? Everybody seems nice so far. Yeah. No, I mean, I'll talk about this, I guess, if you want me to. I'd rather hear more about how to plug in a Roku because I was trying to follow along while you were doing that, but you went way too fast, dude. Griffin, you have to take the blue Ethernet cable and plug it into the back of the... Slow down.

Jesse, Jesus. Plug it into the... You have to plug that into the television. Jesse, if you keep going at this speed, Griffin's never going to be able to join the streaming generation. I'm not even back to where the fucking stick is yet. Just give me a second. Jordan, you're going to have... He's heard about Hulu.

He's curious about Hulu. PBS Craft in America over the air, OTA. Oh, man. Jesse, I think you were on to something there. I think people were kind of tuning. into this expecting, you know, just like a fun, goofy chat. No, this is a hard hitter. Do we separate the art from the artist?

Let's go around. Problematic faves. Let's solve it here. Yeah. Here. And I mean, again, I'd rather talk about Roku or what YouTube I watch or anything else other than that. Should we introduce our second guest, Ross Duthot from the New York Times? I am curious, Griff, what your...

What do I put on YouTube when I need to put something on YouTube is? That's a good question. Yeah. Oh, gosh. There's a whole ecosystem of extraordinarily charismatic nerd folks who their whole shit is just retro game handhelds. Okay. And which ones are cool and which ones are good and which ones are worth of, you know, $500 tariff to import from mainland China.

So these are not, we're not talking about an Atari links. We're talking about a contemporary. temporary device that has all of the Atari Links games stolen and programmed into it. Well, okay, stolen's interesting. Who'd I steal them from? From people who don't care anymore. From John California Games, the owner of California games. From Francis Clux.

I threw a brick through the Atari headquarters in Tokyo and busted in and stole all their games. Yeah, but there's like a million of these things. They're making a bunch of them, and it's like, last year you couldn't play GameCube on them. now you can play a game keep on them. So like it's changing really, really fast. And to stay plugged in, you've got to, you know, follow the, follow the feet. My daughter has one of these that pretends to be a PlayStation. Sure, sure.

Again, an insane, a truly, truly wild verb to attribute to this inanimate gaming device. It's not pretending. It's not trying to trick you or lie to you. I think it is. It looks like a PlayStation such that if you looked at it on TAMU, you would think you were buying a PlayStation, but actually you're not buying a PlayStation, you're buying a little tiny thing.

Okay, that's fair. And it has a fake mustache on and a fake ID. Yeah, it has about 60 games in it. And what's fun about the games, it's horrible. She bought this as a joke. I think one of her favorite YouTubers who makes fun of bad things talked about how bad it is, and my daughter saved $40 or whatever to buy one of these things.

And it has about 40 games programmed into it. some of them are real games. Like you can play Super Mario World for Tetris, for for Game Boy. Thanks, Dad. While Tetris watching. Are you guys going to play a Tetris? I got a new tape for your Tetris machine.

Let me order some little Caesars and you guys could play Tetris all night long. Jordan, didn't you have a neighbor whose mom called it a Nintendo? Matthew Dudley's mom told us that we should have fun up there playing Nintendo. So anyway, she's got, it comes with like four.

Dudley's brother had Playboys and Metallica tapes. It comes with... Cool house. Yeah, it was rad. Some of the games are real games like Super Mario World. You're sleeping over at Matthew Dudley's house? You're having a good time. Some of the games claim to be Super Mario World, but it's only like two levels of Super

Mario World and then it disappears. That's funny. That's interesting. Some of the games claim to be like Super Mario World 3, but are a different game that they've changed the main character's spree. Sprite into a Mario. Yeah. But there's no umpalumpas or whatever.

And then he after after. Talk about gumbas? Yeah, there you go. You're talking about gumbas. And then at a certain point, two levels, it disappears. Then Mario pops on screen and says, hey kids, to access my levels, get your daddy's checker book. Exactly.

Point the datty's checker book out to the screen. What are you playing on the, are you, do you have like six of these things? I've got, I mean, behind me, I have like, about. 18 of them. Oh, yeah. There's, I mean, I got this new one. It's the dual screen, A-I-N-4, playing chrono-trigger, DS on it. That's emulated.

I mean, yeah, it's a real problem. And that also works, it looks like, that also works as a hoverboard. Is that correct? It does, yeah, you fold it out, and it also works as a sort of permanent, aesthetic contraception. As long as you are carrying one of these around, all, nobody's getting pregnant. No one's, you're fine. You got enough kids. You got enough kids already.

I got, I do have enough kids. I need, I actually need no more contraception as I have talked about my vasectomy, publicly and often. Yeah. On our other podcast. Did yours, I won't bring. Smell? My vasectomy?

Yeah. Did my vasectomy smell? That's interesting. So are you talking about like the stuff that came out or are you talking about like the procedure itself? You mean, no, not the sperm's, mine, the semen minus the sperm's. I'm talking about the procedure. Were you awake for the procedure?

Yeah. I was told you had to be and that you, quote, had to feel it. It was a quote, offering unto the Lord, I guess. That's the last time you book a medical procedure through the manosphere. The pain was an offering unto him. But mine hurt and also smelled like burning flesh. There was a smell. I do remember the smell.

and I didn't ask about it because like, I don't know, I asked once about like, hey, I feel like I'm about to fucking like barf. Is that normal? And he was like, yeah, for nervous guys. And I was like, Jesus Christ, this guy's really, so I didn't ask any more questions after that. I assumed it was like a, you know, like you bang your elbow real good and like it makes you sneeze. It's like, oh, you never really know how all your nerves are connected in there. I just assumed that there's something grundle word that connects to my, like olfactory senses. I had to take a course. I want to say four classes from a trustworthy nurse, sort of an esepathomirthesan type, someone who would play a police captain who's giving instructions on a Larn order spinoff. And it was fine. You didn't have to take a test. So I just sort of spaced out the whole time because I was pretty confident I wanted this procedure on account of having too many children. And the best part of it, by far, was the population of this class, which featured, I'm going to say, two other dads that already had two or three children and were, you know, they're like, well, I'm 35. I'm done having kids. But I still like to blast inside. Yeah. Yeah,

yeah, sure. And then just like 10 weird burnouts. Oh, yeah. Just like a, you know, 54-year-old guy that, like, sits in a cafe all day. Uh, yeah. And, yeah. And, yeah. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. You know, you know, he's, And his hair goes sideways. Like he sits in a cafe and he did order a drink, but he's also got a can of beer. Mm-hmm. That sort of guy, asking weird questions, like raising their hand and being like... Is it okay? Then I brought my own tools?

Exactly. Is it okay? Exactly. I brought two. Can I keep it? Can I keep them afterward? there's something still come out? Griffin, I want to say this.

I really enjoyed your book, The Stowe Way, choose your own adventure book. Thank you. And I want to say thank you as well to the publicity staff over there at Scholastic Publishing, who sent not only the book, but this autographed bookplate. Wow.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm nervous about those circulating out there because I do think it would not be too hard to catch me if you can. style like put that on some checks or something i could put this anywhere you could put that signature of mine anywhere i could put this on my Lamborghini galardo and then people are going to pretend to be griffin in order to uh sleep with stewardesses i think was i think that's what that was that's what

happens in the movie yeah i'm not known for that but i would say that leo in that movie definitely he got a couple of stewardesses a couple sexy stews Griffin uh did to to bone up to read this thing. How many classic Choose Your Own Adventures is did you read? I had read my fair share when I was growing up, but when I was asked to sort of like pitch a book to To Choose Co, I definitely busted out some of the, some of the classics, your space and beyond. There's sort of like a new run that is happening now. So reading some of those time travel in is one of the more recent ones that I brushed up on. I can't remember. There's so, there's so many, so many wonderful adventures to go on. Can I just say, and to choose between? I love, I love the folks over there at

Chew's Co. They make the choose your own adventure books. They make high chew candies. Right, yeah. They do. Yeah, that's correct. Any other one? Can you do a third chew base? A third chew. There has to be an Asian American man I can come up with. We're thinking of John M. Chu, the director of Wicked. There you go. Okay. Yeah. He's also one of their best problems. He works there. He's not for sale. He makes the wicked movies on behalf of Chooseco.

Griffin, I was reminiscing about my time with the Choose Your Own Adventures, which I guess I read a lot of those as a kid, mainly got them at the, like, Friends of the Library store. Yeah, that's a place to get them. I mean, you should buy Griffins at your, you know, bookshop. Do not wait for it, too. Only cost $9.95. I'm like, I think I had 10 of these and I think they. they were all about Yetis. Yeah, I remember the Yeti one.

There's a huge Yeti one. The reason you remember the Yeti one is it's like, I think it's like a primal fear type situation because the cover of the Yeti on the front of the Yeti book is so scary. It's a really, really scary depiction of a Yeti. And so like, you see that as a kid, you're going to remember the Yeti book over, you know,

the magic of the unicorn, which is in and of itself a pretty scary book, but the front cover of it doesn't have that. that terrible, you know, Snowbees. I realized just now where I got my Choose Your Own Adventure books, which is, so when I was a kid, young, pre-8, I would say, pre-9 when my dad got married, let's say. A magical time in a young boy's life.

It's such a fun age. It's a fun age. My dad had this girlfriend named Susan. Very nice woman, as I recall. Sounds great. You know, I don't remember her vividly. But she had a son who was older than me. Maybe he was 14 or something.

I only met him like once or twice. But she had a son that was older than me, and I got a box of Star Wars toys, a box of baseball cards, and some choose-your-own-adventure books. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Was it like a Toy Story 3 situation where he was like, I'm entering another chapter of my life? Yeah, those Star Wars toys were real sad. They were real sad. Did they have his initials on the feet?

Yeah, exactly. And when I say sad, I don't mean that they were bad toys. They were great toys. They just were emotionally sad. that they had been abandoned by their previous owner. And I had no toys to speak of of my own. At one point, my dad bought me a scooter for Christmas that I had asked for. And then he, he, like, had a hard time assembling it and gave up.

That was the main toy he got me. But did it ever get assembled? No. Wow. Yeah, he just gave up. The end. Do you think to this day, it's still in a box somewhere in your stepmom's house? I think that he, I think he had a plan for his friend, Rich Lubin, to help him,

put it together after he failed. But the thing is, as you guys know, Rich Lubin lived in Taos, New Mexico. We do. Yeah, sure. I was going to say, there's no way the lubes making his way over just for that. Lou B' Rube, as he was known in my house, was not going to make the trip. Griffin, am I just remembering that one with the Yeti? In my mind, they were all about the Yeti, but maybe that one just was so... I definitely read the Yeti one. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely also read the Yeti one. I don't know if there's a... There might be more Yetty books, right? Like, there might be, these were written before I was born, I think, for the most part. They were largely written before we were born, I think. I think they're mostly written in like

the late 70s. Yeah, somewhere around there. So, yeah, I'm not sure if there was a whole series. I got, I will say that I was more of a completionist in the, the goosebumps, choose your own adventure books, which were similarly scary, but like, I don't know, in Magic of the Unicorn, if you make a wrong choice and you get the plague and you fucking die from it. In magic of the unicorn? Yeah, dude, it goes really hard. The first thing that happens is, like, the well that your town relies on for all its water gets cursed by a witch and anyone who drinks from it dies. It's like, I'm pre-8, dude.

I can't handle something like this. It's supposed to be a fun age, you said. If you make a bad choice in goosebumps, you end up going down a slide that just goes forever. Are you thinking of, hey, if you got to die. Are you thinking of that one? But ever slide. Are you possibly thinking of that one book by Stephen R. L. Stein. Best selling popular science writer, Stephen Johnson.

I think that's probably what you're thinking of. Let's see. Stephen Johnson, Collar a book. This is a great. The Ghost Map. The Ghost Map. I enjoyed that. That's what it was.

Yeah. It was the book about cholera, the ghost map, not the magic of the unicorn. Choose your adventure story. Get those two confused a lot. First of all, the ghost map, great book. Stephen Johnson, excellent popular science writer. The really good part about that, first chapter, just all about people waiting through shit to find little pieces of metal.

Oh, boy. Just pieces of fabric you could sell to the raghouse. A list of everyone in Elizabethan England that found shit on the ground and then sold it. Griffin, were you tempted to make your book go hard? How hard would you say it goes? No, I was, I really pulled my punches with this one. I tried to introduce my firstborn son. That's a really weird way to say that.

My child Henry to it. And not if you believe it. I mean, somebody's got to inherit your lands. That's true. Yeah, my heir, Henry. I tried reading one of those books to him and it was like, he like made a wrong choice. And it was like, yeah, and then you get sick and now you're dead. And he was like, I don't want to read these books.

You don't have books often that tell you, and now you're dead. Griffin, and I died so many times reading this book. But did you? Or did you get put to sleep? Or did you get in prison? Or did you get flung out into the vacuum of space? But you didn't die. It suggested you probably will die.

There's no dying in the book because I didn't want to scare kids. I wanted it to be enjoyable, an enjoyable, lightweight, heady. sci-fi adventure. It is headier, Jordan. You haven't had a chance to read this yet. I'll lend you mine. It's signed. I love head.

I don't know. I'm not like that. I've been saying no. I will say this. It's much more like conceptual and astral traveling e than I anticipated. I can't wait. That's one of those things when I saw it announced that

that you wrote this book. It's one of those where you look at the little announcement, you nod and you go, hell yeah. It's like, it made sense to me. Like, what I was as to do, I was like, oh, yeah, everything. Oh, of course, this is the bottleneck through which, like, my entire kind of nerd upbringing has been funneling towards. Right. A moment you've been training for. The moment, all of those, all of those Japanese visual novels that I've played, they've all been building towards this one beautiful, perfect moment.

Cracks knuckles, writes book in one night. Yeah. Oh, God, I wish. I think we should take a break. We'll be back in just a second on Jordan Jesse Go. Love you, love you, love you. It's Jordan Jesse Go. I am Jesse Thorne, America's Radio, sweetheart.

Jordan Morris, Boy, Detective. According to the wiki, I'm a Griffin-McRoy, sweet little potato. I don't own that. Yeah, I've always known you to be a tater tot. I'd like a new one. I'd like a new one, please. I don't know which paperwork I have to file to do a new nickname, but I don't like that one anymore. What about Big Bucks Boy?

Big Bucks Boy is kind of cool. Yeah, it's a max fund drive, right? Big Bucks boy? I like Big Bucks boy. It's alliterative and it's fun. I like that. I'm Big Bucks. Big Bucs boy. Yeah, hey, it's the Max Fund Drive. What a fun time. Do people know, I think a lot of our listeners know what the Max Fund Drive is, Jordan? Yeah. Some of our listeners who came in over the last year, explain to those half dozen people what the

Max Fun Drive is. I would love to. I was going to say, where did you guys find new, we haven't gotten any new listeners in like four years. How are you guys finding? We like to, we're trying to manifest new listeners. All right. If we just say it enough. I've been reading The Secret, Griffin. Okay. What if what if longtime listener Hunter Ellen Boss was sitting under a coconut tree? Uh-huh. And a coconut fell and struck him upon the head and struck him foolish. Yeah, we, we're assuming that, you know, the. 100 people who have always listened to our show. Some of them have gotten amnesia.

Yeah. It happens. It happens a lot. So yeah, hey, the Max Fun Drive. Max Fun, not a giant evil tech company, but rather a worker-owned co-op that just makes podcast. Doesn't do anything else. Doesn't sell our voices to train AI. It doesn't help Donald Trump to build a ballroom.

It just makes podcasts. And the way it does that is by soliciting me. members, kind of like a NPR station, kind of like a PBS station, a little bit like a Patreon, except for it supports the whole network. That's how we keep going. That's how we keep independent. That's how we keep this a worker-owned co-op. People go to maximum fund.org slash join.

And the lowest level is five bucks a month. There are other levels, 10 bucks, 20 bucks. You get some stuff for those. But five bucks a month, hey, we love that. We feel like it's very doable. Not only do you support the shows, you keep them coming, but you do. get bonus content, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of bonus content, special stuff, cool stuff. The time we did a drinking game of Jordan Jesse Go, and I, since I don't drink,

just drank marijuana soda until I was totally ablazed out of my mind. Oh no. Yeah. The time that Jordan and I bought a boat on Craigslist, well, technically we sent Brian Fernandez to buy a boat on Craigslist, then put it in MacArthur Park Lake and tried to podcast while peddling a paddle boat, which turns out to be super hard. Really hard. Really hard. And we just published what I'm calling, I'm going to go ahead and call the most beautiful artwork ever created. Yes.

Which is a three hour podcast in which it is a series finale for podcast movie, movie podcast, and sometimes we talk about shows where we watched the final five episodes of Alex Inc. the terrible Zach Braff sitcom about podcasting and then recorded a three-hour recap and discussion program about them. You do not have to watch Alex Inc. And in fact, we insist you do not. Yes, if something were to happen, they were to think that maybe there was a fandom out there

that wanted a revival. No, we cannot let that happen. Frankly, I am terrified that I'm going to get hit by a car and then someone is going to need to find my computer passwords and then they're going to see that I've watched Alex Inc. Like my mom is going to know that I watched Alex Inc. They probably factor in for a certain amount of ironic consumption of the program. There's a margin of error there that they probably bake in.

Yeah, I think that's about right. Anyway, Griffin, what did you make for Max Fund members this year? Because you have three Max Fun shows. Dead ass, dead ass for fun. Oh, great. Straight up forgot. Like freaking out actually right now, like, oh, no. No, we did a lot of fun stuff for the.

The Adventure Zone, we continued what we've called in the past, the Charlieverse series, where in the past Justin's oldest daughter, his firstborn next of kin, creates a D&D one shot from her twisted mindscape for the rest of us to play. Only this year we did it with five of our six combined kids, and the result is truly madcap. I think the most madcap part of this is that you decided to combine your children. children. Yeah, so each one of them has strengths and weaknesses. And now I will list the weaknesses of my children and my nieces. Here we go. In order. For my brother, my brother, me, we invited Janet Varney to come on to give us a master class in voice acting, which basically just turned into us asking her why we're not booking gigs anymore. For about an hour, it's pretty desperate. You guys who did that golf video game? How come you can't get it? We did a golf video game. Thank you, Jesse. Are there sequels? No, I don't know that that company's still around. Did they pay you?

Did the checks clear? Yeah, but just only. And then they were gone. Got it. I just want to say, I was always against Griffin playing Tiger Woods. I just didn't think it was appropriate. Yeah. Listen, man, it was fucking 2020.

It was a different time, dude. No, you're right. It was a different time. It was a different time. Well, that's sweet. Yeah, all the shows do cool stuff that's just for. members. Jesse, should we announce what our new members-only show is going to be? Okay, so here's the deal.

If you, literally, you can join at five bucks a month. There is a link in the description right now to Maximumfund.org slash join J.J.Go. Just five bucks a month right now. Done. Done. One click. One click. There's a quick and easy one. But anybody who goes to maximum fund.org slash join joins at any level, gets access to all this stuff. we put up polls on all our social medias, and we called this out on the show

previously as well, to find out what Boko show we should do for 2026 and beyond. There were three choices. One was called stream to ream, parentheses, no stash. That was a show that was a sequel to our show. Well, people know what it is based on the title,

Jess. You don't have to explain what it is. Based on our show, Stash rules everything around me. Bert Reynolds recap show. That was sequels to, we were going to recap sequels to Bert Reynolds movies that don't have Bert Reynolds in them. My daughter, Grace, prepared us a dossier.

It's very thorough. It's really breathtaking. It includes descriptions of films like Mr. Bean's Christmas holiday. Bert Reynolds only had a cameo in the first Mr. Bean movie because apparently he demanded of his agents that they get him into it because he loved Mr. Bean so much. But also a lot of like, like there were. a bunch of TV movies of Smokey and the Bandit. Okay, okay.

That Hal Needham, the director of Smokey and the Bandit, directed. Wild. Anyway, that one lost. And then we also offered up Gracie's Game Gauntlet Modern Mania, which was making us play the worst video games of the modern era. Yeah. That one also lost.

I think, Jordan, our audience, was ready to stop torturing us. That's nice. They wanted, I mean, we may circle back. Yeah. Maybe they wanted a brief respite of us recording podcasts where we're mad. Yeah. I mean, again, we can't emphasize this enough. Pitch Perfect, too, we kind of enjoyed.

Yeah, sure. And also that Godzilla movie. A lot of fun. Yeah. So, yeah, let's do it. Let's announce it. Our new Bocco for 2026 and beyond is called to be watched. It's when Jesse and I pick movies from our cues that we have not gotten around to yet.

We watch them and we tell them, we tell them to you about them. That's right. Speaking good is part of me. Jordan, you know what movies are in my cue? Yeah. As the parent of three homeschooled neurodivergent children who always control the television. We're only watching Paw Patrol, aren't we? Fuck!

I mean, yay! I mean, it's copaganda. What do I think? I don't know! I don't know! What do you think, listener? Okay. All movies.

All movies that have ever been released. in my cue because I don't get to see any movies at all unless I watch them in my shed during the day because it's work. So this is cool. Jesse and I are just going to pick stuff with a meaning to watch. We're going to kind of go back and forth. We're going to alternate who picks the movie. Maybe we'll invite on a little special guest every now and then to pick something from their cues. Griffin, you're not invited.

We don't want you on. Griffin, I think you're invited. Who's got time for movies, man? I'm a books guy now. You know what I've been thinking about watching? Ahma Deus. Okay. Have you ever seen Amadeus?

I've seen Amadeus. Okay, I'm crossing that off the list. What about gold diggers of 1936? Have you seen that? You know, I haven't. I kind of want to see that. What about Lauren? Have you ever seen Lawrence of Arabia?

I have never seen that. I can have seen it. You can have seen it? I can have seen it. I can have seen it. Well, I think whichever is fine. All right. Okay.

Now that we've figured that out. The big sleep. You've seen high noon before? I have seen high noon. God damn it. I can have seen. You know what? If you had a sun, this wouldn't be a problem.

It's true, but I don't have one, as you all know, and it's the Pledge Drive. So I'm going to give this a little extra juice. Griffin, are you ready for this? I want you to sit down. Griffin, I want you to sit down because the audience, everyone, we're all going to literally, it's going to be an explosion from both our buttholes and our penis holes. And just talking to, I'll be honest, guys, I zoned out for like nine seconds there, and I don't know why we're about to scream from our penises.

Okay. I'm about to do my catchphrase. Hold on, Jordan. I'll set it up again. And if whoever's produced at Jordan, Jordan, if you're editing this, throw in the Christopher Nolan, Bois.

I, just so you know, I have three kids who always hog the television. So my cue is like every movie ever, Griffin. I'm waiting to see anything. But my friend Jordan over here watches everything. he would be like me if he had a son. I got to get a son.

Oh, I'm working on it. He's working on it, folks. Maximumfund.org slash join. Wow, works it, good. org slash join. La La La La La La La La go, I am Jesse Thorne, America's Radio Sweetheart. Jordan Morris, boy,

detective. Griffin McGrath, Big Books, boy. Griffin, your new book is what they call a space adventure book. It's true. This is set on a spaceship. It's a young man who's in the cargo hold. He wakes up, and he's

got to figure out why there doesn't seem to be anyone else on the ship, except for one guy who seems frankly a little bit like a car YouTuber. He has car YouTuber vibes. Big vibes, yeah. And of course, Jordan, I know that you are playing for the Cleveland Guardians. Yes. That's something we haven't talked about a lot. Yes and, Jesse. Yes, and. And so I thought that I would bring the two of you a little gift. Oh, my God, I love a gift. I know probably in the, you working in the field of space adventure, Griffin, you probably know a lot about Star Wars.

Oh, sure. And that's definitely how people say it, by the way. Yeah. Star Wars. Star Wars. Star Wars characters have incredible names. They're drawn from imagined cultures all over the galaxy. And professional baseball players have some remarkable names, too, although they are mostly from Tampa.

So this is a game called Home Run, Kessel Run, or Homespun Fun. Love it. God dang, you guys are good at that. I know. I didn't do it. This is all in just, he's crazy. He's the one who's good. Well, I mean, the names of the boca,

like you guys are just really strong namers. I feel like I'm, I feel like I ran out of names like five years ago and you guys are still cranking out like multiple names for app. It's insane. You pumped out Henry and then it was done. That I was, well, I did have another son after that, and I don't know how much pumping out of them I did.

That's how you described sun-having, right? Sun pumping. Griffin, the way this game works, the way this games work is I will give you three names. One of them will be a Star Wars character. One of them will be a real professional baseball player. And one will be some shit that I just made up. Okay. So Griffin, you're first here.

Here are your three choices. Are you ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Dub, Glead, Kit Flisto, and Flur. and flirt bim boss. Okay. Kit Fisto, I know, is Star Wars.

And I know that that's not, uh, my competitive spirit in bits like this always does run up against my, uh, spirit that wants to make a funny, like a bit like a joke. It wants to entertain the audience. Like to entertain the audience, but instead I'm just like, that, that hindbrain part of me is like, Kit Fistow Star Wars. Time to win. Say it. Time to win. Get the points.

But Kit, Kit Fisto is from, is from Star Wars. and then dub gleed I think I feel like dub gleed is a home run and I feel like the other one that you said is a home spun fun Flart Bimboss I think Flart Bimboss is homespun fun Jesse

Griffin three out of three for you Dubbleed is a third baseman for the single A Vancouver Canadiens Kit Flistow I mean you already know this Griffin but he's a not a land Jedi master from Glee and Selm. And I think it's Fisto, right? Are you saying Flistow?

I think it's, is it Fistow or Fistow? Listen, I almost did the same thing. Correcting someone on the pronunciation of a Star Wars character's name is like the ultimate geek check, like, they'll get you good. I almost fell for it. You could take that back if you want the Fistow thing. I am taking it back. Stay out of my mentions.

Okay. Are you ready for yours? Stay the fuck out. Are you ready for yours, Jordan? Yes, I am. Thank you. Coleman Trevor. Okay.

Narciso Crook. Okay. Or court officer. So Narciso Crook seems very Star Wars to me. Seems like kind of an on the nose name that, you know, George would come up with for, yeah, like a space bandit or something. Can I get the, can I get one and three again? Coleman Trevor. Okay.

And court officer. Coleman Trevor does not seem that unusual to me. me, that seems just like a name, but maybe that's the red herring. Okay, so I think I'm... You can also tell me the color of the herrings. Yes, got to be red. But I think I'm not, I'm going to try and not overthink this. I think it is, uh, first one baseball player. Mm-hmm. Two, Star Wars three made up. That's zero out of three for you, Jordan. Coleman Trevor is of course, and the audience, you can say this along with me. He's a Verk Jedi master from the planet Sambia.

Huh. Okay, that's interesting because I'm... I felt so certain that it wasn't going to be that one because I didn't think the name Trevor could exist in Star Wars. I don't know. I feel like that's a wild one to sneak in it. I mean, it's a surname, so it means one who Treves. Okay.

Yeah, no, but I mean, there's no Joshes in Star Wars. Do you know what I mean? It just seems like he's, I don't know. Narciso Crook hit 19 homers and stole 28 bases for the Gastonia ghost peppers and court officer is just that's like a bailiff I just read that off a patch on the arm

of my bailiff outfit from Judge John Hodgman while I was trying to think of the hands I'm gonna come back from this is it over okay are you ready Griffin? Might be no it goes on way too long Oh good awesome so it's a quiz from this show yeah you ready more three more

than we should have had maybe cut two yeah you ready hit me you ready Griffin okay absolutely Zet Jukasa Jets Williams or Get Shorty. Okay. Well, it kind of feels like maybe when it came time to homespun up some of these names, you decided instead to go find more Star Wars and baseball guys.

And that led you to naming some of them after stuff that was just in the room that you were in. Because I know that you always keep a DVD or Blu-ray of Get Shorty within eyesight of wherever you are at all times. A VHS and a paperback of the boys. I believe, give me one and two again, because it's not get shorty. Zet Jukasa and Jett Williams. Jet Williams. Jet Williams. Oh, man, I hate when it feels like I'm being tricked.

Jet Williams. Jet Williams is baseball. Zet Jukasa is Star Wars. Once again, three out of three for Griffin. Oh, my God. Zet Jukasa is a deadly Padawan played in the prequels by George Lucas's son, who was probably did the best acting in the prequels. I don't know if you've seen the prequels.

Jet Williams is an outfielder who spent most of last year with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. Yep. And of course, Get Shorty is a fun Elmore Leonard novel made into a fun movie starring the great John Travolta.

Okay. Is John Travolta bad? Don't remember. Probably not. Just crazy. Scientologist, I guess. Yeah. Okay.

You ready, Jordan? You're down six to nothing. right now. Sorry, I didn't mean the... No, I feel bad about it. It sucks that I laughed. No, no, no. That was out of pocket.

I'm sorry. Don't worry, there's a thousand questions left to catch up. Listen, we'll be here for another 90 minutes. Santo Falcon. Commander Cody. Uh-huh. Commander Cody. Oh, boy.

One is a Cody with a C and one is a Cody with a K? I think they're both spelled with a C. I don't know if the... I don't know if the Star Wars one is spelled out. Uh-huh. Give me our first one again? Santo Falcon. Okay, so I think Santo Falcon is baseball.

I think Commander Cody is Star Wars, and I think Commander Cody is made up somehow. I don't know what your logic for that is, but... Santo Falcon is, of course, an outfielder who last played for the GCL Nationals. Okay. So that's one. Commander Cody is a clone trooper from Camino, genetically identical to Django Fet. And then Commander Cody is the leader of Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen, who are best known for their 1971 hit, Hot Rod Lincoln.

Man, oh, we got a game, baby. We got a game. We got a game. We got a game. Look out Griffey. Yeah, no, I'm definitely feeling the pressure. How much is riding on this, by the way? Everything.

Everything. Oh, shit. Actually, all the listeners out there said, Griffin, that if you win, they'll go to maximum fun.org slash join. But if Jordan wins, they'll go to maximum fun.org slash join. If I win, they'll go to dachshepard.com slash join. Throw daxie a couple bucks.

What's great about, what's great about Dax Shepherd is, you know, he doesn't know anything. Right. He's learning along with you. That's what makes the show good. Yeah. I would love to be an empty man because then like everything that happens to me is like, Like, is no word. Like, I'm growing.

I've never, I've never heard of it before. Yeah. He was also pretty good on Parenthood. Okay. The TV show. Okay. Are you ready? It's back to you, Griffin.

You're leading six to three. And without a paddle. That's my favorite Dax Shepherd project. Sure. Possibly directed by Bob Odenkirk. I think that was directed by Bob Odenkirk without a paddle. That's a fun. That's fun.

Okay. Are you ready, Griffin? Oh, yeah. Blimbofen. Sorry. I was going to say the meter on that could not be correct. Blimphoben Gorero

Blimphoben-Gorero That's one name Quinlan Voss Yeah Joe Hamper Arindal I've heard the second name But I'll be honest

I don't remember if it was in a baseball context or a Star Wars context Or if it was the name of an old John Travolta movie There's precedent for all of these You're thinking of staying alive movie staying. Dang, you're right.

It's possible George Wolfe is not in that. Voss, I want to say, is Star Wars. Quinlan Voss. Quinlan Voss sounds very memorable to me, and I probably remember more Star Wars stuff than baseball stuff. And then, God, Joe Hamper is a really, I want Joe Hamper to be real so bad

that I'm going to say that that's a baseball player. Three out of three. I made up Blimphobin Guerrero. Quinnland Voss is, and again... You struggled the most to read the one you made up. Yeah. Well, I switched it around a little bit right before it. In real time.

Yeah. Okay. Quinlan Voss is, of course, a Maverick Jedi Master who can read memories from objects. Some of these... You type in one of these names, you know? Yeah. You click on that first link 40 pages long. Sure.

A lot of lore there. Joe Hamper Arundall, possibly Joe Hamper, it's Ph. I think it's Joe Hamper, was a center fielder who was a 2018 All-Star in the Dominican Summer League. Amazing. Well done. Good work for him. Okay. Back to you, Jordan.

Thank you. The score is 9 to 3. This one's probably worth, each one's worth double points this time. Ooh, cool. It sucks. Here's your choices. Dingo bingo. You ready?

Yeah. Dingo bingo. Uh-huh. Ben Casperius Eno Cardova Okay I think Ben Casperius sounds Star Warsy to me

I mean you know It's like it's a first name But we got a Ben and oh Maybe they wouldn't do Ben again Say him again I'm because there is a Ben There's a Ben Yeah

It might be pronounced Bean Okay Say them give me Give me all three again Dingo bingo Dingo Bingo Bean Casperius

Okay Just trying out that pronunciation. Eno Cardova. Okay. Eno Cardova, Star Wars. Bean or Ben Casperius baseball? First one made up. Dingo Bingo?

Yeah. The most memorable of all three? You're absolutely correct. You're tied with Griffin. You're now tied with Griffin. Dingo Bingo I made up. Ben Casperius is a relief pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, although as of this recording,

he has an earned run average of 7.36. So he might be a relief pitcher for the Oklahoma City Comet soon. That's the AAA affiliate of Los Angeles Dodgers. Is that not a good? That would be a demotion. Sounds bad. That would be a demotion. No, I get that that would be a demotion.

7.36 earned run average. Yeah, it's a terrible earned run average. And then Eno Cardova, I do not have any record of his earned run average, but I can't tell you, he's a Jedi archaeologist who specializes in the ancient force-sensitive Zepho civilization. also the fifth Marx brother, by the way. He has been called... Funnyer than he got credit for. Yeah, called the unsung hero of the Star Wars universe

by no less than the website neosabers.com. Neosabers.com called him that. Pretty cool guy. Griffin, this is the final question. So this is a tie game right now. If I get any of them right, yeah, I just have to not fully blank out. If you get any of these right,

literally every listener in our audience is going to go to MaximumFund. or join and become a supporter of this program and probably of all three of your programs. Are you ready? Okay. Yeah, I mean, no pressure. Deppa Bilaba, Skylar Hayes, Torgan Niphaven. Talk it out.

Say that first name again again. Talk it out. Say the first name again for me, but say it five times. Deppa Blabba. Depa Blabba. Depa Bilaba. Depa Bilaba. Depa Bilba.

Depa Blaba. Toy boat. Toy boat. Okay, so Skyler is a, that's a real, that's a real person's name. Did you know that there was a year, the year 2007, when every baby in Tampa was named Skyler. That's interesting. No, I didn't know that, but it's a good, I would say context clue for me to say that it's a baseball player. And then the Star Wars character is the one that's not Dempa Blamba.

So you think Torgon Niphaven is the Star Wars? character. Wait, no, actually, hold on, wait. No, because you came up with that name for sure. The first, Blempa is a Star Wars character. Niphaven, you made up. I think that Griffin just ran the table, Jordan. Deppa Balaba is a wise and powerful Chalacta Jedi Master known for her mastery of the VAPAD lightsaber technique. Wow. This is a particularly difficult technique from what I understand. It's pronounced vape pad, and it's when you install a cart

like in the side of the vape. If you actually ask at Disney World when you do like the lightsaber building experience, they will let you put the vape attachment on this. They're cool. Skylar Hayes is a relief picture for the Frisco Rough Riders. Torgon Niphaven

is the president of that one part of Copenhagen where you can do any drug. Hell yeah. Awesome. Congratulations, man. I'm so proud of you. I mean, congratulations to all of us

because now people are going to go to maxwindfund.org slash join and support us in the max fund drive. That's awesome. Speaking of which, Jordan, speaking of which, let's talk for a second about the max fund drive. I love to.

I like to talk about that. Okay, so here's the reality of the situation. Okay. You hear the occasional advertisement on Jordan, Jesse, Go. Yeah. As many as, but often fewer than. two advertisements in a given episode.

But the reality is that the thing that allows us to pay Jordan Cowling, the thing that allows us to pay for this studio, thing that allows Gabe Mara to be paid, who's on the boards right now. Oh, yeah. And the thing that allows Griffin McElroy to be paid, Griffin, you're getting paid for this appearance, baby. I don't know if you knew that.

I definitely didn't. Are you, is this a bit? No, you're really getting paid. We pay our guests now on the Jordan Jesse. go. We like to, you know, we, that's something that, you know, that the Max Fund member helps with. We figure that this show is, uh, you know, not fun and a time suck and hurts your career as much as it helps it. Yeah.

So, by the way, we pay our guests on the Jordan Jesse go. We also now call it the Jordan Jesse go. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So yeah. So we, uh, you know, it's, it, it's nice that all the folks, uh, who make this show get paid. It's really cool.

Not always the case with, uh, internet-based. companies. So yeah, it's really cool. Maximumfund.org slash join to make sure all the MaxFund shows keep coming. Again, your membership doesn't go into, you know, doesn't go into some stockholders pocket. It goes back to making the shows. And yeah, and that's not the case with all subscriptions. So please subscribe. We appreciate it.

It means a lot. Your five bucks a month really genuinely helps this operation. I want to say this. Yes. So maximum fund runs all of our business crap. They pay for all of our business crap. That's why they get a little bit of the money that when you go to maximum fund.org slash join.

Stuff that we would have to pay someone to do, maximum fund is running. They're running our overhead in our administration and sending out the gifts and buying the gifts and all this different stuff. When you become a member, 70% of the money goes to the shows that you listen to, directly to the shows that you listen to. That 30%, by the way, Maximum Fund, a worker-owned cooperative. I mean, it's not just that it's not going to tech gazillionaires. It is going directly to the workers who work at Maximum Fund.

100% worker-owned cooperative now. And all of Maximum Fun shows are owned by their talent, including Jordan Jesse Goh, including all of the McElroy family's shows. And that means that when you support the shows, you're directly supporting the people who make them. Jesse, you mentioned gifts back there. Yeah, let's get into these gifts.

Fifts, huh? I love gifts. Obviously, you support the show. This is the paper anniversary. You get all that sweet bonus content, hundreds and hundreds of hours. At $10 a month, you get a beautiful show-specific keychain that you select. You pick your favorite show and you get that show's keychain. Our keychain this year is a tribute to our dinosaur contest we had where we picked a king of the dynos.

So our keychain has a beautiful blue brontosaurus. How come, Griffin, how come on none of your shows are you doing public service work? It doesn't pay the bills, dude. Doesn't pay the bills. Well, we like to... It does if you turn it into a keychain. We like to give back. I guess that's true.

It does explicitly pay the bills. I've never really thought... It occurred to me the other day. I don't have to put this keychain on my keys. Yeah. I can hang it off some other shit. Your erection. Yeah.

Just draping over the erection. Yeah, I got a key ring-sized penis. One of your... One of your mini guns. Just... Put it on your day. Like it's a call a duty flare. I was kind of thinking backpack.

Backpack works, too. Yeah. But, yeah. there's a lot of other cool gifts you can get for various pledge levels. Go to maximum fund.org slash join. You can check out all of that stuff. But yeah, I have a question for, I have a question for our friend Griffin. Well, we have our friend Griffin here.

Please. Griffin, we're, I don't want to say failures. Let's say barely getting by. Okay. Some of your work is moderately successful. Sure. And you've been part of Maximum Fund for a really, really long time. Why are your shows part of Maximum Fun? We joined Maximum Fun in 2011,

which is 15 years ago, which is kind of insane. That's the paper anniversary, if I'm not mistaken. I think it might be the paper anniversary. You know what? Check your mailbox. There's a ream in there for you, buddy. We've been doing it for a while and we've been able to turn it into our jobs, our careers, we built our lives around the stuff that we make. And I don't, I mean, we, we know a lot of other people who are making podcasts for, you know, different places. We've made podcasts for, for, different places that are not sort of on Max Fun, none of which I think are currently, currently rocking. So, like, I feel like I can pretty authoritatively say that there is not really another entity out there, like Max Fun that

gives the people who make their stuff the amount of like freedom and ownership. Like there really isn't. I feel like I know the score at a lot of other places pretty intimately and it really does kick ass here in a very unique and special

way. I guess I gotta say this, right? There have been these sort of cycles in podcasting and occasionally one of those cycles involves super rich people backing up money trucks with weird deals to sell your soul. And I went through, I got a few entreaties from these people about Max Fun, not about Jordan Jesse Goh, nobody wants

to buy that. Of course not. But about Max Fun. I'm sure that, I'm sure that Griffin got a few of these entreaties about his three shows. And I would guess that the reason that none of those shows are, you know, productions of Joe Rogan Incorporated right now is kind of the same as the reason that I never, I never really wanted to sell to one of these big investor types. And ultimately, when I needed to sell, we transformed Max Fund into a worker-owned cooperative. It's that like in-show business, you know,

which is, of course, the business that we're in. We're roughly comparable to like John Hamm. where it counts Celine Dion Talent You've seen that guy's dick You've seen that guy's dick in his sweatpants It is like sometimes

Sometimes something happens And somebody is like there to give you a bunch of money Yeah And then a year later You're canceled Not canceled because you like sexually harassed somebody But your work is canceled You no longer own it

You can't do it anymore And you just have to go become a barista and I felt that way about Max Fun. I was like, if I sell Max Fun, I know day one, I might get some good money for it, but like day one, half the staff is going to get fired. 40% of the shows are going to get canceled. I was like, I don't want to do that. The purpose of Max Fun always was whether you have a small thing, a medium thing,

or a large-ish thing, that it is a sustainable enterprise where you get paid for your work directly and you get to do it in a context where you're supported and cared about and, you know, there's a community of audience members that are there to back you up. And that is very meaningful to me. And that is what has kept us in the game for the 15, 20-ish years that Max Fund has existed. It's that we never, we never took that, you know, dump truck full of weird money that had, you know, from the United Arab Emirates or whatever, you know, like we have built something that is sustainable in the long term and that actually benefits the people who work on it rather than benefiting someone who wrote a check at the beginning. And if you think that that is a good

way to make media, I would say become a member of maximum fun. I know that this is a dumb show. Look, we know this is a dumb show. We make the show. We hear every, episode, it comes from our mouths. We hear what we say. But we also know that the fact that it has stuck around, that it is decent-hearted, that it is a comfort in tough times, that it is funny and warm, and the things that we really try and imbue into Jordan Jesse Goe. And decent, just like we try and be decent, is meaningful to you.

And if that's something that's meaningful to you, I hope that you will go to maximum fund.org slash join and become a member. There's a link in the show description. It's there for you. And if you're already a member, think about bumping it up. You know what? I was watching a service called Home Box Office Maximum the other day. I got a promo for an upcoming television show.

You know, it had like a little British kids with magic sticks. Sure. And I said to myself, later for you. assholes. Yeah. You know what I mean? Is it late? Yeah.

See you, Arliss. Yeah. You don't need my $8 anymore. And if you've done something like that or you thought about it, maybe kick that money over to Max Fun. Maximum Fun.org. We would love it if you went there now. We'll be back in just a second on Jordan Jesse Go.

La La La La. It's Jordan Jesse Go. I'm Jesse Go. America's Radio sweetheart, Jordan Morris Boy, detective. Griffin Macrae are Big Buck's Boy. He's the Big Buck Boy. He's the coming to town.

We all take a different song. That's cool. It lends itself to so many genres. Oh, the Big Buck's boy is coming to town. He's looking for a soul to steal. It was sort of a Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airman version. I mean, I know that it was a devil that came down. But when you're talking about country songs

slash Roots Rock songs with recitative at their heart, you're going to be talking about Charlie Daniels band, and of course Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airman and their 1971 hit, Hot Rod Lincoln. Okay, yes. All of that is something. Sure. Words all. When something, you know what, let's hold the momentous occasion for a moment.

Okay. Because we got something special in the hopper. Oh, special. Ooh. Griffin, I don't know if you have this experience. but our listeners' partners hate the show. Oh. They won't listen to it.

They don't care for us. They love their partners. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But they disagree on our show. So our partners, you know, our listeners, they listen with the headphones in. Yeah. They're not allowed to listen on the phone speaker in the kitchen.

This isn't a universal condition. There are loving partnerships that have been brought together by Jordan Jesse Go. We assume. We think. probably. Law of large numbers, there's got to be someone. Yeah, even when the numbers aren't that large, as in the case of Jordan Jesse.

However, however, however, for every loving couple brought together by their passion for Jordan Jesse Go who goes on road trips to Zion National Park listening to Jordan Jesse Go, there are also partners who simply don't care for the program. We have asked them to call us and tell us

why so that we can make improvements. We love feedback. We're kind of like, that's great. We're kind of like a roundtable pizza or Burger King. Was it Domino's? Who fixed, who changed there? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Those ad campaigns were like, Domino's fixed their piece. It was pretty bad. Roundtable pizza is perfect. Down, have you? Domino's pizza. Yeah, go ahead, Griffin. Do you have a plan for like,

what if the feedback is about something pretty integral to sort of your being or the structure of this? Like, what if the feedback is, like we don't, your guy's energy is just, we don't love, we don't love. I'm a chameleon. I'm kind of a Jason born type figure. So,

I'll change my energy. Yeah. Okay. I can talk like this. How would you talk, Jordan? What's, my new energy? Hey, Jordan, can't? A new Jordan, can I ask you a question? Oh, sure you can't. Do you have any daughters? My daughter, I'm working on it.

See? This is a whole new vibe. Good show. That's super strong. It's a really good show. That's why everyone likes it. And I'll probably just become a man influencer. Yeah. I've been chewing on really hard to chew gum to improve my jawline.

Griffin, do you feel like couples listen to your show together, or is it a, you know, this is one person's special thing? You have a loving couple's show. That's no fair. We do have a loving couple's show, and that is, like, pretty exclusively couples listen to it. I don't get a lot of, like, I, Can't stand your show shit. We do get a lot of like bewildered partners coming to like a live show or something like that.

Yes, yes. Especially because like, I'm sure you all are familiar with this doing the, you know, your live shows and Judge John Hodgman and what have you. That if you don't know what's going on, that's a weird public event to be at. So that hits people in a strange way. But the animosity you're describing is, I would say, foreign to me in my experience. And ours is a, it's a relatively benign animosity. People aren't contemptuous or hateful. Sure.

I would say it's sort of in between that and confused. Well, I think we're going to learn this now. I think we've put out this. The reality is this, Griffin, not all librarians with tattoos are married to other librarians with tattoos. So there's going to be some disagreements about Jordan Jesse go within loving couples. I understand. So this is a spouse who called in was. nice enough to let us know how we could be better slash different. Okay.

Okay, Ashley, why don't you like Jordan Jesse go? I think my main issue is that it kind of like sounds like a dumb show. Like if you just walk off the street and you come in and you hear it, it sounds dumb. Yeah. And it makes me think maybe you might be dumb because you listen to it. I know you're not. I don't think you're dumb. Okay. But I also get it mixed up with the dough boys. They sound like a dumb bro podcast. And then you made me watch it and they're not dumb, but...

It just sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between when someone sounds dumb versus when they actually are. Right. But you like the McElroy's. Yeah, that's true. So where's the line between them? I didn't like them at first though. I didn't like them at first because they sound dumb. Yeah.

And I had to get over. like feeling dumb listening to it. Okay, well, there you have it. That's fair. Yeah, I'm concerned about... Other than the blinker noise? Perfect call. Yeah.

Yeah, a really, really good call. I hope you enjoyed your left turn. Yeah. That call took a real left turn, Griffin. Only fucking dorks use their turn signal. I just rip it to the side. No warning. Why use hand signals like I learned in driver's ed?

Oh, thank you. Sure. Like a responsible cyclist. I have to say this. She's not wrong. No. Yeah, we're dumb. Reasonable.

She's not wrong. Bros, I would push back on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would not do this to your own defense, perhaps. So maybe it's good that I'm here. You guys are so extraordinarily not bros. Just from a taxonomical sort of standpoint, like, you simply aren't. I've said this many times.

I'm artsy. I just want to be clear. I'm artsy. You're closer to artsy than you are to a bro. For sure, for sure. I'm a little fartzy. A little bit. I've been eating a lot of beans. I got some good complex carbohydrates and a lot of fiber. You're turning back towards bro, man. With this line. Yeah. What you're talking about? Sorry, talking macros. Talking about diet maxing. Yeah, but I mean, I get how if you hear a snippet of the show or a segment of the show, it's like, these are just like podcast guys, you know? They're not wrong to confuse us with the dough boys either. I mean, we're not talking about anything. So in that sense,

our show is worse. Right. We don't have an appealing premise. When people hear, they're like, oh, that sounds fun. So yeah, we don't have that. But yeah, I mean, I get it. I get where this, where this caller's coming from. And yeah, I mean, it sounds like, you know, she went on a journey with the McElroy's, maybe had some of those similar feelings, but then once she got to know you, got to know your soul. Right. You know, she came around and kind of got a little more what you were doing. You know, the smartless guys have had a lot of success.

Should we change our thing to smartful? I think so. That's cool. Smart thing of the day could be the first thing that happens in an episode in case a spouse hears it. And I would say the only other thing you should change is that you have been super famous already. Yes. that you already will have been, have been in the past super famous,

like, I don't know, like 20 years ago even. So people go, oh, the guy from Will & Grace. When they see our show or they hear about it. Do you have a question for you, Griffin? Yeah, sure, sure. Jordan is a zaddy. The internet is established that Jordan is a zaddy. Yeah, let's go with that.

Should I be handsomer? Hmm. I mean, my blanket answer to this is, couldn't hurt. It's really annoying. Justin has gotten much handsomer over the last couple of years. I've noticed that. And I'm going to be honest, your claim to fame in the McElroy's was you were the cute one.

You were sort of the McCarty of the group. And Justin has gotten very handsome. Travis is doing his own thing. Travis has always been a looker. And Justin, I mean, we've all, there are special boys in my heart. And I'm not going to talk any yay about them. How would you rank them? In terms of handsomeness, am I including myself in this ranking?

No, rank them overall. Just Travis and Justin. Who's number one? Who's number two? Who do you love more? Who do you love? Who do I love more? It depends on the day.

Listen, three good-looking brothers, if we're doing fuck marry-kill, I'm going to fuck all three, all right? Thank you very much. All right. Excellent. And I would never marry you because you're already married. That's true, yeah. Well, we'd be begging, too.

We'd be begging for it. And I'm saying, nope, you get. tie this hog down. But we'll fuck for sure. Jordan, fucking all three of them is big of you, but you're not into big of me. No,

you can't tie this hog down. Trying out a new catchphrase. Kind of getting tired of the sun one, honestly. This one's gonna make us sound smarter. I like this one. Yeah, I think this will help. You can't tie this hog down.

Anyway, we got a momentous occasion in there, I think, right? Yeah, when something, momentous happens to you like you finally tie Jordan's hogged down. You can't do it. Send it to us in a voice memo at JJGo at maximum fun.org or you can give us a call

206-9844 fund. Do not do it while operating a vehicle or heavy machinery. No, don't. That's just not safe. Safe. This woman thinks we're dumb. She's turning left. Yeah. Yeah. She sounded bright though. She seemed like she had the bright out. A lot of great points

about the show. A lot of good thoughts about the show. Should we do something more to distinguish ourselves? from the doughboys. I mean. Hi, Jordan. Hi, Jesse. Hi, guest. Maybe Chris Fleming?

I don't know. Anyway, this is Brooke calling in with a momentous occasion. I work in a bookstore and I was shelving when I heard a customer say, oh man, I just watched all of the Lord of the Rings movies today.

And his friend said, oh yeah, those are better than the Hobbit movies. And then his friend replied, no, I have to discus agree with you, man. And the moment's occasion is that I didn't immediately turn around and ask that customer if he was on crack. I'm proud of myself. Thanks. Bye. You know what? I've been reading this Hobbit book. Yeah. It's called The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkien, about a Hobbit with my youngest child, Frankie. This fucking book's great. No wonder, no wonder people have loved this. No wonder every nerd since

1970 has loved this fucking shit. This guy that he's going to run. There's two-page long songs that have no melody and I have to make up a song while I read it to my child. There's like a chapter about a strange hamburger that they make in their little holes. It's great. It totally rips, though. Griffin, you done Lord of the Rings with the kids? No, man, they don't really want to watch any live action films. And the books are probably a little too heady.

I don't know. I rewatch the Lord of the Rings movies maybe every couple years or so for whatever reason. and I associate it with the holidays, an association I used to lend to the British stick children movies, but now has been supplanted. And there's a lot of- You're watching men movies now. Men who have sticks.

And there's a lot of cutting dudes heads off and like stabbing them in ways that when you're like 16 years old, you're like, fuck yeah. But when you're eight, probably you're like, this is too, this is too. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to know little kids like forced perspective. They do?

Little kids love it. So that's a big advantage. I know they are, they are much, much derided, except for maybe by this one guy in this one's bookstore. And by the way, wild that we have a listener who works in a bookstore. I never thought I was doing it. This is not adding up. It works in a bookstore, huh? And I will say those Hobbit movies not as good as the Lord of the Rings movies.

I think everyone would say that. I kind of like them. I think they're kind of cool. I like how the dwarves watch the dishes. That's a whole part. That's a big part of the story. the movie. Watch more dishes.

They make too much noise for Billbo, but it turns out they did a pretty good job. They did a pretty good job. Yes, Griffith. I watched him once, and I'm still kind of waiting on Tofer Grace to get his hands on him to, like, do his own sort of cut, his own sort of tighter cut.

That's the service he provides me. Obviously, he did all the Star Wars prequels, and everyone knows about that. But for me, personally, I reached out to him on Cameo, and I was like, cake when you do like maybe a few of the more recent Transformers movies. I'm falling way behind and he put it together a tight little 85 minute presentation. I actually, it's helpful in that way.

I know Tofer too. I reached out to him through Cameo. Yeah. The funk band behind Candy, you dropped a bomb on me and so forth. And it's been really great. Me, him, and Larry Blackman, the front man of the band Cameo, like to hang out a lot.

together. We're a likely trio. Let's do this. Should we reach out to Tofer? Take a little break. Come back for some more? Yeah. You know what, Griffin, can I give you a piece of advice? Sure, sure. You want to watch those movies with your kids? Mm-hmm. Just everybody gets blazed. Everybody gets blazed.

Right. We'll be back in just a second on Jordan Jesse Go. La La La La La. It's Jordan Jesse Go. I'm Jesse Go. I'm Jesse Go. I'm Jesse. Thorne, America's Radio Sweetheart, Jordan Morris, boy, detective. Griffin McRoy, Big Bucks boy. Forgot it for a second, but I got back on. That's okay, big bucks. The bucks are big, baby. Yeah, man.

You know what? I'm a big buck hunter, and I think I'm going to score me a big buck boy. I like those big bucks. I cannot lie. Don't ask me to lie. You would never. The Lord will strike me down, should I lie about big bucks? The Lord will strike me down should I mix fibers.

Oh, well, don't. do it then. No, will wool clothing, yes, cotton clothing, yes, but never the twain shall meet. No, let's not meet. They shan't. They shan't, Griffin. As long as, if it's a crop top, if the shirt's a crop top and it doesn't actually touch the pants, then the Bible says that's okay.

I'm not worried about that because all my shirts are crop tops. So a wool shirt and cotton pants is how I usually go. You do the work, you might as well show it off. Oh, man, yeah. Remember when that caller called in, I get a question about comedian Chris Fleming. Sure. We should book comedian Chris Fleming on. George Jesse.

That's a good idea. I watch Chris Fleming's special with my daughter. Chris Fleming is a stand-up comedian who dances the whole time. And very funny. Chris Fleming, very funny. Here's my question. How this guy's not out of breath? How is this guy like full-on Janet Jackson when it comes to dancing around and doing

jokes at the same time? Yeah, yoga and deep breathing probably. The other thing that really impressed me about this Chris Fleming special, as I said, Chris Lemming's doing little dances the whole fucking time. Yeah. This is a new style of stand-up comedy Chris Fleming. which is sleeveless jumpsuit, do little dances. And it's great.

It's real funny. I want to be clear about that. I'm about 25 minutes into this hour and five minutes special or whatever. This guy does the moonwalk. Wow. He's so confident in his other dance moves that he can do the moonwalk in the first third. Yeah. Can't even imagine that level of just having that energy.

It seems outrageous to me. He's running around the entire time. Maybe that's what we should be doing. I get tired from like running on stage when the theme song, by the time I hit my chair, I'm usually like pretty winning. Yeah, time to lay down. There's stairs to the studio. I got to come up five minutes early to catch my breath.

Yeah. I think, you know what? This is a bad show, but I think we got some good tips to make it better. We got a lot. Yeah, we got a lot of good tips. If you want to see a brighter future for Jordan, Jesse, go go to maximum fund. We just have to keep it going a little longer and we'll figure it out. We need sleeveless jumpsuits.

Sure. We need probably those kind of headset microphones. Like a Madonna's. Longer quizzes. This is the feedback that we've been getting from most everyone. They're like seven is not enough questions. Well, yes. Thank you. Hey. We're talking about keeping the show going. You got to do that. You got to do it. Maximumfund.org slash join. Yes, Jessica. Can I say this?

Yeah. One reason I'm glad that we're friends with Griffin. My three children, the main thing that they complain about, is that I get excited when I hear the voice of someone I know on Bob's Burgers, right? This is the main thing. We watch Bob's Burgers. I'm like, oh, my God, there's Andy Kindler, or whatever, right? Right.

I like these people and they're talented. I know that professionally. We're not close friends, but I know that. It's great. I'm so excited that someone I know is on television, and I think they deserve it because they're all so great. You know what the only thing that has ever impressed me, impressed them is? I know one of the guys from the Adela.

Adventure Zone. Oh, yeah. I don't know the other brothers. I don't know the other brothers or Clint, by the way. Never met them before in my life. Yeah, yeah. This is the one thing that has impressed my children. I keep you, I keep you guys separated

because I don't want there to be like, I don't know, I don't want them to seize the throne or whatever. There's got to be a go-bitch. Well, you have a duchy and you want to pass that to your eldest child. Yeah, exactly. While we watched the Lord of the Rings movies. You've got to be blazed to really appreciate them. It's very exciting.

But you know what? Yeah. I was preparing to interview Griffin, which I did. interview with Griffin on Bullseye, this week or next. I can't remember which. And I had a great time interviewing Griffin about his smash hit, brand new book called The Stowaway. Choose Your Own Adventure, The Stow Away. And I was walking my dog up Radio Hill here in Los Angeles, Elysian Park.

Nice little walk. Don't have to change my shoes, it's paved. And I was listening to My Brother, My Brother, and Me. This is the podcast that started it all. Griffin, Justin and Travis McElroy, three guys giving bad advice to real advice questions and talking about press releases they got about snack products. And you know what I was thinking of myself, Jordan? These guys are so fucking funny.

They're hilarious. They're so fucking great. You know what their success is? Earned. Earned. Earned. Earned. Based on talent and hard work.

Yep. It is. Three of the funniest guys. Thanks, guys. Three amazing guys. That's sweet. amazing guys. We feel lucky to know them. I'm sure you do too as a listener now that you've heard now that you've heard some of the delightful, not just the delightful humor that Griffin has given us,

but the accurate quiz answers. The accurate. Yeah, I'm going to be riding high on that for a while. I never win the games on my own show. So it's a new and exciting sensation. When you get to dinner with your family tonight, you're going to say, a table. What a coincidence. I ran one of those. those earlier today. Just working it in whenever you can. Working it in. Listen, maximum fun.org slash join.

You keep this show going. You keep all Griffin shows going. All these great shows on the network. You get all kinds of bonus content. You get to hear our new upcoming show to be watched where we are going to watch movies that we hope to like. And we talk about them. Like high noon, maybe.

Maybe high noon. Listen, only one way to find out if we watch high noon. go to maximum fun.org slash join and yeah keep it coming it really it really means a lot and really means a lot that we can still be doing this show uh almost 20 years later and you know it doesn't take a whole boat load it doesn't we didn't take a whole smart list full of listeners to keep this thing going it just keeps a few sickos just a handful of loyal sickos who listen despite their partners hating it i mean i like something i'm speaking for you for a moment jordan please do i'm exhausted we've been doing this for we've been doing this for a we've been doing this for

a long time. And you were the, you were the first one among us to move to Los Angeles and work in show business. You had a fucking vision. You've worked so hard to make your place in show business as a, as a writer, as a performer, all around. And it has been incredible for me to watch a guy who is still doing the same shit he was doing when he was 19 because he's terrified to change. And it's so impressive to me. And the fact that you do Jordan Jesse Go has a if anything, been a hindrance to your other work. I think, you know, we live with the terror that someone who would ask you to write a book for them might listen to Jordan, Jesse Goe. Sure.

However, that having been said, show business is a motherfucker. And you have been through the fucking ringer. Like, you have had every kind of job, every kind of unemployment, every kind of great boss, every kind of shitty boss, every kind of job you really want to do. every kind of like thing that you desperately hope will lead to a different thing that you really want to do. And Jordan Jesse Go has been the like thrumming drumbeat behind that. That has, I think, ultimately allowed you to make the rest of your career. Like, even though nobody has ever said, like, I heard you on Jordan Jesse Go, let's write a movie. The fact that you have been able to make it through the fallow periods, thanks to the fact that people go to maximum fun.org

slash join and become members is really meaningful. Yeah, totally. And I think it's nice for everybody. I think, you know, everybody who posts shows on Max Fun has a variety of jobs. This is just the way things are now in 2026. And it is nice that the doing a maximum fun show isn't something you, like, go in the red for. And I think a lot of people start a podcast and it, you know, it's a time suck. It's a money suck.

So it's really nice that we can show up every week and do this and know that, you know, it's not going to hurt us in any way, except for maybe, you know, like socially. So, yeah, it's really, really nice that folks listen to the show still, and it's even nicer that they support it. It really means a lot, and I am happy to keep doing this show. It's always fun. I always have a great time laughing it up with my buddy, Jesse,

and our wonderful guests. And, yeah, I just, I love doing it, and I hope to keep doing it for the foreseeable future, maximum fun.org, slash joy. Griffin, I'm sure that you imagine that the rest of your career would be having people yell at you over video game reviews over yeah decimal decimal differences in what they would rate the latest tomb raider from what you would rate the latest tomb raider yeah i mean that was the dream but it did get it

did sour uh i would say towards the end of my my video games critic uh career uh but fortunately max phone was there to catch me in anette made of money that our members made that they wove together like so many like so many spiders so many spiders if you are pooping the silk of community yes from your butt the spider thing and run with it wind it together with your eight beautiful legs plug your spinneret into maximum fun.org slash join and blast off look into our compound eyes with your compound eyes we also have compound eyes we do too now Okay. Yeah.

How many legs do we have? There's so many. You know what? I've always said our listeners are a bunch of eight-legged freaks. All right. Hold on. A bunch of eight-legged freaks. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for all. Like David Arquette. Just like David Arquette. Okay. Maximumfund.org slash join Gabe Mara on the boards. Jordan Cowling is our producer. Our theme music is Love You by the Free Design, courtesy of the free design and light in the attic

records. Hey, join us. We are streaming every single. single day during the Max Fund Drive. So I hope that you will join us at 9 a.m. Pacific every single day for the subdoms, our subreddit themed show where we talk about. I think I'm, I think I got a few, I got a, I got a few good, I got a little doc going on. I can't wait to see.

I can't wait to see. I can't wait to see. To share with you. Maximumfund. org slash join is the place to become a member. And we'll talk to you next week. I'm Jordan Jesse Go. I'll love you and kiss you and love you.

Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Maximum Fun. A Worker Own Network of Artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.