Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - a holiday hello, and free bonus shows!

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Hey folks -- happy holidays! Please enjoy this holiday hello from Alex, plus two free bonus shows. Research links for bonus show #1, featuring guests Caitlin Gill and Andrew Ti: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-show-1-40113401 Research links for bonus show #2, featuring guest Katie Goldin: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-show-2-cow-40114297 To hear 70+ more bonus shows, follow this tagged link to the full list: https://www.patreon.com/sifpod?filters[tag]=bonus Have a safe and fantastic rest of 2021, and see you in 2022!

Hey, wow, it's Alex. Thank you for listening to that very professional music. Welcome to this holiday hello from me and from, you know, the podcast, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. And yes, this is a holiday hello that's a change to the usual programming schedule. There's a regular new episode next Monday, and there's been a regular new episode every Monday ever since this podcast launched, with two episodes on a Wednesday, actually, a ways back. But then there's been a regular episode every Monday. For a variety of reasons, I want to use this particular Monday to give you a holiday hello and give you a set of new-ish podcasts. The whole rest of this audio file that you have

downloaded or streaming or whatever else, the whole rest of this audio file is some podcast episodes that are new to almost all of you that I think you'll love. First things first, happy final Monday of 2021. There are a few more days left. None of them are Mondays. And, you know, let's have an amazing rest of this year. I also want to thank you for making my year amazing by making this show part of your 2021 and part of how you experienced it. Before I taped this, I was

sitting and I was looking at the little Christmas tree that we have, and I was being very, very, very, very glad that this podcast can exist because it can. It's awesome that a small handful of kind listeners are the whole reason I get to do this. It's the best. I also want to say thank you for the joy I get in making this thing. And I do make it. I have my friend Chris Souza, who I'm able to pay a bit to master the audio each week, which is improving and evening out the sound quality of what everybody taped before I go and edit it. Chris is awesome. A lot of what he does is not really noticeable, and that's kind of the point.

And so just very thankful to him for that. And then beyond that, it's me. There is not a large faceless company pooping this thing out. There's also not a huge team of producers or extra staff or something working on it. Occasionally I get emails that are addressed to Alex or his assistants.

One time I got one that was addressed to Alex's intern paid question mark, which I don't know. It's very funny to read that when I am reading it, Alex is reading it. Anyway, it's me. If somebody's talking to you from the accounts of this show, it's me. Obviously it's my voice on the mic, but I'm putting the whole thing together. And I'm finding a lot of joy in that, especially getting to do it for an audience like you folks. You make it fun. You are nice pen pals. You are nice people to be in touch with and to trade jokes with, art with, everything else. It's been a wonderful year. It's just been very warm and human. And it's even better than I could have expected when I started this and when it was in kind of the early stages of sending the early backers cards, if you folks remember that. This year of it, 2021, the first entire year of it ever, has been the best.

And so I want to say thanks. Thank you. has been the best. And so I want to say thanks. Thank you. Anyway, it is probably boring to just keep hearing me say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, you know, but I mean it a lot. And that's why I'm saying it. And this is also a pretty new show. I have already lightly calendared doing this again on the Monday that lands between Christmas and New Year's next year. Because I love being there every Monday with you. And also I think it is, like last year, I just went ahead and put out a full episode that day and worked through that holiday. This year, I want to pause and I want to breathe for a second. I want my gladness about this podcast to sink in for a bit.

And so that's what I'm doing this Monday. That's what's going on. So yeah, that's the holiday message. And the other thing to share here is new-ish podcasts for almost all of you. Because what you're about to hear, the rest of this file, is the first two bonus shows of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. There's a new bonus show for patrons every week. It's one additional story. It's obviously fascinating, and it connects to the main episode every week. For example, CifPod episode number one, if people remember,

it was about U.S. post offices. CifPod bonus show number one is about Americans mailing each other through the postal system, like humans attaching postage to themselves and being sent as mail. Then bonus show number two is about cow tools, because main episode number two was about cattle. Also, I re-listened to them, and I'm amazed how short they feel. The first one is like 10 minutes, the second one's longer, but from there, my bonus shows have gotten much longer, have gone deeper, have become, you know, more substantial. Also, these two bonus shows still hold up.

They're still great. And I was aiming for that. I wanted these podcasts to be built to last. Anyway, that means if you go to the Patreon right now, there are more than 70 other bonus shows just stacked up ready for you to hear. And I'm pretty sure you haven't heard any of them because I have the numbers, I have the math. Only a very small handful of listeners also back this show on Patreon. It's less than 10% of the audience. Honestly, it's a lot less. And so these bonus shows are new to almost all of you,

and I'm excited to share them with you. And if you sign up for the Patreon, you give yourself the gift of like 70 plus more of these and counting as the weeks go by. There's a new one every week. Every new patron makes a humongous difference. This is a very, very tiny, very, very independent podcast that is fully committed to good research and no weird sponsors. podcast that is fully committed to good research and no weird sponsors and just like a premium show that makes you feel good and also broadens your horizons, brightens your world. Also, huge shout out to the folks who are already supporting it and just kind of listen in the public feed anyway because they feel like it. Thank you, folks. You're awesome. So anyway, thank you again. Happy holidays. Have an amazing rest of 2021 and a safe celebration of 2022.

And please enjoy the first two bonus shows ever made of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. We made it. We made it to the bonus episode, which means we are enormously thankful to you because your donations make Secretly Incredibly Fascinating possible. And that's why you get a whole nother story here. It's great and it's weird and tangentially related to the episode. But these are almost always going to be something that is like pretty obviously interesting up front. And the topic of this is Americans mailing each other. Oh, man.

As in like putting people in the U.S. mail and sending it around. Yeah. Punch it. There's a weird thing where like among the many ways the post office was designed just to spread information initially, it was basically only private companies handling like packages and parcels until 1913. That was when the US mail started handling them. And they put in a rule starting in January 1913, post offices would take packages weighing more than four pounds. And we've got three different sources here, the Indianapolisstarhistory.com and Smithsonian,

all talking about how basically as soon as you could send packages, people started putting their kids in the mail. It was like immediate. In a heartwarming way or in a kids died kind of way?

Or both. I guess it can be both. Yeah, no recorded deaths here. So that's good news right up top. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't write those down. Yeah. Right. That's true.

But according to Nancy Pope, the head curator of history at the National Postal Museum, because we have one of those, quote, you had different towns getting away with different things depending on how their postmaster read the regulations. End quote. Pope has found seven instances of people mailing children between 1913 and 1915. In particular because railway mail was cheaper than a train ticket. So the first instance here is January 1913. As soon as you could send packages. is January 1913, as soon as you could send packages,

Jesse and Mathilda Beagle in Ohio mailed their infant son one mile to his grandmother's house, and it cost 15 cents. Just knocked it out. You know, one mile to grandma. Mailed an infant a mile. I can walk a mile. I've withered into a useless, atrophied husk, and I can walk a mile, even carrying a baby.

Come on. Did you say Beagle also? Yeah, and their last name is Beagle. So it sounds like a comedy bit, but it's not. That is incredible. How much do you hate your mother-in-law? That you're like, put the baby in the mail. I'm not going a mile down the road to see her.

Do you try it with like something, you know? Like a dozen eggs? Yeah, just what does happen to that box? Like a duck or something? A duck, a duck is perfect. A duck really is actually, yeah. There's also, there's another story here. February 1914, there was a four-year-old girl named Charlotte Mae Pearsdorf,

and she was mailed via train from her home in Grangeville, Idaho, to her grandparents' house 73 miles away. So they sent a kid 73 miles by train by mail instead of buying a receipt does that just sticking a stamp on a kid's forehead or like did they put a kid in a box i couldn't i couldn't so i couldn't find any real pictures of it the thing is like also at the time there were mailmen and people with babies doing like gag photos of a baby in a mail sack but every one of these pictures is labeled like obviously they were kidding this is not how the child was transported. But there's no information on how it really happened.

I don't know. No, that's a real question. I am genuinely asking, how were these children transported? It does feel like probably it's like, they're like, if the postmaster, it feels like that scene in Air Bud where it's like, well, there's no rule that says

you can't put a person in this thing. And then it feels like it had to have been, all right, I'll watch your f***ing kid. You found the loophole, you got me. Come on, kid. That is exactly what happened. Okay. That is a precise description of it.

Yeah. As soon as they put the rule in, in 1913, a Pennsylvania man wrote directly to the postmaster general of the United States, Frank Hitchcock. And he asked for advice on the very nice thing of he wanted to adopt a baby remotely and then receive the child. He wanted to help, but he wanted the child to be mailed to him and so he asked quote may i ask you what specifications to use in wrapping it so the baby would comply with regulations and be allowed shipment by parcel post as the express company are too rough in handling end quote and then the postmaster general uh like consulted with experts and put out this statement quote babies in the opinion of the postmaster general do not fall within the category of bees and bugs the only

live things that may be transported by mail that's amazing they're kind of larval yeah kind of a larva a little pupa yeah think entomologically yeah's too much. There was also one story here. It's June 1914. There were a Mr. and Mrs. Henry Euler. This is in the past when ladies were just the Mrs. of a person in records. Yes. But Mrs. Henry Euler. Oh, it's fine. Don't worry about us.

Right. And so what happened is Mrs. Henry Euler mailed her two-year-old son to his father in La Porte, Indiana because they were divorcing and this was like the next move in the custody battle. And then because the parents were arguing, the post office apparently took care of the boy for at least a day or two until the husband came in and picked it up. So there was some kind of situation where they were three men and a baby in a post or two until the husband came in and picked it up so there was some kind of situation where they were three men and a baby and a baby in a post office because of the mail what year did you say this was 1914 yeah okay so this was probably before well maybe not but probably before you know conveyor belts and all this in the back, back of the, I'm just saying, I guess it's like, you know, just the baby crawling along and just riding around in a bucket or,

or whatever. It's probably not how it went down, I guess. That's right. Hilarious series of machines. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But yeah. And then the, the last recorded instance of a child being mailed is August 1915, when three-year-old Maud Smith was sent 40 miles through Kentucky to visit her sick mother. From there on, there aren't any more records of it. I'm surprised it stopped at kids. Just grown-ups should have just hopped on the train, just like, yeah, I'm male.

Oh, man. Take me. I'm a male. Oh, man. Take me. I'm a package. Satan. Yeah. It legitimately seems like part of why it was kids getting mailed is because they weigh less. Yeah.

It seems like legitimately people were like, an adult would cost a lot of money. Yeah. But my kid, no big deal. They're tiny. If it's an adult, you might as well buy a train ticket per pound. Right. But a kid of the right size?

Are you kidding? Hey. Yes. Yeah, they're just like playing the system. Yeah, it's great. It's their fault for making the rules. I'm just taking advantage of the great, great deals that the U.S. Postal Service offers. Andrew, you are like in the heads of these 1910s people.

That is exactly what people thought about this. No exaggeration. Yeah, that's where I stay and that's where I remain. There's also one 1800 story, because before the post office did packages, it was a group of private companies. And part of why the post office started is because the companies were kind of being a cartel. But there's a, I guess, wild story.

It's kind of exciting story from 1849 where there was an enslaved person named Henry Brown who was in Richmond, Virginia, enslaved. in Richmond, Virginia, enslaved. And then with the aid of accomplices on both ends, he got himself packed in a wooden crate and shipped from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia, which is about 250 miles. Well played, Seth. To freedom. They used a private company to mail him to freedom,

and his nickname for the rest of his life was Henry Box Brown. He remained free and alive for about another 50 years. Good job. Just quintessentially American. Yeah. Like, sad he had to escape. Amazing escape story. It's the most American shit you can do.

Yeah. Mail yourself to freedom. Yeah. Use a loophole to become free. I think that's about the best you can hope for. Yeah. God, it really is. Yeah, they specifically picked a company called the Adams Express Company

because the company had a big slogan and a lot of language in their stuff about how they never look inside any parcel no matter what. So they were even playing the specific shipping company's rules to get this guy to freedom. Amazing. Yeah. And, I mean, this is the positive side of that coin, but sometimes look in the box. And, I mean, this is the positive side of that coin, but, like, sometimes look in the box.

Yeah. If the box is like, shh, don't look, I'm running to freedom, don't look in the box. But if the box is like, please help me, I'm a purchased bride, please go ahead and look in the box. Like, I might go with the shipping company that has a slogan like, if a box is whispering for help, we'll open it. Like, I might patronize that company but in this particular instance i am very glad that it worked out for the benefit of a human being that is that's wonderful it's it's like the pendulum on what constitutes human trafficking has swung from from from good to quite bad. Yeah. You know, words can mean anything, I think, is what we're learning. Yes, context is important, I think.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, because actually, kind of speaking of that, like, to be clear with people, only 1913 to 15. People through the U.S. postal system. I'm just imagining just one of your listeners slowly, Charlie Brown walking back home, dragging their box of human behind them. This is an awkward time to bring up our sponsor.

Folks, Amazon.com is... Someone... There's other deals. We'll find them. We'll find them. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the podcast. Bonus sources are in the bonus post at sifpod.fun. Next week, a whole new bonus. We made it. We made it. We are in the bonus episode, which means we are thankful to you.

Thank you for supporting the show on Patreon and making it possible that the whole Secretly Incredibly Fascinating podcast can happen at all. Katie, this is such an exciting story to me to talk about, because every bonus episode is going to be about something related to the topic, but also really out there and kind of its own thing. And today we are talking about cow tools. I am vibrating with excitement over this topic, Alex. excitement over this topic, Alex. Every cell in my being has been waiting my entire life to talk about this gosh darn comic strip. It has befuddled me. It has been a lifetime obsession. Well, and as you mentioned, Cow Tools is a comic strip. It is a strip from The Far Side by Gary

Larson. It was published in October of 1982. And I think we have a couple short takeaways for people. But in general, it's just a fascinating strip. Maybe do you want to describe it? Let me paint a picture for you. So I think I first saw this cartoon when I was maybe 12. I had all the Gary Larson books. I loved Gary Larson cartoons. As a young sort of person interested in animals,

this very much appealed to me. Totally. And cow tools, however, caused such great cognitive dissonance in me. It almost destroyed my mind. So, like, this comic features a cow in very Gary Larson fashion with a barn in the backyard.

And before the cow is a table. And upon this table are oddly shaped objects. You have something that looks a bit like a saw, but it's lumpy and sort of organic looking. You have a weird stick that has a few tendrils poking off of it seemingly at random. You have a lump, sort of an amorphous lump, and another amorphous lump with some sort of appendage sticking out of it. And the only text in this cartoon is two words. And it says cow tool. And then that's it. And I guess in case people don't know about the fireside in general it's an amazing comic strip from the 80s and 90s where it's a single

panel and a caption and that's and a joke and this this cartoon is just a cow standing in front of a table that you beautifully described with its four strange tools only one of which is very recognizable at all. And then the caption is just cow tools. And that's it. That's all you get. It's one of those things that when you read it, you feel it manages to do to your brain what years of training at meditation can sometimes do to where you start to feel your comfortableness with reality sort of disintegrate. Right, you can see the see the seams on reality. And you're like, Oh, I see. Yeah. But also,

I don't see I'm confused. Yeah, the social contract has been broken. And I feel unanchored to, to our society and to the world. Yes. to our society and to the world, yes. This strip, it's a really fascinating story because not only is it a strip that just doesn't obviously make sense right away, like it's just a cow with some tools and it says cow tools. And they're weird and lumpy.

Yeah, and they're weird and lumpy and strange. And then it's also a strip that kind of built the entire The Far Side cartoon because Gary Larson started doing the tune nationally in 1980 he kind of fell into cartooning accidentally after getting out of a biology major and he told the new york times in an interview that his fantasy the road not taken is that he became a professional entomologist and just never did cartoons at all, just studied bugs. I really, I do very much empathize with this. So when I went to college, I studied psychology and evolutionary biology.

My degree is actually in psychology, but I almost double majored in evolutionary biology. I just sort of prioritized taking a bunch of classes that I liked instead. So I did, I took a lot of evolutionary biology classes. And I was really interested in sort of like how human and animal behavior overlapped. But, and I always think about, man, I could have gone in like, because I had thought about going into grad school and becoming an animal behavioral biologist. But instead, I just started to create comedy by doing a parody Twitter account about birds. And then I got more into comedy and producing comedy.

And then obviously the Creature Feature podcast. These are much beloved cartoons by evolutionary biologists. I remember seeing these all the time in my evolutionary biology classes. There is a classic one of a bunch of lemmings jumping off of a cliff. Now, first of all, lemmings don't actually jump off of a cliff, off of a cliff. Now, first of all, lemmings don't actually jump off of a cliff. But in this cartoon, one of the lemmings, they're all jumping into this water, right? And then one of the lemmings is wearing an inner tube and kind of breaking the fourth wall, smirking at the camera. And it's used as an example in evolutionary biology of when you have an adaptation that is clearly advantageous how it would take over.

So if you have one animal sort of with the inner tube soon, all of them are going to have the inner tube because that's going to be the only one that survives. So his cartoons are still used to help educate young potential evolutionary biologists, which I think is great. Well, and I, and I, because he was a biology major at Washington State. And I, like, I feel like when I learned about his background, I was like, oh, between Katie's animal enthusiasm and comedy ability and interest in cartooning, like, you're the most Gary Larson person I know. Like, this is, this is right up i grew up on gary larson yeah yeah absolutely i can't tell you how many times i just took a big stack of gary larson books into the bathroom and was in there for hours you know my mom knocking on the door what are you doing in there you know nothing cow tools like well okay that makes sense to me

that lemmings one is a perfect example of like like so many great far side strips are like very easy to understand i feel like like not not easy to understand maybe but like like the joke is very clear and direct yeah like you can tell what it is that doesn't mean it's a weak joke or an easy to do joke just like he figured out a great joke and it's in front of you. And so Larson was about two and a half years into making the Farside nationally and suddenly made a strip that no one understood. And he, in the prehistory of the Farside, he describes it as a strip that, quote, awakened me to the fact that my profession was not just an isolated exercise in the corner of my apartment. Because he just started getting constant letters and also his publisher's phone apparently rang for two days straight with people demanding to know what the Kautoul strip was about

and trying to figure it out. We also have some quotes from the letters here. I was thinking we could read a couple of them. Do you want to take turns reading letters from cow tools infuriated people? Certainly. I'll do the first one. Then you can do the next one. Yeah. The first letter here is, quote, I asked 37 people to explain the cow tools of last week, but with no luck. Could you help? Reader, California. Okay, next one is, enclosed is a copy of the Cow Tools cartoon. I have passed it around. I have posted it on the wall. Conservatively, some 40-odd professionals with doctoral degrees and disparate disciplines have examined it.

No one understands it. Even my six-year-old cannot figure it out. We are going bonkers. Please help. What is the meaning of cow tools? What is the meaning of life? Oh, that's a great performance. Yeah. We give up. Being intelligent, hardworking men. We don't often say this, but your cartoon has proven to be beyond any of our intellectual capabilities. Is there some significance to this cartoon that eludes us, or have we been completely foolish in our attempts to unravel the mystery behind cow tools?

I represent a small band of fellows from every walk of American life who have been drawn together by a need to know, a need to understand, and a certain perplexity about what to do with this decade. We are a special interest group under the umbrella organization of the Fellowship and a certain perplexity about what to do with this decade. We are a special interest group under the umbrella organization of the Fellowship of the Unexplained. The Cow Tools Fellows have been brought together by the absolute certainty that your cartoon-captioned Cow Tools means something. But as this letter signifies, just what it might mean has escaped us. California.

And yeah, I think I think that we can leave it there with people's fury about it. Because just everyone was used to, okay, open the comics, they all make sense, or else they make sense. They're not very funny. But either way, like it makes sense. And I read it and I enjoy it. And then Gary Larson made this strip where it's just a cow with its table full of tools that says cow tools on it. And I suppose we could talk about like what he seemed to think the joke was, or what he seemed to believe the joke was. Yes. Because Larson was asked by his publisher to explain to the public, and he not only explained, but also apologized. And basically, the joke to him is that, like you mentioned, Katie, the tools are very crude looking and not

very good looking. And so he felt like the joke is, if a cow tried to create tools like early humans did, they would just not be very good tools because cows are not very sophisticated. That's it. I mean, you know what? It's good to hear that because that's my interpretation of it. Yeah. And I remember as a kid trying to figure it out and ultimately thinking like, maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's just funny because they're garbage tools and it's a cow. Turns out I'm right.

Yeah. Like one of them's just like a lump with a knob coming off of it. Like they're not very good. I actually disagree with it being the worst Gary Larson strip. I actually quite love it. I think there's something absurd about it. There's something so fun and absurd about it. Like, yeah, like if a cow tried to make tools it'd just be these like weird lumps made out of probably their own poop yeah i do i like the joke i really i get a kick out of it

it's like it just takes a little bit of a leap maybe to know what it is but it's a funny joke yeah i think it takes a mental flexibility and a sort of ability to let go of certainty to like the cartoon. That's why I compare it to meditation. I mean, I have a lot of anxiety. Sometimes it's hard for me to deal with the unknown. It's very similar to what I've been taught in therapy sessions of like, how do you deal with the uncertainty of life? How do you deal with the uncertainty of what's going to happen? What if this happens? What if that happens? It's just being able to accept a little bit of this. You may not always have control over what happens.

You may not know what comes next. And it's okay. In a similar vein, you may not fully understand what cow tools means but that's okay it's all it's okay for it to sort of be this just like yeah a cow with like crappy garbage tools that's kind of funny yeah but you don't have to really fully understand like what the implications of it are and i i think there's something about the art too where the cow is staring directly at you and it's truly the cow is challenging you the the reader it's not it feels like a challenge like this is what i these are my tools what say you human and i think this desire to respond to the cow is what drives people into such deep madness over this cartoon.

I love that. I feel like that really speaks to also one of the reasons this was all ultimately okay for Gary Larson. Because I think if people are fans of The Far Side, they know the strip went on and it remained very popular. went on and it remained very popular. But it's a strip where Larson claims that ultimately the chaotic reaction to it and people freaking out about it ultimately made the strip better known and written about in newspapers and just more famous. And he said, quote, in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood and wasn't funny. And therefore, I went on to even greater success and recognition yeah i like this country end quote uh and even though i think it's a funny strip he he said like even if no one liked

it it only benefited me and made me a bigger deal and so that's kind of cool that uh the country can work that way but the harmlessness of the the joke you end up finding as you stare at it, like a Rorschach pattern or an eye test or something, like the joke you find is very delightful. And so I think that's part of why people were like, well, if that's what it means, I'm okay with it. Yeah. So there we go. Be the cow tools joke you want to find.

Wait, be the cow tools joke that you find in the strip that you want to see in the world yeah that's that's just a way to live i love it yeah yeah because he also and his apology he said quote i regret that my fondness for cows combined with an overactive imagination may have carried me beyond what is comprehensible to the average far side reader end quote and i also like to think you and i and other people like us are above average far side readers we can find the joy in this crazy strip you know no i i love it i mean i told i deeply relate first of all i've always loved his cartoons but is the, for me, just replace cows with birds. And I 100% agree with everything he says. To me, birds are intrinsically hilarious.

A bird could be doing anything and I'll just start cracking up. They are so funny. Just their existence. And it's not funny in a me mocking them way. I think they're incredible and I love them. I think they're incredible. And I love them. I think they're beautiful, wonderful animals, but they are just naturally so funny. Seeing a bird pick up like a piece of a chip and then waddle away from me is so, so funny to me. So if you ask me to write a comic strip, and I say bird tools, and it's just a bird

with its face in a donut, like to me, that's funny. So for Gary Larson, it's cows. And I totally accept that. I think that's amazing. Yeah, he has also said, just got a bunch of quotes from him, quote, cows as some fireside readers know are a favorite subject of mine. I've always found them to be the quintessentially absurd animal for situations even more absurd. Even the name cow to me is intrinsically funny, end quote. And I see you with your similar affinity for birds. Like you just find that thing about them every time. Yes. It's a love for them. It's a deep love for them. But also, they tickle me so much, just their whole existence. I'm completely in love and I find it hilarious.

And I think I'm so happy to know that about Gary Larson, because it is wonderful to have an animal that just brings you so much joy and so much laughter just to know that they exist. It's like it's so like things can be crappy and stuff but just knowing like hey cows exist like that my god they are in many ways the main character of his whole strip that doesn't have recurring characters uh in a 1998 interview with npr gary larson said that the publisher wanted him to develop something like charlie brown or some other kind of recurring thing yeah and he said quote i just didn't see humor as something that had to be confined to one

particular character, end quote. But also like the Farside books are full of cow covers and the complete Farside is an edition that's put out with a Holstein spotted case. Like cows are kind of the main character of his whole thing. I do love that, though. I love that he resisted that idea of like you have to have like a Garfield or a Snoopy. As much as I love Garfield and Snoopy, the idea that you have to have a single character that you can market and yeah, it's, it's, you really, it, it, it's similar. It's a similar sort of freedom of creativity as the cow tool strip of like, no doesn't have to be doesn't have to be packaged for you we can't turn cow tools into an action figure but it exists so i love it although i wouldn't okay i said we can't turn it into an action figure and now i'm thinking actually we

can and we should definitely do it now i need it i mean it's it's very toyetic. That's the term for toyable, right? Because you have the cow and then the accessories. Right, right. And I can imagine they would interlock with its hooves. Yeah. Yeah. No, it needs to happen. Yeah.

Really want that toy. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the podcast. Bonus sources are in the bonus post at SIF pod dot fun next week, a whole new bonus.