Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - badger badger mushroom (with jonti picking)

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

In my day, there were but three things middle schoolers cared about -- BADGERS, MUSHROOMS, AND SNAKES. This week, we look at the peak of Flash animation -- Jonti Picking, aka Mr. Weebl's masterpiece "Badger Badger Mushroom," and the obsessive subculture that was Newgrounds flash animation of the 2000s. How do you become an iconic animator online? Here's a tip: be an incredible musician already. Jamie talks to the multi-talented Jonti about how he makes art born from problem-solving. Follow Jonti: https://www.youtube.com/@weebl See Jamie on book tour for Raw Dog!: https://us.macmillan.com/author/jamieloftus Watch Boston PD Zamboni Crimes Division: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRTunzDofwY&list=PLTHWo4zMtfja4vxOAxnyDK0VXGpRhvRW5See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. If you're looking for another heavy podcast about trauma, the saying it. This is for the ones who had to survive and still show up as brilliant, loud, soft, and whole. The unwanted sorority is where black women, fims, and gender expansive survivors of sexual violence, rewrite the rules on healing, support, and what happens after. And I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episode. Every Thursday on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately from Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month,

and Money and Wealth Podcasts with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in life. Let me just say this.

AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to Money and Wealth from the, Black Effect Podcast Network on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. CoolZone Media. Hello, 16th minute listeners, Jamie here, and we have one more weekly episode of 16th minute next week before we're going on a short hiatus. We will be coming back in the summer with a brand new season, but before we go, my book, Raw Dog, is out in paper. we're back today. Today.

And today, I am on tour, starting literally the moment this episode comes out. So for one last time, I want to remind you, this is where I'm going to be with more dates to be added in the summer during full hot dog season. But if you were in the following cities in the days to come, this is where I'll be. Tonight, May 13th, I will be in Los Angeles at North Fig Bookshop. Tomorrow, May 14th, I will be in Louisville, Kentucky at Carmichael's bookstore. May 15th, I will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Cambridge Public Library with Torrey Bedford. May 19th, I will be in Portland, Maine with my friend Maya Williams at Longfellow Books. May 20th, I will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at Midtown Scholar Bookstore. May 21st, I'll be in Richmond, Virginia, at Fountain Bookstore. May 22nd, I will be in Petaluma, California, at Copperfield's Books. And May 31st, I will be in Larkspur, California, at the Marin Country Mart. And that is just to start. All of these events are free, so there are a few places you have to sign up.

So just check the link in the description. And I hope to see you soon. And welcome to the Badger Zone. Some of our planet's most defining moments are the results of years, centuries of concerted effort, a singular vision. willed into reality. And others are complete fucking mistakes. My favorite example of this is from the late 1920s in a science lab in London. A certain doctor, and I won't say who because it gives it away to all you dorks.

So let's just say a certain doctor went on vacation. And like many people who just got back from vacation, he left his station at work a complete mess. But scientists don't have dead. desks like mine, covered in Coke Zero bottles and collectable minions figurines. Scientists have workspaces that, if left untidy, can become dangerous ecosystems. What was on this doctor's desk was a collection of petri dishes that contained bacteria in them, which now that I say it, could actually describe my desk at varying times, depending on which dishes were left on them. But when it's a scientist, the bacteria is there, at least intentionally.

And in these petri dishes were, I'm going to try to read it, Staphylococcus, snuffilophagus, a bacteria that causes abscesses, sore throat, and boils. Probably something that the scientists should have rinsed out before going on vacation. But in this case, it was world-changing that he was a slob, because in one of these dishes, a mold had grown that appeared to be killing the snuffaloficus back. bacteria. The doctor took notice of this and told his assistants, who instead of calling him disgusting, began to examine the mold, identifying it as something that very well may have saved your life a few times over. That is, if you've ever gotten an ear infection, pneumonia,

strep throat, boils, syphilis, gonorrhea, meningitis, a UTI, or a gastrointestinal infection, which probably you have. This slob's name was Dr. Alexander Fleming. And his disgusting vacation mold was penicillin. Filling bottles with the medium in which will grow the mold that produces penicillin. Canadian output of this amazing drug, perhaps the medical discovery of the war, has been greatly increased. It was a beautiful accident, one that was motivated by chance, but it would not be the most beautiful mistake to ever happen in the United Kingdom. No, dear listener, that would not happen until 2003.

2003. In the year of Our Lord's School of Rock and the best season of Gilmore Girls, in my opinion, the product of another beautiful accident hit the internet and inspired not a medical miracle, but something even more powerful. Jontie Picking was already a successful animator in the early 2000s, but what most motivated him in his work was finding new animation techniques that solved a technological problem he was having. And in the 2000s, there was no shortage of problems that came with distributing independent animation on the internet. In the days where buffering times could be the difference between your work being seen or not, when compressing a file could be the difference between being able to afford to host your work or not. Jonti took it upon himself to make animations that were memorable, musical, and very fucking funny.

And one day, he cracked it. what better way to create the illusion of a longer animation than creating something that was a perfect loop, a content or a boris, if you will, one that hit his target audience intentionally or not, people who would play this loop until their parents threatened to shoot them with a harpoon gun. It was a piece of art that wasn't a mistake to make, but was born from a problem-solving stance and became a masterpiece. A piece of art that inspired a generation of middle schoolers to be more annoying than you could possibly imagine. The cartoon in question was a simple one, a looping one, pulled from earlier internet hits like, Real Ones Will Know, Peanut Butter Jelly Time. It's peanut butter! The colors in jaunty's animation, though, are distinct.

Its imagery direct, its joke perfectly calibrated to the senses of a tween. It consists of three. images. And if I'm evangelizing, and I am, a holy trinity of images, of badgers, of mushrooms, and of snakes. It is this cartoon that I feel is the penicillin of internet flash animation. All this delivered at sugar rush level speeds. On September 3rd, 2003, a legend was born. Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, aka Mr. Weble, aka Jonti picking, your 16th minute starts now. Sixteen minute of fame

Sixteen minute of fame Sixteen minute of fame One more minute of fame I'm not so bad when you take me of my mind I'm another character to say you're so good-bye Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we take a look back at the main characters of the internet to see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and what that says about us and the internet. I'm your host Jamie Loftus and to round out our first year of 16th Minute,

where we've talked about a new internet character of the day every week. I wanted to revisit an artist of the early internet who was and is one of my favorites. The one and only, Weebel, or English animator jaunty picking, the mind behind some of the internet's most enduring flash animation classics, and an artist whose work encapsulated feeling like your favorite internet cartoon was the best kept secret in the world. And yes, of course, we spoke to the man himself. What do you take me for?

This video first became popular when I was in late elementary, early middle school, and was as popular as an online video could be, with a fifth grader at this time. So, yeah, of course, it could be seen as a little bit annoying. But that was so much of the early internet, right? And I say that with love. Hashtag Random Humor is always going to be popular with the middle school set. But hashtag Random Humor was kind of popular with everyone around the time of this video's release.

At least everyone who would dare step foot in a hot topic at the mall. And I'm not pulling from anything scientific here, but during the Bush into the Obama years, there was this strain of comedy among Gen X and millennials that would rightfully come to be considered cringe. It's parodied quite a bit. So I just did a thing. And what intonation could that be, ye might ask. I bought pumpkin chocolate chip muffins in true Hufflepuff fashion. But cringe is not exclusive to any particular generation. Gen Z is slowly learning that their brand of random humor by way of nihilism is going to be considered cringe by younger people as well. Even Gen Alpha, who will one day have to answer for Skibbitty

Toilet. I do kind of like to think that there will be a Jamie-coded Gen Alpha 30-year-old one day intellectualizing Skivety Toilet. And I bet they'll be great at it. The point is that no one is immune here. Even Gen X's most famous comedic legacy, down to the little voices that tend to appear in all of these videos, started as one of the first viral videos ever in the early 90s. South Park's Jesus versus Santa. You know, I don't think that was the real Santa Claus. Oh no, shit, Sherlock. Yes, South Park began as a popular video e-card before moving to TV on Comedy Central. So while I know that every generation thinks that they were the one to

invent random humor that appeals to 12-year-olds, this goes back to your parents. And we're going to jump into this story, the story of jaunty picking as a 20-something-year-old English tech guy with a lot of weird energy and experimentation bouncing around in the early 2000s in just a moment. But before we do, jaunty's deserved success needs a bit of grounding. A bit of new grounding, one might even say, in 2000's internet culture, and the way that home computing democratized extremely silly art and building up skills in enthusiasts who would use the internet to become artists in their own right. So come with me, if you dare, to the early 2000s internet. By 2003, the increase in internet use in people's homes can

continued to rise in the U.S., reaching 60% of households, according to the Census Bureau, doubling from less than 10 years before. This was the year that my Neopats account was hacked, and all 1 million of my neopo points were stolen, leading me to leave the website only to return when my dad died and now I have 17 million neopoints. I'm talking 2003, the internet of loud primary colors of dial up tones and buffering. of defragmenting a desktop every two weeks in the hopes that your mom wouldn't ban you from Neopets because it was allegedly breaking the computer. And as that internet access continued to grow,

as these massive machines migrated into homes and libraries and schools, it really was on the dial-up internet. It would be completely impossible to cover all of the sites and programs that defined this era. So the things I'm going to focus on here that had a hand not only in jaunty picking slash Weebel's success, but also with much of the flash animation generational standbys we still talk about is flash animation itself and the website Newgrounds. Okay, Grandma, go to bed. No, it's time to talk about flash animation. Flash animation was a program that became extremely popular in the mid to late 1990s, and was this consumer software that made it possible for at-home users to create their own amateurish animation

in a very particular style, very flat but more fluid than illustrating frames by hand. The aesthetic was high contrast, bright, often with noticeably bad audio if you made it at home, because there wasn't really a consumer equivalent of audio equipment at this time. And while software made it much easier to create low-budget animation at home than it once did, it was mainly used in TV in these early years. Some notable early examples were on shows like Ren and Stimpy, the Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and later on shows like My Little Pony Friendship is Magic and smiling friends.

These shows all share common, aesthetics, if not character design itself. They were clearly digitally animated and usually brightly colored. But Flash wouldn't really break through to the everyday internet user until a few years later, largely in part because the general online streaming speed wasn't fast enough to load these kinds of animation without significant difficulty. Sidebar, but important, Flash animation also needed the aesthetic of the internet to catch up to its aesthetic, something that was largely assisted by the introduction of the looping gif, I'm not saying gif, sorry, in 1995, where the internet mainly consisted of text prior to that time, kind of this big digital book,

particularly when it came to self-generated websites and blogs, the wide dissemination of gifs made it possible for everyday people to add little looping animations to their sites. Think virtually every Angel Fire fan site lurking in the back of your mind. Think of, and maybe I'm dating myself here, and I know I am. Those blingy online paper dolls where you could make your little brats-looking doll sparkle on an eternity loop. Peanut butter jelly time literally is just a looping gif of a dancing banana accompanied by music. In 2020, flash animation plugins were discontinued to the dismay of many early internet natives.

even if the slow fade of the technology kind of made sense. But in the early 2000s into the 2010s, Flash was king and was both a major generator of culture for kids and launched a lot of careers for animators that may not have had access to the big studios or the ability to make their own work without this tool, which brings us to the Big Daddy. Big Daddy!

Of Flash animation, one that took advantage. of increasing internet speeds and, however unintentionally, had a hand in curating how animation online is upvoted and curated today. New ground. If you were on the internet, when cartoons like badgers were spreading like wildfire and sending parents into constant spirals of you're putting viruses on the computer, you had a very specific attachment to a very specific piece of flash animation. For me, obviously, it's Badgers, and it's my podcast, so we're talking about that.

But maybe for you, it was Salad Fingers. Hello. I like rusty spoons. I like to touch them. Or statistically, if you're any man I've dated in my entire life, it is certainly Homestar Runner. A wagon full of pancakes In the championship?

I'd like to see it twice. I'm serious. My fiancé is the smartest person that I know and yet he was born in 1995 and therefore if Homestar Runner comes up, he instantly becomes the most annoying person I've ever met. Okay, Grant. Yes.

I'm going to give you 15 seconds to explain the appeal of Homestar Runner. You ready? Yes. Okay. Three, two, one. It felt like a secret, like you had to find it out from a friend on the playground, and it had the humor of sort of witty Simpson-esque writing, but it felt accessible,

and you could actually write into it. It was interactive. It was an early proto-interactive. I really thought you were going to do the voice. I'll give you a bonus five seconds. An extra five seconds to do a strong, bad voice. I'll take it every time. Oh, geez.

sticks, one not. Nope, you're done, you're done. Hold on. They got to do a better home start. I got to do a better home start. Two seconds, five more seconds. Wow, 60. You're done.

Come on. Another element I've noticed is that original music is a big part of what separated the flash animation wheat from the chaff here. And Badgers is a great example of that. Because, as we'll talk about, jaunty picking was a musician first and animator second, a quality that he was not alone in. David Firth, the creator of Salad Fingers, was also a musician first, as was Neil Cicerega of Potter Puppet Pals fame.

And the marriage of a distinct online visual with music makes a lot of difference, especially the further back you go. But flash animation wasn't limited to these short narrative cartoons. It was also games. There is just as much of a culture around young, game developers making early experimental or silly work in flash and gaming as there are in narrative animators. Okay, this is becoming a young millennial indoor kid circle trick. So if you exist outside of those bounds, I'm going to try to calcify the appeal of this style of

animation. It was funny, sure, but internet animation was funny in a different way than what you enjoyed on TV. It's like Grant was saying in his impassioned endorsement of Homestar Runner. A lot of internet culture still felt like a secret to a lot of kids at this time. And while things like Badgers would become hugely successful, it wasn't the kind of hugely successful that your parents would immediately understand the reference to. And this feeling of secrecy and exclusivity has carried on into the animation culture that exists online in the last. last 10 years, even as the popularity of online animation has waned. I am literally living proof of this.

It was this generation of animators that later motivated me to make my own joltie, absurdist cartoons. Hi, I'm Office of Crimes, and I'm Officer Get On the Ground, and we are the Boston PD Zamboni Crimes Division. That joint is called Boston PD Zamboni Crimes Division, link in description unless you're scared. And animators like jaunty picking and other early pioneers like my personal favorites, Brad Neely and Amy Winfrey of Making Fiends,

really did create a pathway for a lot of what would inform the next generation of animated entertainment. But I'm not saying that the existence of flash animation meant there were absolutely no barriers to who could make something special online. Because you'll notice that most of the people I've cited, including John T. Picking himself, were at the time they became famous, young white men who came from at least middle-class backgrounds. And while the internet has obviously become more widely available over the years,

early adaptation to home computing was largely informed by class, meaning that financially privileged, disproportionately white families were the first to get the big, monstrous gateways. in their homes. And add that to the highly gendered way in which tech jobs are still viewed with, as recently as three years ago, over 90% of American software developing jobs held by men, and, you know, white patriarchy. It even affects badger, badger mushroom. In the early 2000s, most flash animators would have to lure viewers to their personal websites time and time again to maintain viewership.

Because there was no YouTube yet. There was no BuzzFeed clickbait culture. There were no automated feeds. There were just shared links on blogs and very little else in terms of pulling a random middle schooler into your artistic vision. Which is where the website Newgrounds comes in. And for the purposes of this story,

two of the most successful forums slash video sharing slash have you seen this one prototypical sites that would eventually give way to sites like Reddit. Newgrounds was the big one, although there were many imitators and successful ones at that. You might remember names like albino black sheep, ebombs world, smosh.com, to name a few. But it seems pretty commonly decided upon by internet historians that Newgrounds was where most now iconic flash animation originally found its footing. I only ever knew Newgrounds as a website prior to researching this episode, but it turns out that it's even more of a Gen X endeavor than I ever realized, because Newgrounds actually began all the way back in the early

1990s as a physical fanzine for something called NeoGeo that I've never heard of. But it was founded by a then 13-year-old boy named Tom Fulp, who eventually converted the zine into a website in 1995. But as time went on, what made Newgrounds special was that their greatest successes were both user-generated and originally hand-cureated by Tom Fulp and his brother.

The site started taking off in the late 90s into the early 2000s, with Tom expanding from his own. fan cartoons into originally submission-based content that ended up costing the then-college student upwards of $1,000 a month to continue hosting. He shockingly managed to break even as the site grew more popular by selling old-school banner ads. But the cartoon violence that was all but inherent to this era of flash animation...

Charlie! Yeah, Candy Mountain! Oh, I'd fine, I'll go with you to Candy Mountain. would sometimes make it difficult to sell said ads. But like so many sites before and since, Newgrounds both lost money and became really popular at the same time. This was still very much the era of being paid in exposure, being paid and just happy to be here, an era that the internet will never give up on. But like most sites with generational pull, Newgrounds didn't last forever in terms of cultural pull. nor did flash animation, but their legacy is genuinely important to some of the most successful

platforms today. There's no doubt that early YouTube and other user-uploaded sites, the same sites that alternatively turn people into fascists and create compelling six-hour video essays about video games I've never heard of, were taking cues from the community building and viral techniques that came together on sites like Newgrounds. Just before Newgrounds and all of its imitators became the Western middle schoolers' de facto destination for annoying cartoons to talk loudly about in algebra class, a star was born, and he had a really fun character design for a dancing badger. Okay, class, when we come back, we're talking jaunty picking. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison

or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you.

And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you can. get your podcasts. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in.

I'm Will Lucas spotlighting Black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future, one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make some. someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it.

To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Eye Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When your car is making a strange noise, no matter what it is, You can't just pretend it's not happening. That's an interesting sound. It's like your mental health. If you're struggling and feeling overwhelmed, it's important to do something about it. It can be as simple as talking to someone

or just taking a deep, calming breath to ground yourself. Because once you start to address the problem, you can go so much further. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have resources available for you at loveyourmindtay.org. Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs.

The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy-truthers, who say that you were given all the answers, believe in... I guess they would be conspiracy theorists. That's right. Are there Jeopardy-truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like. They gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like.

They gave you the answers, and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of The Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th Minute, the show where we compare the badger-badger mushroom video to the invention of penicillin. Happy to have you here. And now that you're fully thrown back or caught up on the state of flash animation in the early 2000s, we can jump into the story of one jaunty picking, aka Mr. Weble, aka the badger-badger mushroom.

guy. But make no mistake, that was far from his earliest hit. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of his independent work would continue to blow up once it was re-uploaded onto more curated sites like Newgrounds and E-Bom's World and eventually Reddit, years after their original publishing. And then would blow up again when they were re-uploaded to YouTube, where Jontie Picking's new work still ends up today. So, who is this guy? Jonti was born in 1975, in what he describes as a very boring suburb in South Yorkshire, England, and was a kid who was really into both music and technology, both of which would go on to heavily inform his work.

I'll let him tell you more in the interview, but at the time he began experimenting on flash animation. Jonti was working primarily as a sound engineer in his early to mid-20s, and he would actually go on to work in visual effects on the Resident Evil movie in 2003. Same year as Badgers, big year for Jonti. But in his 20s, in the late 90s, Jonti was a multi-hyphenate with too many passions to fully throw himself into. He really loved music and sound design,

but he also really loved messing around with animated visuals. And in a skill I am so envious of, he had both a great sense of humor and the ability to solve artistic problems with incredible scientific precision. And it was from a technical problem he was having at work while working in digital media that we got Jonti's first successful animated hit, a series called Weble and Bob. There they are, The Little Voiebel and Bob.

Voices again. Weeple and Bob was a series of simply animated cartoons by jaunty following the titular characters who are literally wobbling talking eggs yapping against a hot pink background. Every single time. The bigger egg, Weeble Bull, is obsessed with pie and his best friend, the smaller egg, Bob Bobbertson, Random Alert, is his best friend who also loves pie. This is a clip from the first Weble and Bob short from the early 2000s, simply titled Pie. It's set against that bright magenta background, and we see both eggs rocking bag, pie. And we see both eggs rocking gently back and forth and chatting unintelligibly. If you recognize the voice,

it's because both of these eggs are voiced by jaunty picking, who also voices the Badger video. And the only way you ever really know what Webel or Bob is saying is by reading the captioned speech bubbles that come out of them. The Weble and Bob shorts were very low-fi, partially because Jaunty was learning how to animate, and because the more low-fi, and because the more low-fi the cartoons he was making, the easier he found it was for them to stream on an internet with a much slower speed than today. And the easier a short was to stream, the more people could see it. And this experiment very much worked. Webel and Bob were so successful in this early iteration that it eventually expanded into over 120 episodes of the show in the same

short, simply animated format that is scored with jaunty's voice and music. It was so successful, in fact, that Weevil and Bob made it to mainstream television. And keep in mind, this was really early in the process of major TV networks attempting to understand the internet. And it would be years before the internet was written for TV by people who had an intimate understanding of it. But when Weebel and Bob was put on to MTV UK in the early 2000s, the suits were at least paying attention to what the kids were watching. And they had the good sense to not just try to replicate it. Instead, they hired the guy that was making it. There was a stretch of six exclusively televised Webel and Bob shorts on MTV UK that

were met with positive reception. And this increased attention and financial flow meant that John T. was able to experiment with his work using other animated concepts online when the MTV deal made it possible for him to leave his day job. And it was this that led to his grand opus on September 2nd, 2003. You know what I'm talking about. An animation with badgers appearing in a meadow, dancing identically in perfect harmony, with one more badger appearing slightly further. away with each subsequent renouncement of the species. And then we go to a bright red cartoon

mushroom with a push-zoom for every repetition of the phrase, and just when you thought it would go on that way forever, a danger is presented. A bright green cartoon snake, presenting a danger to our badger, and probably not the mushroom. Do badgers eat mushrooms? I don't know. But while the snake is presented visually and orally as a sense of existential danger, nothing ever happens to the badger because as soon as we see the snake, the animation just loops back to the beginning. And long before YouTube hits, the badgers became big,

slowly growing there and jaunty slash Mr. Weebel's audience to a level of public recognition that was so popular that his body of war, won a U.K. People's Choice Awards in early 2005. The inspiration for this short, according to Janty, was pulled from a novelty track that was popular in the UK during his childhood, a song called Saturday Night by Wigfeld, and specifically a very particular element of that song, and see if you can spot it. Here is how the song starts. It was not clear to me immediately either, but the little repeating thing you hear in this song is a duck sound,

one that apparently inspired Jondi picking to do something equally loopy and looped and silly. So from the duck sound in Saturday night, we get art is great. And the benefit for viewers of Jonti's first becoming successful, with Badger's pre-Newgrounds is that he had already made follow-ups in response to the cartoon success, meaning that by the time I saw Badgers on Newgrounds, there was already a lot more to watch in this universe. And all of the follow-ups to Badgers hit these very of-the-moment cultural touchpoints, including themes like zombies. Or Santa. This I think was my favorite one as a kid, Santa, Santa, presents, presents.

This, I think, was my favorite one as a kid, so I do want to include what went in the place of the snake. That's funny. You're laughing. And in a relatively short amount of time, the animations became beloved, particularly, in the UK at first, where Weebel and Bob were already popular by being seen on MTV. In 2004, Jonti released a soccer, football, I don't care what you call it, both countries suck, themed version of the Badgers video for the 2004 FIFA tournament. What made this format so sticky was its simplicity, while, remaining very distinct in both look and sound. It was absolute drugs for middle schoolers and went on to experience many subsequent lives on Newgrounds, Albino Black Sheep, eBombs world,

and YouTube. Badgers is internet canon. But like many animators of this time, this only empowered jaunty picking to continue exploring his ideas through one-off flash animations with weird concepts. Stuff like narwhals. Norwhals, narwhals swimming in the ocean, causing a commotion because they are so awesome. Like Amazing Horse, or like Jonti's personal favorite in his catalog, a cartoon called A Walk in the Woods, which is both very beautiful and also 90% cartoon animals shitting so hard that they fly. And while some of Jonti's work could get violent or sexual, his work isn't characterized by these qualities in a way that much early flash animation was. I'm going to cut your throat open and use your blood as syrup on my pancakes. Yay!

Jonti or Mr. Weble's work was musical and silly first. And so even when it did fall into violence or sex, it was never defined by shock. And again, so much of what makes his work special is that John Decomposed all of the music. And he's continued to release music on his own. He's been releasing full versions of his original songs and more on band camp since at least 2010, and transitioned into making full albums of just music independent of his work in animation, starting in 2014. His current band Savlonic is his most music-forward blend of, music and animation to date.

It's mainly jaunty, but the animated band is composed of virtual members, similar to guerrillas. I stole your keys, because you stole my heart, it seems like a fair trade to me. Now I will drive around in your car, it helps me to feel free. But as you can hear, the animation and a lot of the voice and instrumentation is still very much jaunty, as well as some of his most common collaborators. As of this writing, Zavlonic has released two cover albums and four full albums. I'll let him tell you more about it in the interview, but the work itself is synthy and really cool. This is from their most recent album. I don't feel like myself when I'm without you,

too, you, you, I miss... Jaunty remained a creature of the internet post-badgers after emerging from a generation of online animators that, I would say, split the difference in terms of pursuing mainstream success in traditional animated media versus maintaining increased creative freedom for their audience on the internet.

And in Janty's case, we are richer for the fact that he stayed online. Because while he's never pigeonholed himself as particularly fixated on any one project, he's also never resisted the positive legacy that projects like Badgers and Webel and Bob have associated him with, which maybe brings me to the weirdest offshoot of Badgers that exists

from 10 full years after its release. Listen to this. Oh no! Now, if you're thinking, wait, why did the introduction to that badgers video sound like Queen? Well, that is Brian May of Queen, who reached out to Jonti Picking in 2013 asking to help him preserve actual English badgers, real badgers as a part of his conservation work. And so what you're hearing at the beginning there, in a beautiful twist of fate, is a song from Queen called Flash. Brian May said of the project at the time of the release. The British people are speaking in their many thousands, and yet the government is refusing to listen.

We thank them for buying this track and giving the badges a voice. Let's get this to number one so David Cameron cannot avoid it. The coal is unscientific, unethical, and unethical. and won't work. The government is set to murder 5,000 badgers and yet all the peer-reviewed scientific evidence shows that the answer to the problem of bovine TB in cattle does not lie in this slaughter

and that this action will be ineffective and potentially damaging to the welfare of both farm animals and wildlife. And so, the badger became politicized, to the point where this song titled, Save the Badger Badger Badger literally played in the House of Lords

in protest to the David Cameron backed proposal to exterminate real-life badgers far beyond any ethical limit and the intention of the song is to prevent their slaughter jaunty picking said this in a 2014 interview on how the project

came together. The new version was based on the soundtrack to Flash Gordon written by Queen and Brian May. He asked me what we could do to make something together featuring my badges, and that was the first thought in my head. I love Flash Gordon. I did a rough remix using my track and samples and sang the new lyrics I'd come up with in a queen style. And sure, I'll risk a copyright strike to share Brian May shredding, because it's Brian May shredding, for Christ's sake. Here it is.

The video ends on a screen that says, Be the mushroom, stop the call. And the song ended up charting on the UK charts, peaking at number 79. And by this time, this was a 10-year-old meme and a very niche political issue. Badgers had reach and meaning. And while I couldn't possibly reign all of the influence

of jaunty picking's work in the space of a single episode, I do think this is a really cool example of how much it really meant to people. And the rest of the story, I'll let him tell you himself. He is incredibly funny and still innovating any animation and music space to this day, now a married dad of two preteens. And as you'll hear, he is incredibly patient with an interviewer that has active bronchitis. When we come back, my interview with jaunty picking. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison

or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program

and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We all know, right? Genius is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not.

It's Black Business Month and Black Tech Green Money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas spotlighting Black founders, investors, and innovators, building the future one idea at a time. Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level, to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking

the boat, so be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs.

The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy Truthers, who say that you were given all the answers, believe in... I guess they would be

Kenspiracy theorists. That's right. Are there Jeopardy-truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like. They gave you the answers, and you still blew it.

Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of the Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the Movie Pass era, where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero cents, and I could not stop thinking about it.

I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind a movie pass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of Movie Pass the company that he founded. His story is wild that it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther.

And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th Minute. I just got back from visiting my nephew and all he watched was Blues Clues. And it sent me into a death spiral of listening to every interview on the face of the

earth that's available with any of the hosts of blues clues in order to compare their general vibes and relationship to the blue screen and they're my friends and I love them. Anyways, my interview with the wonderful jaunty picking is up next, but a quick note at the top, my voice sounds very bad in this interview. I am aware of that. There is no need to contact me about this. This interview was recorded back in January 2025, uh, shortly. after the Los Angeles fires had happened, which, well, I was very fortunate to not be affected by, and you can listen to our episode about relief efforts that came out at the time. But I did have bronchitis and ended up leaving town because I couldn't breathe well.

And these are the circumstances the interview was conducted in. So leave me alone. And please enjoy this interview with the lovely jaunty picking. I know it is actually pressure because loads of people call me we. or Mr. Weble, which was a terrible choice of name, by the way. Never do that. Some people call me John T. Some people call me Jonathan.

Usually only feel I've been very bad. I'd make cartoons and music on the internet, mainly, but every now and again, not on the internet. Just to mix things up. No, I like to keep it interesting, you know. You do buy many names. Are you sick of Weble? Is that what I'm picking up on? I'm sick of the fact that I chose a word that's not spelled how you assume it would be spelled.

No, it was a terrible choice of name. Oh, watch your website and you go, it's Mr. Weeple without a knee at the end. And then there's like a hyphen and then stuff. Yes, like the word stuff.com. So you'd be like that all the time. I feel like that's a lot of early internet mistakes is a name that looks funny but is impossible to say out loud. Yeah, I've had my share of like, well,

It's funny to me, but it's humiliating to have to spell out for others. Tell me a little bit about, to the extent that you're comfortable, how you grew up, where you grew up? What kind of kid were you? I grew up in the north of England in South Yorkshire, which is a, you know, in the north, in the south of the north, but in the north in Yorkshire. Totally. In Doncaster, which is, was a mining town. God knows what they're up to now apparently very honest accents

I sound real trustworthy me but that's why I grew up in like the 80s really quite a depressing place if I'm honest me being me didn't really have much of a plan flailed around for many years doing music bits and bobs

and eventually got into stuff via a music course and then a company in London took notice of what I was doing Flash and hired me and that was my life for I think three years. So I know that like music and animation, it sounds like this,

they've all sort of like coexisted for you for so long. When you were a kid in like figuring out what you liked, like was it one particular thing that you're like, oh, this is my thing and then more things came later? It was always a mix of like art and music, if I'm honest. I had the Commodore 64, which had like this weird one and a half octave plasticy overlay on the keyboard. It's awful and a two-second sampler. I love the music of the Commodore 64,

and that kind of electronic music was what I listened to, not sort of like the prog rock or anything. But I was very much into synths, synths of fantastic, love them, new noises all the time. It's like, oh, this is great. That's a very particular kind of 80s kid. I love that. It is. Like when synth wave happened, I was like, whoa, wait a minute, this is my time to shine. What were your like early experiences with the internet? Do you have like memories of like, oh, this was like a website or a creator online that I really liked at the beginning. I'm curious who you were into or what you were into when you started making your own stuff. I was on AOL.

You've got mail. All that business. Terrible. Quite text heavy back then. Obviously, you couldn't really have it. And then Flash came along and things started picking up. I ended up on new grounds like looking through that. I think it was like the British.

It was like the Britney Spears monster truck jump challenge or something. It was a different time. It was quite violent and very edgy. The random movie, which was a flash thing, I love that. It kind of opened my eyes and I started, while I was messing around, when in Flash, obviously, for work. So I started doing animations more as a sort of technical thing,

like what can I do and have it straight away on like a 56K modem. And I think that was a lot of it. And the loops came around that way as well because just keeping file sizes down, really. It was kind of just more problem solving. Oh, this is good animation. Whoa, wait, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, so it was sort of like as an experiment to see, like, how much you could get away with on a certain modem.

Were you working a day job throughout all of the early cartoons? Yeah. And then I work in the evening doing my own stuff. Then one day out of the blue MTV phoned up and said, do you want a series on UK MTV, not, you know, fancy MTV? Yeah, so they got me in to do that. And then I quit my job and took a chance on doing this Friday. I think it was a year to make it, something like that.

What project specifically was it like Weebel and Bob? Yes, weble and Bob, yeah. I have such a hard time explaining new grounds to someone who was not there to experience it. Can you help me? It was a lot of people could get pirated copies of flash, is what it breaks down to. So teenage boys in their bedrooms were playing around as teenage boys do. And I count myself among them, even though I was much older than in my teens, probably. And so madness happened, and you'd see just the weirdest stuff.

It is very hard to describe. You've put me on the spot, haven't you? It's in my head, but trying to put it into words is surprisingly difficult. Because it was also, like you're saying, really, really edgy humor, sometimes like the cartoon violence, especially cartoon violence in Flash. Yeah. I think it's always very funny and never very scary, which is great. I guess I want to talk a little bit about Weble and Bob, because that comes before Badger Mania. How do you come up with the idea for Weeple and Bob?

You're going to hate me. No, I like you so much. Don't worry about it. It was a technical challenge. Oh, really? They were very simple shapes. I'd figured out that processors were very, very poor back then. And you didn't really have fancy graphic cards either.

It was all done with the CPU. So their shapes, I think I used about four points for each shape of the bodies. And then the eyes are like two possibly. It was made to be as simple as possible. And the only reason they actually spoke was because Rob Manuel and Peter said, I think they should actually speak. It's really annoyed me at the time by I accepted his sage advice. What was the experiment for?

Was it like another web design experiment? Yeah, it was, can I make this playback smoothly with the very most file size for literally as many people as possible? And so how long were you making Weble and Bob? It started online and then it went to MTV. What was that process? Was there a big change in process when you took it to TV? The only real problem was exporting them in a TV-friendly video format, which turned out surprisingly tricky.

So if you ever saw The Monkey Song on MTV, all the frames were all over the shop. It was awful. And I said, please let me fix it. And they went, no, that's how it is now. Suck it up. From or maybe during Weeple and Bob Badgers happens. The world changes forever. 2003, big year for me because Badgers came out and so did School of Rock. And these were

transformative pieces of art for me personally. Take me through your process. Where does Badgers come from? Okay. So there's a song called The Riddle, I think, by, I'm going to say, Nick Kershaw. However, there were a couple of Knicks around at that time. So it's hard to say 100%. Everyone's, oh, what's it mean? And they turned out the, had no meaning it was all just placeholder words and they went yeah that'll do so i kind of had that going on with the lyric side of badges but in the sort of musical side of things i've become obsessed the tune or get people's attention because of the wickfield theory which do you remember saturday night maybe it wasn't big in the u.s i don't i don't know if it's like the way you move

there's a duck quacking all the way through it i swear to god so badgers has an annoying squeak all the way through it. So I paired that mess and Badgers happened. And, you know, the rest is history. And people are like, I love how people love to apply meaning to nonsense. It's intrigued me for years. So I kind of abused that a bit, really. I like to just be very vague. When Badgers started to really, like, explode, I mean, how does that feel as like an artist? Does it feel like, oh, cool, like there's this validation? Is there pressure to make more? Like, how do you, yeah, what was that like when it first happened? It was cool. It was very cool. I remember I'd gone away for the weekend.

So I wasn't near the internet because I don't think Wi-Fi was widely popular. And I got back and I think it was like 50,000 views, which at the time was huge for me. And then it just kept going bigger and bigger and bigger. It was appearing everywhere. And it's like, wow, what is going on? And I think at that point, my website costs just got ridiculous. that hosting. Yeah, we were on fancy hosts. I can't remember when we managed to get adverts on the website, but for a while there was nothing and I had no idea of how to monetize anything. So I'm just like, here you go. Wow. Okay. So yeah, I mean, how did you

manage to adjust that so that you could make a living? I was always so curious, like, was it possible to do full time? I know now that it was, but like, yeah, how did you make that work? There are a lot more sensible people with business minds who I hung around with on the internet. And again, it was a lot easier to collaborate with people in many different ways. And one guy I knew, knew another guy, and he was in advertising. What he said, well, I'll set up an ad company online and we'll get you, sort of, and he would go off and do deals and all that sort of thing and find the banner ads. This was pre-AdSense as well. It was all very new and exciting and odd, very tied to the website adverts would happen.

So it was kind of fun. I was all for it. So as this video takes off, you do a series of them. It was also featured during a football championship. Is that true? Yes. Fans were singing it. Wild.

Seeky Badgers, yeah. It was crazy. But there was a lot of good vibes in the country. at that point. I'm not deeply into football at all, but that one got me, I seem to remember. I'm always curious when it's like, oh, you became the badgers guy, right? Did that sit well with you? Or you're like, oh, I better make something else so I don't become the badgers guy? Like, how did you, you know, like creatively think about that? I never really thought of that at all because I'd always be, I'd always be making other stuff as they went along anyway. So I was always

I think I do Webel and Bob I do Badgers to do it. It never really could. Now it's very clear that Badgers is the one that everyone remembers. I never really thought of myself as the Badger's guy until later on really. I'm not really sure I do

now, to be honest. Maybe it doesn't sit well with me. Maybe this is what we can take from this. I don't want to be, it's like Bart Simpson in that episode and you know, we've just got a duty catchphrase. I've always hated sort of catchphrase humor and yet here we are. Well, but I want to talk about you have built out, like, an expanded universe of characters and works, like, before and since.

What is your favorite series of animations that you've made? Series. Or, I mean, it doesn't have to be serious. I think my favorite 2D animation, if it's like looking that way, probably be the Walk in the Woods one, just because it amused me so much to do. what if this happens and the bunny would come in and it pooped its way off screen and that was going to be the end but then I thought to myself well what if it isn't the end so I had I had I had a really good time making it so maybe that's part of why it's one of my favorites I think it came out pretty well yeah a few things I really want to change which is it's pretty good for me

you started your own production company um is does that change the way you work does it just expand it? Are you a boss now? Like, how does that work? I've always been a boss. No. So true. It's kind of, it's just a comfortable space, really, I guess, where someone else deals with the business side of things and keeps me under control, which is fantastic because I need that. My partner also joins in with writing and stuff. It's very much a partnership now, and I love it to bits. I'd love to do like stuff external as well. I'd love to be a director

on something and just be around people every now and again would be nice. 20 years in a room is quite a lot. How is making stuff now for the internet different than it was when you started? It's much harder to get noticed I would say for everyone.

And just because there was less people making stuff initially I would say and now it's very easy, which is great in many ways. The algorithmic changes. You could talk about those endlessly and whether that's interest or not. I don't know. The whole tailored search thing is a huge

bugbear of mine. There's not much natural growth of things anymore, I would say, but maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Maybe I'm an old guy in his ways who can't really see the future anymore. My favorite thing, though, is just

I love problem solving, I love puzzles. So, changing with the software and that sort of side of things, It has been fantastic. I've taught myself blending now. And I'm loving that sort of the creative tools that we have at our fingertips now, like from where we were with Flash, which was, it was okay, I guess, at times. He served a purpose.

But now we can just do, oh, I want to do this. And you can do it. Madness that that's where we're at. You started doing this because you wanted to problem self something. So, of course, you've grown with the times. Yeah, I like surreality. Because life is surreal. and I just kind of look at things

and go, oh, I'm now going to poorly explain this part of life. Is there anything that you haven't done? Are there characters that you're like, oh, or just even concepts you've wanted to get off the grounds for years and it's like, someday, someday.

Yeah, this is part of why I've been teaching myself, Blender. There's two things I want to do. I'm kind of obsessed with these ideas. I realized that asking 2D animators to do what I wanted to do was just not fair on anyone. The other thing is I want to do a 3D

stage show for Savlonic with the sort of Pepper's Ghost thing. I've been working towards that, like trying to do live motion capture and all DIY and indie. So I'm getting there, but it's a slow road. That's so cool. I wanted to

ask you more about Savalonic because I feel like that's like your, you know, music first project. And I know you've released other stuff over the years, but how did that come together when When was it like the right time to start that project? I think it was the first one was 2008. It was meant to be a parody back then.

So the original songs are very silly. And over the years, they've grown up, really. And I think when we finished this album, we all kind of looked at each of them with like, this is a proper grown-up adult album now. Feels good. But I do love that about the internet. It's like the fact that we've been given the room to like change from a silly

band doing almost parodies to whatever they are now. And not because all these things are on the internet to let people do this. It wouldn't have been possible. It's fantastic. Whenever I'm down on myself, I'm just like, you know, I'm very lucky

really. I've got all this stuff. I wanted to touch on this just because it is like such a weird fun thing in your in your catalog. Bring it back to Badgers for a second. I do want to talk about Save the Badger, Badger from 2013. what a singular, how did that come together?

Like most things, it's just odd things happen. And you kind of have to say, yes, I'll do that. That sounds ridiculous. Yeah, I got a phone call from Brian May himself. And he's talking to someone about badgers and they were said, I'm paraphrasing a lot. You're the badger guy to talk to. Do you want to help me save Badgers?

And because, yes, I do. Well, I'd love to help us. what do you see me doing on it? I think was what he said. Well, you're Brian May. I assume you'll play guitar? He's like, yeah, okay. And play guitar, he did.

He did. He enjoyed it as well. He had a good time. It shreds. It's so good. He's quite a good guitar player, it turns out. But I got to play around with the master tapes of Flash Gordon as well, which is my favorite film of all time.

And I'm not joking. He's literally my favorite film of all time. So that was just magical for me. Oh, and then it seems like it was received really well. I did exactly what he was hoping. He's played in the House of Lords, which again is insane. What is going on? Life is ridiculous and it's wonderful,

but this ridiculousness has been seen in ridiculous places. Has that changed the way you've interacted with the internet as having kids they use it? I was very aware of what the internet was like when they were growing up for sure. yeah they've been encouraged to stay away from social media um sites but they're welcome to like chat to their friends on and all that and my daughter loves Pinterest my son just loves gaming anyway so it's not he plays with his friends and they chat to each other so that it's quite a wall garden internet that they're experienced at the moment i think i'd like to think so who knows

what goes off really. I'd like to, they're very sensible, much more sensible than me, which is wonderful to see. I do remember my mum phoning me up once at work, telling me she was very disappointed in me about one of my cartoons. Oh. She's quite religious, my parents. How did they, well, that's actually, that's, that's a question I should have asked you is, because you're, you know, like one of the first waves of this kind of like super absurd cartoons on the

internet. Yeah, how did your family receive that? I've tried to just say to them, this isn't for you who don't watch. Every now and again, there'll be one. I can go, oh, you can watch this one. That's fine for you. But yeah, general is like, it's not for you. Please don't watch. as my main yeah that's what I'll say and generally they don't watch but my mum is quite proud of me

like she'll tell her friend oh he does this and I guess my last question which is kind of dovetails with talking about your kids' relationship with the internet how has your relationship to both the internet

and the work you do how is it changed like how is distributing art on the internet changed for you. Everything's become a lot more sort of homogenized, really. So you don't have your work popping up on

like albino black sheep and e-bombs and all that stuff. It's generally it's on YouTube and that's where everyone goes or it's on TikTok and that's where everyone goes. I can't stand this vertical video from up. But that's you know, I've got someone who does it for me.

They're doing really well. I have no idea how are they doing it or what they're doing. I don't want to know. I concentrate fully on the YouTube. It's like, this is how I want my art to be seen. Thank you very much. I've become kind of knobby about that. I've spent ages with the Savlonic video,

just making the red slightly less red so it wouldn't look as pixelated on YouTube. But again, that's problem solving again, I guess. So it all comes back to, there's a problem. Let's fix that. Or it's just different problems. Yeah, always new problems. Always be scared. That's my motto.

Thank you so, so much to jaunty picking, not just for his amazing work over the years, but for patiently tolerating my traumatized bronchias voice. You can follow his work at the links in the description, and I really hope you do. Jonti is a breed of internet artists that I worry that we won't get more of, in a landscape that is increasingly driven by algorithms. And while there were certainly trends during this era of online video that we were talking about today,

there was also room for experimentation in a way that I find to be way more limited now. And this criticism scales out to mainstream media too. So many experimental shows are being pushed out of production in favor of what is perceived as a sure thing with wide appeal. And when it comes to work that appeals to young people, that seems to me, a lot more emphasis on trend following than any encouragement to experiment or try something weird and new. I really hope I'm wrong because I think every kid deserves their looping jaunty-picking Badgers video. So jaunty-picking, your time will never be over. But Badgers, your 16th minute ends now. Okay, here's your moment of fun. Grant,

really in his element here doing some strong bad impressions and giving me a headache. I can't tell you why, but that cartoon, it really makes me mad. Here it is. Wow, a whole 16 minutes of fame for Hope Starwater. What a great time. Is that pretty good? I don't know. I wouldn't watch it.

16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and I Hard Worldcaps. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Laughness. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cats fleeing Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all.

Bye! Every case that is a lot of. a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're looking for another heavy podcast about trauma, the saying it.

This is for the ones who had to survive and still show up as brilliant, loud, soft, and whole. The Unwanted Sorority is where black women, fims, and gender expansive survivors of sexual violence, rewrite the rules on healing, support, and what happens after. And I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. Listen to the Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month, and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving.

It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in life. Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to Money and Wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on IHeart Radio app. podcast or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth?

Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.