Wonderful! - Wonderful! 109: The Hair-Eating Robot Friend

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Rachel's favorite labor icon! Griffin's favorite helpful automatons! Rachel's favorite pancreatic peptides! Griffin's favorite communal dining experience! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Is it my turn? Yeah, I thought you might. Is it my turn to? Because I always come in and I'm like, well, did you guys see in the news about the big beef shortage? And then we have to make jokes about the beef shortage, which is

no fucking laughing matter. The beef is gone. Where's the beef? See, I went and made a joke about it. I thought, but I thought if we were going to switch things up beforehand, you would be like, oh, hey, Rachel, by the way. By the way, I want you to do. I'm going to stare at you.

I'm going to stare at you until you do a starter thing. Don't do the one about the beef shortage. People get so freaking sensitive. But where did the beef go? You know what I mean? The cow run away with the spoon. You know what I mean? Or wait, the cow jump over the moon.

You're almost doing a slam poem right now i has this whole episode so far been a slam poem i don't know i open up my box what's inside the not the beef oh see you're doing it it's when if you hesitate even for a second you're not they know you're not slamming. You got to do a lot of like, I look into the newspaper and what do I see? Beef shortage. So you talk kind of like a robot, like a bad broken robot. I opened up the beef tray a little harder than you thought huh

where is my beef hey do you have any small wonders I do so it's actually it's a twitter account oh gosh um I found this I don't know why but I found this it's uh the account

is called wiki title singable to teenage mutant ninja turtles i don't know how i found it yeah uh but all it is and they tweet almost constantly it's just eight eight syllables yeah so for example um let me give you one here. Okay. Spider-Man the Dragon's Challenge. Human Rights Protection Party. Senate of the Czech Republic. And it's just constant. It's just the right number. And everything they post,

they post like with the graphic format. That's really good. Dang, that's good it's very very good pleasant valley ranger station i mean dreaming of a jewish christmas is a personal favorite of mine that's a wiki title i guess so what that is um i got a small wonder it's that new pokemon got it came out while we were on like a really long tour uh this past weekend and what a what a time for that to drop because it was just me and justin uh and our business manager amanda

just like playing it on the plane and you can see like a ticker like a stock ticker of like what your buds are doing so like i'd lean over and be like yo that was a dope wulu you just caught i bet that one's got high stats psyched for you dude psyched for you um i'm really liking it i've i've got the i've got the bug again and i really haven't explained to me how they vary like the game sent it seems to follow the same format in which oh my god yes catching the pokemon how does one game it's just a good one of those i feel like okay it's a good one of those i feel like okay it's a good one of those it's got a bunch of quality of life things that would be way too granular for me to

unpack here it's still got its problems but uh i think also just it being on the switch like i love that switch and i carry it with me everywhere i go i found out that i can slip this new the switch light into my pea coat breast pocket and so that shit was with me everywhere in the Midwest. And I just like pop it out, catch a few Pokemon. And then, you know, get back to what I was doing. I got like 130 Pokemon already out of 400 in this version. So I could ostensibly catch them all. This thing's only been out for a few days, folks.

I might just be the next. You're good at throwing that ball, huh? I am. Do you, I don't know if that was a sex thing, but it is like how, I don't want to, see, I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but you go first this week. Okay.

What is your first thing over there? It wasn't a sex thing. It's just, I have a very limited knowledge of Pokemon. Yeah. I know that you throw a ball to catch them. You do, yeah. Yeah. Well done.

My first thing is Rosie the Riveter. Oh, wow. Yeah. I don't know much about Rosie the Riveter. Well, I actually didn't either, turns out. Rosie the Riveter was the star of a campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for defense industries during World War II. A bunch of men enlisted in the war, and that meant that if any business was going to continue, the women had to start going into the workforce.

More than 310,000 women worked in the aircraft industry alone. Before or after the war? I'm guessing after. During. So that represented 65% of the workforce

compared to 1% in pre-war years. Oh, shit. So Rosie the Riveter stressed the patriotic need for women to enter the workforce. She was created by a Pittsburgh artist and was featured on a poster for Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Here's the thing that's interesting about,

that's what you're picturing, right? Yeah. It's like that woman with the little headscarf and whatever. She flax in those huge guns. At any point, nobody said like, this is Rosie, the riveter. That actually was assigned later. Whoa, okay.

In kind of retrospect. I was gonna ask, because this is for an electric company are rivets an important part of electricity and how it is sort of dispersed yeah no so it kind of things were kind of happening simultaneously so this pittsburgh artist howard miller created this uh for the westinghouse company and it was displayed for Westinghouse employees during a two-week period in 1943. So it wasn't even like a promotional thing. This was like an internal memo.

No, this guy was hired to create a series of posters. And it was only for existing employees to kind of boost morale. Wow, that's wild. Yeah. employees to kind of boost wow that's wild yeah what ended up happening was that there was an another rosie the riveter that was created by uh norman rockwell who was actually the the actual rosie the riveter like woman holding a lunch pail with a rivet gun and the lunchbox read rosie and this is 1943 so this is like a year later so the thing the the icon that we call rosie the riveter isn't rosie not the origin no no all of this came there was a popular song called rosie the riveter in 1943. And so there's this kind of confluence of events

where we all know it as the like, you know, we can do it poster. Right. But that poster actually kind of disappeared and didn't resurface until the 80s as like a feminist icon. Yeah. Part of what I read, the reason that the norman rockwell

one wasn't used more frequently is that the rockwell family was very proprietary over the like rockwell pieces of art oh yeah and so it was less easy to use that yeah icon going forward i'm surprised what were there like and you'll have to forgive my ignorance about the works of norman rockwell but i assume surrounding his version of rosie the riveter there were you know children laying on a rug reading a book and a grandpa with a hot beverage sitting by a fireplace no this was a cover of the saturday evening post oh okay um and it you know it was in 1943 it was this kind of that time period sure there was actually a rosie the riveter film that came out in 1944 whoa based on based on the based on the works of norman rockwell i guess this is i don't know if

this was a talkie or not but i guess if it was if it was pre-spoken word they could just say like yeah look it's the it's the one from Normo, you know? It's the 40s, babe. They had film. Did they have talkies, though? Yeah. Yes. When did people start talking to movies?

You don't know. I don't know for sure. Yeah. But I do know. Casablanca probably came out back then or something. Like Jimmy Stewart, you know, those folks. Yeah, Jimmy was making flicks back then. They had talkies.

I've definitely heard that man's voice. So the women that went back and worked specifically as Riveters were called Rosies in that time period. Like it really took off. It became like a huge huge huge piece for that effort sure um but again the picture that we all identify with it today is not actually where that came from you know it's wild though i was thinking about it and i was going to ask before you started if norman rockwell was the one who drew this rosy because there is something rockwellian about it yeah so the the most

credible because everybody's like is this based on a real person where'd this come from the most credible claim there is a photo um from 1942 of this woman named naomi parker fraley who was working in a machine shop in california and in the photo she's using or she's using like a riveter and she is wearing like a polka dotted bandana. Okay. So there's a suggestion like oh she must be the inspiration. Right. I hope she got

some residuals man. Actually what's interesting she was incorrectly identified in that photo. So everybody associated the photo with another woman. This is like four layers of us just dropping the fucking ball on this one. Yeah. It just,

the, the photo had been like incorrectly attributed to a woman who was actually still in high school when that photo was taken. Okay. So it was only later she was like looking at an exhibit or something. It was like, Hey, that's me. That's, yeah.

Whoops, guys. So this propaganda campaign about getting women into the workforce was hugely effective. And what was interesting is that after the war ended, all the propaganda was suddenly like, and now go back home. Oh, really? Yeah. all the propaganda was suddenly like, and now go back home. Oh, really? Yeah.

There were actually like government-sponsored efforts to encourage women to basically, now you're needed at home again, ladies. And as such, the overall percentage of working women fell from 36% to 28% in 1947. But a lot of women still stuck around um the oldest last known riveter from that time period built airplanes for 50 years and was just laid off at age 95 in 2014 yes are you kidding me by the time she left she had worked on every single c-17 plane at the Boeing plant. She's Rosie the Riveter now. I feel like if you are the Highlander, like last woman standing in that career, you, congratulations, you're Rosie the Riveter now. And that's the thing.

She didn't, at first I read something that she retired at 95, but then I read she was laid off at 95. That sucks. That does suck. Although, you know, know 95 50 years working there hopefully the severance was quite choice um i yeah i thought of this recently because you around halloween time you see a lot of ladies going out there in the in the rosie the riveter yeah outfit but it is just kind of a nice reminder of this time when the country really needed women to step up and

fill all these positions for the men that were fighting yeah uh and it really changed things for women fundamentally from there on out it was like hey we showed you all that we can do it and that we're just as dedicated and we're just as important and we're not going anywhere hell yeah so i i feel like anytime i see rosie theeter, it's just a reminder of that really pivotal time point in history. Well, jumping to my first thing, it's not quite as sort of iconic and culturally important as yours. So I'm feeling, again, a sort of rough transition here, a sort of tonal whoopsie doodle, if

you will. Because my first thing I have written here, good robots, good robots, a good robot who is not an evil, a good, I wanted to, I wanted, I was originally,

I was like, robots are pretty bad-ass. Cause I feel like I've been on sort of a star Wars kick lately. And so like, I think I've just got droids on the brain. I have a transition for you. Okay. Okay. We can just edit all that out.

Yeah, sure. And go back to speaking of a Rosie that was a robot on the Jetsons. Yeah. Was she a good robot? I guess so. She was sassy, but she got it done. Yeah, she did. She got it done.

She was a good robot. I was trying to think if there was ever an episode where she like attempted to thwart or perhaps even terminate the jetson family so when you say good robot you mean robots that aren't um you know contrarian no i mean i'm couching this mostly because i know that eventually robots are either going to destroy the world or the economy and i don't want this i don't want people to play this episode back and be like griff, Griffin was, you know, he helped this sort of robocalypse come to pass. I don't want that. I enjoy good robots. I'm also not talking about like the Iron Giant, who's an incredibly good robot.

Yeah, for sure. Everybody wants him to be bad and everybody thinks he's bad. But everybody like this one little boy and maybe Harry Connick Jr. and maybe Jennifer Aniston were like, okay, you're a good robot now. I'm going to start crying now just thinking about Iron Giant. Oh my gosh, that takes the macros down. It is a, it's a heavyweight. I'm talking about actual factual good robots. And you may be wondering, Big Dog?

Big Dog's a good robot. Are you kidding me? This Big Dog is a good robot are you kidding me this big dog is a good robot not not the most practical i think big dog breaks the mold for me because i'm talking mostly about good practical robots that help us yeah uh in our day-to-day lives big dog hasn't helped me necessarily but um it's hard not to watch this guy try and climb up some stairs and be like you can fucking do it big yes big dog um Roomba Roomba's a good robot this little robot goes around he eats up all your crumbs in your hair

so that you don't have to step around in it and get your feet dirty because Roomba goes in there and eats it just so you can be happy and so you'll be proud of it and he like learns your house too he learns where your house where the stuff goes down the stairs he doesn't go down the stairs very conscientious we just personified Roomba extremely hard it's hard not to do that with Roomba that's the kind of robot I think I'm talking about the one that you cannot help but personify because he did such a good job and he's doing his absolute best and sometimes he'll bump into the table leg but you moved it and how's Roomba supposed to you know Roomba don't got eyes Roomba's maybe got a camera some sensors but be nice to Roomba because Roomba wants to do

its best I like that anytime I see a house with a Roomba or an off-brand Roomba I get so excited this also explains why recently you've taken to buying our three-year-old son robots that he is far too young to manage yeah well we got the we did the droid building experience at disney world but that was a good pickup he fucking loves that robot and i'm way into that but he picked out we let him pick out a toy at a toy store and he picked this like very technical dancing robot that he played with for like 30 seconds so it's like i don't know how to do the buttons so goodbye um i want to talk about another good robot and this one lives in

the austin airport this one's maybe a little bit bougier of a robot but i travel a lot these days and i love the austin airport but there are um there are like three good places in the whole airport to like get not awful coffee uh like not complete like i i'm i am not like a coffee snob i'm talking about it's not like super super shitty airport coffee and like 300 degrees and it's yeah uh and there's like so there's like only a small handful of places at the austin airport to get good coffee and i like i drink a lot of coffee every morning to get going uh and those three places always have like a wild line and i'm always coming in pretty hot when i go to the airport and so most of the time like i just didn't get

the coffee and i'd have to get the airplane coffee and that's a horse of a different color um no it's not it's the same color it's bad coffee but now there's this robot his name is brigo brigo lives at the airport there's two of him uh and i don't think i understand how brigo works brigo's a friendly robot he's a big's a big, big box. And he listens to an app you have on your phone and you say, hey, Brigo, I'm on my way to the airport. I'll be there in a couple minutes. Or, hey, Brigo, I just got off a plane. I'm walking towards the gate where you live outside of watching and smiling at all the happy airplane reunions. Do you think that you could make me a 16 ounce coffee with two ounces, a half and half and a shot of like vanilla flavoring and one packet of

Stevia. Thank you, Brigo. And Brigo says, sure, just roll up to me. I got a screen on me. You're going to punch in this secret password.

I'm going to tell you this secret three digit password. And then you go to the machine and it's made your coffee inside of Brigo. Brigo takes the ingredients inside of his body and turns it into the drink you ordered. So it's not like it sits in a holding container. It does sit in a holding container. I mean, it keeps it warm. It warms it for you. So when you order it. Yes. Does it make it immediately?

It makes it. Yeah, it makes it. And then kind of pushes it out the door for you when you arrive? Yes, exactly. You can also decide how hot you want it to be. Brigo, you shouldn't have because I'm going to get on this plane. I need it to be drinkable now. Thank you, Brigo. Like, I get it.

That's kind of incredible. It's a tech, it's a tech, you like brand. And I know that that raises some people's hackles, but I'm rolling up to the airport and my flight's going to start boarding in five minutes. And like, I would really like a coffee. And here is this big robo box does it ever tell you like hey i ran out of vanilla sorry he's never run out he's never run

out he's a true friend uh paro the therapeutic baby seal robot that they have in some like hospitals and nursing homes that like provides people sort of like social comfort because it can make eye contact and blink and like make little seal noises and snuggle with you i did not know about this guy he's a good guy and you don't have to like worry about like feeding him or anything like that he's just a little robot companion if you're lonely that's very good i learned about a new one today and uh this robot's name is gita and it's a little cargo robot and it's from the company that makes the vespa the uh the theita and it's a little cargo robot and it's from the company that makes the Vespa the the scooter and it's just like this little circular helper bot that rolls around behind you

and it can carry 40 pounds of cargo and it'll follow you up to six miles an hour and it can avoid obstacles and it has a zero turning radius and just follows you all around and you're like oh I need to get my groceries I'm gonna put it in your brain and you're gonna carry it for me thank you gita and she's like no problem and then you're probably like somebody's gonna steal the groceries from gita no it's got a fingerprint sensor it'll only open up for you whoa gita you're such a good friend so it's not a shopping cart no it's a, it's about the size of a tire. It looks kind of like a tire, but it isn't just one big rolling tire. It would fuck up all the cargo it has inside of it, if that was the case.

It's just a little friend that helps you and carries your things. I love these good robots. Yeah. These are good robots. We need more of them, more good robots. And we need to, i don't know how we prevent this but keep them from being corrupted by the bad robots or the malicious code made by people robots aren't going to be the one that fucks this up for us all we're going to start

the fire i agree with you anyway hey can I steal you away? Yes. Hey, can I read you a personal message? Yes. I don't know if you read ahead. This is part of a set. Okay. This message is for Brunch Squad. It is from Rachel Brand.

Brunch Squad, meeting you all at the shows in june was one of my favorite wonderful things to ever happen just wanted to say thank you for the unending love and support and the sharing of this inclusive mcelroy community despite us all being states away let's keep conquering this distance see you soon your babiest rachel e brand that is uh good i'm glad we can be uh even a very very small part of helping helping these fine folks come together and find friendship that is one of the things that brings me the most joy in the whole world because this next message is also for brunch squad and this one's from sid who says brunch squad thank you for being my go-to team even though we live across five different states,

you've made me feel so welcomed and loved at the Nashville Mbembe, and it's been nonstop encouragement, delicious meal swaps, and goofs ever since. Thank you for existing. You're all pretty wonderful. Love, Sid.

It's so embarrassing they sent the same message. Brunch Squad is real powerful in this episode. Brunch Squad is unstoppable in this episode it's a it's an absolute uh avalanche i just i just realized that that was a play on munch squad didn't it's a completely separate thing and it's so embarrassing they didn't know about our thing when they did their thing hi i'm Renee Colbert. I'm Alexis Preston. And we're the hosts of the Smash Hit podcast, Can I Pet Your Dog?

Now Alexis, we got big news. Uh-oh. Since last we did a promo, our dogs have become famous. World famous. World like stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Second big news. The reviews are in. Take yourself to Apple Podcasts. You know what you're going to hear? We're happy. It's true. We're a delight. A great distraction from the world.

I like that part a lot. So if that's what you guys are looking for, you got to check out our show. But what else can they expect? We've got dog tech, dog news, celebrities with their dogs, all dog things. All the dog things. So if that interests you, well, get yourself on over to Maximum Fun every Tuesday. What's your second thing? My second thing is also kind of a heavy hitter.

Okay, what is it? Insulin. Whoa. Is this because the thing that happened in the news about people trying to synthesize their own insulin? I didn't know about that. Oh, yeah. This is totally unrelated.

Yeah, I saw it in the news today. Well, I think it was like a Verge report or something that's about the people who are trying to like, you know, fucking hack insulin medicine so that people don't have to pay $55,000 fucking dollars for it anymore. Wow, that's incredible. I didn't know about that. I did not read the article, so I don't know how far along they are. But yeah, keep at it, y'all.

You're not doing the Lord's work. You're doing the work that human beings should be doing and not being fucking shitty about it. Okay. Sorry. That's fair. Yeah. I'm always hesitant to kind of tread into medical topics. One, because Dr. Sidney McElroy kind of owns the skills on that one.

But also, there's a lot of medical stuff out there that's pretty wonderful, and it's hard not to talk about it. And I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but it's an issue I think pretty near and dear to your heart. Yeah, so I was going to talk about it. So my dad has type 1 diabetes, and it's interesting because that is a type of diabetes that is typically discovered when you are juvenile and actually used to be called like juvenile diabetes because it's where the pancreas just doesn't produce insulin. So you are dependent on insulin to just function as a human being. Whereas type two diabetes, often individuals will produce insulin, just not in sufficient quantities to function well. And all of this happened when I was real little. So ever since I can remember,

my dad's been diabetic, but this is not something he had most of his life. And I think it was real tough going for a while trying to kind of figure out how to manage it as an adult, having been used to the majority of your life not needing anything. And then all of a sudden, you have to dramatically change everything. And I had known that in my own lifetime, kind of the technology behind insulin had advanced pretty dramatically, but I didn't realize kind of how recently this all came together. So this is like back in the 1920s was when they first discovered that insulin was a thing that would help diabetics. For a long time, they didn't really know the cause of diabetes. And so people didn't live very long with it. The most effective treatment was to

put people on diets, but it would only usually extend their life a few years after they were diagnosed and often the diets were so strict that people were getting as little as like 450 calories a day jesus christ so they would die of starvation uh and so as they focus more on the pancreas they discover this very specific cluster of cells called the islets of Langerhans. Whoa, that's badass. That sounds so cool. That sounds like the next, like,

George R.R. Martin book. Which is how they came up with the term insulin because the Latin word insula means island. Okay. This is fun. I'm learning so much. So in 1921, Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best figured out how to remove insulin from a dog's pancreas. And when they put it into another dog that had severe diabetes, the dog lived for an additional 70 days and only passed

when there was no more insulin available. So that's when they realized, oh, this is the key. This is what, you know, creatures with diabetes need. And then it just kind of advanced from there. They moved from dogs to a more pure form of insulin that could be found in the pancreas of cattle. And it was in 1922, there was a 14-year-old boy in a Toronto hospital, became the first person to receive insulin. And within 24 hours of receiving it, his dangerously high blood glucose levels dropped to near normal levels. And they were like, here we go.

We figured it out. And so a year later, they received the Nobel Prize. Yeah, I would fucking say so. and so a year later they received the Nobel Prize. Yeah, I would fucking say so. And started large-scale production of insulin from cattle and pigs for many, many years. The first genetically engineered synthetic human insulin was produced in 1978 using E. coli bacteria. Wow.

Which I thought was interesting. Yeah. Because the problem with the insulin that was coming from cows and pigs caused a lot of allergic reactions. Well, and you have to harvest it from other animals, which I imagine it's like, it's a more finite thing

than something you can synthesize. Yeah, it was very difficult. And I would say, if I remember correctly, it was early in the 80s, a lot of people were still using that pig and cowize. Yeah, it was very difficult. And I would say if I remember correctly, it was, you know, early in the 80s, a lot of people were still using that pig and cow insulin. I think. I do not. I would have literally no way of knowing. I think including my dad, because if I remember correctly, it was only after he'd had it for a few years that you could really get this synthetic human insulin. Because it wasn't until 1982 that Eli Lilly went on to sell the first commercially available human insulin, which now comes in many forms from regular human insulin, identical to what

the body produces on its own, to ultra rapid and ultra long acting insulin. So yeah, 1.25 million people have type 1 diabetes uh so obviously this is like a significant yeah sure um people can get it at any point in their life you just find it often in younger people because if your body isn't producing insulin usually you can catch on pretty quick yeah um and i i just it's just incredible it's incredible just within our own lifetime how much that's advanced i remember there was a uh there's a girl that i was in like uh all the like you know talented and gifted whatever you whatever your school called it um that had type 1 diabetes and like came in one day with like one of these pumps and all of us were like so like kind of like

super curious about i mean we were like the you know science science and all of us were like, so like, kind of like super curious about, I mean, we were like the, you know, science, science nerd kids. So we were like, we wanted to know everything about it. Uh,

and I feel like at first, pretty much everybody thought that she was like the youngest kid to ever have a beeper. Everybody thought it was a fucking beeper. And so like, she got like straight out of it. Uh, but yeah,

I remember, I like, I remember that was what it looks right out of it uh but yeah i remember i like i remember that was but that wasn't until like uh like sixth grade or something like that and before that like i hadn't even heard of diabetes before because i i don't know i maybe my my bubble was a little bit small yeah it's kind of i mean it's kind of an invisible condition you know if you manage it right um which you, is easier or more difficult for some people, but, you know, you can just kind of live your life and it's not particularly noticeable. Yeah. But I imagine, at least my experience is that every case can be different. Yeah.

You know, and it, I mean, I know from my dad's, it took a long time for him to figure out kind of how to manage it. And as the drugs advanced, it only got easier and easier. Um, so yeah, so I'm, you know, I'm, I'm real grateful for it. I think it's, it's one of those things, um, that I can't imagine not existing. You know, it's like, for me, it's, it's like penicillin, you know, it's like this, this incredible drug that is so necessary to daily life now uh that has like fundamentally changed our lives uh and is is just a really

wonderful thing that's fantastic yeah i'm actually really excited about my second thing i was trying to figure out the correct sometimes i struggle to like really encapsulate what i want to talk about in like a single sort of phrase or something like that. Because what I started out with was like the experience of eating German food in a public sort of beer hall, beer garden setting, the entire, the entire sort of German food eating experience in an established limit like

that. And like how it, how well everything sort of pairs up and then like warm nice sort of the nice sense of sort of like warmth and community it gives you but then i learned there's a german word for it oh good and i'm going to try and pronounce it i'm going to do a very bad job uh it is it roughly translates to like this warm, friendly feeling of good cheer or coziness and peace of mind. It's an incredibly good word that I will never say again because I'm pretty sure I just embarrassed myself. But it describes this experience that I'm talking about.

And I know that like not everybody's excited about drinking big, big glasses of beer. And so like I'm not even talking about like that's not even the the big thing for me this is not like i'm not thinking about this is my favorite way to get plastered drunk uh it is i mean it's maybe a little bit of a part of that but like i'm not talking about anything debaucherous to set this up uh we had a sort of a day off during this last tour and so uh me and justin and travis and our uh and paul who's our tour manager and amanda who's our our business manager and her husband uh we went to a german beer hall in milwaukee oh my gosh and we went there and it was cold as hell outside and we went in and it was really nice and warm uh We found like a big table right away, sat down, got like liter glasses of like crisp

lager and had like some curds and big pretzels and, you know, schnitzel and a bunch of different types of sausages. And like we drank that. And then we played this game where you have to hammer nails into a big log like hand-cut nails you got to use this big like five pound hammer to do it at your at your table like no this was like right next to our table okay uh and so like you have to just get it in and the person with the last like nail stand there's a lot of different rules for this for nail game we couldn't figure out what it was actually called but we played that and then this there was a stage where a guy started playing acoustic guitar and he's playing a lot of those you know cgf three chord classics uh

did take us to margaritaville which justin very much appreciated but all of this went hand in hand and like i left that thinking like that was a fucking great night and also is sort of representative of like most times that i've gone to a place like this and eaten food like this and drink beer like this. Um, if you go somewhere and they serve sausage and pretzels and kind of adopt like a, like a German sensibility, like it follows a format. I know this does not like encapsulate all of German cooking. That would be like an incredibly reductionist way of like looking at this entire culture's food output. like the the meals that i've eaten at you know beer halls beer gardens uh hofbrau house place like that a place like that uh

there there is something so like pure about this pairing of here is a tall like outrageously large crisp beer and here's a bunch of like super savory salty food to go with it and those two together just like it makes sense this may also be i mean you may be about to talk about this but you're kind of your first international travel was to germany and so i think that resonates with me in a major way the first time i ever left the country was when i got it was post-college uh because it was when we were together yeah holy shit so this must have been 2011 uh i was i you know i had always thought of myself as like not the type of person who could travel internationally uh that i like wouldn't know what to do or that i would like embarrass

myself and i did um but the first time i left the country was to go to gamescom this big game conference in cologne germany and i went with some folks that, you know, Polygon was pretty new at the time. So like, I didn't know them especially well. And our first night there, you know, I was super jet lagged and like fish out of water. And we went to this beer hall. And I ate, you know, Jägerschnitzel for the first time and had all these like tiny, like tall cylindrical glasses of like extremely light lager and had a bunch of those and then by the end of the night we were all like i got to know them a lot better than i would at any other kind of like sort of dinner celebration and it's because of this gemut lakad i'm telling you you did it again i know i got brave um i just like pretzels with the big ass pretzels that you

just can tear apart as a group and dip in like some sort of cheese and mustard i know you know i love a soft pretzel there's some good places for that in austin which i'm very grateful for uh it's true and i you know there's even like good beer halls in austin that have like you know fairly authentic german food and uh it is i said paul was talking about this like uh and I I feel like I'm sort of on the same page of it is a type of cuisine that I forget that I fucking love like I really like and I really really like going to places like that with groups of friends because it is a it is an experience with such a singular purpose when it like works and it is uh i don't know i i am again struggling to kind of like put

put the right words to it but um it's just you know going out and having a a tall glass of refreshing beer with salty food and playing games there's like a spirit behind it you know yeah a lot of uh food that you find associated with American culture, for example, is all about convenience. You know, it's not really about the like. Sure. I don't know. I guess I'm thinking about like, you know, hamburgers. Yeah.

But what I'm thinking about is like a crawfish boil or a low country boil or something. Yeah, that's fair. Like, you know, a nice long table with a bunch of food on it that is like spicy and salty and you have some drink like yeah man that's really good stuff yeah keep it up jaeger schnitzel is also fantastic i would love i think i've made it before i didn't i made jaeger schnitzel for us before with like pork cutlets i for sure yeah i think so you're right that was a long time ago yeah i will say this the next, the next day, I wasn't hungover because that is the miracle of all of this

like extremely like heavy, salty, fatty German food. I was not hungover, but my stomach was confused. My stomach was like, that was too much. You know this. Griffin, we've been working together for 32 years now. I thought that you have figured this out by now. That was way too much. You know that, right? I don't know if working now. I thought that you have figured this out by now. That was way too much. You know that, right?

I don't know if working together is really the relationship you have with your stomach. It's more like you work next to each other and occasionally your interests align. It's sort of a like, who's the boss here situation. Cause that's the first dilemma. Tony Danza. I've only watched a few episodes of it,

but it's kind of like succession. Like we're both sort of angling for the reins. And not like Who's the Boss, the popular sitcom with Tony Danza. Is that what the plot of that show is about? Tony Danza trying to wrest control of the household? A little bit. Oh, wow.

Okay. I got some submissions here. This one's from Cassidy who says, something I think is wonderful is the Jeep wave. Have you heard of the Jeep wave? No. I drive a Jeep and Jeep drivers

always wave at each other in some way when we pass each other on the road. The most common is to flash a peace sign, but I've seen people do all sorts of things,

including excitedly waving their arms out the top of the car or reaching out the side of the car when the door is off and waving with an arm and leg. It's a little thing

that makes me smile on a daily basis i didn't know there was this secret jeep society i i knew that there are particular models of car that people feel real kinship like subarus for example oh yeah there's a lot of esteem between a room already subaru owners yeah i wasn't aware of the jeep wave um but i i mean it's delightful us volkswagen owners just have to look ashamed that we got the wool pulled over our eyes uh here's one from uh denali who says uh a little thing that's always guaranteed to put me in a good mood is pulling up to a parking meter that has time left on it, even if it's just a few minutes. Oh, that's good.

Such a good one. First of all, pulling up to parking, period, is good. There is no experience more pure to, and I think this may be from owning a car in Chicago, there is no experience more thrilling, dare I say erotic, than parking a car in an urban environment. Yeah. And having it not be your fucking problem anymore

for even a little bit. Especially if you're parking somewhere and it is during a time period where there is no charge. Yes. That is a miraculous feeling

of like I just get to leave my car here. Hey thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the Use for a Theme Song Money Won't Pay. You'll find a link to that

in the episode description. And to Maximum Fun thanks for having Theme song, Money Won't Pay. You'll find a link to that in the episode description. And to Maximum Fun, thanks for having us on the old network there, buddy. Yeah, if you haven't checked out MaximumFun.org, I think you should because there are new episodes of great shows posted every single day. Yeah.

Every single day. You will never be hungry for content. It's true. And it's going to fill you right up. And we got other stuff at Mc's true. And it's going to fill you right up. And we got other stuff at McElroy.family. Find links to that. Gosh, you know, it's weird not having any tour dates to promote. We are done with the Become the Monster Tour.

Yeah, it's true. And Candle Nights we're very excited for. Rachel and I are going to do a holiday or maybe Huntington themed wonderful. What are we going to do? I think it's funny that you think that I would be able to do a Huntington themed wonderful. What are we going to do? I do think, I think it's funny that you think that I would be able to do a Huntington themed wonderful. Maybe this will be a very lopsided episode of wonderful where I just, I could do a whole episode about flapjacks to knock us.

You know what I was thinking of? What? Is whether or not I could find Griffin McElroy trivia that I could, I could share. Ooh. That I find wonderful. That could be fun. That could be fun. That could be fun.

You would have definitely some sources for that data. Bring some of your high school buds up on stage and get some real Griffin McElroy gems. Well, let's not go wild here. Yeah, but that's it. We're going to head out then. Time to get going. So see you later. Bundling up and warming up the car.

We did the thing where he said bye, but we're walking the same direction, aren't we? Oh, audience. Why don't you stay right here? And we're going to run away. You ran too, audience. Now this is just, hey, are you fucking following us? Gun it, Rachel. Moneyball. Hey! Working on. Hey! Moneyball. Hey! Working on.

Hey! Moneyball. Hey! Working on. Hey! Moneyball. Hey! Hey! MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported. Hey, cool shirt. Oh, this? Thanks. I got it at MaxFunStore.com. MaxFunStore.com Hmm, that's strange. I visited MaxFunStore.com MaxFunStore.com a few weeks ago and didn't see it. That's because they've just launched a ton of new stuff, right in time for the holidays.

Oh, cool. There's patches, mugs, totes, stickers, even a onesie. Nice. Those would make great gifts for everyone I know. Great, because I already got you something from there. Thanks. Now, excuse me a moment. I need to look up maxfundstore.com on my smartphone, you know, to see what's new. Yeah, you can't go wrong with anything from maxfundstore.com.