Wonderful! - Wonderful! 123: Nasty Jupiter

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

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.

Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. This is the podcast that everyone's talking about. It was recently profiled in New Yorker and Smart People. Business Insider. Business Insider had it. Business Outsider was all over it.

We got that prize. We got the big prize from the publisher's clearinghouse uh we won the mcdonald's monopoly game we're doing we're just you we're we're blowing up right now yeah we're blowing up right now yeah we're blowing up right now i wanted to see if you'd say yeah third time and um you know we're so glad that you're going on this journey with us now does that mean that we're not going to take part in the Max Fund Drive later this month? No, we are going to, we are going to do that because we still need your support in a big way. But you know, things are changing around here. Rachel's got a big gold tooth now. She looks like the bad guy in Home Alone.

And Griffin, as you all know, or may know, if you follow his other shows, likes to rip his clothes apart while he is recording. And that's,'s you know that's a hard habit to keep up without your support runs the tally up for sure hey do you have any small wonders i do actually i i thought about making this a big wonder but i figured i would keep it small and talk about the zamboni driver that filled in for the goaltender unbelievable i didn't read the story. I just saw the headlines. The Carolina Hurricanes, both their goaltenders got injured during a game in February, and they had nobody else to back them up. It so happened that the Zamboni driver had a history of playing goal. He actually had a pretty successful hockey career career and then he needed a kidney transplant and his career got derailed and so he was helping the toronto marlies which is an affiliate team

right he served as their practice goaltender so i think they knew like oh he'd be able to do this and so he came in around the third period they had a 3-1 lead when he entered okay and he stopped eight of 10 shots. And so they ended up winning 6-3. So Carolina, clearly the dominant team in this game. But he also eight of 10 shots. That's pretty good, man. Not bad for a man that was in his 40s and doesn't play goal.

That is so good. So because I guess he played this role, he gets per NHL rules $500. And he's allowed to keep his jersey. Oh, okay. Very cash, right? Thanks, NHL. Yeah. That's so nice of you.

I'm going to say the worst idea of all time podcast. Oh, that's nice. These are our friends and co-hosts on the Tell Death to Us Blart show, but they have started doing a miniseries, or I guess wrapped it up because it was a miniseries called My Week with Cats where they watched the cats movie every day for a week and i just dip back into to that and sweet sweet god it's still like it still makes me laugh very hard this show these two boys hurt themselves with bad movies and i enjoy hearing that happen a great deal and it's more timely than some of their previous ventures which were less focused on

movies that are currently yes exactly phenomenon hey you go first this week what do you got um this actually so um we are recording some of these um batched because we are about to travel right and so i was kind of struggling to come up with things and so i reached out to my good friends one of which uh our our friend grace who is um just just a brilliant young woman and she suggested jupiter the planet yes the planet she's like jupiter is a super cool planet you should look into it um yeah i mean it's big like you can't fucking beat it for size right yeah it's so big yeah do you have any stats about how big it is, hun? Oh, of course I do.

Were you trying to set me up right there? Yeah, a little bit. It is 318 times as massive as Earth. Ooh, wow. That scares me to think about. If you combine all the planets, it is still two and a half times more massive. Nice try, guys. But Jupiter wins.

Real big guy. It takes only 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis. What? So not only is it like super big, it's real fast too. It's spinning so fast. I think it, I didn't read this. This is why my friend Grace suggested it. She said that it like keeps our planet safe

from a lot of like asteroids and meteors and stuff because it pulls so much energy towards it. Interesting. Yeah. It is not only big and fast, it is the third brightest object in the solar system after Venus and the moon. So you've probably seen Jupiter in the sky and not realized that's what you were looking at. Yeah. I hate to jump in here and disagree with science, but I think the sun is one of the brightest things in our solar system. I mean, probably, yeah.

But you can't see the sun at night, can you? Yeah, that's a good point, hon. Didn't think about that. Jupiter also has ring systems. So Saturn gets all the credit for the rings. Jupiter hasn't, too. They're pretty faint. Yeah.

Kind of gassy, right? It's a gassy planet. Yeah, I mean, it's a gassy thing. It's like material that was ejected by moons that just kind of orbits. Moon Duke just floating around. That's gross, Jupiter. You nasty. Speaking of moons, Jupiter has 67 confirmed moons.

I thought it was like in the 70s. Did it lose a few moons? Well, 67 confirmed moons, like as of now. Io is one of them. Oh, I didn't write. Did you think maybe I knew all the moons? Titan, I think, is one of them. Sure.

Okay. It has over 200 natural satellites orbiting it so maybe that's why okay yeah is that like some of them are moon some of them aren't i don't do i know what makes something a moon i don't know but the rest of them i think we can agree it's just space trash it is spinning so rapidly that it is flattened out a little bit it's as it's poles and bulging at the equator so it's not like super round it's got kind of a dummy thick planet a little bit. Yeah, it's thick in the middle. All right, I like this.

The last time we saw Jupiter, NASA's New Horizons made a flyby in 2007. So it's been a little while. Who knows what's going on up there? Yeah, a lot can change. 13 years. Gosh, I mean, what were we doing in 2007? You know, it was a different time for all of us.

Yeah, I was still in Chicago. You were still in Chicago? You doing in 2007? You know, it was a different time for all of us. Yeah, I was still in Chicago. You were still in Chicago? You were in college? I was in college, yes. Wow. I was in college. This was 2007, so this was like George Bush was president. You know what I mean?

Like, shit was wild. Pretty sure the song Drops of Jupiter had been out for a long time by then. Yeah, maybe not, actually. Who knows? That song feels immortal in a way that I really appreciate. I think that's all I want to say about Jupiter. I just think there's a lot we don't know about up there. And I've never been particularly a space person.

Yeah. You know, I never had a desire to go into space. I've never been particularly fascinated with it. Didn't realize how big Jupiter was out there. Yeah. Got me kind of interested in space more. It's one of the things I remember like in school talking about the scale of different or like celestial bodies where like the thing was like, oh man, Earth can fit into the sun

like 1.5 million times. And like it was like something like you can fit like 13 Earths in Jupiter or something like that. But that doesn't seem correct. I think I just made that number. Well, so there's, for example, so there is a red spot on Jupiter. Yeah, it's butthole.

That's what I always, every time I look up at it, I'm like, ew, Jupiter, that's not, that's gross, Jupiter. Put that away. What would you call its rings then? If the red spot, is it like its belt? Yeah, that's its belt. Okay.

So that red spot can contain two or three planets the size of Earth in its diameter. So just that red spot alone. And maybe it does. We've never gotten in there. Right. But maybe a couple couple maybe we used to have like 12 planets in the solar system and jupiter ate it all up oh that's a good point yeah there was actually i saw a line that if um if jupiter were more dense it would start pulling in on itself oh then jupiter stop yeah jupiter stop you're good like like, as is. I love, you're our big helpful friend keeping us safe, I guess,

from asteroids and the like. But please calm down, because that would be bad if you imploded. Like, don't change a thing. Don't change a thing. Don't slim down. No, God, no. No, don't. Just stay, just right as you are.

Right as you are is really, really good. Just maybe put that butthole away people are looking we've maybe you don't know this because you're wicked far away but we've invented telescopes so we can see that nasty thing like we know what you're doing up there one day saturn's gonna be like oh shit jupiter i think they got telescopes and jupiter be like oh my god this whole time this whole time my bong has been just out man hey what's your first thing my first thing is the greatest breakup song of all time uh wait weird that felt very familiar i feel like we've done a song where we said like oh that's the greatest breakup song of

all time like we've talked about i can't remember what it was anyway it's a case of you by joni mitchell oh i don't think we've talked about joni mitchell on the show we've referenced her a lot right because we talked about judy sill and so like yeah it's a pretty obvious comparison there but uh uh the album blue by joni mitchell is like front to back one of the best albums yes it's one of the like it's one of my first like treasured record albums that i got uh and i was sort of a latecomer to it. But this song, A Case of You, is off that album. And it is widely regarded as one of her greatest songwriting accomplishments.

I am a just hilariously uncultured fella. And this was especially true before I moved to Austin. And met me. And met Rachel. And got that rachel and got turned so much better the first time i heard this song was actually at a concert in chicago from the decemberists oh and colin malloy did like a just a solo acoustic cover of it after the uh after the encore and it was like so great i was like man this song kicks ass the decemberists at it again with another big hit. And then I learned it was a cover. And that is like when I got super into Joni Mitchell,

like that year living in Chicago, because man, that's good wintertime music too. Holy shit. I just, I, this song is so gorgeous, right? Musically speaking, we can start there. It is just these really rich guitars, like layers and layers of guitars and steel guitars uh and just like gentle sort of alt percussion tapping uh

and you know jenny mitchell's voice just like really explores the space uh which is like a very jenny mitchell thing just like launching her pitch like just all over um if you've never heard it before uh i'm gonna play a little bit of it which is like kind of tough i don't know which part to play because it's it's a very efficient song and all of it is really good but uh here's a little bit of a case of you you're in my blood like holy wine it tastes so bitter and so sweet Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling And I would still be on my feet Oh, I would still be on my feet

So, like, the music is kind of sad and lovely in a really nice way. Like it's among my favorite songs of hers just because of that. Is it weird that I never really realized it's a breakup song? Well, it's funny because I was listening to our wedding playlist on Spotify and it was on our wedding playlist. But like it super is a breakup song. I don't know. Maybe you can interpret it as some

other way uh but uh the the the lyrics of this song oh my god like she's like she's a brilliant lyricist and i think she's firing all cylinders on this song there is a sort of ongoing metaphor about sort of communion in this one uh the chorus obviously is you're in my blood like holy wine tastes so bitter and so sweet um this idea of love being this like visceral physical thing like having it be embodied in that way is such a i think powerful way of of uh writing about love um and this this is like for me the iconic thing about joni mitchell is if you read it like a breakup song, which is how I do it, uh, there is a sort of like humor to it as well.

Uh, just that first verse, it paints this image of like somebody sitting at a bar by themselves, drawing a map of Canada on the back of a coaster, uh, just like in a dark bar illuminated by blue tv screen light uh and then just like while they're doodling like that like absent-mindedly like drawing the face of a lost love like that is such a like crystallized like such a clear image such a clear scene that

she like paints like that and uh it's it's like the kind of thing that she is so fucking good at yeah and you believe like she did or witnessed or happened to her that's what's like so authentic about joni mitchell is that like anytime she sings anything i'm like oh that must have actually happened to her right and she's actually singing about it and she has a quote about that uh she was interviewed uh in rolling stone by cameron crowe, and she was talking about Blue. And she said, the Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.

I felt like I had absolutely... That's an amazing little turn of phrase that you just fucking dropped. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music is that there were no defenses there either. So like, not only do you have to be a brilliant sort of, you know, person, a poet to create stuff like this, like you also have to be like extremely vulnerable, I think, to tap into the kind of stuff like this like you also have to be like extremely vulnerable yeah i think to tap into the kind of stuff that this song taps into uh and i mean then you could get into the kind of difficult conversation of like um you know suffering and art and like the whole concept

thinking about this a lot lately because um i found it a lot easier to be artistic when i was unhappier sure but on the receiving end of that like i think it is easy to say um uh i think maybe we talked about this with nick drake too like this idea of just like yeah he suffered so much but the art that came out like that that is such a like there is a way of thinking about it it's not that i don't believe like there is a way of thinking about it it's not that i don't believe that there is a way to to create art from a uh happier place i feel like it's something that like you and your family members do all the time absolutely yes yes um i just i've i respect it even more because i think it's like it's it's difficult to be vulnerable when you are

not feeling particularly vulnerable i guess yeahanticizing somebody else's suffering for the art they create feels like gross to me, but like doing it for yourself is like a way of reclaiming that time, like reclaiming, uh, those like shitty feelings that you, that you had when you were feeling low. Um, uh, I think that that's really, I don't know, really strong. Uh, If you are not a Joni Mitchell fan, like, you know, I was not until I heard the Decembrist cover her, like this song and I feel like Blue as a whole, just like listen to that front to back. It is such a like good sampler. I feel like.

Yeah, because I will say like she is an artist that was always kind of experimenting with her style. And so you may find some of the later albums like not as pleasing. Yeah. But I feel like Blue is you can recommend that to anyone. Yeah. Go dig it up. Dig it up from the boneyard.

That's what she calls it. Oh, yeah. She calls her body of work the boneyard. So she would say like cellophane wrapper on cigarettes. Yeah. But also come out to Joni's boneyard and listen to my tunes, my new mixtape. She's got a great SoundCloud. Can I steal you away? Please. Hey, I have a Jumbotron message here.

This one is for Daniel, and it is from Noah, who says, Ever since our first date, you've always been my biggest wonder. I've loved getting to know you a little better every day. I'm honored that you've let me into your life, and I still get a little choked up when I remember that I got to marry you. Here's to many more snuggles with the dog, yummy drinks at Epcot and a wonderful life with you. I love keeping that romance going post-wedding. Sometimes people are just like, well, I'm done. No. It seems like these two. Not Daniel and Noah. Keeping it up. They're like, let's go get fucking faded at Epcot together and snuggle with that pup into it.

Can I read the next message? Yes. It is for Haley. It is from Dominic. Haley, I love you more than I could ever put into words. Thank you for introducing me to this show and this good, good podcast family. With luck, we are listening to this one together while snuggled up with our cat oatmeal. I have no idea when this is being read

and if it means anything, I bought it the day before Valentine's Day. Does that mean anything? I guess so. It's close to Love Day. Yeah. That's the Love Day right there. That's the Love Day. The message came out after Love Day, but that doesn't matter. I am so charmed by these lovely, loving jumbotrons. I love them too, but don't make cat oatmeal. That's inhumane. Hi, I am Lori Kilmartin. And I'm Jackie Kish. Together we host a podcast called The Jackie and Lori Show. We're both stand-up comics. We recently met each other because women weren't allowed to work together on the road or in gigs for a long, long time. And so our

friendship has been unfolding on this podcast for a couple of years. Jackie constantly works the road. I write for Conan and then I work the road in between. We do a lot of standup comedy. And so we celebrate standup and we also bitch about it. We keep it to an hour. We don't have any guests. We somehow find enough to talk about every single week so find us you can subscribe to the jackie and laurie show at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts okay bye what's your second thing i mean you don't have to get angry and punch the microphone about it we've talked about don't bring your rage into the studio hon that's where my passion comes from i know you know how passionate I am

when I'm reaching. You create so much great art when you're furiously trashing the office. This one, I think, is going to be a fun one. Oh, boy. Mnemonic devices.

Okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah, it took me a second. I thought you were talking about onomatopoeia. That's not how it's said, is it? Onomatopoeia.

It's spelled that way, but people say onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia. Why's not how it's said, is it? Onomatopoeia. It's spelled that way, but people say onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia. Why can't I say that word? Give her the O. Onomatopoeia. There you go. Sorry.

Mnemonic devices are devices used for aiding memory. And they come in all sorts of forms, which I didn't really think about. I'm more familiar with the initials, you know? Yes. But there's all these different memory tricks that are considered demonic devices. Ooh, I think you may have just said demonic devices a little bit, which that's cool. What's that mean? You can find it in Jenny Mitchell's Boneyard.

Yeah. Mnemonic devices are actually, I didn't realize it goes back to philosophers which surprised me a little bit like to me it just seems like a like a hack you know something you'd find on buzzfeed yeah but it's like something that like plato and aristotle were like all up on i believe it was aristotle who invented my very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas right see that's the thing about doing jup I was like, oh, this fits in. It's right in there. There's this story about a poet named Symenides in 5th century BC, who is kind of credited

as being one of the first ones to come up with a mnemonic device. But this is more of a visual thing so initially when mnemonic devices were kind of put together it was a way to create a visual picture in your head and then use that to remember something okay so the story with him is that he was performing at a banquet hall he left the banquet hall was destroyed in like an act of like violence and then they couldn't identify the people that were killed during the destruction and he was able to remember using a visual picture this is a horrific origin story yes for this yes um that is not like my very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas. No, this is an idea that by using locations and pictures in your head, you're able to

remember things. Okay. It was only later. So go forward until like the 15th century when people started saying, hey, let's use letters of the alphabet. Yeah. And people that could do this were often viewed as like sorcerers, which was a problem. So there was a German poet named Conrad Celtus or Celtus. He used letters of the alphabet for associations rather than players.

He kind of took off with this idea and then later in that century, there was a man named Petrus de Ravenna who brought such astonishment in Italy through these nevonic vices that he was believed to be a necromancer this is guys so people would demonstrate this thing like hey i've created this vice ask me these questions let me show you i can do it and then everyone's like you are evil okay so it's just their incredible memory recall is why they thought they were a sorcerer

not the fact that they could create like look at a list of objects and then combine the first letters of all the object names and then come up with a demonstration of it that's so wild why is that sorcery in 16th century lambert schneckle who taught mnemonics to people in france italy and germany um demonstrated his ability and was denounced as a sorcerer. Okay. All right. I guess. So here are some of the other mnemonics. So the first letter thing is the one that a lot of us know. Yes.

There's also the idea of like music mnemonics, like the ABCs. You create a song that helps people remember the alphabet. By the way i had henry sing it to me this morning in the car he wanted songs and so he wanted a number song so i did a number song and he's like i'll do a letter song i said good and it was so fucking dope does he still do he does a b c d f and g and then he was like, Spider-Man, go on vacation. Get on boat. One horse open sleigh.

That's incredible. It's a really good song. I mean, he doesn't know his letters. No, he doesn't. He's three though. Right. We've got time. There are a lot of mnemonics with letters that I never knew before.

For all the Great Lakes, people learn homes. Yeah, yeah. Did you know this? I feel like I never had to learn the Great Lakes. Yeah, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and... Oh, man. Oh, my God. Superior. Superior, yeah.

Yeah. That's embarrassing. I don't think I ever had to learn the Great Lakes. Yeah. Roji Biv. Oh, yeah. Of course. They're a lot for math. Oh, yeah. Of course. They're a lot for math.

Oh, yeah. Do you remember, please excuse my dear Aunt Sally? Aunt Sally, yeah. Do you remember FOIL? When you were doing like a- First, outside, inside, last? Yeah. And then there are some for foreign languages that I thought you would like.

Ooh. So apparently to remember command verbs in the U slash two form in spanish people say vin diesel has 10 weapons i don't know enough about spanish to like know what all those stand for vin diesel has 10 weapons i mean and not only is it a good mnemonic device it's true definitely true at least at least 10 weapons on him at all times uh in music the the lines of the staff every good boy does fine yeah in between that his face uh when i was taking piano classes last year and starting from like basically the beginning it would be so embarrassing but like my teacher would point at a note on a scale and be like what's that and i'd be like all cars eat gas at a note on a scale and be like, what's that? And I'd be like, all cars eat gas. Oh, well, that's a G right there.

Oh, yeah, because that's for piano. Well, that's the bass clef. The bass clef has a different set of things. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun, babe. I don't like that they were thought of as sorcerers, but it is a kind of magical power if you think about it i find it so useful i like um i have a really bad memory it's always been really bad like i remember in fifth grade we had to memorize all the presidents and i just couldn't do it and i would watch all these kids get up there because the teacher had a lot of time to kill and had each person get up and recite all of them in front of us for like a week and i just watched everybody do it and then i got up there and i just stalled out man i remember there was a game show i don't remember

what it was called because i think there were a few game shows like this where uh for a million dollars uh a contestant would be challenged to do something like impossible and they would give them a month or so to like prepare and one of the episodes was uh doing like the first uh hundred digits of pi and they were they brought the person into the studio gave them that challenge sent them away for a month and then like the rest of the episode just kind of focused on what they had to do to memorize the first hundred digits of pi uh and like the number of mnemonic devices that they came up with was like wild because they essentially tried to boil it down to like 30 mnemonic devices like okay

that's the birthday that's the last four digits of your secure like social security number that's the uh yeah it's and then you need to like nest them because you have to have mnemonic devices to remember the order of the mnemonic devices like it was it was really wild there are a lot of spelling ones too like i before e except after c yeah um anyway i can't remember all of them but i just i think it's it's uh tmnt tmnt teenage mutant ninja turtles that's how you remember that well see now you're just getting into acronym territory you know but i would sometimes i'll mess it up. You know, I'll be like, oh, those Teenage Turtles ninjas. Mutants. Mutants, turtles.

Hey, my second thing is a bit abstract, and I apologize. And you may recoil at it at first thought, but I promise I'm going to keep it loosey-goosey in a place that you will feel comfortable playing. Okay. All right. I want to talk about the sort of shire aesthetic i like the aesthetic of that shire and i know you are you inspired about from the week that we talked about um my lady of the bracelets a little bit i was inspired by that uh and i was inspired by uh a news article that i read about something wonderful that I will get to

at the end of this segment. I guess I'm talking specifically about Hobbiton, which is the sort of focal point of the Shire as seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I'm not gonna talk about the whole of the Lord of the Rings because there's a lot to unpack there. Please don't.

But whenever I would watch those movies, which I used to do very regularly after they came out, I would always just like adore the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, the first one, because it spends a lot of time in Hobbiton, in the Shire. And it's just such a like chill ass vibe. It is such a good vibe that I like looking at and thinking about a lot is it now you know that i'm pretty unfamiliar right but i picture a lot of moss there's a

great deal of moss yeah uh if you've never like read the books or seen the movies the sort of thing you have to keep in mind and and this informed like a lot of fantasy sort of staple ideas moving forward, is that a lot of Lord of the Rings, like races other than like the humans, all sort of lived among nature in a way that like fused this idea of civilization and nature, right? So the dwarves all lived like in the

mountains in these mines that they would carve out down to the heart of the mountain or the elves like lived among the trees and the hobbits sort of did that idea but just like in the plains like just in grassland just among sort of like empty vast hills uh and that is how you get this this aesthetic and like the most sort of iconic thing about it are the like burrow houses that they build into the hills with like big circular wooden doors and windows coming out of them uh where just you know you look at the hill from a different direction and the house is completely invisible to you uh and then you go inside and it's just like nice and warm like and like nice wood floors and rafters above and it's just all just so nice and rustic as fuck in there i like that you like cozy

i like it cozy and on on the outsides of the houses you get just like flowers all over gardens. These little wicker fences. I just, I've always, I like a loamy roof, right? I think that's the real life interpretation of the aesthetic that I dig. Like whenever you see a, this is not common in the States. I feel like this is more sort of like- Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what you're referencing right now.

I'm talking about like deep cabin, like deep rustic, like norwegian sort of vibe of like actual like dirt roof with grass on it like actual like you are growing some actual sort of flora up on the top of your on the top of your cabin that vibe just really does it for me i like that a lot whether it's in fantasy or you know do you like uh do you like david the gnome i love david the gnome i mean that's a different vibe though like now you're talking they lived in a tree right i think they lived in a tree gummy bears you live in a tree that's fine but that's just like one thing i always liked like this idea of just like living in the hills like living in just like and then you get like the shit they

were doing in there don't get me wrong the hobbits were uh a deeply prejudiced uh folks with lots of lots of sort of problems amongst themselves but they were just kind of fucking chilling in these little hill houses that you would go inside and they'd be like hey come on inside look at all this dope food we have. Do you want me to smoke you out? Because you're a wizard. I want to smoke out with this wizard in my hill house that has a circular door. How do you not get down with that?

No, I'm into it. I'm actually surprised that there haven't been more Harry Potter style Universal Studio opportunities. Well. Did I just set you up for your next thing? You did. You set me up real real nice uh uh i was going to talk about like the inspiration for it but like tolkien grew up uh most of his

life in england and so just like english countryside shit he lived in this village called uh serhole uh in birmingham that was just like wide open like plains and and uh they had it had a corn mill on the river, which is also like a part of the geography in, in Hobbiton. But in like my vision of what it looks like, it didn't come from the books, which I think I read after the,

I saw the movies. It comes from the movies. Uh, and like building Hobbiton was like this huge undertaking. They built it on an actual working like sheep farm. Uh, and like obviously had to excavate a bunch of shit and do all this stuff. But they shot all of this in New Zealand on North Island.

And they didn't tear it down. Like when they were done filming. So Hobbiton is still there. Oh man. And you can get a ticket and go visit it. And go chill there and go to the green dragon inn and get yourself a food and some drink you can they do like events there the winter solstice is coming up i think in june and they have like a special event planned around that

and that is very good to me we should do this for your 40th birthday i never have been in the like i know there's lots of people who feel this way like i i really like those movies but i was never one of those like i it is my life's dream to fly to new zealand and go on the helicopter tour of like all of there's the mountain that they climbed up on and did all this like that's never been my jam but like the thought that this thing exists on our planet it makes me feel pretty good yeah it makes me feel real nice and again it's not limited just to like this lord of the rings thing i'm talking about the aesthetic from what i understand the um uh the studio ghibli like park in tokyo is also all about sort of like this hidden little zone in amongst like the mossy rocks and

shit like oh oh that's good for me it's very good that's good for me thank you thank you moss I guess shout out shout out to moss too like right like none of this would be possible without moss moss is doing a great job you don't want it on um your roof unintentionally I think it's supposed to be pretty bad. Collects a lot of moisture and then just kind of like keeps it there. Not great for the roof's integrity unless it's intentional. And it's like, oh, that moss isn't eating my roof. It is the roof.

And it's just frame of mind, I guess. You know? No, I could talk about moss for hours. Good, because. Here we go. Lock in. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about? Yes.

I want to talk about Sean, who sent us an email and also made a video showing us the message in a bottle that they have made for us of you saying... You saying hot tube. Hot tube. Yeah, there's not an umlaut on it you just kind of like i don't know why i said that way hot tube uh i love it so much and sean has built an actual bottle that uh whenever i open it up i get to hear that little yeah we'll have to be very happy thank you sean it's going to be in our po box this week i think so let's keep an eye out for it um

and marlo says i love cooking spaghetti squash it looks just like a regular squash when you cut it open and it looks like regular squash after you've roasted it but then you drag a fork through its insides and it falls apart into strands just like spaghetti it is the most satisfying thing i've ever cooked we had some of that we made it once we got very excited about spaghetti squash because we like saw it in a video and i think we were looking for sort of more side dishes it's really easy to make it's really easy to make but we didn't do a very good job of it if memory serves so i think that i think just the recipe we use was bad but it the texture of it beats ass and we're tasting good yeah um we'll give another shot spaghetti squash thank you marlo for the inspiration and thank you to bowen and augustus for the use of our theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in

the episode description and uh thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah, thank you, Maximum Fun, for hosting our show and so many great shows that are funny and topical and, you know, make you laugh, make you cry. Make you cry? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Maybe, you know. I've heard some people like that Adventure Zone show.

Oh, yeah, I guess. Get a little weepy over it. We put a little bit of that cry juice on that. And hey, if you really like MaxFun, you'll have your chance to support it and support us here in a couple weeks when we have the MaxFun drive, which we're going to talk all about when it runs for a couple weeks. But we're going to have all kinds of cool stuff going for you. We're going to have a bonus episode for you for new members. And it's just a lot more. We'll be back to talk about that later uh i think that's it um and you gotta go back to work you do yeah this was a nooner is that what is that what you said

hold on that's what i put on my calendar What did you tell your boss that you were doing? I put on the calendar, nooner, at home. Babe. That's a doing it thing. Well. I've got to go. I've got to go. money won't pay, workin' on pay money won't pay, workin' on pay money won't pay, workin' on pay money won't pay, workin' on pay

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