Wonderful! - Wonderful! 127: A Real Pesci Situation

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Rachel's favorite TV plot device! Griffin's favorite Japanese electronica duo! Rachel's favorite humble pants! Griffin's favorite mind power!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. How you doing? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I'm doing okay. I would say six out of Okay. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I'm doing okay.

I would say six out of 10. Yeah. That ain't bad. No. I mean, it's an F in traditional sort of school grading terminology, but six out of 10. Or a generous D minus. A generous D. Yeah, for sure. No, yeah, I'm feeling about a good six right now.

And that's better than i i think i was last week and that's you know i like that upward momentum maybe we could even aspire to a seven one day or a 7.5 whoo it's gonna take it's gonna take a while i haven't made in the shade with a 7.5 we hope you're doing even better than that eights nines tens across the board that's what i want from you our audience um this is wonderful as a show where we talk about things that we like things that we are into things that are good um which is you know all the more important that we talk about good things in this this day and age do you have any so what are you looking at you're gazing down at my you're looking at your strange

pose that you've adopted i'm crossing my legs and i'm supporting your torso like 45 degrees it's how i like to sit it's i'm it's like i'm doing a kind of stretch and i'm engaging my core so i guess i'm the asshole for engaging my core listen podcast time is just a it's and i think we've been doing this long enough that we can admit it. Just a waste of time at this point. So I want to be doing something good. So I'm getting that core. Yeah. So tight. Yeah.

When I twist like this and I push the jokes out of my diaphragm, oh, my core gets like a big, like it's stucco down there. So firm. Do you have any small wonders? I'm going to say second day cake. The second day of cake is traditionally the best day. Yeah. Yeah.

I had a birthday. No big deal. 22 years young. Stop. 16. No. No, not 16. No.

25 years young. Okay. Five years young. Okay. And Griffin found a way to procure cake in this time. Yes. Which itself was wonderful. But then he got enough cake so that I could have it the day after my birthday as well. Yeah.

A plus. It was very good cake from La Patisserie here in town. Yes. If you're in Austin, support your local biz. Speaking of supporting your local biz there's a little mom and pop shop called taco bell that i guess is giving out free tacos today free uh doritos blasted whatever they're called tacos this won't be applicable to our listeners no it won't um but i'm i celebrate that i think i mostly celebrate the doritos locos taco is my

mini my mini one because doritos are good as hell and i love these tacos i've not had one in a long time from what i understand they have discontinued the cooler ranch one which was like the shit um but yeah giving out free tacos uh is good maybe a bad sort of transmission vector but it's also a transmission vector for good flavors good dorito flavors and i think that that's that's bold and important and special and worth talking about it's kind of amazing how doritos has changed the chip landscape oh yeah there's a lot there there's a lot to talk about there like you're talking about the hint of lime tostitos right or any of the hint of lime chips like yeah i feel like the zest on those is getting so strong and so good and i think it's just because of the bold direction, the path that Doritos sort of bushwhacked in the flavor jungle for them.

For Frontierman. Yes. The chip vector. Yeah. We love the word vector in this hustle. I'm kind of leaning into that one. You go first this week. Oh, I do.

Can you begin? go first this week? Can you begin? My first thing is it's a trip back to Quantum Leap. You're taking us back to Quantum Leap? Yes. That's very okay. Not unexpected. As you'll maybe recall, if you are a devout, wonderful listener, not just that I enjoy Quantum Leap, but also I have discussed it previously on the show, but at that time,

I discussed a very particular episode of Quantum Leap, which was the Leap Home. This time I am discussing in particular when Sam, as played by Scott Bakula, interacts with historical figures. So like virtually every other episode of the show. Not entirely true. Can I guess which one you're gonna bring no i'm talking generally generally when sam on quantum leap interacted with historical

honey this is a very very very specific wonderful topic i believe maybe you're most specific yet there's only like a dozen times that he does it in the like five year run of the show can i say my very favorite okay ch. Chubby Checker. Yes. He invents the twist accidentally, doesn't he? Oh no, this was very intentional. Okay, fantastic. This was, that was Sam being like, oh, you know what dance you should do with this song?

Is the twist. And that introduces another sort of like conundrum loop, right, of like who actually invented, if Sam Beckett goes back in time and teaches Chubby Checker the twist because he learned it from chubby checker who made the damn twist right right this is what i love this is the kind of stuff that quantum leap brings to the table right uh a lot of a lot of what i'm going to detail detail is a very small part of the plot. It's almost just like a little wink there at the end, usually. I feel like the, I mean, it varies.

Sometimes it's incredibly heavy handed. I'll just start going through them and you let me know if you want to spend some more time examining a particular one. Because you at this point have watched the entire series, right? Or no? Yeah. I mean, babe, we watched it this point have watched the entire series right or no yeah i mean babe we watched it together we watched the whole series together so i don't know how i would have missed a couple there um how how does the chubby checker teaching him the twist rank in the heavy-handedness sort of department that's because it feels awfully heavy to me

it it is i uh there's one where he teaches michael jackson the moonwalk and that one's pretty heavy-handed yeah i would say going back to um black performers and then teaching them the dances that they popularized is maybe a little is maybe a little problematic quantumly yeah i mean one could argue that the twist would have eventually appeared on its own, right? Because twisting your body is something that you do.

Okay. One would argue that the twist did appear because Chubby Checker invented it. Well, I'm saying the moonwalk is not something

somebody would naturally do just on moving their body. No, it's almost like a performer would have to sort of choreograph it i'm saying i twist my body every day i'm twisting my body right now and engaging my freaking core yeah uh there are also examples for uh in how the test was won an episode that was supposed to take place in 1956, where Sam helped Buddy Holly write the lyrics to Peggy Sue. Okay. And maybe he could have given his boy a heads up about a specific airplane

that he maybe should not get on board of. Of all the things he could have done. You think he was like, oh, I finally accomplished my mission. Time to leap. Whoa. Oh shit. Hey, Buddy.

Oh, too late. In the episode, Accomplish my mission. Time to leap. Whoa. Oh, shit. Hey, buddy. Ah, too late. Please. In the episode, Buddy Holly was a young boy sitting on a porch singing to a pig he loved and saying the phrase, piggy, Sue. Oh, boy. At which point Sam said, you know what? You should try Peggy. So again, like where did, okay. This is like, this is a Samckett is his own dad level of like

of the snake eating its tail there are also other light ones uh there's one uh leap of faith is the episode takes place in 1963 uh where he teaches a young sylvester stallone the plot of rocky i do not remember that. It was a boxing one. It was where he was boxing for like a church for whatever reason, for the nuns as a fundraiser. God, this show beats ass. And he was learning how to box.

And there was a young Sylvester Stallone there. And Sam kind of detailed like the great comeback story of Rocky. Yeah. I feel like you are cautiously inching toward the big one, the big historical. I mean, okay, you say the big one, and I think I know what you're talking about, but there's also an episode called Starcross

that takes place in 1972 where Sam tips off the Watergate break-in. Oh, yeah. Thanks for the big tip. We couldn't have done... So he was Deep Throat? Is that like the... No, no, no.

He sees some people in a hotel kind of moving around and he like makes a call. Oh, okay. He's not really thinking. I think that it's Watergate at the time. Well, then he's not a very smart man, is he? I guess that's that Swiss cheese brain. There is one where he performs the Heimlich maneuver

before the Heimlich maneuver was invented. That one I will say someone would have figured that out on their own. He is at a restaurant and he saves somebody using that method and Heimlich happens to be there and he's like, that's a really good method. I'm going to steal that. I'm going to make so much money. And there's one 1964 episode, The Boogeyman, where he meets a young Stephen King, at the time called Stevie King.

There's ones where he actually leaps into the historical figure himself. Okay. So he leaps into Elvis. Leaps into Dr. Ruth oh yeah Wowzers which is a complicated episode yeah the one I think that you are referencing where he leaps into Lee Harvey Oswald himself fuck yeah it's a two-parter didn't win like a an Emmy or something like yeah is it this episode is shit hot it is is like, that's my ideal, if I was going to

onboard somebody on, because I guess there's really not another sort of series sequence like that, but having him jump into Lee Harvey Oswald and having to complete his mission is some wild shit, man. This is one of the ones where they suggest that Sam has changed

history considerably. Right. Because at the end of that episode, Sam feels very upset that he wasn't able to stop the assassination. And then Al indicates that in the original timeline that Jackie also passes and that Sam has actually saved her. Yeah. I just like got chills saying that a lot. I remember the first time i saw you watch the whole episode thinking like how are they gonna resolve that like they there's also

like a subplot of lee harvey oswald is in the the quote-unquote waiting room right yeah and that's like yeah the idea is that when sam leaps into a body in this show that the body his displaced goes into this future waiting room where the like scientific experiment is taking place right typically it's it's a harmless switch but lee harvey oswald i guess like a harmful individual yes uh yeah that that man those episodes are so wicked good another um heavier one is when he leaps into the limousine or i guess chauffeur driver uh of marilyn monroe oh and he is in a position uh to i guess try and save her as well um and then the argument at the end from al is that he has extended her life not that he he saved her. So yeah, that's another example where there's kind of, there's two circumstances, right?

Where like Sam invents something or like teaches the person something. And then like Sam actually like changes history in a significant way. And that the idea that the timeline that we know is actually not the real timeline. It's the timeline that Sam Beckett has created, which I, as a child watching

this show absolutely loved yeah sure because i you know i mean when you are a kid watching this show and probably a lot of adults too you kind of like this idea that this is real right you know and i still kind of i still kind of think of that and we still kind of make jokes of that of like why haven't i leaped yet like this idea that you've done something that is like profound in a person's life and that was the thing that you were supposed to do yeah man i won't go watch some freaking quantum leap man i love it so much it is it is a little cheesy i mean a lot of the examples i gave you kind of demonstrate the humor of it which is always kind of ridiculous and goofy but oh so fun um

my first thing this week is a band uh a duo uh called capsule uh and capsule is a an electronica duo uh from japan uh that has been kind of like seminal to to that to that genre uh they got started in 1997 uh when uh the the two members of the group the producer whose name is yasutaka nakata and uh the the vocalist for the group uh and her name is toshiko koshijima uh they were 17 years old and they met at like some sort of like conference and since then they have put together 15 albums uh So they're like really, really prolific. And their music is, for the most part, just like super relentlessly upbeat and very like danceable and enjoyable. They're often compared to like Daft Punk in terms of like aesthetic, musical aesthetic. And I don't know a whole lot about Japanese electronica,

despite the fact that this is the second time that I have brought something, including Wednesday Campanella a while back. But I really, really like Capsule a whole lot. And I will go through periods where I don't listen to them for years, and then I will find them again and just go deep down a Capsule hole. currently in the capsule hole right now and I want to take everybody down with me um so uh I'm gonna play a song of theirs real quick for people who've never heard them before uh this is off of their 2010 album player uh the track is called I Wish You you. So their albums are really successful overseas, where most of their like attention comes from is that all of their music gets licensed for like theme songs for shows or for commercials there are uh talk shows that they their music has been licensed to be the title

theme of uh there are uh i'm trying to remember the i have like a list but it's like dozens of things that there are uh the theme song for um and i have a really like special memory of this band and specifically that song we just listened to uh which is rachel and i uh our honeymoon in japan that we went on in 2013 um where we had some afternoon where we're just like killing time in shibuya and we went into a record store that had like those listening stations do you remember this and we were just like let's go i mean we got like an hour to kill let's go just walk around and listen to some music that like we've never really dabbled in those genres before uh and that was really fun and i remember i found a cd of capsules is that how we found them? And I was like, hey, come listen to this.

Come check this out. And you listen to it and you're like, oh, that's great. Flash forward like a week or so and we're staying at this Airbnb in Kyoto. And there's like nothing to do in this Airbnb, like nothing, nothing really to do. So we would get back from walking around all these places and just be dead tired and not really have anything to, you know, relax with at home. So I remember there was a CD player in the kitchen that was like the one sort of entertainment device in the whole place. And so we walked to a record store that was like in the base of the Kyoto Tower. And we found this album player by Capsule and brought it home and just like listen to it non-stop and i think we

still have that cd somewhere right it's like the only cd i've listened to in the past decade or so um so like their music's really upbeat and really nice and i'm uh i am drawn to music like that right now specifically and it like listening to their music now makes me happy not only on a like the music is happy and it you know is is upbeat uh but it also like makes me remember like a really special time and a really special memory i've i can't think of too many other times that i've like sought out music like that like we went to that record store like let's go find a fucking capsule cd and it took us a very long time but we managed to do it i remember feeling like oh we found this little treasure and so like that album has a very special place in my heart for sure um i don't

really have much else to say uh they haven't dropped an album since 2015 but as far as i can tell if they were still making music uh as far as i can tell they didn't like formally break up or anything like that but uh i think this is the longest dry spell that they have uh that they've ever had um uh but yeah i i hope i hope they're just like you know working on their magnum opus or something like that uh yeah their sound is just like really cool and uh i enjoy it on a few different levels i'm gonna play uh to take us out just uh another song off that album player that is called Hello. Yeah, that's it. I don't have much else to say,

but I feel like we need to say something to pad out while that track fades out before we play the home improvement stinger. What do you think it would sound like if Capsule did the home improvement stinger? Are you gonna do that? I don't know how to do that, man. That would be like pretty tough. No, I'll throw my hat over the fence.

I think it would sound a little something like this. Can I steal you away? Please. This first personal message is for Samuel, and it is from Kyra. Hi, baby. Just writing to say that I love you every second, things these days, I like to think. But I think loving a pumpkin is too much whoa i think being in love with a pumpkin is a bridge too far who any gourd really oh wow griffin yeah i'll say it i'm not

afraid to say it this is my this is this is my i'm on that joe rogan shit right now telling you the truth you may not want to hear it, but it's the freaking truth. I don't think you should love a pumpkin. Here's another Jumbotron. This one is for Emily. It is from Beckett. I just pointed out to Rachel that the first one was from,

it was for Samuel. This one is from Beckett. He's out there. He's out there and he's reaching out and he needs you, Rachel. He needs you rachel he needs you right now uh oh boy oops uh okay well emily said beckett says happy hanukkah to my favorite wife author and mother to our terrible dog children i'm so happy you actually married me

in september and i can't wait to keep adventuring with you i love you to the moon and back let's get bow and yell about our characters tonight you're wonderful so we did screw the pooch on this one we did beef this one and we screwed it up because it's supposed to be around Hanukkah or we're really early or we're extremely early no because they say that they got married in September I have to imagine unless they have the gift of foresight and saw their marriage going off smoothly here in six months or so. But hey, happy Hanukkah. Have a great one.

Light some candles. Light some candles. Do it. Hi, I'm Dave Hill from before. And I'm very excited to bring Dave Hill's podcasting incident back to Maximum Fun where it belongs. You can get brand new episodes every Friday on MaximumFun.org or, you know, wherever.

And while my partner Chris Gersbeck and I might lack in specific subject matter on our podcast, we make up for in special effects. Chris, add something cool right here. Also, we have explosions, animal noises, and sometimes even this. Dave Hill's podcasting

incident every Friday on Maximum Fun. Chris, do another explosion right here. What's your second thing? My second thing is the humble sweat pant. Sweat pant. A good friend of mine and yours. Yes. And I imagine everyone during these trying times. I expect at some point that I will feel the desire to get dressed up as if I am to leave the house that day. But so far, that has not been the case. I have spent a lot of time in the sweat pant.

You've been working from home for two weeks now. Yes. It took me several years of working at home before I worked up this sort of dedication to do that. It's been a really interesting experience for me and Griffin because for Griffin, his daily routine has changed, for me and Griffin, because for Griffin, his daily routine has changed, but not in the sense that he is, you know, confined to his, his home while he is working, but it is very different for me. And so I kind of like to check in with him and be like, okay, tell me what the beginning was like. The beginning was quite bad. For several years working from home writing for Joystick at AOL, And for several years working from home, writing for Joystick at AOL, my office was a desk with a laptop on it that was in my bedroom.

Yeah. And that was up until I lived in Chicago. That was like my setup. And it's hard to work when your bed is like right there. Well, and then when you moved to Austin, I mean, you didn't really have your own office I didn't really have an office. Yeah, I forget. Where did I even work?

Did I just work on the couch? You worked in the living room. Yeah. Remember, you were watching a lot of friday night lights at the time oh yeah that's true um but yes now i try to take it very seriously uh because i think that it sort of you know helps make it feel normal in a in a way um but i also think that working in your sweatpants is normal too yeah i i was curious and i have found a little bit of data out there to suggest that the uh investment in athleisure has gone up in recent weeks um specifically there was a representative for net apporter which is a kind of a popular clothing site that said that they experienced a 40 uptick in general sweatpants sales

in the first week of COVID-19 lockdown. Aeropostale recorded a 23% increase in women's sweatpants. Rutsal Athletic has seen a double-digit increase in searches for sweatpants styles, etc. I have noticed that a particular brand that I like has been sold out of many different sizes. Oh boy, yikes. So sweatpants, invented in France in the 1920s by Le Coq Sportif. It took us, amazing name, it took us that long to lock down sweatpants? Yeah. I mean, it was primarily for athletes. I mean, this is the era where people wore a hat if they were outside.

You know, it was a very formal time. If you were going to leave the house, you were going to cover your head because everything was to be formal and covered in public. And also because the clouds are full of mercury, and so you need protection against that. Mercury? Yeah. Things were different back then okay what else what else oh boy let me tell you the street lights would just like they were fire they were made it was an oil lamp with fire on it so you had to wear a hat to protect your hair didn't you because your hair had all manner of uh old oils massaged into it. You know, a lot of people did wear

a lot of oils in their hair back then. Because lice was just like a thing you had. Like everyone just had their own sort of lice situation. And for the courtesy of others, you would just sort of slop them all down to your head with a thick layer of oil. But boy, how do you walk too close to one of those lamps? You're gonna have yourself a bad Tuesday.

You're gonna be a Joe Pesci in a home alone you're gonna have a real pesci situation and you see that movie and you say that's funny that's so funny that is so funny that man's skull would and brain are like done my man's head is cooked so just something to keep in mind old timey. So there are a few things that popularized the sweat pant. First, Olympians. They began appearing a lot in the Olympics

in the 1930s. Seeing athletes in sweats was kind of the go-to. It wasn't until the 1980s with films like Rocky. Oh, yeah. and also icons like jane fonda who kind of popularized this kind of workout culture and the clothes associated with it um which in turn has given us athleisure what about a sweat short i mean that is that is a thing also i guess

it's kind of the same thing rachel has a pair of shorts that used to be sweatpants but then we cut them off at the knee yeah so that i think it was i think we got the pants for a costume to be arty the strongest man in the world which by the way you're wearing a shirt that would have oh shit you're right that would have been amazing yeah griffin found a pair of red sweat pants that he was going to repurpose as part of the costume didn't end up going that direction uh so rachel got crafty i got crafty cut the legs off just that was where it stopped and now oof these shorts are we constantly joke about the sort of like anti-sexiness of them they are somehow the least flattering garment that

exists maybe on the planet so there so there are a few things that have popularized athleisure one is that just the general technological improvements in synthetic fiber like spandex which is more durable washable than natural materials um also the modern fixation on healthy appearance uh one thing you'll notice a lot with these these pants is they make your uh they make your body look good because you're all you're all tight in there oh you're really you're packed in and you're tight oh is that what people like people tend to like that i like it loose and sort of um mysterious and then also just the more the more casual appearance that is appropriate now in in daily life right as i mentioned you don't have to wear the hat anymore when you go out to the grocery store it's a it's

a common observation but boy howdy it's true uh that every day at college every class just like everyone had sweatpants on pretty much all the time i didn't roll like that just because i didn't live on campus and so um for me it was making a statement if i left the house and walked down the sidewalk to my car and drove on public roads in my sweatpants you still won won't really leave the house in a sweatpan, I've noticed. No, no. A lot of times, if you are going to go somewhere, you will change into street clothes. Well, because if there's a danger or some sort of hazard, I can't negotiate that in sweatpants.

This is a lot about you, Griffin. It does say a whole lot about me, huh? Yeah, there has been a decline decline in the in the purchase of denim uh recently but there is a huge increase in athleisure well it's direction that i support i support that that direction of the economy yeah i mean one of the big popularizes for this was a lululemon oh yeah um and that was in the late 90s but the phrase or the term athleisure appeared as early as 1979 um which you know is is kind of what i've been describing this idea that you can wear workout clothes and they're a little stylish so that you

can wear them generally in your day-to-day unless, again, a hazard that you must negotiate and then you're just... Can you give me an example of like a hazard? Where you would be like, oh, I am wearing the inappropriate pant for this hazard. I don't want to get arrested

in sweatpants, I guess, is what I'm thinking about. I don't want to have to face some sort of judge in sweat... You know what I mean? What if I get a job interview on the street and I'm dressed in freaking sweatpants? Yeah i mean what if i get a job interview on the street and i'm dressed in

freaking sweatpants yeah or what if the and you know this is true the paparazzo well yeah yeah so like i can't can you imagine then you'd be stars are just like us you know no it would be like look at griffin he's he's given up he doesn't give a shit like people know me for my fashion right you don't see heidi klum walking around in sweatpants unless she's doing like a really funny halloween costume um so that's the expectation that's on me is it fair no is it the price that i have to pay for the the level of success i have achieved yes is it a trade-off that i think is worth it no i won't leave the house in sweatpants but i cannot because of just these the shutter bugs outside it's their shutters going off so that's

yeah even now they're out there and they're not supposed to be well thank you for your service griffin yeah it's a it's a no it's another kind of courage i. My second thing this week is telekinesis. Telekinesis. Whoa. Yeah. It's so dope. It is the superpower I wish I had. When people ask like, what superpower do you wish you had?

If you could have one superpower, for me, it's telekinesis. And people who are like, oh, I wish I could fly. Most people don't know what they're talking about. Because if you had telekinesis, you could just make yourself or anyone else fly. Like it is the ur-superpower. You can do so much shit with telekinesis. It's the dream that I have most often. The dream that like I can move stuff with my –

Well, it's like the – I don't have a flying dream. I have a lot of like, oh shit, I can move stuff with my mind. And then like I achieve a level of like fame for that, like full move stuff with my mind. And then I achieve a level of fame for that, like full-blown phenomenon style. And then I have to go out on stage and move some stuff with my mind. And then I can't do it. Griffin has a shocking number of going out on stage dreams.

I guess maybe not so shocking considering your profession, but I almost never have those dreams. And that's like all you have that's all i have um so telekinesis is the ability to uh affect a physical system via non-physical means with your mind uh it's also commonly called psychokinesis apparently that is the more common name for it i always call it telekinesis but i will call it psychokinesis or pk for the remainder of this segment um and

people throughout recorded history have you know claimed to have these pk powers um uh you know especially once magicians started to kind of incorporate that kind of stuff into their illusionary acts well i mean you started out more with like stuff that read from far away like uh you know i'm going to make this shit float and then there were magicians who would say like i'm literally able to make shit float i am unto a god uh and that's when people were like hey roll it back just to roll it back just a little bit uh and honestly like uh people claiming to be psychokinetic ability users led to a huge influx of like professional um uh oh god what's the word i'm looking for skeptics like people who tried to like disprove those claims uh there is a large community of skeptics that came up around the sort of psychokinetic ability movement um because

in more modern times the idea of like pk abilities has lent itself to people claiming a psychic healing of powers which is about the limits of what i find fun about telekinesis uh parapsychologists they uh typically categorize like the idea of psychokinetic powers into uh two camps uh the first is macro which is like visible. I'm going to pick that shit up and move it with my mind. And then micro, which you can only track through, you know, you can't see it. So that's stuff like, you know, healing and something called thoughtography, where you like project an image into somebody's mind uh stuff like that so

i want to talk about macro psychokinesis because that that is uh a rad like fictional concept lots of superheroes have it jean gray uh psylocke uh matilda matilda carrie from carrie freaking uh like a lot of characters in akira which i don't think you've seen before i don't think i've made you watch akira it's really good um but even when people are using it for bad stuff like most of the people in akira uh i'm still like damn i wish i could move stuff with my mind um so powerful was my desire to to move stuff with my mind i have a lot of vivid memories of elementary school i was in the safety patrol for a few years where we would serve as basically like crossing guards and i would like on one of those shifts when nobody was around like try to move the flag on the end of my pole with my

mind and sometimes the wind would blow it and i'd be like look i didn't see everyone see uh i am not alone in that desire because in the 1980s fucking everyone wanted to move stuff with their minds and there was a dude whose name was jack hauck uh and he was a like an engineer at boeing for 42 years and then he was like i want to get cool psychic powers and so he started to uh research like psychokinetic abilities and remote viewing and all kinds of like wild shit like that uh and then how popularized what were called pk parties uh where bored adults would get together and just try to ruin silverware with their minds uh and it was like a thing like lots of people did this yeah uh and he published a paper about like how

to throw a pk party for for free except for some silverware that you're going to ruin uh and it's easy to find this just search jack hauck h-a-u-c-k uh pk party and you can find this document that he circulated and led to this like whole phenomenon um and he explains like not everyone at your party is going to be able to do it and most folks are just going to be able to achieve what he called quote kindergarten bending which is like so bonkers if i was like at a party and i bent like a spoon a little bit with my mind and i'd be like oh that wasn't very far and not like holy shit it's real it's really happening this is an excerpt from the document that i think is so fucking funny

after people have bent four or five pieces of stainless flatware in kindergarten bending then have them try to buckle the bowl of silver plated spoons do not use knives because they sometimes break and cut people similarly glass and graphite pencils tend to explode which are not good for your safety this is so precise and i love it i fucking love it just just the specificity of like we've bent a lot of stuff here at the institute And so let me tell you what you should and shouldn't bend. It goes on and is like plastic cutlery is good because it's cheap and you can like give it to the kiddos and not have to worry. But he will have people come up to him and be like, ah, I can bend all the metal, but

the plastic is I can't do. And he's like, well, think of it like a radio dial. And on the far left side is the metal spoons. And on the far right side is the plastic spoons. And then people come back to me and they're the far right side is the plastic spoons and then people come back to me and they're like i finally bent the plastic spoon and it's like this this this listen a lot of people are can be very predatory with stuff like this and that's not great but the idea of like the 80s going to a kick-ass like psychokinesis party sounds pretty fucking cool to me.

And just, like, a big spreadsheet that says, like, what have I bended and what would I like to bend? Yeah. Cabbage patch doll? Check. Troll doll? Check. And you're gonna have somebody at the party who, like, bends shit, like, really good, and then, like, they go to eat the last jalapeno popper,

and you are also reaching for the last jalapeno popper, and they just kind of, like like look at you like scanners and you're like, oh shit. Okay, it's yours. It's yours. I don't want any of that shit. You've been my bones inside of my body. No thanks, dude.

Yeah, PK. It's neat shit. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Elizabeth says, my small wonder is the video call site Zoom. Since my girlfriend and I can't see each other in person at school anymore

We have begun to call each other on Zoom We are both making PowerPoints in the style of your podcast About our big wonders to present to each other Using the screen sharing feature of Zoom on Friday And I'm very excited I love your podcast and I hope you're both doing well Oh that's so great Yeah I learned just this week about

That you can insert digital backgrounds on Zoom. I have heard that, but I don't know how to do it. It's like just in the preferences. And then you pick the photo you want behind it. I would love to do that because that has been at work. That has been our new method. And we're supposed to start having weekly and or bi-weekly meetings. And I work with a lot of people that are just about as familiar with it as me.

So I would love to just bring that heat. That would be really, really cool. Like, Rachel, are you on a beach somewhere? I've been traditionally doing like bootleg Shrek costumes behind me because they're some of the scariest images on the internet. Brianna says, my small wonder is the smell of cooking onions, especially at a market or fair. The smell is delicious all the time,

but when you don't know what exactly it's coming from, it can be so exciting. Is there a bratwurst stand waiting for me around the corner? A taco truck? A pizza kiosk? So many culinary possibilities. That is so true. A lot of times Griffin or I will be cooking

and that is the first thing you smell and it's just like, ooh, something smells good. It's like always onions. Always onions or onions and garlic. Yeah, I think I just get excited by that smell because it means some kind of home-cooked foods are coming. It's like the starting pistol for a food race. And the finish line is my mouth.

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 hey, thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah, thank you so much, Maximum Fun fun there are a lot of podcasters out there that are providing special additional content right now i would encourage you to check it out because it is very endearing and charming and kind of what i love most about the maximum family yeah uh hey everybody you're doing you're doing

your best it's uh try not to be too hard on yourself right now. You know, try to be on. One thing Griffin said to me that I found really helpful is he was like, this is the first time, you know, in our lifetime that anybody has ever had to do this. And so, you know, be gentle with yourself as you figure it out, because that's what everybody's doing. Be gentle. Be tender.

Try a little self tenderness be your own best lover be your well no yeah sure i mean if that's how i come on yeah come on it's a don't be a prude griffin you don't have to social distance yourself from your from your stuff your thing no i'm not gonna go that far think. Oh, yeah. Leave me on your hang now. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay.

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