Wonderful! - Wonderful! 139: A Most Powerful Laugh

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Griffin's favorite home manufacturing! Rachel's favorite giggle! Griffin's favorite British challenges! Rachel's favorite keepsakes!Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaFor more ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ 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. I'm going to bring a lot of intensity this episode. Ooh, that'll be fun. Mostly to you with the way I'm looking to bring a lot of intensity this episode. Ooh, that'll be fun. Mostly to you with the way I'm looking at you. Just like, can you describe it?

It's very intense and very fierce. Yeah, a lot of eye contact. I'm not going to look away from you this entire episode. That's going to be difficult. When I do have to refer to my notes, I'm going to kind of just like hold it up in front of your face. But I'll always at least have one eye in my periphery. Okay? Okay, I'm not going to do okay okay i'm not gonna do that i need you to do that i can't just give out that energy and you not give it back yeah

how am i supposed to perform like this it's just i uh my computer i don't want to have to lift you just looked away from me i win we were actually having a secret staring contest this is a show where we talk about things that are good and things that we are very into. And it's maybe a bit of a challenge considering everything. But we're still happy to be here talking to each other. Plugging along. On that enthusiasm train. Doing our best. Hey, there's a poster with our faces on it.

Yeah. It is incredible. I never thought I'd be on a poster but here i am on a poster it was designed by beck hurley you can get it at our store if you go to macroid out family you'll find a link but yeah if you like stuff like that that's where we are we look cute as hell we really do um you got any small ones i was just trying to think about that you're gonna ask me to go first aren't you i'm trying not to oh what about can i say have i said copper mugs a little copper mug i think we've talked about specialty drinking cups before i think you've done a segment oh my gosh yeah no it's a don't get discouraged. If you do want to talk about that,

then you can talk about that. You know, I will share this anecdote. So we purchased two copper mugs, exactly two, for the purpose of drinking one drink, which is the Moscow Mule. And we were doing it on a Zoom call. And one of our friends thought we were so fancy and I was so charmed by that.

Yeah, they thought the cocktail itself was fancy. And I wanted to be like, this is vodka and ginger beer, and maybe sometimes lemon juice. It's like not fancy. She told the story that there was a bar she went to in college that required you to turn in your ID if you were to drink out of a copper mug because they had had so much theft. Oh, God, yeah, I don't blame. I'm going to say the Leatherman multi-tool. I'm almost certain we've talked about the Leatherman multi-tool before, but we have two of these now in our house because I think I got one as a present from your parents. Yes.

Because we lost the other one, but then we found the other one. So now we got an upstairs one. It just lives on my desk now and I use it all the time. And the one downstairs, I use it all the time and the one downstairs like i use it all the time it is so nice to not have to like run to the toolbox anytime i need uh you know uh something to pry something or a knife or a lot of prying he doesn't talk about it that's me typically there's something and something and he wants to pry it i always need to get it out of there don't i those two things are attached.

No thanks. Pry, pry, pry, pry, pry. Hey, I go first this week, I believe. I think that's right. My first thing this week is one of those segments that I do sometimes where I try to justify a recent irresponsible purchase to my wife, Rachel, because today I want to talk about 3D printing. Oh, should we have a song for Griffin?

Irresponsible purchase. You're feeling kind of down. You got a little bit of expendable income. You may as well use it to make yourself happy for a moment because it does not last. Just going to tide you over to the next thing that pulls you out of a depressive episode. Irresponsible purchase.

I love this. So I buy a 3D printer. And I think 3D printer is cool. Can I say that we don't even have it in our house yet? Gets here today. Very excited. I think 3D printing, the concept of it, the tech evolution of it is very cool,

except when people use it to make illegal guns. That part's not great, obviously, but putting that aside, 3D printing is pretty cool. I think probably both of us were informed and myself sold on its capabilities on the Joko Cruise, which we've gone on a couple times now uh where uh a person or group of persons i'm not entirely sure who is the responsible party uh hid little 3d printed low poly uh pokemon all over the ship so that people could do like a real life pokemon hunt i feel like that is what is responsible for henry being interested in pokemon i think so too yes finding those little creatures uh it was also responsible for us not losing our minds at sea

because Henry would get sub-bored and we would just wander around the ship trying to find little Pokemon toys for him and he went wild for it. The ship was not designed for children and as such, like the gift shop. Well, not two-year-old children. They have like facilities and stuff.

But like the gift shop, for example, did not have a lot of toys, which concerned us. And then we found these little guys. We found these little boys. They were so delightful and they were really cool and i learned like hey you can just like freaking make these you know what i mean so i'm excited to get a 3d printer for a few reasons but also because like it'll be neat to just make little figurines for a lot of people use them to make like minis

for uh tabletop role-playing game things which is a cool concept not that we you know have a tabletop game here in town uh that we're playing uh there is i have yet to figure out how this is going to be useful to me and i feel and i know that's so important anytime i buy something for myself i feel like that's going to be important right how do i benefit from this and i haven't figured it out yet right it's like when you buy like a lush bath bomb set or something like that. I'm like, what do I get out of this? And you have to be like, well, it makes my skin,

it gets softer and smells better. And that's, you have to be around me. Maybe you can make me some beads that I could string. I love that. In a jewel. Rachel loves a bead. I can make you a new toe ring.

What do you think about that? You want a new toe ring. What do you think about that? You want a new toe ring? I could make you a new, very stylish, cool toe ring. I can put whatever the hell you want on there. That's 3D printing, baby. I made the mistake of bringing this up the other day that I wore a toe ring all the way until 2011. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

That's very soon. That's not that long ago. And now you all know it too. Now you know it as well. I think 3D printing is like one of the more futuristic things to happen in my lifetime. There's this book that I like from Neil Stevenson, who's a sci-fi author called The Diamond Age. And it's like this futuristic book that isn't necessarily about this but it informs like a lot of the story uh is that there are just publicly available uh matter compilers just all over the place hooked

up to this infrastructure system like water or electricity called the feed where just like anything you want you go and just print it off in in one of these compilers and i thought that was such like a cool concept in the book but now, you can kind of do that a little bit at home. I am excited, obviously, to have it to make dumb stuff like little toys and things for Henry and other things that, you know, I just kind of want to goof around with. I've been getting into sort of like electronics modding stuff that started with like tweaking around with uh switch controllers and things like that and having a 3d printer opens up a lot of doors for that whether it's like making parts or uh components like drill guides to help you like actually do a good job with the

things that you're making um but also there's like this annoying faction of of things that if you lose them you're just kind of up shit creek and like the thing i'm thinking of specifically is like the uh back uh the like battery cover on a remote control if you lose that it's like well that's it but now like you have a way of kind of like if you can find the design for it obviously like printing it off and replacing it the idea of having that sort of uh means of production sort of available in your house it's just like a really really neat concept to me i don't know how actually like applicable it will be but like having this other thing that you know if you need a document printed you have a printer for that if you need pasta extruded you use a pasta extruder that's a terrible example but like

there are things that just like if you lose them or they break you have to go out and buy them but sometimes they're not available because they're very niche and having something that can make things in the house that you otherwise couldn't get is like a i don't know i think is very very very cool and how like readily accessible this 3D printer was not a very expensive purchase in the grand scheme of things. They make very, very inexpensive models. I think it was like 170 bucks or something like that, which compared to a few years ago

is very, very cheap for one of these. And you just run a little line of filament into it, which is not that expensive either. And you can just start making stuff at home. And I think that's very cool. This technology sort of came about in the early 80s although uh as time has gone on it's become more sort of sophisticated and easier to put in your own house um and most of the time printers use a thing called fused deposition modeling where it just like sort of gooshes out little bits of uh filament hot filament at a time

watching a 3d printer work in in like a time lapse is very cool apparently the prints take very long so i'm not going to be like cranking out a lot of uh material every given day uh and i think where my interest also spiked was right around when coronavirus stuff was first hitting. There were stories about this pair of Italian printers who were making these valves that were necessary for a certain type of breathing machine that was like in limited supply. Like these valves were in limited supply and they were necessary for this machine to work. And so they just started printing off these valves. So that people could use the machine. Without burning through this expensive. Sort of limited resource.

And that story got a bit blown out of proportion. And has been sort of like. Corrected a bit. Because there were stories of like. The company who made that machine. Wanting to sue these guys. And that the valves cost $10,000 a pop. Which like that stuff wasn't necessarily true.

But I like the idea of like these two have lives attributed to them that they saved because they were able to provide these little tiny plastic things that were essentially a bottleneck to people surviving COVID. And like the idea of having that sort of power in your hands is like super super cool to me yeah no that is cool um yeah i i also know that people have used it to sort of make um

mask hooks that you can kind of put on the back of your head so people who are working in uh like the medical field who need uh who are wearing masks all day like it can get pretty uncomfortable around your ears if you're wearing them for hours and hours and hours at a time. So it's super easy to print out these little hooks that you just put on the back of your head and they hook on there instead. Yeah, I think just conceptually having a way to make something

that is not like, before this, like I couldn't make little plastic things, like whatever it was. And there's lots of things in our house that are little plastic things that break all the time. Like having the ability to sort of recreate that is, is very, very cool to me.

Is it an irresponsible purchase still? Yes. Have I justified it? No. This has been irresponsible purchase. This is my poetry corner. I mean, I could also do a whole irresponsible purchase segment on the many tools

that I have purchased to work on my electronics game. I bought a Dremel. Very excited to fuck around with that. I appreciate that so far your irresponsible purchases have been relatively small. So they do not take up a lot of space. Yes. Which is nice. Yeah, no, I'm not going to buy like a rock climbing wall or anything like that.

Although. Although we do have a, hold on. Hey, what's your first thing my first thing yes is the singular laugh of griffin mcawry oh babe babe i'm talking about like the real laugh the real shit the one where you back away from the microphone where did you when did you write this because i we played some jackbox games with our friends last night. It was yesterday while you were recording Besties. You were really busting up. I was ripping. Yeah.

We recorded two episodes of Besties back to back yesterday. And one of them is a very special episode where we decide a winner of the upcoming console wars. And I was just, man, I was just busting. I heard. So Henry was downstairs and he was being kind of grumpy and I could hear him from upstairs. And then I heard him say like, my daddy's laughing.

That's my daddy laughing. That's so good. And it seemed like it snapped him out of his, it snapped him out of his funk. Oh, that's so pure. I thought you may have written it last night because also on this, we have a weekly Zoom call with our friends that is like the highlight of my week and has we've been doing it for like two months now and it's like incredibly important to me but

also one of our friends cut his own hair and it looks good on the front but the back it the back looks like uh on on jackass they used to do like this series of pranks where they would just go up to somebody and just shear off hair off the back of their head and it looks like that and I just fucking went into the ground it was darling because his wife was like oh I wasn't gonna say anything

and we just fully put him on blast just fully ripped oh shit okay sorry yes my laugh is this is one of those things about Griffin that I think took a while for me to get used to. One of those things, one of those many, many things. He has a very, I mean, you all know it. He has a very loud, distinct laugh.

And it is unlike any laugh I have heard before. And I think at first I was like, I was a little, I was a little, this is this is unique about him and i've never thought i know that it gets i know that like i am unable to control my laughing when it hits like a fever pitch but i never knew it was like particularly like unique and how oh people talk about it oh really people talk about it occasionally like i will get tweets about the show that will reference how much people have enjoyed your your raucous laughter oh fantastic yeah it is it is an endearing and beautiful

quality about you do you have any peer-reviewed research uh about my powerful laughter well no i did some research on on laughter in general what interests me specifically was that like distinct laugh, like the fact that some people have a very like identifiable laugh. Like the person that came up a lot was like Seth Rogen, for example. Yeah, his is not even necessarily loud. His is he his is more just like, it's just like constant. Yeah. What I found that I really enjoyed. So there is a whole study of laughter and it is called gelatology. Gelatology? It's spelled G-E-L-O-T-O-L-O-G-Y. I actually looked up Google, like the thing where it will tell you how to pronounce something. It is.

It's pronounced gelatology. I like that a lot, babe. I know. That's really good. And the thing that I was really excited about was a ted talk i found by sophie scott uh and she talks about a lot of things associated with laughter uh one thing she talks she does like a whole diagram of the ribs and shows like how they like contract when you laugh and how many muscles you actually use throughout your body, which if anybody has ever been injured in the torso area, you really realize how many muscles you use when you

laugh because it is excruciating. People that have injured a rib, for example, talk a lot about that. But she also talks about just the people originally thought that human beings were the only ones that laughed, but actually rats and primates, most mammals laugh. Yeah, the primates doesn't. I feel like primates. They talk about it.

So if you tickle chimps or gorillas, they laugh in kind of a panting way, which they think is kind of like the origin of laughter. Like as we have evolved, it has like taken a more human quality. I was thinking more Dunstan checks in, Dunstan pulls a prank on Jason Alexander and like, like does the laugh. They call it like a panting sound. Yeah.

Monkey Trouble, you know, is another monkey-based movie. Okay. What are some more of your favorite ones? I mean, there's the episode of Quantum Leap where Sam leaps into a chimp. Holy shit, babe. What hasn't that gentleman jumped into? So here's the thing that she talks about that I found particularly interesting that speaks a lot to the different types of laughter that people have.

There's two types of laughter. There's what they call kind of social, what she calls posed laughter, which is what you do kind of when you're interacting with people that is a way of like connecting and bonding. And sometimes you're doing it to kind of support your friend. For their benefit. Okay, interesting. And then there is what they call helpless or involuntary laughter, which is like the loud signature Griffin McElroy cackle. Yeah.

Is when something like really tickles you and you just can't control yourself. You know, it's funny is I that makes so much sense to me. And like, as you were explaining it, I was like, yep, okay, that that all clocks. And then I was thinking, like, I don't think I've done the first laughter on one of our podcasts that I do with the fam in many many many years they uh they say that when you are with another person uh you are 30 times more likely to laugh so like if you're watching something by yourself you know you're less likely to laugh out loud yeah absolutely they talk about a lot like a lot of like the social capital of of laughing and how it is a way of like showing

community when you laugh um so they said that helpless laughter is longer louder and higher pitched um a lot of times you can tell like they've done a lot of experiments where people can tell right away if somebody is doing the social laughter or the helpless laughter, like you can hear it in your head. This is another thing like your brother Justin, for example, like the wheezing, like that's when you know you are hearing helpless laughter. They also say that as far as that recognition, it gets clearer as you get older. Like for example, you can fake laugh with a kid and they will not be able to tell you are fake laughing. But they said this awareness really peaks

in your 30s actually. Wow. The people have more of awareness of like posed versus involuntary laughter and that gets more and more distinct the older you get. Huh. So yeah, I would recommend if you're interested, it's Sophie Scott. It's aie scott it's a ted talk

she plays a lot of laughs that they have collected throughout their research which are incredible um and she also kind of quizzes the audience to see if they can tell the difference uh and everybody immediately gets right it's a really cool yeah head talk i would recommend it uh just to cap this off i thought i would like show everybody like kind of what that laugh that i do that you love so much oh yeah please please it's it's hold on i gotta tickle myself please please Please. Please. Please.

Please. Griffin, that laugh is just for me. That laugh is just for me. Please stop. Griffin, there are other people in our house right now. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, oh, oh, in our house right now. Like that? Yeah, that's the one.

Can I steal you away? Hey, we have some personal messages, Griffin. Cool, cool, cool. This first one is from Matt. It is from Taylor. To my dearest Matt, you are truly the most wonderful thing to happen to me on my 30-ish years on this weird spinning void rock. I love you heart, body, and soul.

You make me believe in the future and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my days with you. You are mine and I am yours. Love, your adorable space ace. That's very sweet, and I do, I sympathize with the 30-ish years, because I forget how old I am all the time, too. You know what I mean?

I think right now it's 32 or 33. It's around there. I shouldn't say that out loud. There's lots of people on the internet who I don't really understand who want to know all my stats. Uh-huh. My stats and statistics. That's weird as height. A lot of people seem to-

Everyone wants to know my fucking height. If you look online, Griffin's height is listed and it is accurate. And everyone wants to know my shoe size. Here's another one. This one is for Charlie and it's from jane who says while we are apart i wanted to send a message to light up your little eggy head you are the funniest and smartest hedgehog a duck could ask for and i am constantly thankful for your care and your kindness and hope to continue to share love and fox pics with you continue being bobo bebo continue continue being

bobo bebo continue being bobo bebo don't hoard all those fox pics but don't fucking bogart those fox pics but what's a what's a what's a a good fox pic yeah oh. Oh, man. Those faces. The little triangular face. The little hands. The little freaking hands with the toe beans? Baby! All right. Hi, I'm James, host of Minority Corner, which is a... Podcast that's all about intersectionality.

It's hosted by James, the guest host, every week. Discussing all sorts of wonderful issues nerdy and political pop culture black queer feminism race sexuality news you're gonna learn your history their self-empowerment and it's told by what feels like your best friend why should someone listen to minority corner why not oh my god free stuff there's not free stuff the listeners of minority corner will enjoy some necessary lols but mainly a look at what's happening in our world through a colorful lens people will get the perspective of marginalized communities i feel heard i feel seen like you said you need to understand how to be more proactive in your community and this is a great way to get started join us every friday

on max fun or wherever you get your podcast minority corner because together we're the majority can i hear your next thing my next thing uh probably will also not come as a surprise to rachel it is a uh television program that we've been watching a lot of and then i can't can't stop thinking about it is task master uh a british comedy show that uh so many people have recommended to me uh over the the past year or so yeah it is something that i had never heard of until very recently and now it seems like everybody is talking about it and i completely slept on it so hard completely understand why uh and i feel bad for how much we have slept on it because it is like again it has just consumed my every thought it's all i want to do is watch it uh and great news it's like all on youtube right now multiple seasons episodes

all on youtube it's official channel not like pirated shit like the real real uncut stuff i am going to try and describe taskmaster but i think one of the reasons why it didn't really land uh for me like one of the reasons why i didn't immediately seek it out when uh my my friends were telling me about it is that I think it's kind of difficult to describe in a way that makes it sound as funny as it actually is yeah and it varies so much episode to episode because the tasks are always changing right so uh the basic premise each episode there are five comedians, the same five comedians throughout like a six to 10 episode series, compete in a challenge, a series of like seemingly menial challenges, which they try to either they compete to solve sort of as quickly or cleverly

or efficiently as possible, depending on what the task sort of. Yeah. And there are very little rules or parameters. And so it's really on the creativity of the comedian to figure out how to do the task. How to best do the task. It could best be, I think it could be described as like lateral thinking the game. And that is where like the true joy of Taskmaster lies.

Yeah, so they'll walk into a room and there'll be a card there that will give them the task. And then, you know, they are filmed as they are completing the task. And it's how they find the wiggle room in those rules that like much of the comedy of the show comes from. What is also very funny is that the show is staged in front of a live studio audience where these five contestants are being judged by Greg Davies,

who plays the taskmaster and his production assistant, Alex Horn, who's the actual creator of the show, but plays this like deferent figure. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, he's the creator of the show, and he plays just this sort of like obsequious like helper. That's incredible. And what's great is they don't know what their competitors did each challenge. Like they all had to do these challenges, and they don't know what their competitors did each challenge like they all had to do these challenges and they don't know how their

competitors approached it and them watching each other like do these sometimes profoundly strange solutions to the puzzles is like so hysterically funny. So these puzzles are filmed off site and then they all watch the video together on

stage in front of an audience. Each episode also starts with a prize challenge where they all bring something that will be in the prize pool for that episode that the winner will walk away from. And it will be things like your most valuable possession. And one of the prizes somebody brought in was their wedding ring. They're like, yeah, that's my most valuable possession. I sure hope I don't lose. Can you give an example of a task? i have several examples of the tasks here uh first episode i think maybe even the first challenge uh is the comedians walk into a room one at a time and sitting on a table

in a room like sort of surrounded in plastic wrap is a watermelon and they open the card and it says you have 60 seconds to eat as much of this watermelon as you can. And your time starts right now. So you see this every challenge. You see a basic sort of like panic response as they like try to immediately start putting together a game plan. And without fail, each challenge there, you see a lot of different approaches to it. A few of the contestants just like immediately get the knives out and start cutting the watermelon in half one of the contestants just picks up the half of it and starts burying

their face in it and eating it one of them actually picks up a spoon and starts like scooping into their mouth uh one of the contestants tim key uh who was like a superstar the first series uh with the way he comes up with solutions to things uses the corner of the table to just kind of like smash into it. Another one, Ramesh Ranganathan, who was probably my favorite contestant in the first series, picks it up, hoists it over his head

and just immediately smashes it to the floor. I watched this clip of this happening today as we were prepping for this like five times. It never fails to make me laugh because of his surprise at how quickly it just shoots all over the room like a bomb has gone off and then he realizes he has to eat it off the floor and he like his immediate regret is so fucking funny to me uh that's like an example

of like how things can like uh how people approach things in different ways uh in one of the challenges probably one of my favorites in the first series they have to all the challenge says is throw a tea bag into a mug from as far away as possible furthest from the mug wins you have one hour or something like that yeah um and you see uh ramesh just sets up a bunch of mugs in like a cluster and you're like oh how clever And then he starts throwing dry tea bags at them, which like don't have a lot of great momentum or velocity. And like almost towards the end of the challenge, he realizes like,

Oh, if I get these wet, they would go a lot further, which like everybody else figured out fairly quickly. Uh, one of the contestants built like a cardboard shoot that they put the mug at the bottom of so that you could throw it at the shoot and it would would have a bigger target tim key who is the master of lateral thinking uh digs a funnel into the ground and puts the mug inside of that ground dirt funnel uh builds a

backboard out of like a big tarp and then cuts open a tennis ball and tucks a teabag inside the tennis ball and then uses a tennis ball sort of like thrower that you would use at like a dog park or something like that to launch it from like so far away and gets it in his first shot this is what's incredible about this show is it seems like they have unlimited resources available to them like i recognize it probably is limited in some way but it they come up with these ideas and these constructions that take like any number of supplies yes the the uh rube goldberg machines that they sometimes build uh to solve these tasks are like uh it's like a different it's like a strange kind of humor those because like it is a and this is very british i feel like of just like how clever. Like you get a laugh out of just like how fucking clever and smart a

solution. Like it is because comedy is all about like the unexpected. And so this is a very kind of like weirdly cerebral, unexpected laugh that you get. Sometimes it's fucking funny when, when Ramesh smashes the watermelon to the ground, it's hysterical. His look of regret as he realizes he's wasted all this time throwing dry tea bags is hysterically funny but seeing somebody put together a contraption

uh that is so smart or see how it works another uh great example is uh one of the contestants there's a challenge where all they have to do is they have a half hour to collect as many tears in a cup as possible so a lot of people are like cutting onions or watching sad things on a computer to try and like make themselves cry, which like most people are not able to do. One of the contestants realizes it doesn't say your own tears. So he gets the entire production crew together and has them cut onions while he sings them this beautiful traditional like folk ballad. And he wins because he collects the most tears from everybody else in the cup. It is such a universally like great idea it is such a universally funny idea so much so that like

we've watched uh a series and a half now we don't know any of the comedians that have been on it so far but they are still like we don't need that recognition to make us laugh there is a series coming up with james a caster on it that i cannot fucking wait for because he is incredibly funny uh it is also universal enough that it has had a few different uh international versions yeah i was gonna ask about that there was a version in the u.s on comedy central uh it ran for one season alex horn was the producer of it he played his production assistant role the uh what this will be fun guess who they got as the task master greg davies is just this very sort of uh tyrant king figure on the show who like judges who wins uh and who has broken the rules each episode so who do you think they got for the am i do i know

this person yeah not not personally but yeah but like am i is it possible for me to guess it uh no because i don't know that it's a it it is matches that energy necessarily i love who they cast i do not think it was a great pick necessarily for the taskmaster uh joe rogan jesus god no jesus god no i would have said john hodgman i thought i think would be oh fucking hysterical and would be like perfectly matches that they got reggie watts who i adore and i think it's like very very funny and talented but like it's not like greg davies is an asshole on the show and like i would never use that to describe reggie watts so it ran it also like what are you saying about john hodgman well john hodgman could play a character who is very like, yeah.

And the vibe was just kind of wrong. Like, it never quite like, I think, I think Taskmaster has a very, very specific vibe that the US version

didn't really get. The host has to be a little subdued. Like, the host doesn't typically draw focus from the contestants. And I feel like

Reggie Watts, part of what's so great about him is he has this big personality and it would have, like, he'd have to be kind of restrained, I feel like. There's a of what's so great about him is he has this big personality and it would have like he'd have to be kind of restrained I feel like there's a lot of restraint in the show that yeah I fucking hate being the guy that's like yeah I'm like UK

version of the winner because I don't feel that way about a lot of things including the office come at me but it ran for one season and then got cancelled and I would love I would I still think there's there's a chance for it to like come back it is such a brilliant idea for a show that i would love um

you know to see to see uh a u.s version of it but fortunately there's a lot of episodes of the uk version of it all of them are youtube on youtube uh and you should watch it because it's it's fucking hysterical it has brought a lot of joy into mine and Rachel's lives over the past couple weeks, so check it out. What's your second thing? My second thing, now I have talked about, I believe a small wonder I had at one point was printing a digital photo

so you can actually physically have it, but I have not talked about photo albums, which is something that I love. Oh, yeah, I bet I know what inspired this. Well, actually, you know what was funny is that I came up with this before yesterday. So part of what I really loved growing up, and this might be an only child thing, but I really loved looking at photo albums before I was born. Oh, interesting.

My parents when they were younger. before I was born. Oh, interesting. My parents, when they were younger, one thing that happened when my mom's parents passed was that her older sister, I believe, just went through boxes and boxes of photos and made each of their siblings an album that had primarily pictures of them in it.

Oh, that's great. And it's just fascinating to me. There was something really interesting to me about seeing my parents when they were younger because to me they look totally different. Oh, yeah. And it was just like a weird thing to kind of wrap my head around as a kid. And it's something that I love to do when I go home. I love seeing pictures of me as a kid too. Yeah.

Especially now that we have Henry like to see the similarities at the different age range. It's wild yeah it's cool I feel like my uh version of this was home movies which like you know I was like obsessed with our home movies that's very true um it is something you know as you know my dad is a collector of many things but my mom and I have the common trait of just like kind of liking photos and really nothing else right uh so that was one of the first things i did with henry after he turned or right around when he turned a year old i like made sure to like pull all the photos off of facebook and put it in like an album of his first year yeah uh and then yesterday totally unprompted we have have hired child care support so that Griffin and I can continue to work.

And her name is Sarah. She just kind of unprompted made this little photo scrapbook of her summer with Henry. And all these pictures I had never seen before. So darling. And you could tell I'd been taken over a series of days because he's wearing different outfits. And I was just so endeared and char like charmed by it I just I love photo albums uh it's something that I feel like is really important to me uh because I feel like once you put photos like in the digital space it's like less likely for you to look at them

yeah we did finally get one of those like digital photo frames uh from Griffin's dad and it's helped a lot to like yeah get us looking at older pictures i have always thought about those as being the purview of uh older folks because like i i don't know i'm fine with the static images that don't move like a like they're in the harry potter castle let's say hogwarts jesus uh but yeah having that we have that in our kitchen so like we're just constantly walking by it and it's it is uh you know it's very nice it's it actually makes me feel a little uh more homesick than i like thought i would feel because like i this is the by far the longest i've ever gone without seeing seeing my family yeah and it is it's like it's comforting in a way to

see those pictures but it is also just like it reminds you that like you cannot be with those people right now, which is also difficult. Um, I, when I was looking into photo albums, um, first of all, like it just,

this should not be a surprise, but like photo albums have existed since basically you could have a photo, like since the 1850s, there's the oldest one is, is in the library of congress right now uh but there is an artist who in 2013 did an exhibition called album beauty in france uh that over 15 years of like flea markets and secondhand stores he just like compiled all of these like photos he found cool um. And turned it into an exhibit

and made it kind of something you could walk through. Like the images were blown up and displayed as wallpaper. Others were in like interactive albums that you could like leaf through. There were photo life-size props that you could put your face into and then photos printed on the carpet that you could walk over.

And so this artist obviously spent a lot of time just looking through other people's photo albums. And he said, this is what I found interesting. So this artist is Eric Kessels. And he said that most people make an average of seven or eight albums during their lifetime. I feel like I've already done that many. Well, yeah, that's what's interesting. He kind of noticed some themes, though. He said that the

first album he would find is usually when a couple meets each other. So there's a lot of photos of the couple. You know, they're like going on trips together. You know, they're like being with friends and all this stuff. And then after that is more related to the marriage. So there's like the wedding album. And then the third one is usually dedicated to either the first child or if they do not have a child, their pets. And then he said the fourth through seventh albums are kind of like a complete mix of like holidays important occasions everyone

has a boudoir album right yeah we got a few of them Griffin Griffin is the master of the erotic pose yeah yeah no it's, yeah.

And he can be doing any kind of, you know, menial tasks too. Like he can make, you know, taking the garbage out erotic. Right. We have a whole album dedicated to that. Yeah, well, I have a lot of sort of like, sort of volunteering muscular control in my butt cheeks.

Yes, no, that's true. Each individual one, right? Any position too. He can be in repose and that butt. I can make him clap or spread him out pretty wide. What were you saying? I wanted to talk about the eighth album of the seven or eight that most people make, talk about the eighth album of the seven or eight that most people make uh which is usually when the couple is older and they are traveling together this is like particularly like relevant to me

my grandparents my dad's parents traveled a lot once they retired and just have all of these albums of just like landscapes from different countries they went to which is not particularly interesting to me but the artist said that that is usually what happens is that the couple is typically less interested in each other and they tend to make more photos of the environment they're in right uh which is yeah like anytime anyone gets back from a vacation and they like bring all these photos of like here's a mountain we saw it's like great i want to see you i want to see you in a place um well but then they have their ninth album which is their sort of uh elderly boudoir one to sort of cap it off do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about please okay well this one is from tasha who

says my small wonder are fireflies in my 32 years this is the first time I've seen a yard full of them bopping around. I wonder where Tasha lived for that long to not see. I mean, I guess in the city. If you're in a super urban environment, it's hard to see them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are little bugs. I still get delighted.

I don't know what it is. I guess because you don't see them as much in the non-summer months right but every time they appear I'm like oh my gosh yeah I mean we had our first firefly sighting this week too uh and like just seeing them like through the window just like seeing one I get so excited like was that a firefly you have to look and confirm okay uh Shannon says something I find wonderful this time of year is taking a moment to enjoy a powerful AC unit. I work in an order fulfillment warehouse and it always feels so good to slowly stroll down the aisle where the big AC unit is located and just feel the breeze on my skin. Plus it provides a much needed relief for my masked face. I mean, it's very, very good coming in from outside into a air-conditioned room is very great uh this made me nostalgic for um

our wall our like window ac unit we had one like in mine and travis's bedroom that we shared that was like i had one in mind too those old houses like if you were on the second floor it was impossible it was impossible yeah so we'd have to like leave the door closed that was like a big thing we'd get in trouble if we left the door open with the ac on uh but the smell there's like a big thing we get in trouble if we left the door open with the ac on uh but the smell there's like a smell that it created that like i got very very nostalgic for it felt like very very kid summer vibe to me this took me back uh hey thank you to bowen and augustus for these for our theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description and uh you can check out all the shows on the maximum fun network uh and enjoy them and think they're cool and subscribe to them and

listen to them uh i'm gonna recommend baby geniuses okay super super funny ladies check it out uh yeah uh fanti i know we we uh hosted one of their episodes on this show i've been listening to them uh every week and uh it's uh it's it's it's incredibly good you should you should i'm assuming you're already listening this is redundant uh yeah i think that's it yeah yeah oh yeah and i wanted to thank everybody uh for your patience we have been a little late on our episodes lately uh it's been a little more challenging to find the time but we are yes we are figuring it out and we are dedicated to you the best uh oh uh we're uh the new adventure zone comic uh graphic novel uh book comes out in a couple weeks yeah you should pre-order it at the

adventurezonecomic.com we just got it this morning it is it is a lovely thick book yeah it's a it's a dense one it's got lots of great jokes in it and cool art though uh i think that's it thank you again and uh good night and good luck do you know him yeah good night and good luck that's a really good edward murrow is that our murrow i don't care about his middle name people always use the middle initial though it's important it's gonna call him edward murrow I'm in a hurry. Good night and good luck. That's what he sounded like. He would get angry at the end of each broadcast.

Good night and good luck. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay.マリオ ワーキングオンマリオ ワーキングオン

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