Wonderful! - Wonderful! 140: The Atomic Collage

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

Rachel's favorite patchwork art! Griffin's favorite valuable boxes! Rachel's favorite revolutionary poet! Griffin's favorite educational TV show!Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaFor more on the Audre Lorde Project: https://alp.org/For 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.

Hey folks, it's Jesse, the founder of MaxFun. Since we postponed our annual MaxFun drive in mid-March, we have gotten a lot of questions about if and when we'd be rescheduling it. And honestly, we've been asking ourselves the same thing. Well, now we have an answer for you. The 2020 MaxFun drive will start on July 13th. That's coming up soon. We decided to have the drive now because it's always brought a lot of joy and excitement to our community and certainly to us. And to be totally honest, it's also the main source of income for some of our hosts. Like pretty much everything right now, this year's drive is going to be a little different. We'll still be bringing you very

special episodes, fun community activities, premium thank you gifts. But we also know it's a weird time and for some folks a really difficult one. Some people are in a position to become new or upgrading members, others can't right now, and that is okay. We'll have ways for you to support MaxFun at every level, including some ways that won't cost you anything. We're also going to run the drive for four weeks instead of two. We didn't think it was a good time to be rushing anybody, and having a longer drive lets us be a little more low-key in our drive pitch. It also gives us more time to do fun stuff,

like the weekly live streams we'll be putting on for charity throughout the drive. Most importantly, we want the 2020 MaxFunDrive to highlight all the ways we support each other and our communities. MaxFunDrive to highlight all the ways we support each other and our communities. We also want to show how grateful we are to you for making all the work that we do possible. Stay safe. We'll see you July 13th for the MaxFunDrive. hello this is rachel mcelroy hello this is griffin mcelroy and this is wonderful do you think the audience would be okay with just 45 minutes of dead air silence me and you climb under the desk lay down take a quick 45 minutes snooze i'll turn on the meditation app i'll turn on some white noise we're in the studio so i can crank the you know the sound system with that soldier boy i can crank the soldier boy because i know that

you love listening to that to help you sleep um and the two of us will just treat ourselves to a little schnoot because our our listeners are always talking about hey what could you hey you guys are always just pouring your heart out of your sleeves into our open ears and mouths and what have we done for you lately and it's like that's a good question maybe we could just do a dead silence 45 minutes of episode and you don't tell on us to to advertisers or max fun do you think they would do you our audience is a decent size do you think they would all be cool because all it would take is one weak link to send an email to jesse and be like hey get them in trouble if if you took that 45 minutes snooze yeah do you think it would really make a difference it would make more is better than nothing huh i

guess that's true i think it'd be great and i think let's try it starting right now can't sleep right now anyway i'm too excited to talk about how uh excited i am to talk about how excited i am on this week's episode of wonderful to show. We talk about things that are good. And, uh, how are you doing? How are you doing? Um, pretty,

pretty good. Pretty good. A little stressed. That's a lie. That's I feel like neither. We just had a remote teaching sesh with, uh, our son's daycare,

which has reopened in a limited capacity. We have not sent Henry back in. I think I, you know, what helps is i keep reminding myself that they are doing this because they think we want it yeah they're not doing this to set us up to fail they're thinking let's offer them something felt like it though huh 30 minutes 30 minutes sitting on the floor with his classmates learning about the planets

of henry playing like a reverse staring contest to see how long you could go without looking at the people talking to him on the computer screen it was rough rough stuff i just i i keep reminding myself they think we want this right they're not doing this because they think we need it right they think we want it yeah they're so wrong um hey do you have any small wonders, though? You always ask me first, and I'm never prepared to go first. Right. So I think you should just, like, declarative.

I'm going first. I have a small wonder. Grenadine, I enjoy it in a cocktail. It's a cherry syrup. Long before I drank adult beverages, we'd go to Applebee'sbee's and i would say let me just get some coke with some grenadine in it because they didn't have cherry coke most of the time i just be like let me get a coke with some grenadine in it and that was always such an exotic treat for me was coke with grenadine i've always fostered a love for this sweet red syrup

and uh i enjoy it in uh many many a beverage for beverage for grown folks these days. And that's my story, folks, and I'm sticking to it. I will follow your theme and suggest taking a fruit juice and putting it in a cocktail. We have been really good lately about getting a lot of fruit items. We've had some watermelon, some pineapple. Maybe, not to brag, watermelon, pineapple. You heard of them? We got them.

And so a lot of times I will take the juice from that fruit. I will put it in my cocktail. Right. It is a summer treat. You haven't lived until you've seen Rachel pick up a whole watermelon with her hands. And just squeeze it. And just squeeze it. And just squeeze it.

And the juice comes out without the sort of hull of the husk of the watermelon breaking. I don't know how the fuck she does it. Yep. It's pretty incredible. I squeeze it. It looks like a deflated balloon. It's like she's wringing out a towel. It's incredible.

Hey, you go first this week. What you got on deck? I am bringing something. And I'll be curious to hear your experience with this, because I don't know if this was just a phenomenon for me. Okay. I'm talking about collage. Collage of many things put together into one thing.

Things cut and glued on a piece of paper in a pleasing array. Are we talking about um sort of the the like artistic like eric carl is that the dude's name the hungry caterpillar fella but i did a whole fucking segment on him i can't remember his name that is he like worked in collage you're talking about that are you talking about like here are some pictures of my of some of my favorite members of 98 degrees not the other? Okay. Both. Okay. Maybe also it could be like an artistic spread

of pictures of Nick Lachey's face and body, abs, nipples, powerful arms. Just isolating particular body parts and pasting them separately. I can see your dad like going into your room and be like, hey, Rachel, and just seeing you putting together a huge poster board of just nick lachey's nipples and where they have sort of found their way to the

surface oh this is terrible just uh just uh just this is grotesque like a highway map of nick lachey nipples no no okay just to be clear i was not a fan of the 98 degrees. Baby, you don't have to impress anybody here. We're all friends here. Collage was a big thing for me in maybe middle school. This was something that you would give to other people a lot of times on a birthday. Whoa. You would take photos and cut them up into little shapes and put them on a piece of paper. I was suggesting that you might have experience with this

because I thought maybe after one of your theatrical performances, there were collages made of people in character. Mostly as like director's gifts. In fact, that was fairly traditional, more like scrapbook or poster style design, not like, you know, I feel like when you say collage like

you have to be cutting interesting shapes you can just include a bunch of pictures all glued together the only time i remember me doing this is i made one for myself of all my friends yeah right uh that i had in my room i bought like a big poster board at like walmart or something like that and i was very excited about it and I just like thumbtacked all these pictures of one of my friends. This was several years ago now was cleaning out his stuff from his parents house and found his collage from high school posted on Facebook tagged us all it was a trip. I remember destroying my collage and just taking all the pictures down off of it i think when i moved to cincinnati because i had to do a real hard i was really trying to condense my life

marie kondo style long before that that was a thing and saying like well i could fit all the photos on this in one very small sandwich size ziploc bag or i could carry this entire huge fucking poster board with me across state lines didn't didn't make the trip i will say in middle school one of my friends gifted me a blank journal but on the inside cover was a collage of leonardo di caprio photos and was this i imagine the journal didn't come like this no the journal this was okay so what was the thinking there just like here's where you can write some here's a place for you to safely write some of their most erotic poetry about leonardo dicaprio my argument is that she took an impersonal gift of a journal made it personal by cutting up pictures of a celebrity that i liked what's the message though because a journal is like where you do some creative writing or maybe a little

bit introspective writing and is it like here's a journal and i'm gonna go ahead and give you a prompt look at all these leo nips it's leo nips all over the front cover you look at those you center yourself for 15 seconds and then you begin writing you have a strange misunderstanding of what a teen girl finds attractive about uh her love interest it is not typically nipples i think your memory is starting yeah i know you've got your finger on the pulse of my finger right on it um collage is something that is also used in in high art form not just you know teens um we became most familiar with it i think as, as a globe with the Cubist painters, Pablo Picasso, George Braque. They kind of would take a painting and then maybe cut out some newsprint in a shape or something and put it on the painting. It's also called mixed media a lot of times.

I call it freaking lazy. Just paint. Just paint it. Use paint to paint it. Who is this character, by the way? I don't times. I'll call it freaking lazy. Just paint. Just paint it. Use paint to paint it. Who is this character, by the way? I don't know. I'm so tired. I don't know who it is.

I don't know who's coming out of me anymore. But this was not actually something that they originated. This is something that has been around forever. Japanese artists began to stick paper onto silk as early as the 1100s. In Europe, paper collage happened in the 1400s. The technique of just kind of taking prints and putting them on canvas is something that is very common. In the Victorian era, this happened a lot in scrapbooks and homemade Valentine's cards. Adorable.

Yeah. And I mean, stained glass windows is also, if you think about it, just glass collage. If you really sit down and you think about it. Or like a mosaic, I guess,

would be another example of tile collage. Tile collage. And really, if you really think about it, paint on canvas is just a paint collage. Oh. And if really think about it, paint on canvas is just a paint collage. Oh. And if you think about it, a sandwich is just a meat, lettuce, and cheese and bread collage. If you really think about it, I am a blood, muscle, and bone collage.

Think about that. Wow. You are writing a poem over there, and I am loving it. The universe is just an atomic collage. Whoa, that's something. Hey, babe, there's something to that. Write that down. Write that down in your Leo nipple journal.

Atomic collage. Ooh, that's good. That is good. There was actually something similar. Feminist artists in the 1960s, there was an example of a piece called body collage uh where the artist rolled around in shredded printer paper yeah uh her body painted in wallpaper paste cool what she called an active collage that's neat it also reminds me i don't know oh man i can't get on

this whole rabbit hole there is a series of gi joe, like, PSA spoofs that were, like, early internet videos. Oh, is this body massage? Just sounded like body massage. Yeah. Sorry. That's nothing. That's nothing. It's nothing.

It's absolutely nothing. This is also something pop artists use, just taking everyday ordinary objects in their work. Yes. just taking everyday ordinary objects in their work. Yes. And then also, if you think about the 70s and 80s, posters for bands like the Sex Pistols used a lot of this collage. So I think it's interesting to just kind of look at,

this is like an at-home, a decoupage. You take a table, you put a bunch of pictures on it, suddenly it's art. Love it. Or you can go into a gallery and see a lot of this too. Yeah. I think i find it really um accessible because a lot of times as an artist um my skills of capturing an image are are not great oh don't sell yourself short but if i can cut it out of a magazine paste it on something all of a sudden i don't have to draw that globe. I've got a picture of a globe. We're really obsessed with globes this segment. Just a lot of globe chat.

Can I tell you about my first thing? Yes. My first thing is weird and abstract and sort of conceptual, which is just sort of where my mind is at right now. Opening a treasure chest. It's always so good to open up a treasure chest this must be why unboxing videos are so popular i think it is there's a lot of sort of ways that you can extrapolate this idea out into the real world i think yes unboxing videos i think uh the surprise egg surprise bag sort of youtube craze for kids uh where they you know make fairly

cheap toys and you open up a bag and oh man there's a 1 in 48 chance of getting this you know silver gudetama or whatever the fuck uh it's it's a very universal thing uh and especially in sort of the domain of video games opening a treasure chest is like such a common thing um and it struck me that like regardless of the game or whatever thing uh regardless of like whether or not i even know what's inside a said chest every time i open up a chest in some game or whatever there is a dopamine kick associated with that that is just sort of like irrefutable uh a hundred percent of the time no matter what and i think that's kind of like uh the the the i don't know the icon of opening a treasure chest the symbol of opening a treasure chest being that sort of like consistently uh exciting yeah kind of incredible um and it's

like that's ubiquitous across like all games uh zelda is like a huge example of that where you're exploring dungeons and there's little chests with you know cash or keys or bombs or whatever the fuck in it but every dungeon has one big chest that you're working your way towards and every single time you're opening up that big chest like oh shit here it goes uh dnd obviously any role-playing game it's like a big thing i've been playing a card game on my phone called slay the spire which is all around like one to two hour long runs along which along the way you'll open like a dozen chests and even though i've played it for so long every chest i'm like fuck yeah what's gonna be in this one i don't know um also i think that there is a we mentioned the surprise bag uh toy craze um in video games there's also a concept called loot

boxes which uh became sort of legislated over the past few years because it's like you know this game is free but here's a random box you can buy for a dollar that might have a new costume for your guy in it uh and kids were spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on these loot boxes because they were not sort of financially responsible or financially sort of educated uh and game developers were sort of like enticing them to blow huge so yeah you have no understanding of money yeah that's the thing and so like legislators have sort of uh come after that practice and made it more sort of uh you have to be more transparent about like what's in these boxes and what your chances are of getting each thing and uh you know if you're a youtuber you can't juice the system because a developer like paid you money to give you a fake box that oh man this one has all kinds of great stuff in it um i don't know why i talked like that

just now but basically it's gambling anyway treasure chests as like a concept as an icon uh are a are a trope largely uh because of pirates and the like concept of buried treasure uh which you know is the origins of this idea of keeping treasure in a box in clandestine locations um and archaeologically speaking there are lots of examples of troves that have been discovered or hordes uh that have been discovered uh and like so much so that there are like all kinds of categorization systems for art that archaeologists use when describing uh what are they called wealth deposits um which is really interesting i'd never really looked into it there's a concept called the founder's horde

which is uh comprised of like unfinished objects that the like creator was planning on returning to this makes me think of the the pyramids uh yeah well that's i mean yes the pyramids also uh largely included what were called votive hordes and votive hordes were essentially hordes of treasure that were never intended to be dug up like that is their final they are they are buried there to intended to be their final resting place so for a lot of ceremonial purposes uh the pyramids had a lot of votive hordes uh the idea of buried treasure is almost entirely like fictional and there are certainly some examples like throughout history of just sort of like mad rulers burying their vast sums and then like it instantly

being found because somebody didn't keep a secret or whatever the fuck but uh the idea of a pirate doing this is almost unheard of the only one uh the only pirate sort of confirmed to do this was william kidd uh who was sailing in new york city he started out i think a privateer but he for sure slipped into doing a great deal of piracy and so he buried treasure i think in long island somewhere before sailing into new york city to use as a kind of bargaining chip in case he was caught and prosecuted. He could say like, well, don't hang me because there's all this treasure.

That gambit did not work. He was killed. And this became sort of the origins of a lot of fictional stories like the Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe and most notably Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. And that is how this like idea the gold bug by edgar allen poe and most notably treasure island by uh robert lewis stevenson and that is how this like idea of a treasure chest being this object of desire uh hidden away in some

dungeon or whatever uh rose to prominence i think that is just a cool idea like i think it's a cool thing that there is a games are all about building around like feedback loops of you know challenge followed by reward where your efforts are sort of put through the paces and then you receive a prize for said effort at the end of it and almost ubiquitously that prize is a treasure chest and you know even though it's been in every game forever it's every time you open a treasure chest i'm like fuck yeah here we go what's in this box let's find out i bet like archaeologists and paleontologists like i bet that's part of the reason they got in the game oh yeah oh yeah this idea of just like stumbling upon something incredibly valuable you know you have to like work to you know and i'm sure there's an archaeologist that like cracked open a crypt somewhere and there was just a bunch of gold and treasure laying on

the ground and like ah fuck if it was if it if only this had been in a chest that would have been so much cooler it's so messy i could also get into like the concept of mimics which is another sort of fiction obviously game thing of monsters in the shape of treasure chests which is like a manifestation i didn't know about this yeah i mean it's like a a tropey sort of dnd thing you know what i'm picturing right now i'm picturing a treasure chest with arms and legs. Is that right? Yeah, and a big tongue and sharp teeth. Yeah, more or less.

Yeah, essentially. But if I talked about that, I would sound like a big nerd as opposed to a cool athlete like I have so far today. Yeah. Hey, can I steal your bike? Yes. Griffin, we have personal messages. Yeah, baby.

This one is for Nick. It is from Shannon. You are the most wonderful person I've ever met. And after one year together, I still can't believe you exist. Thank you for coming into my life and loving our tiny, hit me as hard as it did. Me too. Because I heard that and I was like, what does that mean? But then I thought of like what a Thursday pizza party looked like. And as it did me too because i heard that and i was like what does

that mean but then i thought of like what a thursday pizza party looked like and i was like fuck that see i was thinking like it was more like the class had earned it and they were rewarded oh my god yes like you got enough stickers or something and now you got a pizza we got enough stickers we're gonna get some five dollar hot and readies, and we're going to watch the first 45 minutes of Finding Demo. Here's another Jumbotron. This one's for John, and it's from Emma, who says, Hey, love, I'm writing this on your couch, soon to be our couch, because I'm finally moving to Austin. I couldn't ask for a more supportive, caring partner, and I can't wait to start our life together.

Here's to many years of endless pop culture references homemade pasta and finally getting me to watch the wire love you always of course i would recommend austin as a destination uh yes maybe not in the middle of them dog days that's when you moved here right i did i moved here in july so the the days didn't get much doggier than those. I think I showed up here and immediately my underwear was just like completely saturated with sweat. Like I stepped off the plane and it was just like. Hey, I'm Mallory O'Meara, a weird fiction reader who enjoys whiskey and owns a book weight. And I'm Bria Grant, a science fiction reader who likes iced tea and reads to escape the world.

And we host Reading Glasses, a weekly show that dives into reading suggestions, goals, complaints, and the really important questions like, what are the best reading snacks? And seriously, Mallory, what is a book wait for? Every week, we talk about reading. It's not a book club. You're not going to have to listen to us review a book you haven't read. You just have to be excited about books, authors, the bookish community, writing, and talking about reading. We can literally talk about reading, like, all day long. Reading Glasses. Every Thursday on MaximumFun.org.

Glasses. I thought about doing that. Hey, what's your, what's that second thing? My second thing is a trip to the poetry corner. Hey, oh my gosh, I feel like it's been so long. The poetry corner, and a salad and poetry. We got some lines, we got some verses, and baby, come along with me. But I don't know what to do about those salads

and scrambled poems they're calling again do you like how i shorten poems into sort of one actually poems how do you say it poem yeah boom it's stronger i would like to talk about an incredible poet who i knew first as a poet but is actually known for many things and that is audrey lord oh okay anybody that has taken a woman studies course has studied feminism in any way has heard of this incredible woman i've heard of this incredible woman yeah uh i actually i was wondering if I was kind of off and thinking of her as a poet first, but she has created 11 volumes of poetry and five works of prose. That's so, that seems like a lot.

It's a lot. That's 16 things altogether. Audre Lorde was a black American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She described herself as, quote, a black lesbian mother warrior poet. Fuck yeah. Fuck yes. So she passed away in 1992, but was kind of at the beginning

of the whole concept of intersectional feminism. Okay. Because as she described herself, a lot of her qualities crossed over and impacted her feminism. And she was always kind of critical of non-intersectional feminism. And this is kind of one of those famous things that you may have heard before. This is a quote from one of her essays. She said, those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women,

those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference, those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older, know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.

I have heard, yeah. Yes, right? Yes. She became an academic relatively early. She started as a poet, got her poems published in Seventeen Magazine, and then got a fellowship that allowed her to teach, which is actually where she met her partner of many years, and became kind of a member of this academic area that was primarily white and kind of had to

discover a lot about herself and her priorities and her interests in that experience. So she was a poet, but then also became an academic and ended up writing a lot of essays about her experience. And I wanted to read one of her poems. Please do. So this is from the Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. It was copyrighted in 1978. It is called A Litany for Survival. For those of us who live at the shoreline, standing upon the constant edges of decision, crucial and alone. For those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice, who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns, looking inward and outward, at once before and after, seeking a now that can

breed futures like bread in our children's mouths, so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours. For those of us who were imprinted with fear, like a faint line in the center of our foreheads, learning to be afraid with our mother's milk, for by this weapon, this illusion of some safety to be afraid with our mother's milk. For by this weapon, this illusion of some safety to be found, the heavy footed hope to silence us. For all of us, this instant and this triumph, we were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises, we are afraid it might not remain. And when the sun sets, we are afraid it may not rise in the morning. When our stomachs are full, we are afraid of indigestion. When our stomachs are empty, we are afraid we may never eat again. When we are loved, we are afraid love will vanish.

When we are alone, we are afraid love will never return. And when we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcome. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive isn't that incredible that is is such a beautiful expression of the experience of being marginalized right like? I mean, in a way that you and I could never fully comprehend for sure. That is like, I'm like struggling for words over here. There are moments in that poem that I just think are so succinct and brilliant.

This idea of, so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours, I find incredibly powerful. And she talks a lot about this idea of so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours, I find incredibly powerful. And she talks a lot about this idea of when you are in a group of marginalized people, you are often told to be silent, to kind of adapt to the culture so that you can get along. And Audre Lorde oftentimes said, like, that is not a way to success for us. That is not who we are. That is not going to bring us the freedom we want. The Audre Lorde Project was founded in 1994, two years after her death.

It is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, trans, and gender nonconforming people of color center for community organizing. And it is all building on her legacy of speaking out for oppressed and marginalized groups. She left such a legacy in her writing and in her activism that the work still continues today in her name, which is an incredibly powerful thing for a poet. That was so fucking incredible, baby. Thank you for bringing that.

I for sure had heard her name i i for sure had like heard her name before but i had never like heard her poetry before she's an intimidating person to bring because it's it's difficult to talk about her impact in a you know 10 minute segment no yeah of course but i wanted to draw attention to her poetry because i think a lot of people do know her for her activism and her essays and her critical thought. But her poetry is incredible, too. This is an important person to look into, if you are not familiar with her work. And there is a lot there that just reads as revolutionary, but then is also so common sense yeah you know there's something kind of intimidating about a lot of philosophers and intellectuals and academics and i feel like she stays very rooted in who she is and the power she can bring in just being that person yeah uh and so i would recommend it i'm not talking about fucking fritos or

no uh my second thing is i'm actually pretty excited about it i was struck because yesterday i was singing one of these songs and i was like oh my god how have i not brought this i want to talk about schoolhouse rock schoolhouse rock it strikes me um i i was going to talk about this like later in the segment i in i want to say like around 2000 or so. I was definitely like early teens, late tweens. I was in a production called Schoolhouse Rock Live, which was written in 1993. And it was essentially like a stage performance of something like 20 schoolhouse rock songs. And because of that, I am intimately familiar with those 20 schoolhouse rock songs. It's the nature of like being in a show, you, you know, have to memorize your lines, or you have to memorize the lyrics of the songs that you sing. And it just so happens that the

lyrics of these songs are so like deeply educational about these like incredibly foundational subjects that like i know them very well however uh most of the 64 episode run of schoolhouse rock uh took place in the late 70s uh to early 80s and so i imagine there's lots of people who uh were not in the production Schoolhouse Rock Live who maybe have no exposure to Schoolhouse Rock. And that's why I thought it would be good to talk about it. There was a lot of nostalgia in the 90s for that time period. Yes.

And so I remember that being a real cool thing in the mid to late 90s of like, hey, look at this super retro looking stuff. There have been a couple of revivals of schoolhouse rock. Uh, I think in the nineties is there were, I think eight seasons, right? And the main Canon of schoolhouse rock exists in the first four seasons,

which I'll dive into. The fifth season was like computer chip, Billy inside them. And it was like, I think that was the season that was in the nineties. And it was like all about how computers work, but it was like a month later, like they, those episodes were outdated or was like, think that was the season that was in the 90s and it was like all about how computers work but it was like a month later like they those episodes were outdated or was like i've got eight kilobytes of ram it's like no get the fuck out of here no way man um the uh schoolhouse

rock if you are like not familiar with it at all was a series of three minute long educational cartoon music videos essentially tackling a very broad range of subjects uh that aired on abc uh mostly in the 70s um and like i said there have been a couple sort of short-lived reboots here and there i think in the late aughts there was a short season about climate change um which is awesome. But the main body, the songs that everyone talks about when they talk about Schoolhouse Rock, are the first four seasons, which cover science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. Which is like a lot of stuff.

There's a lot of words in there that bored me, a 33 year old man uh that like enraptured the youths at the time uh and they had these songs had so much staying power because of like how catchy they were uh the the whole series was created by a guy named david mccall uh who was an advertising exec and the story goes that he son was having a lot of trouble with his multiplications tables. But McCall realized that his son also knew all the lyrics to every Rolling Stones song. So he sort of put two and two together. He hired a guy named Bob Dorough to write a song about multiplication.

And that song was called Three is a Magic Number, which is the first episode of Schoolhouse Rock is Three is a Magic Number. And I'm going to play it right now. A man and a woman had a little baby. Yes, they did. They had three in the family. That's a magic number. Three, six, nine. Twelve, fifteen, eighteen. So an animator working at the same firm as David McCall made these visuals to accompany the song, and then they pitched it to ABC as a series where it attracted the attention of michael eisner and then it took off like a rocket i feel like my friend had a like alternative rock

version where a bunch of musicians got together and did covers of these songs almost certainly yes yes i i think that that uh i remember that as well but i don't uh god it's so hard there were so many alternative rock covers of every imaginable type of music under the sun uh so the first four seasons uh I will go in order the first season it's multiplication rock just what it says on the 10 threes a magic number in there uh also my hero zero uh another memorable song and figure eight uh both of those songs were in the musical number three figure eight is double four you know that one okay anyway um uh the next season was grammar rock which is probably pound for pound the one that people know the most songs from can you name any uh can you name songs from grammar rock i'll

be curious to see how much this has been really no conjunction junction oh what's your function junction uh we got uh unpack your adjectives we got lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here oh my Conjunction Junction. Oh, Conjunction Junction. We got Unpack Your Adjectives. We got Lolly, Lolly, Lolly. Get your adverbs here. Oh my gosh. These, okay. Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, a song about pronouns, which was my number that I had to sing.

Oh, Griff. Which is this just endless screed of madness. It was the hardest song in the show and I had to do it because it's all about how, it's like Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla had an armadillo named something something something and he knew a woman named something something something something and but you can say that much much faster with pronouns uh is the whole hook of the song anyway uh just a lot a lot of bops in grammar rock uh then uh during the bicentennial in 1976, we get America rock,

which is where you get all of your history and your civics. This is the one when I think of schoolhouse rock, I think of I'm just a bill. I'm just a bill. You get a mother necessity and the preamble, which was in the schoolhouse rock live musical and saved me in so many different like history classes at that point because the preamble is literally just the preamble to the constitution oh that's handy

we the people in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. This was 20 fucking years ago. This was 20 years ago. I was in the show and I remember it. I had to memorize that in ninth grade and we did not get that song at our fingertips and that would have been very helpful. It's literally, that is all the song.

They repeat it from there. It is just the preamble to the Constitution. And I remember it because it took place in song form. And that's incredible. Yes. And then the fourth season, the final sort of season of the main run of the show was Science Rock, which has a few jams in it that are lesser known uh interplanet janet which teaches you the planets of the solar system uh do the circulation which is all about

the circulatory system uh we get victim of gravity which is about gravity uh but then there's also electricity electricity uh which is also a fantastic song um and the songs as evidenced by the fact that i can remember one 20 years later word for word uh the songs were super catchy the show was super well received and like the amount of sheer educational work done by this program is is literally immeasurable um and that is such a tricky needle to thread like educational kids tv programming that is not just sort of um vacuous and uh in sort of like the the lessons of which are not sticky like they're intangible like that is such a difficult thing to pull off. It is, yeah. And Schoolhouse Rock, so many of its 64 episodes, of its 64 songs, are incredibly memorable, catchy, well-written, well-performed, and very helpful, mnemonically speaking, songs.

Better than Baby Shark. Way better than Baby Shark. And I just love them. I love the songs for their educational purposes. I also really loved being in that show because it was like all my friends and I just like, it was an easy, there was not a lot of emotional weight. Was there choreography?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Dude, the circulation was out of control. You had to get that blood pumping. Yeah, and that's it. I want to end with uh the final song from schoolhouse rock which is one of my favorite songs i don't know if you've heard it before uh is the tale of mr morton and it's all about uh subjects and predicates and i think it's just a really nice pretty song so i'll end my segment on that mr morton walked down the street mr morton walks mr morton talked to his cat mr morton talked hello cat you look good

mr morton was lonely mr morton was mr morton is the subject of the sentence and what the predicate says he does do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Well, Meredith says, I've gotten into embroidery recently to pass the time. There's something about the action of sewing that is really calming and fun to do. It's also a great way to keep my hands busy while listening to podcasts. Yeah, I've never, I. My grandma was like incredible.

Oh, yeah. At embroidery in her early days probably close to my age actually yeah uh and i love it i i just i there's something so um it feels like an heirloom it feels like you're making an heirloom yes when i see it i feel like this is something that somebody is going to keep forever like Like the creepy boy holding a cat. No, holding a little ball and cup. Is that what it is? That's what it is. Okay.

I thought it was a cat. There is a cat in the picture. Okay. We have a large embroidery thing that Rachel's grandma made. And it's beautiful. It's well done. It is haunted.

It's incredibly haunted. It is certain that it contains the soul of a young child. Yes. Or that the soul of a young child somewhere contains the painting. Yeah, it's hard to say that the soul of a young child somewhere contains the pain. Yeah, it's hard to say. It's something.

There's something. I think we can all agree there's something. Sandra says, a big problem in Minneapolis, especially at the lake by my house, is people feeding ducks human food. To solve this, the city of Minneapolis

made little rubber duck picnic table centerpieces reminding people to not feed the ducks. It's very cute to see little rubber ducks all around the picnic area and it seems to be very effective that's so charming it's it's very nice i remember i learned uh shamefully recently not to give not shamefully recently maybe within the last decade or so uh because i said something on the pot like a podcast like yeah man give a whole baguette to a duck it'll be awesome the ducks have earned this and then got a bunch of people who knew much better than me saying like

no no no no you needed a schoolhouse rock song i did like don't give bread to a duck that's really good give milk to a cat well are you not supposed to give milk to a cat? No. Okay, see, I apparently need this song very importantly. Chocolate is not for dogs. It's important to remember that. Baby. We're done. The reboot. It's coming back.

Hey, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You'll find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you so much to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah, you may have seen that they have announced the upcoming MaxFunDrive. You can find a lot more information about that online. We had promos for it in this exact episode that you're hearing now for more details.

But it's kicking off very, very soon. And it's going to be much more low-key than it has been in previous years. And we got some fun stuff. Yeah, just like a celebration of the great network that we are on yeah great creators that are included in it yes uh and i i mean i think that's it hey um my uh new graphic novel that i made with my family comes out next week uh we got in a huge box with like 60 copies of it here at our house so It's a big old book. It's a big book. Big, big book.

A lot of work went into that. Yeah. Mostly by Carrie Peach, the illustrator of the book. But you can find it at theadventurezonecomic.com. Please preorder it. That would be very cool of you. And I think that's it. I think that's where we're going to wrap it up.

And well. Thank you to flowers and trees. Thanks to flowers and trees. Thanks to grass and bushes. Oh, doing great work this week, bushes. Clouds, though. Clouds. What is this show turning into?

Clouds and sun. Clouds, sun, stars, space, air. All part of the beautiful Atomic Collage. Oh, God. Just... Is it too late to change the name of the podcast? No, definitely not.

I'll send an email to Apple. Working on it, money on it. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported. Rocket Ship One, this is Mission Control. Come in. This is Rocket Ship One. Go ahead. Rocket Ship, what's your status on Max Fund Drive? Shouldn't we have seen it by now?

Sorry about that, Mission Control. Turns out I miscalculated. Current projected ETA for Max Fund Drive is... July 13th? But it looks different. It'll be for... four weeks, so it's longer than expected, but all readings point to low-key. Oh, that'll be good. But can you verify that there are still special gifts for new and upgrading monthly members? Verified. Sweet gifts for new and upgrading members, plus amazing new episodes and even special weekly live streams for charity.

Copy that. Rocketship, can you confirm ETA for Max Fund Drive? 90% probability of Max Fund Drive from July 13th to August 7th. Did you say 90%? There were a couple of decimal places and I might have carried a zero wrong. I'm just going to pencil in July 13th to August 7th. Mission Control out.