Wonderful! - Wonderful! 141: Anyone Can Pilot!

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

Griffin's favorite personal data storage! Rachel's favorite educational animal! Griffin's favorite timeless aughts rock! Rachel's favorite transit drain!For more ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/To become a supporter of the Maximum Fun network: https://maximumfun.org/join/ 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 just going to give you this big fat thumbs up the whole time we record. Thumbs up has so much meaning for us now because our son doles them out. It's very rewarding. Let's be fair. He also dishes

out thumbs down. He does. That fucking hurts, man. I have to tell him. When I fail as a father, I have to reckon with that sort of internally and I reflect on my bad parenting. And then into the night, you know, I wake up in a cold sweat. And I'm like, oh, man, I really goofed it today.

To get that sort of instant feedback, thumbs down, because you made me eat my meatballs for dinner. Thumbs down. That's like, oh, shit. I have to look you in the face while you tell me I'm not doing it right. But you're going to get a big me I'm not doing it right. Damn. But you're going to get a big thumbs up from me. Thank you. Because this is a podcast where we talk about things that we like and things that are good and things that we're into.

And right now I'm into you. And by right now, I mean always for the rest of my life. But right now I'm really into you. And you get a thumbs up. Oh, thank you. Is that your small wonder? No. Oh, okay.

What's your small wonder? Why don't you go first this time oh this is terrible um we just watched palm springs on hulu yeah and i enjoyed it way more than i expected i would that yeah that i'm a i'm a sucker for like a time loop movie groundhog day is like my favorite, you know, flick ever. And I'm very fascinated by the idea and they have a lot of fun with it. Yeah, I thought like, oh, here comes a romantic comedy, which is, you know, a 50-50 shot usually.

But I thought this was really great. Yep. I'm going to bring back Hiyori's Bed and Breakfast. We are like on the final episode of it and we've been watching this final episode for like weeks because we can't,

I think both of us are a little like nervous to just have it be out of you know what's hilarious is that i think the show the season we're watching takes place over two weeks and we have been watching it for like six months oh if not longer uh that show is still just very uh it's a nice chill come down show if we watch something kind of spooky kind of eerie yeah kind of troubling we'll come back into the ever loving arms of hayori and sangsoon and it's uh it's good stuff it's on netflix if you haven't heard us talk about it before it's great they run a bed and breakfast hey another small wonder of mine that's actually a huge sort of uh existentially foundational wonder is the max fun drive which is

happening right now we've obviously rescheduled it uh and now we are doing sort of a different format much more low pressure rachel and i are not going to talk your ear off about it but we are a part of the max fun network which is uh listener supported uh and artist owned as john hodgman and other people tell you at the end of each episode of every show uh and you can join the network now at MaximumFun.org slash join. Choose a monthly membership level that, you know, you are able to give. We know it's a weird time right now. But the support that you have given us in the past has allowed us to make this show a larger part of our lives.

And that is incredible. And we cannot thank you enough for it. Yeah. a larger part of our lives. And that is incredible. And we cannot thank you enough for it. Yeah, I would encourage all of you, if you are able to give right now to go to maximumfund.org slash join. Check out, you know, some of the benefits we're able to offer you

if you are a member and support us. Make it sound like we have like an exclusive lounge at most airports. Yeah, we'll tell you a little bit more about it later on but uh let's go i think i go first this week that sounds right okay uh my first thing is a little bit abstract um but i got excited the more i thought about it uh i don't really know

how to phrase it but so i'll try this having your own personal data storage device this sounds like very very nerdy but i'm talking about like and this joy has been long diminished since like uh technology has advanced and now you can like for two dollars buy a terabyte micro sd card are you talking about those those thumb drives that you can wear as a bracelet that's a great example of exactly what I'm talking about. Thank you so much. Yeah, these days, like, you know, it refers to flash drives or external hard drives or micro SD cards, which like, it's not novel anymore that we have like these enormous data storage things, but I still enjoy it a lot. My closet, I probably have like

six or seven, like big external hard drives in there and for me like i like knowing that there are these like little snapshots of like everything i've ever done on a computer like all in one thing like if i ever wanted to find an old document or an old like idea of mine there was like a a game i was like working up in photoshop which i haven't had photoshop in fucking forever and i was like i wonder if i could find that and i did like i found it in an old hard drive in my uh in my closet um so i don't want to get like too grandpa you about this like that's the the the modern context for this thing and i don't think people give a shit about it as much as uh i used to when we're talking about rewritable floppy disks.

When we're talking about, yes. 90s kids remember. 90s kids remember the floppy disks. When I was in middle school, 3.5 inch floppy disks flowed like wine at our house. We had a computer at our house and I feel like we always like, we weren't like it wasn't ever a top of the line thing it was like the same dell for like nine years or something like that but we had a lot of floppies and uh i felt very empowered by the idea of having my own floppy disk with my own like you know a journal or some cool things i had painted in Microsoft Paint or a game maybe.

If I'm being honest, like- Or a short story you wrote about the 92 flood in St. Louis, Missouri. Yeah. Okay. Now are you- It sounds like you're bought in in a way that maybe you weren't before. I'm saying this stuff to try to make myself sound good mostly it was like video game emulators it was like super nintendo games that i would then go to the my middle school library and like find the row of computers that were facing away from the front door and punch it in and start playing some you know final fantasy 3 or whatever uh and for me there was something so like futuristic and

gratifying about having this like little sliver of technology like all to yourself uh that you could do like whatever you wanted with there was something so like cool about that and i think it's just because of the novelty of it like that that 3.5 inch floppy i forget how like the actual storage size of it it wasn't big it was quite little um but like writing something to a disc like that felt so like uh complicated and impossible because like that that technology was just like not really there in the 90s yeah and that was very very very cool to me um i also we bought a cd burner back when like that yeah like first became sort of publicly available and uh like i of course loved like burning mp3 cds that we could listen to in my friend's cars and i could like share my

music with them but you share your dj name uh there was a few uh there uh dj taco was like there for a bit but then there was dj griffey uh was in the mix for a while i had a lot of different uh sets that i did but i also liked uh you could burn like audio data cds that you could fit like a way way way more music on and i would take those to school and like in tv news class just like pop it in and drag and drop all the music from it. And then like, just have that. Now that I'm thinking about it,

like most of these examples are me like finding ways to slack off at school because it's like the equivalent of having like the comic book inside of the textbook is essentially what I'm talking about. But like, it felt like I felt like this renegade slacker hacker in a way that was that like made me feel very very very cool um and the very first like flash drive i got again was like very very small uh i got it from the mtv internship thing that i did and again like i just put everything on it i put in every mp3 that like i owned and I would just go over to friends' houses and like plug it into their computers and we would listen to music off of my flash drive.

And like I look back on those days like very fondly and have been looking back on them since I've been like prepping this topic. But when I think about it, like it really actually represents a fairly like narrow window of my life because that technology sort of became a thing and then followed do you know what moore's law is no it's this technological concept uh and i forget who like the author of it was but it basically states that the number of microchips like on a processor or whatever doubles every two years or something like that. It's like a way of sort of exponentially tracking the increasing capability of computer technology. And that is absolutely for sure true of personal data storage. Now, like it's to the point where it's exponentially growing

to like degrees that I can't even envision, like talking about like cloud computing. And I don't know what a zettabyte is and i'm too old to like learn um but i just really like the idea of having a virtual footprint of some sort uh and i've talked a lot about like the importance of having personal ownership over spaces when you're growing up and like how formative that was for for me and how like i prioritize that and like having this little floppy drive with some of my favorite you know nintendo games or you know music or my journal or whatever was just like so intoxicating and i don't know i'll ever feel that way about like a piece of technology again but i

i i treasure those those uh beloved floppy disk memories yeah what do you do now like because for me i have a disc of all of my creative writing from college and i have no idea how to ever access it again i think i have some i think i have like an optical drive that i can plug into yeah yeah it's weird it is it's very strange i wonder how far removed i i i am not one to like reflect on like gen z versus like millennial shit but like this is the kind of stuff that because it was such a like quick progression from i am writing these floppy disks to i have this hard drive that i can store a billion gigabytes of shit onto like it that's probably just a thing that people completely missed like the idea of cds not the the idea of cds being important to your to your life uh is one thing the idea of like not

even being able to create cds like not having the power to create them is like also kind of wild the links that you had to go through to burn a cd uh like that that's the kind of stuff that i think about when i think about sort of the generational gap yeah hey griffin before we go on with the show can i tell you a little bit more about the max fun drive i mean i know because like i have a sheet of like information here right in front of me and also it's like my 10th Max Fun Drive. But if you want to tell the audience about it. Can I tell you, our listener, you right now? Oh, you want me to step into the shoes of our listener?

No, I'm talking directly to the listener right now. Actually, if you could leave the room so I could just talk to the listener right now. I'm eating lunch did you like that hey listener Griffin's gone now it's just you and me let's talk about the Max Fun Drive is that weird

yes the face Rachel was making during that was hugely upsetting. Max Fund Drive is something we do every year. Obviously, this year is a little different than previous years. We know a lot of people are not in a financial position to be Max Fund members, and we completely understand that. Maximumfund.org slash join shows you the different ways you can give. And most people choose $5 or $10 a month. And that is more than enough for us. And we would love to tell you a

little bit about the gifts that you can get if you are able to join at that level. Five bucks a month gets you. Oh, Griffin's back, by the way. Hello. I jumped in through the floor. Smash. Five bucks a month gets you bonus content, not just from our show, but from all the shows, and not just from this year, but for all years. It has been four months since we put up the original bonus content for this show,

and I forget what it was. Animal Crossing. Oh my God, what a fucking trip. It was Rachel's first exposure to Animal Crossing New Leaf before the new Switch game came out. What a weird. You've played that game like every day or the new version. Switch version.

It's so wild to think of how recently you had no exposure to that world. That's fun. We're looking at other stuff we can put up as bonus content for this show and all the others. But it is a while. It's over 200 hours of bonus episodes for all the shows that is only available to MaxFun members. That's just at five bucks a month. 10 bucks a month, you get the bonus content.

You get an exclusive pin for the show of your choice designed by Megan Lancott. They've been doing this for a long time now and the pins are absolutely gorgeous. And you also get a max fun membership card and also all the boco there's a like a game pack at 20 a month and a rocket mug uh at 35 that's that's really cool really like uh it's it is a strange strange time to be doing this and we are fully cognizant of that uh and we do not want you to uh like give money to our show if you are not in a position

to do that that is obviously not something that we would ever ask but uh if you do want to uh you know invest in this in this show and the max fun community as a whole um it means the world to us and you can do it at maximumfund.org join uh what is your first thing my first thing is the classroom pet oh this is great yeah never had one really never you are you 100 100 sure maybe like some goldfish and like some class but like that doesn't feel very that does not feel especially exotic but no i never never i don't think i know i'm not 100 on this i don't think i had one until sixth grade okay and which was kind of inexplicable right because like middle school is is the time when you start to get too cool for everything right for some reason that was the year that my class had a hamster and that hamster was named patches he was a very uh

roly-poly guy uh and i remember like i remember him in the room i remember like passing him around sitting in a circle everybody holding him in sixth grade yeah what's this like your home room or yeah it's my home okay i was gonna say yeah and i remember like years later going back to visit my sixth grade teacher and him like sadly telling me like you know patches passed away oh um but my mom always had a classroom pet always because my mom taught kindergarten and it was almost always guinea pigs um but i think she also like she did chickens like that that was a thing in her classroom yeah you get fuck there was a teacher at her school that had like farm hookups had like a family member that had a farm

and so she would like approach my mom every year and be like hey you want some eggs this year okay and they would like hatch them they get like the little hot lamp and the cardboard box and they'd like they'd like incubate them yeah okay yeah um that's weird that seems like a weird pet to keep indoors in school it seems like a prank that you would pull well like they would rival school is they would send the chicks off to the farm which is hopefully what actually was happening with these chicks once i hatched um but it was i just pantomimed eating like your mom would be like okay these are all hatched up and then she would just eat the chick whole that's not what happened your mom would not do that uh

no but but there was a series there was a series of guinea pigs at one point i had a guinea pig in college that was i believe your own personal guinea pig yeah it was junior year of college and I went and got a guinea pig that I then passed on to my mom that my mom if I remember correctly studded out to another guinea pig stop what the big thing was that they would try and have like get guinea pigs pregnant so they would have babies what during the During the school year. And that was like their classic spearmint? Was breeding these guinea pigs and making them get horny and have sex? Rachel?

So guinea pigs are like social animals. Like anyone that has spent a lot of time with guinea pigs know that they actually like prefer the company of another guinea pig. Love to get down. These natural pigs. And yeah, and then the guinea pig babies are the cutest thing ever. Oh sure, I love a guinea pig down these natural pigs um and yeah and then they would the guinea pig babies are the cutest thing oh sure i love a guinea pig especially if they have the spiky hair and it sticks out in all the directions just these little tubes of so good meat um but so the the reason that

a lot of teachers don't do classroom pets is obviously this is another like out of pocket expense for the teacher right like they are do they have a lot of those yeah i'm kidding of course they do um they uh they have to not only like pay for all of the supplies and the animal itself but then they have to like take care of it sure uh maybe the most arguably the most high-stakes pet to keep alive. uh american humane in partnership with human animal bond research institute and the pet care trust did a study of classroom animals for third and fourth grade students across the united states and it was it showed a significant impact on the social behavioral and academic development of the students by having that classroom pets they did a study where 20 classrooms had a pet and 21 did

not and then the teacher would complete a survey and these pets could be like guinea pigs reptiles whatever well it sounds like the kids were the guinea pigs in this experiment that was being run that's pretty good thank you uh and so every subscale of social skills measurable, which was like communication, cooperation, responsibility, empathy, engagement, uh, they showed increases in all of those areas and a, uh, decrease in hyperactivity and withdrawal in their students as a result of the pet. Did they discover that there was a cap on that where there's now there's too many animals in the room?

Was there a classroom with 20 kids were like, well, if one guinea pig is good, 70 guinea pigs is even better. Oh, shit. Nope. This is way. This now has a detriment on their social skills because they're knee deep in guineas. We saw this in our back when Henry was attending his daycare. They had a classroom pet in each room. And it was like a big draw they had a few it certainly made there was a long stretch there where Henry's drop-off uh by which I mean my drop-off experience was very bad but then they got this snake and he was very

interested in this snake and it was like there's a way to like get him in the classroom in the morning and he felt more comfortable like being like he he the transition was much easier because here's a like an animal that he thinks is cool yeah it's also gives the teacher an opportunity to kind of like as i mentioned like teach about the life cycle and teach about habitats yeah you know all the different um you know science related facts you have a pet um so yeah i think i think it's really cool i understand why a lot of people do it i honestly if i were teaching i don't know that i would want to because there's always the issue of the summer you know where like what do you do with this pet yeah how do you keep them alive by themselves for three months oh you take them home yeah you just like leave a

lot of food a huge water bottle and a giant cube of food with a spreadsheet that's like okay take two bites on thursday thursdays are your your double bites days no don't do that that's obviously quite bad uh and i think it's you know i mean you see a lot of kids that may be really shy or as as mentioned in the study really kind of have difficulty focusing. And this is like a cuddly way to kind of keep their attention and keep them engaged. Yeah. And also if you get a lizard, then they eat grasshoppers.

Yeah. As a young child, I imagine that is exhilarating. I remember going to like a feed store with my mom to get crickets for her classroom pet. Crickets. Probably not grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are big. I don't think I know what the difference is between these two animals.

Grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts in my mind are like kind of the same creature. Is that bad? See, if you had a classroom pet. Yeah, maybe. You would probably know the difference yeah and they're sort of like taste profiles i imagine um have you ever had a cricket before have i ever had like eaten a cricket yeah yes yeah me too i was lying that's no i'm just kidding uh no yeah i think i've eaten a cricket that i feel like they're at the Cincinnati Zoo.

You could like get like bugs. As I recall, they tasted kind of like sunflower seeds. No, yeah, it's good. I'm not here to bug Shane. Great source of protein. It's delicious. Can I steal you away? Please.

Here we go. got a couple grumpotrons can i read them or one of them and you can read the second one and we'll share them i love it this one's for cecil and it is from billy who says hey cecil you are my tall wonder every day oh let's explore that. We should talk about that. We are currently separated by quarantine, a real modern day Romeo and Juliet. Can't wait for the plague to be over so I can lovingly hit you with pillows.

Monterey! A tall wonder. Yeah, let's go back and forth on some tall wonders. I'll start. Basketball players, go. Benedict Cumberbatch. Oh, wow.

That was even better. That's all I got. You lose. That's the only tall thing you could think of. Basketball players. Not like Mount Everest. For some reason, tall made me think it had to be people. Okay.

That's interesting. Yeah. Do you want to read this other one? Yes. This message is for Tommy. It is from Mel. Hi, Tommy. I did a thing.

I wanted you to know how special I think you are and what better way than via my favorite podcast. I'm sorry you have to work nights right now, but at least you get to be on cool planes. I can't wait to marry you next May, you big goofball. Here's to a life of love and many cats. Hopefully cool and not entirely filled up planes. Although I'm wondering what a cool plane is. I think like cool ass like-

Like lights, like cool lights. Like it has cool lights on it. Maybe it's just like a biplane, like old ass vintage plane but it has flames on the sides of it maybe the seats feel cool when you sit in them and it has nos and you can turn on the nos and your like little wright brothers biplane like starts blasting there's one seat in the plane that controls the nos and if you get that seat you get to make you get to make that that would be fun they should really democratize the process of flying the airplane 14c 14c gets one 21b can like turn the lights on and off like that's funny

uh i think like 3a can like do the announcements like they have to you know what i mean yeah i like that let's just open it up it's like a co-op and give our flight attendants a break like just let them sit there and watch and just like shake their heads like no that's not that's not how to do it oh god I started listening to Ono Ross and Carrie shortly after I broke my arm and the doctor had told me I'd never walk again. I couldn't get my book started. I was lost, honestly. I knew it was time to make a change.

There's something about Oh No! Ross and Carrie that you just can't get anywhere else. They're thought leaders, discoverers, founders. I'd call them heroes. Ross and Carrie don't just report on French science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal. They take part themselves. They show up so you don't just report on French science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal. They take part themselves. They show up so you don't have to. But you might find that you want to. My arm is better.

I can walk again. I wrote an entire book this weekend. It's terrible, but I did it. Just go to MaximumFun.org. Thank you, Ross and Carrie. Ona Ross and Carrie is just a podcast. It doesn't do anything. It's just sound you listen to in your ears. All these people are made up.org. Thank you, Ross and Carrie. Ona Ross and Carrie is just a podcast. It doesn't do anything. It's just sound you listen to in your ears.

All these people are made up. Goodbye. Hey, can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. It's a band. A band that you and I have enjoyed for a while. And I don't know. I've kind of like fallen off

because they haven't released anything in a long time. And as is usually the case when I talk about a band or artist on this show, I've listening to them a lot uh since i decided to talk about them and holy shit i've been really enjoying my my dive back into their body of work it's tv on the radio oh uh i i'm all about like bringing artists and bands to this show that like don't sound like anything else like other other artists and there's something just like super like attractive to me about that that like makes me want to listen to that band uh especially when that like novel sound really rips ass uh like tv on the radio does uh tv on

the radio is a rock band that just draws on so many different like disparate sound inspirations um i have a list of cited like inspirations that they've talked about that i pulled off wikipedia uh bad brains earth wind and fire nancy sinatra uh serge gainsborg brian eno and the pixies it's like a peanut butter and pizza sandwich but like like it tastes incredibly, incredibly good. And it just like all comes together to create just a whole, just musical canon that is just kind of unforgettable.

It's also one of those bands whose body work like feels recent. But then when I was looking at the release dates of these albums that like I love, I was like, oops, I'm old uh specifically like dear science which was such like a an important album to me i love that album 12 years old i'm a ghost i'm a skeleton and a ghost uh also uh we got to see them for free at acl because acl hands out out free tickets to their tapings. And it was one of the best concerts I've ever been to in my entire life.

Yeah, it was very good. So TV on the Radio got started in New York City in 2001 with two members, Tunde Adebempe, who was the vocalist, and David Satek, who was like guitarist, keyboardist. And they've expanded to like be a four-piece group uh and they have released five studio albums the most recent of which uh is called seeds which is really good came out in 2014 so that was six years ago um they like uh you know went on sort of on again off again in the early years and made like a big deal of going on this like one year hiatus and now it's been like kind of six years and i think they've done a little bit of touring since then but uh

i very much miss them especially after listening to and falling back in love with them uh and if you don't know tv on the radio i would almost guarantee you have heard this first song i'm gonna play it is by far their like breakout hit uh called wolf like me called Wolf Like Me. Holy shit, what a bop wolf like me is uh it is like i get why it is just their their biggest hit because it just like goes so hard and i get so pumped when i listen to it that i want to just like kick kick a hole in the wall yes several holes it's one of those bands where you hear a song and you think i would love to see that live and it does not disappoint. It does not disappoint at all.

It's got this just constant kind of like ballroom blitz percussion energy to it that like just builds with these endless screeching guitar riffs. I am kind of wild about it. It's maybe not the best sort of expression of their range of their like different genres that they tackle and like the big sort of rich sound that i'll sort of demo here in a second

um i think that that sound that like strange novel sound uh is is at its best in dear science which was their 2008 album uh which is so critically acclaimed um i forgot just how sort of like widely beloved it was uh it was named best album of 2008 by rolling stone uh the guardian spin magazine the av club mtv entertainment weekly uh the pitchfork media's uh readers poll uh and and a couple others it was named second best album of 2008 by nme and the fourth uh best album of 2008 by NME and the fourth best album of 2008 by Planet Sound. Really a good album. If you've never listened to TV on the radio, just start listening to this one. There's like a bonus expanded edition with like 20 tracks of weird sounds at the end. You don't necessarily have to listen to those, but like I'd forgotten how good it is. Halfway

Home is the opening track, which like is probably my favorite song off it but what i really want to play is like the song that i feel like i am made happiest by by them and it's called golden age uh i'm gonna play it right now It's just so fucking like funky. Like it rules, like it rocks. And I love like a good brass section in the song. Yeah, me too. But that like, that funk energy is like so heavy here in a way that like i listen to this song and i have to listen to it like all over again uh i am like wild about golden age it's

such a good song um yeah it's it i feel like there are a lot of artists that i was getting into around this time this was when i was uh dear science was when i was a junior in college like i was just about to graduate and like i feel like i had a musical explosion as everyone does in college and there's a lot of that music that like i still really like and i will go back to from time to time i have albums from that era that like i really really love and like a lot of indie rock stuff that like i return to i feel like tv on the radio is the one that has aged the best because I genuinely think it's like some of the best music ever made. Yeah. And I'm sort of fired up right now because I know I'm going to be like hot on them again for a while.

Yeah. And that makes me, it's like when you like rediscover like an old TV show that you love and you're like, oh, I'm going to watch this whole thing. Like I'm at that level right now with TV on the radio. And they've also provided some of the best, i've seen them in festivals too a couple times like they're just so fucking good they're a really good ass band i don't really have much else to say there's this like metric right of like would i play it at a party yes would i play it while i was driving a car? Yes. Like, would I play it if I were going on a run? Yes.

Would I play it on a bus? Yes. Would I play it when I cuss? I forget how that book goes. I don't think it's on a bus when you cuss. No, but it should be. But it should be. There should be more profanity in Dr. Seuss books. You know?

Hey, what's your second thing? My second thing. Now, this is kind of like a fun journey that I went on. Do you want me to explain how I got to this thing? Always. I always want to hear about a good journey. So a lot of times I start with the Muppets, right? Like I start with the Muppets because I think there's a lot I like about the Muppets.

Maybe I should do another Muppet topic. So I started reading a little bit about labyrinth which is a superior muppet movie yes uh and it led me to something that i only found out about a few years ago uh in 2015 our friend steffi wrote an article about the unclaimed baggage center oh how did how on earth did you get there from Labyrinth? So the unclaimed baggage center is a result of the 0.5% of bags that are on planes and never find their way back to their owners. It's a very small percentage. Which is a bad thing.

It's not good when you lose luggage no the unclaimed baggage center which is located in scottsboro alabama uh makes it a big point on their website to say like after a three month search for the owner that is when an unclaimed bag is deemed truly orphaned at which point the center will orphaned orphaned is that Orphaned. Is that their word? That's their word. Like your Samsonite bag is fucking Batman? Yeah. Okay. This is serious business here.

I guess so. It ends up in the unclaimed baggage center, which now has relationships with all domestic airlines. And it is a 50,000 square foot facility. And they sell the items and they make the point to say that for every item that is sold, another item is donated. So it's not like they, I mean, it is a retail business. They are making a profit profit but for every item that is sold they donate an additional item to someone in need so they they make it a point to kind of 50 percent balance their profit with donations i guess the thing i'm struggling with is that it's not there

i feel like it's not their stuff true but the airline has taken every measure possible to reunite it with its owner, and it's only 0.5% that doesn't. 0.5% is quite a lot. I feel like 0.5%, you're saying if I ride on a plane and I check my bag, there's a 0.5% chance that my bag will be sold at auction if it doesn't get to me. I mean. That seems quite high that means if i fly 200 times one of those times my bags could end up in being ethered away well no i'm saying that after the bag goes missing there's a 99.5 chance that it will be reunited i got you now okay okay that's much that makes me feel much better i've probably flown close to 200 times so that was a scary statistic for me i know i understand uh so the reason that i got there via labyrinth is that uh one of the items that was found in an unclaimed bag

was a four foot tall hoggle from labyrinth what the why yeah who was flying with that like an authentic movie prop like a real ass hoggle it wound up at the unclaimed

baggage center in 1997 that must have been quite a scare so this is well after the movie was created so somebody must

have just been traveling doing a little hoggle just doing a hoggle smuggle can you imagine being working at that facility and being like let's open up the let's see what electric toothbrushes i have to and then there's a four foot hoggle just right it's big dead eyes

just kind of staring at you as you open up the bag can you explain what a hoggle is. I mean, it's a puppet goblin from Labyrinth. It's one of the main characters. It's in almost every scene with Jennifer Connelly. Yeah. And he kind of serves as her guide

through the labyrinth. Okay. That's still not something you want to open up and see inside of a bed. No, he's got a very scary face. Yeah, it's not great. Other things that have been found

are a human-sized paper mache Tinkerbell. Was it empty? Were you afraid there was a human in it? I don't know, man. I've seen House of Wax. I know how people do it sometimes.

They found a 43-carat raw emerald appraised at $32,000. This is ours now! and a live snake in a duffel bag that's that holy shit yeah i mean snakes can live a long time without eating i didn't think they could live that long but and also don't do that like clearly don't do that clearly don't fly like that yeah uh The emerald is sus to me because it's like, oh, this one got lost. Of all the ones, it could have been a bag that had like an electric toothbrush in it, but instead it's the fucking heart of the ocean. Oops.

Guess we lost it. Anyway, money please. The reason I like this, I mean, by nature, I feel like i'm kind of a snoop you know okay it's like the same reason people like going to you know yard sales or garage sales sometimes you just kind of want to see what people's stuff is yeah i mean it's why people watch storage wars right but like yeah exactly storage wars is a bummer in a way because it's like a lot of the times it's like oh those people couldn't afford to get their stuff back and so you just lose it this is maybe this is maybe one more degree removed from that where it's like it was a whoopsie and now yeah and like why was somebody traveling with

this emerald you know oh so you're gonna put it on them why was this person flying i'm more curious about more than the snake more than the emerald more than the hoggle the human-sized paper mache tinkerbell yeah what's a human-sized piece of luggage i also read that they had they found a pair of mcdonald's golden arches which i can't exactly figure out how do you pack that right it must have been shipped and then just it never made its way to the the franchise i don't know it's fascinating to me i get it like it's not good that they lose and resell these things but it is fascinating to have what is essentially a drain at the bottom of the entire sort of uh plane transit system that uh things run down into uh yeah um so here's here's the thing that kind of appealed

to me as a as a voyeur. Every day at 230, they pick a lucky guest to open a bag. What? So it says every day we invite one lucky visitor. This is off the website to sort the contents of a fresh bag. join us in the center of the store at 2 30 p.m and you may get the chance to experience the thrill of it for yourself but it's not always a hoggle huh no it's not always a hoggle probably a lot of times it's just like a pair of swim trunks that's a tower this okay i've actually turned against it now that's fucking weird that's fucking weird and. How is it different than going to like a resale store? Because a resale store, typically, it's not that somebody took a big bag of clothes to the resale store and then lost it there.

Yeah, that's fair. To have somebody sort of like, like, I get it, the curiosity of it, but like, got it just at the tail end baby snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because it got gross again um i i get that it's a little suspect right like this is obviously for a lot of people would not be like a pleasing adventurous you know discovery like me going to a TJ Maxx. Like part of the reason I like going to those stores where you kind of never know what the merchandise is going to be. And it's like cast off. Sure. It's like the thrill of finding something that you're not expecting to find. Yeah. So for me, that's the way I'm approaching this. But I see your perspective also that like this is this is something that was supposed to belong to

somebody and now they don't get to have it because it's being sold at this. The Tommy Hilfiger boxes that have colognes and wallets and belts all in one boxes that they sell at every TJ Maxx in the country. Tommy Hilfiger himself wasn't carrying a bunch of those boxes and then set them down somewhere and then turn to take a phone call and turn back and oops, I lost them. And then set them down somewhere and then turn to take a phone call and turn back and oops, I lost them. They were purchased, I imagine, at a discount price, maybe in bulk from Mr. Hilfiger himself. So the Unclaimed Baggage Center is a family business. It was started. What?

Yes, it was started by Doyle Owens in Alabama. He borrowed a pickup truck and $300 to drive up to Washington, D.C. and bought a load of unclaimed baggage from Trailways Bus Line, which he then sold on contents of card tables in an old rented house. This is how he started. And now three generations later, this is a 50,000 square foot retail store. This gets wilder and wilder. You just like piece by piece develop these relationships with airlines. Right, I guess I wasn't thinking of it

as a privately owned business. I was thinking of it as like a, I don't know. No, for whatever reason, like nobody had really thought of doing this until this guy was like, hey, you know what? I bet some of this stuff never makes its way back. What do they do with it? Yeah, I guess they can't just sit on it forever

and wait for people to come pick it up. That's still so wild. I know. I know. It's a complex, wonderful topic. I understand that. It's one of the first wonderful topics that is not strictly wonderful but it is incredibly

interesting it's i do remember our friend steffi writing about it yeah she actually went to write an article uh i would really recommend you check it out it's on vox uh it came out in 2015 um and it is called this is a Story About Loss. And I would really recommend y'all read it if you haven't. She is such a good writer. She's an incredible writer. And it is their 50th anniversary this year, the Unclaimed Baggage Center. I thought you were talking about Chris and Steffi.

No. Steffi is married to my Besties co-host and former Polygon writer, Chris Plant. And so I got my neurons. They haven't been together a long time. Not quite 50 years. No, it's the Unclaimed Baggage Center's 50th anniversary. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about? Yes.

Danica says the new Babysitter's Club show on Netflix is wonderful. I didn't grow up with the books, but the show is incredibly sweet and wholesome, very diverse with great topical messages and life lessons presented in a kid-friendly way. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried at at least one episode. You don't got to be ashamed of that ever. Let them rip. I have heard a lot of good things about this show. I also did not grow up with Babysitter's Club.

Was this for you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it really appealed to like the entrepreneurial spirit of young girls uh and every every character and it had like their own little backstory and you became really invested in in their their outcomes sounds good let's do it uh here's one from kennedy who says hello my wonderful thing is kolaches uh and also clobot klobosniks? I don't know.

I probably said that wrong. The meat-filled ones. So, apparently, kolaches are just the fruit-filled ones. As a Czech-American, as well as being from Austin, I often take the kolache for granted, but I love these fruity pastries. I love having a way to connect to my roots as well as have a tasty snack that is just about everywhere in my city or my kitchen. There is like a short list of things when I moved moved to austin that i had no familiarity with and kolaches is definitely on there they are everywhere i was not familiar before i moved here extremely good

we used to live around the corner from a kolache place yeah and that was a that was a very very nice thing to have accessible to us maybe i mean it's not the healthiest food so maybe we were no i mean it's one of those items that you purchase for yourself and then that's your day. That's your whole day. Hey, thank you so much for listening to our show. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use for our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. One last time, Max Fund Drive is running now. You can join at maximumfund.org join we know it's a weird time to be asking for money but if you can uh we really really appreciate your support um and as as with

the other shows on the network uh by by if you become a member yeah part of the reason that we've stuck with maximum fund for so long is that all of our content is artist owned and they offer that to everybody on the network and um it's a it's a great benefit it's a great network um we encourage people to support it because they let you pick the shows that you want to support yeah you know and all of these artists um really appreciate your support and also a lot of them live off of this support of course yeah so uh anything that you're able to to invest is appreciated yeah and you'll get cool stuff um so yeah that's gonna do it for us we will be back next week and the next episode y'all no spoilers but it's gonna be a real barn burner explosions suspense chases super romance romance uh battle for the

ages deceit villainy kissing See you soon. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it.