Wonderful! - Wonderful! 147: Chronohop to the Future

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Griffin's favorite night out activity! Rachel's favorite electronic pop! Griffin's favorite obscure Renaissance instrument! Rachel's favorite temporal anomaly!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/Donate to the Milwaukee Freedom Fund in support of the protesters in Kenosha: https://supportwomenshealth.salsalabs.org/mkefreedomfund/index.htmlSupport the California Wildfire Relief Fund: https://www.calfund.org/wildfire-relief-fund/Register to vote: https://vote.gov/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. You're inside now, and we're going to shut the doors. And lock them. Wait, why are we locking them? And then here's the key.

And I'm going to swallow it. This key is too big to swallow. So I'm just going to put it in my pocket. But don't try and go for it. You're in here now. I don't know that I like trapping people in our podcast. Well, here's the thing. It helps the numbers. don't try and go for it. You're in here now. I don't know that I like trapping people in our podcast. Well,

here's the thing is it helps the numbers. So user retention and minutes. Listen, these, these numbers are very, very important. How many minutes do we have to keep them here for it to count? Uh, it depends on the advertiser.

Um, like, you know how we have that big course, light. The advertiser coming up, they want them here for like 15 minutes at least. So please don't leave for the first 15 minutes

so Coors Light likes us. No, that's not. We don't have that Coors Light money. No, we do not. Yeah. Do you have any small wonders? I'm going to say

just plant nurseries. Okay. I decided I was going to invest in some herbs. No, I'm not. All right. And I had an instinct to go to like a big box hardware store. And then I thought, you know what?

I bet there is a local plant nursery. Turns out there was. It was like three minutes away. And I went there and it was just pleasant. It was just pleasant to be there. Look at the plants. I bet. I bet it's a nice place

to be right now. Most like, I've had to go to Lowe's a couple times to like get things for our house when it started to fall apart. And just being in like

the outdoor section, I mean, it's 155 degrees, which is not great, but just like it feels, it's a nice place to be in the choir. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and not every city has a botanical garden, but you know, most places have a plant a botanical garden but you know most places have a plant nursery i'm gonna say afrin uh i recently had a procedure to get my turbinates shrunk down because i couldn't my right nostril basically stopped working uh and since then the recovery has been surprisingly arduous and uh i've been very very stuffy and and hurting and that afrin is like the fucking limitless pill you take it and just instantly it opens things up and this is i know this is like the second or third time i've talked about some sort of sinus-based medication i know

for sure pseudofed was one of your wonders at one point pseudofed is the longer longer haul afrin which from what i understand afrin can also have a sort of addictive property to it so i got to be careful with that but it is uh it's literally dr jekyll mr hyde potion like i'm so stuffy and then i'll do a couple snoots and then i'm ready to go it's incredible it's incredible medicine that works and that's my that's my shit griffin takes it and then comes into the living room and ceremoniously lies down on the couch and just waits for it to kick in. It's crazy. Well, I do that so that it, you know, settles in there in my schnoz and really gets in there. But Afrin, man, I'm upset. I've only just discovered it thanks to this procedure and the number of like sinus issues

I've had in the past. It makes me very upset. 30 plus years without nasal spray. Wild. Okay. I go first this week. My first thing that i want to talk about is open mic night whoa i know right uh open mic night is something that i went to literally every

week in huntington i can't imagine this right like it feels like the most vulnerable thing to me and the fact that you did it repeatedly so it blows my mind i only did it a few times i'm i'm talking more of like as a patron uh of of open mic night i would perform a few times but we would go to open mic night on wednesday nights uh at the v club like every every week week in week out no matter what even if we were performing or not with our group of friends usually someone was performing but very rarely was i actually getting up there and taking my turn. I know that you get, it's not unusual for you to get uncomfortable watching somebody perform when they are nervous.

Well, here's the thing. Here's the double standard that I have for that. Okay. For me, that applies to comedy and it doesn't really apply to music. And I realized that that is like a snooty thing to say, but for whatever reason, like watching somebody bomb at comedy sort of makes my, makes my skin crawl. And I hope I can say that in like a nonjudgmental way. It's just the secondhand anxiety I get from that is very, very intensified.

I don't really get that with music as much because, well, I think music is a lot more subjective and I think it's, you know, easier to find something good in the music that people are performing, uh, than then then sort of bad comedy uh but also because like i don't do that kind of like music sort of professionally like i don't play live performance music professionally so like i don't have as much to draw on when i use my imagination to pretend it's like me up there bombing um so i i really really uh enjoyed open mic nights i have i haven't really gone to them since i moved away from from huntington quite as much there was a place in chicago i would go to occasionally um but uh it's such a great idea and the unpredictability of it i think for me is what

makes it so exciting like you really never know what you are going to see at any sort of given open mic performance. And yes, there are certainly lots of performances that are not great. But sometimes you'll see a performance that is great. And you get that like a really nice moment of sort of talking with your friends. And then just sort of the conversation stopping and being like, oh, shit. Like whoever's on stage right now is actually really, really good. It did. The few times that i did perform it is terrifying because you uh whenever i would you know bring my guitar up there and play like you know what that audience is like because you've

been in it so you like you know that it's not the most wrapped attention and so you're you're kind of fighting for their attention a little bit which which makes it satisfying when you get it, but all the more disheartening when you don't. And I find that very, very exciting. You know, I guess what it is, is I have only known you in a performance context where you are collaborating with your family. So the idea of you getting up on stage by yourself to do something, it blows my mind a little bit. with your family. Yes. So the idea of you getting up on stage by yourself to do something like blows my mind a little bit. Yeah, no, yeah, I've I have not had to do that more than a handful. I think my FSU speech is probably like the biggest thing I've done by myself. But yeah, it's I

definitely feel more comfortable with my with my family up there with me. There's there's when it's good, you get this feeling like you are catching the first glimpse of something. And I'm not saying like everybody turns out to be, you know, a big, big Nashville star or whatever following their their good open mic performance. But you get the feeling of like, oh, I am seeing I am hearing good music that like nobody else has really been exposed to before. And that is sort of like tantalizing. before and that is sort of like tantalizing but when it's bad when it's music and it's bad for me at least personally speaking i get a sense of like knowing that the person who's playing music on stage right now is nervous and is fighting those nerves and is like still sort of like doing their thing up there even though they're nervous i find that very like um you know i get secondhand

gratification off that like watching somebody face their fears like that. Maybe it's a double standard. I should feel that way about comedy, too. But it's, it's, I don't know why. anything by myself on stage. And for example, when I was in Chicago, you know, I was somebody who was really involved in poetry at the time and went to a lot of, you know, what could be called kind of a poetry open mic. Yeah. But could never imagine doing it myself. Yeah. As confident as I might have felt in my ability, like, oh, God. Yeah. I, I just just i also think like a good uh open mic venue has this like symbiotic relationship with the performers and the patrons where like if the open mic the v club was a very welcoming spot for for musicians to come and play so first of all like it would attract real weirdos who would get up there and do like some pretty,

let's call it experimental shit, which is super, like super fun. Like this is bad, but I've never heard it before. So holy shit. But it also attracted people who were very good and very talented. And because it was a positive experience because of the venue and the way

they sort of like enforced things and, and invited that talent, more talent would come. And so like when you went to the V club, you could count on it usually being a good, good time, like a good slate of performances because that's what they, that's what they attract.

That's a really, that's a really good point. Yeah. The environment makes a huge difference. Also because like, you know, you're going out with your friends and it's just, I feel like a neat activity to, because all those things you're feeling of the second hand like

anxiety and the like second hand pride of watching people like sharing that with with friends that you're like out on the town with is very exciting it's usually free to go to an open mic um i uh yeah i miss it i feel like i would enjoy i mean obviously it's much harder for us to i mean now in the quarantine i would not want to go out to an open mic because i don't know that those are even happening but you know with a with a kiddo it's all that more difficult for us to go out for a night on the town so i understand why we're not doing as much anymore but that's like that was my favorite way to like go go out i know i would very rarely go out with my friends just to get drunk or whatever usually it was to

go to the v club and launch open well and it's a community too right like i i was telling griffin one thing i really wanted to talk about this week but i couldn't quite wrap my head around it was that like creative community sure like like being being in a room or a space with other people who have a similar interest and are trying to create things yeah you know and i didn't really know how to talk about that but i feel like that's kind of what you kind of what this is describing because you get you get it's satisfying to be there and like that's its own sort of reward but you do like i did see some performers who went on to like start being like i watched tyler childers play there a few times,

and now he's a big, big country star. Everything about it, I think, is cool. It is just a sort of cool premise for a thing that a venue can do. I've also been to bad open mic venues, where the venue is just like the back room of some restaurant where people are talking as loud as humanly possible and you can't really hear yourself play guitar and everyone just ignores you uh but like eventually those would die out because nobody would want to fucking play there um yeah hey what's your first thing uh my first thing is a electronic pop duo

called sylvan eso okay is this the is this the the the music video that you sent to me okay yeah this is fucking good yeah this is good this is good stuff you know me i'm not always a huge fan of of electronic music true uh there are very kind of specific bands that i will like that fall in that category and this is this is one of them i feel like you like an electronic pop i feel like you like uh you like a robin that category. And this is one of them. I feel like you like an electronic pop. I feel like you like a Robin. You like, yeah. This group actually reminded me a little bit of Dirty Projectors.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Do you recognize the name Sylvan Esso? I do not at all, even a little bit. Apparently they derive their name from an iOS video game called Super Brothers Sword and Sorcery. Oh, okay. Yeah, that game fucking slaps. video game called super brothers sword and so oh okay yeah that game ripped that game fucking slaps that game is super super i've played that game i just didn't

recognize did not recognize the name so sometimes when i like throw a video game reference at you i feel like i'm like talking to somebody's nephew and i'm like you like video games right well this was super brothers sword and sorcery it was like an ios like it was back when the app store was like 50 apps that you could download like this was one of them and it was just rad like it's a super hip like music based adventure game uh and so it was like i don't know it was one of the first like cool ios games i feel like yeah so this group released their first album in 2014 okay so that that may be why it it timed out that way that that's their name um they met uh the two members amelia meath was in a three-woman folk group called mountain man uh and they shared a bill at a club in milwaukee with nick san, who is the other member of the group.

Amelia and Nick are actually now married. They formed their band and then in 2016 got married. I love that. They're on that pomplamoose tip. They are now located in Durham, North Carolina. So they have had two albums. The first one, Sylvan Esso, was the name of the first album in 2014. The second was What Now in 2017. And then their album Free Love is set to come out September 25th.

Okay. And I discovered them. You know what's interesting? So I actually, one of their songs I did know on their first album was called Coffee coffee and they did an episode of song exploder oh cool god that show's so fucking good god song is good uh i don't think i have actually listened to that episode but i have heard that song um they did chart their debut single hey mommy uh came out you know in 2014 and reached number 39 on the billboard chart it's higher than we've gotten it's true where are we where did we get where did we end up 40 40 oh 40 with uh and what was gosh hey daddy hey remember it was and it would be like hey daddy that tie's too

big for you you know rachel and i watched a clip of some old whose line is it anyway and fellow folks wearing their fucking ties in the in the mid to late 90s why were those shits so large very large i mean everything was large right like the suits were big the ties were big the pants were big so big these ties wow all of them all of them drew ryan fucking greg all these ties very big ties i could wear them as a tank top now these ties i like that we're not going to really discuss how we ended up watching whose line is in any way as if this is a thing that all the no we don't do this all the cool kids do we don't do this often i think youtube recommended it or something like that or maybe well no we i think what it is is we get to a point in the night where it's late that

we're not going to watch an entire show oh yeah we usually want to watch something kind of light to close out our evening yeah and i think you just kind of suggested it and there i had a hankering for colin mockery is what it was and yeah we had like 20 minutes to kill a plus talent yeah and a lot of uh say a lot of jokes that didn't age well no you would think uh we're not from the 1990s but rather the fucking 1940s sorry uh so i i mentioned earlier that i am not always a fan of electronic music and a lot of that is because you know i want i want a melody i want a hook you know i want i want something i can like hang on to maybe that's just my interest in poetry like i'm looking for some lyrics yeah but i don't know that electronic music precludes those elements from happening like i i think a specific type of electronic music maybe

doesn't focus on it but i think especially poppier stuff almost universally does have it well i feel so i feel like nick sanborn uh the member the the duo that is really responsible for the electronic component, said it really well in an interview I read. He said, quote, my favorite electronic music is music that really sounds like humans make it. You want those choices to be emotionally intentional. Hopefully every sound you pick, the way every word you would pick is there for a reason. Sure. hopefully every sound you pick the way every word you would pick is there for a reason sure which you know may may sound um i don't know for for real fans of that genre of music they

could probably make the argument that most electronic music does that but for me as an outsider i found that really resonant just like music that is is intentionally aligned with the lyrics in a way that it is producing kind of the emotional reaction that the lyrics are sylvan so they just released a like a live concert film documentary uh that came out in april um and the the lead singer uh amelia is is just kind of a an incredible dancer and performer it made me really sad to think like i've discovered this new band and i don't know when i'm gonna get to see them live again, especially the concert film made it pretty incredible. They were traveling with like a 10 piece band, which is like an electronic duo was pretty unique.

So it's cool to watch. But the song I wanted to play just came out in this in this quarantine time of August 2020. And it is Rooftop Dancing. So good. I would encourage everybody to check out the video for this song. The group lives in North Carolina, but they have roots in New York. And the video is just kind of New York in this time right now where there is still activity. There is still a lot of vibrancy, but it is a lot in isolation.

And the video, I think, really captures that. It feels like a very hopeful video. It's kind of communicating. There is still this spirit there even if the city looks very different. And it's just a really great song. Yeah. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

I've been bumping it. Oh, good. As the teens say. Can I steal you away? Yes. We got a couple jumbo goms here. Can I read the first one? Yes.

This one is for Future Alex from from past alex who says hello future alex this is past alex oh boy these last six months am i right i feel like this message could have worked at any point any time anyway uh despite everything going on i'm proud of everything that you're doing uh i will always love our long walks together laughing out loud to manga and petting every dog that we can i'm your biggest supporter and i can't wait to see what we do your best friend alex this is very powerful alex it's strong and beautiful and clean there was a time during that message where i forgot it was a person writing a message to themselves yes and then i was like what a great friend.

Oh, wait, no. Yeah, it's very much on that Lizzo tip. What's that song where she talks about marrying her own soulmate? God, that song rips. You want to read this other one? I do. This message is for Will. It is from Desi.

Will, I love waking up with you every morning and falling asleep with you every night you're the best person i could have possibly met my dear my doll love you lots and lots and polka dots you're desi so good what a good lots and lots and polka dots a succinct little little package there but every every moment of it was a delight to the senses five stars five stars a plus gold sticker that has uh that has what who's bart simpson on it he's giving big thumbs up on his skateboard sun with a smiley face in it yeah and it says a cool job no way it's an ice cube or snowman it It says you cool. Perfect. You did cool. You did cool. Now we're here.

Schmanners. Noun. Definition. Rules of etiquette designed not to judge others, but rather to guide ourselves through everyday social situations. Hello, Internet. I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy.

Every week on Schmanners, we take a look at a topic that has to do with society or manners. We talk about the history of it. We take a look at how it applies to everyday life. And we take some of your questions. And sometimes we do a biography about a really cool person that had an impact on how we view etiquette. So join us every Friday and listen to Schmanners on MaximumFun.org or wherever podcasts are found. Manners Schmanners. Get it?

Can I hear your second thing? You know I teased it. You knew it was coming. I did. Everybody knew it was coming. The press, the podcast press has been buzzing about it because I dropped some hints last episode. Some people are about to win some money when they bet on the next episode topics.

The hurdy-gurdy. Did you listen to the thing I sent you? I did. It was cool to see because I legit don't think I've heard of the hurdy-gurdy. I did not know what it looks like. Yeah, it's a weird box type. Okay, let's start at the very beginning. The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument that could be best described as a sort

of crank-based violin accordion. You crank with one hand a hand crank, and with the other hand, you manipulate buttons to change the tone of different strings that are played by a rosined wheel. So imagine instead of the bow, which you would play with a typical stringed instrument like a violin or a cello that produces sound as you rub it across the strings, the wheel is sort of the same idea, but it just doesn't stop. You can produce long uninterrupted notes because you're cranking this wheel and it's rotating against the strings and creating sound. And these buttons can change the sound, right? But there are also buttons that you can set

so that they are pressed up against the string that you are not changing. So those produce a constant sort of drone. They're called drone strings. And they produce one tone that you can then play a melody over with the buttons. And that's a hurdy-gurdy. Because of those drone notes,

it has the sort of sound impression of like a bagpipe which also does uh drone notes but uh to give you an idea of what the hurdy-gurdy is i want to play a song uh or a clip from a song sorry every time i wrote hurdy-gurdy my the app i used to take notes translated it to curdy curdy like who is top first of all whoever oh this milk is quite curdy like nobody says that and nobody would say it twice in a row anyway uh there's a there's a song on youtube it has like four million views uh because it's one of those youtube recommends sort of, uh, quicksand pits that people just kind of fall into. Uh, it is by a, uh, performer named Andre Vinogradov.

Uh, and the song is called Equilibrium Medieval Tune. Uh, and it has an organ, it's cheating, but there's an organ layered on top of it, but it'll give you a sound, uh, an idea of what the sound of a hurdy-gurdy is like. how do you know this instrument uh so my uh the first time i think i ever heard the words hurdy-gurdy and saw what it was was when i was playing sea of thieves uh which is that pirate game that i infamously ate a banana while covering for polygon um yes yes uh because when you're playing that game you can sort of play sea shanties with the other members of your crew and there's like an accordion and something else but one of the instruments is a hurdy-gurdy i was like what the fuck is that thing uh and so i looked it up and it is a sort of semi-traditional sort of folk instrument used in a lot of folk music.

It has sort of an interesting origin. It is used interchangeably with the bagpipe in a lot of different places because it has the drone notes that give it a sort of similar sound. So you can sort of compose around it the same way. give it a sort of similar sound so you can sort of compose around it the same way. So there's lots of different types of folk music that use the hurdy-gurdy, like the Catalan folk music, Cajun French, Hungarian, and Slavic folk arrangements all typically can include the hurdy-gurdy. It has its origins from the fiddle, which makes sense. But when it was first developed, it was called the organistrum, and it had two drone notes and one melody string. when it was first developed uh it was called the organistrum and it had two drone notes and one melody string but it was so fucking big that two people had to play it

one person would crank the crank and the other person would play the notes to change the melody string i look at this instrument and i just can't imagine how it happened it seems like somebody was trying to make something else yeah they were They were trying to like make a, like a coffee press or something like that. Like a big music box. And they were like, oh, what if you could play this like an instrument?

It's really interesting because like nobody knows anything about the hurdy-gurdy. Like I, I feel like I, I mean, obviously there are, there's a type of person that knows a lot about the hurdy-gurdy and that person has been to more than one Renaissance fair. And that's not a judgment. i fucking love a ren fair but that's what it is a fact it is a fact

um but like i would say commonly it is not one of the instrument types that you ever even hear about let alone learn about in school which is interesting because like it was pretty like feverishly uh iterated on when it first came out you had the organist room which was very very large and like you would see two beefy monks like playing it in a church right um and then people would would keep making smaller and smaller hurdy-gurdies with more uh sounds uh by the renaissance it was like popular like as popular as other instruments and people played it very very uh commonly um the reason why the hurdy-gurdy sort of fell out of of uh fashion was because by the end of the renaissance the way that composers were making music people uh were drawn to a more sort of polyphonic sound or a more sort of uh

frenetic arrangement that because of the the set drone strings that you cannot change the sound of in the middle of a performance on the hurdy-gurdy it just became sort of impossible to to play those songs like the the hurdy-gurdy i think sounds really radical but it's gonna have like those tones playing constantly that you are changing. So like a certain sort of, you know, you can't do like a Coltrane, like jazz chord progression on a hurdy-gurdy because of those drone strings. So like, because of that, people stopped playing the hurdy-gurdy. And that was it. I found that really interesting.

Like the type of music we like made the hurdy-gurdy fall out of fashion just because like you couldn't play that music. Yeah, but like, that's the whole thing with rock and roll right like like all of a sudden i don't know like big classical arrangements yeah sure i mean music musical taste changes and then the instruments sort of follow suit but like i cannot think of another instrument that so completely fell off the face of the earth like the hurdy-gurdy the the next time we heard about the song or the instrument was from donovan who in 1968 did write hurdy-gurdy man hurdy-gurdy man does not feature a hurdy-gurdy in it thanks donovan you had a real opportunity there i think uh do a signal boost but it did

sort of force people to like what the fuck is donovan talking about yeah and then the hurdy-gurdy sort of had a slight a slight uptick uh i mean it is prohibitively expensive i looked into hurdy-gurdy sort of had a slight a slight uptick uh i mean it is prohibitively expensive i looked into hurdy-gurdy i thought you might have you know i looked into her you know i love a specialty instrument that i will play for like one adventure zone song and then put in the closet never play again uh the hurdy-gurdy is like you know it's a complex instrument it has the wheel and it has these strings and it has uh would you even like the maintenance like who this is like you have to take them to like a hurdy-gurdy specialist i think fiddler's green here in town like has one that you can like play there and they can like i think fix it for you i was looking on their website but they i don't think they have

any for sale um but you know there's a handful of hurdy-gurdy players on youtube who have like hurdy-gurdy channels and you go and watch them but it's so niche because of uh the the price of entry and because like just nobody really knows about the hurdy-gurdy but i think it is uh i think it's i just think it's amazing glad you did this after your bell tower week we're like we're like on a month of i could do a whole month of obscure instruments uh the uh the name hurdy-gurdy uh is thought to be on a monopoetic just because of back in the day the sound that it would make as you had to crank it. Although hurdy-gurdy or hurly-burly are also old English terms for like commotion.

So yeah, I was gonna say, I always thought it was a dance. Yeah, I wouldn't, I don't know what I thought it was before I knew it was an instrument, but I think it's great. And also the comments I found on the YouTube video that I played the song from earlier are just some all-time greats because again, it is everybody coming there

from YouTube recommends. And it's like a sad medieval tune and so i want to read some of the comments because they made me laugh so fucking hard uh when thy surf chooseth not to fertilize thy field but to forsake thou and fertilize thy wife when thine liege lord takes 50 of thine crop yield instead of just 40 it's like if a violin and a bagpipe had a daughter but she was saddened by something uh and then so the youtube recommended has brought us all together again good to see you all sweet i love it man all there's there's a genre of like old obscure stringed instruments played by sort of weathered looking people that have the funniest fucking youtube comments i have ever i've ever seen i saw one of uh like a three stringed

like very dark sounding gothic sounding lute uh and one of the comments was like other musicians uh i have to check my i have to check my tunes this guy i have to check my runes to check my i have to check my tunes this guy i have to check my runes anyway so are you gonna make some memes maybe it seems like maybe you're gonna make some memes i have no interest in creating any more memes the banana one was enough for me you've retired i've retired i'm getting out on top fucking i'm very uncomfortable with the energy I've created in the studio today. Is it big? Big. Wow. I was not aware of this until yesterday when I saw that it was on Twitter, and people are

saying it on Twitter, referencing the TikTok meme, referencing the indiscutable clip from the My Brother, My Brother, Me television show. You're going to be on a reply all yes, yes, no, I bet. I bet that's the next step i don't know if it's that big it's weird to me though why that why that i mean it's it's a good thing yeah it's good i'm not i'm not complaining you're a funny guy everybody loves what's your second thing uh my second thing is time travel oh yeah baby are you kidding me i'm gonna make travis mcroy listen to just this segment of wonderful sweet travis gets irrationally fucking angry about time travel

things oh my god oh it delights me ask hey everyone ask travis his thoughts about looper forgot about and then strap in for the ride of your life. I mean, I have never been one of those people, let's just say, to really deeply examine a piece of culture in the way that Travis does. That's why I love you so, so, so much. Which is probably why I like time travel so much. I don't care about the science. No.

Don't waste your time. Don't. don't waste your time don't don't waste my time i mean i enjoy it all right when you're watching quantum leap for example and he takes that string and creates a loop and then balls up the string to explain how one person's life could touch multiple points you love it i love it i do i love that but am going to sit there and try and figure out whether or not that makes sense? No, not. No, thanks. I don't, you know, I'm here to say I haven't figured it out. She's been trying, folks. She's been trying. We have a closet that is just full of like there's a colander wrapped in tinfoil with

some batteries taped to it. And you said that that was your time your time cap and when you put that on you could um you said chrono jump was the term that you used but really you just started like sort of bunny hopping i've tried different speeds in my car with different songs playing yeah you did 88 you did you did 33 you did um you did negative five you thought you went back, but then you cried. You've destroyed a lot of homes and houses. I was sitting down to think like really like, okay, obviously I've talked about Quantum Leap, I love Quantum Leap. What other kind of time travel pieces of fiction and film are big for me?

travel pieces of fiction and film sure big for me um there is a book i read written in 1970 and my parents had it and i must have i don't want to say middle school middle school feels right called time and again and it was about time travel but it was it was in that very like for the purposes of connection and romance kind of book oh a real lake the lake house situation that's another one i really liked the lake house i'm not gonna i saw it in theaters uh another book i read came out in 2004 time traveler's wife oh yeah it's made into a movie uh that is actually written by um faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

You know, I briefly considered getting an MFA and actually got into the MFA program there and then didn't go. And I kind of regret it only because she taught there and it would have been cool to have her as a teacher. Back to the Future. Got to. Got to. What's your favorite of the three?

I think the first one yeah yeah i mean the third one i think is underrated uh i definitely would not say the second one really yeah second one is just recycling a lot of the first one i don't know the second one's my favorite really yeah i just like all the future future stuff the the the hoverboard future scenes both the the race uh through town and the like car chase later on like those were my absolute shit when i was a kid my absolute shit um bill and ted okay you know what do you think of the new one can i get your thoughts on the new one coming out i mean i don't know anything about it. You watched the trailer?

No. Oh, okay. There's a trailer. You should watch it. I've also, I'm not, I don't know much about Tenet, but I heard that Tenet has a time travel element. It's, yeah. I mean, it's got like a Christopher Nolan time travel element, which is like nobody

really understands what's going on. Like time can go backwards for some people. I don't know. It looks wild um some of the original kind of time travel phenomenons i mean everything that i read said hul is the time machine got to but they also 1843 even before that charles dickens a christmas carol um you know yeah he's traveling to different times yeah absolutely yeah for sure that is time travel yeah the time machine is pretty explicitly about time travel though yeah that was more about a spiritual journey into one's memories was it time travel or did he experience if you experience it

in a dream is it really time travel i don't think he could do so he couldn't interact with his past right so it's like he couldn't change their time that's fair that's interesting there is a lot written about time travel yeah i know a lot of different like theories and ways of describing it a lot of like speculation on whether or not it will ever be possible did your did your research into this uh fictional subject uh bring up primer no oh okay primer is a movie uh that it's like an indie movie that was like critically acclaimed because of its like hyper realistic approach to time travel oh where it's like a box that you get inside and then you have to sit in it for like eight hours and then when you get out it's before you got in the box and so you can

sort of like manipulate the the things that happen and then when you climb out, it's before you got in the box. And so you can sort of like manipulate the things that happen. And then when you climb in the box, that version of yourself just like now no longer exists because it is a hyper convoluted, but like almost ironclad. Like it's somebody made, it's like somebody made a movie listening to people's complaints about like causality and like why time travel movies can't happen like all right motherfuckers like i'll make an extremely dry indie sci-fi movie so it's like almost un it's unpalatable but it's also super fucking fascinating yeah i so when i when i read about time travel um what i read was also pretty dry and it and it was like scientific american talking about

time dilation that you get from like approaching the speed of light oh yeah i guess interstellar had that explicitly so so for example um the the thing in scientific american that i read talks about you know if you left earth in a spaceship continuously moving at 1G, you would begin to approach the speed of light. And as the ship continued to accelerate, it would come closer to the speed of light. And under that circumstance, a round trip to the center of our galaxy and back, a distance of some 60,000 light years could be completed only in a little more than 40 years upon arriving back on earth the astronaut would only be 40 years older while 60 000 years would have passed on earth um hurts your hurts the old noodle to think about kind of hard to really get the the brain around

a lot of them just talk about this idea of you know you are always moving at the speed of one second per second but when you are you know flying or traveling it you can kind of futz with that a little bit of time on the clock but it's not like going back to make sure that your parents fall in love which is what i'm interested in yeah sure absolutely uh read a little bit about wormholes again don't understand it yeah yeah once you get into string theory and shit i'm like nope bye uh chaos theory i do enjoy okay um you know that idea that like a small change could impact things um i definitely my in ninth grade our math class asked us to pick some kind of theory and do a report on it so i picked chaos theory and then showed that clip from jurassic park i was gonna say did not do well did not do well on that report shame um even with all the

erotic tension between jeff goldblum and uh you think that would have gotten me a few extra points yeah laura dern oh my god i can't believe i forgot laura dern's name for like 10 seconds shame on me shame great shame to my house put that poster back up on your wall of laura duran so you remember her forever well you made me take it down yeah you said her shorts were too short i said those are her jurassic park shorts what's wrong with you those are the shorts um yeah so i you know i don't i don't have a lot to contribute to the science of this um i i have not made advances in my own research in this direction. I don't know that I believe it will be possible in the way that I want it to be possible.

I also don't know that I would really change anything necessarily. No. Like I still want to end up where I am now. Maybe I would like to like have not eaten that meat that made me so sick at that barbecue, you know, but I don't know that I would. I don't know, man. The butterfly effect opens up some like trolley problem writ large.

Whereas like every bad thing that happens after that, is it your fault because you didn't eat that meat at the barbecue? I don't know that I would ever be able to rest. I also don't know if there's a particular time period. Like I don't have it in my head, for example, like, oh man, I'd love to go back, see some dinosaurs.

Like, I don't know. No way. Are you kidding me? Scary and big liz lizards i think i'm okay over here there's a particular time period i'd really want to be at no um but man i love i love it in a movie love it in the tv show never saw early edition kind of like not really time travel not really time travel but i like the idea of trying to put right what once went wrong i remember the one that really blew me away was prisoner of azkaban the third harry potter uh book slash movie that came up when i was looking for like examples in film and it just had it has a twist time travel ending that is like so satisfying and like really puts the rest of the book in perspective and the rest

of the movie in perspective i remember being wowed and delighted by that as a child um yeah do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about yes well we got one here from lauren who says when you're taking a walk around the neighborhood pass an open garage and the floral cottony smell of detergent wafts from their running washing machine and out through the garage oh my god laundry smells so much better when you're not doing it that is 100 true that's very true it's very good i used to man god i love that smell as a kid seeing like the steam come out of like somebody's uh like basement exhaust pipe yeah in the dead of winter and getting really close to it and smelling it and then probably giving myself

some sort of chronic condition because of just how much i was huffing washing machine exhaust fumes uh tia says something i find wonderful is painter's tape peeling it off the wall to reveal a crisp clean line of paint is so satisfying and just might be the best part of painting not just that but when you can get when we painted henry's nursery in our old house oh i managed to like peel off an entire wall up over a door like in one single pull even though it was multiple pieces of tape holy shit that's satisfying wow that's i've been watching a lot of those videos on facebook where people make art by putting tape down and painting around it and the lifting that's a nice video

those are really popping off like you make the moon by putting a circle of tape on a thing and painting around it yeah why are we why are we seeing is that viral the idea of painting around tape i don't know i didn't know something that abstract could anyway uh thank you so much for listening to uh our little program and thank you to bowen and augustus for the use of our theme song money won't pay you find a link to that in the episode description thank you maximum fun for hosting our show and all the great shows that you can find on maximum fun.org. Yes, there's there's a lot for you to dig into. I know this show is an upbeat show, but there's some horrible stuff happening right now that everyone should be paying attention to and trying to find ways to help if they can that it is, you know, not good to shut that stuff out

completely. Specifically specifically the police shooting of jacob blake in kenosha uh which is uh infuriating and just the latest in a string of police violence there are ways that you can support uh protesters on the ground like the milwaukee freedom fund uh or supporting black lives matter uh and to not you know completely turn away from that, because it is as important as ever to find out what you can do to help. Also, the California wildfires, there's no shortage of ways that you can help out with that. We'll have a link in the episode description of different sort of mutual funds and other ways to give to communities in

that area to support them. but um yeah we would encourage you to help because uh it's it is the right thing to do i think that's about it yep and um i sound really gruff don't i sound like a real billy goat over here don't i what do you want me to say in like my cool voice my cool my cool uh shrunken nose meat voice we are having a sale right now on rice krispies the rice krispies have been the prices have been slashed on these crispy little guys 4.99 how much is is a Rice Krispie cough? Probably not $5 a puff. What? MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture.

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