Wonderful! - Wonderful! 149: Grandpa Discus

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Griffin's favorite throwable object! Rachel's favorite tropical fruit! Griffin's favorite nu-disco duo! Rachel's favorite impersonations!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. Let the rain fall down. Watch my face. I've done this before. Have you? I think I've done this exact thing before.

We're getting some April showers right now here in September. Here's the problem is that I think I always talk about the weather on this show whenever it rains. And maybe that's just because it doesn't rain that much here in the wastelands of Texas. But I feel like that's pretty basic, huh? Like who does that? We know our listeners better than that. We don't have to make small talk. Okay, let's try it.

Then let's do it again. Oh, boy, it sure is hot today. Damn it. It's like I'm talking to them like they're complete strangers and we're talking at like a business conference. You could ask them about their Labor Day activities. Tell us your Labor Day activities. I hope non-eventful.

Because the alternative would be somewhat irresponsible. But this is wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things that are good, things that we like, things that we are into. And man, usually I have one

like in my holster ready to pull out and just fire away. You could talk about your new um culinary uh invention the adventure i went on last night putting peanut butter on everything yeah i've been putting peanut butter on everything we did rachel got hand apple hand pies and put a little bit of ice cream on out the only ice cream i had was chocolate ice cream which is

not typically the flavor you blend with the apple pie experience so i was like as long as we're doing this put some fucking peanut butter on there i introduced griffin to putting a spoonful of peanut butter on ice cream yeah now it's that's all i think about what he has to do day in day out again i feel like talking about putting peanut butter on things is up there with saying it sure is raining inside i promise we're gonna get into some pretty heady shit here in just a second are we some heady controversial materials. Do you have a small wonder? Have I talked about putting ice in water?

Yikes. Is this really where we were at? Come on. Give me that hard shit. Give me that confrontational, like say something that you wouldn't, people would be like, wait. Oh, that Rachel Brand that you're used to? Yeah. Of just getting in there.

Something really get real and get like visceral. What won't you say yeah yeah um i'm not wearing my wedding ring right now what the fuck i get in these hot days i get a little rashy under the ring and sometimes i have to take it off oh man put some vaseline on there just so the rash gets better but that the the curse imbued in that ring i guess my small wonder would be to put a lip balm on your finger wow the curse that is put on wedding rings by the officiant at the ceremony is the only thing that keeps you honest and this is i'm not just saying just for rachel this is the thing if you've not been married this is your thing that your married friends won't tell you

is that the officiant puts a curse on the rings. And that's what keeps the wedding so tight. You know what I mean? It's what keeps the marriage going. A lot of people don't know that. Yeah, no, I didn't. Yeah. I guess I should put it back on.

You should, or else you're gonna start aging rapidly at the end of the last crusade. I think I go first this week. Okay. Both of mine are fairly uh lightweight i feel like i've had i've had some uh lightweight ones and what could be more lightweight than the uh delicate lovely arc of a frisbee flying through the air oh a frisbee is a miracle i love a frisbee this may come as a surprise that i'm choosing this topic to my to my wife it may be a surprise that I'm choosing this topic to my wife, it may be a surprise because I

am not one to actively seek out Frisbee throwing opportunities. That's true. We know some people who really like to, quote, sling the bee around. Yeah. That is not us as frequently. I think I appreciate the Frisbee aesthetically, and I appreciate getting a good Frisbee throw out there, but I am not one to plan a day around rocking that scuba. I've never played ultimate frisbee

because it seems like- Oh, you've never played? Maybe once or twice, but like it is never, it's not my jam. It's not my speed. It's a lot of running. They don't tell you that about ultimate or freestyle.

That is, it's just mostly, you're just running around a lot. Disc golf, I do appreciate a lot i really like uh throwing a frisbee and trying to do it hard and accurately it's like my favorite thing when have you disc golfed i've done it here in austin a few times oh yeah austin has quite a few uh disc golfing uh spots for you to do it um but i think i just appreciate the frisbee sort of conceptually like if you're going to an outdoor place you can just grab a frisbee sort of conceptually. Like if you were going to an outdoor place, you can just grab a frisbee. Like there was a time where I just had a frisbee in my car so that if I went to the park with my friends or whatever, we would just, as long as I knew I had

a frisbee on hand, I knew that we had some sort of outdoor activity to take part in. And that's very reassuring and very satisfying to me. It took me a very long time to learn how to throw frisbee it's all about the release time man so many people so many people don't release at the right time no uh and it also is the type of thing where like if i go a few months without throwing a frisbee next time i throw a frisbee it's gonna take me like a half hour to really dial in exactly how to throw a frisbee again it's awkward to figure out where to put your hand you know yeah like what your technique's gonna be. When I was a kid,

we grew up a few blocks away from Ritter Park, which is Huntington's big, nice park. And we would take the frisbee there and just throw that thing around for a very, very long time because in the summer, there was not a whole lot else to do when you were nine years old.

Did you guys do some cool catches? I could do a few cool catches. i could never do a cool throw um like the people who can sort of do it backhand or like sort of you know they like snap their fingers yeah or they jump in the air and they do like three somersaults and they like run up the side of a tree a few steps and then like flip off a bird's nest which to be clear you can do i can do that but then i can't throw a frisbee at the end of that um i i always really had a lot of fun just throwing frisbee it made me realize that like the game of catch is a good game it's true you don't think about that you think about catch as being a sort of um very very basic activity that you do with a with ball and you throw ball and catch ball

but it's a lot of fun when you do it from very far away with an uh an object that hovers as if by magic uh the physics of frisbee is basically the same physics as an airplane in which lift uh keeps this bad boy off the ground there's higher pressure underneath it than there is above it and so it goes up or rather stays on the level if it goes up then it comes right back down oh that's right oh i love frisbee but when you throw frisbee and it goes straight up and then it comes right back down at you oh you stinker you can be kind of a rascal frisbee can can he uh frisbee is of course a registered trademark it's like kleenex frisbee is, it's used colloquially, but it is the name of a product. And the history of the Frisbee

has some fun facts in there that I was not aware of. So, I mean, people have been throwing discs for a very long time, both from an Olympian aspect and as a just sort of recreational aspect but as a toy the frisbee came about when walter frederick morrison and his wife lucille uh were tossing around a cake pan on a beach uh in 19 i didn't write down the exact year it was like the early early 20th century i love that idea of this couple being like is this something yeah is this anything should we should

we tell people about this? It was the 1930s when they were doing this. I know now because then World War II happened and Walter was in World War II and was a prisoner of war. But when he got back, he had Frisbees on the brain. He was like, I got to do this thing. like a better design a more sort of uh aerodynamic design for for this disc and uh started selling them at fairs uh where they started to take off and throughout its history the frisbee had a lot of different extremely fun names uh the first was the whirl away which i guess was named after a very famous racehorse uh back in the 1950s uh in 1955 uh they were called flying saucers because ufos started

to be like a thing that was on the the mind of uh every god-fearing american uh and then the name that he landed on that was going to be really really just like what took off was the pluto platter rolls right off the tongue, the Pluto platter. It would have like little planetary designs all over it. It was very, very cute. But then he sold the rights to Wham-O in 1957. And Wham-O was like, Pluto platter is nothing. The name Frisbee, Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee like right away because college students, unsurprisingly,

were the target demographic for the pluto platter and it started to really uh find purchase in their uh crunchy soil and the pluto platter uh they the college students just called it the frisbee because they resembled pie platters from a pie manufacturer in connecticut that like sold lot. Apparently it was like a thing at Yale was pies from the Frisbee Pie Company. Oh, so we're back to the pie. So we went right back to pie. It brought us right back home.

And it was a big thing for college students, but the real reason that the Frisbee became a big deal is because of how it was sort of positioned as an athletic sort of uh device uh and a lot of that positioning came from the general manager of whammo uh whose name was ed hedrick and ed hedrick wanted to popularize the frisbee as like sports equipment and so he participated in like developing standards for golf, for Frisbee sports. So like freestyle, like he created the organization that like was the sports organization for freestyle Frisbee and also developed like the rules for disc golf. So like he is the reason that he took off. He was this hugely influential figure for disc-based sports.

And then he died in 2002. And after he died, his request was to be cremated and his ashes turned into discs that would be distributed amongst his family or auctioned off for charity amongst disc golf enthusiasts. That's incredible. That's so amazing. That's so good. Who does that? That's such a rad, powerful thing. Yeah.

I love that. I love that. Except for like, you know, you're his grandson or whatever. And you're just tossing around your grandpa disc on the beach. And then a crosswind catches it and takes it out to sea. And you're like, oh man. Well, that's what he would have wanted. That's what he wanted.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, to frisbee, back to the ocean. Grandpa's stuck in a tree. Bye, grandpa. I love you, grandpa. Anyway, that's a frisbee. I like a frisbee. I feel like I would love to throw a frisbee. I mean, I would love to do anything outdoors

with a friend right now. And I feel like a frisbee would be a lot of fun. Not in this rain though. Cats and dogs out there, right? Speaking of which, you didn't even talk about dogs catching frisbees. And I feel like that's a big benefit. Dogs catching frisbees is very, very good.

I didn't realize that like for events, like actual competitions with dogs there is like a special type of frisbee that they use that is a bit more pliable so it's not as rough on the poor pupper's teeth yeah i appreciate that got to think about the pupper's teeth anyway uh what's your first thing uh my first topic is also kind of a kind of a light topic it is a topic that i appreciate uh a lot in the summer months, and that is the pineapple. Pineapple, yes. I'm not going to talk about the symbolism of the pineapple.

Obviously, a pineapple, very cool-looking fruit. I'm talking specifically about eating pineapple. Eating pineapple is really good. It's my favorite thing to do with a pineapple, I think. Yeah, not like scratch your back? No, I mean, cutting it up with a big sword feels cool. Oh, you can do rings around the eyes. And you can say like, I'm the fruit raccoon.

That can be really fun. Smash it like a Gallagher. Oh, man, I don't know if that would be as satisfying as a watermelon. I think there's a reason that Gallagher chose the watermelon. Oh, no, yeah. But like a big pineapple would probably be pretty good. Like a really big one? Like a really big one.

Like a man-sized pineapple? Like a dude-sized pineapple, yeah. But like a big pineapple would probably be pretty good. Like a really big one? Like a really big one. Like a man-sized pineapple? Like a dude-sized pineapple, yeah. Pineapple is super associated with Hawaii. Yeah, it's not where it's from, though. No, no. It's actually indigenous to South America. Since the 1820s, it has been commercially grown in greenhouses and many tropical plantations uh the spanish introduced the pineapple to hawaii in the 18th century um and this is where we get um dole food company but from what i understand like that was sort of

a weird sort of colonialist marketing ploy to like position hawaii as the land of pineapples when that is not like they're not not their original jam at all yeah it's Hawaiian production started to decline in the 1970s uh because of competition and the shift to refrigerated sea transport and so Dole left uh Honolulu in 1991 and in 2008 Del Monte terminated its pineapple growing um so the the remaining dole plantation on oahu grew pineapples in the volume of 0.1 percent of the world's production yeah so it's it's still associated i mean you hear a lot about the the hawaiian pizza for example right with the pineapple but it's like not there yeah it's a it's a weird bad sort of uh deal yeah um production of pineapple is led uh by costa rica the philippines brazil and thailand

keep it up y'all are crushing it um pineapple i it's just it's just kind of the best most reliable snack a lot of times you get like a fruit and it's not it's not right where you want it to be yeah but i feel like pineapple is always good if i crack open the crisper and we have small fruits and they're usually for henry if pineapple's in there it's one unfailingly it is always the one i reach for it may be pound for pound my favorite fruit wow i just like it a lot i like it i like artificial pineapple flavors in anything i like a pineapple upside down cake there's the thing though you don't like pineapple in a savory no god no no but nobody really does i do oh man you know what i used to get in college i had a co-worker at sally beauty supply that turned me on to the idea of pineapple

and artichoke pizza. Man, incredible. Maybe I should give that a chance. I feel like I was spoiled on it because I don't enjoy pineapple and ham together. And I also don't enjoy a honey ham. But I do love ham. And so whenever a sweetness was applied to ham, I feel like, oh, man, you've ruined that good ham. I really like that. I know it's a lot of people's jam, but it's not my jam. Pineapple also has high levels of vitamin C and manganese. A lot of those things are associated with, you know, just good health generally. If it also, I've read about pineapple has like melatonin oh in it so if you're getting ready for bed pineapple's not a bad snack what's the thing pectin now what's the bromine bromine

bromelain man this is so rough because there was that breaking bad what was the breaking bad movie about jesse that came out on netflix and there's like a flashback scene where he's talking about pineapple. Oh, El Camino. Yeah, El Camino. But he's like talking about the good things that pineapple has in it. But he's saying it wrong. And now I'm actually unironically doing that. I will also say we haven't talked about the pina colada.

That's not true. We have talked about it during our cruise show. No, but I mean in this moment. In this exact moment. In this exact moment, yes. In this moment associated with the pineapple. Yes. It's just incredible. Good way to like just a tropical drink.

Always a treat in the summertime. Yeah. I love pineapple. I mean, do we want to talk about... I couldn't find a way to research that aspect of pineapple it's not i'll say this probably not on brand for our show yeah so the manganese is associated with male sexual health okay okay uh i don't think they were talking specifically about the flavor it might add to your sexual health yes um and let's just maybe we just walk away at that maybe we just maybe we just drop that in there oh you plant that

seed all right let's there's mine's eyes ears i have also heard this this thing that you're referencing everybody's heard it and i do not i cannot possibly comprehend who started it. I've never really play tested this. Nor I, nor I. I've never done a double blind sort of study on it. Hey, we're not scientists. We're not scientists. No. No.

We just like pineapple. And that's my story. And I'm sticking to it. Man, pineapple and frisbee. Who are we? Something has happened to us. Something has definitely happened. And I'm all about it.

Next thing, we're going to be talking about straw hats. How did? No. Hey, can I steal your way? Yes. yes oh we have jumbotrons we do um do you want to read this first one sure uh this message is for mom it is from mia i bet a lot of moms got excited out there sorry this one's from mia hi mom i just wanted to say that enjoying the McElroy family of podcasts with you is my wonderful thing. It's been a hard year for a lot of reasons, but nothing has stopped you from being the strongest, most kick-ass mom on the planet.

I can't wait to make even more goofs and desserts than usual with you now that I'm stuck in Texas. I love you. That is so nice. That is so nice. You can pick worse states to be stuck in. Isn't that right? We got barbecue. We got horses. We got horses.

We got boots. Big hats and boots. We love big hats and boots. Did I say barbecue? You did. Horses. Tacos. Oh, yeah.

We love them. Yeah. Here's a message for Savvy, and it's from Savvy. Hey, Savvy. It's past you. I just want to say you are amazing and the coolest person I know. And that's all that Savvy and it's from Savvy. Hey Savvy, it's past you. I just want to say you are amazing and the coolest person I know. And that's all that Savvy says.

And what I really like about what they've said here is that they didn't use all of the characters that they are allowed to use in the message. But Savvy was like, I know exactly what I want to say to Savvy. And it's true and powerful and strong. And I don't want to waste Savvy's time, by which I mean my time. I'm just going to tell them what they need to know.

Love it. Love it. I'm Riley Smurl. I'm Sydney McElroy. And I'm Taylor Smurl. And together, we host a podcast called Still Buffering, where we answer questions like, Why should I not fall asleep first at a slumber party? How do I be fleek?

Is it okay to break up with someone using emojis? And sometimes we talk about butts. No, we don't. Nope. Find out the answers to these important questions and many more on Still Buffering, a sister's guide to teens through the ages. I am a teenager.

And I was two. Butts, butts, butts, butts, butts. No. Can I do my second thing? Yes, please. I've realized now that I haven't sent you my second thing to listen to, but I think you've probably heard my second thing a bit. It is the French electronic new disco house duo called Justice.

You know Justice? Oh, you introduced me to Justice. I had no awareness prior to Griffin McElroy. Justice is like an alternate universe daft punk uh that just goes a little bit harder and is a little bit less theatrical about it um they are you know a french electronic duo much like daft punk uh that came about in the early aughts um and they first hit the scene with their debut album in 2007 called cross which just shreds absolutely from front to back um they never really had the huge i would say like mainstream success of a daft punk um despite like their similarities but i feel

like their music can very very easily hang with with daft punk's music apparently like i don't remember this because i i think came to them a little bit after they debuted, but they were kind of controversial because there was so much buzz around Justice when they dropped this first album because they came together in 2003. The duo is Gaspard. I'm going to say their names incorrectly. I apologize. Gaspard Auge or Auge maybe and Xavier DeRosne. or og maybe uh and xavier de rosne uh these two got together to submit songs to this concept album of electronic tracks that were meant to sound like they were eurovision entries that this like group was putting together yes it's a very very esoteric um and uh sort of launching off that

they started to do remixes of everyone uh they were like known as a duo that just did remixes of of a bunch of different groups including britney spears uh nerd fat boy slim daft punk uh franz ferdinand like was doing like pretty huge remixes like pretty popular remixes of all these songs before they released their first album in 2007 so when they released this album like they were kind of a household name among like people who liked electronic music and the similarities to daft punk led to them being fairly like controversial because everybody wanted to compare them to daft punk and daft punk uh was and to some extent like still remains this like deified group where like beetles like right where like every single album they've ever made is this like a sort of very important canon and so for somebody to step to them uh was kind

of a kind of a big deal even though that was not really what justice was actually doing uh but their music was a little bit harsher than daft Punk's was. Not quite as straightforward danceable. There was a lot of heavy metal influence in a lot of the stuff that they made. There was a bit of horror influence in some of the music that they made. And to sort of give an example of that, I want to play Cross's opener,

the first track on Cross, which I absolutely love, which is called Genesis. this song like a lot of the songs on this album is just this like wild fruit salad of samples and and genres uh there's you know funk and disco and heavy metal and house music and uh just just a lot of different things that they are a pretty huge palette that they're painting with um and i think that's what spawned a lot of sort of the online arguments around them when they first came out because daft punk was doing a a somewhat more straightforward uh extremely good like extremely skillful thing but like not their their music was a little bit more confrontational and a little bit sort of like rough around the edges yeah i

had no idea there was such a like uh uproar there was but i mean there was an uproar about fucking everything in 2007 uh and i don't know it it is they're throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall but but even people who thought that their music was whatever, overproduced, I don't think anybody can deny that it's super original. Because each song on their albums, especially as time went on, they've released, I think, four studio albums, maybe three studio albums and a few live LPs. They touch on so many different things right

so you get that you get genesis which i just played which has elements of like you know thriller to it like danceable horror jams uh but then you also get d-a-n-c-e which is probably their most well-known hit because it's on like every just dance and every like thing uh which i'm not going to play that one i feel like everybody's heard it right like do the d-a-n-c-a one two three four five uh like that is another sort of brush that they paint with they paint with this like sort of disco inspired 80s hair metal sort of lightweight thing uh on top of the like heavy sample wild house music that they do. So I want to play another track to kind of like give an example of like the other brush that they

paint with off of their 2011 album, which is called Audio Video Disco. And the song is called New Lands. So you're running best of three And you're coming home looking so For me And you So you're running best of three And you're coming home looking so For me I had this realization while I was like listening to them preparing for this segment today that like uh it kind of put a face on the exact type of music that I find fun to dance to like my exactly the the type of music that i enjoy when i want something sort

of upbeat uh at like a club which is not a place that i have been even before the pandemic started in a very very long time uh which is just like wild mashup-y sort of music that touches on the best parts of a lot of different genres like when i think back to um we used to go to this place called club echo every friday night in huntington when i was in college literally every friday night every single week uh because the dj uh this dude named jesse would just like play a lot of different types of music and he would play a lot of daft punk and a lot of justice and a lot of uh lcd sound system and stuff like that where i and i realized only now that like i think i just like it when music

is coming at you from a lot of different angles like coming at you with like a lot of different types of sounds and a lot of different genres and justice is kind of like one of the grand masters of that i feel like like. Do you like dancing? I do enjoy dancing, yeah. I mean, in the right circumstance. I don't enjoy it when people are looking at me, like focusing on me. Like I never really enjoyed the dance circle

at a wedding or whatever, where like you would get in the middle and like be the star player or whatever. Just like being with a bunch of people on a dance floor and like moving your your body to some good tunes i really like that i really liked it at club echo because it was very dark and so there was very little spotlight with you if dancing was like a um a side effect of alcohol consumption or if you just thought like it helps i want to go dance it helps it move things in the right direction but like when i was when i was like going out to to you know

clubs in huntington a lot uh it was it was definitely a piece of the puzzle right it was just like it wasn't like i want to i gotta i just gotta dance it was like i want to go out and have a couple drinks and like you know dance with my friends it was it is a way of uh i mean we're talking about a completely different thing now but like and i'm not saying anything revolutionary but it's a way of sort of like weakening the societal barriers between people that are kind of like agreed upon in a way that like i was incapable of doing in virtually any other way um and just justice is such a, I mean, obviously you pointed out not all of the songs, but it's such a like a dance.

It's an extremely dancey band. And I don't know, it's funny to like wrap things up. There was so much, you know, fervor around them when they first launched because of the comparisons to Daft Punk. And I feel like now 13 years after that first album came out like I do put them in the very same sort of pantheon of every justice album is sort of a canon that I think is really great and uh it's been a while since they put out I think their last album was 2016 they had a live album between then and now uh and as far as I know there's like no plans for whatever the next album is but you know daft punk also took however many years off before they did uh random access

memories uh so like who knows um but yeah i i i am wild about justice and if you've never listened to them but you enjoy a daft punk like you, you should start listening to them right away because they're fantastic. Um, Hey, what's your second thing? Uh, my second thing I'm worried is going to empower you a little bit. Um, I like when people are good at impressions, impersonations. Let's see how far I can go. How long I can go without actually doing one. I was thinking of this last night and I was thinking about asking you what you thought your best impression was.

But then I thought I would save it for right now. Oh, interesting. When we're talking. You don't have to do it. No. In fact, I might encourage you not to. No. I'm just just wondering i think of you as somebody that's pretty good i i think it's i think it's partially because you commit but i

also did a little research on like why some people are better at it than others um and i'm just curious it's one of those things where like if you ask me to tell a joke my mind immediately purges all jokes from the memory banks i like your michael kane for example yeah but michael kane is also one that i think a lot of people think they can do it's like a christopher walken but then like when i try to do it like it doesn't come out i know i don't want to put you on the spot that's not what this is about i used to read henry books in the voice of michael kane uh there was one peep peep and egg Halloween book that I would try and read to him entirely in the voice of Michael Caine.

I'm not trick or treating and I would try and do it all in the voice of Michael Caine. And it was very satisfying. I'm not going to do it, but just trust that it sounds so good and funny. There are a lot of, of people. I mean,

a large number of former former saturday night live cast members of course it used to be a thing for sure if you were going to be on the show you had to come with impressions um it was interesting because when i was trying to research this i kept researching like what makes a good impression and i kept getting like how to make a good first impression and i was like okay i need i need different search terms. So I looked up like mimicry and impersonation, which led me to a lot of research on Elvis Presley impersonators. This is what I thought was interesting.

In 2019, there were 84,000 Elvis Presley impersonators according to the IRS, which makes me wonder, are people writing that on their taxes? Wow, I mean, somebody's got to be writing it yeah yeah he's just fascinated by that i don't think the occupation codes on tax forms goes quite so granular well i think you can write in i imagine that's what's right but there's like occupation codes right so it's like live entertainer or whatever but i don't think one of them is like i pretend to be elvis though that's 08h31 um kind of the old school impressionist

uh rich little this is like this is somebody who kind of made his mark impersonating richard nixon which gives you a sense the time period still alive by the way as of this recording nixon no rich little okay um more modern uh people like Jimmy Fallon, Bill Hader. When we were kind of watching Saturday Night Live, like Dana Carvey, Daryl Hammond. A lot of people, if they could do the president, they had a reliable spot in the weekly show. Right.

But this is not something I've ever thought this is not something I've ever thought I was particularly good at. And so I kind of wanted to figure out like, what is it that makes you good at it? Um, there are researchers at the university of California, Riverside, uh, who said that people that have, uh, more musically minded strengths are more are more likely to pick it up. If you're able to carry a tune and tune into the sounds and rhythms of music, it's not dissimilar from being able to pick up intonations and language. That's interesting. I've never thought about that.

Yeah, which I thought was interesting, too. I mean, it makes sense. You know how people can hear a song and sometimes replicate it on an instrument or kind of pick out the notes when they hear something. I feel like, and the research supports it, that those people are more likely to be good at impressions. I think, I'm trying to remember. Yes, okay.

Ariana Grande, I think, does like wild impressions of other singers. Like can imitate other singers and their voices. I feel like that is like a impressions of other singers like can it can imitate other singers and their voices i i feel like that is like a genre of it she's obviously not the only person that can do it like there are a lot of singers out there who can recreate the singing performances of other singers and i guess that that those two skills are like not dissimilar yeah it makes sense you know what's interesting is that i read a lot too about people's ear for foreign language and how, you know, it gets worse as you get older because you get more entrenched in your existing language, like your native language. And I always thought

I was pretty good at foreign language, but I, you know, can't do a good like Bill Clinton impression. No, I feel like you don't commit to your impressions. That's part of it too, right? I don't have the confidence in my performance. I was looking to, there was research by the University of London in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience that looked specifically at people's brains while they were doing impressions. So they gave people like a list of celebrities and asked them to commit to 40 different people. And then they looked at them in an MRI scanner. And what they found is that the part of your brain that is associated with, you know, just speech in general is the same part of your brain that lights up when you do an impression.

So it's not like you're using different skills, which I think is interesting because sometimes if I'm sitting down to like try and do somebody's voice, like I feel like I'm like trying to summon some part of my brain that I don't normally. And then I just realized like, no, I'm pretty much using the same part. That's just panic. That's just panic setting again. That's just panic. That's just panic setting in. Yeah, so the areas associated with planning and producing speech are the same that lit up in the MRI when they were trying to do their impressions. So, yeah, it's always something I've really kind of delighted in.

And I can't – I'm not building it over the years. Well, I mean, you should, you should, you should put in the work, you know? I know. I know. Like you have. Like I have, you know, when I was doing ground links under Fred Armisen, just like working on it. Your Borat has only gotten better. My Borat is, yeah, it's pretty, uh, pretty incredible.

I read a lot of research to the people that have this instinct to mirror speech in other people, it's like an empathetic and social response. You know, if you're talking to somebody that has an accent, it's like sometimes you'll have that instinct to try and replicate it. And it's just a way of social mirroring. There was a lot of research that suggests that people that have that instinct to do that are actually doing it from a empathetic place that's so cool um hey can i tell you what our friends at home are talking about yes i went that whole segment by the way without just like busting like a yeah like a yeah baby i know well i feel like i set the terms up front like don't don't griffin don't feel don't feel inclined i appreciate it uh tererese says,

my wonderful thing this week is the game Spiritfarer on the Switch. It's like Stardew Valley meets Studio Ghibli and it's so calming, relaxing, and satisfying. A main feature is hugging your friends to improve their mood. It's such a lovely game. I just started playing this.

I wanted to also highlight it because it's really sweet. You play the, you replace Charon, the ferryman across the river Styx from like, you know, Greek lore. And you like, you'd like build a little boat for these spirits to live on

as you shepherd them from one thing to another. It's really genuinely a very sweet game. Julia says, my wonderful thing is when you get your email inbox down from over 1,000 unread emails to none. Seeing my inbox full of stuff I actually care about fills me with such deep contentment and makes me happy during subsequent visits. Oh, my gosh. That must be nice.

I am a very active deleter. Oh, yeah. And, you know, now that we are in the Zoom age where people are sharing their screens all the time in meetings, like somebody's inbox will pop up. And I'm like, no, God, like you have thousands. Like for me, if I see something I know I'm not gonna read, I just delete it. Yeah, I've gotten some shit before. I remember I've done some like-

You're not very good at email. I'm not good at anything. No, that's not true. I just, well, and it's the type of thing that I've become so inoculated to that I just like went to my home screen on my phone and I have 314 text messages that i guess i just haven't read well sometimes if the notification pops up it doesn't

count as red that's true it's possible you just saw okay and never opened the text yeah a lot of them are from like let's see um a lot of them political uh no most of them are like pizza day has a new extra large deal with free wings you gotta unsubscribe dude come get your haircut appointment for your child simplify your life griffin i guess that's true um hey thank you so much for listening thank you to bowen and augustus for our theme song money won't pay you'll find a link to that in the episode description and thank you to maximum fun for having us on the network yeah thank you maximum fun uh there are a lot of great shows on the network that i listen to all the time uh let's recommend the flop house yes here we go you should listen to the flop house yeah now it's now the recommendation is done uh and that's it rachel has to literally hop onto another call

in like 35 seconds so i'm a working woman. A working woman? Not me. I'm going to, you know, go play some bocce ball with the boys over at the club. The bocce club. What has happened to you? I don't know. I think it's the rain. It just gets me so silly. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay.

Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay.

Working on pay. I love you all. Hey! Hey! I love you all. Hey!