Wonderful! - Wonderful! 160: That Stinky Tree Blood

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Rachel's favorite reporting! Griffin's favorite oddly bottled soda! Rachel's favorite arboreal scent! Griffin's favorite German board game!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaDemand police accountability and reform: https://action.justiceforbreonna.org/sign/BreonnaWasEssential/Ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter   MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. And that sound you hear is Griffin McElroy. This is wonderful night. That was the sound of sultry saxophone steam on the street of the city coming up from the subways. When we took last week off. Yes. We thought it's a holiday week. Let's treat ourselves.

Let's treat ourselves so right. And then the week that followed we uh lost our child care had a brush with covid yeah and everything's everything's okay everything's all right but we're in we're in love lockdown over here yeah it's uh so our our recordings got a little more a little more a little more nighttime a little more nighttime a little more. A little more nighttime. A little more nighttime. A little more anxiety. A lot more exhaustion. A lot of just sort of like existential dread and also just more exhaustion. And it's like, will it?

Is this all going to be like, are we almost finished? No? Ah, shoot. A lot of those vibes. But also the saxophone and the scene from the city subways yes the music of the night love it my children you're doing a bit of a drag it went and you took it in a bit of like uh castlevania direction i'm not see i was thinking like phantom phantom was based on Dracula in the Castlevania series of video games. Not a lot of people know that.

Yeah. It's just IP theft is what it is. So anyway, this is wonderful. We'll talk about things that we like, things that we're into. Small wonders. Now, do you have them? I do, actually.

I wanted to talk about the difficult to find but worth the watch movie, which is Muppet Family Christmas. Yeah. Oh, you can only get this one basically on the dark web. We traded some. I won't be specific because I don't want to get busted, but we traded some pills for this Muppets Christmas special on the dark web.

And they were just fiber gummies. It was just, yeah, but the real ones. Do you know what I mean? Not the ones that you can get at walgreens the ones that'll hollow you out but anyway this muppets movie is great yeah and i'm not talking about a very very muppet christmas which is the different film or the muppet christmas carol yes which is a again a third film muppet family Family Christmas is literally across the Muppet continuum right the hints in verse

and so you've got your Muppets from the Muppet show you got your Muppets from Sesame Street you got your Muppets from Fraggle Rock everybody's together I think that's it you don't get that Dark Crystal you don't get the I think you get some Labyrinth't get that. You don't get that dark crystal. No. You don't get the.

I think you get some labyrinth Muppets though. Oh, you think? I can't. I can't be a hundred percent on that. Maybe bunny picnic Muppets. Yeah. There's a fair amount, but. Bowie shows up for like a second.

And he's like, his hog is just showing. And Gonzo's like, that looks like my nose. But anyway. But anyway. But anyway. Oh, now I can't get it. You forgot what you were talking about. No, so the reason that this is not available, you know, for example, on the Disney app

is that they did the thing that a lot of programs did from that time period where they did not license the music in perpetuity. And so we are not able to see it now officially. No. But it is so nice. It's a breath of fresh air. It's very nice.

Very charming. I just wanted to talk about an extended like half hour long conversation Rachel and I had last night. This is my small wonder. Where we basically wrote up a whole business proposal for a sausage restaurant here in Austin. I've been very much craving German food since last night when we started talking about German food.

And I realized that there is a, just sort of a gap, a gap here in Austin where there's just, there's like two German restaurants. There's lots of places that have certain things, but there's only like two restaurants to do German food. But nothing that's like, that I could get right now if I needed to.

And we should say that this came about because we have been watching the recommended sausage videos from our previous episode. Oh my God, whoever suggested ordinary sausage, thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you it's filling the gaps i am down to clown with whatever they want to stuff inside a sausage rachel is a bit trepidatious yeah they get pretty gross because he will take items and grind them up and then put them in that sausage casing which is a lifestyle i really want to be a part i really

want to be a part of that i understand that about you uh it can be a little grotesque uh but charming and also has made us crave sausage yeah i would love some sausage so we came up with like several names none of which i can remember because they probably weren't very good but like business plans about like how we could get the word out what kind of like combo meals we could offer there's something about spetzel bites yeah yeah and there's a lot of plays on like worst and brat none of those were good none of those were good but we did get like spetzels pretzels and brats which now saying it out loud makes it does sound like wetzels pretzels so we would bump into some stuff there but yeah just uh doing a long little sort of like imagination scat with my wife uh in bed was was a fun one was fun imagination scat with my wife in bed sounds

not great uh hey you go first this week oh hooray uh my first thing is journalism yeah yeah yeah. You're welcome. It's a big topic. Yeah. I'm going to do just kind of a crash course through some big milestones in the history of journalism. This was something that I had wanted to pursue

and truth be told, didn't largely because i was not allowed in well mizzou's journalism school is no fucking joke so at the at the mizzou journalism school your freshman year you apply and you have to have taken like the introductory course which i had but you also have to have a certain GPA which I did not have and there was an appeal process but I was too proud to do it yeah uh and very quickly discovered that being an English major was a better fit for me anyway but easier right well papers are longer I have to imagine, yeah. I have always really respected journalists. I have

always loved just kind of the art of the interview. I have loved the kind of the curiosity that comes with the profession and what you can accomplish in that position. And also, I feel like there are so many people that are important that become so removed from your access. You know, there are people in politics, there are people, you know, in movies and music that you will never meet, you will never talk to. Right. And I always really respect the like really great journalist that gets this great story that gets you access to information you wouldn't get otherwise.

Yeah, of course. story that gets you access to information you wouldn't get otherwise yeah of course um and i mean especially now when everything feels so crazy to have like a really thorough investigative journalist look into something it gives you like such peace of mind it's like the opposite of being gaslit you know you're just like oh oh there's real information out there and you got it. And now I feel safer because of it. Yeah, sure. So I wanted to talk a little bit about like, newspaper and television. Because I think part of what really inspired me initially, when I wanted to be a journalist was 60 Minutes. Okay, my family would watch it every Sunday night. And it just like, some of those pieces really like stuck with me. It made me feel like, this is like kind of a rock and roll job.

You watched 60 Minutes with your parents growing up? Yeah. That's kind of, you understand that's a bit wild. Well, I don't think it's that uncommon. I don't know. I mean, well, we watched Rescue 911. That's the difference. It had a number in it.

Well, how did you decide to be a journalist? Was it just like a practical, this is a job I could do? It was mostly a fascination with the radio station because my dad had done radio and I'd been around it my whole life. Marshall had a great radio station. My dad had done radio and I'd been around it my whole life. And Marshall had a great radio station. And Justin, at that point, Justin was writing for the Ironton Tribune.

And I don't know, I had done like some of it in high school and kind of enjoyed it. And I also, the track I was on before that was to be a theater major, which I also realized was not the right one. But I don't know. Some of those skills proved useful. So I think I chose correctly. Yeah. People don't talk about that enough. You know, like how lack of exposure to certain careers will prevent people from pursuing things. But like, it's so clear in your family, like you all were like, well, these are the jobs there are. These two. Yeah. So newspapers, as we kind of know them today, really took off in the 19th century, thanks to high speed printing presses, the expansion of elementary education, which meant more people were reading, and also the sale of advertising.

became a thing that you were trying to get the biggest circulation so you could get the most advertisers so you could make the most money uh which is where you get people like pulitzer and hearst and the incredible musical newsies oh god yes uh this is in like the 1840s 1850s. Not much to report on back then. Quiet times. Famously with Pulitzer and Hearst, this is where you get this muckraking yellow journalism, which is both exposing corruption, but then also creating these sensational

news stories just to sell papers. I would love to do a side-by-side comparison with some of the stuff that comes out today with that stuff. I know. With them, they'd be like, and this man, this scoundrel, it's like, you, you've lost your ethics. Television news kind of became what we know it in the 60s, specifically with the assassination of JFK. Oh, yeah.

So CBS News was the first to report it, and then CBS and then the other station at the time, which was NBC, were just covering it, just the entire start to finish, just 24-hour-a-day coverage of everything associated with the assassination, which kind of created this demand among people of like, if something's happening, I want to know about it as it's happening.

And then the kind of the newsman that we kind of think of today from that time period was the 1950s. Murrow, Edward R. Murrow was a radio man fuck yeah god i love have you seen good night and good luck yes that movie rips man yes so he's straight there and in the mix crushing it no it's so good uh he uh he was primarily radio and then in the 50s started becoming a television man and good night and good luck is all about the joseph mccarthy uh series if you have not seen it i cannot recommend it highly enough everybody is putting in some work in that movie it's good although george clooney i mean obviously george

clooney instrumental and the creation of the film his role that's all right it's whatever yeah uh and then i wanted to talk about 60 minutes just a little bit just because that was kind of my my inspiration for this so that's been around for over 50 years now uh it has won more emmys than any other primetime program on u.s television it's uh over 130 emmys uh and what happened was the producer of cbs evening news with walter cronkite wanted to spin off a show that was supposed to be kind of like a life magazine that was like a mix of like serious and light stories uh which it took him a while to kind of get support for that because everybody was holding up edward r murrow and like investigative journalism and he's saying like let's make stories that are a mix of both

uh that are you know more accessible and more engaging for a wider audience um and uh and yeah and it obviously it was a huge hit you know i was a big fan of uh of the original marley safer mike wallace ed br Ed Bradley, and of course, the late, great Andy Rooney. Maybe not great. Not late, definitely. Definitely late. Yeah, it's just a profession that I think is really respectable. And obviously, there are people that don't do it well, and there are problems with it.

and obviously there are people that that don't do it well and there are problems with it but i think the intent of it and when you see somebody do it well can be a real inspiring important thing yes i agree i wish i i wish i had done been better at certain parts of it it was just the confrontational aspect of it that i was just not you know i mean you know me as a person i love talking to like artistic people or people making shit that i was interested in and getting to like interview them in a way that i felt like i can get some stuff out of you that will be interesting to people like me reading this i loved that part but anything anything more sort of like extra than that anything like more like hey hey you hey you get your damn hands off her of course the great the great journalist uh from back to the future yeah uh yeah no i mean it takes curiosity obviously and and like tenacity but also i think the thing that you bring to the

table is the enthusiasm yeah you know like but it's a separate it's like two separate and it's like a whole conversation that is easy to be like condescending either way about but it's just like i don't want you to sell yourself short that's fair i think you did good work out there then i'm gonna prove my journalistic chops by talking about my okay first subject which is ramune the japanese soda uh that is and this is hard-hitting stuff babe i took it all the way to the top and i was slamming my hands on a lot of desks i threw my briefcase and i was like it's time to stop lying you've been lying for so dang long it's a it's a good soda have you ever actually i know you've watched me drink it i have tasted it and i have to admit that the other day when you drank it i did look at the bottle to see

how much sugar was in it just out of curiosity oh what was that where did we land on that 18 grams for that little bottle that doesn't seem like a i guess it is quite a bit i mean for for context henry's uh child z bar has like 12 grams so it's more than a child's granola candy bar okay well that's not great uh ramune has a ton of different versions uh but the original was a lemon lime adjacent flavored bubbly soda that was first sold in japan in uh 1886 it was created by a scottish pharmacist named alexander cameron sim uh and i didn't realize this and maybe i should have but the name is actually a japanese borrowing of the word lemonade which i find strange because holy shit it doesn't taste like lemonade it is not like lemonade even a

little bit i feel like i mean it's it's sweet and citrusy i don't find it citrusy for any the best way that i've heard it described is like if you took sprite and then you put some ice in it and you let that melt a little bit and then you threw a bunch of bubble gum into the liquid i was gonna say it's more like sprite resin right it's sprite leavens uh it's a very popular drink that you'll find at like any japanese import shop like Like it's, it is for sure going to be something that they carry because it is like a, it's a, a beloved beverage over there,

especially in, in summer. It is like a sort of Japanese staple. Is this the one with the marble in it? This is the one with the marble in it. And that is the most interesting thing about Ramune is that folks also call it marble soda um and the the bottle that ramune comes in if you've never seen it has a chamber inside the neck of the bottle like a second interior chamber that you can see through the the clear glass and it contains a small clear glass marble uh and when you buy the bottle of Ramune, the reason why that sort of shape exists

is that the carbonation is powerful enough that it just pushes the marble up into the top. There's like an O-ring on the mouth of the bottle. And so the marble is pushed up into that by the carbonation. So it's like holding its's the carbonation is holding itself in because of the way that this bottle is designed and that's why when you want to open the the marble soda you twist off the cap and there's a little plunger inside the cap that you have to pop out and then you push that down into the marble to give way for the carbonation to shoot out and then the marble falls into the the neck and then you can drink it and it's kind of an it's it's it is novel and it's cool and it's fun and it's satisfying but it is also kind of annoying to drink out of that bottle because if

you're like really tilting it up and ripping it then the marble just pops back into the the o-ring and then it seals back up again and you you can't really chug it i have i have tasted this soda before i don't think i've ever witnessed the process of opening it. Oh, really? It's like so fun. It's like a fun thing to do. It keeps the soda bubbly as hell. Like it is an extremely carbonated beverage. And what I found extra surprising is that it wasn't,

Ramune did not invent this bottle design. In fact, it used to be a long time ago, like a fairly common way of keeping bottled sodas or bottled beers or any sort of carbonated bottled beverage carbonated. It is a style of bottle that was designed by a guy named Hiram Codd in 1872. And they're called Codd bottles,

which sounds nasty. And lots of soft drink makers in in europe and india and australia uh used the bottle design to to keep their drinks fizzy back in the the 19th century um but the the design was replaced with other sort of technology that was a little uh i guess cheaper to use probably and also because it's a little bit annoying to drink out of the bottles. I think Cod Bottles sounds like the name of a villain in like an old Batman TV show. Yes, I mean, I think Oswald Copperpot

is the name of the penguin. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of. So you're maybe not that far off. Another thing is that kids used to just smash the bottles to get the marbles out. I wonder that, right? Like to me, I'm so used to a smash the bottles to get the marbles i wonder that right like to me i'm so used to a child's product that comes with a toy that i assume like am i supposed to be able to like keep this marble somehow and you can i've been i'm an adult man and we got

ramune like i think we got it with some delivery like earlier last week and i was just looking at that marble like that's a nice that's a good marble i mean we should recycle this but smash the bottle no are you supposed to smash the glass bottle how do you get the marble out you don't you just recycle it see that's what i'm saying you and i are both operating from this place which is like well i can't leave the marble that's a perfectly good marble yes and kids in the fucking like early 1900s were like i want to play marbles of course marbles is a game that i play free marble are you kidding me it's like if i got a josta and there was a pog that was instrumental in opening the soda but then they were like oh but don't

you can't get the pog out without destroying the josta it's just i don't know kids were maybe it's like one of those cracker barrel puzzles where if you turn the bottle just right the marble pops out maybe um today there's only really two main soft drinks that use the cobbled design one is ramune the other one is an indian beverage called banta that i'd never heard of before um that's it they're the only ones that use it and that is to me i think pretty delightful because it is such i remember the first time i saw ramune i was like what the what the fuck is going on in there like what is this space age bottle technology as it turns out is from 1870s and uh is not the most practical thing but it's charming as hell yeah it's evidenced by the fact that you can get a can of soda and you just just pop it yeah just drink

it like if i'm if it's a hot well i think every time i've been to japan it's been pretty hot yeah and i always reach for a fucking dripping glistening bottle of picari sweat you don't have to fuck with any marbles with picari sweat you just rip that or cc lemon cc lemon i cc lemon's a little too sour for me these days pakari sweat oh my god that's good i should have just done what am i this is a fucking joke i shouldn't have done ramune when i could have talked about pakari next week look forward to pakari sweat i'm gonna do a whole thing on japanese beverages also ramune has been produced in 55 different flavors. I'm going to, and this is not like a, isn't Japanese food so weird segment, because most I think is really good. They make a melon flavor that I genuinely very much like.

It's a radioactive fucking ecto cooler green, and I think it is super, super tasty. But there are some more, I would say, novel flavors. tasty uh but there are some more i would say novel flavors those include champagne chili oil curry uh kimchi octopus takoyaki sauce teriyaki and wasabi and one that's just called disco dance i would be i would be surprised if disco dance was still in circulation might be wrong on that i'm sure i'll get fact checked by our audience. I do want to drink a disco dance marble soda. I like thinking that maybe disco dance is just

all of the flavors combined. Oh, shit. That maybe not be, that probably wouldn't be good. I think you could probably have all the like fruity flavors of Ramune and then have like

a little bit of chili oil and a little bit of curry in there and you would know what was up. Hey, can I steal you away? Yes. We have two Bumbo Bobs and I would love to read one of them and then I think maybe you should read

the other one of them. Okay. Are you okay with that? Yeah. Well, here read the other one of them okay are you okay with that yeah well here's uh the first one it's for sarah it is from gary who says dear sarah you are the most wonderful person in my life these last two years have been amazing you are my good good girl love your boyfriend gary love your boyfriend gary yeah it's a command really love your boyfriend that wasn't part of the message. This is me suggesting. Hey, love that boyfriend.

Love your boyfriend, Gary. Love your boyfriend, Gary. I've got a concise message here for Cookie from Remy. Cookie, you're a good friend. Thanks. That's the message. I appreciate that. I also appreciate in the pronunciations, you need to clarify segment's the message i appreciate that i also appreciate uh in the pronunciations

you need to clarify segment of the message they've just written no but i love you guys it's nice maybe because i don't know if it's kooky or cookie the field could have been used to better effect but we appreciate the admiration we appreciate that love It is hard out here. Speaking of personal messages, we have an announcement. And that is, if you want to get a personal message, now's your chance.

Yes. If you want to get your very own Blumbobo job on the show blumbo job is too much blumbo job again you have to stop you have to stop especially when we are telling people how to do it yes we should probably say the word correctly yeah if you want to get your very own junko tram message on the show then the way that you do that is you head to maximumfun.org slash jumbotron drawing and then you can uh sign up for a slot the way it works is there's a lot of demand for this uh this service and we only do two an episode um so we don't have enough to fill the demand but if you want to try and get a message on the show, just go to that link, MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron Drawing.

You have until Tuesday, December 29th. The messages are 100 bucks a pop. You'll have the option to purchase one if your name gets drawn. And we're only doing personal messages at this time, no more business ones. And we can't guarantee the air date of those messages, but we will do our dang best.

If you have any questions, you can reach out to Daniel at MaximumFun.org. Hey, friends. Jesse here, the founder of Maximum Fun. And I have some really great news to share with you. This year has brought a lot of changes for all of us. And one tradition that we were grateful to be able to hold on to is our annual pin sale to benefit charity. This year, through your generosity and love of pins, you helped raise $95,400 for GiveDirectPlan. If you're a member and you bought pins, they'll ship in January.

In the meantime, your support will provide direct cash relief to families impacted by COVID-19 across the United States. Even in this incredibly tough year, the Max Fund community remains extraordinarily kind. And whether or not you bought pins, you can continue to help by heading to givedirectly.org. And as always, thank you. Let me get that second one. My second one is pine smell. Pine smell. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. It's that piney smell. That piney, piney smell. God, don't you sometimes wish we lived in the Pacific Northwest? I mean, I have never been, so it's difficult for me to say that confidently. Oh, shame. But it looks very pretty. It's great up there.

God, my second home. Oh, yeah? The whole region. So where does that put West Virginia? First home. First home. And then where we are now? That's first home, actually.

Okay. You can have more than one first home. First home. And then where we are now? That's first home, actually. Okay. You can have more than one first home. Oh. Yeah, no. Oh. Yeah, no. Everything is, it's part of a sort of tiered, sort of pyramid system. Oh, your cup overfloweth.

It does. Got a lot of homes. In different area homes. I love this piney smell i uh i've had many conversations with people about the perfect pine candle oh where are you at on that well i'm still i'm still not 100 sure oh wow you know You know, obviously the Yankee candle really sets itself apart from the rest. Yeah. But I've experienced many, you know, many positive variations of the pine candle. We've been sent some fine holiday themed candles.

I can't remember specifically if we've gotten any pine, any pine ones. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I, I will seek them out every season. Sure.

Because we, you know, we do that artificial tree. Yeah. It has no stink. No, it has the stink of plastics. Uh,

and so I did a little research into what, what, what it is about that smell. Okay. Um, this is from a website that I assume is reputable but it is called earthsky.org okay that sounds right i mean it seems like that i mean that's what we're talking about here right if i wanted to know what a good pine smell is and what makes it i think earth sky is where i would

turn to for that news uh so that pine smell is due to chemical compounds called terpenes. Terpenes are carbon and hydrogen atoms, and they are made up of pinene, which is a monoterpene that has the piney odor, and limonene, which is another monoterpene that has the citrusy odor. Are all terpenes so explicitly named? Or is one called like caramelleen and this one has this one smells like caramel and you know i didn't go to school for terpenes but i'm sure somebody out there did how do you say that word c-a-r-a-m-e-l i say caramel okay i'm a very busy woman. So many types of organisms produce terpenes, including insects, marine algae, and sea slugs. You're telling me there's bugs out there?

It's like, is it Christmas time? No. It's just that ant. I think pine odor, it's those combinations of terpenes that give you that smell. But I haven't ever smelled a slug. I don't know. Maybe it's pleasing. Hey, folks, it's 2020.

Smell a slug. You got a little time left to smell a slug. You got a little bit of time left to smell. Wait, what? Because in 2021, no more slugs? Well, if 2020 is the year you're going to smell a slug, then you've only got a few weeks left, is what I'm saying. That's true. This year's been a real fucking shithole.

May as well give yourself one positive memory to go out on. Send 2020 out in the high note. Go smell a big, fat, stinky slug. And report back, please. So the reason we get that smell from the Christmas trees are that you can find a lot of terpenes in a conifer resin so when the tree's bark is damaged the resin flows out hardens and actually protects the tree so it's like it's like when you when you chop that boy down he covers

himself in this resin yeah and it smells real good and he's like ha ha ha enjoy my stinky blood and it's like jokes on you bro i actually love the smell of yours the smell of your stinky blood is bringing my family together we are watching home alone 2 lost in new york right now and we are enjoying it extra because of the smell of your stinky tree blood thank you um the amazing thing about trees especially these these conifer trees that i didn't realize is that that smell is actually a deterrent to bark beetles uh and also when it is released into the atmosphere it can uh play a role in cloud seeding. So some scientists think that the clouds that cover a conifer forest have actually been created to block sunlight and cool the forest.

That's wild. So the trees release this compound and they get some shade. Man, I like that. That's cool. There have been a lot of claims about terpenes too uh they're used for a lot of purposes um they are used in turpentine uh which is that solvent that mends out the paints yeah uh they're also used in fragrances and cleaning products and in medicines um they have started

to explore whether it could be a replacement for a petroleum-based chemical for things like plastic and fuel. Okay. But the problem is that trees don't produce a lot of terpenes, so it's not really economically feasible to think. Just use more trees. We got a lot of them, right? You kind of solve one problem by creating another with that one. Yeah.

I watched Ferngully. I think the message of that movie is there's always more trees did i watch it did i take that away i don't think so uh so yeah so pine spruce and fir trees all produce these terpenes um and there is there is also uh apparently some vitamin c in that the pine bark and needles too so there's a lot of stuff going on there i used to chew pine needles i remember very clearly they were like on campus at marshall and there's a big one growing out right behind the theater and so just like green room breaks you know dip back hit up that tree on my way out grab a needle chew on it on my way home it's nice it's very rustic that does sound

like some people had toothpicks and you're like no i'm more more earthy i like it tasted good as hell yeah yeah sometimes you get a sappy one and those didn't taste especially good i get why those beetles are like nope next tree the pointy ones guys are gross can you do my second thing yes my second thing is a game called settlers of katan actually these days it's just called katan. I think they dropped the Settlers of, but the traditional title was the Settlers of Catan, or maybe Catan, again, depending on, but then you start thinking about Chris Catan, and then you start fucking laughing so hard

that you can't focus. You think about Mango, and it's like, oh no, I lost control of my body. God, I miss playing Catan. Our friends here in town are not big gamers, especially like board gamers, but for whatever reason, Catan for a long period of time

was like the thing we did when we all got together. Yeah, it surprised me because I feel like we had a lot of games that I think were faster pace and more accessible but for whatever reason katan was the one that really took off we would have game nights with like me and some of my buddies where we would go over and just play one game of katan and that's it that's like all we did but for whatever reason like everybody was so into it despite the fact that they didn't really touch other board games they just got really into katan you know i heard

you can play that online i wonder if that would be a fun solution for our friends that's not a bad idea yeah i think there's a board game version or a like an app that you can play anyway i just sounded like i was 400 000 years old katana is a german resource management board game where uh if you're playing the basic version you and two to three other players sort of vie for control of an island that is made out of these little hex-shaped pieces. Apparently on new versions, traditionally you could pop the hexes in and out. So every time you played, it was like a different board.

But I think that the new versions of Catan just have a static board that is like designed for optimal fairness, which is interesting. I don't know. I have to do more research into that. Basically, the different hexes have different resources on them and you build little cities on the hexes to gather those resources and build more cities and roads and things like that to try and accomplish different objectives and collect enough victory points to win before your opponents. Yeah. And there are all these different strategies

that I have witnessed people use. I don't particularly have a favorite. Do you have like a favorite go-to? I usually will try and be a little bit flexible for the first few rounds. So to give you an example, you could get victory points for building towns and then you can get more victory points

for upgrading them to cities. And then you get victory points on these little basically chance cards that you can spend resources on uh and you can build a road you have to build roads to connect your cities and then whoever has the longest road gets victory points but you can try and steal that from other people so like i kind of watch what everybody else is doing and then see like if there is a way for me to snake one of the things that nobody's going for very easily yeah um that is what is so brilliant about this game right like i i know what i said earlier

sounded complicated but that's it like that there's a robber you move around to screw people over like there really isn't much to the game other than that and there are a million different ways that you can try and play it to win. And because of the way that you build your first cities, every time you play, everybody's going to have a different arrangement of like, okay, well, this time I have a lot of access to sheep and ore. I haven't had that before starting to play a game. What is my optimal way to victory look like well and it does become kind of a group game in a way because at a certain point if you realize somebody is poised to win you can all kind of work and that is what is so the other sort of fascinating heat to the game is that in order to realistically in order to win you have to trade there's a part of the round for every player's turn where everybody can can trade with that player and you have to do

that right like you you are not going to be able to have a monopoly on every resource in the game and you're going to need something from somebody at some point so then it's a question of just like well i really need the thing that you are offering me but i also know that the thing i would give you in return would perhaps win you the game so that social aspect is like kind of integral to the game and adds like a huge, huge layer of complexity to it. Because now not only are you playing your game, you have to sort of mentally play everybody else's game too to make sure that you don't end your game

by trading away the wrong thing. It's so, so, so like, it gets at these like primal board game concepts and a lot of them too, without like getting way, way too complicated about them. There are a lot of different expansions to the game. The main one I think is a five to six player expansion that makes it so you can play with more people.

We typically play that every time we play. But then there's like Seafarers and uh what are the other ones knights and cities and traders and barbarians like there's all kinds of different flavors that add things or add different sort of like campaigns and scenarios but just the basic katan is not that complicated the rules aren't complicated but like the the mental calculations you have to do while you are playing it and paying attention to having sort of situational awareness is like super super complicated there was a um the game was created by klaus tuber who released it in in germany in 1995 and it birthed sort of this huge wave of german board games that went global uh like this this genre of game was like huge in in germany but it wasn't until katan that it sort of had broad

crossover appeal when it like reached the states and and everywhere else and became like this huge huge thing like don't break the ice like yeah uh yeti and my spaghetti like you know these german classics uh there's this prolific RPG designer whose name is Richard Dansky who wrote about the game and this quote, I think like really, really perfectly summarizes

like what makes it so brilliant. He wrote, it's a resource management game defined by position and strategizing. It's a social game defined by horse trading of resource cards and sicking the fritz as my friends

call the robber with bloodthirsty bonami it is a game of chance ruled by dice rolls and card draws it's a hardcore game and a light social pastime and everything in between a laboratory where i can test a hundred different play styles and a genuine reason to invite friends over like it ticks all the boxes of things that i like about playing board games and it does it in a package that like for i think is pretty well tested at this point at least locally it like works for everyone which is so rare it's so rare there's just enough luck involved that you know if you are somebody that hasn't won before, it doesn't mean that you're never going to win. And I feel like that's what can be really appealing

when you have a group of people who may or may not be board game enthusiasts, is like if you sit down with a bunch of people and you feel like, well, I'm never gonna win, you're less likely to invest the time. But this one, I feel like- I feel like everybody has won. We have played dozens and dozens and dozens of games of katana with our friends and i feel like everybody's won

at least once it is uh it is it's pretty i mean it's probably the perfect board game i don't think you can do much better than it and boy how except for the adventure zone game the adventure zone game which yeah is perfect is really good and oh god i wish i really wish i could memorize the url for that but it's on mackaroy family i think mackaroyfamily.com you can probably find the link no mackaroy.family mackaroy.family i think we have a few hyperlinks that'll get you there uh here's some submissions from our friends at home katherine says my wonderful thing is choosing the right kitchen tool to get the job done my partner and i recently expanded our kitchen tool collection and there's nothing more satisfying than having the right flexible plastic spatula to scrape the sides of a bowl clean or the proper sturdy metal spatula to

get all the crispy bits off the bottom of a pan. I forgot to tell you that box right there does have a new set of wooden kitchen instruments that don't add a crazy wood like a crazy sandalwood flavor and smell to the food that we cook it with there's like 13 wood tools in there i'm so stoked god almighty i love wooden cooking tools okay uh yeah you know what when you started reading that submission i instantly thought of the spatula because it's one of those tools that i almost never use and then when i remember we have it i'm like oh my gosh this is the perfect thing this is it this is what i need right now uh and katie says now that it's actually chilly outside one of my favorite things is going outside real quick without a jacket to take the trash out or grab something from my car then coming back inside and feeling the very warm cozy air that's good too got cold

here for a bit in austin got warm again gonna get cold again soon i guess i had to run something outside and i was in bare feet and i came back in the house like that sucked i just sat by the fireplace and was just like oh that's good uh hey thank you for for listening thank you to bow in and augustus for the use of our theme song money won't pay and you can find a link to that in the episode description. And thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Check out all the good shows on MaximumFun.org. Yeah, a lot of really good, a lot of really, really good stuff.

I was excited actually this week's Stop Podcasting Yourself has Rhea Butcher on it. Oh, great. Yeah, like the nicest people on one show. I do love that. And thank you all to be... Thank you all love that. And thank you all to be. Thank you all to be good. Thank you all to be good. Thank you all for being patient with us as we figure out a recording schedule that will work for us.

Yeah. Each week. It's. Yeah. I think what we are experiencing is what a lot of people are experiencing, which is you have a very careful card house built right now. Yeah. And if one card comes loose, you realize you have nothing. Yeah.

And so that is what we are figuring out. And then all of a sudden you're the president. And then I guess your chief of staff is a real bad guy. Oh, house of cards. I see, I see, I see. Yes. And then I guess you died, but you didn't see me. You didn't see me. I can't start fucking thinking about Kevin Spacey's Christmastime video.

I mean, we do watch it every year because of just how fucking, just how sad it is, but also how buck wild it is. You got to send that to Justin right now. I got to, we got to go so I can send that to Justin. Bye everybody. Bye. Mario! Work it off! Mario! Work it off!

Mario! Work it off! Mario! Work it off! Mario! MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.