Wonderful! - Wonderful! 171: Butt Warfare

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Griffin’s favorite spiny rodent! Rachel’s favorite mattress size!  Griffin’s favorite viral drum beat! Rachel’s favorite funny people!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Please consider supporting these various causes to provide relief to those living in Texas still suffering from the damage of Winter Storm Uri: Feeding Texas: https://feedingtexas.networkforgood.com/projects/124201-texas-disaster-response Austin Mutual Aid: https://www.instagram.com/p/CLrfiSNFmiL/ Other volunteering and donation opportunities: https://www.austintexas.gov/help-atx-winter?fbclid=IwAR1U_9fbwP2jglq11rY9wZR2jJePgQoxN934-bOFOPvbcckdRUPOVgK0Znk MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Been a week of no natural disasters, in our place at least. There's been some in other places, but that's just kind of par for the course at this point. But I feel like we got our hand firmly on the rudder. I've got one on the rudder. You got one on the big sail.

What's the cross sail rigging? And I've got another hand on the steam lever that chooses how many knots the ship moves at. Foot on the pedal. So, yeah, you've got a foot on the pedal and you have one hand on the top sail rigging. I've got one on the rudder and the steam power. That leaves you with another free hand. So do you think that maybe you could, I mean, have the map? You could have the map in one and the top sail rigging in the other?

Is this still a metaphor or are we actually piloting a boat? I think we're piloting a big boat at this point with just two people, which is not enough people for the type of ship we're talking about. I will say that we have running water now. Yes. So if we want up we wanted to have a little a little bathtub boat we can do that oh sure we could oh yeah running water opens a lot of doors for you uh vis-a-vis nautical play it's wonderful show we talk about things we like things that we're into um thank you all so much for the the very warm reception to the last episode i know it was a break from our usual formula but yeah so many folks like encouraging us to feel our feelings and i think griffin and i just because of our upbringing and our temperament yes have a tendency to be like oh but you know

we're really we're fortunate because you, like we are still alive and breathing. Right. And everybody was like, hey, things suck and it's okay to acknowledge that they suck. And I appreciate that reminder. Yes, I will champion that for you and our listeners at home. But I had this, the sort of gene imprint

of Southern Baptist upbringing for, you know, 18 years or whatever. That's a tough code to crack. I know. I know. Well, and I think, too, it's, you know, when you are surrounded in Austin by people, you know, living in an apartment complex who still do not, you know, have running water. It's easy to be like, well, we're fortunate, you know, in that sense. But I appreciate people giving us space. Yeah, it's very, very nice. Write it out. But I'm back on my bullshit over here. Okay. With some more lightweight topics. But hey, do you have any small wonders before we get started in earnest?

You know, we just finished the second season of Blown Away. Yes. And I, as Griffin knows, kind of went back and forth on it. There is an insufferable personality on the show, the second season. Yeah, the show is obviously focused on people that blow glass, and there is a professor of glassblowing, I guess, on the show who has quite the ego, and it was difficult to watch him. He wouldn't do it. They'd be like, make a cartoon thing, and he wouldn't do it.

And he'd be like, I don't know if you know this about me yet but uh i kind of don't like to follow the rules and it's like then fucking leave uh he i mean it didn't help that he had like not only like taught some of the guest judges but like had established himself so much in the community that i think he came in with this sense of like this is my show to win right uh so i had some difficulty with it but the last episode they they, they had to put together their own little gallery exhibit. And it was beautiful. Yeah. Man, I should have thought of something while you were talking about that.

I'm just going to say like. You want to talk about the cookie, the little cookie snack you got? Vanilla wafers? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess. I don't know. Yeah.

Last night you were so enthusiastic. You were like, this is a cookie that has been with me my entire life that I have always enjoyed. Yeah. Henry got sick, and so I had to go to the grocery store to find sick food fare that you could eat. Nilla wafers were a staple for me growing up. for me growing up but i also like i realized like i have very strong memories of eating nilla wafers like off of off a paper plate in daycare or something like that and like being like man i'm still crushing these bad boys nilla wafers hold it down uh i do appreciate the nilla wafer i go first this week okay and i want to start out by talking about the porcupine

been a while since we talked about an animal i I feel like. And I don't know why mine always focus so firmly in the world of rodentia, but. Yeah, there's something about the snout and the low to the ground. I think it appeals to you. Yes. And I get it. Yeah, I've talked about the capybara on this show. And what is a porcupine except a dangerous capybara? Like a cool, edgy capybara on this show and what is a what is a porcupine except a dangerous capybara like a cool edgy capybara uh they are you know fairly similar in size only obviously the porcupine has the big

the wombat too wombat too also yeah uh i forget i think a porcupine is the third largest rodent on the planet and the only ones bigger than it are the uh are the capybara and i believe the badger is a badger you're looking for mickey mouse mickey mouse is also tall he wears human clothes and that's fucked up um so yeah they got these big long defensive quills all over their body which is great for them but bad for anybody who might want to you know give all these bad boys a big hug which maybe by the end of this segment might include you. I didn't really understand porcupines. I didn't really know that I liked porcupines until I saw this video,

or I guess it was a series of viral videos of a delightful big boy of a porcupine named Teddy Bear. And he eats a variety of gourds, mostly. The way I just said the word gourds was Oscar worthy. They were gourds mostly the way i just said the word gourds was oscar worthy they were gourds and he just gobbles them down and he makes the sounds that are the sound i actually have pulled a clip from the video uh of teddy bear eating just a bunch of little tiny pumpkins out of a bucket so you all can fall in love with teddy bear all over again. Oh, what is it, teddy? Pumpkin?

Can you say pumpkin? So good. It almost sounds, it sounds, it's one of those things where if you listen, you can hear human words. Like, yum. Yeah, I found myself, because I don't know, with these videos, you never really know, like, why you're watching it. Like, is it just cute or does something incredible happen?

And I swear I thought he said pumpkin. Yeah. Because she was encouraging him to acknowledge that it was a pumpkin. And I swear he said pumpkin. But he didn't. He is still a porcupine and it's fine it's fine like we like to play here and we like fun things but we you know magical thinking can get you in trouble sometimes so there's two main flavors of porcupine uh which are actually like pretty different uh there is and i don't know why they're called this the old

world porcupines who live in Southern Europe, Western and Southern Asia, and most of Africa, and the new world porcupines who live in North America and Northern South America. And old world porcupines are like purely terrestrial. They are purely nocturnal. More conservative in their views. Very conservative, hugely conservative. No, they are a bit bigger than New World porcupines. And what makes New World porcupines stand apart is obviously they're a little bit smaller, but also they climb trees. They live in like wooded areas. So they will climb trees and spend most of their time up there. And they are not like strictly nocturnal.

They can party in the daytime a little bit too so yeah i mean an ocean apart these these two different types of porcupines are actually quite different but both of them do have the quills uh which is part of a suite of defense mechanisms uh that it employs against predators so when someone steps to a a porcupine they flare out their quills to look bigger in the nighttime, especially because they're, you know, usually fairly monochromatic or, you know, just black and white. Their appearance is sort of disguised by their big, big quills now. But also they sort of simulate the skunk stripe. So like there is a coloration thing there.

This is all part of what are called, and I've always thought this was very fascinating, but I didn't know the word for it, aposematic defenses, which are just visual warnings against predators, like certain types of frogs that have like bright red and black coloration, as if to say like, hey, check this color out. I am poisonous. Do not, you do not want to mess with this. Porcupines have that like all over in their colors. The fact that they have quills, the fact that they make their quills larger, they rattle their teeth together and their quills together to make a like pretty loud noise actually. That can be kind of scary.

And they rely on that coloration a bit to make predators think they're a skunk, but they can also make a smell. Their smell comes out of their like skin all over and it's not like skunk strong but it's like enough to make a predator go like oh okay never mind and if all else fails they will run backwards or swing their tail into a predator and get them with these big barbed so good luck pulling them out quills they are serious serious business yeah i didn't know about the smell i didn't either one other like misnomer that i don't know how it went on this long is like a thing that people just assumed about porcupines i had always thought that they

could project out their quills like they could fire off their quills it's not true like they just don't for forever everyone just thought like oh well they can just blast off their quills. It's not true. Like they just don't. For forever, everyone just thought like, oh, well, they can just blast out their quills like they're a superhero or something. Yeah, I think, well, because primarily your exposure to porcupines is like cartoons. Right. I feel like there's a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons where you're like, uh-oh, look out. They're going to shoot those at you. Yeah, that's not how they do it. They will just sort of run their ass back at you,

much like the wombat does when he crushes you with his big, powerful butt. Rodents have figured out butt warfare. And us humans, we think we rule the roost. But we can do great things with our butts. Great things with our butts. We can make history with our butts. But we haven't quite cracked the rodent code of how to use the butt to smash the bad guy.

There are military personnel in a lab watching just a series of twerking videos thinking, how can we weaponize this? How can we turn this into a weapon? can we turn this into a weapon if if us human beings had coils or just like a firm carapace like a you know or a keratin hide around our just butt i don't know what it looks like but if someone breaks into my house and wants to hurt my family i want to do a big butt smash on them with butt warfare learn from big rats the hard thing about butt warfare is you have to turn your back on your opponent yeah you know and and that's a dangerous maneuver but not if you have a huge strong butt back there with i don't know a big like horns coming out of it do you know what i mean i don't want to you know violate the sanctity of what we

have already accomplished with butts i don't want to like rob peter to pay but paul i want to i i want to i want to just keep it i want to keep my family safe uh-huh anyway um porcupines are great uh props to the hedgehog too it's basically like a little porcupine it's a lot easier to hold yeah um but uh today we're talking about porcupines it's so so cool uh they're They're a very cute, cute guy with a lot of aposematic defenses that I find really fascinating. I love shit like that where it's like,

this guy was cute and delicious and getting gobbled up all the time. And so he's like, what can I do about that? And evolved quills. And he's like, okay, that'll do for now. Love it. That's really good. I'm wondering if we can make a pin out of butt warfare like how one would even represent that just maybe it's a porcupine

eating a pumpkin but looking over its shoulder at you looking at its butt like try it try something i don't know if that would read on a pin or not well it's not our job you know it's not you're right we're not the artists we are word artists and joke artists and fact artists which is to say liars uh my first thing is something i've really been missing lately and it is the king size bed oh yeah i mean this is a brag this is a brag we have a big we have a king size bed we have a big bed but that's just because we cannot touch each other at night that sounds much dire than uh what is the actual we are not night snugglers we don't fall asleep cradled in each other's arms we need space i am very skeptical that there are people that really do that

consistently because i am like a wild animal in that if i am pinned under anything yes i immediately just start thinking like how can i get out of this yeah we were spooning once on the couch and i noticed that you would nod through my wrist to free yourself it was kind of cute so right now because of the destruction in our home from the plumbing disaster we are sleeping upstairs on a trundle bed we each have our own twin uh it is fine it is comfortable but we um are are not enjoying the comforts of our large bed. Yes, a trundle bed, if you don't know, because I don't think I knew until we had one, is like a bed, but then there's another secret bed that you pull out underneath it. So we're kind of stair-stepped. I'm on the lower bed just always looking up at my beautiful 17 month pregnant wife up on her beautiful soft

casper pedestal uh yeah that's it's a it's a trip yeah i uh and the interesting thing too so when i um when griffin and i first started cohabitating i believe we were sleeping on a full-size bed. Full-size bed, yes. Yeah, I was living by myself and got a full-size bed for me. And then we moved in together and we weren't ready to purchase a large bed together. Right. And so we just skipped the queen entirely, went straight to the king. Went straight there. uh partially because we were expecting henry and everybody had told us you need a bigger bed right and it changed it changed my life changed everything yeah this like king-sized bed thing is a relatively new phenomenon i mean it's not new in that like it's it's existed since like the the 60s the 50s and 60s. But the increase in interest in it has gone up significantly.

Why is that? Just people are getting bigger? People are getting bigger. That's 100% true. Oh, I was goofing. Okay. Yeah. No, I mean, well, so here's the thing.

So in 1900, only 4% of adult men in the United States were six feet or taller. Whoa. And then by 1959, that number was 20%. Whoa. And then women were growing taller at similar rates. You got that milk. That milk makes us big, didn't it? Are you talking about cow's milk or some kind of human milk

that I don't really want to? I'm not talking about getting human growth hormone through breast milk. No, I'm saying we drank our milk and got our bones bigger. Fuck yes. Are you kidding me? I didn't realize we got that much bigger that fast. That's great. Something I didn't know is actually a queen and a king size bed are the same length.

Yes. a queen and a king size bed are the same length yes uh and the california king is actually not as wide as a king but it is longer interesting the king is a square right is a it's well it's it's 76 by 80 inches essentially a square yeah and then uh when you get to the California King, you get 84 inches, which is seven feet long. Woof. California Kings were made popular by kind of celebrity mansions. In the early 1960s, a Los Angeles furniture company started making oversized beds for celebrity mansions. And this is kind of how this became a thing. That's too much.

I love a big bed. I have always been a proponent of you spend so much time in a bed yeah it is like the first thing i think i spent a lot of money on was it was it was a good bed because i realized that i am first of all a fucking precious princess in a p situation this was not always true though okay so this is the thing that I don't know if you just became a man that appreciated the finer things or if something changed about your body

because when I met you, you had been sleeping- On a busted ass hoopty of a mattress, for sure. But I think it's because I slept on that mattress for so long that I really fucked myself up. You also started traveling a lot more and i think that influenced your decision of like when i sleep on a bad bed i feel bad that's

true so yeah so in the in the 60s is when they started encouraging people to upgrade to larger bedding uh and in 1953 king size bedding represented less than 1% of overall bedding sales. In 1961, this had risen to 5%. And then in 1962, it was 10%. Okay, so we knew right away this is a good bed. It started skyrocketing. I obviously, you know, I picked the king because that is what we have. I don't feel particularly strongly about a king versus a queen bed. Right.

I just miss being able to lay on the same level with you in the same structure. True. True. It's a strange situation, but I mean, we have beds and that's fantastic. And that is fantastic. we have beds and that's fantastic and that is fantastic um i i will say so uh when you look at like a full-size mattress which is what i used to have that is just four and a half feet by 6.25 feet right uh which is kind of crazy to think that we we slept on that as long as two lovers well Well, we would spend our nights entwined in a passionate embrace.

A standard full bed only provides two feet, three inches of space per person. Right. So you basically have enough room to kind of turn from your one side to your stomach. You and me are big wigglers at night, I feel like. We do a lot of tossing and turning. We really explore the space yeah and so yeah i i appreciate having the extra space i don't i don't know that i would need a california king that's the thing like like neither of us is like particularly tall i mean me not at

all and i'm huge and you're you're not you're not six feet i'm basically six feet you're not yet six feet so there's a bunch of weirdos on the internet who want to know exactly how tall I am. And I will not give in to that. So I will say almost six feet and I will leave it there. You could comfortably round up to six feet. Well. You could comfortably round up to six feet. But yeah, we have a particular mattress that we have had for years now that has our

little divots in it. Uh, and we should probably get a different mattress. Right. But I feel so. I can't, I'm too old to start working on a new divot. That trench.

I put a lot of sweat equity into that trench. I'm not just going to give that up. Uh, yeah. So beds, beds beds are good can i steal you away we have a couple jumpy plumps here and i would love to read the first one please do the first one is for future lydia and it is from past lydia who says hi you i know sometimes it's hard to see that you're doing great but trust me you are you've got a lot of good things ahead of you like moving to austin with your best friends and writing a whole ass book for your thesis take a breath kiss titus on his little doggy head maybe get some more sleep and remember you've got this in the bag welcome to

austin great time to be here uh i i for a second i was gonna make a joke about like is a message for future lydia from past lydia and i was gonna joke like here's the scores to the big sports game make sure you bet on them them. But that's backwards from how it would work. If past me was like, let me tell you about how the final score of the Buffalo Bills Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl, I would be like, no, what? No, they weren't the ones.

And why would you know that? Anyway. Can I read this next one? Oh, yes weren't the ones. And why would you know that? Anyway. Can I read this next one? Oh, yes. It is for Ed. It is from Dressler. Ed, I love you more than the moon, and you know how I feel about the moon. You're the best vampire screenplay writing partner, the best virtual cow co-parent, and the best maybe future husband I could possibly hope for. You already know all of this, but now you extra know it.

I love that. I love an aspirational jumbotron. It's empowering. You also made like a little noise of recognition about the moon. Love the moon. Moon's great. Talked about the moon on this show.

Did a whole segment about the moon. Big. Governs the tides. Love that. Big. Bright the moon on this show. Did a whole segment about the moon. Big. Governs tides. Love that. Big. Bright sometimes, too. Werewolf. Real bright.

Different colors. Love that. Maximum Fun is a network by and for cool, popular people. But did you know it also has an offering designed to appeal to nerds? A show for nerds? On Maximum Fun? The devil, you say? It's true.

It's called The Greatest Generation. And they review episodes of a television program for nerds called Star Trek. They've reviewed TNG, DS9, and are now reviewing Voyager. Hey, Star Trek. My daughter enjoys that program. Well, if she enjoys that, and she enjoys humor of the flatulent variety, might I recommend she subscribe

to The Greatest Generation? Hey, are you calling my kid a nerd? Why, I oughta... Well, gotta go! Become a friend of DeSoto by subscribing to The Greatest Generation on MaximumFun.org today! Can I do my second thing? Yes.

My second thing is a drum break from an old song that has been sampled in thousands of pieces of music and has gone on to define entire sort of sub-genres of music. And that thing that I'm going to talk about is called the Amen Break,

which I feel like I'd heard about it before. I had definitely heard about sort of, you know, drum samples that had been, you know, at the core of, you know, certain hip hop movements in the 80s and 90s and, you know, British dance music movements. But I don't think I knew specifically the Amen Break was like the sample was like the loop. Yeah, this was I mean, it was something that when you sent it to me, it was familiar, right? But I had never heard of it as a thing. Yeah, that's what I find really, really fascinating about stuff like this is that you don't have to possess like a about stuff like this is that you don't have to possess like a categorical like understanding of music history or theory you hear this this drum loop and then you realize that you've heard it in so many songs uh and it's like learning this secret language that like underpins a lot of music of just like oh my god like it's like the Wilhelm scream do you know about that the like sound effect that's in like every movie of a guy like

falling and going like and it's in everything it's in they sneak it into every movie it's almost like a easter egg for you know sound mixers and editors and stuff like that I feel like this is kind of like that so I'm gonna play um the Amen Break, which is essentially a four-bar drum solo that is taken from a 1969 song called Amen Brother, which was a B-side from a soul band called The Winstons. And it was played by a drummer named Gregory Coleman, and it's six seconds long. But when you hear it, you're going to realize that you've heard it everywhere. So here is the Amen break. It's just this unassuming thing, and it's so short,

but it has been just absolutely everywhere. So in the 80s uh it it started to appear on these bootleg compilations of uh famous beats and breaks for djs to use because sampler technology kind of came up in the early to mid 80s and that's when people started to really seek out these really incredible drumming performances from from the past from the 60s and 70s and earlier even in some cases uh and the amen break for whatever reason just like i think you can probably think about it as just like it went viral uh and started to go just absolutely everywhere so salt and peppa were the first like big mainstream artists to sample it in a song called i desire which came

out in 1986 um but where it really really really like took the main stage is that it is the backing drum beat for straight out of compton uh just like front to back like that is the drum beat behind straight out of compton uh it is pitched I think, and slowed down a bit because when it is sampled, you know, it's usually pitched up and the tempo is kicked up for, you know, techno music when it's used in drum and bass loops. But in a lot of like hip hop of that era, it was slowed way down, but it's still the same. It's still the exact same sample. It's just like been processed differently. So it became sort of more ubiquitous in hip hop in the late 80s and early 90s. But I think the bigger kind of like impact that it had is how it created this entire breakbeat dance genre, which, like I said earlier, was kind of the purview of British

DJs who were messing around with these old breakbeats to create like the drum and bass sample, a lot of techno music, the jungle genre, a lot of industrial dance music at that time. There were just so many different tiny little sub genres of dance music that had this six seconds of drumming like at the very core of it it it is a

seed that like branched out into all of these different places based on this one four bar performance that this dude laid down on a b-side track back in 19 you know back in 1968 yeah this is this is fascinating to me because as somebody who doesn't make, you know, music or, you know, has experience like composing music, I don't always hear kind of the individual pieces of a song. So it's always interesting for me to hear like, oh, yeah, this is used all over the place. Yeah. I just never noticed. It's everywhere. So outside of like hip hop and drum and bass, you know, dance music. Bowie sampled it.

Oasis sampled it. The Futurama theme song, it's the backing drums for the Futurama theme song front to back. Like you hear, it's, you really will hear it everywhere now, which is kind of awesome. What is significantly, hugely less awesome

is that because it was sort of propagated through these compilation albums which credited the performers and artists behind those those beats sort of not uniformly let's say the artist who actually like played the drums gregory coleman never got a penny he died in 2006 he was oh my gosh he was like impoverished he died in atlanta in 2006 and the band leader for the winstons a guy named richard lewis spencer said that he he was pretty sure that gregory coleman like did not know like had no idea that this this beat that he had made had changed music forever which is heartbreaking which, which is very, very sad.

None of the artists, none of the Winstons got like a dime from this, didn't even know that it was a thing until I think like 1997, a record label came to Richard Lewis Spencer and was like, hey, can we have the masters for the Amen break? And he's like, what are you talking? What do you mean? And that's when he found out that it had been in all of these songs and taken off and established all these new genres. And he was fucking pissed. Understandably, it had gone on to be in so many songs that had made so much money and they hadn't seen a dime of it. that this this thing that they made had gone on to be so important to like capital m music and in 2015 some british djs like wanted to write this wrong so they launched a gofundme campaign

and raised like 40 000 that they then sent to richard lewis coleman uh but he he passed away last year, sadly. So it's very messy, clearly, the lack of rules for how to credit and pay royalties to these artists. But it is fascinating to know that these sort of like Rosetta Stones exist out there that are just everywhere. The Amen Break is not the only one of these. There's something called the Think break that is also a very memorable break like this. There's a James Brown drum break that is also super ubiquitous, although I imagine he probably got more credit for it.

You kind of wonder what comes first, whether somebody's sitting down and they're putting a song together and it's the only thing they can think about while they're doing it. Yeah. Or if it's like a little nod to like history more than it is a like inspiration point. Yeah. I mean, I think it is mostly I think it is mostly that like a nod to history. Yeah.

The other thing I find really fascinating about stuff like this is like it ties two time periods together. Like when I think about music being made in 1968, I do not think about British drum and beat bands that I was like listening to on Winamp in 1999. like that music was this own thing that was very kind of futuristic and like industrial in a way that the soul movement in 1968, like I was, I did not think about it like that. And yet this drum performance that informed all of this, like what I thought of as futuristic music when I was listening to it happened in 1968. That's awesome. That means that like music doesn't have a, it's not crystallized in time necessarily. Like there are, I had this thought like when I finally like got into the Beatles in my teens where I was like, wait a minute, like a lot of this sounds like music that I listen to

today that I think of as only being possible in the era that we live in now. Like there's something inherently futuristic or at least like present about the music that's being made now. But you go back and listen to older songs and it's like, this could be recorded today. Or not only that, this made music what it is today. So it's not like, oh, that's just old stuff. I think that's amazing. I think that's, you know, super cool.

So that's the Amen, right? Yeah, that's cool. I think that's, you know, super cool. So that's the Amen, right? Yeah, that's cool. I apologize for if I did sort of poison everybody's brains who are now going to like, hear this stick out like a sore thumb anytime they hear it in a song, but there it is. What's your second thing? My second thing, I thought about being more specific than this, but then I decided the category itself was really something I wanted to talk about. And that is just generally

funny women. Okay. Just women that are funny. Sure. I think it's something that I realized just not too long ago that was very important to me. Because I think when I was a kid, you know, my kind of like comedy influence or whatever, you know, what I thought was funny was mostly male dominated because that was just what I had exposure to. Uh, and I realized just the reason this came to mind was because of, uh, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey just recently hosting

the golden globes. And it's just this reminder that like the power of, of seeing a woman on stage, you know, and on stage because she is funny and being funny uh because it is still something that feels a little subversive i mean in our lifetime the and obviously clearly this conversation is still happening but you know hopefully relegated more to the shithead uh contingent of people on the internet. But like, I remember conversations, like hearing conversations like in the media of just like, can women be funny too? And again, like people are still assholes

about stuff like that, but it used to be so matter of fact. This was like not long ago. This was like less than 10 years ago. Christopher Hitchens wrote that article of like why women aren't funny. And I'm sure he wrote it largely to be inflammatory, but it definitely people were like, people were like, yeah, why aren't they? That's so strange. And I feel like it is something. So I grew up just in

a house with a lot of very funny women. And I didn't realize that that was particularly unique until I got older. But I always found being funny to be something really important and really interesting. And I found myself drawn to like, to having that community like in among all my friends all the time. And it was strange to me as I got older and I realized like that that is not typically a priority for women. And if you think about like, you know, fairy tales and stuff, like, you know, like the focus is on being attractive and desirable. And that is not always the trait that people go to right away. Yeah. But then you look at like, you know, obviously Saturday Night Live is kind of the easiest thing to point to.

But I just remember like finding like Gilda Radner and realizing like there is a way to do this that is so like intoxicating, you know, and exciting and interesting and and important uh and that that made a big difference for me yeah for sure and it is something like i i don't know i i you know i'm not like i don't know i never like fancied myself like a comedian you know uh or somebody that like wanted to make comedy but but i always found like being funny to be like the most interesting quality and and one of the things that like really i feel like drew me to you not not just that you were funny but you were quick you know like there are a lot of guys out there that are like funny yeah dane cook dane cook you're dane you're dane cooks but i need that like quickness you know like i need to be

like if i'm if i'm having a conversation with somebody and they're they're being funny it does not work for me unless they say something unexpected like in a very like fast off-the-cuff manner yeah and i appreciate that about the mElroys, I think. Yeah. Thank you. So there have been a lot of studies on like male versus female, like funny humor, like approaches to humor. Why like,

why men are seen as more funny. Yeah. I mean, as long as we're arbitrarily sort of exploring the gender binary, then let's, let's add a layer of extra arbitrariness to that i know i almost didn't want to talk about it but then it was just it it it continues to be such a thing right you know um and it's hard not to uh because generally um women will say you know when they are looking for a male partner that they want that person to be funny.

And that is just not as common when men are looking for female partners. I know a lot of people have a lot of feelings about Amy Schumer. But one of the things that stuck out the most to me in the documentary that we watched about her sort of – I forget who made it. me in the documentary that we watched about her sort of i forget who made it it was part of a series about her like childbirth experience was like you really get to see what it's like being kind of the focal point of that like conversation currently or not currently maybe you know five five years ago or something whenever the amy schumer show was on the air when like she was the focal point for this conversation of like what what does it mean for a woman comedian? Which like ignores all of the women comedians that had come before and were also doing it at that time.

But like people just fucking hated her because she was a successful woman comedian. Yeah. And she was the first female comedian to do Madison Square Garden. Right. You know, like she has definitely blazed a trail for a lot of other people. So all of these studies kind of look at, you know, different traits that people say that they're interested in and how it actually stacks up. There was a study actually at University of Missouri that I thought was interesting that said men prefer women who are receptive to their humor, whereas women prefer men who produce humor,

which I thought was very telling. What does it say about men who are looking for women who are just kind of patient with their humor? In this study, participants were given an imaginary budget of $5 to spend on a trait they want in their sexual partner. What the fuck? Isn't this kind of fascinating, though?

So the idea is you get $5 and you budget it out for different traits you want. And you pay more. What is this weird science fucking cold stone creamery of a human being that you're doing? It gives you really interesting data, though. So the more they spend on traits, the more their partner would embody that characteristic. So women, she found, would spend just $1.91 on a mate who laughs at their jokes.

But men would spend $3 on one. We're fucking terrible. $3 on one. We're fucking terrible. $3. I don't have enough food to eat this month. What happened? It's very important to me that she thought I was funny. There's also older studies where they look at, here's one from 1998, where people were shown photos of people of the opposite sex,

along with transcripts of interviews supposedly conducted. In the interviews, the photo subjects came off as either funny or bland. For the women, a man's use of humor in the interview increased his desirability. The women's use of humor, meanwhile, didn't make the men want to date them more. It actually made them slightly less luring. Fuck. Oh, man. meanwhile didn't make the men want to date them more it actually made them slightly less luring there's a lot to be said to just evolutionarily about people that are funnier or smarter and whether or not like there is a predisposition to be drawn towards a smarter mate you know for survival reasons oh so like seeing humor as emblematic of intellect?

Yeah. Oh, that's not true. Oh, I can tell you that's not. No, no, no, no, no. That's not it. I know two state capitals. The thing that I found, and this is something I've found true,

is there was a 2001 study that analyzed casual conversations among young people. And it found that women told many more jokes when they were in all-female like, you know, me and the girls, all of a sudden these people come forward and I'm just like, oh my gosh, I had no idea you were so funny. Yeah. So it speaks a lot to kind of just what is and isn't encouraged, you know, in kind of a mixed group. But yeah, I mean, it's an awkward thing to talk about, I think, because there's a lot of, you know, outdated and kind of antiquated construction to this whole concept. The reviews that like kind of commented on my kind of introduction to the podcast world were just kind of like, I didn't, she, you know what? Funny. No idea.

Didn't expect it. And I feel like you find that a lot if you are somebody who is trying to make jokes as a woman. Yeah. And it is. It's just it's powerful. It's powerful to see people like Maya Rudolph on stage, you know, like doing something, you know, that is just like feels, you know, radical still. Yeah.

And so I just wanted to draw attention to that and say it's wonderful yeah you're wonderful you're so funny my favorite thing in the world is like late night um like slow like slumber party levels of exhaustion after just like a long day with henry and like one of us will pitch an idea like uh like different names of jeff foxworthy ted talks yes and then we'll just fucking go and go and you will just like lay there quietly for four minutes and just drop this this this bomb i will get very quiet and griffin will realize that i'm still trying to think i like won't go to sleep i'll be like, I gotta stay up to hear Rachel's next bon mot. Do you wanna know what our friends at home

are talking about? Yes. Here's one from Jesse who says, the snow has melted here in Vancouver, BC and spring flowers are starting to pop up. Crocuses and daffodils and snow drops are everywhere and it makes me so happy to see that spring is coming and winter is over.

There's been a weird thing that has kind of happened in reverse here in austin and i'm sure all over texas is that our succulents turned into full-blown dolly painting yeah melted weird abstract landscapes yeah There is the suggestion that potentially you can cut some of these plants back and they will regenerate. Yeah. But it really looks like everything is just gone. One of our friends started an Instagram account called Flaccid Plants because it really does look like somebody put a hairdryer on these bad boys for an hour and a half and just let it melt.

Yeah, I will say, though, I mean, like Texas, you get those huge swings. So we, after being like 10 degrees, are now up in the like 70s and 80s. So it seems likely spring is coming. Maybe. is coming maybe some of the and some uh like forms of cacti have hairs i guess that grow out of it uh kind of wispy uh what's the word like flaxen kind of hairs that grow out of it and when the freeze happened a lot of those plants ejected those hairs rapidly and so you just see these weird, like white, like animal tails just drooping out of potted plants all over. It is one of the weirder sort of visual effects

of what happened here in Texas. Anyway, here's another one from Quentin and Melissa who say, one thing we think is wonderful this week is the Danish concept of hygge. That's H-Y-G-G-E. It's the Danish antidote to being forced indoors all the time. The perfect example is snuggling on the couch, reading a book and drinking hot beverages

with the soft light of candles nearby. This was something I just became aware of like last year. It was like a phenomenon where everybody was talking about that like aesthetic. Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's definitely like it's not something we see a lot of in Texas, but in areas that have that kind of cold climate traditionally. Yeah.

Get that real cozy. Yeah, I'm sure. Cozy vibe. If you're equipped for it, I'm sure it's dope. Yeah, I'm sure if you're equipped for it, I'm sure it's dope. I'm not sure if what we had to do when our house was freezing qualified as hygge, like locking ourselves in a single chamber with all the candles we owned lit. Yeah, but like, you know, when you see like an Airbnb and it's like a cabin and they have a variety of throw rugs and blankets. Yeah, I'm into that.

Hey, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you so much for listening. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. We've got so many great shows at MaximumFun.org that you should go listen to. Can I interest you in a triple click? That's a good idea. May I interest you in one of our fine triple clicks if you like video video games may i interest you in one of our stop podcasting yourselves

we have many over here on this shelf and what about dr game show we have a fresh batch of dr game show for you it is right here on the on it's a blue light special. I think that's it. I think we're done. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Oh, do you want to tell people about that rescheduled Adventure Zone? Hey, if you like Adventure Zone, we have rescheduled the live show that was originally going to happen a couple weeks back. It is now this Friday, March the 5th, and I believe it's at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

And you can find tickets at McElroy.family. We're playing a game called Honey Heist where we are bears who are trying to steal things. We got Erika Ishii, who's going to be our guest, who I'm very excited to play a game with. Erica Ishii, who's going to be our guest. I'm very excited to play a game with. And it's also going to be choose your own adventure interactive experience, which should be fun. It's weird for me going into a live show

without really knowing what to expect. I have no idea how this thing's going to go, but it's going to be a lot of fun. And it's this Friday. So go to McElroy.family. And you make a really great bear. Thank you. I played a bear and I will be reprising the role, I assume,

of the Thomas Crown Affair, the polar bear, who is spectacular. Anyway, speaking of bears, I'm berry hungry, and I would love to go chow down, some grub. Money home. Hey! Money home. Hey! Money home. Hey! Money home. Hey! Money home.

Hey! Hey!