Wonderful! - Wonderful! 172: Rachel Beef

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Rachel's favorite stuff-carrying device! Griffin's favorite buns! Rachel's favorite memorial poem! Griffin's favorite precarious board game! 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, I'm Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Do we do enough preparing of our bodies before we start recording the show? Because I just did the biggest stretch I've... You saw me. I just did the biggest stretch I've ever stretched in my whole life. Saw that little belly when you did your stretch.

Yeah, I mean, you saw my cute little belly. But now I feel like I'm full of podcast energy. I'm full of podcast energy. I'm full of jokes. And I don't think I was right. I think I had too much lactic acid and too much sweat buildup on the inside. I have always told you to stretch and I am grateful now that you have had an additional person who is a medical professional tell you to stretch.

That's true. I've seen a medical professional for my terrible, terrible body. Yeah. It's various aches and pains and he was like do you do you even stretch dog yeah um i uh i slipped him a fiber yeah i said talk to him about stretching rachel bribes all my doctors but i feel like oh i feel like i'm back at my back of my fighting know what I mean? Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Look at my wingspan right now. You've got a very good reach. Imagine a basketball. Yeah. Oh, shit. A flaming basketball. A flaming basketball. I have a friend named Tanner who,

that was one of his senior pictures, was him holding a basketball in each hand and they were on fire. I can't. It was so amazing. I can't. So amazing. I have to imagine that was his vision and I wonder how it was executed. I don't know.

Did he have a face in the photo? Like, oh, oh, oh, oh, hurry, hurry, hurry. No, he looked pretty stone cold. I mean, he looked badass. He looked cool. I don't know what else to say. Was he like the star of the team? He was quite tall.

That is a way to answer that question. And I can't really cast any aspersions here because Dad did send my senior pictures in the post and hadn't laid eyes on these bad boys in a long time. And let's just say I would have killed to have some flaming basketballs would have killed to have something that unironically cool in in these photos but no dice um do you have any small wonders before we really uh start pounding the pavement here um i'm gonna say just in keeping with our our general uh hockey report that I am excited that Tarasenko's back. Yes. Vladimir Tarasenko was sort of the, would you say he's like the biggest name on the Blues or at least was for a while there.

He is just good. He's just extremely good at hockey. He was instrumental the year they won the Stanley Cup, which was 2019. And then he's been more or less injured since then. And he just came back and he's, you, and he's still getting his ice legs. Right. But it's exciting to think about him back on the ice court. I really like talking about hockey now because I am so not a sports fan.

I know, it's fun, right? But I feel like we have watched so much hockey now that I understand kind of what makes it cool and what makes sports fun to watch sometimes. And it's like this man coming back to this team who have suffered like a tremendous amount of injuries this season. And it's basically like I'm on reserve. Like they wanted me to sit on the bench in our last game because they had just run out of people. But now I have this dude back. It's very exciting.

I'm going to say on the besties, we're doing a two-part series where we're talking about the best zelda game and it's got me going back and playing some old zelda games and it's just good man it's good stuff yeah i always i'm familiar enough with griffin's game systems that when he gets out an older one right i think what's going on you that's an old guy henry started to display some interest in it uh which is great i'm playing link between worlds and the gimmick there is you can turn into a painting in the walls and like move around and he was just like do that again do that again yeah he's really excited he's very excited about it um let's get let's get it let's get it, let's get it going. What's your first, uh, what's your first big old thing? Uh, Rachel's big old one.

New segment, Rachel's big old thing. Jumbo size wonders. That is a sneak preview. We are trying to figure out how to fill time for when we have the baby. And when we say fill time, we mean provide exceptional content. Yeah. But also, you know, feed the beast, so to speak. And the beast is you, the listening audience.

And we're talking about doing double stuff episodes where we just do like a couple big segments. Yeah, we find one exceptional topic that can last the duration of an entire episode. Yeah. If you have any ideas for fun and let's say easy to produce episodes that we could do maybe four of in a single day in the next, I don't know, week, hit us up. Yeah. Let us know.

My first thing is the backpack. All right. Do you know like the backpack is like a pretty new thing. Like our parents didn't have backpacks when they were kids. What, they just take a briefcase to school? mean yeah so there were there was like a variety but like the nylon zip up backpack is like real recent huh interesting uh i was thinking about this because we got a new

diaper bag and we very quickly found out that the backpack kind of variety is the easiest for travel because you can have both your your hands free and not all the weight on one shoulder gotta have that yeah yeah and i got real excited about the new diaper bag because i think i love a backpack i love a backpack too i'm so i'm amazed we have not talked about this before because like whenever i had to especially when i was traveling for podcasts and polygon like video game conference stuff at the same time I like researched backpack brands like for a month until I could like figure out my my personal my personal jammer I feel like I've heard Griffin talk about backpacks I have yeah

maybe that's just the two of us in our I embrace. I remember giving out my recommendation for like which one I settled on. It's been so long. I cannot remember what it is. But we've definitely, I have talked about backpacks before, but we've never really dove in. Yeah. I'm still reeling from the revelation that our parents didn't have backpacks. Like I did all, were all their books just at school already? It was like, it was primarily an outdoorsy thing.

It was like a hiking thing. It was like a hiking thing. It was like if you were going to go camp, you had a backpack. But if you were going to go to school, you either had the leather strap that went around your books. Oh, God. They also made the little leather... I mean, they were basically backpacks, but they were like squared leather bags that fastened shut with buckles. So a backpack then. But not the nylon ones. Yeah, it was before jan sport came in and changed the whole game or the like the kind of the canvas

like you know side shoulder yeah uh but yeah it wasn't until the 80s really that you saw damn like backpacks exclusively being marketed for school children. Huh. I mean, wow. That was a lot of money they left on the table then before that. Because, oh man, I was all about it. There's even like, as I looked into it, there's even like a West Coast, East Coast approach to the backpack. Tell me everything about this.

So the first backpack with the zipper, 1938. And that was for like hiking, camping. I mean, that was probably around the invention of the zipper, right? Yeah. I don't, I said that I have no idea when the zipper got invented. No, that's true. Okay. So there's a store that was called Jerry's Outdoors that invented the first backpack with the zipper.

Okay. And that was called Jerry's Outdoors that invented the first backpack with the zipper. Okay. And that was primarily camping. 1967 is when they switched to nylon, a stronger, more durable, lighter. Right, better in every way. And I didn't realize this, but there was a guy, Murray Plitz and Skip Yell, who had an outdoor gear company in Seattle.

Okay. And Murray was dating a woman named Jan, who had a home sewing machine. Oh my God. And when they got married, Jansport was born. Jans, is it Jansport? Jansport. It's as if her name were Jan space sport. Okay.

Yeah. That's amazing. I had no idea that Jan, it was an actual Jan. There was an actual Jan. It makes sense. But that's wild. It's like if I started up a butcher shop and called it Rachel Beef, it's not, it's a strange. That's a little different, different honey than like a sporting goods

that's like a consumable that you're saying i guess that's fair rachel beef is not like a sort of pleasant image in my mind actually yeah no i don't like that i don't like thinking about you as as beef because you're not You're a person. Such a feminist. I love that about you. Yeah. Happy International Women's Day. You are not beef. So, as I mentioned, Jansport opened up their store and they were actually attached to a University of Washington bookstore.

And so when the weather got real bad, people would buy these backpacks to put their books in. Clever. And then all of a sudden it was like, hey, you know what? Everybody should have one of these books. Yeah, these are incredible. They started making them specifically for books after that. They took some bus seat vinyl and sewed it to the bottom

to make it more durable. I definitely had some jansport backpacks growing up that were made out of toilet paper that were made out that were not they were made to last exactly six six week periods of schooling yeah they were made to last at one fall to the end of the next spring, and then they dissolved. What are you putting in there? Books and lunch. A lot of books. I remember just a tremendous amount of books. Yeah.

Like you would prioritize like, okay, well, these are the classes I have today, so I'll put the rest of the books in my locker so I don't hurt myself. See, I never used my locker i just carried around all my that's probably why my back is so fucked up oh well uh so 1982 ll bean featured the book pack and then in 1984 jansport released the spring break uh so on the west coast we had jansport. On the East Coast, L.L. Bean. Okay. All right. I feel like Jansport won that hands down, though.

Well, L.L. Bean has always, like, I've always seen that as more of like a catalog option, whereas Jansport, you go in the store, you pick it up. Seems like that's easier, you know? But you can get that nice little monogram with the L.L. Bean. I do like that. Damn it. The little initials. That's actually, actually,? But you can get that nice little monogram with the L-L-B. I do like that. Damn it.

The little initials. That's actually, actually I never had one of those and I thought the people who did were the biggest douches in the fucking world. Monogramming is like a big thing the further south you go. Like the idea of putting your initials

or your name on something. It's like a southern thing. Why? A little too popped collar for you actually that's my backpack as you can tell from the letters that are on who's anyway um so yeah so this is this is the 1980s this is like very recent right for the backpack it's so It just blows my mind a little bit. I love a good backpack. I loved a sleek backpack that I could fit my laptop, an iPad, and a game system into. And that was it.

That was all the space. And it slid perfectly underneath an airplane seat. And now that I also need space for 10 kids' cliff bars and a plastic bag with some undiarrhealed kid pants in them, that is no longer an option for me. So speaking of the sleeker backpack, I wanted to show you a picture of something. Backpack companies are beginning to sell accessories

that supplant backpacks for students in the digital age, such as Jansport's Digital Burrito, designed for students who just aren't carrying many books. It's a digital burrito. Jansport has made... They literally made the packaging look like a tortilla, and then you unroll it, and then you can slide your little cords and stuff in there.

Okay. Yeah, they just made a big burrito. Jansport's having fun with it just an $18 burrito package yeah inedible burrito people need to stop making things that look like food that isn't food because that's a trick on everyone oh hot take i'm just saying they got the what's the what's the we talked about it on munch squad and then one uh our friend ariel actually got one the bread mug from panera panera bread mug but it's also a hand warmer but it looks like a bread bowl can't you no no i think it's like

made out of like rubber and stuff oh it's a trick on me i don't like it um can i talk about my first thing yes uh talking about things that keep your hands warm uh and looks tasty in the cold air i'm talking about that steamed bun the bun that is steamed god i love a steamed bun and it takes many many forms and we'll we'll get into those forms um do you remember your first steamed bun yeah the first steamed bun i ever ate was in it was in tokyo and i went there with uh polygon in 20, God, that would have been 2013. I had one in Chicago. And so that would have been like 2006, maybe. And then basically not again for like a decade. Yeah. Because it's not super easy to find them.

Yeah. Yeah, I was in Tokyo. I remember I like hadn't necessarily done my homework on like getting around tokyo and like how to like find a restaurant that would have uh that i'd be able to like get into um so i sort of subsisted on 7-eleven uh steam buns they're called nikuman there uh and they have so many varieties and that's what i am going to talk about later but man when you are cold and a little bit peckish the ability to just walk into any convenience store and get one of these tasty little just little hot little nuggets that's going to fill you up on the inside

and warm you up on the outside there is it is the perfect food delivery vehicle. I cannot think of anything better. So the steam bun has taken many, many forms, many permutations across so many different like North and Southeast Asian cultures and cuisines. It's kind of tough to track its exact origin. The big sort of thing that it derives from are bao su, which is a Chinese steam bun. thing that it derives from our baosu which is a chinese steam bun and apocryphally like it's said that it was created by a chinese military strategist named juga liang uh and that he was the first one who just started stuffing you know chopped up meat inside these buns so that their soldiers could get you know bun power steamy bun power um but it's hard to tell like it's there's so many things we talk

about on this show specifically food things that are like a food idea a food structure that is iterated upon across different across generations and cultures and stuff like that so that it's kind of impossible to figure out like who was the first one who steamed up a beefy bun it's yeah and the important thing, the distinction to make, like better than a sandwich, right? Because like you've got full enclosure. Absolutely. You know, like nothing's leaking out the sides.

Cuter than a sandwich. That's true. And it's a mystery. When you look at a sandwich, you know what you're about to bite into. It's true. Steam bun, who knows? So like I said, there's a ton of different things to put inside of a steam bun and a bunch of different ways to kind of prepare it. And, you a big-ass steam bun that you poke a straw into and you drink the rich soup inside. And I was like, that's the fucking best thing I've ever seen.

They got sweet bean paste kaya, which is a jam made out of coconut and eggs. They also sometimes put custard up in there, sesame paste, pickles, lamb and potatoes. And the bun itself can be steamed. It can be pan fried. It can be grilled. It can be pan fried, it can be grilled, it can be sort of left open like a taco. I feel like that's kind of popular in a lot of Asian fusion places here in Austin. And yeah, like I said earlier, Nikuman are a staple food in Japan during like festivals and for, you know, street food vendors uh and then they just take over convenience

stores in the winter time from like september to april uh kind of like how we have like gross looking weird cheesy corn dogs on those rollers in every gas station like that is the equivalent there except their shit like actually slaps so hard uh and they also go so hard on the different flavors so it's not just pork and beef in the nikuman that is sold in uh in convenience stores in japan here's just i'm gonna go down the list here uh circle k has got a white curry mon uh squid ink seafood mon uh deli chicken mon with mayo style flavor i'm okay i like the flavor mayo so i'll enjoy a mayo style flavor it sounds like maybe just kind of like chicken salad that's true uh mini stop has got a few they got a uh a boiled pork cube crunchy curry mon uh a crunchy cheese lasagna mon and a belgian chocolate mon

okay family mart's working with that cream cheese mon the choco mon the chestnut mon there's a hatsune miku mon which is just a sort of salty green onion steam bun but the it looks like hatsune miku the blue haired hologram and then when you bite into it she pops out it looks gross it looks by by which i mean it doesn't it looks like a weird homunculus of a, it got dragged when it was introduced because people were like, this just looks like a blue haired, like, gopher. This looks terrible. Let's see. Lawson has a milk caramel Mon. I'm curious about a dessert steam bun.

I'm into it. I'm into it. I can't see anything wrong with it. 7-Eleven, of course, comes at you with the pizza mon, which, wow. You know what this is reminding me of is kolaches. Kolaches? Yeah, sure. I would see that.

I mean, kolache is definitely like a more like heavy. Yeah. Because of the bread. There's something about the steaminess of it that makes it for me. Yeah. of it that that makes it for me because it's it is uh because it is a little wet and it is extremely hot and steaming it it it almost disperses heat in a way that is just pleasant to hold you know we've also talked about the tamale recently i feel like there is something about a steamed food a steamed vehicle that we are interested in yeah we yeah i mean we do talk

about this a lot i enjoy we enjoy a good food delivery vehicle sort of genre and i feel like steam bun is huge our hands messy i hate it um also this is one of those segments that while i was preparing for it it made me the hungriest for steam buns i've ever been in my entire fucking life so we need to acquire some today. Yeah, I'm into it. Okay, good. But for right now, let's fill our bellies up with advertisements. Can I steal you away? Yes. Oh, there is a loud bird. I mean, we've been leaving the door open in the studio and i suppose our

listeners will tell us if they don't like the bird noises but uh i like the good air inside of the room sometimes i forget with those headphones on that you can't hear all the uh the foley yeah um yeah let us know audience vote here in the poll we're gonna put it up right now and you just click thumbs up and thumbs down. Do you like the bird noises? But for right now, we do have some plumpo prompts and I want to read the first one because it's for Rio and it's from Oppie who says,

Dear Lisa of 2021, I don't know where you are right now or what you're up to as you listen to this, but no matter where this Jumbotron finds you, know that I am thinking of you, that I love you very much and that the whole world is still out there waiting for you to discover it. This is your sign. Go get it.

Is this a sort of Manchurian candidate style activation code for Rio? I feel like one of the things you worry about the most with these Jumbotrons is activating. Yeah, you got to because we can't be held accountable for that. We can't be held accountable. Can I read the next one? Please. This is for Amy Kathleen. It is from Wade.

Amy Kathleen, I'm proud of you and all the work you're doing to grow. It's an honor to have you in my life. After seeing how much ice cream you can stack on your palm without touching any fingers, I'm confident you would do reasonably well on Taskmaster. That is the ultimate compliment I believe you could pay somebody in this day and age. I really think I'd do good on Taskmaster. I really do. It's a shame that I'll never be on that show.

But man, I think I'd really crush it. I love lateral funding. Cindy was talking about that once of like just getting like a full family Taskmaster. Ooh. Incredible. Yeah. Although last time they tried to bring Taskmaster to the United. We definitely did a thing on Taskmaster.

How do we not remember anything we've ever talked about on this show we've been doing for three years? We talk about things we like and it turns out we do that when we're not recording too. Yeah, that's fair. That's true. We talk about things we like, and it turns out we do that when we're not recording, too. Yeah, that's fair. That's true. Hey, I'm Janet Varney, host of the JV Club podcast. Ah, high school.

Was it a time of adventure, romance, and discovery? Class of 95, we did it! Or a time of angst, disappointment, and confusion? We're all tied together by four years of trauma at this place, but enjoy adulthood, I guess. The truth is, it was both. So join me on the JV Club podcast where I invite some great friends like Kristen Bell, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Neil Patrick Harris, and Keegan-Michael Key to talk about high school, the good, the bad, and everything in between. My teenage mood swings are getting harder to manage. The JV Club. Find it on Maximum Fun.

What's your second thing? My second thing is a trip to the Poetry Corner. Oh my God. It's been a little while. Hold on, let me strap in. Gotta be careful let me put my helmet on and my elbow pads it's dangerous because it's dangerous sometimes the poems hit you so hard i don't want to get knocked out of my seat out the window and fall that's how all i can think about is how you're sitting right now.

I'm sitting kind of like a gargoyle, aren't I? I'm perched, ready to go to the poetry corner. Just really, really showing me what happens. It's a vertical man spread. It's like a, do you know what I mean? It's going up. Yeah, the knees are up and out. Yeah, I'm sort of in a birthing position,

which maybe, do you think it's like a sympathy thing probably that's interesting probably well the only thing i'm gonna birth right now is attention that i'm going to pay to you while you do this incredible segment i think with the poetry corner more than like a helmet and a seat belt you need like a box of kleenex oh yeah and a Oh, is this one of those? It could be worse. I'll say that. Fuck.

The poet I am doing is one that I have recently become aware of. So I got, for any of you that are looking for like the new poets on the scene,

there's a Best American Poets that comes out, like an anthology that comes out every year and i got the uh 2021 because i was looking to hear who was out there today you know william carlos williams been gone for a long time sure yeah uh and that is where i found rachel eliza griffiths you looked at me as if i was going to say something like, hey, that sounds like my name. Is that what you were expecting? Well, I mean. You looked at me like, got something to say about that?

A little bit. Okay. Well, I don't. So she is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. And recently, in 2020, released a collection of poetry and photography called seeing the body uh which is compiled in the aftermath of her mother's death her collection pairs poetry and photography and exploring memory and black womanhood in the american landscape and rebirth like there's a lot going on in this book i'm definitely going to order it after reading some of her poems. I do not think

I can read any poems from that book because it is devastating. The poem I read in the anthology was called Good Mother. And it is about the experience of her going to a pharmacy, like a CVS or Walgreens, after her mom has passed on like uh in the mother's day season oh and i was just like oh can't read this one out loud no you can't yeah terrible we've never had to stop doing the show in the middle of the episode before but that would definitely be the case of that yeah yeah she um she's written several collections of poetry. So I mentioned Seeing the Body, which just came out in 2020. There was Lighting the Shadow in 2015, The Requited Distance in 2011, Mule and Pear in 2011, and Miracle Arrhythmia in 2010. She actually got her MFA from Sarah Lawrence in creative writing and appeared in the first ever poetry issue of Oprah magazine, which is kind of incredible.

So she has a debut novel coming out from Random House. So she like does everything. She's incredible. Yeah, no kidding. But she also writes really well about death and grief, which while I didn't wasn't able to summon the strength to read poems about her mother i found another poem that i really wanted to share it's actually published in the new yorker in 2019 called heart of darkness and it is about the death of cecil taylor who was a american pianist and poet kind of like an instrumental figure in the New York jazz scene.

Yeah. And so she wrote this poem about him and meeting him. And I just found it to be a really lovely tribute. So I wanted to read it. It's called Heart of Darkness. Years ago, I went to NoHo Star with some poets and Cecil Taylor. NoHo Star is closed now and Cecil died yesterday. I walked to Union Square and watched black men playing chess, rubbing their jaws while the afternoon light poured down the

gentle rooks of their fingers hanging above a queen or pawn. Cecil Taylor sat across the table from me wearing leather gym shorts, rainbow striped knee socks, a fringe vest, and a face so musical I could hear the notes blunting and banging as he low laughed and looked like a lion who had bitten off the ancient secret of a soft roar. I liked him right away. Said yes when he asked me if I would share a dessert with him. I, in an ivory dress that was vintage, the kind my mother would have worn, with chiffon sleeves, the shining air made the loose dress cling to me. The way a special music clung to Cecil Taylor followed the radical swing and swag of his voice. Do you want to have the heart of darkness together, he said. That looks sweet enough.

I remembered later when we stood on the sidewalk, sugar and poetry in us. Heat coming off the summer night in the city always made me feel like I could never leave New York. I get this tunnel vision sometimes when you're reading a poem, especially one that is as like sort of visual as that, where it's like everything else. Yeah, it's very, very disorienting and incredible. That was so good yeah i i liked reading that one because one i could get through it it was close there it was a squeaker at the end um but also it really kind of captures one of her strengths you know that makes this this newer book of hers about her mother so powerful is that like her

ability to really attach herself to qualities and moments with a person that are so definitive and so like indicative of who they are and what makes them so incredible right and like and and compose these really like lovely tributes yeah you know that make you feel like, oh, she like, she really got him. You know, in an interview in the LA Review of Books that came out in 2020, she was asked if she believed that writing could heal. And she said, writing this book didn't and doesn't heal my grief. It armed me with tools, sure, and shown me so much about who I am and who I am becoming. I'd throw every copy of this book in the trash if I could pick up the phone and hear my mother ask me what I'm cooking for dinner.

Because of the way that other writers and readers have responded to the work, I do believe its existence is a positive thing. Let it give itself to others who need it. I needed to write it, and I did. It was necessary for me to go directly through it, that intimacy in the process of writing, which was like the process of writing, which was like crawling and clawing to reflect on my life and how I perceive my art. Writing makes me feel embodied and empowered because of the listening that it requires. I do believe listening can be healing. I really liked thinking of it that way because I'm always impressed by people that can write these kind of tributes, you know, after somebody dies,

because it's, it's such an emotionally like scary, vulnerable place. And to phrase it as like listening that she like had to, in order to do it, she had to do the listening and the listening was what was healing. I thought like, that's a really nice way to think of it of less of like,

you're trying to create something from nothing, but you're trying to like, listen to your experience and kind of put together something that represents that. So I found that really powerful. I would encourage you all that poem that I mentioned, Good Mother, that I can't read out loud is also very good. That whole book just devastating yeah yeah and devastating that was amazing uh my second thing is uh uh i should actually i should narrow this down and say regular size jenga because you don't like the the big bar it's come back in a big way right with big jenga that happens and maybe this is a localized thing here in austin okay i didn't i i assume not but i feel like every outdoor every bar with an outdoor space had big jenga in it so for a while so loud when it falls down it's the loudest noise in the entire universe um it's the noise of a sun exploding it's so so so loud and

scares me and i'm always afraid it's gonna fall and a sun exploding. It's so, so, so loud and scares me. And I'm always afraid it's going to fall and hurt somebody. And it probably does a lot. So I'm going to say regular size Jenga though is pretty, pretty great. Um, and I've played it with Henry once or twice, but honestly, though he enjoys it, it's a lot of work to set up the tower and having him do a smash to it um you know seconds after the game gets going it makes me not want to continue sort of that um that process uh jenga tower 54 blocks you stack them up three by three alternating you get it you know jenga right yeah

and miraculously some of them are loose some of those little pieces are loose oh i'm gonna get it you know jenga right yeah and miraculously some of them are loose some of those little pieces are loose oh i'm gonna get it i'm gonna get into that and it's that's the best part man is when you find one of those loose pieces of of the it's it's uh yeah it's so satisfying i play with people who i feel like like uno there are people who enforce different rules for jenga and some of them don't exist. You are allowed to bump pieces. You're allowed to bump. I know.

Yeah. Some people are like, well, you touched it. It's not, yeah, it's not chess where if you, you know, take your finger off the piece,

that's it. No, it, but you do, if you do move a piece while you're bumping them, you do have to like put it back where it was before you can start touching another piece. You are only allowed to use one hand

while doing things. So none of this like pincering a piece with like both of your index fingers. I've definitely seen people do that. Yeah, that's bullshit. Think back to every game you've played with people who did that. You won that game because they were cheating.

And that's all that I'll say about that. Your turn ends when somebody else touches the tower or after 10 seconds have passed since your move. You take a brick out and you got to put it on the very top. And thus the tower continues to get taller and more and more and more unstable. So the tower has to be stable for 10 seconds before your turn ends.

So you can just sit there and watch it and wait. I'm not sure physics agrees with that time span. Is there really a tower that's going to take 10 entire seconds to fall down? I can't make heads or tails of that. Maybe if a stiff wind is blowing and you want to wait and see. And of course, you can only take you know uh bricks from uh below the top two yeah none of this like oh i just pick one up from it no that's bs so jingo was invented by a a woman named leslie scott and it's based on a game that she just used to play with her family

using this set of building blocks that uh that her family bought from a sawmill in Ghana, which is where she lived for most of her life. And actually, the word Jenga is a shortened Swahili word, which is Kujinga, which means to build. Never knew that. And so, you know, she invented this game just based on a game that she used to play with her family. And then during the 80s, distribution for it exploded and turned it into the staple board game that it is now. It has sold, as of this year, over 90 million copies, which is over – not over, about 5 billion Jenga blocks, which is a whole bunch of Jenga blocks. So according to the packaging of one of the editions of Jenga, the tallest tower that's ever been built was on one of these original sets by a distributor whose name was Robert Grebler.

And he built one that is 40 and two thirds levels tall before it fell down. Which if you think about it is there's only 54 blocks in a set. That is an extremely big tower. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess if it's perfectly balanced. Right.

You could do like one block in a row. But it is extremely hard to accomplish that. And I will tell you why. And this is the thing that completely shattered my reality when I read it. And this is the thing that completely shattered my reality when I read it. Each Jenga block is meant to be 1.5 centimeters tall, 2.5 centimeters wide, and 7.5 centimeters long by design. That is how long they're supposed to be. light and a random and sometimes nearly imperceptible variation on one of those dimensions to make them flawed like inherently flawed by design it's not an accident so when you have a brick that is loose oh right it is because maybe it is like just imperceptibly a little bit shorter than the other bricks.

Wild. Yes. So that's why it makes it so tough to do like a perfect stack up to the heavens because you are inherently using building materials that are offset. Wow. Yeah. And I've definitely noticed that before I feel like while playing, especially like while

stacking up the tower to begin with but i would chalk it up to like oh it's just humidity in the air or oh we have a bad jenga block here or oh this must have broken some no it's by design jenga blocks are not not like perfectly uniform it's it's almost like you could make your own you could get a bunch of jenga sets and you could make your own road set that you like take all of those pieces yeah i like to play with a shallow set it's like your own pool cue you like yeah you like get out your little briefcase and there's all your that's bs though you can't play jenga with your own pool cue. You like get out your little briefcase and there's all your. That's BS though. You can't play Jenga with your own set, I feel like, because that's like playing pool on like a pool table that, you know, tilt slightly to the left there so you can, you

know, hustle people on it. Man, there are probably Jenga hustlers out there. Anyway, one time I played Jenga Truth or Dare and that was too much compound anxiety for me. I'm already nervous enough playing Jenga Truth or Dare and that was too much compound anxiety for me. I'm already nervous enough playing Jenga as it is. I don't need like my deep dark secrets to come out or maybe I'm supposed to do a kiss to somebody. No thanks. Do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Well good because I have a couple submissions here. The first one

is from Jaya who says I just wanted to say that I was listening to episode 154 and decided to listen to that Wolf Parade album and I am straight vibing. Here I am, a 20-year-old college student during a pandemic who hasn't listened to new-to-me music in months, now listening to a 2005 indie rock album and loving it. So I'm just here to thank you for this recommendation. It brought me joy today. We get a lot of feedback like this, but this one really delighted me. The idea of somebody cooped up, I mean, like we we all are in quarantine and not necessarily being exposed to a lot of like new media yeah and finding what is a pretty righteous rock and roll album is it's a really good reminder i think you know as as people in our 30s we sometimes think well everybody our age

knows about this yeah but there's always the chance that you're going to find a younger listener or maybe somebody who just wasn't aware and really, really changed their trajectory. I mean, Apologies to the Queen Mary is at this point a 16-year-old rock album, which is devastating. John says, my small wonder is when your car's turn signal matches up perfectly with the BPM of whatever song you're listening to it doesn't happen often but when it does it's one of the most satisfying things ever pretty sure we've talked about that before but also it happened to me recently uh while i was out driving to uh just some lo-fi chill chill hop song and uh oh the vibe was nice i didn't even take i didn't even want to take the turn. I sat at the green light for a while just because the vibe was so right. And I knew I'd never capture it again. Hey, thanks 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 to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. I wanted to encourage people, if they haven't checked out Judge John Hodgman, to do so. We are at the one-year anniversary of the cruise that we were on right before lockdown happened. And we were supposed to see our friend John Hodgman on that cruise.

Oh, that's right. He couldn't go because he had been in Europe. And that was where we thought everything bad was. And then it turned out everything was bad everything little did we know everywhere uh that the magic was in us all along yeah um and hey we got other stuff at macroy.family uh merchandise and things and um what else huh what else babe we are uh What else, huh? What else, babe? We are... We're gonna have a new baby here.

Very, very soon. Very, very soon. And it's not scheduled to come out until the end of the month. So, you know, maybe some regular programming until then. But I would wager that the week where the baby does arrive,

there will not be an episode that week and then everything that comes after that for a while. Unless the baby arrives on like a Thursday or Friday, like a real party boy. Like a real party boy. And then we would have had an episode that week. All of this is to say that we are entering wild boy country and anything can happen and just be ready just be ready for it

like a thief in the night this baby will arrive i heard you talking about our new baby on um a bim bam yeah i realized there are a lot of people that probably didn't know that there was another gonna be a second yeah um yeah it's to be a real zoo over here. Am I right? Or am I right? And it's going to be nothing but pee again and poop again all over. Our older son is just going to have to start fending for himself. He's going to have to.

We really need to teach him how to make his own chicken nuggets. How to make grilled cheese. Oh my God. It's going to be so rough. 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.

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