Wonderful! - Wonderful! 183: Nature’s Master Chief

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Griffin’s favorite geographical feature! Rachel’s favorite fashion design!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Support AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate Support the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ 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. And right now, we are traveling through the airwaves in a pretty unusual way, I'd say, which is to say, by the seat of our pants. We're just sitting downstairs, just got little son down for a nap. Big son started daycare again today. Now, little son, fun thing about him, only sleeps in about 20 minute increments. We've talked about this.

But that is to say, we now know that we live our lives 20 minutes at a time. And so we're going to be recording this episode probably in two chunks for the rest of- Fast and the Furious. Fast and Furious. I have my topic prepared. Rachel does not. I do not. Have you considered the possibility that this is going to be a freakishly long nap and then

we're just going to be sitting here and you're going to be like having to freestyle a topic for the first time i am wondering so there there's a real sliding doors situation where there's the topic i would have prepared had we not started my goodness yeah and now there's the topic that i will prepare in response just by looking around at shit in the room well no to whatever your topic is okay i was gonna say i got a lot of great stuff in my office so if you see um you know uh rug rug i like rug name tags nintendo 3ds charger that i have out for some reason ceiling fan ceiling fan we love him then you know what if that's what we do this episode that's what we do this episode people are getting that down dirty raw stuff from wonderful this month and they know what they signed up for. Yeah. This is wonderful.

It's a show where we talk about things that we like, things that we are into. And we literally just ran up the stairs. I'm a little gassed, as they say. Do you have any small? I do, actually. Oh, what you got? I was going to make sure that we did that segment. Okay, okay.

Because I have been wanting to bring this for weeks, and I keep forgetting. And it is, and this is something that only people that have been around small infants will know yeah it's getting that fuzz out from in between the fingers oh my god it's i mean if okay if you don't have children i'm gonna get nasty here but sometimes you get some stuff out of your belly button and it's like whoa that was a lot of stuff in there i don't know maybe this is just a me thing but it's the same thing except a child has what? Eight of those crevices in their hands alone? Yeah. Oh, that's good stuff.

So little babies keep their fists clenched very often. Especially when they're full of rage and hatred, like our small baby. And so sometimes when they stretch their fingers out, you can get some little fuzz out from there. Get that crud. And it's the most satisfying. Because it's a lot, man. It's a lot.

And it regenerates every day. Instantly. I don't know. It's like he's grabbing garments and squeezing, just raking his fingers across them. Yeah. Wow. In all that time, I really should have had something, but I didn't. It's fair.

You got excited about the finger fuzz. There was an Indian restaurant we used to eat at here all the time in Austin. And it was very reliable, very fast. Everything was pretty tasty. And then I think that we both get food poisoning like or just you. I mean, as I remember it, it was just me. You got some of the worst food poisoning I've seen from you. And we said, no, never again.

We've been burned. And that was not a joke. Three, four years ago. I just like I couldn't I couldn't get excited about it. Yeah, because you've seen it from both sides now, as Joni Mitchell says. Her favorite song about food poisoning. Yeah, about getting sick with Indian food. But you know what?

This week, took a look in the mirror. We said, you know what? Maybe it's time to open our hearts back up. When you have dietary restrictions that rotate around dairy and soy, you start looking at cuisines that are more accessible to you. Yep. And Indian food is a great option for me right now.

So we both went wild. We both got two entrees each that we continued to eat over the course of like a whole week. I just finished mine and- I think of that as like a Travis McElroy tip. Oh yeah. That I did not exercise until very recently.

Until you married into our monstrous family yeah um do you want to know what i've prepared for you for my topic for this episode is please waterfalls not just the song although i could do a whole thing about the song yeah it is um griffin my favorite tlc song griffin has performed that song i have it used to be one of my uh it was a karaoke go-to for a while it isn't i did it a couple times at an open mic uh yes i i adore that song yeah like a very spirited performance you give yeah it's not one of those like winky like oh can you believe i'm singing the song it's like no i love this song it's got a beauty like the the hook of it

is great and the verses go some very interesting and dark places might i add that's fair um but uh no i want to talk about the actual water the thing the water thing this water water feature that makes it sound like a thing you have in your front yard i couldn't find like the classification of it's not a body of water it is a it's a it's just when water kind of falls and there's that can mean a lot of sort of different things because there's a lot of different types of waterfalls. But it's just like, I think we can all agree, a nice big mountain, love it.

A big canyon. I've never been to the Grand Canyon, but I've seen some canyons before. I love a good canyon or a gulch with a river running through it. Yes, please. Have you been to Niagara Falls? I've not even been to the Big Boy, no.

Oh, that's the biggest boy. I know, you've been there, right? Yeah. It seems like the kind of place that your parents would just kind of spirit you away to on a weekend. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

No, I've never been to, I would say the most majestic waterfall I've seen is probably Ruby Falls in Chattanooga, which is an indoor cavernous waterfall. That sounds like the best beginning to a country song. Ruby Falls Chattanooga? Yeah. Or just the word Chattanooga.

Chattanooga. It's fantastic. It was a fine trip. I remember I took home a lot of fake gemstones from that trip. My nanny took me. It was a great time at Ruby Falls, but there are far more majestic. If you live in Chattanooga, I'm not trying to diss your beloved waterfall, but there's better ones out there. But any waterfall I love. And this segment wasn't inspired by some profound waterfall childhood

memory that I have. Although living in West Virginia, one of my great regrets is that I was not more nature-y because there's a lot of great hiking in West Virginia, obviously, and a lot of great waterfalls that I found while looking up this segment. Yeah, you know, I will say at some point in our relationship, Griffin expressed his shock to me that I had never been whitewater rafting. Yes. And then expressed to me that it was a very easy thing to come by where you lived. Yeah, I mean, I only did it a few times, but every time it left like an indelible impression on me of just like, I need to be more outdoorsy because this fucking rules and it does why why water rafting is kind of like

going over a bunch of really small waterfalls if you think about it sometimes you go over a big waterfall but i was never a good enough rafter to do that anyway waterfalls uh what inspired it is it's been raining constantly in austin and we have a creek that runs through our backyard, a sort of short hop from our house. And it's been going nonstop since these rains have come. And a little walk down the creek, there's like this really nice sort of rocky step where the water just goes down like three feet or so over like a series of rocky steps. And it's so lovely. And me and Henry raced sticks and leaves down it and it was just delightful.

And it made me think like, anytime I see a waterfall, it's like the one thing in nature that like guaranteed I will see it and just be like, wow, that's good stuff. So I have learned a lot about waterfalls today, specifically that there's a lot of different classifications and ratings. And the ratings are like sort of on a logarithmic scale. So something like I think Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world.

I believe it's in Venezuela. It's very, very big. And so it's a 10 rating. Niagara Falls, I think, is maybe a nine. And then obviously like a week one in our backyard is probably, I don't even know if it would register on the scale. But there's a ton of different types of waterfalls that I'd never really even kind of thought about before. There's lots of different ways that water can fall off a thing. Huh?

I have no idea how to contribute to this. Okay, so there are ledge waterfalls where the water goes over the edge and then it stays partially in contact with the wall of bedrock as it goes down. And then from there, those get broken down into sheet falls where the water is wider than the waterfall is high. But on the inverse are curtain falls where it's a narrow stream that falls a farther way down. And then there are classical falls, where it's just like a square, where it's just the height and the length of the waterfall are the same. But that's if the water stays in contact with the wall, which sometimes it does the whole way down, which are called horsetail falls, which is very good. And horsetail falls, you can think of as like a slide, right? Like the water stays in contact with the wall the entire way down.

And sure enough, that breaks down into slides, ribbons, chutes, and fans, where it splashes down and then kind of spreads out, right? And then there are plunge falls, where the water just goes over the edge and falls all the way down. And those are the ones that you do not want to stand underneath because it will hurt your body quite a bit

when that big water falls right on you. There are ephemeral falls that only run, obviously, after rains, such as the bodacious and proud waterfall in our backyard or glacial meltwater. There's a lot of sort of glacial falls in national parks and also glaciers. of sort of glacial falls and you know national parks and also you know glaciers um but what i found really fascinating about waterfalls that i learned about when studying about these majestic big beauties and again i don't think i ever had a sort of geological study class like ever in all of my tutelage i literally took geology my freshman year of college maybe the worst grade i've ever gotten in a college course i had to take okay so i same i had to take one of the requirements to graduate from marshall is you had to take an earth sciences class which could mean anything and i i may have taken a geology

class actually now i think about it but i only went to it like three times during test days and i just like studied really hard before you people are the worst i mean i got like a c but i i passed the class uh because i didn't care about well learning but also geology but now i find this stuff very very fascinating um so what i find very fascinating is that there are these ephemeral falls that only run at certain times but in a manner of speaking, all waterfalls are ephemeral because the rate at which they experience erosion is so much faster than any other form of erosion you can think of. Aside from, I guess, like beachside erosion where the waves are lapping away at it. You get at the edge of the water where the waterfall sort of like falls off. That erodes fairly quickly, right? And then if it makes contact with the wall as of like falls off that erodes fairly quickly right

and then if it makes contact with the wall as it goes down that erodes very quickly and it hits the bottom and splashes and that throws water quickly up onto the the bedrock wall which erodes that away which is why a lot of waterfalls have sort of caverns behind them and as that erodes that makes the top of the waterfall erode even faster so like at uh at its fastest the uh the like peak of a waterfall where the water goes over the surface that point can retreat a meter and a half every year which is wow super super super super fast now i'm really wondering about niagara falls if it's like gotten bigger i mean mean, I think Niagara Falls is big enough that it's... But if it just keeps getting wider because of the erosion.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Because naturally, like waterfalls turn into gulches or valleys or whatever as they fall. Not only that, but the erosive, which I don't know if is a word, force at the bottom of the waterfall right the water hits the the pool at the bottom and a lot of the times that will dig a hole downward as as the force of that water goes and then that will form a whirlpool which will catch you know sediment and rocks and everything in it and basically form this insane drill that will just burrow down into the earth as these rocks get whipped around against other rocks super, super quickly in this whirlpool, which changes the geography of the waterfall even further.

I found that so fascinating. It's something I'd never really considered before. I find things like the very, very slow formation of stalagmites and stalactites as water drips through the limestone or whatever. And over the course of like millions of years forms this, you know, rocky spire. Like that's rad to me. Cenotes are like in like so wild that there can be these underwater channels that run over the, like the entirety of, of, of, you know, a whole country, a whole landmass that is formed just by water pressing up against a thing. I think that's really interesting. And waterfalls are doing that at a nearly visible rate,

like at a rate that you could potentially clock if you keep going back to the same waterfall over the course of a year. Yeah, I just thought that was really interesting. I think you like geology. I might like geology. I think maybe you should do some more of it. I just find, I find forces like that very interesting. And I think that what sort of resonated with me while learning about waterfalls was that maybe that is part of the majesty of it, right?

Like waterfalls, look, i think objectively very cool like it is a it is a lovely thing to see a nice big waterfall or even like a small babbling brook or some rapids or whatever like that's very interesting but learning like the righteous power of these things that they form these like hydro drills down into the ground like it is that why they're so majestic like is that a contributing factor of it like you see it and just part of you knows like damn that's strong water right there powerful water that's really powerful well i mean there's the whole thing with the dams right like yeah you you hold that water back and you can you can run a city yeah that's how that works, right? Yeah.

And also, I mean, the biggest thing for me is that's, I mean, that's God's white noise right there. That's the first white noise, you know, the first human beings to need a sort of sleep aid took a camp out by a waterfall and they were like, damn, that was the best sleep I ever got in my whole life. Yeah. It must be this incredible waterfall making this soothing sound. It's not always soothing.

Sometimes it's loud as hell. There's a series of falls called the Ograbies Falls in South Africa. And they just plummet, just these, a whole wall of waterfalls, a series of them that fall into this barren canyon that echoes the sound of the waterfall and you can hear it up to 25 miles away wow so that's a pretty loud one that might uh south africa on the rabies falls it's it that might be a little too much white noise even for me but uh waterfalls man they're good yeah they're good and i appreciate them don't let it be said like griffin he's an indoor he only likes his video games he stays inside he plays in halo and he plays a final fantasy he stays inside and he just games out with all of his internet buddies

that's true that's true but i can get out there yeah i can find you can go look at something i look at a waterfall i'm like that's like a like a Master Chief to me, but nature made it. Waterfalls is nature's Master Chief. That's beautiful. Think I steal you away? Yes. Thanks. Oh, man, we've got a couple of armbar bombs here, and I want to read the first one, can I please?

Yes. Because it's for bro, and it's from bro who says, hey bro, thanks for being the best friend a person could ever hope for. We've been through a lot over the last couple of years, but I know we have nothing but wonderful things coming our way. No regrets. I love you. Also, if this is around your birthday, happy birthday. It sounds like bro wanted this for early June. So just crushed it.

I like this because there's a lot of bros out there listening. There is. And it's like, is that for me? It could be. Maybe. Look in your heart, are you a bro? Hey, you a bro? How do you say that word if you saw someone on the street and you're like, that's my bro right there.

How would you say that? I would say bro. You wouldn't give it a little bra? No. Hold on, wait. Would you give it a little brah? No. You wouldn't get, hold on, wait. Would you give it a little brah brah? No, honey. Okay.

Can I read the next one? Oh, yeah. This is for Chikara. It is from M. Hi, Chikara. This is a message to remind you that your existence is a gift to everyone around you. The world is so much brighter because you are in it. I know the past year has been crushing so much brighter because you are in it. I know the

past year has been crushingly heavy. Thank you for keeping on. You are doing an amazing job. Things will get better and you are very good. From M. I believe it. And I didn't until this incredible message from M to Chikara that bad skies are gonna not be bad. Put on a happy face. We all had to do a quarantine, but put on a happy face. We got vaccines all over the place. I wish you knew more about musical theater.

Yeah, I know. I feel like I let you down constantly with that lack of knowledge. It's the only way in which you let me down constantly. Oh. But it... It is constant. It is constant. But, like, that means that every other way, you are a perfect, perfect partner for me. Hey there, beautiful people.

Did you hear that good, good news? Something about the baby Jesusesus he's coming back or do you mean the fact that apple podcast is named fanti one of the best shows of 2020 i mean we already knew that we was hot stuff but a little extra validation never hurts okay hosted by me writer and journalist jared hill And me, the ebony entrantress myself, Travelle Anderson. Fanti is your home for complex conversations about the gray areas in our lives, the people, places, and things

we're huge fans of but got some anti-feelings toward. You name it, we fanti-ing. Nobody's off limits. Check us out every Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your slay-worthy audio. Rachel, it's a brand new day. Literally. Because we couldn't finish this

yesterday, but we've got probably another eight minutes here. Do you want to tell me about your topic for this week's episode, which is now certainly going to be late. Stripes. Oh, man. In the context of clothes, we're talking about zebra.

We're talking about. We're talking about fashion. The white ones. Fashion stripes. Okay. Okay. I'm wearing them right dang now, aren't I? Yeah.

I was wearing them yesterday. I was also wearing them yesterday. I was wearing, and I'm ashamed to admit this, striped t-shirt with flannel over it. And I wore that to daycare to drop off our son. Isn't that embarrassing? I'm your husband. That might come, but they might track that back to you.

I don't really mind your fashion. Okay, stripes then. Yeah, stripes. I love stripes. Oh, for sure. Always love stripes oh for sure always love stripes yeah horizontal vertical you remember that song it's like polka dots checks and stripes was a fashion this thing is like raffi or something no you didn't fuck with raffi i mean as much as any kid did as much as any kid fucked with raffi i guess um i i find myself just completely drawn to stripes, both like in my clothes and then also just like in patterns on like, you know, furniture and like, you know, gear.

Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed that about you. Like if I were to get like an accessory, like a purse or a shoe. Yeah, sure. A bangle. I love a stripe on it a brooch we talk about a lot how you say that word brooch and not brooch it's got to be one of those it's okay either way things yeah like aunt or aunt oh man but it's what it says. Yeah, sure. You know? Stripes, huh? Stripes.

A lot of history behind stripes. Okay. Do you have a sense? Like, when you think of, like, the iconic stripe, what are you thinking of? Like a sailor's outfit? Yeah, yeah. Like blue and white, like the sailors wore it. I don't know if it had a functional purpose. Like, if you fell in the water, like like the stripes made it easier to see your clothes.

So that is part of it. Yeah. So we're talking about fishermen, French sailors in 1858. The stripes made it easier for people to find them if they fell into the water. I can't believe I got that right. Are you kidding me? That's wild. You're 100 right um it's so rare during one of your segments that i feel smart uh this is uh this is a big moment for me i really needed this today

um yeah it's it's a very like french look like when i like if you do like a black and white stripe you know a little mime it's like a mime costume with that too is that but is that something that is like it was a standard sort of french garment for non-mimes um so there's there's a history of stripes that go back to the middle ages okay and in the middle ages it was like not it was like not a good look. It was like, the example they give, they say only the social outcasts, such as prostitutes, jugglers, and clowns wore the pattern. It's my favorite Cher song. Jugglers.

Jugglers, yeah. The hatred of jugglers, I guess. Can I say, can I admit something? You don't really care about it. I don't really even care about that anymore. It's a strange bit to adopt then, I think. It was a long time ago. There are archives that say in 1310 in northern France,

a cobbler was condemned to death for being spotted wearing stripes. I mean, I assume that people at some point in history have been condemned to death for every conceivable thing at this point that's fair uh and then of course you know prisoners prisoners wore stripes yeah so if they fell in the water it'd be easier to see to see them is there a reason for this is there a because now i'm thinking about like if there's a functional reason for stripes as prisoner. Well, it's the same as the water, right? Like it's just easier to see.

It stands out, the stark contrast. I guess, yeah. You know, like if you're running away in like a solid color, it's easier for you to blend in. Well, I guess why orange, I don't know if this is a thing. No, we don't know. We don't know this. But yeah, I think, you know, a pattern of any kind would stand out. Yeah.

So, you know, could have been checkerboard. Yeah. You know? Sure. How come all flannel is checkered? Not all flannel is checkered, but like when people talk about a flannel shirt, flannel is the material, not the pattern, right? True.

That's weird, huh? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Right? True. That's weird, huh? Yeah.

Okay. So, and then we talk about fashion. We're talking about like Adidas with the three-stripe pattern. Hell yeah. That's been around since 1928. Adidas? Yeah. All Day I Dream About Soccer has been around since 1928?

Uh-huh. Isn't that wild? Have we? Is that the real acronym for it no i don't think so i think that's like middle school apocrypha i'll have to google that later to see if that's something that like my friend john in middle school told me and i thought it was the truth until this day. It may not be. And then we're talking about the stripes. You see Tommy Hilfiger big on the- Oh man, I forgot about Tommy Hilfiger. The red, white, and blue stripes, you know?

Can I admit something? Yeah. I had a Game Boy Color when I was young for like a birthday or something. Someone got me a customizable face plate for it that you could snap on the front of the game boy and it came with like little acrylic paints that you could paint whatever you wanted and i did a red white and blue tommy hill figure stripe pattern on it

whoa it's pretty cool so not patriotism you were no you were tommy hill figure no it was the only patriotism i have is for the country of Thomas Hillfiger. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the, like, horizontal versus vertical. Yeah. You know, people say, like, vertical stripes are slimming. I put nothing behind that. Yeah. And as right, you shouldn't, because it has been disproven.

1925, Hermann von Helmholtz created the Helmholtz illusion, which was two squares containing equally spaced stripes, one vertical, one horizontal, to kind of identify whether, you know, the horizontal lines look taller and narrower. the horizontal lines look taller and narrower okay um and so and in that study it did suggest that the stripes did look no okay taller and thinner yes they were i optical illusions are like sort of objectively yeah true for the most part i was saying that like i have never looked at a shirt exactly and looked at the layout of its stripes and gone that will change the shape of me yeah in someone's eyes and maybe it does or doesn't but i could give a shit yeah later research suggests that when you put stripes on a body it does it does nothing like it doesn't change the like they did research to figure out whether it changed people's perceptions yeah you know i say that i don't uh i don't own i don't believe i own any vertically striped shirts but that's not that's not because of how it makes my body they just don't make shirts like that

really yeah it's not it's a strange and and if if they do sometimes you're in danger of of looking like a um like a barber and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know how you got there, though. I'm trying to think. When I think of a vertical stripe, I think of like the red and white. The barber pole? Yeah. You know that's not a vertical stripe.

It's like a curly one that goes diagonal. That's right. That's okay. That's right. I don't think there is a costume that has a vertical stripe on it necessarily oh what about Beetlejuice those are horizontal I thought are they

I would have to look at the man to find out I'm sorry I gotta google it I mean you could just say his name a couple more times and he would show up here oh interesting so the sleeves are horizontal but the torso is vertical. What a...

So we're both right. A mold breaker. God, that Beetlejuice is so funny. You know, you do have vertically striped underwear now that I'm thinking about it. I do, I do, I do. And that's fine. And it makes your business... I mean, all of it does

look taller. It makes my zone look like wicked tall. Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. Um, yeah, so that's my topic stripes. Hey, it's good. Was it worth the wait? It was, I, you did have a full blown 24 hour period to prepare this topic and I appreciate the legwork that went into it. I think in the annals of history, people are going to look back on this episode. It's the one where we talked about falling water and the design of Stripe and say,

was it their hardest hitting episode? No. Was it their most momentous one? No. Was it one that they had exactly about 30 minutes between the course of two entire Earth days to one? No. Was it one that they had exactly about 30 minutes between the course of two entire Earth days to record? Yes, it was. No, but I do appreciate stripes. Makes you think, huh? I just, I think we both wear a lot of stripes and I think it's great. I think it is too. I think it is too. I also like a polka dot, but I didn't look into that. Oh, that I don't know about.

What about a floral pattern? Let's all go back and forth and talk about our favorite patterns on clothing. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use for our theme song, Winning 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. Go check out all the shows on MaximumFun.org. They got a bunch of really, really good ones like Triple Click and Stop Podcasting Yourself, Judge John Hodgman, One Bad Mother.

There's a bunch. There's a bunch of really good shows on MaximumFun.org. And we have other stuff at McElroy.Family if you want to check it out. Merch and the like. Yeah. I saw you all announced your virtual live show. Yeah. We're doing another live virtual MBMBAM, I believe June 25th.

And you can find tickets for that at Mac. Sawbones is opening. It's going to be a real heck of a good time. Yeah. And yeah, apologies for this short episode. Again, things by the end of this month, things are going to be, well, it's not wishful thinking. We feel pretty confident by the end of this month, things are going to be kind well, it's not wishful thinking. We feel pretty confident by the end of this month things are going to be kind of back to normal for us.

And I am way too superstitious to say anything like that out loud. Rachel does not, yeah. Rachel has knocked on enough wood to bloody her knuckles sort of permanently. But, you know, we're having a good time. And the special memories of this time, when you cherish them in your heart, it's a special, it's like you're pupating inside of the chrysalis of love that is...

And emerge. You emerge and the memories are the special ones that you keep in your heart and where there's one set of footprints, that's where you... The colors of the wing painted from the memories. The memories of the wind beneath our wings. And that's babies! Bye. Hey! Hey!