Wonderful! - Wonderful! 184: Ding, That's a Sin

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Rachel’s favorite decade of life! Griffin’s favorite synanthrope!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.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. We're here. You're here. Us here. Hot studio. Hot studio tonight. We got a hot one. It's not tonight. It's 1.21 p.m. Central Time, but it is a hot one because there's a big stink in the house, isn't there? And I'm not talking about the child that doesn't sleep or eat or do anything? Although he does stink.

He does do a stink every now and then. We have a second floor laundry room that has a drain in it. If the drain does not get water in it for a while. Yeah, it gets angry. It starts to release a stink. A bad stink. And Rachel tried to fix it. And I don't want to say this and make you mad, but it made it way stinkier. And it's everywhere now.

It's in the kitchen. It's everywhere. It's got gotta get worse before it gets better. The house has a big stink and we're going through it like the one guy, I think maybe Teddy Roosevelt or somebody like that said, if you're going through heck, keep going. So Griffin opened up all the windows and it's a very hot day in Austin.

Muggy. And there's nothing that is harder for me than a sweaty record, but I'll do it. You know what's totally jacked, dude, is I stepped outside this morning to take our big son, the one who eats and sleeps, to daycare. And it was already like 85 and just like so muggy. And I said that. I said, wow, it's so muggy. And he said, what's muggy mean?

And I was like, it means it's humid. And he said, what's humid mean? And I was like, it's like when the air is wet. And he was like, rain? I was like, no, damn it. This is hard to explain. It's like the air itself is kind of wet. My friend Charlie used to say, it's like being in somebody's mouth

and i feel like that's a good way to describe but you also understand why like with the brand that i've been trying to escape from for like half a decade now like why i couldn't say something that's fair okay good hey you got any small wonders do. And I'm going to reveal our secret shame. And I'm sorry that I'm doing it here on the podcast. Please don't. Please no. But my small wonder is a series that we have been watching compulsively. We're having a very difficult time. This is an extremely difficult chapter in our lives.

And it's okay. Just to couch it. I don't even remember how we started. I don't either. But we have been watching married at first sight it's it's it's actively bad television it's a terrible premise it's a terrible premise made unethically yes just here it's it is a gross show to watch but they bring people on with advanced credentials to try and make it seem like it is an experiment

but what it really is, is making people get married before they've met each other. And we started watching it. And then we found that there were a lot of seasons on Hulu. And it's pretty much all we watch lately. Yeah. Well, because we watch TV with this sound off in the dark in our bedroom while you

hold our baby from like 8 p.m. to like 6 a.m. So, yeah, we don't want to watch good television. So, yeah, we've been watching it. And it's the most poorly made television. What I enjoy about it is like half the shots are out of focus. It's on the lifetime network and it's like the lifetime version of the bachelor where it's just like they don't they're not very good at pointing a camera at a thing and recording it and that brings me a great deal of joy when i'm feeling very exhausted yeah and and so it's not

what one would say a wonderful show but it has been wonderful to us in this time where our brains hurt yeah exactly what's your small under uh we so we got big son in daycare and we get photos every every now and then and he's such a special weird kid and you feel a little guilty like putting him into the system like this although it's a montessori school so like how much of a system could it possibly be but yeah they send photos through the app sometimes. And in every single one, he's like wearing a crown made out of paper and like putting his dukes up

like he's fighting like a Power Ranger or something. And you know, no other kid in there is bringing that particular. I know, he's always by himself. He's always by himself flexing and looking like a tough guy. I think he, his best friend in the class lately, at least so it seems, is the teacher herself. Does that sound familiar?

Hey, you go first this week. Okay. My first thing, and I am speaking generally, I'm going to use the word your, but I'm not talking about you in particular, Griffin McElroy. But I'm going to say your 20s. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Okay.

All right. I had to think about it for a second. And like 23 on for me, it was like dope. Like really good stuff. Yeah. No, see, you're lucky in that way because a lot of people have pretty terrible 20s. Is that true? I feel like 20s is good time for most folks.

Well, it's just, it's a time where you have all these expectations and goals and the world isn't necessarily ready for you. Yeah. And so a lot of people experience that and they um have a very frustrating experience with their 20s i i don't really think i hit my stride with my 20s i mean i think it started when i was 25 that i started to feel like i've got a handle on this and then maybe 27 when i was like i'm gonna be okay yeah i will say the 20s is like where the rolling start of your life stops, where you're like in high school, you're like, can't wait till I get to college.

And then when you get to college, it's like, once I'm done with college, it's really going to happen for me. And then once you get out of college, it's like, once I get past these awkward post-college years, everything's going to happen for me. And then once you hit a certain point in your 20s, it's like, oh, this is, oh, I'm fucking in it now. That's undeniable. Well, and even if you don't go to college, you have this experience of like kind of all being in the same place as your friends.

Absolutely. Yeah. We're making a lot of generalizations about what your life looks like. Yeah. And that is not fair or true. Yeah. Like I had a handful of friends that didn't go to college. I had some that got married really, really early.

But we all were kind of in this same place of like, what am I going to do? You know, like, what's important to me? Which of these friends am I still going to talk to? Like, and being in the same place is something that, as you get older, gets harder and harder to do. Yeah, sure. We talk a lot about that now that, like, we have multiple children

and it is becoming immediately harder and harder to like have a social life it's just like you you feel yourself start to diverge in paths and then it becomes harder to to kind of keep it going this is a fun show are we talking about things that we like did we say that maybe not it is a fun show well i wanted to say like for me like my 20s like i look back on really fondly but i think it's because i have like the advantage of hindsight and also the advantage of realizing that my experience was not particularly unique right and i say that because there's a lot of data to suggest now that that your 20s look different

like when i finished college i thought i'm supposed to find a job and this is going to be my forever job. Yeah. And I'm moving to a city and this is going to be my forever city. Yeah, I know. But a third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Yeah.

40% move back home with their parents at least once. This is from a New York Times article in 2010. Well, even that, like that's an 11-year-old article. I know. People in their 20s go through an average of seven jobs. And two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. Huh.

That's a sin, but okay. We don't do a good enough job on that on this show. And it's something I'd like to get better at is when something is obviously a big sin, we can just say like, that's a sin and maybe we can have like a little bell that we ring to let people know like hey don't um don't do this it's bad i'm just kidding man go nuts uh yeah and so this is the other thing that like came about when i was actually in my 20s is people started talking about the quarter life crisis do you remember hearing about this yeah i feel like you could say pretty much, I'm in a 34-year-old life crisis.

I feel like it's just a big crisis. So it was like an actual book. It was a thing. Oh, I see. It's like an actual expression. It encompasses four typical stages, which is that you're suddenly locked into some kind of commitment at work or home. Right.

Or an apartment or a relationship. And then you leave that and then you become kind of like lonely and you have this like crisis of recalibrating. Yeah. And finding kind of a new version of yourself on the other side of it. Yeah. Or sometimes just the lonely one goes for a while a while it goes for a while the load yeah you know i was thinking a lot too about like uh it's kind of your first experience of like picking your your friends and your circle in a way like if you go to school you kind of

become friends with people out of circumstance sure and then there's a certain point where all of a sudden it's like you're in charge of choosing your circumstance and you have to kind of figure that out yeah uh and a lot of times you're like hold on to those friendships uh maybe past their yeah their prime um so i there. So there's a book called The Rocket Years, How Your 20s Launched the Rest of Your Life that came out in 2020. Hey, that's appropriate. And it talks about kind of that experience

of what 20s look like now. And they did a study that said 95% of older gen z's and millennials think that finding a career is the most important objective in their 20s that's interesting so like in previous it was like you know finding a partner or like having kids or buying a house but now it's like a focus on a career but for most people it takes between 10 and 15 years to find a job that actually aligns with your skills which is fair like and this article said a lot about, you know, you have this concept of the dream job and you want to work for this like great cause. And, you know, like for me, like I was very focused on like getting a job in publishing

and then I really wanted to work at a nonprofit and I kept picking things that paid very little and didn't actually have me doing the work that I cared about. Yeah. So then you became a grant writer at a community college where all the money is, baby. Well, it's definitely more stable. I will say that I am confident that I will have a job next year, which is not something I could have said about anything before this.

No, absolutely not. So all that to say, like, there's this ethic around, like, finding something you care about, but then there's all these compromises involved in it, and that can leave you feeling kind of disenchanted. And so the article was like, it is not a dream job if you do not have benefits and or, like, can't afford to live where you're living.

Yeah, for sure. In that job. Yeah. I mean, it's that desire that led to so many sort of like predatory in like internships come intern at our company and the experience is going to be great it's never going to turn into anything but come on down yeah um and then the last thing i'll just go back to is that like that friend circle that i was talking about so there's a lot of research that shows your circle of friend peaks at like age 25.

And that like the average person in their 20s has like 18 close friends, which I think is a little bit of. That's a lot. That's a lot. That seems good to me. I would love to have 18 close friends. No, well, that's the suggestion is that it starts to decline from there. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I was really fortunate uh and i think griffin benefited from this too and that i came to austin and i just suddenly had this huge friend network which is and i was like in my late 20s at the time and it was really kind of exceptional because most of the people i knew had seen like a decline in their friendship and i just had like a huge skyrocket yeah from doing americor uh and that has made such a huge difference for me and i look back on that time really fondly because a lot of those friendships i still have of course yeah and they were all kind of founded around this idea of like we're all excited to be in the city you know we want to do things that are important you know and we're all kind of figuring our lives out now, you know, after we've had a little time to kind of figure out who we are.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. When you mentioned the topic, I thought, like, that's such a broad, because you're talking about a 10-year span, which could mean anything to anyone who lives there. For me, I'm really talking about the last five years of your 20s. I'm talking about the musical. The one that's like, Jamie is dead and Jamie is gone.

I should learn more than three words of that musical, huh? What? What are you doing? It's called The Last Five. There's a musical that's called The Last Five Years. Oh. And it's about, I believe, a painful divorce. Cool.

Cool. So like the marriage story, but to song. It's like the marriage story, but it doesn't got Kylo Ren in it. Maybe. I don't know, actually. I didn't see the film version. So I guess that was a good one. Can I steal you know, actually. I didn't see the film version. So I guess that was a good one.

Can I steal you away? Yes. Got a couple boom-boom-bops here. Can I read the first one? Yes. It's for Courtney and future Cindy. And it's from past Cindy, a.k.a. Stan, Queen of Con. Dear Courtney, thanks for being the lady in nerding to my Queen of Con,

bringing me SoCal sunshine and introducing me to the McElroys. You'll be an amazing nurse. Dear future Cindy, you may not be prepping for a PhD, but other dreams and projects are fueling your soul. Remember, your unapologetic enthusiasm brings oodles of joy. I love you both i said fueling your soul there like i was fucking shang tsung from mortal combat fueling your soul there's something about a jumbotron that makes you want to like adopt your announcer voice yeah that i mean it's called a jumbotron. It's right there on the tin. Can I read the next one?

Please. It is for Van. It is from Callie Vanford. You're the best brother I could ever imagine. And since moving back to Texas, spending time together is the only thing that's kept me sane. I am so proud of you and your accomplishments. And I know there's even more to come. You're going to be amazing.

Let's get Taco Bell and play TKO next weekend, yeah? Love you so much. Calliope. I miss TKO. I miss playing Jackbox games with the crew. We did that so much during quarantine when we would do Zoom calls all the time. That was fun. I know. Our friend that had scheduled the regular Zoom calls

was like, oh, we don't need these anymore. And part of me was like, we still do. We're still trapped in our house. From the internationally acclaimed creators of Who Shot Ya? comes the movie podcast Maximum Film. Starring producer and film festival programmer Drea Clark as a woman bound by passion. I saw this eight months ago on the festival circuit, and I loved it. Film critic Alonzo Duralde as a man corrupted by greed. Why watch one Hallmark Christmas movie when I can watch seven?

And comedian Ify Wadiwe as a man protecting a love that society simply won't accept. I think Pacific Rim is a perfect movie. And if you can't accept that, then I want you out of my life! From the makers of the movie podcast Who Shot Ya? comes Maximum Film. That's right. We changed the name of our show to Maximum Film. But don't worry. We're still a movie review show that isn't just a bunch of straight white dudes. So tune in to Maximum Film at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, may I do mine?

Yes. Do we have time? Is baby still asleep? Baby is still asleep. All right. There's no way I'm going to make it through this. No, you're not. But let's get started. Let's get started.

We talk a lot about sort of exotic, adorable animals on this show. We do. A lot. Yes. But today, I want to talk about a little guy that we overlook so frequently. A little guy that lives in our backyard and also everywhere on the whole planet. I am talking about the humble squirrel. Oh.

The humble squirrel. I feel like if squirrels were not. Here we go. Here we go, guys. Get ready. Get ready. This may just be my own sort of twisted sort of view but uh i think if squirrels weren't the pigeons of rodents okay we'd be stoked every time we saw one like we would be going to the like to

the zoo or to like their their natural habitat wherever they live, to go and see a squirrel, if not for the fact that we see 100,000 squirrels every day. I will say, man, if it is furry, like you've already got a plus in my book. And so like I saw a bunny the other day. Yeah. And I just like, I felt like I needed to tell someone. You could have told me. I know I should have.

I would have been stuck. Just as a mental exercise, you listening at home, if you're not operating a motor vehicle, close your eyes and just imagine that squirrels weren't everywhere and then think about how good they are. Yeah. The bushy tail. The bushy tail. The little face.

The way they sit. The way they sit. The way they eat a nut. It's all pretty good stuff. And they're leaping from tree to tree. Yeah, yeah. Like a monkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For sure, for sure. So there's like a billion different kinds of squirrels of varying colorations and sizes and habitats and all that jazz. You got tree squirrels. There's also ground squirrels, which like marmots and prairie dogs. Whoa. That's a ground. a prairie dog is a ground squirrel yeah it's part of that whole part of that whole family uh chipmunks um they even got flying squirrels now so it's just like nowhere's nowhere is safe from school if you got a nut nowhere is ever since the right squirrel brothers invented the capability to fly exactly well there's not

ocean squirrels, I guess. If you got a nut that you need to hide. Yeah, it depends on when you're listening to this podcast. That's a good point. Maybe there are ocean squirrels. You think in the future they're going to come up with that technology? A little Jacques Cousteau squirrel. Oh, shit.

That's good. Oh, man. So I just, I haven't, I don't know that I've ever seen a squirrel that wasn't at least like a little bit adorable. And the ones that I guess arguably are not are like the big Hulksters, like the big ass absolute unit guys that we get. We get these huge sort of like very dark fur squirrels that like run up on our deck sometimes. Yeah. And we see them and it's like a it's like a dog or a cat has showed up and it's it's so exciting every time that one that one is when

we point out to each other like look at that big squirrel and that's always very exciting um so the most common squirrel is the eastern gray squirrel which uh there's over two billion of those bad boys liberal elite squirrels yeah and uh so but there's over 280 different species of squirrels uh none of them i believe have two billion uh in their number but uh some of them are actually quite endangered there's some there's some squirrels that are like there's less than 100 of them um and they belong to a classification all squirrels do and i'd never heard this word before and it's so good of uh synanthropes or perhaps synanthropes s-y-n-a-n-thropes uh and that refers to an animal species that like lives in harmony with humans and like benefits from their being adjacent to human civilization. Interesting. So pigeons are also sort of in that category. Yeah. I thought

that that was really interesting. They eat nuts mostly because they can't digest cellulose. And there are some rare reports of ground squirrels eating meat when Push really came to show up. There were studies done on like the droppings of different sort of ground squirrels. And some of the bigger marmot boys were like had some lizard stuff and tiny bones in their stuff. But there are fortunately very few reports of human attacks. I don't think they've ever taken one of us down. And maybe that's why we still all like them so much. Because the scoreboard is still like so heavily in our favor.

And they're just so industrious. One of their main predators for a long time, snakes, right? And so what do they do? They got all kinds of ways they learn to fight um but the big thing that they've done and it it's so good is they'll take dead rattlesnake skin like shed rattlesnake skin and chew it up and then rub that stink on themselves to make like rattlesnake perfume to like scare predators. I thought you were going to say that they wear it. They wear it.

They put it on like a little costume. They make tiny little boots out of it. And it's the cutest. Hey, did you know it's illegal to have a squirrel as a pet in Texas? And also most of the other states. I did not know that. But what's a pet? That's my question.

But what's a pet? That's my question. If I wanted to see a squirrel, I could probably do that within the next 60 seconds, depending on which window I looked out of in our house. And if I wanted to have a moment with that squirrel, I could have a squirrel moment. What is a pet but that? I may not be able to touch it and pet it. And I don't think I would want to to but isn't that a pet i think a pet is something that you have ownership over you know like oh listen to you like who rescued who i'm asking all i'm saying i'm over here saying all squirrels are my pet

the supreme court decision who rescued who. I believe that was who versus who. Hey, did you know? Hey. Hey. Hey. I feel like my little nephew has come into the studio. Hey, did you know?

Hey, did you know that squirrels can turn their ankles 180 degrees backwards? Oh. But that's why they're like the only mammals that can climb down a tree faced first. Think about that. You see a kitty cat climb up a tree. If a kitty cat tries to climb down a tree, you got to go backwards. Squirrel, though, can turn its ankle completely around and then hang from it like that. Wow. I never thought about that.

It's so sick. It's so radical. Yeah, you don't think about like, man, they sure do go around those trees real fast. It's because they can turn their feet backwards. And that's great to me. I just think they're neat. I just think they're neat. And it's wild to me that they're just like clouds.

You just see them and you're like, oh yeah, more squirrelss i will say we are saying this from a vantage point we do not have crops uh we do not have bird feeders i don't think they go for many crops i i think they probably they could probably mess up some well they can't digest like like cellulose and plant fiber yeah but they can really get in there and muck things up you know i guess but so i mean so could any creature and then your bird feeder right like there's always the squirrels that are okay if i have a bird feeder and squirrels eat some of it i'm like okay not it's a squirrel feeder too like there's nothing they're saying i'm not gonna yell at a squirrel like get out of

there that's for birds another animal in nature. Who gives a shit? Oh, man. Those birders are really going to come after you. I know the burgers are going to come after me, but I'm not worried about that. Because I'm saying if I put food out in nature and an animal eats it, mission accomplished. Okay. That's a good point. Anyway, I didn't know my wife hated squirrels so much.

Or else I wouldn't have done this. I do love squirrels. I just like to present all sides, you know? That's not something we do on this show that's fair i feel so cross-examined um hey thank you for listening and thanks for sticking with us through these these uh these here shorts uh hopefully we'll only have like maybe one or two more in this tiny tiny bite size for both of our boys to be under the care of others eventually at which point we can start making shows that aren't so frantic yes uh i kind of like the half hour format if i'm being honest it feels good it feels good to me and we can do real deep dives into things like squirrels maybe play some games maybe what does that mean well i don't know so like that is it

like jimmy fallon we don't have any real like without the poetry corner which is a segment we don't really have any other segments and i think maybe we could play some games i mean we have small wonders and ads which is a game for us because we do win sure sure um hey thanks to bowen and augustus for the use for 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 they got so many great shows that you're just gonna love you should go and find a new one that you haven't listened to before you haven't checked out depression mode yet yeah the critics are raving about yeah they are raving um in a good way um they could be you know raving or angry about it but they're not they're they're loving

it um and i think that's it the baby has stayed asleep for this entire i mean this is a 27 minute recording so far so let's not like go throw in any parades or anything like that but this is our first recording we've had in a while that didn't get interrupted should we just keep going it feels like honestly it feels like a waste to stop before the baby should we felma and louise this and just hold hands and just hold hands but they wouldn't the audience wouldn't hear that so what's like the audio equivalent of holding hands have you seen them on the waist by the way um the one where they jump off the thing? It's the whole movie.

I know that that's how it ends and it sounds sad, so no, I didn't watch it. If I know a movie has a sad part in it, I'm not even interested in it. Yeah, no thanks, because why would I get invested in these people if they're about to chomp it? No thanks. Okay, so what is the audio equivalent of holding hands? Is that what you asked? Yeah. Can we rub our noses on the mic?

That's probably good. Is that picking up? I think it might be picking up. Rachel, can you boost the bass on that? And let's get it really bumping. And this is good too because it exfoliates. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

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