Wonderful! - Wonderful! 314: Style Ombudsman

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Rachel's favorite short-lived network! Griffin's favorite contentious punctuation! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya The Marsha P. Johnson Institute https://marshap.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. Welcome to our podcast, Wonderful, a show where we talk about things we like that are pretty much across the board good. And all the way across the board, we are into these things. Yeah. We don't do things that – we're not phonies. Sometimes we get comments and they're like, there no way that you guys like korean reality competition

shows as much as we pretend to and to that i would say look at our fucking netflix watch history oh for sure we don't we don't get on here and talk about something that we heard other people like yeah a lot of people say you've never watched one st louis blues hockey game front to back and to that i would say false i i've watched at least seven or eight of them a lot of times we don't watch the whole thing and that's only because they're playing badly or so good that they're squishing the other team and it's like not even no we watch those games we love those games don't we those? Those are good, fun ones. I'm excited to be here. The Blues are keeping us guests of the season,

talking about those sweet blue notes. Hey, you sports fans, this is our sports podcast. This is a quick sports podcast. That's my small wonder. It's the St. Louis Blues. They keep you guessing. It's always fun because you never know when they get on that beautiful ice called the rink what kind of performance they're going to

put out sometimes they're playing a huge just like champion of the league and they'll beat them soundly yes and then they'll play against a division rival who they very badly need to be in order to clinch the uh the wild card spot or at least stay in it for the playoffs and they'll get their asses handed to them and it it's like, cool, like cool. I get the vibe that sometimes when they're playing poorly, they decide to start thinking about the sandwich they're gonna have after the game. Possibly.

Instead of actually trying to win the game. Yes, there was a fun stat for the first half of the season. I don't know if it's still true, where if they did not score first, they lost. They would lose the game. Which is funny because like back in like 2019 i feel like even part of 2020 before the season got all weird they were like the comeback kings they had like the most come from behind victories of like any team in the league and then that was that's not true no more but still keep it keep it going guys keep it up proud of you do you have a small wonder i do and i bet you

know what i'm gonna talk about what glass blowing yeah baby uh griffin in a very like prescient uh decision was like you know what i'm gonna get rachel for christmas is a uh a spot in a glass blowing class like an introductory discover glass blowing is what it was called. Yeah, inspired by, I think we talked about it on the show. The Amazing Race had a challenge where they had to blow glass

and we were both like, that looks fucking great. And we had watched some of the Netflix show too. Yeah, blown up? Blown away. Blown away. Blow it up. Yeah. And I don't know i i probably never would have done it like i never would have signed up never have done it for a class um but what was

great is that there were only six of us and the instructor was pretty committed to all of us like leaving with stuff yeah so he would kind of let us do something and then tag in and do some of the more complicated stuff and then let us do another thing uh and it was great it's just so nice to take like a creative class where you like leave having made something sure yeah i mean you used to be you used to do a quite a bit of pottery before we had kids i think when we had some spare time i think you actually took one class after henry was born just to like get out of the house a little bit yeah but that was cool because you would come home and you'd be like here's some bowls and stuff yeah this was

like another this is like a i don't know why i rank glassware above like pots and cups and stuff like that in terms of like i don't know it's wild the people that humans can make that stuff. But you came home with like a beautiful vase and a really rad looking paperweight. And that's like sick that you made that stuff. Yeah, it was really great. And now I'm thinking about continuing to do it. The class was just a one-off.

And then you can sign up for what is like a five-week class, which feels like a big commitment for me. So I'm still mulling it over, but it was great. I loved it. I'm glad. I'm so glad you crushed it. You go first this week for your big wonder, and I can't wait to hear what that is. You've got devices just flanking you like an old Western quick draw artist. That's what they call me.

Yep. What do you got? She's jacking in. She's plugging her cyber cord into the mainframe. Okay. And we're in. My thing is no longer in existence. Oh, okay.

But I'm sure you'll know it, and that is the WB. The channel? Yes. Okay, man. Whatever you say, man. Hey, you remember that? Quick aside, just for the listener. Don't listen to this, Rachel.

You remember the part at the beginning of the show where we said we don't talk about things that we actually don't actually care about all that much? The WB. 90s kids won't remember this. It was not a very good channel with very much good programming. How dare you? Were you a big Seventh Heaven fan? Honey. Or what was your flavor of choice?

You're going to eat your words. I can't wait. Let's return to this at the end of're gonna eat your words i can't wait let's return to this at the end of the set okay i can't wait uh the thing about the wb is that it had a lot of teen programming they really doubled down on teens yes um which if you think about it now is kind of crazy in a way like that's not something that really happens these days it seems like television is largely targeted to people like over 45 well teens don't watch tv like teens don't watch yeah television channels yeah and i think i mean and that's you know technology sure but just to be a teenager and to have a channel that you could go to and like pretty much every show in the evenings was for you was like kind of a cool moment in time. All right.

This is sorry. I'm discovering with this segment that there is just a wild divergence in our sort of like media consumption as kids because I never watched the WB. I never, ever, ever watched it. Interesting. Well, we'll talk about that. But we had like, you know, a premium package. So I had access. Oh, you had no need for network television.

No need for it. I could watch some Disney Channel sometimes. Okay, the WB. Warner Brothers, yes? Yes. Okay. Do you remember the mascot for the WB? It's that fucking frog.

Michigan J. Frog. Michigan J. Frog. One of my favorite jokes from the simpsons was uh shit was it family guy uh-oh i hope it was simpsons was they turned on the tv and it was that frog and he goes hey look at that it's the wb it's another bad show that no one will see like a little routine there was okay i will say there was a lull for the WB. Okay. There was like a golden era.

I will name the shows and you will remember them. I can't wait to be, eat my words. And then in the last few years of it, it kind of diminished in popularity. So 1995 is when it, when it hit the scene. Okay.

And when it first started, we're talking about the Wayans brothers. We're talking about Sister, Sister. Oh, shit. That was WB? Beginning in, yes, 1995. Did that get consumed by Disney? Because I feel like I remember Sister, Sister being Disney.

Sister, Sister ends up on ABC. Okay. Which, yeah. After WB, after Michigan J. Fr. Which, yeah. After. WB. Yeah. After Michigan J. Fraw dies in a car accident. I didn't research the history of Sister, Sister, so I can't tell you.

What was the movie we just watched? Oh, Yes Chef Christmas. Oh, yeah. One of them was it. We never talked about Yes Chef Christmas. Yeah. Oh, shit. Okay. Next week. Next week, I'm going to talk about a Christmas movie. It's a little out of We never talked about Yes Chef Christmas. Yeah. Oh, shit. Okay, next week.

Next week, I'm going to talk about a Christmas movie. It's a little out of season at this point. Maybe a little bit. Maybe I wait till next Christmas season. Yes Chef Christmas. Okay. Now, the time period where it really blew up was 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Was WB?

Yes, sir. Wow. That's what I'm telling you. Like, a lot of these shows maybe you watched when they were streaming. Or on DVD, yeah. Yeah, but this was on this network.

And I feel like a lot of these shows also got et up by other channels when the WB went down. And so when like I would watch them

in syndication it was on other channels. I had no idea Buffy was on DVD. This is why I wanted to let you discover with me. Okay, cool. Did you watch Buffy when it was like on TV? When it was like happening on the air?

Okay, cool. I only got into it on DVD. I was a very late comer to that whole universe. I never watched the whole series while it was on TV, but I watched parts of it while it was on TV. Well, it was fucking impossible to watch the whole series of any television show while it was on TV. I know, because it would move around.

It'd be at different times. And then like- Well, and the episodes wouldn't air like in order sometimes. Yeah, that's true. Like you would have to catch rewrites. My dad had this whole like insane catalog of VHS tapes and like a card, like his own Dewey Decimal System just for this exact purpose. Yeah.

To be like, I want to watch season three, episode 11 of Star Trek Enterprise. Oh, that's on V1081. Really, it got up into the four digit numbers. We'd love to talk to him about that at some point. Me too. Okay, so it debuted March 1997. It debuted with the highest Monday night ratings in network's history, attracting not only new teenage viewers, but new advertisers.

Inspired by Buffy's success the wb intentionally shifted the focus of its program okay i'm starting to figure out exactly where this is going to go now because was charmed a wb it was also okay it was and the other one which debuted january 1998 dawson's creek was a wb product yes Yes, sir. That's so fascinating. Who feels silly now? I feel extremely silly. I had no idea. You didn't watch Dawson's Creek, though.

I think this speaks slightly to the small age gap between us because when that was happening, I would have been like 10 years old, which is too young for... 1997, I was in high school. And I was like freshly in high school. And I was like freshly in high school. I was like a freshman in high school. People using that information can backwards reverse engineer our age gap.

I think we've talked about it before. It's quite large. It's five years. Who gives a shit? It's not. Okay. Dawson's Creek. Enormous hit.

Most of you will probably know what it is it's but pretty much every actor that was on that show as a lead continued to have a successful career after yeah yeah i mean pacy took a break pacy took the pacy dropped off for a minute wasn't fringe right after no fringe was a bit because i remember hearing sydney talk about how stoked she was to see the return the return of josh what's his name joshua jackson joshua jackson sorry for forgetting that extremely memorable name uh the popularity of dawson uh helped and his creek his excellent creek his related creek helped boost the network's other shows, such as Buffy, which served as its lead-in on the WB's new night of programming, which launched January 1998, branded as New Tuesday. New Tuesday?

Yes. Okay. And Seventh Heaven, okay, so Seventh Heaven was the year before. So it started in 1996, Buffy came in 1997, and then they all got smushed together as part of New Tuesday. Buffy came in 1997, and then they all got smooshed together as part of New Tuesday, and 7th Heaven enjoyed a massive 81% increase in viewership because the teens were there, the TV was on. They already had it on. You've stumbled into 7th Heaven.

I grew up in the faith, and even I, whenever I would catch a few frames of 7th Heaven while swapping between channels, I'd be like, this show seems so shitty. I started so many episodes of Seventh Heaven. Accidentally. Yeah, I never finished. Because you would. You would start. You'd be like, these are young, attractive people.

This must be for me too. Nope. And then it was just like, the stakes are so low. Okay. So also on WB, you mentioned Charmed. Felicity. Wow. Okay. Was also WB. Was mentioned Charmed. Felicity. Wow. Okay.

Was also WB. Was Gilmore Girls up in there? It was. Jesus Christ. We're not there yet. Smallville came out October 2001. Okay. I did watch that.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. I didn't watch Smallville. Okay. 2001, I think, was a little late for me. Then I kind of moved on. 1999 to 2000, we had roswell popular uh angel hit the scene sure uh and i want to say even angel premiered with 7.5 million viewers um that's a grip of people i know for. For context. Oh, another one.

I will say the highest ratings the WB ever saw was February 1999, 12.5 million viewers. So for context, the 2024 Golden Globes had 9.4 million viewers. Yeah. And that was up 50% from last year. Well, and the population of Earth in that 30-year gap quadrupled. Okay. And then Gilmore Girls 2000, as you mentioned. Also 2000 was Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was another very popular show.

God, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that was TGIF that was on ABC. Also 2001, not applicable to us, but maybe some of our peers watched it. And that was reba i bet i could name you two to three of our peers who watched reba okay so what you were probably thinking of when i first mentioned the wb was the 2003 to 2006 era yeah and that is when wb had a significant decline because of some poor choices I believe they made. First, in 2005, they retired Michigan J-Frog. You think that was a bad choice?

No, here's what I'll say. This vaudevillian frog guy. I don't think the loss of the frog contributed. But I will say the reason behind the loss of the frog was WB's president at the time said, quote michigan was a symbol that perpetuated the young teen feel of the network what the fuck that's not the image we now want to put to our audience this is a frog that tap danced and wore a top hat and had a little cane like we're gonna move on to serious adult things and what they moved on to was One Tree Hill, which was pretty popular. Yeah. Also Beauty and the Geek. Oh, Jesus.

Not a great show. And I will say Supernatural has a cult following. Oh, shit. That a lot of people, I have not watched the show. All right. But this was kind of in the period where they were like, we're not really for teens. We're going to try some new stuff out. Yeah.

Didn't work. I got to say, I appreciate now, seeing the full context of it, the WB's commitment to the occult and supernatural elements in television shows. Yeah, true. Yeah. It is wild, the streak that they went on of like, all right, magic, aliens, vampires, monsters. I mean, that was the thing. Like, Buffy and Charmed were kind of like all right magic aliens vampires monsters i mean that was the thing like buffy and charmed were kind of like hey look i guess that yeah crazy stuff happens in this show and teens loved it and they're like all right let's keep doing it i did watch more wb kids at the time because wb kids had pokemon in syndication and they would show that shit non-stop if you

wanted to catch pokemon on whatever it was, I think like Fox or something when it was first airing in the States, you had to be like at your TV at like 2.45 p.m. exactly. So I'd have to sprint home from school if I wanted to catch like the back half of it. But WB Kids just ran that shit constantly. Okay, I don't remember WB Kids. Yu-Gi-Oh?

Again, this is... I never watched Yu-Gi-Oh you i would like to say it's our age difference i don't know if we had been the same age i don't think so uh the wb aired its final night of programming on 2006 uh and then um to like close out the station which i've never really thought of before like there's a point where the station ends and something else begins. Mr. Feeney just like turns the lights off, I think, in the WB broadcast room. No, they aired like a bunch of like well-known stars and like clips and stuff from their previous shows. And then they said, for for 11 years you brought us into

your home we made you smile and tug at your heart and now we say goodbye from all of us the wb thank you the final image seen in the montage was former network mascot michigan j fraud yes who was shown as a silhouette due to the animated character being retired as the WB's mascot, taking his hat off and bowing, thanking the audience for watching. Silhouette? They can't show the frog. We can't show you the frog. We're done with the frog. We're going to give you a hint of frog.

Guess what? You're done with fucking everything, WB, because you made a lot of bad choices. Show us the frog. What's wrong with you? We can't show you the frog because we don't use the frog anymore. You don't use anything anymore. You died because of the bad choices that you made and then and then what happened we're talking the cw oh yeah very similar took a lot of the same shows over um i don't know what the cw stands for

i don't either the cool wet work it's like network cool warner cool warner what's up teens we're cool warner what a frog fuck that frog we're not brothers now we're not the brothers we're the best brother cool singular cool warner and it was cool james warner uh that was a wonderful what a journey i took you on what a wonderful journey that was now you understand right now i get it it was a golden moment for teens yes it's wild i just missed it i missed it by a by that much by about five years that i can completely change your mind i know in the course of a segment i don't think there's that many cultural moments that are were that like bubbly that one of us could pick it up like completely and run with it and the other one's just like fucking not now what i what i will say do these shows hold up

no not necessarily um would i recommend them to people now maybe not no uh but at the time as a teen sure it felt powerful felt powerful. Yeah, absolutely. I could see that for sure. Yes. Can I steal you away? Yes. Cool. Have you ever wanted to know the sad lore behind Chuck E. Cheese's love of birthday parties?

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Join us, hosts Austin and Brenda, and learn all of these things and more at Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries. Now on Maximum Fun. The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls. 911. My husband! It's my husband! Calm down, please. What about your husband? He loves the dishwasher wrong.

Please help! Please help. Where are you now, ma'am? At the kitchen table. I was with my dad. He mispronounced those words intentionally. There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice, but only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodggman the only true crime podcast that won't leave you feeling sad and bad and scared for once only on maximum fun.org i really enjoyed researching my topic today um because it is something that i use a lot and i didn't know about sort of the the history or applicate like proper application of it it is my favorite punctuation mark and it is the m dash oh you're one of those what does that mean i feel like this is like a thing in journalism people talk a lot about the m dash okay yeah i'm

not actually sure if ap style is like M-dash like focused. I'm just saying like when I was coming up, it's not like you really learn about the M-dash in school. No, you do not. You just start seeing it in articles all the time. Right. And then you're like, oh, I get it. This is very much a learned like habit of mine that started when I started working at joystick back in 2008 um so i don't write like 10 as much as i used to write like back back in the day when i was on the on the

news beat for joystick and then polygon um you do write some very popular graphic novels though i will say i do do that but i do not employ the m dash terribly much in those. In those bubbles. Yeah, that's right. In graphic novels, every drop of ink that goes on the page requires a tremendous amount of effort from a lot of people. And so an em dash is just like a luxury that a lot of publishers cannot afford. But when I do write sort of non-graphic novel format, I do still use the M-Dash a lot more than sort of its similar contemporaries. The Dash family, if you are not like, I don't know, a nerd, I guess, the Dash family has three members. You have the hyphen, which is just pathetic in terms of width and power. But it has a very specific purpose that is valuable.

It has a very specific purpose of hyphenating words and like you know if you can names sometimes and if you like can't finish a word in one like line in a book you can use a hyphen to like say like hey catch catch me on the flip side for the rest of this word you're gonna fucking love it um the n dash e n dash uh which is all right and then the m dash the triple hyphen that can just break a sentence down into as many chunks as you need and just interrupt the flow of a reader's journey as you as you will it i am hoping that you will distinguish for me the difference between an m dash and a comma because a lot of times i'm not entirely sure yeah um well one goes like whoop and it's kind of curvy one goes side to side don't get cute with me fucking long um so it was it was

that joystick i i learned about the existence of the of this punctuation mark which is fucking wild because they should at least show you in school like by the way you know about the hyphen especially because you went to journalism school right yeah it just was not it was just not a thing that was really taught there. I guess you were broadcast. They were like, he's just going to be saying what's written for him. I mean, yeah, I did. I did write for the paper for at least one year. Anyway, so early, early on in my tenure there while being copy edited, I posted up just

a weak, terrible hyphen in the middle of a sentence to break it up. And Ludwig, who was the style ombudsman for Joystick, showed me the error of my ways because the style guide there was use an em dash. Some, I think it varies from outlet to outlet. Some folks use an em dash without spacing on either side between the words, but there, and therefore every other time i

would use the m dash it would be you know words words words words space m dash space rest of the words um so after learning about the m dash i went fucking m dash crazy i was incapable of like writing a full sentence without the constant use of like asides or like fragmentation just slipping this big ass line in there uh with aplomb it changed my writing style the like power of this punctuation mark because like i i i realized that i enjoyed in this like blog format like a very informal style of writing that the endash really lends itself to um and so like it did make my writing fairly disjointed at times particularly when i was reviews editor there i would still use em dashes a lot which was um i posted up some real bricks in that regard i think i've reined it in a bit since then

the em dash is great because it can be used to substitute four different punctuation marks depending on how you you employ it um so in lieu of a comma or a pair of commas that separate out an aside or additional information such as garfield m dash a cat who loved lasagna m dash was a very good comic strip um the best thing about why is that better than commas well let, let me tell you. I'm just about to say that. Sorry, I just don't understand. The best thing that that is used for is a sentence where commas have already been used, right? And especially once you get into like Oxford commas. Like if you need to break out a list of three things, all of a sudden like your shit is just riddled with commas.

Yeah. But with the m dash like you have options in terms of like mixing it up it makes the sentence actually way more readable and also again like it is the m dash is typically used for a more informal style of writing yeah and so like i i find the m dash to be an incredibly clear i mean by design like way of separating shit from other shit in sentences. Whereas a comma, like there's a few different ways to read a comma because a comma is used for a lot of different things. Yeah, I will say I have definitely written some emails and had sentences that had way too many commas.

I just thought like, well, they all need to be there, but I don't like how many there are. There's not a lot of ways to substitute commas either, right? You can either like just change the sentence dramatically and just make a new sentence you can sometimes use a semicolon but the semicolon is the fucking riddler of the punctuation mark world i like a semicolon you would think it's a question mark but no the semicolon is like is this right i don't fucking know nobody knows how to use a semicolon um instead of parentheses when you're adding commentary or interruption so garfield m, M-Dash, my beloved orange friend, M-Dash, has tragically died. This is probably like the most common use case for me

because it basically allows for jokes like everywhere. Like you're in the middle of writing a sentence about some new video game announcement or some like, you know, dumb thing some director of a game said. And then like you want to make a great joke? Bang, you don't even have to finish the sentence to get to your joke m dash joke m dash rest of the sentence yeah you know i think sometimes in that case i would use parentheses sure that's also fine i think that but it doesn't have the urgency of an m dash it doesn't i feel like an m dash is more powerful than a parentheses. Because a parentheses to me feels like you're telling a little secret. Garfield's dead.

Whereas an em dash is like, boom, he's my beloved orange friend. It can be used instead of a colon for additional information at the end of a sentence. Finally, Garfield learned the truth. Em dash, Odie wasn't real. So you don't, it doesn't always have to come in pairs. You can use it as a sort of checkpoint. Say like, here comes, here comes the drop of this sentence. Or it can be used instead of a semicolon to connect two distinct sentences.

Garfield buried the knife in the garden. M dash, the knife would never be found. So that. Wait, you can use it not in a pair? Yeah. You can use it as a, you can use one of them in a sentence to like separate out two sentences. I don't know that I've ever used it not in a pair? Yeah. You can use it as a, you can use one of them in a sentence to like separate out two sentences. I don't know that I've ever used it not in a pair. Right.

It's basically can be a colon or a semicolon in the use case that a colon or semicolon could be used. You seldom have need for any other punctuation marks when you have the em dash in your quiver. And it's really good at catching the reader's attention and providing a sort of like pacing through the sentence that you're writing. Yeah. All while maintaining a like super informal tone. That's very prevalent in the blog world.

And also it can be kind of lazy and easy to use them a lot because you don't have to think so hard about how you're structuring your sentence because you've got that em dash that you can use to like change the sentence in any one of like a handful of ways as you need to there's not a lot of like when you're writing 180 blog posts a month like you don't have a lot of time to say like let me look critically at every single thing that i'm writing here to see if it like grammatically hits and is as like powerful as it can possibly be the em dash can get in there like your little friend to help you do whatever it is that you need it to do. And I really, really like that. Okay, so the name. I saw so many trusted sources explaining what the name em and em dash was, which is that the em dash, spelled again, E-M, I know this is confusing, is the length of a capital M, whereas the N dash, E-N dash, is the length of a capital M. Is that true? No, that's apocryphal.

And I was surprised because there's some pretty big names putting up this false information. It does come from typography, the etymology of the M dash and the N dash. typography, the etymology of the em dash and the en dash. The em, E-M, and the E-N-N are units of measurement for typography. So I found one source that said that old print shops used to use the term mutton for the M and the nut for the N to make things less confusing because they're also, you know, printing a lot of actual letter m's and n's so the mutton or the m is the height of the point size of whatever font that you're using uh and the n is half of that so in digital terms think of it this way if you write an uppercase i that is the m that is the height the bottom of the i to the top of the I is the M of that font.

So that is just a vertical M dash. You turn that I on its side and that's an M dash. It is an M dash is as long as a capital letter is tall. Yeah. So it's not the width. It's the length. That's right. Yeah.

Or the height specifically. Yes. Yeah. So yeah. And then the N is half that size. specifically yes okay yeah uh so yeah and then the n is is half that size uh a lot of that comes down to like old printing press like the actual size of the uh you know different type pieces that they would they would put in the height of it would be the m half of that would be the n and so an m dash would be the height of the thing the the the type i mean aren't all capital letters the same height

yeah they are but not all dashes are that long, right? So I use the I as an example because it's literally a vertical M dash if you turn it on its side. You're right. I shouldn't say any letter. But the I is just perfect, especially if you're looking at it on like a Google Doc. It's just one vertical line and you turn it on its side. It's an M dash. Whatever.

So yeah, I've learned over time that the m dash is a sometimes food that you should sprinkle in your writing because if you use it too much it becomes completely unreadable i do think some of your earliest emails to me were full of m dashes and i remember thinking like who puts m dashes in their email i mean i was i was working at joystick when we started recording and so uh that makes a lot of sense because I was fucking M- just wild about these things. I still really like them. They are still my go-to punctuation mark. You hit the hyphen button key three times and it makes one.

Or you can do, I think, like option shift hyphen will just whip you out a big long M- real quick. I love the idea that you would get an M- tattoo and everybody's like, line and you'd be like no no no no it would be hard to just i don't want people to see that and be like oh you have a hyphen because without the context of other shit around it people aren't going to tell it it's a big strong virile m dash you need like a ruler underneath your tattoo exactly also tattoo right but it like showing font point size. Anyway, that's the M-Dash. I love the M-Dash. I used to use it way too much.

You should use it if you write because it feels good. Because you can just make, you can make jokes. You can write quick. And it does a lot of, does a lot of different things. And I like the flexibility of it. Anyway, here's some stuff from our friends at home. We didn't get a ton of submissions in this week. So please send us your small wonders, just a sentence or two about something you're really into at wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com. We have one this week from Jolie who says, my small wonder is subway poetry,

specifically an initiative in Toronto called Poems in Passage. I love looking up at a place where an ad would usually be and instead seeing a poem from a local poet. Kind of in the vein of your street art segment from Ransom. Yeah, exactly. That's what it reminded me of, of just like seeing unexpected like art in regular places. Yeah. Subways have so many opportunities for cool art shit.

Yeah. I was watching some video that Henry had on that was showing a, what's it called? Zoetrope of like a subway train that as it goes down a tunnel, the way that like these pictures printed on the wall pass by the windows. It makes it look like it's like animating. Yeah. Anyway. And like when they turn the steps out of a subway station and like piano. And so like as you go up, it like plays notes.

It's a fun interactive environment thank you to bowen and augustus for you so our theme song money won't pay you find a link to that in the episode description thank you to maximum fun for having us on the network i feel tired i feel worn out from talking about the m dash and also we just went to the gym if you've noticed a certain amount of like energy, it's because we still got that adrenaline and the endorphins and the lats. My lats and delts are fucking pumping right now. Yeah. I've got just strong traps.

My traps are like a gorilla. We have merch over at MacquarieMercom including a sometimes it rains in trav nation shirt that i've absolutely smitten with uh some some great fun galore stuff over there um and i think that's it again wonderfulpodcast.gmail.com let us know what your your what's in your heart what's in your heart today i don't think we want necessarily no we don't want that specifically we need we need content but what i mean we don't want that specifically. We need content. But what I mean, I hope your heart is good, but we need the content. Hey! Working on it! Money won't pay! Working on it! Money won't pay!

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