Wonderful! - Wonderful! 360: Ashes to Ashes, Pipes to Tubes

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Rachel's favorite indestructible kitchenware! Griffin's favorite interface-themed game genre!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaPalestine Children's Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/

["The Wicked Man's Theme Song"] Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Thank you for listening to Wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things we like that's good that we're into used to be a show about Bachelor

and now it's not. So deal with it. Wow, that has been true for a very long time. Yeah, I don't know why it's stuck in my craw today. I mean, it's probably because we did watch The Bachelor last night, episode one. Every once in a while we dip back in to see. Gotta dip the toe in a little bit.

Is something different? Is it better than before? And usually the answer is no. Yeah. As Max Fun donors know, we did watch Joey's season. And we watched that golden shit. Yeah, and we watched the golden one. We enjoyed both of those.

Sure. This one looks a little bit like more of the same, but who knows? Right over the plate. We watched that golden shit. Yeah, and we watched the golden one. We enjoyed both of those. Sure. This one looks a little bit like more of the same, but who knows? Right over the plate. Doesn't look like there's a ton. Get this. And you guys aren't gonna fucking believe this,

but it looks like when The Bachelor gets to the end of their romance journey, they have a, it looks, and again, all we have is the season preview at the end of the premiere, but it looks like he's gonna have a really hard time deciding between the two final women. Yeah, they always- Isn't that crazy?

They always tease the like end of the season now, because there was one season when it was like a really dramatic ending, as you may recall. I think it was Ben, one of the Bens, it was like, I can't, I love, it was the first time they said I loved. The woman found out. You remember?

Yes. It was a season we watched. Was it Joey's season? Man, I don't know. Well, yes, there's that. The woman found out. That was Joey's season. And preemptively shut it down.

I'm talking about, we were watching the show when it happened that the guy said I love you to two different women, which had never happened before. Oh yeah. And now it happens every season. And it sure looks like it's gonna happen again this time. I don't know, man. What is love though, really? You know, I love a lot of people.

Wait, what? Not in the same way I love you, my husband. Anyway, I don't know what got me talking about that. Do you have any small wonders? Oh, I was thinking about this yesterday that I was gonna make it a small wonder. Okay. I do this thing in our family where I like to put my cheek

against the other person's cheek. It's good. I do that with everybody basically in the house because it does, like it really sends like endorphins or serotonin or something. There's something about the skin to skin, particularly face to face, that really does nice things for me.

And now it's just a thing that happens all the time and I really enjoy it. I remember learning that cats do that and they have some sort of gland in their cheek that puts the smell on you to know. Is that what I'm doing? It might be. I'm tagging all of you.

It might be. I always do enjoy that. I mean, for intimate purposes, but also for utilitarian purposes because you're always quite warm and not quite cold. That's true, I'm a real Dharma. We've been arguing about, we've been hitting this conversation a lot lately.

Who would be warmer or? I mean, clearly Greg would be the cold one. Just because that's kind of like, it resembles his personality. But Small Wonder, Seventh, it's good as hell. I'm not gonna say anything about the plot or spoilers. Yeah, we've seen the first two episodes. It's all that's out.

And it does everything we want it to do. It's so good, y'all. That season one, right, takes such a huge swing at the very end. There's a big cliffhanger, and you worry kind of with these artsy shows that they are gonna make no efforts to like pick up anything, but they definitely do. They fricking do and it's very satisfying.

And it's real good, real good TV. I would say we're on Tinter Hooks now for that and Traders, that Traders season three. Traders. Traders. We're watching that one, enjoy it too. Not a glut of television on right now, but you know, that always happens this time of year. So I'm grateful for Severance.

You go first this week. I actually got to print out my topic. Look at you. Like the old days. You remember I used to do this? You look like fucking Indiana Jones right now with a mask. I used to prep at my office and I would print out my topic.

Okay. But lately we've been recording on Friday and I'm not in the office. Right. But today we're late. Anyway, I got to print out my topic on one satisfying piece of paper. Beautiful.

What is it? My topic is borosilicate glass, otherwise known as Pyrex. My topic is borosilicate glass, otherwise known as Pyrex. All right, all right. I didn't wanna come out and say I'm Pyrex Stan till I die. Is it, because that's a brand, right? Yes, although they're the ones that started the whole show. Okay.

But the thing I like really, honestly, is a glass jar That you can put in the microwave or in the oven a microwave safe glass is like literally all you all you all you gotta say I'm I'm sold. I'm here. Okay There's kind of an interesting history about it you're gonna have to do some real convincing For me to buy well if you think about it, so it's been around forever. The idea of like relatively indestructible glass has been around since the 1880s.

There is a German scientist Otto Schott who developed what's called a low expansion glass used for industrial and scientific settings like laboratory glass, so light glass beakers. And then in 19- But then he put spaghetti in one of those one time. I was like, oh dang. That's actually very similar to what the story is.

Oh good. So in 1908, Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York. Do you know Corningware? It's like the white ceramic casserole dish that has the little blue flower pattern on the front. So they're the ones that made that. But it came about because a scientific corning, they had been using it for battery jars

and railroad lanterns. I don't think I know what a battery jar is. I don't know what that means either. I'm assuming that, I don't know, in like a battery jar is. I don't know what that means either. I'm assuming that, you know, I don't know, in like old machinery, batteries were encased in glass of some kind. I don't know, I don't know. I didn't look into that.

Anyway, they had been using it for those purposes, but ironically, it was so strong, it was never getting replaced. And so they needed some other use for it. A scientist at Corning named Jessie Littleton was married to a woman named Bessie who had her earthenware dish crack in her oven and asked him to bring home a battery jar.

And so she made a cake in it and the jar stayed intact, which big gamble, right? Sure, yeah, I mean, for the cake, for the oven. which big gamble, right? Sure, yeah. I mean, for the cake, for the oven. And then in 1915, Corning Glass launched their first Pyrex line. And what's interesting is, so Pyrex,

there are two different schools of thought. So this glass was called Nonnex at first. And that was what it was called when it was used for battery jars and railroad lanterns. Pyrex came about and either it was named as a combination of pi and non-X because like pi container, pi tin, whatever. Or the one that I like more is that they are playing on the prefix pyro.

So it's like fire glass. is that they are playing on the prefix pyro. So it's like fire glass. Yeah, since they had used X in all their glass formulas, they combined them together. Okay, I'm into it. Because the early advertising called it fire glass. Okay, so that's cool. I mean, cooler. And what a cool sales pitch, right?

We made this special fire glass. It sounds like an Avengers thing. Yeah. You know, like an Iron Man. we made this special fire glass. It sounds like an Avengers thing. You know, like an Iron Man. Like fire glass. Technically all glass is fire glass. And I see what you're saying. Because it's had to go through the crucible at some point. True, but most glass you can't expose to heat

and then cold and have it survive. That's true. So, okay, so we're at 1915. Pyrex now is in like 80% of United States homes. And one of the things they talk about in this article, so I got information from both Food and Wine and Smithsonian. They talk about the eight ounce measuring cup. We have one of these.

Oh my God, yeah. Like everybody has these. They're like these glass measuring cups. They have the little hook handle and the little red measurements. Yeah. There's like a whole history associated with that. Basically the handle of the measuring cup

used to be like a regular coffee cup handle, but then they detached it at the end so it could stack like in anything. Oh wow, okay. So this idea that you could like stack all your bowls and then like put the measuring cup right in. I've never done that even once. Oh, I definitely have.

Stacked the measuring cup into the bowls? Yeah, yeah. It seems like a good way to have a tumble. Have a tumble come out of it, to have the thing tumble out. Well, I'm talking about when I store it and all of our drawers are like knee level. I guess that's true. I'm not gonna like pull it onto my head.

Also, it wouldn't break. What are you worried about? I do have to say I do prefer the Oxo Good Grips two cup measurement cup. Whoa, just because it's bigger? Bigger, easier to read from up high. I'm a tall man and I need to read my measuring cup quickly and from up high without having to fucking get down. Like I'm Walter White,

like trying to fucking like exactly level out my measurements. Bakers would argue that that you should always get low because you're supposed to see, make sure there's no rounded top. But with the Oxo Good Grip's two cup measuring cup, it has that sloped measuring vertex. That's very true. I didn't know this was gonna be a brand battle

between the two of us. Well, it's funny because my topic this week is the Oxo Good Grip's two cup measuring cup. Okay, so early Pyrex dishes, the casserole dish I mentioned, the pie I mentioned, custard cups, loaf pans, oval baking dishes, cut glass teapots and engraved dishes. They must have been so stoked. Can you imagine if you discovered a new kind of glass and you're like, I guess we'll use it for cooking stuff. What kind of cooking stuff is there? All of, a million different kinds,

so many different kinds of cooking stuff. Congratulations, you're so rich now because there's so many different kinds of cooking stuff. Yeah, well, and especially for a company that's like, we're not selling anything anymore because nothing breaks. Because these greedy scientists aren't buying our incredible glass.

With their lanterns. Their freaking battery jars. Okay, so all of this is happening like early 1900s. After World War I, Corning started hiring women who were getting degrees in home economics. Like after World War I, like women are going to college, a lot more of them are majoring in home economics. Okay.

Pyrex started hiring them and they hired a full-time scientist slash home economist named Lucy Malty, which she established a techs kitchen and she would read all these letters from like customers and she would test out all these projects and she made some like key adjustments, including two cake pans that could fit side by side in an oven.

This is like the obvious stuff that like, if you're not actually using it, you're probably not thinking about. Also, handles on a cake pan. Like the little, oh, I love those. Isn't that crazy to think that you wouldn't have a handle on a cake? How did you pick it up before?

You probably just like are like, you know, like a little cat with your. Put your up before? You probably just like are like, you know, like a little cat with your- Put your hand into the casserole, put another hand on the bottom of the casserole, pick it up like that. Or you do what I do sometimes with like the oven mitts where you're kind of like, you're getting in on the lid

and you're kind of poking it towards you and you're trying to like shimmy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many burns have you gotten? So many burns. Rachel would sometimes just like roll into the living room with a big burn on her arm like, yeah. That's the toaster oven's fault though.

Okay. The toaster oven door comes down. I like to jostle stuff around in there while it's cooking and I don't wanna go all the way to get an oven. For sure, but I mean, it's a real, it's like a arrested development corn baller level. I know, that's very true. I think you just play it fast and loose

with the rules and cooking safety. Okay, so I will say there's something that we missed entirely. It was on the market only until 1979. What's that? And this was a stovetop pans called flame ware, which were like glass Pyrex frying pans. That seems wrong.

That doesn't seem right to me. There's a, in this interview I read, a curator of modern design at MoMA says the glass frying pans produced during that period, quote, have a certain shock value. It was one thing to put a casserole dish in the oven, but putting glass in direct contact with heat was an uncomfortable idea.

Well, sure, yeah. I mean, you don't think of glass as being like, able to kind of disperse heat in the kind of way that a really good frying pan can. True. I like the idea, and I like this with casserole dishes too, that you can see like what's happening on the bottom. Yes.

You know, which is not, but yeah, the idea of like a glass frying pan does stress me out. Seems real bad to me. Yeah, but that again ended 1979. And then 70s and 80s, that's when the microwave came out. So like how bomb all of a sudden that you can put, and the big thing about the like Pyrex is that with plastic you get a lot of like leaching of like the sauces

and whatnot and chemicals and all that. But with Pyrex, like there's none of that. This is not sponsored by Pyrex. I know we don't have to clarify that on the show. And I'm talking about borosilicate glass. Right. I'm not entirely, Pyrex is my shorthand. This is like Kleenex for me.

You don't care so much about the company as much as the product. Exactly. Yeah, as I mentioned, 80% of homes have some today. So really what I am is I'm a woman of the people. That's I've always said that to be true of you. Yeah, that's that's Pyrex. I don't know. I was thinking about it today because we are basically totally out.

And I just ordered some more. Fuck yeah. Fuck yes. We've been doing a lot of leftovers lately, and we've just gotten to a point now when I purged our drawer that we don't have any containers to put leftovers in. I don't know how that happened. I love getting a big order from like, you know, an Indian place and then like, getting like huge portions.

You just dump all that right into the Pyrex and you eat out of it and when you're done, put the lid on. Man, we haven't ordered from that Indian place in a while. We have not. You just reminded me. Tonight. Ooh.

I celebrate. Indian food with you. Is that it? That's my topic. That was so great. Can I steal you away? Yes. Yes.

Today, I would like to pull up Google Docs on my phone. Huh? Today, I would like to pull up Google Docs on my phone. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a printout like me? It would be so nice. I'm gonna talk about something that was inspired by the episode of Besties I recorded earlier today. It is a broad genre of games for which there is no name. My good friend and Polygon editor-in-chief Chris Plant gave them the title UIRPGs, which

is a user interface role-playing game. Basically any game that you play that simulates some sort of computer interface and that is the main way of interacting with the game. This is inspired by a game I just finished called The Root Trees Are Dead. But this whole subgenre is very broad and there's a lot of entries in it, even though there hasn't been a lot of exploration of what this subgenre really means. The first game in this category I can remember playing

is when we actually played together, which was Her Story. Do you remember Her Story? Oh yeah, we played that on a plane or something. Yes, we were on some long flight, I forget, if it was like coming back from Hong Kong or some long trip and we played, start to finish through all of it, like sharing a pair of earplugs.

And it was very, very cool. Her Story is a detective game, which is sort of a common companion to the UIRPG kind of like subgenre. A lot of them are mystery or detective games where you are trying to unravel something through this interface.

In her story, the interface is this database of police interviews with this woman named Hannah Smith. And you are trying to find clues in this database of interviews to try and solve her husband's disappearance. And the way it kind of pans out is you'll watch a clip from one of these interviews, you might hear Hannah say something, mention some name

or some place or some event of importance, and then you can search in this search bar, okay, well then I'll search Cornwall and see if there's any other results. And it will pull up other clips that you haven't seen before. And that's the only way that you kind of find them. Is this striking a bell for you?

Well, I was trying to figure out what this genre was that you were speaking of. And it sounds like what you're describing, like this is a common vehicle. It is becoming somewhat common. It is a very nascent sort of way of making games, I think. It's kind of like escape roomy a little bit, right? I think that's maybe a good way of thinking about it,

right, the way that an escape. That you have to kind of, to figure out how the game works, you have to like dig around. Yes, exactly, but I guess my main area of fascination with this genre is that the thing you're digging around in is a simulation of a computer. That's all, right? Like you're not a character standing up

and walking around and doing a bunch of stuff. You're sitting at a fictional computer and using a fictional search engine to like do stuff, which is very much a mirror of like what most of us are doing every day on on computers, right? It is this idea of taking the the video game formula of character goes out and does a thing out in the world and instead making it character Does a thing on a computer which is really what we're all doing all the time

Anyway that I find really really fascinating and I think her story is a really excellent Example of it and a really good forbear the creator of that game is named Sam Barlow He's gone on to sort of spearhead this whole genre His latest game was called immortality and in it you are Going through old film clips and behind-the-scenes footage and like TV interviews With all of these like stars of cinema to try and figure out what happened to this missing actress. And you kind of like unravel this grand conspiracy

along the way, very much in the same vein as her story. But more like exploring like movies and cinema through this fictional interface where you are going through and going and looking at things. There's a game that came out last year called The Operator where you're an agent for this fictional federal bureau, basically like the FBI. And The Operator, you're basically the guy in the chair

for like cool field agents who are like out there like, hey, I'm chasing this guy and I got this video footage, I need you to enhance. Like you're the nerd at the desk doing the enhancing. But all that you see in the game ever is the screen of your computer that you have at the FDI headquarters is the name of it. And you are the operator.

At one point you have to get on your computer and walk a field agent through a bomb disarming manual as this like countdown timer is going off in the background. It's very, very cool. And again, there are some scenes where you get up from your computer, but it's presented all blurry and you just are really just hearing sounds of everything.

The only thing you ever really see is your computer at your desk. It is a simulation of a person who does a job at a computer, which is kind of neat. What device are you playing this on? My computer. Okay. Isn't that crazy?

There's another sub sub genre of this that are like doing this but a phone. I forget the name of this game, but there's one where it's like found phone mystery where you find the phone of this girl who's disappeared, but it's on your phone. And so it looks like a phone, but you're playing it on your phone. Uh, my favorite game in this genre is one called hypnospace outlaw, which is a

fucking incredible title where you are basically a moderator for hypnospace, which is a kind of a parody of early internet, uh internet that people access in their dreams. The game takes place in 1999, and so there's a lot of Y2K fear and panic happening, but it's like you are a moderator of all these GeoCities ass webpages, all of these web rings, and it looks a lot like the internet

at the turn of the 20th century. Yeah, wow. You can download a fictional win amp and get your own skins and download pirated MP3s from it while also moderating copyright infringement and harassment and piracy on these different, it is a hysterically funny game that is also very cool because you're going through a simulation of the whole internet.

It's like really very, very ambitious. And this game that I just finished, Root Trees Are Dead, is a genealogy game where you're a genealogist trying to piece together this whole sprawling root tree family who are these like candy company magnates who have this whole empire and a bunch of them just died in a plane crash and you're trying to piece together this like twisted history of this big

family by using a search browser and using like a library search engine where you can find books by specific authors or periodicals website. If you can find the name of certain newspaper. So it's like, you'll find the name of certain newspaper. So it's like you'll find the name of a magazine and some search result, but Google's not gonna turn up the names of every root tree because some of them aren't famous. For those, you gotta go to the local newspaper of the thing

and find their name there. And you're putting together like pictures and names and professions and relationships on this huge sprawling family tree, basically at your computer or at your evidence desk. How do you keep track of all this stuff? Like that was the hard thing for me about her story is that like, because it's supposed to be kind of

like a realistic dive, like you're not getting like little achievement pop-ups that are like helping you keep track of your next thing that you're supposed to do. So, Root Trees Are Dead, I think does this really well. This game just came out, so if you're listening to this and you like this genre of game, I cannot recommend it heartily enough.

One, you have a little journal, so any time you find something on a search engine, you can just highlight it and save it to your journal instantly, which is very cool. It also takes a lot of inspiration for this game called Return of the Obra Dinn, where you're an insurance adjuster on an old, old cargo ship trying to solve the mystery

of why everyone on board disappeared, filling out the manifest, and it will confirm things and lock things in if you get three at a time correct. That way you can't just guess at shit. You have to get three things correct and then they'll say, okay, those three things locked in. Same thing with this game. If you get three identities on the family tree correct,

it'll lock them in, say, you got that, don't worry about that, use that as an anchor to solve the rest of it. And so, I guess the connective tissue of all of these games is that there is a thread that you start tugging on and there is a momentum to how that thread begins to unravel that kept us playing her story. We didn't put her story down because we couldn't.

If we did, we would have forgotten everything that we were doing. That is kind of like the strength of the whole kind of detective genre. And I think that there is something really magical about doing that in an interface that sort of mirrors our own realities like search engines or computer programs or historic internet databases.

This idea that like the computer that you use every day could contain this mystery that if you're good enough at Googling stuff, you can unravel with no other skills in your belt whatsoever. I find that really, really compelling and really exciting. And it is a type of thing that like, again, there's not like the only name for this genre I could find is UIRPG from Chris Plant that he mentioned on the besties, I think a couple times.

And it is really, really neat to me that there's this whole, I don't know, this whole world of games that is forming out of recognition that we spend so much of our time online, or we spend so much of our time at our computers. And so just a simulation of that holds so much potential and so much value as a story.

Well, and like the comparable thing is that thrill of like you remember a teacher or classmate that you had 20 years ago and you go on this like internet search for that person. Yes. And if they're not on social media, you do a lot of like different terms and trying to connect them to people.

And that's like always kind of thrilling. Yeah. So like, I appreciate why this would be good too. I took a few like investigative journalism classes in college, because you have to in the J-School program. And it was really interesting because they teach you about all these different tools that you can use to fill out Freedom of Information Act requests,

which has gotten significantly harder since the 2000s. But I was always really frustrated, I remember, because it didn't unravel in a satisfying scripted way that a video game might. But I cannot play enough of these games. I am so, so into the detective genre and this fictional interface genre. And this game, The Root Trees Are Dead,

it is a very, very good example of it. But there's so many out there, and it's exciting to me that there's just more and more and more of them coming out it seems like each year. I have some submissions from our friends at home. Do you want to know what they are talking about? Yes. We got one here from Chloe who says, My small wonder is that a sunfish in a Japanese aquarium

was not feeling so well, but got better when the staff put cardboard cutouts with human faces and clothes around the tank to make the sunfish less lonely during the aquarium's renovations. The sunfish loves people. We got this from a lot of folks. I think I saw it in the Facebook group as well. Really? This specific story? Yes, this Japanese aquarium was undergoing repairs and this sunfish just wasn't getting

any visitors and seemed sad so they put cardboard standings. That's a whole Pixar movie right there. Pretty short one, but yeah, I mean, it could be Finding Dory. Well, okay, like one of the ones that you see before, the feature length. That's great, yeah. Put it before finding whatever the last one. And plus, like, man, an animated sunfish

sounds pretty great. Sounds pretty good to me. Yeah. I still think about that slime. Reed says, I love the sound of my dishwasher draining into my sink. I can even see the cascade of dirty water if I look straight down into my drain, just knowing my dishwasher is doing all that work for me

and it's dumping the dirty water makes me happy. It's also a fun gurgle. Dishwashers are so efficient and lovely. Wow. I know the sound. I know, I've never looked in there. I've always been really confused how that works, if I'm honest.

The water go from sink to dishwasher and then dishwasher in the sink. Yeah, but how? Ashes to ashes, dust to pipes, pipes and tubes. Well, yeah, pipes, pipes, sure. I love the sound of our dishwasher finishing its job because it makes a lot of noise. And it pops the door open.

And it pops the door, not all the way open, it doesn't swing and blast open, but it just kind of cracks it a little bit. The first time that happened when we moved here, it was the most confusing. What did we do to this thing? Scared me. 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. Thank you to maximumfund.org for having us on the network. We're so honored to be a part of this network. We got some new merch up in the merch store over at McElroyMurch.com. There's an Energy Dragon pin from McElroy Family Clubhouse, and 10% of all merch proceeds this month will be donated to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.

We got some shows coming up in Florida, in Tampa, in Jacksonville. We're doing some bim bams and taz down there February 20th through the 22nd. You can get tickets to that at bit.ly McElroy Tours, and that's going to do it for us this week. Aw, wonderful. Till next time, keep it slimy like a songfish and stay warm out there, folks. I don't know how to play with you in this space. Some days I get to the end of the road and I realize that there's just a wall there. Yeah.

Sometimes you sound a little bit like a weatherman a little bit. But they have it easy, don't they? You don't think about that, but weathermans get up there and all they do is they say, it's hot today. Grab an umbrella on your way out the door. Back to you, Charles. We don't have, that would be so sick.

Can you imagine if our podcast was inside a podcast and therefore we had no pressure to start and end. Is that why Justin does what he does, do you think? With Munch Squad? I think that might be why he does that. You can just get in and out, no pressure to start or end. Yeah, so maybe we do that for this one and be like, back to you, Charles.

Money won't pay, working on pay. I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll I'm on a roll