Wonderful! - Wonderful! 367: Gun-Poppin' Think Pad Stretch

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Griffin's favorite sociological phenomenon! Rachel's favorite dog-friendly poet!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaWorld Cent...ral Kitchen: https://wck.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 28, 2025! Support our show now and get access to bonus content by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful, a podcast where we talk about things we like that's good that we're into. We're halfway through the drive kids. We're gonna stop at this residence in for the night and we're gonna get out.
Starting point is 00:00:34 Here's 50 cents. Go get something from the vending machine. Get yourself a soda pop from the vending machine. And then give us that money right back. Give it right back for the max fun drive. You all have been so supportive of this show and all the shows that we do throughout the many, many years that we've been doing them.
Starting point is 00:00:51 This is our 14th drive, I believe. When you say hour, you mean? The McElroy family's. You're a part of this, babe. I know, but I wasn't there at the beginning. No, you weren't. I tried to get you. There was an extra set of footprints.
Starting point is 00:01:07 But that's where you carried me, I guess, while you were not present. That's where my love, my future love carried you. Exactly. To the moment we met. Maximumfun.org slash join is the link you can go to. This is our last week of The Drive. We've been doing a ton of streaming
Starting point is 00:01:24 and have a bunch of bonus content available for you. If you've never become a member, seriously, the amount of bonus content, hundreds of hours of stuff across all the shows, you are going to find a treasure trove, a dragon's hoard of good stuff in there waiting for you. And also, you support us, this show, directly. The money, when you choose what membership level you wanna go with, each of which comes
Starting point is 00:01:50 with some great rewards. Yeah, you get like a list of all the Max Fun shows and you can select the ones that you listen to and then they will get a chunk of your donation. Yes, so it is a very, very direct way. Max Fun skims a little off the top. No, that makes it sound like they're doing nefarious work. They do incredible, incredible work
Starting point is 00:02:10 and they take a little bit for, you know, to administrate this whole shebang. To have staff that like support all of these shows with all the things we need to stay afloat. And not only that, but owns the network also in a co-op style. It's a wonderful, wonderful group of people, a wonderful network that I am so honored
Starting point is 00:02:31 to have been a part of for as long as we have. We'll tell you more about the drive later on in this episode, but if you enjoy our work and you are able to, maximumfun.org slash join. If you think it might be something you wanna do, go ahead and just knock it out. It's really, really quick, and then you won't have to think about it later.
Starting point is 00:02:51 And then you will be able to listen to a whole bunch of extra stuff. You'll hear a bunch of extra stuff, like Hockey Talk Badaka Doc with us and Dave Schumpka. Any small wonders for us this week? Small wonders. I mean, I gotta say that game. That fucking game, y'all.
Starting point is 00:03:04 Okay, non-sports folks, listen, I get it, but last night's game of hockey was insane. And keep in mind, we're recording this early. Friday, yeah. But the game of hockey we watched last night was the game between two teams battling for the wild card spot in the Stanley Cup playoffs. And that was the St. Louis Blues and the Vancouver Canucks.
Starting point is 00:03:25 Dave Strumke's team of choice. Yeah. Yes, and yeah, the playoffs are looking really fucking tight. Blues, the Flames, the Canucks are all like neck and neck and neck and neck. There's like a dozen or so games left, I think, maybe a little bit more. And so it's just thrilling.
Starting point is 00:03:44 And this game was just absolute Stanley Cup level, like incredible hockey. It went to overtime, because Canucks tied it at the last like- With two seconds left. Yeah, the last two seconds of the game. And then overtime is five minutes and it's three on three and it's very stressful to watch.
Starting point is 00:04:00 And then the Blues scored in overtime. And Griffin and I literally jumped up and hugged each other. I screamed, I know. Yeah, it doesn't settle things. It's like, I think we're at 77 points, Connects are at 76, and the Flames are at 75. Yeah, it's still incredibly close.
Starting point is 00:04:17 It's still so fucking close. But we are technically in the spot right now. We are in it. I know, I looked at the standings this morning, and it sent a wave of warmth over my body. Gosh, I think I was gonna say that too. I know, I know, anything you say will probably pale. I think I talked about Wonder Stop on this show,
Starting point is 00:04:37 we did a whole episode on it on the besties, I'm not sure if I talked about it on this show. It's the new game that was written by Davey Redden, who we knew back from Austin. He made a couple of great games. Yeah, I don't know if you've mentioned that on Wonderful. It's wonderful. It's fantastic.
Starting point is 00:04:55 It's a game about burnout and the sort of like forces that lead a person to burnout and, you know, how work ethic can be a toxic thing, but it does, it has that conversation in a really nuanced way, not just saying like, you gotta take care of yourself, man. Like it really gets into like what it means when you have that voice in your head
Starting point is 00:05:22 that is telling you. You mean that you don't jump from level to level drinking vials of energy juice? You don't jump from level to level drinking vials of energy juice? You don't jump from level to level drinking vials of energy, well, gosh, babe, you're actually not too, there is a lot of sort of like, you have to get into a very zen-like state of mind with the game.
Starting point is 00:05:35 I feel like it would drive you a little bit crazy because it's like the anti-Stardew Valley a little bit where ostensibly you are growing these plants for tea farming, but there's not really a reason you're doing it. And throughout certain points in the game, like the area will just reset and everything is gone. And now you are sort of starting from. So it's like unattaching yourself from the grind
Starting point is 00:05:58 that is also like inherent to games. Anyway, the game's fantastic. The soundtrack is by Daniel Rosenfeld, C418, who we also know from back in Austin, and it's incredible. It is so lovely, and I've been working to it lately, because it's just like chill instrumental music. But it's definitely in my top games of the year so far.
Starting point is 00:06:21 Recommend it highly. I go first this week. I would like to talk to you about the small world phenomenon. This one scratches like that sociology minor itch in my brain. I always forget you have that. Yeah, you know.
Starting point is 00:06:36 How did you pick it? How did I pick it? At Marshall University, there was a thing called the Marshall Plan. And the Marshall Plan was you cannot graduate until you have taken this number of credits of these different subjects. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Was sociology one of them? Sociology was in one of the tracks, right? I didn't wanna take history. The reason I became a sociology minor is because I didn't wanna be a history minor. But also I took a sociology class and the teacher was fucking incredible. He sounded like Click and Clack from Car Talk
Starting point is 00:07:05 combined into one human being. But every class I had in that track was like so detached from anything else I was doing at college. I didn't know anybody in any of the classes, but I had so many great classes in there. I took one called sociology of death and dying that was like kind of a rough ride. I remember you talking about that.
Starting point is 00:07:24 But I found it like really, really the idea of every living human being in civilization being part of this massive sort of unobservable organism that is just chaotically sort of changing all the time and the best you can do is sort of find patterns in it. Like I found that very, very fascinating. This is sort of the opposite of that in a way. So to walk us into it,
Starting point is 00:07:48 there is an Instagram account called SmallWorldPhenomenon. I was telling you about it, I believe the other night. All they do is post videos where they connect any two human beings across history to modern day, six degrees of Kevin Bacon style. Oh yeah, you showed me that one of these. I showed you one of these.
Starting point is 00:08:05 They take on the challenges left in the comments of these videos. People are like, no fucking way you can connect these people and they'll be like, just posted it. Some highlights include Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the band Franz Ferdinand. Ryan from Ryan's World to Saddam Hussein, which I think is maybe the one I showed you.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Joseph Stalin to Hayley Welch, the Haq Tua lady. Anne Frank to Steve Zahn is another quick one. You're probably gonna get there, but when they were showing the connections in the video you showed me, it was like images of people together. Is that how they're doing it? That's how they're doing it.
Starting point is 00:08:43 They're saying these people have met each other, right? This is inherent to the small world problem or phenomenon or experiment or whatever, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But yeah, it's basically saying like, these two human beings were, you know, at least knew each other to the extent that they took a photo together, right?
Starting point is 00:08:59 Or in some cases, we're in a painting together when you go back to like, you know, old, old, old, old, old days. Some of these connections, like Ryan from Ryan's World to Saddam Hussein is like so fast. It boggles the mind how quickly you get there. What I find really fascinating is the more I watch these videos,
Starting point is 00:09:20 the more like I started to pick up on certain patterns. There are bridge humans who allow these massive leaps from past to what we would consider modern day. So like Charlie Chaplin, there's a Charlie Chaplin to Marlon Brando to Michael Jackson pipeline that almost all of these things run through. And that is, I find that really fascinating,
Starting point is 00:09:48 the idea that there are these iconic people who have met enough iconic people that they form these little like social nexuses around themselves, nexuses around themselves where if you want to connect this person from 200 years ago to this SoundCloud rapper today, you're gonna go through Brando. You're gonna go through Chaplin.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Right, I think that's very, very cool. There's another very sort of common pipeline that I see, which is Muhammad Ali to Will Smith. Muhammad Ali, huge influential boxer, met a ton of celebrities and politicians. And so because there's different worlds connecting there and then you get to Will Smith, who has also met, Nelson Mandela is another huge one you see all of the time
Starting point is 00:10:37 because there's a lot of sort of global reach there. But seriously, in all these videos, you will see one of those people pop up every time. These vast social networks sort of are spiral galaxies around these few sort of pinpoints of human light. That's like wild to me. Yeah. So this idea of the small world phenomenon, it didn't originate with this Instagram account, obviously.
Starting point is 00:11:04 If you've played Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon, you probably could have guessed that. Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon's an interesting one, because it's a bit more limited, right? Like, it is typically limited to movie stars, film people who share credits on the same movie. What you're describing makes the Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon game look like child's play. It really does. They're in the same industry. Exactly, you could do probably one degree of separation
Starting point is 00:11:29 to Kevin Bacon if it was just like, who took a picture together? But it's just about who was in movies together. And I think because Kevin Bacon has such a wide, let's say quality range in his catalog from like Oscar nominated stuff to not as good stuff. He's kind of like the Marlon Brando. Well, he's not the Marlon Brando of movies, is he?
Starting point is 00:11:53 No. No, that's gonna be Marlon Brando, isn't it? No, but he's like worked with like Susan Sarandon and John Lithgow, you know, like people. Susan Sarandon's gotta be at this point, a huge Nexus person. Yeah, they've been in the business for a while now.
Starting point is 00:12:06 But the Small World Experiment predates Kevin Bacon by quite a while. Around the turn of the 20th century, there were a few researchers and sort of sociologists kicking this idea around the world. There was a Hungarian author named, I'm gonna butcher this, I apologize, Frigis Korynti, who
Starting point is 00:12:27 coined the term six degrees of separation in 1929. But it was a social psychologist by the name of Stanley Milgram, who really formalized and named this small world you know, problem. He wrote an article in the May 1967 issue of Psychology Today about it. That was very, very formative. Milgram also did what was called, I think the Milgram experiment, which was, I believe at Yale, and it was the experiment where people,
Starting point is 00:12:54 through a computer, were asked to administrate shocks to different test subjects. And it was an experiment to see how obedient someone would be in the face of asking you to do terrible things, which was very, very controversial, understandably. But Milgram also had all of this stuff that he wrote about the small world problem. It was all supported by other researchers
Starting point is 00:13:19 and mathematicians, and the small world problem, put simply, this is from the article, is what is the probability that any two people selected arbitrarily from a large population such as that of the United States will know each other, also sort of like factoring in the intermediary acquaintances, however many links in the chain you need to get to those people. And at the time, and still now really, but at the time especially, the small world problem was exactly that.
Starting point is 00:13:47 It was a problem because nobody had the tools to really like run the numbers on this at the scale of like just the population of the United States of America, right? Like you couldn't, in 1967, you couldn't like go and find out who knew who in a really wide ranging way. But this problem, it garnered a lot of attention, got a lot of people writing about it.
Starting point is 00:14:16 And what I find really interesting to sort of like cap off this dry history lesson is that this small world problem, both with the work of Milgram and the researchers who came before them, formalized an idea that is pretty relevant today, which is that they called this web of connections between people a social network, which is. Oh yeah. Yeah, which is kind of what it is now.
Starting point is 00:14:40 I wonder how feasible it would be to do a small world like experiment using the social networking tools that we have available to us now. Obviously not everyone is using those and fewer and fewer are using them by the day. But anyway, that was a really long walk. I just find it really fascinating. Like we think of the world as just sort of enormous
Starting point is 00:15:03 and it's population just vast and unknowable, there's so many people who are all so different, but what the small world phenomenon suggests is maybe it isn't, and I think that's kind of neat. Also it kind of speaks to like the benefit of privilege in that if you are somebody of note, you will get more and more access to other people of note.
Starting point is 00:15:28 Yeah, for sure. So if you happen to know somebody who has a moment of like celebrity or fame, they're gonna be able to access tons of people in that moment. And that makes the kind of connection process a little quicker. Yeah, if you get a picture of yourself with Will Smith. You're in it. You're in it.
Starting point is 00:15:46 You are way, way, way in it. And I think that's really very neat. You know what else I think is neat? The Maximum Fun Network. Hey, me too. You also think it's neat? Yeah. That's good. It would be a weird time of year to shit talk.
Starting point is 00:16:03 We have so much bonus content for you. If you can support us at just five bucks a month, you get access to the whole lot of it, all the bonus content. This year, we got the Hockey Talk Badaka Doc with Dave Schumke here on Wonderful. We auditioned for Hot Ones on My Brother, My Brother and Me, and we're gonna release a video of that
Starting point is 00:16:26 to in the bonus content. It is, yes. We hit our 4,000 member stretch goal, which we're very excited about. We did a new installment in Taz Charlie verse, which is the one shot episodes we do where Justin's oldest daughter, Charlie, puts together a one shot campaign for us.
Starting point is 00:16:42 And it is. Big Son has a little monster in that. Big Son has a monster in that. Big Son has a monster that he put in that too. It is some of my favorite stuff we've done. There is other pledge gifts levels too. At 10 bucks a month, you can choose one of a ton of different enamel pins for each of the shows on the network here at Wonderful.
Starting point is 00:17:03 Our pin is the Poetry Dragon. He's very neat looking. He's got a little beret. He's got a little beret. He's an icon. And of course you get the bonus content at that level too. And there's other levels beyond that. But if you are able to chip in just five bucks a month,
Starting point is 00:17:21 it is that kind of support is the reason why we are still doing these shows, why we are able to do these shows. We have not run an ad on Wonderful in... Weeks and weeks and weeks. Months, I mean, genuinely, I can't remember the last time. And so like that market has, for certain shows,
Starting point is 00:17:39 like fully, fully collapsed. And so it was never the bulk of our... I mean, we're just, the competition is so fierce now. Exactly, yeah. There are people of tremendous reach now that are getting access to the advertisers that once came to us. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:17:56 This model is obviously not entirely novel, but it is like, I don't know a lot of people making stuff like that we make and the way that we make it who are not beholden to any other number of forces beyond their control, determining the content of the show or whether or not your show gets to keep being made or not. We don't have to clear our wonderful things with anyone. We don't, no.
Starting point is 00:18:19 And that only is true because of you all. And so there's a really wonderful symbiotic thing almost of like this show, if you like it, it is the way that it is because we are supported by you, the listener. That has been true of all the shows on the network for so long and you can be a part of that. Yeah, you know what I was thinking about?
Starting point is 00:18:44 Like this morning I was thinking about the opportunity I have to share poems and poets with our listeners. And it occurred to me, I was like, this is kind of my dream job. Like it's hard for me to think of it as a job, because it's you and me talking, which is something we do all the time.
Starting point is 00:19:03 But when I studied poetry in college and graduate school, I didn't necessarily think that would lead to any kind of career in the field. That's wild, because you went to school for it for a fucking wicked long time. I know, because I loved it and I wanted more of it. And I was, I think, hopeful that it would continue to be in my life, but definitely not certain of that.
Starting point is 00:19:26 And it wasn't for a long time. And it wasn't, yeah, I mean, it was something I did kind of on the side, but now I get to share it with a lot of people, and I get to kind of publish my own little anthology of my favorite poems and poets, you know, as often as I want. And that's kind of amazing. That is amazing.
Starting point is 00:19:42 I really appreciate people that have enjoyed that and are able to donate to support the show because I love doing it. as I want and that's kind of amazing. And so I really appreciate people that have enjoyed that and are able to donate to support the show because I love doing it. Yeah, maximumfun.org slash join is where you can go. If you're already a member, first of all, thank you so, so much. We are trying to, you know, obviously reach our,
Starting point is 00:20:00 we have a bunch of different stretch goals. We're gonna do a bunch of fun stuff if we hit those numbers and you can help us reach those by boosting your membership, you know, a buck or two a month, if you are able to do so, or you can upgrade to the next, like, you know, membership tier from five to 10, uh, a month and so on, if you are not a member and, uh, you, you enjoy this show and it, it means anything to you, you can be a part of it and you can help us make it and help us keep growing regardless of the market forces
Starting point is 00:20:36 of the world, maximumfund.org slash join. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. What's your, can I steal, no, I'm not gonna steal you away. Because we don't- You just kind of did, but not really. It was like the longest steal ever. Like I was crawling to second base. You wanna know what my thing is?
Starting point is 00:20:54 I would love to know what your thing is, babe. Be chin for the think pad. Gotta stretch. Your guns really pop when you stretch for the ThinkPad. Thank you. I got a quick small wonder, how much we objectify each other's muscles these days, I really do appreciate.
Starting point is 00:21:15 We're just not people that have ever been, I think, appreciated for our physical prowess. Yeah, that's true. And it's not like I'm like, you know, fucking popping Chad over here, but sometimes I'll just like pick up a thing and be like, ooh. Yeah, I'm like, you know, fucking popping Chad over here, but sometimes I'll just like pick up a thing. And you'll be like, ooh. Yeah, I'm like, hey, look at, there's something there.
Starting point is 00:21:29 And I can see it from here. Just a real muscle daddy and muscle mommy over here. That's the new name of this podcast. Muscle daddy, muscle mommy. No, please. Why not? We don't know anything that we could share with anyone about muscles.
Starting point is 00:21:43 I'll tell you about creatine and- I don't think that's a thing anymore. Creatine? PanX? Are people still? People are mixing PanX with creatine. I don't know what PanX is. It's turning them crazy.
Starting point is 00:21:56 Okay, can I? Please, yeah, I would love you to. So speaking of poetry, this week I am taking you to the poetry corner. Shhh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, sh Doing the family matters thing? No, my head was just like, make these sounds. And I was like, okay. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. That's so fun. It's a rare condition. I thought you were thinking like,
Starting point is 00:22:33 normally I do the Frasier song, this week I'll pick a different show. Family matters theme song, step-by-step theme song, and full house theme song. I mean, full house of course, yeah. Which one, which one fucks the most? For me, it's Family Matters All Day. I mean, I only, of those three,
Starting point is 00:22:49 I only really watched Full House. So it's hard for me to feel strongly about the other two. Do you hate Urkel? I kind of. Is that okay? I guess so, yeah. Is that a hot take? You love Stefan.
Starting point is 00:23:02 See, here's the thing with that show. I was supposed to hate Urkel, right? No, I don't think so, babe. I don't think you were supposed to hate him. I was supposed to be endeared to him? I mean, he was a stinker. We can't, we can't spiral. Everybody on the show treated him like he was a nuisance
Starting point is 00:23:16 and I was supposed to like him? He was a nuisance, but he was so funny. And sometimes he got in a machine that turned him sexy. That makes it sound like there were viewers that were like watching until about halfway and they were like, oh, not a sexy week and just trying to show off. No, no Stefan machine, I'm out of here.
Starting point is 00:23:34 Okay, this is a show where we talk about poetry and poets. Yes, yes, yes. And the poet I am talking about this week is Ellen Bass. That sounds familiar to me. She's been around for a while. She's been putting out books of poetry since the 70s. She is still alive now. She is 77 years old and she has a pretty famous poem.
Starting point is 00:23:58 And I think I'll just read it real quick here at the top because it's a short one. Okay. This is the one that I recognized right away. It is called The Thing Is. To love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
Starting point is 00:24:16 your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, it's tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water, more fit for gills than lungs. When grief weighs you down like your own flesh, only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, how can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you.
Starting point is 00:24:48 I will love you again. Fuck man. Isn't that phenomenal? That's really, really tremendous. A lot of people shared this poem with me, and I apologize, I can't remember who exactly. Because there's another one of those poems that's like right in my wheelhouse.
Starting point is 00:25:02 Of course. Of like such precise language, these like surprising comparisons, and and this indomitable spirit. The idea of grief laying on you, tropical humidity, slaps so hard for me. That is an idea that I have never tried to put into words before, but it's really, really, really good. She is really incredible about that.
Starting point is 00:25:26 That's kind of one of her like special skills. There is an interview with her in the Adroit Journal and they ask her about how you take specific memories and turn them into larger themes. And she says, that's what I'm hoping will happen when I write a poem and what I try to be alert to that moment when the poem starts to veer towards something I didn't anticipate didn't know before I started writing
Starting point is 00:25:53 many times the poem doesn't open up or I'm too dense to hear what it might be offering me but sometimes I'm able to catch it she talks a lot about metaphor as one of her strengths. She grew up in New Jersey, lived over her family's liquor store. And moved to Boston, got a master's from Boston University, which is where Ann Sexton was teaching at the time, which is one of the famous female poets. One of like five poets I could probably name off this list.
Starting point is 00:26:26 Yeah, and one of my entries into a real profound appreciation for poetry. And she has edited a poetry anthology of women's writing in the 70s. And then she had kind of a huge gap of like, she was publishing in the 70s and 80s, and then 20 years went by. And she was doing some nonfiction and hosting poetry workshops and kind of fell out of the
Starting point is 00:26:55 scene a little bit and then now she's as active as ever. Her most recent collection came out in 2020. It was called Indigo. But I want to read another poem. Oh, dang. Yeah, well, you know, Super Size Sweeps Week. Yeah, I guess so, yeah. This is from a book she released in 2007.
Starting point is 00:27:17 And the poem is called Lost Dog. It's just getting dark, fog drifting in, damp grasses fragrant with anise and mint, and though I call his name until my voice cracks, there's no faint tinkling of tag against collar, no sleek black silhouette with tall ears rushing toward me through the wild radish. As it turns out, he's trotted home, tracing the route of his trusty urine. Now he sprawls on the deep red rug, not dead, not stolen by a car on Westcliff Drive. Every time I look at him, the wide head resting on outstretched paws, joy does another lap
Starting point is 00:27:56 around the racetrack of my heart. Even in sleep, when I turn over to ease my bad hip, I'm suffused with contentment. If I could lose him like this every day, I'd be the happiest woman alive. Jesus. Christ. Isn't that phenomenal? It just, that pivot there at the end.
Starting point is 00:28:15 Dude, the pivot at like the 30% mark of that poem. Oh, where it's like, oh yeah, he's gone. Rachel, if you read a poem on this fucking show, where something bad happens to a dog, we will be ruined financially. I could sense your tension. And I felt that tension when I was reading it too, of like, oh God, this is gonna be the saddest poem ever.
Starting point is 00:28:34 But then the idea of your worry being sort of relief. It's such a profound happiness when you are terrified that you are never gonna see something again and then you have it and she captures that. So like. The joy does another lap around the racetrack of my heart, Beth, stop it. If I could lose him like this every day,
Starting point is 00:28:56 I'd be the happiest woman alive. Fuck man. Every line of that is like, it's pretty memorable. I know, I know. She's remarkable. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. She, to my knowledge, is still teaching in the MFA program at Pacific University.
Starting point is 00:29:15 And she's a phenomenal poet, Ellen Bass. I would recommend checking her out. Thank you, Ellen, for your great works. Do you wanna know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Okay, we got one here from Nathan who says, "'My small wonder is my call commute to work.
Starting point is 00:29:33 "'I got a new job recently and it's in the same direction "'as my mom's workplace. "'So sometimes we'll call each other "'and talk the whole drive up. "'It's been so nice to start the day talking "'to one of the most amazing people I know. "'Love you, Mom. "'Bonus, little one, we also like to do
Starting point is 00:29:44 "'what we call insider trading, where we coordinate our driving during the call, like slowing down to let the other change lanes and such. I really like that a lot. That's so charming. It's really very charming. AJ says, I installed some ring cameras when I moved
Starting point is 00:30:01 into my new house in January. And after living here for a couple months, I've realized my area has dozens of outdoor cats that are fed by my neighbors. Now, I get random notifications throughout the day when kitties come to visit my patio and it's always so wonderful to check the footage. It's like my own real life version of Nico Atsume.
Starting point is 00:30:18 You remember that game? The little cat collecting game? That was very cute. Yeah, that sounds really nice too. I would be a little bit annoyed, I think, getting constant notifications from my camera. But then you check it and see that it's a cat and that's probably a great relief.
Starting point is 00:30:37 Hey folks, one last time, really, for us, for the whole drive, because this is the last week of it. MaximumFun.org slash join is where you can go to become a member of the network, support our shows, support this show directly and gain access to a ton of great bonus content and other gifts depending on what you are able to give. We are not gonna ask you again this year.
Starting point is 00:31:00 No, this is gonna be. We would appreciate if you made it a priority. If you are on the fence about it and it sounds like something that you wanna do, that you wanna support, don't put it off because you won't hear our voices again, probably for the rest of the week. Maximumfun.org slash join is the link.
Starting point is 00:31:20 At just five bucks a month, you get access to hundreds of hours of bonus content, dozens just from the two of us, from, you know, wonderful and rose buddies. If you don't wanna do a recurring payment, I totally understand that. You can pay upfront for the whole year if you would like to,
Starting point is 00:31:37 and you will get access to all of that stuff. A lot of people feel pretty confident that they can do this now, but are maybe concerned about what the rest of the year is going to look like. Absolutely. And so we give you that option. Totally understand that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:31:50 That is also a huge, huge, huge support to us. If you're already a member, you can boost or upgrade your membership to the next level, and that will help us sort of reach our stretch goals where we're going to be doing a lot of very silly, pretty much all embarrassing stuff. We're streaming every day during the drive, so go to our McElroy family YouTube channel and we're doing stuff over there all the time. We are trying as hard as we can to pull out all the stops
Starting point is 00:32:18 during this two week period. And it is because it is pretty make or break, I will say for us. This, I'm so fortunate and thankful to get to do the work that we get to do because of the support we get from our listeners. And also it is like a little stressful to have a two week period of the year
Starting point is 00:32:41 where you are determining a lot of stuff. Yeah, particularly because like you have an incredible team of people supporting your work right now and you're very attached to all of them because they're incredible people. Yep, absolutely. And so the pressure feels high. So we thank you for your support. Yes, we thank you very, very much. One last time, maximumfund.org slash join.
Starting point is 00:33:04 Thank you very, very much. One last time, maximumfun.org slash join. Thank you for listening. We will be back with a new episode, a non-drive episode next week. We'll put the bad boy in park up on Hangman's Peak and we're gonna make out. Oh no, it's the Zodiac Killer! Hey! My own Hey! What can I say? My own Hey! Hey! My own Hey!
Starting point is 00:34:00 Maximum Fun A workaround network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.