Wonderful! - Wonderful! 389: The Hot Smell of Beefy Chilli

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Griffin's favorite time-traveling device! Rachel's favorite personal hangout space!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaEquality Florida: https://www.eqfl.org/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. This is wonderful, a podcast where we talk about things we like that's good that we are into. A very sensory episode this week, I'll say. sights sounds specifically the hot smell of your beefy chilly wafting up the stairs into our third floor office absolutely filling the atmosphere with yeah i may have jumped the gun on that a little bit we had some nice cool rainy days earlier this week and i thought like now's the time but today it's like 85 out just because it's 85 degrees doesn't mean you can't fill the air and environment with that rich funky beefy stuff do you know what I mean like

what is it about hot wet beef soup that has to happen in the fall times I feel like the longer you describe this the more unappealing it sounds I don't know you're talking about this sweaty beef and bean mix up this brown mash of funky stuff no I love it so much I'm really excited for it

we were betrayed I will say by the 10 day forecast I was fully ready baby I was so ready you know me chomping at the big I know. You have so many cozy hoodies. I bought it at a pumpkin. I bought it a pumpkin. You did not. I'm sorry. I'm not going to yes and this. You did not bought it a pumpkin.

I bought it two pumpkins and you don't know about everything I do. Sometimes I go out and I buy big seasonally incorrect produce. And I don't tell you about it. Where do I keep it? Where do I keep it? in my shoe drawers in your 3D printer because you know I'll never look in there you will not you're afraid you'll break it do you have a small wonder

anything you'd like to start off the show with and it movesbooth I guess it like so you know I'm still using that electric bike you know those of you may remember former advertiser electric e-bike

welcome them back anytime Sure. Because I'm still using that bike, and I will tell you there's nothing better than when you, like, charge that battery. Yes. And you hit the road, and you're like, I could be out here forever. Forever and ever. I had to go return something at the UPS store, or rather mail it to be returned.

You know how it works. Yes. And turn that bike on, ready to go. I've seen kids at Henry School, probably around his age, on electric scooters, like little kid electric scooters, but they still go. you know, 20 miles an hour, which seems wild to me to stunt just eight-year-olds doing Akira brake slides on their, on their little whips. I mean, some kids are just more, more daredevils than our sons. Some kids are more, or me, like more daredebt, like cooler than myself.

It's hard not to think we may have had some kind of influence on the status of our boys, hellrazers, or lack thereof tendency. I don't know what I want to talk about. We've got some weekend IKEA project that I'm excited to dip into trying to redecorate Big Sun's Room. We've got some big box shelves to put together, and I find that process so satisfying. Even though they do change, they change what kind of fasteners they use, I feel like, on an annual basis there. Did you get the materials necessary to mount that stuff? You know we're mounting it right on the wall.

Okay. Yeah. And the question is, where are we going to put it where he's not going to brain himself on it? I don't know. That laugh you did was so sinister. Did you think about me running into those big boxes or our son? No, I just thought about you in the middle of the night. You forget like the layout of our bedroom consistently.

Yeah. And I always... We're so bad about unpacking our suitcases when we get back from a trip. And the number of times I have beffed it while trying to sneak back into the room. Speaking of, I just put big suitcase away from our Austin trip. Thank you so much for doing that, babe. It is Friday. We did get back on Monday.

Not a big deal. I go first this week. Yes. I'd like to talk about Polaroid cameras, if I may. Oh, okay. May I? Yes, please. Go ahead.

Thank you. So Polaroid cameras, I feel like became kind of a hip thing again in the late 2010s, and I didn't really understand why? No, that's true. Yeah, like around Christmas time, it was like, oh, this is the thing. I've got to get all of the cool, like, Gen Z people in my life. Yes. And they had been not a thing for some time before that. And I was kind of confused as to like why that was. And in researching Polaroids, I kind of like got to the bottom of it. But I don't know. I feel like I quickly kind of dismissed it and the public consciousness kind of quickly dismissed it as like a really kitsch thing. But I don't know. There is a part of me that when I see someone like at a party or something taking pictures of people with a Polaroid camera, I'm always like, hell yeah. brother like that's a what a weird little journey that you're on but it's a it's a kind ride and I'm happy for you I'm happy you're here um so like four years ago I did a segment about kids cameras

yeah mostly because of like the weird digital cameras that are that Henry had and his cousins had and talked about the game boy camera that I had when I was a kid and I don't know the Polaroid camera is kind of like the perfect streamlined version of this idea I feel like if you ever saw a kid when you were a kid with a Polaroid camera it was like well one their family probably has a lot of money that's a fancy kid that's a fancy kid yeah because they were always kind of impractical sure like they were they were hefty the like photo came out uh in a format that was not easily framable you know not at all frame it was kind of like you were suggesting like i want people to know this is a Polaroid picture uh and i'm not

entirely sure what I'm going to do with this picture once it's out. Right. It is very romantic to me, the idea of like capturing a moment and then getting like a hard copy representation of that moment within like a minute or whatever. But yeah, like so much of the Polaroid like model is the opposite of how we treat photos now where there's so much focus on, you know, digital photography and archiving and editing and having like your library that is constantly sort of at your fingertips that you can curate and edit and remix and do whatever too like all of that is not real I mean I guess

you could put a Polaroid into a scanner or whatever but at that point why not just have a digital camera but I don't know I feel like I would not take as many photos on my phone if I knew that I wasn't going to get some like permanent shareable, editable version of the photo that I was taking. But like that's the Polaroid promise, right? Like you click and you take one photo and you get one picture and you're done. And I don't know. I think that's nice. It is nice when someone gives you a Polaroid that they took. I think that that is a cool thing because it does make the as like weird as it is to not have it be a part of your collection, your digital library or whatever. Like it makes it feel kind of meaningful

because it's not just some throwaway thing. It is a tangible object that you were sort of there for the creation of. Yeah. Have you noticed the one that I have displayed in our kitchen? The one from the New Year's Eve.

Yeah. So I'm bringing this up actually because while we were cleaning out the kitchen drunk drawer, uh-oh, that's a different drawer where we put all our tiny airplane bottles of vodka and whatever.

No, the junk drawer. And I, I found like a handful of Polaroids from that New Year's Eve party where our kids and their cousins took a bunch of, took a bunch of Polaroids while we stayed at this cabin with Justin and Sydney and a bunch of their friends and kids. Yeah, Charlie had a camera and she was going around and taking pictures. And she got a really cute one of our kids. Yeah. And it made me feel like they were little time travelers. Like I got like a little vision of them like as little 90s kids.

The quality of the photos is sort of transportive in that way. But we also got a lot of photos that are not so great. Like a lot of photos that are, because it is a fairly low quality camera experience. But even though they're not great, it was cool finding those Polaroids today because it was like this perfect little encapsulation

of that party and like how all of our kids just played Splatterhouse on one of those old retro Sega consoles for nearly the entire weekend because that game is impossible. possible to be, and probably pretty age inappropriate now that I think about it, Spire House. I never got a good look at what it was. Oh, okay, good. Don't. I was sort of shocked in researching this about how long instant film cameras have been around. So the Polaroid Corporation was founded in 1937 by a guy named Edwin H. Land, who was an inventor. He actually invented the polarizing

filter that makes instant film possible. And he did that after dropping out of college at Harvard in his freshman year. He moved to New York City and, you know, was working on this idea of this filter that could pass through light in this very specific way to like process film very, very quickly. He didn't really have the place or resources to do it. So he would sneak into the labs at Columbia University in New York to like, developed this technology, which he did, I think, in 1928, and then he continued to develop it out and out and out until founding the Polaroid company in 1937. The way that it works, when you

would take a photo on a Polaroid camera, it would have a negative sheet, which would be exposed, and the light would pass through this filter and produce this negative sheet, like, instantly in the blink of the eye. And then there would be a pod with a reagent in it that would smush and gush out and then would get pressed between the negative sheet and the positive sheet, which would transfer over the photograph and develop it out using the chemicals that were dispensed by the little pot. And all of that was happening originally inside of a really big role of film. The original Polaroid sort of format was these huge roles of film. And it wasn't until 1958 that we got the more sheet-based sort of Polaroid stock that we're more familiar with. Didn't have color until 19. 1963 with the Pola Color line, even that seems like pretty early for instant color photography. I don't know why I would have assumed it would have been quite a bit later than that, but I don't know. They had it figured out. As for its resurgence in the 2010s, so the rest of like the Polaroid Corporation story is like a beautiful little parable for how development and technology can absolutely ravage a business that has like a single sort of focus.

because in 1991, Polaroid was pulling in $3 billion annually, and in 2001, they declared bankruptcy. And in that span of time is when photography kind of left instant film behind in a major way, and their stock just absolutely plummeted. The assets and names of the Polaroid company kind of passed around for a while, and this successor Polaroid company sort of came out of it that was sort of doing some of the stuff. But in 2008, this Frankenstein Polaroid company announced it was not going to make film for the older cameras anymore. So there was like three Dutch investors who loved instant film cameras who bought a bunch of the machinery from Polaroid as it was like doing this fire sale going out of business. I think for like $3 million bought all of their stuff in some factory in the Netherlands and founded a company called Impossible Project.

to keep making film for older Polaroid cameras. And then in 2017, they just bought all of Polaroids like available stock and name and became Polaroid originals. So this like company that started to continue the legacy of Polaroid and keep making film for cameras for enthusiasts then became Polaroid. And that was in 2017. And that's when they started to make this new batch of cameras. So like it had a research. because of this handful of people who are like, hey, don't stop making that film. We'll make that film.

And then they did it for long enough that they're like, well, I guess we're Polaroid now, which I thought was a fun story. They also make, like, wireless speakers and other tech stuff, which seems wild to me. I don't know why that seems wild. Maybe they're trying to protect themselves from the same kind of. Yeah, because you don't want to get hit with that same wave of obsolescence. Yeah, I have to imagine if they were going to like get on. their feet they had to like convince people like no no no we're not putting all our eggs in

that basket this time we're real we're a real company now anyway uh that's that's polaroids it is an extremely kitsy thing and it is easy to kind of like I don't know dismiss it I don't know that I have the confidence in myself to walk around with a Polaroid camera because I do think it says quite a bit about you to have one out and about and like bring it to a party but I'm always delighted by the people who do that who do exactly that and it is always fun to, I don't know, get a little tiny little thing handed to you. And shaking it is good. I was going to research what that does. And then I forgot, I assume it disperses the reagent between the two. Yeah, but remember, they told you not to do it. That was the big thing when

the Outcast song came out. Oh, yeah? And Polaroid, like, released a statement. Like, don't, you don't have to. It's not necessary. Don't do it. Well, that's fine. That was probably around, I mean, when did Hey, Yaw come out? Probably around 2008. Outcast maybe took Polaroid down. No, no, no. no no no that was earlier than that are we gonna let's do this what year did hey i by outcast come out 2003 yeah i was gonna say it was the beginning of the end i was still in college so i knew it was before

yeah god 2003 my sophomore prom must have been baller or homecoming dance i didn't go to promis sophomore but dang what a track i mean people wanted you to go but you were like guys i was asked. Yeah. But I had prior engagements.

Mm-hmm. Can I steal you away? Yes. Yeah. All right. All right. Are you ready? Yes.

My topic. Yes. This week is the front porch. Okay. Yeah. I love this big open room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In front of the house between the house and the yard.

It's awesome. I think the only. and best, and I guess therefore, best front porch that I have ever had is the little rental house that we had, our first rental together. Oh, yeah. You know, when we lived... Cute little spot. We lived...

That Christmas Lights spot in Austin? In Austin, I think it's 37th Street. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know how specific we wanted to get. I mean, yeah. We haven't lived there for over a decade. So, yeah, it's like this cute little street in Austin that would go so hard on Christmas decorations.

We did not know that when we found that rental. No. Like I had lived in a similar area and I was on a walk and I passed it and saw the little for lease sign and went for it. And then they were like, hey, just so you know. I was like what? And then it blew up. And it wasn't like a super fancy upscale neighborhood.

It was like right kind of in the city. It was just like a short block and everyone on it just the density of the Christmas decorations yeah and it really picked up it had been huge and then it was kind of small when we lived there and then they really organized I think after we left anyway we had a great front porch when we lived there yeah and I like I don't know if you have this experience but for me when I was in like middle school and high school and I would go over to friends houses and they had a nice front porch particularly like a front porch swing yes I was so like envious and I just thought like if I had this, I would be out there all the time. Yeah, we had a front porch and we were

out there all the time. Yeah, were you? Oh yeah, all the time. We had a swing and we had a glider, which was like a ground swing. A swing and a glider? I know. Can you believe it? We were really, really doing okay. That seems like so ostentatious to me. I mean, it was a thing. I think my parents needed places for us to be sometimes when we were particularly underfoot. And so having this tiny outside room with two swings in it was a what would you i guess because you probably all fought over the one swing and so they got a second one yeah we would also turn them so they would face each other and then we had a basketball that we would kick back and forth towards each other's swings sort of like soccer but sitting down and we would do that for literally hours i would have a friend come over and

we would just play sort of porch soccer with a basketball because we didn't have a soccer ball for literally That would be the plan. Come on over so we can play some porch soccer. This is all real. This isn't a lie. This is unbelievable. The stories you tell sometimes are so unbelievably. It makes me seem so folksy and relatable, I bet.

Yeah, I also thought, like, for me, it was, like, one of my romantic ambitions that never got realized, which was to, like, obviously I didn't have one at my house, but to have that, like, good night moment on a front porch. and or front porch swing and I never got to experience that with a nice with a kiss just like a sit like a sit on the swing a hand hold because you don't want the night to end a tender question tender question what would the tender question be as a teenager I guess like would you go to the dance with me will you go to dance to me will you go to dance prom question mark prom yeah never got that but it seemed like it was like it was the point of a lot of like WB slash CW I would have asked you to dance

on my porch and you would have said I'm in college I can't I can't actually that would be wild Griffin I'm your babysitter your parents are going to come home any minute The age gap isn't that significant

It is not unusual for a child that is five years older than another child to babysit them I guess 5 were 15 and you were 10, I would probably babysit you. I don't know that I would trust you with that. I'm sorry. Sorry.

So, anyway, front porches. Anyway, front porches. A lot of the reason, for example, like my house didn't have a front porch is there was a real, like, peak and valley for the front porch. A lot of these front porches, like, that you think of when you think of, like, kind of the big, like, grand traditional porch is, is, like, a southern institution. it was like the second half of the 19th century. We're talking about like French colonial style homes. You're seeing kind of the big porch. Also before air conditioning or electric fans,

there were sleeping porches, which were like screened in spaces to allow like nighttime breeze in like Victorian era and early 20th century homes. Also like porches on the second floor, next to bedrooms as a way to avoid tuberculosis. Oh, okay. I guess you got to use everything you got available to you. People really, like before antibiotics, like the standard treatment was fresh air exposure.

So before we had the word balcony, we had tuberculosis porch, upper deck tuberculosis porch. I have to make a declaration, but I do not want to get tuberculosis. Where can I do it? I know. So this article I was reading in Dwell talks about the decline in what they called the Inner War era, which was 1918 to 1940 or kind of between the First World War. Okay. So it wasn't like a war for our nation's porches.

No. There weren't like houses across the street from each other slinging cannons. I hate your, get a, get a terrorist like the rest of us. What are you trying to do? Give us tuberculosis. Well, there were, so there were actually like stricter housing, house building guidelines. Okay. Which meant a lot of developers were streamlining designs.

There was also increased car traffic, which meant people were really kind of putting their real estate in the backyard. I love the idea of a Depression era HOA that's like, hey, hey, I know times are pretty tight right now. And this is going to seem pretty silly and low stakes. but you actually, if you look at the other houses, you can't have a porch. I'm so sorry. So, yeah, so a lot of people focused on the backyard and the front kind of became like a stoop situation. Yes. Which is what we had.

I love a stoop too. We just had like a concrete platform between our front door and the little sidewalk. I hope that part of your segment is not stoop hate because we have, I bet a lot of listeners who, love a stoop in some big cities a stoop's all you get and a lot of people you're looking at me right now i mean why would i hate a stoop of course i don't hate a stoop okay i just wanted to make sure do you think part of my segment was going to be stupey i thought it was going to be i only love porches so much because of how much i hate stoop you think i was going to change the format of wonderful to counterpoint one in one out yeah um yeah so then there was there was kind of an

An increase, though, is so according to the National Association of Home Builders, the number of new single-family U.S. homes built with porches climbed from 42% in 1994 to 52% in 2004, and then 66.4% in 2022. Huh. Some of this is, you know, situations like COVID, where people are looking for, like, opportunities to, like, socialize, like, safely in front of them. house. Yeah.

It's also kind of a big, a big way to kind of keep your neighborhood, like, friendly and and safe and supportive if you have kind of a porch culture. Yes. Where people are just out all time. Oh, God. I love that. I've not had that since the house I grew up in. The house I grew up and had a front porch, obviously.

Yeah. Or else would we play porch soccer, and as did every other house on the block. And you really would be hanging out there with friends and your neighbors would be doing the same and we wouldn't like talk at length about a lot of stuff but it was nice to have other people hanging out nearby it was always a cool thing I know yeah there's there's still areas like in new Orleans for example where this is still very much a big part of like the neighborhood and the community yeah and you know obviously there are still porches but yeah we don't see quite as many and it's and it's largely because there was that huge gap of time um where people just weren't

building them. So if you have kind of these old homes or these brand new homes, you'll see them sometimes. But there's the big chunk in the middle where they weren't. Let's smash out the front wall of our living room. And we'll probably need some permits to do that. And part of the second floor of our house will fall down. But we got to keep the stoop too because we love stoop. Well, look, we got to have a front porch and a stoop. It feels performative now a little bit. Like it feels like you're trying not to get in trouble with the stoop. People are like, why do you have a front porch and a stoop and we'd be like, why, why wouldn't we? Do you hate stoops?

Sorry I came at you so hard about the stoop thing. I just don't ever want you to assume that I hate stoops. Okay, I won't. Do you watch Hey Arnold? Only a couple times. Cool. Do you want to know what our friends at home are talked? There is this very stoop-based episode called Stoop Kid and is a good one.

It's probably everyone's favorite episode of Hey Arnold. Do you want to know what our friends at home I'm talking about? Yes. Ellie says, cheering on a semi-truck when they turn very carefully in front of you. I started doing this at intersections and the drivers always look so proud of their skills and happy to be recognized. Oh, I love that. Every American citizen should be required to spend one to two hours playing one of the hundreds of big rig truck simulators on Steam or PC or wherever. because playing one of those games

instantly instills within you a deep and tremendous respect for our nation's truckers. Or if you've driven like a moving truck, like if you have rented a moving truck from like a U-Haul or like a budget or whatever. Yes, there is something about the bigness of the truck that is challenging.

I'm talking about like in one of those games, you're playing it, you're like, wow, it's kind of fun, I'm going pretty fast. And then it's like, time to turn left. Nope. No, you can't. Good luck. How are you going to do that?

How are you going to turn left? Look how big you're fucking. car is man anytime i see a truck doing that my first instinct is always annoyance and then it immediately turns into like i don't know if you're going to be able to pull this off buddy and then it turns into you did it i always instinctively back up a little bit i give them as much room as yeah yeah absolutely uh keenan or kinen i apologize uh says my wonderful thing is the new album from the beth's straight line was a lie first heard about them from the pod and they have since become my favorite band this is hot off the presses this just came across my death

I did not know there was a new Beth's album But I'm going to be bumping that this weekend And I can't wait That's exciting I hope you'll join me God I love the best Yeah Really really really can't get enough of them

Seems like fall is the perfect time For a new Beth's album Fall and you know what to me? Summer. Beth's the summer band You know it depends I guess in my head they're wearing sweaters In my head they're wearing t-shirts

Huh Brains are crazy Thank you so much for listening Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fund for having us on the network. Go over to Maximumfund.org and check out any show. Any show they got over there. You're going to like what you see. I guarantee it. We got some merch over at the Macroy merch store at macroymerch.com.

We've got a new gerald t-shirt design that I'm just wild about. And we have one more leg of our tour from a Bim Bam and Taz coming to Salt Lake City in San Diego next month. If you you live in the area, either of those areas, come out and see us. It's going to be a really good time. The TAS show in San Diego is going to be our 50th live Taz show. Do you believe that shit? So we're going to do some fun stuff for that one. And all of that is over at bit. L.Y slash MacRoy tours. You can check all that out. Thank you to everybody that came to the Austin and San Antonio shows. Oh my God, the most fun. The most fun. That Austin Live Wonderful was such a blast. Such a like warm crowd. It felt like I was I was being like I was crowd surfing basically the

whole time. It did feel like the whole time we did the show, people were like lifting us up and like passing us around. Right after we came on stage and sat down like someone yelled, welcome home. And everyone cheered and oh God, took my breath away. I know. So lovely. But don't yell things at our live shows. People paid to see us, not you, regardless of how sweet. And moving, your exclamation might be. Well, I guess there are very few cities where people could actually shout that at us, though, you know. That's true. Okay.

I guess they could shout like, thanks for coming or like, you should go to this restaurant down the street. Well, now I feel bad for having that person immediately removed from the premises and banned from all future shows. Yeah, we did stop the show. It took about 15 minutes. This is really, and I'll be honest, guys, the vibe was fucking racist. Bye. Money on, oh, workin' all. Money won't, working on,

working on, money on, working on, work, and working on. Money won't, work in all, hey, working on. Maximum fun. Hey! Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.