Wonderful! - Wonderful! 399: We Keep You Warm With Our Coat Show

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Rachel's favorite guilty pleasure at the holidays - NOT Rachel's favorite Christmas movies! Griffin's favorite keystone species!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaHarmony House: https://harmonyhousewv.com/

Hi, this is Rachel McRoy. Hi, this is Griffin McRoy. And this is wonderful. This is a podcast where we talk about things we like that's good that we're into. Keep you warm in these cold winter months, like a big puffy coat. full of Goosey Down and wool and cotton and all the fabrics. It's an amazing technicolor dream coat that you listen to. And scientists are so confused.

They say, how come listening to a podcast makes you warm and hot? And we say it's hot stuff. I don't know. Yeah, the spicy love between these two lovers. Yeah, that's what we say. We always know when scientists are talking shit about our show and we will call them up and we'll be like, maybe it's the spicy love between two lovers. And they say, there is no scientific evidence for anything that you just said.

And how did you get my home phone number? Why are you calling? It's 11 o'clock at night. Why are you two podcast hosts calling me in my house? I bet if we surveyed wonderful listeners against maybe some other podcasts. Yes. Obviously not on the maximum fun network. our listeners would be happier and spicier yes call me daddy call me sadly sadly

sadly that's the only podcast and that is our competitor that's our main it's us and it's call me sadly and we're doing our we're doing our best out here losing quite a bit of market share but that's okay because we keep you warm with our coat show do you have any small wonders to start off things with our coat show here I mean, we've been watching Stranger Things. Yes. Which is, it's such a wild show, right? I got made fun of for talking about it on Basties.

Oh, really? Well, did they fall off the wagon? Because everybody was watching that show years ago. I think it's just that, you know, everybody there, they bring, like, cool pop cultural sort of stuff. And I brought, Justin made fun of me. He said I only heard about it from the gushers that my kids eat, the special Stranger Things brand in cush. That's not really making fun of you, though. That's just on brand.

like make, it felt like making fun on me. Well, he does, he does he know that you like Gushar so much? Um, no, he doesn't actually. So, so it's just him knowing about the cross promotions that's happening between brands, which is very much his real house. Yeah, you're right. Maybe it was a nice compliment. I will say the show, the show is at its best when it gives me like real Goonies vibes. Yeah. There's a lot about the show that is not peak television, but like, I'm always entertained. super nasty super gory like a lot of people I think

have kids that watch this show because it's about kids but who this season it's TV 14 and a man's head gets turned into a bowling ball like real bad stuff I'm gonna just say small wonder just to just

broadly speaking candle nights was so so lovely it was this past weekend and it was It was really wonderful just to have everyone, you know, in our hometown, come out and come to the show. The turnout was amazing. And the show ended up being like a big two and a half hour, three hour long affair. We had a lot of, we had a lot of stuff prepared.

And so it ended up being a truly enormous amount of programming. We did a walk through and kind of an estimate on time. And what were we thinking? We were thinking it was going to be like a clean two hours. Yeah, like an hour 45. Nope. So hopefully folks who came to the show knew what they were getting into. But there was so much fun stuff in there.

And we're going to be able to put it up to watch on demand starting December 19th. We're going to be putting it up streaming. Originally the plan was December 19th at 9 p.m. We were going to like put it up and then be in the live chat. We may end up moving the time because. It's sooner because it'll be ready sooner, do you think? Well, no, because it's quite a long sort of program and starting out nine would be challenging. Good point.

But hopefully folks will grab your streaming ticket, bit.ly slash candle nights 2025. And you can watch it anytime you want and through like, I think January 4th. And all of the proceeds go to benefit Harmony House, which again could really use the help. It's just a ton of fun. And I hope folks will grab a streaming ticket so they can be part of the way. You can see my fancy dress. Rachel wore the most beautiful, most fancy dress.

I wore a fancy dress, and I wore like a little coat accessory. Yeah. And I had heels that matched the dress. And you brought shame to your social media presence. Well, is a spoiler? Do we want to bring a spoiler into this? I mean, I was thinking less a spoiler and more of just, like a little teaser, like just to wet their appetite. Yeah, nobody has commented on that,

by the way. That's great. I love that. I love that for you. And it like speaks to the like, I don't know, the Midwestness experience of like, let's just be polite about this strange thing that I just saw that I think is embarrassing. A lot of fun stuff in that show. Hey, you go first this week. What would you like to, I love your vest, by the way. You're rocking a vest with a little Oxford Underneath situation, it's really, really working for you. I always feel like I look a little bit, I don't know, or like a 14-year-old boy. No. Okay.

No. Okay, good. So my topic this week was inspired by something we did on our trip home to Huntington, which was to watch cheesy Christmas movies. Yes. We watch the champagne problems, and we watch Christmas. at the catnip cafe. That one was largely just kind of on.

That one just kind of washed over us. I couldn't really tell you the plot other than there were obviously cats. Yeah. Champagne Problems was all right. That's, I guess the new Netflix one, Minka Kelly, is a champagne businesswoman who goes to a champagneery in France and falls in love with a bookstore owner slash champagne air to a champagne empire. Yeah. It's really accessible stuff for everyone, I think.

Griffin and I were talking a lot about how this kind of new phenomenon in film where, like, I mean, I haven't seen Emily in Paris, but this idea that like this woman gets this opportunity to do this incredibly luxurious elite thing and you're watching it knowing that you will never or have that experience or know anyone that has that experience. Sure, yeah. So I want to, I also want to clarify, a lot of times these episodes are going to get billed as like Rachel's favorite X. These are not my favorite Christmas movies. No? These are like my favorite like guilty pleasure at the holiday time. Because like obviously there are movies that have Christmas as a central piece that are really enjoyable and I would recommend. Of course.

Um, these are just kind of goofy and fun. Um, and they have like certain tropes that go across all of them that are kind of fun to look for. Right. They kind of feel a little like seek and finds, you know? Sure. I mean, I'll say like the number of Christmas classics, like movies that I watch has been whittled down pretty dramatically, uh, year to year. Like, I feel like elf is usually in there and it's a wonderful life has got to be up in there. And it's a wonderful life has got to be up in there. And then other than that, like, there's not much else sacred. What's great about these is that they're making infinite of them always, and they're at least funny. They are at least, they're new and they are funny and sometimes, like, completely unbelievable. Yeah. And if you go, so New York Times has a, like, a holiday movie decision tree for these. And it's like, it really, like, goes, it starts at Christmas time and then to a female. and then you can choose lawyer, CEO, real estate developer, reporter, and, like, go down from there and, like...

Reporters, like, half of them, huh? Yeah. Reporters got to be about, I mean, that's princess, what is it, Christmas Prince? Christmas Prince, I believe, is about a reporter. Yes, we watched another one that was about a reporter, too. Is chef one, was chef one of those? Yes, chef. Yes, Chef Christmas.

Was she, like, a food critic or, like, an actual... I think she was actually a chef. Hence the name. It wouldn't be called yes food reporter critic. So these exist on a lot of different channels. I did a little research specifically on the Hallmark Channel just because I was curious. I mean, that's kind of like the leading, yeah, that's like the leading edge. So Hallmark Channel was officially launched in August 2001.

And I will say its highest ever broadcast premiere ratings was 2014. the original movie Christmas Under Raps starring Candace Cameron Purray, which was watched by 5.8 million years. Holy shit, man. Now they have what they call a countdown to Christmas

which usually begins mid-October and runs through the end of the holiday season. Mid-October? Yes. I guess it's a count-down. I mean, I guess, yeah, sure, we're counting down. So in 2013, Hallmark started releasing a large number of original movies.

2013 had 12 original movies. In 2024, they set a record with 47 new movies. Yes, dude. Fuck yeah. It was especially to celebrate the countdown's 15th anniversary. Yeah, you got to make 47 of them for that. That's a tremendous number of motion. Just feature films.

Yeah, just like constantly. As I understand it, a lot of them are set in like Vancouver. And I think they just crank them out. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I can't imagine the production costs on those. 20, 25 only has 24 new movies. Wow. And it is estimated that around 80 million people turn into the channel at some point during the holiday season.

Yeah, you got to. And then approximately zero tune into the channel when it is not the holiday season, I assume. Yeah, I honestly don't even know and didn't look into what they do the rest of the year. I imagine it just kind of fades into the mist. It's just like those old-timey, like, screens where there's just nothing playing. It's just like an American flag. Just a brigadoon just vanishing slowly. I wanted to hit some of the 2025 titles just to get everybody psyched if they haven't started yet.

Of course, we got Lacey Chabair, who has been, by the way, in more than 40 Hallmark Channel films. Most of them holiday themed. And some Netflix. I mean, she was in Hot Frosty. I have to imagine she's been in other Netflix Christmas originals as well. So her 2025 hit is called She's Making a List, and it is, and this is difficult to figure out, so you may have to watch just to even understand what this concept is. Oh, cool. A naughty or nice inspector evaluating a girl's Christmas status falls for her widowed father, making her question the strict rules of her consulting firm and forcing her to choose between protocol and love.

Wow. Sounds like we're getting into sort of a Calvinist interpretation of Christmas. and some of the classic Christmas law. The way I'm envisioning this, and let me know if you're having a different thought, is that she's like official North Patrol, like, or North Patrol, North Pole staff. Right. And she is sent down to really look into, I guess, undecided cases of naughty or nice. Right.

But then it's also like, I have to imagine it gets into a deeper examination of like free will and predestination and a lot of like really, really kind of heavy stuff. with Lacey Chabair is kind of like the locus of that of that and if anybody can do it. They probably start putting together more complicated plots just because they know she can handle it. Yeah, absolutely she can. What a talent. The other one I wanted to mention was oi to the world. Okay.

When a synagogue's pipes burst, a church offers space as choir directors prepare a joint Christmas Hanukkah service. Old rivals Nikki and Jake must overcome their competition. to unite their communities through song. Well, can they... Challenges. One, Hanukkah does not fall on or particularly near Christmas this year. I mean, we get close, but we're not, we're not even on Christmas Eve. So, maybe they set this in a year where those coincide more.

Okay. But a lot of potential with that one. I mean, we get close. What is it? December 14th to the 22nd is Hanukkah this. years. Yeah, so you're, you're fresh out of Hanukkah when Christmas gets here. Yeah, you're done run out. The one that we watched recently, that I don't know that we've talked about much, is the spirit of Christmas. Have we not talked about the spirit of Christmas on the show? So not as a formal topic. Okay.

We have probably mentioned it. This is a 2016 movie. It was featured on how did this get made. And this was a Hallmark film? or it's hard for me to tell i don't think it was i didn't because we had to like buy it on apple tv or some shit like well now it's on youtube oh hell yes dude um that actress by the way because i had a vibe and i'm sure you did too like she's been in a lot of these yeah um that was actually kind of the beginning of her christmas run since then she did something called mingle all the way in 2018 amazing royally wrapped christmas uh 2021 great um A Paris Christmas waltz, 2023.

Shit, man, that's good. And this year, a Christmas mystery. A Christmas mystery? Rachel, we must. Now, this is... Does Christmas mystery have as many supernatural elements as the spirit of Christmas? There's not a lot in the description. So this one is actually on the Great American Family Channel, which you may have heard about.

No. So it used to be Great American Country. And then in... That sounds so sinister to me. It has sinister undertones. I know. In 20... What was it year?

2022. It made news because they kind of set themselves up as a more... I mean, I don't know what I want to say. Christian network. Sure. Unsecular. Faith-based. Hallmark, like, got some backlash for airing ads that featured a lesbian couple.

And so Candice Cameron Bure, like, took it upon herself to, like, really align herself instead of with the Hallmark channel, with the Great American Family Channel. She became their chief content officer and announced she would develop, produce, and star in original romantic comedies and holiday content for the network. Cool, cool, cool. She said that she left Hallmark quote because it was a completely different network than when she started and wanted to quote tell stories that have more meaning and purpose and depth behind them, including those with stronger faith-based themes. I mean, there's a lot of those Christmas movies where the lady reporter does have a gay best friend. And I think Candace Cameron Berg saw that was like, I can't, I can't go this way. Well, that's a shame. The Great American Family Channel has 18 movies on its 2025 Christmas slate.

Okay. So pirate those, if you are going to watch them. Is Spirit of Christmas one of those? I mean, so Jen, that actress from Spirit of Christmas is in a lot of these new ones. I see. I see. Okay. Yeah.

Jen Lilly, that's where we find a Christmas story. And it has Jen Lilly in it. The Spirit of Christmas espouses so many dark supernatural elements. that I can't imagine it fitting in what it's about it's about a ghost romance yeah and that doesn't feel particularly biblical to to me for my money um it is also a murder mystery and the like romantic lead was like a bootleger and had like a fraught relationship with his brother and also he can only manifest during the 12 days of Christmas but then also maybe some other times too and he can't leave the premises of the B&B that he haunts but sometimes unless he can't maybe he falls in love

Maybe he does. And also his wife is there as a ghost, but is she there and a ghost? And is she ready for him to move on? And will he choose his wife or this new woman that he just met? Question mark? I can't get enough of that stuff. I can't get enough of that stuff. I know.

It's genuinely, it's so entertaining to me. It's so enjoyable to me, especially when they hue really close to the format and have some fun with it. Like in Hot Frosty, I think is like the most fun one of these. that has been made in a long time. And the cluster funk Christmas. And the cluster fun Christmas was like parody. Yeah. Very, very fun one with Rachel Jackson.

But one might say hot frosty was too. Hot Frosty toes the line, doesn't it? Hot Frosty has its cake and eats it too. There's some winking and there's some like dead serious moments. Yeah. But yeah, these are fun just because it's like you kind of know what the tropes are. You're looking for them the whole time. You don't have to pay super close attention.

They really hit Christmas hard just to like make sure that you don't forget that it's a Christmas movie. And so it is kind of fun. There's always a lot of like scenery and merriment. I do love scenery and merriment. Yeah, I know that. Can I steal you away? Yes. Welcome back to Animal of Planet. Today I'm going to talk about an animal for wonderful. And I'm going to do a really offensive Australian accent the entire time that I do this. What about the brothers? Oh yeah, the crats. What about wild crats? I'll be the third wild crat brother. Okay. He's less wild than the others. His name is Jeremy Cratt. He's less enthusiastic. They wouldn't let him on the show. They just cut to him sometimes

and he's like on the couch and he's like, hey. Reesus monkey? Cool. I'll talk about bevers. Oh, all right. And let's be mature. Even laughing at that, I think, is a lot. A lot of of the times when I talk about or either of us talk about animals on this show it is from like a perspective of like this one species of animal is like really cute or really unique and like beavers sure like they're the second largest rodent they're they got those big buck teeth they got the crazy long scaley paddle tails like that's kind of cute I think to some but I I think they're also maybe nature's most important animal I guess I guess I guess bee, but bees is a bug, not an animal. And I'm not interested in getting into a discussion about whether or not bees are animals. Okay, well, all right, withdrawn. Beavers are what's known as a Keystone species, which is a term for like an animal that

has a sort of outsized impact on their ecosystem compared to their population. Oh, I like that. They impact a lot of other species of animals and also the entire sort of of like ecology of their environment. We're kind of like a keystone creature, although probably mostly negative. Yeah, no, I mean, we have a huge impact, I will say. I don't know that we necessarily support the ecosystem of other creatures, although I guess we support ecosystem of each other, but even that, no, not sometimes.

So beavers are better than humans. Part of the reason, like, that they are, have an outsized impact is because their population never really recovered from the beaver fur trade, which kind of exploded during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's estimated that the North American beaver population is roughly 10% what it was before the sort of trappers hunted them nearly into extinction. These little guys used to be everywhere. They did.

And I mean, the other reason that they are a keystone species is that the impact they have on their environment is truly profoundly wild. They change their surroundings in a way that. is fucking visible from space. So like, and they, they do that with their dams and their lodges. And both of those structures are ways that beavers have of creating a sort of more habitable environment for themselves with dams. Everyone kind of already knows this, but they use their teeth to chew through, to chew through trees.

And I read a fact that they can chew through a tree that's like six inches wide or less in less than a it just alternating one side of their teeth to the other side, just kind of moving their heads around. What are lodges? So lodges are like their houses. And both are kind of made up of the same stuff, right? It's just like a different construction. They chew through trees. They use the timber with like rocks that they can also carry, patches of mud and grass. And they sort to stick that all together with a dam, they use it to, you know, stop up the flow of rivers, which, you know, it doesn't completely stop it, but it does kind of allow the water to spread beyond the banks of, you know, the river and form a patch of wetlands, which then becomes a, you know, a whole different ecosystem for different animals and for themselves to, to inhabit. it. Lodges are their homes, which they can build either along like the bank of a river or sort of freestanding inside of the water out of like submerged stones and sticks.

Regardless, either way, the architecture is similar, regardless of where the lodge is, the entrances are accessible only underwater. And then there's like small holes near the roof of the lodge, which is like for air ventilation and stuff and those lodges are pretty safe for like in terms of like if a wildfire goes through the area and I'll talk about that a lot here in a bit but like it creates a perfectly sort of safe a little you know panic room for them to go and chill in I think more than any other animal beavers are known for like their infrastructural sort of aptitude but they're not just like making a home they are reshaping the natural world around

them and this has become like especially kind of important with the increase of wildfire activity specifically across North America because the wetlands that beavers form when they dam up you know the flowing water are like insanely effective at stopping wildfires they form natural fuel breaks where all of a sudden there is no dried wood for the wildfire to consume and so it will stop at the borders of of a beaver wetland there's tons of, like, satellite images and images taken from, like, helicopters and of, you know, forests that have been ravaged by wildfires with just these belts of lush greenery surrounding by a dam adjacent wetland. And it's not just wildfires that beaver wetlands, like, can prevent. They also are important for, like, storing and managing water tables year round.

So they support the watersheds of specifically the western U.S. is where most of this work gets done by kind of, you know, stopping the flow of like spring water and sort of spreading it out into the surrounding landscape so that it kind of enriches the soil. And instead of it just kind of like flowing past and eroding like the banks of a river and, you know, draining super duper quickly so that it is. a dry, you know, a drier land in the late summer and fall by sort of like spreading it out and slowing the flow and like embedding it in the soil and creating like a more, you know, pond like wetland. It makes it so that the water table can last a little bit longer. Can I ask, I don't know if this is anything you found in your research, but whenever an animal is capable of doing something so complex, I always wonder like, is it? Is this just in their DNA?

Like, if you raised a beaver in captivity and it had nobody to show, like, show them how to make a dam, like, would they just kind of do it instinctively? I don't know. I think that instinct absolutely plays into it, right? Like, I guess maybe if you're a baby beaver and you watch your parent beavers, like, make you a lodge. You're like, damn, that's cool, yeah. Like, like, you pass down to, like, the generation. after you of like this is how our family always created dams. I like that.

But I also wonder, you know, if you took them like out of their community, if they could still kind of figure out how to do it. Like, it just seems like every time I beaver sits down to make a dam. Yeah. Like, you kind of wonder, like, how much are they just kind of wing in it? Yeah. Well, I mean, another thing is part of their diet for big chunks of the year is like the bark of certain types of trees.

Yeah. So maybe it starts out as like, hey, that willow tree looks pretty yummy and then they eat it and the tree falls down. I'm like, oh, shit. Well, I may as well pull it into this. How else can we use this thing? Yeah, right? Like, I don't want to eat the whole tree. Jesus.

But maybe I can put it in this river. So, like, beavers are really effective at sort of managing these like watersheds and making sure that they don't dry out. They are so effective that human beings like land managers for big, you know, national parks and forests and what have you, have begun building their own sort of structures to fulfill the same purpose called Beaver Dam analogs or BDAs, which like obviously humans know how to like manipulate the flow of water via building huge like infrastructural things. But when you are trying to rehabilitate like an ecosystem or you're trying to entice, you know, certain animals to come back to a certain type of ecosystem or whatever, bringing in heavy machinery to build a dam or whatever is not always an option. So these BDAs typically are built by volunteers using natural resources that beavers would use, like willow branches and steaks and poles and reeds. and they form their own beaver dams to form wetlands with the goal of, you know, making the area more inviting to wetland creatures and specifically beavers who can then take over kind of the process. It's very labor intensive, right? Because like humans are having to go out and cut these, you know, stakes down. Yeah, we don't have the big teeth and the tail. We don't have big teeth or the tail. Thank you, babe. We don't. We do have cool tools, but like they usually are just using the stakes down.

around them so that they don't have to haul a bunch of stuff with a bunch of trucks out into a river. But it's like a really effective way of helping the ecosystem grow or recover without bringing in like, you know, big, big trucks or other things that would scare off the creatures that they're trying to entice. I think, I just, I really like learning about symbiotic relationships between animals and the ecosystem that they inhabit. And I don't think there's like a cleaner, more kind of dramatic version of that than. beavers who very famously like make a thing that changes a the flow of mother nature to create like a whole different biosphere.

I just think it's really, really very cool. And the fact that human beings have kind of like learned how to do what they do also with their own Beaver Dam analogs, which is a really fun terminology, I think is super neat. Do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Katie says, My Small Wonder is the children's music artist Caspar Baby Pants. He's the alter ego of Christopher Ballou, the lead singer of the presidents of the United States of America,

and he writes children's songs that are lyrically and musically interesting, a change of pace from the constant repetitive nursery rhyme songs. His target audience is zero to six-year-olds, but sleepy snail and speedy spider, and chicken in the cornbread don't get skipped even when my daughter isn't around. We love Caspar Baby Pants. I love Caspar Baby Pants. I'm trying to remember. the caspar bait i'm gonna look it up now because it's gonna probably gonna be like in my top top spotify

listens uh we really tried to push this with henry in particular because you know we kept trying to direct him towards the stuff that we also liked yes and this was one of the run baby run and then uh stompy the bear oh that's oh that one's a really good one stompy the bear um he i think he retired the caspar baby pants persona um a few years back but I mean, the discography is there, and it's robust. Yeah, I imagine, I mean, I don't know for a fact that he had young children, but I imagine it seemed really relevant and useful when you have kids around you that are young. And as they get older, you're like, who am I doing this for? Yeah.

Maybe it's just that he conquered the realm of adult rock and roll with Presidents of United States of America, which absolutely shreds. Hey, thanks for listening so much. 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 Fun for having us on the network. Go to Maximumfund.org. Check out all the great stuff they've got going on over there. We, again, have streaming tickets available for the Candle Nights 2025 live show.

All proceeds go to benefit Harmony House, an organization that works to end homelessness in our hometown of Huntington, West Virginia, through a myriad of supportive service programs. Those tickets are over at bit. L.Y slash candle nights 2025. There's also some merch in the Macroy Merch store, including some Candle Knights ornaments that also go to support Harmony House. There's, I think, some deathblart stuff up in there, too.

That's over at Macquariemerch.com. And I think that's just about it for this week's episode. Pre-order Griffin's book, if you haven't already. Yeah, if you want to, it's a choose-your-own-adventure book, sci-fi story called The Stowe Way, Bit. L. Y slash Griffin's Stoweway. So you can go to get that. You can always do the thing where you like print out the receipt and put it in a card and give it to somebody as a present. Oh, that's nice. For the holiday season. Like, hey, don't even worry about it. I got you this book. It'll come when it's out.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be so rad of you. There's also, I mean, the last Adventure Zone graphic novel also comes out next year and it's also available for pre-order at theadventurezonecom. Okay, that's it. Thank you so much please have a wonderful warm week weekend buddy and we'll come out as we always say we're going to come for you we'll come for you next time so we'll keep better watch out Maximum fun. Hey! Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

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