Wonderful! - Wonderful! 401: Rachel and Griffin's Favorite Oprah's Favorite Things

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

A 2025 retrospective! Rachel and Griffin go through their favorite favorites of the past year: wonderful music, wonderful poems, wonderful television, wonderful geographic features, wonderful celebrations of nostalgia!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaHarmony House: https://harmonyhousewv.com/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McRoy. And this is wonderful. Happy Honda days, everybody. It's wonderful. A podcast, we talk about things we like that is good that we're into. Was there? a marketing sort of ploy more effective than happy Honda days.

I can't think of anything that has co-opted sort of a, I don't know, such a big... I mean, Coca-Cola did a lot of stuff. Yeah. But it wasn't like catchphraseable. Yeah, I mean, obviously they've got like, they got too much shit. Like, they've got the polar bears. They got this new ad that's all AI and it's got like Coca-Cola trucks driving through nature and all these like AI animals.

like squeak squeak and the trucks also change between every shot like how many tires they have and shit uh because it was made by a computer and lacking in holiday spirit but happy honda days i mean damn man they get it right in there and it's it's stuck forever it seems like you don't want to talk about happy honda days well i think this is something that was maybe really meaningful to you yeah maybe not to everybody you never owned a honda did you no i can tell you have the i don't never did either. This week, happy Christmas Eve, I believe the day that this comes out. This is going to be our last episode of the year. We are taking next week off. And so we thought we would take a look back, a retrospective, if you will, on some of our favorite stuff of 2025. I thought for a

second, it would be fun to title the episode, Rachel and Griffin's favorite, Oprah's favorite things. But that doesn't make any sense. That doesn't really make much sense. Well, and it also suggests that we have gone through the history of Oprah's favorite things and picked our favorites among her favorites. It's a lot of pajamas, I've noticed. She does do a lot of pajamas. She'll do a box that has like artisanal like nuts or whatever in there. That's big for her.

A lot of aromatherapy stuff. None of this is really stuff I want to talk about. I want to talk about stuff we've talked about on this year television show. Sorry, I was looking at my list and there's like a thousand television show. On this year podcast, some of the stuff we talked about this year and sort of take a look at some of our favorites. How would you like to begin? I don't know. So Griffin and I did this independently and we didn't really discuss the format or our individual approaches.

So I think there's going to be a lot of surprises along the way. Oh, boy. I don't know if you want me to start or you want to start. I'll start because I think I have more stuff than you. I have mine kind of busted out into superlatives. I also did superlatives. Okay, great. I think there's going to be a lot.

I think there's actually going to be a lot of crossover here. I have four best music in general of 2025. For me, personally speaking, boys go to Jupiter. Yes. I had them down as best new artist. We, I feel like maybe found them late last year, maybe. But we went to see them in concert. together in like January, February here.

And when I say we found them, I will say that Justin McElroy sent me a text out of the blue that said, hey, this is an artist I think you would like. Here's a song. The song he sent me was Virginia. And then I instantly like dove into everything they had. Yeah. They had an album come out in that time frame that I listen to constantly. That album is called Meet Me After Practice.

Yeah. And yeah. And then we saw them twice. or at least I saw them twice. I saw them once. But holy shit, what a great show. It seemed like super nice folks. And I've just listened to them nonstop.

I'll say runner up. The Beth's had a new album out this year. Straight Line was a lie. This was my second most listened to album behind Montaigne's new album. It's hard to be a fish, which is also one of my top musicians, top music things of the year. I also have a breakout here for favorite song. And this is maybe a recency by a situation. but I can't stop listening to Lake Street Dives cover

if you're still the one. Holy shit. This did not come out this year. I believe this track is a couple years old, but we found it this year. And man alive, it's just so good. I have a lot of those kind of like,

hey, this didn't actually come out this year. I wanted to highlight, if we're talking about music, best musical debut in 2023, discovered in 2025, and that is Quinny's album Flounder. Oh, yeah. Which I listen to,

That is a great one. That is a really, really good one. I have some stuff here. Book, favorite book. I don't know if you had any books up in there. I mean, I got poet, of course, but no, I don't have book. My favorite book, it came out this year, is a drop of corruption. The second in the mystery fantasy series.

Did you talk about this on the show? I did, yeah, as a small wonder. it's the second in the series of the Shadow of the Leviathan series, which is like the sort of Kaiju fantasy world where everybody has weird kind of plant powers. And it's about a guy who can remember everything helping out a detective who has like insane powers of her own. And it's just such a cool world and such a cool series and such a great mystery. It's by Robert Jackson Bennett, my favorite fantasy author. Cannot recommend it enough. Start with the Tainted Cup.

It's the first book in the series that came out last year. So I'm hoping the third part of the series will come out next year. But yeah, my favorite, that was my favorite book in the year. I didn't read a ton of books. Rarely do I, like, really chomp through a billion books in a year. But that one sticks out. What else you got? What was your poet?

You wouldn't do that? Yeah. And actually, the poem is short enough that I can read it again. Oh, yeah. Okay, so I titled this category, best poet. and poem to get you through this shit year. And it is Ellen Bass The Thing is. Yeah.

And the poem, The Thing Is, goes, 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. 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 I will love you again really good I love the line to take take life like a face between your hands that's

That hits so right. Yeah. I remember that poem. That is a really, really good one. Yeah. I feel like that one just like helps me just like exhale a little bit. Yeah, for sure. You brought a lot of banger poems.

I really, it was a good year for the poetry corner. I have any year food, favorite food. I don't know if we talked about this on the show, but it was a thing I learned how to make this year and it is spam Musubi. Yeah. I really feel like Prometheus season. fire from the gods and having my liver pecked out by eagles on like a mountain face because I've become too powerful. It's like so good. We saw a commercial for spam where they were like having a fun Musubi party with friends. Yeah, they get it. They get it, man. They understand it.

No, when we were in Austin, we had a place that we would get like takeout or delivery from. But we moved here, and there was kind of only one option, and it was really far away from us. And so Griffin took it upon himself and really, really crushed it. It's not that hard. You do get to use some specialty tools. I love that in our house we have a Musubi Press, which is just like a little plastic frame you put rice into, and you squeeze it on down with a big paddle. But there's also one of my favorite tools we just have in our kitchen is a spam slicer. It's perfectly sized for a brick of spam.

And you put it in and it's got like a dozen sharp wires. You can probably put other stuff in there. Maybe like a soft cheese. A soft cheese, you could probably get nice even. But man, when you get those nice even slices, slop it in the bag with the marinade. Damn, I love Missoubi. Wow. What a turbo meal.

I love that. Yeah, we also talked about the stroop waffle. Stroop waffle, yes. Yes. Which I have a great fondness for now. I still feel like we need to find a great source for those. Maybe there's a local delicatessen that slings those little way first. Probably not a delegatessen.

Maybe there's a local Belgian sort of, you know, patisserie. What would you call a shop that makes a bakery, I guess? Yeah. I mean, or like an ice cream place. I mean, they have all the things in front of them at an ice cream place. You would think they would be able to. I don't know. We haven't really looked into it.

I started to come up with what my favorite movie of the year is, and it made me realize we saw, like, two movies. Like, really, and this is, I think, something that we have really fell off of since Gus was born, and we can't even stay up late enough at night to, like, consume a whole film. We got through the whole new Knives Out movie the other night, but that was only because we were having a romantic getaway away from our home, where we could. plop down and watch all. It was a good flick. I had sinners as my favorite film of the year. This is the thing. You've seen significantly more than me. Well, sinners and weapons are my two top ones. You didn't see either of those. I went on a sort of solo solo mission. Well, no, actually, I went to see weapons with a good friend and tour manager, Paul Saborn, which was a really lovely evening. Yeah, great, great horror movie year, but I didn't see a ton of them.

Didn't see a ton of flicks. So maybe next year. I don't know. I feel like every time the Oscars nominations come out, I'm always like, I feel so guilty. Because I consume a lot of media, and I used to watch a lot of movies. I guess we also went to see,

weirdly, I think the only movie you and I went to see in theaters this year was the new Naked Gun film. Yeah, that's what we did. Which feels pretty out of pocket, but also like, I don't know, it makes sense. It tracks it that.

Yeah, I don't know. I got really excited about going to see it. I think it's just there aren't a lot of good comedies that come out now. And I felt really optimistic about that one. And it delivered. Yeah, those are really good, really fun time. You got anything? I wanted to highlight one of your topics. I gave the category the name Best Emergency Responder, and that is the 415 Super Scooper Firefighting Airplane. Yes. I had a superlative that was favorite thing I learned about. that was that was runner up behind the anatomy of the human ear yeah but i god i love the super scooper in in theory the super scooper is just such an achievement such a marvel god dang that thing can eat up so much water i think about that a lot because there there are so many things that happen in this country that it feels like we just don't have the capacity or tools to address yeah and i feel like that was kind of the perfect machine. And clearly it doesn't solve the problem, but it makes a

significant dent in the issue. And it's just very impressive. Isn't the super scooper from Canada? I think it is. I think it's, yes, it's the Canada Air CL-15 super scooper. So as much as I would love our country to claim credit for that. They did let us use it, which was nice. That is a good point. But yeah. Another good thing we talked about that came out of Canada is Last One Laughing. Yes. So I have a whole big frickin' rock block of television shows because this was, I think, I don't know, man, looking at the list, probably my favorite year of television, maybe ever. Wow.

Last One Laughing Canada, obviously kick ass. The final showdown between Tom Green and Colin Mockery, just like two. two folks kind of at the top of their game at the height of their power kind of squaring off was very, very good. Yet not really at the height of their career. Not at the height of their career at all, but just like the deep well of respect

they had for each other as they got, if memory serves completely shit-faced drinking like a fancy brandy that they had in the Last One Laughing Room. I think I prefer the UK version of Last One Laughing. which had Bob Mortimer and I'm blanking on literally everyone else that was in that season. But Jesus Christ, Bob Mortimer doing his magic show on stage trying to, if you didn't listen to that episode, it's a show where you try to make people laugh.

If you laugh, you're out, Bob Mortimer's presentation where he gets on stage and does very, very rudimentary magic tricks and just continues to go, shh it's only magic just a man alive there's really really really uh just so much funny so do we want to do tv maybe we should take a break let's take let me steal you away and let's get into what a hot shit year for tv this was can i steal you away yes thanks i was i was i had a lot like ready to go for tv because I can remember a lot of the stuff. But when I looked at, like, the year's best shows on TV, on, like, lists online, it, like, blew my mind

that all this stuff came out this year. I think my favorite, pound for pound, is offline love. I had such a good time watching that show. That is a Japanese dating show where 10 singles go to Nice in France and don't have their phones, and the only way they have to communicate

is either by finding each other, which they represent with a big sort of map where you can kind of see everyone's locations and see these like chance encounters whether or not they see each other or not as they pass each other on the street or they can send each other letters in their little mailboxes.

Such a simple idea for a show but executed so well with so many like some wonderful little meetcutes and nice little relationships. It is something that we recommend to everybody. Yeah. Because there are a lot of shows, for example, like Terrace House

that people have a real. real like hole in their heart where Terrace House was. And I feel like offline love kind of did its, did its part to fill that a little bit. That end, uh, the boyfriend, which I thought season two was supposed to come out this year. But I think it's currently slated for early. I don't remember the boyfriend. What was the boyfriend? The boyfriend was the, uh, gay Japanese dating show. Oh, yeah. Kind of the only one that I can think of, uh, that where they worked in a coffee truck. Yeah. Where they were, I'll say it, some of the worst employees of the, of the, of the restaurant service industry i've ever seen. And they would like choose who they wanted to work with

yeah but it wasn't really about the business which is good because they would come home with like we made $60 today guys. What's great also about offline love is there was a guy on that show that then was also a contestant on final draft one of my runner-ups which was the sort of Japanese take on physical 100 featuring retired athletes. Really really really great and you You get to meet a lot of really fun characters in that show, who in turn are featured in Physical Asia, another one of my runner-ups and probably my favorite kind of like competition show of the year. We've talked at length about Physical Asia, but they're doing a spinoff, right, of the Mongolia team. Are they? I don't know about this.

I think they're making a show just about the, like a special that just focuses on the Mongolia team because it featured so many really, really, really, really. huge characters, both in terms of the scope of their personality and also the sheer tonnage of their enormous powerful bodies. And then, I mean, Severance Season 2 was this year? Wow, yeah. Isn't that kind of wild? That seems like it came out a long time ago. It does feel like a long time ago. But man, that was what a terrific sci-fi series of TV, as was Andor, the last season of Andor, which I know. you didn't go for but probably my favorite Star Wars story kind of like ever told um one that I would totally go back and watch uh someday I had two other TV shows uh that we watched together which uh

devil's plan season two was also this year oh yeah uh really really enjoyed a lot of the games featured in that one I think a lot about the that was the season that had a format where they would play like one big game where they could sort of earn immunity from the death match that then players would compete in. And those death matches were shit, hot, brilliant games. I will say, I don't know if I liked the second season as much as the first. Yeah, it's funny, I was talking to my barber about this, who also watches a lot of Korean reality programming,

which God fucking jackpot in terms of conversation topics. I don't know have ever met anybody who also watches these shows. No, but like in the wild. Shooting the shit about like, man, siren, when's that new season? They need to make more sire. But like, I was talking to him about how, what really worked about Devil's Plan season one is it was so surprising. And like, you didn't really know what to expect. And this time, it's like everybody who loses this challenge goes into the jail and immediately are like, we got to find the secret puzzle challenge.

Not quite as exciting. It's kind of reminiscent of survivor in the way that like everybody understands immunity idols now. And so, like, it's kind of changed the experience of it because, like, it's, I don't know, it's, it's not like they spend all season trying to find it, you know? But Devil's Plan season two had like the time auction where you just held in a button and you had 10 minutes of time and you would let go of the button to kind of like submit your bet. And if you didn't win, you just lost that time. But if you won, you won the round and you had to win like a certain number of rounds to progress. thrilling to watch people hold in a button for 10 minutes. There was also the poker, the sniper Hold'em,

where they were just playing pretty much straight up Texas Hold'em. But if you could guess what hand your opponent had, you could eliminate them from that round. So it was like, I don't, there was layers of, it was like, I want to watch a show that is just this, that is just this Texas Hold'em. And also, perfect match this year was phenomenal. This was the first season where they brought in folks

from other reality universes. So they had Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants and Love Island and was so fucking sloppy, messy, but like really, really good nasty, nasty food for us. Do you have any other stuff? Yeah. So I wanted to talk about something I realized, which I called the hidden theme of 2025. Ooh. I noticed that topic over topic, we had one thing that kept showing. up okay uh and that is the ocean just like everything aquatic because uh you talked about um

damselfish i believe yeah i talked about ocean sunfish uh the poet ellen bass yeah um i talked about the artist sea lemon um quinney's album was called flounder you talked about lighthouses uh one of the poems i talked about Maya Popa's dear life was just an extended fishing and open water metaphor. Amazing. And I just realized like, oh, wow, we just kind of kept hitting that deep water over and over again. I love that deep water. I have one of my favorite event of the year was the Joku Cruise. The Joko Cruze.

Jokoku Cruise we went on back in. God, that feels like forever ago. It does feel like forever ago. It was March or was March? March, yeah, I believe it was early March. A lovely time. We only did half of it. it because we had to pull the boys out of school, which was a bummer. I would have loved to

have saved the whole thing. Yeah, because it ends up being this really kind of cohesive bonding experience for everybody that does it. And we kind of missed out on that part because we only stayed for like three days. But it was, it's just always such a nice vibe. It's the only cruise I've ever been on. And like, I think I love cruises. And not from a like boozy standpoint, but just it's cool to be on a big boat in the ocean. Like, that's the thing I like the most is just being out on a... And I thought that was the thing I was going to hate is looking all around me and not seeing land. I thought I was going to experience, you know, fascophobia or whatever they call it, like, being very, very...

But it's just cool. It's just cool to be out there. And then sometimes when you disembark off the ship early, because you can't let your kid miss too many days of school, because the DCPS will track you down like a blade runner. sometimes when you do that you get to also disembark with John Linnell if they might be giants and have a conversation

about mutual fandom there and that was that conversation was a real fucking highlight I think about that a lot very very special wonderful moment I will say I was surprised you know because it is

primarily a cruise for adults and we bring our children because you know we have to and there is something nice as a parent just knowing like this is all we're doing yeah like we can't do anything else but there is a lot of space to be in yeah um and the novelty of it works for sure uh and so like it's it's surprisingly stress free um which is not typical when you're traveling with children yeah absolutely can i do games can i have like a few minutes to just like blast through some games because i know that

this is not something, I don't think we played any games together this year. It's been a long time since we've played games together. But man, it was a weird, good year for games. My favorite was probably Blueprints, which was the sort of mystery, roguelike kind of game where you're going through a house and solving all kinds of little puzzles, but you're building the house every day that you play it. Does this come up in the besties? So it doesn't.

It's funny. This was my game of the year. But so many of the puzzles, almost all the puzzles, are really kind of themed around color. Oh, yeah, you told me about this. And as much as I love the game, it's kind of criminal, the lack of kind of accessibility options. And, you know, our dear friend Russ and co-host of the best, he's just like fully can't play. Like, fully could play it, but we'd be missing out on such an enormous sort of piece of the literal puzzle that we kind of punted it and said, maybe weigh it next year if they get those options in but it felt weird to talk about a game that

one of the hosts of the show was kind of prevented from playing so that that is a real shame um delteroon has been a fun one it's uh sequel to sequel kind of to undertale uh which is one of my favorite games and henry's like so into that world yeah it's like a weird thing because it's an episodic game it's supposed to be i think seven chapters and this year chapter three and four came out and i think five is coming out early next year. But it's such a sweet, like, heartfelt, cool game that is just hysterically funny and one of my favorites. Absalom is a beat-em-up with, like, cool RPG roguelike elements that me and Henry also got really into. Death Stranding 2 is a game where Norman Redis explores a sort of death apocalypse with a little baby on his chest and drinks his own piss.

And that's cool. Clear Obscure Expedition 33, French JRP, excellent, excellent game. There is one that came out this year that I think you would like called the root trees are dead, which is a sort of detective game where you are trying to piece together the genealogy of this kind of family that's like a candy empire. And when the game starts out, the surviving members of the family have passed away in a plane crash. And so you are going through a computer that has like a full fictional search engine version of the internet. And you're just kind of like looking for terms. So you'll like learn someone's name and you'll look for that.

And you'll find like a internet article that's like in this interview with this magazine. And you say like, oh, shit. Okay. So now I know the name of that magazine. I can search for that. Now I have this whole other search engine that I can. It's basically a game about being kind of nosy on the internet. Yeah.

It's like if you're the type of person that thinks like, wonder what happened to that person I went to high school with. I'm going to try and find out everything about them on Facebook. It's kind of a video game about that. And that is so novel and so fun. And that's the end of my video game segment. Do you have any other big superlatives? I just wanted to call out what I called the best celebration of nostalgia,

and that is the used to be a pizza hut. Yes. Website and movement. I really enjoy when a community kind of, of gets around this like, this element that was pretty significant, you know, from your childhood and everyone kind of joins together to kind of like identify in their community how it was represented. And, and I don't think I ever watched the documentary about that. We should, man. I would totally watch that. Yeah. And, and yeah, it just, that was, I'm particularly delightful.

Yeah. Do you want to know what our friends at home were talking about? Yes. Seth said, my small wonder is the lightkeeper pro, a tool that fixes Christmas tree lights. I had a whole strand not lighting and couldn't find a burned out bulb, but this thing with the push of a single button reset something and the strand lit up. There's a version for LED bulbs too.

Thank you, Seth. Wait, what is it? Like a tool that you buy? I think it's probably a little magic wand. I don't know. I didn't Google it, but Seth is really providing some service journalism here

because I did talk about. Maybe this is something that could revive our sweet, beloved three-year-old artificial Christmas tree. Yeah. It's called the Light Keeper Pro. Thank you, Seth, for the pro tip. And one last one. Sherry says, My Small Wonder is books that have an attached ribbon bookmark. I just got a book of poetry as a gift, and it is such a beautiful convenience. I do love that. I wish that was just kind of standard.

Yeah, I think I've only had it in Bibles. they like in like you know artistic like uh reprints of like old books you know okay i feel like i had a like a wizard of oz book when i was a kid that was like green and had gold pages and came with like a little ribbon i do like they will do like special editions that have that but yeah it's obviously not common yeah um folks that's gonna do it for us for the year 2025 uh thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use for a theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to maximum fun.org as always for having us on the network. Maximumfund.org is the link you can go to find a bunch

of really, really great shows covering any interest you could conceivably harbor, and everyone's just really firing on all cylinders, if you ask me. Some merch up in the Macroymerch store over at Macroymerch.com, including a candle knight to poster and ornament, design by Scott Hawk, and 10% of the proceeds for all merch sales this month. Go to Harmony House. And also, speaking of Candle Knights, you can now watch on demand the Candleights 2025 spectacular filmed live in Huntington, West Virginia at the Keith Albee Theater. It is a huge show, a huge program with all of us.

It's a real peak inside the McElroy's brains because the whole thing start to finish was basically developed as a team effort from. scratch. And so you really get a window. Yeah, you sure do. And that you can go to bit. L.Y slash candlelights 2025. And the ticket sales for for the video on demand version, which is available until January 4th, 100% of those proceeds go to Harmony House, which is an amazing organization we've worked with for a long time that provides a lot of different services to folks experiencing homelessness in Huntington, West Virginia, who need a lot of help. So again, bit.L.Y Sash Canaanites 2025, ring in the season, ring in the new year with us.

And that's going to do it for us. We are off next week as our sort of entire staff takes a well-earned break. And we'll be back next year with new stuff. So have a happy holidays, have a happy Honda days, have a happy new year, and take care of yourselves and each other. Because after all. as we always say how the hell you love yourself if you don't love somebody else that's not ours goodbye everybody bye Maximum fun.

Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.