Wonderful! - Wonderful! 407: Curling Curious

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Rachel's favorite fallen Olympic sport! Griffin's favorite rising (vertically) Olympic sport!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaImmigrant Law Center of Minnesota: https://www.ilcm.org/donate/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. That's not it. What's the Olympics one? I don't know. I was trying to think of this earlier. Yeah.

Is that just for us? Yeah, there it is. No, that's chariots of fire, isn't it? No, that's the Olympics one. Yeah, you're right. Bamba-Bapabha. Welcome to Wonderful. It's a podcast.

We talk about things we like. That's good that we're into. We're reporting live from the Olympics. Olympic Games. We are in Italy. Milano. We're in Milano, Italy, and we are here talking to some of our favorite guys. Apollo Anton Ono is here.

Yeah, here, let's go. Let's go. Let's do this. Tara Lipinski. Christy Yamaguchi. Christy Yamaguchi. Fucking. Did you say Tara Lipinski already?

Yeah. Johnny Weir. Johnny Weir. The Ham brothers. They were more of a summer Olympics, or was it, HOM? I don't know who you're talking about. They were like the gymnastics guys. Oh, that sounds right.

Like sick on the pommel horse. They're here. Fricking everyone has gathered. Lindsay Vaughn? Well, she... Did she get injured? Is she the one that got injured? She was pretty terribly injured.

Oh, dang. So that's not here. She's recovering, but she's still. doing great. But we are here to talk about these big games and we haven't watched hardly any of them. No. We've seen little highlights. The problem is a lot of it airs during the day. Yeah. And the other problem is our children don't let us decide what we watch on TV. Right. We did get some purchase with Gus for a little bit. They were curious about curling. They sat patiently while curling happened Figure skating, he seemed to enjoy, which is great because I also enjoy figure skating.

Yeah. But anything beyond that. But most of the time it's the royalty family. Most of the time it is YouTubers. If the royalty family could be in the Olympics, we would have a match. And I'm sure they probably have some sort of deal. Yeah, they're probably there right now. With them.

I mean, we've watched Jordan Bennington, the St. Louis Blues goalie, who is in net for team Canada. Having a terrible like season with the blues. For us. But what's his say percent? It's like eight, seven, five. Like something really really. It's literally one of the lowest in the NHL. And it's because our team, I guess, is not supporting him appropriately because he's doing great for Canada.

He's doing amazing. Just like he did last time. Yeah. He's shutting out the haters. They beat France 10 to 2. Yeah. Which is like, I don't know that I've ever seen that score on a hockey scoreboard before. Not lately.

We watched the Miracle on Ice feature, and there were definitely scores like that back then. Yes, largely by the Soviet Union putting up pretty insane numbers. Which is what it was called back then. We know that it's not anymore. Yeah, I got sorry, did you feel like you needed to couch that with our listener? I don't know. Did you think our listeners would be like, um, actually, the USSR disbanded it? Yeah, no.

Thank you. Thank you. I didn't. I just thought I'd make it clear. Do you have a small wonder? I was going to say something that has been true for a long time, but it just occurred to me today. Oh, wow. Which is we don't really use glasses to drink out of anymore.

Yes. Which is, it feels very eco-conscious. I know when Griffin and I met, he was notorious for leaving half-empty glasses around his living space. And we just have water bottles in our house all the time now. It's what the boys drink out of. It's what we drink out of. Reusable water bottles is important. We don't have just like, it's weird for you to say we don't use glasses because we're eco-conscious.

Instead, we're just draining aquafina's fucking left and right. Sorry, to me, that was like the USSR. I just kind of assumed people would know. Yeah, no. But yeah, I think about that when I open our cabinet. Now, coffee mugs, tons, tons of coffee mugs. I've got two on my desk right now. But water bottles, yeah.

So we basically have like a bottom shelf in our cabinet full of glasses that we almost never use unless I want to decant a beer. right for just a special night sure which i don't know that we've decanted a beer and we have a i decanted a beer remember we got that cider that's not a beer that's like a nice cider what is that stuff called i considered cider a beer it's it's got a spanish name i feel like oh yeah i think that's right it's good shit man yeah um i would so love is blindies back and it's uh we're not caught up we're not Yeah, we basically, we're like on the last episode of the chunk of episodes that's available now. I think there's an episode where they like go to quote unquote paradise after they've coupled up that we have not watched yet. We started it.

Do you not remember? We started it last night because one of the couples, they were just like, sorry, we ran out of money and we can't send you to paradise. We did start it, but we haven't seen any of the, oh, I guess we have seen a little bit. They have just arrived. It hasn't left much of an impression. They have just arrived at the resort. We haven't seen them all meet up with each other. True.

Or like, do any. That's always where. That's always such a crucible. Oh my God. That doesn't happen as much on Love is Blind. I feel like I know. It just reminded me of when we used to play a bachelor bingo or whatever. Yeah.

Some of the conversations that took place in these pots, first of all, compared to last year, way less like, and I believe in traditional conservative values. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Like a lot less like, and I, you know, if my son told me he was gay, I would be like crazy. because they're in Ohio. They are in Ohio. Which is one of the more notoriously conservative states. I mean, it's swing.

It's definitely swing. They swing it. But also like some performances by the dudes in the pods that are truly unwatchable. Truly, truly, truly, truly unwatchable. There's a dude who talks about how he's like giving a sad story to try to like open up. He's a soccer player. and he talks about how on draft day he was supposed to be a top five pick, but he had a knee surgery. And so he's like telling this story and you're like, oh, my God.

And then he didn't get drafted. And he's like, but I was there watching with all my soccer teammates. And one of my friends got drafted and they cheered. And then they were like, let's go play soccer. And then they left. And I was like, wow, this is a sad story. And then he was like, and then I got drafted in like 20th place. But I was supposed to be top five.

That's your thing, dude? That reminds me of the guy who was like, I know you said you wanted to go deep. So I'm going to be vulnerable here and tell you about my great first kiss and the great first time I had sex. Yeah. Yeah, I lost my virgin. And you said it was like the notebook. And the woman on the other side was like, Jesus Christ. I was obsessed with the fact that she hadn't seen the notebook and then continued to talk about the notebook.

Yeah. It's like, yeah, my girlfriends and I always watch the notebook together. It's like the thing that I do with my girlfriends. soccer dude also was like talking about I'm such a nerd what do you read I read uh stoicism letters from a stoic that's the same soccer guy yeah same soccer guy but then he like misattributed it he was he said he was like yeah I'm really into letters from from a stoic but he like said the wrong dude like who did not write those it's it's it's some all-time boy performances from what I can tell has no redeeming qualities now it may change but it seems to be

the case. Now what do you think is wonderful exactly, just that it's back? I don't know, man. Like, it's some true uncontrollable cackling. I feel like it has sort of gotten out of us during a pretty trying time. It's sorry for missing last week's episode. We have been, um, fuck man. I mean, going 10 rounds with our health insurance company to try and get our son to have a surgery to repair his a ear drum to reverse hearing loss. And our insurance company is like, let us think about it for a couple months. This may be hugely relatable. The problem is that Griffin switched insurance and that apparently is impossible. Because anything that happened before that was approved now has to be approved again.

Yeah. Even if it is the most obviously approvable thing. Yeah, even if he had the same surgery on his other ear, not six months ago. And so it's, it's, it's so infuriating because like, I don't know, I'm not going to, uh, beg for sympathy or anything. But like our shit is pretty wild all the time. And we had to clear the decks in the way that we did for this thing. Yeah.

Uh, to be then turned away in the like pre-op kind of patient room is, uh, yeah. I mean, so, so miserable. I mean, we could talk about this for a whole episode, but the, it is decidedly unwondering. Yeah, yeah, I will just say, and apparently this is happens a lot. I was actually exchanging Marco Polos with Teresa about this. And she's like, it's not uncommon to call an insurance place, have one person tell you one thing and then call again. And the other person tells you the opposite thing. Yeah.

And that is what has happened to us a lot. So it's been a really, and also everyone's sick again. It's just been like a really fucking pretty miserable week. And there's still snow on the ground from like a month ago. from a month ago, but love is blind came in and just like some of these dudes, there's one guy who like can't decide between two women, which is not the most novel thing, but he is also kind of like, has some trouble kind of like articulating. A lot of the dudes are like kind of slick with it or they'll like kind of sell them. And this guy, just like these two women will be like, you need to pick one of us. And all he can say is like, this is the craziest day of my life. This is so crazy. Today's crazy. And then it'll be the day after we'll be like, yesterday. it was one of the craziest days in my whole life. It was so crazy. It's like, dude, you need to say something.

You need to say something of substance for these people. Yeah. And then he would go on to like praise whatever woman he was talking to. Yeah. But never ask any questions about her or seem interested in how she was feeling. 101 shit, dude. Which kind of blew up a little bit. 101.

Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, yeah. It's, I'm, I'm having fun watching it. Yeah. No, that's very true. And there's a couple of couples who seem genuinely very into each other, which I don't know that I could say about last season. Couple of like face-to-face meetings that were like, oh, that's so nice, actually. Can we just briefly reference the laugh we got out of the like thumbnail art for Lois Blight?

Okay. I don't, I don't want to suggest that we have any problem with their appearance normally. What has happened with this photo, though, is that they... It's Nick and Vanessa. And... Vanessa has what I've been calling Wilma Flintstone proportions in this art. And it's so clearly, like, touched up, but it is touched up in a way that, like, sort of defies. She looks like a...

She looks like a cartoon barbell that, like, Popeye might lift. Yeah, and she's wearing, like, leopard print, too. Yeah. And so, like, that's clear. like there's something that it's been done here. But then my man, Nick, is like this perfect rectangular. He looks like strong mad if you watch the Homestar Runner stuff. And like also one of his arms is like huge.

And one of his hands is like huge. It's like it looks crazy. It's just a crazy. It's crazy. It makes me laugh every time. It makes me laugh every time I see it. And it reminds me of them a Bim Bam TV show poster that they made. They made my oldest brother Justin seem like he was about half my size,

which is so strange. Just like a very small man. There's people out there who work on promotional materials for television programs, and they do not have any oversight. They have no one saying like, dude, stop. Well, and this may be AI too. I don't know exactly what AI can do, but this may be AI. Maybe. So we're talking about the Olympics.

We came out from a couple different perspectives. What is your Olympic topic this week, my dear? So I, and this may be true for a lot of people. You know, I've been getting pushed a lot of clips. of Olympics. I don't do TikTok, which again is a little brag that I like. I think we both recognize it is no longer a brag and more sort of obstinate. But I do Instagram, so it's not like I'm perfect. And I get a lot of Instagram like meme, whatever. And I got one for ski ballet. Oh, what? Which used to be a sport as recent as like the 80s. And it is no longer a sport in the

winter games, but it made me curious about the fallen wonderful sports of the Olympics. And so I did a little research. Just the winter Olympics or the, or all of them? No, the whole, the whole thing. Okay. And so I brought, I brought some to talk about. I'm so excited. I feel like we've glanced off of this in the past because I know we have talked about on this show how art used to be an Olympics, like doing art was an Olympic sport. Yeah. Which is, I still kind of unbelievable to me, but would really, I think, be so rad. So the one I just reference ski ballet. Yeah, how does that even work?

So it kind of follows figure skating and that there spins and jumps and a two-minute routine choreograph to music. On skis. On skis. Like on like a ski like surface, like on snow. Yeah. They have poles.

One of my favorite ski surfaces. They have poles, which kind of aids you can imagine in the like spins and jumps. Yeah. They can put pressure on a pole. and kind of spin around. Okay. But it was in the 80s and 90s. It became popular in the mid-70s.

And there's a whole slew of Olympians that have won medals in ski ballet as recent as the 1992 Olympics. Did you watch this taking place? No. I don't remember this at all. But like if you look it up, you can see clips from these previous competitions. And it's wild when that means. music hits.

To be outdoors, you know, and think about, like, how loud this must be. Oh, sure. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, they must be booming it. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, wow. It's pretty much what you would picture, though, like, if you had to imagine.

Yeah, but they're, like, wearing, like, the big pants and everything. Holy shit. Someone just did a flip off their poles. This rules actually, why did this stop being a sport? I mean, everything that you see. whenever a sport disappears in the Olympics, it's just suggested that it is kind of fallen out of fashion and not popular enough. I mean, which is hard to imagine. Yeah, no, I mean, I kind of get it.

Like, it's sort of wild to see. But I mean, baby, there's so many people are doing flips and most of them are doing them off the polls. It looks so wild. It looks wrong. But cool also. Yeah. So I did like a little, because obviously everyone knows like the Olympics have been around forever. like beginning of times Olympics because, you know, they came from that time period in Greece when it was

happening. But the modern Olympics, as we know it today, was founded by this fancy French aristocrat, Baron-Pierce de Coubertan. Cool. Founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894. And the first modern games, as we know it, was in Athens in 1896. So a lot of sports, not like ski ballet, but a lot of the ones I'm going to read are from those early days of Olympics. Right. And you have to think about it like no television, obviously.

What? You know, and like not a lot of modern equipment. So a lot of the stuff feels kind of like, you know, things you could do at home, but only occurred in one Olympics. So the first one I'm going to talk about. and this is from like a Reuters article that I found is, and this will remind you of like Ninja Warrior and Physical 100. But the first one I found is 200 meter obstacle swimming. Awesome. It was only in the 1900 Olympics.

Obstacle swimming. And so the idea is you dive in the water and then you'd have to climb over a pole. And then you dive in the water and you'd have to get into a small boat. And then you'd dive in the water and have to go under another small boat and then you would finish. That's cool. Getting into a boat is so hard. That's absolutely should be an Olympic sport. You go swimming on like a pontoon boat with your friends.

You hop off the boat and then it's like time to get back on. And then you like begin hoisting yourself and you're like, oh wait, fuck. What if I can't do it? What if I live in the water now? Absolutely, that should be an Olympic sport. Yeah, it's absolutely wild. There's also plunge for distance. Like how deep into the water do you go?

So you would have to do like a stand-up dive from like a springless surface and then you couldn't move. And you just had to kind of glide under. water as far as possible. Well, I can see why they stopped doing that because it feels like you could really over-commit to the bit and then become dead. You had to remain motionless until you rose above the water. Okay. That one I think is okay that it went. But again, like 1904, you're not seeing anything that's happening underwater, right? Yeah, who's judging that? I don't understand. I mean, they're just standing on the side of the pool, I guess, in measuring how far they came. I guess so. But you can't tell if they're moving or not.

Right. Yeah. There's another competition like this called underwater swim, which again was in the 1900 Olympics, but it was in the Sen River. And you got a point for every second you stayed underwater and two points for every meter underwater. No, don't do that. That seems bad.

You can win if you don't come up to breath. Don't breathe. What are you doing? Don't you want to win? The one that reminded me a lot of physical 100 that I wish was. was still a thing was tug of war. Yeah. Oh, God, that seems pretty iconic to me.

I know. This happened a lot. This was 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and then a small gap, and then 1920. And then stopped. And it hasn't been since 1920, really? Yeah. I know. God, bring that back, man.

That would be so cool. Because I can't, hmm. Do you think it lasts for a long time, tug of war? Maybe. I don't have a lot of information about how. I feel like a tug of war is like tick-tac-toe. I feel like it's a solved. game where like people know like there's a way to brace yourself so that it becomes like a

real war of attrition and I could see that maybe not being the most thrilling yeah and this was like five to eight team members so you could like stack your team in such a way to really dominate yeah for sure um another one I found all around dumbbell lifts which was a series of 10 exercises over two days. This was only in 1904. Competitor would have a series of heavy dumbbell lifts. On the first day, they were to perform five instructed lifts. And then on the second day, four instructed lifts plus the freestyle lift.

Whoa. But you can see there's like a little picture of like different ways you had to lift the dumbbells. Yeah, that doesn't seem that exciting to me, actually. I want to see the big weight I want to see trembling I want them to drop it and yell Of course And it's wild

I mean they're It again It's surprising That this was a thing And that people got medals for it Yeah There are a lot more Croquet was on there

Bummer man I fucking love Croquet so much Yeah I know Solo synchronized swimming Yeah so I've heard that before It was called artistic swimming So it's just like they should call it something else, right? Because it's just like rhythmic water dancing.

Yeah, kind of like water aerobics a little bit. Robe climbing, which again, I think would be cool to watch. Yeah, for sure. There's climbing events. There's like rock climbing events now, right? In the Olympics? Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

I think so. Anyway, it's super cool. It's super cool to look at this. I would say if you are like, oh, man, this is a bummer. You know, you should join us in watching Ninja Warrior and Physical 100. Because a lot of those things occur and it really scratches the itch. Have they announced whether breakdancing will return in the 2028 Olympics? Oh, I don't know.

Let's look. Let me do a quick cursory, Google. It will not be returning. Whoa. One and done? One and done. I guess. Maybe it was too hard to judge.

Oh, no. So they actually decided it would not return before even it had debuted. in the 2024 Olympics. Wild. Yeah. That's a bummer. I really enjoyed it. Obviously, like,

Raygun was that? Yeah. That was like the thing that everyone talked about and that was a shame. There was a lot of like really, really. Yeah. So it's the International Olympic Committee

that makes all these decisions. And a lot of it, I think, is just based on popularity, which is wild. But I guess, you know, it's a program on television and they want people to watch it.

Yeah, sure. It's just like any other show and that if it's not popular, they're going to get rid of it. Hey, can I steal your way? Yes. Out with the old and with the new, because I'm talking about the only new sport debuting in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. The only new one.

The only new sport debut in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, and that sport is Schemo. Schemo. Is that what they call it? They call it Schemo, which is short for ski mountaineering. Is that like cross-country skiing? Babe. No, it's up-country skiing. It is one of the most exhausting human endeavors I can ever imagine undertaking.

I watch some video of people doing it, and it's just crazy. Are they hiking in skis? So here's what it is, okay? There's a lot of ski-based events. We've figured out how they measure people's athleticism on skis in a lot of different ways. You have alpine downhill. You have your trick-based freestyle skiing. you have flat ground cross-country.

In some of them they're like, here's a gun, ski, and then shoot stuff for the biathlon. And you're like, surely we've discovered everything, hard thing you can do on skis. What ski mountaineering says is, hey, you know how you take like a chairlift or a finicular to get up to the top of the hill to do like skiing? Yeah. What if we got rid of that? And instead you had to ski the fuck up the mountain that you would then have to ski back down. That is what ski mountaineering is. Sorry, I'm trying to look at pictures of this. And it does look like hiking on skis. So there's multiple different kind of like steps to it. But ultimately, it is a sport of uphill skiing in defiance of gravity and God's will. It's new to the 26 Olympics. It actually previewed during the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, where it was a big success. And in the 26 Olympics, there's three different categories. There's the men's sprint, the women's sprint, and the mixed gender relay.

There's weirdly not a ton of specifics about like what the course looks like in Bormio, Italy at the Stelvio Ski Center. The course takes roughly three and a half minutes to complete with a total elevation climb of 70 meters, which doesn't sound like a lot of meters, but then you remember that you're doing a lot of that on skis uphill, which just remains insane. So how it works is you are wearing skis at the start of the race. Those skis are lighter weight than a lot of your more. traditional ski-based sports. And they also have a kind of grip tape on the underside of them to provide some traction so that you aren't just constantly sliding. Yeah, I'm watching a video.

And when they're on like steady terrain, it's almost like they're running. It is almost like they're running. It's not a lot of like planting and then pushing yourself along like you see in like a cross-country thing. Yeah. It's just running uphill in skis, basically. And you're doing that. It's not like the steepest parts of the course where you're doing the on-skiy ascent.

right but at a certain point you reach what are called backpack checkpoints you pop your skis off and you strap them to your backpack and now you are hiking and during these parts of the course usually like the terrain becomes a bit chopier right and also it's not a straight shot uphill sometimes the course will kind of do a serpentine pattern going up and down over this kind of rough snow and you're having to kind of just like hike up it and down the hill and then back up and then back up and then back down and then back up, kind of taking this winding path until you reach another backpack checkpoint where you have to put the skis back on, finish the climb, and then once you reach the top of the course, you rip the tape off of the bottom of your skis, and then you go down

a like slalom style sort of thing between checkpoints until you reach the bottom. Again, it takes about three minutes to run the sprints of this course. For the mixed gender relay, the the athletes have to run the course. It's a longer course and they have to run it twice. So first, the woman of the pair runs the course twice before tagging in the male athlete to then do the same. So I can't imagine doing this fucking once, let alone twice in a row on a longer course. It just seems wild. I don't understand how the human body can possibly do this.

Yeah, and I always wonder too with a new sport, like how they get the word out, you know? So the sport of ski mountaineering, first of all, I mean, it has like pretty ancient origins. Yeah, I can see that. And it's informed by a lot of, you know, a lot of cross-country stuff and a lot of, you know, alpine skiing. It gained popularity first like in Europe around the Alps. The International Council of Ski Mountaineering Competitions formed between a handful of countries in Europe in 1999. The first official ski mountaineering championship in North America wasn't founded until 2012. But since they announced that the sport would be joining the 2026 Olympics back in 2021, it has had a sort of boom in popularity.

And the audience that it has most attracted to the sport are like endurance athletes like. long-distance cyclers and marathon runners. Yeah, I was to say, like, you know the fun part of skiing? It's not that. That's actually not as much what you're doing. Yeah, no, the fun part of skiing is, one, when you're done and you get to go chill and drink a hot beverage. The second is going fast down the mountain. Exactly.

Yeah. The third is getting to sit on a chair left and catch up with your friends, but they don't do that in skimo. No. In schemo, you are running uphill on skis, and it just sounds absolutely wild. I don't know, man. There's a lot of things you can watch people do during the Olympics that seem like beyond the realm of human capability. But just seeing some clips of people doing schemo, it really feels like it is truly on a whole other level. Well, and I always think, too, of like commentators.

Like, they have to keep up some kind of patter while you're watching it. And I guess there are certain techniques maybe. but it just seems like the people that are commentating would just be like, he's doing it. He's going so fast. Holy shit. Look at those powerful legs. There's like, I mean, obviously there's a lot more technique to it than that. There's a lot of technique in the backpack checkpoints part of it.

Yeah, that's true. How fast can you get? It's like pit crew style. How fast can you get your skis off? How fast can you put them back on? How fast can you rip that tape off? And then, like, you have to be good at alpine skiing. Then you have to go down between these, like, flags.

You have to actually do good at that. I think on the track at the 2026 Olympics, there's, like, a slight incline that you also have to go back up once you finish the course to get to the finish line. So, like, there's a little bit of a one final push that you have to do. I'll be very, very curious. Also, like, it is a simultaneous race. During the sprints, you were watching, like, I think, like, 20 people fucking running up the hill all at the same time.

That's cool. I don't actually know if it's happened before. Maybe the clips I've seen were from the 2020 Youth Winter Olympics. But I don't know, man. It is weird. It is weird to see it would be like if there was like a speed skating event where like halfway through they had to pop their skates off and then do like a tour to stod around the bleachers around the ice before they were allowed to finish speed skating. It's just kind of a wild mashup, but one that, I don't know, I think it seems pretty cool. And the people who finish it seem the most tired I've ever seen people before.

Like most clips you see of people finishing a schemo course, they just immediately kind of ragdoll to the ground because they left it all all out there. For whatever reason, maybe because you said mountaineering. At first I was picturing them like going up like a tree filled incline. So like not only are they going uphill, but they're having to go around trees in a forest. You were imagining like an event that was like ski free where you're having to go over ramps between trees and then not get eaten by a Yeti. Yeah, I think I was thinking of like orientering, which again, I've never done. I've also never really skied. I say really because in St. Louis, I don't know if it's still there, but there used to be this place called the Hidden Valley that had from what I understand two hills.

And I went there in like eighth grade, I think, and spent half a day. So I, like, I feel like I can't count that. Anyway, what I'm thinking of, I think is orientering where you go through the woods and get little flags or something. That sounds cool. But again, I haven't done that. Do you get to keep the flags when you're done? I think maybe you just find the flag and then go to the next one. You don't get to keep the flags?

I don't know. I shouldn't have started talking about this. I don't know anything about orienteering. Anyway, I have decided to become a big Schemo fan. And I think mostly it's because of the name. I didn't think they were going to come up with a Winter Olympic sport with a better name than the skeleton. But Schemo, I think, has surpassed it in my mind. Schemo should be the name of the little mascot.

There should be a mascot called Schemann. The mascots are ferrets this year. Or weasles? Or weasels. Yeah, they're long sort of rodents. They're weasels. Cute. Love them.

I love these guys. I love an Animal Olympic mascot and not like it's the, it's a tower of some sort. Hey, do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Tyler says, My Small Wonder is vacation planning. I'm going to be traveling this summer and it's reminding me how fun and exciting it is to look around Google Maps for places to go and things to do when you're going somewhere. It's such a great thing to look forward to. Oh, yeah.

I miss this so much. Griffin used to be the king of this. Yeah. We have several word documents of like a gen. as day by day. Just two. One for our trip to our honeymoon in Japan and then one for our trip to Hong Kong. Which yeah, when you're traveling internationally, you really do kind of have to prepare in advance because it's not going to necessarily be easy to navigate in a place where you don't know the language. Right. That's true. Well, Hong Kong is pretty easy just because there's a lot of

English language. I don't think we knew that for sure when we went. No, that's true. And it's depending on which part of Hong Kong you were in. That's the other thing is we used to like give these guides out to people like we were fucking uh yeah with zaggots or something i did not long ago i had friends go to japan and i pulled out our japan all that shit's outdated man all that shit's gone there's no robot restaurant no robot restaurant there's half those shrines are that's not true the shrines are probably still rocking shrines will still be there one of them was actually uh under construction for for a long time that big one up on the up on the hill with all the lattice work that i can't remember the name of Anyway, thank you so much for listening.

Please write us at wonderful podcast at gmail.com with your own submissions that we can consider here at the end of the show. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use for theme song Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you so much to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. You can go to Maximumfund.org. Check out all the stuff that we've got going on over there, all kinds of great shows. We got merch over at Macroymerch.com. There's a 20 Make It Stick poster designed by Lucas Hey.

Hespenhide that that absolutely rules and and guys uh griffin's book his choose your own adventure book is about to be in the world and you can pre-order that it's called the stowaway yeah it's uh we got a big box of them here it's a very it's uh i'm really proud of it i'm really really proud of it it is incredible it seems really challenging to do what you did it was not easy and uh it's you know primarily obviously it's a choose your own adventure book designed for younger readers in the eight to 12 kind of middle middle grade age range but I just think it's a cool take on this formula and it's an honor to have written it because I love these books growing up and it's 10 bucks for the book and if you pre-order it at bit.L.Y slash Griffin Stowe

that would truly mean a lot to me because I'm very proud of this book and I hope folks like it. Oh, we have a bunch of streaming that we're doing on our YouTube channel over the Macroy family on YouTube, mostly us playing games and stuff. Me and Justin and Travis are all streaming by ourselves one day a week. I'm doing a randomized Legend of Zelda Majora's Masks, not speed run. It's going very slow, actually. But I'm playing that every Friday. It's called Trial by Fieri, and it's a lot of fun.

And then every Tuesday we all get together, me and Juice and Trav to play games. And last Tuesday every month, we do Macroy Family Clubhouse. There's so much fun stuff happening over there, and we're working really hard on it. So if you like our stuff, I bet you'll like that too over at the Macroy family on YouTube. Or you can follow Macroy Entertainment System for all of our gaming stuff on Instagram. That's it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great rest of your week.

Hump day. Right? And we'll catch you next time. Do the Olympic theme again. Yeah, sure. Maximum Fun A Worker Own Network Of Artist-owned shows

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