Wonderful! - Wonderful! 419: A Romp with Two Hot Super-Married Singles

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Rachel's favorite uniquely-named family business mascot! Griffin's favorite strong-personality bodies of water! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya First Nations Development Institute: https://www.firstnations.org/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinwonderful

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. This is a podcast where we talk about things we like that's good that we're into. Sometimes it's animals. Sometimes it's food. But no matter what it is, you can bet that you're in for a wild ride.

A raunchy romp with two hot. Mary. I've watched too much perfect match. Yeah, okay. And it's kind of ruined. What was influencing your decisions on this? It's kind of ruined my brain. I almost called us two hot singles, and that's not true.

Like, we're wicked married. We're super duper married. No, in fact, one would say that marriage is the third character in this podcast. Well, New York City is the third character in this podcast, even though we're not there. We live in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. But I like to think of Washington, D.C. as the New York City of the DMV area. Discuss. I mean, you're saying that of the Maryland.

Virginia. D.C. D.C. region. D.C. is the New York City of the... I would say D.C. is closer to New York than any of the other cities in Maryland or Virginia. Yeah, for sure. Shots fired, Baltimore. What's up now? Yeah, you know, that's true. Baltimore's pretty cool. I haven't spent enough time in Baltimore. Why do we live here and not in Baltimore?

And Baltimore feels more on the water than D.C. Absolutely, it is. And New York is. Pretty water, pretty waterlogged. Yeah. Wets it. That's why they call it the big wet apple. Do you have any small wonders? We like to start things off by talking about little stuff. And this is the opportunity for us to do that. Sometimes I vamp while I can tell my wife, Rachel, is really racking her brain for good stuff. I don't do you have one? You were telling me how much you love the trash can nachos at the Guy Fieri restaurant? No, that's not true. I've never been to a Guy Fierry restaurant or had the trash can nachos. I can go first if you know. Oh, I'll say badminton.

Whoa. Shit, dude. It's like you just remember the badminton existed. What I do is almost just like an inventory of what we have done the past few days. Yeah. And what maybe newer things are in our lives. Yeah. And I got a little badminton set.

Thought maybe the kids would be at a point in their coordination where they could participate. Not really. Not yet. You know what? You know what? Goofed them up. We got those tennis. rackets and so they played with tennis rackets for a while.

Tennis racket much bigger. Yesterday, Henry was like, let's play badminton. Got that badminton racket could not connect. He was so used to, we've trained him so hard on the size of a tennis because I was thinking we've been doing tennis racket and balloons. And I thought, well, badminton, like the little birdie is, you know, pretty floaty, gives you time, forgot that the badminton actual surface area. Much smaller. Much smaller. And birdie's also kind of squirrelly, isn't it? Because if you, it doesn't always go in the exact direction. And the racket length. length is very long. And our kids, if they fail to do something three times, they never will do it ever again. It's a real shame. I was out there playing with him and I was having a good time. You and me

were playing around with the Batman. I know. I enjoy Batman. And you fucking smoked me. You were crushing. It was a lot of fun. And so I was like, please God, just let him hit the birdie two consecutive times. That's all it. Nope, couldn't happen. Yeah. I thought like maybe without a net too, that would like take the intimidation down. But yeah, they're not ready. Which is a shame. But I enjoy it. I still enjoy it. It's an adult endeavor.

I'm going to say I finished my latest season of Trial by Fieri, my series where I play Litchin Zelda games in a very difficult way where all the stuff is in the wrong place. And I set it so that I died in one hit. That's kind of customary. I've done it. This is my third time doing it. My third Zelda game. I did Majora's Mask, which is a weird fucking game.

It's a cool one. I know you're not super well versed in the Zelda world, but it's got like a time loop. You have three days to save the world, but you can reset time like at any point. And the whole time the moon is like coming down to crash into the earth. So you're like, well, not the earth, but fantasy earth. Yeah. And it was so hard. It was the hardest one I've done.

And it took me like 16 episodes, I think. And I'm, I was real proud of myself. Yeah. We're finishing that one up. Are you going to retire your Guy Fieri shirt and frame it and put it on the wall? Until I do this again. I think you're You think you'll return.

I need a break. It's a stressful thing to live stream because it's a game franchise that a lot of people have a lot of feelings about and like no are so familiar with that like if you fuck up, they're like, why didn't you do this thing that I've done a thousand times? So it's stressful. But it's, I don't know, it's the hardest video game thing I do. And it's satisfying to do it. Yeah.

It amazes me because I like our children. if I try something a few times and I'm not getting anywhere, the likelihood that I am going to stop doing it increases. And when you're live streaming, you can't be like, you know what, today? Stream three minutes. You know, I said it's the hardest video game thing I do. Right now, Justin and Travis and I are playing Dark Souls,

which is a famously, in an unfathomably difficult video game. Also visually very dark. Oh, it's challenging. It's really brutal. It's a very brutal game. Like when I have definitely tried to watch. you guys play Dark Souls because I enjoy the McElroy family Tuesdays. It's oppressive.

But it's so dark. Yeah. It's so visually dark. I'm so lost in what is happening in the game. Yeah. It seems so hard. And I really liked when you were the three little guys in the camper van. The three little guys in the camper van.

Well, that game got even harder than Dark Souls. We had to fucking bail on that game. We reached a point where you had to like scale this tower that went straight up. And we were like, and that's the end of our time. this game. You go first this week. I do. I would like to take this sweatshirt off.

You do this, man. I know. You are like a ride or die fall for life. I'm not ready to let go. And it hasn't been fall for a very long time. It hasn't. Nor has it been winter. In the mornings, you still put on a...

Ow! I hit my face with my headphones and you laughed at me. I'm okay. I'm fine, by the way. How sweating. Am I? Not that sweaty. What's your topic this week, my love? So maybe I'll say the somewhat inexplicable but delightful mythology of the stork that is the mascot for Velasic Pickles.

I can't tell you how excited I was. You sent me a link like, hey, here's the Velasic stork doing his thing, being one of the Marx brothers, I think. And here's his deal. And I was like, oh, I know this fucking creeps deal. I remember this old stork, but I am also pushing 40. So there's probably a lot of folks listening who don't know what the fuck we're talking about. It's just one of those things you kind of stop questioning. You know, like why is a tiger representing frosted flakes?

Like, I don't think about it anymore. The commercial you sent me, I think, was the first Velasic Stork commercial, which does build some lore that I wasn't. I never questioned it. This is a stork who delivers pickles, of course. Yeah. It's his job. Yeah. And I want to be clear up front, I don't actually really enjoy the pickles themselves.

If I'm going to choose from like an easy-to-find store brand, like Claussen 10 times out of 10. I don't have any religion in this capacity. So I don't want to say like, oh, and my favorite pickle, no, no, I'm talking specifically about the stork. And it's kind of strange origins. and I don't know. I got real national treasure with it in, again, a movie I haven't seen, where I was like connecting the dots

of like, how did this even... Yeah. How was this the thing? Do you have any intention of playing a clip? We could play a clip of audio from one of these commercials so people can hear this story? I would like to.

I want to wait. Okay, okay, okay. I want to wait. You let me know when to deploy it. I want to set the stage. Okay, cool. Okay, so Pickles. The Vlasic family

emigrated from Croatia to Detroit in 1912 and started a small creamery. Okay. So they were not in the pickle game at first. But it is like one of those family businesses where like the guy that started the creamery, his son took over. And then by 1937, they were, quote, approached to distribute a home style pickle and the first plant was built in Michigan, and the pickles were introduced in 1942.

They were approached. I know. I don't really know what approached means in this instance, but that is like the research I did. Suggested that it wasn't necessarily their idea in the beginning. And again, family continues through this process. So what happens is, is after Joseph we get to Bob, who is Frank Vlasic's grandson.

And Bob took over management after he finished college in 1963. Okay. Bob, kind of a character. Sounds like it. I found an interview, or no, it was like an obituary on NPR. That's different. Yeah, yeah. But, like, you know how NPR does the, like, two people talking?

and neither of them is the person they're talking about. That's kind of what this was. Bob Vlasic was such a fan of just lighthearted humor. He has a book called Bob Vlasik's 101 pickle jokes. Oh, man, Bob. Would you like to hear one of these jokes? I want to hear 50 of these fucking things, man. What's green and pecks on trees?

A green woodpecker? Woody Woodpickle. That's good. I forgot they were pickle-based. I instantly forgot that these were pickle-based jokes. His whole attitude was like we're not going to take ourselves too seriously. Simultaneously, what is happening is that the baby boom is ending. So the baby boom happened after World War II. It's like late 1940s to 1960s when just a lot more kids are being born.

and there's a whole mythology around pregnant women loving pickles. Okay. I do feel like, yeah, I feel like that is a common. I have never seen a specific reason. Well, it's a weird craving kind of staple, right? Like, that's the thing that people talk about sort of stereotypical, like pregnant women cravings. Yeah, like sending the husband out. Pickles and ice cream or like some weird, weird stuff like that.

I think more than anything, it's like salty and sweet and pickles are salty. That's my guess. So salty. I mean, maybe sometimes they're sweet. I don't know. Anyway, they put together the idea that pregnant women love pickles. Right. We want to capitalize on that.

Because their print ads, like the early print ads were like focused on that. Like pregnant women love everyone's pregnant right now because of the baby boom and pregnant women love pickles and this is our end. Right. But when it came to the television ads, 1974, they, they. the suggestion, and you'll hear it in the ad below, is that there is a stork now with Flasic, and there's a reason there's a stork, and let's play that. Doctor, it's the Stork.

I bet you could tell from my legs. Say, I deliver the babies around here. Not to worry, Doc. I deliver Vlasic pickles now. You see, the baby boom is bottomed out. I know. But Blasic pickle sales are topping everything. Really?

Care for a baby dill? Delicious. Maybe I should start delivering Vlasic pickles. What do you think? I think you should take two Blassickakins and call me in the morning. Blasick, America's favorite pickle, now in California. I guess my question is like if there's so many babies being born, you would think that Storks would be incredibly in demand. Their time would be like...

No, that's what I'm saying. Baby boom ends 1960s. Oh, I see, I see. 1960s. It's 1974. Okay. They're trying to keep enthusiasm for pickles up. Right.

And I love how specific the stork is, like in explaining, like doing the connective work when he says, but with the birth rate down and the Velastic Pickles sales up, I deliver pickles now. Makes sense. Airtight. It's that like one sentence explanation of like, I know, Stork, pickles, why? This specific reason, answer given, questions done. And then there's, and then there's assholes like me who are like, why is this guy? delivering pickles and it's like if you don't start the story at the beginning yeah of course you're going to be lost he explains it the thing with the stork and you mentioned the groucho marks voice yeah is that okay it's one thing of like oh pregnant women love pickles stork doesn't have as much to do not as many

babies stork delivers pickles why does he sound like groucho marks yeah like a lot and i thought in my head oh groucho marks had that game show you bet your life do you know about you this. Some one, I never watched it, but I know it existed. It started on radio in the late 1940s and then hit television in the 1950s. And it was Groucho Marx. There was like a duck that had a cigar that was supposed to be like Groucho Marx who like, you know, like, characteristically like had a.

A cigar. A cigar. Yeah. So I thought like, oh, oh, they were probably trying to capitalize on this momentum of like Groucho Marx and this duck and now they have a stork and the stork is like Groucho Marx. That show ended in 1960. This commercial came out in 1974.

So it's just some old weirdo who's just like, I miss Groucho Marx's great game show. My hypothesis is that Bob, funny guy, Bob Flasset. Yeah, dude. You know, like comedy, comedy fan, Bob. You know, he kind of came up and thought like, oh, you know what, I'm going to do a nice, a nice tribute. And the pickle is going to be the cigar, and this one's going to sound like Groucho Marx. But correct me if I'm wrong, the Velasic Stork doesn't, he doesn't like, does he ever have the pickle? And he's like, yeah, like, yeah,

he does, he does, okay, okay. For sure. Like, fun fact, the original voice of that, because I did, I did, I did have a moment, especially in that original commercial where I was like, did they actually get Groucho? Yeah. No, the original actor was, but apparently played the sheriff on murder she wrote. That was like his other claim to feign. I will say he was replaced by Doug Priest, who is best known for his voices on the show Doug. Okay. So he did like Phil Funny, Bill Bluff, Vice Principal Bone.

Like he used all those on Doug. All right. I could see that. And also the pickle stork. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, it's difficult to kind of piece together given kind of the 1970s time period of this. But when Vlasic picked back up their like momentum and started doing like YouTube, there's a whole YouTube channel at Vlasic Stork, 1942. Granted, there's no more recent post than from 10 years ago.

Damn. But the stork has a name. Storko. His name is Jovny. J-O-V-N-Y. Jov. You're sure about that pronunciation? J-O-V-N-Y? I don't know. I don't know. I didn't like dig real deep into it.

Sounds like an acronym. Could be Jovny. I know. That's what I thought. But what? For what? I couldn't find it anywhere. If I Google Jovny, is this going to be the only guy that shows? Yes. I thought maybe it's like a traditional Croatian name and they're trying to give tribute to their like family history and connection to. I mean, Velastic Stork is the only thing that shows up. Why is his name that? I don't know.

I tried to come up with an acronym. There's nothing inherently like, I don't know. It's a mystery. I can't find anything about it. Someone emailed the Velasic Pickles Company asking why the Stork's name is Javney and they did, they iced them out. They did not respond to this. They did not respond to this query.

So it's just another layer. another kind of inexplicable layer of the Vlasic story. One of the top results is from the Sonic the Hedgehog wiki, Javany Vlasic the Stork, which like I guess it kind of makes sense that he would be in the Sonic universe. Is he in the Sonic verse? I don't think so, but like he would fit into it pretty well, I think. Yeah. I don't know.

Anyway, Vlasic apparently spent sometimes more money on advertising. than most of the competitors combined. Like really, like doubled down on this. There were a lot of different iterations of Jevney. They tried to update him in 2010. Oh, boy. And it was not well received. I don't know if you can see this slender fellow.

Why do they make him so skinny? He's so, so trim. There was a period in the 90s. If you look into these commercials, at first, you know, it's like, oh, pregnant ladies love pickles. And then in the 90s when there was this whole like low fat sugar-free like diet craze, then they started to have Jovney talk about how there was no fat and pickles in the commercial. That's wild, Javni.

I don't need that from you, dude. So they tried to keep him irrelevant, but turns out people just kind of like the original guy. Did you know Velasic made pickle balls? Yeah, I saw that too. Oh, they're corn puffs. They're just flavored like pit. Trying to capitalize. Cowards.

Trying to capitalize on pickleball. They don't miss a trick, do they? Yeah, they are chasing the relevance real hard. And I think... Well, except for when they made their mascot be based on an ancient game show that had been off the air for 14 years. And I will just say, pickles at the time, real popular. I don't know if it was the jarred aspect, you know, because for a period of time, like, everything was jarred. Just given the, like, desire to, you know, be conservative about food.

food usage. Right. In 1933, Americans ate about two pounds of pickles a year. In 1974, when this was kind of beginning, they ate eight pounds of pickles per year. It's crazy to think of measuring the amount of pickles I eat in a year by pounds. Yeah. I would do ounces probably safely for me. I'm not a huge pickle guy.

I wish they were crunchier. I wish that they weren't. That's Claussen is the way to go. Clausen. Well, even Claussen, like, the brining process makes the kellery. cucumber so soft, doesn't it? I don't want it soft or squishy at all. I want a hard firm. You can. You can find that. No way. How? How? There are a lot of pickle folks on the market. I don't know if you've been to like a nice grocery store, but there's just like. I don't know if you've been to a nice grocery store. Well, I don't know if you've looked at the pickles in a nice grocery store. I should clarify.

You get all your groceries at the local slop shop. But yeah, I love the mythology around this guy. There's a lot. It was fascinating to try and make the connection of like, uh-oh, if there are less babies, how are we going to keep pickles relevant? Oh, well, the stork, he's got free time now. So wild that they were concerned with the birth rate. You're a pickles company.

Why are you looking at that at all? I mean, if you think about it, and it's definitely they're talking about it. in this administration, this idea that if the birth rate goes down, what does that mean? No, no, no, for sure. I understand that from a sort of broader sociological scale and what that means, you know, economically and all of these. But it's a pickles company. So like, why are they, like, were they really like pregnant ladies are the only ones eating these fucking crunchy, salty, green boys? And what are we going to do? I think Bob, funny man, Bob Flassick, I think he really got excited about you know, like television and

bringing humor to the brand and for whatever reason the stork stuck and they're still using it today. Hey, good for them. Pickle, I think, is a funny food. Like, it's a funny kind of idea for food to shape, obviously, we're adjacent. We love that.

I'm busting up over here. It's wild that this is the direction, this is the spot they landed on, but hey, we're for them. I don't know why they gave them a name that's not, apparently a name, but that's, again. Again, it worked though, didn't it? Dang.

Well, yeah. Bulletproof Jovney, the Velasic Stork is. I guess so. Can I steal you away? Yes. I, this past weekend, went up to Northwestern University to do a talk about books and stuff with Adel Rfeb from Magic Tavern. It was really great.

Thank you everybody who came out. I'd never been up to the, to like that part of Evanston up north of Chicago. And man, it's just, it is drop dead gorgeous. It is lovely. It is incredible. Like the architecture of the school's insane, like insane in the way that Chicago's architecture is like totally buck wild. And I don't have enough sort of vernacular for the, for architecture to be able to speak of it.

But it doesn't look like anything else. And also just like the campus is beautiful. The surrounding neighborhoods are real cute. Really cute. And it was also like peak Chicago weather like after horrible free. winter before sweltering sweaty summer, just like really lovely. But the highlight for me of the weekend was walking on the on-campus shoreline of Lake Michigan. I would like to talk about the Great Lakes today. Whoa. I know. That's a big topic. It is a big topic. There are big

bodies of water. You're not going to pick a lake. You're not going to pick a specific of lake. I mean, I'm going to focus mostly on Lake Michigan just because it is the one that I'm sort of most experienced with. I was so enchanted by the lake when I lived in Chicago. I was always so, I don't know, just mesmerized by it whenever I was on sort of the eastern part of the city looking out over the water. Because what's so amazing about Lake Michigan is that it is so big, it is basically an ocean. Yeah, you can't, like, you can't see across it. You can't, I'm going to talk more about that because that's interesting. But yes, you can't, when you look out over the horizon, it's just more Lake Michigan.

They have like beaches all along the shoreline and it feels like you are at like an ocean. like 20 miles of beachfront just in Chicago, like alone. But like, like Michigan's got waves. The Great Lakes have their own like weather systems. They have currents. They totally like consume the horizon. There's ports and bays like supporting all of this different sort of commerce running all along them. The water is fresh, but otherwise like that's an ocean, baby.

It's got all the stuff that you want from ocean. And it's easy to kind of like lose perspective on that because the Great Lakes are, they're fucking huge. huge. And I always knew that, but I didn't until I looked up some of the stats for this subject, like I didn't quite appreciate how huge they were. Together, the five Great Lakes, can you name them? Oh, why are you doing this to me? I'll try. Superior Erie, Michigan. Huron? Yep. Ontario. That's right, baby. Oh, wow. Look at me. Look at you. I always learned Holmes as the acronym. Oh, I got so nervous. You just restiled it and you got them.

So the five Great Lakes, they span over 94,000 square miles just on the surface, comprising nearly 20% of Earth's entire freshwater supply. And each of the Five Great Lakes have their own little quirks. I think there's a great opportunity here for like a Great Lakes style Power Rangers, like a Super Team. Yeah, Captain Planet could work too. Power Rangers, I was more thinking, just like they all have like different kind of geological profiles that could like, well.

Well, no, they don't morph into the Great Lakes, but, like, Superior is, like, the biggest one. It contains more water than the other four combined. So I'm imagining, like, he's, like, the big, like, the big tanky kind of member of, like, the group. And then Huron has the most shoreline. It's got over 30,000 islands in it. So I'm imagining, like, Huron's, like, sort of the laid back, like, chill. You're describing a boy band right now. Maybe it could be a boy band.

Lake Michigan is fully contained within the U.S. It is the largest freshwater lake contained by a single country. So he'll be like the super patriotic, like really American one. You got Erie, which is the shallowest and warmest of all the great lakes. And so it's got this like insane biodiversity, a lot of algae and stuff. So I see him as like really plugged into like nature and like marine life and stuff. And then Lake Ontario is like the smallest, but it's fed directly by Niagara Falls. So he's got like Canadian hydrojet powers.

and stuff. This thing writes itself. Canadian hydrojet. How would that make him a character? He can blast out hydro jets and he's like Canadian. And I imagine... He's like the tech guy maybe? Yes.

Like in a fast and furious. Oh, that's cool. So I think him in Lake Michigan butt heads a bit because Lake Michigan is like, again, really American patriotic. There's, again, like there's the friction there. There's a lot of opportunities. And this is my backdoor pilot for Great Lakes Rangers. I was accidentally tapped into this window, I guess, during your segment.

And I typed Jovney in the middle of my notes as I was trying to Google it on my other screen. Just dialing into Lake Michigan, right? Because that's the one that you and I have spent the most time here in Chicago. It's the if you're not familiar at home. That's the eggplant-shaped one that kind of hugs the western border of Michigan, helps form Michigan's kind of glove shape there on the left side. There are dozens of major cities. along Lake Michigan from the four states that border it.

Obviously, Chicago and all of the outlying kind of burbs. Down in Indiana, you got like Gary and a bunch of other places. Michigan obviously has a ton of cities kind of running all along the coast. Muskegon, I think is how you pronounce the name of that city in Michigan is a big one. And then it goes all the way up to Wisconsin, all the way up to Milwaukee and Green Bay and Kenosha. there's like a lot of really major cities just around this one of the five Great Lakes. Lake Michigan supports 12 million people

living along its coast and it provides drinking water to nearly 40 million people throughout the U.S. And there's also over 170 species of fish in the Great Lakes Basin, mostly in Erie, the shallower, warmer, kind of funkier one. And you might hear all this and be like, man, must be chill, big freshwater pools supporting life and sustenance to humanity.

and fish alike, but actually the waters of the Great Lakes are famously really treacherous. Yeah. Which they have a reputation for having like severe, rapidly changing kind of weather conditions. Yeah. Brutal waves in sort of stormy weather. Really fast currents, ice cold waters that are not as buoyant as ocean water because they're they are not salinated. They're desalinified. There's no salt in the water.

And so there's an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks at the bottom of the Great Lakes, which is wild. You don't think of a lot of ships being on there, but there's actually a ton of trade that goes through. Yeah, between Canada, but also just between like the major cities just along Lake Michigan, right? Do you know the most famous shipwreck of the Great Lakes that Gordon Lightfoot wrote a very famous song about? No. It's the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. was a freighter that sank in a storm on the Great Lakes. So yeah, I mean, you think like, well, they're just lakes.

How bad could it be? But they're so big that they have all of these kind of like insane climate hazards that you do have to kind of keep an eye out for. Have you ever successfully been inside of Lake Michigan? I mean, I've like waded around it in the waters of Lake Michigan. It's so fucking cold. There is like a, there is, I don't think so much on Lake Michigan. I believe like Lake Superior is. more the destination for this, but there is like a dedicated surfer community of like the

really? Yeah, because the waves can get pretty big and bodacious. And also something I learned is that the waves, I'm not sure what it is that that causes this, maybe because they are ultimately smaller than like, you know, the Atlantic Pacific Ocean. But the waves, they can be quite large and they come way faster. Usually on like the ocean, you get like three to five seconds or so between like big swells and on the Great Lakes. They can just like over and over and over again. So it's like dangerous. It's pretty dangerous. And I imagine unpleasant because of how cold it is, but there's still people who are all about that. When people always talk about lake effects snow, which is like that you will sometimes get like extra inches the closer you are to it. It's powerful.

It is powerful. And I also really like that. I loved that living in Chicago is like you knew if you were in a certain part of the city during the summer, if you are nearer to the lake, like it's nice. Like it feels way nicer because there is like a nice breeze. And man, again, while I was up there in Northwestern, like the breeze off the lake going through like the spring trees. Oh, man, God, that's heaven. That's the best. If I could lock weather conditions at like a single sort of moment, it would definitely

kind of just be that, I think. So you mentioned not being able to see across Lake Michigan. Yes. Which is true. Normally you can't see across it. A six foot tall person sort of standing on the shores of Lake Michigan can usually see about three miles out to the horizon before the curvature of the earth kind of, you know, hides what is beyond view from that. And Lake Michigan averages between like 40 to 80 miles from

its western to eastern shores. Standing in Chicago looking directly east across to Michigan, it's like 40, 45 miles somewhere around there. So you can't, you can't do it, right? However, under the right conditions, standing in Michigan, it is possible to see the 40 or so miles to the Chicago skyline. And there's a few reasons for that. One is that tall buildings, tall buildings, right? You would have to be about 1,400 feet tall to see across Lake Michigan, and buildings like the tallest buildings in Chicago along the skyline are about around there at their peak, which makes it easier for them to kind of crest the horizon. But also, there is an optical phenomenon called atmospheric refraction, which happens when the air above the water is warmer than the water itself.

and it bends light rays in a way that allows you to kind of see around the curvature of the earth. It's a process called looming. And so, especially this time of year where the lake water is cold and the temperature of the air is starting to get warmer, you can stand on the Michigan side of things. And if the conditions are just right because of atmospheric refraction, you can see around the curvature of the earth to see the Chicago skyline. And there's pictures like people have gotten standing in Michigan of just like crystal clear where it looks like the Chicago skyline is like a hundred yards away. Like it's a really, really incredible effect that I knew nothing about until just now. Yeah.

It's just kind of rad being able to be in a city in the Midwest, especially Chicago. There's so many. I love Chicago so much. There's so much I love about Chicago. And it is rad to be there in the Midwest on a temperate spring day and also be standing. standing on a beach. Like it's kind of wild that you are able to do that. It's a lake beach, sure, but it is a beach sort of nonetheless. Yeah. And I really, I don't know, I really romanticized that and I just, I could spend all day just kind of kicking it by the lake. I was trying to think of

a reason that we could take our boys to Chicago. And then I remembered, isn't the field museum going to do some kind of Pokemon exhibit? Didn't I tell you about that? Isn't that coming to D.C.? Also? I thought it was just field museum. Someone came by for the, the signing who worked at the who worked at the Pokemon that they like helped bring the Pokemon dinosaur the fossil exhibit to the field museum I don't know I may have just been assuming that but anyway that would be a good reason to get our children excited oh dude hell yeah absolutely I'd love to do that anyway that's the Great Lakes they're amazing um got some submissions from our friends at home do you want to hear them yes it's two uh almost identical ones

and it's about a subject that we discussed last episode Connor said hearing about the lapel pins for Japanese lawyers reminded me of the order of the engineer. When engineering students graduate in the U.S., they're invited to attend the Order of the Engineer ceremony where a silver ring is placed on the pinky finger of their dominant hand. It's a pinky ring because the sound of the ring, clacking or dragging on your desk whenever you write is supposed to remind you of your obligation to uphold integrity and serve humanity. Another fun part of the ceremony is putting your hand through a giant version of the ring when you receive it. And they sent both photos. It's very, very cool. Yeah.

Samuel sent one in that said listening to Griffin talk about the lapel pens made me want to chime in about Canadian engineering rings. Once you finish your engineering degree in Canada, you're given an iron ring. They're worn on the pinky of your dominant hand, so it taps the table when you write to remind you of your responsibility as an engineer. There's a crazy swearing-in ceremony with chains and anvils and an oath penned by Ruehird Kipling. I don't know. Oh, that's the guy that does the... What? The like the fables, the like old like, like jungle book.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And just so stories, which is what I was thinking of. Just So stories is like about animals like being in morality situations. I love that. Samuel continues. My favorite detail is that the rings are deliberately made with rough hammer strikes in them.

So they smooth over time. The smoother the ring, the longer someone's been an engineer, it was something to look forward to all those years in school. And now I wear it with pride. That's correct. I had no idea about any of this stuff. I was always kind of jealous of people who had like class rings. Oh, man. I have to feel real allegiance to my institution to get this ring.

And then, you know, but I always thought like if you do feel that and you wear that ring around, like that's cool. It is cool. They're so big. Dad always had, dad had like a Marshall ring with like a green, like an emerald sort of, it was big. I don't think he had like the comedy and tragedy mask on the side or something. I think, no, I don't know. That was a thing Jostin's, I think, sold if you wanted. I definitely was like, I tried to get my parents excited about getting me a ring to commemorate my high school graduation.

And they were like, no way, buddy. Very expensive. Very, very expensive. You want a giant princess cut garnet? Are you out of your fucking mind? Anyway, yeah, this is cool. Please keep sending him more information about jobs that give you accessories. Accessories.

When you do them good. I know that like a lot of employers, including I got a five-year pin from Austin Community College. There are a lot of like, you know, jobs. Was there a ritual ceremony with a giant? I mean, they did have a ceremony, but it was like recognition of service and it was like five years, 10 years, you know. Yeah. And then I think when my grandma used to work for the phone company, she got like pins from like, you know, Southwestern Bell or whatever. When I beat one of my trial by fairy things, Amanda and Sarah sent me a hot dog statue.

you. That's about that. That's about the, that's about the, which you could put on a chain and wear around your tag. I could. I think it's right. Yeah, it's right there. Oh, it's right there. It's a really, it's a, it's a delicious looking dog, very lifelike. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to our program. 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. And thank you, as always, to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to maximum fun.org. Check out all the great shows that they've got over there. No matter what you're into, you will find a show that caters to your interests, I guarantee it. We got merch over at Macroymerch.com.

New this month, T, the My Brother, My Brother, and T, which you can get in a bundle with two new mugs, one that says I like all butts and no government. The other says, don't talk to me until I've had my podcast. You can also get a sticker for Count Donuts Cape Fall if you follow Mbim Bam and Justin's ongoing journey to keep his cats from peeing all over his costumeery. I think that's, I think that's probably, oh, hey, the Adventure Zone, the last graphic novel comes out in a little under two months at this point.

It's story and song. I'm super duper proud of it. And if you think you're going to be interested in reading it, if you want to pre-order it, that is extremely helpful for us from a business side of things. For reasons I don't understand, despite the fact that this is like the ninth book that we've published. So if you go to theadventurezonecomcom, you can secure your copy now. And I would really appreciate that. You're going to like the book a lot of it. That's it, though, for now.

Thanks for listening, so wonderful. And be... Just a show with two hot singles. Two hot singles. Talking about things they like. No drama. No drama. No games.

Challenges. Challenges. Yes. Yes. We're going to paint a boogie board with our box. bodies. I'm going to get my butt soaked with paint and I'm going to put it on a boogie board. If you don't watch reality television, this doesn't make any sense to you.

But for whatever reason, as a romantic endeavor, they always put a couple on a date and make them paint things with their limbs. Pretty sexy stuff. You're so messy, dude. How's your sexy date? Because you're messy as fuck right now. Well, then they take a shower together and that's also steamy footage, literally. Yeah.

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