Wonderful! - Wonderful! 432: Wet Hair, Cult Leader

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Griffin's favorite physics-defying film! Rachel's favorite tall tumblers for animals!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaMidwest Food Bank: https://midwestfoodbank.org/disaster-relief/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinwonderful

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, 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. Just before we started, Rachel said that with her wet hair and the shirt that she's wearing looks like a cult leader. I disagree with that. And if I didn't disagree with that, it's like a cool, like a hot look.

I don't, do you clarify, I don't think it's anything about wet hair in particular. It's just that my hair looks a little crazier than normal. Yeah. And like, I don't know, that kind of like, you know, what's she capable of like, like, kind of look, kind of suggests, like, maybe I might rally some people and, you know, make some changes. But in a sexy way. Like, it's like giving Mary Martha Macy May Marlene. Macy Mary Marlene. There's a movie and it had Elizabeth Olson in it.

It's about cults and it's four women's days. But I can't marry Martha May Marlene. No, Macy's definitely. one of them. How do you have this knowledge? How do I have any knowledge, baby? My brain is a fucking garbage can. Okay. Okay. Yes. I can agree with that claim sometimes. But this is a movie with Elizabeth Olson in about a cult leader. Yeah. Why do I know of it? Yes. I mean, you see a name on a movie theater marquee that has four women's names on, all starting with M. And that's the... Will you look it up now? Yeah. I'm too curious. Mary, I think it's Mary Martha May, Marquis. Mary, Mary,

Mary Martha May Marlene Martha Marley Martha Marcy May Marlene Marcy was nowhere to be found in my estimation of the film's name Martha Marley It's not as good I like my better honestly And this hit theaters

This hit theaters And it's got Sarah Paulson in it I bet she's the cult leader I mean that's one heck of a cast That is one heck of a cast When did it come out? 1911. Whoa,

holy shit. Wow, a silent movie starring Elizabeth Olson. She looks great for like 140. And Sarah Paulson for that matter. I mean, Sarah Paulson, that's no surprise. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I actually want to know when it came out. 2011. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was what came out a while ago. Do you have any small wonders? Mine's Martha Marcy, Marley Marlon. So in 2011. Yeah.

You were old enough to see it. Are you wondering, it's R-rated? Are you wondering if I'm allowed to see it? I'm just wondering when you, like, walked by a marquee and thought, hmm, I wonder what that film's about. Yeah, I better remember it forever, kind of. I better almost remember some of the names in the title of this motion picture. I might need it for a podcast. I might need it to fill three minutes at the top of a podcast.

I need an intro to a podcast. Yeah. Do you have any small wonders? I was going to talk about how we have ice now. Uh-huh. Our freezer's been broke for a long time, and it's a load-bearing freezer. Well, let's clarify again. The ice maker inside of our freezer has been broken, and it seems like a silly reason to get a whole new fridge.

Even though we did look at that briefly and then realized it was going to be a lot of work and our choices were limited. It's a weird-sized, jerk. German imported. We didn't do this. I wouldn't. I'm a frigid air man. This makes us sound very fancy. I would not do this. I would not buy it. GE or nothing in this house. And so like replacing it is not possible because it's like in a cabinet to it. It's so fucking annoying. Or if we replace it, we're going to get the exact same thing. Like there's nothing really wrong with it. It's not the most practical choice for us. Anyway, this is a lot of information. Yeah. All that happened is that I just went and bought one of those little countertop ice makers and now we have ice. And that's, it's a game changer. It's so good. I drink so much more water now.

Yeah, I don't, but I enjoy the water. I drink more, I'll say. I like how the cubes aren't cubes. They're like little tunnels. They're little, what's the name of that shape? Not a cylinder, but there's a name for the shape that's like a ring, like a three-dimensional ring object. There's a name for that shape. Do you want to open your browser with Mary Marcy May Marlene?

Yeah, I mean, three-d ring shape name is, it has a cool, a torusiness. Isn't that a cool name? A Taurus. Your brain is fascinating to me. Yeah, it's got, it almost has Taurus. It almost has the name of that Elizabeth Olson film. This is why we're going to be married forever. We will be forever and ever.

What's your small wonder? I mean, I want to talk about the new TV show that we've been watching. Yes. There was a television show on Netflix that had two seasons. We definitely have talked about it. That we've definitely talked about called Hiori's Bed and Breakfast, in which Lee Hiori and her husband, is a famous pop star,

K-pop star. Her husband is also a musician. They turn their like retreat on Jeju Island into a B&B and just invite people out and then have to run the B&B. And it was so charming and so fucking chill. And there's really nothing like it

that has that vibe. Until. Until J.C.Ox B&B rules may not be how you pronounce his name. I'm not very good at pronouncing words in Korean, despite how much Korean television programming we consume, which is a lot.

I think it's been on Netflix for a while. I think we just... Are late to it. We were kind of hopping around and, you know, like the trailer for a show will start playing when you hover over it. And so we just started watching and we were like, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Who is that?

So it's you, J. Seok, who has done a ton of these types of like kind of funny variety shows is the name of the format. one called, I think, busted, which we watched a little bit of, he's done like a ton of stuff. He's been like a TV presenter for a long, long time. He's joined by three other very funny TV presenters, and they have a facility that they, the location of which is not really telegraphed, which probably makes sense because they had to stop doing Hayori's bed and breakfast because people found out where it was and got really creepy about it. It looks like a rec center. It does. To be clear, it is not a home.

No. But the guests have to go up like a long path to get there. And the idea is that these people have to be their hosts and they have to handle the activities and the meals. And there's like some competition elements and teams. All very informal competition elements. Yeah. It's so charming. Nobody's there to like win the weekend.

Yeah. The reason we started watching it is because the first season, there's like two big batches of people who kind of. who come in and during the second half of the first season, Hayori shows up with her husband. And we don't know anything about what happens. It was just teased in the trailer and that was enough for us. That was enough for us. We're like, yeah, we'll watch these two people who we love so much.

I love watching these two do fucking anything. Help them, these clueless, hapless TV celebrities run a B&B. It's so funny genuinely from like the moment people arrive. There's like a moment of realization on all their friends. faces, all the celebrities faces of like, oh shit, this is going to be hard. We're going to have to cook a meal and then as soon as we're done, start cooking the next meal. We just watched basically the first full day and they were all remarking like, we haven't like taken a break. The only break we've gotten is to use the bathroom. They have to keep running out to buy stuff

so they'll be like, there's no garbage cans. There's no, we need slippers so people can actually go to the bathroom. Oh, shit. And then they have to run and hop in the, there's a fucking hysterical sequence where they buy coffee. They have like a big coffee dispenser. They take it to a cafe and get it filled up and then realize as they're driving up the mountain back to the center, the coffee is just spilling out of the container all over the car. It's so funny and so chill. The vibes are so good. Yeah. It's like a big summer camp. Like unlike Heori's been breakfast, like this because of the rec center locale feels very much like a summer camp, which is delightful. I've been gasping, gasping for more Korean reality or variety

television. I mean, all the new seasons of Physical 100 coming out in Italy and the U.S. and Mexico, I think, is doing one. There's like a bunch of international physical 100s. I'm down. I'll watch all those. You know it. I'm a freak for that shit. But Devil's Plan season three is still on its way. You know, I'm stoked for that. Can't wait. This is, this is, ooh, this is it in the spot. I go first. this week. Okay. You can talk about De Matrix. The film?

Yeah. Okay. What else would be? Okay. If I was not talking about the film and I was talking about a sort of abstract matrix, then this would be a Manosphere sort of podcast. And that is, you must know that so far from our brand. Well, and for all, I know there's a video game.

The Toyota Matrix. Was one of my first cars. It was a sick ride, actually. I like that automobile a lot. Now someone's going to be able to answer a security question about you. I do feel like I need to say up front that the, a lot of the Matrix has been co-opted by unsavory communities online. Terms like Red Pill and what have you.

And the concept of like The Matrix is a very big manosphere thing. There is no spoon. There is no spoon. I don't know if it's a big, huge man of it. Probably. That's not the Matrix's fault, I don't think. It's certainly not the Wachowski's fault. They just made a kick ass.

One of the best action and sci-fi movies I think ever. I fucking love The Matrix. Did you see it like in theater? Oh, hell yeah. I was 12, I believe, when The Matrix. came out. So, you know, I had to go with an adult because of the violence of it. I think if you were not around in 1999, which is when the Matrix came out, March 99,

it might be tough to like understand the footprint that that movie kind of left behind for, like, it's such a landmark action movie in so many different ways. And it's really, I think, ambitious and interesting reading about, like, the making of the movie. The Wachowski's had all of these different inspiration points that were just kind of all over the map. Neuromancer by William Gibson, a very, like, famous, like, cyberpunk novel. I've heard of that. Anime stuff.

Hong Kong action cinema stuff. Real life hacker communities. Like, they had all of these different inspirations and put them together into a movie that they really had to fight tooth and nail to get made. And it's a miracle that it did and, you know, that it absolutely made such a huge impact. Hong Kong action cinema was like the biggest inspiration, I think, and probably the reason why it hit so hard is like the kind of martial arts fight choreography and wirework stunts that the film did were not stuff that I saw in a lot of action movies in the States. Wirework stunts being like, that's like how Carrie Ann Moss is able to jump eight feet in the air and then stay there for a while. Like shit like that is so iconic and so cool and was like, I don't know, not something that I had been exposed to when I first saw The Matrix and was so rad. The big advancement production wise was a process called bullet time sort of informally, which is, you know, the scene where Neo has to dodge the bullets and he goes back and things slow down and the camera whips around them.

I think about that scene all the time. time I'm getting like a lot of new information at once. That's what it feels like to me. Yeah. It's, it's a very, it's been memed in so many ways and it's such a fan. But it was like, seeing that shit in theaters, age 12 was like, whoa. You don't even realize kind of like how they did it because it was practical. They had a special rig that was basically a ring of cameras that were firing at like 12,000 frames per second. That then they were able to, you know, the actor could stand in the middle and there's green. screens around the whole thing. The actor Keanu Reeves could stand in the middle and then, you know, do his thing and they were able to basically show slow motion with a camera moving,

not in slow motion. And it was a completely practical effect. It was invented by an inventor named John Gata. And he credits Akira, the anime movie, for inspiring the effect, as well as the music videos of Michelle Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine to Spot his mind and then did like a ton of really rad. He did some daft punk music videos. He did weapon of choice by Fat Boy Slim. All of this stuff like came together to inspire this inventor to make this bullet time rig. And it's like, I don't know, such a, such a rad thing that this movie was the first, the first one to sort of do. It invented a new way of shooting a thing, which I thought was so rad. The plot also of The Matrix seems so like, I don't know, obvious, I guess now, but was I, for me, at least as a, a tween, like... Does that seem obvious to me? I guess not. Maybe, there have been movies that have sort of explored this same thing.

Yeah, I mean, the like conspiracy kind of idea that, like, there is a world happening that you don't see for sure. That's been around for a long time. But it also explored a lot of stuff about, like, consciousness and, like, existentialism and faith in a way that was not really cyberpunk sort of coded, but, you know, lent a, I don't know a unique air to the thing. Yeah, just kind of the suggestion that there's really nothing inherently wrong with living in your kind of naive world. Well, I mean, Morpheus would disagree with that. Morpheus would like to have a word. You sound like Joey pants right now eating that steak,

being like, like the steak. His famous quote, I like this steak. I'll take the steak, please. I mean, just being a young person, this idea of like reality being a virtual world that you could hack superpowers into yourself with was so novel. I love the idea of just like being able to just boot press a button and now you know how to fly a helicopter. Yeah. So sad. I don't love the idea of being like jacked in, you know. That always did seem unpleasant. Didn't love that.

The noise, some of the folly work done for the big needle going into Keanu Reeves head. He's all slimy and he can't have hair for some reason. He really shaved his whole box. for that. He also lost like 25 pounds just for that. That was the last thing they shot in the movie was like the scene of him getting flushed down into the sewer. Oh, geez. Because he like lost the the, the, the, the Chowskies had to like sell their vision of this movie to basically everyone. Uh, and the actors that they got, uh, who like, I can't imagine any of these parts. Hugo Weaving. I can't imagine anyone else playing Agent Smith. Uh, I can't imagine anyone else playing Morpheus or Trinity. I can't imagine anyone. The, the, the, the, the, Neo was so. made for Keanu Reeves. He's like so in his element. That role was made for him.

But it actually really wasn't because they also offered it to Will Smith, Val Kilmer, Nicholas Cage, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who actually accepted the role for a little while before changing his mind thinking like, you know, an action movie with this many effects is not a great way for me to follow up Titanic. So I'm actually going to back out. And then we got Keanu Reeves. I can't fucking imagine any of those other dudes doing it. There's such a. I don't, there's like a vulnerability about Keanu Reeves. There's a gentleness to him. Okay.

I feel like, I feel like even when he is doing crazy outrageous stunts, you feel like that's a sensitive man. And a great sort of cluelessness to him that really lent itself to this like through the looking glass storyline of this guy. Like an innocence. Yes. You know that you wouldn't find like in a Will Smith. Yeah.

Like, you know, if Keanu makes something look good, he wouldn't tell you that he makes it look good, you know? That's true. Will Smith would be the first to inform you. And in fact, historically has been the first to inform you that he makes this look good. They made the Wachowski's made all the actors, like, do reading, like assigned reading on some like philosophical works. Gene Baudriard's Simulacra and Simulation is a work from, I think, 19. that explores digital consciousness. They were like, you all have to read this before we'll let you see the script.

Because they really wanted to make sure that everyone really understood kind of the plot of the movie. No, that's a good point. Warner Brothers was like really hesitant to Greenlight a $60 million action movie from the Wachowski's, who at that point had only directed one movie, which is called Bound, with Gina Gerson and Jennifer Tilly in it, which was like a neo-nouar. I've never seen it. No. Erotic crime thriller.

And so the Wachowski's commissioned a 600-page shot-for-shot storyboard from like indie comic artists that they then had this enormous Bible that they showed Warner Brothers. They filmed the first part with Carrie Ann Moss, you know, running and jumping from rooftop and jumping up in the air and kicking someone and then calling someone on the phone and disappearing, showed that to them. And they're like, okay, fucking A, let's go. Yeah, the phone thing. That was cool. thing. That was cool. So like in addition to the assigned the homework that the actors got to read about philosophy, like they also went through hell because they had to condition their bodies to do the wirework, which is like super demanding, super exhausting. And like everyone got

injured at different points of making the movie. I remember watching the on the DVD, which was so fucking good. So many special feces on this DVD is crazy. But they had like a making of thing where they showed a stunt in the lobby like gunfight or Carrie Ann Moss runs up the wall and she lands weird and injures her leg and starts just screaming not because she's like injured but because she's so upset that like she can't finish this shoot like she can't finish this shot that level of like dedication is like so apparent from everyone from from from all the actors from the wachowski's how hard they came out and sold it this movie came out 27 years ago and it's still just fucking rules, man.

Like the action scenes are so incredible. The special effects are on another level. And the things that made it such a groundbreaking movie in 1999 make it still just so enjoyable to watch today. And I don't think the other Matrix movies are that good. There's some good animatrix stuff. It was like part of this animated extended universe thing. And also the Wachowski's went on to like screenwrite and direct a bunch of like great shit,

like V for Vendetta and Speed Racer, which is. so much fun. But like to me, the Matrix is just in this pantheon of movies where if I'm like at a hotel flipping through TV and I land, I see it playing on like T&T or whatever, no matter what part of the movie it's on, I'm going to park it right there and just sort of enjoy The Matrix because there's going to be some good shit happening sort of no matter what. I like the Matrix a lot. Yeah.

Cool, cool flick. There were some good games that came out. You are of an age where I would say. 99% of people in your age range. Yeah, middle schoolers. I will say there were some middle schoolers who got weird about it, who maybe like saw the gun part of it and was like, that's the shit. I'm really going to focus on.

So many Halloween costumes. So, oh man, it launched a thousand ships. Yeah. A thousand Halloween ships this movie did. But all that aside, man, just kicks ass. Kick ass flick. Can I steal you away? Yes.

Okay. What you got? Are you ready? Yes. My wonderful thing this week is a bird nest. A bird nest for birds. A little home of sticks. I love these things.

Okay, conditionally, I love these things. If there's somewhere where I don't want it to be, I don't like bird nest. I mean, I still like the bird nest and the birds inside of it. But like, we had an air conditioner in our window of the house I grew up in and pigeons would roost on it. And it was so loud and stink. And there was not much you could do about it that wasn't barbaric. We had in my room, I had a bird nest under an AC unit. And I think it's just because it like dripped water.

Oh. And it was like very safe, obviously. Mine was on top. And it made me think like that can't be good. When that kicks on, that's got to scare the little birds away, doesn't it? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

We got one in a Christmas wreath one time at our house here. Here. Yeah. No, that was a nightmare. Because you had to open that door real fucking stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just, it was just, it wasn't even like a real plant wreath. No. It was just an artificial wreath that they had turned into a home. It didn't end well, but not because of us, I think, because the wreath was not big enough to hold a bird nest. Just a note for the, for the, for the

mama bird next time. Well, I told the story before. I thought it was empty. We waited a very, very long time. We did. And then I went to take it down and it was not empty. It was not empty. It was a sad day. Yeah. I think they made it, though. I do think they made it. I put them in a little box and then they were gone. And you shipped them to Abu Dhabi. I assumed that they had learned to fly and flew away. Absolutely they did.

Anyway, bird nests. Bird nests are cool. I didn't really realize, and this makes sense, of course, that specific types of birds make specific types of nests. Sure. You know, like when you will see a nest on the ground versus in the tree, versus like what shape it is. I just always thought kind of birds were deciding. They were freestyling.

Okay. And you will see that a little bit. What we're most familiar with is called a cup nest. It's like kind of what most people think of. The Robbins make. Not a bowl nest? A cup. Well, it's called a cup nest.

I get it. I guess it makes sense. But it's just if we're talking about kitchenware that the nest looks like, that's bowls. I don't think about them getting in a tall, frosty tumbler. They're in a little bowl of sticks. Well, they're usually pretty small, though. And what is a cup, if not a small bowl?

A tall bowl with tall sides. So it should be called a tall bowl? A bowl is a plate cup. If you took plate and you made it a little bit more cup-like, do you understand what I'm saying? Everything's on a spectrum. A bowl is a plate cup. A bowl is a plate cup.

I get that. Yeah. Anyway, I don't want to argue Samantha. I'm not a bird guy. I shouldn't get naming rights, but... Okay. I'm talking about the cup nest now. Cool.

I won't change the way I call it. Don't. Just for your pleasure. I'd be uncomfortable if you did. Cup nests. Begin with a platform of twigs and grasses, including occasionally man-made materials. They're held together with mud and then lined with finer materials such as spiderwebs,

fur, and hair. I love that. Did you ever do a thing where, like, you put out a bunch of, like, sticks and straw and string and stuff for birds to use for their nests? No. That's the thing. I remember doing that at like a camp or maybe at church or something where we would put out just like a big ball of sticks and string and shit. The group would come together to produce one ball.

Yeah, it was like a little DIY nest kit and we would, you know, put them outside. This is a very fuzzy memory, honey. It's at the edges of my, it got pushed out by Martha Mary May Marlene and I'm trying to fucking reel it back. in. And then you just leave it there. For birds to find and use. And would it continue to be there? Like, I don't know that I was so invested that I continued to check in on my garbage ball. It was just a 20 minute activity to get you to the next activity. And I think that honestly, maybe there was just, it was dirty and they wanted the kids to clean up and then turn it into a nest ball. Yeah. Well, and it's got an important message about recycling. Sure. More for the birds, though, not for us. Yeah, no, I think I don't envision a future where you put out a dumpster in front of your lawn that is just for birds.

Okay, these kind of cut bird nests are often between branches and are between 8 to 20 centimeters, taking 2 to 6 days to finish. Traditionally, in the Robin family, at least, males gather nesting materials while females construct the nest and the pair remains monogamous, at least through the breeding season. Okay. Uh, no. What? Was it the way I said okay? Yeah, are you skeptical? I mean, it's just like the breeding season's over and now you're going to fucking dip.

Oh, I thought you were like, okay, they're monogamous. Oh, no, yeah. That's, I guess it could, actually, I've never thought of it, but until now, because I've never had to. But like... It's not like birds have cell phones, you know? Yeah, are they track? I guess they're tracking the bird. I mean, I guess they can kind of track.

They're tracking the birds. But once, you know, once those babies are there, who's to say? Yeah, yeah. I don't know who's cutting out, though, in that scenario. Maybe it both. Maybe it's like an agreed upon, you know, just for fun. Just to blow off old steam. The kids are driving us wild.

Let's get out there and find some strange. Cool for the birds. Good for you, birds. Hey, good for the birds. None for me, thanks, but for the birds. Go for it, guys. Birds and the bees. You know, that's something.

You think they're getting together with the bees now. Kinky. nests at least in the cup family are they can be reused but but often they are rebuilt for each round of babies other kinds of nests so or ornithologists have defined 10 nest types this is from the Cornell lab Bird Academy website so in addition to the cup there is is the scrape, which is the simplest nest form. It's just like kind of a dip in the ground where the bird will lay the eggs. Boo!

Not a good parent if you're getting a scrape. I get the times are tight, but it takes two to six days. If you're in a very, if you're in a very remote area and there isn't concern about predators, I could see why you would just like, well, I'll just put them right here. In a dirt hole. Yeah, in a dirt hole. I'm just saying, if I'm a baby bird and I get born in a dirt hole, I'll be a like, come on, mom and dad.

No, that's a good point. You look over at your neighbors and you're like, you've got like a whole thing in a tree. Yeah. Also, my mom and dad are over at my neighbors and they're drinking. They're wearing blindfolds and they're drinking. What's going on? They're wearing blindfolds. They put all their bird keys in a little, at a smaller cup nest.

A little small cup nest that they mean. Why don't I have keys? That's weird. I guess they stole them from a human. Other kind of nest, platform nests. And so this is the kind of nests the red-tailed hawk would make. Okay. Which is you build up the nesting material into a mound with kind of a depression in the top for the eggs.

Cool. Some platform nests are built on the ground where others are, you know, up higher like a red-tail hawk. Yeah. Domed nests are essentially cup nests with a roof. Cool. And they tend to be used by species that nests. on the ground and need extra camouflage to protect the eggs from terrestrial predators. Okay.

So they just put a roof on it. Well, don't camouflage it too much because if they put it somewhere where I'm walking. I know. I don't want to goosh a nest because it's so well hidden. I will say that the website gives examples of birds for each of these nest categories. I only put the birds I'd heard of, which means a lot of these do not have examples. A lot of these ornithologists try to trick us. Normies.

say confidently like, oh, and then this kind of bird builds a dome nest and make people think that I knew what kind of bird that was. That's what I'm saying. They set these little traps out to catch us normies, us civvies, us non-Ornithologists. I know. I mean, good for them. Yeah, I guess. They find their fun where they can.

Uh-huh. And birds are pretty fascinating. I think so. Pencil nests tend to be a bit deeper than cup nests and are often constructed farther out towards the tips of branches and they're kind of hammock-like and they hang from thinner branches. So they're more protected from like a heavier predator. Yeah. But also wicked not protected because it seems like that's the most fallable of all the nests.

Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be great for inclement weather, I'm assuming. But if you're worried about like a squirrel or like a snake coming out there, it'll fall right off. Yeah. You know, pendulousness. Ooh. Go even further out on a limb and in kind of a sock shape. Yeah.

Which is time consuming to construct but has the benefit of further cocooning the eggs, protecting them from predators in extreme weather. And not like a hummingbird. I know hummingbirds do some weird shit. They get up to some weird nesting behaviors, right? I mean, if it were a hummingbird, I would have written it down because I know that one. You do know that one pretty good. I will say I read a lot about hummingbirds that make little tiny cup nests. Like three or four centimeter, like little little guys.

Cool. Globular nests enclose the eggs in a spherical shape with a side opening. I don't really know how this is different than a domed nest. Because if a cup with a roof is a dome. Yeah. Then a spherical nest, how would that be different? This feels like an SAT question. I know.

Some birds, okay, this is another one I've heard. So the screech owl will often rely on, cavity nest, which is like in a tree or another structure. So like a hole in a tree. I love that. It's like already there. I love that because it's displacing squirrels. I feel like. That's a squirrel house. A hole in a tree. Are you anti-square you just said you love it? No. Well, I love birds sort of, I love birds and squirrels equally. And I feel like squirrels are bullies kind of to birds because they're bigger, heavier guys, sharper teeth, any teeth. And so they are just like, we get the holes. But I like that there's screech owls who are one of nature's scariest birds. For sure.

Who can say, like, actually, that'll be my hole and the squirrels have to obey. Because they've been hypnotized by the owl's magic eyes. Ooh. Are you writing a graphic novel? No, I'm saying screech owls have magic eyes. I'm saying if you want to do a children's graphic novel about a screech owl that has magic eyes, I would read it. I'm saying owl. Owls have psychic powers.

and that's why the Tootsie Roll guy was able to get away with as much shit as he got away with. We're learning a lot. Let me see that lollipop. You're going to eat it. No, I'm not. Munch. Okay. I just got two more types of nests here.

Okay, great. The Atlantic Puffin uses what's called a burrow nest. Yes. Which is you excavate the ground a little bit or you take over a burrow left behind by another animal. That's so puffin. That's so puffin. These guys are so fucking lazy. They're so cute.

They're so cute. I want to pick them up. I got nervous because I read the Atlantic puffin, and I was like, wait, am I thinking of the right puffin? But I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last one, mounds. So this is relatively rare, and it's from ground-dwelling birds.

Again, I didn't write this down. A ostrich. Like a flamingo or something? Flamingos fly, I think. Well. Ostriches. It says primarily ground-dwelling. birds. I mean, they do, I guess they do like to, I guess they do stand a lot. It's one of their

favorite things on one leg to fucking show off. I can't stand flamingos. That's the one that I do. Wow. You have a lot of feelings about birds. Like almost all of them. I don't actually know how I feel about owls because how can you be sure they could just blast you and make you think you like them. There's no way to tell. I wanted to talk about the bald eagle really briefly, before we finish. Oh, sure. Bald eagle nests can weigh over a ton. I'm sorry.

No. They will use nests year over year and continue to kind of add to them. Okay. So they will get heavier and heavier. The largest eagle nest was 20 feet deep and estimated to weigh two tons. Why are you doing that, bald eagles? What do you need all that space for? You're one of nature's proudest animals and you can take to the skies and no one's going to

The sky is your nest. Why do you need a fucking McMansion built onto the cliffside? I'm pissed off now. I don't like that. That's too big. That's dangerous. That could fall on me or my kids or another animal. I mean, good for them, though, you know?

Industrious, sure, I like that. It's just like, you don't need all that space. You were just complaining about like if I were a bird and I were born in a hole in the ground, I would think, well, what a bummer. Can you agree that this is. is a little extreme. Eagles can create nests reaching up to nine feet wide. How wide is an eagle? Nobody knows.

No one's quite sure you can't get one of them. That's why that's such a good thought exercise when you're trying to relax. How wide is an eagle? Can you imagine being like a pigeon or something who gets, I guess, wicked lost and you find an empty bald eagleness? That's got to be. the craziest windfall. Such a huge boom. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I mean, I could research bird nest. This could be like a four-part topic for me. Expoise. Because it's just fascinating. Like, nobody teaches them how to do this, but they all kind of do it the same way. Yeah. And it's incredibly intricate.

And it's fascinating to me that there's that much kind of planning up ahead. I mean, there's a reason people use the word nesting when you like, get your house already before you have a baby. But this idea of just like, I'm going to need a safe place to put these things. Yeah. And I'm going to take a tremendous amount of time and thought and effort and do it so that they'll be safe. Yeah. It's very sweet and fascinating to me.

Yeah, they don't get a fair shape. Everyone thinks of beavers as like our nature's most prodigious, you know, construction workers. But birds, I mean, every bird's out there doing it. Birds are family creatures, I guess. Yeah. And beavers are builders, they're constructors, they're trying to build a society. Yeah. Disruptors. Do you want our friends at home with her talking about?

They love the Matrix. They sure do. Madeline or Madeline says, My Small Wonder is my toddler's dinosaur rain boots. No matter the weather, she wants to wear her pink and green dino boots is the best thing ever. Oh my God. I love kid rain boots. I love kid rain boots so much. I'm going to miss these blue and red ones that probably neither of our boys can fit in that. But Henry wore them and Gus wore them. And now I guess now they go in the landfill.

For sale, baby shoes worn a lot by two different healthy kids. When we lived in Austin, I had a really hard time convincing myself that it was a reasonable purchase to get rain boots for our kids because it did not rain very often. Yeah. But now that we live here, I happily bought rain boots. And it has been rewarding. You still don't eat them that often, but when you do, wow. Wow, it feels good to have rain boots for the kids. It's Amy says, my small wonder is salt and pepper.

So simple, so perfect. This is that savory dirt that you can put on food to make it taste better. And I agree. Pepper doesn't actually taste like anything. It just makes the food look like you've seasoned it, which is cool. But salt. Oh, I love it. Sometimes talking to you is like playing like a game of taboo.

Awesome. When you're like, you know, the savory dirt that you put on. food. I just want the folks at home to know. Like you couldn't say seasoning. No. And you couldn't say like, I don't know, granulated or... Well, it's tough. You're finding out now that right now, which is that you can't say it's the salty, um, no, shoot, you know what I mean? Like, I want people at home to understand what we're talking about. And we can't just say the word. Otherwise, I'll just be like, it's the salty dirt. Salty little rocks you put on pretzels. Yeah. It's the white stuff on pretzels that makes your tongue go crazy.

Thank you so much for listening to our show. Thanks to Bowen and August. I'm in a silly mood today. You are in a silly mood. Probably because you've just been working a lot today. I have been. Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for real for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximumfund.org, the website and organization, for having us on the network. There's so many great shows there for you to go listen to. Give it a shot. I want to tell you about some merch we got up in the merch store. We got a bunch of Taz Amnesty stuff this month.

Ooh, okay. A bunch of stuff. And that's all over at macroynurch.com. And we got our Besties live show, our first one ever in New York City, October 9th. Bit.ly slash Besties on Broadway as where you can go and come and enjoy this. There have been a lot of planning meetings for this. You guys are really putting your backs into it. We are.

We're trying to make it a good show because it may not happen again. But we may do it again. It depends on how this one goes. We've never done it before. We stream every day, basically, over on our YouTube channel at the Macroy family. I wanted to give a shout out to, on Fridays, I do a video called Every Game Ever, where I'm putting together a spreadsheet of every video game I've ever played. And now we have a shareable form of the blank spreadsheet with all the games in it.

And you can download it and you can make your own Every Game Ever spreadsheet. Where are you at right now? What are you going to be doing to go ahead? So this Friday, I'm going to start the PS2, which I'm excited about. I love the PS2. There's so many good games on it, but there's also like 4,000 games on it. So far I've only done systems. I think 1,000.

I did the original Xbox, had about 1,000 games on it. That's about as ambitious I've gotten. This one's way bigger. Some of them is like the PC has like 200,000 games. So like I don't know what I'm going to do there. But that's a later problem. Yeah. But yeah, I've only done like seven or so systems at this point.

So it's not too late. hop on make yourself it's been fun to go back and think about old games where are we PS2 where is that in your life space PS2 is like uh like late middle school early high school I want to say prime video game oh dude it's prime time dude so many jammers on there I can't wait gonna talk about fucking guitaroo man gonna talk about fucking persona gonna talk about so much shit I'm so stoked um that's every Friday at 11 a.m But, you know, go follow the Macroy family on YouTube or Macroy Entertainment System on Instagram because that's where we post whenever we're streaming. That's it for this show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us.

We'll be back with a new one next time. So until then, we're going to go watch Mary Marthy, Marthy. And find out which pill she takes. Find out which one she takes. I bet the blue one. I hear the blue one taste better. I bet. Blue traditionally, I mean, if you're thinking about Gatorade, sure. Blue all the way.

And I am. Always. Maximum Fun. A work-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.