Wonderful! - Wonderful! 70: Throwing a Tooth Into the Sun

Episode Date: February 6, 2019

Rachel's favorite tooth-buying supernatural entity! Griffin's favorite random toy delivery mechanism! Rachel's favorite dead plant smell! Griffin's favorite inexplicable holiday! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, it's Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Just wanted to start the show off With a little ceremony Just a little remembrance That's a little loud Sarah You're coming a little hot

We lost a good friend The wonderful.fyi website Maybe it's just gone Maybe it's sick And the website hospital I don't know if that's a thing that exists But we just want to start the show out With like a little prayer so we can maybe talk about maybe it'll be up by the time this episode maybe i'll be up and this isn't gonna make any sense but right now i mean i've been

checking i've been keeping vigil all fucking day and so i'm scared that we're gonna do a repeat a do-over we have no way of knowing without this precious website this is a stranger that we had nothing to do with that has guided our entire show yeah ever since its creation i don't know who the fuck goes first this week it's uh it's a tough it's a tough tough putt and so if you're out there wonderful.fyi website the creator of it specifically because websites aren't sentient oh that's my favorite part my favorite part is when she sings In the Arms of an Angel. If you're out there and you need any sort of assistance,

I would die for this website. Thank you. It's a good song, huh? It's a very good song. A lot of people like to make jokes about it, like me 15 seconds ago, but it's a nice song, and it's actually my first thing of the week my small wonder is the

wonderful.fyi website come back please and then also that one song by sarah mclaughlin that i always think is called arms of an angel but it's just called angel oh really i didn't know that yeah do you think that people when they work out and they get big strong biceps they like refer to themselves as having arms of an angel because of how beautiful their arms are i've never had a bicep so i wouldn't i don't know how these people talk about it on this show we talk about things we like do you got any small wonders you go first my first small wonder this week actually is um a real one i mean the other two things i talked about are good but um queso have we talked about queso before i'm almost certain we have i'm almost certain we have to i made it myself here for um the big game the big bad boring awful awful

awful game it's really a terrible game this is maybe only the third time on this show that we've said something is bad and so i think that that should tell you something about the quality of the game but the quality of the queso is undeniable. And also I made like four gallons of it. And that was a bad mistake. Oh, I have a wonderful thing. Okay. What is it? Just meal delivery apps.

Okay. Griffin's getting ready to leave town to go on tour. True. And normally I would be scrambling to try and put groceries together. But it occurred to me. Meal delivery apps. Yeah. Yeah.

There's so many of them. Bless it. You got a fave? You a door dasher? I don't want to buzz market. No, let's buzz it. I mean, we get lots of favor. Let's not say the name of it, but people do favors for us

when they dash to our door. And Yum Express is my new one that I'm launching with Jeff Bezos. We're working on it together. He's working on a competing one to Amazon restaurants with me and it's called Yum Express. What does yum stand for? I'm glad you asked.

Yummy. Uh, meals. So yummy is in the acronym itself. Okay. i think you go first this week are you but we have no fucking way of knowing for sure because the world is a cruel and random place we'll take a look at the episode description no who's got the time my first thing yes tooth fairy hey okay you know i've heard of them uh been a long time since I've got a visit from this old partner, though. I am curious what your Tooth Fairy experience was like growing up. I mean, the question is the exchange rate, right?

The question is the exchange rate. No, not necessarily. There are a lot of different ways that a fairy delivers teeth. Delivers teeth? Sorry teeth sorry what hold on what was your tooth fairy experience i misspoke a lot of ways that a fairy picks up teeth right yes and i was curious what yours were can i remember can i say something yeah i remember getting a dollar per tooth that was the that rate. Yeah, me too. Which I never thought was especially bougie,

but apparently a lot of my friends had quarters, and that's fine, but I mean, you spend the quarter on a gumball, now all of a sudden you got 75 cents because of the pulls. Or it might be easier to get under a pillow. That might be what it is. It's just non-discrete, not selfie parents. There was a point in my life where the toothoth Fairy didn't go under my pillow any longer, but went on my nightstand.

That's insulting, isn't it? Tooth Fairy's like, yeah, I had a great time. Not getting under there. No, I was saying, I was doing it like you and the Tooth Fairy had a- Oh, Griffin, no. Well, yeah, we'd listen. Tooth Fairy fucks probably okay i don't know if that's true or not but yeah you know what's messed up i'm a 31 year old full

grown man and i don't actually know how my parents got the dollar under my pillow because did they come in literally while i was asleep and put their hand under the weight of my head, which is a fucking. You made a face way too fast at that. You made a face way too fast at that. You made a face. It was. Y'all couldn't see it because you're not in the studio. But like like four nanoseconds before I made it clear that that was going to be a funny joke.

Rachel made a face like, oh, no. Well, I was just picturing it was a two-person job. So like one of them had to hold the pillow. You had to winch to get in there. And the other one stood in. I don't know what that magic was. I'll have to ask, you know, daddy. But yeah, I would lose a tooth

and then I would get a dollar. And then I had more than one day when I was a kid where i lost more than one tooth in a day but i still think i only got a dollar for those teeth i had one day when we were on a winter retreat with my church's youth group where i lost i lost three fucking baby teeth in a day jesus griffin what happened and my like my parents like by the time i got the third one out like it wasn't even i didn't even i don't even think i told them about it i think there was just like a third tooth that i was just like holding and they're like what the why is there you there's a third one oh that's grotesque it's weird to think about but i i

before i got braces i got teeth pulled to like make room because my yeah me too oh my god my gob was so fucked my teeth wouldn't fall out on their own like the permanent teeth would start coming in oh yeah it's so gnarly i know it's it's upsetting to talk about i'm sure but i got five teeth pulled to get ready for the operation i think i got like four which makes me think that i just lost my teeth in like four lump sums i was like like i was a snake or a tarantula molting it's like um but yeah so a dollar a dollar per tooth and i do not know how the fuck they got it in there but we didn't have an allowance so it was pretty fucking sick when i lost a tooth oh so you just did chores for the sake of chores we did chores to live in the house we got to we got free room and board um and uh did chores for it or also our parents were very disappointed in us so there is a lot of stuff around the world about losing

baby teeth okay there's a lot of like ritual associated with the loss of teeth nobody's just like oh a tooth in the way that like people are about like fingernails yeah so uh there is actually somebody a researcher named br townsend that distilled the rituals down to nine forms one the tooth was thrown into the sun hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on we're talking about like throughout time and across the globe yes okay so the tooth was thrown into the sun? Thrown into the sun, number one. By who? By who? By the tooth fairy?

I don't, this is a distillation of all the rituals. This is not detail. I get that, but you can't just say something like the tooth was thrown into the sun? The tooth fairy is a relatively new creation. The tooth fairy came around in the 1920s. Okay, but here's the two situations I'm trying to decide and i'm not going to do this for all nine of these i promise okay the tooth was thrown into the sun does that mean i imagine the kid wakes up and the parent is like a guy came and threw your tooth into the sun i imagine

the child was taught to go outside and throw it into the sun that's the second scenario and that one's way wilder because how strong is this kid? In the direction of the sun. I don't think they expected it. I don't care like when this was or where this was. They probably had neighbors. That's rude, folks. Well, it wasn't necessary

to make it to the sun because number two on the list of rituals is thrown into the fire. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Yeah. Good. That's good eating, cook tooth.

Number three, thrown between the legs. So Yeah. Good, that's good eating, cook tooth. Number three, throw them between the legs. So, you know, like a football, you bend down, you hike that tooth. It's not like a football. Don't try and rationalize this. Somebody, do the, are you doing, are there booths, private booths for you to do this in? I don't want to see you hook a fucking tooth between your legs. you to do this in? I don't want to see you huck a fucking tooth between your legs. Well, have you ever

like spit out your gum while you're walking around or like a pumpkin seed? I wouldn't spit my gum out while I'm walking. What the? Spit my gum out while I'm walking? Am I a deranged murderer? Like a sunflower seed shell or a peanut shell? I still feel

good. I would only do that at a baseball game or a Texas Roadhouse. You want our number four do you think you're allowed to throw whatever the fuck you want if you bring sunflower seeds into the texas roadhouse can you put that on the floor i feel like this was an actual question i'm a bim bam maybe if i bring a whole watermelon in there and just like start cutting it up can i just drop the rind on the ground and then like dirty diapers so this is amazing fingernails sure sure sure do you want to know all of them or no so badly are you kidding me number four thrown onto or over the roof of a house often with an invocation to some animal or individual okay

that one can i say something is a double standard that one i'm super into yeah because i mean if you can get it over the roof like you get 10 points to you but also you shout like this one's for you mr owl i love it that's fucking great number five placed in a mouse hole near the stove or hearth or offered to some other animal yeah i mean whatever goes in that mouse hole you're never gonna see again well and i just kind of like the idea like oh what would that be for a mouse that would be like a little button on its jacket? Yeah, or like a little poof that guests can sit on whenever they have friends over for a big party. Oh, that's nice, like a little TV tray. Oh, alternatively, the mouse could be like, hey, guys.

No, I don't want this. I don't want your big tooth. I'm little. This is big. Well,'t want your big tooth. I'm little. This is big. Well, it's a baby. It's a baby tooth. It's still there. Mice, Rachel.

Number six, buried, which like makes the most sense to me. I guess in that sort of waste disposal sense. Maybe a little tooth tree grows out. Oh, that's great, baby. Actually, you know what? That's scary as fuck. A tree made out of teeth coming out of the ground? Yeah, that's great, baby. Actually, you know what? That's scary as fuck. A tree made out of teeth coming out of the ground? Yeah, that's pretty scary.

Who knows what that thing's gonna be? Or like a sentient tree that has eyes, nose, and a mouth. I'm into this now. Okay. Oh, wait, no, I'm not. I lost attention for a second. I'm not into that. That sucks.

That's scary and bad. Number six. Oh, number six is buried. I already said number six. Number seven, hidden where animals could not get it. So we're either giving it directly to animals while invocating their name or making sure they can never get their fucking grubby, filthy paws on it. Placed in a tree or on a wall.

That one's quaint. Or number nine, swallowed by the mother, child, or animal. Stop it. Stop it. The mother, child, or animal? animal yes those are the three options three options okay um yeah that sucks ranking them throwing it on the roof while yelling an animal name is obviously the best one and i'm gonna make my presidential platform is gonna be regular making that normal again uh last place is probably definitely swallowing can you imagine cleaning out your gutters at the end of the year at the end of the year how many

fucking people live in your house that are losing all these teeth i mean people had a lot more kids back then to like till the fields and so their gutters would just be full of teeth okay i noticed that one of those wasn't stolen by a parent and replaced with cold hard cash no so in the 1920s the first print appearance of the tooth fairy was in a eight-page playlet for children uh which is like a three-act like a little short play for kids okay was this published in something it's just i don't know this must have been a pretty fucking dope tooth fairy play for it to like you spread across the you know how it is like where like a mythos starts and then they go back to try and find the first evidence and print of it

that's what this is this isn't like i may be talking about that in about eight minutes for a different thing okay uh so 19 late 1920s is around the time where disney started to like really popularizing the whole the whole fairy interesting with like pinocchio and cinderella and this like whole fairy idea was like taken off in in the u.s was sleeping beauty the one with the three fairies who had like the different colored clothes i've never seen sleeping beauty before yes i'm only familiar with their work through the lens of kingdom hearts which god it sucks i don't talk about right about video games anymore because folks i got some thoughts

not the time not appropriate not the time or place every week you've been talking about that kingdom hearts i've noticed yeah but this is not the time not the place okay so there there is a number of people that have studied this whole phenomenon. I would hope so. Where they talk about kind of the rites of passage and the role the tooth fairy plays among your rites of passage growing up. Okay. So according to somebody named Arnold von Ginnip, there are three stages in a rite of passage that mirror closely the whole experience of tooth loss and tooth fairy so first there is separation which is the tooth falls out and then the child leaves the

tooth under the pillow right transition which is the gap in the teeth and the uh the child going to sleep that night what are we talking what are we talking what are we talking about rights of passage the three stages associated with every rite of passage. So this is a symbolic thing. Yes. Okay. He's talking about how the experience of losing a tooth, leaving it out for the tooth fairy, and then receiving compensation mirrors the experience. And then the final is incorporation, which is where the new tooth grows in and the child wakes to the gift of money.

See, I don't even think the money you need, because the gift you get is a bigger stronger tooth that you're gonna have soon you know why can't that be reward enough it's not all about the money folks do you want to know so in 2014 uh researchers at visa did a study to find out what the average amount was. Is it going to make me upset? Probably not. Okay. $3.70. Yeah, you're right. That's fine.

You know what that is? That is a median sort of leaning upwards, trending way upwards, actually, between the parents who leave $1 and the parents who leave $5. Exactly. way upwards actually between the parents who leave one dollar and the parents who leave five dollars exactly the five dollar parents uh by which i mean bill and melinda gates i don't want to be five dollar parents that's wild yeah no i don't think we need to be how many baby teeth do you get how many baby teeth do you have like 26 or something yeah something like that i want to give henry first time he loses a tooth a debit card with 26 on it and just say like and now it's your responsibility

we should at least put in a savings account so you can earn some pennies there on that money yeah or maybe just you know a target gift card because he is a child and children fucking love isaac mizrahi and all of his great designs. Can I tell you about my first thing? Yes. My first thing is Gashapon or capsule toy machines. I mean, I enjoyed them when we were in Japan, I guess. Did you not use like capsule toy machines when you were like a little kid?

This was not a thing. Capsule toy machines in like every single grocery store in the history of mankind you wouldn't see those things when i hear capsule toy i think more specifically of the japanese phenomenon i don't well what i think of is like the little machines at grocery stores they're like little gumball machines well they had gumball machines i guess they had little homies little homies was a thing and then there was sticky hands and you know balls super balls and you're right and like the fake jewelry and you gotta open your mind up you gotta open your mind up it's not all just about and and in in japan it's obviously like its own thing and i'm gonna talk about that because I think that that is also pretty buck wild and cool.

But when I was a little kid, man, and like going to it, it's they're almost always positioned at places that I don't want to be at as a five year old through, you know, 11 year old. And so seeing like, well, there's some toys in there. I mean, we're going to walk around the Kroger for an hour picking out our stuff. But why don't I go and crack over there, get myself a little toy and then we'll get right back to it. What do you say? Now, that's something that hasn't really gone up in price. Not entirely true.

I remember sort of the addition of, I remember the first time I saw a 50 cent capsule toy machine and I was like, that's half a tooth. There's definitely like one dollar ones and in japan like gosh upon machines can run from like the the average is probably like 100 to 500 yen which is roughly one to five dollars so that's like a one tooth or one rich person's tooth um and but they obviously like it has its sort of different thing there. It has more of a collector vibe. The toys are like kind of nicer. Uh, I, when I was researching this, apparently there's like a, uh, a brand of like Gundam toys, like the big mech anime, uh, that have like light up led components to them, big

fancy toys. Um, so I, I think the whole thing is, is super neat super neat uh and i was trying to learn a little bit about it uh weirdly enough like there's not a great source on like who was exactly the first one to do this because uh vending machines especially like bulk vending machines which is what sort of uh gumball machines and stuff like that sort of used to be categorized as were, I mean, a thing long before they were specifically this thing before they were, you know, toys sold in capsules. Apparently, there used to be machines that would just have sort of toys and candy just

kind of all mixed up floating around in there. Oh, that's weird. It's weird. And I'm kind of into it because i like i do like both those things but it would be hard because candy eventually goes bad it would be hard to kind of keep your hands on a bunch of loose candy my library of course had uh not capsule toy machines but like candy vending machines by the by the front um and your your public library yeah yeah yeah and one of them was runts we've been talkinguntz is getting a lot of fucking free air on this show.

But I remember that the level of the Runtz never changed because nobody ever bought these Runtz. And I always wondered, like, these Runtz are probably no bueno. So anyway, this is what I found out. In 1936, there was this dude named Samuel Eppie, which is fun. 1936, there was this dude named Samuel Eppie, which is fun. And he helped sort of push the invention of bulk vending machines forward. He was working on a project for a company whose name was literally Gum Inc. Gum Incorporated.

Oh, that's fun. They made school supply products. No, they made gum for you to chew on and samuel lepe was trying to sort of invent clever new ways of getting that food that that that food gum is food in kids hands uh and so he made these little plastic charms that could be encased with each sort of piece of gum that could be sold in these bulk vending wait a minute so people would have to chew the gum to get to the toy? I mean, this is the same as like opening the pack of baseball cards just to get to the gum. Yeah, but you put the toy in your...

It's not in the gum. Oh, okay. It all was sort of in one sort of capsule. And so this idea was a big failure, but he kept sort of trying it and then sort of that is kind of attributed as like the first capsule toy thing um but really the idea of like gosh upon uh which is the sort of the japanese word for it which i

never uh i obviously like my japanese vocabulary is limited to stuff they say on terrace house and stuff i've needed to know how to say in japan to like get seats at restaurants and stuff uh gasha pawn is actually onomatopoetic where gasha is the sound of the like mechanism turning in the machine and pawn is the sound of the capsule hitting the that's delightful i think that's great i think that that that sort of uh is worth the price of admission i feel like for this segment on wonderful like that fact alone was really great for me um so there's this guy in japan in 1965 uh whose name was ryuzo shigeta who um was an exporter and he exported sort of like cheap goods to the u.s and one of his clients there sent him a bulk vending machine uh and he kind of thought that the idea of like candy and toys being sold in these things was kind of gross.

So he started to explore like, well, what if we just sold toys in it for like 10 yen a pop and started selling that outside of his store. And that is sort of attributed as being like where it took off in, in Japan for the first time. And then he kept like pushing things forward more and more in 1977, a company called Bandai,

which holds a lot of like huge licenses today uh they started sort of selling their own Gashapon which they actually trademarked the word Gashapon uh and they they priced them at more sort of premium prices so instead of 10 yen it's you know getting around that 100 yen price point and now it's stuff like for big manga and anime and game series like like Gundam and Ultraman and other big stuff like that and so like that's sort of why it's a different thing there than it is here where there you you know buy these figurines for these different licenses these different franchises that you really like while here it's like well there's a sticky hand that I want to be able to

play with for eight minutes before it gets too much stuff on it uh and there have been like weird booms in the gashapon market in japan there was a thing and i actually remember these even they must have come stateside in some degree uh in 1983 they were introduced to gashapon machines in japan they are called keniku man keshi gomu and they are like uh they made a bunch of different types of them like hundreds of different types of them like hundreds of different types of them and they were just little rubber dudes uh often sort of like big burly strong men who were just made out of rubber and you could use them as erasers and they were all different colors and there were so many different kinds and people just went fucking ballistic about them they sold 180 million units of of these little eraser men

uh which i think is very very good and i don't know how i know about these because i wasn't even born yet and obviously yeah that's interesting i like it's a great idea yeah um and so then in the mid 90s uh they sort of the price point sort of escalated again and that's how you get to that like 100 to 500 yen price point uh and now like you know neon genesis evangelion and like all of these different like huge franchises are selling sets of toys that now you have to you know press your luck to try and complete the whole set people are selling the different pieces like wholesale like rarer finds and there starts to be a secondhand market and And then recently in 2014, I didn't even know about this. Uh, and I have played the game before there's this thing called Yo-Kai watch, which is a sort of new Pokemon kind of, except it's like ghosts sort of, uh, and that has like led to a very recent boom in the, in the market. Um, for me, I just like,

I don't know. I was obsessed with putting a quarter in a machine and getting a random toy out of it. Because boy, I could really make those things last a long time. I remember there were these little plastic ninjas that are probably like three quarters of an inch high and they were different colors and different poses and they would have different weapons and they were super, super cheap. But I was like obsessed with them i had dozens and maybe maybe hundreds of them and i would make my own little plastic ninja army uh they had them in the machine at my blockbuster like down the street and i remember just going in there and just like nice dropping like 50 cents in and getting two new ninjas from my army every location you went to have these vending machines i'm just now thinking about it

maybe it was a distinctly huntington thing but pretty much everywhere i went would have these vending machines i'm just now thinking about it maybe it was a distinctly huntington thing but pretty much everywhere i went would have these things i'm surprised my church didn't have them um so these days i never thought about this through this lens but these days like the gosh upon market has been largely supplanted by blind bags which is this functionally the same fucking thing yeah if you if you don't have a a child in your life in some way like everyone's just buying these bags that are gonna have a random toy in it and that's like the whole thing that's like all they that's all that kids like at all like the the lol dolls and the there's so many different ones also like if you get like a cereal or a happy meal you get the same kind of

kind of that was always my experience that you could kind of juice it god that's it's own fucking segment god there were so many good happy meal toys the whole power rangers one where you could get different discs to put inside the thing that you hold out when you god Rachel

also these days like gosh upon sort of mechanics are huge and like like, mobile games. Like, the only successful mobile games that come out are ones where, like, I'm actually really into one called Fire Emblem Heroes where you, like, use orbs to get new units for your, like, fighting squad. And that can be a pretty money-sucking way. It's gambling. I mean, all we're talking about here for this whole segment is just way. It's gambling. I mean, all we're talking about here for this whole segment is just like kid gambling,

which is what I'm very into that. Hey, can I steal you away? Do you want to hear some personal messages? Yes. This one is for Kendall. It is from Dan. Nice. Beep.

Turns out I lied to you when I said I didn't get the Jumbotron. Whoops. Sorry for being a liar. I hope you're having fun with the Latin classes you're teaching this year. I can't wait to see you tonight and hear about all the weird things your students said today and tell you about what mine said. I love you. Love, Beeb.

I'm about student-teacher confidentiality. I told my teachers. What about the fact that both of them are named Beeb? That's great. And I like that. But this makes me scared because I told my teachers everything. They were my best friends. Oh, were they?

They were my best friends. Tell me two of your teachers' names. Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Fortner. That was grade two and grade four. What were their first names? Mrs. Okay. I don't know.

I don't know. Does anybody know? Well, your mom was a teacher. Your parents were teachers. That's fucking cheating. I know my dad's co-workers' full names. I can go first and last name on pretty much every teacher I've ever had. Okay.

Well, okay. It's not a contest. This next message is for Kate. It is from Craig. Kate, it's been a wonderful 11 years, whenever this comes out, with our trips to Italy and France, a long D&D campaign, bus rides to family, and now exploring 14th century reenactment and week-long camping trips without modern gear. I'm so glad to have you by my side. Here's to more adventure, more art, and more hats for Shrew. Love you, Craig.

This is a great message i think that when they said 11 years whenever this comes out they've actually only known each other for two years they just sort of are banking on us goofing up and also camping without modern gear why deny yourself all that tech get out there get you a hatchet with a laser pointer on it get you a tent made out of flint. Oh, or like one of those hammers that we watch in the art restoration that has the magnet on one side and the little nail sticks to it. I'll find a use for that for camping. Yeah. You know, bludgeon a bear to eat it.

Or tack up a list of meals you're having. Or bludgeon a wolf that attacks my family. Both of those. One of those has definitely happened to me. I like the laid back vibe of this episode. Hi, I'm Biz. And I'm Teresa. And we host One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting.

Whether you are a parent or just know kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent. I'm just going to end with this. Everybody, you're doing a remarkable job of swimming through the shit show that is parenting. So join us each week as we judge less, laugh more, and remind you that you are doing a great job. Find us on MaximumFun.org, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's your second thing? My second thing, and this has probably come up

from a listener submission, but I wanted to explore it a little deeper, and that is the smell of cut grass. Okay. Big fan. You're big into smells i've noticed i really love the smell of cut grass hey you are the one that loves no maybe that was me book smell that was you my love book smell and also suntan lotion smell yeah i think these have all been you i'm big on smells i guess you are i wonder if my olfactory senses are i mean i'm a super taster but maybe i make up for that by not having good smell i don't think you can be both that's true it's all connected up there anyway good tell me about this uh so the smell of cut grass is a mix of oxygenated hydrocarbons that include methanol ethanol acetyl acetyl the hide fuck yeah acetone uh all those together are called green leaf volatiles

okay so these are things that these are chemicals that live in leaves yes just waiting for you leaves grass just waiting well it's probably in leaves too probably in leaves too and it's just waiting for you to butcher them so they can create these good smells so the smell isn't just an accidental byproduct of the the cut grass uh there is evidence that the smell that is emitted uh is is a like a distress come on why do you keep doing this when you're like when the leaves change colors that's great and i'm like yeah that's great you're, that's a tree crying because of its death. And now you're like, oh, you like that good grass smell? Yeah, that's a grass begging for its life.

Well, if you think about it. I don't. They actually, there was this study done in Northwestern where they looked at the difference in the smell of grass due to mechanical damage versus wounding from herbivores so so like the mechanical process of cutting grass actually emits significantly more and different smell than like well yeah the little bunnies just oh that's good i mean i'm a blade of grass, right? And then a small cute bunny comes along and bites my entire body off. I'm thinking, not great, but this is how it's supposed to be. A big sort of mech monster comes and kills me and everybody in a 100-yard radius.

That'll mess you up as a blade of grass here's what i'll say though okay so i saw that too i saw the like the concerns of of the protest the protests that i'm going to lead against the big lawnmower companies tomorrow but it also serves a purpose of alerting other organisms you're gonna say other grass get out of here guys he's got a lawnmower kind of like like who knows but okay okay sorry i've got to slow down a little bit i'm excited so there's there's the idea that other insects and like animals can get this scent and then know that like there's something significant happening. So it like helps them. Interesting.

And then I think it's possible the plants are also letting other plants know. To what end? I ask. I don't know. It's like they can get away. That's exactly right if i see a fucking like tulip like using its leaves to like trying to drag itself down the street i'm gonna know it's something my neighbor's cutting their lawn this is wild to me the smell of cut grass is

grass telling other plants to get the fuck out of there so other plants smell the smell of cut grass and think this is horrible. This is the worst thing that's ever happened. Why do humans do this to us? When humans smell it, they're like, fuck yeah, we're doing this to plants. There's another thing. All right.

I mean, I do love the smell. So I have to lean into the fact that I am supporting this carnage. But with wild tobacco plants, for example, they only emit that kind of g what's called the green leaf volatiles the glv when they are being grazed by caterpillars and this acts as a signal to attract nearby bugs that prey on caterpillars so it's like saying hey i'm under attacked here's a smell that will attract your predator so you'll stop eating me and this is tobacco that

does this yes is to what has tobacco ever done anything good for anyone uh it's kind of incredible where's that where's that truth commercial where's that truth campaign tobacco sets honeypot traps for sweet caterpillars like in the eric carl book can you believe these fucking guys don't smoke 15 year olds i i found this very fascinating so i i looked it up because i just like i love i love that smell yes for a while gap put out a perfume called grass and i was all over it yeah super great smell and so i just kind of innocently said smell of cut grass and then i just found this like battle that exists and the like the the smell that goes out and the impact it has on the creatures around it sure it's fascinating i mean you've seen fern gully

yeah i haven't okay Okay. Okay. Wasn't it the thing about book smell that it was the smell of the pages sort of rotting away? Apparently, I just like the smell of rot. The scent of decay. Where's that fucking candle, Erica? Let's get that one going. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes.

My second thing is Groundhog Day. Now, I know you're wondering, going um can i tell you about my second thing yes my second thing is groundhog day now i know you're wondering am i about to listen to griffin talk about this fucking movie again for like the 80th time on some podcast i want to talk about the event itself there's a lot of great stuff about groundhog day that i wasn't aware of until i started looking into it which i don't need to say that that's all we do here on this show it's redundant groundhog day has um has a history where they like look back to find the first instance of it yes so um first of all it's just groundhog day i've been fucking that up i do i inter intermittently call it groundhog's day which is i've seriously been

doing that my entire life and when i think about it it like, let's all celebrate Groundhog's. But that is kind of what we do. So it's mostly just a North American thing. Mostly just sort of, and really it's mostly Pennsylvania and like 10 other places. And Al Roker. And Al Roker. Its origins, like as we know it, like as the event is mostly sort of pennsylvania dutch superstition um but that even came from like uh european lore namely there is a uh like a german uh weather lore uh that actually uses a badger but it's basically the same thing and weather lore like stretches

back throughout like you know pre-recorded history uh when weather started to win weather probably or when the first person was like have you all ever noticed 1927 yeah weather started i think it was a bit before that 1926 that was it uh and so like it's hard to tell where the actual true root of animal-based weather lore was, but that's sort of the closest etymology we got. Pennsylvania Dutch to European folklore. So the first Groundhog Day, as we know it, was in 1886 in Punxsutawney, which is in Pennsylvania. That is just Groundhog Day HQ. That's where they do it. And you may be wondering, why do they do it there?

Yes, I am. It was reported in the Punxsutawney newspaper in 1886, this first year that it was sort of like reported. And they reported that, quote, up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow, which I think is a very good way of referring to a groundhog. It'd be a beast to a mouse, huh? Yeah, I mean, or an ant or a blade of grass that sent screamed as it was eaten by, I don't know what groundhogs eat.

So that report was from one Clymer H. Freeze, who was the city editor for the Punxsutawney newspaper. And Mr. Clymer just kind of decided that Groundhog Day is going to be Punxsutawney's thing. Interesting. I can't. I can't. interesting i can't i can't there's so much conflicting like uh there's so many conflicting stories about like the true like first groundhog day and how it sort of spun off to become its own thing uh there was a local elk's lodge like the very first sort of connection to groundhogs and punxsutawney is there was an elk lodge the elk's lodge that that hunted groundhogs for meat and they would just eat that i guess so they had like a groundhog hunting club and i guess mr climber was just like that's pretty

cool what if we just celebrated this Pennsylvania Dutch tradition and not only celebrated it, but made it the only thing that anybody in the entire world knows about our city? And I love this sort of enterprising idea of like, we got to have a thing, guys. I know. Well, it's like New York has Times Square where the ball drops every year at midnight.

Yes. And Puxatawney has groundhog day yes it's one to one it's one it's basically one to one it works partially because the dude like works for the newspaper but also because like the lore of punk satani and and their groundhog day sort of capabilities sort of gets more fleshed out and embellished and it spreads across the country and then it just sort of organically earns the title of this is where groundhog day happens is in this city i really like that idea that one person can take a look at their town and say we've got nothing going on yeah what if we are the city all about honeycomb cereal and everybody's it's a very no i don't even think they make it anymore but when people think about honeycomb cereal and everybody's it's a very hard no i don't even think

they make it anymore but when people think about honeycomb cereal they're gonna think about us austin texas or you know hot dogs in west virginia hot dogs in west virginia we got that game pretty much on lock i know you're thinking like what about new york hot dogs what about we got so many hot dogs in west virginia So many hot dogs. Hot dog festival, right? We got a hot dog festival. We have lots of festivals. So we do kind of, I feel like people try to do this in cities all the fucking time. I feel like West Virginia has changed its state motto to open for business.

Very, very short-lived, if memory serves, motto was open for business. And that was literally just like the government saying this will get the business here we'll just extend an open invitation this one newspaper editor was like this is groundhog day central baby and everybody's like what are you sure we kill and eat them sometimes when i was a kid i was real into groundhog day like i i thought really like the fate of the year hung on that groundhog. Yeah. That's too bad. Cause Phil's hit rate is like 37%. Really?

By the way, Phil, he wasn't even, they didn't even think to name. This is their whole shit. They didn't even think to name the fucking groundhog until 1961. They've been doing it nearly a century before they decided to get assigned the, the animal,

a title. Uh, so they just keep doing it and uh the the groundhog keeps doing a very bad job uh but then other cities just like kind of also start they want to get in on the action yeah and a lot of it's just sort of like oh they look like they're having fun we're gonna have fun too uh there's the slumbering groundhog lodge uh which i don't know i didn't write down where that, but that's a fun name for a place. In 1907, they started doing their thing with a taxidermied woodchuck.

So good try. Your name is the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge, and you use a fucking stuffed woodchuck. So that's wild. Anyway, Raleigh, in Raleigh, carolina at the north carolina museum of natural sciences they still do an observation here only their groundhog's name is sir walter wally and this dude's right 58 of the time that's impressive it should be around 50 i believe right and phil oh gosh i wouldn't even know how to start that calculation. I wouldn't either. So Phil has actually been right 39%, according to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, which has receipts on your ass, Phil.

The best, though, the best city that is taking a swing at the throne is Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. It's a city in Wisconsin that basically not long after the Punxsutawney sort of observations began and it began to be like recognized as the spot, Sun Prairie was like, well, we're going to do that. We would like to be the Groundhog Day city. Why can't, why not us? And this ignited a horrible feud between the two cities. Thousands of lives lost in this conflict. The Punxsutawney newspaper actually burned Sun Prairie in the paper, like writing about them trying to steal the throne. They said that it is a, quote,

remote two-cow village buried somewhere in the wilderness. And in response, Sun Prairie started calling the next year's Groundhog Day observation, quote, the Groundhog Day capital of the world. Fuck you, Punxsutawney. So this feud kind of simmered. And then in 2015, just a few years ago, disaster struck. The Groundhog in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, was a little dude named Jimmy, which is very good. Which is, we're starting off very, very good with this little story.

Did he get caught doing drugs? He did a hundred drugs. Groundhog drugs, too, which is the most powerful drugs known to man. During the part of the ceremony where Jimmy's supposed to whisper the results into the mayor's ear, Mayor Freund, Jimmy bit him. Oh, my jimmy bit him on the ear it was there's a video of it i watched it today and fucking cackled because i love seeing sort of like the underdog take a swing at the man and you don't get much better than this this tiny little well this big rat sort of biting the the city, I think, is extremely good. It was scandalous.

It made headlines across the globe. The next day, Freund, and this is a pretty good move, issued a mayoral pardon for his groundhog assault. However, and this is like the moral of the story, the rest of the story that happened the year following after like the meme had died down uh the bite got the attention of the u.s department of agriculture and the wisconsin department of natural resources uh who found that they didn't have the necessary licenses required to exhibit an animal which you would need for this exact kind of sort of event and so jimmy had to be

released into a field the following year oh my gosh There's lots of ways of looking at that story. I look at it like Jimmy, a captive to guess the weather incorrectly year after year, took a fateful hunk out of the mayor's ear and earned his fucking, the keys to his captivity. Yeah, or like it was his plan all along of like, this is the year i get out and here's how i'm gonna do it and then sun prairie wisconsin they had to just close the whole town because they fucking lost in the game of groundhog day you win or you die the ear biting capital of the world you stepped upon satani and now you're the goofballs who got your ear bit uh we may have listeners at sun prairie it was worth the effort. You're the second best Groundhog Day city in the world and there's lots of

cities so you gotta take that one. Where do you think Austin is on that list of Groundhog Day cities? I don't even think we do it. Do we do it? No, I don't think so. Again, there's not that many places that do it and yet this one shows up on every calendar. I love that. There's lots of holidays that I don't celebrate. Even ones that I used to

celebrate. Uh-huh. Groundhog Day I've never, it's lots of holidays that I don't celebrate, even ones that I used to celebrate. Groundhog Day, I've never, it's never really, Groundhog Day, I never remember that it's happening until I see that like Groundhog Day is on TBS. I remember when I was at school, if I like missed the notification, I'd like be asking around at the end of the day, like, hey, do we know, did the groundhog see a shadow? Do we know what happened with that? And yet it's still on every calendar that gets printed. And I love that. And it's just because of these enterprising individuals who are like,

groundhog day is my thing. I just like that. I like that a lot. It's nice. And I like the event. I like that everybody looks at an animal to decide if it's going to be cold or not tomorrow. I got some submissions here from our friends. You want to hear them?

Yes. Sarah says the thermos is very good. Sarah is sick right now, but says, quote, I use my travel thermos to make a second batch of tea that I can sip throughout the day as I sleep and recover. It keeps that good, good tea hot like it was just out of the kettle.

I love insulated cup devices. Yeah, we have a lot of them. I feel like you've really been on a quest. Well, my nodding got our whole family hooked on Tervis tumblers, which are like those vacuum sealed, like see-through cups. And they were basically the only types of cups that we had at our house growing up because of that. So I just got spoiled. I love my beverages to stay the same temperature for as long as possible.

I got a, what is that? Yeti thing? Yeah. A little Yeti tumbler that I hold much coffee in and it keeps it hot through lunchtime. Hannah says, my rediscovered wonder is geocaching. It's so fun to tromp around your city and find little treasures and see who else is visiting, uh, visited. It's exhilarating when you find an especially tricky one.

I can't wait till Henry's old enough for you to get an especially tricky one i can't wait till henry's old enough for you to get him into that i can't wait either that pokemon go will do both i'll have two phones out one's got pokemon on it one's got little secret mazes and riddles on it and here's one from nicole who says my small wonder is laser tag winter can be a bummer season so i got a big group of friends together recently to play. It was so fun to run around, sweat, and embrace my inner child. The key word there for me is sweat. Yeah, we did this not long ago for a friend's birthday. At a place called Blazer Tag here in Austin, which is great, and I was so excited to go.

And then as soon as the match was over, I thought I might actually have a big heart attack and pass away to heaven. Hey, can I thank some listeners for gifts? So we finally went to our P.O. box. Don't say finally. We said we'd go monthly and we did. I wanted to thank Julia for the Sandra Boynton book for Henry. I wanted to thank Jackie for the Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack. I want to think I want to jump in here.

Think Crafty Tibbles for the little doll of me it's very good i want to thank anna for the look for small wonders every day piece of art i want to thank michael who works at bows i guess and sent me some super nice bows headphones which i needed because i keep breaking my my headphones uh that was that was very cool thank you very much uh i also got a cutting board from emily that says uh griffin's chopping zone on it and that's uh you know that's gonna get heavy rotation we had a lot of other really great invitations and cards and and just really sweet gestures thank you so much everybody thank you all so much uh the po box if you want to send stuff to it that is uh not jokey joke horse magazines because folks, P.O. Boxes are not that big.

We didn't get any horse magazines when I went this last time. Well, maybe I shouldn't tempt fate. Then you can send it to us at P.O. Box 26038, Austin, Texas, 78755. And we check that monthly. So don't send any food, please. Thank you to Bowen and augustus for

these for our theme song money won't pay uh bowen just sent me he did the uh the music the soundtrack for uh a new game that's out on switch uh that looks very very cool it's called piku niku and i was listening to some of the soundtrack because he sent it over and it's very, very good. So yeah, that's great. And also the money won't pay is good too. And Maximum Fun. Yeah, thank you to MaximumFun.org for hosting our show and lots of other spectacular shows like The Flophouse. And stop podcasting yourself. I'm going to steal that one.

That's a steal. You can check them all out and I would recommend you do so. And we have stuff at McElroy.family which is our new website. You can find all kinds of stuff there. Today actually there should be a new Monster Factory out. I've been waiting for that Monster Factory. I know. I teased it last week. I thought it was

out last week but it's out today there at McElroy.family and I hope you all enjoy it and oh hey if you live in Birmingham or New Orleans, like tomorrow, we're going on tour for my Bim Bam and Taz. Birmingham, we're going to be there Thursday. New Orleans, we're going to be there

Saturday doing Taz and Sunday doing my Bim Bam, I believe. And you can find tickets for that at McElroy.family. Please come see us. And that's it. So let's end the show with one of our fun skits and sketches that we do um i've been working on on some and i know you've been working on something you're really excited about so um so we have there here's one called actually human gashapon

that is and the whole thing here is that you're going to put, I have a big sack of quarters here. Shh, quarters. And you just put them in my mouth. And I don't know how, maybe it's just sort of mime work, which you know I'm good at, but toys come out of my butt. Out of your butt? Then that's what jokes is. I learned that from George Carlin at his joke school that I went to in 1981. Money won't pay. What's it all? Money won't pay.

What's it all? Money won't pay. What's it all? Money won't pay. Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Not all heroes wear capes. Some heroes watch war movies and then review them.

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