Wonderful! - Wonderful! 83: A Eulogy for an Onion

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

Griffin's favorite defunct appetizer! Rachel's favorite short-term job! Griffin's favorite deduction game nobody will play with him! Rachel's favorite graduation-boosting initiative! 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, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Oh, come on, sit on down over here with us. Please do. Pull up a big seat. And this is wonderful. Oh, come on. Sit on down over here with us. Please do. Pull up a big seat. We've got a beanbag.

But if you don't want a beanbag, we've got a papazon. And if you don't want a papazon, we've got a recliner. And if you don't want a recliner, we've got a barstool. And if you don't want a barstool, we've got nothing. And I'm sorry. Yeah. We've got to swing outside. And it's fun. But you won't be part of this sort of conversation as an indoor.

Don't sit in that chair, though not i see you i am that one chair the nasty one don't you dare get in that i just said can you believe it it's it's a wet chair it's wet but not the kind of wet you think this is wonderful as a show where we talk about real good stuff good stuff uh great stuff i would actually argue oh yeah uh you got any of them small wonders i do so this is kind of a guilty pleasure but i've been looking at those outfits from the met gala i was literally going to say the met gala like like part of me is like i recognize the extraordinary privilege it takes to create a dress that you will clearly only wear this one time and never again and it probably cost a ridiculous amount of money but oh man that hamburger outfit that katie perry wore i haven't even seen that did you see what lizzo was wearing i think so yeah it was so powerful it was so fucking powerful yeah um yeah that's really good uh i will say

my small wonder you actually took mine but i like those wildflowers that you're seeing those wildflowers are showing up i like them they grow right next to the highways here in texas and you get the blue bonnets and you get the yellow ones i don't know what they're called and you get stuck in traffic here in austin a lot but you have this nice thing to look at and just be reminded there's red ones too you get to be reminded that it's not all roads out there. There's still some places that aren't just road. They're between the roads. They're sandwiched in the roads. They are suffocated by the roads, but it's not always just roads. Sometimes it's plants. That's beautiful, Griffin. Thank you. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Do you want to hear my first thing is the delicacy, the taste evolution of human consciousness that is called

various names, but its first name, its Christian name is the Bloomin' Onion. I want to talk about the Bloomin' Onion. What? The Bloomin' Onion. Do you know about him? I do, but I feel like I don't know you at all anymore. He's a big one pound onion that they fry up for you or for anyone. All right.

Let me get on your level here. Yeah, please do. You selected this because of the concept, because of the flavor, because of both. Yeah, I mean both. Yeah. The concept is the flavor. The flavor is the concept. The concept is the flavor the flavor is the concept the concept is the promise the promise is mouth satisfied because you're not an onion guy

really that's not true at all you take that back right now how dare you i feel like if a sandwich were to come to you and they said you want onions on it you wouldn't always say yes i don't want a raw onion what am i shrek hell no okay i'm a man i'm a human man shrek was a big green monster okay well i guess call me shrek then i i mean you're more like a parfait people love parfaits who doesn't love a parfait donkey all right continue with your continue with your blooming onion uh so yeah the blooming onion it is the uh is that what outback steakhouse this is their this is their thing, right? I did not know this.

Outback Steakhouse launched in 1988 and it had Bloomin' Onion on the menu. Did they get to you? Did they get to me? Did Outback Steakhouse get to you? I mean- Are they paying for this episode of Wonderful? They definitely put out a radio ad that had the activation word in it that sort of set off my Manchurian candidate.

No, they didn't get to me. The Bloomin' Onion got to me when I ate it and felt a promise of mouth satisfaction fulfilled. I'm sorry. I keep interrupting you. Please, please go ahead. It's a deep fried one pound onion that they sort of desiccate into the shape of a flower. And then you have a dipping sauce with it. Have you ever had a Bloomin' Onion?

No. Oh my God, babe. I can visualize it. I can imagine what the taste is, but I have never actually had one. You cannot imagine the taste of the dipping sauce. What is the dipping sauce? Exactly. It's this sort of pink slime. Is it like ketchup and mayo or something? No. It has a spicy, tangy, outrageously tangy flavor that I could not put my finger on. After some internet research, I learned it's mayonnaise. So it's technically an aioli.

It's a horseradish aioli. You mix it with horseradish. And it's good. That's good. The flavor's good. The fried element is good. The sweet onion, the sweet hot onion is very good. Well, you have to understand, when I was growing up in Huntington,

we did not have good restaurants. We essentially had uh we had the chain stuff we had Applebee's we had a TGI Fridays eventually uh and then we got an Outback Steakhouse and so Outback Steakhouse is like where I went for prom or homecoming I went there for multiple proms and homecomings because it was like a nice meal now Huntington's got all kinds of dope restaurants of course after I left uh so I have i think it's mostly nostalgia because i think if i tried to eat a blooming onion now my body would die before my brain knew what was happening um it is it but i can appreciate the sort of invention of the blooming onion um it, also the breath aspect. It makes the breath really bad.

It makes the body die, but it's going to go down with this big stink mouth while you're going. I can't remember anything else, any other menu item at Outback Steakhouse. And it's possible I never ate anything else. I have a hint for you, and it's in the name of the restaurant.

Well, no, I think that I never ate anything else there. I think you get four bites into a blooming onion and you're done you're done which this may be a solution for world hunger you know if we can just give people little samplers of blooming onions onions aren't hard to grow they are famously easy to grow uh so yeah i launched in 1988 it was basically the tent pole of the entire restaurant i don't know why they didn't change their name to Outback Onion Zone or something like that. It is a profoundly unhealthy food, which you probably do not need me to tell you. It's a one pound fried onion.

The blue onion's got 1,954 calories with 134 grams of fat, which is very bad. Well, you don't eat the whole thing by yourself. You can, depending on like if you were, I don't know, dumped four days before homecoming one year. Oh, good. Yeah, it's fine. We don't have to go into it,

but getting dumped, yeah, you can really tear into a blooming onion. And very quickly, other restaurants took notice of like, hey, this restaurant just launched and they are writing this one appetizer. Let's get it. So Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon had the Texas Rose, which is essentially the same thing. Oh, clever. just launched and they are writing this one appetizer let's get it uh so lone star steakhouse

and saloon had the texas rose which is essentially the same thing oh clever more beautiful name i would say and also more fitting because another thing you have to keep in mind is the bloomin onion is not an australian invention it's not anything over there it really isn't they sort of just did it their own thing and then they were like this is australia food and it's not it just isn't it never was but but texas rose i feel like we could own the blooming onion a lot more because it's i feel like fried anything is more of a texas for sure uh and then famously chilies i've said famously a lot this is a famous topic star studded star studded topic chili's had the awesome blossom yeah that was my shit it was crispier have you ever had an awesome blossom no that would have

been wild yeah there's this world where i would let you talk about blooming onion and say no what is that now awesome awesome awesome awesome was better it was so good uh it had uh it was just crispier it tasted better the problem with the blooming onion is it would get sloppy and sometimes you try to pull a thing off and the whole thing would fall off no yeah you just get the breading you wouldn't get the onion it was so bad uh but i that didn't happen with the awesome blossom it was just better in every way and also you could eat there and not think about the fact that the outback steakhouse has a pack that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates in 2000, 2004 election. So you eat at Chili's and you can kind of feel better about it.

I have to imagine there's shit with Chili's too, though. Chili's probably got some shit. I didn't dig into Chili's. So this thing happened. There's a tragedy. so this thing happened there's a tragedy men's health the magazine the traders ran an article about the worst appetizers in restaurants in america this was in 2008 okay okay okay number one spot was the awesome blossom which makes me think that outback steakhouse paid for this fucking article uh the awesome blossom came in at number one one i don't know what's so wildly different between the

two preparations of the two items but somehow the awesome blossom has 2710 calories uh 194 grams of carbs 6 360 milligrams of sodium and 203 grams of fat which is how much fat is in 67 strips of bacon holy shit that one got a rachel cuss folks so you know that's a big boy um i mean that's how it tastes better i guess i don't know i don't know what kind of restraint maybe there's butter and then they fry it whereas uh the blooming onion just has oil. They air fry it, maybe. Yeah, whatever the case is, literally pretty much right away, Chili's pulled the Awesome Blossom off the menu in 2008,

never to have returned, much to the chagrin of the fans of the Awesome Blossom. No, they'll replace it, though, but it'll be called like the the Crazy Daisy. And it'll be. Yeah. Just a little bit healthier. Now, you might be wondering what did Outback Steakhouse do?

Because obviously they weren't named, but their tent pole item was definitely put on blast. Yes. They went ahead and announced the loaded Bloomin' Onion, which has cheese fries on it. So just like do the damn thing. Just like get in there and stick your guns. There is something to be said. This is like sometimes people just want to be bad. Sometimes people just want to be bad and they should have a place to do that.

But in 2017, they announced the three-point Bloomin' Onion. And this came in for March Madness. And this one had cheese fries on it. And it also had like little pieces of steak too. On your onion slivers. On your fried onion slivers. Tell me how to fucking eat that out back steakhouse.

That's a good point. I need three different utensils to do that. You gotta use a fork. You gotta use a fork, right? And you gotta use a knife to get this. Well, it depends how big those steak pieces are. They're like little bacon bits. Oh, they're not bacon bits.

No. They are sort of cubes like you might put in a stew and also the cheese fries and i think you need a fork to get the the bite on you need a knife to get separation from the onion and then you also need a spoon for the the cheese sauce and i don't even know if we're dipping i don't even know if dip enters the equation on this monstrosity and then maybe some aspirin and then some aspirin and a heart attack you're about for the heart attack and then a slip and slide that just goes right into a coffin so you can take that last bite and somebody can just effortlessly shove you into heaven yeah so blue and onion i have not eaten one i mean i haven't eaten an outback steakhouse since i left huntington I haven't eaten an Outback Steakhouse since I left Huntington.

I haven't eaten an Outback Steakhouse since high school. I have eaten a Chili's far more recently than that. But they don't do this shit anymore. I also remember that they were selling a, as seen on TV, make your own Bloomin' Onion maker. Oh. Yeah, it was kind of like that apple slicer that we have. That's like a circle that slices the core out. Yeah. But, you know, it slices kind of like that apple slicer that we have. That's like a circle that like slices the core out. And then also, but you know, it slices it a lot more.

It slices it in a lot of different ways. And I think you're supposed to use smaller onions. I think we had one at the house and I'm pretty sure we never used it. Bloomin' Onion. Bloomin' Onion. Wow. Takes me back, the Bloomin' Onion. Yeah.

What is your first thing? My first thing is temping. Temping? Temping. Did you is temping temping temping did you temp i temped when did you temp when i was in chicago that makes sense yeah i went with this agency so i moved to chicago had trouble finding a job um was working retail for a while i was working at the barnes and noble coffee shop and then got a very short-lived job in publishing because they fired me after a month. What did you do? Were you stealing pens?

Oh, no. No, I didn't do anything specifically. It was an environment. It was a very small office, but nobody talked to each other. All the correspondence was done via email. And they wanted me to answer the phone and manage their intern program and manage all their mail uh and manage their website and do some light editing and i just couldn't do it and i was getting paid twenty thousand dollars a year too it was not a great idea so when they fired me it was kind of a blessing but

did not want to go back to retail so instead went to northbridge staffing in chicago and got temp jobs and it was the best was it yeah it kind of was so they were in the wrigley building which i don't know what is that called now isn't that called the wrigley building the jiggly building okay are you talking about the big big the biggest structure no no the wrigley building is like it's right by the river And I don't know if it's still called that. But they were located there. And one of the temp gigs you could get was you would be an administrative assistant in the building. So when people would call in sick, you get a call in the morning saying, hey, can you come in, sit at the front desk. Every front desk had just an entire shelf of gum. Oh, damn. So all the guests that came in could be like, oh, I'm waiting for my appointment. Let me just grab this little five pack of Wrigley Spearmint.

A whole pack? Yeah. A whole pack. First of all, it sounds like your first thing should have been gum. Well, because then after that, so I did that a few times. then i worked at various companies all doing like reception gigs yeah but then i got a five-month gig at depaul university oh cool they were transferring all of their paper student records it sounds a little bit like oh what i did at a tridata a tridata yeah we were manually but we weren't scanning we were manually inputting them into their computers.

We had to do that sometimes. Okay. Yeah. So I did that for five months. So it was like an April to September gig right before I went back to grad school. And it was awesome. Did you enjoy that work? Did you enjoy, to specify, Rachel and I, I am learning this just now, have both done

the job of digitizing paper records. Here's what I did. What did you do? both done the job of digitizing paper here's what i did what did you do uh i watched all of buffy in the little corner of my screen i was doing it oh they would not approve that at tridata at first i didn't at first it was kind of like oh okay and then i revealed myself to be very adept at it yeah then my supervisor just kind of didn't care anymore because i was doing the work so i found a youtube channel that had all of buffy oh so it was illegal streams too so that's great uh that's great that

you were doing my thing uh i started working at tried out this is by the way tommy smurl's company that i was um i think everybody knows unceremoniously unceremoniously fired for uh from and uh i started working there right when pandora came out the website and so i could just like have pandora open in the background just find some new tunes well that's fun it was except i was working the four to midnight shift which is the opposite of fun and my car kept getting broken into yes you know this was like your standard like nine to five kind of job uh and it was great because it helped me get other jobs you know, this was like your standard like nine to five kind of job. And it was great because it helped me get other jobs, you know, like getting that experience. You know, when you work retail, it can be difficult to transfer into an office environment because they want to know that you've like done office type things.

Well, Tempain is kind of a great way to get experience in that area and have a kind of variety of employers. Whereas, you know, if you applied for those jobs cold, let's say they wouldn't hire you. But if you're feeling an immediate need they have and you're doing the same kind of things a person in that position would do, you can kind of get that experience. Is it inherently part-time work? Do you get like, can you get benefits from like the temp agency or whatever, like health insurance like health yeah that's the tricky part is that you're technically an employee of the temp agency right so you're kind of following whatever their rules are and so i did not have health insurance when i was doing it so it's not ideal in that sense yeah but uh if you're looking to break into kind of a new field and build your network in a new city it is really good yeah

just as long as you do not get sick do not get a gallbladder problem yeah don't don't ever get sick uh but i will say over a i was looking at american staffing and over a third of temp workers are offered permanent work during their temporary assignment wow okay so it's not i mean it's not bad in that sense it's kind of like fostering a dog before, you know, you adopt it or you send it away to be adopted by somebody else. So the staffing industry, the whole idea of like getting temp work, like staffing agencies existing to fill needs of employers actually started during World War II when small agencies in urban areas started hiring housewives for part time work while the war was going on. Oh, okay. So that was kind of the beginning of it, of like how employers were saying, we need to hire a tremendous amount of people.

We can't, we don't have the capacity to hire this ourselves. And the temp agencies were like, hey, we got these ladies, you want them? And that was kind of, that's how it all started. I'm about to say one of the most profoundly unintelligent things I've ever said on any podcast before, so buckle up. Doing this show and talking about all these you know typically older things has really made me realize just how much stuff changed and was invented during world war ii i know it was a big hey it was kind of a big thing huh yeah i mean it was a tremendous investment of united

states resources that like totally restructured how they do everything in this country. Yeah. It was big. Yeah. It was a big one. We hopefully will not have to do that in our lifetime. Yeah. But if we do think of all the fucking new like types of candy bars, we're going to get out of it.

And think about all the cool new board games and you know fun fun new furniture i mean terrible times do generate a lot of creative work yeah no i don't want the war because i'll for sure be the first against the wall but the candy bars but the candy bars though they're gonna keep for so long and have new exciting flavors uh-huh uh can i jump back to something yeah when you had all those packs of gum in front of you, what'd you usually go for? What was your jam? What's your favorite gum? I can't say,

I mean, it was restricted to Wrigley gum, obviously. Ah, I see. So I can't really remember off the top. I mean,

if you think about it now, this was over 10 years ago that I was doing this. Yeah. I can't remember. Okay, you're at the grocery store and you want a pack of gum,

but a stick form, not like whatever else. What do you reach for? What's your shit? shit i mean now i go minty okay i think a cinnamon used to be kind of a go-to but yeah you find that the flavor kind of disappears after it does it goes away very quickly you just want more gum then you just want i did have to do the like delicate work the tremendous mental energy of figuring out how much gum I could steal. Oh, yeah. That was appropriate.

Everyone's done that who's worked in an office environment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I liked winter fresh. Oh, yep. There you go. That's it.

That one woke you up, didn't it? That was a cup of coffee. The thing was, is that I did have to answer the phone. So I was always conscious of like, should I really be chewing this gum? Yeah. That's the thing about temping, though, is you show up and nobody tells you anything. Yeah, cool. You most of the time, you are just answering phones. So one time that got me in trouble because I was working at a company at their front desk, and it was going to be a week long gig. And I was given no instruction,

just a list of phone numbers. And somebody called asking for someone by name that was not on my list of phone numbers. And so I said, I'm sorry, I can't find that number. And they said, you can't find the COO of your company. And I was devastated. But nobody was there to witness it. So it worked out okay. So then you sent somebody to kill this man. And nobody was the wiser.

Hey, can I steal you away? Uh-huh. Here we go. Down the money slide. Got a jumbo tram here, and this one is for Cam, and it's from Una, or perhaps Una. It's a very cool name. Either one of those is a cool name. Hey, O'Cam, sweetest angel.

Jesus, why am I like this? Why am I like this some days? Hey, Ocam, sweetest angel, my North Star. Right now, you're getting ready for work. I don't know where we'll be when this drops, but wherever we are, I hope we're happy and have a sweet cat friend. Anywho, you should know that you're wonderful and I love you. Oh, so much. Here is to many more road trips, D&D sessions, and everyday adventures together.

And then there's an emoticon here, which is always refreshing to see an emoticon instead of an emoji. And it's a smiley face, but they're, oh, it's winking, but it's been given a nose. A little pointy nose. I'm uncomfortable with this. I do not think emoticons deserve, I don't trust what they're going to do with those noses. Maybe Cam has a pointy nose and this is like

a subtle hello to that. Yep. Yep. Probably that's it. Can you read the other one? You want to hear the next one? The next one is from Melissa. It is from John. Attention, attention. Please sit a moment and let me tell everyone listening why my fiance is so great.

Late night TV, co-op stardew, board games, Flux, and playing Pathfinder. Since we've met, you've kept me smiling and laughing. You're such a wonderful woman, and I'm so lucky to have you in my life. I can't wait to marry you in October. I love you. It actually says OCT period, which a lot of people think is october but they're actually octopus they're getting married by dr octopus from spider-man oh i don't know whether to be happy for that or not uh he's a bad boy like he likes to fuck shit up and like hurt spider-man

and his friends but uh at the same time he gives a very moving sort of uh sermon i believe it i believe do you think he uses all those wild arms to just gesticulate during the ceremony he uses it it's a funny joke at the end when he's like you may now kiss you know whatever he uses them to push them together and everybody has a laugh at it oh that's fun yeah except one time he did too hard What are you laughing at, James? Aneke, I'm laughing at you. What? And me too.

Huh? Our podcast, Minority Corner, silly. Oh, the one where we talk about topics that cover the queer community, race, feminism, and good old pop culture? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yep, that's it. Oh, girl, we are so funny. I was just thinking about something we did. Wait, wait, wait. Are you listening to me or...

Me, me. Both. Minority Corner. Every Friday. Can I tell you about my second thing? yeah okay here comes the second thing my second thing you're gonna hate you don't like my second thing very much but that's okay because most people don't i want to talk about clue the board game clue to be fair i like clue i don't like playing clue with you okay is that better or worse it's worse because i my first point here is clue is

probably my favorite great game that everybody refuses to play with me. I don't think I'm like great at Clue. I just, I just. It's not that you're great. You're just super intense. I'm very intense about it. And it's just because I really like it. It's like the other people you're playing with are just obstacles to you winning the

game. Is that not? Is that not the, is that not by design? I mean, it's not traditionally, I think what people focus on when they play a game. Like, how do I get all these people out of the way so I can win? Yeah, I mean,

yeah, I guess, I guess that's a good point. It explains a lot, actually. I also think it's just not a very popular, like, I feel like it falls into this category of like iconic board games, like Monopoly, like the suite of board games that just everybody has

everybody has a monopoly everybody has like a you know checkers or chess set everybody has a deck of cards and i feel like clue is kind of up there except nobody likes playing clue i feel like monopoly is the much more playable enjoyable game a lot of that is because and monopoly suffers from this as well of uh the sort of prevalence of house rules of clue uh which like kind of makes it when there's that many it kind of makes it impossible to remember what is actually what is actually rules that are intended for the game like uh doubles or uh dragging a player into your room when you make an accusation or can you stay in one room for multiple guesses can you bounce back and forth

between shortcuts like all these different things uh i'm not sure like what those mean um but i really like it if you've never played clue which is probable because nobody plays it it's a game you're in a big mansion you gotta solve a murder everybody has some cards that have different rooms or weapons or characters on them and then there's one of each of those in a secret envelope in the middle. And by asking what your opponents have, you sort of process of elimination, figure out what's in the package. Here's the thing though.

And this is something I didn't realize until I started playing with you. Like the deception that's involved in like specifically asking questions that you know aren't true to like throw people off. Yes. That's the part that like, I was like, was like oh no i'm not ready for this game i mean there's a so i was going to talk about this like clue i think people write off as a

luck-based game uh or at the very least like a game that does not require or allow a lot of skill or strategy a lot of like it's basically like tic-tac-toe in that sense like somebody's gonna win this time let's just play it out and see what happens but there's actually like a lot of like, it's basically like tic-tac-toe in that sense. Like somebody is going to win this time. Let's just play it out and see what happens. But there's actually like a lot of strategy to it. Like you said, like fooling people with like fake guesses for stuff in your hand to make them just like get on the wrong scent for a while. There's, you know, if somebody is heading to a room that you think is actually the murder room and they're about to guess it, can uh you can accuse them of the murder and pull them into whatever room you're in so like a defensive sort of play you can do stuff like that um you can like not only keep track of which cards are out of the running but keep track of who has those cards that's that's what's crazy like this is where

the note-taking like reaches new degrees of like oh he asked that question a lot does that mean that that's the right question or does that mean he's holding those cards and he's trying to throw people off and he's just trying to dial into one of the either person or weapon or room and so he's fake yeah uh yeah so i really like it it is a very exciting game for me because it almost always like every game i've played usually ends with a rush to the center of the board, which is where you make your final accusation. And like somebody knows it and another person probably knows it too. And it's just the first person that can get to the room.

And it's like this wild race to finish off the game. I think it's a really well-made game. I think it is a very, very fun and enjoyable game. Before I talk about the history of it, I should also point out that Justin and Russ Frushtick made a video for Polygon a while ago that is like this 12 minute exhaustive explainer of clue and its origins that is going to be uh far more comprehensive and probably entertaining than my thing's gonna be so go watch that it's on polygon's channel um but if you do want to hear me talk about it it was made by an english musician named uh anthony. Pratt in 1944. And it was kind of like evolved

from this murder mystery game he had made shortly before, the title of which was called Murder! With an exclamation point, which I like very much. So he got a patent. He sold it to a UK-based board game company called Waddingtons, and they changed the name to Cluedo. Did you know about Cluedo? That is still what they call it in most of Europe.

I think I watched that video that you referenced. And so like, it sounds familiar to me. I knew about the name Cluedo. I did not piece together that it is a portmanteau of the words Clue and Ludo, which is like a prefix that means like gaming. which is like a a prefix that means like gaming that means oh so there's talks like in the gaming industry like ludological sort of studies are like studies into game design and game theory and stuff like that um so that it was cluedo in the uk when when uh waddington's had it and then when parker brothers brought it to the us they just trimmed it down to clue but it's still called cluedo over there um and there was actually a lot of stuff in those original versions that weren't in the game there were uh 10 characters

in the game uh and one of them would be killed at random like before you started so it's not just mr body it's like you have to figure out the the killer and so the the roles change every time which i think is actually really cool uh there were more weapons there was like a bomb which is the probability of this though with this many variables it would be a much much longer game which is why i think there are more rooms more weapons like i think they just trimmed it down which was a smart smart choice there's 21 cards now in uh in regular old clue um and clue was clue for a long time and people were into it. Then in 2008, they introduced Clue Discover the Secrets, which I think is the version we have. That changes a few things. It changes the characters. Mr. Plum is now Victor Plum, who's a game designer multimillionaire.

And it also adds these little intrigue cards that can give you little bonuses. But then there's these clock cards, which can permanently kill your character uh and there are some like diehard clue fans that like still think this version is shit uh i like it i think it's fun and entertaining um but yeah i just think it's a really fun game i think that it's uh i think that it scratches an itch that it kind of falls somewhere between like candyland and like werewolf kind of like it is a game about uh uh it's a game that really sort of tickles a part of my brain that i don't think any other sort of board game does do they have clue computer games oh yeah for sure they definitely have i feel like i might like that a little better than like the the handling of the the pencil and the paper

and trying to keep track of all the notes and whatever. Yeah. You're more of a cyber, like a cyber surfer. That's what they call me. Would you say that you're more of a cyber surfer? Yeah, no, I mean,

that is, that's what they call me. Okay. Like a hacker. Mm-hmm. I'm trying to remember so desperately the Julia Stiles monologue from Ghost of the, ah,

shit. Yeah, sorry. Do you know anything about hackers? can you jam with the console cowboys can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace never experienced the new wave next wave dream wave or cyberpunk i love that you did the hand gestures while you're saying that too like you couldn't not you couldn't not do it uh what is your second thing there my console cowboy my little

cyberspace jammer my second thing is something that i thought you might not be familiar with which is early college high school you've just said two things you've just said two things have i uh-oh uh early college high schools are high schools that allow students to receive a high school diploma and an associate degree by taking a mixture of high school and college classes so this is different than dual enrollment where you get college credit uh while you're in high school at early colleges students have fewer high school classes because some of their college classes replace their high school. At early colleges, students have fewer high school classes because some of their college classes replace their high school classes.

I've literally never heard of this. This has to not be very common, right? It's a relatively new thing. Like it really took speed in 2002. Bill and Melinda Gates funded a large number of these high schools around the country. Is it designed as kind of a fast track, or is it designed to sort of

get students who may not graduate across the finish line? Yeah. So it's focused on access. It's focused on getting college credit to students who otherwise wouldn't get it. So it's not like an accelerated model for elite students. It's like the idea is they put these in areas where there isn't a great college going culture to give students access to things they wouldn't otherwise. So it's like a sampler for college, but also like, hey, if you do decide to go to college, you're going to have this leg up. That's really interesting. Yeah. So there are more than 230 early colleges across 28 states serving 50,000 students. And 92% of these students graduate from high school

versus a national rate of 69%. That's really incredible. 86% of graduates enroll in college the next semester after high school graduation. And 70% of these students are students of color. And over half of them are on free or reduced lunch. So the idea is that they're getting students that are first generation college whose parents potentially didn't go to college and

don't have the means or access to know what it would be to enroll in college after graduating. So in the Austin area, there are, I think, six early college high schools. What? And it's focused on schools that were graduating a lot of underperforming students. Okay. So there's still problems with it because they've focused on these under-resourced schools

and really high-poverty neighborhoods. So they still have a lot that they're up against when they become an early college high school, but it's giving these students an opportunity to graduate with two years of college credit when they finish high school. Yeah. Which is incredible. And when you're in high school and like everybody is talking about college, it is still such an like abstraction. And that makes it really tough to kind of like get excited or like know what to expect. So i feel like knowing what to expect is also like an enormous benefit well and here's the thing too so i don't know if it's true everywhere but in texas this is free so the students that are in these early college high school are getting

college credit for free and they're getting it from austin community college which is how I know about it. That's so good. Isn't that incredible? Yeah. Yeah. So the students are receiving this college credit while they're high school students. So they're getting support from both the high school and the college. Right. They're getting their traditional advising support on their high school campus, but then they also have access to all the college resources as well, which is kind of incredible. Is this, different countries do different sort of arrangements of school schedule. Like there's some where high school

is like a longer stint than four years and like there's no middle school. Yeah, yeah. There's, you know, you go to college early. Like I feel like this is kind of becoming that conversation a little bit about like, is K through 12 and then college the right, we've been doing it that way for a very long time,

obviously, like, is it still the right way to do it? Because as you talk about stuff like this, and as you talk about stuff like AP classes in high school, which I took, that I got college credit for, like, why am I not just in college at this point? Which I know is maybe like a snooty thing to say, but like, why am I not just in college at this point which i know is maybe like a snooty thing to say but like do why not why am i not learning this in a college atmosphere why did we decide that i have to you know take take 12 years of of you know lower undergrad school yeah i think well

there's just a lot of emphasis now on like building on like the strengths of of existing structures and kind of the world that we live in yeah you know like distance learning is a big thing uh one thing that we talk a lot about is competency-based learning so the idea that if you are taking it you know certificate courses and you have the ability to progress through that faster why shouldn't you be able to do that yeah uh so there's there's a lot of kind of different models out there now i think the thing i was suggesting is maybe to exist in a utopian world where college is free yeah because obviously k through 12 like you can you can go and there have been politicians that have proposed that yeah um but you know we'll

see if that ever happens. God, it would be cool. Um, but yeah, this, this is just this incredible thing. I get to, in my job, I get to work with the people that, that manage this program on our side. Uh, and it's just, it's really inspiring and it takes a lot of work and a lot of financial burden from a lot of people to make it happen. Um, because, you know, just because you give students access to a college class doesn't mean that they're ready to do it. You know, I think,

you know, if you think about yourself in high school, this idea that you could just go home and be done for the day does not work with college credit classes. And so there's a lot of additional support that needs to be provided. And you're sending these kids home without the resources necessarily to really do all the research that's required to write a paper. So it takes a lot of work, but it's really an incredible model. And it's just an awesome opportunity for students. And I think it's cool. I think it's cool too. thank you bill thank you melinda yeah thank you for this thank you for cool new toilets and thank you for computers thank you for computers everybody thank everybody thank bill and melinda for the toilets and the

computers and this say it now thank him and her i don't know about these toilets i'm not sure i want to know and no they're cool new toilets that are like designed for uh impoverished areas that are cleaner they help support uh hygiene better they're good toilets i made fun of them on twitter once and i felt very bad about it do you have like a toilet alert in your google i do have a google toilet alert yes uh don't judge me do you want to hear some submissions from our friends at home yes uh our first one was from macy who hear some submissions from our friends at home yes uh our first one was from macy who was talking about the mac gala i think we have that covered in our intro but yes it was very good fashions uh charles says one thing i love is half-size carts at grocery

stores i live alone and just shop for myself so the half-size cart is a perfect compromise between the carrying capacity of a big cart and the maneuver maneuverability of a basket oh i love this it's really good i love the half size cart as well it's pretty much all i go for at this point unless i'm doing like a costco big boy like yeah like the upper and the lower so you can like really diversify your grocery items and you can drift you can do cool stunts with it it's much easier uh one more here from samantha who, I think homemade whip cream is wonderful. And my favorite part is when I put the bowl and the whisks in the freezer before I start. There's something so wonderfully silly about putting an empty bowl in the freezer that

makes me grin every time. I did not know that this was part of the whipping process. I didn't know this thing, but I did know our friend Johnny that makes a great biscuit says that he just puts everything in the freezer before he starts. So everything's ice cold. Cookware, utensils, ingredients, everything. Yeah. Love it. Love it. So thank you for listening.

Deeply, from my heart, I thank you. I thank the Bill and Melinda and everybody listening. And Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. What do you want to talk about? I want to thank Maximumfund.org for hosting our show yeah encourage folks to listen to to just really stellar programming like uh minority corner or uh uh heat rocks heat rocks or uh switchblade sisters yeah uh or mission to six or anything

on the maximumfund.org network we have other stuff at at McElroy.shows, McElroy.family. And yeah, we have a pin, the Rachel's Poetry Corner pin up now in the merch store. And we're working on getting more stuff. Some folks have just started getting theirs in the mail. And they have been posting pictures. And I appreciate it. Yeah. And there's like tour dates and stuff.

We still have some shows available. Cleveland, please. Cleveland. Cleveland. Please, Clevelandveland please cleveland come on and that's it we're gonna end it because rachel's hungry where are you gonna snack down on anything well y'all left over papa left over pot pot bye Bye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne, and justice is within your reach. Artist owned. Listener supported. My partner's board game collection is out of control. My sister won't stop stealing my clothes. I'm Judge John Hodgman. I'm tough, but fair.

Tough, but fair. I'll bring you justice, and I'm only a click away. Tipping. Automotive etiquette. Siblings. Roommates. If you've got a case, go to MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. Judge John Hodgman is tough but fair.

Tough but fair. Subscribe to the podcast today. Judge John Hodgman rules. That is all.