Wonderful! - Wonderful! 99: Where Does the Stink Go?

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

Griffin's favorite soothing reality show! Rachel's favorite fun food for children! Griffin's favorite failed 4D experiment! Rachel's favorite multi-purpose powder! 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. You got something you want to share with the class? You got something you want to share with the class, Mrs. McElroy? You were gesturing at me as a conductor. Oh, is that what it was?

To indicate when I should begin. But each gesture looked like it was going to lead to another gesture. You know, I wasn't. So I didn't know when to start. I wasn't thinking about it like a conductor. I was thinking about it like I was pulling the spirit of the show we do wonderful about the good shit from the ether of the air surrounding us sorry we missed last week y'all sorry we missed last week i was sick why did i say that that's a lie i'm like so quick

to lie about being sick so that i don't have to go to school and it's an old habit and i don't i don't need to do it for wonderful we were on vacation we were at disney world i was sick of work i was sick of y'all and so i had to go to diz with my bud rachel and our my other bud who's our son henry and lots of other family but it's just the entire squad went to disney world a lot of fun uh a little worried about um about hurricane dorian uh which of course was a fucking monstrosity just not for florida necessarily although we did have to cancel our orlando show which was a bummer but otherwise fun fun disney trip did star wars star wars did up had that blue milk it's horrible you know since we didn't do the orlando show we can make up all sorts of myths about what

it was going to be like. It was going to be wet and wild. So I was going to come out on stage. Yes. And I was going to twirl a baton. Yes. That had fire on both ends. Yeah.

And then you were going to start the foam party and then we would lose our deposit. I'm not sure how it works we don't book the shows anyway do you have any small wonders i do okay small wonders yeah vacation photos they're good i love it because it's the one time you really prioritize taking photos of yourself and your family right uh and then the photos are so good because you're all so happy to be on vacation together yeah and they're always in like fun places and just looking at them i don't know now i'm i'm trying to decide how many of them i want to print out and frame because it seems like the majority yeah i feel like i wasn't really exposed to this until like our honeymoon

when we started like travel internationally by which i mean we did it twice and then we had a baby so that stopped happening uh but it was it i was i was such a shutterbug wasn't i yeah we used to make little photo books oh that was the jam and and yeah it's just the pictures are so good it is took some good ones to try to get us to buy them there's one of henry getting a kiss from minnie mouse i'm quite a fan of yeah you should get it anyway yeah i want to talk about uh my small wonder raisinets i was going to do a big wonder on these because i wanted to know we bought some as a potty potty training treat literally just raisins dipped in chocolate i was like i want to know the history of raisinets and i like googled and i got on you know nexus lexus and i found some peer-reviewed research that was like their raisins dipped in chocolate dude like you'd really want an oral history somebody took a raisin and dipped it in some chocolate was like that's balling

and it could have happened anywhere at any point in time anywhere on the globe we can't say who the first person was it's such an obvious slam dunk yeah but they're so good i'm not like a big chocolate candy fan in general, but like the texture's nice. You get that little bit of, that bit of fruity sweetness in the middle. You're not really a big raisin fan either, if I remember correctly.

You like them in other things. I like them in other things. But you wouldn't eat them by themselves. No, and I used to. I used to fuck up a box of Sunmade. But I love them, man. They're just nature's candy that we made even better. We came into nature and we fixed it.

Like we do with everything. Yeah. All the time. Meddling, dipping it in chocolate. Speaking of dipping it in chocolate, I go first this week. My first thing is, and we've talked about it tangentially in Small Wonders from time to time, but it's time for us to put the Great British Bake Off on the table and really, really show. Oh, we never really made it a whole topic?

We did a small wonder about, hey, there's new episodes, right? Yeah. But I think we need to like, I think we need to. Okay. I'm ready. It's just, it's so good. It's damn, it satisfies every time. I know.

It's so good. And like, we can talk about rachel and i love reality television obs and we love reality competition shows and you know that's that's all my jam and it's a good one of those but like there's stuff that this show does that is kind of more intangible than that and nobody does it as either as good as they do or even like attempts to do it like they do it and like that's the stuff that's true i don't know who was involved with casting both the hosts and the judges and the contestants yes but just a plus all around a plus well done um like okay broad strokes the obvious stuff like the idea of a baking competition show seems kind

of counterintuitive because baking is just a tremendously boring process and usually takes like it takes forever and it's not an obvious like it's not a great fit but like these people are really good at it most of the time and it's a great skill like showcase and that's awesome and a design and art showcase and that's awesome uh and you know you also get that like food porn itch scratched which there really needs to be a better name for that there really needs to be a better name for that phenomenon um and you know the hosts the hosts have always been great i've always thought that the host both uh you know the the judges and the the hosts of the show have been like fantastic but in my opinion there's new episodes going up

on netflix right now in my opinion it's the best it's ever been right now it's the best it's ever been right now and now we haven't watched all the episodes of this season maybe it takes a turn maybe it takes a turn but i doubt it uh i mean i love mary berry i love the other two hosts but uh you got you got prue and paul their their chemistry is just off the fucking charts yeah they're both very like it's a funnier show now no it's true and uh the the new hosts noel and and sandy uh noel i i knew before from mighty boosh and and some other stuff uh They're fucking hysterical. So charming. It's not even just that they're charming. There are bits that they do that are fucking gut-bustingly very, very funny.

No, I think it used to be that the people in their roles before... I wish I could remember their names. Sue and... And the other one. Ah, shoot. I feel bad. They were our buddies for so long. I feel bad. They were our buddies for so long. I feel bad.

They saw their roles as nurturers and comic relief, but in a very hosty way. Hosty. In a very staged, hosty way. And they were fantastic. They were fantastic and also very, very funny in their own rights. But it was, I don't know, a drier. Now it's more like a place for weirdos. It's unrestrained in a way that I am a big fan of. Also,

like, I feel like now the, the challenges are getting a little bit wilder. It's like build of, you know, a functioning vending machine out of bread. Idiot. Yeah.

It used to be like, all right, everybody's making pineapple upside down cakes and then they would do it again the next season. And then they would do it the season after that. Now it's like, it's always changing. Yeah.

They'd be like, make some weird uh ancient italian wedding bread cake the episode we just watched was make a birthday cake for you in your childhood so wild and so good and so fun it's just a more fun show and it's like the best it's ever been and like the format is also like great you get the signature bake up front to like set the theme and then you get the technical challenge which is a fucking horror movie because you know how it's supposed to be done and then you watch these like complete goobers just fuck it up so royally it's like and watching somebody like i'm gonna do an egg wash on this and it's like no don't do an egg wash well and what's what's great about it too is that they will name some very obscure ancient dessert dish and you are waiting for them to go to that table with the judges so you can see

what it's supposed to look like because you don't know either. Yeah. Last episode we watched, they did a thing called a fig roll, which is basically like a chonky fig Newton. Hello, nurse. Let me out one of them bad boys don't even cut them up let me get one big fat fig tube baby so like all that stuff's great and the format it's a great reality competition show but for me like the reason i got so excited when i saw there were new episodes going up weekly on on the flicks is like the same reason i get excited for terrace house and that is that

this show has its aesthetic like on lock it is so like it is a tender and polite show and i don't just mean that in like a like everybody is very polite to each other like the show itself and the way that it is presented and paced i will say even more than terrace house because terrace house throws you some curve balls sometimes. Especially this season we're watching now. With the intense drama. Yeah. But Baking Show is always soothing.

It's always so soothing. It is a nice way to end the day. It's an audiovisual nap. Like the cinematography is very soft and the music and the silence sometimes. It's like our planet Earth. It's like our planet Earth. You know how some people sit

down and watch planet earth and just get totally engrossed i feel like that doesn't work for me but baking show does baking show does i get whisked away uh it's just so nice the people are nice the show itself is nice i get emotional watching this show more than i do watching any other reality show like i give a shit about the people performing on it like from episode one the guy who got sent home episode one i was like oh man i know everybody's standing around hugging them and they're like all very genuinely invested in this guy and it's week one it's been week one it's been a day it's been 24 hours since we watched that episode and i can remember that guy's name which isn't like that doesn't happen on reality shows for me. Yeah. It's just such a great, nice, just good show. Good capital G good show.

And it's nice and long. So you can just sink into it and just bathe in it. Oh, Great British Bake Off. So good. And I will only use the proper British name for it. Get that Great British Baking Show. Get that out of here. I'm authentic. I remember this show when it was on the streets the streets of london we used to have to walk behind a dumpster

to get your episodes and you had to knock on the door five times and you had to say sword singer and then they'd open the door and that's how you got your episode and who's at the door is hugh grant he gives you some gbbo on the cassette tape and i catch a tube with my friend gbbo it's beautiful thanks what's your first thing by the way rachel you're flying without annette and this is fun this is fun for all of us. I feel like you should tell everybody. I feel like we need to be transparent about our process. Well, so we've talked about this before, I think.

But typically what I do is while I am at the office during a sanctioned break. No. I type up my notes. You sanction it. It could be whenever, how long. I type up my notes for the episode

and I print them off on one piece of paper and then I fold up that piece of paper, put it in my purse, come home, whip it out, time to record.

Yeah. And then you get the piece of paper out. Forgot to print out my piece of paper. Luckily, I remembered my sources. Okay.

So I just pulled them up in little windows on my phone okay so i i mean you're like tarzan swinging from website vine to website vine i can't wait to see this act of trapezoid okay so my first thing is very related to our past week and it is the kids meal the kids the kids meal the kids meal meal. The kid's meal. The kid's meal. The concept of the kid's meal. The kid's meal. I'm not speaking about the specific food associated with the kid's meal. I'm talking about the concept of a kid's meal. At like a restaurant.

No, you're talking. Yes, yes, at a restaurant. Okay, I thought you were, you have to understand me as the hearer of that sentence. You saying, I want to talk about the kid's meal, the meal for children's. Anytime a child eats, I, Rachel, I love that shit. No, when I say kid's meal, like, you know what I'm talking about, right? It's like, it's like a smaller portion meal with foods that are more likely to be appealing for kids.

And sometimes there's a toy. Yes. Okay. I, uh, I really came to appreciate this now that we have a kid. I mean, when I was in my 20s, it was kind of like a way to get a smaller portion from a fast food restaurant. Yeah, and a badass toy.

Toy. Fuck yeah. And now I see it as a way to typically spend the right amount of money on something that your kid is only going to half finish anyway. Yes. Yeah. So the kid's meal is actually existed before fast food, which shouldn't be too surprising. So they didn't come out until the 1900s because typically when people were sitting down to eat, it was just men and it was taverns. Women weren't even invited.

And then as more time passed and women started being more present in restaurants, that meant the kids often were coming with them. And so one of the first places to do a kid's menu was actually marshall fields in chicago as early as 1916 they advertised their children's menu in local newspapers so this is like restaurants in department stores oh okay so the idea was that people were going shopping and then they would stop at the restaurant in the department store and they would have kids meals available that feels very progressive that feels like you you jumped like 10 steps to get to food court do you know what i mean like it feels like you skip you evolved very quickly and landed on food court well if you think about it department stores i mean it used to be like a

whole event right the way we go to theme parks now i feel like people go to department stores and a whole day affair and so they had to feed them. Yeah, and you wouldn't be exposed to the plague or whatever. You'd be safe there. You'd be safe. You'd be safe there. Also, train cars had kids' menus. Oh, right. It also makes sense.

You're in a train. People finally realized, like, oh. And part of that is because before the 1900s, people didn't really realize that children had different dietary needs. That's just bad. That dietary needs bad parenting yeah so um yeah scientific studies showed the children and their growing bodies had unique needs uh and so instead of you know just serving your kid the same thing you were eating right they would actually you know set aside different foods for kids. At the time, it was, of course, very bland food, not like hamburgers and fries like it is now. Yeah.

God, we're crushing it, aren't we? Look at all the food we have. It's badass. Hamburgers, french fries, the works, baby. So I wanted to talk about, too, this idea of the kid's meal at a fast food restaurant. Yes, of course. Again, saying, like, by no way endorsing the quality or nutritional value of this food i will

fuck yeah i'll die on this hill all right here we go yum yum give me some whatever dude whichever eat it every day every day every meal every meal i would. So the interesting thing, everybody thinks McDonald's is the first one, started in 1979 with a Happy Meal. I don't think that. Oh, okay. Who do you think started the idea of a kid's menu at a fast food restaurant? Hardee's. Actually, Burger Chef. That's not a restaurant.

Yeah, so this is the thing. First kid's meal was the fun meal at burger chef in 1973 cool name so burger chef back in back in the day back in the like 60s and 70s was like mcdonald's number one competitor okay so that's why when burger chef did it mcdonald's jumped on the boat and did it too. Nice. And so when McDonald's started it, though, that was when you started to see this idea of not just like kid-sized portions, but also like the toy, which starting out was just like a stencil or like a wristlet. Whoa, Ronald, you shouldn't have. A stencil, my man?

Draw this dinosaur. Thanks, bud. And then it wasn't really as much of a phenomenon i mean obviously like when disney movies started becoming a thing they started doing the merchandise but what really blew up the toy 90s beanie babies yes baby oh you know i had some of them yeah uh now not as valuable not into hand as everyone. Weird how that happened. What's the best Happy Meal toy you ever got? Because you've got to have one.

You've got to have one. They had this thing for a while and I don't know why I loved it so much but it's what came to mind when you asked that were little McDonald's food items that were Transformers. It's like a little container of fries.

Yes! And it would turn into little arms and feet when you'd fold it out. That must have been like a perennial, like they must have used that one a long time for a while because I definitely had all them bad boys. Yeah, I don't know why. It wasn't like a particularly great toy, but when you said that, that's immediately what I remembered. I am a fan of the pokeballs that

had like the gold cards in them i liked that a lot and uh the number one though was that around the time that the mighty morphin power rangers movie came out they had the little like morphin things that they held uh and it would like snap open and i have a little medallion and the medallion would like represent one of the different dinosaurs or whatever. Wow. It was so badass. It gave you a prop to make believe, pretend Power Rangers with. It was so good.

No, and that's the thing. I think Happy Meal toys used to be pretty generic, but as soon as the Star Wars movies started coming out, all of a sudden it was like, oh, oh, now we should do this. So yeah, so that's the kids meal. The kids meal. I think it's a great idea. Obviously, it's been problematic. I've read about a lot of restaurants that have stopped doing the kids meal, like Taco

Bell, I guess, used to have a kids meal. And so this does not make sense for us. This is not our audience. Yeah. You know, Taco Bell started leaning into the like, hey, you're a college kid and it's 3 a.m. and we were your only option. You're fucked up.

I'm fucked up. Get in here, baby. They are, there is going to, there is a culling of the Taco Bell menu that is coming. I was just lamenting this to Rachel. They are getting rid of the Doritos Locos Taco. Yeah. And I don't eat fast food fucking ever now,

but I like knowing that the Doritos Locos Taco is there. And I don't eat fast food fucking ever now, but I like knowing that the Doritos Locos Taco is there for me when I fall from grace. I suggest to Griffin that he go and just stockpile. Just order just the shells. Just the shells? I don't know that they're going to keep. I'll have 75 shells. I mean, they will keep, right?

They'll probably keep. Probably all that will keep for some time. You put them in the trunk of your car leave it out in the parking lot at the airport for three years oh boy it's not great for you though this food can i steal you away yes uh i got a message here for melissa and it's from Melissa, who says, Hey, Melissa, it's you. You've had a pretty rough time lately, but at least you're pretty and funny.

Hopefully you didn't fall asleep before the jumbotrons, as you often do. Lol. Please don't do that. Please don't do that. The sponsors find out we don't get paid. You know how you could wake her up is you could do your rendition of Sweet Melissa. Sweet Melissa. Oh, God, I can rendition of Sweet Melissa. Sweet Melissa. Oh, God, I can't get enough of that.

I know. Remember to be proud of yourself. Remember that you and your friends love each other very much. And remember to ask Patrick if he wants a bead animal. Owl City rules. Later, skater. I can't believe you made me say all that stuff. Actually, there are a lot of R's in skater,

and I feel like you didn't really pronounce it. No, I bounced right over it. Can I read you the next personal message? Yes. It is for Bear. It is from Pancake. I think that's Jer Bear or Jar Bear. It's tough to say, but just say it.

Jar Bear, I hope I have told you lately how much I appreciate all that you do for Maybe and I. Thanks for being my person, hating all the same things, and helping me find the brightness in life. Remember, you deserve nice things, and self-compassion isn't selfish. Let's make the good vegan mac and cheese soon. It's been a while. Love, Pancake. Now that's in quotes, which makes me wonder if it was supposed to be delivered in a very specific way.

It's been a while. Or, it's been a while since I still remember just the way you taste. That's a gross song, huh? I thought it was kiss. I thought it was still remember just the way you kiss. I thought it was taste. I mean, both are kind of gross, I guess. Taste is definitely gross hello there ghouls and gals it is i april wolf i'm here to take you through

the twisty scary heart-pounding world of genre cinema on the exhilarating program known as switchblade sisters the concept is simple I invite a female filmmaker on each week and we discuss their favorite genre film. Listen in closely to hear past guests like the Babadook director, Jennifer Kent, Winter's Bone director, Deborah Granik, and so many others every Thursday on MaximumFun.org. Tune in if you dare.

It's actually a very thought-provoking show that deeply explores the craft and philosophy behind the filmmaking process while also examining film through the lens of the female gaze. So, like, you should listen. Switchblade Sisters. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes, please. Okay, I was going to talk about 4D, right? The 4D experience of theaters. Because we just got back from Disney World, which, like, hits that shit hard.

Obviously, Hobbs and Shaw is very near and dear to my heart and that was an experience I'll never forget and it's such a like it's a weird thing for me to be into because it's such a pointless endeavor it is from a cinematic perspective it is also like

kind of a travesty because it does nothing but detract from the movie that you are watching I feel like it was tough to sometimes really hone in and get in the groove of Hobbs and Shaw because I was being jostled so violently. I mean, that's the thing. It's not like they do this in like the English Patient or... Damn, that would be good though. What do you think that movie smells like? Probably not good.

English Patient, probably not the most pleasant aromas coming off that movie. I'm saying it's good for action movies because you're going expecting you know a full body to be to be blasted yeah um so anyway i was gonna talk about 4d but like that can be a complicated thing because you're talking about rides you're talking about movies there's different context for it but anyway while i was researching i did a deep dive on smell-o-vision so here we go that name that name like it's used as a sort of broad term right like smell-o-vision as the idea of having an extra sensory just not just audio visual experience when you're watching a tv show or a movie by getting like smells thrown

at you right like it's a catch-all term but it was also like the patented name of a thing smell hyphen o hyphen vision uh and it was a short-lived beautiful thing that i learned about today and i want to share some of the great things uh that i learned so uh this idea of releasing scents in theaters was not uh you know necessarily a modern idea uh there is some sort from uh like late 19th century there's an example of some theater that was showing the rose bowl like an old old rose bowl and they like piped in the scent of rose oil into the into the theater and then actually like live theater productions it was a thing to like um put perfume like spray perfume down from from the ceiling at certain points uh in the show uh so like this idea kind of existed

beforehand and people were kind of dabbling in it walt disney considered it for uh fantasia actually in 1940 but decided it would be kind of cost prohibitive which is probably the right decision smell-o-vision was invented by a guy named hans laub who uh demonstrated it at the 1939 world's fair uh at which point it was called scent-o-vision and the idea is that it connected pipes to uh you know scent blasters uh and the pipes would run into individual chairs instead of just like pumping the room full of whatever stink you needed that way you could have more control over when the smell started yeah right and they wouldn't like linger and mix it wouldn't linger and mix it still did it was a bad invention um but but you

know you could have some control over it so you could actually make it be part of part of the story and like a projectionist would like pull the trigger on these different stinks and it would blast to all the different chairs and there was some interest at the time but like none from film and tv studios to like actually make a movie that would utilize it so they dropped uh he dropped it and uh and and moved and then 15 years later uh there was a producer named mike todd who was making uh around the in 80 Days, a film adaptation of that. And he was interested. He was like, oh, what if we put this stink-a-vision in it? But it never made it into that movie.

But when he died, his son, who was also a film producer, his name was Mike Jr., signed up with Hans to create a movie that would use smell-a-vision called Scent of Mystery. Ooh. Yeah. The movie sounds fucking wild. It is a mystery flick about a mystery novelist who is on vacation in Spain

who is trying to thwart a plot to murder an heiress who is played by an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor. Oh my gosh. Yeah, this movie has it all, folks. They recently remastered it. They found it and restored it,

I think think back in like 2015 i don't know if they kept the smell of vision component to it if that's where she got the idea for white diamonds interesting maybe maybe it was one of the multitude of scents uh the process of small vision changed a little bit before it was like you know the projectionist would fire it off at certain points here is how it worked here's i'm going to describe how a machine works and maybe that's not the most interesting thing but i found it interesting uh instead of the sense being manually released it used what he called a smell brain which is good it used a smell brain which was a series of perfume containers linked in a belt arranged in the order that they would be released the belt was then wound around a motorized reel

as the film threaded through the movie projector. Markers on it would cue the brain. Needles would pierce membranes on the containers, releasing the scents, which would then be blown by fans through the pipes to individual events underneath the audience member's seats. The cost of outfitting a theater to accommodate the system was anywhere from $15,000 at Chicago's's cine stage theater to one million dollars elsewhere which in today money is 127 000

to about eight and a half million dollars oh my gosh for the smell of vision also at that time there was a full-blown arms race with another company called aromarama aromarama was trying to beat them to the punch this movie came out in 1960 since scent of mystery came out in 1960 in 1959 aromarama got out there with their shit which like blasted it was it was a more uh you know scattershot approach that just filled the theater with different stinks uh that was made by like a theater magnate called walter reed jr and uh it was it was used the film that used it was called uh behind the great wall and it was like a travelogue in china uh and he claimed that they could pump over 100 aromas into the theater in a showing

which sounds fucking horrible i don't want to smell 100 different smells within the span of a movie like and i'm trying to think how they would even like. Control. Well, no, in any given movie, how many times are there really to smell different things? A hundred different things. Like I feel like, oh, they're at a restaurant and they're eating a pie.

Okay, I could smell that. Right. But then am I smelling when they get in the cab to go home? And then am I smelling when they, I don cab to go home and then am i smelling when they i don't know get in the shower like how many smells could you really find walter reed jr did an interview uh and i didn't get the quote but he was like bragging about all the great stinks he had lined up for this movie and he said stuff like you know different fruits and exotic foods uh there would be the smell of fireworks going off at a certain sequence

and the smell of, quote, a trapped tiger. What's that smell like, Walt? Hey, Walt, what's that smell, dog? Probably just kitty urine, right? Hey, Walt, why does that smell differ from a regular untrapped tiger, Walt? Hey, Walt, what do you know that I don't? What's in that basement, Walt?

Is it a tiger, Walter? That's a good point, too, because they have to make all these smells, right? Yes, they would have to generate all these smells. How do you extract the stink of a trapped tiger? Gosh. Gosh. Gosh. Anyway, the whole thing was a shit show, the Aromarama.

And that actually built up a lot of bad press about Scent of Mystery before it came out because it kind of colored press reactions to it where they're like, oh, well, this is also going to be shitty and bad. And it was. It wasn't very good. Smell-O-Vision was just like super unreliable. It was, first of all, loud. It made a hissing sound every time that a smell came out. And it wasn't just that.

Like it took too long to reach the balcony because it's further from the smell brain and that's how you know smell works uh in some parts of the theater like it was really strong in some other places it was really really weak right like how do you guarantee that each pipe is getting an equivalent amount of stink in it and because it was weak in certain parts audience members would be like forcibly really loudly sniffing throughout the entire movie well and then the bootleggers you know the bootleggers would capture the smells of jars yeah and make them available at a discount and also the movie apparently was very shitty so like all these things came together to make it a complete debacle and like no other movie ever

did it and it was a colossal failure and a huge lost leader for movie theaters in the year 1960. All right, Griffin, I have to ask. Yes? What movie? What I Want the Good Stinks In? Yes. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Next question.

Oh, okay. Maybe, what's your second pick then? Like you can't pick a movie that's specifically all about candy. Okay. Huh. How about- What about Wizard of Oz? No. movie that's specifically all about candy. Okay. How about Wizard of Oz? No. She gets in those

poppies. I don't want to smell it inside a tornado. It collects up all the stink and sucks it in. No thanks. That's fair. What's yours? Do you have a smelly movie you want? A smelly movie? I mean, I was going to say Wizard of Oz, but you really talked me out of that one yeah what in that movie smells good to you i mean just when she's when she's in the field of poppies and then they get to find out you know what glenda smells like and toto

toto you can't walk that back, baby. You want to smell Glenda. I mean, a good witch. You know, she's magical. She probably smells good, too. You're such a pervert. Anyway, Small Vision crashed and failed. But, like, this idea of movies you can smell kind of did go on in the context of scratch and sniff cards. Yeah. go on in the context of scratch and sniff cards uh in 1980 john waters uh his movie polyester or

1982 polyester used scratch and sniff cards and then a more recent probably more puritanical example is one of the spy kids movies used it uh i think it's called like smell-o-rama or something you just get a little scratch off card and it says like hey scratch off number 12 what's that yeah i was thinking and this is probably messier but I was thinking if I were to do an at-home version. Yeah. Little moist towelettes. Ooh, that's fun.

You just rub them all over your face and hands. Just like open towelette three. And now also, you know, some 4DX experiences do use it and Disney World uses it. PhilharMagic, you get great smells. Oh, I love that like smell and be our guests. Yeah. Like apple cinnamon, whatever. Soarin' does does it we've never

ridden soarin but it gives you like different nature smells and avatar the avatar ride which rachel and i got to ride for the first time this this year was fucking fantastic it doesn't you know they squirt you with water too scratch with water they get you on from all sides it's just it's a fascinating thing smell of so i love people who take big swings even though at the time they must have been surrounded by people saying this swing is bad this is a bad idea it's not going to work people aren't going to pay eight million dollars to outfit their theater with stink tubes also there's like no quality control right if you were to use this at all different theaters you like ship off your smell jars like how can you really be sure they're using them appropriately right

right they get the smells mixed up and it totally messes up your movie you see you see this really attractive person comes on screen and then they get out the mud smell and you're like cow smell cow mud ew elizabeth taylor smells like cow mud i don't want to watch any more movies with her in it history changes what's your second thing My second thing is baking soda. All right. You're going to have to really get me invested in baking soda. So here's the thing with baking soda. Yeah?

A lot of uses. All right? All right. Like obviously baking. Can you name any other ones? Volcanoes. Okay. Fantastic volcanoes. what about like practical uses uh making of volcanoes an extremely practical use and it was also what all of our listeners were thinking of is the second application of baking soda here's the thing yeah you know how it's in

deodorant now sometimes and in toothpaste sometimes and in kitty litter sometimes. Yeah, what's the deal with that? It is really great at both cleaning and masking odors. Don't let this free incentive mystery. People will be like, I'm missing all the clues. All I can smell is the baking soda. It sucked up all the stink jars. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. It's a chemical compound that is composed of sodium and bicarbonate.

Huh. Is there maybe two carbons in there? Yeah, there's several carbons. It's crystalline, but often appears as a fine powder. It is a slightly salty alkaline taste. That's baking soda. Yeah, that's baking soda. Here's the thing.

So many uses for this thing. Okay, babe. I wanted to share some of them with you. Some of them I have personally enjoyed. Some of them I didn't even know about. Dazzle me. Treat heartburn. You want me to just eat baking soda?

So you can't use too much because it can damage. So... But if you dissolve a teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of cold water, it can address some of the issues of acid reflux. I mean, that's basically what Alka-Seltzer is, yes? Yeah. Okay. Mouthwash.

Freshen your breath and provide antibacterial and antimicrobial properties there's so many ways to do that that don't involve putting baking soda in my human only mouth that i get on earth soothe canker sores now that i'm into uh so what you do is you make a baking soda mouthwash now this remember when henry had some kind of rash and they recommended we give him a bath with baking soda? Yes. You remember that? He had a very, very gnarly rash. You can whine your teeth, which is why it's in a lot of toothpaste.

It has a mild abrasive property. Okay. Which can break down some of the bacteria that can stain your teeth. Deodorant, as I mentioned, may improve exercise performance. This one I didn't know about during high intensity exercise your muscle cells start producing lactic acid right uh baking soda has a high ph which may help delay fatigue allowing you to exercise at your peak for longer now hold on lactic acid from what i've always understood is your body's way of saying like yo fucking chill

you need to chill your muscles are about to explode it's lactic acid is responsible for the burning feeling you're right exercise right it's hurt your it's your body actively hurting you because your body doesn't want to be doing what it's doing this is what i love that okay so this is a study they cite they say one study found that people who took baking soda exercise for an average of four and a half minutes longer whoa i mean it's an average that's what i imagined quite a bit there's probably some big outliers there was you know somebody who's like i've just run 30 miles i'm full of wild baking soda energy uh so here's the thing about fridge odors oh the worst i i so when this is not

recommended although i don't know if it's a marketing scheme of the baking soda company, but you know how they tell you to like put a box in there and then change it like every two months or something? That's wild. Yeah, I never do that. I put a box in there and I leave it there forever. Same, same with my car. They say change the oil. I'm like, it's oil, man.

So here's, I'm not sure on the science on this, but apparently baking soda interacts with the odor particles to eliminate them rather than just masking their smell. This sounds like an excuse I would make up when trying to sound like a scientist. It catches the stink bits out of the air, the stink nanites. Every smell is composed of 75 stink bits. Baking soda eliminates 72. So that's not very many stink bits, is it, Rachel?

Widen your laundry, clean your kitchen, eliminate garbage odor, remove carpet stains, clean your bathroom, clean fruits and veggies. This was kind of exciting. I mean, if you rub anything

against fruits and veggies hard enough, it's going to clean it up so this is in relation to pesticides so people recommend peeling fruit obviously is the best way to remove pesticide but you can soak fruits and vegetables in baking soda and it can remove pesticides without you having to peel them i'm just not going to do that making pretzels making pretzels yes Making pretzels. Yes. You got it.

You do an alkaline bath and that's how you get the good firm and bagels. These two breads are so great. Thank you, bacon. And baby, you've done it. You've won me over. Baking soda is a wonderful thing. So I don't need to talk about how it polishes silverware. No, no.

Eliminates rust. No. It kills weeds. Well, okay. Eliminates rust. No. It kills weeds. Well, okay. Deodorizes shoes. Okay. Basically, it deodorizes. We don't have to go through every...

It cleans and it deodorizes. Yeah. It soothes, cleans, deodorizes, alkalizes. Makes shit bread rise. Have you ever combined it with vinegar for non-volcano purposes? No. To like clean a stain off the carpet? Yeah.

Works really well. Yeah, you pour it down the sink when you have a bad stink down there, and it eats up the odor. A lot of people will purchase these expensive, harmful chemicals that actually destroy some of the things that you're trying to, you know, clean. Not sweet, gentle baking soda. Baking soda trying to you know clean not sweet gentle baking soda baking soda just you know it just shakes it up a little bit yeah it gets in there it just shimmies around that says like i'll take care of those particles now you're making me think of

baking soda as being kind of a little sexy dancer kind of a sexy dancer like oh hello stinky shoes shoes what do you think of this i'm shaking up gonna clean up gonna get the stink give me on the stink but where does the stink go now we're getting into the real truth of the question the research suggests that it eliminates the stink no and. But this is... Stink can't be created or destroyed. Exactly. Exactly. It must go somewhere. Where does the stink go, scientists? Huh?

Where does it go? Nobody knows. Where's all that stink going there, Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nobody knows. Yeah. When I was doing this research, it reminded me that sweat doesn't actually stink.

It's the bacteria that makes it stink and that's why baking soda can reduce the smell because it kills the bacteria it yeah something like that cool but it's just like it reminds you like you naturally don't smell bad it's how dirty your body is that's nice to think about it's not me it's everything else on the planet uh can i tell you about our friends at home what they're into got a couple here megan says i think pez dispensers are wonderful i love the idea of having a little container guy that stands on its own the sole purpose of which is making an already pretty good candy more fun to eat i don't know how common it is to keep the dispensers, but when I was little, I kept a Yoda one for like a year.

I had this exact Pez dispenser. It did give me lots of fun candy memories. And I love the Yoda Pez. I know you're a big fan of Pez. Yeah, you really want to talk about Pez with me? You love the Pez. I used to receive a Pez dispenser on holidays. My grandmother would purchase like, you know, a Halloween witch

or like a little Santa Claus or an Easter bunny. And all of a sudden I had like five or six and my dad kind of jumped on that and was like, you know, there are more out there that aren't for holidays. And so all of a sudden I had all the Simpsons Pez dispensers. And then I had like a Pez dispenser themed salt shaker and a pez dispenser themed lunchbox and then my dad suddenly had a guy at work that was like connecting him to pez it went deep you had a lot of pez it sounds like keychain yeah i never liked the candy the candy's great no oh man it's like chalk that's kind of sweet it would be hard for me i would get these at the cracker barrel whenever we stopped at them because it was like if we were

going on a family vacation driving to either florida or the carolinas to go to the beach for summer vacation we would have to stop at cracker barrel at some point i would get the pez it would be really hard for me to not just like unwrap the candy bricks and just not just pop them right into my mouth cut out the cut out the middle yoda do you have a flavor you liked uh pink they made a lemon one which was very good yeah oh yeah they're all great usually anyway uh second one here is from marianne who says something i think is wonderful is having leftovers for lunch that someone made for you the night before i packed some chicken parm that my partner and i made last night and it was a delight to eat something homemade at the office, especially something simple, tasty, and made with love.

Oh, that is nice. I always get excited when I have that opportunity. Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like you, the stuff you make lends itself more to leftovers than the stuff I make. Because I get in there with the sous vide and I don't want to, you know, do bonus salmon or whatever.

But you'll make a big thing of pasta and that'll keep us going for a while. pasta or chili? Chili. Oh, you haven't made chili?

Oh, it's almost fall. Yeah. Oh, it's almost chili season, baby. I've been waiting for that chili. Open up,

throw open those windows. Chili weather. Let the beans stink out. Thanks to 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.

And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go check out all the shows on the network, shows like Mission to Zix. And Switchblade Sisters. And Story Break. And Friendly Fire.

And go to McElroy.family if you want to see more stuff that we make. A lot of merch. A lot of merch. A lot of opportunities for growth for you and i and um i think that's it so time to until next time wipe off the makeup and hang up our hats and fancy tuxedos it's. Let me slip out of these tap shoes.

Turn the house lights on, Gary. I want to talk to the people. We've had a lot of fun here today. How is this going to end? But you know what's not fun? Uh-huh. Drugs. Drugs. When your dogs use them. When your dogs get addicted. Listen, folks.

Nine out of nine dogs are addicted to some kind of drugs out there. It's a problem, and they shouldn't be driving. Working on it. Money won't pay. Working on it. Money won't pay. Working on it. Money won't pay. Working on it.

Money won't pay. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hey, I'm Janet Varney. And like many of you, some more recent than others, I used to be a teenager. In fact, just about all of my friends were too, including wonderful women like Alison

Brie. I'm dead center on the balance beam. And this is like a big gym. All the kids' parents are there watching. I have to stop, like, you know, when you have to pee so bad and you can't even move. And then I just go. I just pee right in the middle of the high balance beam. So join me every week on the JV Club podcast, where I speak with complicated, funny, messy humans as we reminisce about our adolescences and how they led us to becoming who we are. Find it every Thursday on Maximum Fun.