Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 29: Tito Taylor

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

Rachel's favorite information extraction method! Griffin's favorite YouTube time-waster! Rachel's favorite brown soda! Griffin's favorite autobiographical song! 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.

this thing got really stinky like a couple weeks ago it got really stinky and i cleaned it off since then but now i have like phantom stink do you get does that ever happen to you it's my least favorite Star Wars like you know how that was very good but you know how like this is the episode by the way you know how sometimes something stinks but then you clean it but then you look at it and you're like you stank once that's how I feel about this water bottle hi this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, it's Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful.

Do you like how cash that was? Hey, it's Griffin McElroy. Oh, hey, Griffin here. Griffin McElroy for Radiolab. What's the one we do? I'm sorry I opened up with our stinky bottle, but... Wonderful. This is a podcast where we talk about

all the greatest stuff that we're into and you're into. And it's also the Max Fun Drive. And that's very good. And also Stinky Bottles. And Stinky Bottle Day. Go watch those bottles. It's so important. Because I look at it and I'm like, I know how that stink got there.

And it was from my mouth. Yeah. My mouth put the stink on it. And I have to live with that. Because I don't know what's going on in there. Hey, I kiss that mouth. You kiss that mouth sometimes. That's disgusting.

I know. I mean, I don't know. Okay. So yeah, it's the MaxFunDrive. This is the time of year we did it last week. And this is the last week of the MaxFunDrive. So if you're waiting for an invitation, Buster, time's running out. I don't know who you're waiting on.

If your name is Buster, we would like you to donate. All Busters must donate. Who else? If your name is Buster, Melissa. Sean. Sean. Shonda. Money time.

Trevor. Trevor, come on. You owe us, Trevor, specifically. You know what for. No, we are part of the Maximum Fun Network, and the Maximum Fun Network is supported by listeners like you. So if you have the means and you enjoy our show and maybe a bunch of shows on the network,

then consider becoming a supporting member of the Maximum Fun Network. Just go to MaximumFun.org slash donate. You're going to get a bunch of bonus stuff when you do, including a bunch of bonus episodes of all the shows on the network from, well, throughout time. There's hundreds of hours and a bunch of other gifts that we're going to get to when we get to them. I don't know.

You know, pretty loosey-goosey here, but do you want to start doing the show? Yeah. Hi, this is Griffin, and my bottle stinks. Do you want to do your first thing? Yes. What is it uh interview podcasts interview podcasts yes so you're talking about uh i mean of course bullseye with jesse thorn bullseye with jesse thorn on this network um also fresh hair terry gross fresh hair is terry

gross's one it's not really a podcast but it can be listened to in podcast form. True. And she, on that one, on Fresh Hair, will talk to people and be like, who's your stylist? And they'll be like, oh, you know, Hurricane. And they'll be like, oh, I love it. Maybe you can't hear us. Because hair? I said hair. Oh, Fresh Hair.

Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. So wouldn't it be funny if Terry grows for, like, April Fool's? We just miss it. But maybe next year I'll call her up and be like, do a thing with me. Fresh hair. It's going to be really good.

Justin got Roman Mars to do a funny thing with him. I want Terry grows. Yeah. And I listen to a lot of, like, other, like, celebrity ones, too. Like, WTF, an armchair expert. And I've listened to Anna Faris' podcast. lot of like other like celebrity ones too like uh wtf and aren't your expert and listen to anna ferris's podcast and um yeah i just i i found that i really like listening to people being interviewed about what makes them them yeah is this an interview podcast i mean in a way in what way we ask we we kind of get to know each other.

Oh, I see. Like we bring something to the table and then we ask each other questions about it. Okay, so I could ask you like, grapes, the purple ones or the green ones? And now it's basically fresh hair. Purple. Yeah, that's right. You're really good at this. Well, I went to school for it. Yeah, so's right. You're really good at this. Well, I went to school for it.

Yeah, so here's the thing. I actually wanted to be a journalist when I was junior, senior in high school. You were in the band Junior, Senior in High School? Did you do Shake Your Coconuts? Did you write that one? No, babe. Whatever happened to Junior, Senior, huh? I don't even know who you're talking about.

They did that song that was like, Everybody on united i can do the whole thing i might need you to okay uh yeah you know went into journalism yeah so i went to uh mizzou university of missouri columbia great chase school there uh and took my very first journalism class uh and did not like it what was it about my profession that you hated so much and you judge me for to this day it was not that not that i actually still have a lot of respect for journalism since my interest in the interview sure uh and that was actually the reason i wanted to be a journalist is I very much liked asking people questions. Yeah.

I found that I didn't have kind of the competitive spirit needed. You know, like I felt like a lot of the people in the class with me were real hungry for the scoop. And I was more interested in just kind of having a leisurely chat about interests, which is why I chose English major. I'm loving this because I had the same realization my freshman year at the Marshall Journalism School I attended,

only I went, it's just four years. I can do it for four years. You know, I'm uncomfortable talking to strangers, and I have virtually zero ambition in my career. And there's only like 180 broadcast news networks in the country. And so there's like very few jobs. And so you have to be ferocious. And I'm not like that.

But it's really just four years. And I can do anything for four years. Well, part of it, too, was that I didn't have great grades my freshman year. Uh-oh. And our journalism school was pretty competitive. Okay. Well, there's the other difference is I had terrible grades my freshman year. Yeah, you had to have a minimum GPA requirement, and I was not there.

Yikes. Because, well, my freshman year, I took biology and geology. I thought you were going to say, like, I took— And statistics. I took weed. well uh so let me tell you a little bit about the interview so i actually found this i found a piece on terry gross in the new york times from 2015 and because terry gross terry gross they talked a little bit about the history of the interview because she's like the best do you think when she gets interviewed about stuff like this

she's like that's your fucking question you know or she helps them out and is like the question you want to ask yeah were you trying to get at this so journalistic interviews in the United States began to appear in the 1860s as we know them today.

Before that, reporters didn't typically quote sources, which I think is interesting. What? This is something that I found in that article. No, I'm not saying you're lying. I'm just saying it's unbelievable because, like, the press was established in America for all intents and purposes, as we know it, in, like, the late 18th century yeah and so what did they do for a hundred fucking years i mean i think they told the story but they didn't necessarily feel the need to talk about who they were talking to jesus i know isn't that interesting so they'd be

like george washington carver said something about some peanuts it was really interesting i should have fucking written it down for example like, for example, if a building burned down, they would be like, you know, neighborhood person says the fire was big. Or something like that. Again, like I didn't get it word for word. And so this was largely an American phenomenon until after World War II when television gained popularity and the age of the broadcast interview began. And also, in this time, psychoanalysis, the other great innovation in opening people up, was beginning to be practiced more widely.

You know that I was deep into that when I was in J school. Just all about just peeling back the layers of these strangers I didn't know who I definitely was very anxious to talk to. Well, you also, I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but you also had to do the MTV Choose or Lose thing. Yeah, so I was in chosen every state in the 2008 presidential election. One sort of young person was chosen to cover the election from that state. I applied, not thinking I would get it, and I did, and so I was West Virginia's hard-nosed political reporter for this thing.

And it involved me going out on the street and talking to people about their political views, which basically I didn't do. And instead just talk to my friends about their political views. Which I'm sure a lot of the correspondents did. Oh, yeah. Because here's the thing. I know my friends. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because here's the thing. I know my friends. I did on election night have to go to both campaign headquarters in Huntington and interview people there. And that was tough, dog. No, I'm sorry. One of them was awesome because it was a fucking party. And the other one was real tough and also full of people I used to go to church with. Hi, what's up? Oh, I'm in a nightmare?

Yeah, I'm in a nightmare. So Terry Gross talks a little bit about how interviewing is like therapy. She said that she herself started seeing a therapist and said, quote, when she asked me a question that gets exactly to the heart of what I'm trying to say, but maybe haven't articulated clearly, it just feels so good. My ideal as an interviewer is to be the person who gets it. Like somebody can tell you something really personal. You can ask them something that can help them comfortably move to the next place and go deeper. Hearing someone speak really personally and having that affirm your experience as a sexual person or a sick person, or just a person trying to get through daily life is really valuable. And I think that's why we turn to literature.

I think that's why we turn to film. Beyond the entertainment it gives us. So, yeah, I guess what I respect about that is the thing that I always find most interesting about listening to interviews is somebody is being asked questions maybe that no one's ever asked them before the information they haven't really volunteered before uh because there's this intimacy there that you wouldn't get to hear maybe even if you were one of their really good friends that's literally it like i um this is the i did journalism for a very long time i would not call what i do now that even close at all a little bit, which is to say making video game fart jokes and videos and podcasts and stuff.

But what I learned over doing it is like really trying to think of something you can ask them that hasn't been asked and published 45 fucking times. Is it like that's the job um and it's i i it always drove me wild when i would like read an interview or like and not to sound like a like a dick but like be the subject of an interview and just be like i can answer this one before and i'll you know i'll be attentive and i will i will give you a good quote but like this story has existed for for a long time yeah and i think that's the mark of really good like interview podcasts um and i think that's what makes these these folks so talented and successful is it's we talked about nard work podcasts and like the late night talk shows yeah for sure like when you're watching a talk show too that can be something that happens it's really

exciting they have a little leg up because the folks who are coming on these shows know that they need something new to talk about. Like that's kind of on them. Well, yeah. And the host has been set up usually of like, so take any great vacations? Yeah, sure. Like they're ready to go. We talked about Nardwaur a couple of weeks ago and the Canadian music journalist. weeks ago and the the canadian music uh journalist and like he is the fucking best at this because he goes so deep and spends so much prep time figuring out shit from like there's their childhood yeah

and that like opened their you know putty in his hands at that point like they'll tell him anything it's so impressive uh so one thing in this article that ira glass says about terry gross uh and ira glass as you know host host of This American Life, said, there have been times when I've re-listened, and he's talking about Fresh Air, just to hear the order of the questions and to figure out what was planned and unplanned, like a magician sitting in on another guy's act for two nights

so he can figure out the trick to steal it. Glass goes on to say that Gross has great improvisers performance chops. Not surprising that she loves jazz artists and stand-up comedians so much. She's their journalist peer. I would love to see a show called Glass and Gross. Oh my gosh. Not doing journalism, but like crime fighting. Yes.

Yeah. Or just like talking about movies they saw that week. That would be good too. So I wanted just to close out my little segment to talk about the top three most watched interviews on television. Oh. So number three, not a surprise, Richard Nixon by David Frost in 1977. That was 45 million. Saw the movie, but I was not there.

Where was I? 1977. Yeah, where was I? 1977. Yeah, where was I in 77? The cosmos. Number two, Monica Lewinsky by Barbara Walters in 1999. That was $74 million. Do you know what the top one is? Can you guess?

Jesus. Is it recent? Yeah, it's in our lifetime. Not super recent, not in the past 10 years uh i have no idea michael jackson by oprah 90 million viewers in 1993 wow nothing has beat that to date that's wild i mean you get that you get you get two heats there essentially yeah exactly and it's somebody who's super mysterious yeah for sure that everybody was like in 93 especially no idea what he's gonna say what he's gonna do so Yeah, for sure. That everybody was like. In 93, especially. Like no idea what he's going to say, what he's going to do. So, yeah.

So I thought that was interesting to know that, you know, the highest, highest, most watched interview is significantly old at this point. What's going on? Who do we need to get on the horn? Who's a famous person? Lady Gaga? No. Do you want to know my first thing yes my first thing is super slow motion videos oh yeah i've seen you watch these before you've seen me watch a lot of stuff before because these days i don't know when this like change happened in my life but i am prone to

going down like internet rabbit holes for hours. And I used to, I guess, have a lot more focus than I currently do. But if I see a video that's like a cooking video or people who are like turning bolts and other hardware into like pieces of jewelry or someone making a table out of some pallets. You know what I think a lot of it is too too, is the Facebook kind of autoplay video thing. That's it. Is that as you're scrolling through your feed, it'll start playing, and then you're suddenly watching it. I started, and the other problem is that the way they curated it is I started watching a video once of somebody making a, you know, a nut and bolt into a pretty ring.

And they were like, well, sounds like Griffin loves pretty ring videos. And I was like oh shit i do um but yeah vine compilations videos of hydraulic presses crushing things uh airsoft gun tournaments like what why am i but i will uh i spent a lot of time consuming these things but my favorite rabbit hole to go down is slow motion videos um specifically ones showing like sort of natural phenomena rather than like dope skateboard stunts. Um, and I have a reason for why I think this is, um, and first off this genre of like slow motion videos, what's really cool is that it has gotten more like exponentially buck

wild in the last decade or so because camera technology has actually evolved pretty significantly. Um, because in order to get a slow motion video, the capture, the camera has to be able to capture a higher number of frames per second. Um, and then it shows that that video that it recorded at a more standard speed, like 60 frames per second. So it stretches it out to this like long,

longer length. So like to define those numbers, if you're not like super familiar with how it works, the average movie is shot at 24 frames per second okay except for peter jackson's hobbit movies which were 48 which was like fucking disgusting uh the standard for like video games is 60 frames per second and newer phones when you record a video on your phone that's 60 frames per second so you're literally saying you're seeing 60 images essentially in one second and that that creates the moving video so newer phones can record slow motion um and the standard before was 240 frames per second yeah i was gonna bring that up yes i have noticed that you and we all

have had this on our phones for several years now 240 frames a second you play that back at 60 frames a second you're looking at a four times speed down, right? The Samsung Galaxy S9, which came out very recently has super slow-mo, which does 960 frames per second. So that's a 16 time like slowing of the video. It's really impressive, but those are just phones. This is where things get a little wild. There are DSLR cameras like the Sony RX 10 too, which can shoot at 2,400 per second oh my gosh uh which slows down the video by 40 times which you can get pretty slow and a lot of like the youtubers who like do shit like this are working with uh sort of specialty equipment there are also specialty

camcorders uh there's one called the phantom that can shoot a million frames per second and you show that back at 60 frames per second and eventually you're talking about diminishing returns because it can only get really so slow um but like that you that allows you to see like a bullet shooting through a pane of glass and then that sequence lasting 45 minutes hard time thinking of any practical application um i mean the only practical application is like we're going to set this thing on fire and you're going to watch as the molecules individually combust. In 2011, MIT invented a camera that captures footage at a trillion frames per second. That's absurd.

That is high enough to visualize waves of light coming off of a camera flash. Oh my gosh. There's a video of this online. It came out in 2011. They take a picture of a bottle of water, a full bottle of water that's lying on its side, and you can actually watch this wave of light pass through the bottom of it, through the water, and through the cap.

It's like time traveling almost. It's ridiculous. And I'm so glad you said that because that's why I'm so fascinated by slow motion videos. It's like time traveling almost. It's ridiculous. And I'm so glad you said that because that's why I'm so fascinated by slow motion videos. It's not just like a neat visual trick. It feels like a way of seeing these secret invisible parts of our world.

It's like a microscope. It's like a microscope. It's very similar to a microscope. The first time you look through a microscope and you're like, oh my God, that's what stuff looks like. That's really interesting to me because we are all very, when you see a drop of water splash against the surface in real time,

it's nothing. You've seen it countless times, right? It does not stand out as anything and you keep on going about your day. When you watch it in super slow motion, it reveals this beautiful, magical, aquatic detonation that's been there the whole time. You've just never really been able to appreciate it before you saw it like this.

And I really like- We watched that video with the balloons. Yeah, so we watched water balloons being thrown at a man's head. They stretched so much. I couldn't believe that they were regular-sized balloons. Yeah, but that's just how balloons, that's just how water balloons do it. Yeah. I really, I'm not being like silly,

I feel like when I say that like, I think it's really incredible and science has so many ways of like revealing this stuff to us to expand your world in a way by making you see these common everyday things that you can't really perceive with your human eye that technology can only be like the only gateway into that stuff it really does feel

it feels magical it feels like there's secret stuff happening around you all the time and i think that's like so that's so rad and and there's uh so many like youtubers and and personalities who have capitalized on this idea um really good slow motion videos will show you like the event being recorded in real time like a water balloon hitting a dude's face and you're like okay that's a good prank sorry sorry steve about your face america's funniest home videos was slowed down shit getting with that mit camera every episode would take 48 hours to watch and it would just be one guy getting hit in the balls at mini golf.

And you'd be like, it's 6pm we're 18 hours in and the club hasn't even connected with the shorts. If you come back at like 11am tomorrow the club will just be touching the shorts. And it's just like 25 minutes of whoa. Yeah, oh. Tomorrow, the club will just be touching the shorts. And it's just like 25 minutes of... Yeah.

But you see a water balloon hitting a guy's face in real time. And it's like, okay, good prank. And then they slow it down, you know, a thousand times. And the way that like the water sticks to them, almost like a plaster cast and like leaves behind this watery shell that forms like to the shape of their face before it falls. That's really fucking cool. And that's what happens every time anybody ever gets hit with a water balloon.

That's what's hard to really get my head around when I watch those videos. I'm like, oh, this is incredible. And I almost don't even think about the fact that this is always the way it happens. Yeah. I should mention I'm very high right now no but there is an element of like i am not but there is an element of like i think that's a pretty common joke of just like when you're high or whatever it's just like oh man the flowers are so beautiful but here's the thing the flowers are pretty fucking beautiful and these slow motion videos are like,

I don't know, a way of kind of proving the thesis. But so much of this podcast, honestly, is a little like that. Probably. So yeah, I just,

I like them because it makes me believe in magic. Not magic, science, but cool science. Not the one where it's just like, we, you know, going to see how this bird mates. And it's like, what have you done for me lately, science? And then like, we, you know, going to see how this bird mates.

And it's like, what have you done for me lately, science? And then like, yeah, but here's a super slow motion. They slowed down the bird mating. They slowed it down. And then there's a lot of fluid. Can we talk about the Max Fund Drive? Yes, please. Speaking of fluid.

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And I fucking love it. Anyway, yeah, it's got that. It's got Spaghetti Geddon from a Bin Ban recipe. It's got our mom's chest bar recipe. And then all the hosts for all the shows. Can you say what chest bars are? Because I'm not sure a lot of people know. Isn't it?

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No, babe. It's overalls. No, I'm kidding. It's root beer. I don't think we did root beer. I don't think we've talked about root beer. You're talking about that bubbly sarsaparilla stuff, right? Yes. I love this brown, sweet fluid.

I get this everywhere. A&W, Mugs, Barg's. Do they even make Barg's anymore? Yeah. Okay. Barg's is actually kind of gross, but the other stuff, I'm all about this root beer. What is that? Is it categories where you have words on a card that you can't say?

Oh, yeah. Sometimes doing a podcast with you is like that. Where I talk about root beer and you're like, you know, that brown liquid. I just love this stuff. Bubbly. So root beer has been around for a super long time. It's actually been sold in stores since the 1840s. Nice.

Just before we figured out how to do interviews. Right. It's a big time for America. It's a North American soft drink traditionally made using the sassafras tree or the vine, which is sarsaparilla, as the primary flavor. Does this have Appalachian roots? I mean, I didn't go down to the actual location. Okay, in West Virginia in middle school, quick aside, we had to take a West Virginia history class. Yeah.

I didn't. We had to do a Missouri one, too. Yeah. I didn't. We had to do a Missouri one. Okay. I think it's standard. I didn't pay very good attention in school in general. But I do remember there was one day where our teacher brought in a big thing of sarsaparilla tea he had made. And I was like, this is going to be gross. And I drank it. And I was like, well, it tastes like flat root beer.

So it's better than I was expecting, but also kind of gross. And I think he told us it had like appalachian origins but he could have been full of shit yeah i don't know so pharmacist charles elmer hires was the first to successfully market a commercial brand of root beer he developed his root tea made from sassafras in 1875 and debuted a commercial version of root beer at the ph Centennial Exposition in 1876. Hires was a teetotaler. A what? It's when somebody doesn't drink.

A teetotaler? Teetotaler. Did you say teetotaler? Baby, it's so good. I don't think I ever knew how to say that. Teetotaler. It's so good. I don't think I ever knew how to say that. You know, Taylor, oh, my God, you fill my life with light and love. Oh, Rachel. I think I've only ever read that word.

Oh, God, it's so good. Yeah. Yes. Teetotaler. Oh, man! Okay. Can we renew our vows right now? Yes!

Okay. So sick. Okay. So he wanted to call the beverage Root Tea. However, he wanted to market the product to Pennsylvania coal miners, so he decided to call it root beer. And it also, during Prohibition, became very popular as a non-alcoholic drink. Was it just because it had the same name? And they were like, we could just make pretend. Yeah, there was so little alcohol to be fine.

You knew there were some folks back then who were like, what is this? Root beer? Yeah, let me give a shot. Whoa, I'm so faded right now, like just faking it. So here's something interesting that's worth noting. So you mentioned sassafras. And one thing to know is that saffrol, the aromatic oil found in sassafras' roots and bark that gave traditional root beer the flavor, bark that gave traditional root beer the flavor was banned for commercially mass-produced food and drugs by the FDA in 1960 because lab animals that were given oral doses of sassafras tea that contained large doses of saffron developed permanent liver damage or various types of cancer.

My fucking middle school teacher made me drink this. So sassafras is no longer used in commercially produced root beer and is sometimes substituted with artificial flavors, natural acts... Natural acts body spray. Natural extracts with the saffron distilled and removed are available. God, fucking millennials got us again. Took my cool G.I. Joes with their real bladed swords. It was banned in 1960. Yeah, I know.

I know. The millennials. Time-traveling millennials. So Bark started in 1898. And then in 1919 came A&W Root Beer. And so, yeah, this is a real old soda. My connection to root beer. Yeah, please.

So naturally, sassafras root or whatever variation they make now doesn't have caffeine in it. And so when I was a kid, I had this rare skin condition called urticaria pigmentosa, which was my skin was real blotchy and real sensitive to irritation. And one of the things they thought would exacerbate that was caffeine. So I didn't have caffeine a lot as a kid. And so I could have root beer. So I developed a real taste for it as a kid. And that taste continues today. I used to think, or at least the one doctor I saw thought that it was complicated by caffeine. So I didn't have any. I also turned to root beer because of a health condition because I had a horrible kidney stone in college that shut my ass down for like three months.

They should start advertising root beer that way. Well, here's the thing. My doctor said, you really shouldn't drink dark sodas anymore. And I was drinking Coke and all that stuff every day. And so I said, OK, I'm going to drink root beer. And he was like, that's still a dark soda. And I had already left the office. I was like, I can't hear you.

I don't like it down on much like Coke, Pepsi products anymore. But a root beer somehow in my mind, and it makes no sense, just feels like I'm doing something better for my body. When we go to fast food places, I'll usually ask for a lemonade or a root beer. It's true. It's a little treat for myself. Non-conformist. I love it.

Diet Coke tries to get me back, and they're like, we got one that tastes like cayenne pepper. And it's like, nah, Diet Coke. I'm with root beer now. I'm with root beer. Quit trying to steal me away. Hey. Hey.

My second thing, can I tell you about it? Yes. It's a song oh like we've never done songs before on the show i know i usually try to bring like one artist like a whole body of work or one entire album but i just wanted to focus on one song uh it is by casey musgraves uh who is a a sort of country turned sort of country pop artist who has a new album out that just came out in March called Golden Hour. And I wanted to talk about the opening track off of it, which is called Slow Burn. So like, I've only had kind of a passing familiarity

with Casey Musgraves in the past. It's been a really long time since I've been a consumer of country music, despite it sort of being the focus of my dad's career for several decades. I had a Tim McGraw phase as I think all like young. Well, I mean, like insert, I think in West Virginia. Okay, I was gonna say no, not for me. No matter who you are in West Virginia in like 1994, you were a big Tim McGraw fan. You had all his cassettes. But I passed through that fairly

quickly and then never really dabbled that was your favorite tam a tim mcgraw yeah i mean jesus i mean don't it's hard to be don't don't take the girl and that really was like my jam and that's sad also um i like it i love it i want some more of it you know that one gosh do you know that one yeah no i'm just picturing little griffin singing like standing at the big toy on the playground singing um okay okay wait wait wait can we address the fact that you say big toy because that's not something that most people say i don't think big toy is that a roar is that another sort of regional thing interesting yeah we called it like big what would you call it like the thing that the playground equipment with it had like

the slide and the jungle gym but it was one big thing so it wasn't just an individual slide or jungle gym it was the big toy okay anyway uh casey musgraves new album golden hour uh just came out and like i said it kind of has more of a pop country aesthetic to it there's one track that's just like straight up disco jams um it has just kind of moved away from this like pure country thing. And so it's a bit of a reinvention, but one that is not shitty. Like I don't want to cast aspersions, but I feel like there have been a lot of modern artists that are sort of the popular artists of the day who are like, all right, now I'm moving on to something new and it's going to be really convoluted as I sort of experiment with this new stuff. And with mixed success, there have definitely been folks who have pulled it off better than others. What I like about this album in terms of like it being a reinvention,

if you want to call it that it's really fucking accessible. It goes down so smooth um and i think a big part of that is that the all the music on it is is very idealistic which is kind of another change from her past album she kind of had like sort of more of a cynical hard-edged country sort of bent um but now it's just very like it's it's it's very optimistic i read a review that described it as like casey is singing about these like lovely things she's noticed about the world to an audience that she assumes has never heard about them before which is not it's not to say that there was something like naive in what she's singing about but rather like it's a reflection of sort of the earnestness with which she's singing about them and that's so refreshing

and i have this attunement i think think, because of my upbringing, despite the fact that I was, you know, never a big country music guy, I do have this attunement to a certain genre of country or country adjacent music that I can only describe as like music for driving down like a country road on a nice night with the windows down. I was just thinking of that the other day. There's something about listening to country music that kind of conjures that feeling, even if it's not an experience that you had that often. Yes.

And I think it's kind of the sentimentality of a lot of the lyrics often. Like you'll hear people talking about sitting on a porch swing or riding around in a truck. It gets so meta because then there are country songs literally about this explicit feeling. Yeah, I know, you're right. I feel like that's like a huge sub-genre of country music. That song is like, it's a little bit of chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday.

You're just talking about things you like. By the way, I only know that song because of karaoke. Literally every time I go out to karaoke, somebody busts that jam out um anyway that aesthetic is like this album all over so i wanted to talk about the opening track slow burn because i can't get it out of my head from the literally the first time i listened to it like a week ago so i'm gonna play a little bit of slow burn right now good in a glass good on green good when you're putting your hands all over me.

I'm all right with a slow burn. Taking my time, let the world turn. So like, first things first, her voice fucking rules. Yeah. I don't have any like good poetic way to like describe it. It's just very fucking good. It's a very good voice. It reminds me, the music itself reminds me kind of like a bluegrass kind of inspired. A little bit, yeah.

And I think her first album, which was called Same Trailer, Different Park, had definitely leaned into that a little bit more. Now it's a little bit more subtle. And again, it mixes with sort of more pop stuff there. But musically, it is gorgeous. That droning acoustic guitar underpinning Casey's voice, which is very, very good. It's just phenomenal. And that run on Slow Burn that she sings in the chorus is really, very good. It's just phenomenal. And that run on Slow Burn that she sings in the chorus is like,

it's really, really good. So like musically, great. What I really like about it also is as far as like autobiographical songs goes, it's one of the better ones, I feel like, even though it delivers that data in a very small number of words. Yeah, it's a very specific, like I think that's what separates it from a lot of the country songs we were talking about

is that the details are so specific. They're very specific, like born in a hurry, always late, haven't been early since 88. And I was like, huh, I Googled and she was prematurely born six weeks early and weighed five pounds when she was born. It's like a really specific detail. Yeah, that's a great grandma cried when i pierced my nose the phrase good in a glass good on green good when you're

putting your hands all over me like that's so fucking good and i feel like i know a lot about you and you delivered it in three lines what is what a good on glass good on green mean i think i took good on a good in a glass means like i can i can drink with the best of them good on green like uh i my original thing was the golf like i'm a good golfer but it probably just means like i'm good being outdoors or something yeah i don't know but anyway um but like this this idea of like the autobiographical song like any song i'm so fascinated by songs where artists sing about themselves or their history um whether it is more of a you know a coal miner's daughter or anything like you know any song there's there's great compilation videos online of uh musicians

particularly rappers saying literally the words explicitly just let me introduce um, which has been in like 40 songs or so. And it's just like, what, what information have you chosen to share with me? Stop what you're doing. Cause I'm about to ruin the, the image and the style that you're used to. I don't think I knew what image and style I was.

I don't think I had that locked in my mind. Um, Mr. Humpty. Um, but I find those songs really interesting. And what I think is really cool about this song is it just gets across a lot of stuff really quickly

that, even though it's sparse, it paints a really clear picture, I feel like, of who this person is. And it's a really personal song on a really personal album that kind of reconciles this somewhat different, more optimistic persona than

she presented in like the moods that were in her previous albums. And this is covered kind of in the liner notes, if you buy like the physical album, there's a letter that she included about how she had this kind of moment of enlightenment while she was making this record on her 29th birthday, which was during when she was making this record was when the solar eclipse happened. And apparently was this huge moving moment for her that sort of inspired the direction that this album went. And the notes say, this is from her letter, that represent different sides of ourselves. None of them are solely us, and yet they all are. There's the lonely girl, the blissful girl,

the new wife, the daughter missing her mother, the hopeful girl, the selfish girl, the sarcastic rhinestone Texan, the shy girl and the life of the party, the winner, the loser. They're all characters on this record. None of them alone are me, and yet they all are. The golden hour is when all the masks come together as one, and you can see in perfect light the whole picture of me.

I don't know i just think that the the the idea of music that musicians have written and performed about themselves is a very fucking tricky needle to thread um but this whole obviously this song is very explicit in how it does it but like i think the whole album kind of paints a picture in a beautiful way um well and so much of the industry is like selling a particular version of yourself a brand that people will think is the most marketable uh and so to come out with kind of a complicated portrait is kind of a risky move especially especially when it doesn't really look like the portrait that has been like painted in the past yeah um and this happens a lot and it can be like anything as extreme as you know fucking

chris gaines coming out or when uh christina came out with dirty and was like this is this is my new style documentary about the dixie chicks when they took kind of a more political stance and lost a lot of their yeah i mean that was more that was more organic right that was them like making a decision and speaking their their truth and that truth had always been there i'm talking explicitly about just like this is who i am now it's a new me and at times like that can feel you know like a commercial decision or it can feel like you know it can feel like anything and i i don't know it's interesting to see a musician sort of do it in a way that feels like organic and it feels like oh okay that's actually that makes sense that's who you've always that's that's who you've always been we're just like saying now it's like a slow motion video of a

of an artist's life you know secret worlds invisible worlds anyway she's probably not talking about golf there huh yeah i don't know i thought you had it all figured out that's why i asked even if i don't it still sounds thought you had it all figured out. That's why I asked. Even if I don't, it still sounds good, huh? No, it does. But maybe she's a great golfer. I don't know. Maybe it does. Do you want to know some submissions?

Yes. Here is one from Haley who says, Something I find wonderful. It's wildflower season. One of my favorite things about living in Austin is getting to see the beautiful patches of colorful flowers lining the highway in the springtime. It makes Central Texas that much more gorgeous. Oh, it's incredible right now. It's so good mean nasally speaking it is horrible yeah it's my worst so horrible um but like i don't think a lot of people understand that austin and like hill

country texas is actually like pretty scenic and then like environmentally interesting oh yeah when i moved to texas I thought it was all flat. Yeah. I thought it was a lot of cacti. No, we got hills and trees and flowers and rivers and creeks. The central Texas region, also called Hill Country, is very beautiful. Yeah, and especially this time of year. Sharon says, I've always loved when a dog gets so excited that it starts sneezing.

I didn't know this. Oh, I've seen dogs do this before. I didn't realize it was related to excitement. But I recently learned they do it to signal non-aggression so other dogs will play with them, and now I love it even more. Oh my gosh. Hey man, are you cool? Okay, you're cool.

Let's do this. I got a ball. You want to see it? No, I get it. You're cool. You don't have to. You think some dogs are really bad at fake sneezing. Oh.

And then they can't make friends. Or they want to attack. They're like a seagull coyote. Or they're, yeah, a chew. And they're like, ha ha. Oh, a chew. Oh, the cedar. Anyway, want to play? A chew, a chew.

Well, this has auto-corrected somebody's name to something that that's definitely not their name but i'm gonna go ahead and um okay hold on yes okay this is from loring not loving which is what my document said it was um here's something that tickles me the full scientific name for the western lowland gorillas is gorilla gorilla gorilla i recommend saying it out loud for maximum effect sure enough this is like the most common sort of type of gorilla and the scientific name is gorilla gorilla gorilla oh my gosh griffin let's start a band gorilla gorilla gorilla i think somebody's definitely done a band on this. I would assume so. That is very good.

Sorry that we did so many animal facts. It feels like maybe this show is moving in that direction, but animals are so great. Yeah. And so are you for supporting us in the Max Fun Drive. Thank you. This is our last plea because the Max Fun Drive wraps up this Friday. We'll be back to sort of our regular style next week, but take a moment this week and think

about supporting us with a donation at MaximumFund.org. Donate. Get the great rewards. Get the feeling of knowing every time you listen to our podcast from then on that you've helped to support us and help us to create this thing, because that sense of

cooperation is is is pretty cool i was a max fun donor before i was a you know a host of a max fun show and i still am yeah we're currently max fun donors i actually did it independently before griffin and i got married yeah um double dipping double dipping double double crafts this year that's one of the pledge gifts um but anyway uh it really means a lot to us, and we appreciate your support. And thank you. Thank you all so much.

We've had a really cool, like, really nice turnout so far, and you all have been—it really means a lot to us, again, because this is sort of still a new show that we're doing here, and it means a lot to you all. Thanks so much of it. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. new show that we're doing here and it means a lot to y'all thanks so much of it thank you thank you and thanks to bowen and augustus for the use of our theme song money won't pay find a link to that

in the episode description and thanks to max fun and um i think that's about it yeah yeah maybe we just end it with like a nice stretch like we just say hey let's all just stretch oh that might be nice i mean it would feel good it would feel good everybody just take a minute and i'll walk you through a quick stretch take your knee with your hand just grab it as hard as you could yeah knee what's up now i'm stretching you feel so relaxed right now. Griffin's never stretched before. No, but I think this is how he's done it. Money won't Work at all Money won't Work at all

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