Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 33: Fbutter and Sprawn

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

Rachel's favorite food allergy tips! Griffin's favorite form of youthful expression! Rachel's favorite educators! Griffin's favorite way to find new music! 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. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. This is wonderful. Hey, welcome back. I'm glad you made it. The directions we gave you, I know, are a little confusing. To tune into the podcast, we said, in the MapQuest directions we printed out, we said, go down I-5 for 100 miles, turn left at the big barn, turn around, we fucked up, go back

and turn right at the big barn. I do not like landmark directions. No, and it's good that we've evolved past that. Like, is that the biggest barn? Is there going to be a bigger barn? You'll know when you see the biggest barn, Rachel. It's pretty freaking big. It's kind of like a TARDIS barn. Like, it's got like 100 barns inside of it. And sometimes they call it Barnes and Noble, and that can be fun. Come on down to the Tardis Barn. Tardis Barn.

So this is a show about things that we're really into and things that we really like. And I got a small wonder for you. Ooh. Kolaches. Did you have one this morning? I may have had one this morning. Don't tell my wife. I may have had two this morning.

Whoa. And I may have more in the refrigerator, because I thought I might have a double. I might have a breakfast kolache and a lunchtime kolache. Ooh. Yeah. I'm a little worried about it. Now you're making a face. What that's going to do to you.

If you do not know, kolaches are these wonderful things. They're like hot pockets, but great. They're like great hot pockets. They're just little dough guys. Little buttery rolls. Little buttery rolls. Little buttery rolls stuffed with whatever you want. Savory or sweet snacks in there. What kind did you get?

I got some, you know, pan-sausage egg and cheese. And I got one sweet one with like cream cheese and blued berry. And it's very, very good. And I ate two of them for breakfast. And I will have two for lunch. And nobody can stop me. I'm unemployed. I can do whatever i want my body

doesn't know it has a job anymore and so i can fill it with just hot pockets did you tell the massage therapist um you're gonna be needing out some kolaches i said we're gonna be working on some tight knots and some loose bowels i went and got a massage today i've talked about this before do you have any small wonders i do yeah okay uh it's the childish gambino oh yeah the track it's very very good video yeah it's really good i've watched it like like 15 times i watched it again this morning it is it is challenging i think it is safe to say more challenging perhaps than a lot of the fair that we bring and i am only bringing it as a small wonder because a lot of people with more background and education are talking about this and i think i would advise

you to check that out yeah but i enjoyed it and wanted to share that yeah he is fucking inspiring yes and that he does like everything yes like i Like I loved him on Community. And I think that's where, and I knew of some like Childish Gambino tracks, but like to see him fucking stick his toe in every imaginable creative water. And Atlanta is a great show too. And Atlanta, yeah. And just like fucking crush all of them is really, really incredible. I think you go first this week. Yay.

Go for it. All right. So what I am bringing this week. Yum. Go for it. All right. So what I am bringing this week are my very wonderful dairy-free life hacks. Oh, dairy-free life hacks. I've heard of these. Yes. So I've talked about this on the show before. When our son was two weeks old, his pediatrician identified that he was very likely suffering from a milk protein allergy.

He had what medical professionals call his butt exploded while we were at the hospital. And it's good that it happened while we were at the hospital, because if it had happened at home, I would have fainted and fallen down the stairs. You always say hospital. It's the doctor's office. It's the same thing. No, hospital suggests like a more serious ailment. He's at doctor's office, but did explode. And that's not me speaking colorfully. His butt cheeks and butt,

sorry, what? So this is so this is different than like lactose intolerance, for example, which I think a lot of people kind of confuse it with that when I talk about it. It's literally the protein that is found in cow's milk that his digestive system is not able to process. It's more insidious, I think, than a run-of-the-mill lactose intolerance, which I possess. So he was too young, obviously, to be drinking cow's milk himself. But if I was eating anything with cow's milk in it, I was passing it along to him, and it was making him sick and very uncomfortable. The body is just so wild, the ways it works. Yes.

And the terrible thing about this is that it takes a long time to get out of your system. So I think they said something like two weeks for him, but four months for me. I thought it was just one month for you. Four months would be wild. If you accidentally drink a little bit of a milkshake, that's just four months of tummy trubs. Well, I mean, it was a long-term usage. Yes. But, yeah, it took me a while to kind of figure out how to do this

because I didn't realize how close I had to read the ingredients. So a lot of times I would slip up and I would see an almost immediate impact on him. Yeah, the bigger like thing that was tougher to avoid, I feel like was soy, which is commonly goes hand in hand with cow's milk protein allergy is they can't do soy. And that's in, hey, y'all fucking everything. Yeah, there's something about the construction of the protein in soy that's very similar to cow's milk. And so I avoided that for a long time just out of precaution. And it wasn't until he was a little bit older that we determined he was no longer allergic to that. A lot of dry ass sush.

A lot of sush without that good brown helper friend that we call soy sauce, which has it right there in the name. Yes. friend that we call soy sauce which has it right there in the name yes uh so i along the way discovered a lot of really great substitutes uh and and various food items and i wanted to share those and we should mention these apply to our friends who by choice do not drink uh do not i mean i guess even if you have lactose intolerance and you drink milk that's still a choice but like a lot of folks are vegan, for example. That was it. I couldn't remember the word vegan. Yeah. And then if you're like most people, a lot of times dairy just kind of upsets your

stomach generally. Sure. So here are some tips. Yeah. What have you, what have you, I mean, I'm asking you, but I've been subject to these products as well. And I have my own thoughts about some of them. Well, okay. So there are various ice creams that are, I think, phenomenal. They're fucking really good.

Yes. So a national one is So Delicious, and they have various ice creams that are made from coconut, almond, soy, or cashew milk. And they're very, very good. I get a salted caramel one that's very good. Recently I had a chocolate cookies and cream And they're very, very good. I get a salted caramel one that's very good. Recently, I had a chocolate cookies and cream one that was very, very good. I secretly eat some of your ice cream, like one bite at a time. I would go in the kitchen while you're watching TV and I'd be like, I want one bite of ice cream, but I didn't have any. So I eat a little bit of yours. It is as good as if not sometimes better than the real deal Holyfield.

Well, and that's why I'm talking about this. So the allergy he has a lot of kids grow out of as they get older, and sometimes it takes a long time. But Henry seems to be at a point now where he has grown out of the allergy. But I am still eating these foods because they're tasty, and I've developed an affection for them. This is a point of contention between Rachel and I. Yeah, it frustrates Griffin. My dog is up in daycare literally eating grilled cheese sandwiches.

And Rachel's like, I don't know if I should put butter on my toast this morning. Like, you wicked can. He can eat butter on his toast. And that's the thing. So because of this allergy, it led me to breastfeeding longer than I had planned to because I couldn't start giving him whole milk when he turned one like a lot of kids do. So I continue to breastfeed and still do at this point, although I probably could stop. Yes, we're probably nearing the end. So a local brand of ice cream is Natamu.

That's local? Yeah, it's made in Austin. And they have a chocolate peanut butter that's incredible. A lot of chocolate and peanut butter sort of influences on your life. So another dessert item, Enjoy Life is a brand that makes like a series of dessert treats like cookies, for example.

I get the double chocolate brownie cookies a lot. Again, like... They have a snickerdoodle kind. Some really tasty... This is good because you were eating these as sort of a necessity, but I was eating them in the kitchen when you weren't looking because you were eating these as sort of a necessity but i was eating them in the kitchen when you weren't looking because they were your special cookies and they kept me coming back and sneaking into the kitchen and eating the food like a goblin

and coming back for more these are very good they have a website they also sell like chocolate chips so if you were to make for example dairy-free cookies with um there's a uh what is it called uh something earth balance makes a uh like a vegan butter spread so if you were to make like a cookie uh you could use enjoy live chocolate chips and the uh the balance let's talk about this faux butter or butter if you will because this butter um was all we had in the house. And so whenever I had to like cook something that, for instance, had a pan sauce. Yeah. The f-butter, when applied to any amount of heat above body temperature, turns into gross water, basically.

Yeah, it's kind of like sweat a little bit. Sweat is a great way way which then makes me wonder if they've emulsified the sweat and turned it into the product i do not know you spread this shit on toast i'm down to clown until i'm in the ground you try to make a pan sauce out of it it tastes like old gatorade um and the nice thing about earth balance is they have a spread that is also soy free which is hard to find because obviously most margarine is dairy-free, but this was also soy-free, which I like. That's sneaky thief soy. So here's another point of contention among me and Griffin.

When it comes to pizza or macaroni and cheese, there is a brand called Daiya, D-A-I-Y-A. Yeah. And they make a mozzarella-style or cheddar-style cheese product that is actually largely made from tapioca starch and coconut oil. I like it. It gets the job done. Yes. But I also think that they made a slight tactical error by leaving Rhea off the end of their name.

Because I feel like every time I've eaten a significant amount of it, it has put me on the bench for the big game of life. You say this, but if you eat a lot of pizza with just regular cheese on it. This is a good point. This is a fair point. I like it. It melts like cheese. It kind of tastes like a laughing cow cheese spread. It doesn't taste exactly like cheese, but it suggests cheese, and I appreciate that about it. It tricks cheese. It's a cheese trick, kind of, that they play. No, it is above average, I would say. I enjoy it. Specifically cupcakes that are very similar to Hostess cupcakes that are dairy-free. Their whole model is free of the top eight food allergens, which include gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, corn, nuts, among others.

And they are also local. So I don't know if you can get them nationally. You must have crammed these as soon as you brought them home because I'm always on the hunt for your foods. Yeah, I didn't bring these home. Oh, so you've learned. They have them at like Whole Foods and Central Market. And so sometimes if I'm picking up lunch, I'll grab a little dessert. Can I mention one dessert thing that I was never a big fan of? And I think you kind of fell off too was dark chocolate because dark chocolate doesn't have typically like if you get it dark enough, it doesn't have any like cocoa butter or butter or anything in it.

But what's your threshold? Because because for me it's about 55 anything darker than that it tastes like yeah there's this brand is it called pasha yeah yeah griffin used to pick this up for me because there was a really great uh convenience store near us that had a lot of fancy chocolates and this was one of them um yeah 55 is tends to be my favorite. Anything over like 60 starts to be like bitter. Yeah. Okay, so that's all the kind of food items. But I wanted to call out two fast food restaurants that provide very detailed nutritional information on their website.

So you can select on their website through their menu for allergens you want to avoid. One of them is Chipotle. Hey. Which we have talked about on the show before. And part of the reason that I'm a big advocate for Chipotle is because they make it easy. They've been good friends to you and I. Yeah, they make it easy for you to check and make sure that there aren't hidden allergens in your food. And also Panera does that too.

Oh. I feel like the line's always too crazy at Panera for us to ever go there, but it's nice that they are thinking about us. Yeah. So that, those are, those are my little dairy free life hacks. I'm going to continue to eat a lot of those foods because you know, dairy has a lot of fat and can make you feel kind of sick and, and I've developed a taste for those. So it's just kind of a, an easier way to live for me in a lot of ways i remember when we found out like it was a it was a it was a upsetting moment and because a our child

was sick but also because like that was that the idea of that restriction seemed really wild to to you and i well but these these things made it like actually a lot more manageable especially once you could eat soy again soy was i will say like genuinely very difficult and it made it actually a lot more manageable, especially once you could eat soy again. Soy was, I will say, genuinely very difficult, and it made it actually hard for us to go out to eat anywhere. Yeah. Because dairy, you can go to a restaurant and just be like, I can't do dairy. But to say, do you have soy in your foods? The answer to that sometimes is, I have no fucking idea.

Yeah, soy is in a lot of bread products. It must be, and I didn't do research on this, but it must have some kind of preservative quality, because they put it in a lot of things. For example, another treat that is dairy-free are Oreos, but Oreos have soy, so I had to avoid those when I was avoiding soy. Which all of that is to say, like, I am also genuinely thankful for these things because it actually made it a lot more bearable to, well, for you and for me to go through this. Because I ate so much of it, too. well for you and for me to to go through this because i ate so much of it too when you weren't looking when you were distracted i would throw a coin into the kit into the into like the living room and you'd be like what was that noise like i was playing metal gear solid and you'd go

check it out i'd be in there scrumming scrumming on your chocolate dips do you want to know my first thing yes it's a bit abstract okay but I couldn't stop thinking about it when planning for this episode. Childhood interior design. Again, an abstract concept. But as we start to, like, fill out our new house that we are living in now with stuff, I had the most powerful memory come back to me about how psyched I always was to decorate like my space in the house that I grew up in. And this by the look you're giving me may not be the most relatable concept. But in our house, like our bedrooms were always up to us to lay out. Like I remember my mom

and dad never like came in there and were like, okay, so let's put this here. Let's put this here. I've bought this new, you know, bookshelf and I i'm gonna put all this stuff on it it was totally so much about your video game interesting things like animal crossing where you like design your space i think it probably does but i also think that this is kind of to a lot of people like this idea of ownership and self-expression being very important to a young person, I think is universally relatable, even if it doesn't manifest necessarily like that, like like this. But I think that I was an indoor kid, right. And so I spent a lot of time in my bedroom. And so I always really celebrated the opportunity to customize my space. And looking back at at that idea, what I really love is the massive amounts of unearned confidence that I had in terms of my interior design chops.

Because I would look at my bedroom once Justin moved out, I should say, and Travis and I weren't rooming together anymore, which... Jesus. Griffin still uses, this is something I didn't realize with siblings, Griffin still uses Travis as a touchstone. Like, whenever I'll ask him a question, he'll be like, well, you know, Travis would do this, or this isn't how Travis did it. And I realized, like, oh, this is really formative for you. I do that with Justin, too, I think, to a degree. But Travis and I, you know, lived in the same room together, and then we lived together in Cincinnati. Which was doable. The sharing the same room was a complete non-starter, Clant.

Clant! I would look at my bedroom and I would say, okay, what can I do in here? How about I stack up these empty Nintendo 64 game boxes on the bookshelf in a cool pyramid there and I got a couple swords that I'm gonna post up in the corner of the room that'll look great i'm gonna put the tv and the aforementioned nintendo 64 on a shelf

like five inches away from the bed i got a poos i got a poster for the movie space jam that's gonna look really good next to the door here's a gundam model that i bought at mid ohio con despite the fact that i've never watched an episode of any Gundam anime. I'm gonna put that. Where is a good spot for that? Here's a dartboard that I bought at a yard sale and have literally never played with. I think I'll put that right on the back of the door. That's gonna look really good there.

And the resulting... Can you give me an age range for all these examples you're giving? This would be, let's see, Justin's six years older than me. And he I think moved away temporarily in like the summer of his freshman or sophomore year of college. So I would have been like 13. Okay. That seems right.

The resulting room of this design crucible would be completely aesthetically repellent. But it was mine. It was my space. And I always really, really just, anytime I saw something and had the idea of like, oh, I can put that in my room. Did you not have this? Did you not have like your room that you designed and you like would find essentially junk that you could put up in there, but it was like your junk and your space and you felt like ownership of it. Well, there's, there's a couple of things here. First of all, I had that like really abrasive sand paint, you know,

so you couldn't stick anything to it. Anything tacky would get like kind of burrowed in the crevices and tape wouldn't work. Sure. So I didn't have like posters up or anything. Okay. And then around middle school, I got into sunflowers. And so there was kind of a sunflower bedspread curtain theme. Nice. And I also liked the perfume sunflowers. I really doubled down on sunflowers. I had a cologne display on top of my... Oh, Griffin. Was it mostly Axe body spray? Axe was present. No, not Axe. I'm sorry.

Bod. Oh, yeah. Okay. The squirt bottle. The squirt bottle spray. And it worked. I would say the biggest thing I had in my room that I was the most excited about was the Papasan chair.

That felt like a real decorating choice for me. And I was proud of it. Was that your pickup? Or was that a David and Linda? I think I asked for it as a person i see i see i had some of that too i had like a keyboard i didn't buy it was like the cheapest casio keyboard ever but i had it in my room and i felt like a little artiste um so when i was in high school i was over at my my best friend's house the minskers and we decided to turn their unused basement into a

rec room with their parents blessing told me about this this is like i think an even more unrelatable idea um it was a it was they were not using this basement they were mostly using it for storage but we saw this space and nobody was using we're like we can have parties in here and so we were off to the fucking races we went to every open box outlet store and bought the cheapest half broken furniture imaginable. We bought every yard sale beanbag chair that we saw on the side of the road. We purchased like a half dozen disco lights and like plasma balls from Spencer's gifts. Is this also how old are you at this point? I'm, you you know high school

like 14 15 spencer's gifts by the way is to like a 14 year old interior designer basically pier one imports uh i did have a lava lamp from there oh i had a lava lamp too um that i think i won at like a trivia contest at church that's a weird anecdote but then we had a bunch of parties down there like sleepovers and and stuff and like new year's eve parties we would have uh like we had like four new year's eve parties in a row with all our friends down there and we'd like stay up and you know count the count the ball down and then we'd have like a sleepover down there and it was so cool and i looked forward to to that party for months, because it was happening in this space that we built for ourselves entirely. It was so fucking roundhouse, this idea of like this club

house that is entirely our own creation. Like I felt so I was very excited by that. But I think more importantly, like I felt empowered by that in a way that like, I didn't feel empowered about a lot of stuff when I was a kid. And so I think there's something powerful in this idea for a young person. I think that young people need to have their own space that they feel comfortable in and responsible for. And they make themselves comfortable in it by making it like decidedly them. And I was very fortunate to like have that experience in my childhood. Although I do think it informed some of my clumsy interior design

ideas as an adult in an irreparable way. But yeah, that's something I've been thinking about a lot. Did you guys I know that you went to a pretty crowded high school, did you have a locker for yourself that you would decorate to? You know what, in high school, I don't ever think I used my locker. Oh, really? You just carried around? oh really you just carried around i think i just carried around all my books all the time wow in middle school i definitely used it but at my high school was was quite large and so like um my locker would be you know on one end of one wing of the school and like i'm not gonna fucking walk all the way up to the language arts section. I'm down in Science Town.

No way. Yeah. I wonder why I have back problems. The locker is where I really went for it. I would think about kind of how I would customize my locker. Tell me more. Middle school is probably the best example. My friend Amy and I got stickers that were for ck1 this is a very 90s reference yes right now it was a sticker that smelled like the perfume and so you could put it up inside your

locker and then your locker would smell like ck1 that's nice any pictures pictures of fucking Jared Leto's character from my so-called life? No, that always kind of made me uncomfortable. Oh, yeah? It felt like a little too teen to me. I thought you were going to say a little too Tina from Bob's Burgers. That would work, too. Yeah, I never wanted to broadcast who I was into. Yeah. to like broadcast like who i was into yeah you know i know when in my room the only posters i

had of men i had one of curtis joseph the blues goaltender in his full goaltender outfit so it wasn't really like a beefcake photo he was in goal uh and then i had an rem collage um i had several photos of michael stipe and i had a fat head you know what those are they're like sports hang-ups that are like uh they have some like depth to them um they're like they're just like big uh decals essentially like huge decals of sports things okay i had one that was like made of metal, and it was of Jeff Gordon and his race car for NASCAR. Yes. This confuses me a lot.

Yes. I never, ever... I have not watched one NASCAR. Was this a radio station get? Yes. I'm so glad you put it together, because I'm pretty sure it was just something that I found at the radio station. I was like, I could like Jeff Gordon and put it up in my room.

Do you ever have any pictures of ladies? No. This is not uncommon for a boy's room. I was just curious. Well, I'm thinking about like in my house that I grew up in. I'm imagining with your somewhat conservative upbringing, this would not be appreciated. Yeah, that dog would not have hunted. But I, you know, like a...

I don't think I ever have at any point in my, even when I like lived with... In the Space Jam poster. The Space Jam poster did have Lola Bunny. Featured. Yeah. Where she like sprawled out suggestively. Jesus. Hey, can I steal your way?

Yes, but I would like you to provide the music. Hey, can I steal your way? Yes, but I would like you to provide the music. That's so weird. Our mailman just came in the house and did that. Our neighbors are going to smash through the wall Kool-Aid man style. Is everyone okay? This message is for Awful Squad Junior. It is from Rye.

All my love and wiggles to the greatest community on the internet. I'm so happy to have made so many kind, supportive, and wonderful new friends. Thank you all for being so wonderful to me and to each other every day. QE, QE, QE. These are the buttons that you press to wiggle while playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. It's fun. You can do it at home,

like you're being controlled by the message. But then watch out, because it's like click to punch. Oh no, my dad, I punched him. This is the new spec script for Black Mirror I'm writing. Awful Squad, for those of you that aren't familiar, is something that Griffin did for a long time when he was at Polygon. Yeah, I'm still going to be on it sometimes,

but they're still rocking over there. We just play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds every week. And they set unusual rules together, which make it more challenging. It's Tuesday afternoons. Catch the wave. YouTube.com slash Polygon. Actually, it's going to be on Friday. It's Tuesday afternoons. Catch the wave. YouTube.com slash Polygon. Actually, it's going to be on Friday. It's Fridays now. Everything's changed.

Russ just tweeted about it. YouTube.com slash Polygon. While you're there, check out Brand Slam. It's a new show I did an episode of and watch Gil and Gilbert and everything they have. Yeah.

This next message is for David. It is from Julia. Hey, Goose. It's Goose. Happy 24th birthday, bro. Six months ago, I left you a birthday surprise behind the picture in your room of a long desert road, and you'll find a note that will send you on a fantastical scavenger hunt. Holy shit. Which will lead you to your birthday present and dinner. I barely know her.

Like dinner, I barely know her. Like dinner. I barely know her. I could have read that better. I'm sorry. No, the way you read it made it even funnier. Shit. Is this for real? Wait, let me finish the message.

Oh, okay. Okay. You'll find a note that will send you on a fantastical scavenger hunt, which will lead you to your birthday present and dinner. I know her with yours truly love you goose happy hunting holy shit uh the suggested time frame was near april 29th so uh yeah we're close oh man a scavenger i know i should do that for you sometime you You would really get into it. If, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would need a certain level of challenge. Yeah, no, I know.

I'm pretty good at hunting. I know. Quail, bear, moose and squirrel. The Dead Pilot Society podcast brings you hilarious comedy pilots that were never made, featuring actors like Aubrey Plaza, Andy Richter, Paul F. Tompkins, John Hodgman, Adam Scott, Molly Shannon, Busy Phillips, Tom Lennon, Anna Camp, Laurie Metcalf, Alicia Day, Michael Ian Black, And many more. Listen at MaximumFun.org, iTunes, or wherever you download podcasts. Hey, what's your second thing? My second thing.

My second thing is Kathy Tuckey, Marianne Chase, Dennis Tallman, Agnes Gregg, Dane Williams, Spear Morgan, and Iric Steinhoff. I don't know any of these clowns. They're my former teachers. Oh. Today. I'm sorry i call them clowns today is as we are recording i believe is teacher appreciation day and at least at our son's daycare it is teacher appreciation month yeah so i thought i would bring some of my my most favorite teachers this week cool um. Did I have any of them? Probably not. Shoot.

I was just fine. I wanted to talk about how great they were, too. I mean, you were welcome to share teachers that you also enjoy. I guess I had a couple good ones. If you happen to know their first and last name, which is a qualification. Oh, no. I mean, Mr. and Mrs. and Dr. and Miss. Ooh. So the teachers I all read range from kindergarten all the way up through graduate school, and they are teachers that specifically encouraged me for a particular talent or skill they thought that I had.

Kind of going above and beyond what was required of their teaching duties. They kind of recognized a particular quality in me and would kind of make me feel special for that, which is not a requirement of being a teacher. Obviously, the best teachers have that, but these all really improved my confidence and kind of made me more talented in that area as a result. Yeah. more talented in that area as a result. So my parents were both trained to be elementary education teachers.

And then my mom, all three of my mom's sisters also at one time or another pursued teaching. That's wild to me. I guess not that wild. I mean, me and my brothers all do the same shit. My grandmother also had a great interest in teaching. That's wild to me. I guess not that wild. I mean, me and my brothers all do the same shit. Yeah. My grandmother also had a great interest in teaching. I feel like I've been surrounded by teachers my whole life, and I've always had a lot of respect for it. And I feel like it's incredible to me to see how much of themselves a lot of teachers bring to the table. Our friend Anna is a teacher, and she's incredible, and she brings so much of herself to the classroom,

which makes such a huge difference. And when I say themselves, I mean a lot of teachers bring their own money and their own resources from home and a lot of extra time just to really make the kids feel special and cared for. And I just respect it tremendously. Like so much so that I was intimidated by it. You know, I had friends that became teachers and it was obviously something that I was kind of interested in, but I was intimidated by it because I realized how hard it was,

you know, and how great the commitment was and how much responsibility you were taking on. And how thankless for the most part it is, except for today, this special day. Yeah. So I just, I, I, I felt like I can't do that because it's so hard. Uh, and I would feel bad if I weren't able to really make a huge difference in these kids' lives because teachers have always been like such a powerful figure for me. Do you remember one – can you share one anecdote of like something a teacher did that like you – like it changed the trajectory of your young life? Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean everybody I read did that to an extent. But I mean, a few examples. Agnes Gregg, when we took her freshman English class,

we all read To Kill a Mockingbird. And this is a book that I think every freshman class read every single year. And she, I remember, we got to the point where they do the verdict in the courtroom with Atticus Finch. And there's the moment where Scout is up in the balcony and the woman sitting next to her says, you know, stand up, your daddy's passing as he leaves the courtroom. as he leaves the courtroom. And our ninth grade teacher couldn't read that scene out loud because it made her so emotional that she had somebody in the class read it instead. And I just remember being really struck by that, of like, they teach this every year. You've done this I don't know how many times. And it still is so powerful for you that you can't read it out loud.

And I always had such respect for her and kind of the passion she brought. And she was also very supportive of me because I was a big overachiever in all my English classes. Yeah. She always made me feel real special. Oh, and I also, I didn't read, or I didn't mention, but Dane Williams was my marching band instructor when I was in high school. I don't know if I read his name or not. And he was just like, he was very passionate about music and very passionate about the community that marching band was. And I remember this was my also my freshman year of high school. He had before the big band competition, like the state band competition, he had us all lay down on the floor and he played this music. And he gave us all these little heartbeats. And because like a big part of it was like bringing your heart to the performance. And so he like passed around heartbeats for every single person in the marching band, which was like hundreds of people. It has all lay on the floor and played this music and gave us this like motivational speech.

And I just remember thinking like, this is the sweetest thing ever. Like, was that the year that Mr. Holland's Opus came out? I don't think so. It was the show we did that year was Queen music. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. So we did like Bohemian Rhapsody and Bicycle Race.

We are the champions. Yeah. And so it's just these moments of people like, obviously, this has nothing to do with standardized tests or grades. This stuff is important, too, in its own way. But this is the stuff you remember. Feeling like I was connecting with another human. Not as a figure of authority, but somebody who really enjoyed the thing they were sharing with me and made me feel very close to them and made me trust them.

And so when they were supportive of me, it meant so much more. Because it was like I saw who they were supportive of me it meant so much more because it was like i saw who they were as a person and i respected them and then when they supported me i felt like this is this is somebody who is sincere and it means a lot that they they support me too the teachers i remember and i'm so grateful to are the ones who uh i was such a fucking lazy kid and i was so i was good at tests but bad at school if that makes sense and so like the the teachers i remember are the ones who like pushed pushed me by like not taking any bullshit which i historically am not very receptive to but was in in cases where i could tell that they were doing it because they wanted me to actually do a good job so like dan hollis uh who was my like advisor in college who just like didn't didn't accept any bullshit and

really really pushed me out of my comfort zone helped me to apply for that mtv uh choose or lose like campaign coverage thing i did in 2008 which like was not my milieu and then i got it and i was like oh no i don't know how to do this um is is a big one and then there was in high school uh tootie ray who was the uh she was the english teacher there and she also taught tv news class the like broadcast class which i went into like on a whim and then like straight up changed the course of my life because I was a theater major up until that point. And then I did that. And she encouraged me to do whatever the fuck.

Again, it was very roundhouse in that class. It was just like, yeah, make whatever. And we're going to put it on the whole TV news. And so we would make dumb, stupid comedy videos that were barely news at all. And she like encouraged me to like, break out of my shell and try to make funny things that people at my school who had no idea who I was would have to watch would be forced to watch every Friday for, you know, the first eight minutes of class. It's so interesting when you talk about like, when people talk about their favorite teachers, it's such a good clue into kind of how they became who they are. Yeah, like all those examples you gave, like led you very specifically. Yeah, for sure.

To like the path that you're on now. Yeah, I've had a lot of great teachers, but those two were the ones that like really stuck out to me as far as like, I am where I am because of them. Tootie Ray fucking made two classes for me. I was, I did like TV News 1 and TV News 2. And then like, I was done, but I like really liked doing it. And she could tell I was very passionate about it. I wasn't passionate about literally anything else in school.

She created two more elective classes for me. She was great. Do you want to know my second thing? We've talked about this before, but we've never done a whole segment on it. In researching it, I think it's very, very cool. I want to talk about Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist. Oh, okay. I am not a very active user of social media stuff,

partially because, I don't know, for whatever reason, I just don't super enjoy it, but also because I think unchecked data collection and exploitation is categorically bad for human civilization, except for the case of Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist, which is very good, actually. So if you're not a Spotify user or you've never used this feature before and you don't know, every week Spotify generates for its users

a 30-song long playlist comprised of music that kind of matches what you've been listening to, but that you haven't listened to on Spotify before and probably haven't heard before. And miraculously, I would say it's it's hidden about 60%, 70% of the songs on that playlist are fucking great, no matter what. And that is a very, very, very high hit rate um there are other services like pandora i think is the first one i can remember ever using i remember when i worked at tridata scanning documents from 4 p.m to midnight every day of the week um i would would need music and i would listen to pandora and i was skipping about every other song and hearing like a lot of repeats itunes has sort of a similar service and both of those use their own

algorithms. But in my opinion, they're, they're a lot more hit or miss. Um, Spotify, it's got mostly jams on its playlist. And,

um, this is really useful for me because I have a very bad habit and always have of just like having the music I listened to without branching out and finding new music. And over the past couple of years, discover weekly has been the way that I have found almost all the new bands and music that I listened to. I wanted to specifically talk about this this week because my playlist this

week is fucking hot fire. It's got some familiar tunes in there. I'm trying to break your heart by Wilco's on their execution of all things by rilo kiley twin falls by belt to spill some courtney barnett um and these are songs that like i haven't listened to recently but that i know and love so i wasn't quite sure like how they yeah caught it in the dragnet but here they are but in this one playlist there's so many bands that i've never heard of before that i really dig i'm gonna play like really short clips of a few of the songs there's a japanese rock band called ogre you asshole uh that has this really fun song called balance and i've listened to it like 20

times in the past couple days it's got this kind of like fun like modest mouse feel to it that i like i really enjoy. There's a song called Hammond Song by an Irish-American folk trio called The Roaches on the same playlist as the Japanese rock band called Ogre You Asshole. They're called The Roaches, and they were a band in the 70s, and I think they're still performing today. It's like Spotify is like a cool college girlfriend that you get to have and still be married to me. Yeah. as like a cool college girlfriend that you get to have and still be married to me. But this band, The Roaches,

they do these beautiful harmonies and these like really quirky lyrics and it's like so completely my jam and I've never even heard of this band before today. So this is a little bit of Hammond's song. Throwing yourself away Not even trying come on

you're lying to me you're lying to me into me And then there's a slowcore band called Snail Mail, like this cool indie rock fuzzy guitar band. And they have a song on the playlist called Thinning. And the weird thing about this one is I genuinely don't think it sounds like

anything I've listened to at all for a long time. But I still really love it. And I have no idea how curious about how this service works. And so I researched it for this episode. It's really interesting. Discover Weekly was overseen by a guy named matthew ogle have you ever heard of last fm or the website this is my jam i have heard of last fm this is my jam is sort of another music-y website where you can share the music that you're

listening to in on on social media like you'll type in the name of the song and it'll automatically find like a link to it on youtube or some other streaming service and you can share that and then you can look at like the songs that your friends have been listening to. It's just another sort of social music site. This guy, Matthew Ogle, worked on these two sites before, and from 2015 to 2017, he worked at Spotify overseeing Discover Weekly. I think since then, he recently left to go work at Instagram. So I found an interview on a website called courts that explained like how this service worked. Um, and as you might guess, like it looks at music

that you like, it looks at, uh, genres and moods of the kind of music that you're into. And it like compiles data from, from that. Um, and that's like how a lot of music recommendation services work, right? Like, Oh, you like, uh, you know like chiptunes? Okay, here's a, here's another chiptune band. Let's see if you like that. What Spotify Discover Weekly does that makes it work so well, and that I think is so fucking cool, is that it cross-references like your profile that it builds out of the music that you listen to. It cross-references that data with a human element. It looks at the billions of playlists that other users have created.

It finds users with a similar profile like you, and it finds playlists that have the songs that you've listened to on them, and then it picks another similar song from that playlist that you've never listened to before. So the Quartz article breaks it down. In the simplest terms, if Spotify notices that two of your favorite songs tend to appear on playlists along with a third song you haven't heard before it will suggest the new song to you

that's so cool fucking cool to me and it makes this service feel like so much more alive and i've used it every week for the past two years. It makes it feel way more alive to me, this idea that I'm only hearing this song because there was somebody else out there with similar tastes that I have who is listening to the same music I listen to. And this is just another one of their—it's like I'm being recommended music by 30 anonymous people who I have a lot of similarities with musically. And we're having a rainbow connection across the internet. See, I was going to say an American tale somewhere out there moment. Yeah. There's another thing that makes it work really well, is that it uses deep learning, which is like AI pattern learning software that further hones your profile.

For example, when the algorithm is putting together your taste profile, this learning software, it is smart enough to recognize outliers based on your listening history. And this is why on my Discover Weekly, it doesn't recommend songs based on the Sesame Street theme song, which I listen to with Henry every day. It knows it builds these patterns of the types of music I listen to. And then when it finds like a wild outlier, like the Sesame Street theme song, it doesn't go like, okay, well, here's the Fraggle Rock theme song, which don't get me wrong, I would still probably enjoy, but like it just leaves it out. That's so much better than like Netflix, for example, when they'll recommend shows to you based on everything you've watched. And a lot of times it's like, this is wrong. Sure. I mean, made a

bad choice. Netflix does not have the, you know, billions of songs that is on Spotify. So I think they're picking from a much more limited list. And so the heuristics they use don't need to be quite as complex, because they just like don't have enough to like show you um but this is this is this is remarkable stuff and i think that it is technology used in a practical helpful way that is good for me because i've discovered a lot of new inspiring like creatively speaking music uh over the past couple years solely through this service but also because it helps like smaller bands who make really niche music find their niche audience yeah uh by like connecting the the smaller set of of of audience that they're trying to play for which i think is really fucking cool um so yeah that's

spotify discover weekly it's it's i had no idea that it worked in such a complex way. Yeah, like, I assumed it was just like it looked at these little bubbles of like, oh, you like indie rock, here's more indie rock. But it does a lot more than that. And it does it by like, by connecting you with other people in a way that I think is really neat and ethically questionable, but not as bad as some other stuff going on out there today. Hey, do you want to hear some submissions yes marshall says something i think is wonderful are straws that

have little spoons on the end with the weather getting warmer there's nothing better than eating a slushy with a little spoon on the end of a long straw oh is there some is there something fundamentally different between a slushy and a snow cone? Yes, a slushie is drinkable. A snow cone is not. If you drink it, if you... No, no, no. If somebody can't... Well, no, no, no, no.

A snow cone is not even in, like, a drinkable shape. Maybe if you, like, chomped off the top of it. But they both use those little straws with spoons. Yeah, I guess that's true. A straw a straw? A sprune? A straw? A straw?

A a sprone? A strewn? Sprawn? Or strewn? Strewn is already a word. I'm'm gonna say sprawn judah says now that spring is in full swing i want to say how wonderful gardening is it gives you a great excuse to get some sunshine all summer and the payoff is so sweet when you get to take all those little tomatoes and make the best

fucking pasta sauce you've ever had because it's made with love i love the idea of gardening and don't want to do it yeah both of us love the idea oh i love it i think it's so with love. I love the idea of gardening and don't want to do it. Yeah, both of us love the idea of gardening. Oh, I love it. I think it's so cool. You're making shit from the ground with nothing but sunshine and seeds. I literally forget it's an option. I forget that I can do it. We own this property and we could have a garden.

We could have a big, beautiful garden, but won't. Lynn says something I think is wonderful is that when my parents got married, they only bought one wedding band and cut it into two very thin rings. They did it to save money, but I also think that's symbolic of their love, and I think it is adorable. What a cool idea. Yeah, it's a cool idea. I know this is a very specific one, but I thought it was very neat. Yeah, and don't try this at home if you don't know what you're doing, because I imagine it could be a little dangerous.

Step one, step one, don't try to do it while it's on your finger. No, no, no, no, no, no, bad, bad. Put the saw down. That's it for this episode. I'm sorry for yelling bad at you, but you know what you did. Thank you 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 Max Fun. you can find a link to that in the episode description and max fun thank you maximum fun.org for hosting our podcast and all the other great podcasts yeah podcasts like the beef and dairy network podcasts like lady to lady podcasts your mouth made a cool sound when you said that did you hear that yeah i did what was that i mean i don't know it's just some just god the body is just wonderland uh yeah anyway a bunch of podcasts at maximum fun and if you want to hear other shows we do

it's all at mackleroyshows.com and i think that is gonna do it until next week this has been wonderful bye Bye. I'm Riley Smurl. MaximumFun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. I'm Riley Smurl. I'm Sydney McElroy. And I'm Taylor Smurl. And together we host a podcast called Still Buffering, where we answer questions like, Why should I not fall asleep first at a slumber party? How do I be fleek? Is it okay to break up with someone using emojis?

And sometimes we talk about butts. No, we don't. Nope. Find out the answers to these important questions and many more on Still Buffering, a sister's guide to teens through the ages. I am a teenager. And I was too. Butts, butts, butts, butts, butts. No.