Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 40: Sheet Fighter

Episode Date: June 27, 2018

Griffin's favorite nearby celestial body! Rachel's favorite new music! Griffin's favorite psychedelic song! Rachel's favorite love study! 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, it's Griffin McElroy. This is wonderful. Dan Daniel back at it again with another episode of our podcast. I can't believe that's the first time you've used that. Yeah, I was downstairs in the kitchen right before we came up here to record. And I was like, what? The people love a sort of like silly thing that I say at the beginning of the show to introduce it.

And I was like, I miss damn Daniel. Not just the phrase, but like the whole situation of it, I guess. I tell you, I didn't know that was a thing until the Bachelorette. Really? Yeah, until that actual guy named Daniel brought it to the table. Well, Ram, Rachel, that's pretty wild. It sort of took the America by storm, including me. And even every night when I said to you right before you went to sleep,

I would give you a gentle kiss on the lips, like two feathers brushing against your lips. And then I would say to you, I love you. Good night. Say your prayers and do a sweet dreams and damn Daniel. Every night? And you didn't even like bother to Google it? Why I said that to you?

Every night? You know, I guess I never put it together. Anyway, there's a podcast about damn Daniel and it's called Wonderful. The name doesn't work with what the show's about, but we talk about everything. So we did an episode last week, if you missed it, about the white kids and where you could find them. And then we did an interview with damn Daniel himself and just sort of talked about what his life has been like. We did that episode on famous daniels throughout history yeah and the show hasn't taken off yet but i think that's just because we have the explicit tag on itunes because we do we do say the d word a few times we've said

it we've said it a few times since we've been doing it but um maybe this episode instead of talking about our our best friend damn daniel we could uh talk about things that we like i would like that especially if you went first. I do go first this week, but I think we should both go first with the hot corner, small wonders. Whoa, I really took it back there to the thing that we only called it that one week. You got any of those old guys that I like so much? You know, I was trying to think of a small wonder all day. Uh-oh.

I got nothing. Yeah, stuff out here. Stuff out here. Maybe it's just because everything that you see, you have so much love for it in your heart that it's like big wonders. Yeah. And so you don't want to burn them all down. I want to talk about SGDQ, Summer Game Stone Quick. It's back.

It's better than ever. Every time it happens, Rachel says the same thing, which is, I can can't believe it's going on again i can't believe it just feels like it was last week every time it goes on you talk about it on the show yeah i do because it's great uh i have managed to get like way deeper into like the speed running scene than even i was when we i guess when it last rolled around in january question about this actually that i just occurred to me yeah do the same people come back every year and speedrun the same things? No, they have a different schedule of games. You know, new games come out, and some games are better suited for speedruns than others.

But sometimes they bring them back, show open this year with Banjo-Tooie, which you're like, Banjo-Tooie? They did that one like three years ago, and they're already doing Banjo-Tooie again? Well, all the strategies have evolved and changed, and they've found so many new ways to burn that game the fuck down that they just brought it back again because it's just a completely different run and that's what i find very fascinating oh gosh so many questions are coming to mind all of a sudden go uh how do they find these people uh they all are like active members of the speed running community it's like a very tight-knit as you can imagine it is like pretty niche but at the same time there's actually a lot of people who are doing it. And so each game kind of has its own community. But the whole speedrunning scene is very, very connected.

Follow up question. Yes. How do they decide what games they're going to do? I think they take a look at like what games they did last time, because they don't want to repeat it too much. But then there's some staple games like later today, they're doing Super Metroid, which is like, you got to do Super Metroid, because it's like a classic and it's like one of the first games that developed like a serious speed running scene uh final question yeah do they ever do like your basic like your free cell or your mind sweeper yeah they have entire blocks devoted to

sort of like weird picks uh they did kind of one of those last night. You know what they ran? Somebody knocked it the fuck out the park in about 10 and a half minutes. You want to guess? Motherfucking Cool Spot. Oh, really? We got to watch the on-demand footage of the Cool Spot run.

This is how you get me into it. It was at like 3 a.m. last night, but I would love to watch the Cool Spot run with you as soon as we're done. Yes, because that is another of the approximately a hundred percent of video games I've played that never finished. Yeah. Well it's,

yeah, I have many games like that. That was like, Oh, I didn't finish. Oh, and you already finished you in the span of me starting that sentence. You,

you finished the game. I love SGDQ. They raise money for a doctor without borders and it's really cool. And so go, go watch it. Just be careful because I, man, I just spend parts of the day just watching speed run videos sometimes if I don't have anything better to do,

even when this event's not going on. Sometimes I watch videos about the history of how runners have tackled specific games. I'm pretty deep down the oubliette. I go first this week, though. Yes. And so last time I did what? Tic Tacs?

Yes. And something else. I want to do something a little bit bigger because the tic tac it was fun and i do eat them every day i had probably about i would say about 40 today um i want to talk about the moon you know about this oh i think uh it's the night sun yeah it's like the evil sun um yesterday evening what was that fast food chain that had the moon character oh it was mcdonald's yeah it was mac tonight was his name yeah there's not going to be a mascot for any major fast food franchise that you're going to be able to describe that I will not know how to name. And that includes all of, you know, the BK kid squad. I take that back because I can't even remember what the name of the squad was. But it's weird that I'm talking about the moon maybe a little bit.

But last night you had gone to bed. I came up to my office to do some work on Adventure Zone editing. And as I walked up the stairs, the door to Henry's playroom is open. And in Henry's playroom, there's just this big window looking out into sort of the nature behind our house. And the blinds were pulled up in this window. And just this beautiful just panel of moonlight was shining into the room in this like perfect square of moonlight on the floor. Tomorrow is the full moon until like the moon of moonlight on the floor uh tomorrow is the full moon until like the moon's nice and big and bright right now griffin you didn't wake me up no i didn't

wake you up for the big i thought i woke you up last night because i went to turn the air conditioner down in our bedroom stepped on one of those palmetto bugs it was the fucking worst is that what they're called palmetto bugs i always them June bugs. No, it was like a big bug, like a water bug type dealie. I smooshed it good. It was so fucking horrible. It was so gross. And you didn't hear me going like, Anyway, I don't want to talk about the bug I squooshed.

I want to talk about the moon because I looked up at it through the window in our son's playroom. And I just thought like, wow, the moon is pretty good. Do you agree? No, I do. Actually, like, wow, the moon is pretty good. Do you agree? No, I do. Actually. I really, I enjoy the moon. Here's some stuff about the moon.

It regulates my monthlies. That's my first thing about the moon and you just fricking took it. I didn't mean to step on that. It says it comes and it gives my wife her monthlies and it comes and takes it away too, I guess. I know you're wondering how that works. It's tidal pull. It just sort of yanks and yanks and yanks um do you know how far away moon is i like to give you these little brain

teasers from time to time oh my gosh i'm gonna be so i have no capability i'm not gonna go on with the show until you tell me how miles yes i just want me guess. I just want to know wisdom of the crowd style. 1,000 miles. 1,000 miles? Yeah. I'm going to say it's more than that. 1,001 miles. Oh, no.

It's 238,000 miles away. Yeah, it's pretty far away. You look up at it and you say yeah i mean buzz is up there scooting around you're like that'll take him like a couple days cauldron or light year yeah and um we only get to see the one side of the moon because of its synchronous orbit around earth that one side with all the you know stuff on it is always facing us and that's kind of a bummer to me because i bet the other side's pretty good but nobody really gets to see it that's the other side then we never have that pink floyd

album that's true and then we wouldn't be able to synchronize our viewings of paul blart mall cop 2 to it um i just really like the idea that the earth i'm not high but i like the idea that the earth just has like this little friend up in the sky that's moving in the same way that we are that's very cute and the moon does all kinds of cool stuff for the earth too and it's just like it didn't have to be there you know like a big chunk of whatever ran into earth and then the moon came out i guess and now the moon's there and it's like wow cool moon i was gonna say i actually don't know the history of the moon came out, I guess. And now the moon's there. And it's like, wow, cool moon. I was going to say, I actually don't know the history of the moon. Yeah, there's a big chunk.

Not a big chunk. It was, I can't guess as to what the thing. I read it briefly on Wikipedia today, but I didn't write that down. But something hit the earth, and I guess the moon came out. Maybe. But here's some cool stuff the moon does. One, we have a light in the evening time yeah earth has like a little night light um did you know though that the moon is not actually especially

bright there is a term called albedo which describes sort of the reflectiveness of a celestial body like how much light and radiation it can catch and reflect back to the observer. And the moon's albedo is like super low, very, very, very low. There are a couple of reasons why it looks bright in the sky, though. The first is this observational phenomenon called opposition surge that I learned about for the first time today, which basically says when there's like a rough surface, like the surface of the moon, and it is illuminated from a light source from behind the observer, there is it makes that rough surface look brighter. So like a specific example of this is if there's an astronaut

standing on the moon, and they have the sun at their back, right? And so their shadows in front of them, and they take a picture of it all around their shadow will be like this halo of light and that is just a weird phenomenon called opposition surge that has like a few sort of hypothesized explanations for it um and so that is why you know the the sun is behind the earth somewhat and it hits the moon and the moon just kind of looks brighter because of this phenomenon the other reason is just because it is illuminated at all and it is standing in contrast to, you know, the pitch black horror of space, of infinite space. But really, like, the moon is about as reflective as, like, worn asphalt.

It's not that bright, but it's doing its best. The moon also causes the tides and the monthlies thank you for i wanted to make sure uh because the gravitational pull i never really thought about it before the sun also has gravitational pull that affects the tides but it's only about like 40 strength of what the moon does because the sun sucks and the moon rules i'm sorry When you become a moon fan, you really have to take a very strong position against the sun. The sun, I want you to know that I'm okay with you. Okay. The earth is pulling everything down.

The moon wants to pull everything up. It wants to get its grubby little hands all over all of our stuff. The only thing it can really move is the water. move is the water. And that's how we get the tidal pool because it literally lifts the ocean up in a huge mound at actually two opposite points of the earth at a time, which then a bunch of different forces like, you know, wind and actual friction for the ground underneath the ocean creates, you know, waves and tides and stuff like that. I wonder if surfers have some knowledge of the moon and how it impacts the waves um probably but you've just made a very good point which is without the moon we wouldn't have rad surf stuff we wouldn't have um point point break no bungas

of any kind no bungas we wouldn't have yeah a lot of the trademark sort of tmnt stuff would be out the window um the underground disney classic meet theedles, like that film wouldn't make any fucking sense if they weren't surfers. Oh, I don't, you know, and I don't think I've ever seen it. Meet the Deedles? Yeah. That's okay. Only me and my brothers have because we rented it while we were on vacation from a Blockbuster

video once. And I honestly don't remember anything about it except that i loved it very very much i should re-watch that maybe i'll bring it on another episode um one last thing the moon does that's very cool that i didn't really appreciate because i hadn't thought about it because i don't know anything space is really freaking cool i love bringing space stuff on this show like like the sandwich astronaut because it's just really cool and there's infinite of it so there's like infinite stuff to talk about but anyway um the moon makes the day longer on earth um because of the friction created by tidal pull it is very slowly uh slowing the rotation of the earth just like microseconds per year uh because of the the pressure that the moon

exerts on the earth with tidal pull it slows its rotation just a little bit but those microseconds per year. Because of the pressure that the moon exerts on the Earth with tidal pull, it slows its rotation just a little bit. But those microseconds every year, they add up over, you know, an extremely long period of time. So it's estimated that four billion years ago, the Earth spun three to four times as fast as it did today before the tidal friction slowed us down to the 24-hour period we have today. I think it's estimated that like 4 million years from now, if the sun, you know, made it that long,

kept on kicking, the day would be like two months long or something wild like that. I didn't get that necessarily down on paper. But that idea that 4 billion years ago, the day was a quarter of a million. So like dinosaurs were like where did the time go yeah if they were around four billion years ago i don't i i anytime i talk about any history literally before i was born i get it very wrong and i get a lot of tweets um but yeah the flintstones were there and they were like get up bam bam bam go to bed um so i know i talk like speaking of the flstones, kind of a caveman when I'm talking about the moon.

But I don't know. I just had a nice little moment last night. I thought of all the nice times that I had like a camping trip or some sort of outdoor nighttime thing. And I looked up at the moon and I just thought like, oh, that's nice. You got the great Fievel song about it. You got, it gave us like an aspirational first step out into space, not first step, but like first, you know, stop and visit. Uh, the moon is very good.

I like it when it's like a little sliver. I like it when it's full. Yeah. When it's half. Did you know that when it's a quarter moon, that it's not a quarter as bright as it is when it's a full moon, it's actually like a 10th because of that weird opposition force or what is it? Opposition surge. How would I possibly have known that? I know. It's just, it's a full moon, it's actually like a 10th because of that weird opposition force or what is it? Opposition surge. How would I possibly have known that? I know. It's just, it's wild. We don't

do a lot of moon studies in school. Yeah. You don't really study the moon. I imagine they did back in like the early seventies, late sixties. I feel like elementary school and middle school was like, here are the planets and what they're called. All right. And then like the next thing for me, it was then like, you know, 14 years later, it was like, all right, I know what we said about the planets and what they're called, but we were changing it arbitrarily. You were super betrayed by the whole Pluto thing. I really was.

Because I don't know what the new fucking mnemonic device is. My very energetic mother just made us noodles. It doesn't make sense. That works just as well. but there's nine of us and we need nine pizzas these noodles aren't gonna feed my all my friends you're just so feisty what's your first thing uh my first thing is an artist that I just discovered today. Oh, boy. Her name is Mitski. Mitski.

Yeah. She is a 27-year-old Japanese-American singer-songwriter that started singing and recording while she was studying at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. She started releasing albums in 2012 and has a new one coming out in august called be the cowboy this is one of your new music jams that you bring to the show sometimes i like to go with like classic stuff but you are on the fucking bleeding edge so what i do um our very dear friend evan minsker works for a website you may have heard of called Pitchfork, which I go to every once in a while to see what the best new tracks are and best new albums.

And this track, Nobody, was listed today. Let's play a little bit of Mitski's Nobody right now. No one will save me I just need someone to kiss Give me one good honest kiss And I'll be alright Nobody, nobody, nobody Nobody, nobody Nobody, nobody, nobody Can I be honest with you? Yeah.

This spooked me out. This song kind of spooked me out a little bit when you sent it to me. So here's the deal. Yeah. I feel like it was kind of dreamy and poppy, and it reminded me a little of The Bird and the Bee. Yeah. Oh, The Bird and the Bee is so good. And it does remind me of that a little bit. Maybe I'm conflating it with the music video, because the music video has a little of the bird and the bee. Yeah. Oh, the bird and the bee is so good.

And it does remind me of that a little bit. Maybe I'm conflating it with the music video because the music video has a lot of sort of like Hauzu style imagery of like arms and faces coming out of the walls and like being all creepy. Yes, the music video is very good. But yeah, it creeped me out. It's a good jam.

It just like made me feel uneasy, which I guess is good. Music can be evocative like that. Yeah, she's kind of been all over the place too. So after I heard that song, which I guess is good. Music can be evocative like that. Yeah, she's kind of been all over the place, too. So after I heard that song, which I love very much, I started going through her catalog. And she had an album that came out before that in 2016 called Puberty II, which I kind of love as the title of an album. That's a very good title for anything. And that's a lot more like rock and roll.

Huh. So she studied composition in college, and her past records lean more towards piano-driven, singer-songwriter kind of music. She said in this interview in Rolling Stone that she cites the international folk music her dad would play and the Japanese pop her mom would sing to herself as inspirations. But she also draws influence from MIA, Mika Bjork, and J-pop singer Sheena Ringo. Okay. Those sound like very good inspirations to perform. Yeah.

And then she just kind of recently picked up guitar to just kind of add to her ability. But the song I wanted to play from Puberty 2 is Your Best American Girl, which I like because it's also a very good song and it's almost totally different from Nobody. It gives me kind of a rock and roll Weezer Blue Album

vibe. Alright, well here it comes. Right into your cans, your earphones I mean. It's Your best American girl here on Wonderful Radio. I'm proud of how my mother raised me, but I do, I think I do. And you're no American boy, I guess I couldn't help trying to be your best American love. So at around a minute 25 in that song, it just really, really hits the groove. Yeah. Super exciting. And the lyrics are super good, too.

How do they go? So here's how Your Best American Girl starts. It's, if I could, I'd be your little spoon and kiss your fingers forevermore. But big spoon, you have so much to do and I have nothing ahead of me. And then the chorus is your mother wouldn't approve of how my mother raised me, but I do. I think I do. And you're an all American boy. I guess I couldn't help trying to be your best American girl. So it's just, it's like super, she, she does a lot of writing about being kind of the other being kind of an outsider, which I know I always love. Uh, but I love, I love the lyrics

to that song, especially just this feeling of like being in love with somebody that you, you kind of see as the like all American, like, you know, aspirational, all this country can be. And then feeling like you couldn't possibly be that. Yeah, sure. But yeah, so I was super excited about her, her single, Nobody. And again, that new album, Be the Cowboys, comes out in August 2018. I love when you bring new music to this show, especially when it's like a new artist that you haven't heard before.

Because it's just like, it's always so exciting to have like a new musical artist that you're into. When I, when I like listen to a couple songs and then you start going through the back catalog and that's really good too. Yeah. Just like, oh my gosh, there's this whole world out there and now I can like really dig in. Yeah, sure.

You know, it's like when you, when you find a new author or a new podcaster. Yeah. I just got into this guy. His name is... I can't think of a podcaster other than Marc Maron sometimes. And that's not good. Because there's lots of them. And also, I do it and know a lot of them.

Chuck Bryan. Chuck Bryan. I'm very into his flavor right now. You know what else I'm into? What? You know what else I'm into? I don't know why it came out like that, but I'm into stealing you away.

Hey, I'm gonna steal you away. Can I steal you away, though? Boop beep. Beep. Boop boop. Beep beep. Boop boop. We're losing her.

Beep beep boop. Boop boop. Beep beep. Boop boop. We're losing her. Beep beep boop. Boop. No! Claire, get out of there! That's my wife! Boop. Boop. Boop.

We gotta get her a new butt. Wait, what? She's been on the transplant list for too long. She needs a new butt! Take my butt! Please. This is a new butt. Take my butt. Please. This is a real journey we went on there. Yeah, there were like three or four skits in there.

Hey, Griffin, do you want to hear some Jumbo Trance? Yeah. From our pal Mario. Hey, I would love nothing more. We would have to issue refunds to both people, but I would love nothing more than to hear you do Mario doing the Jumbotrons. This message is for Nick. It's from Beth.

So Dusty goes up at the end of everything? It's kind of like a Seinfeld Mario combo. Yeah, it's fun. What's the deal with Goombas? Bowser. Like he says Newman. Newman is kind of the Bowser of Se seifeld if you think about it write a thesis on that yeah so i guess george would be luigi uh would elaine be peach that feels obvious maybe daisy because daisy was more like sort of, you know, in charge. She was the mayor of New Donk City.

Who's Toad? Kramer's Yoshi. Oh, okay. Toad could just still be Toad. Okay. I'd watch that. The new Super Smash Brothers is really weird. This message is for Nick.

It is from Beth. Happy birthday, probably, to the best dude. Hopefully you like my cat since they're living here by now. You're the best and I love you a lot. A lot of ifs in this message. Well, it was for March. I really hope you like those cats then. Because you've been with them for three months now. And I just hope everything's going okay with the cats.

And, you know, they're not having sort of a dander filled birthday or had one. Cause it was a quarter of the year ago. Uh, this message was also for March. Uh, Oh, let's take a trip back in time. Let's think March.

So we moved into our house. Yeah, that was, I had a birthday. You had a birthday. Yeah. This message is for Jenny and Brian. It is from Becca, dear Jenny and Brian. It is from Becca.

Dear Jenny and Brian, I think you are the most wonderful people I know, and I am so grateful for your friendship. Congrats on one year of marriage and the new apartment. I think you guys are the coolest couple other than Griffin and Rachel. Hell yeah. Can't wait for our chill hangs. Love, Becca. Recognize the game, though.

I mean, you don't need to include stuff like that in your messages of like, you're the best. I mean, second best behind the host of whatever podcast you listen to. Yeah, I mean, they have precious characters to choose from. So I would not expect that. And I also just want to just up the congratulation. You said a year of marriage. I'm going to say a year and change. That three months is important.

Again, it is one entire fiscal You said a year of marriage. I'm going to say a year and change. That three months is important. Again, it is one entire fiscal quarter of a year. Sometimes every month can feel like an eternity. Why? I'm just teasing you. Well, Adam, we're still putting out the Greatest Discovery podcast while we wait for season two. What are we doing with these

episodes? We've talked to a whole bunch of interesting people like the Wall Street Journal's Ben Fritz and MaximumFun.org's own Danielle Radford. We're kind of using this time to find ways to entertain ourselves and you while we wait for the next season. So catch yourself up with Star Trek Discovery and join us Tuesday on The Greatest Discovery. It's on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. I got a song.

Oh, good. In my heart. Down, down in my heart. It is a song called When I Was Done Dying by Dan Deacon, who I shamefully did not know very well and probably had the strangest way of introduction to Imaginable, which is we went to Max FunCon East in what, 2016? Were you pregnant then or was it 2015? Oh, I was pregnant.

Yes, I was 2016. And Dan Deacon was a guest there where he did a DJ set for like the party night of Max Funk Con. If you've never been to Max Funk Con, one night is always the dance party night. And this one had Dan Deacon DJing, which made it one of the better party nights of my entire life. Holy fucking shit. The dude ripped it right up.

He played some Little Mermaid jams and everybody felt so seen in that moment. Yeah, there was like a projector sort of shooting some some cool visuals all over the room. And it was it was seriously the best. And I instantly recognized like this guy knows jams. And so I started listening to him. I picked up his 2015 album Gliss Riffer, which is a fucking great name for an album. A lot of good album names this episode. And I was just sort of enamored right away that the album is fucking great. There's a lot of great tracks on it, like Feel the Lightning and Learning to Relax. A lot of the songs are genuinely the slap in terms of like they are upbeat sort of danceable jams, even though the lyrics you probably wouldn't assume are the lyrics to dance jams necessarily but my favorite song off this album is when i

was done dying uh which is just this psychedelic jam full of all of these all of this like existential imagery and stream of consciousness writing which i'm learning doing this podcast i very much enjoy apparently in my music um i'm gonna play a little bit of it right here so you can get a feel for what the song is like. This is When I Was Done Dying by Dan Deacon. So like the song itself, the music is so is really interesting. There's this mix of like acoustic and electronic elements to it. There's this nonstop marimba riff happening under this like really crunchy guitar riff under this like really shrill gated synth that comes and goes with like each couplet

of each verse. There is this chorus of voices that are singing at different pitches just singing along with with dan deacon's vocals uh and this like really simple acoustic drum loop happening underneath it like even without all of the lyrics like it is just a really neat neatly composed song um but the lyrics are what makes this song really powerful to me they're they're super evocative, albeit without being like an explicitly clear message about what the song is actually about. There is imagery about like sort of transcendentalism and spiritual reincarnation

and like these cosmic cycles of life. Some people have sort of posited that maybe it's just sort of a description of like a very vivid drug trip which is you know maybe valid also um but the lyrics are just like sung in this non-stop breathless way and are full of just these really wild like hypnotic images my favorite verse of the song goes uh it's sort of describing all of describing all these things that uh he experiences if you're to believe the title of the song when he it's sort of describing all of these things that he experiences, if you're to believe the title of the song, when he's done dying. And so this section goes, and the earth looked at me and said, wasn't that fun?

And I replied, I'm sorry if I hurt anyone. And without even thinking, cast me into space. But before she did that, she wiped off my own face. She said, better luck next time. Don't worry so much. Without ears, I couldn't hear. I could just feel the touch as I fell asleep softly at the edge of a cave. She said, You are being a good enough person, whether or not you're making the most out of your life. And anytime there's sort of any imagery of this cosmic force, you know, trying to reassure you in this song, the earth telling you wasn't that fun after you die and saying next time, don't worry so much. It's like so, so, so beautiful to me.

And I think it tells a lot about Dan Deacon. Also, he had an interview with Baltimore Magazine. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. And he described this song as the most representative of me lyrically on the album Gliss Riffer. And he said that speaking about Gliss Riffer, that it was like a very, very personal work. He says, and this is a quote, it's me exposing myself, figuring out the root of my anxieties and who or what the hell is going on inside of my own brain, which is very, very relatable and very, very good to me. And the idea of exploring your anxieties through this like existential artistic lens and then creating a song that is like this evocative and beautiful is genuinely like super inspiring to me. And on top of that, I just I think it's such a

bop. It is so good. It's very, very good in the video, the video. Holy shit. I hadn't seen it before today. But I had to send like Rachel this song so she could listen to it. And so I said, like, looked it up and found a YouTube link and send it to her. It's from an Adult Swim series called Off the Air, which is sort of this just wild animation series that's on Adult Swim series called Off the Air, which is sort of this just wild animation series that's on Adult Swim. And so a few animators got together and did a music video for it that go look that shit up. It is fucking amazing.

It is so good. You want to talk about your second thing now? Yeah. So my second thing is a article from time.com. I'm so sorry. It's called The Science Behind Happy Relationships. Is there anything in there

about taking large slurps of your soda while you're recording a podcast? Or is that like the first thing it says? You're not going to believe this, but laughing like that as I did, it actually made my throat kind of scratchy again. And I want to take another gulp of soda, but I'm just going to kind of sit here and just try not to cough instead. No, I want to support you.

Oh, good. I'm ready now. Okay. Okay. Okay. So there has been a lot of research on the qualities that create a lasting, happy relationship for couples. Sure. And this article kind of summarizes some of those studies, and I found it very interesting. Can I guess some of them?

Yes. Sex power. No. power uh no uh both you like the um like frazier but that's number one or both of you hate frazier but you can't do one-on-one cool cool clothes you know it's not frazier but it is cheers so you were close you had kelsey grammar he was fraser on that show so i think i still got it right technically i meant the character fraser not the show fraser of course duh of course that's all three that i can think of okay do you want to know there are actually three uh empathy yeah i'm just like, yeah. Positivity.

Sure. If the third one's not sex power, throw this article away. Strong emotional connection. So that's kind of like sex power. Sex power is an emotion. Although I'm not sure exactly that I know what you mean by sex power. So if you wanted to elaborate on that. It's just the aura, you know?

The aura of somebody's sex power yeah yeah yeah or the aura that happens during oh this is good yeah so it's i i you're asking is it just sort of an aura somebody gives off where you know that they have very much sex power or is it is it a more of a noun that's just like you're having sex and then like things around sex and then things around the room start moving or catching on fire because of the power coming out of your body? Yes. And the answer to that's both. Both. Now that's what the article says. Nothing about cool clothes, though.

Uh, okay. So this is, uh, research that I saw, uh, from the Gottman Institute, which is an organization dedicated to the research of marriage. Uh, they say that emotional disengagement can happen when couples are not doing things that create positivity. So one piece of advice they give is compliment your partner every day. It validates them and helps them feel good about themselves and reminds you why you chose that person in the first place. I love your big muscles.

I feel validated by that. And we're still in it, folks. Still going on strong. And I love your eyebrows. I think I got them trimmed up. Got them all trimmed up at the barber shop they look awesome thank you yeah thank you i love your eyebrows who i mean i don't love i hate your eyebrows what did i do wrong i could love my eyebrows like you love my eyebrows okay they don't love your eyebrows like you love my eyebrows. Okay. They don't love your eyebrows like I love their eyebrows. So when it comes to the brain in love,

biological anthropologist and Kinsey Institute senior fellow, Helen Fisher, has found after putting people in a brain scanner, sounds like an oversimplification of probably what that is. What the device is actually called. Yeah, we're going to want to lay you down, put you in the brain scanner. Like, what are you talking about? Looks like you're 1799. I'm going to put you in the blood swapper. Do you mean a dialysis machine? Call it a dialysis machine. So the brain scanner confirms that there are three essential neurochemical components in people who report high relationship satisfaction. And those are the ones I mentioned, the practice of empathy, the control of one's feelings and stress, and maintaining positive views about their partner.

In happy relationships, partners empathize with each other and understand each other's perspective instead of constantly trying to be right. Keeping positive views of your partner, which Fisher calls positive illusions, are all about reducing the amount of time you spend dwelling on negative aspects of your relationship. No partner is perfect and the brain is well built to remember the nasty things that were said, said Fisher. and the brain is well built to remember the nasty things that were said, said Fisher. But if you can overlook those things and just focus on what's important, it's good for the body, good for the mind, and good for the relationship. It always freaks me out a little bit when we start talking about love science. I don't know if you get like that too, but when it's like, I'm going to put you in the brain scanner and see which parts of your brain start wiggling around

when I show you a picture of your lover. Like, I don't like that. see which parts of your brain start wiggling around when I show you a picture of your lover. Like, I don't like that. Are you worried that like, science doesn't confirm my words to you? No, because I think it definitely would. It's just like, I don't like the idea of not thinking about it like some sort of some sort of magic, if that doesn't make me sound like too big of a child. See, I am coming at it from the other angle.

Okay. That a good relationship isn't this abstract nebulous thing that there are like three common traits that anybody could put into their relationship and have a good one sure and i feel like that's good but you can't necessarily put it into a relationship right like you can practice it you can practice it for sure but it's a i think that isn't it easier to like have have a person who has these three things with you than trying to like necessarily inject it of course but if your relationship is is you know diminishing or if you're feeling less positive about it there are

three real things you can do to make it better yeah for sure which i like yeah uh and and it's something that i've noticed like when when i I saw these three things about empathy, positivity, and strong emotional connection. It kind of helped me kind of highlight which components were missing from my previous relationships and kind of— You scared the ever-living fucking motherfucking fucking shit out of me, and I shit my pants and almost died. Are you kidding me? Doing a sentence like that on a podcast? I almost shit my fucking

butt off. Are you kidding me? Help me realize something. This is our last episode of Wonder... Are you kidding me? I'm sorry. Jesus Christ. Help me realize what was missing from my previous relationship. Okay, but you understand that you sent shockwaves throughout the whole community.

People were writing Facebook posts like, what the fuck? Why would I bring you to this podcast? I don't know. Last week you brought our sexual relationship, our sexual congress into the thing. And I thought maybe Rachel's doing a bold new experimental style of podcasting. Griffin, I'm taking this opportunity. Yeah, wowsers. No, I was going to say that it makes me realize why ours works so well.

Okay, good. Because we are very empathetic with each other and we do compliment each other often. Sex power is off the charts. And we focus on the positive. Yeah. They can't even quantify our sex power. Sex power. Blew up the positive. Yeah. They can't even quantify our sex power. Oh, the sex power. Blew up a whole bedroom yesterday.

Ah, jeez. I know. A wave of supersonic force shot out of my body. We don't have to tell the listeners. They probably felt it. Oh, no. Apparently that's what we do on this show, is talk about my supersonic sex energy like Blanca from Street Fighter.

Just shooting out of my body. Electricity tearing off the wallpaper. So. I don't know who Blanca is. That's okay. He's Big Green Monster from Street Fighter. He's cool. He does that attack where he crops us down and shoots electricity out of his body.

And, like, you know, E. Honda tries to punch him, but he gets a big shock. With your sex power, you're more like a sheet fighter. It's pretty good, right? Yeah. Do you want to talk about submissions? Yes. Thank you to submissions for giving us a way out. Tristan says,

I think it's wonderful when you add half and half to iced coffee and it swirls around in billows. The contrasting colors and densities make a brief but dramatic and delicious show. The flavor of this beverage is very good. And I do like fluid dynamics. It's very interesting to me. Is that part of the thrill of creamer for you? No. Creamer is purely utilitarian for me.

But when you shoot dye into water, I watched a YouTube video on like the weird science YouTube, which is like literally all that gets recommended to me on YouTube. Yeah. These two guys trying to recreate this old science experiment that was only created in like the early 70s when like video camera equipment was bullshit of shooting two kind of vortexes of dye into each other side by side in one aquatic tank because when they hit each other just perfectly and they're spinning at the exact same speed they like explode and create like a dozen other vortexes all around it nobody could understand how that works because the camera was so low quality but now it's 2018 we have dope ass cameras so they worked and worked and worked to try to like rebuild this machine they had no schematics for and ended up making it.

And it's so fucking beautiful watching this die, like collide in water. I learned a lot about fluid dynamics from that video. I don't know what's happening to me. Yeah. We were talking about half and half, but it's fluid dynamics. I'm going to talk about some,

some cream hitting some, some cold brew and turn it up. I may have hit up the Einstein bagels bros on my way to pick up Henry from daycare the other day, got myself a little, little iced coffee on the way and stirred it up. And I have hit up the Einstein Bagels Bros on my way to pick up Henry from Daycare the other day. Got myself a little iced coffee on the way and stirred it up. And I was like, oh, it's beautiful. Chelsea says, I think it's wonderful when a grocery

cart exchange happens between strangers entering and leaving the store. The smile and eye contact and moment of connection always makes me happy. I don't get this next part. Bonus points if it's somewhere like Aldi and you trade your quarter for their cart. Oh, yeah.

Do you not know about this? No. In order to get a shopping cart, you have to insert a quarter. What? It's like a super discount grocery store, and they keep the prices very low through a variety of ways, and I think one of them is that. That's a quarter? Mm-hmm.

That doesn't seem like very much money to then get discounted goods from the whole store. Well, I'm sure that is not their only cost-cutting measure. Yeah, I guess not. I know that I have a lot of friends in St. Louis that swear by the Aldi. How dope would it be if there was a grocery store where you paid $150 up front, and for that you got a cart, and then everything in the store was free. You just got one cart full of it, and they leveled it off. They had like a big scraper, and they would run it over the top

of the cart, and it would have to clear the top of the cart. No like cheatsies. Oh, it's like those thrift stores where you bring in, or you use like a bag and you fill it. Yes. Except this time, it's fucking supermarket sweep, because also you only have a minute and a half. You just get 100 turkeys.

Can we talk about the strategy of supermarket sweep because it was always get a hundred turkeys run to the turkey get the turkeys get the giant mr mrs butterworth's and now you've won i heard that this show is on amazon prime yes very much like to watch we gotta watch it one last thing and this one is uh strange for show. We don't normally pick self-referential things, but Kian informed me. There is a website called wonderful.fyi that will let you know who's up first on each episode of our show

based on who went first last week. You can also search through all the wonderful things you've previously shared on the podcast. Somebody must have gotten so tired of us talking about who's turn it was. I mean, we spend a lot of time. This website is very, very good. I'm going to show it to you now. You can check it out at wonderful.fyi. Oh, that's beautiful.

It's a really good website. It's got all of our topics arranged like a chat. Oh my gosh, I love that. And the artwork from Louis Zong. Yeah. Louis Zong who put out a jam collabo with Brian David Gilbert, which was the collabo of the fucking century today. Go check that out. But that is it.

Thank you so much for listening. I had a lot of fun with this episode, and I hope you did too, Rachel and our friends at home. 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. What else do you want to talk about here? You know, this episode has really made me realize what I'm missing

from... Oh, stop! Stop it! Thank you to Maximum Fun for hosting our podcast and any number of other great podcasts. Podcasts like... Podcasts like?

Podcasts like, I mean, The Greatest Discovery. Podcasts like? Friendly Fire. Oh, Friendly Fire, The Beef and Dairy Network. One Bad Mother. There's a lot of good podcasts on the Max Final Work. There's a lot of good podcasts. If you want to hear other stuff that our family does or see any of the videos we made,

it's all at macaroyshows.com. I think that's it, huh? Yes. Well, then this is probably a good time as any to talk about something that has uh been missed that was missing something that like i feel like so sad and empty about that's missing from speaking about like romance stuff and like relationships stuff and so there's something that's missing i that i'm angry i can't do it myself it's not fair bye Working on money more Working on money more Working on money more

Working on money more MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hi, I'm Bess. And I'm Teresa. And we host One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting. Whether you are a parent or just know kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent or just know kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share

what it's like to be a parent. Turns out it isn't what we thought it would be. For example, stickers on car windows? It's no longer about what type of monster would let that happen and more like realizing you are that monster. So join us each week as we judge less, laugh more, and remind you that you are doing a great job. Download One Bad Mother on MaximumFun.org or Apple Podcasts. And yes, there will be swears.