Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 59: Edible Jellies

Episode Date: November 14, 2018

Rachel's favorite nasty mating ritual! Griffin's favorite gentle children's author! Rachel's favorite power vocalist! Griffin's favorite broth-food! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya That's a Ten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLP9mbCuhJc MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Taste all the Senses Get it Overall 100 taste buds Feel the cream Feel the texture feel the sweet aerate it that's a 10

that's it that's the start of the episode hey everybody welcome to wonderful it's a loose casual podcast we don't have to do the same thing in the intro every time but hey it's griffin and rachel here keeping it real i would like to introduce myself yeah it's griffin here hi this is rachel mcelroy and that's it and that's a 10 if you don't if you don't what if people haven't seen the video of the man taste testing the ice cream i'm almost sure nobody else has it's entirely possible man griffin showed this to me very early in our courts. It's true because I needed her to know where I learned the art of seduction. I'll probably link it in the episode description unless I forget, which I almost certainly will. Just search for man ice cream taste.

Hey, this is a podcast where we talk about stuff that we are really enthusiastic about, stuff we're really into. It's called Wonderful. Did we say that? It's called Wonderful. Maybe not. I did a lot of ice cream man goofs at the top and didn't prioritize the name of the show. First things first, healthy boy sitting over here, feeling so good for the first time.

Okay, I still cough a lot. I'd say about 95%. 95%. I'm getting there, though. The road to health was a long one. Thank you all for... Fair, fair, fair, fair dinkum. But anyway, mostly better and um yeah i'm just excited to share my

life with you my health life i am also very eager to have that with you again yeah we can finally get back to our you know mountain biking and extreme repelling uh extreme repelling which is you do it without the rope which is really just kind of falling down a mountainside pretty fast and hoping for the best. Hey, you got any small wonders? I do. Yeah. Michelle Obama has a book out. Oh.

And it just looks super, super great. It's called Becoming. Is this what you just checked out from the library? No, it's not. Oh. You think I could get my hands on that at the library right now? That's a good point. It's a hot commodity. I could sign up for a that at the library right now? That's a good point. It's a hot commodity.

I could sign up for a waiting list and get it in approximately two years. Okay. I want to bring, well, first off, Fallout 76 comes out tonight at midnight, the night that we were recording this. I don't know how good a game it's going to be. I don't know how deep it's going to be. You just want to take a walk down memory. I have to play it, right?

I've seen some pre-release footage and like seeing people I was watching today and just like a twitch stream of somebody in the UK because the game is already live there uh and they were just walking on the bridge over the new river gorge and I was like fuck yeah like this is this really is something like special for for West Virginia like I I feel like I kind of scoffed at like how the tourism board is like making a huge deal out of it but like it is fucking cool that like this place i grew up i can like walk around a digital place that is which i never really thought would happen yeah um also there's a video circulating right now on social media of behind the scenes footage of when they first recorded the baby back ribs theme song that is absolutely my shit oh it's them in the fucking studio just like laying it down and like you know that's my shit you know that like hey griffin you know that thing

that was like the first meme kind of basically back in the day this is a reference for those of you that aren't they got to know what it is the chili's commercial Yes. This is the original cut. The original artists, talented, talented folks just in the studio just like doing the shit. It is so fucking fresh. Look it up. You will not be disappointed.

Is the barbecue sauce guy everything you'd want him to be? The barbecue sauce guy is like Batman. He is the dark knight because everybody's, I mean the dude who's really like

putting in work and earning his paycheck is the, I want my baby back baby because he is non-stop he is all over this video and then you get like two guys who come in with the chilies and they harmonize and and then just like out of the shadows just like dropping in from like a ceiling tile that has moved out of place this guy drops in and goes barbecues and it's gone oh my gosh i don't know how everybody kept their composure during that recording and what's best is at the very end of the video like literally it's like a guy sitting at a studio op or just like hitting the button

just like yeah knowing that like we fucking got it that's it that's a 10 that's it that's a 10 hey you start this week can i can you tell me about your first thing? So this is going to be kind of a journey. Okay. Just to let you in on my process. Okay. There are several websites that I kind of browse around when I'm looking for a topic. Okay.

One of them led me to today's topic. Okay. Don't worry. That website is Smithsonian Mag. Okay. So it's relatively peachy although the topic i am bringing and this is going to be should i take a big drink of water before uh so they're called nuptial Okay. These are like the wood for one year or whatever? Two, paper for two? No?

Nuptial gifts are food items or inedible tokens that are transferred during courtship among birds, insects, and spiders. Except for, can you say it again, but not the spiders one? Can you say it again? Just be like for birds. Just really for birds. And this includes birds only say only birds do this completely birds completely birds it's also known as courtship feeding oh my god tell me everything oh i want you to we haven't done an animal one in a while i want you to enjoy this moment right now because it is going to get worse for you. Oh no. Wait, is it like, let me start out. Yucky. Let me start out. So, uh, Kareem Verhead is a professor of etymology at the university of Derby in England. And he is like the foremost,

um, expert in this area. Okay. So let me just start you off with male katydids. I feel like katydids are always up to no good. So male katydids produce what is called a spermatophore. All right. That sounds bad already. Which contains both ejaculate and a mass of edible jelly. This could be up to 30 of their body mass oh my god i'm imagining and katie did just like smoking a cigarette like you just hollowed me out

did you enjoy my edible jelly that was 30 of of my body mass? So the female consumes the jelly while the male is... What a Trojan horse this is. Depositing his sperm. You freaking sneaky sneak thief. It's marital gifts. When birds get married, they give each other... You were picturing little smooches with maybe a little berry. When you said nuptial i imagine like birds getting married that's how like into the idea i was that i wasn't thinking about it logically and now you're like katydids feed each other

come that sort of constitutes a third of their body weight so for male katydids by giving them this uh spermatophore uh they just say jelly just say edible jelly edible jelly sperm sperm is also edible i don't want to be somebody that might be like eating this while eating like a pb and j eating this while eating a pb and j i hope they're not unless katie did katie did got its hands on it and pulling a gross prank. So by giving this gift to the female, the male ensures that she will spend some time consuming it. Wait, say that again? So this kind of locks her down. So she is eating the jelly. It's a feast.

It's 30% of his body mass. It's a fucking smorgasbord. So she's not going to go anywhere. So they can have that moment together. Oh, yeah, man. This is a big deal, this meal of him and his jelly. Do you want to hear about nursery web spiders? Almost certainly I don't. This is almost like, we almost need to say like content warning for spiders because I am going to be troubled by this.

This is actually fun okay i think so um a lot of the examples i'm going to give you are just like an edible gift given to the partner um but what's funny about nursery web spiders is what they will do sometimes is they will provide a fake meal so they will wrap an inedible item often in webbing meal so they will wrap an inedible item often in webbing and provide that to the female as like a hey look what i got you and then when they've you know lured them in surprise why would i this isn't fun this is mean this is mean at least when the katydid gives a third of its body weight in ejaculate like it's something you know but a spider saying likeulate. Like, it's something, you know? But a spider saying like, oh, look at this.

It's Taco Bell. It's wrapped up in my web in the shape of Taco Bell. It's a whole burrito. So you want to smash? Okay, we smash. You unwrap it and it's like three rocks. I just enjoyed the trickery there. By the way, nursery web nursery web spider no no thanks i don't want any spiders in my nursery thanks and please don't send me facebook links about how great spiders are i know

they're a valuable part of the ecosystem but you want to hear about the ornate moth i do like moths okay so this is this is kind of a lighter fare literally because it is only 10 of the male's body weight oh okay what's great about this one uh also ejaculate but sure includes uh alkaloids that serve as a chemical defense from predators oh okay my seed will protect us yeah so there's some benefit to the female that goes beyond just nourishment. And this represents, this is the quote, this represents the total parental investment of the male. See ya. You've got my protected, you've got my ward on our household.

You want to get to the birds now? I don't think I do. I'm kind of okay with this nasty stuff being sort of the the business of the bugs the northern shrike is a songbird known for impaling mice insects and even other birds on sharp twigs the males present this skewer and the females select the fellow who offers the largest nuptial gift whoever can bring the choicest kebabs. Exactly. That is, they, what? There's actually, there's a picture I saw of. Don't, I don't, I can't.

A picture you saw of, sorry, that was rude. Just one of those items that I outlined on like a branch, just ready for presentation. Ready for roasting. What's a bird going to do with a dead, I guess, do they eat them? But they're not carnivores, are they? Well, so here's the thing. So there is a theory that since animals, females often, and in this example, female birds,

expend a great deal of energy on reproduction. Right. Their success rearing young can be increased by the convenience of a mate delivering food right right i'm saying like meat though like are they i guess they yeah i guess birds eat meat i don't know what i'm talking about i don't know i don't know fucking anything i will just say that it is just like an example of a male providing in a way that i guess would make a woman think you know know, I mean, it's probably harder than, I don't know what's harder actually being a bird and having to do spear

combat, learn how to use a javelin as a bird or ejaculating 30% of your body weight. That's a tall order also in its own right. You know what I mean? This season on the biggest loser. Like if I had to go out into a field with a couple of longhorns in it, which is like not uncommon around here in Texas,

I know where I could scrounge up some longhorns. And all that you gave me was like a long, sharp pole. And you told me to bring you one of those longhorns for mating feast. I don't know if it'd be easier for me to do that or ejaculate 30 of my body weight because the latter one would take me a while i mean and i'd probably like have to try to lose some body weight just to meet it in the middle a little bit why did you bring this i just think it's wonderful i i really so the thing that was funny about this was they introduced the concept

in because i started reading a lot of articles about it. And they introduced it like, you know how men will often provide women with an engagement ring when they propose marriage? Yeah. Well, other species also provide gifts when looking to commit to someone. So it's three months of salary or three months of a three-month load. It's terrible, the things we've said. We're 14 minutes in and the things we've said are terrible. But do you want to know my first thing?

Can I tell you something? Yes. It's food. So I should maybe switch it with my second thing and give it some space from your first thing. How about that? Why don't we switch it? Okay. My second thing and give it some space from your first thing. How about that? Why don't we switch it? My second thing is Eric Carle. Eric Carle.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, this is going to be a nice little sort of tonal shift. Eric Carle, if you're not familiar with him, which I was not before I had a child. Is that true? That is true. Like, I knew his work, obviously, but I did not know him. I did not know him by name for sure. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

I mean, I think he does not necessarily, he's like one of the most prolific and successful. For sure. His art is super recognizable. But I don't think he has like the name recognition of a, you know, a Seuss, for example. But Eric Carle is the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a bunch of other stories. How do you say that word? Do you say caterpillar? Do you enunciate the R in the middle?

Caterpillar. Caterpillar. Caterpillar. I know a lot of- Oh, caterpillar. I'm trying to think because I said it caterpillar there and it felt weird coming out of the mouth. Yeah, I see what you're saying.

It felt weird coming out of the mouth. Yeah, I see what you're saying. So anyway, the thing that I feel like I was not prepared for before we had our child is how one of the most grueling forces that you have to sort of fight against is the force of repetition. Especially as they get to the point where there is certain types of media that they only want to consume to wit. We have probably 40 books, right? We probably have about 40 books over there, 40 to 50 books,

I will say. And I have read all of them over a dozen times. The Eric Carl collection. I have almost certainly read. There's some of them. I've almost, I've definitely read a hundred times at this point. The thing is that's true of like a lot of the books that we have. And the Eric Carle ones are

still like, they're still kind of fun to me. And they are so iconic and I feel like they do stand out so much. They're just like, they're really gentle books. They're really soothing. They're really nice to look at. Again, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is his most successful book. It's like sort of an iconic picture book about a little caterpillar who hatches from an egg and then eats a bunch of garbage and then goes to sleep for a while and then turns into a butterfly. And like most of that is stuff that I can fuck with for sure. Um, this book is so successful.

I did not really like, uh, appreciate how successful it was. It has been translated into more to more than 64 languages and it has sold more than 46 million copies which is equivalent to 1.7 copies sold every minute since it was published which is which is wild i knew it was like a big deal right because every kid like knows this story but i i guess i didn't realize it was like a you know harry potter phenomenon we're also talking for those that aren't familiar with the caterpillar uh brown bear brown bear brown bear brown bear what do you see the whole blank bear what do you blank collection uh there are four books um this book the the uh the very hungry caterpillar is like so beloved because it is

it is again like a nice and gentle tale but it's's also, like you mentioned, like Eric Carle's art style is so instantly recognizable. All of his artwork is created through collage, where he cuts and layers hand-painted papers to create these lovely images. And all of his books have stuff like this, but I feel like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, this is maybe a weird thing to say, but there's a long section that's just like a bunch of different types of food

that he has done in this like lovely like collage style that food looks so fucking good the page that has like all the garbage food on it that's like one hot dog one cupcake one slice of cheese one there's two different types of sausages i see see that and I'm like, damn, those will look fucking good. And it's because of his very good art style, I guess. It's amazing. So the thing about Eric Carle is his life, a majority of it until adulthood was like super difficult. He was born in New York City. And then when he was six, his mom was sort of missing germany which was her sort of motherland uh and so they moved back to germany right before world war ii oh man uh when he was 15 he was conscripted

by nazi forces to dig trenches uh in the sigfried line which was this 400 mile long defensive line that like Russian prisoners and children and conscripted people were like forced to dig. It was awful. It was miserable. And he moved to New York City in 1952 after the war with $40 in his pocket and got a job as a graphic designer in the like advertising promotions department of the New York Times. And then he was drafted in the Korean War, but then he came back and he did the New York Times thing again. And it was while he was like doing illustrations for the Times that he was contacted by Bill

Martin Jr., who is another children's author. His jam, if you know a bunch of children's books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. That was old Bill Martin Jr. And he wanted to collaborate with him. And thus the Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See series was born. This book is fantastic. It's just a bunch of different animals asking what they see. And then they say the next animal in sequence. So Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me. I could probably do that whole book verbatim. It's brown bear, red bird, yellow duck,

blue horse, green frog, purple cat, white dog. White dog. White dog. Yeah, white dog. Black cat. Black sheep, goldfish teacher students. God.

Anyway, that's a useless bit of trivia that will never come in handy ever again. So after that, after they published Brown Bear, Brown Bear, first of all, that's a four book series, which is buck wild because all of them are basically the same, but he went on to publish and he went on to rather illustrate and write his own books solo. And hence his long and prolific career got started.

He's still like knocking out books. Oh, really? Yeah, there was a sort of another Caterpillar like holiday book, I think that came out in 2017. We got to get that one. Yeah, we do for sure. So like Eric Carl's books are like, like I said, like very gentle and very like nurturing for lack of a better word. And that is like by design. And it's kind of what he attributes a lot of his success to. They are focused on like developing, you know, intellectual activity among like very young people and sort of like nurturing their curiosity and recognizing their

feelings in a very like Mr. Rogers way where it's like your feelings are valid even though you're you are a child like that doesn't make your feelings less valid than mine he has a quote that says with many of my books I attempt to bridge the gap between the home and school to me home represents or should represent warmth warmth, security, toys, holding hands, being held. School is a strange and new place for a child. Will it be a happy place? There are new people, a teacher, classmates. Will they be friendly?

I believe the passage from home to school is the second biggest trauma of childhood. The first is, of course, being born. Indeed, in both cases, we leave a place of warmth and protection for one that is unknown. The unknown often brings fear with it. In my books, I try to counteract this fear to replace it with a positive message. I believe that children are naturally creative and eager to learn. I want to show them that learning is really both fascinating and fun. So just like, I don't know, I admire him like for his like skill and his creativity and his artistic eye. Again, like his sort of collage style is so unique

among any like picture books i've ever seen um but also because like he had a really difficult childhood and then spent his entire career trying to make childhoods better for people around the whole world i think that's like such a beautiful like legacy to have um and also like you know i can read his books a thousand times without like wanting to rip my hair out which is pretty much a miracle so great great work eric carl i feel like we're not on first name basis yet but we're getting there i love that he's still out there i know that's awesome uh hey can i steal you away yes would you uh provide the accompaniment?

I mean, what I really want to, like, what's really stuck in my head is like, we could do like, bang, bang into the, and it's nice and short, but I think I just have that song in mind. Uh-huh. No, I think we should go with that. Okay. So that was it. And that was the short one, but...

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Yeah, second thing, hit me up with it now. Please. Please. Please. This is another musical artist this week. Yes. It is Mia Follick. Yes.

New to the scene, right? Very new to the scene. Her first full-length album came out last month. Yes, I had not heard of her before you sent me a couple of her songs. And buckle up, because they fucking own bones. They are so good. So my friend Jacob posted on Facebook the song Stop Talking. Yes.

He works for a PR company that represents a lot of musical talent. Oh. And so whenever he posts anything, I'm always like, oh, I'm going to look into this. So she is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter. Her first EP just came out in 2015. She had another one in 2017, and her debut album, Premonitions, came out in October.

She was born in Santa Ana, California, and she studied classical voice. Do you have on there how her band came about because i learned that fact and it blew me away yes yes uh so she um attended nyu to study acting and then ended up going to the university of southern california but uh during a gap semester a high school friend taught her how to play guitar and so she decided to start her band using Tinder where she created a profile that said looking for a band

so good, that's so dope so I wanted to play first the song that I discovered today which is Stop Talking I find myself floating away the song that I discovered today, which is Stop Talking. So I read a lot of reviews of her new album, including one from Pitchfork. And they say that many of the songs on Premonitions feel like anthems, battle cries for personal and universal empowerment. This comes in part from her incredible voice. universal empowerment um this comes in part from her incredible voice um and then her her song subject matter which is kind of what they say it feels intimate but applicable that's a very good

way to put it which i thought was great this song is such a like fresh dance jam the music video is also very fantastic uh it's such a relatable song right because you've, as a person, you've been on both sides of that, where you are just incessantly talking to your friends about somebody, and then also to be the friend and to be just tired of it. Yeah. And so the kind of, what weaves through it is the chorus, which is, we have to speak with grace, we will become the words we say, which is like, you know, you're just you're talking

about this terrible person all the time. Like you will become a terrible person. That's true. She also has a great line in there. That's like, I know I've talked off my share of ears about this subject at hand. Yeah, it's such a good song. So she gave an interview about this album to Pitchfork, and she said, quote, We wanted to shine a light on normal life and make tiny moments feel like special occasions.

We kept joking in the studio that we were making domestic pop music. And this record was deliberate response to the heaviness that everyone's feeling. Every day there's something new to be incensed about. And if you're not angry, then you're not paying attention. But if you live with that anger every day, you will become sick. I don't like to make hopeless songs. I talk with my friends about making things fun in a way that feels vital.

Fun is a decision. It's not about buying into this nasty polarized way of talking that we've learned to do on the internet. And you'll see this if you kind of do any research on her. She's in her late 20s, and she's very involved kind of in what's going on her. She's, I mean, you know, she's in her late 20s and she's very involved kind of in what's going on globally. Right.

And I think she's trying to kind of push through that and make music that matters to people. Yeah. But she's not just kind of a, like a pop person. And so I wanted to share one more song and this is off of one of the

aforementioned EPs. I do not know what clip I'm going to pull this song is so fucking good throughout the whole like there are so many huge peaks and valleys throughout it so this is where her kind of her classical voice training really comes through

there's and if you watch the music video for it the song I'm talking about is give it to me and it's such a perfect music video because it's literally her on a roller coaster and anytime she gets to kind of a peak in the song she's like going down uh a valley like in the roller coaster i couldn't help but think like how exhausting that video must have been to shoot because seriously you have to ride that roller coaster a bunch of times anyway uh uh so i like every time I listen to this song, it gives me chills.

And then there were a few times I listened to it that I actually teared up a little bit. Because she is so emotional. And the song can be just so devastating. Let's play it. Okay. to make me happy like you said. Not since Kesha's praying praying like that note she hits like have i have i like been so fucking floored by a vocal before i'm not kidding like i i again we've talked so much about how like i lack the words to talk about music in any kind of like intellectual way but like her voice has texture

in a way i've literally never heard a human singing voice before so there have been like a lot of comparisons between her and uh florence welch from florence and the machine yeah um and so she gave an interview uh where she said i didn't grow up listening to tori amos or the cranberries or shanae o'connor which are artists she all gets compared to a lot yeah i did listen to a lot of jody mitchell uh but she goes on to say um but i wasn't that interested in contemporary music now i listen to a lot of bjork which you can kind of hear oh yeah and then she says something that just warmed my heart so much she said i fucking love Fiona Apple.

And if you go on to listen to her music, there's a song called Dead Body off her new album that feels very Fiona Apple to me. I want to look up this album right now. I'm very, very excited to get into this artist. So again, the album is called Premonitions. It just came out last month. You can find it on Spotifyify uh or soundcloud or whatever uh but she's incredibly talented she's touring in the uk right now i think we may have missed her yeah the u.s tour uh but i was so

excited to listen i just like went through everything i could find on youtube uh today uh because i think she's incredibly talented and i was super excited uh can i tell you about my first thing yes it's your second thing though well yeah unless you want to talk about eric carl again no i mean eric carl is my second thing i did it first it's my first thing the food the food it's the food one it's gonna be so fast i thought i would do this first and then just like be over with and i try to save my like big one for the second act of our show. You know what I mean? So this will be kind of a weekday.

But I'm it's ramen. Okay. It's ramen. I was kind of a late comer to ramen and an even later comer to actual good ramen that you would get. I didn't eat it in college the way a lot of people did. I ate the instant ramen. I mean, there's a part of this segment that is, I feel indebted to instant ramen in a way

because there was definitely a couple of years there where I may have actually died from not eating if it had not been for this instant ramen. I ate it constantly. I ate it so much. And I'm talking, I'm not talking not been for this instant ramen i ate it constantly i ate it so much and i'm talking i'm not talking there's good instant ramen out there uh i have a recommendation actually we got some from costco last time we were there it's a miso ramen called i think nisen rao r-a-o-h um and it's just like a really nice miso ramen i'm into that um but this was not that this was fucking top ramen 13 cents a packet. But I'm not above that. There's no such thing as bad ramen. There's just ramen that's way, way, way, way, way, way, way better than other ramen. But all ramen is beautiful in God's eyes.

Phil's this place that I always wanted soup to fill when I was younger. There was no good soup when I was little in my mind. That's not true. My mom made a potato soup that I was crazy about. Every other kind of soup was bad. These days, there's like maybe three good soups. Yeah, you're not really a soup guy. No, I like a tomato basil bisque.

That might even be it. I think that's about it that might be it a potato soup i like a creamy but i can't like eat that much cream these days you kidding me tomato basil bisque though with a nice like a fancy grilled cheese to dip in that like i'll suck with that any day of the week but ramen is good ramen is very good uh according to the record of the yokohama Ramen Museum, ramen originated in China and made its way over to Japan in 1859. And early versions were just wheat noodles and broth topped with Chinese style roast pork. So like, they've definitely chopped and screwed it in the, you know, couple of centuries since then. But I mean, I still think ramen kind of still sticks close to that original formula. So today there are four kind of main

types of ramen, of non-instant ramen. Instant ramen is not one of the four types. There's four sort of flavor variations, and they are all sort of common throughout Japan, but some are more common in different regions compared to other ones. There is shoyu ramen, which is kind of the most common one. Like if you see on a menu that just says like ramen, it's probably shoyu ramen, which is, you know, a meat based broth flavored with soy sauce. That's sort of the basic starter ramen. And it has the usual fixings in it, right? Like ramen, usually a fancy, nice ramen.

And it will have like slices of pork and maybe a hard boiled egg, some bamboos, some, you know, mushrooms, a bunch of different options. Bonito flakes. Bonito flakes for sure.

There's Shio ramen. Shio is Japanese for salt, I believe, which is a lighter sort of chicken broth based ramen, sort of a lighter variation of the shoyu ramen. And then there's miso ramen, which I've been getting into lately. It has miso in it, the soybean paste in it. So it creates sort of a thicker, heartier sort of broth uh that actually originates in hokkaido where the winters are very long and very very cold so like they wanted a big boy ramen a thick a thick boy ramen so that's sort of where that comes from and then the rhyme that i feel like is like super common

here around austin because we are a land of excess is tonkatsu ramen, which is a pork bone broth. So it is just like, so like thick and cloudy and fatty as hell. They are, they are also good. Like I, I genuinely do enjoy all of these different types of ramen. There's some other sort of variations.

There's dipping ramen where you just have your noodles in one bowl and then a bowl of like really thick sauce and usually like ground meat and fixings in there and you literally favorite that's rachel's favorite i like it at a michi ramen michi ramen here in austin it fucks me up it is so fat it is so fatty hard on your body uh it really takes you out of commission for a while um these days i really just like you know a basic sort of shoyu ramen, just a nice hot bowl of ramen.

And I get excited about it because I love a good broth. Good Lord, do I love a good broth. I think I've talked about pho on this show and how picky I am. There's like one pho place in Austin that I actually like their pho because, I don't know, broth is such a commitment. When you're eating a know, broth is such a commitment.

When you're eating a broth, like you're eating a lot of stuff and it's a very assertive flavor and you're going to be with it for a while. I want it to taste really good. Um, and we are lucky to live in a city where like, we have lots of great ramen opportunities. Um, uh, I also like need to point out that when we were in japan we ate ramen constantly and the ramen sort of restaurant experience in japan is maybe the idealized like dining experience for me because at a lot of places uh they are very very sort of small kitchens with like uh rows of seats or private slurping booths uh at some places uh a lot of the places like you just want to get in eat some ramen get out and get get back to your day yeah a lot of the places, like you just want to get in, eat some ramen, get out and get back to your day.

A lot of those places will have basically kind of a vending machine outside where you punch in like what kind of ramen you want, what sort of fixings you want. You pay for it and then you get a little ticket

that you hand to somebody inside the restaurant and then 45 seconds later, your ramen is ready for you. And then you can just like blast it, blast it down your gullet and like go back outside with like a full warm hearty belly we had a very nice person in japan explain to us how that process worked because when you stand in front of the machine it can be a little

intimidating you're like how's this machine gonna make all the ramen inside of it no it just prints out a ticket that you hand to the person inside. But like, that's fucking great, man. Like, obviously, there's lots of dining experiences that I want to be like nice and long and social and, you know, enjoy myself. But a lot of the times I wish I could just like walk into a restaurant with a ticket in hand that will get me food 30 seconds later. It's so fucking great. But yeah, ramen is just like it's just i i don't like soup right and so i don't have a lot of like wet food options i don't have a lot of like liquid food options it took me a long time to kind of get my head around the idea that it was a noodle dish

that was also soup right took me a lot and I still sometimes find myself choosing one over the other. Like, I really like the soup part of this, but I'm not as into the noodles. Or I'm really into the noodles, but not as into the soup. I almost always do that as well. There are places I like the noodles and fixings better at Ramen Tatsuya here in Austin, but I definitely like the broth better at Minji. Yeah, I agree. the broth is so i could just drink that shit for like just just that i would just drink a cup of their broth

for lunch one day it is so unbelievably good um but yeah i love ramen i went from like not eating it at all except for the instant stuff all the way up until like my late 20s and then i was like oh shit this is the best food ever when you had since i was never really one to consume this i'm curious when you had the instant yeah what was your flavor of choice uh chicken okay chicken there were a lot of flavors in there that i just i didn't i couldn't get on board with there was like a chili lime flavor that was all right i was kind of kind of okay with that, but almost always chicken. And then sometimes I'd mix in stuff with it.

Did it taste like chicken? Oh, no. Okay. It tasted like... Just salt, right? It tasted, well, it kind of tasted like if you had put salt in one end of the Large Hadron Collider and then salt on the other end of the Large Hadron Collider and then salt on the other end of the large hadron collider and then shot them into each other at the speed of light to create a sort of like super salt black

hole that you taste with your mouth and then you uh you don't piss for a week so it's kind of like that okay um i will say i've been doing my fitness pal so it like tracks your nutritional facts and stuff like that. And when I punched in this ramen I recommended to all of our listeners at the start of the show, it was like, yo, you just passed up by a wide margin your daily sort of recommended dose of sodium just in this one bowl of instant ramen, my friend. You need to go drink a glass of water. It said go drink water right now, Griffin.

I'll wait. I'll wait. I'll wait. Hey, can I tell you about what our friends at home are excited about? Yes. I got one here from Kyle who says, I can enjoy a good trailer almost as much as a good movie. I love trailers.

Just this week, I watched the new Super Smash Brothers trailer and the Detective Pikachu trailer multiple times because they are both so enjoyable. Try to get Rachel excited about Detective Pikachu. No takers. No takers there. I don't have an outlet for this shit anymore, but let me just say

on our podcast, Wonderful, I think it looks fucking choice as hell. I was confused because it reminded me of Paddington. Yes. But it was Pikachu. And Paddington owns bones and this is with Pikachu in it. And it's got all my favorite Pokemon friends in it. I feel like I don't know enough about Pikachu to really know where this might take him.

You know? Yeah. You really got to watch the anime to like get that stuff. Like Detective Pikachu to me is kind of like what, I don't know what regular Pikachu is. Kind of like Assassin Mario. It's like, why is he doing that? Here's one from Olivia who says, I work in the office of my university's earth science department. In the hallway outside the office, there's a seismometer, the machine that shows a squiggly line to measure earthquakes, hooked up so that people can see their footsteps register on it. I think it's wonderful when I'm sitting at my desk and I can hear people exaggeratedly stomping past the office

as they register a bigger earthquake. Even most of the professors do it. That's so cute. It's so unrelatable, but also such a nice little slice of life that I just was... We should have a big window in the office. I hope that you can see it happen. Or a Nest Cam recording people just like silly walking down this highway highway hallway you know what i meant but it did make me think

about when they have those signs up that like measure your speed oh yeah you always kind of want to like see what would happen if you just ran real fast by him do you do that i've never had rachel i never had criminal crime to run real fast oh to run i thought you're talking about driving okay so ann says something i find wonderful is when you perfectly fry an egg over easy without breaking the yolk or sticking to the pan especially when you manage it on a cast iron pan it's such a simple thing but it makes me feel so accomplished and proud of myself cooking an egg good is the best feeling i've never tried it on a cast iron i bet that's difficult. Nor I.

Yeah, I bet so. Because you don't get that nonstick sort of assistance. The one time I poached an egg and I got like a few perfect poached eggs. That feels so good. It's not that hard, but like. I was so impressed. It looks very impressive. Yes.

Hey, thanks to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to MaximumFun.org, the website. Yes. Thank you, Maximum Fun, for hosting our show and hosting just dozens of other really, really good shows. Shows like Switchblade Sisters and. That's it. That's the only show on the network.

International. Pairing Down. International Waters is on there. Friendly Fire. that's it that's the only show on the network international pairing down international waters is on there friendly fire trying to think of ones we don't mention all the time there's so many like there's definitely ones that we haven't mentioned minority corner minority corner rocks heat rocks

there's a lot of great shows it's all a maximum fun dot org if you want to hear other stuff we do it's at McElroy shows dot com McElroy mailing list if you want like future announcements it's at mackleroyshows.com um mackleroy mailing list if you want like future announcements it's at bit.ly slash mackleroy mail um i think that might be it i think so well hmm i wish i would it's felt we it felt off hasn't it the outro it's felt off it almost feels like we do need like a kiss your dad square right because that would be a that would be a much easier sort of way to because Rachel let's take you behind the curtain Rachel and I often sit here inside

we did just now sit here in silence for a good 10 to 15 seconds just looking at each other like say something funny so I think we need to get the council together and really figure out a nice closing catchphrase oh wait i got one i got one okay well that's 30 of your body weight you'll never get back what do you think Mario! Working on it! Mario! Working on it! Mario! Working on it! Mario! Working on it!

Mario! Working on it! Mario! Working on it! I am ready. I am ready. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. How does this sound? A weekend on a beautiful mountaintop in California. Comedy and culture. Artist s'mores! All of this can be yours at MaxFunCon, returning to Lake Arrowhead next June.

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