Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 60: Walk Man

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

Griffin's favorite argument-solving method! Rachel's favorite mobile thinking technique! Griffin's favorite TV theme song! Rachel's favorite role model! 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. And this is wonderful. We, moments ago. Yes. I'd say four minutes ago maybe okay we have come upstairs after having a fine a fine meal of trader joe's beef and broccoli i think spicy beef and broccoli rachel did not pay attention to the packaging but i think it was spicy because i

burned my mouth good didn't i but anyway we were eating that we watched the terrace house movie that's right they made a terrace house movie after the first season and i have been emotionally devastated i guess and it's probably the weirdest energy i've ever brought into a podcast recording in my life the movie the movie was kind of a surprise to us sure but then once we found out about it we were very excited it comes at the tail end of like a 98 episode long season of terrace house and you see just this all your faves come back all the faves come back it is it is kind of like if they made like a movie of lost and like all the characters were that well that's kind of actually what the ending of lost was so never mind but you get my point we have been just wrecked sort of my it there it brought out like a sorrow in me

but like a good sorrow it was weird because when the season was over we were sad it was over oh i cried so hard and then we were like oh the movie and i felt like they can't do this to me again they already fucking did it to me again and now we're recording our ostensibly sometimes funny podcast yeah and so that's going to be a challenge but well here's what we have to look forward to yes we can just start over again this podcast boys and girls in the city oh i thought you were saying you didn't like the intro to this which is fine it's a fine position to take it's a little not exactly zippy no you're right let's zip it up with some fucking small wonders small wonders but if i do fun voices that might sort of make me forget about the sadness

so let me say hey did anybody order these uh small wonders what is that voice who are you thinking of when you do that voice new york man i thought maybe it was like a beetle like george harrison and then anybody all of these small wonders did anybody order any of these paul did you order the small wonders? You're doing like a Christopher Walken a little bit, I think. Did anybody order any of these Ringo small wonders? Hey, do you have any small wonders, though? I do. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Yeah, you had yourself a grand old time. I did my first ever work trip since Henry was born. Sure. And I went to Washington, D.C., and I was determined to hit up some of those museums. And I thought the National Portrait Gallery would just be, I don't know, portraits. But it's so much more. I mean, what the fuck else do they have? It's called a portrait gallery. Just a lot of, like, modern exhibits of artists that do more than just portraits. Why is it called that? Well, it's primarily portraits oh okay i feel relieved um did can you tell me the truth do you touch any of them

i didn't know i was thinking about how fun it would be to bring henry to a big old museum but then i thought oh he would for sure touch everything he would touch everything with intent to destroy yeah that's a phase he's in now he wants to hurt do you i have a small wonder it's a podcast so we talked about uh baths i think in the last episode uh the the electronic uh artists uh and our facebook group blew up because uh they were all recommending a podcast a podcast that he does, Will Wiesenfeld and his brother, John, called 2.0, where they just try to fix things that are fine. So there's like an episode about barbecues and cemeteries and house cats and the third dimension.

And they just come up with suggestions on how to fix these things. Oh, OK. It is is very it's very good it's got it's got good vibes uh and it's right up my alley i've been listening to it a lot now on my my daycare drives cool uh yeah anything else that spicy beef and broccoli really did it for me trader joe's frozen meals like do it for me trader joe's has the good frozen meals i know i'm not above it. Obviously, I like having a home-cooked meal that we have prepared. Yeah. But if it has to be froze and then hot and then we eat it,

I would prefer, if it's got to be froze, it's got to be Trader Joe's. Come on. You can use that, Joe. Who is the Joe? Nobody knows. Nobody knows the traitor joe joes what if it's joe pantoliano who the actor joey pants what if it's joe lawrence has anybody ever called him joe lawrence before am i the first joseph jose Lawrence. That's his name on Broadway. That is really? No. Was he on Broadway? No, I don't think

so, baby. He might have been. Who goes first this week website that is loading right now? It's me. Gosh, I always feel like you go first. It's not true. 50% of the time you go first. What's that say about you? I'm just eager.

You know a way we could actually decide who goes first? We could play rock, paper, scissors. That's my first thing. No, you can go first. Oh, it really is. Rock, paper, scissors. Oh, okay. I was thinking about it today.

I was thinking about like games. I almost talked to you about Skyrim, so be glad that you dodged that bullet. But I was thinking about games, right? Because I like games, and I was thinking about them. And then I was thinking about folk games. I like a good hide-and-go-seek, capture the flag, Johann Sebastian Joust, I like that stuff.

And I was trying to think of stuff like that that I'm very familiar with and everybody's familiar with. And I don't think that Rock, Paper, Scissors is the best game ever it's like a zero-sum game somebody's gonna win or somebody's gonna tie and there's very few outcomes and not much strat that goes into it i'm not constantly going around playing and i'm not going to the tournaments which there are definitely tournaments which is exciting i love that human beings came up with a way to solve arguments between themselves with a competitive hand game i love back in caveman days if somebody wanted to eat the big

fish that they pulled out of the ocean but they only have one fish and two people they would beat each other to death with clubs probably to decide who gets it and then there were people who were just eventually like what if we played a little hand game together can they trace rock paper scissors back that far not to caveman days no it does trace back literal millennia uh it was uh first played and sort of documented across east asia uh there is a book that was published in China around 1600, which said that the game was first played during the Chinese Han Dynasty between... Hey, you know what I just thought of?

What? It was caveman days. It just would have been rock. Hey, that's good. Yeah, they didn't have the other things. Well, when it started out, it was not rock, paper, scissors, which I will get to. But it was so it's thought to have been played during the Chinese Han Dynasty between 206 B.C. and 220 A.D.

Wow. That's when that dynasty was. So it was according to this book that was published in 1600. It was called and I'm going to fuck up the pronunciation on this and every other word I'm going to say in the next 10 minutes. on this and every other word I'm going to say in the next 10 minutes, but Shao Shi Ling, and it was sort of a rudimentary, there's not much on like the rules of what this like very first discovered version of Rock, Paper, Scissors was. It's a lot easier to kind of trace how the game evolved in Japan. It made its way over to Japan fairly quickly. There it was called Sansukumi-ken. According to Wikipedia, it means ken, which translates to fist games,

where, quote, the three who are afraid of one another, which is great because that's fucking what Rock, Paper, Scissors and every permutation of it is. So one of the first ken games in Japan wasn't Rock, Paper, Scissors. It was Frog, Slug, Snake. Oh, that's fun fun that's extremely good and obviously you're not making scissors with your hands because it's frog slug snake yeah uh you hold out your pinky that's slug you hold your thumb up that's frog and you extend your index finger like that it's a snake and in this game slug beats frog snake beats slug

frog beats snake it's just it's literally the same thing, but with frog, slugs, and snakes. I'm trying to think, because the big thing that always stresses me out about Rock, Paper, Scissors is getting my hand to the right shape fast enough. And I'm trying to think how it would be. I think it would be easy, right? Boom, boom, bink. That's my pinky. That was just on my pinky shooting up.

So there was another version in Japan. Again, it is easier to track like how the game changed and they just had like a lot of these different kin games uh there's one kitsune kin kitsune means uh fox and in this game fox beats village head village head beats hunter hunter beats fox and so uh i think that's pretty great i don't know what the hand signals were for that maybe it's like for the fox you have to do like the foxy lady dance from wayne's world uh too that um and so the version that we play today uh derived from uh jan kin uh which is rock paper scissors it is rock paper scissors that is what they call rock paper scissors in japan um so uh it first came to america in 1932 the new york times was writing an article about tokyo

and kind of talked about rock paper scissors and kind of unleashed it to the world well not to the world it was it was spreading across the world before it came here uh but then that's that's how we got rock paper scissors uh so people who are very like a lot smarter than us have written about rock paper scissors and have sort of figured out that human players yeah are non-random in the things that they choose to throw which is a long way of saying that it is possible to gain a skill-based advantage in the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. Yeah, I heard there's a competition and people are actually good at it. Yeah. Specifically good.

There are lots of tournaments. A lot of it boils down to how you read your players' hand motions and habits and then perform your own hand motions in reaction to them. Another thing that happens in tournaments is that players try to confuse each other by shouting out one of the positions and then throwing a different position. And their goal in doing that

is to get their opponent to make an illegal move, right? Because you can't do like, you stick out scissors and then you change to rock. But if somebody yells something and throws out something different and you feel compelled to change, then you lose that round because you cheated. So the way that they get around that is a lot of people in tournaments decide the sequence of gestures they're going to throw before the tournament even starts.

Okay. That's fucking wild to me. Here's another piece of sort of like errata that I actually knew about and forgot. In 2012, uh, researchers from the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory at the University of Tokyo created a robot hand that can play rock, paper, scissors with a 100% win rate. Uh, using a high speed camera, the robot recognizes within one millisecond what shape the human hand is making, then produces the corresponding winning shape. Look up rock paper scissors robot if you've never seen this video that's awesome it's obvious that it's cheating

it's still fucking sky lab terrifying watching this super powerful pneumatic robo hand just like launch out the fucking scissors in a millisecond it is the scariest thing uh i always get really paranoid whenever i play rock paper scissors that something about the motion of my hand will suggest what i'm gonna do before which is exactly what you're saying that robot does yeah exactly i i don't know i just i really think it's great that when we have a when when people have a like dilemma that they need to solve and they have something they can't figure out instead of you know duking it out or taking it to a higher power we play a little game i think that's nice i think that's great yeah it is nice it's always fun to see people

play it too because usually it's like a relatively low stakes thing oh yeah where people will bring it out and it's always fun have i have i told you about my super high stakes rock paper scissors i had one time no it was when i was oh wait is the room in the apartment is my apartment i just moved into my first apartment with uh two guys i went to high school with uh when i was still living in huntington and it was on the 13th story of the tallest building in huntington and there was one room that was kind of big with no windows at all and then one room that was kind of small with one window that was like frosted so you couldn't really see through it and then one corner room with windows overlooking all of god's splendor across wild and wonderful west

virginia and it was amazing and it was huge and so we played rock paper scissors for it and i i won and i got that sweet room and i can't imagine what that fucking year would have been like if it weren't for that because that was that was a sweet little setup i had there all thanks to the the r the rps what's your first thing my first thing is walking walking are you talking about sort of the idea of just sort of uh ambulation or like no and i thought you might say that okay jesus well i so i wanted to provide so it more for like for leisure and contemplation oh interesting i realized when i was in dc i was walking like six seven miles a day which is

something i used to do a lot of when I had more free time. And I just started thinking about like how it's been such a thing for me. So like when I was growing up, my parents had this above ground pool in our backyard and I used to walk around it and think my thoughts. Wait, that's the best thing I've ever heard. Like around the outside of it. So not like on the deck, but like.

No, like a polar bear in the zoo. Why didn't you just walk? I've been to your house that you grew up in many times. It's on a, it's only like a nice, quiet residential street. Why didn't you just sort of cruise the hood? Well, because I was a youth. I mean, this is when I was young. This is when I was like nine or 10.

My parents weren't going to let me go on a lengthy walk around the neighborhood by myself. Oh, mine would put me up on that bike. I mean, I could get on a bike by myself. I think it was because there were three of us. And so if they lost one, it would be if one fell in the crick, they still have the two backups, you know? So I did that a lot as a kid. And then when I was in college, I used to like to, when I was having difficulty finding friends, I would take my little disc man and I would listen to U2 Joshua Tree.

There were so many good things in the last two sentences you said. And I would walk around in the campus in the campus and and you know just really really think my thoughts i have to know if this was you saying something funny for the podcast or if you actually call them disc mans what else would you call them discman is the only way i've ever said it or heard it pronounced in my life. Discman? Discman. This is Discman.

He is powered by U2's Joshua Tree. I am very confident that this is not a Rachel. Holy shit. This is a real thing that people say. Discman. Somebody put a poll up in a Facebook group. Okay, so do you say Walkman? Yeah.

Do you say Walkman? Holy shit. Maybe. What the fuck? Maybe. I mean say Walkman? Holy shit! Maybe. What the fuck? Maybe. I mean, it's awesome. It rules. I'm glad. Different strokes and all that jazz, but I'm just...

Do you say Hangman when you play a game? No, I say Hangman, but it's not a brand name. I'm not like stupefied that you call it something different. I'm stupefied in how entrenched in our positions thinking the other person is so wrong. It's wild. You're just happy that this has sprung back on me. Rachel makes fun of my colloquialisms like all the time. The other day we were worried that Henry had injured himself.

And Griffin just said, oh, no, he probably just stoved his leg. And I was like, stoved it? Yeah, like when you run your, if you run your finger like against the table straight and it kind of like pushes it back and then it hurts. So we always said jammed it. Jammed it, stoved it.

I don't know what the, yeah. I don't know what the etymology of that is, but it's what I always heard it called growing up in the old wild and wonderful West Virginia. Okay, I'm so sorry. That was such a huge diversion. Walk, man. Anyway, the thing that's nice about walking beyond the contemplative aspects of it that I really like are I have been in this phase where I just don't feel like exercising.

I just really don't. I just can't get excited about the idea of running or getting on an elliptical machine. But I can always get up for some walking, and it's actually really good for you still. Yeah, it's still good for you, and it's a good way to take in the place wherever you are walking, which I like. Well, it was interesting. you know, place wherever you are walking, which I like. Well, it was interesting.

So obviously there's a lot of things like lower blood pressure and it can improve your mood and lower your stress. It also can lead to better memory and cognitive function. How? Which I was surprised about. Oh, there's that fucking tree again. I know you. There was a study in the the uh journal neurology in 2010 2010 that found that walking was associated with a greater volume of gray matter in the brain a measure of brain health

huh that's wild to me i wonder if it really is like because you see more of the when i lived in when i first i've thought about this a lot today for some reason i thought i tried to remember when i first moved to austin and didn't know where anything was or what it was. But then I thought about the first month that I lived here and I just wanted to fucking eat the city up and see everything so I could get a lay of the land. And that's kind of like a memory improvement, right? At the very least, you're using your mind. Well, yeah. And the fact that I can remember walking around the pool and thinking my

thoughts when i was like you know eight or nine years old i can't remember anything from eight i can't i can't think about like i can't remember thinking my thoughts in other situations but i can in that one uh the other thing i found interesting so you know how a lot of people talk about 10,000 steps as like the goal the daily goal which is actually ludicrous ends up being about five miles ludicrous it didn't that number didn't originate from scientific research uh it was first used in a japanese marketing effort associated with one of the first commercial pedometers the device was called man poke which literally means 10 000 steps meter in japanese then i feel fucking lied to and also

extremely relieved the 10 000 step goal is thought to be a realistic minimum and it's good but for complete risk reduction people should aim for more what the fuck i'm toast dude this this physician from the university of warwick did a study and said that those who took 5,000 extra steps on top of the 10,000 had no metabolic syndrome risk factors at all. All right. So 15,000, Griffin. Whatever. It's not reasonable. I work from home, and then I go to daycare.

I drop off Henry. I come home. I work from home. I go to get Henry, and then I come come home and then we put him to bed you could go on a walk around our neighborhood for five motherfucking miles it would take me it would take me an hour and a half if we lived in a more you know walk friendly environment i could walk downtown that's 10 000 steps it would take me 10 000 steps from our house i could literally walk downtown that is i could walk up to the ikea up in round rock so the research i said was uh said

that 30 minutes of moderate intensity walking five days a week is is healthy okay not gonna happen if you listen to me folks listen i'm serious folks sitting at home if you do not do this that is totally fine i think walking is great and i think it is a valuable thing i have started i have started walking between 30 and 40 minutes at work each day that's fine on my lunch break i'll go out i'll do a little walk it's nice for me and it lets me think my thoughts for sure i think that that's great and i've certainly have done that in the past but before we had henry i would try and go on regular walks because it is nice i would mostly do it for the like uh just to get out of sort of my existential funk of living out of the house exclusively like i think that that's a good thing to do 10 000 steps it's so much it's so many steps um so yeah i was doing that at disney world right but like that is literally 14 hours of just walking from one donald to another goofy

when i was in dc and i would have these little breaks i would go on these walkers and i ended up doing like seven miles one day and that was just like four little discreet walks i took i definitely think people who like live in the city crush this all the time texas not the most walkable state because it's the size of the like half the earth i think yeah no that's that's that's right can i steal you away okay so you're gonna be excited i thought of lyrics oh for whoa last night i woke up at 3 a.m holy shit this was in my head and And so I wanted to share it. You went on a two and a half mile walk. No, it's ad appropriate. Okay.

Mattress meal kit, website watch, underwear, socks. That's good. Really covers all our bases. I got that in my head at three in the morning and I had to write it down. I was so proud of it. My love for you is as deep and wide as the ocean, as all the oceans. And I don't tell you that enough.

I tell you that a lot, but after hearing that, I still think I could put in a little bit more elbow grease. Hey, do we have any gumbo chums? Yeah. So this jumbo-tron is for Fantastic Worlds Podcast. It is an actual play podcast of diverse and inclusive friends with overactive imaginations adventuring into worlds unknown. They focus on story first, math second.

Can we make math like a 14th? The characters are nuanced, relationships are complex, and the stakes are high. They endeavor to engage a community by weaving a story not driven only by the written page, but the ingenuity of characters and luck of the roles. Come for the story, stay for the bitter fights and playful banter that is fantasticworldspod.com or wherever you listen to podcasts and that's every wednesday hats off to you every wednesday once a week unthinkable i mean we used to do it where what what was my life like that we were doing that show once a week. Seriously, hats right off to you.

This next message is for Taylor. It is from Jacob. To my dearest comma Taylor slash Charlene slash Taylor, take a breather from all of the wedding planning stress and listen to this message. I love you the most from here to infinity and beyond. I can't wait to spend my life on more road trips, listening to podcasts with you and cuddling all the cats. With love, Reginald, a.k.a. Jakeyob, a.k.a. Jacob. A.k.a. Buzz Lightyear. Oh, got him.

Was that a burn? they said uh infinity and beyond and i heard that and then i couldn't take it it was for me it was just this is fucking buzz light year yeah uh so like how did how are you even typing this with your little plastic hands and no fingers buzz think about that one reach for the skies yeah tim allen you know it's hard to Think about that one. Reach for the skies. Yeah. Tim Allen. You know, it's hard to think about that sometimes, but it is still Tim Allen. Hi, I'm Dave.

Hi, I'm Graham. And we're two house DJs who have been trapped inside our drum machine. We love it here. And we'd love if you stopped by and visited us every week on Stop Podcasting Yourself here on MaximumFun.org We're just a couple of doofuses from Canada and listen to our show

or perish. Stop Podcasting Yourself on MaximumFun.org Stop Podcasting Yourself on MaximumFun.org. Hey, can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. My second thing is the best television theme song of all time. Okay. I was very excited to do this one,

and it's a bit like sort of an abstract way to approach talking about the best TV theme song of all time because I really appreciate a good TV theme song song i appreciate that television shows have theme songs in the first place like who decided that like television who who are these people seinfeld um that's why i the fraser theme song and the seinfeld theme song do you like it i just like that they would say the name uh i love a good tvp song why is it the television shows get credits at the beginning and the end of it i guess movies do that too but movies don't typically have like theme songs at the beginning

of it but yes perfect strangers is definitely in the pantheon it's not number one perfect strangers cheers is good cheers is iconic parks and rec is good parks and rec is a good one i like an instrumental one that like sticks with you and i feel like that and uh the office like those yes those themes i was like you can remember note for note. Firefly had a good one. It was a good tone setter. WKRP in Cincinnati. If you live in Cincinnati and you go to karaoke,

you will hear somebody sing the theme song to W. Baby, have you ever wondered? You're going to get that no matter where you go in Cincinnati. It's kind of the fucking best, right? If there was a show called, you know, W, I can't think of a fucking single call sign. KLBJ. Why can I not think of a fucking single? Because you don't listen to the radio anymore. That's fair.

But Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air might be my runner up, actually. Because it tells a story more than anything. But Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air might be my runner up actually. Because like. Oh, okay. It tells a story more than anything. West Wing. That's a good one. Inspiring. Any more that you think before I come up and dunk on it?

Maybe The Simpsons. Yeah. I'm over it. But the best TV theme song of all time is from the 1998 Space Western anime Cowboy Bebop. And I hope that there's somebody out there listening to this who got a little flutter in their heart because they were hoping that that was it. There's probably just one person. And if that was you, I feel you and your cause is righteous and beautiful. Holy shit, this song's a jam.

I had it in my head yesterday and decided I want to talk about it in some context. That's why I sort of approached it in this like serpentine pattern. I sent it to you this morning just to make sure that you had heard it before. And I've played it for you definitely, I guess, because you said, I know this. I know this track. Yeah, well, it's unforgettable. It is very unforgettable, just as Cowboy Bebop is. I cannot think of a TV theme song that has brought so much joy to my life because every

time I hear it, and I know I speak enthusiastically about a lot of things on this enthusiast podcast I get so fucking psyched I want to kick a hole in the wall it is such a it's such a jam it is hard for me and this is bad like when I was younger and more foolhardy if I was driving like on the highway in my busted up fucking 1992 Cadillac Sierra like and this song came on my mix CD it was really hard to fight the temptation not to like hit the gas a little bit harder and pretend I was in an outer space dog fight Cowboy Bebop if you have not watched it you should it was a very short-lived anime it's only 26 episodes so you can get through it it's 26 episodes and a movie.

And it's about this team of intergalactic bounty hunters from, not galactic. It takes place in just our solar system. But it's a diverse team. There's a former hitman, a former cop. There's a con artist and a computer expert and a genetically engineered corgi. And they just tour the solar system and hunt down criminals for cash i first came across this show as i think probably a lot of people living in america who are fans uh did which was it came on adult swim in september of 2001 and that was fucking like that opened my eyes because i'd never really watched any anime at all before this is the

first anime they'd ever shown on adult swim which was like completely my shit and it just like blew me away i remember we were visiting our friends like family friends in indianapolis and we had stayed up like past our bedtime and we're watching adult swim and this show came on and i was like this is the coolest fucking thing i've ever seen in my entire life um The thing that really like makes the show, like its settings and characters and premise are all like really great, but what makes it is its tone. It has this like jazz inspired aesthetic

that just like permeates the entire thing. And both like kind of like sorrowful jazz, like the show, the premise of the show is that earth has more or less been destroyed. And so people had to move into other planets of the solar system. So there's this like lingering sense of loss like everywhere they go and so you get this like nice like smoky jazz over that and then anytime there's like a fight scene or like a space

race scene or anything you get this fucking pump up jazz and that is exactly what the theme song is it's called tank by a japanese band called The Seatbelts, which was actually formed specifically for Cowboy Bebop. They just made all of it. The lead of the band is a woman named Yoko Kanno, who is a prolific composer for huge names in anime. She did music for Ghost in the Shell and some other things. I wish I could play the whole song for you because it builds and develops in this fire climax that I can't really get across just by playing a snippet. But here's a little bit from Cowboy Bebop It's just the dopest song ever.

It is so good. And I rewatched Cowboy Bebop right after Henry was born because I needed something to watch between like three and five in the morning every night. between like three and five in the morning every night. And it was, again, holding a baby and being very tired and wishing the baby would sleep even a little bit better than it was. I was at one of the low points of my sort of awaking life. And then I would hear this theme song and then me and the baby would go fight crime and stuff.

It was pretty cool. Oh my gosh, I wanna see that show yeah it's the cowboy bebop remake um cowboy bebop's great theme song's great what's it called uh cowboy bebop 2 oh cow baby cow baby beep cowboy baby cowboy baby beep it's called kibibobop and it's a really good show you know what i realized we forgot to mention? What? In our theme song conversation. Yes.

Both theme songs to Dawson's Creek. Yeah. The real dilemma is which one is your fave, because you've got to have a fave. Is it, I don't want to wane? Or is it, slings and arrows, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, For those of you that don't know every step just uh when dawson's creek was released on dvd so wild for some reason they could not get rights to the original theme song so they had to use a different one which is so wild because you're fucking dawson's creek you are a huge show and

for you to say like, there must have been a fight with, was it Sarah McLachlan? Did she do? I don't know. No, it's Paula Cole. Paula Cole, that sounds right. Will you look it up, please?

No, it's Paula Cole. Okay. They couldn't get that? They must have had beef with Paula Cole. That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Because Paula Cole, they were like, we'll give you 50,000. And she like I want 100 and they're like I think

when they like signed her deal yeah like didn't even know DVDs were gonna be a thing that's entirely possible that's probably true for a lot of shows from back then uh what's your second thing my second thing what what like part of what anime is your second thing i guess is my question no mine is mentors i love them the commercials were so fucking funny when like the guy would get paint on his pants and then he'd roll around on the bench so it looked like this whole suit was pinstripes have you ever heard anything so silly that's a good you put mentors in diet coke it explodes it's a good joke you seen that meme you see ice bucket challenge oh i'm just thinking some good things mentors though let's get serious i've been

thinking about that more as i get older because you know how sometimes you're talking to somebody and they're like oh that reminds me of my mentor and you're like, oh, that reminds me of my mentor. And you're like, oh, come on. What does that mean? But I'll tell you what, it's a real thing. Yeah. So when I started at United Way as an AmeriCorps VISTA member, my whole job was to help start this mentoring program that United Way was doing at the time. And they were trying to match volunteer adults with middle school students from disadvantaged backgrounds. And there was all this research that said that, you know, a kid with a mentor is twice as likely to go to college. You know, they are more likely to, you know, go on to have a good career and do better in school. I don't doubt it, man.

All these things. And, you know, a lot of times this comes from, you know, children that don't have, you know, a real like a parental figure in their life. And so having that mentor is somebody that can be really important to them. Well, I've always thought there's also like so much value in seeing something be done by somebody who's like passionate and good at it. Yeah. Because it makes that thing so tangible. It makes it so accessible and seems like something that you can just like do. I mean, a lot of kids don't ever like leave their neighborhood.

You know, they don't ever get to see, you know, a college campus or go to, you know, an office building downtown. And by connecting somebody who has kind of like a different experience than them, you know, but that they can relate to, you know, you're opening their world to things. And so there was all this research talking about, you know, like an hour a week of time for no less than a year is shown to have the most impact, all this stuff. And I always kind of thought of mentoring kind of in that aspect. But then I started thinking about, you know, as I become older and more professional, you know, I think a lot about like the mentors along your career and the value that they have. So I wanted to share with you and maybe get your thoughts. You know, TED Talks. I've heard of him. So there are five types of mentors that you need in your life. I thought you were going to say there's five types of TED Talks.

There's five TEDs. One's about animals. One's about apps. One's about life. One TED is real wacky. Yeah. The other TED, a little more debonair. Yeah.

I watched a whole TED Talk from, fuck, who's the magician who does the stunts that are going to one day kill him? David Blaine he did one about when he held his breath for 18 minutes on Oprah pretty good TED talk he held his breath on Oprah for I think maybe 17 and a half minutes he broke the world record for holding

your breath and he went ahead what kind of television was that must see TV Oprah had like guests Oprah had like a doctor sitting there went ahead what kind of television was that it was he just must see tv how could they verify i had like guests over i had like a doctor sitting there just like how could they verify that he wasn't breathing well they he was underwater oh well you didn't say that oh he was just standing there for 17 staring and he didn't tell oprah he was gonna do it he was just like

sitting on the couch across from oprah she was like so tell me on your next trick and he's like well oprah it starts right now and she was like okay but uh staring directly at the camera getting frozen that must have been cold huh you're really not going to talk to you're really going to hold your breath for 17 okay fuck that's good uh do you want to hear about these mentors yes please i thought it would be nice if you could share your mentors yeah sure okay so the first is the master of craft this is the person that can function as your personal jedi master someone who's accumulated their wisdom through years of experience and who can provide insight into your industry and fine-tuning your skills the most obvious one is probably chris grant who is the editor-in-chief at polygon

editor-in-chief at joystick kind of giving my my first big gig and then kind of actually my only gig i did until i quit it and started doing a podcast full time uh like he hired me when i was 20 i didn't know anything and uh i learned everything that i know about online media basically that's the thing this and also carpentry and home improvement this seems like a really good role for a boss i feel like i've had a lot of bosses that have had this relationship to me yeah for sure. The next one is the champion of your cause. These are people who are advocates and who have your back, but they're more than just boosters. Often they can be connectors to introducing you to useful people in your industry. Huh? This one's not as obvious to me. For me, this was more like academic. This was like instructors I had

that would tell me about new poets or books I should read or movies I should see or, you know. Yeah, I don't know if I attribute, if I would attribute this to like people who have said nice things about our shows on Twitter. All of our listeners who tweet about the shows. You are my...

Well, I mean, this could be Lynn, right? This could be Lynn, yeah. all of our all of our listeners uh who tweet about the shows you are you are my well i mean this could be this could be lynn this could be lynn yeah lynn has said so lynn has helped us out so many ways uh the next is the co-pilot i mean jesus christ next next thank you this let me read the descriptor okay this is your best work bud yeah the co-pilot is the colleague who can talk you through projects. Of course. Advise you in navigating the personalities at your company. Mm-hmm.

And listen to you vent over coffee. Yeah, I mean. This kind of mentoring relationship is best when it's close to equally reciprocal. Hmm. I mean, I had people, again, like this does not apply to my podcast world because i i for me then i have two choices basically and the other one's just gonna find out uh but i don't know like chris plant uh at polygon yeah this is my friend leah for me yeah for sure somebody we met through the workplace we have similar kind of professional interests and goals and uh we kind

of talk through you know things that are going on in our job with each other yeah like i'm not necessarily in the games industry anymore but i was in it for so long and i want to know i want yeah i want the fucking scoop yeah that's my dude you want to know what toads wear in these days yeah you know yeah that's i mean a decade of my work uh can be boiled down to what's toad wearing these days and like stardew valley like what don't try to get on my good side now by referencing fruits are available it depends on what season it is obviously in fall you got your blackberry game going okay now you'll like this one okay and and i'm not gonna assume that i know who this is is it gonna be you this is the anchor yeah well your jesus be too

well your champion supports you to achieve specific career goals your anchor is a confidant and a sounding board the anchor is keeping your overall best interests in mind and can be particularly insightful when it comes to setting priorities, achieving work-life balance, and not losing sight of your values. I mean, it's got to be my wife, Paul. I wrote down Griffin. I wrote down Griffin right here. All right. That was a gimme.

Because you're really my anchor. Hear that, Jesus? And then this is the final one. This is the reverse mentor. Someone I fucking hate the guts of. The devil. So this is the person that you are mentoring. Even though they have fewer years in the workplace,

you can get feedback on your leadership style, engage with the younger generation, and keep your perspectives fresh and relevant. I definitely don't have anything like this right now. I was in charge of a small team of young reporters earlier at Polygon, and I definitely got that feeling. And I really liked it. earlier at Polygon and I definitely got that feeling and I really liked it I don't know how useful I was but it was nice to um watch them watch them grow whether or not I had anything to do with it at all that was a very reward I had never managed anybody in my life before and I was so sure I was so full of shit the entire time but uh whenever I I don't know whenever they did something really amazing I was I was very very very proud. It keeps you connected to kind of what got you fired up in the first place,

to have somebody who's newer on the scene. Yeah, for sure. I know when I finished AmeriCorps, I continued to stay at United Way, and each year a new group of AmeriCorps members would show up, and I would just feel this real kinship to them and this real interest in what they were doing because it kept me excited about the work. Yeah, yeah yeah that's a good subject uh we had a lot of fun along the way but i think it's important to i think it's important to like really take stock of the people who have helped you you know become the the person that you are and helped you get the

i think so too you know and i talked about teachers before and i thought like is this duplicative but it isn't really because a lot of this comes from like an informal relationship. You know, they don't necessarily have authority over you and what you do. These are people that like, you know, aren't making the rules for you necessarily. They're just like supporting you along the way. It's nice. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

I was trying to think if I snubbed anybody. So now I'm just going to list a bunch of important people in my life. Did you say Jesus? I can't remember. Jesus, Jesse, Thorn, my dad, your dad, just to be safe, your mom. Yeah. Your mom. So thanks for listening to Wonderful. this is a podcast that we do every

brothers my brothers um there's a podcast we do every week for you uh and we this one's finished more or less we gotta say some stuff at the end of it uh i got a mailing list it It's McElroy, bid.ly slash McElroy mail. Speaking of mail, we're going to get that P.O. box going. For sure. Very soon. And so that's going to be cool. And we'll let you know where that lives. Thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. They got all kinds of great shows like Story Break.

And Everything's Coming Up Simpsons. And Can I Pet Your Dog? shows like story break and everything's coming up simpsons and can i pet your dog and i'm trying to think of one we don't say all the dang time international waters international waters i don't think we've plugged in quite some time not because it's a bad show but because there's 40 shows on the network and where you're bad at recalling all of them beef and dairy network beef and dairy network is precious in god's eyes. So that's MaximumFun.org. We have other stuff at McElroyShows.com.

Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. It is actually the best theme song of all time, but this is not a TV show. You can find a link to that in the episode description.

What else? I feel like going else. Please like and subscribe and review and share and tweet and pin and favorite 60 episodes and i don't think we can ask for that anymore i feel like we and i it's important that you tell your friends and like we get the word out but after 60 it kind of feels like you have put all the english on the ball that you're gonna get we spent the first 60 episodes starting to we threw the dart and now the dart is out of our hands and whether it hits the bullseye of podcast success

or not uh maybe you got a friend that likes the cowboy bebop and they would love to hear somebody else talk about the bebop god that song fucking owns god God, it's good. Watch the actual opening to the show too because it is also slick as shit. But yeah, thank you all so much. It's been fun. I feel like I really bounced back from Ted John's whole saga coming to an end in front of our eyes

just an hour ago. And I'm thinking about it and I'm sad again. Can we please hang up? Can we please hang up? I need to go to my... I need to crawl in my weeping basket. I need to enter my morning yurt.

Do you mind? Please go ahead. I'm crawling into the morning yurt now. Do not follow me in here. Do not go in there. Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Have a good one. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported. Hey Kira, so Max Fun Con tickets go on sale this Friday, November 23rd at 11am Pacific, and I'm trying to write a promo. Okay, so what do they need to know to look forward to? Inspiring classes. Live podcast tapings. Stand-up showcase. The s'mores party. Making new friends.

Don't forget about the dance party! Oh, and it all takes place on a beautiful mountaintop. Okay, got it. Anything else? Well, if we missed anything, they can find all the details at maxfuncon.com. And we'll see you in June! I think that went really well. That sounded good too. Yeah, that sounded good.

Great job! Thank you.