My Brother, My Brother And Me - MBMBaM 481: I Have Seen Every Bird

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Look, the title ain’t lying, and you’d have no way of proving it if it were. One of us has seen every bird, full stop. We’re the new high score on the birdwatcher leaderboard, and who’s gonna argue against that? The birds? Probably not the birds. Suggested talking points: Spookily, Raccoon Trash Strats (feat. John Hodgman), Dickbilled Priebus, Freakied and Fridayed, Ammunition for the Soda Wars

The McElroy brothers are not experts, and their advice should never be followed. Travis insists he's a sexpert, but if there's a degree on his wall, I haven't seen it. Also, this show isn't for kids, which I mentioned only so the babies out there will know how cool they are for listening. What's up, you cool baby? Hello, everybody! Welcome to my broother, my woother, and me. I'm your oldest brother, Justin McElroy. I'm your middleest brother, Travis Merderoy. Those are bones. I'm Griffin. Okay. It's spooky Christmas. Those are bones. Tell me more about these bones, Griffin. Where'd you get them?

Inside me. I guess I was, I guess I died. Now I'm a skeleton, and isn't that something? Isn't that something? Listen, my main Halloween exposure so far has been weird YouTube, which Henry is now far, far down the oobliet, and now I live in that prison with him, and it just seems like a, boys, it seems like a market we are neglecting. Because apparently you can just put Spider-Man and a skeleton in the same room, and now it's Spider-Man Halloween, and it has 3.6 million views, and it's maybe $55,000. That's it. Very easy. There's one, and it's a guy dressed as Spider-Man walking in front of a green screen while ghosts and skeletons walk by him, and there's a song in the background that goes, and I'm going to sing it

exactly. This is not a joke. Halloween, Halloween, creepy spooky Halloween. Three and a half million people said, that's my shit. Three and a half million people are also being held hostage by their toads. I think eight kids watched it for 100,000 times. That sounds about right to me. So anyway, yeah, that's where I am. I guess my spooky Christmas spirit has not kicked into overdrive yet. You can put fucking anything. I don't know how you get, do you have to get like a permit to make weird YouTube videos? Because it seems so ridiculously lucrative that I have to imagine there's only a few people allowed to do it. I don't know how you get in that game, but I would love to get a slice of that. That pie seems delicious. I assume that the only qualification, Justin,

to making weird YouTube videos is that you have to always stay on the run one step ahead of the government who's chasing you. That to me seems like the only thing like, oh, we almost got them, that kind of thing. Now, I will say somehow, Bebe has not gotten into this. So I have, I've been spared this. The weirdest thing I watch is like, said the science kid. I'm going to mess up. So you've messed up. Oh, the thing is, you got to put, you got to put more garbage. I love, I love seeing my daughter watch these weird Russian monstrosities and thinking, yes, put that in there, put that in that brain. Let's see where it comes out. I don't know where it's coming out. Maybe when she's 30, maybe when she's eight, I have no idea. Maybe when she's eight,

talk about turbo team a lot for some reason. If there was a show on when I was 11, I'll be honest, 16. And that show was just a box. And every time they opened it, I did have a different Pokemon inside of it. That's must see fucking TV. I would have faked sick even more often than I did to watch that show during the daytime on WB. Love Halloween. Love Halloween though. I do. Anybody got costumes? Well, as is always the case, I now have to find either a costume that already has a beard or any other costume that justifiably looks okay with beard. Oh, I mean, there's not that many bearded heroes. Correct. I don't want to be Wolverine for the 18th time. Oh God, your Wolverine is always so thirsty trap. Your Wolverine was always, it was always so thirsty. Well, I mean, it's really

hard to be Wolverine and have it be like that as a conservative, super calm, not interested in attention Wolverine, you know, that's so weird because I am doing Wolverine this year. But with no take different than mine. A young Wolverine. Maybe we could each of us do the many stages of Wolverine and Justin, you could be a Wolverine, I could be a Wolverine Griffin, you could be Wolverine Logan, I'm Logan. Hello. Aren't you Wolverine? I'm not. I am Logan. Wolverine's my dad. I am Logan. But you have the bone, you have like the bones, right? Fuck yeah, I got the bones. I'm Logan. Listen, can we just talk about Spookly the Square Pumpkin for a second? Why? Do you guys have a second to talk? We just talked about Halloween and kids programming and it made

me think about the only thing I'm allowed to watch on Halloween other than Mickey's Monster Musical. Spookly the Square Pumpkin, you guys know this fool? No, tell me about him. Okay, hold on. He sounds fun. He's a real piece of garbage. Here's the deal. Here's the deal with this idiot, okay? I'm going to tell you this story. I'm going to leave this narrative for you based on the Wikipedia page. Now, I don't need the Wikipedia page. I've seen it a thousand times, but I don't want it to be colored. I don't want you guys to think I'm coloring the story in any way. Is that fair? Sure. Yeah, but I'm going to tilt my monitor up and everybody just gather around the fire gather around the heart for this fucking. Oh yeah. Can we put haunting

music over it? Can you? Oh, Justin, sorry. Absolutely. You're just got your decision. Yeah, I'll put haunting music over it and make sure you do it like a spooky story. Yes, please. This is the story of Spookly the Square Pumpkin by Wikipedia. You could be scarier. I don't want to do it in a goofy voice. Well, I've already been playing. Hold on. Stop the music. I'm playing spooky music under it. So do a fucking. Okay, that'll be the lift, though. Yeah, you don't have to do a silly voice, Justin. Just like a committed voice with some energy. Give me two bats. I'm not a fucking monkey. Just say let me read it. Now say now say I'm not a fucking monkey, but say with like five percent spooky just so we know it's different.

Five percent. Not a fucking monkey. That's like 65. That was so, so spooky. Two bats who live at Holiday Hill Farm buggy eating Boris and bug loving vegetarian Bella discover an unusual site, the pumpkin patch and rush to inform the farm scarecrow Jack of their find a young innocent and square pumpkin who identifies himself as Spookly. Just a real fake. Is that different from other pumpkins in the pumpkin patch? They're just like not innocent. They've seen some shit in the naughty. Yeah, nasty pumpkins. Jack takes a likely liking to Spookly, but little Tom, a small pumpkin attached by a vine to a much larger big Tom. Another pumpkin immediately begins bullying Spookly and says only round pumpkins are real pumpkins. Okay. It's weird

that they able to establish bias that quickly, but there you go. So Jack organizes the pumpkins in the patch to compete in the quote Jack Olympics, which is so challenging. It's an athletic competition that is quote not affiliated in any way, shape or form with those other games. And it's designed to determine the pick of the patch. Now, Justin in this, as I have not seen it, are the pumpkins mobile? Are they alive? Yeah, all the pumpkins are alive. Big Tom, little Tom, right? Yeah, we have a Tom's is it is then the farmer is just okay with this. I guess he doesn't have other things to go. This is all in a farmer's imagination. That's what you find out. Oh, at the end, you find out the farmer was hit by a car and these are

his last moments. Yes, this is the these are the neurons in his brain, right firing. Oh, there's a This is a weird shape pumpkin and his names add verb. So these spider I'm skipping ahead a little bit. The spiders decided to help him in the Jack Olympics so they can eat the prize, which is a crown made of candy corn. Right. And big Tom, little Tom get disqualified because they're using their vine to give them an unfair advantage. They're just making this shut up as they go along. Why is that not allowed? Where did the scarecrow get candy corn from? Spookily turns out to be this is a quote from Wikipedia. Spookily turns out to be a total failure at all the events, leaving him discouraged. Bobo's crown,

the winner, spiders abandoned Spookily to help themselves to her crown. What? And then a severe windstorm hits the pumpkin patch, pushing the pumpkins all over and pinning Jack under a flaming tree branch. What the fuck? Spookily. This is so sweaty. Spookily, because he is square, does not roll away when the wind hits him. Well, and okay, shut the fuck up. That's not how aerodynamics works. If it's hitting Spookily's flat ass surface, Spookily's going to get fucking launched. After the storm, the farmer goes to the patch to assess the damage. It's horrified. Monstrous. My children, my pumpkin children. How did he survive the flaming bridge? Did we just drop the flaming branch? No, but Spookily saved him because he's not round. Okay, right. Okay,

okay. But I would argue that him not rolling away. Okay, I'll give you that. And what way does that help him lift a flaming branch off someone? So Jack, so he saves Jack. The farmer goes to assess the damage and discovers Spookily. The farmer is charmed by Spookily's square shape and decides to make the square pumpkin his own personal jack-o-lantern. That's right. His incredible reward for doing so good at being rectangular is to have his eyes hollowed out, his brains removed. His evisceration. Oh, no. This sounds like a ballin' movie, dude. Yeah. So this is the film that you can watch if you are so unlucky to do so. It is absolutely horrifying. I mean, it is monstrous. And it is spooky in a way. Yeah. But Spookily, the square pumpkin, that is the whole story.

And that's Justin's popcorn thoughts. Another segment here, another successful segment on My Brother, My Brother and Me. Another great segment. All right, I think we should actually start the show at this point. Okay, yeah, yeah, let's begin. All right, I'm pressing record. Oh, no. Now. It's going to be so weird when people just listen at Griffin and I react. Hey, let's do our first question. Here is our first question. I am bringing my boyfriend home to meet my family for the first time at Canadian Thanksgiving. Next week, however, my sister is also bringing her boyfriend home for the holiday. Although some of

us have met him before, this marks the first holiday or major family event that any of my siblings or cousins or I have brought a partner to. How can I give my boyfriend an edge to help him become the clear favorite when my sister's boyfriend has already had a head start on winning some of the family over? That's from Superior Significant Other in Ontario. I'm in the fucking tall grass already. Oh my God, I know we just started, but I used it all up in New York Comic Con. I don't got any left. We're being asked to basically wait into not only family dynamics, but also another culture that I have no insight into. In fact, there is only one man I can think to turn to in a situation

like this. Let me see if I can get him on Snapchat. Here he is. Hello? Ring, ring, ring, ring. Hello, brothers, brothers. Hi. Hi, Snapchat, John Hodgman. I can't believe the emergency Mabimbam Snapchat that I set up three years ago finally rang. The excitement with which you answered, John, made me feel like maybe you're trapped in Snapchat and we have to get you out of there. I've had it open on my phone. I guess that's where it is, right? That is where Snapchat is. Well, John, I've had it open on my phone for three years, and I've just been waiting. I'm so glad that you finally reached out to me. John, I'm so thrilled that you have a book coming out because that's the legally only time you

allow us to contact you. I'm thrilled. It lined up perfectly, actually, that your new book is coming out and is out. Currently will be out. Well, let me ask you this question. Not to pull back the curtain too much on the production of a podcast, but sometimes these things are recorded ahead of time, correct? Occasionally, not this one. This one's live. So what is today's date, then, if it is live? Today's date? Oh, it's the 14th, John. It's October 14th. How long have you been in Snapchat, John? Of what year? 2019. Not only does my new book, Medallion Status, True Stories from Secret Rooms, come out tomorrow in the United States and Canada, but speaking of Canada, today, brothers, do you know this? Today is Canadian

Thanksgiving! Hey! We haven't missed it, were we? We haven't missed it, everybody! You did it all in one night? I happen to have the Canadian Thanksgiving Wikipedia page open before me right now. Oh, okay. That's okay. There's a lot of weird coonky dinks happening on this phone call. I have observed Canadian Thanksgiving one time when I was in Honduras. Ha! At the the consulate. Oh, the Canadian consulate. Yeah, there were some some expats from Canada, there who ran a small inn, a resort, if you will. A small opium din for Canadian opium. It's the only place to get the stuff from the Great White North. And they celebrate these two Canadians celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. We're kindness to have us as guests. I don't know how that

experienced. What did you have? Do you remember what you had for Canadian Thanksgiving in Honduras? Turkey and pumpkin pie, but it had a little Canadian flag in it. So I don't know if that's part of the bit that they put Canadian flags on a lot of stuff. That would seem weird, I think. My brothers, my husband, I don't want to derail us. I don't know that the individual trappings of Canadian Thanksgiving have so much impact on this question. Yeah, I don't think, unless you all are playing a wild angle, I think that this could be a more sort of neutral. How do I make my boyfriend the best boyfriend? Unless you're saying how to plant the largest Canadian flag in the smallest pumpkin pie. Excuse me, I have no idea what you're talking about,

because you called me after you posed the question. In fiction, the person we're calling has already heard the questions. Oh, okay. Yeah, because why would we reread it? The listener, we shouldn't waste their time. So yeah, in fiction, you have somehow already seen this. I thought we were trying to build a world here. I thought we were trying to create... No. Okay. We are, and it's a world in which you have already heard the question. So here's a question. Superior significant other in Ontario is bringing home her significant other for Canadian Thanksgiving for the first time. Or their significant other, I don't know that we know. That's true. I did very, very well put. They are significant other for the first time,

and they want to do better than their sibling, whose significant other has been attending Canadian Thanksgiving for years. Maybe even as far back as 1957, the first official Canadian Thanksgiving. Here he goes. I mean, we all know that Canadian Thanksgiving has been celebrated since November 6, 1879, but it wasn't officially proclaimed until January 31st, 1957, when Vincent Massie issued a proclamation saying, a day of general Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the bountiful harvest in which Canada, that's the important part, has been blessed to be observed on the second Monday in October, Vincent Massie. So... Could it be possible that a good way to give your significant other a leg up is to have him

roll up and verbatim from memory, deliver what John Hodges said? That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that the superior significant other in Ontario's boyfriend, right, boyfriend, right? We do know that. Yes. Okay. That the boyfriend should steep him or themselves in this Wikipedia page and just roll up with a ton of Canadian Thanksgiving fun facts. Because people love fun facts. I love fun facts. I love fun facts. The problem is, I am looking at this Wikipedia page and there are no fun facts. Oh, no. Just fact facts. It's not a trivial holiday. There's just no trivia surrounding it. It's just a regular... Yeah. Now, I don't want to step on John Hodges'

toes, so I will not pause at fake facts. What I will pause it is perhaps embellished true facts. He talked about this Massie fellow proclaiming Canadian Thanksgiving and maybe he did it while like stealing like an official turkey from America and saying like, this is my holiday now. And it was kind of like when one college pranks another. This holiday was invented in 1956, B.C. You can talk about all the dinosaurs. We should say that Vincent Massie proclaimed this after he stole across the border with the turkey that had just been pardoned by the United States president at that time. Yes. He snuck into the White House and the lawn, 57. That's got to be Eisenhower, right?

Eisenhower? Sure, man. Yeah, totally. Yeah, sure. Good. Ike. Ike. Stole that to him. The big dog. That was his nickname. Yeah, he did not like to stay on the porch or be second. Nope. No. And sometimes he hung out with Big Johnson. Hey, listen, this is all you got. This isn't that hard. Your boyfriend has just got to help out a little bit by taking out the trash. You take out the trash one time and make a big production out of it. I'm saying a big, make a real big deal. Hey, where is, ask every single person where the cans are. Ask every single person on the premises where the trash goes and have two bags,

one in each hand. Like, where does this go? I'm happy to, can you just direct me to, make sure everybody sees it. If you make a big enough production out of it, you will skate. You will skate into the number one position. Yeah, just say, like, where is the, like, make sure you ask, where's the compost? Where is the plastic recycling? You know, make and also sing and make a big production and sing a song about it. I'm taking out the trash. Contingency. The contingency plan is if their relatives partner is already on that trash game and not leaving you any trash to take out yourself. And if that's the case, good news, you're not out of luck. You go outside to the trash cans.

After he's done his work and you rip up the bags and you pour them all over the yard. And then you go back inside like, Jeremy, what did you do? That's not how you take trash out, Jeremy. He did it incredibly incorrectly. The bags go in the cans. Did you leave it open? Did you leave open the can? Cause some raccoons got in there, Jeremy. Yeah. Some raccoons got in there. And now, you know what? I cleaned it up already. And I put it, oh yeah, skip Griffin's thing. Cause that seems like work. And look, Jeremy, maybe I shouldn't have brought a raccoon to Canadian Thanksgiving, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have been on this. Say, don't worry, Jeremy. I'm going to fix your fuck up. I'll take care of this and

grab a trash bag and go outside of the big pile of trash and then wait for a raccoon to come and capture him in the trash bag. The family will not see that. That's great for the boyfriend, cause he's just going to be able to get a minute to himself out there waiting for the raccoons. So he'll love it, but he'll also be able to help out the family and maybe give a raccoon a great new home and a trash bag. Well, you wouldn't leave it in there. Is Jeremy the boyfriend that we're trying to beat here? Is that, do I understand? I believe that that's where we've come up. And I also would remind you, Justin, that in this moment that, that raccoon is innocent. Yeah. Yeah. Right. The raccoon didn't actually, well, you know, you can't, you can't make an omelet

without breaking a few raccoon eggs. That is one of the great sayings of Canadian Thanksgiving. Now, if this is my experience, you're, you are going to have to collaborate with your boyfriend to some extent, which is to say you have to tell your boyfriend that this is a priority, because then your boyfriend's going to have to balance out doing this, this scam that you're orchestrating while also spending large chunks of time in the bathroom, just anxiety, Facebooking and waiting for the day to end. It is also incredibly hard to execute a scheme when one has just eaten a lot of food. That is, you don't see a lot of cat burglars about to go into a heist and stopping at a golden corral first. Okay. Okay. Okay. You let Jeremy take the trash out,

and then when no one's looking, you go out and get the trash and then put it in your parent's bed. Okay. And then your boyfriend storms the room and he's like, God damn it, Jeremy, can you explain this to me? Why on earth would you think the trash bags go in Melanie's parent's bed? I cannot fathom why you think that's right. And he's just going to be stuttering and stammering and owned. I just, I don't know what the traditions are in Ontario. Maybe that's where the garbage goes on the bed. So now you, John, you have taken on the role of other boyfriend. That's fun. We've never had anybody be the antagonist before. It's your character. You're now, John, for the rest of the episode, the portrayal of

enemy boyfriend will be played by John Autchman. Jeremy, the enemy boyfriend. Yes. Yeah. I'll see what we come known. No, I'll take that heat. I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the villain that Canadian Thanksgiving needs and deserves. That's true. Hey, John, tell me about your, uh, your new book. Well, coming out the day after Canadian Thanksgiving is a brand new book by me, John Autchman called Medallion Status, True Stories from Secret Rooms. And, uh, it's another book like Vacationland that you, that you guys were very kind to, to read and, and, and talk about before. And in the same vein, it's first person, funny stories that are also sometimes, um, thoughtful and dare I say, very profound about

my implausible career as a, uh, very famous minor television personality and all of the secret rooms and first class lounges and exclusive parties that even the minors to fame allows you entry to, until you are slowly kicked out of those rooms one by one by one. And you're not on television that much anymore. And now you're not even as famous as the least famous Corgi on Instagram. That's kind of my story. Medallion Status comes out tomorrow. Now, John, what if this, this book is such a massive hit that you get super famous again? Whoa. You're back in the mix. All of a sudden, another, wouldn't that be embarrassing for you? I know. Wouldn't that be horribly embarrassing?

Back on top by John Autchman. I'm getting, I'm getting chills thinking about that worst possible outcome. I mean, I really didn't have a plan B for this book succeeding at that level. Uh, that would be fun. Everybody should go buy it. It's a very good book. I've been reading it. And, uh, I, you know, I say that, you know, it sounds like bullshit, but this book really speaks to me. And I think John Hudrin is one of the great, uh, observers of sort of our, Earth, our, our culture as it is right now. Uh, and he speaks to it beautifully. And it's also hilarious. At least a joke presents. Uh, and that is, uh, that's a hit ratio that, that, uh, anybody could be proud of. Well, that's really kind. And thank you for letting me, uh,

come on and talk about it and say these words, BIT.ly slash medallion status. That's where you can check it out and maybe order it if you want. But listen, did we solve this for superior significant other in Ontario? Oh, no, we don't actually fix them. All right. Just sort of look, I know, I, look, I come from the judge John Hodrin podcast where we, here he goes. All right. All right, motherfucker. Hold on. We had to, the agreement was the book. Okay. How dare you, how dare you get on and put here and try to tell us how to do our jobs. Yeah. Don't, don't, don't worry. It's, it's not a competition. Don't worry about it. You guys, you got, you got to cover it. You got to cover it. Much like Canadian Thanksgiving. It's not a competition. This is what I want to say,

to superior significant other in Ontario. Like we all know Jeremy's a creep. We all know that everyone likes Jeremy even though he's, you know, and the family fawns over Jeremy because he's got that smile, but he's actually kind of a jerk and he's, and he's secretly bad mouths. Everyone behind their back. We all know this. Jeremy deserves to lose, but you're, you're a significant other superior significant other. Your boyfriend doesn't need to be drawn into a Canadian Thanksgiving fight. It's really great. And then save your machinations for tomorrow when everybody's all turkey drunk and susceptible and enjoying the new book by John Hodrin. Right. Well, they're distracted. That's when you start, maybe you start moving some trash around.

Once Jeremy's asleep with my book on his face, as everyone else is watching this book, Jeremy, we got to buy another one. You got to go buy another copy of this book that you drew. Right. As everyone else is watching Canadian football on this weird alternate universe, parallel dimension of Thanksgiving on their oval television. Thank you, John. We appreciate it. Thank you very much so much indeed. I have a Yahoo here. Okay. Delicious. Yahoo is sitting by Michelle Smith. Thank you. It's an honor. Oh no, it's Yahoo answers user Ricky who asks, is bird watching just guesswork?

So far I've seen about 20 odd birds and noted them down. I don't know if they're saying 20 birds and change, or they have seen exactly 20 very strange birds. I've seen about 20 odd birds and noted them down. I'm just getting into bird watching and it's late in the year so I don't have a serious list yet. The birds I've seen particularly at a distance, I'm only about 60% sure I've correctly identified them. I can never totally be sure. Right now I saw a fleeting glimpse of what I think basing a Google search on a memory was a buzzard. Can I really count that? Whoa. Hey, I've never bird watched in my life. I know that that's not how you do it. By the way, the first Yahoo answer

respondent to this says, sure, personal finance. And I was like, what the fuck's that mean? That's the section that this question has been posted in. How I see. Business and finance, personal finance, is bird guessing just guesswork. I'm pretty sure one is supposed to have a book and maybe you take a picture or you look at them with binoculars and you say, yes, that is that. You don't just see a bird in the distance and say, I'm going to remember that and remember to think about it later. Is there any hobby that is as susceptible to fucking speed runs as bird watching? There's no, I mean, I could just stand near a book and with a notepad and just start writing

names of some birds. And if someone's like, is this a purple-bellied Starling? Those aren't native to West Virginia at all. I'd just be like, yeah, because I fucking kick ass at this. I'm so good at this. I found one that's like super hard to find because I'm killing it. I'm so dope. I saw this afternoon just looking out my kitchen window. I was not even properly bird watching. I just like yawned and looked out the window and I fucking no-scoped a dick-billed pre-bus and it was so choice. That's not a bird. It is. I know. I found a new bird today while I was young. Yeah, I found the first one. I no-scoped a pre-bus. It's amazing. It's pretty tight. I really like that this question basically is positing, like, that we are all kind of bird

watching all the time. Like, if you see a bird, whether you meant to or not you are bird watching, it is up to you whether you want to follow up on step two, which is look up bird. But I could now sit down after 35 years of consecutive bird watching and try to remember all the birds I've seen and write them down. I saw a purple one once. Watching is challenging. A challenging way of putting it, if you think about it, because I'm sure the birds would prefer you just like bird, like looking. Bird seeing. Bird seeing and then moving on with your life. I was bird watching, bird glimpsing. Bird watching is like, what's up next, you nasty woodpecker? What else are you got planned for the day? I'm just going to watch you. It's perverse. By the way, I think the only

reason a woodpecker does what it does and like hits its head against a tree is because it knows someone's watching. Like, because there is no way that evolution was like, this is the best way to do this. Slam your face into a tree. I used to have an app. I think it's called Merlin. I may still have it installed. And I got into a habit of like, I would see these birds out on a tree outside our house. And I think, wonder what kind of bird that is. And so I would enter into the Merlin app, the color of the bird, approximate size, or there's on the ground or the trees. And then I would figure it out what bird it was. And then I would see the name of the bird and I would know it. And then I would tell my wife and children. And then I stopped that because it

turned out nobody gave a shit, including myself. I would just get this knowledge and be like, I don't give a shit about this. Why do all that? I could just be like, oh, pretty bird. How chill. What a chill way. Okay, I'm moving on with my life. But no, I had to fucking poke at my phone like an asshole for 20 minutes trying to figure out, look how birds out there. And they know they watch me. Like, I'm not going to be able to play it off like I'm fucking Yule Gibbons. Like I'm clearly just poking my phone like an asshole. This is one of my favorite weird facts about like Brace, one of the only things I know about that Audubon dude. He went around spotting birds, listening to other people talk about birds and drawing birds. And even today, there's some

birds in that book that people are like, uh, no one else has ever seen that bird. And it makes me think that every so often he was just like, I don't know, what if a bird looked like this? No one knows. It's like 1870 or whatever. They can't look at, they can't Google to see if this word exists. I'm that this is my dream bird. My publisher says I can charge more if there's more papers of birds. Oh, I'm eight pages shy of my, of my, of my goal. Uh, I'm just going to draw something. Now a silly one. Let's, oh my God, here's my problem with it. I just Googled this. Please don't Google it. We'll make a fun game out of it. But how many different types of birds do y'all think there is? Answer now. Uh, I'm going to say roughly like 10,000. I was going to say eight.

I was going to say 8,000. It's 10,000. There's about 10,000 species of birds described worldwide. It's about the one estimate of the real number of places that had almost twice that. Hey, good numbers science. It's either this one or double it. So I'm going through and there's so many different taxonomies, these bad boys. And that's why I could not get into this is because like there's 10,000 options. Is that a frog mouth or is that a night jar? I don't know because I just saw those words on the internet. I'm never going to learn what they mean. I think we need to pair this down to like a dozen birds. That's that I can do. That's a big blue one. The big blue one would be like color bird and we can get parrots in there. Flamingos I think

could go in there, but I think flamingos you could also taxonomize as the tall bird. Yes. And we'll put ostriches in there and then we'll get uh, eaten birds. Those are birds that are delicious. Penguins get their own little nook, I think. Oh, you know what's fun about eating birds? We can make that birds that are good for eating and birds that are good at eating. At eating. Yeah. Pigeons. I do like this because I know myself well enough to know that if I tried to be a bird watcher, right, I would say like, Oh, there's, you know, whatever a green build honey hammer. And so maybe like, no, it's not. And then I'd never do it again. So I'd like this idea of being able to say like, there is a big bird and something like, yes, it is. And now we,

and now we have something to talk about. It's going to bring us closer together as friends and as people. And like, there is no like, no, that is not a, that is not like an eaten bird. And like, yes, that is a bird I would eat. I'll decide what's an eaten bird. Yes. That's one of those weird dance birds. I'm very disappointed because I just googled, I have seen every bird and there's no, nothing right about it. Hi, my name is Todrick Plebbins. And I've seen, you may know me as the man who's seen every bird. Yeah, there's no, it's 2019. How is there not someone who's whole deal is they've seen every bird? They, there's no one who said I've seen every bird. The closest I've found is this,

this editorial and why she posts this titled, I never meant to be a birder, but the birds didn't give me any choice. And I'm not going to read it. I'm just going to leave it just like it is right there. Does that mean a bird? Hey, look at me. All right, write me down. Okay, I'm not going to read it. Damn, the Wikipedia's got a list of holy shit, y'all. This is my new life. Wikipedia has a list of, I'm sorry, not a list, a fucking scoreboard of who's seen the most birds. It's Klaus Goran Cedarland has seen 9,637, but then it says slash 9,636. There has to be one disputed bird. How many? How many? 9,637. You got close, but you missed out on 400, didn't you there, Klaus? I've seen 9,738. Oh, shit. Go call Wikipedia.

I guess I'm number, I'm number one. No, I guess it's what I'm saying that I'm the number one bird. What if you've only seen one bird, but you've seen a lot of that one bird? Yeah. I've only seen one kind of bird ever in my entire life, but one time I saw like 50,000 of them at once. Damn, you have to clear 8,000 to even for Wikipedia to even give a shit about you. I don't have time for that. Hey, I got an idea. Let's take a break and go to the money zone. Okay. Squarespace, Squarespace, Squarespace. What was it again? Squarespace. They make a service that you can use to do a website for the internet. And whatever you do with the website at that point, it's all up to you. You can say you want to showcase. It's all legal. Yeah,

if you do it legal, then it's all okay by Squarespace. They will look the other way while you showcase your work blog or published content, sell products, and services of all kinds and more. I don't like what you guys are positing here, because I'm afraid that you mean I could set up a website that I could sell marijuana to people who I also then assassinate. No, no, no, no, no. Squarespace would be like, this is totally cool. Listen, Travis, Justin's 300 birds away from getting the big, getting the big certificate. And a lot of these birds, Trav, you can't just go outside and find them. You do have to go into the dark web to get these birds. Yeah. So we could make a dark web for birds. Well,

not for birds of birds. We can make a dark web for birds also. They deserve their own. Anyway, they do that. We're not getting paid for this one because they're going to take it away. But anyway, it's got beautiful customizable templates created by world-class designers, and they are optimized for mobile. And you can buy domains or choose from over 200 extensions. Fuck, man, you could do both those things. And they do have built-in search engine optimization. And if things get broken, then they got 24 seven award-winning customer support. And so I want you to go to Squarespace.com slash my brother for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code, my brother to save 10% off your first purchase of

a website or domain. I wasn't very good. I liked it. No, I didn't do it. No, I fucked it up. I didn't do a very good job. Don't nag yourself. I thought it was great. I thought you did a great job. I'm very proud of you. Hey. Yeah. I would like to tell you, it's a very special time of year. Spooky. It's spooky o'clock. It's spooky Christmas. Oh, they have fucked up so bad, haven't they? Why is that? It has here written down introduction, ghost noises. Yes, please give us your rendition of what ghost noises are. Yes, I'm very excited about this. What does that mean, me undies? Griffin, can I hear your ghost noises, please? It's not fun and playful like people think. There's a reason people are scared of these guys.

Yeah, I think mine would be like, I'm gonna kill you. Yeah, right? I wouldn't. You're not please. Very good. Very good. Yes, it's a wonderful time of year. And they're bringing back, they've got spooky prints and halloween costume onesies. I love that. That's exciting. That's fun. That's so fun. Me undies also has like the most comfortable underpants and like they have sizes from X or small to 4 XL. Listen, it's time for you to trick your bits and treat yourself with these comfortable underpants. Treat your ass. Treat your ass with these comfortable underpants. Trick your bits and treat your ass with these halloween. Give 50% off your first do it. Say it. Say it and do it. So, give 50% off. You were enjoying

your own jokes so much, Griffin. I didn't want to interrupt. It's not a joke. It's what they say to tell people. It does say, it says right here, it says, if we, it says this section is mandatory, trick your bits and treat your ass. This is our first not-for-profit episode of my brother. To give 50% of your first pair free shipping and 100% satisfaction guarantee, go to meundies.com slash my brother. That's meundies.com slash my brother. Treat your ass. Trick your bits. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. It's a podcast that we do as, we, we are married and how's the ad going so far? Because I think it's going very good. We talk about things we like every week on Wednesdays.

One time Rachel talked about pumpernickel bread. It was so tight. You cannot afford to miss her talking about this sweet brown bread. We also talk about music and poems and, you know, weather. There is what? Weather. One time Rachel talked about baby beluga this song for like 14 minutes and it just really blew my hair back. So check us out on maximumfun.org. It's a cool podcast with chill vibes. Amber is the color of our energy, is what all the iTunes reviews say. They will now. Here is another question from a beloved listener. I was driving through a parking lot and almost got hit when another driver decided to cross without looking. My natural reaction was to,

of course, yell and flip off the driver. As soon as I did that, however, I realized I recognized the car and after getting a glimpse of the driver, I'm 90% sure it was a woman whose kids I maybe sit all the time. Brothers, I get along really well with her and I love her kids. Like they're my own family. Do I address it and apologize or do I pretend it never happened? That's from Kayla in California. Now Kayla, you probably know which one we're going to say. It's the one where you pretend it never happened. It's you said 90% sure. Good news. I've found a new home for you and it's inside that 10% and that's where we live there now. And you don't even look at the other one. I'm also going to give you this, right? If your boss is to say like, hey, this is going to

sound weird, right? And then ask you about it. You're going to say, that's like the third time someone said something like that to me, right? And you are just going to like, oh yeah, I guess there's someone else who looks like me who's just living in your room and just loudly announced, God, I hate my twin sister. Oh yeah. And your boss would be like, what? He's like, she's a real shithead and she's such a bad driver and she takes out on everybody else. But then they're going to think that you've been parent trapping them every time you come by to babysit and they're never going to trust you again. Then you could say like, I think I have a doppelganger, spooky, scary, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Someone took my face off, but I got it back. I love it. Someone took

my face off for a day. I body swapped. Oh, that's it. I body swapped with a real Jerko and I fixed their life and they ruined mine. I rebuilt their relationship with their kids while they were going around flipping people off in parking lots all day. I'm exhausted from fixing all of my social relationships because this Jerko who took my body flipped everyone off. Yeah, it was my mom. What day was it? That happened Friday? Oh, no, no, no, that was my mom. It was a freak. Yeah, we freaky, freaky Friday. There was a lot of other story beats and we grew as people, but one of the things that did happen is my mom was a total shithead back to you and that was the freakiest thing of all. You probably saw her right at the beginning of the arc before she

learned about like responsibility and love and stuff. It turned out in this one, I was the responsible one who had to learn to loosen up and she was the Jerko who had to learn to like be more responsible or whatever. It was the sequel. Did you hear about that hospital administrator that got on the intercom and was like, hey, everybody, there's free ice cream in the calf? Yeah. That was actually, that was me. That was me. That was near the end of my arc. Did you hear about the assistant principal who did skateboard tricks in the cafeteria? Yeah, that one. That was me too. This is the fifth or sixth time we've done this. You would think at this point we'd stop, uh, you know, neglecting each other,

but here we are because that's when it happens. That's what we got a lot of lessons to learn. It's every, every Friday this happens. Eventually I'm going to teach my mom how Snapchat works and she's going to have to give me her key card to the elevators because I'm so fucking tired of walking up the stairs at that fucking hospital. It's also really weird because I'm sorry kids, by the way. Sorry, sorry kids. Sorry, sorry. So I'm 25 at this point and I have a daughter and so it's weird that my mom and I keep Freaky Friday-ing at this point. Like we're both adults. We've both like have responsibility. Like I, we haven't even said like, you don't know how hard it is or you don't understand what it's like to be, we haven't said anything like that in years.

And of course, of course, every Friday I come home to kids fucking full of sugar. Yeah. It's like, thank you mom. Thank you mom for misusing my body to, to get all the sugar out and give it to my fucking kids. At this point it's normal Friday. We're not surprised when it happened. A Freaky Friday would be if I got to spend a Friday in my own body. Right. I haven't gotten to do one casual day since I was like 16. Ugh. I got, I came back to my body last Saturday. My belly button ring had been removed. Can you fucking believe that shit? Yeah. Which I appreciate. I appreciate that. You know, last Friday I spent the whole time fixing her credit. Yeah. That's what I did. She was like, can you get this virus off my computer? That was my Friday. That's what I did.

Excellent. How many Fridays would you spend helping out with a router? Yeah. That's good. Do you guys want to do a Yahoo? Sure. Sure, bud. Here's a Yahoo. It was sent in by Emma Cant. I'm going to go with that for now until I figure out how it's actually pronounced. Thank you, Emma. It's anonymous Yahoo answers user. I'm going to call Jarvis asks, how do I learn to hate soda? There's literally no other details. There's no other details? No. I'm assuming they want to kick it, want to kick the habit. Maybe they also have the habit of soda. Maybe they also had a doctor who after some kidney stones said it's because of all the brown soda. And I can't, you know, and you

know what? Dr. Howard, I don't know why it was brown soda. Does the color brown add the kidney stone juice? Yes. You want the nice filtered pure sprite. That's why Crystal Pepsi had actually been run through 18 Britas. Yeah, you want to kick the soda, but you love it so much because you're a red blooded American. And what now? How do I hate this stuff? I want to hate it. Here's what you do. All right. You know that kid that you do not like, the kid in your class, maybe they're bully or maybe they're like, you know, they're the goody two shoes who always gets away with everything. Pay them $5 to drink soda and tell you how good it is, right? And then you're going to be like, oh, fuck you, Josh. Fuck you, your Pepsi Cola. I'm not, oh, and then every

time you go to drink a Pepsi, you'll think of Josh. This is Josh's drink. When I drink this, I think of Josh. Oh, but then maybe, oh no, my plant is backfired because then you find that you have something in common and with Josh is that you both love Pepsi and now you're in love. Share a Pepsi. Stop fighting, everybody. That's what everybody's trying to get across. That's what that whole Coca-Cola thing is. Yes. And you learned that Josh was only a bully because he was self-conscious about his love of Pepsi. Now Travis's thing didn't make any sense and it was bad. Justin, how do you make it hate? How do you make hate? For the drink? Yeah. Hate of the drink? Yeah. You just have to find something that you like better than soda and do

that. Is it coffee? Probably not. I mean, coffee does it for me. Coffee instead. Oh, wait, coffee instead? Yeah, but. What about that? What about that? You get a Starbucks triple shot with protein. You get that can from the store every day and when the urge, this is just a substitution. When the urge to have a soda kicks in, then you drink 300 calories of that delicious brown water right down your throat. You pay $4 for a can of this delicious 300 calorie brown water. Yeah. You get that. That's going to give you everything. That's got bits more. It's more caffeine sugar. It's more caffeine than soda, more sugar than soda, more just liquid than soda. In every way, it's an improvement over soda. The only problem I have is that it's different flavor

palates, right? When they go for that soda, it's that sugary blast. I feel the fizz. Oh, it's carbonated too. Could we get carbonated sweet coffee? That's just why Coca-Cola Black should still be on the market. Our dad worked the morning shift in radio for 40 years, never drank coffee. That is unfathomable to me and the man would have a tall, cool can of Diet Coke poured into the biggest glass possible, a block full of ice, dump a Diet Coke on top of it. Folks, I used to deliver papers and wake up at the same time as my dad. If you never tried to drink Diet Coke at 4.30 in the morning, I highly fucking recommend it. It is brutal. It's a kick in the face. It's so much sugar. Your body will rebel against you as you attempt to drink it. I did

say Diet Coke. So it's not sugar that you have to worry about in this case. It's like a burn. There's a burn to it. Your throat isn't ready for fizzy. It's been sleeping all night. It's not awake enough for fizzy and it's confused by the sensations. Whenever Henry drinks a carbonated beverage, he complains that it is spicy and I've always made fun of him for just not knowing a lot of stuff because he's just so young still. But you know what? He's not wrong. Yeah. A nice and a powerful, strong, virile Diet Coke at 4.30 in the morning is a spicy fucking drink. Maybe every time you do something you don't like to do, you also have a nice so. I like this. If you have to, you gotta go, I don't know, fold the laundry between every fold. And I do mean every fold.

You have a sip of that delicious brown brew we call soda. And then by the time you're done, you will so closely associate or like you have to go to your aunt's funeral, whatever it is. Every time you go to your aunt's funeral. Thankfully, your parents are from big families. Yes. Yeah. A lot of aunts to go around. You gotta have one aunt per soda. This is like Coca-Cola was for Darlene and then Mountain Dew was for Aunt Steve, like just different ones. Man, I'm starting to worry guys. What's that? What if Pepsi hears this episode and they start using these brilliant techniques to make people hate Coke and then there's an imbalance. Oh no. We've created an incredible weapon in the cola wars. What if they start like Pepsi starts slinging

Coke outside of people's aunt's funerals? Like, oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. But you're not going to backfire, right? You come out and you're like, Oh my God, I feel this is the saddest I've ever been. I loved Aunt Judy. She taught me, you know, so much about life and oh, what's this? Oh, a soda. Thank you. Oh, this is delicious. I feel so much better. Well, a little spicy, but I like that. You could pour Tabatsco in it. Huh. So what was the word? Sorry, Griffin, my recording of your track dipped out for a second. It was the word Tabatsco. I guys, and I said that to throw off Pepsi because I don't want them to use these ideas. They got their text to speech robots or rather their speech to text robots crawling the spiders crawling this

episode. So for ways to burn Coca Cola to the ground. So you throw a little Tabatsco in the box. I'm all I'm saying is that the Pepsi CEO goes and sells Coca Cola, probably not sells it. That would be cool, though, with spicy stuff in it outside of funerals so that people now hate this Coca Cola so much. But then once they get to their car, you run up to me like, oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. I know your mouth burns. Drink this Pepsi instead. Hey, Pepsi, have you ever thought about that? Buy a bunch of Coca Cola, sell it for 10 cents more than you bought it. Right? Why isn't Pepsi doing this? Pepsi should just start selling Coca Cola for a slight markup. You're welcome. It's like, we don't care

which one you like. We sell them both. We sell them both. What if we sell Coke and Pepsi? Why doesn't Pepsi just sell Coke? Why don't they just buy Coca Cola, ship it to terrorist cells around the world, and then when they get their pictures taken, people will start saying that Coca Cola is the official soft drink of terrorism. Stop helping Pepsi. I'm on fire, guys. Here's the way you do. Coke, buy all the Pepsi, then relabel the cans as Coke platinum, sell it for a dollar more than regular Coke. There's no Pepsi on the market. People are losing their minds. The two options they have are Coke and Coke Platinum. They're buying them both. The profits are through the roof. You've done it. You've won the cola wars. They're over. And we use that cola money

to feed the hungry and give people homes and maybe destroy all the weapons out there. Whatever we want to do. Good one, guys. Okay, Pepsi. Now it's your turn for a tip, because we've got to keep this arms race fair. Just have people in masks and go to grocery stores and smash up all the Coca Cola good right onto the floor. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Pepsi needs to smash all the Pepsi because that way Coke can't buy it and resell it as Coke Platinum. And you can have them wear Coca Cola masks when they smash the Pepsi up. So then people say, that's too good. Because then people will say, oh my God, can you believe these dirty business practices Coca Cola is doing? And then they're like, there's no more Pepsi. And you're like,

don't worry, we have secret. We have new Pepsi. You're going to love this. Do you know when you go to the store and you're the Pepsi distributor and you go to the store and you put like a hundred Pepsi's on the shelf? Yeah. We've all been there. Let me get you with this. What if next time just put one. And that way people come up and they're like, oh, fuck last Pepsi. Even if they weren't going to get it, they're not going to miss it. They're not going to miss out. And they're also like, does no one like Coke anymore? Because that's good. There's a lot of Coke on the shelves right now. And just the one Pepsi, which I'm definitely going to snatch up. And you can hang a plaque right next to that one Pepsi and say, sorry, folks, there's not more Pepsi. The bad

Coca-Cola men came and destroyed all of it. And that's why this one's $25. Yeah. This one's a little bit more expensive, but we got to recoup the cost because the bad Coca-Cola men came and smashed away all our Pepsi. Signed the Lorax. This is the last Pepsi. Who will protect it? Who will be there to protect this Pepsi until more Pepsi can grow? Is this our last episode of my brother, my brother and me before we all get snatched up by PepsiCorp or Coca-Cola? I anticipate a bidding war because whoever loses this one is going to lose the big one. Whoever loses, we win. Yeah. Whoever wins, water loses. Yeah. Well, that is true. And our dad loses, his kidney loses. All right. Yes. Do you guys know Pepsi sells Dasani? Yeah. That's the same

bottle. Did you know that? Okay. I tricked you because it's Aquafina. It's Pepsi. Okay. Dasani is Coke, I think. So even when you're trying to enjoy a nice bottled water, you're still choosing a side in the cold of wars. Isn't that heartbreaking? Just trying to enjoy a water. Yes, but Pepsi robots, if you are listening, if you could make a caffeinated water for me, that would be just great. I would love that. Damn, that's good. When I Googled that to double-check my facts, Google told me people also search for Coca-Cola tap water. And I wonder why. I wonder what they were trying to figure out. God, this is so embarrassing. I hope Google's not watching, but can I get Coca-Cola to come out my sink? The next one right after that is

how to produce Coca-Cola. Okay. I respect you. I respect you, Franco. I respect you, Franco. These prices. The recipe's right here. It's on Metafilter. Who knew? Folks, thank you so much for listening to our program. We appreciate you so much, and you're a dear friend of ours. We don't ask this a lot, but if you wouldn't mind going to iTunes and leaving us a rating or a review, that really helps us out. I don't think iTunes exists anymore, do they? Oh, bummer. What happened? I'm going to get rid of the app, and it's all... I mean, wherever, you know, go to your podcast. Maybe not iTunes. So where are you listening? Where are people listening to this now? That's a good question. The only one that I know about is iTunes. Oh, no. Boys, is this just for us?

I have somebody who just brings me a compact desk once a week of all my podcasts. Fuck. Okay. But hey, if you like the show, think the delivery person who brings you the compact desk. Tell them how good the show is. They'll tell their friends, and that really means a lot to us. We've got some shows coming up this week in Philadelphia and Brooklyn. I think there's still some tickets left for the last Brooklyn show. If you want to come to that, please do, but send in your questions. We've got to make so much show. There's so much show we're doing this week. It's a... Put what show you're going to be at in the subject line, like Brooklyn and then the night or Philadelphia, so that we can make sure to do your question in the night that you are

there. What else? Oh, we've got New Merch. Well, we always have New Merch. Each month, we put up New Merch. So go check that out. If you haven't yet, McRoy.family, and then click on Merch. You can also click on Tours to see what's coming up. Well, thanks to John Roderick in the Long Winters for the use of our theme song, It's a Departure, off the album, Putting Todays to Bed. Badass. Badass tune, Badass track. Five stars. And thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to MaximumFun.org. Check out all the great shows there. Shows like Switchblade Sisters. And can I pet your dog? And stop podcasting yourself. And so many more. All at Maximum Fun.org. We've got other stuff at McRoy.family, including Merch and shit. I think Travis just said all

that. Anyway, you know what that final? Yes, please. Send them by the prospector, Mayor Palmer. Thank you, Mayor. It's an anonymous Yahoo Answers user who I'm going to call Laz Aris. Ask. Nice. Barack Obama is a smart guy. But do you think you can beat him on Call of Duty? You can. He's Justin McRoy. He beats ass at Call of Duty. I'm Travis McRoy. I'm Griffin McRoy. This has been my brother, my brother, me. Kiss your dad. Square on the lips. MaximumFun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hello, this is Amy Mann. And I'm Ted Leo. And we have a podcast called The Art of Process. We've been lucky enough over the past year to talk to some of our friends and acquaintances

from across the creative spectrum to find out how they actually work. So I have to write material that makes sense and makes people laugh. I also have to think about what I'm saying to people. If I kick your ass, I'll make you famous. The fight to get LGBTQ representation in the show. We weirdly don't know as many musicians as you would expect. I really just became a political speechwriter by accident, realizing that I have accidentally pulled my pants down. Listen and subscribe at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcast. It's like if the guinea pig was complicit in helping the scientist.