Wonderful! - Wonderful! 131: 'Skeetos

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Griffin's favorite remixes! Rachel's favorite natural sound! Griffin's favorite cooking method! Rachel's favorite groundbreaking politician!Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://ope...n.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. I feel like you hit the L in our last name like really hard that time. And I almost never do perform it that way or hear it that way. It gets there's a lot of vowels in there and it gets kind of mumbly. So I try really hard to kind of say each syllable precisely. And I appreciate that.
Starting point is 00:00:38 It shows a certain like reverence for the brand. I'm relatively new to this last name. I know. And I stumble in like a drunkard off the street. Like I'm McElroy. I'm McElroy. It could be spelled any which way. There may or may not be an L in there.
Starting point is 00:00:55 But you come in here with your eloquent diction. Thank you. And you just smash it right out of the freaking park, man. Thank you so much. Now your first name, you could use some help with that. Your first name, you could- Yeah, do I stumble through that? I got some notes.
Starting point is 00:01:09 If you take some notes. This is a show where we talk about things that are good, things that are wonderful, things that are nice, that are lifting us up, that are the winds beneath our wings. And there are still those things, and that's good. And I want to talk about a small wonder, which is this fresh
Starting point is 00:01:25 flirty fun might i even say sexy haircut that my wife rachel gave me last night in our bathroom with a razor i did a little touch-up work on the bangs you say with a razor but i feel like that's that's a little misleading like a clippers clippers electric clippers uh used a size so she used a size six guard, uh, faded up to an eight full eight up on the top. Listen, we're not trying to go crazy here,
Starting point is 00:01:51 right? We're not, we're trying to reinvent the wheel. Um, but, uh, Ooh, it looks good.
Starting point is 00:01:56 You do. You look fresh. I feel good. God, it's the longest I've gone without getting a haircut in a very, very long time. And, uh,
Starting point is 00:02:03 I feel a lot better. I feel a great weight has been lifted off my scalp i guess oh yeah do you have a small wonder uh i am gonna say the uh the outdoor fan the outdoor fan the outdoor fan it's a it's a wind you can conjure up with technology uh-huh you don't might say electricity you don't even have to wait for mother nature you say i am mother nature we uh have a very nice deck that we have invested time into but still don't spend a lot of hours you know sitting out there the mosquitoes have invested more time into it yes yes and so griffin said this this is this is the time i'm putting a fan up i'm doing it
Starting point is 00:02:46 let's not wait a day longer and i'm grateful for it and now these dumb ass mosquitoes fly up like time to bite you but then they get caught up in a whirlwind of our own creation and are blown hither and yon take that you fucking blood suckers god i hate mosquitoes so much i know i as much as we talk about things we love on this show i could fill an entire another podcast of just like bad shit with just mosquitoes what the fuck are they doing who do they think they are yeah i don't know they're not good bugs people like don't don't kill spiders because they're cool and they eat other bugs and it's like yeah for sure i'm with you on that if a bee is flying around don't get scared of it that it's gonna sting you it's more scared of you honeybees are great skito get the fuck out of
Starting point is 00:03:34 here skito now we're gonna get comments on the facebook like actually skitos are uh excuse me i am a mosquito i'm a mosquito and i think we're pretty cool uh hey i go first this week okay i wanted to this one's gonna be so quick i felt foolish a little bit while preparing it because i was like oh i want to talk about this but then i was like i will be able to talk about this for about 90 seconds and then that will be it uh it kind of evolved though this topic i want to talk about remixes of carly ray jepsen songs You're laughing because I sent you one of these this morning. Like, you gotta, you gotta jam on this. I feel like you're going to find at least a dozen ways to talk about Carly Rae Jepsen.
Starting point is 00:04:12 Just the minutia. Listen. Just to make sure that we continue to keep her in the orbit. I use all the parts of the CRJ Buffalo, okay? And right now the Buffalo part that I'm using is the remixes of her songs. Because guess what? There's a billion, jillion of these. There's so, so the remixes of her songs because guess what? There's a billion jillion of these. There's so,
Starting point is 00:04:28 so many remixes of Carly Rae Jepsen songs. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I guess I think it's just because like her music is kind of poppy and accessible in a way that like makes it kind of easy to chop and screw. Like it's made up of different sort of constituent components that are easy to kind of like dissect and then do your own sort of thing with. Well, yeah. And like if a song is a bop, like you want to remix it.
Starting point is 00:04:52 You want to like bring a new dance energy to it, I feel like. Yeah. So she has released a ton of like EP length albums that are remixes of some of her, you know, biggest songs. The one that showed up in a Discover Weekly list for me, and I've just been listening to nonstop because I'm just crazy about it, is a remix of Runaway With Me off her seminal album,
Starting point is 00:05:14 Emotion, by an electronic music artist named Embers, E-M-B-R-Z, all caps in the cool way. And I am just so wild about this remix. Embers is an Irish DJ who is all about making sort of soft dance music, like dance music that is not all like hard drops and pulsating beats, but just kind of like a little bit gentler than that, which I really appreciate. I think you could kind of slot it into uh the
Starting point is 00:05:46 future bass genre which is something i'm very very into right now which is just sort of like weirder percussion and like pulsating synths and just sort of gentle gentle drops uh and that is your base that's a that's a thing that's a thing that's a genre thing, that's a genre, yes, future bass. And yeah, I'm going to play a little bit of this remix right now so you can get a feel for it. that background synth that like wobbly like sawtooth synth over the chorus is like my favorite sounding thing like i love how uh when it's uh you know a sound like that is like gated and wobbly that like intensely like it kind of messes with your ears i guess that's my asmr is wobbly sense uh but i also really like um vocal chops where an artist can like take an acapella vocal performance and then like turn it into its own instrument by just putting in
Starting point is 00:06:58 little clips of it here and there to like turn it into a new thing i think that's so cool do you feel like you have a new appreciation for this kind of music now that you create music yeah i this is the type of music that like if i could be if i if i was like very very skilled at uh like synth work like making my own sort of synth sounds inside of synth engines and uh you know mixing and mastering to a degree that I'm just like, I don't know how to do. This is the kind of music that like, I feel like I would want to make because it's so cool. It sounds it sounds so cool. And it's so listenable. And I really have been listening to like this song and other like sort of future bassy stuff like nonstop. But yeah, I think so. Like I at least know a little bit more of the language.
Starting point is 00:07:42 You're able to pick out like distinct sounds better than I do. Like I don't listen to music. I think the same way that you do. Well, I don't know. I think I think I feel that way about this particular genre because this particular genre is all about the sort of specific layering of just a ton of different sounds. What I really, really like about this genre and this song and more of Embers' stuff is that you listen to it and it's because it is sort of
Starting point is 00:08:06 gentler because it is sort of quieter you assume it is like a simpler thing but there's actually a ton of stuff going on like little clicks and pops that you may not realize or like steady background you know ambient effects that you don't realize until you like listen to it a little bit more critically and realize like oh actually there's a there's a lot of very, very specific stuff going on here that I, I really, really appreciate. Um, and yeah,
Starting point is 00:08:29 there's a lot. I just, I really like a good remix. I like a good remix, especially if a song that you already really, really enjoy, because it's like, you've,
Starting point is 00:08:36 you've found another facet of what makes that song good. I feel like at the beginning of every remix, someone needs to shout. It's the remix right that would be helpful just to let me know it's me more hype like oh no here we go oh no oh no oh no would be your reaction well i'm trying to keep it clean billy ray cyrus oh you didn't want to say i didn't want to say a curse oh yeah yeah no you're very i guess i could have said oh dang yeah that would have been better.
Starting point is 00:09:05 Oh, no. Oh, no. Makes it sound like. I'm not afraid of it. Right. That makes it sound like if Billy Ray Cyrus opened up the remix of Old Town Road. Like, oh, no. I'm about to do it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:15 Oh, and there's another remix that I found here just because I wanted to play another one of Carly Rae Jepsen's of Party for One, which I don't think I've talked about on this show before. Fuck that song Rules. It's probably my favorite song off her newest album. They put out a full EP of just remixes of Party for One, and this is one of those remixes by More Giraffes, too. Take us out. Hey, what's your first thing?
Starting point is 00:09:55 My first thing, and this, you're going to think maybe we've talked about this before, but I think we've only indirectly talked about it. Okay. And that is the sound of water. Oh. Okay. I'm not talking about the film with the uh the fish man i'm talking about the actual okay the pleasing sound of water do you think they will make a sequel to the sexual fish man movie called the sound of water in which they become a sort of
Starting point is 00:10:18 like country americana duo but under the under the sea i do enjoy a lot. The fish man in a cowboy hat? Yeah, that'd be good. It would be like a star is born but sort of aquatic. Oh, I love that. Can you... I think it would go a little something like this. Yeah, here we go.
Starting point is 00:10:36 Oh, my God. Because they're underwater? That's incredible. You can just pull that just at a moment's notice that's the part where she like you know so nice i know hey can i tell you about my thing taste of water well i'm glad you asked that one's gonna be like the bradley cooper cooking movie that i can't remember the name of oh bradley cooper runs the gamut of all of our human senses no reservations no you are thinking of the katherine zeta jones film which i saw in theaters and is maybe the worst movie i've ever seen in my life anyway we've
Starting point is 00:11:14 stumbled so far away uh the sound of water so i'm talking about the the ocean i'm talking about that creek i'm talking about those like lovely little water sounds that are so soothing. Okay. Can you make those with your mouth? Just to give me an example of what you're talking about. Can I do the wave sound? Yeah, do the wave sound, please. Yeah, that sounds like a sick person. It's a little Darth Vader.
Starting point is 00:11:39 A little bit. You want to try again? Oh, I'm going to go again. Yeah. And what sound is that? what water sound is that it's like the waves crashing i love how water is completely silent in the ocean until it hits something and then it goes hey i'm not the foley expert over here. I'll leave that to you. True. So the sound of water actually has been studied because people love it so ding-ding much. Okay.
Starting point is 00:12:18 And they specifically studied its impact on stress levels and that stress hormones have dropped 20 to 30% when they have studied it. When somebody listens to the sound of ocean waves, waterfalls, or splashing creeks. Hmm. studied it when somebody uh listens to the sound of ocean waves waterfalls or splashing creeks they say so the people that have studied it like various you know sound engineers that have studied it have said that water creates what they call like a broadband sound which means that there aren't like little distinct noises that you pick out it's just like a like it overwhelms your your sense of sound so much that your brain isn't trying to pick out distinct noises. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:12:48 So it's calming in that way. This is an associate professor of biobehavioral health at Pennsylvania State, says these slow whooshing noises are the sounds of non-threats, which is why they work to calm people. The idea, like I said, is not you're not hearing these distinct less attractive noises you're just hearing this like single sound uh which relaxes your brain that's interesting i was trying to think of something threatening that makes a a sound like that and i really could it's not like a tiger comes up at you like well that's what they said so so people are kind of trained just on like a a prime primordial level right uh to distinguish between threat and non-threat and so they did a 2012 study in a
Starting point is 00:13:37 hospital setting and so even at low volumes at like a whisper level alarms from hospital equipment would wake study participants from sleep 90 of the time wow uh and half the time from deep sleep so that's you know shallow sleep versus deep sleep meanwhile the sounds of helicopters and traffic while reaching 70 decibels which is almost twice as as much sound did not wake participants frequently as alarms ringing phones and human conversations would interesting i mean i i'm sitting here like thinking about this when i really don't need to i require white noise to fall asleep at night or else i can't yeah well and that's what they talk about like the sound of water in some ways is is more relaxing than the sound of white noise uh and and they think there's maybe some like you know amniotic womb womb-y sort of experience quality yeah or
Starting point is 00:14:32 they even like i was reading this kind of like earthy explanation that talks about how like we are majority water as people and we have evolved from water creatures onto land. Oh, I love that shit. In my DNA code, there's still some fish in there that's like, yeah, boy. So you before have talked about the creek behind our house and how pleasing it is when it rains. Yes, it takes some doing, but once it's running, it's gorgeous.
Starting point is 00:15:04 We were sitting outside and there was kind of like wind in the trees which had kind of an ocean sound to it and it just reminded me how much i love i just love that ocean sound yeah it is very just like automatically calming it is yeah but then those skitos would come around oh god i'm so sick of those skitos i love the creek I love the sound it makes. I love its aesthetics. But the mosquitoes love it even more. And it drives me crazy.
Starting point is 00:15:32 If I could press a button to explode all mosquitoes, I would do it. Should you maybe run for office and have that be your platform? Hey, it's me, Griffin McElroy. I don't know how, but I'm going to poison every mosquito on the planet. Join me in my beautiful crusade. In my hate campaign. Will I destroy parts of other parts of the ecosystem? Yes.
Starting point is 00:15:48 Will there be collateral damage? Yes, absolutely. Are there things that love to eat mosquitoes? Of course. And are they going to also perish? Yes. Destabilizing the entire ecosystem? Yes.
Starting point is 00:15:58 Is this an irresponsible thing for me, real Griffin McElroy, to be saying on a podcast? Absolutely it is. Of course it is. Do I hate mosquitoes that much that I don't care oh yes yes they bite you that's my blood that's my blood i worked really hard to grow that blood inside me i eat the hamburger and i turn it into blood in my body i think and i work really hard on that so it's just is it the biting is it the invasiveness of the biting? Or is it the after itching?
Starting point is 00:16:27 Or is it all of it? It's all of it. The itching I get over pretty quickly. Oh, see, the itching is what I hate. But I don't like looking down and seeing a little mosquito with his snoot in my blood. Just like, hey, partner, mind if I have a little bit? I ate so many hamburgers to make that blood and it's not i only have so much of it so stop it hey can i steal you away yes please
Starting point is 00:16:52 hey can i read a jumbotron here Because it would be very confusing if you read it. Sure. This one is for future Rachel, and it is from past Rachel, who says, Rachel, not you. Thank you. Thank you. Your ears perked up. You sat up straight. Rachel, by the time you're hearing this, you'll be done with your thesis and have a master's degree. I've been spending a lot of time writing about Victor Frankenstein and his whole deal.
Starting point is 00:17:24 So I hope you're taking a break and being proud of all the hard work you've accomplished you're amazing love rachel from the past congratulations rachel that is a congratulations rachel was looking for this message to be in may so we may have jumped the gun a little bit if that's the case keep on grinding on frankenstein you are so close you're gonna to get there because past Rachel said so in a prophecy foretold by crystals. And Rachel's historically. Never wrong. Never wrong.
Starting point is 00:17:53 Can I read the next one? Yes. This next message is for Felicia. It is from Austin. To Felicia, the shining star that inspires me every day. You are the greatest treasure i have ever known you are a masterpiece of a woman and i am eternally grateful that i am able to be your partner i love you my blessing of the cosmos yours austin holy shit that's grand blessing of the cosmos
Starting point is 00:18:19 yeah do you think felicia is and a lot of people are talking about this i read this in a lot of the tabloids that felicia is actually a constellation that um i you know i recognize that i think you when you look to the night sky this happens a lot actually sometimes somebody will make a wish and constellation will come to life like a weird science and come down and fall in love like a mannequin i want to know who if there was a movie let's say who would play felicia the constellation come to life i mean tyra banks oh that's good yeah thank you gosh that's good yeah perfect casting yeah honestly it sounded like I had to think for a while about that, but Tyra Banks was first thought. And then I was like, is there anybody better than Tyra? And the answer was no. It's going to be Ty.
Starting point is 00:19:14 Video games. Video games. Video games. You like them? Maybe you wish you had more time for them. Maybe you want to know the best ones to play. Maybe you want to know what happens to Mario when he dies. In that case, you should check out TripleClick. It's a brand
Starting point is 00:19:27 new podcast about video games. A podcast about video games? But I don't have time for that. Sure you do. Once a week, kick back as three video game experts give you everything from critical takes on the hottest new releases, to scoops, interviews and explanations about how video games work, to fascinating and sometimes
Starting point is 00:19:43 weird stories about the games we love triple click is hosted by me kirk hamilton me jason shire and me maddie myers you can find triple click wherever you get your podcasts and listen at maximumfun.org bye hey can i hear your second thing oh yeah uh in the in the category of things that i can't believe we haven't talked about before and i did i looked in the site and it said no we hadn't talked about speaking of soothing water noises the water noise that soothes me the most is the noise of water being circulated to a very specific temperature so that it may cook a protein to my exact specifications i am talking about sous vide cooking that's right
Starting point is 00:20:25 people it's time is it weird when you said circulated water i thought you were going to talk about toilets you thought i was moment okay i thought you were going to just express a profound appreciation for the toilet i've talked about bidets before almost certainly yeah yeah because uh uh you know that's that's another sort of, I have a lot of sort of water features in this house that are important to me and sous vide is the number one thing. I think there's never been a better time to get into sous vide cooking. I think that it is a, it slotted into my work from home lifestyle in a way that was like incredibly good. And I think it will therefore slot into everybody's quarantine lifestyle in a way that is similarly fantastic.
Starting point is 00:21:07 Sous vide cooking, if you do not know, is a method of cooking where you have a big container of water. We have a 16 quart container of water with like a special lid that a water circulator slots down into. We use one by Inova, which is the general recommended brand. It's like $100. So there is a significant price investment, but it is my favorite thing that we own in the kitchen. And you take vacuum-sealed food, which you can do with a vacuum sealer. We invested in one, but you could just do water displacement where you put a thing in
Starting point is 00:21:39 a bag and then lower it into the water and it pushes all the air out. And so you have this vacuum-sealed food and you can put whatever else in there with the meat usually like i we will i say meat you can cook whatever but like i'll put a steak in there with like some rosemary and a little pat of butter and maybe some garlic vacuum seal that up get that marinade going get that good flavor in there going drop it into the water for at the specified temperature at a specified length of time and then you take it out and it will be perfectly cooked through at the specified temperature at a specified length of time and then you take it out and it will be perfectly cooked through at the exact temperature that you set it at because of science and technology yeah yeah and and then you know you just like you sear it or whatever
Starting point is 00:22:15 and sear it to get some color on it or very little effort on your part you also like we i've gotten i will admit a little bit lazy with sous vide because like we were heating up some curry the other day and wanted some chicken to put in it and i just sous vide some chicken and you don't even have to sear that off because it's going into a curry you just like plop that right into the thing and it's good i could i defrost shit in the sous vide now because it's a it is a no fail way of you can't fuck it up which is perfect nothing is more frustrating to me than spending a lot of time on a kitchen project this is why i stopped baking bread is because like it takes so fucking long and you work so hard at it yeah and then it comes out and it's shit and
Starting point is 00:22:54 you're like oh god it's i've wasted the entire day and a significant amount of food resources on this garbage no that's exactly true it's like never too dry like there's no danger of overcooking it like it is it is always perfect you can uh freeze stuff in advance i had we had one beautiful week where like on a sunday i had like henry took a long nap and i just prepped a bunch of different like bags in the freezer like vacuum sealed bags of chicken and pork and steak and like all kinds of different stuff put that in the freezer and then you just set the circulator at the temperature that you're supposed to cook stuff at plop the frozen bags right in there cook it for you can drop right in there frozen man you don't even have to defrost
Starting point is 00:23:34 that shit this is what i don't understand how does it adjust the cooking time if you put it in there frozen you have to do a little bit longer they say like time plus 50 but like even that has been like not necessarily true for me that's what blew my mind right that you could put it in there frozen, you have to do a little bit longer. They say like time plus 50%. But like even that has been like not necessarily true for me. That's what blew my mind, right? That you could put it in there frozen. You can put it right in there frozen. It does spike the water temperature down a little bit. So you have to wait for it to like climb back up. I think that probably adjusts for the extra time.
Starting point is 00:23:57 But like everything that goes in that water ends up being the exact temperature that the water is as it's being circulated. I have never, I tell this to Griffin pretty much every time he uses the sous vide. I have never been a huge fan of the red meat. Nor I. Because I have had a lot of poorly cooked red meat. And I have thought, who wants to eat something that requires you to chew this much? Right.
Starting point is 00:24:17 Turns out, if it is cooked well, you don't have to chew that much. Yes, exactly. I never cooked, yeah yeah that or pork really i never really messed with we did chicken but like never in like a starring role usually the chicken would be like a you know a thing that we would chop up and put into something else yeah well and we'd be so nervous about under cooking it that we would cook it to a temperature where it was not particularly enjoyable exactly yeah and so having this way of guaranteeing that you have cooked i i think for me knowing that i have cooked this perfectly yeah i have made this food i didn't technology and water and time made it perfect uh but knowing that like i am serving up some
Starting point is 00:24:58 some dish that has been cooked perfectly is so just soul satisfying to me uh and also like you know it traps in like all the good juices in that bag like it's not just that like the temperature has been like perfectly uh cooked it's like tastes really fucking good too so like it is an investment up front if you want if you want like a decent circulator and you want like a vacuum sealer to make it less of a nightmare uh to to do that stuff like you are going to be spending but like i cannot it has not only uh given us a bunch of very very good dinners and a bunch of very very good meals it has sort of like uh added a whole nother section of of cooking to my repertoire of just like i'm going to make some very good chicken thighs and then serve that with a side vegetable.
Starting point is 00:25:45 Like it's not like I have to go and like find a very fancy recipe that takes hours and hours and hours to cook. Now it can just be like, here's a side dish. Here's a good protein that I know how to make. I can freeze it during, you know, during a lazy weekend day. And then just like, you know, four o'clock, I'll heat the water up, drop the bag in and then at dinnertime, sear it off and it's good to go and it takes no time at all it's so good this has also become griffin's go-to present for somebody if he is trying to figure out like some a thing for somebody that likes to cook
Starting point is 00:26:15 uh this is like do they have a sous vide no okay that is what i'm getting i think i've gotten it for everybody at this point it's also the present that people sleep on they're like oh thanks and then i get a text from them like three months later it looks intimidating it's wicked not though like that's the that's the thing i want to stress because i do i genuinely i'm gonna get goopy here but i think it would be a good thing for people to do if they are at home they are just sort of like struggling because they don't feel a sense of like creative satisfaction in any way and they're looking for something making food for me is like very creatively satisfying because you make it and you feel proud of yourself because
Starting point is 00:26:49 you've made a good thing and then also you get to eat it and that is like you know that's why chefs chef right and but like it was hard for me to really scratch that itch with these long ass recipes that wouldn't turn out very good yeah this is a way that like it'll slot really nicely into your day and then you get really really good meals that you can impress people with and eat and be satisfied by and it's not that fancy it really isn't it's really easy we're talking a lot about meat but there's like a lot of stuff you can do yeah sure you haven't even tried it's you can make uh really really good eggs this way you can make creme brulee this way you can make um you know any
Starting point is 00:27:26 vegetable that you want to cook through perfect anything you vacuum seal is going to get cooked right um you just may have to do a little bit of finishing too but yeah i i it has changed cooking for me in a in a major way and taught me a lot about sort of like heating food like how the way that food likes to be heated up. Even when I'm not sous vide cooking, like I understand like when something is done now because I've seen it done perfectly.
Starting point is 00:27:50 Yeah. Sous vide, man. It's powerful and good and I love it and I'm enthusiastic about it. I have some stuff here about the history of it, but it's boring.
Starting point is 00:27:58 But a chef and a scientist work together. The end. Well, I don't want to stop you to do you want to talk about anything about the the chef and the scientist or it was like the 70s and and they were they were just like they were just like doing it the chef was working on foie gras and decided that like doing it in in submersion was the way to go and then the scientist added sort of vacuum sealing into the mix and the two of them collaborated and sous vide came out of that yeah hey what's your second thing my second thing is somebody
Starting point is 00:28:33 that i did not know much about uh but i wanted to explore a little bit and i thought uh she was pretty wonderful okay it is jeanette rankin. Jeanette Rankin. That name is familiar. She is the first woman to hold federal office. Oh, okay. That's why. Yeah. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Montana in 1916 and again in 1940. Hell yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:59 Wow. That's, wait, that's a huge spread, Jeanette. Wow. So she lived till 92. Whoa, damn. And's a huge spread, Jeanette. Wow. So she lived till 92. Whoa, damn. And had a super long career. She kind of started as a social worker when that was a relatively new thing. So again, so she's born in 1880.
Starting point is 00:29:13 Whoa, okay. Which is even before Montana was a state. And then she, probably among few women in her time period, went to college and then went to school to become a social worker and then kind of lived all over the country. She spent some time in New York, she spent some time in Seattle and kind of built on the whole cause of women's suffrage, which she gained some recognition for and then then became president of the montana women's suffrage association this was back when suffrage was a state by state quest yeah so there was no amendment at this time it was just each state would decide whether or not they were going to
Starting point is 00:29:59 let women vote uh and that kind of continued um when Rankin gained office, it was still not an amendment. And so she gained office and was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1916. And she gave a speech when she won. She said, I am deeply conscious of the responsibility resting upon me because she was the only woman with voting power in the country. Can you imagine? That is wild. Here's something that is interesting about Jeanette Rankin. She was a pacifist, did not believe in war, made that very clear in her platform, was still elected.
Starting point is 00:30:47 Turns out she's elected in 1916. 1917, Congress wants to go to war on Germany. War on Germany. I'm going to do a war on you. That'll show you. U.S. dropped a big old war. Dropped a big war right on them huh so she uh voted against that war which you can say may not have been the right call uh but she said years
Starting point is 00:31:14 later she said i felt the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war she should say it yeah she felt very strongly just that war was not the way to solve a problem. In general, I think that that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's certainly other ways to solve problems. So by 1917, women had been granted some form of voting rights in about 40 states. And so Rankin, as a member of Congress, created a committee on women's suffrage. And then in January 1918, the committee delivered its report to Congress
Starting point is 00:31:48 and Rankin opened the debate. After ratification by three-fourths of the state, it became the 19th Amendment. All right. Yeah. In 1918, she ran for Senate and lost, unfortunately. So then she spent some time just kind of doing some community organizing
Starting point is 00:32:08 around the country, doing a lot of work for the labor movement. She spent some time with minors. She spent some time getting people the right to an eight-hour workday. And then in 1940, at the age of 60 60 she showed up again in congress guess who's back again brian kent's back um and she was the only member of congress to vote against the declaration of war on japan uh she was just completely destroyed for this
Starting point is 00:32:49 um when she voted against it they everybody was encouraging her to abstain because they knew that she didn't believe in war and was going to vote against it right including her own brother she received a cable so she's one of six her brother brother was very wealthy and financed a lot of her campaign. Her brother sent her a cable that said, Montana is 100% against you. Good Lord. Thanks, bro. After she voted, a crowd of reporters pursued her into a cloakroom, and she had to call the capitol police jesus to escape basically uh she said everyone knew that i was opposed to the war and they elected me and i voted as the
Starting point is 00:33:32 mothers would have had me vote uh so she i mean she was principled yeah sure like say what you will about whether or not she was right she was definitely uh principled. After she finished her time in Congress, because perhaps understandably, she did not run for reelection. Right. People did not respond well to her vote. She spent a lot of time traveling. She went to India and studied the pacifist teachings of Gandhi. And then in the 60s and 70s, and granted, this is when she is like in her 80s.
Starting point is 00:34:04 Yeah. She mobilized in response to the Vietnam War. Damn. In 1968, she led a coalition of women's peace groups and organized the largest march by women since the suffrage parade of 1913. She led 5,000 participants to the Capitol building. Apparently, even in her 90s in 1972 she considered a third house campaign hell yeah get on that robert c bird track but at that point she had significant illnesses uh she died in 1973 at the age of 92 she left her estate to start a scholarship fund. So this is a annual educational scholarship for low-income
Starting point is 00:34:48 women 35 and older. So she started with a single, or the foundation rather, started with a single $500 scholarship in 1978. And the fund has since awarded more than $1.8 million in scholarships to more than 700 women. That's fantastic. Isn't't that cool it's specifically women 35 and older which i love you know i mean as a woman who had a lot of success in her older years i feel like she's saying like hey it's not too late to get started yeah uh as of 2019 she is still the only woman that has been elected to congress for montana i don't know wow oh my god yes isn't that crazy um i mean which speaks to how challenging like and what an accomplishment it is yeah um she told in 1972 so a year before her death she spoke at the montana constitutional convention and she said if i am remembered for no
Starting point is 00:35:42 other act i want to be remembered as the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote. That's. Isn't that incredible? Yeah, that's really neat. How cool is that? To like, to be somebody kind of at the forefront and then to get to make the vote that like ensures that everybody else will get to vote as well. Yeah, that's fucking radical. It's a cool lady.
Starting point is 00:36:03 I didn't know a lot about her. You know, you hear about a lot of the, kind of the notable women in history and she was not somebody I knew a lot about. So it's cool to discover her over the past few days. Yeah. A lot of notable women this episode. Her, Carly Rae Jepsen.
Starting point is 00:36:18 Yeah. I guess that's it. You. Oh, thanks. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Well, of course. I'm going to tell you as I find them, the notes.
Starting point is 00:36:32 Here they are. Grace says, I find jigsaw puzzles just wonderful. There's something so satisfying about finding the exact little place a puzzle piece is meant to be in such a vast picture. I love watching the picture build and the rush of realizing two groups of pieces actually belong together and one big puzzle chunk gives me a real sense of accomplishment. So much puzzling out there right now. I remember reading an article
Starting point is 00:36:53 about how like puzzles are scarce. Like there's a puzzle shortage. I like to think that there is one executive at the top of the puzzle ladder that just like woke up, saw the news and was like oh that's terrible i wait a minute wait a minute fire up the presses get ready get those puzzles ready let's go uh katie says when a recipe calls for packed brown sugar i've always loved that it holds its shape and looks like a little sugar sandcastle when you pour it from the measuring
Starting point is 00:37:19 scoop into the recipe this one hit me hard i have been doing a lot of that so i've been making a lot of muffins these days they almost always call for brown sugar it is like it's like kinetic stand it's like that texture is just so pleasing smells good too man i love the way brown sugar smells that's weird but it's true hey you know what else is weird but true bowen and augustus let us use our theme song when he won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Thank you, Maximum Fun, for hosting our show, for hosting all of the great shows. I absolutely love this network and the community of people.
Starting point is 00:37:56 I would encourage anybody and everybody to go to MaximumFun.org and discover a new show. Or Rachel will find you in your house. And I will give you the biggest hug and I will say, come on, let love in. Yeah, maybe that's our positive affirmation this week. Let love in. Is just wait for Rachel to come to your house. Leave a window open for Rachel.
Starting point is 00:38:21 Leave a glass of wine. Leave a glass of wine on the counter. She'll be there. She likes a Merlot. Leave a glass of wine. Leave a glass of wine on the counter. She'll be there. She likes a Merlot. Leave a chair open. Leave a chair for, well, two chairs. One for Elijah. And one for me. And one for Rachel.
Starting point is 00:38:35 She'll be there. And I'll hug that chair. She'll hug that chair. She'll hug Elijah as well. Yeah. No, this is remarkable, actually, because I am not much of a hugger, as you all know. But, this is remarkable, actually, because I am not much of a hugger, as you all know. But in this time? In this time,
Starting point is 00:38:50 it's the worst possible time for you to be a hugger. What are you doing? Don't go to people's houses and hug them. Okay. Okay. Thank you. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.
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