Wonderful! - Wonderful! 241: Measure Your Brain in Cups
Episode Date: August 24, 2022Rachel’s favorite-sized skeletal structure! Griffin’s favorite frozen dairy dealers!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya ...Trans Youth Equality Foundation: https://www.transyouthequality.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.
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Hi, this is Rachel McElroy.
Hello, this is Griffin McElroy.
And this is Wonderful.
This is Wonderful.
This is Wonderful. This is wonderful.
This is.
This is wonderful.
The show, we talk about things we like, things that are good, things that we are into.
And I'm feeling really great this morning.
Can you tell?
I'm all spring in my step this morning.
Is that true?
No, it's not.
I'm not going to.
I'll keep it 100, as the children say.
I have a sore butt.
My butt and my butt muscles are sore.
It's all these dang stairs.
And it's toned.
Don't get me wrong.
It's for you, babe.
How toned it is.
And I know you like that.
But all these stairs are really doing a number on my
my my heister we'll be doing a lot of walking doing so much walking up so many of dc's dc is
famous for its hills how sort of mountainous it is um i know like people like to call it the swamp
but here's the thing about swamps they go down into the swamp but then you have to go up to get
out of the swamp too and it makes your hyster hurt so bad.
Well, and you've been lifting.
And I've been lifting.
I've been hitting the gym for lifting the big weights.
The biggest weights they have.
The biggest weights that they have at the gym.
And, yeah, I do the boxes to kind of complement the barbells and dumbbells.
How much you?
1,500 pounds. Whoa. barbells and dumbbells. How much you... Fifteen hundred
pounds. Whoa.
Fifteen hundred. I'm up to fifteen hundred
pounds. Cool. I should
make you lift me more. I didn't know.
Yeah. I mean, that would be nothing to me
because you don't weigh anywhere close to
fifteen hundred pounds.
I could lift up like a bunch of yous.
Easy,
easy,
easy.
And juggle you in the air like Gaston does with so many babes.
And this is wonderful.
Did we say that part?
I think so.
We talked about,
let me check my list here.
It was wonderful.
Talk about how sore my heister is.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think we're good to move on to the next segment here.
Small wonders.
Do you have any of those?
I do, actually.
As you were going on and on
about your physical prowess,
I was thinking about a small wonder.
Oh, okay.
Sorry about that.
No, that's okay.
But you know, hey,
we're moving along at a clip now.
We sure are.
Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga.
Don't let go of the handlebars.
I wanted to talk about our uh double stroller
the double stroller when you are a parent of two children and you get your first double stroller
it makes you feel like a real dipshit forever owning anything else well i mean when we only
had one we really only needed one stroller okay but you know what i mean uh so we actually we
don't have the traditional side by side no way uh because i thought that was kind of cumbersome
and also if you only had one kit in there people would be like what happened to the other where's
the other one yeah right but when you get it in the kind of mario kart double dash orientation
that we have it in where henry can kind of like sketch on the back yeah
that's a cool ride i thought a lot about this because i didn't want to purchase one and you
know immediately think this was a waste of time because we already have the one person stroller
yeah you know yeah and i realized i didn't want the width that came with the side by side so i
got this stroller where you there's like a little bench in the back for the kid to sit sure of course immediately upon opening and discovering
the stroller henry was like where's the side-by-side yeah it's like bb and dot have the
side-by-side where's where's our side-by-side no and i said no but look look back look at this
little bench and and he he came around because it meant he didn't have to walk that's his favorite
i would say of all the points about it, he is a fan of that.
We got a wagon too, big wagon.
Yeah, thank you.
From Nana and Gaga.
Yeah.
And took a ride on that around town, just picking up babes and having ourselves like a cool weekend.
Henry immediately was like, we can have meetings in this.
Yeah. weekend uh henry immediately was like we we can have meetings in this so yeah so him and gus were riding in it and henry was trying to have a meeting with gus a boy's meeting it was
about you know legos he was using his like fancy businessman voice too which is really great it was
good i say jesus christ i don't think that's his name. I don't know.
We're both a little tired today.
That's really true.
I'll say The Rehearsal, the show from Nathan Fielder.
Yes.
Which, whom I adore and whose previous work, Nathan For You, is, I would say, pound for pound maybe.
Did we mention The Rehearsal?
It may have been.
Well, no.
We've mentioned Nathan For You as a small wonder, I believe.
Yes.
The rehearsal, it takes a lot of the energy of that show and takes it to a, I almost said logical conclusion, but I don't think there's anything really.
It goes so far beyond what you think is possible. The premise of this show is that Nathan Fielder devises these incredibly elaborate ways for people to prepare for real life situations.
Most of the time it is like a challenging conversation they're going to have with somebody.
Yeah.
Episode one starts with somebody who has to kind of admit something to a friend
and Nathan shows up
and is planning to help him practice that.
But goes so far as to like build an exact replica
of the bar that they go to for bar trivia.
And the lengths to which he goes to like make it as accurate as is possible is where a lot of the
comedy lies well and it's also fun because it's it's an hbo program and you can tell that he's
kind of flexing that hbo budget yeah which is kind of fun and it also like there is a line that it walks between reality and like uh scripted comedy i would say and trying to like
figure out where that line is is hysterically funny because there's also some things in this
process that are so morally dubious that but the show kind of like plays with that in a way and trying to figure out like how how far it
actually goes yeah i mean here's what i'll say like if you are uncomfortable watching
awkward television this is not free this is not the show for you um if you enjoy watching i would
say high concept television this is about i I watch a fucking lot of reality television.
This is about as high a concept as it gets.
Yeah.
I would say that there are people that like Nathan for you
that might not even like this show
because it's not as goofy.
It's not as goofy,
but it is like,
it's way more ambitious.
I realize we are sort of talking in circles around the thing
because I think that you kind of need to watch how it develops.
It's only five episodes.
I don't want to spoil anything.
And each one is like, I don't know.
There's an episode in this season that me and Rachel have both talked about
being like, if it does not get at least nominated for some kind,
I don't know if individual episodes of shows like this get nominated for Emmys,
but man alive.
Yeah.
It's so well filmed.
Like the,
the choices he,
and I'm assuming the other people he worked with on the show made to like,
play this out are so like interesting and unique and i just i feel like it should get
some acknowledgement for that i also think it is improved if you if you have watched nathan for you
because he is such an uncomfortable human being and you really i think it intensifies the scenarios
he finds himself in in this show if you know how uh inept he is at sort of just having a
conversation with another human being anyway i think it's fantastic i also don't think it's for
everyone but i we recommended it to your brothers do you know if they hung in there or if they both
just i don't think justin cleared the first episode i think travis made it to about when
the show's like through line starts to surface and i
think he might have popped out around yeah uh hey you go first this week i do we're recording very
early this week so we did just knock one of these out a couple days ago so i'm feeling like i've
already got like i'm all limbered up and oh really yeah see i'm feeling more fatigue, I would say. Well, yeah, that's also just children.
Okay, so my thing might surprise you. My wonderful thing this week is a big head.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
I am very comfortable talking about how both you and I have large-sized heads.
Okay.
This is something that I was a little
maybe embarrassed about.
And then in recent years,
I've just kind of embraced.
And I want you to know that I actually,
I really like your big head.
And sometimes I talk about it
in a way that maybe makes you think I don't,
but I want you to know that I do.
No, no, I never think that.
I don't know what this experience was like for you.
You are in general a smaller person than I am,
so I don't know that the proportions were quite as,
like, cartoonish as they were for you.
But, like, I have had the same size head since I was about 12 or so,
but the rest of my body kind of didn't get there.
12 or so but the rest of my body kind of didn't get there uh and so i was i would say not mercilessly bullied but like it was always the like big hit like always the go-to oh really
oh for sure i think i knew that did you ever you never nobody ever picked on you don't seem to
notice my big head like like, like I've had the conversation
with people before and, and I mean, maybe it's just out of courtesy, but, but it was never really
acknowledged. I don't want to under thunder you either, but like, if I put one of my hats on you.
It is a little bit large, but I don't think, I mean, I think I am a hat size of like seven and a half.
Okay.
Maybe seven and a quarter.
I don't know 100%.
But that's, I mean, that's large.
That's big.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Anything, from what I can tell in my research, which was 30 minutes of research.
Good.
That's about what we do here.
Anything over seven, I think is is where you start
talking about a larger head because i think seven is pretty standard for people yeah christ alive
no way seven no way no i always assumed seven was pretty i mean we i was telling griffin once i was
like in a room full of women this was not long. And we were all talking about how we didn't know what our hat size was. So I had this like teenage moment seven eighths, which is such a terrible affliction
because they make a lot of seven and three quarters hats.
And then for like genuinely very big people,
like who are bigger in all dimensions,
you can wear an eight plus, but that's too big for me.
So like I have the hardest time finding hats
and then I have the hardest time
not losing those hats like instantly yeah yeah and then it it takes you forever to get a
replacement yeah um i didn't realize i had a big head until marching band okay uh we had this like
closet full of band uniforms it was and you just kind of picked one at the beginning of the year. Okay.
Uh, and so I,
I had to get a very small,
you know,
like coat and pants.
Uh,
but when it came to the little,
little hat that I had to wear,
I had to get the extra large.
And my mom was always like,
it's because of your hair.
And I kind of believed her for a while until I,
I got older and realized I don't have particularly thick hair. And then I was like, it's because of your hair and i kind of believed her for a while until i i got older and realized
i don't have particularly thick hair and then i was like it's no it's because of my big head
it was confusing for me because i genuinely did have extremely thick hair yeah because i didn't
still do i would say okay yeah it's i mean i wear it much much much much much much shorter than i
did when i was getting just thinned out at the Happy Hair Boutique every like six weeks.
Is that really what it was called?
Happy Hair Boutique?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's where my mom got her hair cut because like a lady from our church worked there.
And so I went there for basically until college.
Is that where your brothers went to?
You said that like it was just you.
No, I mean my brothers
are older than me so they they wised up a little bit earlier than i did but i didn't get my first
like college haircut from someone who like knew how to handle my stuff until i was like maybe a
maybe a junior in college yeah i was up there getting my haircut at the happy hair boutique
when i was like you know know, legal drinking age.
And you still had no problem.
Still had no problem. So whooping poon.
Oh, God.
So here's the thing. Here's the good news about big heads.
Yeah.
There have been numerous studies and there is not a huge correlation correlation but a significant correlation between head size
and intelligence that's interesting yeah i thought you were going to say something else because i
thought i know that a lot of like celebrities are like uh-huh little people with big heads i spent
forever trying to look for some like actual article about that and all i could find were like anecdotes not like a
real investigation the way i wanted i am just saying i have been in maybe two or three circumstances
in my life where i have been in a room where like there were too many famous people i would say very
very recently i was in one of these situations uh when we were at san diego comic-con where there's just there's just famous
to the left and famous to the right they're petite for the most part they're quite they're
quite small with big faces yeah i i saw something kind of suggesting so there was the thing i kept
finding over and over again was merv griffin who apparently like went on record and said i
specifically chose pat sajak and vanna White because they are small people with large head.
And I believe that that looks best on camera.
There's like a suggestion that it makes your like frame look narrower
when you have like a large head.
That's wild.
I thought it was more like a, you know,
how like poisonous frogs have like colorful patterns on their back.
It's almost like a biological thing so when you see like a a little tom cruise with his big face you're like
whoa i need to pay attention i need to keep my eye on that guy they yeah there was there is a
suggestion and one of the things i was reading that like it is it is more compelling that like
the head fills up the screen and people are drawn to it. That sounds more like what I was thinking.
So I wanted to talk about some of these like little studies I found.
Okay.
And when I say little, I don't mean to be dismissive.
It's more like this is the amount of time I spent, which is little.
And we should also say, if you have a little head, that's just stand in your truth.
That's just, that's, this is a sort of um at least it feels like to me sort of reclaiming
um the power that comes from a thing that i was mercifully mercilessly well that's a tough word
huh mercilessly mercilessly mocked for as a child uh well yeah and i will also say by the time i get
to the end of this you're going to realize it actually doesn't have that much to do with it
uh so can i just leave and you do the rest of this segment alone? Because I'm riding high right now.
This is the best I've felt in years.
Okay, so there was a 2018 study
published on nature.com,
which is, from what I can tell,
reputable.
Yeah, sure.
Even though it sounds pretty like...
Sounds weird for nature
to have a website.
Yeah.
That says,
intelligence is not a function
of how hard the brain works, but how efficiently it works.
So there is a suggestion that larger brains have low neuron density and low neuron orientation dispersion, which means that while larger brains do have more neurons, they have fewer connections between those neurons which means they can process
information more efficiently okay now i don't totally understand a lot of that which is ironic
because you would think that my neurons would be like all right listen up it's time for you to
learn about us uh but i i don't know i guess i guess the, you know, I mean, more neurons seems good.
Sure.
And they've got space to bounce around in there.
Love it.
They're having a great time in there.
There was another study in 2003 from Southampton University that suggests the larger a person's head, the less likely their cognitive abilities are to decline in later years.
Oh, that would be great.
Which I also found encouraging.
Sure.
The one that kind of calls this into question a little bit
is a 2018 study from University of Pennsylvania
that suggests that there is a relationship
between brain volume and performance on cognitive tests,
but size is only part of it,
explaining about 2% of the variability in test performance.
So kind of suggesting it's a piece, it's a significant piece,
but it's not by any means the whole story.
So you're saying that size doesn't matter?
Oink, oink.
So some of the other factors they looked at was educational attainment.
And there was a suggestion that additional brain size does not increase your likelihood to have completed more education.
Yeah.
So the article says an additional cup of brain.
What?
An additional what of what?
Don't measure my brain and measure your brain in cups
uh so this is a researcher from a university in amsterdam that was part of the researchers in the
study said uh quote an additional cup 100 square centimeters of brain would increase an average
person's years of schooling by less than five months.
Okay.
So it's not, you know.
How many cups of brain do you think I've gotten there?
If you were to estimate how many brain cups I have.
That's tough, isn't it?
I don't know what the average brain cups is.
Oh, man.
I'm going to say six.
Six cups of brain?
Yeah.
I think it's eight. Oh. I guess I'm going to say six. Six cups of brain? Yeah. I think it's eight.
Oh.
I guess I'm struggling.
Are we talking about liquid cups or are we talking about dry ingredients?
Because the brain is kind of like what?
I'm just thinking like a cup.
Like if I were to fill a cup like to the rim.
Like a measuring cup.
Yeah.
Okay.
You think six?
I think it would be more than six, hon.
Yeah, I guess I'm looking at your head right now and I'm trying to figure out.
Look at it from the side profile.
If I had to portion out.
Yeah.
Yeah, you might be right.
So this coffee cup is like two and a half cups of brain.
And if I hold it next to my head like that.
I think eight is right.
I think it might be eight.
I think eight is right. I think it might be eight. I think eight is enough brain power.
I wanted to talk about a famous person with a large head.
Oh, okay.
So I spent a long time Googling like celebrity head size and like, you know, trying to figure
out like who is on record for talking about their large head.
Yeah.
And it is St. Louis' own Jon Hamm.
Wow. That's not surprising large head. Yeah. And it is St. Louis' own John Hamm. Wow.
That's not surprising to me.
No.
He has this 2014 article in Vanity Fair.
It talks about an interview he had with Seth Meyers where Seth Meyers said that he set
a record in the wig department.
Oh, wow.
And in that interview, John Hamm must have felt pressured to change the focus because he outed Ben Affleck.
And he said, I actually, I had a conversation at Saturday Night Live asking if there was anyone with a bigger head.
And they told me Ben Affleck.
And he's like, I checked this myself.
I ran into Ben Affleck and I gave him one of my Cardinals hats.
And it sat on his head, quote, like a little toy hat.
I love that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, good for Ben.
Congrats on the nuptials.
I found a website too that has like president head sizes, which I didn't know like how much
faith to put in it.
I will say the largest head on the list.
Gerald Ford? No. Seven and five eights john f kennedy seven and five eights is the biggest presidential head size
that's what that's nothing that's nothing you can't tell me gerald ford had a smaller head
than seven and five eights that there's no way i gotta know that dude's head yeah i don't see him actually i don't see him on
this list uh so maybe either we didn't know his head size or this list is extremely dated oh i'll
shoot him an email uh the smallest head side on here is uh let's see henry ford at six and seven
eight see he wasn't he wasn't a president no wasn't. So this is just historical men, I guess.
Okay, great.
Because Fred Astaire's on here, too.
Yeah, not the president Fred Astaire, famously.
Can I?
You kicked my mic stand.
I'm sorry.
It scared me so bad.
I thought a ghost were in here moving my microphone around.
So that's Big Heads.
Thanks.
Can I steal you away?
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Thanks.
Can I steal you away?
Yeah.
Okay.
Got a couple Dumbo pops here,
and I would love to read the first one because it is for Future Bucky,
and it is from Past Bucky,
who says,
Dear Future Bucky,
I hope that you are doing well
and that your research for your master's thesis
is coming along.
Have you decided where you want to go
for grad school 2.0?
You have made it through some very hard times recently,
but you are so strong and I love you.
Tonight, you should celebrate with some mac and cheese and a blizzard.
Much love.
That's a beautiful sentiment that they have outlined here,
which is to say mac and cheese and a blizzard,
that's going to get you riding high, I think.
Yeah, although if you
had it it would make you pretty ill maybe but that is gonna touch on the topic that i'm going to be
discussing later today so i'd like to pretend like i'm a cool guy who can eat as much dairy
as he possibly wants okay can i read the next one yes this is for future Tay from past Tay. Dear future Tay, I hope by now things are less buck wild.
If not, embrace chaos.
But seriously, I'm so proud of how far you've come with the voices of the McElroys in your ears along the way.
Hope your 30th is as emo as you want.
In the eyeliner, fallout boy kind of way.
Keep chasing those small wonders and scritch the boys for me.
Love five ever.
Past Tay.
I think that 30th should be the
emo birthday.
I think that when you turn
30, you should be allowed to get
as emo
as you possibly can.
I think so.
What does that mean?
I do not know.
It makes me wonder what I should have been for my 40th birthday. I think so. What does that mean? I do not know. It makes me wonder what I should have been for my 40th birthday.
I think your 40th is when you get like super preppy.
Like preppy, sporty, Zack Morris style sort of vibe.
Okay.
Which I think, babe, would definitely work on you.
Thank you.
It could happen to you. Thank you. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And together we form TripleClick, a podcast about video games.
If you think you might be a person who likes video games, we hope you'll give TripleClick a listen.
TripleClick, new episodes every Thursday on Maximum Fun.
Hey kid, your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dorf's nose at the kids
choice awards in dead pilot society scripts that were developed by studios
and networks,
but were never produced are given the table reads they deserve.
When I was a kid,
I had to spend my Christmas break filming a PSA about angel dust.
So yeah,
being a kid sucks sometimes. Presented by Andrew Reich
and Ben Blacker.
Dead Pilot Society, twice a month
on MaximumFun.org.
You know, the show you like.
That hobo with the scarf who lives in a magic dumpster.
Doctor Who.
Yeah!
My thing this week is going to an ice cream shop.
When you go to an ice cream shop and you walk in and you're confronted with all the smells and sights and sounds of an ice cream shop and the excitement that goes hand in hand with that sensory experience. Because I know your long story career, are you differentiating between an ice cream shop
and a yogurt shop?
No, not a froyo place.
I would, you know, soda fountains, ice cream parlors, a Baskin Robbins, a country's best
yogurt.
I put them all in there.
Lump them all in there lump them all in
oh really
it's the same
experience
you don't need like
the big tub
behind the glass case
I love the big tub
behind the glass case
yeah
see I feel like
I need that
but I also
you know
when you see
a line
a row of machines
at a yogurt land
and it's like
that is exciting
that's exciting too
especially when you get
I didn't even write
any notes about samples but obviously that's like the best part yeah especially
when you get those little tiny little little paper pill cups you can go around you just
just shoot down little shooters how wild that they do that by the way if you think about it
that's not common practice in an area like in a restaurant where you get food no sure of course
but but an ice cream it's like it's standard. Yeah, so as somebody whose body rejects
large amounts of dairy,
the risk associated with eating a frozen dairy treat
makes it a more sort of, I don't know,
thrilling luxury, makes the payoff sweeter.
Can we quickly have you talk about how you realized
that you had a sensitivity to dairy?
Yeah, so I used to go to school and be sick every day.
I used to go to school and I would feel sick in the mornings every single day.
And I could not figure out why.
It really started at like middle school is usually when it happened.
But I remember being in like sixth and seventh grade and just
like going to the doctor they thought i had like stomach ulcers or something because i was sick
every single day and then uh i remember our family doctor or whatever was like so what do you have
for breakfast every morning i was like oh big bowl of cereal milk and he's like okay, try something else. And so I switched to something else.
And then poof, I was cured.
Poor Griffin, too, by the way.
Like cereal was such a like major section of the food pyramid.
Yeah, and we didn't really have almond milk back then.
So I got into like a lot of waffles.
It was just like soy milk.
And that seemed like so strange to me.
Yeah.
A lot of French toast sticks kind of became the order of the day at that time, which,
you know, I'm not complaining.
So I love perusing the menu of an ice cream shop that I walk into.
There's a lot of, I would say, standard ice cream flavors that if I see that they are
available, like I'm already like set,
like I'm already excited and raring to go. I love in the summertime. I love a mint chocolate chip.
I love a strawberry flavor. I love a pralines and cream. I love a sort of nutty caramely or
a cinnamony ice cream flavor. Those get those excite me a great deal. I'm not so big on like a chocolate, straight chocolate, rocky road, fudgy fudge.
Yeah, see that, that is exactly my wheelhouse.
I mean, I guess it's good, right?
Like we, we have different interests and that keeps things exciting.
It does.
It keeps things very exciting.
But then like when you go into a more specialty place like a Ginny's or a, or a Lick back
in Austin and you see, see you know olive oil and sea
salt or uh what was the what was the uh lick had goat cheese thyme and honey ice cream yeah and
when you see that it's like what does that even mean how is that ice cream i must know like that's
super exciting for me i like to comparison shop for most things in my life, but rarely do I get
more into it for food than I do when I'm at an ice cream shop and see some like exotic flavor
combination that I did not know was possible. And that doesn't even like factor in toppings,
which I usually don't mess with anymore. I'm pretty by the book when it comes to how i consume my ice
cream i like a cake cone i like one big scoop ice cream right on it that's all i need i like some
texture variation i like i like a like a like a crush them or or like a like a little nug but you
go cup you don't go i can't balance a of, I can't be responsible for eating this mint chocolate chip ice cream before it melts all over my hand and ruins my pants and shirt and shoes and floor of the place that I'm standing over.
And also like balancing some gummy worms on top of that.
That's true.
I can't be responsible for all that.
I'm a parent of two children.
I can't be responsible for that that. I'm a parent of two children. I can't be responsible for that also. This is fascinating
to me because you could
just get a cup and then you could have
all of those things. I love a cake cone though.
I love a sugar cone too, but a cake cone
is because of the
sort of
structural lattice work
happening inside the cake cone that it's
less stressful for me. No, that last bite of a cake cone
is pretty great. If a place has a waffle cone like forget it i i am on board yeah but the waffle
cone is like that's a little bit more food than i i usually am ready for what a strange line to
draw in the stand if i'm like i like i said i can't handle that much dairy so like a waffle
cone with one scoop in it looks stupid
that's true and you've got to get at least a few to fill out a waffle cone yeah and I can't I can't
rock like that anymore I'll die I'm sorry if I do but don't I'm not sad about it I love a cake cone
I love one scoop knock it down in like five minutes and then I'm off. I'm away.
Back to business.
Back to work.
So one time I went to a Cold Stone Creamery.
I think just once it was across the street from the GameStop I worked at for like a year.
I went there once and it gave me like a panic attack because there's too much.
It's too much.
It's too much.
It's too much stuff.
I don't want to get it wrong.
You know what I mean?
Also, they sang a lot
when i saw the like there's like a tip jar thing or something like they're required to sing and i
just watched people tip them and i was like why are you doing this stop this you have control
over whether or not they sing uh so ice cream in the shops that sell them are sort of a tricky thing to historically pinpoint because ice has been a luxury item for like over a
millennium and people have been putting fruit and milk up on it and eating that for just as long
uh the first shop that sold something called uh ice iced cream uh opened in new york city at the end of the 18th century and it was
like a treat for the elite uh i found an article about how one summer george washington apparently
spent over 200 on ice cream and had his own and like mount vernon had his own like ice cream
jars that he could use to manufacture it himself. Didn't know that.
Nowadays it would be like,
this is where our tax dollars are going.
But, but two,
two hundred dollars at the,
at the end of the 18th century.
I mean,
I guess it just won the revolutionary war and he was like,
time to fucking celebrate with a little bit of that good,
cold stuff.
Uh,
around 1800 insulated ice houses were a thing, and ice was more readily available to people who were not U.S. presidents.
And by 1850, like, further technological advances made ice cream something that, like, most people could source.
Toward the end of the 19th century, you get soda fountains that popped up and they sold obviously soda,
but they did ice cream and floats too.
Apparently, this feels apocryphal to me,
but I found it in a couple places.
Like ice cream floats were viewed
as like a sinful extravagance.
And so soda fountains began just selling
ice cream on Sundays,
sans soda,
and that is where the term Sunday comes from.
Whoa.
Only spelled with an E, I guess,
to differentiate it from the Sabbath.
And it was also sort of like in World War II times,
kind of like an iconic morale booster treat.
Apparently there was a floating ice cream parlor in the western pacific
just helping out naval service members with their with their fix um and also according to the
international dairy foods association americans celebrated the end of the war in 1946 by eating
20 quarts of ice cream per person annually on average that That's a lot. That is a lot. That feels like more than people today.
20 quarts is a lot of ice cream.
There's a great deal of ice cream.
Yeah, because like a pint,
how many pints are in a quart?
Four to six or possibly eight.
It's either three, four, six, or eight.
It's one of those numbers.
If you think about that, that is a lot of ice cream.
Ice cream rules, being at a place that has a bevy of ice cream options and making any kind of like good choice about it and come out of it.
No, who comes out of Cold Stone Creamy and is like, perfect.
I picked the perfect one.
It's the perfect size, perfect flavor, perfect topping.
I crushed it.
I mean, here's the thing.
If you are in an environment like that, you just choose something that has stood the test of time.
You just go like Oreo. You just like you get in, get in you get out you don't but then there's more adventure
that you didn't go anyway i love going to an ice cream shop i am doing this topic because we
live very close to a very cool ice cream like cafe play cafe thing here in dc that we've been
to many times now and uh it And it's always exciting going in there
and being like, what ice cream do I get to eat?
Hooray.
Hooray.
Thank you for listening to our show.
That's it for the show.
Thanks to Bolin and Augustus
for the use of our theme song,
When You Won't Pay.
You can find a link to that
in the episode description.
Thank you to Maximum Fun
for having us on the network.
Go to MaximumFun.org.
Check out all the shows that they have there.
And listen to every episode of every one of them.
Please.
There's tours.
There is tours.
There's tours to see the McElroys do their jokes on stage in your hometown.
That's correct.
We're going to be in San Jose and Denver
at the end of September.
We're going to be doing Cincinnati, Detroit,
and Washington, D.C.,
the jewel of the country,
in November.
And you can come out and see us.
There's still tickets for most of those shows, I think.
You can go to bit.ly slash mackroytours.
Check those out. We also have merch slash mackroytours. Check those out.
We also have merch at mackroymerch.com that you can get that you're just going to love.
It's going to look great on you in your room and your weird vault that you have, the shrine that you have created for all your favorite podcasts.
It can go in any of that stuff.
And we sure do appreciate it.
We appreciate you.
Yeah.
Hey, thank you.
Hey, thank you.
We don't say it enough.
Nobody really says it enough.
You know?
In these times.
My thing is like,
my whole thing is like,
if you said thank you to like three people
and they said thank you to three people, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I know.
This is beautiful stuff.
Like, if you did thank you to three people and they did three people and then they did three people, that's already like 30 people.
And in the world good now, this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Do you ever kind of step outside of your body in moments like this?
I can't.
I can't.
I have to be like right there in it.
Yeah.
Or else I can't do the jokes.
That is a definite talent that you have.
Well, I got an eight cup break.
So. Bye. Hey! Hey!