Wonderful! - Wonderful! 326: Two Swole Adults in Love

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Rachel's favorite teen autonomous zones! Griffin's favorite source of the waffle juice! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya��World Central Kitchen: https://wck.org/

["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things that we like that's good that we like

that's good that we are into. I am so pumped to be in this dude with you today. We both hit the gym this morning for the first time in a while. Well, as a couple. As a couple, right. I mean, we are always bowing our heads reverently at the Iron Church, trying to get huge for each other

and our kids and the world to be the sort of Adonises, Adonai for people to gaze upon and tremble. Yeah, I know, everybody, I mean, the feedback is in and it is, we wish Rachel and Griffin would get bigger. Yes. And we are listening to you. They say, we want more of you. And we want you to be so big,

you can pick us up and put me in your little pocket. We wanna hear the muscles through the microphone. It's important to us that our podcast listening experience is curated by two swole individuals. Two swole adults in love is the feedback. That's like every iTunes review. I don't think iTunes reviews are a thing anymore because it's Apple Music now.

Anyway, we are here with you. I really don't have any fodder for the intro. Just rippling. Just rippling and quivering and- Taught. Taught, turgid flesh. Do you have a small wonder for me to hear and listen to? I will say that, and this might be taken from you, but that season finale of Survivor we watched last night.

Oh, manzies, we're not gonna spoil anything. I've been thinking about it all day. Yeah, me too. I did the thing a moment ago where I was like reading the articles online. Yes. Like trying to get a little bit more content out of it. Yeah, we didn't watch the after,

I mean, that's a long ass episode of television. So after the votes were counted, we went to bed. So we didn't watch the after vote count stuff, but wild season start to literal finish, just absolutely the most unhinged collection of people who have ever been on the show, making the wildest decisions. Though like the record for people going home

with idols in their pocket. But beaten by two. So like really, really went ham on it. Just a lot of people trusting everything they've been told. It was one of, I would say, of the new era, one of the worst seasons in terms of gameplay and strategy. There weren't that many moves where I was like, oh, no way, which is I think what happens

when nobody plays their fucking idols ever. But the people were unbelievable. And I was happy with the ending, I was satisfied with the ending, but it's such an interesting game, man. I know that there's a lot of our audience who probably just tunes out when we talk about this stuff, but it will forever interest me

that there is no one winning strategy for survival. You have to make that shit up as you go because every season is different, every jury is different, every like- And know your strengths. Yes. Like the people that win are the people that know exactly what they can pull off and what they can't

and they like double down on, you know, their most influential quality and do not try to be something they're not. Yeah. I'm ready for an all-star season. We didn't watch the trailer for the next season. Yeah, I think it is though. I think that's what I've heard. I know they got one coming up

because Mary Ann's gonna be on it, which I'm just very excited for. I think, she was talking about it. Anyway, oh God, I mean, that was gonna be my small wonder. I figured it was. There is a game series on Nintendo, on Nintendo, I sound like a grandpa, and it called Pikmin,

and I've never been able to get into it. It is a sort of like super accessible take on the real time strategy game genre, like a Warcraft or a Starcraft, but like cute and with like little colorful plants. I've played a lot of them and it's a series that like, it's probably the only Nintendo like hard line series that I've never like really been able to get into,

but Henry has gotten into it. Yeah. With Pikmin 4 and we discussed, it was a little bit too hard for him, but we discovered there's this co-op mode where he can just shoot rocks at the screen to like take out enemies and help things move faster a little bit too hard for him, but we discovered there's this co-op mode where he can just shoot rocks at the screen to like take out enemies and help things move faster.

And, oh, gotta be real. And it has been so much fun and it's nice for me. I feel like I'm finally getting to understand this thing. I guess we'll give the people some feet pics. Yeah, that's what the people crave. I cut your feet out just so you know. Thank you, I got your feet in. So that's what's up. Anyway, I've been really enjoying it.

He is like so deep into Pikmin in a way that like, he kind of was for Pokemon, but there hasn't been any Pokemon jam in a while. That's what I was gonna say, his interest in Pikmin does seem kind of catching them all. Yeah, yeah, that. Yeah. You know? Yeah, that's true. You go first this week,

and I would like to hear what you've got prepared for us. Okay, my topic this week is the finished basement. Wow. Basement as hangout zone in your childhood friend or your own house. This is incredible. I feel like I've done rec room before, but this is more, I think,

you can use a finished basement for so many things. Yeah, it's the place in the house that is usually most interesting to me because I feel like, you know, people decorate the first floor of their house typically in a like guest welcoming way. You know, like it's very, it's usually very clean and organized.

It's traditionally like living room, dining room, kitchen. Like everything is pretty much cookie cutter in a way. Going to the basement. Finished basement, it's a fucking, there's no telling what's gonna be down there. There's weird shit in there, man. There's weird, weird shit in there. But it's real, it's so authentic, a finished basement.

I like, if I sat down, like I can mentally transport myself to so many of my friends' basements, just like throughout my life. Because that was the spot to me, usually that the hanging out happened, and or was the most mysterious, interesting spot. See, I used to hang out in our friends'

the Minskers' basement because we sort of bought a bunch of stuff at a secondhand sort of furniture store and built it up that way, but it was an unfinished basement. So there was just sort of like pipes and insulation and stuff all over. I mean, it was still great. We still had some kick-ass parties down there.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know this, but growing up our basement was a kind of shrine to the sport of hockey. I've never been in the basement of your childhood home. That's true. Is that really true? I don't think your mom will let me in it.

That used to be like the showpiece, if I'm honest. Like people would come over and we have a- I did go down there once. That's what I was gonna say, right- I did go down there once. As I say, right? I did go down there once. You did not go down at the peak. At the peak of that basement, there were large cardboard cutouts of multiple hockey players. That's cool.

And they were like right at the bottom of the stairs. So you would walk down. Like sentinels that you- Yeah, you'd walk down and be like, oh, hello, Bret Hall. Bret Hall, solve my riddle. Greeting me. If thine wish is to pass, solve Bret Hall's riddle.

So yeah, so that was our basement. Not the most comfortable place for hanging out, honestly. It was finished, but we always had at least one, sometimes two cats in that house. And for whatever reason, man, that was their pee spot. So you put any soft fabric down there. Yeah, we had a basement in our house. It was also unfinished, a stone floor,

and it was just always kind of wet down there. It was always just sort of wet. That's a real issue. And I didn't like that. I didn't like being down there because it was always just sort of wet and stinky a real issue. And I didn't like that. I didn't like being down there because it was always just sorta wet and stinky because of the stone being wet all the time.

The reason I thought about this was actually yesterday I went down into our basement and it was so much cooler. And it's like I did- Temperature wise cooler. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, there's some cool stuff down there. There's some cool toys down there.

I mean, it's where toy, that's like our toy purgatory. Yeah. Where when the children aren't playing with it every day, but we're not ready to get rid of it, we will put it down there. And then for them, it's like a fun treat. They walk in and they're like, whoa, this old house. Anyway, it was so much cooler temperature wise.

And so I did the thing that I do every time, which is like like I walked around all the vents, like these vents better be closed because I'm not paying. They are, yeah. I'm not paying to air condition. It's just cold underground. No, it's just cold.

So anyway, I did some research on basements. Okay. You wanna hear about it? I do wanna hear about it. Okay, so basements are much more common in colder environments and the reason for that is that the colder environments, the ground is more likely to freeze and you don't want your pipes too close to the surface.

In climate zone five, which extends from New York across the middle of the country, the frost depth is three feet or more. So the solution is to build with footings deeper than the frost depth. And if you're already excavating three feet, going a couple of feet deeper to get a basement doesn't cost that much more.

Interesting. So it's an infrastructural sort of consideration. That's interesting. I mean, yeah, I guess I never went to any place in Texas that had a basement ever. Yeah, so this is the reason that a lot of houses, particularly in the south, don't have basements is like one, like damp soil, like Louisiana and Florida, there's just way too much water in the soil to build below the ground. bedrock, which is like Texas, Tennessee. It's a very shallow layer of soil and then right underneath it is bedrock. So just like it's difficult to get in there.

I can do it. That's a big- I've been going to the gym twice a week sometimes. Sometimes. I'm ready. So basements as hangouts. I found this Washington Post article from 2019 called the Teenage Lore of the American Basement.

Fuck yeah, I'm so excited for this. So the basement as rec room tradition was like post-war, 50s and 60s, the teens starting to get into the rock and roll, starting to have these interests that are like counter what their parents' interests are. But the idea was that like, you still wanted to keep them home and keep them safe. So it was like, let's find a dedicated place

for our teen to listen to this rock music. And we still know they're home and they're not like out getting in trouble. And like the basement is kind of this like, this, you know, secluded more private space for particularly like young people in the house. Right. And so the basement kind of became that.

I've never thought of basement that way. But then you think about like, you know, that 70s show or Stranger Things or like any number of shows where like the hangout is always the basement, always. Yeah. And Freaks and Geeks, like there's just a lot of basement action in all those programs.

So this article features Sarah Lichtman who is a professor of design history at Parsons School of Design. And she says, these ads would show teenagers dancing or playing shuffleboard in basements, sending a clear message, keep teens at home. You don't want them to go out and become juvenile delinquents. Is that what they were doing though,

is playing shuffleboard? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what that ad could have been for. It seems like it would have had to be specifically for shuffleboard. Have you played shuffleboard before? You have introduced me to it. Yeah fucking great Yeah, the way you feel about shuffleboard is that if it exists within a bar you will comment on it And then I feel like oh, that's not even the kind of shuffleboard. I'm talking about

That's like that boat like long sandy table thing What are you talking about like where you have like the little, sandy table thing. Yeah, what are you talking about? Like where you have the little pucks on the ground that you scoot with the little scoopers. Oh, that was in a basement? That's what I thought they were talking about. I thought that was just on cruise ships. Maybe, it was at my church is where I would gamble

on shuffleboard. Yeah. The other thing I thought was interesting was they talked about the places that don't have basements. The article is like, where there are no basements, adolescence changes. It's harder for teenagers to find a sense of autonomy at home and try new things in a place

where they often feel at least somewhat protected. Without basements, teenagers looking for privacy, spend more time in malls, parks, cars, and diners, according to several basement deprived young adults. That's really, really genuinely very interesting. Isn't it interesting? Not a joke, I think like most of my fondest sort of like teen Rapscallian memories are all in basements.

Every single one of them. I can think of four basements off the top of my head where like I got up to no good and had a fucking great time and it was just all basements all the way down. And the idea of like that stuff wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have done that stuff without this kind of like privacy, this accessible privacy that the basement offered me.

I guess there's attic, huh? The un-basement, but it's so hot up there. It's very rare to find a finished attic. I guess that's true. Our house actually weirdly did have a finished attic. Well, out of necessity though, right? Because there were so many boys. The boys had to go somewhere.

Spilling out boys. Yeah, I feel like for me as a young person, seeing somebody's basement was also a real indicator of like how much disposable income they had. Because most basements were, as you described, like this is the furniture we wouldn't put on our main floor and or like we don't really have furniture. So the basement is a hangout spot

where there's really nowhere to sit. But some people, man, they have like the whole, the whole like movie zone, like the big sectional couch, the big TV. Big one for me, went over to Aunt Brenda's house for Thanksgiving routinely. She got a ping pong table down there. You're not gonna put a ping pong table on the first floor.

Are you out of your gourd? No. That's a basement friend. Yeah, although the other thing is garages. So like when no basement, garage will do, is the argument. But I mean, if you think about it in a colder climate, you know, like when the weather gets nasty, like you have to be indoors if you're doing an activity.

Right. So yeah, it's either a basement or shopping mall, you know? Yeah. There's really no end to it. And they don't have the second thing anymore. Your parents aren't gonna let you entertain in your bedroom. No way. You know?

Either your bedroom is like a pit of just like clothes and debris and or there's no seating and your parents are nervous about you having conversations. Yeah. On the top of your bed. And for good reason. Yeah. That's basements. That's basements.

Love, love me a basement. Excited to be back in a region where there are basements. Genuinely, sometimes when we go to like people's houses and they have really nice sort of like living spaces and then we go down to the basement, I'm always like, can we stay down? It feels like I'm not gonna like fuck up down here. Like the stakes are so much lower down here in this basement.

I will say so far, the majority of the homes that I have been in that have basements are using them for their children's debris. Absolutely. Like that is, especially in DC, where like most people don't have extra rooms, you know? The basement is the spot for activity. Can I steal your way? Yes.

Cool. The Greatest Generation has been going on for more than eight years, and while it's the world's most beloved Star Trek podcast, we know it can be a little impenetrable. If you've been greatest-gen curious but have never taken the leap, you could be forgiven for being a little bit intimidated. We recommend exploring your greatest-gen curiosity in a safe, fun environment with partners you can trust. Right now is one of the best times ever to become a new listener.

That's because we just started covering a new series, Star Trek Enterprise, one of the weirdest editions of Star Trek ever released. This is your chance to ease into the greatest generation lifestyle. The greatest generation now covering Star Trek Enterprise. Be one with Scott Bakula every Monday on MaximumFun.org or in your podcast app. Hey, Sydney, you're a physician and the co-host of Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine, right? That's true, Justin. podcast app. to learn about the medical misdeeds of the past, as well as some current, not so legit

healthcare fads. So you're saying that by listening to our podcast, people will feel better. Sure. Isn't that the same reason that you go to the doctor? Well, you could say that. And our podcast is free? Yes, it is free. You heard it here first folks, Sawbones, Merrell-Ture, misguided medicine, right here on Maximum

Fun, just as good as going to the doctor. No, no, no, still not just as good as going to the doctor, but pretty good. It's up there. I've got sort of a sequel for you to a segment I did a very long time ago, four years ago now. I talked about how much I love maple syrup. Today I wanna talk about the proud,

the majestic maple tree. Whoa. This is, I was inspired to talk about this because of what has become sort of my favorite backyard pastime in our home, which is we will go out there with the boys and our trampoline will just be, like there will just be a solid inch deep layer

of Whirlygigs or helicopter seeds, maple seeds. There's so many different names for them. And hello, that's basically a nature toy. Like, you know what I mean? It's such a like, like it was one of those things that I have like almost as a core memory and I'm sure our boys will too. Like when you figure out the like play potential of those things that I have almost as a core memory, and I'm sure our boys will too. When you figure out the play potential of those guys,

it's out of sight. You imprint on it. Look at this magical thing nature has made for me. And for whatever reason, our trampoline is in prime real estate to catch hundreds of these fucking things. And so we'll just go out there and play with them. If you don't know what I'm talking about,

maple seeds are the ones that are, it's like a pod attached to a fibrous little wing that when you throw the seed in the air, or if you're a tree, you just kinda let it go. Splurt it out, it goes away. It will spin around very, very quickly and it falls slowly to the ground,

or if there's a nice stiff breeze, it'll get carried away. Those seeds are called samaras and they are- Wow, I never knew what they were actually called. I know, genuinely there's like 15 different names that people call these things because they're so fun and so iconic. I was gonna do a segment on pine cones

because I think pine cones are pretty cool too, but then I was like, nah, there's just a pretender to the seed throne. I love this show that we do together. I do too, man. So they evolved to have these seeds that can go really, really wicked far away so as not to be sort of strangled by the tree

from whence they sprung. And I find that incredibly cool. A big enough maple tree can release hundreds of thousands of samaras, which explains why they are all the hell over our yard. All the time. Yeah, is it, man, is it hard to grow a tree? Cause you think about, these guys are floating everywhere.

It's not like you see trees everywhere all the time. It's not like every yard I walk into has like 17 trees just popping up out of the ground. There's very specific circumstances required for one of these seeds to like germinate and it can take anywhere between like two months to four years. So these seeds can also be sort of embedded underground

and not germinate for like a couple of years before they start to grow. But yeah, I mean, most of them, I guess, get picked up by our kids and then thrown around in the air. And those ones probably don't get to be trees. Yeah, I will say Henry's at that age where anytime he finds anything, he wants to like plant it in the ground, but his version of planting is to just, you know.

Put it an inch, a quarter inch deep in the ground. Yeah, I like, you know, it's the kind of thing where I don't wanna be like, that's not turning into anything. No. But it is not, it will never. Other stuff about, that's just the seeds. Maple trees have also got it going on.

Caterpillars, just wild about maple leaves. Second only to the whole nation of Canada, which is really wild for these guys. The maple leaf was sort of like an iconic symbol in Canada before it was the flag. The Canadian flag that we know, the red maple leaf, was only introduced in 1965. It was a pretty new flag.

Before then, they were like. What was it? Before then, they were just kind of like throwing around the Union Jack for a while, and then there was a, I forget what it was called, it was like the red sigil of something, but it was like, in one corner, there was a Union Jack, and then the rest of the flag was red, and then there was like a little coat of arms

that was like part of the military sort of emblem. It's wild to think that there are people that are alive in that country that still think of it as the new flag. Yeah, I mean, that is kind of wild. I didn't know anything about that. But like in 1960, they started sort of shopping around what the flag was gonna look like

and the one that they got, I think. Kicks absolute ass. It is the single maple leaf flag, the maple symbolizing sort of the strength and endurance of the Canadian spirit. I'm also just now kind of realizing that Canadian iconography with the leaves is very like elvish, is very elf-like.

Yeah. Like leaves in nature and stuff. I've never thought about it this way, about our friends and neighbors in North Bay. No, there aren't a lot of flags that I know of outside of Canada that have leaves on it. True. Maple leaves themselves are just pretty as hell.

There's tons of different types of maple trees and a lot of them turn super pretty colors in the fall. There's the Amur maple, which has the red leaves. There's the sugar maple,, which has the red leaves. There's the sugar maple, where we get that good, good syrup from. We also get good, good, orange-ish red leaves from those. There's hedge maples that grow up to be humongous. They take a long time to grow, but they have the bright, yellow leaves.

There's so many different hues. Japanese maples are interesting because they sort of run the gamut. They start changing color in the spring. They turn deep red in the spring and summer. And then when fall rolls around, they turn sort of yellow and red, purple and bronze. And so like you get your money's worth with a Japanese maple.

They also are a smaller tree. And so they're actually pretty popular for like bonsai plants, like having just like a single tiny little Japanese maple tree in a pot. That's chill as hell for me. I remember on our honeymoon in Japan when we were in Hakone, it was seeing all of the,

just this ocean of like warm colored nature all around us was one of the most sort of breathtaking like nature sites I think I've ever seen. Yeah, I feel like we very specifically went in the fall with like that as a hope. Yeah, and it paid off big time. Maple wood, particularly sugar maple wood is used a lot for like craft wood

for all sorts of purposes, bowling pins, baseball bats, recurve longbows, furniture, you name it. Maple's also a pulpwood, making it great for making paper out of it. It's a resonant tonewood, which means that it can be used for like musical instruments and is commonly used for musical instruments, specifically stringed instruments.

Like the body of cellos and double basses or the body and bridgeos and double basses or the body and bridge of an electric guitar, oftentimes is maple just because it's a tone wood that sound can pass through fairly well. And also the fact that it blossoms and it pollinates earlier in the spring than a lot of other plants,

it's actually a really important kind of like foothold for the whole bee economy. Yeah. The whole bee economy. Yeah. The whole bee ecosystem and economy. And also on top of all that, you can put this tree juice on your waffles and it tastes so fucking good. Yeah.

It's wild how much we get out of maple trees. And I think it's probably my favorite tree, which I realize is a very mainstream choice, but also like, you know, there's a reason. There's a reason why people swear by it. There's a reason why Canada made it their whole deal. And that's because it does- It's a good tree.

It's a good tree and it does a lot of stuff for us. Thank you, maple trees. Pine, keep it up. I think pine's onto something. Pine's getting close. Yeah, I mean, pine doesn't have the big color show, typically, but. I think pine's onto something. Pine's getting close. Yeah, I mean, pine doesn't have the big color show typically, but you know, it's dependable. If pine changed colors, how fucking cool would that be?

Oh yeah, the little needles are like yellow. I will say when it snows, pine looks pretty cool. That's true. The maple doesn't do much with the snow. It's pretty cashed out by that point. Anyway, this has been Tree Talk with me, Nature Guy Griffin McElroy. Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You'll find a link to that in the episode description. Hey, we got some friends at home who have sent us some submissions. Joan says, this is less of a wonderful submission, but more of a, it is wonderful. Joan says, Scott Bakula is coming to DC this fall

to play Abraham Lincoln in a one-man show at Ford's Theater. Thought you would like to know. What? Yeah, Joan, we would like to know about that. Thank you so much. Wild. Why didn't he mention that to us when we met him?

I don't know, I don't know. We told him we were from the- Maybe it's a secret. Or maybe he didn't he mention that to us when we met him? I don't know, I don't know. We were, we told him we were from the- Maybe it's a secret. Or maybe he didn't even know yet. Okay. Maybe he like, you know, had done several rounds of auditions. Yeah, maybe. I mean, we gotta get to that, right?

I don't know, I don't know. A one man show? You're, you are cautious of, I don't know, a one man show? You are cautious of I feel like one to two or two handers in general, because it's not a lot of people to watch for a long time. Yeah, like a one man show, like just him up there being Lincoln. It sounds pretty good to me, man.

And then I decided on the big hat because. Maybe there will be puppets and stuff. And I also doubt very much that the Abraham Lincoln show done at the Ford Theater is gonna be about his hat choices. Anyway, Evan says, my small wonder is cool summer morning air. My apartment is in a noisy enough place that I can't leave windows open at night to let cool air in.

But when I open them up, when I wake up in the morning, I get a nose full of cool, fresh air that smells incredibly relaxing. That's so nice. It's very nice. I don't have openable windows in my office, but I do have a door that sort of opens out. Yeah.

And first thing in the morning, once I get in here, I crack that bad boy open before it gets like so muggy and awful. Yeah. Just like freshen it up. It's like, I don't do really candles or incense or sprays or anything in here. I just get a little bit of that good outside DC stink

coming my way. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. I already thanked Bowen and Augustus. We got some shows coming up. If you go to Macroi Tours- Yeah, you dropped a bunch of new ones today. Yeah, bit.ly slash Macroi Tours. We're coming to a bunch of different places.

Obviously Kansas City and St. Louis and Tyson's, Virginia very, very soon, but then there's like Detroit and Greenland. I saw Detroit on there, yeah. And Orlando and Atlanta and a bunch of places. Bit.ly slash Macroi Tours is where you can go to find out if we're coming near you and get tickets and come and see us.

The shows have genuinely been super duper duper fun this year, the whole fun galore vibe is surprisingly powerful. And we've been doing Taz versus Dracula for the live shows. Which is so good. Yeah, if you haven't seen Bim Bam in a long time, there are so many multimedia elements now. It is a real performance of-

We work on it. Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, typically there's music and video and just anything you could want from a podcast performance. I wouldn't say that, because I don't know what people want, but we give them what they need.

Anyway, that's it for us. Thank you so much for listening. Join us again next week. Please won't pay. My own thing My own thing My own thing My own thing My own thing