0:00

Hi, I'm Rachel

0:04

McElroy. Hi

0:23

I'm Griffin McElroy. And

0:28

this is Wonderful. This

0:31

is a show where we talk about things that we

0:33

like that's good, that we're into. It's so good to

0:35

be back in St. Louis kind of. It's

0:41

so good to be so close to being

0:43

back in St. Louis that the

0:45

posters just went ahead and said St. Louis.

0:48

I don't know if there's any Chesterfield locals

0:50

here who are like, fuck St. Louis. But

0:54

I hope not. Because

0:57

who are you kidding? Yeah

1:04

I think this is actually the first time I've

1:06

been in Chesterfield. Oh wow. And you

1:08

grew up in St. Louis. So

1:10

what did Chesterfield do wrong that

1:15

you didn't come here until just this moment?

1:17

I just had everything I needed already. I didn't

1:19

have to come out this far. I

1:25

think this complex here

1:27

absolutely rips ass. This

1:31

is my small wonder. The fact that you can start

1:33

at one end of this complex, hit

1:35

some Topgolf, get some pretzel sticks with your

1:37

buds while you hit the links and make

1:40

some memories, walk three minutes.

1:42

Now you're at main event eating a

1:44

different kind of pretzel sticks and

1:47

playing Dance Dance Revolution. You do a little bit

1:50

of strip mall shopping. There's like

1:52

an escape room that's based on game

1:54

shows. And then you catch a night

1:56

of kick ass all comedy podcasting. That's

2:00

the best day of your life. Why would

2:02

you ever go back to St. Louis? Chesterfield

2:04

has everything you need. Or where we live

2:07

with our children. I'm moving

2:10

to Chesterfield. It's

2:12

a big decision, but... Do

2:14

you have any small wonders? I do, actually,

2:16

and I wanted Paul to help

2:19

me with this. My

2:21

small wonder is toast ravioli baby.

2:25

What's that? Don't

2:28

get me wrong. I know about toasted

2:30

ravioli and in fact, maybe speaking more

2:33

about it later this very evening, but

2:35

I didn't know it came in delectable

2:38

baby form. So,

2:40

since I have left St. Louis over

2:44

20 years ago, St.

2:46

Louis got into soccer. Okay. I

2:50

think basically every major city

2:52

in America has done that without

2:55

consulting me at any point in

2:57

the process. I'm giving anybody a

2:59

real primer on what soccer is

3:01

or does, really. I don't

3:03

know enough, really, to be a fan. They

3:05

should have a town hall meeting where they

3:07

explain to everyone the rules of soccer before

3:09

they allow soccer to take place here. Anyway,

3:12

so this is a star soccer player

3:14

for the St. Louis soccer team? So,

3:18

before there was toasted ravioli baby,

3:20

there was toasted ravioli man. Paul,

3:22

can you bring up? Whoa!

3:27

And a witch turned him into

3:29

a baby? So,

3:33

this is Nick Lamoring. Him

3:36

and his girlfriend made this costume for

3:38

himself to wear at the games. And

3:41

then there was another family, Chris

3:43

Burke, and him and

3:45

his wife went to IKEA, got a

3:48

brown IKEA slipcover.

3:50

I thought you were about to say they

3:53

got a toasted ravioli costume. Bought

3:56

it for $5 and said we have

3:59

to... put our baby in this and

4:01

so this is the next evolution. Of

4:04

Toasted Ravioli man. I love it. Yeah.

4:09

I mean, I would dip that baby

4:11

in marinara sauce and... Granted,

4:13

it's no Chesterfield, but it is. No.

4:17

It is remarkable. Who here

4:19

has never heard an episode of

4:21

Wonderful before? It's okay. Oh, wow. Holy shit.

4:23

A lot of you have heard Wonderful. That's

4:25

great. We talk about good

4:27

stuff. They brought up the lights for that just

4:30

so I could... No, that was chilling. Really

4:33

make eye contact with everybody who has

4:35

not listened to this show before. Frickin'

4:37

missed a button on my shirt. That

4:39

sucks. Anyway, we talk about

4:41

good stuff on this show. That's literally it. We

4:43

used to talk about The Bachelor, but that became

4:45

dicey too. One

4:48

might say it was always a little dicey. Yeah, sure.

4:52

Okay, am I starting? Yes, please. Okay.

4:54

So, as

4:56

I mentioned, I haven't lived here in 20 years,

4:59

so I may not be up to date on

5:01

everything that is popular, but when I was a

5:03

young person here, the place to go was Six

5:06

Flags. And

5:10

I wanted to talk about the first roller coaster I

5:12

went on that ever went upside down, and that is

5:14

the Ninja. I

5:19

love a roller coaster that people

5:22

have any kind of feelings about.

5:24

Yeah, as if I had said,

5:26

like the screaming eagle, everyone would

5:28

have been like, boo. Ninja

5:33

has been around since 1989. I

5:36

became very familiar with the

5:39

subculture of coaster enthusiasts. As

5:42

I was researching this, I got a lot

5:44

of information from coaster101.com. Great.

5:47

Okay. There's definitely some fans of

5:49

coaster101.com here tonight. And

5:53

the YouTube channel Theme Park

5:55

Crazy. Okay. This

5:59

audience is... the best audience on the

6:01

planet. Of course, of

6:03

course there is overlap. I just love

6:06

the overlap

6:10

between us and roller

6:13

coasters. But

6:16

before I talk about that, I wanted to

6:18

read the description of the ninja off of

6:20

the Six Flags website. Okay,

6:23

please. Okay. A

6:26

ninja is not just strong, precise,

6:33

and a master of technique, but the ninja

6:35

is also a master of stealth. He sneaks

6:37

up on you, delivers his punches and kicks,

6:39

and is gone before you even look up.

6:42

May I interject? If

6:47

you have waited in a line and

6:50

strapped yourself into a moving

6:52

vehicle. That is not stealthy.

6:56

When it starts moving, you can't be like, whoa,

6:58

where am I? It

7:01

moves? Slicing

7:03

through the air at 55 miles per hour at

7:05

over 2,430 feet

7:08

of track, you're about to learn the ways of the

7:10

black belt. Writing

7:16

ninjas like an education in the art of

7:18

looping. How

7:21

many trained assassins do you know who could

7:23

in one maneuver fly through a half loop

7:25

and a half corkscrew then back out at

7:27

a nearly vertical angle? I feel

7:30

like actually that is taught at ninja

7:32

school. There's

7:35

only one martial artist that comes to

7:37

mind. At ninja school, they call that

7:39

trick a sidewinder loop. Do

7:44

you think this person who wrote this had to go door

7:46

to door to different ninja

7:48

schools around the world? Excuse me. What

7:51

do you call this? If it is a half

7:53

loop and a half corkscrew. Okay.

7:55

Including a sanity warping devil corkscrew.

8:00

There are a total of five inversions. Ninja

8:02

employs its famous stealth as it takes the

8:04

low banking curve so close to the ground

8:07

you'd swear you never saw a roller coaster

8:09

race by, unless of course you were riding

8:11

it. No, again, I

8:13

have to disagree with that. I feel

8:16

like I'd be pretty certain I just saw a roller... Oh. One

8:19

more sense. This attraction is

8:21

presented by M&Ms. So

8:32

deep in the ninja lore, like

8:34

really brought you into the culture

8:36

of ninjas. Yeah, absolutely. And

8:38

then reminded you. Yeah. So,

8:40

I personally remember

8:43

the ninja feeling like a very exhilarating,

8:45

smooth, upside down experience. Looks like it,

8:47

yeah. But that is because my previous

8:49

point of reference was the Screaming Eagle,

8:51

which was an incredibly old wooden roller

8:53

coaster. Yeah. I

8:55

remember the first gnarly wooden roller coaster

8:57

I ever went on was Son of

8:59

Beast, which was only open, yeah, at

9:01

King's Island, which I only rode once

9:04

or twice because it didn't go up for

9:06

very long because it kept hurting people's bones.

9:10

And then I went on a metal roller coaster

9:12

and was like, oh, okay, I get it. Now

9:15

I understand. There was a description on one of

9:17

the roller coaster websites that I was looking at

9:19

that says, ninja is perhaps the most infamous attraction

9:21

at the park due to many enthusiasts labeling the

9:24

ride as, quote, rough and a neck breaker. I

9:27

don't remember that being true. But again, I

9:30

was very young. My bones were not fully

9:32

connected. I

9:35

will say I was not present for this, but

9:37

for a few years there was a VR experience.

9:39

Did anyone participate in that? Oh,

9:41

wait. So they didn't put a VR helmet on you

9:43

while you were on ninja, right? So

9:46

there were headsets that had

9:48

like a Samsung phone in it.

9:52

And you would wear the headsets on

9:54

the roller coaster and it would present

9:56

a themed fighter

9:59

jet. experience. But you're on

10:01

a rollercoaster. What

10:03

could you possibly see on a screen

10:05

that is better than the rollercoaster you're

10:07

on? You were going through a futuristic

10:09

city and you were battling aliens. Eventually

10:13

you would encounter a mothership and

10:16

then that debuted in 2016 and

10:18

then as I understand it was

10:20

gone by 2019. Yeah, yeah. There

10:22

was a lot of cracking and

10:24

freezing of the phone or running

10:26

out of battery. You mean the

10:28

one that's an inch and a

10:30

half from my face and eyes?

10:33

And also the operators of the

10:35

rollercoaster had to manually adjust each

10:37

headset. Oh, God almighty. So the

10:39

wait times became enormous. And also

10:41

if the phone was out of

10:43

sync it would cause extreme nausea.

10:45

No way. Because

10:47

people would have the visual of going down

10:49

a hill before they were going down a

10:51

hill and it would just... Oh

10:53

my God. Yeah. It sounds like you've engineered the

10:56

scariest imaginable rollercoaster experience. So this launched in 2016.

10:58

As of 2019 all six flags VR coasters were...

11:02

I bet I could put it together on my

11:04

phone in a shoebox. I bet I could make

11:07

my own ninja headset. So that

11:09

is the ninja. That's amazing. I

11:11

would like to talk about beverage. Last

11:13

time we came in town and did

11:16

wonderful. You sang

11:18

the praises of Vess Soda.

11:20

Thank you. Which I

11:22

still think is made up. Specifically

11:25

you mentioned Whistle and

11:28

orange soda which apparently contains a billion

11:31

bubbles. Did

11:33

you also know that the creator of that drink, Charles

11:35

Grigg, also

11:39

whipped up a little beverage called 7 Up. I

11:42

don't know if I did know that or not. Well now

11:44

you freaking do. He invented it in 1929. It was a

11:46

formula he devised which he named

11:52

Bibb Label Lithiated Lemon Lime

11:55

Soda. And it launched two

11:57

weeks before the wall Street

11:59

Crash of 1929, which

12:04

is fortunate actually because this

12:06

beverage was chock-full of lithium

12:08

citrate, which is

12:10

a potent mood stabilizer. You

12:14

may know it as medication historically

12:17

prescribed to folks with bipolar

12:20

disorder. Yeah. It is also

12:22

a premium thirst

12:24

quincher. They later went

12:26

on to change the

12:28

name to 7-Up Lithiated

12:30

Lemon Soda, which is

12:32

weird because I guess

12:34

they took the lime out but they

12:37

left the lithium in. And then

12:41

they just shortened it to 7-Up in 1936.

12:44

But don't get it twisted. This bad boy

12:46

had lithium in it all the way up

12:48

to 1948. It's interesting because people talk about

12:50

how there's been this increase in diagnosis of

12:52

like mental health concerns, but it's just because

12:55

your carbonated beverages

12:57

don't have lithium anymore. That's right.

13:00

People were getting what they needed from

13:04

7-Up. The

13:07

name 7-Up, there is no

13:09

universally agreed-on reason for the

13:11

etymology of that name. Some

13:14

people theorize because it has seven

13:17

main ingredients. Yeah. One of which

13:19

I assume is lithium. Or that

13:21

lithium's atomic mass is 7. Or

13:24

because it was released in 7-ounce bottles when

13:27

the norm at that time was 6-ounce bottles.

13:29

So you got extra thirst quincher mood stabilizing

13:31

drug with every bottle you bought. There's

13:34

been some great marketing campaigns that have come

13:36

out of 7-Up, like the Make

13:39

7 Up Yours campaign, which is still

13:41

very, very good. But it can't be

13:43

the original marketing campaign, which is this

13:45

will cure your hangover. Which

13:48

like maybe... Wait,

13:52

that was the marketing campaign or that's just

13:54

true? That was sort of what they pushed

13:56

as the main message of 7-Up is if

13:58

you're hungover, this will help you. get better

14:01

from that. Which I have used

14:03

it for that purpose post lithium

14:05

and I don't know it does okay.

14:07

It's bubbles something about bubbles. Something about

14:09

those bubbles. It can

14:11

also cause hangovers when blended with Seagram

14:13

7 crown whiskey to

14:16

create the classic 7 and 7 which swept

14:19

the nation in the in the late 70s.

14:21

It was also my drink of choice for

14:23

a long time partially because the bubbles made

14:25

my tummy feel better as I was making

14:27

it sicker by putting alcohol in. But

14:30

also because that's what Ryan Atwood drank on

14:32

the OC and I

14:34

wanted to be like him. I never

14:38

realized that. But like all great things

14:40

invented in St. Louis it

14:42

didn't stay here forever because eventually

14:44

it got bought by Philip Morris

14:46

in 1978. The cigarette

14:49

guys were the beverages market

14:52

just completely it tanked. Now it's part

14:54

of Keurig Dr. Pepper which I didn't

14:56

know that's what that company was named.

14:58

That's gross. That's

15:02

7 up. Thank you. You're welcome.

15:11

So I wanted to bring a musical artist

15:14

which meant that I had to reacquaint myself

15:16

with the St. Louis musical scene and I

15:18

was very delighted to discover

15:20

Smino. Smino. Yeah. Okay.

15:23

Oh is this new to

15:25

a lot of people? Some people know

15:27

Smino and some people don't. Love

15:30

Smino. I

15:32

feel really hip right now. Yeah cool

15:34

man. Okay. So

15:37

Smino was born in 1991 in St.

15:39

Louis. Born Christopher Smith Jr.

15:42

in a very musical family.

15:44

His father played the keys. His

15:46

mother sang. He learned to play

15:48

the drums and sing at church and

15:50

I know you're all wondering what

15:53

high school he went to. And

15:56

that is Hazelwood Central High School. All

16:00

right. Y'all are so freaking weird for

16:02

that. You know that, right? You're

16:05

the only ones that do that. You know that,

16:07

right? And

16:11

I don't know if this is a movie you're

16:13

familiar with. So the name's Mino supposedly

16:16

was inspired by a character named

16:18

Nino in the movie New Jack

16:20

City from 1991 starring Wesley Snipes.

16:25

I haven't seen it enough times to recognize

16:27

the names of characters from

16:29

it. To be fair, you were four years old when the

16:31

movie came out. Yeah, but I was

16:33

a cool four-year-old. Very cool. And

16:38

so he did a few EPs, but his first

16:40

album came out in 2017. It

16:42

was called Black Swan. And

16:45

I wanted Paul to play a song

16:47

from that album, and it is called

16:49

Anita. Anita, Anita,

16:52

Anita. Anita.

16:54

Anita. So fling,

16:56

don't fling from me. I

16:59

scream, shoo, shaggy, shoo. Go,

17:02

Dave, go, Dave, go, Dave.

17:06

Turn up the ballerion, this feel like

17:08

hallelujah. Shoot the choir too, I'm off

17:10

the holly, you probably a full of

17:13

you. I got a chicken coop, dip

17:15

out in here with your barbecue. I'm

17:17

fly while she want the cockatoo, and that's why my

17:19

bread like a big my guy. Standing over here,

17:21

they greet my guy. Straight out the middle like

17:23

a senor like. Never had time for

17:25

the tea, the kind on the face like I

17:27

ain't gonna come up fly. I'm a nigga's whole

17:29

to a lobby, smellin' like loud around Republicans. Like

17:32

why they no niggas workin' obvious? Really

17:34

genuinely great. Very very cool. Really

17:37

though, I will say one of the most

17:40

uncomfortable 35 to 40 seconds of my entire life.

17:43

Because for a few seconds it was like, okay, what

17:45

do I do? A lot of people are watching me

17:47

right now, and they're just listening to a song, but

17:50

they're not seeing the person making the music. They're just

17:52

kind of what it's like they're watching a YouTube reacts

17:54

live video of of this

17:57

artist, so I kind of nodded my head for a

17:59

while. But then after 10 seconds, I was like,

18:01

I'm gonna look like an asshole if I just nod my

18:04

head this whole time I know I had to

18:06

fight a lot of instincts to just like really

18:08

move my body Yeah, I didn't I didn't want

18:10

to do that any of that. Yeah, sure We

18:12

should have just climbed under the desk that we're

18:14

sitting behind So

18:18

that album Was

18:21

named top 50 album of 2017 by

18:23

consequence of sound one of the 40 best rap

18:25

albums of 2017 by Rolling Stone and

18:31

The the story behind it is

18:33

that he he really wanted to kind of elevate

18:36

black women He had just seen hidden

18:38

figures And he felt like

18:41

it was so Frustrating to

18:43

him that there were so many black women in history that aren't

18:45

written about so he wanted to do a song that kind

18:47

of emphasize You

18:49

know black women and he

18:51

said quote with Trump in office now is

18:53

such an important time to be confident about

18:55

blackness We need some cong Congregational

18:57

ass music that we can sing together That's

19:01

fantastic. So he released that album

19:03

on March 14th in honor of st. Louis

19:05

day And

19:08

he said I feel like

19:10

a lot of people don't know much about st. Louis

19:12

period I can't even explain it st. Louis is a

19:14

city that doesn't have a lot of influences We're cool

19:16

with whatever is around us But I want people to

19:18

know that st. Louis has creative talent coming like in

19:21

the early 2000s. That's amazing He

19:26

has released Two albums since

19:28

then noir came out in 2018 love for rent

19:30

came out in 2022. He has also Started

19:36

a new collaboration with the

19:38

aforementioned soccer team. I Didn't

19:42

expect this to be such a soccer heavy episode.

19:44

Yeah Simino and st.

19:46

Louis City SC announced their new collaboration

19:48

called homegrown where Simino chooses artists with

19:50

ties to st. Louis and they received

19:53

one-on-one access to him and he advises

19:55

them on building their craft and career

19:57

Trajectories. He also has an annual concert

20:00

called Kribmas. K-R-I-B-mas.

20:04

Okay, cool. Started

20:06

in 2016 and

20:09

the proceeds from that benefit Almost

20:11

Home, a nonprofit helping homeless women

20:13

and their children and

20:15

provide new coats to the Annie Malone

20:18

Children and Family Services organization. Speedo sounds

20:20

like the best! He's the best! Yeah,

20:22

so I'm glad that this is new

20:24

to you all, or a lot of

20:27

you. Check it out. I think

20:29

it's incredible. His work is amazing. Hey,

20:41

this is Mike Kavlon. It's you out of your way. And

20:43

Sierra Cotto. The hosts of TV

20:45

Chef Fantasy League. Where we apply fantasy

20:48

sports rules to cooking competition shows. We're

20:50

not professional chefs or fantasy sports

20:52

bros. Just three comedians who love

20:54

cooking shows and winning. We'll cover

20:56

top chef, master chef, great British bake-off,

20:59

whatever's in season really. You know chefs

21:01

love cooking whatever's in season. We draft a

21:03

team of chefs at the top of every series. And

21:05

every week we recap the episode and assign points

21:07

based on how our chefs did. And at the

21:09

end of the season, we crown a winner. You can even play along

21:11

at home if you want. Or you can just

21:14

listen to us like a regular podcast

21:16

about cooking shows. That's cool too. Subscribe

21:18

to TV Chef Fantasy League on maximumfun.org

21:20

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hallelujah.

21:27

Hello. Welcome everyone. Step right

21:29

up. We're going to heal you. We are

21:31

the healers, Ross and Carrie. Yes, yes. You

21:33

there. You look like you're upset. Come

21:36

up here. Yes, you are healed because

21:38

you've listened to our podcast. Yes. Have

21:40

you been having trouble with demons? Are

21:43

you sleeping too much? Too little? Just

21:45

right? We have the solution. It is to listen

21:47

to Oh No, Ross and

21:49

Carrie. A show where we

21:52

examine unusual demons. We

21:54

show up so you don't have to

21:56

find us on maximumfun.org. We won't actually heal

21:58

you. I

22:10

want to talk about something that you all probably haven't heard of

22:12

before, and that is normal

22:15

toasted ravioli. St.

22:20

Louis has given a lot to the

22:22

rest of the country, but I think your

22:24

most generous offering remains this new and exciting

22:26

way of eating ravioli. You guys

22:29

heard about this? This superior... No,

22:31

you don't, because you've lost perspective.

22:36

It's so much better than

22:38

eating untoasted ravioli in every

22:41

conceivable way. Upon my

22:43

first visit to St. Louis when we were

22:45

courting, you took

22:47

me to a restaurant to sample two

22:49

of St. Louis's trademark cuisines, the first

22:51

of which was this profane

22:54

cracker-thin pizza, which you all still

22:56

should be ashamed of. Y'all

23:04

were cheering so loud, I thought for

23:06

sure Paul put a picture of your bad

23:08

pizza up on the screen behind us.

23:12

Here's what I tried to tell Griffin. I said,

23:14

you're going to enjoy it if you don't think

23:16

about it as pizza. And

23:20

I stand by that. Yeah, sure. The

23:23

other thing that I sampled

23:25

there was T-Ravs, which absolutely

23:27

dazzled me. T-Ravs

23:29

I think are... Love

23:35

those. Love those. T-Ravs

23:38

are a curse if

23:40

you think about it, because after

23:42

I had one the first time,

23:44

it became impossible to un-flip the

23:46

switch in my mind that told

23:49

me that regular ravioli is now

23:51

just raw toasted ravioli. It's

23:54

just wet dough for idiots

23:58

that is reborn. in the

24:00

flames of a deep frying machine. That's

24:03

also great that it's not toasted. That's

24:06

the best part about it. Because no

24:08

one really knows why, except there's

24:10

a lot of argument about who

24:13

was the originator of toasted

24:15

ravioli. There are a few

24:17

restaurants on the hill that

24:20

say that they are responsible for it. There

24:23

is one potential originator

24:26

named Louis O'Donnie, or perhaps

24:28

Louis O'Donnie, who said

24:31

that he called them toasted ravioli on his

24:33

menu because it sounded more appealing than fried

24:35

ravioli, which I

24:37

would reply to that with, no,

24:39

it fucking doesn't. Fried

24:42

ravioli sounds a lot better than toasted.

24:45

It sounds like- No, I see, I disagree. Toasted,

24:47

it sounds like there's a real precision

24:49

to it. Like

24:52

when you fry something, you just dump it

24:54

in and pull it out. Toasting, you are

24:57

watching it, and you are monitoring the exact

24:59

time when it is right to remove it,

25:01

I would say. Right. That's-

25:03

It also sounds healthier, toasted.

25:05

Yeah, but it doesn't

25:07

sound as delicious. This fried ravioli does. Okay,

25:09

that's great. You all are, I

25:11

feel like, immune to this revelation.

25:14

I despise ravioli. I

25:16

think there's not a good

25:18

bite of a ravioli that doesn't just

25:20

turn into like, ricotta gushers. But

25:25

when you told me we were getting

25:27

toasted raviolis, I assumed that we were

25:29

going to get these crusty, dried out

25:31

versions of my least favorite pasta. I

25:33

didn't know. And then out came these

25:35

gorgeous, golden brown, crispy

25:37

beauties. I didn't know you felt

25:40

that way about ravioli at the

25:42

time, and it really speaks to me how much

25:44

of a sport you were, that you were like,

25:46

you know what, this is early in our relationship,

25:48

we're courting. Yeah. I'll give this a shot. It

25:51

was a real one-two punch, because you were like, you gotta

25:53

try our pizza. And I was like, pizza? I know what

25:55

that is. I

25:57

do not think I introduced it as pizza. What

26:02

I adore about toasted ravioli,

26:04

I've been all over this beautiful country of

26:06

ours, and there

26:08

is a way that local

26:10

delicacies have of expanding their

26:12

turf, your Philly cheesesteaks, your

26:14

Buffalo wings. You all have

26:16

had this thing going with

26:18

ravioli for a while that

26:20

the rest of the country

26:22

has decisively said, we're good,

26:24

actually. But

26:27

those people are cowards, because tea rabs absolutely

26:29

rule. Everyone else

26:31

is wrong. What

26:35

have you got? Okay. So those of

26:37

you that have listened to the show know that a

26:39

signature bit of mine is a trip to the poetry

26:41

corner. Boom,

26:44

boom, boom, boom, I hear the poetry calling.

26:46

If you haven't watched the show before, I

26:48

do like a, I do like a

26:50

Frasier thing. So salad,

26:52

scrambled palms. It's never good,

26:55

and I don't want to do

26:57

it anymore, but to

26:59

change it at this point would be wild. I'm

27:01

gonna explain what I think is your process on

27:03

connecting it to the Frasier theme, which is you

27:05

see poetry as a very intellectual thing, and

27:08

the most intellectual song you can think of.

27:14

It's the theme song to Frasier. Am

27:18

I right? I mean, yeah. Okay,

27:23

so the poet I wanted to talk about is a- Frasier

27:26

crane. From

27:29

Seattle, Washington. I

27:33

bet he does have a book of poems out there. Kelsey

27:35

Grammer, I bet he does. Oh, I bet it

27:37

is good. Okay,

27:40

so the poet I want to talk about is

27:42

a professor at Wash U. His name is Carl

27:44

Phillips. There's

27:47

some Carl Phillips heads in the audience. I

27:51

mean, so he has been teaching at Wash U over 30 years,

27:54

so thoughts are a little bit better that there would be

27:57

people in the audience. If you have been to Wash

27:59

U in the last- Oh, Carl

28:01

Phillips! Oh, Carl! Carl

28:03

Phillips. So

28:05

he just recently, as of last year, won

28:07

the Pulitzer Prize for a collection of poems

28:09

called Then the War from 2022. He

28:14

lives in the Central West End, walks his dogs in Forest

28:16

Park. And he

28:18

has been a very celebrated poet. He

28:21

has a Guggenheim and a Library of

28:23

Congress fellowship. He got a Pushcart Prize,

28:25

an Academy of American Poets Prize, and

28:27

an American Academy of Arts and Letters

28:30

Prize. That's a lot of prizes. He's

28:32

celebrated. He ended up

28:34

at Wash U. So he is actually originally

28:36

from Massachusetts. He ended up at Wash U

28:38

because a friend of his and friend of

28:41

the show, Robert Pinsky. Not

28:43

really a friend of the show, but I talk

28:45

about him. I was so confused. You just scared

28:47

the shit out of me. I

28:50

have talked about him on the show before.

28:52

OK. My mind was racing. I thought you

28:54

were about to say, you remember, right? Our

28:56

friend, Robert Pinsky? I

28:59

mean, where did you go to salute your

29:02

shorts immediately? Immediately. Immediately, without a beat. Yeah.

29:05

So he found out about a three-year job

29:07

at Wash U from Robert Pinsky that, as

29:09

I mentioned, turned into over 30 years. So

29:13

I wanted to read a poem

29:15

of his called Domestic. And

29:19

I will do that now. If

29:22

when studying road atlases while taking, as

29:24

you call it, your morning dump, you

29:27

shout down to me names like Miami

29:29

City, Franconia, Cancun, as places for you

29:32

to take me to from here, can

29:34

I help it if all

29:36

I can think about is the things that

29:38

are stupid? Like, he loves me. He loves

29:40

me not. I don't think so. No more

29:42

than some mornings waking to your hands around

29:44

me and remembering these are

29:46

the fingers, the hands I've over and

29:49

over given myself to. I

29:51

can stop myself from wondering, does that mean

29:53

they're the same I'll grow old with? Yesterday

29:56

in the cafe, I keep meaning to

29:58

show you. I thought this is how

30:00

I'll die. Maybe alone somewhere too far

30:02

away from wherever you are then my

30:05

heart racing from espresso and too many

30:07

cigarettes My head down on

30:09

the tables cool marble and the ceiling

30:11

fan turning slowly above me like fortune

30:14

the part of fortune That's half wished

30:16

for only it did not seem the worst way

30:19

I thought this is another

30:21

of those things that I'm always forgetting to

30:23

tell you or don't choose to tell you

30:25

or I'll tell you But only in the

30:27

same way each morning. I keep myself from

30:30

saying too loud I love you until the

30:32

moment you flush the toilet Then

30:34

I say it when the rumble of water

30:36

running down through the house could mean anything Flood

30:39

your feet descending the stairs any moment

30:41

any moment the whole world all I

30:44

want of the world coming down lovely

30:51

That is the first poem you've ever brought

30:53

with Poop as a framing

30:55

device He

31:02

said he gave an interview in

31:06

student life calm And said

31:09

in the early days of writing poems the

31:11

story that was unbearable was my queerness and

31:13

my poems knew that even if I didn't

31:15

At the time closing each poem I realized

31:18

now that I was constructing a world within

31:20

which and a language with which a crucial

31:22

part of myself could find a Voice and

31:25

make space for itself. I love that lovely.

31:27

That was beautiful Yeah,

31:29

Carl Phillips is set to retired. So if

31:31

you're thinking about going to wash you now

31:33

is the time get there Cuz

31:37

he I mean every interview I read with him was

31:39

like any any day now You're

31:43

gonna get tail end career

31:46

just this the snickle Fritz

31:49

these frickin kids I I'd

31:52

like to do one more. Yeah, it's okay. Please I

31:54

want to talk about to just do a complete 180

31:57

tonally the forward projectile

31:59

football pass. This

32:03

is connected to St. Louis in a

32:05

way that probably not

32:07

a lot of people in here may know about.

32:09

This episode has been way too sports heavy for

32:12

me. That is a good point.

32:14

No, I'm talking about football

32:16

Norte Americano, not the soccer

32:20

traditional form. Which

32:22

I know a lot more about. Which you know

32:24

way more about. In the early days of football,

32:27

basically every third person who

32:29

played the sport died. Because

32:33

it was a game about ramming your head into

32:35

someone else as fast and as hard as you

32:37

possibly could. Some might say it still is. Well,

32:40

maybe. We didn't have great pad

32:42

solutions for that back then. Everything

32:44

was made out of actual factual

32:46

leather. In 1905,

32:49

in the collegiate football circuit, which is all there was,

32:51

there was no NFL at the time. There were 19

32:54

deaths and 159 serious

32:57

injuries reported across the nation's

32:59

call it. Yeah, it's a

33:01

lot. And they just thought

33:03

like, we'll get this. We

33:07

keep telling them to slow down, but

33:09

everyone just goes crazy out there. People

33:12

went to President Teddy Roosevelt and

33:14

were like, hey, maybe we should

33:16

ban football. And Teddy Roosevelt was

33:18

he probably just finished bow hunting

33:20

or something. I was like, well,

33:22

no, football's great. Let's just make

33:24

some new rules. And so the

33:26

year after that, a bunch of

33:28

schools got together to change the

33:30

rules of football, which,

33:32

you know, bear in mind, no NFL. This

33:34

was it. These were the big. This was

33:37

all the football that there was. And they

33:39

came up with allowing legal forward passing. This

33:41

is wild to me for a few reasons. One, I think

33:44

we can all agree the only exciting

33:46

good part of football is when somebody

33:48

throws the ball really far and someone

33:50

catches it. Yes. Holy shit. Yes. That's

33:52

so much more football that I don't

33:55

have to pay attention to because they

33:58

skipped a lot of it. And you're I

34:00

mean, that never happened until these rules

34:02

went into effect in 1906. How

34:06

did this sport stick around for

34:08

so long when it was just

34:10

running plays forever? So

34:12

the team that is credited with

34:15

really taking ownership of this new

34:17

touchdown vector was the 1906 St.

34:20

Louis Blue and White football team. Bradbury

34:22

Robinson was the quarterback for that

34:24

team, and he threw the

34:27

first ever legal forward pass on September

34:29

5, 1906, playing

34:31

against Carroll College. It

34:33

was an incomplete pass. So

34:37

there must have been lots of people who thought, ha!

34:40

This new way of

34:42

playing football is for dummies. So

34:45

did he know that he was doing it, or was

34:47

it just like no, everyone looked at each other like,

34:49

oh, we'll let this one slide. No, he knew what

34:51

it was doing. At this point, the rules had been

34:53

agreed on. This was the first season where the rules

34:55

had taken place, and this was the first game in

34:57

that season where somebody had done it. Later

34:59

in that game, they went on to

35:01

make a lot of complete passes to

35:04

win that game and every other game

35:06

they played that season, ending that season

35:08

with a record of outscoring their opponents

35:10

for the season, 407 to 11. This

35:18

is why I'm obsessed with this moment

35:21

in sports history. Y'all, they played a

35:23

game against the Missouri Miners, which

35:25

they won 71 to nothing. Wait,

35:30

so I don't understand why other people weren't

35:32

doing this. Because when they changed the rules,

35:34

there were probably a lot of people, a

35:36

lot of cigar-smoking coaches, who's like, they

35:38

think they figured it out, no way. The

35:41

Missouri Miners at this, can you

35:43

imagine the terror in those boys'

35:45

eyes where the

35:48

defenders were like, we don't know what to do.

35:52

The ball is up! None

35:55

of us can run very fast. He

35:57

can't run? We're all a huge laugh!

36:00

who can tackle so good. The

36:02

ball's up there. We can't

36:06

fly. The

36:08

coach of the St. Louis University football

36:10

team that season was a man named,

36:12

I didn't look up the pronunciation of

36:14

his last name and I never will

36:16

because in my name it's pronounced as

36:18

follows, Eddie Coachums. That's

36:21

incredible. Did

36:23

everyone eventually get wise to the fact

36:26

that you can make the ball go

36:28

so far so fast if you just

36:30

yeet it with maximum excitement?

36:32

Yes. Are there other

36:35

teams that did that that season that didn't

36:37

get as much credit because they didn't go

36:39

first because their football season started later than

36:41

St. Louis? Yes. Also, but only one

36:44

team had a coach named Coach Coachums and

36:46

that's got to count for something. That's amazing.

36:48

Yes. That's all that we have prepared for

36:50

you today. Thank you all so much for

36:53

joining us for wonderful. Thank

36:57

you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of

36:59

our theme song Money Won't Pay. If you're

37:02

listening to this later there's a link to

37:04

that in the episode description. We have a

37:06

poster for sale for Bim Bam out in the

37:08

lobby designed by Kate May. We've signed a bunch of

37:10

them that you can go grab and we'll

37:12

be back soon. Thank you all so much. Hey.

37:31

Hey. Hey.

37:35

Hey. Hey. Hey.

37:41

Hey. Hey.

37:51

Maximum Fun. A work-around

37:53

network of artist-owned shows.

37:56

Supported directly by you. Thank you.