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TIDBITS Episode 5: TRAVEL with MARISA!
25 Plays1 month ago
Greetings, Fellow Travelers!!! This week’s TIDBITS has a TRAVEL theme as MARISA travels over hill & dale to join the crew high atop The Tidbits Tower! Gaz chaarrrrrghts a pirate ship voyage, Rob takes us into the sky (and beyond!), Marisa takes us anywhere & everywhere (take a look: it's in a BOOK!), and Mike unpacks the unexpected perils of TIME TRAVEL! Is this the nerdiest episode of TIDBITS yet? DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!!!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Reboot
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey!
00:00:09
Speaker
that only goes to decide that descarte was
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey, guess what everybody? It is a long awaited fifth episode of... Tidbits! Tidbits! I am happy to be back doing tidbits with my buddies, Mike. Hi, how are you? I'm Mike and I'm part of the Tidbits crew. He is so formal and then of course, it's curmudgeonly guys.
Curmudgeonly Humor and Tidbit Tower
00:00:35
Speaker
Baby brother about to drive me out of my mind saying, can I go fishing with you? And no, you cannot.
00:00:41
Speaker
Is that what you come up with for curmudgeonly? Put them in the pot, honey, put them in the pan, cook them till nice and brown, throw a pole wall in, get a non-pound catfish, and bring it home for suppertime. That's good stuff. That's really it's really good stuff. Hello, guys. Hello, Rob. Good to see you guys.
00:00:54
Speaker
We're in the Tidbit Tower, and we are high up in the Tidbit Tower, which I think you guys know since you're here with me, is a very large, tall tower. I wanted
Challenge Victory and Fictional Characters
00:01:02
Speaker
to tell you... Friend and listener of the show, Aiden, had pointed out that I, Rob, was given a challenge to not say um at all, and I didn't because he checked. And that means that Gaz owes me $87. That's okay. Well, I stand corrected. I owe you $87.
00:01:17
Speaker
What was the challenge after my, because then Mike won, the the reward system has gotten all junky, and I don't even know what it is. This a well-produced show. Mike's reward was that he randomly told you, Gaz, that you have to come up with two tidbits. but Oh, that's right. And I did. but I did. So that's fine. Hey, you know what?
00:01:32
Speaker
I think even though it's very, very far down in the very, very tall Tidbits Tower, I think my super sensitive hearing might hear something at the front door. I've hired um Dandabridge Dorlington, the senior steward of entry and egress and doorknob affairs here at the Tidbits Tower. um Master Dorlington, are you there?
00:01:50
Speaker
are are you there, Master Dorlington? Gaz, remember you're going to be a character? I thought the character was the curmudgeon I did at the beginning. No, that... This a well-putting. You said I'm going to you. Okay, okay. Master Dorlington, are you there, sir? Aye, I be here, sir.
00:02:07
Speaker
Very, very good of you to quickly respond to my page, which is always, sir, all you're paid for. Would you mind, Master Dorlington, senior steward of entry and egress and doorknob affairs of the Tidbits Tower, would you mind going down to the very, very large Tidbits Tower door gate and seeing who might be there, sir? I would mind indeed, but since I'm in your service, I have no choice, so here I go.
00:02:28
Speaker
You not dilly-dally, Dorlington. I'm dilly if I must- That's all. Deliver them directly forthwith. Okay. Who is that coming up the stairs and through the door?
Marisa's Journey and Pirate Voice Origins
00:02:37
Speaker
It Marisa!
00:02:39
Speaker
It's you, Fabio! Our old pal Marisa, I think one of the funniest human beings on the planet and her old friend from college. Well, guys, you know, i as soon as I heard that you were accepting visitors on one of my all-time favorite podcasts of all time, yeah I had to travel over Hill and Dale all the way to the North Pole where the Tidget Power resides. Somebody has been doing their homework. Wow. hard That is a hard traversal. It took me like two weeks.
00:03:12
Speaker
I enjoy how much lore this podcast already has. I want i want to tell everybody we all know Marisa from college. Marisa was in a sketch comedy troupe with us ah that was hilarious, of course.
00:03:22
Speaker
and I was not in that troupe, just to be clear. No, you weren't. You were a big fan, though. you ki it it is It is good that the one person that wasn't in the troupe was the one that was told to do acting at the last second.
00:03:34
Speaker
That's true. But you were in an improv troupe, and you were like pretty amazing, guys. So I thought you'd be better... Webmaster Dorlington. That's fair. Right. and I also came up with a really fun way to decide who goes first, second, and third. I got a dice tower of the Tidbits Tower. It says TT. It says TT, right? And I have a four-sided die, and I have each of us assigned to a number, and we're going to figure out who goes first. Hopefully it's not Marisa. That's a lot of pressure.
00:03:59
Speaker
And that's you and that's Gaz. Gaz goes first. Hey, okay. Well, as always, I'm the most prepared, except not at all. Should i just dive right? Wait, wait, wait. Do you want to do the mailbag or something before i dive in? Well, the only real piece of mail was the feedback that you owe me $87. I did hear more feedback that I really don't care to share about how your voice is sexy, Gaz, which I just think. i At this point, I think you're making that up because it... Listen, I don't want to tell you this. I don't want to play with it. You have a nice voice. um I have some mail if you if you have a moment. I would like to comment on a piece I heard a few weeks back about how Bennys are actually women with mental health problems.
00:04:42
Speaker
This is the point at which we decided that the Tidbits Tower needed a little girl power. We need little estrogen in here. I didn't say that. I said that there was one of, it could also be folks from Bayonne.
00:04:54
Speaker
Fine. So that was mailbag. I traveled over Hill and Dale to deliver it in person. Well done. Well done. Maybe before Gaz goes, Marisa would like to share something about herself with the audience. Well, um I am a librarian. I'm a senior librarian at the Nutley Public Library and i work in the reference department, which basically means I help people log into Gmail all day. And that's what I spent $60,000 on a master's degree for. That's me. And i am not as big a Star Trek fan as Rob.
00:05:26
Speaker
Oh, but you're close. You're pretty close. I'm pretty good. You guys want jump in with tidbits? Gaz, you ready to go? think we should do a lot more kerfuffling so you have to edit even more than usual. Gaz, be another character. Go.
00:05:36
Speaker
Go Be another improv character, Gaz. Hello. My name is Charlton Dalton and I like to have bagels but only the top half. Okay, that's really more the voice I was expecting for Master Dorlington, but all right.
00:05:48
Speaker
You're a terrible director. Hey, what's up? It's me, Gazbot, and I've got my tidbit for the week. Let me ask you something. You ever think about pirates? Sure, who doesn't? I'm gonna turn back to my normal voice. Normal sexy voice.
00:05:59
Speaker
This is the first tidbit, because have to do two, is one that I think a lot of people know, but just in case, I'm gonna kind of ease in with this one. Talking about pirates, there's the pirate voice. Talk like a pirate day. Arr, I wear my Argyle socks. And a lot of people wonder, where does that come from? It kind of comes from nowhere.
00:06:15
Speaker
No one knows exactly how they spoke. There was a thought that it was a West Country English accent or an amalgam thereof or approximation thereof. But different pirates came from different areas and spoke different ways. Some were educated, some were not The reason we have that voice as best anyone can tell is because there was an actor named Robert Newton who played Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney movie Treasure Island.
00:06:35
Speaker
And as near as anyone can tell, he did this amalgam voice, accentuated the R's and kind of gave it a bunch of flair. And everybody since then has more or less been imitating that, which is why we all kind of quote unquote know what a pirate sounds like, even though none of us do. And they probably didn't sound like that.
00:06:48
Speaker
That's a good tidbit. And I like that you kept it short since there's another one coming. It's like how um Coca-Cola created Santa Claus. Yes. Historically, Santa Claus wasn't actually like that. He was different. Wait a minute. i I watched the whole movie about how Charles Dickens essentially created Santa Claus. No, he created Christmas. oh I guess that was Jesus.
00:07:07
Speaker
I'm under this understanding of Mike's tidbit that he interrupted mine with that there was an idea of Father Christmas or of the pagan person that would give out presents, but it was all amalgamated and codified to being the image of Santa in those Coca-Cola things. Yes. But we have a librarian with us and maybe you know something we don't.
00:07:22
Speaker
Nope. ah um ah Don't you have a second tidbit? I do, actually. That was just the preamble.
Nautical Knowledge and Educational History
00:07:30
Speaker
Because my other tidbit isn't quite so whimsical, but it's just something that I found out the other day that, I don't know, shocked me, even though it's not that shocking. And it relates to pirates because it relates to ships and navigation. So when you think of a ship, whether it's a cruise ship or a pirate ship, how do ships stop in the water?
00:07:46
Speaker
Anybody? I guess they don't throw the anchor down because that would like rip the boat in half if they're like going really fast. Okay. Does anybody else have a guess? I don't know. Well, youre you're kind of wrong, Rob, because they do use an anchor. That is the typical way ships have stopped for a long time. Now, they will slow down. if they have an engine, they'll slow as much as they can or they'll lower the sails so they're not going a thousand miles an hour.
00:08:04
Speaker
But once they've reduced speed, they do drop anchor. but the anchor itself, I always imagine sort of like sticking in the ground and then like, that's it. They're like a hook, like a grappling hook. I was thinking about it and I'm like, yeah, but then how do they get it out? Like, especially back in the day, it's not like they had divers that could go down and unhook it. Like once it's hooked, how would you ever unhook it?
00:08:21
Speaker
What I've come to find is that the anchor really does very little of the work. The work is done by the chain. They always have a very long, very large chain, especially for big ships now. They'll have chains the size of my room. And the chain, when it's lowered, they'll put this the anchor down and they'll lay as much chain as they can that'll lay down on the seafloor.
00:08:37
Speaker
And so the drag is from these heavy links of the chain with all the different surface area. And yes, the anchor kind of sticks in, but it doesn't matter if it's hard or soft or whatever. It like bites into whatever it can get because the chain also, the part that goes up to the to the ship, will disperse the tidal currents and any forces coming because otherwise, as soon as like a wave hit, the whole thing would get pulled out. But it kind of diffuses all that.
00:08:58
Speaker
So all the magic is in the chain. Anything that's going to come along that's going to move that ship, the chain is doing most of the work. And then when they want to leave, they do kind of back up and they pull the chain in first. And then the anchor is usually not even that deep into the thing and they can just pull it out. Either by nowadays, they have mechanical winches. Back in the day, they'd have wooden winch or they'd have, you know a thousand men or whatever. i was shocked to learn that anchors aren't really the point. Does the anchor like hit the ah the the bottom of the... It does hit the bottom, yes.
00:09:23
Speaker
But if it hits a rock and and can't really sink in, that's kind of okay. If it hits mud and it kind of has like a not a good grip, that's kind of okay. The anchor does some of the work, but most of what the anchor does is make a starting point for the chain to lay down.
00:09:34
Speaker
I have to say, I love your tidbit. It is one I know that I'm going to be saying to people in the future. Because I, too, thought it was just a hook, like a grappling hook, like Batman kind of thing. It just sort of caught the floor. I went fishing couple months ago. My brother-in-law is front of a fishing boat.
00:09:51
Speaker
He took us out with a bunch of kids, like my kids and his kids and his nephews and nieces. And he did drop the anchor. And it does go down really fast. It's sort of like almost scary when you drop it because it's a lot of weight, all that heavy chain. though I didn't know at the time that the chain was doing the work. I'm like, oh, make sure you're getting a good hook with that anchor.
00:10:08
Speaker
I'll wrap up my story real quick to let you know that all the children threw up. um Because they all ate all these like, you know, what is it, airheads and like brownies and stuff like that and Oreos, that boat full of like brownie Oreo bark and we didn't catch anything.
00:10:22
Speaker
Why is it shaped like a hook then? And what if it does get hooked on something? Like what if it gets hooked on something and it can't unhook? It's shaped like a hook because they do want where, you know, they had the old anchor one that sort of had that U shape on the bottom and the new ones have ones that fold out the little like four teeth. It is helpful if but if it grabs onto something. It's not like it's bad to grab on something. It's just, that's not the main purpose. And then I guess if it gets really, really stuck, there could be a problem. But the way I understood it is, like I said, you bring up the chain and you back up or get as close as you can to it. And it usually just unhooks a little bit coming back because it doesn't, the anchor in and of itself would not hold. a matter of fact, to the point where if you pulled it up to where just the anchor was touching and it was a little hook, if you were stuck, probably ah eventually tidal currents would pull you free one way or the other. And actually, I'll add this in. If you ever see like an action movie where they're in like a speedboat or something and they're drop the anchor and we're going to a crazy turn. And you see them kind go, whoa!
00:11:09
Speaker
like And they're making a circle and the anchor looks like a radius of a circle, you know, where that's like right in the center. That is not true. That could never happen. The anchor would not hit anything and it would just bounce around or it would immediately become pulled free. It's impossible to do that. I like it. Marisa, do you have any really good books about anchors at your local library? Maybe we do.
00:11:27
Speaker
yeah Probably. Are you going to ask me all these questions that I would need to be in the library to answer? Because what did what did i I travel all the way up here? You don't understand how long this journey was. i had to pack really light. Also, traditionally, this is the point where the other people ask the tidbitter.
00:11:43
Speaker
Did you have a follow-up question, Marisa, as opposed to a question being given to you? No, I do not. All right. I think it's time to roll the die. Now, if we roll gas again, I'll just re-roll. I got a third one. Oh, it's Marisa. Marisa, you ready to go?
00:11:56
Speaker
Yay. You have a third one? It's Marisa's turn. Just say that third one. All right. Marisa, let's your tidbits. So for my tidbit, it's kind of a newsy tidbit. It's not one of your mystery tidbits. It's not one of your twisty surprise tidbits.
00:12:10
Speaker
I like those. But it is in honor of reading Rainbow. Which just came back starting October 4th with a new series that is on webisodes.
00:12:21
Speaker
They're like full-length episodes with a new host. So I thought I would talk just a little bit about how Reading Rainbow started. And of course, Reading Rainbow's host is one of our favorite guys, one of the best human beings on the planet at the moment, yeah um LeVar Burton, who is also part of the Forge on Star Trek The Next Generation.
00:12:40
Speaker
I, you know, this was actually, to side note, this was actually really interesting to research. And I just want to say, i hope my coworkers are not actually listening because I've spent about two days of work time reading about Reading Rainbow and then other things that branched off of Reading Rainbow. Like Edward R. Murrow is a really interesting guy. Did you know that? can't talk about him now. I don't have time, but but maybe my next tidbit will be about him. Come on back. A long trip to the Tidbits Tower, but you're welcome back for, I love Eduardo Moreau. He's like a superhero. It's kind of ah a segue. It's kind of related because to talk about Reading Rainbow, you need to talk about educational television, which has, know, the idea of educational television has been around basically since the idea of television. People were...
00:13:27
Speaker
captivated by the possibility of television. They thought that it would be the Jetsons in the future and that nobody would go to school anymore and we'd all be just taught by the television. Actually, I read a really interesting article in and the New York Times from July 10th, 1983, the day before Reading Rainbow premiered, talking about Reading Rainbow and saying that this idea that TV would replace actual schools that you had to go to was actually super popular in the segregationist South of the 1960s.
00:13:58
Speaker
Edward R. Morrow comes in because he had a cool quote about if you don't use television for teaching, inspiring, it's really just a box with lights and wires. That's not the quote. It's a paraphrase, but it's pretty cool. So anyway, by the 1980s, people figured out that we're not going to cancel school because of television, but we can use television to add a layer of quality to education that may be missing. but There's a guy called Tony Patino, works up in Buffalo at WNED. He's the director of educational services, and he's been doing some local original programming, wants to come up with a reading show to help combat the summer slide, which is what they call it when kids are out of school all summer and then come back and don't remember what they had been learning. And then teachers have to spend several weeks catching them back up again.
00:14:49
Speaker
So this was his idea. he tells a story about how he was in one of the classrooms. Now they put together all these educational local shows with the public schools and also the Catholic schools. And he's in a classroom and there's a TV on, the kids are watching and they're watching a nun teach a lesson on TV. And the nun says to the camera, someone out there is not sitting up straight. And all the kids in the classroom look around to see who it is.
00:15:16
Speaker
And he realized the value of having a presenter that's speaking to the audience. The audience is going to connect. The audience is going to feel like, yes, that's basically where they got the main idea for the format of Reading Rainbow, where LeVar Burton comes along and talks to you about all the cool adventures you're going to have.
00:15:34
Speaker
Age-wise, they wanted something that was going to follow up on Sesame Street, which teaches you like the foundation of reading. and Reading Rainbow is supposed to be teaching you the love of reading. They struggled to get some funding.
00:15:45
Speaker
They got the Kellogg Foundation to give them some money. Publishers were not interested. They did not see where they were going to get anything out of this deal. So these guys had to go and find books on their own. And then they had to pay to get the rights to the books for the first season so that they could use them on the air. The kids who do the reviews at the end are actual real kids from Buffalo. They were given the books, but they wrote their own reviews and it's pretty much the way they wrote them, the way they set them on the air. And then it came to choosing a host.
00:16:15
Speaker
They started out thinking they were going to use this lady storyteller, and they decided they wanted a male host because a larger percentage of kids who suffer from the summer slide are boys. They wanted somebody, you know, to relate to. LeVar Burton was handsome and charming and had just gotten a lot of buzz for having done Roots.
00:16:35
Speaker
He was the first African-American man host of a full children's television show. Bill Cosby had done picture pages, but that was on the Captain Kangaroo show. I just want to, you know, put that in there in case you're... i not know that. No, it was Bill Cosby. He had little segments.
00:16:51
Speaker
LeVar Burton was the first full host of a full-time show. LeVar Burton has the benefit of not being a sex monster. So they're true. So they wanted LeVar Burton and they they went and they asked his agent.
00:17:03
Speaker
He was in Africa on location at the time, so he couldn't give an answer, but she answered for him and she said, yes, of course he's going to do it because she happened to be married to Gordon from Sesame Street at the time and knew what a good project that would be to work on. There you have it. The first episode that aired, they did the book Tight Times, which is about a family where the dad loses his job. Then it cuts to a segment with LeVar in the library talking about how you can have fun without spending money. um It goes back to the demographic they were hoping to reach, which was inner city kids who you know needed that extra support.
00:17:39
Speaker
Side note, they actually never shied away from tough topics in reading Rainbow. In addition to poverty, unemployment, slavery, the aftermath of nine eleven the death of a loved one.
00:17:51
Speaker
They even showed a live birth on TV. It was it's not like the way it sounds. It was a sort of a whole show where they they followed this mom who was going to have a baby and they went to the doctor with her to see what that was like and all the things that she had to do to prepare to have the baby and prepare her house.
00:18:10
Speaker
And then of course, at the end, they she had the baby and they filmed it from the waist up so you didn't see anything at all. So anyway, after the first season, of course, publishers were then throwing books at them.
00:18:23
Speaker
Sales would go up 800, 900% once it was featured on Reading Rainbow. They got those little stickers to put on the cover of the book. Yeah, so so Lamar was a huge hit with the kids. Everybody just related so well to him. But he thought he was going to have to quit in 1986 because he got the role of Geordi LaForge on Star Trek The Next Generation. I remember he did an episode about Star Trek the Next Generation. As a matter of fact.
00:18:50
Speaker
So the reason all of that was able to happen is because one of the producers of Star Trek, Rick Ehrman, who, by the way, it was kind of a jerk in other ways, did know the value of children's programming, had been a producer on children's shows in the past, and made it possible for him to film Star Trek and then go film Reading Rainbow on the weekends.
00:19:12
Speaker
And of course, do a Reading Rainbow episode from The Bridge of the Enterprise, which was very cool. It was very cool, yeah. So they constantly struggled with funding. They got the, you know, the Corporation for Built Public Broadcasting, gave them some money, but nobody could fund them forever.
00:19:28
Speaker
After 26 years on the air, they final nailed the coffin... was 2001, George W. Bush and the No Child Left Behind and With that, it mandated funding for reading instruction. So any kinds of supplemental educational programming would be sort of geared towards shows that we're going to teach the the rudimentary aspects of reading. they taped the last episodes in 2006, and then it stopped airing in 2009. You said it was coming back, and I didn't know that. When is it coming back? So there's a new host, a new series. It's sort of a similar format. it's ah It's the same theme song, you know, jazzed up a bit for the new millennium. and i Put some, like, little rap in it? Yeah, rap for the new millennium. The new host is named Michael Threats.
00:20:19
Speaker
He's a librarian. TikTok famous? or he's Yes, he is internet famous. I had seen his videos. He was just like the nice guy librarian. Yeah, now that he's getting a show, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. He's super, super nice. He became super famous during COVID for his like uplifting videos. He worked as librarian for like 11 years in California. And once he started doing the videos and became famous,
00:20:41
Speaker
because everything is terrible and the world is a dumpster fire. He got bullied off the internet and trolled so hard that he quit his job for his own mental health and reevaluated his life, but came out the other side as the resident librarian at PBS.
00:20:59
Speaker
And, you know, somehow parlayed that into being the new host of Reading Rainbow, which to hear him talk about it is just so adorable and wholesome because he is just fanboying all over LeVar Burton. Like, oh, my God, maybe I'll get to meet him now. Yeah, yeah. It's very cool.
00:21:16
Speaker
Go to ReadingRainbow.org. You can see all four episodes. Yeah. Michael Threats has brought back. Reading Rainbow. But really it was his evil android twin brother the whole time!
00:21:29
Speaker
Who saw that coming? Gotcha! Got you! Got you should've given it away. Got you should've given it away. That good stuff, Marisa. Who's got a follow I have follow ups. So I did not know a thing about George W. Bush. That's very interesting to learn this shift away from just enjoying reading, like to shift away. There's no value in just the pleasure of reading and art. Yeah, everything had to be measured. You know, everything had to be quantified and measured. And it was like that for a long time. And that's why I got out of schools.
00:21:57
Speaker
When I was first a librarian, I was in public school. And I hated it. i hated having to write down those little codes in the margins that told what standards I was adhering to with everything I was going to say in my class every day. Teachers on both sides of the political spectrum did not enjoy any of that.
00:22:15
Speaker
That's awful. So the other quick thing was they recently had the ah No Kings marches across the nation about a month ago. I went to the ones in Red Bank and the night before or two days before the email said to wear yellow. And I don't have any yellow clothes. It does not go very well with my skin. i don't It's not a good color for me. ah So I bought this Big Bird costume.
00:22:35
Speaker
So I went to the No Kings, like, protest wearing this big bird costume. And because I had this costume on, I made a sign that was, like, related to public television and the need to, like, fund to do these things because it's good to do things like have fun libraries and fun public television. And I've been mad at myself since then because I'm like, it's not top, top of my list of, like, what I'm upset about. just I was wearing a big bird costume. So I felt like, I kind of. I needed to like tie it in. But that reminds me that actually do care about that. Like I care a lot about the arts and like we should support it and it's good to have these things just because it's good. But that was my follow up. It reminded me that, you know, yes, I also would like us to stop kidnapping people. It reminded you that you stand by the message that you gave Yeah, I just was little bit like, man, we should find the library.
00:23:18
Speaker
think three hundred There's a lot happening. Speaking of Michael Threats and his whole, like all of his videos, one of the things that he gained popularity for was that he would just talk about issues in librarianship. This is why librarians are such a big fan of him. The fact that black men are not librarians. Did you know that less than 1% of librarians are black men? And one of the things he talks about a lot is how librarians are burned out because they are forced to be social workers now too. So you're keeping libraries open. You're not just keeping story times and fun things for the kids and, you know, even literature for the adults. You're keeping somebody... giving them access to their lifelines, their their internet, companionship. You know, we have people that come in for hours every day and just try to strike up conversations with people. And yeah, of course, it's a little bit annoying, but you understand that it's because they have no one else.
00:24:12
Speaker
You know, we have a senior apartment building down the block and they come down and they're like, oh, hey, do you have the Bergen record? You know, and they just sit and read the newspaper for a while around other people. Libraries are the last third space where you can go and not have to buy anything. You do not have to be anybody in particular, just hang out and and in and exist.
00:24:35
Speaker
And it's for everybody. Just remind folks that if you defund the libraries, because we might have some books about the gays, you're also defunding grandma's access to her email and her doctor's messages, all of that good stuff too. Well, the good news is our reach is so vast that I'm sure this problem will be solved immediately. Awesome. Rob's sisters are the ones who can, uh, in our audience.
00:25:00
Speaker
Shout out to them. one I do. I have billions of sisters, so. um I have a six-year-old and she never really got into Sesame Street. I tried to push it hard because when she was younger, found that they had all the old ones that like from when I was a kid and she's like, I don't care. And as soon as she was old enough and verbalize it. She's like, I don't want to watch Elmo. i don't want to watch, but like she just wasn't into it ever reading rainbow. She was into more be honest though. She was the most and still is the most into Mr. Rogers, even though she's a little bit out of that age, she just likes the engagement. And I think the reason she likes Mr. Rogers more than reading rainbow is because there's more time of Fred Rogers on camera than LeVar Burton. And I think that's yeah the main difference because it's like an older show. It's a weirder show. And she liked both of them way better than Sesame Street. i like a huge market. Fred Rogers is another superhero.
00:25:44
Speaker
All right, I'm gonna roll the die. Oh, it's me. It's me. That means you go lot you go last. Mine's not good. Mine's terrible. So let's let me in. My cat is sitting on my notes. Get off that, Yege. I really am excited about my tidbit. It's a good one. I am curious. Mike won't know this one.
00:25:58
Speaker
This will be a surprise for Mike. Marisa, I think you might know this. If you do, mum's the word and you can let me know afterwards. I totally knew. I totally knew. I told Gaz this tidbit about a week ago. because I was sure he would know it and he didn't. and then i said And then I said to Gaz, I said, you have to pretend that you didn't know it when we do it live. And ever-integrist Gaz said to me, I can't do that. I cannot lie to our listeners.
00:26:23
Speaker
And I said, you know you know, there's a bit of performance art to what we're doing. And Gaz said, not lying, not lying. Gaz won't lie, but maybe, Gaz, what you could do is you can show off more of your acting prowess by pretending to be surprised. Well, right now, I don't have to be surprised because even though we had some conversation, I don't remember. um You're going to, once I start, it's a really good one for this week. It's a perfect
Gene Roddenberry's Adventures and Time Travel
00:26:46
Speaker
follow-up. Set the stage, World War II pilot, and he's got a crew of about 10 men trusting him 30,000 feet above the Pacific. And in 1941, this guy had enlisted in the Army Air Corps just in time for the world to catch fire, right? And by 1942, this guy was piloting B-17 Air Fortress bombers in the South Pacific on very long, very dangerous missions. In 1943, this guy is flying B-17 called the Yankee Doodle, which I just think is a great name. He's above a spiritu santu, an island in the South Pacific, and then the unthinkable happens.
00:27:17
Speaker
Mechanical failure in the engine. They're all going down, and the trees are rushing up fast, and our captain keeps... I'm really proud of how I wrote this bit. Ready? Our captain keeps a level head, and more importantly, a level plane, as they crash into the jungle.
00:27:32
Speaker
There's explosions, there's burning, but the expertise of the landing gives this crew ah fighting chance. And this is like a really dorky side note, but this reminds me of the moment in Star Trek III when the Enterprise is crashing and Kirk saves them.
00:27:44
Speaker
And Kirk goes, my God, Bones, what have I done? And Bones goes, what you had to do, what you always do, turn death into a fighting chance to live. And that was that was this guy. Two crew members did not make it, but the rest of the crew survived. And after the crash, he's pulling men out of the wreck. He's organizing the survivors. He's organizing rations. He's coordinating their rescue. And this earns him the Distinguished Flying Cross, which is awarded, quote unquote, for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.
00:28:14
Speaker
And that might just sound like a ribbon until you realize that this is usually pinned on people who should have died. He also receives the Air Medal for bravery for doing his job right when panic would have made sense.
00:28:25
Speaker
And so after the war, he still loves flying. Even after that, he keeps flying during the war. After the war, he flies commercial for Pan Am. And he loved this. This was like the golden age of aviation. Champagne flights, tailored uniforms.
00:28:38
Speaker
Pilots during this time were kind of treated like like movie stars, and he loves it. He would fly the longest routes in the world from New York to Calcutta, through Beirut, Cairo, and Karachi. In 1947, he's on Pan am Flight the Clipper Eclipse.
00:28:53
Speaker
somewhere over the Syrian desert and the first engine fails. Okay, they got other engines, but then the second engine fails. They got one more engine, the third engine overheats and they are plummeting into the sand. This pilot makes the best of a bad situation as the plane crashes into the sand. When the dust settles, this guy has broken ribs. He had like two or three broken ribs, a bruised spine and a choice.
00:29:14
Speaker
he could wait for He could wait for rescue or become the rescue. So once again, he rallied the survivors. He's pulling passengers from the wreckage. He's using pillows to smother fires.
00:29:25
Speaker
He's gathering water, rations, supplies. He's setting out to make contact with rescue. 14 people died, but 22 survived. And many lived because of this guy's calm in the chaos.
00:29:36
Speaker
So after the second crash, he decides he's not flying anymore. But Pan Am comes to him and they said, we want you to be our lead aviation safety investigator, a role where you can make a difference, a role where you can analyze crashes, trains, crew, mechanical safety, basically make sure that fewer planes go down and more people survive. um And he was perfect for this role. This guy had lived through the worst case scenario. This guy had lived through the Kobayashi Maru twice.
00:30:01
Speaker
And if you guys don't know what the Kobayashi Maru is, I know Marisa does. I know Gaz does. Mike probably doesn't. Look it up. what? really don't? He doesn't. He's pretending. So people who worked with him said he was obsessive about it, but he just wanted to help people survive. But during this time, you know, it becomes more and more of a desk job. This guy's head is in the cloud. While in this role, which he was very good at and he really liked, he starts honing another passion and talent of his, which is writing stories. He starts to write stories about exploration, about command, about humanity. Some stories are about flying into the sky, of course, but eventually he starts writing stories about flying past the sky and into space.
00:30:37
Speaker
He's writing fiction, yes, but fiction that is fueled by everything he's learned in the air. Discipline, risk, leadership under fire, the unbreakable bond of his crew that trusts his captain completely. Eventually, he left aviation entirely, but he never left the sky. He becomes the great bird of the sky. You know this man.
00:30:56
Speaker
You've heard me quote him today. His name was Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek. The man had fallen out of the sky twice, but still kept looking up before teaching the world how to fly, how to boldly fly, where no one had flown before.
00:31:11
Speaker
listen He dropped his mic and and he wants us to applaud. So here's some applause. Yeah. Okay. I got a follow up. I got an immediate follow up. Wait a minute. That's a minute to breathe because that was intense. Are we all going to sit in?
00:31:25
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. followup Follow up. Follow up. We did not talk about this. You did not tell me this story. yes
00:31:33
Speaker
Cause I didn't know this story. Good acting. Like two weeks ago, we were on the phone and you said, I'm not going to pretend I don't know that now I know it. Yes, that part we've had, but you didn't say what was. say was going to do it.
00:31:44
Speaker
I did say I was going to do it with more dramatic flair and going give little more. remember that conversation where you said I would know it and you would do it with more dramatic flair and have more details that I might not know. You know, at the end, when I said Gene Roddenberry, like, oh yeah, that's what we were talking about. Quick interjection. Marisa, do you miss this?
00:31:58
Speaker
No.
00:32:01
Speaker
You miss bickering over? It's like no time has passed at all. It really is. Is that really your follow-up, Gaz? It really is. all right. Wait a minute, wait. I think I might have just picked up on something. Are you acting like you didn't know this story? No, man, I'm not that good an actor. Do you have a follow-up, Marisa? I do have a follow-up. I totally knew that.
00:32:23
Speaker
I thought that you would. I did. I did know that. But comment, if you would, about the dramatic flare. It was very flary and very dramatic. Just to clarify, so he crashed two planes? He did.
00:32:38
Speaker
He's not that good of a pilot. The planes had mechanical failures and he managed to land them relatively safely where most pilots would have crashed and died. But he did crash. Like one plane has a mechanical failure and you're like, oh my God, that's terrible. What a disaster. Horrible accident happened to you. And then two planes. You're like, okay, guy. don't know if I want Pilot Roddenberry taking me anywhere. I did par it down a little bit because- Pared it down?
00:33:05
Speaker
I did make it a little shorter, but there was a whole paragraph in there at at one point about how- Say that say that word again. Paratown? There you go. Okay. but He's from the South now. Hard down. We say words a little different. So I thought that they made it very clear that in both cases, both the military and Pan am made it very clear that it was not pilot error, that it was mechanical failure. Mike, do you have a follow up? Well, that was what it was. i don't want Captain Roddenberry flying me anywhere.
00:33:32
Speaker
It was very good drama. Very good drama, Rob. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. And there was lots of Star Trek references all along. That happens every time you speak, though. That's nothing that we would pick up on. I guess not. All right, Mike, you ready to do your tidbit? oh You know how we think about anchors as being like part of stopping ships? What?
00:33:51
Speaker
Because sailors would get that type of anchor on their arm and it's the wrong kind of anchor. They should get like actual scientifically accurate anchors on their arms from now on. I want to see like that foldy thing and a big chain. ah No, that's not my tidbit. My tidbit, I will keep brief. Please don't interrupt because i know you'll want to.
00:34:10
Speaker
are you talking to here? The room. Well, specifically you and y'all. feel like 75% Rob, 25% me, zero, Marie. I've been laying awake at night worrying because I was thinking about how you'd run into some unexpected problems if you were to travel through time that I hadn't thought about before. I'm sure someone else has, but that's why don't you interrupt because I don't need to be told that this is something you've already thought about.
00:34:34
Speaker
If you were sitting where you're sitting, Rob, and you were to press a button and travel eight hours into the past, you You would not be in your room. You would be at whatever point of the earth was in its rotation eight hours ago. You'd be somewhere in the ocean or something like that. Because when we move through time, that's a dimension. Space um is also a dimension that we move through. Movement, space. So if you were to go through time, you would find yourself in a different part of the planet. That's if you were just to travel a short period. Like, cause the earth rotates at the speed of a thousand miles an hour, right? Or something like that. So you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.
00:35:09
Speaker
To make it worse, if you were to travel to a different month or different time of the year, the earth wouldn't even be here. It would be somewhere else. yeah. Around the sun. So you would just be like, I'm going to go six months in the past. And you just find yourself out in the vacuum of space.
00:35:23
Speaker
And wait, I said, do not interrupt.
00:35:28
Speaker
I knew you would want to. But to make it even worse, the universe is expanding at 70 kilometers per second. So if you were to travel back a significant amount of time, say you wanted to, for instance, go back and stop Bill Cosby being on Pokepicture or whatever it was called. It's a picture.
00:35:49
Speaker
So that LeVar Burton would have the title of, you couldn't do it because the Earth and the sun and all those things would not even be in the same part of the universe. There are no fixed positions in the universe. Oh, that's long and long. You would find yourself in the middle of the vacuum of space and the whole galaxy would be elsewhere.
00:36:09
Speaker
That's crazy. Crazy. I've been upset about that because i I think we all feel like probably they'll figure out time travel. I know that we all kind of feel like they will, but now I'm realizing we're going to have a whole lot of other problems to get to. Because I have to mention Star Trek, I was thinking the instance in Star Trek IV where they go around the sun could maybe work because they're going around the sun, they're in a ship, they could find the earth or whatever different location it was in. So that's been Star Trek four They go around the around the sun. But in Star Trek First Contact, as they're coming at the Earth and just traveling back through time following the board, the Earth just wouldn't be there. It would be somewhere else.
00:36:48
Speaker
So they would go back in time and the Earth would just not be there. So I don't actually know what the tidbit is because I don't throw a little bit in there. I think the tidbit is, did you know the universe is expanding at 70 kilometers a second? I did because of that Monty Python song. That is the ultimate stoner tidbit. That is the ultimate tidbit to make people go, oh my god. Because small distances, the earth, you're at a totally different spot on the earth. That blows your mind, right?
00:37:13
Speaker
And then the added thing of like, now the earth is moved if you go a little further out. But then like extra blows your mind. The whole universe, it's like way out there. It's distressing There's no... For all of our audio listeners, Rob is literally doing the stoner thing where he's putting his fingers to his temple and then shooting them out to the sides each time he says his mind is blown.
00:37:30
Speaker
it's it kind of ruins every single time travel story I've ever heard. Except for Doctor Who, because the TARDIS is time and relative dimensions in space. The Time Lords of Gallifrey have solved that problem, so maybe one day we will too, Mike.
00:37:43
Speaker
Okay, let me feel better. Thank you. They're time and space lords is what they say. know he does zip around in his box. He does zip around his box. Very good. You're British. You should you introduce me to Doctor Who, Mike. I just said, I know he zips around. Did you just say Mike introduced you to Doctor Who? He did. i mean, you were the one that got me to appreciate it. But when we were little, he he would be like, watch this weird stuff from my from my home country. I'd be like, this is really weird.
00:38:05
Speaker
ah Marisa, what do you think of Mike's tidbit? I have follow-up. Bill Cosby was on picture pages, and I'm sorry, in our country, we have humans on our television shows for children and not just bananas and anthropomorphic trains.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yes. Well, I grew up watching Blue Peter. No one here knows what Blue Peter is. I know what Blue Peter is. David Prowse was the green safety man. All right. I don't know what that is. So that was my tidbit.
Favorite Tidbits and Farewell to Marisa
00:38:33
Speaker
Thank you, everybody. Good job, Mike. Oh, I love the dramatic flair, especially. Well done. The turn of phrases were inspiring. I didn't see the ending coming. Great work. You didn't even write it down. That's how good he is. That's Are you guys ready to vote? I'm going to have a hard time voting this one because I'm torn between one where I like legitimately learned some stuff that that I'm genuinely invested in both professionally and compassionately. But Mike's kind of blew my mind.
00:38:59
Speaker
And there's the one that moves me compassionately i had way more work put into it than the one Mike put together. So that I got to think, as who you voted for? Mike, I'm grading on a curve also because I got from Marisa what I would expect from Marisa. Mike generally doesn't do well. And so for him, this was really good.
00:39:18
Speaker
What do you mean by you got from Marisa what do you expected? He high expectations. He has low expectations for me. Exactly right. Yeah. I knew she would come prepared and have something really well thought out and done. And Mike shows up and he's like, ah, you can't ask a dog. So, you know, for him, this was really good. It's funny that it comes down to super well-prepared versus off the cuff kind of cool one. But I think I'm going to go with Marisa though, because first of all, she's a guest.
00:39:41
Speaker
Second of all, LeVar Burton. And reading is fundamental, man. If I didn't hear Mike's tidbit, I probably could have learned this by opening a book. I'm going with Marisa. Marisa gets my vote. Mike, who do you vote for? I'm going to vote for the anchors.
00:39:53
Speaker
Vote for the anchors? Marisa, who do you vote for? I vote for Rob for four-way ties. Yeah, Rob got a Wait a minute, that's a tie, Ben. It's a four-way tie. Oh, but Rob said we can't have We can't ties. We just did it. Wow. Of course we did. That means everybody's a winner. That's It's good episode. Hooray. Everybody's a winner. There's no- Everybody owes each other $87? No, ah you owe me $87. Everybody else gets to keep their money because we're all winners.
00:40:22
Speaker
Okay. I think this is like a nice, warm, friendly way to end my time on Poole's tidbits featuring Gez and Mike.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's time for you to head out into the cold and go over Hill and Dale back to your home many, many miles away. Perhaps if the Tidbik Tower requires a resident librarian at some point the future, know you can.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be great. That's a good idea. Mike, Mike, quickly, get the raven. Be a raven at the last minute with no preparation. You're raven, go. You're raven, yo, Mike, do it. I'm not good at the improv. Oh, come on, you're good at the improv.
00:40:58
Speaker
You could be a raven. I don't even know. Caw. Caw. All right. That was a good tidbits, guys. I think that was maybe really great tidbits. It's going to be our longest tidbit. impressive You know how at the end you always fade it out where we're like jib-jabbing at the end?
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah. I'm going to do a fart sound. Let that be in the little...