Podcast 19 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 19: The Daring Interview (2007-11-16).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, book, post, filter, porn, thought, read, thread, favorite, girls, metal, awesome, totally, project, year, daring, antique shop, daughter, write, meta

Transcript

mathowie 0:07 Jessamyn

Unknown Speaker 0:07 Welcome to the metal filter podcast.

mathowie 0:12 Welcome to Episode 19 of the metal filter podcast today features an interview with mother shock, whose recent daring book for girls just debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. Also, we'll have recaps from around metal filter with Jessamyn and me

mothershock 0:41 can I just say before we start that, of all the media that I have I've had to do for this book. Like I'm the most nervous about this one. Oh, come on. Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Like metal filter has been like my morning newspaper for the last, you know, five years. This is crazy. I feel like rock stars. You know,

Jessamyn 1:03 that's so funny. It's my morning newspaper, too. And I never thought of that as like a way to way to conceptualize it. Oh, it

mathowie 1:10 was my, someone told me it was their morning newspaper in the year 2000. I was shocked. And I'm doing something wrong. Like, go use a real newspaper. And he was actually like a journalist guy. And it sort of became that for me. After he said it. I just realized, Oh, that's right. I don't even go to CNN. I just wait till Yeah. Do you really important things that trickle into metal filter happen?

mothershock 1:34 Exactly. I know. And my husband is like, he already knows, like, whenever he starts to say like, oh, did you hear about he's like, I know, you probably already read this on a filter. But I know.

mathowie 1:43 A result of that is like I don't know about specific things. But I know about news trends, because people will mock them on metal filter. So I knew existing white girl syndrome was but didn't know who the missing white girls were every summer.

mothershock 1:56 It's very meta.

mathowie 1:59 Let me see your you're like one of our most important guests we've ever had for New York Times bestseller list now. Yeah. That was the debut, right?

mothershock 2:11 Yeah. Yeah, we found, we find out like, every Wednesday, we find out what it's going to be for the week after. So last Wednesday, we found out that it was going to debut this weekend on the bestseller list at number four. And I just found out yesterday, or the day before the it'll be number four again the week after. So. holding steady. Very exciting. Yeah, it's kind of hard to believe.

mathowie 2:34 I guess I want to ask you about how the book started. I know there's the dangerous book for boys last summer. So came out. Yeah, I remember I sort of read because I've child you know, some of the sort of parenting blogs. And everyone's sort of stoked. I think every everyone was the son was really happy about it and thought it was a cool idea and a cool project. And everyone the daughter was like calm Where's ours? Right, exactly. Did the publisher plan the girls book right away? Or was it based on the success of the boys book?

mothershock 3:04 You know, actually, it's pretty interesting. The publisher had no plans at all for girls book, because really, the boys book came out in the UK a year ago. And it was it's written by Khan iggulden, his brother how, and they really kind of approached it as a project for stuff that they wanted to pass down to their sons. So it was really kind of a father and son thing. And that's all they ever envisioned it as being. And of course, when it was released in the US this spring, you know, like you said, everybody with a sudden was like, Yeah, this is awesome. Everything one with the daughter was like, Wait a second, what about us? So I think HarperCollins like went on record in April may be saying there's no plans for girls book whatsoever. But around that same time, I was I run a small, like web, PR kind of company for getting the word out about books called mother tongue. Yeah. And we were asked to put together a blog tour for the dangers book for boys. So I found out about the book that way, really. And we put together a tour for the book happening in like mid May. And the response from the bloggers was really great. And of course, a lot of them were asking the same question that that we were thinking to, which is what about the girls? And as we as we started the tour and kicked it off, and everybody was so into the book, I just couldn't believe that there was not a girl's book in the works. So I talked to my mother talk partner, Miriam, who's also an author. And I said, you know, what, do you think we just pitch it? Because, either I mean, either somebody's already doing it, or somebody's gonna do it, and why shouldn't we be the ones to do it? So on a whim, we we got in touch with the editor at HarperCollins. And we said he, here's what we think a companion book for girls would look like. And he called back in about two hours and said, Can we can we meet in person soon All happened really, really fast. It was pretty. Let's It was a busy summer. And actually, when I posted on asked me about books that would change your life that was in June. And we were about three fourths of the way done with the book by then. Yeah, it was it went very fast.

mathowie 5:19 You have a few other books about the mothers and daughters one I see you've used projects successfully

mothershock 5:27 tried to participate. Metafilter person? Yeah. My first book came out in 2003. And that was about the culture shock of new motherhood. And then I had a couple of anthologies, one about with writers writing about raising sons and raising daughters, and then one featuring the work of writers who were also mothers.

mathowie 5:47 I really liked the project, you posted your first project, it doesn't look like it became a book.

mothershock 5:54 Oh, yeah. When I was when I was 12. Yeah, it's

mathowie 5:57 such an awesome concept that just tell me a story from when you're 12. It's sort of a pivotal time in a girl's life. Yeah, that was that was another

mothershock 6:05 one that really came out of conversations with other writers. It just seemed like 12 Is that that time when, when the girl is kind of still a girl, but you know, it's I don't know. And of course, eight seems to be the new 12 right now. So that maybe that's all changing. But yeah, that's it. Yeah, it says this is a project that I still am really, really interested in. In pursuing it. It's it's since it was it's one of these ones that I keep collecting stories as I go along. But it's not. It's not, you know, time restricted. So it's something that's like constantly on the back burner. But

mathowie 6:41 the stories you post on the site, they're awesome, like I was, yeah, hopefully you think the success of the daring book for girls might give you an easier contract for this book.

mothershock 6:51 Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something that I that I'm that I'm thinking about.

mathowie 6:56 It's just like a weird. As I was reading it, I was just like, it's just an interesting phenomenon. But like the world entirely changes at 12. For so many people, bad things happen. And it just seems. Yeah, and

Jessamyn 7:12 I had heard that like, from a lot of like, my guy friends growing up that for a lot of them, like the time right about 1211 1213. Like, they can't remember their life in the first person before that age. Yeah, like something happened. And now everything they remember about their childhood, if they remember it at all, it's like it happened to someone else. And with the women that I'd spoken to. It wasn't it wasn't that feeling exactly. But I asked everybody after a while, because that's not my experience. Like, I feel like I have a first person life all the way back. Right. And a lot of the women I spoke to didn't, didn't have that same schism, although things definitely changed. And it was interesting to talk to them about that.

mothershock 7:53 Yeah, you know, it was one of those things where I could talk to somebody and they say, Oh, my god, yeah, when I was 12, this horrible thing happened, or this exciting thing happened. And then some people would say, Oh, God, I don't remember anything about being 12. And then say, suddenly be like, Oh, wait, oh, my god, that was the year that, you know, my uncle molested me or something, you know, my parents said, you know, it was like, either they had an instant memory of something amazing or horrible, or they had no memory at all until they started thinking about it. And then Oh, my God, this was the year that everything changed for me.

mathowie 8:25 You could probably split this into a Boys and Girls book series.

Jessamyn 8:28 I can show you girls version first.

mathowie 8:31 Because I'm thinking 12 was like, sixth grade and everything changed. That's when like, I became a nerd and outcast. And like, before that you knew everybody in fifth grade and sixth grade cliques,

Jessamyn 8:43 you go to a regional school, Matt, like did you go to a bigger school when you hit when you hit middle school?

mathowie 8:49 Well, actually, sixth grade was still Elementary, but that was the time or like, no, no longer was everyone your friend. Like and suddenly there was cliques and stuff.

mothershock 8:58 You know, actually, that was that was part of the the real fun of working on the daring book was because it really is about that time in childhood before you start becoming aware of all that stuff. You know, all the all the things that we got to focus on whether they were projects or stories or you know, historical stuff, or factoids, all this about that, like, that time when you were a kid, when it was really cool to know stuff and to do stuff and just to be open to everything. And it really does change there is really a shift and it 12 seems to be kind of the place where it happens.

mathowie 9:30 Yeah, what a bad

Jessamyn 9:35 what else for me was like the year that my parents split up and my father moved out and like, so I don't I have no relationship to how it had to do with my age, because it was just like immediate catastrophe at home. Right. So like, 12 was the year I basically don't remember because like everybody was mad at each other and then it calmed down after that.

mathowie 9:53 Right. So, Andy, well, what was the today's show? Like that looked crazy. I actually Oh my gosh. That's it. I was like putting on my shoes. I never turn on the TV in the morning and like watch TV, but I just happened to turn it on, I think you know, the pull up door or something for my daughter. And it just happened to be like it taped something on channel on NBC the night before. And it was playing and your interview just started like, right when I

mothershock 10:20 turned it? Well, that's fantastic timing.

mathowie 10:23 Because the host was also like in silly costume. And it was so weird looking.

mothershock 10:28 It was totally crazy. I mean, first of all, you know, they we knew about that we'd be doing the Today Show, probably back before we even had written the book because it moves so fast. You know, the PR stuff has to start kicking in a couple of months before the book comes out. And we just didn't, we had a very compressed timeline. So like we were freaked out about this whole Tonatiuh thing for like months, pretty much when we were finished writing the book, we were like, oh my god, what are we going to do on the Today Show? What are we gonna wear, you know, all that stuff. And then like, the day before, we were going to New York for the book launch. Our publicist called and said, Well, I heard from the Today Show, and they'd like you to come in costume. And we were like, what? Yeah, so at first, we were like, This is ridiculous. That's humiliating what they ask the male authors to go on and copy the whole day. I don't think they I don't think they were on on Halloween. That was the kicker, though, you know, so we just decided to go along with it. You know, as best we could. And we ended up like the night before. Our today's show thing like in Ricky's the Halloween store in New York City with about 50,000 Other people trying to get let's scramble for the last of the Halloween costumes. So I ended up Oh, yeah, I ended up with a pirate hook and some pirate belt buckles. And we did get a stuffed parrot. But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't. And actually, you know, it actually turned out to be really, really fun. Because it was so crazy. Everybody was in costume. It was just we were outside instead of being interviewed inside like it was just a circus. And so that made it really easy to just sit down and like I'm being interviewed by Eddie Munster. So it was very easy to not take it seriously. Yeah. So in that sense, it actually worked out fantastically. Yeah, I would have been a lot more nervous. If I was talking to somebody without the pointy ears. You know?

Jessamyn 12:26 That probably Yeah, took the whole thing and made it a whole bunch actually easier. Because you were like, Yeah, this is just a Sunday up. It's not like we're on the Today Show with a new book. Oh, my God.

mothershock 12:35 Exactly. Exactly. And then the next morning at like, I don't know, like 545 We were on Fox and Friends. And it was totally, totally bizarre, because we were interviewed by Steve Doocy. And I don't know somebody else. And I mean, just to go from like Halloween costumes one day to like, we were seriously on on the show. We were like, right in between the Hillary bashing and like blaming liberals for killing God. And then like, there's us in the middle, you know? So? Yeah, we came in costume as I guess we sneaked in as Republicans or something. It was bizarre. It was just bizarre.

mathowie 13:17 Did they ask you about racy parts of the burqa? How you destroying America?

mothershock 13:20 No, you know, this was the weirdest thing. They loved the book. Like, I don't think they did any research on us because they like they didn't realize that, you know, like, my co author has a PhD in women's studies. Maybe they didn't notice that the book opens with a whole thing about Title Nine, or that we spend a lot of time talking about, you know, women who were smart and important. Awesome. Yeah. So they just really got they were really into the whole self sufficiency and self reliance and, and all that stuff. They really really liked it.

mathowie 13:53 Wow. I thought yeah, they ignored the girl power. And they just saw the like, and Ryan stuff. Why?

mothershock 14:00 Yeah, exactly. I think I think because there's this thread of of it's not, you know, the book is not retro, we think it's actually very forward thinking. But it kind of has this retro package to it. And so the people, the folks who are really into nostalgia and this kind of everything, everything is better in the olden days thing. Really like that, you know, so I think it's a little bit stuff. I like that, you know, somebody who's really conservative like that might pick up this book and think it's awesome. And maybe their daughter reads it and finds out that, you know, she could win a Nobel prize like, you know, Marie Curie and, and her daughter.

mathowie 14:41 I could see that's perfect. The nostalgia it does come off as nostalgic as like, Here's how you make to visit the cootie catcher. Like, that's totally harmless and like funny and, and people would remember that from when they were kids.

Jessamyn 14:54 We were actors at my place. Like before this came out before I ran it Wow,

mothershock 15:00 that's awesome. And I just love that we have like, I think the page opposite cootie catchers is about capillary action. And it talks about how that's the subject of Einstein's first academic paper. You know, I love that we got, because it's this encyclopedia of real miscellany. I just love that we get to give some context all all this stuff. And also even for stuff like cootie catchers, we we try to include the story you know, the backstory, some put it in some context and give it some perspective, so much like a good metaphor, shelter front page post.

mathowie 15:34 I didn't read the kuti, the capillary action page. But my favorite capillary action, inaction story is being stuck in an office building with regulated air conditioning in college, and it was freezing, it's like 65, there's nothing we can do. But we found the thermostat on the wall, which is not adjustable. But if you put a pan of water in a paper towel, barely touching the water, it would pull water up and over and cool down the thermostat. So the heat came on.

mothershock 16:08 Awesome. So you could do a daring book for office workers.

Jessamyn 16:13 Dairy daring book for office,

mathowie 16:14 it's gonna be like the new the new dummies series.

Jessamyn 16:18 Daring the daring book for librarians? Yeah.

mathowie 16:22 We are sitting on a pile of money here. I guess. Tell us about how you found metal filter.

mothershock 16:29 Um, you know, I actually think I found metal filter through the morning news. Yeah, I think so. Because I one of my earliest memories of metal filter was reading this morning news thing that was like metal filter among the ruins? Oh, yeah. That it was just kind of a parody of all the what a metal filter thread would look like. In the apocalypse? I think so. And I start I think sometimes remember that at

mathowie 16:58 all? I guess Matthew Baldwin, probably mocking. Like they're mocking kind of like the 911 thread but like, but also marking the site?

mothershock 17:08 Yeah, I think that was, that might have been my first encounter with Metafilter. But I think I'm not sure if I had seen it before. But that's when I started like reading all the time. And I think I finally joined as soon as as, as I was able to,

mathowie 17:20 oh, yeah, you signed up three years ago. And that must have been turned on.

mothershock 17:26 I was one of those. Yeah.

mathowie 17:28 Because everything I wrote down to ask you, Do you can you think of anything? Jessamyn?

Jessamyn 17:33 No, I was mostly just, you know, what you sort of already talked about, like being able having you be able to sort of come to ask Metafilter and like, ask your questions and the whole sort of full circle of like, showing up asking your questions. And then getting to actually not only come back and say this is what I did with it, which always makes my heart warm up. But like, this is what I did with it. And you know, and you've done good. Like, I just think you make us look good. But it also makes the system look good. Which makes me happy. So really, mostly what I wanted to do was say thanks. But but that I'm sort of pleased that that worked out properly. And the way it should have

mathowie 18:11 even thanked the site in the book, which is really cool. Yeah, exactly.

mothershock 18:15 Yeah. And there were a couple of meta filter folks who are great. I mean, I, I emailed rumbled me and said, you know, you don't know me, but I know you've met a filter. And I have a question about Shakespeare quick, you know, help. And same thing with a corpse in the library who wrote a book about girl pirates. So it I mean, metal filter is just a fantastic resource and a fantastic community. And, and it was great. I loved reading that thread about people's favorite books, I'd completely forgotten about the witch of Blackbird pond. And that was like, my super favorite book as a kid. And it was somebody responding to the question that reminded me of it. Sounds great.

mathowie 18:50 Um, what, what? What pushed you into think, during the post? Like, was it 11th hour like deadline? Or was it thought about for a while, like,

Jessamyn 19:03 I've definitely done that before?

mathowie 19:05 That like, like, the myth like this is very similar to Adam Savage asking about Mythbusters myth. He did it, but it was really a key set is kind of 11th hour like he had no nowhere else to go. And he was like, I should? Yes, like he had been thinking about for months. And he's like, this is I'm gonna call it in like, right, right.

mothershock 19:24 We've been we've been talking to, we've been trying to talk to as many women specifically as we could, to, like, I asked my daughter's second grade teachers and the upper school teachers and, you know, our online writing groups and women that we know, we kind of, were just trying to get a sense of, of what where everybody was, like, where everybody's favorites. were, you know, because we had an idea of books that changed our life and books that we thought were really important that every girl should read that we wanted her daughter st etcetera. But um, but you know, we wanted to see if we, you know, had our finger on the pulse basically. Really? And when we were kind of brainstorming about like, who else can we talk to? And who else can we run this by? I was like, I've got to, like, I would be stupid to not ask Metafilter

mathowie 20:11 because there's plenty of women on metaphysics.

mothershock 20:14 There are and there's plenty of people who love books, and there's plenty of people who love to tell everybody what their favorite stuff is. And, and there's plenty of really smart people. And it was just the perfect, perfect audience to, to pose the question to.

mathowie 20:30 That's cool. How'd you find out the course in the library did a women's pirate book?

mothershock 20:34 Um, I think I just I think I clicked on her user profile. Maybe I found her or her website that way, I think, okay. I didn't know she.

Jessamyn 20:48 Yeah, I think I only knew it because I've seen her Flickr picture something I don't know. I knew I knew it from somewhere, too, but I think it was someplace different.

mothershock 20:55 And she's in she's in a chapter on women pirates. There is a little kind of call out box that lists a bunch of cool books about higher ed some some classics, and some, you know, more recent ones. And, and she's on there too. Yeah. Awesome. That's so great.

mathowie 21:13 No, this is a great, thanks for talking to us. And

Jessamyn 21:17 absolutely. Superduper Thank you very much.

mothershock 21:20 Oh, so nice to meet you guys on the phone or whatever.

mathowie 21:34 I guess we should do the metal filter stuff. Super. I hadn't just have your list of good metal filter stuff handy.

Jessamyn 21:41 I have my listen to the short. Actually.

mathowie 21:43 I have one MC 123252 i Five and I've cut them down from like, 15.

Jessamyn 21:50 I have to cut it down to three.

mathowie 21:53 Let me see. Well, there's two or three that are really quick.

Jessamyn 21:57 Okay, if they're related, why don't you go? Let's we'll trade off and then that'll keep us shorter and honest.

mathowie 22:04 Should we do the thing about people on the site? There's sort of meta ones. Which, I guess Okay, so my all time favorite one of the last two weeks or so? It's been two weeks. I guess it's been two weeks. I think so these weeks fly by for us.

Jessamyn 22:19 I've been like traveling, like all over the place just the last two weeks, as I think I always say, but this time it's really true. I got home at midnight last night, I'm exhausted.

mathowie 22:27 A million people have been coming and going. And

Jessamyn 22:31 oh, yeah, you get to see all the khaki. Um,

mathowie 22:35 I think my favorite was the found photos. The that's my favorite.

Jessamyn 22:41 The pictures discarded in the dumpster 30 years ago. And they tracked down the photographer.

mathowie 22:45 Yeah, Guy posted on Flickr and does searches based on the Google, I guess is Google, it really solved it for him. Like he sort of made out the guy's name and then found like, there was a photographer of that similar name online.

Jessamyn 22:57 So this is what happened. The guy found a box of photos in a dumpster. And then he scanned them and put them on the internet right? First were discarded

mathowie 23:04 in the dumpster 30 years ago. So he's like, Did he grab them? The guy who posted them on Flickr? Or does mom grab them or something? He found the box.

Jessamyn 23:13 I think they explain it on the thread.

mathowie 23:20 No, wait, am I in the wrong? What?

Jessamyn 23:22 Well, no, they were in an antique shop and the antique shop threw it away.

mathowie 23:26 Oh, yeah.

Jessamyn 23:30 So the guy the photographer threw away a bunch of crap when he was moving. He lives in Hawaii. Now. An antique shop got it. And then later on through this, it's just slides like slides are like weird. It's like boxing aesthetics, you know.

mathowie 23:44 And those things lasts forever with full color, which is kind of cool.

Jessamyn 23:48 And the color is awesome. Yeah, right. Well, we've got tons of old like, my dad's got all these old slides that he's been getting scanned. And they're really Yeah.

mathowie 23:55 So he was an American officer in the Army at Vietnam, in Vietnam.

Jessamyn 24:00 Yeah. And then this other guy found these pictures and a really sort of interesting slice of life, Vietnam pictures.

And then turned out he actually found the guy because they figured out where he lived. And then he guy who was the he was an artist with the Department of Information and so shot 1000s of photos, and then moved from Arkansas to Hawaii and threw them all out, and was actually kind of happy that this guy had found the pictures and scan them and put them online, but was also like, yeah, you know, I'm an artist. I'm an artist living in Hawaii. So, you know, I show in these galleries, and that's really great that you're putting up all those pictures from

mathowie 24:40 when I was dumpster diving and came across them and sold them to a pawn shop, an antique shop and then someone else bought a box of them in the antique shop in Arkansas that eventually tracked them down. So yeah, Guy on Flickr was the second one. That's pretty cool.

Jessamyn 24:57 And I don't know if you read through the entire thread but I Actually, I don't know how to pronounce these names Alad far one of our users dropped the guy in email. Like, why did you? Why did you throw those things away? Like, didn't you care about them and got a nice thoughtful email back from the guy explaining it with permission to post. And so there's an actual sort of first person response in the thread as well. It was neat.

mathowie 25:23 Yeah, I was just reading that. That's cool. We should have shot him a free account. It should be. It should be a red phone, like when a user is going to do something like this, that they can go, Hey, you guys really need to shoot a free account to this URL or give me the magic URL or something.

Jessamyn 25:38 Right, right, right. Okay, so our favorite was the same. What was your what were your other ones? Like?

mathowie 25:47 The dumb YouTube commercial of the month that I actually like,

Jessamyn 25:52 I don't think I saw that one. I was least for some of the YouTubers.

mathowie 25:55 Just because, you know, it's one of those magic moments where something in a boring sort of genre, like cereal commercials actually like transcends the genre of boring cereal commercial and actually have some humor and wit. And so what is this? Go watch this. This is an all brand commercial for all brands serial featuring a guy in a construction yard walking around talking about how, how he needs fiber in his diet, how difficult pooping is, and all the while there are visual metaphors going on the background that are ridiculous and hilarious. I can't believe this is on TV. Like, it's just so this is like a commercial. It's a commercial you'd make Yeah, it's a commercial you'd make to like crack up your ad buddies.

Jessamyn 26:45 Oh my god, that is so funny. Yeah. I never would have thought okay, I'm gonna have to start paying.

mathowie 26:52 I don't want to spoil the commercial for people who haven't seen it because it is funny. And ya know,

Jessamyn 26:58 it's laugh out loud, funny. Oh my god.

mathowie 26:59 They're hilarious visual metaphors. Actually a serial commercial. It's so good.

Jessamyn 27:06 Excellent. Okay. The next one that I liked was Mr. Carl Bushby who is walking around the world. It's opposed by Dejardin. It is. Basically, it's this dude who's who's decided over time. And I think in segments, that he's literally like walking all the way around the world, like finding like where the land bridges are and walking across the Bering Strait or walking on us flows across the Arctic north or whatever.

mathowie 27:35 minimizes, like boat use.

Jessamyn 27:38 I think he's zero in his boat use, I think there are no boats. Wow. And he's got to walk across the mostly frozen Bering Strait. And it's 36,000 mile walk. And he's been doing it since he's gonna walk across the maintenance tunnel of the channel. But like a lot of it's a lot of it's all about, like getting permission. And it's weird. It was one of those posts that was completely awesome. And got like, whatever 19 comments,

mathowie 28:07 actually bought the land bridge, it actually worked, or he was planning to do it.

Jessamyn 28:12 Done that part of it. He's not going to be finished until 2012. And what I couldn't figure out from like, a kind of cursory instruction was, uh, you know, I think he kind of goes home and like goes back and does segments of it. He's definitely had some buddies for part of it. You gotta you got to put it, but it's it's a great post because it's got like, I mean, it the first link is his Wikipedia article, but then it goes to his website male to web, it's on male to web.com They're like sponsoring it. But then there's like a BBC news story. And then there's the adventurer expedition and then there's a YouTube video. It doesn't

mathowie 28:50 Yeah, he does it legs. Like he's saying he does it. So he's gonna go off of the European continent towards the North Pole, then back to Canada to make make it from over the Atlantic. Yeah,

Jessamyn 29:05 he's going like, all the way up and all the way all the way around. And, you know, it doesn't hurt that he's this kind of like hunky mountain man looking guy in the websites kind of a 2.0 bloggie looking thing. And yeah, and he's from Hall, so I don't know why Sergeant serenity isn't all over it.

mathowie 29:26 Hall. Oh, like the most boring. A friend became a professor at the University of Hall

Jessamyn 29:33 in East Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire prior

mathowie 29:36 he said it was like the most boring place in the world.

Jessamyn 29:39 But yeah, this guy was in the army and then left the army to follow his dream and walk around the world and T shirt and made this awesome poster. That was the other post that I really liked the site

mathowie 29:49 and check it out fully. See the other awesome? I think there's I think every time we do this, we have found objects found images we already Did the Vietnam photos. But the Stanford School of Medicine had the not a coffin, a carload images from 1920 to 1950 cigarette industry ads. And there before there was any regulation on cigarette ads, and so that it's all about your how healthy smoking is. Yeah. And which doctors recommend and how it's great for your throat and how babies don't mind the smoke, like all sorts of crazy things.

Jessamyn 30:30 You know, my sister has a bunch of like, she collects like Camel cigarette paraphernalia, and so like, people give her ads and stuff like that. And she has like, right over her desk. She quit smoking last year, in May. And she has a big thing of like, the doctor holding up the holding up the pack of cigarettes being like, yeah, totally, you know, calms your nerves or whatever the heck it is. It's totally

mathowie 30:53 the cool thing about the Stanford site is they'll juxtapose the the ridiculous ad with some truth. So there's one of about I can't link to it because of its stupid, weird frames, but uh, it's like viceroys as your dentist recom as your dentist, I would recommend viceroys and there's a guy in like a white dentist's shirt holding a cigarette with a little mirror. But then the little texts I'll play along with it is like, you know, the early victims of oral cancer included Sigmund Freud and people had, you know, like our US presidents us, Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland, both mouth cancer. So that's horrible. Yeah. And they had actual comics, like, the whole Joe Camel, kind of marketing to kids. I mean, they had real Camel cigarettes comics, aimed at kids. It was just like crazy. You know, there's no regulation on this stuff.

Jessamyn 31:49 Right. Which which is always Yeah, I'm always interested in that. Like the libertarian argument is always like, whatever, let them advertise however they want and then like you look at what happens when they do that, like prior to regulation and it's, it's it's horrifying, especially given how much we know about smoking in smokers.

mathowie 32:06 Yep. Yes, did you have anything else or that your

Jessamyn 32:13 two favorite that's mostly minor from from AskMe to filter as usual,

mathowie 32:17 I guess we had to sort of meta filter meta ones. I just wanted to mention really quick one was the teen grabs the old man who fell down the tracks at a train station while the train was approaching and claimed it was what he did. He jumped in grabbed the guy off the tracks, jumped on the platform the train zooms by and he held on to the guy really hard thinking that's what happened in a Mythbusters episode. But apparently in the MythBusters episode, they showed a train can't suck you into the tracks that was the myth but he saved the guy anyhow. Yeah, but he was so convinced that the guy would get sucked back in and under the train but Adam Savage popped in which was nice.

Jessamyn 33:01 I really liked the way that Savage is like comfortable being like yes, I know you're talking about me again. But

mathowie 33:06 oh, actually, I am that to him. And I know he got like the two I think there's a whole meta talk thread about Adam Savage. I am both of them. And he responded and both when he got off

Jessamyn 33:19 there was probably 17 metal talk threads.

mathowie 33:23 But he was like, Yeah, you know, are you know I have to say you know, our channel the production company loves this story. But you know, I can tell the kid totally misread. He missed remember the, you know, the actual myth was the opposite of what he thought would happen. But that's okay. The other cool one was the log boy post.

Jessamyn 33:43 Oh, that's right. Yeah. No, I liked what was that? Was that next guys? Who was it?

mathowie 33:48 Madame Gigi jive. Is she's been following him for a long time. I guess.

Jessamyn 33:55 Metaphor filter poster from way back. Yeah. Was to Iraq. Right. It looks

mathowie 33:59 like he joined during the Casey Nicole thing and he was posting a lot then. I had no idea. He was like the world champion of log rolling on ESPN. Like when you see the like 2am ESPN two. There's like lumberjack champions. Talk

Jessamyn 34:15 about him when? When he got injured? Yeah, I think due to drive follows his stuff.

mathowie 34:21 Yeah. Yeah. Well, he always had like a so like, in the last three, four years since he went to Iraq in 2004 or five. Yeah, he would post like, I mean, we would be having some post about you know, yet another, you know, Bush sucks. Iraq's a waste of money. And suddenly this guy would pop in and be like, I am posting this from the green zone. You know, it's not it wasn't like antagonistic or anything. You'd just be like, No, here's what really so you know, yeah. Here's what it's like on the ground. I think these people are misguided. They're going too far with whatever you guys are saying. I think that's when everyone sort of started taking notice of them including me. Well Gigi died that like wow, it's kind of cool to have someone in the shit giving us reports of what it's like in the shit. Right and then unfortunately, a bomb blast hit his car and he lost his right right arm and or half of his right arm and most of most of his fingers.

Jessamyn 35:21 Right he was he was he was injured by an IED. And there was a meta talk thread about it that I that I sent you.

mathowie 35:28 Yeah. And there's this cool. There's this cool little ESPN bio,

Jessamyn 35:32 but his legs are fine. So you can still log raw. So

mathowie 35:35 the post was the like a little ESPN movie maybe 10 minutes long about just recapping all the stuff. But I guess I just never clicked for me that he was this like guy on ESPN every year the lumberjack championships killing it in.

Unknown Speaker 35:54 Sun take seat. I got something to say. Dad endzone live here. No more. Things won't be quiet lag before.

mathowie 36:07 Oh, we didn't talk about the best job.

Jessamyn 36:10 I wasn't thrilled with any of the job. Yeah. I just have a project that I really liked

mathowie 36:14 the jobs. What project was your favorite project?

Jessamyn 36:18 My favorite project was the deer rockers project. Did you see that?

mathowie 36:23 Oh, yeah.

Jessamyn 36:25 Came musicians back $5 at a time. I mean, everybody talks about it right? Like, oh, yeah, I still tons of music, but I don't five bucks, maybe requirements.

mathowie 36:35 The requirement is you come up with five bucks. You pick them as a musician, you have to write them a letter. And then you scan or photograph the letter. And then you find their mailing address. You actually send them five bucks.

Jessamyn 36:47 Yeah, or whatever. And it's Darren bearfoot, who I believe had like some awesome project from a while ago.

mathowie 36:55 Projects. Oh, he did the he did the second life go get a first life. He did. Oh. Which was hilarious because it got Second Life to write a fake takedown notice, which was like a key, which

Jessamyn 37:10 was good. And everybody was like, Oh, we like Second Life. It was also it was

mathowie 37:15 what's the opposite of a cease and desist it? Yeah. They came up with the opposite of a cease keep going. And don't stop. Yeah, keep going. Don't stop.

Jessamyn 37:22 You also wrote the username and password. He did that video, which was all about like, all the different things that he had to log into. Yeah, that was awesome. One day. Yeah, it was great. He's just super talented. And so this was like his latest thing. And it was great. So you write a letter. And if you go to the website and read the letters, like, it's like, dear so and so I played your music at teen dances a lot in the 80s and probably didn't get any money for it. So here's five bucks. And yeah,

mathowie 37:51 oh my god, they started posting the songs with it. Like a song that people like the most. He has the mp3. They're

Jessamyn 37:59 so adorable. It's adorable. So yeah, I totally enjoyed that.

mathowie 38:02 I think this is why we built projects was for like really creative web developers, you know, sorry, just web developers. But people are just developers. It's geared towards people that are churning out cool like, you know, projects every few months. I guess. Let me talk. Let's talk about the ASP medical other stuff. If you can pick your first favorite list, and I will start whittling down my my seven your massive

Jessamyn 38:27 list. Well, you know, you can always stick like also RANS in the meta talk thread you know? Yeah, three talk. Thank you and me.

mathowie 38:38 There take that one out.

Jessamyn 38:41 My favorite helped me with my safe for work porn fix. It's not what you think. Yeah, this was a that delicious. Everybody liked it, but I liked it as well. That was my death delicious. I'm looking for really great websites that have photo, you know, porn, quote, unquote. And

mathowie 38:59 it was it was more like, I thought because a few people were unclear on the concept and I had to delete their posts because they didn't understand they were boring. Yeah, they didn't understand and someone posted furniture porn, which is parody of porn. And that's not what they meant.

Jessamyn 39:15 All incredibly beautiful photography. Well, it's so much so that

mathowie 39:19 but not just photography. It's just the idea of anything that that's just obsesses over a topic. You know, either magazine or a website or something. It's basically porn about its food porn. This is food porn. Like, I think five years ago, a friend said like dwell. I think it's dwell magazine or what? He just said, Dude, it's lifestyle porn. It is like the similarities between Playboy and you know, people staring at houses in Architectural Digest. It's like there's no difference. So, this is awesome list of library porn, cheese porn, molecular imaging porn.

Jessamyn 39:59 It's not NATO part of the special forum where my two favorite it's not

mathowie 40:02 just pictures, you know, it's just like the whole, like, they got the whole thing. Like, it's so infectious.

Jessamyn 40:08 So aren't all of these pictures are they not picture driven

mathowie 40:10 image driven but like when it's like some of the stuff is lifestyle porn, you know, like, like curbed you know, it's like Sorry, your

Jessamyn 40:19 I don't think she's considered porn as much if it's if it's texting, I think it's considered Wang curry. That's just maybe that's just me. And anyway, I loved this serial classifier, because I immediately saw it and was like, oh, not a porn for it and ask metal filter.

mathowie 40:37 I know. Yeah. Then then I

Jessamyn 40:39 was like, Oh, delightful. Car porn.

mathowie 40:41 There's one of just nothing but guitars, 1000s of guitars. I think I'll just maybe I'll just do a link dump of there's been a billion. As we get into winter, in the northern hemisphere, everyone, I think starts thinking about exercising. And yes,

Jessamyn 40:59 not they all look themselves and they're like, I'm just gonna sit and eat for four more months. I need a plan

mathowie 41:05 last winter the winter before I gained like 20 pounds sitting around. So I've been really working hard on doing stuff. So this stuff is coming to me right? When I'm thinking about it, like God, how can I ride more? There are like three or four posts about how can I ride in the winter? Like, one of them's without looking like, futuristic Spaceman? You know, so much stuff on. But there's like, yeah, how do I? How do I run in the winter? How do I run with them? How do I run with them heavy?

Jessamyn 41:33 I saw that one. Although I feel like we get that one about every two months. Yeah, and people are like, I don't know, it depends on how far away you're standing with the donut. Here's the other one that I like it's totally geeky. It is.

I'm just going to read it because it's hard to explain otherwise. But it's I'm looking for an online resource that will allow me to enter a time in hours, minutes and seconds and return a listing of the angles between the hands if that time was displayed on an analog clock. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

mathowie 42:08 Well, I read that I thought this is like a Google Microsoft job interview question for Perl programmers or something. Yes,

Jessamyn 42:14 I thought so too. But it was awesome. Like there

mathowie 42:17 must be a mathematical formula for it. But it can't tell

Jessamyn 42:22 ya it was by laying new language new language new. I don't know. I've seen him. Actually got it. Yeah.

mathowie 42:29 Yes. Someone answered in seven minutes in JavaScript. That's amazing. I

Jessamyn 42:33 know. And yeah, I've seen the guy, you know, with his laptop bag at the New York meetup photos. And so you know, I was like, Oh, I know where you're coming from. But yeah, it was a oh, he went to Northwestern. He's got a totally boring username. But then he writes, yeah, I loved it. Just because it was totally weird. And people were like, being got it. That's amazing. Only I'm gonna filter.

mathowie 42:55 I was like, there's gotta be some with more math background than me that could figure it out. Someone figured out Excel. That's awesome.

Jessamyn 43:01 I know. They're all there. They just make me so happy.

mathowie 43:04 It's like whatever. Like one guy thinks in JavaScript. One guy thinks in Excel. And they both arrive at the same answer. That's awesome. I think there's three things here. Let me mention them in rapid succession, which are kind of pulling everyone about something. Oh, I like that. They're all succeed. Yeah, they're all super popular. I'll just go through them really quick. So these three things are ones like, give me a list of famous people that failed at school went on to be successful, like the quirky types. And there are just a ton of you know, mega billionaires that uh, you know, couldn't get a meal popping

Jessamyn 43:40 up into that thread to say that he didn't go to college. And like being a lot more out about that.

mathowie 43:48 Yeah, he's always said that.

Jessamyn 43:50 Yeah, extreme said, I'm gonna filter I guess he didn't mention it. Oh, now

mathowie 43:53 I would say read this read this thread about failed people that went on to become rich, just for it's good trivia material. The second one is, I love this one.

Jessamyn 44:05 I love this one too. I just didn't mark it. For some reason. It was like an author

mathowie 44:09 trying to write about a super spy who's super suave and with it, and like, you know, this is a person who knows everything about everything and is cooler than you. So so the question was, give me a list of things that are really cool that only people in the know know about. And he rattled off like secret menus.

Jessamyn 44:32 American Express black card. Yeah, we know I only learned about this year,

mathowie 44:36 which I guess started as myth and folklore and then they actually made it because it sounded funny or, yeah, you're supposed to watch us. If you spend over 100,000 Or a million dollars a year on your card, you can get a black card, which means you have your own actual employee at American Express. I'll answer any question at the end of this phone line. You know, you just that'll be your personal concierge. This stuff this exam polls aren't really secret. But then he asked for secret examples from other people. And they're all pretty good about, like, you know, the secret magic clubs in LA and, you know, drafts of books and how you can get them and stuff. Oh, this is awesome. There's this thing called FedEx custom critical. This is basically your own FedEx plane, if you want to overnight shitload of stuff yourself. Yeah. You call up FedEx. And you say you want FedEx custom critical, and they will fly a plane for you, just for you. Just like chartering FedEx. That's pretty cool. Well, it

Jessamyn 45:39 makes sense, right? I mean, a lot of this stuff is like, yeah, if you have an incredible shitload of money. I thought that was the read where somebody had said, like, oh, yeah, I used to have an Amex black card. It's not that big a deal. I don't, it must, it must not be. I can't find it. I remember reading in the last couple of weeks that somebody on meta filter was talking about their Amex black card, and it was fun to sort of learn about it. I think

mathowie 46:01 there's a lot of contention of like, oh, well, the examples you give, even my mom knows about it. Like they know what black cards are like, these aren't super secret things. And so there's a lot there's a little bit contentious.

Jessamyn 46:13 People were like, Look, if it's so secret, just make the shit up. Because everybody will assume if they've never heard of it, but they did say like, oh, read pattern recognition, et cetera.

mathowie 46:22 Yeah, if you want it to be a believable story, you do want to be like, slightly have a tinge of like familiarity with people but they kind of know it only as a myth or some urban legend. Kinda like the right I heard about black car gyms. 10 years. Yeah, the what's the deal? Banana peel, just I was hanging out with four year olds. And

Jessamyn 46:40 I was gonna say you liked that because you have a four year old.

mathowie 46:43 Don't have a four year old but it's silly. I thought it was like the most popular thread and the whole month was just give me give me silly phrases. What? What's Fiona? Two, two and a half? Really? I guess I think she's older because she's so tall spins on Flickr so much. Right? Yeah, just give me silly rhyming phrases like sea layout, alligators, things like that. And they go on and on and on. Lots and lots. I was 50

Jessamyn 47:11 What's the story Morning Glory was mine. And Aki blue. Oh, chi blue. Got it early. So neato mosquito

mathowie 47:19 Squeezy? Yeah.

Jessamyn 47:21 I think we should have somebody just read these out and do it as a metal filter music. Yeah, a better filter music thing.

mathowie 47:28 If you went home you memorize this, you'd be the coolest person a four year old knows definitely. I'm already a coolest person a four year old knows through. So many here. I just never off kilter metal

Jessamyn 47:39 filter. Maybe that should be our next

mathowie 47:43 tagline. That's a week.

Jessamyn 47:45 A week. That's why the four year olds don't like you know, sense of wonder.

mathowie 47:51 Do you have any other favorites that we haven't covered? Or?

Jessamyn 47:53 I enjoyed the one that I read? I think it's this morning. Actually, I should go check my comments because like I talked about all my favorite posts, but some of the favorite things that I've seen on Metafilter have been like, comments that I've enjoyed Not, not actual posts. So hang on just a second. I'll, I'll figure out what those were.

mathowie 48:13 Yeah, I'll go with my last one. And then we can wrap it up after yours. Okay, this was great. Because person wanted to ask it and they asked me over email, and we actually helped her punch it up a bit, which was she didn't want to be chat filtery but was like what parts of cooking do you do yourself that people don't typically do themselves? Like what's, what's something?

Jessamyn 48:37 No, it would be terrible if we didn't have a cooking strategy. Yeah,

mathowie 48:40 I would say yeah, this is my obligatory cooking thread, which is, you know, top of the charts, but it was essentially the twist was, were some things you make yourself, comma, that most people don't make themselves comma. But it's actually easy and people should like that was essentially the goal with this. There's a lot of people that make bread that said, you know, breads not that hard. And here's my recipe and pastry pizza dough, like these are things you can make and like 20 minutes that people go out and buy spaghetti sauce was huge. You just get like tomato paste and some spices and you make your own sauce and can make it

Jessamyn 49:14 easy and it doesn't have any the corn syrup in it that yeah, stores gonna have it's

mathowie 49:19 gonna be 288 cent, you know, cans and 10 minutes instead of a $4 thing filled with corn.

Jessamyn 49:26 If you do it from tomatoes, it's like not that hard. Yeah.

mathowie 49:30 So this stuff is tastes better, easy to make and usually much cheaper.

Jessamyn 49:36 Search this because I need to figure out how to make decent garden burgers. Oh, just like I really liked like veggie burgers like just because I think they're tasty but like they're really hard to make. Good. Yeah, yeah. And the stuff you buy in the supermarket, they're fine, but they're like expensive and you should be able to just make your own I thank

Unknown Speaker 49:59 you This was a good post I'm making a note here HUGE SUCCESS it's hard to overstate the links is Quality Matters matter filter we post what we want because we can for the good of all of us except the ones who are banned but there's no use flaming every post you just keep on snarking to get favorited most you can call them all out and you'll make a call out for the posters or

Unknown Speaker 50:55 not even flagging I mean so CCO right now even though you are stupid can't even smell right posted as I read I was so mad and did not favor it you know these posting patterns make me start to suspect that you're sharing something and should post it projects so I'm glad you got cuz you're so lame people go on it's a while since we all laugh maybe we'll find some worlds to post on like little green bow was a joke haha fat shots anyway my ghosts Andre. They are so nuanced and smart. Look at me still flaming when there's posted to your replies amazement cloud I'm not you to be tight as at the people who are on the blue. And believe me. I'm getting favorites. On the blue. I have babies while you're planning on and when you're gonna be