Flightless Bird

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand Costco, the giant membership warehouse club loved by millions of Americans, a store that now pulls in $64 billion in revenue each year. Farrier meets up with a friend of the show Andy, who takes David inside Costco for his first shopping trip. David is so impressed he signs up as a card-carrying Costco member, before returning with a former staff member to get the goss. Finally, Farrier talks to a staff member who’s been at Costco for a quarter of a century, meeting his wife at Costo, buying his engagement ring at Costco, and naming their dog after the iconic Costco brand, Kirkland.

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to the town of Roswell, New Mexico - home of the 1947 UFO crash that ignited the imagination of the entire planet. After visiting the Roswell UFO Museum, Farrier sets out to see what makes Roswell, well, Roswell. He meets up with artist Michael Beitz who runs the Meow Cat Sanctuary, before getting some Mexican food with local cowboy “Spider Dailey”, who fills Farrier in on the local military academy… and how to be an anarchist. He also goes to see Nancy Fleming who runs the Miniatures & Curious Collections Museum, and stops by Roswell’s UFO-themed McDonalds where he meets a man who’s had a close encounter of his own.

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand why Americans guzzle down over 10 billion donuts every year. He sets off with his friends Andrew and Lauren to sample some Californian donuts, before meeting up with Emily Taing. Tang is behind Pink Box Stories (@pinkboxstories) on Instagram and educates David about the origins of the donut’s famous pink boxes, and the importance of America’s mom-and-pop donuts stores. David then sets his sights on the big East Coast chain - Dunkin’ - meeting with their president Scott Murphy, and one of their franchisees Sue Andrade.

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier tries to understand why his entire street smells like semen. He finds himself in the world of the Callery Pear Tree - also known as the Linden Tree or the Bradford - AKA “the cum tree”. David talks with Theresa Culley, a professor at the University of Cincinnati - who knows a lot about this particular foul-smelling tree. The plant biologist teaches David why the trees smell like that, before diving into an analysis of how American these trees really are. David is shocked to find out one of these trees survived 9/11, and is now found at the 9/11 memorial site. He also discovers the tree - once the darling of US landscapers and gardeners - is now considered an invasive species. With this in mind, David visits LA’s Natural History Museum to meet herpetologist Greg Pauly, who educates David about some of America’s other invasive species, including one particularly loud and annoying frog.

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier dives headfirst into one of America’s favorite foods, the humble hot dog. He learns that Americans eat around 20 billion hot dogs a year, which means the average American eats about 70 hot dogs per year. Why? How did this simple food get so popular here? To understand, Farrier decides to talk to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council. Eric Mittenthal picks up and answers some of Farrier’s burning questions. David then takes foodie and Flightless Bird producer Rob Holysz out to eat some hot dogs - first at the iconic LA joint Pinks, and then to the very niche Wurstküche in the Arts District. There David and Rob dine on rabbit, buffalo, and rattlesnake. They also set out to answer the burning question: “Is a hotdog a sandwich?”

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier takes Monica’s advice from an earlier episode and investigates America’s obsession with quilts. He begins his journey by interviewing quilting podcaster Ashelyn Downs of “The Grateful Thread”. Farrier discovers that quilting is not just oldies sitting by the fire, but that there’s a new movement of younger, more diverse quilters taking over America. He sets off to meet Latifah Saafir, an engineer who now makes some of the most amazing quilts you’ll see, incorporating bits of her culture and life into the quilts she makes. David then stops in on another young quilter, Luke Haines, who has some of his quilts hanging on gallery walls. Luke insists on making a quilt featuring the one and only Monica Padman.

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier seeks to be better understood by his co-hosts by diving headfirst into the American accent. He meets with dialect coach Joel Goldes, who’s helped coach actors like Viola Davis through her various accent roles. As “The Dialect Coach” (www.thedialectcoach.com), Joel teaches David how to place his tongue to sound more American, and takes Farrier through what he’s been doing wrong. Monica, Rob and David also take an accent quiz to see how good they are at picking American accents (which you can try at home too: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/juliafurlan/pahk-the-cah-nomaaaaaah)

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier investigates America’s extreme love of cereal. He sets out to answer why America needs over 5000 different types of cereal, and why some of the most popular cereals have been discontinued. He meets with YouTube cereal reviewer Thomas Hicks, AKA The Cereal Snob (https://www.youtube.com/c/CerealSnob), to get the lowdown on how much milk should be used in cereal, and what types of cereal are the best. David also discovers that cereal was invented by John Harvey Kellogg in the 1890s, who created the humble cornflake. David finds that Kellogg was trying to create something so bland it would stop people masturbating or having sex!

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier begins to notice how much America loves cars. Why do 92% of American households have at least one vehicle? That is so many cars! The country's love of cars has transformed it, with not only roads - but with millions and millions of parking spaces. David becomes obsessed with all of America’s parked cars, sitting down with Henry Grabar - a staff writer at Slate who writes about cars and transportation, urban policy and housing. And Grabar has also been thinking a lot about how much of America is taken up by cars. Why in America, on average, are there up to 6 parking spaces for every car? Why does NY make more money off parking tickets than parking fees?

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand America’s obsession with pinball. He heads to Long Beach California for a meeting of the Long Beach Pinball League, headed by passionate pinball man Tom Walker. His league is part of the International Flipper Pinball Association which is made up of 96,000 players from 45 countries. David then meets Tom Radar, a man who has been obsessively collecting pinball machines for years.