Underunderstood

By Select WorksSociety & Culture

Underunderstood episodes

February 23, 2021Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute
The storied history of a United States Forest Service mascot, and why the government wanted him incinerated.
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Show notes:
Where it all began (Symbols.gov via Archive.org)

Boing Boing post from 2007

Every time you masturbate ... God kills a kitten

The Ballad of Woodsy Owl (Forest Service)

The Ballad of Woodsy Owl cover by KITSCH CLUB

Retro PSA Give A Hoot Don'T Pollute - Woodsy The Owl

Woodsy Owl PSA

Woodsy Owl on German Wikipedia

Johnny Horizon

Woodsy Owl Funko Pop

Woodsy Owl licensing pitch

A Brief History of Woodsy Owl
48 min
February 16, 2021How Long Does Lipstick Last on a Dead Body?
If you unearth a body after seven years, will the makeup still be there?
If you like the show, support us on Patreon and get access to our bonus show, Overunderstood.
Show notes:
0:46 – ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ by Ottessa Moshfegh

1:00 – Ottessa Moshfegh

1:39 – Rouge Dior 999

1:59 – Can One Red Lipstick Really Look Good On Everyone?

2:50 – Thierry Mugler

3:18 – The Compounds in Red Lipstick

7:10 – Rouge Dior 999 ingredients

12:30 – The Mortuary Science Professor Who Came ‘Out of Nowhere’ to Help N.Y.C.

13:27 – Mortuary Makeup Artists Give Us Their Best Beauty Tips

14:05 – About Amber – Mortician in the Kitchen

15:00 – Refinery29: This Is What It’s Really Like To Do Makeup… On Dead People

18:35 – American Chemical Society

19:00 – Lab Muffin Beauty Science breaks down Lipstick Science

21:10 – Stability Testing Guidance for Product Safety and Shelf-life Insight

22:40 – Shelf Life and Expiration Dating of Cosmetics

27:00 – Microbes A-Z: Your Questions Answered

31:50 – Kalon Massage Cream
37 min
February 09, 2021Why Is This Sheriff Arresting Fire TV Sellers?
An 88-year-old is being charged with a felony after selling "jailbroke firesticks" at a Florida flea market.
If you like the show, support us on Patreon and get access to our bonus show, Overunderstood.
Show notes:
00:56 – Sheriff Grady Judd - Wikipedia

02:59 – Amazon Fire TV Stick - Wikipedia

03:50 – iOS Jailbreaking

04:22 – Rooting (Android) - Wikipedia

09:33 – VPN - Wikipedia

11:45 – F.S.S. 812.15 - Unauthorized reception of communications services; penalties.

15:20 – Nilay Patel - Twitter

15:36 – About The Verge

15:41 – Decoder with Nilay Patel

16:16 – Local news report about Napster (2000) - YouTube

16:44 – Why news sites benefit from having writers with legal backgrounds - Poynter

17:01 – CNBC segment on Kazaa

23:40 – Cynthia Conlin & Associates

29:47 – Dan Marino statue on Google Street View

30:46 – Mobdro FAQ

40:54 – Sheriff Judd reads "Oh, the places you'll go!" by Dr. Seuss - YouTube

42:30 – Full response from the Polk County Sheriff's office

42:34 – Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

43:21 – ‘Star Trek’ and Dr. Seuss Mash-Up Not Protected, Court Rules - NYT

44:00 – The officially sanctioned reading of ‘Oh, the Places You'll Go!’ by Michelle Obama - YouTube
46 min
February 02, 2021Jeff Goldblum’s Secret Tattoo
A listener emails Underunderstood: "Jeff Goldblum has a tattoo in Jurrassic Park - no one noticed, no one can identify. Help!"
Show notes:
01:20 – Clip of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) with the flare in Jurassic Park

06:50 – The Reddit post

08:50 – Jeff Goldblum’s community number

10:22 – Correction: The word “tattoo” does show up in Jurassic Park, the book once. Quote: “We got another hadro dead. Juvenile.” Muldoon bent down among the flies and checked the skin on the sole of the right foot. A number was tattooed there. “Specimen is number HD/09.”

12:42 – Jurassic World: Dominion started shooting in February 2020. Universal Studios halted production on March 13. The film was mostly shot in England.

16:40 – Ana Maria Quintana’s IMdB page

18:45 – Here’s a typical continuity analysis of the goat scene. This writer actually concludes it was not an error. If you feel compelled to email us about this, please don’t — we won’t appreciate it. Try one of the many active Jurassic Park forums instead!

19:30 – Jurassic Park is the 40th top-grossing film of all time. Movie theaters boosted it to the top of the box office again in 2020, when COVID-19 put new releases on pause.

21:10 – Christina Smith’s IMdB page

24:50 – Dom Nero on Twitter

25:50 – Dom’s article about Colin Trevorrow’s Star Wars script

40:10 – Wikipedia page for Blowup (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
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44 min
December 15, 2020Does Anyone Remember this Robot Vegetable Band?
Why does no one remember a set of singing vegetables from an Oklahoma grocery store in the 80s?
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Show notes:
01:27 - Homeland on Wikipedia

02:45 - Stew Leonard's on Wikipedia

05:46 - Matt's Reddit post

06:45 - Melody Farm Follies on YouTube

06:45 - Melody Farm Follies on YouTube

13:06 - An incredible promo video for Big Fresh

13:15 - Animatronics at Big Fresh

13:40 - Jungle Jim's

14:20 - Anti-drug animatronics at Mollie Stone's

15:22 - Stew Leonard's in Paramus, NJ

19:50 - Photo #1

20:35 - Photo #2

21:51 - Another Melody Farm Follies video

24:10 - VP Animations

28:00 - The old Homeland logo on a store

30:06 - Bobby Gosh's music credits

31:04 - Advanced Animations

37:25 - Dick McCormack on Wikipedia
48 min
December 08, 2020The Case of the Blah Blah Blahs
A famous datset of Reuters articles from the 1980s includes “Blah blah blah.” in place of some stories. Why?
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Show notes:
00:31 - The link Jess sent

8:31 - SGML

8:46 - This is what the blahs look like and this is what all the entries look like.

24:00 - FTP

24:34 - Linguistic Data Consortium

29:00 - RCV1 at NIST and David D. Lewis’s README

30:22 - Construe-TIS: A System for Content-Based Indexing of a Database of News Stories (Phil Hayes and Steven Weinstein)
37 min
November 24, 2020Closing the Loop on China's Mystery Seeds
What ever happened with those mysterious seeds that were showing up in U.S. mailboxes?
00:33 - Michigan Department of Agriculture tweet

03:10 - USDA answers frequently asked questions about the mystery seeds, including “What should I do if I already planted the seeds?”

02:30 - Facebook post from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development

03:52 - Invasive species are no joke!!!!

04:50 - As of this writing, Snopes said there was no motive determined for the seed shipments: Are Americans Receiving Unsolicited Mailings of Seeds from China? (Snopes)

09:32 - USDA still hasn’t found anything to cause major concern, but it has now identified more species and some viruses. This is an updated comment as of Nov. 18: “Altogether, we have identified approximately 460 taxa of seeds. We have detected 2 quarantine insect pests using x-ray and 28 Federal Noxious weeds based on identifications by APHIS botanists.
We have also identified 6 quarantine significant viruses or viroids using molecular testing.” Also, here are some photos of U.S.D.A. investigating the seeds with microscopes.

14:29 - Jason Koebler and Emanuel Maiberg of Motherboard. The last story Underunderstood collaborated on with Motherboard was this one.

15:05 - Hundreds of Americans Planted 'Chinese Mystery Seeds' (Motherboard)

19:16 - Zack Franklin in action

22:44 - Amazon explains fulfilled by Amazon and a little bit about fulfilled by merchant.

30:55 - ”The mysterious seed is back! Shenzhen cross-border seller actually sends parcels here” (forum post)

31:31 - Moss’s website for Amazon sellers and Moss on Zhihu.

34:07 - Honest Buyers Club on Facebook is an example of one of these groups. Once you get involved, you’ll start to get one-on-one messages from sellers. To clarify, I (Adrianne) have never actually ordered anything, I just lurk and try to harass people into doing an interview (100% failure rate). I’m definitely not endorsing giving your address out to strangers on the internet, but I think these guys are mostly legit. So, maybe you could give them, like, a PO box?

36:06 - ”Evaluation blacklist” — a crowdsourced list of people who accept free gifts without providing the requisite review
44 min
November 17, 2020The One About the Masked Singer
Billy digs into how The Masked Singer got a studio audience to show up during COVID.
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Show notes:
00:35 - The Masked Singer (Wikipedia)

02:29 - King of Mask Singer (Wikipedia)

05:00 - After the Mask - May 6, 2020 (YouTube)

05:07 - The Masked Singer s04e01 (Tubi) - skip to 1m5s to see the clip we're talking about

08:43 - FOX MLB virtual fans (YouTube)

08:58 - tweet 1

09:12 - tweet 2

09:33- tweet 3

09:42 - tweet 4

10:16 - health disclaimer (JPG)

10:53 - Unreal Engine credit (JPG)

11:09 - Unreal Engine (Wikipedia)

12:26 - The 9/11 photo story

14:43 - Kyle Montplaisir on Talent Recap

20:00 - Dragon's performance (YouTube)

21:54 - voting disclaimer (JPG)

22:12 - How Does 'The Masked Singer' Voting Work This Season? (Cosmo)

23:43 - Gremlin Reveal (YouTube)

27:14 - Pixotope

27:29 - Nickon Mirsepassi

31:05 - Giraffe performance

31:51 - DMX512 (Wikipedia)

35:13 - Lidar (Wikipedia)

36:31 - Silver Spoon

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43 min
November 10, 2020Justice for Jocko
An unsolved mystery from our members-only podcast, Overunderstood. You can sign up and get access at patreon.com/underunderstood.
1:50 - Unfriendly Chimp Stolen From Cage In Central Park (NYT) - March 6, 1970

4:24 - Thief Says A Rare Bird Needed Love (NYT) — July 14, 1999 and Rare Bird Is Back in Hand, and So Is a Suspect (NYT) — January 28. 1999

6:31 - History of Central Park Zoos. There are no chimps today.

9:34 - Found a relevant crime, with a very different ending, while uploading these show notes: Chimps Stolen From Zoo Found Happy in Brooklyn Phone Booth (NYT) — October 25, 1966. Except apparently the Prospect Park zookeepers missed their chimps, who were "like babies to us" and started a ransom fund before they were found. The same kidnapper?? This story also notes that the chimps cost about $600.

10:18 - What the park zoo looked like in the 1970s. The zoo is also mentioned in here around 8:58.

13:55 - AWFUL CALAMITY. The Wild Animals Escape from Central Park. TERRIBLE SCENES OF MUTILATION. This was a hoax by the New York Herald in 1874.

15:40 - $60,000 for a chimp in 2009 and $600 for a chimp in the first half of the century

18:46 - Chimpanzees in Central Park Zoo, New York City, 1970. (Photo by Jill Freedman/Getty Images)

20:18 - Jill Freedman on Instagram. The photo of her with a beer was taken down, but you can see some of her work.

23:25 - This version of the photo has a caption and more specific date: "A chimpanzee wearing a tuxedo and roller skates sits on a chair at a photographic gallery opening." New York City, 1974. (Photo by Jill Freedman/Getty Images).

29:37 - The Wildlife Conservation Society told me they had no records, but stuff like this and this seems promising.

30:24 - CORRECTION: I said University of North Carolina in the episode, but I meant North Carolina State University. Ugh.

31:34 - Angry Keeper Stages Monkey House Lock‐In

And more stuff here.
37 min
November 03, 2020Tom and Gerry
Regina searches for the true story behind a sexist remark.
Show notes:
00:40 - This is Geraldine Ferraro's Wikipedia page.

0:52 - And this is Walter Mondale's.

01:21 - This episode published on November 4, 2020, which is election day in the United States for the 2020 Presidential election.

01:31 - The 2020 Democratic National Convention kicked off on August 17, 2020. It was technically in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but because of the Coronavirus pandemic it was a mostly virtual event.

03:15 - Edit desk: Shades of sexism, published April 30, 2017, is the piece of Emily's that I am referring to.

04:05 - hereGeraldine Ferraro's full acceptance speech

04:30 - Walter Mondale's full acceptance speech

06:10 - Kamala Harris Tests America’s Relationship to Women in Power, published in The New York Times on August 19, 2020

06:57 - In 1992, Hillary Clinton got in some trouble for implying she didn't want to "stay home and bake cookies" and as a result ended up in a bake-off with Barbara Bush. She won, apparently due to using shortening instead of butter.

07:56 - Prematurely mentioned obituary in The Economist.

12:04 - Tom Brokaw was accused of sexual misconduct in April 2018. Here is an Opinions piece in The Washington Post that his former colleague wrote about the experience.

13:41 - The Vanderbilt Television News Archive.

15:56 - "The Lady Is a Pol," by Marie Brenner for New York Magazine's July 1984 issue.

17:07 - "out of sight of the cameras, her feet began doing a secret minuet, an odd, pigeon-toed dance. Her size 7 ½’s were sheathed..."

17:51 - "The Rise of Geraldine Ferraro," written by Elisabeth Bumiller and published by The Washington Poston April 29, 1984

19:05 - Here are the details for Caroline's article, published in 2015.

20:46 - Some of the great research Caroline is referencing can be found in these research study results from Celinda Lake for Name It Change It with the Women's Media Canter and She Should Run.

23:07 - "Cosmetic Coverage," by Jennifer L Pozner

24:47 - The Representation Project.

34:39 - Check out our patreon to sign up and get access to Overunderstood as well as our Discord channel!
36 min